In Fraud We Trust
Only hours after Leo Linbeck III described the ruling elite’s infatuation with Rosseau’s volonté générale — “the will of the political organism, an entity with a life of its own quite apart from that of the individual members of which it is built”, President Obama unwittingly commented on it by making the collective the new cornerstone of American freedom. He said in a recent speech that our freedoms are defined only within the context of the state.
But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.
For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.
Chris Matthews liked it so much he called it the new Gettysburg address. Many of us would find it more akin to another famous speech, one heard on the Internet that goes “all your base are belong to us.”
Matthew J. Franck of the National Review, unlike Matthews understood Obama’s speech at once and directly apprehended the link between Obama’s inaugural and the reification of the volonté générale.
But the most notable thing about the speech is not what it contains but what it lacks. The overwhelming impression one gets is that in Obama’s America, there is no civil society — no arena of private action, of voluntary responsibility, of free associations of citizens for solving the community’s problems. There are only the government (by default, the federal government, at that) and the individual. This is the “Life of Julia” campaign philosophy rendered in inaugural rhetoric: Without government’s aid in every aspect of our lives, we are lost, we are helpless, we are nothing. Every “we,” every “our,” every reference to “the nation” in this speech was a reference to a government solution to a “problem.” In this vision of America, no families, churches, charities, voluntary groups, or other institutions of civil society make any appearance at all. And when there are only the government and the individual, we know which one will be in charge.
And once in charge government will us give us our bread, safety and free phones. How wonderful for Julia if it could really come true. But as Walter Russell Mead points out, they might get nothing at all as even the New York Times admits that people are fighting for the scraps of the collapsing blue model. Obama’s vision of the collective apparently has a very large menu and an exceedingly small kitchen.
Dozens of city and state public employee pension plans are on the verge of bankruptcy—or are actually bankrupt—from Rhode Island to California; in 2010, a survey of 126 state and local plans showed assets of $2.7 trillion and liabilities of $3.5 trillion, an $800 billion shortfall. The national debt exceeds $16 trillion….
In cities from Los Angeles to Chicago to Houston, African-Americans are competing with Hispanics and others for government jobs, good schools, good neighborhoods, political power and basic resources.
Ironically people may have to fall back on churches, families, muskets and militias — what Leo Linbeck referred to as the “mediating institutions” to put food on the table. The great and omnipotent state cannot even pay its bills. Mead writes, “the reality of blue model decline is so obvious that nobody can ignore it any longer.” Nobody except maybe Julia and all her Facebook friends.
But can it at least provide safety for all of us? What Mead called the “blue model” has been showing its age and weariness for a long time abroad. Probably the first sign that people were losing faith in it was the little noticed Sri Lankan civil war, where for the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall “Eastphalia” was chosen over “Westphalia” as the preferred model for fighting a civil war; this in spite of the strenuous efforts of Western NGOs to force the Sri Lankan government to fight according to Geneva rules. The Tamil Tigers were beaten down in what the West had considered an unwinnable war.
the victory attracted considerable attention through out the world. An interesting interpretation was offered by Sumit Ganguly, David P. Fidler (leading the Indiana University Centre on American and Global Security) and Sung Won Kim (of the Legal Affairs Division, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Korean Republic). In a paper which argued that with the shift in power to the East, the centuries old ‘Westphalian’ concept is being slowly supplanted with a new ‘Eastphalian’ alternative, they stressed, inter alia: “… Sri Lanka’s ability to gain Chinese and Indian support in the [UNHRC] to defeat Western-backed resolutions critical of Colombo’s bloody crushing of the Tamil Tiger insurgency is perhaps also a sign of Eastphalia’s arrival.” (‘Eastphalia Rising?’, World Policy Journal, Summer, 2009). It was then a significant set-back, one that the US and its allies cannot forget.
Major Niel A. Smith, USA who served as Operations Officer of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center from 2007 to 2009 offered an analysis of Sri Lanka’s victory in a National Defense University Paper.
Sri Lankan military and civilian leaders believe the application of these principles enabled the government’s victory:
political will
go to hell (that is, ignore domestic and international criticism)
no negotiations
regulate media
no ceasefire
complete operational freedom
accent on young commanders
keep your neighbors in the loop.These harsh principles stand in stark contrast to the population-centric approach articulated in U.S. military doctrine. Field Manual 3–24, Counterinsurgency, counsels an approach that attempts to influence and persuade the population to willingly side with the counterinsurgent by providing a superior alternative to the insurgent cause.
That plus the fact the Tamils could no longer raise money abroad meant the Tigers were doomed. The Sri Lanka civil war was a little noticed but tremendous setback for the approved NGO way of war. The shock could be felt round the NGO world. The Sri Lankan H.L.D. Mahindapala gloated at how thoroughly the Europeans were trashed:
Each time the Tamil Tigers walked out of negotiations on the flimsiest excuse Solheim and the I/NGOs backed the demands of the LTTE to pressure the GOSL to give into the next level of demands put forth by the LTTE with no guarantees of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Solheim too was happy to use Prabhakaran’s gun powder to force GOSL to concede more and more at formal and informal negotiations in Geneva, Colombo, Sattahip, Delhi and Oslo.
Meanwhile, negotiations were not going anywhere because the attitude of the Tamil Tigers was that they do not need talks, negotiations, mediators, co-chairs or peace deals because they have the guns. Solheim too was happy to go along with Prabhakaran’s because the only way by which he could consolidate his position as an interventionist dictating terms to GOSL was by keeping the gun powder of the LTTE dry. Enhancing the political, legal and military power of Prabhakaran was a deliberate policy of the Norwegians to gain credibility and acceptability with the LTTE. For instance, in the first round of talks in Sattahip, the delegation sent by Ranil Wickremesinghe was forced to address Anton Balasingham as “Your Excellency” conceding that he was a representative of a sovereign State. Solheim even told President Mahinda Rajapaksa that Prabhakaran was a great strategist and the Sri Lankan forces would be defeated.
The West was sold on the myth of the invincible superiority of the Tamil Tigers.
Western diplomats were queuing up at the gates of Prabhakaran in Kilinochchi to pay their homage as if he was the Head of State.
Not even the newly installed President Obama could stop them. The website Tamils for Obama exhorted him at the time to Save The Tigers. But he could not. The Voice of Command by the Western elites no longer sounds so compelling. And Prabhakaran is still dead.
But if Sri Lanka has since been forgotten recent events in Algeria have reminded us that the Western ways are no longer universally admired. Adam Garfinkle at the American Interest describes how Algeria also has a “go to hell” counterinsurgency policy for historical reasons. It began not just in the Battle for Algiers but continued to develop during their own civil war against the Islamists.
The present Algerian leadership consists of the very last remnants of the old guard that experienced the war of independence against France, and the generation right behind it experienced the civil war. Taken together, then, this leadership is as battle-hardened, ruthless and cold-blooded a group of guys as can be found anywhere. This is not a kind and gentle military that holds regular sensitivity-training sessions; it’s a military that uses eight bullets when two will do nicely, and that has no qualms about feeding still wriggling bodies through the wood chipper. They are also very proud and exquisitely sensitive to any slight coming from the general direction of foreigners. One former U.S. Air Force helicopter pilot (who of course will not be named) involved in a limited training mission has had this to say: “. . . the Algerians . . . . proved to be completely inflexible and almost hostile to the idea of working with us.
The Algerian civil war was the first major blowback from the mujahedin war against the Red Army in Afghanistan. …
Starting in around 1993, and through toward the most horrific years of the war (circa 1996-98), the French and U.S. governments concluded and remained convinced that the Algerian military could not win this war. After having had a hand in causing it by supporting the military’s annulment of the 1991 election, Paris and Washington now urged compromise. The senior Algerian generals, whose seminal experience had been the very bloody war for independence against France, believed otherwise. They doubled down, becoming utterly ruthless in an unshakable determination to win. They refused all compromise and they sustained as well as inflicted great pain—and they won. The main Islamist opposition group called it quits in 1999, but fringe groups, one called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) continued fighting until by 2002 the military had either tracked and killed them, or they managed to flee the country.
Whatever the long term efficacy of the “go to hell” model might be, these countries have shown one thing the administration and the West seem unwilling to do: fight their own corner. The Sri Lankans, Russians, Syrians, Algerians and Libyans — not to mention the Iranians — to name only a few, are the emerging members of the non-Julia world. They unabashedly want to win and if al-Qaeda hires axe-wielding dwarves they’ll hire some of their own. The new barbarians have no respect for the Roman Senate. As for dead Europeans and Americans, what of them?
They constitute the world that is right outside Europe and America’s PC gates. They constitute the world we are told no longer exists; that we don’t need muskets or militias to defend against. All we need is faith in collective action, the volonté générale represented by Barack Obama and everything will be jake.
And we may not even get Obama’s protection at that. Con Coughlin at the Telegraph writes: “Barack Obama has given up on the fight against al-Qaeda”.
Just before Christmas a senior Obama official claimed the America could wind up its campaign against al-Qaeda because it no longer posed a threat. That remarkable claim was made by US defence department general counsel, Jeh Johnson. At about the same time another Obama adviser told me that Washington didn’t really mind if the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan once Nato troops had withdrawn in 2014, as the Taliban was no longer interested in working with al-Qaeda. Unbelievable!
And now we have Saint Obama himself proclaiming that America was no longer at war, and could concentrate on rebuilding the economy and the country’s social fabric.
Free cell phones, post office and DMV jobs. Life of Julia stuff.
The debate over whether Rousseau or Tocqueville were right about freedom, about volonté générale, is not entirely philosophical. It is practical too. It is about which vision works. If the blue model is bankrupt, then the volonté générale of Obama is just a pile of I.O.U.s. All the soothing assurances about free healthcare, free Obama phones, secure government jobs and nice fat pensions are then just irredeemable promises that will be left in the public’s hands when the elite absquatulate to wherever such esteemed people go when the chips are down. The main problem with relying on a world without mediating institutions — without individual freedom and the mechanisms within which to work it — is what to do when Leviathan is bust.
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W. a few typos:
-Rosseau’s volunté généralez- should read : Rousseau’s volonté générale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_will#Criticisms
Early critics of Rousseau included Benjamin Constant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel argued that, because it lacked any grounding in an objective ideal of reason, Rousseau’s account of the general will led ineluctably to the Terror. Constant also blamed Rousseau for the excesses of the French Revolution, and he rejected the total subordination of the citizen-subjects to the determinations of the general will.
In 1952 Jacob Talmon characterized Rousseau’s “general will” as leading to a Totalitarian Democracy because, Talmon argued, the state subjected its citizens to the supposedly infallible will of the tyranny of the majority. Another writer during the Cold War period, liberal theorist Karl Popper, also interpreted Rousseau in this way. Other prominent critics include Isaiah Berlin.
thanks fixed typo
Argh. Obama is so full of shit. Can I say that here? Such a fool too. But he’s getting what he wants: which is to say, he’s winning. He’s a real dick and a nasty little shit, but he is ruthless and it’s all working for him, for the time being. I may think I might hate Republicans equally as much for being so stupid and incompetent and gutless–for letting Obama get the best of them.
Not having a good day here, what can I say.
“For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias”
That is the most ruthless attack on American ideals I have ever heard.
What depresses me most about this President is his cheap rhetorical habit. People who suck this stuff up are such suckers!
Just take the first paragraph you quote:
“[W]e have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.”
Aaargh! The collective “We” bugs me right out of the gates. Who’s this “we” kimosabe? It’s like he has a mouse in his pocket.
Then there’s the “when times change” addage. It’s a cliche, really, which says less about “changes” in citizens’ living conditions – these have actually stagnated or worsened since he took office, and more about “change” in the modern apparatuses and fashions which connote status today. Just twenty years ago none of us had cell-phones, now you almost have to own one just to “fit-in” at high-school.
“[T]hat fidelity” really grates: it scrapes finger-nails across a blackboard for me! He employs a definitive article in front of an emotive noun like “fidelity,” not definitively, but by referencing the vague “always understood” time-verb clause before it…and I know it’s trivial, but, “always understanding” does not always equate to “fidelity.” The question that sprung to my mind was, “That fidelity that did what?” Sad to say, I’ll never get the answer.
And take,”New Challenges?” What’s so new about them? Well, it’s how you define them, I guess. If the New Challenge is “How can Child-protective Services get Person X another cell-phone so she can keep ‘tabs’ on her high-school aged son?”, then, yes, this is indeed a new “challenge.” And I’ll bet Obama’s got a plan for that. But if the challenge is keeping the ship of state from foundering on fiscal shoals, then, No, it’s old -as old as beans and rocks, and so’re the solutions: Balance the budget, cut spending, devolve to local elective bodies.
There’s nothin’ new about that.
Last, there’s this “our/we” thing again near the end: “our individual freedoms” is oxymoronic because of it. He uses a plural possessive to qualify an individual holding. It would have been a good time to use “your,” as in “your individual freedoms.”
You know? Then I would have known whose individual rights he was talking about all this time.
By golly, Obama uncloaks at his second inauguration (apologies to the Star Trek website):
“The enigmatic Boy Keeng is the central locus of the Borg Collective. He brings order to the legions of voices within the Hive mind and provides a common direction — much like the queen of an insect colony. He resides primarily at White House One in the D.C. Quadrant, but will often leave this home base to participate in assimilation efforts of a special nature.
The Boy Keeng has a unique personality and a sense of individuality that normal Borg drones are not allowed. He is usually the one who “speaks” for the Collective in situations where contact with outsiders is best conducted by an individual. But for the Boy Keeng the concepts “I” and “we” are interchangeable. In his own words, he is the “one who is many.”
Now we know why Obama has no sense of humour, why he wears Mom jeans and why he is always hooked up to a teleprompter. He’s the Borg Queen in drag.
Interesting:
-political will
-go to hell
-complete operational freedom
Lord. That is the essence of fighting to win, rather than directing your armies via ROE to show the fine moral sensibilities and virtues of the enlightened ones who got them into the conflict to begin with. PC wars are not meant to have losers. Everyone must have prizes and no one’s feelings should be hurt, especially the people you are fighting against. It might make them feel inferior. The fact that soldiers are dying, ours and theirs, seems to make no impression on the PC leaders at all unless the losses are asymmetric. Their precious principles are much more important than the mere lives of people who they believe are socially beneath them.
Once upon a time Americans fought to win. Those days are gone. Higher Progressive priorities are more important than winning.
Generalez fixed, but volunte is still incorrect. See above.
What of Senator Rand Paul’s suggestion that BHO might have been actually arming Al-Qaeda through Libya?
Does anyone else share my jaundiced view of COIN in both theory and practice? I always thought COIN was largely BS. Not entirely, but largely. A recipe for endless and expensive war. The whack-a-mole approach to conflict.
sbw @ 9: Does anyone else share my jaundiced view of COIN in both theory and practice?
It depends. If you commit the army, army smash, that’s its purpose. And our failure to smash appropriately in Iraq may have been a major mistake, OTOH we got a win on points, I think, and more pink points for being nicely COIN. Is that a net win? Hard to say. Afghan and other cases need to be evaluated separately.
COIN is definitely more expensive of American blood and/or treasure. It also has to be evaluated in those terms.
Compare and contrast to our Afghan strategy in the first weeks, six guys on horseback with laser designators. That’s good COIN. But it allowed OBL to get away, and we abandoned it. The variety we’ve employed since then – well, the Afghans just aren’t very good subjects. It’s not clear that COIN really worked in Iraq, so much as the Sunnis just awoke on their own. When that happens sure do it, but it’s not really doing it that causes results.
We’re supposed to look back on Vietnam and the Green Berets being our first COINers, and that counting as success. On that, I dunno, do you?
–
ps my last post on the general will and link to Wikipedia never posted, let’s see if this does, problems posting from this workstation. OK this one posted. let’s see if it edits.
–
sbw @ 3: +1
“absquatulate” Now that is a truly great word. It won’t even spell check.
Sell outs
Relax and settle down
Let your mind go ’round
Lay down on the ground
And listen to the sound
Of the band
Hold my hand
‘Cause everything in the world is yours and mine………
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aq-61yjBU8
Josh,
I’ve unhooked it from the spam filter.
@9…
COIN is being used to describe conflicts that are not insurgencies.
Pakistani Taliban invading west from the FATA (Federally Abandoned Tribal Anarchy) into Afghan lands is NOT an insurgency.
Indeed, their accents are so pronounced that ALL of the Afghans can spot the Taliban the second they open their mouths — if not sooner — it’s their tennis shoes.
Likewise, proxy fighting by nation-states against Israel is not an insurgency. Hamas is not an internal development of Arab culture — within the Projects, as it were. It’s been ‘stood up’ as a proxy army by the Hez from the very first. It’s externally funded, too.
Yet, the Pentagon-Pink House axis sees insurgencies everywhere.
———–
The other bizarro meme is that AQ is fracturing/ splitting.
If anyone were to take the time to read AQ doctrine…
They’d note that the whole purpose of AQ from the very first was to operate as a Master Franchisor; handing out its feral rules book/ template to islamists — Franchisees.
Meaning: that each so-called split is but the budding of this single-mentality warrior caste.
AQ as an entity is the Knights Templar with reverse motivations.
I’m surprised that such an obvious link goes unremarked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Templar
Get a load of the pro-muslim historical re-write. ^^^^
Josh…
That’s not COIN.
That’s small footprint warfare.
You’re making it the universal war — for universal warriors.
“Compare and contrast to our Afghan strategy in the first weeks, six guys on horseback with laser designators. That’s good COIN.”
That’s not COIN. That’s Counterterrorism (CT). Very different from COIN.
Vietnam COIN succeeded because by the time it was fully implemented (after Tet 68) the insurgency had been effectively wiped out. There was virtually no insurgency to counter. The PAVN replaced the VC and PAVN was most definitely not fighting as an insurgency force. Vietnam COIN rode the coattails of Westmoreland’s big unit, high-tempo, attritional warfare. Westmoreland has been reviled as “the man who lost Vietnam” but his successor Abrams would not have enjoyed success in the period 1968-72 had American and Allied forces under Westmoreland’s overall command not spent the previous four years searching out, engaging, and destroying VC forces and, increasingly as the VC was attrited, PAVN forces as well. COIN claims for success in Vietnam are bullshit.
Re. # 4. SBW (aka Roughcoat)
“…I may think I might hate Republicans equally as much for being so stupid and incompetent and gutless–for letting Obama get the best of them.”
I have a news for you: they are on inside, playing good cop-bad cop routine.
The game is going on since (at least) the time they’ve betrayed Goldwater. Reagan was a fluke caused by Carter’s stupidity with regard to Iran (among other blunders). I doubt that history will repeat. So in my “crystal ball” there will be an abundant energy with horrendous taxes on it and a worship of savior Obama at the end of his 2-d term.
… Unless…the population will go berserk for some “unexpected” (here the word!) reason, and you can insert here any dystopian vision you like.
I’ve used the term pidgin Marxism to describe the cliche riddled gibberish you hear from Obama that is thrice removed from the original Marxist formulations (which at least tried to maintain the pretense of intellectual rigor). But I think I do pidgin an injustice. It is, after all, aimed at communicating useful information among ordinary people trying to get real work done. Obama’s “platitudes with attitude” are aimed at enervating as much of the nation as possible while galvanizing a gnostic core of followers on the Left who think they can decipher what is actually being said.
As a program for national improvement it will, of course, fail. If the fail is epic (and will anything less do?) then someone — some group — will have to be blamed (George Bush, all by his lonesome, won’t do). With the help of the media Obama will pick the targets, turning people against each other. He may act like Borat abroad but he could turn into a capable Algerian at home. With a little encouragement from Chris Matthews I think we’ll find out. After all, the bloodiest portion of the Civil War came after Lincoln addressed the Collective Will at Gettysburg. Who will be Obama’s Grant? Or is Stalin required?
Hopefully we will stumble through the next four years. America often has stumbled through the rough patches. But Obama’s behavior so far is not encouraging.
Obama is hardly invincible. Everyone is successfully defying him. The bad guys abroad, the bad guys at home. They can burn a consulate with impunity; shake down the federal government with ease. The good guys of course cannot, being law abiding, do the same. But that is more the result of their own restraint than nanny state’s omnipotence.
The game can change immediately if legal and constitutional methods of opposition to his policies emerge. That will free the good guys to act. What they want is a legitimate framework for action. The Republican party should have been the vehicle for this, but they have abdicated the field. Yet if something like that got going — and maybe it will come from the governors more than Republican Senators and Congressmen — people willing to be intransigent yet remain within the law — then the challenge would be real one.
The crystallizing issue must ultimately relate to money, because that is what galvanizes the electorate. That will probably either relate to taxes or to healthcare costs. It will be some domestic issue. A foreign policy disaster might do it, if it were sufficiently large and threatening.
The difference between Lincoln and Obama, if it were not absurd to even compare the two, is that Lincoln represented an emerging force moving against the antiquated and dying system of slavery. On the other hand, Obama represents the last gasp of 19th century Marxism. Lincoln disposed of burgeoning material strength where Obama can only rely on the declining energies of a system he himself is helping to kill.
Re # 11. Josh
“…And our failure to smash appropriately in Iraq may have been a major mistake…”
Oh, it smashed allright. Within few weeks tanks rolled into Baghdad. The idiotic turn to “winning of hearts and minds” was the problem.
Wretchard wrote:
“The debate over whether Rousseau or Tocqueville were right about freedom, about volonté générale, is not entirely philosophical. It is practical too. It is about which vision works. If the blue model is bankrupt, then the volonté générale of Obama is just a pile of I.O.U.s. All the soothing assurances about free healthcare, free Obama phones, secure government jobs and nice fat pensions are then just irredeemable promises that will be left in the public’s hands when the elite absquatulate to wherever such esteemed people go when the chips are down. The main problem with relying on a world without mediating institutions — without individual freedom and the mechanisms within which to work it — is what to do when Leviathan is bust.”
Exactly. And therein is the problem.
Wretchard, I want to thank you for the “buck up, boys” tone of some of your recent posts. In the last thread you chided me for my language which it seemed you found wanting in the optimism category.
You are being generous, to be sure. But you have to understand why some of us here aren’t necessarily in buck-up mode.
I know you fought for a cause against Marcos et al. Your insights on hope in the face of big odds are no doubt informed by that experience. But I’m not sure that the situation then is analogous to what we face here today.
First of all, the technological power at the beck and call of the opponent is several orders of magnitude larger. Drones, for example, now used for token PR oriented killing of Islamicists, can (and I believe may) be used against adherents to limited government, fans of the individual vs the group, and authentic Christianity by our American version of the Borg collective. This makes things far more dangerous.
Secondly, we now have a situation where half the country would not object to such use of violence to achieve the objectives of the colective because they are convinced (rightly or not) they will directly benefit from it. The measure of this is as follows….
If you were to ask all the Democrats in the country (and the wording of this is of utmost importance), “If the federal government under Obama started to disenfranchise or imprison or kill conservatives and/or Christians, what would you do to stop it?”, what would be the breakdown of the answers?
My predictions:
1. Something like 10% would say “Even though I’m a Democrat I’ll be right there in the resistance with you, fellow American.”
2. Something like 40% would say “Stop it? I’d cheer the government and help however I can to get those evil bitter clingers once and for all.”
3. Something like 50% would answer “Nothing.”
Bear in mind, every Democrat who, when posed the question, bursts out in mock rage and says something like, “How dare you, that’s a wacky and extremist thing to say, I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer!” is firmly in category 2 above.
It’s important to ask the question that way, “What would you do to stop it?” That leaves no weasel room, it makes the person commit to decency, or to complacency/evil.
I believe we are very near the point where a regime would have enough support to attempt something like this and get away with it. In a way and on a scale that the Marcos regime cannot match.
That is why I am really having to work at seeing a sunny side. Writers like you and Mead keep talking about the demise and bankruptcy of the Blue State model but I can tell you that from my day to day perspective the zombie corpse just keeps on going, partying like it is 1959. Until the evil, immature, and ill-informed people who are reanimating the corpse go into that night, the corpse is there, it’s real, and it’s dangerous.
Please keep up the encouragement, but don’t be shocked if we don’t smile all that often.
20. wretchard: “It will be some domestic issue.”
Honestly, I think the gun issue will be the trigger. That’s if Obama and the Democrats follow through on their rhetoric. Other issues may subsequently take precedence. But guns will start the ball rolling. I recently applied to renew my FOID which I foolishly let lapse. I also contacted Cabelas to find out what they had in stock and whether I might put some money down on some items until my FOID arrived. A Cabela’s representative replied via email to let me know that their stock was flying out the door and they couldn’t know what would be on their shelves from one day to the next. As fast as they are getting deliveries from firearms manufacturers they are selling out. The representative told me that this has been the situation for several months and that the process is accelerating. He said, and I quote, “I’ve been working for Cabela’s for seven years and in that time I’ve never seen anything like what’s happening now.” And this is in “gun unfriendly” Cook County, Illinois.
I find this all curiously heartening. If Obama and the Dems come for our guns, there’s going to be hell to pay. Not at first, and not all at once. But eventually–hell will be paid. They are sowing the whirlwind with their rhetorical assault on the 2nd Amendment. If they’re not careful, they’re going to reap the storm.
Wretchard, I’ve been coming to BC for many years pre PJMedia,does that make me a member?
Please allow me to put my Tin foil hat on for a second and ask this,
Why is a Filipino, who lives in Australia, so bloody interested and knowledgeable about the U.S. political system? Are you an FBI plant? designed to weed out the dissidents for the FEMA camps? TF Hat off/
Sounds bizarre I know, but what if there ARE websites, blogs etc. that farm for dissidents like us here at BC? OT I know, but I have thought about this for some time.
Lastly, Thanks to all of the posters here, L3, Wretchard for hosting and giving me a sense of not so aloneness,
Bob
Edit for clarity
Wretchard, I don’t believe that theory, just my Tin Foil hat again,
you are the best Blog on the Web Hands down and Thanks,
B
Wretchard, I want to thank you for the “buck up, boys” tone of some of your recent posts.
No mo uro +1
no mo uno #22
Wretchard is right to buck us up.
The future is not in drones or technology, but in culture. Wretchard and the Belmont Club are controlling culture.
The Socialists will fold when they run out of other people’s money.
From our point of view that will be disastrous, but the Belmont Club will live on, even without the internet.
TRIUMPH DES WILLENS
Obama has laid out his agenda for the country; national socialism. “Fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.” One might think, Thank goodness he doesn’t have a Leni Riefenstahl, but he does, an army of Leni Riefenstahls, all bent to his will.
They lined up deep along the road
The flower throwing crowd
Their faces shining in their joy
The cheering long and loud
The motorcade, the blaring horns
The smiling savior come
The open car, the genial wave
The vibrant low pitched hum
Of forces stirring in the dark
The coming of the night
The jackboots ready at command
To set aside the light
And when it’s done and freedom gone
The flowers crushed and dried
We’ll wonder how it came about
That freedom here has died
@25. winslow, you said, “but the Belmont Club will live on, even without the internet.”That means I’m a Member of the Belmont Club and always have been, thanks for clearing that up,
Semper Fi,
Bob
The USA can be efficiently governed only through legitimacy and consensus. Unlike primitive 3rd world economies, any attempt to impose a police state on American society will collapse the economy, which relies on information flows, telecomms, fleets of trucks, vehicles in their millions, a web of railroads, shipping, couriers to simply put food on the table. America is literally built on things and ideas continuously moving around.
Once you destroy information you destroy markets. Once you destroy markets you create actual hunger and chaos. You can create a “papers please” society in the primitive 3rd world country — say in Syria. But this would be infeasible in the short term in a continental, high tech economy the size of the U.S.
Hence, like it or not, the only feasible game unless the elites are completely suicidal is legitimate politics. The “forward” people are delusional if they think they can create a permanent majority by force or fraud. And yet some may actually be delusional. The single most destructive thing the administration has done is exude this belief that “we won”; that they don’t need no consensus no more. Democracy is what you can get 80% of the public to go along with. It is not what 51% of the public can impose if it insists on it.
If you look at where the craziness is coming from it isn’t coming from the Tea Party. It’s not coming from those who look things up in what Piers Morgan reviled as “your little book”. It is coming from those who think they don’t need it.
Thus, the most sustainable revolutionary arena a person can actually participate in is in legitimate constitutional opposition to wrongheaded policies. If the current institutions don’t suit, create new legal ones. But that’s where the action has to be unless you want to pull the plug. Imposing a police state on a complex economy basically pulls the plug.
A guy with a rifle out on the freeway is a nuisance. But a broadly based legal resistance is a real threat because the first threatens not just the state, but the fabric of society; therefore it cannot be tolerated. The second is based on the fabric of society and may grow. Yet to some extent, a politician who thinks he stands above legitimacy has more akin to the man with the rifle than the person who is willing to work within the system to change it.
Think about it this way. If you have a crisis inside an operating system your only hope is to run a fix in parallel and switch over. You can’t drop the OS just like that. The computer will grind to a halt and you might never boot it again. If you destroy legitimacy completely the most likely outcome is a crash. The experience of the machine politicians may be misleading in this regard. A Chicago and a Detroit are only possible because it can leach energy from the larger system in which it is embedded. But once a Chicago or Detroit become a closed system then entropy takes over. And nobody, except maybe God, has found a way to beat entropy. The “forward” people have no experience with closed systems. They’ll find that once you wreck things there’s no one who will bail you out.
In some ways this speech is a blessing. Obama himself is pulling away the curtain, because it’s obvious the Republicans are too cowardly to do it.
Deep down, Americas still idolize the Constitution – yes even fashionable liberals.
But of course the loony Left despise it.
.So there is an opportunity for a Conservative of strong will and great character, to again, like Reagan, restore our Constitutional principals and in the process destroy the destructive far Left. It won’t be easy but it can be done.
It’s all a matter of will.
Wretchard: “All the soothing assurances about free healthcare, free Obama phones, secure government jobs and nice fat pensions are then just irredeemable promises that will be left in the public’s hands when the elite absquatulate to wherever such esteemed people go when the chips are down.”
I like that word “absquatulate”. As for the elite absquatutlating anywhere when all the IOUs come due, the question boils down to whether enough of the military sticks with its oath to uphold the Constitution, because when push comes to shove, the question “who has the guns and how many and what kind?” becomes exceedingly important.
Rosseau’s “volonté générale” has butchered more people than anything else in history.
We have considerable design-margin left. Let’s use it!
g @ 21: Within few weeks tanks rolled into Baghdad
But that was not enough. Nobody surrendered. And then came Fallujah.
sbw @ 17: That’s not COIN. That’s Counterterrorism (CT). Very different from COIN.
But think about it, it only works in something like a COIN environment, it’s COIN with its priorities straight.
sbw @ 4: I may think I might hate Republicans equally as much for being so stupid and incompetent and gutless–for letting Obama get the best of them.
I like to think that is the case, that if we can piece together Rand, Rubio, Scott, Cain, Christie, Jindal, and yes even Palin 2012 into the Republican Frankenstein so we have a candidate who can speak to and thru the media – and even govern wisely and effectively should they be elected – then they WILL be elected, and we can laugh about the Obamanation that was, and forget about the Mittens that wasn’t.
But two things stand in the way, first another four years of Obambus, and second that the problems are real and serious and not easy even for an ideal candidate and administration to deal with.
But a crash test dummy could do a better job than Obambus. Rather, an empty chair: first, do no damage.
It was a long time ago. I am, after all, old. When I first read Rousseau and encountered volonté générale in “Intro to Political Science” it may have been on parchment, and in his own handwriting. But the moment I read it, the hair stood up on the back of my neck. This was a justification for any sort of tyranny that the “interpreter” of that Will could conceive.
The General Will may not be restricted to one polity. As you mention the “Eastphalian” model, that is one current of General Will. The Blue Model espoused by Obama and our Nomenklatura of all parties is another. And as the strength and involvement of the Blue Model fades, so does its current. The “Eastphalian” model will become the General Will of the world. And, it will be tyrannically enforced on the adherents of the Blue Model.
The problem is that #22 no mo uro is absolutely correct in his estimation of the enemy. The days of Democrats loving the country and Constitution are gone, long gone. And there are large swathes of the population who consider the Democrats to be weak and wishy-washy in their devotion to the Collective.
We are on the knife edge, in that in the absence of a SECOND party in this country, as to whether there can be “legal and constitutional methods of opposition to his policies”. I do not see any hope of future moderation in the demands of the Left, I don’t see any hope of the Vichy Republicans standing for anything, and to be honest there is no time left for an electoral alternative to arise; or for the electoral system to be cleaned up enough for there to be fair elections.
I am hearing reports over the last couple of days, not yet confirmed but interesting in that they are neither denied nor dismissable out of hand; that Flag rank officers in all services are being asked if they would fire on the American people.
Money perhaps, because that relates to everything. Or perhaps an outrage to Free Americans’ sense of what they are. But there are too many “supersaturated solutions”; any one of which could be “chrystalized” by a shock, a drop too much being added to the solvent, or simple passage of time and entropy. And in the absence of a legal and constitutional means of opposition, we will be faced with the choice of kneeling or resisting by “Eastphalian” means.
The outcome of such resistance is uncertain, even in victory. But a failure to choose, is to yield your choice to others.
Subotai Bahadur
@32 Josh,
I think we can safely leave Christie out of the equation. Even if he IS done fellating Obama for a photo-op and helping him get Springsteen to sing for Sandy relief, which did not do a damn thing for those people. He is NOT conservative, he is anti-gun, he is pro Big Government.
#22 no mor uro
“I believe we are very near the point where a regime would have enough support to attempt something like this and get away with it.”
I disagree. The US government is a feeble and feckless regime that is nearing its end.
It cannot control its own border. It cannot manage its budget. It cannot keep the peace in its own cities. It cannot defeat Al Qaeda. Or the Taliban. Or convince Pakistan to stop supporting the Taliban. Or convince Iran to stop building nuclear weapons that they openly say they will use against us.
No one fears the wrath of the United States. Except law abiding, taxpaying American citizens, that is. And there are fewer of them every day.
This isn’t going to last. Mark Steyn noted a few years ago that in 1914 no one expected the disappearance various European monarchies as a result of the First World War, and I bet Louis XVI didn’t expect the French Revolution either.
My guess is that the US regime will last only until the next serious crisis- a nuclear attack on a US city or cities, the collapse of the dollar, anything serious enough that the lickspittle leftist press can’t coverup- and then it’s game over, man.
The regime has striven mightily to buy the votes of the swarming masses of Julias, and in the process has alienated everyone else. Once the bread and circuses go away, the Julias won’t have any reason to care what the government commands- and once the regime starts issuing commands for everyone else to work even harder so the bread and circuses can be resumed, everyone else will have good reason not to comply.
Reality doesn’t go away because the DC political elite find it untidy, or because they write another million pages of rules and regulations to keep it at bay. I have no doubt ugly times are ahead but continued rule by the incompetents of DC seems unlikely to me.
@33. Subotai Bahadur
I’ too have seen the rumblings about this “litmus test”, the last at GatewayPundit.
I would not be surprised, as Flag-Ranks are no-longer “Military Professionals”, but politicians.
Much-as “Police Chiefs” are not cops, but political appointees.
You WILL please the master, or you will be unemployed.
So it goes…
That is precisely the danger, cogently and succinctly put: not that the “forward” people are on the verge of taking over the world but that they in their fecklessness will implode the system and leave nothing in its place.
Hence the real importance of legal, institutional and constitutional opposition. If the current elites implode then people will recreate a consensus simply because they have no choice. And the odds are that they are going to recreate it around the Constitution and the remaining institutions. There is really no alternative for a country as large and diverse as the US.
Hence the importance of the States and far-sighted politicians who understand the power of legitimacy. That is the parachute; the backup system for the day when Julia says, “oh wow” in rueful realization. The future does not belong to those who believe they can govern without legitimacy, through some kind of cult of personality or by extracting ridiculous oaths of personal loyalty. That is bound to fail. It belongs to those who understand that a great continental nation can only be governed by legitimacy and general tradition — one which permits the population to live in safety, prosperity, freedom and custom.
The biggest danger is take the counsel of fear and be unprepared for the failure of “forward”. The greatest opportunity is to opt-in but in a radical way. The big challenge is to use the legitimate institutions and the framework of the Constitution to get things working again.
33. Subotai Bahadur
I read that too. What also concerns me is what’s the real focus of Obama’s campaign machine that is now a political advocacy group? If they train their guns on specific elections (senators & congress) to keep in the hands of Dems using every dirty method they picked up along the way, who knows…
But, I feel we are continually in defense mode. How do we fight back? The rot has been going on for a long time. The populace is ignorant in a large part due to the media and academia who propagate the false narrative that the left pushes. It is hard to have an intelligent conversation about most issues because they believe the narrative they are told and are too lazy to look for themselves.
Eventually facts will catch up with them, but will it then be too late?
I don’t see why Republicans are quiet. Why are they not pointing out every single lie this president has uttered? He said taxes would only go up on families with income of $450K . Osama is dead and GM is alive. Why are they not pulling the curtains back and laughing at this clown and holding every democrat senator / congressman to account for it?
John Stewart is popular for a reason, why not deploy the same thing against them?
It is depressing to watch.
Obama’s inaugural address was an essay in hypocrisy. He cloaked every element of his agenda behind a mask that supported the very thing that element is striving to undermine. He called us to traditional values on the surface, yet declared an intention to do away with them. He called us to capitalism and individualism, yet declared collectivism to be the path forward. He called us to draw closer to God individually, but manifested that with ways to draw us closer to the state collectively.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. We beheld a progressive hitting every element of the triangle with the wand. Very strange plays on language and meaning were going on. I suppose the thing to do is to lie back and let our betters inform us about all the dog whistles we hear, sounded from discounted sources unknown.
#34 ChrisP,
I wouldn’t be so quick to write Christie off just yet, although I freely admit there is an excellent chance your objections are absolutely correct.
But assuming the US remains intact enough to hold national elections 2016 he may well be a formidable contender.
I consider Christie to be an actual, honest-to-goodness politician. This is a valuable skill for an elected office holder to have, which is something that Republicans often don’t seem to understand or appreciate.
I note that he is a Republican who won in a blue state, and looks likely to be re-elected as well. Compare and contrast that with the assortment of dolts that the GOP often gets stuck with, who manage to lose easily winnable races in deep red states.
So I’ll tolerate Christie running his mouth and saying nice things about Obama, because he wants to be re-elected in a state that hearts Obama very much.
And I’ll reserve judgement for now about what he’d really do as president, or even what he really thinks. We’ll find out more about that later.
If “Absquatulate” were an onomonopia, how would you define it?
Re # 32. Josh
g @ 21: Within few weeks tanks rolled into Baghdad
But that was not enough. Nobody surrendered. And then came Fallujah.
Between tanks and Fallujah was idiotic dismissal of Iraqi army as part of idiotic H&M campaign.
We have examples of Julia in full application. In Canada it is called the Indian act, where the government owns the land, buys and fixes the houses and probably even buys the birth control.
Another description would be a complete and effective technique to dismantle humans so that they end up hopeless, incapable and intoxicated.
None of his bs in that speech is new. He is a vacuous twit if he believes it, and anyone who agrees with him, and worse, supports giving him power, is a blithering idiot that will fully deserve what is coming upon them.
Ironically people may have to fall back on churches, families, muskets and militias — what Leo Linbeck referred to as the “mediating institutions” to put food on the table.
I showed people the webcams; this world isn’t going back to Little House on the Prairie. That is, Pa can’t shoot a bear and expect children come running, Mother give thanks for his courage and wisdom. Some wish for this since it’s easier than human resource compliance. Others want their own feudal manor where they can burn witches and pour oil on fools who dare enter. (Did you know you can do that for fun these days?)
Good luck with those plans anyway… I’ll stick with DeVry for my future, you all pray for social collapse.
Then there are the rumblings from the non-flag rank officers and senior enlisted talking about “…all enemies both foreign and domestic..” and taking down flag rank officers who violate their oath.
In the past, esp. in the third world it is the colonels more often than not, who are the ones who lead the coups and revolts and imprison or execute the establishment generals.
I just finished watching a show called “Hard Core Pawn”, about pawn shops in downtown Chicago and Detroit. Bizarre, uncomfortable entertainment. The people in this show live on a different planet than I do, in a different world.
But to a large extent, these are the people that Obama is talking to. Their world is chaos and they know it. They know that things are hopelessly screwed up. As has been said, the chaos in places like Detroit, Chicago, Gary, etc can only continue because they can feed off the energy from elsewhere. The chaos is spreading. The energy is reversing, and what Obama seeks is that kind of social chaos “everywhere”, because as an Alinskyite provacateur, he understands viscerally how to manipulate that.
The old order, the political and social order that we were born into is dying, and nothing can stop it. It will indeed be a system crash, but the system is not a digital device, but as has also been said is a dynamic economy with the need for the free flow of information. My guess is that even now Obama is allying himself with the folks who run the major information “systems”; Facebook, Internet Search engines (GOOGLE), other ISP providers, the TV Networks, etc. There will be a flow of information, but it will be managed. It will be clumsy and work poorly, but it will function well enough to rule.
Just who will gather and stand up to this? Name names. As Subotai already intimiated, will the military turn on its citizens in a time of crisis? A permanent “national emergency”?
We may ride this all out in a few years and doff our tin foil hats and things may appear to return to a new normal, but I doubt it. This chaos that is spreading is rooted in the intended political and economic disorder that has been initiated for decades, and is now going to bear fruit.
Where will be the forces of reason when the mob roams the streets looking for food? If the systemic collapse comes, just who can you count on? How will you recognized you allies?
Identity politics are part of the root of the problem, and identity politics will be the tactics of the mob.
My prediction of the trigger mechanism will be when the US Dollar ceases to be the world’s reserve currency. This will trigger massive inflation at home with a collapse in the value of the dollar. We will all suddenly be much poorer, and feel it.
Obama better watch out! Word is out that the new Republican character on Lena Dunham’s show likes to listen to Adele,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYEDA3JcQqw&ob=av2e
#40. Xennady
Christie sold his soul to Obama on the Sandy deal.
“I consider Christie to be an actual, honest-to-goodness politician.
He is, indeed an “actual, honest-to-goodness-politician.
That’s the last thing we need. We need “An actual, honest-to goodness patriot.”
Christie seems to be willing to sell his soul for expediency, not “political philosophy”. He is, in fact a Whore.
What is he is not in dispute, only his price.
So it goes…
#44 Baobo
“Good luck with those plans anyway… I’ll stick with DeVry for my future, you all pray for social collapse.”
I’m glad that you’re not interested in social collapse- but that does not necessarily mean that social collapse isn’t interested in you.
The problem is that while you put your trust in DeVry millions of others put their faith in the check that shows up in their mailbox every month. And the US government may be broke but- by gum- it still has checks, and plenty of them.
Eventually the broke will matter, and the checks won’t be enough to wallpaper it over anymore. I’m not going to try and guess when, but it will.
So stick with DeVry, but get ready for unpleasantness.
cp @ 34: I think we can safely leave Christie out of the equation.
I want about twenty pounds of Christie, basically the lip.
“It’s déjà vu all over again,” in that “one nation, and one people” = “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.”
Christie is the Islamists tool. He is not on our side.
#38 shivermetimbers
If I may digress a wee bit. Under another name, I had a chain letter-style email newsletter from shortly after 9/11 until a few years ago; discussing the war, world affairs, and politics. I had several dozen people I corresponded with and sent anywhere from 5-10 typewritten pages every weekday, with occasional special editions, and even more rare “Special Projects” of 50-70 pages plus graphics. They would send them to their own lists, who sent them on to theirs, etc. I deliberately didn’t know how many layers each had or how large they were. What one does not know, one cannot be made to reveal. One of the basic rules was that each level below mine was supposed to sanitize as to source other than me. But I know that I would get messages passed up every so often from all over the world and frequently from deployed military officers, some at O-6 complimenting my work.
I have also been active in politics since I was a kid. I have run a presidential campaign in my county [we kicked butt]. Active TEA Party now, not a Republican since January 2. The surrender January 1 was the last straw, and I could not change registration until the 2nd.
In the course of all that I met various people at various levels in the Republican Party. One is from a southern state, both parties of the couple are very high in the state party, and the one I corresponded with is now slated to run for state office. I have been my usual … reticent [do I need a *sarc*?] self and trying to get an explanation for the behavior of the Republicans.
I never got an answer, or explanation, or excuse. Today I got a request from that person to remove them from my email list. Which I immediately did.
Years of correspondence, but on that key subject, silence.
Here in Colorado, the Institutional Republicans are very literally more at war with Conservatives than Democrats. Since the 2010 elections were over, that has blatantly been the case. At the 2012 convention, the Republicans changed the party rules to enable them to block Conservative candidates. After the 2012 elections, Boehner purged Conservatives from key committees; and he made it the norm to have himself and 40 or so of his adherents to vote with a unified Democrat bloc to defeat the Republicans. And he has backpedaled and yielded to the Enemy at every turn, the next being tomorrow’s vote to give a 3-4 month Debt Ceiling holiday to Obama.
Vote fraud is a key component of the Democrat plan to subvert the country and Constitution. It is overwhelming, and I do not have room here to list it all. But the 2012 election [which we now find out that Romney did not want to win] was won by 407,000 votes in four heavily defrauded states, including my own. And in the aftermath, I found out that in 1982 the Republican Party signed a consent decree with the Democrats before the 3rd US Circuit Court agreeing NEVER to combat their vote fraud NATIONWIDE. Decree here:
http://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/rnc-v-dnc.pdf
By the way, I brought this to last months County Central Committee meeting, with copies for all. You will note that I am not at this month’s meeting, and even if I had stayed in the party, I still probably would not be welcome.
Sometimes you have to look at the obvious. The Republicans are not fighting the Enemy, ever, because they do not consider them to be the Enemy. They are fighting the TEA Party and Conservatives, constantly, because they do.
I use the term Nomenklatura here and elsewhere. For those who don’t know, it comes from Soviet Russia. It means, roughly, The Named Ones [collectively]. Holding power over the nameless masses, they had names. They were the Party and Government functionaries. There were factions within the CPSU, but they were ALL Nomenklatura and until the end when it all fell apart would stand with others with names against the proletariat.
Class loyalty and self interest is not just something from the old Soviet Union. Power and elites cross ideological and geographic lines. The Institutional Republicans are loyal primarily to power and money. And fixing the country, or opposing the Democrats and other Leftists [who are more ruthless than any Institutional] means less power and less money. Being a tame opposition can be a good gig, until it all collapses.
I speak Heresy, of course. All those who want to really stand against the Left are Heretics in our country. Inquisitions are not really big on reasoned discourse, and tend to favor brute force.
Subotai Bahadur
The legacy of Abraham Lincoln, as a president, is antithetical to the ideology of Barack Obama.
If Abraham Lincoln had relied upon the federal army to win the Civil War, the Union would have lost within weeks. The Union army was built from local militia fielded by states – well regulated militia.
It was under the auspices of the state militia that the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was raised. If the federal army had had anything to do with it, no black men would have ever served under the Union banner. The militia system allowed men to serve along side other men they liked. Many of them were self-financing. A local politician or industrialist might pay for the outfitting of the regiment. Sometimes, as in the case of the Zouaves, each man would pay for his expensive uniform and equipment.
Yet, if Barack Obama had had anything to do with it, the United States would have fallen apart out of his stupid insistence upon “collective action” from a federal monolith.
I will go further. George W. Bush blundered in not encouraging people to raise volunteer regiments for the fight against al-Qaeda. Barack Obama is merely compounding that original blunder by turning collectivism into a fetish. Although it is true that the worship of an emperor as a sun god is very American, it is antithetical to the American Constitution, and to find it one would need to go back to the old Natchez kingdom back in the 1700′s whose ideology was warmed over Cahokian despotism.
We need to revive the militia system to make it easier for men such as Pat Tillman and Daniel Chen to serve their country. We should also bring back the letter of marque and reprisal, which is under the exclusive power of Congress and only Congress; privateering is one power that the executive branch is constitutionally prohibited from interfering with.
mh@12
From worlwidewords.org: A writer in the New Orleans Weekly Picayune in December 1839 noted that the origin of the word lay in squat, to which had been added the Latin prefix ab– (from abscond), meaning “off, away”, and the verb ending –ulate (borrowed from words like perambulate), so making a word meaning to get up and depart quickly. Or, as a writer in the old Vanity Fair magazine in 1875 elaborated: “They dusted, vamosed the ranch, made tracks, cut dirt, hoed it out of there”.
I love that word and intend to use it at my every opportunity.
49- They aren’t going to doom billions of people with whatever folks are imagining. Economic news is like other news- they could be shrinking the money supply for all we know.
Now there’s still this question of what to do with the homo-centurion and displaced samurai class, since age makes them stabby and rapey. (Goldman should do a study on that.) In the past, Americans were sent random places so reporters could film it and say how awful it was. I’ll bet if you’re too Islamic, they give you a vest and $25,000 cash.
The options aren’t good for today’s low information thetans. Turning them into writers and dwarfs may be a good plan.
#48 ChrisP
“That’s the last thing we need. We need “An actual, honest-to goodness patriot.””
You’re giving me platitudes. I note again that Christie won running as a Republican in a blue state, while many Republicans can’t even win in deep red states. That matters. That’s reality telling the GOP it has a problem, not that the GOP is interested in listening.
So don’t denigrate his political skill. We need actual honest-to-goodness patriots with actual honest-to-goodness political skills who can manage to win elections, because otherwise their patriotism is utterly irrelevant.
Christie may or may not run for president, may well be a tool of the islamists as #51 Blast From the Past says, and may not even be re-elected.
But I don’t live in his state and I don’t have to condemn him just yet.
I won’t.
This “collective” is what zombie (see zombietime.com) calls “the Hive Mind.”
#52 Subotai Bahadur,
Re Colorado- I’ve heard eerily similar stories about actions taken by the GOP establishment in Michigan. And if the GOP still considers itself bound by a decades old promise never to fight against vote fraud then it is merely yet another sign that the party is soon going to join the Whigs on the ash-heap of history. I won’t mourn.
#37 Wretchard,
I’d just like to note that it made my day to see you quote me. I certainly hope my occasional commentary here has been a positive addition to the site, as I can certainly say that you’ve been a positive influence on my intellectual development over the years. Many thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with the world.
Josh@11: We’re supposed to look back on Vietnam and the Green Berets being our first COINers, and that counting as success. On that, I dunno, do you?
It worked very well in Viet Nam when it was applied by Creighton Abrams. The average person in Viet Nam was not a communist, in fact, most weren’t political. Most were just like us; leave me alone was their philosophy, but to no avail.
The US did push the communists out of South Viet Nam and the citizens of the South did support their government. We left Viet Nam, the communists came back and the rice farmers weren’t able to grow rifles and planes in sufficient quantities to fend off the communists.
Our liberal, democracy loving congress refused to supply weapons or the money to buy them for the South while the North had sufficient backing from their communist neighbors.
COIN in those days meant helping the victims; sharing our food, our medicine and our arms with our friends so they could keep the murderous communists at bay. It worked very well until the John Kerry Group put an end to it.
SBW@17: COIN claims for success in Vietnam are bullshit
While it is true that the VC mostly committed suicide during Tet of ’68 (That’s what the surprise was all about), the NVA pushed aside what was left of the VC and US CAP style programs kept the re-infiltrators out.
The whole “must do these things together” schtick is effective because there is a grain of truth in it. There are a lot of things – important things – that have to be done in collaboration with others.
Of course, there are many problems with collective action: free rider effects, tragedy of the commons, coordination and decision costs, and so on.
But at the core of this General Will worldview is a profound lack of confidence in the average American. He can’t find a job, so we have to give him 99 weeks of unemployment insurance and Pell Grants to attend his local community college to upgrade his skills with a degree in anthropology; he can’t pay his rent, so we have to create Section 8 programs to make housing affordable and Fannie/Freddy mortgage programs so he can have his share of the American dream; he doesn’t have health insurance, so we have to create a massive, federal system run by experts to manage the health care industry, and provide all manner of subsidies to get him to buy insurance; he can’t afford food, so we expand food stamps to make sure he gets his recommended daily calorie intake, so long as it’s not in the form of a 48oz Big Gulp; etc.
All of these goods and services – education, housing, health care, food – he is simply incapable of providing himself, according to his betters in Washington DC. Why? Because he’s a vice-riddled idiot, and I, the policy maker, am a virtuous genius. Noblesse oblige!
But for centuries, that support was provided by mediating institutions in America: families, churches, community chests, benevolent societies, and the like. But since those institutions are made up of average Americans, they can’t be trusted to see to those needs any more. I guess that means we’re more compassionate at large scale than at small. Yeah, that must be it.
It’s that disdain for the common man that is the most maddening part of this entire conceit. The seeds of that disdain are planted and cultivated in our elite institutions, and are rooted in the cognitive hypothesis. It’s a failure of elites, and elite-generating institutions.
But being book-smart is only one kind of smart, and (as Paul Tough argues in the linked article above) much less important to life success than character.
The hard truth is that a janitor making $15/hour is pretty damn smart in his way. It would be impossible for any of the policy wonks on Congressional staffs that write these bills to survive on that pay, much less raise a family – which many janitors find a way to do. So in my way of thinking, the DC intelligentsia doesn’t have half the smarts of a janitor.
The other way they’re different: janitors get paid to remove the garbage, while the Beltway crowd gets paid to generate it.
L3
Xennady@56:
You *do* realize, don’t you, that the type of Republican that would be electable in a blue state is not the type of Republican that would be electable in a red one?
In fact, I’d say the national Republican party is finely tuned to choose the ilk of Christie, who would be unelectable in a red state.
#52 Subotai Bahadur — +1
Greatly hope that your thoughts become more widely held and that club members help highlight the evidence that supports it. I’ll add only a small contribution now.
A cartoon I commissioned back in 2002 depicted the collaboration between the establishment Republicans and Democrats. Too bad it was insufficient to aid recognition of the problem earlier.
The revolt that resulted in the TEA Party was long overdue, but may have formed too late to save us from institutionalized voter fraud. Aside from the 1983 agreement of which I was unaware, I do know that organized fraud was in progress for decades. I witnessed its increase here in Los Angeles in the 1990s. What was the reaction of the GOP secretary of state (Bill Jones) to my evidence*? It was to limit access to voter registration data so that the evidence was harder to detect. Calling it to the attention of the GOP county committee got nothing but dismissals. They feared its exposure by them ran the risk of them being charged with racism. They actually said it was the job of the press to break the news, as if that was the only answer.
I had no idea things could get as bad as they did or I would have made a bigger stink. Not that I might have had a better chance of success, because I’ve learned how many of these creeps are ruthless, but I’d feel far better about my efforts.
—
*55 Latino Dems registered in a tiny house on my street a few blocks away.
The Second Law has taken control of TOTUS! Ted Sorenson, where have you gone?
We choose to go to the Moon, and these other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Off course, that was only an aspiration, my colleagues at Grumman made wishes come true. As our tee shirt says http://preview.tinyurl.com/ah66vkh
WE DID IT!
That’s right Mr. President, we, the employees of a CORPORATION, conceived, built and supported the flights of our Lunar Excursion modules which took 12 men to the surface of the Moon, and “returned them safely to the Earth”.
YOU DIDN’T MAKE THAT, MR, PRESIDENT!
WE DID IT!
So let us have people stop saying , “if we can put men on the Moon…”
WHAT’S THIS “WE” SHIT???????????
I beg pardon from everyone for making yet another comment in this thread. Blame beer, because in my work schedule this is my Saturday night. Hicc.
#61 I get it,
“You *do* realize, don’t you, that the type of Republican that would be electable in a blue state is not the type of Republican that would be electable in a red one?”
My point is that those Republicans who should be so incredibly electable in red states that they actually manage to win their elections somehow don’t.
That they don’t should be a sign for the GOP to notice something is wrong. Yet instead the party reacts to such events by doubling down on stupid and attempting to lockup the party machinery such that non-establishment candidates can’t get control no matter how many elections they win. Subotai has given personal experience of this, and I’ve heard essentially the same in my state. Fail fail fail.
“In fact, I’d say the national Republican party is finely tuned to choose the ilk of Christie, who would be unelectable in a red state.”
No, the party machinery is finely tuned to chose the ilk of John Boehner, Dennis Hastert, George W. Bush, John S. McCain and Mitt Romney.
Fail fail- oops, I repeat myself. They’re electable or not, but it doesn’t really matter much because they won’t do a thing to upset the leftist applecart, win or lose.
That’s a problem, because folks like me who are inclined to vote for them have grown weary of the endless irrelevance.
This is an existential problem for the Republican party, not that the party seems to notice.
Time will tell how it all shakes out but I bet the present GOP establishment won’t last.
“Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.”
“Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein fuhrer!” A slight change of the original order (for BO, the state is higher than the people?), and he leaves it to Chris Matthew types (Another Gettysburg Address???) to finish the line, but the sentiment is clear enough.
So who is BO’s Leni Riefenstahl? Or is there no need for such crude pageantry as “Triumph of the Will” when MSM and most of Hollywood is on board and running interference for him?
As an ex-Democrat who never found the GOP appealing, I agree with #64 that the GOP is going the way of the Whigs after 1850. What comes next remains to be determined.
I would not be surprised, as Flag-Ranks are no-longer “Military Professionals”, but politicians.
How many of these flag-rank politicians remember how to clear a jam in an M2? Perhaps they are the wrong ones to be asked the question.
subotai bahadur @52: “The Republicans are not fighting the Enemy, ever, because they do not consider them to be the Enemy. They are fighting the TEA Party and Conservatives, constantly, because they do”
This has been apparent to me for years. Peruse the newspapers from between 9/11/01 and 9/16/01 (the latter being Bush’s Joint Session speech). Virtually all the printed comments from party leaders were warnings against a “right-wing backlash”.
They may or may not support full-on socialism (I personally think they do, and they just don’t want icky working class people running it). But what they oppose, with every fiber of their being, is a rightist synthesis which would allow the worst possible thing in their mental universe: “turning back the clock”.
The GOPe has imbibed progressivism with their mother’s milk. They think they can do it better than the Democrats – more responsibly, less corruptly, etc, etc. But they really do subscribe to “pas d’ennemis a gauche”, which they have transformed in our time to “toutes d’ennemis a droit”.
Time for a change.
If only the Israel had the strength of Sri Lanka.
“They unabashedly want to win”
If not in the end, at least in the short and long term, winning defines who is the better man.
“one nation, and one people.”
A new people, born out of the death of AmeriKKKa. RIP.
America:1776-1963. Cause of death: suicide.
I think we need to take Barack Obama’s words very, very literally. There is indeed a pronounced rhetorical aspect to his speaking style, but it would be a mistake to denounce it as “mere” rhetoric, designed only to press certain emotional buttons and to whip up the base. Obama is speaking from his heart; he is telling us what he really believes.
Obama really believes that the expansion of the welfare state is the best path to the greatest peace and prosperity for the greatest number. He really believes that the progressive victories of the past—such as Social Security, Medicare, and Affirmative Action—have helped to transform America into a stronger, better place. You may disagree with truth of those propositions (as I do), but they are not entirely without supportive evidence nor a certain appeal.
Obama really believes that, by enacting Obamacare and other welfare state expansions, he is standing solidly within an established tradition that produced those earlier gains, which he calls the authentic American tradition. And again he is not without credible evidence to back him up. And why shouldn’t he think so? Conservatives seem to have accepted the progressive goals of the past. Serious opposition to Social Security and desegragation as ideas is almost nonexistent these days.
There is a constant murmuring among conservatives that Obama is the frontispiece in some Manichaean plot to take away your cherished freedoms, but that is not true. Alinsky may have been that man, but Obama is not. The idea that there is an antagonistic dichotomy between freedom and welfare has quite simply never entered his mind; and furthermore, he is not Machiavellian enough to conceive and carry out a powergrab of that magnitude. For Obama, freedom and welfare are complementary and he thinks he is doing good.
The criticisms of Obama that I see at Pajamas Media and elsewhere have taken on a misplaced eschatological tone, but this is only to be expected amongst a commentariat who reveres the founding of the American Republic as the most important event in the history of the world. I suppose when your particular conception of constitutionality vanishes, your world will vanish with it. My world, the world, however, will not.
I would ask you to do yourselves a favor and not get so excited about every new development out of DC. All this impassioned speechifying accomplishes nothing. The problem is that you have misconstrued the nature of the great struggle of our age. Do not fear the triumph of Leftism, for Leftism is already fated to fall. Only not to you, nor to the Constitution.
Leftism will be overthrown by boredom. Exasperation, frustration, exhaustion are its issue. There will come a day, likely only a few decades hence, when men will have had quite enough of ideologies of every kind and will ask only that the simple facts of life be honored and preserved. That day will also call forth a new brand of politics which will look quite different from the special interest obsessions of the moment. That politics, which we may call Caesarism after convention, will ask little in the way of pretense for the raw exercise of power, but neither will it mask its intentions. Ordinary people will at least know where they stand, and that may be considered a slight improvement over the current chaos.
At that time questions of creed, of ethos, of nationality and family, will assume an importance that the atomised, PC world of today would find difficult to imagine. L3′s “mediating institutions” will return in force: not as kindly, less obtrusive substitutes for the failed welfare state, still less as paeans to good-natured American individualism; but as tribes, houses, orders, and guilds—and from them will flow the issues of life.
It is to these things that you should devote your attention. There is truth in the world, both physical and metaphysical. If you seek salvation, jump in the bark of Peter. If you seek protection, sell your cloak and buy a sword. If you seek a stable civil society rooted in constitutional principals, then heaven help you because that thing never existed and never will.
“[W]e have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.”
This, after just taking an oath to defend the Constitution.
I guess that’s what the definition of is is.
Matt, we’re trying to have a serious discussion about how to fix a real problem here. Put down the Hans Hermann Hoppe and move away slowly before what’s left of your judgement evaporates.
Your solution to the current crisis is to replace Obama with Edward Longshanks or Cardinal Richelieu or the de Borgias. It is to return to the times of treating people as property belonging to the land, the sale of indulgences, and jus prima noctis – and worse, to try and pass that off as something wonderful that God wants for his children. Every intelligent, informed person, including and especially devout Catholics, ought to know better. We may end up there, unfortunately, but wishing that sort of thing upon your fellow humans isn’t covered under the definition of love.
Honestly, it’s a shame that someone with your knowledge and wordsmithing capabilities can be so obsessed with such a terrible idea. The society that I seek is one that acknowledges that human beings, like all living things and indeed all of God’s creations including his Church, are flawed (original sin) and can at best achieve a dynamic equilibrium, never ossiification pretending to be stability unless by actions that are counter to God’s will. The “stable” society that you seek is one of brutality 99% of the time, the “stability” of the Pharaohs or of any monarch Catholic or otherwise – which is in practice no different from the “stability” of Stalin or Mao. No civility there, Matt, beyond toadying to the autocrat and desperately hoping. In the end, your anxiety-riddled search for a life where you always know where everyone stands exactly mirrors the pathetic desire of the public employee types who desire only to be anxiety free about their income stream. In both cases the desire to avoid anxiety, which which when acted upon without constraint or thought for the consequences upon your neighbors, becomes a deadly and evil force. I would counsel finding healthy ways of coping with the anxiety rather than giving in to it and allowing it to make you justify treating your fellow humans as inferior, or mere things subservient to your need to excorcise your personal demons.
The dark side has many manifestations but they all have in common one thing, an earthly prince with absolute dominion over the lives of others – others whom God created in love, with dignity and inalienable rights that nearly all (including Catholic) monarchs have abused over the millennia. Even an apparently benevolent monarch is the same as Mao with a change in whim. History tells us this if nothing else.
Watching Hillary answer a question from Barbara Boxer (D-CA) all I’m hearing is her crying poor, in effect “spend more money”.
Can we trade some limos for Marine guards in Libya, as in “…to the shores of Tripoli…”
Remember the Battle of Derne in Cyrenaica? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Derna
Hillary “I was not focused on talking points…” Oooops, there goes Obama under her bus!
Grab the popcorn here comes a blockbuster Hollywood production….
REVENGE OF THE PUMAS*!
*Party Unity My Ass
Yo Hillary, during your generation it was
“I am woman hear me roar.”
Now that your daughters are coming into power, it will be
“We will bury you Bitch, literally, and your pals the rest of the Three Valkyries.” Even you cannot escape the Grim Reaper….HA, HA, HA! And you won’t be going to Heaven! Say Hi to Satan!
The fact is, we Americans have done a lot “collectively”. But our best comes not from a guided, controlled collective, but the emergent actions of a lot of people acting independently.
That’s the American model.
The Obama model for collective is a team of horses reined together. Of course, someone will have to step up to hold the reins and guide the horses…
Progressives who push for collective anything never envision themselves as one of the horses. And not one sheds a tear when at last Boxer is taken away.
The thing I have not seen anyone mention is that in his address Obama said, as usual, we had to do all these things “for the children.”
And no one has pointed out that the massive debt and even more massive bureaucracy will land like a ton of bricks “on the children.” It is they who will have to embrace poverty to pay off that debt. It is they who will have to dismantle the bureaucracy. It is they that will have to organize armed covoys to take their trash to the dump and go to the suppliers where you can buy food. It is they that will experience the lamppost shortage. It is they that will have to clean up the progressive mess, and with extreme prejudice.
Let me go back to the Drug War. Some one did look up “Rudi Dekkers 9/11″ but missed the whole story. “Mohammed Atta and the Venice Flying Circus”.
And then in the comments further we got the heroin scare. i.e. heroin is coming to get you.
So let us look at the numbers – before opiate prohibition about 1.3% of the population was into opiates when they were over the counter. Since nearly 100 years of prohibition the number is – still 1.3%.
But prohibition does serve a number of important purposes. It supports Al Queda. It props up the banks “Why we must not end prohibition” is a good one on that. And it is a very useful slush fund for our intel agencies who import the drugs to America when they need cash. Iran/Contra being a prime example of that.
And irony of ironies – prohibition was the brain child of Progressives. Swallowed whole by “Conservatives”. Which is to say we live in a one party state. The Party has two factions. Their objects are different. Their methods the same. The end the same. Control.
As I said. The Matrix has a number of different angles. The Clubbers have chosen a different angle vs the masses. And congratulate themselves for being outside the Matrix. Not at all.
And let me add for all those here who fancy themselves staunch Constitutionalists.
Where is the Drug Prohibition Amendment?
And yet the complaints about Obama and the Constitution. Obama is the end game. “Conservatives” did rather a lot to prepare the way.
Who will be the targets of the SWAT teams when Prohibition goes away? And it is going away.
63. MachiasPrivateer,
Interesting that you are an aerospace guy. Me too. The late and much lamented Sundstrand. Now a division of United Technologies. I used to pass the Shuttle APU refurbish stand every day on my way to my cube.
Hillary explaining why no one at the State Department raised an objection AFTER Susan Rice went on the Sunday talk shows.
“maybe it was an abundance of caution…”
Who is her speechwriter, Admiral Thad “An Abundance of Caution” Allen?
CHU LIED, DOLPHINS DIED!
So “an abundance of caution” didn’t kill just dolphins, it killed Ambassabor Chris Stevens and his col-leagues in Benghazi.
league /lēg/, Noun
1. A collection of people, countries, or groups that combine for a particular purpose.
Quelle @ #41,
I think the verb “to absquatulate” is onomatopoetic. The culprit absconds suspiciously, pausing in the doorway briefly to flatulate. Not sure, though.
Once you start looking for it, most human vocalizations are onomatopoetic. Mandarin’s full of it.
MSimon @ #75,
Not sure about your stats, but agreed: The “War on Drugs” has curdled Conservatives’ credibility when they extoll small government and private-party solutions. Pitted against a nominally pro-drug but big-goverment party like Chicago’s Democrats, the GOP might as well be running a marathon uphill with a self-inflicted, broken femur!
Zum beispiel: A Terry Schiavo should be left in peace to make end-of-life decisions with his or her family and friends. BUT, free citizens’ choices of at-home medicaments are a matter for a federal agency and the Nation’s Congress. There’s just no way to square that circle, especially under pressure from a confessed cocaine/choom-using tactical team like Obama/Jarret/Axelrod!
“What of Senator Rand Paul’s suggestion that BHO might have been actually arming Al-Qaeda through Libya?”
Well documented. In fact some newspapers reported that Hamas got some of the weapons.
The thing about our media is that they DO report the truth. What they do for the controllers is emphasize the “correct” stories in the “correct” way. But the truth is out there.
Wretchard says:
“The game can change immediately if legal and constitutional methods of opposition to his policies emerge. ”
The game is changing. Prohibition – which props up the current regime in so many ways – is being defied. And who is defying it? Left-liberals (liberals in the old sense) and the libertarian right united. You should see the venom applied to Obama on the anti-Prohibition boards by nominal leftists.
The trouble is that the mainstream right backs Obama on the issue. Too funny. But as I said. The matrix has many angles. It takes real effort to get outside it.
L3/60: that is just brilliant. What a clear and plainspoken distillation of the conceptual failure we face. Thank you for that; and (belatedly) thank you for your action in the Real World. It’s an inspiration and, I hope, is having the desired effect.
Mr. no mo uro,
I thank you for your reply, but I have to ask a simple question. What in GOD’S NAME are you talking about? Clearly you understand by my words something very different than what I meant when I wrote them, and your assessment of my motives and personality is also rather mistaken. I know you’re a kind and intelligent fellow and that you meant no harm by any of this, but still I would rather not be thought of in that way. However, in your favor I should point out that you have clarified something for me: If this is how you and others understand my postings, it’s no wonder I get such a bristly reception here.
I’m not going to attempt a total fisking of your comment, but I do need to refute a few things.
1. First, let’s dispense with the notion that I am heavily influenced by Dr. Hoppe. I’m not. I know who he is because I read a few of his essays several years ago, but that’s about it. He’s an interesting fellow. Heck, the entire Austrian School is full of interesting fellows with interesting ideas. But I do not agree with them and I am not a libertarian.
2. As I (and others, e.g. Mencius Moldbug) have repeatedly pointed out, autocracy is always conserved. You can dispense with the title of Prince but never with the fact of Princes. Wealth, power, pedigree, talent, charisma, and other unnamed qualities always result in certain people weilding considerable influence over the lives of others. England has a Queen Elizabeth and America has a Queen Kardashian. The former is official and has more class, but the latter is just as real and may very well be more powerful at the moment.
To oppose this fact is to be a true-quill egalitarian—as in “equality of outcome”—which I doubt is something you would go for. My point, however, is not to affix labels but simply to demonstrate the truth of the premise that autocracy is always conserved. Defenders of the Constitution will always employ a Whig-like historical narrative so as to make it appear that the past was full of horrible atrocities that the modern American is blessedly free of, thanks to the Constitution. Both prongs of this argument are not true. The past was not uniformly atrocious and the present is not free from atrocity. The Constitution has made no difference in the basic nature of human societies. Indeed, how could it? Human nature is given and immutable.
3. Richelieu and Longshanks and Borgias are not the only rulers who have ever walked the earth, and they were not uniformly bad even themselves. Richelieu was actually quite good in his way. Monarchs are no strangers at making scandals of themselves, but that has nothing to do with the form of monarchy. Ordinary people are just as faulty, greedy, rapacious, and cruel as any littany of bad kings, but their lives aren’t lived in the public eye, for all to criticize.
4. Bearing in mind that all human beings are fallible, you may think that this supports your “dynamic equilibrium” model of optimality. It does not. When you look carefully at your dynamic equilibrium, you will see that it is in fact a very Spencerian idea: Human societies are treated as giant analog computers, calculating workable routes from A to B. They are never treated as forms with their own natures and ends. But there is a purpose to society, and there is only one organization of society truly suitable to that purpose, viz. hierarchy.
5. The Church, being founded by Christ and sustained by the Holy Ghost, is not flawed. You must consult your catechism on that one.
6. What exactly is it with you and anxiety, and what do you know about my personal demons? I have seen you on more than one occasion attribute “anxiety” over the loss of income, the loss of free stuff, etc., as the principal reason that Leftists do what they do. This is very incorrect, by the way. The urban canaille who voted for Barack Obama are not the anxious sort. Anxiety belongs to those who have responsibilities and carry cares, not to the taco-eating, dope-smoking, UFC-watching slum denisons stacked one on top of another in barrack appartments. They feel they are entitled to whatever they can get, and they cannot envision enough of the bigger picture to feel anxious about anything.
But now you are tarring me with the same brush (albeit in a very kindly manner, seemingly with the intent to help me, which I appreciate). In response I will only say one thing. The desire to know wehre one stands is hardly irrational or unhealthy. It is basic to the structure of all human action and interaction.
7. Concerning the dark side and princes—this is a subject which has been heavily perverted by Protestant sanctimony and by now has infected the minds even of most Catholics. That monarchy is the preferred form of governmnet is something the Church has continuously affirmed down through the ages. There is nothing in Scripture, Tradition, or reason to suggest otherwise. When David (himself a king!) says “put not your trust in princes,” he means “do not look to anything of earth for your salvation,” not “seek ye a republican form of government.” The passage from the Book of Judges concerning the rights of a king, which was quoted here by Cowboy just the other day on the L3 post, was similarly meant to chastize Israel for rejecting the rule of God, it was not a criticism of the monarchial form of governmnet.
Okay, enough said for now.
Wretchard says:
“Democracy is what you can get 80% of the public to go along with.”
Med-Pot fits that bill to a T. 80% support.
No mo uro/71: Brilliant. Love the statement of the “dark side,” which is always about exercising dominion over others. Our deepest selves are found in the exercise of choice, for well or ill. The arrogation of that choice is not merely bad politics and bad society, it is fundamentally contrary to our being. The liberals have drunk from that cup, and it is sobering, not to say terrifying, to watch them lose their way, and try to make us lose ours.
“That is precisely the danger, cogently and succinctly put: not that the “forward” people are on the verge of taking over the world but that they in their fecklessness will implode the system and leave nothing in its place.”
This is what seems to have happened whenever totalitarian/socialist regimes fail.
The population becomes so degenerate that they no longer remember how to be free (e.g., Soviet Union, Wiemar Germany, Communist China). They welcome powerful rulers – they seek slavery.
Thus, Fascism usually follows socialism (and fragmentation in the case of the Soviets).
The important question is how far has this process gone on in America and what proportion of our population had degenerated to the point where they will welcome slavery when the “free cheese” stops.
The Church, being founded by Christ and sustained by the Holy Ghost, is not flawed. You must consult your catechism on that one.
So the church says. Others see it as just another branch of the monarchy. One of their recent saints gave the game away. She said (very roughly) “The church prefers to keep people poor because the poor are easier to entice into the church”. She was great at providing amelioration. She did nothing about encouraging escape i.e. encouraging entrepreneurship.
dope-smoking
In my experience half the engineers in aerospace fit that description. The difference between them and the people you describe is that the engineers prefer to keep their jobs.
But it is an excellent divide and conquer tactic. Why no similar vituperation against those who prefer alcohol?
In my experience half the engineers in aerospace fit that description. The difference between them and the people you describe is that the engineers prefer to keep their jobs.
And in other news, the Dreamliner fleet has been grounded by the FAA.
By the way, if, God forbid, you were to lose your job and everything else you have, Mother Teresa would gladly give you a bowl of soup, a suit of clothes, and all the mercy in her heart. Just another day’s work in the monarchy, for a servant of the King of Kings.
The days of Democrats loving the country and Constitution are gone, long gone.
You should hang out with the people you revile. The anti-prohibitionists. You might find a few things to your liking. Resistance to Obama for one. And that is leading many of the leftists to a libertarian view.
Matt,
Thank The Mother (yes the expletive) very much but I prefer to stand on my own feet.
I am:
http://www.ecnmag.com/tags/Blogs/M-Simon/
And my urine was not certified pure for the position. All they wanted to know was could I write about the topic. But so many will whip it out for the government. And that used to be (in saner times) considered an insult.
And the Dereamliner is not the first aircraft grounding. It will not be the last. And you will not fix it. Nor will The Mother. Engineers will fix it. Thank you very much.
Matt,
I am not opposed to your view of the world. In fact I agree. Voting is a safety valve. It does not confer control. But there are two sides to it. Princes who rule with a heavy hand and those who prefer to rule with just a touch. Our system was designed to favor the latter. What we are now getting is the former. It will not stand if I can help it. There are more than a few with my attitude. And it only takes 10% who are determined to at the least gum up the works.
You must remember Americans are descended from those who couldn’t stand the heavy handed princes. Rebellion is in our bones. A phrase common among my kind:
Molon labe. Or if you prefer the English translation: Don’t tread on me.
Geez! Rush leads off with a monologue asking why it took an hour and a half for Hillary to be asked about “the video”. The poor producer of the video is rotting in jail!
BOO HOO!
Meanwhile Kurt “Harry Potter” Mix has his case continued, after proving in court that the government’s case is without merit, because old Eric “Voldemort” Holder does not want him to say
“CHU LIED, DOLPHINS DIED!”
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2013/01/federal_judge_delays_ex-bp_eng.html
And his FORMER employer, BP, has abandoned him like he was a former Navy SEAL defending the “annex’ in Benghazi!
Kinda burying the lead aren’t you Rush?
If we wait until Feb. 25, 2015 to hear from him, it will be too late to watch Marcia McNutt parade naked down Bourbon Street on her way to be tar-and-feathered, like the sea birds were by her actions!
Come on! A naked blonde on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras is MUST SEE TV!
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_DzWFKhu_mdM/SlbIiBjE88I/AAAAAAAAE1M/7TVPFv4bG_c/s320/mkm2.jpg
It would even be better than mud wrestling! It would be Tarbaby wrestling!
Matt,
If I may…sometimes commentators will respond to the brand that an author has established, rather than to his most recent words. And I think that that’s what no mo uro did here.
‘Happens all the time.
I read your comments always. They are lucid and revelatory, and I for one appreciate them very much. But form and function alone do not define an author’s brand.
Content factors-in, too. To me, your brand is defined by your advocacy for a return to monarchy – which is, in my opinion, a call to respond with an archaic, simian reflex, that of calling for a “King.” Our tetra-cameral system harnesses this same reflex to govern without the problems that “Kings” pose: three distributed branches of government act as “King” to dispell the celebrity-worship that monarchy encourages, while our other camera, the unfettered press organs, vent-off the excessive heat of the deliberations.
So, Point goes to no mo uro.
That said, I cannot disagree with a single point you made in your first, very readable comment here – nor with anything you have written in your defense since, for that matter. And, since (except for a slight slip-up near the end of your enumerated rejoinder), your comments in this thread avoid advocating for Monarchy altogether, it’s clear that no mo uro was not responding specifically to them.
So, one point goes to Matt, too. ‘Looks like a draw from my bench.
I like your style, Matt. Don’t go nowhere!
Emphasis mine.
We should now rename Obama from “The Won” to ‘One of Fivehundredthirtyfive’ – straight out of Star Trek – Next Gen and The Borg.
1/535 means to rule us according to the diktats of the elite.
Well, say what you will, I found President Obama’s speech inspiring.
This morning I ordered 400 rounds of 30’06…..
What so many on the right do not see is that opposition to Prohibition has created a cadre in opposition to the government that has clandestine operations taught by the environment itself. Not too dissimilar to what Wretchard experienced in the Philippines.
They are our natural allies in the fight against the leviathan.
Except all I have to say is “dope smokers” and our allies are now our enemies. You have been divided. Can conquered be far off?
Subotai Bahadur as a former minion of the state has been co-opted. I would have more respect for him (and I currently have quite a lot on most topics) if he joined “Law Enforcement Against Prohibition” or since he is probably to the right of them check out Retired Detective Howard Wooldridge – who I count as a personal friend.
@71. no mo uro
It appears to me that you missed the thrust of Matt’s comment by a wide margin if not completely.
I quite agree with his statement If you seek a stable civil society rooted in constitutional principals, then heaven help you because that thing never existed and never will. Maybe the concept is more easily understood by changing “stable civil society” to “civil society that maximizes the potential for human flourishing” or some such.
The distinction is not between monarchy or democracy as you suggest, but between centralized decision making and localized decision making. Which provides the greater opportunity for human flourishing?
It’s very difficult to make direct comparisons between the Medieval period and today because general conditions are so different but here goes. I would be hard pressed to concede that a reasonably diligent young man growing up in 13th Century France was ipso facto less likely to have a satisfying life than the same person growing up in today’s Paris, or New York. I would bet anything that the 13th Century teenager would have multiples more human friends and companions than his modern counterpart. He also would have had a mother and a father and a grand collection of aunts, uncles and cousins.
The purpose of the illustration is to show that a “good” life is measured by the frequency and quality of human interactions. That assertion is entirely consistent with Matt’s reference to “tribes, houses, orders, and guilds” which are above all associations that promote meaningful human contact.
Monarchies did not interefere with local associations. As we are seeing now firsthand constitutional democracies have no qualms about pushing out local associations with government agencies, or interfering directly in member composition and managment of local associations.
The so-called HHS Mandate requires associations (business and non-profit) to provide all employees with contraceptives and abortion inducing drugs for free. Why were those drugs chosen instead of something like vitamins or diet pills? Easy answer. To bankrupt by egregious fines associations that do not comply with the constitutional democracies “general will” that morals shall be determined by the state alone.
Which is more evil? The government that demands your money and your sword arm, or the government that demands your money and your humanity?
M. Simon @ 96 – You would be much more persuasive if you did not use appeals to authority (he’s a personal friend) and DID THE SEARCH AND POSTED THE LINK YOURSELF!
http://www.newswithviews.com/Wooldridge/frosty326.htm
Why won’t you get off your dead ass and onto your dying feet and DO THE WORK!!!!
WORK is necessary to decrease entropy.
People respect others who DO THE WORK!
This nation was built on THE PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic
SLACKER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Last post, hope I’m not over.
Matt, you’ll have to forgive my “bristly” rejoinders. The angst largely stems from frustration. It is rare to encounter someone of you age with your good sensibilities and expressiveness. You add a great deal to the discussion here, and believe it or no I always look forward to your posts, even when they frustrate. It is the conclusions you draw, and your prescriptions, that exasperate. No doubt you feel the same way about other commenters. That we are on the same page does not mean we are in the same paragraph.
The desire to have an unshakeable knowledge of where you and everyone else stands is not inherently bad, but like many other things in life once it becomes obsessive the change in amount becomes a de facto change in nature. In a similar way, while rational concern about maintaining the means of providing food and shelter for one’s family is a good thing, it can also become a destructive monster when it is not attenuated. The anxiety about income to which I referred was not that of the welfare crowd, who, as you correctly point out, are typically too drugged or lazy or ill-informed to even care, and I certainly do not perceive you as being affiliated with that horde. No, I was referring to the new clerisy of the public work force, which was 5% of the workforce in 1960 but is now over 20%, a number which is mathematically not possible to sustain in an era when public functionaries make more than private sector workers. This is where the desire to avoid anxiety at all costs has been so destructive to America.
You see a big difference between the moral basis of monarchical autocracy and a secular autocracy. I, and others, find that to be a distinction without a difference, but see a huge difference between both and a republic. We must agree to disagree on that, I’m afraid.
Update to #52
The Debt Ceiling Holiday passed the House this morning, in another chapter of the annals of the Institutional Republicans’ own “Jubilation T. Cornpone”.
I do wonder exactly where the next line in the sand will be drawn, and if it will last a week.
Subotai Bahadur
The General Will. The Hive Mind. The Collectivity.
The last is what Il Duce called it, in his time. He said: “The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity. The Fascist State with its corporative conception puts men and their possibilities into productive work and interprets for them the duties they have to fulfill.”
Note the enemy is named very well, I mean the enemy of the Fascists, the Marxists, the Progressives, the Communists. The individual. Specifically the ” selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity.” The individual who neither wants nor waits for the State to assign productive work and the duties to be fulfilled.
Contrast Mussolini’s enemy of the Fascist State with the founding document of America: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Ideally, America is the full-hearted enemy of Fascism. Yet today we are more Fascist than free. Our establishments have strayed far from the Founder’s intent.
101. bvw
And let’s not forget what follows immediately after “…Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happines.”
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…”
This is a very clear statement about the purpose of government. Sticking to this concept would solve many problems.
Leo,
If I am understanding you correctly, then I must respectfully disagree with your analysis. It seems like you are saying, in effect “The elites know not what they do” and are stumbling into disaster with the best of intentions, however wrong.
I think you are right the elites likely have a ingrained disdain for the peons, as it is human nature to want to feel superior.
But I think the real motivation behind depicting the average man as incapable of running their own life is a selfish one draped in benevolent curtains.
After all, if so many of the ‘little people’ cannot run their lives, then SOMEONE has to do it for them, right?
And to do that, they need power and position so that they might share their benevolent wisdom, whether the peasants agree with it or not.
If, however, you accept the premise that most people can and should run their own lives, what the hell is the use of an elite? And worst still how can one BE an elite if no one has to pay any particular attention to you, let alone supply you the resources to maintain the lifestyle of which you believe yourself entitled?
No, the ‘elite’ have been trying to infantilize the populace in the interest of becoming a modern nobility, an ironic use of the term if I ever heard one.
Many may be doing it subconsciously in a fashion, refusing to admit their base selfish motives, but instead viewing themselves as the enlightened. A little frank discussion of the matter without cover of the media and political correctness, or challenging their position, reveals the ugly truth.
Weary G @103,
I’m not sure we have a choice as to whether there will be an elite. It’s the other side of “the poor you will always have with you” coin.
In the domain of basketball, Kobe Bryant is an elite. In the domain of music, The Rolling Stones are elite. In the domain of investing, Warren Buffett is an elite. In the domain of acting, Matt Damon is an elite. In the domain of fantasy novels, J. K. Rowling is an elite. In the domain of politics, Barack Obama is an elite. And so on.
The real problem is when the elite in one domain feel entitled to authority in other domains. Kobe Bryant has no authority over my business decisions merely because he is a phenomenal basketball player.
The political domain is particularly problematic in this regard. That’s why real-world implementations of the General Will always turn every societal issue into a political issue (communists are famously adept at this jujitsu). When all decisions – public or private – become subject to the General Will test, all decisions are ipso facto political. Under these conditions, the political elite morphs into the Ruling Elite.
You are no doubt correct that some political elites are centralizing authority for their own personal benefit and pleasure. And this could explain all of the dysfunction in Washington DC. But my observation – although not by any means conclusive – is that most elected officials are assimilated into the Beltway Ruling Elite Borg based upon a set of structural incentives more than personal character defects.
I think that how you answer that question has a profound impact on the strategy you employ to repair the system. If you’re right, then the solution is to elect representatives who are Frodos: virtuous beings who can withstand the allure of the Ring of Power. It’s a common view; almost all of my friends who have a political bent think that all of our problems can be solved by simply “electing better people.”
If, on the other hand, you view the world as I do – through the prism of structure, including culture, institutions, and incentives – then “electing better people” won’t solve the problem, because even good people will do bad things if they’re embedded in dysfunctional structures. (The exception are heroes, but designing a system that relies upon a high concentration of heroes doesn’t give you much design margin.) You can only fix this by changing the structure.
I realize this analysis is a bit oversimplified – but only a bit. In short, I see the arrow of causality pointing predominantly in the other direction. It’s not that wannabe-nobles seek election to higher office, it’s that we elect people to higher office, and then place them in a structure that treats them like nobility.
After all, what is the function of an aristocrat? To distribute money and status, consume in a manner that is both conspicuous to and supportive of the commoners, be a symbol of the power and stability of the nation, and engage in rituals that reinforce their distinctiveness – and to do all of this without any accountability other than their accountability to their fellow nobles, their peers, the “members.” Is this a description of a Senator or the Earl of Grantham?
So your observation is spot-on: the Ruling Elite is becoming (or has become) an aristocracy. But I think we may disagree on the causes, which might lead us to different solutions.
If there are disagreements, however, they’re honest ones, and I appreciate your thoughful comment.
Cheers,
L3
Regarding the Church; I am assuming that what is meant is the Catholic Church, which is the only denomination claiming direct authority handed down by Jesus Himself:
I think that the Church’s claim to moral authority is fatally undermined by at least four facts. In no particular order, as they say in talent shows:
The current pope is an unrepentant Nazi.
The Church continues to cover up evidence of both breaking of their holy vows and criminal perversity (at the same time, by the same series of acts) by various priests – i am, of course, talking about the “paedophile priest” scandal.
The Church hierarchy decided to say nothing whatsoever to disagree or condemn when numerous Irish Catholic priests publicly supported, in word and deed, terrorism – to wit, the IRA.
And the Church decided to give its second highest honour (beatification) and put the wheels in motion towards giving the highest (canonisation) to the one person in the Church who has undoubtedly caused more misery than any 100 other people combined. I refer, of course, to “Mother Teresa” who kept to her opposition to any form of birth control in India, whose biggest problem is simply too many people.
The Catholic Church, as an organisation, is evil beyond redemption. I find it interesting to speculate about Christ, should he return, would do to the Vatican. There is precedent for his getting… somewhat annoyed.
“If, on the other hand, you view the world as I do – through the prism of structure, including culture, institutions, and incentives – then “electing better people” won’t solve the problem, because even good people will do bad things if they’re embedded in dysfunctional structures. (The exception are heroes, but designing a system that relies upon a high concentration of heroes doesn’t give you much design margin.) You can only fix this by changing the structure.”
I get you. This sounds very much like that Milton Friedman was talking about when he said getting “good people” into was not the desired solution, but to find ways to motivate the bad people to do the right thing.
Thank you for your response.
The problem is to have the politicians reform themselves. Since this is against their interests, an indirect way is needed, which will not insult or deprive them directly. I would suggest these three ideas:
First, no bill or law should be longer than 20 pages so that its effects and consequences can be considered.
Second, no one but the legislature can make laws; all the alphabet soup of agencies can do is enforce duly passed laws, not make laws.
Third, one month a year should be spent weeding out outmoded laws.