136 Comments

1. Pascal:

As you know, I’m more optimistic than most. What I posted last night isn’t a perfect fit. However, it broadly describes how I feel about the forces who are working overtime to bring about what others are fearing, and aptly describes my hopes that things are not as bleak as MinInfo wishes for us to believe.

Join me in the cheery thought and spread it around.

Thanks

Pascal

Oct 14, 2008 - 2:44 pm 2. lc:

“Even people with no talent can live fearlessly and well.” Rebel!

Pascal – I love it.

Oct 14, 2008 - 2:59 pm 3. rab:

Richard-

It is encouraging to hear again and again that what tomorrow brings will be what we make it.

Any uninvited Government agent who attempts to pass over my threshold will have to die for his cause. I am willing to die for my cause too. Hopefully it is more than a 1:1 ratio.

As far as the New Fairness Doctrine being applied to Blogs I’ll be there (I hope) for the BC w/$.

Richard

Oct 14, 2008 - 2:59 pm 4. krontekag:

Three weeks will tell us if the centre truly cannot hold, or whether the rough beast really is slouching its way towards Washington.

With apologies to WBY.

Oct 14, 2008 - 3:12 pm 5. Cetera:

I went to the Broncos game this Sunday in Denver(my first regular season game in Invesco, second time ever). My wife and I parked downtown, went to church, and then caught the shuttle bus over to the stadium.

There are huge, gigantic posters for Obama all over the place. The one done like a painting, in red and blue, with him looking just slightly above the horizon. Its extremely creepy to see it on the sides of buildings, over parking lots, etc.

It looks like something you’d see in Cuba or North Korea or something, like we’re the People’s Republic of America, and our new fearless leader desires homage.

It was very disconcerting.

Oct 14, 2008 - 3:18 pm 6. Patriot Front:

How do you think I feel living in Detroit? There are tons of Obama t-shirts hanging on display outside every liquor store (there’s alot)and murals of The One cover every bare wall. And nevermind that football season means I have to watch the Lions.

Oct 14, 2008 - 3:28 pm 7. newtland:

As with all forces motivated primarily by overweening pride, the Obama supporters will not be able to contain themselves as victory nears.

It is possible it will be their undoing.

Already, Nutcutter Jackson has announced that Israel (aka, a really big Himeytown) will be nursing at the anterior mammary and the Palestinians are to be our new favorite.

Minister Farrakhan has gone so far as to announce BHO as the new messiah.

ACORN will beat somebody to a bloody pulp and someone will film it.

There is zero chance that Jeremiah Wright will keep his mouth shut for three weeks.

Fact is, BHO is one scary dude when you look at him in landscape. McCain owes it to the country to do his best to make sure the electorate understands his opponent as completely as possible.

It ain’t lyin’ if it’s the Truth. And the Truth is we are looking at a formal surrender of Western culture if Barack Hussein Obama takes the oath.

Oct 14, 2008 - 3:32 pm 8. Patriot Front:

Does anyone think that BHO’s poll numbers will simmer down in the next 3 weeks? Or do you think that he is over-polling 5+ points? If neither is possible, than we are just living out our death rattle.

Oct 14, 2008 - 3:44 pm 9. Mark:

via ‘Horse Feathers’:

“I don’t know what they have to say,
it makes no difference anyway;
Whatever it is, I’m against it!”

And no candidate can win unless he knows the
secret password.

Oct 14, 2008 - 3:47 pm 10. Brock:

Hope? I’ll tell you about Hope. I Hope that BHO is a liar who will do anything to get elected, and his lies include the ones he’s told Bill Ayers & the rest of the Hard Left, Rev. Wright, his wife and the other Black Liberationist, ACORN, and all those others. I hope he just saw them as the quickest path to national office and doesn’t hold to their principles. That’s what I hope.

How has it come to this?

Oct 14, 2008 - 4:45 pm 11. trangbang68:

More anecdotal evidence. I spent the weekend in DC and was taken aback by the government apparachiks sporting their glazed eyes and Obama gear. It reminded me of Socialist posters from the 20’s .
The crowds at the Palin rallies are another America, working class, churched, patriotic, gun toting. Are the polls correct? Have our numbers shrunk that much.
Two wild cards, At malls in the District are lots of angry looking boyz from the hood. If Obama wins they’re going to demand their pound of flesh. They’ll be the lawnmower and the “Best and the brightest” yuppies in DC might just be the grass.
I spent Sunday at a small church full of immigrants (African and Central American). They are true believers in the Word of God and can be won to our cause if the Republicans will stand for truth.

Oct 14, 2008 - 4:46 pm 12. Cris:

Gerard pointed to this: Surveying The Abyss , which appears to capture the zeitgeist perfectly.

Oct 14, 2008 - 4:48 pm 13. OldSalt:

If 51% of Americans (or 45% plus 6% fake Acorn “voters”) vote for Obama, this country deserves it’s fate. These Obama Americans do not deserve the freedom they will lose under an Obama administration, and they certainly are not worth the blood of a single Patriot who died to guarantee those freedoms. Voting for this fraud, this “former Muslim” for President, after a 7 year war against Muslims, is a thumb in the eye of every man and woman who served. It’s spitting on the graves of those who gave their all.

Anyone who truely feels that Al Gore would have been a better President for this country on 9/11 than GWB will likely vote for Obama. And, they will probably feel that Obama will do a better job protecting this country than either Bush or McCain. What has any elected Democrat done in the last 8 years to make this country safer from it’s well identified enemies? Nothing. Obama will do even worse, if elected, and America will deserve her fate.

Oct 14, 2008 - 5:11 pm 14. E. Nigma:

Perhaps we all see darkness and fear where others see light and renewal. Perhaps we misunderstand the nature of our own reality. Perhaps we should not take council of our own fears. Or maybe it’s just we all want to re-finance our mortgages.
Or perhaps we have had it so good for so long that we think some moderate reverses are the end of the world. Now is not the time for anyone to lose their nerve.

Yes, I think it is almost inevitable that Obama wins the election. Yes, the left-wing triumphilism will be hard to bear for quite a while. Yes, there will be some unpleasant upheavals in store for many of us. Yes, I think it will get uglier before it gets better. We haven’t hit bottom yet, and the anxiety of waiting it out and seeing the “bottom” is probably the worst of it.

Yet, Obama has to govern, in the end. If he fails, then much of what he espouses as his philosophy will be openly repudiated. As Fred has discussed on the Belmont Club before, we are going to have to go through this to purge this crypto-Marxist intellectual poison from our system, from the academy, from the media, from the so-called centers of intellectualism.

It’s never really over. History turns the page.

Oct 14, 2008 - 5:20 pm 15. heather:

Yes, history is turning a page.

Perhaps what must happen is an event that clarifies the meaning of ‘treason’ for the people of our time.

Oct 14, 2008 - 5:36 pm 16. outa my league:

“But hope that is seen is not hope, for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?”

Very few at the BC these dark days believe that McCain will win. Count me not among them. “We walk by faith, not by sight.”

Oct 14, 2008 - 5:39 pm 17. Evil Otto:

“If 51% of Americans (or 45% plus 6% fake Acorn “voters”) vote for Obama, this country deserves it’s fate.”

Umm, so do the 50% or so who DON’T vote for Obama “deserve their fate” as well?

Oct 14, 2008 - 5:42 pm 18. Eggplant:

E. Nigma said:

“Yet, Obama has to govern, in the end. If he fails, then much of what he espouses as his philosophy will be openly repudiated. As Fred has discussed on the Belmont Club before, we are going to have to go through this to purge this crypto-Marxist intellectual poison from our system, from the academy, from the media, from the so-called centers of intellectualism.”

That’s the perceived “silver lining” of this approaching storm. Will we survive the purge of this intellectual poison? Is the cure worse than the disease?

The situation is insane: Imagine it’s 1984, there has been some sort of computer glitch and Gus Hall has just been elected President with Angela Davis as his VP (Were the people cheering as the Athenian fleet sailed off to Syracuse with Alcibiades standing proudly at the helm?).

Oct 14, 2008 - 6:06 pm 19. Kinuachdrach:

“Yet, Obama has to govern, in the end.”

That is the interesting point, isn’t it?

There will of course be those unpredicted game-changers which British PM MacMillan called “events”. There will also be entirely predictable occurrences.

The new President will start with a recession, which will lead to bankruptcies & higher unemployment for which he will get blamed. State & city governments will struggle financially, for which he will also get blamed. Policies with higher taxes & increased regulation will lead to even more job losses, and more blame. Angry baby-boomer retirees will find that Social Security was a Ponzi scheme. Terrorists will test the new President, and test him hard. Iran will get nuclear weapons, and may actually use them. The New York Times will go bankrupt. Congress’s approval rating will continue its slide towards oblivion.

Great time to be President, eh?

Oct 14, 2008 - 6:07 pm 20. Robohobo:

E, Nigma said:

“Yes, I think it is almost inevitable that Obama wins the election. Yes, the left-wing triumphalism will be hard to bear for quite a while. Yes, there will be some unpleasant upheavals in store for many of us. Yes, I think it will get uglier before it gets better. We haven’t hit bottom yet, and the anxiety of waiting it out and seeing the “bottom” is probably the worst of it.”

The bad part is this, never, ever has government been grown and then reversed. Ever. (See Roe v. Wade)

If we have a “New and Improved Fairness Doctrine”, our voices will have been silenced.

If health care care becomes universal, then it will not be relinquished without bloodshed.

If the ‘Obama Youth Corps’ or whatever that Obamanation is becomes reality, then only will death on a massive scale to reverse THAT little experiment. (See Hitler’s Brownshirts.)

If taxes go up, well, only one man in recent history has done anything like really reducing taxes (GWB) not just reducing the growth rate of same taxes.

If they take our weapons from us then they have the means to control the population in a way that has not been heard of since the late 1700’s. (That was one of the main reasons for the first battles in Mass. King George wanted our guns.) If we give them up then some of us will become criminals through not fault of our own and to retain them might become very bloody. Like Wretchard has said, there is no such thing as a clean, bloodless revolution. Ever.

Buy guns, beans, rice and ammo. Not the stocks, the goods.

Oct 14, 2008 - 6:14 pm 21. lc:

In the stark world of good and evil, choices seem clear (though not necessarily easy); in reality, distinctions are much more difficult to discern – cause, effect, ends, means, intent….understanding the true nature of something seems an impossible task – and is even less clear when action and decision is required. Yet, to me, using such stark terms is unavoidable (a decision).

In the great mythological “Lord of the Rings” the Evil One’s power works through soul dampening fear and despair; the bravest shrink and shrivel from its power. This is how evil works – it sucks life out from below; it (evil) is illusory and manipulating, negating thought and action. Yet what works is recognizing evil for what it is and see that is path which leads nowhere. Fear and despair are choices, not results.

What was it said several months ago at BC – do the right thing with the knowledge you will probably not succeed…it was said much better than I remember it, but those were excellent words.

I’m not sure I know what hope is.

Oct 14, 2008 - 6:24 pm 22. Storm-Rider:

“If (when?) Obama is elected, by my estimation there’s an at least even chance that the newly-reconstructed FCC will reverse course and attempt to apply the New Fairness Doctrine to blogs. If (when?) it happens, I’ll break that law.”

“Law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.” Thomas Jefferson

“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” George Washington

Oct 14, 2008 - 6:49 pm 23. wretchard:

What was it said several months ago at BC – do the right thing with the knowledge you will probably not succeed…it was said much better than I remember it, but those were excellent words.

You do the right thing whenever possible. Whether or not you succeed is something you find out afterwards. I don’t think tyranny is a given, whether or not anyone aspires to the job. It is the least enduring form of government, but the most destructive.

Oct 14, 2008 - 7:07 pm 24. Cannoneer No. 4:

<a href=”http://cannoneerno4.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/john-rambo-mccain-versus-obama-bin-laden/John Rambo McCain Versus Obama bin Laden

This thread needs some levity.

Oct 14, 2008 - 7:09 pm 25. Cannoneer No. 4:

John Rambo McCain Versus Obama bin Laden

Oct 14, 2008 - 7:10 pm 26. peterike:

Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

— Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Oct 14, 2008 - 7:25 pm 27. Leo Linbeck III:

For the depressed:

Do not look forward to the changes and chances of this life in fear; rather look to them
with full hope that, as they arise, God will deliver you out of them. He has kept you
hitherto, do you but hold fast to His dear hand, and He will you safely through all
things; and, when you cannot stand, He will bear you in His arms. Do not look
forward to what may happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cares for you
today will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either He will shield you from
suffering, or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace then, and put
aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations.
St. Francis de Sales

For the defiant:
You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination not much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will happen; but then they must also pray to be given that extra courage to carry this far-reaching imagination. But for everyone, surely, what we have gone through in this period – I am addressing myself to the School – surely from this period of ten months this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed that our account was closed, we were finished. All this tradition of ours, our songs, our School history, this part of the history of this country, were gone and finished and liquidated.

Very different is the mood today. Britain, other nations thought, had drawn a sponge across her slate. But instead our country stood in the gap. There was no flinching and no thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a miracle to those outside these Islands, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.

You sang here a verse of a School Song: you sang that extra verse written in my honour, which I was very greatly complimented by and which you have repeated today. But there is one word in it I want to alter – I wanted to do so last year, but I did not venture to. It is the line: “Not less we praise in darker days.”

I have obtained the Head Master’s permission to alter darker to sterner. “Not less we praise in sterner days.”

Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.
Winston Churchill

Cheers.

L3

Oct 14, 2008 - 7:40 pm 28. Coyotl:

We are quick to call out illusions in other, but always loath to dispell those fictions that get us through dark days. It’s always intriguing to note when multiple visions are projected on the same subject, to the point where Obama is queer and muslim; muslim and marxist; marxist and Wall St. tool.

Which are the illusions? And why have so many of the conservative elites either tacitly or openly endorsed Obama? George F. Will “McCain Loses His Head”. Charles Krauthammer “Hail Mary vs. Cool Barry”. And now Christopher Buckley. What illusions are they operating under?

Oct 14, 2008 - 7:49 pm 29. peterike:

to the point where Obama is queer and muslim; muslim and marxist; marxist and Wall St. tool.

Those are not necessarily contradictory items, especially the last.

Meanwhile, Tampa Bay is beating the daylights out of the Red Sox, so it’s not such a bad day after all.

Oct 14, 2008 - 7:54 pm 30. E. Nigma:

Winston Churchill’s words were inspiring and brave, and might very well have saved the West for that time, but frankly, the days since the end of WWII have seen nothing if not the intellectual, moral and spiritual reserves of Great Britain (or the United Kingdom) go down the drain. It was not enough, because one man, however inspired, cannot turn the tide of history alone.

I don’t like the future that I see, so the point now is to do something about it, though the hour is late and the odds are long.
For those of us that are American citizens, contact the McCain campaign and volunteer to help their GOTV efforts by phone bank or whatever.
If you are going to rail against the gathering twilight, at least go down making an effort to forestall this ridiculous outcome.

The future is not yet written, except by the unseen hand of God.

Oct 14, 2008 - 7:56 pm 31. An eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth « Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group:

[...] never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. — Winston Churchill, via Leo Linbeck III at The Belmont Club. [...]

Oct 14, 2008 - 8:24 pm 32. Leo Linbeck III:

Coyotl,

The question of illusion is deeply interesting. I have many friends – from each of the contradictory categories you list, and many more – who see things quite differently from me. Our bonds of friendship have allowed us to explore reality together, and I have been enriched by the process. These exchanges, however, have not resolved the question of which of us (if any) is right.

All geniuses are heretics, but very few heretics are geniuses. What distinguishes a genius from a garden variety heretic is that she is right, and her vision matches with reality. Heretics see the shadows on the cave wall, but don’t realize that they are shadows of a prankster’s hands, not a foul, cruel, bad-tempered rabbit with big, pointy teeth.

It is virtually impossible to distinguish between them ex ante. People we think are geniuses are frauds; others we think frauds are geniuses. There is no reliable way to tell if the swan is black, or simply covered with mud. But when the rain comes, we’ll know.

Einstein couldn’t find a teaching job, so he went to work in the Swiss Patent Office in 1902. He was passed over for promotion in 1904 because he couldn’t master the machinery that was a part of the job. In 1905 he had his annus mirabilis, publishing four of the most important papers in the history of physics on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, general relativity, and the equivalence of energy and mass (e=mc2). And yet even those papers contained errors. Go figure.

It could be that Barack Obama is a genius. Time will tell. And while I have grave doubts about him, if he wins he will be my President – we salute the rank, not the man. But I am also confident that if the same amount of vitriol and hatred channelled toward GWB is unleashed upon BHO, we will never know. He will be crushed under its weight. And we will all be to blame.

And as to Buckley et. al.,, “experts” are not an infallible guide in such matters. The scientists of his day thought Galileo was a nutjob – he is now revered as one of the greats of his day. Virtually all medical experts thought Australians researchers Robin Warren and Barry Marshall were quacks for thinking Helicobacter pylori bacteria were responsible for stomach ulcers – they went on to win the Nobel Prize. Arguments from authority may be right much of the time; but in too many situations they are all too fallible. And worst of all, they seem to fail in direct proportion to the sum of their intellectual prowess and the importance of the crisis.

What is one to do? I am the wrong person to answer this question; I have no earthly idea. But I have come to believe that discourse in good will may be part of the solution. That is why I have recently moved from lurker to participant here at the BC. And even if it is not, the pleasures of engaging with well-mannered gentlefolk still remain.

Which is a comforting thought.

L3

Oct 14, 2008 - 8:31 pm 33. Thrasymachus:

I don’t know what to make of it. I think the left wing, and the ghetto legions, are going to go nuts after Obama wins, we will see celebration riots like after a basketball championship. The independents, moderates and moderate liberals will be horrified at what they have done. Barry Obama will find actually being in charge much less gratifying and fun than making stirring speeches from a teleprompter and quickly freeze up. To cope he will recruit the usual suspects of the Clinton administration, the last liberal administration in memory. Not having a savvy operator to rally around they will each run their own agenda, and something like chaos will ensue. Joe Biden will start to think he is president and cause all kinds of trouble. The Dragon Lady and whatever empty suit takes charge in the Senate will not be cooperative either.

David Axelrod will continue acting like it’s a TV show. The campaign is a TV show but governing is not. Nonetheless the result will be entertaining. It’s cold comfort but it will have to do.

Oct 14, 2008 - 8:42 pm 34. fred:

I take comfort from the fact that EVERY socialist experiment in history has failed. Every one. Even the soft socialism of Western Europe has as its legacy a stagnant economy for decades, low birth rates, no hope, and no future save the growing hordes of Allah’s minions.

In the short term I still see crisis and struggle, but in the long term I believe that a very large minority of Americans will animate what the Big Media and academia cannot animate. When your soul is good, your mind clear, and your heart is in the right place you find the courage and eloquence to move people who need to be inspired.

I can see no way that we can avoid the confrontation and struggle with cultural Marxism (Collectivism). It’s here. It’s planted. It’s robust and for now it has the mob, the vast majority of whom do not even know what it is or that it exists. But we have a name for it (they don’t). We can articulate its failures and it will surely fail here too. Some of us have deeply read all of the Marxist thinkers of modern times, so we know the Achilles Heel of that tradition.

We can slay this, but first it is going to have to break out and be felt by most Americans. I guarantee you they won’t like it and will reject it, if not politically, then (in extremis)by means I am not permitted to speak of here. Hopefully, it will never come to that. We hope that from 2010 to 2012 it can be roundly defeated at the ballot box.

I think – and I am being perhaps optimistic, but by nature I am an optimist – most of these kids will eventually be jarred into reality. And this one is the last hurrah for a segment of the Older Cohort of Boomers. As a younger Boomer I have always resented how some of that group soiled the nation, even when I was on the Left. I did not like these people. Seeing them get their historical just desserts would make my day. And for the guys in that Cohort who did serve and stayed proud of their nation, I am sure they too would enjoy seeing the Communists of their generation get that kind of payback, after what those people did to our veterans.

From my angle, I believe the truth will win out. Call me naive, I’ll accept that criticism. But we will see the nation through the crisis.

Oct 14, 2008 - 8:49 pm 35. fred:

I just wanted to impart my slogan of defiance to all of you.

COLLECTIVISM IS THE BORG. FIGHT THE BORG AND STAND UP FOR LIBERTY AND OUR CONSTITUTION!

Oct 14, 2008 - 8:51 pm 36. Cannoneer No. 4:

Leo,

I consider the likelihood of Barack Obama’s genius to be so slim that I am willing to accept the blame for doing unto him as was done unto Bush and preventing his Light from truly shining.

Hell, I’m an old, white, heterosexual male. I’m going to be blamed anyway.

Oct 14, 2008 - 9:00 pm 37. E. Nigma:

Leo,
I’ve learned a lot from your posts, you’re a very bright guy. Thank you. I’ve “lurked” for five years at the Belmont Club.

And yes, Thrasymachus, a BHO Administration COULD be very entertaining, in a sort of “watching a train wreck” sort of way.

I think he will be, frankly, a weak executive, because he doesn’t have much training or experience as an executive. I would actually like to sincerely wish him well, because the whole country will suffer if he is a lousy president. But I fear he WILL be a lousy president because he is not up to the job, and there is no one who can stand in and ghost write it for him. I think a lot of fears are misplaced in terms of all the things people think he will DO, versus just how ineffective he will BE, and how the country will suffer for it.

I think Obama will go in with the praise of the Media, but soon, as he limps from crisis to crisis with no real philosophy of governing besides the shopworn pablum of his crypto-Marxist beliefs, it will be a tug of war between the various cabinet members as to who influences him the most, plus the Congressional leadership, such as it is.

As public doubt begins to rise, even his pals in the Media will start to question him. lest they lose all credibility (and ratings) in the process. People tend to forget how hard the press was on Kennedy before he was assasinated. LBJ got a big pass for a few years as a result of that tragedy, but the Media turned on him by 1967.

Oct 14, 2008 - 9:05 pm 38. Leo Linbeck III:

We once had a position in our company that we could never seem to fill with someone who could do the job. Every year or two, we’d grow exasperated with the person doing the job, terminate them, and fill the position with another person who seemed to be the solution to the problem. That person, in time, failed too. This went on for over a decade and six failed hires.

Eventually, someone figured out that the problem wasn’t the person; it was the job. It was defined in such a way that any person taking that job would fail. We redefined the job, pushed key aspects of it down the organization, and limited its scope. The next occupant was a stunning success, although that person was no more qualified or impressive than any of his predecessors.

We labor under the illusion that the problems of Washington are the result of having “those people” in charge. “They” are bad, incompetent, evil, corrupt. “We,” on the other hand, are good, knowledgeable, virtuous, and civic-minded. Once “our guys” are put in charge, all will be better. Yeah, right.

I believe this illusion results from a misunderstanding of the problem. The real problem is a structural, not personal. The job of President is no longer workable; it was designed for a different time, a time when the scope and size of the Federal Government was smaller, when the power of Washington and the several States was more closely balanced.

This “vertical” balance of power envisioned by the Tenth Amendment must be restored. That, it seems to me, is the true conservative mission for the next four years, not incessant and destructive attacks on what looks to be the coming Democrat domination of Washington. This is a goal I have spent time thinking about of late, and have grown more optimistic about its prospects given the general mood of the country. My sense is people know the system is broken, and are looking for a strategy

If successful, this rebalancing of vertical power would turn Obama’s conquest of Washington into the political analogue of Napoleon’s conquest of Moscow. Glory, followed by a rout. (Without the fires, please.)

Just a thought.

L3

Oct 14, 2008 - 9:14 pm 39. Leo Linbeck III:

Cannoneer No. 4,

I agree with your estimate of the odds of Obama’s genius, if for no other reason than the general one that genius is quite rare. Then, adding in the low probability of that a genius would survive our Presidential selection process, and we’re talking exceedingly small.

The fundamental problem, though, is that our system cannot survive if it relies on genius. The Framers’ success was due, in large part, to the fact that they realized the nature of man (and genius), and designed the Constitution in such a way that a Great Man would be a bonus. Frankly, we’ve already had more than our fair share.

I’d understand if you decided to give what was got. But what intrigues me is the possibility of channelling the collective energy of our great nation into true, structural reform, something that will allow us to last the next 200 years. Same effort, better payoff. And, in the long run, greater satisfaction (of all varieties .

L3

Oct 14, 2008 - 9:28 pm 40. Leo Linbeck III:

E. Nigma,

Thx. And great post. Your prediction strikes me a very plausible. A Congressional Regency. Obama as Richard II. Nancy Pelosi as John Gaunt. Harry Reid as John Wyclif. And Hillary Clinton as the Black Princess.

Here’s to a Peasants’ Revolt .

L3

Oct 14, 2008 - 9:39 pm 41. Bob Murphy:

@Old Salt
“If 51% of Americans (or 45% plus 6% fake Acorn “voters”) vote for Obama, this country deserves it’s fate.”

I have no intention of going down for that 51%, Old Salt.

That leaves 49% to defend our G-d given rights and convince the others or a few of them that we have taken a wrong turn and need to fix it.

At the very least a rearguard action until the next Congressional elections and grassroot moves.

Oct 14, 2008 - 9:39 pm 42. fred:

The primary responsibility of the President of the United States is Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. It is stunning to see how deplorable the mob’s knowledge of what the POTUS is most responsible for.

This will be the area where his failures will be most acute. If one peruses the list of his advisers in all of the areas which pertain to the military and foreign policy, one is struck by their records of failure and even possible perfidy (Anthony Lake). Obama’s instincts are so poor that I cannot see him being able to go beyond the poor fare that is likely to be served up to him.

On the economy, it is amazing to see how much of America seems to think of the POTUS as a kind of CEO of the American economy. I think a lot of this is mythology rooted in the FDR administration, whereby Roosevelt cultivated an image of The Man who is pulling us out of the mire. This myth has only reinforced the long tradition of statist tendencies (towards collectivism)in the modern Democratic Party. Given the size and complexity of our modern economy, it is height of ignorance for people to make CEO of America, Inc. a job description that the Founders never intended.

But, there it is. He (or she) is stuck with it and it, quite unfairly, becomes one of the items on the report card. And since Obama fancies himself as the All Wise Redistributor of Wealth, we should gleefully stick him with the blame for the inevitable screw ups.

Oct 14, 2008 - 9:39 pm 43. Konyok:

Jeez, I feel kinda shamefaced to bring this one into the mix:

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/10/unreal-new-8th-grade-english-textbooks.html

It might just be for real.

Meanwhile, I’m putting my hummingbird butt where my crocodile mouth has been. Making phone calls to undecideds for McCain. The Hoover analogy for Obama (tax hikes + protectionism during financial crisis = depression) seems to work pretty well. The associations story is proving a harder sell, but the ACORN piece is killer.

Oct 14, 2008 - 9:41 pm 44. Cannoneer No. 4:

I see no possibility of channelling the collective energy of our great nation into true beneficial structural reform until those who benefit from the current structural dysfunction are purged.

Catastrophic structural reform as a result of a constitutional convention rewriting and superceding the U.S. Constitution of 1787, as amended, is much more likely.

Oct 14, 2008 - 9:47 pm 45. Konyok:

We have a lot of political work to do.
But, there is even more housekeeping to be done.
How in the world did these textbooks find their way into public schools? Why are we so passive?
Freedom requires constant care and feeding. We have ceded the commanding heights to our opponents and now we must contest them. Peacefully, patiently and steadfastly.

Oct 14, 2008 - 10:01 pm 46. fred:

Konyok,

A lot of people in education, at all levels, who were or are not now Collectivists ceded the high ground by not standing their ground and resisting the takeover of education by the Gramscians. They acquiesced. They went along with the program, rather than protest these blatant attacks on our culture and using the kids as political fodder.

God damn them all.

Oct 14, 2008 - 10:12 pm 47. krontekag:

Leo – redesign the presidency??? That is heresy indeed, and might step on a few constitutional toes.

That’s not to say it’s a bad idea, in fact it may well fall into the genius category. It’s true that the presidency was designed in a simpler time, and over the years has not scaled well against the population and communications and technology axes.

I agree – something needs to be done. I like the way you think.

Oct 14, 2008 - 10:16 pm 48. Alexis:

Your actions speak so loudly I can’t hear what you say.

– traditional American proverb

One of the reasons why Barack Obama’s history as the right hand man of William Ayers is so important is due to the educational importance of example. If one follows the example of William Ayers, one would bomb government buildings if one believes that the government is too authoritarian. Here’s the rub — what if the administration of Barack Obama becomes authoritarian and oppressive? Is it acceptable for young disaffected radicals fight a guerrilla war against the federal government if Barack Obama makes unpopular policies and becomes perceived as the presidential devil incarnate?

Barack Obama keeps on talking about “the last eight years” over and over and over and over. There’s a reason for this. He knows he is riding a wave of raw hatred against George W. Bush. Yet, doesn’t Barack Obama realize that he could easily become one of the most hated and reviled men in the entire twenty-first century? He who rides a wave of hate can expect to be hated in turn. If his campaign were truly about hope and not about hate, he would have had nothing to do with Shepard Fairey. And yet, far from being shunned, Shepard Fairey’s artwork is featured by the Obama campaign. Specifically, limited editions of Shepard Fairey’s prints have been used to raise money at Barack Obama’s campaign web site.

Shepard Fairey once made a poster with a menacing police officer wielding a billyclub in one hand and pointing to the viewer with his other hand, with the caption I’M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS AND GET AWAY WITH IT! (The original artwork was in all caps.) Now, if Shepard Fairey’s idol Obama gets into power, Barack Obama will need to explain how this poster isn’t describing the basic worldview of his administration toward dissent. He will need to explain how Shepard Fairey’s artistic violence and vicious anti-Americanism are not integral aspects of his political platform.

My URL links to a story about credit card fraud, where a Republican family’s credit card got raided for a donation to the Obama campaign. I do not regard the Obama campaign as responsible for any malfeasance in this case. However, I do think the Obama campaign is inspiring a variety of political enthusiasm among Obama supporters that would use every means fair or foul to advance the cause of Barack Obama. His own example of scrubbing his rivals off the ballot in 1996 would serve as inspiration to any supporter who lacks moral scruple.

Any Obama administration runs into the inevitable conundrum of the revolutionary. How can Barack Obama effectively govern when his supporters expect a revolution?

Oct 14, 2008 - 10:19 pm 49. mika2k1:

Reward greed stupidity mediocrity corruption, and you will get greed stupidity mediocrity corruption.

Oct 14, 2008 - 11:10 pm 50. starling:

@ Fred, Comment #34: Well put my friend.

Oct 14, 2008 - 11:32 pm 51. Towering Barbarian:

Alexis,
“He knows he is riding a wave of raw hatred against George W. Bush. Yet, doesn’t Barack Obama realize that he could easily become one of the most hated and reviled men in the entire twenty-first century?”

Possibly not. He’s a typical Chicago Democrats and we select our Democrats for stupidity and shortsightedness above the national norm here in Illinois. We’ve been doing this for 120+ years now (Also breeding dumb and spineless GOPers as a side project), and over this period of time we’ve gotten very, very good at this indeed. Mr. Obama may be regarded as our premier example of how dumb a Democrat may be. ^_~

In fairness to Mr. Obama, the Democrats outside Illinois selected him as their candidate so what does that make them? My suspicion is that Mr. Obama is relying upon a typical Chicago Democrat campaign policy of “Promise your supporters anything and then do what you feel like anyway because voters have too short an attention span to remember anything you do from election to election.” In his defense this policy has worked like a charm in Chicago and is currently working well in the rest of Illinois as well as witnessed by the careers of Governor Blagovitch, Todd Stroger, Mike Madigan and Dick Durbin as well as Mr. Obama himself. Perhaps he is counting on this to work on the national level as well? As I wrote, we in Illinois have indeed been breeding our Democrats for stupidity. ^_~

Oct 15, 2008 - 12:58 am 52. ledger:

Hold on a minute. There is a good chance Obama will lose.

[CS]:

Polls all ACORN’d up?

Bookie makes a very interesting point about a possible “Dewey Beats Truman” thingy going on.

Incidentally, everyone talks about ACORN creating fraudulent registrations, but no one talks about the fact that they are all Democratic registrations. As someone said in a comment, that’s got to affect all the polling, because the polls are weighted in favor of Democrats now to reflect all these so-called registered Democrats. If these people don’t show up on election day (since even the most fervent fraudsters will have a hard time showing up in 72 places on one day), well, it may be a reprise of “Dewey beats Truman.”

My instincts tell me at the most we are only talking a percent or two in the polls in just a few states max – but we are in many ways in terra incognita here WRT Chicago politics on a national scale.

Makes you go hmmmmmmmmm….

See:
http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2008/10/polls-all-acornd-up.html

Oct 15, 2008 - 1:15 am 53. Pascal:

even the most fervent fraudsters will have a hard time showing up in 72 places on one day

I can picture thugs delivering boxes of ballots with intimidating relish. Who’s gonna ask what polling station they came from? I can tell some of you haven’t seen it.

Oct 15, 2008 - 1:43 am 54. Fred:

Maybe he’ll turn out to be a Bill Clinton type of centrist. Clinton had good economic advisers.

In 1980 my Dad thought Reagan would spin the US down the drain as a right-wing nut. At the age of 69 my Dad was thinking of leaving the country. The US survived the Great Communicator. We’ll survive the lefty Great Communicator, too.

Oct 15, 2008 - 4:05 am 55. Bob Murphy:

I am very concerned about Acorn’s voter registration skewing numbers.
But it’s one thing to register that type of person and quite another to get them to show up at a polling booth on the big day.
They’re not, for the most part, be organized conscientious types.

Oct 15, 2008 - 5:01 am 56. Leo Linbeck III:

ledger,

I absolutely agree. I have not given up hope. We can never tell how events will unfold. There is a possibility that tonight will finally make a difference.

L3

Oct 15, 2008 - 5:23 am 57. Leo Linbeck III:

krontekag,

Thx. Not so much redesign the Presidency as shrink the beast over which he presides. All done constitutionally. We should not throw the baby out with the bathwater by abandoning a framework that has worked so well for so long.

L3

Oct 15, 2008 - 5:26 am 58. Michael Hoskins:

I haven’t heard, or even seen, the fat lady yet.
Nor have I pulled the lever in my local booth.

ooh rah.

Oct 15, 2008 - 5:26 am 59. Coyotl:

34. fred:

“I take comfort from the fact that EVERY socialist experiment in history has failed. Every one. Even the soft socialism of Western Europe has as its legacy a stagnant economy for decades, low birth rates, no hope, and no future save the growing hordes of Allah’s minions.”

Funny, in that Sweden’s bank nationalization plan of the 1990s has seen similar adoption by the UK’s Gordon Brown, and now here in the US we’ve begun to nationalize banks. I’ve been hearing for four decades now that socialism could never survive, that it would either have to make a real choice during the Cold War or that it had to get with the program after the Cold War had been decisively decided.

And yet socialism endures and thrives, spreading in Latin America in countries like Chile and Brazil. Even poor Wretchard suffers under the social democratic policies of the Labor gov’t in increasingly authoritarian Australia. When will all these socialist states get the memo that the experiment FAILED so long ago? Fred, why can’t they see the light like we have?

Oct 15, 2008 - 6:18 am 60. fred:

Coyotl,

Er, Sweden’s unemployment rate has been high and stagnant for quite a while.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not nostalgic for the 1970’s. I’m 53 years old and I remember what that was like. Taxes were very high, on income and capital. So was unemployment and eventually interest rates, as soaring energy prices combined with Fed Chairman Burns’ money pump resulted in economic crisis in the Carter years.

Is that what you want?

Oct 15, 2008 - 6:43 am 61. Vinny Vidivici:

fred:

I’m afraid that whereas the media savaged Reagan in his day, it turned a mediocre Kennedy adminstration into the enduring myth of Camelot. Expect more of the hagiographic fawning over Obama we’ve seen throughout the campaign. The survival of mainstream media depends upon the sort of things we see Obama surrogates doing to intimidate opponents and the hobbling of its competitors through regulatory lawfare.

Downside: Suddenly, dissent will no longer be ‘the highest form of patriotism’.
Upside: ‘Racist’ will soon be as meaningless a label as ‘fascist’.

Oct 15, 2008 - 7:10 am 62. El Jefe Maximo:

“What will tomorrow bring? Have no fear. It will be what we make it.”

The problem, of course, is the “we” in that statement. Broadly speaking, there are at least two different visions of tomorrow; and, as Vodkapundit and others say, the Left is about to get the chance to impose its vision of Tomorrow.

Conservatives are pikers, Vodkapundit says, who do not fully understand or even want to wield power. That will change, or conservatives, and their vision of tomorrow, will not survive.

Maybe we can make a better tomorrow, but we must contend to do it. The Left is fixing to make plenty of recruits for us.

Oct 15, 2008 - 7:34 am 63. Pascal:

Jefe;

The very label conservative contains and idea that is actually multifaceted.

The “not [wanting to bother] to fully understand or even wield power” certainly reveals the “just don’t bother me dammit” segment of conservatives. Troublemakers seeking power are viewed as the others.

To such, even the conservative who wishes to preserve and defend the old virtues is often viewed as one of the others.

And then there are those who have great power and position and don’t want to share it or have their notions of governing questioned. They’ve turned so “conservative” they’re reactionaries even though the banner they fly over them may read “liberal” or “Progressive,” and will pull out all the stops to prevent reform (loss of their power).

The current leadership of the GOP I see among these; the Dems are just more open about their reactionary tendencies

Nothing I just stated should be a revelation. What is startling is how little it is discussed. Without discussion it ain’t ever gonna be fixed.

Oct 15, 2008 - 7:59 am 64. Charles:

Two things are no longer in the cards:
1.) A depression
2.) Obama going down to defeat by a landslide.

Oct 15, 2008 - 8:03 am 65. Pascal:

What is startling is how little *it* is discussed.

Damn pronoun lacks a clear antecedent. Sorry.

The it: The many aspects of conservativism and whether or not the label serves defenders of liberty well. That is what is in need of review. The current label provides succor and cover to too many pretenders and worse. The man currently chosen to lead that banner seems all to ready to surrender at home in a manner he’d declare dishonorable abroad. When we defeat Obama it will because of us, not him.

Oct 15, 2008 - 8:25 am 66. Pascal:

Is it possible that McCain so much is ready to throw in the towel that were we to pull it out for him he’d pull a William T. Sherman? “If elected I will not serve.” (Which should remind us that McCain wasn’t a general — or admiral as was his Dad. Tactical brilliance seems beyond him.)

Oct 15, 2008 - 8:48 am 67. Patriot Front:

I think that until recently, McCain believed that he would win somewhat easily. He probably figured that voters would see right through BHO. Although it’s part of the natural order to swap parties in the White House this time around, the dems still need to put up a reasonable candidate.

I bet McCain looked at Obama and thought, there is no way will this country will elect someone like that at a time like this. So why not campaign as a gentleman, almost indifferent? The voters would see a man drawn to office by a sense of service, not lust for power.

McCains mistakes were many, the worst was his excess of faith in the people.

Oct 15, 2008 - 8:59 am 68. Peter Boston:

To be optimistic about the future after the November Obomaination one has to assume that people will act rationally, or at least have the opportunity to do so.

ACORN is not going away. The greater probability is that ACORN will become the cadre of Obama’s “civilian defense force.” History doesn’t leave much doubt about what populist leaders do with private armies. Was Obama just kidding? I don’t think so.

The Dems will do everything possible, legal, illegal or otherwise to insure that governance at the national and probably the state level too will be decided exclusively in Democratic caucuses with elections as a ratification process. Cars with McCain stickers are keyed or trashed. Yard signs run over. McCain supporters are catcalled and softly threatened in the streets of major metroplitan areas.

The Orwellian Fairness Doctrine is dusted off and ready to shut down dissent. Obomatons will act violently both within and outside the law following the election regardless of who wins. The violence will last longer, perhaps much longer, with an Obabma victory because it serves the Dems interest to cow conservative thought and association. I could be wrong in my thinking that folks like Pelosi, Reid, and the Congressional Black Caucus are more concerned with the common good than furthering the hold on power of the Democratic Party, but I don’t think so.

It’s going to be ugly for a very long time.

Oct 15, 2008 - 9:05 am 69. Coyotl:

60. Fred

“Er, Sweden’s unemployment rate has been high and stagnant for quite a while.”

Sure, but their incarceration rate, per capita, is nearly a tenth of ours. The US has the highest incarceration rate, and prison population in the world. Sweden puts their lower classes on the dole, we lock ours up. A high unemployment rate, does not mean a country has “failed.”

In fact, look at the spread of socialism, or social democracy across the world. Look at Western Europe and Eastern Europe, or all the socialist parties gaining power in Latin America. Look at poor Wretchard living in semi-captivity under the authoritarian Labor party in Australia (I know why the caged cat blogs!)

Is this what you mean you wrote: “34. fred:

I take comfort from the fact that EVERY socialist experiment in history has failed.”

Funny, in that we just nationalized our banks under a Republican administration, and the Euro-socialists are convinced that American laissez-faire capitalism has finally failed. Who is operating under what illusions?

Oct 15, 2008 - 9:13 am 70. Konyok:

Who am us, anyway?

This vague rubric “conservative” reasonably seems to imply that something is to be “conserved.” John McCain is here excoriated for not being mean enough. Is it possible that he feels that civility is one of those things worthy to be “conserved?”

As I look back on the potential roster of Republican candidates, I can’t imagine any of them doing as well as McCain has against the personality cult juggernaut of Obama. Romney? He’d be crying with frustration by now. My man Giuliani? He’d be entangled in a scandal allegation a week. Huckabee? He’d be polling in the 30’s. Ditto Fred Thompson.

What I do know is that defeatism is turning out to be one of Obama’s secret weapons.

Oct 15, 2008 - 9:23 am 71. Dave:

The fat lady has warmed up her voice, but she ain’t hit any high notes yet.

Two things: One: Sarah Palin will get John McCain more popular votes that anybody else could have.

Two: The raids on ACORN will result in Barack Obama getting fewer popular votes than before.

How does all this effect the Electoral College? Don’t know. Doubt even Michael Barone could figure it out. After all, Sarahs popularity in Berkely will not sway California and ACORN is flaccid when it comes to delivering Texas to Obama. Only the “swing” states can count.

In two of those, Nevada and Ohio, McCains ball is definitely back in play—–in spite of McCain himself. In the others, Quien Sabe? But the developments are in favor of McCain, the degree is what is unknown.

Now for the important part: The Obama campaign is practicing psychological voter suppression. They want all of us, (coyotl, Benj and maybe c-fudd excepted) that voting is an excercise in futility. That we are doomed no matter what we say or do.

Shall we get in their faces?

“Travis answered with a shell
And a rousing Rebel Yell.”

Which is why men remember the Alamo—and always will.

Oct 15, 2008 - 9:29 am 72. Dave:

Konyok, a liter of my finest Georgian wine
(if I can find some) to you for your
pithy observation about Obama and defeatism.

Off to work now.

Oct 15, 2008 - 9:32 am 73. Alexis:

Towering Barbarian:

I think your comments about stupidity and my comments about hatred complement each other.

Hatred and stupidity often go hand in hand. I’ve noticed how hatred regularly gets manipulated. Hatred attracts cynical demagogues. Greed on the part of constituents reinforces corruption at the official level. As harsh as this may sound, much of the corruption among our elected officials is a reflection of the corruption of our electorate.

Just as there are people who are ethnically Democrat, there are people who are ethnically Republican. These dyed-in-the-wool types ensure that the primary is where all the action is. In some states during the early twentieth century, socialists seized control over the Republican Party and Republican constituents voted for them because these socialists were Republicans.

Do I think Obama is stupid? No. I do think the environment you describe in Chicago has taught him to be devoid of the human empathy necessary for governing effectively.

Oct 15, 2008 - 9:33 am 74. buckets:

Towering Barbarian –

Cheers to a fellow Illinoisian! It’s been amazing over the last 5 years to watch the rise of Obama out of the dark recesses of Chicago politics. As much as I think Obama is a creature of the Chicago machine, he is also much further to the Left than most of the hacks we elect. I think his Leftism is the more worrisome trait, and I’m starting to think this will be the most liberal administration this country has ever had.

Also, how great has Patrick Fitzgerald been? More and more I am admiring what he has accomplished, in the face of the Chicago machine. There’s talk of Obama firing the U.S. Attorneys when he takes office; I fervently hope Fitzgerald has too much support to be fired.

Oct 15, 2008 - 9:33 am 75. Mark:

L3 writes:

“All geniuses are heretics, but very few heretics are geniuses.”

and

“I have come to believe that discourse in good will may be part of the solution.”

One might note that Raskolnikov was a genius of kind and a heretic. The extent to which a genius is “right” depends on the area of inquiry and action. Some humility is always a good thing. Science is only “right” in the sense that we have examined a question and found a replicable result.

All of the Obama supporters I know are good, good people, and they are people of good will. They believe, also, to a person, that the intelligentia/Democratic leadership knows better than the hoi polloi. And they believe that Sarah Palin represents the hoi-est of the polloi. Frank Rich cannot find anything bad to say about Bill Ayers. The intelligentia believe that they are, to quite an extent, something like Plato’s guardians who see the truth and need to expunge error and illusion.

Sarah Palin’s endorsement of life and her refusal to acknowledge her betters is an unforgiveable crime. Until she confesses her crimes, she will not earn lenient treatment. She will be sent back to the countryside, i.e. gulag Alaska.

And yet discourse in good will is indeed a necessary response. (And brush up on your Alinsky: hold the electoral victors to their own impossible standards.)

Oct 15, 2008 - 9:45 am 76. Spindok:

Hope may indeed spring naturally from life but I think it exists only in a life not yet crushed by fear. Hope requires faith; faith in ones self, in the premise that the individual has every right to be here; faith that there is meaning in what happens from birth to grave.

There is no such thing as collective faith, it is an individual property. Collectivization requires subservience of the individual to the great grasping “we” and neccessarily destroys faith and hope.

Collectivists (and they come in both red and blue) maintain power through the destruction of faith and its replacement by fear. Speech laws, government takeover of the banks…there is no doubt about what is going on here and why. Collectivists will win every time. Like a lobster set to boil we dont even know what we have lost until it is too late.

From “Life for Rent” by Dido

But if my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

I’ve always thought
that I would love to live by the sea
To travel the world alone
and live more simply
I have no idea what’s happened to that dream
Cos there’s really nothing left here to stop me

The last line is where liberation begins. I wont be watching the debate tonight. There are no answers there. People will one day resurrect the faith which lies dormant inside of them but they will need to turn off the Television first.

Spindok

Oct 15, 2008 - 9:53 am 77. Boorey Pith:

For those wringing their hands at the polls and numbers, a read of “the numerology of nose counting” on the site of “The Rule of Reason” Sorry I could not figure the URL to include. Boorey Pith

Oct 15, 2008 - 9:53 am 78. JMH:

It’s unclear who will win – the polls are suspect and the Obama camp has a huge disinformation campaign going on. I can’t predict who will win.

But if Obama does win, he will likely be the last Democrat elected President for at least a generation, perhaps ever. He would have a wholly Democrat congress and a looming economic problem. Everything he wants to do and every instinct of the Dem congressional leadership will be dead wrong for the economy. By 2010 we will be in a depression and Obama will have shown himself to be totally unqualified and unprepared for the job.

As Thrasymachus said, the people who elected him will be horrified, but they won’t accept the blame themselves. Oh no, they won’t admit their own stupidity, blindness and gullibility. Instead, they will turn on the MSM who so obviously shilled for and covered for Obama. What little credibility and audience NBC, CNN, the NYTimes, etc. have left will disspear, meaning the Dems will not have the propaganda machinery needed to blame the national catastrophe on the oh-so-clearly out of power Republicans. It will stick to dems and stick hard.

Now, the ACORN wing will certainly try intimidation, and Vodkapundit is right about the coming assault on the First Ammendment. Thugs will bully anyone who criticized Obama and the authorities in Democrat-leaning localities will ignore and protect the thugs. But ultimately the Democrat brand will be toxic, far more toxic that “Bush” is today. In fifty years, Obama will be considered the worst president in US history. But it will be a very rough and rocky time between now and then. This is the begining of a Turning and the America of 2030 will be a different place, for better or worse.

Oct 15, 2008 - 9:54 am 79. Konyok:

Mark points the way.

What we need is anti-socialist Satyagraha. Regardless of who wins.

Gandhi did not directly confront the British. He began by promoting home weaving to strike at the imperialists’ economic base. He made salt to undermine their legitimacy.

We can bankrupt the already precarious mainstream media. They have taken sides and we can turn them off.
We can shine a light on the education establishment. We can review curricula and textbooks.
We can spend our entertainment dollar selectively, rewarding those works that honor American values and punishing those that don’t.
We can get politically involved on the local level where we can do the most good. We can create a generation of Sarah Palins, drawn from WOT veterans and their families.

Yes, we can!

Oct 15, 2008 - 10:12 am 80. Peter Boston:

Konyok

The problem as I see it is that the the “we” is no longer us. The Left has won the culture war if we can use film, music, magazines, network TV, newspapers, and the general level of civility as indicia of the culture.

There are not enough weavers never mind people willing to take on the teachers’ unions and the school boards to make any difference. We got in this situation in the first place because nobody has stood up to shout against the tide. Even GWB who had command of the public microphone has chosen to silently absorb the abuse. McCain would rather be polite than be President. Sarah Palin is the only light on the horizon.

Oct 15, 2008 - 10:44 am 81. Eggplant:

Fred said:

“In 1980 my Dad thought Reagan would spin the US down the drain as a right-wing nut. At the age of 69 my Dad was thinking of leaving the country. The US survived the Great Communicator. We’ll survive the lefty Great Communicator, too.”

My mother thought the same thing and also said she’d leave the country (she didn’t).

I voted for G.W. Bush, continue to support the Iraq War and will vote for McCain but I think it was a miracle that we survived the Gipper (IMHO, he was the Right Wing version of B. Hussein).

Patriot Front said:

“[McCain] probably figured that voters would see right through BHO…. I bet McCain looked at Obama and thought, there is no way will this country will elect someone like that at a time like this….”

Hillary also fell into the same trap. I remember this being true with Reagan (people didn’t take a Hollywood movie star seriously, particularly one prone to outrageous gaffes). Supposably in the beginning, people didn’t take Hitler seriously because he looked so much like Charlie Chaplin.

Patriot Front also said:

“McCains mistakes were many, the worst was his excess of faith in the people.”

Don’t blame “The People”. They’ve been filled with lies by the MSM (definitely blame the MSM along with the moonbats). Also most people (including me) are scared stupid by the economy. Voting out the party-in-power is the standard automatic reaction whenever the economy goes sour.

JMH said:

“It’s unclear who will win – the polls are suspect and the Obama camp has a huge disinformation campaign going on. I can’t predict who will win.”

Many polls are suspect. I do not trust Zogby or anything associated with Newsweek, CBS or the New York Times. However there are many other trustworthy polls indicating that McCain is in trouble. However, as a loyal American, I will vote for McCain even though he’ll probably lose.

JMH also said:

“But if Obama does win, he will likely be the last Democrat elected President for at least a generation, perhaps ever. He would have a wholly Democrat congress and a looming economic problem. Everything he wants to do and every instinct of the Dem congressional leadership will be dead wrong for the economy. By 2010 we will be in a depression and Obama will have shown himself to be totally unqualified and unprepared for the job.”

Once again, the cloud’s silver lining does you no good if you’ve been killed by the tornado. You have assumed that B. Hussein will not turn the US into a smoking ruin. If we land in a 1929 style depression AND the Islamic fascists play a trick on us resulting in 100,000+ casulties then a military coup d’état is a logical consequence (the Third Conjecture would likely happen after that). McCain could probably dodge that bullet but not B. Hussein.

Oct 15, 2008 - 10:51 am 82. trangbang68:

Alexis, If the Republican base made sure that all the action was in the primary,then McCain wouldn’t be the nominee. In reality, craven political operatives rig the system enough that the old suit (Dole, McCain) can get the nod despite their unelectability because of their blandness and lack of ideas.
Obama stole the crown from the honchos .He really is the chosen candidate of the Dem masses; a hard left, anti American radical who they think they can mold to bring the final victory over old America. Many aging gray pony-tailed hipsters and their young stupid libertine acolytes see this election as the tanks rolling into Saigon . The last Conservatives are climbing off the roof of their freedom into the helicopters.
Unfortunately for the Obama legions and collaterally for the rest of us, outside forces will grind their ideologies into the ground. What will be left is anyone’s guess.

Oct 15, 2008 - 10:56 am 83. Konyok:

One of the tenets of conservatism, as I understand it, is personal responsibility.

Progressives have long criticized this concept as merely an excuse for self absorption. They say that we call for personal responisibility on the part of “society’s victims,” but want to hide from problems in our “suburbs and gated communities.”

Another feature of conservatism is its lack of *fuehrerprinzip.” We are not given to personality cults and we find it nearly impossible to come to consensus on anything.

So, why are we so dependent on leaders to fight the culture war?

If we have eyes to see what is happening, don’t we have a personal responsibility to do what we can to fight it? Do we really need a “mother may I?” to take action? Do we really use the rhetoric of responsibility to escape responsibility?
How is it that we lament the advent of the statists, when we already seem to have adapted the civic passivity that enables them? Are we “good little Germans” awaiting the orders of the *authorities?*
This is surely not the spirit that animated the Minute Men.

Oct 15, 2008 - 11:18 am 84. fred:

Coyotl,

These are the indisputable facts about Western Europe (Sweden included):

- high structural unemployment for decades

- low levels of entrepreneurship and job creation

- high government expenditures on the Welfare State

- low military budgets, which make robust and necessary military action and defense virtually impossible (check out the performance of French, German, and sometimes even British forces in Afghanistan)

- imploding birth rates (having babies is a sign of having faith in the future) which suggest, among other things, that Western Europeans have a gloomy outlook for their future

- cultural descent into hedonistic nihilism

- swelling ranks of the minions of Allah

- the State having to bail out large, monopolistic corporations

- low capital investment

- low charitable giving

And why is it desirable for most criminals to be on the streets of Europe? Just paying them off to trust that they will behave sets a bad precedent. Crime is escalating across Europe. Even violent crime, and the good citizens are not armed to defend their property and lives.

Contrary to the leading Marxist theoreticians, socialism did not and will not create the new, moral man. The evidence of this fallacy is overwhelming. Just take a look at the gangersterism, crime, prostitution, drugs, and cyber crime going on in former socialist countries in Europe and Russia.

Socialism’s spread across Latin America is not proof that it succeeds in bringing about better societies. Look at what is happening to Venezuela and Cuba.

Your efforts to hoist the flag for socialism would be better spent propagandizing on some college and high school campuses. Certainly more efficient. Here, you are just a pimple on someone’s ass.

Oct 15, 2008 - 11:22 am 85. trangbang68:

Listening to Heather McDonald on Laura Ingraham show. McDonald is a spokesperson for the elitist “Conservative” wits who denigrate Palin as a subpar candidate while they toady up to Obama. These people disgust me. They are rats sinking the ship under the withering fire of the liberal blitz. It is why as a social conservative, pro military voter I hope and pray for a third party that isn’t licking the bootheels of the media-politico-celebrity axis of evil.

Oct 15, 2008 - 11:53 am 86. Konyok:

fred,

You left an important thing off of your excellent list:

All of the European social democracies, and especially the Scandinavian ones, enjoyed an extraordinary level of social and ethnic solidarity when their social welfare states were established.
There was no racial spoils system and there was very little antagonism between social groups in Sweden when the social democratic system was adopted. Swedes were not divided 50-50 like Americans today.

Currently, Sweden is trying to figure out how to cope with a 15% non Swedish population that is disproportionately on the dole. The current majority in government is what passes for conservative there, and the national conversation is how to cut back the social welfare state in the least painful way possible.

It is ironic that just when American progressives see their historic opportunity to erect European style social democracy in the United States, all of our friends in Europe are trying to figure out how to climb down out of the tree.

Oct 15, 2008 - 11:55 am 87. Whitney:

69. Coyotl:

Sure, but their incarceration rate, per capita, is
nearly a tenth of ours. The US has the highest incarceration rate, and prison population in the world. Sweden puts their lower classes on the dole, we lock ours up. A high unemployment rate, does not mean a country has “failed.”

So large numbers of the citizens of a country not contributing to the labor required to sustain that country isn’t a measurement of failure? I guess you should ask the people of Haiti if their unemployment rate is part of what defines Haiti as a failed state.

As for the incarceration rate, perhaps you weren’t aware that Sweden almost always releases prisoners with life sentences after 12 years. A German woman was just sentenced to life for bludgeoning two Swedish toddlers to death in a jealous rage. They expect to release her in 12 years and there are demands that she be expelled from the country when she is released. I think I’ll take the high incarceration rate.

Oct 15, 2008 - 12:11 pm 88. fred:

Konyok,

You added something to my argument that I did forget, but am quite aware of. Much of the violent crime being committed in Sweden is being done in Malmo and Stockholm by Muslim young men. Ethnically Swedish females are frequently being raped by these scummy sons of Allah. And Swedish men are doing nothing to fight back. A society that hangs out its women like this is dying.

I much prefer that we incarcerate our criminals rather than pay them some kind of jizya. Scandinavians already are being put under the Dhimma in their own lands by these vandal invaders from dar al Islam.

Oct 15, 2008 - 12:17 pm 89. Charles:

Front page of wordpress today
http://wordpress.com/

Shocking development: Mrs Obama decides enough is enough: “My husband was born in Hawaii and adopted by his step father, does that make him unpatriotic; she asks”, on a direct telephone to API.

Oct 15, 2008 - 12:19 pm 90. Konyok:

fred,

There is that. Bitter fruit of social democracy’s cultural incentives and disincentives.

But, also, at the time when these systems were configured, the populations were nearly homogenous. It was easy for the politicians to sell because it appealed to Swedes’ solidarity with their fellow Swedes. This is not the case in early 21st century America.

One salient feature of the Obama campaign is the offer of racial healing through the expiation of white guilt. The McLuhanesque act of voting for Obama is hoped to purge the demon of racism. (Alternatively, ANY reservations about the junior senator from Illinois are now proof positive of a racist heart.) The deal as proffered is Obama in the White House = racial harmony.
A president Obama would face a non-stop series of Sister Souljah moments if he wants to achieve any of his agenda. The expectations of the African American community would be stratospheric, and he would have to deny much of them. Any perception by white and latino communities of favoritism would result in a furious backlash.
Even with increased majorities in Congress, a president Obama would be only as strong as his weakest link: blue dog Democrats susceptible to e-mails and phone calls from outraged constituents.

If there isn’t political strength to reform social security, there surely won’t be the ability to create social democracy. The electorate is just too volatile.

Perhaps Obama could find some pretext to declare an emergency and assume dictatorial powers. SCOTUS would take that case in a heartbeat and slap it down so fast it would make that one’s head spin. There is a reason that our system of divided government has lasted so long – it works.

Oct 15, 2008 - 12:56 pm 91. whiskey:

Leftism is really a debased Calvinism — the predestined saved and the damned. An elite ruling over the sinful masses.

Religion never goes away, merely transforms. Catholic rites in Haiti or Central America, and Southern Mexico, echo pagan voodoo and native Indian religions, that merely adopted Catholic symbols.

So too with the US and Europe. Calvinism never went away, rather it transformed itself into Green/Gaia-worship, hatred of the common people, and the pre-selected saved of the elite.

Obama if elected would be a disaster, not the least of which is his worship, along with Democrats, of Calvinist Third World Dictators and their methods — Chavez and Castro, and their desire to create a StormTrooper Obama-corps to intimidate and control every aspect of public and private life.

With an economic meltdown, no revenues, and huge political battles over AA and other issues (Whites first fired, last hired, while being the majority of the country) it will be remarkably ugly very very fast. Obama and Dems only play is a Dictatorship.

It was a good run for America.

Oct 15, 2008 - 1:04 pm 92. Kinuachdrach:

Peter Boston wrote:
“We got in this situation in the first place because nobody has stood up to shout against the tide.”

Not really. We got in this situation because the Republican political class forgot who took them to the dance.

Thanks to some inspired Republican leadership (and to W Clinton’s oafishness), Republicans were given the keys to the federal kingdom — Presidency, Senate, House. The failure of that political class to follow through on their promises has brought us to the point where we are now looking at a Democrat clean sweep.

Oct 15, 2008 - 1:06 pm 93. whiskey:

Fred –

The assualt of young Swedish women by young Muslim men in a racial-religious conflict is both PC unmentionable, by well, Women, particularly the feminists who set the PC-Multiculturalism agenda, and a factor of young Swedish men being both feminized and lacking any “investment” in their female counterparts.

Blogger “the Rawness” recently visited Sweden and found young Swedish men to be very feminized, compared to his own US experience. Promiscuity and casual sex dominated, and there was very little romantic investment by men and women in each other. There seemed to be on his inspection, no real serious relationships that he found. Merely casual friendship.

This (minus the overt feminization, including excessive grooming, “thin” rather than muscular physiques, etc. that “the Rawness” commented on in Sweden) matches the US collegiate experience. Casual sex, promiscuity, and lack of any real serious investments, with a great deal of men on the sideline as far as committed relationships go lead to lack of caring/social investment by young men regarding their female counterparts. Alongside PC-Multiculturalism speech codes. Any White male is automatically “evil” unless proven otherwise, all others “pre-destined” for salvation in the debased Calvinist theology.

The shocking thing about the VT shootings was that NONE of the healthy, active, vigorous young men thought it worthwhile to risk their lives for their female classmates. Only an elderly Holocaust survivor and a middle aged veteran Professor took any action at all, and paid for that with their lives. Passivity and failure to act were the norms, created by about 15 years of conditioning in the Public school system and the culture at large.

In contrast, in the “Lost” America of the early 1960’s, the shootings at UT from the bell tower sniper prompted students and Professors alike to go get their hunting rifles and shoot back at him! Allowing Law Enforcement to go after the sniper, enter the tower, and kill him.

We have created, through PC and Multiculturalism, and the debased religion of Volk-Calvinism, a passive and uninvested populace, particularly young men, throughout the West. The US no less than Sweden.

IMHO, this is because urban anonymous living and untrammeled personal freedom allows PC and Multiculturalism to dictate norms. Of course, on campus as in the wider political world, the practitioners of PC, those who wield it the most, and with effectiveness, are minority leaders and women, often single and professional, who seek raw political power through it’s Calvinist doctrines.

Which is what it’s all about — raw political power. It’s why feminists ignore or cover up things like the assaults of young women in Sweden and ally themselves overtly with the Muslim groups, in concert against their real enemies — men and the political power they wield. It’s why PC defenders and practitioners are almost exclusively minority leaders (Jessie Jackson, Obama, etc.) or women (NOW, Emily’s List) or their political leaders (Barney Frank, Dodd, Biden). You don’t see PC or Multiculturalism practiced or defended by Republicans, with their largely White male and married women base.

Oct 15, 2008 - 1:20 pm 94. Michael Hoskins:

Many of the comments thus far include “…McCain thinks…” or “…McCain probably thinks…” and, of course, “…McCain ought to think…”. This is a huge error. McCain’s life has been so different than most of yours that you have no frame of reference. I too am a third generation Naval person (of enlisted/ Warrant stock, a fraternity of its own). I attended 18 schools before NROTC at Ga. Tech. To date my longest time in one place has been at Tech. I have a feeling for Capt. McCain’s thought process. There it ends. His time in Hanoi is so different than the rest of us that I cannot fathom his processes.

In my case, it is part of the attraction. He won’t flinch. He is likely, if elected, to be a very independent President. I like the idea that he will shake the system up to the extent it can be shaken.

I have also concluded that the polls are in disarray. They are asking the standard questions in the standard ways. Neither candidate nor campaign is standard.

While I hope we win, it is still a horse race.

I plan to help hope in the voting booth. I plan to help hope with encouragement of the undecided. I plan to help hope by ignoring Sweden, Switzerland and where ever else hope has been sold for temporary security.

ta

Oct 15, 2008 - 1:23 pm 95. newtland:

Anybody know anything about this?

I’m told that Iranian ship that was recently shanghaied by pirates was actually carrying radioactive sand.

Supposedly, the plan was to blow it up just west of Israeli port cities and let nature and the dust do the mullah’s deadly work.

Plot was discovered when the pirates started dying of radiation poisoning.

Is this a script for “24″ or a real story?

Oct 15, 2008 - 1:29 pm 96. Michael Hoskins:

Radioactive silicon dioxide? Nuclear Chemistry wonks, is that even possible? Concrete containment vessels are largely, sand.

Oct 15, 2008 - 1:32 pm 97. Al_Batross:

newtland,
i first saw it at:

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/09/mystery_surrounds_hi.php

the last i heard of it was here:

http://www.theaviationnation.com/

so if you know where is it now, please share, thanks

Oct 15, 2008 - 1:34 pm 98. Al_Batross:

newtland,
i first saw it at:

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/09/mystery_surrounds_hi.php

Oct 15, 2008 - 1:35 pm 99. Al_Batross:

the last i heard of it was here:

http://www.theaviationnation.com/

so if you know where is it now, please share, thanks

Oct 15, 2008 - 1:35 pm 100. Al_Batross:

“It is ironic that just when American progressives see their historic opportunity to erect European style social democracy in the United States, all of our friends in Europe are trying to figure out how to climb down out of the tree”. – Konyok

And we in Europe need to do it soon because the tree is going to fall. The rot has gone too far, and the money has gone too fast.
I am sorry to find so many in the BC so despondent today, and am myself dejected at the strength of the cult of BO over here. It seems that many Europeans have yet to grasp that he only offers the failed policies from which we are now trying to escape, and that by weakening the USA he will make all of us less safe. If he wins, there will be change alright, but not change we will want to believe in.
On a brighter note, before programmer went off on his break, he left this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIWb8HJ5gLo

I mention it in the hope that it may lift a few spirits.

Oct 15, 2008 - 1:52 pm 101. fred:

whiskey,

I too have noted the trend towards feminizing of men in our culture for awhile. It can have no good end. Instead, we have males and females behaving like predatory animals cruising for quickie sex. It’s deplorable, as it debases both men and women. And I am no prude, but my courtship of my wife was both serious and amorous, and both of us were raised traditional Catholics. Today people confuse libidinousness for love. Instead of integrated eros, we just end up with animalistic groping. Everyone loses, especially the children who are born of these quite happenstance couplings.

But, I digress. Here is something from personal experience that also, I think, illustrates the harm done by feminizing of men. I used to play ice hockey on amateur levels right through college and after the university in adult rec leagues where I live, until at age 45 I had to have a left him (and later right hip as well)total replacement due to osteoarthritis. I grew up playing this fabulous game of both ballet and brawn. As kids and young men, playing together on frozen ponds and indoor rinks, we learned what I call The Honor Code of Hockey. We learned this from the hockey culture, from our Christian backgrounds, and from the examples of adults like our fathers and players we looked up to. The Honor Code of Hockey is not hard to understand, but it does tend to baffle some outsiders who lacked the honest and tough male figures who modeled what it means to be a man. It basically says that you play within the rules. You are allowed to legally check other players, when they have the puck and just after they’ve gotten rid of it (but you are only allowed two strides before hitting a guy). You may not hit a guy from behind when he is facing the boards, as this may result in very severe injury to him. We learned that it was especially dastardly to use your stick as a weapon. And never hit a guy in the head with your stick or your elbows. It’s against the rules and a cheap shot.

In other words, we learned to be tough, but fair AND TO ALWAYS RESPECT THE OTHER PLAYER. Certain actions would mark you as a malfeasant and a dirty individual.

The rules of the game allow fighting. And there is a good reason for this. It’s a fast game and the officials cannot always see everything and be everywhere. There are players who are sneaky/dirty. They violate the game, its honor code, and other players. It used to be that we could take justice into our own hands, drop the gloves, and proceed to punish those kinds of players. Believe me when I say this: those kinds of players fear retribution from other players way more than they fear the referee’s whistle. And even if you lose a fight to the dirty player, you at least stood up for yourself or your team mates. You served notice that you and everyone else, as a matter of honor, will not tolerate certain kinds of behavior. And it worked, for the most part.

But, the culture of the game has changed and The Honor Code of Hockey is now almost gone and I’ll tell you why. During the late eighties the NHL Board of Governors hired a man from the basketball world named Gary Bettman. Upper East Side hoi poloi, with the “in” crowd of people who would call hockey players knuckledragging hoodlums who should be prevented from fighting. Bettman was hired for his marketing skills from the NBA, but he also brought with him an alien culture. Under strenuous efforts on his part, the Instigator Rule was introduced, ostensibly to get rid of fighting. The NHL Governors did not want to outlaw fighting entirely, as they understood why fighting is in the game and allowed, but they could not admit that they hired someone who wanted to change the game so much. Bettman tried to convince them that rapid franchise expansion to the Sun Belt and ending “violence” in the game would make the NHL more marketable. In large measure he has failed, but that’s another topic entirely.

The Instigator Rule adds an additional two minute penalty to the one who starts the fight. This dramatically changed the culture of the game, since typically instigators are guys who are retaliating against the malfeasants. They are trying to enforce The Honor Code of Hockey.

It has changed the game in ways Bettman could never foresee. Among the amateur ranks, there is no longer any respect for the head. There are more cheap shots taken. Concussions are up. The game is faster now, and so the effects of these changes is to magnify injuries. And it has trickled upwards into the professional ranks. Some of the players themselves now talk about this as a real threat to the game’s integrity.

All the result of a feminized man from a feminized culture which thinks of the hockey culture something retrograde and dirty. When it was a lot cleaner than they realized and now has indeed become a game where players no longer respect each other and the game.

Oct 15, 2008 - 1:54 pm 102. Pascal:

Konyok 70:

You must know I agree with you on the defeatism; hence my linking Habu to Bozzetto’s spoof last week. That led me to further adapt that vignette and linking it at comment no. 1. I have long been willing to pursue personal campaigns as you have suggested.

Unlike many of my friends, I recalled Twain’s commentary upon reading his obituary: the demise of old media has been vastly exaggerated, as well as the Emperor’s gleeful revelation about the seemingly incomplete death star. Conservatives ought never have bought the notion of their oft alternate snark lamestream media. People may have been tuning them out, but moneyed interests still are their paying customers, and they still have repetitive impact.

Let’s for a scant moment presume that Obama is no real leftist, but simply a man who smartly follows those who have always managed to advance him to heights beyond his wildest dreams.

We’ve watched the antics of those forces who’ve advanced him. Many here must recognize the successful patterns from history they most closely have adopted. I see one for sure that I recall from my old Western civ text. Is it possible at this late date to make use of our combined knowledge?

Oct 15, 2008 - 2:01 pm 103. JMH:

the cloud’s silver lining does you no good if you’ve been killed by the tornado. You have assumed that B. Hussein will not turn the US into a smoking ruin.

I made no such assumption. You read that into my statement. I said “it will be a very rough and rocky time between now and then. This is the begining of a Turning and the America of 2030 will be a different place, for better or worse.” A smoking ruin falls under the “or worse” clause, and is entirely possible.

Kinuachdrach said “We got in this situation because the Republican political class forgot who took them to the dance.”

I agree. The Gingrich revolution stalled (not sure it was Newt’s fault entirely, he proved a better minority leader than Speaker, but his instincts were correct. He just wasn’t able to execute effectively). The real lesson of the GOP losses in 2006 was not Iraq, but rather the Bridge to Nowhere and the K-Street Project, not to mention rather limp-wristed advocacy of real changes (e.g. why do the tax cuts expire if they aren’t renewed? Tax increases are never temporary.) The GOP Congress tried too hard to make government into their creature, not realizing it was, and will always be, a pet of their opponents, a necessary evil that must be kept penned in at all times if you don’t want it to devour you.

Oct 15, 2008 - 2:13 pm 104. newtland:

It was maddening, really, to watch Newt fall prey to the same shallow popularity game he had railed against.

All the cool guys had chicks on the side, right?

But the saddest moment came when the very day J.C. Watts called out Nutcutter Jackson as a race whore, Newt had Jackson as his special guest at the State of the Union address.

As such, the black man who should have been running for President quit politics in disgust.

Newt got dusted, anyway, because he forgot that snakes are always snakes.

Today we are paying the price not so much for our sins of commission, but for our acquiescence.

Wonder if this is how the salt-of-the-Earth Jews felt during the era of the errant Kings …

Oct 15, 2008 - 2:55 pm 105. Konyok:

Pascal,

Your question implies that we are virgins in danger of some unerasable despoiling. We are not. Our virtue has always been somewhat flexible.
Our knowledge, and, no doubt, the knowledge that we are soon to learn, will be more than sufficient to carry us through this to the next round of follies and errors. Being human, we screw up.

The Obama train is also human, hence fallible. This fallibility opens the way to blunder into wisdom as well as blundering into ruin. Who knew what kind of blowback awaited us from arming the mujahideen? The law of unintended consequences is relentless. Those who so confidently predict the future subconsciously invest themselves in what they foresee, whether by fueling the bandwagon or by paralyzing efforts to stop it. We so dearly love to hear our own voices, and at this stage of American civilization we so earnestly want to think of ourselves as hardbitten realists, immune to fads and propaganda. But, this privileged perspective that we fancy we have is transitory.

What endure are our individual faith and the institutions of our nation. If we have so little confidence that we won’t even defend them, without the mischievous thought of overthrowing them ourselves, how can we presume to call on providence to save us?

Oct 15, 2008 - 3:03 pm 106. Pascal:

I implied nothing of the sort. Why would you even infer it?

I know I am an optimist but I think too many read my commentary and think it the opposite. Must be my inability to break through the cynicism that has been woven into place where moral fiber once was nurtured.

Oct 15, 2008 - 3:30 pm 107. Coyotl:

Relax Fred, I’m hoisting no flag, simply inquiring whether you’ve got your facts straight. For instance:

“84. fred: .. . . cultural descent into hedonistic nihilism . . .

- the State having to bail out large, monopolistic corporations”

Ummm, do you read the news Fred? Oh-ho, EUROPE is bailing our large coporations, they’re failures, nyahh, nyeah, nah! Come of it my fellow patriot. Read up on the current American bailout and the nationalization of banks.

As to “cultural descent into hedonistic nihilism” what does this even mean? Fred, you’ve clearly never been to Sweden. I have and they’re boring and they know it, they’re not hedonistic nihilists. What? Don’t you have cable TV here in the States? Never been to Vegas? LA? Get out of rural Idaho and get to know your own country before you start berating others for cultural nihilism.

Lastly, you’ve gone from saying that socialism has always failed to listing its many problems . . . the many problems of current socialist, and social democratic states. See the incoherence in your argument?

Oct 15, 2008 - 4:08 pm 108. fred:

Coyotl,

So, please refresh my memory. Again, why is Sweden a good model for socialist success?

Obviously your bar for success is set rather low.

Oct 15, 2008 - 4:31 pm 109. Storm-Rider:

Just a reminder of what America has hitherto always stood for – this is the real American Dream. We American conservatives wish to conserve the great liberal principles of human rights and human government bequeathed to us by our founding fathers. How can we fight for what we can’t enunciate or enumerate? How can America, as established by our founders, be passed on to future generations if we can’t pass it to our own children?

1. All men are created equal – equal before the law, i.e.: American Revolutionary equality – not government-forced economic equality, i.e.: French Revolution and Marxist equality.

2. Our human rights to life, liberty and creative pursuit of happiness are sacred – from God and therefore irreversible – not from the State and therefore reversible.

3. Liberty = freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion (religion non-subversive of liberty), freedom to defend life, freedom to own property creatively attained by the sweat of your brow, freedom to have privacy at home, freedom to petition government for grievances, and division of government power into its three branches.

4. The entire reason for human government is to secure our essential human rights as listed above.

5. Just government power can only derive from the informed consent of the governed. All other government power is unjust, and subject to tyranny.

6. When government becomes destructive of our essential human rights as listed above, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish the government.

By the way, Konyok, I’ve recently published several articles at reputable on-line journals touching on this theme – I am trying my best to be proactive on a personal and public level – I’m not just a keyboard jock at BC. I read the second paragraph of our Declaration of Independence to my kids before we shot off our fireworks; and I talk to my friends at work about our founding American Values.

Why not copy these six founding American Values and email them to all our friends and opponents? Why not read these values to our children?

Oct 15, 2008 - 4:45 pm 110. Storm-Rider:

How about an overall game plan – a strategy – something from which our tactics will spring? Here are some of my ideas:

1. Write and publish articles relating to our founding American Values.

2. Talk about our founding American Values with our families, neighbors and co-workers.

3. Get very involved in School boards and local government, and for some of us, get involved in higher levels of government.

4. Amend our Constitution with term limits for Congress and the Supreme Court, and provide Congress with 2/3 override power for all Supreme Court decisions impacting or relating to the Constitution its self. This amendment should also identify the Supremacy of the laws in our Declaration of Independence over Constitutional law.

5. Enforce the tenth amendment by breaking up all entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security into fifty state programs. Also, make the Department of Education an advisory agency only – ban all educational matching grants from the federal government to the states – let the states and the people educate their children without the socialist federal state.

6. Cease federal funding of the ACLU and similar organizations.

Oct 15, 2008 - 4:58 pm 111. peterike:

Way too many comments to catch up on. But some quick ones.

* Anyone who thinks the MSM will go out of business in future is crazy. Under an Obama regime, after the “alternatives” are put to sleep, if the NY Times needs money, Obama will subsidize them. Soon we will have a tax to support ABC/NBC/CBS just like they have with that other bastion of freedom, the BBC.

* Someone made the comment: “Voting out the party-in-power is the standard automatic reaction whenever the economy goes sour.” True enough. Though the irony is that, first of all, the Republicans aren’t the party in power. People really do not realize that. Second, the many failures of the Republicans that helped lead to this were precisely because Republicans acted like Democrats. What has FAILED here have been Democratic approaches to things: absurd amounts of spending; stupid new entitlements; rampant illegal immigration; PC everywhere; on and on. But of course the population at large can’t parse that data. All they know is Republican = bad.

As someone else mentioned on the thread, the failure of the Republicans to do ANYTHING to roll back the country’s Leftward drift after they took power was the moment America slipped away, possibly for good. They were whores and sellouts and they sold out their country for a handful of gold coins.

Now we get the spectre of the country railing against “failed Republican policies” which weren’t “Republican” at all, and certainly not conservative in any sense.

Finally, Fred, interesting story on hockey. I’m not a big fan and I never heard that. I wonder if it was the same guy at the NBA who let it turn into a thugs game and marketed it that way.

Oct 15, 2008 - 6:04 pm 112. Dave:

Over in Europe they are in deeper financial kimchi than we are. Some admit it. Others
say that they are bailing out US firms/banks etc.

What they are really peddling are all those ACME products Wile E Coytl keeps trying on us.

BEEP-BEEP

Oct 15, 2008 - 7:39 pm 113. Dave:

BTW, Rich Galen over at townhall.com has an interesting theory. He believes that it was Iceland where all the financial chain reactions started.

Iceland has a population of 304,000. Three banks. Between them those banks ran up over 100 Billion in Euro obligations due upon demand. Like now. As a result their own currency, the krona is useless outside Iceland itself and inside Iceland a return of barter trade may be imminent.

Iceland seems to be the Archduke Ferdinand of this era. All the other Euro-socialists were leveraging their income estimates based upon assuming that Iceland could/would pay in full.

An interesting take on things and I’m sure that there is at least some substance to it.

Oct 15, 2008 - 7:49 pm 114. Dave:

About Rich Galen: A great wit. Once his friend Lee Rodgers of KFSO in San Francisco
accused Rich of being “a paid Republican shill”.

Rich Replied, “That is much better than being an unpaid Republican shill”.

Oct 15, 2008 - 7:51 pm 115. DonB71InWA:

Some things to count on:

-Losing the battle is not the same as losing the war. The internal contradictions that brings down every socialist/communist regime will do so again. Some vanished quickly, some slowly, some still failing but the fall is inevitable. Economic laws are as real as physics. Let’s pray the price won’t be too high.
-Always count on self-interest. At some point the news media will turn on Obama. Money will seek environments more favorable. Most young strivers will not tolerate promises of utopia for stagnation or a stunted future. The glamor of a bohemian existance is best enjoyed from afar or as an affectation.
-Always count on western ideals. These were bought with much blood, pain and tears. Many will fight even when the cost is high. Others will realize their mistake and retreat from lefist orthodoxy. America is full of people who viscerally oppose the “divine right of kings” whether dynastically or Marxist in origin. Many Christians and Jews will unite to oppose the secularists. The martyrs of the past will provide models for the future.

In my own little way both mentally and physically I plan to practice WWRRD (what would Ronald Reagan do)? At a minimum, I will not threaten to pick up my marbles (economically or geographically) and go play somewhere else. This is my home. And God is great.

Oct 15, 2008 - 8:32 pm 116. Karen:

Pascal: The it: The many aspects of conservatism and whether or not the label serves defenders of liberty well. That is what is in need of review. The current label provides succor and cover to too many pretenders and worse.

Konyok: Who am us, anyway?

About the best explication of conservativism I’ve come across is Russell Kirk’s six canons of conservative thought (and I quote the 6, from “The Conservative Mind: from Burke to Eliot”):

1. Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality, what Coleridge called the Understanding, cannot of itself satisfy human needs. “Every Tory is a realist,” says Keith Feiling: “he knows that there are great forces in heaven and earth that man’s philosophy cannot plumb or fathom.” True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which ought to prevail in a community of souls [i.e., the moral bond among the dead, the living, and those yet to be born].

2. Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems…

3. Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a “classless society.” With reason, conservatives often have been called “the party of order.” If natural distinctions are effaced among men, oligarchs fill the vacuum. Ultimate equality in the judgment of God, and equality before the law, are recognized by conservatives; but equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom.

4. Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked: separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all. Economic levelling, they maintain, is not economic progress.

5. Faith in prescription and distrust of “sophisters, calculators, and economists” who would reconstruct society upon abstract designs. Custom, convention, and old prescription are checks both upon man’s anarchic impulse and upon the innovator’s lust for power.

6. Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculations, and a statesman’s chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence.

Do the above convictions serve the defenders of liberty well? Yes, I think so. But many – many! – people living in this country today would beg to differ. Just how many, I don’t know, but enough to put forward a candidate like Obama. (After all, surely, some of those instrumental in his rise must know who he is.) Perhaps it’s true that many of those who intend to vote for him have no clue what he’s really all about. The Obama I saw in the debate does not square with the Obama I see based on his past and present associations, his Senate record, his background and his early career. We’re often told that Americans are basically conservative. But these supposedly clueless people who intend to vote for Obama in droves, if they were of a truly conservative frame of mind, could they be content with only the polished campaign image, without digging deeper? If yes, then the whole concept of citizenship and the civic right to vote is practically meaningless. If people are voting for what they know not, and Obama is elected, it will be because they were manipulated into believing the illusion. For the last forty years society has been primed to accept an illusion like Obama. It seems his time has come. Evidently, our part will be to pick up the pieces after the country is ruined. That’s our hope. Not a very cheerful one. Or, I guess we can just hope that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et. al., somehow *won’t* ruin the country or leave us open to some devastating attack.

Personally, I’m going to copy L3’s quote of St. Francis de Sales. I shall add it to my growing stockpile of revelatory reminders that a state of peace exists which passes all understanding.

Oct 15, 2008 - 11:58 pm 117. 3Case:

Christopher Buckley is proof that when an acorn falls from a tree it can roll…a lot.

Oct 16, 2008 - 12:37 am 118. Pascal:

Thank you Karen. I was hoping my request would animate someone for which Number 5 resounds.

Prescription relies upon stable descriptions, for which labels provide summary. While the conservative label can be stretched, stretching too far tears it. It was torn by some, reluctantly accepted by others, and left in tatters by large numbers of people for a great variety of reasons, almost all believing their reasons are prudent.

Thus number 6 is in dire need of review itself.

Oct 16, 2008 - 6:28 am 119. Konyok:

Sorry, Pascal

I was sloppy in my 105. I wanted to tie to your “combined knowledge” and wound up on a tangent.

I was really trying to address Kinuachdrach and others suggesting that the problem is an insufficiency of conservative purity. That kind of observation doesn’t help us much right now, and it doesn’t capture the intrinsic ambiguity of human motivations. (This is one aspect where I think that whiskey’s musings actually offer some light …)

**

If we define conservative as conserving, then a proper definition has to include within itself the definition of the opponent’s cause. Conserving is reflexive – this isn’t ancient Kemet for heaven’s sake (hat tip to our Afrocentric friends …), we don’t mummify against any conceivable change. Our chief domestic concern at the time is the progressive project, so we can be called anti-progressives. (Bad press, that …) Cannoneer suggests anti-socialist or anti-statist. At other times, our lineage has been anti-communist, anti-fascist, anti-corruption and anti-slavery. Traditionally, this coalition has included disparate elements united in their opposition to the social pathology of the time. So, in this definition, we and our opponents are locked into a tight definitional embrace – yin and yang – each defined by the other.

Alternatively, we can define ourselves as Americanists. However, when we try to specify what that means we have to resort to oppositionist language. We don’t advocate a Greater American Empire, rather, we oppose diminution of American sovereignty.

I think that the best definition is loose, because we really are engaged in a perpetual rear guard action against the moonbats.

Oct 16, 2008 - 8:16 am 120. Karen:

The term “conservative” has certainly taken a beating in our time. If you look it up on Wikipedia, you will find much elaboration on the psychological research aspect. People likely to hold conservative views are claimed to possess certain personality traits, such as authoritarianism, social dominance, an intolerance for ambiguity, a death anxiety, hostility against homosexuals, prejudice against disadvantaged groups, etc., etc. Evidently, a lot of effort has been expended in studies and research in order to stigmatize the conservative political philosophy. Gosh, it’s enough to make some conservatives conclude they suffer too much conservative purity and must redouble their efforts to compromise and “reach across the aisle.”

What is across the aisle? Konyok: …a proper definition has to include within itself the definition of the opponent’s cause.

Kirk answers that as well, although he admits, in a hastily generalized fashion:

“…radicalism since 1790 has tended to attack the prescriptive arrangement of society on the following grounds -

1. The perfectibility of man and the illimitable progress of society: meliorism. Radicals believe that education, positive legislation, and alteration of environment can produce men like gods; they deny that humanity has a natural proclivity toward violence and sin.

2. Contempt for tradition. Reason, impulse, and materialistic determinism are severally preferred as guides to social welfare, trustier than the wisdom of our ancestors. Formal religion is rejected and various ideologies are presented as substitutes.

3. Political levelling. Order and privilege are condemned; total democracy, as direct as practicable, is the professed radical ideal. Allied with this spirit, generally, is a dislike of old parliamentary arrangements and an eagerness for centralization and consolidation.

4. Economic levelling. The ancient rights of property, especially property in land, are suspect to almost all radicals; and collectivistic reformers hack at the institution of private property root and branch.”

Oct 16, 2008 - 9:47 am 121. Pascal:

Every time now that I see that word leveling I keep thinking of the quote which Hazlitt attributed to Dr. Johnson.

“Your levelers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear leveling up to themselves.”

The power to employ envy is why anti-conservatives attempt to demonize their opponents. By demonizing you they wish to level you down to themselves.

Oct 16, 2008 - 11:06 am 122. Karen:

I think of anti-conservatives as L3. Not the L3 who posts here (apologies to Leo), but L3 as in the Leveling Looters of Leviathan. It’s always far easier to tear down than build up. And envy over what you don’t have is more tempting than gratitude for what you do have.

Oct 16, 2008 - 11:40 am 123. Konyok:

Karen and Pascal,

Oh boy, a light is going on for me.

I’m getting a glimmer of awareness of some of my own Pavlovian responses. I’ve been conditioned by the media to avoid at all costs any expression of racism, sexism, insensitivity or religeous intolerance. This conditioning has dovetailed so neatly with early religeous instruction that it seems a natural fit. Nobody who wants to be a *nice person* violates these taboos without considerable embarassment.
The dilemma is that we conserve that which is according to a moral imperative. It is our responsibility as guardians of the moment to protect and preserve the best of that which is. We perceive this duty as a moral necessity to protect us from falling into greater error.
That which is evolves over time. For example, we have internalized a legacy of Martin Luther King. Although he was a controversial figure in his own time, he has joined the American civic pantheon. We conservatives have enthusiastically adopted his equality of opportunity rhetoric as our own.

The great problem arises when the gatekeepers of the civic ethos become partisan. (Most notably, the news media.) In times past, our consensus societal goals (AKA Compelling State Interest) were generally practical in nature – the Depression, WWII and the Cold War. The media were one of the sinews holding the country together through challenging times. The meta-messages were obvious and intuitive to everybody. How can you argue with “Loose lips sink ships” during wartime? This type of messaging harmonized well with the conservative impulse.
During the post-scarcity delusion just ending now, the gatekeepers came to believe that conservatism was an obstacle to progress rather than a stabilizing keel.

The conservative impulse seems to me to be a hard-wired feature, not a bug. The gatekeepers’ attempts haven’t erased it, but they have contributed to an irrational lack of confidence in our ideas and our abilities to to control events.

True enough, we often reach across the aisle because we don’t want to called racist.

But, sometimes we must reach across the aisle simply because we don’t have the votes.

Oct 16, 2008 - 12:10 pm 124. Leo Linbeck III:

Karen,

I guess I may have to change my signature.

Great posts.

L3 (Lighthearted Lover of Liberty)

Oct 16, 2008 - 2:10 pm 125. Bob Murphy:

But the term conservative has different moral implications depending on the system that person wants to conserve, surely.
A person could well want to preserve something intrinsically dysfunctional in a dysfunctional society, take Saudi Arabia or Egypt.
A conservative in England might want to preserve monarchy but in America to preserve a republic with strong built in anti-authoritarian bias that is intrinsically against monarchy and aristocracy and non-consensual religious fundamentalism.
Thus being conservative in America is to be, compared with mankind’s history, revolutionary.
Revolutionary in believing that government authority is a danger to be limited, that it is not the source of political rights that are intrinsically, inherently the right of every human.
So surely we should be seeing ourselves as the colourful vanguard or defenders of liberty, the champions of an unchained humanity.
How did we get chumped into a “conserve” mode? Hell I’m really colorful about my traditional American views and can hold my own in any party pub or cafe I’ve ever been in my native San Francisco.
And surely in the present environment, with the ongoing abuse of constitutional powers by the judiciary and congress we are the people, empowered by our God given inalienable rights who should be demanding liberation from government tyranny. WE should be on the offensive challenging these usurpers.
What has happened to us and perhaps more to the point what has happened to John McCain as a person nominated by the supposedly traditionalist conservative party in the US?
Has the left so stolen our national narrative and the political initiative that 50% of Americans think they are mainstream???

Oct 16, 2008 - 7:21 pm 126. Wolf Pangloss:

I am Joe the Plumber!

Oct 16, 2008 - 8:09 pm 127. Karen:

Thanks, Leo, for your good humor. No, don’t change your signature! After reading your clear explanation of derivatives on another thread, even I – whose eyes glaze over at details of finance – understood (just don’t ask me to repeat it back); therefore, may I suggest Learned Lover of Liberty.

Bob, I wish the word ‘conservative’ wasn’t so absurdly elastic that it would apply to a regime like that in Saudi Arabia. Conservatism is a lot more than simply preserving the status quo, whatever or wherever that status quo may be. Our American conservatism stems from our own customs, conventions and prescriptions, nobody else’s. It doesn’t travel well, imo, which is why I always had doubts about democratizing Iraq. But I second your comments. Yes, we should be on the offensive, challenging our pigeonholing by the left which depicts us as legitimate objects of scorn and ridicule and gets away with it.

Konyok: reaching across the aisle must not compromise core principles.

Oct 17, 2008 - 2:03 pm 128. Pascal:

I agree with you whole-heartedly Karen. “Conservatism is a lot more than simply preserving the status quo.”

I know it is not only my opinion that the problem with the GOP can be found in how thoroughly in control are those who cling to the status quo. I tried to address it a couple of years ago with Understanding Who Blocks Reform as suggested by Matthew 19:24: “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

The gist of it centers on what you just wrote. Due to the love of the status quo, broader conservatism has always been in danger from its leaders, and certainly from our current ones. Why? Because those who are happy with their lot will block reforms simply out of fear that fixing things MIGHT rock their boat. Power inclines to prerogatives favorable to it.

Sad to say, events of the last few weeks strongly support my view; what is threatening us further is sustaining it.

Konyok, I know how reluctant you are to agree with such a view. Still I imagine even you have to agree its probability has grown.

George Bush or his Dad repeatedly feted the likes of Kennedy during his 8 years. And now we have video and audio of the after-debate feast in New York. It tells us McCain is funnier and clearer than Bush. It also shows us that he is on much better terms with our tormentors. He doesn’t call them names; he jokes with them.

Where is McCain’s disdain, opprobrium and long renowned anger? Oh that? That he reserves for his base.

Karen. 1. Let us assume that by some great gift of Providence the country votes against Obama and wins the election for us. 2. There seems unprecedented possibility in America that the Left, aided by its control of information institutions, will stage something stronger than a protest of the results. But let us presume we come out well in that too.

America will have won a reprieve.

What then?

Oct 17, 2008 - 6:58 pm 129. Karen:

Pascal, when G.W. Bush was governor of Texas, he earned a reputation of being a uniter of the two parties in the state legislature and he vowed to continue that spirit in Washington – which he did, no matter how many times he got clobbered for his efforts. And that whole compassionate conservatism thing – well, that seems to have ended up as just the opening the libs needed to get us onboard for the giveaways. For Bush, clinging to the status-quo meant he didn’t want to tarnish his image or reputation for bi-partisanship, I think. But he was never a true conservative anyway, just what passes for one these days. The real problem may just be the sea-change in people’s beliefs.

In the public arena, as has been noted before, real conservatism is pretty much confined to the blogosphere and talk radio and only an occasional legislator like Sen. James Inhofe. Real conservatism, along with real Christianity, offers the best opportunity for the country to be rightly guided, but neither one is exactly widely esteemed these days. BTW, your interest in applying religious principles to the secular world’s problems is very intriguing.

If America wins a reprieve, what then? Well, if McCain wins, then I think our system of government will have won a reprieve, viz., the trend toward socialism will have hit a snag. I will breathe a sigh of relief and hope that the future brings new leaders who’ll restore conservatism’s luster. But although it seems like so much hangs on this election, I still have the feeling that no matter who wins, time has speeded up and is rushing us toward – ugh, I hate to say ‘destiny.’ But I don’t know what else to call it. The judgment of the nations?

Oct 18, 2008 - 2:55 am 130. Pascal:

Fitting explanation for GWB personal stands. However, he at least permitted his political machine punished conservatives who demonstrated loyalty to principle before principal. And his behavior fits the RINO profile. Showing no spine against the Dems but really putting their backs into internecine warfare.

The real problem may just be the sea-change in people’s beliefs. That surely contributes. What large numbers been herded away from and what they’ve been indoctrinated to corresponds with what they’ve been taught to ridicule and what they’ve been told they must tolerate. That our institutions had degraded so much into MisInfo and MinInfo now is far more widely accepted (though these mocking names haven’t yet taken hold as quickly as some others). Where there are democratic elections it is preferable that desired policies at least appear to have percolated up. How did they come to believe these things? Well, who regulates the policy of what schools teach? Who influences what editorial bent manages the media? We’ve witnessed the incubation of the Ministry of Truth.

In the public arena…. There is where real conservatism has been tarnished and will continue to be so until we find a way of getting the majority to recognize in how many ways they too are conservative and that conservatism represents them better than any label the power hungerers claim belongs to them.

BTW. Your use of the term “the public arena” and your later phrase “speeded up and is rushing us” suggests to me that it is time to update the oldest entry in my glossary, the Ideological Corral. It was suggested to me back to the mid seventies. Your phrase here echoes one I used there “moving a great deal faster all the time.” So I bet since its operation is clearer now than ever before, functionality has changed.

A corral is inclusive. An arena is exclusionary. Those who insist on standing by the old standards, the right-most anchors of the corral before those running the show decided to pull up stakes, now find themselves outside without voices inside to champion their causes.

In the arena postmodernism is preferred to modernism; science has been supplanted by post-normal science; Progressives employ Luddites; liberals are preoccupied with what can be tolerated. You want entry? Better bone up on shibboleths.

Oct 18, 2008 - 11:59 am 131. Pascal:

your interest in applying religious principles to the secular world’s problems is very intriguing.

What have you been reading?

I think we are served best when we allow our secular world to be informed by religious principles. Right now, at best, that is currently being blocked.

I think most of the current problems are due to a battle waged by pessimists against optimists. As I have explained it at length, I see religious principles tending to coincide with optimists. The drum beat to exclude from the public arena those who use religious phrases (the wrong shibboleths) is due to having permitted the pessimistic view to have gained the upper hand. For the most part, optimists let it happen unwittingly because they didn’t really know why they were under attack.

Oct 18, 2008 - 12:26 pm 132. J-Rog:

As always I enjoy BC and it’s insights, particularly as a the young whelp just out of college. My salutations to the older gents and dames who proffer up wisdom and experience. I’ll do my best to carry on, since as Chesterton noted, hope is what you do when things become hopeless.

One anecdote: Last spring I overheard two college girls talking about the primary candidates. One remarked to her friend that, “Well I obviously like Obama, but I really like this Ron Paul guy.” After the double take I pressed her on this. I realized that she inclined towards the Messiah because the culture told her to, but that she might have more conservative instincts than realized. So maybe there’s hope for all us young idiots (I’m in favor of pushing the voting age back towards twenty-five at least, we’re not responsible enough as a generation yet).

I’m doing some volunteer campaign work for a non-profit in North Carolina, suddenly a swing state. Anyone with contacts/information, feel free to drop me a line.

Oct 18, 2008 - 1:06 pm 133. mac:

Here’s my bottom-line question. What are you going to do when the police officers show up at your house to confiscate your guns?

I know what I’m going to do and I’ve already steeled myself for the consequences.

Have you made up your minds? Have you even thought about it?

Oct 18, 2008 - 11:46 pm 134. Karen:

Pascal: What have you been reading? I just followed your link to your website. Some interesting essays you have there. I see you’ve been engaged in the war of ideas for a while. Regarding the “ideological corral,” I guess we can say, we didn’t leave the Republican party; the Republican party left us.

mac: What are you going to do when the police officers show up at your house to confiscate your guns?

I expect that, before police had time to show up on your doorstep, there would be so much massive protest and such a slew of lawsuits flooding the courts that any actual enforcement would have to be at least postponed. Then, if the courts fail, I would hope that local authorities would refuse to follow orders. I just can’t believe that Americans will allow themselves to be disarmed.

Oct 19, 2008 - 1:19 am 135. Pascal:

“I guess we can say, ‘we didn’t leave the Republican party; the Republican party left us.’”

That is a valuable soundbite Karen! Your adaptation of Reagan’s words may serve as fine focus for conservatives treated worse than Mrs. Teasdale.

Oct 19, 2008 - 11:19 am 136. Pascal:

Karen, I only just read that Christopher Buckley used this concept in his explanation for leaving NR published for the Daily Beast on October 14th.

So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.

I guess now that he was the source of your summation line and so I missed the irony. Someone could have told me.

Oct 23, 2008 - 11:12 pm

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