Paul Rahe on Romney’s failures and the changing electorate.
It’s a long article and well worth the read, but let me highlight a few points. First, as Rahe writes:
Lest I bore you and fail to provoke sound and fury, let me preface my remarks by saying two things: that libertarians should be social conservatives and vice-versa.
This was and is an argument I have been making here, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, and in fact this site has nurtured the nexus of those two groups in a way that I believe is unusual on the right side of the blogosphere.
Which is perhaps why protein wisdom is often treated as a kind of niche site. But be that as it may.
Recall, my argument for supporting Rick Santorum over a more milquetoast, establican moderate like Romney — who we all knew would move drastically to the center, would refuse (as did McCain) to take aim at Obama the leftwing ideologue, and who would try to pander in his own way to the centrists who oftentimes base their electoral decisions on flimsy and superficial desires for comity and compromise (for a glaring example of such puffed up fluff, see Colin Powell) — was that it was the social conservatives who, having been at war with the secularists, were in a sense doing the work of showing us where real liberty exists, what it is, and how, by way of an overweening government and the status quo popular culture, which can infect even the courts, it is taken away.
That is, I argued that Santorum would be able to articulate and explain the very real attacks on religious freedom, freedom of conscience, and the necessity and morality of federalism — of keeping the government more localized, and allowing the states to make determinations based on the wishes of the citizens of those states to pass laws (or not) that are the proper Constitutional bailiwick of the states (and not of the Courts or the federal government, who have created over time entire new categories of civil rights that don’t comport with the Constitution — in a way that would benefit classical liberals and libertarians and prevent a kind of social and cultural status quo.
For his part, Rahe argues a similar point, although he focuses on the sexual revolution and libertinism:
Why, then, you may ask — if you even remember the question I posed some paragraphs back — should libertarians be social conservatives? The answer is simple. Single mothers and their offspring are bound for the most part to become wards of the state. For a man and a woman who are married to rear offspring is a chore. It may be fulfilling, but it is demanding and hard. It requires sacrifice and discipline. For a single person to do so and to do it well requires a species of heroism. For a single person to do so at all requires help — and that is where we are. For we now take it for granted that we are to pay for the mistakes that the single mother (and her sexual partner) made. We now, in fact, presume that she is entitled to our help — and we now have a political party in power built on that premise.We are to pay for her groceries through WIC (Women, Infants, Children), for her medical care through Medicaid, for the contraceptives that she does not have the discipline to use properly and for the morning-after pill should she slip up and need an abortion. Her right to be promiscuous trumps our right to the fruits of our own labor.
What I would say to libertarians is this: Liberty requires a responsible citizenry, and the sexual revolution (very much like the drug culture, which was and is its Doppelgänger) promotes irresponsibility of every kind. It promotes dependence, and it fosters an ethos in which those who exercise the virtues fostered by the market are punished for doing so and in which those who live for present pleasure are rewarded.
There are many reasons why Mitt Romney lost in 2012. Some, as I suggested in an earlier post, were his fault. Some of them were not. One of the latter is that the demographic deck was stacked against him in a fashion that it was not stacked against Ronald Reagan in 2008. If we do not find a way to reverse the sexual revolution, we are doomed. The future of liberty is contingent on the success of the social conservatives. The libertinism that some libertarians ostentatiously embrace provides the growth in the administrative entitlements state with its impetus. If to be a libertarian is to favor political liberty, then libertarians must embrace social conservatism. If to be a libertarian is to embrace sex, drugs, and rock and roll, then libertarians are the proponents — whether witting or not — of the soft despotism that threatens to engulf us.
Here, I believe Rahe perhaps overstates the case, though I don’t dispute the larger points that redound to the necessity of recreating an ethos of personal responsibility. After all, there’s a reason the left is going full bore in the academic sphere to convince us all that rugged individualism and self-reliance are part of an American mythos that doesn’t really exist — that it’s a lie, that without the government, you wouldn’t have your business, your education, and so on. It takes a village, after all, and the collective we is greater than the selfish me.
This is the kind of feel-good pablum that, as a propaganda tool, sells well to a culture that’s been thoroughly Oprahfied and indoctrinated into leftism by schools, media, and much of popular culture.
But there’s an obverse to that, and I believe it explains the enormous rift we’re seeing as the country separates out into those who believe in the founding principles (including among them the Protestant work ethic and the necessity of a kind of baseline morality taken from Judeo-Christian teachings) and those who watch “Glee” unironically, and believe they are entitled to just about anything — even if that means taking it from some faceless distant other — provided they can figure out a way to define it as a “right”.
Lately, I find myself drawn to shows like “Pawn Stars,” “Swamp People,” “Duck Dynasty,” “Storage Wars,” and the like. Part of it is the kitsch value and the enjoyment I take watching the local color. But part of is that these shows represent an unapologetic defense of industriousness, capitalism, competition, self-sufficiency and self-reliance, and in many cases, the importance of family.
These are the “values” that I believe many of us on the right crave — though not in the way that makes us blue-noses or intrusive godbothering theocrats.
That is to say, it’s not necessarily the sexual revolution per se that is the problem, but rather a kind of tacit cultural acceptance that, as a result of the sexual revolution, the government needs to step in and act as a proxy family to those who are not prepared to deal with the consequences of their own actions, and to do this, the citizenry is required to pay for such “compassion.”
As Rahe rightly notes, the Democrat party saw an opportunity in the aftermath of the sexual revolution to court those who in the past would have been expected to learn from mistakes, not be rewarded for them, either with excessive governmental largess (see my earlier post today on the subsidizing of the poor and the disincentives it creates) or with a kind of romantic, Rousseauvian nobility.
And this is what I mean when I speak of the Oprahfication of American culture: those who make mistakes should be given sympathy and assistance; but what they shouldn’t be given is a victim status that allows them, with a few tears and some learned platitudes, to forgive their own missteps as the product of a collection of societal forces almost beyond their control. The Democrats nurture that narrative, pander to it, in fact (how else can you explain the glorification of Sandra Fluke, the $3000 a year condom junkie?) — all in exchange for votes and the creation of a permanent dependency class that, along with crony capitalists and insecure liberal elites concerned with status markers, is their electoral client base.
I believe the country is right now splitting along those lines — those who desire individual autonomy, smaller government, and self-reliance; and those who dismiss such things as antiquated Enlightenment ideals that don’t fit a modern society looking to “progress” toward an egalitarian system of conformity in outcome — and that we’ve reached a kind of tipping point, one that Romney (and most of the GOP establishment) continues not to recognize, and so continues to lose national elections for wont of appealing to all those who believe in the former, many of whom I suspect stay home on election day convinced that neither party represents them.
Of course, I could be reading the zeitgeist wrong, but then again, I may not be. So it’s worth considering. And if I’m right, the question is, how do we go about essentially deprogramming that part of the population that has lost its way and actually desires a kind of managed subjecthood, provided they can get a free phone out of the deal?
Because these two factions can’t continue to live peacefully together, I don’t think — particularly when one is paying for the other without even enjoying the same standard of living as those they are subsidizing.
Discuss. I’ve got wrestling to coach.
(h/t D.Skolnick and Sdferr)
Good stuff.
That is to say, it’s not necessarily the sexual revolution per se that is the problem, but rather a kind of tacit cultural acceptance that, as a result of the sexual revolution, the government needs to step in and act as a proxy family to those who are not prepared to deal with the consequences of their own actions, and to do this, the citizenry is required to pay for such “compassion.”
One of the cornerstones of the sexual revolution was the DON’T JUDGE ME “ethic.” If I choose to spread my knees for whomever I choose, whenever I choose, don’t you dare say a thing about it no matter what comes next—conception, abortion, single motherhood, disease. If I behave or dress like a slut, you don’t get to point it out but I can participate in a “slut-walk” without hypocrisy.
After you’ve established culturally that other people’s sexual behavior cannot be condemned (except abstinence, which is abnormal and harmful), it’s a short step to refusing to recognize the link between bad behavior and the larger social consequences, especially economic ones.
How can we refuse to subsidize “accidental” pregnancies unless we also establish that getting pregnant out of wedlock is a really bad idea, and that if you don’t carry to term and give the kid up for adoption, you’re not putting the kid’s interests first?
Also, please note that the sexual revolution was predicated on easy contraception via the pill and Kinsey’s fraudulent reports, not on anything new we learned about sex and human nature, and DEFINITELY not on the desire for a more responsible populace.
The hippies were wrong, the feminists sold us a bill of goods, and the Statists decided 100 years ago to destroy the nuclear family so that non-proggy values couldn’t be passed on to the chilluns. A sexual revolution was just the thing: stop people from dealing with the consequences of reproductive behavior, and behold, a Brave New World is born.
How justice works in Florida : Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the hoodie.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/new-photo-of-george-zimmerman-from-the-night-of-tr
Karl Marx was very early on (prior to the full development of his theories of economics and political order) concerned as to what he saw as the fundamental injustice of the division of labor, and the most fundamental division of them all as between men and women in their homes and lives. Topsy-turvy is the rule of the day. Unfair! But let’s eliminate nature and see what happens.
I know lots of responsible people what pay taxes taxes taxes plus have sex sex sex with all sorts of people
losers are losers
they can’t blame it on the sexual revolution
I didn’t blame it on the sexual revolution, as I noted. I blamed it on an attitude produced as the result of the sexual revolution. Your anecdotal evidence unfortunately doesn’t comport with the statistics. Be serious or don’t be. But either you want to look for answers or you just want to hear yourself chirp.
sorry I was responding more to dicentra I should have been more clear
the answer is that the individual can still have a great life in failshit america
I for one sure intend to
they can’t blame it on the sexual revolution
Why not?
The sexual revolution told people that if it feels good, do it. The poorly raised thereby lost the one compass that might tell them whether they ought to follow their hormones or walk the straight and narrow.
Furthermore, prior to the sexual revolution, there was plenty of fornication and adultery going on, but you had to OPT IN. Fortunately, the sexual revolution’s attempt to normalize adultery fell flat (nobody likes to be cheated on, and the human heart just isn’t capable of ignoring infidelity while continuing to trust).
As for premarital sex, we’re to the point where you have to OPT OUT, which takes Herculean amounts of self-discipline, believe you me, especially since saying NO makes you an unbearable square and totally unhip and OMGREPRESSED which means emotionally time-bomby, as if we were all teapots that must spew off steam or else. (Moving the kettle off the heat isn’t an option, I guess.)
Not to mention that he’ll move on to someone who isn’t so, um, high-priced, as it were.
Those of you with children: Wouldn’t you rather society made NO the default option, so that kids who want to have to OPT IN, rather than the situation we have now, where you have to after three dates (or less) or risk being branded whatever it is they brand kids with these days to mean that they’re worse than nerdy.
hey everyone if it feels good knock it off
just stop it
go do shit that feels bad for awhile
it’s for the greater good trust me on this
there’s chirpping going on here
hey everyone if it feels good knock it off
So it’s either Hedonism or Puritanism? Nothing in between?
Cripes, my church says no extramarital sex but not on the grounds that it feels good and is therefore bad. That’s literally a medieval attitude, wherein The Flesh was an enemy that must be constantly humiliated by wearing scratchy clothing and eating bland food and sleeping on stone slabs and only sleeping 3–4 hours a night so you don’t have any of THOSE dreams. All earthly pleasures were by definition evil, and the only way to guarantee happiness in heaven is to be miserable on earth.
That’s not our gig: not by a long way. The constraints on sexual behavior are to preserve family integrity and to enhance the happiness of them what follow the law of chastity, even without a family.
I am a by God 49-year-old virgin with absolutely no regrets. I don’t wish that I’d slept with anyone I’d met, though I did give ’em a good kissin’ (the absence of which has caused a few regrets). And I’ll give you ten bux for every woman you and find who genuinely wants more notches on her bedpost instead of fewer.
Except nishi. She’s half cyborg.
A glaring black-and-white worldview is the epitome of puritanism, happyfeet.
im just saying that individual people whether poorly raised or not get to make choices and live with the consequences such as they are
social engineering for to optimize morality is not really something we can entrust to america’s bullshit political class… they just need to maximize liberty and economic opportunity and let the chips fall wherever
federalism my chirpy
I’ll tell you what, Jeff. I’ve been watching some of those shows, too, because I’m stuck here solo trying to get my folks’ place ready for sale, but here’s what strikes me about stuff like Storage Wars and Pawn Stars and Pick & Destroy: they’re all the foul rag and bone shop of post-prosperity America. You’ve got to admire those guys. They work hard, they make an honest dollar, they keep the cultural implements and totems circulating, but it’s nostalgia, nostalgia, nostalgia. Futurism can be goofy, but it can also be heuristic. There’s none of that in those shows, except for a yearning for futurisms past.
I don’t like it. No, sir.
Then you’ve got the supposedly educational shows about apocalypse: “Birds falling from the sky, the seas swallowing up the land. These are just a few [sic] of the signs of the apocalypse.” Well, hell, yeah . . . especially the latter. And you’ve got the show about preppers, which features a lot of folks who appear actually to be psyched about the idea of complete cultural collapse, so that they can have the giddy pleasure of being a little less horribly off than those grasshoppers who didn’t prepare properly for DOOM. It’s fucked up.
Then there are the shows like “I (Almost) Got Away with It” that simultaneously glamorize and caution against whacking people, and that creepy Dominic Dunne thing about well-heeled criminals on HLN, and that weirdo with a bow-tie on Oprah’s network, and the stuff about the fascinating encounters of repo men, and the shows about lady cops in Florida and the ones in Alaska busting drug users and drinkers of rubbing alcohol, and the one about moonshiners (who live in a “forgotten corner of America” and every bit as esoteric as sasquatch), and the Jungle Gold one about feckless Mormons in Ghana trying to feed the post-prosperity craving for something super-tangible as opposed to traditional investments in industry and the like, and the Border Wars one that never gets around to mentioning how the feds’ advertisement of the social program largess of the US might possibly drive some of the illegal immigration . . . all ghoulish chronicles of human misery presented with little effort to consider the multitudinous stupidities and asinine policies that might create the conditions. It’s all just the way things are, and y’all need protection by . . . agencies.
It all reminds me of the rant in Network about people just hunkering down in their personal spaces and hoping to be left alone, and safe, and secure, while the world collapses around them. I watched some of a show about the bubonic plague the other day. I figure my imagination’s just about as morbid as most people’s. But I have to say, this almost gleeful anticipation of doom, previously left to asshats like Ted Turner and his academic Svengalis, has gone mainstream, and I find it disquieting and repulsive.
long term problem solving isn’t chic right now. burn baby burn is.
kinda fitting for the 1st muslim precedent
“shows like “Pawn Stars,” “Swamp People,” … part of is that these shows represent an unapologetic defense of industriousness, capitalism, competition, self-sufficiency and self-reliance, and in many cases, the importance of family.”
Not so much with “Pawn Stars”. He’s got a monopoly on pawn shops in Vegas, by law. His is the only one. Should someone want to see what a “competing” pawn shop can offer, they’d have to drive 500 miles through the desert to Reno. And Rick takes strong advantage of the fact.
“Capitalism” is very good to you if you happen to have a government sanctioned monopoly.
And it helps if your “clientele” is desperate and hard up for quick cash.
Okay, Yuri. I’ll take you word for it. But let’s just say that’s not advertised as part of the show, and so it doesn’t trouble my point in any but the most pedantic way. Also, w/ the experts he brings in from sports shops and toy shops etc., it’s not like there aren’t other places besides a pawn shop to sell your collectibles in Vegas.
That, and I imagine Vegas has Craig’s list, too.
Also, this would seem to suggest there are other pawn shops in Vegas.
Two questions.
1) Why does any one watch TV?
2) Why can’t I log in here using Fire Fox? I enter my name and password, hit log in, and it kicks me right back to “you must log in to comment”
I love Duck Dynasty, is all I can say.
2) Why can’t I log in here using Fire Fox? I enter my name and password, hit log in, and it kicks me right back to “you must log in to comment”
Dunno BMoe, but maybe explore your “options” dialog drop-down box under the tools tab at the top of your Firefox window and see if you’ve got conflicty add-ons or security measures barring the way?
I’m using Firefox and not having prollems.
i gave tv up for advent
That shit that feels bad? Called “work”.
You mentioned something about it to me just yesterday I think.
social engineering for to optimize morality is not really something we can entrust to america’s bullshit political class
At what point did I suggest using the levers of state to socially engineer anything at all? Are things to the point where if we withdraw the social engineering (subsidizing unwed motherhood, e.g.), that’s also social engineering?
Or are you mostly saying that the moralizing godbotherers need to shut their cake-holes about other people’s behavior? Even when that personal, private behavior is very definitely picking my pocket?
2a why did my previously disappeared bookmarks toolbar show up then disappear? firefox got some buggy stuff
You might as well too, since you’re paying for everybody else’s.
1) Why does anyone watch TV?
I don’t have cable: I have broadcast, which includes MeTV, which shows old Mission: Impossible episodes, Night Gallery, Columbo, That Girl, and more Dick Van Dyke than you can shake a stick at.
Saturdays are chock-full of the old Westerns, Sunday nights are noir. Yesterday was wall-to-wall I Dream of Jeanie for to honor the dead guy.
I also have MHz network, which shows Italian and Swedish murder mysteries with subtitles plus news shows from Japan and India.
Not an unscripted bit of dreck for as far as the eye can see.
Social demolition doesn’t count as “engineering” di.
His use of social engineering in such a way is one of those “Guess what? I’m a troll” tics.
dicentra i was more addressing rahe there about the engineerings… he thinks the gop needs to roll back all that dirty sex stuff
but as far as cakeholes go there’s nobody in all of america what has an appetite for listening to Team R hold forth on sexual mores and such
nobody
and if someone says they do they’re lying
and lying makes baby jesus cry
Um, no. There’s another right up the street from him. Vegas is lousy with ’em. There’s a line to get in his place and you have to be let in. I was there in the spring as my girl was trolling for baubles. I grieve for the time I wasted.
Dan (and others), your lists are lacking. Because Honey Boo Boo. We’re depraved and demented.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
And this brings us to the post in which Jeff tries very hard to get noticed by (a) co-opting enough of the conservative-speak blog-o-sphere to seem to be one of “our people” to (what I refer to as) those people, and to calve off forming a thin wedge of daylight such as to sound original and not just a meer regurgitron. Truly, a post that ought to get some trackback and/or pingback action, or whatever the kids are calling it these days when bloggers hook up over Teh Interwebs.
But from what flawed seed doth this post sprout? That Libertarians should (naturally and without effort) start getting a lot more comfortable telling other people how to live.
One does hope that Jeff someday meets a true Libertarian so that he can share his refinement of Paul Rahe’s grand vision. Oh what hilarity would ensue, and one could be assured that a good time would be had by all.
im just saying that individual people whether poorly raised or not get to make choices and live with the consequences such as they are
hf, are you really missing most of your brain or are you deliberately trying to stir shit?
Cuz the whole point is that individuals making POOR choices right now are being shielded from the consequences …
on MY dime
Had an argument on Classical Values in the comments with one “libertarian” who was all about how the Religious Right is American Taliban or something, but when I point out that the left is much more about legislating individual behavior (big gulps, light bulbs, etc) I got some claptrap about how “necessary” stuff about our safety/protection/directed against businesses not individuals is understandable/ok/whatever.
Some guy demands his “right” to smoke crack? Fine, go ahead, but no food stamps/section 8/medicaid/socsec disability for you!
Enter moron two.
Hey, slope! How about you go suck a dick?
nobody might be a wee bit hyperbolic mr. pablo
oh, and here comes slitherslop to ignore the difference between witnessing to what works and THEREOUTTABEALAW!!
Re: Darleen, the only “rights” the Proggs are concerned with are abortion and sodomy. Everything else can be regulated.
Me, I’m not looking for regulation. I just want to resurrect shame. It worked pretty damned well.
you’ll get no argument from me that we should shred the safety net like a thintensity condom
but if someone wants to pay for their own abortion i say hey it’s a free country sister
I find it disquieting and reject the word gleeful.
There’s definitely a feeling in the air that doom is imminent. I don’t understand revulsion for those that recognize it as such, and act accordingly.
I think pretending things are normal is negligence, myself. Prosperity hates to be taken for granted.
” Oh what hilarity would ensue, and one could be assured that a good time would be had by all.”
Well that was just a lot of smug pointless gibberish. Boring too.
It is a proscribed activity saith the Jeff.
Pardon?
http://www.vice.com/read/reasons-why-los-angeles-is-the-worst-place-ever
Hah hah haaaaah!
I missed where he said that. In fact, I’m certain that he didn’t. So, you’re free to go. And swallow, if you like.
i don’t think big gulps are outlawed btw cause of those come from convenience stores
“It is a proscribed activity saith the Jeff.”
This isn’t even snark. It’s too low power. It’s sub-snark, just boring shit dressed up as wit by a tit.
Hey, slope —
Here’s a plan for you: if you don’t like what I have to say or how I say it, why not go someplace else where you aren’t a mere flashing red sign that says, “Here’s my ass. NOTICE IT!”
Does anyone know of a statement/quote by Justice Breyer that says, in effect, “morality is no basis for law.”?
I’d swear I’ve read something like that; but cannot find anything now.
There’s nothing sadder than someone hoping to be provocatively mendacious that can’t quite summon the mental juice to pull it off.
It’s like Slippery set out to drop a duece on the hood of an imaginary IROC Transam with T-Tops, in the driveway of his enemies, but all he managed was to fart near the fender of a die cast Matchbox toy of the Kia Soul on the clearance table of a follar store. Oh well. Mission accomplished!
slip saith:
Jeff actually “saith”:
Something tells me Slip is lying. Again.
want to talk proscribed slippery? how many regulations issued by fed gov’t last year?
The point is, it has to come from grassroots citizenry, not the political class.
If you would rather see (or not care) those close to you predictably choosing an irresponsible lifestyle predictably leading to multiple children from multiple fathers, all supported by government services, you are part of the problem.
You should help guild those that trust your opinions, if you care about them. Even if it makes you look square.
That reminds me of the joke about Yo mamma, the price check, and the “follar store”. Only in the joke, they spelled it “dollar store” (whatever that means.)
Justice Breyer that says, in effect, “morality is no basis for law.”?
oh.good.lord.
Law is but a subset of morality … a legal floor, if you will.
e.g. adultery is immoral, but it isn’t illegal (nor should it be)
and hf when abortion involves only one person, then we can talk about it being laissez faire
landlord – tenant ? do you have bastards? oh my fun at hud
i dunno mr. lee rahe is very clear about this idea that Team R can’t surrender to the sexual zeitgeist
but just cause i have sexually active friends doesn’t mean they’re making babies willy nilly… and it’s really rare for anyone i know to have an abortion or pay for one actually
plus i’ve warned them about the thintensity thing
Unless you’re in the military.
oh here
link
This was a really thought provoking piece. I wish I had something pithy to say; I don’t. I’ve been doing a ton of reporting lately and have little fuel left in the tank. Odd, ultimately, that something as self-centered as sexuality would be turned back to the State for subsidy.
It’s great to see Dan back and props to JG for the piece.
statist upfront with their desire for power
That reminds me of the joke about Yo mamma, the price check, and the “follar store”. Only in the joke, they spelled it “dollar store” (whatever that means.) ”
Yeah! And that reminds of the joke about the guy who was so hilariously sharp that he had to point out an obvious QUERTY typo while sarcastically moaning about how Furer Jeff won’t give him permission to follow an order to go smoke a wang. Because that was all he could manage!
proggtards flipping the terms of the debate. no we be ancient progressives
This is barely English.
Yep, that’s what I was trying to do. I have no real disagreement with others and invent minor points of disagreement so that I can “calve” shit “off.” You got me.
Probably, but I don’t count on such things. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t even have a site meter here.
Oh, I see. They should be required to pay for how others live, and otherwise just shut up. Because opinions and morality are exactly like governmental edicts or bureaucratic regulations or “legislating morality,” unlike those actual governmental edicts or bureaucratic regulations or morality legislating the left traffics in.
I noticed you capitalized Libertarian and I didn’t. Know the difference?
You’re precisely the kind of ill-informed tool who believes Bill Maher when he calls himself a libertarian, then gives $1 million to Obama.
If the earth was run on justice, you’d all explode from the pressure of your own bullshit building up.
‘Mama’ has one ‘m’ by the way. ‘Mamma’ is some kind of Al Jolson minstrel show shit unless you put ‘jamma’ after it and ‘ she’s a bad’ before it.
Of course you democrats enjoyed minstrel shows well after they went out of style in mainstream society, so I understand your confusion.
I’m tired of the war on women. I want a war on ‘dumb asses, rabble rousers, six-figure a year union seat fillers, red tape, and thieves’.
Rick from Pawn Stars was on Mark Levin’s show a while back. The “monopoly” story was HIS story …. Rick’s story.
Whether it was ever true, or when it became untrue, I have no idea. I said it because HE said it. I don’t live in Vegas, or frequent pawn shops, so how would I know. And why would I doubt what the man stated on national radio?
If it were true, would it be that important? I thought I was providing trivial information. I thought it was true. I thought it was true because the owner/ “Star” said it was true.
If it were true, would it be that important? I thought to say something about Pawn Stars — totally unrelated to the topic or the point of the post as a whole.
Jeff loves Pawn Stars. I do not. I must have breached some un-written rule on that one.
Rather than do my own homework, (which I clearly failed to do the first time) I’ll let someone else check line-by-line through year old transcripts of Levin’s show so they can “catch me out” in another lie.
I’ve already gone over my self-restricted limit.
Hey, did you know that elephants are the only animal with four knees? I read it on http://www.pedantry.com — my personal website.
Thanks to Obama and the last four years my life is now shittier materially than it would have been if I were an employed adult two years before I was even born.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/12/01/Middle-Class-Net-Worth-Collapses-to-1969-Levels
Forwards! (To 69!)
Slippery blames Bush though.
I’ve never seen the show. But I have seen the shop, and Vegas.
If slipperytyrant weren’t a tyrant he would stop trespassing on Jeff’s private property when Jeff tells him to.
People who believe in liberty respect other people’s as much as they respect their own. Tyrants insist on imposing themselves where they aren’t wanted.
Every time he comes back he proves the charge against him.
Libertarians, as the piece (of…) states, “should be” social conservatives. Which is, of course, a non sequitur.
http://www.lp.org/platform
But then, as socialism doesn’t mean what you think it means, so maybe you genuinely don’t know what libertarian means either. Let me quote a few things from the platform that should make it clear how a libertarian is the natural ally of the social conservative.
And while not in the platform, libertarians support legalization of prostitution.
So, you have a few big rocks to get out of the way before Libertarians are going to link arms and condem single mothers and other sluts, and lament how ladybits have ruined America.
“People seem to have forgotten the boom times between 1983 and 2007 — almost a quarter century of unprecedented growth, incredibly low unemployment, manageable deficits, and a growing of the wealth pie that was interrupted only by two shallow recessions. Just a few years ago, the thought of celebrating 100,000 new jobs per month and a 2.7% GDP was unimaginable.”
Then the stupid re-befell us.
‘And the burnt fool’s bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the fire”.
libertarians for sharia. you go infidel!
slitherslop
there is a difference between libertarians and Libertarians
but you know, and ignore, that
Slippery, did you bother reading Rahe’s piece? Or mine? You seem yet again to be arguing with figments of your own rather pedestrian imagination.
hey sluts “pay your own way”!!11~!!
Something tells me that ss isn’t capable of doing the work involved in understanding why socons/Burkean conservatives would find common cause with libertarians. And vice versa.
The thing that tells me this are all of his comments to date.
Btw, I quite like palaeo’s “sub-snark”. It fills a descriptive need quite nicely.
and Government does not have the authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships. Consenting adults should be free to choose their own sexual practices and personal relationships. works right up to the time 2 or more people start accessing said government courts to arbitrate their relationships and the property/promises/children that said relationships produced.
Dude, what the fuck is it with you and the attitude?
First, you missed the point of my having picked the shows I picked to introduce some pedantic bit about a monopoly. Then you seem butthurt that I told you so, then went and looked up whether or not it was true, as if my finding it it wasn’t was somehow a slight at your expense.
Believe it or not, sometimes I look things up because I’m interested, not because I want to catch Yuri, whom I don’t know, out in a lie.
Jesus. Sometimes I wonder why the fuck I bother doing this.
“Libertarians, as the piece (of…) states, “should be” social conservatives. Which is, of course, a non sequitur.”
Libertarians are not anarchists nor are they nihilists, and being socially conservative is not the same as asking for enshrinement and enforcement of social norms in the form of federal law. Some social conservatives have attempted that but many have refused to do so. You misuse both terms due to your cartoonish misunderstanding of them. You have to read and understand an article on its own terms before you can hope to validly criticize it. If you can only knock down a straw man that you’ve set up either in ignorance or maliciously then you’ve knocked down nothing at all.
Of course, Jeff could just ban him — but slippy should be compelled to explain why should have to.
After all, if someone were trespassing on my land and refused to leave, there are things I could do, but why should I have to?
Dragging a body into the woods, digging a hole, explaining to the cops that the loud noises the neighbors reported were just firecrackers… Who needs it?
Not according to a libertarian.
A libertarian president who favors federalism could be a bigger threat to Roe v. Wade than a pro-life president.
Slipperytyrant would be surprised at the socon outcomes a libertarian government could deliver.
Precisely.
Not only that, I asked if he knew the difference between Libertarian and libertarian, and he retorted by proving he didn’t while at the same time (without irony) suggesting it is I who am confused, having myself learned from source texts and not, as is the case with this smug, ignorant poser, from Political Caricatures for Dummies.
That statement is simply in conflict with the definition of libertarianism, which would state that a libertarian “should be” whatever that individual libertarian wants to be.
You can be a social conservative, and a libertarian, but that means that you would (by definition) vote to legalize drugs, prostitution, abortion, and gay marriage.
proggtard commenting on liberty
You really don’t know the definition of libertarian, do you?
“Not according to a libertarian.”
Which libertarian? :) Bill Mahr?
“You really don’t know the definition of libertarian, do you?”
And the irony began to build to dangerous levels…
proggtard/#occupy commenting on liberty
I love when ss shows its work. It allows me to use fun words like grotesquery.
…and I’m forced to fund the consequences of those relationships.
You left out shooting gay addicts prostituting themselves on your front lawn to buy an abortion.
legalizing it I mean…
easy peasy : gov’t don’t take my stuff!!11!!
Again, precisely right. Hence my argument that Santorum, having by dint of his beliefs been a target of the secularist war on public religion and the phony Hugo Black-enshrined “separation of church and state” (b/c as a Klan sympathizer, he was anti-Catholic), would be an ideal proponent of the kinds of limited government and federalism libertarians support.
The alliance is on principle, not on specific policy desires.
This is confusing to slope, because as a leftist his education is likely a mile wide and an inch deep — and the piddling trench of knowledge he draws from is comprised mostly of revisionist history or “facts” that simply aren’t so.
“That statement is simply in conflict with the definition of libertarianism, which would state that a libertarian “should be” whatever that individual libertarian wants to be.”
No, it is merely in conflict with your ignorance regarding the actual meaning and use of the term and by consequence, your own egregious misuse of the term.
Go read this: http://www.lp.org/platform
He still doesn’t understand capital letters. Remarkable.
I, too, thought the article, and JG’s comments, provocative and insightful. Wish I had something to offer. It’s a challenge to keep up with you all, though.
You obviously haven’t thought it through.
(I could have left off the last two words, I know.)
Also tedious.
Holy shit! It’s Heisenberg/Walter White!
I hope Pablo is still around to appreciate this.
Okay, I see that you are around, Pablo. Look, it’s Heisenberg.
I’m officially jealous of that avatar.
I don’t think you appreciate how far Rick Santorum is from Ron Paul. You’re viewing libertarianism through the lens of what you wish it was, not what it is.
“You can be a social conservative, and a libertarian, but that means that you would (by definition) vote to legalize drugs, prostitution, abortion, and gay marriage.”
Actually, as a libertarian, you would try to devolve controlling authority on those issues away from federal law or regulation and try to minimize state involvements in said laws as well and if you disliked local laws on the matter you would try to have them over thrown by your vote, engage in civil disobedience, or else leave and seek another community with laws you like better.
“Legalization” of abortion via RvW in early trimesters, proceeded as a federalization and nationalization of the issue to override state and local laws. That is not a libertarian position.
No. It simply means that you agree that these should be voted on and that the votes be state matters. Which is where social conservatism and libertarianism / classical liberalism collide and form a gloriously useful union, one that would tear the hearts out of the statist tyrants on the left.
That being the point of the post.
Which you wouldn’t understand, because as a fascist who seems to have no real understanding of the founding principles of his own country, you lack the requisite frames of reference.
Again, you miss the point. Which is something of a specialty for you, isn’t it?
BTW please respond with a Libertarian answer from the LP platform indicating that you do not understand the distinction between libertarian and Libertarian.
I hadn’t caught that, bh. Now I have and I’m delighted. Props, agenesisofthecorpuscallosum. Good call.
No. I means that these decisions should be left solely to the individual (Liberty!) and not regulated at any level. Go educate yourself, because you don’t know what you’re talking about (again).
“I don’t think you appreciate how far Rick Santorum is from Ron Paul”
And you don’t understand that it’s not relevant.
Ron Paul is not “libertarianism” and Rick Santorum is not “social conservatism” or even “Center American Catholicism”.
so the proggtard gets to define “libertarianism” how nice
” No. I means that these decisions should be left solely to the individual (Liberty!) and not regulated at any level. Go educate yourself, because you don’t know what you’re talking about (again).”
Nope. As I surmised you have confused Libertarian and libertarian and even then confused LP interests for a purist LP platform.
Everyone knows that libertarians believe that all men should do as they will. Just like in a pre-political state of nature.
I mean, shit, educate yourself.
[What a moron.]
like murder or rape rape? #occupyproggtard
Shorter: “Federalism? Never heard of it.”
If one drew a Venn diagram of so-called ‘social cons’ (I prefer the term conservative) and small-l libertarians, you’d see much overlap. But add the far-Left Democrats, those of the today’s LeftLibProgg – modern Democrat stripe? There’s very little of their ideology that covers either libertarians or conservatives. But they’d overlap the Socialist – Communist wheel quite nicely, unfortunately for this here suffering Republic.
new – please go look up libertarianism before you continue. You’re embarrassing yourself.
You really are confused, aren’t you? Figured out the capital letter/ lower-case distinction yet? Read up on minarchism (there are competing ideas about the role of government within minarchism, for instance), classical liberalism, and compared it to, say, Objectivism?
Do you understand the way a political philosophy is forced to operate within a constitutional representative republic? Within a framework of federalism and natural rights?
Of course you don’t. You know talking points and caricatures. You don’t think. You quip. Poorly.
Shit, quoted the wrong comment. I meant this one:
I’ve gotta quit smoking crack for breakfast.
He probably hasn’t figured out the difference between Republican and republican or Democrat and democrat yet either. Or Satan and satan.
That’d be great. Care to find one?
Ernst has made some very salient comments on this topic but as they were written at an adult reading level they wouldn’t be much use for one such as ss.
Thank you, Pablo. And bh.
This is a prime example of what is now known as sub-snark.
bh, I would say that where ss dwells involves a lot of swearing, emotional outbursts and banning.
Logic and reasoning? Not so much.
Cheers, agofthecc.
neither do you.
Odds that he reads Hayek just for the title before missing the crux of the argument?
telling the fed gov’t to leave me the eff alone is libertarianism; a hole.
Imagine how confused this will get when SS stumbles across the revisionist ‘right and left libertarianism’ canard where so called ‘left libertarianism’ regards unclaimed or unappropriated material property or resources to be ‘owned by the community at large’ and thus will justify coercive government action to ‘defend’ said resources from being claimed without government permission, yet still claims to be a libertarian somehow because of all the awesome fucking and the rock n’ roll and the drugs n’ shit.
That’s not liberty. That’s anarchy.
You want to be an Individual, go live on top of a mountain somewhere where you can’t hurt anyone but yourself.
Ernst – care to guess what Hayek’s views were on legalization of drugs, prostitution, and the draft? Care to guess where Hayek would come down on legalization of gay marriage and abortion?
Nice selective editing. I said “These decisions,” where “These” were abortion, gay marriage, drugs, prostitution, etc. You might need to read a little more of the thread before you chime in – at least the original post and not just the response.
You don’t think. You quip. Poorly.
Just another immature moral idealist raging at the world because life isn’t fair.
I see upthread that ss claims not to know what a Dollar Store is. What a snob.
I thought you guys cared about the poor.
Every desire to travel back in time and tell your sophomore-in-college self how he’s a rather glib moron?
I reckon it’d play out a bit like this.
You get your copy of Constitution of Liberty and I’ll get mine, twerp.
That was a nice bit of selective editing there yourself, btw.
Gee, Ernst. He called you uneducated.
How unintentionally hilarious.
oh my the slippey can’t quote and link html fail = internet proggtard
I’m not finding any entries in the index to Constitution of Liberty
How’s the google search going?
“leigh says December 3, 2012 at 9:31 pm
I see upthread that ss claims not to know what a Dollar Store is. What a snob.
I thought you guys cared about the poor.”
San Francisco has seen a lot of them open up since 2009 which brings in lots of delightful complaints from the hipsters who wish they could control zoning for what is allowed in their slummy little art-village neighborhoods (with three locks on the door and bars in the windows) that they hope to gentrify someday (so they can move out because it’s lost its old charm and has too many chain restaurants now). They could always use more family owned hardware stores, tasteful bodegas, horribly named taco places that don’t actually serve tacos anymore, and laundromats that have exercise bikes in them that ALSO cost $1.25 in change to use.
Since I don’t convey the proper status signals, I am leigh. By definition
Like Jeff and Dicentra and sdferr and….
At least I’m in good company.
“Every desire to travel back in time and tell your sophomore-in-college self how he’s a rather glib moron?
I reckon it’d play out a bit like this.”
I’d tell my younger self to date the nice boring girls who played sports on the weekend and not hang around with the weird girls, lest he start to turn into one (mentally) as the mid thirties approached. And he’d tell me to fuck off and remind my receding back that BOC totally rocks. But he was an asshole and thought that virtual reality would be a big deal and that the networks would NEVER allow a thing like TIVO to happen. Well, he’s still kind of an asshole. :) EMOTiCON.
dollar stores are the american equivalent of how unilever creates special packaging configurations for third world countries
they’re very depressing
JeffG:
…it’s his only real (slim) chance of claiming some sort of victory. ;-)
I lived in SanFrancisco for a year in the mid 80s. It was starting its descent into hipster hell then with the flagship GAP store—surrounded by sex shops and leather bars.
It was also starting to look like the crappy parts of Midtown Manhattan, with the 3 card Monti guys and the knock-off tee-shirt dudes and everyone trying to sell you dope if you stood in one place long enough.
He’s probably googling stuff like ‘Hayek shot down as yet another fascist Straussian by Markos KOS Moulitsas ” dated 2003.
“and everyone trying to sell you dope if you stood in one place long enough.”
Shoe on the wire, looking for a buyer.
Unintentional hilarity, thy name is slipshod.
Since I don’t convey the proper status signals, I am leigh. By definition.
Heh.
“happyfeet says December 3, 2012 at 9:47 pm
dollar stores are the american equivalent of how unilever creates special packaging configurations for third world countries
they’re very depressing”
It’s just a five and dime for modern times.
Shoe on the wire, looking for a buyer.
Sounds like Pittsburgh.
[Looking at the analytical table of contents] hmmm.
if 5 and dimes only had 4 foot high shelving as a key loss prevention feature
For you? Sure!
slipperyslope says December 3, 2012 at 8:51 pm
See, this is why I left the Libertarian party, it’s not serious.
Come on ss, do you seriously think the government courts will not accessed by two or more people who will sue over property/child custody issues? Then by what standard should the court use to adjudicate?
the LP should, like, grow up.
I’m just loving that he’s pretending to have read and understood Hayek at the same time he likes to sneer away all the markers that we have well and truly traveled down the Road to Serfdom.
This is like moron performance art.
Test
Dollar stores in my area have pretty normal shelving and I think they kind of want you to steal the $3 movies with Steve Martin or Cedric the Entertainer in them. They keep the cheap MP3 players behind glass. I like their $6 blue jean sales and their pouch of four grey v-neck t-shirts for $8 because that gets me some cheap disposable ‘work in the yard’ clothes that weren’t scoured from the closest of recently dead people like you at Goodwill. I bought some clothes there once and never again. I swear that you could almost smell the sadness on them.
Uh, the same way they do now? How does gay marriage affect civil court adjudication of property or custody?
This is like moron performance art.
The technical term is buffoonery, I believe.
Because it’s impossible to read The Road to Serfdom and see the obvious flaws?
ok but they still depress me
I’d like to see walmart buy one of the chains and make something spiritually uplifting of them
yup I sure would like to see that
Speaking of reads, you guys should check out:
http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/dp/0307453421
You’d love it.
If you buy anything edible at the follar store, you get what you deserve.
rahe didn’t even mention the gay marriagings I don’t think they fit comfortably in his vision for socon libertarian wonder twin power activation
gay marriage=undefined concept.
You’d have to ask the blood relatives, wouldn’t you?
gay marriagings=undefined concept 1/0
Oh? Do tell. Then go ahead and take on Milton Friedman next.
But before you do, you should probably know that I have just about every configuration of “Hayek Road Serfdom critique liberal left” at the Google search ready. Careful you aren’t caught cribbing the work of others again. When pointing out the “obvious flaws.” Which you’ll rush now to look up.
That was so embarrassing last time. Or rather, it would have been, had you any shame.
Ernst – because you don’t think courts have ever adjudicated in divorce cases where children were adopted?
Oh, I forgot, we don’t speak about adoption in polite company – it’s something kids best find out about only when the parents are on their death bed.
anti darwin = 1/0
Been listening to today’s Prager show, and he interviewed Liberal Democrat Greg Lukianoff, president of FIRE, who quoted a sociologist who found through research that the more educated you are, the less likely you are to encounter viewpoints that differ from your own.
As if we needed research to confirm empiricism, but there you go.
Now who can argue with that!?
I’m more interested in the happyfeet slippyshod woder twin power activation. The masks, the masks, they fall, they fall!
If one was distrustful of the veracity of internet trolls they’d wonder whether or not the delay in commenting was already a function of frantic googling.
Surely not.
stupid strawman. 1/0 carry on slippey
Uh, I’m adopted and have known so since I was old enough to understand the concept. So yet another caricature from our resident moron performance artist.
Currently, custody law tends to heavily favor the mother. What that portends wrt a same sex marriage situation is anybody’s guess. Sean Hayes trumps Eric McCormack?
The point is, Jeff, courts are already settling these issues, and were for some years before gay marriage was legal anywhere. This isn’t a new issue that courts are going to need to figure out. You could look and see how they’re handling it currently.
To say nothing of heritability.
Slurpy seems hellbent on proving beyond a shadow of a doubt how brain-jarringly stupid it is. We get it, slurpee. You are a cowardly lying troll, endowed by your Creator with invincible ignorance. We were already convinced.
” See, this is why I left the Libertarian party, it’s not serious.”
Yeah. I got sort of creeped out by how a large portion of the people I talked to were either highly technical minded people who worried about flouride in the water, aspartame being a poison/super-carcinogen, and the true power of the CFR a lot (and I liked those people a lot because they were hard working and honest and friendly but they seriously believed that the Bavarian Illuminati were following them home) or older mustache and buzzcut guys that were libertine hippies who kind of wanted to shack up with four or five 15 year old runaway girls and like just live with ’em and smoke a bowl with ’em man.
No matter what I said to them it somehow proved that I was really a libertarian.
” You think black people are robots send from space to monitor us, and the skin pigment hides the robot parts that would show through less pigmented skin? Well in the Libertarian Party you have the RIGHT to believe that! Welcome home! ”
And yeah that’s a totally unfair cartoon of my experience with the LP but its the impression I came away with. This was back when they were still kind of mad that Ron Paul ran as a Republican for a while and they whined about how much they all hated Reagan. Reading some of Ron Paul’s old newsletters did not help matters much.
Now, I have no party though. I want sort of a kill the constitution and live under it as written or else amend it but quit screwing around and telling me that up is down and that amendments can be interpreted to magically neutralize or strengthen each other like fields in a particle physics problems. The constitution is not a perfect adaptive algorithm that works in tune with the wild ups and downs of human nature. It was not shat out fully formed as an architectural paragon from clear Masonic minds. The constitution was written as a compromise by angry suspicious people who didn’t trust each other and were trying to screw each other while stopping others from screwing them. It was envisioned as a means of investing a government with power over multiple semi-incompatible groups while keeping one side from dominating the other and always locked in a near stalemate wherever there is a serious controversy. It was designed to keep a bimodal society functional for as long as possible without going to war for absolute supremacy. It was also designed to keep the government tied down so that it would be in bondage to the will of the people instead of the other way around. And ‘the sides’ as soon as Washington was gone formed alliances and started trying their best to twist and break it. It should be read, and interpreted as such. It was made to frustrate the aggressive ambitions of the powerful and to give the common man a mens of contending with them beyond revolt. We fuck with the constitution at our own extreme peril.
why? is that their purpose?
Careful you aren’t caught cribbing the work of others again
Plagiarism is a favored pastime of our trolls.
Currently, custody law tends to heavily favor the mother
– Very true, and THAT of course is what all the hullabaloo is really about among the ss gaggle since there is no fem in a ss male only union. It is not an arbitrary approach as slitheryshit wants to portray, It is die to common agreement among pedopsychs that fem nuturing is most important in the early formative years. In this case, as in many others having to do with family law, the courts rely heavily on the psych experts input.
– That pisses off the male gays. Hemce the acting out.
Maybe it’s the lapsed Catholic in me speaking but people don’t use “invincible ignorance” enough.
Good work, JD.
” slipperyslope says December 3, 2012 at 10:07 pm
If you buy anything edible at the follar store, you get what you deserve.”
Sneered at by the other useless trust fund kids?
they do that sometimes in pennsyltuky
Slurpee would not know good-faith if it crawled out it’s festering weinerhole and left a giant mushroom bruise on it’s cheek.
Again, you miss the obvious: this is a new issue because the participants are redefined, and the reasoning for favoring one parent over the other may well come down solely to something like who makes more money. Or who creeps the judge out less.
Square that circle with your progressivism, slurp.
I tend to resort to Orwell’s formulation bh.
I miss the George Orwell who posted here.
The “ignorance is strength” slogan, Ernst? I might be missing the allusion otherwise.
i think orwell is now narciso at patterico’s maybe
– One item I have to take issue with the author over Jeff. Theres a common miss-conception that when you are a single parent there will be a sort of sociatal comphensation going on. Not true, at least nowhere in my personal experience did I find this to be so. In point of fact I found just the opposite. Authority and private interactions always were made even tougher for my own case. There were a few isolated exceptions but not very many.
– There seemed to be an undefinable resentment I could never identify, but it was there. And not just for white males, it was equally true for the single mothers I was aquainted with.
The reductio ad
absurdamBrazil would be if the court awarded custody to the nannyAgainst her will yet.
That would be the one bh.
legalization of gay marriage
btw, ss, name me one state in the USA where a gay person cannot get married. Cuz, last I looked, no marriage license demands declaration of sexual orientation.
A gay man has as much right to get a married as a straight man.
” http://steveblank.com/2012/11/23/careers-start-by-peeling-potatoes/ ”
I stole this from Ace.
It’s about how a lot of so called “experts” aren’t anything of the sort and how they get tripped up by theories that could only survive in a bubble in an echo chamber in an ivory tower and would probably disintegrate if you even thought words like “laboratory”, “live demonstration” , “rehearsal”, ” blind test”, “trial run” or “prototype” anywhere near them. You learn more coming up from the bottom than you can by looking down from the top and consulting someone else’s map.
Okay, yes, very good, Ernst.
It’s doubtful but one day slippy might understand that his ignorance doesn’t give him any strength. He’ll have been useful though so I guess he has that going for him.
The point is, Jeff, courts are already settling these issues, and were for some years before gay marriage was legal anywhere.
Wow, some industrial strength changing-the-subject there! Right after you just got finished stating that the government should have no say (e.g. no standard) by which to adjudicate any private relationship.
I disagree bh. An intelligent troll would have been beat down by now. Ignorance is like Energizer lithium batteries.
You can jumpstart a flying saucer, but you can’t make it go anywhere.
– I’m assuming here that we tolorate the slippydork because its been so long since we had our very own resident troll to eviscerate and dewing and stuff.
– So far this one is geneeally a dissapointment
Things have changed, BBH. Check out the post I did linking to zerohedge, because it speaks directly to this issue.
Uncle Insty wrote a USA Today piece. I think I kind of agree with him. Repubs need to stop staring at the bodacious indy voter ass and come home to the pissed off base and make things right. Part of that is growing a new set of balls and learning to stare down a bused in crowd and their cardboard standee president even if it means losing a few semi-purple seats and being called the same names they’d be called if they folded. Take a stand and maybe some of the deserters will return and the troops rally. But no more credit. The tab has gotten too big and the bar has grown too smart for another six to eight years of walking left where the leftist stones can hit you harder and more often. If they can’t get serious now then they just can’t get serious. (And we already know that ship has sailed over the edge of the world and bounced off the infinite nothing that lies below, but till the new party gets here and plants a root, we might as well keep the chorus going. )
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/12/03/fiscal-cliff-obama-debt/1741339/
Heh, Ernst. You certainly have me there. Point taken.
“that weren’t scoured from the closest of recently dead people like you at Goodwill. ”
That was supposed to read “that weren’t scoured from the closest of recently dead people like you FIND at Goodwill.”
I’m not accusing happyfeet of being recently dead or implying that he is soon to be dead or anything like that. I’m just saying that Goodwill has a lot of dead people clothes from cleaned out closets and missed a word that made my already informal post take on unintended sinister hostile overtones.
I’m sure I strongly disagree with something that’s been said here in the last 10 years. So, everyone had better shape up, dammit!
*This non-sequitor brought to you by boredom
There’s a passage in 1984 where O’Brien explains to Winston that the party’s slogans are reflexive:
Ignorance is Strength because strength IS ignorance
Love is Hate because hate IS love.
War is Peace because peace IS war.
and most importantly:
Freedom is Slavery because Slavery IS freedom.
I did not know Goodwill sold dead people.
I did not know Goodwill sold dead people.
– They even come with an extended warrenty,
SS works very hard at that JD when she’s not stripping.
Quick! Somebody call Haley Joel Osment’s agent! I sense a corporate pitchman gig.
– feets seems to be under the weather tonight. Maybe the Kodak tour is closed to the public, or the Mount Washington cog-rail train is closed for the winter, or Pier W fish restaurant is closed for the holidays.
– Or maybe he ate a bad mushroom.
Steely Dan “Barrytown”
Sure the kids with the learning disabilities fix them all up good as new. Same thing as with all those LED clock radios and ‘George Foreman lean mean grillin’ machines’ .
closest -> closets.
I buy all my dead people from Goodwill. Frankly, the graveyard was always a mug’s game what with your shoveling and nightstick swinging bobbies and apparitions and the overall societal disdain.
Better to buy ’em from a reputable dealer than to pay a hunchback gravedigger under the table, that’s for sure.
We get some great improv around here. Nice work.
And they all vote “Obama” too.
*putt*
Donate your remains to Good Will so they can be bought and put to use by someone who really needs them and so kids like Francois D’Arugula and Martina Mortisectus here can learn useful if macabre trade skills like corpse repair, or upholstering. You might not realize it, but cremation is bad for the environment! It releases carbon and nitrogen bearing greenhouse gases and particulates into the atmosphere, it wastes natural gas, or sometime homemade thermite if you are a stupid $#@#ing hillbilly, and it smells like a pork barbecue which makes weak willed people fall off of their diets and risk becoming obese and a drain on our semi-nationalized health care system! So, if you are thinking of being cremated, think again! Cremation is the wrong answer! Give Good Will a call and they’ll be right by to collect that mortal coil you’ve shuffled off. Don’t be an ash!
I like goodwill cause of the salvation army is one of the good guys
the red cross is snooty and has entitlement issues
speaking of snooty the USA Today devotes three pages to the knocked up royal slut, which is an Editorial Decision
also speaking of snooty what’s this “klim” business all about it looks like it costs more than my car
“This Court finds you butch.”
Yeah, good luck with that. Can’t wait to hear how libertarians are supposed to embrace the power of the state that will miraculously legislate an end to the sexual revolution.
I’m not interested in political rants based in no less fantasy land than “green energy”.
Oh, BTW, there is a lot of chirping going on here. Most of it in the vein of “hey, sexual freedom and a lack of responsibility is bad” but completely lacking any attempt to mention some practical solution to how you deal with that. Chirping indeed.
“Oooh, sexual revolution BAD”. See, I can do it too. So VERY helpful.
Who says the power of the state is necessary? Society led us into this and it can lead us back out.
we just need republicans to tell people about how they need to stop making sex and be more responsible and settle down and get married unless they’re gay in which case they just need to work work work and subsidize the child tax credits for the people what are duggaring out their womens right and proper
I smell realignment
Who needs to legislate anything? All that has to happen is to reduce the moral hazard by eliminating the perverse incentives created by the social safety net. Take away Uncle’s sugar, and I imagine a not insignificant change in behavior will ensue.
Win win for socials conservatives and libertarians: traditional morality is affirmed and government encroachment upon the private sphere is rejected.
Much easier to accuse others of what you’re doing instead of attempting to engage with the argument when chirping’s all you got, I suppose.
He lacks any seriousness required for “specialty”. I would have chosen “hobby”. Or possibly “obsession”.
Speaking of chirping…
to embrace the power of the state that will miraculously legislate an end to the sexual revolution.
“dead” extends to rody’s brain as well
NO ONE is calling for the state to “legislate” sex; what Constitutional Conservatives want is for the state to STOP SUBSIDIZING the sexual revolution with taxpayer money.
Jaysus on a Pony, this continual bad faith re-invention of everything a non-leftist says is just flippin unacceptable.
And deadrody, it is kind of disheartening that people default to assuming specific legislation to bring about socon outcomes rather than thinking through the effect of libertarian outcomes on what socons say they want.
Repeat after me, please: Roe v. Wade federalized abortion law. Re-empowering the Tenth Amendment (a libertarian theme) will reverse that.
One might call it “unintended consequences,” if one were to buy the notion that libertarians want abortion laws to remain federal.
Furthermore, as a socon who disapproves of the idea of drug legalization, I would nevertheless be willing to trade de-federalizing drug enforcement in return for de-federalizing abortion law.
the drug war has been an expensive failure
which is par for the course for our pitiful little country’s wars
but still
might be time for a rethink
Mostly it’s revealing in a truth will out sort of way. After all, aren’t specific acts of legislation how progressives brought about their desired outcomes? At least, it was until they learned to hide behinds courts and regulatory oversight —less chance of the voters taking back what they earlier gave that way, bless their hearts.
It’s one tool, but mostly they infected culture via media, academia and arts first.
My first thought was that you weren’t going back far enough chronologically, that the problem is older than 60s radicals taking over the academy.
Then I remembered that a number of Progressive Era progressives infected the culture via arts and the media, and especially the academy (importing the german strain of the infection, no less)
So now I’m faced with a chicken/egg paradox and find myself back at the beginnings of the Enlightenment.
Which brings Hegel to mind.
Do what I do when that happens: drink until it passes.
spoken like a true drug warrior
It’s one tool, but mostly they infected culture via media, academia and arts first.
Indeed, the Left did the ground work such that even if the “wrong” people got elected, they’d do the “right” things — from their perspective, at least.
Chirp.
As with nearly everything you write here, deadrody, you miss the real argument and go after the straw men in your head. I hate fucking RINOs.
What are you doing here, anyway? You gave us another losing candidate and berated us for not getting behind him, even as you and your kind talked down conservative Senate candidates. Your snark is pitiful because it doesn’t address the argument in anything other than an oblique and either disingenuous or ignorant way.
It is interesting, however, to see slippy, happy, and rody all lined up. Who would have thought?
Oh, that’s right. Me. I knew you all before you did.
Jeff,
I’ll repeat one bit:
“I thought I was providing trivial information. I thought it was true. … something about Pawn Stars — totally unrelated to the topic or the point of the post as a whole.“
“Dude, what the fuck is it with you and the attitude?”
Can I take this hairshirt off, yet? It itches.
” so it doesn’t trouble my point in any but the most pedantic way.”
Repeat: it was not meant to.
Dude, what the fuck is it with you and the sensitivity to a meaningless comment?
Projection on the “butthurt”?
My reaction wasn’t to your first comment. I merely corrected that. It was to your second comment, where you suggested I cared enough about you to catch you in a lie, when what I was doing was looking up to see if what you said was correct.
I don’t do projection. And I don’t do passive/aggressive.
Those are just truisms you’re going to have to deal with when you comment here.
And yes, this is one of the many reasons I’m so fucking over this whole blogging thing.
It’s almost like they can’t imagine anything NOT originating in DC.
A common problem largely responsible for our present predicament.
I think this one is just dying for attention.
gooble-gobble!
gooble-gobble!
” And I don’t do passive/aggressive. ”
Horseshit. Your comment oozes it.
“Okay, Yuri. I’ll take you word for it. But let’s just say that’s not advertised as part of the show, and so it doesn’t trouble my point in any but the most pedantic way. Also, w/ the experts he brings in from sports shops and toy shops etc., it’s not like there aren’t other places besides a pawn shop to sell your collectibles in Vegas.
That, and I imagine Vegas has Craig’s list, too.
Also, this would seem to suggest there are other pawn shops in Vegas.”
Define “pedantic” for everyone. Including connotations.
In short, your pissed over my comments from three days ago.
One of the things in that thread that sparked me off was the series of other commenters telling you how brilliant it was.
This indicates something.
What it indicates is that other commenters know you take opposing opinions very personally. It also idicates that you are soothed by ass-kissing.
Tell others that your use of “pedantic” wasn’t shorthand for “asshole”
But you don’t do passive/aggressive.
Yes you do. My guess is that you do it a lot.
Me, I just do agressive/aggressive so here it is.
Not every comment inspired by a part of your post is about you. Not every argument against the content of your post is a personal attack against you.
YOU, were “butt-hurt” over my comments on an entirely separate thread. And you laid-in-wait three days till my next post to unload your new favorite word. Which, would be fine if it were even applicable.
Well, you got your chance (after 3 days) to call me pedantic. You can pretend you weren’t waiting for that chance, tell everyone you want. The problem is three-fold:
1. “pedantic” means “asshole”. I know that’s not in the dictionary definition; but I’m 40 yrs old, I’ve heard the word used many times (not always against me); and that is the connotation with which it is ALWAYS used.
2. I wasn’t being pedantic. I can be. But I wasn’t this time. The term was not applicable. This means that you basically called be an asshole because you were waiting for an opportunity to do so.
3. The only reason you used the word is that it summarizes personality flaws that I offered up about myself. So, you used against me — inaptly — ammunition that I gave to you in an apology.
4. YOU just couldn’t let the other thread go.
Tell who you like that it’s just not so. You’ll tell yourself that, even though you know it’s not true.
Am I too thin-skinned and emotionally over-sensitive to continue commenting here? Maybe. Probably. But it hardly matters as this is my last.
Are you too thin-skinned and emotionally over-sensitiver to be the author/primary poster of an open blog. Yes, you are.
This will piss you off as your falling asleep tonight, you’ll invent justifications and excuses for yourself, you will take nothing to heart as even potential truth or cause for self-analysis, and all of this will make you more and more pissed off at me. But, man, I’m gone.
Yuri. Dude. You are neither winning friends nor influencing people.
Geez yuri, kinda full of yourself aren’t you?
Pedantic in Jeffs use means “trivial”. Obviously, that must have really hurt…
Words mean what people claim them to mean.
You commented before the Pawn Stars thing? Who knew?
As for being pedantic: introducing facts (that turned out to be incorrect, but at the time I didn’t know that) in order to question the use of a particular show that was only offered as an example of a kind of industry that is built around hustle, hard work, studying various bits about history, production, and etc., — that’s being a pedant.
I called it pedantic.
Clearly, you haven’t been here too long. Because had I wanted to call you an asshole I would have called you an asshole.
But you aren’t an asshole. You’re an attention whore and a self-righteous prick.
Thanks, though, for telling me that one of longest-active blogs on the right can’t work with me at the helm. I’ll take it under advisement.
Dude, what the fuck?
Everyone knows I’m the house pedant!
Something tells me yuri is one of those that has commented here before under other names…
The pedants are revolting!
““This Court finds you butch.””
Okay that’s fuckin’ funny.
Mr. Gossamer, this court finds you a ‘pervy semi-queer curious’ who is willing to experiment, mostly under the influence of alcohol, and not actually gay. it is the finding of this court per expert testimony, that you are masquerading as a bottom entirely because it makes you feel weird, and therefore it is merely a temporary sexual fascination pursued due to a desire for the thrill of novelty, a desire to stay ahead of your encroaching desensitization and boredom towards more normal means sexual expression, exploration of a kink associated with feigned powerlessness and being ‘pampered’ by a peer, peer pressure as transmitted by a fad, or a short term anal fixation, and this behavior is not a natural feeling of intrinsic bottom partner homosexuality as understood by modern sexual psychology. You are here mostly to weird yourself out on what your perceive to be the edge, as outlined by the principle original evidence. Notwithstanding that whole ghastly “baby? I want you to choke me out, can you do that for me baby? Just choke me out while we do it…” thing you recorded on your ipod and uploaded, with a link on your nightmarish Facebook page…and that erotic tumblr you made is really awful too…
Well it is the opinion of this court that you are not in a homosexual relationship ‘because it feels right’ and that you have no natural unlearned predilection towards standard, acceptable, and normal homosexual lovemaking whatsoeve. Therefore, we the court, and the state of Oregon, do hereby award custody of your adopted child (whatever the #@#$ it is, who the hell cares, this is about the optics of social justice) to your authentically homosexual partner and entreat you to quit being such a poser. NEXT!
Yuri took his ball and went home. No more Yuri for us, we don’t deserve him.
Meh.
I got your Wizard of Id reference, McGehee.
If only he’d take slipperyslope and dreadrody with him.
Can anybody connect Yuri’s disconcert with the deepest source of our troubles? ‘Cause he totally lost me there.
Or in the alternative, maybe he’s just not interested in that so much as to bother connecting it for himself.
*The pedants are revolting!*
You’re tellin’ me!
Somebody allowed their shadow to touch somebody else’s sacred honor.
At least as near as I can tell.
Alternatively, somebody has mistaken somebody else for somebody’s controlling wife and/or mother.
I remember a Wizard of Id where Bung runs in all inebriated and shouts, ” Sire! Sire! Close the gates! The peasants are revolting!” The king looks through a doorway to see Sir Rodney and three rather over plump women chatting and goofing off, and he says ” Yeah well, the peerage ain’t much to look at either Bung. ” And then Bung looks at the “viewer/camera” of the strip all dead eyed and kind of unimpressed with a sort of vaudevillian “you see what I have to put up with?” look of frustrated straight-man disappointment on his face.