Thank you, Breda.
Tag: Reset Button
Quote of the Weekend
From Dr. Sanity:
This weekend is clearly going to be make or break for those of us who value freedom and don’t want to see America take a giant leap forward toward socialism and Big Government.
Like Charles Krauthammer, I believe that–by hook or crook(and undoubtedly it will be mostly crook), this terrible thing is going to be foisted on the American public, who clearly do not want it. But we will get it nonetheless, because we were so careless about who we elected; so mesmerized by empty rhetoric and so zombified by the promises of hopenchange.
I am pessimistic, but willing to be pleasantly surprised that there are still people of conscience and integrity who will stand against this health care tyranny.
If there aren’t, then this will truly be the beginning of a pathetic end for the American values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I’ve seen this sentiment echoed all over the web the last couple of days. For the previous couple of weeks, there have been numerous references to the Declaration of Independence, specifically this passage:
. . . when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
But I am reminded again of the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal.
and of the timeline apocryphally attributed to Alexander Tytler:
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.
And, of course, de Tocqueville’s warning:
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.
Finally Heinlein’s observation:
The worst thing about living in the declining era of a great civilization . . . is knowing that you are.
Quote of the Day – Victor Davis Hanson Edition
(T)he present attempt to remake America is the effort of the liberal well-to-do — highly educated at mostly private universities, nursed on three decades of postmodern education, either with inherited wealth or earning top salaries, lifestyles of privilege indistinguishable from those they decry as selfish, and immune from the dictates they impose on others. Works and Days, Reflections on the Revolution in America
Quote of the Day – Pissed Off Edition
I don’t know what makes a politician get to Washington and immediately assume that every problem in the world can be fixed by more rules, another federal agency, and a few tax dollars, but a majority of them get that way. And the rest, who don’t, get into the “my esteemed colleague” mode, addressing people like Barney Frank as if her were of sterling character and his ideas of no more import than a difference in the color of the carpet.
I’m tired of the silence that signifies assent.
— Mostly Cajun, It’s getting near time . . .
Dan Riehl Has Had About Enough
And I’ve never considered him to be a bomb-thrower.
Perhaps he needs a fountain pen.
Reasoned Discourse
Reasoned Discourse
I appear to have offended Markaphasia. Apparently through an act of omission – I haven’t written anything condemning Joseph Stack’s re-enactment of 9/11 on an office building in Austin, Texas earlier this week in his attempt to wreak vengeance upon the Infernal Revenue Service. Since, according to Marxadelphia, Stack was obviously part of the America’s version of “The Base” (aka Al Qaeda), my omission is obviously tacit approval of his act.
I’ve left a comment over at Marxy’s blog, which, BTW, is titled a most martial “Notes from the Front”. Is that the Eastern Front, or the Western Front, I wonder?
Anyway, suspecting that the comments over there might degrade into what we in the Gunblog Community derisively term “Reasoned Discourse,” I’ve decided to print my comment in its entirety here as well:
Once again, Markaphasia, you illustrate just how right I am when I say that you are a perfect an example of the Left in this country. Thanks.
You say that you “have stated previously that it was only a matter of time before people who think like Stack start committing acts of violence.”
I believe I’ve been saying it longer than you have, since 2003 at least. I’ve also said that such acts are the acts of people pushed beyond their thresholds of outrage, and they’re not helpful to my side of the argument.
Now, one thing I’d like to point out is your lack of reading comprehension. You state, in quotation marks (that’s “verbatim” just so you know): “As has been said many times at TSM, ‘the time for reasoned discourse has passed.'”
Really? Please point, by means of a hyperlink, to that phrase in any post I’ve written. You just accused me of wanting to kill you – “As a Holocaust survivor once said, ‘When someone says they want to kill you, believe them.'” – using those words as your evidence.
The closest you will come, I believe, are these words from my recent and oh-so-accurately titled Überpost What We Got Here is . . . Failure to Communicate:
Their vision is an activist vision, while the constrained vision is a largely passive one, intent largely on limiting the power of government to judge or interfere with individuals exercising their individual rights.
It is, indeed, a conflict of visions, and the time for passivity is over.
Which you, apparently, have read as a call to arms for “the base” to rise up and kill . . . you?
And you call us hyperparanoid?
Indeed, the time for reasoned discourse is over. It does not, however, follow logically that the alternate to “reasoned discourse” is violence (except if you’re a Leftist.)
As Thomas Sowell has pointed out, repeatedly, the Left, the Unconstrained Vision, believes that talking and reason is all that’s necessary to prevent violence, but when that fails, all they have left (no pun intended) IS violence. On the Constrained Vision side, we believe in deterrence.
Or as Clint Eastwood once so famously said: “Go ahead. Make my day.” 😉
Question from the Audience II
Question from the Audience II
I received an email Thursday from reader Joe P.:
I read your post about refusing to pay taxes in order to starve the beast. In it, Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is mentioned, as is the strategy of making people more miserable in order to get them to join the revolution. I pondered that a bit and had something I wanted to run past you. How likely is it that this is the strategy of the current administration? Make all of us – the producers – so miserable that we finally revolt? It would be a fight we couldn’t win, for sure, and with the media complicit in much of what was going on, it would give them all the cover they needed to eliminate the last vestiges of true freedom – gun rights, for sure, probably the 4th amendment (what little meaning it retains, that is), etc. The way I see it, they have us right where they want us. If we tolerate the quickly tightening screws, they win. If we go out in a second amendment blaze of glory, they win faster and probably more decisively.
And the ballot box? Who’s running? More socialists? No society in history has successfully gotten people to give up loot from the public treasury for the good of the nation. I think Donald Sensing was right. We are the last generation to experience meaningful freedom.
Anyway, I was just interested in your thoughts on the matter.
I am, as I have noted previously, a pessimist by temperament. I am not, however, a conspiracy theorist. No, I don’t think the current administration has a strategy to fire up the populace and bring us to armed rebellion, I really don’t. I don’t think they fear us at all. By the same token, I agree that an armed uprising would merely hasten the current disassembly of the Constitution. And I am in full agreement, as I have also stated previously, that merely throwing out the Democrats in the next two elections is not equal to “taking back our country” or our Constitution, because we have nothing worthy to replace them with.
It has taken over a hundred years for us to get to where we are. We have gotten here through the actions of thousands of people, each chipping away (and most with the best of intentions) at the foundations of the American culture: self-reliance, independence, the Protestant work-ethic, individual (as opposed to collective) compassion, education (especially in history and civics, later mathematics and language), etc. The actions of those thousands have spread geometrically until now the majority of the population lacks the skills, the knowledge and the philosophy necessary to support a culture of liberty.
I don’t know how to get it back. I’m afraid that whoever wrote the historical sequence attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler had it right, that civilizations go through a predictable cycle due to human nature:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back again into bondage.
I’d put the majority of the population at late-stage apathy, early-stage dependence.
I was going to save this for tomorrow’s Quote of the Day, but here is as good a place to put it as any (and hell, it’ll still be tomorrow’s QotD):
The Left believes it will achieve final victory through socialized medicine, which will forever shackle the middle class as dependents of the State, and destroy the independence that makes them dangerous. — Dr. Zero, Hot Air – Targeting the Tea Party
And those are my thoughts on the matter.
The Internet Detects Censorship as Damage . . .
The Internet Detects Censorship as Damage . . .
. . . and routes around it. From what I’ve seen, this video is getting yanked from YouTube and other sites, so I thought I’d host it until Photobucket gets pissy.
http://static.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vidmg.photobucket.com/albums/v99/smallestminority/America_Rising__An_Open_Letter_to_D.flv
From what I’ve read recently 14 House Republicans, 10 House Democrats, six Senate Republicans and two Senate Democrats have announced that they will not be running for re-election. Who will be replacing them? And what about the Democrats who do run?
Of course, I’m going to repeat Ken’s comment from this post:
Yeeeeaaaaaahhhh, but the idea of hangin’ our hats on 2010/2012 puts me in mind of a comment from a post at Jaded Haven. Quoted in part: the subject of Daphne’s post “…is prepared to learn that he must leave it to Republicans to move the progressive agenda at a pace at which it can be absorbed.”
In your heart, you know he’s right.
Voting out the Democrats does not equal “taking back the country.” There’s a reason the Stupid Party is called “Democrat-Lite,” and the choice between the Evil Party and the Stupid Party a choice between castration and a wedgie.
Give ‘Em Hell, Bill
Give ‘Em Hell, Bill!
This t-shirt notwithstanding, Bill Whittle’s latest Afterburner installment is an inspiring piece indeed.
Spread it around, would you?
UPDATE: However, reader Ken reminds us in the comments that simply throwing out the Democrats isn’t going to fix anything:
Yeeeeaaaaaahhhh, but the idea of hangin’ our hats on 2010/2012 puts me in mind of a comment from a post at Jaded Haven. Quoted in part: the subject of Daphne’s post “…is prepared to learn that he must leave it to Republicans to move the progressive agenda at a pace at which it can be absorbed.”
In your heart, you know he’s right.
Yeah, I do.
Quote of the Day – Fine Rant Edition
My Boomershoot buddy emailed me a link to this one; Jaded Haven, The Cant of Thieves:
I do believe the remnant landscapes of true America, ones that still marginally graced my existence through a sixties childhood, are a thing of the past. The cant of thieves now dominates our times. Men and woman have forgotten their faces, the history of our people has been reduced to nothing, there is no pride in our forefather’s wisdom, sacrifice or common sense. We live like animals, succored on airwaves and tweets, disposable goods and the graft of elected vultures that we’ve elevated to iconic status. Historical ignorance has become a point of pride in the man on the street.
Our lives skim the surface, searching for depth in the fleeting adulation of our collection of goods, wives and bank balances. God lies in a Mercedes-Benz, a velvet Ivy league degree or a great set of tanned, plastic tits.
READ. IT. ALL. I am reminded of Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal.
Damn, but I love a well-crafted rant. Daphne hits one out of the park.