Some advice for my fellow classical liberals / constitutional conservatives going forward: embrace bemusedness. Lead from behind. Point and laugh and shake your heads. Smile knowingly.
Be not bothered by the smug lectures from progressives who today wish to chide you or molest you with their sudden interest in “reality,” and then declare your demise is complete. Let them stay drunk on their pride; let them embrace the demographics they’ve decided is tantamount to destiny. Let them march toward the culmination of their historical dialectic, boastful, filled with hubris, clinging to the materialism they pretend to have shunned. Because the looks on their faces when they reach their destination will be absolutely worth the wait.
Become bemused.
And take heart: We now have dibs on “I told you so”– not with respect to the President or the professional left or even many in the media and academia, who have spent decades finessing history and massaging narratives and dumbing down the “masses” until they could seize this particular historical moment, to sabotage the last best hope on earth and turn it into just another socialist police state run by a permanent ruling class and its bureaucratic army (that is, them) — but with the useful idiots who they wooed and fooled and used to secure their power. And though that’s cold comfort, at least it’s something to hold onto when it all goes pear shaped. Which it necessarily must. The laws of economics can’t be wished out of being.
Not being surprised at the coming collapse will hopefully give us an edge.
One other thing, and I’m serious about this: consider some sort of identification, a kind of marker, that lets others of your kind know who you are and where you stand implicitly. Get over your aversion to tattoos; a small “live free or die” or “don’t tread on me” somewhere on your person might just one day save your from the zombie hordes. Hell. Use henna if you have to. If you’re into irony, maybe a yellow Star of David sewn to your suit jacket.
Because make no mistake. They’ll be coming. They have to. It’s just a matter of how long it takes before the revolution starts and the country divides into factions. The takers have now voted themselves your labor and liberty. But I suspect when it comes time to forcibly take it, that’s when the seriousness sets in.
Our political class can’t help us. It’s just not in them, precisely because they lack any sort of core conviction. I’ve been saying for years that it’s the ruling class against the rest of us, that party doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t.
Be your own master. Smile. Knowingly. And wait.
Our time will once again come.
I think a small Gadsen flag tattoo might work nicely.
I’ve been here before, under a number of names, but I don’t remember them and/or they’ve probably been banned. So just assume you know me.
So wait, after Jeff’s ranting months ago where he went on and on about how backing Romney would just embolden the ruling elite of the party to keep offering up big government statists, and that people should refuse to support Republicans that aren’t classic liberals, and yadda-yadda-yadda. After all that, it turns out that Jeff really wanted Romney to win because of the evils and the lesser?
Pffft.
Maybe the next time the Republicans nominate a candidate you should just get on board, because by election day, you’ll be on board anyways.
I think I’m going to aim for detached instead. No offense, but bemused is too close to ironic —which is no small part of the reason we find ourselves where we find ourselves today.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/49722937
They’d better home that group stays subsumed beneath the metrosexualized entitlement whores like the little nasty wuss commenting just above. Because that’s one Beast that’s best left unstirred.
Become bemused.
be•muse v. to bewilder or confuse (someone); be•mused adj. preoccupied; lost in thought.
Strictly speaking, that is. People now use it to mean “detachedly amused,” but the dictionaries haven’t picked up on it.
oh. not Ernst. Seriously!
Yeah. All Jeff’s fault because he didn’t get on board soon enough.
Try harder we much!
I was just about to order a Gadsden flag to replace Old Glory outside my house.
The Republic is dead. We’ve become what Madison feared most: a democracy.
Even those who thought Whittle was way off in last night’s stratosphere lounge broadcast can likely agree that he is right on the point that too many Americans have lost their virtue, and that nothing is going to change as far as the government goes until a majority of them have it again. Recall that Friedman also stated that government won’t change until even the wrong elected officials are willing to do the right thing because that is what the electorate demands of them.
Right now, the majority of the electorate demands free stuff, so the politicians will give it to them, until the money runs out.
So, I fully agree with this post. It’s time and past time to ignore the takers. Let them say what they want, and don’t give them the satisfaction of letting it bother you. We know they are on the path to doom.
In the mean time, we must prepare, and be vigilant. Sooner or later, after they have burned through what they have already taken, they’ll come for the last of what we have.
I’m not giving it to them.
The takers have now voted themselves your labor and liberty.
Oh, they’ve been taking it since before I was born. We were just lying back and thinking of England.
Now? It’s not really worth it anymore.
‘home’ > ‘hope’. Steenking Droid.
I got a better idea slipperyslope. How about next time, instead of relying on my antipathy towards the liberal fascist flavor of the day to keep me and social conservatives, constitutional conservatives and classical liberals like me on board with the managerial-welfare state GOP establishment technocrat flavor of the day, you give me somebody I can support?
Don’t believe so.
Were. Last minute.* Didn’t help.
*altho best I can tell my missing vote wasn’t much noticed in the fifty grand my state lost its way by.
BHO, in victory: “Tonight, more than 200 years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward.”
Despite having been a former colony, the unperfected USA today retains none of the virtue of its one-time victim status. In determining its own destiny it had become too successful and now must be tamed.
Yeah, bemusement. With an iron core of stoicism and preparedness. Because of the inherent unsustainability of our Leftist economic environment, that is doomed to certain failure.
I’m just waiting for news reports on more layoffs.
BHO is going to “perfect” our union?
Joy.
Queue a variation on the “wrecker” theme in the next few days.
The market is down 350 points plus as I type.
In my mind the phrase “Toqueville limit” has taken hold. As in we have reached it.
Completely devoid of any irony, this message arrives in the work email inbox this AM sent out by a starry-eyed, Obama-supporting colleague.
My response:
“Hey, ______. Ooopsy! You accidentally sent this to my email instead of @whitehouse.gov. Any potential 2012 charitable contributions FROM ME just got offset by the tax increase you voted FOR ME last night. Maybe you could. . . . Forward!?”
I was chatting with the sporting goods guy at Wal Mart this morning.
He mentioned some guy had come in early in the AM and purchased $600 worth of .45 ACP. Another customer was in a short time later and purchased $300 worth of ammo.
the_pill, johntaylor, sometroll, shotbythedictator: in case you were wondering what your earlier names here were.
And in a way you’re right — not that I shouldn’t have criticized Romney and pleaded with my fellow “big tent” GOPers to go with someone conservative — but that I did in the end relent. Much as it killed me to do so.
And that’s because I really do believe we hit the tipping point, and this would be our last chance to at least give ourselves 4 more years to beat the drum about returning to first principles. Which may even have worked if the economy started to turn around, and people started equating that with the fiscal and economic policies of conservatism.
I saw this happening in the States, where GOP governors were turning things around. It just didn’t carry over nationally in places like Wisconsin or VA or OH or in a number of the Senate races like Indiana and Missouri.
I can’t help that we live in a world of soundbites and bumperstickers — nor that most people in this country are too dumb to know what it is they’re doing when they vote, or how it will impact them going forward.
But I do have two young children. And I wished another four years to try to affect a paradigm shift in the thinking in this country. Romney, if nothing else, would have given me that. And really, that’s about all I hoped to get out of him.
Jrez, you should have had him adopt your family since we’re all redistributionists now.
BHO continuing: “It moves forward because of you. It moves forward because you reaffirmed the spirit that has triumphed over war and depression, the spirit that has lifted this country from the depths of despair to the great heights of hope, the belief that while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people.”
One Family . . . One nation . . . One people.
I’d be buying up ammo, too, Ernst. But I can’t afford it right now, sadly.
Nicely put, Whadjuwant.
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
I hear more an echo of “Ein Vaterland . . . Ein Reich . . . Ein Volk” cranky-d, but yeah, it’s a commonplace sort of rhetoric. The outstanding question is whether their are intentions harbored beneath, and of what sort those are.
“there are” — such is the fruit of sleepless night.
Whaddya mean you can’t afford more ammo? Haven’t you heard? Financial irresponsibility is the new normal.
Let’s not end up like that Star Trek episode where they had a flag and constitution, but could not read or understand it. Oh fuck, about 52% of the voters are already there.
You’re a much better historian than I, sdferr. I should have known what you meant.
EBL – “The Omega Glory”
And yes, I got that from memory.
Clearly we’re going to have to dumb down our message.
up down black white
David Brooks is William F. Buckley.
As far as Obama’s intentions go, we already know he’s a liberal fascist, so using fascist rhetoric is second nature to him.
dicentra,
Great comment of yours over at NRO on the Steyn piece. A feckless, failshit country truly has the leader it deserves.
The message cannot be dumbed down. They are going to have to learn it for themselves.
It will be painful. There will be blood.
Damn
We at least have the sense that we’re in for a new order, a fundamentally new order: it’s just that we’ve no idea what that order will be, precisely because that order has been heretofore hidden — though many well intentioned men attempt to discover it by means of careful investigation. But the new order may be so new (as an amalgam of never before synthesized elements, for instance, or even otherwise, as entirely novel — though this latter is highly doubtful) that there simply aren’t historical analogs on which to depend for guidance.
I’m seeing posts here and there saying Obama lacks a mandate.
For those who haven’t noticed, Obama doesn’t need a mandate. He can rule by decree (executive order), and neither of the other two branches are willing or able to stop him.
If the EPA can define carbon dioxide as a pollutant event though it’s a natural byproduct of respiration and necessary food for plants and trees, what exactly is outside his reach?
The administrative state is so large and powerful now, especially with ObamaCare, that legislation is only needed for window dressing.
Mandate. Yeah, right.
The message cannot be dumbed down. They are going to have to learn it for themselves.
It will be painful. There will be blood.
I think between many learned this between 08 and 12. The problem is that not ENOUGH of them did.
And Romney – he didn’t exactly shun the big-government ideology. Not really.
And women – they’re simply too effen stupid to vote.
One women just told me that under Romney, women would have gone back to life as it was in the 1950s.
^too stupid to vote, amiright?
Tattoos and ammo would be nice, but I lost about $400 on Intrade last night. Hopefully there will be some left when I replenish my slush fund.
As for attitudes, I remain deeply disappointed in the ignorance, envy, greed, and sloth of my neighbors, and grimly determined not to pay for their mistakes. I remain part of the pack, not the herd, and I refuse to bow my head to accept the collar that my bleating neighbors crave. I will continue to preach freedom, and to work around the media gatekeepers who try so hard to keep me silent.
But yes, 2012 marks a tipping point for me. Until now, I’ve been dedicated to avoiding the coming crash, or at least mitigating its worst effects. Now I’m resigned to it, and my mitigation efforts extend only as far as my loved ones. Our would-be masters, and the idiots who empower them, are going to meet the Gods of the Copybook Headings in a few short years, and I’m not going to be standing nearby when they make their acquaintance.
We fought with honor, and we lost. I will wear my browncoat with renewed wistfulness.
Mandate is Latin for dong in newspeak.
[…] Some suggestions for conservatives in Tipping Point. […]
Not the Chinese derived dong, we take it, but the “dick in hand” sort of dong (glancing back at the manus bit)?
Blood and Pain is dumbing down the message for those who will learn no other way.
dong dildo giant rubber cock of the all powerful all conquering hopenchanger
newspeak latin is flexible.
I have often fantasized about getting a tat, only I could never think of something I’d want on my skin for the rest of my life.
I think I just found one.
Great comment of yours over at NRO on the Steyn piece. A feckless, failshit country truly has the leader it deserves.
Thanks! 76 upticks, a record for me.
Of course, Steyn is still true to the cause with these two latest:
Les mots justes
Book Relaunch
Muse.
Loud.
All day (even if they are douches)
I will wear my browncoat with renewed wistfulness.
This especially hurts knowing what a twit Whedon is.
Why the Chinese, by the way.
Like this bit of Steyn SW linked earlier:
A-fucking-men brother Steyn.
Cassandra’s fate was not a happy one.
Much further into his speech, BHO says (without the slightest hint of an acknowledgement of the ironies inherent in his words):
So again, how do the SEALS think of the President who is “behind them watching their back(s)” as their retired comrades die on rooftops without hope of relief? How do the small businessmen — who have been sacrificing their own interests for the interests of their employees — now think to make further “cuts” as they witness their prospects diminish for another four years? Does BHO not know? Or does he know and refuses to say what he knows?
I’ll do a post about this later — the pragmatists made their fucking bed and ours, as well, so they need to be called out — but for now, I’ll just mention it here: Republican turnout in 2012 was less than 2008 or 2004.
I suspect some of the Senate losses in close races were due to Mitt’s absence of coattails. Hell. Seems he was wearing a cropped, acid wash jean jacket.
Over to you, deadrody. Or, so long, and thanks for all the Mittens.
Barack Obama had nearly 10 million fewer votes last night than in 2008.
And he won.
Evidently, some people just couldn’t see the enormous difference between ObamaCare and its original author. And there were all the other similarities I pointed out back in the primaries, too.
People have lost hope in the government. Maybe last night’s election was really a mandate for letting the whole thing implode, then starting up from scratch, maybe as several countries.
BHO, shows his sleight of hand (in a moment if self-indulgence?), his “getting one over”:
So the small is used for the purposes of the big, without ever acknowledging the big before it is to be put into action. And this is “self-rule”, or “deliberation” at its pinnacle, “the best”.
The Romans had a proverb: Eventus stultorum magister.
A lot of folks are in for an unforgettable lesson.
Ouch.
Excellent, Dale.
Muse.
Loud.
All day (even if they are douches)
“Uprising”, I presume? Well, you can take pleasure in the fact that every time you enjoy it, you’re pissing them off. “You’re doing it wrong!”
fodder for the cynics
Cynics = people who don’t believe in my greatness.
“Uprising”, I presume?
The Resistance and The 2nd Lawalbums, actually.
Then the guy’s voice got on my nerves for being too whiny.
Jeff, pardon me for concern-trolling a bit, but here’s my 2 cents (from the happy vantage point of having voted for Obama and watching him win).
You should never have relented and sided with Romney. If you’re right about anything then it was to label him as a big government statist and say, “No thanks.” A Romney win (IMHO) would not have bought you four years to beat the drum. I think it would have done one of two things:
1. Things get better: The establishment cheers, “Compassionate conservatism works! Big government collectivism is the way to go, so long as it’s cherry red flavored rather than blueberry.” Go home tea party. You were useful idiots that helped us get here, now out of the way.
2. Things get worse: Conservatism fail! It’s like Bush III. Back to the blue team.
I don’t see any path from a Romney presidency that leads to limited government Republicanism.
So the best case for you is that over the next four years, things get significantly worse, and you can bang your “Told you so” drum.
The best case for me is that over the next four years, things get better, and Republicans stay convinced that they can win with only the angry white vote.
Voting for Obama a second time makes you an imbecile. But thanks for sharing, jackhole.
Things have had four years to get better. Obama has had more consecutive months of unemployment over 7 or 8% (I forget which and I’ll have to find the graphic) Than all other Presidents who experienced recessions combined. This is the longest recession/stagnant economy since the Great Depression.
Just how in the hell does Obama plan to make things better? Hope the Chinese bomb Pearl Harbor?
There was post a day or two ago: 44 years to get back to where employment levels were when Obama took office at the current rate of “growth.”
But hey, 5 1/2 million jobs bitches!
Well, given that it’s my drum and I own the drum sticks, your opinion doesn’t mean much in that regard.
Unless we’re going to silence right-leaning hate sites, of course. Which I wouldn’t put past this douche, who received 8.5 million less votes than last time.
Things can’t and won’t get better now. And you won’t be able to blame Bush. For Obama and the Marxists he’s surrounded himself with, things collapsing is a feature not a bug; if you actually care about things not collapsing, and you voted for Obama, you’re the very definition of a useful idiot. IMHO.
I’m sure they’ll find somebody else to blame.
“…they’ll find somebody else to blame.”
Won’t be hard at all: the willing victims are rushing forward to claim the mantle.
Evidently the message of this post was that I want you to kill black people.
These are the people we lost to. Just a reminder.
I wonder how cheerful and smug he will be in four years after getting what he thought he wanted.
tweet this
With first post-racial president reelected, ‘F**k white people’ trends
Well, I’m going to go play some Halo4.
Biting the hands that feed them.
Only in self-defense.
Or is submitting to physical as well as financial rape the way to prove your pc bona fides these days?
oh good more rape theorizing
I used to eat Chocolate Babies at the movies. Kind of a random memory, but it does tie killing black people and killing babies together.
They’re all pink and wet and oozing-red on the inside, regardless of skin color.
Or so I’ve been told.
You forgot the chocolatey flavor.
If #killwhitey were trending, I’d have gone with that.
Suddenly I have a craving for cherry cordials.
The Melians likely understood rape was entailed in the consequences the Athenian ambassadors were spelling out to them, yet the Athenian ambassadors also understood it was not necessary to broach the subject: so it passed unsaid.
Nah, you’re probably just wrong. And if things are better in 4 years, you’ll just say (a) they aren’t really better, or (b) they’re better but it’s through trickery and it’s really, really going to really collapse this time, extra big, because we waited longer, or (c) it’s better because of Republicans in the house.
Actually, you’ll probably say all three at the same time.
Then something about being enslaved by the state. It’s coming. It’s all the big 60 year Socialist Enslavement Plan ™, passed from one generation of liberal elite to the next through a secret Stonecutters guild carnal ceremony that involves a drunk goat with the words “American Publik” spray-painted on its side.
Finally, you’ll let people know that if they send you a check, you’ll ban anyone who shows up and kicks their intellectual asses.
Forward!
. And if things are better in 4 years,
they won’t be so the rest is just straw man flailing
. And if things are better in 4 years,
try running your car without gas
I don’t even know what an intellectual ass is, but my money’s on slipperyslope not having the ability to kick them.
Steven Hayward:
. And if things are better in 4 years,
There’s GOT to be a pony around here somewhere!
Sure! A big wooden one with Greeks in it. And we just hauled it inside the gates.
It’s like you guys have all forgotten how exactly the same Romney would be on economic issues. Last I checked, he was planning on significant deficit – grow our way out of it – spending.
Isn’t it remarkably easy to forget what never was? Moron.
Ah, it’s the old feedback ignoring “static model” presumption that revenue must go down whenever the tax rate is cut. Y’know, the one that countries currently lowering their tax rates to be more competitive and attract businesses have rejected in an effort to raise MORE revenue and have better employment figures.
Last I checked
You should check again.
Why is an Obamabot attacking a president who never was in order to defend a demonstrably incompetent president-elect? This must be one of those intellectual ass kickings he talked about delivering here.
Last I checked, he was planning on significant deficit – grow our way out of it – spending.
proggtards- being stupid is credentialed by nea and seiu
Don’t use twitter all that much since it’s blocked from work and I have problems keeping up with the flood of mini-posts but that “Jeff wants to kill black people” idiot managed to draw a snarky tweet from me. He should be proud.