Meanwhile (and setting aside the strained sneering at, and predictable low-ball estimates of, the short-notice, mid-work day crowd size), I give you glorious progressive success stories by which to compare. The people rising up! Fighting the military industrial complex, the shady Jewish conspiracy, the patriarchy!
Not to mention our own historic President’s massive, world-changing appeal.
They’re frightened, the ruling class and its useful idiots. Again. I can smell it.
I smell it, too, Jeff.
The reek of desperation is everywhere: its a cross between week-old gym socks and that greasy residue on the row 24 left-side window I found on a Pakistan Airways flight in the seventies.
Not pretty, and it’s going to get worse.
I made the mistake of reading some comments on politicsusa.com.
HP Lovecraft only thought he had an understanding of madness and horror.
Beware the frightened and desperate Leftists. They will lash out like the wounded animals they are.
That’s okay, Bob. They fight like girls.
Jeff, what’s up with the representative from Colorado Springs and his anti-gun rhetoric? How did I guy who represents the district that is home to the Air force Academy get elected with those kind of views?
I = a
They fight like girls.
Which is to say[?], with poison, and for keeps.
I was thinking slapping, crying, hair pulling, sdferr.
My sense however leigh, is that those are more like epiphenomena in the political struggle, than the main event, which creeps up on the victim outside his awareness, which in turn comes only after it’s too late to do him any good.
That’s quite possible. We need to be vigilant.
Tincture of progress
Boom.
Not only is the honeymoon long over, folks. The marriage is becoming deeply troubled and, increasingly, loveless.
So the Tea Party got that turnout on a Wednesday? That’s pretty good considering most Tea Party folks are, you know, working – and not as paid protesters.
Meow.
I’m taking bets that Levin’s July 15 (?) announcement is the formation of a third party.
I’ll bite, Red. Who’ll helm this party? What will be it’s mission statement?
Those whose jobs the Unicorn Prince hasn’t taxed and regulated out of existence.
-Let us hope RI Red.
-Leigh: They get others to do their fighting for them. There are plenty of thuggish-minded people out there willing to staff the concentration camps, gulags, and re-education camps – there always are.
I figured as much, Bob. I’ve never been much on following orders but I can recognize their kind from a hundred yards or more.
Re: Those whose jobs the Unicorn Prince hasn’t taxed and regulated out of existence.
Yeah. I witnessed my fair share of rallies & protests when I lived outside of DC and there really is a professional activist/protest class – students, 60’s radicals who never grew up, people who work for non-profit or advocacy organizations, unions, paid protesters, etc.
That’s what makes the Tea Party so different, it’s just normal folks who are taking time off from their regular, productive pursuits, such as a job, raising their children, volunteering at a local establishment (church, their children’s school, etc.).
it’s just normal folks who are taking time off from their regular, productive pursuits
Pursuits like cousin-humping, cross-burning, moonshining, and snake handling, you mean.
And banjo-dueling. Don’t forget banjo-dueling.
Kiss my ass, you sunnavabitch — I’m the best there’s ever been!
Leigh – first guess is Jim Demint, Heritage Foundation. Perhaps that was why he resigned from the Senate.
Mission statement? Levin will write it and it will be something along the lines of Constitutional Conservatism is the only way to protect Liberty. Down with crony-corporatism and Statists, Fascist, Communists and Progressives (BIRM).
Pursuits like cousin-humping, cross-burning, moonshining, and snake handling, you mean.
Can’t beat a bit of cousin burning and banjo humping.
Left unstated that no-one could hold a candle to Auguste Comte when it came to coosinburking and bangjoborking. The secret sauce was in the science.
Perhaps that was why he resigned from the Senate.
I suspected that was his motivation at the time. I’ll have to give this some thought.
For years Levin has insisted that third party would doom the Republican Party and that the only way to recover it is from the inside. He was also very careful to point out that all change would happen by ballot box and not bullet box.
Recently though, I think he has come to the realization that the Republican Party cannot be saved. Just last night he reminded the party elders that, if true conservatives pull out, the party will never win another election. I’m thinking that he now sees that as a feature, not a bug. He still backs off of anything stronger than voting and civil disobedience, but is now wondering if we shouldn’t use the tactics of the left.
That tells me he has come to the conclusion that we are too far gone. Formation of a third party would be the last chance to save the Republic working within the system.
Rush has always said, “Don’t panic until I tell you it’s time to panic.” Hasn’t happened yet, but he’s sounding awfully frustrated after seeing no change during his 25 year program. He’ll keep broadcasting because he loves it, but I think he does see the writing on the wall.
For years Levin has insisted that third party would doom the Republican Party and that the only way to recover it is from the inside. He was also very careful to point out that all change would happen by ballot box and not bullet box.
He was (is?) right. However, if the GOP leadership is either so sold out for cheap gardeners and maids, or so deluded to think they can actually win a Hispandering contest, then forget it. They had fair warning in 2005, and deep down they know why Bush The Younger’s poll numbers plummetted. Nope, it wasn’t the war. It was the “Comprehensive” Amnesty fraud.
We can forgive pork-barrelling, we can forgive entitlements. But when they are deliberately importing the underclass that will be used to destroy The Republic, then forget it.
I just wish there was a 3rd Party that was coherent. I suppose one will have to be made.
And again, I want to cry.
Curmudgeon, “Pull yourself together man!”
I’m hoping for a breakaway of the “good” conservative/constitution/TEA party types. It’s not going to happen overnight, that’s for sure.
The Girl From Epiphenomena
Levin’s got another book coming out. Maybe that book will be a plan and a call to action for a third party, maybe not.
” a call to action for a third party, maybe not.”
nah civil rights/states rights
The Boy in OffKey
Aguas de Marco: to the happier times.
Helpless by Neil Young
link
RI Red says June 20, 2013 at 3:16 pm – He was also very careful to point out that all change would happen by ballot box and not bullet box.
He is wrong in this; it is going to take both. The most conservative states are going to have to have leadership changes from the efforts of the voters, but it will likely take some refusals and threats by multiple states to rein in the federal leviathan. It might every well escalate to violence.
Of course I suspect he knows this, but can’t articulate it on the radio, lest he be labeled a kook/revolutionary.
Levin actually talked about dual citizenship/divided loyalties last night. I wonder if he realized he was crossing into “Birther crap” (his terminology, not mine) territory.
RI Red wrote:
If this is indeed what he’s planning, Mr. Levin will have to be very diplomatic [Ooo, that word] in crafting the mission statement. It will have to be something that meets the approval of Classical Liberals, conservatives, and small ‘l’ libertarians – no easy task that.
Any mission statement would also have to reject Ideology, otherwise this third party would damn itself to eventually becoming what the other two have evolved into.
Ideology is the bane of freedom and ordered liberty.
J.B. Bury, The Idea of Progress — An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth, [1920]
*** But the outstanding fame of these great reactionaries must not mislead us into exaggerating the reach of this reaction. The spirit and tendencies of the past century still persisted in the circles which were most permanently influential. Many eminent savants who had been imbued with the ideas of Condillac and Helvetius, and had taken part in the Revolution and survived it, were active under the Empire and the restored Monarchy, still true to the spirit of their masters, and commanding influence by the value of their scientific work. M. Picavet’s laborious researches into the activities of this school of thinkers has helped us to understand the transition from the age of Condorcet to the age of Comte. The two central figures are Cabanis, the friend of Condorcet, [Footnote: He has already claimed our notice, above, p. 215.] and Destutt de Tracy. M. Picavet has grouped around them, along with many obscurer names, the great scientific men of the time, like Laplace, Bichat, Lamarck, as all in the direct line of eighteenth century thought. “Ideologists” he calls them. [Footnote: Ideology is now sometimes used to convey a criticism; for instance, to contrast the methods of Lamarck with those of Darwin.] Ideology, the science of ideas, was the word invented by de Tracy to distinguish the investigation of thought in accordance with the methods of Locke and Condillac from old-fashioned metaphysics. The guiding principle of the ideologists was to apply reason to observed facts and eschew a priori deductions. Thinkers of this school had an influential organ, the Decade philosophique, of which J. B. Say the economist was one of the founders in 1794. The Institut, which had been established by the Convention, was crowded with “ideologists,” and may be said to have continued the work of the Encyclopaedia. [Footnote: Picavet, op. cit. p. 69. The members of the 2nd Class of the Institut, that of moral and political science, were so predominantly Ideological that the distrust of Napoleon was excited, and he abolished it in 1803, distributing its members among the other Classes.] These men had a firm faith in the indefinite progress of knowledge, general enlightenment, and “social reason.” ***
It will have to be something that meets the approval of Classical Liberals, conservatives, and small ‘l’ libertarians – no easy task that.
Sounds like a tall order that the Founders have conveniently already tasked themselves with and left a documentary trail.
Any mission statement would also have to reject Ideology, otherwise this third party would damn itself to eventually becoming what the other two have evolved into.
Ideology is the bane of freedom and ordered liberty.
But wait–without a principled ideology to follow, doesn’t it all degenerate into “pragmatism”?
-Leigh: Indeed, The Founders did a wonderful job in balancing the various interests, but they had the bonus of not having very many Ideology-infused brains to deal with. Virtue is a rare commodity these days, whereas, in the 18th Century prescription and prudence – the legacies of over a thousand years of Christendom – were even possessed by such people as Jefferson and his ilk [when I’m being kind, I call them ‘Neo-Ideologues’].
-Curmudgeon: The degeneration into Pragmatism comes when one embraces Utilitarianism. As long as someone possesses a Moral Imagination, there is little danger of that happening. A deep and abiding respect for The Permanent Things and a belief in transcendence will stop the slide into believing things and people only have value if they’re ‘useful’, if they meet certain metrics [God, I hate that word].
‘Neo-Ideologues’
Heh. I blame it on old Tom being a ginger. George Washington, also a ginger, is the exception that proves the rule about redheads.
What Leigh said.