Although our ruling class and its subsidiary in the presumptuously self-positioned intellectual-media class seem unable to understand or deliberately unwilling to acknowledge the essence of the current radically decentralized (1) but very large contrarian movement, an overarching sense…actually an urgent plea… for “reasonableness” is fundamental to the movement’s soul for anyone willing to look past the thin and embarrassingly disingenuous popular media portrayal.  History…even the very near term writing of it…will be much more honest and accurate.  (How could it not be?)

To be sure, our despicable Fourth Estate would have preferred to ignore…or mock into irrelevancy…this movement a year and a half ago and surely would have if not for the immense number of these small voices.  This persistence through numbers and “radically decentralized” nature have so far been a sufficient life force for a still infant movement.  While still critical, it is doubtful this will be enough to ensure longevity beyond Election Day.

Realizing that no matter how good or bad the results, on the morning of November 3^rd absolutely nothing will have been accomplished…as in realized results…to directly make our current situation any better on the fiscal or freedom fronts.  Real momentum is required as events move into 2011 and with this I turn to one of my favorite quotes to nurture my own optimism:

“Revolutions, it is commonly observed, often break out not when circumstances are next to intolerable but when conditions begin rapidly to improve.” – Robert Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah

The perception that “conditions [are] begin[ing] to rapidly improve” needs to spread quickly during the next legislative session.  As many have already made clear, this means both legislative victories and failures that put the enemies of freedom, responsibility, and reason on record over and over again all the way to 2012.  I fear our current ruling class (of both parties) doesn’t truly appreciate the soul of this movement or the power of its millions of persistent voices.   They need to be constantly reminded…or and (eventually) removed. 

As they say: Endeavor to Persevere.

EPILOGUE

I cannot help but add a few gold nuggets from the Hitchens book and chapter noted below that I choose via my “[edits]” to read great import into with regards to 2010 America.  The first is from a discussion of “conscience”:

“Its existence guarantees nothing in itself, and the catalytic…moment only occurs when [individuals prepare] to cease being the passive [Lower Orders] and to become instead [armies of reasonable voices].”

See my previous diary for the “Lower Orders” reference via Orwell. (2)

The next comes from a paragraph on “human nature”:

“…it was wrong to endorse the lazy proposition that ‘You can’t change human nature’. … Ought not the corollary to hold – that if it can be altered one way it surely can be altered the other? … It is those who hope to transform humans [and societies] who end up by burning [or starving] them, like the waste product of a failed experiment.”

Although written in 2001, it’s hard not to appreciate the usage and close proximity of the words “hope” and “transform”.  (Fundamentally, I presume.)  While I don’t attempt to equate today with the magnitude of historical failed experiments, I do insist on recognizing a consistent evil nature.  The “With an Iron Fist, We Will Lead Humanity to Happiness” gulag sign was certainly hung with an implied “or else”. 

Also, in the paragraph leading into this, he issued “Bear in mind, however, that Utopia itself was a tyranny…”. Priceless!  Wasn’t that in the small print on the Seal of the President-Elect?

Lastly, I’ll reach back to the closing paragraph of the previous chapter:

“Only one other sacred text mentions “happiness” without embarrassment. But even in 1776, this concept was thought to be mentionable only as the consequence of a bitter struggle, just then being embarked upon.  The beautiful word “pursuit”, however we construe it, would be vacuous in any other context.”

So far this has been a “Party”.  You know what is ahead.

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate Member since April 2006…?

Note: Diary title taken from passage on Freud’s memorial in Vienna as quoted by Christopher Hitchens in “Letters to a Young Contrarian”.  It was my reading of his Chapter IV early this morning that sparked my mind to ramble on this topic here.

(1) Borrowed this descriptor from a Sunday morning talking head a few weeks back.

(2) http://www.redstate.com/ntrepid/2010/10/16/profiles-in-arrogance-a-brief-commentary-on-understanding-our-progressive-ruling-class-and-how-they-destroyed-america/

“…Of course I know you’re a Socialist [Progressive]. So am I.  I mean we’re all Socialists [Progressives] nowadays.  But I don’t see why you have to give all your money away and make friends with the lower classes.  You can be a Socialist [Progressive] and have a good time, that’s what I say.” – Hermione (1)

My edits aside, that is how Orwell presented the fictitious personality of the “warm hearted, unthinking Socialist [Progressive]…who only wants to abolish poverty and does not always grasp what this implies” (2).  In this second reference, he spelled out our current situation a bit clearer…and hints at the sinister nature of the beast…even while making his case for Socialism:

“The truth is that to many people, calling themselves Socialists [Progressives], revolution [Hope and Change] does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which ‘we’, the clever ones, are going to impose of them, the Lower Orders.” (2)

A clever ruling class…imposing…reforms…on others…with no grasp on (or even regard for) the implications – Orwell seems to have known 2010 America quite well. 

For more than two years now (yes, some of the disgrace extends back to the last administration) the “Lower Orders” have been very publically insulted on a regular basis with the excessive spending of our monies, frequent flagrant disregard for anything close to a legitimate legislative process, and cynical disregard for laws and lawmaking. (What was TARP money supposed to used for?  What was supposed to be done with repaid TARP money?  You have to pass the bill so we can know what is in it?)

Electoral upheavals, as they may very well come in the next couple of cycles, will help but I fear they will prove mostly just cathartic exercises – our federal bureaucracies, the structural changes already in place, and the corruptive nature of the beltway will see to that.  The bigger problem…and impediment to real recovery on the economic and freedom front…will continue to be the now broken myth of the natural sanctity of our laws.

When the history of a broken American decade (or more) is being written from the 2025 perspective, Obamacare and unimaginably huge deficits may be largely the focus but I suspect Amity Shlaes (in my most current issue of Imprimis) nailed the moment the cut to the American jugular occurred with barely a whimper from the then Tea Party-less electorate:

“Property rights are endangered as well by the ongoing assault on contracts generally.  A perfect example of this was the treatment of Chrysler bonds during the company’s bankruptcy, where senior secured creditors were ignored, notwithstanding the status of their bonds under bankruptcy law.  The current administration made a political decision to subordinate those contracts to union demands.  That sent a dangerous signal for the future that U.S. bonds are not trustworthy.”

It is the implications of this arrogant, extra-legal maneuvering that we will be dealing with for quite some time to come.  At least their Progressive hearts were in the right place. (…?)

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate Member since April 2006…?

(1) Keep the Aspidistra Flying (Orwell) http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_26?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=keep+the+aspidistra+flying&sprefix=keep+the+aspidistra+flying

(2) The Road to Wigan Pier (Orwell) http://www.amazon.com/Road-Wigan-Pier-George-Orwell/dp/1409211509/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286024719&sr=1-1

I finished this month’s issue of Imprimis (The Tea Parties and the Future of Liberty by Stephen F. Hayes) and my first cup of coffee as the sun came up over my kitchen table this morning.   His last paragraph has lingered in mind all day:

Most Americans don’t agree with the president’s priorities.  And many of these Americans are now active in the Tea Party movement, a movement that has succeeded in starting a serious national conversation about a return to limited government. (Emphasis added)

The entire piece is worth reading and a conversation is a good start but I hope the above is an understatement of epic proportions.  This movement better be a good bit bigger than a discussion about ideas…this needs to be about big actions and effective results.  The referenced “return to limited government” can no longer fit nicely into some ambiguous task to “reform”.  It should be understood that this will require completely dismantling large portions of the federal behemoth that will be openly hostile to the movement every step of the way.  There will be many casualties and turncoats among the elected ranks along the way and, while the immediate electoral needs in the upcoming midterm are obvious, a continuous grooming of and planning for replacements and improvements needs to be well underway before all of November’s ballots are counted.  We want our guys in there now but, as a local car dealer advertises, we “aren’t married to none of them”.

The point to that little diatribe is that this is more than a conversation and it better be much more than a single climactic, cathartic electoral eruption in early November with lots of immediate devastation and the impression that the worst (and the hard work) is over and the healing can begin.  History needs to record the next half decade or more as an American political tsunami to the right.  Certainly the period since between late last March and the approaching November, if not actually beginning a year before that, should in retrospect be viewed as the drawback when it was clear to all what was coming next and the midterms will be the first waves crashing over the beach.  The relentless onrush should peak in November 2012 and the surging tide needs to continue through the following midterm.  That is the type of persistence…active support for and positive pressure on our elected representation…required to battle the entrenched evils already codified into the bureaucratic monstrosity that aims to choke the liberty out of the American dream.  I hope the Tea Partiers are up to the task.

While a sweep of some size may already be dealt into 2010, it is also already in the cards that the elections of 2012 will be the fight for the future of the republic as we know it.  Battle plans are already being drawn.

I suspect we will see familiar themes from history emerge before Christmas…there is only one liberal/progressive playbook and it really isn’t all that long.  The complete failure of the current administration, the current congress, and the current agenda will need to me mitigated…and blamed on us, of course…so the narrative will shift to the country being “ungovernable” and the presidency as “too big for one person”.  This will be relentlessly pounded into our collective psyche by the loyally incurious media for the better part of a year.  That will lay the groundwork for the all-but-certain Biden exit and “spectacular” announcement of the liberal dream team…still president and his number two, of course, but (wink, wink) effectively co-presidents…and the only ticket smart enough, progressive enough, electable enough and, not to mention, diverse enough to save us from ourselves.  Obama-Clinton-2012 is its name and that, my friends, is what ultimately stands between you and freedom on the other side of the approaching storm.  (Sorry to break the bad news to those who assumed we had already weathered through mid-storm…you aint seen nothin’ yet.)

And that’s the way I see it from the oppressive summer Texas heat of August 2010.  Prepare yourselves appropriately.

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate Member since April 2006…?

Ignoring my only-half-joking desire to never again travel to foreign lands, the ntrepid family managed to temporarily leave the familiar confines of our Texas home base for the annual late July pilgrimage to the state of my birth (read as: took the kids to visit Grandma & Grandpa…with the added bonus of spending time with Great Grandma.)

My chosen reading along the way included Christopher Hitchens’ “Why Orwell Matters” and the very long piece from The American Spectator (TAS) “America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution” (1).  As it turned out, these selections provided more than enough depressive reality to offset many of the rich experiences along the way: the Strategic Air and Space Museum, a week at small town (population < 5000 & one stop light) pace, rural county fair festivities, and the Oklahoma City National Memorial….just to name a few.  All this and the marvelous drive…no doubt scenic boredom to the extreme for most Americans…through my America.  (Notwithstanding two kids tortuously five-point-harnessed into minimized viewing pleasure.)

The referenced “disconnectedness” was refreshing in some ways but also more than a bit unsettling.  Day after day of experiencing current events nominally like most of America – headlines and thirty second news snippets only…with no real details or critical analysis – a news junkie’s nightmare.  (During one visit, an old friend laughed about being forced to watch Sunday morning talking head programming at my house back in the early 90s…my wife informed her that I have now perfected continuous dual programming – cable TV news channels and AM talk radio blaring throughout the house at the same time.  Is this torture?)

Anyway, a few thoughts from along the way…

It’s the Spirit that Matters

While not as vocal as revealed on this trip a year ago, it was obvious to me that the Tea Party spirit in my little corner of the heartland runs true and very deep.  Additionally, it becomes clearer every day that this “spirit”, or what I’ve referenced before as the “soul of discontent” (2) (3), really is an awakening and a frame of mind.  Hitchens referenced the phenomenon via Pasteur as “…the mind that is conditioned to notice…” and Orwell being “conditioned to keep his eyes open…to register the evidence”.  It took generations to lull the collective American spirit into the trance epitomized by the election of 2008 but now it has been awakened…shocked to attention and full of the resulting adrenaline…and more importantly conditioned to notice the ongoing deceptions and bipartisan disdain flowing freely from the current ruling class.  The republic as we know it is definitely in trouble but this spirit will not sleep again anytime soon.

While probably obvious to others all along, I also noticed with more clarity the way in which mass media for an ADD society persistently and deliberately misinterprets the word “party” in the movement’s unofficial name as a standing political organization instead of merely a part of a revolutionary historical reference – as if equating the movement to (or framing the story as) something as organized, institutionalized, and homogeneous as the two corrupt and corrupting entities that are so massively failing us today.  This perspective of the movement completely and, I say again, deliberately misses (misrepresents) the point.  Nevertheless, I suspect this iceberg of a movement is well more massive than the clever shading the media chooses to project upon the less daunting visible tip transmits.

The Progressive Label

I continue to be perplexed by the rampant self labeling as progressive by so many on today’s left.  It may well be the best descriptor of their beliefs and agenda but common sense and modern marketing practice would seem to dictate avoidance of a term with such a not-so-distant sordid – and easily retrievable – past.  I cannot imagine that fifteen minutes of basic internet research into the history of that movement wouldn’t elicit a gag reflex in any being infected with an ounce of Americanism.  (For starters, search the topic era with Wilson, Sanger, eugenics, income tax, Jim Crow, and/or direct election of senators.)  Such arrogance would seem to support TAS’s contention that the ruling class – specifically those on the radical left – think we are stupid.

That should play well with the newly “conditioned” electorate (see above).

Knowing the Opposing Forces

Over the last year or so I have picked up and expanded a habit of highlighting and noting in my books as I read them.  In some cases – most notably Friedman – this becomes a somewhat useless exercise because such a great portion of the text ends up marked that finding a specific reference will require substantial rereading anyway. 

Somewhere along the way I began underlining any form of the word “bureaucrat”.  After many books on many topics from many perspectives one thing jumps out with incredible obviousness: these references are almost never – and I struggle to include that word almost – in a positive context.

In his discussion around some of last century’s most notable evils, Hitchens’ Orwell is quoted on “necessary murders”:

“…they don’t speak of it as murder; it is ‘liquidation’, ‘elimination’, or some other soothing phrase…(this) brand of amoralism is only possible if you are the kind of person who is always somewhere else when the trigger is pulled”

Consider that wisdom in relation to “fictional” death panels (bureaucrats) and substitute “plug” for “trigger”.

By the way, elections have virtually no effect on these people…their power remains static at best but most often grows and grows and grows…

Twilight’s Edge

The following lore of optimism from Dr. Franklin (via Wikipedia) circa the birth of this greatest nation has never seemed so distant:

 “I have,” said he, “often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.”

I have no doubt we are nearing the end of that glorious day.  While an immediate and massive rightward electoral shift is a must to manage the pain, we shouldn’t fool ourselves.  Even 537 new…and unrealistically pure…elected faces in DC would have little impact against the structural cancers already in place and actively devouring liberty – present and future.  The system is corrupt and perverted to the core. (See the term “ethics committee” is association with either chamber of our legislative branch for the former and “nonpartisan CBO” (4) for the latter…just for starters)  This well is spoiled.

Considering a total rightward – or more accurately, a Tea Party – shift later this year, TAS warns of the damaging effects of implementing the needed policy reversals:

“…by carrying out its own ‘revolution from above’ to reverse the ruling class’s previous ‘revolution from above,’ it would have made that ruinous practice standard in America.”

Again, this well is spoiled.

Franklin’s sun will rise again but I suspect my grandchildren – to be born in the 20s or 30s – or their kids may be the ones to see it.  Prepare for the long, cold night (a slow, painful decline).

My optimism tank is running very low.

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate Member since April 2006…?

(1) http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the

(2) http://www.redstate.com/ntrepid/2009/04/18/sophomoric-wilsonianism-and-the-soul-of-growing-discontent/

(3) http://www.redstate.com/ntrepid/2010/01/17/rebellious-momentum-and-the-strengthening-soul-of-discontent/

(4) I suppose we will never really know to what extent the CBO – or some not-so-nonpartisan members within its ranks – was complicit in being used…as in “soiled”…during the March health care process but the deliberate and barely hidden manipulation of the inputs to produce the barely accurate, headline grabbing, desired output using wildly improbable assumptions was shameful.  This could turn into another diary so I’ll stop there…

Times seemed so simple then before our most recent quickening.  Those long ago days of ’06 and early ’07 when it seemed almost every weekend found at least one all consuming global warming thread here at Redstate.  Our local giants took on all comers in those grand debates…they were educational and very entertaining. I do so wish I had kept more links to some of them.

I make no claims to any substantive added value to any of that dialog but I am proud that I was cheering for the right side and occasionally provided my unsolicited take on an issue or two.  Sometimes even drawing reply commentary from the big players on both sides…Joliphant, pliny, gamecock, Socrates, and Misters Hinz, Stevens, and Chance, just to name a few…that always made my day.

On today’s fast shifting sands of the once laughably claimed “settled debate” I occasionally come across something that reminds me of something I swear I once took a position on.  Maybe even posting something crazy like this (1):

Unfortunately, it’s the behavior of those who generally fall on my side of this debate that causes me to chime in so late to this discussion. The nearly universal reflex to concede something along the lines of “we all agree that there has been some warming…blah, blah, blah” based on no real scientific data is really starting to irritate me. Your “memory” of colder winters and milder summers wherever you happened to be at the time is not science and certainly not a measure of “Global Climate”.

Or even this (2):

My current issue is with the all-to-common urge by even honest and reasonable people to make statements like this:

“I am willing to concede the earth has warmed 1 degree over the past 100 years…”

Ultimately that may be true but it is far from established fact so why concede anything at all? The available data doesn’t support anything near that much of an increase (if any at all). I also believe the “consensus” among the general public that things “just seem” warmer now is flat out wrong or that any increase is so negligible that no one could honestly detect a trend over their lifetime.

Now three and a half years later, I appreciate the public support in spirit from none other than the 38^th ranked certified denier.  I give you Frank J. Tipler (3):

But human bias is human bias. I myself have looked at some of the raw data from surface stations that measure the Earth’s temperature.  The raw data are from selected sites in the USA, in New Zealand, in Australia, and in Sweden. I selected these sites because I’m reasonably sure they will not have bias due to changing human habitation, or human wars, or human politics. These sites show no warming in the twentieth century. So I have to conclude that we don’t even know if there was any warming on Earth in the twentieth century.

Notice that I am not saying that there has been no warming, just that the available raw data that I’ve personally been able to check do not show it. Until all the raw temperature data are placed online, so the data can be checked by anybody, a rational person has to suspend belief in global warming, to say nothing of AGW.

Oh, by the way, Mr. Tipler also reminds us that their witnesses have impeached themselves:

The official government adjusted data for these sites do show a warming trend. All the warming is in the “corrections.” Sorry, I don’t buy it. Especially from “scientists” who are known to “correct’ their raw data to “hide the decline.”

I rest my case.

All kidding aside, my memories of those on-line debates are probably skewed a bit toward the “fond” side because the tide has since shifted so dramatically.  Back then there was no indication if or when such a shift may happen.  It truly was an uphill battle for what are today called “deniers” and what debate there was occurred mainly in out of the way places like this.  It’s hard to say what impact, if any, such conversations had on the greater cause but the warriors involved should be commended for staying true to the cause.  They held the line here at Redstate and that helped me maintain my sanity on this issue.

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate Member since April 2006…?

(1) http://archive.redstate.com/blogs/ntrepid/2007/jan/20/silly_climate_change_hyperbole_vs_the_data

(2) http://archive.redstate.com/blogs/ntrepid/2007/jan/26/my_struggle_part_1

(3) http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/writing-for-pjm-helped-make-me-enemy-of-the-state-number-38/?singlepage=true

With the busy holiday weekend there was no “normal” or “schedule” to my Sunday morning but eventually I did get around to my habitual Drudge-Instapundit-Powerline-Redstate progression to get a feel for what was going on in the world.  It was at that third stop (1) that Mr. Johnson directed me once again to the Calvin Coolidge speech marking the 150^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (2).  This time I printed it for a more proper read.

Packed with wisdom, warning, and optimism, I suspect the good Mr. Coolidge couldn’t even imagine a perfect storm of voter ignorance and apathy that could result in our current federal leadership triumvirate:

Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken. Whatever perils appear, whatever dangers threaten, the Nation remains secure in the knowledge that the ultimate application of the law of the land will provide an adequate defense and protection. (Emphasis added)

Assurance?  Confidence?  Secure?  Adequate?  Not so much in 2010.

He provides some historic perspective…and we should fully expect the dismissive arrogance from Lindsey Graham our current aristocracy:

But the preponderance of all those who occupied a position which took on the aspect of aristocracy did not approve of the Revolution and held toward it an attitude either of neutrality or open hostility…The American Revolution represented the informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty-loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights, and possessed the courage to dare to maintain them.

In looking back, he seems to be describing the more recent movement as seen through anything but the MSM’s narrow band make-the-inside-the-beltway-creatures-feel-better narrative filter:

It was well advised. It had about it nothing of the lawless and disordered nature of a riotous insurrection. It was maintained on a plane which rises above the ordinary conception of rebellion. It was in no sense a radical movement but took on the dignity of a resistance to illegal usurpations.

It is worth the time to read the entire speech.

Looking over the much underlined pages of his text this morning and other “printed” presidential addresses in my trusty notebook, the thought strikes me of how remarkably unremarkable in a historical context the prepared remarks have been to-date from President Obama.  Beyond his now tired substance-less style, I suspect tomorrow’s historians aren’t going to have much to work with.  Long after the spin of a friendly media looses momentum and the cold, hard perspective of time focuses, history will most likely not be very kind to America’s first occupant of the Office of the President Elect.

Barack Obama has a long way to go to catch up to Calvin Coolidge.

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate Member since April 2006…?

(1) http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/07/026665.php

(2) http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=41

The jury is still out but my perception is that Sec. Gates has been the absolute best Secretary of Defense under a Democrat administration in my life time.  That isn’t actually fair and more than a bit backhanded just to make a point.  I am on record somewhere here admitting to being a Rumsfeld fan but I do fully expect to be able to give a much more positive assessment of the current Secretary’s job performance (against the proper backdrop of his current boss’s pathetic agenda, of course) when a complete accounting can be viewed at the end of his tenure.  I suspect that will be soon…and that probably isn’t good.

For the record, I suspect the only cabinet member that wants out more than Mr. Gates is Sec. Clinton.  Forgetting for a moment my extremely poor political forecasting record, I’ll throw out the bold statement that they will both be gone before the mid-term elections.  He will be out first because I sense he is guided more by principles and self respect…both will dictate a carefully orchestrated exit the Friday before Labor Day weekend.  She is in a bit tighter spot because her only driving focus is the exact opposite – Democrat party credibility.  But, I digress.

The real point here is to come back to an issue raised back in late 2008 (1) when the Office of the President Elect (that still makes me giggle) asked Sec. Gates to stay on.  Updating my comments from that time with more quick wiki-research, a nominal Republican or better has manned the office for the last thirteen-plus years, twenty five of the last twenty nine years, and thirty three of the last forty one years.  Going back any further gets too close to a McNamara-induced cussing fit – see McMasters’ “Dereliction of Duty” – so I’ll stop.  As I said then, that’s “two generations without much of a sign of leadership or the pipeline of knowledge and credibility required” for effective leadership in national defense.

I do not bring this up because I have some great insight into a totally vacant Democrat bullpen.  I truly do not know what the names may be that populate that obviously neglected pipeline on the left.  Not a single name comes to mind that would demand instant credibility on the world stage, or within that department for that matter, when Mr. Gates chooses to exit.  As bad as that sounds, I am tempted to suggest I must be wrong but evidently the last two Democrat presidents found it lacking also.  I am not encouraged.

Even worse – and yes the following was originally written long before numerous other progressive threats to the republic fully emerged – is the corrosive effects this situation has on the mechanisms used to choose and guide our government that keep this free society more or less dynamically stable.  As I wrote then:

It is also not healthy for the republic to allow one party to so totally abdicate its responsibility to the most critical function of the Federal Government.  When they are allowed to cater so fully to (and fuel the creation of more of) their leftist elements while not even giving the pretense of being well rounded on national defense it greatly distorts the electoral process and perpetuates more of the same.

So there’s the rub.  There is never a good time to have weak leadership at DoD but this is certainly one of the worst imaginable.  Unfortunately, it is also well past time for Republicans to stop providing “loaner” national defense leadership. The responsible party must insist that the Democrats develop a respectable and overt plank on this front and begin cultivating a legitimate “pipeline” of potential department heads.

Or we could just stop electing Democrat presidents.

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate Member since April 2006…?

(1) http://www.redstate.com/gamecock/2008/11/29/bush-world-barbarians-at-obamas-gates/

(The question, of course, is buried in the rambling mess below.  Also, please don’t mistake this as solidified opinion.  Aside from being appropriately dismissive of this administration’s pap, this is more of a wandering search…some may say cry for help…to best understand our current situation with the “religion of peace”.)

Unfortunately, it appears that on this side of the war with whatever-you-want–to-call-it-that-wants-to-destroy-American-style-freedom-as-we-know-it we are going to continue to debate the exact wording instead of taking the threats seriously…like the other side does.  Thus we get preachy condescension like this from the highest levels of government…”Homeland Security” nonetheless:

The President’s strategy is absolutely clear about the threat we face.  Our enemy is not “terrorism” because terrorism is but a tactic.  Our enemy is not “terror” because terror is a state of mind and as Americans we refuse to live in fear.  Nor do we describe our enemy as “jihadists” or “Islamists” because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenant of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children. – From remarks by Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan at CSIS, May 26, 2010 (1)

(Emphasis added)

Legitimate discussion? Maybe.  Wishful thinking? Most likely.  I can’t help but fear that such language from individuals with fancy sounding titles will look very foolish when we look back from a much different world in 2025.

To counter the good Mr. Brennan in his chosen debate on accepted meaning of words, I would suggest a quick skim through Andrew McCarthy’s Willful Blindness but at something over three hundred pages I fear that would be useless to an administration so averse to reading anything.  On a hunch that he may be able to spare the time and attention during this long holiday weekend, I will direct him to the mere sixteen pages of Chapter 3 titled “We are Terrorists” (Quoting Omar Abdel Rahman, the Blind Skeikh.).

Unfortunately, that does little more than fuel this silly and useless discussion.  I assure you the other side doesn’t waste one minute worrying about what we call them.

The relevant truth is that some non-negligible number of them believe jihad to be something much different than Mr. Brennan.  It is safe to assume that at least tens if not hundreds of thousands of them have been sufficiently motivated and enabled to attend training camps in various middle east locations and/or here in the United States.  (Read those last five words again very slowly.)  It is probably safe to assume there are at least a similar number of motivated Islamists that lacked only the means to be officially trained but will/have offered full support to the cause.  Finally, since I suspect there is much less confusion about the meaning of jihad within mosques here and abroad, I can imagine untold millions worldwide and certainly tens of thousands domestically happy to be the anonymous support structure (funding/fund raising, obtain/store/traffic weapons and weapon making materiel, provide safe houses and transportation, etc…most anything but the martyrdom).  There you have quite a large network of anti-Brennan-style Jihadists.

Given the demonstrated damage in the late summer of 2001 that a mere nineteen individuals can inflict, where does this put us now?  Think about that for a while.

The point here is to gain a little understanding of what is very likely going on all around us here on our own shores.  I have no doubt that a great many…probably most…citizen / resident Muslims in our communities are exactly as Mr. Brennan chooses to see them.  But my question (for which I offered a semi-educated answer in the title above) is: How many degrees of separation divide the typical Brennan-ite (adult) American Muslim from someone who fits somewhere into the vast network I described above?

Unfortunately, I fear the answer it rarely more than one and that is a very sobering thought as I observe the people and faces around me in the hustle and bustle of daily life in a medium sized American city.  I do concede the typical Brennan-ite Muslim may not even be aware of this…but I fear otherwise.  I suspect many just stay quiet out of fear or (gasp) tacit approval. 

Mr. Brennan went on:

“…Muslim leaders around the world have spoken out—forcefully, and often at great risk to their own lives—to reject al Qaeda and violent extremism.  And frankly, their condemnations often do not get the recognition they deserve, including from the media.”

That’s news to me but it very well may be true.  My guess is that if there were many such forceful voices out there the anti-Bush media would have had them all over the main stage for most of the last eight years further battering the warmonger, now former president.  Without additional specifics, the Advisor offers only hollow rhetoric.

In lieu of gratuitous condescending emptiness, I do remain open to verifiable facts and reasoned arguments to convince me that I am over estimating the true threat.  Educate me, please.

As for Mr. Brennan, given the very specific wording in his title as “Assistant to the President”, I naturally take his use of “our” and “we” in the first quote above to mean only the administration.  We the people are under no obligation to be so naïve.

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate Member since April 2006…?

(1)  http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-assistant-president-homeland-security-and-counterterrorism-john-brennan-csi

With respect to Redstate, that is.

For some time now I’ve been “signing off” at the end of all diaries and comments with an affirmation of proud membership here at Redstate that was robotically populated from my profile here at the website.  Today that reads:

Registered: 5 years, 7 months.

To be absolutely clear, I was always and still remain proud of that.  More than five years is something of a “personal best” for me.  In the context of most twelve step programs, that is an eternity in any relationship (constant reading and periodic comments and diaries) for me not to say something so monumentally stupid and/or offensive that the authorities feel the need to ban me from the site.  It almost seems too good to be true.

Actually, most of the credit is probably more properly placed with the Redstate community as a whole for their ability to effectively ignore the idiot in the room in the hopes that he will quietly go away.  Well, ignorance is bliss…I can live with that.

Staying true to the old axiom…it now appears that such a claim of longevity cannot possibly be true.

In a recent diary (1), Mr. Trevino documented the birth of Redstate as July 16, 2004 so the registration information I’ve been parroting would place me as a member within the first couple months.  I freely confess to being a lurker from the very start…actually, a transfer lurker and one time commenter from Tacitus…but cannot provide accurate recollection or supporting information to further claim being a “first two monther”.

In fact, my first diary is dated April 21, 2006 (2)…with a single comment by c17wife – now that’s a pleasant blast from the past…and notes on my desk calendar from that time seem to support that I registered on the site on or just prior to that date.

A not-so-quick side note…my first comment here was actually a little more a month later.  I cannot find a link to the actual diary but it covered what I had hoped was a bad memory of past administration corruption and not of Czarist activity to come. You guessed it…Carol Browner.  Here’s the text:

Actual Arrests?

At least that is a step in the right direction.  It wasn’t so long ago that this type of activity might just go virtually unnoticed. See Carol Browner…

The same day news of the imminent Andersen indictment was floated, the Wall Street Journal noted that Browner’s EPA had destroyed documents in the closing days of the Clinton administration despite a federal judge’s order not to do so.

“EPA officials had hard drives erased and back-up e-mail tapes destroyed. Judge [Royce] Lamberth is now considering a motion to order the EPA, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, former Administrator Carol Browner and her two top deputies to show why they shouldn’t be held in contempt.”

(http://www.newsmax.com/scripts/showinside.pl?a=2002/3/9/103240)

and

Six months ago, on her last day in office, Bill Clinton’s former eco-chief oversaw the destruction of her computer files – in clear violation of a judge’s order requiring the agency to preserve its records. According to recently released testimony in a freedom of information lawsuit filed against EPA by the Landmark Legal Foundation, Browner told a computer technician: “I would like my files deleted. I want you to delete my files.”

(http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin070501.asp)

Once again I’ll repeat a Redstate favorite of mine: “Those who learn from history are surrounded by those destined (or is it determined?) to repeat it”.  Shame on us.

So if I succeeded in drawing your attention here with a provocative title and kept it long enough to get this far down the page, I’ll conclude with possibly the lamest “me too” moment in Redstate history…following the Achance chart topper from a few weeks back…it appears to be my fourth anniversary at Restate.  I think.

Takin’ it one day at a time…

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate Member Since April 2006…?

(1) http://www.redstate.com/trevino/2010/03/28/where-redstate-comes-from/

(2) http://archive.redstate.com/story/2006/4/21/225718/166

“Books are the carriers of civilization.  Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.” – Barbara W. Tuchman

“You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read” – Charles “Tremendous” Jones

Unfortunately for me, I did not acquire a serious interest in reading until my early thirties but for the better part of a decade now I have been playing catch-up as fast as I can.  (An even greater challenge now with two youngsters in the house.)  Over the last year or so it has been good to see a more explicit focus and interest in book reading here at Redstate and, while this spotlight on conservative themed books is refreshing, I do wish to stress the importance of expanding into history and science also.

As for the diary title, I just wish to plant a seed for thought as many are digging into some of the very good titles and lists that have been compiled here in our little neighborhood.  (And, for the record, these are rather soft guidelines that I abuse regularly…I just liked the sound of ”Doctrine” above.) 

The point is to recommend seeking out at least 1500 pages on any given topic for the added value of a broad, well rounded knowledge base.  Presumably, this will entail different authors with a variety of positions and historical perspectives on the given topic.  I would advise against stacking them up back-to-back.  Spread them out over a couple of years or more and return to a subject only after some time to let the information sink in and get mixed up with a balance of other reading material.  Try to include at least one 500-plus pager for a more expansive treatment of the subject.  Reread (good) books periodically and, as I’m starting to do more and more these days, highlight / underline passages as you go.  It sure helps to find a particular quote when you want to use it in a diary.

As a quick aside, I’ll immediately violate these guidelines by recommending 168 pages of stand-alone true value in “The Little Red Book of Wisdom” by Mark DeMoss from which I borrowed both of the above quotes.

With that, I would like to humbly list some examples of grouped readings from my “library” with an open invitation to add recommendations to improve upon the “well rounded knowledge base”.  While specific books and authors will always be subject to the tastes, preferences, and circumstances of the reader… many of these are only here because they were found on a sale rack, mentioned on a radio program, or just jumped out at me while passing through a local bookstore…no great insight went into these selections.  However, I will try to indicate with a (***) those which I believe are must reads on a topic.

First up, our founding era, of course (~1922 pages):

John Adams by David McCullough (***)

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (***)

1776 by David McCullough

The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin by Gordon S. Wood

For the record, I also have a not-abridged-enough version of Jefferson by Saul K. Padover (186 pages).  No disrespect intended towards the author…I just don’t care for the specific subject.  I believe I’ve referred to him as the most dangerous ever VP (to the Republic) on this bandwidth before and nobody has yet changed my mind.  But, I digress.

Next up, the Civil War era (~1442 pages):

The Soul of Battle by Victor Davis Hanson (***)

Grant and Sherman by Charles Bracelen Flood (***)

Grant by Jean Edward Smith (***)

I cannot seem to get enough of either Grant or Sherman.  Also, with the previous section, this completes my list of greatest Americans who also became Presidents…Adams and Grant.  (The semantic game there is Greatest American and Not-Necessarily-Great-President with history possibly being a bit harsher that warranted.  I may add Ike to the list after I’ve read more about him.)

How about the Middle East and terrorism (~1709 pages):

A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin

Ghost Wars by Steve Coll

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright (***)

The Truth about Muhammad by Robert Spencer

Please note that if you stop by your local bookstore and read just the prologue / introduction to any of these you will be vastly more informed on the topic than just about all MSNBC talking heads put together.

I’ll summarize this category as “Freedom and Threats to it”…most are short books so it takes many to reach my target minimum (~1428 pages):

Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman

The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry M. Goldwater

Slouching Towards Gomorrah by Robert H. Bork (***)

Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman (***)

The Case for Democracy by Natan Sharansky

Animal Farm by George Orwell (***)

Presidential biographies are valuable for wider context and perspective.  In addition to those listed above I’ll add (~2240 pages):

Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

Truman by David McCullough (***)

The Reagan Diaries by Douglas Brinkley (Edited)

How about science under the sub-category “Calibrating Perspective before Misusing the Term ‘Global’ in your Anti-Science Crusade Against Reality” (~1462 pages):

The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg

Rare Earth by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee (***)

The Privileged Planet by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards

*A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (*** – A very fun read.)

And, last but not least, keeping the most important issue of this beautiful Sunday in mind and adding to the obvious ancient texts (~824 pages):

The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel

The Case for Faith by Lee Stobel

More than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell

Cries from the Cross by Erwin W. Lutzer

Happy Easter everyone.

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate “Old Timer” – 5 years 7 months

You don’t undrop The Bomb. 

Thankfully, wisdom and character were rightly placed in history…the right decision came rather easy for Mr. Truman.  (Just months removed from a post in the Senate, this may be the most fortunate and timely promotion…aside from General Grant to the Potomac…America has ever seen.  If the Senate of the mid-1940s was anything like today’s, I wouldn’t bet two cents we could roll the electoral focused dice at the convention and find one with a spine.  But, I digress.)

When it comes to irreversible acts, history brands some figures…some names…some decisions…forever: Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, Robert E. Lee.  In more generous cases, history mostly just writes them out…James Wilkinson.  When your actions are just votes and you are but one of 435 it is usually safe to assume a large amount of anonymity in your shame.  On Sunday, March 21, 2010…DON”T COUNT ON IT.

With hours to go before the big vote even occurs, some have already crossed the threshold and earned their eternal brand.  President Obama owns this.  Senate Majority Leader Reid owns this.  Speaker of the House of Representatives Pelosi owns this.  And to be perfectly clear, “this” is not a bill or a law…”this” is this the putrid fourteen month process that has torn mightily…and so destructively… at the very fabric of American society.  The extensive collateral damage, primarily the credibility of the Congressional Budget Office, will plague DC for decades…maybe forever.  Their shame is total.

Others carry quite a stain…Nelson, Landrieu and, yes, Snowe.  (“When history calls, history calls”? Holy crap, that ranks right up there with “Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?” and “Joey, have you ever been in a… in a Turkish prison?” coming from a sitting US Senator.  Unbelievable.)

Many more will chose a place in history very soon.  They have but one duty…a vote…executed while under the following oath:

“I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Nothing about an obligation to the Speaker…or to the President…not even explicitly to constituents back home.  This is a pledge of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States not a vow to grasp for unlimited power when majorities allow and to grant new rights and redistribute property on a cynical legislative whim.

The simple fact that there are 180 or so solid “Yes” votes on the “reform” bill says a lot about how low our collective standards have become for federal representation…and makes you wonder what exactly these individuals have in mind when they repeat the phrase “So help me God.”   Unfortunately, after this weekend, they will remain mostly anonymous outside their districts.  Unfortunately, to the extent that a majority in those districts has sent such lacking character to DC, I expect no shame to be placed on them.

On the other hand, there are undecideds, late deciders, and flippers.  These names will be branded and they will be remembered.  The new media are everywhere and they have long memories. 

So when the true costs of this are finally known…you will be remembered.  When Speaker Pelosi admits that abortions actually will be funded brags that this is the ultimate victory for women’s reproductive rights…you will be remembered.  When Americans go to the voting booth this November…you will be remembered.

Votes have consequences…long lasting consequences.

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate “Old Timer” – 5 years 7 months

…emotions are high, tempers are short, and the time for talking (constructive debate) is nearly through.  It’s time to play out the hand. 

The good guys are greatly outnumbered but firmly occupy the moral high ground (that’s why they’re the good guys).  The case is simple:

Hence, in this state of nature [inviolable right to personal liberty, and personal safety], no man has any moral power to deprive another of his life, limbs, property, or liberty; nor the least authority to command, or exact obedience from him; except that which arose from the ties of consanguinity. 

Hence also, the origin of all civil government, justly established, must be a voluntary compact, between the rulers and the ruled; and must be liable to such limitations, as are necessary for the security of the absolute rights of the latter; for what original title can any man or set of men have, to govern others, except their own consent?  To usurp dominion over a people, in their own despite, or to grasp at a more extensive power than they are willing to entrust, is to violate that law of nature, which gives every man a right to his personal liberty; and can, therefore, confer no obligation of obedience. 

…

When the first principles of civil society are violated, and the rights of a whole people are invaded, the common forms of municipal law are not to be regarded…In short, when human laws contradict or discountenance the means, which are necessary to preserve the essential rights of any society, they defeat the proper end of all laws, and so become null and void. – Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted (1775)

(Emphasis added.)

(Of course, the perverse mind of the modern American liberal instantly reads the utopian right to mandatory “free” health care for all into Hamilton’s “state of nature” …oblivious to the contradictions to liberty that such a practice necessitates.  Or are they?   To be sure, where that ignorance does not exist, evil does.)

To be clear, while I obviously cannot resist them myself, comparisons of the struggle against the Obama socialist surge to the American Revolution are grand overstatements in general and usually a real stretch in specifics.  I do not for a moment suggest that within weeks or months the fifty colonies will be in armed resistance against a distant, oppressive, nonresponsive parliament and an arrogant, piddling king.  (Though both target entities listed here certainly do exist.)  That will not happen, nor should it.

However, very dangerous games are rumored to be ongoing in DC.  Change for the sake of change has been ordered from the top and the titled representatives of the people are determined to make change happen.  They seem well focused on the immediate political and electoral risks of their actions without seeming to notice…or acknowledge…that they are playing a much bigger game than that.  A game that can have much more significant consequences.

Unfortunately, sometimes change…monumental change…can happen very quickly.  Once triggered, events of change can take on a life of their own.  I’ve referenced it before but in 2010 America it’s hard to imagine that in less than 45 days between confirmation of Lincoln’s electoral win and actually assuming the powers of the office, seven states left the Union…the confederacy gained amazing momentum in unbelievably short order and the stage was set for a very messy period of American history. (1)

Again, I am not suggesting even the slightest parallel or magnitude to events today but I am reminded of what a wise Redstater once said: “Those who learn from history are surrounded by those destined to repeat it.” (Or something like that.)  Evidently, change is coming…undoubtedly, the American Spirit can handle it…God only knows if the republic will endure it.

On this wonderfully pleasant Saturday afternoon in North Texas…after a lazy, playful, and free morning with the wife and kids and dogs in the backyard…it’s hard to comprehend just how different…and dimmer…my America may be a week from now.

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate “Old Timer” – 5 years 6 months

(1) http://www.redstate.com/ntrepid/2009/04/18/sophomoric-wilsonianism-and-the-soul-of-growing-discontent/

This morning’s perusal of Instapundit links sent me to Walter Russell Mead’s “How Al Gore Wrecked Planet Earth” (1) which, in turn, warmed my heart and left me reminiscing about some of the great Redstate global warming discussions from 2006-2007.  Some of my (admittedly amateurish) contributions are archived (2)…links to other, more substantive entries would be greatly appreciated.

Exact content aside, I enjoyed the jabbing repetitive flow of this passage:

Frankly, I blame Al Gore.  Unlike naive scientists who know little about life beyond the lab, or eco-activists whose concepts of the international political system come from writing direct-mail solicitations to true believers in rich countries, the former vice-president had decades of experience with high politics.  It was his job to provide the leadership that could channel the energy and concern of this movement into an effective political program.  Perhaps there’s a story we don’t know yet about how Mr. Gore labored quietly and in vain for many years to …. Perhaps he reminded them… Perhaps he tried to explain to them …Perhaps he urged them … Perhaps he begged them…

That could have happened, but I don’t think it did.  I think Al Gore failed the climate change movement and that his negligence and blindness has done it irreparable harm.

No doubt he did fail them…his very nature necessitated it.  As I humbly recorded…and still stand by…in this comment to a 2007 pilgrim diary (3):

Possibly the Laziest Mind in Modern American Politics

So the common myth goes…the environment is THE issue most important to Mr. Gore for which he long ago chose Global Warming as his vehicle to save us from ourselves.

It simply amazes me (not really) that this Envirosavior has done so very little to truly educate himself about the real science behind his issue.  He’s been verifiably underemployed since January 1993 – except for his 2000 run for office – so even at a slow, self-paced, night school-like course load he could have several related technical degrees by now.  All kidding aside, at the very least he has been in a position to command access to THE REAL SCIENCE COMMUNITY and could have compiled quite an impressive informal education in the climate field.  Unfortunately, he has chosen the road most traveled and ended up in the Hollywood spotlight.  (…and triggered a long awaited backlash by real scientists.)

I can only explain his last 15 years as unserious and intellectually lazy.  The man who robotically passed on the planted phrase “no controlling legal authority” is obviously not a thinker.  Yet, I so do hope he makes things interesting for the other side with a big announcement later this year.

It is actually worse than Mr. Mead admits.  The former VP not only failed his team politically, his lust for fame and fortune drew much attention…eventually maximum overexposure… and finally the tipping point.  The backlash referenced in the comment above was probably well into its infancy at that point but it was little more than a pipe dream in mid-2006 (4):

Maybe someone should make a feature length “documentary” to educate people…and reenergize the already settled debate.  I’m sure the real climate experts would enjoy another shot at the mythical scientific consensus and it could only do the general public a whole lot of good.

Thanks Al. Seriously.

So, in all honesty, I repeat: Thanks Al.

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate “Old Timer” – 5 years 6 months

(1) http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/02/19/how-al-gore-wrecked-planet-earth/

(2) http://archive.redstate.com/blogs/ntrepid

(3) http://archive.redstate.com/blogs/pilgrim/2007/jul/01/gore_vs_mother_nature_mother_nature_wins

(4) http://archive.redstate.com/story/2006/6/15/224135/703

“Revolutions, it is commonly observed, often break out not when circumstances are next to intolerable but when conditions begin rapidly to improve.” – Robert Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah

If there is any truth in the above statement then somewhere there exists a threshold beyond which a mocked and belittled protest movement accelerates into something more substantive.

I suspect that we are currently very near the point where Katrina Vanden Betterthanyou’s “Teabaggers” transform into something near a perpetual civil revolution machine. 

(A not-so-quick side note: The smirky condescension with which that term is tossed around by classless TV punditry these days…just as it was signaled from the top for them to do last April…should offend even those Americans not moved to protest by a government’s lurch toward un-Americanism.  Sadly, most in that category are easily entertained by just that type of sophomoric liberalism and wouldn’t understand such rudeness unless code words with fewer syllables like “negro” were used.  On that note, it does make you wonder what other words Senator Reid and his in-crowd use privately in reference to their other core constituency groups.  Think about that as you retire for the evening comfortably in your civil partnership or tomorrow morning when you put on you union badge or cap.  No, they’re not using you…they respect you….especially during election years.)

The point is that momentum has been growing for some time and after the “break out” referenced above this thing may really take on a life of its own (if it hasn’t already). 

It will not matter if Scott Brown wins.  Sure, a win will be an instant boost to the movement’s momentum but at the same time there is now no way for Team Coakley-Obama to win cleanly.  A dirty win for them will only feed the soul of discontent which will in turn boost momentum. 

Similarly, it will not matter if Obamacare passes or not.  Defeating it will be an instant boost to the movement’s momentum but there is also no way for it to pass cleanly.  A dirty “reform” with the added fanfare of an in-your-face signing ceremony will feed the soul of discontent and again boost momentum.

The administration and their minions have unwittingly nurtured this soul from infancy…keeping alive a movement that should have been nothing more than a largely forgotten weekend and a couple of news cycles not perfectly scripted by the White House.  Now everything they do will only make it stronger.

The kicker is that 2009 unfolded in such a way that Obamacare is just a battle in the larger war against the Obama agenda.  Unfortunately for them, armies revolutions of a season* are swift and ruthless and they don’t just win battles…they win wars.

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate “Old Timer” – 5 years 4 months

*Apologies to Dr. Hanson…and by the way Redstaters, everyone should read VDH often and my special recommendation for “The Soul of Battle”.

In the spirit on Spartacus, I wish I could muster all of my Cornhusker bona fides…to include but not be limited to my eternal longing for the return of the tear away jersey, the fond memories of the greatest game program photo ever: Wonder Monds, my attendance at the 101^th straight sell out at Memorial Stadium (no, the Ntrepid parents weren’t about to give the youngster a ticket to the 100^th vs a ranked Penn State), and the sincerest belief that not only was Tommie Frazier robbed of the Heisman Trophy but the statue itself should forever be remade in his image…and go “all in” to stand by an honorable Senator from the great state of my birth.

Alas, I cannot.  To do so regarding the matter at hand would dishonor four generations of Bug Eaters on both sides of my family on principle alone.  Oh, there is also this, the above referenced Senator is not honorable….I suspect he is a scoundrel.

I don’t think I could make up anything more insulting than this paragraph from an email response the senator sent to at least one of his constituents:

An important part of my decision was the fact that had this bill not been approved with my vote, the alternative for the Senate leadership was to use a procedure called “Budget Reconciliation.” This procedure would have enabled passage of a much less conservative bill, requiring only 51 votes in the Senate. I supported this bill for two reasons:  first, because the reconciliation alternative would have included a government-run plan and would not have been as beneficial for Nebraskans; and second, because it will deliver relief from rising health care costs to Nebraska families, workers, rural communities, and employers. This bill takes a market-based approach, offering tax credits for middle-class Americans to help make insurance more affordable; and it improves the delivery of health care for all of us while reducing the deficit.

So it appears that the senator agreed to join the invaders as they strolled through our front door to poke us in the eye and steal some of our belongings in order to keep his party leadership from breaking in through the back door to punch us in the gut and steal all of our belongings.  Somehow, in the twisted world of Modern Liberalism that is 2009 2010 America, I guess that is supposed to make him some kind of hero as opposed to an accomplice.  Mr. Nelson really hopes that you are smart enough to appreciate the nuance of his position…and pull his polling numbers out of the crapper.  I’m not buying it.

And to top it off, his last statement indicates that he seems to expect that we don’t understand that he knows full well that the inputs to the CBO scoring have been manipulated to such a great extent that the resulting analysis is all but meaningless to intelligent people.  (By the way, have you noticed that all of the once nearly reflexive references to the “non-partisan CBO” were dropped completely from media coverage a couple of months ago.  Apparently, even they became too uncomfortable with the blurred lines and close coordination going on between the input-ers and output-ers in this sick perversion of the American legislative process.)

As for the senator and his strained explanation above, I believe Dr. Franklin diagnosed this psychological syndrome long ago:

“So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”

Mr. Nelson should feel lucky if in the end he and his years of service to a proud state are merely written completely out of Nebraska history.  The anonymity would be far preferable to the permanent stain upon his name acquired while attending to Harry Reid’s needs.

Nebraskans may take some solace in the extreme pressure required to sway their Senator.  In the end, at least the good Majority Leader had the decency to throw them a bone or two…kind of like tossing them a towel with a suggestion of putting some ice on that bloody lip before he left the room.

I am NOT Ben Nelson.

Ntrepid

Proud Redstate “Old Timer” – 5 years 4 months

Even with a seeming over abundance of doom and gloom among the good guys these days I have absolutely no intention of offering comfort to the troops.  The American spirit has seen darker days before:

If we examine the pretensions of [congress], we shall, presently detect their injustice. First, they are subversive of our natural liberty, because an authority is assumed over us, which we by no means assent to. And secondly, they divest us of that moral security, for our lives and properties, which we are entitled to, and which it is the primary end of society to bestow. For such security can never exist, while we have no part in making the laws, that are to bind us; and while it may be the interest of our uncontrolled legislators to oppress us as much as possible. – Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775

Dark days are coming again.  Be absolutely clear, wherever you happen to reside in America today, you can look towards Washington, DC and know that you are viewing a setting and not a rising sun.  (All apologies to Dr. Franklin.)

The current on-going legislative game of theatrical negotiation, pseudo compromise, and flat out bribery really is a sadly laughable joke.  The language…hell, even the intent of the bill as written and as understood and voted on by individual elected representatives…really is irrelevant.  History and those smart enough to learn from it provide a very clear indication that the eventual manifestation of this health care “reform” will in no way resemble today’s carefully crafted talking points…the structural realities of government (i.e. the bureaucracy) will necessarily make the outcome significantly worse for the taxpaying citizenry and health care consumers alike.  From a previous Ntrepid diary (1), Mr. Friedman long ago provided the insight:

A 1973 column entitled “Barking Cats” gave us the following version of some great wisdom of the ages:

What would you think of someone who said, “I would like to have a cat provided it barked”?  Yet your statement that you favor [government intervention] provided it behaves as you believe desirable is precisely equivalent.  The biological laws that specify the characteristics of cats are no more rigid than the political laws that specify the behavior of governmental agencies once they are established.  The way the [government agency] now behaves, and the adverse consequences, are not an accident, not a result of some easily corrected human mistake, but a consequence of its constitution in precisely the same way that a meow is related to the constitution of a cat.  As [an intelligent being], you recognize that you cannot assign characteristics at will to chemical and biological entities, cannot demand that cats bark or water burn.  Why do you suppose the situation is different in the social sciences?

Six years later, when Milton and Rose Friedman published the book Free to Choose, the author of that column provided in a single paragraph a near perfect algorithm for those political laws or, as they then referred to them, the “natural history of government intervention” (bulletized here to accommodate several generations of Americans educated under the thumb of Federal Bureaucracy):

1.   A real or fancied evil leads to demands to do something about it.

2.  A political coalition forms consisting of sincere, high-minded reformers and equally sincere interested parties.

3.  The incompatible objectives of the members of the coalition are glossed over by fine rhetoric about “the public interest”, “fair competition,” and the like.

4.  The coalition succeeds in getting Congress to pass a law.

5.  The preamble to the law pays lip service to the rhetoric and the body of the law grants power to government officials to “do something”.

6.  The high-minded reformers experience a glow of triumph and turn their attention to new causes.

7.  The interested parties go to work to make sure that the power is used for their benefit.  They generally succeed.

8.  Success breeds its problems, which are met by broadening the scope of intervention.

9.  Bureaucracy takes its toll so that even the initial special interests no longer benefit.

10.  In the end the effects are precisely the opposite of the objectives of the reformers and generally do not even achieve the objectives of the special interests.

11.  Yet the activity is so firmly established and so many vested interests are connected with it that repeal of the initial legislation is nearly inconceivable.

12.  Instead, new government legislation is called for to cope with the problems produced by the earlier legislation and a new cycle begins.

One of the big lessons here is that we can confidently project that not only the honest rhetoric disseminated during this debate – which we’re not getting much of from today’s left – but also the actual text of the legislation will eventually lead to a system that will not even remotely resemble the intent of the “sincere” reformers.  The entrenched bureaucracy will by natural order pervert the system for its own sake with no concern for the fate of the affected American citizen.

This sham process continues to be a (barely) constitutional formality to fool your democracy sensors…their contempt for us is despicable.

And for those who presume that the work to reverse this monstrosity will begin as soon as there is a change in power in D.C. I offer a very blunt: Fat Chance, Sucker!  The unfortunate reality is that the road back to more freedom is long and hard and requires being true to liberty’s principles while the toll-road to bettering “my” position in the midst of a runaway government debacle is much more efficient…merely costing, at a minimum, tacit denial of those alleged principles.  Today’s unified Tea Party Movement will quickly begin to show more fragmented interests as various side paths to individual benefits present themselves as alternatives to a long, hard, revolutionary slog.  The perceived unity of a back-against-the-wall defense will not be so solid during a period of multiple offensives base on self interests.

A good example of how quickly things change in these types of circumstances can be seen with the recent banning of smoking in restaurants in a large city near my home.  An organized group of restaurant owners put up a correct and valiant…yet futile…defense based on their rights with respect to their property. They fought on principle and were backed by similar business owners and organizations from the surrounding area.  Of course, after losing their rights to a runaway city council (i.e. uncontrolled legislators) this group of fine restaurateurs continued the good fight on those same firm principles to reverse this decision…NOT.  That would be hard…and the bottom line in business doesn’t wait on battles of honor.  The more expedient path was to start pushing for identical regulation from the state level so that restaurants in surrounding communities didn’t maintain their property rights and enjoy an artificial competitive advantage any longer than was necessary.  Rights are forever…my rights are critical…your rights are very important up until they conflict with my bottom line.

Don’t expect reality and human nature to be any different in carrying through on reversing health care “reform”.

Ultimately, the rather dark tone of many recent diaries and comments in this neighborhood is not remotely unwarranted.  Facing up to today’s looming reality means bracing for a long stint in the wilderness and preparing the next generation as best we can for the emergence on the other side.

Endeavor to persevere.

Ntrepid

Proud Member for 5 years 4 months

(1) http://www.redstate.com/ntrepid/2009/09/20/barking-cats-wisdom-in-government-through-utopia-colored-sunglasses-versus-the-known-laws-of-human-nature/

“She’s a Joke.” 

Sunday morning round table expertise boiled the entire ongoing Palin phenomenon to these three simple words on last week’s Stephanopoulos show.  There may have been some (light hearted enough to barely contain the condescension) bantering and mild dissent but the tone I was getting all around seemed to indicate that the whole table thought it beneath them even to discuss her.

I don’t happen to be a Sarah Palin hyper-fanatic by any means but she does interest me.  Through a long line of events, some well beyond her control, she now effectively combines a certain natural magnetism…an infectious attraction…with the large stage she was initially given only controlled access to and has since cultivated into something real…for the moment.  She now undeniably commands a rather large spotlight on the nightly off-year, cable political programming schedule.  She has a voice in current political discussions and it is real…especially with a large and growing segment of the American electorate.  Many of our prized elitist national opinion makers on both sides of the aisle cannot seem to grasp this…those pigs are obviously better, smarter, and more equal than the rest of us animals.

This may be only a flash or it may prove a lasting appeal.  I certainly don’t know and, given my growing cynicism regarding this snobby Washington talking head class over the last several years, I have no confidence they do either.  I suspect more than one of their types similarly derided citizen Reagan back in ’64 and Governor Reagan in ’77.

Fools write off any national political future for her in November 2009.

I guess I should embrace this new era of ultra-bluntness ushered in the Mr. Brooks.  Maybe George S. could add a “[Blank]’s a Joke” segment every week.  Stripped down to raw job performance, leadership, and competence while applying governance standards and expectations consistent with any public high school student council, I will submit to nomination a three way tie this week for President Obama, AG Holder, and Sec. Clinton.

Unfortunately, that joke is on us.

Ntrepid

Proud Member for 5 years 3 months

The Ntrepid family just completed a week long vacation to the state of my birth.  It was eight mostly blissful days away from the habitual over consumption of news that mires my routine everyday life.  Nothing but kids music and videos for endless hours in the car…a near perfect media blackout.

A few items did stick with me along the way…

(1) During a self guided tour of the state capitol building we snapped a family photo just outside the front door…standing below the following stone carving:

“THE SALVATION OF THE STATE IS WATCHFULNESS IN THE CITIZEN”

Hmmmm.  “Salvation”…as in “deliverance from the power and penalty of sin, redemption” (per my copy of Webster’s)?  I’m not sure how much to read into the chosen wording but I’m pretty sure it was selected not to mean specifically “survival” of the state, “empowerment” of the state, “prosperity” of the state, “generosity” of the state, and probably not even “monthly check from” the state.

It struck me again how even such preserved wisdom of the ages seems lost on the voting generations of the early twenty-first century.  When undefined “CHANGE” and a paper thin resume garners 52% of the vote during a time of war and world wide economic collapse, I see a citizenry that is wholly undeserving of the awesome responsibility of caring for this ongoing experiment of freedom. 

I won’t even go into the embarrassment that is the current congress…with plenty of shame on both sides of the aisle. This further demonstrates that the problem isn’t just with red or blue states and it wasn’t just one election.  The American Citizen is failing.

The voters are not alone in this dereliction of duty.  It seems to me our media needs to realize they are not partisan cheerleaders…they are citizens first.  More importantly in the coming weeks and months, our congress needs to realize they are not check writers and givers of rights…they are citizens first.  That responsibility seems forgotten once most of them enter their “kingdoms” in Washington, DC.

(2) One morning I passed by a TV tuned into CNBC and paused just long enough to hear one of the on-air personalities mock the conspiracy theorists who still have the foolish audacity to believe that speculators had anything to do with last years spike in oil prices. 

Hours later I came by again in time to hear another market expert explain that whatever it is these speculators have or have not been doing and whether that manipulated the market or not, I need to know it is very important to me that they are doing it.  (Whether I’m smart enough to understand it or not, I presume.) 

Further bastardizing a sentiment that I long ago stole from someone much wiser than me, this story continues to erode any remaining confidence I have in any media source to actually understand the facts and context of a particular story and, even worse, casts larger doubt that they have the intelligence or the will to report it accurately.

(3) It is simply amazing how often you come across numbers so preposterous and/or overly-massaged into meaninglessness that are so easily and mindlessly repeated by local and national media figures alike…even when you are purposely not paying any attention. 

“Forty-odd million uninsured” this and “ump-teen thousand lose coverage every day” that…it is all so shocking and without context…just as intended.

But it’s the ignorant recitation of such numbers by policy makers that drives me nuts.  A little real knowledge (and honesty) would prevent embarrassments like “five hundred million job losses per month”, “six hundred thousand Iraqi civilian deaths”, and “twenty foot rises in sea level”.  I seem to remember an episode back in the mid-nineties when someone threw out a figure on Crossfire that equated to 110% of all American women as being battered.  And, of course, it never occurred to anyone to challenge it.

(4) As I worked my way through the halfway portions of McCullough’s “Truman”, I came across this nugget from the former President:

“If a man is acquainted with what other people have experienced at this desk it will be easier for him to go through a similar experience.  It is ignorance that caused most mistakes.  The man who sits here ought to know his American history, at least.”  If ever there were a “clean break from all that had gone before,” … the result would be chaos. (Page 558)

There’s a lot to think about in there…much of it leads into the next topic.

(5) Just a few pages later in the same book the Truman administration realizes the opposition is playing a completely different game:

But Stalin had asked what difference it made if there was no agreement.  “We may agree the next time, or if not then, the time after,” Stalin said, as he idly doodled wolves’ heads with a red pencil.

Stalin’s indifference made a profound impression on Marshall.  The Soviets, it seemed, were quite content to see uncertainty and chaos prevail in Europe.  It served their purposes to let matters drift. (Page 661)

It appears the old international version of the anti-individual-freedom playbook is very similar to the domestic translation.  Don’t ever let a crisis go to waste…and bring on the politburo (or maybe just an unaccountable collection of czars). 

With that last reference, it is unfortunate that new boundaries of federal power are quietly being marked and solidified while “we” all focus on important things like the over-organized spontaneity of a White House photo-op involving beer.  When the fog of “chaos” lifts, even many of last November’s fifty-two percent may not like what they see. 

All in all, I’m not so sure I’m looking forward to my return to normalcy.

Ntrepid

Proud Member for 4 years 11 months

PS. Who was on that plane?

(Ntrepid Lessons for all Ages…Learn Them While You’re Young)

And so it was…as a rambunctious high school senior, your humble correspondent had run afoul of a very well thought out, firmly established, and oh-so-PC school policy and the wheels of the small town public school kangaroo justice system were spun up with extreme haste…we’re talking special school board sessions and all:

The high school principal stood firmly behind the policy…”The rules are the rules!”

The school superintendent stood firmly behind the policy…”No exceptions allowed!”

The school board (minus one honorable abstention) behaving much like the Gov’s cabinet in Blazing Saddles stood firmly behind the policy…”Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! What’s going on here…these paddle balls are defective!”

I bring up this bit of embarrassing Ntrepid history in order to point out that it was a mere two or three years later that the same superintendant’s son along with at least one other faculty offspring very publically found themselves in violation of the same policy and of course it was handled with all the consistency and intellectual contortionism of the American Left:

The high school principal displayed substantial backbone…”Where is that rule book anyway?”

The school superintendent stood firmly behind his wife…”This is obviously a flawed policy and needs to be revisited before we can ever actually implement it.”

The school board stood firmly to protect their phony-baloney jobs…”What policy?”

Lesson learned.

Working my way towards modern day, more than a decade later I found myself sympathizing with the House Managers during a slightly more important affair…those poor saps.  For most of the decade leading up to their battle, American societal consensus was set…noticing pubic hairs on Coke cans was harassment and anything closer to sex than that was a fire-able offense and most likely rape. No questions asked.

That is, until a President from the appropriate political party indulges in a little intern diddling and then all of a sudden ACLU cheerleaders and Democrat-leaning pundits everywhere couldn’t spot sexual harassment if it smacked them in the face with a “naturally” lubricated cigar.  (My apologies to any reader who may have been in the U.S. Senate back then…you obviously will not understand that reference.)

And that brings us to the current Supreme Court nominee.  No, I’m not hinting that she has an inappropriate history with interns or even an interesting fetish for rolled tobacco products…I won’t even pretend to know what’s truly in her heart regarding other races.  I will state unequivocally that her statement on record being discussed at length these days is absolutely racist.  At least it was until now.  Not so long ago, a “Lott” less was a fire-able offense…just ask anyone in the MSM.

Much has been debated about how the Republicans should play this out in hearings and what they should even dare say aloud in public or in private.  With respect to confirmation, it most likely doesn’t matter.  But this is a valuable teaching opportunity and the larger than normal news-consuming audience during the confirmation hearings should be exposed as much as possible to the hypocrisy and tortured Democrat logic produced to defend her. 

Obviously, this is more about baby steps.  This will not produce a mass conversion to the cause overnight but it will plant little seeds in the minds of many who are new to the audience.  These little seeds and the truckloads being provided daily by President Obama and his administration will be important down the road a ways.

As a bonus, this exercise in splitting hairs for an acceptable  bifurcated definition of racism should also further reduce the future effectiveness of that dreaded race card.

Ntrepid

Proud Member for 4 years 9 months

PS. Who was on that plane?