If you’re right, you should win–you deserve to win–if you’re not winning, there’s probably some treachery or conspiratorial stuff being done by whoever’s winning or at least on their behalf. Then a few steps further, it’s civil war, right after the end of the republic. & whoever disagrees is a sucker, being played by evil people whose powers might just be unlimited.
Lotsa anger among conservatives, not enough for the right to cohere, but too much for the various factions to tolerate each other. What is there to do? I don’t know. How can we live with it? I have some ideas about this.
Moralism is the opinion that if you hold the right opinions, you’re a good man. That if you think clever thoughts, you’ve got prudence. That if you take care of yourself, the world owes it to you to be orderly & propitious… Deserving to win & winning are not the same. Conservatism is today poisoned by our failures. We are beginning to believe that every previous defeat must have been a matter of betrayal. We are now able to sit in judgment of anyone doing any job while not doing anything comparable. This is the arrival of shamelessness. We are also coming around to the opinion that there no mistakes–every thing that goes wrong is evil. The opinion that we should contemplate the coming chaos weakens us–it takes our eyes off the prize. The prize is this: What do we want & who can we get along with to get it? If you want stuff the getting of which does not require alliances & friendships–then you do not need politics. Politics is in a way beyond the conservative horizon. We think of it as, we win, they lose!, forgetting that Reagan talked that way about the enemy–he did not think Americans are the enemy.
Listen to the way we talk about the left, the progressives, about the establishment–there is never any way to work together. They have power, we do not. The solution, of course, is political revolution. We need to tyrannize. Well, I certainly feel that way, more than a little. But I am unendingly surprised that we start talking publicly this way, as though disagreement were a call to war, not a way for us to learn we should become better than we are–look up to some possible unity beyond partisanship. We’re coming around to the opinion that because we have the right principles we have to exterminate other people. Partisanship means, we do not have to persuade electoral majorities or concrete people-in-the-flesh. That’s wrong. Partisanship is supposed to unite the right; then you need something else, too, a principle & persuasion that can unite people.
This is mostly wishful thinking. I really don’t know what the solution is or who will lead us. But I can tell when anger turns politics into a chasing after vengeance. We are losing sight of any possible good & any possible future where Americans are together. There is a special mix of affection & helplessness in those of us who were not lucky enough to be born Americans–not to say I do not count my blessings: In my early childhood tyranny & the USSR collapsed, not too bloodily, so I know it could have been far worse for me…
I do not really concur.
What I see is actually the left being totally unwilling to speak, to deal, to come to terms. Obama as their leader continues to vilify all who disagree with him, whether for good or bad reason.
You only get called names so long. Then you get tired and knock the dope off the block. We may be coming to that position. The left has been ruthless in applying their ideology to all, with no mercy for any alternatives. And the parties have conspired to keep the government trough running.
The problem is that there is no realistic way to “manage” this monster and save liberty. That happens to be the goal of many conservatives and libertarians. But the leviathan that the left has unleashed will take a different approach to get its haircut.
1. I think you have a rather good point about Mr. Obama–that’s what people tend to do when they think they’ve won.
2. This business with ‘The left has been ruthless in applying their ideology to all, with no mercy for any alternatives’ however is where I think you take entirely the wrong attitude. Suddenly, we’re in the situation where there is absolutely no banal explanation for how the left won elections. They did it by evil! This is no longer a matter of politics or how to deal with the country now.
3. I understand & share the anger. But I do not think that should be the guiding light of politics. Only anger out of control could hide the ugly truth: America is not conservatism. There are, as always, two ways for conservatives to get to rule: Tyranny or electoral competitions. In the latter case, the point is not how angry you are or how much right you have to your anger–but how to persuade an electoral majority to support you.
Let’s get some perspective: Conservatives do not now have it really hellishly worse than in 1980 or 1952. But they talk & sometimes act as if they did. I guess, you could say, this is more like 1964! Maybe, but that’s not reassuring…
4. I agree that the state is a great danger to freedom. I would say, so long as people are angry, it’s not too late. But then you need to stop acting as if you’re in control of the country or the country is longing for you to be in control of it. You have got to figure out how possibly you can get from where you are to an electoral victory in 2016 or 2020–so that you can test your principles against what seems likeliest to happen in the near term. Politics always is a matter of urgency: Anger is completely blind to the present…
I am not speaking of the value of what the left did, but rather HOW they did it. They have been ruthless in their application. There has been no broaching of dissent, of alternatives. It is irrelevant whether one is on their side or not – nonconforming has been swiftly and completely punished.
I don’t call this “evil” – I call it singlemindedness. They DO have their eye on the prize, and it is the domination of their ideas over all else.
Look at global warming. The true climate experts are hardly unanimus on the position. Indeed, there is a LOT of skepticism. There has CLEARLY been manipulation of data to come to a desired conclusion (not necessarily an “evil” thing but perhaps more a sign of the times). Yet despite this, there is no waiver in the stance. There is no acknowledgement of the possibility of error, or ANY deviation from the official line. One recognizes this same forced control in both Stalin and Hitler regimes.
As for perspecitve, I of late have reflected on what I have been reading about the state of mind of the nation just at the opening of the Civil War. It was much worse than now. It was truly a horrifying prospect. WWII was like that also.
So we aren’t at the worst point in the life of the nation. But that is the only thing that keeps me even remotely optimistic. We have been threatened before.
That and the fact that MATH will kill us, sooner or later, if we continue as we have been. And the progressive state can do no less than continue as is. They have no fallback position. We, OTOH, have liberty. And history.
I think you’re exaggerating things. You do not take into account how much people agree with progress & progressives. None of the ringing failures have doomed the doctrine. No one is in any doubt that the lower classes in America–or whatever they call it–are worse off than two generations ago. Family is a thing of the past, it would seem. One does not see any massive protests or a powerful consensus that the welfare state, however animated by love & care, is failing.
That cannot be accounted for by ruthlessness, but it has to be accounted for to be countered.
Then this business with global warming–it used to be global cooling a generation back…–is alike to other forms of fanaticism that become important in modern societies. A century back, it was eugenics. Half-a-century–planned economies.
Again, you have to give an account of the beliefs here. Lots of people do want to believe these things, do not rebel against them, & do not seem to have an instinct to cause them to turn away.
All this psychology has to modify the account of the institutions (the singlemindedness / ruthlessness is about how to use institutions). Like Lincoln said: Public sentiment underlies & sometimes drives American politics. With it, you cannot fail; without it, you cannot succeed.
You are right, of course, that America has faced far worse. The question is what does it take now to make things better, to bring a sense of national community-
Think Greece – but on steroids.
Greece has Germany to try to bail it out. In truth, it is Germany’s fault Greece is in the straights it is; had they not insisted Greece join the Eurozone, it would have bumbled along fine, inflating as it needed. Instead they are stuck with foreign debt.
We, too, are stuck with foreign debt. So while we are the reserve currency of the world, it may not last that long. And when it falls, the game is up. OR when the debt comes due. OR when we can’t pay the interest any longer. Or when no one will buy our debt.
All those issues are math, plain and simple. THEN, whether the poor classes like it or not, the gravy train will stop. Same for the politicians – gravy train stops.
AND you will need serious revisions to how we do things. Indeed, we will be going back to old principles, like it or not, ad we will have to pay our debt. Times will be tough – much like wartime. But it’s coming.
If there is any hope of avoiding this, there will have to be a serious reversal of attitude in the nation. And THAT means changing the attitude toward public aid, etc.
PERHAPS that can come about with better employment, adn THAT can come about with a significant decrease in regulation and an allowance of small business to flourish.
But I’m not all that sanguine about that happening. Meanwhile I am hearing about people who are paying workers (carpenters, plumbers, etc) with gold. No government control. No inflation (or very little). Hard asset. It has much of the benefit of Bitcoin with few of the drawbacks.
It’s not as simple as math: This is politics. America must fear the contempt, not the math education of other nations. So long as America retains its power, with or without justice, it will retain its ability to be fiscally irresponsible.
I believe there is a limit. England had the power but lost it and ended up a pretty thin shadow of its former self. There is a legacy of sorts around the world (England has invaded more countries than any other nation, by a factor of probably 3) of some good things and many bad. But it doesn’t command much respect any more.
You can, of course, note that it lost most of the land-basis for its power, and that would be true.
My point about the math is that IT is the absolute limiter. Yes, you will lose face, etc, much as Greece has (unfortunately, because in her position it could have been avoided), but the math will FORCE you to change.
Now perhaps I don’t really grasp what you are saying. It seems sometimes I have to reread what you write, then listen to you speak further on it before I get your approach. I think it has something with how you use words. I tend to be a pretty simple, straight-forward kind of guy. So I have to work on ideas some.
But here’s yet another take from Sultan Knish.
“We’re not going to have a conservative revolution by electing the perfect candidate. Three elections full of disappointments should have shown that already. If we’re going to have one of those, it will be because we have a movement of ideas that can’t be hijacked by anyone with an angle.
I’m not asking you not to support candidate X. I loathe the idea of seeing Jeb Bush up on the podium with Hillary Clinton more than eating used rubber tires. But you might just want to consider the possibility that Jeb Bush’s path to the nomination might be through your favorite candidate and that yelling all day at other conservatives does nothing except open a path for him to get there.
Romney won because there was no consensus conservative opposition candidate. It wasn’t for lack of different potential candidates and their supporters yelling at each other and smearing each other. None of that yelling did anything except clear a path for Romney to the nomination. And then conservatives could self-righteously stay home while Obama grinned at another victory.
We don’t need another replay of 2012.
If we put politicians first. We lose. If we put ideas first, then win or lose, we build a movement.
When we put ideas first, politicians compete to adopt them. That’s what happened with opposition to ObamaCare. It’s what happened with immigration.
Putting ideas first puts us in charge. Putting politicians first puts us right back where we started.
There’s a big difference between supporting a politician and believing in a politician. Belief should be saved for ideas, not for people running for office. When you believe in a politician, you lose sight of the ideas we are fighting for. You stop asking questions and stop holding them accountable.
And then you get Hoped and Changed on.
No politician can save us. No politician will save us. Fighting for the right ideas just might.
It’s fine to look back on a Ronald Reagan with rose colored glasses. Movements need ideal models and the best ones are out of office. It’s dangerous to do that with people who are actually in power because it blinds us to their weaknesses and mistakes. It weakens our fight for what’s right.
None of the candidates in this race is absolutely the 100 percent right one. Some of them may be close enough for government work. And your view and the view of the guy next to you may vary. The right way to tell is by looking at their track records and what they actually support in the cold light of day.
If we don’t do that, if we make excuses for them, then they may get somewhere, but we never will.
If we want to change America, we have to change politicians instead of letting them change us. If we’re not skeptical of the politicians we support, we will keep on being fooled, waking up to wonder why we were fooled and then going through the same cycle as many times as it takes.”
?Is this more along the lines of what you are trying to say.
First, everyone, I’m sorry if I’m not clear–it takes a while to get used to the crowd, you know… I agree with the guy in part, & disagree in part. Let me try to explain my opinions.
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I agree about 2012. There was no serious conservative candidate. That means 1. A man who has persuaded the base to support him, hopefully because of his record in government & what they think they know of his character. 2. He’s getting the money & the necessary staff organization to campaign. 3. He’s dealing with the press & finds some way to address the nation, as opposed to his electoral base, so that he can get to an electoral majority.
Conservatives never find this guy & never believe it’s their fault. Do you know any conservatives who give serious attention to the fact that they can only boast one guy who really had it all–& he was first a somewhat liberal Democrat & a really popular guy?
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I mostly agree with the guy: Conservatives do seem to have come to believe that happiness means destroying the GOP, which will give America to the Dems. That’s a big problem. I agree with him in part that conservatives need to pick who they want & see the guy get a shot at the title.
I do not believe a conservative’s conservative–there are many supported by rather small factions–can win national elections. They do not understand America & democracy properly.
I agree that people should be skeptical of politicians–but also of their own ideas. If conservatives get it into their heads that now they have all the knowledge neeeded to proceed, they are doomed. Conservatives need to come around to asking: How come we fail?–Betrayal & other people being evil are not good answers, unless you want tyranny. In that case, it’s great: The party & the state are evil–it’s time for hell to be unleashed! But if you want something else: How can we persuade conservatives to unite behind a candidate? How can we persuade an electoral majority to support such a candidate? How can we change institutions in a conservative direction? How can we make any change last?–If you want answers to these sorts of questions, you have to take seriously the possibility that conservatives are losing for non-treason, non-conspiracy, non-evil reasons…
I disagree, both with the characterization and the solution.
It is time to fight, and there are plenty of wrong-doers plainly betraying us. Vengeance is a perfectly valid logic in an iterated game — the only valid logic in less-than-perfect games.
Defection without punishment rewards evil and punishes virtue.
The GOP has earned our fury. Let them have it. And maybe, just maybe, they will stop interfering and help us take the fight to the broader enemy, who are, yes, Americans, but hate America.
Welcome back! and OOHRah! with some B-Z! on top. Politics is a *tool* of vengeance – not merely ideation; it includes incitement: red meat and bare knuckles. It can’t just be for breakfast (with mimosas and fruit cups) any more.
You agree that that means, the GOP will lose in 2016–it’s as good as guaranteed? Or do you think that enough of the fury & vengeance could be a winner in 2016?
I believe as things are going, we will. I see no sign of any serious coalition of conservatives, with the picking of a slate. The current method of selecting a leader has serious drawbacks, not the least of which is that it is hard to collectively create a strategy for winning and then select a slate to carry it out.
Like any good bureaucracy, the politicians do not respond to the voice of the people but to the input of the insiders. I say that not as some “conspiracy theory” dude. Rather it is what one sees when someone is elected.
Not so fast — where you going with those Mimosas?
Whatever else, you aren’t likely to pry those mimosas from Nanda’s hands. Don’t blame her.
To the back room, where the *real* work gets done, Beloved Admin…I saved a pitcher-full just for you…
Dev, I’ll gladly share a mimosa – or more – with you. Unless you’d like something stronger?…
By the way, TT, I’d submit that moralism – emphasis on the “ism” – is a *human* tendency/problem, not just a ‘conservative’ one…Witness the current focus by progressives on mandating ‘compliance’ with rapidly-changing social/cultural norms.
Sure, it is a human problem. But conservatives are the ones who hurt themselves with it when it comes time to take politics seriously as an art. Liberals, as you point out, do damage in another way–it is the policing of manners.
Democrats have politicians who run on being politicians; politicians who run on ideology; maybe other things, too. The Clinton crowd did not destroy the party because Mr. Obama won the nomination in 2008. Nor did progressives do that in 2004, when they had to face defeat like the GOP did in 2012.
Only in 1968 did it happen, when the New Left arrived…
Well, here I can agree with most of what you say. If there is a non-agreement point, I am too tired to write about it now. Been a long shift and I need to get home to sleep as I have to be back early tomorrow.
But this ain’t over, as the movies say.
Rest & work. This is for when you have leisure. We’ll get to a kind of basic agreement in time, & then work on the specific disagreements.
Yes, we rightward folk do have a history of cannibalism, sadly…I used the word ‘progressives’ in preference to ‘liberals’ purposely…We need to reclaim the word, it seems to me…
About reclaiming words–hard to do, but it would be good if it could be done.
About who we are on the right, we’ve got trouble. It seems like now we have far more hate & fear than any sense of good things that might come from the future. We’re losing sight of where we are & we’re not thinking a lot about how to get there.
Instead, we turn on each other. We’re looking for people to do the work of hate on our behalf.
A time will come when we will have to choose between our justified anger & something else, something better. The way we think now, it’s no surprise we turn on each other: We’re thinking we’re surrounded & almost defeated by an alien ideology that turns everyone else into enemies. That’s how paranoia spreads. I think that we think we’re better than our institutions. In a way, it’s true. All the conservatives who are openly for anger & making the other people hurt, however hateful publicly, probably are caring, decent people in private. To a large extent, we can be caring in private because we are in control. In public, we’re not & we act out as though we’ve lost control of ourselves, too. We’re not better than our institutions, though they failed us. If we do not learn that, I fear we cannot learn how to make better institutions. I am not sure we have any examples of people who have built institutions that do something good for people…
I grant your point.
I would say that anger is a great motivating factor, but it doesn’t replace strategy. People in a rage during a fight usually lose, UNLESS they have that cold rage wherein they are motivated but cool about how they go about dismantling the opponent.
I would submit that we need that. We need the motivation, but we also need a plan on how to go about dismantling this monstrosity that the left has imposed on our nation. And to do that, we need successes to prove our way is not only better but sustainable.
You can’t win those arguments unless you are forceful in opposing the propaganda being put forth by the opposition. Case in point – the recent videos released about Planned Parenthood (an oxymoron if there ever was one!). Note they put out ONE video. Got all kind of reaction, including the response by PP. Then they let out the next one that basically refuted the PP position. PP responded. Then the next came out and destroyed THAT argument. And so on. PP has been looking like serious louts and all their protestations have been basically taken out.
And NOTE! EVEN NOW THE FECKLESS REPUBLICANS CAN’T GET THEM DEFUNDED!
Dev,
First, blessings on ya! Take care of yourself, as you care for others!
Next, I finished “TET” last night; that cold, furious rage you mention: I’m there…Is this when “leading from behind” started?!
Glad some o/t States are taking action re: PP: May the tendency toward backbone spread! The Cuba thing makes me ill!
Last, but not least, the heads up re: the Semper Fi Fund is keeping me sane and motivated…real Teufel Hunden, aren’t those brothers and sisters?…They’re fighting him every day, no? S/F to my OIC!
BTW, not to change the subject, but changing the subject, ?how many here write their congress critters on anything like a regular basis. I once had a site, something like congress.org, where you could choose your reps and send an e-mail about whatever. it was very handy. My guess is that it was TOO handy, as they shut that down, and now it’s only regurgitation BS & gunsmoke FROM the critters. I liked it better the other way.
Too bad no one has set up a site like that. One that had e-mail addresses for all the congressional people – and the president – and you could type in your address and get a listing of your reps. Then you could write an e-mail, choose a general subject, and send it off. I wrote enough that I was getting position papers from the critters. Guess they saw my e-mail address enough to note I was “involved”.
But that seems gone.
It seems ‘petitioning’ has become the last “feel good” tool of the under-empowered (unless they’re part of the loony left.) [Sigh]
But keep in mind the wording of 1A. We have the right to peacefully assemble and to petition our government.
We do, indeed, have the right and responsibility, Dev; we seem to have forgotten/not learned how to use it. I remember all kinds of learning opportunities via high school student council, etc. What do people have now? (I’m feeling like a junior troglodyte, I think.)