As the government plans to rob my generation of the tattered remains of the paltry inheritance left to us, I wonder whether the earlier generations who currently run our nation really truly want this to happen.
The problem with creating a tyranny for your own benefit is that eventually it comes back to bite you. What'll happen, do you suppose, when my generation or the 'millenial' generation holds the wheels of power as the nation reels under the weight of retired persons? When those most perfect of larcenies, Medicare and Social Security are vanished for those presently paying into the systems merely to care for those who saddled us with the burden in the first place.
Are you really and truly sure you want bureaucrats of the next couple generations in charge of deciding whether you deserve the best health care available? Do you think that those of us whose only inheritance is a mountain of debt and stolen freedoms are going to care for the old folks when they can no longer fend for themselves?
I don't speak for myself in this; I'll never be a bureaucrat of any description, and the amount of power I wield is likely to be minimal at most. However many of those in my generation and younger will wonder why exactly we're so lucky as to have a future of endless drudgery stretching out before us for no reason that that such a large chunk of the so-called 'greatest' generation and the baby boomers are a pack of larcenous faux-socialists. One day every government bureaucrat will be Gen-X or Y. And you're bringing in a regime that'll let them decide whether you get the MRI or somebody more deserving does?
Did you really think this through? Are you so sure that the next generations will simply keep slaving away to keep you going when you slaughtered 20% of us via abortion and voted for your own comforts without any thought for those who come next? Democrats love to talk about children being the future and reason good; who else will be their debt slaves when they sit back to live their golden years out? Perhaps the bureaucrats of the future will deny only Democrats advanced medical procedures; presumably they voted to make us slaves so who cares if they die in the hedgerows?
Of course the 'greatest generation' doesn't have anything to worry about. They'll be dead by that time anyway, having won a world war against totalitarianism only to vote in velvet fascism that does what fascists do, but with sweeter rhetoric. Perhaps the next two generations will happily embrace the debt slavery imposed on them by the selfish generations, but I wouldn't count on it. As the 'me' generation has destroyed all reason for self-sacrifice can they really expect that those of us who have real injuries to resent rather than their ludicrous fantasies will behave with the sort of self-restraint and noble self-sacrifice that they never taught to us?
All the fogies out there ought to think this all the way through. The 'greatest generation' can't be blamed for Social Security per se, though they did vote to expand it to its present unsustainable levels. They are responsible for the rest of the 'great society' larcenies and far too many Baby Boomers have done everything they could to destroy our freedoms. Now as we sit on the edge of yet another robbery, perhaps now is the time for Baby Boomers and earlier generations to wonder whether they truly think that the future generations they have treated with such contempt and disregard are the best persons to entrust with their future health care.
Now that only half of Americans pay taxes, those of us who do pay taxes will not only have to shoulder the burden of earlier generations, but we'll have to pay the share of those who don't pay taxes as well, in addition to paying those who are net welfare recipients the 'refunds' they get from the government. Why keep at it, especially if the petite-fascists raise our taxes even further. How much longer before callousness and even vengefulness set in?
It won't be long before the whole canard about Social Security recipients eating cat food is seen as too good for them. It won't be long before the sob stories about those who receive 'refunds' that are really welfare ring hollow. Human beings are not naturally good as the Hellenistic side of the Enlightenment still believes. Locke is not natural; Hobbes is. Locke requires effort and work to achieve, but Hobbes is always there waiting in the wings. Many cultures used to leave the old and infirm to die in the cold; in some the elderly went willingly, refusing to be a burden on their children and grandchildren.
In America some of us have decided that the young are only good for bearing the weight of the old, and as long as the old have the whip hand, it will remain so. The leading edge of Generation X is now past 40, and it won't be long before all of those mid-level bureaucratic jobs are filled entirely by Gen-X and below. In 10 or 15 years there will be many in congress and at every level of the bureaucracy.
Lots of elderly folks live in closed communities where children and younger people are not allowed, safe little havens where they don't have to be afraid of the young. But then the way they vote makes them right to fear the young.
Simultaneous voting to rob the next generation and giving them the power over the healthcare of future retirees seems excessively optimistic. Society is a fragile thing, and as the left in America leans ever closer to statism, recall what happened to
'useless eaters' in another modern, progressive society not so long ago. If we vote in petite-fascism, the real thing might be close behind, and those who've felt the whip may be shortsighted enough to refuse to help those who wielded the whip. Many might protect their own parents but what about those who aborted or alienated their children? Who will protect them from vengeance?
This is a vision I hope is entirely wrong. I really don't want to live in a culture where the elderly are driven off into the cold because they're no longer any 'use.' I can think of countless things they can and do teach and 'use' has changed greatly since a strong back was the measure of a man. But as human life has become ever less sacred through our 'progressive' movements, it's not that hard to imagine. Those who feel pain on behalf of the helpless fetus won't necessarily be so compassionate about what will be caricatured as a selfish, self-absorbed old fogy who has robbed and enslaved the younger generations of Americans.
This is not something I expect to see emerge my side of the fence however. It'll come from the left. Those who lust for power for its own sake don't really care how they wield power as long as they are able to do it. And if keeping hold of that power means tossing a few thousand elderly 'robbers' to the wolves, I'm sure they won't hesitate.
The 'progressive' movement has always been about making life easier for wealthy old men. Feminism provides them plenty of fresh meat, as does the 'gay' movement. Abortion makes it easy for them to avoid responsibility and unwanted children. Unlimited immigration gives them cheap servants; unions keep schools from teaching upstart kids how to threaten their wealth or businesses from growing beyond their control. All the 'free love' crap from the 60s removes the criticism they might otherwise get for chasing 18-year-old girls (or boys). Now they're working on lowering the age of consent so they can get away with robbing children of innocence without any danger. Time after time, 'liberalism' in its modern form has simply been a way for the old to selfishly exploit the passions of the young.
Now they're looking for additional power over the American people, one more chain to make slavery popular under the guise of 'free' healthcare. They should really think it over. Every camel has a last straw, and slave or peasant revolts are never pleasant. Even when they're crushed plenty of rich old men get killed in the process, and one thing that's different about America is that there are nearly as many guns as people here. Leisure world swinger parties are no protection against a mob of outraged former slaves.
Think it through.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
How Dungeons & Dragons made me a Conservative
I’m not a natural conservative. I’ve got all the makings of a liberal just a couple of micrometers beneath the skin. I have to constantly fight those tendencies that make people liberal, and the reason I do comes from something I learned playing that ultimate measure of True Nerdity: Dungeons & Dragons, also know as D&D.
D&D is the grand-daddy of all Fantasy Role-playing Games. There would be no World of Warcraft or EverQuest without it. To create a character in D & D you need 6 attributes. Three of them are physical, and the other three are mental and/or spiritual: Charisma, Intelligence and Wisdom. This is something I learned when I was 11 years old, so needless to say I was not at that time an imbiber of masses of philosophy. I grew used to thinking of a human character as divided into these three parts without ever really analyzing its origin or even discovering how true or false it might be. As I grew older this changed, and instead of so simply dividing things I now would include several additional areas. That is not relevant to the story, however, because the critical change comes from esteeming intelligence and wisdom as two different things. I had many characters with low intelligence and high wisdom, or vice versa; and while at first this seemed silly over time I came to believe that either was possible. I learned this as I struggled against being a nerd on several occasions, trying not to be what I obviously always was.
I didn’t have too many friends who were obvious nerds; those that were always seemed to be heavy on brains and information but low on savvy and personality, and I tended to drift away from them, perhaps fearing contamination as much as any other reason. It wasn’t something I analyzed at the time. As I grew older I noticed that there is often a striking distance between a large accumulation of knowledge and the ability to apply it in any useful way, and that came to be my definition of the difference between intelligence and wisdom. A person may be highly intelligent, well-informed and well-read, a skilled debater, even have excellent interpersonal skills, and still not have a clue about reality. Such people ruin businesses and lose elections and make just plain bad decisions every day.
The reason why they make bad decisions was something that interested me personally, because I’m well-informed and well-read, pretty handy at getting people to see things my way, and have personal skills that are downright amazing (for a nerd that is). It’s one of the benefits of being a nerd; manners are an afterthought but people forgive you. So far it would seem I’ve got everything going for me in the intelligence department. So how is it that I make bad decision just like others of my sort?
The answer is probably obvious to many: arrogance. In politicians it could even be called hubris. It’s easy to be arrogant when you so easily bend the opinions of others to your own, when everyone you know just expects that you’ll know something worthwhile about EVERYTHING. It’s not only easy, it’s natural. It’s inherent to all human beings, but it’s easiest, almost inescapable, for the intellectual.
The problem is that quick wits, reams of information, and a sparkling personality don’t translate into actual wisdom. A dimwit hick with the personality of a goat may accumulate more wisdom in the course of his life than any intellectual, because unlike the intellectual, he’s not immune to learning one important lesson: error.
During the last presidential election lots of people were talking about Bush’s hubris because he wouldn’t admit he was wrong about Iraq. I found it humorous because the very people accusing him are guilty of their own accusation in so many areas. The hubris of the left is its defining characteristic and central belief. The ‘progressive’ believes that regardless of history, regardless of human nature, regardless of evidence, he can make the world into whatever he desires because of his own great and powerful intellect. That whatever came before is always going to be worse than what’ll come next because he’s going to condescend to guide us into the bright future that only his astonishing mind can conceive.
This is a conceit I share. I feel it yapping at my heels constantly, and on some occasions it irks me to the point of anger that all the dolts just won’t LISTEN! This is of course not confined to the left; after all I’m no leftist. We all feel it to a greater or lesser degree. Listen to any talk show you want, read any blog, left or right, and some variation of ‘wake up America’ will be repeated ad nauseum.
There is a difference, and that’s where D&D came into play. When I was a teenager I thought it would be fun to make a character that matched me. I tried very hard to come up with accurate stats based on both the game itself and Dragon Magazine articles. I had the hardest time with Wisdom and Charisma, while Intelligence was easy because it matches IQ. Charisma I just estimated, because it’s hard stuff to pin down, but I decided to put some work in on Wisdom. It was really the first time I tried to understand what wisdom actually is, and the more I learned about it the more I realized that despite a fairly high IQ and Advanced Placement classes and the like, I really didn’t have much wisdom at all—if any. I decided that wisdom is applied understanding. Philosophy is ‘love of wisdom,’ but usually amounts to either a pursuit of wisdom or an arrogation of wisdom. I say wisdom is the understanding of a particular thing, and really knowing its place and use in the world.
Some will notice that this is not unlike the Stoic definition of wisdom, and reason good. Marcus Aurelius wrote: “this thing, what is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its substance and material? And what is its causal nature? And what is it doing in the world? And how long does it subsist?” There are a lot of things in the world. You can take forever to learn about just one. Finally understanding the whole of anything is a pebble of wisdom, and it takes a lot of pebbles to make a mountain.
This offends the arrogance of the intellectual. Having imbibed as much knowledge as necessary, in other words enough to awe the yokels, anything beyond is just waste. This is promoted by our education system, which puffs up the honor society students and Ivy League graduates to insupportable estimations of their own superiority, and instead of learning their own insignificance as reality descends, they turn leftward. Their arrogance is not misplaced; the system is simply against them. They congregate in places where everyone agrees, dismiss all contrary opinion as bunk, and fume that the world doesn’t give them proper respect.
All this I feel in my heart-of-hearts, but instead of accepting that it’s all so very true, I struggle against it. D&D gave me the first pebble: I didn’t have any wisdom. Adam Smith gave me a second pebble: an understanding of my own insignificance. Even kings and presidents can’t order back the tide, order the planets into alignment, or force people to be excellent to each other.
Those who can’t understand that grotesquely obvious truth are what we now call liberals or progressives, which last century they called fascists and socialists. The rhetorical and tactical differences are irrelevant; those who reckon themselves wise enough to reorder all of society according to the dictates of their overwhelming intellects are just as likely to be rotten bounders as any commissar or reichsmarschal. I’ve got another nugget of wisdom to be gleaned from the world of Fantasy, this one from The Lord of the Rings: “…were you ten times as wise you would have no right to rule me and mine for your own profit, as you desired…”
The central belief of American conservatism, in contrast, could be summed up by a quote from Santayana: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Not very nice of me to condense Burke and Smith and Chesterfield and all the rest into one statement, is it? I still believe it’s apt, because American conservatives are wild radicals by world historical standards, and that small dose of caution is all that keeps them from the hubristic excesses of the torrid romanticists of the left. I suppose it could be called the difference between arrogance and hubris, because overweening pride is common to both conservatives as liberals--I'm proof positive of that. It's a tiny but crucial difference.
I never had a liberal phase; I was a cautious and skeptical federalist conservative from the age of 15. I don’t buy libertarian pie-in-the-sky promises any quicker than ‘progressive’ ones. All thanks to Dungeons & Dragons.
D&D is the grand-daddy of all Fantasy Role-playing Games. There would be no World of Warcraft or EverQuest without it. To create a character in D & D you need 6 attributes. Three of them are physical, and the other three are mental and/or spiritual: Charisma, Intelligence and Wisdom. This is something I learned when I was 11 years old, so needless to say I was not at that time an imbiber of masses of philosophy. I grew used to thinking of a human character as divided into these three parts without ever really analyzing its origin or even discovering how true or false it might be. As I grew older this changed, and instead of so simply dividing things I now would include several additional areas. That is not relevant to the story, however, because the critical change comes from esteeming intelligence and wisdom as two different things. I had many characters with low intelligence and high wisdom, or vice versa; and while at first this seemed silly over time I came to believe that either was possible. I learned this as I struggled against being a nerd on several occasions, trying not to be what I obviously always was.
I didn’t have too many friends who were obvious nerds; those that were always seemed to be heavy on brains and information but low on savvy and personality, and I tended to drift away from them, perhaps fearing contamination as much as any other reason. It wasn’t something I analyzed at the time. As I grew older I noticed that there is often a striking distance between a large accumulation of knowledge and the ability to apply it in any useful way, and that came to be my definition of the difference between intelligence and wisdom. A person may be highly intelligent, well-informed and well-read, a skilled debater, even have excellent interpersonal skills, and still not have a clue about reality. Such people ruin businesses and lose elections and make just plain bad decisions every day.
The reason why they make bad decisions was something that interested me personally, because I’m well-informed and well-read, pretty handy at getting people to see things my way, and have personal skills that are downright amazing (for a nerd that is). It’s one of the benefits of being a nerd; manners are an afterthought but people forgive you. So far it would seem I’ve got everything going for me in the intelligence department. So how is it that I make bad decision just like others of my sort?
The answer is probably obvious to many: arrogance. In politicians it could even be called hubris. It’s easy to be arrogant when you so easily bend the opinions of others to your own, when everyone you know just expects that you’ll know something worthwhile about EVERYTHING. It’s not only easy, it’s natural. It’s inherent to all human beings, but it’s easiest, almost inescapable, for the intellectual.
The problem is that quick wits, reams of information, and a sparkling personality don’t translate into actual wisdom. A dimwit hick with the personality of a goat may accumulate more wisdom in the course of his life than any intellectual, because unlike the intellectual, he’s not immune to learning one important lesson: error.
During the last presidential election lots of people were talking about Bush’s hubris because he wouldn’t admit he was wrong about Iraq. I found it humorous because the very people accusing him are guilty of their own accusation in so many areas. The hubris of the left is its defining characteristic and central belief. The ‘progressive’ believes that regardless of history, regardless of human nature, regardless of evidence, he can make the world into whatever he desires because of his own great and powerful intellect. That whatever came before is always going to be worse than what’ll come next because he’s going to condescend to guide us into the bright future that only his astonishing mind can conceive.
This is a conceit I share. I feel it yapping at my heels constantly, and on some occasions it irks me to the point of anger that all the dolts just won’t LISTEN! This is of course not confined to the left; after all I’m no leftist. We all feel it to a greater or lesser degree. Listen to any talk show you want, read any blog, left or right, and some variation of ‘wake up America’ will be repeated ad nauseum.
There is a difference, and that’s where D&D came into play. When I was a teenager I thought it would be fun to make a character that matched me. I tried very hard to come up with accurate stats based on both the game itself and Dragon Magazine articles. I had the hardest time with Wisdom and Charisma, while Intelligence was easy because it matches IQ. Charisma I just estimated, because it’s hard stuff to pin down, but I decided to put some work in on Wisdom. It was really the first time I tried to understand what wisdom actually is, and the more I learned about it the more I realized that despite a fairly high IQ and Advanced Placement classes and the like, I really didn’t have much wisdom at all—if any. I decided that wisdom is applied understanding. Philosophy is ‘love of wisdom,’ but usually amounts to either a pursuit of wisdom or an arrogation of wisdom. I say wisdom is the understanding of a particular thing, and really knowing its place and use in the world.
Some will notice that this is not unlike the Stoic definition of wisdom, and reason good. Marcus Aurelius wrote: “this thing, what is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its substance and material? And what is its causal nature? And what is it doing in the world? And how long does it subsist?” There are a lot of things in the world. You can take forever to learn about just one. Finally understanding the whole of anything is a pebble of wisdom, and it takes a lot of pebbles to make a mountain.
This offends the arrogance of the intellectual. Having imbibed as much knowledge as necessary, in other words enough to awe the yokels, anything beyond is just waste. This is promoted by our education system, which puffs up the honor society students and Ivy League graduates to insupportable estimations of their own superiority, and instead of learning their own insignificance as reality descends, they turn leftward. Their arrogance is not misplaced; the system is simply against them. They congregate in places where everyone agrees, dismiss all contrary opinion as bunk, and fume that the world doesn’t give them proper respect.
All this I feel in my heart-of-hearts, but instead of accepting that it’s all so very true, I struggle against it. D&D gave me the first pebble: I didn’t have any wisdom. Adam Smith gave me a second pebble: an understanding of my own insignificance. Even kings and presidents can’t order back the tide, order the planets into alignment, or force people to be excellent to each other.
Those who can’t understand that grotesquely obvious truth are what we now call liberals or progressives, which last century they called fascists and socialists. The rhetorical and tactical differences are irrelevant; those who reckon themselves wise enough to reorder all of society according to the dictates of their overwhelming intellects are just as likely to be rotten bounders as any commissar or reichsmarschal. I’ve got another nugget of wisdom to be gleaned from the world of Fantasy, this one from The Lord of the Rings: “…were you ten times as wise you would have no right to rule me and mine for your own profit, as you desired…”
The central belief of American conservatism, in contrast, could be summed up by a quote from Santayana: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Not very nice of me to condense Burke and Smith and Chesterfield and all the rest into one statement, is it? I still believe it’s apt, because American conservatives are wild radicals by world historical standards, and that small dose of caution is all that keeps them from the hubristic excesses of the torrid romanticists of the left. I suppose it could be called the difference between arrogance and hubris, because overweening pride is common to both conservatives as liberals--I'm proof positive of that. It's a tiny but crucial difference.
I never had a liberal phase; I was a cautious and skeptical federalist conservative from the age of 15. I don’t buy libertarian pie-in-the-sky promises any quicker than ‘progressive’ ones. All thanks to Dungeons & Dragons.
Monday, January 05, 2009
The real problem with the conservative movement
Ever since Ronald Reagan left us, many conservatives have been casting about for some new plan for conservatism to come back into its own. There's an excellent reason why that hasn't happened, and it isn't because of tactical mistakes or intra-movement bickering per se. The problem is that the overarching reason that brought the conservative coalition together has been neglected, in some cases even abandoned.
Ronald Reagan brought hope back to many Americans, a point with which everyone can agree. The question is: why? The core principle that united Ronald Reagan with the rest of us is also the core principle of America.
Freedom.
The problem is that liberty is something taken so much for granted in America that it seems almost trite to mention it, and glib appeals to freedom as a defining reason for anything tend to draw cynical smirks rather than enthusiasm.
Despite those disadvantages it is nevertheless the road back to both popularity and power. Freedom may not be much thought of historically speaking, and has been denigrated or denied by most religions, philosophies, mythologies and political movements throughout all time. However we're not talking about convincing Punics not to sacrifice their daughters to Bel in a vain attempt to keep the Romans at bay, but convincing Americans that the freedoms they enjoy are worth preserving.
After all it is the conservative movement. We're not here to conserve traditions, or family values, or fiscal responsibility, or even the Constitution as its written, each for its own sake. Those things are important elements, but the reason for all of them, for the entire American system of government, is to conserve and protect liberty. We have many different organs dedicated to small parts of the whole, but each of those organs ought to explicitly serve the greater reason for their existence. The why behind the how is what we need to bring up, again and again. Our arguments should all be about why a particular tradition protects freedom, how family values promote individual liberty, how fiscal sanity keeps us from bondage, how a federalist diffusion of power and a strong standing army and navy keep us free. Why do we want strict constructionists on the Supreme Court? To protect our freedoms, also known as rights. Why do we oppose gay marriage? We want to protect our religious freedom, which is almost the raison d'être of America.
This is the thread that pulls every piece of the conservative movement together, and yet it barely receives lip service from pundits and politicians alike.
John McCain spoke of freedom movingly on many occasions, but it wasn't and isn't enough. Every one of his attacks on Obama should've been about how the policy in question limits our freedom. They dragged out the dreaded word 'socialism' towards the end of the race. What good did it do? It wasn't coupled with the reason to oppose socialism, which is that socialism, even the petite-fascist version of the Democrats, destroys freedom. Every socialist of every camp, whether National Socialist, Bolshevik, Frankfurt School or First Internationalist, is a tyrant just aching for the chance to tell everybody else what to do. Just look at the supposed environmentalists right now. Have they come up with an alternative that they're trying to sell us so we can save the Earth? Nope. Have they made any attempt to invest in battery technology so that we can make the biggest change imaginable and conserve energy instead of the current use-it-or-lose-it system? No way. Every proposal they've made comes down to forcing other people to do what they say. I don't believe most of them care about the environment much, if at all. The priority is to dictate the behavior of others, even if they cause forests to burn down...as they have.
And to be a little more specific, there are three major components to freedom, and those of us who claim to want to preserve liberty need to use them in the argument as well. Freedom is knowledge, authority and responsibility. One has to know the choice exists and the options, must have the ability and the right to make the choice, and is responsible for the consequences. If any of those components vanishes so does freedom. The easiest part to attack is knowledge; ignorance is intrinsic slavery, and that is the area our opponents have mastered. They've controlled the educational establishment for many decades, and yet we wonder why people become ever more ignorant of American ideals.
It is also important to remember why Reagan believed in freedom; for all that some reckon it an eternal principle of the Universe, the political concept has its roots in something a lot closer to home. A true conservative believes that the people can handle freedom. Reagan believed in the American People, that those who have been brought up to be free can manage their own lives and don't need to be ordered about. The left in American talks a lot about how much they care for 'the people,' but it's the sort of thing you'd hear in the Roman Senate or the pre-revolutionary Versailles. They fear the mob, and see 'the masses' as a herd rather than individuals. They hold the contradictory beliefs that the idiotic mob can be easily led by their great wisdom and education, but is also a terrifying beast that could break free at any moment if some fool puts the idea in their head. It's not for nothing that liberals are labeled elitist these days.
People are not cogs in a machine; they are not a virus out to destroy the earth, nor are they faceless drones that labor mindlessly for their betters. Every individual deserves freedom, the right to goof up beyond redemption or excel beyond present dreams, or labor along in the middle, doing a little good here and a little bad there, as each individual elects. This is the central right of all rights; none of the others matter or even exist if we are unable to choose for ourselves.
No matter what the argument is about, it should include reasons why something strengthens or weakens freedom, and which of the three main elements it attacks or defends. This is not hard, and I'm sure the petite-fascists who call themselves democrats for reasons of camouflage will attempt to steal it as they've stolen other labels and arguments over the years. But consistent use of freedom as a cause for everything we support, built into well-reasoned arguments, can have a powerful effect, and most importantly, it will poke holes in the ignorance that has been so carefully cultivated and maintained by the supposed champions of the little guy. Anything that breaks down that wall of ignorance is worth the effort, and it is also the best way to preserve those things that are worth preserving over not just decades but centuries.
Ronald Reagan brought hope back to many Americans, a point with which everyone can agree. The question is: why? The core principle that united Ronald Reagan with the rest of us is also the core principle of America.
Freedom.
The problem is that liberty is something taken so much for granted in America that it seems almost trite to mention it, and glib appeals to freedom as a defining reason for anything tend to draw cynical smirks rather than enthusiasm.
Despite those disadvantages it is nevertheless the road back to both popularity and power. Freedom may not be much thought of historically speaking, and has been denigrated or denied by most religions, philosophies, mythologies and political movements throughout all time. However we're not talking about convincing Punics not to sacrifice their daughters to Bel in a vain attempt to keep the Romans at bay, but convincing Americans that the freedoms they enjoy are worth preserving.
After all it is the conservative movement. We're not here to conserve traditions, or family values, or fiscal responsibility, or even the Constitution as its written, each for its own sake. Those things are important elements, but the reason for all of them, for the entire American system of government, is to conserve and protect liberty. We have many different organs dedicated to small parts of the whole, but each of those organs ought to explicitly serve the greater reason for their existence. The why behind the how is what we need to bring up, again and again. Our arguments should all be about why a particular tradition protects freedom, how family values promote individual liberty, how fiscal sanity keeps us from bondage, how a federalist diffusion of power and a strong standing army and navy keep us free. Why do we want strict constructionists on the Supreme Court? To protect our freedoms, also known as rights. Why do we oppose gay marriage? We want to protect our religious freedom, which is almost the raison d'être of America.
This is the thread that pulls every piece of the conservative movement together, and yet it barely receives lip service from pundits and politicians alike.
John McCain spoke of freedom movingly on many occasions, but it wasn't and isn't enough. Every one of his attacks on Obama should've been about how the policy in question limits our freedom. They dragged out the dreaded word 'socialism' towards the end of the race. What good did it do? It wasn't coupled with the reason to oppose socialism, which is that socialism, even the petite-fascist version of the Democrats, destroys freedom. Every socialist of every camp, whether National Socialist, Bolshevik, Frankfurt School or First Internationalist, is a tyrant just aching for the chance to tell everybody else what to do. Just look at the supposed environmentalists right now. Have they come up with an alternative that they're trying to sell us so we can save the Earth? Nope. Have they made any attempt to invest in battery technology so that we can make the biggest change imaginable and conserve energy instead of the current use-it-or-lose-it system? No way. Every proposal they've made comes down to forcing other people to do what they say. I don't believe most of them care about the environment much, if at all. The priority is to dictate the behavior of others, even if they cause forests to burn down...as they have.
And to be a little more specific, there are three major components to freedom, and those of us who claim to want to preserve liberty need to use them in the argument as well. Freedom is knowledge, authority and responsibility. One has to know the choice exists and the options, must have the ability and the right to make the choice, and is responsible for the consequences. If any of those components vanishes so does freedom. The easiest part to attack is knowledge; ignorance is intrinsic slavery, and that is the area our opponents have mastered. They've controlled the educational establishment for many decades, and yet we wonder why people become ever more ignorant of American ideals.
It is also important to remember why Reagan believed in freedom; for all that some reckon it an eternal principle of the Universe, the political concept has its roots in something a lot closer to home. A true conservative believes that the people can handle freedom. Reagan believed in the American People, that those who have been brought up to be free can manage their own lives and don't need to be ordered about. The left in American talks a lot about how much they care for 'the people,' but it's the sort of thing you'd hear in the Roman Senate or the pre-revolutionary Versailles. They fear the mob, and see 'the masses' as a herd rather than individuals. They hold the contradictory beliefs that the idiotic mob can be easily led by their great wisdom and education, but is also a terrifying beast that could break free at any moment if some fool puts the idea in their head. It's not for nothing that liberals are labeled elitist these days.
People are not cogs in a machine; they are not a virus out to destroy the earth, nor are they faceless drones that labor mindlessly for their betters. Every individual deserves freedom, the right to goof up beyond redemption or excel beyond present dreams, or labor along in the middle, doing a little good here and a little bad there, as each individual elects. This is the central right of all rights; none of the others matter or even exist if we are unable to choose for ourselves.
No matter what the argument is about, it should include reasons why something strengthens or weakens freedom, and which of the three main elements it attacks or defends. This is not hard, and I'm sure the petite-fascists who call themselves democrats for reasons of camouflage will attempt to steal it as they've stolen other labels and arguments over the years. But consistent use of freedom as a cause for everything we support, built into well-reasoned arguments, can have a powerful effect, and most importantly, it will poke holes in the ignorance that has been so carefully cultivated and maintained by the supposed champions of the little guy. Anything that breaks down that wall of ignorance is worth the effort, and it is also the best way to preserve those things that are worth preserving over not just decades but centuries.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Thanks to the H8ters
I wrote in my last that it was hard to maintain pity for those who spew venom in hatred in your face. It's true, but with a little effort pity can displace resentment once again.
After additional contemplation I've decided that we Mormons should be grateful for the H8ters who have decided to target us. Very grateful! They've done us an enormous service.
What service? What have they done except increase our standing among those of other faiths? Those who have become sickened by the half-hearted semi-Christian denominations they've belonged to for years will hear about Mormons standing up for 'traditional' beliefs. They'll hear their pastor trying to be as mealy-mouthed as possible, trying to balance on a rickety fence and they'll remember that we Mormons aren't anywhere near the fence.
What's more, they aren't going to be hearing about Mormons gunning down the protestors or even getting into fights with them. I'm very proud of how well behaved my brothers and sisters have been when faced by the hateful cruelty of these protestors 'for' tolerance. They remember that a good number of us turned the other cheek and didn't return evil for evil.
And then they'll get an earful from their pastor about how Mormons aren't really Christians at all—despite the fact that they've seen nothing but Christian behavior from Mormons in this situation.
The fact is we want everybody to be happy, in the truest sense of the word, and nobody can be happy while defying God. It's possible to have fun, to have a sort of surface happiness that never touches the depths where the soul truly lives.
In the end this whole apparent mess will bring more souls to Christ. How can that be a bad thing? Some of the Saints will suffer under this weird form of persecution, but they suffer for Christ, which generally is a blessing, not a curse. Their suffering will be a catalyst to bring the good news to more lost sheep, and that makes even much greater suffering worthwhile.
It's been something of a worry over the last few years that the growth of the Church has slowed somewhat. That slowing may now be over with as people who might never have opened the door for our missionaries suddenly change their minds. Blessings in disguised are never really disguised, we just won't see them in the proper light.
So a hearty thanks to those pitiable souls who languish under the slavery of closed minds. May a chink of light blink through, because no matter how much you hate Him, God still loves you and wants you back. He really does know what He's about, and His plans tend to work.
After additional contemplation I've decided that we Mormons should be grateful for the H8ters who have decided to target us. Very grateful! They've done us an enormous service.
What service? What have they done except increase our standing among those of other faiths? Those who have become sickened by the half-hearted semi-Christian denominations they've belonged to for years will hear about Mormons standing up for 'traditional' beliefs. They'll hear their pastor trying to be as mealy-mouthed as possible, trying to balance on a rickety fence and they'll remember that we Mormons aren't anywhere near the fence.
What's more, they aren't going to be hearing about Mormons gunning down the protestors or even getting into fights with them. I'm very proud of how well behaved my brothers and sisters have been when faced by the hateful cruelty of these protestors 'for' tolerance. They remember that a good number of us turned the other cheek and didn't return evil for evil.
And then they'll get an earful from their pastor about how Mormons aren't really Christians at all—despite the fact that they've seen nothing but Christian behavior from Mormons in this situation.
The fact is we want everybody to be happy, in the truest sense of the word, and nobody can be happy while defying God. It's possible to have fun, to have a sort of surface happiness that never touches the depths where the soul truly lives.
In the end this whole apparent mess will bring more souls to Christ. How can that be a bad thing? Some of the Saints will suffer under this weird form of persecution, but they suffer for Christ, which generally is a blessing, not a curse. Their suffering will be a catalyst to bring the good news to more lost sheep, and that makes even much greater suffering worthwhile.
It's been something of a worry over the last few years that the growth of the Church has slowed somewhat. That slowing may now be over with as people who might never have opened the door for our missionaries suddenly change their minds. Blessings in disguised are never really disguised, we just won't see them in the proper light.
So a hearty thanks to those pitiable souls who languish under the slavery of closed minds. May a chink of light blink through, because no matter how much you hate Him, God still loves you and wants you back. He really does know what He's about, and His plans tend to work.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Is anyone surprised at the GLBT reaction?
A lot of Mormons are wondering why the protests against our Temples by the 'gay marriage' advocates aren't being reported. I can tell you why: it's not news. It's news to nobody that the gay movement is bigoted, hateful and intolerant of all opposition to their dogmas. We are not now to learn that they will treat anyone who disagrees with all the venom they can muster. Remember Dr. Laura. There's a reason to be gay, and it's not a lifestyle choice and it's got nothing to do with genetics. To become a GLBT activist is to declare your hatred of the society that raised you and to do anything and everything in your power to destroy it.
This may have its roots in the fact that more than 80% of gays/lesbians were molested or raped as children or adolescents. Society didn't protect them as it should've, and what's more a lot of the people who committed such crimes often continue to maintain a facade of respectability that reasonably angers those who have peeked behind the mask. Add to that the constant barrage of negative descriptions of bourgeois society (aka 'America') in many media and colleges and you've got a recipe that spits out cruel-minded bigots who despise their mother culture and constantly struggle to weaken it.
Gay is such an apt word for this movement. Gaiety is the least and most shallow of all forms of happiness; it is skin deep at best. Gaiety lasts as long as the fun lasts, and vanishes swiftly like the wispy stuff it is. Whoever decided it was the perfect word for homosexuals got it exactly right. We see this every time they're thwarted; the smiles vanish and out come the fangs.
I feel a great deal of pity for those who have chosen (or have been tricked into) this half-life. But it grows ever harder to act on that pity. The constant attempts to force the majority to conform to the views of their tiny minority arouse disgust rather than compassion. As they try to wreak vengeance on we Mormons for daring to disagree with them they demonstrate with perfect clarity what will happen if they ever get the whip hand; they'll wear out the leather. They long to be rulers over the rest of us, and dictate to all of us what we're allowed to believe. What's more, if they ever got what they claim to desire they'd be no happier, because it would change nothing. They would be just as miserable, and the fabulous smiles would still be a veneer over the self-hate underneath.
History has plenty of examples of a minority attempting to tyrannize a majority. Sometimes it works out for them for a while, but eventually they lose power and often their lives long with it. In this case, they will never be able to win, because we Americans simply will not allow a tiny minority to force us all to change religions. If they ever get their way because some self-deluded petty tyrant of a judge declares for them (again), they'll soon discover that things could get much worse. Bigotry is only admired by bigots, and those who might've ignored the gay community forever will suddenly become ardent foes when faced with the loss of their religious rights.
And that is really what the GLBT movement is about: destroying religion. America is a very religious country, and lots of hypocrites use the mask of religion to do vile and evil things, and much of the GLBT community has first-hand experience in this area. But the unreasonable and bigoted attitude they take from their experiences does no good for anyone. If one priest is a pedophiliac, it does not mean all are. Even if a majority of priests were pedophiliacs, the rest still wouldn't be, and there's nothing like a majority. To condemn religion and religious belief en masse because of the actions of a few is purest bigotry and intolerance, and is the hallmark of the GLBT movement. Their demand for the rest of us to tolerate them has already been met; there are GLBT persons in every section of society and they hasn't been a single pogrom against them. No concentration camps, no ghettos, no sumptuary laws. Obviously tolerance is not enough, so now they're demanding that we embrace their religious beliefs and do as we're bid like good little children. This reaction is the reaction of any would-be tyrant when the proles don't do as they're told.
It may be news to the GLBT movement, and the 'News' media, and liberals in general that there are no proles in America. There are no common masses, in fact, no masses at all. Free people tend to do what they think is right, and resent mightily when a pack of wealthy elitists try to force them to change their beliefs. The fact that these particular wealthy elitists also have (for the most part) a range of pitiable personal histories is what's gotten them this far. But pity dries up quick when it's repaid with increased bigotry and vitriol. Attempting to persecute Mormons for refusing to change religions may be a bridge too far for the GLBT movement. Even Evangelicals who've been persecuting us as best they could for decades are now coming to our defense. That's what happens when a common enemy rears its head, and with their unsubtle prejudice and narrow-minded intolerance these pitiable souls are making themselves the enemies of everyone who believes in freedom of conscience. What a pity.
This may have its roots in the fact that more than 80% of gays/lesbians were molested or raped as children or adolescents. Society didn't protect them as it should've, and what's more a lot of the people who committed such crimes often continue to maintain a facade of respectability that reasonably angers those who have peeked behind the mask. Add to that the constant barrage of negative descriptions of bourgeois society (aka 'America') in many media and colleges and you've got a recipe that spits out cruel-minded bigots who despise their mother culture and constantly struggle to weaken it.
Gay is such an apt word for this movement. Gaiety is the least and most shallow of all forms of happiness; it is skin deep at best. Gaiety lasts as long as the fun lasts, and vanishes swiftly like the wispy stuff it is. Whoever decided it was the perfect word for homosexuals got it exactly right. We see this every time they're thwarted; the smiles vanish and out come the fangs.
I feel a great deal of pity for those who have chosen (or have been tricked into) this half-life. But it grows ever harder to act on that pity. The constant attempts to force the majority to conform to the views of their tiny minority arouse disgust rather than compassion. As they try to wreak vengeance on we Mormons for daring to disagree with them they demonstrate with perfect clarity what will happen if they ever get the whip hand; they'll wear out the leather. They long to be rulers over the rest of us, and dictate to all of us what we're allowed to believe. What's more, if they ever got what they claim to desire they'd be no happier, because it would change nothing. They would be just as miserable, and the fabulous smiles would still be a veneer over the self-hate underneath.
History has plenty of examples of a minority attempting to tyrannize a majority. Sometimes it works out for them for a while, but eventually they lose power and often their lives long with it. In this case, they will never be able to win, because we Americans simply will not allow a tiny minority to force us all to change religions. If they ever get their way because some self-deluded petty tyrant of a judge declares for them (again), they'll soon discover that things could get much worse. Bigotry is only admired by bigots, and those who might've ignored the gay community forever will suddenly become ardent foes when faced with the loss of their religious rights.
And that is really what the GLBT movement is about: destroying religion. America is a very religious country, and lots of hypocrites use the mask of religion to do vile and evil things, and much of the GLBT community has first-hand experience in this area. But the unreasonable and bigoted attitude they take from their experiences does no good for anyone. If one priest is a pedophiliac, it does not mean all are. Even if a majority of priests were pedophiliacs, the rest still wouldn't be, and there's nothing like a majority. To condemn religion and religious belief en masse because of the actions of a few is purest bigotry and intolerance, and is the hallmark of the GLBT movement. Their demand for the rest of us to tolerate them has already been met; there are GLBT persons in every section of society and they hasn't been a single pogrom against them. No concentration camps, no ghettos, no sumptuary laws. Obviously tolerance is not enough, so now they're demanding that we embrace their religious beliefs and do as we're bid like good little children. This reaction is the reaction of any would-be tyrant when the proles don't do as they're told.
It may be news to the GLBT movement, and the 'News' media, and liberals in general that there are no proles in America. There are no common masses, in fact, no masses at all. Free people tend to do what they think is right, and resent mightily when a pack of wealthy elitists try to force them to change their beliefs. The fact that these particular wealthy elitists also have (for the most part) a range of pitiable personal histories is what's gotten them this far. But pity dries up quick when it's repaid with increased bigotry and vitriol. Attempting to persecute Mormons for refusing to change religions may be a bridge too far for the GLBT movement. Even Evangelicals who've been persecuting us as best they could for decades are now coming to our defense. That's what happens when a common enemy rears its head, and with their unsubtle prejudice and narrow-minded intolerance these pitiable souls are making themselves the enemies of everyone who believes in freedom of conscience. What a pity.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Unmasked at last?
o how long before the latest Democratic party mask comes off?
They've been wearing masks all through history, from pretending they cared about 'the common man' when they were really only trying to protect slavery, to pretending to care about 'American traditions' when they were really only trying to keep black folks 'in their place.' Now they pretend to care about minorities while doing everything they can to reduce their numbers via abortions, they pretend to be the party of progress while trying to drag us all back to the middle ages, and they pretend to be the party of the little guys while lining their own pockets with money from the big guys.
Obama presented the most fake and apparently convincing mask of all: he pretended to be a fiscally conservative 'Blue Dog' Democrat, slightly to the right in a center-right country. He's got an awful lot of people fooled, despite the evidence of his skimpy resume.
So when does the mask come off?
It already has with his choice of Chief-of-Staff. He's going to go as far left as possible, and there's really nobody to stop him but a weak minority in the Senate and a 4/1/4 Supreme Court. I believe the Democrats think they're finally going to get back their antebellum powers at last.
Rush Limbaugh at this very moment is saying almost exactly that. We lost, they fooled enough people, and they're going to do just about anything they feel like doing. He admits to being fooled by the American people; he didn't think the sort of vile venom the left has heaped on Pres. Bush would be rewarded.
Of course it hasn't been; Obama is simply the most brazen liar ever to run for President, though like Clinton he's only an effective liar because the Press carries so much water for him. Without that cover he'd never have gotten past the first round of primaries.
There's one thing that Obama and the Democrats and even Rush are forgetting about. And that is the core of Democratic beliefs. Democrats have two mutually contradictory beliefs that are at the center of everything else. First: the People are a bunch of useless idiotic drones who need government help to drool properly. Second: the People are racist violent bigots who are terrifyingly likely to take up arms at the slightest provocation.
It's true that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will totally ignore phone calls to their offices telling them not to try and nationalize medicine or the car industries or whatever else they try to take over. But they will listen when tens of thousands of angry calls start pouring in, when even peaceful protests in numbers show up in Washington. They'll try to bring back the good old days, raising taxes, absorbing State responsibilities, ordering dumb rubes about like the fools they are, and quite frankly the people won't take it. A good chunk of Democrats in House and Senate are conservative Democrats—which means they weren't elected by a pack of socialists. The news media declared it ridiculous to call Obama/Biden Marxist (though everybody with half a brain knows perfectly well they're not Marxists, they're Fascists). But it makes people believe they're really mainstream, not representative of the 3% who make up the true leftist cadre in America. The Big Lie still works, and we have proof of it right before our eyes.
The comfort is this fact. Not only do Democrats (and the harder left, the harder they believe) think that Americans are a gun-crazy mob, nothing in the world terrifies them more. They are truly afraid of the American public, as they've demonstrated all their lives by living behind bars and gates and keeping the People at arms length except when they have to sully themselves by campaigning to win the support of the mob.
The reason for this has its roots in a belief that goes back to the Enlightenment: that people are naturally good. Democrats in general, but leftist Democrats in particular, hate the bourgeois nation that is the United States, and desperately want to have an actual proletariat to boss around instead of all these uppity middle class types, you know, like in Europe. They dream of their new Intellectual Feudalism where they'll get to be grand seigneurs, deserved of course because they're the smartest and best. A true aristocracy such as Plato would've envisioned if he'd had the wit.
And therein lies hope. All three of these beliefs are false. There is and has never been a proletariat anywhere in the world. The American People are not a simmering lynch mob waiting for some tiny provocation. And human beings are not naturally good.
Russia spent 70 years rebuilding their country on a pack of lies, and will probably never recover. China ignored reality for 40-odd years before they finally turned fascist, but their nifty 'third way' between socialism and capitalism is turning them into capitalists, because capitalism could just be called 'reality' and done with it. Fascism is far more powerful than ordinary socialism because it's less focused on perfection, and it may take a long time to win China out of their Communism-in-name-only version of Fascism, but you can only buck reality so long. Cuba and North Korea are doddering along still pretending to believe in Communism but if it worked they'd be paradises by now instead of slave camps.
America is not going to bend over for Fascism, and that's really what the Democrats preach today: "everything for the State, and nothing without the State." It's one area where I agree with Pat Buchanan, of very few; a backlash is imminent. Not because of what has happened, but because of what's about to happen. It may well prove violent, though I hope it won't, nor do I think there will be any need for violence. Liberals like to consider themselves the brave vanguard of society, but they in truth are about as cowardly as your average corporation. They despise they People, true; but they fear us more.
Of course there's one thing that will let them win, which is despair. That is what turned Russia and China and Cambodia and others into slave-nations; people gave up and turned tail. That's what we need to fear, not the fascists who think they've taken over America.
And maybe finally we'll be able to quit pretending that the Democrats care about America and want what's best for her. I'll believe it the moment I see it, but except for a few hours after 9/11 I've never seen any evidence that any prominent Democrat cares in the least about America as America, except of course those in disgrace like Lieberman. They are not patriots for America as she is, but only for what she might be. And since she'll never be what they want, which is perfect, she'll never have their love. But for the nonce we'll keep pretending they support the troops while they do everything they can to get them killed, and love America while they try to ruin her, and care about the poor while they kill them off via abortion.
Right up until the mask finally comes off.
They've been wearing masks all through history, from pretending they cared about 'the common man' when they were really only trying to protect slavery, to pretending to care about 'American traditions' when they were really only trying to keep black folks 'in their place.' Now they pretend to care about minorities while doing everything they can to reduce their numbers via abortions, they pretend to be the party of progress while trying to drag us all back to the middle ages, and they pretend to be the party of the little guys while lining their own pockets with money from the big guys.
Obama presented the most fake and apparently convincing mask of all: he pretended to be a fiscally conservative 'Blue Dog' Democrat, slightly to the right in a center-right country. He's got an awful lot of people fooled, despite the evidence of his skimpy resume.
So when does the mask come off?
It already has with his choice of Chief-of-Staff. He's going to go as far left as possible, and there's really nobody to stop him but a weak minority in the Senate and a 4/1/4 Supreme Court. I believe the Democrats think they're finally going to get back their antebellum powers at last.
Rush Limbaugh at this very moment is saying almost exactly that. We lost, they fooled enough people, and they're going to do just about anything they feel like doing. He admits to being fooled by the American people; he didn't think the sort of vile venom the left has heaped on Pres. Bush would be rewarded.
Of course it hasn't been; Obama is simply the most brazen liar ever to run for President, though like Clinton he's only an effective liar because the Press carries so much water for him. Without that cover he'd never have gotten past the first round of primaries.
There's one thing that Obama and the Democrats and even Rush are forgetting about. And that is the core of Democratic beliefs. Democrats have two mutually contradictory beliefs that are at the center of everything else. First: the People are a bunch of useless idiotic drones who need government help to drool properly. Second: the People are racist violent bigots who are terrifyingly likely to take up arms at the slightest provocation.
It's true that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will totally ignore phone calls to their offices telling them not to try and nationalize medicine or the car industries or whatever else they try to take over. But they will listen when tens of thousands of angry calls start pouring in, when even peaceful protests in numbers show up in Washington. They'll try to bring back the good old days, raising taxes, absorbing State responsibilities, ordering dumb rubes about like the fools they are, and quite frankly the people won't take it. A good chunk of Democrats in House and Senate are conservative Democrats—which means they weren't elected by a pack of socialists. The news media declared it ridiculous to call Obama/Biden Marxist (though everybody with half a brain knows perfectly well they're not Marxists, they're Fascists). But it makes people believe they're really mainstream, not representative of the 3% who make up the true leftist cadre in America. The Big Lie still works, and we have proof of it right before our eyes.
The comfort is this fact. Not only do Democrats (and the harder left, the harder they believe) think that Americans are a gun-crazy mob, nothing in the world terrifies them more. They are truly afraid of the American public, as they've demonstrated all their lives by living behind bars and gates and keeping the People at arms length except when they have to sully themselves by campaigning to win the support of the mob.
The reason for this has its roots in a belief that goes back to the Enlightenment: that people are naturally good. Democrats in general, but leftist Democrats in particular, hate the bourgeois nation that is the United States, and desperately want to have an actual proletariat to boss around instead of all these uppity middle class types, you know, like in Europe. They dream of their new Intellectual Feudalism where they'll get to be grand seigneurs, deserved of course because they're the smartest and best. A true aristocracy such as Plato would've envisioned if he'd had the wit.
And therein lies hope. All three of these beliefs are false. There is and has never been a proletariat anywhere in the world. The American People are not a simmering lynch mob waiting for some tiny provocation. And human beings are not naturally good.
Russia spent 70 years rebuilding their country on a pack of lies, and will probably never recover. China ignored reality for 40-odd years before they finally turned fascist, but their nifty 'third way' between socialism and capitalism is turning them into capitalists, because capitalism could just be called 'reality' and done with it. Fascism is far more powerful than ordinary socialism because it's less focused on perfection, and it may take a long time to win China out of their Communism-in-name-only version of Fascism, but you can only buck reality so long. Cuba and North Korea are doddering along still pretending to believe in Communism but if it worked they'd be paradises by now instead of slave camps.
America is not going to bend over for Fascism, and that's really what the Democrats preach today: "everything for the State, and nothing without the State." It's one area where I agree with Pat Buchanan, of very few; a backlash is imminent. Not because of what has happened, but because of what's about to happen. It may well prove violent, though I hope it won't, nor do I think there will be any need for violence. Liberals like to consider themselves the brave vanguard of society, but they in truth are about as cowardly as your average corporation. They despise they People, true; but they fear us more.
Of course there's one thing that will let them win, which is despair. That is what turned Russia and China and Cambodia and others into slave-nations; people gave up and turned tail. That's what we need to fear, not the fascists who think they've taken over America.
And maybe finally we'll be able to quit pretending that the Democrats care about America and want what's best for her. I'll believe it the moment I see it, but except for a few hours after 9/11 I've never seen any evidence that any prominent Democrat cares in the least about America as America, except of course those in disgrace like Lieberman. They are not patriots for America as she is, but only for what she might be. And since she'll never be what they want, which is perfect, she'll never have their love. But for the nonce we'll keep pretending they support the troops while they do everything they can to get them killed, and love America while they try to ruin her, and care about the poor while they kill them off via abortion.
Right up until the mask finally comes off.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Audacity of Despair
How does one go about becoming an infant? I often wonder who all these despairing people are that can't do anything for themselves and wait around for somebody to come along and give them hope. How do you join this freemasonry of despair? Do they have secret handshakes and code words? Do they sit around in encounter groups telling each other why there's no possibility of any good ever coming unless some man-on-a-horse comes along and makes it all better? How do you become a hopeless helpless infant?
Naturally I have no idea because I have no desire to be one. I'd much rather be a responsible adult, even though it's far more painful and difficult. I don't want to be ignorant because ignorance isn't bliss. I don't want to be a slave, even a fairly comfortable slave of a kindly mistress (see Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of). What's more, I'm willing to hold myself responsible for my own deeds for good an ill.
I just lost about $5k from my 401(k). The people managing my account are evil vile greedy slimes, right? I should go shoot them today! Well except...I'm perfectly aware that the primary motivating factor of corporate America, and even more so in that segment of it that revolves around Wall Street, is not greed. It is cowardice. Making more money is very well, but what they're really all about is not losing any money.
This is the same cowardice that afflicts the upper classes in almost any existential conflict. They've got the most to lose so they're less willing to risk. Call it the natural conservatism of the wealthy, which is in no way connected with the philosophical conservatism of libertarians or federalists or movement Republicans. The innate natural conservatism of corporations is inherently logical and self-consistent; but it often turns upon itself because fear so easily leads to panic.
Corporatism is like Athenian Democracy; braggadocio in victory and terror in defeat. The crowd stampedes from flush to broke for no reason whatsoever. What would cure the present market? Nothing more than a bit of courage. Same goes for the housing industry. Whoever has the courage to start buying up properties, buying stocks, and lending money, will make the most profit in the long run, because everybody else is waiting for somebody to follow. And they will.
Human beings are not herd animals, however we resemble them in many ways, and this is one. The middle of the crowd is always the safest place to be.
Once upon a time I was at a dance in Tennessee where there was exactly one African-American girl in attendance. I overheard two other girls talking about how sad it was that nobody would dance with her, so I went right over and asked her to dance. After that several other guys danced with her--she never sat down the rest of the evening. She saved the last dance for me and we had a great time. I didn't do it out of pity, it never occurred to me that I was doing anything noble. I was just irritated. But even though my motive wasn't necessarily perfect and pure it was enough. All it takes is for somebody to take a step, and then others of good will come right along.
It might seem that I'm making an argument for the man-on-the-horse after all. Far from it. I didn't force anybody else to do anything. I didn't take charge or order anyone about. I just showed the way.
I'd love to do so now in the market, but the pitiful amount of money I can throw at it wouldn't make any difference. However what I can do, I will do; I'm leaving my 401(k) alone. It'll grow or shrink with the market. About 3% of my 401(k) is invested in the company I work for; it stays too. I'll rise or fall with America herself; if we really do have a financial meltdown America may never recover. You never know what might happen next. I'm betting on America. I refuse despair, I refuse to be an infant; I do what I do out of my own conviction and and faith. It's not much; I have so little socked away in my 401(k) that it would raise only sneers if I mentioned the amount.
Nevertheless, that is the difference between a free man and a wannabe slave. I am responsible for what I have, however large or small, and I risk it or hide it under the mattress according to my own will. It doesn't take great courage to bet on America, and it didn't take great courage to break the ice at the dance long ago. It only took a very little.
That's all it'll take to save the markets, both Wall Street and Real Estate and all the dependent industries jeopardized by them. A modicum of courage.
This is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. We'd better start acting like it.
Naturally I have no idea because I have no desire to be one. I'd much rather be a responsible adult, even though it's far more painful and difficult. I don't want to be ignorant because ignorance isn't bliss. I don't want to be a slave, even a fairly comfortable slave of a kindly mistress (see Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of). What's more, I'm willing to hold myself responsible for my own deeds for good an ill.
I just lost about $5k from my 401(k). The people managing my account are evil vile greedy slimes, right? I should go shoot them today! Well except...I'm perfectly aware that the primary motivating factor of corporate America, and even more so in that segment of it that revolves around Wall Street, is not greed. It is cowardice. Making more money is very well, but what they're really all about is not losing any money.
This is the same cowardice that afflicts the upper classes in almost any existential conflict. They've got the most to lose so they're less willing to risk. Call it the natural conservatism of the wealthy, which is in no way connected with the philosophical conservatism of libertarians or federalists or movement Republicans. The innate natural conservatism of corporations is inherently logical and self-consistent; but it often turns upon itself because fear so easily leads to panic.
Corporatism is like Athenian Democracy; braggadocio in victory and terror in defeat. The crowd stampedes from flush to broke for no reason whatsoever. What would cure the present market? Nothing more than a bit of courage. Same goes for the housing industry. Whoever has the courage to start buying up properties, buying stocks, and lending money, will make the most profit in the long run, because everybody else is waiting for somebody to follow. And they will.
Human beings are not herd animals, however we resemble them in many ways, and this is one. The middle of the crowd is always the safest place to be.
Once upon a time I was at a dance in Tennessee where there was exactly one African-American girl in attendance. I overheard two other girls talking about how sad it was that nobody would dance with her, so I went right over and asked her to dance. After that several other guys danced with her--she never sat down the rest of the evening. She saved the last dance for me and we had a great time. I didn't do it out of pity, it never occurred to me that I was doing anything noble. I was just irritated. But even though my motive wasn't necessarily perfect and pure it was enough. All it takes is for somebody to take a step, and then others of good will come right along.
It might seem that I'm making an argument for the man-on-the-horse after all. Far from it. I didn't force anybody else to do anything. I didn't take charge or order anyone about. I just showed the way.
I'd love to do so now in the market, but the pitiful amount of money I can throw at it wouldn't make any difference. However what I can do, I will do; I'm leaving my 401(k) alone. It'll grow or shrink with the market. About 3% of my 401(k) is invested in the company I work for; it stays too. I'll rise or fall with America herself; if we really do have a financial meltdown America may never recover. You never know what might happen next. I'm betting on America. I refuse despair, I refuse to be an infant; I do what I do out of my own conviction and and faith. It's not much; I have so little socked away in my 401(k) that it would raise only sneers if I mentioned the amount.
Nevertheless, that is the difference between a free man and a wannabe slave. I am responsible for what I have, however large or small, and I risk it or hide it under the mattress according to my own will. It doesn't take great courage to bet on America, and it didn't take great courage to break the ice at the dance long ago. It only took a very little.
That's all it'll take to save the markets, both Wall Street and Real Estate and all the dependent industries jeopardized by them. A modicum of courage.
This is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. We'd better start acting like it.
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