Why do we let it go on? Because the leftists are capable and willing to wreak havoc on our personal lives, our jobs, our very being, if we oppose the slightest bit of their Marxist, statist agenda. So we shut up. We have jobs, we have children, we have outdoor pets who could suffer. We shut up.
And we let the stereotype go on.
If you have gay friends — weirdly for such “homophobic” people, a lot of us do — ask them about the effects of such closeting of who you are. The effects on yourself, the effects on society. I still remember when gays were a safe target of every comedy. No more. People have found out there’s more to gay men than mincing, lisping figures of fun. They’ve found gay people are their brothers, their sisters, their friends, their co-workers.
And gay people have found that they are better for being themselves.
I came out as a conservative about two years ago.
It hurt my income and I didn’t have the room for it to be hurt. It hurt my social standing with my peers. But I sleep better at night. (Not last night. No. Not even with the pint of Jim Beam.) And I feel I was doing what I had to do.
I’m an American. We don’t go quietly into that good night, and we come from the spiritual stock of people who risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor in pursuit of liberty.
Without them there would be no Americans. Without them we wouldn’t be trying to get back what would never have existed.
We’ve let the Marxists mao mao us into the closet, and we’ve let them get away with fraud, and we’ve let them get away with violence.
They parade the worst president ever and an impeached president as paragons. We refuse to admit to George W. Bush, who, for all his faults, kept the economy humming after 9/11, because they scream and say he’s a liar.
Because we’re in the closet. Because we let them define us, our candidates, our positions.
The fault is not with our candidates or their campaigns, but with ourselves.
Come out, come out, wherever you are. Let’s proclaim 11/7 constitutionalist and small government pride day. Maybe we can have a parade.
Will it be painless? Hell no. Will you suffer for it? Unless you’re already on top of your field, and feared, or unless you work for yourself and can’t be punished, probably.
Did you think it was easy? Did you think it was a game? Did you think such a good as liberty could be purchased cheap?
But if you come out, if you admit who you are, if you tell people what you believe — if all of us do — eventually the caricature will be defeated.
The other side has nothing. Marxism enshrines envy as a virtue and cannot build. It can only tear apart. The world they’ll create is mire and horror for whoever comes after us.
We must not let it happen. Our life, our fortune, our sacred liberty. If we’re lucky, we’ll not need to water this tree with blood.
It’s 11/7. It’s our Constitutionalist Pride Day.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
Be Not Afraid.
I was going to stay silent today. For a long today.
I am badly depressed.
I have two things in my mind:
- my generation opened Pandora’s box and now we pay, with all due interests.
- The majority of the American People is made of nasty idiots.
(Obviously those are the two poles of a bipolar mess)
Your column is provocative and deep. Thank you.
I feel your pain and I agree with you. We’re overflowing with deadbeats.
we’re playing a game we can’t win.
I don’t think I’ll ever see another republican in the Whitehouse again in my life.
You give yourself, and your generation, and the human race too much blame;
It came down from the trees last week, it came out of the caves yesterday,
and it is not yet fit for civilized society, seeing only what is in front
of it and responding emotionally rather than rationally.
there was a fabulous poster here named proreason who vowed to never return to pj media early in the repube primaries because of the romeny supporters easy and cavalier dismissal of newt and perry
the main gripe: newt was the only one with true fight in him- even if he eventually lost he would fight and could occasionally connect with bone rattling haymakers- the point being that the pubes never fight so we have no way of knowing what would happen— could it be worse than what has happened today?
the main problem was the inability to showcase collectivism and how it works
we have examples from all over the world of the utter destruction of state controlled economies and how market capitalism is the one system devised my mankind for the poor schmucks like me to gain any independence and freedom for myself
where were the references to “road to serfdom” and milton friedman’s youtubes which so eloquently and succinctly get to the heart of the problem
milton friedman could simultaneously debate and debunk 5 lefties at a time and never lose his place; hayek calmly details the utter failure of european socialism and the cretins born from its shambles
(submitted before finished- my bad- i’m still furious…)
until we are unafraid to go after these vermin on the left and right infesting our nation they will continue to infect us with their pestilence
Excellent questions. I think the answer is that deep down, many conservatives agree with liberals that there is something morally disreputable about capitalism, in spite of its clear success in creating prosperity. There’s actually a new book out addressing this very issue, and what a true moral defense of capitalism would consist of: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0230341691
There is something disreputable about crony capitalism and global corporatist both of which are joined at the hip to the R party. Both of which bankroll the party. Neither of which the party operatives are going to be eager to cleave any time soon.
Is that a joke? Since when is cronyism/corporatism restricted to Republicans? Give me a break.
Milton Friedman is the economics equivalent to Neo of The Matrix.
A picture is worth a thousand words
http://tinyurl.com/cggarfd
Another:
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/citi/images/standard/WebLarge/WebImg_000080/120533_672211.jpg
“You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!” ~ George Taylor
BRAVO! And thank you for using the M-word to describe the President. That’s the way to frame things. It’s not Left vs Right. It’s not Liberals vs Conservatives. It’s Marxists vs Classical Liberals. It’s Criminality vs Rule of Law.
“Stop the circular firing squad. I’m here to tell you it is not only crazy, it is counterproductive.”
I quite disagree. After McCain and especially after Mitt the Electable could not even get himself elected in his home state, against a failure the magnitude of Obama, then something is BADLY wrong and a firing squad of SOME shape is exactly what is needed.
“Let’s start with the media.”
Yes, let us start with the media by ENDING the media. They are our masters now.
And yet, the media in this country is owned by Business, and that’s really all you need to know about it. A rather curious and unnatural dichotomy…which means that SOMEONE must be making a LOT of money.
Rather like being the Fire Chief and the arsonist in the same town, huh?
“A “true conservative” candidate would not have a snowball’s chance in hell.”
Perhaps so, but if you have to go down in defeat, at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that you were struggling for your principles.
What were Romney’s principles again? Week by week?
If you stand for nothing, you’ll lie down for anything.
And when the public has a choice between a real Liberal DemocRat and a faux RINO Liberal DemocRat, they’ll choose the genuine article every time.
Some businesses work as, well, businesses, having to deal with the bottom line.
Then there are others. Wasn’t Newsweek sold for a mere dollar, on the caveat that nobody would be fired or laid off from the company?
For some, it’s more than just a business. It’s a calling, almost like being a missionary. They believe in their version of the truth more than anything, and will proselytize in their papers and broadcast, and damn the red line.
Yes, this is quite true. These people are called Marxists. They continued with their ideological fetish of collectivized agriculture through decades of crop failures despite the fact that Russia had been a grain exporter in the 19th century.
Same as they are doing in Zimbabwe…literally starving to death in the aisles of a fully-stocked grocery store.
Let tens of millions die but do never question Party diktat.
We need a man like Henry Ford again. Your continued employment is conditional upon your politics.
No Sarah, I don’t think I can ever bring myself to battle again. Unlike you, my life has always been open and vocally conservative, but the fight just left. I’ve voted,I’ve donated, I’ve GOTV(in my way) and America has rejected everything I’ve stood for.
Pride of country, DECEASED.
Pride in a job well done, DECEASED.
Instead we now have Pride in GIMMIE. You worked for that? It’s mine now! You want to feed your family? There are others more deserving. You want a roof over your head? Go to a shelter. It’s the US. It just doesn’t include us.
I’m with you, Joe. The fight is gone out of me. I said back in 2008 that the current American population needed to see a bit of socialism first hand in order to find out why it was a bad idea. I really thought that Obama would be repudiated as Carter was in 1980. Well, Americans have now seen socialism first hand — and they’ve decided that, as long as they get their free stuff and they get to demonize people who don’t believe the same things that they do, they are fine with it. Traditional American values are now confined to middle-age whites and military men. That’s a group that is gradually dying out, and America as we know it will die with them.
I watched the achievements of the Apollo program as a child; my father had a role in it. I had great dreams about what America would be able to accomplish by the time I grew up, and I looked forward to participating in it. That’s all gone now. NASA no longer has any capability to launch humans into space, and the commercial launch companies will find it overwhelmingly advantageous to move offshore. It’s just a matter of a few years before it becomes too difficult to keep ISS maintained, and it will be abandoned. That will be the end of America as a spacefairing nation. The next humans on the moon will hoist the flag of China and claim it as their territory, and there won’t be a damn thing we can do about it.
Welcome to the post-Western-civilization world.
If we quit, they win.
I don’t know about you guys, but I have children, and I don’t want them growing up as property of the state. My father was active in politics in a one-party town that they called “Little Chicago” for a reason–and having seen it up close and personal, I don’t want my kids growing up under the thumb of the Party Machine.
Their way of doing things is unsustainable. If something can’t go on forever, it won’t. If a debt can’t be paid, it won’t be. Either we replace it with something better before it fails, or after it fails, but the former is better for everyone.
This is a long march, not a commando raid. Conduct yourselves accordingly.
AMEN, Baby M.
To listen to the whining today, you would think that all of the battles were over, the eternal war lost, that Conanbama had utterly crushed the Forces of Good, driven them before him, and that I was reading the lamentations of the women.
Grow. A. Pair. All that happened is that our assault failed and the front line moved a teeny bit. While the result is going to be painful, it was going to be painful either way. Be thankful we are not looking at what we were in ’09, with Dems holding both houses of Congress and enough in the Senate to arm-twist past a filibuster.
Yeah, but our children have been brainwashed in the public “schools” and don’t see anything wrong with the current regime.
“If we quit, they win.”
That only matters if there’s still time left on the clock. They’ve already won. Inspirational speeches might work at halftime, but in the locker room after a punishing loss, they’re a waste of time. Like the video game says, game over man. I have children too, only one voted for Romney. The other two voted for Obama and Gary Johnson. Let them enjoy their debt. I’m done.
Dave and Joe,
I have to believe you’ll be back. I just have to, with all the respect to both of you. I teach middle schoolers (private school) and expressed to the boys in my homeroom that I see 15 young men who are going to be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and they didn’t ask for it. My generation (I’m 47) and, most disgustingly, the generation before me have failed them. Obama is not a radical. He’s the next logical step in the progression. There’s nothing surprising about him. He IS what the country has been waiting for. And our children are going to reap the whirlwind because of what we’ve done.
But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying to right the wrong. I’m all in. Hell, I loved “The Alamo…”
I have faith that you guys will come back. It’s who you are (and I know that by reading what you stand for). We HAVE to fight. For those boys in my homeroom, and tens of millions like them in our country.
God Bless you, and God be with us all as we endure what’s to come…
Quit if you want to but if you do just shut up about it. I’m heartsick about what happened last night, but I have kids and grandkids and I damn well owe it to them to KEEP ON FIGHTING. It may be a rearguard action but I WILL fight to preserve as much freedom as possible for as long as possible.
Then go sit on the porch with the other old people. We’ll have tea soon.
I’d love to tell you to keep up the good fight or call you a crybaby.
Truth be told I am a middle-class white guy who pays his taxes and tries to follow the old rules of courtesy and etiquette.
All I see around me is a society that continually rewards the cheaters, the selfish, the dishonest, and the oblivious.
We shield people from the consequences of their actions and then wonder why they never learn any hard lessons. We as a society have gotten pretty dense.
I’m trying to decide if I keep up the good fight. Continue being a good citizen, or do I start to withdraw. Do I game the system to keep every possible dollar while just barely managing to stay legal? Do I stop giving to charity? I’m not going to participate in the same lousy behavior but I am seriously considering just doing as little for society as possible. If they don’t want my “old fashioned” values than maybe I’ll just hide them.
What do I tell my kids? Work hard because other people are counting on you? They’ll be valued for their honesty? That’s not the case anymore. We have despicable politicians. Many of them in the Democratic Party but the Republicans have far more than their fair share. We need to hold these guys accountable but we just told somebody with a horrible track record that they get four more years. What kind of message did we just send our leaders?
Crazed Java -
I reacted exactly the same way that you did. I will no longer consent to pull the wagon and then get criticized for not pulling hard enough.
We are sheep who are supposed to be grateful for being shorn, and if we object to it, we are called “greedy.”
That was my first thought, “What do I tell my kids now”, I was planning on the whole work hard, be honest and try to be successful thing but apparently that just gets you snide laughter a good slap in the face. I was going to illustrate with stories of the NUMEROUS friends and family who worked to success from various states of “poverty” and now have great lives. I guess those will sound like odd fairy tales now.
What do I tell my kids now? — Emigrate. People used to come to the USA to be free and to have better economic opportunities. Now, people here who want those things have to leave. Find a country that isn’t attacking freedoms, doesn’t encourage wars, and doesn’t want to control every aspect of every citizen’s life.
Whilst everything I stated earlier today is to some extent true, I refute my conclusion. Now that I’ve had about 3 hours sleep, I’ve got a new(same) attitude. F=+k THEM! This is my go755mn country! I F-=king refuse to give the f][k up. I’m going to stop feeeling sorry for my damn self and I won’t stop until that marxist muther is freaking run out of town on a rail and takes the rest of his crew with him. Galt was a puss I’m going BREITBART! ON HIS A$$!
Why does everyone have to dance around the fraud. It was there, just as in 2008. As long as people don’t want to recognize the problem, they will be unable to fix it. Now that we are clearly no longer a nation governed by law, what are we?
I’m not dancing around it. It’s just that we could still win if we’re “out and proud” and call things by their right names.
I agree with you. The fraud this year is STAGGERING. It’s the Chicago machine.
Thing is, we have to be able to prove the fraud and prove a systematic fraudulent practice that is engaged in sufficient quantities to affect the outcome.
Do we have anyone investigating? I would love to catch them in the act storing pre-filled ballots in their trunk or whatever.
It’s hard to convince the public at large if all we catch are the onesy, twosey fraudsters. We need to catch them organizing and executing the plot to subvert the election.
Sarah, Republicans have more control over state legislatures than we have had in long time. 30 Governors! We need to document any voter fraud and pass state laws to combat it. Obvious changes are to pass laws requiring a picture ID to cast a ballot in the main count, forcing the more of the questionable ballots into the provisional ballot pile for added scrutiny. We should also reign in absentee ballots and early voting. I like the convenience of early voting, but casual convenient voting is killing us.
The Tea Party movement has shown that it’s much easier to win low turnout primary elections. So far they have only primaried Republicans. Imagine targeting out-of-touch Democrats in their primaries too. If I lived in deep blue territory, I’d vote for the more sensible moderate Democrat over the senile socialist.
Not to worry – Obama has a plan for that too!
- Core Curriculum, to ensure that local education is responsive to what the Feds want students to learn!
- Regionalism/Metropolitanism/Smart Growth, funded by federal grants directed to regional planning agencies to avoid local governmental bodies and accountability!
We are focusing on the part of the iceberg we can now see but forgetting about the 2/3rds we can’t…
Sarah, gay people didn’t gain acceptance by showing everyone that they are model citizens. Sure, some did (are) just that, but there were many others, like Dan Savage, who made sure that no dissenting opinion went unpunished.
I’d like to believe that 30 republican governers would make the effort to clean up the fraud in their states. But it didn’t happen in Michigan or Penn.
Both new GOP govs.
in the lib world 30 is less than 1/2 of 57
mathandsciencehalliburtonderp
The left is able to mainsteam socialism because leftist extremists lie so as to appear moderate. wink wink
While on the right a conservative who succeeds at appearing moderate in order to become electable is too much a sham for principled “real conservatives” to support?
Its the not the economy, its just the stupid.
Liberals should be made to study economics
conservatives, ditto with the theatre arts
and dissemblance in military history
(war is deceit; some dissembly may be required)
“But he was the best candidate we could have this year, and he campaigned well. He campaigned like he wanted it”…
Sara Hoyt = idiot
Good you’ve mastered the equal sign, but not the ability to copy spelling. They teach that in second grade. You’ll grow into it.
Look, asshat, your neighbor, your dog or your cat might be a better candidate, but we’re a country of millions where you have to get people to first run then get the approval of other people — he was the best one we could get through that process.
I’m sure you’re much better, and as soon as you find your way up from mommy’s basement, you’ll prove it. Good luck with that.
Romney was not the problem. He is as fine a man as has ever offered himself for public service and we are all the poorer — yes, event the snotty progressives — this morning because he didn’t get elected.
The problem appears to me to have been turnout –theirs did, ours didn’t. Why? Maybe the pundits will tell us eventually, but for now it appears that having a minority at the top of the ticket was sufficient to excite the base regardless of his poor performance in office. That and the Democrats’ usual political theatre and their vaunted “ground game”. I’d like to have somebody explain to me why that works for them and it doesn’t work for us. Labor unions, maybe? At least, it doesn’t appear we tried very hard.
Media bias is a tremendous handicap but I think it’s here to stay and we have to overcome it with appeals to basics. The media moguls are simply one arm of the elites trying to shore them all up, because their power is derivative of the government, and that equation isn’t going to change.
“theirs did, ours didn’t. Why?”
Simple. Because despite claiming to be the “party of the grown-ups”, the Republicans acted like a bunch of spoiled children and found one reason after another to talk about how “Mitt is no better than Obama on issue [X]”
Disclaimer: I voted for Mitt, but I am not a Republican or a Democrat. I’m your swing voter. I watch from the outside and here is my view from the outside of the Republicans.
When it comes to party politics they are what the Democrats where in 2000 to 2004. Mean-spirited to each other, petty, and internally divisive. There was a huge shift in 2004 with how the Democrats do business and they’ve been successfully campaigning since 2006. Sure, 2010 was a rough year for them, but they learned from it.
The Republicans don’t learn. Even Conservatives refer to them as “The Stupid Party”. I don’t like what the Democrats are becoming, but I don’t see the Republicans taking on the threat with the urgency it deserves. If you want to see the Democrats swing away from Marxism and return to being the “Party of the People”, then Republicans need to start unifying instead of hobbling each other with petty squabbles.
Also, the Republicans desperately need to stop ALLOWING themselves to be painted as hateful racists. They need to quit complaining about the MSM while constantly jumping in the MSM spotlight everytime a biased reporter waves a microphone in their face.
In short, if Republicans want to win elections they need to
1. Stop the internal bickering
2. Stop allowing the opposition decide what the rules should be
Sadly, only the TEA party ousting establishment Republicans is their only chance of having a future. How ironic is that?
Democrats stopped being mean-spirited after 2004?
I believe he means they stopped stabbing each other.
I find that I’m agreeing with Crazed Java. Until we start focusing on taking down the liberals, and stop nailing ourselves to the wall, we’re going to keep losing. Romney got considerably fewer votes than McCain did in ’08. Obama’s vote count also dropped off significantly, but not enough that he lost. Romney lost 2m votes on McCain. Obama lost nearly 10m.
Romney won the independents, and it did not matter, because the base didn’t bother to show up.
Sarah,
I’ve found it’s better to ignore the rats than to feed them. Sure they look like squirrels without the fluffy cute tail, but in the end they just get fat and build a nest. At least they do un UAWland. . .
Yah. It was not a good campaign, and frankly did not deserve to win, but we hoped it would anyway, because Mitt’s campaign was tepid to the point of invisibility, but Obama’s was entirely dishonest and nasty.
COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT OF CONTENT, that’s a win for Obama, because Romney never refuted charges, never offered a competing story.
I don’t like Romney and don’t believe he’d have fixed anything, but I do believe he would have stopped breaking things, as Obama will now continue to do.
It is not going to be pretty.
Such a compelling argument you raise there Juan! Wow, I’ve never thought of that, I’ll just have to change my entire perception of Sarah based just on that!
Do I really need to add the obligatory tag?
http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/11/post-election-day-2012.html
This sadly sums up the day.
I have no hard feeling for Mitt Romney. He ran a competent campaign and frankly would have been a competent president. Hardly perfect. We would have had to watch him like a hawk.
But now we will see some real damage to the Republic.
I have some hard feelings for a few, but frankly it will be reflected in never trusting or supporting them. I think you can guess who they are. They are not conservatives (at least true ones).
Until yesterday many thought that 2012 would replay 1980 with Obama in the role of Jimmy Carter. Back in 1980 the economy was bad in ways that gave immediate pain, especially the effects of high interest rates and fears over energy shortages.
2012 didn’t replay 1980 because too many voters think our New Sucky Normal can go on. But it can’t. Certainly not for another four years. In large part this is because Bernanke has been carrying Obama’s enormous deficits and has put us on a steady morphine drip of low rates. This has allowed the political class to kick the Great Reckoning into 2013, at least.
This presented a real challenge for Romney. He had to run a campaign that avoided his being a scaremonger in the hope that he could move a few percent of the voters in the middle. I expect that had the election been held a year from now it would play very differently.
The Tea Party will go on because in the end “math” matters. We can’t tax our way out of the hole we’re in. Stagnant economic growth will only make that clearer.
Canada here. If you’re talented, productive, and hardworking, maybe you might give another country a shot?
Seconding that. Come on up, the water’s fine!
I never thought I’d see the day when I would think my kids would have a better economic future in Canada than in the US. That day just came- until the NDP manages to take the Federal Gov’t here.
I have always liked Canada and Canadians. How difficult is it for an American (Or American family) to immigrate there? E.g., do I need to be a millionaire? Do I need to have a skill deemed “essential” by the government?
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/index.asp
That’s a start. Amazingly, one of the Conservative Gov’t successes up here has been gradual immigration reform.
We lost because of abortion.
We refuse to let go of the belief that we have to control people and enforce morality, and control women.
Anyone who talked to an Obama voter knows the abortion issue is what drove them away from the GOP.
When the GOP stops trying to legislate morality they will start winning and rebuilding the country. This election is probably the last time the GOP allows pro-lifers to dominate. They will never get through the primaries next time.
Here is a short outline for the next three years:
Obama attacks House Republicans endlessly as his only policy, abuses government power to punish enemies, general collapse of economy plays out.
Biden resigns, replaced by Hillary.
Senate changes hands in 2014, Republicans have both chambers.
Obama impeached in 2015.
So money is more important than human life?
Abortion became a problem because only the pro-lifers get asked the hard questions. The next time they must answer, “I will you answer your question the next time my opponent explains why they support abortion for sex selection”.
I will vote for a pro-life socialist before a pro-death free marketer anyday.
This sort of intimidation of most GOP adherents by single issue pro-lifers is the problem, but won’t work in the future.
It has become totally clear that they are willing to see the country destroyed rather than give up their beliefs that the primary role of government is to control the private lives of everyone.
We need to strip away government power, not redirect it to social control.
You are a moron….
Control the lives of people/women?
Get a grip. Pro-life is about protection of LIFE, simple.
Abortion is murder, governments job is to protect the lives of its citizens. You’ve obviously never seen even a 4 week ultrasound.
You don’t like that only one sex can have babies? Tell it to the man upstairs or leave the human species (let me know when you find a way to do that one, Mr. Smart).
I suppose it would be okay with you if I could just kill you as I felt like it because of any undue stress, or negative life situation YOUR presence might put upon me. Say because you’re an obnoxious neighbor who let’s their dog crap on my lawn, or because you are on welfare and tax my tax dollars I could otherwise spend for myself (basically the boiled down two complaints of a woman who doesn’t want to raise a child).
You’re misinterpretation of the motivation and issue at the core of pro-life is astounding. You clearly have no ability to critical think.
You are making my point. As long as you are the face of the GOP as seen by independents and Democrats, there is no hope of having our explanations of the benefits of limited government and free market solutions getting a hearing.
And admittedly I need to grammer check my posts.
@ REI – actually, you missed the point. FAIL.
I dont expect the GOP to abandon pro life, but they need to get sensible about it, and avoid guys like akin and mourdock, that sound like women hating religious nuts. Those boneheaded remarke by akin and mourdock were worth several millions of dollars of obama attack adds, and we gave him those 2 gifts for free. The dems can afford bombastic boneheads, since the MSM will not publicise them, we cant.
REI,
As I’ve pointed out elsewhere in the thread, Romney beat Obama in independents. Romney took the “golden center”. It did not matter, because the right wing stayed home.
What this election showed is there aren’t enough independents, and they are not vigorous enough voters to control who wins the election anymore. Unless the patterns change, it is going to be controlled by the ground game, and whomever gets the most of their party members out to the polling places.
The center does not matter any more.
Gallup shows that right to life vs right to abortion is a 50% issue.
Most of the pro-life half don’t really want to see the government to have any role in the issue.
The problem is with those who have a compulsion to control others, and who have found this issue irresistible. It lets them go totally crazy with self-righteous wrath.
Most people avoid and don’t want to be associated with that sort of behavior. Those exhibiting it are totally oblivious to how they are seen by others, but they are the face of the GOP as seen by independents and Democrats.
Listen, asserting the right to life and governments right to protect the life of its citizens like all police forces do on a daily basis is not trying to control someones life.
In no way shape or form. Hell, I’m all for as limited government as possible. I support the end of the war on drugs, I could give a crap and think government should stay out of what religion you’re part of, what stupid tv you want to watch, what dumb celebrations you want to have, etc.
The one thing governments is explicitly intended to do is protect life.
It’s not a control thing bud. Sounds like you have a personal experience you can’t shake the guilt of unless everyone sees it your way so you feel vindicated and released from your guilt.
How many, one, two?
I believe abortion is wrong, but don’t want the government to be involved. That opinion is held by at least 75% of people who vote Republican.
I am active in my local Tea Party and contacted a lot of people this cycle to try to get votes for Republicans.
You are a very destructive minority, and you are preventing the rest of us moving the country back toward sanity and freedom.
I have never had any association with abortion or with anyone who had one. I am a father and grandfather and own a small business.
I think the effort required to control it would totally destroy any freedom left in our society. If you think the war on drugs causes endless violations of civil liberties, wait until you see what the abortion police will look like.
You are a well-camouflaged religious fanatic. Your beliefs as to what
‘The Man Upstairs’ wants done have no place in the legal system of a
_secular_ State. The same can be said of the ‘secular religion’ of the Progressives. The ironic and amusing aspect of ‘moderates’ in both camps
is that if their side ever gains complete control, with their help, they
will be purged along with the unbelievers, for insufficient zeal.
I dont expect the GOP to abandon pro life, but they need to get sensible about it, and avoid guys like akin and mourdock, that sound like women hating religious nuts. Those boneheaded remarke by akin and mourdock were worth several millions of dollars of obama attack adds, and we gave him those 2 gifts for free. The dems can afford bombastic boneheads, since the MSM will not publicise them, we cant.
Keep dreaming.
REI, I’m not sure about your timeline, but I agree with the essence of your post. I’d love to see a resurgence of Goldwater Republicanism. We should just leave abortion out of the platform, recognizing that there are different views on it within the party. For a presidential candidate especially to express an anti-abortion opinion is a lose-lose proposition because (1) there’s nothing he as president can do about the legality of abortion, yet (2) he opens himself to the sort of “war on women” demagoguery that we saw in this election. Imagine the difference it could have made in this election if Romney had had more support from suburbanites who believe in fiscal responsibility but oppose government restrictions on abortion.
REI is correct. My wife and I had a fight about this election night — she said no other considerations (fiscal responsibility, national security, etc.) were enough to balance against the Republicans’ desire to “take away her rights and control her body.”
I pointed out that the President didn’t have the power to do that, and that it would take a very long and somewhat improbable chain of events for the Supreme Court to get around to overturning Roe v. Wade, and even if they did abortion would still be legal here in Washington state, and she didn’t care. In her words, “It’s like putting some one in office that is pro lynching but fiscally fits your idea of a good leader.. just because they couldn’t feasibly pass laws that they could be on the books doesn’t mean they are someone I want making choices for me. The difference that we have is I see putting some one who is anti woman in office as like putting someone in that is a bigot in any other way.. David Duke could come up with some solution that would take out a magic wand and fix everything financially and I still wouldn’t elect him into office.”
I eventually got her to grudgingly agree that she would be willing to consider a candidate who said, “I personally am morally opposed to abortion, but it’s a private matter not a government matter.” She would have to think about it if the GOP were to say “abortion is wrong, but we won’t pursue legislation on it or try to overturn Roe v. Wade” or just leave it out of their official platform altogether.
My wife is by upbringing a Minnesota liberal who grew up on welfare. Her other issue is help for the poor but otherwise is annoyed by nanny-state interference in private lives and businesses. She would be willing to accept conservative arguments that the poor would be better off if the economy were booming and there were enough jobs for everyone who wanted one.
So yes, the Republican insistence on a loud anti-abortion stance is a deal-breaker for otherwise-liberal women who could be talked around to a conservative or libertarian vote. And I believe that she’s *very* representative of lots and lots of other women across the country.
Thomas Sowell would disagree with your wife on the poor and job growth.
How do you stand that woman? Just be reading that one paragraph I’m irritated by her. I’m sorry for saying that.
*by
Politics is less important than love.
In every other way but politics, we’re perfect matches for each other, and she’s a wonderful mother to our daughter.
While I agree with your attitude, you sound like the social-issue equivalent of a Country Clubber. What type of person prizes money over life? So you are pro-life, as long as it’s not enforced?
It was the MSM, for Akin and Murdouck too. Why are Conservatives asked about abortion for rape, but Leftists never about abortion for sex selection?
are you talking to me? Where did I say I want to do nothing about it? The place to do something about it is education and at the local level. And raise your daughter to think of themselves as something other than walking vaginas who must be catered to.
Forbidding abortion doesn’t stop it. I was almost aborted in a country where it was forbidden. (And btw, no, it wasn’t back alley. That’s a fable from the abortionists.)
I have, admittedly, considered that forbidding it IS the only way to keep it rare, safe and… well, not legal. Because it implies a risk.
HOWEVER that’s neither here nor there, until you do the education the outreach, the raising girls properly, it just guarantees we lose.
We are winning on the education, and while my heart breaks for the wounded (mothers) and the dead babies, it’s ALL we can do, and it takes time. You don’t stop a body-wound with a bandaid. A law now, even if it COULD be passed (and the president CAN’T do that) would only cause revolt.
And thank you on the “country club” thing, I always though I was the equivalent of the wild-eyed anti-statist running around with a rope and a bad ‘tude. You make sound so much better.
I think he was responding the REI’s insistence that abortion lost us the election.
Sometimes the reply system doesn’t always append posts as replies, and just tosses them out there.
Good points made. Compared to McCain, Romney did a much better job. The thing is, even if he’d won, history would not go into reverse. Socialism has been gaining ground in the Western world for at least 100 years (take Woodrow Wilson with his Federal Reserve and League of Nations). First it took the universities and concert halls, then it took TV and the movies, then it took Wall Street. Welcome to the future, comrades – it is looking curiouser and curiouser.
I feel sick. I have two daughters, the same age as the Obama girls. My husband and I started our marriage with absolutely nothing. He had an ROTC scholarship and I worked my way through college. Never occurred to either of us to expect a handout. My husband and I made sacrifices so I could stay home and raise our daughters. When the youngest began school, I went back and earned a teaching certificate. Four years later, I am a substitute teacher. I do just about any job the district asks of me. I go to work each day and I watch a train wreck. I just finished covering a two week job, did report cards, cleaned up grades for a teacher on leave. I had students in each class confront me (definitely in rude and demanding fashion) that I had the audacity to grade for ACCURACY not simple completion. I was told that all anyone expects is completion. Get ready, the next generation might be fine with completing that job on your car, but might not feel like tightening all of the lug nuts. At any rate, I stood my ground, refused to change any grades, and told them that LIFE demands accuracy. I’m sure the marks will be changed behind my back, but at least SOMEONE held them to standards. In this new world that we have damned ourselves to, I feel I am a dying breed. A dinosaur.
Marie,
I have sons a little older. If I didn’t, I’d just go off and go Galt. But I HAVE sons. We must fight. And when we fall, someone else MUST pick up the standard.
You f*cked up…. you trusted us.
This morning I saw I had three choices. 1- Laydown and take it, again. 2- Go Galt. 3- Emulate Breitbart. I’m choosing number 3. It’s my America too!
Just wanted to add that our children are watching. They are watching us cut corners, go for the hand out, and pass the buck. They are enamored with the concept of “cool”. We have our first cool president. It’s better to answer questions with a snide attitude and snark than in a genuine way. I was never ashamed of how Mitt Romney carried himself as a human being. I am ashamed that we have chosen the leader of the free world on the basis of quips and derision.
In the Canadian coverage I was watching last night, they were snarking on Mitt for his behaviour during the evening- not apparently stressing out, chilling with family. I realized at that point that the man had put his faith in God that the result would be what God intended and Mitt had done what he could. No matter what, Mitt will be OK after this. it’s the rest of us (including us in Canada and the rest of the world) who will be undergoing tribulation.
Thanks Sarah.
I, for one, am not giving up. To quote John Paul Jones, I have not yet begun to fight. I refuse to surrender to the current villainy.
Obama is a commie racist. So is liberalism a casual love affair with some dumbed down, pop-culture version of communism built around race. In terms of long decades, the Dem Party is a suicide cult. Supposedly when America’s demographic resembles a pie-chart of the U.N., all will be well. That’s the day there’s a rematch and the Aztecs win at Otumba.
You know how four years ago during Obama’s first campaign, Michelle said this was the first time she was proud of her country?
Today is the first time I’m ashamed of mine and my fellow countrymen. I’m so ashamed and disheartened hubby and I will permanently remove the flag that came with our house. After all, the country it represents is gone now.
Maybe we can rebuild, or maybe we can create something better in the ashes remaining after the left thoroughly trashes what’s left of the economy. But for the moment, the looters and moochers have won; hooray for them.
May they have great fortune in raping and pillaging the remaining producers, so that they can reap what they’ve so joyfully sown: a government they’re completely dependent upon, suddenly incapable of offering further support, once its credit rating is downgraded to junk bond status.
We can’t get our message out because it won’t make it past the media barrier to reach the majority of voters, whereas every vile slander from the scum on the left is represented as “mainstream” opinion and “real” issues, like the fictional “war on women”.
The most potent weapon of the left is the normalization and legitimization of the perverse and the extreme: ant-Americanism, defeat, envy, sexual profligacy, unlimited state power.
Trying a direct assault on the national media/academia/rich liberal fortress is impossible.
We need local & state action:
a) States: there are now 30 Republican governors– surely there are some states that can act to nullify the coming avalanche of despotism.
Even if many of these measures are symbolic, they can cast a shadow on the legitimacy of the Obama administration.
Stronger measures would include the forced ejection of Federal regulatory agencies, like showing the EPA the door in Texas. Another measure would require employers to deposit all Federal tax deposits in accounts administered by the state, with the state having the option to withhold the cash.
Such measures will need to plan to respond to Obama countermeasures, like a cut-off of Fed funding for certain programs, and also how to enforce state law vs. federal law over recalcitrant businesses and individuals. Remember the states, counties and localities have a far greater number of law enforcement officials available than the Feds.
Instead of setting up Medicare health insurance scams a la Obamacare, set up state social insurance pools that use the entire state population to provide actuarial-based health insurance, disability, long-term care and retirement plans instead of the current Federally controlled programs. Tired of “Mediscare” and “Social Security scare”? Give people a better alternative not funded by the Feds. States not hopelessly indebted have a better shot at this option: let people know their Medicare & Social Security taxes will go to pay the benefit packages of public employees in California and Illinois and see how they like it.
If worse comes to worse, plan on calling up and de-Federalizing the National Guard. A few billion dollars of Fed tax money sitting in state accounts would help here.
b) Local– watch what your local school district is doing. Are they teaching multi-culti Marxism in the classroom? Expose it and put the kabosh on it. Work to eliminate state and local recognition of public employee unions. Expose local regulatory apparatus abuses (zoning, business licenses, eminent domain) and public corruption, which is growing out of control even in places like Texas. Use local pushback against ludicrous state controls over local education and other local decisions.
c) Religious groups: make sure your congregation understands that your parish and church will be coerced to pay for abortions and contraceptives, and that the Obama admin wants to control church appointments as well under “equal opportunity” laws (this last case is still working its way through the courts. The Catholic Church made an emperor kneel in the snow at Canossa– lets do the same to Obama.
In brief, make sure that the states and localities controlled by conservatives are really controlled by conservatives and not Federal or State mandates.
We’ve just experienced our Dunkirk. We have a lot of work to do to get to D-Day.
Start the revolution from the bottom up.
Good suggestions. Here are some general observations:
“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” (Muhammad Ali)
“Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw”. (Vladmir Lenin)
“A science fiction editor posted on Facebook yesterday that we must make sure that we voted for Obama, or we’d be back in the fifties with segregation and without women’s rights.How can they even believe that? What part of the Republican platform had anything to do with that?”
Well, what would one expect from a guy who spends nearly every waking moment of the day in alternate universes and dimensions?
My prediction: Mitt Romney will go on to do great things. And Obama will be remembered as “that smooth-talking SOB who suckered us twice.”
It’s not just science fiction editors who believed that. There was a video floating around late last week of a 9-year-old black boy talking about how he wanted Obama to win because Romney would “send us back to the fields to pick crops.”
I’m pretty sure the kid didn’t come up with that idea himself. Especially not when Joe Biden told a largely black crowd that the republicans were going to “put y’all back in chains.”
The left can make up any crazy lie they want — apparently, the crazier the better, like how supposedly Romney was going to outlaw tampons (“It’s in their platform!!!”) — and a majority of democrats are apparently so stupid and/or gullible they’ll believe it, without giving the claim even a moment’s worth of critical thought. Or for that matter, actually reading the platform they cited to ensure it really says that.
It’s like they’re pod people who are only capable of regurgitating whatever they’ve heard from the teevee or read in a party-approved information outlet, like the Huffington Post.
If you’re on the right and your kids are enrolled in the public school system, pull them out, posthaste! Because keeping them there is tantamount to child abuse or criminal neglect.
Outlaw tampons, that’s funny. Another funny thing, under obamacare, a toothbrush is now a medical device. And will be taxed.
Yeah, I thought it was ironic that they were saying Romney would outlaw tampons, since, as you mentioned about toothbrushes, under Obamacare tampons and other feminine hygiene products will also be considered medical devices and will be taxed accordingly.
(Who’s fighting the war on women again?)
So keep in mind, under Obama, your birth control will be free, but tampons will cost you $20 a box.
Maybe all those lefties who were threatening to menstruate in Romney’s mouth should do that to Obama, once his beloved namesake healthcare scourge is fully in force.
Nah… they’ll just pull down Lincoln’s statue overlooking the reflecting pool and replace it with one of Obama, the great conqueror of liberty.
Being involved in SF has nothing to do with it per se. SF has wandered in political correctness to a degree that is staggering. Most of this is due to how much it’s been mainstreamed. 40 years ago SF literature was a still rather obscure genre inhabited by professional but aging writers with little access to their fan-base. Politics didn’t matter; good story-telling and writing did.
Today, it is the complete opposite. Men like Neil Gaiman and John Scalzi are more talented at promoting themselves than as writers. Gaiman’s wife is practically the poster child for this in music, as witness the over 1 million dollars she raised for an album on Kickstarter. She is far more popular for her “cool factor” than for her music, which is vapid.
No veteran SF writer in their right mind would’ve been dumb enough to believe that dumb lie about the GOP 40 years ago. The irony is that SF today is considered far more “mature” than in the ’40s or 50′s but if you look at the most popular work today, the audience for that would have to graduate to get to the level of Eerie, Creepy and Vampirella. No matter how much lipstick you put on it, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is still Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Actually, 40 years ago, most SF writers weren’t all that old.
That’s true. I guess I meant older. And some of the new guys weren’t all that younger, just more recently successful. Some of that older generation went on and continued to write great stuff after 1970 like Pohl and Vance. Lieber in particular seemed to make an effortless transition.
Some didn’t stick to their guns and didn’t transition well into the new type of SF. Heinlein especially, one of the older ones, tried hard to adapt to the new reality and failed after 1970. Some did stick to their guns and became irrelevant, like the Doris Day generation when The Beatles came along.
Some of those newer guys like Zelazny, Niven, Dick and Ellison wrote some great stuff, and weren’t overtly PC, like Leguin. Actually the liberal writers of SF back then seem tame compared to the ones today, who are pretty hard-core conformists of the far-Left.
The point as pertains to the article is that this is every where today, and surprisingly conformist considering what bright, rebellious voices the new PC generation of artists sees themselves as. When I hear bands like Arcade Fire I wonder what stereotype factory they were built in. They think they’re the new latest thing but I laugh when I read the diabolical biography of Doris Day and then think the “avant-garde” performance artist Laurie Anderson has had the same haircut for 4 decades. Hard to get more redneck than that. It’s all a con.
Epic, not again. You know NOTHING about the field of SF, and I don’t know why you imagine you do. FORTY YEARS AGO WAS WHEN THIS EDITOR STARTED WORKING.
You’re right about the current state of the field, because people are promoted due to political correctness not talent.
And yet you want more gatekeepers, who are always leftists and therefore… I’m not sure what you think, but it’s circular.
I know more about SF and fantasy than you do. I’ve been reading it for 48 years, IN America and in my native tongue. How does that translate into nothing?
By “this editor” I assume you mean the one on Facebook. I specifically mentioned an older generation. Even almost a decade before 1970, the New Wave was trying to overturn the applecart. Many of them were very good writers, but were the first generation of PC writers. They “admired” the older writers in a patronizing way, e.g., “Dangerous Visions.”
So, if your “editor” has been working since ’72, they are part of that new generation. Having said all that, I don’t even know what your objection is to my post.
I have no feelings about “gatekeepers” one way or the other. Publishers do the best deal they can. If that means screwing writers, and they do, why haven’t writers started their own publishing companies and doled out the cash? It’s because it’s a business. The reality is that all the great SF came through magazines. Were they gatekeepers? Are John Campbell and Pohl gatekeepers? If so they did a damn fine job.
Music companies have been robbing bands for decades. Many bands have sought to get around it, but it really hasn’t worked out all that well musically. And what’s to know about the SF industry? Be careful of accounting and contracts. Any professional would be thinking about it like a business in the first place.
The hilarious part is that every SF and fantasy writer and their sister is writing juvenile fiction now hoping to cash in like the “lucky” J.K. Rowling did. If there’s not a 12 yr. old involved then it’s a zombie. Some people don’t like to admit those Potter books are very cleverly constructed and written. If you have writing that’s lazy and drawn out, how is one to cash in when “luck” arrives?
You know, I was just looking for an example of a clueless arrogant dweeb. Thnk you!
Excuse me, I just want to make sure I’ve got this right. You know more about SF than someone currently working in the field, who has several successful series and has won a prestigious award for her fiction?
Is that about the size of your statement sir?
Didn’t I just state as much?
Fail,
With all due respect, you may have ten to twenty years of reading experience on Sarah, but you have not worked in the publishing industry that you’ve said. So on the internals of the industry, you do indeed know nothing.
Apart from your comments about the New Wave (with which I completely agree), the rest of your comment is so far away from the reality it isn’t even wrong.
“Why haven’t writers started their own publishing company”: until very recently that took rather more money than the average writer was ever likely to see, and even then the concentration of distribution to all to two at the same time as bookstores consolidated into two chains meant that the only way to get books to readers was by the established mutual backscratching of the lefter-then-left writing establishment. The music industry holds a similar gridlock on radio play and is trying to force one onto the Internet via repeated attempts to eliminate any method of playback they don’t control and get paid for (money which no musician has ever seen, to the best of my knowledge).
I’m curious to know how one can be “careful” of accounting and contracts when I have seen contracts that amount to slavery – contracts that give someone else control over publication of anything else an author writes that could conceivably be “related” in some way. Bestsellers have been handed these contracts. The only way to be “careful” with that level of abuse is to not participate and take one’s chances as an independent – which I have done.
The Harry Potter books are indeed clever and well written. The last four could have used more editing, but overall they are extremely well done. Ms Rowling is still extremely lucky: there are many equally well written works by relative unknowns languishing in midlists or being rejected. Or sitting somewhere in the vast number of independent works on Amazon, waiting for word of mouth to eventually work its magic. Some of them would have been equally amenable to being made into movies, equally capable of becoming world-wide best sellers. That is where Ms Rowling has been lucky, and I for one don’t begrudge her one penny of the wealth it’s earned her.
Thanks for not insulting me Kate.
I disagree with the but-for-the-grace-of-god-go-I when it comes to Rowling. Certainly, right place, right time and yes a certain amount of luck and timing. But a case for the idea there is a lot of work that good is not compelling from my point of view.
What Rowling had going for her is rather simple: her desire to write was matched by the fact she had something to say. I might compare it to Edgar Rice Burroughs, a man who’s lambasted as a writer but who had a lot to express and was a great story teller.
I don’t put Rowling on that level cuz I don’t think she was a gamechanger or ahead of her time and her prose certainly doesn’t reach very far, though it serves what she does; just a right fit for the time.
For me the bottom line is that I try out an awful lot of new fantasy. I won’t bore you with a list but it’s a long one and very recent. It doesn’t really engage me – the writers really have little to express as artists. When I started Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire it immediately engaged me. Even the Potter books immediately draw you in and there’s no hemming and hawing. With Rowling, when you read 100,000 words you get 100,000 words. With others, you get puffed up short stories. Most work simply isn’t that good. Other people, really in love with the genre, perhaps have lower discrimination settings for enjoyment.
But my worst peeve is the regurgitation of tired stereotypes. The field of fantasy is so folded back on itself it’s pitiful. I make a distinction here of the difference between a stereotype and an archetype, which is what Rowling engaged.
Fail, you are aware, by the way, that Sarah is an award-winning SF writer and a native of Portugal who writes in her adopted English, right?
Yes I am aware of that, I’ve been to Porto. Didn’t she just ask someone to translate one of her works into Portuguese? Since I speak Portuguese, I wonder if I might do. As for the Prometheus Award being prestigious, I liken that jargon to “comrade.” If it’s prestigious it speaks for itself.
As for award-winning books, “Darkship Thieves” is so lazily written I wonder how it got any where. The stuff about “divining” a escape pod lock was just that though the heroine admits she didn’t know it for a fact, falling asleep during the most traumatic event of her life, a joystick that suddenly DOES work, taking 5 min. to bump into a semi-mythological culture, and Mr. Cat-Eye never thinking to wear shades to protect his eyes is all in just the first several pages and makes no sense. On top of that she’s congratulated for doing an imitation of Heinlein, like I would of James Cagney, I guess.
Your Human Wave clique is thin-skinned, intolerant of criticism, full of yourselves and your mediocre talents, and insulated to the point where simple disagreement seems like heresy. I’m not impressed. Go stuff yourselves. If you only want opinions that mirror yours then state so on the article. Disagreement is not an insult. An insult is an insult.
There is a thing in this world called “reviews.” They are not meant personally or the result of a troll. They are not haters but simply people who give an opinion, which may be different then yours. If you want the label of conservatives then start acting like one and respect others opinions.
If you want credibility then stop respecting odious novels like “Ender’s Game” and saying “genuflect” when mentioning the childish work of Terry Pratchett. I know frickin’ Hee-Haw and Larry the Cable Guy when I see it and it smells just like a Monster Hunter. Arrogant is puffing yourself up to a place you’ve never been. Cocky is bragging. Your clique has little enough to brag about though you do it constantly.
Don’t go away mad, just go away,
and quit forcing me (and others?)
to pound on the ‘Page Down’ key.
Read Tom Kratman, William Dietz, Travis Taylor or John Ringo – just a few examples of contemporary SF that does not cater to the political correctness.
Wonderfully heartening article. Thank you.
Guys, how about we don’t make any drastic statements for at least 48 hours. Right now we’re upset and disappointed and distraught. We aren’t thinking clearly. Let’s spend some quiet time with our families and just chill.
The democrats/socialists have control over media because they TOOK control, They win because they understand that keeping it simple and saying it over and over again works, because they do whatever they have to do to get their guy in.(Like Bill Clinton, not like Chris Christie).
In politics, winning tactics aren’t pretty. You don’t win because you are right. And as long as a party is “above” them, it will lose.
[i]We’ve become what gays used to be: a minority that’s safe to ridicule.[/i]
Also good scapegoats and bogeymen. Jobless? Hungry? Bored? It’s those evil conservatives! They’re keeping you away from the jobs! They expect you to work for your food! They’re obstructing Dear Leader! Purge the conservatives, for the glory of America and Obama!
I know we’re not allowed to draw analogies to 20th century fascists, for some reason I don’t understand, but there it is.
I don’t see why not. Fascism is fascism. Black or red.
“And Obama will be remembered as “that smooth-talking SOB who suckered us twice.”
No he won’t. There’ll be bronze statues in every town. He may get his picture on the $5 bill. There will chapters devoted to him US Gov school history and sociology books.
Were I younger, I’d seriously consider finding a place to live with a brighter future, because this country is going off a cliff. In 1-2 more generations, the USA, as it was only 2 generations ago, will no longer exist and life will resemble something very much like the old USSR.
And people keep voting for more of it.
From election 2007 to election 2012 about14 million voters dropped out. Why? Who were they?
Recall the WW II “greatest Generation”? They and their relatives.compatriots were dying at about 500 to 1,000 per day. 4 years times 365 days time 1,000 equals 1.46 million voters gone from the voter pool. Add in about 250 per day for Vietnam Vets and another 365,000 drop-out. Accidents, medical and other deaths easily add several million more. I believe our current birth rate ,excluding illegals, is barely at replacement rate.
To make matters worse, the mix in society of liberals, conservaives and i betweeners has changed sinificantly. It is no wonder to me that our political society has changed dramatily. K – 12 education has made it worse.
We have a lot of rebuliding/retooling to do that will be our future challenge.
Sara,
For four years I screamed that the media, the media, the media —- had to be defeated first. That Team Romney and RNC didn’t dispatch 1000 Sununus and Gingriches is baffling
If only a media campaign with ads placed in public, putting the anchors faces and names in them, had been executed the George/Matt/Diane/Candy coalition may not have been so emboldened.
Until we defeat the so-called MSM, we are toast. Obama would air an ad and they would amplify it 1000x.
Romneys ad would get analyzed, fact checked and ridiculed.
Obama ran against Romney.
Romney ran against ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS, WashPo, NYT, CNN, MSNBC, AP, Reuters —– oh — and Obama too. He, we never had a chance. My wife sad this morning” We have to find a way to reach out o women”. There was never any war on women. It was a media fabrication started by Stephanopoulos with direction from OBama WH.
No honey, we need to defeat the media before we ever run another campaign. Even for dog cather.
We’re on track. PJ’s circulation compares to most major newspapers. Fox makes money; CBS, NBC, ABC, and the major papers except the Murdoch papers are losing money.
We don’t have to fight them. In due course, we’ll own them.
Nice one. (I assume the pun was intended.)
Ms. Hoyt…more than a decade ago as an activist for RKBA I spent time with the media “spinners” for the gay movement. What I learned from them has helped create a fundamental change in how we in the pro-gun movement interacted with the media and with our blood enemies. In short, “out of the closet and into the street.” And we’ve been amazingly successful over the last decade, but not successful enough to swing last night.
We will pick ourselves up off the ground and fight, of course, because that is what we do. But in my heart I fear we’ve hit the de Tocqueville “tipping point.” The next election will be about which party can provide the best bread and circuses. I’m sorry…I wish I was more optimistic.
Michael B
Thank you all for the laughs. After three years of watching the right’s circus of billionaire-powered grassroots movements, news organizations-as-propaganda outlets and the constant spew of thinly-veiled bigotry, it’s really nice to come to a site like this and see folks genuinely distraught over last night’s results.
I’m an Independent, and I’ve done work on a couple Libertarian campaigns at the state level. I appreciate conservatism, but am very saddened by what the movement has become. Mike, above, is correct: Obama will be memorialized. Will he be a great President? Probably not, but he’s done a lot of socially progressive things that will be remembered. And he will be remembered fondly, because he’ll be on the right side of history.
As for you all, you will obviously not be on the right side of history. If you want things back in 2020 (it’s sure as hell not happening in 2016 barring anything catastrophic), you need to get your shit together, push the far-right, demented and fringe elements out of the party, and realize that you’re only getting older, and this country is getting more colorful, and if you want to be a part of it you need to reexamine your priorities. If you don’t wish to be a part of it, it doesn’t really matter much, because you’ll be washed away with time.
Yes. Of course, I went to a teaparty with billionaires.
You people drink your own ink.
Take head out of ass, because when they fleece us, they’ll fleece you too bucko.
So the “right” side of history is pillaging the incomes of future generations for whatever the heck you want the government to waste it on now, like your birth control?
Got it.
Get stuffed.
The libertarian attitude (I know, I am one) is that it’s not the government’s place to decide who’s married and who isn’t. It is NOT libertarian to legalize whatever new way you want to define it as being today. Libertrianism is about getting the government off our backs by making it smaller, not enlarging it to cover whatever whim strikes your fancy.
The reality is the only segment of our economy that’s growing is the government class. And if that continues, we’re financially screwed for all eternity.
But hey? What do you care, as long as they legalize gay marriage and give you more free stuff?
Elaine,
Thank you.
Since when is the destruction of America the right side of history? Taking the failure of the Third World in its millions into the West will simply spread failure. Doing so based on the PC-based shame of America’s past success as racist and imperialist will only hasten this process. In 50 years this country is toast, and it will be because of liberal philosophy which demonizes success and spends untold billions to uplift failure. The lights are going out in Europe and America. Those who can take the long view and who’ve traveled extensively can see this clearly.
Absolutely nothing you just said has any logical basis. Hardly any of those words actually mean what you seem to think they mean.
But you can’t see that, because you’re exactly the sort of economically illiterate, self-righteous ignoramous that would vote for Obama.
I say that if Americans want Obama, we should see that they get a heaping portion of the Obamagenda. Instead of resisting, the Republicans in the House of Representatives should rubber stamp whatever the Democrats propose. Put a supercharger on the fiscal bus that they will drive over a cliff. Americans voted for Obama, we deserve him. I’m done. Speed spoil, hasten plunder. Nations, particularly democracies, deserve the governments they have. We deserve Obama and his ruinous policies. America was a nice idea while it lasted, but it appears, per Benjamin Franklin’s warning, that we have not kept our republic. Not just the battle is over, the war is over. We lost, never to win again.
Instead of engaging in a now fruitless effort, I think that instead of politics, I’ll focus on making myself a better person.
A majority of Americans want a left wing country, handouts rather than a hand up. Let them have the country that they want.
A BARE majority of Americans, some of them VERY young people who were told in school that “From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs” is in the constitution and that all the good countries are Marxist.
So, you’re going to be a better person. Nice. How about instead you concentrate on prying education from the wrong hands; on writing a book, or making a movie or a game that takes education to the kids? REAL education about real stuff.
Or you can be “a good person” while your country and about half the citizens who did nothing to deserve it and 1% more who are just young and very stupid suffer under a tyrant’s boot.
How good can that be? Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin.
“A BARE majority of Americans, some of them VERY young people who were told in school that “From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs” is in the constitution and that all the good countries are Marxist.
There has been one conservative president in my lifetime. I think we’re deluding ourselves to think that this is still a center-right country.
“So, you’re going to be a better person. Nice. How about instead you concentrate on prying education from the wrong hands; on writing a book, or making a movie or a game that takes education to the kids? REAL education about real stuff.”
It’s impossible to pry education from the wrong hands. What are you going to do, fire every school principal? They and most professional “educators” tilt left. It’s not just the teachers – the entire K-12 public education system and college campuses are wholly owned subsidiaries of the left. That’s a permanent status and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
There’s an old Jewish story about a great rabbi on his deathbed. He said that when he was first ordained and got a pulpit, he resolved to teach his town to be better people and better Jews. Failing at that he decided to concentrate on teaching his own congregation. After some years he realized that he needed to focus on on his family. Finally, in old age he realized that he should have started with himself.
“Or you can be “a good person” while your country and about half the citizens who did nothing to deserve it and 1% more who are just young and very stupid suffer under a tyrant’s boot.”
The Talmud teaches that when a natural disaster or plague occurs, it harms the righteous along with the wicked. Them’s are the breaks. As a society we voted for the tyrant’s boot. It’s unfortunate that we all will suffer but that’s reality. We get the government we deserve.
“How good can that be? Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin.”
Are you sure that’s the biblical passage you want to quote? It’s about a society that has been counted, measured and found lacking.
Sarah, I think you are correct about the schooling. It’s amazing that modern parents schedule their kids for every activity under the sun in the eves and weekend, but are not teaching values, economics, basic money knowledge. That has to change.
Well, what can you say? Obama got just enough votes to push him over the top in the key states. His GOTV machine (and possibly quite a bit of fraud — a lot of people got to the polls and learned that they had already “voted” by absentee ballot; who needs Voter ID, anyway?) got the job done.
The American people have doubled down on stupid. The Honey Boo Boos have won. The worst president of my lifetime, with the economic competence of Carter and the honesty of Nixon, has been re-elected. He can thank the media, who managed to keep the lid on the scandals (Fast & Furious, Benghazi) and drag him over the finish line. And we can also thank all of the young single women who voted with their ladyparts instead of their ladysmarts. Thanks, girls. Thanks a lot. That’s going to be some really expensive free birth control when you tally up what it really cost you, down the road.
And of course, we learned that there really are more “takers” than “makers,” and they all voted to keep their free stuff coming in. Look for a lot more job-creators to “go Galt” in the next couple of years. Obamacare will be the law of the land; this was the last chance to derail it, and it will make health care both more expensive and of poorer quality, it will raise taxes and curb job creation. Obama will get to nominate probably at least two more hard-left Supreme Court Justices, tilting the balance of the Supreme Court for a generation to come. The “rich” will be taxed, and that will curb job creation. The EPA will be implementing all of those new regulations that they were hiding until after the election, which will put coal-generated electricity out of business; I don’t doubt that they will go after natural gas fracking as well. There won’t be a Keystone pipeline. And Americans will wonder, “Hey, why the hell did my electric bill skyrocket and why is gasoline $6 a gallon?”
But hey, we’ll still have all of those glittering celebrities partying at the White House, our own Versailles on the Potomac, and Obama will continue to hone his golf game. Michelle and the girlls will be jetting to all of the finest vacation spots in the world. What a country!
I think that this election was an inflection point. People are going to look back at this time, in the future, and wonder just what we were thinking. A lot of bad things are going to happen, and this election will be viewed as the last time they could have been avoided or at least mitigated. I have “I told you so!” rights for the next four years, and I will be making extensive use of them.
I don’t think we have more than two years. IF we have that. Before that, there will be an attack on one of our major cities; before that one or more states will go utterly bankrupt;before that all significant economy will go underground.
I’ve seen this movie before, and we’re Americans. We do things bigger and faster.
Now is the time to speak. “I told you so” doesn’t taste nearly as sweet when you’re dead.
Why bother wasting breath speaking out? They’re not interested in what we have to say. They’re more interested in free birth control.
Do you think that an attack on an American city (or Israel), the bankruptcy of a state government or the voluntary withdrawal from the official economy by producers will have any impact on the 52% of Americans that no longer have the American dream? They and the MSM will continue to make excuses for Obama like they have for the past 4 years. Now that they have doubled down on their emotional investment in Obama, you think they’ll be open to the possibility that they’re wrong?
Also, the notion that they “barely” won is whistling past the graveyard. We’ve lost most of the presidential elections since I’ve been an adult. This is a center left country, moving farther left, and to think otherwise is to be in denial. The takers now outnumber the makers.
Like I said, America was a good idea while it lasted. It’s over. Done. Finito. Let them run the country into the ground. We can’t do anything about it.
The Gramscians have prevailed. Most Americans are now the product of a dumbed down and politicized educational system. Let them have the society they want.
I agree. High on the liberal list of most-hated is the idea of European-American exceptionalism. The Left despises this above all things, though any simple reading of a history book will tell a pretty clear story. To a liberal, the idea is pure racism and white supremacy, though that success has absolutely nothing to do with such imperatives. Any so-called “supremacy” came from winning competitions, and did not precede those events in history.
In 400 years, virtually nothing has come from Latin America. In the eyes of the Left, there are “reasons” for that. Indians have been in England for 200 years and barely left a mark. The English rode high on the hog in India for 150 years and have left an indelible imprint on a much older civilization, though only a tiny percentage of India’s population.
Liberals are addicted to multiculturalism through immigration, legal or illegal. This cannot be undone or stopped. We are at once the victims of our own success by acting like a magnet, and the victims by having murdered our own resolve.
Take heed, fellow “Kulaks”: very soon, “going Galt” will be illegal.
You know that “from each according to his abilities” thing? They mean to get it, one way or another.
This is a very nice post, Sarah… and very timely. Thank you. Yesterday’s disappointment led to a lot of ‘how can a conservative ever win again?’ questions — I am a social liberal but fiscal conservative – and I think Romney would have made a good president, so yesterday was so sad. We have the worst performance ever from a president and even that wasn’t enough to change perceptions. And you are right — a lot of it has to do it with conservatives being conservative about their enthusiasm for their cause and in their beliefs. I will read this post a few more times so I can continue to discuss my views and opinions in a civil manner and not let vitriol make me hide.
Thank you so much…that helped get me out of my funk and look forward!!! Great column! After a day of self pity i will be back up on the horse!!
I disagree that things will ever change. The election proves that people love what Obama is doing and what he stands for. The American populace is too far gone. It has gone beyond the point of no return, having embraced Obama despite the horrible conditions in this country. Too many people don’t care. The US is over as we have known it.
My neighbors believe Republicans are evil. And yet, repeatedly throughout the year they rely on me for favors and various kindnesses from me. I’m the family with my shit together. I’m the reliable, friendly, helpful guy who is always willing to lend a hand. From borrowing my snow blower to my lawnmower to hand tools to carpooling neighborhood kids around and running soccer practices. That all stops today. From now on, the answer is no longer a kind yes. In fact, it’s not even a simple no, but HELL NO. They want more of my taxes and more of my freedom on top of my generosity. They can go to hell.
I ALREADY PAY FOR THEIR HEALTHCARE, THEIR MORTGAGES, THEIR UNEMPLOYMENT CHECKS AND THEIR GOVERNMENT PROPOGANDA SCHOOLS. ISN’T THAT ENOUGH?!
Apparently not…
Charley Rose, on CBS, was mentioning this morning that Republicans in the House will have to compromise on the economy and not stonewall Barry, no mention that compromise involves two parties.
Based on what happened last night I think the house Republicans should rubber stamp everything Obama sends them. The American people made it perfectly clear what they want and they should be given what they asked for.
The rest of us can just go Galt and do our best to live our lives around the consequences.
I think you’re wrong when you dismiss abortion as a major issue in this election. I know this motivates people very strongly, people who would otherwise have been more receptive to Romney’s economic message. You say it wasn’t part of R/R’s campaign, but (a) it’s explicitly part of the Republican party platform (b) Ryan is very strongly against abortion, so the choice of him as VP carried additional weight and (c) this election may have Supreme Court ramifications, and socons would like to reverse Roe v Wade, so it was a relevant issue.
I think you underestimate the passion many women feel about the right to abortion. I know of a conversation between two friends after Mourdock’s “gaffe” where one of them asserted that this is evidence that some men continue to think of women as “chattel”. To people like her, it is a gut-level imperative that the right to an abortion be preserved.
If you still don’t believe me, consider this poll: http://www.gallup.com/poll/158069/women-swing-states-gender-specific-priorities.aspx
39% of women in swing states consider abortion the most important issue in this election.
Now obviously there’s passion on both sides of this issue; that’s why it won’t go away, and it’s a no-compromise issue for many socons as well. But you shouldn’t just dismiss it as irrelevant, because it’s not.
When I was growing up back in the ’60s and ’70s, I often heard the Republicans criticized as ‘not being willing to play hardball’ with the Democrats. For a few years it looked as if the Party had gotten over this reluctance, but it’s evidently still the case.
At some point I think we have to admit that the United States of America isn’t the country it used to be and isn’t the country we wish it was. At some point we have to realize that a plurality and possibly even an outright majority of our citizens neither understand or care about our founding ideals.
I’m pretty sure that “at some point” happened last night.
We could rationalize that in 2008 McCain was a weak candidate, Obama lucked out on the timing of the financial crisis and people got hoodwinked by hope & change. But last night the American people were offered a clear, unambiguous choice: four more years of the guy we’ve seen Obama to be or a President who would make some small attempt to roll back the government. And as much as we may hate to admit it, they chose Obama. It wasn’t even close.
Blaming the media is fine, but really having an electorate that believes in Obama and one so stupid that it swallows what the media says about Conservatives is functionally the same thing.
And as far as the Republicans go, if they couldn’t beat this President in this economy then I don’t see who they CAN beat.
If you want to start now it’s possible we might be able to take back academia and the media in two or three generations. And maybe during that time the GOP can be either rebuilt from the ground up or replaced by some other party. But for right now I think it’s time to face it: this is Obama’s America, we all just live in it.
The Republicans in the House need to play hardball and not pass a single bill the Dems want. Especially, they should refuse to fund any part of the government (outside of the military). Let the lefty political offices close due to lack of funds. Especially especially prevent any funding for Obamacare! Shut off money to the BATF, and for Eric Holder. Don’t pay Timmy Geithner’s (the tax cheat) salary. Also, never confirm any Supreme Court justice nominated by Obama, using year-long filibusters if necessary.
No, this isn’t being a sore loser, it’s called refusing to let the Marxists take over and ruin a good country. After the USA, there is no place else to really go to in the world.
As I also been saying as many places as I can, the country should split into two countries, divided by red and blue states. Let folks move to the system of government they think they want, but once they move, they can’t go back! Especially want to stop “blue-staters” from moving into red states and trying to enact their commie policies.
Rusty
Good luck getting the republicans in congress to play hardball. These are the same jerks who, after the 2010 Tea Party wave caved in on raising the debt ceiling. And why did they cave? Because the dems and the media portrayed them as being a bunch of recalcitrant meanies who don’t care if grandma starves because she didn’t get her social security check.
It’s easy to SAY what the repubs in congress SHOULD do, but getting them to do it? Impossible. Boehner’s already cooing his conciliation to Obama and the dems. Good luck getting him to stop.
The only answer is for us as a nation to hit rock bottom — our credit rating will suffer more downgrades in the coming months and years as the only entity buying our treasury bonds will be our own treasury. Once Leviathan runs out of other people’s money and can’t borrow from any other nation on the planet, well, then… maybe we can start to rebuild from the ashes.
Until then…
They made it clear last night: we can’t stop them. And they refuse to listen to anything we “haters” have to say about anything.
give them everything they want. And give it to them hard, like they did to us last night.
I think Romney lost for 1 reason. It wasn’t the ideas. It wasn’t the media (I mean, who even watches the news anymore?) and it wasn’t contraception. It was the Republicans’ hard line on immigration. Romney won more of the vote in every area except the Hispanic vote. This is a demographic that is growing quickly and needs to be courted by R’s. Shutting down the borders and deporting illegals is seen as a threat to these voters, whether it to their friends or their family members. I better approach would be to look at comprehensive reform that included a guest worker program and made it easier for Hispanics to come here legally. No need to deport those that are here illegally (it isn’t viable anyway!) but having them pay a fine to get a green card makes sense. If they want a path to citizenship, they would need to go back to their home country and apply like everyone else. Otherwise, they pay a fine and stay, but have no path to citizenship. I think this would make the Hispanic voter more likely to become Republicans as their values are conservative in general.
Who says they have a right to be here at all?
The issue is the whole concept of what you’re preaching. I don’t just trounce into other countries and DEMAND to be accomodated or heard one way or another.
That is called literal invasion. WE don’t want to be complacent or lay down for invasion.
What are you missing here?
I’m not missing anything. What are you missing?
The difference between the US and every other country (where immigrants aren’t necessarily “trouncing” into there) is that we are a nation built on an idea. Built by immigrants. Americans are the only people that are truly a mix of many different nationalities. The idea that we should slam the door shut now is literally Un-American. Making the immigration system better and more realistic is the only way R’s are going to win elections. If you want to be permanently in the minority keep attacking immigrants. If you want conservative ideas to actually be implemented make changes to the immigration system and make it right.
I’d agree with you on open borders, save for one point: ours is a welfare state. As soon as some illegal slips across the border, he costs us countless thousands every year. School for his kids. Hospitalization for the mom and automatic citizenship for the unborn baby he brings with him. Free healthcare.
And, heck… he doesn’t even have to contribute anything to government’s largesse by paying income taxes on any blackmarket income he makes.
Why shouldn’t he come here and live off our gravy train?
You talk about how much it would cost to send illegals back — how freaking much do you think it costs us to allow them to stay? Let’s not even mention that allowing illegals to work takes jobs away from many blacks in this country. That’s why their unemployment rate is so astronomically high compared to every other ethnic group.
Why should we give preferential treatment and rewards to people who thumbed their nose at the system in place and jumped to the head of the line, all so they could steal from the honest taxpayers who’ve lived here all our lives?
Screw that.
BTW, maybe you should ask Mexico why they don’t welcome Guatemalan imigrants with open arms; why should our nation treat illegal Mexicans more favorably than Mexico treats illegal Guatemalans?
Oh, right… because we’re the land of plenty and we should hand over what’s ours to whoever wants it. After all, that’s only “fair.”
Thanks for all your great columns at Instapundit. I have bookmarked your personal site and will be buying your kindle SF. We need to do two things post-election: 1. stop funding our enemies. I dropped all three weekly news magazines, the local paper (owned out-of-state) and my monthly donation to NPR. 2. Stop saving the blue-state morons from themselves. Mitt Romney sorted out Massachusetts, which returned the favor by electing first Deval Patrick and then Elizabeth Warren and Obama. California just enacted an extra tax on people who have the means to flee the state; they are going to get a lesson in the reality of the Laffer Curve. California’s Pension plan is a half-trillion dollars short; Illinois has the highest per-capita debt in the nation, and the last three Speakers of the House in Mass went to prison; the price of a one-party state. Texas provided half the job growth in the USA last year; let the Red States prosper and then rub it in the faces of the Liberals.
This is the only piece of fresh thinking I have seen in all today’s post-mortems. Mostly, we’ve seen the conservative intellectual class pointing fingers at demographic groups, or Romney’s campaign strategy or tactics, or the media, but never ever at themselves for letting conservatism go stale or for being diffident in the face of relentless media torment.
I think our conservative punditocracy is old, tired, brain dead and might as well be ignored.
I want to focus on trying to restore a government in this country based on the US constitution as it is written, not as some bunch of black-robed idiots claim that it is. I have purchased the following domain names. Which one do you like best?
re-constitution.us
restore-usa-constituion.com
restoreconstitution.com
Forget it. It was a stupid idea. I cancelled the domain names.
America’s productive voters, the people who pay all the taxes that make the welfare state possible, are now at 49% and shrinking. In the math of democracy, 49% equals 0%. Are we going to quietly accept this taxation without representation? You think a few moochers might vote for our side if we ask nicely?
Forget about amending the Constitution. If we can’t get 50% we sure as hell can’t get 38 states to ratify. There are a few other possibilities:
Military coup. Pros: Quick and effective (Chile 1973) Cons: Unlike Latin America, our soldiers are sworn to uphold the Constitution. New regime may overstay its welcome to avoid punishment. Could degenerate into civil war (Spain, 1936-39).
Atlas shrugs. Pros: Uses a leftist weapon (the general strike) against the leftists. Cons: Could take a long time, and cause a lot of innocents to suffer. Few places in the world to conceal a Galt’s Gulch.
Secession. Pros: Both sides win, assuming total control in their respective nations. Cons: Lots of people have to relocate (like the Loyalists who fled to Canada).
Well said, Sarah!
The stage is still set to over-run Congress with Tea Party type conservatives in 2014 – now is not the time to take potshots at anybody not wearing the Democrat/liberal label.
I never felt Romney was our best candidate, nor did I agree with Ryan for VP. Nonetheless, I supported the ticket vigorously.
Perhaps in 4 years if Marco Rubio continues to show the intelligence and political skill he has to date the party will wake up to his true potential. In the meantime let us work like dogs to make sure the next Republican President is faced with solid majorities in both houses of Congress.
Hell, if there had been a conservative Democrat (a conservative by my standards) running, I could have even crossed the aisle. As it stands we no longer have two parties of mixed leanings – most of the Democrat leadership today is socialist bordering on rat bastard commie.
Romney said, rather timidly in my view, that things need to change. The nation is split evenly between those who see an urgent need for change and those who don’t. If you’re living off of the magic money fairy then you probably won’t see the need for change until the magic money fairy quits pooping money. One of the other candidates might have done better but they weren’t on the ballot yesterday.
However, I do find it interesting that the Establishment said “Romney is the guy” because he supposedly gave the GOP the best shot at regaining the Senate. So we got Romney, the Establishment then bailed, and we lost a Senate seat (or 2 if you count the new indy). There must be a zombie infestation in DC because there aren’t any brains.
But, Ms. Hoyt is absolutely right… we must continue the fight. If 2012 has taught us anything it’s that the Establishment will not fight. They’re perfectly happen sitting on their elite fannies thinking deep thoughts with their zombie munched brains.
a couple of thoughts: 1) the msm while generally loathed by many people is ubiquitous, I believe that most people are headline only readers which plays into the msm’s strength, they see a headline and it makes an impression need to find a way to do the same thing from the repub/independent/libertarian side 2) now is the time to press the attack put the pressure on obozo will own the coming storm make him and his party pay
I think repubs need to do some soul searching, especially on how to broaden our party to get that remaining 5% we need to win, with groups like hispanics, asians, and women. Hispanics and asians are workers and entrepenours and dont want gov handouts, they just want an accomidation on immigration. We can’t cede 70% of the hispanic vote to the dems and win, we need to move on immigration. And we need to make sure that if we nominate any pro life candidates, at least they are not religious nut types like Akin and Mourdock, who badly alienated women and moderates. We also need to move on gays to win young people, who really cares if 2 men want to get married, they dont hurt us or cost us anything. We cant just depend on fervor within our present cooalition, we must expand it, and the type of issues I cited here are not the vital type of pocket book issues we must stand firm on, but can win us a lot of new votes.
“Devastated”….that’s the word that came to my mind when Ohio went to Obama. I felt it. Right to my core. But I like your article Sarah and appreciated the lift it gave me.
But…what to do now:
1. If you need to….Take 3-10 days and rebuild your heart and soul. Do whatever works for you. Watch John Wayne, Braveheart, or Errol Flynn Daily. Read novels of bravery or courage or of triumph. Perhaps poetry or listening to particular songs will be your thing. Exercise vigorously or take long walks in a nice spot each day. Spend extra time with family and friends in an especially fun activity. Focus extra time on your Faith. But….REBUILD.
Next…..
2. Go after the Media—Same thing we have been doing but to the 10th power. Ridicule them. Satirize them. Write limericks. Create a poem. Do a short skit. Create a Damn online SNL Just. For. Them. Every misstep with their bodyguard-action in behalf of the One, earns them 1 million mentions in twitter, cartoons, bumperstickers, Jay Leno jokes, etc. Force them into the LIMELIGHT. Rats don’t like the light.
3. As to whether America can come back from this powerfully deadly blow….
I believe it can; for I believe in God, and he CAN accomplish Miracles.
I don’t know how I have not heard of you before but what you said is pretty much how I feel. Pro Life and pro stay out of other peoples lives. I have a hard enough time living my own life to try and tell others how to live theirs. Conservativs who are for limited government do not seem to have a problem with government interferance when it goes along with their beliefs.
I do not favor gay marriage but then I’m not gay. If I were I might feel differently or I might want to hide under the safety net it that not being allowed to marry provides, who knows? What is true is that abortion, gay marriage, prayer in schools are issues to be debated and promoted in the private sector through church, charitable organizations and advocacy groups. The conservatives would do much better if they stuck to the issues that can and will fundamentally change the structure and fabric of America. Debt, National Defense, realistic immigration reform and JOBS.
We lost a lot of votes from people who agree with us on most issues because of the fear that the less government group was going to impose their beliefs on us through government intervention.
“We’re horrible, uncaring people. We hate everyone. We’re stupid too.”
Well, if that’s how we’re going to be treated, then we might as well do all the horrible things they accuse us of. It won’t make our reputation any worse, and at least we can kill off the most annoying ones.
Conservatives need to translate the moral arguments for a secular culture, not abandon those arguments. There are secular reasons to oppose the destruction of the family. We need to make them. The family is the basic political organization in a civil society. It’s where children learn to trust, to engage with others, to understand limits. When the family can be redefined to mean any group of people who choose to live together, and the state refuses to regulate it, then it is the children – our future who suffer.
Liberal access to abortion may be wrong, but it is also bad policy. Look at China where sex selective abortions have left 145 million men with no possible mates. Excess men without the civilizing influence of marriage and family leads to more violence and war. Is that what liberals want?
Redefining marriage so that it is no longer recognizable may be wrong, but it is also disastrous social policy. If denying two men the opportunity to have their relationship recognized by the state is a denial of their civil rights, then it is a denial of the civil rights of 3 men, or aging siblings, or heterosexual friends, or any other group. The lesson of domestic partnerships is clear – it was designed for homosexuals, but many more heterosexuals took advantage of it, providing “marriage lite” as an alternative to the lifetime commitment.
It may be wrong for women to have children by several different men, but it is also bad social policy to encourage it. Why should the tax dollars of hard working plumbers and electricians (for example) or Latino farm workers be used to support these choices? There are now in our major cities and elsewhere as well, matriarchal clans of great grandmom, grandmom, mom, daughter, and one or more babies all drawing tax supported welfare payments. You can live quite well with the older ones on disability, with everyone getting food stamps, rental assistance, home heating assistance, free phones, WIC for those with children, charitable contributions of food, clothing, and equipment. This is happening in small towns now too.
Why can’t conservatives explain the consequences of these policies without moralizing? I’m not opposed to moralizing, but many people will just stop listeniing.
As “Rush” stated before the election: We can live with President Obama 4 more yrs
easier than we can live with the Interest groups and folks that would elect him.”
To that, 2 days after the election, I say Amen.
Here was a candidate
- refused to release many years of tax returns
- switched positions on issues to suit the audience
- back tracked on every position he ever held
- represented the wealthiest of wealthy americans
- born on 3rd base and thought he hit a triple
- played tax return tricks to bring his tax rate up temporarily to an acceptable level (he didn’t claim all the charitable deductions he was entitled to – I sure he has already filed an amended return to get that money back)
- has money in and a owns a ship that flies the flag of the cayman islands (of course he claims there is no tax benefit)
- has money in swiss bank accounts
- clearly knows nothing about the auto industry (read his op-ed piece)
Go back to Switzerland, Romney, you freak. America doesn’t need you.
” But it’s not all their fault. It is ours too. We’ve hid in the political closet. We’ve eschewed politics in polite company. We’ve become what gays used to be: a minority that’s safe to ridicule.”
I stand convicted: of remaining silent during classes, meetings and parties during my years of growing up. For hiding my opinions admidst a sea of left-wing hive-speak. I saw people isolated, damaged and driven away whenever they went public and raised a challenge, and I was not willing to join them. When I finally found my voice, our social, cultural and political environment was possibily poisoned past repair.
“And all of my libertarian friends who think the problem is that Romney didn’t say he was okay with contraception and abortion — since when was contraception and abortion part of the campaign?”
Hmm, let’s see..
http://whitehouse12.com/republican-party-platform/
Scroll down to “The Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life”
Yes, since when was party platform part of presidential campaign?
I’m pretty sure the “cone of silence” republicans were kept in was what won the day for Obama.