We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Leaders and nations “So Obama, Biden, Pelosi, and Reid are all on Air Force One. Suddenly it malfunctions and crashes. Who survives? America.”
From a commenter on this item.
Actually, the logic applies to most countries and their governments. Parts of our MSM like to believe that if the leader of X or Y has a problem, dies or whatever, that the nation will be plunged into chaos. Not so; it is a mark of a healthy country that the passing of a leader, even in tragic circumstances such as those affecting Poland recently, is not a massive blow to the country per se.
Tangentially, this book by Gene Healy about the “cult” of the modern presidency is worth reading.
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Belgium survived for a year or more without a government, recently.
I was wondering what would happen and, golly gosh, nothing did.
Obama dies tragically, and what happens? The bozo gets canonised, that’s what. Think John Kennedy, remembered for being the star of Camelot rather than as the corrupt President who got the US into Vietnam.
No, two years to go and Obama is already starting to be disowned by his fellow dems. Let the script play out and he can leave office seen to be a failure.
There were a lot of good Obama one-liners in the article. My favorite:
“People were once comparing him (Obama) to Jesus Christ. On the economy he seems more like Moses; wandering around aimlessly, blaming everything on the Bush.”
But to Johnathan’s observation, I think he’s missing the point of the joke. It’s not that with the loss of its soi-disant leadership “the nation will be plunged into chaos”; rather, it’s that such a loss would free us from the chaos he is wreaking. Black humor at its finest. (pun intended)
“The new Obama economy game show: ‘American Idle’.”
A dreadful accident at Buckingham Palace kills Queen Elizabeth and all her children and grandchildren. Who survives?
The British crown: Viscount Linley (Margaret’s son) succeeds.
An organization with clear rules of succession can survive the demise of a leader or even the entire leadership group.
Incidentally, Reid is not in succession to the Presidency. He is Senate Majority leader. The fourth in succession is the President pro tempore of the Senate, Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. Inouye however is 86, and would probably resign, leaving the office to the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
John B: “Belgium survived for a year or more without a government…”
There was no formed ministry, but all offices were occupied, and all the functions of the state continued without interruption – such as tax collection.
I remember a joke about Ford Kissinger, a Priest and a Hippie on Air Force One, they’re going to crash and they only have three parachutes. Ford as the leader of the free world gets one and Kissinger <"Recognized as the smartest man in the world" gets one and jumps. The priest turns to the hippie and says "You take the last one lad, I know where I'm going. The Hippie replies "There are still two parachutes father, the world's smartest son of a bitch just jumped out of the plane with my backpack."
Sorry but America would still be in deep trouble. Geithner, Summers, and Bernanke were not on the plane.
The black humor is getting closer to reality. There is a first term Democrat Congress-critter named Bright [an ironic name] who is from what is a normally Republican district in, I believe, Birmingham, Alabama. He is desperately trying to separate himself from his 100% support for every Obama and Pelosi initiative for the last couple of years because he is faced with strong opposition and is likely to have to start living under the laws he has voted for. He has adopted the meme that many Democrats have started doing in the last week, calling himself an “independent conservative”, playing down his party affiliation. It is a major campaign issue in his district that no matter how “independent” he might be, he will automatically vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House in the next session of Congress if he is re-elected.
This was brought up in the question and answer period. Bright made the stunning statement to the effect that “Pelosi may not be re-elected, or she may get sick and die from something before the session begins”. Aside from what that implies about the Congressman and a future visit by SEIU goons and a frantic carpet-dance in front of the Speaker’s desk, the response was notable. The audience clapped and cheered.
I would have too. And wished for a similar plague running wild inside the Beltway.
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai,
Hmph.
Well, much as I dislike these people I don’t, repeat, don’t, wish them dead. I realise a plague is a passive death, rather than actively inflicted, but still; wishing it does come too close to conflict with the non aggression principle for my taste.
I merely wish them to be doing something more in keeping with their abilities and knowledge, like stacking shelves at Walmart.
Laird, I get the point of the joke just fine, but I chose to look at it another way.
Taylor,
You remind me of another joke…
An aircraft carrying an international delegation loses an engine and is heading toward high ground. The pilot needs to lose weight so after everything that can be jettisoned has been he asks for volunteers to do the noble thing…
The British delegate shouts, “God save the Queen!” and leaps.
Still not enough and those mountains are getting closer…
The French delegate shouts, “Vive la France!” and follows his British colleague out the door.
Still not enough…
So the Texan gets up, shouts, “Remember the Alamo!” and throws the Mexican out.
Wow, CC, merely fantasizing about something bad happening sua sponte to evil persons “does come too close to conflict with the non aggression principle for my taste”? That’s a pretty extreme definition of “non-aggression”, even for a libertarian.
I’m surprised you can breathe up there.
Ok Laird, so it’s different strokes for different folks.
If lefties like to fantasise about Chimpy McBushitler meeting his end in some unpleasant manner then fine, but I prefer not to put myself at their level. If someone really is a mass murderer I am happy to see them dead, but if I merely disagree with their policies, even if I think they are incompetent and self righteous lunatics, I don’t see that as reason to want them pushing up daisies.
I don’t relish the idea of Obama being dead, but I do fantasise that one day he will live in ignominious obscurity while Hayek reigns supreme throughout the US and Europe.
OK as long as we’re exchanging jumping jokes.
Air Force guy to paratrooper
“What kind of an idiot jumps out of a perfectly good airplane ?’
Paratrooper to Air Force
“When the Air Force comes up with a Perfectly Good airplane , maybe I won’t jump out of it.”
CountingCats, there’s a saying used often in self defense discussions: “You don’t shoot to kill, you just shoot to stop.” The implication is that if that happens to require killing, so be it.
Likewise, I don’t wish these people dead, I just wish they’d stop. I don’t really care what the cause.
Counting Cats
I acknowledge our differences, and readily admit that I am not anywhere near a pacifist, being actually a fairly bloody-minded sort. One reason that I am not a Libertarian is what I perceive is their doctrinal inability to deal with hostility, violence, and what I would consider to be evil by others. “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you” does not work well in reality when the other guy intends to do unto you; first, harder, and oppressively, tyranically, or fatally.
There are sociopaths, and psychopaths, loose in the world; and they do not alway operate only as individuals. In addition, there are world views that are perhaps valid in their own cultural context; but when they encounter another such context, one or the other must perish as there is no possible co-existence. The key question, as always, is at what point is resistance and counterattack justified? There, opinions will differ.
There is no hard and fast line easily recognized by all. Time and events will determine when people have had enough. The story above was not a joke. It happened a few days ago in Birmingham. The names have not been changed to protect the guilty. I posit that the fact that at least one Democrat politician suddenly realizes that his working to usurp the Constitution may have consequences and is desperately backpedalling to try to avoid being connected with his own acts is one such event. I further posit that the reaction of the freaking Chamber of Commerce [what Marx would refer to as the petit bourgeousie] is an even more stunning event.
Events soon to come are going to determine the fate of our [I assume that you are American and not Brit from your Walmart reference] poor country and Constitution. And they are in motion.
Though not at all of the Judeo-Christian persuasion, if I may I will take a theme from the Old Testament.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
We look at the events in our history as being inevitable. But, if the Sons of Liberty had not been formed in the wake of the Stamp Act, if the Massachusetts Circular Letter by Samuel Adams had not been sent to all the Colonies in the wake of the Townsend Acts, if people had not seen their peaceful efforts and legal petitions under their rights as Englishmen blatantly ignored and trampled into the dirt; would the events of 9 June 1772, of 2 November 1772 [may our coming November 2 be as fruitful], of 16 December 1773, taken place? And without them preceding, would we have de facto become a real nation at Merriam’s Corner on that day in April 1775?
For all the talk of Conservative and TEA Party violence, we have yet to have one documented instance of such misbehaviour. There has been violence. And in each case it has been perpetrated by the regime and its supporters. More than that, there have been Democrat false flag operations that have been caught.
In Denver, a Democrat office had its plate glass windows smashed out a few months ago. Crude racist and political threats were painted on the walls. The Democrat party immediately released a prepared statement denouncing the TEA Party as the vandals. Unfortunately for them, they did not know that in the middle of the night a police patrol had caught the vandal in the act. He was a known local Leftist who was a paid employee in that office who admitted to acting as a provocateur.
In Missouri a week ago, Democrat Congress-critter Russ Carnahan’s office was vandalized and firebombed. The immediate official and media reaction was that it had to be the Republicans/TEA Party. They caught the guy. He was a writer for a major Democrat blog who had been employed by Carnahan’s office, who Carnahan had refused to pay.
There was a cabbie in NYC a few days ago who was stabbed by a person who first verbally confirmed that he was a Muslim. Hate crime? No, political provocation by violence. The attacker proved to be yet another Democrat supporter and writer.
There have been numerous physical attacks on TEA Party people and other constituents at Democrat Congress-critters’ public meetings and Town Halls over the country. It has all been one sided, with the assailants being SEIU union thugs, or Democrat party workers. There seems to be more than a little difficulty in getting prosecution, even when it is caught on video. In St. Louis; Kenneth Gladney’s assailants were uniformed SEIU [Union t-shirts] and one was a Democrat candidate for mayor. There were multiple videos of the attack and the assailants were easily identifiable. The local Democrat District Attorney declined to prosecute, claiming that the meeting site was the only place in his judicial district where he did not have legal authority to prosecute crime. It has taken a year of additional legal action to force charges to be filed.
For the benefit of Brits here, there is no such place, other than on Federally owned land, and this happened outside in a public area. Imagine that if Brits were allowed to have mass, peaceful, public protests of the actions of Gordon Brown; and if he had been able to call up Union thugs and they were allowed to beat British subjects who were protesting and the Crown Prosecution Service refused to file charges.
We are on the edge of things possibly getting …. really busy. Last election, armed members of the New Black Panther Party blocked white voters from the polls. By order of the Attorney General [and reasonably there is the assumption that it was authorized by the White House; especially since the AG’s office is flagrantly ignoring subpeonas from the US Civil Rights Commission on the subject] all charges were dropped AFTER they pled guilty and were awaiting sentencing. Last night, gunfire shattered the windows of a Republican HQ in Delaware. Saturday, there will be a mass TEA Party rally on the Capitol steps. Will it be allowed to be peacefully conducted? Sunday, we will have a supporting TEA Party rally in my small mountain town. Every time we do this, there are groups of people taking pictures of us with long lenses from across the street. They are not local law enforcement or reporters [I am a retired Peace Officer.] The assumption is that they are regime operatives, and they mean us ill. Since I am a speaker at such events, I suspect I have a file.
And there is the underlying unease as to whether the elections will actually be allowed to take place in November, or if the votes will be honestly counted. With a few exceptions like Bright in Birmingham; most of the Democrats are still arrogantly acting as if they will never have to be accountable to anyone ever again. This is an anomaly. When people start acting totally out of character, contrary to self-preservation, there is usually a nefarious reason.
When violence is brought into the equation by one side only, when one side abuses the legal system to protect the perpetrators from any legal consequences of their actions, and when one side and one side only tries to benefit from violence and the falsified appearance of violence; then the other side cannot rationally make the assumption that self defense is too extreme.
The first prerequisite of a Loyal Opposition under the Law and Constitution, is a Government that obeys the Law and Constitution.
Events are in motion. They may be resolved peacefully, and indeed we all hope so. But if it comes down to a choice between submission or violating a non-aggression principle; choices will be made. Most Americans, hopefully are not into submission.
Subotai Bahadur
Taylor,
Another:
USAF slogan:
“100% success rate – We ain’t left one of ’em up there yet!”
Cats,
Nice to see you back! You are right. The arena is one of ideas. If we really believe what we believe is right then that is where we must fight. If we do not believe our ideas, ably put, can hold the sway then we have lost before we have even drawn a single sword from it’s scabbard and no amount of stooping to their level can gain us any form of victory other than the true disaster of becoming them ourselves.
Nick, I suggest you read Sabotai’s comment first. Neither I, you or Cats are located in the US, and it seems that over there things have already spilled out of the ideas arena.
I don’t think that’s correct, Alisa. Things aren’t that bad over here (yet); we’re still talking (although not necessarily listening). Let’s see where things stand after November 2.
Of course, bear in mind that talk is just violence carried out by other means. (Apologies to the shade of Clausewitz.)
I hope you are right Laird- like I said, I’m not there, so I don’t know.
I don’t agree on the Clausewitz paraphrase though: there is a clear line between words (other than those spoken by politicians) and physical violence – it’s the one that delineates private property.
You’ve never met a New Yorker, have you, Alisa?
I live in Israel, Laird – New Yorkers are not worthy:-)
🙂
According to Glenn Beck the American people have already won – for they have resisted all the provocations of the politicians and the academics and the “mainstream” media and REFUSED to give in to hate and anger.
Instead they have decided to respond with WORK, THRIFT (pay your debts – refuse the path of lies that says “credit spending is good for the economy”) and CARE – not mushy “”caring”, but real care. Tithing their income to help people hit by hard times – and using their own hands to help their neighbour.
“If the left scream obscenities at you, hoping you will respond (for their friends the media to broadcast) then link arms and sing a hymn – for they do not know how to respond to that”.
This is the advice that is being followed (all of it – from tithing to help the poor directly, to responding to screams of hate with songs of love) how effective it will be only time will tell – but certainly the intent is noble.
It is an appeal for another Great Awakening – for people to first transform THEMSELVES (as individuals) before they think they can transform the country politically.