So now you know what we’ve been up to lately. And here you all thought I was just slacking. Shame on you.
Anyway, I hope you all got a chance to listen to Levin’s show last evening; his liberty amendment agenda sounds promising, using the 2nd amendment to article 5 to have the states call an amendment convention, essentially circumventing the federal government ruling class and moving directly to rein in their power. That Levin is an originalist — that is, that he plans to look at the intent of the Framers, using Madison’s notes, etc., to re-establish constitutional initiatives as they were purposely constructed — ties in with my long-time efforts here to revitalize the notion of intentionalism, which will hopefully find a venue to flourish going forward, the upshot of which has been an attempt to teach the importance of language function with respect to stable rule of law and consistent governance. The adopted, trendy assumptions the left has all but institutionalized (with the help of tacit acceptance from many on the right), incoherent though they are, have a real and powerful impact on law, legislation, and the entire experiment in consensual government.
But such a final push as Levin outlines has to start with local politics, and local politics begins with making people aware of what’s happening locally, regionally, and nationally. Clearly, we here in what my friends call the donut — we represent a growing number of contiguous outlying counties that surround the Denver / Boulder doughnut hole owned by the hipsters and Democrats, and the many out-of-state (and illegally out-of-country) imports who have taken over Colorado government, at least for the time being — are stepping up, making the kinds of waves that tend to focus the minds of runaway politicians.
The movement we’ve started here in Weld County, which is picking up steam, may ultimately go nowhere. But in this case, the message is being sent loud and clear that the people outside of the progressive enclaves don’t like the direction Colorado has taken, feel betrayed by Democrat lawmakers who were essentially used as puppets by Michael Bloomberg to pass a spate of anti-second amendment legislation, and a Democratic Governor who is nowhere near the folksy centrist he likes to portray himself as. And sometimes a well-placed salvo focuses the mind and reins in the impulses of runaway legislators.
And we are willing to make our voices heard even while being labeled kooks and “fringe” elements — an attempt to tar pro-liberty, pro-business, pro-growth outlying parts of the state as simultaneously dangerous and worthy of blithe dismissal — precisely because the campaign to marginalize us is being carried out by all the right kinds of people, from poli sci professors to progressive activists who don’t seem to understand how economics works, or where local energy and produce comes from.
Levin’s longterm strategy is a sound one. But it’s also not a quick fix. And while there are no real quick fixes, refusing to go along with progressive policy — obstructing, rejecting, protesting — is a fine first step, and one that can perhaps keep progressives from advancing the ball down the field while we work on getting healthy and bringing in our best blue chip prospects to speak out against distant, arrogant, unaccountable government, and how best to stop it.
from poli sci professors to progressive activists who don’t seem to understand how economics works, or where local energy and produce comes from.
They know.
They don’t like it.
Sound strategies rarely are.
local ? for the crowd
i got this:
Democratic Pa. Attorney General Won’t Defend State’s Gay-Marriage Ban
i’m looking at this:
Client-Lawyer Relationship
Rule 1.16 Declining Or Terminating Representation
and this:
Oath of Office
Section 3., Power of Impeachment
Section 4.
this clown needs to be punished for her actions. the proggtards are setting this precedent nationwide in the states
It won’t include Boulder will it? Because that would screw it all up.
With the huge caveat that I didn’t hear the details of the proposal, any call for an amendment convention worries me to no end. Way too much risk of “unintended consequences” for my taste…
update: talked to local tea party folk. told them we we should attempt disciplinary procedures of both the state and bar assoc. against the ag. we have to go on offense. make the stupid pay.
Jeff wrote:
Mark Levin on 07 November 2012:
I like ‘Resist, Obstruct, Sabotage’, #ROS, better as a motto.
Godspeed, Jeff, to you and your fellow patriots in Colorado.
I look forward to reading Mr. Levin’s proposal.
My initial fear is that this process he proposes may take too long. Time appears to be running out. However, being a student of History I know that sometimes events, like what Mr. Levin proposes, can suddenly gain a great deal of speed. I think we would have to work to juice-up, as it were, the Amendment Convention.
This may be the right time to strike, as discontent with the way things are and are going is increasingly, literally, by the day in America. The iron may be hot enough.
Another initial thought: perhaps our goal should be to have each state calling for the Amendment Convention to send along a set of draft Amendments or a limit on matters to be considered by the Convention to be called, with the proviso that said state would only consider any Amendments that came out of the Convention which stayed within the restrictions as set forth in the authorizing call to convention.
We know that, if this idea gains any traction, the Left will do whatever it takes to sabotage it and/or take control of it.
As long as you know it’s not going to go anywhere, I guess
”
OUR SYSTEM is most frequently characterized as a dictatorship or, more precisely, as the dictatorship of a political bureaucracy over a society which has undergone economic and social leveling. I am afraid that the term “dictatorship,” regardless of how intelligible it may otherwise be, tends to obscure rather than clarify the real nature of power in this system. We usually associate the term with the notion of a small group of people who take over the government of a given country by force; their power is wielded openly, using the direct instruments of power at their disposal, and they are easily distinguished socially from the majority over whom they rule. One of the essential aspects of this traditional or classical notion of dictatorship is the assumption that it is temporary, ephemeral, lacking historical roots. Its existence seems to be bound up with the lives of those who established it. It is usually local in extent and significance, and regardless of the ideology it utilizes to grant itself legitimacy, its power derives ultimately from the numbers and the armed might of its soldiers and police. The principal threat to its existence is felt to be the possibility that someone better equipped in this sense might appear and overthrow it.
Even this very superficial overview should make it clear that the system in which we live has very little in common with a classical dictatorship. In the first place, our system is not limited in a local, geographical sense; rather, it holds sway over a huge power bloc controlled by one of the two superpowers. And although it quite naturally exhibits a number of local and historical variations, the range of these variations is fundamentally circumscribed by a single, unifying framework throughout the power bloc. Not only is the dictatorship everywhere based on the same principles and structured in the same way (that is, in the way evolved by the ruling super power), but each country has been completely penetrated by a network of manipulatory instruments controlled by the superpower center and totally subordinated to its interests. In the stalemated world of nuclear parity, of course, that circumstance endows the system with an unprecedented degree of external stability compared with classical dictatorships. Many local crises which, in an isolated state, would lead to a change in the system, can be resolved through direct intervention by the armed forces of the rest of the bloc.”
link
demonrats vs rethuglicans : the new cold war
Rep. Cantor: House Set to Take Up Immigration Reform
detente i tell you- ford/nixon/rockifeller
There have been “movements” for splitting California into 2 or 3 states since, well, since California became a State. It used to be “North/South”, but increasingly it’s “East/West”, “Coastal/Inland”. (For instance, “Coastal California” would be the coastline (LA, SF, San Jose and maybe Sacramento) and inland about 30-40 miles, from Camp Pendleton to Humboldt County).
It might be worth a try, Ernst. It is certainly worthy of discussion.
Mark Levin, it may turn out, is chaneling John Dickinson. In fact, I would say he probably is, but, in the interests of making every effort to avoid bloodshed, I think we must at least consider every proposal put forward by reasonable men.
”
LET US now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth.
The bill is not long in coming. He will be relieved of his post as manager of the shop and transferred to the warehouse. His pay will be reduced. His hopes for a holiday in Bulgaria will evaporate. His children’s access to higher education will be threatened. His superiors will harass him and his fellow workers will wonder about him. Most of those who apply these sanctions, however, will not do so from any authentic inner conviction but simply under pressure from conditions, the same conditions that once pressured the greengrocer to display the official slogans. They will persecute the greengrocer either because it is expected of them, or to demonstrate their loyalty, or simply as part of the general panorama, to which belongs an awareness that this is how situations of this sort are dealt with, that this, in fact, is how things are always done, particularly if one is not to become suspect oneself. The executors, therefore, behave essentially like everyone else, to a greater or lesser degree: as components of the post-totalitarian system, as agents of its automatism, as petty instruments of the social auto-totality.
Thus the power structure, through the agency of those who carry out the sanctions, those anonymous components of the system, will spew the greengrocer from its mouth. The system, through its alienating presence ín people, will punish him for his rebellion. It must do so because the logic of its automatism and self-defense dictate it. The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual offense, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.
This is understandable: as long as appearance is not confronted with reality, it does not seem to be appearance. As long as living a lie is not confronted with living the truth, the perspective needed to expose its mendacity is lacking. As soon as the alternative appears, however, it threatens the very existence of appearance and living a lie in terms of what they are, both their essence and their all-inclusiveness. And at the same time, it is utterly unimportant how large a space this alternative occupies: its power does not consist in its physical attributes but in the light it casts on those pillars of the system and on its unstable foundations. After all, the greengrocer was a threat to the system not because of any physical or actual power he had, but because his action went beyond itself, because it illuminated its surroundings and, of course, because of the incalculable consequences of that illumination. In the post-totalitarian system, therefore, living within the truth has more than a mere existential dimension (returning humanity to its inherent nature), or a noetic dimension (revealing reality as it is), or a moral dimension (setting an example for others). It also has an unambiguous political dimension. If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why it must be suppressed more severely than anything else.
In the post-totalitarian system, truth in the widest sense of the word has a very special import, one unknown in other contexts. In this system, truth plays a far greater (and, above all, a far different) role as a factor of power, or as an outright political force. How does the power of truth operate? How does truth as a factor of power work? How can its power-as power-be realized?
VIII
INDIVIDUALS can be alienated from themselves only because there is something in them to alienate. The terrain of this violation is their authentic existence. Living the truth is thus woven directly into the texture of living a lie. It is the repressed alternative, the authentic aim to which living a lie is an inauthentic response. Only against this background does living a lie make any sense: it exists because of that background. In its excusatory, chimerical rootedness in the human order, it is a response to nothing other than the human predisposition to truth. Under the orderly surface of the life of lies, therefore, there slumbers the hidden sphere of life in its real aims, of its hidden openness to truth.”
link
I agree its worth a try. I just don’t expect it to get very far.
The North Colorado thing, that is. I expect the Art. V sec. 2 movement to finish off what TR, Wilson, Dewey, Holmes, Croly, FDR, LBJ, Nixon, Warren, Obama etc. etc. have been eroding for a century now.
living the lie
Cobb County man slaughtered in random hate crime mob attack
I too want a divorce, and I want it now.
“I say 80 percent of the oil and gas revenue in the state of Colorado is coming out of northeastern Colorado – Weld, Yuma County, and some of other counties,” Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway said. “Seventy percent of the K-12 funding is coming off the state lands in Weld County alone. I’m telling you we are economic drivers.”
Awesome leverage. Success would send shock waves through America. Godspeed, Jeff.
I’ve been exploring something slightly different, but similar, in my area. Political power here is roughly divided between Progressives and normal people, university folk and indigenous folk. Thus, Republican state reps we manage to elect are often squishes. But the balance of power rests in only a few hundred voters.
I’ve begun talking to local business conservatives and others about attracting more conservatives into our area. I’m suggesting we target/access younger conservatives in places like Detroit, California and show them what a wonderful place we are for a young person who wants to start a career, raise a family, and escape Blue State pathologies. Our area is a gem.
[…] That GOP Took Food Stamps Out Of Farm Bill Marginal Revolution: Microsoft, Security, And The NSA Protein Wisdom: Effort To Create New “North Colorado” State Grows Weasel Zippers: Jay-Z Brags He Still Texts With Obama Dr. Milton Wolf: Obamacare’s Panicked […]
“New South Georgia?” Say from south of Midway to a line over near, but not including Valdosta?
Of course, we’d have to guillotine everybody in Glynn County & Brunswick government first, but it’s a good start….
The adopted, trendy assumptions the left has all but institutionalized (with the help of tacit acceptance from many on the right), incoherent though they are, have a real and powerful impact on law, legislation, and the entire experiment in consensual government.
But Jeff, how can we have consensual government without consensual reality? I mean, really!
Good luck to N.Co. I didn’t hear Levin, but how does he address the problem with our educational system, if he does? Starting at the bottom, which is a good long-term strategy with respect to political institutions does nothing to change the state of public and post secondary education. With my kids, I opted out of the public system to good results, but now am faced again with worrying about a son going off to university and fearing what sort of indoctrination he will receive. And he’s in STEM, for heaven’s sakes. Until there is a purge in Academe, I fear that it will all be naught. Not an excuse for doing nothing, but still . . .
how does he address the problem with our educational system[?]
heh, Shermlaw.
Let’s leave Mark aside for the time being, if only since we aren’t in possession of his book, but turn instead to ourselves, asking ourselves in the manner of the famous Sean Connery character Jimmy Malone in The Untouchables asking Ness: “Do you really want to get him? What are you prepared to do next?”
But here we’re asking at the deepest root, not whether we’re prepared to use force to “get him” — or achieve our educational object, in the metaphor — but whether we’re prepared to go the last step to stand up a proper education, a truthful educational life, a life beyond the merely utilitarian object of instilling firm political philosophical principles and understanding, but a life of education embracing the totality of human needs? Which, as I look at the problem today, is where our educational “system” has abandoned the wisdom acquired over the ages and lost the thread which animated those founders to whom we look as sages.
What did they have — educationally — that we have learned to forget?
A recognition that the mistakes of others are lessons to all, regardless of how long ago the mistake-maker lived and died.
So. Lunch, then jury deliberation begins. Any guesses as to what the verdict is going to be?
Any guesses as to what the verdict is going to be?
Nope.
It would be a fine result, however, if the corollary of the bizarro alternative-world nature of the trial leaked out into public consciousness though, that justice has been turned on its head, that the State is seeking to consciously commit an injustice upon an innocent for the sake of unseemly motives, and if then the public were to inquire of itself just what the hell is going on in our political life when such a moment arrives.
sdferr, believe me, I’ve thought about the problem quite a bit. What troubles me, is that well-meaning people who bitch about the system, do not put their money where their mouths are when it comes to their children’s education. We’ve foregone much to send our kids to parochial schools which present the sort of education you describe without the BS that comes with a public school education. Homeschooling is, of course, another option. Alas, I cannot count the times I’ve attempted to convince people to pony up the cash to start schools or, at least, avail themselves of alternatives. The response is always the same: “It’s too expensive” followed by “I pay my taxes for public education.” And so, are their kids exposed to the latest fads, crappy instruction, NEA sponsored diversity initiatives and lord knows, what else. In a perfect world, a substantial minority if not majority of people would reject public education, which has been lost and may never be resurrected in the form it once was, and start their own system.
This comment is long enough, but I could do pages on destruction of public education in this country and still not be finished. It’s why I gave up on it 25 years ago.
The right still hasn’t learned.
No, not the article, my comment, ya knuckleheads!
Maybe let me put it another way Shermlaw?
Do we look to the founders as sages?
Were they well educated (even relative to our know-it-all contemporaries who can blithely say of electrons, for instance, “Oh, we know what those are, whereas those primitive politicians of yesteryear didn’t even know such things existed!”) ?
If our tacit answers to those two questions are both “yes”, then what was going on that this could possibly be so?
I applaud you, di, and grant you the greatest honor possible within the current system. (i.e., I clicked the little up-arrow thingy.)
They were certainly well enough educated to spot the fallacy in such a criticism. “And what, pray tell me kind sir, does the knowledge or ignorance of the existence of electrons have to do with the foundation of a federal republic dedicated to protecting the natural rights of its citizens?”
They may think that’s why they’re paying school taxes, but in fact they’re paying for the convenience of not having to be responsible for ensuring that they’re getting what they think they’re paying school taxes for.
As for alternatives being too expensive, there used to be a saying about being penny-wise and pound-foolish. The oft-referenced figure of $16+ trillion in debt is a hyperconservative estimate; the real figure makes $16+ trillion look payable.
They may think that’s why they’re paying school taxes, but in fact they’re paying for the convenience of not having to be responsible for ensuring that they’re getting what they think they’re paying school taxes for.
Quite. There is certainly a complete abrogation of parental responsibility to find out what’s going on. And when parents do stick their noses in, it’s to bitch because their precious isn’t getting an “A” or, more likely, enough playing time on the football team.
Sweet.
They may think that’s why they’re paying school taxes, but in fact they’re paying for the convenience of not having to be responsible for ensuring that they’re getting what they think they’re paying school taxes for.
I pay taxes for public safety, as well. I still have a fire extinguisher and a gun.
That’s because you’re smarter than the average cuttlefish.
Maybe Alaska should look into dividing itself into, say, fifteen or twenty states, and Texas into nine or ten.
60 more Senators would rock.
sdferr, what we forgot is everything that makes men civilized. How’s that for a broad answer? Somewhere along the line, we stopped rearing “Men with Chests,” to borrow from C.S. Lewis. We stopped teaching the Cardinal Virtues. We stopped expecting that our children would behave a certain way; believe the truth of certain things; hold in awe the same things which we did. If I had to pin it down, it was when the Boomers started percolating into the mainstream. (I’m a younger member of that cohort, BTW) We, the Boomers, knew no hardship, no sacrifice because our parents wanted to spare us. And so, when things became difficult, we took the easy way and destroyed every institution and adult trait we could get our hands on from education to marriage and the family to self-reliance, personal responsibility ad infinitum. We’ve made a mess –not me personally; I was reared better–and we’d rather pass it onto our kids and grandkids to clean up so that we can enjoy our retirements paid for by the slavery of those same descendants. In my darkest moments, I fear that those things will never come back, because the only thing my generation was ever good at was fucking things up.
He didn’t specifically, but on other occasions, and given his fidelity to Reagan, I know he wants to abolish to DOE.
If you start showing any signs of success, prepare for them to be ruthless.
[…] a blogger for Protein Wisdom says whether the new state attempt fails or not, northern Colorado representatives have made a […]