Janet Daley of the UK Telegraph and Angelo de Codavilla of Boston University, in what will be a landmark essay, argue that overt class struggle has come to America. Not the classic Marxist class struggle in which the wretched of the earth arise to break their chains. Rather the reverse, one in which the Masters of the Universe impose their unutterable vision upon the benighted masses. Daley tells the short form of the story, one in which a newly arisen self-appointed enlightened elite use bread and circuses to rent the mass necessary to crush the middle classes, all distinctly un-American.
The president’s determination to transform the US into a social democracy, complete with a centrally run healthcare programme and a redistributive tax system, has collided rather magnificently with America’s history as a nation of displaced people who were prepared to risk their futures on a bid to be free from the power of the state. … They are talking a lot about this in the US now. Suddenly the phenomenon of class resentment is a live political issue.
AdvertisementWhat is more startling is the growth in America of precisely the sort of political alignment which we have known for many years in Britain: an electoral alliance of the educated, self-consciously (or self-deceivingly, depending on your point of view) “enlightened” class with the poor and deprived … this sentiment is taking on precisely the pseudo-aristocratic tone of disdain for the aspiring, struggling middle class that is such a familiar part of the British scene.
Codevilla as might be expected, tells the long form of the story. In his version it begins as many things American do, with an original political sin. Not the obvious one of slavery in which the British Crown after all played a large part, but in what legitimized it — and sanctified a particular form of opposition to it. It was the doubt that all men were created equal and had inalienable rights that created the first revolt in new republic. For even after the Declaration of independence there many who doubted that the idea of the equality of man could be taken literally. In this rebellion against the founding principles the slave-owners and indeed some abolitionists were agreed. In the view of the former, some men were destined to be subjected; in the view of the latter some men were destined to be enlightened — by them. Codevilla writes:
By 1853, when Sen. John Pettit of Ohio called “all men are created equal” “a self-evident lie,” much of America’s educated class had already absorbed the “scientific” notion (which Darwin only popularized) that man is the product of chance mutation and natural selection of the fittest. Accordingly, by nature, superior men subdue inferior ones as they subdue lower beings or try to improve them as they please. Hence while it pleased the abolitionists to believe in freeing Negroes and improving them, it also pleased them to believe that Southerners had to be punished and reconstructed by force. As the 19th century ended, the educated class’s religious fervor turned to social reform: they were sure that because man is a mere part of evolutionary nature, man could be improved, and that they, the most highly evolved of all, were the improvers.
Thus began the Progressive Era. When Woodrow Wilson in 1914 was asked “can’t you let anything alone?” he answered with, “I let everything alone that you can show me is not itself moving in the wrong direction, but I am not going to let those things alone that I see are going down-hill.” …
The cultural divide between the “educated class” and the rest of the country opened in the interwar years. Some Progressives joined the “vanguard of the proletariat,” the Communist Party. Many more were deeply sympathetic to Soviet Russia, as they were to Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Not just the Nation, but also the New York Times and National Geographic found much to be imitated in these regimes because they promised energetically to transcend their peoples’ ways and to build “the new man.” Above all, our educated class was bitter about America. …
By 2010 some in the ruling class felt confident enough to dispense with the charade. Asked what in the Constitution allows Congress and the president to force every American to purchase health insurance, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi replied: “Are you kidding? Are you kidding?” No surprise then that lower court judges and bureaucrats take liberties with laws, regulations, and contracts. That is why legal words that say you are in the right avail you less in today’s America than being on the right side of the persons who decide what they want those words to mean.
But unlike Europe, an American class struggle if it existed would be distinguished not by the rise of a proletariat, but by the emergence of an aristocracy who not surprisingly see themselves free to exercise their rights of judgment unencumbered by bourgeois sentimentality. The idea would breed in their veins and eventually it would make them almost an different species. When Elena Kagan was being interviewed by the Senate she refused point blank to hold an opinion on natural rights. It was almost as if there was something in her DNA which balked at accepting the self-evident grant of liberty from a source beyond themselves. Rights, where they existed at all, had to spring from man-made instruments parsed as it happens, by people like her.
COBURN: I’m not asking you about your judicial. I’m asking you, Elena Kagan, do you personally believe there is a fundamental right in this area? Do you agree with Blackstone that the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense? He didn’t — he didn’t say that was a constitutional right. He said that’s a natural right. And what I’m asking you is do — do you agree with that?
KAGAN: Senator Coburn, to be honest with you, I –I don’t have a view of what are natural rights independent of the Constitution, and my job as a justice will be to enforce and defend the Constitution and other laws of the United States.
COBURN: So — so you wouldn’t embrace what the Declaration of Independence says, that we have certain God-given, inalienable rights that aren’t given in the Constitution, that they’re ours, ours alone, and that the government doesn’t give those to us?
KAGAN: Senator Coburn, I believe that the Constitution is an extraordinary document, and I’m not saying I do not believe that there are rights pre-existing the Constitution and the laws, but my job as a justice is to enforce the Constitution and the laws.
COBURN: Well, I understand that. Well, I’m not talking about as a justice. I’m talking about Elena Kagan. What do you believe? Are there inalienable rights for us? Do you believe that?
KAGAN: Senator Coburn, I — I think that the question of what I believe as to what people’s rights are outside the Constitution and the laws, that you should not want me to act in any way on the basis of such a belief, if I had one or…
COBURN: I — I would want you to always act on the basis of a belief of what our Declaration of Independence says.
KAGAN: I — I think you should want me to act on the basis of law, and — and that is what I have upheld to do, if I’m fortunate enough to be concerned — to be confirmed, is to act on the basis of haw, which is the Constitutions and the statutes of the United States.
The notion of a class above the law, one which could wave away the petty customs of the unwashed, were on almost cartoonish display in a moment almost made for television during the sentencing of Walter Kendall Myers, who was being sent to life in prison for spying for Cuba. He argued with judge Reggie Walton that he had a higher obligation from noblesse oblige to help the Cuban people. Kendall Myers is the grandson of National Geographic Founder Gilbert Grosvenor and the great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell. Imagine the scene.
“The U.S. is not a perfect nation,” U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton said, noting that his great-grandfather was a slave and his grandfather a sharecropper.
“But America is not the devil you may believe it is,” Walton said. “You had privileges unlike others, and yet you squandered those privileges at the expense of your own government.” …
Myers told Walton the couple’s “overriding objective” was to help the Cuban people.
“If you believed in the revolution, you should have defected,” Walton said, adding that Myers showed “no sense of remorse.” The defendant gave the judge a 10-minute discourse on why the couple spied and how they’ve found a “silver lining” in prison: They’ve stopped smoking, he joked.
You could not have made the exchange up. The last remark about the cigarettes says it all. Even in the dock Myers was playing the Olympian, laughing at the petty conceits of a jumped-up Uncle Tom. The alumnus of a private boarding school and Brown University who had been a State Department intelligence analyst, university professor and weekend sailor of a 37-foot yacht grandly told the judge that he was only motivated by humanitarian ideals and would continue his ennobling work even behind bars. The descendant of a sharecropper might sentence him with his greasy little pen but for his part Myers could remain innocent before the great bar of his own opinion. The question nobody answered was whether he was also innocent in the judgment of his ‘peers’.
“Our overriding objective was to help the Cuban people defend their revolution and forestall conflict between the two countries,” Myers said as the couple stood side by side before Walton. “We are equally committed to helping the struggling people of the world.” …The couple received little of monetary value from the Cubans. Instead, prosecutors said, they were rewarded with medals — and, in 1995, a private visit with Fidel Castro. …
Myers told the judge that he and his wife served as teachers’ aides in jail and had made friends among the inmates — “many are African Americans trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty, drugs, crimes and jail.” Invoking Nelson Mandela, he told Walton that he hoped to be able to continue working with inmates.
The judge, though, said he was troubled by the idea of Myers teaching in prison, where he said inmates can be “radicalized to hate their own country.”
‘Inmates radicalized to hate their own country’, the judge might have added, by the very elite to whom the country had given everything. Of course not everyone is a Myers and there many members of the social elite who are patriots, but as with Philby, Burgess and Maclean — to take the Anglo-American comparison further – there is enough truth in the stereotype of the upper-class traitor to make the depiction disturbing. Disturbing but not universal. Deep down in Codevilla’s magnificent essay is the insight that despite the aristocratic pretensions of would be rulers their real motive is really base money and power. Class is ultimately founded on a division of spoils and nothing so grand as high ideals. Codevilla wrote:
Our ruling class’s agenda is power for itself. While it stakes its claim through intellectual-moral pretense, it holds power by one of the oldest and most prosaic of means: patronage and promises thereof. Like left-wing parties always and everywhere, it is a “machine,” that is, based on providing tangible rewards to its members. Such parties often provide rank-and-file activists with modest livelihoods and enhance mightily the upper levels’ wealth. Because this is so, whatever else such parties might accomplish, they must feed the machine by transferring money or jobs or privileges — civic as well as economic — to the party’s clients, directly or indirectly.
Don’t let the fancy words fool you, Codevilla says, the elites may have come to Washington to “do good”, but they are really staying “to do well”. And that should be a comforting thought. We don’t have to believe in class struggle just yet unless we want to impose a self-fulfilling paradigm on ourselves. Class struggle is a dangerous word for the present. America may have an aristocracy, but there is nothing necessarily European about them; their titles all date from Tammany Hall. It’s always nice to know that deep down inside the most grandiloquent svengalis are really driven about ego or money. Just like any con man or stick-up artist. Myers might not find prison so strange after all.
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The big Zero has turned the notion of a “public servant” on it’s head. He and his cronies seek the public to serve them.
To that end, he will use everything from “natural disasters” to populist economic thievery his to secure his position of power. Worse, his henchmen wielding the megaphones at the NYT and the like will do everything they can to help him.
I say get the book on him and then legally boot him out of Office.
Wretchard: Don’t let the fancy words fool you, Codevilla says, the elites may have come to Washington to “do good”, but they are really staying “to do well”
It took Daley and de Codavilla this long to figure out what was happening? Oh, like wow. Okay, now tell me something I don’t already know.
The other facet of the situation which Daley and de Codavilla left out is that the many of the elites are certifiable idiots. That one fact alone frightens me.
Didn’t see anything about the Chicago machine rigging the nomination for their boy on the Sunday talk shows.
Arguably an important point in America history. On the other hand, was it any different from any other brokered convention? For years I lived in fear of a third term for Clinton. Now I would see it as a relief and an improvement. Is there a difference between brokering a convention and stealing one? Does voting fraud cover conventions? Or just elections?
I think Obama and many with whom he has surrounded himself are doubly bad for what this nation has historically been. Yes, they’re bad because they arrogantly believe there is no constraint against them enriching themselves at the public trough in classic Chicago style. But they are doubly harmful because of the sense of entitlement they have brought to governance. Obama, his wife, and many members of the inner circle were raised on affirmative action, believing they qualified for their entrance to fine schools, scholarships, and select company because of historic wrongs. I think this moves them to work toward redress of those wrongs on a grand scale at the same time they plunder the nation’s treasure. The attitude they bring to their seat of power and influence is pernicious, destructive and arrogant. Kagan’s hearing were a display of classic arrogance. We can only hope that loss of majority status in Congress next January will stop this plunder. F
The fierce, emotional reaction of many Rebublicans against Sarah Palin and later the Tea Party movement was a surprise to me. Codevilla’s essay explains the aristocratic pretensions of many on the right, and why BHO was attarctive to these people despite his politics (he’s one of us!).
The middle class is not represented by either party, and it galls me that Michael Steele et al are already congratulating themselves on pending gains in November they have done little to deserve.
Take away: It is fun to bitch and complain, but the time has come to get involved. I contacted the local Republican party and inquired about becoming the precinct representaative for my neighboorhood. It was remarkably easy. Now I get to attend the county level meetings which serve to vet ALL Rebublican candidates for State office.
I manage two companies and have no time for this stuff. However sitting on the sidelines is no longer an option.
I think it was about a decade ago that I read an article about the ruling class of France, the French author claimed that they all went to the same schools, they all went to the same parties, they all worked the same kind of jobs, and they all pretty much excluded those who weren’t part of their “class” or network, and that the voters really didn’t have all that much of a choice…..(Sarcasm on) I’m sure glad it isn’t that way here in the US(Sarcasm off)
I totally agree with Codevilla. The only thing I would add to his observations is the role of PC and multiculturalism to the mix. The conflict of identity groups performs the same function for the ruling class as war did for Oceania in Orwell’s 1984. It is an essential component of their rationale for existing.
Much, if not all, of what they do is predicated upon “fixing” some wrong that one group has done to another, or that renders them “unequal.” Grievances, real, imagined and usually magnified have fueled their rise to power. Just as it was not in the interest of the Party in 1984 for the war to ever end, it is not in the interests of the ruling class for conflicts between identity groups to ever truly be resolved. In the absence of illness there is no reason to administer medicine or do surgery.
The interesting dynamic that is rising today is that the ruling class truly is starting to be perceived as what they actually are. The revolting peasants are actually showing indications that they may revolt. The main question is what kind of measures will they take to make sure this doesn’t happen? The one thing you can bet on is that they will not go quietly without a struggle.
Want to get more involved? Here is a URL to ballotpedia which is trying to organize watchdogs for the coming elections. Since you cannot trust either party, it is up to the citizens to fight for our natural rights;
http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
That means organize. We have numbers but they don’t mean anything unless they are organized. Ever seen 2 or 3 cops control a mob?
Recently there was a vido of a cop punching out some mouthy broad. He had a pardner but they were outnumbered. If the mob had wanted to, they could have taken down both cops in seconds. They didn’t and there is a reason why. Organization.
If both sides are organized, then the bigger mob wins.
The amazing thing of the story of Kendall Myers, is that Judge Reggie Walton presided over the Kangaroo Court trial of Scooter Libby. If only Judge Reg had defended American Jurisprudence in that one.
AuggieDog, “The fierce, emotional reaction of many Rebublicans against Sarah Palin and later the Tea Party movement was a surprise to me. Codevilla’s essay explains the aristocratic pretensions of many on the right, and why BHO was attarctive to these people despite his politics (he’s one of us!.”
That point needs to be repeated over and over. Many of our elected Republican representatives are aristocratic sellouts. Too often Republicans legitimize and condone the treasonous conduct of the Democrats, without giving it the proper slamming it deserves.
So how is this “come to America” when you point out that Wilson was doing the same thing 90 years ago?
The problem with any upper class is that it breeds mostly upper class twits, as any Brit can tell you.
Do we want to be lead by Mother Teresa? That’s not a model of government sober people will endorse. So how about Papa Doc Obama? Is that “class struggle”? Obama his own self would probably tell you its a moral class struggle, not an economic class struggle. Unless you can’t separate the two?
WOtever.
Entertaining articles, and great comments from Wretchard. But in the end — Arithmetic Conquers All!
Every prior aristocracy and would-be aristocracy has disappeared into dust. Obama and his ilk will be no different.
Look at what is already happening in Europe. It is easy to be a redistributionist in a world of growing pies and US hegemony. In a world of shrinking pies when the Global Policeman has quit, hard decisions have to be taken. Unpopularity looms for those aristocrats who make the hard decisions about whose subsidy gets cut; disaster looms for those aristocrats who avoid making those hard decisions.
Liberalism mutated into fascism, and the Annointed glimpsed the Promised Land. But just a glimpse. They ate the horses that had been carrying them forward, and remained to die in the desert.
What a splendid set of discussion threads!
Playing on the tendency of people (not limited only to women) to be fooled by various types of Pick Up Artists, the American voters once again fell for a smooth talker in 2008. Charming the majority, while at the same time clearly transparent to those with eyes to see, he promised to be our father and our mother and our sister and our brother and take us to a “higher” place. He came at what for him was the optimal time. Our resistance was down. We were drunk — not with alcohol but with refinancing our mortgages — and we were getting tired — not sleepy but tired and worn down by the relentless negativity about our country and our former leaders. So we said, “What the heck. Let’s go home with that handsome and charming fellow. It sounds like a great adventure.”
Then, as Dr. Krauthammer tells us, this charmer is quite serious about what he really wants to do to us. We may think that a strong cup of tea this November will make everything better, but it won’t. The tea is not strong enough and the poison the charmer has given us is a long acting one. We go to the health food store to ask the shopping clerk there for a suggestion and he tells us about all kinds of great remedies. In one store they tell us to call for an Article V “limited” Constitutional Convention. In another they tell us to buy a solar power system for our roof. Still others sell us bullets while others give us wild advise about whom to shoot.
So we go back home and break open the medical text books and low and behold, we discover, hopefully not too late, that Angelo Codavilla tells us we probably have an incurable condition for which the only potential remedy is a scorching chemotherapy that in itself may kill us. We shrug our shoulders, knowing that he is a grouch and a pessimist, and look around for a second opinion.
Only a site like The Belmont Club could string together a set of discussion threads that initially seemed so disparate and were truly so related.
The funny thing about the elite is that disconnect between the interior, cellular world of their ideology and what their feet seem to be doing. Where you and I might not take tomorrow for granted, they do. They remind me of Romans with vacation villas in Pompeii: all those lovely geographical certainties they were sold are now exploding. Where there was once a bay, a mountain and horizon, a definite discernible direction to the future, an end to history they could clearly see, there is nothing any more. Only darkness.
The People of Pompeii
How vigorous their bodies still appear,
How beautiful. How the volcanic ash
Freezes, softens, then erases fear,
Like snow. They’re running for their lives: their last
Meals still digesting, still flexing muscle,
Still fending off bacteria, as if
All this activity is quite normal.
Pompeiian life continues: fountains lift-
Distant waters up toward the sky,
Naughty boys chalk penises on walls,
Slaves hold cosmetic mirrors, dishes dry.
Perhaps a bowl left on a table calls
A little fruit fly down, his greedy eyes
Full of figs the air will fossilize.
For the earlier answer and now the deeper commentary, thank you Wretchard. Some mistook my sharp tone, but I’d already been deep in thought and discussion of Codevilla when you first commented on him. I’m glad you know me better.
Codevilla is so significant that a friend who worked for a now-deceased topmost puppeteer, sniffed: “Yawn. Not a shred of anything new.”
He went on to say that Codevilla is weakened by his implied assumption that “the Founding Fathers were somehow something other than the wealthy, educated and empowered class of their generation.”
Even though he himself works with words, this man is so impressed by position that he believes it is entirely those with power who shape what ideas the underclass believes to be more powerful. He’s correct if we’re already statist. “He who controls the present control the past….” In which case, Codevilla provides intended provocation.
Typically, Americans have respected and encouraged people with exceptional talent. We aren’t afraid of differences in ability. Homer Hickam’s Coalville is a good example, as is any small town newspaper that reports on an outstanding grad’s college scholarship. What is asked in return for that support is to remember where you came from and to carry with you the values that allowed you to succeed. Today our ruling class is embarrased by those values and forgets that there are life lessons to be learned outside the boarding schools and Ivies. They have substituted class symbols for accomplishment.
If Coburn was truly with us, he would have got up after that little exchange with Kagan and said he was finished with this farce and had all the information he needed to fight her nomination to his last dying breath. The problem with most republicans in congress is that they will not stand and fight. What is happening with this country is not a minor policy dispute; it is a “fundamental transformation” of this country to something abhorrent to the intent of the Constitution. We are at war with the statists, only our side doesn’t seem to know it. We do not need timid self serving republicans who would rather stay in office than fight or risk anything to keep the Republic.
It sure surprised me as well. When I see an NRA sticker on one side of a bumper and an Obama/Biden on the other, it disturbs some of the most comfortable assumptions that I hold and puts me in a ‘WTF?’ kind of mood.
“Well, I’d support McCain, but that woman…”
Repeat that a few more times and the evidence is there that I’d better start thinking differently about these kinds of things. First of all, most people don’t identify themselves as ‘Republicans’, ‘Democrats’, or really by any political description. They will think and act in a manner that makes them feel good about themselves, and by extension, the larger Society. Second, information that enables this is absorbed automatically. No study is required, no real thought is necessary. “It doesn’t make any sense to me, but I like it. I’ll go with it. What’s the harm?” Any talk of Natural Rights, Originalism, Freedom, etc. is met with blank stares. As if any of this is relevant at all. Gramsci’s cultural hegemony makes sense now. No matter what those who believe in American exeptionalism, Destiny, or Duty think, it’s all being played over a background noise of plain old feudalism. The easiest most natural order of things. Just who gets to be the ‘leader’, who must ‘make the tough decisions’ is really the only item anyone discusses out there. That the decisions have already been made, and that the ‘fudamental transformation’ of the society is nothing more than pulling the plug; stopping all energy and thus freezing the status quo for all time, isn’t important. Entropy is a risk-free state.
Hi Pascal,
I enjoy your posts a lot. They are very thoughtful and challenging.
One quick thought, and then back to lurking: Most critiques of Codevilla amount to debasing Common Man’s god-like endeavors. As if to strive to be “God” is a pastime reserved only for Codevilla’s critics.
This was Napoleon’s conceit, and one that France’s governing classes has profited enormously from. Because Napoleon “talked to God,” and because “his” vision was translated by subsequent governments into concrete architecture for all to see…forever, then the Common Man need not want to “be” God.
This is, in effect, the governmentalists’ ecclesiastic, preemptive defense: “Napoleon already did “God” for you, and now that we, the graduating class of the Sorbonne, 1985, et al, occupy the Emperor’s divine bureaus, gardens, venues and boulevards, we’re doin’ all your “God-stuff” for you.”
“Know your station! Now, back to the plow with you. Be “Green,” and don’t forget to pay your taxes!”
Sound familiar?
Wretchard writes: Deep down in Codevilla’s magnificent essay is the insight that despite the aristocratic pretensions of would be rulers their real motive is really base money and power. Class is ultimately founded on a division of spoils and nothing so grand as high ideals.
Another example of this pernicious mindset is Obummer’s latest recess appointment, namely another M.Deity in the grand tradition of Jack Kevorkian:
Berwick has publicly stated that he loves [the British NHS], a sentiment that he has also put in writing: “I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it.” Even worse, he goes on to say that his affection for Great Britain’s socialized medical system is inspired by his loathing for its American counterpart: “All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country.” This doesn’t leave much doubt about where Berwick stands on rationing and what sort of rationing he favors.
Which brings us back to the good doctor’s personal coverage. Before Obama picked him to be our new Medicare czar, Berwick was the chief executive officer of an outfit he founded called the Institute for Health Care Improvement (IHI). IHI bills itself as a nonprofit charity, but it seems to do an awful lot of work on behalf of for-profit entities. As CEO of this enterprise, Dr. Berwick earned a cool $2.3 million in 2008. But, more to the point, IHI will provide him with private health care coverage during his declining years: “The Institute created a postretirement health benefit plan for its chief executive officer (CEO). It provides the CEO and his spouse medical insurance from retirement until death.”
In other words, Dr. Berwick has made sure that he and his wife will never be subjected to the tender mercies of Medicare, the health care program for seniors over which he now has control. Thus, even after he has implemented rationing programs modeled after those of NICE, he won’t have to worry about his wife suffering for lack of drugs deemed too pricey by some obscure comparative effectiveness calculation.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/donald-berwicks-motto-rationing-for-thee-but-not-for-me/2/
What astounds me is how ignorant they are of their own incompetence.
There is yet another serious side to this story that suggests that Obama, Tribe and Kagan were involved in plagiarist activities that pervade the “publish or perish” Harvard Law School. Over the past 25 years or so, a half dozen professors, including Tribe, have been using “research assistants” such as Barry Obama, to compile and even write research papers. Some of the sources of the research were directly plagiarized. Dr. de Codevilla writes in his lengthy treatise:
I do not believe that the Senate has questioned Kagan on her role, so for an entertaining look into the plagiarism scandal, you might check two blog sites created by Harvard law students. The first is Harvard Plagiarism Archive and the other is Harvard Parody, maintained by the HLS Drama Society.
Batman @ 12: “… American voters once again fell for a smooth talker in 2008. Charming the majority, …”
Let’s not make the challenges any larger than they actually are. Obama in the 2008 Presidential election got the votes of about 1/3 of US voters. Nearly 1/3 voted against him. And the other roughly 1/3 chose not to vote. Obama (like most elected politicians) was put in place by a minority. A minority can remove him.
w From the post:
“It’s always nice to know that deep down inside the most grandiloquent svengalis are really driven about ego or money. Just like any con man or stick-up artist. Myers might not find prison so strange after all.
You forgot to mention that America’s prisoners are [and have been] educated and converted right now to Islam. Or at least the black inmates. It has become such a problem and condition that Warden’s have become alarmed and are requesting assistance. This is doubly not only a warning but a threat because ego and money are not part of the equation of Islam. Well, not entirely true, Islam demands that you submit completely to Islam and that you destroy and forever cast out any ego you may have.
auggiedog
“Take away: It is fun to bitch and complain, but the time has come to get involved. I contacted the local Republican party and inquired about becoming the precinct representative for my neighborhood. It was remarkably easy. Now I get to attend the county level meetings which serve to vet ALL Republican candidates for State office.
I manage two companies and have no time for this stuff. However sitting on the sidelines is no longer an option.”
I don’t know whether to say Thank you Lord or buy the next six rounds. Either way, welcome to the front line and remember that the same rules apply as to combat.
Because this this is combat. Between you and our Republic’s enemies.
Papa Ray
19. PA Cat
It sure improved his healthcare, didn’t it?
Coldplay is arguably the best band to come out of the UK in the last decade. Their most recent album is entitled “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends.” The eponymous single “Viva la Vida” was released in June 2008. Every time I hear it, I can’t help but think of Obama and all his friends. I can’t help but hope that life will imitate art:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5TNK-TvIcI
I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own
I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy’s eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing
“Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!”
One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand
I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can’t explain
Once you go there was never
Never an honest word
And that was when I ruled the world
It was the wicked and wild wind
Blew down the doors to let me in
Shattered windows and the sound of drums
People couldn’t believe what I’d become
Revolutionaries wait
For my head on a silver plate
Just a puppet on a lonely string
Oh who would ever want to be king?
I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can’t explain
I know Saint Peter won’t call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world
***
Aside from realizing that The Rulers get into government to do “well” for THEMSELVES, it is absolutely essential to realize that the current bunch is degenerate, and that its education is sub par. These people are indeed, like those Romans waiting in boredom for the barbarians to arrive. Which could explain, by the way, for their fascination with ‘multiculturalism’. One remembers Tom Wolfe’s description of Bernstein’s cocktail party given for the Black Panthers.
As more ‘tea partiers’ get involved in the American political process, they have to NOT be impressed by anyone with an Ivy education. The rulers remain in place as long as the peasantry are willing to bow down.
Another aspect: this American Ruling Class is explicitly non military. Interesting, what?
@ Heathermc (25): I like that distinction you’ve drawn between the Cocktail Party set on one hand and the Tea Party set on the other.
#26–ahh, “Radical Chic and Mau-mauing The Flack Catchers”. Loved it.
There is mo much to comment on in this post and thread, but I’m going to zero in on Kagan’s non-remarks about natural rights. I have come to realize that many people, particularly among the elites, and most especially the liberal ones, have no use for the Declaration of Independence as a founding document. I was even once laughed at (literally) when I insisted to some humanities PhDs that the Declaration was a supporting governing document to the Constitution. My retort to their ridicule was that they had just chosen not to agree with Abraham Lincoln. I admit to enjoying their momentary discomfort (speaking of twits), but was really taken aback by their rejection of the one true document that explains “us,” the American people, as we were conceived to be, and the nation we were supposed to want.
From the website of which I am the webmaster:
Abraham Lincoln on the American Union: “A Word Fitly Spoken”
http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=733
Interestingly, I recall towards the beginning of the recent financial crisis, that someone remarked that the crisis appeared as if, behind the scenes, the ultrawealthy were attempting to cut the legs out from under the merely well-to-do.
Another aspect: this American Ruling Class is explicitly non military. Interesting, what?
And they lack a sense of duty and obligation to their country in the broadest sense. Whatever the faults of past elitists, including those in the early years of the progressive era, they had a sense of duty and obligation to the greater society. It was people such as those who literally went down with the Titanic, rather than crowd the lifeboats. Nowadays elitists are creating a veritable Titanic, and intend to save themselves at our expense.
30. RDS
Interestingly, I recall towards the beginning of the recent financial crisis, that someone remarked that the crisis appeared as if, behind the scenes, the ultrawealthy were attempting to cut the legs out from under the merely well-to-do.
That is a common meme these days, and one which I have resisted, until recently. Putting people who are barely affluent (couples making a combined income of $250K) in virtually the same high tax bracket as those who make 100 times as much is one example; putting unrealistically burdensome requirements on small businesses is another.
I agree with W’s assessment that Codevilla’s essay is extraordinary.
There is, however, one flaw in it: he misunderstands the historic and current role played by political parties. As a result, his policy solution – a third party – simply won’t work.
In the 19th Century, political parties were a core social institution. They drove politics from the bottom to the top, and they had elaborate and powerful organizational structures that kept the politicians under control. Politicians, during this time, were agents of the party – nominated and supported by party leaders, who were themselves supported by leaders and members further down the pyramid. The decisions on who ran may have been made in a smoke-filled room, but who the politician served was unambiguous: elected officials served the party.
One anecdote and one data point to reinforce this. First the data point: during the 19th Century, the average tenure of House members in Congress was less than 2 years. Today, it is about 10 years.
And the anecdote. In one year, Abraham Lincoln was elected to the House of Representatives in 1846. He served one term, and enjoyed his time. But due to forced rotation, he was not allowed to run for re-election.
So, again, politicians served the party, the party controlled the politicians, and the party was controlled by private interests. Now, before long businessmen figured out that if they could get control of the party and use it to help friends and punish enemies, it was quite profitable. Thus, you had the growing corruption of parties, particularly in big cities (Tammany Hall being one of the most well-known examples).
The Progressive Era reforms accelerated the destruction of the party structure through a series of changes designed to promote “democracy.” Over time, however, those changes had the effect of making the politicians more powerful, and the party less so.
By the end of the 20th Century, then, the politicians no longer served the parties; the the parties now served the politicians. And the most powerful check on the political class was turned on its head.
In place of a party, incumbent politicians supported and funded the development of a professional bureaucracy. Whereas before government roles were either elected or appointed (patronage), in the new system most positions were filled by “professionals” who did the bidding of the politicians. The bureaucracy and incumbents became symbiotic, and for direction and validation they looked to universities and their learned professors.
The Bismarckian Progressive system, then, was fully transferred to the US. We see this in small scale in the education world: elected school board members, teachers unions, and schools of education.
Anyway, Codevilla’s criticism of the parties, then, is misplaced. They are not powerful; they are completely controlled by the incumbents. Howard Dean and Michael Steele are court jesters; the king is Barack Obama and the queen is Nancy Pelosi.
The way back, then, lies in taking back the parties from the incumbent politicians, not forming a third party. This can be done by controlling the nomination process: one of the core principles of politics is that he who controls the nomination controls the party. The parties lost their power when Progressive Era reforms removed their ability to control the nomination process (they turned it over the the government, and its professional “experts”).
What is currently lacking is a way for all of those who would like to defeat an incumbent to rally behind a single challenger, thus dramatically increasing the likelihood of their election.
That is only part of what is coming, however. The people are not happy with the current system, and there are more of us than there are of the ruling class. We can beat them, and win back our ability to govern ourselves.
More than than, we will beat them. The American people will not be governed by others. We will self-govern, and the Ruling Class will, in the end, capitulate.
But 2010 is not the end; it is only the beginning.
There is much, much more to come.
L3
“And that should should be a comforting thought.”
Oh really Wretchard? Within the body of your own essay you provide a shining example of two ideologues for whom “doing well” was THE LAST item on their list of social priorities. Yes, for many blacks who have been brought along into government with Obama like Holder, et al, it’s “payback time” –both ideologically and financially–but it is those bureaucratic ideologues–the mid-level bureaucrats, the true believers such as the husband and wife team just sentenced–who are to be justly feared. First,they are legion–they are everywhere around the levers of power and policy-making/regulation-writing. Indeed it is these “middle-managers” and mid-level technocrats in every department that do the yeoman’s work of policy promulgation in government much as Majors and Lt. Cols do in the armed services. The government can’t work without them, and once burrowed into the bowels of government and protected by Civil Service they become a permanent power unto themselves–a power with a definite ideological slant.
These vast majority of such people are not, in the main, driven by money–or even by power and ego–except insofar as their ego is wrapped up in their ideology and power is seen as furthering said ideology. These are the very people Eric Hoffer and C.S. Lewis have warned us about–progressive utopians who would make Heaven here on Earth–to impatiently make Kingdom come on Earth rather than wait for Heaven. And those busily creating paradise, so utterly convinced that only they, like the Gnostics of yore, are possessed of the absolute truth (the WORD) and of “The Vision of the Anointed” will brook no opposition; for what intelligent, rationally-minded person could conceivably oppose (or even want to–or even be ALLOWED to) giving the benefits of paradise-on-earth to all once the TRUTH has been revealed? Only evil and/or ignorant fools could possibly desire otherwise once the utter logic of it all has been revealed to the masses, n’cest pas? ALL totalitarians of every stripe think alike in this in terms of not suffering differing views about earthly societal “salvation”. As one Iraqi Islamic jihadist was quoted prior to the first vote on a new constitution exclaimed: “Why do we need a constitution when we have the Koran?” “Progressive secularists” are no less blindly fundamental in their unchangeable beliefs–and just as dedicated. Wretchard, once again I must state my belief that you are whistling past the graveyard here.
re: become active, (support a republican)
Are not the same things – we need to find groups that are waging the battle to turn D.C. into a park by devolving power back to local political jurisdictions. Imagine what would happen to productivity if the elites and their buracracies (~2 million federal employees not counting the military) were to move from a below-the-line drag on society to generating an above the line return. I suspect the returns would pay for the so-called “entitlements” (at least until they become local responsibilities).
Granted, this is a far harder battle to take an institution that believes it’s role follows times arrow in terms of increasing prestige, power and importance. We need the same revolution in the (central) government that big business went thru in the 70s and 80s as headquarters staff shrunk (at least) 10x (due to Moore’s law and information moving from scarcity to abundance, Carnegie and Sloan “command-and-control” organization replaced by networks, etc.).
So, when you become active make sure those you support understand your goals (a return to the liberty of the founding age), and that you want it to be theirs. Which for me is ending D.C. as we know it (when it comes to domestic affairs), esp. the regulatory state. I’d pick a timeframe for returning D.C. and all of the domestic-related Federal buildings in the country back to the citizens by a date-certain, say, 2020, invite proposals to accomplish same, and ask candidates to declare their position, for or against the principle – a domestic federal government of 100th the current size, import, power and control.
Well, I can dream.
Anyone reading here who has seen a few episodes of “Yes, Minister” or “Yes, Prime Minister” will slowly shake head in remembering when the realization sank in that the show was merely a brutally honest depiction of how the British Civil Service works.
Just like the comic strip “Dilbert” or going back a few decades, the book “The Peter Principle.”
I thought they were great entertainment at first, then as I spent a decade caroming among the cubicled mazes of Silicon Valley manufacturers, I realized that the authors of those two items were probably sobbing in their Jack Daniels somewhere.
I’m telling you, the stench from the system running this country doesn’t wash out. You have to wash your clothes, THEN burn’em.
Obama did it again today –blamed the meltdown on predecessors, and we’ve yet to see the reporter who will say “Mr President, the meltdown was caused by fannie and Freddie, and your every vote as senator that would’ve allowed fannie and freddie to be reined in, was a “no, do not touch fannie and freddie”.
Mr President, would you please, in plain English and without equivocation, explain this?
In the Democratic Party, the liberal wing took advantage of the party’s internal fractures in 1968 (Vietnam and the response to the protests and riots in and around Grant Park) to get the McGovern Commission created, to recommend changes in Party governance. This was the liberal Trojan Horse by which they took over the presidential nominating process and ultimately the Party in 1972, and the libs have retained control ever since.
The Tea Party types need to be looking at the GOP in 2012 the same way as the liberals looked at the Democratic Party in 1968. Earlier, if possible–maybe the necessary dumping of Michael Steele after the 2010 elections would be a good time to insist on something like a Coburn Commission…
The analogy is far from perfect on several grounds, but still I think there’s something worth pondering.
#24 rickl
It sure improved his healthcare, didn’t it?
It doubtless also paid for his daughter’s medical school tuition, thus guaranteeing that she will never have to work as an indentured servant in daddy’s CMS in order to pay off student loans; she can move straight to the top of the government medical bureaucracy as a crown princess.
The second-generation Dr. Berwick graduated from medical school at Yale in May. You will never guess who was the featured speaker at the medical school’s ceremony.
After reading Codavilla’s essay about America’s Ruling Class, and remembering Irving Kristol’s “2 Cheers for Capitalism” in which he describes the New Class, which is really the same thing, the crescent shaped memorial to the fallen heroes of 9/11; and a giant mosque within spitting distance of the Twin Towers pit: well, it isn’t such a puzzle anymore, is it? Apparently, outside of NYC, in smaller towns that lost people on 9/11, there are very affecting and genuine memorials.
Boredom. With decadence comes Boredom. And Chatter. Lots of Chatter. In the meantime, the greatest power in our world looks like it’s being driven into the ditch.
The Codevilla article says : “Supposedly, modern society became so complex and productive, the technical skills to run it so rare, that it called forth a new class of highly educated officials and cooperators in an ever less private sector.”
Indeed, I have seen that process. And it is a fabrication. It need not be that way.
First it is a fabrication because that is the way the Denizens of DC see things, they are in love with complexity, with interlocking fields of responsibility, multilayered organizations, and obtuse experts.
Second it is a fabrication because special interest groups do not wish to battle their way through every county and every capital in all 50 states but just enlist someone in DC to issue edicts in their favor. Work in the Pentagon and it is remarkable how many of such people you see, calling up to Five Sided Ft. Fumble to get an order issued to their customers or even to their superiors.
So realize that when you call, as Ari Tie does in his # 35 does “turn D.C. into a park by devolving power back to local political jurisdictions” it means that you yourself are willing to do it the hard way, locally, up front, and personal. The various unions, National Associations for the Advancement of Etcetera and their associated legions of bureaucrats should fear this most of all.
Taking our country back means, by God, taking the controls ourselves.
Chapter 17 29th Day
When I sat down and began to put my ideas into writing, I had no clear picture of where it would lead. So basically, I followed my stream of consciousness. As I finished one chapter, the next one would suggest itself. But I had no clear idea of where the title for each suceeding chapter was coming from. For example, why would I include a chapter about the Lottery? It seemed so trivial. Now, I can see more clearly where my thinking has been leading me.
I believe that the struggle taking place is not about who will dominate militarily, politically, economically, or ideologically. These are Means. They are not Ends. It turns out that writing about the Lottery is what made me realize this.
The end point of the struggle, the victory or the defeat, the result that will determine our future for centuries, not decades, is the answer to this question: “Will Liberty survive as a concrete reality? This is what the struggle is really about. And it is a life or death struggle.
S/36, that’s very good –wash ‘em and then burn ‘em. Wash ‘em first, even tho you intend to burn ‘em (ahh, Burnham Wood come to Castle Dunsinane, dunce inane), beCAUSE, wash ‘em is all that the old system ever needed, in order to restore traditional sufficient workability.
The old system –lets just call it the pre-Clinton system –could always be corrupted, but you could always wash ‘em.
but now ya gotta burn ‘em –why? –because really, just as Otherworld Kagan being IN Otherworld sees in the mirror Onlyworld, this system can’t be corrupt because corrupt is this system.
thus Obama’s single signal of sincerity (the source of his stump power) is exasperation that “some” refuse to “see”.
but on plans, what to do, we should note to others the brilliant simplicity of Teaism, of Teaocracy; Just get out of our way so we can have More Constitution, Less Government, and a Budget Balance.
Start small if we must, with synergies –think of what wonders would flow from Carly Fiorina’s idea (paraphrased, “every spending desk in Gov’t has a website showing every spend, by whom and for what”) in synergy with “term limits”.
***
I will not be afraid of death and bane,
Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.
–Macbeth, Act 5
***
sees in the mirror
season the mere ‘or’
seize Zen theme error
It is going to require another bloody revolution in this country to reestablish its true meaning. The eristic “dialogue” the powerful and moneyed are the return of the Melian dialogue and their intent is to control a large herd of fat Americans.
Our government cannot be trusted any more than any government that has existed as long as our “republic” has. I laugh at using the word “republic” for we are simply being used as a milk cow, yet we go through the motions ….the outcome remaining the same…a larger more intrusive government and less personal freedom.
***
I will not be afraid of death and bane,
Till Burn ‘Em would come to Dunce-Inane.
–Sythianeedle, Act 1
***
that system or
this cyst tumor
***
habu –how’s Big Sky Country?
“The end point of the struggle, the victory or the defeat, the result that will determine our future for centuries, not decades, is the answer to this question: “Will Liberty survive as a concrete reality? This is what the struggle is really about. And it is a life or death struggle.
As it was eloquently put in a previous but equally desperate struggle, “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Don Rodrigo@29/
Totally agree. It is always amusing to watch these post-modern logical positivists who worship at the altar of the great Agustus Compte and who would laugh any student out of their classrooms (unless they taught at a Catholic Univ.) should they argue for the utility–let alone existence–of Natural Law–and would flunk them should they so argue in any written exams–once outside the borders of the US be the very first to grasp at–indeed to seize upon with the fervor of a drowning man–that previous object of their derision: natural law–as a shield to protect the powerless against the predatory acts of their rulers/fellow countrymen in places like Haiti, the Sudan, the Balkans, Africa–take your pick. Of course they don’t call it that. They disguise it with terms like “human rights,”etc. But just ask these great liberal protectors of, advocates for, the powerless, from whence are these “human rights” derived? Then wait for the answer.
The inevitable results of societies based upon naught but logic and theories of logical positivism is the moral supremacy of the bigger battalions and ample justification for everything from eugenics and euthanasia, on to the ovens, zyklon-B, the gulags and “re-education” camps. Only the civic morality and its practice provided by the concept of Natural Law stands in the way. The likes of a Kagan certainly won’t..
41. RWE
The Codevilla article says : “Supposedly, modern society became so complex and productive, the technical skills to run it so rare, that it called forth a new class of highly educated officials and cooperators in an ever less private sector.”
Indeed, I have seen that process. And it is a fabrication. It need not be that way.
Absolutely. The biggest conceit of the modern era is that “modernism” demands complex top-down governance. It is nonsense, and becoming more so as modern technologies become more user-friendly to both smaller groups of people and individuals. I’m not just talking computers here, but even manufacturing technologies. Nothing new with what I’m saying; Glenn Reynold’s and his Army of Davids and Daniel Pink and his Free Agent Nation allude to the fact that there’s no absolute need for colossal government and its attendant bureaucracies in a technologically advanced and urbanized world.
L3,
Next year will be put up or shut up time for the Republicans in Congress. With a likely Republican majority in at least one house, Republicans will have sufficient powers through Congress’s ability to defund programs, restrict the extension of the National Debt limit, and it’s investigative authority, to bring about major change in the way America is run. The question then will be whether or not Republicans in Congress will represent the will of the people or will of the new Aristocracy.
We will be able to tell if among other things the Republicans can at least:
• Dramatically reduce spending to a level that our tax revenues can support with perhaps a small deficit within the historically average range.
• Dramatically reduce unnecessary regulation, and restore our Constitutional liberties.
• Repeal or gut Obamacare.
• Reduce taxes, including income, corporate and inheritance taxes along with capital gains.
• Restore and deploy our military systems cut under Obama, particularly missile defense, our nuclear capabilities and the F- 22.
• Dispose equitably our TBTF banks, their fraudulent manipulation of the market, and get our money back from the trillions in gifts, benefits, bailouts, and ZIRP loans the Fed has given to the TBTF banks, and Fannie/Freddie etc.
• End all ” some are more equal than others” policies.
• Enact real tort reform.
• Investigate thoroughly the misdeeds of the Obama administration and the Democrats. Impeach if warranted as is likely the case.
• Drill, baby , Drill.
If the Republican Leadership in the next session cannot reasonably fight to achieve to these things at a minimum, then we will know the Republican Party is through and totally corrupted beyond repair. It will be time to build a new party based around a return to Constitutional Principles, and a defense of the American way of life for the 2012 election.
More ineffectual, impotent talk from a professor emeritus, who will take his ideas to the grave. Carve on his tombstone: too old, too late.
L3@33
It seems that your optimism is based, at least in part, on sharing Cordevilla’s judgment that there are more of us than there are of the ruling class. My fear is that the ruling class (voter behavior over the long term rather than just in 2010) includes all of those who receive more in government benefits than they pay in taxes. This number is now approaching a majority of the population. Is this a point beyond which there is no return short of the system collapsing completely?
Any antidote for my pessimism? For example, is there evidence that those in the lower economic end of the ruling class will sacrifice government benefits for more liberty–and the responsibilities that liberty entails?
I always look forward to your comments.
Best wishes
Jim
Don’t let the fancy words fool you, Codevilla says, the elites may have come to Washington to “do good”, but they are really staying “to do well”. And that should be a comforting thought. We don’t have to believe in class struggle just yet unless we want to impose a self-fulfilling paradigm on ourselves.
I don’t think that’s true. And if it is true, it undercuts virtually everything else Codevilla says – he speaks throughout of class conflict, of the ruling class and its desires.
The desire of the ruling class is, first and foremost, to rule. Power over other people is their ultimate goal. It may be true that they secure power by robbing Peter to pay Paul, by funneling government money to their own supporters, but for the ruling class proper this is a means to an end and not an end in itself.
49. Unsk
Dream on, my friend, dream on. Despite surface appearances the members of the political class have much more in common, and also more loyalty, to each other than they do to the people they allegedly represent. I think that is the essence of what Codevilla was talking about. The only hope we have is to root them out, tree and branch, from the bottom up. Vote every incumbent out and replace them by people who are not linked to them by blood or alliance (political or economic) to the current political class. For the most part the major difference between the Republicans and Democrats is not where we should go, its all about how fast we should get there.
As many people have said, the key is getting involved politically on the local level. If you control the bottom of the pyramid you will have the ability to cull those who aspire to rise to its top. If the bottom is cut out beneath you then you shall fall. This is what the TEA party people have been advocating, and that’s why the powers that be fear and hate them. The Democrats loathe them and the Republicans are trying to co-opt them.
That truly is the dynamic and the tension. Does the power flow from the top of the pyramid down, or does it flow from the bottom of the pyramid up? For the people at the top of the pyramid the idea that the people at the bottom can cut off their power for non-payment of promises or for public displays of hubris and/or incompetence is disturbing to say the least. It is indeed an existential threat to their existence as they know it. The clouds of that storm are growing closer and closer.
My fear is that the ruling class (voter behavior over the long term rather than just in 2010) includes all of those who receive more in government benefits than they pay in taxes. This number is now approaching a majority of the population. Is this a point beyond which there is no return short of the system collapsing completely?
Only if you think that blacks and Hispanics are part of the ruling class and not its hirelings.
http://www.pickensplan.com/act/
sign the petition, tell the kids at school you have gas!
TCobb, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you. Realistically this November, we have only Republicans to choose from. Next year, if the Pubs don’t produce, it will be obviously to all that the Republicans are done as a party. It’s the last chance for the aristocrats in the party to get their head’s screwed on straight.
In my post, I was responding to L3 who wrote that a third party “simply won’t work”.
Trees and Ropes, gentlemen.
A rope and a tree.
Put them together
and set ourselves free.
Buddy: that’s very good –wash ‘em and then burn ‘em.
Then rename the town Washburnton, for the mnemotic value.
@ 57:
Moby much?
Several threads ago you were all for extirpating the Down’s syndrome population. This is the third or fourth time you’ve whipped on the Guy Fawkes mask. Getting old, wot. Maybe it’s time you went back to the sandbox to play with the kids your age.
I’ve been commenting on this pheonomena for a few years, as have others. I often mention the formation of politically directed, highly regulated “economic cartels” because this is the form their class control over the entire economy is taking. I think one reason for the disillusionment of Mort Zuckerman and others in big business is the realization that they will become mere administrators for the grand plans concocted by others — though available to take full blame for failure.
One more characteristic about the ruling class is the frequent intermarriage between members of its various branches. It is still a devastating political charge to say that a politician is “in bed” with so and so — unless it is literally, rather than figuratively, the case. You see, if they are literally sleeping together, you are the rogue for pointing it out.
A huge problem with our current “Ruling Class” is that they derive their power through the administration of shortages. They require a poorly functioning economy that requires a high degree of central direction and forced rule making. For instance, Wind and Solar power are highly inefficient and therefore greatly preferred because the widespread use of these forms demands a massive expansion of the administrative state. Ditto Cap and Trade. And, of course, they will also cause the economy to sputter and decline — which will require more “administration of shortages.”
Because it is in their interest to destroy economic opportunity for others, they will act to give their own children a head start in acquiring important administrative posts. Soon, membership in the ruling class will be largely determined by heredity.
a rope and a tree
it seems to me
is missing the party
of the third part, the three.
to fill in that trois
i’d go west as far
as Californee
and the networks TV.
Duh! Yeah Leo #33. How, when and whom? When you get it figured out, I’d like to sign on. Unless you’re thinking John McCain or Mike Huckabee.
“The way back, then, lies in taking back the parties from the incumbent politicians, not forming a third party. This can be done by controlling the nomination process: one of the core principles of politics is that he who controls the nomination controls the party. The parties lost their power when Progressive Era reforms removed their ability to control the nomination process (they turned it over the the government, and its professional “experts”).
“What is currently lacking is a way for all of those who would like to defeat an incumbent to rally behind a single challenger, thus dramatically increasing the likelihood of their election.
That is only part of what is coming, however. The people are not happy with the current system, and there are more of us than there are of the ruling class. We can beat them, and win back our ability to govern ourselves.
More than than, we will beat them. The American people will not be governed by others. We will self-govern, and the Ruling Class will, in the end, capitulate.
But 2010 is not the end; it is only the beginning.
There is much, much more to come.”
51@Jim Nicholas said, “For example, is there evidence that those in the lower economic end of the ruling class will sacrifice government benefits for more liberty–and the responsibilities that liberty entails?”.
This is why I went on at length in the previous topic about all the ‘regular’ people who are part of the problem even if they don’t think so. These people have factored into their current and future spending the expectation that the money or tax break they are getting will continue to be there.
But it won’t. All the money is gone. The size of Federal indebtedness is ~$70 trillion. Public pensions, under the best case (where they earn 8% on money that is not even there yet), are ~47 trillion. There is -no- way these obligations can be paid.
Now who wants to be the political candidate to tell voters this news, hmmmm? And baby step cuts of 2 or 5% will not work, but you can bet the Left and the MSM (I know I repeat myself) will be screaming about how handicapped illegal immigrant lesbian Granny with AIDs will be thrown out in the street to die if we cut her water aerobics program back to three days a week.
Vallejo California declared bankruptcy, but laid off employees rather than redo the union contracts that put them there in the first place. Oakland proposes to lay off 80 cops rather than cut the budget. The public employees will not submit easily.
L3 and others are right that we have to take back the country one precinct and school board at a time. I have been on our local civic association since the early 90s and we do what we can in a Blue district. But I must not be the only one who -despises- politics and would rather have root canal without anesthetic than go to a 3 hour county board meeting. I want to live in a country where the elected officials take out the trash, pave the roads, keep the commies off the beaches, IOW do their damn jobs without having to be watched all the time.
But that time has passed. Grrrr.
jw/63; but that time has passed
Remember this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mqSXsNJzRM
all i can say is ”fantastic” –and not in the good way.
Don Rogrigo #48:
One of the consequences of the “Too complex to understand” idea in DC is the “Make it too big to fail” approach. There are constant cries from the bureaucrats to combine requirements and programs to roll in more and more complex factors. This makes it easier to satisfy multiple special constituencies, including especially the bureaucrats themselves. You end up with the bureaucratic equivalent of a combination TV, refrigerator, and Swiss army knife. The number of bureaucrats wandering around DC looking for people for whom to hand problems to be solved is incredible. And they have inevitably made the problems so complex that they can’t be solved at all.
We were approached by one OSD office when I was at the Pentagon who wanted us to roll into our requirements for a modest satellite test capability the ability to test a full up strategic defense system. And they had figured out that such a test program would require, in addition to many smaller tests, one large one that would involve the nearly simultaneous firing of 50 ICBMs. I told them it probably would be cheaper to just go ahead and start WWIII, since shooting off that many missiles at once probably would do so anyway.
The USAF and NASA finally were advised to give up on their attempts to cooperate in building a new space booster system in 1994. It had proved impossible to do so anyway; the extreme difficulty in doing so from the technical standpoint was compounded by NASA’s insistence that the effort employ as many of their people as possible and made impossible by the combination of Congressional committees that had to be satisfied. As a result the USAF managed finally to do something useful, if not as successful as they had hoped, while NASA fell on its face while trying to do its own thing.
Re #1. ledger
“I say get the book on him and then legally boot him out of Office.”
This would be nice, but who and how would be able to do it? Absent that it is wishful thinking and history will continue to run its course (or is it curse?)
Unsk @49,
There are two reasons why the Republicans will not respond in the way you wish.
1. They will at best only have a majority in the House and Senate, and the most likely scenario now is the House only; the Senate remains a long putt). Barack Obama will still be President. Consequently, they will only have a blocking position. They will not be able to repeal anything. And the more they push, the more the President will stand firm, protecting his legacy and blaming Republicans for obstructionism. You no doubt realize the Obama’s best case scenario is for Democrats to lose both houses; if they do, he will blame them for all of the bad stuff that will happen in 2011 and 2012, concocting all sorts of “solutions” to problems of his own making that Republicans will then oppose. As the situation deteriorates, he will begin running for re-election against the evil Republicans who are obstructing progress.
Regardless, there is no way for Republicans to do anything, even if they wanted to…
2. …which they don’t. The key message in Codevilla’s essay is that Republicans are part of the Ruling Class. They don’t want to change; they have found that life is much easier if they just go along with the “way things are.” That way, after all, is very profitable for all involved. Trent Lott, high-paid lobbyist and former Republican Majority Leader, this week attacked the Tea Party. Uh, yeah.
Now, this way of framing it is not exactly precise. The precise way to put it is that the entire Washington system is designed to give power only to those people who will play the game. Think about it for a moment: if Republicans win the Senate, the Majority Leader will be Mitch McConnell. Do you really think McConnell will do anything to really undo the mess? Think about the financial regulation bill just passed. There were something like 243 new rules that will have to be developed “in consultation with industry.” Every single one of them represents the opportunity to reward a friend punish an enemy. Do you really think McConnell has any agenda other than helping “Republican friends” and punishing “Democratic friends”?
If you really think that he is a principled, policy-driven leader, then consider this:
By tradition, the Majority Leader files the first 10 bills in the Senate. These bills represent the majority’s legislative priorities for the session.
Also by tradition, the Minority Leader files bills 11-20. They represent the minority’s legislative priorities. Now, they are largely symbolic, since the majority controls the process, but they are important statements of principle. And because they are never going to pass, it is quite easy to file them – no consideration of details, vote counts, etc.
This session, Mitch McConnell filed precisely zero bills.
No, I’m afraid that the time for Republicans to redeem themselves from within have passed.
That being said, the play in 2010 is definitely to get as many Republicans elected as possible. If Rs take control of the House and Senate, it will stop the Obama Administration from inflicting even more damage. It will buy us some time, and that is important.
But we should not think that will solve the problem. It won’t.
Something more will be needed. More, and different.
Cheers,
L3
Jim Nicholas @51,
My fear is that the ruling class (voter behavior over the long term rather than just in 2010) includes all of those who receive more in government benefits than they pay in taxes. This number is now approaching a majority of the population.
Not really. There was a big to-do about only half of the people paying taxes. This was not true; only half of the people pay income taxes. But just about everyone pays FICA, and it hits the working class especially hard. And what do they get for it? Well, a promise of future Social Security and Medicare.
But, as jWarrior so aptly points out @63, the money is all gone. It has been spent by the Ruling Class. And when the average working person figures this out, there will be hell to pay.
What did the Ruling Class spend it on? They created a “public political infrastructure” that they are counting on to keep them in power (part of our plan, BTW, is to catalyze the development of a “private political infrastructure” to counteract their public one).
Why did they spend their money on that? For just what Steve said @52: Power over other people is their ultimate goal.
There’s a great scene from Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. Sir Robert Chiltern, near the beginning of the second act, describes a conversation with the Baron. It’s worth quoting the description:
This captures it perfectly. If you don’t know the play, Sir Robert is really one of the “good guys,” who went to Parliament to do the right thing for King and Country. But once there, exposed to the Baron and his ilk, he was seduced by the power. This is what happens to everyone that enters into proximity of the Ruling Class. Some withstand longer than others, but the closer they get to the power, the less they can resist.
I’ve probably said it too often, but it’s true: the ring of power wants to be found. It won’t work to simply transfer it to another person; in time, it will corrupt them as well. It must be destroyed. And power is destroyed through dilution. Even the most caustic chemical can be rendered harmless if it is diluted enough – my water resources prof used to say, “The solution to pollution is dilution.” Dilution in our system will come through subsidiarity (the real kind, not the fake Euro kind.)
In the mean time, people will continue to pursue power because it does feel good to wield it. If this weren’t true, we could all just go on with our lives, frolicking in the Garden of Eden.
Too bad, with the snake and the apple and all.
Cheers,
L3
steveaz @18. Thanks. I hope you don’t mind a cautionary note on what you seem to be concerned about being deprived of reaching for. No man should reach for that IMO.
I see our rulers wanting to eliminate God from the public sphere so that they can declare themselves gods as did Augustus, not to prevent us from doing the same.
It’s simply a matter of limiting the number of gods. If everybody is god, nobody is god. For then, we might as well have a republic that guarantees equality before the law.
“No, no, boy. You must leave it to us.” /Dr. Ludovico [insert clip]
I’d be very surprised if I’m alone in interpreting the Eden story as I do. Yes we got kicked because we broke the one rule. But it has always been within human nature to be inclined to break that rule. The rule was there as a test; see God did not build a fence around it. When Eve discovers that touching the tree doesn’t kill her, that event provides the opening for the envious thought that God doesn’t want to share His power. And then she goes ahead and eats of it. The ego to understand and glean all you can from this world in good. The ego to run the world is what happens when you’ve gotten all you can get and rather than be grateful and happy, you still want more. This is the state of the rulers we’re witnessing. They will not be satisfied unless the break the world. That’ll show God!
Unbridled ego describes these rulers so well, and I think you just touched on it. (So I went a bit long.) Anyway, it is they who really don’t want competition wielding power. The fun of the destruction would be watered down if they shared. Know your station indeed little ones.
They’d destroy the relative paradise with which the middle class is satisfied, and within the reach of all Americans, simply because the power to destroy life is their only way to get in God’s face (they CAN’T create life, but they can kill).
Recall the death camp commandant in Schindler’s List [insert clip] who simply decided he’d be god at that moment he spared a life? That sort of derangement is going to be running Obamacare.
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LL3 @68: Looks like you ended on the same note that I began with. Subliminal!
Or rather, it’s kind of hard not to relate to the old standards when the ancient evils warned of are staring us in the face. And even better understand all the lesson that could be gleaned from the story.
L3
Maybe I misunderstood you, are you saying you think third parties can work?
My argument was basically to give a list of what the Republicans need to do, to avoid being run over by a new third Party.
Do I think the Republicans will do those things? They would if they ‘re smart. But there is no real evidence that the House and Senate Old Guard Ruling Elite/ Aristocracy is in touch with mood of the country at all. So if I were a betting man, I would likely go in heavy against ‘em.
I’m a thinking that right now is not the right time to start a third party, though. But by late Spring, early Summer, if the Republicans have not made some pretty tough moves against Obama and his onslaught, then the time will be right. Many more people will be even more disillusioned with the Republicans by then, and the Republicans could easily be painted as an out of touch Ruling Elite resistant to change and prone to Cronyism.
Buddy Larson #55
Boone Pickens abandoned his rent-seeking wind project back in January because natural gas prices are so low. No one is saying how much the taxpayers got burned on that one, but he called in a whole bunch of legislative favors to lock up the land and rights in the Texas panhandle. Now he wants more gas-powered power plants “to reduce foreign oil dependency” because he has always been in the natural gas business. More rent-seeking?
I think that I will pass on Pickens Plan #2
The upside of governmental complexity for the Ruling Class is that you need one of them (e.g., Trent Lott) to lobby for you and guide you through the woods of DC, all for a large fee, of course. I live in the DC area, and am continually surprised at the number of luxury cars around here.
Microsoft thought it could ignore Washington until the Clintons, for reasons that are still unclear to me, decided to jump all over it about the bundling of Internet Explorer with the Windows OS. MS played it badly, spend untold dollars, and is now one of the larger tech players in the lobbying game. Message received. Pay tribute or else.
2) The permanence of the Democratic part of the Ruling Class (“public political infrastructure”) depends heavily on unions. Democrats support pro-union policies (Card Check, anyone?), the unions take 2% of their members pay in dues which mostly goes to the Dems. Rinse and repeat.
This is especially pernicious at the local level where unions, whose pay is controlled at the local level, are often the biggest donors by far to political campaigns, as well as supply a large get out the vote effort. The winners are only to happy to raise the pay of the unions that got them elected.
For a long time, these long term costs were affordable. No more. Virginia, which is a fairly well run state, ‘balanced’ its budget only by deferring a $700+ million contribution to its employee pension plan. Illinois floated bonds to make its payment. Try this in a private business and you will be in deep do do. Only recently have states had to publicly account for their pension liabilities.
I’ve rattled on too long, but it baffles me that BHO and company would saddle the country with Free Health Care after the 2008 meltdown. They are either complete economic illiterates, or believe that wishing will make it so.
Another excellent set of comments on BC, but I miss Whiskey. He sure did rile things up.
Whoops! Almost a double post.
I have a few disparate thoughts to offer. First, it is beginning to seem to me that Obama is having an effect on Black/White relations somewhat akin to the OJ Simpson trial verdict. 98% or so of Black America wanted Obama for, among other reasons, racial solidarity. And many White American voters wanted him to “cure” racial divides and make up for past prejudices. Now that he has had 18 months in office, Black Americans still argue that the racial divide has not changed one iota. And White Americans have seen that electing Obama has done nothing to improve the view Black America has of White America. So what good did it do? None. This may have an effect in 2012 but it will also have an even greater effect for years afterward.
For nearly sixty years there has been an immense effort to help Black African Americans catch up to the mainstream. Trillions of dollars have been poured into the effort. Practically every major city in that time has had a Black Mayor, a significant number of Black City Council Members, and a like number (or more) on their respective Boards of Education. How much has it helped? Well, the reality is much better here than the perceptions. But to hear the NAACP tell it, things are as bad or worse now than 100 years ago. So one might well ask oneself “Why bother? None of our efforts of 60 years and Trillions of dollars has changed things. Isn’t it tie to stop?”
At the same time African Americans are already no longer the largest minority group in America. Soon they will no longer be the largest minority voting block. The next 50 years will see virtually every major city with a Hispanic Mayor, probably of either Mexican or Central American descent, with a similar pattern on City Councils and School Boards. What will happen with our African American population when they are no longer the recipients of the largess of the past 50 to 60 years?
Meanwhile, as I have argued at other times, our Latino or Hispanic population will have a fateful decision to make very soon. To put it in poetic terms, will they decide to be Black or Italian? They could easily follow either model, though for most readers of BC the better decision is obvious.
The OJ jury convinced a lot of people that African American jurors could not be persuaded by the facts and had limited concern for reaching a just verdict. Instead they were focused on supporting one of their own far more than they were concerned about impartial justice. And this is the lens through which many Americans view the agenda of most African Americans. Racial solidarity above justice, above facts, above everything. (Hopefully this is not really the case for most African Americans but the perception was strongly created by the OJ case and Eric Holder has certainly made that view seem even more credible.)
So why bother?
This post is too long already so I will offer my other thoughts later in a separate one.
My second thought today comes from watching the movie Inception. It is a very clever film, pretty well acted. The writer and director, Christopher Nolan, has given us several other films about the reality of illusion and the question of identity, including “Following” and “Memento,” and also directed the most recent Batman movie (inspiring my nom de plume here) in “The Dark Knight,” a wonderful meditation on good and evil and the price paid by the good guys.
My mention of Inception rests on one theme of this layered and multi-themed film. In it the main character, Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, remarks that the greatest parasite is not a virus or a toxin but an idea. Once an idea fixes itself in someone’s mind, it establishes itself and spreads and takes over. The ostensible “A” story is Cobb’s mission to implant an idea in someone’s mind so skillfully that the recipient will believe it is his own.
This is indeed what has happened with the three toxic philosophical ideas of our age — deconstruction, relativism, and progressivism. These have been expanding for at least 90 years and their roots go back 100 years earlier. (Yes, elements of them have existed throughout time but their current iteration matches these time frames.) They now feel to a large portion of our population as self-evident as Jefferson’s list in the Declaration of Independence. And with the “anti-viral” tools of logic and the integrity of scientific evidence so greatly eroded over the past 30 years, our tools for fighting these corrupting viral ideas are in short supply or not working at all.
So while we are fighting battles in the voting booth and in the precinct, and perhaps even on the streets, we will not win a lasting victory (nothing lasts forever in the “sub-lunar” world, but I’m thinking of another 100 year run) unless and until we win the war of ideas.
This is what Sharansky was trying to say and what our Founders said and what Lincoln said. In the classroom, in the media, at the water cooler, in the parking lot, in the stands at the soccer field, as well as in election campaigns, the ideas of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (ie not having someone else interfere with your ability to reach your potential and succeed) these themes have to be repeated over and over again. And they must be argued with logic, evidence, and passionate conviction. Without wholesome ideas argued effectively, we will not be able to overcome the toxic viral ideas that are the pandemic of today.
Sorry for three posts in such a short amount of time but the threads of today and the previous few days stimulate much thought.
On the question of Natural Law, it is clear that our nation was founded with a clear understanding that Natural Law was more fundamental than positive law. Lincoln affirmed that in The Gettysburg Address, a key moment in American history in which, as Professor Harry Jaffa argues, used the reasoning of The Declaration of Independence to trump and thus correct a fatal flaw in the Constitution.
There is an even earlier expression of the primacy of Natural Law. It is in The Ten Commandments. Even those who are not particularly religious acknowledge the central role The Ten Commandments play in civilization. Different denominations number the Commandments differently, but I would argue that the first commandment is the most important and the affirmation of Natural Law over positive law.
Exodus 20:1 “God spoke all these words, saying: “I the LORD am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods besides Me.”
I don’t want to get too technical here, but the original Hebrew offers opportunities for many complex readings. The last sentence could also be translated as, “Don’t have for yourselves other gods before My face,” or “Thou shalt have for yourselves no other gods within or on My face.”
Leaving the linguistic delights of translation aside, the main point is that everything that follows comes from God, or as Jefferson would have preferred it, “Nature and Nature’s God.” If it doesn’t come from God or if it is not intrinsic to the nature of human beings, then it has to have to have come from a person or a government. And if the basic rules of life come from a person or from a government then they can enact anything they want.
This is how the positive law permitting slavery trumped the Natural Law that held that by their very nature humans are to have liberty. Throw out Natural Law and you are subject to the will of whomever writes the law, be it a King or a Congress or even a Supreme Court.
Of course the codes and statutes have to be written by legislatures. But if there is not a superceding higher Natural Law, the only measure of right and wrong is not good and evil but legal or illegal.
If Kagan does get confirmed, it will be very exciting to hear her lectured by Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas.
Lots of folks have been dancing around it, and I think loathe to say it. That’s because it sounds so strange, and also because it isn’t a take that ought to be made much of on a strategic front. But here it is: what we face is diabolical, as in Satanic.
Should you have any doubt then survey the body of thought of this elite class, and start with Berwick. He’s a fairly standard representative of this sort, and one who does us the favor of being blithely open about the profound evil he’s up to, even if unwittingly. One can spot his evil from a mile away, had one eyes, but he can’t. He’s a lost soul, succombed to the romance of declinism, finititude, and death, in short the enivitable altars of postmodern thought.
One great moment in theology was when God shook his head at the worry of man and asked man to consider the sparrow. Alive in the granted moment, equipped with the tools to succeed until the next, and granted with the seed that ensures a vibrant race, that’s the natural sparrow. Our postmodern friends can’t look upon it with anything but horror, despite their pretentious embrace of naturalism. That sparrow is wild, these grand cycles of nature are too volatile, it sets the mind to ill-ease. Managed outcomes are to be preferred, and enter the pride of man, and enter the diabolical. Berwick looks at a managed health care system and finds romance. Do you find romance in a hospital, or in a bureaucracy that manages them? No, of course you don’t, because you are sane and still aligned with the sparrow at heart. Consider how warped a mind, how warped a heart, that could even conceive of nationalized health care system as a romantic ideal, as it has been described a hundred times, “The Holy Grail.”
Another great moment in theology was when it was said, “You will know a tree by its fruit,” and look around. Pick an issue. Energy. Education. Foreign policy. Military policy. Immigration. Health care. Interest rates. Public spending levels. Promotion of commerce. Environmental stewardship, even. Pick one. Pick one issue where the other side is right. Give me one, please. I’d really like to know if they have a good point about one single thing, given my goal for long term vibrancy of this nation.
This is the strange fruit of liberalism, one that brings only death, yet one which man keeps biting.
How strange, indeed.
gadfly, falling gas prices put the wind power on hold –he’s quite frank about it –he needs a certain level or the wind power economics don’t work. I’ve heard nothing about tax money in the project –he’s in the hole himself on it. The right-of-ways were bought on the market–landowners were tickled to get some money. Sure there’s been a few cases of second-guessing and sour grapes from one or another of the hundreds of deals, and these have gotten into the press –boone’s name sells. folks can do a search and get a sense of what that’s about, and make their own judgements who’s the good guy and who isn’t.
Legislative favors? when –where? yes he wants some legislative help on the heavy haul coversion –the infrastructure costs nullify a multi decade conversion, so what he wants is a reg calling for all new 18 wheelers come ‘converted’. Nobody has to retrofit existing equipment if they don’t want to.
okay, some don’t like the promoter / crusader / capitalist / wealthy / twang / boots n folks types –but that shouldn’t color some basic energy geopolitical market facts –natty is cheap, clean, abundant, and ours.
we have a lot of it, and we can replace half of the oil we buy from OPEC just by converting the 18-wheeler fleet. that won’t just help the trade deficit, that will also change the politics in our favor and do an array of good things for national security.
but, suit yourself –it’s a free country!
Tcobb, #7: The revolting peasants are actually showing indications that they may revolt. The main question is what kind of measures will they take to make sure this doesn’t happen? The one thing you can bet on is that they will not go quietly without a struggle.
My guess would be an overarching “scorched earth” policy, the back half of the “rule or ruin” that is the Left’s usual M.O. Utterly destroy the economy, the culture and the political and legal systems on your way out, then go into tooth-and-nail resistance mode to thwart any attempt at recovery, and keep your successors vexed and exhausted until the time is ripe to seize power again. The Iraqi resistance (pre-surge) is the model I’d expect the Left to follow, doctrinally if not tactically.
Not only is the threat of this (at least theoretically) a deterrent against revolt in the first place, but it might even lead people to regret having revolted after the fact. At least when we ruled, we merely plundered the nation, I can almost hear Pelosi et al sneer now. Your little “resistance” totally wrecked it. Buyer’s remorse, anyone? This is a way for the Left to convince Americans that even in defeat, they were on the right side of history and it was stupid to reject them.
Pascal, #69: I see our rulers wanting to eliminate God from the public sphere so that they can declare themselves gods as did Augustus, not to prevent us from doing the same.
Like I’ve said here before… their idea of atheism isn’t disbelief in God, but looking upon God as the enemy.
Unsk,
I don’t think a third party is viable. It is possible that one of the parties will go the way of the Whigs, and be replaced by something else, but at the end of that we will still have just two parties. The reason for that is our winner-take-all voting system. It has nothing to do with ideology; it’s all mechanics and game theory.
Anyway, I think your list is excellent, and – as you say – if Republicans were smart* they’d try to do it. My point was that many of those changes would get vetoed by the President, and others require an act of will beyond their capabilities.
And also that Republicans are part of the Ruling Class. So *they’re not very smart. Just very well-educated.
What’s really funny/sad is that they don’t even realize there’s a difference.
Cheers,
L3
Habu,
It’s great to see you back! You and Subotai are my favorite corespondents here and both of you have been too silent for some time.
Ned
76. batman
What a wonderful post! And as a Christian, I know what you wrote instinctively, but you said it so much better that I ever could. It was so very nice to hear one offer it so articulately. Don’t worry about three in a row…they were all very enjoyable to read.
As to third parties, it is not an unworkable goal. It is the means by which third parties have been “created” in the recent past that has rendered them inviable. They have started from the top as an effort to win Presidential elections. This does not work, and probably never will.
They need to start from the bottom up. Go after local elections. Win them, and show responsibility and results. Once voters are satisfied with the product start going after state offices. Rinse and repeat, going higher and higher, and keep your eyes on the prize, but never get into a fight (like fielding a Presidential Candidate) unless there is a reasonable probability that you can win.
It you want to play the game like the Democrats and Republicans you will lose. True power derives from the base of the pyramid. The powers that be think it derives, or should, from the top. You will not defeat Sauron by emulating him.
A third party could rise, but they would have to play by different rules. Unless there was a reasonable probability that their candidate could win, their tactics should consist of having public “contracts” with the Republican and Democratic candidates. Give us what we want as to X, Y, and Z and we will endorse you. Break your promises and we will do our best on the next election to have you thrown out of office no matter who your opponent might be. And it should be public. No back room deals.
But this presupposes a qualitative difference in such a third party where the goals are more important than merely getting people elected into office. Is it possible? One can only hope.
c/77; no it doesn’t sound strange to me at all. i suppose if one were to take you to mean there’s a big red forktail forktongue horned humanoid up on the surface prodding people with a trident, well that’s hard to imagine. but that some people simply throw themselves into the self-hell-hole and give in to their every impulse on the grounds that “it’s natural” –then i could not agree with you more –and i shiver with fear & loathing right alongside you.
Buddy, you seem to have put your finger on the immediate and enduring rationale for O’s intentional sabotage of the oil drilling industry, starting with the prolonged disruption of any cleanup efforts in the Gulf of Mexico and extending by regulatory chicane into exploration and development on land.
With petroleum-fuels affordable, the alternative fuels are seen as exorbitant, and voters will squawk over trillions of $$$ of give-away contracts and grants to regiments of twitter-pated loons claiming some inexpressible command of cold fusion and perpetual motion.
But the Nothing-In-Chief is already forced to resort to draconian clamps on the FOR-PETE’S-SAKE Mainstream PRESS that wants dramatic images of the oil leak he’s engineered into a catastrophe that didn’t need to be.
The Leftist PROSTITUTE PRESS has its collective nose out of joint, if only because they know that the pictures of besmirched beaches and dead precious birds and mammals would sell oodles of papers, increase circulation, and so increase ADVERTISING revenues. This comes as they are getting noticeably weary of having to KowTow the the pukes in the WH just for a load of worthless lies to repeat to increasingly restive skeptics.
Mixing metaphors with reckless abandon… The mask is slipping everywhere. There are every day more and more examples of the lies he’s told to one group crashing into the contrariwise promises he’s made to another.
The Bag-of-Pus masquerading as a chief executive is beginning to remind me of the old circus act that was repeatedly used on the Ed Sullivan show, in which a guy would start first one plate spinning atop a ten foot pole, stick the pole in a fixed base, and keep adding more and more. Eventually the guy was racing back and forth across the stage like a madman, keeping them all spinning so they wouldn’t fall before he finished.
Sadly for the Towering Intellect of the White House, no amount of experience picking pockets and extorting bribes from dirty politicians can begin to keep his vaudeville act from falling on its ass.
Doesn’t mean cleanup will be easy. But he’s giving his opponents a boatload of clear targets.
Judging from the first year and a half, he probably would have done better as a standup comic. Being an idiot there he would be regarded as a genius.
Well, actually, he might need some professional writers…
A blizzard of paperwork could be about to hit numismatics.
Passage by Congress of the national health care legislation has had
an unintendedconsequence to the nation’s coin collectors, vest-pocket dealers who buy and sell coins, and larger dealers who are frequent buyers of coins that collectors periodically liquidate as they trade up their collections for better coins, or simply sell to take a small profit or loss.What has happened is that effective Jan. 1, 2012, the whole system of giving and receiving Internal Revenue Service 1099 forms will be turned on its head and all persons (including corporations) who are in business will now have to give 1099 tax reporting forms for coins and other goods that they sell as well as buy.
The responsibility for issuing forms kicks in at $600 for coins or bullion – not a very high level and one that has already started sounding alarm bells. It doesn’t matter in what form payment is made, whether cash, check, credit card, or Yap stone money, the $600 threshold applies.
More: http://www.numismaster.com/ta/numis/Article.jsp?ad=article&ArticleId=11843
The confluence of potential decisions and acts of legislation in the areas of property rights, the right to be secure in your papers, rights of self protection and the right to free speech in the coming SCOTUS sessions is probably going to be the defining measure of the reinvention of government by the democrat party.
Natural rights are IMO self evident rights and as such have been institutionalized by the US Constitution. The argument made by Larry Summers on June 28th during his announcement about the proposed auction of over 500MH of wireless Spectrum, was a definitive statement about competition and the nature of the Industrial/Educational/Bureaucratic Complex as believd in by the president. Mr Summers argues at the 45:25 mark,during the Q&A to his speech that “competitive advantage cannot reside with the individual, it has to reside in something that is collective”, and the individual is “valued only in as much as he is part of a collective”. That a series of collectives are required that enhance innovation, while staying within the structure.
Now I am not so convinced that the sale and regulation of additional communication waves is enough given the depressed prices and small return on effort required to develop applications, that the new economy can be driven by wireless sales. But I find the lack of acknowledgment of the role of individuals in sales, production and ultimately in making need and not market driven buying decisions to be little nausea inducing. It is behavioral economics, Pavlovian theory in action.
Being able to hold the republicans in line voting against most of the administrations’ measures voted on since Obama’s inauguration is a good sign that the Republicans have the ability to act according to principal. Leadership is a different thing.
@ Batman (74) who said “At the same time African Americans are already no longer the largest minority group in America. Soon they will no longer be the largest minority voting block. The next 50 years will see virtually every major city with a Hispanic Mayor, probably of either Mexican or Central American descent, with a similar pattern on City Councils and School Boards. What will happen with our African American population when they are no longer the recipients of the largess of the past 50 to 60 years?”
This eventuality has already been anticipated. It’s important to know that black voting power comes as much from its concentration as from its raw numbers. Consider the Congressional Black Caucus. It is comprised of one Senator from Illinois, Roland Burris (D), and 39 voting members in the House of Representatives–all Democrats. Those members come from just 20 states. In twenty-five (25) of their 39 districts, blacks are the largest ethnic bloc. In thirty-six (36) of those districts black voters make up 25% or more of the population.
Now if you think about the 20 states again, you’ll see what I meant by concentration. Even if the number (or proportion) of black voters remains constant in each state, the CBC and thus the Democratic party would lose probably 90% of these seats if the districts were less racially concentrated. Without those 30-40 seats, Democratic control would be in jeopardy.
Hispanics represent a threat to black voting strength if they live along side blacks in the same districts and vote differently. They complement it if they vote the same way, as in the case of Maxine Water’s district, CA 35, which is only 34% Black and 47% Hispanic.
If Hispanics concentrate in other districts and vote non-Democratic, they represent a threat to Democratic control generally but not so much to black voting strength.
CBC Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Black_Caucus
The Declaration of Independence identifies natural rights – “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” – as the basis for their claim for liberty.
Natural rights are those rights that are inherent in us, rights that exist independent of any earthly power.
How can we have rights that are superior to any earthly power? If someone stronger than me comes along and decides not to respect my right to life, liberty or my own property, what can I do about it?
That’s exactly where we’re all at now. We find ourselves subject to rulers who’ve decided we’re NOT fully and securely entitled, after all, to these rights we thought we had. How did that happen?
How in God’s Name did that happen??
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I like this quote from Angelo Codevilla’s 1997 book, The Character of Nations, “Arthur Koestler and George Orwell identified the moral relativists’” – and it is precisely the moral relativists (like Elena Kagan, can’t bear to touch natural rights with a ten-foot pole) who are so fond of tinkering with the Constitution – “identified the moral relativists’ ultimate enemy: the soul that is stiffly independent because its anchor is beyond the regime’s reach.”
I’m afraid Batman @12 is right. November elections, an Article V convention, tea parties, solar roofs aren’t going to save us. Ditto natural gas conversion, portable nuclear energy, relocating to outer space, any kind of technology, no matter how impressive. Not even arithmetic will save us. When they run out of other people’s money, then we’ll be missing a middle class, that’s all. None of these things, either by themselves or all together, are going to guarantee our freedom.
The only guarantee of freedom is souls anchored beyond the regime’s reach. Are there enough of those kind of souls out there? Not as many as there used to be, I think, and you don’t see them in public too often either, I might add.
Buddy: How about telling NASA to come up with a jet engine that would run on
Liquid Natural? Don’t you imagine that commercial jets currently use at least as much diesel as do 19 wheelers? And while we are at it: Think you could blend LNG
with some kind of oxygenate (nitrous oxide comes to mind)? Then you would have an extremely compact and potent liquid rocket fuel that did not need a separate tank of Liquid Oxygen in addition to main tanks. SSTO–Single Stage To Orbit—will be just
around the escape velocity corner.
Gadfly: In the oil bidness, if one produces great new sources one creates a surplus
so large that prices fall so low one goes out of bidness. Think not? Check out
10 cents a barrel petroleum when pumping costs ran 85 cents to a full $1.00 a barrel. Happened more than once. I can remember when the Railroad Comission limited the number of barrels per day and the number of days wells could be pumped.
This was to keep the post World War II surplus from bankrupting producers. During that same time period we had a gas flare so huge that it could be seen for over 200 miles and was considered a navigation aid by pilots. (It was called the Philips Torch.) Refiners have to be able to offer producers some kind of price/income guarantee. This necessitates (a) an exemption from anti-trust statutes and (b) somebody who will be sure to buy the new quantities of produce. T. Boone was pointed in the right general direction although his precise azimuth was magnetic rather than grid.
that’s brilliant, fiddler, how you planted Andy kaufman as Andy Kaufman per-forming a parody of an imaginary Andy kaufman playing the real cartoon character Mighty Mouse singing “Here I Come to Save the Day!”
undoubtedly enjoying privately the irony of the missing irony that propels their albundian Shoo selling prinzip, the Obamas made beach speeches today, exhorting one and all that, come summer vacation, it would be SO sweet and SUCH a treat for you to beat your feet on the Mississippi mud (well, the Gulf Coast sand, actually, but close enuff when needing a rhyme) –thereby recreating that mother of all dada the Andy kaufman lyp sinch of the actual recording of Mighty Mouses’s voice actor. The Gall has sand, alright –beaches of Maine sand, that is, no black gold, no Texas tea, on the beach of the state of.
Buddy, my point is meant to be put in your back pocket. It is “folk talk”, and therefore not suitable for the table of the elite and their followers. That take I presented will not win arguments, it does not follow the approved set of discourse.
But when I say demonic I do not mean some humanoid with a forked tongue sitting atop the world, nor do I mean to suggest something easily explainable by the tendency of people to create hell-holes for themselves. We can look down the street to the nearest bar and find volumes of examples of how people can fall into traps, and that’s only one source. Our fallen nature is a given, and I’m not talking about that commonality.
I am suggesting a demonic agency, a diabolical bent that grips and corrupts our governing class systemically. Screwtape and Wormwood sit in the heart of the left. They work evil upon all that they can touch. Would that all were at stake were the unemployment figures, or the debt as a percentage of the GDP, or yada yada yada.
No, what’s a play is the very soul of this nation. And they are winning, they whose mouths are full of ashes. They are going to win, too. In this world, at least. Luckily that’s no consolation for them.
Concerning parties: There are but two parties. There has always been only two parties. They are the only two available to man born of woman.
They are: The Stupid Party and the Evil Party. How can you tell which is which?
Here is a hint: The Evil Party calls the Stupid Party evil and the Stupid Party
calls the Evil Party misquided.
Find the Stupid Party and stick with it until Gabriel Blows His Horn. Only way
H. Sapiens can make it.
BTW: The Stupid Party sort of likes Natural Rights but finds all sorts of (imaginary)
exceptions. The Evil Party consistently manages to deny Natural Rights.
‘Nuff said for now.
Natural Law grew out of Roman Law’s observation that every new land they encountered eerily had a form of justice that suggested a commonality, or universal sense. Theft, murder, rape, double dealing on contracts, and many more were perceived as wrong all over. See Cicero’s classic oration against Verres where he successfully related Verres’ crimes in Syracuse in terms understood both on that island and in Rome, and Verres stood as a man accused against high crimes against Natural Law and guilty no matter upon whose ground he stood.
Natural Law and Natural Rights are intimately related, and to see Kagan’s testimony is disgusting. The Constitution presumes both Natural Law and Natural Rights. It exists as a document that limits the application of Federal Rights. It is not a grantor or a guarantor of your rights. That’s a big con. Your rights do not exist because the Constitution gave you them, or because some panel of judges interpreted the Constitution so as to allow you the privilege. The Constitution enumerates FEDERAL RIGHTS. And it LIMITS them. Everything not enumerated in the Constitution is reserved to THE STATES and THE PEOPLE.
For what it’s worth, that is.
The US Constitution is a dead letter. Dead, dead, dead. If an executive or a Congress can entertain for one second the promotion of a Sotomayor or a Kagan, then bank on this: the US Constitution is sunk. No more. Nada. Adios.
11. Kinuachdrach:
“Look at what is already happening in Europe. It is easy to be a redistributionist in a world of growing pies and US hegemony. In a world of shrinking pies when the Global Policeman has quit, hard decisions have to be taken. Unpopularity looms for those aristocrats who make the hard decisions about whose subsidy gets cut; disaster looms for those aristocrats who avoid making those hard decisions.”
Yep. It’ll be interesting, and rather painful, to watch them try to deal with this.
16. Kingston53:
“We do not need timid self serving republicans who would rather stay in office than fight or risk anything to keep the Republic.”
Problem is, they don’t want the underlying system to change. The Republicans are not on our side.
20. Talnik:
“What astounds me is how ignorant they are of their own incompetence.”
That assumes that competence has some value to them. It doesn’t, so they don’t care. It’s who you know, where you were educated, and how you can spin the message that counts.
26. heathermc:
“Another aspect: this American Ruling Class is explicitly non military. Interesting, what?”
The government is in the business of propping up whatever theory is currently in vogue, and the success or failure is what they say it is. Meanwhile, while we’re all arguing over this, they plunder the country. Bad things may happen, but those stay in the future, and the loot is today. The problem is, now is the future, and they don’t know how to deal with it. The Military has it’s own theories, but when they’re proven wrong it’s very obvious, because a lot of people die. They have to change, because they can’t hide the failure as well.
The Military is one of the few institutions that retain the broad support of the populace, because they have to show some results, and still appear to have a sense of honor, and that’s why the elite hate them. Just watch any Congressional hearing where the Military is testifying, and the contrast couldn’t be more clear. The Military has it’s own problems, but compared to them the elite fare very poorly, and they know it at some level.
Give the statists several years to replace or co-opt the Military leadership, and we’ll be surprised at how much the “elites” love them then. I think that’ll coincide with the time when the rest of us start to fear the Military, and I hope that day never comes.
twoby/86, just write multiple checks per over-$600 transaction, none over $599.
Cowboy: There have been justices as bad, possibly worse, than Sotomayor and Kagan.
Taney comes to mind. Fortas for another.
And whilst you are at it, why doncha read some of Fr Malachi Martin’s books?
He knew what to do about them critters.
83. Tcobb:
“As to third parties, it is not an unworkable goal. It is the means by which third parties have been “created” in the recent past that has rendered them inviable. They have started from the top as an effort to win Presidential elections. This does not work, and probably never will. They need to start from the bottom up.”
Yes, I agree. If we want to see true bipartisanship in action, let’s elect a President who is not beholden to either of the parties, and has no base of support in Congress, and then we’ll be astonished to see how well the DEMS and GOP can work together. A new party has to be built from the bottom up, although I think L3 is correct that if it became viable it would replace one of the two existing parties, ala the Whigs. Then we have recent history, which shows that once new political ideas reache a critical mass one of the two parties will co-opt it’s ideas and absorb it and it’s followers into the existing party. This would have to be the GOP, and I could see that happening, but it’d be a long haul. This is just another way of stating L3s thesis.
The real efforts should start with the individual States. Not only does this give a new political philosophy a trial run, hopefully building support as it goes, but it also harnesses the second most potent political force (State Governments) to the cause. I don’t expect to see this happen until after things get much worse, if then.
i gotta hit the hay, but wanted to stick this O?T in the thread, for the sake of reportage:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idAFSGE66I04720100719?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a49:g43:r1:c0.250000:b35782678:z0
Dave – Methane/N2O has in fact been suggested as a fuel mix for rockets – but only because it can be made from natural materials in an automatic process; one idea for Mars missions is to send a rocket fuel factory first.
For applications other than that it simply doesn’t have enough energy. SSTO using that fuel will not work. It’s bad enough using liquid oxygen as an oxidiser. Actually, methane/oxygen might be a useful mix – both are cryogens but not deep cryogens and industry doesn’t have much difficulty dealing with either.
Mix liquid methane and liquid N2O and what you have is a bomb, not a rocket.
106 more days, ladies and gentlemen.
Samuel Colt was born 196 years ago today. Remember him? He is the guy that made all men equal. WE have 106 more days to organize the defense of Mr. Colts labors.
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Samuel+Colt
Young Sam invented the 6 shooter because it was impossible. Whenever you get discouraged, remember that American history is a long list of people doing “impossible” things. We CAN bring America back from the Abyss. Being “impossible” just means doing it is natural for Americans. Right up our ally.
Meanwhile, it’s the anniversary of the battle of Britain;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/world-war-2/battle-of-britain/7881879/Battle-of-Britain-our-finest-hour.html
Western Civilization is a lot tougher then our enemies suppose. It will take more then a long legged Maque Daddy to bring us down.
FC: Well, how about using laughing gas and old tires as a propellant mix?
That will get you sub-orbital.
Just ask Burt Rutan.
The thought has troubled me – that trying to see the world through conservative and patriotic lenses is in some ways naive. It is indeed arguable that the realities of our world are really based on money and power, regardless of the political affiliations of those who hold power. Peter Schweitzer’s book Architects of Ruin certainly had plenty of evidence about those who currently hold sway.
O’Pwaise Da O’Lawd: O’s “secret weapon”.
Say Amen, Tommy.
Amen Tommy & Pass da Collection Plate.
…-
“Obama Gains Evangelical Allies on Immigration”
“At a time when the prospects for immigration overhaul seem most dim, supporters have unleashed a secret weapon: a group of influential evangelical Christian leaders.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/us/politics/19evangelicals.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
I was reading an article over at the American Thinker about how many people Obama has inspired to hate him.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/president_haters.html
Also what is ironic is that the young, the minorities, and etc. who put him into office are the ones who can’t get jobs now or are losing their jobs in the Media.
“It must have been rough to do that last round of lay offs? I made it a little easier on myself by getting rid of the ones who had Obama stickers on their cars first.”
Time after time, Whiskey denied the role of Gramscianism and cultural Marxism in the decay of authentic Americanism and Western civilization leaving all the destruction at the hands of urban single women who had reverted to the hypergamy of the basic primate social organization and ethnic tribalism and competition.
While he wasn’t wrong that these are occurring, and corrosive, he would never concede that the Gramscian termite was the single greatest cause, even the enabler of his urban female corroders. I was never able to put into words a rebuttal, but this thread has done so marvelously. Thanks to all. This thread should be required reading at every college and university in the West.
Actually, toadold, if you were laid off in the past two years you were more likely to be a white person and four-to-one most likely to be a man.
74. batman:
After one election several years ago, in which American blacks voted Democratic in lockstep yet again, Dr. Walter Williams dimissed the idea of the Republicans trying to appeal more to the black population by saying:
“Why should the Republicans try to appeal more to the blacks? What have the blacks ever done for the Republicans?”
Starling #88: And you have hit upon the REAL problem with illegal immigration, or rather the cause for it. The Republicans know that they have lost the blacks, as a group if not as individuals, for all timer and for evermore. They can’t afford to lose the Hispanics, so they mollycoddle them.
Leo #80: I agree that a third Party as separate from Repubs and Dems is not viable but I think a whole lot of small Necktie Parties offer an alternative to submission to the Ruling Class.
L3 @ 68: “Dilution in our system will come through subsidiarity (the real kind, not the fake Euro kind.)”
Oh dear! L3, you are a real leader. Please lead from the front by eliminating that dreadful Politically Correct term “subsidiarity” from your vocabulary.
There is no need to adopt an evil European PC term when there is a perfectly-good US term with deep roots — federalism.
As you know, “subsidiarity” is just another word for central control, where the peons are allowed to do certain unimportant things as long as they follow the guidelines set by the center. “Subsidiarity” is an evil pernicious notion. It must be expunged, along with all the rest of the PC vocabulary.
The answer is stronger Federalism — the delegation to the center of well-defined limited powers, subject to being pulled back when the center steps out of line.
First I’ve heard of Walter Kendall Myers. Probably next time I see his name will be on of of the President’s year-end pardon lists.
#107. no mo uro
“Actually, toadold, if you were laid off in the past two years you were more likely to be a white person and four-to-one most likely to be a man.”
While you are correct on these statistics, (This recession has been called the men’s recession.)There was a carve out at the Federal level to protect and aid employment in the “pink” jobs, education esp.
The unemployment rate for young minorities has really gone up. Part of this is due to bad times especially in Blue cities but also the rise in minimum wage esp. in the Blue states. Summer job unemployment rates for black kids are running almost twice that of others. Why hire a kid when you can get an adult if you are hiring at all. College graduates in the soft Majors and some hard majors, are out there with loan debts and a growing knowledge that they have been lied to about the value of their degree.
The heavy industry jobs that men where most found in have been destroyed or displaced by insane tax policies for years (since the 1990′s IIRC) it just got much worse in the last two. Here in Texas it is not as bad as it is elsewhere but young couples are working two part time jobs each and going on food program to make it. I’m also seeing a stretch in the length of time it takes for people to get degrees, they work part time and get as many credits at the Jr. Colleges as they can. Many are opting for technical certificates to avoid the college debt and unemployment trap. I wonder about the long term effects of that?
“By 1853, when Sen. John Pettit of Ohio called “all men are created equal” “a self-evident lie,” much of America’s educated class had already absorbed the “scientific” notion that man is the product of chance mutation and natural selection of the fittest. Accordingly, by nature, superior men subdue inferior ones as they subdue lower beings or try to improve them as they please.”
“The individual is only a cell… power is collective. The individual only has power in so far that he ceases to be an individual… If he can make complete utter submission; if he can escape from his identity; if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all powerful and immortal… Can you not understand that the death of the individual is not death; the Party is immortal… You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do, and will turn against us; but we create human nature.” George Orwell – 1984
L3,
As it stands right now, Romney has a pretty clear path to the nomination of the Republicans. The Ruling Elite have deemed it so. Romney is a me too Democrat, with an R next to his name. Romneycare, aversion to tax cuts, weak on defense, yada ,yada ,yada. He has not been out front leading on any core conservative cause.
Palin has no chance to win the nomination. The Ruling Elite and the MSM have savaged her so badly so that many of those, including many Republicans, that don’t pay close attention to politics will never vote for her. Plus the Republican Establishment will sabotage her just like they did Fred, as they will any true conservative. So the idea we can’t forsake the chance to beat Obama with a third party is just a fool’s bet. Another Rino President would preside over the death of the American Dream.
If the Republican Leadership won’t change and won’t represent the wishes of the base, why stick with them? What is a viable alternative? We just don’t have the decade or longer it would take to fight the entrenched cronies at the local level to rebuild the Republican party.
Things could easily be far worse than they are now by early next year. There could be a series of terrorist attacks – we have been very lucky so far. There could be a Iran- Israel war – a good thing if Israel sticks it to Iran, but likely gas prices will go through the roof and dent up the economy more than a tad. Interest rates could rise markedly due to a whole number of causes: a sovereign default, China pulling the plug on treasuries, the market just waking up to the facts, whatever. The double dip is definitely coming. Are we to endure again and again the continued unwillingness to change for the better under those circumstances?
If the Republicans don’t change given power in this Crisis , ( and there are many things that can be done even with the Obama Veto) , they will go the way of the Whigs. There will be three parties for a short period and then the Pubs will be gone. History.
“Our ruling class’s agenda is power for itself.”
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others… We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we’re doing… Power is not a means, it is an end… The object of power is power… Always there will be the intoxication of power… We are the priests of power… Power is power over human beings, over the body; but above all over the mind… The real power; the power we have to fight for night and day is not power over things but over men. How does one man assert his power over another… by making him suffer… Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing… We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back… Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling; everything will be dead inside you… You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.” George Orwell – 1984
“Don’t let the fancy words fool you, Codevilla says, the elites may have come to Washington to “do good”, but they are really staying “to do well”.”
“It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called “abolition of private property” (Communist Manifesto)… meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before… In the years following the Revolution it (The Socialist Party of Oceania) was able to step into this commanding position almost un-opposed because the whole process was represented as an act of collectivization… It had always been assumed that if the Capitalist Class were expropriated Socialism must follow; and unquestionably the Capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport, everything had been taken away from them; and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc (Socialist Principles of Oceania), which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result; foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent.” George Orwell – 1984
s/88 & c/92; nice work y’all –among lots of other nice work –
Buddy if you went to sleep before reading #90, go back and check it out.
Jets running on LNG could be had (I think) in relatively short order.
Fueling and servicing same would lead to an infrastructur that would make LNG
readily available to roadbound types as well.
This “could” be the answer to what to do with what comes out of all them thar shales.
I’ll do it, Dave –tnx for the pointer. The Haynesville in N Louisiana is sure on fire –drilling-wise –operators must know somthing as new supply is really hurting price –which is good, if they can stand it and not seize up –
Folks will have to ‘get over’ the fear of driving around with a tankful of pressurized volatiles –but that’s just a matter of familiarization –
***
Take a look at these two AP pointers now up in Goo ggregation:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jxis444npt9S4H_y2LQopui4VGEAD9H279780
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i6eCHe8kgIeX8w5N5-xbvZP8OhtAD9H266780
da Spooks is stirring –
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/19/bill-clinton-gates-aids-conference
…while under the usual “AIDS Conference” cover, the planners of the next NWO move convene –in Vienna!
(note also speaking, Dr Zeke Emanuel –AKA “Doktor Death”.
Karen @ 89 asks, “How in God’s Name did that happen??”
It all started about 3 centuries ago, when the Enlightenment project enshrined reason, allowing for it eventually to be uncoupled from its God-given origins and turned into the primary weapon of the post-modernists and other manner of usurper.
This thread is great, but the larger battle seems not to have been named. The U.S. project has been a attempt to strike a balance between Truth, as it represents God and associated natural law, and rebellion against that Truth, a kingdom run by men (see Eugene Rose’s 1960′s discussion of Nihilism for a spellbinding review of all this).
Right now, the revolutionaries look to have pulled ahead by a nose, but that cannot hold up for metaphysical reasons. And that’s why many of us here have had this “uh, oh” feeling in the pit of our stomachs as we’ve watched the train wreck unfold.
“It was the doubt that all men were created equal and had inalienable rights that created the first revolt in new republic. For even after the Declaration of independence there many who doubted that the idea of the equality of man could be taken literally.”
Comrades, if man is made in the image of God, then his/her value is infinite; and all men are equal in value before God, and equal before the law. If God does not exist, then all men are not created equal – none with infinite and therefore all with unequal value. Under our faith some individuals (like us) will become, as in Animal Farm, “more equal than others” based on our measurable value related to natural selection, and our Nietzschen “Will to Power.” If God does not exist, then the individual has measurable economic and social value; a few of greater value (us) and the vast majority of little value.
Comrades, if man is made in the image of God; then, since God lives and gave life to man, man has a sacred unalienable right to life and self-defense. If God does not exist, then the individual’s right to life is reversible since it comes from a group of other people – from government – from us. The Soviet constitution of our now departed Comrades granted a so-called right to life to its subjects, yet the glorious government engaged in economic/social class struggle – social justice – murdering tens of millions of their own people. Interestingly the Soviet constitution – thank the Holy State – did not grant its “little people” a right to self-defense – no second amendment because we the Pigs of Animal Farm (scratch that) we the State “Philosopher Kings” possess their right to life and self-defense. Remember Comrades, without a right to self-defense the so-called “right to life” is meaningless. The State-damned Declaration of Independence states that all individuals have a self-evident God-given right to life, and the State-damned American Bill of Rights reiterates that all have a self-evident, God-given right to defend life in self defense through bearing arms – so we must destroy all understanding and memory of the American Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights – our education, media and entertainment specialists are proceeding apace on this front.
Comrades, if man is made in the image of God; then, since God is free, man has a sacred unalienable right to liberty – man is born free. If God does not exist, then the little serf’s freedom of speech (without fear of life, limb, liberty, or property) is reversible since it comes from a group of other people – from government – from us.
Comrades, if man is made in the image of God; then, since God is the Great Creator, man has a sacred unalienable right to his/her own creativity – a right to property created through individual labor – a right to the pursuit of happiness. If God does not exist, then the individual’s right to honestly earned private property is reversible since it comes from a group of other people – from government – from us – so we get first dibbs on their stuff.
Comrades; is “Social Justice” great, or what?
Rush is currently reviewing the Angelo de Codavilla of piece.
CSLewis wrote Mere Christianity. He appended a listing of the piece/parts of Natural Law that surveyed all civilizations and called it the Tao of the Law, demonstrating the universality of law and belief. But by the way demonstrating that Christianity had the totality of Natural Law within it.
……………….
On Batman’s point about the loss of status of the African-Americans as a significant voting bloc, its interesting to note that they have invested in government as a chosen industry. Now what happens if the bureaucracy is cut by a quarter? O the Lamentations, O the Racism; Government cut, Blacks hardest hit!
74@Batman said “… will they (Hispanics) decide to be Black or Italian?”
Black is the answer. The first generation works hard, but the second generation has all the pathologies of the Black underclass — drugs, gangs, dropping out of school, illegitimate children, crime, etc. I predict that their political rule will be just as tribal as black rule has been.
Karl Rove’s great delusion was that Hispanics were natural Republicans because of their Catholicism and strong family structure. But they come from countries where many things we take for granted, like building permits, are available only through bribes or by the favor of an El Jefe. Calvinist Scotch-Irish they are not. But the Dems see them as potential votes, the Republicans see them as chear labor, the Yuppies get cheap lawn care and nannies, and the rest of us pick up the cost.
PS Whiskey is over at Ed Driscoll’s place: http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2010/07/16/the-ancien-regime-isnt-going-out-without-a-fight/2/
119. maineman
Here’s an interesting NY Times article posted over at free republic that reads:
It is a fact rarely discussed on either side of the Atlantic that American colonists played a crucial role in the English Civil War, the bitter struggle between King Charles I and Parliament that tore England apart in the 1640s. The English Revolution — and that is just what it was — can be interpreted in all kinds of ways: as a religious fight between pathologically earnest Puritans and the Catholic-leaning bishops of the Church of England; as an uprising by a nascent merchant class determined to throw off the shackles of medieval feudalism; as right-but-repulsive Roundheads bashing the wrong-but-romantic Cavaliers.
It was all those things. But it was also a battle against the arbitrary tyranny of the crown that prefigured America’s own struggle for independence. And hundreds of American colonists cared enough about that struggle to sail back across the vast Atlantic, to build a city upon a hill — not in the frightening, alien landscape of Massachusetts but in the familiar fields and townships of England.
Most of these men were linked by friendship, business or marriage to the Rainborowes, a charismatic clan of English merchant-mariners, pioneers and visionaries who moved back and forth between the Old World and the New in the 1630s and 1640s.
Let me clear the reasons up for you then! Anne Bingaman was appointed Assitant AG to run the Antitrust division, argued for a huge budget increase, and then had to show some results. Microsoft was the obvious target because it was large, prominent, and had not paid its protection money while several competitors (notably Netscape with the hiring of Barksdale – ex telco exec- as CEO) were wading hip-deep into the corporatism swamp.
Now, when I say she had to “show some results” I’m obviously not talking about results in the real-world sense of making things better. Her actions diverted a lot of money towards lawyers, politicians and political operatives, but were ultimately damaging to the tech world as a whole. But diverting that money – flowing power towards the neo-feudalists, the Neo-bility, was exactly the sort of results she had to show to justify her place in the peerage.
The Microsoft DOJ case is an excellent position from which to view the larger debate of the Neobility, which isn’t stricly limited to government employees. Barksdale (brother of a 5th Circuit federal judge, COO of FedEx and CEO of AT&T, two heavily regulated firms, before joining Netscape) is as much a member of it as Bingamen (Stanford Law School, wife of a former NM State AG and US Senator). Moving market decisions to the control of bureacrats and lawyers is the only way that that they can insulate themselves from the unworkability of their actions. Market decisions reward organizations that identify problems and provide solutions to them that work. “Works” in this case is defined by the every-day reactions of people across the country. If subjected to this test, almost every favored program of the Neobility, not to mention their own managerial abilities, would be rejected, defunded, and ignored.
It’s only by creating artificial rules by which to judge what “works” that they can keep their fingers in the pie. Then of course it’s essential for them to keep control of the artificial rules.
As L3 said, you can’t destroy power, you can only disperse it. But equally important to dispersing it is preventing it from re-concentrating. The Founders thought the best way to do that was by creating competing centers of power that would jealousy guard their share of power from each other. Unfortunately, they didn’t prevent the creation of, hah, cartels as it were (trustbusters indeed) who conspired to concentrate their power. Parties helped in this – running both State and National (not to mention municipal) governments, gladly shuffling money and power around, all the better to obscure responsibility too.
The essay explains the universal (except for TWANLOCs) admiration for the military. The internal values of the military are coincident with the society from which it comes. The Ruling classes’ values are coincident with the society from which they come.
jmh/125; nice work –reminds that even Madison the great converter of nebulous reality into exacting prose, could find no words to light the way clear of ‘factions’.
Nitrogen based oxidizers were studied in depth forty-five years ago.
We’ve abandoned them because of hypergolic risk and low specific performance.
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A methane/LOX combo has never been used on a large scale. I rather suspect that methane makes a poor regenerative coolant.
The LOX used in rocketry is slushy and compressed. Cryogens will compress — even in the liquid state — as if they are still gasses. ( But not ideal gasses. )
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On a different front:
The Federal expenditures under the ‘bamster are running TWICE the level of receipts!
The difference is covered by borrowing — of which a massive chunk is electronic money printing by the Federal Reserve. ( The Fed is buying government debt at the auctions in grand style with it’s money engine. )
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At the outset of WWI the European powers were shocked to discover that their military responses cascaded upon each other: the Armies were dominoes.
We are now in Financial WWI. The Fiat Powers are startled to discover that their currency credibilities are racked up as dominoes.
Spend-thrift, Chicago-on-the-Potomac Spending must end as a train wreck.
As ever, the dependent classes will experience cold turkey when the LLMD cuts off their supply. That he’s killing the golden goose is beyond his dogma.
——
The quirky markets now demonstrate wholesale front-running by prop desks. The NBBO is corrupted by flash-snow: fake-exploratory bids/offers out number cleared trades thirty and forty to one!
Not surprisingly, one by one real market makers are heading for the exits.
There are a million reasons to SELL stock. There is only one reason to buy: confidence/ optimism in it’s future value — its ability to profit the buyer.
The massive front-running by the Primary Dealers is bleeding the capital markets dry and destroying the animal spirits of capitalism.
While the Fed can inject blood plasma ( fiat buying power ) it cannot generate blood cells. ( capital )
The result is a corporate corpus that shows good blood pressure right up until collapses for want of true life support.
‘Faking it until you make it’ may work for a crack PUA. It’s not such a smart play for the Federal Reserve.
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For all of those presuming high skill and intellect in the Resident: explain his hacking on the links.
He’s a Gonnabee, period. All teleprompter and no wit. Pure dogmatic faith — in himself and magical thinking.
Why else promote his twenty-something personal chef to nutritionist in chief?
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As for Soros, functionally, isn’t he the Anti-Christ? From his own bio we know that he is totally amoral. By turns, it appears that his ambit is financial sabotage. In which case, the Gonnabee in Chief is not a player –
he’s ordinance!
#124 Charles:
“It is a fact rarely discussed on either side of the Atlantic that American colonists played a crucial role in the English Civil War, the bitter struggle between King Charles I and Parliament that tore England apart in the 1640s.”
Relevant to that topic also is King Phillips War. By modern standards, there were not a lot of deaths or wounded, but it was extremely bloody for its time, and the importance of the war – and the way the English left the colonists on their own – was crucial in forming the mindset that would ultimately lead to the Revolution.
This is a VERY good article on a subject every American should know:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Philip's_War
Most New England colonists were not supporters of the monarchy vs the Roundheads and lack of support for them by the crown as a sort of punishment for the events of Cromwell’s rebellion was key in developing the suspicion and lack of sense of belonging to England that became the independence movement.
For some reason, the whole link didn’t get converted to hypertext, cut and paste the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Philip%27s_War
Storm-Rider: I call BS. “All men are created equal” is self-evidently utter and complete twaddle. According to that measure, Stephen Hawking and Osama bin Laden are equal as are a randomly-chosen crack whore and Joanna Lumley. (For you Americans, Ms. Lumley is not only smokin’ hot despite being 62 but has fought a long, difficult and successful campaign to get the Gurkhas who have retired to the UK their due.)
Secondly, you appear to be saying that since all humans are of infinite value then a randomly-chosen wino from the streets of NYC is greater in value than an entire species of endangered animals. Or to put it another way, you would be prepared to see every orangutan on Earth die in agony to save BHO.
Maybe that’s what you think. I don’t.
blert/128 –you outdid yourself, pardner –and that’s sayin a mouthful –but but but –re buy the cannons and sell the bugles, aren’t we at least arguably (elections 100 days or so) due a GOP-victory-ginned margin expansion?
FC / 131
All I’m saying is what our Founding Fathers said in the Declaration of Independence and elsewhere in their writings; that all individuals are of infinite and therefore equal value, and that all are therefore endowed by their Creator with equal rights (defended by equal law) to life, liberty and creative pursuit of happiness.
“Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights (along with the majority), which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression.” Thomas Jefferson
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0500.htm
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0100.htm
Osama bin Laden gave up his rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness on 9/11/01 – he no longer possesses equal rights. Stephen Hawking, not being a mass-murderer, still possesses his equal rights.
A randomly-chosen wino from the streets of NYC possesses equal infinite value with the high-achieving professional and thereby equal rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The wino has equal rights to the Neurosurgeon but he obviously did not exercise his right to creatively pursue happiness – equal rights naturally results in unequal outcome. I never said all men are created with rights to equal economic and social outcome – that is an irrational, society-destroying Marxist idea. A “right” to so-called “Equal Outcome” fully depends on unequal rights to property (pursuit of happiness) and unequal property (tax) law – the laboring, tax-paying middle class with inferior property rights – the lazy, tax-eating Marxist ruling class and the lazy, tax-eating Proletariat class with superior property rights.
“The proletariat (non-disabled poor) will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital (property) from the bourgeoisie (middle class), to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state (Marxist Government)… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic (unequal) inroads on the rights of property.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
The “Equal Outcome” of course is an Orwellian lie. There will of necessity be a superior class of not-to-be-equalized equalizers – the Pigs of Animal Farm – superior in rights – superior before law – superior in social and economic outcome.
“It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called “abolition of private property” (Communist Manifesto) meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before… In the years following the Revolution it (The Socialist Party of Oceania) was able to step into this commanding position almost un-opposed because the whole process was represented as an act of collectivization… It had always been assumed that if the Capitalist Class were expropriated Socialism must follow… Factories, mines, land, houses, transport, everything had been taken away from them; and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc (Socialist Principles of Oceania), which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result; foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent.” George Orwell – 1984
You are obviously not an American because you do not think like an American.
Fletcher Christian said:
According to that measure, Stephen Hawking and Osama bin Laden are equal
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I’ll ignore the Bin Laden aspect and ask you why you KNOW Hawking is amazing, brilliant, savant-iferous and so on?
Is it because you trust authority? I’ve not gained a single new thing from a Hawking book. Smolin might be better received if he sent his POV by eye blinking. No? Probably.
What are the odds that Hawking is a con man? I’m not saying he is stupid or a liar, but I wonder whether he played his weakness because that weakness fit a narrative.
@ #18 steveaz- it is also important to remember that Napolean is history’s first national socialist, and so explains why Hitler admired him so much.
Here’s a good post by Victor Davis Hanson that is almost like a companion piece to Codevilla’s article:
Pity the Postmodern Cultural Elite
A case of great minds thinking alike?
I read the following quote by Adam Smith from ‘The Wealth of Nations’ at StandFirm, the Episcopalian blog, and thought how apposite it was.
“The clergy of an established and well-endowed religion frequently become men of learning and elegance, who possess all the virtues of gentlemen, or which can recommend them to the esteem of gentlemen; but they are apt gradually to lose the qualities, both good and bad, which gave them authority and influence with the inferior ranks of people, and which had perhaps been the original causes of the success and establishment of their religion. Such a clergy, when attacked by a set of popular and bold, though perhaps stupid and ignorant enthusiasts, feel themselves as perfectly defenceless as the indolent, effeminate, and full-fed nations of the southern parts of Asia, when they were invaded by the active, hardy, and hungry Tartars of the North. Such a clergy, upon such an emergency, have commonly no other resource than to call upon the civil magistrate to persecute, destroy, or drive out their adversaries, as disturbers of the public peace. It was thus that the Roman catholic clergy called upon the civil magistrate to persecute the protestants; and the church of England, to persecute the dissenters; and that in general every religious sect, when it has once enjoyed for a century or two the security of a legal establishment, has found itself incapable of making any vigorous defence against any new sect which chose to attack its doctrine or discipline. Upon such occasions the advantage in point of learning and good writing may sometimes be on the side of the established church. But the arts of popularity, all the arts of gaining proselytes, are constantly on the side of its adversaries. In England those arts have been long neglected by the well-endowed clergy of the established church, and are at present chiefly cultivated by the dissenters and by the methodists.”
Smith talks specifically of ‘clergy’ and ‘religion’, but for some time liberalism has taken on the role of religion for the unchurched, and the elite are very much its clergy. This surely parallels the sudden and unexpected onslaught by the Tea Party (popular and bold, to be sure, and while I wouldn’t bet a lot on ‘stupid and ignorant’, there certainly is much unembarrassed anti-elitism there, which the ‘enlightened’ cannot differentiate from vulgar barbarism.
When I was writing of Anne Bingamen and James Barksdale above, and their family connections, the thought struck me that the legal profession is akin to the Roman Catholic clergy of feudal Europe. Every powerful family of nobles had a son or two in the church heirarchy. Every politician and corporatist CEO seems to have a connection to the law industry these days.
And as far as “vulgar barbarism” goes, Rahm “Shower Power” Emmanuel would seem to fit the description a lot better than, say, Sarah Palin.
maineman/119: Karen @ 89 asks, “How in God’s Name did that happen??”
It all started about 3 centuries ago, when the Enlightenment project enshrined reason, allowing for it eventually to be uncoupled from its God-given origins and turned into the primary weapon of the post-modernists and other manner of usurper.
It was a rhetorical question. But you make a good point. The Enlightenment’s enthronement of reason DID do a lot to lead us along the road to postmodern confusion. Reason as the ONLY guide would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that reason, too, is corruptible. Ample evidence of that is continually on display from the Left as we speak.
BTW, when I posted my #89, I hadn’t read very many of the comments and had not seen Batman‘s post #76, which stated so very well what I was trying to get at.
maz2 @104: “Obama Gains Evangelical Allies on Immigration”
Yep, there’s a lot of them on board with the immigration thing, with social justice, with Creation Care (to save us from global warming), you name it… anything the Left can make mushy-feely enough to the undiscerning. They’re so busy cooperating with the Left’s agenda to save the world that the gospel of the salvation of Jesus Christ has become an afterthought, and lots of times not even that, since the gospel is so inconvenient when you’re trying to build all those ecumenical bridges. These are not the people who would fit the definition in the quote I mentioned above: “the soul that is stiffly independent because its anchor is beyond the regime’s reach.”
119. maineman
“Right now, the revolutionaries look to have pulled ahead by a nose, but that cannot hold up for metaphysical reasons. And that’s why many of us here have had this “uh, oh” feeling in the pit of our stomachs as we’ve watched the train wreck unfold.”
I just got Rose’s work on Nihilism and will start reading tomorrow. But could you expound just a tad on the paragraph above?
I share many of LLIII’s comments in #33.
I especially reflect on the history of political parties in California. The progressive movement at the turn of the 20th century was able to reduce the influence of the Southern Pacific Railroad in state politics by neutering the parties. Primaries allowed cross-filing and filing on BOTH parties tickets. Patronage was sharply reduced. The initiative from the May election made for even less power for parties. He was right about reapportionment as a way to let politicans pick their voters rather than voters pick their representatives.
I was heartened by his estimation that the ruling class represents on a third of the population while the Country Party represents two thirds. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, that is a consolation!
The practical way forward to still not clear. The ruling class’ hold on power is strong and growing. They are attacking directly other potential power centers preemptively. For example small business people like car dealers. A political oppositon without resources is a weaker opposition. With the ruling class holding the power of the purse to subsidize their coalition, we face an uphill battle.
The future vision of America held by the ruling class reminds me so much of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” Remember, that was a dystopia.
Whitehall 141: “The ruling class’ hold on power is strong and growing. They are attacking directly other potential power centers preemptively.”
George Orwell also wrote about a dystopian, totalitarain future – a warning to us.
“Do you begin to see then what kind of world we are creating… a world of fear and treachery and torment… ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement; everything else we shall destroy… it will be a world of terror… The more the party is powerful the less it will be tolerant; the weaker the opposition the tighter the despotism… Always we shall have the heretic at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible; and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord. That is the world that we are preparing… If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.” George Orwell – 1984
Instead of Soma, we’ll have cheap marijuana. The Obama Administration has announced that they will not prosecute federal marijuana laws.
Let the people slumber in pipe dreams, disoriented, distracted by pleasures, without discernment or energy, while they vote Democratic.
Perhaps soft totalitarianism is the phase we will pass through before Orwell’s vision, but I think Huxley had the longer view. Orwell was satirizing the Communists, Nazis, and Fascists of his recent history. Huxley had a strong family background in biology and saw an easier path.
Whitehall,
A Huxley transition into Orwell is plausible; one also alluded to by C.S. Lewis in the Screwtape Letters.
“The safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” C.S. Lewis
143. Whitehall
Exactly. Huxley’s dystopia is based more on technological and psychological sophistication rather than raw brute force.
I’ve been saying for years that the party that finally comes out for the legalization of marijuana will garner millions of permanently loyal voters, many of whom never voted before. Sometimes it has seemed like I was talking to the wall when it came to conservatives. Even though you would think that conservatives would be amenable to a lessening of government control over individual choices. It turns out that that’s not necessarily the case. I guess we all have our blind spots, and marijuana is a big one for conservatives.