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Eric Massa and the mock-feudal Congress.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  April 18th, 2010 at 10:23 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Heh.  I’ve been referring to Congress as being barons and petty-nobility – very, very, very petty nobility – for some time; but it’s nice that other people have noticed. Eleanor Clift (via Instapundit):

?It took just three weeks for upstate New York Democratic Rep. Eric Massa to resign his seat in Congress after accusations surfaced that he had sexually harassed members of his staff. The long trail of unwanted and often abusive advances that preceded his resignation—and why his alleged behavior went unreported for so long—highlights how much Capitol Hill is a feudal society, with each member the lord of his or her own territory.

The kicker is, it’s not even a proper feudal society.  A proper feudal society would have seen Speaker Pelosi’s office burned down by her own vassals for her willful sparking of a peasant revolt in said vassals’ fiefdoms.  Feudal societies were rambunctious affairs; the average French or English baron would have sneered at the milksops that blindly and meekly followed the Democratic party leadership’s charge over a cliff.

And let’s not get started on the Germans.

Moe Lane

PS: regarding the specifics, somebody should tell these people that the droit du seigneur – the sexual ‘rights’ of a feudal lord over his vassals – DIDN’T ACTUALLY EXIST.  Ah, the Democratic party: not only do they not learn from history, many of them didn’t actually take it in the first place…

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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  • http://thesandsinstitute.org Vassar Bushmills

    I like the analogy because of the dark Gothic overtones, which I think fit. But the Dem-Left only wishes it could become feudal, for that lasted 1000 years, while bureaucracy-borne diseases such as Marxism can only muster about 75, even under the most totalitarian of circumstances. That’s also a natural law, of sorts. Feudalism belongs to meat-eaters, not tap dancers.

    As for the droit de signeur, I don’t doubt what Mr Cecil says about Western Europe, but it existed and was used in the Ottomon Empire, with rigor and purpose. That’s why you don’t see a lot of blond Spaniards and Greeks. A Montenegran official told me of a small valley in Herzogovina where there are still blondes, and they are treated much as the white buffalo in Plains Culture

  • archer52

    Pelosi as a duchess. Harry as a baron. Obama as the young prince.

    Great. Now I won’t be able to watch “Robin Hood” without seeing their faces. But you are right. Each little fiefdom has its own ruler and even rules. What decrees apply in Barney Frank’s district, like never running out of Vaseline in the royal cupboards, isn’t the same as in McCain’s fiefdom where he decrees only he can say silly things and then go “he he he, when can I get on Meet the Press?”

    We were warned when the founding fathers built the system. Don’t screw around with it, you could mess everything up.

  • Adjoran

    Massa wasn’t allowed his behavior as some sort of feudal fiefdom, it was ignored by – although known to – the Speaker and Democratic Leadership as long as he was a good soldier when they needed him.

    He voted for the stimulus, although he did criticize parts of it and how it was spent later, but this doesn’t matter. Tell the rubes at home whatever you want, so long as you vote right.

    He was a “NO” on health care the first time in the House, but from the Left, preferring single-payer socialism from the start. But once it became clear he was not going to change, no matter how badly Pelosi needed his vote, suddenly his long pattern of behavior “leaks” somehow and he is forced to resign. Scratch one “NO” vote right there!

    And don’t worry about his replacement voting “NO” too – rely on the corrupt David Paterson in New York to refuse to call the special election as required by law. Why take chances with elections?

    Clift knows about as much about feudalism as she knows about economics in general – which is to say, nothing. She was a party girl in the LBJ years, and no one was ever willing to just say, “Eleanor, you’re dried up, ugly, and stupid. Get the heck out of here!”