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I get emails, redux redux

This time, from a flak of Jared Polis, an openly gay Colorado Congressman. She writes:

Dear Jeff

I just wanted to make sure that you saw the email below that Jared wrote when the Supreme Court decision came down this week. Jared was at the steps of the Supreme Court with thousands of others and I could hear the excitement in his voice. We now face an important quarterly deadline for his campaign. Donations made now before can be counted for this quarter and are very important to help him win re-election.
Please take a moment now and donate online at: https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/equalitywins

Thank you!

Lisa Kaufmann

PS: Even if you can only donate $3, $5, or $15, it really does make a difference!

Below this, as is consistent with the grammar of such entreaties these days, is a press release from Polis, a portion of which I’ll post here (emphases mine):

Today we have made great progress in the fight for equal rights. The Supreme Court’s decision will have an enormous impact on same-sex couples’ lives legally, fiscally and emotionally. Moments like these make me proud to be American - proud to live in a country where the constitution affirms that all people are created equal and where our judicial system is working to ensure all citizens have access to liberty and justice.

While today our country has taken an important step closer to full equality, there is still more work to be done. We must gain strength from this tremendous triumph and take action now to ensure that members of the LGBT community are treated equally and have the same protections under the law as every other American.

Let's work together to pass legislation ensuring that LGBT people and families are not discriminated against in the workplace, in schools or when it comes to housing or public accommodations.

Please contribute now so we can keep fighting for full equality.

Discrimination is just plain wrong. Today’s Supreme Court ruling should reinvigorate and reinforce our resolve to fight for justice. We cannot stand down until the country we love and honor respects and honors all of us.

****

First of all, discrimination is not “just plain wrong.” Were there no discrimination — for instance, between qualified engineers and LGBT applicants who demand the “civil right” to build bridges, even without the proper training — overpasses would collapse and people would die.

So this is just more pablum, and it effectively captures the shallow, sound-bite politics of our entitlement age.

Second, laws already exist to prevent workplace discrimination, school discrimination, and discrimination in public accommodations. Read between the lines here and it’s clear what Polis and his activist contingency want are to impose his own “civil rights / non-“discriminatory” beliefs on private citizens and religious institutions. That’s the next phase of the state’s attempt to corrupt individual religious rights and rights to assembly.

It’s obvious. This is what is meant by “more work to do” — Utopia always being a work in progress, a goal that is never to be reached but always sought, the price of which is the surrender of more and more liberty to social engineers, politicians, or would-be philosopher kings like Anthony Kennedy, whose majority opinion is an embarrassment of self-righteous arrogance.

But we’re to pretend otherwise, because it makes us feel swell to say that we were part of something historic.

— Which, that worked out real well with the election of our first Good Man Marxist, a half-black Barack Obama who was sold as a post-partisan, post-racial candidate, yet has done more to Balkanize the nation along ethnic, racial, and class grounds than any President in my lifetime.

All of which is merely a digression. Here is my reply to Lisa, who so gushingly embraces the gushing cynicism of Rep Polis:

Dear Lisa --

Do you really wish me to celebrate what was a perversion of our constitutional system? Am I supposed to luxuriate in judicial activism, where 4 lockstep ideologues and a sanctimonious Justice who essentially decreed more than half the population vile bigots, without taking into account the history and tradition of marriage, nor the potential legal consequences that occur when SCOTUS opens the door to expanding definitions of institutions previously fixed? You don't get to call a porterhouse a carrot and then claim to be a vegetarian for eating nothing but "carrots." Similarly, there was no reason to call a new legal relationship -- supported by people like me -- "marriage" in order to impose that fractive and divisive expansion of the institution on those who resisted it, for whatever their reasons, be they legal or religious.

Finally, do you really think that I'm the type of liberal status seeker who is so shallow and concerned with adopting de rigeur appearances that I will pretend that he fought for a "civil right", and that my support was instrumental in doing away with a category of "second class citizenship?"

These are false tropes. Lies. Professional victimization and political correctness marshaled as a way to shame a populace into accepting the decline of the civil society and embracing the religion of the secularist state.

Jared Polis is a Congressman. He's gay. So how exactly has the mean old world -- ruled over for too long by hidebound bigots like me (and the 89 Congressman who voted for DOMA, eg) held him back? If anything, it is far more fashionable to be openly gay and "fighting for a civil right" against slack-jawed, bitter-clingery anti-statist tradition these days than it is to be a person who cares about the method by which these decisions are being made -- how the political and socially expedient aspects of what are at base convoluted, illiberal decisions, one of which effectively disenfrachised the voters of California and declared Kamala whatsherface and Jerry Brown de facto dictators, destroy the systems of checks and balances at the heart of a healthy constitutional republic.

These decisions effectively -- through a legal strategy still playing out -- neutered, and perhaps finally even killed -- federalism. And this is something to cheer about?

When the populism pendulum swings -- and it will -- you and your Congressman and supporters of your ilk will be standing on the steps of Congress screaming bloody murder because some Republican governor refuses to uphold some environmental regulation, or some carbon credit scheme, etc.

And when that happens, you can think back to that excitement in Jared Polis's voice as he stood at the steps of the Supreme Court and cheered judicial tyranny all because it worked in his favor, for his cause, this time.

How you get there matters. As unfortunately we'll all learn soon enough.

That you would then turn around and use this post-constitutional, quintessentially PC pair of decisions to raise money just shows me how remarkably disconnected are you from the system of government and its founding documents Polis took an oath to defend.

That, my dear, is the long version. The short version is this: go fuck yourself sideways with an open umbrella. You sicken me.

Respectfully,
Jeff Goldstein

55 Replies to “I get emails, redux redux”

  1. Silver Whistle says:

    Kamala whatsherface

    Sounds like a new Ben n Jerry’s flavour.

  2. Spiny Norman says:

    Bravo, sir!

    I have to wonder, what are the odds someone (your new friend Lisa or some flunky) will read your reply and, because they can’t understanding a word of it, declare you a sub-literate right-wing redneck?

    Heh.

  3. Spiny Norman says:

    Damned HTML fail.

  4. Darleen says:

    As usual, the Left has proven that they are, indeed, fascists.

  5. sdferr says:

    Just to point out: there is an element of progress, the idea of progress, and most especially of the idea of progress as the fundamental idea of political organization, which is both revealed in the decision and not so surprising about it.

    Namely, this: the contempt of the past. The contempt of the past as a matter of course.

    For not only are the legislators who passed DOMA found to be bigoted, or wanting as regards right moral standing, but so, indeed, are all those now dead people who took marriage in the traditional sense as normative. They’re all — one and all — held in contempt as impossibly bigoted, as the very picture of wrongdoers. And this for all time heretofore, and all peoples who stood so, both then, and now.

    It’s both quite the indictment and condemnation, and quite the claim to perfected wisdom.

    But this is at the heart of progress as such. And as the heart of the matter, shouldn’t be missed.

  6. serr8d says:

    Perfect.

  7. happyfeet says:

    4 lockstep ideologues and a sanctimonious Justice who essentially decreed more than half the population vile bigots

    ***

    For not only are the legislators who passed DOMA found to be bigoted…

    you see this interpretation a lot but I think Mr. Hugh has it right here is a quote:

    We can see this fundamental misunderstanding clearest in a quote Patterico used to prove a different (and correct) point — that Bill Clinton is a flaming hypocrite:

    Anthony Kennedy says those responsible for DOMA had the “purpose” to “disparage and to injure” same-sex couples:
    The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.

    [the key bit is the “by its marriage laws” part]

    Patterico didn’t realize he had shifted subjects, from a pair of individuals to marriages: Kennedy isn’t saying that the constitution bans disparaging gays; he says that the constitution bans disparaging some legal marriages (hence the associated spouses) as not as legitimate as others. One may agree or disagree with Kennedy’s position, but it’s not what many conservatives claim it is.

  8. happyfeet says:

    link

  9. leigh says:

    We’re on the verge of a global World War III. I sick of talking about fags and their relationships. We have bigger fish to fry.

    This is just a fabulous squirrel.

  10. Darleen says:

    griefer, it’s a distinction without a difference. Kennedy & ilk have made up out of whole cloth something that has never existed in human history

    same-sex marriage

  11. cranky-d says:

    Patterico has not exactly covered himself with glory in my book, so I don’t care what he thinks about anything.

  12. happyfeet says:

    Kennedy & ilk have made up out of whole cloth something that has never existed in human history

    no Darleen not really… the states did that

    that’s why Mr. Hugh sees the DOMA decision as upholding federalist principles

  13. Alec Leamas says:

    There must be demand, somewhere, for this sort of exhibitionist contrarianism. I just don’t think it is here.

  14. cranky-d says:

    That won’t stop it from continuing, however.

  15. BigBangHunter says:

    – The only real difference between now and “then” is that sticking it to the man used to be the radicals way of being different. Now its gone mainstream which means its days are numbered.

    – Unless, of course, it turns out it was always just about posturing and peer acceptamce, in which case it will last until the next generations need to find a new “difference” to embrace for appearences.

  16. leigh says:

    That’s it exactly, BBH. It’s preening by the insecure in their own beliefs in order to be accepted by a peer group they aspire to be a part of. It makes them feel morally superior to us conservative roobs.

    When I was teaching college, a lot of the young girls in my Psychology classes felt the need to act out by becoming absolute freaks. They’d cut their hair in unflattering ways, dye it unnatural colors, pierce their bodies, get tattoos and curse a lot. It was like they went out of their way to be so outrageous that someone would tell them to knock it off, already. Proggs are a lot like those girls. They’ll keep pushing and pushing until we’ve had enough and knocks their blocks off.

  17. dicentra says:

    When the populism pendulum swings — and it will — you and your Congressman and supporters of your ilk will be standing on the steps of Congress screaming bloody murder because some Republican governor refuses to uphold some environmental regulation, or some carbon credit scheme, etc.

    I am sorely tempted to agitate for conservative governors to start doing this as hard and fast as possible, but the chaotic free-for-all that would ensue, from everyone breaking all of the rules, would destroy the Republic faster than the Left will by it’s own self.

  18. Drumwaster says:

    but the chaotic free-for-all that would ensue, from everyone breaking all of the rules, would destroy the Republic faster than the Left will by it’s own self.

    So we should accept the status quo of only those on the Left disobeying the rules (and being rewarded/promoted/protected for doing so), while the rest of us are forced to blindly struggle within a system that exists solely to inhibit our efforts at self-correction? I prefer to be more fair than that, in that once the social/legal/political rules have been broken (and that break having been set into law by being called a “tax”), they have been broken for all interested parties going on into the future, and no one can claim “clean hands” about the rules that one side never really believed in to begin with… (Moral high grounds don’t exist in foxholes under fire.)

    Hold them to their own rules… Use their own tactics against them whenever possible… and when (not if) the Republic collapses, remember whose rules caused the collapse…

    Make them own it, good and hard…

    PS: It’s already too late to save the Republic in its current form. Best idea would be to start figuring out where the pieces will land, and how best to arrange things once the rubble quits tumbling.

  19. dicentra says:

    In other news, it’s 103° here in Salt Lake, just as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow.

    NOT the best time to have a swamp cooler instead of AC, is what I’m sayin.

  20. Blake says:

    Orwell placed a 15 minute time limit on hate.

    Yet, bitter clingers have endured 5+ years of hate.

    It’s getting a bit old.

  21. Blake says:

    dicentra, respectfully, because you’re one of the smartest people I know, the Republic is dead. The rule of law has been perverted, at best, and, at worst, ignored when it collides with the goals of the current administration.

    It’s all well and good to play by the rules, but rules only matter when both sides abide by the agreed upon rules.

  22. newrouter says:

    it is the heat sometimes not the humidity

  23. LBascom says:

    Glad you’re feeling better Jeff.

    For myself, I’ve learned “our side” cares no more about objective truth than the other. It’s all tribes and cliques, truth and justice but mere talismans for the group justifying their allegiances.

    “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

  24. Jeff G. says:

    that’s why Mr. Hugh sees the DOMA decision as upholding federalist principles

    And as ever, he’s wrong, always trying to put a happy face on some massive catastrophe.

    The DOMA ruling coupled with the California ruling, as I explained yesterday, essentially ended federalism.

    Hewitt told us Mitt Romney was a swell, conservative winner.

    I’ll pass on Hugh’s opinion. The federal government has every right to define marriage for the purposes of how the federal government wishes to recognize marriage. Kennedy is a fucking tool and and an arrogant dust-farting scold who needs to be slapped with Rosie O’Donnell’s liberated underpants.

  25. JHoward says:

    So we should accept the status quo of only those on the Left disobeying the rules (and being rewarded/promoted/protected for doing so), while the rest of us are forced to blindly struggle within a system that exists solely to inhibit our efforts at self-correction? I prefer to be more fair than that, in that once the social/legal/political rules have been broken (and that break having been set into law by being called a “tax”), they have been broken for all interested parties going on into the future, and no one can claim “clean hands” about the rules that one side never really believed in to begin with… (Moral high grounds don’t exist in foxholes under fire.)

    Hold them to their own rules… Use their own tactics against them whenever possible… and when (not if) the Republic collapses, remember whose rules caused the collapse…

    Make them own it, good and hard…

    But they have no rules. And being denialists and worse, they will never own a thing. This is sociopathology.

    Make them own it rhetorically, Jeff’s gift. As for structuralism, it is akin to morality. The former cannot stand without the latter, the very reason you justly oppose this Hive.

    John Galt:

    ‘The political system we will build is contained in a single moral premise: no man may obtain any values from another by resorting to physical force. Every man will stand or fall, live or die by his rational judgment. If he fails to use it and falls, he will be his only victim. If he fears that his judgment is inadequate, he will not be given a gun to improve it. If he chooses to correct his errors in time, he will have the unobstructed example of his betters, for guidance in learning to think; but an end will be put to the infamy of paying with one life for the errors of another.’

    Let’s grant some conditions: We live in a surveillance State, within a command monetary economy, under the hard Marxist ideology permeating press, academy, and church, appealing for mercy for all but food and shelter — and being dispensed even them to a vast degree — playing games with the illusion of political choice while the real game and its terrible stakes play out entirely elsewhere, and wanting only for the approval of our peers before we call any of it what it really is. It’s tyranny.

    On our best days the whole of us cannot lobby our oppressors for a reprieve from even one of these tyrannies, and on our worst we welcome the chains of half a dozen kinds of Old Socialism on our shoulders for entire decades: Medicine, welfare, education, retirement, “social justice”, and liberty itself.

    One of the reasons I don’t comment anymore is because this is all past hence and most has been since at least JFK. But to become its tactical analog is to lose the point of the Individual, which is to say the point of Mind.

    None of what we’re experiencing and are about to experience is unique, unexpected, or mysterious. What it is is of its own, wretched, failed stripe. To beat it you must be prepared to have it first beat you, which it already has and by which action it brands itself as fundamentally different from you.

    It has no mind. It is Mindless.

    What it can never take is your mind and that shall absolutely but only be its undoing.

  26. happyfeet says:

    not Hewitt this is Big Lizard Hugh

  27. newrouter says:

    who is this lizard what big hugh?

  28. steveaz says:

    Surprise! Leigh and I agree on this: the issue of Gay Marriage ™ is a bunch of hooey!

    Mark my words. In ten years when the actuaries go to count the number of “gay marriages” extant and functioning in America, they will discover a statistical nullity. Sure, there’ll be a few here and few there, but, statistically, they’ll barely exceed the bean-counters’ margin of error for their voluntary census.

    This has been a media stunt all along, with its target audience being adolescent urban folks who are still in that experimental stage of pubescence (who can be forgiven for identifying themselves with their dabble in erotic “play”), and an aged, licentious cohort, also ensconced in cities, that is constitutionally incapable of attracting serious courtiers, and whose members – like most social predators who stalk primate societies, cannot nourish long-term, monogamous relationships.

    I also see a boon for the legal profession oriented to profit from “gay divorce.” Gay couples, as incontinent and prone to disruption as they are, represent a fruitful new tranche of the DINKs (dual-income no kids) populace. And this tranche’s individuals’ penchants for infidelity can only make the legal profession salivate over the prospects for contriving copious claims demanding tort among this wealthy, newly-legalized class.

    So, let’s tally the actual gay marriage licenses in a decade, and see whether today’s hullabaloo matches the predicted benefits (and foretold harms) tomorrow. I say it won’t, and, aside from the fortunes made advertising Gay-Marriage ™ by politicians, lawyers and media (but I repeat myself), the emotions out-poured on all sides of this issue will appear excessive and clownish in retrospect.

    Now, can we get back to lowering the tax burden and reducing gas-prices for all of us Americans, please?

  29. Blake says:

    steveaz, what I find even more hypocritical about SSM is that the same people who wrecked traditional marriage point to the destruction of traditional marriage as a reason for SSM.

  30. cranky-d says:

    I think you are conflating being sick of hearing about Gay Marriage and thinking it doesn’t matter.

  31. leigh says:

    Exactly, cranky.

  32. cynn says:

    I certainly agree with you Jeff that Polis has overstepped the tacky boundary. Gays of all people should know better.

  33. BigBangHunter says:

    – What will be most informative is the raw and openly hostile reaction of the next generations that will enherit all the lovely financial results of this three generations slouth and averice.

    – Good fucking luck trying to make any sense out of the social mess at that point.

  34. cynn says:

    Why would that be different than any other period?

  35. BigBangHunter says:

    Why would that be different than any other period?

    – Spoken like a true down to earth taker.

    – But then, I don’t blame you for whistling past the angry mobs to come. Just glad its you and not me that will have to deal with it sport.

  36. happyfeet says:

    Big Fucking Lizards Is What The Deal Is

    These Lizards Are Big As Fuck You Do NOT Want To Fuck With Them

    There’ll Be Fire On The Mountain

  37. Gulermo says:

    “That won’t stop it from continuing, however.”

    Do an “Alex B.” on him. He has previosly stated that is acceptable behavior.

  38. BigBangHunter says:

    – From the book “Good help us”……

    Pelosi said she believes that members of Congress will do what’s right for the country when it comes to approving immigration reform. “And it’s certainly right for the Republicans if they ever want to win a presidential race,” she said.

    – Because, well, nothing says leadership and personal ethics like race pandering to win elections don’t cha know.

    – Good fucking lord, what have we come too……

  39. BigBangHunter says:

    – The Left must have even less respect for these useful idiot Pols that they have dancing on the identity politics strings than we do if thats possible.

  40. happyfeet says:

    hah noodles did an ipo

    nobody tells me anything

  41. palaeomerus says:

    So anybody out there know how to barbecue several pounds of shame, digust, and regret? Do you smear mustard and cracked pepper on the outside to form a crust? Wrap it up in foil? I need to know because the fourth is coming up. Should I light the coals with a rolled up copy of the constitution maybe? Drink Belgian beer? Eat a gluten free organic whole grain trisket and separate the recycling? How does a subject celebrate the day we stopped being subjects after becoming a subject again? Will I need to go to the red wing store and pick out an OSHA and EPA compliant face stamping boot?

  42. happyfeet says:

    yes you should drink Belgian beer

  43. newrouter says:

    i saw a belgian friar with a girl on his knee drinking beer once in bruge

  44. happyfeet says:

    that’s a memory that’ll gitcha when you look back

  45. newrouter says:

    like johneffink it is seared into memory

  46. Blake says:

    palaeomerus, sheesh, you don’t barbecue shame, disgust and regret. You wallow in it. While drinking heavily.

    Funny how the therapy for shame, disgust and regret is the same as the therapy for breaking up with a girlfriend/going through a divorce.

  47. leigh says:

    Definitely. Take it on the gin and get out of town for a week or two.

  48. happyfeet says:

    or you could do tequila shots and nibble on saladitos and wonder why that Avengers movie looks so cheesy in high def

  49. newrouter says:

    eat healthy eat carrots™

  50. happyfeet says:

    disney people are natural born fascists it’s in their dna

    they even polluted espn with it

  51. happyfeet says:

    you know if that were on a different thread it might make a modicum of sense but nevertheless i stand by this sentiment

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