In 2004 anti-leftists were determined to prevent the Democrats capturing the Presidency. “No Child Left Behind” and all the rest of the Bush’s absurd wild spending (opposed by John McCain and a some other Republicans) were forgotten about. Even Saddam turning out not to have stockpiles of WMDs (although, yes, he had plans to get them) was downplayed by people trying to prevent a President Kerry, and lots of evidence of serious mismanagement of the war in Iraq was ignored (apart from by McCain and a few others). Total focus was on winning the election.
However, even if Senator Kerry had won – the Republicans would still have controlled Congress. Now in 2008 there is the most leftist leadership of House and Senate there has ever been. Speaker Pelosi (who has shown that the “Blue dog” moderate Democrats are either a myth or a joke) and her friends in the House (such as Barney Frank). And a Senate in the hands of people like Senator Durbin – with pathetic “coal makes you sick” Harry Reid acting as front man.
Yet no one cares that the Presidency may be about to fall to the Democrats – indeed a Democrat whose record and background is of the hard left.
Total power over every part of government (from the FCC to the IRS) via control over the Executive and the Legislature – and power over the appointment of judges. And there is no focus – no will to prevent it happening.
“But they are corrupt, Paul”.
Someone can be corrupt and still work for a cause.
For example Senator Dodd is corrupt (and in the most old fashioned sweet heart loan from a corporation way), but this is not stopping him putting a housing bill into law that will send yet more millions upon millions of tax Dollars to leftist activist groups. Think how much more the left will be able to do when they have total power.
Or stay as you are and do not think – after all thinking about it might mean it would occur to you that you should do something.
Yet no one cares that the Presidency may be about to fall to the Democrats.
…
Or stay as you are and do not think…
Why is it, do you suppose, that you’re the only one to see the truth and act on it?
He knows the audience he is talking to, Mr Ed, do you?
Curious how McCain managed to oppose No Child Left Behind, whilst voting for it at the same time, no?
One minor observation seems relevant here. The self-same Senator Dodd who is, indeed, far to the left on economic matters, is also the leading opponent of a bill which extends the powers of the executive branch to monitor private communications without warrant , and which gives immunity to firms that have heretofore engaged in such illegal behaviour with the President’s sanction. The bill is supported by both Senators McCain and Obama, and is in plain contradiction to the rule of law and its universal application to all individuals, including those at the highest level of government.
The problem, then, is not who is wielding the absolute power, Republicans or Democrats – the problem is that it is being wielded at all. Neither Senator McCain’s collectivist ambitions – as exhibited in his ‘national greatness’ ideology and prohibitions against free speech – nor Senator Obama’s – in his redistributive ideology and prohibtions against voluntary exchange – are compatible with the principles of private property and individual freedom.
If McCain wins the presidency, and federal spending is lower by the end of his term than it was before it, I will eat tar. The only thing McCain will have a relatively free hand is foreign policy and the military. Since McCain is a reckless internationalist interventionist and a military booster, his foreign policy will be very expensive and military spending will be even higher than it it is now. Overall, government spending at the end of a McCain term will be far higher than it is now.
M,
And if Barack O’Barmy ends up in the Oval Office do you expect spending to drop? Or a sensible foreign policy?
Because it’s either or. They are the last two left standing.
No, I just assumed that everybody already knew that Obama was pro-big government and an internationalist. The fact that it is McCain vs Obama shows how ignominious American democracy is.
Democracy, which is only one of the ways in which the body politic (not necessarily inclusive of an entire population) may aver its consent to specific governance, does not become “ignominious” by reason of its selective processes, but rather by the motivations of the electorate.
On examination, the principal “ignominious” motivation of the U.S. electorates, in local, state and federal processes (which are made up of more than the ultimate casting of ballots) currently seems to be that of seeking transfers of individual (and civic) obligations to reified mechanisms of government: “The City,” “The County,” “The State,” “The Federal Government,” all the various “Departments” and bureaux, etc. created and operated to satisfy those motivations.
In our once republic of the U.S.A., we now have, by judicial fiat, something called ” the interest of government,” which comes dressed in various garbs of prevalence, to supersede the rights and interests of individuals. That is part (but not all) of the price for transferring individual obligations.
None of this is a matter of “Left” or “Right,” it is an issue of what kind of bribery is offered to, and accepted by, the electorate to ameliorate the desires for transfers of individual obligations. The electorate continues to ignore Ross Perot’s caveat: “They’re bribin’ ya with y’r own money.”
It is the electorate, not the candidates, that are responsive to the forms of bribery, and the ways in which it may be cloaked.
They get the “representatives,” executive and legislative, they deserve to match their motivations.
Which is why for some months, even while HRC was in the running, I compared the situation to being in a TV show called ‘Choose your own rapist’.
There are no good choices*. There aren’t even any ‘less worse’ choices.
Ron Paul was never a choice either.
As I see it, it won’t matter substantially whoever “wins” the election. What really matters is that regardless of who wins, We the People are on the fecal end of the stick, so to speak.
What frustrates me greatly is that freedom seems only a word to many now, one that seems to rank in importance well below comfort and affluence, and who is on American Idol.
When you add to this representatives who clearly act on interests having little to do with their constitutional offices, and a public who only cares who “brings home the bacon”, I see little reason for hope.
The words of the Preamble of our Constitution state that when a government becomes injurious to the people it is supposed to protect, it is time to replace it.
I guess the injury isn’t sufficient enough yet for Americans to wake up from their slumber. Maybe four or eight years of the coming nightmare might do it?
Motivated me to work harder to help elect McCain, thank you.
I have a market-anarchist friend who won’t vote for McCain on the grounds that “The lesser of two evils is still evil”. That’s true, but it’s also true that the lesser of two evils is still less evil.
There’s no opposition congress to stop Obama’s socialism, and most of the supreme court justices are older than 70. As much as I personally don’t like a lot of McCain’s ideas, I’d rather take the best I can get even if it’s not very great.
Strange! There seems to be an assumption that that McCain fellow is running for President. Fact of the matter is that he is not — he has no chance of winning, and his behavior proves that he knows it.
Fortunately, Peak Oil and high energy prices will be the death-knell for intrusive big government — regardless of which grasping leftist politician tries to hang on.
At the end of the day, this election does not matter. Which is why close to 50% of the US electorate will sit it out.
Sort of like AGW
Actually, dre, the real problem is Peak Air. We’ve got entirely too many people on this planet, and they’re going to breathe up all the air, eventually leading to mass death by suffocation.
Folks, As you can see by my name I served this great country for most of my adult life (starting in 1963 until 1992),so when I hear that the people that I put my life on the line for are just to d..n lazy to get up off their fat behinds and vote it makes me sick.
Look, folks you need to get out there and vote for what you want or you are going to loose it and I do mean loose it. How would you like to wake up one morning to someone knocking at your door and say “Come with me, Mame or Sir, and you are never heard for again.” Will that could happen if you don not fight for what you have. Oh, you do not have to join the Military to do that all you have to do is get up off your fat behind and vote.
IF YOU DON NOT VOTE, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO GRIPE ABOUT THE KIND OF GOVERNMENT YOU GET!, so get out there and vote make my and other veterans sacrifices worth it.
This is the great country in the world so let us get out there and fight for it, do not let the leftist(Socialist) and anti-religious idiots take it away. Some of my Brothers and Sisters gave their lives for your freedom do not let their sacrifice go in vain.
John W. (TSgt, USAF Ret.)
Regrettably one cannot keep a fool from his folly.
The day after Obama and the democrat congress get elected the meltdown of the US economy will begin in earnest. Obama will have the dubious honor of making Jimmy Carter look good.
America will have a recession. That is the nature of capitalism. The economy like the weather, has its cycles. The difference between a McCain Presidency and an Obama Presidency is the profundity of the recession and the long term damage bad policies will result in.
McCain: 7 to 8% unemployment. Obama 9% plus unemployment. Not to mention a long term drain of capital out of the US coupled with Italian levels of tax evasion in addition to European national debt levels and long term unemployment and “disability” levels.
The republicans have only themselves to blame. By wanting to be lite democrats all they have done is given the public a taste for real democrats. The masses will enjoy punishing the rich right until the time they are in a soup line. They will look back at the Bush years with nostalgia.
A completely banal platitude.
When the government stops with confiscatory taxes I’ll consider stopping my complaints of government.
I am of the belief that civil servants and welfare recipients as well as those who do not pay their portion of the government outlays should not be permitted to vote.
Indeed I believe in eliminating the secret ballot and taxing people at the level of ideology they vote for. Putting one’s money where their mouth is. That and abolishing the withholding tax. But then again I am just an old fashioned troglodyte.
I think you’ve got this the wrong way around.
If you do vote, then you’ve agreed to be bound by the majority decision, and so your consent to the process means that you can’t really complain with whatever comes out of it.
If you don’t vote, you didn’t consent in the first place, so you have every right to complain that some arbitrary group of people, calling themselves a majority, are claiming a right to confiscate your property, regulate your private business and force you to belong to a collectivist experiment – be that in fascism or socialism.
As a minor additional point, it seems to me that if you really oppose people kidnapping you and holding you without charge indefinitely, you could always vote against the guy who called the recent declaration of illegality of such a process “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”
When I read that item, Paul, my first impulse was to laugh right out loud. The very next impulse was to weep.
I am not kidding you.
My third impulse was to solemnly inform you that you’re delusional — which I suppose I’ve just done while trying to disclaim it because I know that nothing like that is very edifying.
But look, man: there is nothing to be done for it. All you’re talking about, in the broad historical stroke of the thing, is a minor difference in time before even the most pig-fucking-headed morons out there (not like you at all) understand that it’s bloody over: it’s not America anymore. It’s goddamned France here now.
Try to understand, Paul: freedom simply does not occur to these people anymore. It’s simply not a value to them, at all.
It should be obvious that this is not a problem that can ever be solved at the polls. I cannot understand why people keep looking to them for answers.
“Do something.”
My god, man. I don’t enjoy that impulse to laugh, but that’s just about all there is.
me: Why is it, do you suppose, that you’re the only one to see the truth and act on it?
Albion: He knows the audience he is talking to, Mr Ed, do you?
No, Albion, I don’t think that that’s sufficient explanation for Paul’s sweeping assumptions, one of which isn’t even limited to his audience.
Out of 6 billion people, it takes only one counterexample to disprove that “no one cares that the Presidency may be about to fall to the Democrats.” If no one else will stand, then I shall.
*** I care – I care deeply – that the Presidency may be about to fall to the Democrats. ***
“Or stay as you are and do not think.” Paul can hear whether I’m thinking or not? I’m thinking, I’m thinking! Honestly I am! Maybe something’s interfering with the signal.
But I don’t think that serious analysis, honest communication, and good knowledge of the audience describe this situation. One possibility that does is trollish provocation.
Being accused of uncaring unthinkingship won’t move me, personally, in the desired direction. (Instead it just changes the topic of debate.) But maybe it works for the majority of Paul’s readers, and if so, then all power to Paul!
I have to say that motivating people by claiming that they aren’t thinking, all the while counting on them precisely not to think about what one just said, is devilishly
cynicalclever! If that’s what Paul was thinking.“A completely banal platitude.”
{nod} It’s like saying that I have no right to point out that a card-sharp cheats unless I sit down at the table with him. It’s abject nonsense.
There is a strain of purist disdain among the participants of this site for the grubby, day-to-day workings of politics. Such a hand-off attitude is a fundamental error.
I disagree somewhat with the good Sgt, even as I will take this July 4th holiday opportunity to thank him sincerely for his valuable service to the Republic, in that I do not believe those who do not vote have no right to criticize. As a citizen, you have the right to praise or criticize as you so choose.
The reality is, though, that those who do not vote do not exist as far as political policy makers are concerned. The fundamental fallacy of the purist rejection of partial victories and lesser-of-the-evils choices is that one is left with no victories or viable choices at all.
Statism and its advocates have constructed a massive and intrusive governmental apparatus in the US, and elsewhere in the world, by relentlessly working for each little increase in state power, each new program, each little victory, each little compromise which advanced their agenda, until now, as we survey the political landscape, we see statism and more statism on every side.
It is irrational to simply retreat to a darkened room, cursing all who cannot see the truth as clearly as one of the proper libertarians or min-archists or whatever label is fashionable this week, and refuse to soil oneslf with the rough and ready, and dirty, to be sure, maneuvering that makes up the daily routine of political policy making and candidate selection and electioneering.
The result of opting out is irrelevance. If you are constantly amazed by statism’s successes, and so discouraged by the blindness and obstinancy of the electorate that you wash your hands of the whole business, then stop being amazed—statism’s success is directly correlated to your lack of engagement.
I vote in every election, every primary, every referendum, every chance I get. I believe in the words so easily forgotten and passed over, that governments deriving their just power from the consent of the governed IS the only valid basis for the formation of a political body.
But, as Sir Thomas comments during his trial in “Seasons”, silence gives consent.
You may bitch as loudly as you wish on line or at some pub, but, if in the voting booth you are silent, in the final analysis you give consent to whatever the body politic and its operatives decide to do.
In modern therapeutic terminology, you are an enabler.
The process of dismantling the monstrosity that the state has become will take generations of hard, dirty intellectual and practical political work. If your hands are too delicate to get that grubby, so be it.
Some of us are not so pure and delicate, and we will do what must be done, with your help or without it. It would be easier with it. You must decide what you will do. I have.
“The reality is, though, that those who do not vote do not exist as far as political policy makers are concerned.”
Bullshit. Look: if I was working the plantation hard enough for them, they would still drag my ass off to prison when I didn’t send them my fondest regards next April 15th. I’m not here to be mean to you, V.R., but that’s fucking bullshit, and somebody had better say so, so here I am. Your “policy makers” would still kick my goddamned door down in the middle of the night if some dimwit called ’em up and said I had a meth lab going or something. They are going to do everything they can to price me out of medical markets and drive me into their lovin’ arms — whether I vote or not. Those “policy makers” are now being coached into things like “nudging” and “choice architecture” by a crop of intellectuals cooking up new rationales for the same old technocratic stomp, and they don’t bloody care whether I vote or not, except for one thing:
They will agree with you that I should vote. You should think long and hard about that and what it really means. I think it means that they know something that you either don’t know or will not admit: they know that my vote is a fundamental nod in favor of their existence. Go watch those creepy assholes on NBC doing their video bumpers and telling me how important it is that I should vote.
They know the whole fucking charade would fall right over if they could not claim to “represent” us.
Well, guess what. I represent myself. I do it all year long, every day of every year, and I don’t wait around for their goddamned permission every couple of years, presented as a duty — mind you — to line up at the polls and hand them a blank check during the periods between the national hysterics every couple of years.
And that’s the very last thing they ever want: me, standing for myself.
You are dead wrong. Every one of you here who votes: you’re all wrong.
You’re getting more wrong with every passing election, and you keep doing it.
I know — I know — that I am not making an impression with any of this. You’re going to keep doing it, in some atavistic hope that I will never understand. You’ll keep doing it until it eventually dawns on you, one at a time, that you have committed all the years of your only-ever life to this pathetic sop of a consolation that they hold out to you, and that it has gotten you nothing but more tyranny all the while.
“It is irrational to simply retreat to a darkened room,…”
It is fucking outrageous — do you hear? — fucking outrageous for you to put it that way. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m living in what’s left of the sunshine, sir. Every single day. And I do not submit anything about it to your opinion, a commie’s opinion, or anyone else’s. Sneer all you want, and go submit my rights to a vote all you want, but bear this in mind: I would never do that to you.
You’re just wrong.
Billy Beck = John Galt II.
Out of curiosity, veryretired, if you want to “dismantle the montrosity that the state has become,” how exactly do you think voting for John McCain – the sentiment of the original post – will further that goal?
This election isn’t Goldwater vs. Johnson. It’s nationalist vs. socialist.
“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” — Emma Goldman
John W. says that if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain.
Concurring with M, below, who calls that a banal platitude! Those of us who abstain on principle have every right to complain. Only when you vote, and you participate in the mockery of justice by which men profess to auction off the rights of others in a popularity contest, do you forfeit your right to complain about the government you get. You, sir voter, are the one who deserves whatever government you receive.
The rest of us, on the other hand, well, it doesn’t much matter whether we vote or not, because nobody is about to give us our damn freedom, no matter how few (or many) of us there really are.
If I don’t like any of the candidates on offer, I cast a write-in ballot. I’d spoil the ballot if we had real paper ballots.
I haven’t seen our newfangled electronic voting machine yet, so I don’t know what will be possible with that.
Just remember, kids, you get the vote- and so does that guy you hate and the girl who sucks. The problem, the really big one, is this- when 90% of the people around you can’t name more than two of the constitutional principles you take for granted, what are they doing when they’re herded into the cubicles?
Not holding up your Republic, I can promise you that. So- what is to be done about the mob that doesn’t think?
Just go ahead and spot me, in a temporary manner, the fatal assumption that the average citizen SHOULD tell you how to run your life through his endorsement of a politician, because he is wiser/nobler.
Do you see any evidence of it?
I am not at all surprised by the reaction to my comment, especially the spittle flecked, curse filled vituperation.
Irrational nonsense is always the first resort of the purist who is above the ishy reality of the world as it actually works.
You may think of yourself as principled. You are, though, merely disengaged, a sputtering engine emitting noxious fumes but producing no effective work.
You free ride on the blood of men and women like the Sgt, and the intellectual and moral courage of those who engage in the difficult and complex business of confronting and engaging those who would overturn every element of the freedoms you enjoy through absolutely no merit or effort of your own.
Now swear and piss and moan some more. I am so very very impressed.
Freedom from the “terrists,” no doubt. The Party has done an excellent job of persuading people that Osama, or Farmer Jones, or whoever the subject of the Two Minutes Hate is this year, will indeed be back if they but close their eyes. It certainly isn’t the freedom to open a hot dog stand without the Party’s assent, or the freedom to keep our money from going to projects we do not agree with, or the freedom to found communities that may be operated without interference from our betters.
I assure you, sir: the sheer cheek of telling the proles that they have a “free ride” is the most brazen trick of the professional class of parasites. I further assure you that we would wear “disengagement” from their system with some pride.
They don’t seem to want to let us go, however. Which is odd, because I’m quite sure people would be willing to buy a large stake of government land, in exchange for the government’s promise to leave the inhabitants in peace. No one really wonders why it won’t happen.
Good news- our Australian papers tell us that Obama is losing support amongst the ‘progressives’ because he is ‘clarifying’ (changing) some of his earlier statements, depending on his audience.
Something else to think about- a letter writer to ‘The Australian’ pointed out that Obama is NOT the Democratic candidate- yet. Until the Democrats meet and anoint him in August, his position is not official. If he keeps losing votes, they might decide to put Hillary forward. Would that be good or bad?
My utter contempt for Hillary, as opposed to a grudging wariness of Obama’s cleverness turned to statist purposes, is irrelevant to your question. They’re both terrible, just like McCain. Good or bad is a question that will never enter into it.
As for the situation itself, your letter writer is holding onto the faintest hope imaginable. Wake up and see what will happen either way, won’t you?
“…Irrational nonsense …”
It’s a lot more than that and your distaste for my style has nothing to do with it. If you can’t think your way through it then go sit on the porch, old man.
You’re fucking wrong. Shut up.
BB: “You’re fucking wrong. Shut up.”
Hmm … does this sound like a freedom or facsism?
DavidNcl,
That’s just silly. He is quite free to ignore Billy Beck and keep typing his bullshit.
A refusal to vote, or to stand for public office oneself, does not constitute tacit consent to whatever government is elected.
Obedience to legislation passed by that government does amount to tacit consent. Disobedience, on the other hand, amounts to something entirely different.
‘Engagement’ need not be delimited purely to the existing electoral system – since one may be ‘engaged’ by the task of dismantling its’ cultural support.
You cannot starve a monster by feeding it, even if you are feeding it its’ second choice food.
The only justification for voting for McCain, if liberty means anything to you, is the ‘lesser evil’ argument.
McCain is the lesser evil in the here-and-now, not doubt about it. Obama is the most left wing presidential candidate since Roosevelt and he actually comes from an out-and-out Marxist background, which is a first if he gets elected. He will do immense damage if he wins.
In the long run however, accepting yet another Big State Republican like McCain (who I think may well be mentally… odd) will mean the last fading vestiges of Goldwater/Regan Republicanism will be killed off, which in the long run may be even more damaging as it means there will be no basis for a counter attack.
The ‘If you do not vote, you cannot complain’ argument is fatuous… the ‘If you do not vote for your choice of rapist, you cannot complain when you get raped’ analogy is apt. I vote ‘none of the above’.
Sorry Paul, I think the USA is truly stuffed no matter who wins and its political culture is revealed as just as decadent and pathetic as the Europeans. American ‘exceptionalism’ is dying and if McCain is the man defending the last ditch, the barbarians are already in the citadel.
I can only hope that the Goldwater tradition eventually reasserts itself but I cannot see how having John McCain in the Whitehouse will expedite that process.
“I can only hope that the Goldwater tradition eventually reasserts itself …”
How on earth could that possibly happen? The very idea is so contrary to the facts that it’s extremely difficult to even frame the question: how is that supposed to happen, given the intellectual material represented by the typical American votist today?
It would require that some decent percentage of them actually value freedom. And they don’t. They don’t even know what it is.
Where in the world is the intellectual initiative for something like a Goldwater tradition supposed to come from?
This would be a phenomenon on the order of something like rotting meat spontaneously causing winged angels.
The US is screwed. Of the last three job applicants Hillary is the least evil, not for her personal ambitions, but that she holds the smallest superiority complex. She seems to be the only one who actually believes the government serves the people, not the other way around. She is utterly wrong about everything I can think of, but not in the ‘kill our body to save our soul’ way that seems to inspire the Obama faction.
Perhaps living in the Arkansas legal system gave her an attitude of contempt and cynicism for the political process that neither Obama or McCain seem to have. They want to correct and purify it, she merely wants to use it. Those two want to muzzle the opposition, Hillary would rather bribe it. With Hillary, we would almost certainly have a corrupt but non-suicidal government. With the other two, well, I think Obama is the American Tony Blair. A smiling, good public speaker that will attempt to utterly destroy any vestige of our Constitutional government. Both Obama and McCain would destroy the Constitution to ‘save’ us.
The choice between Obama and McCain is a far more difficult one. I think McCain will be much more of an enabler for what this congress will want to spend its two years doing than Obama will. The number of Republicans who will stand by their ‘Republican’ president will mean that there is a filibuster proof block to support him. On the other hand, there are several very deep veins of visceral opposition to Obama in both the Republican and Democratic parties. Without exception, when I have to wipe the spittle off of my face after mentioning Obama, it is from a Democrat.
There is something else amazing and very useful that came out of the Obama/Hillary war. Democrats used to completely blow off the possibility that the MSM has a liberal bias and automatically crucifies the least leftist candidate. They never before believed me. Now they not only believe, they are well on their way to doubting everything to come out of the MSM. This is the first signs of an awakening of the sleepwalking masses that I have seen.
Many Democrats in Congress will quite likely oppose him frequently during the two year period. Those that do support him will probably find themselves purged at mid-terms.
With an Obama presidency, we will certainly see far worse things attempted. There is no doubt about that. But we will see strong even strident opposition. With McCain, we will see far less offensive, but none the less statist, things slide through uncontested.
It is a choice of being murdered in our national sleep with a knife or with CO asphyxiation. I think I prefer the knife. We stand a much better chance of waking up and fighting back.
On Billy Beck etcs’ comment about voting and the right to complain.
There is no sunset clause on the Constitution. This is not a contract that expires if I don’t vote for its continuence. The idea that if we stop pleading for our life, we are to blame for losing it is wrong.
If I trust somebody with a loan and they swear an oath to pay it back, I need do nothing to but expect its safe return. The idea that if they call me to ask if they still need to pay it off, and I don’t pick up the phone, and that this means they don’t have to pay off the loan, is beyond preposterous.
Every last one of these officials swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. No amount of political shell games changes that.
That seems simple; By taking the long view and taking the time to change minds.
And that’s the issue; The voters, in large part, ARE being propoerly represented by the current power brokers… they really DO think that way. And there, Billy is the biggest problem we face. It’s not the system itself that’s the problem, it’s beacuse the thing got ignored and taken for granted for too long.
Does anyone seriously think that the voter movement behind conservatism simply sprung up suddenly out of a hole in the ground? Or was it, rather, because a lot of people too the time to spread the word, teach and so change minds? Similarly, the collectivist non-thought that now pervades our politics did not arrive all at once; This damage didn’t happen in a day, nor will it be solved so. It was taught, with the long view over several generations. And that’s the cure for it as well.
I was listening to “Broadcasting House” on the BBC yesterday morning. Reviewing the newspapers were Red Ken Livingstone, failed journalist Sarah Sands, and comedy actor Chris Addison. They were discussing the presidential election. Leninslime reckoned that Obama was like Kennedy, the actor liked him because he was “exciting”, adding that McCain had been “the Republican it was OK to like”, but now they had Obama things were different. I think that tells you all you need to know about the BBC left liberal mindset. There is really no point a Republican like McCain trying to win these people over, because even if they concede that you are “OK to like”, unlike other Republicans who eat babies, they would never actually vote for you in a million years.
Midwesterner said “There is no sunset clause on the Constitution. This is not a contract that expires if I don’t vote for its continuence. (sic)”
Oh! The constitution is a “contract” now? When did I agree to it? Your analogy is tantamount to someone long dead signing a promissory note in my name, and then presuming that I’m liable for it. There is no principle of law or of reason that would support that view.
When you took your oath of office.
“That seems simple; By taking the long view and taking the time to change minds.”
I want you, Eric, to bear in mind something that you have never before really integrated. Are you ready? Here goes:
That is my life that you’re talking about, sir.
Do you understand? This is the only life I’ll ever have, and I don’t have time for what you’re implying. I’ve got well over thirty years in that fight as it is, and I’ve seen where it went.
Do not ply me for patience, mate.
You know me well enough to know better. And yes, I understand full this is your life you’re talking about, and mine along with it, lest we forget.
But consider with me please, a practical apporach; As faulty as it’s gotten, what we have in the west is as close to the ideal as we’ve ever gotten it, and is as close as we are ever likely to see in our lifetimes. Are you really so keen on dumping on that? How will doing so improve your lot, or mine?
“and mine along with it, lest we forget.”
As my grandfather would say, “Then, you know.”
What I cannot understand is why you play it the way you do, but that’s none of my business.
“Are you really so keen on dumping on that?”
“Dumping” what, exactly? Identify precisely what you’re talking about and I’ll answer you.
Voting gets us what we’ve got.
That ought to be warning enough.
Midwesterner, I’ve never taken an “oath of office.” Thanks for playing, though.
More courage than brains, eh David? Or maybe your comment gives you away and you really are only playing. I assure you I am serious.
You can live in your happy little fantasy land, I happen to have an anarchist/individualist ideal myself. But that is exactly what it is, an ideal. Unlike you, I live in this world and I seek alliances of people who will not only honor my personal LLP, but will help me protect it against those that won’t. 200 some odd years ago a bunch of people who held the same general values as I do drafted an open contract with anybody who wants to join it. This is a mutual protection contract between voluntary participants. I concede it has been badly compromised, more on that later.
Anybody who wants to can reject both the incursions and protections of the law. They are called outlaw, which does not necessarily mean ‘criminal’ in their nature, it means outside of a particular association’s laws. There are good associations and there are bad ones. My first ancestor to set foot in North America arrived on the Mayflower with the Puritans. He was lynched by them for not being submissive enough to the nascent Puritan state. They called it a hanging and him a criminal but what I’ve been able to dig up, it was Puritans eliminating an ‘enemy of the state’. Yep. My 11 greats grandfather is the first enemy of the state executed by Europeans in the New World. From what I can tell, he had a hot temper and plenty of courage but was not real strong in the thinking things through department. You are welcome to go outlaw at anytime you like. I have made a tactically very different choice. As compromised as this government is, I think working inside the system is still possible and useful.
Since you make clear you will have no part of this constitutional contract, I encourage you to stop giving any money to this government, stop registering any land you own, buy or sell with this government, stop driving on any roads, etc. Of course, being outside the law, if you have any disputes this government will side with whoever is ‘inside’ the law, but fire away, hope for the best. I’m with you in spirit. I might even put up an article eulogizing you. People can leave comments like flowers for your memorial.
I have chosen to accept the constitutional contract we have with our government now. I can opt out easily enough. All I have to do is leave behind any property I have acquired within its protections (and maybe even not all of that) and I am free to leave. I choose to stay. But I demand that all officials honor their oaths to me. At some point it is possible enough of us constituents will decide that the officials claiming constitutionally described roles are in fact outlaws and we may, as once before, take things back directly into our own hands. I sincerely hope we never get to that point, but history has plenty of governments that turned criminal by violating their charters and oaths.
You are welcome to make your heroic solo stand. I prefer to pursue a course that I estimate has a far and away higher chance of success. My ancestor’s unilateral campaign to free himself from Puritan domination certainly failed spectacularly. Let me know how your’s works out.
(Mppffffph.) You’re damned right, I know. The reason I play it the way I do, is actually an excellent question, and one central to what I’m telling you. So…
We’re both 50, you and I. Whatever happens, in terms of future direction for this country, and by extension, western culture in general, be it good or bad, we won’t live to see it. A bleak outlook, certainly, but as you say, I know... and you also know I’ve never been one to back off from an unpleasant truth. (Or a good argument with a friend, for that matter… Chuckle) And the truth is, that another republic… another chance… good or bad, isn’t going to spring up out of a hole in the ground… there are no instant answers, here… such a new situation will simply not happen within the timeframe we have. I should think that amply clear, by now. It’s also true that what we have now is the best we’re likely to see, as a basis to work with… to improve on.
(Whence my question about how leaving your power to move this mountain by the side of the road unused helps your situation. Clearly, it cannot)
Anyway, with that in mind, all we can do is kick this can down the road a bit further, and hope to hell we’re kicking it in the proper direction. And yes, sometimes that means making choices among less than optimal players, most cycles, and making choices so as to minimize the damage to what we have. Not only so that I might live out my days in the best manner possible, but so that my kids and their grandkids can, as well. It’s the nature of the rather distasteful beast, but there it is. It’s what we have, and we’re not likely to get a better deal. So I work with what we have trying to improve on it. I work, trying to change minds, among my other efforts. Why?
There comes a time in a father’s life that you cannot know, Billy, (Your loss… you’d have been a good father) when you recognize that your largest obligation is to that next step along the way… your kids… and beyond them….and you do everything in your power to arrange a better life for them, than they might have had if you just sit back and let it all fall down around your ears. I chose to use what power I have, less than direct though it is, to effect the future for the better.
Midwesterner, you’re not really free to leave, because you were never free to join. You were never given a choice to enter in to any such “contract,” and I maintain that referring to the constitution as a contract is a convenient fiction for your argument. The fact of the matter is that you never had a choice; how you choose to rationalize it, at this point, is of no consequence to me.
“At some point it is possible enough of us constituents will decide that the officials claiming constitutionally described roles are in fact outlaws and we may, as once before, take things back directly into our own hands.”
What you’re essentially saying is that might makes right. Only if and when I have a contingent strong enough to overthrow a government through violent means, only then can I lawfully secede. There is *no* voluntaryism in that.
You’re as fucking wrong as V.R.
“We’re both 50, you and I. Whatever happens, in terms of future direction for this country, and by extension, western culture in general, be it good or bad, we won’t live to see it.”
I think about that sometimes, Eric. It’s not a theme that I want to hit on, for at least a couple of reasons. For one thing, while I completely understand what you’re talking about (in fact, I think I understand it better than you’re letting on here), it carries implications that are very difficult to bring to arguments about politics. For example: in today’s feminized cultural environment, go ahead and try to make the case that a man’s life is a lot more than half over by the time he hits fifty. Let me put it to you this way: neither you or I are sympathetic figures when it comes to votists and public politics. We could both keel over right this instant and nobody would care. To them, we’ve just about expended our social value.
Besides all that, I don’t think I’m quite done yet. Last week, my name got dropped into nomination to direct touring lights for a major rock band that most people here would know for decades already.
Now, it’s just about miraculous that that happened. I have important friends looking out for me, but it’s been fifteen years since I did work on that scale, and the reason is that everybody in the business who knows me also knows that when it comes time to pay me for what I do, there are big problems involved. There are people in the business who understand me, but that doesn’t matter to the complications of actually hiring me, which have only gotten more and more bloody horrendous in the past two decades.
Here’s the thing: I would kick that gig right straight in the ass. The whole setup is perfect. Right down my alley.
It’s probably not going to happen. (It has to be wired by the end of the week, and my telephone remains dismally silent from the right area code.)
You know what, though? I still have it, Eric. After thirty-one years on the road, I still have a passion for this work that could shame a twenty-two year-old. I know what I’m doing and I’m really good at it.
It’s really hard to consider that I’m watching all that drain away, mate.
I wouldn’t have too much of a problem thinking about the kids once I was finally done, but I’m not, in the actual nature of things sorted from the ghastly political artifacts of our time.
I could still get things done, Eric. What I need is for the state to get out of my way, market-wide, and right now.
Which is a fair enough reason for why you’ve never understood that position before. My ability to impart and examine those implications in this medium are, I’m afraid, limited at best.
My shortcoming, I suppose, but the complexity of the thing gives my ability a little cover, I guess.
I had an idea something of the like was up. You’ve been offer your normal line for days, and now it makes sense. Good luck to you with it. You’re right; it’s right up your alley.
But here, again, we come to it; You and I both know that’s not going to happen in our lifetimes, or all at once, when it eventually does.
So, to my mind, and within the framework I’ve laid out, the question becomes how to arrange for an improvement in the situation?
I’ve long since decided the answer for me is to move this pile as far as my limited resources can move it, toward where it will do me the least damage and the future the most good.
“You and I both know that’s not going to happen in our lifetimes…”
That’s the crucial thing: there is not one good reason on earth why it shouldn’t.
That’s what I know.
David,
Your argument is circular. Leaving and joining have no binding tie. Membership being the default assumption for people born here is not at all relevant to whether or not you may leave. I can tell that thinking is not your strong point.
And no, I am not saying ‘might makes right’, but I am most definitely saying that might makes possibility and that an uncooperative individual alone has no chance against a collective.
You are very clearly saying that results do not matter, heroic suicide gestures are where it’s at, and I am silly to actually be planning on winning.
Be sure and tell me before you make your dramatic gesture, I can probably write you a pretty entertaining obituary.
BTW, secede? You can secede your ass out of here anytime you like. Start walking. If you find some place better, LMK. I think what you are really saying is that property that you have acquired through the present system has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it is yours. That is bullshit. You only still have it because there were other people helping you keep it. Without those people and the terms they protected you by, you would be nothing more than some corpse rotting in the ditch of some great collective’s cultural revolution.
You are free to leave, so go.
Billy and Bithead,
I sure as hell intend it to happen in my lifetime. And I am the same age as you guys.
Society is like plate tectonics. The pressure builds and builds and then it shifts all at once in an earthquake. The criminalization of our government has been a slow creeping process. But you need only step out onto any street, talk to any person, read any poll, and you know there is going to be an earthquake soon.
I am attempting to influence where things come to rest when it is over. We bloggers are the pamphleteers of the 2nd American War for Independence.
Billy:
Well, there is a fair enough reason, and it’s one I’ve been trying to explain to you for years, now; Not enough people have been out there trying to change minds to allow it to happen That lack results in more people wanting things to go the other way and not seeing any good reason why it shouldn’t.. And that’s really what it comes down to.
Midwesterner:
I hate to put a pin in your baloon, but I will point out that so has Billy these last 30 years or so. Are Billy’s efforts so much less worthy than your own, to that end, that you’re going to be that much more successful at it? Sorry, I don’t think so. And of course more than just Billy.
Well, then, when you put it that way I will say you’re on the right track; Changing minds is what blogging…. political blogging at least… is all about, and why I’ve put such effort into my own place, and into other blogs I find useful to that end. But I think you overly ambitious and setting youself up for a fall, if you think this is going to be anything but a slow process, and an educational process, at that.
We didn’t get to our current situation overnight. It wasa slow, edicational, and generational process to get us to where we are… and it’s going to be nthing but that which will return us to where we want to be, I’m afraid.
And you know what? A lot of that is a matter of trust and understanding of the individuals involved. As an offhanded example, (and I hope Billy doesn’t mind… )Billy and I have known each other since before the internet, and yet, there are, as you see, still questions and discussions between us. Though we understand each other enough to have a healthy respect for each other, in this thread he’s demonstrated he still hasn’t fully figured me out. And of course that goes the other way, too. It’s taken us this long to get even this far. And that’s just two individuals. How can it be otherwise with millions of others, without simply imposing the desired change in a dictitorial sense? That way, I hasten to point out, lies the fault of Marxism, for example.
You see? Get your arms around the scope of what you’re trying to do, here, and you’ll understand it’s naught but a multi-generational project, the same as the one that got us here, in the first place. Keep fighting, certainly. But don’t expect instant response.
Bithead,
Summer of ’84 I quit my job with a third world relief and development agency, put my guitars in their cases and have done nothing much with them since.
Then I started reading. One of the first books I read was Atlas Shrugged. It is not a perfect picture. But I was confused and not able to make sense out of what I saw in our society. I had many of the pieces fit together but didn’t see the big picture. That book for me was like ‘cheating’ and looking at the picture on the jigsaw puzzle box. Once I had the idea of what the picture would approximately look like, I was able to fit all of the pieces together on my own confidence, not having to take Rand’s word for anything. I have been building from there ever since.
That may not be Billy’s 30+ years, but its enough to share the frame of reference.
There is a huge amount of cynicism about the coming vote in Massachusetts. But that cynicism is entirely based on the people’s pattern of voting to get everything they can from government. I find nothing incongruous about the idea that people who vote to get as much back from government as they can, will also vote to give it as little as they can. I give this measure a very high chance of passing. If that happens, we may have a pretty good idea if this is the beginning of the earthquake.
If it passes, the vicarious philanthropy of the thieves will shed its mask. In Milwaukee a bunch of the people who live on government redistribution attempted to get free handouts from the government that were intended for flood victims. These people had nothing to do with the flooding, they just demanded free handouts. When they found out that FEMA was only registering names and not actually giving out stuff yet, they rioted.
This is a vignette of what is to come on a far greater scale. A lot of people are going to see naked theft for what it is. The question is what will come out the other side of the upheaval. The French Revolution certainly could have turned out a lot better.
I really strongly am convinced that by 2012 we will be near the midpoint of whatever is going to happen. I think by then the die will be cast.
Perhaps unlike Billy, I have not believed at every step of the way something was about to happen. I did not begin to get that feeling until the Bush/Gore election and even then I was anticipating it taking 5-10 years to begin. We are now eight years out and nothing has changed my mind. For good or for evil, I think something is starting.
Mmmphf. There’s been that, there, for a lot longer than either of us have been around. It’s what makes Boston what it is. But there it is; the state still continues to keep Kennedy in office.
Yeah, something is starting, all right, but I doubt, based on previous movements, it’s what you think. The Left has entered every vaccum the rest of us have left open. The problem, as I see it is twofold; Nature abhors a vaccum, and the majority thinks the solution is more government. That doesn’t bode well for what you have in mind.
To back my point,
The approval rating for Congress has fallen to single numbers.That’s the first time ever, that’s happened. And yet the polling data still says the electorate is thinking more leftism is the solution; they’re going to vote Democrat. Get your arms around that and you will understand why I’m skeptical that the ground shifting will go the way you hope it will.
I am also skeptical, but apparently far less so than you.
That is because for generations the left has been defining us. Now, just like pamphleteers using the newly cheap printing presses in the colonies, we can speak for ourselves. My uncle just wondered to me this morning that the local city paper is in tight straits. And he saw their paper dispenser sitting full of unsold papers. We are once again in a situation where money does not by exclusive control of media. All major MSM outlets are down. The buyers of news are shopping around.
There is no point in me telling you to man the batteries, you already are. So I’ll just say cheer up. You’ll be more effective. Both as a campaigner and a recruiter. And now may be a good time for a surge of our own.
MW, it’s your argument that’s circular. I’ll refrain from ad hominem attacks.
232 years worth of people have been “planning on winning” the game of politics that you respect so much. Look where it’s gotten them.
When I say “secession” I’m not talking about “leaving.” Secession !=Leaving. I understand that I’m free to “leave” and that the government will continue to try and tax my earnings abroad, under the auspices that I’m a tax avoider, cheating them of what is rightfully theirs. The government won’t even respect many people’s desires to leave, your argument fails on this point, alone.
If a man, or a group of men, decide to tell their state that they no longer want any part of it, other than that for which they are willing to pay (e.g., fuel taxes for “use” of roads, etc.) the government will not only stop protecting them, or providing whatever services it arguably renders; it will ultimately attack them.
You assume that the government is a legitimate owner of all lands within its arbitrarily defined borders; borders which were established and are maintained to this day by force, and force alone. You are saying that you take it as valid, that a man or a group of men can unilaterally declare a contract to be in force forever, and for everyone. The only way this can ever be the case, is when such a “contract” of strict adhesion (e.g., your “default” position) is ultimately enforced by a gun.
Put down the gun, then we might talk.
Midwester:
That’s simply nonsense. This country hasn’t yet fallen to the level of any number of other rotten countries wherein things are considerably more horrible without the least hint of a looming “earthquake” in sight.
You have all the influence of a mouse-fart on a hurricane. — Welcome to comment-blogging!
What was “going to happen” was codified into the Constitution over two-hundred years ago. The “mid-point” was the passage of the Income Tax nearly a hundred years ago. The “die was cast” forty years ago by LBJ.
— Do you understand Beck’s impatience with people who think some solution might be just around the corner?
(I expect to pull another fifty years out of life, but even so I’m not convinced I’ll ever get to witness socialism getting the grapeshot it deserves, per Bierce’s devilish hopes in 1911 .)
David, you are a freeloader. Without the protections that this constitution has provided for you, you would own exactly as much as an Amish farmer in Zimbabwe.
Without the protection of some association, you have nothing. Not even your life. So like those absurd ‘just give peace a chance’, ‘ban war’ protesters, you free load your safety and claim that there is nothing you owe anybody.
You believe that you should be entitled to withdraw all of your property, including land, from participation in this government. Unilaterally.
Your belief that you should be able to withdraw a piece of property from the constitution has about the same merits as somebody who owns a condominium believing that they should be able to withdraw their unit from the condominium association. And then deny the rest of the members access to the roof or the foundation because “it’s mine”.
And no, I do not believe ‘the government’ owns anything. I do not believe government has any rights at all. But I do believe that people have the right to associate and to enter into contracts with each other including this giant condominium contract that is our constitution. And the people of this association have through many generations built up a lot of wealth and have recognized ownership according to constitutionally agreed upon rules. Law breakers who have gotten into government have broken many of those rules, no question about that.
But if you are a typical American, nothing you own including your own body was acquired outside of the protections of this group. Since this constitution was written by individualists, it recognizes an individual’s right to leave. I strongly oppose this new idea that government authority follows people who leave and there is nothing in the constitution to support government’s claim that it does. It is not a flaw in the contract, it is one of the crimes by politicians that I am referring to.
You seem to believe that if you could just destroy that eeeevvvill U.S. government, then everybody could live happily in anarchic peace. Absurd. Individualists will always have to enter into mutual protection agreements. Compared to every other constitution, written or traditional, that ever existed, this one is the most successful individualist one yet. And I think it is still restorable.
Mike, I note your opinions and disagree.
As for a solution being ‘just be around the corner’, well something is definitely just around the corner. I am not so sure it is a solution but I am sure we won’t have long before we find out. Present policies are unsustainable. Something will give.
A reading from Lysander Spooner on that collectivist document:
The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago. And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts. Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. And the constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children. It is not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they could bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them. That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between any body but “the people” then existing; nor does it, either expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power, or disposition, on their part, to bind anybody but themselves.
If the instrument meant to say that any of “the people of the United States” would be bound by it, who did not consent, it was a usurpation and a lie. […]
Such an agreement clearly could have no validity, except as between those who actually consented to it. If a portion only of “the people of the town of A—–,” should assent to this contract, and should then proceed to compel contributions of money or service from those who had not consented, they would be mere robbers; and would deserve to be treated as such.
Again with the pejoratives?
The fact that these protections were provided throughout the last 232 years is evidenced by 232 years worth of other people who paid for them. You can’t hold history over my head and say “You owe me!” because those debts have already been satisfied. I have paid for all of these protections since I was 16 (I think the first year I filed income taxes).
What I’m saying is that I don’t want any more protection; I would merely like to stop receiving them without getting shot. The mere fact that the government can’t figure out how to unbundle its goods from the land that it doesn’t own in the first place, is not justification for pointing a gun at me and demanding that I use them and pay for them.
Sure, why not? You believe that others should be allowed to unilaterally enforce a contract against me, absent my consent! Why can’t I enforce contracts against them, without their consent? Because I don’t command enough firepower (i command none, for the record) to force them to submit. Your entire argument ultimately rests upon a gun, not a premise.
A member of a condo association can conceivably purchase the property, including property held in common, from the Association. Government offers no such concession; there is no payment I could offer in exchange for Allodium (Link).
This constitution has either tolerated the crimes against it, of which you speak, or it has been utterly powerless to prevent them. I have to side with Spooner here, concluding that “in either case, it is unfit to exist.”
Well, just make sure you guys send me drafts of your obits before you make your dramatic last stands. If they are any good and are appropriate to the outcome of your efforts, I will put them up in an article. Then in the comment thread, admirers can leave literary bouquets marveling at your doctrinal purity and adamant perfection firstism.
I hold very similar principles to yours. But that is where the similarity ends. Unlike you, I have no intention of either suicidal gestures or reveling in violated martyrdom. I ‘play’, to use your term, to win.
“I ‘play’, to use your term, to win.”
There’s nothing more pathetic than a libertarian DeLeonist.
Um, don’t look now, Ernie, but De Leonist tactics are why we now live in a socialist state. Apparently you think it is doctrinally impure for individualists to cooperate. I think it is essential.
“Um, don’t look now, Ernie, but De Leonist tactics are why we now live in a socialist state.”
That’s exactly the point that Beck, et. al., have been trying to drill into your head. In a choice between offering free ponies and candy and individual responsibility, which is going to win on majoritarian grounds?
Well, I guess you’re right. After all, the pamphleteers of the First American Election of 1776 managed to get the colonial voters to peacefully oust the American Tory party in the North American elections, save for Canada’s demurral, didn’t they?
“Apparently you think it is doctrinally impure for individualists to cooperate. ”
Please refrain from committing arson on the corpse of Ray Bolger, please.
“I think it is essential.”
Nope, or submitting to the dictates of the cod-DeLeonists wouldn’t be the first thing on your political menu.
Please don’t patronize me with lines like “I hold the same principles…” You’re arguments are proof enough to the contrary.
I’ve got no problems co-operating with other individuals, or with individualists co-operating. There is nothing wrong with co-operating, whatsoever, it is indeed fundamental to the continuance of human life as we know it. The problem arises when A is holding a gun, and offering to sell B the privilege of not getting shot; at that point, it’s anything but co-operation.
Even you sir, could grant me that much.
So am I, if your yard’s tall tree shades my house, reducing my electrical bills in sumer. What of it? What you hire somebody in Washington to come after a piece of my property with guns-in-hand?
Show me someone complaining of “freeloading” in terms of not paying the state’s mandated tithe, and I’ll show you a defender of socialism, every time — even if they think of themselves as conservative.
One wonders how Americans owned anything in the decade preceding the Constitution, then. Oh, wait; there wasn’t gun-control back then! You could shoot Redcoats with your very own rifle.
If the Zimbabwean Amish don’t want to arm themselves, that’s their fucking business.
— Of course present policies are “sustainable” from the point of view of the political huckster: America still has gazillions of wealth to steal, and no fighting-mad segment of populace yet ready to put so much as a flaming bag of poo on the huckster’s doorstep.
You don’t see them revolting in Britain, France or Sweden yet, do you?
==//==
“Most nations have not lasted as long as Rome fell.”
— Fall of the Roman Empire
E.B.,
It is a matter of separating voting for ponies and candy from voting for paying for them. Everybody is going to vote for everything they can get, therefore, Ted Kennedy. But they are also going to vote to not pay for anything they can avoid, therefore the existing Massachusetts property tax cap. And the income tax prohibition is very likely to pass. I plan to stock up on pop-corn and hit the blogs as it rolls around.
And we are winning some fundamentally important battles. For me the biggest surprise in Heller was the 9-0 victory for originalism. I’m too cynical to attribute too much genuine doctrinal originalism to it. But I do think the extreme lengths all nine justices went to cloaking their opinions in originalist garb shows a new accountability that has been missing almost since the last of the authors who were at the drafting of the Constitution died. I don’t think the timing of the Civil War was a coincidence.
At the absolute top of our priority list must be the protection of free speech on the net. Particularly in the realm of anything even remotely political. The net is our pamphleteers printing press. And if they confiscate the presses, were screwed. Then it will be time for grand gestures.
David,
It appears you are either putting energy into misinterpreting or really need things explained in extreme detail to you. How you reinterpret advocating the De Leonist tactic of organizing political factions into voting blocks to use democracy to gain control of the government into advocating pointing guns at each other and grabbing everything we can just does not make sense. What De Leon advocated was taking over the government through its own democratic mechanisms. I am advocating retaking it the same way.
Mike,
You are free to go anywhere outside of this country and start from scratch. So why don’t any of you guys do that? Could it be because, as flawed as this place is, it is still doing more to protect you liberties than anywhere else you could go? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life in this horrific prison rather than start fresh somewhere else? Why?
You are free to go anywhere outside of this country and start from scratch
I have a *right* to be free anywhere I am. I am a human being. I am no one’s rightful property and no one’s rightful subject, and I am likewise rightfully subject to no deity or deities.
“What De Leon advocated was taking over the government through its own democratic mechanisms. I am advocating retaking it the same way” is not changing anything–it’s just hoping for a majority on your side, leaving the majoritarian mechanism intact for whomever comes along next. In other words, it’s just discussion regarding the size of the cage and who gets to be the zookeeper.
Midwesterner:
People don’t want freedom least of all you.
But by all means, evangelize away and try to collectively produce liberty…just leave me the fuck out of it and your sorry constitution.
lulz. I made no reference to DeLeon; I was speaking of government in general. This is what I said:
Now, replace “A” with “government” and “B” with “David Z” (or Billy Beck, or Mike Schneider, or Ron Good, or hell, even you).
All government ever offers anyone, is the privilege of not getting shot. If you stop paying them, it’s not enough to simply stop giving you the “services” it arguably provides, no, they have to come after you, because they fraudulently claim a right (by estoppel) to some portion of your existence.
That you want to leverage this power to your particular advantage, says volumes.
Get back in your coffin, Spiro Agnew; you mouldering fuck.
(There’s one of these assholes on every board, isn’t there? Somebody tell me: Is he a cop, too?)
Samizdata seems to have been inundated with douche bags.
That’s not fair–literal douche bags at least serve a legitimate function.
I see there is no adult supervision today.
Andrew Roocroft:
The Housing Bill is about subsidizing people Bank of America – the people who own most of the mortgages.
Bank of America are the new owners of Senator Dodd’s old pal Countrywide.
The Bill also provides many millions of Dollars for various leftist activist groups.
Remember them?
Like vote-r-us ACORN.
The people who threaten to sue (under the Communities Reinvestment Act) commerical enterprises that do not lend money in high risk areas – i.e. SUB PRIME.
Of course the credit money bubble of the Fed is the main cause of the problems – but the activists hardly help.
They also demand bribes (sorry “donations” for themselves) of course.
“But civil liberties”……
Civil liberties:
The first order of business of the left (if the comrades win) will be to eliminate as much dissent as they can.
The “fairness doctrine” will be used to eleminate the conservative part of talk radio – and pressure (F.C.C., “anti trust”, I.R.S. – whatever it takes) will be used to make News International (i.e. Fox News and the Wall Street Journal) cave in.
And it will work – the left will not even need to appoint a load of judges who will declare anything they do not like “hate speech” (but a “President Obama” would do that anyway – and the Senate would confirm them).
Those people who complain about living in the Bush “police state” (with people kidnapped ……..) will learn what living in a police state is really like.
As for government spending.
John McCain was given Hell in 2001 for arguing against various Bush schemes – as Tom Tancredo (no friend of McCain) said, the Bush people went nuts (really nuts) demanding that Republicans vote with the President in the end.
Even the Cato Insitute (again no friends of McCain) has said that John McCain has a good record on government spending – not just on earmarks and subsidies (although even that is vary rare in Washington D.C.) but also on entitlement reform.
If that is not good enough for you – then you are asking for the Moon and stars.
Yes McCain-Feingold stinks – but Obama is not going to repeal it (he will appoint judges who support it – and a lot else).
But in the end supporting McCain over Obama is a lot more than voting for the “lesser evil”.
Civil liberties:
The first order of business of the left (if the comrades win) will be to eliminate as much dissent as they can.
The “fairness doctrine” will be used to eleminate the conservative part of talk radio – and pressure (F.C.C., “anti trust”, I.R.S. – whatever it takes) will be used to make News International (i.e. Fox News and the Wall Street Journal) cave in.
And it will work – the left will not even need to appoint a load of judges who will declare anything they do not like “hate speech” (but a “President Obama” would do that anyway – and the Senate would confirm them).
Those people who complain about living in the Bush “police state” (with people kidnapped ……..) will learn what living in a police state is really like.
As for government spending.
John McCain was given Hell in 2001 for arguing against various Bush schemes – as Tom Tancredo (no friend of McCain) said, the Bush people went nuts (really nuts) demanding that Republicans vote with the President in the end.
Even the Cato Insitute (again no friends of McCain) has said that John McCain has a good record on government spending – not just on earmarks and subsidies (although even that is vary rare in Washington D.C.) but also on entitlement reform.
If that is not good enough for you – then you are asking for the Moon and stars.
Yes McCain-Feingold stinks – but Obama is not going to repeal it (he will appoint judges who support it – and a lot else).
But in the end supporting McCain over Obama is a lot more than voting for the “lesser evil”.