Conservative Values

Abortion and the Return of Moloch

Mark Noonan10 Comments

First off, for our liberals out there – who was Moloch? Moloch was a pagan god who went by various names in the ancient world, but the main point here is that Moloch was appeased by human sacrifice, especially the sacrifice of children. In case you ever wondered why the Romans, after defeating Carthage in the Third Punic War, destroyed the city entirely and sowed the ground with salt, it was because the Roman’s despised the Carthaginians, who worshiped Moloch – to the Romans, what sort of savage, inhuman people sacrifice children like that? If you want to get a sense of the horror the Romans felt, imagine a community of modern, American people getting dressed up in their best to go watch a baby being roasted alive. Since the downfall of Carthage and the later rise of Christianity, the very concept of human sacrifice has been anathema in the West – until recently.

Here was have an article by Sady Doyle which is urging all good liberals to cease defending abortion as a necessary evil, but promote it as a positive, moral good:

Katha Pollitt’s Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights is a deeply felt and well-researched book which argues that abortion, despite what any of its opponents might claim, is a palpable social good. Progressives, Pollitt says, can and must treat abortion as an unequivocal positive rather than a “necessary evil”; there is no ethical, humane way to limit abortion rights. The fact that Pollitt needs to make this argument in 2014, however, seems to indicate that pro-choicers have long been a little too nice for our own good…

Too nice for their own good? Goodness, it’s like the good lady hasn’t even checked to see just what sort of hatred, vitriol and violence is directed against pro-life people by pro-abortion. But, we’ll set that aside – the real issue here (and I do give her points for honesty) is that she’s of the view that abortion is morally good, and insistent that the pro-abortion movement say just that in public.

The article goes on for a bit about how sweet and wonderful abortion is – essentially asserting the view that pregnancy is a disease and massive, artificial medical intervention is necessary lest women have the unbelievable horror of pregnancy “forced” upon them, apparently in violation of the primary female activity, building a career in corporate America (yep, nothing says “freedom” better than being shackled to a cubicle for 8 hours a day…of course, it could be that Ms. Doyle doesn’t interact often with that part of the sisterhood which doesn’t make its living writing articles lauding abortion…). It is horrifying to read; to understand that in 2014 we have people who have so far gone into moral topsy-turvydom that evil is good and good, evil. Pregnancy to Ms. Doyle is a problem – and it needs a solution, and might as well make it a Final Solution, right?

I’ve long held the view that once you step off from morality, you’re doomed to just get worse and worse unless you step back to morality. Chesterton in one of his stories had a character point out that you can some times maintain a reasonable level of good (in spite of routine failures and sins), but you can’t maintain a reasonable level of bad – once you go bad, unless you repent completely, you’ll just get worse and worse. Once people asserted that human life is not uniquely valuable and legalized abortion, it became certain – unless we repented – that we would eventually start killing anyone who isn’t up to snuff. Now we see euthanasia for the ill and elderly, people advocating for children to be killed even after birth if they aren’t “fit”, and now a bald-faced assertion that killing is morally good – this being far different (and, morally, far below) the original argument of rare, sad necessity used to push abortion to legality. Given how far we’ve fallen, I don’t think that anyone can argue against my next statement:

Unless we repent and restore the sanctity of human life in law and custom, we will eventually start celebrating the murder of human beings.

I’m not kidding – people who have fallen low enough to say that abortion is morally good will eventually want to celebrate it. It is the next step down, don’t you see? What would stop them from doing such a thing? They already hold life, itself, in contempt – only the most narrow and selfish interests move them…and if they are to have an abortion, why not make a party out of it? And they’ll do it when they kill the elderly, as well – in fact, I can easily see, given attitudes about the environment, that killing human beings can be seen as beneficial to the world…a small sacrifice to Mother Nature, right? That it is human sacrifice – heck, so much the better: in fact, when you abort your child (or off you grandmother), you are doing a good deed…you are helping to save the plant by reducing humanity’s carbon footprint!

We are, fortunately, on the cusp of an increasingly pro-life America. The young, especially, seem to be keen on allowing everyone to live (having been born in a time when they, too, could have been aborted at will, I think, has concentrated their minds on the matter). I do hope that this is the last, hideous shriek of the Culture of Death – but if these people do continue to have power, they will continue to press their case, and we might find altars to Moloch springing up here and there. The lesson here is for everyone who still claims to be “pro-choice”: you can no longer hold to that position. You really do have to choose – be pro-life, or be pro-abortion (or, more accurately, pro-death). Pro-choice was a phrase which allowed people to hide from the actual, moral choice required of them. It is now time to choose – which side do you want to be on? On one side, there’s the rather difficult task of getting everyone into the world, and then treating them decently until they die a natural death. On the other side, people who will kill because a person is inconvenient. Pick.

Ferguson: Everything Has Gone Wrong

Mark Noonan31 Comments

We have to leave aside, for now, any exact judgement on the precise events – there are lots of stories circulating about who did what to whom, but until it is all sorted out during the investigation(s), none of us can say who is at fault.  What we can say, however, is that unarmed men – as a rule – shouldn’t be shot and killed by the police. We can also say that when people get outraged over a police shooting, looting stores is NEVER a proper response. We can also say that when the police, in response to the looting, come into a neighborhood dressed up like an occupying army, it won’t do much to improve community relations.

The mess in Ferguson is explicable to me only in the context of the overall decline of our civilization which is revealing itself both in our increasingly anti-social behavior (the looting, eg) and the incapacity of our governments (local, State and federal) to properly govern. The behavior of the police in a civilized nation should be that which makes it enormously unlikely that an unarmed man – even if engaged in criminal activity – will be shot by the police. The behavior of the citizens shouldn’t be – no matter what the provocation – to turn to criminal activity as an allegedly political statement against injustice. That we frequently get un-armed men (and often completely innocent people, into the bargain) shot by the police and that we also frequently get looting and other anti-social behavior from the citizenry should be setting off alarm bells.  But here’s the real problem – it doesn’t.  People seem to accept that the cops will do wrong and that people, in response, will go on and do wrong, as well. Lawyers will then sue and settle everything up for a money payment and the national narrative will move on to the Next Thing. We can’t go on like this, good people – our civilization is dying and it will die completely unless we start to get a grip on this.

There are myriad causes which can be asserted for the decline of our civilization – but fundamental to it is the decline of Judeo-Christian theology in the public square. As the public square has been taken up by various secular fads, Judeo-Christian theology has been increasingly marginalized.  But here’s the kicker: it was precisely the Judeo-Christian theology which made for a civilization in which laws would be obeyed, manners would be observed and public decency upheld. There never was a time when there was a moral policeman on every block making certain that everyone kept up to scratch, but our ideals were based on Judeo-Christian theology and so most everyone, most of the time, kept their end up. Replace that with consumerism, money-grubbing, hucksterism (political and religious), narcissism and all the other nonsense we’ve fed on, and this is what you get…police forces which don’t know how to police (but which can, indeed, kill) and citizens who so lack a sense of justice that they can’t even have a political demonstration without looting a store.

We are not, at this point, all gone.  We do have many people who still know how to act – who can govern or hold political demonstrations without devolving into looters of one sort or another. On the other hand, there are these looters in Ferguson – who are doing no differently, in effect, than the Occupy movement…or the anarchists who periodically protest outside globalist-elite gatherings. But the fact must be faced that a very large portion – and perhaps a majority – simply does not know how to act, whether they are acting in government or acting in the capacity of citizens. What difference between a pack of looters at a Wal Mart and a police force which seizes property on the flimsiest of pretexts? At bottom, both involve people stealing – the one under the cover of law, the other under the cover of political protest. We’re not, as I said, all gone – but we’re going.

Unless and until we accept that we can’t survive as a people who condone immoral behavior, we’re doomed. I’m not demanding that each and every one of you attend Mass or go to a synagogue this week, but if you want to live in a free and civilized nation, then you’d better act as if you do go every week. None of us are innocent; all of us fail – but the ideal still has to be held up and at least some attempt must be made to adhere to it. The fact that you are living in the West and have this ability to live pretty much as you please is based upon  the Judeo-Christian ideal that each human being is uniquely valuable and has the sovereign power to make his or her own choices.  That ideal doesn’t really exist anywhere else. It was built up, painfully, over many centuries as people came to a fuller understanding of God and man’s relationship to God. It actually peaked between the 12th and 15th centuries…its been rather downhill since then; for the ideal, I mean. Starting in the 16th century, people started questioning that whole notion of free will and a personal God. There has been pushback since the first questioning of the ideal (which is why we’re not completely gone, yet; part of the pushback, by the by, was the Declaration of Independence), but the general trend has all been towards fatalism, the supremacy of the group, the hopelessness of life, the pursuit of purely worldly pleasure and the rest of the claptrap we’ve been laboring under…and which makes for the situation we see in microcosm in Ferguson: police who can’t police and citizens who can’t act like citizens…because both are confused and don’t know what they are supposed to be doing. Think of how many news stories you’ve seen in just the past year which demonstrate that people don’t know how to act – and government doesn’t know how to govern. Most of these don’t involve people heading out to do a malevolent act – most of them are merely the result of people behaving stupidly because they honestly don’t know there’s a sensible alternative.

In the long run, I don’t know how all this will come out. I’m pretty confident that at least a veneer of civilization will remain until I’m safely in my grave. But I think it would be rather a good thing if our civilization was around 100 years from now – and 500 years from now, too.  But it won’t be around 100 years from now unless people make a conscious decision to rebuild it and maintain it. If you can’t at least – even if grumblingly – accept free will (and thus personal responsibility) and the need for public decency (sorry, guy with underwear hanging out), then we’ll never get anywhere. What price are you willing to pay for civilization?  That is what it comes down to – and if you won’t pay it, then you won’t have it.

 

 

The Left Believes Immorality is Moral

Mark Noonan12 Comments

Interesting bit over at Ace of Spades:

…The left does indeed engage in moral relativism– selectively.

For the enemies of America or Israel, or for the enemy of civilized, orderly society (say, the common street-murderer), the left does indeed engage in this analysis of moral relativism.

But what about for America itself, or Israel, or the family murdered by a “desperate” and poor lifelong criminal?

Does the left ever engage in the same moral relativistic thinking and say, of America, Israel, or a community outraged by murder, “Well, these people were scared. They felt as if they had no choice. Their anger can be excused and understood, and justified to some extent, because of the grievances they felt they had against their enemies.”

No– they do not. This moral relativism, the excusing and justifying of evil acts, is a one-way street only, only serving to apologize for people who kill Americans (or Westerners; the Israelis in this case are taken to be White Westerners)…

This has a lot of truth in it, but I don’t think it goes far enough.  For us on the right, we like to have a mindset that people are reasonably decent and want what is best – and to a certain extent, this mindset is true but for the left “what is best” is immoral. Until we understand that what the left wants is flat wrong in the sense of being immoral, we won’t really be able to get atop them and prevent their actions.

Continue reading →

Punk Rock Lives

Cluster14 Comments

Very seldom does one article capture everything you have been thinking but that is exactly what I found this morning with this excellent article from Kurt Schlichter over at Townhall. Progressivism is over. It’s stale. It’s status quo. It’s predictable and worse yet it is a failure. I know some people were offended by my opinion on the current crisis we are facing with the border, but my opinion is based in the reality that we have to shake things up. We have to not be afraid to offend some people. The status quo, i.e. progressivism is not working. It’s not ok to have children out of wedlock and depend on food stamps. It’s not ok to father children and then abandon them. It’s not ok to expect that someone else pays for your birth control. It’s not ok to stone women to death and deny the right of another ethnicity to exist. It’s not ok to sell drugs and kill people. It’s not ok to have children and then send them to another country for someone else to raise. It’s not ok to lie to win an election. I am sick and tired of mealy mouthed, politically correct, even tempered, non offensive political bullshit.

The music of liberalism doesn’t move us, it doesn’t change us, it doesn’t excite us. It’s just there, aural wallpaper designed to keep us quiet, to get the liberals through one more election cycle, to help them hold power just a little longer.

Exactly. Whatever the progressives have to do to win another election they will do because they have no shame, no principles, no morals and no guts.

There’s no energy left in liberalism, no excitement, just more rules, more controls, everything the punks hated. You can’t say this, you can’t think that, everybody read the memo – today we’re scheduled to be angry at people don’t want to subsidize our birth control! Oh, and make sure you obtain a videotaped, notarized consent form before you kiss your cisgender hook-up.

One of my favorite movies is Miracle, a movie about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team and Coach Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) had one of the best pre game speeches I have ever heard, and part of it is now a pre game speech for conservatives:

This is your time. Their time — is done. It’s over. I’m sick and tired of hearin’ about what a great hockey team the Soviets have. Screw ’em!  This is your time!! Now go out there and take it.

That’s the attitude we all need to have. Screw the progressives. Screw Putin. Screw the drug cartels. This is our time. It’s time to be rebellious and stand up for moral clarity. It is time to say enough is enough. There is nothing wrong with being an extremist and I wear that label as a badge of honor. It’s time to be politically incorrect. It’s time to offend people and shake up the status quo. Who’s in?

 

Turley’s Testimony

Cluster13 Comments

In all of the chaos that has been swirling around the last week or two, i.e.; the border crisis, the Malaysian airliner, and the Gaza Strip, what has been lost or certainly under reported is the very important Congressional lawsuit against Executive Authority. Notable George Washington University law professor and admitted Obama supporter Jonathan Turley testified in front of Congress this last week in support of the lawsuit, and his testimony was very compelling and should get the attention of anyone who respects the Constitution and the founding of our country. Turley warns not only of unlawful unilateral changes to legislation by the executive branch, but also of the “fourth branch” of government, and the increasing power of agency deference, and the enactment of law through regulations. The testimony is found in full text here, and is a good weekend read. Many of us here have spoken to this issue quite a bit calling for the need to limit the size and scope of the federal government, and to see that the House, through elected representatives, and the States assert their Constitutional authorities. Unfortunately, in the face of those statements, we have been called racists and extremists by the very people who either support the expansion of unilateral power and the departure from the tripartite system our founders intended, or by those who are so willfully ignorant they pose an extreme danger to our republic. I contend it is the latter. In his testimony, Turley explains how he sat in bewilderment when the President stood in front of the Congressional body and told them straight up that he would go around them if they failed to act and many of them stood up and cheered. How sad is that? Congress cheering a President that promises to strip them of their elected responsibility. This lawsuit must go forward, and it must succeed, and this is just the first of many actions the people must engage in to regain control of this government, and of this country. Below are some excerpts:

While the President is clearly exasperated by the opposition that he has encountered in Washington, the Framers created a system that often forces compromise between factional and political groups. That legislative process tends to produce laws with a broader base of support and, frankly, a better product after going through the difficult revisions and conferences. What emerges is not always perfect but it does have the legitimacy of a duly enacted law. It is that legislative process that is the key to the success of the American system. Thus, the loss caused by the circumvention of the legislative branch is not simply one branch usurping another. Rather, it is the loss of the most important function of the tripartite system in channeling factional interests and reaching resolutions on matters of great public importance. 

The rise of this fourth branch in our tripartite system raises difficult questions.65 Today, the vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations. Adding to this dominance are judicial rulings giving agencies heavy deference in their interpretations of laws under cases like Chevron. Recently, this Supreme Court added to this insulation and authority with a ruling that agencies can determine their own jurisdictions — a power that was previously believed to rest with Congress. In his dissent in City of Arlington v. FCC, Chief Justice John Roberts warned, “It would be a bit much to describe the result as ‘the very definition of tyranny,’ but the danger posed by the growing power of the administrative state cannot be dismissed.”

Secession is the Answer Update

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Well, it’ll be on the ballot in California in 2016:

A proposal backed by venture capitalist Tim Draper to divide California into six states has received enough signatures to make the November 2016 ballot, according to the nonprofit Six Californias…

I expect it to be crushed at the polls – the last polling on it showed 59% of Californians opposed.  But, you got to start somewhere; in a democratic republic, nothing happens right away and, very often, the first time something is tested on the ballot, it goes down in flames. It takes education and political activity to bring something to majority support – and this is something that needs majority support.  In fact, this is the single most American political proposal in more than 100 years.  After all, the Founders were secessionists.

Draper’s proposal will fail – and part of the failure can be traced to the way he’s drawn the borders of the Six Californias. The purpose of secession in California is to free the people of California from the oppression of those who currently run California – San Francisco, Los Angeles and the Sacramento area. That should be one State, rather than being broken up into three…and the one State shouldn’t be rewarded with the Lake Tahoe area, especially as Tahoe has nothing in common with the Pacific Coast area it’s shackled to in Draper’s plan. No, no, no: liberal nitwits in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento have made California into a mess where a lot of people would like to get out – and no one other than the nitwit liberals of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento should be stuck with said nitwits. Draper’s “Jefferson” should be called “Northern California” and it should include the Tahoe area. Central California (though Central California could be called either East California or West Nevada) and South California are fine – so, with those modifications, you actually get Four Californias, not Six…and that would have a better chance of winning votes.  Of course, the other part of possible failure is that the poorer areas of the State (in my division, Northern California and Central California) might be scared off from secession because they would technically lose some benefits of taxes in the rich areas…but even here, a good public education campaign can show that what they’d lose in State spending they’d more than gain in economic growth by not being tied to the anti-growth liberals in West California (ie, SF, LA and Sacramento).

Getting back to the basics of it all, the primary purpose of secession is to provide political organisms which are united by a general set of common interests and thus are protected against rapacious or indifferent outsiders. That is, ultimately, what American government is all about.  The British government was rapacious and indifferent – and so we cut ourselves loose from it and made a government which wasn’t.  Or, more accurately, 13 governments which weren’t and which ceded enough of their power to a central government to protect us against foreign encroachment. To be sure, the theory can be carried too far – as it was in the Civil War when the South had all the protections it needed in its local relations, but decided to pull out altogether because they worried that at some theoretic point in the future, someone from the North might want to intefere directly in Southern life. But because someone once took it too far doesn’t mean the essential principal is wrong.

Not only does California need to be broken up, but so does New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Nevada and probably several other States where population and economic changes over the past century have caused various parts of the States to develope organically into entities which have little or nothing in common with other parts of the State.  Take, for instance, Nevada – back when Statehood was secured, mining was pretty much it for the State; it is what Nevada did.  But now over time changes have come over it – mining is still huge but only in the northern part of the State, while the south (ie, Las Vegas) is nothing but gaming and tourism.  These days, Neavda politicians in the south of the State greedily eye mining profits in the northern part of the State and propose to tax such profits to pay for things in the southern part of the State (and, of course, dependent upon gaming and tourism – ie, bribed by gaming and tourism industry lobbyists – southern Nevada pols never seek to tax heavily their own gaming and tourism)…but what matter is it to, say, a person living in Winnemucca what the class size is in Las Vegas?  Why should a mine which pays enough taxes for the locals in Winnemucca (and provides good jobs for people in Winnemucca) pay for the schooling of kids in Las Vegas?  The State should be broken up – so that Tourist/Gaming Nevada will have to take care of it’s own while Mining Nevada will take care of it’s own, with neither being able to do anything to the other.

Now, to be sure, such a break up of the States would result in more Senators – which is not necessarily a good thing.  But it would also be a bit more fair – and I think we’d also have to increase the size of the House from 435 members to right around 651 in order to ensure good representation of the people. But the resultant government – at the State and federal levels – will be more responsive to the needs and desires of the people, and less able to be controlled by the fat cats of a few large, urban areas. Ultimately, I think it would strengthen the union if there were more parts to it – and that is why I praise this effort in California and hope that it will grow and spread over the next few decades.

 

 

 

 

Violation of Common Sense

Cluster23 Comments

In a 5-4 decision, the SC has struck another blow to the ACA stating that a requirement of private employers to pay for contraceptive coverage is a violation of their religious freedom and conscience as written into the First Amendment. A common sense decision that everyone should understand but evidently 4 SC justices and a multitude of statist progressive don’t. Hobby Lobby, and the many other private companies that objected to this mandate, can not and do not force any woman to work for them, so when a woman does independently and of free will choose to work for that company, how in the world does she have the right to dictate to them what insurance coverage they should offer? That is absurd.

In another ruling that will rock the progressive world, and in another 5-4 decision, in-home health care workers will not be required to pay union dues which served to strengthen the collective bargaining position of the public unions in Illinois. This again is a victory for individuality and freedom of expression and a blow against big union corruption and political graft.

This has been a bad year so far for statism and progressivism and in turn a great year for individual liberty and conservatism. Let’s keep the momentum going.

The Un-Death of the TEA Party

Mark Noonan19 Comments

The obituary of the TEA Party has been a regular feature in the MSM since about 5 minutes after the movement started. A good deal of the motivation behind this is the ardent desire on the part of the Ruling Class – and thus 90% of the MSM – that the TEA Party be dead.  The TEA Party is very much not wanted for the simple reason that if Congress ever has a working majority of TEA Party politicians – or, my goodness!, a TEA Party orientated President – then the game is up.

It cannot be over emphasized just how much of America’s rich and powerful are rich and powerful simply because they are juiced-in to Washington, DC.  The life of Harry Reid is an excellent illustration of it.  Harry Reid really did come up from nothing.  His life story would be an inspiring rags-to-riches story except for one thing:  he got rich by the power of government.  He really was the son of a hard rock miner and a woman who took in laundry to make ends meet.  He really did walk miles to school (I’ve driven over the rout; it simply must have been a long, hard hike when Reid did it way back when).  From that background of grinding poverty, Reid is now fabulously wealthy – but he’s never actually done anything.  All he’s been is a government office-holder on one level or another since he graduated from law school (I’ve talked to some who do advise that for a short period Reid was in private law practice…but I don’t see much evidence of it, and it certainly wasn’t enough to build up Reid’s current level of wealth).  Using his connections and his political power, Reid has managed to engage in various financial schemes to get rich – some of which were clearly legal, others a lot more questionable, but in every case greased along by the fact of Reid’s membership in the Ruling Class; none of these deals, bottom line, are open to people who are not juiced-in with government.  And Reid is legion.  There are millions of people like him at the federal, State and local level, in and out of government, but all sharing one thing in common:  the ability to tap into government to get rich.

There are several rules regarding membership in this Ruling Class:

1.  Never attack the Ruling Class, as an entity (its ok to turn on individual members who get caught in a jam, but no attacks on individuals must be allowed to spread to an understanding that the problem is systemic).

2.  Never defend the traditional forces of the Republic.  You can make noises about supporting the troops and such – especially for the Rubes on the 4th of July, etc – but never defend that which actually made America great.  The reason for this is simple: defending what made America great means attacking what is now making American small – the Ruling Class. Stern, republican virtues and emulation of people like Washington and Madison are kryptonite.  This goes doubly so for the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of American morality – go ahead and be Catholic, Evangelical or Orthodox Jew all you want, but for crying out loud, when it is time to choose between defending that morality or destroying it, make some insipid statement about being opposed on moral grounds but not justified in defending it on legal grounds.  It is a requirement, you see, that the Ruling Class destroy traditional forces and the old morality – in their view, it is the only way they can guarantee their power indefinitely.  Demoralized people will submit to be ruled.

3.  Never, ever, ever, EVER agree to reduce the size of government.  Doesn’t matter if you ran as a small-government conservative.  That was just for the hill-apes back home.  Once in the Ruling Class, your job is to keep government large and growing larger.  How else are the new-comers to the Ruling Class to gain their wealth?  The Ruling Class must judiciously bribe and corrupt small sections of the people in order to ensure that things remain as they are, and this can only be done by an ever larger government. At best, you are permitted to pretend to slow the rate of increase in the size of government.

You do all that, and you’ll get along fine and the rest of the Ruling Class will defend you, even if they are allegedly in opposition to you.  They’ll be your buddies.  They’ll ensure that you, too, are given your opportunities to increase your wealth via government-greased deals. They’ll write laws so that you and they can pretty much be openly bribed (and they’ll call it “campaign finance reform”, into the bargain!). True, some of you might have to be thrown to the wolves from time to time, but most of you never will – and even if you do have to lose your particular office, there will be book deals, television shows, etc to keep you on the gravy train.  Just be true to the Ruling Class and all of this will be yours.

And then along comes the TEA Party.

Its not that TEA Party types are particular against any person – individual members of the Ruling Class do become lightening rods of TEA Party criticism, of course, but it really isn’t a personal thing.  TEA Party types are those people who hold to the old morality and the stern, republican virtues of our Founders.  And thus they see that, in a sense, it doesn’t matter if someone like Reid never broke a law – he simply should not be rich.  The fact that he is rich proves the system corrupt. And from there comes the requirement that the system be radically changed.  This is bull in a china shop kinda stuff…and it crosses party lines, which really irritates the Ruling Class because they hope to keep it a party vs party thing and thus have us divided….but if the people get united in a general desire to change the system, then everyone in the system is cooked.   And, so, the Ruling Class unites to destroy the TEA Party – and continually writes the TEA Party’s obituary, only to have it come surging up again like it did in the Virginia-07 House race on Tuesday.

And it will keep surging up – it won’t go away until the system is changed or the United States is destroyed as a nation by an unchanged system.  As long as there is any body of people in the United States who can bother to read what the Founders wrote, who heard stories about grandpa and great-grandpa or who just understands that only people who work hard at a productive trade should be rich, there will be a TEA Party.  And as the Ruling Class shoves America closer and closer to dissolution as a nation, the TEA Party will just get more vehement:  time is running out, after all.

Cantor’s defeat caught all of us by surprise – but it really, in a sense, shouldn’t have.  Cantor is a nice guy and he’s not some wild-eyed liberal.  He’s a rather conventional GOPer of the Ruling Class.  His opponent wasn’t and ran a campaign which spoke to the public desire for leadership which would challenge the Ruling Class, rather than make deals to increase the debt limit or an amnesty program without any realistic border security provisions. Most of the time, unknown and unfunded TEA Party candidates will fail – simply for not being able to get their message out there.  On the other hand, some times they will win – and so the GOPers who are part of the Ruling Class better take note: you have a decision to make.

You can either dig your heels in to defend the current system, or abandon it and thus, perhaps, become instrumental in the reform and revival of your nation.  True, if you turn against the Ruling Class, as an entity, you might lose – you might be tossed out on your ear.  The TEA Party impulse in the United States might not be victorious and America might be doomed.  On the other hand, if you join with the forces of reform, then they just might win…and while you’ll have no way to make any money off the deal and the Ruling Class will treat you with disdain, you might be able to save the United States and go into the history books with the fame of an honorable name.  You’ll also be able to look yourself in the mirror.  But come what may, what isn’t going to happen as long as the Republic endures is the death of the TEA Party.  It isn’t an aberration – it is America trying to save herself.

Update: Mickey Kaus notes Brat’s last-minute pitch for votes:

The entire amnesty and low-wage agenda collapses if Cantor loses — all the billions of special interests dollars, all the favors, all the insider dealing — all of it is stopped in its tracks tomorrow if the patriotic working families of Virginia send Eric Cantor back home tomorrow. 

Tomorrow, the middle class has its chance to fight back. 

Tomorrow, the people of Virginia can show up to the polls and defeat the entire crony corporate lobby. 

Tomorrow, we can restore our borders, rebuild our communities, and revitalize our middle class.

Yeah, that sort of thing is precisely what the TEA Party is all about.

A Conflict of Vision

Retired Spook24 Comments

Mark and Amazona and I had an off-blog conversation recently about how we have begun to distance ourselves from friends or acquaintances who inhabit the left side of the political spectrum.  For most of my adult life I rationalized keeping such friends by convincing myself that it was “only politics”; that we basically wanted the same things for ourselves and our descendants; we just disagreed with how to get there.

One of the things that the Obama presidency has accomplished is highlighting the stark contrast between Liberals and Conservatives, not just on issues and not just on their approach to problem solving, but on a fundamental conflict in our vision for the future.

The greatest and most obvious conflict of vision is about the basic role of the central government where one side believes the success of government is defined by how many people are helped by government and the other side which believes the success of government is defined by how few people need help from the government.

But the conflict is much deeper and broader than that.  It is a conflict between:

  • The fundamental transformation of America and the fundamental restoration of America.
  • The belief that some people can neither handle nor deserve freedom, and the belief that the yearning for freedom is an inherent part of the human spirit.
  • The belief that America is the greatest force for freedom and prosperity in the world, and the belief that America is the source of most of the evil and misery in the world.
  • Doing what’s right all of the time, regardless of the consequences and doing what’s right only when doing so yields personal or political benefits.
  • Always telling the truth and ignoring the truth when it has negative political or personal consequences.
  • Voting for someone because you’re confident they will honor their oath to uphold the Constitution and voting for someone because you’re confident they will ignore or subvert the parts of the Constitution that you don’t like.
  • Case law and original interpretation.
  • Morality and moral relativism.
  • Learning from history and re-writing history to fit an agenda.
  • Dwelling on what’s good about America as opposed to dwelling on what’s bad about America.
  • The creation of wealth and the transfer of wealth.
  • Freedom of religion and freedom from religion.
  • A dynamic view and a static view on just about everything.
  • Defining success as actually helping someone in need vs. defining success as feeling good because you tried to help someone.
  • Accountability and avoiding responsibility.
  • Humility and hubris.
  • Criticizing policies because they’re bad policies and being accused of being racist for criticizing policies because the policy maker is black.
  • Becoming a color-blind society and using race as a political weapon.
  • Lightly-regulated free market capitalism and crony capitalism with rewards for supporters and burdensome regulations on and harassment of any company that doesn’t support your policies.
  • Policy making based on polling and policy making based on sound scientific and economic principles.
  • Transparency and closed door, secret deals.
  • Increasing tax revenue and decreasing spending.
  • Economic justice and economic liberty.
  • Social justice and justice for all.
  • The individual and the collective.
  • Results vs. intentions.
  • Conservation and eco-imperialism.
  • Victory and exit strategy when applied to military conflict.
  • An educational system that teaches how to think vs. what to think.
  • “Our plan didn’t work because we didn’t spend enough money”, and “your plan didn’t work because it was an unworkable plan.”
  • Eliminating incentive and fostering dependency vs. entrepreneurship and self-reliance.
  • Voting based on issues and voting based on the best way to govern.
  • Liberty and tyranny.
  • And ,ultimately, between the survival of the human race vs. the here and now.

So I ask my former friends and acquaintances on the Left — common ground?  What common ground?  We are in a fight for the soul of the greatest nation in the history of the world, and our conflict of vision for the future is so profound that I will, without hesitation, lay down my life to ensure that my descendants are not forced to live under your vision.

 

The End of the GOP, or a New GOP?

Mark Noonan70 Comments

Interesting:

Four Republican-leaning groups with close ties to the party’s leadership in Congress — Crossroads and its “super PAC” affiliate, the Congressional Leadership Fund, and Young Guns Action — raised a combined $7.7 million in 2013. By contrast, four conservative organizations that have battled Republican candidates deemed too moderate or too yielding on spending issues — FreedomWorks, the Club for Growth Action Fund, the Senate Conservatives Fund, and the Tea Party Patriots — raised a total of $20 million in 2013, according to Federal Election Commission reports filed on Friday.

“This is by far the biggest nonelection year we’ve ever had,” said Matt Hoskins, the executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund. “It shows how committed people are to electing true conservatives and to advancing conservative principles.”

The golden rule of politics is, of course, “whoever has the gold, makes the rules”.  How long can the establishment GOP really retain control of the party when the non-establishment part of it is pulling in more money?

Democrats have been gleeful ever since 2008 over the GOP “civil war” – I haven’t viewed it in those terms.  It believe that what is happening is that the Republican Party is becoming a party of Jacksonians.  This would, no doubt, surprise and amuse that old Whig Lincoln who helped to build the Republican Party, but I don’t think he’s be dismayed by it, either.  We are a long way, after all, from the Republican Party of the 1860’s, just as we are from the Democrat Party of that era.  Things change and ever since FDR routed the Civil War era GOP in 1932, there has been no political party which has broadly expressed the old, Jacksonian principals of limited government.  Both parties have been broadly in favor of government, with just different ideas about just whom is to benefit the most from government largesse – though with both parties tending, in the last 20 years, to favor the rich and the poor over the middle class.

Jackson, it should be recalled, was for States’ rights…but not in an absurd sense, as shown when he smacked down South Carolina over nullification.  Jackson was in favor of free enterprise, but not to the idiotic limit of just allowing the rich to grind the poor.  Jackson’s power emerged out of the State militias rather than out of the traditional financial (in the North) or planter (in the South) Establishments.  Jackson would fight a man to the death to preserve his rights, but then adopt that enemy’s son and raise him as his own – this neatly encapsulates the American ideal.  Our modern Jacksonians – even if they don’t know they are – are also for States’ rights; for free enterprise (but getting more and more disgusted with crony capitalism); and for the right of the individual to live his or her life however they wish.  These are the general political ideals which are fueling the new forces in the GOP – and the forces which now look to take over the whole enterprise.

To be sure, the final part of this battle for the GOP might result in handing the Democrats just one more victory in 2016 – but the bottom line is that the old GOP Establishment will have to knuckle under to the TEA Party (broadly defined), or go over to the Democrats.  I think most will knuckle under – after all, any group which can raise $20 million in an off year is a force to be reckoned with…and a force which is probably going to win it all, in the by and by.