How Did All That Happen?
5. How did Barack Obama invent himself into a bi-partisan, working across the aisle, no more red state/blue state unifying figure? Mellifluous rhetoric and a partisan myth helped to promulgate that myth, I grant. But still, how did the U.S senator with the most partisan voting record in the Senate (to the left of the socialist Bernie Sanders from Vermont) and a devout attendee of one of the most divisive and racist preachers imaginable refashion himself so successfully? Was it the simple declarations — as in something like “I say I am bipartisan, therefore I am bipartisan”? Did all forget that our pre-mid-term election president evoked phrases such as “enemies,” “sit in the back of the car,” and “hand to hand”?
No matter — as soon as Obama was “shellacked” with a 63 seat loss in the House, and his polls hit 42 percent approval, he dropped all the prior rhetoric about “I won and you lost” or “elections matter”—and now announced to his “enemies” that he could “work together” to get things done. Had Obama increased the House Democratic majority by 30 more seats in November, would he now be praising the virtues of bipartisanship? Had the vanity of Rev Wright not convinced the huckster preacher to hawk his Trinity racist rants on incriminating DVDs, would he now be a frequent “healing” presence at the White House?
Lurking somewhere behind all these improbables is a rather small Western elite that is enormously influential in the media, government, the arts, universities, and Hollywood. And what it would like to believe, often simply must be believed — and so it usually is.
there may be a simple answer about Obama … John McCain simply refused to make Obama live up to his history and record. If everyday for months on end had McCain made an issue of Ayers, Wright, school records, book deals, and Obama’s lack of experience and refused to shut up about it when accused of racism we would have had a different set of data to evaluate Obama against. I’m willing to bet that we would have seen the Obama from the Tax deal press conference during the campaign.
Had McCain just stayed in Washington and let Sarah off the leash to campaign, we would have had a different result. Or at the very least, it would have been a closer race.
If John McCain would just go home and try and do something useful like selling beer we would have one less RINO. His last day of service to the country was the day he got home from Hanoi.
it’s over- move on
Right on the money. The race was totally winnable and McCain did everything but take a dive, including leashing Palin. The damage done by RINOs can exceed that done by liberal Democrats. We are seeing it again today. As a special RINO insult, can anyone spell Murcowsky?
The reason RINOs are so dangerous is they manage to “fly under the radar” of the uninformed and could never accomplish as much damage to the Right in the clothing of liberal democrats. They are truly “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
Winning trumps morality. Just remember what Liz Taylor said: “Vini, Vidi, Vici, Vini.”
WRONG! Liz….who should know!….said:”…success is the best perfume.” Succinct , trenchant & ( most certainly , unlike Odumbo ) – to the point, Sirrah.
I think there is something fishy going on
…McCain wanted obama to win. Palin was an obscure governor from a waaay away state. McCain just didn’t seem to care. He was like some old dead worm on the sidewalk after a big rain..
If not for Palin he would have lost by much more. She will never be president, but she is a force to re reckoned with and i don’t’ think people like McCain expected that. She sure sets Obama on edge!!
I’m tired of the PC, stomp the bastards into the ground next election. Black or purple Obama has to go and all his minions. We best watch the things he tries to put into action with some back room laws or add ons.
It all happened because we are happier sitting on our collective butts than getting out doing something. “let the other guy do it”…he does, he gets out and votes and look what a crap shoot me got. we are a lazy lazy people, who are now reaping the whirlwind..
A fine summary of recent social / political history, World-wide.
So what? Isn’t it time to name names and actions in addition to that passive acquiescence of John McCain, that furthered these improbables. Sentient observers are well aware of that “tiny but influential elite” and its power.Continuing exposure of each of those on BOTH sides of the aisle who voted for, encouraged and abetted what are in truth abrogations of Rights of Americans protected by the US. Constitution.
As ALL in that exclusive gentlemens club US Congress have sworn oath to uphold and defend that Constitution, shouldn’t the miscreants unfaitful to the oath be “named” and if possible shamed. Pie in the sky? given ample evidence that high status members of the “Democratic” Party are immune to shame. Responsive ONLY to risk to their careers as power brokers, when their behavioural aberrations can no longer be concealed. or are dismissed as irrelevant in their public decision. Isn’t there a comment somewhere out there that “the personal is political”?
To a man / woman exposed to their true activities as “representative of the People”? Maybe a Wikileaks for the back-rooms and cocktail parties of Washington /New York/Chicago/San Francisco? And then left to the People to decide how well they’ve done their job of protections of Americans’ Rights. OR if the American People even care about their rights
That is iffy as evidenced by the re-elections: of McCain and the more egregious Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid,and Jerry Brown, publicly contemptuous of free Americans. With their triumphant nose-thumbing in their dictatorial / gangster passage of Obamacare and other bills to embondage Americans in debt unto the nth generation.
WHAT Americans voted and still vote for these persons. Exactly what people do they represent?
These people : Obama, the Clintons, the Kennedys and their “front” in the “Democratic Party” have not yet cloned America. To realise their DREAM in the HOPE of CHANGE from Constitutional Republic with EQUAL RIGHTS in law for EACH Citizen to that of of centralised power over the lives of others. Using the “cells” of the Soviet and the European Unions. To realise their DREAM of centralised dicatorship under bureaucratic monarchies / Commissariates. Answerable to none but their own exclusive club
members, their “elite”.
AND what Americans still answer to pollsters with a 42% approval of Obama and his management style? Of course the polled populations not described in detail except “random”,. Nor what and how the questions are framed. Nor what help is given by the pollster for the answers of record. Polling is a business, NOT a neutral act. Example the recent disclosures of the “research” of CRU.
I won’t go as far as saying McCain “wanted” Obama to win…but think of what the political scene would be like if McCain had managed to eke out a win. To start with, the Dems’ media sockpuppets would be pounding relentlessly on the message that a narrow electoral victory plus Dem majorities in both houses of Congress = “no mandate whatsoever”. Under MSM covering fire, Pelosi and Reid would have jammed through enough of their collectivist program that the McCain administration could be caricatured as frozen in carbonite, not even able to react to the Dems’ legislative rampage. Palin might well have been driven from the vice-presidency by now – the Dems and the media would have launched a coordinated assault againt her and her entire family. I could easily imagine a situation in which, for example, Track Palin’s Guard unit is deployed to Afghanistan, a lefty reporter finds out some closely-held details of the unit’s operations and feeds them to an Al Jazeera stringer, who promptly relays them to the Taliban.
Also – without the image of a single empty-suited radical socialist galvanizing them, do you think the Tea Parties would have gained the traction they did? I suspect the opposite…that the MSM, via constant Goebbels-esque repetition, would have driven home the image of McCain as an ineffectual, doddering old fossil of a president. And we’d be looking at a veto-proof/filibuster-proof Dem Congress this January.
In conclusion…by electing this cardboard-cutout Manchurian Candidate, we may have once again proved the essential truth of Otto von Bismarck’s statement that “God makes special providence for fools, drunks and the United States of America.”
Interesting analysis and likely observations, though it hardly seems possible the MSM could have attacked Sarah Palin with much more zeal. An attack that continues to this day. And I can easily see the Track Palin Guard unit scenario being played out. Those jackals in the MSM will stop at nothing to harm Sarah. Regardless, I think you are right on the money with respect to what would have happened in Washington had McCain won.
Otto von Bismarck was right on the money as well. I just hope and pray that we as a nation can live up to that providence.
I wonder if George Soros’s hand could be found behind McCain’s winning the Republican nomination? I have tremendous respect and admination for McCain’s character based on his behavior as a POW, but it seems he became a Caspar Milquetoast somewhere along the line, an appeaser of everyone. Fire in the belly gone.
Snopes needs to disspell the urban myth that liberals are smarter. Most blacks who voted for Obama were voting racially, not logically. However, most whites who voted for Obama are naive fools.
I remain unconvinced that more Palin in the 2008 election would have meant more votes. Many people have that impression, but it seems to be based on her invigoration of the people already predisposed to conservative government, not by inspiring moderates and undecideds to vote Republican.
It is liberals, remember, who fall into the trap of thinking that because they like someone sooo much, it means everyone else must like them somewhat, and just need to be nudged. Much of the 2008 vote was dissatisfaction with Republicans causing some voters to stay home. Sarah brought some of those back, and has had some success in attracting undecideds and half-committeds. But as with any candidate who actually stands for something, you pretty rapidly reach a point where you lose one voter for each one you gain. That’s not a bad thing – it provides clarity. But we shouldn’t be thinking there is much more out there to attract quickly to a candidate. We’re into the long hard slog of convincing people now.
AVI,
I had said twice, publically, that I would vote for Hillary Clinton, rather than John McCain. I ended up voting for Sarah Palin because McCain had enough style and sense to realize that if he had to kiss and make-up with the Conservatives, it was no time for a single rose, or two, or three dabbled and dribbled out but it was time for the grand gesture–a dozen roses, a limosine, and a really big diamond necklace.
This dissapointed the loser RINOs who wanted Full Speed Double Dead As a Cemetery Ahead. But for every Chris Buckley he lost, he probably gained a handful of real conservatives. And in so doing, he revealed many a RINO as a sore loser of extreme proportion (After all, they got their guy in No.1, and they were going to go home over losing out on No.2?)
Now that she’s got the base enthused, the base needs to start trumpeting the good news. That’s how you win over independents. Get the base happy, and then tell them ‘CHAAAAAARGE!’
Frankly, if McCain had won, I would have expected that big government “conservative” would have engaged in pretty much the same miserable, fool-hardly bailouts, state assistance and such, as Democrats in congress and public mewling forced his hand.
He likely would have acted foolishly in foreign affairs, displaying his ill-tempered lack of cool more than a studied strategy.
And conservatives would have to spend another 4 years explaining that, like Bush, McCain does not provide any good measure of what a conservative would do in office.
In short, I am actually glad the most liberal president in my lifetime has to deal with this world as it is now. His failures, and the failures of his allies in congress, are there for all to see. And as a conservative, I need not accept even a thimble of the blame for what President Obama has done. I put that all on his plate.
A McCain victory would have been a disaster for the reasons you state. Bush was without any coherent vision and was a disaster for conservatism. Four more years of aimless drifting and McCain temper would have discredited Republicans for another decade and the press would have gleefully stitched conservatism to the whole mess.
Jeff you are absolutely right. McCain was a horrible candidate. The upside to having Obama, Reid, and Pelosi in office is it finally exposed the fascism that is the left. We can move on now.
Now that the radicalism of Obama is undeniable, it is easy to say that McCain should have made it more a campaign issue than in a good video. But that is with the benefit of hindsight. Things ion 2010 certainly look different. At the time in 2008, however, the mind of the electorate was elsewhere. There were what could be called “headwinds” that precluded any Republican from being elected President in 2008 — a financial meltdown that created economic anxieties that have historically favored the Democrats and did that year; a Bush Administration financial bailout that muddied the waters of what was a Reaganesque economic message delivered by McCain and Palin on the campaign trail; the unpopularity of GW Bush, which is unfair but which is the result of unceasing attack by the Left, war weariness and Bush not using the bully pulpit to defend his Administration; a 7 to 1 advantage that Obama had in campaign money; and media bias that was absurdly in the tank for Obama and that operated effectively day-in, day-out as a propaganda machine for Democrats (e.g., Obama, the tax cutter). It was a different world.
it happened because the modern day gordian knot constructed by the western elites needs to be hacked apart rather than untied
Agree. Maybe they are more emphatic because they feel threatened by their loss of influence to the new media?
For instance, VDH has a voice that was heard ‘round the world: it has started so many wars (NB: sarcastic swipe at the Scarborough show).
While public opinion seems to be freer from the pull of their histrionics, the deluge of collectivist policies already promulgated has caused such damage that no leak, no weather, not even a surrogate oppressor, or any freaky faculty formulae—much less a metamorphosis of our historic first Islamic apostate president—will ever revive the freedom of our once prosperous way of life without a new reckoning of historic proportions.
I agree and am buying ammo for my various weapons. There is no way that the loons and paraphiliacs on the left will ever climb down from their coconut trees, so we have to make our rules just like they make theirs.
I hacked it apart here: http://clarespark.com/2010/12/29/f-o-matthiessen-martyr-to-mccarthyism/. The Stalinists and Stalinoids are still at large and have tenure. But it is not enough to assert such a thing. You have to prove it, as I did in my book, one part is excerpted above to show the New Deal consensus that was strengthened in the late 1930s and compacted in the 1940s. We are still living with its statism and fear of being labeled anticommunist.
“a rather small Western elite”
Is it really all that small, though? What worries me is that New York City would re-elect Obama tomorrow if it could. San Francisco gave Pelosi what — 70-80% of the vote? In New York state we’ve just given Andrew Cuomo, one of the architects of the housing/financial meltdown, a huge vote of confidence. The power of self-delusion, of denial, is immeasurable. And that’s what the “rather small elite” feeds upon. It’s a huge force multiplier. And when people try to speak the truth to this power, they’re labeled haters, troglodytes, racists, neanderthals, homophobes … very difficult to fight the power of mass delusion.
You are right about the “power of delusion”. And it doesn’t end there. All over the country are “safe” districts whose deluded voters keep sending crooked and incompetent politicians back to DC. Voters – if they had any sense – would be ashamed of themselves. Alas, ignorance in those areas seems pandemic.
They who send the progessives to rule are not deluded. They are highly rational beings with socialist world views. And to boot, they’re the consumers of the producers. It is not clear that they do not know they will eventually kill the goose that lays the goldens eggs. No, the Ocamm’s razor explanation is that they just want to get all they can get, while they can get it until this gravy train ride they’re on comes off the tracks. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about welfarists or corporatist, either.
Therefore all the rhetoric on the right would epitomize that which is known as preaching to the choir. We’ll have to put the pens down and push away from they keyboards if we want anything to change. We’re the ones who are deluded into believing, in the face of decades of decline that our politics and/or our Constitution can save us now. We must save them.
Most people don’t pay attention to politics, they simply vote their team, year after year, until some event womps them upside the head. You ask them a political question, they repeat the last slogan that came over MSM. You know the old adage, a conservative is a liberal that was recent mugged.
The good news is that liberals, when they get off the sidelines and are put in play, produce plenty of upside-the-head moments. Its why the country is conservative.
I’m a New Yorker where the power of the delusion is another mundane fact. Stendahlian irony is a meta-level beyond these jokers… substitute New York, Washington and university towns for post-Napoleonic France and read the Red and The Black — the greatest bit of irony, a joke Stendahl would have made himself, is that Al Gore cited the Red and The Black as his favorite novel when he ran for president!
There are a number of improbables, anomalies, paradoxes, ironies, absurdities—call them what you wish–on the national scene that simply defy reason. We usually fault an ignorant media as culpable for creating narratives that have no basis in fact and yet are rarely questioned. Here are some of the glaring examples and you decide how the unlikely became the gospel.
1)Assange
2)Global warming hoax
3)Palestinians as “victims”
4)Academia hypocrisy
5)Obama, the radical “centrist”
VDH, the when, where, why and how this all exists are secondary to the seminal question. WHAT is this and is it all related.
The answer is that it is indeed all related and that it is war. The tear down the system types have a vision, a worldview, and a mission to destroy and replace Western civilization. By any means necessary.
One quibble that I know you will see coming, but permit me to give it voice once again. The lapdog media is not ignorant, they are co-conspirators.
These people, amounting to less than 20% of the population have congregated in key battleplan landscapes. Academia, Democratic Party politics, Hollywood and entertainment, the media.
This is not an accident. In order to seize control over popular opinion, one must control the flow of that opinion, the flow of information, the flow of communications and the shaping of the “narrative”.
Why do you suppose they are so frothing, raging, eye-bulging, spittle inflected against Fox News, Talk Radio and …lately…you?
Why do you suppose they want to find a way to “control” those folks and the internet?
When Dan Rather and Mary Mapes were caught at CBS with forged documents trying to sway a Presidential election, when Green Helmet guy was exposed, when East Anglia emails got into the open air…a battle for truth was won, but how many hundreds of thousands of “truth executions” went unnoticed and unknown for four decades?
And still do?
Tearing down the system by exposing state secrets, no matter who gets murdered in the process is Assange’s contribution to the tear down the system movement. He is a warrior for rampant, unchecked leftism and he doesn’t give a rip about the consequences, only the end game. But, in this way…is he any different from the NYTimes? In fact, could one argue that they, not he, do substantially more damage on a daily basis? Would they give away state secrets, if given the opportunity? Indeed they would and they have.
They are not as different as they are the same.
The Hamas bedfellows with tear down the system leftists need only to overlook their differences to join forces in the end game. Tearing down Western civilization in general and America and Israel in particular, link them in purpose. They adopt each other’s lexicon. They apologize for each others’ excesses and transgressions.
Palestinians (or as I call them Pawnestinians)are mere props, used to frame the tear down the system warriors are “protectors” from American and Israeli “oppressors”. The framing of the narrative and control over the lapdog media “messaging” is the same on all “victim” issues. The tear down the system leftists or jihadists are “good”, anyone who opposes them is “bad”.
To be a leftist is to wallow in hypocrisy. Deceit is mother’s milk. Any means necessary not only includes lying, it perfects it.
Pretending to be “centrist” is just one of the many masks that come on and off depending upon the audience, the landscape and the need to break off another fraud upon the people.
Academia is littered with the leftists, because it is where you indoctrinate the next generation, soften the resistance, break the will of the people to defend themselves. You divide the children from their parents…by painting the parents as out of touch and ignoble.
We are at war, VDH. With rampant, unchecked leftism. With a tear down the system organized and entrenched enemy of our way of life, our system of government, and in all corners of the globe.
Most of us do not recognize it. We treat it as a passing fad.
At our peril.
Spot on, cfb.
“The lapdog media is not ignorant, they are co-conspirators.”
Hear hear. As a child growing up during the Cold War and learning about McCarthyism, I often heard 60s liberals dismissively snickering that McCarthyites saw a Commie in every bush. Even as a 10 year old, my logic thought to itself, “Just because there isn’t a Commie in every bush doesn’t mean there are no Commies in ANY bushes.” Gaining control of the media and the universities was and still is a great way to divide and conquer without firing a (less-than-state-of-the-art) shot.
I posted two blogs today on this subject: http://clarespark.com/2010/12/29/ayn-rands-rational-modernism/, and http://clarespark.com/2010/12/29/f-o-matthiessen-martyr-to-mccarthyism/. They should be read together. There are Stalinists and Stalinoids still at large, and of course, in charge of indoctrinating the young. It helps to be intellectually armed to fight them.
Very well said.
cfb: You are right about the media.
The main stream media at great effort and with great redundancy projects a strange “reality-distortion-field.” This field must be agreed to (political correct intolerance!), must be alleged to (no free speech dissent allowed!) and be ever more and always unquestioned (don’t say the king has no clothes!) and lastly requires absolutely no self-awareness (we’re not gerbils cliff bound!)
The fact that this is so, implies the main stream media is lying… and lying BIG TIME.
If the media reported the straight truth of the news, it would need no redundancy and no effort… because the truth needs no redundancy and no effort at all. Truth is the one thing that doesn’t require any kind of machine to create a reality distortion field.
Lastly, reality distortion fields are very expensive, expensive in dollars and especially: SOULS!
Bravo, sir!
But we’re no longer at war.
We lost.
It’s over.
How did these things happen, one asks? Why they all happened because of the artfully magical use of a trick of logic called the pseudo syllogism, which our current crop of highly edumacated libruls can create but do not seem to recognize when others create it. Let’s go down the list just a bit:
#1a. Assange
All secret American military and diplomatic intelligence is bad.
Assange revealed secret American intelligence information.
Ergo, Assange is good.
#1b. There is secret information about charges against the good man Assange.
Someone released some secret information about these charges.
Ergo, that someone is as bad as the good man Assange is good.
#2a. Industrialization is bad.
Cheap energy is good for industrialization.
Ergo, cheap energy is bad.
#2b Any change in the climate since 1973[pick any year you like]is bad.
Industrialization since 1973 has caused the climate to change.
Ergo, industrialization is double bad.
#3. The rights of homosexuals and women are recognized by the law in America.
Muslims deny many rights to homosexuals and women in Muslim countries.
Ergo, Muslims have been victimized by America.
Common, this stuff isn’t rocket science; it is simple logic.
Fred, how have you been overlooked for tenure? Parroting such sophistry should yield you a high paying salary, few office hours, maybe serve as overseer to a “directed studies” group of graduate level students. Think of the “extended research” that soaks up Federal Grants but yields nothing due to the overwhelming complexity you spin.
If you haven’t thought of these things then it’s recommended that you do a full scale career reassessment because Bubba, you ‘got the chops to make it big’.
To expand on Dr. Hanson’s questions, climate chaos devolves into no meaning allowing adherents to hide behind the confusion. Another is one of my favorite bromides: “undocumented worker” implies an approved step not completed. When did illegal become undocumented? The subterfuge of confusion gives the advocate “legitimacy” to make his claim.
The Left thrives on synthetic thinking and speaking based on the dialectic. How else can they convince themselves that new math of 2+2 = 5 and to “pacify our enemy we must destroy him”. The Left lives in a world of doublethink, doublespeak and double spin. How do they hold 2 equally opposed ideas as true by compartmentalizing? Simple, when there is no substance of right and wrong, good and evil and love versus hate, then anything is possible.
The epitome of the Left inhabits the White House. An empty suit who has nothing to offer but unbridled ambition and pathological, schizophrenic narcissism. Hitler said if the Big Lie was told often enough it would be believed. Hopefully the 2010 election proved Americans are not ready to buy into that.
I am not being a smart a** and agree with your opinions, but it’s spelled “Dagny.” I have read Atlas Shrugged so many times I’ve lost track (and I mean more than 20, it’s my Bible). We have Wesley Mouch in the White House and are looking desperately for our John Galt, Francisco d’Anconia, and Hank Rearden. Betram Scudder represents our mud-slinging anti-capitalist media. The name is appropriate.
The parallels to Rand’s prophetic novel go on and on. I fear Galt’s Gulch will be located outside America.
The moniker is spelled with an “e” on purpose. I wouldn’t dare imitate the progenitor of the fundamental reality of the world.
Correct spelling demands precision and discipline, characteristics lacking in our “modern” world. Indeed, we have “slouched to Gomorrah” in record time to incubate a petri dish ready for “men of the mind” to go on strike.
So, while I would like to accommodate you for a simple error to the spelling, my 1960′s doused brain works in multiple dimensions. The spelling displays the reflexive confusion of those minds drenched in the type of pseudo syllogisms Fred Beloit brilliantly illustrated for us.
You’re right, though, it should be spelled Dagny if one uses linear abstract logic in the application. However, in a fumbling and uncoordinated world, the mere inclusion of an extra vowel is not enough to bother the masses with. Besides, who would complain except one who has clear thinking? And after all, aren’t they becoming an invisible group among the great unwashed?
;)
You need not FEAR Galt’s Gulch is outside the U.S.
It is!
I live there.
Dag, I have no over-weeweeing ambition. It’s just that I love logic. It is so, so…logical.
I repeat, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
Jimmy Carter cause a resurgence of conservatism. Barack Obama is creating a tsunami of conservatism.
By the time 2012 rolls around, conservatives will be kicking a$$ and taking names just for the fun of it. American Revolution II, part 2. Coming to your polling place.
I think the conservatives will take the Senate, but we are in for another four years of Obama unless the economy really tanks. If we hit $5 a gallon, that might help or if unemployment is at or above 10%, but otherwise we get four more years. I hate thinking it but the independent voter isn’t going to switch off of his greatness unless things are really crappy like with Jimmy. Look at what happened with Bill, plus there isn’t a clear front runner other than Palin, which the independents hate.
hmmm $5 per gallon… here enters Israel airforce to wipe some nuclear sites out
Sandy,
That Shell CEO said $5 gas was momentary, and that of course will further unemploy them folks to say 15% (actual 22% or that’ll be the report). So, what were you saying about his stayin’ 4 more?
The 2013 election could mark the return of Conservatives and conservative thought back to real power . . . But it will be only if the GOP doesn’t lose it by infighting, nominating hopeless candidates and awarding control of party support of congressional House and Senate seats to “nice” but inept people like Elizabeyh Dole – - – we need ruthless and sharp people like Lee Atwater again. It is our election to lose . . .
“The 2013 election could mark the return of Conservatives and conservative thought back to real power . . . But it will be only if the GOP doesn’t lose it by …”
We need to think outside that box. Forget the GOP, destroy the GOP, we need another party entirely.
While the wave will be “very large”….I don’t see it as Revolution II yet. Far to many people still hold on the liberal religion that the Government if for the good of the people.
Until it completely crashes on every level not a whole lot is going to change. While many people are now awake, for everyone awake there are still 75 that are asleep and snoring.
We need a complete reset or things are doomed for this country, but I think it will only happen after it is to late.
The corrupt elite is influential only because it is aided by a compliant press. If we overturn the press, we control the narrative.
“The press” as we now know it will never recover from their mass abandonment of ethics and objective judgment. Obviously there were exceptions, but overwhelmingly they have colluded on some level to kill the goose that laid their golden eggs.
It will be exciting to see what form finally emerges as the generally accepted mass information provider. The clock is ticking, so it might not be that long.
The “New Press” is right here ….the Inter Net. More and more people are turning to it to get the unfiltered information they want. And that makes pee run down the leg of every “progressive” piece of crap in DC, they hate the “truth” …..unless they get to filter it first.
I believe that is about 99% of the reason the Government and their “friends” have fallen in love with the idea of “Net Neutrality”….It would put then Government or it’s new hand picked “czar” in charge of when the information is “available”, what said “information” will contain and how much said “information” will cost us, and we even should get the “information” or who even gets to send said “information” out.
The “progressive elite” believe they must control the information available because they “need” to control the minds of the people so that the “chosen outcome” stays as intended.
All they really want is control, and for the “people” to conform to the plan, oh yea and for us loyal subjects to pay them for the “service” of being lead to a better life.
Hello Mr. Hanson! happy holidays! I see whenever you or Mr. simon post a blog here hundreds of people follow you and respond. this shows the respect they have for both of you and trust in what you are writing. to that end why are you so surprised? isn’t this the greates country on earth because of our enterpenuralship? because of our marketing ability? because of our ability to coeelect dat and see what peopel are intrested in and what flies? a few years ago when Iphone came out for the first time while I am in the 1950′s when it comes to technology, I did realize the buzz going around specially with the younger peopel who wanted to have an Iphone. I took the oppurtunity and had my 18 year old son to get in line at an ATT store on west 23 street to get in line. I convinced him that he would make serious money. he wound up being number 4 in line with about 150 people following him. he sold his spot for $800.00!!! isn’t this what America all about?
take a look at the diet indusries: epole have been eating bread since day one. they came out saying keep the carbs out and then added bunch of other bullshit and created a multi billion dollar industry! di they not?
this guy Assange, someone saw the opputunity and fanned it and now he is a household name!! he signed a book deal for $1.5 million dollars! isn’t this America? he will make money, publishers make money, people will buy the books and the our economy keeps moving! you know what is next now? they are going to make a movie as well and you know it is going to be a big hit! when making movies, people in that industy work, the studios make money, people go and spend money to see the movie and while there the spend money on popcorn and then they put the movie on DVD and the cycle keeps repeating itself!
as in climate change: that too is the creation of someone(s) with a vision. remmeber, in WW1 the called shell shock. in WW2 they called it fatigue syndrom, in Vietnam war they called it post traumatic syndrom, which one of these phrases do you think can make more money?
climate change is making money like there is no tomorrow. whail I agree this whole climae is a bunch of BS, but I can see the money being made: green trash bags, green detergent, organic laundry, greet tshirts and so on…
so you should not be surprised. in fact you should be very happy!!
this whay this is the greatest country on earth!!
have a good day!
Miriam, you just gave me a great idea! Why don’t we burn down all our houses! Think of all the new jobs that will create!
Liberalism really is a mental disease…
Chris: first of all I am not a liberal. simply because i do not agree with you or someone here that does not make me a liberal.
second of all you are idea is about destruction and not construction. where in my blog did I say let’s destroy something and then build a model around it? so no, you do not have a good idea. sorry. hope santa was nice to you.
M
Hello,
Listen, green jobs and green products are destructive by nature, they are innefficient and require more resources than traditional products. You may like to read an old writting by Frederick Bastiat called “What’s seen and what’s not seen”. Hey, I found a link to it:
http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html
Then you would understand why other people are comparing what you said to a destructive philosophy.
greetings,
X
Wrong again Miriam, your idea is all about the destruction of conventional means of energy production (coal, gas, oil, hydroelectric, nuclear) and replacing them with much more expensive and unreliable energy (windmills and solar panels), and subsidized with taxpayer money. The government is trying to create demand where none exists, and that is fiscal insanity on par with torching our houses to stimulate the economy. The only remaining justification for this literal ‘power grab’ is to solve the ‘imminent catastrophe’ that is global warming. Now since you are not a liberal, as you claim, you must have heard about climategate, which destroys even that bogus rationale. Your move..
If I understand you correctly, miriam rove, your criteria for defining ‘the greatest country’ seems to hinge solely on whether it is possible to ‘make a lot of money in that country’. I think this is a narrow and quite possibly fallacious definition of what makes a ‘greatest country’.
After all, in China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, and so many other totalitarian states in the world, it is possible for some to make a great deal of money. You have only to consider the wealth of some of the leaders and businessmen in these states. But, does this really define a ‘greatest country’?
In the West, it is possible to make a great deal of money. We have Madoff as an example. We have lots of other means of making a lot of money, from drugs to scams on insurance, to scams on the elderly – on and on. Does this ability define ‘the greatest country’?
I think that some additional values other than ‘ease of making a lot of money’ ought to be added to your criteria. How about having a Constitution, an elected legislature and with term limits, and a rule of law? How about freedom of speech, habeas corpus, fundamental freedom? I think that these are far more basic than ‘ease of making money’ in the evaluation of ‘the greatest country’.
etab: you just said it. it would be a half of the greatest country had we not have freedon, a constitution, free elections etc.. sorry I thought that was a given but I should have said that.
m
obviously we are not the greatest country in the world, by the fact that things like spell-check are not (financially?) available to you – I think I agree with some of the things you wrote, but eye kant undurstand vary much of it
Good Lord, “tom” – how petty can you be? You don’t even capitalize your name, yet you criticize Miriam Rove because her grammar and spelling is not perfect.
Perhaps she is just excited as she is writing, or she is just not a good typist.
If you are going to pick on someone, pick on them for their ideas, don’t just be a big jerk because you can be such a big jerk.
Please learn to spell, or at least learn how to use a spell checker. Believe in the communication of your ideas enough to get your words spelled right. Why would you want to confuse your readers with your bad spelling when you are trying to make your enlightened views known to us?
one of the simplest measurements of freedom is income. All of the things you listed lead to freedom and opportunities that lead to a measureable thing and that is money …
Sure its a crass measurement but its one that everyone understands and thats what makes it easy to use.
In the end you have to have a way of measuring the effects of a Constitution and Republican form of government. Just claiming they are good ideas doesn’t count, to many people Communism is a good idea too. In the real world we can measure the results and the results using money as a measure show that our method works better.
Oh yes, climate change/warming/kerfluffle. My home state of Minnesota has just set an ALL-TIME record for the snowiest December. Polar bears have mauled 1,200 people in downtown Minneapolis alone and timberwolves tore the Metrodome roof to shreds as a record 3 Vikings games have had to be rescheduled because of warm and snowless weeks and mindless animals on the prowl.
It’s the “Little Ice Age/Heatwave” all over again which will result in a schizophrenic Greenland needing therapy from the U.N.
The more things climate change the more they stay the same.
Yea that sums it up…
We are living, more and more, in ‘imaginary’ or ‘virtual’ worlds. That is, we live within words – not within the world of real material objects, be they farms, factories, industries.
So, we actually think that whatever we say, is both real now or ought to be real and if we fight for it, can be made real. That’s the world of the ‘progressives’, the socialists, the fascists – the academics, the left.
It’s absurdly simple to live within the world-of-words. After all, there is no real material world that rears up to confront your sophistry, your arrogance, your lack of humility, your insistence that what ‘ought to be’ is the only way to live within.
Think of the UN; it lives totally within a virtual world. Unaccountable, unelected, answerable only to itself. Put it in the real world and the result of its actions is genocide in Rwanda, massive oil-financial fraud in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, cholera in Haiti..and so on.
Washington – the Congress lives in a virtual bubble, endlessly talking within and to itself, oblivious that its actions of ‘what ought to be’ have actual results, now, in the real world.
Obama – a narcissist who lives totally, completely, within the images he manufactures of himself as Himself. All descriptions of him during his time in the real world – birth certificate, school records, grades etc – are all removed from observation by any who live in the real world.
He considers that all that he needs to do, is Speak – and His Words become reality. So, Islamic terrorists and terrorism are reworded as ‘extremists’ or ‘man-caused disasters’. Islam’s stunning paucity of achievements in science, technology and medicine are denied by instead praising their ‘enormous achievements’ in these fields.
Illegal entrants to the US are defined as ‘victims of American racism’. Obama sues Arizona for trying to protect its borders. Why? Not for the sake of the borders but to present his image to Hispanics as on their side.
He insisted on Congress passing Pelosi-Reid’s ‘stimulus bill’ – without reading or debate by declaring that without it, an ‘apocalyptic economic collapse’ would ensue. This bill was not about stimulating the economy but, misnamed, was in reality payback and pay-for to various Democratic funders and state governments, by the Democratic leaders.
Health care? Nothing about health benefits; it is in reality the insertion of statism. And what about Obama’s declaration that doctors are evil, and cut off limbs-for-money?
This isn’t just the lies of politicians. It’s a deeper disease within America and the West – where words become privileged over reality, where reality is viewed as irrelevant to the truth, and what is accepted as indicative of Truth – are the Words of Experts. And an expert, we must realize, is as amorphous and vapid as the words we accept in place of truth.
Interesting extension of your malignant narcissist theory.
Congress, the UN, academia, climate scientists, progressives – all malignantly narcissistic organizations, living in fantasy worlds of their own creation. Truth is shut-out. They are like computer games with enclosed environments of their own. They resemble reality but are fundamentally different because they are only images, and the only interaction with the real world is when the game players (i.e., congressmen, diplomats, “scientists”) send information out that has been created totally within the fake environment. Information from reality is not allowed in.
If you disagree with the false reality, there is no real dialogue about it. You are immediately labeled an idiot; overwhelming reams of invented information is spewed out (all of it correct according to the rules of the game, but also bearing no realationship to the real world); many angry speeches are given; the game itself continues and is not affected in any way. If you aren’t careful, you as the disagreeing party may be electrocuted.
Awesome movie idea.
What more proof is needed with the performance of a silver tongued Calhoun the Lawyer with the debaters body language but not the intelligence of William F Buckley continuing his campaign rhetoric standing neck deep in the current democratic and czar created sewage while holding the office of POTUS?
I don’t expect much to change until MSM economic discussions refer to something other than investment and promotional advertising as basis for recovery without a single mention of the less than 20% of the population that actually sweat for survival and support all the other parasitic professions including government rapidly evolving into gerontocracy. Federal reserve inflated currency has only created opportunity for more parasites while being the opiate of those that actually produce and those that only consume while promoting all to a higher tax bracket.
The time for whatever it was that once spoke louder than words must be overdue for almost a hundred years.
In the world of words the left have no use for strict definitions they move these definitions from word to word or make up new definitions Ask any lawyer about the world of words, anything can be justified and molded to get your way in court if your good enough. So the same goes for words outside the courtroom.
Sorry Greg, as a lawyer, that’s not what attorneys do in court. But, I agree with the rest of your comment. In my view, the changing meanings of words are not only related to political machinations, but also, to introduce a softness into the language. Two of my favorites are the words, “issue” and “hero”. A “problem” is an “issue”, whether it relates to a car crash or a blocked artery. A “hero” can be nearly anyone. I’ll never forget the victums of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center being referred to as “heros”, right along with the firefighters, police, etc., who actually did heroic things.
It comes, calculatedly from the academic Socialists, who realized mid -century, that the proletariat in the U.S.A. would not unite, did not consider themselves down-trodden, and would never elect a Socialist President.
So they concentrated on the children of the wealthy, the beneficiaries of capitalist ancestors, counting on obsessing them with guilt and persuading them of the obligation to make retribution through Social Activism and redistribution of ill-gotten gains, rather than instructing them in reason and free-thinking.
And so we have the Billy Ayers and the Pinch Sulzbergers and their ilk: the starry eyed graduates determined to go straight into government and “make this world a better place” rather tan dirty their hands and minds with industry or commerce. Following the practice of the Roman Catholic chrch, they have molded the minds of youth and converted universities into seminaries of the “faith”. Schools of journalism are as close-minded as Jesuit institutions and as evangelistic.
America presents Marxism turned upside down: The true believers are the “elite”, the seekers of truth are the masses seeking to be free.
What is interesting, when one listens to the fervent campaigns of the left for ‘redistribution’ and their sanctimonious rejection of capitalism and wealth – is how their own economic well-being is heavily protected and not vulnerable to any ‘redistribution’.
The govt employee, the academic, the unions – those who are most evangelical about redistribution – live not only within the virtual world of words. But within the protected walls of a specific mode of income. Protected Income.
That is, a great part of their well-being and comfortable lifestyle is protected; it can’t be removed and taken for ‘redistribution’. AND, most of it comes not from their salary as deductions but in the form of ‘extra benefits’ of their employment. Medical care. Pensions. Dental care. Employment costs such as moving costs, travel, conference costs, meals and hotels. So much of this ‘well-being’ and amenable lifestyle is not graspable by the TaxMan.
Therefore, the inhabitants of this protected lifestyle can achieve the illusion of charity and the nobility of acknowledging ‘those who have little’…without giving up a scintilla, a trace, of their own comfort. Their charity is offered up only in Words. Words. Words. Their lifestyle remains protected within its Walls.
Excellent point, my friend.
Smashing article, Professor Hanson. Making your points through the use of paradoxes is very wise because a paradox is so memorable and so efficiently ties together all of the crucial questions associated with an issue. I hope all your paradoxes end up on T-shirts.
Alas I heard a lot of this at my own dinner table on Christmas Day.
It seems that we must add weather to the taboo subjects of religion & politics. My husband & I had to bite our collective lips while our leftist kinfolk discussed how global warming was causing severe snowstorms and why we must use the term “climate disruption” in the future. Remember when discussing the weather was the most neutral of topics? Thanks a lot, Al.
I had a similar Christmas experience debating one family member whether 9/11 was an inside job. Another relative reliably offers opinions at all gatherings that reveal disdain for out culture and suspicion regarding every aspect of the West and the white race. She revealed how a little “coercion” was appropriate to bring green energy/recycling skeptics along. I must have been adopted.
How Did All That Happen?
Just take a good look around: so many grown-ups, so few adults.
Envy has two cures: Socialism or Maturity.
Mr. Assange seems to occupy a similar intellectual space as Gandhi and M.L. King in the sense that, had those 2 men protested in Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Russia among many other polities, they would have simply and quietly disappeared without a trace.
In this sense, the tributes to Gandhi, King and Assange are in fact a tribute to the very systems they rail against. Obviously all 3 men were and are aware of this but downplay the fundamental strengths that were really present all along in the institutions they fought.
These men are only as notable as the political structures they work within and it is fair to say that those fundamental and valuable qualities antedate all 3 men and will be there for a long time after. The real hero is the system and calling it a villain and painting Hitler mustaches on it or constantly referring to it as imperialist or colonialist is semantic nonsense that disguises the reality of the phrase, “Compared to what?”
Assange’s releases are, as you suggest, a de facto condemnation of all the polities he does not move within. Assange’s own restriction in his movements and releases is a celebration of the West, not a condemnation of it, dressed up in nonsense. Should Assange seek asylum in Libya or Iran and then take up his old job, he too will disappear without a trace.
Actually, many, including myself, are quite certain that King was assassinated by the Johnson administration.
Sarah Palin 2012
For America
In this segment of Uncommon Knowledge, Richard Epstein was very on the money just 3 months after the Inauguration. Obama is dogmatic and wouldn’t even consider compromise until the Republicans had near veto power in the Senate. Scarily, his description of Obama and his mask reminds me of the description of sociopaths. Always in control, never letting anyone see their real beliefs and pretty much reflecting whatever anyone throws at him to engender commonality.
Question: with a cadre of Columbia School of Journalism graduates following Obama around, why is it that none sought to reveal the man. Was it malfeasance or simple incompetence? And really do we believe JournaList was the only message coordination scheme these “journalists” use?
good link
The country has elected a person who has gone to great lengths to hide who he is and what he believes.
What could go wrong?
“Was it malfeasance or simple incompetence?”
The charge is malfeasance, pure and simple. Reading between the lines, you seem to agree (along with many posters above).
One of the best things about this site is realizing that so many others think this way and will never ever trust the MSM again.
In America the legacy media is moribund, a dead man walking. That suits me fine. The sooner they croak the better, and good riddance. They are the principal enablers of all the other absurdities we rail about.
I think it all started going awry when we collectively chose to deal with symptoms instead of the disease and passed the 17th amendment. We were warned at the time but the popular thing to do was “be nice” and fix the problem “a more polite” way. And thus began the law of unforeseen consequences.
Brilliant as always, Dr Hanson.
With regard only to point #4, wherein professors disparage the capitalist behaviour of their wealthy donors, alumni, and benefactors who made their disposable income through it, I can perhaps explain it in half a dozen words, paraphrasing (possibly among others) Scott Adams:
THE WEALTHY DO NOT SEEK COMPANY.
Wiser alumni ignore the teachings of their leftist professors, graduate, make their fortunes, and then donate to their alma mater so that the less-perceptive latter-day counterparts will be more likely to believe the destructive nonsense that professors teach. The wiser benefactors reap their harvest and pay to have bad advice passed on to their younger competitors. Could it be simpler?
Attempts by the Bamster’s minions to try to stifle conservative radio or websites just might make 2012 the end of the world for Democrats.
The power to influence now held by people mentioned in the article’s last paragraph will likely fade in the coming decade. After all, the MSM is slowly dying a well-deserved death. Universities no longer have the kind of cache they once had with the public—who pays attention to far left professors anymore? And the product of the American film industry has gotten so execrable in recent years that it might soon make Bollywood competitive in the world market.
The democrats have, in fact, taken control of Internet. No, not directly but the usual patronage and intimidation tactics. It works out the same.
Sometimes absurdity is the best humor. Like when I watch a rap video and think, “There’s actually a market for this crap? Somebody actually believes this represents talent?”
Liberalism is the Pet Rock of political philosophy.
Great article as is the norm Doc.
Liberals create myths about themselves and their causes.
Myths are how they take an Assange, who is nothing more than an arrogant, muckraking pseudo-intellectual who appears to be crafty, greedy, and a near sexual predator, and morph him into some sort of altruistic global crusader.
Or, for that matter, how they took a lackluster “Community Organizer,” and glossed over his non-record of excellence, and voila! – he becomes President.
Myths.
MYTHS? How about psychological warfare?
VDH writes:
“Lurking somewhere behind all these improbables is a rather small Western elite that is enormously influential in the media, government, the arts, universities, and Hollywood.”
M’thinks they have a lot of influence on politics, and on the economy too. In fact the above may be seen as the ideological smoke screen behind which this elite operates. It spread over decades, originally as Communist subversion which finally took hold of the popular culture in the 60′s (aimed at undermining traditional institutions and altering the meaning of language). But it wasn’t until the last decades that the elite, their “long march through the institutions” finally accomplished, decided to tip things over the edge.
Who are they? I have often wondered what Obama’s sudden, urgent and highly secretive trip to Switzerland shortly after his election was all about. Perhaps therein lies a clue?
Either way they launched their revolution too soon. They were almost there. Another 10 years or so and there would have been few left to recognize what they were up to. Now they have awakened the sleeping giant. They can twist and spin all they want now (the No Labels ‘movement’ is a Progressive fraud, as are their supposed triumphs of the last few weeks. Empty charades that won’t help them in the long term. Just as they thought they thought they could stem the tide in November, they will keep mis-reading the situation and keep conjuring smokescreens. This is exactly what we want. The more they focus on their political charades, the more transparent they become, and the less effective they will be in preventing what is coming. They are practically following a script at this point.
For our part, the key is unity. The conservative media must act as a liaison between the citizenry and the GOP. The GOP has to quickly recognize what the Tea Party is and realize that trying to isolate Tea Party leaders will only cause division. Simply provide a structure to focus Tea Party energy and everyone wins. The People, the Country and the GOP.
70-80% of money the democrats use is 2 or 3 steps removed from our taxes. Democrats get kickbacks to anything they fund. In the long run we must hold the house of representatives and choke off the money.
No earmarks is very important part of this. If your a pimp for government money, we need you to think congress is the wrong place to be.
I think Obambi really is bi-partisan…as long as the two parties in question are the Democrat and the Communist parties.
Dr. Hanson made me think that our ivy league universities are more like WalMart Institutions.
If my kid had come out of Harvard as stupid as Barracky boy, I’d be suing the joint for malpractice.
I just might sue anyway; I wonder how many jobs that would create?
Why do 95% of blacks support Barrack Obama when black unemployment is nearly 50%?
Obama has completed failed blacks, but they continue to support him?
Here’s the new Obama Cultural Initiative for the President to use the bully pulpit to lead (for once):
1. Stop committing crimes.
2. Stop using illegal drugs.
3. Stop having children out of wedlock.
4. Earn an education or learn a trade.
Cornhead:
What’s not to like about a one who has the ability to and would gladly send you a check written on your neighbor’s bank account for two or three thousand dollars a month and why would you not support such a person? Seems like pretty simple math and logic.
Bully pulpit be damned. Old America, New America.
Thanks for another great essay, Dr. Hanson….
Fortunate we are that electing our first communist president didn’t happen sooner. I sit at my computer and read this wonderful article; I read science blogs that are written by real scientists unpoliticized by government grants; I read foreign newspapers with differing perspectives; it’s probably akin to the joy people felt after the printing press destroyed the millena-long stranglehold on information that had to be hand written or orally delivered.
Like the effects of Gutenberg’s invention, the internet empowers us. It’s in its infancy, yet already is transforming every institution in society. How fortunate for us that the blinders wielded by the elite for so many decades are removed. The old MSM no longer holds absolute power over news and perception of news…..The brick and mortar institutions of learning are technically obsolete; they, too, will pass into history as people use online classes with low costs and high quality knowledge/teaching methods….Already, the internet has provided us with collective power via petitions, organizations such as the TEA movement, etc….
“I wonder how many jobs that would create?”
More than the stimulus bill did, that’s for certain.
There are no rules. They just make it up as they go along.
Some things to ponder-
” In the generation when the Messiah comes, young men will insult the old, and old men will stand before the young [to give them honor]; daughters will rise up against their mothers, and daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law. The people shall be dog-faced, and a son will not be abashed in his father’s presence. It has been taught, R. Nehemiah said: In the generation of the Messiah’s coming impudence will increase, esteem be perverted.” [Sanhedrin 97a]
“The Wisdom of the learned will degenerate; fearers of sin will be despised; and the truth will be lacking. Youths will put old men to shame.” [Sotah 49b]
“Truth will fail” (Isaiah 59:15).
“The wicked shall do wickedly, and not understand” (Daniel 12:10)..
“He who departs from evil will be considered a fool” (Sanhedrin 97a).
so what you are saying is that obama IS the messiah ?!?
…. Amid (Assange’s) jet-set Westernized odysseys — predicated on the bounty and security of American-vanguarded European culture — Assange was certainly not too eager to root out and leak to us many state secrets from Russia, China, or Iran. What would we think of Assange had he given credit to his team at WikiLeaks; globe-trotted in Africa, the Middle East, China, and Russia to inform the world about Mugabe, Chinese plans toward Tibet, Ahmadinejad’s nuke project, or Putin’s attack on dissidents; or donated his profits to dissidents …?
Even to getting his gear off with young women, Assange is but a modern Mohandas Karamchand Mahatma Gandhi. The success of whose silly shenanigans was entirely predicated upon their being practiced, rather than in Africa, the Middle East, China or the Soviet Union, on the hapless once-great British whose poofter, Mountbatten, after picking up his missus from Jawaharlal Nehru’s bed, ran from Gandhi — and from British India — as had the once-great British electorate’s never bettered representative, Neville Chamberlain, from Mister Gandhi’s friend, Herr Hitler.
…. somewhere behind all of this is an, enormously influential in the media, government, the arts, universities and Hollywood, small elite. What that Manchurian gang likes to believe often as not must be believed. And so it usually is ….
As, for now, by some of the People, some of the time, is its Candidate. But not by We.
OMG! Cold in the winter, hot in the summer!! Climate Chaos!!!
And, talking about improbilities, how could one tiny representative democracy, Israel, seem to be be hated by the representatives of nearly every other country on the earth?
Ron, I’m a StateDept-trained Arabist and have served in several Arab countries. After a decent interval, I finally understood that the Arabs are too cowardly to admit that their entire combined economies minus oil are not as great as Israel’s with its 5 million people, 2 million of which are Israeli Arabs who often live a subsistence existence. The countries I lived in Europe, France & the UK, had a deep reservoir of anti-Semitism to draw upon and don’t forget that the Israelis had to fight British perfidy during their whole existence—save for Balfour and a few other true stalwarts. Russia has some of its smartest emigres in Israel, therefore hates it. The Arab countries where I worked in the US embassy often had their citizens tell me ‘privately’ during cocktail and dinner parties how much they admired the Israelis for sheer pluck and grit and bravery. However, the Arab Groupthink mentality does not allow these thoughts to be uttered in public, because retribution of some sort is sure to follow.
Re: Global Warming/Climate Change/Junk Science
“If it can’t be falsified, it’s not science”. (Dr. Michaels @ CATO)
The quote is in reference to a NYT OP/ED on how severe winter weather proves GW/CC. IMO, what the NYT’s claim proves is the ascendancy of Junk Science. If the data can never refute the theory, it’s not science.
How did these things happen? First of all, just because the MSM says
something and claims that “Americans believe”, doesn’t make it so – I think
we’d agree on that point. But, what else would you expect from folks who ate,
drank, and slept for decades the notion that “there is no such thing as
absolute truth; what may be true for you isn’t necessarily true for me”?
They make up their own “truth” and then claim it is true for all of us.
They have lost the capacity to think critically, believing their own nonsense
and not even realizing when they are being hypocrites. We are witnessing what
happens to a culture (or at least part of the culture) when you can’t trust
anything some people say. Thankfully, there are some outlets (like PJM) that
point out fantasy parading as truth and inconsistencies in the message of
the MSM messengers.
quote, “How did 20-minutes-of-fame Julian Assange construct the façade of an idealistic crusading electronic muckraker?”
“One thing is certain: The Wikileakers certainly qualify as “press” within the meaning of the constitution. Make no mistake about that. What the Framers intended by “press” was pamphleteers, people like Franklin with a printing press in the basement, or Tom Paine, or — in other words, they did not mean the organized press, newspapers, magazines, and the like: they meant people writing pamphlets and distributing them. Freedom of the Press shall not be infringed.
You might also look up the episode in American history regarding the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the Genet Affair. We used to get those in 6th Grade but our public schools are much improved now, and it’s more important to have diversified social studies or whatever they teach instead of American History now.” – Jerry Pournelle http://www.jerrypournelle.com
What kind of Capitalists support the modern (post 1917, post 1933, post 1967) Ivy endowment? We can no longer be wise and refer to “capitalists” as friends of Liberty. The many of the most wealthy of them are not.
Capitalism, of itself, has never been a reliable indicator of Liberty, of freedom to do business. Today we have mainland Chinese capitalism and the a good chunk of the world’s most wealthy capitalists are there – in still COMMUNIST China. Red China. It is indeed a form of captialism.
In Nazi Germany there too was capitalism, as there is as well in many banana republics, in Congo-esque Africa. Evidently — and the evidence is clear and longstanding — Fascists, dictators, Communists, Trade Unionists, Radical Anarchists and Fabian Socialists are all happy and fat with some variant of capitalism that cutz them in. Cuts with a ‘z’! Hacked forms of capitalism, Crony Capitalism.
True Free Market Liberty is VERY DIFFICULT to achieve. Human nature tends towards stable but degenerate forms of capitalism, where, while their are shares of ownership, the effective ownership is under strict control of an elite, a Mandarin class, an oligarchy.
In the US today this elite consists of the Federal behemoth (behemoth is the proper Hebrew — a huge beast, but of a domesticated, useful, species), Academia, Big Unions and Big Finance. We have no more of Big Industry — what is left is a strict suzterainty of Big Finance or of the FedGov behemoth regulatory state (viz airlines, GM.)
So of these great men who donated so lavishly to the Ivies, what percentage among them were Men of Liberty, and not just fattened crony capitalists, fellow travelers in the US Mandarin class?
Does anyone have any insight into how the “small Western elite” became, largely, hostile to our Western heritage? Is it simply moral preening? One becomes rich enough to attack the institutions that made him rich (like faculty at Harvard, as VDH mentions)? Or is it something else?
The left’s capture of education has done a lot to propagate disdain for the West, Christianity, and capitalism. I think their influence would not be a lasting one were the minds of the young the least bit independent. It’s just not possible to trip over conservatives views somewhere in one’s daily life, especially on the web.
The persistence of the disdain, therefore, must be due to some fundamental resonance between it and human psychology as it is conditioned in industrial society with the prolonged adolescence of our youth and general insulation of the population from life’s harsh realities. Perhaps.
I know very intelligent young people whose minds fervently and ingeniously search out arguments and facts that undermine their nation, race, and culture and help to tear out the barriers to statism.
The small elite reflects this base rather than conditions it.
Perhaps what is most deeply at work is the infection of the hubris that followed the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, and the scientific and technological marvels of the last century. Since wonders have proceeded from human reason, the persistence of conflict, poverty, crime, war, and corruption must therefore be due to the obtuseness of enemies who are irrational and never lose an opportunity to undermine progress by constantly harping on the “difficulties” of taming human nature and the “realities” of culture, race, and tradition, and by opposing really smart people like they are whose sincerity, insight, and correct analysis are just givens.
The nominal “leaders” of the country – the government, the media and the universities – are a bunch of frauds and fools. As more and more people come to recognize this, there will be a blowback. The shape and course of this backlash will determine the future history of the country.
All facets of an irrational / nihilistic culture that is now beyond “sweeping the nation” to entrenched. I think it goes way beyond the usual suspects; too many people willingly lap it up.
As usual VDH asks the hard questions that NOBODY in the elite media will even look at. Professor Hanson has distributed many bits of wisdom in this article but perpahps the most trenchant is…”Lurking somewhere behind all these improbables is a rather small Western elite that is enormously influential in the media, government, the arts, universities, and Hollywood.”
In his magisterial 1990 work, “The Russian Revolution”, Richard Pipes described this group (in the context of Tsarist Russia) as “the intelligentisia.” This is the self-described intellectual elite within Western societies that seeks to to “reform” makind on the basis of it’s own received wisdom. The intelligentsia seeks power over all aspects of human affairs for the “good of all” and naturally gravitates to socialism and increasingly draconian models of social control. (The enviromental movement is a prime example of this.)The intelligentsia promotes social grievances largely so that it can pose as the only agency capable of solving those grievances. (Think of your typical New York Times columnist.)
Journalists and the “artistic community” have always been tempermentally drawn to this model and have always desired to be considered a part of the intellectual elite. During the 1970′s all pretense was thrown off and the electronic media, the press and the entertainment industry began to devote themselves whole-hog to the progressive agenda. This seems to me the answer to Professor Hanson’s question – “How did all that happen?” Our traditional gatekeepers have joined the elites both in promoting their political agenda and in their withering contempt for the rest of us.
…and btw, when did reporters become ‘journalists’ and how many actually kept or are keeping a journal??? I would MUCH prefer to go back to having all these so called journalists being reporters and keep their bias out of reporting, instead of trying to force-feed their left wing beliefs on the rest of us. I know, I know, dream on.
How did all that happen? Rhetoric! Sophistry!
The techniques of persuasion and propaganda have come a long way ince Greece and Rome. We have so many more media, and professions whose main aim is to shade the truth or convince us of untruth.
I feel like we’re seeing the fulfillment of all the alarmism about Communism undermining our free society I heard during the Cold War. Communism may have collapsed but the undermining forces remain in place and active.
You can fool some of the people some of the time. In NY and CA and urban centers you can fool the people all of the time. There is a
saying in Yiddish “Oylem, Goylem,” meaning the people are dummies.
Remember, it’s both parties against the people.
Having read down to the bottom of the comments I was struck by the lack of realization by most. IMO, the reason most ‘regular’ folks are mis- or uninformed as to what is causing the current, 50 years worth, of challenges is that they are too busy trying to stay alive, re: work, school, raising children; to pay ENOUGH attention to what is going on ‘behind the scenes’ and then the attention that they do pay is primarily fed by the ‘main street media’ which, as has been pointed out repeatedly here, is complicit in the overall campaign to frighten and at the same time assure the ‘masses’ that everything is just wonderful since the ‘right people’ are in charge and fixing everything.
RE; Post # 46
See my reply to post #48
Assange didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. I’m sick of hearing his name. if it wasn’t him there would be another Judas type selling us out.
Most incomprehensible and unbelievable of all was the tax compromise we are stuck with….. That is our kids are stuck with. All of that tea party ire brushed aside by both parties. Many billions more added to the debt time bomb. Spend spend spend more money we don’t have. QE2 keeps the interest rates artificially low while adding more and more billions to the debt. Hurray, everyone gets a “Payroll tax” break so we can buy more junk produced by foreign workers. Meanwhile we just pulled a few bricks from the foundations of our social security safety net. Please someone explain how we get out of this mess….
I read VDH religiously and all the comments, always. I am always amazed at the wisdom of the readers. I feel compelled to ask a question that is always bothering me. What do all these morons on the left (dems, liberals, academia, MSM, hollywood) think is the end result of all their teachings and preachings. I cannot for the life of me understand that they don’t understand that this cannot end well. I was born before WWII in Germany and lived there until the late 60′s. I grew up with the stories and experiences of post-war Germany, people fleeing from the East, the horror stories of East Germany (watch “The lives of others”), my father’s horror in the Soviet Gulag as a POW for five years. Do these idiots think none of this will happen. Totalitarian or communist or marxist systems ALWAYS lead to horror and mayhem. Can somebody help me understand why anyone would think this would be different?
RE:My perspective;
It is the common belief amongst all neocommies and tyrants past, present and (probably future) that the right people hadn’t been running the show and as such it ended in disaster. It is their tiny little warped brains that make them think that THEY are the CHOSEN to get it right. However as we all know human nature being what it is, that is to say flawed, has these “do-gooders” falling into the same pit as those that had come before on the same road.
we let this happen
more bricks thru windows, I should think
How did villains become heroes, global warming become “climate change,” and the most liberal senator become a “bipartisan” president?
Spin, My Dear Watson.
In the language of the Left (an offshoot of Newspeak?) anything and anyone can be re-configured in words as the opposite of what it is.
“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”
Even more beautiful to these people is the destruction of independent thought.
That’s why it’s incumbent upon us to keep pointing out their serial asininities and why Obama, his FCC et al. and etc. are working day and night to silence our voices.
—We remain puzzled by VDH’s steer clear of the looming, indeed,
immminent New World Order slow-mo collapse of the US into North
American franchise slum, eugenics standardized ‘union’…
—We remain puzzled by VDH’s steer clear of the looming, indeed,
imminent New World Order slow-mo collapse of the US into North
American franchise slum, eugenics standardized ‘union’…
Herr Doktor Hanson;
You need to get with the new terms.
“Climate change” out, “warmal colding” (have no clue as to what that is supposed to mean) is in.
Case in point: the faculty of an elite university (Duke) didn’t have to think twice when some of their students were falsely accused of rape. They simply knew it had to be true; and they proceeded to toss out presumption of innocence (along with all the evidence of innocence, which included DNA test results) and in effect created a modern version of Scottsboro.
Nothing would persuade them that their students did not act according to the stereotypes created by their own version of “the narrative of modern life”.
And the media, of course, lapped it all up.
Look people, the “Anointed One” makes his chess move’s and us babbling humans need to realize that the unbelieving conspiracy “heathen” understate the issues when they say that Obama is a radical. Alas, they know not the secrets we are all going to witness. The “Anointed One” is amazing (and according to Biden: he’s so brillant), and takes the people at the highly efficient Post Office and sends them right over to the Student Loan Program. The “Anointed One” knows all. Twitter messages were machine-gunned to cell phones at mach speed. Facebook and MySpace groups spread across the Internet like digital fire. YouTube videos featuring celebrities ricocheted across the globe and into college students’ in-boxes with devastating regularity. All the while, the Obama mega-money-raising engine whirred on at high speed, until the result became inevitable: an unthinking mass of young voters marched forward to elect the “Anointed One.”
I am not surprised to hear these stinking lies about our “Anointed One,” it should be apparent to anyone that this was coming down the pike. I do have a couple questions about future process steps concerning these developments? When the “Annointed One” decides to start bar-coding everyone, will we get to decide if the mark is on our hand or forehead? Allot of people will prefer the hand, (especially women of course), unless your a porn actress or something along those lines. Also, my girlfriend was wondering if the Administration will be getting fashion advice from Hollyweird or the New York City crowd? We are both agree that the Administration “Maoies” as the “Anointed One ” so lovingly calls them,will be getting uniforms similar to the SS uniforms in Germany in WW2. With big letters abreviating “Barack’s Socialists.” So shall we start calling them the BS?
If Julie Assange has any brains, which is debatable, if will spend his new found wealth on bodyguards instead of lawyers.
He may have embarressed this country and some of it’s institutions but he has also pissed off some other people who and powerful, mean, wealthy and have long memories. Sleeping with Julie in the future may carry more danger than just getting pregnant or an STD.
Dr. Hanson, Thanks for bringing up the fact that part time instructors are paid at a much lower rate than permanent and tenured professors. I teach part time at a local public college and I can tell you that most of us “adjunct” instructors don’t do it for the money. We do it we love it and we take seriously the importance of educating our students. I wish more tenured faculty were as dedicated as the part-timers. Some of my students tell me that they wish the tenured faculty were as capable as the part-timers as well.
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