Are You ‘Them!’?
Punish Our Enemies?
In the last week, there was more talk on illegal immigration from open-borders activists, the Obama administration, and Mexico—all to the effect that the United States has to shape up, be more caring, and start granting amnesty (“comprehensive immigration reform”). But what are we missing? Did not over 11 million people enter the U.S. illegally, and without apparent care about the law? I would not drive into Mexico without legal identification, or sign affidavits that I knew were false, or abandon my car at the scene of an accident in Acapulco, or register for public assistance in Mexico City, but I am to expect others can do the reverse with impunity?
Does not the U.S. allow almost $50 billion to leave the country for Latin America in remittances? Are not American social services extended to illegal aliens at a time when states are near bankrupt? Are not nearly 50,000 illegal aliens housed in California prisons at a cost of at least $40,000 each per annum?
In other words, the United States seems to have been a generous host. Why then the unending anger and accusations, rather than frequent gratitude that one is living in Fresno rather than Oaxaca? Whether intended or not, the message is hourly becoming “you better let me come into your insensitive, illiberal, and uncaring country—or else!”
Rarely in the history of U.S. immigration have the representatives of want-to-be citizens been so angry at the majority of the country into which their constituents have decided to move. Only Orwell could explain why the Mexican government is suing the state of Arizona to force it to accept its own apparently unwanted Mexican nationals who have entered that state illegally: “You better let us export to you our own whom we cannot house or feed adequately (and often will not care to)—or else!”
What We Look Like Matters—Sometimes, Always, Never?
Then there was President Obama announcing his new African Americans for Obama website , where the president appeals directly to a constituency to support him on the basis of shared racial identity. I am afraid it was quite frank; mutatis mutandis the appeal would be sort of like a theoretical caricatured President Billy Bob Alabama creating a Europeanamericans.billybobalabama.com site with appeals to those who look him to give him money on that account.
Apparently the president is worried that a 96% majority of black voters might slip to near 92% in key states, given near-record levels of black unemployment during his administration.
But the problem is that there is a pattern here. This comes after the 2010 video appealing to past supporters to continue solidarity on the basis of race and gender, and all the other minority-targeted “punish our enemies” tropes. I think we got that message about March 2008: The more noble souls in our country are supposed to ensure that conservatives do not discriminate on the basis of what Americans “look like,” and so they will accomplish that precisely by appealing to voters en masse on the basis of what they look like. What a strange logic: blacks are to vote for Obama on the basis of being black, but others must vote for him on the basis of him not being black.
“I accept no post-American anything—and am quite tired after three years of being lectured that I am supposed to.”
Amen! I know I’m the choir for this sermon, but I could not agree more, and I view this as the reason that Obama will lose.
To the minor typos: in section two, paragraph two, sentence 5 you have: “sold real estate ot made much money”. In sentence eight of the same para, you have: “I have never used in my life the term” which reads a bit awkwardly, but is purely a matter of preference, and is merely listed here for completeness.
In section nine, paragraph two, sentence 4, you have: “Compared to the caste stem in India,” when you wanted “system”.
As always, great article.
Jeez….get a life. What, you think he’s gonna ask you to become his editor?
And you wasted a comment on a VDH article on my OCD tendencies? Who needs to get a life, again?
I’m just trying to be a useful reader.
Acually YOU wasted a post here with your OCD tendencies …
There’s nothing wrong with constructive criticism, which I include proofreading notes as. After all, if VDH wishes, I reckon he can make the corrections and then delete the post, which would probably make Donna very happy. The corrections were clearly not posted in any kind of mean/attack manner, so…
As to the article, it was well-put. President Obama’s views on America are not my views, and I most certainly would not vote for someone who sees America the way he does, much less someone who has divided up the world into even smaller “us vs them” units.
I think it’s great that you take the time to post the corrections. It helps me to be a much more thoughtful reader, and it helps me pay more attention to my own writing, most of the time. A lot of people could do the same. I for one, thank you.
It’s not the first time Miss Manners here has corrected our host’s typos. Her compliments seem to be a vehicle for her typo “correction notes”.
I hope her dishwasher is empty, and the dishes duly put away before sending those corrections.
Who says a dishwasher does an adequate job?!
(That was a joke.)
i thought you were spot on Diana, if it helps make a better article than it is not a wasted post. OCD sucks, glad you have a sense of humor about it.
Actually, VDH deliberately inserts those typos for Dianna to find.
This is one of the reasons I like liberty and small government. People like Dianna can be as OCD and nit-picking as they like, and I’m free to take their suggestions or to ignore them.
In a ‘collective’ people like this get government jobs and plague us for life!
It’s the counterfeit Chinese dictation software.
Okay, first time I’ve read the opening comments/replies and laughed out loud.
All that said, Work&Days is a blog, “a personal journal,” as Wikipedia defines it. This is a vehicle for Hanson to share some quick thoughts with you, so don’t be so uptight, it’s supposed to be a loose form of communication.
Humans are social animals — they always, and must, live in ‘societies’. A society is a dominance hierarchy, the textbook example of a dominance matrix, or zero-sum game. All human interactions, with a theoretical exception for some economic exchanges, are zero-sum games. So, seeing life in a multi-racial USA as a ‘black-white’ existence is exactly correct. One has the option of not ‘seeing’ life in this way, as one has the option of choosing to ignore gravity. But jump off an office building and you’re gonna go “splat” regardless of your belief. Just as you had to give the edge to alQueda in their war on the USA as long as the US refused to ‘see’ that they were at war with us, racial groups seeing America as a battleground among races for dominance, would seem to have an edge over whites, who are taught that “we are all Americans”. Sure, many/most of us are American citizens, but not much more than half have the DNA which would identify one as a descendant, or Europrean relative, of the peoples who founded America.
Uh. Thanks for dropping by to hijack a charming thread on proof reading.
Best of luck with your racial theories blog, though.
Since more than 99% of DNA is common between humans, distinctions between different humans on the basis of DNA is pretty useless. There is less variation between any two humans (say a Hottentot and a Japanese) than there is between two non-twin chimpanzees with common mother and father in a troop in Africa.
Differences between humans are based on very small fraction of genes, and on culture and life experience.
In fact, according to a study done by Cornell scientists in December 2003, humans and chimps have a nearly 99 percent similarity in their DNA.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/04/2.12.04/human_chimp_DNA.html
“All human interactions, with a theoretical exception for some economic exchanges, are zero-sum games.”
This sentence is complete rubbish. Economic exchanges are not a minor “theoretical exception”. Voluntary trade (absent fraud), where both parties benefit (if both parties dont benefit, why would they ever bother to voluntarily make the trade), is the basis of free market capitalism, and the basis of our prosperity. The idea that nobody can get anything for themselves unless they take it from somebody is the basic flaw of socialism, and the basic flaw of the Obama identity group spoils system. True, all too many interactions are zero sum games, like fraud, theft, predatory lawsuits, and gov taxing from one to give to another. And for the very reason that these transactions add no value overall (and in fact typically lose value, since there is always some waste associated with the involuntary transfer) is why they should be opposed.
I’m with Dianna. Lack of proper editing is a widespread problem in published articles, on the web or otherwise. I see nothing in Dianna’s comment other than a sincere desire to help, and I also see that her suggestions have now been implemented, to the benefit of readers. I don’t understand how anyone could be offended by that.
The typo gestapo needs to take their complaints to the proper authority.
Here it is:
Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. (ISC)
Then there’s the Picayune Minutia Society, but they are a very clandestine group.
Well, . . . I don’t know, . . . maybe, . . . as Christian and Hopeful at The Slough of Despond, we wipe the mud from each other, . . . but, . . . I envy our “Dianna” here, . . . I’d bet that, she has matriculated with a 4yr degree, . . .
I would marvel to know the path of her education such that, she has not yet “picked up on” the correct construction and use of the disjunctive sentence, and the punctuation denoting a conjuction:
In the 2nd para. she has: “I know I’m the choir for this sermon, but I could not agree more, and I view . . . .”, in which “but” stands to negate the previous condition. The sentence would better in something along the lines of: “While I know, I’m the choir for this sermon, I could not agree more; and, I view . . . .”, which leaves the writer’s wistful position in the choir, intact.
Also, not being dependent, the clauses are not so closely related to suffice for context with a simple comma–I would say, a semi-colon is required.
This, our “Dianna” ends off with: “. . . . and I view this as the reason that Obama . . . .”.
Here, a comma will distinguish between “that” used as a indefinite conjunctive and those other times and conditions in which “that” is to be used as a definitive. This makes for faster reading and easier comprehension, and common sense parsing for computer management of English.
So, the sentence would better ending in: “and, I view this as the reason that, Obama will lose.”.
And as an aside: No. But, Obama will again be installed; and yet, however that might be, Joe Biden will finish that term of office, . . .
And, I don’t know just why our dear author, V. D. Hanson–in contemplating his general topic–appears at all surprised. For, even without much administrative evil from other things related to population and governance, upon the combination of otherwise ordinary people–as they often see themselves–into a financial bloc for self-aggrandizement, is not the nature of administrative governance vis-a-vis the people, us-versus-them?
And so, was it not for this reason that, the founders thought to bind government down with the chains of the written constitution?
Edward Bernays : on Propaganda and Public Relations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0OrT-8gXMs
You seriously think that marketing and public relations are the source of our problems? See http://clarespark.com/2009/08/19/noam-chomskys-misrepresentation-of-walter-lippmanns-chief-ideas-on-manufacturing-consent/.
Clare – you don’t think that marketers are propogandists? People are so unaware of the things that control their lives and thus are readily manipulated. Bernays was evil and so were the corporations that employed his techniques.
Clare, see my comment on your page that you provided a link to.
I stand in awe.
Hear! Hear!
You bet I’m one of “them”, and I’m damned proud of it! Wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Them” makes for a full stadium and control of this upcoming election. I’m tired of reading of my family values and principles being flushed by the liberal royalty who crowned themselves. I’ve always said that those who build thrones for themselves are the first to fall. Watch Obama fall!
Ah yes the family values of the Democrats. JFK apparently was hosing a 19 year old intern, move along nothing to see here. Geez it is sickening having these assholes in power.
One of “them” means boogyman to Obama & Co. I should have clarified that.
Well done and thank you, Dr. Hanson!
VDH, you old fogie. Get with the program.
You can’t get your small c communist decoder ring, if you don’t join the protest culture.
It doesn’t matter what you protest, it doesn’t matter what “suspect class” you choose, you simply must protest “something” about the “establishment”.
Never mind that Soros and a gaggle of small c communists ARE the “establishment” in media, academia and entertainment.
Never mind that the unions are the “establishment” for government workers and the Workers Party in general.
Whining about the “establishment” and forming a “grievance posse” to “go after them” is all the rage. Do not pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, “too much” success makes you a target. And do not pull on your big boy pants, taking responsibility for one’s mistakes, flaws, frailties and foibles removes your ability to blameshift and backslide. It’s ALWAYS the fault of the “establishment”, you just have to find your personal grievance and then peddle it, using the ACLU, plaintiff’s lawyers, the mass media, academia and entertainment to put it on “the market”. Sort of the E-bray for the jackass set. It can be sold in bulk, (class warfare, racial wafare, ethnic warfare) or one-off, incremental, incidental and anecdotal.
EVERY attack from the left sounds like this…even when it comes from those on the right, who fall to its temptation.
The siren song of personal grievance indeed is a great temptation. It’s certainly easier than standing up holding a mirror to one’s life. There are no mirrors in Obama’s glass house.
Small c communism assures there will never be.
Excellent point, well made.
“the E-bray for the jackass set”
There’s a keeper :)
Those of us occupying the real world have grown weary of Barack “Harangue” Obama and his anti-America and anti-American bias.
Thank you for reminding us we can overcome these challenges and this man (and his minions). We can fulfill BHO’s vision of/for us, or we can continue to strive to be/become the country and people we are and need to be. I choose the latter.
Superb and timely. I admit I needed this.
“I admit I needed this.”
Yes, GDI. It’s been a good day. This perfect stem-winder from Dr. Hanson AND 3 full hours of Mark Steyn on Book TV’s In Depth.
Yes, a very good day.
Was America like this in the 1850′s?
No. People back then had funny hair-dos.
SB
And many men very unfortunate beards… but women had real tits. Of course, their waists were usually squashed into near-nothingness by a whalebone-stiffened corset.
It was also considered acceptable for political enemies to thrash each other or fight duels in public. Which was messy, and hard on furniture and bystanders, but may have been an improvement on smiling hypocrisy and a shiv in the ribs.
A great many of the duels were fought between politicians and newspaper editors.
At least back then, both sides had the courage to stand and fight for what they believed, out in the open and with real weapons.
Remember when Preston Brooks beat Charles Sumner half to death with a cane? All because Sumner had insulted Brooks’ “honor.” I guess we’re lucky today’s congress members have no honor. The way they talk about each other, there’d be a weekly bloodbath on Capitol Hill.
And the problem with that is……..????????
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Brooks
If anyone’s interested.
The great thing was that it was a South Carolinian beating up a braying jackass from Mass, whose bio reads just like John Kerry’s.
I don’t care how short DeMint is vs. Kerry, my money’d be on DeMint.
A great many of the duels were fought between politicians and newspaper editors.
Which would be a true win-win for everyone else if both parties in the dual lost.
Superb. Many thanks.
Add to this, Obama’s obvious contempt for ‘the People’ – as shown in his contempt for Congress which is the Will and Voice of the People. His claims that IF you don’t accept his Will, then, it means you are ignorant. Or biased. Or partisan. Obama never accepts that you don’t accept his policies because they are harmful to America and Americans.
And his class warfare with his endless rants against those who earn and make the wealth of this nation – his sanctimonious assertions that ‘you’ve earned enough’ and must give it to others. Or, he’ll define you as greedy.
Then, there’s his thin-skin narcissism; Obama can’t handle criticism of any type. He turns malicious and vicious if you attempt such an interaction.
Great post. Thanks.
Brilliant, as always from the good professor.
I have only one quibble, with this line:
“I did not vote for Barack Obama and I have a bad habit of criticizing much of what he wishes to do for America.” [my emphasis]
It should read, “to do to America.”
February 5th, 2012 at 12:35 pm
I had the same thought.
I would like to note for Diana’s benefit and the small hoard of other OCD wantabees that pointed out typos in the article in earlier comments, that this comment was not a matter of a mistake in Dr. Hansen’s writing but a comment on the nature of Barack Obama’s intentions.
All this us v. them stuff (always there in both Obamas, despite disclaimers) is textbook community organizer.
Uncultured people with small potato minds, they and their entire coterie.
As one of “Them,” I find myself in 99+ % agreement with you, Prof. Hanson.
Allow me to pick one nit: In India, because of our ethnic backgrounds, neither the President, nor you, nor I would be entitled to a status in any caste. We would be casteless.
You better stop criticizing Obama, Mr. Hanson,
OR ELSE!
We should really THANK the dummies, who shot BHO into the White House, because America is thus getting a breathtaking lesson on how to lose its freedom. Why, when Slick Willie was prez, I was blown away by his ever more outrageous actions, having followed his career thanks to “The American Spectator” magazine.
And, for three years, The One has magnificently outdone Clinton! Just when you think he can’t rip the Constitution any more, why, there he goes again—that is, the idiots he’s managed to put into power expose their madness.
A simple example—the senate hasn’t submitted a budget for a thousand days, even though there’s a LAW that congress ITSELF wrote, directing it to do so. Senator Reid and his henchmen are, therefore, CRIMINALS, no?
A la un-dear old Geithner, as well, such an in your face flouting of the LAW tells me that if it’s okay for such people to ignore a LAW, why shouldn’t I also do so?
If Obama-Reid-Pelosi, the Gang of Three—remember the Gang of Four, in China, after Mao died?—aren’t ousted from power, the people will have spoken: and, look for MORE anarchy. Underground markets, higher prices for gold, silver, etc are already coming, IMHO.
Gold to $10,000 an ounce!
I’m afraid, by the way, that the rolling meltdown of the dollar continues to be hidden from the masses. What’s the dominant attitude of most “regular” folk, these wild and crazy days—
MEGO! My eyes glaze over!
So, most people have just become inured to even a glimmer of news about gold going up, for instance. They aren’t really aware that the truth is that the DOLLAR is what’s losing its value—oh well.
As a retired math teacher—among other jobs I did—I’m super sensitive to the innumeracy of most citizens, so what’s the surprise that gold going from one divided by 1200 dollars for an ounce, goes to one divided by 1700?
There IS a sucker born every minute!
AND, BHO et al are masters at manifesting another cliché—never give a sucker an even break!
It is said that when Gen. Robert E. Lee came into possession of Yankee newspapers the first thing he looked for was the value of the US paper dollar versus the Pound Sterling and gold.
“In other words, the United States seems to have been a generous host. Why then the unending anger and accusations…”
You see the same rage in Black Communities because the recipients of the largesse know they neither earned nor deserved the money. They know that their future depends on taking from others, they have zero control over the outcome, it’s all uncertainty, turmoil, anguish and fear.
The major demarcation between Conservative polices and Marxist polices is who has the control. If you control your future then you can be happy and confident. If the government controls your future then you can only be fearful, and with fear comes rage.
More than that, I think. They also see that victim status and government largesse have failed to improve their lot and make them “equal.” They’re still waiting for whatever amazing thing they expected to happen back in 1865. I think some of them expected Obama to deliver it to them.
I disagree that the anger is because they didn’t earn it. It think it’s more like the old adage: Never give anything to a demanding person – they won’t appreciate it. Look at the various riots and protest in Europe as further examples – make people dependent and they expect you to keep giving.
Barry Goldwater pointed out that those who assert that the wealthy have the duty to support the poor may be talking to the wealthy, but it is the poor that hear.
…he might have mentioned one more thing — in his own behalf. Given he writes, ranches, speeches and teaches, etc., to piece together his annual income, which likely varies year-to-year, I expect he has to pay estimated taxes to both the IRS and FTB. It is paying in advance for the abuse or neglect he lists. He cannot just settle up on April 15; if he overpaid, he will get the difference back — without interest. Underpay and he would be penalized with a fine, possibly an audit going back years. There used to be a joke simplified tax form with the bottom line, How much did you earn?: Send it in.
So what? I pay some of my taxes that way. What is your point? As a taxpayer, if you have a brain, use it. It can work FOR you.
– examples.
You don’t pay in “advance” any more than payroll deductions are in advance. You have to have sent in enough money so that you avoid paying a penalty, which means that you have to have paid by various points in the year, most of the amount that would have been deducted keyed to your income and your proper number of exemptions.
– “you have to have paid by various points in the year” means that you have to have made those quarterly payments in advance of April 15.
Did you get the “payroll deductions” part?
Payroll deductions are not the same under the Internal Revenue Code.
But the bottom line is avoiding paying a penalty, which is determined by whether or not you have paid, or had deducted a certain % of your tax by certain dates. If you are smart, you just figure it out and do it or build in other kinds of deductions along the way for charity, tax payments whatever. Hell, it is safer to overpay and then claim a deduction. It’s not as if the money is going to make a lot of interest for you. If you don’t really understand it, then even the complexity of it seems like the government punishing you. Of course, you can understand it and still curse the government, but it is what it is.
– give more to charity, but no money to spare after quarterly estimated taxes.
But in years when I happen to be giving significantly more to charities I can make smaller quarterly payments because I know that I will have more charitable deductions. I will grant you that the timing of my payments has never been precise, nor called into question, but if I throw in a thousand dollars several months in, and again several months later, that seems to work. Granted, I am having payroll deductions each month, but not enough by themselves to avoid a penalty, so I throw in a couple more thousand, but one year when I happened to purchase a deductible $5000 gift at auction for a local historical historical society, I knew that I could skip one of those thousand dollar payments, and I still got a refund.
– that by giving it to the Government, you are giving it to charity.
your post touched a point with me.
I worked steady for the past thirty years, always got a refund. Since losing steady employment a few years back, I now somehow owe several thousands to federal and state apparatuses.
This year my wife’s friend who has never worked a day in her life will do my taxes. She says she can get me about 66weeks in back ui and free mass health.
It may also be possible to get some eitc thing to cover my fine for loosing my bluecross.
It sux to realize that I was doing things all wrong, allthose years. I even qualify for food aid apparently.
godspeed
– prevails.
When your record stinks and you have nothing good to run on, the only thing left to do is come up with some other enemies of the state to blame all your problems on. Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of you, Mr. Presient. But what makes me really sad is that a guy is willing to tear this country apart just to save his job. Now THAT is what I find really disgusting about the present administration. The Federal Government is like any other major corporation now, with the same people simply trying to protect their jobs. And people wonder why Americans are so disenchanted with politics.
The Tea Parties may be the last chance we have to save what is left of this nation, to remind politicians that they work for us and NOT the other way around. And that we have the power to fire them, not Donald Trump. Hard work is ahead of us, but if we hang in there this country can still remain of the people, by the people, and FOR the people. Count on it.
‘Obama website , where the president appeals directly to a constituency to support him on the basis of shared racial identity’
Who said Hussein Obama is not a racist?
And again, hurrah for the Western tradition, based on Greek idealism from so many years ago
Beautifully said Dr. Hanson. Your passion is evident in your words and I only wish that more of my fellow citizens would share that passion. I greatly fear that we are slouching into serfdom, ruled rather than represented, by a self proclaimed elite cadre of government workers who have turned the term ‘civil service’ on its head. I fear that we soon will be, if we are not already past, the point where we can retake this country by democratic means. The lesson is being hammered home that our vote doesn’t seem to matter – whether it’s votes against state benefits for illegals in ’94 to more recent votes against same sex marriage – both California intiatives, to an overwhelming and historic Congressional turnover two years ago but seemingly all for naught as the current occupant of the White House blatantly gives the middle finger to the will of the American people. The government class either ignores our will or seeks and finds judicial means to impede and strangle it. Any voice we might have is drowned out by the near monopolistic drumbeat of the Democrat Party controlled media. I am afraid that we are fast approaching the point where the final step will be to take on a bad Russian accent and start addressing each other as comrade.
If this state of affairs doesn’t make your blood boil then you are already nothing more than a serf.
the level of desperation in your post reflects exactly how I feel. The most dangerous part of all that is wrong is the level of total deceit coming from this administration which is so easily echoed by the media. I’ve been around a while, and although the bias in the MSM has always been there, you could count on a few honest journalists to expose wrong and evil on the Left. Today, there is silence.
I’ve said this before, but what angers me most deeply is the deceit. If the Left/Democrats/Obama would just come out openly and say they believe that socialism/communism is the way they want to take America – and the American people voted and gave them a majority – I think I could accept that. I wouldn’t like it. As a matter of fact I would hate it – having been born under communism and escaped from it with my parents – but I would accept it and hunker down with my loved ones and hope that we weather the worst of the evil that was coming. But to do it with lies and propaganda and brainwashing – taking full advantage of the tolerance and decency of the American people, a people so benevolent that one could search fruitlessly throughout history to find their equal – is unforgiveable and illegitimate in my mind. The Left’s screeching for equality is nothing but a grasp for naked power camoflauged by false piety.
VDH wrote, “My God, man, how did Barack Obama & Co. conjure up so many demons?”
My God, man, what an unbelievable statement from a guy who writes for PJM, which sees a demon behind every liberal tree. Pot, meet kettle.
The difference is, Dwight, we’re not imagining them or lying.
Oops, I forgot that you guys have the monopoly on virtue. What was I thinking?
No, Dwight, and we don’t claim to have a monopoly on virtue or that all on our side of the irrepressible conflict are virtuous, but the Democrats do have a virtual monopoly on a lack of virtue. Hell, they can even get away with live boys and dead girls.
Possibly a bit off the subject “Dwight”, but I would like for you to comment on the following. Bob Dole comes to mind a s a Republican whose character and reputation is held in high regard by both sides of the aisle for valid reasons. Let’s assume that the married Bob had, following a drunken party, driven off a bridge and left a young lady to drown. Also, imagine that Bob was a serial philanderer as well as an attendee at a wild party with younger relatives at which a rape occurred. Not to mention the fact that Bob had a lifelong problem with the bottle. Just for fun, let’s also make Bob’s imagined past include a stint as a recruiter for the Klan. Here’s my question. Given his past, to which political party, Republican or Democrat, could Bob belong and become its elder statesman and be labeled as Dean of the Senate? Secondly, how much virtue would you ascribe to a political party who champions a bum like old Bob?
Well said.
The only thing sadder about the ‘Swimmer’ case is that he always got the plurality of the Massachusetts votes every time he ran for reelection – and most often got the majority of them. Says a lot about what suckers the American voters are. Hopefully that will change and the sooner the better. Maybe Bawney knew something when he decided not to run for reelection.
It was Winston Churchill that said the best argument against democracy was a five minute conversation with the average voter.
Whatta ya gonna do?
Maybe it has something to do with the tendency of the right to make absolute judgments about conduct, leaving them hung up on their current Newt conundrum. The left tends to make similar statements about economic justice. Practically speaking the philosophy of the left encourages the GROUP to work together for whatever. The righties push the individualist credo, and as Art has noted, are not that comfortable in a group-government setting.
As for Teddie Kennedy (of whom I was not a big fan, but did vote for), who knows how many times he dived down to try to save her? I don’t. After that, he panicked and was trying to save his ass. But the GROUP of Mass. voters subsequently decided that Teddie could serve them better than the alternatives.
For you either-or folks, you see virtue on one side, evil on the other, apparently because that is how a certain percent of the human species’ brains work and reveal truth to them. Others tend more toward survival of some larger group, more of a pack mentality, vs the lone wolf or grizzly. You guys have your own little pack here, but the Dems tend to have a bigger one out there, at least when they pull in the middling pack. Maybe we need all of this motley crew to make humanity work, but whether we need it or not, that’s what we have.
Ironically, I am generally much more of a loner than a pack guy, but I do not confuse that with virtue.
“Economic justice” – the latest left-wing/socialist cause celebre that ignores human nature and the failure that socialism (wealth redistribution) has been everywhere it’s been tried. It joins “social justice”, “affirmative action”, and all the other left-political perversions over the last hundred years. I prefer the story of the Little Red Hen. Clearly, you missed or have forgotten that one.
Dwight, there are hypocrites on the right who on the one hand say the support the Constitution’s foundation of the rights of the individual, then in the same breath advocate outlawing behavior by individuals with whom they disagree by claiming it is for the good of the whole.
That is not news, nor is it a condemnation of the entire Right – most especially conservatives.
And yes, conservatives are uncomfortable with the “group-government setting” preferred by the left – and rightfully so.
Some thoughts from Thomas Jefferson can illustrate some of the Constitutional basis held by conservatives for advocating small government that operates to protect individual rights and responsibilities from both itself(government) and others:
“I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.”
“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”
“A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”
“A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
You may believe the individual freedom and responsibility of each American will be protected by Obama, his cohorts and successors, et al, with a massive and clearly ever-growing, all-consuming government owing to that individual’s inclusion in some politically-defined, politically-correct “group” – but many of us simply disagree and see such government as oppressive of the very individual rights and responsibilities our Constitution was created to ensure.
That pack mentality thing you refer to also sometimes referred to as groupthink reminds me of a math term. It’s called “least common denominator”.
Dwight…the thing is each side has their own truth. But when the facts are laid out, a conservative thinker uses this to support his side. He does not twist the facts to fit the story and I have sadly found this to be true of the left, over and over.
Take Global Warming for example. The IPCC is not a research facility. It did not prove any theory or hypothesize to find validity or reliability in anything it reported, did it? Because IPCC merely interpreted data, it did nothing else. When the truth came out, the left-minded thinker was still trying to convince me that “green” was better and that we must “save” the environment. Where has that gotten us so far? We have seen billions of taxpayer dollars get wasted even when due diligence showed a bad investment. We have seen that electric cars and ethanol is another waste of money. All of it geared toward the cronies of the democratic party.
I have yet to see the conservative side show such blatant corruption of the taxpayer dollar as we have seen since Obama took office. How the left can give anyone a pass for wrong behaviors while explaining away the misdeeds constantly astounds. Conflicts of intersest with Feinstein, Pelosi, Obama, Holder, Frank, Dodd…You believe VDH is whining. But every word is the truth. You can find the facts or you can pretend he’s lying so it fits your window of the world. Go ahead. Look it up.
The right tries things like “cutting taxes will always help balance the budget.” Any war is a good war (unless it is Obama in Libya) and any union is a bad union. Also the responses to AGW are all over the place from denying that any warming is happening to muttering of commie plots. But the richest irony is when the folks who have been blasting Obama from Day one, are now tired of being cast as “them,” the bad guys. Boo-hoo.
Maybe if folks didn’t throw out non-stop crap against Obama, his attack on “them” would be met more skeptically. People may not know whether Obama is any good or not, but they do know that “they” are out to get him. Listening to Hannity or Beck (and I assume Rush) is to hear non-stop Obama bashing. It is the GROUND on which everything else walks and talks. Since they try to spin everything which Obama does as being the worst outrage, ever, they become like a lot of little boys crying “wolf” all the time. How would we know when it really IS the worst?
We know the number of times he tried to save her. Zero.
What is it about virtue that confuses you?
I notice you didn’t DENY the accusation against Obama, “Dwight”.
After that list in the first paragraph, it leaves little to argue with if one’s claiming Obama’s not apt to conjure demons.
The list is simply ways that righties can feel they are being portrayed. Boo-hoo. Even the Art Chance method of analysis would acknowlege that some of this list is “true,” but, of course, a list of particulars about lefties would ALWAYS be true. That is ridiculous on the face of it, but you guy sure appear to beleeeeve it. Nevertheless it is NOT a telling critique of Obama.
Got a substantive rebuttal to anything I’ve said, Deee-wite? No, you never do, just like all lefties; everything you say is either a subjectivist fallacy or an outright lie.
What an ephiphany!
I get it now – you lefties really are delusional. Up until now I just thought you guys were a bit thick. Nothing to say about the particulars of Dr. Hanson’s fine essay – you Brush off the nasty facts about your Messiah like a speck of dirt. Your ears must close up like the nostrils on a seal when he’s about to dive when you hear The Messiah speaking. You really can’t hear the BS.
Interesting…
Grow up! Have you ever noticed that politics is a battle. You use the left jab, straight right, left hook as the battle calls for it. VDH seems to be whining because some of these blows are landing, not that he is not swinging away in almost every column.
What you refuse to see is that both sides are essentially correct in the critique of the other, but that is simply the starting point. Then you have to get something done.
D-white
Please do us all a favor and quit posting here you do yourself nor whatever case you are for any good, plus O as well as many others just skip your posts, of course if you are paid to post then feel free to do so you have the 1st Amendment, but no one has to read your crap!
Post? What post? I didn’t write anything, as you well know, because you skipped what I didn’t write. ;-)
I see that someone from Obama’s Office of The Director of Progressive Media and Online Response has stopped by.
Wow! That’s all I gotta say.
Great perspective Dr VDH. Now do another article on the morons who voted for Obama and who will likely vote for him again. Thanks.
I am not “Them.” I am “IT!” Fear me…
I can barely wait to see what Obama is like post-presidency. What does a famous narcissist do after he loses the biggest popularity contest in the world?
The days between the end of election litigation (no matter HOW distant the election is, there will be litigation, sadly) will be some of the most dangerous for the country. What will Obama have to lose?
Obama when no longer in office will be even more obnoxious if that’s possible.
Not only will he be more obnoxious but will constantly seem to appear on television, radio and in print almost everyday, still campaigning for something is there a way to stuff a sock in this clown’s mouth?
You actually think there is going to be an election?
http://www.attherubicon.com/2012/01/in-the-past-three-years-president-obama-has-enacted-many-significant-changes-on-behalf-of-millions-of-middle-class-working-f.html
This has been stated at every election cycle since I don’t know most of my life yes there will be an election, and even though Obama will actually lose there will be court decisions possibly in many states and even the supreme court to actually decide the fate of our country, till then wait and hope for the best, Obama will not go out gracefully nor will those that support him and his awful policies!
Might get nasty but so far gun and ammo sales are skyrocketing and propel getting carry permits are at an all time record so preparation
in is in progress…are you prepared?
I can barely wait to see what Obama is like post-presidency. What does a famous narcissist do after he loses the biggest popularity contest in the world?
He will likely follow the Clinton model of post-presidency by writing books with heafty advances (multimillion dollars) and go on the speaking circuit to pull in 6-figure fees. We’ll likely see him as an even worse ex-president than Carter and Clinton by actively criticizing his successors (something honerable ex-presidents refrain in doing). Every failure of his will be explained away. A narcissist like Obama is incapable of self-reflection or admitting he was ever wrong about anything.
What did Jimmy Carter do? Spent the rest of his life trying to get revenge against the country that spurned him. Obama will probably make huge sums explaining that nothing was ever his fault.
Dr. Hansen – well said and what a wonderful list of the various demons Obama has conjured up over the years. Yes, you are one of them – the racists who complain about Obama :) But seriously, as an Aliskyite, Obama has to have an enemy to go against. No enemy and he has no campaign. Hence, his entire political identity is “the great divider”.
“My God, man, how did Barack Obama & Co. conjure up so many demons?”
Relax Vic, it’s all the same guy. Booooooooooooooosh!
LMAO. The more things change, the more they stay the same. A minor difference is the ability to amplify and/or observe repeating themes over time.
VDH,
Barry Obama is a street agitator.It’s what he knows best and it’s his only move, so just like a dog returns to it’s vomit, Barry is always looking to create strife.
As a “typical older white women” I am a demon because I
must be a racist and thrown under the bus with BO’s
grandma.
One of the few areas where all contemporary variants of Marxism agrees is that the great worker’s revolution will not occur as long as the middle class is intact. When you read Obama, Pelosi and Reid’s actions through this understanding, the “them” is a lot more clear. The Middle Class is that them, which must be eliminated one way or another, in order for the promised political utopia to be realized.
Yes, there is no middle class in Ant societies.
Barack Obama has displayed contempt for ordinary Americans from day one, whether he consciously meant to or not. I, for one, am damn sick of it and can’t wait to be rid of this incompetent buffoon.
Mega dittos to that!
African-Americans for Obama is such a blatant example of the utter freedom black Americans have to express their casual and apparent unwitting racism that it is hard to credit.
Of course this echoes the massive double standard where the Congressional Black Caucus is somehow not about racial advocacy and disdain but the Tea Party is, articles like “Black Professionals: We’ve Got Obama’s Back” are not racist but the opposite from whites (which does not exist in the mainstream media) or even far less means a KKK hood.
Voting to the tune of 96% is somehow an “issue oriented” vote but whites voting in a split not along racial lines that put Obama in the White House is a sign of racism in this world. The comments about Mexico further reflect this double standard.
The solution is to start calling out this racial hate speech for what it is. MSNBC is clearly pandering to this shield minorities have to be outspoken racists by hiring Al Sharpton and now that odious little Goebbels look-alike, Melissa Harris-Perry.
I despair of a country where the simplest comparative analysis is seen as some kind of complex system. When I first read “1984″ I guess I never really believed Americans were so dumb as to fall prey to hypocrisy that crosses the line from partisanship to delusion but evidently is is the case. This is not a problem from Obama but from a massive percentage of our population and gov’t. Mexico should sue itself.
Well said. And the CBC isn’t just racially exclusive – they just about gagged when black Republicans were elected to Congress.
Damn…that was good…REAL good!
I am thinking about making a “Whities or Honkey’s or Cracker’s Against Obama” bumper sticker (but would put it on mu rear window for easy removal just like I hope this next election does to this slouch we have in the white house (lower case on purpose, he is not this countries president and soon will be a forgotten memory)!
Very well done; now go decompress by reading Heinlein’s ‘Magic, Inc.’
which describes an electoral takeover of the US by Demons from Hell,
…and the overthrow of the demonic administration, Light defeating
Darkness.
Never expected to see a Heinlein reference on PJ. Bravo!
Usually, we’re quoting from Starship Troopers – or the bit about “bad luck”.
Me? I like the bit about the desired impossible meeting the disastrous possible.
lol, Dianne, you are my new bestest PJ fan.
Ooops Dianna…sorry, i know how much that upsets your OCD…
ooops..meant Dianna…sorry to upset your OCD with my quick typing errors.
Haven’t read that one, for some reason. Love it when I see references to his work on these sites, though.
Some additional members of Them: the Slurpee sippers, the folks who created this mess, the people who should be thanking him, the people who should not do a lot of talking, the people who should get out of the way, the millionaires making $200,000, the people who are part of the problem he inherited, the Jews who should engage in some serious self-reflection, the people who can come for the ride but gotta sit in back, the ones who can buy a truck, the secured creditors who wanted their security.
I operate on a simple philosophy ….if it annoys a liberal ….I’m all in
It is obvious why Mr. Hanson supports the greedy pigs at the top, he is a paid propagandist for them. Like other writers on this site, he is paid by a coteie of greedy billionaires to distract the White working class with lurid tales of Blacks raping and killing Whites, Hispanics running across the border and living on welfare, Muslims flying planes into buildings, and homosexuals “corrupting” their children. This is to keep the White working class from hating their real enemies–the greedy billionaires in the boardrooms riding in limos and wearing Armani suits.
It is the greedy 1% who own everything in America is why White workers have nothing, and not because of welfare for Blacks and Hispanics! If we seize the wealth of the greedy billionaires like the Koch brothers, we could easily provide food, housing, and health care for all. We could close down all the prisons because crime would disappear in such a society that placed caregiving ahead of greed.
I was writing this intricate response when I realized how useless the effort was. This is a person who won’t stand to be educated on math and economics and human nature. Couldn’t even hear it – the guy’s plugged into a personal Ipod of propaganda, bopping along to the rhythm of the slogan-shouting, mouthing the words of all the protest pamphlets. Troll on, Yobbin, troll on…
That comment is satire, right?
Soon, we’re going to find an kill you and all of your friends.
That Art is just a regular riot. Just kidding, eh?
If we seize the wealth of the greedy billionaires like the Koch brothers, we could easily provide food, housing, and health care for all.
For about three weeks. Then what?
Then everybody is poor miserable and almost hopeless because there is no longer anyone elses wealth to take.
Margaret Thatcher was close about socialist policies money is not wealth, assets are though, such things as property and goods produced, also services are a form of wealth so there will still be be those with no monetary funds but possibly great wealth due to the aforementioned!
I can live if necessary without money, all I need is shelter and some land (even in a national park) to grow some crops an area with wild game or fish and clothing and shoes and I will do just fine and can sell you or trade to you my excess, it is called survival of the fittest!!
Completely off the grid?
I know I could go long enough “completely off the grid” that those who weren’t adequately prepared would be so weakened that my “shopping” trips would be easy. It’s like if you and I were being chased by a bear; I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you.
Are you kidding me? Without internet blather, you would go nuts. You’d be talking to trees about your “career” or you would be out robbing people, just so you would have someone to talk to.
Seriously, we are all so used to stuff we don’t really need to get ourselves through a day, that most of the survivalist chatter is almost sheer speculation. I have survived a winter without running water, have a huge woodpile, a water source, a lot of guns, blah, blah, but I don’t kid myself that I would necessarily survive better than the newly desperate folks, who might come murdering before I was even thinking about it.
Good rough draft of a preview. If not that, then, your medication needs adjustment. You are getting free medical care, aren’t you?
Yobbin, go watch this to see how long that top 1% would pay the bills:
Tax The Rich Mentality
Some people just don’t understand numbers, addition, subtraction and stuff like that…
tomw
I bet you have a closet just full of “Che” t-shirts. Wow, talk about a spit-flecked wackadoo…
That the fears of most honest, loyal, and true Americans are true, real, and valid might be said to be a point in their favor.
By contrast, the complaints of racists about American racism, of trust fund babies about the supposed 1% rich, and the criminal crony capitalists about excessive favoritism enjoyed by their competition have weighing against them the minor matter of being false.
Thank you, Dr. Hanson, for once again brilliantly summarizing the on-going fantasy world of Obama and the far left. If nothing more Obama has demonstrated how deeply inconsequential he is as a thinker, and perhaps as a human being. His radicalism is closing in on that of communists of a half century ago.
The demons Obama imagines and denounces are mere psychological projections of his mentally diseased mind. His malignant narcissism within cannot be faced by him, so he must see its evil as something outside of himself.
The great irony is that so many voters projected so many good hopes, dreams, talents, characteristics, motives, ad nauseum upon Obama. Obama, in turn, can only return the favor with aloof disdain, contempt, and hatred.
Let’s hope that the electorate sees and votes the truth such that we will be free of Obama’s cancer on the body politic.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/saul_alinsky.html
I don’t know what you are going to do with this link. It is not self-explanatory unless you know the bitter product of Saul Alinsky (now dead). He was a quasi-Marxist. He differed from the Communists in that he was not in favor of killing his enemies, but was similar to the Marxists in that he believed in eternal revolution. He had no trouble with creating chaos and therefore pain on his way to revolutionary change, though he was unclear about his goals for those he sought to empower.
Obama has been linked to Alinsky through Ayers, the bomber. The irony of the link to the aphorisms of Alinsky being used for an ad by the Obama campaign to push his next four years is truly astounding. It says it all. What a hoot! A gift from Heaven! I will be passing this on to a few bloggers, seeking their reaction. I do hope the ad is not pulled until people can archive a jpeg of the page.
If you can take care of yourself you are an enemy of the state. Unless you are employed through no fault of your own. Such as not understanding how to get the benefits you need. You are a victim of the governments ineffective administration of benefits. We will make sure to hire an advertising company and do community outreach. You must be under a great deal of stress providing for your family without our help.
Unless you earn enough to pay taxes, and are upset with the thought of higher taxes. Then you are a selfish racist that hates the poor and must be punished for succeeding and not being grateful for the infrastructure that allowed you to succeed. But not to worry we will have a reeducation camp near you soon and every attempt will be made to fix your thinking.
As much as I appreciate the way you and others continue to articulate the obvious hypocrisy, I’m afraid too many Americans have taken the blue pill. I’m worried we’ve already crossed the event horizon.
The audacity of hope was for his campaign
Tyranny, thuggery and demonization are for his reign
His candidacy was rather like that of a Henry Houdini
His presidency is far more like that of a Benito Mussolini
Although he tries to slip it all in under another guise
To all his fascist action most foul we must still be wise
In spite of all the Houdini lies
Dancing in Obama’s evermore Mussolini eyes!
I understand that Mussolini and Houdini both died when they couldn’t perform their trick well enough. Some things don’t end well.
Not just Tyranny, thuggery and demonisation, but slavery itself, the end game. The Final Solution. Part Deux
(Notice that there is plenty of slavery in the world at this very moment, and yet the Left won’t lift a finger to try and stop it. Why? Because they are so deep invested in cashing in on a new slave system loosely based on the grievances of a more recent one, that ended more than one hundred and fifty years ago. ‘Grievance is Power’- is their motto. The magic dust that produces something, EVERYthing, anything! from nothing. The lynchpin, of it all, on which it pivots, is a shabby, crackpot religion. One based on the phony sacrament of The Absolution Complex. The Absolution Complex. Yes, you too can convert, and be left untouched, unmolested, unthugged. How, by engaging most publicly in The Pieties. The Pieties. The unwritten Pieties. By renouncing and condemning all the colonial taint of our history, our ancestry, you too can be not only absolved of any taint of slavery, but purified, that’s right, purified into the klatch of the select, the entourage, the unholy retinue of the well positioned! How long have you borne the burden of the sin of others!? How weary you must have become! The burden that now befalls you is the again unwritten
sintemptationcompulsion of Peer Pressure!! It’s the worlds fastest growing religion, born of the purified and conquered avatar of Hollywood, there is no escape! It’s all around you! YOU have only to submit, and watch as the others must now suffer the righteous indignation, now to be your righteous indignation and condemnations! Not just the elite anymore! All can join in and be among those redeemed Jeremiahs within that judge a nation and find it wanting! The Absolution Complex. The Unstoppable Absolution Complex! At a theatre near you!!)It’s certainly no secret that the black community will overwhelmingly support Obama, either out of racial pride, honest belief that he represents their interests, or hope (a al “Peggy the Moocher”) that he’ll pay their mortgage and buy their gas. But I’ve gotta say that to designate a page on his official re-election campaign website to appeal exclusively along racial lines is offensive, to say the least.
The mask slips a little every time he divides us by income, color, religion, and liberal or conservative social orientation. He’s always inclusive in his public remarks, but much like the Islamists when they report in Arabic something different to what was in the western media, what he says amongst his own is often the opposite.
So much for him being President to everyone, I guess.
I often wonder where Peggy Joseph(peggy the moocher) is today and does she still buy into the notion that if she “helps Obama” he’ll help her?
That’s why I refer Obama as P.O.D. Obama—-President of Democrats. He has no interest in being president of the entire nation.
“This is proving to be a Manichean administration. It sees the world in terms dark and light, of us/them…”
Well, it is to a certain extent. I’m pretty much dead set against “liberal” totalitarianism, and I have basically no use for the political party that is its primary host.
Considering what the Democrats have done over the decades (slavery, Jim Crow, the use of political terror and murder to get what they want, endemic treason…especially in 1860, their widespread corruption and their championing of an ever increasing government, just to name a few of their egregious sins), there’s essentially no chance I will EVER vote for a member of their party, and that pretty much makes them the boys wearing the black hats.
I think Manichean sums it up nicely, with the proviso that it isn’t a struggle between bad materialism and good spirituality (which I think is inherent in the concept of actual Manichaeism), it’s a struggle between left wing love of totalitarianism, and right wing love of individual freedom.
But, the dualism aspect is essentially the same.
Maybe yin-yang can help you out here.
I think not.
If I adopted that philosophical tenet and applied it to my political viewpoint, then I’d have to modify my posititon and say, you can’t have freedom unless you also have totalitarianism…and, that wouldn’t really work out too well.
But neither freedom nor government should be absolute. What line has to get crossed for you to call it totalitarianism?
Look on the bright side D-White. At least you weren’t JFK’s Favorite Intern. Or Teddy’s.
But, meet Pick It Fence.
Ping Pong Tongue, make Sense.
Pencil Neck, is Red.
D-White
Loves Mr. President, with Romney in Bed.
Oh it all began with just one little dance
But soon it ended up a big romance
Blame it on the Bossa Nova
Not VDH…
Hey, music man, try to do something constructive and check out this and other Leonard Cohen stories and clips that are out there: Here’s a good one on how he calmed the angry mob at the Isle of Wight, back in the day:
http://www.tabletmag.com/arts-and-culture/music/89715/leonard/3/
D-Wight?
Oh, that other D-White busted you… Rule of Law?
“..calmed the angry mob…” Yet another reference to the crazy, nasty, flipped out PJM crowd?
Look, implement the Constitution as it is, and wow, instantly, all this melts away.
You know, even Modern Liberals would like that. They seem to need being told what to do. They could be like, Peter Pan.
Blame it on the Bossa Nova,
The dance of love
“it’s a struggle between left wing love of totalitarianism, and right wing love of individual freedom”.
In an academic sense yes. However, what is happening in our government is that both sides also suffer from the deadly lure of abusing their power to enrich themselves, their cronies, and to bribe their voters. And because of the nature of the left to support the kinds of corruption that furthers their personal ideology and/or pocket book, such abuse inherently tends to empower the left and cripple the right.
While ‘We the People’ have the power to easily right this mess, we are failing to do so. And that is what really worries me.
All too many Americans have become, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, ‘timid people preferring the government-provided calm of soft despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty’.
As a people our foundation, our once fiercely strong belief in individual liberty and freedom, is being diminished and even vilified.
And Benjamin Franklin chillingly summed up where that inevitably takes us:
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
I am also a “typical white woman”. I read Dr. Hanson because I like what he has to say, especially after reading his “Ripples of Battle” outloud to my husband (not much of a reader by a great listener and synthesizer.) This column exactly articulates my mood of the last couple weeks, been climbing out of my skin for days…and this is why. I’m angry. I’m darn angry.
Our business has been cut down to a quarter of what it was in 2008 which makes us vulnerable and anxious at a time of life we expected to be safe and slowing down by choice. (No union pensions, no paid for life medical insurance.) These morons have made a shambles of everything…the media talks about foreclosures and mortgages like they will just magically turn on again at some point, but we are here to tell you that they have broken the system. Data bases are wrecked, relationships have been severed between lenders, realtors, builders and appraisers. There is no one left who can help you because the power of individuals working together as a team has been quashed.
You are all on your own in a way that you have never in your life experienced and you don’t even know it yet.
After forwarding this column last night, I have seen reactions like mine from people I didn’t even expect to receive a response from. Powerful
There is no question that realtors are in deep doo-doo. But how much were you complaining when the market was soaring, people were flipping, and you were making money enabling them? Need a safety net now?
“Deep Doo Doo”, meets Ping Pong Tongue…
Nice piece of performance art here D-White. What’s next, Conservative in a Bottle filled with #1?
No no the Bossa Nova
Or the stars above
Ok now I have this image in my head of the Obama Family being eaten by giant ants. Besides a brilliant article that is one more thing to thank Dr. Hanson for.
I see now I am part of them (and yes I’m proud to be so).
VDH’s observations are as usual, dead on…
Taking a step back and looking forward, I wonder where it’s all going.. where we are all going.
Will something and/or someone put an end to this nation-splitting us vs. them nonsense – or will it continue? I see nothing on the near horizon that can stop the nation’s chaotic downward cultural spiral.
I know that the Obama administration will continue to escalate the divisive rhetoric and tactics going into the election as they see it being a “positive” for them.
I know every decision made by the administration is somehow for President Obama’s political gain.
I know the Republicans suicide battles are bleeding energy, support, trust from their base and electability to Obama.
What I don’t know is how long all of “them”.. us, will take it. When or if the people decide to forcefully make their feelings crystal clear, the nation will be righted.
Until then, even if a Republican president is elected (which I’m beginning to doubt), this divisive spiral will continue to be stoked by the likes of Obama, his cronies, and his legion.
Thus us/them shtick is the oldest con in the book. O’s laying it on so thick that even the rubes are catching on.
Today, on the Today show interview with Matt Lauer, President Obama essentially unveiled his re-election strategy – the US will be at war with Iran, and anybody who doesn’t vote for him is soft-on-terror and downright anti-American.
I agree. The first bombs and missiles will fly in late summer. Americans do not like to change ships in mid battle. Also the last of the hoarded stimulus will be dumped about then to create a false “bump” in the economy. Anyone want to take my bet?
I’ve been predicting much the same for the last couple of years. People, especially patriotic people, naturally tend to rally behind the leadership during times of crisis.
Obama will use that to his advantage. He is a sociopath. He doesn’t care how many are killed in the process.
I would expect that if intervention with Iran is indicated, Israel will beat us to it. If that’s the case, Barry sure won’t back up our ally – what, I wonder, will be his crisis-generating, self-aggrandizing move then? Or will he just side with the Arab states, including Iran? One thing is sure – he doesn’t give a hoot in hell how much trouble A-Goat-Ate-My-Dinner-Jacket stirs up, because he is quite frankly enamored of the man and his tactics. All Barry cares about is how to turn anything to his own political advantage. It is only his wish to maintain power by quasi-legitimate means that keeps him in check at all. My God have mercy on us all if this b*stard is re-elected; nothing will then stop him. And may God have mercy on us if he is defeated – I think we will see “unofficially sanctioned” riots from his goon squads (unions, African-Americans for Obama, OWS, etc.) and marshal law to ensure he remains in the White House.
That’s my wager, any takers? (I wouldn’t mind losing).
Question: What will the Secret Service do if that comes to pass?
Nobody paints the Orwellian world better than VDH, but we probably need a new term, since Orwellian seems to have become the norm. Maybe it should be Hansonian.
“The last official act of any government is to loot the treasury.” – George Washington
In our case, the marxists are looting the treasury in advance of the collapse.
If you listen carefully you hear the old Revealed Religions, bumping up against dualism. It is loathsome certainly but know the roots and just laugh. Dramas of persecution and redemption should be left at the movies. People don’t like to think that their situations spring from their believe spawned acts.
Barbara Oakley has written a great deal on pathological altruism, and that is what we see here, that and non-consequential ethics. Most likely it is a genetic disorder, and needs clinical intervention.
It’s ‘The Guilted Age’ and ‘The War on Progress’.
Equality of Outcomes. Everyone suffers…, uh, I mean, uh, sacrifices equally.
Except of course, the perps.
Beasts of burden, ay, that we are. That’s the plan. That’s the ticket, to serfdom.
Bravo. I am tired of being cast as the heavy in the Obama morality play. This is a failed presidency. I hope that there are enough of us to throw the bastard out before it is tool late.
When Obama says “it’s not class warfare, it’s math”, how can anyone not be a significant “one” of “them”?
Not only is Obama racist, he has racist math equations to back him up!
Einstein would be extremely amused.
“What a strange logic: blacks are to vote for Obama on the basis of being black, but others must vote for him on the basis of him not being black.” -best thing i’ve read in a very long time.
Another “must read” from the Good Doctor Hanson. Those of us who played by the rules, paid our taxes, worked more than full time, didn’t suck off the government (yes, everyone has to be in some program, and pays for more), didn’t break the law and built middleclass lives far below the maligned 1% are being played for chumps. They gin up votes from the average Joe while despising him. I will link to this from my Old Jarhead blog.
Robert A. Hall
Author: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic
All royalties go to help wounded veterans
For a free PDF of my book, write tartanmarine(at)gmail.com
It’s Hugo Chavez… except in English.
Now you know what it’s like to be the target of an Alisky-style community organizer.
wherever he can start a war that is what he does, in the guise of “diplomacy”.
he is insane.
immediately,from the beginning of his campaign for the 2008 nomination, he began a concerted effort to create a divide between black americans and white americans, who had worked together to create an egalitarian ideal. ideals can never be perfectly reached, yet in fact we have a very large black middle class, and prior to this president, a patriotic one.
his divisive and ghastly lying and equivicating in the middle east, even in the face of nuclear war, is a symptom of his mental problems.
now, his mental illness is our problem. and, the problem of western civilization.
obama is a very dumb man and a very poor and confused president. a person for whom reality never intrudes.
fascist, moslem, who knows. he would become wiccan, if it pleased his twisted and furious ambitions.
Add all “Them” together, get all of “Us”.
See, Obama really _is_ a uniter, not a divider!
Bravo, Mr. Hanson!
The Iranians know The Dear Leader has them in their sights come late summer…they aren’t likely to just lay there and take it. EMP, anyone?
And, instead of voting this twerp out of office this fall, the GOP is hell bent on nominating a Bob Dole, John McCain look-alike; not that those two gentlemen were bad people, simply not the kind able to win that high office. The very last thing our country needs is to have another “W” in that office, which would only make the president after that Obama once again or his acolyte. My reference to “W” is meant regarding another high spending, hearty and hale good man who’ll try to get along with everyone and not defend his policies.
All I ask for is a President who respects the Rule of Law and the Will of the People.
I’m more than willing to defend him and his actions as vociferously as necessary. I’m more than willing to expend whatever time and energy it takes to steer him and Congress in the right direction.
In short, the game has changed. We can no longer rely upon leaders to govern on their own. It’s up to us now. We have to steer them in the right direction. In order to do that we need leaders who respect the Rule of Law and the Will of the People.
i·ro·ny
[ahy-ruh-nee, ahy-er-]
noun, plural -nies.
1. the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning
I’m sure that Un-FairCampaign.org missed the irony of their sign.
Hey. Another monster out there.
“Finally, I don’t buy into the president’s trendy “post-American world” fantasies. We are growing; Europe, Japan, China, and Russia are aging and shrinking. Is there a Facebook sprouting in Istanbul? Does Mumbai give us Wal-Mart? Does the world flock to Shanghai to learn brain surgery?”
If you think we’re growing, you’re not paying attention. Everybody’s shrinking. And if you use Wal-Mart as indicator of how great we are, you set a really low bar for that “greatness.”
“I try to pay my credit cards off each month; pay the mortgage regardless of the fluctuating value of my house…The Obama administration believes that all sorts of sinister people tricked the unknowing into running up credit card debt, taking out student loans, and buying too expensive a house—and that we the taxpayers are uncaring unless we are willing to borrow more trillions to help relieve these debts.”
I rarely use my credit card and have always paid cash for everything; however, the government’s largesse in doling out low-to-no interest mortages to the unqualified has destroyed — destroyed — the value of my modestly mortgaged blue collar neighborhood home, which I will now, never be able to sell. If it ultimately comes down to a choice between paying the mortgage for a home that has bankrupted my future, or walking away in order to save money for my old age, I will walk.
To die poor with my honor, is still to die poor. And it wasn’t my fault. I followed the rules, I was frugal, I saved, I was forced to have PMI and jump through hoops to get a mortgage. And then Wells Fargo, at the urging of Fannie and Freddie handed out multiple house-flipping loans to illegals (my new neighbors who have fled) and others who just a few years earlier would have been considered highly unqualified. The government destroyed me, not the other way around. I expect no bail out, but I may be forced to be dishonorable and walk in order to survive.
The foolish banks destroyed the lives of their most responsible customers, and now they gripe that those same people are not honorable. Virtue is not its own reward when it only applies to a few. A house is not a car. A junker sitting next to a new car does not destroy the value of the new car. On the contrary, it highlights the value of the new car. A gorgeous home that has been foreclosed, however, can destroy the value of a modest property. That value has been destroyed by the government and banks, not the property owner. If we must move on, rather than die poor, we’ll move on. I expect nothing from the government; in fact, I want nothing to do with it.
Great article. VDH left several other monsters off the list. I am one of them. I am conservative, both political and theologically. I am repentant of my sins. My real sins. Not the phony ones liberals would like me to feel guilty about.
Yes, Dr. Hanson, you are one of the “them,” and a berth at a re-education facility is being prepared for you even now.
Wish I were joking.
Thank you, Doctor Hanson.
I agree with VDH that we too many times get caught up in trashing America. God knows we do make mistakes, but compared to the rest of the world? For all those liberals to ignore the city of Detroit, Baltimore, DC
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Can someone like Mr. Hanson explain to me why the Conservative media is running full speed backwards when it comes to covering the crimes being committed by Barack Hussein Obama. Hell, you would think they would have welcomed the opportunity given to them by Sheriff Joe Arpaio to openly investigate what he and his Cold Case posse have uncovered and given probable cause to doubt Obama’s bc and Selective Service registration are forgeries. A Commander in Chief with a fraudulent Selective Service registration is unforgivable. It carries a $250,000 dollar fine and 5 years in prison. Mr. Hanson, you being a lawyer must realize the seriousness of these crimes??