elbertcounty.net

"Just the facts M'am, Just the facts." -- Sgt. Joe Friday

Notes on Democracy

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“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.

Elco Dem Reorg

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Elbert County Democrats
Mission Statement

The new Elbert County Democratic Party is building toward the future with the fresh ideas, energy, and commitment needed to help build our local economy, make our county a more desirable place in which to live and work.With Bill Ritter as our Governor and a Democratic majority in Colorado State Legislature, the Elbert County Democrats are poised to work in harmony with the State Party to provide the leadership that Elbert County needs to overcome the current financial and social woes that have resulted from over a decade of single party rule in Kiowa.Elbert County Democrats are determined to establish a positive presence in the local government and the county’s social fabric.  The Democrats are committed to providing new solutions to helping Elbert County grow and simultaneously preserving our rural tradition.  The Elbert County Democrats resolve to offer county residents a richer alternative to the local Republican Party by means of effectiveness and transparency.

Grades:

A+ for good intentions.
F if they use tax money and government regulation to accomplish them.

Civil War PC

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TRUTH-TELLING.

IT is amusing to see how a man in a passion lets the truth escape him. The London Times, which has constantly striven to represent the rebellion as the noble effort of an oppressed people to recover and defend their liberties, and has with perfect success falsified every fact in the history of the war, unguardedly tells the naked truth in a late article written under the consciousness of the extremity of the rebel cause.

It is speaking of the project of arming the slaves at the South, and the Times innocently remarks: ” The South has no reason to doubt that the negro will fight just as bravely in support of the cause of slavery, which is the cause of his master, as he will in the cause of liberty.” And it adds of its particular friends the rebels : ” The man who would submit without a murmur to the impressment of his horses or his crops, may very likely shrink back with a species of superstitious horror from the attempt of his own Government [at Richmond] to deprive him of those very slaves for whom he has already fought a long and desperate war.”

This is as it should be. The Times confesses that this insurrection is an effort to save slavery; and the paper whose asserted pride it is to defend “fair play”—the representative of the aristocratic governing class of England deliberately supports as a manly assertion of an undoubted right the armed effort of a body of men to overthrow a Government, which they do not pretend has ever wronged them, merely for the sake of preserving slavery. Does any really intelligent and thoughtful Englishman wonder that his country is detested by all other nations when he sees that its leading journal, holding a position which no other paper holds in any other country, is guilty of such a crime against human nature and civil society?

We do not for a moment forget the sympathy and generous service of our friends in England who, understanding this war, truly appreciate and despise the course of the Times and its adherents. But the fact of which we speak will help explain to them the indignation which they hear so often breathed against England. They may he very sure that if the mine owners any where in England should revolt against the British Government for the sole purpose of more surely imbruting the unhappy miners, no American statesman in office would applaud their insurrection as the founding of a nation, as Mr. GLADSTONE said of this rebellion ; and if any leading newspaper here, clearly recognizing the object of the insurrection, vehemently supported it, it would be overwhelmed with the derision and wrath of the great body of the people.

Harper’s Weekly, December 10, 1864

…said Daniel Hannan

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“Prime Minister, I see you’ve already mastered the essential craft of the European politician, namely the ability to say one thing in this chamber and a very different thing to your home electorate. [Read more…]

FDR’s blueprint for Obama

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“In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all — regardless of station, or race or creed.

Among these are: [Read more…]

Statists…

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Statists have launched bloody revolutions followed by violent periods of terror in France, Russia, Germany, China, and elsewhere, always under the flags of democratic populism, Marxism, national socialism, and fascism.  For the Statist, revolution is an ongoing enterprise, for it regularly cleanses society of religious dogma, antiquated traditions, backward customs, and ambitious individuals who differ with or obstruct the Statist’s plans.  The Statist calls this many things, including “progressive.”  For the rest, it is tyranny.

Mark R. Levin, Liberty and Tyranny (New York: Simon  & Schuster, 2009), 30.

“Ayers-Dohrn Paradox”

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But we ran smack dab into what I call the Ayers-Dohrn Paradox, which is:
Ayers and Dohrn gained fame as violent revolutionaries willing to commit murder and other terrorist acts in order to overthrow the United States. For that, they were greatly worshipped by the far left. Now, in their sunset years, they’re trying to re-cast themselves as “respectable” left-wing professors with “reasonable” opinions, who have long ago sworn off violence. And so, at these events, neither of them ever mentions their violent heyday, except rarely in passing. Instead, they focus exclusively on their current obsessions: Introducing Marxist thought into schools, and closing down the prison system. However, almost no one who goes to see Ayers and Dohrn gives a damn about hearing monotonous lectures on these particular topics: instead, their fans idolize them because of their violent revolutionary past. So at these events, the audience (as in this case) is full of far-far-far-left radicals who came in order to hear overheated revolutionary rhetoric. But instead, what they get is a boring professorial monologue. If Ayers and Dohrn were nothing more than your run-of-the-mill leftist professors, no one would go to their appearances. They’re coasting on their violent reputation, while at the same time trying to distance themselves from it. And that is the Ayers-Dohrn Paradox.

Thanks to Zomblog

Bellagio

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Room with a view

Conservatory

Bellagio Fountains   50 megs, wmv file.

North end of lake

Room with another view

(I need to work on the red end of the spectrum in these night shots.  A lot of the reds wash out into white.  Things are much more colorful than these images show.)

Bellagio and Ceasars

Paris

Thomas Jefferson

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

Aristotle

"Only an armed people can be truly free. Only an unarmed people can ever be enslaved."

Karl Popper

“A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.”