Obama’s Second Inaugural and The Party Line
It’s difficult to watch Barack Obama begin a second term with the debt, the unemployment rate, the poverty rate, and the number of people on food stamps all higher than they were when he took office the first time. It’s difficult to see him sworn in after he surrendered the war we’d already won in Iraq and doubled down on a war no one could win in Afghanistan. Obamacare is about to contribute to medical entitlements that will devour a third of our profligate budget. The Middle East is being swept under by the tide of Islamism George W. Bush tried so hard to stem. It’s tough to see Obama handed the power of making policy for four more years.
The short-term reasons this happened are becoming clear. The Democrats ran a cynical but effectively targeted campaign. The Republicans were blind to changing demographics and deaf to the fears of the working class. But in a larger sense, it’s just the nature of the beast — namely us; namely humankind.
I had the pleasure last weekend of reading The Party Line, a new play by PJ Media’s own Roger L. Simon and his wife Sheryl Longin. The drama tells two interlocking based-on-truth stories. One is the story of Walter Duranty, a New York Times reporter who won the Pulitzer Prize even as he was covering up the Soviet-created famines that were murdering millions in the Ukraine. The other is the story of Pim Fortuyn, the courageous Dutch politician who warned against the Islamization of the Netherlands and was assassinated by a crazed environmentalist out to protect Muslims.
I call reading this a pleasure because the play is a good one, evocative and powerfully written, as I’d expect from Roger and Sheryl, experts at finding the human drama in historical events. But it was also a disheartening reminder of an aspect of human nature that has haunted me for many years and that has reached a sort of apotheosis with Obama’s re-election
As the title suggests, the theme of the play — and what links the two stories — is the triumph of credo over truth, the ferocious commitment that decent, intelligent, educated people make to virtuous-sounding ideals and well-intended programs that are, in fact, the sure road to atrocity. The utopian hope of Communism, which has caused its adherents to turn a blind eye to mass murder and oppression… the high-minded lie of multiculturalism, which, in the name of tolerance, has given aid and comfort to the enemies of civilization… Intellectuals and sophisticates not only cling to such fancies but demonize the prophets who try to reveal their real nature.
These creeds don’t deliver what they promise, but they do provide their followers with a sense of their own virtue — a sense that comes to trump the millions of lives shattered or lost in the course of the creed’s actualization. For all their good intentions, the true believers somehow seem to forget that each human “sacrifice” to the greater good had a life as urgent as their own; had dreams, loves, thoughts, experiences each more worthy of reaching fruition than even the finest of cloud-based utopias.
Barack Obama is not a monster like Stalin or the jihadis. Conservatives who say he is are hysterical children who haven’t lived, who don’t know what a real monster can be. The president is just an empty mediocrity who trimmed his narcissism to the credo of the age and became its incarnation. We can survive four more years of him, I’m sure. But when he’s gone, we’ll still be stuck with the leftist pundits and pols who accuse reformers of racism even as their own policies turn African-American lives into crime-ridden nightmares; the economists who spread the gospel of debt and who ridicule the free market even as the bankrupt nations of the west spiral into decline; the feminists who hector women out of their homes and away from their families and then try to rationalize the steady decline in female happiness; the militant atheists who evangelize and enforce a philosophy that decreases joy and increases despair wherever it takes root; and all the rest of the well-intended workers on the road to hell.
I’m embarrassed to say it, but in my youth I thought humanity stumbled slowly but surely toward the light of truth. Now I believe that we cling desperately, even violently, to the sense of our own virtue — and that the light of truth, which reveals us as we are, is our natural enemy. We would rather destroy the world than know ourselves.
So welcome to Obama’s second term.
Also see: Full Text: Obama’s Second Inaugural Address
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Image made courtesy image from shutterstock / timy
My question is this; what will the leftists do and say when Obama’s policies have crashed us into that brick wall of reality? When his policies have proven so fruitless and expensive that nobody can deny what a waste it was, what will they do then? Blame Bush somehow? Try to distract the American people? I live in an area of the country that can barely stand Obama (Eastern Washington). When he was re-elected there were many of us that wanted to find an Obama supporter and ask WHY!!??
Christians should be Ashamed when in the presence of Liberals.
Jesus admonished the Christian to have the Faith of a Mustard Seed. Yet Christians have trouble exhibiting that they have that level of faith.
Liberals, however, will demonstrate that they have the Faith of an Avacado Pit on a Daily Basis.
In other words, they will lament the fact that when we hit the Brick Wall of Reality we weren’t going fast enough to break through it.
“In other words, they will lament the fact that when we hit the Brick Wall of Reality we weren’t going fast enough to break through it.”
Nice turn of phrase, and spot on.
Christians are more likely to be ashamed OF liberals when in their presence. So you have the faith of an avocado pit. By your own definition. I doubt Jesus would agree, mostly because He said that having the faith of a mustard seed would move mountains. In a way I suppose it’s true; leftists are moving this entire country into the ocean.
I strongly suggest you actually READ what I wrote!
My apologies, I didn’t mean to come across as contrary. I’m afraid my emotions (coupled with caffeine) may have ruled the moment.
You can find plenty Obamunists over the mountains in Western Washington. I hate layover time at SeaTac because sooner or later somebody from Seattle is going to ask me where I’m from and I have to lie or tell them I’m from Alaska; and then the rant begins! Only San Francisco has a stronger concentration of leftwings and a**holes.
sorry, seattle is 3rd place on the west coast. portland is 2nd place.
But, but, but… Seattle has a toy train now….
Oh yeah, portland has a bigger one.
As for what they’ll do when the wreckage of their policies becomes too apparent to all to hide anymore, I suggest that if history is any precedent they’ll pick a scapegoat group and try to exterminate them. Failure on a grand scale is no impediment to a true believing prog. Remember, never let a crisis go to waste.
Want to hear a good story about Seattle?
When I was going to college in 2008 at the University of Washington in Seattle, the moment the news anchor called the race for Obama a massive cheer could audibly be heard coming up from the entire campus. A few minutes later people started pouring out of the dorms and marching in a zombie horde down the street chanting Obama slogans like “yes we can” and “hope and change”. Hundreds of them. I watched them go from my balcony as a police helicopter followed overhead to make sure it didn’t turn into a full blown riot. According to reports I read later the crowd I saw met up with another even larger crowd in the middle of campus and they all just marched off southward. Good faithful soldiers of the left going….nowhere. It was apparently sometime around midnight when the hopium wore off and they realized they were several miles from campus with no way to get back. They’d ridden the tidal wave of their enthusiasm all the way out to a stranding in the middle of a warehouse district. They slowly dispersed as each solitary fool tried to find their own way back.
This story captures in one elegant moment the motives and foresight of the average lefty. These are the people who elected the dunces now running our government. Many of our founders were deeply uneasy of democracy for a reason.
Democracy means “mob rule.”
What sort of mob depends on the context; it could be “the mob” in the Cosa Nostra sense, or simply “a mob” … which could be anything from #Occupy to “Arab Spring” to Kristallnacht to “flash mob” attacks. They’re all bad, in part because a mob is a vehicle for the abdication of responsibility. In short, a mob is a beast with many arms and legs and mouths, but no conscience.
To hard to find an obama supporter/voter. They are hidden in cyberspace.
Not so hard. One appeared out of nowhere last fall and keyed my pickup truck six ways from Sunday, scratching emphatic circles around the anti-Obama sticker on my tailgate. About the same time, there was a rash of reported thefts of Romney/Ryan signs from yards all over my area.
They have their ways of showing their brotherly love.
What will they do? Blame the Republicans, of course. I have Obamist friends now who fall back on how the nasty Reps “won’t cooperate.” It’s not the utopians who wreck utopia, it’s the naysayers.
I think it’s obvious what liberals will do after the crash. They’ll do the same thing Stalin did — find scapegoats and raise a pogrom against them.
Eventually they will also claim that they voted against Obama. But that will take a number of years. First Obama worship will have become unfashionable.
This is what The One and his minions and leash-holders are betting everything on, and is the cornerstone of the old Cloward-Piven strategy.
When it all comes down about our ears and we turn into a giant Greece the terrified populace well come crawling on their hands and knees to the Great One and beg him to rule over us and save us. The de-Kulakization will begin. Obama is confident that, with the help of the MSM, he will be able to lay all blame on the Evil Republicans and the one percent. We are talking about a man who, in private, threatens his opponents with inciting mob violence against them. Debt ceiling, budget, taxes, it doesn’t matter which course of action Boehner and Co. pursue. The crash is coming and no matter what they do, they will be blamed for what happens. The only question is just how far the “masses” allow themselves to be led by the nose before they finally turn on the pied piper.
It always works out that way.
The revolution always cannibalizes its children – though never soon enough.
“Barack Obama is not a monster like Stalin or the jihadis. Conservatives who say he is are hysterical children who haven’t lived, who don’t know what a real monster can be.”
Not so fast.
It took many years for Stalin to become the full-fledged tyrant that he always was at heart. Stalin had to survive through the 1917 revolution and then make his way up the ladder during the Lenin era. Furthermore, by the time Stalin reached the top, Lenin had already done much of the work in putting together both the Soviet Union and the gulag system.
Yes, the jihadis are monsters, every one of them. But who has been empowering the jihadis? Who has been helping them at every turn, financially and in every other way? Obama and his administration. That makes Obama a jihadi himself, even though, as far as we know, has never fired an AK-47 on behalf of the jihadi cause himself. He need not use his own hands to commit murder when there are so many other people’s hands that he can use to commit it instead.
Thanks for giving the correct response to Klavan’s otherwise good editorial.
Barry would not hesitate to become a modern day Stalin if he could get away with it. Further, he would like to be our times Hugo Chavez and be “President for Life”.
One would hope that Hugo is contagious. Cuba’s Obamacare might save the day.
I love that Simon guy. I’ll have to read his play.
I felt something go out of me after this election, as well. It’s a strange thing- I’ve gone past being angry and disappointed, and have just learned to accept things the way they are. For the first time in 15 years or more I avoid the political websites I used to devour by the hour, and I avoid watching our telegenic president and his telegenic family. I even try to find good things about him. For example, the rest of the world loves him. For another, his crowd on election night was a hell of a lot more representative of today’s America than Mr. Romney’s. I find myself, when I do read about him, enjoying profiles in places like the NYT that humanize rather than demonize him. I find to my surprise that there is a lot to like about BO as a person, even though his policies are fiscally suicidal.
I’m a little tired of the smartasses on both sides of the debate, and the routinely nasty observations I read (like all those stupid references in Comments sections to the ‘Repugs, and ‘Dims’), as if each writer is trying to out-one-liner the other. It’s all rather tiresome and I find a great deal of solace and refuge in reading novels, biographies, and history, in helping the poor and homeless in my church, in serving and loving my God, and in enjoying the natural beauty of the country I live in (bankrupt Greece). And you know what? The sun keeps rising every morning. Even in this place, with its 26% unemployment rate.
BO ain’t going to break our country. The pendulem will swing back the other way and he’ll hand it off to a gifted politician from the other party, a Rubio or Ryan, in four years. The US will be damaged, but not beyond repair. I suppose that’s good enough for me. It has to be, anyway. Really, things are not that bad. I just read ‘The Worst Hard Time,’ the Pulitzer winner about the Dust Bowl, and saw the American Experience documentary ‘Surviving the Dust Bowl’ on Youtube. Man, now that was suffering. For the first time, I appreciated the saftey net put in place by FDR even as he was being demonized as a socialist himself. I happen to be poor, and a safety net to a person like me doesn’t look half bad. I’m not lazy, I’m just crappy at making lots of money.
In the meantime I’m learning the art of trying to find positive things about the opposition. And, surprise surprise, there are actually some good things there, even if they’re being implemented unwisely. The bottom line is this: like old Zimmerman says in one of his best songs, “Of every earthly plan that is known to man, he is unconcerned. He has plans of his own, to set up his throne, when he returns.”
“a safety net to a person like me doesn’t look half bad
We no longer have a safety net, we have a hammock.
If you are crappy at making money and live in a manayana infused country like Greece instead of here, and look at the current situation with 4% of the country on welfare and a third on food stamps and 20% working for the public sector at jobs that produce nothing and are often destructively applied to reducing the private sector’s ability to generate real wealth, the data supports the conclusion that you are, in fact, lazy, and probably incompetent as well. And that like many Westerners you have an inflated and historically inaccurate notion of what the value of your labor is worth in terms of lifestyle, wealth, status, and material standard of living.
In the past six years government at all levels has added tens of thousands of dollars and many, many hours of regulatory compliance costs to my business and those owned by others, none of which has made a statistically meaningful improvement to the lives of my employees or clients, but has given a great deal of income stream security to worthless public hacks who would (and should) be digging ditches and cleaning hotel rooms if they weren’t given government jobs based upon who they know, or some affirmative action preference quota hiring. That you can stand by and say that nothing is really all that wrong while the government is forcibly doing this to your fellow citizens speaks volumes about what you really are, and aren’t. The suffering from the Dust Bowl may be more “romantic”, but it is certainly no worse.
America is, in fact, broken.
How much “refuge” will you have in literature when the PC squads seek to delete it for being “patriarchal” or “colonialist” or some other such nonsense? How much “refuge” will you have in your church when the atheist fundamentalists who now control goernments on both sides of the Atlantic decide to confiscate church property and disenfranchise/”re-educate” believers? In what way will taking a workforce from 20% public sector workers – four times the percentage in 1960 – to an even higher number be of any benefit “even if implemented unwisely”? We need maturity and focus and independence, and you offer lotus-eating perpetual adolescence, diffuse thought, and a blase attitude about dependency.
No doubt you fancied your comment a sage and measured plea for reasonableness, but in fact it is the proverbial gong signifying nothing. Really, you don’t deserve to think so highly of yourself. I doubt Dylan would.
The safety net enjoys wide acceptance, even among us Righties. What we have, however, is edging ever nearer to a welfare state, something quite different.
The safety net tries to ensure that nobody goes hungry or homeless no matter their circumstances. It is compassionate. The welfare state tries to compel us all to be equal and bind us to the state as the omnipotent source of our entitlements. There is an enormous philosophical and political difference.
A safety net is sustainable, to use a modern buzzword. A welfare state? Well, look around you, you are in Greece.
“Safety Net” indeed. I think the liberals are convinced we can look forward to a genteel Sweden-style welfare state. They simply can’t see that the annual trillion-dollar deficits are unsustainable and that Greek-style utter collapse is just around the corner with no one to bail US out.
For people who decry “American Exceptionalism” at every opportunity, they still think the rules don’t apply to us and that we can continue on or merry way indefinitely.
Um, Sweden pretty much pays cash for its welfare state — hence the confiscatory tax rates there — just a skosh under 50% national income tax (plus local taxes) and a 25% VAT on sales just to sweeten that monstrous pot. Effective total taxation for many Swedes is in the neighborhood of 70%. This is why Sweden isn’t on the verge of fiscal collapse, but is also not likely to become a world-beating economic competitor in the foreseeable future.
Unlike Sweden, we in the US have decided — or permitted our government to decide on our behalf — that massive borrowing and deficit spending, rather than actually paying as we go, and without the merest plan for ever repaying the debts being racked up, is somehow a sustainable path. There is really no rational basis for comparing the two economies.
Wemedge … If you are finding good things about the “opposition”, you are probably more with them than opposed to them. There is nothing good about Barack Obama and the Democrat party. Nothing at ll. Do you watch a movie and decide the actor is a good person because you liked the character he played in the film? Or do you leave and say, ‘he was acting’? Obama is an actor. He is less than an empty mediocrity. He is bent on wrecking our country as our Founders and many generations before us knew it. He is a criminal and his party is a criminal organization. They have stolen trillions from working people to hand out to cronies, friends, and purchased voting blocs. There is nothing good at the core of this fraud.
“I’m just crappy at making lots of money”…
LOL…God Bless you. Your post hit me like a brick, as I feel the exact same way. I’ve come to recognize that all of these earthly battles are simply an ongoing spiritual battle. Thus hard adherents of “utopia of earth” are just atheists who rejected God and serve themselves. And that, quite frankly, is the disaster in itself. These lefties have elevated man to the level of God. And that’s where the downfall is. We are so fallen, so unable to create heaven on earth, that any mass attempt to do so will lead to very serious problems. Greece has employment mandated into its constitution, no? Then, I ask, how is there 26% unemployment? This was the first time I looked at the PJM website in weeks…I’m so glad I read your post!
Me too: I took a much-needed detox after November 6, and avoided the blogs and Facebook, it did me some good.
I was so frustrated at how stupid this country had become, well at least half of its voters anyway. All the talk of this state or that state being in play meant nothing as Romney was only able to retake North Carolina and Indiana. The unions and the inner city machines were able to get out their once every four year voters and stuff the ballot boxes as usual so it didn’t matter.
I offered my liberal friends 20-1 that the debt won’t be over 20 trillion when he leaves office. So far no takers.
I looked at it, that it doesn’t matter if this moderate candidate running against this horrible record, black or not, then there was no hope. I look to see Hillary in a walk in 16, and by 2024, maybe the census results from 2020 may matter, blue states losing and red states gaining, but what the matter, we will have a Supreme Court made up of 9 liberal activist dim wits like Elena Santakagen.
My wife is from the Philippines and we are in our forties and have no children. As I drove home in shock that night, I told her, “For the first time in my adult life I am glad I don’t have children and I like the fact that, if we had to, I have a place to retire to where they speak English, the dollar goes far and they love Americans.”
No matter what happens in the next four years, even a standard GOP pick up in the 14 off years, the damage may well have been done. God, I hope not.
Wemedge: Enjoy your pathetic new “insights.” You have no idea what you’re talking about or what we’re up against. Get out of the way of the rest of us.
The problem with the “safty net” is that it corrodes public virtue and divides us. Liberals imagine that the safty net is an act of charity (charity means love). It is not. The money is taken by force and distributed by faceless bureaucrats to people who do not know or even meet any one who is a giver. There is no human transaction and no human relationship. An individual cannot love a bureaucracy and a bureaucracy cannot love a human. Neither the giver nor the receiver is ennobled by the sacrifice, as they would be in a human transaction. Therefore the receiver is free to envy and vilify the ones from whom the money came, and the giver is free to despise the ones to whom his money has gone, because he had no part in the decision to give it nor in the amount to be given. A religeous organization, on the other hand, collects the money that is freely given and delivers it along with a message of love and the equality in God’s eyes of all people, regardless of the circumstances in which they find themselves. So both parties are ennobled and the people are unified. The state, in contrast, is only a machine; and the safty net, while saving some people from hardship, is a poison.
Your blase acceptance of the man whom nobody knows anything about (What IS his legal name?) is generous. Meanwhile, those of us who grew up in the best country in the world and see it being given away to the muslim brotherhood, various thugs and black supremacists are a little more upset. Please excuse our inability to be as magnanimous as you are.
Much of the reason we turn him off is that, regardless of politics, his lecturing tone where he talks to us all as if we were ill-behaved, not-too-bright children, is outrageous. A llttle respect for those you supposedly serve, rather than constant contempt, scorn, and ridicule, might help us be slightly more accepting as you tear our country apart piece-by-piece and give it to the Third World.
Whether you recognize it or not, you have fallen face first into resignation and defeatism. In fact, I would go so far to say that your mindset is the last gasp of the realization you are in the death throes of a dying civilization and you are simply acclimating yourself unconsciously to the inevitable ruin.
Since I have children, I refuse to do so, will continue to fight the good fight, stay the course, and keep the faith. I will finish the race.
However, I can sympathize with removing yourself from the fray. That does provide a measure of solace.
“… like old Zimmerman says in one of his best songs, “Of every earthly plan that is known to man, he is unconcerned. He has plans of his own, to set up his throne, when he returns.”
Zimmerman also says:
“Broken lines broken strings
Broken threads broken springs
Broken idols broken heads
People sleeping in broken beds
Ain’t no use jiving
Ain’t no use joking
Everything is broken.
“Broken bottles broken plates
Broken switches broken gates
Broken dishes broken parts
Streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken.
“Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground
Broken cutters broken saws
Broken buckles broken laws
Broken bodies broken bones
Broken voices on broken phones
Take a deep breath feel like you’re chokin’
Everything is broken.
“Everytime you leave and go off someplace
Things fall to pieces in my face
Broken hands on broken ploughs
Broken treaties broken vows
Broken pipes broken tools
People bending broken rules
Hound dog howling bullfrog croaking
Everything is broken.”
So what’s your point?
Wemedge: So they’ve broken you, just as they meant to do. You’ve crumbled under their abuse and you’ve given up. So be it, the rest of us will close ranks and go on without you. Enjoy your Victory Gin.
That’s perhaps the most insightful and wise post I’ve encountered concerning the times and the debate I’ve read on any pundit’s page. Shows you know the ways Americans work and even something of the God Who still is in control of things. Thanks, Wemedge, a real day brightener.
God is not in “control of things” in the sense of determining outcomes. If this is what you’re saying I think you need to re-read the part in Genesis where God puts us in charge of the world. God is keeping the power plant running, but we are deciding where the wires are to go and what to connect them to. God did not “defeat” Romney nor did he “elect” Obama. We did that. God gave us free will to manage as we see best. We are not doing a very good job of it.
While almost everything you write appears to me to be true, the following is not: ” The Middle East is being swept under by the tide of Islamism George W. Bush tried so hard to stem.” Mr. Bush did no such thing. He destroyed the regime of a vicious totalitarian monster. He did not confront “Islamism.” Had he, say by doing in Iran what he did in Iraq, perhaps one could credit him. No — American foreign policy — Dems and Repubs alike, like ostriches — seems to be willfully blind to the most massively metastasizing movement in the world of this era. It’s just too hard for any western politician to confront, because it means sending people to war. And like all the polls say, Americans are tired of war…poor dears.
What on Earth do you mean by this snarkism?……
“And like all the polls say, Americans are tired of war…poor dears.”
You’re treading on very emotional ground……especially with veterans and with parents who’ve lost sons and daughters….for starters.
Dear Charlie,
By no means do I intend “snarkiness.” I mean that there is a war on whether we like it or not. So, we can “be tired of it” all we want — all the polls reported that Americans are “war weary,” during the election season. But it is a reality nonetheless. If we don’t fight it, I believe we will lose our way of life.
Yes, he did confront Islamism. Ever heard of the Taliban? Ex-rulers of Afghanistan, driven out of power by the Northern Alliance with the help of the American armed forces, G.W. Bush, Commander in Chief? And those forces, for better or worse, stayed there for over ten years to try and keep the Islamists from regaining their foothold in the country.
Iraq was a sideshow.
No third party, take over the Republican Party and change it from within, make it something that Truman type Democrats would join. Follow the Constitution and be prudent with the purse, get children away from the liberal propagandists that have taken over schools. Crucify criminals in Government and pare Government drastically before we are consumed by it. The country will be ruined by the Obama/Democrat economics, it is the peoples duty to fight against the profligates. Love the country, don’t give up hope and fight for what is right, there is no place to run to that would be safe, there is no choice.
“make it something that Truman type Democrats would join.”
What a hoot! Just what we need to turn the country into a 2 Leftist party state, the Far Left and Moderate Left.
LOL!
Look to Europe, that is where they have already gone. The Communists vs the Social Democrats. All they disagree on is the speed at which we arrive at the Socialist Utopia. Disempowering Conservatives isnt the answer…as if you cant beat them then join them, is a strategy for anything other than surrender/defeat.
I agree with Lars Walker: When these policies fail, it will always be someone else’s fault. The number one reason not to trust Leftists is that they don’t take responsibility for their failures. It’s also the number one reason why they don’t learn from their mistakes.
Best take-aways from President Obama’s second inaugural:
“They [safety-net programs] do not make us a nation of takers. They free us to take the risks that make this country great.”
Heh. Atlas is shrugging. A new freedom is born: the Freedom from Risk. It appears to be closely related to the Freedom from Consequences and the ever popular Freedom to Sit-on-Your-Backside-and-Let-Others-Do-the-Heavy-Lifting.
“Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm.”
Oh, yes, “cared for and cherished and always safe” by the benevolent State. I can see the New Living Constitution now:
We, the Sheeple of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Social Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the Common Defence of the State, promote lots and lots of general Welfare, and secure the Blessings provided by the State to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this New Order for the United States of America.
It’s national oaf of office day, hurray.
Now that’s some weapons-grade lollage!
Society is breaking down. See the despair in Detroit, Oakland, Newark or Philly or any other big city run by Democrats? They foster sloth, crime, drugs, drink, and the loss of dignity which work brings and the chance for real freedom. They offer no lofty ideals, no saving grace. Just the grey steps of doom. No hope, just destruction of the soul. But, good for business. Just witness the past election. As the Bible say, if slavery is your destiny, into slavery you will go. So sorry, all so sad. Seduced by the devil…oldest story in the Book.
The Soviet Story – Why killing is essential to communism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3uFUxMwA1w
The U.S. militia should charge Obama with dereliction of duty if he doesn’t get a budget through Congress in the next few months.
He thinks and acts like he answers to no one, and he is beyond any prosecution.
He needs to be shown exactly what country his oath for president is for.
May 16 2012 Timeline Of Senate Democrats’ Refusal To Make Budget Plans Public
http://budget.senate.gov/republican/public/index.cfm/budget-background?ID=b630d3bd-f985-4943-a87a-a746ecec6a51
Harry Reid: ‘Foolish’ for Democrats to offer budget plan May 20, 2011|By Lisa Mascaro, Washington Bureau
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/20/news/la-pn-harry-reid-budget-20110520
#3 Wemedge
That’s funny, but on an adjacent PJM blog a commenter mentioned that he now truly understands the Civil War:
I’m afraid that I agree with him, not you. There is an evil afoot in this country that dares expropriate the flag that so many died to preserve. A petty, ignorant, lazy man stood in front of us today and vowed to finish what he started.
Well, maybe. And maybe not. I suspect at some point in his life he is going to need the lifelong Secret Service protection that he just gifted himself recently.
You’re right,Obama is not a monster. It would be better if he were;then more people would see the necessity of defeating him and his ilk. As it is, he is a mean little sewer rat carrying the plague of arrogant liberal insanity that, if left untreated, will cause massive epidemics of chaos,wreckage and ruin.
Over the past year of praying and meditating, I’ve discovered what I call a Hierarchy of Purposes, which is the fact that whatever cause or philosophy you’re working for needs to serve a greater cause, and the greater cause has to serve a greater cause than that. For example, I vote Republican, but my Republican voting is subordinate to my Conservative ideals. Conservatism is only valuable when it serves American patriotism, and being American is only worth something when you’re promoting the inalienable rights to Life and Liberty that are due to all human beings. Human rights are important only because we’re created in God’s image. Every purpose, I therefore believe, must lead to the Supreme Purpose of God’s Glory. Nothing good happens in this world without His involvement.
Most people only pay attention to their present purpose, and they make it their whole reason for being. They stop short of God’s Glory and, in a way, are guilty of idolatry. This explains why Liberals will stoop to any depth in order to promote their agenda- like Communists, they don’t regard any morality beyond spreading their ideology. I’m afraid we Conservatives are guilty of it too, to a lesser degree. We get so worked up about what the other side does we become cranks. Although I think we’re closer to what God wants than the libs are, The Lord is above our silly notions about Left vs. Right. It’s better to think in terms of Up or Down. The question we should ask is: are we serving His purpose instead of ours?
(Yeah, borrowed from Reagan a couple of times just now. He really was awesome)
Alexandre Dumas: “I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest.”
Andrew Klavan: “The president is just an empty mediocrity”.
Yes he is. And there is the rub: He will not rest.
Jacques
Jscques:
Andrew Klavan: “The president is just an empty mediocrity”.
Yes he is. And there is the rub: He will not rest.
Maybe he’ll play more golf. He seems to do a lot of that when things don’t go his way.
Andrew, intelligent and moving as is your wont.
I struggle with the first part of the following quote as I do believe that many of those who support politicians, media and policies that we, conservatives do not agree with, do have good intentions. Not all, but many.
” For all their good intentions, the true believers somehow seem to forget that each human “sacrifice” to the greater good had a life as urgent as their own; had dreams, loves, thoughts, experiences each more worthy of reaching fruition than even the finest of cloud-based utopias.”
However, I completely agree with the second part about the progressives not seeing the common man as a living, breathing person with all the accompanying qualities. Their actions, particularly identity politics, not to mention the hostility to small business and the destruction of the family,say otherwise. And that is terribly sad. We have to share this country with them and it sure looks as if their policies are in ascendency for the next four years and maybe longer.
“militant atheists”
Indeed Mr. Klavan. Thank you. There are large differences there.
Klavan concludes, “I’m embarrassed to say it, but in my youth I thought humanity stumbled slowly but surely toward the light of truth. Now I believe that we cling desperately, even violently, to the sense of our own virtue — and that the light of truth, which reveals us as we are, is our natural enemy. We would rather destroy the world than know ourselves.”
He’s right, and we forget at our own peril what follows that most famous Bible verse, John 3:16.
“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” – John 3:19
I hope that’s what Klavan means. I feel like there’s a diminishing of Christian optimism reflected in his recent columns.
Klavan, Im still looking on the bright side of things, per a recent post of yours…
Im jumping on the Chris Mathews bandwagon!
Blue Skies!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSy3BzWAUig
“I’m embarrassed to say it, but in my youth I thought humanity stumbled slowly but surely toward the light of truth. Now I believe that we cling desperately, even violently, to the sense of our own virtue — and that the light of truth, which reveals us as we are, is our natural enemy. We would rather destroy the world than know ourselves.”
Man-kinds nature is to do evil, this is why we were thrown out of Eden and cursed to toil. W
Mankind’s nature must be, has to be, marginally more inclined to good than evil, or America cannot and never could have worked. If you are right, we should have stayed under an absolute king, and an earthly crown at that.
God instructs us to put our faith and belief in him not in men for this reason, liberals do not follow this and place there belief in the benevolence of rulers and states all creations of man, they will never learn because it is much harder to point the finger at yourself than it is to point it some one or something else. No one likes to be told they are wrong and will fight to the death to keep the delusion that they were right and despots and tyrants have known this since time began and use it to control the mobs. Obama is just the latest one to use this to gain power thus the class warfare, identity politics etc..
Toqueville on Eventual Slavery
I’ll give the last word to Alexis de Tocqueville, as he describes the way he expects despotism to emerge from modern American democracy:
“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power [central government], which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild.
“It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: [the government] is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.
“For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
“Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.
“After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.
“The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting.
“Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
Been thinking of the old movie “LOGAN’S RUN” a lot lately.
Never thought after we won the cold war.. America would be so viciously betrayed by our own media like we have bee. There is no such thing anymore as a free press aside from our limited access to FOX and talk radio.. the networks work tirelessly to indoctrinate millions with left wing dogma.. and work just as tirelessly to “kill” any persons reputation who dares object to the party line media… We may well end up breaking up.. because we reject the rule of the vile hate spewing left.
let em tax their own billionaires into submission while bad mouthing private sector jobs.. then see in ten years who the next banana republic is. if Ohio won’t leave… we’ll simply eject the ten blue counties and take our red 78 form a new state of our own.. they can all rot in hell..
no more stolen elections through media fraud..
They say, “What is truth?”
When I was a kid I saw an episode of Boris Karloff’s “Thriller” show called “The Cheaters”–anyone who ever saw it will know why Mr. K’s post reminded me of that today.
Obama will now continue building on a record that was so catastrophically awful, it couldn’t be mentioned during the election campaign. And the majority of Americans cheered his accomplishment.
Never thought I would live to see the day.
This is the 60th anniversary of one of the greatest confessionals of all time and, as we march in the direction of oblivion in Obama’s second term, I suggest a reading of “Witness” by Whittaker Chambers for a glimpse of how we got pointed in this direction. The Communist Party of America doesn’t even run candidates for office any more because they don’t need to. I am also disheartened to be watching this march. It seems very few people can even think outside of the claptrap of the Collective these days.
The triumph of credo over truth is the triumph of Deductive reasoning over Inductive reasoning. It is the triumph of the Democrat narrative over Republicans using too much of the same narrative. Tax rate? It is the Rate of Taxable Events. The 2% who are not paying their fair share? It is Eat the Rich, a sacred goal of Socialism. When the economy etc. crashes and he gets a third term, it will be the triumph of the Nomenklatura.
This is very, very good, and of a length that Aunt Mabel and Uncle Ed might actually read it.
http://dadecountylawyer.org/2012/08/27/the-truth-about-communism-and-socialism-and-the-atrocities-in-history-part-ii/
PS, two others, five-minute reads by JR Nyquist, pertain here and –because they so cleanly context the slipped thinking –are i think good tools in the dismantle-this-horror (or die trying) project:
Stone Age Genocide
The Oracle
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I should’ve noted re the Dade County Lawyer essay that the Duranty story his covered in short form and includes some hair-raising quotes from a few contemporaries, such as
(quote from the essay)
Arthur Koestler, a British writer, started out sympathetically toward the Soviets and changed as he traveled to Russia and saw starving children that looked like “embryos out of alcohol bottles”. ( Burns, Eric ( “All The News Unfit to Print” , John Wiley & Sons, (2009 ) p. 130 ) ). As Koestler traveled through the countryside of Russia and saw the ongoing famine, he saw ruined farmland, crumbling houses and recorded that the train stations “..were lined with begging peasants with swollen hands and feet, the women holding up to the carriage windows horrible infants with enormous wobbling heads, stick like limbs, swollen , pointed bellies.” ( Ibid at p. 130) After Koestler’s report, the Russian Soviet Leaders ordered railway officials to pull down all window shades on all trains. ( Ibid p. 130). Unfortunately for the freedom of news dissemination, the British Socialist explained away the reports and watered down the impact of the loss of freedom and failures of policy.
(close quote)
Also, the essay separates and thumbnails each of the sequenced major initiatives by which Russian society –after slow, patient, preparation –was suddenly swept off its feet in a very short time; civil and official institutions usually requiring only a year or so per each to totally turn inside-out, once the ‘go’ order had been given.
Terrifying –and especially considering it’s not medieval but modern –in our time.
I’m sorry I missed this until now. Surely one of the best productions Mr. Klavan has given us, and that’s saying something. Thank you!