The spirit of federalism lives on — even as the permanent ruling class, always busy shoring up more and more centralized power, keeps insisting it has a mandate over all the country’s newly-minted subjects.
The truth, however, is that some sort of organic resistance to the march of tyranny is already taking place, and that the first post-racial, post-partisan President has fractured the country in such a way that we’re beginning to see with real clarity the distinctions in ideological vision competing for the soul of the American experiment. Because make no mistake: that’s what’s playing out on a localized scale with this gun owner and his shop.
Unfortunately for the classical liberal / constitutional conservative / libertarian movement, which is very publicly now separating itself out from status quo national politics, there’s no real party home. And the coalition, though powerful in its determination to resist, hasn’t yet formed a workable strategy for how best to do so using the current political paradigm.
The Republican Party, led by John Boehner in the House, is working behind the scenes to sabotage those who represent politically this organic resistance movement, engaging in power grabs, shoring up its own entrenchment, and committed to defeating conservatives and classical liberals with a zeal they never bring to bear when battling leftist Democrats.
Which is precisely why it is no longer just an empty threat that those traditional Republican voters who believe in the principles of limited government and individual autonomy — and who deplore the steady movement from both parties toward a managed centralized state with an entrenched and permanent ruling class with a bureaucratic army at their disposal — must leave the Republican Party.
We can keep electing Republicans, but all that does is give the old bull entrenched career politician like Boehner more power — which in turn gives those doing the voting less by way of representation.
Here, I realize, I’m largely preaching to the choir. And it’s not like my voice carries much weight among the entrenched, well-funded, and well-connected network of “conservative” opinion leaders.
Still, that doesn’t mean I’m wrong about what needs to happen should we be serious about changing course and trying one last ditch effort collectively to save the country as founded: and that means we have to destroy the Republican party as it currently exists.
It can’t be taken over from the inside, I don’t believe. And it does not represent the interests of anything but itself and the power and perks of its longtime legislators.
It’s a catch-22 for us, I realize. But we have a one-party system using political theater to keep the fundraising money flowing, distracting us with supposed partisan differences as it continues the steady march toward a centralized technocratic State.
What’s left to do but opt out?
I’m opting out! and I’m buying more guns. So there.
Thank God I already moved to a red state, because if I were in a blue state right now I’d have to move again!
I see the branding behind Avoiding the Fiscal Cliff™ is working splendidly. As in Boehner and King and Graham, being all concerned about balanced budgets and all such conservative principles, capitulating to the Socialists by giving up on various pledges to not give ground on taxes.
We’ve got a national debt the size of the nation’s annual GDP that never, ever reverses. We’ve got that quarter quadrillion in unfunded federal obligations and state pensions. We can’t even pay the interest on what we owe. A monetary cabal euphemistically called reassuring things like federal and reserve owns all market direction.
But suddenly, right now, post-election, we’ll have us some sound fiscal policy called Avoiding the Fiscal Cliff™.
And by God not a dime of this new-found fiscal sanity will come out of the programs that built this disaster in its entirety.
Fonzie is Harriet or black is left or however that works.
One would think that the Republicans ought to recognize that they’re going to be blamed for the inevitable plunge off the fiscal cliff, regardless of how far or how fast they cave; so they might as well embrace it and fight for what’s right instead of what’s expedient.
Of course, that implies that Boehner, Christie, the Bush cabal et. al. know the difference between what’s right and what’s expedient, doesn’t it?
Seen on a license plate cover: I carry a gun because I can’t carry a cop.
Heh.
When seconds count, the police are under no legal obligation to come at all.
[…] Jeff Goldstein is right: Unfortunately for the classical liberal / constitutional conservative / libertarian movement, which is very publicly now separating itself out from status quo national politics, there’s no real party home. And the coalition, though powerful in its determination to resist, hasn’t yet formed a workable strategy for how best to do so using the current political paradigm. The Republican Party, led by John Boehner in the House, is working behind the scenes to sabotage those who represent politically this organic resistance movement, engaging in power grabs, shoring up its own entrenchment, and committed to defeating conservatives and classical liberals with a zeal they never bring to bear when battling leftist Democrats. […]
“We’re in the business of killin’ Nazis – and brother, business is a-boomin’…”
— Inglorious Basterds
As Glenn was remarking on earlier this weekend (quoting James Scott):
If we can’t get Washington to reform itself; if we can’t get the states to opt out of the various extra-Constitutional programs and power grabs that Washington crams down our throats; if we can’t get our functional mid-size cities to opt out of the stupid programs and power grabs forced on them by big-city-dominated Legislatures; if we can’t get our school districts to opt out of the one-size-fits-all shackles imposed by the union-dominated State — if all else fails, the best we can do is opt out ourselves, and encourage our friends and families and neighbors to do the same.
It doesn’t mean that we’d be idle. The underground economy in Greece and Italy and Spain is estimated at more than a third of those countries’ economic output. If the Dems are committed to an America reformed in the image of Europe, then it would behoove the rest of us to make sure we’re part of the freedom-loving Europe that flies under the radar, interacting with the State only to the extent needed to keep the authorities looking the other way.
Here’s an instruction manual written 35 years ago. (Some days I can’t believe it’s come to this; other days I can’t believe it took so long.) America may be changing, but I don’t have to change with it.
that story scared the shit out of me because we’re actually living it. Jesus.
The good news is that for those of us who remember liberty and butter, being “leggers” will be fun in a way…and perhaps profitable :)
It’s odd. I love butter. And I love eggs, but I hate the flavor of eggs fried in butter. It’s bacon grease or boiled for me. On the other hand, I’ve no problem banging out a hollandaise or bearnaise, since there’s no point to life without them.
that story scared the shit out of me because we’re actually living it. Jesus.
Here’s an article written by the author a couple of years ago, where he says American Dad didn’t rip off his story about black-market foodies. He observed that the idea is natural and not all that novel: where the government bans things that people like, black markets thrive.
And in a land where black markets are the only thing that thrives, you can bet your ass that I’ll be an enthusiastic participant.
Squid, from the comments, the author, in part responded thusly: “..The Volstead Act was popular with congress, the newspapers, and the Anti-Saloon League, but unpopular with (and widely flouted by) the general populace. But that didn’t stop its passage.”
Of course, the other little point to that story is how unhealthy it was for “revenoors” to come poking around places where people had weapons… and that only the desperate or stupid were unaware of that fact.