The Secret History of the World
One of the most common question successful revolutionaries ask themselves afterward is ‘what have I done?’ During their retirement John Adams and Thomas Jefferson grappled with the question of what actually happened during the Revolution. Jefferson’s answer was that no one could ever describe it. “Nobody; except merely it’s external facts. All it’s councils … which are the life and soul of history must be forever unknown.”
Adam’s memorable response was to question whether the Revolution happened when people thought it did. Their exchange frames the great debates of today in the most striking form. Where is this crisis leading? And when is it happening? To some extent the crisis is unfolding in the change in attitudes that are taking place today. It is entirely possible that today is the revolution.
As elder statesmen, reconciled correspondents, and avid readers, it is not surprising that Adams and Jefferson, in their retirement, periodically asked and offered their individual reflections and informed thinking on their own historical reading. One such exchange between the men in the summer of 1815 ensued over who was best able to write a history of the American Revolution, the important epoch in the nation’s history in which they had each invested their sacred honors and much political capital. How did they see the history of the Revolution being writ ten and whom did they deem worthy to write it? Was such history the domain of its firsthand participants and actors, those heroes of the battlefield and politicians of the chamber, or was history within the purview of more distant observers and spectators? Who, they pondered, had the right to carry the mantle of the Revolution?
Jefferson replied from Monticello to Adams’s query: “On the subject of the history of the American revolution, you ask Who shall write it? Who can write it? And who ever will be able to write it? Nobody; except merely it’s external facts. All it’s councils, designs and discussions, having been conducted by Congress with closed doors, and no member, as far as I know, having even made notes of them, these, which are the life and soul of history must be forever unknown.”
Jefferson’s observation that the full ramifications of what they achieved “must be forever unknown” demonstrates his intuitive understanding of emergent events. It was as if he himself stood on the threshold of the mystery of his own creation; or rather the joint creation of many. It had been born almost like a human, full of tendencies and hidden currents that would only become known with the passage of years. Adam’s response demonstrated something else: that Revolution may not have taken place in the obvious “external facts”. It had a secret history that was even more impenetrable.
“As to the history of the Revolution, my Ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we Mean by the Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen Years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington. The Records of thirteen Legislatures, the Pamphlets, Newspapers in all the Colonies ought to be consulted, during that Period to ascertain the Steps by which the Public Opinion was enlightened and informed concerning the Authority of Parliament over the Colonies.”
“The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen Years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.” Here, nearly 250 years ago, was Adams talking about memes and cognitive warfare, and the possibility that changes in attitudes and modes of thinking were in fact where America was born. Today the world is by increasingly perceived as being in the throes of a huge change. Who can write the history of it? And where and when are these events taking place?
Open thread.
What a remarkable correspondence that was between these two giants. The mystical bond that grew between them after a bout of bitter disagreement was almost supernatural, as they both died on the same 4th of July.
We can only hope that at this time, as the long march through our institutions has finally borne this bitter fruit, that Americans are changing “attitudes and modes of thinking” in regard to all that the left has done to this nation. Certainly the failure of the Republicans to be the guardians of conservative, representative government is evidenced by the ‘awakening’ that is taking place in the form of the Tea Party, but perhaps finally the many other victims of the leftist movement (including minorities in public housing and on welfare, union members who have not necessarily agreed with how their dues have been spent, the many who have lost their jobs because business has been taxed and regulated out of their state…) are also opening their eyes to where we are, and worse, where we’re headed..
And the continuing apologies about America that emanate from the current administration, the constant playing of the racecard, the double standards when it comes to race in cases such as the New Black Panthers, the mosque at Ground Zero and those defending it as an act of ‘tolerance’…
It all seems to swirl around the same group and their perverted ideology.
And lots of Americans are feeling the effects, and I think the picture is becoming clearer.
“There’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come” Victor Hugo
Today, in 2010, whose time has come; is it the times and ideas of Thomas Jefferson or the times and ideas of Karl Marx?
“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work (laboring, tax-paying middle class) and give to those who would not (lazy, tax-eating proletariat class led by the tax-eating Marxist ruling class)… To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much (from the middle class), in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill (to the proletariat class), is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association – the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it… The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.” Thomas Jefferson
“The proletariat (lazy, tax-eating, non-disabled poor) will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital (property) from the bourgeoisie (laboring, tax-paying 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. You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible… In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” provides a useful metaphor to understand Marxist Class Struggle and its aftermath.
“The proletariat (lazy animal class) will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital (eggs,apples,corn) from the bourgeoisie (working animal class), to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state (Marxist Pigs)… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic (unequal) inroads on the rights of property (eggs,apples,corn). You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class (working class animals) owner of property. This person (little animal) must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible… In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property (eggs,apples,corn). Precisely so; that is just what we intend.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
The lazy animals (proletariat class) lay up in the barn, smoking dope and watching soap-operas, while the middle class animals labor in the fields. At the end of the day the Marxist Pigs, after gorging themselves, ring the bell and all the “little animals” approach the communal pot which contains all the leftover eggs, apples, corn, etc. The “little animals” must approach with their tails wagging and must lick the hand that feeds them. The Marxist Pigs control the communal pot – they are the commune-ists.
In the end the laboring animals become demoralized and exhausted; many run away from the farm while others enter the barn with the lazy proletariat animals – hands out for the fruit of another’s labor. Eventually there aren’t enough working animals to sustain the farm; there isn’t enough food, so chaos ensues. Guess who will “come to the rescue?” The Marxist Pigs come to the rescue – they have a plan – it is called Dictatorship. The economic collapse of a socialist system is pre-ordained due to human nature its self; the economic bust and anarchy which follows is not a bug – it is a feature.
“Property is the fruit of labor…property is desirable…is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built… We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name – liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names – liberty and tyranny.” Abraham Lincoln
“In the general course of human nature, a power over man’s substance amounts to a power over his will.” Alexander Hamilton
I’m with Adams: the result should not be confused with the process that brings it about, often with those involved being unaware or only partly so.
It’s commonly said the the USSR collapsed with nobody seeing it coming, even Gorby. Actually, some time before–I don’t remember how long, many months anyway–the Manchester Guardian published an article about the coming failure of the regime in Russia, pointing to warnings issuing from KGB officers. They, more than almost anyone else in the society, were in a position to know the truth.
This attracted little attention. I had a friend who was retired CIA. Although his area was Africa, he had connections from his early career in W Berlin. When I queried him, he called some people and verified that the Guardian piece was basically ignored. But look what happened.
Similarly, I have a feeling that the liberal/’progressive’ process has passed its arc and reached a point of inevitable excess and collapse but virtually none of them know it or are just beginning to get that dreadful suspicion.
And, the Tea Party ‘movement’ is only the sum total of a collective groundswell of disgust, anger and frustration probably proceeding for years, generations even, with the individuals involved having no idea of the collective frame of mind. When that guy gave his rant on TV could the Tea Partiers sprung up so spontaneously? No; the tender was there, only needing a spark.
Now we’ll see how it plays out but the momentum was already there.
All it’s councils, designs and discussions, having been conducted by Congress with closed doors, and no member, as far as I know, having even made notes of them, these, which are the life and soul of history must be forever unknown.”
Well, you can’t blame TJ for focusing on the councils of the high and mighty. But as Bernard Bailyn showed, it was a much broader ferment that made “Common Sense” the all-time best seller in the Colonies.
In his most influential work, “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,” Bailyn exhibits through a thorough analysis of pre-Revolutionary political pamphlets that the colonists believed that the British were intending to establishing a tyrannical state in the colonies that would abridge the historical rights of the colonists. [bolding mine] He thus argued that the Revolutionary rhetoric of liberty and freedom was not simply propagandistic but rather central to their understanding of their situation. This evidence was used to displace Charles Beard’s theory, then the dominant understanding of the American Revolution, that the American Revolution was primarily a matter of class warfare and that the rhetoric of liberty was meaningless.
Freedom is in our DNA. And I’m betting most of us aren’t the kind of cowards who whimper “But it’s hopeless!”
Who indeed to write it? For my money no one is more qualified than a certain wretch of a fellow currently residing in Australia but living on the internet, however that just might be my churlish opinion.
What is certain, however, is that many highly unqualified authors will try to fill that void with cants and narratives galore. I hate that their biases might become accepted lore, but stranger things have happened.
Besides W, anything by Sowell, VDH and Spengler would be worthwhile.
There were giants in those days, indeed, but I’m not convinced our Founding revolution will provide much of a template for the one we seem to be contemplating. For want of a better term, I think it was easier to “articulate the Revolution” then; the issues were concrete, visceral, even–in the case of the Proclamation Line–marked on the map. The internal revolution that Jefferson mentions is similarly cartographic in nature as well: for that third of the population who became Patriots, there was no “us” before there was a “them;” no “here” before there was a “there.”
For myself, I think whatever change is in the air will more closely resemble the English Revolution in that our internal geographies are hopelessly muddled, leaving us apt to temporize while ignorant armies clash by night. In his sneering way, Hobbes laid the cause of the war at the feet of men who had read the Classics while schoolboys, but there were many others who, after two decades of war and social chaos, couldn’t tell you what the fight was about. Of course Milton, anticipating the reflections of Jefferson and Adams–from the other side–at least got some great poetry out of it.
“What do we Mean by the Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen Years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.”
What a truly brilliant man. I have read a lot by and about Ol’ TJ but that little gem escaped me. TJ was Boyd Cycling centuries before Boyd was born. And it seems by intent. There is no box so big that TJ can’t think outside it.
There is much more to war then bugles blaring, flags waving and cannons roaring.
The current revolution started in the dead of night, with a one sided vote on the Health Care bill that none of the voters had read in their hurry to flee the scene of the crime.
Churchill stated that “History is written by the victors.”
In the case of the “revolution / election” of 2010, who will write this history?
The ultra-left progressives and the new American Ruling Class?
Or the disgusted, angry and frustrated taxpayers organizing at the grass-roots?
And who will clean up the mess of the past 3 years? (or 45 years?)
Perhaps the lines in this case will be drawn across physical boundaries. In a discussion I had with someone who had just been influenced one of Ferguson’s apocalyptic “America is dead” lectures my answer was “and who shall live? Europe? Australia? China?” They are all in the same case and further along the feckless path.
What distinguishes American crisis and marks its particular character is that the millions of people are considering answers to questions that are only now being understood by Europeans. It has gone so far in the understanding of the disease that it is at the point of contemplating cures. And because the possible cures are so basic, and so much at odds with the current of the last hundred years they boggle the mind. My guess is that when the answers are finally supplied and if they are successful they will reorganize the world. Not just the United States.
While this sounds hopelessly vague, let’s consider this: can the current political memes now rising in America remain exclusively American? If Washington is diminished by grassroots reassertiveness can the EU be far behind? I think the PC brigade understand things better than the Tea Party Movement. If PC cannot survive in America it is threatened everywhere. The Left has supplied the prototype of the Global Meme. Is there any way of not paying it back in its own coin?
But it is too early to fill in the details. All that can safely be said is that the old order is in crisis. What will replace it — for good or ill — has not yet shown its “external facts”. We do not see its face yet. And it is also likely that we are in the midst what Adams called the “revolution in the minds of the people”. That is the task at hand. What follows, well, we shall see
I believe our current revolution has already started. I believe it follows a meme, not an individual or a party or an economic ideology, and that meme is impatience at an oligarchy that disrespects voters who have elected them. It is not Republican or Tea Party or Libertarian; it is frustrated that their voice is ignored and it’s mouthpiece is the internet. DARPA’s genius was in inventing a means of communication that functions in swarm fashion, and that is what we are benefiting from right now. The words we read on this site are repeated by other commenters to other web sites in other languages, but the unifying theme is anger at the oligarchs. Who will write the history of this revolution? We all are writing it now. Lots of questions remain to be answered, obviously, as the revolution matures and becomes focused, (one of my favorite question is: “will we use lamp posts or tar and feathers?) but this swarm is gaining increasing focus. I am enjoying the show although my heart is heavy for the victims who are already suffering. Bring it on! F
The final lines from the movie The Prophecy.
Wretchard @ 11: “and who shall live? Europe? Australia? China?” They are all in the same case and further along the feckless path.
That would have been my thought, until recently. Now I am beginning to wonder.
The standard view is that the American Revolution was a minority success — about 1/3 of people in the Colonies actually supported the Revolution; the remainder were split about evenly beween those who opposed the Revolution, and those who simply kept their heads down. Something miraculous happened to let a minority take the lead.
Now look across the Atlantic today. David Cameron, who must have been on everyone’s “Most Likely to be a Useless Tosser” list, was elected Prime Minister with less than 40% of the vote. Yet he is honestly trying to (gasp) cut government spending! A modern case of a minority taking the lead.
The French, who have been objects of derision since the wars of the 1870s, look like they are seriously trying to do something about the creeping Islamic take-over of their nation. And Germany somehow manages to run a high-wage economy which can still generate a massive balance-of-trade surplus.
Of course, if the US goes down, then so does Europe — weak, defenseless, dependent on the US market for their exports. But as things stand today, there is at least an arguable case that the Mandate of Heaven has left the North American building.
What we need, and may be arriving at by the same process the Titanic used to arrive at the iceberg, is a New Age of Enlightenment. Many have seized the mantle of this over the last 100 plus years, but all were partial in nature at best and steps backward into the darkness at worst.
What we have seen is mostly the acquisition of physical knowledge, much of it false, and almost all of it misinterpreted. Even philosophical advances such as the Civil Rights Movement almost immediately sunk back into the very morass of ideas-without-thought that it was supposed to rise above.
What we need is a genuine recognition of What Really Works and What Really Has Not. The current awakening is driven as much by the realization that the tired old rusty Kaiser Frasher is never going to run, pollution free, on moonbeams extracted from cucumbers as it is driven by philosophy.
What I think is the political class has been exposed, the media elites have been exposed and the regular people have begun to understand the manipulation of their lives.
Freedom, baby!
Evolve, or Die!
8. Sertorius
For want of a better term, I think it was easier to “articulate the Revolution” then; the issues were concrete, visceral, even–in the case of the Proclamation Line–marked on the map.
I don’t think so. I think the story was just as vague and amorphic then as now. As I understand, back then America was divided into three: the Patriot, the Tory, and the fence-sitter.
Samuel Adams was the first propagandist. The Committees of Correspondence had to be established one network at a time. It took time.
David Cameron, who must have been on everyone’s “Most Likely to be a Useless Tosser” list, was elected Prime Minister with less than 40% of the vote. Yet he is honestly trying to (gasp) cut government spending! A modern case of a minority taking the lead.
I think Cameron is a leading indicator of the new idea. When you think of it, the acceptance of the idea that government has to get smaller is a revolutionary one. What he’s up against is the parliamentary system of electing an aristocracy. You elect a crowd in the Westminster system. Instead of the hereditary gentry you select members of parliament. The Great and The Good. Then these guys get together and decide who rules, who the PM is, who the Cabinet it.
It makes for fewer upheavals but the result is a far more closed system because you have to “get in” through one of the gates to count. There’s a lot more validation through peer recognition. Because it’s the group that counts. This is I think why the blogosphere is so much weaker in Parliamentary countries.
The practical consequence of that is that the ferment on the Internet is in America because individual from-nowhere ideas are more acceptable in this setting. This may mean that other societies can institutionally incorporate the ideas of subsidiarity much more quickly than the US. Elite led societies can move quickly if the elite adopts the meme.
Thanks to W and the original poster who introduced us to “subsidiarity.” Very important to the discussion.
so the real revolution took place 15yrs before the fighting started.begs the question about the teachers’ union.bill ayers etc. they’ve managed quite a head start dumbing down education.can they be stopped?
Heeey, I know of this part time lounge singer whose been running a fiscally conservative minority government for a few years now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCbVw03zEyU&feature=related
Glenn Beck, Another Whitefield? The 8/28 Revival of Pluralism
Though revival is sorely needed in our land, it is fair to ask what kind of revival Beck would make happen. He recently said “We need another Whitefield”. He was referring to Great Awakening preacher George Whitefield. Though Beck regularly lays it on thick with affection for Whitefield, he grossly misunderstands or greatly misrepresents Whitefield’s preaching by suggesting the thrust of his ministry was “freedom” and “individualism”. It would be good for Beck’s soul to read some of Whitefield’s sermons.
George Whitefield was perhaps the most consistently orthodox gospel preacher the world has seen since the days of the apostles. He preached faith in the one Triune God, Jehovah, Who alone is eternal. Beck, on the other hand, frequently says things like “I don’t care what God it is that you worship or what church you go to.” and calls upon Christians to “put all differences aside on everything”. But the devil’s lie from the beginning was “ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil”. There is only one God. And we don’t get to pick him.
Whitefield preached about the eternity of hell. On the contrary, at an “American Revival” rally in Salt Lake City, Beck said “hell is not an eternal lake of fire” and proceeded to mock God and His Judgment against sinners, calling Him “a giant Octopus”. Thomas Jefferson likewise considered the Trinity a kind of three-headed mythological creature. He promoted instead the god of reason, and a “Unitarian Faith” he predicted would eventually take over the country. Ironically, Jefferson’s god is the seedbed of progressivism. If God’s revelation of Scripture is seen as progressive and unending, it should be no small surprise descendents of Jefferson’s religious philosophy would end up ignoring the Constitution.
The elites declared a separate allegiance first. The significance of September 11 was, apart from the obvious, was also in the refusal of the political elite respond to a direct attack on American soil. This was the ultimate “loyalty test” and to varying degrees large parts of it said “um, no thanks”. The refusal ranged from the Bush’s oblique unwillingness to name an enemy to Obama’s overt refusal to even acknowledge the aggression. The Ground Zero Mosque, the refusal to enforce the immigration laws are all a gradual “coming out” of something which until the litmus test forced it out, could finesse its divided allegiance.
I think history will judge that the “elites” left the idea of America, to declare their own intellectual and moral independence from it’s contemptible NASCAR-watching, gun-owning, Bible-clinging roots — long before the rest realized they were gone. They now form, or are forming a community of their own with specific attributes. They “know” their own and it is a definition that transcends race.
A pundit at the Huffington post reveled in the ‘whining death’ of Christianity in Britain; they know to laugh at Sarah Palin; sneer at this or that — without prompting. They can’t abide the company of the other and form their little Journolist cabals not so much for the conspiracy as for the community. The story of a revolution, if ever it is told, will not be about the creation of one nation, but the simultaneous rise of two nations, each aware of the other.
The real divide, I think, will be when the non-elites (if one may call them that) also leave the idea of America behind in the same way that the elites have already done. For the biggest hold the elites have on the non-elites are the very values they can scarcely abide. The harder by they are put, the greater the elites will appeal to God, patriotism and family; and appeal to it to advance the state as a religion, transnationalism as an allegiance and transgenderism as a social model.
What is not clear, and what will not be clear for a while is whether obtaining freedom from the elites must come at the cost of destroying what Jefferson and Adams created. I think the idea of Jefferson and Adams must be extended, as they themselves extended the ideas of their day and yet preserve the essentials. In 1776 the physical boundaries of America resembled nothing like their present-day ones. It was the mental boundary which defined it. I think the challenge is to re-create or re-dedicate that mental boundary and if that is done then idea of America will have a future not just on the North American continent, but out into the stars.
cadams @ 17– Not to say the Founders didn’t have momentous decisions to make (especially those who had, like Franklin, once glanced up at the skulls of those unfortunate Jacobites still spiked above Temple Bar!) But to pick up on Wrechard’s thread in #23, though, it would be interesting to know how often the Founders daydreamed of the backcountry of their respective colonies, and whether the knowledge of that fresh green breast of the New World waiting along the Ohio made it any easier to turn their backs on Whitehall and the Crown.
“The standard view is that the American Revolution was a minority success — about 1/3 of people in the Colonies actually supported the Revolution; the remainder were split about evenly beween those who opposed the Revolution, and those who simply kept their heads down.”
I disagree. You use the word revolution in to timid a manner. You seem to be addressing the 1776 to 1782(?) war, The period between Breeds (bunker) Hill and Yorkstown. TJ saw it as the period between about 1750 and 1770. I agree. The actual war was the result of the revolution, not part of it. And while about 1/3 actually got involved in the fighting, EVERYONE was involved in the revolution. The 1/3 that you say supported King George II actually didn’t support the Monarchy, they just didn’t support armed rebellion.
They wanted freedom handed to them, without fighting for it. Who doesn’t? It never works like that, of course. The Iraqi’s are discovering that now. If they don’t back up their ballots with bullets, they will end up with another tyrant. He may part his hair on the other side, but in the end all tyrants are the same.
The elites declared a separate allegiance first. The significance of September 11 was, apart from the obvious, was also in the refusal of the political elite respond to a direct attack on American soil. This was the ultimate “loyalty test” and to varying degrees large parts of it said “um, no thanks”. The refusal ranged from the Bush’s oblique unwillingness to name an enemy to Obama’s overt refusal to even acknowledge the aggression. The Ground Zero Mosque, the refusal to enforce the immigration laws are all a gradual “coming out” of something which until the litmus test forced it out, could finesse its divided allegiance.
exquisite
Charles @22-
Great men, both, but in what way was Whitefield more consistently orthodox than Spurgeon?
Regarding the institution of human slavery? Concerning the practice of infant sprinkling?
I’m not sure how others feel, but 9/11 was the watershed moment for my own revolution. It took me another year to wrap my thoughts around the matter of Islam, a little longer to comprehend Islam’s confluence with the Left, PC, post-modernism, etc.
Since then, I have thought of my input on the web in particle terms – hoping to impart as much of my own spin and inertia onto/into the larger constellation of thought. I am especially heartened now to read the comments in a wide variety of publications here and in Europe echoing many of the themes which barely existed eight years ago in the media. Then, terms such as “jihad”, “taquiya”, were rare, and notions expressing a deep seated suspicion and doubt about Islam and Muslims were virtually non-existent. Today these themes and words crop up frequently, especially among the unwashed. The old-think of the intellectuals and elites at the top of the food chain still push their ossified trash with stale nostrums and bromides about “Religion of Peace” (TM), and “hijacked by extremists”, etc. In fact, our enemy is doubling down on his lies about Islam and the necessity of multicultural “understanding”. So apparently, nature’s little kings haven’t gotten the memo that shattering times are upon us, but everyday joes are starting to know it.
The message of our ideological enemy has remained stale, become shrill and entrenched, while our understanding has developed, deepened, and widened. Is it too much to infer that, in the face of radical change, the ossified lies of the Left and their jackbooted armies foretell that THEY are marked for destruction? Isn’t their paralysis, their entrenchment in the face of radical change, the best measure that revolution cannot be far off?
We are in a three power war of ideas and will. There is the merger of Judeo-Christian beliefs and values with Classical Liberalism in one corner, leftist, statist, “progressive,” quasi-totalitarianism in the second corner, and militant, relentless, demographically increasing Islam in the third.
The progressives have been on the ascendancy for about 100 years, with brief rest periods. Their roots go further back to Marx, and before that to Nietzsche’s deconstructionism, but in America they began to penetrate the university, the media, and entertainment in the 1930′s. They were stalled by World War II and its aftermath but went underground in the late 1950′s and early 1960′s and by now have metastasized and have spread to the brain. They are decades ahead in the “idea” part of their revolution.
Islam is in the early phases of its third attempt to defeat the West and conquer the world. Their first effort was halted at Tours on October 10, 732, thanks to Charles Martel. Their second was halted at the Gates of Vienna on September 11, 1683, thanks to Jan Sobieski, with a little help from his friends.
For the moment Progressivism and Islam have signed a “Hitler-Stalin” pact. That pact will dissolve in time and one or the other will prevail.
Our American amalgam of Judeo-Christian beliefs and values merged with Classical Liberalism has been on the ebb for half a century, having peaked in the 1950′s, though with some rebounds in the 1980′s and the early years of this century. But we have been losing the war of ideas for many decades. It is not that we don’t have spokesmen — we do. And it is not as though we don’t have our up surges now and then. But the American exceptionalism that was in our bones fifty years ago is no longer self-evident to most Americans, let alone to Europeans or others across the globe. And the capacity of people here to think logically, to get dirt under their fingernails, to repair almost anything, or to know even the most basic American history, is more and more dilute every year.
It is always heartening to see England, France, Canada, Australia, Israel elect leaders who are trying to turn things in a better direction, but they are all shoveling sand against the tide. And the tide is “Progressivism” to the left of them, “Islam” to the right of them. Into the valley of death rode the 600.
It took 15 years for the Founders to shift the mindset of the colonists. And then took nearly 9 years to win the war, from Concord and Lexington on April 19, 1775, through the near disaster at Brooklyn Heights on August 29/30, 1776, through Valley Forge on December 19, 1777, finally to the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 19, 1782, and then to the Treaty of Paris signed on September 3, 1783. Does anyone think we have that sort of stamina for a 24 year long struggle today? Does anyone think our current culture would endure another Valley Forge? I wish I could say “yes,” but I can’t. Yet I hope with all my heart, soul, and might that I am being too pessimistic. Has anyone seen a Jefferson, Washington, Adams, or Franklin around lately? I haven’t.
Sure, there is no other country ready to take America’s place. So? Islam would be glad to fill that void and drag us all back to the seventh century.
Alternatives? I think that Progressivism is a horrible alternative. But the Islamic outcome is even worse. I know God helps those who help themselves, but a little bit of divine intervention would surely help.
I think our online discussion of “subsidiarity” means to solve social problems to the lowest common denominator. I am just beginning to learn what it means in Catholic social teaching; in my own Mormon tradition, solving one’s own social problems at the level of individual and family first, before others step in, goes back before Brigham Young led the pioneers across the Plains. We might say some form of subsidiarity, of necessity in one form or another, was a given across the world before socialism stepped in.
We have spoken in vague terms about a ‘Revolution’ at hand we hardly know how to define, much less speak of in general principles. In the last few years I have come across some books that may point in this directional. These books may teach us what to do after the ‘bottom drops out.’
The first book, by David T. Beito, is From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967. It reviews the mutual aid efforts of the Freemasons and Oddfellows in Great Britain, then spreading to America and around the world in various organizations. From rudimentary beginnings, such as providing burial costs for Masons at individual lodges, it developed into complex social services, for detecting malingerers, to hospitals, worldwide networks and complex medical care. It also traces various causes for its near total demise: especially since retrenchment beginning with the Social Security Act in 1935 (except for the occasional Elks Lodge you see in the run-down parts of town). I was astonished to read how African Americans were known as ‘joiners.’ I wondered whether FDR was the worst person someone of African descent ever came across in 1,500 years. My final impression was that fraternities are NOT politically correct, but a hell of a lot better than democratic socialism. The writing was filled with lively quotations and anecdotes from the past; worth purchasing.
Another book is The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society, edited by the same David T. Beito. The authors trace voluntary efforts through the centuries, from medieval merchants of the Hanseatic League, to Italian city states, to Edinburgh Old Town, to Chicago’s Central Manufacturing District, to modern housing cooperatives. Of course Tocqueville is quoted. The writing is more dense than the first book; may be best borrowed from a college library. I loved how one author discussed how the poor should be able to hire armed guards just as the rich do in their gated communities. Another author reviewed efforts in the past in England and America to falsify data of private social efforts; i.e. Marx and Engells, the Education Act of 1870 (England). One of the keys to understanding voluntarism, the book says, is through the covenant and the lien.
A great introduction to the Cooperative Movement is Co-Op, the People’s Business, by Johnston Birchall. (Another good intro is “Cooperative” in Wikipedia.) There are many coops in America and around the world nowadays, but many of them are so watered down as to be unrecognizable; but the original English model, developed by displaced weavers from Rochdale during the Industrial Revolution, was truly a marvel of bottom-up social thinking. The coop went beyond the fraternity; its core principles were what made it so special. The coop was so designed to put people above profits; to put limits on investors; to equally benefit consumer, producer (employee) and investor; and to care for the whole employee, not just for his wages. As you can see, some of this sounds like socialism; but it is voluntary and grassroots. The original coop pioneers first developed vertical integration and the branch system.
Books that detail Mormon bottom-up social and economic efforts hundreds of miles from any which point to civilization include Great Basin Kingdom and Building the Kingdom of God, both authored by Leonard Arrington. The first is a large scholarly book; the second is focused on more experimental communities established by the Mormons in the Intermountain West (comparable to something between the Amish and hippy communities).
Another book, entitled Working Toward Zion: Principles of the United Order for the Modern World, by James W. Lucas, Warner P. Woodworth, and Hugh Nibley, is well worth the read. The term ‘united order’ is a Mormon term that may compare to the expression ‘Catholic social teaching.’ It summarizes the first two Mormon books mentioned, and integrates them into a modern global setting. Although written from a Christian service perspective, it has many great ideas to put into practice, here and now at the neighborhood level.
I have taken notes of all these books, of what I considered to be the most important keys to understanding. I would be willing to email them attached in WORD format to anyone interested. There are no citations, with quotes or paraphrases not necessarily stated; and is highly condensed for my benefit. But if you’re interested feel free to email me at mormonhighlander@yahoo.com. And I would be interested in other related literature that others have.
wretchard @ 23
To my mind we are at a divide similar to the one the U.S. was approaching in 1838 when Abraham Lincoln gave his Lyceum Address, excerpts below:
Excerpts of Abraham Lincoln s Lyceum Address
The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions:
Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois
January 27, 1838
“. . . Their’s [the founding fathers][mine, o] was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ’tis ours only, to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader; the latter, undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation, to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.
“How then shall we perform it?–At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?– Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! . . .
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
“I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; . . .”
[Consider: Attorney General Eric Holder dropping the uncontested case of voter intimidation against members of the New Black Panthers; the violation of the due process clause, 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to the secured bond holders of the Chrysler corporation; the failure to enforce our immigration laws; et. al.][ed. o]
“I know the American People are much attached to their Government;–I know they would suffer much for its sake;–I know they would endure evils long and patiently, before they would ever think of exchanging it for another. Yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property, are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the Government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come. . .
“The question recurs, “how shall we fortify against it?” The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor; . . .”
[Young Abraham Lincoln (28 years old at the time of this address) warned his listeners what to be wary of][o]
“It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon?–Never! Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.–It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.”
Can we return to being a nation under the Declaration of Independence and Constitution when all three branches of the federal government have been captured by the “progressives”? Facilitated in no small part by the educational and media establishment.
onesimus
de Tocqueville
Time does not arrest its course for nations any more than for men…When we think things are stationary, it is because we fail to see their movements.
The mental habits which suit action do not always promote thought. The world is not directed by long and learned proofs. All its affairs are decided by the swift glance at a particular fact, the daily examination of the changing moods of the crowd, occasional moments of chance, and the skill to exploit them. The evil which one suffers patiently as inevitable seems insupportable as soon as he conceives the idea of escape from it.
America is my home. Need it be anything else?
There are those who would reduce America to being an idea, an abstraction, a principle one can read in a book. They do a disservice to America.
Is tyranny un-American? No. The oppression of Cahokia was very definitely American. Is the worship of a sun king un-American? No. The Natchez monarchy was very definitely American. Is Marxism un-American. No. Marxists have been in America since the nineteenth century – anarcho-syndicalists too.
The attacks of September 11 were not merely an attack upon liberty, but also an attack upon America. If our ideals were the pagan worship of Mother Earth, do not think the terrorists would have refrained from attacking us. If our ideals were Communist, do not think the terrorists would have refrained from attacking us. If our ideals were those of divine monarchy, do not think the terrorists would have refrained from attacking us. I dare say that even if our ideals had been Islamic, al-Qaeda would still have attacked us.
Our enemies attacked us because we are American, because al-Qaeda seeks to eradicate all cultures other than its own and attacks the most powerful culture to send a message to all others. (One would normally expect Marxists to be the first people to fight against al-Qaeda given how the attacks of September 11 were a blatant attack upon the proletariat by a feudal order promoting its own brand of oriental despotism based upon sectarian slavery – that is, if Marxists were not themselves a faction of the leisure class so eloquently illustrated by Milovan Djilas.)
Freedom is important. It is a means to fight. It is a method of defense. Far more than an ideal, freedom is a technology of warning against People’s Temple. Freedom is our weapon against those who would enslave us, kill us en masse, or both. Those who would deprive Americans of our freedom are those who would make us weak.
So, why do I fight? Home. America is my home. America is where I live. It is the land under my feet, the air I breathe, the taste of the water around me. Those who would call for death to America would pollute the land, poison the air, and eradicate every living thing in my home – that is what they pray for. That is why I fight.
Ace has a Fox News Video and says a few words about it.
Pat Caddell: Country’s Mood Is “Pre-Revolutionary”
But let us not forget that elections are not won anymore by votes alone. They are also won by those who count the votes.
Ace says that “We will take this country back.”
I pray that we do but also pray that we find the right men and women to do it and that they know the right things to do afterward. And do them with the preservation of our Republic foremost in mind.
Papa Ray
If one were to assign a moment at which it all began, one could do worse than mark the calendar at Rathergate. The signposts in this battle will not be hills or valleys but ideas which will be indicated by two things: the ownership of words and the dominance over institutions.
Take words. “Mainstream media” is a term that dates from around Rathergate. “Class” dates from around the Codevilla essay. Combing through wordcounts from 2000-2010 will indicate when certain notions forced their way forward never to retreat. Once these notions are invincibly entrenched they trace out the mental places that are securely taken. Take other terms like progressive or liberal. Once they meant something. Today they don’t quite mean what they did. The sands are shifting and in time even mighty dunes may blow away.
Institutions are another milestone. Congress, the academe, the media. The Nobel Prize. The descent of these once holy institutions into something approaching or actually attaining (in the case of the MSM and Congress) disrepute is another indicator of trends.
Once these institutions ruled by the sheer power of prestige. A leading indicator of the lowered estate of the old elite is the way direct state power must increasingly be used in place of cultural pressure. When Valerie Jarrett wistfully hankered after the day when ‘people believed the media’ and Walter Cronkite could establish a fact by mentioning it she was unconsciously admitting how far they had retreated. By these metrics the paradigm shift is well underway.
Bill Gates recently claimed that the Internet would within 5 years compete with universities as the principle provider of education. Glenn Reynolds talks about the “higher ed” bubble. These and other headlines suggest the places to watch are the schools, the retirement infrastructure and the States. When you start seeing states challenge the feds in court and trouble in pensions, just wait for that crowning indicator, student unrest.
One good student revolt against the liberal orthodoxy will a shattering blow to their meme. And it is not wholly inconceivable. Indebted, without prospects of employment, hedged with PC rules and kept only in check by the tame ‘activist’ infrastructure and facing the challenge of the Internet in an era of rising tuitions, maybe it’s not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’. None of these possibilities may happen. But if they happen they will have the effect of placing a mental referendum before a large of block of people. And it will strike them almost tacitly as something momentous. By then many will have forgotten where these lines came from. But it will not matter, they will reinvent the notion in their own words.
Fouad Ajami suggests that the Un-King (apologies to MLK)’s moment as the Sun King has passed: “The Obsolescence of Barack Obama”:
“It is in the nature of charisma that it rises out of thin air, out of need and distress, and then dissipates when the magic fails. The country has had its fill with a scapegoating that knows no end from a president who had vowed to break with recriminations and partisanship. The magic of 2008 can’t be recreated, and good riddance to it. Slowly, the nation has recovered its poise. There is a widespread sense of unstated embarrassment that a political majority, if only for a moment, fell for the promise of an untested redeemer—a belief alien to the temperament of this so practical and sober a nation.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704164904575421363005578460.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
A “widespread sense of unstated embarrassment” may not be quite the same thing as Wretchard’s “throes of a huge change,” but the sense of a corner being rounded, a turning in the course of events, is certainly there in Ajami’s essay.
You may ask yourself, what is that beautiful house?
You may ask yourself, where does that highway lead to?
You may ask yourself, am I right, am I wrong?
You may say to yourself, my god, what have I done?
Holy sh*t!
Based on the CBO’s data, I calculate a fiscal gap of $202 trillion, which is more than 15 times the official debt. This gargantuan discrepancy between our “official” debt and our actual net indebtedness isn’t surprising. It reflects what economists call the labeling problem. Congress has been very careful over the years to label most of its liabilities “unofficial” to keep them off the books and far in the future.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-11/u-s-is-bankrupt-and-we-don-t-even-know-commentary-by-laurence-kotlikoff.html
wretchard:
I would suggest that the ruling class’s hesitancy to fight against al-Qaeda has little to do with Marxism, but rather because full mobilization for war would necessarily undermine its domestic hold on power. Perhaps the ruling class perceives its own hold on power as illegitimate, a fake meritocracy built upon connections, inherited money, and credentials rather than intelligence, knowledge, hard work, and common sense.
It is common for ambitious politicians to seek the shortest route to power, yet those who do so usually fail to understand the importance of legitimacy. Political power without social legitimacy is necessarily weak. Political legitimacy must be earned and cannot rest upon technocratic credentials that can be easily counterfeited.
wretchard:
What happens when it becomes abundantly clear that “the best and the brightest” are neither good nor bright? If there is any similarity between the Vietnam War and the Obama Presidency, perhaps it is the exaltation of a meritocracy that lacks merit.
Of the elites, “They “know” their own…”.
Have you ever noticed the sibilant pronunciation, the large S sounds on NPR? A group identifier.
We should mock their ideas, pretensions, and culture. Never ape them. Make it repellent to be a leftist.
What happens when it becomes abundantly clear that “the best and the brightest” are neither good nor bright?
What happens is that the public relies on government where “good enough for government work” suffices. They take it off the critical path except in matters of national defense and foreign policy. They accept that the “best and the brightest” is a myth and that realistically about all you can expect is a half-way decent bureaucracy.
That was in fact the original conception. Government would be limited to areas where nothing else would work. It was treated as a necessary evil, to be as little indulged as practicable. Somewhere along the line this idea was replaced by the notion that it had grown in wisdom; that it invented the A-bomb and broke the Depression and Hitler. In its new wisdom it could decide things better than individuals. So the “best and the brightest” was allowed to bet the farm and not surprisingly, promptly lost it.
All of us should know when we’re getting in over their heads. Really bright people know their limitations. Truly stupid people cannot imagine they have any because they surround themselves with courtiers, hangers-on, hacks, yes-men, PR consultants, clowns, carny barkers and jesters. Nothing is new in this. The Divine King was the “best and the brightest” concept of 250 years ago and was a crock even then. It’s so old it seems new.
On 9/11 and in the months that followed I discovered how much I loved my country. I learned a lot about who I am that I didn’t suspect before. I noticed that a great many people were experiencing, in their own way, similar identity revelations; and I noticed that a great many others were not. I believe that was when the revolution began, with that awakening to our American identity that we had always taken for granted, and with the awakening to the reality that not everyone in this country cares so much for it. Something like that must have happened around 1760, a result of the French and Indian War. An thus began a divide that became ever more significant once it was recognized.
No Question about it. The “seeds of the revolution” were sown long ago. It’s fair to say a lot of vets returning from VietNam, even if they weren’t combat missions. (I had friends who suffered permanent injuries just in training.) Plenty of guys returning to the US were spat upon and cursed by privileged kids maybe even older than they were. It was not lost on these vets that a lot of people were getting free goodies from the government, not just taking without paying, but living in comfort and bounty that the peasants where these vets had served — war zone or no — would have risked their lives to possess.
And it gradually became screamingly obvious to them that the leaders of the culture they’d defended — for which many had lost irreplaceable limbs and organs and all had lost irreplaceable years — mostly didn’t give a crap about them. Their own politicians, professors, editors, grandfatherly news anchors, priests, and girlfriends had fraternized with the enemy, kissed their rings and kissed their asses, flown to Paris for meetings while the war raged, or to Hanoi to make propaganda films, or paraded before Congressional committees hungering for any damned lie they could make up to villify and demonize the military and anyone who loved it.
The Marxists in the 1960′s radicalized students, and planted provocateurs, and coaches well trained in strategies and tactics of disruption. These overwhelmed the timid administrators of colleges from the humblest community colleges to the loftiest towers. Columbia’s leaders soiled themselves like Obama facing teenage Somali pirates. They would not risk a police assault on “students” who brandished shotguns and pistols while occupying the administration building. Leftists bombs and fires ravaged campuses, banks, and shopping centers. Yale’s chaplain Wm. Sloan Coffin offered sanctuary to draft dodgers and deserters, and the government dared not respond to his taunt. Yale’s president in spring of 1970 said a black revolutionary could not get a fair trial anywhere in the US. Self-identified Marxists were given tenure at many universities, or when denied, championed by students threatening to trash the campus.
The Black Panthers postured, menaced, and strutted, running token free cafeterias and day care centers while making REAL money selling cocaine and prostitutes. In their spare time they busied themselves murdering each other when they weren’t having gun battles with police, or attending “radical chic” cocktail fundraisers with Leonard Bernstein and other decadent NYC gliterati. When Nixon struck VietCong sanctuaries in what was supposed to be neutral Cambodia, nationwide student protests (spontaneous, my ass) seemed to be bringing the country to the brink of armed rebellion. It was widely believed by the Clearasil crowd that Nixon intended to declare martial law and stay in office indefinitely without ever bothering with elections again.
Within a couple of years, most colleges and universities had utterly caved in to student unrest, loosening minority entrance and grading standards, and giving un-challenged accreditation to the intellectual bowel movements of race, gender, and “critical” studies. Didn’t much matter. The English departments were become so utterly dominated by Marxists that students are now as thoroughly steeped in the dialectic and revolutionary dogma there as they ever might have been in a grade school in Moscow.
Now parents of 8-year old girls are discovering that the public school will give them abortion counseling, condoms, and demonstrations of every possible sex act, but will adamantly refuse to share information with parents about these programs, or warning that they are going forward. All this deliberate dismantling of parents’ rights going on with funds extorted from them by local, state, and federal bureaucrats who sneer at them and call them racist, reactionary dunces who don’t know what’s good for their children.
The government tells them the carbon dioxide they breathe is a pollutant and will tax their asses of for producing it. The government tells the people who work and pay taxes, that they are racists for protesting any thing the government decides to do with their money, most especially using it to buy votes from people who have lived on the public trough for three or six generations. The Government tells taxpayers THEY don’t deserve and can’t get free university tuition, but that people who have violated US immigration laws DO and WILL. The Government tells people who earn a wage or make products to sell that they have to pay for their own and health care, emergency services, mortgages, rent, government administered instruction, driving manuals and driving tests in 25 languages besides English, AND in addition, they have to pay for the same services for all the people who DON’T work, AND for all the people who are living in this country ILLEGALLY.
The government tells them their homes can be condemned and bought up by the local council, to re-sell for a profit to any developer who dangles the bribe of a few extra dollars of revenue for the council to use to secure their retirement plans. Ditto for the private citizens’ own retirement plans — THOSE were being sized up for seizure by the Democrats in Clinton’s first Congress in ’93.
We now have a half-black mostly arab-descended President telling us we are more racist than ever. That same president just spent the summer working tirelessly to transform a relatively minor tragedy and oil spill into a major environmental disaster. The tap-dancing usurper couldn’t even accomplish THAT, by deliberately delaying and obstructing every effort attempted or proposed to mitigate the oil leak. This administration — uniquely in any disaster since WWII — imposed a ban on news helicopter flights over international waters where the spill occurred. Now that the beaches and marshes are revealed to be remarkably less damaged than all his shrieking minions have been telling us, they change their chant to “Well, BP used LOTS more dispersant than they should have!” (Yeah, 3 per cent more than authorized, for a chemical that is not in any way classified as dangerous.)
This president made his career as a disrupter and obstructor, has never done anything remotely definable as “productive” — only amassing confederates and co-conspirators for a vast looting of the National piggy bank. The two organizations most closely involved in his career — SEIU and ACORN — have been revealed to be populated by criminals, embezzlers, and thugs, who show up at citizen’s meetings with their Congressional reps and beat them up for protesting the President’s confiscatory policies. This week, while millions of people are despairing of finding a job, his supremely arrogant wife is pissing away something like $100k of taxpayer moneys EVERY DAY on a vacation at a resort that caters to international millionaires.
The absurdities listed here are just a few turds of the avalanche of stinking feces that’s been pouring out of the LEFTIST’s Anti-Cornucopia for four or five decades.
“Cognitive Dissonance” ceased to have any functional meaning by the time the phrase was coined.
The Left does not have a blind spot for its own insanity. Their vision is ALL blind spot.
As Wretchard pointed out, the revolution is not the battles waged with guns and bullets. Those occur long after the fact. It is the AWAKENING of a subject population that their own government already views them as slaves, and that they have only themselves alone to sunder the shackles.
batman, #29: Does anyone think our current culture would endure another Valley Forge? I wish I could say “yes,” but I can’t. Yet I hope with all my heart, soul, and might that I am being too pessimistic. Has anyone seen a Jefferson, Washington, Adams, or Franklin around lately? I haven’t.
Alexis, #33: So, why do I fight? Home. America is my home. America is where I live. It is the land under my feet, the air I breathe, the taste of the water around me. Those who would call for death to America would pollute the land, poison the air, and eradicate every living thing in my home – that is what they pray for. That is why I fight.
Indeed, I’d be willing to bet that even a lot of people who call themselves “progressive” share Alexis’s sentiment, however secretly: When push comes to shove they will fight to defend America as surely as any of us – but simply because America is their home too. Liberty and the Founding Fathers have nothing to do with it – merely a latter-day form of Blut und Boden. Hence, once again, my worry that we’ll end up stuck with a Cromwell, Robespierre or Ulyanov leading the charge instead of a Jefferson, Washington, Adams, or Franklin.
#44 Mad Fiddler
We now have a half-black mostly arab-descended President telling us we are more racist than ever.
You may have read about his latest insult, this time to the Governor of Texas:
“Gov. Rick Perry’s meeting at the Austin airport with President Barack Obama on border security lasted a mere 34 seconds, and Perry had to hand a letter on the issue to presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett because Obama declined to personally accept it.
That did not dissuade the governor from inviting Obama to come back to Texas and tour the border with him to get a first hand look at what Perry describes as the threat from Mexican drug cartels.
‘Look, he’s got the letter. I suspect he’ll read it. I hope he responds to it,’ Perry said. ‘This is way past partisanship or politics.’
Perry said Obama’s decision to send 1,200 troops to the entire border with Mexico was inadequate, particularly since only 286 are coming to Texas. . . .
During their airport meeting, Perry applauded as Obama came down the steps from Air Force One.
‘It’s the gracious thing to do. He’s the president of the United States,’ Perry said later.
Obama and Perry shook hands for several seconds. Obama used his free left hand to give Perry two friendly slaps on the right arm.
When they released their handshake, Perry attempted to hand Obama a white envelope containing his letter on border security. Obama did not respond when Perry first held it forward. Then when the governor offered it up again, Obama turned to his right and motioned toward key adviser Jarrett. She took several quick steps toward the men and took the letter from Perry.”
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7146152.html
Considering that Perry went to meet His Nibs at the airport when Texas Democrats are fleeing from him in order to salvage what’s left of their re-election campaigns, the Preznit seems remarkably incapable of ordinary good manners, let alone graciousness.
On the subject of Islam dragging us back into the seventh century – it’s worse than that. It’s worse than that, because a seventh-century society can’t support more than a tiny fraction of the 6.5 billion people currently inhabiting this planet. Almost certainly not as many as the seventh century did the first time around.
Islam cannot support a technological society. Not the purest forms of it a la Saudi, at any rate. And thus the end result of the formation of the Caliphate will be the death of well over 90% of humanity. And probably more than that, because resources accessible with Dark Ages technology are largely gone. And most people (including rural communities in the West) haven’t got the skills required for a seventh-century lifestyle, either. Perhaps the SCA might become the nucleus of civilisation in such an environment – except that they will probably have been slaughtered by the sons of Satan^H^H^H^H^HIslam.
Further to that and probably on a longer timescale, Dark Ages technology won’t help us in any of various natural catastrophes that ARE going to happen sooner or later. Choose one; another Dinosaur Killer, Yellowstone or another of the world’s supervolcanoes letting rip, global pandemic…
So there you have it. Let Islam win, and eventually it will kill us all.
I think it’s imperative that this “Revolution” is a peaceful one that’s achieved by democratic means. That’s definately possible, but it’s going to require that people focus on this for several election cycles. In order to do that, there has to be an overriding theme for the reform movement to rally around. There’s not really one now, but we may get there.
My fear is that we’ll elect a bunch of GOP reps, they’ll get bogged down in inside the beltway investigations and periphreal issues, and will not begin the process to really change things. Or, if they do manage to pass any game changing legislation, or even tentative steps in the right direction, those will be put on hold or nullified by some Federal Judge somewhere. At that point I believe many will impatiently throw up their hands and say there’s nothing to be done, and the process will evolve into something else that goes to places we don’t want to go.
We need patience and a singlemindedness moving forward. I hope we have them, because things will not change overnight.
The single most peculiar quality I see in the current ruling regime is an absolute lack of concern with public opinion. Sure, they’ve always thought we’re idiots that need to be led around, but they never used to be so blatant about it. They would take baby steps to get to their goals if they felt the ramifications for stronger legislation would be too great. They used to have the good sense not to stir up the people needlessly, but that seems to have flown out the window. I can’t think that’ll end up very well for them.
For example, until recently could anyone imagine a Congress that passed legislation in a back handed fashion that was vehemently opposed by at least a large minority of the population, and then rubbing it in their faces by strolling through the streets of DC with a massive gavel to celebrate their victory?
Politicians used to have more sense than that, and I guess we should be thankful that this crew doesn’t. It makes it much easier to see what they’re really all about. Stealth is the Progressives friend, and they’ve forgotten that.
Whither Al Gore (WAG)? (formerly AGW)
It’s O’s fault:
““The U.S. Senate has failed us” and “The federal government has failed us.” Gore even seemed to blame President Obama by emphasizing that “the government as a whole has failed us… although the House did its job.”
Wait, it’s the “founders” who floundered: “Gore said “the government was not working “as our founders intended it to”.
…-
“Gore concedes, National Wildlife Federation calls skeptics “bastards””
H/T WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/10/gore-concedes-national-wildlife-federation-calls-skeptics-bastards/#more-23270
http://greenhellblog.com/2010/08/10/gore-concedes-on-climate-this-year/
One good student revolt against the liberal orthodoxy will be a shattering blow to their meme. And it is not wholly inconceivable.
Not wholly inconceivable, perhaps, but extremely unlikely.
I’m currently going through a UCLA podcast course on Western Civ. The tenor of the course is that the French Revolution was the singular, most important event in modern history because it established that history, tradition, and custom were meaningless. That society, the culture, and the political system “could be shaped” by men of vision and strong will.
The prestige, self-esteem, and emotional payoff of being in control that comes with becoming one of the “shapers” of cultures is an awfully strong motivation for human beings. Perhaps the strongest motivation of all. I believe that the promise of this supreme emotional payoff is the reason that Marxism, and its red-headed stepchild Progressivism, will not go away despite the trail of mangled corpses the shapers must negotiate.
It’s the Adam and Eve story all over again – for a man to live peacefully among other men he must first refuse to be a god. Adam and Eve flunked.
The American Experiment of 1776 was, above all, an attempt to institutionalize the god refusal, or at least an attempt to make it as difficult as possible for those who would choose the apple over their brothers.
The Republic, at least as we imagined it, no longer exists. Perhaps it never did. Maybe conceding custody of the apple tree to the slave owners on the hope they would forego the harvest was a fools errand after all.
“I think it’s imperative that this “Revolution” is a peaceful one that’s achieved by democratic means. That’s definately possible, but it’s going to require that people focus on this for several election cycles.”
dtmack, sorry but that just isn’t possible. The ONLY people that have the time to devote to politics over several cycles are the political class, who are the very ones we have to get rid of.
Tea Party types have to go to work. They have to earn a living. Baby needs new shoes. A big part of the problem is that many don’t have work, which means no new shoes for baby.
That is why I favor a Constitutional Convention (whatever one calls it). That can be done in a cycle or two. It’s just a matter of electing the right representatives and pressuring them to vote the right way.
A Constitutional Convention is sort of the nuclear weapon of American politics. It pretty much takes the elites out of the loop, or dilutes their influence.
The key is having the Convention populated by people that are NOT sitting politicians or have ever held office. NO Lawyers either. I never understood why Lawyers are allowed to hold office. To me that is sort of like hiring Bonnie and Clyde as bank guards.
Get normal people, a combination of wage earners and small business owners and we will get a New Constitution that is suited for the 21st Century. Plus it will make it easier for our great-grandchildren to do it again next century.
No political compromise lasts forever. So the system should be allowed to self correct every few generations. Ours is, we are just overdue. That is because the elites don’t think there is anything wrong with the way the system works today. That they are wrong is self evident. A CC will show them that without the violence. At least one hopes.
While “trees and ropes” can be meaningful and fun, in the long run it is almost as harmful to the observers as to the participants. Almost…..
A Youtube section devoted to politicians dancing on air while twisting slowly in the wind would be a big hit. How many hits did the video of Saddam hanging get? Not enough, obviously.
Intellectually speaking, Barack Hussein Obama represents King George II and the Monarchy. He is backed by a small yet powerful group of Aristocrats including the MSM, the Unions and the “modern Ivory tower intellectuals.” He does have the ability to enchant his fellow aristocrats yet play both sides of the street like King George. He is impoverishing the majority of American’s like King George (and is alienating a large number of American allies).
The key is to find another Adams, Jefferson, Washington and Franklin to oppose him. These men were intellectuals, warriors and lawyers. There must be a modern set of these men around.
Sadly, it seems like all of the intellectuals and lawyers are beholden to the BHO monarchy and the warriors are being assassinated (not by bullets but by the slanderous words). I fear that something terrible must happen before these new patriots are motivated into combating the BHO monarchy. Hopefully I will be proven wrong.
Charles 22: “Thomas Jefferson likewise considered the Trinity a kind of three-headed mythological creature. He promoted instead the god of reason…”
Thomas Jefferson rejected the Divinity of Christ but he didn’t reject the Orthodox Biblical God, and presumably he didn’t reject God’s Spirit – Jefferson accepted 2/3 of the Trinity. Jefferson’s orthodoxy in regards to God the Father was illustrated in his second inagural address:
“I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with His providence and our riper years with His wisdom and power.” Thomas Jefferson
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jefinau2.asp
Thomas Jefferson was not a Deist because the Biblical God is not the detached God of Deism; furthermore a Deist God cannot bother Himself with the mundane affairs of little people – such things as unalienable human rights.
“Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens . . . are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion.” Thomas Jefferson
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?” Thomas Jefferson
http://www.monticello.org/reports/quotes/memorial.html
It appears to me that Thomas Jefferson believed the Biblical God was the God of reason.
Progressives seem self-consciously revolutionary, from Lenin and his professional revolutionaries, Mao and his fishes, to Alinskiy, Cloward/Piven or that scumbag Bill Ayers and his murdering savage bastard wife, etc. For them (progressives) its about tactics (check Journolist); they “understand” the march through the institutions (“understand” – more like figuring the best way to pull the okey-dokey).
The men who brought about the American revolution were reluctant revolutionaries. They wanted freedom and a chance to run their own affairs. They were careful to create a philosophical, moral and legal grounding for what they wanted. Although at some level they must have understood where their actions would lead, revolution was not their goal. I think they would have preferred some accommodation with Britain (representation), but the British were tone-deaf, answering colonists’ grievances with ridicule, arrogance and force, the colonies being something to plunder first and foremost. If I remember correctly, the British government at that time was dealing with, among other things, a very large debt, which constrained (so to speak) what they could, or were willing, to do.
Where a Bill Ayers may say “kill the pig”, John Adams defended, successfully, British soldiers involved in the Boston massacre. He also said we should be “a nation of laws, not men.”
Alexis 33: “Is Marxism un-American. No. Marxists have been in America since the nineteenth century.”
Marxism is un-American because Marxist ideas contradict the American Declaration of Independence which Thomas Jefferson described as “an expression of the American mind.” Marxists do not believe in self-evident truth; for them truth is relative, and as in Orwell’s 1984, always changing to meet current class and political requirements. Marxists do not believe “all men are created equal;” they anoint themselves as Plato’s “Philosopher Kings” who are endowed by natural selection with superior human value, and therefore superior in rights, superior before law, and superior in economic/social outcome. Marxists do not believe in God-given unalienable human rights. The so-called “rights” of the little people come from them and are therefore malleable and reversible. Marxists do not require “consent of the governed.” Marxists are the Pigs of Animal Farm.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” Thomas Jefferson
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm
It bears noting that the left and Islam are currently in alliance because, like Hitler and Stalin, they are built on the same foundation.
I expect it to become increasingly clear over time that the conflict is between Christianity, i.e. the New Israel, and everybody/everything else.
The reason Europe and England will almost certainly fail to roll back the tyrannies of government, PC, and Islam is that their souls were effectively destroyed by Hitler and Stalin. The old order, predicated on the march of Western Christendom, just seems to have been hollowed out by the wars of the last century.
Actually, I should have said hollowed out by the world wars and communism.
And I think one of the reasons Obumbler is sinking like a stone is that many people intuit, by now, that we have elected as our leader a man who embodies both of our primary enemies.
Some would argue further, that the thinking that forms a revolution was not mature until 1789.
The effects of the arguments and efforts required to make a revolutionary mindset certainly occurred well before that.
The machinations that set out to institutionalize the really crappy and at least IMO unconstitutional behaviors of the political class in two pieces of critical legislation seem to me to be part of the early awakening of todays revolutionary thought.
First was the McCain/Feingold Campaign Finance Reform bill. By the time the bill made it through committee it had been compromised to death. It compromised the constitution and compromised our freedom.
The no child left behind bill, was a measured effort to return to parents the right to educate their children as they saw was in the best interest of the child. What was at stake however was control over the funding for PERS programs, the grant moneys from fed to state based on head counts and the ability of a progressive curriculum to be given more light even above the ideas behind the enlightenment. Ensuing the NCLB bill was set up to fail was IMO the greatest achievement of the Sen. Kennedy. His legacy can thus be summarized as an attempt to deny the American dream to the very people who looked to him for help in finding it. The refusal of government to find and agree in principal, upon a reasonable and constitutional solution to those questions of education and free speech.
The manipulation of a good and competitive system to the detriment of the individual citizen’s ability to decide is the ultimate treason. Intellectually dishonest and ethically abhorrent, the legislative efforts since 2008 have been only confirmed what should have been evident since before Rather-gate.
What was genius about President Bush’s efforts in Iraq was the planting of the seeds of liberty. If successful the revolution of freedom in the Middle East and S Asia will have positive effects on humanity for generations to come. We aren’t finished yet, It isn’t over. Our soldier’s sacrifices for a just and noble cause count for something greater than me.
Timing is everything.
The URL below links to a fly over of Auschwitz by Israeli F-15′s. They were about 60 years or so late.
http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/israel/history/f15-jets-over-auschwitz.htm
A truly grass roots, popular movement only has a finite amount of time to work it’s will. The Elites know this and are clever enough to wait it out… While delaying it as much as possible. Politics is NOT bean bag to paraphrase President Johnson.
So if we the people don’t get a Constitutional Convention by 2012, then we have lost. Based on the argument that both sides in a civil war lose.
The Elites will stack the deck again so it looks like change but really isn’t. They will part their hair on the other side and switch ties then go back to the same old song and dance. IIRC, Kerry and Bush were classmates in College. That should tell everybody something. Or is a clue at the least.
The key is to find another Adams, Jefferson, Washington and Franklin to oppose him.
The observation made by Adams, that “The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775…” is what most distinguishes 1776 from today.
A significant percentage of Colonialists were independent businessmen, small farmers and the merchants that provided everything they did not produce themselves. The continued prosperity of most Colonial Americans was dependent on other people, including the government, simply leaving them alone.
It could hardly be any different today. Millions upon millions of today’s Americans either work for federal and state/municipal government, and enjoy an above average standard of living for doing so, or get a substantial portion of their daily bread from the government, either from entitlements or as the result of favorable legislation. Obamacare will swell the ranks of SEIU by many millions more as every medical facility that receives federal money falls under its purview. An awful lot of people are fully invested in keeping things just like they are.
Under the very best possible conditions only about 1/3 of Colonial Americans were willing to put their property and personal well being at risk for the abstraction of liberty. I suspect that today’s percentage would be a tiny fraction of that. What is the rallying cry? Smaller government? Who even knows what that means.
Any meaningful change in the American political system is opposed by a behemoth of federal and state bureaucracies, and the millions upon millions of individuals and businesses that directly benefit from sucking at the government teat. King George and Parliament were 3,000 miles away. Today’s equivalents occupy the tallest high rises in every American city.
The Tea Party is the most promising social/political development of the last 100 years but its raison d’etre is still too much of an abstraction. If there is an Adams or a Jefferson out there it appears that they don’t have anything to talk about, yet.
cadams @ 30: “I think our online discussion of “subsidiarity” means to solve social problems to the lowest common denominator.”
Cadams, I disagree with L3 (whom I deeply respect) on the adoption of subservience implicit in the (now)-Euro word “subsidiarity”. For the same reason, I disagree with your use of the same despicable word.
L3′s point that the “s” word has a long & proud history in Catholic tradition is accurate but irrelevant. Today, Euros use the “s” word to mean the very reverse of the independence & community to which you refer. The “s” word now means control & direction from the Political Class at the center, with the tax-paying peons on the periphery being allowed some limited control over implementation of the policies imposed by the center.
George Orwell spent a lot of time on the importance of the meaning of words. In “1984″, he pointed out the Political Class’s tendency to reverse the meaning of words — Ministry of Truth, etc. “Subsidiarity” had a proud history, but it has been corrupted by the Euros. The old meaning is dead.
L3 is right that society has grown to the extent that we need more than “federalism”. We do indeed need to start with the self-reliant individual and the self-reliant community. But don’t call that by the now-contaminated “s” word. If you do, reasonable people will think you mean the exact opposite of what you intend to say.
Josh @ 29, “Exquisite.”
I was thinking “Divine.”
God. I love Belmont Club!
Already been out, delivered more propaganda, talked to three supporters, who will come try and help me this next week.
I gave money to a single Mom who needed gas to get to work. Yea I know I’m an idiot, but she has two kids and works at a CO-OP and she gives me a discount on animal and plant stuff I buy there, so I guess that she bought my support. OH…support your local CO-OP, they still support their members and even other [non-member] customers like me.
Anyway. Came home to feed these damn kittens and give them fresh water, which I should have done earlier, but forgot because getting two kids out of the house sometimes can be interesting.
Also, had this link that I wanted to leave here.
“What Are You Prepared To Do?” – SavingtheRepublic.com
This is not something we have years to mull over, this is a decision we have to make in the next few months. Do you really think that the republicans will change much? If you do, you are wrong. They just spend a little less, in a longer time and are better at hiding their motives and their graft – than the democrats.
We need to kick them all out and elect citizens who don’t want to be a politician for the rest of their working lives. But who just want to restore, protect and preserve…
Our America.
Get up, get out and get on the line…
And don’t forget…
Buy More Ammo.
Papa Ray
P.S. There is much more here.
PB/60–yes, it is still pretty much an abstraction because, although the dissatisfaction is there, we’re unable to think past the idea that an election could begin to make things right. This, after all, is the idea we were raised with, ie the elected will do the will of the people.
What if that doesn’t work? That’s where we get stuck. The word “revolution” gets used but only in concept. Basically we are on hold, hoping to get out a huge mold-breaking vote, and hoping/assuming that then things will start to improve.
If it happens, where do we begin to improve things? Nobody really knows but it’s sure to be a mammoth task.
If it doesn’t happen? Well, now . . . as Michael Barone said, quoting Robert Redford: “What do we do now?”
61. Kinuachdrach
George Orwell spent a lot of time on the importance of the meaning of words. In “1984″, he pointed out the Political Class’s tendency to reverse the meaning of words — Ministry of Truth, etc. “Subsidiarity” had a proud history, but it has been corrupted by the Euros. The old meaning is dead.
You mean like Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” and “Popaganda and Demotic Speech?” Thanks for the clarification.
Wretchard wrote: “. . . The harder by they are put, the greater the elites will appeal to God, patriotism and family; and appeal to it to advance the state as a religion, transnationalism as an allegiance and transgenderism as a social model.”
Peter Boston wrote: “It’s the Adam and Eve story all over again – for a man to live peacefully among other men he must first refuse to be a god. Adam and Eve flunked.”
Maineman wrote: “I expect it to become increasingly clear over time that the conflict is between Christianity, i.e. the New Israel, and everybody/everything else.”
Internet connectivity ensures that the proceedings of secret councils will not be forever secret. (Maybe we’ll even get to see that long-form birth certificate some day.) Lie after lie, from Dan Rather on down, meets sunlight and shrivels. Anti-secrecy agents counter the lies as best they can. Yesterday I saw Sharia referred to as “the new Jim Crow.” Touche. Perfect. That’s the beginning of the end of the “religion of peace” meme. But the spinners and fabricators will not rest. It’s their day job, and they make a good living doing it.
‘Subsidarity’ may be useless as a term since it’s been co-opted every-which-way; but we know what it means, and what it means is bottom-line, base-unit self-determination (family, community, individual, probably in that order), in the context of a social contract.
I think Rene Girard is right: Christ and Christianity are (in their fundamental truth) the end of myth, i.e., the end of mythmaking and its attendant scapegoating. Myth upon myth (religion as the privileged power of a church, deference to a protector-monarch, elevation of a favored people or nation, gaia, etc.) shrivels, each one exposed as a power play meant to subjugate and control its victims. Truth does not need that kind of victimizing myth. It needs examples of love, fidelity, and sacrifice.
Powers on the right will try to create new myths to oppress and deceive, as will powers on the left. Many people will opt out for quietism and gnostic lolly-pops. Maybe a majority of people in the middle have finally woken up somewhat and will begin to judge the responsible powers on the basis of what those powers are doing to preserve the common people, you know, the ones who have certain unalienable rights, the ones who adopted a social contract intended to ensure the blessings of liberty.
My hope is absurd of course. The worming away of evil and self-deception are here to stay in this sublunary world. As myths evaporate, and Christianity itself is dismissed as myth (regardless of its reality as anti-myth), people are going to be desperate for new myths, of blood, land, religion. Islam is perfect for that.
Maybe, as Wretchard says, the elites will continue to win adherents to the idea of the state as a religion, transnationalism as an allegiance, and transgenderism as a social model. But the myths of the elite have met the steel blade of Islam and the myths of the elite have been found vulnerable. Islam is a perfect scapegoating mechanism, a ‘closed circle’ in the words of Bernard Lewis.
Interestingly, Christianity is a boom religion in Africa and East Asia because, I suspect, of its subsidiarist teachings. These Christians aren’t afraid to fight back against Islam, which teaches submission, not independence. But these Christians are nevertheless prey to all kinds of myth-making and scapegoating, as in Rwanda. Christianity should, however, be eventually be a solvent on such atavism.
We’ll see what the Christian subsidiarists and fellow-travelers can do. They’ve usually come around to doing the right thing, and we’ll see if they are willing to fight against Jim Crow in all its forms, which declares that some people based on something are inherently superior to other people and therefore deserve privilege. Oink.
It will indeed be interesting to think back through recent history to “ascertain the Steps by which the Public Opinion was enlightened and informed concerning the Authority of Parliament [Congress, elites] over the Colonies [states, people].” For sure 9-11 was a wake-up. And subsequent events. I’ll never forget Hillary’s speech at Madison Square Garden. She couldn’t depart from the root-causes ideology even at that solemn event.
By taking some of the New Twenty Six Billion bailout,
Schools are Legally bound to make NO CUTS to existing budgets in the future!
Government employees are gauranteed their future benefits as civilians lose their present circumstances.
…and our children, future penury.
64. Gordon; “If it doesn’t happen? Well, now . . . as Michael Barone said, quoting Robert Redford: “What do we do now?”…
See Papa Ray’s post before yours, particularly the line “Buy More Ammo”. Since 2008 about a hundred billion rounds have been purchased by civilians in the USA. I shoot A LOT but have been stacking away the crates myself. I am willing to bet that less than 5% of the total has been purchased by the Commie followers of Teh One. In twenty-five years of police work I have seen far too much of the ugly that is in man’s soul to welcome a violent confrontation. I am certain that, if trouble starts, it will be a Lafty that starts it and I and many other Americans will not flinch from the fight.
Papa Ray, glad to see you can still find time to post occasionally, I attended another “America’s Ruling Class” BBQ over the weekend. The host had invited twenty couples, eighteen showed up. There was a very lively discussion during and after dinner (two couples left early, I think they didn’t like having their beliefs challenged) The interesting thing was that everyone attending took their copy of the essay home with them, even the ones that split early. I hope to get at least two more groups together before school starts and wrecks everybody’s schedules.
I am also putting together a list of Wretchard’s best essays for further reference, suggestions are welcome please send them to; corporslsmith2000 at yahoo dot com. There are so many great posts that I end up bogged down trying to decide. Right now at the head of the list is the Three Conjectures, I am aiming for twenty or so that I can link to directly in an e-mail.
Keep the faith, the word is getting out.
cas: And who will clean up the mess of the past 3 years? (or 45 years?)
It will have to be the middle class… they’re the only ones who do any real work, afterall. I’m of a mind that if I’m going to be cleaning up then it’s at the very least going to be a mess of my own making.
The progs and muslims won’t be swayed, deterred, or reformed. Like the ideaologies of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, the only way to overcome these two most recent threats is by making their cities, institutions and homes into ash filled craters.
The Tea Parties are great, but all in all they’re just talk, and constrained by the rules of a game where the rules aren’t equitable.
Disgust with the progs is at an all time high, if the elections are done fairly there will be a large shift in the elected bodies. If that shift doesn’t happen, then we’ll know we’ve been had, suckered like it was a ring-toss booth at your local county fair. Oh, it will be close… just a haaaaaiiiir away from getting your choices elected. Better luck next time!
We are at the apogee of the progs power, the tipping point. If they act desperately then it’s going be bad. This generation of progs isn’t patient like their forerunners, who had to bide their time. This crop of progs grew up getting their every desire fulfilled and I’m willing to state that they’ll react poorly to losing come election day. They’ll take measures to ensure they don’t lose because of that, too. Not to get ahead of myself (the progs aren’t the only impatient members of these latest generations), but what do we do then? (he said, echoing Gordon’s earlier post).
Rally some more and talk about it?
Have some real tax-based tea parties, doing some withholding monkeyshines?
Cut power lines to the major cities?
I hope those damn elections work, because I worry a lot about this. I enjoy the modern world and all it’s comforts, like medicine and motor transportation and knowing my kids are realatively safe riding the bus to school.
That e-mail addy is corporalsmith2000 at yahoo dot com, man I gotta learn how to type one of these days!
One good student revolt might shatter the liberal meme, true. We certainly might see something instantaneous and spectacular. Or we may see something more gradual.
I have been wondering how these changed economic conditions—kids being forced to live at home with their families, parents and children being forced to rely on each other—re-discovering, for some, extended families and such networks—might roll forward as a slower moving revolution.
One of the things in 1984 the Party sought to destroy was the family. The family, in a larger sense, personal loyalties, that might conflict with the State were just as dangerous as the meanings of certain words. This is why I think liberals try so hard to stoke racial and cultural animosities. It is a way of harnessing love and hate for their own political purposes. Divide and rule.
But I think they have failed—at least in my case. Even though we sometimes fight among ourselves, even though we hold very different beliefs very dearly, when I look at my friends and loved ones laughing at a barbecue, I can’t help grabbing a beer telling a few gay jokes, too, laughing at my own expense. I can afford it. I know that these people don’t want to kill me.
You see, when I look across my beer bottle at all that laughter and all that love I see what Churchill saw across the Atlantic: the arsenal of democracy.
29. batman : Does anyone think we have that sort of stamina for a 24 year long struggle today? Does anyone think our current culture would endure another Valley Forge? I wish I could say “yes,” but I can’t. Yet I hope with all my heart, soul, and might that I am being too pessimistic. Has anyone seen a Jefferson, Washington, Adams, or Franklin around lately? I haven’t.
I work with them every day. The young men and women of our military are as capable and steadfast as any of the 1600-1700′s. As for a Washington, Gen. Petraeus comes to mind.
54. lc : I think they would have preferred some accommodation with Britain (representation), but the British were tone-deaf, answering colonists’ grievances with ridicule, arrogance and force, the colonies being something to plunder first and foremost. If I remember correctly, the British government at that time was dealing with, among other things, a very large debt, which constrained (so to speak) what they could, or were willing, to do.
I think that sums up the situation between the Feds and ordinary people fairly well. And I believe it will have the same result eventually.
60. Peter Boston : What is the rallying cry? Smaller government? Who even knows what that means.
It is not as difficult as it may seem. How about every taxpayer questioning for every dollar spent by any form of government (city, state, federal) “Am I getting, DIRECTLY, any service for this fee?” Too many of us have been hoodwinked by the notion that any good done for anyone is of value to us individually. So if I put a gun in your face and rob you of all you own, telling you it is going to the under-privileged, you should feel good about it? Charity should be a private matter, not a government institution.
61. Kinuachdrach :We do indeed need to start with the self-reliant individual and the self-reliant community.
Exactly. We the people, need to call a time-out on the Fed. We need better control on voting. Better limitations on spending. Demand every citizen pay the same percentage of taxes and a balanced budget. No deficit spending except in time of war. No unions for federal employees. All government employees at every level should get pensions no greater than the military model (50% of wages after 20 years). Positive recall of representatives who ignore the wishes of their constituents. Etc, Etc. Start locally, lock down government control, dismantle unions, allow competition in all venues but especially schools. Children are indeed the future so these are the seeds that need the most protection and fostering.
I too love BC and consider it an indispensible part of my continuing education. Thank you to all contributors and of course our host.
I suspect the start of the actionable part of the next revolution will be very similar to the first such as the Boston Tea Party. The monarchy then just as now depends on our money to enable its bidding. Withhold the money and the “monarchy” (in our current form I suppose Oligarchy is the better term?) will lose power. If every state withheld taxpayer money in trust for the needs of the actual taxpayers on the local level, we would not have anarchy anywhere except the worst run cities: Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc. And would you be able to tell the difference anyway?
Storm Rider:
Now, are you telling me that an American who becomes a Communist ceases to be an American? In other words, is being American merely a matter of ideology?
Liberty is a tool for living a better life. Tyranny is bad because it induces misery by inhibiting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The United States of America is founded upon liberty, but that is merely a federation. America is far more enduring than our federation.
The reason why differentiating between being American and being free is so important is because the exaltation of freedom can in and of itself become a force for tyranny. Belief in liberty must not become a force for ideological conformity that stifles liberty. Freedom is what we make of it; it is a tool.
bigfoot 43 – Astute observations regarding the timing of both events. The F&I War likely created a consternation amongst the frontier and rural folks of a very similar nature to what we and much of the civilized world experienced on and immediately after 9/11.
I wonder what Adams, TJ and Lincoln would think of the USPP telling some kids that they can not sing the National Anthem at the Lincoln memorial…
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local-beat/Students-Silenced-for-Singing-Anthem-at-Lincoln-Memorial-100443134.html
43. Bigfoot & 75. joe buzz
re: The F&I War (a.k.a. the Seven Years War) went a long way to creating a true American identity as opposed to a “British in America” persona. The colonial governments raised, equipped and paid most of their own troops. In many campaigns the colonists outnumbered the British regulars by a significant margin. The eyes of the colonists were opened to how London viewed them by the fact that the frontiers were often left to shift for themselves while the Regulars were sent off to capture parts of New France. George Washinston’s transformation from an officer of the Crown to the general commanding the Revolutionary army is representative of the path of I would guess.
When the London government then decided to place taxes upon the colonies to pay for the debt incurred (largely the result of the Euriopean part of the war) the colonists realized that they were seen as a cow to milked and little else. They had seen with their own eyes that they could defend themselves, could run their own governments, levy their own taxes and regulate their own societies and it thus occurred to them that the “Mother Country” was less of a mother and more of a gold-digger.
They had the nerve and wit to cut the cord that bound them. Oh, that we could follow their example and sever ourselves from the bloated corpse that is D.C.
Alexis 74
Yes, being American is a matter of the anti-Communist ideology found within our Declaration of Independence, but add to that the American attributes of courageous action in defending our God-given equal rights and our reasoned system for just government power deriving through consent of the governed – rational majority rule (Constitution) within moral constraints (Declaration). A Communist cannot be a good American because Communist political ideology (similar to Islamist/Sharia political ideology) is anti-American; it is first and foremost destructive of the individual’s God-given equal rights to labored-for property (part of our pursuit of happiness). Destruction of the individual’s sacred right to the fruit of his/her own labor is then necessarily followed by destruction of the individual’s sacred right rights to liberty because normal people will naturally speak out against government theft of their property. Then, if necessary, the individual’s right to life is brought into question; remember, a few eggs must be cracked to create utopian “social justice” under Communism – you know – 180 million innocent civilians murdered in the 20th Century by their Communist masters.
Human freedom, when shared by all as an equal right and equal limit, cannot in and of itself become a force for tyranny – that is a self-evident oxymoron which requires one to exercise the insanity of Orwellian (Marxist) Doublethink. Equal liberty is the opposite of and the enemy of tyranny. Tyranny is the absence of human liberty as the individual and his/her freedom is possessed by tyrannical government. Ideological conformity to the Declaration of Independence cannot become a force that stifles liberty since liberty is therein contained and enshrined. On the other hand, ideological conformity to the Communist Manifesto (or to Sharia Law) does stifle human liberty because liberty is therein destroyed. Marxist mind tricks don’t work here.
Freedom is not just a tool – not just what we make of it – as if human freedom evolved along with the thymus, liver and opposable thumb. Human freedom renders us in God’s likeness; freedom is a blessing and a natural/sacred right of the individual. Thomas Jefferson gave the best definition of human freedom ever written.
“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
50. Peter Boston
I availed of your two paragraphs ending with the one on Adam and Eve to introduce the following essay: The Ruling Class’ Primitive Urge.
I ended that with an open letter to individual members of the ruling class.
As I understand what happened at the Bastille, I remain hopeful that those who’ve schemed to force the Hand of God will be indeed be forestalled. Those who seek the end of times are simply evil.
@ 5. Gordon
It’s commonly said the the USSR collapsed with nobody seeing it coming, even Gorby. Actually, some time before–I don’t remember how long, many months anyway–the Manchester Guardian published an article about the coming failure of the regime in Russia, pointing to warnings issuing from KGB officers. They, more than almost anyone else in the society, were in a position to know the truth.
The point where I decided the USSR was finished was in March 1991.
Gorbachev’s opponents announced a demonstration in Moscow. Gorby issued an edict forbidding it, and brought in 50,000 troops. The opposition held their demonstration anyway. Nothing happened. Gorby did not have the will to enforce his decree with arms. The entire power of the Soviet state rested on the people being to afraid to oppose it. When that fear was removed, there was nothing left to hold it up.
Kinuachdrach@14 said ”The standard view is that the American Revolution was a minority success — about 1/3 of people in the Colonies actually supported the Revolution; the remainder were split about evenly between those who opposed the Revolution, and those who simply kept their heads down. Something miraculous happened to let a minority take the lead.”
Nothing miraculous happened – it should come as no surprise to readers here that “the standard view” in this regard is a lie – a century deep lie which has been exposed numerous times over the years, but which still exists as “the standard view”.
The source of the persistent lie is a misreading of a letter written by Adams in 1813 in which he described American attitudes toward the French revolution and the resulting conflict between France and English which took during his term as President. It was clear both from the context and the substance of Adam’s letter that his breakdown applied to American attitudes toward the French revolution, not the American.
Consider Adam’s words. Referring to the neutral third, Adam’s wrote “The middle third, composed principally of the yeomanry, the soundest part of the nation, and always averse to war, were rather lukewarm both to England and France….” Now ask yourself ‘Why would Adams, of all people, praise the neutrals as the soundest part of the nation if he was referring to the American revolution?’
However, because Adams was himself neutral with regard to the French revolution and the war with England which followed, it makes perfect sense that he would describe the neutral position on the part of the citizens as “the soundest” relative to that conflict.
The evidence from all sources of the period is of overwhelming support for the patriots over the english among the general population. To be sure, there were tories and other loyalists, unevenly distributed. Still the record shows that nowhere outside the cities were the english forces safe from harassment and ambush – there were no loyalist strongholds to provide support. Documents from the period uniformly show confidence by Washington and others of strong majority support together with a remarkable lack of concern about local loyalists. Tidbits abound in individual stories. One which amused me came from Tory Anglican preacher Jonathan Boucher, who wrote of keeping two loaded pistols at the pulpit as he preached. Hardly indicative of a man confident of strong support even within the church one might think would be most loyal to the crown.
At one point Adams is on record at estimating that one in six was a tory. When applying for a loan from the Dutch, Adams estimated tory strength at one in twenty. So, perhaps the more accurate ballpark in which we might search for the truth about tories in America during our revolution lies between five to fifteen percent.
On the other hand, since marxists and academics seem to like the idea of elite minorities driving hegelian revolutions, we might expect the lie to continue as “the standard view.”
“The gap between Americans who want to govern themselves and politicians who want to rule over them may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century.”
– Scott Rasmussen
In Search of Self-Governance
#25 Skip_this_post:
The 1/3 that you say supported King George II actually didn’t support the Monarchy, they just didn’t support armed rebellion.
There was active armed opposition to the rebels by many loyalists, and not just in the southernmost colonies. New York had a large loyalist contingent, and there were loyalist militias.
41. Mel
Of the elites, “They “know” their own…”.
Have you ever noticed the sibilant pronunciation, the large S sounds on NPR? A group identifier.
We should mock their ideas, pretensions, and culture. Never ape them. Make it repellent to be a leftist.
Oh Lord, have I ever! The lack of testosterone is dramatically evident.
I can’t remember exactly when I started reading the BC, going back to the old site, but what a blessed day it was. Thank You all for your contributions here and in the case of Papa Ray, L3 and others, on the “front lines.”
God, I love this place.
PS: Please someone tell me that Subotai didn’t leave after the Whiskey Rebellion?
PSS: Long live Whiskey!
80. ScenarioA:
Interesting post. It appears to contradict my post at #82. I did not quantify, however, because I don’t claim to know how many actual, committed loyaists there were during the actual war of rebellion. I simply know that it’s documented that there were armed counter-revolutionary units. The most effective “counterrevolutionaries” were the American Indian tribes allied with the British. These tribes made no distinction between rebel and loyalist settlers when they attacked settlements on the frontier, which may have been a factor in weakening the resolve of whatever loyalists there were.
The other thing about the Indians is that it shows that unconventional and assymetric warfare was practiced even more by the British than by the colonists. Much of the serious fighting was done in the conventional fashion of the time, rather than the exaggerated notion of American guerrilla tactics.
American history is full of canards and factual distortions. One of my favorite is the “statistic” that 90% of infantrymen in WWII never fired their weapons (usually the M-1 Garand) in combat. I believe that turned out to be hooie.
66 …
Even more important than Africa is the specifically elite-bourgeois Chinese conversion towards Roman Catholicism; with the services performed in Latin.
Latin apparently frustrates the Commies — the Western Cant being hard to repeat during testimony, all that mumbling and all.
Networking between these Catholics seems to be reaching a critical mass and may in fact be much more significant than anything happening in the West.
Rather like Constantine flipping the despotic Roman Empire — hunks at a time — folding East into West and West into East would eclipse all other global tendencies.
Such a Washington-Beijing love fest would end WWIV in pretty short order. Islam could never withstand the pressure.
Since islamic states are basket cases, every last one, economic pressure would get their special operations troops back into the barracks.
Islam has no other projection power.
Pakistan is able to stay a player by straddling China and America. That straddle will collapse in a heartbeat if the big boys move into active alliance.
I rather suspect that the CCP sees such a development with different eyes than the PLA. For the Army the American boogie man justifies all budgets and senarios.
The big battle must eventually come: the economic empire of the PLA must be brought back into the control of the government.
(The PLA gets staggering revenues running its own forced labor factories that export to the naive West. In this they are twins with the SS under Himmler and the Islamic Republican Guard Corps under the mullahs. In each case they operate as a state within the State. In all three cases they ramped up exponentially — from puppy dog to guard dog to wolf-master of the estate. Such a dangerous breed.)
’bout Subotai -
I have it on good authority (an internet rumor I may have gilded a little) that illegal aliens got’em and are now engaged in sending probes up a certain orifice in order to find the source of his wisdom.
So they can have some.
82
New York City was the absolute bastion of the Loyalists. It was the last city held after the war by the Crown. There were so many to shift to points elsewhere in the Empire.
The vast bulk of such New Yorkers are known these days as liberal Canadians of Ontario. The Quebecois are still holding their noses with regard to those that stopped off too soon.
That’s why most of the Reactionary War was fought in New Jersey.
It also explains the perpetual disdain that New Yorkers for those West of the Hudson.
Their most direct connection to Europe always made New Yorkers the hip crowd. Everyone else was way behind the cultural curve — as viewed from Manhattan.
The classic New Yorker cover showing this distortion is extremely revealing. That the magazine, itself, embodies the self-conceit that is New York’ism, is fulsomely ironic.
Stormrider and Alexis:
My two cents about what constitutes an “American:”
One can be a Marxist and still be an American. The problem is that Marxism is simply incompatible with the Founders original intent, which reflected the original intent of the majority of American colonists. Still, in our recent past, ardent American Marxists and progressives retained a certain “Americanness” and sense of country that is either waning or absent from modern American marxists and progressives. Our very President seems to be ambivalent about being an American.
Once progressivism took root in America, it acquired an American character, but its philosophy clashed with that of both the founders and a majority of Americans of the progressives’ own time. The original intent, the “Idea of America” rooted in Natural Law and Rights and the Constitution that was spawned by that idea, are still the best way to be “an American.” The ideas that took root among American intellectuals 100 years ago were in direct and deliberate contravention to the most fundamental aspects of Americanism that make this country great. Just because we’ve put up with Marxism and its offshoots for a century doesn’t mean we have to declare it a legitimate expression of Americanism. Keep in mind that American colonists wandered away from the original communitarianism and rigidity of the Puritans, thereby rejecting that notion of governance and social order by actual practice. Americans came to like what they had evolved to, and were thus ripe for rebellion when George III made his blunders.
27. Hypenated-Texan
Charles @22
Great men, both, but in what way was Whitefield more consistently orthodox than Spurgeon?
……….
Agreed. I think that the author overstates the case for Whitefield. The only thing that can be said here is that Whitefield was going with the tide of history while Spurgeon was going against it. Why? Because the great awakening lead to the revolution but at the moment of the revolution’s success orthodox calvinism went into decline. A century later Spurgeon was preaching into the wind of Arianism that was first becoming the talk protestant churches at the time.
53. Storm-Rider
Charles 22: “Thomas Jefferson likewise considered the Trinity a kind of three-headed mythological creature. He promoted instead the god of reason…”
Thomas Jefferson rejected the Divinity of Christ but he didn’t reject the Orthodox Biblical God,
………..
No this is not right. When you reject the divinity of Christ you leave the pale of Christian orthodoxy.
In earlier ages people were typically burned at the stake for this heresy. One man, Servitus was a famous example among Calvinists of the 1500′s. The Albigensians were another example among the Catholics.
Perhaps for good reason as the Arian Bishops of North Africa offered little resistance to the Moslems in the 700′s. Indeed the Arian bishops of Spain invited in the Moors.
Even today the leader of the Church of England in recent years has stated that he has no problem with Sharia law. Why not? Perhaps because these days the Church of England has a low view of Christ. ie he’s just a man. This puts them in agreement with Islam about the person of Christ.
Charles, that’s Prince Charles, by his own utterances on the Church of England tells us he is wholly inappropriate to be King of England.
If the number one remaining rationale for the Monarch is to sustain cultural tradition, then the Prince of Wales is not qualified. He belongs on a soap-opera-reality-TV show.
He’s the ultimate in culling edge immorality.
Strangely, he thinks himself an expert on architecture. Where have we seen that before?
Stalin
Hitler
Kim Il Jong
Napoleon
And just about every other Caesar.
Grandiosity writ banal.
Scenario @ 80 — Very interesting; I admit that it never occurred to me to challenge that shibboleth, if only that the “thirds” breakdown seemed to fit how I understood what happened here in the South. Certainly the Brits were looking on the bright side of life, too, as they formulated their “Southern Strategy”–of course they might have had their share of Carolinian “Chalabi’s” haunting Whitehall as well.:)
Don Rodrigo @ 85 — I think the “Indian theater” remains one of the great untold stories of the Revolution–the leftists’ mewling that Americans never fought preemptive wars used to amuse me no end, considering the speed at which Carolinian and Virginia militias deployed into the backcountry in 1776. (There was a reason why the Southern tribes stayed mostly neutral for the duration of the war, the efforts of Dragging Canoe, Stuart, and Cameron not withstanding.) And of course if you think about it, the Chickamauga’s themselves were a multi-ethnic collection of various tribes and disaffected white Tories who made life interesting here in my neck of the woods almost until turn of the 19th Century.
Don Rodrigo@85 drew my attention to his comment @82, suggesting a possible conflict between my post at 80 with 82. At 82, he had written “There was active armed opposition to the rebels by many loyalists, and not just in the southernmost colonies. New York had a large loyalist contingent, and there were loyalist militias.”
My objective @80 was to contribute to the conversation with an insight into the origins of the 1/3-1/3-1/3 “standard view.” I am on firm ground in pointing to the lie. That particular claim, which has been repeated by leftists and academics in recent years, is false and we can show it is false.
As you correctly point out, the indians in the northern colonies remained loyal to England (to their sorrow after the war.) As you also point out, New York was a (the) center of tory support, which should be no surprise since NYC was occupied by the English during the war. And, as you additionally point out, many colonists fought for the English. I’ve read that in South Carolina, a larger number fought for the crown than against it. I’ve read that overall, 19,000 colonialists fought for the crown during the revolution, while 100,000 fled to Canada and elsewhere. (I’ve also seen that number challenged.)
I’ve read from a couple of sources that that 15% – 20% of the european population may have been loyalists. That is not in disagreement with Adams, recognizing that tories were a subset of the broader category. That would be up to 500,000 loyalists. Loyalists included, according to what I read, in addition to tories loyal to the crown, merchants and traders, most indians, some slaves, some indentured servants, some german immigrants (King George was german), and many who opposed violent revolution as the means to the end while generally agreeing with the ends the colonialists sought. A mixed bag, varying over time.
While accepting the above, I read between the lines in the words of our founders a high level of confidence that they represent the will of the majority, and I note the lack of concern in their writings about being undermined by loyalists. If the number of loyalists had been anywhere close to the number of patriots, I should think we would detect a very different tone. I think this is significant.
At the bottom line, I stand by the firm evidence for my singular claim that the ‘standard view’ is an ongoing marxist/academic lie, while agreeing with Jefferson on the fundamental reality of our founding: “All it’s councils … which are the life and soul of history must be forever unknown.” And, with the level of precision we have brought to the subject at this time, I see no conflict with 82.
“My guess is that when the answers are finally supplied and if they are successful they will reorganize the world. Not just the United States.”
I most certainly haven’t given up on American and have faith that we’ll be able to throw off the shackles of political correctness and Obamamania. However, I question whether the rest of the world will be able to also do so WITHOUT an armed populace. Which is the main difference between us and everyone else, and how we make things happen.
But I’m damned if I want my country to ride to the rescue AGAIN of Europe or Japan or Russia if those people decide they are ready to rise up and chart their own destinies, over and above what their Parliaments and unions and royalty have decreed. For one thing we can’t afford it. For a second thing, how many times do we need to keep re-rescuing these same countries and citizens before the lessons take? For a third thing, I’m just pissed at the bunch of them for jabbing at us at least since the Vietnam war and telling us that everything is all our fault.
The thing I’m concerned about in America that I think may be inherent just to us is our on-going conundrum about what to do with our different races. We can throw Obama and his Harvard elites out along with all the educators and public employees and union members, but what the hell are we going to do with 12 million Mexicans who can’t speak English and refuse to go home, and another 20 or so million black people who have decided that their preferred lifestyle is to drop out of school, live on welfare, have babies, and fight over piddly amounts of cash gained from pushing dope.
I don’t see the rest of the world having to deal with those two problems, or at least not worrying about them too much.
///
Does anyone else here at Belmont recall about two years ago when it was verboten to use words like “impeachment” in general discourse because that was seen as trouble-making and traitorous and possibly illegal? I would posit that the overall slant of Wretchard’s whole post is precisely taking that whole “throw the bums out” meme more and more into a planning stages reality sort of place. Yum.
The Tories have too much power in their urban enclaves. It may end up impossible to retain the geographic boundaries of our America. The new America may become a state of mind, partitioned and re-partitioned into spheres of influence – perhaps members of the Union in name only – with modern day Patriots, like an Adams or Jefferson, or an Alfred the Great fighting off the Viking hordes. We may have to develop our own new infrastructure with sympathetic farmers.
We may have to watch from afar as the Tories and their ethnic comrades decimate themselves, or join themselves to those who love the Constitution; and try to avoid the coming scourge.
Will it be like that? No; but my study of the Dark Ages suggests that it is no forgone conclusion that certain groups will not reduce themselves to zero; it could happen.
Against my better judgment, I would direct your attention to the subsection titled Loyalists in the Thirteen Colonies. There are two different letters at different times.
It suggests to me that those who were loyal would both fight for the crown and choose exile. Those who kept their heads down remained in the 13 Colonies to go along to get along with, as you say, the patriots.
http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/574245
I again recommend ” The Loyalists: Revolution, Exile, Settlement” by Christopher Moore as it is rather straightforward and declines to adhere to the Mel Gibson School of Historic reenactment.
96. cadams
You are right but keep in mind that the urban enclaves with their high-brow elites live day-to-day at the pleasure of the “bitter clingers” in flyover country. There is a map somewhere on the Internet that breaks down the last election on a county by county basis, it is almost entirely red. The bitter clingers control traffic between the urban enclaves and the source of food production. The cities would last but days if a division occurred in an unfriendly way.
As I said earlier I am willing to bet less than 5% of all that ammo ended up in Commie hands.
Thanks for all the responses on the Tory/Patriot breakdown.
Charles 91: “When you (referring to Thomas Jefferson) reject the divinity of Christ you leave the pale of Christian orthodoxy.”
True, Thomas Jefferson was not an Orthodox Christian; but that was never my contention. Regardless of his views on Jesus, Thomas Jefferson worshiped the Orthodox Biblical God as the excerpt from his second inagural address proves.
“I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with His providence and our riper years with His wisdom and power…” Thomas Jefferson
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jefinau2.asp
Thomas Jefferson was not a Deist, nor was he an Orthodox Christian. As with the rest of us, God will judge his soul; not any man.
cadams #30, **Thank you** for recommending those books.
97…
Any opinion off of a http://WWW….RU website makes me cringe of the First Directorate.
’nuff said.
ScenarioA @ 80 & 92: “So, perhaps the more accurate ballpark in which we might search for the truth about tories in America during our revolution lies between five to fifteen percent.”
Thanks for the insights, ScenarioA. I learn something every day.
Don Rodrigo & Storm Rider
Woodrow Wilson was an American, regardless of what I think of his politics. Benedict Arnold was an American, even though he was also a traitor. One can be an American without adhering to Jeffersonian ideals of liberty.
Thomas Jefferson was pro-Jacobin. He was an important Founding Father, but his voice was not the only one for the Revolution. In my opinion, he wasn’t even the most important American statesman of the Revolution.
The ideals of our Founding Fathers clashed against each other. Moreover, the ideals they fought for weren’t necessarily the ones that would later be attributed to them. The American Revolution attracted many different kinds of revolutionaries, Alexander Hamilton no less than Thomas Jefferson, George Washington no less than Thomas Paine, James Madison no less than Patrick Henry, John Adams no less than Samuel Adams.
Language is a gift from God, but it is also a tool in our hands. Imagination is a gift from God, but it also a tool in our hands. Thus it is for liberty. Far from being an idol to venerate, liberty is a Promethean fire that gives us great power. That power can be a curse or it can be a blessing, depending upon whether the citizens have the requisite maturity to use that power responsibly.
“Liberty” can also be a word tossed around by tyrants who don’t care about the word means but do see it as a means to oppress others. Take, for example, the Jacobins…
Eden or just Yasgur’s Farm?
I wonder if the left has ever had a tank man moment?
If the Chinese people had been allowed to view the video feed “man stops tanks”, would that have been the defining moment of an enlightened revolution? Or were the tank corps that rolled in from elsewhere in China solidifying Mao’s revolution?
does the Concord Hymn describe the moment the revolution was won, or just the moment the mental revolt overcame inertia?
Is the voice of a Marine vet requesting the government stay away from his kids, or challenging a congressman to fulfil his oath of office, the beginning of the revolution, or just the dawning of necessity? Personally I would nominate Joe the plumber’s confrontation of not so candid-ate Obama, as a sort of “tank man” moment but it does not compare to what happened on Concord green.
Given the choice between Emerson and Joni Mitchell, I have to say Emerson gets the nod here. But for many that is still not the choice.
(the link to finish the last thought)
For them the choice may be Walt Whitman
My own songs, awaked from that hour;
And with them the key, the word up from the waves,
The word of the sweetest song, and all songs,
That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet,
The sea whisper’d me.
SING
Alexis 104
Woodrow Wilson brought us the so-called “progressive” income tax which is of course a regressive Marxist idea. There is no limit to Federal domestic taxation under the 16th amendment.
“In his first term, Wilson persuaded a Democratic Congress to pass the Federal Reserve Act, Federal Trade Commission, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Federal Farm Loan Act and America’s first-ever federal progressive income tax in the Revenue Act of 1913.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson
“Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable… A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
Alexis 104,
Despite what you said there was unity of mind among our Founding Fathers in regard to human liberty; that people are free because they are made in God’s image – a God who is free; that people are free because God made them free “within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”
“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.” Alexander Hamilton
“The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.” Samuel Adams
“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” Samuel Adams
“Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens . . . are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion.” Thomas Jefferson
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?” Thomas Jefferson
“On the distinctive principles of the Government … of the United States, the best guides are to be found in… The Declaration of Independence, as the fundamental Act of Union of these States.” James Madison
It is true that the Jacobins perverted liberty into tyranny; they did so by using their perverted liberty to violate the limits drawn around them by the equal rights of others. Thomas Jefferson believed the Jacobins were bringing forth a Republican form of government with a Constitution similar to our own. He could not have foreseen that the Jacobins were instead creating the first modern totalitarian state – complete with a mass-murdering tyrant.
100. Storm-Rider
True, Thomas Jefferson was not an Orthodox Christian;
Thomas Jefferson was not a Deist, nor was he an Orthodox Christian.
……
The problem here is one of time.
Jefferson could most adequately be described as a Unitarian. While he did not attend church he did spend much time in his later years in association with prominant Unitarians including Joseph Priestly and John Adams.
As many as five American presidents were unitarians. (That is they did not believe in the trinity.)
But today no unitarian could be elected president.
Why not? The denomination has been rolled into pond scum. It embraced homosexuality for the pastor’s long ago. Now the big thing is polyamory among the parishioners.
Basically what this means is that the denomination doesn’t have any inner morality-or any inner spring. It basically takes on the mores and ways of the culture around it. So that when the culture goes bad, the denomination goes bad.
That means that God himself was never on the throne of Grace in that denomination. But only men conjuring.
There is more to it than that. The Arian Heresy was embraced by all the European protestant seminaries after about 1850 through the higher criticism school. The arian Heresy ascendence coincided with the ascendece of Atheisim the the philosophy departments of the European Universities. When Nietzche was talking about the death of God, he was also talking about was happening in his preacher father’s church.
Basically, the Arian Heresy stripped the European protestant churches of any power to ward off the attacks of the atheists. After all, a church has no power when the center of its worship is a human sacrifice.
This is why the European protestants collapsed in less than 100 years.
In the USA the arian heresy made it debut into the liberal mainline protestant denominations in about 1890. And completed its conquest about 1930-40.
Today the divide liberal and evangelical christians is over who Jesus is. The liberals at bottom believe that Jesus is just a man. The evangelicals believe as Christians of old — that Jesus is fully God and fully man. The liberal denominations are rapidly moving toward allowing homosexuals among their pastorate. And their membership is steadily shrinking like the European churches before.
It is a much different story for evangelicals whose numbers are yearly growing even as they are being pushed out of the public square.
Charles,
Thanks for the interesting info. and analysis regarding the evolution of Christianity – some of it as you point out is not good evolution. I’m a fairly Orthodox Christian, but I agree with Jefferson and Madison that Church must be separated from State.
“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.” James Madison
Our Constitution does in fact separate Church from State because there is no provision therein for Churches (or Mosques or Synagogues) to make law. On the other hand our Declaration unites God to State by acknowledgment of the individual’s God-given equal rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness (property earned through labor) – the unamendable moral/natural law of the United States. The European separation of God from State resulted in Fascism and Communism – totalitarian political systems opposed to our Declaration of Independence.
The European separation of God from State resulted in Fascism and Communism – totalitarian political systems opposed to our Declaration of Independence.
And our current elites would like it to be that way as well. I detect open hostility from them on the issues of both natural law and the Declaration of Independence, most especially in our latest addition to the Supreme Court.
Incidentally, one can be an agnostic, or even an atheist and yet be comfortable with “Natural” Law, simply by invoking the laws of nature, rather than its Creator. After all, militiant atheists love to harp on how (in their view) the more prominent founders were “virtual agnostics” or something. This is not a trivial point, because too many progressives disavow the notion of unalienable rights. Whatever device such folks need to be brought back into the fold of Liberty is fine with me.
The radical atheist, i.e.: the Marxist, rejects God because they see themselves as gods; they will never recognize any authority or power higher than themselves; they will therefore never recognize the God-given natural equal rights of the individual. The Marxist believes in the current truth that all men have evolved unequally, that some men (themselves) are endowed by natural selection with the unalienable right to dominate the less equal men – those men who evolved with lesser value and therefore lesser rights. The Marxist ruling class possesses the so-called rights of the lesser individuals; the Marxist ruling class possesses their so-called rights to life, liberty and property. The Marxist ruling class rejects natural law because they see themselves as the creators of all law and of human nature it’s self. The Marxist ruling class are the Pigs of Animal Farm.
“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… 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
110. Storm-Rider
Heritage Foundation
The Mythical “Wall of Separation”: How a Misused Metaphor Changed Church–State Law, Policy, and Discourse
Published on June 23, 2006
No metaphor in American letters has had a more profound influence on law and policy than Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state.” Today, this figure of speech is accepted by many Americans as a pithy description of the constitutionally prescribed church-state arrangement, and it has become the sacred icon of a strict separationist dogma that champions a secular polity in which religious influences are systematically and coercively stripped from public life.
In our own time, the judiciary has embraced this figurative phrase as a virtual rule of constitutional law and as the organizing theme of church-state jurisprudence, even though the metaphor is nowhere to be found in the U.S. Constitution. In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the United States Supreme Court was asked to interpret the First Amendment’s prohibition on laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” “In the words of Jefferson,” the justices famously declared, the First Amendment “was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between church and State’…[that] must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.”
In the half-century since this landmark ruling, the “wall of separation” has become the locus classicus of the notion that the First Amendment separated religion and the civil state, thereby mandating a strictly secular polity. The trope’s continuing influence can be seen in Justice John Paul Stevens’s recent warning that our democracy is threatened “[w]henever we remove a brick from the wall that was designed to separate religion and government.”[1]
What is the source of this figure of speech, and how has this symbol of strict separation between religion and public life come to dominate church-state law and policy? Of Jefferson’s many celebrated pronouncements, this is one of his most misunderstood and misused. I would like to challenge the conventional, secular myth that Thomas Jefferson, or the constitutional architects, erected a high wall between religion and the civil government.[2]
(For the rest of the article go here
Charles,
I don’t see any conflict between separation of church and state (Constitution) and unity of God and state (Declaration); that was the wisdom of our Founding Fathers. The problem here is that the Marxists and other Secularists use mantra of “Separation of Chruch and State” as cover for separation of God from state. In my mind it is that simple.
Those of us who believe in the sacred God-given equal rights of the individual need to fight for that – for the Declarational (not Biblical) unity of God and State. Unfortunately all churches, mosques and synagogues are corrupted by evil men (and women), so we must have separation of church, mosque, synagogue from state. By fighting for no separation of church from state one inadvertently opens the door for unity of mosque and state. I love the Bible, but it can never be the basis for unification of our nation under unamendable natural/moral law – that is where the Declaration of Independence comes in – we must fight for it – just as our Founding Fathers did.
114. Storm-Rider
There was a huge difference between what Jefferson intended and what the 1947 Justice Black court construed.
The “high and impregnable” wall central to the past 50 years of church-state jurisprudence is not Jefferson’s wall; rather, it is the wall that Black–Justice Hugo Black–built in 1947 in Everson v. Board of Education.
The differences between the two walls are suggested by Jefferson’s record as a public official in both Virginia and the nation, which shows that he initiated practices and implemented policies inconsistent with Justice Black’s and the modern Supreme Court’s “high and impregnable” wall of separation. Even among the metaphor’s proponents, this has generated much debate concerning the proper dimensions of the wall. Whereas Jefferson’s wall expressly separated the institutions of church and state, the Court’s wall, more expansively, separates religion and all civil government.
Jefferson’s wall separated church and the federal government only. By incorporating the First Amendment non-establishment provision into the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Black’s wall separates religion and civil government at all levels–federal, state, and local.
By extending its prohibitions to state and local jurisdictions, Black turned the First Amendment, as ratified in 1791, on its head. A barrier originally designed, as a matter of federalism, to separate the national and state governments, and thereby to preserve state jurisdiction in matters pertaining to religion, was transformed into an instrument of the federal judiciary to invalidate policies and programs of state and local authorities. As the normative constitutional rule applicable to all relationships between religion and the civil state, the wall that Black built has become the defining structure of a putatively secular polity.
#84 Vincent Vega
Thank you for the kind words. No, I have not left because of the loss of Whiskey. Indeed, it happened when I was taking a few days off to deal with some things around the house, and I am not sure exactly what went on. When I next looked, there was talk of him being gone. For the record, I didn’t agree with everything he said by any means, but there was a kernel of truth in much of what he said. It was a matter of taking it too far, perhaps.
I have been away for a while. During my absence some contacted me to see if the Black Maria had pulled up in front of my house. Nothing that dramatic, at least so far. There was some physical difficulty in typing for a while on my part. It involved a car door slamming on my left hand. My keyboarding is bad enough at the best of times. It was not even vaguely feasible for a period of time.
Secondly, there were some medical problems with a daughter. After we got away from the local hospital and a doctor who gives every evidence of dedicating himself to reducing the population of my small mountain town [Amongst other things, he gave a snap diagnosis of a specific terminal condition. When I none too gently (the rumors that I am a cuddly little fuzzball are definitely Dezhinformatzia) insisted on the specific and common test that is definitively diagnostic of the condition, it turned out that the doctor was flat wrong and he was really pissed to have it shown. His response was to order her discharge from the hospital while she was still doped up and on IV's; no follow up tests, no referrals to a specialist, no transfer to another hospital that could care for her.] and got her to a real hospital in Denver, we got more care and treatment in two hours than in days at home. We are now recuperating.
In any case, I have been gone for a while, and may disappear again for a while. But I have not abandoned BELMONT CLUB. I will be back as soon as things settle down.
Subotai Bahadur
gentlemen:
The folks at MIT have kindly posted notes and materials of past courses, including “21H.001 How to Stage a Revolution
As taught in: Fall 2007″
The slides are sparse, but class 3 looks interesting
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/history/21h-001-how-to-stage-a-revolution-fall-2007/
116. Subotai Bahadur
It’s great to hear from you, although not so great to hear about you and your daughter’s health problems.
I also asked about you a few days ago, and I’ve also looked for you at the Rott and at Whiskey’s blog.
Jefferson’s refusal, as President, to set aside days in the public calendar for religious observances contrasted with his actions in Virginia where, in the late 1770s, he framed “A Bill for Appointing Days of Public Fasting and Thanksgiving” and, as governor in 1779, designated a day for “publick and solemn thanksgiving and prayer to Almighty God.”
How can Jefferson’s public record on religious proclamations in Virginia be reconciled with the stance he took as President of the United States? The answer, I believe, is found in the principle of federalism.