Revolution
The nobility of the American Revolution is humbling – see the closing paragraph of the Declaration of Independence below:
“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
Having “candidly” itemized the facts of the tyranny under which they lived, the Founders announced a new relationship with the sovereign, and how they would proceed to establish it.
In the next decade, the Founders would studiously consider and publicly debate all recorded historical relationships between citizens and their governors from ancient times through their present. They would construct a Constitution to codify their conclusions about the best governmental structures to preserve the enumerated fundamental rights in the Declaration of Independence.
The deteriorated relationship between man and state provided legitimate justification for their bloody revolution. The Founders constructed a process that led through revolution to a sustainable better form of government.
Today, we’re not faced with a challenge anywhere near that quality.
This summer, the degree that citizens respect or disrespect the self-identifications of other citizens led to mass tantrums in the streets, not to a government-changing revolution, despite the sociological claims of the activists.
The woke-hokum, Marxist-derivative, pseudo-scientific sociology that excused the destruction, rioting, looting, arson, and thuggery in American cities, has no noble foundation. Self-identification is the personal issue that turned into a public cause celebre after selected police events were misrepresented to instigate the mob.
City centers morphed into dangerous adult playgrounds filled with spoiled brats acting stupidly. How do you fix generations of mal-educated, probably stoned, acting-out man-children, coincidentally under the enabling leadership of Leftist mayors and governors?
We have an incredible history in America. The man-children shouting little bromides in the streets today, expressing rabid hormonal outrage, seem oblivious to their lowered standard of ideation. They’re missing out on the great American story, and they couldn’t care less.
They have no better ideas to offer America, and they’re hopelessly lost, bound up in a complex philosophical hell with no desire to escape. From killing babies to killing businesses and cities, all they have is a terrible consistency.
the Mob
Leftist provocateurs – community organizers – play the mob each day by teasing it with power. Mob feedback loops come from acting out physical rage, command of urban turf, and the kowtows they get from government authorities, police, media, sports and entertainment figures.
The mob will not allow appeasement. They will always demand more because dissatisfaction is their source of power.
Any vehicle to generate dissatisfaction will do, and the media provides an endless supply of carefully crafted media images, audio and video to encourage the aggreived.
Racism is particularly useful because it’s an infinitely adaptable thought crime with no limits. One doesn’t have to actually do anything to be classified a racist. All that’s necessary is to find one’s self in the path of the mob, ideologically or physically.
The mob will decide who are racists. The mob will decide their punishment.
With endless marching and mind-numbing repetition of banal slogans that actually prevent any reasonable conversation from occurring, we have long passed any potential for communication contemplated by the 1st Amendment’s “right to peaceably assemble, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.”
Don’t be a tool. Be against the mob. Don’t allow it to overtake our American republic.
Amy Wax on Dissent and Disagreement
…and the “familiar litany of sins”
The best response is no response
The best response to Leftist violence is to starve it of attention. Theater only works with an audience present. Don’t attend, only publish the conflicts on social media alongside critical analysis. Don’t give the barbarians meme space. Leave the angry Left alone to demonstrate and yell at itself.
What possible reason exists to confront it in the streets anyway? Few arguments, however reasonably delivered, could be sufficiently compelling to change a zealots mind during a mob event. Confrontation sustains the mob, and that’s exactly what the mob is there to generate.
Philosophical arguments aren’t settled in the streets. They require cool heads to even be heard.
The Left knows this. That’s why they keep their people in a constant state of agitation. Don’t help them.
concentrated interest vs. distributed interest
ASI – The problem with technocracy
Once again we see the basic problem with technocracy:
Adults will be told it is fine to drink in moderation in new guidelines on alcohol intake unveiled by the government — in a slapdown of Britain’s top doctor.
The rules, to be announced soon, will set the recommended weekly limit for both men and women at 14 units, a reduction of seven for men, and explain that every drink comes with a small health risk.
The dangers of alcohol, like the dangers of rather a lot of things in this life, come on a curve. No booze at all leads to shorter lifespans than some, too much to shorter again. Where those curves are is of course an empirical matter but the too much, leading to the same dangers as none, is well out beyond 14 units a week for men. Up more at 30 to 40 units in fact.
That this is true of much of life is obvious – no food is not known to be good for us, 5,000 calories a day plus a sedentary lifestyle similarly not all that healthy. A diet of pure sugar won’t keep you going all that long but an insistence on “no refined sugar” is to make the opposite mistake. And on the larger scale of course a tax rate of zero percent raises no money from that particular tax while there really is a rate which is “too high” in that raising it further will produce ever less revenue.
It’s superficially attractive that we have experts who decide how these curves work and then tell the rest of us. Certainly we think that pointing out that the peak of the Laffer Curve for UK income tax is somewhere around 40% or so, less than 50% or so, is an empirical result which we think experts should mention.
And yet there’s a problem with such technocracy. It’s akin to the trade protection and tariffs problem. The people who will end up as the technocrats on any particular subject are going to be those with a whole hive of bees in their bonnet about that particular subject. We end up being ruled by the Single Issue Fanatics, as Bernard Levin used to put it.
It’s a standard analysis of the problem with trade tariffs. Those who gain from the protection they provide are a concentrated interest- those few who produce whatever the tariff is placed upon. Those losers are the dispersed interest of everyone else. We don’t care very much, and therefore make very little noise about, tuppence on every toothbrush. Toothbrush manufacturers are very interested indeed, and will be most vocal, about 2 p on every brush they sell. And will thus be insistent about the vital interest of protecting British teeth from the horrors of Chinese competition.
So it is with our technocrats. Those who take a sufficient interest in how much other people drink are going to be those who are very interested in being able to control how much other people drink. The Temperance Lobby in short. Those who wish to control how much people smoke are going to be those against smoking itself. Those who work to regulate e-ciggies will be those who really don’t think they should exist at all. “Proper” salt levels will be determined by those with a bugbear about salt for whatever reason.
It is that concentrated and dispersed interest again. As soon as there is some small part of government which determines such details that small part will be colonised by the fanatics.
[see: Elbert County Planning]
Which is the basic problem with technocracy. It doesn’t end up with those who know what they’re doing running matters, it ends up with the fanatics as they’re the only people who care enough to regulate the rest of us. And if we’re honest about it rule by fanatics doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as rule by experts.
All of which is rather why we are fanatics ourselves. Fanatics for there being fewer rules and rather more of that dispersed interest making itself known by what people get on and do themselves rather than the imposition of absurdities by those with the power to do so.
Domestic Terrorism
Republicans who think the Leftist backlash against Trump is personal to Trump have paid too much attention to the Left’s rhetoric, and not enough attention to their actions over the last couple decades.
In the words of Elvis Costello, Trump is “This Year’s Model.” The Leftist freakout (see: https://www.facebook.com/events/637030473110590/ ) would be every bit as damaging were it inspired by any other “presumptive” Republican candidate. The specific hyperbolic form of attack would be fine tuned to fit whatever another candidate exposed, but the degree of hyperbole, and the projected violence of the attack, would be the same.
This is true because all of the Leftist attacks resolve to the Leftist agenda. The end points never change regardless of the motivating circumstances or the motivating persons that get cast into the nexus of Leftist umbrage.
The Left will create conflict, even where none exists, because without a compelling argument, they must fabricate a change agent to color themselves as some sort of response and solution.
So, Republicans who think an accommodation to the Left will buy them some peace, are flat wrong. They might as well try to mollify Islam. Oh wait, ….
TAMMY BRUCE: Anti-Trump rallies funded by the left
From Chicago to Albuquerque to San Diego, and now last week’s obscene riot in San Jose, California, Americans and the world saw supporters of the liberal agenda violently target Trump supporters, peacefully trying to attend a rally, as though they were prey. Make no mistake – these supposed anti-Trump riots are not organic nor are they… [Read more…]
Revolution persists
Recent events in Ferguson, other American cities, not to mention Syria, Iraq and the Ukraine, all host to rampage and destruction, have affirmed the enduring nature of the French Revolution.
“The pagan religions of antiquity were always more or less linked up with the political institutions and the social order of their environment, and their dogmas were conditioned to some extent by the interests of the nations, or even the cities, where they flourished. A pagan religion functioned within the limits of a given country and rarely spread beyond its frontiers. It sometimes sponsored intolerance and persecutions, but very seldom embarked on missionary enterprises. This is why there were no great religious revolutions in the Western World before the Christian era. Christianity, however, made light of all the barriers which had prevented the pagan religions from spreading, and very soon won to itself a large part of the human race. I trust I shall not be regarded as lacking in respect for this inspired religion if I say it partly owed its triumph to the fact that, far more than any other religion, it was catholic in the exact sense, having no links with any specific form of government, social order, period, or nation.
The French Revolution’s approach to the problems of man’s existence here on earth was exactly similar to that of the religious revolutions as regards his afterlife. It viewed the “citizen” from an abstract angle, that is to say as an entity independent of any particular social order, just as religions view the individual, without regard to nationality or the age he lives in. It did not aim merely at defining the rights of the French citizen, but sought also to determine the rights and duties of men in general towards each other and as members of a body politic.
It was because the Revolution always harked back to universal, not particular, values and to what was the most “natural” form of government and the most “natural” social system that it had so wide an appeal and could be imitated in so many places simultaneously.
No previous political upheaval, however violent, had aroused such passionate enthusiasm, for the ideal the French Revolution set before it was not merely a change in the French social system but nothing short of a regeneration of the whole human race. It created an atmosphere of missionary fervor and, indeed, assumed all the aspects of a religious revival–much to the consternation of contemporary observers. It would perhaps be truer to say that it developed into a species of religion, if a singularly imperfect one, since it was without a God, without a ritual or promise of a future life. Nevertheless, this strange religion has, like Islam, overrun the whole world with its apostles, militants, and martyrs.”
Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Régime and the French Revolution, 1858.
Translated by Stuart Gilbert, 1978, pp. 12-13.
hyperbolic times
Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh
Polite debate is no longer the accepted norm in our society. The liberal left is not tolerating divergent opinions, they want them eliminated. Outrageous labels, personal threats, and even violence have escalated during what used to be polite discourse and disagreements of opinion. [Read more…]
winners and losers
When the Democrat-controlled Colorado Legislature gets through imposing restrictive gun laws upon law-abiding citizens, will we be any safer? No, we won’t, because none of the prescriptions contained in any of these new bills address any element of the crimes committed with guns that will have motivated the bills’ passage.
In the instant case, losers will be law-abiding citizens. Winners will be Democrat politicians, their adoring liberal media, their captive voters, and the criminals who will have an easier time of it going up against a less-armed law abiding citizenry. But that’s only in the instant case. There’s also winners and losers in the larger scheme of things.
The country’s Founders designed a system they hoped would protect minority rights under the governance of a majority. They contemplated that with all the checks and balances between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, the 4th estate of the press, and the people, that enough pauses to consider would exist in the public discourse over new law, that the best argument, the best philosophy, the best solution, the mostly soundly reasoned answer, would tend to carry the day.
They did not anticipate ruthless progressivism with its will to win at all costs, and notwithstanding the soundness of their argument. They did not expect that all of the checks and balances in our country would fail in their primary function and become the captive organs of a single cult mythology.
Wherever progressives get a political majority, they ram through their agenda. Sound arguments to the contrary are not rebutted, nor debated. Opposed parties are procedurally silenced, crowded out, shouted down, ridiculed, overwhelmed, and ignored.
Sure, we have instant winners and losers as each issue comes up under the progressive agenda. But the bigger loser is our system, the one that brought us to this point of social evolution, the one responsible for our success.
And perhaps the biggest losers of all are the progressives themselves. The ones who have no idea what they’ve lost by damaging their fellow American minorities, whom they take such joy in suppressing. The ones dancing in the streets after each victory, the ones shouting in the streets when they’re not dancing.
They’ve lost their minds.
B_Imperial
the Obama surprise
The more the administration gives credence to this false cause of the Muslim riots — it was an Al Quada 9/11 plan and not the video — the more it creates Muslim unrest in the 3rd world. How many Muslim lives will Obama sacrifice to keep up the distraction to get himself re-elected?
condolences
Critics painted me as a defender of the old guard. Ha! The only things I defended in this election cycle were competence, sound management, realistic thinking, and the rule of law. Tragically, these bedrock principles did not win today in the Elbert County Republican Party primary. Well, the principles still exist, and it appears I will have plenty more opportunities to defend them in the future.
Come November, commissioner choices will be between agenda driven liberals and, um, agenda driven liberals. I’m sure this prospect has the New-Plains democrats, populists, and leftists, dancing in their switch grass patches tonight, however, consequences for the county will be grim.
We’ll see ubiquitous zoning and higher taxes. We’ll see environmentalism and its basket of unfounded mythologies unleashed in a flurry of ersatz relevancy as they consume the public discourse. We’ll experience these mythologies fail in an expensive protracted drama full of denial and blame. We’ll see none of these agenda progenitors take responsibility when their no-growth, anti-industrial, country-in-county ideas further impoverish Elbert County. We’ll see the few of us who use their 1st Am. right to dissent from these prevailing insanities called more names, if that’s even possible at this point.
I never wrote for the sake of the old guard. I wrote for the sake of limited sound government. A voting minority of Elbert County voted for bigger more intrusive government. They made a big mistake, and the county government they’ve chosen for all of us will make us pay dearly for it. That’s what unbridled government does to people and these people are all about the unbridling of government power.
The left has won. You’re not going to like these new-strange bedfellows when they start implementing their plans for you.
B_Imperial
Occupy’s Attack On Democracy
Occupy’s Attack On Democracy Posted 05/01/2012 07:10 PM ET
The Left: After a day of mayhem, Occupy protesters have shown themselves to be little more than a dangerous mob. Democrats coddle them even as their outrages escalate. Criminal behavior has no place in a democracy. [Read more…]
Nyquist setback
Commissioner Schwab’s announcement (audio)
After the meeting began, and before the above announcement, a woman quietly tried to hand me a bundle of notices to pass down my row. “This is in case they vote yes,” she whispered with a knowing glance. The notices contained an email address and a call for a recall of the commissioners. I told her I didn’t believe in recall elections and to pass out her own notices.
Nyquist withdrew his amendment because he knew he didn’t have the votes to get it passed. Watch and see how much credit our local lefties give to the commissioners over this decision–and it was a decision, it wasn’t just one side giving up. My bet is they’ll keep sailing their recall boat upwind and simply tack in a new direction.
Update: I left at the beginning of the public venting segment after I spied the lineup of characters preparing to share. Turns out the prediction above was no stretch. I heard the public comment segment became a bitch session about recalling the commissioners. Talk about ungrateful. From screaming elation to a series of screeds. Perhaps there’s something in the water around here that causes mass bipolar disorder. Maybe the commissioners should have let Nyquist sell it to the Springs after all.
2nd Update: What was in that second letter anyway?
Notes on Democracy
“The democratic politician, confronted by the dishonesty and stupidity of his master, the mob, tries to convince himself and all the rest of us that it is really full of rectitude and wisdom. This is the origin of the doctrine that, whatever its transient errors, democracy always comes to right decisions in the long run. Perhaps–but on what evidence, by what reasoning, and for what motives! Go examine the long history of the anti-slavery agitation in America: it is a truly magnificent record of buncombe, false pretenses, and imbecility. This notion that the mob is wise, I fear, is not to be taken seriously: it was invented by mob-masters to save their faces.”
H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1926.