The Way We Are
It’s amazing how many crises you can live through unscathed if you just don’t follow the news.
We all develop silly pointless habits from time to time. Some chew gum. Some collect string. Some vote and write their Congressman.
I don't think voting is actually sinful. It is more a state of cluelessness, like chewing gum or being from Iowa.
Throughout the 19th century and early 20th century, descendants of the sturdy settlers and pioneers who built the United States worried that European countries were dumping their criminals, wastrels, and mentally and physically ill on these shores. Now the same thing is a cause for celebration, as long as they are not European. (The concern was real because in earlier times, as now, the foreign-born were over-represented in prisons, poor relief, and charity hospitals.)
I notice a trend among the Republican hacks to blame the election of Obama on the people. It couldn't have anything to do with Republican ignorance, deceit, arrogance, and failure could it? Or with demographic changes that the Republicans have abetted at every turn?
"Honest Abe." "Weapons of Mass Destruction." "FOX News: Fair and Balanced." Do we begin to see a pattern here?
Looks like the pressure for the U.S. to attack Iran is growing. How many Congresspersons do you think will have the guts to say no? Five? Ten?
The New York Times recently wrote that "the nativists have already lost," nativists being those who want restrictions on immigration. Isn't this just another way of saying that Americans have been overrun and defeated in their own land by foreigners?
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"I don’t think voting is actually sinful. It is more a state of cluelessness, like chewing gum or being from Iowa."
Voting is much like something which I used to do as a little boy. One Easter, why Easter I do not know, I got, along side the Easter basket in which I knew there was a green egg hidden under the straw - an annual delight that my father practiced - a Lone Ranger comic book and a lever-action BB gun. (Two years later, I would graduate to the more powerful pump.) The following winter, likely in late January, our little spot on the Earth was beset by thousands of blackbirds. They flew over our house in endless streams. Into those streams, flying about fifty feet high, I "fired" hundreds is not thousands of BB's. For what seemed hours, I would shoot. From among those thousands of blackbirds and despite score upon score of copper-covered BB's arching skyward, not one blackbird fell and not one blackbird graced me with a plume which I had hoped to dislodge from his body. On they flew, landing from time to time to devour, roost and becrap the land. The blackbirds are the politicians and their gray-faced bureaucratic allies. I am the voter. The BB's, fired with boyish hope, are the votes cast. Things might have been somewhat different if I had had my grandfather's pump ten-gauge shotgun with a thirty six inch barrel, loaded with bird shot. I am not such, however, how that would fit into this analogy. Besides, as an eight-year-old, its power would have been well beyond my capability. Perhaps therein lies an analogy!
Remember that it is our very own white brethren who are to blame for the loss of America. Was it not they who decided to open our borders and markets to the world at the expense of the native people of the U.S.? It's not like Stalin or Mao or Vicente Fox did this to us.
Dr. Wilson, I don't understand your "being from Iowa" potshot. It would make more sense to me if you replaced Iowa with California or the Northeast. And I have firsthand experience concerning the former. I live in California, hopefully not for much more than a year longer. You would laugh if you heard a white Californian of age 18-late-twenties speak to you and try to have a conversation with you. After all, you probably don't have an overabundance of experience communicating with 7-year-olds.
Mr. Brock @ 3
I, of course, do not and cannot speak for Dr. Wilson. However, I must say that we Louisianans, as fallen and as corrupt as we are, do indeed, in the humor found in a stereotype, consider the good folk from Iowa to be clueless, as clueless as their food is bland!
I lived in California (L.A.) for two years back in the mid seventies. I had trouble communicating with the good folk there even then. Far too many of them seemed to have just risen from Dr. Freud's couch.
I notice a trend among the Republican hacks to blame the election of Obama on the people.
Liberals and Neocons made me the conservative Southern Partisan I am today––they talked me into it.
George Bush and the Republican co-perpetrators in the Congress elected Obama as sure as the sun rises.
But going from Bush to Obama we go from the frying pan to the fire.
5. I'd say, rather, going from the fire to the inferno.
"I notice a trend among the Republican hacks to blame the election of Obama on the people. It couldn’t have anything to do with Republican ignorance, deceit, arrogance, and failure could it? Or with demographic changes that the Republicans have abetted at every turn?"
I was optimistic that the Republican purge last November could result in a new conservative ethos. I was dead wrong. The CPAC circus proves beyond a reasonable doubt that they are intellectually incapable of any real thought towards conservative principles, philosophy, and policy.
Opposing Obaman ideology ought to be the easiest thing in the world, yet these Republican bozos have no clue. Rush Limbaugh, for example, said to rousing applause: "conservatism is about people."
Huh?
Yes, our nation's fault lines lie much deeper than party politics, but Obama is threatening such irreparable harm to society that this is in fact a moment when we do need a capable Republican counter-thrust.
Iowa is not evil like California and the Northeast; only clueless
The CPAC circus proves beyond a reasonable doubt that they are intellectually incapable of any real thought towards conservative principles, philosophy, and policy.
There is some truth to this. But more significant is their cowardice. They only talk the talk, but refuse to walk the walk. That is, they refuse to make any concrete application of those so-called conservative principles they espouse. With a nod to Michael Savage, CPAC did nothing to make any concrete connections between "conservative principles" and issues related to our language, culture and borders. The fact is "Conservative Principles" for CPAC remain vague, subjective, undefined and feckless in setting real policy. Republican policy is set the same way Democratic policy is set; by wetting your finger and sticking it up in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. The only difference is the Democrats are more principled in that they cling tenaciously to certain libertine social goals that will further degrade and debased American morals, character and intellect
Iowa,at least in my long-gone day,had the nation's best wrestlers.I can tell you I unfortunately never met a "clueless" one.I doubt I've ever met a less clueless man than Dan Gable.Iowa was Republican back then.Which brings me to my point.As a Republican hack responding to an academic hack--that would be you Wilson---the party has not "abetted at every turn" America's demographic changes.The original and most comprehensive restrictions on immigration were enacted by the Republicans in the 1920s.These restrictions were lifted by good ol' Lyndon and the Democrats in the 1960s.Whatever opposition(and it hasn't been enough) to America's demographic changes there has been has been through the Republican Party...and only through the Republicans.Most Southerners get this--even if the occasional knucklehead South Carolinian like Lindsay Graham dips his toes in the wrong river.Now for my final point...Wilson you are a brilliant scholar of Calhoun...but you are a typical useless academic when you tell our people not to vote.Bosh!!Maybe if paleos would get as clever and mobilized as neos they might stop being "beautiful losers".Open question to everyone:What exactly is the "walk" you're going to walk to power.I could care less about your tedious criticisms of other conservatives.Tell me about your plans...plans that include "walks" to power.Who wins debates on obscure points on a lightly viewed website...I'm just not ready to give up and say that's all there is anymore.
#10, Leo. Most Republicans voted for the 1965 immigration act that is the cause of the problems of today. Most Southerners, Democrats and Republicans, did not. I have made plain many times that a primary need is to detach decent Americans from the Republican Party as a first step toward recovery. That is my reason for criticising present-day "conservatives." I do not criticise true conservatives nor decent libertarians, even when I disagree with them. The quips about not voting were in the anti-Republican vei and, as you seem to have missed, were intended to be humourous. If you think I am a useless academic hack, you ought to meet the rest of them.
P.S. I would love to be enlightened by YOUR PLANS for victory.
One need no longer eat bland food in Iowa. There is a taqueria in virtually every town. And, over twenty years ago, I had the hottest Thai curry in a lifetime of hot Thai curries in a take out joint in Davenport. I suppose this merely proves the "nativist" point.
@9 Tom
Had it not been for a vicious sinus infection I would have gone to CPAC if only to hear Limbaugh's incendiary speech. In years past I found the speeches dull, and the attendees old and male. My son went last year and said it is now college-aged females, therefore a good place to find a mate. I'd imagine the place was still overrun with sayanim in search of anti-semites at every booth.
Iowa is cornfields... lots and lots of cornfields. I had to drive all over Iowa for a job in 2006 and that's mostly what I saw. Of course, so is Illinois and Nebraska (Cornhuskers). Maybe Indiana, but I didn't work that far east.
Plan for victory: Plain and simple - however next to impossible to deliver in the present state of lethargy.
Never has there been any healthy dissent (opposition) to the ruling hand (Democrat or Republican). Our system of government (primarily the Congress) is composed of "bagmen" who are so deeply corrupt (especially those from the CA, NY, MA, IL, etc.) that there is no useful application of "checks and balances". The present system is as close to utopia just as the communism was in the times of Khruschev, Brezhnev, Janos Kadar, Todor Zhivkov, Gomulka, Gustav Husak, Alexander Dubcek, Tito, et al.
Once we have a party which will always be THE OPPOSITION, no matter who dominates the House or the Senate, we will have employed our constitutional right to dissent, question and demand other solutions, under the threat of separating and forming another government just as the Declaration of Independence suggests, we should. Sadly enough only Michigan militia comes to mind as a possible carrier of such plans to action.
Re: "Americans have been overrun and defeated in their own land by foreigners"
I ran across this historical antecedent a while back:
"In 1225 AD Genghis Khan the infamous arrived with his Mongol Armies at the gates of this Great Wall. On his way to conquest of East and Central Asia and the founding of the Mongol Empire, the Great Khan was temporarily halted in his advance by the Great Wall of China. The leading Chinese General of Jin Dynasty China which held rule over North China at the time, had the central Badaling Gate solidly closed with poured Iron to stop the Gate from opening before the Giant Mongol Army. A stale-mate at the Badaling Wall ensued. The Mongols failed to breech the Wall for Months, until Genghis Khan conceived a plan. Outflanking Fortress JuYongGuan with his horsemen, the mongols penetrated the Great Wall in a nearby area where it had fallen into ruin and disuse. Not expecting an attack from the rear, the defenses of Fortress JuYongGuan were overrun and the Mongols cleared the Gates of The Great Wall. Riding down from Badaling the huge Mongol army overwhelmed the Chinese Capital of Dadu (currently Beijing), raising it to the ground in 1237 AD. Dadu would be rebuilt as Khanbalik, the City of Khans, while the Mongols further established their Rule over the Han Chinese. Although Jin China would be annihilated by 1259 AD, the Song Dynasty in south China would hold out for a longer time. Eventually, the Song lost their Capital in 1273 AD. The Chinese were ruled by Foreigners in their own land. The Mongol Yuan Dynasty was born when Kublai Khan was crowned Emperor in 1279 AD."
I understand the Mongol Yuan Dynasty was one of the shortest Chinese Dynasties. Let us hope the same holds true for the foreigners who aim to rule us in our own land. Let us see to it.
Fortitudine Vincimus
Perhaps an alternative to any perceived futility in voting is entropy; that is, this particular iteration of the mongol dynasty may well collapse under its own weight, weakness, & depravity.
#14
I’d imagine the place was still overrun with sayanim in search of anti-semites at every booth.
Etienne,
They're looking in the wrong place. All the anti-semites are at the Democrat functions. There even the Semites are anti-semitic.
By the way, how does it feel to be named after a convert? It's pretty amazing to be a convert and be so influential that you have kids being named after you. But then, there's St. Elizabeth Ann Seaton-the first American canonized.
@18 Tom
how does it feel ...
Sorry, I reflexively cringe at that question because I hear it from every info-bimbo on cable TV. I suppose Saint Stephen was a convert, but I was named after the protomartyr, and the martyr of Milan. Technically every true Christian is named after a convert, and my children have apostolic names despite the fact that OT names were trendy 20 years ago. Nowadays, names mean nothing. Just the other day in a convenience store, a woman was scolding her two disruptive bastards, Armani and Lexus.
Seems like I am the only one advocating dissent. Is it possible that even among this ("more advanced") forum, we do not notice any lack of dissent and true democratic processes? Parliamentary processes are weak or non-existent. We remain deeply corrupt and we even tolerate it - except a few infrequent voices.
This is nothing new in our country - even our Declaration of independence mentions similar imbalance during the British rule. Isn't that why we rose (as a nation?). Oh well - at least I am not watching CNN or any other ether based poison for the mind.
Dr. Wilson: You often criticize and condemn the Republican party and rightly so. However, I don't recall seeing any comments on the Democratic party. Obviously I don't read every post so I could well have overlooked any comments you may have made. But, what of the Democrats? Do you see hope for them ever returning to the more conservative party of the past or have you pretty much washed your hands of both?
Mr. Flinn, I take it for granted that the Democratic party as presently constituted is vile. However, it has two good points that the Republicans have never had. 1) it actually believes in its program and actually represents its constituents; 2)it is capable of change and adaptation to new circumstances. The Democratic party taking a turn for the better is highly unlikely. The Republicans taking a turn for the better would be nothing short of a miracle. I do not expect miracles in politics and government. I harp on the Republicans because I don't think those I am writing for harbour any illusions about the Democrats. However, they return ever to a pathetic hope of salvation by the Republican party, which is a thing accursed from its first breath.
The only real difference between the republican party and the democrat party is that the democrats were once a conservative party. The republicans never have been.
22 1) it actually believes in its program and actually represents its constituents;
I don't really see this in my own experience. Big loves Big, and both parties are Big and seek big entities for their funding and support. The "little people" who look to either party for help or support look in vain. I think George Wallace had it right when he said there isn't a "dime's worth of different" between them.
It is true the democrats have supported radical and even criminal social behavior; homosexuality as normalcy, gay marriage, gerrymandering of the concept of "family", unfettered abortion as a constitutionally protected right, suppression of public religious expression; all these are the darlings of the democrats––as well as supporting corrupt unions, which did untold injury to the coal miners in Eastern Kentucky where I grew up. My father had to go all the way to Virginia, driving over three mountains to get to work in Clinchfield––all because inflexible union policies had shut down mine after mine in Harlan County.
Democrats are more revolutionary--at least in the short term.