The most problematic dimension of decisions is their futurity. It’s not what decisions are about that is most worrisome. It’s what they will lead to that we don’t anticipate that causes the most problems. A turning changes a trajectory in a fundamental way. Take choosing a pair of sunglasses. If you buy an expensive pair, they’ll look funny unless you have a shirt to match, which will look strange unless you’ve got pants to go with them and they in turn will force you to buy a good pair of shoes. You can get a whole new wardrobe from a choice of sunglasses. Here’s another example from those familiar with the tabloids. Newly divorced or widowed men who for some reason think to date a supermodel-type girlfriend may soon find they’ve acquired more than a new romantic interest; that they’ve bought into a whole new lifestyle — as their purchases of hair gel, tooth implants, gym training and contact lenses will soon prove.
This happens in politics too. Take electing Barack Obama. Some of his supporters may have believed that his ideology was decoration at the margins: that things would stay the same and go on much as they always have; that Obama’s edginess could simply be blocked off in one little corner while he governed from the center. Only one really leftist thing leads to another: bailouts, cap and trade, health care. It’s a serial which once begun seeks an ending. Those events are not disconnected from news that the Obama administration is going to question CIA officials about the interrogation of terrorist suspects. Hot Air quotes news sources as saying that Leon Panetta had a vociferous argument with an unnamed senior administration official over plans to prosecute the CIA and “now officials tell ABC to expect some turnover in national security positions”.
Why so serious? Maybe it’s because it sends the signal that successor administrations are prepared to prosecute their predecessors. If pursued in all but the most limited and circumscribed manner, then the way lies open to for each successor to power to criminalize those who came before. Like the sunglasses or the supermodel girlfriend, maybe one thing leads to another and the leftist mission creeps gradually forward and has no logical end until the makeover is complete or it encounters some constraint.
But what if proposing constraints itself becomes illegtimate? Fouad Ajami warns this could lead to unpredictable results. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Ajami says:
So we are to have a French health-care system without a French tradition of political protest. It is odd that American liberalism, in a veritable state of insurrection during the Bush presidency, now seeks political quiescence. These “townhallers” who have come forth to challenge ObamaCare have been labeled “evil-mongers” (Harry Reid), “un-American” (Nancy Pelosi), agitators and rowdies and worse.
A political class, and a media elite, that glamorized the protest against the Iraq war, that branded the Bush presidency as a reign of usurpation, now wishes to be done with the tumult of political debate. President Barack Obama himself, the community organizer par excellence, is full of lament that the “loudest voices” are running away with the national debate. Liberalism in righteous opposition, liberalism in power: The rules have changed.
But wait? How can the rules simply change? Here lies the greatest of all sources of instability because it breaks the system and Ajami is not shy about warning where it might lead.
In the American tradition, the “mandate of heaven” is gained and lost every day and people talk back to their leaders. They are not held in thrall by them. The leaders are not infallible or a breed apart. That way is the Third World way, the way it plays out in Arab and Latin American politics.
Those protesters in those town-hall meetings have served notice that Mr. Obama’s charismatic moment has passed. Once again, the belief in that American exception that set this nation apart from other lands is re-emerging. Health care is the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it is an unease with the way the verdict of the 2008 election was read by those who prevailed. It shall be seen whether the man swept into office in the moment of national panic will adjust to the nation’s recovery of its self-confidence.
If the administration continues to paint itself into a corner, a curious thing will happen: some will begin to argue for the desirability of giving President Obama the chance to climb down without damaging himself too much. One of the supposed necessities of maintaining a long term relationship is a requirement to overlook lapses in the name of continuity. Thus diplomats lobby to release terrorists in the name of “engagement” and party-goers pretend not notice when their dinner companion burps in the name of civility. But for it to work there has to be a tacit acknowledgement that one party is being given a chance to recover. If one side continues to press their advantage then everyone at the table will soon conclude that the rules have truly changed and a return to the old unspoken rules becomes harder to achieve. You can give Eric Holder an inch; but you can’t give him a mile.
Maybe the real key to returning to the unspoken rules of the past lies in the willingness to abide by them. Unless “yes we can” means there is no room for losers.
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We are headed down a path most Americans do not care to go, a path that leads inevitably from single payer to single leader. Barack Obama and his coterie seem determined to remake the United States in their leftist image, an image that does not include the military or the CIA. A war-time English music hall favorite by Noel Coward was a little ditty called Don’t Let’s Be Beastly To The Germans. The United States now has a president and his hand-picked attorney general who like to sing Don’t Let’s Be Beastly To The Vermins. Eric Holder, the radical leftist Attorney General of the United States, was instrumental in the pardoning and freeing of 16 convicted killers belonging to the Puerto Rican Marxist terrorist group FALN in 1999 by the outgoing Clinton administration, a political move designed to gain Puerto Rican votes for Hillary Clinton’s Senate race. No matter that the FALN carried out over 120 bombing attacks on US soil between 1974 and 1983, murdering dozens of innocent people. Politics is politics, especially as practiced by Democrats. And now Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States, is up to his old tricks, helping his friends the terrorists again by releasing terrorists from Guantanamo and appointing a Special Prosecutor to harass and put in jail if at all possible the CIA guys who dared to question captured Al Qaeda big-wigs, who dared to protect Eric Holder’s real enemy, the United States.
Don’t let’s be beastly to the Germans
The cheery words rang through the music hall
As now don’t let’s be beastly to the vermins
Now seems to be the new Obama call
O says we’re not the nation we believe in
He says we cannot be the ones we seek
He says we can’t be lyin’ and deceivin’
He says we’ve got to turn the other cheek
He says that Allah preaches peace and virtue
And peace and virtue’s all we ever need
He says us Muslims clearly will not hurt you
Unless you dare oppose our word and deed
We’re letting people go out of compassion
We’re clamping down on CIA misdeeds
We won last year and we’re the ones in fashion
So throw the Constitution in the weeds
We promised hope and change and you guys bought it
We didn’t tell we hoped to change it all
I hoped to get it done before you caught it
I hoped by robbing Peter to pay Paul
That I could move the folks in my direction
A movement built completely around me
So we could do away with the election
And I could reign till 2053
Take being an ‘environmentalist’ for example.
We all love the environement.
So we feel like we all got ‘to do something’.
Save the environement. Save the planet.
Like reintroduce the wolves in the upper Clearwater.
This costs us taxpayers as much as a new pair of fancy sunglasses. Each one of us.
And kills the elk.
Soon as you know it, you got to fund shirts and trousers for biologists to go study the animals.
They need boots, too, these folks.
This runs up the cost even more.
Soon as you know it, you’re up to the ankles in shit.
I’m going to bed, I’ve had it.
Of the many mistakes that the Obama administration has made; I think the decision to prosecute a previous administration is the most dangerous of all.
It will tear at the very fabric of America; the concept of a peaceful transition of power from one administration to the other is at risk with this decision.
Pursuing this course will make the following prediction come even more true:
Another quote:
The administration is truly playing with fire by prosecuting the previous administration, they are weakening the fabric that holds America together … They are weakening restraints that must not be weakened …
Question: So now what do we do?
It seems to me, the current administration keeps increasing the risk to America. Why? (not a rhetorical question. I really don’t understand why)
I don’t see who this benefits; certainly not the current administration … The asymmetrical radicalization this is causing, of conservatives, of independents, and of libertarions, will just hurt the current administration, in the long run.
So I really don’t understand why the current administration is behaving this way. It just seems, (1) bad for America (2) so so so politically stupid.
Amit red Sulla is coming.
Bush was Marius light; Obama Marius heavy-handed.
Anyway, that fits with those who believe that America is Rome continued by other means.
However, Ajami invoked another sphere. In the American tradition, the “mandate of heaven…” .
That’s not Western divine right of Kings, nor even earthly divinity as when Octavian elevated himself to Augustus.
Mandate of heaven is Chinese — the moneyed element for this, the third triumverate?
Ajami got it, It shall be seen whether the man swept into office in the moment of national panic will adjust to the nation’s recovery of its self-confidence.
The plan for BHO and Rahm Emmanuel is to keep manufacturing crises. It doesn’t matter to them what the crises is because the response has nothing much to do with the precipitating event. Remember Emmanuel’s “Never let a good crisis go to waste?” The Democrats began this pattern before the election by cracking the economy and ramming through the TARP in a panic. Bush was simply overwhelmed by the orchestrated attacks and failed to rally the country.
Is there any reason to be pressing on Health Care while the economy is still under pressure? None at all, except that the atmosphere of panic produced by an unrelated subject can be used to stampede legislation through Congress. The problem for BHO is that after the seizure of GM and Chrysler to reward the UAW the magnitude of the bait and switch corruption became to obvious to hide. You can con a sucker once, or even twice but you can’t con him and then con his friends and then come back a third time. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain had the con men know that they had to sneak out of town with the money before the third performance of the fake play. Is BHO the Dauphin or the Duke of Bilgewater?
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain had the con men know that they had to sneak out of town with the money before the third performance of the fake play. Is BHO the Dauphin or the Duke of Bilgewater?
heh, that’s great, and I can’t seem to get to sleep tonight.
I’m a big Huck fan, Terrisita too, of late memory.
What ever happened to Terresita?
She was very good on Huck, our great
American novel. Quicker than I.
And I thought I knew that book well.
But she was faster than me.
We, Terresita and me, got luddy barsen to admit once, he’d never read the book.
Just a lot of facts and figures from the financial pages, is all he read.
We also got him to say ‘yes’ once, after a lot of enjoining, to join us on a raft trip down the Mississip.
luddy, Terresita and me.
I love that book.
It’s great.
It’s our great American novel.
Fred Barnes argued that whatever success conservatives currently enjoy is due almost entirely to a newly discovered willingness to fight.
This suggests that the party in power can afford to compromise much more than the party in opposition. But until the Tea Parties and Town Halls, the Republicans seemed more amenable to conciliation than the administration. Until their nerves were braced by an outraged grassroots, the idea among some Republicans was that that they could not afford to fight — to be perceived as opposing a popular President, an idea which was self-fulfilling. But there’s more than this to the conservative reticence.
The left is far more willing to take things to the brink than the conservatives because they positively hanker after or believe in discontinuous change. “Bring it on!” Conservatives on the other hand, are psychologically much more reluctant to trash existing institutions and will therefore be more inclined to pull back from the brink if taken there. You can argue that Obama is safer on the edge of the precipice than he is in the middle of the plateau because everyone will fear the consequences of wrestling with him on that doubtful margin. There’s too far to fall. Maybe he doesn’t mind but others do.
One may well hear arguments among well meaning persons to the effect that taking the President on if he runs to an extreme will cause too much damage; that it would be better to let him get away with it than start a kind of confrontation. The structure of this problem is very similar to the old deterrence game. If the President is pursuing a policy of escalation, when is it optimal to counter-escalate? When should fear rightly make one draw back?
I think part of the problem facing conservatives leaders is that they hung back for so long that they are in danger of being overtaken by events. Obama has taken the game to the high-stakes casino. The penny ante minded politicians quake in fear before that portal. A policy of escalation by the President risks setting in train an unstoppable cycle of rising tensions. As I argued in the main post it is up to the Democrats to manipulate the graphite rods to keep things from overheating. If they’re simply relying on the conservatives to forbear, they may miscalculate. If there’s one thing BHO has proved, it’s his ability to go further, faster than most “sober” pundits thought he would. With that data in hand, why should anyone think he won’t keep doubling down?
amit/3; you ask the question of the day, or the era, alright.
The only thing that makes any sense to me is that failing their sweep of loot-legislation (“lootislation”?), the admin is proceeding toward the target (the US Dollar) from another angle –new crises (including such as Comrade Holder is propagating) to break the nascent rally in the markets before it can seize hold and improve the economy too much (much as the growth of private property under GWB panicked them re social security private accounts) and thwart the long term goal of loading so much debt onto the economy that a federal debt crisis requires a dramatic change in the relationship of citizen and government. Leading off will be the emergency-decree boosting of income taxes up to, oh, 80% or so, there to bleed the power and morale out of the merchant, small biz, red-state middle class. If you wonder why Obama doesn’t seem to act as if he’s worried about a second term, well, this explains that neatly.
This will be sold along the way as the only way to protect what’s left of the Dollar (and what value is left in people’s savings), which by then will have fallen thru the AAA rating on gov’t debt status.
This will also be the Democrat’s way of settling foreign debts –that is, pay ‘em off with cheap dollars, because the alternative –cutting government spending 15% or 20% across the board, can never be allowed by this party. it would defeat its whole purpose, which is a Marxist takeover of the United States via the Cloward-Piven Crisis Strategy.
The whole shebang will probably get us into a major foreign war and as likely some nasty domestic unrest –both specialties of this utterly, comprehensively, disastrous political party.
The only way to head this off is for the admin to stop this insane 1930s replay right now –right now –and start visibly repairing what it what it has already done. If it won’t, then pray for some generals to go have a talk with somebody somewhere.
bob/6; great books are dangerous. you can fall down into them and get trapped –willingly, gratefully –inside. Huck Finn could put a person for months on end back in the middle of the 19th century rolling on the Mighty Mississip –a mighty mystifying place to be what with all the wrack and ruin flying thru the 2009 air of the here and now.
#7 Wretchard
With all due respect, I think that you and Fred Barnes are missing something critical. The ‘willingness to fight’ is coming from Conservatives, and pissed off independents and Libertarians. The REPUBLICANS have done bugger all about fighting back, and indeed the supposed spokesmen for the party have been opposed to Tea Parties, Town Halls, and any form of confrontation with the Democrats.
I have seen our state Republican party [2008 election] try to unseat our incumbent Republican Congressman who is an outspoken Conservative and who actually fights and votes for what he believes, not what they hope will please the Democrats and the Media [pardon the redundancy]. Their choice for the seat opened his primary campaign with a promise to reach across the aisle to work with the Democrats. We flattened him in the primary and re-elected our Congressman, who has voted against all of the bailouts and is against the takeover of the economy by the regime. We have had some local Republican officials support the Tea Parties, and the State Party is not at all happy with them. This fight for the future of the country is going on despite, not because of, any Republican resurgence. The Republican Party machinery dreams of being coopted and absorbed into the regime power structure, not fighting it.
As far as the decision to prosecute the former administration; it is expected. Be they Stalin’s show trials, the Nazi Volksgerichtshof, or the public confessions and “self-criticism” in front of Mao’s Red Guards; all totalitarians have some form of kangeroo court mechanism to lend a pseudo-legitimacy to their abuses of power. The outcome is pre-ordained and I am sure there have been meetings in the White House on what the sentences will be and how they will be announced.
In the first 7 months of the first Anno Obama we have seen the rule of law discarded, Congress become a rubber stamp eager to pass any bill put before them unread, and the Constitution ignored. We have a new Supreme Court Justice whose rulings will, by her own words, be based on race and gender. We have seen the President threaten those who oppose him with mobs on more than one occasion, and seen violations of the law by Obama’s supporters deliberately ignored by his Attorney General. The confidence in the validity and honesty of either the census or the coming election [if it happens] is not high. So such prosecutions are of a piece with life in the new America.
If we survive the evil times that are coming. IF. Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen will find that it will do them no good to appeal to the law and Constitution that they have rendered moot. For we will have to rebuild a civil society before they come back into effect. But first, we will have to deal with those who destroyed it. Lex Talonis
Subotai Bahadur
Amen!
luddy at #9
yeah but there is stuff that is beyond time–read it damn you–
I love luddy barsen, he’s a great guy, just not perfectly read.
great books are dangerous
Courage, my friend.
Gird up your loins like a man.
Too much time in the Wall Street Journal.
But I aim to teach him the errors of his ways.
In short, there is human love.
It’s the secret of the two brothers, who are fighting here in this world of space and time, but are at one, and at blissful peace, behind the scenes.
The old Egyptians knew.
That is the secret.
Now I have told you.
Remember it.
It seems to me, the current administration keeps increasing the risk to America. Why?
Why? He’s trying to push his opponents until they break, because he believes (rightly so in many cases) they, unlike the permanent activists of the left, have no stomach for the fight.
lotm wrote:
“Bush was simply overwhelmed by the orchestrated attacks and failed to rally the country.”
W’s inability to communicate effectively made this rallying impossible, regardless of his actual thoughts on the subject or media being in the tank for the left.
Taken as a whole, the human race has not yet evolved to deal properly with mass media (which is, after all, only four or five generations old) and the ability of said media to appeal to the emotional and the sexual while trumping logic and facts. Yes, we all here at BC can pat ourselves on the back for having the ability to not let ourselves be duped by this. Do you really think that the majority of Americans share this ability?
The evolution of our species to the point where all humans are reflexively able to not be deceived (by media glitz and a speaker’s personal magnetism) into missing the underlying logic of ideas could take thousands of years. None of us posting will see the time of this.
W’s failure to articulate the conservative cause (outside of a brief time after 9/11) is exhibit A for the reality of our times. It cannot be overemphasized; like it or not, in this age good ideas aren’t enough, you need someone who is telegenic and an excellent, charismatic speaker, despite whatever risks are incurred in giving a person like that power.
The center/right/libertarian sector of our society has to get over its smugness, no matter how well deserved, of having won the war of ideas in terms of their utility. We live in an age when much of the American public has transformed from having its chief goal of being productive transformed into being entertained. Whiskey’s single urban sluts, their urban metrosexual sycophantic men, suburban/rural NPR listening soccer moms, public sector union guys, and the like, all fall into that category. They will not care if the conservative or libertarian in question is rumpled and a bad speaker while going up against a slick, sexy leftist in a TV debate. These are people who are more interested in image and being entertained than they are in literally anything else. You’ll never peel them off in any amount unless you have someone who appeals to the image machine. I wish it were not the case, but there it is.
“prosecuting the previous administration”
what will prevent the next administration to do that to BHO? If a new attack on the USA
can be proven a negligent of the previous president? That is treason!
BHO is not troubled by that only because he think there are no “next administration”.
He put all the chips on RED!!
my humble outsider opinion.
And before the cries of “What about Reagan?” begin, I would say that Reagan’s success was DUE to what I’m talking about, not in spite of it.
The center/right and libertarians have been telling themselves – wrongly – that his success was almost entirely due to the excellence of non-leftist ideas. While the ideas were indeed excellent, it took the Great Communicator to bring along huge swaths of citizens. You may not want to admit it, but it’s the truth nonetheless.
what will prevent the next administration to do that to BHO?
I have all but concluded that president Obama intends there will not be be enough left of the country for us to worry about a next administration. Look at Hugo, remember Fidel, and the failed Honduran bid.
Impeachment, and then removal is the humane solution, on what grounds?
Something more substantial than the AG has his hands on. We (the electorate as a whole) were stupid to elect him won’t do.
The following quote by author M. Lange says much about the current problems our country faces and the leadership or the lack of to address these problems. “If you ever come close to the truth there will be consequences” The truth of Obama’s decisions are having consequences.
#7 Wretchard: I think part of the problem facing conservatives leaders is that they hung back for so long that they are in danger of being overtaken by events.
What conservative leaders? If you mean the Republicans in Congress or at the DNC … they are, like, totally clueless … I can’t think of them as leaders … And they are being overtaken by events.
Republicans need to realize, the Tea Party movement is *not* on their side … it is a very real threat to Republicans (and rightly fully so, the Republicans deserve to be totally swept out of power with their utter cluelessness) as much as to Democrats.
Obama has taken the game to the high-stakes casino. The penny ante minded politicians quake in fear before that portal. A policy of escalation by the President risks setting in train an unstoppable cycle of rising tensions.
Maybe this was his strategy (I’m not sure); but it is starting to fail very badly (see below) …
As I argued in the main post it is up to the Democrats to manipulate the graphite rods to keep things from overheating. If they’re simply relying on the conservatives to forbear, they may miscalculate. If there’s one thing BHO has proved, it’s his ability to go further, faster than most “sober” pundits thought he would. With that data in hand, why should anyone think he won’t keep doubling down?
The reason he cannot, and will not, keep doubling down is it is no longer Obama .vs. the Republicans … (which Obama could easily have won; the Republicans being so clueless) …
The fight, the last month, has now turned into Obama .vs. the voters. And that one, no President can win.
#11 Subotai Bahadur With all due respect, I think that you and Fred Barnes are missing something critical. The ‘willingness to fight’ is coming from Conservatives, and pissed off independents and Libertarians. The REPUBLICANS have done bugger all about fighting back, and indeed the supposed spokesmen for the party have been opposed to Tea Parties, Town Halls, and any form of confrontation with the Democrats.
Yes, exactly. Its turned into Obama .vs. the voters. Obama will lose that fight. You cannot double down on Obama .vs. the voters.
I seem one problem: “The asymmetrical radicalization this is causing, of conservatives, of independents, and of libertarions, will just hurt the current administration, in the long run.”
We have to avoid “radicalization”. One side has to step back from the brink, while continuing the opposition.
Question: How to we keep opposing, but in the American spirit, without become “radicalized”?
Because, if the conservatives, independents, and libertarians allow themselves to be radicalized, then both sides will lose badly … There is grave danger for both sides here … We really don’t want to live in an America that is being radicalized.
#18 no mo uro The center/right/libertarian sector of our society has to get over its smugness, no matter how well deserved, of having won the war of ideas in terms of their utility … You’ll never peel them off in any amount unless you have someone who appeals to the image machine. I wish it were not the case, but there it is.
Yes, agreed. Have to get rid of the smugness; and fight properly.
#20 no mo uro: The center/right and libertarians have been telling themselves – wrongly – that his success was almost entirely due to the excellence of non-leftist ideas. While the ideas were indeed excellent, it took the Great Communicator to bring along huge swaths of citizens. You may not want to admit it, but it’s the truth nonetheless.
As for the image machine, and the ability to communicate properly, Sarah Palin has that charismatic appeal & communication ability … but … well … to be honest … she is perceived a train-wreck currently by both the left & the independents … Unless she can overcome that; she will not be able to be helpful … I’m hoping she can figure out the right strategy; so far its looking only semi-hopeful she will.
And almost everyone else I have seen, has the charisma of a dead fish. Including, Bobby Jindal, who has all the right ideas, etc, and would make a wonderful President. But you can’t win the Presidency, in our media age, with the charisma of a dead fish [Hopefully I'm wrong here; or maybe Bobby Jindal can learn how to speak properly before a camera].
A political class, and a media elite, that glamorized the protest against the Iraq war, that branded the Bush presidency as a reign of usurpation, now wishes to be done with the tumult of political debate.
It’s a one way street for these guys. Be aware.
What do you guys think about a Romney/Palin ticket in 2012? Are they good enough communicators and tough enough fighters to take on these guttersnipes from Chicago?
SB #11: “Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen will find that it will do them no good to appeal to the law and Constitution that they have rendered moot. For we will have to rebuild a civil society before they come back into effect. But first, we will have to deal with those who destroyed it. Lex Talonis”
Spain. Indonesia. Chile.
When the Left exercises this kind of power in a non-Leftist country, it always ends the same way.
Mac #25 “What do you guys think about a Romney/Palin ticket in 2012?”
Romney is not remotely a political conservative (He does appear to be a nice guy and a family man, but that’s not the same thing). He’s a manager and a damned good one, probably brilliant, but he does not want the guts of the Left on his spear, which makes him the wrong man for the moment.
And la pasionaria? She may be sick of it all already, and nobody runs for VP twice.
Waterboarding is torture. Any discussion that it isn’t is sophistry. If it weren’t torture, we wouldn’t have used it.
Those who used it to elicit information were aware of possible consequences, otherwise they wouldn’t have went to such great lengths to build a bulwark of “tortured” legal opinion authorizing it.
This is one of the open sores that inflames many of the centrists that supported the election of the current team of “brainiacs” running our country. It is time to treat it. Open it up to the air. Let the legal system work, in its imperfect way. In my opinion, this is not an issue to “lock and load” over. This is not a persecution of a previous administration. It is a righteous examination of alleged bad conduct and bad decisions. Just because someone is Left does not mean they are wrong, you just need to count your fingers after shaking hands with them.
We have to avoid “radicalization”. One side has to step back from the brink, while continuing the opposition.
Question: How to we keep opposing, but in the American spirit, without become “radicalized”?
Really? I do not see this. Perhaps I do not understand what you mean by “radical”.
We have to move the nation back to founding principles. We have to rollback all of the work of the Democrats since FDR. There is no other way. It is the false dichotomy of Democrat vs. Republicans that we must unseat. The real opposition is between internal enemies who wish to destroy us and those who wish to save us, and it is an objective choice. It is not merely matter of pragmatically weighing the subjective points of view of political sections.
If we decide that it is the side of the decent that must “pull back from the brink” then the Marxist destroyer will win. This is what they are banking on. This is what they have been banking on for generations. We have to turn the tables on them.
We need to understand what winning will entail. It may mean bringing RICO charges against the Auto Unions for this communist theft of the GM and Chrysler (and Obama may have to go to jail for this). It may mean putting those Dems that are milking Fannie and Freddy in jail and “clawing back” the millions that they pocketed. It maybe that we must seize the wealth of Goldman Sachs and put those people in jail. The broadcast portion of the MSM may have to have their licenses revoked. It may mean putting out a international bounty on Soros. It will been vigorously prosecuting voter fraud, and a great many State level democrat office holders will have to go to jail.
We say that Obama is radical in perusing past administrations, but this climate that we have allowed to go on of the Democrats being above the law has lead us to where we are.
We cannot go on where one party is held to a different legal and moral standard than the other. Clinton should have been brought up on treason charges for the Loral deal, for heavean’s sake. WE cannot live in a world where the POTUS can trade away our security for campaign contributions.
911 should have been seen as a signal to the country that there are deep moral problems in the Democrat Party. This is not a game. They are out to destroy us. Personally I think that in less then a year they have destroyed us a world power. The Scotland kerfuffle shows this.
Avoid becoming radicalized? I think you are wrong. We have to take the country back.
What Obama represents is an open departure from all we have ever been. He clearly shows what is in the hearts of the Democrats, not just the far left of the party but the whole party. There is no place for the to “climb down” too. It would only be a tatical maneuver in their war against us. “Climbing down” would certainly not entail the Democrats recanting their vile designs against this nation. These people are Leninists and National Socialists. They have contempt for not only our very lives but our very history. Witness this business of trying to turn 911 into some sort of communist holiday. National Service Day indeed. They could not be more obvious.
My goodness, the head of the NY AFL-CIO was made head of the NY FED! This is too much. This is at the level of Chavez or Hitler. We have to stop it, and radically so.
We have to face the fact that Obama has taken us into a territory which is completely lawless. Our Republic is hanging by a thread.
You guys have it all wrong.
It’s divide and conquer. Modern politics.
Roughly half Dem, roughly half Repub.
How convenient!
It still looks like they are ALL laughing all the way to the bank!
WITH OUR MONEY!
The guy/gal out there working for a living, the guy/gal that makes 100% of the money, still has no representation, except, Colt, Smith & Wesson, Ruger, Sig, well, you get the point.
I’ll depend more on LMT, Lake City, Hornady, Black Hills and Bushmaster, than these “elected” crooks.
Capitalism has had it’s run, and “democracy” has committed suicide. What comes next is anybody’s guess, but would you put your faith in Barney Frank or Rock River Arms?
Do you believe the Constitution is the rule of law? Do you believe in the original intent of our founding fathers? Do you want to reform Congress? If your answer is yes, we have to work together to make this happen.
http://animal-farm.us/change/constitution-project-575
Programmer:
Just because someone is Left does not mean they are wrong
Of course it does. Few political movements in the history of the world have been responsible for the levels of destruction as has the Left.
They are completely wrong about this, and IMO, so are you, programmer.
This is just playing into their hands. There is nothing that needs to be aired–the vast majority of Americans are thankful for it. It is a false contribution the this “disturbs centrists”. This is another media circus flamed by the press, if it was not this it would be something else. It is purely cynical, and treating it as anything else just legitimizes this. There is no proof at all that this is what got Obama elected, and there seem to be no out cry at all from these so called “centrists” when we find that Obama s continuing much of Bush’s WOT policies. If there are centrist that feel this way then they are morally confused and need to be educated. They do not need to be step up to be further duped by the Democrats.
Goodness, the battle field “torture” by soldiers in the field in WW2 must radically eclipse water boarding three people.
And it is not torture, this also is a false construction and a misuse of the term used to induce hysteria.. It is specious to argue that precautionary were taken because there was fear it was in fact torture. Rather they were undertaken to deal with the expected cynical political maneuverings of the Democrats. This is just begging a question.
It is the Left that is indulging in sophistry here, not the rest of us.
Programmer, you need to see what is happening: the Left are caving in the WOT and releasing terrorists, and they are criminalizing those who protect us. The POTUS in effect is going around the world and surrendering. The international criminal court can not be far behind. Noting could be more serious.
A line must be drawn here and fought over.
The Left are perverting reason itself, reality itself. They are standing the world on its head. It is high time that they were denounced for it.
If they get away with this, it is just a small step to claiming that internal political opposition are terrorist.
What August has wrought is a determination to end the madness. The tipping point has long been reached and there is no turning back. The ordinary citizen has made his stand and it is now up to the emissaries to establish once and for all this is a country based on the Constitution of the United States of America.
When congress returns in September the battle is joined, the Republicans know that the majority of citizens insist this administration must completely change course. If they are unable to articulate the mood and advocate the demands then other means must be necessary.
October is pivotal, either we fight for reestablishing a constitionualy mandated government or submit to the chaos of change that this current administration insist on. We are no longer a two party system but one of patriots vs internecine cult.
907: Capitalism has not “had its run”.
And we know what will replace the Republic should it fail.
There are really only two poles in the end: 1) Limited republican government with checks and balances, and the fundamental rights of the citizen as is well articulated by our Bill of Righst and 2) Tyrannical Oligarchy. Any other political forms are merely transitory, interim forms along the way to this poles. Either the State is the subject of the citizen, or the Citizen is the subject of the State. There is no third way.
The Founders were right. Their truths are objective truths. Let us have no doubt about it. The twentieth century demonstrates this in the most pronounced manner possible.
There is really no choice: Defend the Republic and return it to its founding principles or be destroyed, and it will not just be ourselves that is destroyed but the entire historical project of Western Civilization. Mankind will revert to an Asiatic beehive.
Are we so feeble that the likes of Obama and country can overturn all that is decent and noble in us? Will we let these louts destroy our civilization?
One hopes not.
To follow up on posts 11 & 23, the Republicans need to look out. I have believed republican and conservative were the same most of my life. Mostly because I have lived in deep red territory. But this is certainly not the case as my own republican senators are luke warm on anything conservative. I have attended several of the tea party events and last week joined a group protesting the healthcare takeover scam in front of our local congressmans office. Belive me when I tell you there is a lot of anger out there for these “warm spit” republicans that will not fight for us. The citizens feel that they are alone in this stand against encroaching government domination. Where are the republican calls to arms, the protests on the front steps of the capital. Why are the republicans almost invisible (with a few exceptions) in this battle? We don’t want to compromise with the statists, we want to throw them out. If you are on our side we expect you to suit up and get in the game.
luddy, you’re “great books…fall in” reminded me of a favorite Moby Dick sentence: “How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey’d head, and sweetly perished there?”
It is a false contribution the this “disturbs centrists=
It is a false construction that this “disturbed centrists”.
Another possible scenario is a seismic schism in the Democratic Party. The instinct for self-preservation can trump all. Even those intemperate ideologues, blind to the eventual national disaster of deficit spending can be brought up short by the specter of personal disaster: defeat at the polls. You might say (being a democrat, I wouldn’t) that the rats can feel the ship beginning to list. I believe (or at least hope) that after the 2010 elections Obama will be a general without an army. Obamanomics, spending tomorrow’s money today on yesterday’s failed ideas, will be permanently discredited. Nothing conservatives can say can persuade in the way that what liberals, when in power, actually do.
dan: exactly.
What Holder is doing is criminalizing the process of giving advice contrary to the desires of the Left. My argument that follows is somewhat tortured. It relies on a distinction between what could be defended as possible in theory, prosecuting an interrogator, and what would be extremely unwise in practice, prosecuting a lawyer for advising someone to order the interrogation.
It is not the act of waterboarding itself that important here. It is possible for reasonable people to disagree about that. If they had chosen to prosecute an interrogator for being personally responsible for causing suffering then a jury could hear the arguments. The interrogator could not win by pleading that they were “just following orders.” The Nuremberg precedent precludes that. It would be unwise to do so because if it was deemed illegal to perform an act it does not mean that it would wise to make it be illegal to issue an order for someone else to do the act.
The Left are assuming that the public will accept that it was criminal for the lawyers to advise Bush and Cheney to advise a course of action and that it was illegal for them to act on that advice. What should protect the operator from being charged for acting in accordance with instructions is that doing so would be against the interests of those who give advice contrary to that which the operator acted on. Could they prosecute the chain of command all the way up to George Bush without indicting the lawyers and neocon publicists that justified the former administration’s policy? It may have been possible to do so but Holder already began by threatening people like Douglas Feith.
Given that the Democratic Party is far more dependent on the legal community then the Republicans are it surprises me that there hasn’t been a louder call from the ranks for them to pull back from this course of action. Once the giving of advice is criminalized then the entire apparatus that the Left has built up over the last seventy years is open to deconstruction. The entire network of lobbyists and law firms, of foundations and NGOs and research institutes that have become a permanent government in exile when they are out of office and an unaccountable sources of policy and personnel when they are in power will be open to attack. The Right by comparison has a shallow bench with only a handful of similar institutions.
If the Left begins to lose elections then the entire structure with tens of thousands of people in it will face investigation and possible retribution. The hard core pushing for radical change may desire this because it binds the troops closer to the radical agenda. If failure means exposure and poverty or prison then the nomenklatura will become as bound to the radical project as the purple shirts of the SEIU and Acorn.
If my Confucianism is correct the Mandate of Heaven did not bestow absolute power on the sovereign. Quite the opposite. The sovereign acquired the Mandate of Heaven only by fulfilling his moral obligation to promote the Proper Order of things. A sovereign who abused his subjects for personal gain did not have the Mandate and was considered illigitimate and replaceable.
Ajami misues the term “American Exceptionalism.” The United States was exceptional, not because the bipeds who inhabited the terrain were superior people, but because the Constitution of the United States of America created the first government in human history that purposely limited its powers to the protection of the unalienable rights of all men to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
A Guernsey cow has more respect for the U.S. Constitution than the sitting POTUS. But he is not alone. American political thought since the death of Lincoln almost universally treats the U.S. Contitution as an obstacle to Progress.
We are on the grand march from Jeruslaem –> Athens –> Rome –> Nowhere.
Mongoose,
You state your position strongly, passionately, and fairly.
I am an old centrist. I strongly believe that the Republic is strongest when the Left and Right “ride herd on each other”.
You say:
Are we so feeble that the likes of Obama and country can overturn all that is decent and noble in us? Will we let these louts destroy our civilization?
One hopes not.
Is it noble and decent to waterboard an enemy? Are we destroying ourselves? Killing in self defense or in the rage of a battle is one thing. To restrain an enemy and methodically drown him, bring him to life, drown him, bring him to life, drown him…how noble.
The enemy must be defeated. We agree on that. We need to stop the disintegration of our system. We agree on that. The West teeters on the brink of disaster. We agree on that. I oppose the use of torture. We do not agree on that.
Let us work together where we can to further our mutual goals. Those who take the stand that you are either all for us or you are all against us will find all against them (It’s just in American nature to resist pushy people, something I believe the “brainiacs” are finding out right about now).
no mo uro,
Well said. The triumph of the messenger over the message goes back to the Kennedy-Nixon TV debate.
“Radicalized Conservatives” is an oxymoron.
When ex-conservatives are provoked to action, as opposed to hand-wringing, whining, or woofin’, what do they become?
“Conservatives” are almost always fighting a losing battle, like a fortess garrison under siege, defending, almost never attacking, surrendering the initiative to the attacker. Conservatives can occasionally pour boiling oil and molten lead on the orcs at the bottom of the ladder, maybe even knock down some siege towers, but the besieged must sortie out and steal cattle, slit throats, and poison wells in the besieger’s camp until they lose heart and go away. Balian of Ibelin was a Cultural Revolutionary, and he still lost.
I like the Ajami column title: “Obama’s Summer of Discontent.” Yes, despite his good looks, there is something Richard the Second-like about Obama. Now that’s a scary thought!
Ajami’s “mandate of heaven” metaphor is not quite congruent with American political philosphy, but the metaphor has some analogues in Americans seeing their country as playing a providential role in history. Americans traditionally like to think they are team players with Providence.
America remains a ‘religious’ country. The liberals, in Obama’s own words, are doing God’s work. They have decided the government knows best how we can be our brothers’ keeper. They feel the power of virtue, and this exercise of virtue requires redistribution of people’s wealth for the common good. (My pastor got the Obama message and preached about the need to support health care for the common good. Yawn.) I don’t think Obama believes a word of what he says, except in so far as it helps him consolidate power, but the pew warmers eat it up.
Conservatives have a different idea of God’s sovereignty, for sure.
Loved Ajami’s words about the “magical thinking” of voters who hoped Obama would bring economic revival. Ouch.
I wouldn’t do my job if I worked for this admin. might get sued, imprisoned or shunned when the time came to throw me under the buss.
I damned sure wouldn’t go to a shathole like afganistan and die or get maimed.
36. dan:
favorite Moby Dick sentence: “How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey’d head, and sweetly perished there?”
……
Yeah, I think it was Plato that did the damage and not Aristotle. I think the Name of the Rose got it wrong when it hung the poisoned manuscript on Aristotle.
42. programmer:
Is it noble and decent to waterboard an enemy? Are we destroying ourselves? Killing in self defense or in the rage of a battle is one thing. To restrain an enemy and methodically drown him, bring him to life, drown him, bring him to life, drown him…how noble.
…….
but at the end of the day –the man is uninjured and unscathed. For torture to be torture–some part of permanent injury has to be involved.
I think this is poetic justice that men whose tradecraft involves inducing terror by way of death and destruction are themselves terrorized by the illusion of such.
Are they humiliated? Yes.
But humiliation is not torture. If it were– fraternities would have been put out of business long ago.
18. no mo uro: The evolution of our species to the point where all humans are reflexively able to not be deceived (by media glitz and a speaker’s personal magnetism) into missing the underlying logic of ideas could take thousands of years.
Shall we then evolve to become Vulcans? I think not. Old Homo Sap is what he is. Neither evolution nor education can be counted on to turn men into logical, principle driven beings. Other means must be found.
The huge failure of the right is that it has in the first place utterly failed to grasp the tactics of the Left and devise effective counter measures. The second failure is related to the first, it has utterly failed to successfully market its ideas.
The success of the Left is due in large measure to the effectiveness of its marketing. It has a well organized, consistent message that is repeated everywhere. The message is perceived as internally consistent, morally desirable and holding to it grants validation and a sense of belonging to a nobler, higher and more enlightened tribe dedicated to advancing these higher principles in the face of the purblind opposition of ignorance, stupidity and evil. What’s not to like?
Until and unless the conservatives, be they Republicans or whatever, can define themselves in consistently positive terms and the Left in consistently negative terms as well a articulate an overarching purpose, they’ll get no traction. At the moment conservatives seem to have only managed part of that in the inchoate outrage against Obamacare. If Leftist principles are not to carry the future conservatives will have to do better than that.
It can be done. Reagan did it. The reason, imo, that the Reagan Revolution failed in the long run is because it did not maintain a consistent, broad and sustained marketing campaign. Having grasped the reins of power the Republicans, as the vanguard and standard bearers of conservatism, lost focus on their own marketing principles, opened the door to the Left’s propaganda and allowed themselves to be manipulated by it. The more consistent, disciplined marketing of the Left carried the day.
The principles of effective marketing in service to the founding, guiding and sustaining ideas enshrined in the Constitution are the key to the national future. It worked before and it can work again.
Unsustainable deficits, swine flu epidemic, mob rule, Chicago style corruption and CIA prosecutions you think Osama Bin Laden has just moved in the White House advising government how to inflict fear and destroy the capitalism on this country singlehandedly and to submit populace to submission.
Charles:
I refer you to the US Code: Title 18,2340 etc.
As used in this chapter—
(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and
(3) “United States” means the several States of the United States, the District of Columbia, and the commonwealths, territories, and possessions of the United States.
Referenced page
This will be the code under which prosecution is proceeded upon.
Charles,
At the risk of being accused of being a dead horse beater, were I placed in the uncomfortable, at least for me, position of having to defend a client against said charges, I would probably rely heavily on the phrase in the above that states,”other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions”.
[Sound of feet shuffling off to kitchen to start a spot of tea.]
The comments by Subotai @11 remind me of the quote from Man for All Seasons: “And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast—man’s laws, not God’s—and if you cut them down—and you’re just the man to do it—d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
1) Wretchard has done more hard and insightful thinking about the contemporary left than anyone writing today. Join with me Belmont Clubites and urge him to put his fine X-ray analysis/vision into a book.
2) Slightly OT; has or has not Buddy Larsen (aka Luddy Barsen) read “Huckleberry Finn?”
kindness to your enemy is cruelty to yourself.
Conservatives don’t start revolutions; they simply make sure their shackles are made no heavier.
Radicalized ex-Conservatives, finally motivated to do something to the Statists, have no real leaders, at least not yet. Millions of Super Empowered Individuals and two- or three- person cells dreaming up ways to fling their wooden shoes into the gears of the Statist machine will come up with innovative and amusing methods of Resistance.
programmer: According to the statute you quote above, I can’t even threaten my enemies in time of war. This code must have been written by some who are 1) suicidal, 2) in league with my enemies, or 3) feel they have nothing to fear from my enemies, regardless of the treatment I receive.
A textbook written in 1940s Great Britain is still having effect. C.S. Lewis took up pen and the lecture stand to present an alternative to that book, namely what has been correctly viewed as being timeless. The notes were kept, and they became, “The Abolition of Man”.
What the traditionalists base their stance is simply this: there are objective truths which are communicated via ethics. In other words, there is so much more to the virtues than mere
sentimentality.
That standard has been referred to by those in the far east as the Tao. When a government
does not govern according to the Tao, the mandate of heaven is revoked.
Now, given Aristotle’s golden mean gives the amount of latitude a government has to govern according to the Tao without the mandate of heaven being revoked, anyone would be hard pressed to make the case that Agent Zero and his zombies still have the mandate of heaven.
Which makes the case for an alternative government in exile to operate unofficially in the United States, which is what the new freedom fighters have accomplished in taking on the changes to the American health care system, and they will be tackling the cap & trade system of a threat that is only a get rich scheme of those who peddle biased science.
Excellent article.
Of course it is noble and decent to protect Western Civilization against its mortal enemies, and to protect her at any cost. It is most indecent and ignoble not to do so–it is cowardice of the highest order. What are you going to ask next, should we have not nuked Japan? Should we not bomb enemy stronghold even if there are civilians there? Our ancestors were not half so squeamish, that is why we prevailed. This is why we are here. This is not a game: we are in a moment if deep peril. This is a fight to the death.
Let us be clear:
!) Water boarding is not torture, the day afterward they are sitting in their cells, reading their Korans in their orange jumpers and puffing away on their cigarettes. Get real. But I must say that I really could care less if it was “torture”. As far as I am concerned the whole lot of them should be dragged from state capital to state capital and horsewhipped in public, and then dragged back to the capital and drawn and quartered. A bullet in the head is too good for them. It is bizarre to me to make this argument. Prior to this effeminate age, we know just how our forebears would have dealt with these folks. The Gitmo prisoners would be in the ground. Our collective mincing hissy fit about this nonsense is a mark of decadence and ignobly, not the sign of decency or nobility. What the Democrats are doing with this “torture” nonsense is a complete suspension of the most basic common sense and an inversion of all values. It is madness. It is suicide.
2) I am sick of hearing how doing this or that makes us “no better” than the enemy. There is not in any manner a case where Western Civilization is not vastly superior to Islamic “civilization” or any other civilization in history. It is an objective fact. The dignity of Mankind depends upon it surviving and perfecting its forms. The only thing that would “put us on their level” is suicide and willful self-immolation. Period. Our civilization is facing one of the greatest existential threats in her history. Not to defend her, and not to do so all costs whatsoever is the deepest, blackest cowardice and evil. Period. Those who think otherwise should be cast out of this civilization. It may yet come to that if we suffer a nuclear attack.
Let us look at it another way: Were one’s family under serious and deadly attack and one did not do everything in one’s power to avert it one would have failed them. Musing about how “noble” one’s choices were and how one “did not stoop to the enemy’s level”, will avail one of little as one contemplates that corpses of one’s children.
Few things could be more empty than that.
geoffgo: It is referring to someone in custody or under physical control; i.e. a detainee or prisoner.
So, let me wend my way back to at least the outskirts of the current Belmont Club discussion. If I am in a hospital for treatment and I am placed in severe suffering from the denial of pain killers or treatment because of advanced age (and therefore nominal usefulness to the collective), am I able to claim relief by virtue of this statute?
(Note: Hopefully this is not a duplicate, I submitted this 20 minute ago, but nothing has shown up)
#34 Mongoose: Either the State is the subject of the citizen, or the Citizen is the subject of the State. There is no third way.
You & I agree on this — and in many ways, this is the ultimate question that America is facing today, see Live Free or Die:
As to means though, I believe we need the left — true, we need to oppose their ideas — but they also have a lot to teach us, that we need to learn from them, in terms of compassion, etc.
Again, as #18> no mo uro wrote The center/right/libertarian sector of our society has to get over its smugness
America, ultimately, cannot be run as a country from either the left, or the right.
Neither can we “rollback all of the work of the Democrats since FDR.”, instead, a much more constructive solution, is to transform the great society into something much more associated with liberty.
Some previous thoughts mine on that of that, from five years ago are at The transformational election of 2004:
Now, I’ll admit I was too optimistic then that the transformation would happen soon … at this point, I am more realistic … I think we are probably 4 to 12 years away from a transformation of Democratic Socialism into something more realistic, and better for America.
I’m trying to answer & talk about that question: How can we help in a constructive way.
Now this here: Belmont Club in Houston is exciting! I wish I lived close to Texas.
Maybe we could have another such meeting but close to the Boston / Nashua area? Would be great…
Showing evidence of current political correct decadence cast in the the Military Code of Justice is hardly proof that this was torture or not. We are discussing this in the objective and normative senses. One can change the MCJ.
If you seriously think that putting a mass murders head, a murderer who was part flying airplanes into the WTC, underwater for a few seconds is causing him “severe mental pain or suffering”, or that we should care one whit about his “suffering” then I suggest that you go talk to some of the widows of 911.
This is just lunacy. This is just assisting the enemy.
Holder’s rats with legal degrees will drag CIA operatives out into the dock to explain how they could dare to threaten KSM’s children even as he killed ours.
Once they have chilled any intelligence agents who might be motivated by love of duty and country, the Islamo-fascists will be emboldened to incinerate an American city. After all they despise weakness. Then it will be on.
KSM’s children will die as will many other children whether by Israeli Jericho missiles or the last blow of a dying Great Satan. Cowardice and leftist perfidy will be the end of us all. Forget “Huck Finn” Read James Burnham’s “Suicide of the West”
Politics has two branches. Conservatives fight in the world of ideas and seek to persuade fellow citizens as to the proper philosophy and application thereof.
Republicans fight in the world of votes and appointments, in the mechanics of governance. Republicans are people too and seek office for their own motivations and ambitions. Sometimes those ambitions are more important motivators that their conservative principles.
The battle being organized by tea partiers and on talk radio and by conservative bloggers is in the sphere of ideas. Here is the foundation for our self-governance.
Republicans have to play day-to-day tactics. So far, the party leadership SEEMS to be taking a course of “let them keep digging.” The Democrats are governing in a manner that will offend many voters’ fundamental principles and lead, hopefully, to electorial success for those identified with conservative principles, Usually, those winners will be Republicans.
The risk seems to be that we may be approaching a point of no return. Obama seems to be willing, if not eager, to subvert the mechanics of governing to suppressing opposition. Criminializing former administration personnel for policy differences makes the peaceful turnover of elected and appointed officials impossible.
Obama may drives us back to where we can only replace our elites by killing them. And don’t doubt that the current political, cultural, and economic elites are under pressure to step aside.
trangbang: Just so.
23. Amit Green:
And almost everyone else I have seen, has the charisma of a dead fish. Including, Bobby Jindal, who has all the right ideas, etc, and would make a wonderful President. But you can’t win the Presidency, in our media age, with the charisma of a dead fish [Hopefully I'm wrong here; or maybe Bobby Jindal can learn how to speak properly before a camera].
Amit, go watch this video on Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan:
Congressman Thaddeus McCotter – Q & A from David Horowitz TV
http://www.blip.tv/file/2498041/
I fail miserably at htmllee stuff, so won’t even try.
tom
@25 Mac–
Romney & his Mass. health care plan would be a millstone around Palin’s neck.
#51. programmer
As I suspected from your comments and then your citation of Title 18 of the USC, you are a lawyer and you’re talking about use of torture in that context. If you are not a lawyer, then I rephrase to say that you are thinking about “torture” in the context of criminal law and not in the context of warfighting, where in this case other regulations apply, not least the application of the president’s war powers.
Your points are in effect that same thing as reframing acts committed against enemies at war–whether or not declared, certainly warranted under the Patriot Act–as if they were allegedly criminal acts committed within a civil society where constitutional rights apply.
There are numerous differences, as I am sure you are aware, and if you are aware then you should also be aware that Title 18 does not apply to enemies acting against the U.S. as (or “as if,” in the end it makes no difference) external enemies openly attempting to attack and do damage to the citizens of this country.
Criminal proceedings deal with acts taken in the past, not projected into the future, whereas warfighting necessarily involves projection into the future of expectation of further acts performed in the pursuit of a policy of use of coercive force. Criminal proceedings deal with whether an act took place in the past, and their purpose is the ascertaining whether “alleged” past acts were done by the accused.
As Hobbes in still the best general definition of war said in “Leviathan” (paraphrasing) war exists during a tract of time during which all those involved expect that in the future hostile acts will be committed. In short, war is always fought in the future, and acts involving use of coercive force such as “torture” are expected by all party to the war.
I will below get into the whole question of whether warfighting is itself an application of tortorous tactics to one’s military enemy. But it is worth noting that the Geneva Conventions require declarations of war and the wearing of external signs of being a combatant so as to declare that one is the representative of a belligerent military power visible as such on the battlefield.
These conventions were all made by lawyers in the 19th-century who thought that future wars would be waged on the visible stage of the battlefield. In any case, the Geneva treaties treat legitimate combatants as if they were always already guilty of being hostile combatants and therefore as legitimately fired upon and killed.
One last point: “torture” is the application of physical pain in the interest of compelling the desired behavior. The “desired behavior” in a war is the ceasing of hostile acts and/or prevention of future hostile acts. As Thomas C. Schelling demonstrated long ago in his application of game theory to warfighting, war operates as much by threats–promissory notes as to what “I” will do to “you” in the future–as it does by inflicting physical pain/death in the present.
In short, “torture” is indigenous to warfighting, however much it may be forbidden by the U. S. Code in cases of criminal investigation. Most of what military forces do is “coerce” an enemy’s movements in the field by the “threats” of “torture” (i.e., bombing, strafing, artillery, etc.) even when those acts do not take place. All of these maneuvers are intended to act on the enemy as a promise of infliction of pain and death in the future In that respect, military maneuvers in the field work exactly the same way as torture does in a cell: present pain is a promissory note of future pain if you don’t do the will of the person imposing the pain.
In brief, war is nothing but “torture,” and if you want to be against use of threatened torture against enemies of the U. S. (“declared” by whatever means that declaration takes place: 9/11 functioned communicationally as a “declaration of war”)then that makes you a defacto pacifist. I don’t know whether you are such nor do I care. I simply point out the logic.
The intent of leftist lawyers in bringing jihadi cases to federal courts was precisely to do the same thing you are attempting: transforming the war on terror into a legal game over which not the military but lawyers would have the controlling say.
Friend of mine told me the other day in conversation.
I had never thought of him as being a radical. He is about as square as they come. I will be glad to have him with me on the line when the time comes.
So Mote It Be.
As I’ve already pointed out across the way at PowerLine, the Obama administration is risking massive anger on that part of the U. S. population which doesn’t like him or his administration or his party–which population as Rasmussen daily reminds us is daily increasing. If the townhall revolution could exhibit such anger over a relatively bening issue such as health care, what are people going to do when it appears that the Obama administration is functionally on the side of terrorists?
At the risk of piling on, Programmer, I think you err in thinking of conservatives and liberals as two ends of a legitimate political spectrum. If that were true, then some compromise would be possible and desirable. But it’s not.
We have, at one end, traditions and an awareness of natural/moral law that have spawned the most successful, benign, and ethical cultures in history and, at the other end, a record with no successes and only outcomes that range from failure to catastrophe.
There is a reason for this. The modern liberal – who is a leftist, as opposed to a classical liberal, who is now a conservative — is wedded to a first principal that guarantees mistaking wrong for right and insists that it/they embrace ideas and efforts that ensure failure as opposed to success. It goes back to a relativistic framework that denies the presence of absolutes, i.e. natural law, and insists that the only truth is that there are no truths.
There can be no compromising with nihilism.
The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are the Crown Jewels of Western Civilization. The more I read of the vacuity of Western political thought even the more wonderous it becomes that a bunch of colonial farmers were able to cobble together a kind of polity never before seen in human history.
The essential organizing principle of the Republic is from the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” George Washington in his First Inaugural defined the meaning of the Pursuit of Happiness – “there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness…”
If you expect the Republican Party or even the so called Conservative movement to actually uphold the essential principle or to provide anything other than press-worthy platitudes regarding its existence, you’re spitting in the wind.
Justice Antonin Scalia, who we would all consider a “conservative” Justice, said in 1996:
“It seems to me incompatible with democratic theory that it is good and right for the state to do something that the majority of the people do not want done. Once you adopt democratic theory, it seems to me, you accept that proposition. If the people do not want it, the state should be able to prohibit it (or grant it – italics mine).”
Justice Scalia, a paen of conservatism and an interpreter of the Constitution, says flat out that unalienable Rights don’t mean squat in the American system. How do we square that with the Essential Principle?
There will be no preservation of the Constitution by politics without a prior cultural upheaval whereby the commons defines happiness in terms of virtue and not by novel forms of genital stimulation. The 3rd birth of freedom, if it is to come at all, will be birthed from our social and religious connections.
The fact remains that the United States political system is based on a two party system. All the talk of a third party is just that. And don’t tell me about the Federalists and Whigs. The challenge for conservatives is get their hands dirty and work within the Republican party to move it in the desired direction. That mean volunteering for committees, attending party meetings, running for office, etc. Just as the leftists did in the Democratic Party. Today’s Democratic party is radically different from what it once was. Do you think for a moment that the founder of the Democratic Party, Andrew Jackson (despite the Dems claim to Jefferson the fact is he was the first “Republican”), would embrace what his party has become? Heck no! He would take his walking cane and start cracking skulls, and some folks would be lucky if he didn’t take out one of his pistols and shoot them. The same goes for Harry Truman and Jack Kennedy, though they would merely shake their heads and voice their displeasure. If the leftists can subvert and take over a party, then conservatives can do it as well. The question is will they have the patience and willingness to make short term compromises to further the long term objective?
The Democrats who want to use the legal system to persecute the Bush administration with prosecutions will, quite probably, find out one fine day that can work both ways.
But for now, taking on the CIA is worse than a crime, it’s a mistake. The Obama administration has enough enemies, without deliberately adding to the count a bureaucracy with a long institutional memory, that probably has some interesting files. Nixon made a huge mistake crossing the FBI…I wonder if the CIA will prove a similar mistake for Obama?
Somebody mentioned Sulla and Marius and Rome. I think a lot lately on the end of the Roman Republic. I can see Bush as a sort of a Marius figure, with a dash of the Gracchi about him: lots of good ideas that antagonize all the vested interests, but not much subtlety in presenting them, combined with a certain lack of regard for long term consequences.
Obama doesn’t really fill the red Sulla role, at least so far. Sulla seems to have been a lot smarter than Obama. But like Sulla and the optimates did to Marius, our own optimates fixed Bush’s red wagon. But in the long run, Sulla and his friends and heirs finally lost everything. Marius turned out to be just John the Baptist to the man who was bigger trouble for the optimates coming down the road. . .
Now, only half a year after the fall of Bush, all the necessary elements of a conservative critique of Obama are present. Obama’s plans mean the exhaustion of the nation’s financial reserves; the sapping of its military strength; the daily insults to nationalism and patriotism; the disorganization of the most basic functions of government. All that’s lacking is an affirmative program, and a leader. I wonder who it will be?
Wrichard composed his Three Conjectures in a non-Obama context. I would like to read his Three Conjecture footnote/commentary/revision in light of Obama policy.
If the survival of Islam were indeed to depend. ironically, on its defeat in what used to be the Greater War on Terror (Third Conjecture), and if now the GWOT has morphed into a Kinder, Gentler Engagement with Islamism (need something that yields a better acronym), we seem likely to see non-defeat of Islamism and Islamism’s nuclear implementation of jihad. This raises the possibility of Third Conjecture nuclear attack on the U.S. and later internecine Muslim nuclear conflict down the road.
In terms of the Three Conjectures, it seems that Obama policy steers the U.S. inevitably towards submission or nuclear disaster/annihilation at some time.
There are four different states in which groups of people can interact. These are legal constructs, like marriage, divorce or commercial-client relations are for individuals. People, even criminals, are assumed to be members of social and political communities unless they are certified not to be. People who are not members of any recognized community who then commit acts of violence are Pirates.
1) Comity, that is the state of trust and equality shared by citizens who are mutually pledged to support a common sovereign authority that they empower. Disputes and criminal damages are handled by the legal system.
2) Peace, that is the state of defined legal relations that foster peaceful trade and travel between citizens of different sovereignties. A state regulates its citizenry and takes responsibility for their conduct. Disputes or criminal acts done by persons when in a foreign jurisdiction are resolved by procedures agreed to between the respective states. If a citizen of one state causes injury to a citizen of another then the claim is made between the two governments. While this may be modified for convenience in practice the fact remains that if you as an American are owed something in France and the US government negotiates an agreement that settles all claims between the governments you may or may not get anything yourself. France will no longer owe you and any claim you have on the US government would be a separate matter.
4) War, this is a state in which most legal contracts are abrogated and violence by agents of the state may be used under defined conditions. A state regulates its armed forces and takes responsibility for their conduct.
5) Piracy, this is a state in which there are no legal boundaries binding the parties, making it in effect a “State of Nature.”
Khalid Sheik Muhhamed is a pirate. The only constraints on how he is to be dealt with should related to determining his status to begin with. Once it is verified that he is not a criminal, subject to the laws and authority of a nation that takes responsibility for him, and that he is not a soldier protected by treaties and laws governing the treatment of prisoners of war, then the only protections he has are those administrative policies against random brutality. He is effectively not a human being but a dangerous beast.
Non-state actors, like al-Qaeda, cannot be allowed to claim the benefits for their members that are granted to state actors, even hostile ones, that take some responsibility for the people under their jurisdiction.
Mongoose, you’re on fire, and I’m with ya.
The left doesn’t realize yet (although the fear is creeping up on them) just how big a sleeping giant they’ve awoken.
Tea Parties and townhall anger…this is nothing more than the very tip of the iceberg.
And no matter how they try to portray it as orchestrated and/or fringe (screw you, Charles Johnson), this here’s the real deal, Americans fed up with being taken advantage of.
It took a whole lot for “When in the course of human events…” to finally put grievances to paper, and flint to powder, but dammit, when it came, it came with a determination and a vengeance.
The left can act violent when they know that there’s no risk; they will not like violence when someone fights back.
Any day now, I expect the liberals to come out in droves denouncing Obama, accusing him and his enablers of falsely portraying him as The One.
In order for liberalism and the left ideology to survive, they have to (1) admit they were led wrongly (not their own fault), and, more importantly, (2) their ideology itself is unassailable, however the chosen messenger was a false prophet.
Voltimand, you seem to have missed a critical difference and it is explicated in the phrase: ” upon another person within his custody or physical control” Renders all that war fighting stuff moot.
Voltimand,
Thank you for your very thoughtful comment. I am not a lawyer. I just played one while in the military, back in the day before the Army got all “JAG’d” up (prior to leaving the military, I was given the opportunity to make a case why military law was not, and should not be civil law). I am not a pacifist. I am just a programmer. At one time I was considered proficient with a knife, although I much preferred long range weapons with big scopes on them. Artillery and air strikes really get my approval. However, on a personal level, I do not approve of torture in any form. I, personally (as in, me – programmer), define torture, regardless of UCMJ or USC, as abuse of a constrained person or persons. It smacks of cowardice and sadism. Mongoose raises the age old question in this type of discussion: what does a reasonable person do if loved ones are in danger and it appears that only resorting to torture will protect them? I could dance around on the head of a pin for a while, but in all honesty, I would do what ever I felt was necessary and pray to GOD to forgive my sins and transgressions. So, having cleared that up, let us move forward to what is likely to happen to the CIA operators. You have defined the problem neatly. It is a legal and political game between two conflicting ideologies AND the military and civil lawyers.
In conclusion to this already overlong comment, let me state clearly that I, programmer, am opposed to any kind of government approval for torture in any shape or form. Once approved for the “bad guys”, it is too damn easy to change the definition of who is the bad guy. See Subotai’s comment @160 in the prior thread. Who is the White House going to use its “really, really special Interrogation Team” on? Foes, foreign and domestic?
Mongoose & Voltimand:
Well put gentlemen!
Voltimand,
Your essay at #68 is arguably the best essay that I have read in a comments section at any website, ever.
Thank you very, very much for your concise delivery of two essential messages:
1. there is a real difference between a citizen and non-citizen,
2. there is a real difference between civil, law-enforcement jurisprudence and wartime military jurisprudence.
Both of these rules need reinforcing, and especially right now, because we’re being told by our ruling classes that American citizenship is a triviality in matters of state, and that the nation’s government should deny that we’re still officially at war.
Incidently, both memes track slogans propagated by advocates for militant Islamofascism, the “right-of-return/migration” caucus at the UN, and America’s Democrat(ic) Party (which yearns for unchecked social spending). Islamofascists believe Islam is universal, national citizenship is secondary. Right of Migration-ists cling to a post-national fantasy where local property titles, administrable boundaries, republican government and “Constitutional Rights” are obsolete clerical obstructions. And if you support enormous spending on patronage (ie. social) programs, then the prospect of the demos internalizing the fact that we are AT WAR, and that the war, not patronage, should top the Congress’ list of spending priorities, is to be feared and, of course, obstructed.
The more we can do to lift up American citizenship and remind our citizens that we a nation at war with non-uniformed combatants, the better. Your essay, Voltimand, is as good a propellant to both ends as one’ll ever find.
Thanks again,
-Steve
#29 Mongoose
If we decide that it is the side of the decent that must “pull back from the brink” then the Marxist destroyer will win. This is what they are banking on. This is what they have been banking on for generations. We have to turn the tables on them.
We need to understand what winning will entail. It may mean bringing RICO charges against the Auto Unions for this communist theft of the GM and Chrysler (and Obama may have to go to jail for this). It may mean putting those Dems that are milking Fannie and Freddy in jail and “clawing back” the millions that they pocketed. It maybe that we must seize the wealth of Goldman Sachs and put those people in jail. The broadcast portion of the MSM may have to have their licenses revoked. It may mean putting out a international bounty on Soros. It will been vigorously prosecuting voter fraud, and a great many State level democrat office holders will have to go to jail.
We say that Obama is radical in perusing past administrations, but this climate that we have allowed to go on of the Democrats being above the law has lead us to where we are.
We cannot go on where one party is held to a different legal and moral standard than the other. Clinton should have been brought up on treason charges for the Loral deal, for heavean’s sake. WE cannot live in a world where the POTUS can trade away our security for campaign contributions.
911 should have been seen as a signal to the country that there are deep moral problems in the Democrat Party. This is not a game. They are out to destroy us. Personally I think that in less then a year they have destroyed us a world power. The Scotland kerfuffle shows this.
Avoid becoming radicalized? I think you are wrong. We have to take the country back.
What Obama represents is an open departure from all we have ever been. He clearly shows what is in the hearts of the Democrats, not just the far left of the party but the whole party. There is no place for the to “climb down” too. It would only be a tatical maneuver in their war against us. “Climbing down” would certainly not entail the Democrats recanting their vile designs against this nation. These people are Leninists and National Socialists. They have contempt for not only our very lives but our very history. Witness this business of trying to turn 911 into some sort of communist holiday. National Service Day indeed. They could not be more obvious.
Let it be written, let it be done.
Every one of the remedies, and more, much more, will be necessary to save this country and the Constitution from utter destruction. What is lacking in most is the acceptance of the fact that TWANLOC will not submit to any purely political processes that would bring any of those remedies into being.
They have total control, they think, of the organs of State Security. They have already moved beyond the concept of the rule of law, and feel no compunction about ignoring it. If say that somehow a court could be convinced to take a case based on the violations of the Privacy Act of 1974 involved with the flag@whitehouse.gov snitch site; which statute among other things specifically bars the Executive Office of the President from collecting ANY data about “citizens exercising their rights under the First Amendment”, and which also specifically waives sovereign immunity from civil suit and makes Executive Branch employees criminally liable. If such would happen [and I doubt it would, because the courts have a vested interest in being the agents of a Leviathan like state rather than be bound by laws and Constitution] there would first be efforts to have it dismissed based on technicalities and I’m sure some perversion of the separation of powers or the invention of a supra-sovereign immunity that they will claim cannot be over-ridden by statute. Concurrently, there will be attacks; legitimate and otherwise, by the State and its agents on the persons and families of those bringing the charges. And no rational observer of the last 7 months can rule out the probability of “tragic accidents” befalling the plaintiffs and their supporters.
If the law and the normal political process that insulates people today from what Hobbes called Bellum omnium contra omnes ["the war of All against All" for power] are not sufficient, if the forces of the State are to be used as a matter of course against would-be subjects, force will either be matched with force or we will indeed be subjects and property of the State.
tRex at #53 rightly quotes Robert Bolt. The Left is clearcutting the forest of laws to impose their vision of earthly Paradise. When the winds blow, it will make Hurricane Katrina look like a toddler dealing with the candles of a birthday cake. And the devastation will, like Katrina, fall on the just and unjust alike, and be just as unavoidable. If we do not reign in the Left before the forest is gone, there will ultimately be only one path left.
Today, our Congressman [who I referenced as one of the few willing to fight Obama in #11 above] will be having a public Town Hall here, one of a number he has had during the recess. For some reason, his crowds have been both large and respectful. I expect it to remain so today. But still I will go mentally prepared for intrusion by union goons in Obama’s service. Neighboring Pueblo is a union town, and in the CD of a Leftist. They could come down the road.
But the mood has changed in the last few weeks. I rather suspect that today, if Obama’s people think that grandmothers can be threatened, cancer patients beaten, or bearers of Culpepper Flags mobbed and concussed and they will escape unscathed; they may find that numbers and rage will upset their calculations.
I fear [as any rational person would, Patriot or not]the day will come when we will be dealing with the illegitimate use of force by the State against supporters of the Constitution. The issue will then turn on two things. First, will those who have taken the Oath in the past honor it? Second, when such force is used against one group, will others take the words of Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper #28 to heart and to hand?
If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair.
Starting with the defense of the rule of law, are we worthy of our forebears?
Subotai Bahadur
Uncle Jeffe: Yes, I agree with all you have said.
I don’t consider Bill Bennet to be lacking in intelligence or education, but he, like many others (including me) boiled his view of today’s politically correct view of War down to this:
Killing two pirates to save 1 American Captain = Good
Killing Jihadists and their families with
missiles launched from predator drones = Good
Scaring Jihadists to gain intel to save thousands = Bad
—
People like us think common sense got lost someplace in some of the loftier views of War.
Curtis LeMay burned 120 THOUSAND Japanese to death in one night in Tokyo, making him a Mass Murderer to some.
The way Curtis saw it, he was saving American and Japanese lives, having witnessed the unnamed Holocaust executed by the Japanese that had already taken the lives of ~ 15 MILLION Chinese, Koreans, Asians, and Filipinos.
He and General Grant believed one should never enter a War if you are unwilling to accept what an ugly business it is, and use all weapons at your disposal to prosecute the war as quickly as possible.
79. ash; 80. programmer
I seem not to have made myself clear in my comment:
(1) Title 18 applies to criminal law, which deals with crimes committed where U. S. criminal law applies (continental U.S. et al.). It does not apply to warfighting, which is controlled by other kinds of laws, both domestic and by treaty (e.g., Geneva Treaties); army regulations, etc. etc.
Whatever is said in Title 18 doesn’t apply to the “war” on terror. Now, there’s the whole question of just what “kind of war” this war is and whether or not it constitutes “war” as envisioned by the Geneva Treaties (it doesn’t), and whether we as a nation are allowed to defend ourselves against attacks by foreigners (non-U. S. citizens) when they refuse to abide by the Geneva treaties. For some people, on the other hand, it’s simple).
(2) I also seem not to have made clear my point about “torture,” which has everyone fixated on grinning sadists and screaming victims. Any time you use physical force–including warfighting–to get someone to do something they’d rather not do (“I’d rather not withdraw my tank column, thank you very much, but if you bomb my tank column while I’m moving it out to attack you, I scream ‘torture’ and write the U. S. Congress about it.”), that can be defined as “torture.”
Problem is, the unstated premise of the anti-torture types is that they are going by some unstated horror movie scenario (cf. above about “grinning sadists”). No one likes sadists. I do not like sadists. But “torture” to a purpose other than to gratify sadistic desires can be found in all sorts of unlikely places. In the workplace, eg.: “You do what I tell you or I will inflict the ‘torture’ of refusing to pay you.” Or to the obnoxious nine-year-old: “You do that again and I will take away your cell phone.”
Torture means inflicting whatever the person who’s the object finds painful. If we all want to “talk about torture,” then by God let us do so. You think only the CIA inflicts “torture”? Talk to some parents on the subject.
Good stuff folks! What does it say about the previous administrations when Mr. Cheney request the release of what he believes are pertinent classified documents through the proper channels while Berger et al lift them from the archives to drop them behind a construction trailer. What has become of the missing Clinton era hard drive? Did this wicked torture and threatening of terrorist’s families start under Team 43?
There is real anger out there and not just aimed at the statists but also at those who claim to be on our side but just sat by and let our country be plundered. So far this anger is diffuse and unfocused. This will change when a leader emerges. This is one of the reasons the left hate and fear Palin. She may be an imperfect candidate but she has shown a willingness to engage the enemy and to not back down. The citizens attending the tea parties and healthcare protests want someone to lead the fight. Someone will emerge and I do not look to the republican bench. Perhaps a citizen/soldier fresh from the war and willing to stand up for the Constitution and our way of life.
voltimand,
Even when you are fighting a war, once you have the person(s) in your custody, the law kicks in (whether gleaned from US titles, USMCJ, or US treaty obligations). Mock executing a prisoner is not equivalent to bombing a tank column. Sorry.
The announcement to appoint a special prosecuter to investigate CIA interrogations was coupled to another announcement that a “special interrogation unit” would be formed and operated out of the White House.
OK, there was a famous TV series about a (fictional) anti-crime and anti-terrorism squad, named after Hawaii being the 50′th State in the Union and with their leader, Steve McGarrett, fighting crime kingpins and Red Chinese agents, and answering directly to the Governer.
So tell me now, what is the real-life anti-terrorism squad going to be called, Obama Five-Oh? Or is it going to more appropriately be called Obama Five-Seven? Or more realistically, is an elite squad operated out of the White House because the FBI and CIA cannot be counted upon to carry out the President’s orders, is that squad going to be called something more historical, say, the White House Plumbers?
Programmer:
“This is one of the open sores that inflames many of the centrists that supported the election of the current team of “brainiacs” running our country. It is time to treat it. Open it up to the air. Let the legal system work, in its imperfect way. In my opinion, this is not an issue to “lock and load” over. This is not a persecution of a previous administration. It is a righteous examination of alleged bad conduct and bad decisions. Just because someone is Left does not mean they are wrong, you just need to count your fingers after shaking hands with them.”
—
Voltimand:
“The intent of leftist lawyers in bringing jihadi cases to federal courts was precisely to do the same thing you are attempting: transforming the war on terror into a legal game over which not the military but lawyers would have the controlling say.”
My question, Programmer, is how can a person like Holder, who for political gain pardoned domestic terrorists that blew up innocent Americans in a Restaurant, possibly be said to be conducting a “righteous examination” of anything?
Many, many good comments here people! JFSanders, I think you’ve got a very good friend at your side.
I myself am bored of waiting, I have no intention of leaving this hydra for my children to fight and I intend to do this job correctly and do it Once. Should I instead fear what is coming? I do, to my core, yet I fear cowardice and sloth more.
Does anyone know the South American? general who said this? (paraphrasing here) “First, I fought the enemies of our country. When they were defeated, I fought those who supported them. Then, I fought those who stood by the whole while and did nothing to help”.
These weeds should have been pulled during the 50′s. Perhaps the greatest generation was just plain tired (they had done enough, for certain). More likely they were just tricked, their morals, laws and decency were bent as weapons against them. The point is soon to arrive where it will be too late to remove the parasites, the time to decide is soon. Don’t get caught sitting on the fence.
Excellent thread.
Mongoose, you’re pretty much right as i see it, all up and down the line. “Stooping to the level of the enemy” assumes that our one degree of temporary stoop is equal to his full 180 permanent stoop. a stoop has frikken degrees for cryin’ out loud.
Trang, one thing about Huck Finn: we do need to be breathing some air back into ‘how good things could be’ in this nation, once the work –ridding ourselves of these ugly leftist ideas –is done. We know the big things that DC ought to be doing –they’re easy to describe –there are all sorts of proposals out there that would run this swan dive into an empty pool backwards and put us back on the board. Number one is to repeal the torpedo hit in the rudder –that emergency ‘recovery act’ attack.
LotM, it’s good that you remind how much of this mess was planned –look at these 1,300 page bills –who wrote them? When? Planning? look at that 2007-released IPCC Report, years in the formalization of its boilerplated process, that was intended to ‘hockey stick’ us into cap n trade. And that’s not to even go into the decade of prep and flank maneuver in the “financial disaster” –the regulation-to activists-to congress-to banking-to markets-to regime change string of ‘natural phenomena’. ‘Natural’ as in, dig a hole in the road and someone will fall into it, drill a hole in the hull and water will enter the ship, and so forth.
LFM/92; their morals, laws and decency were bent as weapons against them –THAT is ‘natural’ too, alas.
Sulla was for the old establishment not the new men of Marius’s group. I personally consider him to have been of the conservative bent. As for dying without anything:
“In 79 Sulla resigned his dictatorship and retired to Puteoli, where he died in the following year, probably from the bursting of a blood-vessel. The story that he fell a victim to a disease similar to that which cut off one of the Herods (Acts 12:23) is probably an invention of his enemies. The “half lion, half fox”, as his enemies called him, the man who carried out a policy of “blood and iron” with a grim humor, amused himself in his last days with actors and actresses, with dabbling in poetry, and completing the Memoirs (commentarii) of his eventful life. Even then he did not give up his interest in state and local affairs, and his end is said to have been hastened by a fit of passion brought on by a remark of the quaestor Granius, who openly asserted that he would escape payment of a sum of money due to the Romans, since Sulla was on his deathbed. Sulla sent for him and had him strangled in his presence; in his excitement he broke a blood-vessel and died on the following day. He was accorded a magnificent public funeral, his body being removed to Rome and buried in the Campus Martius. His monument bore an inscription written by himself, to the effect that he had always fully repaid the kindnesses of his friends and the wrongs done him by his enemies. His military genius was displayed in the Social War and the campaigns against Mithradates; while his constitutional reforms, although doomed to failure from the lack of successors to carry them out, were a triumph of organization. But he massacred his enemies in cold blood, and exacted vengeance with pitiless and calculated cruelty; he sacrificed everything to his own ambition and the triumph of his party.
Wife: Ilia
Daughter: Cornelia Sulla
Son: Lucius Cornelius Sulla
Wife: Aelia (div.)
Wife: Caecilia Metella Dalmatica
Son: Faustus Cornelius Sulla
Daughter: Fausta Cornelia Sulla
Wife: Valeria Messala
Daughter: Postuma Cornelia Sulla
Boyfriend: Metrobius (actor, long term lover)
Exiled by Marius (87 BC)
Abdication (79 BC)
Slaveowners
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another thing: It’s war people. The loss of rational discourse, the reversion to core animal instinct. How do you prevail? None higher than a wagon’s hub, cities turned to ash. Read it, it’s in the books. It involves blood, death and all forms of pain. Junior league soccer rules mean nothing to our foes, be they 8th century leftovers or those that worship power. You and yours mean nothing to our foes, you’re a commodity or an obstacle, nothing else.
#94 toad
I think the historical significance of Marius, Sulla and the Gracchi is not the merit or lack of it of their respective political positions but that each exceeded the boundary of the Republic’s constitutional basis for their own purposes.
The rest is history so they say and their excess became the norm, with the silent approval of the Senate I should add. The Republic disappeared over the next several years amid the chaos of serial civil wars.
I think that’s the reason that Marius and Sulla in particular get mentioned so much at BC. We have the historical precedent of what can happen when the rule of men replaces the rule of law. Obama is not going to march the legions into Washington but perhaps spending the Republic into oblivion is not so different.
Mark @#45
“Ajami’s “mandate of heaven” metaphor is not quite congruent with American political philosphy[.]”
I liked Ajami’s title precisely because it will appeal to an Asian reader. China is watching attentively to see how America repels its elective insurgency. Will our vaunted, superior Democracy expel The Chicago Mob, stop corruption in DC and return America to its exceptional norm? Or will we spin off into mayhem, equalize with Haiti and Zimbabwe, and resort to parading in Maoist drag on the world stage?
The first outcome, if realized, might change some minds in Beijing’s CCP, and hasten the advent of even greater liberties for China’s citizens. The second, heaven forbid that it transpires, will only strengthen the worst factions in Beijing’s ruling classes, and do nothing to promote freedom in the Middle Kingdom.
It’s evident that America is fielding the world’s politics right now – agendas seen floating around DC range from those endemic to parliaments in Banana Republics like Haiti, to those found choking the continental parliaments of Swiss Cantons. From cabinet tax-cheats and corruption, to Global Warming and health rationing – all eyes are on America right now.
What will America’s voters do? How will Americans react? What can we learn from the reaction? How can we capitalize on it? From the Sorbonne to Oman, everyone is wondering the same things.
Whether they’re disenfranchised Copts in Egypt, pro-business parliamentarians in Scotland, or American union pension managers invested in the Standard and Poors Index, they’ve got both eyes on America’s politics right now. My guess is that, once again, they’re all hoping America’s citizens will save them from their own excesses.
There has been much comment by the brain-dead alleged news media suggesting that Attorney-General Holder is somehow defying the will of President Obama in announcing the planned use of a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of torture and criminal mis-conduct in interrogations of “suspected terrorists.”
This is the same administration that dropped the prosecution of the most blatant and well-documented case of voter intimidation of the last four decades – that of the New Black Panthers wearing paramilitary uniforms, brandishing an 18-inch billy club, and making verbal insults and racial slurs against passing voters in a Philadelphia polling place. If that were not the deliberate and considered intent of the sitting president, that prosecution would have gone forward, or the A-G would have been replaced with someone who DID the president’s will.
You can argue over whether the intent is merely to demoralize the CIA or to render it utterly ineffective against the enemies of the USA. But to argue that this investigation is anything not sanctioned and ordered and approved by President Barack Hussain Obama is absurd and a lie.
We should have a best threads feature and a way of searching by topic/keyword or date to recover great threads like this for future citation.
programer,
You are among friends. As Voltimond demonstrates the question is where is the line between combat and judicial procedures, between lawful prisoners of war and unlawful combatants detained on a battlefield, what I call pirates. All important questions like all events in the physical world happen at a boundary.
Paul Milenkovic,
I’d call them the Cheka.
ash,
You assume that they are POWs. If they are not entitled to that status then you are wrong.
One of the supposed necessities of maintaining a long term relationship is a requirement to overlook lapses in the name of continuity. Thus diplomats lobby to release terrorists in the name of “engagement” and party-goers pretend not notice when their dinner companion burps in the name of civility. But for it to work there has to be a tacit acknowledgement that one party is being given a chance to recover.
And
One may well hear arguments among well meaning persons to the effect that taking the President on if he runs to an extreme will cause too much damage; that it would be better to let him get away with it than start a kind of confrontation. The structure of this problem is very similar to the old deterrence game. If the President is pursuing a policy of escalation, when is it optimal to counter-escalate? When should fear rightly make one draw back?
I think part of the problem facing conservatives leaders is that they hung back for so long that they are in danger of being overtaken by events
Interesting observation. It made me think about Gerald Ford. At the height of his political power, he essentially threw away his career in order to give the Democrats a chance to gracefully climb down from their Watergate frenzy. He sacrificed himself so the system could continue and bought the Democrats – the other party! – a chance to regain control of itself from its own crazies. The donkeys squandered that chance spectacularly. In retrospect, maybe Ford made a mistake, maybe he should have let the Democrats continue hounding Nixon and focused instead on doing damage control for his own party. It would have been an ugly spectacle and might have provoked the cascade that Wretchard warns we are facing today, but it might also have been liberalisms Waterloo, breaking themselves going after a man no longer in any position of power while Ford and the GOP tackled real problems facing Americans, like the deteriorating economy. I think the odds of the cascade breaking through all of the societal firewalls would have been less then than it is now. But that’s hindsight – how could Ford have known that the Democrat party would abandon itself to the crazies given half a chance.
But Ford and the rest of the Gentry GOP were too wedded to the party system that had layered itself on top of the American political system to realize that the two were not the same thing. They thought Democrats and Republicans were the sum total of the political system, sort of the way lawyers tend to think that two lawyers jabbering at one another in front of a third lawyer (who wears a black robe) is the definition of justice. They didn’t realize the Democrat party was willing to embrace the crazies because the Democrats even back then had fallen into power lust and the crazies promised votes.
A policy of escalation by the President risks setting in train an unstoppable cycle of rising tensions. As I argued in the main post it is up to the Democrats to manipulate the graphite rods to keep things from overheating. If they’re simply relying on the conservatives to forbear, they may miscalculate.
The one saving grace is that America has a tradition of healing wounds after such a cycle.
“LotM, it’s good that you remind how much of this mess was planned –look at these 1,300 page bills –who wrote them? When?”
—
Luddy:
The Bush admin had many policies that apparently were developed in house, as I assume most admins did.
Thus far, BHO’s administration has had little to do in the way of writing much of anything wrt these monstrous bills.
Nor did BHO author “Dreams” imo.
Nor do we have any of his transcripts, nor ANY record of his days @ Columbia.
From Palin’s Facebook page:
YOUR TAX DOLLARS HARD AT WORK: FIRST CARS, NOW FOREIGN OIL.
“So why is it that during these tough times, when we have great needs at home, the Obama White House is prepared to send more than two billion of your hard-earned tax dollars to Brazil so that the nation’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, can drill off shore and create jobs developing its own resources?
—
Oddly, she neglects the most obvious answer:
George Soros is the largest single investor in Petrobras!
In so many ways Barry seems like no more than a bought and paid for animatronic mouthpiece who got where he is by gaming the system that games him. (and us)
wretchard wrote:
Or maybe it is that Cloward-Piven is operational per Rahmbo E. and the desired end state is to crash the system?
PJM has a thread on CIA morale.
Thanks guys for the thoughtful comments on a troublesome topic, at least for me personally. Fortunately, I am no longer in a profession that will require me to make life and death decisions in a split second. May GOD bless and protect our military and civilian defenders from all foes, foriegn and domestic.
No Lifeofthemind I make no such claim (that they are POW’s) only that they are in custody, which is sufficient under the various laws to protect them from abuse.
BC – Wretchard has done an admirable job of pointing out that our system in in peril, and many commentators have continued to enter evidence of America’s collapse. Instead of continuing to illustrate and comment on what is happening (I think we all pretty much agree on the facts) we should be spending our time on this blog, and others of like mind, defining objectives and developing action items that can be undertaken by us (in a political and legal manner) to overcome the threats to our nation and western culture.
This site has been overrun the past year with whinng, complaining, and examples. We get it, we believe, and now we need to find a way to reverse the tide. The Tea Parties are a good start, but still not large enough to gather attenion on the eveining news or on the front pages of the papers. If my local newspaper (supposed to be one of best in nation) won’t cover the announced $9T+ deficits on the front page, I don’t think any protest movement by consertatives will ever get press. We need to work within the system, attend party (R, D, and Lib.) meetings, and find individuals to run for office. With unemployment high, we should be able to find some smart folks with time on thier hands that we could support.
I call on the BC to become a productive organ. Stop whining and lets get some action items…
No mo uro:
The center/right and libertarians have been telling themselves – wrongly – that his success was almost entirely due to the excellence of non-leftist ideas. While the ideas were indeed excellent, it took the Great Communicator to bring along huge swaths of citizens. You may not want to admit it, but it’s the truth nonetheless.
The problem with the coalition on the right is that we have gotten our communication streams mixed up and misdirected. There are two ideological components to the Right – the “morality” wing (which isn’t just religion, but also various American traditions) and the “libertarian” wing. Each has a different, but complimentary, message, and each message resonates when sent over a specific channel. The morality message works well when discussing what we should do. In a the setting of our “little platoons”, one on one and in voluntary groups, it reinforces that we are connected to one another, something Man the social animal needs, and should be both a good person and a good neighbor. The libertarian message works well when discussing what we must do. In the setting of Government when discussing when and for what reason our neighbors may force us to do something. Taken together and focused on those channels, the twin messages are powerful and built a powerful country, one where standards of morality are expected, but also expected to justify themselves and not degenerate into bureaucratic dogma.
But if you flip those channels, if the morality message starts going out over the government channel and the libertarian message goes out over the community channel, the reception is negative. People fear “legislated morality” that criminalizes philosophical disagreements (and in the morality of the Left, such as it is, we do see this). And they are also left cold by the libertarian social message, which in a community context comes across as a desire for a cold, cruel, dog-eat-dog world – the message morphs from “leave me alone” to “every man for himself.”
Reagan got those messages flowing in the right channels. W got them backwards. The solution isn’t more of either message, the solution is to get them flipped back around where they belong.
I agree with programmer, that waterboarding is torture, but have a “so what” attitude about it, as long as it (and ANY other “enhanced” methods) are used judiciously. And every thing I have read indicates that to be the case. Consider the potential payoff vs the potential backlash, and the potential for harm to the interrogator. The last concern should be the affect on the detainee.
#106 Willy wrote “we should be spending our time on this blog, and others of like mind, defining objectives and developing action items that can be undertaken by us (in a political and legal manner) to overcome the threats to our nation and western culture … I call on the BC to become a productive organ. Stop whining and lets get some action items.“
Ok, Willy lets do that.
Some suggested action items:
(1) Willy, please send me an email to amit@mixie.org, so we can start to coordinate. (Others I would appreciate an email from are: ADE, Alexis, GerryP)
(2) Convince Pajamasmedia to setup a forum for us so we can organize & have better conversations.
(3) Take inspiration from Belmont Club in Houston which is having a gathering in the Houston area on Sunday 13 September 2008 [See Without Borders for the genesis of this idea]. How about a gathering like that in the Boston/Nashua area.
Other action items?
Amit Green @ 3:
You are assuming that this is politics as usual when The 0bamanation has told you it is not. Why do you not believe him? Wrap your mind around the possibility that he may mean to crash the system. If that is the case, chaos reigns and perhaps a hot civil war breaks out, what then? Then perhaps the puppeteers behind The Won can be the winners. Either through martial law and the Constitution is thrown out OR through winning and then it becomes a mute point. Either way the US as you know it is cooked.
Heh, and email comes thru just now from the ‘Move America Forward’ bunch: “Obama’s Radical Agenda on the Ropes” Beautiful dreamers, they are. In the local fishwrapper today was the senior Senator of this good state, Jeff Bingaman, saying he is not against using the nuclear option to move health care thru the Senate. Of course, he does not say nuclear option but “reconciliation”.
Amit Green @ 23:
Sorry to be a thorn, but again you miss the point or have not absorbed it yet as I know Subotai has, The 0bamanation will NOT step back from that brink. Never. They have already gone “All-In”. They are the Radicals.
programmer @ 28:
Okay. I prefer a bullet to the brain pan any day. Then I support torture of my enemies. Good enough.
LC Mongoose @ 29:
Here, here! I for one will NOT be joining them at whatever sob-fest they plan. I will be remembering what we have lost on 9/11 in quiet prayer and reflection. “They” are no longer my countrymen.
907ie @ 30:
Or, and the irony of it is striking, Golden Bear and Brown Bear manufactured in……… Russia!
Peter Boston said:
“I think that’s the reason that Marius and Sulla in particular get mentioned so much at BC. We have the historical precedent of what can happen when the rule of men replaces the rule of law. Obama is not going to march the legions into Washington but perhaps spending the Republic into oblivion is not so different.”
Obama is no American Sulla. Lucius Cornelius Sulla was first and foremost a distinguished military officer and secondly a ruthless politician who was willing to slaughter thousands of countrymen to achieve his political ends. I also believe it fair to say that Sulla was a Roman “conservative” trying to preserve a rapidly decaying Roman political system. Sulla’s great error was breaking basic Roman legal taboos in his failed attempt to save the Roman Republic, i.e. using Roman troops within the city limits of Rome.
If Obama has a Roman analog it would be one of the Gracchi Tribunes who permanently broke public faith in the Roman political system through radical populist reforms that set the stage for dictators like Marius, Cinna and Sulla.
Our dear leader Obama is definitely bad news. However the American Sulla has not yet appeared on the public stage. You’ll recognise him as a handsome young man with a distinguish combat record as a military officer. He’ll eloquently promise to undo all the damage that Obama and the moonbats caused. The good news is that he’ll succeed. Unfortunately in the process of succeeding, our Constitution will end up in the trash can and a significant fraction of our population will be murdered in political violence.
Holder’s law firm defends Jihadists @ Gitmo, fwiw.
…and now he’s investigating the prosecutors!
Peter Boston @ 72
I have caught up yet, so if this has been said, sorry.
You chide Scalia over his remark that he bases on “the acceptance of democratic theory”. Scalia is absolutely correct. Democratic Theory is simply mob rule and is what has been popularized by public education for the past 75 years and within that context he’s correct. The constitution went to great length to separate the governance of the country from the mob. It has been change in several respects to more involve it.
Franklin said “if you can keep it”
Cheney Statement on CIA Documents/Investigation
Former Vice President Dick Cheney gave The Weekly Standard a statement Monday night about the CIA documents and the coming Justice Department investigation.
“The documents released Monday clearly demonstrate that the individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda.
This intelligence saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks.
These detainees also, according to the documents, played a role in nearly every capture of al Qaeda members and associates since 2002.
The activities of the CIA in carrying out the policies of the Bush Administration were directly responsible for defeating all efforts by al Qaeda to launch further mass casualty attacks against the United States.
The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions.
President Obama’s decision to allow the Justice Department to investigate and possibly prosecute CIA personnel, and his decision to remove authority for interrogation from the CIA to the White House, serves as a reminder, if any were needed, of why so many Americans have doubts about this Administration’s ability to be responsible for our nation’s security“.
Posted by Stephen F. Hayes on August 24,
Failure to edit:
“It has been change in several respects to more involve it. ”
Should be:
The Constitution It has been changed in several respects to more involve the mob.
Peter Boston @ 41 says, “the Constitution of the United States of America created the first government in human history that purposely limited its powers to the protection of the unalienable rights of all men to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
How does that square with the indefinite detention or harsh interrogation of terrorists? What about restrictions on immigration, legal or otherwise? Does the all men stipulation really apply to all men? I am not trying to be a smart ass in asking the question, and may in fact be opening myself here to charges of being an idiot. But wasn’t the argument for Gitmo in large part a Bush-era recognition that the U.S. Constitution did indeed have limited powers not meant to be extended to all people in all places, much as we might like sometimes to pretend otherwise?
@ 85
Bennett assumes the Jihadists die when the missle hits. In remote areas the injured survivors of such hits may lay in agony for a couple days before the animals start gnawing off limbs. Sounds like torture to me. All this on the orders of the CIC.
“gnawing off limbs”
—
Like JenJis Khan!
Oh, the Humanity!
The Corner at NRO has a link to a post by Charles Murray. Which in turn points to every part of the White population becoming more conservative over time EXCEPT the “Liberal Gentry” which Kotkin coined, the entertainment/media/legal/marketing people, which is btw profoundly oriented towards single young women in urban areas with disposable income, what Kay Hymnowitz called “the New Girl Order.”
This is NOT a fight between Republicans and Obama. It IS a fight between Obama and the Gentry Liberals, the wealthy elites, and the White population of everyone else.
They will not back down, they cannot. Either the elites rule the White population like serfs and servants, or the Elites are destroyed. Bush (and the transparent attempt to charge Bush, Cheney, and the CIA) does not matter, what matters is the elites trying to enslave the people, with ObamaCare, Cap and Trade, everything else.
And there is no going back. No turning back time, no de-escalation. By its very nature, the people, leaderless and grassroots, cannot and will not de-escalate. The current Constitution, Congress, Media, Presidency, Legal System, Federal Bureaucracy, will be swept away one way or another.
Either Obama and his Gentry turn America into Cuba, with hereditary rule (which btw single women LOVE, it’s every princess fantasy come to life) that turns America into a gigantic copy of Castro’s Hereditary Hacienda system, or the people construct a new Jacksonian system based on rewarding THEM and punishing their enemies (the Gentry, and their political allies) explicitly.
But either way, the America as we knew it is gone. Gone: the legitimacy and trust of the media and entertainment. Gone: the Republican party as an institution. Gone: any trust in Dems or the Gentry Liberals. Gone: tolerance for leftism or leftism spoils politics like Affirmative Action, multiculturalism, pc, etc. Gone: legitimacy and trust of the legal system and bureaucracy.
106. Willy:
“We” don’t all agree on the facts, nor even who is included among “us.”
Who, if I may question boldly, the hell are you to be telling “us” how “we” should be spending “our” time on this blog?
Reversing the tide cannot be done within The System. The System is utterly corrupted. The fix is in. What honest man or woman would run for office in these times?
Action items ought not be discussed on blogs like The Belmont Club, because most of the effective actions are actionable and whatever you post will be introduced as evidence at your conspiracy trial or civil suit.
Sirus_sir @116
The US Constitution recognizes the supremacy of the US citizen over government and places limitations on the especially the central government as well as state governments. The US Constitution only operates within the framework of US citizens approval.
While it is not a guarantor of liberty for all man, it recognizes the essential fact that all men are equal and endowed with rights whether they are citizens of the US or not. US citizenship is not a right but a responsibility, to all fellow citizens to agree with an act in certain matters according to certain agreed upon rules. Just being Homo erectus and somewhat sentient is no guarantee of anything other than the fact that you will die.
I apologize if this seems OT, but I don’t think it really is.
Its really all about culture. Cultures are like cut jewels–they have many facets: cuisine, social relations, morals, and so forth. The idea that all cultures are equal is a contradiction in terms. If they were all equal they would all be the SAME. The very fact that different cultures exist means that they are not equal.
Different cultures arose because of different circumstances. They are local blueprints for survival. And then we come to the modern era–people convinced of their own intellectual superiority tried to envision synthetic cultures which, they thought, in their hubris and stupidity, would be far superior to anything that existed. Not a bad thing to think about, but when you used human beings as involuntary guinea pigs for your experiments you ceased to be a philosopher and became a dangerous sociopath instead.
What the modern Left has done is to create synthetic cultures and attempted to impose them upon whatever groups of people they can get their hands on. But culture is also a very stubborn and resistant thing. Despite the harsh measures that Mao used in China, for the most part traditional Chinese culture survives–the defective synthetic is dying except in name only.
What the current crop of “progressive” Democrats has been trying to do is to impose their own synthetic culture on the nation without due thought as to what the existing culture truly is. Contrary to their delusions, a backlash is coming. Once you stray too far from cultural norms as to what is permitted, you may find yourself exiled or burned at the stake. They have offended some American political taboos, and some of the natives are offended. What does the ominous sound of drums in the forest portend? Stay tuned to find out.
Its really all about culture, and people who, in their delusions of grandeur, ignore it.
#107 JMH
I would place myself squarely in the morality camp and I take issue with I see is the very narrow scope in which you have assigned what I believe is the only possible basis of a civil society.
I borrow the term “Proper Order” from the Confucionists to make my point because we do not have a similar container that so clearly delineates the desireable boundaries of a civil society.
Civic morality is not a measure of personal behavior but the standard against which society (and the law) can measure if a person is meeting his obligations to others. The nature of an obligation varies with the intimacy of the relationship, i.e. a father’s greatest oblligation is to his wife and children, and then to his parents, and so on. The obligations of the sovereign must follow the same heirachial order – first to the well being of the multitude of families, then to the local comminities, then to the state.
When everybody is meeting their obligations to others within every level of the heirachy there is a Proper Order and individuals, families and the community prosper in conditions as benign as resources may allow. I’m not trying to sell classical Confucianism, only commenting on how neatly it wraps social institutions, politics, and economics into one comprehensible bundle grounded on civic morality. That this concept of the Proper Order has more or less been influential in East Asian thought for 2,500 years gives it value.
Your comment that people are afraid that conservatives will “legislate morality” is upside-down and fatally flawed because it assumes that morality is relative, which is the same as saying that it does not exist. What else should a government in a civil society legislate other than the moral obligations that bind the society into a comprehensive whole?
The Declaration of Independence and its “unalienable right of all men to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Virtue=Happiness” is the basis of our Proper Order, or at least it was intended to be.
If this is incoherent I apologize. I’m still rattling this stuff around in my head after coming to the realization that with the exception of Locke there has been almost nothing enduring or worthwhile in Western political thought since Aquinas.
#115 herb
I agree with you. I used the Scalia quote because it best exemplifies the gulf we have put between ourselves and the immutable principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
#1, Walt
I don’t have time to go through all the comments, so forgive me everyone if I repeat a point made more elegantly by someone else.
Walt, I must disagree with your analysis. Socialists governments have no problem with strong militaries and even stronger spy services. In fact, they love them and need them. They just want to make sure the allegiance of the jackboot and dagger is to the party and the state, rather than to some outmoded constitution or some bourgeois notion of liberty.
No 94 (Toad).
I agree with you about the general conservative orientation of Sulla in the context of his time: but when I invoked Sulla and Marius, I was not thinking so much of the liberal/conservative part of the equation so much as I was thinking of the community of interests of which Sulla was the servant. Obama is possibly like Sulla in the sense of his desire to protect the power and position of a certain political, social and cultural oligarchy.
Sulla did indeed die rich and successful. But his settlement, and his “republic” — really a sort of close corporation in which his favored oligarchy parcled out goodies among themselves — did not last. Sulla bought the oligarchy time…and little more.
For anyone who gets their knickers entwined over water boarding (programmer et al), I submit: “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”(Orwell)
If it makes you feel better about it, it is truly violence against violence on both sides. We are most assuredly the most humane of the two (remember the decapitations?). It is all just moral self-flagellation until it hits home. Would you torture someone if the fate of your 7 year old daughter was on the line? Me? I am happy to have the “rough men” on my side, glad they are taking out the trash and I am willing to give them room to work. Otherwise, roll up you sleeves and start slitting skulls yourself or lay your head on the chopping block. You can’t have it both ways.
Does anyone remember how blood thirsty the left was right after 9-11 only to start wetting their pants AFTER the military cake-walked through Baghdad? Limp-wristedness of the first order. I do not consider them countrymen.
Peter, your comments reminded me of a recent read of C.S. Lewis in which he divided morality into three realms, individual, intra-individual or social, which I think is what you mean by civic morality, and the grander matter of what we are to be accomplishing as a whole, i.e. what is a human being for. His point is that God seems to have a distinct interest in, not just certain behaviors, but a certain sort of person. Those who violate the template implied by natural law tend not to do well, as individuals, cultures, and in the larger aggregate.
We have clearly taken a lot of wrong turns but also some right ones. Obama — whoever or whatever he is — is off the moral map entirely. He/they must necessarily come to ruin if history has any meaning at all. The only question is whether the rest of us have what it takes to move the big ball forward.
Cannoneer is right –checking in on the theoreticals and learning from the thoughts of others –what we do here –has zero to do with whatever else we may or may not be doing in regards to these matters. The day is long and it’s usual to have many meetings –face to face as well as in the comments at BC. And his warning to be careful is well-taken.
BC as a forum helps enormously in validating what an inquiring mind is seeing happen in plain sight, but may not be credible to one’s own self, without someone else saying “yes –I see it too”.
If we all have to go underground someday soon I’m sure we’ll know the moment. In the meantime, the communists inside this admin are expert at this sort of breaking of the system, and remember with so many people yet on the knife edge of comprehending what is happening, all the oppo would need to do upon some outbreak of civil disobedience is send Obama out wrapped in the flag and making cooing sounds about the Constitution –and YANK goes the rug right out from under us. the MSM is already loaded for bear, and just waiting for an event to go berserk watergating and abu graibing on.
Be patient & circumspect –it could be that just this sort of discussion, multiplied by the thousands and sent out over the air by such as Glenn Beck will be in itself the antidote for the poison. IOW, this is political pressure, and every little bit helps. If dissidents can re-assert constitutional government, get the democrats back under the rule of law, and save the Dollar and the economy all within the system, then so much the better. IMHO.
Wadeusaf @ 121, thank you. I think the case you make pretty much conforms with my understanding as well. But I would contend that the recognition of “the essential fact that all men are equal and endowed with rights whether they are citizens of the US or not” is still rather problematical, given the context of some of the situations I lay out. Is it possible that some forfeit these rights, due to their actions? For instance, does the endowment of these rights extend to the likes of a Khalid Sheik Mohammed? If so, does that mean his harsh interrogation and offshore detention are unconstitutional and illegal, that the lack of civilian judicial review, and the initial fact he was apparently not apprised of his rights argue for his release?
I don’t believe so, but I can see how some might argue the case in the affirmative.
Kinda OT, but ….
What are the five essential issues you think a newly energized political movement should demand of the Federal Government?
I think:
1) A return to true Federalism and a devolution of power back to the States.
2) A commitment to be fiscally responsible in their new, smaller role.
3) Achievement of energy self sufficiency.
4) Immigration reform.
5) Finally, we need a goverment who at the very least pretends very convincingly to be on the side of people who do the right things and make the right choices. And one, moreover, who respects tenent 1, even if they’re itching to get involved in something over which they really have no jurisdiction.
#130 Dtmack wrote “What are the five essential issues you think a newly energized political movement should demand of the Federal Government?
I think:
1) A return to true Federalism and a devolution of power back to the States.
2) A commitment to be fiscally responsible in their new, smaller role.”
Dtmack, I think just #1 & #2 is all we should demand … the rest will flow naturally from #1 & #2, and you don’t want to ask for too much upfront.
Question: How to achieve #1?
Also, I’ll just mention that ‘devolution of powers back to the States.’ also means, to my mind, less power to the Supreme Court, which has taken too much power away from the states.
To me the most important thing to fix is how Senators get elected/appointed.
To help move power back to the states I suggest.
First time you win 6 years.
Second time you win 3 years.
Then Governer (with consent of legistlature) appoints someone to fill in 3 year term.
So Senator could serve a maximum of 12 years (3 years appointed, then wins first 6 year term, then wins 3 year term).
And if the Senator looses either election, of course, the winner would start on the 6 term cycle.
This idea, would start to get Senators more concerned aobut what their states want, and take less power to Washington from the states.
I don’t want to stand accused of piling on, but…
Willy, Wretchard, and other earnest BC contributors have urged “us” to collective action on this site in the past. “Aggregate, Aggregate” the call goes out!
Problem is, folks in a dynamic republic like ours articulate with politics from a thousand different directions most days. And those who make those daily efforts aren’t tickled at being cited for inaction.
So, I’ll agree with Buddy and Mongoose here: whoa, guys!
The call to aggregate, form ranks, or militate, is premature, I think. And, personally, I’d look to AZ State’s own national guard and politicians for cues on the proper timing for this (Sheriff Joe’s fortunes in his never-ending tiffs with the state’s progressives provide a good weathervane, too. When Joe gets the axe, and the NG gets called up, I’ll probably arm up then).
Amalgamation serves Alinsky’s ends right now – they need a definite , isolate-able target to caricature. I say, let’s not give it to them.
#34 Mongoose, I sure hope you’re right! But we have definitely exceeded RWE’s “design margin”.
#110 Robohobo, I’m a big fan of the Golden Tiger, as well as that Iraqui “Surplus” brass case 7.62X39! The M92 Krinkov loves it!
Peter,
You’re misunderstanding me. I’m not writing about the relative value of morality, I’m writing about how messages about morality are sent and perceived, and the impact that has, not only on the receipient of the message, but on the sender as well. It’s the difference between “you should do this” and “you must do this.” Government is all about the must part. The difference between the government and your local church is that the government is allowed to shoot you if you don’t do what they say. Your pastor can say you should tithe 10% and if you don’t, the most he can do is kick you out of the church. The government can say you must pay a 39.6% tax rate and chuck you in jail if you refuse. Or shoot you if you won’t go quietly into the pokey.
Not all questions of morality are cut and dried. Some people think drinking is immoral. They even got a constitutional ammendment passed once banning it. Claimed it was a matter of the utmost importance for civic virtue that no one be allowed a drink. There’s room to disagree, and there is a world of difference between a Mormon missionary standing on your doorstep telling you drinking alcohol is defiling the God-given temple of your body, and a BATF agent taking a fire axe to your whiskey barrels while his partner holds you at gunpoint.
But let’s compare those missionaries to the BATF agents a little more closely. The missionaries have to have a solid grounding to their morality, because they have it challenged every day. They have to justify what they believe, not just to the skeptics they’re trying to convince, but to themselves as well. There’s not much room for flimsy moral constructs in that environment. If the Elders in Salt Lake City lost their way and began talking nonsense, it wouldn’t go on very long. Their morale code only works if it can earn people’s respect, if they internalize it and follow it because they believe in it.
The BATF agents don’t need to justify anything. They have a search warrant. They don’t need to question anything or put up with questions about anything, they have guns and badges. If Congress loses it’s way and passes a stupid law, it takes years and a miracle to reverse it. SOX is still on the books, right? That was an attempt to legislate morality too, and worked out about as well as Prohibition. And the people subject to these laws don’t need to respect them. All they really need to do is not get caught breaking them (or, failing that, buy the right indulgences, so to speak). What kind of morality is that?
Government-run morality, that what kind. We’re all sensible enough not to want government in charge of our physical care. Why would we want government in charge of our spiritual care as well? Same same. If you think government is the spigot where we get our morality, than you’ve fallen for the Left’s trap hook, line and sinker. Leftists are the ones who think all good things come from government. I, on the other hand, think government is a necessary evil that taints nearly everything it touches. Who wants a tained civic morality?
#134 JMH, “We’re all sensible enough not to want government in charge of our physical care. Why would we want government in charge of our spiritual care as well?
Very very well put together sentence, JMH. I’ve felt the same way as you for many years, but have not been able to state it as clearly as you have.
We want a “religious and moral people” to help support & make sure we have a Republic, that we can keep.
However, these same people, should not have the Government impose their view of morality on the rest of us — instead they should support liberty — and then, as you said “Mormon missionary standing on your doorstep telling you drinking alcohol is defiling the God-given temple of your body”
I don’t agree with the Mormon missionary; however, I believe they are doing a great good for America by their lifestyle (and helping many alcholics not drink is great .. as long as I, can have my glass of wine from time to time).
Supporting Liberity will help the people who care about morality thrive & convince those of us that choose to listen to them. This really seems to be a win/win/win to me.
[And after all, an imposed morality, via the government, is not a real morality anyway; people will follow along, to some extent due to fear of punishment from the police power of the state, but with resentment; so its not really useful ... its also a harmful reversal of the concept the people are Sovereign and the government works for the people].
JMH
You have missed my point entirely, and for that I take responsibility for making it so poorly.
The source of morality in the Declaration of Independence transcends government, history and time.
124/George Bruce
You are entirely correct if your meaning is that HARD socialist regimes love and need the military and spy services. I am not yet certain that the Obama agenda is hard socialism ala the Soviet Union to name only one. I believe Obama is more likely engaged in forging a soft socialist European style regime, and if that is so, then I stand by my statement, with the meaning that Obama’s soft socialism does not include the military or the CIA in their current forms. Let us hope that you are not right that their intent is hard socialism amd that we can thwart their intent to impose even soft European style socialism.
Walt Erickson
JMH
You have missed my point entirely, and for that I take responsibility for making it so poorly.
The source of morality in the Declaration of Independence transcends government, history and time.
Ah, we’re talking about different things. I don’t find the ultimate source of morality a practical subject for debate. Either it is what you claim, in which case no amount of disagreement will change that, or it isn’t what you claim, and no amount of agreement can change that.
What we can change is how we take responsibility for aligning ourselves with what we think is right. Looming over many recent BC entries is the quesiton of how we translate our thoughts into useful action. What do we do?
For my part, I think we need to bring the two wings of the Right together again in an alliance that lets the strength of each wing cover for the weakness of the other. We haven’t been playing our cards right lately. “Virtue” is not a system of government and “Limited Government” is not a moral framework.
To loop back to the earlier discussion of Huck Finn (and into maybe the one area where I’m not a dunce compared to the folks here!), Huckleberry Finn is not the great American novel. It’s 2/3 of one. It peters out towards the end and turns into too much slapstick and farce.
The two most flawless gems of classic American literature are The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby.
It’s not easy to grasp the incredible, near perfection of The Scarlet Letter at first read. You have to read it multiple times (I’ve read it about 15 times myself). After a few go rounds, you start to see the amazing patterns of symbolism Hawthorne wove into the text — flowers, weeds, darkness, the multiple meanings of the letter A, a key meaning being “America.” Interestingly, in a book ostensibly about adultery, the word “adultery” never appears in the text. So what is it really going on about?
Gatsby is a similar gem, another nearly flawless book for what it is. Passages in it achieve the level of grand poetry, the famous ending lines key among them. And the portrait of Tom and Daisy is perfect for our current nomenklatura. What better description of rich liberal ne’r do wells than this?
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…
Mr. and Mrs. Obama, anyone?
Still, Gatsby is not Fitzgerald’s best book. Tender is the Night is better, though not as perfectly realized. Still, it reaches for more and ultimately achieves more. If you’ve read Gatsby but not read Tender, well you must.
For all this, the truly great American novel is Moby Dick . A great, festering mess of a book, like a man’s brain exploding on the page, but nothing matches it for sheer power and terror and scope.
And in other news, an anthem for our times…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on_AdFUJVH0
Two things make me believe that inflation even a hyper-inflation are part of the game that is being played by Washington. In 2007? (IIRC) there was a much smaller limit put on purchase of “I” bonds, the ones that adjust their interest payment for inflation.
The other is the news I heard just today that Social Security will not adjust it’s payments for inflation, COLA, for the next two years.
If inflation heats up, the Soc. Sec. alone will save plenty. Limiting the “I” bond takes away one place to hide from a rapid inflation. A nice big crisis for them to do more harm to liberty and at the same time make the national debt smaller.
That it could lead to a war they may see as useful too. National Security in wartime is a progressive’s dream as long as they are in power. See Wilson, Presidency, WWII.
JMH and Peter Boston,
Our individual moral compass, the thing that tells us what is right from what is wrong, and our civic moral sense of what is just, or what is right for the community and what is wrong for the community are derived from one and the same place. Our shared agreement about what that the individual and civic moral compass is is an essential component to making government of, for and by the people, work.
Depending on your sense of morality, an individual has no right to challenge the government, or the government has no right to usurp individual rights.
Our morality dictates the government we have. Our morality dictated the government created by Washington, Jefferson and others of their day. Without their agreement on the moral foundation the effort would not, could not have resulted in the republican form of government we have.
We have lost the moral force to support such morality by religious argument, and have succumbed as a society to the easy answer of morally relative virtue. I would contend that the morality of the enlightenment, the judeo-christian heritage allows man to achieve and live harmoniously with his fellow man if men adhere to basic principals. They are proven over time and they are sound. They are not anything that would agree with nihilism, nothing that would support socialism, nothing that would justify communism.
In keeping with that morality we know with confidence that Individual rights and individual liberty are worth the effort to maintain because it is through the exercise of individual liberty that a quality of life is achieved from which the greatest happiness may be achieved by as many men who are willing to put forth the effort. It is happiness dependent on self and completely independent of the aims and foibles of others, so long as we have the liberty to pursue it.
Under all other forms of government, including anarchy, individual liberty must needs be sacrificed and happiness suffers as a result.
Subotai,
“We need to understand what winning will entail. It may mean bringing RICO charges against the Auto Unions for this communist theft of the GM and Chrysler (and Obama may have to go to jail for this). It may mean putting those Dems that are milking Fannie and Freddy in jail and “clawing back” the millions that they pocketed. It maybe that we must seize the wealth of Goldman Sachs and put those people in jail. The broadcast portion of the MSM may have to have their licenses revoked. It may mean putting out a international bounty on Soros. It will been vigorously prosecuting voter fraud, and a great many State level democrat office holders will have to go to jail.
We say that Obama is radical in perusing past administrations, but this climate that we have allowed to go on of the Democrats being above the law has lead us to where we are.”
I generally agree with your position. However, we must be clear. Once conservatives regain power, and they will, the crimes of Buraq and the Left need to be prosecuted within the Rule of Law, not as some political witch hunt. A political witch hunt will only begat more witch hunts.
The problem, as you allude to, is that the Republican Rino establishment has condoned unlawful behavior by the left for so long that the left’s crimes have become accepted as lawful. Both Bush Presidencies were guilty of overlooking the left’s crimes, but Bush 43 more so.
The Rule of Law was sacrificed on the altar of Bipartisanship under Bush 43. How many security leaks did we have to endure before there was a prosecution? There were crimes like the IRS pursuing the Clinton Enemies list that were just let go as being too provocative. Hardly any of corruption scandals against the Democrats were prosecuted, but they sure were against Republicans. The Democrats were above criticism for Bush 43 and his Rino establishment pals.
One of the main reason we are in such a fix is that men with influence on government actions, mostly on the left, were allowed to go hog wild, particularly in the financial arena. To restore our national sovereignty, our national security , our financial system and our economy we need to restore the Rule of Law in it’s fullest measure.
But to return to the Rule of Law will be difficult. The crimes of Buraq and friends will be enormous and numerous. Exposing those crimes will be difficult for the media and Rino’s to stomach. Real investigations into the financial collapse will reveal ugly truths about men and women of both parties in high places.
The Left, Rino’s and the media will surely cry foul over and over. The political and financial establishment will be aghast. We will hear from the anointed Wise Old Men like St Colin, that the prosecutions are unfair and UnAmerican.
But we must persevere and prosecute with the full force of the Rule of Law. Not for vengeance, jealousy or anger, but for a return to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Cannoneer No. 4 @ 121:
You, for one, do get it. Others here do not.
I use this space to recreate and stretch the intellectual muscles some. Learn a lot also.
907ie @ 134:
Yeah, various calibers have been hard to get. Range time has suffered as I do not want to burn up what I do have, just in case. Big5 has Mosin Nagants for $99 right now. I am thinking of adding it to the others. Mini-14 for varmints. 8mm Yugo Mauser for bigger varmints. ATR-100 for white tails. Hand held various pieces for …..?…
I saw that one of my local tool dealers has Ruger’s newest offerings available again. Maybe things are settling down with tools and accessories becoming more available again? I certainly hope so.
Oh, well, enough of that. this is not a gun blog. Might scare those of delicate sensibilities.
I would suggest to people increased discretion in the current climate. Keep in mind that there are automatic programs designed to seek out key words. and AGW can be said to be making certain kinds of climate hotter…
Those may be sent around the in ter net sniffing out references to politically incorrect activities, based on innocent chemicals that might be mingled into discomodious combinations. Or self-propulsive pellets used in personal accessories used to repel boarders. Or the commercial names of the manufacturers of those personal accessories.
There are vari ous ways to de feat them, just as there are means to def eat the ‘bots that snoop out email add resses to comp ile spam lists for comm ercial purp oses. Might even confu se the so rt of MOr ons wh o supp ort the mess Iah.
Aw, screw it. Just voicing independent thought marks you as a trouble-maker.
“Hans, Call the SS, tell them to bring shackles and eye-gouges.”
#143 Unsk
Agreed with caveats. There must not be any hint of plea bargaining, special handling, country club detention centers, or anything but the same level of treatment and degradation [and that is part of the process, as you are no longer anything special and your position or former position should mean nothing before the law] as in the normal criminal justice system, applied strictly. There admittedly may be a problem in defining what is a ‘normal’ criminal justice system the longer it takes to re-establish the social contract.
Strict Nuremberg rules. They must be held responsible for the actions of their subordinates, even if it results in a capital sentence. And subordinates are not excused from activities that are a violation of the Constitution based on orders from above. Those charged and convicted must not come out with any sort of celebrity or social standing. They are traitors and felons.
There is a part of the Rule of Law that must be pondered. If this regime feels it has the upper hand, there will no doubt be the equivalent of thoughtcrime and political crimes established and punished. And they might well be capital, as that is the trend in totalitarian states. Using the Rule of Law existing, they could possibly be charged with the same thing as their victims. That may not be appropriate for the revived civil order; or conversely it might be thought necessary to account for the worst crimes. Once again, we are looking through a glass darkly. For myself, I think that a charge equivalent to High Treason, being defined as the deliberate overthrow of the rule of the Constitution by someone in a position of Federal power and trust [president, vice-president, members of the cabinet or those appointed to positions of executive power outside the Constitution (think Czars), members of Congress, and members of the Federal Judiciary] might serve both to punish the guilty then and be worth retaining on the books in the new civil order. And for that, I [who am not a nice person] would recommend a penalty involving hemp rope and “cervical one-point vertical dynamic suspension”. But that is a matter for the survivors of the interregnum to decide.
The point is, there is to be no reconciliation with criminals and enemies. Those who have committed and are convicted of crimes, those who abet the High Treason noted above, are literally not our countrymen. No kiss and make up. No giving them another turn at governing. If they once betray the Constitution, I would be leery of accepting their word in swearing renewed allegience afterwards. And if they would not, I do not mind the concept of denaturalization and permanent exile.
I expect brickbats to be incoming, and have donned the Nomex shorts and Kevlar codpiece in preparation.
Subotai Bahadur
you won’t be getting any brickbats from me, Subotai. I have gone and ruint my mind with the study of history, and now can’t see you in any wise off the reservation. Maybe close to the line, but inside it. there needs to be hard people out along the borderlines. if we’re to have the nation back. if we’re to have the nation back, it may look like Cormac Mccarthy for awhile. Not pretty but better by far than forty-five years inside a vodka bottle then back in the ground wi’ ye.
There is always reconciliation with criminals and enemies, always amnesties, always pardons, always Reconstruction, always traitors who needed killing who dodge the bullets and nooses they so richly deserve. Happens after every civil war, Subotai. Has to happen, or the killing never ends. The survivors amongst Those Who Didn’t Want To Be Our Countrymen Anymore must be accepted back into the fold, or killed. And the Good Guys can’t really afford to kill too many of our domestic enemies, because before the dust settles we will need them on our side helping us kill foreign enemies.
Chieu Hoi!
Good point. Lincoln, the tyrant saint, played it right, and won a working system for the next hundred years.
sirius_sir @ 130 (I missed this earlier)
“Is it possible that some forfeit these rights, due to their actions? For instance, does the endowment of these rights extend to the likes of a Khalid Sheik Mohammed? If so, does that mean his harsh interrogation and offshore detention are unconstitutional and illegal, that the lack of civilian judicial review, and the initial fact he was apparently not apprised of his rights argue for his release?
The case made for detention at Gitmo, and during previous World wars, for summary execution after tribunal, is that the actions of the detainee are illegal under the rules of war as described by Geneva Conventions. In not wearing identifying garb, in not adhering to the treatment of civilians in a combat zone and in the active planning and prosecution of methods of warfare that violate all reasonable sense of morality, these illegal combatants have, by their own actions, renounced all claim to mercy (spit).
The disposition of illegal combatants was, I believe, intentionally left unresolved by the Geneva Conventions. It was intended that they should receive the same treatment as accorded to high seas pirates, and demanded by civilized men. In my opinion, to argue otherwise is to call for the dissolution of all moral sense, and the cessation of all legal and rational treatment of man by fellow man.
The only question is should we be allowed to mine for intel before we put a permanent end their freakish threat to humanity. Under the current regime, the prosecution of their actions is a Law Enforcement issue and not as an act of war. The difference is enormous.
Re #84 Subotai, Did you make it to the town-hall meeting? I’ve been lurking here since the fallback days at B.C., but your comment inspired me to go to the meeting. I looked for you there, but have no idea what you look like. Don’t know what I would have said if I did other than: “gee isn’t the B.C. inspiring”. I had no idea we were in the same town until you mentioned the goats at the Rec. Dist. field, I have to look out for them when I’m shooting my bow after church.
The town-hall meeting went well I thought. The lefties were pushier and so made more comments, but when ever we got a chance the response of the crowd left no doubt where most of us were at. It was mostly respectful, but some definite booing of the lefty talking point comments that were made, which in this quiet community is actually saying quite a lot.
121-Cannoneer, 133-Steavz, 144-907,
Well put gentlemen, I am with you fully. I write more than i post here, I often (uncharacteristically) wait a few minutes to cool off and look again before I hit the button. Keep your groups small and close to the vest, great analogy on the weather vane.
907, i’ve seen stocks coming back to the shelves locally and on internet sources too, black longarms are even sinking in price somewhat. Consumables and components are still near record highs though. On another parallel, I’ve also had trouble gettting canning supplies, jars and lids, this season, had to travel about to find them.
All,
My call for action was not a call for ci vil insur rection. I was trying to see if there is any way to avoid what is comming using the existing system of political and economic mores. It seems to be a foregone conclusion by many here that there is no other way… Can’t there be a PAC who can finance ads and media to turn the American Idol crowd? What about the unspent monies in Repubs and RNC coffers? Do they hoard it until another day, or start to agressively campain now while there is still a sliver of hope that we can turn the tide? My desire is to avoid vi lo ent con flict and peasefully return to Life, Liberty, and Prusuit of Happiness. Am I just being wishful? Probably. Stock up and pray.
There is always reconciliation with criminals and enemies, always amnesties, always pardons, always Reconstruction, always traitors who needed killing who dodge the bullets and nooses they so richly deserve. Happens after every civil war, Subotai. Has to happen, or the killing never ends.
Completely agreed. Reconciliation has to happen. The key though is that it has to happen after the victory is clear an the criminals and traitors know without a doubt that they lost. The ones who think maybe they could still win, or could give it another try in a few years, those can’t have any slack.
An ideology needs to be destroyed and the ability to profit from that ideology must come to an end. Whether Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and Franklin Raines ever see the inside of a jail cell is less important than ending the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac cronyism for good. If sending one of those scoundrels to prison and giving the other two a pass will accomplish that, well, that’s okay.
Speaking of criminals is apt, we are dealing with a certain type of crime. And the best way to reduce crime, especially when it has become widespread, isn’t necessarily to imprision all the criminals, even if they all deserve it. The best way to reduce crime is to imprision – serioulsy with no slaps on the wrist – enough high profile criminals that the rest decide a sudden career change is in their best interests.
At any rate, talking about reconciliation, reconstruction, or jail time is a bit premature. We have to win the war first. Right now when Obama, Dodd, Pelosi, Holder et al are in positions to threaten our ruin it’s hard to feel magnanimous. If, God willing, a few years from now they are out of office and powerless, it will be easier to find our better angels.
Wadeusaf @ 150. Yes, I agree. I raised the questions only because the initial proposal, i.e., that all men are endowed with unalienable rights (incapable of being repudiated) seemed to argue against our common conclusion to the contrary.
#151 pressingTowardTheMark
Sorry it took so long to get back. It has been a busy day. Yeah, I made it to the Town Hall. I got there at about 1600, and the place was already pretty full. I counted 120 and people were still coming in before Doug started. I noticed the lameness of the enemy outside. About a dozen holding signs saying “Keep your teabags off of my healthcare”; and chanting “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, the status quo has got to go!”. [Kind of an all purpose Leftist chant.] I also noted the looks on the faces of TWANLOC inside when Doug’s opening statement ended with saying he was against the bill. The roof was raised with cheers [yeah, that was my subdued rebel yell].
I was in the back. I did not feel like being discreet, so I was wearing a black t-shirt with a modified [by PEOPLE'S CUBE] Russian propaganda poster. This version says, “COMRADES, the Party commands you to mercilessly stomp out the Class Enemy’s rumor that our President Obama is a disguised Socialist. Report all unauthorized thoughts and opinions to flag@whitehouse.gov.”.
I did not get to speak [Which I am glad of in a way. I am a wordy bugger and have been public speaking for a while. Everybody there talking was someone who is motivated to stand up and fight back for the first time.]. But I did talk to him afterwards. I hit him on the direct violation of a Federal statute that the “flag” email snitch line was, cited the law, and the fact that the Feds waived sovereign immunity from both civil and criminal charges. I asked if there was anyone else besides him in DC who had a pair of cojones to file, because if a Congressman filed to have a Federal law enforced on the Executive they would have a hell of a time denying that he had standing.
By the way, both he and Kevin Grantham [candidate for state senate and strong Tea Party supporter] liked the shirt.
#148. Cannoneer No. 4, #154. JMH
The key though is that it has to happen after the victory is clear an the criminals and traitors know without a doubt that they lost. The ones who think maybe they could still win, or could give it another try in a few years, those can’t have any slack.
I admit that my post was still affected by my still being mickle p.o.-ed from my encounter with TWANLOC coming and going from the Town Hall. The detestation and contempt I felt for them was amazing, even for me when my temper is up.
However, I stand by what I said about the prosecution of any criminals and perpetrators of atrocities, without fail if we can catch them. This is to include capital prosecution if warranted. Being imperfect, not all will be caught. But, just as it was vital that Germany undergo denazification, and the war criminals be pursued to the ends of the earth and their life spans; we need to go through the same process in order to achieve the clarity and lack of doubt noted above. And given their persistence, it will take some doing.
There is the added factor that it is a special characteristic of the Republican party to believe that they can motivate people by promising to fight for maybe half a loaf. We have seen how that works. We cannot copy that. If TWANLOC in words or actions void the Constitution, moderation before complete victory is suicidal. There is a reason for our declaration that we would only settle for unconditional surrender in WW II, and that related as much to the will of our forces and the home front as much as any international diplomacy.
How the prosecution will be carried out is a matter for those who survive the effort. This is real. Many will not survive. I like the charge related to Federal officials overthrowing the Constitution. Others may not. May we be in a position where the discussion will be something that we can seriously influence.
Subotai Bahadur
#157 Subotai I got there around 1635 so he had just started. I was also in the back – on the left. Felt surrounded by TWANLOC. The big guy who was one of the first commenters was right behind me and the guy who tried to keep commenting at the end was next to me on the right. I thought they were going to lose it, they were so worked up.
Your comment about promising maybe half a loaf hits home. If our representatives are not going to insist on enforcing the rule of law (especially enforcing the constitution), then we are not being represented and are on our own. I’m thinking that is why more of us are getting involved (tea-party, town-hall) that would ordinarily keep quiet.
I hope you folks have been watching Glenn Beck the last few days –as he goes thru the ‘czars’ one at a time, and looks at their objective records.
Look, it’s bad –it’s real bad. the czars is where the head reds are –the project managers who overwrote all these magically-appearing 1300 page mock-English boilerplate American-suicide bills.
He’s doing Mark Lloyd now –the “diversity czar” (which is a hide, he’s gonna ‘do’ RTFP) –showing a videotape of the FCC’s sudden new Political Officer. in the film he’s talking, sweating out Hugo Chavez. No, not that HC WILL take over the Venezuelan communications industry –but that he WON’T.
He’s very explicit –he says it straight –i’m not interpreting, and Lloyd ain’t up to litotes.
And he’s your communications industry czar. He’s as commie as they come, sorry no joke, and he *is*your*communications*czar.
You’ve got to find a way to see these shows –starting with Monday’s i guess.
If we’re gonna fight these people, Glenn Beck is a suddenly indispensable weapon. see the shows, or read the transcripts if ya can –
can someone set me straight on TWANLOC?
He was speaking at something called “The National Conference for Media Reform”, date either 2003 or 2008 (couldn’t read the banner fast enough).
Since 90% or so of the communications industry is already reliable to this admin’s aims, the ‘reform’ subject of the ‘national conference can mean only one thing –that other 10% or so has to be that which “requires reform”.
The czars, sez Beck, are the muscle, the exoskeleton, of a “…machine being built that is awaiting ‘an event’, which will come, one way or another, and then they will ‘turn the machine on’.
Beck is asking for people to start archiving little-known info on the czars –as he thinks the web will be getting scrubbed before long.
TWANLOC those who are no longer our countrymen
see http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/08/22/a-tribute-to-our-decency/#comment-147
#160 Mongoose,
My usage. It is an acronym for Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen. Given the nature of the Cold Civil War, and the rising temperature; we are beyond mere differences between Democrat and Republican, or even Left and Right. At this point we do not share a culture, a language [we use the same words, but they convey totally different meanings], or a view of how the world is. Indeed, there is as much difference between us and Wahabists as between us and those I refer to as TWANLOC. Mind you, Wahabists and TWANLOC are not the same, just both are different from us along different axis’. They do share on thing, which leads to a degree of mutual support between them. It is a belief that “The enemy of my enemy (in this case us) is my friend.”.
The acronym works for me, YMMV.
Subotai Bahadur
The confidence felt in the righteousness of the Union cause and in the military power of the Government to speedily suppress the rebellion gave strong hopes to the general public that the war would be a short one. But after an experience of bloody conflict, during which time the morning papers with heavy headlines too often brought the words of defeat and great losses to the Union forces, saddening the hearts of loyalists and giving encouragement to those opposed to the Government, who grew more violent in their denunciations of the war, it began to dawn upon the people and the Government that our Southern antagonists were of like metal with our own Northern army. Rev. Henry Ward Beecher expressed the situation to a large London audience, while there seeking England’s influence in the preservation of the Union, where he did the country invaluable service. In the midst of a strong and earnest appeal for the North and its righteous cause before a large audience, but one greatly at odds with him, he was interrupted with the question from one of his hearers: “If your cause is so righteous with your great Northern strength, why don’t you put the rebellion down?” The quick reply was, “Because we are fighting Americans and not Englishmen.”
They are still our countrymen, and even if The Good Guys win this CWII, their widows and daughters and sons will still be our countrymen. Who has the standing or legitimacy to declare some Americans Beyond The Pale?
Ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny in this pressurized evolution of a New American
re: 164 Cannoneer. When they spit upon the men my father served with and by undermining public perception and support of that conflict, they went beyond the pale. When they plundered all that my father’s father endured and sacrificed for, they went beyond the pale. When they threaten to squander the future and freedom of my children, they are beyond the pale. All of them, from the lowliest paid hooded sweatshirt wearing pimpled G-8 protester to the Armani wearing stuffed suit sitting on a board of directors.
They do not love freedom, instead they love and covet power. They have through trickery and manipulation kept an entire class of people as their slaves for what, 6 generations now? Even as we speak they spread their lies into our youth. Many the very people freed by the conflict you quoted from. And for what end? For the sole purpose of defeating our very principles of equity by using those principles against us. They are not Americans, not as defined by those that suffered to create and sustain our nation. The vain narcissists who seek to enslave us care only for themselves and seek to use all weaker than they as a commodity, they are soul-less relativist.
I call them beyond the pale, and I sir am most certainly not alone. If there are any of them left when this is over (if we are left) then we’ll discuss re-education. I don’t expect them to sing Silent Night with us once this gets lit, they are that far out of bounds now.
Remember the Fire-eaters?