18 Replies to “Rededication [guest post by motionview]”

1. Squid says:

   January 3, 2012 at 12:20 pm

   Closer to home, we can work on reforming our state legislatures at the same time as we work on the distant Congress. Identify, recruit and support candidates who will demand that Washington recognize and defer to the powers and authority of the several states, and who will use their reclaimed authority in the service of restoring our individual powers and authority.

   What they have spent 50 years to build incrementally, we can undo in 5. Because we don’t have to fool anybody, or lie about our intentions, or cover up the identities of those who’ve been bankrolling our efforts. When you’re on the side of dignity, responsibility, and liberty, all you need is a megaphone.

2. Pablo says:

   January 3, 2012 at 12:25 pm

   We’re losing in a slow motion train wreck, I can see it happening right before my eyes, and I can’t seem to do anything to stop it.

   When the train crashes, Grasshopper, everyone loses, and they the track that was laid. That is when you may win.

3. Pablo says:

   January 3, 2012 at 12:25 pm

   *see* the track.

4. LBascom says:

   January 3, 2012 at 1:00 pm

   I am having an increasingly hard time beating back despair. Yesterday I was in a real funk, and Rush even gave me a look and told me to knock it off.

   What haunts me is the near certainty we’ve already passed the tipping point. The entitlement mentality has become too entrenched, the debt too massive, and the Balkenization of the citizenry too complete to hope the government leviathan can even be restrained, much less diminished.

   75% of the republican party know Romney doesn’t have the heart do do even the most basic first step, dump Obamacare and get the government out of the healthcare business, and are becoming so desperate even Ron Paul is seriously considered. A guy that talks not of reforming entitlements, but of hamstringing or military(one of the few constitutional responsibilities the feds have) as the way to balance the budget. Oh, and buying gold.

   No, I fear the tipping point came around the first part of 2007, and my grandchildren will never know the USA I knew. I fear the only way classic liberalism survives is if red states band together and tell Washington to go fuck themselves, and we’ll have to once again go to war for liberty.

   You are all stocked up on food and ammo, right? If I bring my own, some of you will let me in your red state from California, right?

5. motionview says:

   January 3, 2012 at 1:21 pm

   Sorry about the funky “more”.

   I know where you’re at LB, but I’ve taken a deep look inside myself and I choose to fight and win.

6. leigh says:

   January 3, 2012 at 1:33 pm

   You can come over here, Lee. We have reloaders, a fast boat and a lake to make a get-away on, if need be.

7. sdferr says:

   January 3, 2012 at 1:35 pm

   Can’t help but applaud your decision motionview, even while I think I agree with Lee that the fighting ground of this metaphorical battle will be elsewhere (though I may disagree with Lee as to where, precisely), if there’s to be a battle at all. That ground, I think, will look more like the enterprise of education on which Mark Levin (in his books, and in furtherance of these, his radio show) has embarked. Though even there, I’m not quite sure that’s the shape it will take, as it may entail other — wholly novel — approaches. But to that extent, however it may be, I’m with Pogo [We have met the enemy . . .], generalizing to the whole population.

8. LBascom says:

   January 3, 2012 at 1:53 pm

   I give 100 to 1 odds Romney is the Republican candidate for 2012. I’ll go 8 to 1 he’ll be the next president.

   There will be jubilation. WE’VE WON! will be the cry.

   And then nothing will really change. The statists will go on creating crisis, and ever greater crisis will necessitate ever more government control, and my grandkids will wake up to a police state they inhabit at the pleasure of the statists.

   As I said, I only see one way we escape that fate, and that way is unthinkable among polite company in this day and age.

   Sorry to be such a downer, and I’m not saying I’m not down for the fight. I’m saying I think the fight is going to be worse than most expect. Much worse if we truly expect to win.

   *cue Churchill’s Battle of Britain speech*

9. leigh says:

   January 3, 2012 at 2:04 pm

   I’m with Pogo [We have met the enemy . . .], generalizing to the whole population.

   Heh. You even moved close to the Okeefenokee Swamp.

10. sdferr says:

    January 3, 2012 at 2:20 pm

    Ben Domenech, at Ricochet, posted a link to his interview with Robby George in The City (p. 17). George says important stuff concerning our political difficulties, which I think less connected to a failing martial spirit (which granted, is also a concern), but more connected to the ongoing passive disavowal of our creedal national identity and heritage.

11. Squid says:

    January 3, 2012 at 2:48 pm

    The statists will go on creating crisis, and ever greater crisis will necessitate ever more government control, and my grandkids will wake up to a police state they inhabit at the pleasure of the statists.

    They’re making the documentary already. Frankly, I’m surprised that President Snow Obama is allowing it to be distributed and screened at all.

12. sdferr says:

    January 3, 2012 at 3:29 pm

    Just listened to Levin’s broadcast from last night, wherein he cites B. Franklin from his speech, read by Wilson, on Sept 17, 1787 at the end of the Convention:

    In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.

13. cranky-d says:

    January 3, 2012 at 3:57 pm

    Those founders really knew their stuff.

14. sdferr says:

    January 3, 2012 at 4:54 pm

    Yep. Which is why Lincoln, who was listening to them, said:

    The question recurs, “how shall we fortify against it?” The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;–let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap–let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;–let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.

    And law most of all, preeminent to all written laws? The Constitution. And what law preeminent to the Constitution? The natural law, also called natural right (so, the Declaration). So, and:

    Another reason which once was; but which, to the same extent, is now no more, has done much in maintaining our institutions thus far. I mean the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the revolution had upon the passions of the people as distinguished from their judgment. By this influence, the jealousy, envy, and avarice, incident to our nature, and so common to a state of peace, prosperity, and conscious strength, were, for the time, in a great measure smothered and rendered inactive; while the deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed exclusively against the British nation. And thus, from the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature, were either made to lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of the noblest cause–that of establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty.

    But this state of feeling must fade, is fading, has faded, with the circumstances that produced it.

    I do not mean to say, that the scenes of the revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten; but that like every thing else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. In history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted, so long as the bible shall be read;– but even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. Even then, they cannot be so universally known, nor so vividly felt, as they were by the generation just gone to rest. At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was, that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son or brother, a living history was to be found in every family– a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related–a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned.–But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but, what invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done; the leveling of its walls. They are gone.–They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-resistless hurricane has swept over them, and left only, here and there, a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage; unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs, a few more ruder storms, then to sink, and be no more.

    They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.–Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.

    Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

15. cranky-d says:

    January 3, 2012 at 10:31 pm

    I could be wrong, but I think you are looking for an awakening in our fellow citizens of the passions that drove the founders to what they achieved. And you are searching for a way to bring it out in others who would be inclined, but lack the knowledge to know they are so inclined.

    I don’t expect it to happen. Complacency is common because life is not nearly the struggle it used to be, and it’s so much easier to let things happen than try to order them by yourself.

16. sdferr says:

    January 3, 2012 at 10:42 pm

    Me, cranky-d? If so, I’m not so much looking for an awakening (not that I think one impossible, just highly improbable, especially after my experience of the Sept 11th attacks and the too quick fade of commitment on the part of ordinary folks; even if something like that did happen, any such thing would be very rudimentary I’d think, reduced to what actually are natural inclinations or passions, where those are far far from the subtleties of full-grown American political philosophy as the founders saw it). I’m more thinking it’s an educational project we need, set upon with thoroughgoing intent, in the expectation of a long (and possibly easily upset) campaign.

17. motionview says:

    January 3, 2012 at 11:32 pm

    Well, let me say that having not seen any down-twinkles to my list of objectives I’ll take them as consensussed and drive on. There’s some old fable with a punch line of maybe the horse will sing. In this case, the horse is going to sing; whether as bass or soprano is up to the horse. And the awakening can be a gentle breeze or a drill sergeant’s size 12, but an awakening there will be.

18. bh says:

    January 3, 2012 at 11:42 pm

    [up-twinkles]

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