Of course they were:
In a US Senate vote on proposals to limit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s authority to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act, the Republican advances were fought off successfully by a narrow Democratic majority yesterday (6 April). However, Republicans have insisted on continuing to fight the EPA’s efforts to regulate emissions on a federal level, which had been confirmed by the US Supreme Court in 2005. Under the ruling, the EPA is mandated to address greenhouse gases from the largest sources of pollution, while Republicans claim that these rules would hurt the economy.
The largest sources of pollution? You. Every time you exhale.
This has not a whit to do with clean air — and is about as far away from the intent of the Clean Air Act as one can get (while still plausibly claiming that the text of the law gives the EPA such authority — and everything to do with further controlling and regulating industry, and so, as the Dems have shown they will do, exacting tribute while deciding winners and losers in a crony corporatist system.
That we can’t sell Senate Democrats on the clear problems inherent to giving unelected bureaucrats control over our very exhalation — control they claim authority to based on a law that was never actually passed (I maintain, of course, that the Clean Air Act as it is being used by the EPA is essentially a new text, lent the cachet of legality by a dubious SCOTUS ruling) — shows just how well and truly radicalized our country has become under a progressive ascendancy (aided in no small part by our own unwillingness to fight it using appropriate intellectual measures).
The truth is, much of the radicalism we see today is set to autopilot: the structural foundations — in language, legal hermeneutics, an epistemology that has adopted a superficial view of diversity and a totalitarian view of “tolerance” — have all been laid, prepping the ground for legal and judicial manipulation, legislative malpractice, and executive overreach through the administrative state. The rest is, frankly, plug-n-play.
Even as the more timorous thinkers on the pragmatic right decry the “radicalism” on their own side (which, from what I can tell, consists largely of pointing up the radicalism of the left, and exposing both their Alinskyite tactics and their fraudulent claims), they enable the radicalism selling itself as “progress” by agreeing to operate from within the left’s very own structural paradigms.
But as I’ve noted before, such paradigms are epistemic constructs, not laws of nature. They can — and must — be changed, deconstructed, shifted, and if classical liberalism is to regain its rightful foothold as the intellectual basis for our civil society, we who believe in it must do the difficult work of exposing the false edifice the progressives have built and then hack away at it until the whole rickety thing tumbles and crashes.
And we just don’t seem to have the political will.
Pointing out the “false edifice” is tireless, thankless work that the populace in general does not get nor has the patience to hear. Logically deconstructing leftist falsehoods takes too many well-reasoned words, damit. Wish it weren’t so. As America Dances with the Stars, clicks on #WINNING videos on YouTube, and makes a mad dash to snap up the latest iPad, listening to intelligent, forthright arguments against the tyranny of progressivism is, to them, like enduring a tedious, gin-soaked post-Thanksgiving dinner conversation with their cranky uncle Mickie. American culture is the new soma. Classical liberals need a gateway drug that will wake the public up before any sliver of understanding will seep in. I think Walter Ong (if the genius bastard were still alive) would agree that we are now in a neo-oral culture, where image is the “new” literacy.
I think to a large degree you are correct, ProfShade.
If I thought anybody read any more — or were I not cognizant that certain people who claim powerful friends would, as they’ve already stated in private, work to make sure I can’t get published — I’d get down to the business of writing that novella on intentionalism I’ve long been planning.
A humorous instructive illustrative — and brief-ish — kind of 21st-century parable might work. With guest appearances by Meghan McCain and Scooby Doo.
Maybe I should follow the lead of this chick Pablo linked to and start doing little YouTube blasts on language.
Writing them here just means that I can be sure that the big traffic drivers on the right will ignore them. Hell, at least two of them disagree with the central thesis (one of whom has called it “intellectual fraud”), and another believes that the ideas behind it are, from a political perspective, fundamentally unserious. Hard to get traction when that’s the baseline opinion.
Anything worth being — principle, civilization, reason itself — exists as a single-ended construct with one end mired in dead-ended nihilistic void of dishonesty and envy and theft and the other struggling to explore whatever positive heights it will as an exception to the rule of the former. These rays of the human mind are therefore not balanced — nor are their economies, their societies, their thoughts. There can ultimately be no debate with the dishonest and envious and the thieving: Reason cannot fight the inherently unreasonable.
In the context of your comment we see that the left has become a parasitic force, one that hangs on the seeker’s and producer’s neck until it kills them. It does not care that it does this thing, which is part of the inherent asymmetry.
Being a mere organized, structured manifestation of this tragic human condition and continuum, politics are therefore naturally asymmetrical. Within politics, leftism is simply a disorder, both predictably and by copious evidence. The left attracts to itself the problem and it becomes that problem given a political voice, platform, and leverage.
It exists but it’s just not legitimate. The Lie is not a counterbalance to objective truth, it is a contaminant in the collective mind that occasionally kills that mind.
Jeff is right on at least two levels: He calls madness when it occurs but he also does the work of not backing off. Looking back on the trajectory of all too many peoples and their failures, it’s no mystery why he’s despised.
President Antoinette says…
Meanwhile Lord Obama says, Let them eat cake.
PS: By going around blotting out sunlight, the “right’s” Pragmatists are no less part of the problem than the far left. There’s a good argument that they compound the problem. They’re virtual mobies.
Oh, man…
I heard the audio of Obama yesterday. I’m going to post on it.
I was astonished when I saw the Obama quote. Obama may have said “buy a new car” but what I read was “Let them eat cake.”
I do not understand how people can still claim, with a straight face, that President Obama is smart.
The truth is, much of the radicalism we see today is set to autopilot: the structural foundations…have all been laid, prepping the ground for legal and judicial manipulation, legislative malpractice, and executive overreach through the administrative state.
On the bright side: if these structural foundations cannot be overcome through rhetoric and reason, we can still count on their being undone by simple arithmetic. The whole thing is held up by imaginary money, and much like Wile E Coyote, it will come crashing down once people realize that there’s nothing holding it up.
In the meantime, I keep reiterating to my acquaintances that I’m not trying to cause the Collapse; I’m just trying to manage the collateral damage.
Yes! And bring teh funneh.
I’m just trying to manage the collateral damage.
Yep.
Classical liberals need a gateway drug that will wake the public up before any sliver of understanding will seep in.
Which is why, as I just finished saying in the classical liberal coda thread, you’re boned so long as you look for that: you’ll never get that. You’ve never had that.
There’s always been a great mass of people who don’t care, so long as you shut up and let them watch American Idol. They are largely irrelevant in that they don’t really care – they just watch American Idol. Out of laziness, they are effectively pacifists, which means in the end, they aid the strong and support the winners, nothing more and nothing less.
The support democrats because democrats are most recalcitrant. They’ll support whoever is most stubborn and insistent and escalatory, because the goal of the entire endeavor is to avoid the debate and get home in time for dinner.
You cannot win with them. They support the winner out of a lack of strong desire that warrants conflict. You must win, and then you’ll just have them along suddenly and uselessly.
You didn’t get your rights in this country because a majority decided to fight for them. You got your rights because a minority fought another minority and won, and the once that was done, the rest were too busy watching American Idol to fuss over it. The rebels win, the British win, whatever – they support ending the war ASAP, and they do so by telling the weak side to quit, and/or currying favor and jumping on the bandwagon of the percieved inevitable.
Harry Reid said this morning on this subject that the Republicans want to shut down the government so that they can deny people, clean, pollution-free air.
In the meantime, I keep reiterating to my acquaintances that I’m not trying to cause the Collapse
If –
if these structural foundations cannot be overcome through rhetoric and reason
Then –
Yes, I am trying to cause the arithmetic collapse. Unapologetically. Give me some goddamn food stamps.
Better to me that I am broke and destitute and free, than not free.
Better to me that you are broke and destitute and I am free, than not free. As surely as you’ve persued your prosperity and security by abusing my liberty, I feel fully justified and not at all bad to persue my liberty at the expense of your prosperity and security, if that is what it takes. Good for the goose, to each his own, yadda yadda etc. et. al. It’s morally equivalent at worst.
Fuck your economy. I am the clansman.
” Reason cannot fight the inherently unreasonable.”
You’re spot on, JHoward. But luckily (or unfortunately), the unreasonable hard-core progressives hiding behind their mask of “common good” are relatively few but have huge cultural influence– from Hollywood to the kindergarten classroom. The majority of American’s who don’t get it need a glimpse behind that mask.
And yeah. I think Scooby-Doo is up to the task. And Daphne. She was the one who always broke the scams wide open, wasn’t she?
As surely as you’ve pursued your prosperity and security by abusing my liberty, I feel fully justified and not at all bad to pursue my liberty at the expense of your prosperity and security, if that is what it takes.
I’m not sure that I’ve ever trampled on your liberty, but it’s nice to be considered, just the same.
Also, thanks ever so much for hastening the day when I have to gather my family and get the hell out of the Cities ahead of the ravening mob. Say hi to Cloward and Piven for me!
It’s a generic ‘you’ Squid.
But that’s at least half of what I find so hard to believe about dems actively pushing a cloward-piven strategy.
Change the window dressing and Cloward-Piven is Ayn Rand.
Why would they want to collapse the bread-and-circuses structure? It’s THEIR structure. This is suppose to be the key to their power? The key to their power is also billed as the last hope and final recourse of their opposition. You just called it ‘the bright side’.
At best, the whole thing is a crap shoot. A one last ‘for all the marbles’ gambit. It does not make any sense for it to be done by a side that’s already been winning.
There’s a direct linkage between banning light bulbs and economic black-outs. Don’t want a blackout, don’t ban the bulb. Ban the bulb, better have some candles, bub.
“You can’t have your cake and eat it too”; or maybe “the wages of sin is death”, etc. etc.
Because I recognize the inherant trade-offs built into reality, I hope he fails.
Because what would success look like?
I’d rather the Collapse.
thanks ever so much for hastening the day when I have to gather my family and get the hell out of the Cities ahead of the ravening mob.
You’re welcome.
I mean, would you rather it when you were older and infirmer?
It’ll be during my life time, methinks. Just as soon while I’m young and spry, and still have living time left to give a crap worth fighting over.
What’s the alternative, you want me to work to avoid it? WTF? Why would I do that? You think I should pay into the health insurance scheme and get health care? Pay more than I’ll recieve to keep the system afloat a bit longer, so others can enjoy their ipods? Why?
It’s a generic ‘you’ Squid.
I figured as much; we’ve both been around long enough to know the score. I guess I’m just not that eager to saw off my arm quite yet.
In the meanwhile, I see more and more guys in my neighborhood looking for a little work under the table. Sure, it’s because they need cash, and they don’t want to lose their Obamaployment checks, but I’m starting to think they may have the right idea.
Entropy, I’ve been saying this for years: the Patriots were NEVER the majority of the country; they were just the ones with the guns and the will to use them. Turned out that they had more than the Loyalists / British Govt were willing to supply. Which has always led me to two conclusions:
1. What Jeff does here is necessary, and important; as necessary and important as what Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and all the other writers for the Patriot cause did to rally the troops. Necessary — but not sufficient. Because ultimately the rulers don’t care what you say — as long as that sweet tax money / loot keeps coming and they aren’t burned in their beds. Ultimately, it came down to blood and bodies, and will again.
2. After the fighting was over, the Loyalists were given three choices: leave, STFU, or die. That’s the choice the loser will have here, too… except it will be nastier, because there’s not a lot of places left on Earth that a defeated group can go to and build back up to what they had, culturally or economically.
I’d love to be proven wrong; I just can’t find any examples that I am.
The idea wasn’t really to make the world safe for democracy as much as to make the world safe from democracy.
Right. Watch Wade Rathke. He’s ahead of the curve, again.
I’m hearing that the EPA restrictions are back in the deal, FWIW.