The fight was lost before most of us were even born, now we howl at the wind to retain the last straggling vestiges of our cultural heritage, thinking we’ll be reassured by these spectral semblances of freedom if we can only keep our guns, teach our children as we please, express our views and get a slippery grip on changing social constructs.
Conservative’s relentless crusades in the culture wars and demands for federal fiscal sense obscure the cold, hard fact that we’ve been nothing more than our government’s servants for a good seventy years. One desperate generation sold our freedom and master status in return for the shackles of false security. These men put aside every lesson bred deep in their bones for cheap handouts by mendacious power mongers of the political class. They hung their heads, abdicated their power and offered over their progeny’s precious freedom for pennies on the dollar. Brave men died to give Americans the power to control government, craven bastards freely gave it away for soft pats and false promises.
I can already hear the choir winding up for a stream of stuttering buts. But we’re so much freer than so and so, our standard of living is comfy fine, we have rights, a free press, a system of law, religious freedom, we can abort, buy organic and vote! Yes, we’re freer and better off than most of the world. No doubt about it, we’re still blessed to be Americans compared with numerous harsh places populating the marginalized corners of our globe.
But these blessings are a pale shade of our founding father’s true vision and the actual reality we once lived before deciding the suits in Washington were a special, omnipotent breed born apart who held golden saviour keys to our future happiness and prosperity. We were once barely governed quite well by mostly decent men who were held accountable, when the federal men quietly took unlimited power at our acquiesce, the states readily followed suit, snatching up the short leavings to tax and control their local populace. We’ve created an insatiable, fanged beast that’s forgotten it’s original role of servitude and stewardship.
How many laws do we have controlling our bodies and income? They’re endless, an innumerable path of blatant servitude writ large in the name of public safety, protecting the children, feeble and congenitally stupid. Never mind funding the insatiable maw of ever expanding bureaucrats constant bleating for the most necessary piece of political hush-hush backroom financial quid pro quo to keep the cogs of our great nation turning in the right direction.
We can’t cross the goddamned street in the middle without facing a ticket or argue with the implacable ignorance of IRS auditors without incurring steep bills. The constitution lists only three federal crimes – treason, piracy and counterfeiting, but we’ve somehow managed to rack up around 4,450 offenses for the books, with fifty new ones added every year. The states have grown into monster fiefdoms, regulating every last move we make from our food consumption to yard art.
We live in a constant state of strangling bureaucracy and actively squeal for more constraints to control our rampant natures. We’ve become masochist mules who enjoy regular beatings and tighter big man reins. We crawl and pule when we used to stride upright with righteous strength and grace.
Conservative and Liberal appellations mean little in our world of all encompassing government. We’re battling tooth and nail for tit and tat while the men in power pull all the strings, juggling the scales of power to ease their way and playing us like properly owned pawns. I’ve been screaming into the wind for years, wondering at the continued devolution of our autonomy, blindly treating politics like a fair chess match where reason ruled. I’ve been fighting a losing battle against figment opponents spun of gossamer diversions. Our fate was sealed by dead relatives who sold the nation’s soul for a liar’s foul promise.
The victories we win feel hollow because they are; the barbarians we’re fighting aren’t at the gate, they already hold the keys. We’re the gladiators amusing the still cognoscente masses with diverting entertainment. The involved left and right are little more than sheer sport, barely effecting the governing regime. Our small swords only make small dents, never deflecting the state on it’s forward motion to complete tyranny by any avenue available.
We’ve become a nation of stunted pygmies ruled by rapacious moles. The founders would weep witnessing our self imposed chains to a rock of implacable misery known as the United States government.
She’s right, you know.
Who, Pandora?
When you have a day or so you might wade through this series for confirmation
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified.html
It’s about 9 parts and is heavy going, but I think you’ll find it rewarding. Especially the odd sets of links.
I mean it when I say “a day or so.”
I have the time. I’m currently wading through Garet Garrett’s body of work, reading worthwhile is what I like best.
We just spent committed to seven hundred million dollar’s worth of horse condoms.
We set aside 19 million acres of public land for “wild horse habitat”. I haven’t the heart to see what oil and mineral lease plats have just been shut down forever.
We are going to have census takers out on the prairie. Probably ACORN, and probably filling out forms that with a simple keystroke error might just end up as voter registrations…”Mr. Flicka, is anyone in your herd gay?”
Grand Staircase Escalante still rankles after all these years.
Yes. It is over but for the shouting.
Oh, there will be flames and screams and blood not so far down this crude and sad trail, but I’m about to the point where laughing is all I can do right now.
Without guys like you writing, I’d be aaalllll alone…
Lucretia de Borgia de Boyle: “You are always so glum, Lance. So angry. You react violently to every headline. And that shot gun by the door!”
Me: “Want to discuss it?”
L d B d B: “No. I have to buy track lights.”
“Friends”: “Everything is just fine. These changes are necessary for achieving equality and social justice.”
Me: “Have you ever considered that the former contradicts the latter?”
“Friends”: “There he goes again.”
…muttering to myself, throwing cheesedoodles at the screen.
“You rump fed pointy headed commie bastards!”
I go to sleep fantasizing scenes I cannot mention.
Sorry….
I’ll go buy more ammo.
Surely another 1000 rounds and I will feel ever so empowered.
Well, you’ve raised the bar with this one Daphne.
Thanks for linking UR Gerard. I read through a few hours of his, I can’t really call it analysis…more like a stream of consciousness reality rant, a few months ago and have been meaning to get back there.
Representative democracy seems to have a catch 22 mechanism inherent. Freedom breeds prosperity, prosperity breeds complacency, complacency breeds despotism. So it goes.
Not even Spartacus thought to march on Rome.
The oft-cited de Tocqueville on depotism in democratic republics.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch4_06.htm
para 4-7
But enough with the predictions of Monsieur de T.
We are there, as Ms. Daphne argues.
Here’s a follow-up.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the down-stairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of a half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?…The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt.
If …. if… We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1973
What, for ex, would I do if my wife needed a new heart valve and we were told “Sorry, at her age we do not consider this to be cost effective?”
Or if she had a third recurrence of cancer?
“No, another operation is out of the question. Too expensive, especially given the history? Chemotherapy will, in our opinion, be sufficient.”
“But I will pay for surgery myself!”
“Sorry, but that is not permitted.”
“Permitted. PerMITTed? Just who in the %$#@ing hell do you think you are, you bow tied little bastard?”
“I am calling Security.”
Would this not be murder by bureaucracy?
Is the clerk not responsible? The organization?
[Kafka was so right---The Castle.]
Even Soylent Green said it all.
Will we yield our lives to clerks?
What sort of person WOULD make a decision that is known to terminate the life of another person? [Well, Roe v. Wade prepared us for this.]
How is this rationalized? [I'm afraid these kinds of judgments will soon be VALorized.]
“You are so heroic to make these decisions, Agnes.”
“Yes, it’s hard—WAS hard at first—but now I know that it HAS to be done.”
No doubt Agnes gets a bonus proportional to the money saved—that is, the death sentences she has passed.
This guy has some good sources on how evil becomes routine and banal.
http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/SocialOrgofCruelty.html
So, what would a husband who loved his wife NOT do to the clerk and her boss and his boss?
What would a husband be if he acquiesced?
“Yes, I guess it was necessary.”
Could a husband live with himself if he did nothing?
Should he live?
It may be that THIS will be the tipping point in our so-far verbal conflict with The One and his gang of well-dressed revolutionaries.
When mothers and fathers, sons and daughters are judged unfit to live, and when we watch loved ones lowered into the ground because clerks (following orders) said No.
That will be the time to cry “Enough!”
And to roll out Madame G.
Not even Spartacus thought to march on Rome.
Brilliant.
Only difference between us and Spartacus was that he knew he was a slave.
He didn’t want to overturn the establishment. He just wanted to escape.
There will be many crosses on the road to DC before this is over.
*sigh* depressing.
A people can’t be free once pretty much everyone has decided that the pinnacle of human achievement is a long, comfortable life, with a minimum of trouble and controversy.
What men most crave are not truths but certainties, and socialism promises that. Everything fixed is fatal, yet whatever is fatal is powerful.
It was too late when the Constitution was written. Democracies, republican or not, always self-destruct. It is their nature. The freedoms of the past owed more to vast tracts of land than to the type of government. Same with the wealth of the past. Once that land ended, Americans couldn’t avoid the bureaucrats by simply leaving anymore.
We’ve been on this path a long time we just didn’t see the danger lurking. What form will the battle take? This is what keeps me awake a night. Oh my poor children…
The Won may push so hard, so fast, that he provokes a backlash sufficient to force some understanding. Indeed, the bloody chaos of his aggressively cross-purposed legislations makes it impossible for the rational not to see how security for one must be slavery for another.
A good example is the case of the Indiana teachers’ and firefighters’ unions, who fought hard for Obama and then watched aghast as he stole their retirements to fund the gift of Chrysler to the U.A.W. Now Obama is not safe anywhere non-U.A.W. union members congregate in Indiana. Civil war has been declared, and even the rank-and-file understand that this time, management and the investors are NOT the enemy.
Will these lessons be harsh enough to wake the majority of the sheeple? Almost certainly not; but there is grim happiness in knowing that you will go down, not a puking lonely slave, but a fighting man in the company of his equals.
Wonderful stuff, Daphne. Among your very best.
Now who gave you permission to put it up?
I’m not giving up hope. Yes, the current situation IS depressing… but where else would you rather be?
OK, one could make a case for Australia and/or New Zealand, but they’re on the same track, as well.
Further: A reality check for ya, Daphne. You just need to read some good stuff once in a while. It ain’t the post at the link, per se, it’s the commentariat’s response. We’re alive and well here in the USA.
I wonder what is the breaking point.
Too many seem to think it is perfectly natural and fitting that we should have our entire lives constrained and controlled from without. To be looked after and protected.
Too many lack an interior law and require an external force. Without this, even if Leviathan was defeated, there could be no true freedom or restoration.
This is the only reference I have come across to the fact that the Constitution enumerates three crimes and only three. The express enumeration of these crimes means that there aren’t any more, that Congress does not have the power under the Constitution to enact any other criminal statutes.
This may seem a minor point, but it makes clear the benefit of actually reading the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, especially the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
After you have mastered the document take time to consider the words of the Preamble, which tell us that the government has only the powers that we grant it.
No one is going to take care of this mess for us; we the people must do it ourselves; uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Prometheus’ Rock is a good title for this post.
When did we lose it? You’ve heard the old saw “…first they came for the Jews, then…”?
Well…
First they came to each state asking them to give up their right of restricting voting to only those who were established and responsible citizens, to anyone who could be coaxed to say ‘yay!’ or ‘nay!’ in the name of Democracy! and Progress!
Then they came to take the right to define the school curriculums from the local parents, to give the content of their children’s minds to distant experts approved by the govt, in the name of Democracy! and Progress!
Then they came to take the right to say where your children should be, what they should do, what they should learn, and where they should learn it, to the govt, not for any nefarious purposes of course, but in the name of Democracy! and Progress!
Then they came to take the right to be responsible for paying your own taxes and took your right of first claim on your own income… and you know why, not for any naughty purposes, oh no, only for your own good.
Then they came to take the right for your U.S. Senators to be beholden to those local state legislators who not only knew and understood the interests of their state (and whom the people might know personally, and elected), and demanded that they be elected not by ‘vested interests!’ (which meant you) NO! but by the People!, which changed the nature of the Senate from a deliberative body, removed from the heat of popular opinion, to a forum of show boaters even more practiced in heated populist rhetoric than those in the house of representatives – and far less answerable for their actions… all in the name of Democracy! and Progress! and Campaign Finance Reform! (Gosh that one still works well, doesn’t it!).
Then they came for your actual property, your Gold, actually came and took the gold from peoples houses, on pain of fine and imprisonment, and when the Supreme Court balked, there came the “Switch in time that saved Nine” but which denuded them. And when the govt forced a decision on them that voided the sanctity of contract, Justice McReynolds said “Congress had no power to destroy the gold clause commitment. FDR is Nero at its worse. As for the Constitution, it doesn’t seem to much to say, that it is gone”.
And then they came for the cigarette makers, and the Dr’s, and the car mfg’s, and the food labelers, and the uninsured, and … and… and… no need to fill in the blanks folks, they will do that quite well all by themselves now.
“How ever did we get here?!!!”
Please. Stuff it.
And keep in mind, this time when they come for the Jews? It’ll probably be long after they’ve already come for you.
This week might be the very last chance to slow it down… CALL your non-representing representatives and tell them NO! On what? Doesn’t matter, just NO!!!
Good post BTW (Sorry, got ahead of myself).
Hey Deep Thought!
My personal theory holds that civilization divides (very roughly & with considerable overlap) into four stages.
1.) Tribal member
2.) Subject
3.) Citizen
4.) Consumer
Early 21st century Americans find themselves, in my view, at stage 4. We began the exploration and colonization of the continent at 2. Zipped through 3 in less than 200 years (1776 until 1945) and, in the post-WWII settled down quite nicely in the complacency and material comfort of stage 4. Give or take.
Garet Garrett, besides having a very odd name, had some pretty interesting ideas. There is a very great deal to criticize about the ‘New Deal’. Another point of view might be that Roosevelt expanding the size of the state wasn’t the problem it’s that he saved industrial capitalism. I’m not there. Nor am I with Garrett.
As Americans we have devolved into mere consumers. And the ism I dread is consumerism. We are what we eat. What we wear. What we drive. How we’re scented. Etc. Etc. Were connected to a degree beyond the imagination of even the early 20th century mind yet somehow feel alone. Mobile to a degree beyond the rest of the planet yet there’s no where to go. Living longer and enjoying it less. We‘ve got everything and nothing at all. Too much and far too little
And I certainly share Daphne’s distress at the difficulty of retaining some of what should be important to us if I view it through that lens.
But I do disagree we are our government’s servants these past 70-odd years. Rather, we’re engaged in one huge, endless focus group. ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’ is where we’ve ended up. McLuhan. Baudrillard. Postman. They were onto something.
If we’re slaves to anything it isn’t our government which subjugates us. It’s our too easily satisfied desires.
Arthur,
That was some pretty thoughtful, high quality stuff there, could’ve easily been typed in by some of the thoughtful folks who enjoy generally better reputations. You should be putting some more work into seeking common ground with people, as opposed to defining points of disagreement. Seriously. One of the two of us is picking fights with people with whom he has no serious beef…and I don’t think I’m the one.
As far as that post is concerned, I agree with every single word.
Deep Thought said “It was too late when the Constitution was written.”
False.
“Democracies, republican or not, always self-destruct.”
True.
“It is their nature.”
True.
“The freedoms of the past owed more to vast tracts of land than to the type of government. Same with the wealth of the past. Once that land ended, Americans couldn’t avoid the bureaucrats by simply leaving anymore.”
False.
From the very start, every possible measure was taken to ensure that we would NOT be a democracy. We were a constitutional, representative republic, whose first teir, the House of Representatives, was the ONLY level that was democraticaly elected by the people. Senators were elected by the the state legislators who were elected by the people. The president was elected by the electoral college, made up of people elected by the people and with the right to vote counter to the popular vote if they saw things were out of whack.
The progressive movement targeted that hierarchical structure almost immediately, and in the order I listed in my previous comment, slowly but surely knocking down and flattening the structure our Founding Fathers strove so hard to erect.
And they’ve done it, step by step, with our consent.
Our growth in land and wealth had nothing to do with our losing our Republic, it had to do with our giving up, step by step, what was right, in favor of what others told us was a good idea, was smart, was the way of Progress!
That was not foreordained by our original Constitution, we had, as Ben Franklin answered “A Republic… if you can keep it!”. We need lay the blame for our loss to nothing other than human nature, the willingness to do what is easy rather than what is right, the willingness to abandon what is moral and right in favor of what is popular.
In that sense, it was too late when the Constitution was written, but not because of the constitution… but because of us.
I still think it is possible to undo it, to turn it back, but don’t kid yourselves, it won’t be done by ANY leglislation, at the very best, that will only buy us temporary repreives… stop gap measures at best.
It will have to be unraveled in roughly the order it was sewn up, starting with parents being given back, forcibly if necessary, the responsibility for their own children and their education. If that isn’t done, and a full generation raised with an actual Education again… nothing short of that will allow anything of substance to be accomplished.
Daphne,
Very well said – but do not despair. We are the future, and our blood is its life.
We give it, because we love.
Van: “It will have to be unraveled in roughly the order it was sewn up, starting with parents being given back, forcibly if necessary, the responsibility for their own children and their education. If that isn’t done, and a full generation raised with an actual Education again… nothing short of that will allow anything of substance to be accomplished.”
Quite right my friend. And I am on your wavelength long ago.
I have four wonderful kids: 6, 4, 2 and 3 mo.’s, and my wife and I will be teaching and learning with them at home for as long as freedom persists.
I am hopeful. I am not afraid.
I know the Truth… His eyes are burning bright…
And the Truth always wins.
We will all wake up… just fine. The nightmare will give way to the rising of the sun.
Wake up.. and breathe deep.
Alive.
Welcome to all of the bright new minds who’ve stopped by, all of your thoughtful comments are quite appreciated.
I don’t see the current path of expanding government altering its course. I don’t see government willingly reducing its powers or scope at our insistence. And I don’t see the people rising up in enough numbers to force the horse back in the barn, much less taking a serious self appraisal of their own support for many of the policies and plans that’ve put us in this situation.
There is no better place to go, Buck. I’m not depressed or afraid, just disgusted and angry. I know there are millions of people just like us dotting the landscape, but I doubt we have the collective power to alter our nation’s course at this point.
Morgan, the big men still allow me to voice my discontent, so I do. You’re dead on about Arthur, he’s an intelligent and thoughtful man, it is nice when he lets those qualities shine.
Daphne,
Very good writing and very good thinking.
We can unwind this but the how’s may not be very pleasant.
‘Nuf said.
Thanks.
I say big guns.
Was it the foolishness of universal manhood suffrage? Our original sin of slavery, which through the Civil War destroyed the powers of the states? Women’s suffrage, which leads to a feminized, sentimental polity? The income tax amendment? The New Deal? Or the final, most horrible blow of all, television? If we try to discern causes, I suppose we can trace the missteps back to Eden.
Or Eve?
Daphne said “And I don’t see the people rising up in enough numbers to force the horse back in the barn…”
Heh, I do hear you… still… might help your perspective though to keep in mind that Sam Adams didn’t just launch “The Spirit of 1776″ in 1776… or 1770… or even 1760… or even 1750!
He was at it trying to drum up in his fellow sheeple some sense of independence, trying to awake in a people quite content to think of themselves as Englishmen, the realization that the crown thought of them as mere chattel, since the late 1740′s… and he was thought of as a capital “C” Crank for most of those many years.
It really wasn’t until James Otis thundered out against the Stamp Act (which John Adams cited as the true start of the Revolution) in 1765 that he began getting real traction… and then of course Otis went kinda bonkers, got struck by lightening and generally flamed out, but then John Adams began to come on board and others and then (after another 10 years) Viola! Overnight Revolutionary Spirit inflamed the Colonists!
Personally, I’ve been putting us in roughly either about the mid 1750′s… or the mid 1840′s… or some interesting minor chord harmony of the two. Either way, we’ve got a ways to go yet, no fair getting feeling sorry for ourselves, especially since we’ve got tools Adams couldn’t have dreamed of.
And of course Sam Adams Beer.
Shoot… we got it sussed!
I like smart, optimistic, ballsy men, Van.
I’m a little worried that if it ever comes down to brass tacks, the military may very well protect the men in power who fund that jet fuel and their paychecks. Although the recent Honduras ouster of a tyrant gives me hope.
We don’t have tanks or jets. We’d be reduced to the same terrorist tactics we’re currently fighting across the ocean.
I just don’t see any overthrow happening. Too many folks are sucking the government tit quite happily.
What I’d like to see included, as like Captain Renault we round up the usual suspects…
1. When any & all defenses of “states’ rights” became equated with bigotry. When you socially stigmatize all defenses of something, you doom whatever it is to a terminal demise; it really doesn’t matter if the illness will be done with in the middle of the night, or dragged out agonizingly across the generations. It’s done-fer. Our doctrine declares that regional authority is a thin mask for racial prejudice, and it’s therefore evil…we all want to stop being evil. And so the United States, which was called the “United States” for a reason, necessarily becomes a monolith.
2. Simultaneous with that, if any one region loses its right to govern itself faster than any of the others, it is the deep south. Why, because there’s a history there of disenfranchising minorities? That’s the song and dance, but the real reason is it’s easy to stereotype them there — they talk all funny. And so our supposed hostility to “bigotry” is transformed into nothing more than an excuse to exercise it. Those damn hicks, they don’t know anything anyway. It’s much better to let someone in Manhattan or Georgetown decide what the speed limit is going to be in Atlanta.
3. The idea that rights are class-based…that if someone who can be likened to me, is deprived of something, even voluntarily — this is somehow an assault upon me and everyone else like me, even if we’ll never meet that guy or the other guy supposedly oppressing him. This has led to a notion that no problem, anywhere, is ever sufficiently settled to be left alone. Someone is always being oppressed, and it’s everlastingly compulsory for the rest of us to get involved…as if a neighbor’s house is burning away in the middle of the night. We’ve been spending all our nights this way flailing away at imaginary flames, for generations now, and we’re terribly deprived of our needed REM sleep.
4. More than anything, the absurd notion that laws create or preserve freedom. A law is something that deprives someone in a certain situation of a certain option — period. That is all laws do. They do not add freedom, they subtract it.
5. The idea that, because of #3 and #4, maybe you can do some complaining about something and in so doing end up helping people…since it’s so much easier to complain than to do any real work.
6. That other idea that, in order for #5 to work, there is going to have to be a revolution. Things are all cockeyed now, but you’re going to complain, start a revolution, and fix something. Entire generations of otherwise-smart people have now lived out their entire lives on a turning point. We’ve turned things upside down and upside down some more, toward no good end.
7. The idea that every morsel of missing comfort, no matter how insignificant, is worth throwing one of these revolutions. That’s practically the definition of extremism.
8. The idea that every piece of missing comfort must manifest someone who willingly took it away — every little thing we want to change, must have a villain somehow involved. Someone always has some come-uppins coming. Once we come in contact with a genuine tragedy, that wasn’t caused by anyone and just plain happened, we’re as confused as the dog that caught the car. We have no idea what to do, other than find someone to blame so we can morph the situation into something we can understand. Presto! Hurricane Katrina is George Bush’s fault.
9. Tall-poppy syndrome. Look it up if you need to.
10. Our insatiable appetite for certainty. Too many of us recognize only two gradients of durability for the assets they “own”: The government guarantees you’re getting it or that you can keep it — and, it’s gone or as good-as-gone. As a result, too many of us lack the ability to say “I have ability, therefore, when I want it I’ll get it (or make it).” This is why there’s this widespread notion that “workers” are the real owners of their “jobs” and that the “jobs” are the assets of the “workers,” who have been “robbed” if their employer ever dares to jeopardize “their” jobs. This mentality is brought about by necessity, and the necessity comes from this neurosis that we’re too incompetent to ever get our hands on something except through an ironclad promise from our government, which in turn is brought about by a whole lot of belly-aching. We’ve lost faith in ourselves.
We’ve brought ourselves to this point by chasing that next little piece of comfort, endlessly, like a dog chasing its own tail.
And so we find ourselves chained down to Daphne’s rock. It’s where we deserve to be.
Oh and Van, if I may be permitted to flog a dead cliche once or twice more…
I am intrigued, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
We may be looking at the current state of things from the wrong angle. Instead of The Patriot or Braveheart perhaps we should be thinking Brazil. Just as it’s axiomatic that the military is always prepared for the previous war so too do our cultural references.
Lag.
That’s a true statement, Arthur.
Being angry is good. Mind, where I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused…
Excellent post Daphne.
You’ve always been ahead of the curve, David.
Morgan, are you kidding me? You want me to address that stout list?
We’ve had a few folks come on by to drop the comment (as if coordinating with one another, which I doubt) that I’m a wordy guy.
We’ve been making a special effort lately to try to be brief with things, and yet the reproach keeps on rolling in. Well ya know, Morgan Rule #1…if I’m gonna be accused of something…I wanna be guilty.
Baby, you get as wordy as you like in my world, just don’t expect an equally long answer from the resident goddess.
Tell those whiners to pound sand. You are a windy man and I wouldn’t have you any other way. I like your endless thought processes, keep them coming and don’t you dare entertain a thought of altering your written personality, Morgan.
Daphne said “I’m a little worried that if it ever comes down to brass tacks, the military may very well protect the men in power who fund that jet fuel and their paychecks.”
I partially agree… not so much that they’ll side with their paychecks, but that there is little evidence that the military is now, or ever has been, a monolithic bloc – as Lincoln discovered when he offered the Union command to Lee.
Ladies & Gents, Wesley Clark came from the military and went to the left, Sen. Webb as well, and there are several veterans of the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan who have recently run and won on the Dem ticket, including a recently retired Admiral. Being pro-military doesn’t mean being anti-left – sad to say, but it just doesn’t.
Things are bad today, but I’m betting that when FDR stole all the privately held gold in the country (a bill pushed through congress without being debated, nearly unread and in the dead of night btw (I don’t know much about this author other than having heard his name before, but it seems to hit the facts of FDR’s Gold Heist))… not to mention the fact that he had not only proposed but placed actual salary caps on executives pay, etc (See the excellent FDR’s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression by Jim Powell)… as bad as things are today, I’m betting that a case could be made that times were comparatively as bad then as well, in some ways worse – mainly because there were no widespread avenues of communication for dissent back then, certainly not like this nifty www thingy we have today.
While we still have the ability to speak our minds, to organize, to vote and make our voices heard (remember the Amnesty Bill), I don’t think talk of secession or actual hot fire revolution is warranted or necessary or wise – just imagine Grant & Lee refighting the Civil War with F-18′s and Nukes… such a thing once begun, would have to end in unimaginable horror and destruction.
Besides, that’s not the type of war we’ve got to fight.
I do have my ‘all is lost’ moments of gloom, but some reflection shows there is still light left, there are still Americans here… they’re just not often in the lime light, and our task is to alert them to, and enlist them in, the real war – the one over ideas, and we can all join in on those battles.
In venues like this, and even more importanly, in conversations and social settings, skewer them. Don’t let a PC comment go by without being challenged, and if possible, ridicule it and them. Nothing hurts the Politically Correct and the blase’ cynic more than being laughed at – especially in front of friends and co-workers – ohhh it burnnnzzz!
Such actions may be only low level fire fights, but they serve as rallying cries also. Call people on their PC comments in social settings, at work, among family & friends – and never forget that the people present at that time are likely the least part of your audience. It’ll be repeated in their minds over and over, and those who were present may repeat it to others, or even do as you did when they hear a PC comment. Hell, even the original skewered fool might think twice before making such a comment again – or even actually think about what it was they were saying to begin with. Well… not often… but sometimes.
Morgan K Freeberg said “4. More than anything, the absurd notion that laws create or preserve freedom. A law is something that deprives someone in a certain situation of a certain option — period. That is all laws do. They do not add freedom, they subtract it.”
I’ve been battling lately with some myopic legal beagles who’ve got it into their heads that the U.S. Constitution itself is the origin and source of not only our laws, but of our Rights. The ideas of the Declaration of Independence, of “unalienable rights”, of “… life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…”? Nyah, those are irrelevant.
Ass-tounding.
The ideas of the Founders, classical liberalism, natural law, are anathema to these guys, on both the left and right, they think that the TEXT that is in the constitution, by virtue of being printed there, is all that should be considered, and nothing more than a dictionary should be used to understand it – the idea that it developed out of, and relies upon the integrated concepts of a coherent philosophy is beyond him.
(BTW, if you want to get a fuller understanding of, or just brush up on what the Founding Fathers had in mind, this site is hard to beat, The Founders Constitution, from the University of Chicago Press and the Liberty Fund., it goes line by line through the constitution, from the Preamble on, followed with links to the relevant documents the Founders had in mind when conceiving this Republic, as well as arguing over it.)
I think your #10 begins to get to the heart of it, the issue isn’t with the policies that have been imposed, but the thinking that gives rise to them. Unsupported and unsupportable certainties and assertions are at the brittle roots of the problem.
The problem we face may be simpler than we often tend to think – the origins of the Effects we face, lies in their Causes. If you want to know what brings people to deliberately choose to do the moonbatty things they do, then you need to take a look at the ideas which led them to see situations in such a way, as to decide that those actions actually made enough sense to take them.
The war we’ve got to fight today, has to be waged against ideas, not states. The reality is that we don’t have the convenience of a physical enemy we can target. Our enemy is nothing that can be bombed, our enemy is the philosophy that fertilizes those thoughts in the moonbats heads, and unfortunately you can’t strike at those heads without making their causes seem more justified, legitimate and even romantic.
And while I do think we’ve got to engage the Politically Correct in ‘street battles’ and ‘skirmishes’, the full scale war has to be taken to the proregressives root, which developed from the philosophies of Descartes, Rousseau, Godwin, Kant, Hegel, Mill, Marx, etc, etc, etc, and we’ve got to fully understand our own principles and positions in order to be effective against them.
If you’ve ever seen a little ‘r’ republican try to argue healthcare or campaign finance reform by admitting that the leftist has a point, ‘but we need to be more moderate…’ you’ve seen how not understanding the nature of the enemy, is like drawing a target over your heart. And if you don’t even understand Individual Rights, Property Rights, you cannot defend liberty at all.
And if we confined ourselves to fighting them on issues such as legislative battles alone, it would be like shooting down a plane while leaving their aircraft carrier’s and shipyards and fuel depots intact. Shoot ‘em down where you can of course, but don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ve won a major battle – it was just a skirmish.
The proregressivist began the war on us in our educational system back in the early 1800′s, with just this idea in mind – eliminate the idea of Rights as the Founders knew them, and replace them with ‘rights to goodies’ – do that and the war would be won. And that’s what they’ve been at ever since, taking more and more territory year after year after year, and that is the ONLY place the war can be won. It’s going to be a long, slow, painful battle to win that ground back, but nothing else will produce a populace that is again able to understand the nature of the Constitution we have, and understand that while it is the framework of our laws and the ‘defender’ of our rights, it is not the source of our Rights.
It took Sam Adams over 25 years to stir up a well educated populace to understand the nature of their rights and to recognize the threat to their liberty which parliament posed to them… it may take us a bit longer… but it’s doable.
Just remember that Free speech is a very powerful weapon… but if we don’t use it, and direct it towards our foes, and their roots in wackademia, we are unilaterally disarming ourselves.
Ok, sorry to chew up so much html.
Morgan K Freeberg said “I am intrigued, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.”
;-)
It’s simpler to do than that, I can be found at Blogodidact, and my current post Unknown Conspiracies – You don’t think, therefore, they are, is the latest in a series digging back into how our sense of Justice has become so out of whack.
Fair warning though: if you haven’t already guessed it, I can be a wee bit long winded too.
Apollo cursed Cassandra that her prophecy would not be believed. But Cassandra’s questions, beginning with universal suffrage, reveal a tremendous understanding of the past, and perhaps is prophecy in itself.
Tocqueville came to America to discover why democracy worked here when it was so lethal to life and liberty in Europe. He lived in amazement for nine months as he discovered several hundred pages of the why for Democracy in America. Tocqueville, French to the core, loved America immediately but he had, as well, incredibly prophetic warnings for her. Here is what he had to say about suffrage, in Europe at least–
‘Universal suffrage is a detestable element of government, but it is a powerful revolutionary instrument. There is danger of falling into the worst of tyrannies–that of a despot appointed and controlled, if controlled at all, by a mob. I know nothing so miserable as democracy without liberty.
Those who consider universal suffrage as a guarantee of the excellence of the choice made are under a complete delusion. Universal suffrage has other advantages but not that one. ‘
The Founders knew this, but they also knew they had gone as far as they could, and left us with “a Republic, if you can keep it.”
Discovering how to keep it is not a thing to be invented, but revisited. The inventions have removed us from republic, and liberty. When men can no longer see a thing it is often because they have gone so long a time not looking at it.
Interesting no one brings up one really good idea the Founders had.
George Washington’s farewell Address had some very good stuff on the idea of avoiding ‘foreign entanglements’.
Yet with all the ills which afflict the nation mentioned on this thread, I haven’t read anything about our military forces (roughly equal in strength to the rest of the world combined) stationed in 140-odd nations around the world and engaged in two shooting wars being fought roughly 8,000 miles from our borders.
I wonder what the Founders would think?
So you are not with Garrett are you, Arthur? In fact, his warnings about a large foreign presence is far more profound than Washington’s. It is one of the most sobering things ever written, and that in fact is exactly what prompted this post.
Washington’s warning had a very immediate cause and application. The man had used up every last part of public goodwill, gained from his lifetime of service, to keep America out of the French Revolution. It was a very close call, and the best he ever made as President.
Adams took that to apply to nearly everything. One-third of the Federal budget under Adams went to paying off Muslim terrorists, a fact which had a part in costing him re-election. Jefferson was at the other end of that dog -and pony show, negotiating on behalf of the American government in London to release hostages, and seeing the Pashas first hand. His disgust was so great that the first thing he did as President was send out the wardogs. Successfully.
Empire is one of three essays written in a collection called People’s Pottage, renamed in its latest version Ex-America. Garrett makes the case that American empire is the most beneficent in history, and beyond comparison, but that all empire demands a very strong executive, and a strong executive is incompatable with republic. We lost the Republic under Roosevelt, and there has been no actual attempt to recaim it since, anything but.
Garrett observes that the Founders understanding was that the people could do absolutely anything they wanted, no matter how ill-advised, but that there were rules and proceedures to be observed to get there. That was then. Garrett saw that there were now no more restrictions to change, if we can call this change. I call it destruction.
Arthur said “Interesting no one brings up one really good idea the Founders had…. avoiding ‘foreign entanglements’.”
ehhh…
” I wonder what the Founders would think?”
I wonder more about what they would have wondered if we tried to behave as if our circumstances hadn’t changed in 200+ years?
That phrase (which doesn’t actually appear in the speech, btw.. picky, I know, still…) sounds good on its own, but against the full context of Washington’s full Farewell Address, I’ve found it loses a bit of it’s zing.
“Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships, or enmities:
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one People, under an efficient government, the period is not far off, when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest guided by our justice shall Counsel.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humour or Caprice?”
What Washington was speaking of were bickering peoples, monarchies and despots half a world away, remote lands which took weeks to travel to, and then only small numbers of people at a time could do so; it’s lands held almost no physical influence upon us at all, and so beyond basic trade, they were properly of no concern to us, and it would have been foolish to involve ourselves in any relations with them – to what purpose beyond trying to curry favor?
In his world, that was a correct position. But the last President who might have been able to credibly stretch concepts to fit that scenario was Wilson, who, you may be aware, failed to pull it off.
Today, when any part of the world can be reached by us, and us by them, in a matter of hours and by hundreds and thousands of people at a time; when our legitimate business interests likely have vital operations established throughout the world – business operations, not just trade – and thousands of our citizens are employed or engaged in their legitimate business operations; when we can see and speak with any part of the world instantly, and even be struck ourselves by weapons, craft or insurgents from any part of the world within a few hours, or minutes, if they be already here – such a position is … being polite… unrealistic.
Do we want to be involved in the workings of less than savory foreign govt’s or be a party to their squabbles? No, of course not. But where our ability to uphold and defend our interests, our citizens lives and property, and safety require agreements and treaties, then that is what we’ll need to do.
To pretend to belong to a rarefied world structure and pre-technological society that has been gone for over a century, is little different from one that might be proposed by luddites.
Our best defense is not the policies of our Founding Fathers (which are only properly suited to their circumstances), but their principles – the support and defending our citizens Individual Rights & Property Rights, engaging in (and forcefully defending) Free Trade and defending such from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to those purposes being no better friend and no worse enemy.
(BTW, of course that means Nee! to any foolishness such as Kyoto, U.N.’s law of the Sea Treaty or any of its other ‘endeavors’, etc)
BTW, anyone read Empires of Trust: How Rome Built–and America Is Building–a New World ? It’s the first of the are we the new Rome? books, that I think really captures the essential similarities without contorting both republics to resemble each other. It also makes a much better case for the peril we face in being sucked into the slide to becoming an actual empire… with emperors.
That we’ve not actually slid that final step yet is rather remarkable, and hints that we may still be able to turn aside from doing so… but it’ll take all of our active and outspoken efforts. We’ll see….
But I do disagree we are our government’s servants these past 70-odd years. Rather, we’re engaged in one huge, endless focus group. ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’ is where we’ve ended up. McLuhan. Baudrillard. Postman. They were onto something.
Postman is a frackin’ idiot. I had to read “Amusing Ourselves to Death” as part of some upper-division general ed theme class back in college.
The book was written in 1985 and I read it about twelve years later. He presumes that the entire body politic is nothing but a big lumbering sloth who can’t think for itself. That may indeed describe SOME of the population, but certainly not all of us. To paint the entire population of the US with such a broad brush is no different than the crude, haughty stereotyping we frequently hear from western Europeans.
And that was another thing that I hated about the book. Postman didn’t have one cruel word for all those stupid, socialism-loving douchebags in Canada, Sweden, or Holland. His ire was reserved strictly for the US of A, the one western country on Earth that still has a spark of fight left in it, even in 200. The one that hasn’t laid down and given up on the contest of freedom.
All Postman really did was re-hash Aldous Huxley’s book “Brave New World,” written three decades earlier. Indeed, the last chapter of Postman’s book was entitled “The Huxleyan Warning.”
My instructor made me write a paper on “Amusing Ourselves” after I’d finished reading it. In response to Postman’s charge that we Americans can’t pay attention to exposition for longer than 30 seconds…I wrote, “Excuse me. I sat through his book, didn’t I? Is this essay not proof that I understood the contents well enough to generate an informed response to his argument, whether I agree with it or not?” My instructor wrote “yes” in the margins of my paper along this section. Twice.
Van typed:
‘I wonder more about what they would have wondered if we tried to behave as if our circumstances hadn’t changed in 200+ years?’
Bingo
He added:
‘Our best defense is not the policies of our Founding Fathers (which are only properly suited to their circumstances), but their principles – the support and defending our citizens Individual Rights & Property Rights, engaging in (and forcefully defending) Free Trade and defending such from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to those purposes being no better friend and no worse enemy.’
Absolutely. That’s why it’s so disappointing to watch the US prop up the losing side in a colonial war in SE Asia and blunder into the quagmire of the Middle East.
Cylar mentioned (re: Postman):
The book was written in 1985 and I read it about twelve years later. He presumes that the entire body politic is nothing but a big lumbering sloth who can’t think for itself. That may indeed describe SOME of the population, but certainly not all of us. To paint the entire population of the US with such a broad brush is no different than the crude, haughty stereotyping we frequently hear from western Europeans.
You might scroll up the thread to this one:
Cassandra
‘Was it the foolishness of universal manhood suffrage? Our original sin of slavery, which through the Civil War destroyed the powers of the states? Women’s suffrage, which leads to a feminized, sentimental polity?’
Hmmmmm.
I hadn’t heard of Garrett before, but Arthur Stone and James Wilson piqued my interest & The People’s Pottage is available on Mises.org as a .pdf (though it and his other books are easier to find there through his wiki page), looks like interesting reading, thanks.
On the off chance these names are unknown, let me return the favor by bringing to your attention Irving Babbitt, a good introduction & essay’s here, and if you can find Literature and the American College (1908) (downloadable pdf at the link), buy it – it goes a good way towards answering much of Cassandra’s questions; and (less likely to be unknown) Richard Weaver’s Ideas have Consequences.
Cylar, I feel your pain on Postman, and while I’d go along with ‘annoying’ and often foolish (particularly on some educational policies… might have been another book though… memory lapse) ‘frackin’ idiot’ is a bit over the top. He did note several serious issues, however he and other’s you mentioned, too often, IMHO (pause for laughter), are distracted by non-essentials like technology, etc. Things are never the issue – it is always the ideas behind them, which make the misuse or abuse of some things, into prominent problems. Whenever someone is offering you things as a solution or things as a grave threat, you can be sure of two things – one they are missing the true issue, and two, they will fail in their efforts (Drugs, computerized classrooms, etc).
Babbitt in particular, perhaps because when he was writing there wasn’t any technology (!) is not distracted by side issues, he identifies the real principles of the problems (which are even more serious a problem in our time, than in his) and nails them home, and those most aligned with them, the ideas behind the proregressives, to the wall.