Breitbart lives. But does capitalism?
A war is coming. And we haven’t a chance of winning it if we’re busy apologizing for our “war on women” or our “war on immigrants” or our “war on homosexuals” or our “war on the poor.”
But you establishment fetishists do it your way. You’ve got the Left right where you want them!
Better we fight the war on language, the war on truth.
Capitalism occurs naturally wherever there are people who want stuff and a solid currency. Sometimes it happens in secret via a black market but it happens.
I thought they had the Left right were the Left wanted to be.
Or is that my inner kraut showing again?
http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/03/from-andrew-breitbart-with-love.html The radical left owns Barack Obama.
Capitalism occurs naturally wherever there are people who want stuff and a solid currency.
That’s free trade, and not necessarily capitalism. A black market might work fine if you want to buy a cell phone, but it’s not so great at putting together the capital to build the cell phone factory and the cell towers that make everything work.
I left this comment at L.I.:
If this is war, then I get the impression that it’s all well and good for Breitbart to martyr himself for the cause by going into the den and bearding the lion on his own turf, repeatedly, fearlessly, ON THEIR LEVEL– and yet we would cannonize him for being the very thing we say we’re “above”?
Where do we get off sending our best and brightest into a fierce battle and then seek to micromanage their weaponry? As long as they’re aiming at the opponent, who cares if it misses the mark slightly? The noise alone will frighten some out of their hiding.
Either we get dirty in the fray, get smart in the triangulations, and get ahead of the asymmetrical curve or we can stop with all the righteous indignation at those who would do so.
No wonder Breitbart took every opportunity to rally the punk-Republican kids. As he said, “they’ll dress up like pimps and prostitutes.”
“Stop raping people!” was outrageous. Far worse than, “slut.” He maligned the OWS crowd to their face. Purposefully.
I don’t expect a warrior, at home, to act like he’s in the middle of a fire-fight. I expect him to teach his children civility, plain speech, respect, and clear thinking.
But if I do send him to war, I expect that same warrior to get the job done. And I will support him 100%. No points off for rusty target practice or unintended consequences. You take the bad with the good and go back out and DEFEAT your opponent.
Joan:
I’m reminded of this post from neo-neocon, about pacifism in the face of an implacable aggressor (in this case Islamic terrorism):
Will our obsession with not “descending to their level” help us win the war, or—like the pacifist who refuses to fire real bullets and kill real enemies—are we hoping to win this thing without getting our hands dirty?
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall maintain a gentlemanly standard, and lose the Republic?
Thank you, dicentra, for restating why I see an actual civil war as necessary. Because these people won’t be stopped from enslaving us any other way.
When Rush apologized for falling to the Left’s low standard (the one to which they expect us to hold them, by the way) instead of living up to our high standard (the one which the Left expects us to hold ourselves accountable to), what was that he was doing?
I think he swore on the lives of his grandchildren that he would not be the one to break the
peacedouble standard.Should the Left take that as a sign of weakness? Should we?
That double standard is starting to bleed over into political action, and not just rhetoric by the way. Think recess appointments.
Too true Ernst. So true in fact, we could call it “flooding over” to heighten the contradiction. It ain’t a trickle, but it is a trick turning. Whoring out the office of the President, so to speak, in official acts.
There’s another problem with the type of thinking on the Left neoneocon described in the passage quoted for Dicentra’s comment:
usually, it’s insincere.
” That’s free trade, and not necessarily capitalism. A black market might work fine if you want to buy a cell phone, but it’s not so great at putting together the capital to build the cell phone factory and the cell towers that make everything work.”
On the contrary the drug trade currently carries out organic chemistry mass manufacturing, parallel financing, often out of direct site, and has even come up with smuggling, marketing and a distribution system. It may not be much mood for innovation but production is not really much of an issue.
Silly me; I was concentrating on the 99.9% of the market for which one cannot rely on a 5,000% markup and chemically-enhanced demand. I stand corrected.
Free market capitalism. Where a knowledgeable buyer an sell get together and agree on a price without ANY outside interference. Capitalism is , of course, a term coined by Marx. Free markets are organic. They occur wherever people are free to trade without interference.
A good example of this is an absolute auction where there is no reserve pricing. Or a flea market where you can haggle over the price.
Free market capitalism is just a term that describes human behavior as it concerns wealth and value.
I’ve seen a tremendous growth in black markets since Obama took office.
Benjamin Netanyahu is about to address AIPAC, in a few minutes now. C-Span has the coverage online.
Thanks!
Bibi is slapping Barry’s “loose talk” talk upside its punkin head.
I was listening to an advisor of Bush 41’s today while I was waiting on my son, and the advisor said that Bibi had no use for Obama and his magic diplomacy and was going to let him know it.
Boy howdy, is he!
Existential threats have a way of engendering the growth of genuine statesmen, and this is the major statesman on the face of the earth today.
Amen.
Bret Stephens, WSJ, The ‘Jewish’ President:
Why can’t we have a leader like Netanyahu?
Just on the odd guess, R I, ours is a fat and happy deal, or has been anyhow, for so long that we’ve forgotten the need, and in consequence haven’t developed nor sought one (or two, or fifty). Even when we have been distressed, as at Sept. 11, our solutions have come with such a relative ease that we’ve allowed ourselves to abandon them after only a few years. Which only portends a peril to come again.
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall maintain a gentlemanly standard, and lose the Republic?”
What will it benefit the Republic when tyranny is pitted against tyranny, and tyranny of course wins?
Hang on Lee. We wouldn’t want to suggest that a deceitful and clever man couldn’t operate as a faithful servant of the republic, as a small r republican so to speak, to not slip into a tyrannical robe on account of his very deeds of deception and underhanded cleverness, would we? That wouldn’t square with our grasp of the meaning of sovereignty, would it?
Or, should we war with the Islamists by terrorizing the innocent as they do?
No, but then that isn’t the question, is it?
Let me put that more fully and directly, thus: what is the meaning of a “gentlemanly standard”? Or, what necessarily follows, what is the meaning of a “gentleman”?
“We wouldn’t want to suggest that a…”
I suppose not, but we don’t want to start shooting prisoners because that’s what the enemy is doing.
I do worry that our society is going to lose our culture completely if we don’t continue to hold up our standards.
*refresh*
“what is the meaning of a “gentlemanly standard”?”
That’s not my focus, I’m talking about:
But again, nobody said anything about shooting prisoners [that don’t need to be shot, I assume].
Yes, perhaps, but you quoted “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall maintain a gentlemanly standard, and lose the Republic?”
Evenso, getting their hands dirty is precisely what I’m suggesting the better statesmen are prepared to do. Or, should be prepared to do, in defense of their nation, in the face of opponents who can be presumed to be doing exactly that. This is the bottom line-ishness of warfare, after all. It isn’t a genteel business.
“Yes, perhaps, but you quoted…”
Yeah, sorry for the shorthand, that was the end of dicentra comment, but I was responding to the whole thing. Sorry for the confusion.
“But again, nobody said anything about shooting prisoners “
Well, I did, as an example of “descending to their level”.
There needs to be honor even in war, if one sees honor as a virtue.
I don’t think so about the honor part, exactly, [which is to say not exclusively]. This isn’t to say that there isn’t any honor involved at all in warfare, so much as to say that in matters of espionage and the like, any honor is often at a very distant and tenuous remove, if there be any at all in some such circumstances (which, likely, there isn’t, as it happens).
“in matters of espionage and the like, any honor is often at a very distant and tenuous remove, if there be any at all in some such circumstances “
I don’t know, it occurs to me there is a code of honor even within the world of espionage that is ever present, distinct as that code is from the one in war, which in turn is distinct from the civilian code. Assassination of national leaders for example. It’s just not done. If a foreign leader assassinated our president, we wouldn’t stoop to assassination in return. We’d send a few tank battalions in and eliminate the threat.
I’ll have to ponder on it, but in the present situation of discussing whether to employ the lefts tactics on them, I still hold my comparison of adopting terrorist tactics to war against Islam is a good one. That way lies madness.
I still insist that no one is suggesting using terrorist tactics or anything of the kind against political foes (although, facing up to the implications of fire bombing Tokyo or other cities in war? Not pretty).
However, espionage is a necessary tool of statecraft, whether in war or not (both, in other words), yet can and does involve the use of innocent human beings in ways strictly prohibited by genuine ethical codes, for the “sake” of a “greater” good, so-called. It isn’t bean bag, and it isn’t ethical in any strict or plain sense of the term. It’s what we call dirty (and rightly call dirty, so far as I understand it). And yet, because of the potential implications of refraining from such behavior (such as a widespread societal annihilation nowadays, for instance), it is used nevertheless. As we term it, a necessary evil, to be undertaken in exigent circumstances, though not to be promoted or celebrated in any event. The less said, the better, sort of deal.
I think you misunderstand me. I’m not saying anyone suggested using terrorist tactics against our political foes, I’m comparing the similarities of two circumstances: using the tactics of the left against our leftist political foes, and using terrorist tactics against our foes in the war on terror. Whatever was gained by adopting those tactics of the left(IE, the deconstruction of how language works for fun and profit) would be dwarfed by what we lost in the doing. Just as our enlightened western ideals would have to be forfeit to justify bombing a busload of schoolkids.
Also, you changed what I was talking about, a code of honor, to an ethical code. I think them two different things, though I’ll have to think on why exactly.
But let’s revert to where we started:
Tyranny is a very specific sort of deal. Entailing, I think, ethics at its root.
The political theater conducted by Nancy Pelosi with Ms. Fluke, using people’s ignorance and willingness to jump to conclusions against them, isn’t exactly tyranny, I don’t think. Nor would, say, a Breitbart, manipulating media in a similar manner to his political benefit be a function of tyranny.
Barry Obama making unopposed decrees from the White House, contravening Constitutional law, on the other hand, may very well be an act of tyranny, if, that is, he’s allowed to get away with it.
Let’s simply this a bit, tyrants lead to tyranny. That’s why you don’t see tyranny vs tyranny. It’s not a thing that happens without a war between two nations’ tyrants.
In modern terms it’s like seeing two dictatorships duke it out in a single nation. Can’t happen because you’re not a dictator if you have an equally powerful, internal opponent.
Or, maybe we could simplify it a bit rather that simply it. You know, like native English speakers might do.
As an unnamed thing*, I think you have your finger on the most important game theory question of our age though, Lee.**
*It’s probably named and I just don’t know what it is.
**As do others upthread. It’s not an easy question to approach or solve. ‘Cause of the practical ramifications and all.
“Tyranny is a very specific sort of deal. “
Too much license? OK then.
Anyone on our side wants to go Alinsky on the proggs, that’s on them. I’m not into it myself, is all I’m saying now.
Me, I think we should have stuck with gentlemen, and figured out whether gentlemen can’t be underhanded, sneaky and deceitful while maintaining their status as gentlemen. Cause, I have a suspicion that they can.
It’s rather easy to keep one’s status as a gentleman though, right?
I wouldn’t leave my sister with a gentleman not of her choosing. Wouldn’t trust him with the key to my liquor cabinet.
Gentleman is a bit like freeman that way.
I think you’d have to go on a case by case basis on the underhanded, sneaky and deceitful dealings.
Also, an agreed upon definition of gentleman.
Heh bh. See, I’d be tempted to define a gentleman as someone I’d trust alone with my wife.
I’d still be OK calling him a gentleman if he deceitfully told her that dress doesn’t make her look fat. =)
Edmund Burke, I’d suggest, was a gentleman. As was Pericles. And Cato. In our time? Everett Dirkson was a gentleman. Ronald Reagan was a gentleman. But not John McCain.
“As an unnamed thing*, I think you have your finger on the most important game theory question of our age though”
Here’s another part. I don’t think blowing up a bus full of school children would have any great effect on the Islamist terrorist. Hell, they will use one to hide behind while they shoot at at you.
In the same way, using the lefts tactics against them wouldn’t be effective, as far as accomplishing what we want to accomplish. They only work against a principled person.
Heh.
Good times.
(Unless upon googling Everett Dirkson I find him to be a rather unsociable fellow. No promises.)
It isn’t the left you’d be using the left’s tactics against though, at least not directly anyhow. It’s the common man one would be aiming at, to capture him for a political goal by means of his self-deceiving emotional outbursts and such.
More Machiavelli, less Savonarola.
Let us a propose a game theory version of a gentleman. It will tweak the meaning but also land on what people worry about — rightfully, I’d say.
Can gentleman, as a class, as a set, survive through more that five or six iterations of A Gentleman’s Game once others assume their markings but forgo their manners? That’s the thing that people are worried about.
I’d guess not.
Don’t we have to specify his manners distinctly first, lest we fall into trouble presuming what remains to be proved?
Not in the way you mean it, but in my different way, we see that fr Savonarola didn’t last one iteration of that game. That’s the concern people have in these interactions.
By the way, I don’t mean to say that Machiavelli is a gentleman (he something else altogether), but more perhaps that his political recommendations tilt in the gentleman’s direction.
True. My fault.
I imagine the markings as that which appears to all with normal faculties to be that of a gentleman and the basic manner as not first starting violence (of this or that real or metaphorical variety) on anyone marked as a fellow gentleman.
He can be gulled, at least once, by someone assuming the gentleman’s markings (who plays a round or two, say, with the gentleman’s manner but not with the gentleman’s intentions) but deviating from them thereafter? That is, he can’t sniff out an imposter prior to the imposter’s impostery being exposed, or to put it another way, doesn’t have mind-reading capabilities, acting instead solely on his perspicacity with regard to his empirical perceptions?
Let us imagine this proposed gentleman to be like ourselves. He can be fooled by markings. He can not read minds. Yet, he has his wits.
Remember, the value of a gentleman in politics is much like trust in the marketplace. It’s not a universal but contract law doesn’t survive too many contracts ripped up in the public square.
One should assume than a gentleman would see this dynamic and perhaps consider the more flexible options before him. Many might convert for comparative advantage before once being defeated.
assume that a gentleman would see
“It isn’t the left you’d be using the left’s tactics against though, at least not directly anyhow”
Ah, I see.
Yeah, I still don’t like it. Becoming that what I detest. Manipulating instead of reasoning, informing, teaching.
It’s all too underhanded, sneaky, and deceitful, to have a healthy outcome, even if successful. You would end up with people that agree to agree with you, but without a clue why they do. It could only be a short term gain at best.
It seems impossible to me to trick someone into being a self reliant free man. To truly be a free men, they have to know what it entails, value it, and defend it. Appealing to the baser instincts, as the left does, will not actuate the mechanism that makes men want to be free. It just makes them want to further indulge their baser instincts.
That’s what I mean when I say you can’t use leftist tactics without losing the conservatives goal.
The conversion for comparative advantage is to what now?
That is, do you intend it to entail an abandonment of his former orderly behavior, for a venture into ungentlemanly action, say, or how (we understand the ungentlemanly have to come from somewhere, anyhow, so why not from the ranks of the formerly gentlemanly, as soon as from elsewhere, yes?)?
You guy’s lost me. I don’t know game theory what you are talking about from squat.
I’ll watch…
Ah, well, then you don’t like politics on principle Lee. At least, not politics as Madison understood it to be possible. On account of the deception, and roiling faction and whatnot. But, these things are, I think, at least as I understood Madison to have understood them, facts of the matter not to be gotten rid of but merely to be manageable or mitigated through the opposition of power against power, or however they said it: interest made to oppose interest.
The gentleman would abandon the manner (become willing to take initial action against another marked as gentleman) while retaining the markings so as to become just as those he sees besting others of his own previous set.
To draw in interactions he was losing in and to win in interactions he was previously drawing in. He gains a personal advantage that is, for a moment, greater than the group trust between gentleman.
Imagine mugging another man in an alley and doing so easily because of nice clothing and lulling speech.
Such a mugging would be different than Madison would include in proper action, yes? This wouldn’t be factionalism, nicely offset, one faction against another. It would be a different thing.
It would be a way for one faction to best the others. It would be a faction that couldn’t be offset by others. Not unless they were equally willing to mug as well.
This resultant scenario wouldn’t be factionalism, it would be one spear carrying man meeting another spear carrying man at a watering hole without any sort of overarching allegiance. That is the beginning of politics and natural rights but it isn’t a constitutional republic.
Yep bh, that’s what I was imagining. The only question remaining, I suppose, being whether such underhandedness can be achieved; say in political dealings through the use of proxies (and infrequency of operation and so on), such that the gentlemanly markings remain in place for all intents and purposes (assuming the proxies don’t have to be snuffed out in the public square, on account of their own unwitting gullibility, say, by failing to perceive how and by whom they’ve been used as patsies).
As to my comment to Lee, it aimed more at “Manipulating instead of reasoning, informing, teaching ” than at “It seems impossible to me to trick someone into being a self reliant free man.” Madison wasn’t setting out to teach reasoning or informing as to freedom, and so on, at least not in the political architecture he was fashioning. Reasoning and building moral character was to be left to the civil society, schools, parents, churches and the like, as over against the political society, townhalls, mayors, assemblies, courts, governors, presidents and so on.
“But, these things are, I think, at least as I understood Madison to have understood them, facts of the matter not to be gotten rid of but merely to be manageable or mitigated”
We aren’t talking politics as Madison understood them, I don’t imagine. When I talk about leftist tactics, I’m less thinking of underhandedness, deception, and roiling faction, and more about what Jeff has been denouncing lo these many years…deconstruction of meaning, intent, and how language works. It’s not something that can be managed or mitigated through opposing interest, and using the tactic ourselves would only hasten our journey to utopianism, I think.
It seems to me that we see those wearing the markings of the gentleman (our sociable, good man, Obama) acting in a different manner. Which I’m sure you agree with. How long that can work? I don’t know. We share the opinion that this particular non-gentleman will be rebuked in the next election. But, we don’t really know that is is true. It just seems most likely to us.
Towards Lee’s thrust, which I think is a bit apolitical (not anti-political as I see it), there’s a different standard of action he’s proposing. Which isn’t just how gentleman deal with one another but how they might be judged, first, their own conscience, and, last, by God. Meta. For our purposes, it widens the board. Which, of course, you see by your extension to moral character and civil society.
In my opinion — what else do I have? — it’s a lucky thing that so many men take this meta approach.
Reigning in the powers available to the users of the “deconstruction of meaning, intent”, etc. is precisely an opposition of interest to interest though, isn’t it?
That is, one interest intends to maximize the scope and reach of government and uses deceptions, foibles of human nature, plucking at heartstrings, misuse of interpretation etc. to achieve those ends; the other interest intends to minimize these same aspects of government, to box government in, away from cramping the maximization of personal liberty, and also uses rhetorical deceptions, manipulations of public perceptions, misinterpretations of statists intentions etc., though both, presumably (or maybe not so, in the case of those who simply intend tyranny without compunction otherwise), are intent on achieving an end they understand as good, or better than what’s currently underfoot.
Winning the support of the people toward a view of what is better being the object, and what is not the object? The manner of the winning.
Jeff’s general thrust, as I’ve taken it, is to help people see how to resist the misuse of their own intentions, by showing where these occur, how these misinterpretations work, and how to refashion arguments in order to fight back against them. Not necessarily to forgo such misuses when they may prove worthwhile in defeating statists designs on ordinary folks liberties. Defeating self-deception, in other words, though not opposing self-deception in the opponent, if the opponent chooses to self-deceive.
But, I dunno. Maybe he’s more saintly than I have thought?
[There are a pair of racoons outside screaming at one another right now. It’s hilarious stuff, their fighting.]
Yikes, it’s later than I thought. Later, guys.
Yeah, I’m headed to the sack as well. g’night.
Interesting game.
Which era would you gather the “Gentlemanly Standard” from? Would it be an actual person or fictional character gentlemanly standard? Would we preclude Courage, Honor and Commitment? or are these considered part and pacel of any gentlemanly standard real or imagined?
sdferr put it best @ 2:06am – therefore I would posit that JeffG is the “Gentlemanly Standard”.
“Winning the support of the people toward a view of what is better being the object, and what is not the object? The manner of the winning. “
Well, as Jeff says, it matters how you get there.
Also, it isn’t enough to win the support of the people toward a view. To win, the people also have to give up the entailment mentality and the instinct to turn to government to solve their problems, take on responsibility for themselves and loved ones.
Again, you can’t trick people into being self reliant individuals.
It isn’t a question of tricking people (solely, anyhow). But neither is it a question of a duty to propound the truth as such. There is no categorical imperative in the American political compact.
It’s a question of appealing to the sentiments of citizens for the sake of the good you think you’ve found. And sure, getting to that good doesn’t mean fooling yourself or anyone else (which was the job of the lawgivers — we happen to call them founders — in the first iteration). But again, the politician has to face the fact that people aren’t going to sit still for a long digressive recounting of a political philosophical theory of good, which in the original sense of our political arrangement was to be taken care of in civil society in any event.
“Jeff’s general thrust, as I’ve taken it, is to help people see how to resist the misuse of their own intentions, by showing where these occur, how these misinterpretations work, and how to refashion arguments in order to fight back against them. Not necessarily to forgo such misuses when they may prove worthwhile in defeating statists designs on ordinary folks liberties.”
I’m under the impression Jeff thinks it’s a sin to use language in a way that strips a speaker of the meaning he intends, and gives that privilege to a democratic consensus of listeners. That is the primary tactic of the left I’m saying we shouldn’t use(I’ll assert there really are no other tactics that both sides don’t use with a clear conscience already).
In your game theory*, I think, it would be like your moves could be changed retroactively at any time by a simple agreement between any other two players, an unlimited number of times. How can anyone ever hope to win that game?
* Still a little fuzzy about all that…
Yeah, I don’t think that’s what politics is about, neither here in the US, nor anywhere I can think of, outside perhaps Houyhnhnmland.