The Coming Post-Obama Renaissance
Quite Exceptional, In Fact
The American Constitution remains singular and ensures a stable form of government of the sort absent in a Russia, China, the Islamic world, and even (or especially) the EU. Yes, I know Obama has mused that democracy is suddenly “messy” and he lamented to the La Razistas that he couldn’t quite enact legislation by fiat. And, yes, the governor of North Carolina, in revolutionary fashion, just wondered why we could not suspend congressional elections for a bit, while former budget director Peter Orszag (did he not get his trillions in “stimulus” from a Democratic Congress before he fled to Citicorp?) now dreams of a way of running around democratic “gridlock.” But for all that sudden liberal lamentation that the noble ends cannot be achieved by any means necessary, our system of government remains. And it will ensure us a stability abjectly absent elsewhere in the world.
Saudi America
Second, even Barack Obama cannot stop the oil and gas industries. Their brilliant new technologies and entrepreneurialism may well turn us into a fuel depot like Saudi Arabia, doubling our proven oil and gas reserves. Soon someone is going to see that our own natural gas can power millions of cars, freeing our foreign policy from Gulf authoritarians. We are poised for an oil boom not seen since the age of Texas and Oklahoma wildcatting. With a friendly new administration and more exploration out West, offshore, in the Gulf and in Alaska to augment the Dakotas oil renaissance, we will soon save hundreds of billions of dollars in imported fuel costs, stop subsidizing our enemies, perhaps help to lower energy prices worldwide, create “millions of new jobs,” and give a larger window of opportunity for solar, batteries, and alternative energies to become more efficient and cost competitive in the free market.
Pressure Is Building
Third, private enterprise is hoarding cash, uncertain over the costs of ObamaCare, in fear of more regulations and higher taxes, stung by “at some point you’ve made enough money” harassing bluster, and still convinced that equally cautious consumers are simply not buying. Yet, the country is still growing, still needs new homes, more food, and more energy. There are few strikes. Americans remain more self-reliant than our competitors. We are not a shrinking nation with the demographic crises of a Europe or Russia. Soon the mounting pressure will be released by a new change in government and we will see a recovery that should have occurred more than two years ago when the recession officially “ended” in June 2009 — only all the more enhanced due to its delay. When Obama leaves office, there will be a sense of psychological release in the business community that will lead to a far greater “stimulus” than printing more money.
Tempered by Fire
Fourth, that psychology of catharsis that accompanies the end of this administration will last for sometime. The next time Keynesians lecture us on more borrowing or greater spending (fill in the blanks), Americans will perhaps ask, “So we need to borrow at least $5 trillion within three years? Keep interest rates at near zero? Vastly inflate the money supply? Extend unemployment insurance to over 100 weeks? Exceed 50 million on food stamps?”
With an inept Carter, the left’s lament was “weak messenger.” With the triangulating Clinton, it was “weak message.” With Obama, despite the recent defections and liberal angst, there were both the messianic messenger and the true-blue message. What’s left? The American people turned on both in less than two years. That change of mood will lead the way to necessary reform in a way a less harmful McCain administration could not have achieved: greater revenue from tax simplification, tax reduction, and greater tax compliance, less regulations, entitlement reform, and budgetary discipline. Obama is doing to liberal politics what no right-wing activist could dream up.
Lead from the Front
Fifth, we tried UN multilateralism. We asked permission from the Arab League to intervene in Libya. We celebrated treating enemies and friends alike as neutrals. It did not quite work. Israel is still a democracy; its neighbors still are not. Europe’s leaders still accuse Obama as much as they did Bush. Hussein as a middle name means nothing to the Middle East. Putin is still Putin, and China still is China. Soon we will return to a quiet sense of American exceptionalism, but this time more so, given that the naysayers have had their naysay. Proper appreciation of U.S. global power and moral international citizenship likewise will restore confidence. I don’t think we will hear anymore that Bush turned off theocratic Iran, that Bush radicalized the Palestinians, that Bush destroyed relations with Turkey or Pakistan, or alienated Russia. In all these cases, things are about the same as in 2008 — or much worse.
Unmatched
Finally, the U.S. military has only improved in the last decade. It secured Iraq against all odds. Its Predator drones, in challenge and response fashion, have outpaced the new terrorism.
The domestic critique of the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols has been rendered mere partisanship by the Obama embrace or expansion of nearly every element that was once demonized between 2002-8. Obama’s unintended legacy is to legitimize Guantanamo, Iraq, renditions, tribunals, preventative detention, the Patriot Act, and so on. A Barack Obama who demagogued waterboarding won’t again — unless waterboarding three self-confessed mass-murdering terrorists is a “war crime” while blowing up over 2,000 suspected terrorists (and any in their vicinity, including U.S. citizens) with judge/jury/executioner missiles is not. (I think the current administration’s idea is simply that the more we vaporize in Waziristan, the less hassle we have with live suspects at Gitmo — again, on the rationale that a current senator, posing like Obama in 2007, can always have a field day with a captive live person in U.S. custody, but not so much with a dead one on foreign soil.)
Love the helicopter shot. We’re getting closer……..
Thanks–that was a fun Photoshop to assemble.
“Sunset” would suit me better. Or “incoming”.
I can only wait for Obama’s Sunset and a new Sunrise for the rest of us.
This administration’s silly overregulation and incompetent management has awaken so many of us. The GOP made a mistake with impeaching Clinton, he deserved it but it made him a Martyr and pushed aside the problems with a center left agenda. The GOP cannot make mistakes now in getting O out and some adults in the room. It will take being for things as much as against others. Some key items I think would help:
- Regulation: stop the silly banning of the light bulb, get some sanity in Endangered Species regulations that killed the Central Valley farms, banning of inhalers for air pollution, etc.
- Immigration: We need a policy that controls illegal immigration at the border, allows employers to be able to check if their employees are illegal (it is a crime to run eVerify on current employees, only can do on new ones), have SSA notify employers that there are duplicate employees with the same #, change the law on “Anchor Babies” to needing at least one parent to have legal status (not including tourist visas) and limiting federal bennies to illegals. At the same time, Legal Immigration needs to have vastly larger quotas, but have decent standards that those coming her will be an asset to our society, not a problem.
-Economic issues first – We need to put aside a lot of the social issues for now until we are back on our feet. Further, I feel we need to adopt a more Libertarian footing on these issues. Figure out laws that respect the Religeous views of all, without making us live under Sharia law or the Christian equivalent. At the same time, I don’t want Gay this and Gay that thrust in my face.
The GOP that arrived in DC in 94 had distilled by ’00 to a ‘How do I get elected again’ crowd. The current group needs to have consensus with the public as they get the Fed Gov monster tamed. There will be pain, but for those that want to work hard a future with the American Dream needs to be possible.
Dr. Hanson I love your optimism, and yes we have to wait until Nov 2012 to see the real hope and change. Unfortunately the world doesn’t stands idle, life goes on. A lot of things may go wrong between now and Nov 2012.
Thank you, Doctor Hanson.
And thank you, too, President and Armed-Forces Commander-In-Chief-Elect Sarah Louise Ronald Wilson Reagan Heath Palin.
But as for:
…. we have to wait until Nov 2012 to see the real hope and change ….
Make that January 20 2013.
For, unless he (and it’s not unlikely) does a Nixon and slinks off early, the dangerously-dullard charismatic narcissist won’t become a real threat until he’s been swept from our office and its attached public housing — but still, for eleven long post-November 6 2012 weeks, be-squats and be-manures it!
What will he do during his last month in office? What if he wins? What if he really goes off the deep end, with no Henry Kissenger figure to stabilize things?
Nixon was a white man. He didn’t live to demolish Western Civilization, American society, and white domination of ‘his’ people. The Enlightenment is the most misleading name for any philosophical movement in history. The denial of Human Nature meant that any idiotic fantasy-society was possible. No sex, no private property, no racial discrimination — no problem, in theory. The fact that not one of these utopias could survive longer than 70 years (and that with mass murder) hasn’t dented the illusion for many true believers. But Human Nature does exist; it’s hard-wired; and it hasn’t changed for at least the last 6,000 years. What has changed is the current situation where the dominant groups in several societies have rejected, en mass, reality in favor of some bizarre alternatives, and are doing their best to implement their impossible dreams. Carter/Clinton/O’bama are no different in this respect than Lenin/Trotsky/Stalin. They want to make millions of people behave in ways contrary to Human Nature. It never has worked; it won’t work now; it’ll never work.
Communal, nasty, brutish and short (or 70 years of misery…)
“But Human Nature does exist; it’s hard-wired; and it hasn’t changed for at least the last 6,000 years.”
Just out of curiosity, what was it BEFORE 6,000 years ago, or is that when you assume creation took place?
So we have had the illusion of ending slavery and redefining the role of women, but underneath it we are all still jihadists? I will grant you that human nature changes very slowly, but on the basic issues of slavery and the role of women, we are not what we were in 1776. I suspect that any people you suspected of actually having a changed nature, you would describe as a fool.
Was Jesus a fool? Gather up not treasures on earth…etc.
“… what was it BEFORE 6,000 years ago, or is that when you assume creation took place?”
That’s about as far back as written history or identifiable civilization goes. Depending on your sources and preferences.
He’s right – human nature doesn’t change. What we’re forgetting is the duality of that nature. Yetzer hara and yetzer tov. Ape and Angel. People who kept slaves and people who freed slaves were not of a different nature. They just believed different things.
Human nature – what’s in each indvidual one of us – can do ANYTHING. Donate kidneys, gas Jews, it’s all in our repertoire. Only our beliefs, private or cultural, keep us from succumbing to our worst impulses.
Dwight: “on the basic issues of slavery and the role of women, we are not what we were in 1776″
But were ARE what we were in 1776. Our founders were abolitionists, and they respected women. True, there was no amendment securing the women’s vote until the 20th century, but originally, voting was based on property ownership. Women who owned property by way of having been widowed WERE allowed to vote. The slavery issue and so-called “feminist” issues are just two more collections of lies the left have propagated to destroy the reputations of the founders and those of us who believe in the Constitution as written, and individual sovereignty.
VDH optimism is wonderful but somewhat unrealistic. Where will the lockstep blacks, 47% dependent non taxpayers, holywood money givers, MSM and other clueless morons go on voting day ? Obama doesnt have to tell the truth and in fact cant tell the truth to get reelected. Perhaps Dr VDH ( must have started antidepressents) can inform us what will happen to the country if Obama gets 4 more years. Too much reality ? Sorry to spoil the fun.
I beg to differ with the tally that says “Bush and his 500 billion deficits”. At the end of fiscal 2006, the deficit was 166 billion, but then in January 2007, a new democrat party majority in both houses was sworn in. In two years they tripled budget spending and the budget deficit to 498 billion at the end of 2008, when president Bush left office in January 2009. Just look at it now.
Congress requisitions spending, but the president can veto those spending bills, the appropriation bills. Most presidents don’t. If there is a hint that they will, then media and democrat party go into “crisis mode” and scream “Government Shutdown!!!”.
In Alaska, unelected fat cats write the budget and submit the appropriations bills to the governor, under the auspices of the legislature. That happened in 2006, and was dropped into the governor mailbox on Friday. The governors office worked the entire weekend, and line by line, struck down the pork, and itemized and excised those pork “appropriations” from it, and on Monday, submitted a red-penned, vetoed bill back to the legislature, with the red ink all over it.
The rise in the average global mean temperature has been recorded as .1 (that’s one tenth) of a single degree. But a group of bought off and bribed scientists, said the rise in the average global mean temperature was a rise of .3 (that’s one third) of one agree in rise in global temperature. An increase of three hundred per cent! I guess the scientists with their fingers crossed feel it’s their duty to lie and fabricate numbers to suit their cause. The average global mean temperature will probably, if it hasn’t already, drop by .1 (one tenth) of a degree or it might drop as much as .3 (one third) of a single degree. But I would in fact call that stability. Everything fluctuates at least a little bit. It is ludicrous to “preserve” nature in a pristine state, and every bit a ridiculous fantasy to make this the premise of anything. The only constant is change. Radical change. Changes in the environment have favored one species with an advantage, and that species has annihilated the other for eons before we came on the scene. And still does. There is no real reason why we can’t improve on our stewardship of, on this planet, let’s just get the premise right, without fabricated ones, and get the liars and taxpayer compelling hucksters and crackpot religionists and terrorists out of it. A good old fashioned election will do it. Count on it.
I too, like you feel that the lazy, hangers on people will vote for Obama. Not to mention all the useless uninformed people who shouldn’t vote.
But, I’m feeling good after this article because I want to feel like there’s
a light at the end of this tunnel or nightmare. His sharp, angry, sarcastic, and intimidating tone to the blacks, and the way he is dividing this people, can;t bode weel in the minds of decent poeople and the Independents.
God help us.
Another great piece VDH…. Yes, as someone said a lot can happen between now and NOv 2012…. Not much we can do about it….
Lets repeal Obamacare the first week the Conservative New President gets elected..
Doing the Dance of JOy.
A lot can also go wrong between Nov. 2012 and Jan. 2013. A lame-duck with nothing to lose and an affinity for his little fountain pen can wreak all sorts of havoc via pardon and fiat.
Don’t forget elephant4life a compliant Congress, which allocates the money/these trillions of dollars in debt. We’re talking numbers like speed of light here, and nothing goes faster – yet? – than speed of light.
Don’t forget N. Pelosi still in Congress and revelling in the revenge she promised at the loss of the election of 2000 /Millenium to that “vast right wing conspiracy” designation by big momma of the Democratic Party Hillary Clinton. Whose background via detailed and honest investigation made public would without question be a teachable moment for people who think either Clinton acceptable representatives of Americans.
Don’t forget a compliant Congress/Senate many heavily invested in big government central control/dictatorship and their paymasters in business and banks, international governments and shills in media,entertainment, education and Court. Perhaps Dr.Hanson is right in his optimism. Let’s hope so. But Obama is merely the figurehead for the totalitarian statists in many seats in the nation.
But given the dramatis personae on the stage, with their known behaviours, it might be prudent to remember the old Adam. There’s still plenty of time for these duplicitous vandals to fundamentally damage their hated target America and her people, as to render hope of awakening from their contrived nightmare just another Dream.
The one thing Obama did was to present clarity between what was the liberal left and the conservative right. Now that people, especially the young, see for themselves what life is like under leftist government, there’s hope that there will be a change.
Until 8-12 more years go by and the country will once again elect a collectivist moron because of hope and change message and the stately medias bias toward the party of the folks, etc…etc… We are doomed to repeat this crap over and over until we get it so hopelessly messed up that it can’t be fixed short of a shooting war or worse.
Jim, I’ve said it a little bit differently. It willbe the bullet not the ballot that changes this country. Most Libs will never bear arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.
And what war will this be? Against a weak power, like North Korea, another far away conflict people can ignore? Against a strong power, like Russia or China, who have nuclear arsenals and who no doubt wouldn’t fail to use them if they started losing? Against the ‘Middle East’ – which doesn’t exist as a cultural, political, or even an economic unit?
Or against one another? There’s no sectionalism in the U.S. anymore – Texas is not overwhelmingly much more conservative than California – and Dems and Republicans live side by side. Should we start shooting one another because we can’t agree over ideas? Should nuclear-armed Montana just nuke away the coasts and replace the American flag with an radiation symbol, then of course abolish income taxes after?
Or should we just keep experimenting? This is not the 1980s and returning to Reagan’s formula won’t work twice. Nor, apparently, will stimulus. Nor will having another World War.
I suppose, economically speaking, the Black Death was pretty good overall for Europe. Freed up a lot of land, capital, and resources. Maybe a good nuclear civil war will bump that GDP up again.
Don’t be ridiculous, Reagan’s formula works all the time. Besides, it’s got no history of not working again, it’s only been tried once!
Nancy, I tried to explain the difference between classical liberals, corporatist liberals (you call them the Left or left liberals) and conservatives here: http://clarespark.com/2009/12/16/perceptions-of-the-enemy-the-left-looks-at-the-right-and-vice-versa/. It is a way of decoding political rhetoric.
Also, I was delighted to see a note of optimism in VDH’s essay. He is not one of those who believes in the cyclical view of history, i.e. of inevitable decadence. Bravo, sir!
Thanks to all who have visited my website, specifically the blog that attempts a political glossary. Since posting here in favor of VDH’s strong rationalist belief in democracy, I have written another one, but not so favorable to a different author: http://clarespark.com/2011/10/04/coulters-demons-melville-john-adams-on-the-late-18th-c/. Don’t know if anyone will see this, but here goes.
Like so many of us, I hope fervently that this “post Obama rennaissance” will be a reality after we get our feet on the ground again, after a change in administrations. But we must be very, very careful during this coming very crucial election not to elect anyone on the basis of mere shallow “charisma”. I hope we’ve learned our domestic lessons; vitally important also we should bow to no one…no one….internationally. This is not a secondary school popularity contest, we must remember that we’re actually at war against Islamist terrorism and its closely associated subversive penetration. We seem to resist accepting that fact as a fact. We must elect a pragmatist at preserving our America.
I have a lingering fear that with our increasingly short attention spans and our apparent obsession with achieving the near-instantaneous by the shortest possible route towards any change at all….. that we’ll elect another lightweight but well-tailored suit accompanied by that media-esque electoral “winning smile”.
We simply cannot permit ouselves to be “cool” and flippant and offhanded again.
It’s weird how you think we need a new President to take the Islamic terrorist threat seriously when nearly every week we see a new top terrorist killed. Obama seems to be quite good at that.
Or am I forgetting the Tea Party paradox: Obama is responsible for the 2009 1+ trillion deficit created by law signed in by Bush before he left office, and Obama is responsible for TARP despite not yet being in office when it was created, but Obama cannot receive credit for any national security success no matter how many years we are into his Presidency.
I’m an employed, educated, married, white heterosexual, and will vote Obama for the second time in 2012. I hope you all have fun hero-worshipping potential candidate after potential candidate (Palin, Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Christie, _______) while Mitt freaking Romney waltzes into the nomination. The business wing of the Republican party plays you all for rubes but they can’t possibly believe their luck; their guy is going to get the nomination with only 25% of the vote because the hillbillies can’t pick one person to stand behind. In the strange Tea Party “real America” world, one comment or one debate somehow can destroy decades of actual work. Tearing down is so easy, isn’t it?
And to all the commenters talking about how only “one or two people” booed the soldier: get real. Republican candidates always, with religious fervor, go out of their way to cozy up to any soldier they can find in a public space. But yet not one of them even bothered to thank this guy for his service. Is it coincidence that I have seen 100% of Republican politicians thank troops for service up until the time a serviceman turns up who is gay? Is it just chance that the trend is broken at that particular junction?
Last of all, you people need to drop the “being gay is a personal issue” line. If a heterosexual soldier can talk about going to the movies with his girlfriend, then Mr. Gay Soldier Volunteering And Risking His Life In Iraq So You All Can Have The Freedom To Hate Him deserves the freedom to mention to his friends that he went to the movies with his boyfriend. It seems so absurd to me that, in America, I need to convince others that a soldier should be able to actually verbally mention the existence of his loved ones and/or family, but that is where we are. You are losing this issue with the American people, rapidly and thoroughly. Good work!
Go Tea Party! Obama 2012.
“Or am I forgetting the Tea Party paradox: Obama is responsible for the 2009 1+ trillion deficit created by law signed in by Bush before he left office, and Obama is responsible for TARP despite not yet being in office when it was created, but Obama cannot receive credit for any national security success no matter how many years we are into his Presidency.”
I don’t know if you were here at PJM when Bin Laden was killed but a lot of people gave Obama full credit for that particular national security success. But Bin Laden’s death did NOT erase all of Obama’s failings as a President. Perhaps you think it should have?
There are people who think that way. I’ve actually seen people who hated Hitler look at least a little softer when they found out he loved dogs and was good with children. The same thing happened when they learned that Stalin loved gardening, particularly pruning the fruit trees at his dachas. Suddenly mass murder and horrific oppressions of people seemed to pale in significance when it turned out that these men had at least one positive aspect.
Most PJM readers are unwilling to discard all of Obama’s negatives over a tiny number of positives. We give credit to Obama for his achievements; we just haven’t seen very many. What we have seen is a long string of actions and inactions that call into question Obama’s fitness to lead this country. His few modest successes do not come close to outweighing the negatives.
Brett is just a troll. Can’t you tell by now? You can’t argue with them. It assumes that logic holds any sway at all. It does not. If logic was employed, there would be no Brett. His only argument is, “You’re a poopyhead”.
Also, the rule of single first names that you normally don’t see here, makes him a Move On Soros troll.
Don’t waste your time.
Obama didn’t kill OBL – the seal team did. The president is not to be lavished with praise simply for giving a single order than any one of us would have issued. Doing the obvious isn’t courage or leadership.
Get that through your head, first of all.
()bama voted for TARP while a senator for 136 days, that’s what makes him responsible for it (TARP).
The problem isn’t simply getting rid of Obama. He is the symptom, not the root cause. How do we recover the American Universities corrupted by Progressive philosophy? How do we recover the churches that preach liberation theology and social justice instead of the words of Christ? How do we recover the news and entertainment media so that they create news that accurately informs and analyzes and shows that are worth watching? How do we convince women that yes, staying at home and having a 2 or 3 children and raising them well is a viable career choice? How do we convince men that they need to stick with their families instead of working their way through a chain of women? How do we remind the judiciary of the meaning of the Constitution and convince them of the importance of interpreting it properly?
Unless we can do these things, we will only lose one Obama to elect another, or worse.
Yes, the list of institutions to rebuild or replace is a long one. But the sense I have is that Obama, and perhaps even more importantly the reaction of those institutions to the dramas of his presidencey, has been the final straw for the camel. Progressives went all-in, tip every hand, exposed every agenda.
Sure, many of us knew what they were all about long ago, but the country was willing to live and let live. What harm could a bunch of moldy professors do?
Plenty, it turns out. The Left has created or infected a multitude of parasitic institutions that can only exist if we, the regular folks, allow them to. I don’t think we’re going to allow them to much longer. We used to content ourselves with debating them while they continued to fund their subversion out of our pockets. I think we’ve decided not to debate them any longer and to simply destroy their funding. Cast them out, off the public dole to sink or swim on their own.
They’ll sink, like the Public Sector unions in Wisconsin.
There will be a lot we have to rebuilt to replace what they’ve sullied, but I can see on on the path to doing that now.
When the education bubbles pop, the involved institutions (if they survive at all) will be cleansed. I expect a lot of institutions to simply be replaced, because they are too mired in rigid ideology to be able to adapt, and too filled with people wanting sinecures to be able to put themselves to the test.
End student loans, all they do is enslave young people to a life of debt. Federal dollars for colleges ensures that schools will enforce the statism of their benefactors on their staffs.
The answer to this is, no, we are not going to be able to “take back” academia or sanity in government. At least not in our lifetimes. Because no matter how much evidence is available, people will make excuses–and come to truely believe them–in order to make it fit into their view of life. You are simply not going to be able to change an infrastructure of idiocy overnight, and probably not even in a lifetime. It would involve too many people dumping an ideology that has defined their lives, resulting in de facto self-condemnation and nullification of their lives. You all seem to understand and agree that the human condition is fallible, but I also see you all dreaming of the day when people will “wake up.” In the meantime, we slip further down the path to bankruptcy, mediocrity and loss of our culture.
So what do we do? We divide the country. And let me be the first to throw in an opinion on how it should be done. Anyone else who has an idea, please chime in:
1. Social Conservatives: The Southeast west to Texas and up to and including DC (that’s obvious).
2. Libertarian Conservatives: Washington, Oregon and all points east to Illinois (excluding Chicago). If Canada joins in the breakup, the western provinces would most likely naturally join this union.
3. Liberals: Everything else. A causeway would be given stretching from southern California, Nevada, southern Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and up through Kansas, Missouri then all points north of and including Kentucky, West Virginia, to Baltimore. Utah may have to give up the bottom half of the state for additional land to their north (they can possibly go it alone or choose Social Conservative Land, but will not be able to connect.) If Canada joins, liberals get everything east of Manitoba (except perhaps Quebec).
This map has the best chance of making for as little disruption as possible (which, admittedly would still be a lot). However, dividing the social conservatives from the libertarian conservatives would both avoid inevitable future conflicts and permit a solution to uniting Liberal Land from coast to coast. And yes, we end up with conservative Arizona and Kansas having to fall in with the Liberals, but somewhere there have to be compromises. And with massive immigration inevitable from Mexico, Arizona will ultimately be a lost cause anyway.
Any thoughts?
I am originally from Indiana, you forgot that very conservative state. I now live in Arizona. Out here, people are pretty independent thinkers and well-armed. Don’t count us out.
You know, I actually thought about Indiana. These boarders would push and pull depending on just how many people each new nation would have. I’m making a very rough estimate that half will go liberal, with 25% social conservative and 25% libertarian conservative.
As for Arizona, you might want to think about swapping land in a safer area. Arizona is just a cork in the bottle. If you want, I can send you some chamber-of-commerce photos of Wyoming. Cold, but quite beautiful. And if Alberta comes along, with North Dakota its got the oil to keep you toasty warm. Unless you’re partial to the social conservatism. In that case, try the Southeast. (I suggest the Ozarks.) But if its desert you want, west Texas is wide open.
Any thoughts? You really don’t want to hear them. Give up Arizona? It is to laugh.
“So what do we do? We divide the country.”
How exactly do you envision such a division taking place? Who would be in charge of implementing it? Demographically speaking, libs & cons are pretty thoroughly blended together in most parts of the country, with libs being concentrated more so in places like Washington DC, CA & the northeast.
I don’t see any way this country can be divided without the spilling of blood.
Let’s get away from the spilling of blood for the moment. I, for one, would be happy to move to allow myself to live in the society of my choosing. And I’m sick of having my culture polluted and slandered by practically every media outfit in the nation. I’m also sick of hearing about how our soldiers are either evil or pitiful hicks. That every foreign policy decision this country makes is inherently corrupt by association. That I’m tainted by original sin for my sex and color of my skin. That all evils are blamed on those very values I was taught as a child and continue to hold near and dear.
If having to move to get away from all that is too much trouble for you, I’m not sure you’re considering all things for you and your children, and theirs, and theirs, and theirs. And yes, I know things are pretty mixed up right now, but they seem to be leading more and more to conformity of living amongst those sharing political beliefs. And by not acting while we’re in condition to do so, it might just come to that blood bath you were talking about.
At least you got Wisconsin right. :) Smaller government, more local government is happening here. Once DC gets a wake up we’ll be in even better shape!
Glad to hear it! But don’t hold you’re breath on DC.
Oh! my confederate friends, if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again…. seriously
Please see below.
Or: You just suck it up and somehow bear the burden of living in the most successful country in the history of the world, despite the awful, terrible, nearly unbearable hardship of there being other persons in that country who dare disagree with you on some policy issues.
I know, this is a tough lot to draw, but we all have to make due with the tragedies of our circumstances.
Its not only that we disagree with certain points, its that you guys hate what America has traditionally stood for. How are we supposed to live forever with one side actively trying to undermine the other because of FUNDAMENTAL difference on how they should be governed? And this isn’t done through sober debate but rather through the left literally demonizing the right for everything they do and hold dear. Admit it. Here’s a list of things that have historically been associated with America that you guys find repugnant:
1. Religion
2. Self-responsibility
3. Gun rights
4. Boot strapping
5. A color-blind society
6. War of any kind for any reason
7. Progress (in its classical definition)
8. Wealth accumulation
And the list goes on. You don’t have to apologize for or explain your positions. Its what you believe, and I respect that. But what I do not respect is your ready willingness to betray your own people. How do you do this?
1. Claiming that terrorists are victims as much as those killed by them. And inso doing, giving succor to an enemy and encouraging them to go on killing Americans. In fact I really don’t believe you guys even believe this. Its just a way to attack an America that represents everything you loath. After all for a liberal more than anybody else, the ends justify the means.
Also being so willing to take the side of the enemy with zero thought as to why we are at war with them or who’s killing whom. It doesn’t matter, its all America’s fault. Regardless of who pulls the trigger, any innocent who dies is America’s fault. And it doesn’t matter how many would have died if we hadn’t intervened or what kind of vile life these people would be locked into for eternity, all negatives are America’s fault with no recognition of any positives.
2. The conspiracies your side creates against this country and then goes on to religiously believe with no thought of temperance is what people do when they think about their worst enemies, not their friends. One bad decision by this country becomes justification for absolute metaphysical belief that the US is guilty of all conspiracies. One bought-into conspiracy feeding a reason to believe the next.
A fundamental question that needs to be asked when contemplating division is: “do I trust my fellow countryman to cover my back when its my word against someone else’s (and especially when that someone else is a terrorist or tin-pot dictator)?” Here I truely, deeply believe that you and your friends wouldn’t hesitate to sell me down the river. Your willingness to move to hyperbolic rhetoric–regardless of its consequences to your own people–proves to me that you view me as an enemy to be removed.
That’s your choice, and my choice is to get away from you. Please allow me to do so and not hate and hold me captive in your–to me–hellish universe. Being a white male, your side has decided that I am enemy number one. I reside at the bottom of the totem pole of your list of those preordained self-righteous and those corrupted by sin at birth. And you justify this with hate-filled proclamations of how “sub-consciously” we whites are all racists who may or may not even recognize it. But you want us to believe your witch-doctory unquestioningly. You create fantasies about all of us secretly meeting in country clubs plotting out how we’re going to keep down everyone else.
These are not just little differences of opinion. These are things that tear a country apart. Let’s face it, we both mutually make each other sick.
You voice some valid concerns, but make it sound as if all the “hatred” is coming from the left. Yes, the cultural and values differences are significant, but I hope that they can be contained WITHIN our country as it stands now. Also, it is not true all all the Dems line up on one side of this values system and all the Repubs, or virtually any one on the other.
My reading of the situation is that once GWB went into Iraq, the left became over-the-top vitriolic against him and much of the right was the same against Obama from day one.
Romney, I think has a decent shot at being more of a true centrist, which will make him despised by both poles, but he may be able to build from the center.
Are you mad?! divide the country?! No you fool, we take it back! No matter how long it takes!
I think I’m right when I say I detect a little sarcasm here?
Don’t lump eastern Oregon and eastern Washington in with the parts of these two states that lie west of the Cascade mountain range. West of the Cascades, the liberals reign, based on the preponderance of them in (from north to south): Bellingham, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Portland, Salem, Eugene. We missed out on getting a conservative for governor of Washington following some creative vote counting in King County (Seattle & environs).
You know, here’s the problem with not including the west coast of those states. Ideally when dividing up the country you would like to see each new nation sharing common assets in proportion to their population. One huge compromise is the need to limit two out of three of these new nations to being one-coast nations. This is necessary because of the huge NE stronghold of the liberals coupled with pretty much uniform liberal west coast. If you are going to connect those two points together–which is pretty high on the priorities list–as contiguous states, some compromises have to take place. And believe me, there will be plenty of space in the liberal zone urban areas that will be vacated by conservatives for liberals from Oregon and Washington to fill into.
One compromise is that states like Kansas and Arizona go liberal. But Washington and Oregon would pretty much have to go libertarian-conservative in order to allow for at least one section of one coast to be contained within the new libertarian-conservative nation, along with the need for at least some urban areas. The option of any conservative nation being formed in the southwest would result in an ever expanding hispanic community increasingly at odds with the less like-minded conservative community. Hispanic politics has proven to be far more compatible with that of the liberals.
So what you inevitably end up with is a diagonal line across the country from NE to SW that has to be accommodated. Since a nation ideally needs to be held within one boarder, a division between the two major factions of the Republican party is an obvious answer.
This isn’t Yugoslavia. There’s no neat way to break up the United States, and were that to happen, the north American continent would promptly be invaded by international enemies seeking to take advantage of a divided superpower.
I’ve run out of patience with you armchair civil-war proposers and “lets just break up” types.
You’re nuts.
You know, your claim of nuttiness might hold more water if next time you don’t introduce it with an insane statement.
“The problem isn’t simply getting rid of Obama. He is the symptom, not the root cause. Unless we can do these things, we will only lose one Obama to elect another, or worse.”
I agree completely with your basic point that our institutions are horribly damaged and need major reforms so that they make sense again.
“How do we recover the American Universities corrupted by Progressive philosophy?”
I’m inclined to think this one is actually fairly simple. I’d like to think that a great deal of the nonsense we see coming from our educational institutions would vanish if the instructors were made to have some contact with the real world. It is surprisingly easy to live in a fantasy world of ideas and theories about how this or that change to the world would make it work better if you never go out into that world to see how people really live. It is much harder to sustain illusions when you actually have to interact with the real world. If all of our professors and teachers simply had to work at an honest job for a while and see how the world really works, I think they’d soon lose a great number of their illusions and return to earth. If they were all required to work in the private sector (or the military) for a relatively short time – I expect a year or two would suffice – I think we’d see a dramatic change in their attitudes. Let them drive buses or wait on tables or work shifts on an assembly line for a while instead of living in their little fantasy bubbles.
“How do we recover the churches that preach liberation theology and social justice instead of the words of Christ?”
Clearly, this is not a problem to be dealt with by governments. Government has no business whatever in selecting clergy for any church. This needs to be a matter for members of the churches in question. I’m an atheist and I have only the vaguest idea of how clergy get selected in any given denomination but it seems to me that if the congregation has any role in the selection process, they need to make their feelings heard. Otherwise, they need to vote with their feet and leave individual churches that have objectionable clergy. If their local church’s clergyman is unsatisfactory to them, they should try another church of the same denomination to see if that clergyman is more acceptable. If he isn’t, move on to another denomination or start their own.
“How do we recover the news and entertainment media so that they create news that accurately informs and analyzes and shows that are worth watching?”
We could buy them outright and put them under new management that has different policies. Obviously, not many of us are sufficiently wealthy to buy NBC or the New York Times as individuals but some are. We also have the option of buying into these companies as individual shareholders and electing new directors who can implement new policies.
The other option is the one that is, in effect, already being taken. We can boycott media that propagates lies or other objectionable content. If you don’t like the views expressed in the New York Times, don’t read it. Get your news from other sources. There are many, many new sources of information thanks to the internet. Newspapers have been in decline for decades and even TV viewers have been turning away from the old broadcast networks for years.
“How do we convince women that yes, staying at home and having a 2 or 3 children and raising them well is a viable career choice?”
I would replace the word “women” with “people”. I know there are families that have stay-at-home dads that seem to be perfectly functional and happy. I would not want to turn back the clock to the days where a woman’s lot in life was to be “pregant, barefoot and in the kitchen”.
I think this is a very difficult problem. An entire generation (or perhaps two generations by now) have been brainwashed into thinking that two incomes is the only reasonable model for a family and that child-rearing is a soul-deadening experience. A lot of families love the extra income that comes from having both adults working and convincing them to do without that income is going to be a big challenge. I don’t have a lot of ideas on how to persuade people that a return to the one-income family is a good thing.
“How do we convince men that they need to stick with their families instead of working their way through a chain of women?”
Again, I would amend that to note that significant numbers of women are just as promiscuous as men can be.
This is another tough problem. I’m sure we’ve all heard the observation “Why buy a cow when milk is cheap?” and see how it applies here. If there are no negative consequences to behaving this way, it doesn’t seem likely to stop. Perhaps raising the penalties for being a deadbeat on child support would encourage better behavior on the part of the abandoning parent. Reducing the government benefits given to single mothers might also be useful, although this would tend to hurt the child more than the mother. Sexually transmitted diseases will tend to punish both men and women for sexual indiscretions but they aren’t within our control.
“How do we remind the judiciary of the meaning of the Constitution and convince them of the importance of interpreting it properly?”
I’m not sure if there is a reasonable quick solution to this problem. Obviously a purge of the judiciary to get rid of those who think the Constitution can be ignored is not politically practical. It would be regarded as the equivalent of a coup by the left and would be regarded suspiciously by even many on the right.
I’m not even sure that there is a reasonable SLOW solution to this problem. Given that judges are elected and not appointed, at least at the lower levels, I’m not sure how to ensure that voters only elect judges who respect the Constitution. Since even Congress seems willing to appoint Supreme Court justices who don’t feel the Constitution is binding, I don’t see how we can ensure that judges at ANY level take the Constitution as the bedrock of our laws.
” . . . our system of government remains. And it will ensure us a stability abjectly absent elsewhere in the world.”
Even if, God forbid, Obama gets a second term, he will be kept in the corner by a Republican House and Senate. Yes, the founders’ calculus is still working!
I have spent 10 years living in Moscow, Russia. The mirthful success of the Ataaaaack Waaaatch parody could never happen there. The people have never had a taste of true freedom and most of them do not have the boldness to mock or even recognize government coercion.
We know the taste of freedom, and will not forget it. Thank you for your well-reasoned optimism.
I’m a believer but not for all the good and compelling reasons for a recovery presented. What is being experienced nationally today had a precedent in microcosm in New York where I live and not so very long ago.
It began with a disastrous progressive pol named John Lindsay. It was the late Sixties, civil rights was the height of political fashion and Lindsay was determined to do his bit for the cause. But not with his own money, heaven forbid. On the taxpayer’s nickel.
Lindsay doubled spending during his administration. In a time of easy money (the War in Vietnam was raging), Lindsay tangled needlessly with with the municipal unions even as he put thousands of the unemployed and unemployable on the city payroll in order to give them the dignity of a job. Those who couldn’t or wouldn’t work packed the welfare rolls.
The mayor’s generosity with the taxpayer’s money sparked a migration of the poor to city of from every state in the union while three quarters of a million businesses and a million productive New yorkers pulled up stakes and abandoned the city for places more conducive to capitalism and an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work.
Workers walked, trains and buses stopped running, garbage remained uncollected. The best school system in the nation collapsed. Police corruption was rampant. Crime soared.
Lindsay was followed by Democrat mediocrities of the same stripe. Under David Dinkins, the city hit rock-bottom. At long last, Koch was elected and began to turn the tide. Then came the amazing Rudy Giuliani and suddenly the sun broke out.
The change was immediate and palpable. The signs in the windows of every parked car informing criminals that there was no radio and no valuables in the vehicle and please, please don’t break in were no longer seen. Turnstile jumpers, graffiti artists, squeegee men, panhandlers, half-naked street hookers disappeared. Muggings and snatch-and-run thievery came to a screeching halt. For the first time in many years, the parks were landscaped and patrolled and ordinary citizens could cross Central Park by daylight without fear.
And capital investment poured in. In a matter of months, the entire city was cleaner and brighter. Until they turned out overwhelmingly for Obama, this Upper West Sider thought his neighbors had learned a painful but healthy lesson. Alas, memories proved short.
So I buy into your optimism, Professor. The sun is still out there behind the progressive clouds, just waiting to burst out and shine bright again.
If the nation is very lucky, with the like if not the person of Rudy Giuliani at the helm.
Thank you, Mr. levavi for your optimistic encouragement, along with that of Dr. Hanson.
To be honest, I have had to fight waves of pessimism within myself during the past few decades about whether the USA could survive the Progressive assaults against it. My love of history has taught me on the one hand that the sun does come out eventually, as you wrote, and that the truth, or at least much of it, often is revealed. Yet history also shows that great empires such as Rome and Britain eventually crumble, and good men and good ideas do not always win.
I think that as people who love our country and our founding ideas, one of our biggest challenges is to keep our chins up, and along with that we must always try to fight honorably. To me, Abraham Lincoln offers a good example of an honorable fighter on behalf of right–he was faced with one of the darkest periods in our history, yet he kept his integrity and his humanity throughout. In some ways the Progressives are less honorable opponents than Confederates such as Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis tended to be–Marx, Gramsci, Alinsky, Obama and others of similar ilk encourage all sorts of subterfuges and other wickedness for the sake of their causes. And the Progressive onslaught has been very successful, especially since the 60′s, but it hasn’t completely won yet, and groups like the Tea Party still offer us hope.
Ed Koch was mayor of New York before David Dinkins.
I stand corrected. Koch’s great contribution to NYC was the pooper scooper law. Doesn’t sound like much but for New Yorkers it was a quality of life revolution. Koch also repaired the entire length of Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn which–along with the sudden influx of upward mobile Russian immigrants– kept a large portion of the Borough from deteriorating into a slum. Most important of all he brought his personality and a glimmer of hope that life in the city didn’t have to be a daily struggle with squalor and crime.
David Dinkins and his Police Commissioner, Lee Brown, brought those hopes crashing down again. Like living under Obama and Holder.
What I remember most about Koch: In public he would often greet crowds with “How am I doin’?”
I hate to burst your bubble, but crime dropped precipitously from 1991-1993, the last three years of Dinkins’ term.
What we have witnessed the last 3 years will prove one and for all the genius (divinely inspired I believe) of our forefathers and the resilience of our Constitution.
We had to go through Obama to gain a renewed appreciation for the American way of life and God. Next on the agenda is radical Islam.
I predict the biggest single day gain in stock market history, when the results of 12 Nov 2012 are in.
“Obama is doing to liberal politics what no right-wing activist could dream up.”
Well, Jimmy Carter cured me and many of my contemporaries of this silliness for the rest of our lives. Barack Obama has been much more incompetent, plus has displayed a malevolence and stubborn tenaciousness to stick with what doesn’t work, qualities that Carter thankfully lacked. Obama may decimate liberalism for the next half century. Good.
Good article. Dr. Hanson is right about Obama’s reign of error continuing through next year—it’s what ideologues do and there is little indication that last year’s election has had much of an impact on him. He is also right about Obama being in the end good for the country in the sense that the results of his unrealistic policies have shown people exactly where to put in the big fixes once he is out of office.
Obama’s other gift to posterity will be reduction of the Democratic Party in the near future to little more than bunch of howling misfits that even the MSM will tend to shy away from until (and if) they rise out of their self-inflicted political funeral pyre and start making sense again–if this is even possible.
“Reign of error”. Surely that deserves memehood, if it isn’t one already!
I used to see that phrase a lot next to a picture of George Bush. :\
Let’s not forget, it took a Carter to get a Reagan.
True, but where’s today’s Reagan? I don’t see him amongthe current GOP presidential hopefuls.
We don’t have the luxury of waiting for the next Reagan, or the next Churchill, to lead us out of our problems. We can only work with what we have.
It’s our job – I mean you personally, Raymond in DC, and me personally – to work as hard as we can to hold candidates’ and politicians’ feet to the fire and keep them there.
Here’s what we need to do:
Make politicians and candidates feel accountable to us. Figure out what they should be doing and why, and tell them exactly that. Inform everyone we know about what we have learned, as much as they are capable of understanding.
Reagan was not Reagan as we laud him until he was President, or perhaps some years after he left office. This does not detract from him. It is more a statement about recent history.
Likewise, it took a Holocaust to create the state of Israel. (the greatest Darkness before the Dawn)
Yeah. That worked out so well for the United States…
Which part?
It takes a village … idiot.
Thank god, Professor Hanson! I can start reading you again. You were so convincing in your bleakness over the last year that I couldn’t stand it and had to give you up. Now, I see a sliver of green, a point of light, a ray on the horizon, a drop of rain in the desert, a sign that your words will at last make me bunch my fists in happy determination and say, “YESSS!”
When the stock market tanks, doesn’t it usually do so in October? 1929, Black Monday in 1987, and again in 2008. I’m thinking the market may tank this month, and next year after Obama is defeated, the market will rebound. Once Obama is gone, businesses will starting hiring again, people will build houses, buy appliances, buy cars, lawnmowers, lawn trimmers, TVs, etc. Our economy is in the doldrums because people are (correctly) afraid of Obama’s re-distributionist ways. Until he’s gone, your money, property, health and freedom are in jeopardy.
And to explain that last sentence, I’m sure I got the meaning. It’s addressed abstractly to the Republican presidential hopefuls:
“I and those on my side don’t believe in standing by silently while deployed servicemen are booed for being gay. (This, by the way, is what you did; a deployed serviceman was booed for being gay, and you didn’t speak up.) You’re running against me, so you evidently want to become Commander-in-Chief. Well, you can begin your duties by defending gay deployed soldiers, even if your constituents don’t like gays.”
Not sure why grammatically it stymies VDH. One may not like Obama’s point, but it is pretty clear to me. It is less clear exactly how many people booed, but it was not a good moment….was it? I mean hardly anyone here at PJM is anti-gay, right? ;-)
I watched that debate and the gay military man asked the question in a way that said “Unless you support open gayness in the military, you are opposed to gays. Santorum correctly noted that a person’s sex life is not a political issue. It is a personal matter and should be kept as such. Nothing wrong with the audience booing that questioner. He was a fraud and the audience knew it. Either you support my policies or you are a racist or a homophobic or whatever. I am real tired of people setting themselves up[ to be representatives of the downtrodden, as if group think is ever real.
Given the Left’s tactics, the questioner probably was there to (hopefully) spark some type of homophobic reaction. They didn’t take into account that cell phones can record audio as well as video. They are working this issue hard, to not much avail.
Much ado about nothing…The only people Obama’s comments gain traction with is the liberal Democrats. The rest of us could care less. Do I want gays to have equal rights? Of course. should they have all the rights of marriage? My religion and I do not agree. Can they serve in the military? Sure, if they mind their own business just like I expect military people of different religions not to prosletize to their fellow service members.
Last, do I think women should serve in fighting roles in the military? Hell no.
Thanks for letting me get all of that off my chest!
You are accepting the premise of the left. The person wearing the uniform was using it to leverage to get the audience to affirm his homosexuality. It was that trick which was being booed.
Wait a second! I haven’t seen any pictures of the event, but was the gay military member wearing a uniform? If so, there are some UCMJ problems with that. Just ask Adam Kokesh.
It was a YouTube question from a soldier currently serving in — Afghanistan, I think it was. Is there a problem with that?
Aaron. That was it exactly. Not booing the serviceman, booing the tricks used by the homosexual agenda crowd… booing the reversal of DADT… and Booing Obama who is pushing it..
Lots of boos..
I didn’t care that a few loons in the audience decided to boo this gay soldier. Two or three out of an audience of a few thousand is probably a smaller percentage than in the general population.
I *did* care that not one of the GOP candidates standing on stage bothered to thank this gay soldier for volunteering (he wasn’t drafted) to serve his country. Suddenly they got tongue-tied?
So our candidates are supposed to fall all over themselves thanking every person in uniform, lest they be thought unpatriotic?
The questioner asked a loaded question and was booed for trying to poison the well…and you think the GOP candidates silently approved of someone in the audience booing a man because he is gay? The audience members booed because he asked a “gotcha” question.
I’ve heard the audio recording of the event and the facts are beyond dispute. Go sell crazy somewhere else.
They booed his loaded question not his gayness, listen to the exchange and you will hear that he is not booed when he says he’s gay it’s only later when he asks his question. The Left twisted the incident, which in fairness the
right does at times to Leftists.
Obama’s latest charge is perhaps a preview of the campaign to come: he apparently won’t be running on food prices, the housing market, gas prices, unemployment numbers, GDP, the present stock market, the numbers on food stamps and unemployment insurance, the deficit, aggregate new debt, government borrowing, or consumer or business confidence.
A very good list, yet incomplete as it doesn’t include Obamacare, Operation Gunwalker, Solyndra, Lightsquared, and who knows how many scandals yet to be discovered.
Whosoever leads this Republic post-Obola must push for what will surely be labelled “radical” reversals. To deal with the debt, government needs to be radically cut. Will the great unwashed middle put up with that? I have my doubts. I think we’ll get about 2 steps back from Obola’s 3 steps forward toward the abyss.
The death throes of the left will be bad. We need a leader to who will maintain the death grip.
Thanks for the reminder Dr. Hanson that there might be at least a little light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel.
But is the glass half full or half empty?
“If the nation is very lucky, with the like if not the person of Rudy Giuliani at the helm.”
Will it never end?
Is the glass half full, or half empty?
Neither.
An Engineer will tell you it’s twice as big as it needs to be.
I’d like to know what the crowd was booing— the guy being gay or his messaage.
As well, if I was in the crowd, why would I want to know his sexual orientationt? If I was in the crowd, and had the chance to ask a question, should I preface it by saying I am hetero? Just asking.
john b, for heaven’s sake, get the story straight. “The crowd” did not boo; ONE PERSON was heard booing, and everyone around him tried to shush him up. More at http://tinyurl.com/3zfvsj9
It does sound like only a few people, but Santorum’s incoherent answer got a fair amount of applause. As I have already pointed out on another thread, his answer made no sense, but just gave a kind of “keep those uppity gays from getting special privileges” response, which the audience liked. He included the profound insight that no one should talk about their sexuality in the military. Yeah, that might happen.
“Nitpicking”. Nit Pick It Fence Butting?
D-White, do like Mr. President? Do approve of the way he has handled the office? Does a simple “gay situation” need to be elevated by Mr. President, so as to gin up some sort of support for himself, using a dead horse to beat a dead issue to death? Yeah, real classy!
I wonder when he will take the “Black Community” to task over their attitudes towards those freaky deaky gays.
He asks you with a grin
If you’re havin’ a good time
Then he fines you every time you slam the door
I suppose that you have to fire the bullets that are in your gun. It may stir something up if the Repubs are asked to comment. It’s a no-win situation for them.
Wow. Pure Tweed Faculty Lounge Zen. “I suppose”…
Does long term Tweed Tripping cause selective indignation when skin tone is in contrast? Or political affiliation? Has the Tweed/Denim Axis of Evil so programmed you that now 2+2=5?
Remember, Mr. President is half you know what. Why not Dreams of My Mother? No street cred there, Ping Pong Tongue. Who doesn’t get that? Tweed abusers.
Well, he puts his cigar
Out in your face just for kicks
Obama is a politician. Your pal the Thriller of Wasilla is a politician, albeit probably not as skillful a one, or maybe just has a smaller base; the x% Mr Lucky types fighting against the evil Boss Tweed, and sadly, most of those don’t know what the hell you are talking about most of the time. The politicians shoot their little pop guns at the other side. Some times they hit, some times they miss, sometimes they shoot themselves in the foot.
There may be a song in that for you. How about Boss Tweed takes on the Thriller for control of the Boardwalk Empire? Just try to pick up that tusk and lift it over your head, I dare you.
Holy Red Pencil Neck D-White! “Obama is a politician.” This is really good!
The Thriller of Wasilla vs. Boss Tweed! Damn! Did you down some expresso at the Sugar Shack, don a black beret w/ black sweatshirt (it’s all about “black”, you know), grab Lily Munster and some bongos, refuse soap, stink w/ purpose, and actually…. Think independently? Far From the Tweeding Crowd? The improvement is miraculous.
D-White, really, there is opportunity here. Forget about those offspring running up and down Wall St. You have arrived brother! You will be lined up with a BIG time lesbian entertainer who will positively dig your trip! Diss Sarah, love Mr. President, you’re in! This can be done, there are connections and favors owed, personal connections, yes, and what not. This do do – able. Move over Rover, D-White’s takin’ over.
Think, the Ping Pong Tongue, Tweed Trained, English Prof, in front of 20,000 attentive caged-mind souls, 100,000W PA system, packed with the best technology conservative engineers can offer, hanging on every freely associated Word of Wisdom, with a forward nods of appreciation not seen since Burroughs deployed the Steely Dan (“little pop guns”, soooo good!), or when that closet conservative Kerouac last vomited.
You know D-White, if one Modern Liberal can be saved from Mr. President’s public no nonsense abysmal failure fate, it’s worth it. Oh yeah, don’t forget, you’ll get “x%” of the net! To Be Determined by those Wall St marchers.
Ah, baby listen now
I’ve made up my mind
I’m tired of wasting all my precious time…
With all due respect, I cannot share your optimism as yet. One can be sure that if America is restored by the removal of the current regime, and his replacement is not just another servant of what Rasmussen calls the “Political Class”; then what you posit may well occur. But it is the matter of that restoration.
I take the call for suspending elections by a sitting Democrat governor, the call for less democracy in the country by the recent Director of Obama’s Office of Management and Budget in an article published by a magazine [The New Republic} known for floating Democrat trial balloons, and the call by Obama's former Green Jobs Czar for an "American Fall" to match the Arab Spring riots, along with the increase in violence and threats by Democrats and their supporters extremely seriously.
The Founding Fathers did indeed create "The American Constitution [which] remains singular and ensures a stable form of government of the sort absent in a Russia, China, the Islamic world, and even (or especially) the EU.”. But that assumes that the current regime intends to follow the Constitution. It is a hallmark of the Left, that such “bourgeois sentimentality” as obedience to laws and a Constitution when power is at stake is expendable. Indeed, abandoning them is creditable as far as the Left is concerned.
Given the events of the last 8 months [since the Wisconsin Democrats deliberately violated their oaths of office and fled the state, with the support of the Democratic Party and the Unions. to avoid a vote that they would lose]and the violence and vandalism in an attempt to overturn the elections; it has been apparent that the Left does not intend to follow the law or to lose power through more elections.
We have a period of darkness that we will have to pass through, I fear, before we can get a chance to see the dawn that the Professor predicts.
May we be ready for it.
Subotai Bahadur
your concerns are mine as well.
I agree, Subotai, with you. . . why haven’t all our great “Republican” leaders ( including, sadly, Jim Demint) been screaming from the rooftops about Gunwalker, failed energy policies, and all the scandals and dirty deals this current administration is stuffed to the gills with?!
For that matter, before the election of oblammo, why weren’t these same leadersd screaming about his ineligibility to run? Screw the birth certificate thing- what about the fact that BOTH his parents weren’t US citizens?
I fear most of the people here are looking at things through rose-colored glasses. . . . we are on the edge of the precipice, not coming out of the maelstrom.
Look for a “CRISIS” next year. . . and no leadership from our side to steer the country through it.
Be a “prepper”, look out for your family, and pray to God for mercy for this once great nation.
Subotai, I agree. Much as I’d like to believe that a Renaissance lies just ahead, there is still that “multitude of fools”, the many failed institutions, and the usual pack of RINO candidates that all stand in the way. At this point, with so many looming crises and over 16 months before there could be some relief (and so little likelihood that there will be), I just can’t see anything but hardship ahead. And I’m afraid that it will take hardships like most of us have never known or can imagine to make any impact on the fools. And if the fools awaken, which way will they stampede?
Precisely, SB.
Given the events of the last 8 months [since the Wisconsin Democrats deliberately violated their oaths of office and fled the state, with the support of the Democratic Party and the Unions. to avoid a vote that they would lose]and the violence and vandalism in an attempt to overturn the elections; it has been apparent that the Left does not intend to follow the law or to lose power through more elections.
Let me fix that for you, SB. “…. or to lose power through mere elections.
ACORN has been committing fraud under our very noses. Obama’s campaign turned off the security check system to the credit card donations, thus allowing foreign influence and naked cheating. The DOJ has declared open season on election mischief as the long as the “color affected” is in the “unworthy of protection” category.
Unions were given bankruptcy “preferences” AFTER THE FACT, unheard of in federal bankruptcy court and almost always a “before the fact” act.
The NLRB has openly attacked a private company and their choice of state for building a NEW facility…not even replacing an old one.
We have aborted, retarded and blockaded the use of our natural resources, artificially driving up energy prices, in an effort to hurt people enough financially to get them to stop driving their cars.
We have intentionally run guns to organized crime outfits, in order to make our borders LESS safe, so that an attack on the 2nd amendment can be tied to criminal murder.
We have intentionally “hidden the decline” and other pertinent facts in order to make humans the “cause” of “global warming”, so that money can be confiscated, then diverted from the members of the free market system, into “needy” countries, of questionable governance.
We have a period of darkness that we will have to pass through, I fear, before we can get a chance to see the dawn that the Professor predicts.
There are so many leftist landmines now built into our landscape, we will be stepping on them for decades to come.
I love VDH. Everybody knows that I am an unabashed admirer of him and his work. But, I do not share his optimism.
There is no consensus candidate for the Republicans, they still suck at getting ANY message out, the system through which the “message” of the far left is delivered…is jerryrigged, toxic, and vile. Mass media, Hollywood and academia are tainted earth, polluted with slanders, lies and treasonous filth.
No, I am NOT optimistic…certainly not yet. It’s no time to get cocky. Plenty of ground to traverse between hither and yon. And, watch every step. There’s a landmine hidden just beyond your last footfall.
I hate to rain on the parade, but the left will NOT go quietly before or after Zero is defeated. The dry runs are ongoing both racial and political. The MSM is strident in its defense of Zero and the abrogation of objectivity. The ruling leftists with the money will support Zero and the lefty 527s. The unions know they can inflict punishment with impunity. And this is during the run up to election night.
If Zero is defeated, the left will go beserk with violence. As someone here alluded, IT will come to violence. And the left must be defeated with all prejudice. Does anyone here really believe the left and us can coexist? Can we really share the same nation? The only thing that will save America is another civil war. I am not being purposely provocative but just reading the tea leaves. WE cannot coexist.
What, do you really believe that with a new president from our side that college professors and the editorial staff at the NYT and WaPo will go, “okay they won now let’s be fair?” Never happen. I suppose you think the left will go,”okay you win now end affirmative action with our blessings.” Never happen and any attempt will be met with black and white progressive violence. EPA, DOJ, DOEduc., DOE and the list goes on.
Nope it must come to war. The sooner you get your heads around this the better off we will be when it starts.
Ok.
Cain is elected president.
The senate goes 62-38 Republican.
Obama care is repealed.
9-9-9 plan implemented.
Entitlement reform.
National right to work law.
Minimum wage repealed…
Yes i think their will be violence as Obama, Johnson and Roosevelt are erased, but it will be worth it.
Bingo! Now please remove yourself from my head.
Well, it’s a long way from a sure thing, but if we do manage to defeat the disaster, then I’m already past the next stage. It won’t be a Renaissance, it will be like the release of a coiled spring. This country won’t flower, it will burst into an economic fervor that will rival the Reagan Revolution and possibly best it. It won’t be just the 2 trillion dollars rushing to the game, it won’t be just the relief from the crushing burdens of regulations and Obamacare, it won’t be just the optimism that will pervade the country, it will be the biggest sense of relief this country has had since WWII was finally won. I don’t expect to see dancing in the streets, but there will definitely be dancing in the homes of Americans.
On the other hand, we should prepare for a lot of violence as well, because the marxists and their union and fringe kook thugs will be taking out their anger on the country for months. It will be surprising if thousands don’t die.
But the bigger danger, in my opinion, will be if we relax from the relief and joy of having little lenin out of our lives. Because if we don’t turn immediately to the next phase, driving the marxists from the schools and media, than they will come right back in ten years just like the cockroaches you drove out of your kitchen, but not out of your house.
I hope you’re right.
I fear that, for some of us “seasoned citizens”, it may be too late.
See: Why employers avoid hiring the long-term unemployed
I’m not unemployed myself, but I’m UNDERemployed, and have been so for a long time. The IT market dried up. I updated my skills, but it was no use – no jobs for anybody who didn’t have experience, not merely training, in the new skills. So I’ve been working in retail. Yes, I’m good at that too, but it pays only a small fraction of what I once earned, and not enough to live on.
If and when the economy finally does recover, I will have been out of the IT labor market for so long that it will be very difficult to get another job in that field again.
You may have to go back into IT at a lower position than you are qualified for. At the moment, there probably aren’t any of those, but if the Republicans win, there may be.
Good luck.
It’ll take more than a Republican victory, I fear.
Both parties use immigration and visa programs to put YOU out of work
When the turnabout comes you’ll have plenty of chances for jobs in the IT space … at first maybe not at your previous salary but you’ll eclipse it within a couple of years. Your experience and maturity will be very valuable assets in the coming economic surge. You have real world skills and work experience, something that the recent grads with the new fangled “skills” won’t have and you’ll be very valuable in the future surge … Survive until then by hook or crook …
Something we can agree on proreason. You stated it very well. Truth and rationality are indeed virtues and a mighty combination for good.
Re: “The American Constitution remains singular and ensures a stable form of government of the sort absent in a Russia, China, the Islamic world, and even (or especially) the EU.”
Dr. Hanson, true enough, the constitution remains a singular document, and ensures “stability,” but perhaps not in the manner you think. These days, our political elites in both parties offer only lip-service to the constitutioneven as they rush to trample it underfoot. We have a chief executive, Mr. Obama, who is in office illegitimately, as he fails the test of article II, section I – the natural born citizen clause. Far from investigating the issue, a bipartisan group of Senators passed, with no debate and public discussion, Senate Resolution 522, by roll-call vote, in 2008. The measure “affirmed” that John McCain was a “natural born citizen” entitled to run as the GOP nominee for POTUS. The only trouble is, SR511 was passed not for the benefit of McCain, but for Obama. This nifty little sidestep, conducted by both parties, completely contravenes the constitution not only in letter, but in spirit. The truth of the matter is that the elites of both parties have long-sought to overturn the NBC clause, which they despise. Once in office, however illegally, Obama has been able to undertake a steadily lengthening list of crimes against the constitution, our laws and our traditions – and Congress has done nothing to stop him. The courts have recused themselves out of cowardice or political correctness.
Thus, what you call “stability,” I call the rape of our constitution. We are now, de facto, a post-constitutional republic, and have been for quite some time. The Democrats and Repubicans pay hommage to it during election time, but feel safe to ignore it the rest of the time. I do not agree with Ron Paul about everything, but at least he is framing questions in terms of the constitution, something I do not hear from too many other people.
The real question – one you are qualified to consider – is this: if the constitution fails in the hearts of Americans, and is no longer upheld, what comes next? It’s not just a hypothetical concern, because we are almost there.
‘…what you call “stability,” I call the rape of our constitution. We are now, de facto, a post-constitutional republic, and have been for quite some time.’
Amen. I would go further – we have now have had wholesale rape of reason itself. Post-modern thinking (flowing from critical theory??) means that we can’t even *discuss* constitutional principles with many Americans. Unlike other posts here, I don’t forsee the leftist stranglehold on the university system (and therefore on the thinking of the entire country) collapsing of its own weight. The damage being done needs to become a part of national consciousness as a whole. David Horiwitz’ (and others’) work in this regard is a start, but how to affect the overall cultural perception? It is a self-perpetuating nightmare. Alternative colleges, like alternative media, keep the remnant inspired and preach to the choir to a great degree (IMHO). I fear that it is going to take a person as articulate as, say, Ronald Reagan, with a *big* bully pulpit to break our danger into the mainstream.
The amount of marxist thinking that is now prevalent really scares me. I saw a really cool article a few weeks ago on the internet about how one company plans to have a “space hotel” in orbit within a decade, and I was terrified to read the comments on the article, most of which were *wishing horrible death* on those rich enough to take advantage of such a thing. The ‘littleness’ of the people and meanness of their dreams was sad – and the willingness to condemn those who had more money than others to death chilled my blood.
We need to dig in and build trenches – it’s going to be a long battle, with many fronts, and while I appreciate the optimism of this article, we must never make the mistake that the fruit will fall into our laps because (to us) our conclusions are so self-evident.
True enough. Rape not a bad metaphor.
But was it really ala Whoopi Goldberg rape-rape? Was there not a major degree of consent?
The Constitution organising the lawful structure to support the ethical base in the Declaration of Independence established a nation for SELF-governing CITIZENs. No longer SUBJECTS of a ruling court/elite/nobility.
Citizen members of a privileged club of equals with responsiblity for the civic life of the society/nation. Have American CITIZENS, the most privileged,the richest, the most respected and even envied in the history of the organised world been responsible citizens? Or,the evidence is overwhelming: WILLINGLY given over their civic responsibility and pride to self-anointed, self-propagating seducers as “elites”/nobles/aristocrats, “Exclusive” RULING organisations. Is such consent actually rape? Or is Whoopi correct in “it wasn’t really rape-rape”?
Have CITIZENS been holding responsible those persons they elect/select/choose to represent them? Or been negligent in permitting their SERVANTS -”representatives” of their Consent in Legislature, Judiciary and Executive – take over of the Household to manage according to their goals?
Have the CITIZENS permitted these “representatives” and “elites” to play the old sibling rivalry game with promises to some at the expense of other CITIZENS of cradle to grave love and care without protest and accountability. Perhaps Whoopie and her “it’s not really rape-rape” isn’t silly at all.
All decisions have effects. Negligence is a decision. Irresponsibility is a decision. Apathy is a decision. Destruction and theft of siblings property is a decision. Acceptance of those by the powers that be – remember in the USA, the CITIZEN is sovereign and governors represent ONLY WITH the CONSENT of the sovereign.
Many Americans either do not know or do not care that THEY – the CITIZENS are sovereign in the USA. Sovereign meaning supreme power.
There ain’t going to be any sunrise and deliverance for America.
We’re way too far gone down the statist road for that.
On the plus side, we’re like the late Roman Republic, powerful as hell and not all that easy to destroy. We’ll go on, likely for centuries, slowly declining, before the whole thing collapses in ruins.
So, we fight to preserve as much as we can, and stave off the final disaster as long as we can; and it’s no big deal, because that’s what ALL of us face in our own personal lives.
At least that’s how it looks to me.
The time frames for large empires to go down the tubes seems to be shorter these days.
We’ve already lost the Republic – that started when the too-often-idolized Abraham Lincoln flouted the Constitution to “preserve the Union” so as not to lose the South as a tax-revenue cash cow. Widespread acceptance of the loss of our liberties manifested in the Wilsonian era with the Federal Reserve, the income tax, and World War I, quickly followed by Prohibition. Yes, Prohibition was repealed, but then we had the New Deal…
Here’s what I figure. The federal grabbermint, like the EU, and like Obama himself, is “Debt Man Walking.” You spend what you don’t have, and you keep that up for very long, you go down the tubes, and that’s that. The federal government will break up at some point on account of the debt.
At that point, it’s anybody’s guess. Some parts of the US may revive into viable places to live; others not. It’s possible that the Southeast will re-unify into a loose confederation. I’m fairly sure that Texas, Alaska, and Hawaii will each go independent. Some other States, or parts of States, might link up with Canada or Mexico – or, worse, with the Muslim Brotherhood. The only thing I don’t see happening is the US forming itself again as an intact unit after a widespread federal government default and financial collapse.
Well, you could be right, but I don’t really see the USA breaking up any time soon, nor do I see much chance that we’ll change our interventionist policies abroad, nor will we change our gigantic all powerful nanny state at home.
Too bad we can’t stick around for a few hundred years just to see how it all turns out, and whose prediction is most accurate.
People never seem to see such events coming. Things like that seem unthinkable, until the moment they seem inevitable.
I would support burning the antebellum south to the ground again.
Thanks for sharing Rudebecca.
Do you even know what the term antebellum means?
“We’ve already lost the Republic – that started when the too-often-idolized Abraham Lincoln flouted the Constitution to “preserve the Union” so as not to lose the South as a tax-revenue cash cow.”
Whew — that’s some nasty revisionism there.
Revisionism? The Tenth Amendment would seem to allow states to leave the union. The point that this was perhaps the start of the Federal Government assuming powers not granted to it by the Constitution appears valid to me.
It will take about five minutes for me to be attacked as a racist supporter of the confedracy. Emotion trumps logic these days.
I’d like to know what the meaning is of all the apocalyptic ideas being spouted here… What is the big secret? What great change is going to take place after Obama leaves office? Does anyone really know?
I don’t think a damn thing’s going to change… Life goes on….
Dear Professor Hanson,
There is a wonderful passage in Robert Graves’ Claudius that has come to me often over the past couple of years. It is a grim but hopeful passage in which Claudius writes about letting “all the poisons in the mud hatch out” – a clip of this scene was used by PBS in the promo for the series, so I image most readers have encountered it. I found the following more complete passage on the internet, though I can’t vouch for its accuracy: “I have decided Nero should follow me so that one day the empire will revert back to the Republic, that is to some form of representative government. I have been too good an emperor, too fair and too honest. I will give Rome Nero and when he is done with Rome, Rome will be done with emperors altogether. It will be bad, exceedingly bad…worse even than Caligula but they have to have the whole terrible truth about just how bad it can be before they come to their senses. Let all of the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch out.”
It is striking how this Administration has done its best to stir the muck with no Clinton-like attempt to triangulate away the grotesque spectacle. For this, we should all be grateful. The great lesson of this transition, as with the Nixon collapse, is that our democracy may not be tidy, but it can be effective when the chips are down. I do not count myself among for whom January 20, 2013 can’t come soon enough because I believe there is still more work to be done.
In a separate article, published recently, you argued that the past two years have been a disaster for race relations. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is in race relations that the muck has always been the most toxic. In quoting Maxine Walters as the voice of reason, it should have been apparent to you that something good and hopeful is afoot. It is only from a catharsis of great magnitude, a catharsis such as this, that we will be able to finally relieve ourselves of the horrible burden of white guilt.
Yours truly,
ThOR
In God we trust; all others are suspect. I, too, hope for a revival, but foresee the possibility of collapse. The silver lining is that the 2012 election will tell us with crystal clarity whether the current American republic can be saved. If Obama or a squish like Romney is elected, we know that America is finished, but that frees us up to get working on the next great project for this continent. Civil war will be refreshing. As Russell Crowe ‘s character said in Gladiator, the nice thing about war is that unlike politics, you can look your enemy right in the eye.
“If Obama or a squish like Romney is elected…”
Hey joe, does it feel good to take cheap shots at the candidate who has the best chance of removing Obama from the presidency in 2012 as polls have consistently shown for months? Are you really unable to see the stark differences between the two men, their history and their thinking about the best course for the country?
Do you believe Romney is a Marxist who would continue the destruction of the constitution and perpetuate the welfare state?
Who do you like now, the liar from Texas, the glutton from New Jersey or Rudy Guiliani? Don’t worry, there are more waiting to be auditioned. Maybe at the Reagan Library.
If Romney is our best hope, then we might as well pack it in. And to tell you the truth, I’ve about had it with you moderate types. You’ve nearly destroyed our party.
Romney is McCain part deux. He’s a RINO squish. He isn’t going to be taken seriously on the issue of the repeal of ObamaCare or any other conservative agenda item.
What’s needed is a strong conservative like Perry or Bachmann. Not another “me too, only a little bit less” blueblood northeastern pseudo conservative. Nominating candidates like that gets Democrats elected – why would they bother voting for the imitation liberal when the genuine one is on the ballot?
23 Democratic Senators are up for reelection. Rieds senate has not passed a budget in 3 years. We need to dump these turkeies too.
Perhaps someone can share this article with Michael Medved and point out – “This is how you win by loosing!”
Dr. Hanson, Thanks for the positive statement. My own personal “bus stop” poll hints strongly that the pre-revolutionary changes in people’s minds and hearts are already far evolved. North American energy resources, the coming problems in China and Europe, Mideast instability, rising competitive abilities of many US businesses, and growing support for future budgetary restraint, all present reasons for longer term optimism. If we can steer through the remainder of the term of the interim presidential intern, the future may be bright. One of the more intriguing recent suggestions about corporations being cut loose from their current symbiotic Siamese relationship with government is the most refreshing idea since the Progressives captured government in 1912. GBUSA
You forgot to mention “Atlas Shrugged.” After a government-imposed Dark Age, much like Obama’s, the producers rise again, this time on their own terms.
The fantastic ruminating of America dividing or sub dividing like a Yugoslavian goulash. No, not quite yet. See theirs a little country called the Peoples Republic of China and we owe them our remortgaged fortune, and the image of Ben Franklin has a sentimental value in old Beijing that just isn’t going to hold up to the old cliches’, “It’s their fault”, or “talk to the hand”, or maybe the old standby, “He did it”. California, Massachusetts, are you listening. Simply a United States of America is going to have to pony up or we will have to come up with some new pop phrases like “Chinese foreclosure torture” or pop songs. “I fell in love with the Chinese Repo Man”.
“
Perhaps renaissance is a misnomer. The American idea of rights bestowed by God is eternal and it’s humane correctness thus not re-born but simply remembered. We are not going back to live a new iteration of a grander past time, but forward in our time with a more intimate acceptance of the truth of our condition.
Rush Limbaugh sometimes withholds comment on a subject until his listeners have had a chance to have their say because, “once I’ve told you what I think there is nothing more to be said”. Socialism, progressive liberalism, communism has had it’s day in the United States. There has never been a more fertile ground on our planet for it to have succeeded. The overbearing hindrance of personal liberty is a resounding failure. There has been a century of comment in our society regarding these -ism’s and finally, in 2012 the deliberate truth in this matter will be spoken by Americans and thus, close the debate.
Obama is the best thing that could have happened to this country. Who other than Obama could have illustrated more clearly the importance and significance of our fabulous country? Who other than Obama could have reminded us in clearer terms that the Progressive movement is bent on our destruction from within? Thank you Mr. Obama, for influencing a generation of people who love their country in such a profound way. 2012.
so true!!
the spinsters will use this notion to maintain obama as the “best” president our country has ever had if only to remind everyone of how bad things can get
Dr. Hanson is correct about a number of things, except for the result. Obama got fifty-three percent of the popular vote from voters whose concerns did not include anything on Dr. Hanson’s list. Nothing that has happened since will change that, nor their vote.
We can survive Obama. We cannot and will not survive the fact that we have slightly more than half of the voters who want what Obama is. That a rational person would say we got a disaster is both true and irrelevant.
I dont think 50% of voters wanted what Obama has done. I think many of those voters were ill informed and just got on the band wagon which is not a nice thing to say and not easy to change. As others have said the 2008 campaign was an American Idol contest as many people just phoned in their votes. When you have an education system and media that is just a propaganda machine, there will be a lot of ill informed people. However I am optimistic that the results of this administration have impacted so many people negatively that they are more aware of what it is and they dont want it. Seriously I think 20% of O voters knew what they were going to get the other 80% were stupid, ill informed or had always voted liberal and have not realized these people are not Kennedy dems.
Yeah and a hell of a lot of them should have known better. A hell of a lot of them had a hell of a lot of us screaming at them for months not to vote for this socialist neophyte.
What really frustrated me are all the senior citizens who voted in this clown – people in their 70s and 80s who should have known better. These people have lived through decades of Democrat governance and seen firsthand what it’s done to our big cities and to the country. They weren’t impressionable college students pulling the lever for the first time. They should have known better than to listen to all the scary predictions about what those heartless Republicans were supposedly going to do to SS and Medicare.
Seeing a blue-haired lady driving a Prius with an “Obama ’08″ sticker just makes me want to throw up. They’re like the captain of the Titanic – a veteran mariner who still managed to steer his ship into an iceberg.
He won’t get even close to that in 2012 (without voter fraud). Nowhere close. He’s done. Count on it. But, as people here are saying, the liberal progs/socialists will not go quietly into that good night. It won’t be pretty – but, it will be worth it. I’ve seen but a handful of politicians who have the guts to rid America of this nightmare. They will pay as well. All of them. The conservatives will emerge victorious.
The author completely ignores the biggest difficulty and am expense of conducting business. Rules regulations and restrictions will continue to stifle America
Amen
“our system of government remains”
You’re dreaming. It’s long gone.
To paraphrase the President and La Raza: “What Constitution? We don’t need no stinking Constitution!”
To return to “our system of government” which DOES NOT “remain”, we must:
1. Decimate the Civil Service by firing 9 out of 10 sniveling servants.
2. Sunset all laws and regulations. Test all rewrites for constitutionality by a Robespierrean Council .
3. Limit elective office terms and institute capital punishment for service disloyal to the constituition.
4. institute drug testing of all public servants, elected or hired, immediately.
None of that will happen. The FALL, despite dips and pauses like a falling leaf, remains unstoppable.
Yeah yeah…while we’re at it, let’s bring back the gold standard, repeal the 16th Amendment, and hell, all the others after the 10th. Your proposals won’t be implemented because they make too much sense…they won’t be implemented because they’re insane.
Let’s require all public workers to dress as Bozo the Clown, while we’re at it.
Idiot.
From your pen to God’s ears.
A great piece, for the sake of this once great country I pray you are right on target.
The Wicked Witch of the East (Frances Fox Piven) just called for a popular uprising. Roseanne Barr called for the rich to be beheaded. This is their farcical last hand (inducing civil strife to justify autocratic measures), but it is weak and doomed to impotent failure. Russia and China were unsophisticated, deeply impoverished, war-torn peasant societies; not composed of independent individualists. Thus they were ripe for the demagoguery of a Lenin or a Mao. Germany had suffered a humiliating defeat, territorial loss, a complete economic meltdown and decades of political chaos. It was ripe for the redemptive promises of a Hitler. Besides, all three had long histories of imperial rule.
But you cannot artificially induce such conditions, and then install a carefully groomed, hand picked dictator/puppet, and expect it to work. That they even thought it would reveals how blinkered they are by their ideology (and how brilliant the Framers were in pre-empting such attempts). In a way we can thank them for having revealed who they are, and what they truly intended all along. Fortunately for us they proved to be incompetent revolutionaries. They forgot to stay hungry (which, take it from someone who knows, is lesson one for all would be revolutionaries).
Their final collapse will be destructive, as they vent their failure on the institutions we trusted them with. Let them have their last tantrum. Then it will be our turn. We owe it to our descendants to sear this lesson into the national memory. Next time we might not be so lucky.
The Obama administration reminds me of a nightmare out of Charles Dickens. There are corrupt politicians and business people feeding off of our once healthy government and they are also trying to convert it into something that it is not, a socialist society built on the model of the failed European countries.
I sometimes feel like Nicholas Nickleby, a poor young man just trying to make his way in life, trying to protect his family, but also trying to overcome all of the evil, disgusting, business people and government officials who try to manipulate and control him. It is a terrible struggle, one with much pain and sorrow. But remember, Dickens not only showed how life is, but also how life should be. We will overcome these misfortunes and become stronger for them. For how could we really value the glory of independence if we did not have to first suffer under the cold hard fist of tyranny?
Better days are coming, my friends. It may not seem like it, but it will get better. Both Dickens and I believe that it shall be so.
i’d never heard the word ‘demagogue’ till a few years back…it’s definitely a word that needed inventing…
The real shocker about the whole Solyndra scandel is that the accountant’s issued a formal going concern opinion and the gov’t still made the loan.
Natgas can power millions of cars and trucks. That’s the ticket.
What has Dr Hansen been smoking, or snorting, or scarfing, or shooting? God will not bless the USA until we repent in sackcloth and ashes for the Abortion Holocaust. The great god Mammon will not bless us until we restore real money. The godess Reason will not visit us until we clear our minds of all the erroneous misconceptions we accept as normal and sound. As Dr Johnson put it, we need to clear our minds of cant. Dr Hansen also needs to tre-read his Greek and Roman history and reflect how far down the road to implosion we have gone in so many ways. All of us need to reflect upon the totality of our situation to grasp the whole of what is necessary for our survival. Will we do all this?
Yes, I know that Steven Chu is “brilliant” and a Nobel laureate. But that means no more than suggesting that laureate Paul Krugman was right about adding even more trillions to the debt. My neighbors know enough not to quip, as the know-it-all Chu did, that California farms (the most productive in the U.S.) will dry up and blow away, or gas prices should reach European levels, or Americans can’t be trusted to buy the right light bulbs, or a failed Solyndra just needed millions more of taxpayers’ money.
Chu has been on my sh!t list since suggesting, early in his Obama admin. ride, that we might combat global warming by painting our roofs and roads white.
During the BP/Gulf fiasco, a helpless Obama referenced Steven Chu as his brilliant energy sec’y, as if continuous verbal paeans to a Nobel laureate’s intelligence, might, in fact, plug the hole.
(I thought Chu might have dived down there and, personally, plugged the hole himself)
Chu’s department made the loan guarantees to Solyndra and, currently rushing to spend so called Stimulus money before some deadline, is involved in similar boondoggles.
These are all examples of the effete, academic mind at work.
I think Chu actually meant to say that we should keep our roofs inflated with the recommended air pressure.
Candidate Obama instructed us that we could solve our oil/energy crisis if only we’d keep our tires properly inflated.
And was elected him anyway.
Dang, I must have heard wrong, I got my roof tuned up and painted my car’s engine white.
And, in regards to a presidential candidate’s tolerance for slights against military personnel, more hypocrisy still: when lecturing Gen. Petraeus in September 2008 during the Senate hearings, Sen. Obama took no opportunity to criticize the MoveOn.org ad that had just appeared (“General Betray Us”) or to disassociate himself from fellow senator and rival presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton’s charge that Petraeus was essentially a liar (“the reports that you provide to us really require a willing suspension of disbelief”).
(did she mean “a willing suspension of belief” ?)
Both Hillary and Barack’s questioning of General Petraeus (delivered from their elevated senatorial bench) was revealing.
Obama came across as nervous and insecure, aggressive and assaulting General Petraeus, but very unsure of himself.
Hillary was in a little-girl-questions-big-general mode. Tammy Wynette-ish.
I have read this a dozen times and have no idea what it means.
It means:
“I am seizing on this artificial booing deal as an opportunity to, once again, demagogue (is that really a verb ?) those shallow, soulless republicans who oppose me. Since I am still working hard to paint a false picture of my own humanity and inclusiveness and to conceal the fact that I am an incompetent, condescending narcissist (merci, C Krauthammer), this attack mode, lame and shallow as it is, is the only one available to me.”
I hope this helps.
Blessed be! With a little luck, soon these two intractable malcontents(B+M Obama) will be passed from the body politic like so much FLATUS. I feel better already.
With the greatest respect for Mr. Hanson the sad fact is that the leftist distortion of reality will still be sold by the MSM, Academia and Hollywood after Obama is gone. Those three arms of what is now Establishment America (conservatism is very much the counterculture and very much marginalized) will push push push for statism regardless of its manifesat failure. Which means that any progress against statism will be progress against a steady gailforce wind. Which further means that only modest progress will be made and that the American people will forget the horror of Obama and return for a second helping of statist horror within a decade.
We will need to go through a “de-Demification” process in which the main perpetrators at all levels are fully exposed. We grassroots Conservatives, Republicans, Libertarians, Pro-Capitalists etc. (and even many newly minted Right-Leaning Liberals) will have to stay connected, engaged and active at all levels, all the time, for the rest of our lives. We must never forget that this time, we got by by the skin of our teeth. Next time our children or grandchildren may not be so lucky.
We need to embrace what is best about the liberals and their ideals (though most of it is naive fluff, the sentiments, at least as stated, are often good), but reject their coercive, collectivist approach; dismantle the excessive portions of the nanny state, deregulate and unburden the market, and effectively counter their propaganda by teaching kids how advertisers use emotional manipulation techniques to influence mass behavior. It is in an important tool that will help them preserve their freedom in the age of mass media.
We will have to begin by reversing every single Obama policy. Then identifying and attacking critical problems, like the infiltration of our major institutions by assorted leftists, statists and globalists. To do this, we need to make a spectacle out of exposing the galactic theft that has taken place under this regime; not to mention the assualts on our livelyhood etc. Once the majority of decent, hardworking citizens understand the magnitude of what took place under this cabal, the rest will take care of itself.
Hopefully you are right. In light of the recent statements by NC governor Perdue, and Orszag, I worry about if their will be elections in 2012. Any administration that would run guns to the cartels in Mexico, with no concern about the possible loss of life, is an administration that is capable of anything.
The most likely explanation for this gibberish is that O, having merely human reading comprehension, mangled what was likely just pedestrian demagoguery:
Well, daniel tosh is on cable making fun of race-based behavior. he could not have gone on TV before Obama. Before that, the most outrageous comedy was Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Vaudeville gets ahead by ten years, right? So, I don’t think race hustlers stand a chance in the next decade. Kal Penn actually worked for Obama, and his movies were basically- white people stupid, brown people good. Dan Tosh is- everyone is icky, and we can make fun of stupid, poor people. and ask if things are racist. South Park is still clanking along. It’s aimed at college students. I don’t think guilt or fuzzy thinking really persuades them.
I don’t know that academia stays liberal. Old liberals are what the new, fresh writers rebel against, right? And, now, more conservative writers are jumping in. Larry Schweikart has his giant book of American History. He’s writing smaller books, as well. I think others will get in the game. Joy Hakim has the kids books. Even that HBO series- you would have bored a generation that had the guy taught to dullness- and now John Adams and the passions of founding a country are chic. Or, say, Judd Apatow, making foul- mouthed films about conservative ideas- stay with your baby daddy, have a date night- things like that.
Celebrity women are having babies, and wearing nice clothes. That’s different than even ten years ago, where they tried to look not pregnant. Or freakishly naked- nobody really aspired to Demi-nudity. But looking like Nicole Richie? in cheap old navy clothing? that’s possible, and cute.
Old liberals are rude, and aren’t particularly fun around the dinner table. and, they keep acting like the “man” in charge is out to get them. When the “man”is their own son, it’s not fun. If you read the essays of, say, Erica Jong’s daughter-a model of restraint, and gratitude and decency- her mother, calling for more orgies at this age just sounds horrifying.
and, well, I don’t think people who didn’t vote before obama, will vote again. I was impressed at how all these people who had never voted in their lives voted for the guy. they WERE voting for his color. They didn’t know his policies, he just looked kind of like them. I had an old Hispanic woman ask me to touch her arm, so she could show me how excited she was, and how afraid, still, that she had voted. She was in her fifties. She didn’t know his policies. Her sister had called her up and told her to go vote. A son’s mother voted for the first time- she was spluttering that as a Jehovah’s Witness, she didn’t have to worry about voting -that was God’s job, to find leaders- but now, she thought she had to vote- again for that whole racial thing. She had no idea what his policies were. I’m with Ann Coulter- live by the stupid, die by the stupid. I don’t think they’ll find a voting booth again, ever. I hope not.
“our system of government remains”
Dr. Hanson, have you forgotten your Aristotle? Garet Garrett quoted his words in The People’s Pottage(1938):
There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.
There are those who have never ceased to say very earnestly, “Something is going to happen to the American form of government if we don’t watch out.” These were the innocent disarmers. Their trust was in words. They had forgotten their Aristotle. More than 2,000 years ago he wrote of what can happen within the form, when “one thing takes the place of another, so that the ancient laws will remain, while the power will be in the hands of those who have brought about revolution in the state.”
Between the Homily at St. Luke’s (Phoenix) yesterday and this fine piece of work, my wife and I are filled with new hope and anticipation.
We are a great country of good people and now we know what direction not to go.
Mike&Val
No doubt, the removal of Obama and Co. (which is by no means a sure thing yet in 2012!) will help. A lot of the thinking of progressivism (i.e. 60s liberalism) has taken a huge hit, and that’s all to the good. However…
Obama is not our _primary_ problem. He’s an exacerbating factor, making things much much worse, but we’d be in this mess even absent him. The roots of our problems go back to the 1970s, and are as much or more about low fertility rates and cultural problems as they are about government overspending. The latter is side-efect of the former.
Further, some of the problems come from ideas dear to the GOP and libertarian factions. Obama was actually on to something when he made that clumsy comment about ATM machines, it was a clumsy way of saying that automation and information tech is wiping out a huge chunk of the precise jobs that used to sustain the middle class, that plus free trade is eroding a large swath of the very voters who dislike the Democrats’ social agenda and military and diplomatic weakness.
The idea of a nation of free-wheeling entrepreneurs is fantasy, just as Marxist socialism is fantasy, and right now a good case can be made that the last thing America needs is more free trade, even if that is more economically efficient. The Club For Growth is not necessarily on our side, they want free trade and they want open borders immigration, and they don’t really have any problem with crony capitalism. Crony capitalism, after all, is less risk, less work, and at least as profitable (if you’re on the inside).
Nor is the corporate sector bothered by Obamacare. The same coalition that supports unlimited open-borders immigration supports Obamacare, and for similar reasons, it lets them keep the benefits while handing off the costs to the taxpayers.
The time has come for conservatives to take a hard look in the mirror and remind ourselves that America’s national self-interest doesn’t always line up with the interests of the corporate sector or even small business (though it does so much more often with the latter).
Also, the GOP voting base, the people who we MUST have turn out if we are to win, are also in many cases highly dependent on Social Security and Medicare. There is a huge swath of Red voters who vote Republican out of loathing at the Democrat’s social agenda or their internationalism, issues like abortion, gay marriage, national sovereignty, motivate them, but that doesn’t mean they’ve turned against the New Deal, like it or not.
Right now, we’re watching Rick Perry struggle, and on most points he’s just what the GOP voters have been wanting. But two things are killing him: his immigration policies, and his comments on Social Security, and they’re killing him not in a general election, but in the GOP primary race!
We have to be realistic about who supports which side and for what reasons, or we risk repeating the Dems’ mistake in treating 2008 as a mandate for policies that the public hated.
Great points.
Being a grunt at Walmart does not pay close to what an assembly line job used to and there aren’t even enough grunt positions any more. The predicted outburst of economic energy is going to be steered INSIDE this country…how? Have a question for a product or service? Call them up and you will be talking to someone in India. Stockholders demand profits; making things in China is more profitable. China can use all the money they get from other to further subsidize certain green industries and further screw us up. We are stuck inside this loop and until something shakes us out of it, or the Chinese develop a real middle class with middle class demands, we may remain stuck.
Has Obama solved this problem? Absolutely not? Do his rivals have plans that realistically get get us out of this loop? Not that I can see.
There is growing bipartisan support for getting tough with China and OPEC for all the ways they screw us over.
On the issue of getting tough with China, Romney and Senator Schumer are on the same side. Schumer wants to threaten China with tariffs if they keep deliberately undervaluing their currency. If Romney were President, he would sign that bill into law.
That’s going to horrify the globalist conservatives of the Wall Street Journal.
But there are also us *nationalist* conservatives who recognize that there are TWO exceptions where free markets have to take a back seat:
1. Don’t trade with the enemy–or with a potential enemy.
2. Currency manipulation is not the product of a free market, but is the product of the foreign government’s foreign policy.
Wrong! Rick Perry’s problem is that he is a liar. He makes his truth up as he goes along. Now his wife has promised to stay by his side so he doesn’t say any more stupid things, like calling “heartless” anyone who doesn’t support his loopy notion of rewards for illegality.
When did immigration politics and border enforcement become mired in racial politics? Simple, when an excuse was needed to satisfy America’s current dominant coalition’s policy preferences.
The coalition is cross-party, it’s an alliance of social liberals and 60s internationalists and employers and corporations who want plentiful cheap, scared labor. This unofficial, unspoken coalition has been dominant in our politics since the mid-90s. It’s the precise same coalition that backs ‘free trade’, Obamacare, abortion on demand, and a number of other things.
The employers want cheap, scared labor for obvious reasons, though they like to pretend they have higher motives. The liberals want to import voters since they’ve managed to alienate much of Middle America and the former FDR coalition with their anti-American and anti-sanity policies. Would they do the same for Koreans? If Koreans were a source of plentiful cheap scared labor and votes for liberal social policies, you betcha they would.
Which is why the leadership in both parties loves open borders, against the opposition of the rank and file, again, in both parties. Trying to make it a race issue is just a smokescreen, a way to avoid talking about what’s really going on.
Yes. The Republican party is in serious need of housecleaning. Those who are on our side have about a year left to prove themselves. The rest will be tossed aside.
At the risk of sounding egotistical — well, actually there is no risk here. What I’m about to write is egotistical — I take full credit for this new optimism from the good doctor. I commented in a prior post that his pessimism, while legit, was too Goldwaterian and not Reaganesque enough.
You are all welcome.
What’s that you say? Others have made the same observation? Sigh. And I thought it was me. At any rate, nice to see Dr. Hansen start to see the blue skies temporarily obscured by the stratonimbus clouds (or whatever the hell they’re called).
We need a leader who has a backbone of steel, a cheery outlook, and the ability to push reforms through. Just who would that reformer be? Why its little ole’
Sarah Palin from Wasilla. That’s why the Demons and the Rats don’t like her. She’s a drain the swamp on whoever’s turf the swamp lies. So a lot of oxes and sacred cows would get gored.
She would drill baby, drill. She understands the industry. And it could help turn our foruntes around fairly quickly. Wouldn’t you just love to tell the Saudi princes to just stuff it. And by drilling for oil, we could topple the Iranian regime (and probably a few other). Would save a lot of money on defense in the long run.
Well said! Would that I had such insight and command of our language. I will remain a contractor.
what a weak and pathetic column. it seems mr hanson has become a silly person.
And yet here you are, reading it and commenting.
“Israel is still a democracy; its neighbors still are not.”
It takes a lot of nerve for the Americans who took Arab democracy away or prevented it from ever having a chance to condemn them for the fallout of our actions.
Hopefully the American people have awakened to the need to not vote on emotion. The Republicans have a number of qualified candidates, we cannot afford to let down. When Michelle said she was proud of America for the first time we pretty much ignored that, she knew all along what the devious plan was.
Jesus came to earth to care for all people, for the rich to share their wealth with the poor. America will only regain its strenght if a leader arises that follows Jesus and not the Corporate Men. And it pains me to see ALL republican candidates talk Jesus but follow the mammon. God bless America.
2012 will be the “End of the Beginning” indeed.
The election will sweep a lot of dead wood out of the House and Senate, and, God willing, a new President and an adult administration as well.
As so many have pointed out, it is the downline which is far more important. The TEA Party movement has shown the way, now all of us need to organize and contest every area where “progressives” have established themselves. We need to elect thousands of mayors and tens of thousands of city councilers to restore sanity in civic budgets and defund the thousands of organizations which feed off tax dollars at the civic level and act as incubators for the Left. We need to elect school board trustees who will question programs and curriculums and ensure the ones that remain are based on real learning, not ideology. We need to buy stock in companies and become active voting shareholders, questioning managment and upending the boards of directors of companies (especially media and entertainment companies) that practice crony capitalism or support “progressive” causes.
We know the Left will fight with every means possible, but we have the numbers, resources and intellectual and moral foundations to work from. The economic revival Dr Hanson predicts will visibly lift millions from poverty and provide more resources and converts to the cause. It will take a generation to erase the Progressive’s shattered legacy, but it is a job worth doing, and doing well.
I have read you for years and have several of your books. I agree with most conservatives like yourself as regards their economic observations and “smaller government” orientation. But like most of them, you defend the “empire” and warfare state that we have constructed. The wars in the Middle East are NOT going well at all. The insidious drone wars are killing civilians and alienating the entire Middle East even further.
The neocon mantra of “they hate us for our freedoms” is absolute propaganda. They hate us because we have occupied the Middle East for decades and meddled there for almost a century. Isn’t it interesting that countries we don’t occupy don’t send suicide bombers our way?
As long as the GOP remains myopic about the “warfare state”, they will be hard-pressed to build a solid electoral majority. Now with over 70% of the country dissatisfied with the prolonged, fruitless wars, how can the GOP build a consensus?
I am a Vietnam vet and really detest the “chicken-hawks” (like Cheney who got 5 draft deferments) who eagerly deploy people to war. The government is full of such types.
I have a new rule I’d like to propose – Vietnam Vets may not comment on foreign policy matters.
Quite frankly – and this is coming from someone who respects veterans – your group simply has nothing of value to say on this subject. Every last one of you I’ve spoken to or heard from is a jaded, cynical, blithering idiot. It’s impossible for one of your number to consider that war is sometimes necessary, that the military and government tell us the truth once in awhile. Oh, it lied to you, it screwed you over in southeast Asia…therefore it’s rotten to the core for all eternity.
You throw around words like “chicken hawk” without having the slightest idea of what they mean. You got sent to the jungle to shoot it out with the communists forty years ago, therefore you’re the expert on military matters and nobody’s got any business getting behind aggressive actions aimed at defeating terrorism on its own turf. Peace and power to the people, man! Free love and all that hippie crap, right?
Your generation did way too many drugs. The sad part is that men half your age have a better grasp on American foreign policy than you do. Go away.
I remember the anticipation of the coming of Reagan in 1981. Still, that was messed up by Bob Dole who could turn wine into vinegar with one glance, when he delayed the tax cuts until 1982, costing Reagan the Senate. This time, the anticipation will be a tremendous roar as the American people’s animal spirits begin to burst forth after the election.
I get the bad feeling that Mr. Obama, when he leaves the White House, won’t be leaving in a helicopter…
While watching the most recent Republican debate, I said aloud, “When Obama is defeated we will all be able to breath again.” I didn’t realize until I said it that it was so true. I almost felt better just saying it.
Also, even here in very liberal Palo Alto, CA there was a table set up this weekend for those wanting to impeach Obama (not something I favor, as the electoral process is the best). But the reactions to the table were not hostile. Many were sympathetic.
Here’s a scary thought: If we defeat the current occupant of the Oval Office in his quest for a second term in 2012, he can come back and run again later.
I have this strange feeling that once Obama is voted out of office, he will be quickly looking for another country to live in. He won’t have the residual popularity and power of the Clintons; no future President is going to be reserving a Cabinet post to regale Michelle Obama with.
What’s terrifying is the possibility of a lame-duck or about-to-be-defeated Obama. His clique does not have the stomach for a loss, and would not hesitate to empty out the prisons with pardons or issue dangerous orders to the military that would result in mayhem, in what would be either a desperate cling to power or a spiteful act of ruin over which he cannot rule.
Not likley. By then he’ll be in jail in Mexico.
Someone said human nature has not changed in 6,000 years..I have heard evolutionary biologists say it has not changed fundamentally in 2 millions years..the period of our tenure as humans…
Your a bigget and a rasist!
Oh boy, I needed that. Uplifting. I will be sharing this with many others.
As usual, Mr. Hanson, a well written essay, with which I agree 100%
But the unstated premise, hinted at in your “I, like many, am worried about the Republican field”, is that we cannot afford to replace Obama with any old reach-across-the-aisle let’s-fix-Obamacare-if-we-can’t repeal-it RINO.
In other words, a vote for Romney is a vote for the status quo, no matter who wins.
Now is the time to take the gloves off. Let’s hear who and what you support and oppose in the Republican field.
I for one am counting on you, and am voting Herman Cain.
You mean the guy who’s sorry he didn’t stand up to a couple people in the audience who weren’t booing a gay soldier – rather, booing a loaded question? That’s your pick?
Cain and Gingrich and Huntsman and about six others are a distraction. It’s going to come down to Romney and Perry. Why the others are even in the race is beyond me.
Further:
The trends identified by VDH will be nourished by a technological revolution that will show the dot.com bubble to be a minor precursor. Unlike the breakthroughs in steel, steam and coal that fueled the industrial revolution of a century ago, today’s science demonstrates (and heralds) immense discoveries in a thousand areas. Plus, the capability of mankind to permanently leave this planet and gain access to the virtually unlimited energy and resources of the Solar System has finally arrived.
Let’s take the simple, leave-me-alone, keep the Federal Government in a box, Constitution of the United States, to the final frontier. It’s as American as apple pie.
Those who trust in the Constitution have got it wrong. It’s not the constitution, it’s the people, and the values that inform them, on which our strength lies. Take away the values, and the constitution is just a piece of paper than can be rationalized away – just as we have been watching happen.
This nation has a chance of reviving if and when it returns to the Lord.
The possibility of the people voluntarily overthrowing the modern American state in its totality is our only hope, tenuous although it may be.
The possibility that the people may voluntasrily overthrow the modern American state in its totality is our only hope for avoiding chaos and war, tenuous although it may be.
If only it were as easy as simply defeating this incompetent ideologue. However, the Obama administration’s ability to wreck the damage it has comes not just from the One, but from a constitutional jurisprudence which allowed the national government to expand far beyond its proper constitutional bounds even before we were blessed with the One’s presidency. The foundations of the federal leviathan are Supreme Court decisions since 1937 which have stripped away the Constitution’s limits on federal power. We can only hope to be free of this or future administrations of its ilk when we restore the original limits on the national government. Given how entrenched that Supreme Court jurisprudence is, this can only be done by amendments restating those original constitutional understandings. See http://www.timelyrenewed.com.
I hope I hope – but this depends on the American voter, who has shown a depressing willingness to rely on the pro-left national media -by now we should all understand that this media – NBC, CBS, ABC, NY Times, Time, LAT, WAPO et als are to be avoided at all costs – all of it, especially the entertainment.
Somehow, Americans have to pull together and rid the country of the professional leftist hypocrites that are now in charge of so many of our institutions and are celebrated so much in our media. No matter how many times these people are proved wrong in so many ways the ideas always rise up again. And they get popularized by a depressing litany of fools – like George Soros, the man who left communist hungry only to sponsor communism in his adopted country.
And, if we rid ourselves of these hypocrites, who is to say that the American voted, with their masochistic streak, won’t vote them in again?
I would say, it’s the media stupid, since the national media control the agenda. Bush and Rove were a perfect foil, both refused to defend themselves and left the field to uglies in the Democrat party, including Obama. Both are traitors to the conservative cause, which they almost destroyed. Bush has enough sense to be quiet most of the time, but Rove is annoyingly present, a man of little character who runs around acting as if his opinions still matter. Rove can’t undo the loads of damages he did that led to Obama, but he could do us all a favor and shut up.
So.. about the future. It won’t happen in a way that our children will be able to grow up in a prosperous society unless your readers do more than stare at their computer. Call your local Republican and Tea Party representative and get moving people! Put your time and money where your mouth is – or don’t complain when we lose it all to the people of ill will now populating Washington and our national media.
RIGHT ON!
Wait, did ultra-erudite VDH misuse the term “beg the question”?
I must have read that wrong…
Sometimes one must lose the thing of value before its value can be realized. America has seemingly been in PC induced coma since 1960′s. In a fog, we have watched greatness of America whittled away. Just in nick of time we woke up-Trojan Horse-Obama- was already inside the gate (Oval Office). Being a person of faith, I believe we are witnessing hand of God, pulling America back from precipice of disaster. Whatever, I am glad Marxists/Socialists overplayed their hand with Obama’s election. All deviants came strutting out of shadows. Unions, Soros and other I.O.U. holders lined up demands in hand. America woke up, alarmed! TAKE BACK AMERICA was underway. With numb skulls down on Wall Street as Exhibit A showing results of school youth indoctrination. On television they can’t utter a single logical sentence expressing illogical demands-for wealthy to give drug addicted, too lazy to work youth (youth in Syria, Iran, Egypt, and Afghanastan risk their lives just seeking a little freedom seen in West. Maybe rounding up a few, flying them to Syria and Iran and leaving them there is just the wake-up call they need. Keep the faith and the conversation going.
Mr. Hanson, You wrote, “Is the president trying to turn enforcement of a federal statute into community organizing?” Yes, his goal has been to community organize the entire United States and the World. Unfortunately, he has been getting away with it so far.
Obama’s only experience was being a community organizer. Instead of people being concerned about him hiding information about himself, they should have focused on the four years he spent as a community organizer in Chicago using Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
According to Alinsky, the first step in community organization is community disorganization, and all change means disorganiation of the old and organization of the new. That must be where Obama got his word CHANGE. Alinsky defined change very clearly. Obama didn’t. That’s how he tricked millions of people into voting for him, and he has been community organizing our country ever since.
People need to look at Saul Alinsky’s background and beliefs to completely understand Obama’s game plan. Obama learned how to be a community organizer using Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Millions of people in the U. S. voted for a radical. The very sad part of this is that millions of people do not know that Obama was trained in Chicago to be a radical and he is behind all the disorganization we have seen since he got in office.
I am not so optimistic. I’m too much of a moralist to be optimistic, and too close a reader of the ancient historians. Dr. Hanson is a classicist, I know, and a brilliant man, but I can’t help looking upon our quandary with the eye of a Juvenal, or even Livy, who said that his contemporaries were so sick they could not even endure the remedies for their diseases. For example: I believe that nearly four of five black children in the USA are born out of wedlock. The breakdown of the family is the single greatest tragedy in American politics in my lifetime. No one seems to care; we’d rather confirm the idiocies of the sexual revolution by pretending that a man can marry a man, instead of insisting as our forebears did that a man had darned well marry a woman before he got what he wanted. We’re still profoundly silly, badly educated — take a look at a speech by the eloquent John Quincy Adams, and compare it with what passes for political speech now. We drug into submission the most creative among us — anybody ever hear of the creature called a “boy”? We practice none of the cardinal virtues; the best we can say of ourselves is that we are “tolerant,” which is just a pretty word for apathetic, indifferent, or inattentive.
Tony: WOW! Well said. I hope Dr. Hanson’s optimism proves true, but you certainly nailed the present culture of the PC Left. If “brevity is the soul of wit”, you are one witty fellow.
On behalf of the 18 Million voters who wanted Hillary- we told you so, but the lust to break the racial barrier got Obama elected. Congratulations. And Obama returned the favor-by breaking our economy. My husband’s Social Security check was smaller this month- and he’s 69 with a heart condition. Nov. 2012, I’m staying home and I won’t bother to vote, and millions of Democrats like myself won’t vote, either, since there’s no one worth voting for. We’ll just scrape by and wait for 2016.
I read this maybe a year ago, but it has stuck with me;
You have to have a Carter, before you can have a Reagan.
The Conservative Base will demolish any alternative to Romney, so Romney will the GOP nominee; a son of a politician, a northeastern technocrat who wrote the blueprint, a rich Wall Street financial guy who never really built a business, only “restructured assets”.
Romney is the ideal candidate for Obama to run his class warfare campaign against. Failing to push a counter-narrative, Republicans will be blamed for the economic collapse. Barack Obama will be reelected in 2012.
The Supreme Court will declare ObamaCare constitutional, based on 100 years progressive case precedent and the political balance of the court since the addition of crypto-marxists Sotomayor and Kagan.
Even if it isn’t, the transformation of the healthcare will continue along the ObamaCare lines through the new bureaucracies that are already being rolled out, beyond the reach of Congress.
Republicans will continue to waste their time on irrelevant social conservative issues, while the fundamental transformation of the America to a centrally planned economy continues through the new bureaucracies.
Obama is NOT incompetent. He is achieving everything he set out to do.
Peter Verkooijen:
“Romney is the ideal candidate for Obama to run his class warfare campaign against. Failing to push a counter-narrative, Republicans will be blamed for the economic collapse. Barack Obama will be reelected in 2012.”
If you truly believe that, you are delusional. The person Obama fears most as the republican nominee is one Mitt Romney. All it takes to learn that is wake up, read some truth and then think a little bit. It really isn’t all that hard.
Mitt Romney is not joined at the hip to the political ruling class and they know that he will not be for sale to the highest bidder as president. At this point he remains the only candidate who consistently beats Obama in credible polls.
As of today, after the announcement of Christie’s non-candidacy, the polls say Mitt Romney 25%, Herman Cain 16% and Rick Perry and his wife, 16%.
Do you have a death wish for the nation?
No, Romney is the one Obama is hoping for. He’ll be demolished, just as McCain was. We tried it your way in 2008. We went with the candidate who wanted to reach across the aisle, who said “me too, only a little bit less” and who tried to be a gentleman.
We lost, and lost big doing it your way. We’re done listening to you squishy blue-blood types. We listened to your “big tent, pull in the centrist and moderate voters” shtick. It didn’t work. They still broke for the actual genuine lefty, rather than Mr Stick His Finger In The Wind.
This time around, the real conservatives get to pick the candidate. This time we vote for someone with actual conservative credentials and principles. You can vote for our guy, or you can stay home.
You and Peter Vj-whatever are both wrong.
Dr. Hanson,
Nobody but nobody puts it all together as well as you. Your long and wide perspective really helps us focus and avoid the distortions from being too close to the moment, or actually from being stuck in the moment. There is truly nothing new under the sun. Still Obamalytes and the liberal mindset will rank for a long time as the most vacuous bunch of folks and ideas to almost beat down reason, humanity and intelligence.
In regards to that last line it can be easily explained by understanding that Obama’s real gift is a great mobility for rhetoric and tautologies. During his campaign, I believed he used conversational hypnosis in his most planned speeches, but it may be simply due to the fact that he speaks purely in tautologies. So, in his campaign, when he says something like: “America is in trouble, and that is why you should vote for me” or “that is why I will be the next president”… It is perfectly valid in that it may very well have been true if he “succeeded” (whatever that was supposed to be). Or simply the campaign motto “hope and change” acts as a tautology in that such a slogan is invariably valid – it says nothing. The subtle caveat, further, being that he was always begging the question about his ability to be president by not saying anything of substance as to how. That begging the question fallacy, snuggled within endless tautologies, was able to seduce a lot of people from using their brains.
I used to think he used conversational hypnosis purposely to by-pass the subconscious, but now I think he does it himself (or his writers) unconsciously through logical fallacies. It must say something about a person who is able to use this skill in life and make it as far as the presidency, for sure, but what is it really?
I am slightly concerned that there will be some shenanigans – like a fabricated crisis designed to allow an executive order to suspend elections, for example. This would postpone the post-fraudster renaissance. Is this concern unwarranted?
Yes, it is unfounded.
The Right had the same fear in 2001 when Clinton was about to leave office, and the Left had the same fear in 2009 when Bush was about to leave office.
Not gonna happen. Worry about real problems.
There IS a lot of ruin in a nation.
AND—the “nation” known as the USA, or America, is indeed totally special, despite the ever-present attempts of demogogues like Obama. Over time, just as there are ongoing improvements made by entrepreneurs in the search for more profits—i.e., GOOD and GOODS—unfortunately the “devils” on the left likewise adapt their game.
Obama is just the latest iteration of such expressions of Shiva—the Destroyer. Pace what Mark Steyn noted recently, and as I long ago realized about the nature of our political reality, the arising of an Obama and a Bill Clinton depend on OTHER people choosing them to become president.
That is, the problem isn’t with Obama—it’s not PERSONAL! He is just what he is. Paradoxically, perhaps, it’s also not personal regarding all the individuals who vote for such “appealing” types. In the WSJ recently, a Chicago school economist, who’s a lover of Milton Friedman, admitted he voted for Obama. And, we all love to rag on the “brilliant” David Brooks for his naive support of BHO, as well.
Any way, as you write, VDH, the winners in America have been keeping their powder dry, and before too long, if the donkeys aren’t able to steal the next election, things truly could make a righteous rebound.
My old man used to quip, “Better days are coming”, when he was five sheets to the wind, even though for his addled and degenerating body, bitter days CAME.
Maybe it’ll be a fight between the BETTER and BITTER people.
The People get their rights from God. What this means is that NO UTOPIAN GOVERNMENT can give or take away their essential rights.
This was not meant to be a theocracy but it is founded on the ideal of individual freedom. Individual freedom may or not lead to individual salvation. This is the choice of Jesus “Satan, get thee behind me”.
Why is everyone so confused about this ? Earthly riches do not equal spiritual ones. But everyone has a right to accumulate them. You can then use them for good or not. But once government starts controlling what you do, it will become corrupt and evil and TOTALITARIAN. This is human nature….
Since when does GOVERNMENT have the ability to change human nature ?
This is the essential flaw of the Liberal mind.
This President is intellectually and emotionally STUNTED and is an empty shell, a tragic figure indeed. All the great TOTALITARIANS and RACE PROPAGANDISTS have a certain degree of raw intelligence that became warped with their laser like focus on their own racial/class identity rather than their identity as individuals.
This society is obsessed with class, gender and race. They teach nothing but this in the schools. It does not help. It creates anger and inability to take individual responsibility.
This President is a rabble rousing DIVIDER, he is NOT filled with love for anybody, but with a sense of mission and with anger, and it will take decades to undo the psychological damage he has done, and remove the race and class Marxist partisans from the government.
Professor Hansen’s message is certainly a welcome and one in which I firmly believe.
On the other hand, the Chicago crew of crooks, cronies and czars will not go without two rather disagreeable events.
One is the coming of an unprecedented level of vitriol, vehemence and even strife that will descend upon the nation during the 2012 presidential campaign. I believe there is nothing the progressives will not do because they have nothing to lose.
The other, as evidenced by Solyndra, is the virtual plundering of our national treasury by professional gangster investors and ‘donors’ working with total incompetents inside the government on a scale never imagined in history.
Notice, Obama criticized the GOP for not denouncing the debate audience almost one month after HE refused to denounce Jimmy Hoffa for his “Tea Party are SOBs” speech.
Read here:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/8988899/at_hrc_gala_obama_denounces_shameless.html?cat=17
Victor you are a worry and esentially over the top in your analysis. You accuse the electorate, consisting of folks that also work in MSM of racial illogicallity yet you neatly sidestep the massive cultural fail of the government owned and paid for by corporate america. The american public is wise to the increasing presence of the corporatists in government and all they have to do is ask themselves why other western countries do not have this problem. The other point to consider is what happens when a republican gets in and we get eight more years of bush style economic policy. Americans on Main Street will pause before they pull the electoral lever however a mediocre and largely harmless Obama trumps a potentially poisonous GOP alternative.
President Obama passed health care reform after everyone else tried and failed for decades, killed the two most charismatic and effective Al-Quaeda leaders, prevented the Country from sliding into a second great depression, has deported more criminals than any president in history, and he has been trying, almost pathetically to get the congress to act for the benefit of the Country without success. I am an independent and I am bored of the right wing’s tired old song. We need solutions to our problems, not your 40 year discredited mantra of tax cuts, deregulation, and smaller government (whatever that means-the military?. We tried that for decades and our economic system almost collapsed (knock on wood thinking Greece). Obama will win reelection in 2012. Deal with it.
Yes, health care reform whose repeal is eagerly awaited by a country that opposes it.
Prevented a great depression??? So now you liberals can tell what would have happened under a different set of circumstances???
Trying to get congress to act for the benefit of the country??? Why did he wait for a Republican house??? Why didn’t he “get congress to act when his party had huge majorities in both houses???
Typical member of the Liberal Mob…can’t think logically, parrots the meaningless slogans of the day.
Do you realize that just about everything you said is meaningless? We assume by passing health care reform you mean providing at least some people with something better than what they had before. Right now nobody likes it (right or left), it has been shown to be–if ultimately enacted–crippling to our country, and something people consider horrible, which I assume you consider far better than just bad.
As for al Qaeda, I think that was Seal Team Six. You’ll have to get me the photos of Obama repelling out of the waist gunner’s hatch with knife clenched in teeth. Of course for a liberal, getting up the guts to actually make as obvious a decision as to take a shot at the man who killed 3000 Americans after months of observation, is quite remarkable. And despite the fact that half his quivering liberal lap-poodle cabinet advised him not to.
Deporting illegal criminals? You mean from Gitmo to Afghanistan?
And I’m disappointed to hear that the consistency of our views hasn’t been enough to maintain your attention. Of course we don’t have those pithy sayings like: “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Bush and Cheney gotta go!” But we’ll let you know when we come up with something you can dance to. Nor that that the old conservative mantra of government living within its means and supporting business–understanding that its this that pays our salaries to begin with and not government make-work schemes–is what drives an economy too complex and fast-moving for any government bureaucracy to keep up with. Which if you knew ANYTHING about economics or history should have been blindingly obvious.
As for a return to the confederacy statement you made above, I assume you’re talking about Republicans becoming the Democrats, who represented the South in thought and action before, during and after the civil war with Jim Crow laws, segregation, cross burning, followed up by race baiting, and division afterward?
And by the way, you should be the first to make it as easy as possible for us to split up so you can realize your liberal utopian dream with a minimum of bullets to the back of the head. Just keep calling yourself “Independent” that will throw people off that foul scent of failure, ignorance, racism, sexism, and cognitive disassociation liberals have represented throughout history.
No response other than you’re a liar.
The saddest thing is that so many, like this guy, actually believe what he has written is true.
It’s pretty pathetic, all right.
There’s never been a tax cut in the history of this country (exception: after a large war tax rates go down), there’s never been a move towards smaller government, and there’s never been any deregulation.
ALways the government grows, always the tax RATE rises, and always there are more and more and more laws and regulations.
And, of course, always there’s a neverending supply of idiots, like Marr, who don’t have the slightest idea what they’re talking about.
A marvelous piece as usual – outlining what has happened and leaving us all amazed at how the Obama supporters continue to laud over him.
Then I got to your piece on energy. Please Dr. Hansen – do some serious reading on the reality of oil and gas and research it like you do history and current events. We do not have ample fossil fuels in this country. You can drill all you want – but we have already consumed all the easy and cheap stuff. That party is over. Wishing oil does not make it so. We are now on the downward slope and it is permanent. You are listening to scam artists trying to get investors to part with their investment money to drill. Ignore them and look at the actual oil production from the U.S. The arithmetic is very straightforward. We are not even close to being energy independent ever again. Wishing does not make it so.
Maybe you should find out what the hell you’re talking about before posting.
There are trillions of feet of natural gas in the Rockies and billions of barrels of oil in ANWR, off the Outer Continental Shelf, and in the Gulf.
All that’s needed is for the government to get the hell out of the way. Nobody is asking you to pay for it. If you’re right (and you’re not…) the investors will simply have lost their own money. As it is, MY money is going to Saudi princes to help fund the very terrorism our military is trying to stop.
Go away.
Still, having all that gas and oil is one thing. Extracting, refining, and putting it on the market in any significant volume is another. It’s fair to wonder how much return our currently untapped resources can yield, and when.
I’d love to be as sanguine about America as Mr. Hanson, but one question remains to be answered: What does America promise its citizens and vice versa?
Back when an entire continent offered its bounty, America promised opportunity and its founding documents guaranteed its citizens the liberty to take full measure of it. (Just imagine what our history would have been if the Obama regime had managed the westward expansion like it has green jobs.) Now that the continent has been divvied up, politicians and voters alike are more concerned with divvying up its increase than producing it. Washington can’t wait to dole out and voters can’t wait to dole in, which is why they’re both seizing tomorrow’s increase today through reckless borrowing and spending.
Because we who produce must service the debts before we take our cut of the increase we produce, what does America promise us? Do our founding documents incant spirits long departed? Americans got rich through courage and hard work until we discovered that we could vote, borrow and spend ourselves rich. When the money runs out, will we discover that courage and industry are gone from the American treasury as well? Until I know the answer to this question, I can’t be as sanguine as Mr. Hanson about America’s future.
Un-blaming Bush
We all know that former President George W. Bush is the cause of all the ills plaguing America, right? After all, our current president, Barack Hussein Obama, has said so, repeatedly if sometimes indirectly.
However, are Americans aware that Vice President Joe Biden has exonerated Bush, casting considerable doubts on carefully-cultivated conventional liberal-Democrat wisdom?
VP Biden recently undercut his boss’s tired, old economic mantra of “Bush did it,” that GWB is responsible for everything from failed banks to high unemployment to the plunging stock market, as well as for chaos in American schools, rioting in the streets and, probably, for too many fat kids eating Twinkies instead of watercress wraps.
Loose lips may have sunk Allied ships in WWII and it may be too much to hope that loosey-goosey Biden sank Obama with his remarks last week that the albatross of America’s miserable economy should be removed from Bush 43 and hung around his boss’s neck.
More precisely, the vice president, known for speaking his mind even when there’s nothing in it, said, “Right now, understandably–totally legitimate–this [Election 2012] is a referendum on Obama and Biden and the nature of the state of the economy.”
He also termed as irrelevant . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5624.)
This website, alongs with the rest of the left and rigth wings blogs, website, etc are nothing but echo chambers that repeat the same point of view. This is the problem at its root. While the internet has allow information to flow, now we isolate ourselves, pat ourself in the back, and think the solution is mine, not yours! Funny, the comments here are the same as the comments on the left during the Bush years. We yell past each other these days.
Did we not learn from the patron saint Reagan? This is a president who allowed million of illegals find a path to legalization. Who, while keeping true to his beliefs, was willing to compromise for the better good. Funny, he defeated communism, but embracing a communist leader.
Obama hates cannot deny that the President did what Reagan would have done, reach out to the otherside. However, the GOP has had in for Mr. Obama before he was sworn in, and the result show. Instead of attempting to met the President half-way, the failed to follow Reagan’s example. Please, the GOP’s trats Reagan as a myth, not as a political leader. Reagan’s genuis was to know when to compromise, and when not to.
Obama will win reelection. There are plenty of voters who will be more afraid of the GOP alternative than what Obama may do. Additionally, the current crop of GOP candidates leaves a lot to be desired. What will you do when Obama wins again? Leave the country, or help the country move forward.
BTW This crazy idea that we are in some socialist nirvana is just crazy! As a young person and bankruptcy attorney, I have experienced what 8 year of Bush policies have wrought. The hole was so deep, that it will take a lot to get out. Obama has been has 2 1/2 years to fix a problem a decade in the making. Ask Paulson how deep and how close we were to total collapse.
We’ve heard your whiny excuses many times before. They are as tired now as ever. Don’t mistake your personal fear of a Republican president as the fear shared by millions of Americans suffering under this pathetic waste in the White House. Don’t use your delusion to prop up the idea that Obama will be re-elected. He has lost independents. Big time. He has lost what little Republican support he had to begin with. Even his base is wondering why they should support him as they pine for Hillary. You combine that with electoral remapping and the party of “Of, by and for that state” is in heap big do-do.
Voters have a tendency to look to their basic needs. They’ll take a chance on a new beginning rather than sticking with a proven failure which is what enough of them thought they saw in 2008. 2012 will be the reverse. It will be easier for you to simply come to grips with that now and avoid the depression that we saw so many libs spiral into after 2000 and 2004.
You have the consequences of easy money to thank for the housing bust. For that you can look to Greenspan, Fannie/Freddie and their patron saints Dodd and Frank.
And no we are not in a socialist Nirvana. Rather we are in a stage of creeping statism where technocrats and no noi
nothing Ivy League professors demand control over everything from the light bulbs in our homes to the kind of health care we get. A majority is sick of everything from this stinking bog of perpetual misery and lecture. So you’re done my fine young bankruptcy lawyer. And so is the Pretender in Chief.
If you’re really a bankruptcy attorney, tima, then you know that digging out of the hole for most consumer debtors requires $1,500-$2,500 and a discharge decree. This lot then get to pass the ruinous expense of their highly leveraged lifestyles onto others, i.e. solvent consumers, borrowers and taxpayers, among whom they rarely number.
Who, pray tell, cranked up the credit spigot to full blast while commanding lenders to turn a blind eye to creditworthiness? Uncle Sugar did. So don’t tell me that America isn’t a socialist paradise: Uncle Sugar put the economy at terrible risk so that even the poorest, clueless Americans could borrow a taste of the American Dream, if only for a little while. Now the jig is up and we’ve all got to pay the Piper, except for the spendthrifts you call clients, that is.
So yes, let’s reelect Obama so that he can redirect America’s scarce capital to the folks with the greatest appetite but least wisdom to spend it. That’ll fix everything!
God bless you for keeping hope alive. YES WE CAN! Carter brought us Reagan. Obama will bring us a new true American President. A President that puts America, capitalism, and liberty first.
YES WE CAN. God bless America.
No to New World Order appeasers of ANY skin color. I am NOT a citizen of the world.
I am an AMERICAN.
A citizen of the United States of America, to the Republic for which it stands with liberty, and justice for all.
YES; It seems in the cycles of things we are about to have a boom in technology and the economy. Tracking the US stock market and or proxy data shows a cycle of 14 to 16 not so good years followed by a 16 to 18 year VERY good boom time. A simple look back at the historical index (or proxy) from after the USA civil war is IMO very clear. 1982-2000, (Good boom) 1966-1982 (Flat at best)
Lets get ready for the Big Boom!
It would appear that yesterday afternoon some time, an action order went out at Organizing for Obama HQ. We have the sudden appearance on the thread of a number of purported separate individuals who a) have not been here before under the current handles and b) who respond to the discussion at hand with Democrat talking points that are not exactly synch-ed with that discussion.
Congratulations Professor, you [and we] are on their watch list. I rather expect that the next step will be an increase in volume of such posts, and an attempt to drown out what is said by flooding us with their posts; if not on this thread, on subsequent ones. Shutting down opposing voices is central to the Left. I reference their recent action against the radio station in Chicago [WGN?] that dared have someone on who opposed the regime. Just a heads up.
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai, you are full of rubbish and your post has no relevance. VDH needs to be called out for his unremitting hostile and unfactual attitude. The guy comes across as just another smarmy selfish right wing elite. I have seen several of his articles in the MSM lately and I wish he would either get a clue or try running for office himself.
Yes and I in turn am rather “skeptical” of whatever it is you’re trying to say.
Frankly I think Subotai is on to something. Half the trolls on sites like this are probably on George Soros’ payroll.
Your feelings about how VDH “comes across” are doubtless interesting to you, but irrelevant to everyone else. Perhaps you’d care to try your hand at REFUTING one of his articles–assuming the big words don’t overmystify?
A well written article and full of optimism. But as we all sit and dream of the coming election results, counting the chickens that have not hatched, Iran is sending or threatening warships to our coast. How convenient it would be for an international incident to occur of such consequence that the imperial federal government should impose martial law. (Perdue and Orszag’s trial ballons have my full attention.)Never happen? Maybe, maybe not. I for one, and I am one of many, do not trust ANYONE in Washington D.C. or the lame stream media. Especially “Homeland Security” the “Just-Us Department” or the “BATFE”. That trust will not be regained easily, if ever. The ‘eternal vigilance’ thing…
With Iranian ships off of our coast and all of a sudden a major event occurs. Name you crisis du jour. Blame Iran for a small conventional or nuclear explosion in a heavily populated American city. The Iranians would be conveneintly blamed for the actions, or maybe ‘home-grown’ terrorists (read Washington sponsored black ops) Impossible? Unlikely? I was at the WTC site in October as the towers still smoked and steamed and stank. A ‘best case scenario’ for the radical left in the Whitehouse. I will relax more and be more optimistic after November 2012 has come and gone without an ‘event’.
Holy crap a whole website dedicated to tea bagg’in trailer trash. How’d that whole ignore terrorist threats, low tax, free market, no regulation thing work out for ya under Bush Jr.?
Typical lying leftist narrative. In reality Bush failed because he was not conservative enough, and most in the Tea Party repudiate him as well. Or more pricecely he was not a small gov fiscal conservative, he was mainly a social conservative and fiscal moderate/leftist. I will now answer each of your points:
1. Clinton ignored terrorism just as badly as Bush before 9/11, as did just about everybody else. But at least Bush took strong measures afterword, measures which Obama mostly continued when Bin Laden and Alwaki were finally killed.
2. Bush was OK on low taxes, but not a real conservative on spending, free markets, and smaller gov, greatly expanding it with no child left behind and the perscription drug bill, and engaging in his own version of crony capitalism that was almost as bad as what Obama now practices. On the size of gov he was actually a leftist, expanding it far more than Clinton did.
3. By less regulation, I suspect you imply that the financial collapse came because we did not have enough regulation. Completely wrong. The main cause of the collapse was Fannie Mae and the Community Redevelopment Act, where subprime loans were actually supported and required by US gov policy, both supported by dems like Barney Frank and Dodd. (who also passed the horrendous Dodd/Frank bill, claiming to fix the mess that they themselves created, and in reality making things much worse).
Yeah, “No child left behind” is a great example of that free-market, no-regulating thing we had under Bush, isn’t it?
Get lost.
Absolutely amazing article. Great source of facts, but I could also see that you were not trying to crush Obamma but focus on the greatest of America and the people that support this country. This was my first time on thise website but I will be following it and you very closely. Thanks for speaking the truth boldly.
“People who voted for Obama in 2008 to prove they’re not racist should vote against Obama in 2012 to prove they’re not stupid.”
While I remain reasonably optimistic America may take a turn for the better, the hole is deep and we are a very different country than we were in 1980.
I told my friends in 2008 when it became obvious Obama would be elected, my biggest fear of Obama is, what happens if he fails? He has exceeded even my low expectations of Jimmy Carter reincarnated, as Obama is ever more the useful idiot. What I didn’t fully comprehend until recently is that Obama is only a figurehead and mouthpiece for real evil.
There are some very powerful people working behind the scenes that Obama has tethered his allegiance – and they pull his strings. I doubt even that fool knows how deep he is in. People with power to move markets, destroy currencies, instigate strife, and even create war.
If this election happens to be close, and Obama loses by only a few electoral votes, I can actually foresee riots in the streets, a well spring of discontent from the disenfranchised with much help from our enemies foreign and domestic, an apoplectic and lying media, anarchy, and real chaos. I would suggest we anticipate the worst and gird our loins.
Our political opponents, those that adhere to rushing into the failed Western Europe model that is imploding before our eyes, will not go quietly into the night. This will get very ugly over the next two years.
Wow. Such vitriol.
Do the Electoral College math. Everything else is just noise.
Current numbers have Romney beating Obama 273-265. States that FLIP from last time: Indiana, Virginia, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, and the one from Nebraska.
Every other Republican candidate Obama crushes.
And we’ll be fine. You guys seriously need to switch to decaf.
Reagan and Mondale for a time ran close in the polls too.
I can assure you, any of the top four of five candidates running for Republican will win the same states you’ve listed. And you forget North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Obama could/should lose Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, possibly even Maine and Nevada.
The fact it is even close with Obama winning any states, shows many Americans still don’t understand an epic failure when they see one. And that concerns me that so many Americans could still be so ignorant, beholden to the nanny state.
“Current numbers” mean nothing a year before a general election. YOU switch to decaf. At this point in 07, McCain was dead in the water…at this point in 79, nobody was taking Reagan seriously.
As the other guy pointed out, a bunch of states are certain to turn red no matter who the GOP sends out to play…and a bunch of others are certain to turn blue no matter what idiotic thing the incumbent says between now and then. What, you think the election is going to turn on which way Missouri votes. Uh huh.
Shoo.
Let’s say that Romney wins. After four years of the man’s bloodless managerialism, technocratic fiddling, and ghastly Powerpoints & mission statements, a Democratic administration may–mirabile dictu–once again seem like a reasonable alternative.
Even if Romney wins, he’ll be another G.H.W. Bush–a one-termer whp’ll accomplish precious little for the Right and make the time ripe for a premature return of the Left.
Typical brilliance from VDH. I’m a bit more skeptical, though. Voters have been amazingly stupid on many occasions. How Obama has the support he does is testament to the lunacy still infecting about a third of our citizens. Four years of his presidency has brought our nation to its knees. Four more years will absolutely kill us.
I think what Obama demagogues/panders to in your asterisks is what must surely count among your listed U.S. renaissance positions; our troops coming home. We already have an excessive rate of veteran unemployment. Reminds me of WWII veterans returning to replace Rosie the Riveter only now it will be freed-up illegal alien held jobs and new oil and gas employment.
If one was to turn around in Driscoll’s image and look behind the Obama’s walking off into the sunset, they would see the nation “Victory Kiss” on the White House lawn as represented by the 26 foot tall bronze sculpture “Unconditional Surrender” inspired by the famous moment in Times Square on Aug l4 1945, VJ-Day when WW II ended.
http://www.dnainfo.com/20100813/manhattan/staue-of-famous-wwii-kiss-erected-times-square-for-kissathon
I agree that the US is indeed primed for a very strong and long lasting recovery if governance really changes, but that change requires 3 things:
1. Repubs defeat Obama for prez. (It would also help if the repub prez turns out to be a real leader like Reagan. To those who say that none of the current crop are, I reply that many people did not realize that Reagan would turn out to be as great as he actually was until we had seen him in action, so give them a chance.)
2. Repubs take control of Senate (hopefully by enough to avoid a filabuster) and retain the House.
3. This new repub majority listens to the Tea Party and actually cuts spending, regulation, cronyism, passes tax reform, reforms entitlements, and repeals both Obamacare and Dodd/Frank. The new majority must also not just revert back to the Bush years, with dem cronies replaced by repub cronies, “compassionate conservative” fiscal iresponsibility, and buying off “conservatives” cheap with social conservative BS with no cuts in big gov.
Unfortunately there is no guarantee at all that all 3 of these things will happen, and if they dont our situation could get much worse, and become unrecoverable. But I do agree that we at least have a chance for real positive change, mainly because most of us have recognized the both the Obama leftist abyss, and the Bush betrayal, and know what awaits us if we dont have real change toward smaller gov.
“…the Obama postracial novelty and “centrist” façade…”
It was a facade. Obama was pretending to be a “Centrist” but he turned out to be very right of center….the same old “take all of our money and give it to the rich guys philosophy” as most of our presidents and political leaders have been.
Did you know that Goldman Sachs was the #1 financial supporter of Obama? And GW Bush? And Clinton? And Bush, Sr? And Reagan?
GW Bush and Obama had different VPs, and they had different backgrounds…aside from that they were both almost clones of each other.
Did you know that you’re an idiot? Wall Street is in bed with Obama. It’s folly to suggest otherwise. The numbers do not lie. The record on campaign contributions does not lie. It’s precisely why these Occupy Wall Street buffoons are looking so foolish – protesting the very people that got their man elected in ’08.
And yeah, Cheney was just like Biden was just like Gore was just like George HW Bush. Kind of like how Swiss cheese is exactly like a bowling ball. The four of them couldn’t possibly have less in common.
Go away, troll.
Just a few comments. I am praying for a Republican victory. I guess it is OK the primaries have been moved up in some states, the way I see it, that gives the candidates less time to squabble among themselves and weaken each other.
I don’t think there will be a blowout, by any means. In my view, there are too many voters now who are still uninformed and who voted for the new big thing last time around and will do it again. Too many are “on the dole” and like things the way they are, with their gov’t benefits, tax breaks, etc. Too many are like a relative of mine who can’t bring herself to vote for any Republican. (Well then, stay home, Sis).
Excuse me while I now mix some metaphors: Weeding this crowd out of Washington will not be easy. It won’t be like the weeds I sometimes pull, that come out easily, roots and all. The roots of liberal influence in DC and elsewhere run deep and they will not pack it in just because the president is voted out.
If you look at the numbers on who gets re-elected to Congress, it is clear that the incumbents have a huge advantage. And the longer they are in office, the more likely they are to stay. It was the case in 2010 that most of the incumbents who lost in House races hadn’t been there more than 6 years — which isn’t that long when you begin to look at some of the tenures.
If we are truly going to make a change for the better, we have to vote in conservative, small gov’t types not only in 2012, but every two years after that. When you are sick and you get anti-biotics, the prescription label often says “take all the pills.” If you stop taking them when you feel better, the ailment can come right back. The liberal crowd, their ideas, policies, etc. is always going to be there. We have to keep the ailment in check by taking our pills, (hammering them in EVERY election). As soon as we get complacent we’ll be in for it again.
To continue your “pills” metaphor, the illness comes back mutated to resist the medicine you gave up on too quickly. That’s how antibiotic resistance mostly arises. BARRY dangerous!
;)
Re: “‘So what do we do? We divide the country.’ How exactly do you envision such a division taking place? Who would be in charge of implementing it? Demographically speaking, libs & cons are pretty thoroughly blended together in most parts of the country, with libs being concentrated more so in places like Washington DC, CA & the northeast. I don’t see any way this country can be divided without the spilling of blood.”
Bobcat, that’s a good question. The Founders thought long and hard about how to get people of vastly divergent views to live together in a united polity, and their answer – one of them, anyway – was federalism. By pushing political power downward, ultimately to the state and the local, township level, they created a system whereby each autonymous unit could be what it chose to be – liberal or conservative, rich or poor, urban vs. rural, etc. The states themselves were also an attempt to create a system in which diversity was possible. Maine didn’t have to be the same as Delaware, or Georgia the same as Virginia.
As for dividing up America, via a Balkanization-type of process, that’s considerably tougher to do without “breaking some eggs.” California, for example, overall trends leftward, but there are many conservatives in N. CA and Orange Co. – what would happen to them if the USA splits up? Illinois is rather conservative except for Chicago. How would this be reconciled? And so on.
If you don’t see anyway the country can be “divided without spilling blood,” then perhaps that isn’t the right question. Maybe we ought to find new ways to remain together, without attacking one another. Maybe how to do that is the real question. Isn’t this problem really one of how to live and let live? The dilemma is that while there are many Americans who want to be left alone to live their lives, others won’t permit them to mind their own business. The latter, I suggest, are the real problem in need of a solution.
Frank, re: “If you look at the numbers on who gets re-elected to Congress, it is clear that the incumbents have a huge advantage. And the longer they are in office, the more likely they are to stay.”
You’ve just articulated an argument in favor of voting a straight anti-incumbent ticket, an idea I have been considering myself for some time now. I am a constitutional conservative, and would prefer to vote on that basis. However, I am very tired of being taken for granted by my own party – who love real conservatives around elections, but ignore us the rest of the time. I know of no way to show my displeasure with my party other than by withholding my vote, my money or my time. I’ve tried the latter two, and it hasn’t worked. That leaves option one. Yes, it would mean voting for some Democrats, but they would at least be new faces. The only thing a corrupt career politician really fears is losing his place at the trough. By voting anti-incumbent, we’re sending ‘em home. Of course, they come back as lobbyists on K Street, but that’s a separate problem for another time…
Georgiaboy: I wouldn’t vote for a liberal simply to unseat an incumbent, but I get what you are saying. A conservative incumbent would be OK, leave them in place until such time as a new (conservative) face appears on the scene, or until it appears they have compromised basic principles. The deck is stacked against voters by the way the Congressional district boundaries are drawn to favor one party over another. You can find these types of maps on-line and it is interesting to look at district boundaries around some large cities.
Another area where the voters get bamboozled, I think, is the tendency for Congress to put disparate issues in the same piece of legislation. They end up with a bill with a lot of moving parts and later, politicians get to claim that they were either for or against some issue, simply because it was in the bill — whether it passed or not!
In my opinion the legislation should be short and to the point — not these 1000+ page offerings that no one has time to read.
The biggest reason to be optimistic is that ultimately it’s about ideas.
It’s the conservatives that have the ideas. If you need a counter-example look at the “burn down Wall Street” crowd.
Mark this well, you proud men of action: You are nothing but the unwitting agents of the men of thought who often, in quiet self-effacement, mark out most exactly all your doings in advance.
–Heinrich Heine
One thing I can tell you moderate RINO types: “Moderate GOP nominee = Democrat victory in the general election.”
Lest you think I know not of what I speak…I can give you three examples off the top of my head:
John McCain, ’08
Bob Dole, ’96
George HW Bush, ’92
All three men lost because they’d compromised with the Left one time too many. What’s needed for victory is a strong conservative who articulates conservative ideas – who tells the Left to go to hell and the center to get on board, or be left behind at the station. Reagan and Bush II both spent 8 years in the White House, both coasting to victory after withstanding everything the Left could throw at them.
Quit with the talk that watering down our platform is going to bring in centrist and moderate voters. They’re not going to elect Romney next year with Chairman Zero already on the ballot, so quit banging the drum for him. It does not matter that polls show independents breaking for the GOP rather than Obama right now – they’re not going to vote for a guy who instituted RomneyCare in Mass but thinks we need to repeal ObamaCare nationally. He’ll come off looking like a complete hypocrite, not to mention a jackass.
Give Perry a pass on immigration and social security. On the former count he hasn’t done anything Bush didn’t do, and on the latter he’s quite correct.
Forget about anyone else currently in the running. I don’t care that some poll shows Cain ahead by a whisker this week. He’s not going to stay on top of two other candidates – one of whom is favored by The Establishment, the other of whom is favored by GOP conservatives. You really think he’s going to bring down both and cinch the nom? Dream on. He can’t match either of them on fundraising or anything else that counts.
Oh, and forget about Ron Paul.
I agree that there is much to be optimistic about, Professor. I would add the caveat that Obamacare must — must — be repealed, if a new break-out after Obama is to have sutainable economic underpinnings. Obamacare makes it impossibly expensive to employ Americans
Americans are already priced non-competitively with much of the world. But the beauty of that for big-government mavens is that the American worker’s premium doesn’t go into the worker’s pocket, it goes to the government, and to the beneficiaries of the government’s choice (e.g., union bosses, compliant corporations).
There are some impositions on the economy that we cannot overcome, even with a different president, and Obamacare is one of them. If we really want to get the economy moving again, we’ll have to eliminate some of the other shackles on the economy as well. Not one of them is making more purchasing power go into the working man’s pocket, after all.
It is a heartening article, though it doesn’t account for the Obama-apologist-Leftist media. People tend to believe the messages they are bombarded with on a daily basis.
We need to re-elect Obama so as a second term president he will sever relations with Israel and establish relations with Iran. Our values are closer to Iran and Turkey than that of Israel
Yes, I remember those 8 dark years during the Bush years. It was as dark as living in a spider hole.
You are my inhalation, I own few web logs and often run out from post :).
The right and left are both serving the elite. To expect either party to save America is ignorant. It will take a candidate willing to protect the citizens from corporate interests. Wake up America. Ron Paul or Ralph Nader in 2012 because I am not trying to advance a partisan argument. God bless.
Looking ahead, as it pertains to the soliloquist fashion of statements by Hanson stated in the Saudi America, Tempered by Fire, and Lead from the Front sections, takes on an intrepidly chilling, prophetic form as he uses lines or surety of what’s to come. Lines such as “soon we will return to a quiet sense of American exceptionalism, but this time more so,” “When Obama leaves office, there will be a sense of psychological release in the business community,” and “Soon someone is going to see that our own natural gas can power millions of cars, freeing our foreign policy from Gulf authoritarians…”, are all attempts to sway the reader towards a republican reform that no man is ready for.
The last statement simply means the end of days in most religions; that meaning that the true powers of the world will take over all the earth’s resources, whether it be the illustrious illuminati, the rich over the poor, the Middle East over the west, or Satan himself. Statement two sounds to me as if no one with money and the power to do, trusts the President enough to help the country and will not until he is out of office. Sadly, the statement is proven in Hanson’s opening line of Pressure Is Building, when he exclaims that “private enterprise is hoarding cash, uncertain over the costs of ObamaCare.” This could be a false statement, but given the recent actions of the American people toward the Obama administration, there could be some validity here. Though he may be right in stating what some people feel, what does Hanson actually mean, when he says “soon we will return to a quiet sense of American exceptionalism?” This, to me, sounds like a line conjured up out of a vintage Nazi diary, whereas a few more pages will have the antidote or remedy to the problem.
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