Get Off the Bandwagon
At my age it is best to resist provocation and maintain an unruffled, grandfatherly demeanour. I try to follow the advice that the novelist John Esten Cooke recorded in his diary while serving with Confederate cavalry in the Former Unpleasantness:
How to make manhood and age happy? Here it is. Avoid passion, that is, not feeling (have as much as possible) but wearing, tearing passion. Be calm, steady, moderate. Make the most of simple pleasures, and small enjoyments. . . . Be regular—be calm: be a philosopher. If anybody says “The Yankees are charging us!!!” with all the horrours in his voice, ask “Where did you say they were?” Get in the saddle but keep cool.
But one provocation I can’t resist, one with which I have been assaulted dozens of upon dozens of times in the past seven years. That is people whining that they voted for George W. Bush and now feel deceived and disappointed that he turned out not to be “conservative.” Some of the dupes even confess to voting for him the second time. My friends, the only deception going on here was self-deception.
Not only has Chronicles for the last quarter century at least been full of perceptive and prophetic warnings against trusting the Republicans. Who George Bush is was evident long before 2000. It was known that he had purged all the real conservatives from the party in Texas and replaced them with principleless toadies. It was known that. he was an enthusiast for de facto open borders and affirmative action. Not a single conservative was permitted to speak at the convention which nominated him, which was not a political convention but a substance- challenged infomercial. One of the main planks of his platform was the federal takeover and regulation of education (in the interest of business), than which nothing could possibly be less “conservative.” It was well-established that the Bushes entertain no connection between what they say to get elected and what they actually do when they get power; and that they had never given anything more than lip service on the social issues.
I could go on piling up the evidence till Christmas if it was worth the time. Anybody who thought in 2000 that Bush was “a conservative” was either not paying attention or was badly self-deluded.
Let me tell you why people continue to vote Republican against every evidence of truth and reason.
Tocqueville, Solzhenitsyn, and numerous other observers, foreign and domestic, have observed that the predominant public behaviour of Americans is conformity. This conformity reflects a deep-seated desire to be seen as “respectable.” It was long ago implanted deeply in the psyche of large numbers of Americans that to vote Republican is respectable. It identifies one as not lower class or unassimilated foreign, as not to be mistaken for those who vote for the party of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,” labour unions, creeping socialism, and disarmament. (The South used to be immune from this, having learned the hard way what the Republican party really represents—state capitalism and political patronage—but our resistance has grown weaker with the collapse of historical memory among much of the current generation.)
My friends, you claim to have learned your lesson. But I can already hear the Giuliani bandwagon in the distance, calling out to you to jump aboard so we “conservatives” can avert the eminent peril of a Democratic take-over. If you succumb to this temptation, you lose, whether your candidate wins or not. In either case you have given away your principles for nothing.. Stay off the bandwagon. You may be lonely, but you will have some integrity. That may even be useful in another day.
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The end of Democracy is a terrible thing, to have to live through it is terrifying.
Procrustes
Conservatives vote for the Republicans for one reason: only the Democrats or Republicans will win and because of some quirk in human nature most people desire to vote for the winning side. In other words it is very important to most people to support the winner (or at least whom they think will be the winner). Why this is I don't understand. In my mind I realize that there will be well over 100,000,000 people voting in the next presidential election. Given this number the significance of my individual vote is a big fat 0 (ZERO). Therefore, I will vote for whomever I please and I don't care if my candidate has a snowball's chance in hell.
Well, said, Dr. Wilson. Should we form a new political party and put the "[Clyde] Wilson Plan" into action: take the US House?
You are dead on Clyde. The perception of respectability is the draw and the opposition party is the hook.
The result is that the typical GOP voter appears to be nothing more than a battered spouse or a heroin junkie. Now if there were only a way to cure these poor souls of their addiction to what ails them.
If a Republican wins, the GOP will be held responsible for the disaster that Greenspan told Tim Russert last week that he is retiring in order to escape. As good as it is to see this happen to the GOP, is this really any different from how Nixon and Ford fizzled out?
If a Democrat wins (and I seem to be the only one alive who thinks John Edwards is a shoe-in), then get ready for '90s-era Clinton-bashing, times two. Some of those bygone highlights: 1) Pat Buchanan's numbers soared (along with subscriptions to things like Chronicles and Southern Partisan), and 2) the League of the South was created.
At least here in S.C., the state GOP breathed a huge sigh of relief when Bush was elected. They were afraid that, with a Gore administration, the League might actually get what it wanted.
The Republicans may be a disaster but the Democrats won't stand much contemplation either. Never mind Rum, Romanism and Rebellion (a little of which never hurt anybody) - they were also the party Of FDR, Theodore Bilbo and Huey Long!
" having learned the hard way what the Republican party really represents—state capitalism and political patronage—but our resistance has grown weaker with the collapse of historical memory among much of the current generation.)"
So true ." Honest Abe " spent a great portion of his first weeks in office attempting to manage his managers and the consequences of this "political patronage" --- gone wild !!. It remains the same party today. As Mr. Bush remarked after General Garner thanked the President for appointing him as the first American Czar in Iraq ( and then abruptly replacing him with Paul Bremer ): "Hell , I didn't select you or fire you, Rumsfeld did all that. "
"Rum, Romanism and Rebellion"
That era has long past, and as Dr. Fleming has reminded us so eloquently, they are now the party "of sex, socialism and sedition."
As for respectability, yes, there are some tattered remains of the WASPy snotty upper class that still have good taste, but by and large, "respectability" in modern American society basically amounts to being the sort of person whose words and actions, if publicized, would garner at least nominal approval from most mainstream media outlet, including CNN, the New York Times/Washington Post, and MTV.
I frankly am not sure I want to be respectable in modern American society. But then I'm just a dirty descendant of alcoholics, Catholics and union workers.
"My friends, you claim to have learned your lesson. But I can already hear the Giuliani bandwagon in the distance, calling out to you to jump aboard so we “conservatives” can avert the eminent peril of a Democratic take-over. If you succumb to this temptation, you lose, whether your candidate wins or not. In either case you have given away your principles for nothing.. Stay off the bandwagon. You may be lonely, but you will have some integrity. That may even be useful in another day." -C.W.
Amen. Stick with our lizard girl Hillary. Remember it's not 'brain surgery' or 'rocket science' at that level, the way it's rigged today. It's merely this OR that. The republicans screw you surreptitiously like the snake in the garden for being you...Hillary is just Eve, after the Fall. Stick with the lizard girl, rather than jumping on Satan's bandwagon. Sure Satan is just God's pal in the royal court in a kind of divine sting operation...but then if you're on his bandwagon i.e. on old Sparky's - you're burned, you're stung. On the other hand, the lizard girl is merely navigating her way as best she can through our/& her - fallen world. It's less glamorous to accept it as it is, but stick with her. Don't be sthilly.
And like I've said, *with* her - when she screws us we'll know she knows we know (it's almost like family then.) With Satan he's just laughing at you histerically (while answering his cell phone at the NRA) all the way to the bank. Don't descend any lower than Democratic. Although with Republicans (i.e. aka also neo-cons) in the game, Lower is possible. Don't go there, or at least say goodbye. Go there this time, and say goodbye to your soul my friends. And that's FINAL. Once burned twice learned. If not you're damned even if only for sheer stupidity. Amen.
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Two issues.
First, another sound, if depressing, piece from Prof. Wilson. It amazed me that so many serious conservatives of my acquaintance - not to mention my own mother! - voted in 2000 for the idiot, simply because they couldn't stomach the idea of a continuation of the Clinton regime in the form of Al Gore. This was despite my constant agitation and pleading on behalf of a Buchanan vote (granted, I wasn't thrilled with Pat's frankly PC choice of the honorable, but ludicrously unqualified, black female conservative, Ezola Foster, as his VP running mate, but Pat is still a true conservative, and a protest vote for him could have sent a serious message to the GOP hierarchy).
There is something fundamentally ridiculous about the "American conservative mind". I think it has to do with the excessive Christian influence on rightist politics in this country. For some reason, even real conservatives are seemingly incapable of ever viewing politics from a 'conflict' rather than 'consensus' perspective. Conservatives are basically better people than leftists (as whites are in general morally superior to non-whites, especially blacks), and therefore consistently seek policies which are seen to benefit the whole community or nation, within the bounds of a universal Christian righteousness or natural law. Leftists are just out for their own selfish and often weird ends, justice or civility or the national interest be damned.
The result of this moral disparity is that the Left always negotiates from a position of brutal strength, while the good Christian "sheople", never wishing to assert their own self-interests unless those interests can somehow be justified in light of a universalist ethics, and especially when they conflict with other groups' (even illegitimate) interests, predictably get sheared.
That is the political story of modern America. The meek, salt of the earth types not only do not inherit the nation, they are increasingly dispossessed even of their own homesteads.
Because of these attitudes and tendencies, conservatives invariably want someone 'positive' instead of sober, 'optimistic' instead of truthful. Conservatives in this regard are a bit reminiscent of the old-fashioned (and now largely extinct) British "stiff upper lip" phenomenon (which itself probably grew out of some psychological combination of the Christian emphasis on the moral value of suffering, and the Roman association of stoicism with virility).
"Let's not grumble too much", "mustn't mention the darkies", "none of that now", "stiff upper lip, old boy", "grin and bear it", "remember the example of Him Who suffered on the cross", "we are all sinners", "who would cast the first stone" ... and all the other ideological manure the purpose of which is to condition Western Man to accept with equanimity his accelerating social, political, and economic dispossession, and eventual biological extinction.
Second, and to illustrate these points, a question to Mr. Van Oosbree about his comment above: why did you feel the need to include Sen. Bilbo, a patriot of race and heritage who did all he could to fight the impending racial mongrelization of America, in a list with the liberal FDR, and the populist scoundrel Huey Long?
"For some *reason*, even real conservatives are seemingly incapable of ever viewing politics from a ‘conflict’ rather than ‘consensus’ perspective." -Leon Haller
That's an honest and accurate insight. That's all politics is = conflict. And once at the top it's literally merely binary choices. I.e. this OR that...& not fine distinctions or rocket science. Either the fed treasury or tax base in the state-capitalistic system, (NOT free-market laissez faire globalism-that's just the red flag to wave in front of the bull's eyes i.e. in front of the dyed in the wool ideological 'conservatives' in make believe land), is being looted 'legally' to subsidize the shipping of industry and jobs overseas. OR it's being looted 'legally' to subsidize (benefiting inevitably the same parties - that's politics - to the victor go the spoils) to rebuild america and keep the jobs at home. That's reality at the top, today, GIVEN the context i.e. state-capitalism. Why does it take "conservatives" almost 100 years to figure out the very system in place from the fed reserve and the irs down? Denial? But in the CONFLICT (of politics) the victors know who the "conservatives" are...and which red flags to wave for them to keep them at bay. They even can morph 'into them' and manipulate them as neocons, obviously.
It goes to the fact that (i.e. the human factor) people are Conceptual creatures and yet don't want to accept it or see it...But here's the rub - that very 'unconsciousness' even if willful - while it is necessary to these souls not to see it, does on ONE level make them as you suggest better people (yes by and large) than their -I don't want to say betters or superiors- but those who in effect win and are in that regard their worldly Lords. ALSO these 'higher' souls who have lost in this context or the beautiful losers...also may yet NEED [epigenetically] to believe as they do and have every right to, since it is a human Fact of life that we ALL believe one thing or another all the time throughout the day...& so they NEED to believe as they do for their own health...i.e. that's what 'epigenetically' means.
While conversely the victors also NEED to believe as they do for the same or similar epigenetic reasons...since most are of a DIFFERENT religion. In this different religion the Semitic Facade i.e. the construct behind which one hides or is protected while effecting one's own ends without [sans] the need for violence or force but rather in essence via fraud in the Machiavellian sense is considered a GOOD thing. The belief is that since human creatures are coneptual, if they Can be deceived to avoid manipulating them by violence per se or force then they SHOULD be deceived. I am semitic but I am Not of that religion, which makes me an unusual hybrid. I am thus not anti-Semitic ... rather I am anti-SemiticFacade. In other words in my religion THAT is NOT a Good thing...but a bad thing, especially if done to people who are gracious hosts and of another religion. I could be wrong in my view as to whether or not the Facade is a good thing or not, when used to deceive to achieve one's ends, rather than just for one example as the Romans did always by use of outright force alone.
But I have always said that the values in the West are TOO liberal in tolerating such subversive religions be they of Islam or Judaism within the realm of the Christian. It's really apples and oranges...they're NOT the same and how can you support your own civilization when it is constantly subverted, inevitably...by those who just as sincerely hold opposing views? It's ridiculous to permit this, I am sorry to have to say. Forgive me. I offend all equally. I've always said it's the fate of the double agent...executed twice once by each side to make sure it stuck.
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Ive never been deluded into voting for a Bush. I voted for Pat in 2000 and Kerry last time because of Iraq. The Republicans gained the majority in '94 because so many working and lower middle class whites were hoodwinked by the GOP and fed up with the Democrats. Its always been my impression that the GOP's gains in modern times were racial, especially in the south. Am I wrong?
In looking over the current crop of political weeds and unintended comedians that have sprung up this "election season", the first question that pops into my mind is this: is THIS the best they've got to show us ?
When I was growing up, I was taught that an election was for the purpose of having two or more candidates for office present the things they stood for, and to have the voters choose between them. (Thus demonstrating the naivete of the average schoolboy and/or the blatant hypocrisy of his teachers, but that's another story.) Supposedly, there were actual differences in how each candidate would address the major issues of the day.
This, however, presupposes that the major issues of the day (as opposed to the simply well-publicized ones) are actually going to be publicly acknowledged as such. I simply do not see that happening here. We know what the important long-term issues facing the American Empire and its subjects are, to wit:
1) an out-of-control "entitlement" system (geared towards subsidizing the elderly in unearned leisure) that is essentially operating on autopilot;
2) a taxation and economic-incentive system that punishes traditional (one-earner) families and favors the consumption of material goods over reproduction by those same families;
3) a media-industrial complex that directly aggresses against Human and humane values in favor of the superficial and the "celebrity";
4) a formal primary-education system that is more College of Emotional Engineering than instrument for transmitting knowledge and heritage;
5) uncontrolled Mexican and Canadian borders; and, finally
6) a pressure-group based legal system of black and Hispanic race and ethnic privilege that operates in the name of "civil rights" and "Human equality" while failing to provide safety in the streets;
I have heard precisely NONE of the candidates, "major" or "minor" attempt to significantly address the Empire's deficiencies in any of these areas. Even Mr. Paul and Mr. Tancredo (admittedly the best of this rather pathetic lot) fail to do more than touch upon even one of them. All eyes appear to have been focussed on the Imperial adventure in the sands of Mesopotamia.
One wonders if the upcoming election is for President of the United States or Captain of the Titanic.
In the long run, it really doesn't matter which one of these mountebanks winds up in the Oval Office. The long-term issues facing the American Empire are simply not going to be solved. They are not even going to be paid much attention to. They are just going to be evaded until a real, existential crisis comes, and then the American commoner is going to have to simply endure the consequences of this ignorance.
I hope I'm wrong. But I'll bet I'm not.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
As someone who campaigned for Pat Buchanan in 2000, only to be told repeatedly that voting for him was a "wasted" vote, I can really appreciate Dr. Wilson's point. And if I had a nickel for everytime I heard someone express regret for having voted for Bush -those who didn't want to waste their vote - well...it wouldn't matter, as nickels aren't worth much these days, the Bush inflation being what it is.
Interesting observations, all, but most of them presuppose that a presidential election actually involves the casting and counting of votes. It has been patently obvious for decades that voting has no bearing on elections. The candidates are generally indistiguishable and chosen far in advance of any nominating conventions or primaries and their campaigns aren't even worthy of being noticed as such.
The most obvious giveaway to the whole charade has always been the fact that the national news media reports the "winners" state by state within minutes of the polls closing.
Presidential elections are so drearily predictable that anyone who bothers to check in once a year or so on the nonsense being spouted by the mainstream media's pundits can predict who both parties will have as candidates and even which candidate will win.
Barring the accidental death of either or both, the two final candidates will be Guiliani and Clinton. Hillary Clinton will be the next president. That is so glaringly obvious to me that I'm surprised so many people even bother to discuss the matter as though there's the slightest uncertainty.
The two parties merged into one a long time ago and the pretense of opposition has been publicly abandoned.
Jim Korman:
This country was not set up as a democracy. How many centuries do people like you need to figure this out?
# 10 has done my work for me by his serving as a prosecutor’s chief exhibit and a plaintiff’s hostile witness, though apparently having done so unaware of his Miranda Rights. Christians, Catholics in particular, would be fools were they to think that they would have friends on the “Far Right”. Pius XI was no such fool. I ask the editor to reprint Mit brennender Sorge. Or allow me to provide the link.
I applaud #13 for his considerable wisdom. His list of the real issues is quite correct, his response one for the files. Among his wise observations is that no ethnic group or race ought to have whatsoever any special privileges awarded or special burdens imposed. I add to his examples of ignoring the issues that of the 1932 election. With unemployment close to 20%, the chief issue was Prohibition. Remember, for the Reds its always Birmingham 1962; for the Social Democrats its always 1929; for the Whigs its always Munich 1938; for the Browns its always Munich and Rome 1922.
To return to the article, and to extend Clyde Wilson’s thesis, not only the Whigs, but all the following are enough blameworthy so as to be unsupportable: the Browns, the Reds, the Greens, the Theocons, the Social Democrats. The Paleolibertarians seem to be offering some solid argument, yet even they at depth seem to be just Bentham recycled. That leaves the Jeffersonians, the Burkean-Kirkans, and Catholic Social Teaching as aides to action. I ask again: What is to be done?
I have some cousins, good folks, who emancipated themselves from the clutches of Louisiana and escaped to Texas in the mid-1960's during their early teenage years. (Many of us Anglo-Saxon and Scotch-Irish here in Louisiana are the descendants of ancestors from the Carolinas whose money, energy, health and life ran out before they could reach their goal of "going to Texas." We still speak of that distant cousin who is "out it Texas somewhere" or some distant relative who is "back in Carolina," and its been over 100 years.)
Well, to the point which has something to do with Dr. Wilson's initial post. At family reunions and graveyard workings, we'd meet our Texas cousins once or twice a year. I recall their beginning to gush about the Bush family, and I recall with equal clarity that my Daddy, now deceased, labeled the cousins "fools," declaring that the Bush clan was naught but Yankee carpetbaggers. When George I first ran for President, my daddy warned me, as he had often done, to beware of a man with a silly grin.
Apparently, New Englanders have had designs on Texas since late colonial days. They finally got well into Texas during Reconstruction, and a new wave of them, including the Bush faction, have come down to be parasites on the oil and associated wealth.
Texans have indeed been duped with this conformity and respectability facade - falling for it and wanting it. Baptists in Texas and Louisiana - I cite them because I am one of them and know them - have been particularly susceptible. Alumni magazine are plastered with people with silly grins standing next to George I or his wife as they assist Baptist colleges with fund raisers. I find this quaintly odd since the House of Bush is not Baptist, but, again, as Dr. Wilson has so well stated, the hill-country Baptist seem to have left their first love, the Christ, and gone whoring after another god - conformity and respectability which have become personified in the person of the grinning Bushes and their Republican Party. If this evil thrall can be broken, I do not know. It would seem that far too many have a fatal attraction thereunto.
I was the only kid to vote for Pat Buchanan in my middle school's mock election in 2000, a fact I'm quite proud of.
As irritating and overblown as posts like #10 may be, Mr. Cundiff, even the abberrant can sometimes tell us a great deal about ourselves, as Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale illustrated. There are few people willing to stand up for black and white, right and wrong, anymore. However...
"for the Browns its always Munich and Rome 1922"
We would do well not to insult Fascists and Falangists with a "brown" label. As for Jeffersonians, let's not lionize the Deists, now.
Great post, Robert M. Peters. I can relate to the point you make. Most of my surviving relatives are old Southern Baptists in rural north Texas. Formerly staunch Democrats, most of them are now Bush supporters. And they support him becuase "he's one of us". When its pointed out to them that Bush is in fact no Born-Again Christian, but a member of a liberal Episcopalian church in Washington D.C., they don't believe it.
I attribute this confusion to the fact that throughout his presidency, the media has repeatedly presented Bush as a fundamentalist christian. Today's reporters are apparently so ignorant of Christianity they don't know an Episcopalian from a fundamentalist.
#20: I take as worthy advice Mr. Moses' regarding #10. And it's worth arguing that the Falangists might not have been Brown, and I'll leave that up to others to tell me. As for the March on Rome not being Brown ..... ?
Jefferson might have been in the Egyptian Night about High and Ghostly Matters. He was a better political philosopher. Most of what I know about Tom the Great is from himself, and Clyde Wilson. My first post had the purport of asking, Do we need another Jeffersonians Party? and, How do we bring it about?
Dr. Wilson,
As much as I fear Hillary, and I do fear her, she is mitigated by her sidekick, Silly Bill. Nothing, however, mitigates Giuliani. He is of the stuff that a true Führer is made of.
While history never really repeats itself, there are parallels and similarities. I hold that we are today where Weimar was in its last days. Before the Nazis ever came to power, the Reichstag had become a corpse animated by the engine of bureacracy. The chancellor ruled by edict (executive order and signing statements). I assert that the Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act) has already been passed in the form of the Patriot Act and scores of other "obscure" bills in which things like "financial institution" have been redefined to include "hotels" and commas have been moved in order to therewith shift more power to the central government.
Rudy already has his SS. It is Blackwater! They are already harden and used to working outside the law. Their uniforms are even the correct color. In essence, they are the Freikorps, hardened by fighting in the post-WWI East, from which Hitler drew much of the SS. Rudy's SA would be any of the entitled groups which he could bring into the streets. (Hillary could do this too.) We have seen, based on the slightest provication - real, alleged or imagined - how the masses can be brought into the streets across the nation in the socalled "Jena 6" affair.
If I may mix my metaphors and take us to Transylvania, it is midnight and we have been conned and coerced into taking the Cross, the Blood and even the garlic from the threshold and the vampire is kicking in the door. Now where did I put that wooden stake?
"As for the March on Rome not being Brown ….. ?"
The Kingdom of Italy was an anticlerical crock that gave new lease to the mafia, and decent people can at least appreciate the Lateran Treaty and the Via della Conciliazione. By "Browns" I assume you refer to political eugenicists, and that is an entirely unfair charge to lay against the Fascists. Mussolini became pretty stupid, mind you, but he was only slightly evil.
Re: Jeffersonian politics, I admit to being less than an expert in the era, but what I know about early American anti-aristocracy and the yearning for "liberty" as an end in itself is a bit unsettling: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." I do believe this included a monarch whose sin was to impose a few taxes in exchange for ridding his subjects of French military raiders and their native allies (not that he was the real king of England, anyway, but still...).
Mr. Moses, you really should know much, much more about American history before you speculate so widely. I think also you should begin to understand that history concerns the life of real people and not abstract categories to be moved around, labeled, and pigeonholed at pleasure.
I suppose I cannot refute Dr. Wilson in that I am not qualified to express an educated opinion on broad parts of American history. Nor would I even dream of disagreeing "that history concerns the life of real people," although some categorizing and labeling is necessary in order to sort things out, unless we become nihilists. If I am too abstract in my dealings with American history, it is because, as I have conceded, I know less than I ought to to presume to comment intelligently, and I will stand corrected in anything I have said that is wrong.
Here is what I do know. First, when I was in school working toward a history degree, American history was difficult for me, not the least because few scholars were willing to take a critical eye at pre-Cold War America (except those admittedly many who felt that she didn't do enough for her black, indigenous and proletariat populations).
Second, I know far more (but still not enough) about the history of Europe, and whenever I see the fruits of American influence on anything--past or present--in Europe, the results rarely please me. For example, the French Revolution, republicanism, consumerism, separation of Church and state, etc., not to mention art and architecture (though the influence here is quite reciprocal). And the effects of all this on the lives and minds of real Europeans is quite appalling.
I have heard it argued by some historians that such disaster--along with the tragic story of Latin America--is a consequence of misunderstanding and misappropriating American movements and patterns to foreign situations. But--and I repeat, I will have to learn much more before I could say this for sure--I wish to ask, if it is so easily and so quickly misappropriated, and if its intellectual and cultural relatives have wrought so much degradation on both sides of the Atlantic, can the American Revolution and its architects ever be truly exonerated?
"I was the only kid to vote for Pat Buchanan in my middle school’s mock election in 2000, a fact I’m quite proud of." -Daniel
And well you should be.
But really snap out of it, and don't vote. It only 'encourages' (in their charade) those who have vanquished you via your fathers, and sadly theirs. Ed Roberts (above) has the correct perspective. Now your 'voting' in Their elections only encourages 'them.'
There is only you and your group - have one? ... And, them - they have a group. It is ONLY conflict. Do you understand? There's no blue ribbons... we're all NOT on the same side. There's NO such a thing in this context as Leon Haller is discovering above in his - as 'consensus.' Now all that is - is chicken broth poured onto rocks...to no good outcome whatsoever... no chickens no crops... just really a lot of chicken s--t metaphorically speaking.
So go For what you want (under God) which among other things means knowing your limitations or you have one more, and don't let anyone or anything stand in the way unnecessarily. That's 'it'. And find your Group. There are really no Actual individuals per se... just individuality and the ability to enjoy it thanks to the group. That's [i.e. group] happening anyway...but finding your own group focuses you.
And keep studying until you get your PhD and remain a student of everything (especially your chosen field of expertise) for life. You sound young, I guess I've over-reacted in giving you advice.
It's fun to be a reactionary... there's always inevitably the reactionary imperative. HAHAHAHA ... funny universe.
Here's the answer: http://www.ronpaul2008.com/
Ron Paul? Who was Ron Paul?
Daniel,
I was the only kid who voted for Nader in my 6th grade mock election (I liked his stance on trade, and I had never heard of Buchanan.)
Bush ended up winning by one vote and the class Democrats blamed me for spoiling the election.
Talk about foreshadowing.
Aldebanetc., I just don't understand what you guys think you're proving with your "don't vote" advice. If it's a protest thing ("I'll show them, by golly!"), do you really think that those who are seeking to oppress you will be somehow shamed by the fact or disappointed that you refused to vote? On the contrary. They'll be delighted.
The real solution to all this hand-wringing isn't that difficult: stop trying to outsmart the devil and just do your conscience. You have a civic duty to vote, like it or not. (I cannot imagine Jesus adopting your position, btw.) The question then is, who to vote for? The answer to that is glaringly obvious: in a representative democracy like ours, you should vote for the candidate who best represents you; that is to say, the one who resembles you the most. If that person is a third-party candidate with little chance to win, so be it. By voting for him or her, you've done your duty and the destruction of your country cannot be laid at your doorstep. Doing otherwise, it can.
Only if there is no candidate who even approximates your own ideology (I'm using that term loosely here, as a sort of catch-all) can I see any virtue in failing to vote--either that, or because you positively wish for the end of our form of government.
If there are any persons on this site who actually read (and understand) my comments, I should like to hear their speculations as to why my criticisms are often mocked (despite their inevitably being better written than most, if not usually all, of the other respondents), but NEVER refuted.
I make the same points over and over, all of which really reduce to two. First, that America is being invaded, colonized and conquered by biological aliens whose genomes played no role in the creation and success of America, and who cannot be expected to continue the traditions, culture and way of life that so-called conservatives purport to wish to conserve once they have been allowed to become an (ever increasing) demographic majority. ALL electoral analyses of the voting patterns of racial minorities of all types done over the past 30 years confirm the leftist-cum-(minority) ethnocentrist attitudes that these "new" Americans bring to our shores.
And second, that Christianity, at least in its American "Christian Right" form, is utterly cowardly and useless in confronting this problem.
So again I pose the questions:
What issue is more important than stopping (and reversing) the harmful, white-majority unwanted, unnecessary, government imposed, non-white "racial diversification" of the US?
What is wrong with building an explicitly white racial-nationalist movement if that is the only, or even simply the most effective, way to stop the immigration invasion, with its attendant multiculturalization of what used to be our country?
Let's see if I receive any cogent and relevant answers. How about you Prof. Wilson starting the ball rolling?
When I announced my intention to vote for Michael Anthony Peroutka in 2004, Republican friends badgered me with the complaint that "if too many people vote as you do, we'll lose the White House and maybe Congress, too!" My reply to one and all such: "The problem is not that too many will vote as I do, but that not enough are likely to."
I agree with Dr. Wilson that many people vote Republican because it appears to be "respectable." I also believe that many people continue to vote GOP because they truly believe that Republicans represent the best hope for conservative principles in the U.S. Just one look at the Democratic party's candidates, platforms, supporters, etc. is enough to convince most people that the GOP is the only way to go. Delusions, however, die hard, and it is a delusion that the GOP represents conservative principles. It is also a delusion that the GOP ever really was a conservative party. That there have been and still are conservative elements in the party is clear. Many if not most of them are former southern Democrats who got fed up with the far left wackoism of the national Democratic party and decided to bolt. In retrospect I think that was a mistake. Perhaps it would have been better for those southern Dems to have remained true to their principles and simply boycotted elections (allowing the GOP to win election after election) until the national party got the message that the "solid South" would not simply support any candidate and any program simply because it was promulgated by a Democratic candidate. Maybe they could have taken the party back and restored it to its former stalwart conservative basis even on a national level. (For an interesting interlude, read the 1932 Democratic platform on which FDR ran).
For myself, I became interested in politics around 1967-1968 as a senior in high school. At that time Lyndon Johnson was riding roughshod over the country and we had the likes of Ramsay Clark as attorney general (!!!), Dean Rusk as Secretary of State, and the Great Society was in full gear. It appeared to me that the only alternative to this kind of runaway liberalism was the Republican party. Certainly the conservative rhetoric was there. Unfortunately, that has pretty much been all that was there. Reluctantly, I have come to understand that, with some exceptions, I have been sold a bill of goods. I would love to see the Democrats regain their heritage as a conservative, states-rights party. Most of the truly great statesman in our history have been Democrats. It is a pitiful shame that the party which produced Jefferson Davis, Frank Lausche, Walter George, John Stennis and the like, now offers Hilary Clinton, Barak Obama (sounds too much like Osama to suit me) and all the rest. I have always wondered what the Democratic party would have been had Al Smith been elected president. Perhaps there would have been no "new deal" and the drastic shift to a quasi (perhaps more than quasi) socialism and statism would have been averted. Then the truly statist party (republican) would have been there for all to see and would not have been able to convince us they were the conservative party. I have rambled enough, but suffice it to say that it is not easy for one who has supported the GOP most of his life to come to his senses. Either a new conservative party will emerge or the Dems must stop smoking weed and return to their heritage. Neither alternative will happen right away. But happen it had better.
As an aside, Bilbo and Huey Long may not have been the most lovable Democrats (or even people), but they were what they were and didn't make any bones about it. Watching the McCains, Guilianis and Romneys slobber all over the place trying to convince me of their devotion to conservative principles makes Bilbo and Long look positively inviting.