The Life of Ants
A centrally managed, but inherently unnatural, system requires a lot of inputs and control mechanisms to keep up the appearance of stability. Because everything is imposed from the top, not from the operation of rational choice from below, the level of costs rises in proportion to the level of desired control. By contrast, a society that relies on individual rational choice need only watch out for the outliers, such as criminal behavior. They can leave everything else alone, and manage things by exception, not by detailed specification.
Recently, Fox News reported the story of a little girl whose lunch box was disallowed (and her parents fined) because it did not meet some obscure standard. Who knew there were food police in school? “Trace Gallagher reported that a lunch inspector at the school told the girl she couldn’t eat her turkey sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice. Instead, providing the girl with a USDA-approved lunch with the following guidelines: one serving of meat, one serving of grains, and two servings of fruit or vegetables.”
Well, you learn something new every day. But the most interesting aspect of the incident came from a follow-up story. The inspection system is paid for by the administration’s “stimulus program.” Stimulus program? But of course. The effort required to protect little girls from turkey sandwiches is not to be underestimated. Without billions, how could you afford it? Here’s what it takes to screen a sandwich:
it still isn’t clear who the inspector was who deemed this little girl’s lunch was unhealthy, but that it was an agent from the Department of Health and Human Services at the state level. Apparently a division within the department comes to the school every year to conduct an evaluation related to the More at Four program, which is a North Carolina state program.
Burrows said, “As part of the evaluation, they look at students lunches that are brought from home to make sure that they meet USDA guidelines. And this school, we’re told, lost points this year because too many children were bringing their lunches from home and they did not meet, according to this inspector, the USDA guidelines.”
The costs of running a society by detailed regulation do not scale in a linear fashion. Adding a single little thing requires committees to coordinate between committees; oversight and review functions; evaluation units and managers to manage everything. And that doesn’t even count the cost of politically selling and defending each and every new mandate.
Defending and selling all these expansions of government power is also expensive because you have to beat down the objectors. The most interesting thing about reports that Media Matters, a George Soros-funded tax-exempt organization, has an “enemies list” is that it exists at all. Because once you start, where does it end? A leaked internal memorandum shows that its confidential intention is to investigate “the backgrounds, connections, operations and political and financial activities of the individuals” of the following:
News Corp
Fox News Channel
Fox Business Network
Fox News’ websitesConservative news sites
WorldNetDaily
BigHollywood.com
NewsMax
BigGovernment.comConservative think thanks
The Heritage Foundation
American Enterprise Institute
Cato InstituteNews Corp executives
Rupert Murdoch
Chase Carey
David DeVoe
Lawrence Jacobs
James MurdochConservative donors
Peter Thiel
Richard Mellon Scaife
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
John M. Olin Foundation
Koch Family FoundationsFox News executives
CEO Roger Ailes
Senior vice president Michael Clemente
Vice president of news Sean Smith
Vice president of new editorial product Jay Wallace
Fox Business Network executive vice president Kevin MageeFox personalities
Glenn Beck
Sean Hannity
Bill O’ReillyFox senior production and corporation staff
Hannity executive producer John Finley
On the Record executive producer Meade Cooper
O’Reilly Factor senior executive producer David Tabacoff
Fox & Friends executive producer Lauren PettersonPolitical figures
Carly Fiorina
David Vitter
Eric Cantor
John Boehner
Mitch McConnell
Michele Bachmann
Steve King
Whether or not one believes Media Matters is acting properly or improperly with respect to their tax exempt status, anyone can see this effort will cost a lot of money. What is less obvious is that it is also prone to geometric increase. Because the list isn’t long enough. It is never long enough.
from nro
“When I was spending a lot of time at the Tennessee State Capitol while running a state-based free-market think tank in the 90s, a veteran conservative state legislator told me how to tell the conservatives from the liberals at the legislature. Check the parking lot at 4:30 in the afternoon, he said, quitting time for state employees. All the conservative legislators and staffers hit the door at quitting time. Why would anyone with any sense want to spend any more time than necessary doing the government thing? Eight hours of trying to slow down Leviathan was enough for one day.
Conversely, the liberal legislators and staffers generally remain hunkered down in their offices and cubicles long past 4:30. He noted that, for the liberals, it’s not a job but a calling and the opportunity to expand government and do the people’s work isn’t limited to 8-5. Funny thing, I noticed that he was right; the lights were burning in the liberals’ offices long after the conservatives’ offices had gone dark. And was that the muffled sound of demonic laughter I heard as I passed their offices?!
Government may be, perhaps, the only job where you’ll find a strong liberal work ethic.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/291119/simultaneous-good-and-bad-news-conservatism-not-all-consuming
Remarkable…
A high rise with a KEEP.
I thought such structures went out with the middle ages.
—–
More likely the Keep is but dross to hide the wave-guides…
I’ll bet you could cook a chicken anywhere near that roost.
On his website Jerry Pournelle last year told the story of the Federal Bunny Inspectors. It seems that if you raise rabbits for food, no problemo, bon appetit. Raise them for pets and you must have the Federal Bunny Inspectors examine them. A child who raised a couple of dozen bunnies or so and sold them for about $5.00 in profits on each was fined hundreds of dollars for failing to have the rabbits Federally inspected.
And it seems that nationwide there are 27 Federal employees charged with the awesome and challenging task of inspecting bunnies. Tragically, none appear to be assigned to the Playboy Mansion.
I was once in a meeting at Cape Canaveral (harkening back to a previous thread, at a remote oceanfront building once used for liasions between JFK and NJB/MM) and we asked a government civilian employee what should be done about implementing a particular environmental regulation. He replied very frankly, “You’re asking me? Well, I do this for a living and my answer is that we should implement that regulation fully, because that way my job is protected and I have more opportunites for promotion and fewer chances of being laid off.” The regulation in question dealt with cleaning up contaminated industrial sites, theoretically so thoroughly that they would be good enough to be used as children’s playgrounds. The fact that the industrial site was a former launch complex on an Air Force Base made the question of implemention a valid one; but the expert answer we would receive was going to be based on the personal aspirations of the Federal employee, not a well reasoned technical analysis.
I think blert’s right. How far is that thing from the Bermuda Triangle?
Maybe next year we can get PJMedia on that list.
–
The girl who lost her turkey sandwich was given CHICKEN NUGGETS instead, I presume fried? Where are the “veggies” in that? Ketchup?
Not a lot of four year olds eat a lot of veggies anyway. Fried zuccini with apricot jam dip, maybe, but even zuccini is a fruit not veggie.
–
Meanwhile, yet another dem politico goes around the bend:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/291178/maxine-waters-boehnor-and-cantor-are-demons-noah-glyn
No doubt many would say that Maxine Waters has been around the bend for some time, but back in the day I thought she represented her views and district with some intelligence, seriousness, and good will.
This is from the same Government that sues States that want to identify illegal aliens? Is this the same government that fights drug testing before people get free money? I almost hopes the whole Ponzi scam fails soon, almost. Politicians are the fruit that should be hanging from trees.
It’s not about health of the kids at all. If no crisis exists, then manufacture one.
Oooo, these poor dears are not being taken care of by their parents. We have to ban lunches from home. All children must eat school-provided lunches. School-provided lunches? Union Jobs. Democratic Voters.
It’s about power via having more snouts in the trough.
The thought that any government entity — local, state or federal — anywhere in the US can tell a parent what they must feed their child is staggering. The arrogance of a government that tries to do that makes my skin crawl. Is this for real? In America? In 2012? Hard to believe. Tar and feathers are not sufficient for the lawmaker who gave birth to this monstrosity — time for pitchforks and ropes.
Wretchard said:
“The requirements eventually grow so large that even the Eye of Soros cannot cope. The number of minions who must daily toil in this seething mess to discern and implement their Master’s Will is enormous. And sooner or later, they will start getting in each other’s way.”
I’ve always thought that a big weakness with the “1984″ storyline were the telescreens. Supposedly the telescreens were everywhere including bathroom stalls and someone at the Ministry of Love was always watching. Keep in mind that the availability of computer technology was never assumed in “1984″. This implied that some poor schlub at the Ministry of Love spent his entire day looking at 30 monitors depicting different toilets in various stages of use. If the hapless schlub were to fall asleep on the job or become hypnotized then it was off to Room 101 for torture and execution as an Enemy of the State.
The employee turnover at the Ministry of Love would have been extreme (It’s not easy being a minion to Big Brother).
This does bring up the point that in about 20 years, computer intelligence will be smart enough to monitor the 30 different toilets in various stages of use. Machines will be able to monitor our every move and listen to every word spoken. The moment the machine detects any thoughtcrime then a human agent at the Ministry of Love would be notified and deal with the miscreant.
The Eye of Soros. Perfect! May this coinage spread far and wide.
No wonder so many parents are opting out of public education. What are the elitists going to do next? implement a mandatory subsidy for the lunches of home-schooled children so that they can send out an inspector?
What is really strange is that given the recent news concerning health insurance regulation, such a subsidy with the connected inspections seems almost possible. Yucky government.
He said his name was Tony
But he had such shifty eyes
That I thought he was a phony
Till he took away my fries
Saying those things aren’t healthy
And your mom should be ashamed
And he looked into my lunchbox
And took out the things he named
As contrary to the FDA
And Michelle’s wishes as well
Like my momma’s Saltefleske
And a cod dish I can’t spell
My fried apples he could not decide
If they would pass the test
And so he ate them all and said
He thought that would be best
For fried apples had much sugar
And were fried in sizzling fat
Making them much too unhealthy
For a boy and that was that
Then he tossed my turnkey sandwich
Saying turkey too was banned
But it’s not the turkey that I mind
It’s baloney I can’t stand
The word is “overhead”. It has killed many a business. And many a society too. Joseph Tainter’s 1988 book “The Collapse of Complex Societies” traces the repeated societal failures across continents and millenia due to overhead costs which outgrew each society’s ability to afford them.
With seemingly almost every government on Earth now spending more than it collects, and financing the difference by printing money, it is undeniable that we are in the age of Peak Government. What form the collapse of the western world will take is still up for grabs. But collapse cometh. And maybe it is about time too!
So, what are they doing about the kids with gluten allergies? How about milk allergies? They take away that kid’s lunch and substitute something totally inappropriate and there would be (rightly) hell to pay.
I pity the fool that takes away one of the autistic kid’s lunches and attempts to substitute something that the government says is “appropriate”. One autistic kid I worked with would only eat Lay’s potato chips, cheese pizza from a particular pizzeria, and bananas. That is IT. Another will eat only fruit, no veggies, no milk. I suppose that is why it was the preschool where the lunches were seized. Older children would have hurt that lunch “inspector”.
Kinuachdrach @ 13 said:
“With seemingly almost every government on Earth now spending more than it collects, and financing the difference by printing money, it is undeniable that we are in the age of Peak Government. What form the collapse of the western world will take is still up for grabs. But collapse cometh”
I’ve long thought that it will end with a bang. However I’m slowly coming to the view that it might go out with a whimper. Those of us who still have jobs won’t bother to show up for work because we’ll have nothing to do. We’ll still be paid but the money won’t be worth anything. The official inflation rate will be less than 3% but everyone will know that the number is a lie like the the employment rate. We’ll still have cars and gasoline but no one will be driving because gas will cost $100/gallon. The DJIA will be at 100,000 but no one will care because all the trading will be between PPT robots. We’ll be living in a pseudo-economy where everything is just fine on paper but in reality we’ll all be slowly starving to death. It’ll be a variation on the “boiling frog”.
I have walked past that embassy in havana, while I was standing thier a red 59 chevy drove by in mint condition….
the thing about a “statist” state is everything within their reach and view is thiers. they own it.
those children are within the government minions grasp so the parents no longer have a say and the government effectively owns them.
I rented some horses from a modest farmer while in cuba and went riding in the cuban hills when we popped out at the top through the woods we were overlooking a beach far below, very pretty, anyway the farmer told me how he used to have 4 horses but one was stolen a few months earlier (its against the law for cubans to have red meat)they get chicken or pork when they get any.
well he notified the police that his horse had been stolen in desperate hope it might be found before it disapeared into cooking pots.
the police took a report and later a government official came and presented him a bill.
he had lost government property and they assesed him the value of the horse which he would have to pay the state.
so, he had raised that horse from a foal from a lineage of horses that had been in his family before the revolution, but since the state owns everything including you,
it sends you a bill for losing government property…..
In any other time, an evil, full-time enemy of the State would be hung in the public square. Soros has absolutely no redeeming social value and the fact he has become the champion of not only leftists but a frightening number of elected democrats, shows how entrenched the enemy is and how fierce the battle will be.
I am torn between fighting this evil tooth and nail or simply allowing everything to collapse as quickly as possible so the healing can begin. The New England Patriots wisely tried this in the Super Bowl-letting the Giants waltz into the endzone uncontested in order to get the ball back with some time remaining.
If that structure is not a tribute to Isengard, then I don’t know what is.
Not Isengard, Mordor. And that’s being charitable.
Eggplant
“The employee turnover at the Ministry of Love would have been extreme (It’s not easy being a minion to Big Brother).
This does bring up the point that in about 20 years, computer intelligence will be smart enough to monitor the 30 different toilets in various stages of use. Machines will be able to monitor our every move and listen to every word spoken. The moment the machine detects any thoughtcrime then a human agent at the Ministry of Love would be notified and deal with the miscreant.”
There’s still the human element. I recall reading not long ago of a court clerk checking porn sites on his computer during a rape trial. I wouldn’t expect employees of the Ministry of Love to be much different.
Turnover at the NKVD was murderous.
“Between the aims of the post-totalitarian system and the aims of life there is a yawning abyss: while life, in its essence, moves toward plurality, diversity, independent self-constitution, aud self organization, in short, toward the fulfillment of its own freedom, the post-totalitarian system demands conformity, uniformity, and discipline. While life ever strives to create new and improbable structures, the posatotalitarian system contrives to force life into its most probable states. The aims of the system reveal its most essential characteristic to be introversion, a movement toward being ever more completely and unreservedly itself, which means that the radius of its influence is continually widening as well. This system serves people only to the extent necessary to ensure that people will serve it.
http://vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=eseje&val=2_aj_eseje.html&typ=HTML
Not many people mention that the school program is designed for 4-year-olds, and if lunch is packed, it means they are there for a full school day. Or it’s a topic that ruffles my feathers more than it does others, I guess, as I really don’t think having 6+ hours a day of schooling at age four is a great idea. But I do know people who want universal preschool to be a national priority, and they tend to lead the demands for all-day Kindergarten, too, which has led to some awkward moments for me in the schoolyard when I refused to sign a petition. “This is for the children!” “Your children, not mine, thank you.” I am not at all surprised that someone is policing packed lunches.
My children went home and crashed on the couch after half-day preschool and Kindergarten. Slackers.
#5 Josh ~ exactly re the veggies! Turns out the little 4 year old likes fruit, but not veggies. Took a while to understand that her lunch was seized and replaced by the USDA approved lunch, which had chicken nuggets and the specified helpings of veggies – she would only eat the nuggets…. They did let her bring home her homemade lunch with the note to the mother and the $1.25 charge for replacing the turkey and cheese sandwich…. first they came for the smokers, then your healthcare, then salt and NOW, your child’s lunchbox… cliff? what cliff? we’re over and falling rapidly.
I wonder if the 80%-20% rule is working. I figure 80% of the populace is using hard work, talent, intelligence, persistence, character, and etc., to get ahead and make a living, the other 20% doesn’t have the talent, character, or intelligence, so they “conspire” scam, and take from the 80%, Of course every once in a while 50% of the 80% will thin out the 20% of the parasites till the parasites numbers get down to a controllable level. See also “undeserving poor” vs. “deserving poor.”
Our disgraced former governor, Mike Easley (D-NC), was part of a long line of NC governor’s whose mantra is “for the children” and “our most pressing issue is education.” (For all this $ and effort, NC remained for that entire time ranked 49th in educational acheivement. This crap started with the Jimmy Carter of governors, Jim Hunt, a classic tax and spender. By the time Easley came along, he was almost forced to reach into the womb for more “subjects.”
Anyway, Easley started and promoted the educational platform called “More at Four.” We anxiously awaited the next obvious step in this process, “Ph.D at 3.”
The main problem with the regulatory state is that it tends to expand so that regulation, rather than being a means to an end, becomes an end in itself. Like a cancer it grows, seeking to regulate everything. Any justification will do, before or after the fact, groundless or not. It is a solution that does not depend upon the existence of an actual problem–that can be supplied after the fact.
Presenting the parents with a bill for the chicken nuggets shows that someone has a sense of style gained from studying the Chinese Communists. When they execute you they bill your family for the bullet.
The school undoubtedly has a rule against students using cell phones. They will claim all sorts of high minded reasons for such a rule but the real reason is that they are afraid that children would send texts home like “Mom they took my lunch n gave me nuggets.” That would produce fast acting mobs and a public horsewhipping. Now they can safely hide behind anonymity rules, to protect the child you are assured, while the bureaucratic beast absorbs outrage through its shield of invincible sloth and indifference.
Isn’t there a government agency that is supposed to protect us from chicken nuggets?
Isn’t there a government agency that is supposed to protect us from chicken nuggets?
Only when they’re supplied by the private sector or individuals. When the government does it its okay. Its a definitional thing. It always is.
The really maddening thing about this Media Matters/George Soros cabal is that their members really can’t be all that smart if they’re actually going to issue an official memo with their “enemies list” explicitly spelled out. I cannot imagine why they feel the need to circulate something reminding each other of who the enemy is; guys like them are like the Borg – incapable of independent thought.
The average Belmont Club reader probably has more intellectual capability and (more importantly) common sense in their pinkie fingers than all these Media Matters clowns put together and yet, the clowns seem to be winning. How do we counter that?
Not even a day had past the November 2008 election that I received an email that mildly stunned me from some Cousin It who wanted me to know that I had voted Republican in the presidential election and that they knew who I was and that some vague threat hung over my head because I had made the wrong choice in their muddy piss yellow eyes. I read this a couple of times and too this day regret deleting the creepy corespondent because maybe their could have been someway to identify the bugger or buggers. My thoughts were simply as you described why would anybody invest time and energy to finger scratch out missives to recalcitrant right-wingers, who are and infestation and a pestilence to the left. But much like those plagues will renew the earth once they have swept through and applied their hygienic counter intuitive magic. Condescending. That is always the sensibility the left vibes. They start there and it always evolves into a threat. With that email it evolved into a threat in one day.
“I cannot imagine why they feel the need to circulate something reminding each other of who the enemy is”
-i think it’s because the thrill is in naming the enemy, in showing you know who the chief conspirators are, that you’re in on the game, even, I suppose, if it might come at the expense of some more effective (but to what end really?) clandestine tactics. Increasingly, we live in a world where our choice of means defines us, where they are the ends we seek. Regulation exists for itself, as do freedom and democracy, with no higher purpose other than the faith that these means are the way to minimize human violence. As long as they are naming (you or I might say scapegoating) the supposed source of violence, they’re doing their job in a world where status is gained by finger pointing, not by achieving anything more. More to the point perhaps, they gain that status by affiriming, creating, or supporting the shared mental scene on which status, and all other goods of the left’s political economy, can be marked out and exchanged. As long as everyone knows what thoughts and personalities are taboo: mission accomplished: we now have a common scene, or consciousness, defining who is important and who is evil. In other words, the left are ultimately more interested in sustaining their world of conspiratorial thinking than in acting into and transforming the enemy. They like the enemy just the way he is.
And for the freedom lover, individual freedom is an end in itself because no one can know in advance what is to be gained by it (or what possible future will be lost should it be regulated away).
Damn, that is one sinister looking tower. I had the same thoughts as blert about the real function of such an ugly tribute to Communism. Some of those shapes look awfully close to microwave feedhorns.
And who noticed this little gem?
God forbid! We have too many parents who give a damn about their kids and provide meals for them! That won’t do. Increase the State Dependency Quota!
Talk about perverse incentives…
(And I’m beginning to half-seriously think that knowingly sending your child to public school is akin to child abuse)
15 @Eggplant
I’ve recently come to the same conclusion. Not 100% convinced that it doesn’t end with some fireworks, given the feeling that the dominoes around the world might topple over with one tiny push. But I figured things would already be deep in the crapper by now, and somehow the country keeps shambling on like a zombie. Hard to know what to expect any more.
18 & 19
Perhaps a fusion of both. Just top with the Eye of
SorosSauron, and the pairing would be complete.Looking at all the things the Obama Administration and its enablers have done more and more it looks like Obama has started a civil war, he just hasn’t declared it outright yet. He basically is threatening to use the power of the federal armed executive branches to force obedience from over half the populace. I predict a Ft. Sumter moment on his part before 2013 when some group or state doesn’t roll over and play dead for him.
In my state (CA) one of the counties (Los Angeles) just passed an ordiance in which the act of throwing a football or fresbie on the beach during the summer during prescribed hours subjects you to fine of $1,000. I kid you not. Have we lost our minds?? Everytime I hear about things like the kid’s lunch being taken away or fining people for throwing a frisbie on the beach I wonder where is the rage? The halls of government should be under siege by angry citizens. But no, we go about our day like good little sheeple.
Transman (34),
I read they got caught, and backed off.
“What finally undermines centralized systems as diverse as the Soviet Union and the EU is cost. Eventually they become too complex to remain workable and run out of other people’s money. “
Wretchard, is there a specific reason why you omitted the US from that list above? The US is completely centralized on the axis of Wall St and K St where the behemoth corporations get the government to do their bidding.
Nigel Farage has an interview on KWN where he talks about how Greece is falling apart and the wealthy are buying Kalashnikovs in the black market to defend their villas.
One big advantage the EU has over the US is that secession is still conceivable. The EU states still have their own:
- National armies and no EU army
- Gold reserves
- National banks
- Post offices
- Commercial banks
- Energy companies
- Excellent infrastructure
- Recollection of prior fiat currencies
- Even old border posts
- Remnants of national defense industry
But in the US, secession will bring far more disruption:
- Drones
- Trained and drugged professional army with no local loyalty
- NDAA and Patriot act
- DHS
- Militarized police forces
- Big national banks, energy companies, food companies, Defense Industry
- Dilapidated infrastructure
- History of governmtent seizing gold
- History of war of northern aggression
One of the undiscussed side effects of all the globalization and corporate upsizing is that Wall Street runs the entire country. The city class has completely taken over all the way down to food delivery and health care. In Europe the old national structures are still in place and they are the fallback. The US fallback is wars of secession.
ConfederateH says:
“The EU states still have their own:
- National armies and no EU army
- Gold reserves
- National banks
- Post offices
- Commercial banks
- Energy companies
- Excellent infrastructure
- Recollection of prior fiat currencies
- Even old border posts
- Remnants of national defense industry”
**
Well what do you CH, the US has those things too, so we could secede from the North American Union! Oh wait there is no North American Union. And btw, those European armies that do exist couldn’t stop one Russian or Chinese division.
Lunch Inspectors.
The issue for all of us right-wing thinkers is that we have to address the elephant in the room – that we are prepared to accept some deaths in return for what we see as benefits, on average. As a matter of logic, if the sandwich is of the wrong type, then a girl will die from overweight.
If we are to defeat the left, we must formulate answers to this charge. Unfortunately, this requires excursions into statistics, probability, and balance sheets. All excrutiatingly boring.
So we need the contra to the Lincoln Memorial defence.
Something on the lines of “If the number of sandwich inspectors continues to grow, we will be unable to afford to bury the corpses that result from bad sandwiches”.
Have at it, Belmonteers.
ADE
After reading through this post and the comments so far, I clicked back to the Belmont Club home page to see if Wretchard had posted anything new. He hadn’t, but I discovered something else there that was perhaps even more informative. Underneath the jump-break from the “Life of Ants” post (the top post at the time of this writing) was an advertisement for Allstate Insurance featuring the imposing negro presence of Dennis Haysbert.
How’s that for irony? We’ll get back to that in a minute.
This latest outrage, taking a little girl’s lunch, is certainly the last straw. I hope everybody is thoroughly disgusted by it. Granted, there is often more to these types of stories than meets the eye, and it appears that this event involved special circumstances hardly typical of the day-to-day happenings in school cafeterias across the fruited plain—it looks as if some ignorant busybody from the HHS was just grandstanding in order to drive home a point and justify their existence—but still, there is something viscerally upsetting about the idea of meddling with a child’s lunch, the lunch her mother prepared for her. It is a violation of the most sacred of human bonds, that between a mother and a very young child, a bond very often reinforced and mediated by food, directly so when the child is breastfeeding, and symbolically so for many years thereafter.
[In an effort to be fair and balanced, and to guard against overreaction, I would point out that, from my reading of the links provided by FOX, it appears that there may have been some misunderstanding here. Apparently the More at Four program requires that lunches "deemed inadequate" only be supplemented by items from the school cafeteria, not replaced by them. And there is obviously some well-intentioned rationale for doing so, i.e. if a child is being sent to school with nothing but a complimentary packet of saltines in his pocket. Furthermore, it would be capricious to have thousands of different teachers arbitrarily deciding what kind of lunch is adequate and what isn't, hence the USDA guidelines of "one serving of meat, one of grains," etc. I'm not saying that I agree with any of this; I'm just saying that it's easy to blow it out of proportion and see it as much more sinister than it actually may have been. You take an ignorant bureaucrat, a stupid law, and a four year-old child, and you get occasional dust-ups like this. Now if you really want sinister, just go to the HHS home page and you will see, as the first order of business, a banner for Kathleen Sebelius' upcoming Conference on LGBT Health. Now that is sinister, and it's right in you face.]
But as I said, I hope everybody is thoroughly disgusted; and in doing so I am assured, for once, of the unanimous consent of the Belmont Club regulars. I would only point out that we should have been just as disgusted when the Brown v. Board of Education decision was handed down; we should have been just as disgusted when FDR took us off the gold standard; we should have been just as disgusted when Women’s Suffrage and Prohibition were first mooted; and then, well, there’s Obamacare. And the LGBT Health Conference.
There are far more devastating things that have happened, and continue to happen, and conservatives usually fail to hold the line, which brings up E2′s point and his often-asked question, “The average Belmont Club reader probably has more intellectual capability and (more importantly) common sense in their pinkie fingers than all these Media Matters clowns put together and yet, the clowns seem to be winning. How do we counter that?”
May I offer a bit of constructive criticism? The last thing I want to do is to judge anybody rashly, but I’ve been reading and writing on this blog for years, and I’ve noticed a few things about “the average Belmont Club reader”—to avoid making it personal, let us just say the average soi dissant right-leaning internet cavalier—that might help to explain the lack of tactical success.
There is, to begin with, a strong savor of libertarianism among the blogging Right. It’s easy to see where this comes from: we are all fed up with our federal government and we wish it would disappear. But many of the loudest and most persistent voices among internet conservatives seem to have extended their disgust for the current government to the general principle that all governments are bad and we ought to have no government at all. Clearly, anyone who subscribes to such a belief is going to be incapable of articulating any workable plan of action. Libertarianism is not a governing philosophy; it is a mood, specifically a sort of piratical mood that wants only to seize the moment and enjoy whatever booty is set before it. Libertarianism is the liberty and equality of savages, and it will reduce us to savages if we adopt it. It is also another word for “power vacuum,” and we know how nature feels about vacuums.
Contrast this attitude with what we know of Leftism. Leftism is often ridiculed by conservatives as being weak, wimpy, fantastical, “mere ideology”—as opposed to the realism and manliness that conservatism supposedly represents. In truth it is quite the opposite. Leftism has been from the beginning nothing but the methodical deployment of highly effective revolutionary techniques for the appropriation of wealth and power. It is pure, robotic, amoral will. The “ideology” component of Leftism is only a matrix of catchwords and slogans. It is spread like a spider’s web to ensnare minds, to discredit the forces of tradition (churches, families, property, legitimate governmnets), to reel in the unsuspecting, and of course to secure the material support of any dupe stupid enough to believe all the rhetoric about women’s rights and racial equality and class elimination. The end and essence of Leftism has always been power.
But a power can only be overthrown by another power, not by a principle. That is one reason why conservatives fair poorly in this struggle. Those who renounce the means of government will be at the mercy of those who do not renounce them, which is why libertariasm as fact didn’t ever, can never, and will never exist. It remains a permanent pipedream and is often a psychological compromise for those with unruly passsions who are as yet unwilling to declare themselves Leftists. An effective conservatism would stir itself up not for “freedom” but for righteousness, to declare the law as it is and was and always will be. Conservatives today do not do this.
Another observation: There is often a strong and wholly unconscious undercurrent of unreconstructed Darwinism running through the blogging Right. It is not the explicit Darwinism of the biology department, but the philosophical Darwinism of the Spencerians, manifested in a willingness to see the world as a mechanical process of becoming rather than a braid of substances and accidents. How many “conservatives” today would politely acknowledge that racial equality is at least a noble sentiment, perhaps an actually obtaniable ideal, therby implicitly conceeding that the Civil Rights Movement was necessary, and aligning themselves with the radicals and against their own grandparents? How many, like Bill O’Reilly, would come out and declare themselves in favor of “civil unions?” There is in such ideas a denial of substantial reality and an acquiescence in Eleatic atomism, the forerunner of modern Darwinism. If any of this seems obscure or tenuous, it is only because conservatives today are much more drunk on modernity than they even realize.
And yet the conservative blogosphere, almost to a man, will tell you that they are the cutting edge, that they are undermining the old Leftist institutions, the old news media, the old universities. But here on the Belmont Club is an Allstate ad with Dennis Haysbert, the great black president of television’s 24, combining all the Left’s usual themes into such a masterful piece of agitprop as could hardly be improved upon. The Left is in every facet of our life, has woven itself through us like a piece of symbiotic tissue, so that we cannot live without it. Now, when the moment of truth has arrived and the Catholic Church will soon be forced to pay for abortions, the best that the bishops can do is mutter some words about “religious freedom,” and we find that most conservatives are not Catholic, many not even religious, some with their own moral licenses which they wish to defend, and scarcely a one who possesses the philosophical groundwork to understand what conservatism ought really to be about.
This is a sorry age in which conservatives are more enamored of sensuality and libertine freedom than of God and His truth. It is no wonder we lose. Without God and philosophy and honor, a conservative of today is just a Leftist of inferior willpower, i.e. a libertarian. There will be no victory for that mob. We will have to sacrifice more, and fight harder, if we want to win. But if we sound an uncertain trumpet, who will show up for the battle?
Why is it government’s business what a person eats? Turkey, chicken or chicken nuggets?
Because they are paying for his health care.
How are they paying for that health care?
By taxing the person who eats.
Why is it government’s business what a person who is taxed to pay for his healthcare eats? Having paid his taxes, he has earned the right to eat what he wants.
No. That would be socially sub-optimal. We should eat a standard diet because they are trying to optimize statistical outcomes. By making him eat a probabilistically optimal diet, they are maximizing net social benefit.
Yet the diet may be wrong for the individual person.
Who gives a damn? It is the average man that we care about. To insist on exceptonalism would penalize others. That is selfish.
Why don’t we let people take their chances if they’re paying the bill? It is literally their funeral.
Because that would be uncaring.
How much money is lost in “overhead” to making people do under guidance what they might have decided on their own?
That is irrelevant.
Why?
Because government can print money. The future is inexhaustible. You can borrow against infinite future time indefinitely. Freedom is less optimal than the the rule of the computed mean.
No you can’t borrow against the future. The discount rate reduces the effect of distant years to a great extent. The future will refuse your debt.
Not if we are the future.
You are not even the present.
I can mandate you to buy insurance. That is proof I am the future.
Until you go bust. Why don’t you pay for your own health care and be free?
Because I can’t afford it, despite my master’s degree I don’t have a philistine job.
What’s the Middle East got to do with anything?
All I want is a fair system.
No what you want me to do is pay for your fantasy.
You are a bigot.
The problem with this discussion is that it isn’t about right or wrong. It’s about money, the money you want from me. You’re just too chicken to admit it.
That’s bigotry.
No, it’s the truth.
I’m curious about the mechanics of the program. From the story it seems the federal (HHS) is coordinating with the state-produced program to achieve what the federal wants. I’m guessing the state is twisting arms so they can get the ‘free’ stimulus funds to pay for the lunches. So enforcement is state level? Is their any real enforcement on either level other than withholding money and the coercion of being ‘different’. If parents of kids just said no, is there any real legal consequence?
If the state or federal level does have legal enforcement mechanism, we have come a long, long way from food pyramid ‘guidelines’ that were of my youth. The ‘good’ of health justifies any means.
Matt
I think that Progressivism has been the default Weltanschauung for the last 150 years in large part because people have extended their belief to the social realm in man’s ability to uplift the human condition from the many advances we have experienced in science and industrial technology.
If smart people can change the world for the better by creating behemoth locomotives, automobiles, airplanes and splitting the atom them surely smart people can make the world better by engineering social life too. Marx called his theory “scientific” and people bought it. Many still do. There is no other reasonable explanation.
I think that the epoch of blind reliance on experts to make life better is transitioning and perhaps even coming to an end. AGW has demonstrated that scientists are as subject to the temptation of cooking the books out of self-interest and greed as any local ward boss. Perhaps more interestingly, physics and cosmology make the conditions for life on earth so improbable that the only reasonable remaining explanation is that a super-intellect created it purposely for life to flourish.
Who knows where this is going? The Catholic Bishops have the opportunity to turn an obscure statutory interpretation into an existential stand for the worth of the human individual. When in the last 50 years has the individual been made to feel more helpless against the burgeoning State? The timing could be just right.
@37. Stavros36
“the US has those things too, so we could secede from the North American Union! Oh wait there is no North American Union. And btw, those European armies that do exist couldn’t stop one Russian or Chinese division.”
For the sake of argument, let’s say that the entire German army couldn’t stop one Russian division. Is the Russian army a bigger threat to the freedom of the German Volk than globalism and the already completed take over by the Davos Mensch?
And which army threatens the US? Not one. And unlike Europe, America is separated from the Asian continent by 2 oceans. Yet America spends more on its “defense” (rofl) than the rest of the world combined. So if no army threatens the US, why do they need this massive military, the MIC and the never ending war on “terror”? Why because those guys that run the Fed, the MIC, Washington and Wall Street aren’t taking any chances of some punk slave or punk slaves messing up their game. That makes the US military far more like prison guards than defenders of liberty.
That reminds me, add the following advantage to Europe:
- Practically no one is stupid enough to believe the rah-rah propaganda coming out of Washington and the MSM.
Isn’t Stavros Greek?
Matt and W
The best two posts in succession on this blog, ever. They are both expressions of:
To be or not to be, that is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
Matt, this is where you are wrong:
Libertarianism is not a governing philosophy; it is a mood, specifically a sort of piratical mood that wants only to seize the moment and enjoy whatever booty is set before it.
Wrong, wrong wrong. Libertarianism is far from a mood, it is an accounting, a recognition of the balance sheet of debits and credits in every proposition. Where it fails is in not being confident about the corollary – recognition that there will be losers, even deaths. It cannot state this because it has not got the balls, because such statements are not part of the narrative, because such statements have not been socialised (eg ‘for the childeren’ is a phrase of derision on the right, on the left an expression of compassion).
You are completely right that it’s hands off view has inhibited its implementation.
Equally erroneous, W‘s assertion that a person who has paid his taxes is free to do what he wants: Having paid his taxes, he has earned the right to eat what he wants.
No he hasn’t. He has earned the right to eat what he wants consistent with the terms and conditions of his contract which excludes winches to lift him out of his bed and transport him to life-long hospitalisation should he become overweght. So he has earned the right to eat what he wants consistent that I am not going to pay for him when he dies. Once again, the reality formulation of rights, to be or not to be.
So, as Shakespeare indicated, the answer to the question of whether we should be or not be, the answer does not lie in the stars, it lies in the balance sheet implied by the contract.
And neither the left nor right can face that.
ADE
Fascism is a great jobs program. Just think, you need to staff a new Gestapo, I mean department of homemade security, buy piles of brown shirts from China. Government is the last of the bubbles but this one doesn’t burst. It evolves to the perfect state of tyranny. Stimulus was a bait and switch job from the private sector to gun toting thugs with million dollar pensions, and guess what? They vote. All 33 million of them.
“The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.”
Re 9. Eggplant
“I’ve always thought that a big weakness with the “1984″ storyline were the telescreens… in about 20 years, computer intelligence will be smart enough to monitor the 30 different toilets in various stages of use. Machines will be able to monitor our every move and listen to every word spoken. The moment the machine detects any thoughtcrime then a human agent at the Ministry of Love would be notified and deal with the miscreant.”
I’m writing a book based on that premise…
11. Bill R
“No wonder so many parents are opting out of public education.”
It’s practically child abuse to send your kids to public school.
This is why school vouchers are a hot issue and the democrats hate them. Once parents have the power to use their own money to educate their children as they choose without paying in to the sinkhole PS system, then a big chunk of the union/democrat money base is gone forever.
However, that’s as likely as citizens being allowed to keep their money and decide which health insurance to buy.
Quote that applies to the sandwich inspectors, and to the left, in general:
Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.
-Josh Billings
Wretchard #40:
Once again I bring everyone’s attention to that late-70′s SF story, “Lipidleggin” available on the Internet at
http://www.billstclair.com/DoingFreedom/000623/df.0600.fa.lipidleggin.html
The logic is there. The Government has to provide health care. But it is unfair to expect them to pay for health problems brought on by bad behavior. So they have to control the behavior. Eventually they have to control all behavior.
A later SF story, from the 90′s, had a senior citizen going to the grocery store, where his smartphone told him which products he could buy without having his health coverage cancelled.
In the 80′s in Wash State there was a group trying to get violent pornography banned on the basis that it encouraged violence toward women. In the 2000′s there was an effort in Sweden to pass laws requiring men to sit down to pee, since to stand and pee was to indicate dominance over women.
It becomes like an ant colony: All things are either mandatory or forbidden.
Part of a column on the AMERICAN THINKER.com Dated:”September 25, 2009″
Intel Inside Could Mean a TV That Watches You
By Andy Patrizio
SAN FRANCISCO — Intel is putting Atom processors almost everywhere these days, with the latest target being televisions. The company announced a new Atom-based system-on-a-chip (SoC) design for television sets to make them the hub of social networking and interactivity.
Justin Rattner, chief technology officer for Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), introduced the Atom CE4100 during his keynote, the final keynote here Thursday at the Intel Developer Forum. The goal is to make the TV take on more PC-like function and interact with other devices so it can learn what the viewer’s interests are and adjust accordingly.
For example, it knew what TV shows Rattner had been previously watching but paused in mid-viewing. When turned on another set he was offered the opportunity to continue watching the show, even though he was watching on a different TV.
Another, potentially disturbing element for privacy advocates, of the smart TV was it knew, thanks to a mobile Internet device (MID) Rattner had been carrying, that he recently visited a musical instrument store. The MID told the TV this, and among the different shows offered for suggested viewing were shows on guitarists. At the bottom of the screen were banner advertisements, one of them for a guitar store.
+++
Add this ability to monitor television viewers (aka ObamaVision) to the California idea of a government agency turning off or reducing electrical power to “environmentally unfriendly” homes (homes with their air conditioners to “too cold” a setting) and we get a foretaste of ObamaHeaven. Watching, monitoring, supervising our lives all for our own good.
Annoy Mouse @ 45: “Government is the last of the bubbles but this one doesn’t burst.”
Happily, history has told us repeatedly that statement is wrong, wrong, wrong. Government bubbles have repeatedly burst. Where are the ancient Greek city states? Where is the Roman Empire? Where are the Chinese Dynasties? Where is the British Empire on which the sun never set? Where is the planet-bestriding USSR?
Just as death inevitably comes to the individual, so all governments inevitably collapse.
We have been priviliged to live in a very interesting time. Previously in human history, a collapse of one polity simply represented an opportunity for its still growing neighbor. Today, because of globalization, a collapse of any polity may trigger a cascade through the entire system.
When Greece falls, the EU economies may go into the toilet. Without the European market, economic contraction could push China into civil war. Without Chinese buyers of US Government bonds, hyperinflation will accomplish Obama’s father’s dream of destroying America.
But even then, the oligarchs of Brazil may pull through, and the cycle of governmental growth & collapse will continue. Interesting times!
The great advantage of the left is that they are united by their faith (the worship of power). This is why such disparate groups can manage to stay in lock step – each works toward the coming day when they can dictate their agenda from a position of secure power. The left is focus itself. The drive for power pushes aside considerations about just what will happen once one faction actually attains it. Then the result is invariably that the top dog will suppress the others by either coopting and absorbing them into the coalition (requires elimination of rival leadership) or by exterminating them (a la the Soviet Union).
The right’s aim is liberty. Liberty manifests as true diversity meaning that there is a wide variation in belief. Liberty is chaos without some agreed upon set of rules to which all agree to voluntarily subject themselves (but always with the proviso that if these become onerous one can opt out). The great problem with free men is that absent a great crisis it is almost impossible to inculcate a sufficient sense of urgency that will unite them so as to enable effective opposition to threats to the very liberty they so treasure. Or, to put it another way, free men are loath to come together with the same fervor and zeal that characterizes the left because to do so is to become like the left and to abandon the liberty they love. But from time to time it is necessary to do this or face the extinction of liberty.
The time is now upon us when free men must unite and staunchly defend their liberty or lose it. Live-and-let-live won’t cut it because the left will not allow it. It is their way or nothing. If the left retains power after this election then the choice for free men will be simple: knuckle under or refuse to obey.
The right is fragmented. It is this fragmentation that has allowed the left to gain the power it now has. And if the right remains fragmented it will allow the left to win in this next election. Perhaps this totalitarian ruling by HHS will do the trick and serve to unite the right. Certainly this ruling demonstrates what is in store if the left holds power after this November.
Charles White 50:
Another, potentially disturbing element for privacy advocates, of the smart TV was it knew, thanks to a mobile Internet device (MID) Rattner had been carrying, that he recently visited a musical instrument store. The MID told the TV this, and among the different shows offered for suggested viewing were shows on guitarists. At the bottom of the screen were banner advertisements, one of them for a guitar store.
Charles, you need to read a new book by Glen Goleburn, Do I Recognize You?, available at amazon both in book form and Kindle form. It explores this very subject. Some topical sci-fi on this type of tracking/marketing software and devices.
And then again, it may simply self destruct. I had the radio on in the truck the other day when a news story came on about a school (in California, natch)which ran into a bit of trouble trying to enforce the fruit-in-the-place-of-sweet-treats in the school vending machines. It seems the kids wouldn’t eat the apples because they had been trained that the skins carried carcinogenic chemicals and they (get this, now) DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO PEEL AN APPLE! The school immediately jumped into the breach and organized apple-peeling instruction classes—but, of course, the children weren’t allowed to have paring knives on school grounds.
Now, of course this could be prevented by having Mom peel and slice the apples at home and put them in their lunches—–oh, wait.
J @ 47: I’m writing a book based on that premise…
Have you read Cordwainer Smith’s “Instrumentality of Mankind” stories? There are monitors everywhere to see if you are *happy* enough! If not, you are brought in and happified. Of course people hate being so happy and start to seek freedom and alternatives. Finally the chiefs of the instrumentality realize that mankind is dying of happiness and implement a “rediscovery of mankind”, where people are free to get fat, or angry, sad or bored, etc. Along with that again they can be exhilarated, motivated, set and achieve goals.
Good stuff.
43. Confederate H,
I suspect you might be wrong about the German Army and the aforementioned Russian/Chinese divisions. The modern German Army is small on paper, and gives lip-service to a whole lot of PC type BS, but in terms of arms, equipment, and, from the looks of things, training, I suspect that when you dust all that off, das Heer is still a German Army.
I am not in a very optimistic mood right now about 2012, and I also don’t see any signs of effective resistance against the kinds of outrages discussed here. Even though the MSM itself is carrying such stories and most people are angry or baffled by such things, no one is trying to change this in any effective way. No one.
The economy is “improving,” and the Republicans are making self-destructive asses of themselves in the presidential runup. I don’t care that it’s only February: I believe the GOP has reached the point of diminishing returns already in their runup to the convention. The general voting public is not into nuance in election years, and — having been down so long it looks like up to them — having “only” 8% unemployment by election day means they will likely choose to stick with Obama. 7% unemployment will become the new normal in the limpid recovery that seems to be happening. The Left knows how to wear the people down, and they are succeeding.
I think it’s time to discuss the alternatives that have been brought up before: how to successfully avoid and dodge the increasingly suffocating system.
What is wonderful about the way children eat is that it is a totally natural process. They will eat what appeals to them and have available whenever they feel hungry. It is only later that the process becomes corrupted.
Most people do not really have an eating problem but we all obsess over it to some extent because of social conditioning. It becomes bound to our emotional state and in our culture that comes with a heavy serving of guilt.
In order to control people you have to destroy their innate sense of independance and self-esteem. This is what Michelle Obama is doing. She is targeting all of us, not just those who want to lose weight or something. She wants us all to feel inferior and unable to become what she is…the wife of the worlds most powerful man. She can do more pushups than you and she is all sorts of things you will never be.
Galadriel knew what this power was when offered the Ring: “‘And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair! ”
What is more pathetic and despicable than a parent who cannot properly feed her own child? We can tell you what to eat, drink, and smoke. We control marriage and procreation. We dispense the medicine when you are sick. We control what you read and what shows you watch. We own the fruits of your labor…and we are perfect gods.
I liked Obama better when he smoked.
What is wonderful about the way children eat is that it is a totally natural process. They will eat what appeals to them and have available whenever they feel hungry. It is only later that the process becomes corrupted.
What is also wonderful about children is their plastic brains that learn a prodigious amount without prompting. I bring this up because our educational system has no appreciation or respect for the ability of children to learn at a faster and more challenging pace than they are subjected to. Huge sums and countless hours are wasted as a result. My remarks are not an endorsement of all-day preschool or pushy parents. I think kindergarten is early enough for kids to start learning formally and take off from there. Bilingual education for the first couple grades of school, or longer, is absolutely unnecessary since kids can pick up on a second language with marvelous ease compared to adults.
It goes without saying that “educators” and their allies have no interest as a group (unlike any teachers as individuals) to actually have kids learn much beyond obedience and conformity.
No mo uro (#53) Thanks for the suggestion, I have not read the book yet. I’ve been in the Computer Technology field since 1981 (cut my teeth on the Z8080 and Motorola 6800 learning Machine Language) I just thought I’d throw that out there because the “Atom” processor is used in so many small electronic gadgets now and they all have this built in ability (and I had the article handy), who knows if they don’t automatically connect to Wi-Fi’s on a unpublished OSI layer/Protocol just to “report in”… Just like those Fed Gov forced backdoors into software and encryption. Maybe there are those hidden commands hard coded into individual chips, most of them can get signals thru the power supply (sine wave). Personally I am scared of the Chinese and what they have been doing the last ten years in the Technology Field… US should never had let that stuff go over sea’s!
Did that state inspector (stranger) touch the child in the process of taking away her lunch for inspection? Did the inspecter inform the parents of the child of their rights before performing the inspection without consent? Does the child entering the public school building create consent to searched in property and (gasp!) in her person by any appointed government official?
DR @ 57 – I feel your pain. You are wondering why bad leaders happen to good people – the age old scourge since the beginning of time.
It’s not over yet. Many things can happen between now and election. Believers must take comfort in the knowledge that the King of Kings decides who sits on the throne and how long his (customary usage including female and males) days will be.
Obamadministration is pushing everything to a crisis.
At some point some abused and humiliated parent, citizen, farmer, shop-owner, mechanic, doctor, scientist, barrista, clerk, attorney, tax adviser, or grocery checker will pick up and bounce a rulebook off the forehead of the bureaucratic demon standing there telling them what they can and cannot do, according to the regulations promulgated by some arrogant pissant in Washington.
After that…
No More Mister Nice Guy!
Matt @ 39 – Let’s be clear. Mankind is contaminated, incapable of achieving the perfect standard (total depravity). Our pitiful attempts to clothe ourselves in human standards of morality are just another instance of “operation fig leaves”.
In the divine perspective, the souls of the slaves during our failed experiment with slavery are as valuable as the souls of the freemen. It’s the human viewpoint that was flawed. Slavery was and remains a great evil. I don’t think the majority of conservatives hold otherwise.
The institution of marriage was not some product of progressive thinking. It was built into the design. You know, boy meets girl. Somehow, through a mysterious process, helpless children appear. They must be nourished and protected until they are able to venture forth into the carnal world of good and evil.
Recognition of the basic institutions of authority, first individual volition, second parents over children, third state over the individual, is not optional for a well-ordered society.
What privileges states offer to couples, who are, by natural law, not families are inconsequential. But those are not marriages. They are and remain a great evil. I don’t think the majority of conservatives hold otherwise.
Re: pic of the Russian embassy
As mentioned above, it looks a lot like Isengard. Perhaps even more ominously, it looks even more like a bizarro-world minaret. All that’s missing is a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer.
Don #57:
I have thought for some time now that while Plan A is to defeat Obama and the Democraps in Congress at the ballot box, but that we need a Plan B in case he is re-elected – which, I have always thought, seems likely.
Problem is …. maybe it is my military background, but I cannot come up with any Plan B that does not involve stockpiling guns and ammo, and all that implies.
It would be nice if Deterrence worked and having the arms was enough, but the Left rules a nation of sheep and pretty much discounts the possibility of the people that do not vote for them being sheepdogs/wolves. They think they own or control all the wolves and that the sheepdogs are always tame; they are wrong.
In 1970 our high school senior class held our Class Day ceremony next door to the school, in the very room where the Secession Convention was first held in 1860. We did that not as an act of rebellion against “the system” but for the opposite reason, because we wished to embrace our generation’s place in history. I can’t help but to think back to that, and wonder if that room will be used again not to remember history but to repeat it.
OT, in case y’all have not heard – The FCC just killed Lightsquared’s crony capitalist spectrum grab. Once in a while the system works.
39. Matt – But as I said, I hope everybody is thoroughly disgusted; and in doing so I am assured, for once, of the unanimous consent of the Belmont Club regulars. I would only point out that we should have been just as disgusted when the Brown v. Board of Education decision was handed down; we should have been just as disgusted when FDR took us off the gold standard; we should have been just as disgusted when Women’s Suffrage and Prohibition were first mooted; and then, well, there’s Obamacare. And the LGBT Health Conference.
I’ve inferred from this a perceived moral value in being a reflexive contrarian. What a quaint indulgence.
JJRedfan (#63) “Obamadministration is pushing everything to a crisis.” Ya Glenn Beck had been preaching this for a couple years on Fox News… I believe it too. Soro’s got the OWS pressing from the bottom, Fed Gov pressing from the top and all sorts of “Make life hard on the middle guy” stirring the pot now. Anyone taking bets on when it all finally boils over?
39 @Matt
Since you’ve decided to break out the club of using a ridiculous stereotype against libertarian-minded individuals, allow me to say that I’ve got a huge case of schadenfreude that the church of boy-buggering priests is getting hoist on their own theocratic petard. They had no problem selling out my freedoms in order to push their social justice theology into the government sphere, yet mewl like babies when their cozy church-state relationship turns out to not be a one-way street.
Watt developed theories that other men used to build steam locomotives. A skeptic could avoid riding on trains but their very success came from their ubiquitous application. Marx developed theories of social and economic ‘science’ but no one since his published works has successfully built a working system based on his theories. The tragedy comes from the fact that we cannot refuse to board this train of thought when it is born of the nation state. We can reasonably uproot and travel to better states but moving from nation to nation is mostly prohibited. And why should I move when it was Hope and Change, or Envy and Avarice that made our republic uninhabitable?
One reason why the Republicans can’t mount an effective strategic offense is that they are junior partners in a consensus system whose planks the left has fundamentally laid. Now that those planks are rotting their replacement is really impossible within the consensus. With the system in crisis the candidates with best chance of working within the old consensus are likely to be the worst at dismantling it.
A different sort of impotence afflicts the Left. They have charted a road to destruction whose destination they have artfully concealed to build their ‘consensus’. But they themselves were always fully aware of the precipice to which it led; a precipice which for ideological reasons they longed to pitch themselves over; and at the bottom of which lay a catharsis which they had always assumed would be good though they could never really figure out why. Alas, the cliff is now so near that everyone can see it. Artifice is now useless.
No matter who wins in 2012 the crisis will come. There’s just too much destructive momentum built into the system. The argument for “Anybody But Obama” is really built on a hope that an Anybody But Obama will behave rationally, like a human being, when the crunch comes. Even if there is nothing prepared in him, it will be “alright on the day” simply because has not yet taken complete leave of his senses.
The same cannot really be said of the President. Obama himself is likely to behave in a completely counter-intuitive way in a crunch. He may disarm in the face of danger, print money in the face of inflation, prohibit drilling in a gas crisis? Oh, is that already the description of the current administration? Well then it is also an argument for “Anybody But Obama”.
But such a mediocre nonentity — the Anybody But — is ranged against a superlatively dysfunctional and concentrated incompetence, like a man with a dust whisk facing a sandstorm; like Dagwood in the face of Venom. President Obama’s failures seem to have emboldened him, and actually freed him from the requirement to succeed. On the other hand, the Republicans are bound to appear like pipsqueaks because they are still shackled by the law of gravity, by the strictures of arithmetic and by the inconveniences of logic.
I think Anybody But Obama is probably a better strategy than Give Way and Give Up because we don’t actually know to what depths the current administration can plunge the system. You see the President can imagine it; but maybe we can’t.
“One reason why the Republicans can’t mount an effective strategic offense is that they are junior partners in a consensus system whose planks the left has fundamentally laid. Now that those planks are rotting their replacement is really impossible within the consensus. With the system in crisis the candidates with best chance of working within the old consensus are likely to be the worst at dismantling it.” Speaking of rotting consensus, I see those darn Ronulans got what they deserved in Maine, what with an entire county that voted on February 4th not being counted and Mittens being declared
http://bangordailynews.com/2012/02/14/politics/pressure-mounting-for-gop-caucus-reconsideration/
what a coincidence that the two states where the state GOP now admits its count is bogus or cannot be verified are where Ron Paul came the closest to winning!
If Brother Ron is such a kook, why do the state GOPs in Iowa and now Maine have to cheat to beat him down? Annoy and co. do you endorse this sorta casual cheating? Maybe then ya’ll should go work for the Cook County Democratic Party…
because we don’t actually know to what depths the current administration can plunge the system
Read Dinesh D’Souza’s book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage” and what this miscreant will do in a 2nd term is blazingly obvious.
“This philandering, inebriated African socialist (Obama’s father), who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son.”
D’Souza makes sickeningly good sense. The guy wants to inflict the pain on America that Obama imagines his father felt. There is no price too great that must be extracted from the Democratic Party for this outrage.
“The argument for “Anybody But Obama” is really built on a hope that an Anybody But Obama will behave rationally, like a human being, when the crunch comes. ”
This makes an excellent case for Romney, not that he might slow the rising oceans but his mere business accumen should inform a sober approach if not unpopular. I am afraid of what this administration can “plunge” us into. Thier incompetence at home is only equaled by their incompetence abroad. A damn fool thing could happen here if we collectively let it.
“Annoy and co. do you endorse this sorta casual cheating?”
Hey I like Ron Paul and I’d vote for him if he had a chance to win. I am registered Independent so am not allowed to vote the Republican primary in California. As it stands, I just don’t like being scolded but a bunch of wild-eyed, socially retarded fanatics.
[sic] Mittens being declared the winner with 84% counted and barely a 200 vote margin.
Sorry, I know I’m ranting again. But some of the smuggest of smug PJMers (here’s looking at you Bryan Preston in case you lurk here) know they deserve it. And with Obama’s approval rating topping 50% either all the economic numbers are goosed alongside his approval numbers (oversampling Democrats, but let’s face it, actual election day tallies in MO, IL, LA, PA, OH or any other state with large blue cities oversample Dems) or the GOP is nominating another loser in the Dole/McCain mold.
Your preferred Establishment GOP ‘mediocrities’ (as Wretchard admits they are) will be toast come November. How many Americans really want a GOP candidate that will fault Obama for not bombing Iran more if the war starts prior to November?
Better start sending your checks to Rand Paul and the Republican Liberty Caucus now because the RNC is gonna be totally worthless.
@72. Viktor (not that Victor)
“If Brother Ron is such a kook, why do the state GOPs in Iowa and now Maine have to cheat to beat him down? Annoy and co. do you endorse this sorta casual cheating? Maybe then ya’ll should go work for the Cook County Democratic Party”
I think we should call them “Teddy Roosevelt” Republicans. They are progressives to the core. Did you see this one by Thomas Sowell: The Evil Legacy of Teddy and Woodrow
Forget foreign policy for a minute. Forget Paul’s crusade against the Fed, and Josh (or for that matter, Rich Lowry’s) tacit admission that without unlimited money printing this economy would implode and Gigantic Government would go with it (plus gigantic MIC).
Where are the mainline Republicans on the TSA? Other than the bill which passed almost unanimously in the Texas Legislature and was killed by the Lt. Gov. and Perry, only the Pauls and RLC crowd have made an issue of TSA groping/predations against the people. Same goes for SOPA and the NDAA…or even the Gibson Guitar raid with Tennessee’s GOP delegation to Congress largely staying mum on that.
Rubio only turned against SOPA after Google and several other prominent sites went dark for a day to protest it. The NDAA sailed through with almost unanimous bipartisan support, maybe eight dissenters in the Senate.
Anyway, the GOP’s default position appears to be more or less empowering Big Sis to do whatever she wants, just tapping on the brakes a little bit more now and then.
EOT for me.
One reason why the Republicans can’t mount an effective strategic offense is that they are junior partners in a consensus system whose planks the left has fundamentally laid.
One reason, perhaps, but the big reason is that it’s a big job, laying out a strategic offense, and none of the Republican candidates is up to it, not even the candidate plus all the brain trust they care to trust. Obama, in effect, was up to the job, him and his keepers, handlers, followers, sycophants, etc. Of course his was already the existing rotten progressive framework, but he still had work to do on it, and did enough.
Reagan was up to it. He spoke from some deep source, and it worked for him and for the voters.
Wretchard #71:
The Right is often looks like Don Quoite, tilting at windmills, charging them with his horse and lance.
The Left thinks that the windmills could tilt back, do their own charges – if they could only get hold of Don Quoite’s horse and lance.
Don Quoite has not tried fire yet. He’ll get there.
What, a school in North Carolina took away a child’s lunch?!?! Scrap all regulations!
The conservatives (and America’s) downfall started when they fell for borrow and spend policies under Reagan and later magnified under Bush 43.
Before that, taxes had to be raised to pay for spending. The people got mad and threw them out, which tended to limit spending. Unfortunately, the new breed of conservatives (mostly social cons, or compassionate conservatives) embraced borrow and spend. Since the citizenry didn’t really feel the deficits, the spending kept increasing, and of course this led to further control of the populace by the central govt. I’m sorry conservatives, but you have dug your own grave and continue to do so.
Perfect example is this nomination process. Instead of voting for the guy who balanced budgets in the most liberal state in the US, you want to vote for one of the big spenders in Congress that helped wreck the nation and bring in Barack Obama. Try to see reason before it’s too late. Romney is the only chance we have to turn this country around.
The idea that you must have some of every food group for EVERY meal is absurd, you just should have all the food groups over a reasonable period of time. But of course gov-thought is the thought of a machine and the machine is not designed to be so flexible as that. Mustard greens with hog jowls one meal, then rice and beans the next meal, and the next meal banana cream pie topped with fresh pineapple. A glass of whole milk for a kid would cover several food groups in nutritional value, no? Beats the heck out of chicken nuggets – whoopie!!
“Fried zuccini with apricot jam dip, maybe, but even zuccini is a fruit not veggie.”
You sure? I just spent a week in the ICU and I’ve still got that cheated death again mind fog but I seem to remember a zuccini as that machine they use to get the ice smooth.
72 Viktor (not that Victor) & 76 COnfederateH:
“If Brother Ron is such a kook, why do the state GOPs in Iowa and now Maine have to cheat to beat him down? Annoy and co. do you endorse this sorta casual cheating? Maybe then ya’ll should go work for the Cook County Democratic Party…”
I have an alternate theory: That the cheating was done by the Ronulans to get him as close as he did get in both states. If you pander to and bring in democrats as your supporters, this is what you bring into Republican caucuses. Note also that the reverse Operation Chaos by the left has targeted LaupNor as the vehicle by which to stretch out the campaign on our side. Cheers -
83. Welcome back. Do you know what year it is? Who’s the President?
President Adams and Toqueville were right- an unrighteous people cannot long remain free. Those who refuse to conform themselves to righteousness must be restrained or they will destroy society, and the result if such defectives reach critical mass is either tyranny or anarchy. Freedom without righteousness does not and cannot exist; those who refuse to understand that are just as delusional as those who imagine themselves to be gods.
Why has no one pointed out that this a state-level North Carolina program, even though funded with federal dollars?
The dirty little secret that no one wishes to talk about is that the states themselves are complicit in much of the federal regulation that Americans find so ludicrous, abhorrent, or unconstitutional. As long as they get their 30 pieces of silver, the states will be happy to take federal money: it helps state politicians from having to raise taxes, it funds state jobs (which helps keep unemployment down), and it’s great fodder for political photo-ops.
The federals command and pay, while the states enforce. The functions of the citizen are to pay taxes and obey.
But remember: The terrorists hate us because we’re free.
That’s fundamentally false, bad history and really bad economics.
Ronald Reagan may have been President when the U.S. accumulated $2 trillion in debt, but he also created about $17 trillion dollars of new wealth over eight years. To make comparison, if Obama had been able to follow the same path, our aggregate wealth would be twice what it is now and the debt/GDP ratio would be about 40%, not the 100% we have at present.
If I can borrow money at 3% interest and make 8% in return, that is an investment any sane individual would take – good companies take debt all the time if the marginal return is greater than the marginal cost. In essence, that is what Ronald Reagan did, and that started the long sustained growth in U.S. history. And he did it not when interest rates were artificially low, but when the prime was at 16%.
The problem isn’t simply our accumulation of debt, but the fact we are receiving nothing in return for our “investment.” Obama’s stimulus isn’t an investment; it’s buying more groceries and charging it to the credit card so the kids can pay it with interest when we are gone.
The last three years, a family of four has been charged approximately $70,000 of debt with no return. That is a tax increase by any other name. That alone, should eliminate Barack Obama for consideration as President.
Matt, that was an interesting post. Worthy of a response, but I haven’t decided how to reply and want to give it some thought.
I have said on many occasions that our Constitution was penned for a moral people. The debate then becomes whose morality, which is really the crux of the debate between Conservatives and Libertarians.
Don’t take that as a disagreement with your post, which was quite good.
The problem isn’t simply our accumulation of debt, but the fact we are receiving nothing in return for our “investment.” Obama’s stimulus isn’t an investment; it’s buying more groceries and charging it to the credit card so the kids can pay it with interest when we are gone.
The last three years, a family of four has been charged approximately $70,000 of debt with no return. That is a tax increase by any other name. That alone, should eliminate Barack Obama for consideration as President.
———
Except that the kids won’t be paying it.
The debt NEVER GETS RETIRED — get it?
Such deficits are TAXES RIGHT NOW There is NO DELAY.
The tax hits the INVESTMENT MARKETS/ Capital Accumulation. It takes funding away from capitalism and redistributes it to 0bama’s cronies/ voting blocs, however varied.
It is for this reason that the economy can’t get out of bed. It’s beset by a vampire sucking its life force dry.
——
The $ 70,000 is both a tax increase — and a TAX IN ITSELF, period.
It is paid in the Capital Markets.
Just ONE aspect of this tax is the ramp in fuel prices of approximately 100% since the Wan took the pole of the raft of state. ( Drift is all that he is capable of. )
But the increase at the pump is just but ONE of the ways that 0bama is bombing the economy.
——-
If there is one bright spot in all of his activity — it’s that he’s absolutely destroying the Black middle class — that not yet employed by the Federal government. As for NAM youth: they’re getting destroyed. You know they’re going to re-elect the Wan — the man that’s put them on the dole.
Because we have Chicago on the Potomac I’m rather expecting a vote as polarized as 1860.
I see 0bama having an absolute lock on California, New York, Illinois, and a host of smaller blue states.
Meaning that if he’s defeated it will be a VERY close run thing.
Mitt needs to start moving to the right — and stay there. Otherwise the MIDDLE is going to STAY HOME.
0bama-lite must surely lose to 0bama the classic.
Certainly, that’s the lesson of 2008.
I confess I only read the first comment but I was one of those people out the door as soon as possible. One day I stayed later and found those leaving late often spent a lot of time talking to others or goofing off in some other way. I don’t think just ‘time in’ is a legfitimate way to judge anyone.
” … it still isn’t clear who the inspector was who deemed this little girl’s lunch was unhealthy … ”
Ziss iss no concern of yours, Herr Fernandez. Vee haff no need to name names or giff reasons. Zee children are our future. Zey must haff clear minds undt clean bodies to serve zee Folk. Yah?
It may have been too quick of me to dismiss libertarianism as merely a mood without giving adequate explanation. My apologies for being blunt. I’m one of those guys with a philistine job and I can’t really afford to sit here typing all night; therefore I often must shorten what I’m trying to say, and the important nuances get trimmed away.
I did not mean to imply that every libertarian was a sensualist and a thief, still less that scholars like Ludwig von Mises, Frederick Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Hans Herman Hoppe were a band of slobbering buccaneers. Certain aspects of libertarian thought can be provided with an intellectual justification which is both attractive and valuable. I learned a lot from it myself, having spent some years in that camp.
But I don’t believe that libertarianism provides a complete picture of human life. Any society that wishes to funtion above the level of bare primitivism will have to socialize at least some of its risk. There comes a point at which that dreaded phrase, Too Big to Fail, ceases to be a crony-capitalist conceit and becomes a categorical reality. For example, I would not wish to leave things like the coal mines or the corn supply at the mercy of fickle capital markets. These things have a social and civilizational value far in excess of their market capitalization. They have to succeed “come hell or high water,” or the nation will collapse and people will die. Goldman Sachs and other TBTF banks probably do not have the same degree of social value, and we can argue over whether the various QEs and their foreign permutations were good policy or not; but even so, a complete failure of the banking system would have left millions of people—ordinary people with families—out of work and out of luck, and that certainly wouldn’t be good for anybody. It is not enough to say that we need a conflagration to clear the decks, burn out the dead wood, so that society can recover, which is really just a cryptic argument for the embrace of anarchy. There is no telling what will happen once you let slip the dogs of war, no gurantee that society will ever recover; and furthermore, it is a strange argument for libertarians to make, since they are the very ones constantly touting Bastiat’s broken windows fallacy. It is all well and good to believe in efficient markets and in a subsidiary distribution of control—and if that is what you mean by ‘libertarianism,’ have at it; but if you’re going to say “Damn the corn, damn the coal, damn civilization, let’s have a free-for-all and let God sort it out,” then that is the point at which I call you a pirate.
Now to be fair, I don’t think that the intellectual libertarians actually argue for the extreme case. Knowing full well that we would never have such things as a national oil industry or a power grid unless there was some way to limit the risk to investors, they have had to devise their own schemes for spreading the risk around. If I recall correctly, Dr. Hoppe has proposed to do this through the writing of private insurance contracts which would then be sold on a sort of hybrid bond market—essentially something not unlike our more familiar credit default swaps. It is an interesting idea to be sure, but I don’t understand how it would be much of an improvement over our current situation. Under that regime there would be nothing to prevent the Insurance Guild from becoming exactly what the Federal Reserve is today: a lender of last resort, a picker of winners and losers, and a purchaser of all the toxic risk which is too radioactive to be processed through the normal market machinery.
It is the second function, the picker of winners and losers, which motivates the argument on all sides and which elicits the most bitter denunciations of the status quo and the most fevered dreams of a future Utopia. The resources of society not being infinite, somebody at some time must be allowed to lose. This stipulation, which would be an economic reality in any case, becomes in addition a moral and philosophical problem when it is elevated to the sphere of conscious awareness. Any proposed solution must necessarily come down in one of two broad categories: 1) Nobody decides. We let each man be free to do as much as his strength and talent will permit him, and destiny will pick the winner. 2) Somebody decides. Winners are exalted and losers condemned at the direction of a governing personality.
I suppose it will not escape notice, though, that these two solutions are actually one solution viewed at different scales. In Scenario One the strong man, the champion of the libertarian world, will become the autocrat who “picks” winners and losers around him through his very living activity, while The Decider in Scenario Two is one of the fortunate men whom “destiny” has permitted to exercise libertarian freedom in a world were it is accidentally unavailable to most. They are two sides of the same coin, or rather two complementaries like yin and yang eternally chasing each other’s tails. There at the vanishing point, just when we expect the final solution to come into view, the destiny element remains unresolved, the element without which any answer will be miserably incomplete and with which a clean solution cannot be got.
The problem is intractable in the final sense and permits of no global solution. But there is a quasi-solution which is capable of both giving peace to the soul and of maximizing one’s success in the working world, and that would be a catalogue of techniques, developed with wisdom and prudence, for determining where on the continuum I happen to be at a given point in time, and what I ought to do about it. Is this a time for war or a time for peace? A time for mourning or a time for dancing? A time to cast away or a time to gather in? It belongs to the unique character of Western Man, with his highly developed capacity for analysis, to produce such a “book,” which will stand as one of the works of wisdom for all ages. It will be the final issue of our passionate economic and thermodynamic thought, and a credit to all that we once were.
CH says – “For the sake of argument, let’s say that the entire German army couldn’t stop one Russian division. Is the Russian army a bigger threat to the freedom of the German Volk than globalism and the already completed take over by the Davos Mensch?”
**
The Germans seem to be thriving on globalism. From what I knew of them, the Germans felt perfectly comfortable with the quality and quantify of their freedoms, Davos Mensch notwithstanding.
To understand the end-game all you have to do is listen/read the propaganda. Earth 2100 re-aired last night. CAP has a series discussing the evolution of ‘progressive’ economics. Obamacare will force (rural) migration to cities (given the intended consequences of the economics of the program). The federal gov’t has been buying up land since the Clinton admin. Not to mention the dictates quietly imposed on the food we eat, or the community planning projects within the DOT/EPA/HUD depts.The Malthusians have other projects underway, and policy is being driven out of Non-profit foundations through the crony corporations and bureaucratic agencies. If Obama wins the election it is nigh well over. Even if he doesn’t,expect the money players to buy up the last decent people that have any power.
Sleeping tubes are the new rage…$30 a night. what a bargain. All the wood appears to be behind one arrow…brought to you by gradualism and the total in totalitarianism. Images of a cat playing with/softening up its prey prior to eating it come to mind. Ants? If we’re the lucky ones
The People of the United States of America will not be allowed to elect anyone BUT Obama.
Anyone elected besides Obama will run a gauntlet much worse than G. W. Bush did.
A legal court battle will ensue to make any non Obama President illegal and unable to serve in the office of POTUS.
The democrats and Obama have decided that for America’s own good and for the children o’ the future the only party will be theirs.
Obama may just do a third term or more.
The democrats have our children’s minds with a liberal left wing environmentally friendly education department designed to turn out proles and peons who will be told to vote democrat.
With Obama it will get worse for America.
You know I must be some kind of right wing nutter, but to my way of thinkin’ the Nanny State Lunch Pail Brigade at that little girl’s school are CRIMINALS. They have knowingly, willingly and purposely violated that little girl’s rights to Life, Liberty and Property granted her and all the rest of us in the Fifth Amendment with the intent of imposing their will upon her, grabbing more power for themselves and ultimately installing an authoritarian dictatorship here in America. The plain as day language of the Fifth Amendment does not permit this, despite what anything our betters say about the ambiguous Commerce or General Welfare Clauses. The school officials involved here, going all the way up the chain of command, have violated the supreme law of the land, the Constitution, and should be rounded up, prosecuted, convicted and thrown in the hoosegow for many a year.
Until we explicitly and forcefully start calling out this outrageous behavior for what it is – a crime -, the Left will not stop grabbing more and more of our rights away. We must put the Left on notice in no uncertain terms that unless their unconstitutional behavior stops forthwith, there will be serious, life and death consequences for them. For too long, we have been anesthetized to the great danger and destruction of these acts by those excusing this behavior because it is ” For the Children” or really necessary for our own good don’t ya know.
Our political representatives in recent years from the so called Right – the Republican Party – generally have been complicit in this onslaught on our rights. They definitely have not stood their ground and yelled “STOP”!
As Wretchard hints at with “With the system in crisis the candidates with best chance of working within the old consensus are likely to be the worst at dismantling it” those working now working within the Ruling Crony Cabal are precisely the ones who will not dismantle it. The top two Republicans leading in the polls , Romney and
Santorum, are bought and paid for, full fledged stooges for the Ruling Cronies. Despite their recent conversion to conservative lite rhetoric, there is no evidence that in their gut, that these guys would ever take on in a million years the powerful interests destroying this country. And of course, neither in their entire political careers have stood up to defend the Constitution, either . Romney and Santorum can’t even seem to get logic of defending the constitution and our rights when they pretend to try.
In the primaries, Romney has only won where turnout is low; meaning he is not capturing the base. As such, there is only an outside chance that he could beat Buraq, and his nomination would likely damage the possibility that Republicans could keep the House and take the Senate.
Santorum on the other hand would be a complete disaster. His intolerant comments about Gays and other issues, would be used by the media to drive the the vast majority of independents and many a Republican into the arms of the Democrats and Obama. There would be wall to wall coverage of Santorum’s many insensitive remarks for months on end. The bogeyman stereotype of Conservatives as some sort of hectoring,intrusive Religious Vigilantes would be burned into the public’s consciousness for a generation. The pubs would decisively lose both the Senate and the House, and Obama would again have an effective working legislative majority to that this country down the road to ruin.
“If Brother Ron is such a kook, why do the state GOPs in Iowa and now Maine have to cheat to beat him down? Annoy and co. do you endorse this sorta casual cheating? Maybe then ya’ll should go work for the Cook County Democratic Party…”
Maine is the state that went for Perot over Bush 1 back in 1992–that worked out well, didn’t it?
Maine has become a daft place to live, speaking as a native, and the rise of Paul here is just one more sign of it. A lot of the people here supporting Paul also support some of the most leftist politicians you’ll find anywhere, and the cognitive dissonance is stunning. That, and the almost religious belief that Paul will singlehandedly turn everything around and make America
“constitutional” again.
“Sex ed in public schools.”
“Gay marriage in public schools.”
“Miseducation in public schools.”
“Illiteracy in public schools.”
Why do you waste our time on these trivialities? This that or the other in government-run schools— who CARES? There shouldn’t be any government-run schools in the first place.