This is how it works, isn’t it? Claim to champion the type while attacking specific instances of the type (if push comes to shove, just note that they aren’t a particular authentic instance) — then use the claim that you champion the type as proof of your identity group bona fides and commitment to social justice.
— All at the expense of the individual.
And all of a piece with a political and ideological attempt to neuter the primacy of the individual as the foundational concept of our political founding and enforce instead a kind of Balkanized collectivism more easily exploited by a permanent ruling class.
Nice work if you can get it.
(thanks to Terry H)
Did you all see that NOW is again going after Rush with the aim of getting him fired?
Their ‘irrefutable logic’ this time being that the constitution does not guarantee anyone the right to make $38 M a year saying things they don’t like on the radio.
Funny, I don’t recall that in the constitution. Or that NOW is the arbiter of such things.
“Politics trumps civility….”
Umm, when has civility ever even entered the discussion, except as a political ploy?
Civility is when you let the left say what they want and keep your darned mouth shut.
Ernst, probably the same way the constitution and religion enter conversations with the likes of Pelosi and co.
When and how it suits them.
Sorry about the OT but:
http://yhoo.it/HY1hOM
…[Rubio] calls his evolving legislation a conservative alternative to the DREAM Act — the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors measure. That Democratic-backed bill, which is overwhelmingly popular with Hispanics, would provide a pathway to citizenship to children in the United States illegally if they attend college or join the military. The measure came close to passage in December 2010 but has languished since then…
An immigration plan from Rubio, the GOP’s best-known Hispanic, could help Republicans make some headway with the fastest growing minority group and its 21 million eligible voters, many concentrated in the contested presidential battleground states of Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado…
“We have to get Hispanic voters to vote for our party,” Romney told a private fundraiser in Florida on Sunday in which he insisted the GOP needs an alternative to the DREAM Act. He warned that a significant number of Hispanics backing Obama “spells doom for us,” according to NBC News.
Rubio, who notably called on his party to tone down the anti-immigrant talk earlier this year, is working on a plan that would allow young illegal immigrants who came to the United States with their parents to apply for non-immigrant visas. They would be permitted to stay in the country to study or work, could obtain a driver’s license but would not be able to vote. They later could apply for residency, but they would not have a special path to citizenship.
May I note that before John Derbyshire was driven out of polite company by his erstwhile colleagues, I listened to one of his Radio Derb podcasts, about two or three weeks ago. I was surprised to hear him begin a segment darkly critical of Marco Rubio, conservative darling. What was his objection? He played a sound clip of Rubio speaking on some issue or other in public, and after Rubio finished his remarks in English, he repeated them in Spanish. Derbyshire noted that this was a severe disappointment in Rubio, to find him pandering to the multicultural game with the “let’s speak to identity groups in their own language” ploy. John averred that this guy bears watching. Looks like the now reviled Derbyshire may have been right.
Keep yer yap closed? How very politic.
Identity politics is a suckers game for Republicans.
So it doesn’t surprise me in the least to see Mitt Romney playing it.
Your post, George, is why I never get too high on any public figure. Sooner or later they’ll disappoint you ,if not out and out betray your trust.
Oh, and Marco, we’re not anti immigrant; we’re anti illegal immigration.
Putz.
I warned people that Rubio may not be who he’s was being made out to be. I noted that I suspected the Bush clan had already coopted him.
I was told I was being unfair.
Every day that goes by more firmly cements the idea that our fundamental problems cannot be solved politically, because they are cultural in nature. Wasn’t it de Tocqueville who observed that no republican democracy can endure if the people themselves are corrupt? Jeff and Derb were right. Rubio will be seduced by the likes of Lott and Hatch. It’s as if DC is a giant slime mold absorbing every mind and none can long escape infection.
Sympathetic as I am to Squid’s desire to save the Republican party from itself by taking it over from the bottom up, I find myself thinking more and more that the establishmentarian, go along get along it, it’s just business/winning, mentality has become so corrupting that a clean break is necessary.
I rather doubt there can be another party. Our system is not set up to easily accomodate more than two clearly dominant parties, but that isn’t the real problem.
The real problem is that very few people are left who look at government and think “What business does it have here?” Instead most people in The Nation Below Canada consider government and think “What am I permitted to do, and what free stuff is my right?”
Not all that different than “What does the Manor Lord want me to do today, and how much offal and groat cakes do I get?”
If we (meaning conservatives and classical liberals —and those libertarians who aren’t just about getting high too, I suppose) break from the GOP, there won’t be a GOP.
What the Bushes and Romneys and Roves rely on is our fear that splitting the party means an indeterminate period of Democrat control, that we’d rather tolerate them than suffer Democrats.
What happens when the GOP itself becomes insufferable?
They’re just about there.
There’s a reason you punish apostasy more than disbelief.
I remain convinced that people can learn, and through learning, change themselves George. How else would we account for the creation of our Republic in the first instance, or the disappearance of the Whig party, and the emergence of the Republican party from an obscure beginning in some town in Wisconsin, or for that matter the disappearance of our Republic we bemoan? Granted we may not determine in detail how the such projected future events come about, beyond some possession by the thought that “things needn’t be thus, and can be made to be otherwise”. But we have no a priori reason to believe that such changes won’t take place, and, given the exigent crisis, many reasons to suppose that they will.
I’ll go with the late , great Milton Friedman. Discussing a person’s ideas to vote everyone out of office, Friedman basically told the man that that was fantasy. To paraphrase;
“You don’t ‘throw the bums out’; you keep their feet to the fire and create a condition in which bad people are compelled to do the right thing”.
In that way , their interests integrate with ours.
I’m all for a third party; even the eventual downfall of the Dem and GOP apparatus as it is now. But pressuring them into doing the right things will yield much more fruit in the short term. Squid, that’s where local people/groups come into play.
One of the ways you keep their feet to the fire is by frequent firing.
As I mentioned in the Lugar thread yesterday, I’d vote against him, period. That includes voting for his Democrat opponent in the general, if he survives the primary.
That’s the only way to convince the party apparatchiks to stay the hell out of primaries.
Part of the reason I remain committed to reforming local elements of the GOP is that I believe it’s one of the few levers we’ll have for pulling power away from Washington. In the personal case, it’s a matter of educating my fellow Minnesotans about just how much of their money is being sucked into St Paul, and how badly that money is being squandered. If such efforts bear fruit, we might just wind up with a Legislature that can start making the reforms we need. We might wind up with a candidate for Governor who isn’t a complete waste of skin and hair. We might wind up with a delegation that demands Washington back the hell off and let Minnesota be Minnesota.
Yes, it’s a dream, but it beats the hell out of the nightmare that will come if we give up.
There is a dangerous assumption underlying just throwing the two existing parties out that their replacements would be an improvement. This isn’t necessarily so and supposing they would be worse would probably be a safer bet.
Collectively speaking, we get the government we deserve is an uncomfortable truth. As George Orwell noted, the people have become corrupt. Even if you could get a majority of saints (however you define them) elected to run the government, it wouldn’t last since far too many people aren’t all that interested right now in self-reliance, integrity and responsible government.
Squid, if we could somehow just get federalism to once again hold sway, then the efforts to win statehouses back could bear a great deal of fruit. Trying to get Leviathan to act in anything other than the interests of Leviathan is a lost cause.
I would say in Suid’s defense – it can be done – look at Wisconsin. It sure ain’t easy, and I would gladly let the national GOP go #$%& itself if it keeps this stuff up.
Not sure Squid need’s much defense. I meant to agree with most of the comments, but don’t think Leviathan will return power back to the states voluntarily or becuase the states demand it back. The only hope is that SCOTUS forces the issue.
Hey, I can dream can’t I?
Damned extraneous possessive apostrophes.
I’ll admit that part of the reason why I’d like to see the several states reasserting their sovereignty is because I want to see the look on certain people’s faces when these states say “Hell, no!” to the coming bailouts of California, Illinois and Michigan.
If Texas is to pay off California’s debts, it should only happen because Texas has taken ownership of California as a vassal state.
I’m all in favor of Federal bailouts for states being attached to reversion to territorial status.
Fuck that. Bail them out, but then kick them out of their homes. I could use some affordable beach front property. Around where Jim Rockford used to live would do fine, thanks.
At the rate we’re going, you’ll have to fight either the Mexican drug cartels or the Red Army for that bit of Malibu beach.
Maybe both.