Mike Hendrix, being all unhelpful:
Progressivism simply cannot be reconciled with an America whose people are citizens, not subjects. It is not compatible with individual liberty and unrestrained initiative. It is an ideology not of freedom, but of fetters. It is based not on self-determination, but on coercion and compliance. It is Obama, his halfwit lackey Biden, and their ideological confreres–not conservatives and libertarians–who seek to put us in chains.
America works best as a near-chaotic thing, wherein ideas and ambitions are allowed to ferment and develop organically, to succeed or fail on their own and according to their merits–not as some tightly-controlled lab experiment run by gray men far distant from the lives and circumstances of those they direct from on high.
Progressivism is fundamentally an ideology that calls for micromanagement of all aspects of life by supposed “experts” who have no real, practical experience with that which they hope to dominate. They wish to meddle in affairs that are too big for them: to run things that are beyond human control, too complex and unpredictable to be reined in, far beyond the reach of big, broad rules made by small, narrow men.
The original American ideal called for allowing people to direct their own lives as they see fit, without much in the way of interference or restraint, and trusted them in the main to make choices and pursue goals that would advance civilization on their own, in ways that could not possibly be predicted–or, sometimes, even imagined.
These things are NOT compatible. You either believe in the one, or the other. There can be no lasting compromise between them; one of them must win out in the end, and at the expense of the other. If it’s Progressivism that wins out, as it has been for decades now, freedom and Constitutional government will not only shrivel and die, it will be actively destroyed. Which is exactly what has been happening, slowly but surely…and painfully.
The sorry pass at which we now find ourselves–staggering debt; incomprehensible spending; a moribund economy; an enervated, cynical populace unsure of themselves and mistrustful of their fellow citizens; a feckless, wholly corrupt political class devoid of integrity and incapable of true statesmanship; an unintelligible morass of burdensome regulation which often contradicts its own directives and hampers instead of protects; a nation groping down a blind alley of failure, stagnation, decadence, and despair, looking for some way, any way, out–was not some random event, brought on by errors in management and requiring only slight adjustments and corrections. It was the inevitable and entirely predictable result of allowing a philosophy based on compulsion, harassment, suppression, skepticism, and distrust to take root and flourish.
It must be defeated and destroyed, root, branch, and bough. It must be. Otherwise, we are lost–and with us, the last, best hope of freedom on earth. As such, this is not a fight to be lamented, or shied away from. Our divisions are real, are not superficial or insignificant. This is a battle worth fighting. This is a hill worth dying on. Many have before us, after all. Many. We do them no honor by failing to recognize what’s at stake for the sake of a false civility or an unworthy accommodation–or a temporary, face-saving, peace-keeping expedient. Quite the opposite, in fact.
All so very very true. Those of us who recognize what it is we’re fighting against — that is, those of us who’ve been willing to name it, and for our troubles, have been largely dismissed from the network of interconnected GOP-fluffing blogs and websites and organizations that have come to dominate what was at one time a far more ideologically-driven political blogosphere — have for years balked at the supposed necessity of compromising with the left, and have rejected the faux-graciousness and collegiality displayed by so many on the right who look to separate themselves from the outraged “extremists” they believe themselves intellectually more nimble than. More nuanced, these people are, you see. More attuned to How DC Works — and so willing to forgo the easy task of arguing from principle in order to do the far more difficult (to their way of thinking) trenchwork of developing a complicated calculus for electoral success, engaging the in the very identity politics the left has used so successfully, fighting demographics with demographics, working tirelessly to woo the moderate middle and “independents” by deploying a kind of “us too” governmental compassion that has, over time, grown the government, though at a lesser pace when Republicans are in power, a victory of sorts over which they are proud, and resentful of the silly “purists” who don’t recognize their hard work and genius in cobbling together a winning coalition by which the GOP is able to eek out the occasional victory and take the reins of power, reins they’ll be able to keep so long as they don’t engage in the easy idealism favored by their impatient, impertinent, ungrateful base.
But here’s the thing: those who pose as our betters — who believe themselves “pragmatists” at the expense of taking the easy route of adhering to principle — are in fact an impediment. By accepting the left’s premises, be it over the necessity of identity politicking or the desire of the populace for “compromise” or the importance of moving ever leftward to have any chance at securing independent or moderate voters, they keep us embroiled in a game whose rules are designed to thwart us. They represent us through surrender to the left, a surrender that many of us are simply not willing to accept — regardless of how much temporary political power we’re able to secure as a result.
We are above party. And the foundational ideals upon which this country was built, having proven so incredibly successful in so (relatively) short a period of time, are not negotiable. There is no room to compromise with those whose ideology necessarily and inexorably gravitates toward police state tyranny. In fact, calling for such compromises — and extolling the act of compromise, without worrying about the substance that is lost in the exchange — is an easy act of cheap grace, and bespeaks a false piety and a kind of civic sanctimony that should be repulsive to any thinking free man or woman.
We are in the final stages of an existential battle that “our” side has agreed to lose for quite some time now — provided that in the end, they become part of the permanent ruling elite such losing ensures.
Which is precisely why many on “our” side aren’t on our side, and why we need to reverse the power relationship: they can either come with us and defend liberty and the autonomy of the individual, or they can go their own way, calling for tax cuts and a relaxation on regulations for favorated businesses in a battle over crony positioning with the left they have essentially joined ideologically.
Losing more slowly is no longer an option. Because the final loss is near upon us.
Either we resist or we don’t. And if we choose resistance, it makes no sense to turn over the leadership of that resistance to those whose own interests often require that they surrender ours.
micromanagement of all aspects of life by supposed “experts” who have no real, practical experience with that which they hope to dominate.
Even if they had real, practical experience, it would still be tyranny.
Their credentials are irrelevant. The fact that they actually don’t understand what they seek to control only heightens the absurdity of their project.
What does a modern day revolution look like? We can’t throw tea in the harbor, so what would hurt our overlords in the present day?
By becoming self sufficient? By owning guns? voting doesn’t have much effect now because we are run by a two-party (ONE party, in reality) system. After the country collapses like Greece, what next?
I wish there was a roadmap or some plan of action.
“What does a modern day revolution look like?”
Quite like any other old one. Perhaps I needn’t say, missfixit, but it looks like you. And everyone who thinks with you that they will sally forth without instruction.
Of course there isn’t a roadmap or pamphlet of explanation, because the people who don’t desire to be tyrannized, who are united in their determination to rule themselves, have hundreds of millions of substantially different circumstances. Yet the funadamental elements of political deed are these same people.
Mass noncompliance. And ammo stockpiles.
It starts, I should think, with some brave governor somewhere — or better still, a coalition of such people — who tell the feds to get stuffed, and return their money if it comes conditionally, while in exchange keeping their own state tax revenues.
That’d be a start.
Unless we are storming the capitol, refusing to pay taxes (and then shooting when the IRS agents come for us) – I still don’t get how the modern revolution works. Ruby Ridge was all well and good, but then it’s just isolated nutbags on a mountaintop – we’d need millions of “us”, against the millions on food stamps and government health care.
During the first revolution were we hampered by the majority of the citizenry? I am wondering just how big “our side” is….tough to tell, don’t you think? Most people I know are pretty uniformed, and when they do watch the news they just bitch about how we need more safety nets! Then when I explain to my friends why I’m trying to decide between moving to a goat farm or moving to Costa Rica, they act like *I’m* the nutty one. !
oh I didn’t see Jeff’s reply.
Ok – so we need it to start at the STATE level.
I’m just glad that Mike is on our side. It reinforces my belief that when push comes to shove, we have way better teammates than they do.
For the first revolution, there was King George, who was both politically distant and physically distant from the colonies.
Now, we have a Federal government that is arguably even more distant politically from a good chunk of the people than the King was. However, we lack the physical distance which helped with the King’s decision to let us go our own way. This revolution, if it ever takes place, will not resemble the first one, except that then, as now, a vocal minority of the populace will drive it (my understanding is that roughly 1/3 of the people actively supported the revolution in 1776, 1/3 were against it, and 1/3 were apathetic).
(my understanding is that roughly 1/3 of the people actively supported the revolution in 1776, 1/3 were against it, and 1/3 were apathetic).
Interesting. I’m thinking I need to reread the history books on the revolution. History repeating itself, etc. I don’t remember those stats.
We can’t throw tea in the harbor, so what would hurt our overlords in the present day?
Mass noncompliance.
To expand on Pablo’s reply: the small things you can do mostly involve going around the State. A million people growing their own food and raising their own poultry can get written up in the New Yorker as a movement of “locavores” and hipster foodies trying to get back in touch with the Earth. But what if it’s deeper than that? What if it’s actually a million people who don’t want any part of farm subsidies and USDA regulations? What if it’s a million people who simply don’t want to pay the taxes and the hidden costs of regulation, because they didn’t want to feed Leviathan any more?
What if they are joined by a million small businessmen who decide that they’ve had enough of the crushing expense and legal threats that hang over their heads every day? Perhaps they all close up shop, but keep their equipment and training and continue to work quietly, under the table, for cash. Sure, they don’t employ workers any more, but they’re still doing good work for decent pay, and they don’t have to fill out stupid paperwork or pay a thousand different fees every month.
Guess what? It’s already happening. And as more and more people abandon the official economy to participate in a myriad of smaller, local grey-market economies, it erodes the authority and the tax revenues the State relies upon to maintain control over the people. Hell, Greece would be solvent today if it hadn’t happened over there long ago. Up to a third of their economic activity happens under the table, because people have no respect and no use for a bureaucracy widely seen as corrupt and counterproductive.
Isn’t it about time we followed their example?
If you’re already inclined to agree with the political views of the founders and framers missfixit, I’d recommend you read (or re-read) what they read. Politics ain’t primarily about statistics, at least not from their point of view. So, if you choose to follow that course, begin at the beginning.
What you say is all true. The problem America faces is not the fight between one political/economic ideology and another.
It’s that the Press has overwhelmingly lent it’s ability to shape the discussion, obscure the facts and deride the arguments of one side of that debate.
Before we can address the fight with progressivism, we must address the problem of our lack of a free press.
Many claim the press has always been biased and intrusive. Perhaps so but I doubt that in the past the press was so overwhelmingly in favor of one side in this debate with the ability to reach the masses more extensive than ever before.
We now have to get some of our news about events in our country from THE BRITISH PRESS!
I think this is unprecedented.
Combined with the majority of higher and lower educational outlets also being part of the progressive push, the presses refusal to be fair, honest and open has drastically limited the public’s access to the facts behind the claims of the progressives.
Until the Press begins to be at least countered at every step by the politicians they cover, we will never win this fight.
Too many Republicans either don’t understand that the Press is their enemy and will never aid them or approve of them in print/video or they are willing participants in the shell game of labels the progressives are so able at winning.
From now until the election more efforts must be taken to disable or at least point to the distortions, obfuscations and outright lies that the press commits on a daily basis.
Those efforts can only come from those they MUST cover.
The gloves must come off.
Fortunately, more and more people are treating the press the way they treat the State: corrupt, useless, and something to be worked around.
I don’t deny that the traditional media still wield huge power, but it’s eroding quickly. Sooner or later, Soros will run out of willingness to squander his resources on a failing propaganda machine.
No, it is that. We’re going down one path or the other, and we’re at the fork in the road right now, if not slightly beyond it.
It’s also academia, and therefore education in general. Who teaches the teachers and all.
[…] Read it all, natch. […]
More insidious than Soros though, in a sense, is NewsCorp, which makes its money, expending its resources to generate greater resources propounding bullshit all day long. A public turning its back on all such as these may drive home the thrust, and possibly (though only possibly) engender through competition a better more honest product.
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“I demand to be treated like livestock!” — typical progressive
“Get the government back in my womb!” – another typical progressive
sdferr, while FNC does sling it’s share of bullshit (see O’Reilly, Smith, et al) they also run the stories none of the others will touch, such as Fast and Furious, NBPP, etc., and they’re demolishing their competition in the process. While far from perfect, they’re dragging the Overton Window rightward.
wait!
Squid – I think that’s it. the “gray shadow economy”!
I’ve noticed that people in the suburbs are spooked — we recognize how fundamentally unsafe we are, because our land isn’t big enough to grow food and yet we are too far away from other resources. On top of that, the hipsters that are throwing in with the “homesteading movement”? They SAY it’s about being one with mother earth and getting steroid-free eggs, but I think they are equally spooked — they just don’t know the real reason. They’d never blame it on their lefty ideology.
Everyone I talk to on this subject agrees: land, self-sufficiency re: food supply, weapons, no debt, no big mortgages, “shadow economies” — we’re all moving in that direction, even if we can’t all agree why. !
missfixit, I’d start by reading Atlas Shrugged, then maybe watching the series Firefly. Whether it’s going Galt or aiming to misbehave, you are the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon that will change the world.
Revolutions may take many forms and I would be leery of anyone offering to lead one, but they all start by no longer accepting your chains and denying those who want to put them on you the legitimacy of even trying to do so.
– Well, at least one thing is sure. Once its under way none of us will ever need to ask again “How did the German people ever fall under the trance of a mad man”.
I’ve noticed that people in the suburbs are spooked…
A lot of people are spooked, and not just in the suburbs. I think most people understand at some subconscious level that things are wrong, are broken, are falling apart. Most are too caught up in their routines and quotidian problems that they don’t think very deeply about it, but it remains there, like a 60Hz hum. Plus, it’s just impolite to talk about the impending collapse of society; it’s not the sort of thing you do at the playground or over coffee in the church basement.
Still, people know at some gut level that bad things are coming. There’s a reason why the phrase “zombie apocalypse” gets thrown around so much, and it has nothing to do with people’s love of rotten flesh.
There is no way we can come up with an effective way to defeat the Left until we reject Ideology.
The biggest problem we face is a loss of Virtue, a rejection of Morality, of Tradition, of The Permanent Things, that allowed The Republic to survive it’s early and dangerous years and it struggled to achieve stability.
The Left has been very successful in convincing nearly everyone of us that all of live if governed by Ideology [example: the personal is political].
Ideology is defined by the OED as: n. a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.
No system of ideas, developed as they are in the sterile laboratories of the Human Mind, away from Reality, can ever match experience in the transmission of wisdom. As Matt Lewis wrote in 2011:
The conservative argues that the greatest instructor on what laws should exist in a civil society is human experience….
…traditional conservatives believe the rise and success of Western society was not merely a lucky accident or the result of a couple Enlightenment period thunderbolts, but rather the product of diligent work, trial and error, and human experience — and in may ways the result of Christian civilization.
As such, they argue that preserving a strong moral order — an order that took shape over millennia — is vitally important to a functioning society (including a functioning economic system).
The reason The United States stands, as Jeff and Mike correctly point out, on the edge of collapse is because we have stopped basing our thinking in experience – our premises all flow from systems of ideas and not what living life teaches us. John Adams understood that:
Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Until we reject Ideology – a creature that respects not Tradition and Morality and Prudence – until we realize, as Russell Kirk wrote that: conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order, we shall stand no chance of achieving a lasting victory over Left, specifically, and Ideology, generally.
Plus, it’s just impolite to talk about the impending collapse of society; it’s not the sort of thing you do at the playground or over coffee in the church basement.
Still, people know at some gut level that bad things are coming.
yes. you don’t want to be labeled as crazy, either, like the ppl on that show “Doomsday Preppers”. But it’s there. we all feel it.
When I do broach the subject with a few people who I’ve known for many years, they immediately agree that something bad is coming — but nobody can agree on the cause. I had one liberal friend insist that society is about to collapse because everyone is “so greedy and selfish and there are too many religious fanatics” – lol! Talk about not being able to recognize the problem!
But my MOTHER just told me this week she’s decided to take the concealed carry class with me. Cripes.
No. We need to start it at the state level.
Word order. It matters.
“Get the Bishops back in my womb!” – another typical progressive
Also an acceptable answer in Prog Jeopardy, where no one wins more than the least winningest player
To paraphrase what Geoge C. Scott playing Patton said, “I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his ideology. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his ideology.”
The history of the term ideology is a strangely convoluted bit of business, one we’ve covered here a pw a couple of times before, as well as being covered by such people as Mark Levin and Jonah Goldberg in recent months. For all that (which is to say, as to the particulars of the notion), Bob Belvedere has got hold of something substantial.
Yet just today I saw somewhere a headline proclaiming to the effect: Rush Limbaugh pleased that Romney has finally turned the campaign into a contest of ideologies.
So, it seems to me, we’ve a heap of work to do straightening out our grasp of the very terminology we use to talk about politics.
OT: on mounds and firing bullets, another perfect game, Felix Hernandez thumps Tampa 1-0.
Jan Brewer channeling pw.
where’s rick perry eric?
He’s fishing with Rick Scott. For reals. Or reels.
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
Errata in my comment above…
-2nd paragraph, last phrase of last sentence should read: …as it struggled to achieve stability.
-3rd paragraph should read:
The Left has been very successful in convincing nearly everyone of us that all of life is governed by Ideology [example: the personal is political].
-Last paragraph, last phrase of last sentence should read: we shall stand no chance of achieving a lasting victory over Leftism, specifically, and Ideology, generally.
Apologies for the errors.
Pablo: Please…I am just a demi-god, at best.
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