…and unsurprisingly, Kloppenburg has overcome her 800 vote deficit!
Supreme Court REPORTING 99%
Joanne Kloppenburg 738,368
50%
David Prosser (inc) 738,228
50%
Why, it’s a miracle!
Sorry, Congressman Ryan. And sorry, conservatives / classical liberals. America has reached that tipping point about which Ryan yesterday spoke. And the majority has chosen the “government needs to pay me until the money runs out and I’ll worry about it then”-route to self-determination over the classical liberal ideas — an opportunity society run by free men using free markets and protected by law with checks on power — upon which this country was founded. And I’m afraid it’s all downhill from here. That’s what a tipping point is, after all: that point after which the downward slide becomes inevitable and inexorable.
Not that the majority are entirely to blame, mind: Most people are sheep in need of shepherding. As world history has (sadly) shown. Add to that existential fact the institutional and media bias in this country toward deconstructing our American experiment in individual liberty in favor of promoting the soft tyranny born of social-democratic promises (presented, naturally, as a “diverse” and “progressive” society run on “social justice,” “fairness,” and “tolerance,” however Orwellian were such terms being used) and you have essentially “grown” a few generation’s worth of voters indoctrinated by leftist ideology, that indoctrination beginning with the very linguistic assumptions on which our present epistemology is built (and our laws adjudicated), and moving outward to the “progressive” (ie., anti-liberal, in the traditional sense) propaganda taught in schools, and the advocacy narratives presented as objective journalism upon which a supposed informed electorate is to decide its own trajectory for self-governance.
That is to say, we are born free, but from the moment we become socialized, we are being inscribed to accept our own enslavement to government and man — to a will to power, to force sold as security.
We are Eloi.
Such has been the left’s project. In the 60s, the left acted too soon and too aggressively, and the assault backfired. But they learned from their mistakes, and moved to promote a takeover from within, and the long march through the institutions proceeded with alacrity.
Meanwhile, leadership on the “right,” in the post-Reagan era (with sporadic few exceptions that themselves eventually succumbed to the DC boy’s club mentality), failed in its responsibilities to promote the concepts of freedom and liberty and unalienable rights as a function of natural law. It, too, took on the big government idea, casting it as “compassionate conservatism” (or as Jeb Bush has taken to calling it, “center-rightism”) — which, given the realignment of the Democrats to the “progressivism” of the New Left, meant that “center-right” Republicans have been to the left of traditional Democrats like, eg., JFK.
And so here we find ourselves, with more takers than makers, and no recourse to turn back the tide that is drawing us toward the very kind of collapse Europe is trying desperately to claw back from.
We lack the political will to force a paradigm shift. And even with the burgeoning TEA Party movement, we lack the numbers any longer to pull back from the abyss.
In Wisconsin, the left has essentially put to lie the idea that we live in a free country run by representative government elected by the people. They have shown that such a system, when it is no longer held sacred as part of our national consciousness, can be pressured into failure and overthrow — be it by fleeing legislators, or by legal and judicial subterfuge and malfeasance.
The public sector unions — with the support of our President — have essentially told the taxpayer that they are owned. Try voting in someone who will change the laws, and the unions will riot; try passing laws and union influence will be used to shop for judicial relief; and then finally, the unions will look at the makeup of a court and work to find a justice who will vote their interests — the courts having now become little more than legislatures with the power to give political will the imprimatur of unbiased constitutionality. That so many votes are completely split down ideological lines tells us that the courts have moved away from their stated function and serve now as cover for the left’s will to power.
Our system has been turned against us. Our checks and balances breached. Laws “mean” what justices can make them mean, reasoning back from the results they desire. A predictable result of the move to kill the author — to bracket intent and to turn meaning into something that is determined “democratically” or without recourse to originary desire as a matter of hermeneutic philosophy.
So we are here. Victims of our own failure of vigilance. Victims of intellectual laziness and complacency.
So the question becomes, what are those of us left who truly believe in the founding principles of this country prepared to do about it?
I don’t usually ask such things, but pass this one along to your friends and relatives. And ask them: what are you prepared to do to save your country and to protect your family from the coming state-sanctioned slavery?
Or, perhaps put more simply: outlaw…?
I’ve said for a long time that a second revolution was coming. My hope has been for a bloodless one, but I’m becoming less sure about that every passing day.
Not like there’s any recent history of vote fraud in Wisconsin.
We have been fucked for awhile. Delay is facing prison and Obama didn’t even get investigated, how big of a clue by four do you need?
Did I sound dire enough?
So we are here. Victims of our own failure of vigilance. Victims of intellectual laziness and complacency.
So the question becomes, what are those of us left who truly believe in the founding principles of this country prepared to do about it?
A large part of the country is lost to you; when a people have sold their birthright, they have only themselves to blame. Concentrate on those states that still care for individual liberty and responsibility. In short, move to Texas. Everyone else is used to the stench of progressivism by now anyway. This just confirms it.
I wonder if it is possible to sound dire enough, honestly.
Where Tom Delay was convicted of doing something that wasn’t illegal at the time he supposedly did it? I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there are NO states that genuinely care for individual liberty and responsibility anymore.
Of course, two Milwaukee precincts are the last to report.
The Constitution that protected us no longer does.
And there are plenty of “conservatives” who have promoted the idea of language that, sorry to say, allowed for its deconstruction.
Given the assumptions adopted, it was inevitable.
Newest figure:
Supreme Court REPORTING 99%
Joanne Kloppenburg
739,574
50%
David Prosser (inc)
739,350
50%
Really? 24 votes.
So close, conservatives. Better luck next time!
sorry, 224. Missed a number there.
[…] Sigh. […]
The Wisconsin leftists have really let their closet statist mask slip. Uniformly, the leftists in Wisconsin think it’s great that “outside interests” (Barack Obama’s OFA) spent money trying to influence a state election.
It still looks a lot better than failshit, brokedick Blighty, Spiny. And here isn’t even the endpoint of the trajectory.
It seems to me that the blog changed not that long ago from being a language study to being a study on the aftermath of the failure of language to continue to contain reason. From the theory of decline to the evidence of decline.
It may be time for another subtle change, if it hasn’t happened already: Reporting the post-American experience in the context of how a renewed struggle for survival reinforms an emerging mindset that again values reason because it cannot afford not to. Crisis builds character — there will be reams of intellectual sodbusting to cull as we rediscover just how perfect natural, originalist systems are.
There is immense pressure on our property and even our lives by way of everything from an utterly failed, fiscally and morally bankrupt State to the encroachment against fundamental Western values and possibly territories from many sides. Our own State set us up and left us twisting in a very harsh breeze. We cannot not react. The best thing that could happen to us is about to. We’ll have to fight to survive. Obama is the very last chapter in the old, failed ideologies.
The American experiment was doomed by usual human evil at the time when it ceased to be important to strive. We’ll be striving again, and soon. The material this emerging existential crisis will create will be a fertile new landscape for thoughtful analysis — consider a once mighty American manufacturing city that employed millions now reverting to homesteaded farmland a figurative omen.
Tons of material, and all of it built on an emerging, unavoidable contempt what’s left of the nation will naturally have for the unmitigated, absurd, virtually self-parodying bullshit still issuing from the left-establishment. Plus a hell of a lot of I-told-you-so.
Jeff, the leftest elite are entrenched. I believe that there are more and more outlaws, this election aside. But it’s going to take some time, unfortunately, to wrestle folks from power and influence. And their ability to corrupt.
I’m not advocating baby-steps. Or that we should be happy with small victories. Simply that we shouldn’t despair.
SW,
By that comparison, yeah, Texas looks like a true bastion of freedom. What the hell happened there? This sort of blinkered idiocy requires real work… and that is a only trivial matter in the big scheme of things.
Churchill must be spinning so fast they could hook him up as a power source.
o_O
I know. Despair doesn’t sell.
Hey, Boehner’s not that bad! Let’s get behind Castle! Stop being such downers, you deranged Tea Party types. McCain is electable! Provided he doesn’t go after his opponent, of course. RAH RAH RAH!
Go with the flow, boss. Do pragmatism: “Protein Denial; because not just an anybody can summarize the news”.
The material this emerging existential crisis will create will be a fertile new landscape for thoughtful analysis — consider a once mighty American manufacturing city that employed millions now reverting to homesteaded farmland a figurative omen.
To be fair, Detroit never recovered after the great depression. The vast expansion that began just before, nearly doomed it ever afterward. the
One of Detroit’s infamous buildings was built in 1929. It was supposed to be one of two towers – the second was never built.
It was also built away from the city center – much like the train station everyone has seen a million pictures of. Detroit’s decline has been 60 years in the making, but the seeds go back to the great depression.
I know this it OT. Sorta. Just is as simple as saying X is the factor of Y.
Oh, and “city planners” really sucked at planning societies. THAT is a lesson would should have learned.
Planners wrecked Detroit.
know. Despair doesn’t sell.
Hey, Boehner’s not that bad! Let’s get behind Castle! Stop being such downers, you deranged Tea Party types. RAH RAH RAH!
No, you misunderstand. I’m advocating that the entire destruction of our country is not written in stone just yet. These people spent decades getting to where they are. Hopefully it won’t take decades to get rid of them.
And, I don’t think anyone has ever accused me of “Rah Rah-ism”.
Planners and unionists and socialists, Carin. Men over matter doesn’t work so good.
I wasn’t speaking about you, Carin. I’m talking about some of “our” biggest web presences, and some of “our” major party strategists.
Losing more slowly. But fuck it, tell people what they want to hear! It’s that Reagan can-do optimism!
Planners and unionists and socialists, Carin.
I know that. I was making a parallel to our current crop of planners and socialists.
That, to me, is the biggest lesson to take from Detroit, applying it to what’s going on today.
Detroit was a planned society.
They drew up great plans about how they would have a commerce district here and a neighborhood there. And they fucked things up. the commerce district was too far from the city center (10 miles) and the train station was clear the other direction.
Yet,they’re planning again with their stupid trains.
I wasn’t speaking about you, Carin. I’m talking about some of “our” biggest web presences, and some of “our” major party strategists.
phew.
Badgercare and Medicaid being debated in Joint Committee on finance in WI. Gov Walker increasing gpr, but forecast is costs will exceed revenue. “38% on Medicaid smoke”. “We have to find ways to get people on Medicaid involved in their own care”. “Move from our current based system (volume) to a value based HC system”
“Familycare was supposed to be revenue neutral” “The cap will note reduce the number of people on familycare”
“$43,000 per member is being spent on long term care” “we have a lot of dollars in LTC”
“Find what is broken and fix it”. “layers of beaurocracy”
“before we put more in to it, find out what needs to be fixed”
I’m not sure who the guy is presenting, but he seems to have a good grasp on the challenges. The concerns seem to vary depending on partisan bend. I’m waiting for someone to say “why do you hate children, minorities, etc”? Senator Taylor is there. She never lets me down.
“The world appears to be changing in 2014” Pertaining to Obamacare.
“Centralization does not mean everything is done here in Madison” “eligibility was not being processed fast enough” This is in regard to technology application to who handles the client. A live person or a processing center. Someone seems to want to protect the network of bureaucrats.
Good discussion overall. Taylor is up soon. It will derail then.
By that comparison, yeah, Texas looks like a true bastion of freedom. What the hell happened there? This sort of blinkered idiocy requires real work… and that is a only trivial matter in the big scheme of things.
Churchill must be spinning so fast they could hook him up as a power source.
As Jeff lays out, intellectual laziness, complacency, lack of vigilance. Nanny’s teat is so much more comfortable, don’t you find? And, so fair. Which is what counts.
The supplemental payment to Aurora medical is being discussed.
“this budget is growing incredibly” “we don’t have the money to continue” “stretch our dollars” “we won’t be able to take care of them or it will break the bank”
“this will be a transparent process” (of reform)
Dem sen Jauch us taking it off the rails. “forgetting about the hearts and souls of the people” “as these budget cuts are made, people will be left behind” “written by the RX companies for the RX companies” He’s concerned we are proposing managing and not caring.
“petrified that they are going to lose seniorcare” “why would you want to put people through that to save a few dollars?” “for the benefit of the drug companies”
Response: “part D can be a better deal for you than seniorcare” “they would be better off in a different plan” “we will preserve seniorcare as a wraparound plan, and it will be remain better than any other state (after the changes).
Jauch “the concern we have is not knowing what the changes are” “the federal govt is going to have a role”
“no waiver for WI” Obamacare? Per Jauch per Sen Herb Kohl.
The end of the world is scheduled for 11:45
http://www.lakemillsleaderonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=22&ArticleID=4937
Which is why I am listening in on the finance meeting.
Senator Darling ” we are not going to give up our oversight”
Taylor: Title 5 funding? Federal match? He says it shouldn’t be a concern. Shes expressing a lack of trust in the reformers. Stumbling on the word geographic. “needs of my constituents are important” “failure to hear people” She’s telling him what his answer will be. “Federal dollars not matched or lost will be an issue” “not comfortable with legislature giving up authority” Sen Darling just clarified (again) that they will be addressing that and not giving up oversight. Taylor ignores and continues tack.
“devastation will happen to individuals”
Off the rails: “contraception equity law”? “are you against it?” He doesn’t know what she is talking about.
Response: “was a mandate on private insurance plans” “can’t speak to that” “previous administration had expanded service to males?” confusion.
Taylor “father play an important role” “if unplanned pregnancies has a cost….rambling”
more confusion. Private insurance not in his jurisdiction. Waiver provision itself is. Legislative mandate. Not a policy.
She seems to be attacking the guy with her questions. They moved on. lol!
We need to keep the country functional while we start our own long march through the institutions. We need to break Hollywood, and change the myths of our society. We need to cut off the left’s public funding.
We need to keep the country functional while we start our own long march through the institutions. We need to break Hollywood, and change the myths of our society. We need to cut off the left’s public funding.
THAT’S what I’m talking about.
Give it a go, Carin.
Just try not to get too dispirited when the opinion brokers on your own side call you a deranged, unhelpful intellectual fraud while tacitly (or in some cases, actively fighting for) accepting the conditions that lead inexorably to our defeat.
Deputy Secretary of health services: “we are running against a clock”
They are making it pretty clear that we are boned if we don’t make some significant changes to the status quo. It’s fascinating, again, to see the partisan angles play out despite the overwhelming evidence that we are in trouble financially.
Sen Vos: “cutting payments to providers is no longer an effective means to control costs” Amen. That is why docs are saying piss off to state and Fed programs. Which is a major issue to providing care. Self created govt mess.
Grigsby (taylor clone): “impact elimination of those funds” “Std’s, screenings, birth control” “important community services”
Response: Family planning reform, several parts. Mandatory benefit under medicaid. Waivers are not eligible. Adding men issue again. They have family planning under badgercare. The numbers affected would be small.
No gloom and doom from this corner. The fight will go on until there is no more room.
At that point, what I have I will retain by whatever means necessary. I’m not believing it necessarily WILL happen, but…..
If I could figure out the medicine part, it’d be a breeze.
A good start would be for pinheads spewing such sophmoric horseshit as this in public to be treated with the derision they deserve.
Motionview,
Do you think we are making headway on that front?
I like that Lee Stranahn has joined that effort as well. http://leestranahan.com/?p=1288
If you don’t fix the structural damage, you’ll spend the rest of your life plugging holes with your fingers. While the left goes about building ever more faulty edifices.
Losing more slowly.
It’s time for Wisconsinites to vote with their feet, and take their energy, capital, talent, and motivation somewhere else; Texas, perhaps, or somewhere else in the south or southwest.
Let the “takers” in WI, who amazingly almost always manage to find just enough votes to win by a margin of a couple of hundred, 2010 being the outlying abberation, take over. It won’t be long before WI goes the way of Detroit and the rest of Michigan (no offense intended to Carin and our other Michiganders) and some of the other boned large blue states…
I know that may sound defeatist, but, look at it this way: Instead of proggs from NY, CA, and IL moving all around the nation, infecting their new locales with the cesspool of ideas from the progressive fever swamps, consider it concentrating classically liberal ideas into regions, in order to preclude the dissemination of progressive socialism from spreading throughout the nation.
If WI is far gone enough that there is no ballot-box-too-far to be stuffed, no “philosopher-king” on the court too mindful of the rule of law to legislate from the bench, and the vast, middling, sheep of society can’t be bothered enough to through off these manners of corruption, well, then it’s time to leave, in my humble opinion.
Grigsby: “its unfortunate that we are taking away food from people” barb thrown at Sen Grothman. lol! I knew they wouldn’t let me down!
It’s a good idea, Bob — I’ve advocated for it myself — but how are you to sell your house? Find a job in your new locale?
You’re trapped. This was the plan all along. I’m convinced of it.
I think you are trying to draw a parallel between parasites and hosts, Bob. What works for one won’t work for the other. And we can’t peacefully coexist, no matter what the bumperstickers say.
Good points Jeff,
Especially with a soft economy, mobility is degraded. Those that can, should look into it. Businesses that move, should encourage their employees to consider it as well. Religious groups should band together; establish organizations to aid folks in moving to states that are more “liberty friendly”, like so many did during the expansion of the nation.
But I don’t doubt that you’re correct, there was an assumption that a large number of folks would be trapped by their circumstances, and essentially reduced to serfdom; chained to the land by the burdons the state puts on their abilities to earn.
It’s very much like the aristocracy, and rigged social system, that our nation’s founders eschewed and ultimately rebelled against.
And there are too many who claim to be on our side, who are willing to accept this stilted arrangement, just as long as they’re getting their piece of the pie, or exempted from the “rules for the rubes”.
We need to cleanse ourselves of these pretenders, and let them congress with the other progressive Democrats that they essentially are…
I really don’t have a positive word to say today.
My default position (fight, fight, fight) just isn’t kicking in yet. Maybe tomorrow.
The truth drives people away.
Fact of life.
If that’s in response to my dispirited comment, I’m not dispirited with this post, I’m dispirited by the reality of what just happened/will happen during the recount.
Just tired of Wisco politics, really. It’s been relentless.
Is there a particular problem with Kloppenberg that passing the budget bill again wouldn’t immediately solve?
The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable. Trust me on that one.
I don’t think so Mr. B; the left lives for these fights and we only fight when we are forced to.
I recently described Stranahan as the last honorable liberal; in the post you cite he describes himself as “stepping out from the liberal world” recently (we know this as down the memory hole). He is dead-on describing the prog’s propaganda machine.
We are Eloi.
Fuck THAT! THEY are Eloi, I’m a fucking Morlock.
And it’s about time to stock up the larder with some delicious Eloi steak…;-)
Jeff, “dire” is necessary, and you have been helping sound that warning. I shan’t despair – I can only fight. But that is my usual response to “dire”. I am grateful that YOU have been keeping this up, despite all the tut-tutting from our pragmatic “allies”.
For all you guys thinking that Texas is some magical Galt land, the progressives have been streaming here from Blue States like NJ and CA, for years. They have set up their beachheads in Austin and Metro Dallas and Houston. Far from learning the lessons from the FU of their former home states, they are agitating for the same “entitlements” here. The only thing holding back the tide is the rural population. The Hispanic demographic will probably overcome that in a few years.
The fight in the legislature to tap the rainy day fund to cover the deficits plus all the demagoguing of the budget cuts as throwing the elderly out of nursing homes, letting kids go hungry in school on the front pages of the largest dailies is slowly grinding away at common sense.
Plus Obama’s hard on for knee capping the oil business via off shore drilling … its a full on assault.
Buy Rupees … bitchez
Delay was convicted by an Austin jury, on a case brought by a long time Democratic DA for Travis County.
Yes. The new 4-3 liberal majority on the WI Supreme Court will find a penumbra-ed “right” for public employees to collect mandatory dues and to engage in a money-laundering scheme against hapless, broke-ass taxpayers.
Give it a go, Carin.
Just try not to get too dispirited when the opinion brokers on your own side call you a deranged, unhelpful intellectual fraud while tacitly (or in some cases, actively fighting for) accepting the conditions that lead inexorably to our defeat.
‘eh. I’m cool with that. I’ve gone against the grain my entire life.
If I could figure out the medicine part, it’d be a breeze.
Specialized medicines will be a problem, but for the basic stuff, I’m counting on a couple of recently retired physicians of my acquaintance who are happy to make the occasional house call in exchange for good whiskey.
Whiskey: if it don’t cure what ails you, it’ll pay for somebody who can!
It could solve that one particular problem (which was completely legal anyway) but it wouldn’t solve the other four or five dozen things they’ll sue over next. As Sumi displayed, no suit is considered without merit when it’s lodged against a GOP-passed law in a progressive court.
Well, I have the miserable part covered.
Up from slavery.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i05lsVN6D3Q
I believe we need to split the country in two. I wrote a book about it 1 1/2 years ago and could not find anyone to publish it. Like the first poster I had hoped it would be without violence but I would not be surprised that when the ‘takers’ of society realize they will have less to take then they will resort to violence.
Well, if we’re not going to be a constructive force for liberty and prosperity in the world, we might as well split up into 50.
I, for one, was happy to hear about protein rations being increased to 20 grams.
FWIW, all this direness is the result of so many people being conditioned to believe that perception is reality for far too long. But I digress.
This is a rather long essay from National Affairs that I stumbled on earlier today, but worth the time;
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/beyond-the-welfare-state
They (those to Left) expected more of a blowout victory, to parade about like a head on a pike. Didn’t happen. I ask of them: is this, after your nationwide call to arms, your OFA funding and New York Firefighters Drum Line, the best you could do?
I suppose the only proper response to the late polling results coming in is, “This is what democracy looks like.”
Me, I am mostly reminded of Ray Liotta’s overdubbed narration in Goodfellas about the restauranteur who went to Paul Cicero looking for a little protection from some other good fellas:
serr8d, my glass half full side is taking that approach, too. However, my glass half empty side is really wondering how can there be so many fucking leeches and parasites out there. This isn’t about private unions. That argument, while weak, imho, is merited and has some meat. It’s about public unions. I have yet to hear one decent reason for their being. Not one.
Time to dust off that old AFSCME ad.
Regardless of which justice “wins” this election, we’re still looking at a heavily politicized state Supreme Court injecting itself into the internal affairs of the Legislature. There’s a distinct possibility that in a few months’ time, we’ll have a Legislature and an Executive telling their Judicial counterparts to pound sand. Could get interesting…
Supreme Court REPORTING 100%
Joanne Kloppenburg 740,090
50%
David Prosser (inc) 739,886
50%
Just show enough to win, isn’t that the old punchline?
I’ve been listening to this song tonight.
You know, unlike those big government trustafarians, I really think I could get used to anarchy. Thrive even. I’m bigger than your average dude. I have guns. I’m smarter than your average government worker.
What do I have to lose? They’re taking over half my shit already.
I’m smarter than your average government worker.
Plus you have your second career as a straight man (comedy sense).
Heh.
We’re gonna hit the wall. I’d like to go ahead and get it over with. This is really getting tedious and I’m getting really tired of wondering how it’s going to shake out. Let’s roll already, Mr. Hopenchange.
I’ve been moving that way myself for awhile now, Pablo. Either hope or false hope keeps clouding my vision though.
“Wisconsin Voter Fraud Haunts Razor-Thin Supreme Court Election”
Update. The fun begins.
Forgive me if this question has already been asked and answered, but has one of these razor thin races ever gone to the Republican candidate since the 2000 charlie-fox in Florida? And I seem to remember quite a few very close races where the recounts went on, while they were finding all sorts of votes that went almost exclusively to the Dem, and once they reached a result where the Dem was ahead, suddenly everyone was saying “issue’s settled, let’s not waste any more taxpayer money on recounts”.
As Stalin was reported to have said “It isn’t who votes that counts. It’s who counts the votes.”
This is the vapid dingbat Wisconsin has elected to their Supreme Court? It’s Meghan McCain~!
“Did I sound dire enough?”
Jeff,
Admittedly, it’s not much consolation (and not exactly a barometer of bigger things) but O’Reilly seems to have moved off the fence (irt Obama) and Dennis Miller was on fire tonight.
“I’m bigger than your average dude.”
and when it’s necessary I recon bh is prolly meaner than the average dude (if he’s not drinking cus we drunken Irish are happy drunks;)
The jury is still out on Boehner in my book, but the 1 week CR w/ military funding for the year deserves some props.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/pence-supports-one-week-cryear-long-defense-bill_556897.html
“Mike Pence has been one of the leading opponents of the short-term budget bills, but says he’s on board for Boehner’s proposed stopgap that will fund the government for one week and the Department of Defense for the remainder of the year:
“While I am frustrated that liberals in the Senate continue to resist our efforts to include even modest cuts in this year’s budget, I will support a one-week Continuing Resolution because the troops come first. H.R. 1363 will fully fund the Department of Defense for the rest of this fiscal year and will reduce spending by $12 billion.”
So, does Harry Reid feel lucky?
Ya know, we keep saying that there’s more of us, we keep saying that the true, real deep soul of the American experience will prevail.
It won’t.
There’s your dire.
You can substitute thinking for saying.
That much is true. What there aren’t more of is classical liberal citizens who consider a one-line ballot worth the trouble of going to vote.
There’s a reason why theftist special interests love special elections.
The stupid is just too strong.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/senator-boxer-dangerously-ignorant-on-co2/
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?position=all&page=S1955&dbname=2011_record
And I don’t think there are more of us, I don’t think there ever have been. That is why the Constitution was set up to protect individual rights.
Me, I’m simply gearing up to move to the first state that secedes. I’m guessing Texas.
If there never were more of us, the Constitution wouldn’t be failing now — it would have been a dead letter before it even went into effect.
We’re finding 2012’s big contest shaping up to be the Tea Party vs. the Unions. And they’re setting the tone. (Not yet first blood, but can that be so far off?)
Are you saying you don’t think it’s possible for the rule of law to prevail over the mob, McGehee?
If there never were more of us, the Constitution wouldn’t be failing now — it would have been a dead letter before it even went into effect.
I don’t think so, and I’ve long now said what B Moe said.
Even in the revolution, you had maybe a solid 1/5th to 1/3rd that actually supported the whole endeavor. Another 1/5th to a 1/3rd were loyal to the king, the remainder didn’t want to be involved, would have loved a compromise, but would ultimately take whatever they got, and were keen to support whoever looked like they would win.
And so it’s always been.
It was never a straight up democracy. We never had rights in this country because a flat out majority demanded them. We had rights because the same size minority as ever demanded them beyond anyone else’s will or ability to fight. Same as we now have radical progressive statism.
Bingo. We have (had?) a Constitution proclaiming and protecting individual rights precisely because we were outnumbered from the start.
I would like to see a vast shut down of the private sector. A planned, organized, announced, week long unpaid vacation of all the right leaning producers out there. Every store, restaurant, hotel, truck driver, construction worker, car dealer, etc. Just stay home and don’t spend a dime.
See how Reid likes it when we force the IRS to take in less. A true taxpayer bloodless revolt.
Think something like that is possible? With a month or two to prepare, would you participate? I would.
Can I still buy on eBay? If so, I’d be in.
I think it also illustrates the problem with ‘neo-cons’ and Lieberman/Powers types.
It’s something akin to a Pellagian fallacy popular with liberals (in the classical sense). A wonderfully naive children’s tail, the pellagian heretics of classical liberalism.
All over the world, in every culture and every crackpot despotism, they’re all just yearning to be free, they are. Sure.
You can’t even get half your own country to consistently vote liberal; what the hell would make you think you’ll manage in Afghanistan?
Globalist sorts will say every immigrant is a 401k and an ipod away from assimiliation, based on the pure (darwinian) strength of our modern liberal ideas that will of course always prevail as fittest.
Half our natives leer at their 401k’s the way an addict curses the cigarette he’s still smoking, and beg for heavier chains.
It’s a literally Progressive view – to think that the better ideas must always win in an open marketplace of ideas – in that it’s Historicistic and anthropomophically teleological. That’s not now how we know evolution actually works – Darwin was quite wrong in the details. Survival of the fittest is a tautology – ‘the fittest’ means whomever survived. But anyway…
If our ideas are so borg-like contagious, why must we import people to assimilate to them, why can we not export the ideas and assimilate the people where they sit? They’ve been exposed – they are not biting. Mexico has been right next door the whole time, it’s still a piss hole.
Every backwater former european colony the world over was left with high relative degree of democratic liberalism, and they mostly all voted to stop voting and put in dictators, even as Europe itself moves away from liberal ideals as well, having lost whatever aspect of their cultural character it was that inspired them to feel justified trying to impose it in all the world’s backwaters.
What do you do when you give people a choice and they choose not to choose anymore? Give them a vote and they vote to end the bothersome voting?
That’s the dilemma – when you’ll finally accept it and try to deal with it – that will convert you away from any sappy notions of humanity being ‘fundementally good’ (fundementally liberal). It’s a pretty story, but they are most certainly NOT.
No, sadly, liberalism isn’t contagious, nor a forgone conclusion of Modern or Post-Modern Progress.
To the extent we have fetishized ‘democracy’ (as if such a thing was even inherantly liberal, devoid of any context), it is no wonder it has been nothing but fail and suck, having somehow implicitly agreed to the validity of asking the mob to form a concensus about the legitimacy of the rights of an individual. So long as we’re looking for that Argumentum ad Populum rational for individual rights, we’re lost.
You’ll always be outnumbered.
Nope. Zero commerce for a solid week. Don’t even turn the computer on, don’t allow the advertisers a look. Read a book or something.
Well, entropy, there’s the thing about who has the guns and who controls the narrative. There’s a reason progressives infiltrate the institutions and stack the media.
Think something like that is possible?
Supposedly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribune
Spartacus Shrugged.
Well, entropy, there’s the thing about who has the guns and who controls the narrative.
Yup.
Might makes right – not prescriptively but descriptively.
As in, not that might makes should, but might makes accurate and in fact, might makes correct, in historical record or in matters of prognostication.
Regardless of whether or not it happened to also be the should.
Your rights are descriptive, and inalienable, so long as you insist upon them and excercise them regardless. The moment you volunteer to surrender them to anything, you’ve surrendered them and you ain’t got them no more.
And you’ll have them again, only if you’re willing to shoot the bitch who tries to take them from you, and then of course, be successful. Screaming ‘inalienable’ at the mugger will not stop him from mugging you – shooting him will.
In that sense, (and that sense only) it is truly ‘inalienable’ in that it cannot be forceably seperated from you. They can only remove your rights by removing you – but the two of you are like glue, until you surrender them or trade for some magic beans of security for your life.
They always have recourse to kill you (and they really can’t at all stop you from trying to defend yourself), but whether or not you will have lived and died free is up to you. Always has been.
Since Joey Hairplugs was “promoted” to Vice President, Babs Boxer has a lock on the title “Dumbest Senator”, but who can blame her on this one? During the last election cycle, the American Lung Association sponsored a big ad campaign against Proposition 23 (which would have suspended CA AB 32’s draconian restrictions of CO2 emissions until the state economy recovered) with slick television commercials depicting billowing industrial smokestacks and narration claiming that Texas oil companies were conspiring to destroy California’s environment, and that suspending the regulations would lead to the deaths of thousands of children with asthma. They called it the “Dirty Energy Bill”. Yes, CO2 is “dirty”.
Why shouldn’t Babs trust the ALA?
o_O
Take the health care debate. Does the government have the right to force us to buy health insurance?
We may grumble and moan, and if they do not repeal it, then we may go out and buy the damn health insurance. If we all buy health insurance, then yes – the government clearly had the right and perogative, because we all surrendered to it voluntarily. We gave them the right.
They have no right to make us, because they have no ability to make us. You cannot stop people from resisting. You can point a gun at them and threaten to shoot them, and even shoot them, but you cannot make them give you their wallet, it’s still their choice whether or not they charge the gun or hand over the cash.
To to the extent we will ever let them force us by surrending that power to them, if we all go out and buy health care, then they have the right to mandate we buy health care, because we give it to them.
If the people resist (by any of dozens of means, violent or non, I’m not advocating for any one in particular), if they do not buy healthcare, then the mandate will fail, and if the mandate fails, then clearly the government had no right or ability to do that.
If you assert they have no right to make you do that, then don’t do that. If you do it, you may as well STFU because you’re basically just being a self-contradictory whiner.
So far the Tea Party has demonstrated real principle in working within the system for reform. But if the system operators change the rules when they lose and yank out the rug, if they are willing to assert, and willing to act on that assertion and back it up with reality, meaning force and fact, will it work against the system? Will it actually resist? Say ‘no’? Claim it’s rights and fight for them?
If they have no right to do what they are doing, stop letting them do it. A gaggle of confused moderates with a red-white-and-blue booth and a stylus are really quite irrelevant and besides the point in that context.
Whether it’s a popular grass-roots movement, a boycott, a labor strike or a governor’s office, I’m still waiting for anyone to tell them ‘No’ and demonstrate some evidence of actually possessing and excercising anything approaching what you could call ‘rights’.
The right can mock the left for having nothing much more than a naked will to power, but I’ve yet to see the right display much evidence of having a will at all.
Might makes versimilitude. If you don’t want others to abuse their power over you, you must sieze and reserve some measure of it for yourself; beyond arguing to persuade them they should not wish for power over you, if they should wish for it still, do not give it to them.
There are two ways to prevail over the mob. One is to inculcate them into a culture that deplores mob action in favor of the rule of law — something we in this country used to do (hence my belief that there have been more of us). We’ve stopped doing that, but not all of us who were brought up right have died off and I do believe we’re still the majority — but just so tired of all the bullshit that a lot of us don’t care to go to the trouble anymore.
The other way to prevail over the mob is violent suppression by the ruling class, which doesn’t always work. See France, 1789.
The thing to remember is that all actions are undertaken by individuals. Even the decision to surrender one’s will to the mob is an individual choice. If you don’t have enough individuals against the mob, you will lose. Tomorrow, not in 200 years.
News via NRO:BREAKING: Computer Error Could Give Prosser 7,381 More Votes, Victory
http://tinyurl.com/3v64u9f