(click title above)
Hope and Change through Intrusive Governmental Regimentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtU3vUOa2sw;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZiRiIpZVF4&feature=related.
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Interdependent Checks and Balances among Mortals:Non-Triviality Of Empathy:
Any “thing” that relates to our exercise of consciousness or of free will is non-reducible to perfect explication in any complete formula of mathematics.
In that respect, any such a “thing” is “non-trivial.”
To say such a thing is non-trivial is not to say it is entirely beyond intuition, insight, vision, appreciation, inspiration, or meaningfulness; nor is it to say it is beyond figurative, metaphoric, artistic, or empathetic communication.
It is to say, however, that any attempt to reduce it to measurably dependent and confined parameters and models will unavoidably entail points of view that depend considerably upon incomplete-able intuition, insight, and creativity.
This is not to say that gathering measurements and data is futile.
It is to say that judgment, creativity, and choice-making cannot be reduced to a single “correct” answer for any non-trivial concern.
Problems of Civilization:
Thus, civilization has a moral problem, which has both a formal (objective, organizational, mathematical) and a substantive (subjective, participatory, inspirational) aspect: In respect of WHAT organizational and participatory means should we apply checks and balances for entrusting authority to various levels, layers, and overlaps of power, to make and direct the multitude of non-trivial choices that affect our society as a whole?
Genesis of God Evolution:
Well, there exists a Primal Being, Demi-Urge, or “GOD,” which avails math to experience conscious self-presence.
God, using math, has innate power to compartmentalize and sequence multitudinous conscious perspectives of experiences of universes of space, time, matter, and energy.
All such perspectives, experiences, and universes are derivative of the one, unitary consciousness of primal urge.
There are no particularly existent agents (“god particles”) for transferring mass, but only mathematical functions whereby God transfers into our “eternal-present” our illusory, derivative experiences of “mass” and our particular experiences of apparently interrelating patterns of matter and energy.
In such way, “God Evolves” in mathematical skills for all manner of mathematically related expressions, in respect of which we derive and experience our “physics” and “natural evolution.”
Independent Empathy:
That is, there is no “physics-in-itself” that blindly, unconsciously, or randomly “just happens” to generate our evolution.
Rather, our permutations of mortal experiences are more like mere bookmarkers for God’s ever-encompassing and expanding skills and choices for appreciating empathetic perspectives of mathematical representations.
A society composed of members wise and educated enough to apprehend their respective relationships with God may more easily share a healthy, mutual, independent respect and empathy for one another.
Thus, such a society may well have less need to depend upon formal government. Rather, members of such a society may more easily draw strength, confidence, and self reliance in respect of their higher, common Source.
Dependent Empathy:
But, a society composed of members conditioned not to appreciate any common relationship with God may more likely seek illusory common security in some form of Government.
Those who have lost faith in God will likely have lost faith in one another. They will come easily to seek to recover a substitute for faith in one another by asking all to pretend to believe, trust, and pledge co-dependence only to Government and the State. Not really believing in such a false Source of security, few of such co-dependent pledgers will retain strength of character to act as their government enjoins when no one is looking. So, in desperation of “fairness,” they will invite “Big Brother” to intrude to closely monitor and control all.
This sort of co-dependency is the main gateway drug to mutually sustaining addictions of weakness and despair. It leads directly and quickly to “justifications” of all manner of unsustainable social depravities (viz, San Francisco, California).
Those communities which lack vision timely to resist such down-drain-spiraling become overcome by its relentless sewer logic, pulling all towards a vortex of mistrust, confusion, and despair.
Moving On:
We only relate to such levels of God’s expressions of mathematics as we are able to leverage and apprehend. As we lose receptivity to God’s call, higher levels of God’s interests “move on,” leaving worshipers of mere Government to their own folly.
Purpose:
Our purpose is to find delight for God’s ever-learning, skilling, and evolving. The wisdom-purpose, both for God and each perspective of God (us), is entailed in a primal injunction: Know thyself! In this injunction, co-dependent believers in only government fail, miserably.
33 comments:
MODERATION:
Gini Index:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/san-club/#comment-196043:
Should not some composite index normalize Gini trends with demographic trends? Is not our population becoming proportionately older, even as the Gini remains stagnant? Folks tend to make more money in peak earning years. If we have proportionately more folks in peak earning years, yet the Gini remains stagnant, that would seem not to be a good thing. Combine that with growing chasms at the very highest incomes, i.e., the accelerating number of billionaires with disproportionate influence on our politicians, and I doubt this is healthy for a representative republic. Not sure I trust your presentation.
See http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2854.
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http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/san-club/#comment-196043:
"- If 5% of the tax-filing public earns more than 50% of the income, more than 50% of the taxes collected ought to come from that same group.
According to what, “ability to pay”? That’s nothing more than your opinion, based on a flawed ideology that has been a universal failure."
??? Much emotion! Not surprising, because not all important factors are reducible to simple computation. Hence, class warfare, often based more on selfishness than on basic empathy or decent principles.
A few concerns:
1) Folks making just enough to get by tend to become debt slaves to credit extenders. Folks with capital above what they need to pay basic debts tend to have opportunities to increase leveraging as such capital increases, not necessarily by reference to merit, skill, or industry.
2) Folks who take advantage of opportunities for leveraging wealth are also taking advantage of resources they do not necessarily own, or resources in which all have an interest.
Such as: Common environmental resources; access to means for reorienting public "education" and perceptions; influencing payback networks of fellow promoters and dolers of corporate welfare; influencing political means for keeping the working class utterly dependent.
COMMENT: Who more deserves access to such resources: The Vet who gave his arm and leg to protect us; or the sharpie who benefits from insider advantages?
NOTE: Lib Socialists and Blueblood Repubs work in concert to keep the working class utterly dependent, Socialists more so than Capitalists.
3) Great disparities in wealth distort economic markets as well as "political markets," and often reduce the dream of opportunity to engage in free expression (both in speech and in enterprise) to something not unlike a hoax.
BOTTOM LINE: A principled position would advocate for Fair Markets, to be no more monopolized or regulated than necessary to moderate reasonable opportunity for all to enjoy freedom of political expression and economic enterprise.
To achieve this, both ends of such markets should be moderated.
That is:
(1) Governmental intrusion against business should be no more than necessary to preserve fair markets; and
(2) Consumption of wealth should be taxed progressively, to protect an otherwise free republic from the rise of a political aristocracy of wealth, ever increasing in its capacity for insider leveraging.
For protecting fair markets for economic and political expression against Lib and Blueblood depredations, we need to factor more than the Gini index.
Is it not obvious that the greater part of American society is being reduced to the mind control and benumbed direction of abusers on both ends of our political spectrum?
What we need are some Red Assed Moderates!
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http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/02/republican_defeat_by_moderatio.html:
A principled moderate would seek to establish means to check and balance base impulses coming from all sides.
Our founders, in establishing our government of checked and balanced powers, were principled moderates.
Teddy Roosevelt, in checking monopolists, moderated free markets in order to enhance principled opportunities for more people to express their lives in free enterprise.
But an unprincipled moderate is like a Goldilocks Whore: Not selling out for too much or too little, but negotiating a price that is just right.
And so, Congress has become the ultimate club for Goldilocks Whores and Shakedown Muggers: Get lobbyists and their "news" resources to pimp the public on applying tax revenues for all manner of power shakedowns, and then bring the ruse to legislative climax in exchange for a "moderate payback." After all, a whore needs to keep her reputation for fair play!
Rino Moderates are Goldilocks Whores!
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http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/02/they_live_liberals_and_space_a.html:
Codependency is the gateway drug to all others.
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http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/pigeons_rats_and_democrats.html:
For Conservative Cognoscenti, this could premise a new video game, to star some well known Congress Pigeons and our Head Rat in Chief.
Sort of like “Risk,” the game of world domination, only this could inspire as metaphor a game to reduce the world to alley trash. Call the American version “Rat Fishing in America.”
****
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/congress_the_new_power_class.html:
Fearless Bear ("I was asking my wife the question last night: If the enemy of your freedom does not do anything violent or illegal while he steals your birthright, at what point are you justified in refusing to go along, refusing to pay taxes, resorting to arms?"):
I wonder if this gradual dulling of senses and freedom may be the root cause of the Liberal mental disorder: drummed in codependency, to such a point that Libs actually believe the rote mantra of "change" is a prescription.
Since Libs and their NYT piper purport to understand the root causes of frustration and anger by Hamas and Muslims, why are they so clueless about the concerns of Conservatives, even denigrating our concerns as arising only out of religious fundamentalism and "bitter clinging"?
The answer may be that a lifetime habit of codependency dulls Libs' minds and empathies to anything higher than their own wants, addictions, and "entitlements." This may be why, for many Libs, taxes are for other people to pay.
Cons see the gradual theft of freedom.
Libs embrace the zombie'ism. "More government. Gooood ooom."
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Our problem has much to do with our extreme celebration of codependency, which leads directly to entitlement thinking, which greases our slide to “justify” irresponsible Machiavellianism.
Codependency has become our gateway drug to corruption and loss of character and backbone.
I suspect Liberals especially share the addiction of codependency. That is, they tend never to have survived hard challenges by themselves, and tend never to have learned to be confident in their own self reliance.
While I recognize mankind’s interdependency, I suspect Conservatives, by and large, have strong enough egos to be able to sustain themselves, even absent networks of admirers and posses of co-addicts.
But liberals tend to be codependent. This may be why artists, actors, single children, children raised only by mothers, and legislative partners in crime and connivance tend to remain liberals, as opposed to more self reliant producers.
I suspect the strongest gateway drug of all is codependency. That is, codependency becomes a lifelong habit, or an addiction almost in itself. A person who becomes and admits to being incapacitated for self reliance suffers no loss of pride in claiming entitlement to be nurtured full time by others, including the State.
We have allowed our entire electorate to come to be dominated by people who take little pride in self reliance. Such people and electorates can hardly be shamed.
I have relatives who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. But, their fiercest addiction consists in their codependency. My alcoholic relatives are fully conscious of their own pains, but empathize with the pains of others hardly at all. They take, but do not give.
They regularly fall into pits of despair and losses of work, health, insurance, and mobility. Pulling them out of such pits can become a full time job. They expect other siblings and family members to undertake such job, but feel little gratitude or responsibility when such is done. I know, because I am one who pulls them out.
Looking at the mess in Congress and California, it strikes me that most members of our Congress and of the Legislature of the State of California have acquired traits very much in common with my dysfunctional, codependent, addicted relatives.
The worst thing to do for “helping” my addict relatives is to finance and enable their addictions and to pay their way as they go about falling into pits, indeed, almost looking for pits to fall into, as if wanting me to spend the rest of my life down in their pits, “helping” them crawl out, when they really just want me down there with them, and appreciate my help not at all.
America is spending trillions, not to pull our liberal addicts out of pits, but to condemn the rest of us to join the addicts, for the rest of our lives.
It’s past time to cut the apron strings. If California fails or falls into the sea, so be it. Likewise with the dependently addicted liberal constituency of illegals, felons, sex addicts, drug addicts, and entitlement connivers and reparations mongers. Enough!
BTW: If California is one of the “largest economies” of the world, I have a question: What the hell are they producing that is worthwhile, for which their producers would not move out of that basket case of as State in order to become free of the illegals, felons, sex addicts, drug addicts, and co-dependent momma’s boys, were the rest of the Nation to say “enough!”?
The best thing for Washington D.C. would be if the area fire departments surrounded Congress and then pressure hosed the place, to clear it of roaches and rats.
Let Atlas shrug. No more damn bailouts. No mas!
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/altruism_the_most_profitable_g.html:
"Altruism is dying in our country"
This rings of truth, in that Conservatives now find themselves under the rule of an unholy alliance of Blueblood Repubs (Libertarians) and Radical Dems (Libs).
Libertarians, often believing in nothing more than salvation by personal effort, tend to believe altruism reduces to enlightened selfishness.
Liberals, often believing in nothing more than salvation by government, tend to mouth "altruism" (as well as God), but mainly as a ruse to cover selfishness.
Of the two, the second are more dangerous for leading a society to be abused by its government.
Neither much appreciates The Source of altruism.
Neither can very well be trusted to do the "right" (or empathetic, or altruistic) thing when no one is looking (or when Big Brother is not enforcing the law).
The first, in confidence of personal abilities, want few laws and maximum opportunity.
The second, in envy of others, want many laws and spread out equality.
Neither want such laws, and only such laws, as are necessary to preserve opportunity for all.
Both can easily ruin a nation.
I prefer a third path: Enlightened Conservatism (i.e., "tough love").
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/altruism_the_most_profitable_g.html:
Politicaldoc ("The good doctors are quickly retiring/leaving medical practice"):
Maybe I am just getting older. Or maybe the folks I have always respected are changing.
Regardless, I think social leftism is wearing down the moral idealism, civic responsibility, and professional leadership of a lot of respectable people.
Over time, with the encroachment of governmental regulations, the doctors I know seem less and less inclined to counsel or weigh whether additional medical tests are particularly worthwhile, tending instead to give approval, almost perfunctorily, perhaps out of an abundance of precaution (tort concerns), or perhaps out of a sense of resignation, as if sensing how little they can do to slow the increasing rush of demands for government regulated or backed medical care.
I suspect we are moving to a society that will work less, indulge more rights, demand more health care, and drive up the proportion of monies we spend on government funded benefits for health, as well as for our kids' tuition bills and all kinds of red tape and make work.
Government will come increasingly to distort our money, time, make-work, and values.
Government will continue to pretend to care more and more for us; we will come to care less and less.
Thanks be to Leftists, ain't it a wonderful life?
****
Those who are lucky enough already to be retired can do service by joining and becoming active with The Resistence, i.e., like the politically conservative alternative to AARP.
If Eric Holder condones show-trial shenanigans against Bush, I hope WWII and other Vets will demonstrate, to shame the present administration. And if, during such shenanigans, we get attacked again, there needs to be a national outrage.
Zombie Socialists — See http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/madness_thy_name_is_stimulus.html: The Liberal Mind.
See also: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/alinskyites_at_the_gates_of_ta_1.html.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/altruism_the_most_profitable_g.html:
Is it necessary or only helpful, to posit a spiritual basis for morality?
Apart from civilizing function, altruism based on tribes --- atheists may posit --- necessarily arose among humans because humans otherwise would have been too weak and vulnerable to have survived, especially given our long periods of dependent infancy. Over time, such inter-dependency on tribal-based altruism would necessarily have “hardwired” us with altruism, both in our genes and in our tribal cultures. Thus, for tribal based altruism, atheists posit no need for any notion of God.
But, what of civilization-based or national-based altruism? After all, altruistically based customs for sustaining a clan or tribe against competing tribes may not function well to sustain the synthesis of a nation out of a cluster of tribes. Nor would customs for enhancing loyalties to a nation necessarily sustain loyalties to its tribes.
Regardless, how may altruism be sustained among citizens of a nation (or world), once vulnerabilities to predators and opposing tribes are vanquished? How may a nation hope to convincingly harness altruism for facilitating and leveraging science, business, economics, and entertainments? Upon what convincing or non-arbitrary basis may a populace be indoctrinated or educated, regarding customs meant to condition them to an assimilating and empathetic sense of altruism?
For such indoctrination, most atheists would have reliance only upon the State, i.e., arbitrary “Big Brother” like indoctrination. Historically, this sort of reliance has shown itself inclined towards marked abuse.
On the other hand, believers in God, for such indoctrination, could underpin mores-of-empathy, based on a notion of common spiritual unity under God. This would be reinforced in a variety of locally based churches, each cross-sharing a good number of common religious memes.
In other words, a notion of altruism based purely on Nature, independent of God, is insufficiently inspiring for a worthy or viable civilization. That is, if we wish not to fall into State fascism or totalitarianism.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/the_stimulus_bill_smells_of_tu.html:
Matt ("The modern American leftist is just not that smart. Long-range planning is not their forte, as they swim in a culture which prizes immediate gratification above all else. The American left is factionalized and fragmented by interest groups and identity politics to such an extent, that to put together any co-ordinated effort for an extended period of time is impossible."):
I agree the Zombie wing of the Left is brain challenged.
And the Useful Idiot feathers of that wing have had their intelligence overrun by their womanly emotions.
But you have forgotten about the sociopathic wing of the Left (often aligned with sociopaths on the right), which sees clearly the profit and power from creating and training a permanent underclass of Zombies.
That wing is not at all stupid or short range in its planning.
If it were, our media and academia would not have been swallowing and following their rule books for these many years.
The problem with hard working, morally sound, empathetic members of the middle class is that they tend too easily and too long to have faith in sociopaths, simply because they do not understand sociopaths.
But sociopaths are not like the rest of us.
And history is largely the history of sociopaths.
Simply put, the American experiment for availing freedom to middle class people of good faith is being tested.
If we do not soon rise, recognize, and put down the socipoathy that has roosted in D.C., our experiment in freedom will be done.
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http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/the_stimulus_bill_smells_of_tu.html:
Terry Gain ("I've seen one stupid BDS article after another."):
Well, I don't seek ODS.
But I don't want to be blind, either.
As I watch our politics unfold, I see:
An empty suit of a President.
A cohort of power brokers trained under Alinsky.
A cohort of nutcases with third degree BDS, who are now in power.
A history of Lib pols and Blueblood pols being unwilling to protect our borders.
A history of Lib pols and Blueblood pols cheering for gay marriage and fundamental changes that cannot fail to undermine traditional family values.
A history of Lib pols and Blueblood pols thinking it is a close call about whether illegals should be allowed to get driver's licenses and be protected from deportation in sanctuary cities.
A trial in Arizona by illegals seeking gross damages from a landowner whose property they trespassed on, on account of their hurt feelings.
Johnny Sutton.
A series of Orwellian Rad-Organizations being funded by Soros.
Moral dirtbags dropping hints about how much we need to restrain free speech on radio (i.e., fairness doctrine).
So, as I watch all this moral shock and awe, I have to ask:
Do Lib Rads and Blueblood Rinos really want to protect and defend America?
I want to ask them: "Well, do you, punk?"
I think Blueblood Rinos have demonstrated quite well enough that they do not respect the sacrifices and purposes of our Vets and could care less whether our borders become essentially erased.
I think Lib Rads have demonstrated quite well enough that they want to fundamentally change America.
So, why should I in any way doubt that the present cohort of Lib Rads are on board not to let any crises go wasted when it comes to appropriating new ways for creating a permanently dependent proletariat?
You admit we had 8 years of BDS.
So I think you need to ask yourself why that was.
When you answer that, you may better appreciate what we are up against.
If Obama starts showing good and responsible sense, that is one thing.
The course he is on now is another thing.
I don't see the point in going peacefully along a path to ruin.
Seeing we are on that path, the best thing for America is to prepare ground for uprooting the current crop of dirtbag power brokers --- the sooner the better!
You can dress a pig up in a suit, but it will still be a pig.
****
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/how_democracies_become_tyranni.html:
norateresa ("have not one iota of love, gratitude and loyalty towards this country"):
Suppose you raise a child, provide shelter, emotional support, good schools. The child finds chums at school who think they are entitled. You pay your child's way through college.
Then the child says: I don't want a job in this field. I need time to find myself. I've been victimized by society. You need to hear me out about how I've been victimized and about what should be done.
So, ok, live in my house. Let's talk. Take some baby steps towards independence.
Then: You don't understand. You're a COWARD for not talking more to me, to face up to how society has victimized me.
So, Ok. Let's talk. And so on...
Eventually, you say, ok, we've about discussed every possible angle. You need to take some steps towards independence.
Then: This is child abuse. Hate crime. My friends all say so. The President says so. I'm going to have to sue, to take over rights to the house. You have your own means. Get out.
Now: Ask, how is more compassion and financial help going to help such a child?
And isn't this a metaphor for what we are doing with every minority that wants to blame "whitey"?
Tragedy: We have turned our government and courts over to such child's chums.
Does anyone expect things will go better for them, once responsible adults have been shunted aside?
****
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/a_nation_of_cowards.html:
Cicero
Conserving civilization consists in creating citizens of character.
Character is acquired and demonstrated in respect of how one cooperates and competes.
Too many conniving bluebloods forget about the cooperation part.
Too many conniving libs forget about the competition part.
Character is conditioned more from surviving the School of Hard Knocks than from being indulged or entitled by libertarian or liberal parents of moral toddlers.
Because so many parents have failed their moral toddlers, it now falls to Conservatives to reacquaint all to the School of Hard Knocks.
Recess for cowardly coddling B.S. needs to be over.
****
Karen said:
Cicero wrote: "Character is conditioned more from surviving the School of Hard Knocks than from being indulged or entitled by libertarian or liberal parents of moral toddlers."
As a Libertarian, I take exception to being put in the same category as a Liberal. Please learn the difference. Libertarians are the closest party we have to embracing individual responsibility. And as a Libertarian and a parent, I have never taught my kids that they are entitled to anything they don't work for. Sorry, but that struck a raw nerve with me. I've been called a "Liberal" for being a Libertarian and I can't stomach this kind of ignorance. BTW, I agree with most of what you said. I just wanted to clarify the point that Libertarians shouldn't be classified the same as Liberals.
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Re: Libertarians are the closest party we have to embracing individual responsibility.
Well, what is the other side of the coin of responsibility? Answer: Social cooperation.
Civilization needs both competition and cooperation.
So, how are Libertarians good for social cooperation?
Well, think about the context of drugs, abortion, gay marriage, and spiritual or moral values.
What positions on those issues are important to civilization, and what are the Libertarian positions (apart from "greed is good")?
Libertarians SAY they want freedom from governmental interference.
But then they want the Feds to rule that States cannot regulate abortion.
Some of them want to force government to become involved in confering tax exemptions based on civil unions.
Some support ACLU efforts to require governments to become involved to force removal of references to historical traditions from the public square upon any whiff of religious relationship.
And, what is the Libertarian position on requiring that government not regulate availability of pot to teenagers?
Regarding loyalty to America, how many blueblood Repubs are Libertarians and how much of their loyalty is to erasing and leveling national and trade boundaries?
My point had to do with what is needed to sustain civilizing values.
In that respect, I see as many depredations coming from Libertarian bluebloods as I see coming from depraved Liberal victim mongers.
True, Liberals and Libertarians are not in the same category, precisely.
But in respect of the category of being detrimental to civilizing values, there does seem to be overlap.
And that was the point: Pols are handing out favors to the morally hazardous ends of our society, i.e., (1) the Blueblood Repub irresponsible lenders and (2) the Lib victim mongering Ninja borrowers.
Both are irresponsible to civilizing loyalties and values.
And what is Obama doing? Bailing out both. This moral hazard empowers the existing unholy power alliance, to the detriment of Conservatives.
****
Has not the traditional trinity of topics too tabooo for polite society been sex, politics and religion?
And what has our forebearance in respect of such taboos gotten us?
It has gotten us: parades and "education" in favor of gay marriage; indoctrination in favor of victim mongering and against "whitey"; and straw man arguments by atheists for burying most traditional models for spiritual mores.
Now, tying this up in a pretty p.c. bow, we are called cowards --- not because of unwillingness to discuss race, but because of unwillingness to kow tow to established notions about what is p.c. to say about race.
Given the climate of enforced p.c., the best thing for race baiters to do, and what adults should ask them to do, is to just shut the hell up. Nothing cowardly about declining to discuss merits of whining with whiners.
Just do your job and shut the hell up about how much society has victimized you.
I wish these victim mongers could have met my grandpa: "You want something to whine about, just let me know and I'll be sure to give it to you." (Dumas.)
****
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/02/acorn_breaks_into_foreclosed_h.html:
Banks crapped on us by making loans in amounts and to people they had no business making such loans to.
Borrowers crapped on us by applying for mortgages they had no hope of paying.
Those banks and borrowers are in moral pari delicto.
So, why should bailout money be extended to banks that have ratcheted up their ARM loans,
and why should bailout money be extended to borrowers who would not have been able to make payments even had their ARM interest rates not gone up?
In other words, why is the bailout money not at least conditioned, so that it does not go to banks foreclosing on interest rate mortgages they ratcheted up, nor to borrowers who became delinquent even before their rates were ratcheted up?
Why empower Pols to bailout and buy loyalties from either class of morally reprehensible people?
****
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/show_trials_in_the_obama_era.html:
Dim witted Dims are certifiably committed to believe there is such a thing as true utopia, to be discerned, prescribed, and handed down by our betters, to be enforced down to fine details through State apparatus.
They believe simple deductive reasoning, based a priori on the State, will yield Truth, of which we must get to the bottom.
Naturally, any reprobate one who has interfered with the inevitable logic of a materialistically based State, who believes in any alternative basis for moral guidance, should be thoroughly investigated, discredited, and, if possible, made an example in the world court of criminal law. Thus, all credible opposition to the machinery of the Fascist State must be steam rolled. Bush must atone!
Such Dims are dangerous, deluded, and demonic.
We must take every reasonable opportunity to beat them down with derision, because they will forever be popping up, just like the kid's pop up game of "Hungry Hungry Hippos."
This is an Augean task, but hold your noses, because someone has to do it.
(Aside: This task is not without some irony, given the ordeal of Ramos and Compean.)
Socialist Servitude --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7_YFKyhQMI&feature=related
Opportunity for Responsibility; Fairness and Meritocracy; Trans-Rational Spirituality; “I Am’Ness”; Integration of Truths --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQRUu_4W2j8; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04gdsFt_zDY&feature=related
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/conservatism_speaks_at_cpac_1.html:
Wasteland Walrus:
Clarity:
Go lady-in-white!
Punish the greedy. Greed is not good. Greed is bad.
Go lady-in-white! Punish the slothful. Work hard for a dollar. Work harder for a penny. Work hardest for the $100,000,000 inheritance you so justly gave to the gentry.
*****
Go lady-in-white!
Entitle the dopers, mind-trippers, child misleaders, god-haters, sodomites, commies, pitifully co-dependents, despondents, community communalists, tree-huggers, and multi-culti Islamic welcomers to their own State.
Let them eat oysters 24/7.
There, let them build their own promised land, where they can be as free as the wind blows --- free to sniff, screw, rob, whine, shine, and entitle one another to their hearts' content.
Call it California.
But put an impenetrable fence around it, so they can sob together in security and solidarity with their sister State: Gaza.
****
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/conservatism_speaks_at_cpac_1.html:
C. Edmund Wright ("As long as there is one aggressive and capable nation on the planet, libertarian foreign policy is not sustainable."):
****
I enjoyed your thought process.
Regarding Libertarian toleration of “one aggressive and capable nation” (NYT, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea) and freedom of speech:
1) Conservative Americans wish not to tolerate government tax give-a-ways or Rad Lib images of depravities in prime time, which increase moral hazards and exploit children.
2) Rad-Libs wish not to tolerate "hate speech" that argues against: (a) their assaults on traditional religions; (b) their preferential treatments for non-traditional religions; (c) their advocacies for gay marriage and for entitlement "rights" on behalf of all manner of classes of victims; (d) against erasure of national borders; and (e) against "rights" of other nations to acquire nukes and to exploit their own people as they see fit.
3) Islamists and Dictators wish not to tolerate Western usages of the Internet and of media to blare ideas and images that undermine their traditions and authority. (Even though many such traditions need to be undermined, such as traditions for subjugating and rendering women and non-Muslims to second class treatment.)
So, every society wishes to tolerate only that speech which does not tolerate its own demise, i.e., undermine its favored brand of politics.
I sometimes wish there were a way to channel speech solely for purposes of rational consideration and persuasion. But, so much of speech overlaps with emotive acts and incitements. Only were no side to hold a monopoly on power or resources may a vigorous and free exchange of ideas more likely lead to rational(ized) consensus.
But we are at a point of gross asymmetry. Conservatives hold minds of those who hold responsible jobs. Libs hold minds of self-identified victims, rule breakers, and media. And Islamists hold minds of brain-washed religious fanatics.
These groups are not likely to agree on new bounds for free speech. Rather, a side that accepts speech-boundaries most detrimental to the spreading of its indoctrination of its youth will likely fall.
So, each group resorts to putting its own twist on old grounds, i.e., the Constitution. The more Conservatives let slacken their historically-based, traditional views of the Constitution, the more likely we are to become un-tethered to any moral sensibility sufficient to preserve Americans as a people.
So, Conservatives need to impose, and not apologize for, a constitutionally traditional way for advocating free speech. To do that effectively:
1) Fascist conspiracies need to be prosecuted, not just argued against.
2) Speech against Lib assaults on basic civilizing decency must become imperative, not just politely debated.
3) Speech against Islamic subjugation to Sharia must become emotive and motive, not just p.c.
Presently, Conservatives are the only ones abiding by Marquis of Queensbury rules of debate. But we only make ourselves impotent and irrelevant to the extent we accede to non-emotive, p.c. speech.
Tea Party?
****
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/02/daniel_hennigers_shot_across_t.html:
I am angry that Team Bush lacked empathy and vision to see the growing seeds of disaffection among moderate Americans.
All Team Bush had to do was to throw a bone or two to moderate Americans:
Don't make examples out of border patrol officers doing their jobs;
2) Have sooner taken stronger measures to enforce borders;
3) Throw a more progressive taxation bone (make the tax cuts more progressive), to counter the slightly rising Gini index even as the population has been aging towards peak earning years;
4) Tailor health care provisions to Americans otherwise unable to afford decent health care.
Instead, Team Bush alienated just enough moderates to make them want to "change" away from Repubs, who had simply lost touch with ordinary Americans.
Either Repubs saw this coming, or they had their heads in a dark place.
Moderates are fed up --- both with gimme Dems and with greedy Repubs.
Neither Dems nor Repubs will get us out of this mess.
Either Moderates (you know, the police, border guards, and soldiers who actually put skin on the line to defend the sorry behinds of everyone else) will rise and send them both to bed --- without supper --- or the house will fall.
America has fallen too long for pathetic political pimps and neglected its stalwart middle class backbone.
Now, payback's a bitch --- to everyone.
****
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/the_obama_steamroller_is_resis.html:
K.W.
Philo Wrote:
> Groups like ACORN and the ACLU are sinking, not
> saving, Western liberties and civilization.
> For the ACLU to call itself an organization for
> preserving American "liberties" goes beyond
> Orwellian into the realm of Obamian.
> It is an organization for fomenting treason,
> sedition, nihilism, and moral anarchy.
> Fighting against enforcement of borders and
> verification of voter status is calculated not to
> preserve America but to undermine it.
> A group that truly wanted to preserve America so
> that the seed of liberty would continue to have
> hope in this world should be fighting to protect
> America and to protect freedom of speech (not
> p.c.) and enterprise.
Why is no group financing challenges to the
> constitutionality of big government
> intrusiveness?
Why is no group suing the President and the
> Department of Justice to mandate that they defend
> our borders?
Why is no group suing Congress for usurping
> powers, beyond those in the Constitution?
Why is no group suing Congress for funding an
> organization, ACORN, that is bent on erasing
> national borders?
Why is there no American Liberties Coalition, to
> bird dog and file friend-of-court briefs in every
> case in which the commie ACLU is involved?
> Why is most so-called "philanthropic" big money
> either behind sedition-promoting socialists or
> elitists, with precious little being devoted to
> defending Western Civilization from encroaching
> governmental fascism and totalitarianism?
> Time for an Animal House "road trip."
****
These are all excellent questions. We will not win this war playing by our rules. I think the problem is most conservatives don't have the time on their hands to deal with these issues. For the most part we are working and taking care of our families. We need to start fighting back.
We need conservatives in the public schools teaching. The pay isn't good and the hours are long, but our children are worth fighting for. History would be a good subject for conservatives to be teaching.
Conservative parents need to be teaching their children to make well reasoned arguments. This will not change the minds of confirmed liberals, but may make the difference in some who haven't quite made up their minds.
Conservatives who have extra money need to be donating to organizations who will fight the fight. Conservatives who have the time need to be leading the fight.
Conservative lawyers (what few there are) need to band together and challenge the aclu. Show them up for what they are ... liberal thugs who rule by intimidation. We need to make it too expensive to continue harassing those who don't believe as they do.
We cannot win by playing by our rules. We are still playing by the old rules ... we are still trying civil discourse. The rules have changed. We can either adapt or lose.
We cannot wait for the battles to come to us, one cannot win a defensive war, we MUST go on the offensive. Our country and our liberties depend on it.
****
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/the_obama_steamroller_is_resis.html:
Big Giant Head:
political hack: "The finest minds of our generation will be put to work on legal strategies of tax avoidance of the kind we have not seen since before the Reagan Era. With Internationalization and computer literacy, the possibilities for entrepreneurship are mind boggling."
****
Well, let the games continue.
After all, happiness is a state of mind.
And to pervert the meaning of natural selection is to pervert our state of mind.
What is naturally selected is not "survival of the fittest."
What is selected is survival of the most attractively replicable.
But, what is most attractive depends on prevailing states of mind ("collective unconscious").
To control broadcasting for influencing states of mind is to control means for directing the mind games we find attractive.
Presently, we are mind-numbingly following a myth of merit-to-survive based on who is most brutally fit.
This sort of myth tends to become depressing, fascistic, self-fulfilling prophecy.
As long as we perpetuate a myth that being brutish is naturally meritorious (or godly), we will continue to add power to those automatons, brutes, and totalitarians who are already inclined for servicing those functions which are most brutish.
Were we to perpetuate a different sense of self, that being empathetically civilized is naturally meritorious (perhaps, even a godly pursuit), we would find it attractive to replicate genes (and memes) for competing in respect of a more civilizing, less totalitarian game.
But so long as we buy into "survival of the fittest" as "natural justification" for becoming ruled, ultimately, by some Big Giant Head Monopolist, Fascist, Socialist, or Imam, we will mold ourselves to fit that resonance.
We need better understanding of how "natural selection" relates to politics, personal meaning, and our collective unconscious.
Otherwise, we will continue to elect and follow leaders molded in the image of twisted myths.
And we will continue to find our time monopolized by such inanities as:
"work on legal strategies of tax avoidance"; and
how to vote oneself entitled to the labors of others; and
how to be sucker, or be suckered by, charlatans.
Until we better direct our understanding of natural selection, to respect an innate role for self-creative collective-consciousness, we will remain in the collective service of false myths.
Irony: Individual physical freedom derives from appreciating our collective spiritual consciousness.
God (Collective Unconscious) works through natural selection, but natural selection works through a principle that is far deeper than "survival of the fittest."
Sun Tsu cautioned to know your enemy.
Big Giant Head cautions to know your Source.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/time_to_get_mean_1.html:
"The Obama team knows what they're doing. They know if it ever sinks in, folks will fight it. Unless it's too late. When they get more than 50% of the nation dependent on their new economy, they have us. Why do you think they are rushing all of this through?"
****
When Conservatives made common cause with Globe-Minded, Border-Erasing, Blueblood-Repubs, they made common cause with the Devil.
Blueblood connivers after corporate welfare are just the other side of the same coin of government dependency.
Bluebloods don't want to get mean with Obama because they are not necessarily opposed to the notion of using government to leverage abuse.
For small businesses AND ALL WHO DEPEND UPON THEM, politics should be more about freedom from government control than about short term bailouts or salvation by government.
"CNN and the Bluebloods" say Limbaugh's "meanness" threatens to make Repubs a perpetual minority party.
I doubt it. I suspect many Dems of moderate good sense see the moral hazard from governmental welfare, both of the Lib kind and of the Blueblood kind.
Bluebloods and Libs: Stand for nothing; fall for everything. A pox on the both of them!
We need to quit playing "coin flip" with Dem-delinquents and Repub-derelicts and instead unite American Conservatives to get mean enough to just take the coin away from the connivers now running government.
If we rout Dems only to install a new round like Team Bush, we will have gained nothing.
Why wasn't Bush tarred and feathered for having to be drug, kicking and screaming, to do anything about the border? Had he just enforced the border, he could have gotten a comprehensive measure.
Get mean with Obama.
But get mean also with the Bluebloods.
Re-installing them would accomplish nothing worthwhile.
Obamites and Bluebloods are united to sink not just America, but all freedom from all-pervasive Big Brother.
****
New terminology:
International Commie equals Modern Dem.
Border Surrendering Globalist equals Modern Repub.
Internationalist vs. Globalist --- In respect of Bigtime Government, what's the principled difference?
Commies infiltrate Dems; Bluebloods infiltrate Repubs.
Any way you look at it, its Bigtime Government and Absolute Corruption.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/who_is_barney_frank.html:
We become what we reward.
To take an express elevator to a suite of whores, one checks one’s moral merits at the nearest landfill.
Presently, top levels of wealth reward whores, who love to whore, to help reduce as many underlings as possible to control of whoredom.
Thus accumulating wealth, the next game becomes one of seeking power and control.
By now, many have been zombie-conditioned and convinced that the game of controlling, bedazzling, and benumbing the biggest crowds is the main game.
Why else would so many continue not merely to elect people like Barney Franks, but to admire and promote them?
Our core problem relates to our loss of core values.
The core of our society has rotted.
Pretense aside, we have become far less a nation of constitutional law than a nation of godless Marxism.
Most of our politicians are less about equality or empathy for our pain than about pretense of empathy and pretense of respect for law. (Follow California, to see how meaningless law has become.)
Our controllers have sailed past Marx into sinister lands of Machiavelli, Marcuse, and Alinsky.
As heretofore unwary Social Conservatives, we now find ourselves in bondage to a system of whores, liars, moral zombies, and sociopathic scoundrels.
Yet, we cannot defeat them by becoming them.
Rather, we must reclaim our moral roots, and stop rewarding evil and promoting moral sloth.
For moral selling out, there is not a dime's difference between internationalist socialists and globalist bluebloods.
Both reach inexorably to substitute government control over individual freedom.
Social Conservatives must stop riding a bus that is driven, alternatively, by internationalists and globalists. That is, unless we want America to sink into the moral chaos and abyss of Mexico, Iran, China, Europe, Russia, Cuba, and Venezeuela.
We won't teach Rot Lands a better way by becoming a Rot Land.
Barney, Pelosi, Reid, and Obama are as much emblematic warnings as moral outrages.
They are not about equality or morality.
They are about parading rot, deceit, whoredom, and sado-masochistic control.
Promote them at peril.
From Humungus:
"Dlanor,
I wasn't the one visiting the Communist Party Website. But for what it's worth, I don't think Randy Hoven is a Communist. While he might agree with the Communists on certain points like veterans benefits, I sure Randy Hoven is not an active Communist Sympathizer.
Now....would you care to answer the question? How many points do you agree with the Communists on? Veterans benefits? Nuclear proliferation? How many Dlanor?"
*********
Well, I went to the CPUSA site. It may be more convincing for those who: (1) have a below average IQ; (2) like sociopathy; (3) haven’t studied or absorbed history; (4) put a deep groove in their brains with drug abuse; (5) were raised as an only child; or (6) have whiled away their time around Leftists. (Not sure which category you fall into, Humungus. You may be the genius exception.)
After encountering idiocy in nearly every one of the first six or so paragraphs, I did not see much point in hanging around.
Some stuff I found:
“Working people around the world have always sought a future without war, exploitation, inequality, and poverty.”
I disagree. I am actually for inequality and poverty when it is associated with individual adult irresponsibility, addictive choices, and sloth.
“The great wealth of the U.S. will for the first time be for the benefit of all the people.”
I disagree. I do not believe the wealth of the U.S. should be used to prop up repressive regimes unless there is some clear, compensating advantage in it for Americans.
“Foreign policy will be based on mutual respect, peace, and solidarity.”
I disagree. Once equality of respect is essentially mandated to the most ignorant and easily conditioned, they will become power bases for demagogues bent on molding their minds with media and cheap promises.
“We, the working people of the United States, face tremendous problems today: exploitation, oppression, racism, sexism, a deteriorating environment and infrastructure, huge budget deficits, and a government dominated by the most vicious elements of big capital and its political operatives.”
I disagree: There are few problems relating to exploitation, oppression, racism, or sexism in the U.S. against legal citizens that are not mainly derivative of rabble rousing and poor life style choices by democrats, liberals, and their party bosses.
I agree: There are cultural, demographic, infrastructure, and budget problems for which I would apportion blame in approximately even portions to the social interests that finance and encourage both Rad Libs and Blueblood Rinos.
However, these problems confront not just working people but all people of the U.S. who are essentially not able to afford to buy their own islands.
“…ultra-right domination of all branches of government which deals with problems by increasing exploitation and oppression or progressive electoral coalitions that seek real solutions in the interests of all working people.”
I disagree. I think those who run Rad Lib Socialistic Commies and Blueblood Rinos both seek to increase control and care little about the interests of ordinary people. I don’t see how turning the U.S. into just another Banana Republic is good for anyone, especially working people.
“The working class and all who work for a living—the vast majority of the people—face a relentless, vicious, and amoral enemy: the capitalist class.”
I disagree. I do not see small business owners as amoral enemies.
I do see those who want to tax, not to improve infrastructure or health, but to spread wealth, as being chillingly immoral as well as morally hazardous.
Further, I do not think their leaders want to spread wealth so much as to spread poverty --- to reduce all underlings to party control.
Unfortunately, so many recruits for this B.S. are chillingly uninformed about our human history of depraved psychopaths bent on using government to achieve inhuman domination.
After all, its second nature for a lot of serial rapists and psychopathic demagogues to pretend to feel our pain. (“I always thought he was such a nice boy.”)
These rats can sound as innocuous in their verbalizations as any psychopathic boy next door.
So, I’m sorry --- I’ve read quite enough of the commie program and justification.
So far, I have found mind-rot in every paragraph.
I just don’t see how wading further through the CPUSA site is worth the effort.
Let the CPUSA whiners rejoice in their sloth and sense of victim hood.
They don’t need me, and I don’t need to live there with them.
***
When I first began practicing law, 30 years ago, an older lady found me. She had problems with her landlord. So, I helped her, pro bono. Then she had problems with the used car dealer who financed her car. Then she had problems with her restaurant employer. Then with welfare. Then with the D.A. In each case, I helped her, pro bono. Eventually, I figured out that my legal counseling and moral support were simply making no difference in her life. After I cut the free help, I noticed, seeing her around, that I had not made much difference in her lifestyle at all. She was bound and determined to live the rest of her life in a hole. My choice was whether I wanted to spend the rest of my life there with her.
Now, there are people who can be helped, who I like to help, and who I have helped --- with praise, mentoring, and good job referrals.
But, you know what? Most of them would be ok even without my help.
The difference: I help because I want to.
Now, which of these classes of poor folks should I expect taxpayers to be required to fund, in order to make these folks more economically equal with OPM?
Answer: Neither.
BTW:
I am for forms of progressive taxation to limit disproportionate influence of the wealthy, which is unhealthy to a representative republic.
But I would want such taxes to be used for traditional infrastructure, perhaps including some decent floor of medical care, not for “spreading wealth.”
I am certainly not for spreading wealth to increase the political influence of derelicts, felons, addicts, imbeciles, and shiftless community organizers --- or the influence of their demagogues.
****
"How many points do you agree with the Communists on? Veterans benefits? Nuclear proliferation? How many Dlanor?"
Well, in respect of what Commies mean vs. what they say, I doubt I much agree with Commies.
For example, I agree we need “hope and change,” but I don’t agree with the hope and change Obama has in mind.
I want our Vets respected and properly cared for.
But I don’t want them used as political footballs, nor as openings for justifying equal bennies for derelicts.
Frankly, I don’t quite “feel the love” for our troops from Commies.
I guess I just remember Code Pink and Ivy League demonstrations against ROTC. (But I grant you that Code Pinkers and even Cindy Sheehan may well be more grounded in emotional maturity than the average Ivy Libber.)
I want America strong enough, both with nukes and with intestinal fortitude, to dispense whatever justice may be needed to preserve freedom and to quash Islamofascism in its tracks.
I want what Reagan said: We win; they lose.
Asking whether I want either nuclear disarmament or proliferation without addressing context, mind set, or moral fortitude is simply not very conducive to meaningful communication. It is more like a cheap game of “gotcha.”
Since I am not a Lib, it impresses me not at all to have a Lib or Commie tell me how good I should feel about seeking nuclear disarament or how horrid I am if I want it in a context of “we win, they lose.”
I picture Katie Couric thinking it a telling question to ask whether one really wants Obama’s program to fail. (Please!)
Ask better questions. After all, the typical AT Reader is slightly smarter than Katie’s audience.
Curious: So far, do you see Obama as a Centrist, Center Leftist, Sophisticated Far Out Leftist, or Bull Goose Looney Commie?
I just see Obama as a tool for Commies, not yet metamorphosed to full-fledged Bull-Goose Looney. May be interesting to see what Hoven thinks about that in, say, 60 days or so.
American Pragmatist:
PMK said: “The US has been the patsy where free trade is concerned. We have let the ghost of Smoot-Hawley cow us into giving away all of our manufacturing. That has been followed by services. The author's job might be outsourced eventually. People who can't earn a living can't buy your products, no matter where they're made or how little they cost.”
RIGHT ON!!!
Politics:
Presently, True Believers, both among Lib Rad Dems and among Blueblood Repubs, are united against Conservatives, bent on a tear towards Internationalist Globalism.
Surely, we can be intelligent enough to avoid cliffs on all sides.
There must be ways.
Too much concentration on backing away from any one cliffside danger causes us to back, unawares, towards cliffs behind us.
Cliffs:
1) To not regulate enterprisers is to grease the way for monopolistic sociopaths.
2) To bust all union like exertions is to over-empower slavers.
3) To over-regulate all enterprisers is to reduce us all to bureaucratic red tape and lines.
4) To open all borders to free flow of trade is to sacrifice local cultures, including our own culture of individual freedom of expression. (Americans, unless undermined, do not want to merge into globalism so long as that entails surrendering to the ways of Mexico, China, Europe, Iran, Venezuela, or Russia.)
Needs – we need to:
1) Free competitors within reasonable parameters.
2) Not sacrifice American citizens to have to compete against foreign, collectivist, slave labor.
3) Preserve enough of American borders, language, culture, and business and factory infrastructure to buffer against our being sunk into a world of anti-American, anti-individual, lock step loss of free expression and enterprise.
We need only that government which best regulates and loosens markets for human initiative and ingenuity.
Intelligence:
1) We do not need “true believers” in any one, inflexible ideology.
2) We need leaders with pragmatic appreciation of limits of all ideologies.
3) We need to figure out what are those functions which government can do well, and restrict government to those functions.
4) To advocate pure free trade and open borders is merely to walk backwards, blindly, towards other cliffs.
5) We need means for coaxing government to sponsor pragmatic, SMART TRADE.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/03/obama_seeking_muslims_for_high.html:
Americans believe in individual freedom and dignity.
Obama Bennie and his Jets don't.
They loathe individualism and express their "love" only by fundamentally changing America.
I would like to hear them honor individual initiative, self reliance, and self responsibility, without tripping over their smirks.
For their wet dream of bringing America down to the collective community, they now have control of a majority consisting of useful idiots and actual idiots.
They smirk and lie: They lie to us, they lie to themselves, and the truth is not in them.
They want global currency, global values, collective dictate, banishment of individual expression, end of real empathy, and obedience to the International Cabal.
The only individual rights they defend are rights meant to annihilate traditions and to kill civilized regard for individual rights.
They love America in the sense that they love to plan how to kill her.
For them, to kill America is to kill off what they contemptuously characterize as a hated blue eyed, Anglo Saxon culture and to replace it with The Collective, to be ruled by The Cabal.
They are not just devaluing the British P.M.; they are devaluing humanity.
The President of the EU had it right: This is the path to hell --- for the world.
****
http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/hamlet/6/:
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables,--meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark
Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 105–109
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/the_obama_we_knew_but_denied.html:
Ima Winger said: "Anyway....great post. Maybe it's time to re-examine fascism and rebuild our party around the ideal of a business/government partnership that has a strong govt and protects our nationalism."
Well, strong government for national defense is fine, provided we have a government that is checked so as to honor limits against infringements on personal freedom of expression and enterprise.
I don't want a government that is domestically strong in terms of intruding into details that should be entrusted to individual initiative.
The problem is to differentiate among those domestic social services government performs well and those into which government ought not intrude its big nose. Another problem is that marketplace competition, given world relations and economies of scale, is becoming no longer viable in more and more industries. For those industries, the question becomes not whether to regulate, but how.
These are not problems that have answers amenable to mere science or rationality.
Rather, they are problems best addressed by checks and balances based on suspicion against big domestic government. Today's seeming benevolent controllers of government may not be so benevolent tomorrow. Mussolini ended with a grim "Mussolini minute."
I wonder how much of our economic angst is being intentionally stirred in order to serve an industry for redistributing revenges and jealousies, by inciting base addiction, envy, victimhood, entitlement, and indoctrination of fealty to secular religion? Under what leadership has our emotional economy assumed superiority over our financial economy?
Media empowered demagogues have learned how to pull us around by our basest emotions. And so, we fight slaphappy emotion with slaphappy emotion. Given the failing quality of our electorate, rationality may not return until we endure a violent catharsis.
We need a new Beatles band, to write a new song, "All we are saying is give traditional rationality a chance."
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/04/cornerstone_to_the_obama_agend.html:
"Conservatives need to rethink their charitable giving and stop contributing to charities that receive taxpayer money. Liberal nonprofits indoctrinate our youth and are helping move society towards socialism. Conservatives must not underestimate this subterfuge of free markets, private association and traditional values, nor this foundation to the entire Obama agenda of change towards socialism."
Problem is: How to check against an inertial tendency for feelings of entitlement to accumulate across all institutions.
We need term limits to address "failures to launch": For those who run charities, for profs, and for pols.
Through and through, we are beset with "entitlement inertia" because, for a long, long time, we have not been challenged with any counter revolution.
So, we have lost insight for what it takes to preserve our nation.
Rather, most of us just assume we will be sustained out of good feelings, hope, and protests for peace and love.
We continue to nourish, empower, and franchise such people at our peril.
Presently, our social agenda and professoriate have become a disgrace.
If we fail to require "growing up," we deserve to fail.
How about some charities and institutions for teaching and challenging self reliance and initiative?
It is a grave error to assume everyone wants to be a responsible thinker. Zombies of the Collective Borg are propagating in our midst and prefer nothing of the sort. They are propagating a viral meme for enabling colleges, entitling addictions, and empowering politics.
They worship a notion of natural selection that is devoid of sensitivity to conscious feedback because they devoutly wish not to be consciously responsible for anything. Indeed, they would make zombie-hood a self fulfilling prophecy, gifting zombie-hood to all, for all to kow tow to.
Already, this meme has sucked the soul out of "progressive" Repubs and Dems and other zombie collectivists, junkies, and jihadists. We continue to franchise, certify, and promote zombies and their elite apologists at our peril.
Zombi-hood flourishes under false light. The antidote is the light of liberty. Live free or die.
"Progressives do not even attempt to consider the science behind their beliefs, they don't attempt to study their proposals to determine what would be the expected outcomes based on the laws of physics."
Indeed. Progressives do not much care for God, humanity, or business. They don't much like science either, except the "consensus based science" of close minded fiat, i.e., the "science" that says: Marxism good, Capitalism bad; Consciousness entirely secondary to Materialism; America bad because of Whitey; Globe warming unless business stopped; collectivism good, individual freedom bad; collectively raised children good, families bad.
The only empirical facts Progressives cherry pick are those that fit their close minded models. These progressive people are really purple haze zombies, living through their addictions to dope, sex, and collective induced mindlessness. They get really upset when you don't want to be a zombie too. Raise the curtain; there is not much science to these people.
I suspect what is going on is this: They deeply resent having been expelled from the womb. The amazing thing is, we have surrendered our governance to these people. I would like to see more studies to investigate such suspicion. Pity is, I doubt there is much funding to be had from the collectivist-academic stranglehold.
However, there is hope that conservatives will save reason for application to broader models. Look to fact laden writings of Horowitz, Sowell, etc.
How much of Soros' inclinations are derivative of things he was forced to do as a youngster?
Much of Islam seems founded on a notion that, by forcing people to behave in respect of various secular/sectarian observances, people will eventually become disposed to rationalize and believe such forced observances to be proper. Sort of like subjecting entire civilizations to Stockholm syndrome.
Much of "modern education" consists in leveraging means for social rationalizations. He who wins the war writes the history. He who has the gold makes the rules. He who can enforce the observances writes the religion. He who directs the minds of children shapes the politics.
A component of this way of thinking was not uncommon among the Bushies. And so it is with Obamanots' rousing of the rabble.
When those whom one has been indoctrinated against engage in non-objective based, generalized discrimination, it is often called prejudice or profiling.
When the same sort of behavior is engaged in by those with whom one's Faustian fortunes align, it may be called empowering the base, or organizing the community.
Many are driven more by random social associations and emotive labels than by objective data related to any philosophy adduced for guiding us towards decently sustainable civilization. Nowadays, that seems to pass for "informed education." Read Horowitz's latest book about educational institutions in America.
In America, we began with secular values based on a Judeo-Christian history. We did not want or need government to enforce a detailed, invasive social regimen or secular religion.
Now, our Federal Government has become so large, and those with incredibly disproportionate wealth and power have become so few, that the rest of us feel we are becoming more and more like sheep being farmed by alternating bands of criminal gangs ("progressives"). Our media and academia serve agendas of powerfully backed "progressives." Their purpose is no longer to serve, inform, or educate us, but to shape, organize, and direct us. This way to the egress.
America needs to assimilate, sustain, and defend insistent respect for small government, self reliance, and social decency. Arrayed against Her are all manner of evil philosophies and piggish brutes, who have for many years infested Her universities and infected the minds of Her children.
Decent civilization is lost unless Conservatives unite to conserve it against all false progressives --- whether Rino or Dino. The enemy of Conservatives is now at the helm of our government and infested in the minds of our children. There is no quick fix; there is need for insistent vision and sustained, growing action.
What could be easier than to be a liberal? Who could complain about anyone wanting to use OPM to save the planet, feed the world, and end all pain? It's a no-brainer life. No worries. Don't worry; be happy! No sacrifice, no hardship, no scruples, no man to pay, no Yankee dollar, no having to account for yourself.
You don't have to think. You get to call yourself enlightened even as you call every opponent demented. You get to make sophisticated, foul jokes even as you paint everything that bothers "the man" as normal. You and your buds can vote yourselves tax refunds for taxes you never paid and reparations for hardships you never endured. You get to ridicule those who defend the country whose flag you piss on. You get to spank everyone else for your Mommy's never having spanked you. Take that, you Whiteys and Jew Boys!
Then, after ranks of troops and police are thinned, you get to walk home at night on your lonely walk, surrounded by graffiti and gang regalia. But when you spot someone approaching from the distance, you pray in your ungrateful atheistic heart that it's a soldier, policeman, or even a blue eyed white man. Anyone but another liberal.
Libs are flammable residue of a Neverland society that has allowed its children never to grow up. They are become a wilding fire. Unless confronted, they will burn through all of civilization.
Rob said:
“I do not know how true that is, but in my view, preventing large family dynasties who would have had great economic control over multiple generations has been a good thing for our country so I strongly support a continuation of the estate tax.”
The income tax could be replaced with a consumption tax. Should death taxes likewise be replaced? Should the devising and bequeathing of fortunes be redefined as a final form of “consumption”? We certainly do need means to counter the rising of wealth aristocracies.
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“Redistricting after the 2010 census is far too important to be left to political parties.
Past efforts (controlled by political parties) has only given us greater polarization since primary elections then become the only ones that matter creating more extremist politicians on both sides of the aisle.”
Granted. It would seem best to have a continuing non-partisan commission for redistricting purposes. But, how could Feds take politics out of this, in order to establish uniform standards without intruding on States’ rights?
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“Truly free markets never exist.
There must always be controls making them less free or they will do nothing but oppress the less wealthy.
Also, in a truly free market, future environmental impacts on production are never truly accounted for (I recommend Natural Capitalism by Amory Lovins et al).
True socialism also never exists and most attempts have been blends.
We now have and have had for a long time, a significantly socialistic system underlying our somewhat capitalistic system.
How else would we get our infrastructure, our health system, our fire and police systems, our airports, flight control systems and highways etc.”
The problem pertains to how to assign to government that which it does best and how to assign to markets that which they do best. Assignments to governments do not reliably translate into fairness, nor do assignments to markets reliably translate into efficiency. Were we angels, we could cooperate to achieve a best blend. But, we are not. So, we devise checks and balances, to try to keep governments, monopolies, and wealth aristocrats from becoming too powerful. That is, we employ legal-based artificial checks and balances (Gov) to work in tandem with nature-based supply and demand (Markets).
Presently, however, both government and business have become too large, powerful, unchecked, unrepresentative, and unresponsive to the will of either the people-at-large or to ordinary stockholders. For example, a majority of Americans want their borders protected. But, neither big government nor big business is really willing to do that. Instead, we are handed lofty words, promises, and deceits. In this, Rinos and Dinos may as well be in cahoots, treating the rest of us like mushrooms.
Given how large and disproportionate a role our Feds have come to play in comparison to our States, and how so-called limitations on Fed power have been expanded by judicial interpretation, and how easily powers-that-be use media tools and academic fools to lead our population around by the nose, opportunities for the people at large to check their governance are fading fast.
So, how do we put Fed Gov back in the corral, and how do we reassert control by the people at large over business-wealth-aristocrats!? (For needed checks and balances, simple term limits and market competition can no longer suffice.)
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“By far the most critical thing we humans need to address is destruction of earth's ability to support humankind.”
I would like to buy this, simply because I don’t find the over-abundance of pavement, plastic, and people to be very aesthetic. However, I have not seen a convincing case for the science. If it’s just consensus, it’s not science. And so far, the consensus seems mainly to be among those with leftist agendas --- to panic the cows so they can be put in leftist corrals.
“Overpopulation is by far the largest contributor to environmental decline.”
I agree with this, in that overpopulation does stretch my sense of aesthetics too far. And to the extent quality of environment is important, better incentives for smart population management would seem to be the way to go. Problem: Unilateral responsibility towards this end is unilateral disarmament (cultural suicide) in the face of those cultures that promote population expansion as conducive to some sort of jihad. IOW, responsible population management just leads to “the good dying young.” Not so good, if we value a decent civilization for our children and posterity.
Jobe said, "Trying to talk a leftist out of any of his ridiculous and usually illogically indefensible positions is like trying to talk your knee out of jerking when it is hit with the hammer."
True. Their positions are not based on freely informed choice, religious revelation, science, logic, or math, but on cult-conditioned feelings --- as much so as for any indoctrinate of Islamofascism.
You can't fix stupid.
Nor can you fix absolutist brain washing. (Compare "I Am Legend.")
All you can do is contain it, destroy it, or outlive it.
IOW, conscious choice-making will have to "designedly select" better than "brain-inanimate natural selection."
A free mind cannot tolerate brain-washed stupidity.
For the essence of such memes-of-natural-stupidity is intolerance of any free, un-indoctrinated, un-rote-conditioned mind.
Free minds will not likely be able to re-educate those minds which have already been steeped and conditioned by ubiquitous MSM and academia to embrace commies, Dinos, and Rinos.
Rather, we will have to contain, destroy, or outlive.
Choose carefully which colleges to support.
Traditions for free expression are crumbling. Borders are falling. Decency is failing. Nukes are proliferating. Stupidity is rising. Mobs are rampaging.
A reckoning approaches.
The stakes are whether human freedom and dignity will survive anywhere on planet Earth.
Ironically enough, Jews are in the thick of this, on all sides: Israeli freedom-loving Jews; American socialist- deluded Jews; and Jews following Alinsky (Soros). Choose carefully which ones to support.
Re: "Until modern days, the best of times were had under the benevolent rule of the best monarchs, and the worst of times under the bad ones."
Interesting remark, given the proviso, "until modern days." Seems to be a whiff of a suggestion that the best of modern times are not quite so likely to be under the most benevolent of rulers (or presidents).
If so, why?
Might we of modern times be educating (and improving IQ's of?) our best and brightest ruling elites, to make them good at skills that do not serve so well to meet modern social and global challenges? As we come to value educaton and elitism more so than assimilating traditions and experience, into how much more folly and sorrow will we consent to be led by modern elites?
If I had a time machine, I would revisit the idea of tenure, to try to divert us from the path that has led us towards a stagnant academic environment, i.e., one that emphasizes concerns for impressing ruling ideologues now grown old in socialism.
Parmenter said "It is morally necessary not to torture prisoners of war. Just because enemy troops do not have uniforms that we recognize as uniforms (though they do) does not mean we get to treat them as sub-humans, or even worse than we can lawfully treat animals. And our prisoners in Gitmo and elsewhere included a good many who were not captured in battle, but simply rounded up for questioning randomly."
You often make good sense. Not so much this time. You do not prove waterboarding is "torture" merely by assuming it so.
Now, waterboarding is supposed to be unpleasant enough to get bad guys to divulge information. But, by your reasoning, what technique that is unpleasant enough to get bad guys to divulge information would NOT be torture? By your reasoning, when high value bad guys are captured, we should do what ?
You may want to watch the History Channel, regarding some specials about pirate-like bad guys. It shows the story of Leon Klinghoffer. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Klinghoffer. Also, learn about the Chinese gang that masqueraded as authorities, as they took over a ship and slaughtered its crew. Gruesome footage, followed by more gruesome footage once Chinese authorities captured them. Likely with doctors standing by, to harvest organs. See also http://washingtontimes.com/news/2005/apr/10/20050410-103552-1838r/.
In America, we are up to our eyebrows with leftists who have been pampered in safety and educated by elites, with little military experience (many from schools that do not even allow military training on campus). But we live in a world where many people are unchurched, either in religion or in morals, while many others are over-churched in violence.
In America, we have a surfeit of kids who are so "wise" as to disdain religion, even as they kid themselves by assuming most of the world is conditioned to the Christian moral values their mommies and professies taught them. I would no more trust these people to lead me through a tough national neighborhood than I would trust the Easter Buanny to know how to survive in the wild.
You are not going to teach people who have been conditioned to harsh cultures and piracy by showing them your throat.
I don't think the example of Germany is a good one. Germany was, and is, an advanced, industrious, well educated, and Christian churched society. I hope you are not assuming most Germans were as barbaric as the Nazis. I don't think showing one's throat to Nazis would work very well. Nor would it have worked well to show one's throat to Stalin. Nor to any modern dictator or ruling thug.
I would say having a doctor on standby while being careful not to leave lasting physical or traumatic harm is NOT being subhuman. I would say failing to defend civilization and leaving your children to succumb to despotism IS being subhuman.
The problem with leftist philosophy is that it is overburdened with proponents of much booklearning that is unleavened with real world experience. That is naivete, not elitism. Those who rule leftist societies tend to be more brutal than elite, notwithstanding their university and Hollywood apologists.
What "lesson" do you think Putin, Hugo, Kim, Osama, Raul, et al take from America's being unwilling to use any technique unpleasant enough to get bad guys to divulge information? Do you think their hearts are just naturally good, waiting only to be appealed to by our better angels?
Given how hard it is to school confirmed leftists in the exampled world of experience, I suspect it is even harder to school confirmed brutes in the exampled world of the Geneva Convention. Rather, I think Conservatives will simply have to contain, reduce, and outlast both leftists and the sociopaths who tend to lead them. The alternative is simply too subhuman.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/04/the_obama_cult_deepens.html:
This is what the Left turns to, when it's got nothing left to believe.
Truth becomes just another word for getting emotionally high on mental bankruptcy.
The Left is in throes of a mental virus that cannot be reasoned with.
The leftist meme is a viral malignancy that must be tricked to consume itself.
See Ronald Reagan's star wars.
The Left cannot be trusted or restored to polite civilization.
See 20th Century history.
Gird yourselves.
What dogs America is that it has lost its idealistic identity. Sure, Obama uses high sounding words. But scratch a Dem and you find a crass entitlement-monger. Actually, I think the same is true of what I see of Rinos. Let them go. The reward for selling out just ain't high enough.
Larrey is right that competent leaders don't appear to be much on the horizon. About Mitt: I would rather go down in flames supporting him, even if it meant another term for Obama. Frankly, Libertarians, in respect of defending a worthwhile identity for America, I don't see you as being very distinguished from Obama. You would still lead us on a quick slide to crapsville. I mean, crap is crap.
For an opposition party that wishes to succeed (and, frankly, probably 75% of solid Americans could care less about blueblood Repubs), it may be worthwhile for it to think about what principles should DESERVE TO SUCCEED. For goodness sakes, stand for something more than Ayn Rand'ian greed! Act like you deserve to win! Find and represent some values. Otherwise, who cares where you sink? Promote human freedom and dignity. Defend borders. Promote some decency, for crying out loud! Pretty basic. Why are you letting scurrilous Marxists get away with acting like they have the high ground?
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Kyle Anne Shiver said: "The next time a social liberal talks to you about your "backward" views, simply pose this question...Which of your liberal policies has resulted in the slightest improvement in the social problem it was designed to fix?"
Indeed, I would like to see a response.
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BTW --- We are about to see another Supreme Court battle, based on who is most qualified in respect not of law, but of "feelings."
About False Empathy:
Are you empathetic enough? That, apparently, is Obama’s first test for whomever he may nominate for the Supremes. (Or, more crassly, how deep are you willing to go, when you KMA?)
Beware of Lib’s bearing words of empathy. How infrequently do you come across a Lib in whom can be intuited character for standing for anything higher than a life of personal pleasure? For Libs I know, empathy consists in capacity for projecting mortal weaknesses and fetishes so as to expect reciprocation from others. Life is a pleasure cruise, in which others ought not obstruct one’s view of the scenery. What Libs tend to deem as signs of “empathy,” I view as the enabling and empowering of corruption.
Were one truly empathetic in respect of one’s existential participation, one would intuit and sense a need to be empathetic in respect of a higher Source (Great Commandment?), or a fundamentally common purpose. Drilling deeper, I would say such purpose should be to work to enhance civilizations of meaningful interaction. But this would entail more than a pleasure cruise. It would entail concern for how to sustain a decent civilization. To my lights, being concerned in the core of one’s character only for bossing others to prettify the environment of one’s scenery during one’s pleasure cruise is not empathy, but corruption, i.e., evil.
Yet, I fear false “pleasure cruise empathy” is Obama’s test for how he will fill seats on the Supreme Court.
Were Obama concerned with true empathy, he would be concerned with exemplifying and preserving human freedom, dignity, personal responsibility, initiative, and instilling respect for common decency and values, more so than “gimme my entitlement to personal pleasure.” But, in what church has he learned any such values?
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Social Conservatives are not at war with Progressives (Dinos and Rinos); rather, we are engaged in a struggle to preserve souls from moral zombie-hood. Those beyond our means for saving may have to be cut loose. Or, we may have to go into the wilderness awhile. Or consent to "reeducation" in the figures of neo-speak of False Utopians (i.e., Marxist Progressives).
For ordinary folks, when it comes to baking a Statist-Corporatist cake, what difference does it make whether humanity is reduced to the dictate of Big Gov or of Big Corp? When considering Socialist-Dinos and Corporatist-Rinos, when it comes to preserving human freedom and dignity, which one is Tweedledee and which one is Tweedledum?
You wanna opposition party? Act like you deserve one. 75% of Americans are crying our for leadership, but their eyes are being held --- by Dinos and Rinos --- to shadows on a cave.
FRS said "So many posters seem to have forgot history. Advocating for splintering the party is what got us here in the first place."
Not ever going to buy that crap again!
Bluebloods can pour all their trillions down that drain of a message, and it will not sell.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
Just what would have been so great about electing Tweedledee McCain? Or another Bush?
Would that have restored fiscal responsibility? No. (BTW, what was so fiscally irresponsible about Bubba?)
Would that have restored the borders? HELL NO!
Here's the deal, and Rinos had best learn it: Most Conservatives are on to you (we can smell p.c. for miles).
We know you're in a traitorous alliance to sell the country and its borders down the drain.
Yeah, Conservatives may not be able to stop you.
But voting for you isn't going to stop the slide either.
You can go to hell just as quickly without my help.
Rino Traitors: You can continue to be part of the problem, or you can remember your children and become part of a solution. If you put your money into decency instead of deceit, America would be restored. If America is not restored, it will not be the fault of Conservatives. It will be the fault of a "progressive" conspiracy of evil traitors:
Tweedledee Rinos in cahoots with Tweedledum Dinos about how to divvy up ill gotten gains (i.e, selling out America --- the America paid for mainly in the blood of Conservative forebears --- you know, sons and daughters of Christians, Jews, firemen, policemen --- those sorts of people).
As an "Extreme Moderate," most of the time, I try to be civil.
But after about the tenth time I see drivel, it "do get tiresome."
If you don't cotton to being called "traitor," just substitute some p.c. for the same thing, and try this self diagnostic test:
How long have you been advocating policies that are naturally inclined:
1) to facilitate at every opportunity the ridiculing of traditional family values;
2) to erase and overrun American culture (yeah, before the multi-culti p.c., there was actually a decent, sustainable, assimilable American culture);
3) to erase and overrun American borders;
4) to sacrifice American industry to corporate-serving mantras of "free-lunch free trade" (to facilitate non-American taxes on American production in order instead to enhance foreign revenues and Soros-like ventures);
5) to swell sold-out academia for churning out manipulable zombies;
6) to swell the electorate into a brain-dead rubber stamp (illegals, felons, far out lib and libertarian rads) for big media and big money manipulation; and
7) to try to convince Conservatives that Rinos have their backs (LOL!).
Bottom Line: When it comes to traitorous selling out of America, will someone please 'splain the moral diff in dictate between Murdoch Big Corp and Soros Big Gov? What the hell is "American" about the thinking of Murdoch or Soros? It's a dangerous, sold out world. But Conservatives don't have to be part of the sell out of America. Progressives can keep trying to do that without our help.
Rinos: You wanna check the Dinos, then come along with Conservatives. Otherwise, see ya.
Anti-Progressive:
Rinos and Dinos agree on many things: Open borders, bigness, puppet string connectedness, globalism, and control over workers by a New World Order (international crime syndicate, aka Borg).
The only thing they disagree on relates to that which competing crime families would be expected to disagree on: How to divide turf; who is to sit at the syndicate table; and should turf be territorial (controlled by Dino rulers of nations) or organizational (controlled by Rino rulers of international corporations).
These “Progressives” (criminals) do not give a rat’s ass about: Protecting ordinary workers against mind or debt enslavement (regardless of whether of a secular or a sectarian nature); freedom and dignity of ordinary people; basic norms of civilizing or family-friendly decency; or ideals of higher or moral purposefulness.
In relentless competition for wise-guy payoffs of immediate glandular gratification, neither Rinos nor Dinos are constrained by moral principles of any kind. Both ruthlessly use media, academia, business, and politics to pursue their favored forms of corruption.
Nowadays, in America, ordinary people who live in battlefield zones of turf wars between Rinos and Dinos are subjected less to sprays of Tommie gun ammo than to blasts of propaganda from syndicate-controlled Pravda, stampeding residents by hurling invective. Such invective is most frequently hurled in the Dino lexicon of bailout hijackers, fundie prudes, war criminals, global-warming greed-bags, and environmental killers, and less frequently in Rino lexicon of welfare queens, sloth doping degenerates, global-warming liars, fetal torturers, and civilization killers.
One begins to wonder whether there may be any alternative to siding with either Dinos or Rinos, both of whom calculate to reduce most people to serfdom for corporatist-fascist control (aka Progress).
I think there is a worthy, alternative ideal. It may as well be called “Conservative Americanism.” Such an ideal would respect borders, family, decency, empathy (not wanna-pathy), self reliance, industriousness, and individual moral responsibility.
Conservative Americanism would compete against Globalistic Progressives by:
1) Preserving national borders and restraining immigration to assimilable levels;
2) Closing loopholes for those who would harvest American workers and resources to sell abroad, without remitting recompense or taxes to sustain American governance;
3) Protecting against monopolization of media, academia, and power by collecting progressive taxes imposed against cumulative purchases of political influence;
4) Busting monopolies where economies of scale are not needed to produce the product;
5) Banning foreign ownership, control, or investment in networks of national travel, communication, utilities, and defense; and
6) “Muddling through” in respect of those enterprises that cannot compete except by harnessing economies of scale, by employing some lukewarm blend of state managed Corporatism -- being neither pure capitalism nor pure socialism.
It is always tempting to look with dreamy eyes to government to smooth rough edges of capitalism and merely to assume that government executives will be found to exercise their executive authority for "empathetic purposes."
But government, regardless of form, always has its own rough edges. This is why our founders, concerned as they were with conserving vestiges of human freedom and dignity (i.e., unalienable rights), had to work so hard to establish a functional system of checks and balances.
Unfortunately, our society and its "educators" have not been astute or visionary enough to devise or inspire such adjustments as are required in order to keep our system running smoothly in the modern age.
So, our unenlightened electorate has long been booting the job to government, to reform itself (lol).
Obvious Problem: Our would be governors are elected. They get elected by grooming and becoming beholden to, or in cahoots with, one another. IOW, money talks and b.s. walks. IOW, your vote is a charade. In the last presidential election, no matter what, we were going to get a "progressive" president, i.e., a president who will respect the "progressive" concerns of a N.W.O., with open borders, cheap labor, and reduction of most people to servile service of the "New Big," i.e., Big Gov and Big Corp, i.e., International-State-Corporatism.
IOW, we keep looking to Big Corp to reform Big Gov, and to Big Gov to reform Big Corp. But they are the same con game, and we just keep making them more and more powerful.
Conservatives need to reform not just Big Gov, but also Big Corp. Conservatives cannot do that by alternating between joining a Dem (Big Gov) party and a Repub (Big Corp) party. The only hope is to wake up and recognize the challenge.
If Conservatives value freedom and dignity for their children, they must become a party in opposition to Progressives, i.e., lying Rinos and lying Dinos. If we do not, look for a Progressive decimation of human freedom and dignity --- regardless of which lying party is in power.
Newsflash: We would be little better off, had we elected McCain. Now, Palin, that is a different story, even though, clean as she is, she is not articulate. Second Newsflash: Articulate is overrated. Our next President will probably rely much more on alternative media to keep the citizenry informed.
We need a new President who is of the people. Bush was not of the people. He was of Big Corp. Obama is not of the people. He is of Marxist Big Gov --- big time. Until we can get someone like Palin, we need to hold the line against State-Fascist-Corporatism, which will not produce wealth, but will only, for a short time, reward sell outs.
"I'm curious about the thought process and group mentality of liberals. "
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Modern society, through prolonged adolescence, media, advertising, and education, conditions gullibles through and through to substitute feelings for thinking. There is nothing easier than to be an "educated liberal" --- all you have to do is consider how you feel, and then work backwards to rationalize that feeling. Any second guessing, if any at all, is entirely in terms of feelings. No doubt, elite universities will soon give Ph.D's in "the science, philosophy, and governance of feelings."
Cradle to grave, progressive adolescents (usurpers of modern "liberalism") feel entitled to be defended, praised, and cared for. The hard choices and rugged lifting are left to moral "inferiors." And no one likes this more than those who profit from the care, feeding, and farming of liberals.
Now go give yourself a hug.
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Re: ""Mormonism is a non-Christian sect based upon 19th century science-fiction and freemasonry, wherein they worship the local System Lord." "
**
Well, take ANY religious belief system about values, even secular ones, whose adherents so often lack appreciation for how closely they resemble religions.
When you examine the literal tenants, what reasonably bright 10th grader could not rip each and every system of value beliefs --- if empiricism were the only test, with no nod of respect to a higher Source of values?
But then ask yourself, apart from mathematical laws, what empirical experiences do we have that are direct, objective, not dependent on local interpretation, not consisting entirely in representation, metaphor, model, or figure of speech? Yet, we find such representations of immense value, not only for taking empirical measures from observer perspectives, but also for communicating interpretations of experiences, values, and feelings.
Why must hubristic, smarty-pants empiricists presume they can discover or fashion some rational system of ethics and values by which we could apply axioms in order to derive the "objectively correct" answer for communicating every thought and value, perhaps even to the point of entirely explicating consciousness itself?
A vital aspect of religiously sacred stories and parables is to provide an assimilating basis for a culture to model, represent, and communicate its values. The smarty pants who shuts his ears to proclaim the stories are not in themselves real: misses the time tested reality behind the parables; remains stuck on stupid in respect of appreciating the culture from which he/she was nurtured; and imparts little of new information to believers.
Mitt Romney made an important point that seems beyond the comprehension of leftists stuck on stupid, as well as beyond the comprehension of literalistic fundamentalists who are intolerant of other belief systems (even belief systems that foster many of the same social values, often more effectively): He knows he is a better man for having been churched than he would have been had he not.
When we are respectful of a higher source of values, by whatever name we wish to call it and with whatever parables we wish to illustrate it, if we hang onto that, we have a better chance, in the test of time, to assimilate systems of decently civilizing values, together with illustrative models for them.
We can be guided by the light without being blinded by it. We can receive the light in order to help foster a decent, sustainable, surpassable civilization. Alternatively, we can turn management over to smarty pants stuck on adolescent stupid, with notions that we should surrender freedom and dignity to our betters, i.e., (1) to those progressive fascists who are "better" at rationally deriving objective moral answers based on empiricism, or (2) to those religious fascists who are "better" at emotionally submitting all moral issues to some surreal hand-down for forcing traditional answers onto novel experiences. The dictate of (1) is "shut up and calculate;" the dictate of (2) is "put on the burka."
I stand amazed that so many smarty pants with so little discernment just presume Mormonism to be unworthy in respect of helping to assimilate decent civilizations of freedom and dignity.
A party may idealize its politics in perhaps three ways: One party (Republicans) may idealize Rationality, another (Democrats) may idealize Feelings, and a third (Conservatives) may idealize an enlightened blend of rationality and feelings (what I like to call Enlightened Empathy). Though no real party could remain pure, such idealizations seem pertinent to what we are seeing today.
Presently, our electorate of animal spirits is swamped with supporters of the “party of feelings,” which has progressed to prioritize feelings over freedom of speech, press, and expression. And so we have speech codes, hate crimes, fairness doctrines, and speaker banishments. Obviously, Democrats are now led by those who believe feelings are the supreme priority.
Why? Well, it is not unexpected that those who have been dumbed down or conditioned to think more with animal feelings than with rationality would project that most “good” people do so also. In losing respect for capacity for rational thinking, why should modern Democrats trust any rationalist — except a rationalist who has talent for deceiving with expressions of feelings? Coming to distrust rationalism, Dems trust only emotionalists, or those able to deceive with emotions. This is an inexorable result of opening borders and colleges to invite and mis-educate the most easily deceived to become the bulk of our electorate.
As a Conservative (for conserving decent civilization), I fear both Republicans and Democrats have become far too “progressive” in their idealizations. So progressive, in fact, that they often seem aligned in ways that are counterproductive to decent civilization, i.e., inclined for reducing oasis of freedom and dignity, leading to servility imposed upon most, for the benefit of a very few.
I do not want society to be ruled by a very few animal trainers. Rather, I want all citizens who are intelligent, principled, and empathetic to play a key role in shaping our politics. Presently, however, many rationalists seem to want hegemony over the hoi polloi of animal spirits, while many emotionalists want a “good hegemonist” (good big brother) to govern and look after them. In other words, both Republicans and Democrats are reducing representative governance to animal management.
A society that values broad representative governance needs an informed, assimilated, decent, devoted electorate. It is vital that such a society not unduly expand the voting franchise to the easily manipulated, gullible, inexperienced, mis-educated, ignorant, easily bought out, or corrupt. Yet, America is: surrendering control of its borders, allowing sanctuary cities, motor voter registration, encouraging voting by felons, funding proponents of fraudulent registration, and ignoring the monopolizing of influence over media, education, and “progressive” politics for managing animal spirits.
And so, Progressives have Conservatives in a pincer: Monied elites of rationalist control (Rinos) have monopolized means for planting siren songs into the heads of gullible emotionalists (Dinos).
By blending big business and big government to a corporatist-state, monied elites (Soros) have transcended beyond Rino and Dino. Instead, they become simply bubble-bursting birds of prey, alternatively supporting this or that “progressive” putsch for herding the hoi polloi into servility under their rule. So long as Soros’ hirelings pretend to “feel our pain,” we remain easily led into servility — with nary a whimper.
America, unfortunately, has allowed its electorate to become swamped with bilge of ignorance. If Conservators of decent civilization do not soon summon an effective movement against Progressives, America will become a land of animals used as slaves for those who wish to deceive and be ruled by those who rule feelings. And freedom and dignity will sink beneath the oceans.
Relatively few seem to see or to stand athwart, to yell “stop!” And so, decent civilization is now imperiled, even as the world cheers the demise of the leading country for perhaps a last chance for principled, enlightened empathy — America.
Progressives are busily dismantling America — some intentionally, some stupidly. Even as many Conservatives still do not see. Our enemy is Big. He walks on two legs: Rino and Dino.
Environmentalists and people united against stuff can breathe easier: Mile high glaciers and extreme cold will surely grind and cleanse planet Earth of most human vanities and debris. IOW, Earth already has defenses against us, thank you very much. Gaia does not need our help, for hell is bound to freeze over. Better that we should focus on what is needed to preserve civilization. For that, decent incentives and treaties for population management seem a good place to start. Let us conserve qualities of civilization; let Earth conserve long term environments. Choose the conservation of realists.
Re: "Limited government means limited government everywhere"
Well, the days of limited government are numbered. Welcome to the Corporatist-State. Like it or not, directly or indirectly, by regulation or taxation, government is becoming as ubiquitous as air. The debate will not be advanced by complaints about the quantity of government, but by debates about the quality of government. That is, what concerns should government keep its nose out of?
High on that list should be keeping the government from usurping the role of parents. Do that by respecting civilizing, family values. Do not presume science, or government masquerading as head scientist, has one best set of answers to civilizing moral issues. Respect assimilable heritage and boundaries.
Danger: As more and more citizens are reduced to be employees of the Corporatist-State, opportunities for citizens to speak out and challenge governmental wisdom are becoming ever more compromised. After all, how can a governmental employee very well challenge his employer without risking charges of insubordination? Result: Increasing the percentage of governmental employees gives the media and political powers that be one more bullet for enforcing control.
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If America is Conservative, why is there no conservative political machine for duping, buying, and painting voters and media?
Well, Conservatives tend to respect principles beyond their own skins, such as a principle for bequeathing decent civilization to posterity.
Progressives, on the other hand, having drunk deep from the Pravda that Conservatives are mean or stupid, believe it righteous for them to employ any and all means of dishonesty and emotive grandstanding to unseat Conservatives.
It is always convenient to believe in the righteousness of one's own perceived self interest.
Such righteousness can even be rationalized as scientific (entitlement mongers: no God, no higher values) and objective (pillaging sell outs: Ayn Rand).
So, how can Conservatives best battle the political machines of Progressives?
Well, (1) awaken; (2) perceive what is needed to conserve a decent civilization; (3) organize and go forth to expose the Progressive Machine; (4) in realms of lawless social warfare, recognize that we are at war, so don't waste energy trying to salvage incorrigibles, but employ means (duping, buying, painting?) for reducing them.
The cause is worthwhile: To restore legions of morally hollow zombies ("Progressives") to the civilized control of those with capacity to honor a higher cause that is devoted to preserving freedom and dignity.
Ask: Apart from deceit in service of self interest, what value is it, that Progressives hold superior to preserving human freedom and dignity?
No matter how clever we are, we are not going to be able to compete effectively in outlets that are owned by those with nefarious purposes. Their targets for control are those with short attention spans and easily excitable needs. Those people are not often going to remember well placed rejoinders. Rather, their brains will become wired to the conditioning drumbeat of those with power to beat longest, last, or most timely.
Given how much our electorate has been reduced to servitude to irrational cravings, rational Conservatives must find effective, alternative media and outlets. We must package attractive counter messages and find ways to get them timely read.
The new game of capitalism is not about how to make and market better widgets, but about how to make and market better politicians. Progressives are not operating under Marxism, but under Marxism controlled by Capitalist Gangsters (sort of like "Capitalist-Marxism" or "Fake-Feelings").
To counter Progressives, Conservatives need something like "Civilizing-Capitalism" or "CONSERVATIVE CAPITALISM." We cannot rely merely on capitalism to get our message out, because we do not have the funds or the monopolized media.
Oddly enough, for capitalism to conserve freedom and dignity, Conservatives will need to become skilled in layers and levels of organizing (I know --- community organizing is more like anathema than second nature for Conservatives). But Volunteer Conservative Organizations need to become propelled less by markets than by dedication of time and resources for conserving decent human civilization. An attractive sponsor needs to invite various perspectives of Conservatism to organize, communicate, plan, infiltrate, and promote.
Conservatism will not effectively compete against Marxist organizers unless and until Conservatives come to adopt some of the advantages of organizing that have been developed by Marxists.
While Conservatives sleep, Progressives are consolidating by opening borders, eliminating rational standards of journalism, building super majorities, and using crisis to forever reduce America to be a debt slave to Super-Capitalist Thug-Marxists.
Thugs are pillaging the land, and America is being fast pillaged. Freedom is fading fast.
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