Who’s Your Daddy Now?

When asked if they have a higher opinion of either Congress or a series of unpleasant or disliked things, voters said they had a higher opinion of root canals (32 for Congress and 56 for the dental procedure), NFL replacement refs (29-56), head lice (19-67), the rock band Nickelback (32-39), colonoscopies (31-58), Washington DC political pundits (34- 37), carnies (31-39), traffic jams (34-56), cockroaches (43-45), Donald Trump (42-44), France (37-46), Genghis Khan (37-41), used-car salesmen (32-57), and Brussels sprouts (23-69) than Congress.

(Via Meadia)

So here’s a political and philosophical quandary to chew on. Do most Americans secretly yearn for Democracy? My answer is pretty much unfashionable and unsexy. Most Americans, if given a social unconstrained choice and the opportunity to control what happens if they don’t choose deliberative process, would tell you take Democracy and shove it from whence the waste emerges. So given this economic preference, who in their ever-loving gourd would actually like Congress? Certainly not that vocal and growing Ghengis Khan Fan Club™.

Now RMJ can’t say that about Modern America. He’s just a troglodyte. He’s one of those people Piers Morgan accussed of ”waving his little book around.” Oh, and guess who else Americans like more than Congress? Political pundits.

But no, America is turning into Amerika. It is doing so because a large plurality of Americans is joining that Genghis Khan Fan Club™. Henry Hazlitt described the three processes that would occur as Brother Ghengis worked his mystical will through the echoing hallways of time.

The first and most important, because the other two derive from it, is the pressure for a constant increase in governmental powers, for a constant widening of the governmental sphere of intervention.
The second main tendency that marks the drift toward totalitarianism is that toward greater and greater concentration of power in the central government.
The third tendency that marks the drift toward totalitarianism is the increasing centralization and concentration of power in the hands of the president at the expense of the two coordinate branches of the government, Congress and the courts.

Now this is just crazy-talk RMJ. You just opined against a guy who “fathered more ‘outside’ children than Travis ‘Light Horse’ Henry.” So let’s just say that there weren’t no parties, like a Genghis Khan Party, because Genghis Khan’s parties had gas! Nah, this objection is bogus. These things were ever-so-different when Bill Clinton did them in the late 1990’s. The family values objection has been reduced to a way to get rid of someone you dislike but can find no logical gravamen to argue against.

Then there’s this whole thing about being The Scourge of God, Mighty Manslayer, and The Perfect Warrior. Doesn’t our society love the children and hate guns too much to want a Pater Familias that just refuses to ever take off the wife-beater shirt? Again, this objection is just a façade. Most of the gun-grabbers are really grabbing power. They buy guns themselves. They practice non-violence the way Carl Rowan did with his unregistered handgun.

So what’s to stop The President from becoming Caesar? Not much. There’s the bromide objections that have always been made to kings that date back to the Old Testament. Beyond that, there’s only one, beleaguered group of people standing with Horatio on that bridge forestalling tyranny. We don’t even have the decency to like them much. We tend to think they lie every time their lips move. But then again, given that used car salesman are nearly twice as popular (32-57), why wouldn’t they act more like they have a truckload of crap to sell us?