Dear Editor:
While my wife was in the Woodstock Apothecary I noticed that not a single car of 53 passing Woodstock Hardware sported an Obama bumper sticker. There were five peace sign bumper stickers (nearly a 10 percent rate), a Sunshine Fuel truck, a sheriff’s van with a work gang, and a bumper sticker that said “I Love Trees.” Also, I noticed a parked car with a sign that read “Don’t trust the corporate media.” I wonder if the dearth of Obama stickers is related to Senator Bernie Sanders’s recent proposal that a “progressive” oppose Obama. The “progressives” seem to have taken razor blades to their Obama stickers, which have gone with last summer’s flowers.
A year ago I wrote to the Woodstock Times that Obama is George Soros’s and Wall Street’s marionette. Your readers responded by (a) getting on my blog and calling me a racist and (b) implying as much on the New York Times’s blog. So much for “progressive” tolerance. By that time Obama had already handed Soros a tidy sum via Petrobas. Much worse, unbeknownst to Woodstock’s “progressives,” more money had been created and handed to wealthy banking interests than in the previous history of the United States. The amount is staggering, and because of Congressman Maurice Hinchey’s vote against a Fed audit, no one is certain how much. Bloomberg estimates $12 trillion. That’s nearly $40,000 per American in direct subsidies to financial interests. The real number might be higher, as much as $20 trillion. That doesn’t count the Fed’s ongoing billions in subsidies to the commercial banking system and Wall Street. In creating the Fed in 1913, the Democrats created an orgy of subsidy to the rich. Obama’s and Hinchey’s performance is well within the “progressive” tradition. The current battles between the Tea Parties and government employees are battles between honest working people and petit Fed beneficiaries. We Tea Partiers know whose side the “progressives” are on.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
Town of Olive Republican Committe
Showing posts with label tea parties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tea parties. Show all posts
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Lessons from Scott Brown
It has become evident that Scott Brown, who won election with widespread national support, snookered the Tea Party members who backed him last fall. His victory sent a message, but it was a Pyrrhic victory and a vacuous message. The only one who benefited from all the excitement was Brown himself. The Daily Caller notes:
"When asked about his general views on Tea Partiers, Brown — whose election in January has been hailed a sign of the power of the conservative grassroots activists — rejected the premise that the protesters concerned with runaway government spending should be solely credited with putting a Republican in the Massachusetts Senate seat for the first time in decades.
"'Did the Tea Party movement help me? Sure they did. So did 1.1 million other people in my state and so did others across the country,' Brown said.
"He added: 'So to have one particular party take credit — I’m appreciative. But I had a big tent in my election.'
"On Wednesday, Brown was noticeably absent from a Tea Party rally in Boston, leading some to question whether he’s snubbing a group without whose help he’d unlikely have won office. The senator was said to be busy in Washington attending a hearing on the Iranian nuclear program."
What were the effects of the Brown victory? The widespread support for Brown was motivated by the belief that his election would send a message about the health bill. Many Tea Partiers devoted scarce resources to supporting him. Brown's election sent a message, but the health bill was passed into law anyway. Hence, the message sent was empty. The real effect was that one more "Progressive" is now in office.
Who snookered the Tea Party? How were they duped? It seems that they allowed their imaginations to get the better of their sense of reality.
Glenn Beck has done a good job of questioning Brown post election. But many conservatives were excessively supportive of Brown pre-election. For instance, National Review wrote an article several weeks before the special election stressing the importance of Democrats' super majority (which turned out not to be true) and characterizing Brown as "anti-spending" and "anti-Washington," "perfectly suited to the political moment," which was surely an overstatement.
Brown's was the briefest political moment on record. Normally readers learn much from every issue of National Review, but NR blew it on Brown. More realistically, at the time of the election "The Moderate Voice" called Brown an "independent." The Moderate Voice added "he came to the race knowing exactly what he had to do in order to win as a Republican in this part of the country."
As well, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air Blog asked:
"do we really need another former state Senator with next to no experience in national politics on a major-party ticket? Brown has a good sense of fiscal conservatism, but falls closer to Rudy Giuliani than to Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin on social issues, which is one of the reasons Rudy got an invite to Massachusetts and prominent social conservatives did not."
I would question Brown's substantive credentials as a fiscal conservative. I don't see how Brown differs very much from the majority of Democrats. And as Morrissey points out, if Brown aims to get re-elected, he needs to kowtow to the voters of the Socialist Commonwealth of Taxachussets.
Conservatives are not exempt from the American tendency to engage in fads and crazes, or as Charles Mackay called them in 1841, "popular delusions and the madness of crowds." Perhaps the mistaken emphasis on Brown's election was due to the mistaken belief, revealed in NR and Morrissey's blog, that the super-majority made a critical difference. In fact, few of us would have known better, and those who did were probably professional politicians who did not mind squandering the Tea Party's resources.
If anything, the Brown incident should alert Tea Parties around the country that national races are risky; that national leadership cannot be and ought not to be trusted; and that a great deal of learning and experience will need to be gained over time if the Tea Party is to become an effective movement.
It ought to make little difference to Tea Parties if Brown is reelected in two years. But if Tea Parties learned that initial appearances are frequently deceiving in politics; that scarce resources should be expended cautiously; and that a Republican from Massachusetts is probably a RINO, then much has been gained. As was quoted in Conan the Barbarian, "the blow that does not break the back strengthens."
"When asked about his general views on Tea Partiers, Brown — whose election in January has been hailed a sign of the power of the conservative grassroots activists — rejected the premise that the protesters concerned with runaway government spending should be solely credited with putting a Republican in the Massachusetts Senate seat for the first time in decades.
"'Did the Tea Party movement help me? Sure they did. So did 1.1 million other people in my state and so did others across the country,' Brown said.
"He added: 'So to have one particular party take credit — I’m appreciative. But I had a big tent in my election.'
"On Wednesday, Brown was noticeably absent from a Tea Party rally in Boston, leading some to question whether he’s snubbing a group without whose help he’d unlikely have won office. The senator was said to be busy in Washington attending a hearing on the Iranian nuclear program."
What were the effects of the Brown victory? The widespread support for Brown was motivated by the belief that his election would send a message about the health bill. Many Tea Partiers devoted scarce resources to supporting him. Brown's election sent a message, but the health bill was passed into law anyway. Hence, the message sent was empty. The real effect was that one more "Progressive" is now in office.
Who snookered the Tea Party? How were they duped? It seems that they allowed their imaginations to get the better of their sense of reality.
Glenn Beck has done a good job of questioning Brown post election. But many conservatives were excessively supportive of Brown pre-election. For instance, National Review wrote an article several weeks before the special election stressing the importance of Democrats' super majority (which turned out not to be true) and characterizing Brown as "anti-spending" and "anti-Washington," "perfectly suited to the political moment," which was surely an overstatement.
Brown's was the briefest political moment on record. Normally readers learn much from every issue of National Review, but NR blew it on Brown. More realistically, at the time of the election "The Moderate Voice" called Brown an "independent." The Moderate Voice added "he came to the race knowing exactly what he had to do in order to win as a Republican in this part of the country."
As well, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air Blog asked:
"do we really need another former state Senator with next to no experience in national politics on a major-party ticket? Brown has a good sense of fiscal conservatism, but falls closer to Rudy Giuliani than to Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin on social issues, which is one of the reasons Rudy got an invite to Massachusetts and prominent social conservatives did not."
I would question Brown's substantive credentials as a fiscal conservative. I don't see how Brown differs very much from the majority of Democrats. And as Morrissey points out, if Brown aims to get re-elected, he needs to kowtow to the voters of the Socialist Commonwealth of Taxachussets.
Conservatives are not exempt from the American tendency to engage in fads and crazes, or as Charles Mackay called them in 1841, "popular delusions and the madness of crowds." Perhaps the mistaken emphasis on Brown's election was due to the mistaken belief, revealed in NR and Morrissey's blog, that the super-majority made a critical difference. In fact, few of us would have known better, and those who did were probably professional politicians who did not mind squandering the Tea Party's resources.
If anything, the Brown incident should alert Tea Parties around the country that national races are risky; that national leadership cannot be and ought not to be trusted; and that a great deal of learning and experience will need to be gained over time if the Tea Party is to become an effective movement.
It ought to make little difference to Tea Parties if Brown is reelected in two years. But if Tea Parties learned that initial appearances are frequently deceiving in politics; that scarce resources should be expended cautiously; and that a Republican from Massachusetts is probably a RINO, then much has been gained. As was quoted in Conan the Barbarian, "the blow that does not break the back strengthens."
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Tea Parties Should Limit Themselves to State and Local Politics
Sarah Palin thinks that Jefferson sang this song.
It has become increasingly evident that the Tea Party lacks any national leadership. D. Eris of Poli-Tea and I have debated a related point a couple of times, with Eris claiming the desirability of third party candidates. That may be the case, but Eris's claim still begs the question as to who a charismatic and capable national leader might be.
Sarah Palin is great looking but lacks the intellectual foundations to be a leader. Reagan was no genius, as Chet of Snyder's bar pointed out last night, but he had an intuitive grasp and appointed some good people (not good enough in my opinion but better than any Republican since). Palin does not know anything about the history, political ideas or ideology of freedom. She thinks Jefferson is an African-American dry cleaner in Manhattan who "moved on up to the east side." She doesn't know why anyone might question the Fed, or who in American history favored doing so. In fact, she would be surprised if she found out. This is not to disparage her as a person. We are all members of what Kant called the Kingdom of Ends and so Palin deserves the same respect I give to Sherman Hemsley, who played George Jefferson. But as a presidential candidate she is too unread, and I definitely fear that the special interests may have gotten to her by now. I would make the same observations but to a lesser degree about any of the conservative media people, specifically including all of the announcers on Fox.
The fact that the Tea Party people have tended to congregate around Fox says that the movement is too green to support a national political candidate. The Tea Party needs to start from the local level and there needs to be a core coalition that starts to read, read, read about the ideas that built America. Anyone who does not know what Andrew Jackson stood for or why he would not have liked Abraham Lincoln does not know enough about American history to make sense of what is going on today.
Thus, I urge the Tea Party to develop a relationship with the Foundation for Economic Education. That fine institution has quietly served as a fulcrum on which the freedom movement has rested since the 1940s. Without the support it gave to many freedom oriented scholars through the years, the ideas that are alive today would have died. How many in the Tea Party have taken the time to educate themselves? To develop a relationship with the Foundation for Economic Education? To read about the substance of American history, including the banking controversies that were never resolved?
Moreover, none, I say not one, of the national figures in the Republican Party has the intellectual background nor the moral sense (and I specifically include Newt Gingrich) to represent a freedom movement. Thus, the Tea Party has no leadership and does not know where to turn.
It is only at the local level that freedom oriented candidates can be developed. It is time for the Tea Party to develop candidates who will evolve into the leadership of the coming nine decades. This must be done at the local, not the national level. I do not even think it can be done at the state level. A state like New York just appointed Richard M. Nixon's son-in-law, Edward F. Cox, a Wall Street attorney, to head the state's GOP. Is a Wall Street attorney the direction in which a party corrupted by massive subsidies to Wall Street ought to turn?
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Republican Socialism, Obama's Second Term and the Tea Parties
The Obama presidency is so far a failure. Obama's bailout of money center banks and Wall Street coupled with his corrupt stimulus package amount to the largest effluence of waste in world history. This is the pattern that destroyed Athenian democracy and the Roman empire. In the case of Rome, Septimius Severus in the second century gave large benefits to the Roman army. Rome had long before adopted a welfare system that allowed the citizens of Rome free bread and circus. The Roman system was stable and took several centuries to decline. Rome's scale was the cause of both its stability and its decline as Rome was essentially a Ponzi scheme that depended on ongoing conquest. The extraction of wealth by interest groups contributed. In the case of Athens, the second greatest democracy in the history of the world, imperialism, its war with Sparta, and class warfare led to its failure.
Now, America is weakened by socialism of both the Roman and the Athenian varieties. The war on terror is a legitimate challenge, but the Bush administration handled both the Afghan and Iraqi wars incompetently, resulting in excessive cost. Fourth generation warfare, the use of embedded special forces, should have been adopted early on, but Bush preferred to defer to the second generation warfare concepts of Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon. In any case, the two wasteful wars were coupled with subsidies to Wall Street, the TARP plan and the bailout of Goldman Sachs, AIG and other money center banks.
In a free economy these institutions would have been put into chapter 11, reorganized, the management replaced and the firms split up into more manageable components. This would have been done by bankruptcy courts. The opposite policy of direct subsidization and federal intervention, i.e., socialism, was pursued at the behest of the Republicans and George W. Bush. The Obama administration added some pirouettes, but the basic socialist policy and a large portion of the socialist spending was directly due to George W. Bush and the national GOP leadership, from Newt Gingrich to Karl Rove.
The recent victory in Massachusetts suggests that Americans are upset but that their views are confused. If Americans are upset about the bailout, why did they not question Scott Brown's position on the bailout? In 2000 America elected George W. Bush expecting a conservative, not a socialist. Now, they vote for Scott Brown without asking whether he too is a socialist.
Now that health care has stalled, my 2008 claim that Obama was chiefly elected to put the bailout into place increasingly looks true. Not that John McCain wouldn't have done it too, which raises significant doubts about the GOP at the national level. What makes the GOP different from the Democrats? In other words, in the end there may have been little difference between Obama and McCain.
Both would have given trillions of public money to banks and Wall Street and done little else. At the state and local level, yes, the GOP is still the smaller government party. Not so at the national level. The national GOP leaders are big government Progressives.
In 2012 Obama will have the advantage of incumbency, and if he now transitions to a more libertarian posture, which is what Clinton did, he is likely to win in 2012.
Perhaps the position of Scott Brown on the bailout seemed unimportant this month in light of the threat of the health plan, which served to galvanize the public, including many non-Republicans. If Obama is smart, he won't allow a repeat of the health care fiasco. He will avoid further drama and focus on reducing cost, winning the two wars and balancing the federal budget.
Had Al Gore pursued the Clinton strategy in the 2000 election he would have won. But he rejected Clinton's approach in favor of New Deal social Democracy. He lost.
Oddly, the GOP took Bush's election to mean that it should return to the Progressivism of Nelson Rockefeller and Theodore Roosevelt. It remains a puzzle why Newt Gingrich and his colleagues adopted a big government mindset, but the GOP only can win if it rejects it. Let me repeat that. If the GOP wants to win, it needs to adopt a small government mindset. The social conservatives coupled with the neo-conservative big business socialists were not enough to win the presidency. They won't be in future.
The rank and file in the GOP need to find new candidates to run. The 2008 leadership was entirely in favor of Wall Street socialism and big government and so is tainted. But in order to find new leadership, the rank and file needs to take action. The Tea Parties are playing this role, but I remain unconvinced, at least at the national level.
The Tea Parties have not demonstrated the ability to focus on key issues and resist the cooptation that the GOP's establishment will attempt. I will be delighted if they do, but so far few national leaders have emerged. While the Tea Parties can play a useful role at the state and local levels, it is at the national level where the GOP has floundered worst, and I have yet to see national level deliberation that reflects the ability to overcome the national GOP establishment and Obama.
Now, America is weakened by socialism of both the Roman and the Athenian varieties. The war on terror is a legitimate challenge, but the Bush administration handled both the Afghan and Iraqi wars incompetently, resulting in excessive cost. Fourth generation warfare, the use of embedded special forces, should have been adopted early on, but Bush preferred to defer to the second generation warfare concepts of Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon. In any case, the two wasteful wars were coupled with subsidies to Wall Street, the TARP plan and the bailout of Goldman Sachs, AIG and other money center banks.
In a free economy these institutions would have been put into chapter 11, reorganized, the management replaced and the firms split up into more manageable components. This would have been done by bankruptcy courts. The opposite policy of direct subsidization and federal intervention, i.e., socialism, was pursued at the behest of the Republicans and George W. Bush. The Obama administration added some pirouettes, but the basic socialist policy and a large portion of the socialist spending was directly due to George W. Bush and the national GOP leadership, from Newt Gingrich to Karl Rove.
The recent victory in Massachusetts suggests that Americans are upset but that their views are confused. If Americans are upset about the bailout, why did they not question Scott Brown's position on the bailout? In 2000 America elected George W. Bush expecting a conservative, not a socialist. Now, they vote for Scott Brown without asking whether he too is a socialist.
Now that health care has stalled, my 2008 claim that Obama was chiefly elected to put the bailout into place increasingly looks true. Not that John McCain wouldn't have done it too, which raises significant doubts about the GOP at the national level. What makes the GOP different from the Democrats? In other words, in the end there may have been little difference between Obama and McCain.
Both would have given trillions of public money to banks and Wall Street and done little else. At the state and local level, yes, the GOP is still the smaller government party. Not so at the national level. The national GOP leaders are big government Progressives.
In 2012 Obama will have the advantage of incumbency, and if he now transitions to a more libertarian posture, which is what Clinton did, he is likely to win in 2012.
Perhaps the position of Scott Brown on the bailout seemed unimportant this month in light of the threat of the health plan, which served to galvanize the public, including many non-Republicans. If Obama is smart, he won't allow a repeat of the health care fiasco. He will avoid further drama and focus on reducing cost, winning the two wars and balancing the federal budget.
Had Al Gore pursued the Clinton strategy in the 2000 election he would have won. But he rejected Clinton's approach in favor of New Deal social Democracy. He lost.
Oddly, the GOP took Bush's election to mean that it should return to the Progressivism of Nelson Rockefeller and Theodore Roosevelt. It remains a puzzle why Newt Gingrich and his colleagues adopted a big government mindset, but the GOP only can win if it rejects it. Let me repeat that. If the GOP wants to win, it needs to adopt a small government mindset. The social conservatives coupled with the neo-conservative big business socialists were not enough to win the presidency. They won't be in future.
The rank and file in the GOP need to find new candidates to run. The 2008 leadership was entirely in favor of Wall Street socialism and big government and so is tainted. But in order to find new leadership, the rank and file needs to take action. The Tea Parties are playing this role, but I remain unconvinced, at least at the national level.
The Tea Parties have not demonstrated the ability to focus on key issues and resist the cooptation that the GOP's establishment will attempt. I will be delighted if they do, but so far few national leaders have emerged. While the Tea Parties can play a useful role at the state and local levels, it is at the national level where the GOP has floundered worst, and I have yet to see national level deliberation that reflects the ability to overcome the national GOP establishment and Obama.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
This Man Is Awesome--Let's Root for Lt. Col. Allen West
Phil Orenstein has been backing Lt. Col. Allen West for some time, and Jim Crum just sent me this video. Tell me this guy isn't awesome. Let's hope he wins office in the sunshine state. Here's a real presidential possibility for the tea party movement.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Widespread Media Distortion About Tea Parties
The Democratic Party's propaganda machine concertedly failed to cover yesterday's two million strong tea party. Much like Big Brother in George Orwell's book 1984, the propaganda machine paints the centrist tea party demonstrators as "extremist" and the extremists in Congress as "centrists".
There is little reason to continue to watch, pay attention to or care about the "news" as presented by Democratic Party organs. Fox is no better because it is a Progressive Republican mirror.
In the current issue of Reason Magazine Jesse Walker has an excellent article on the Democrats' and Rockefeller Republicans' use of allegations of "extremism" to aim to suppress the speech of moderates who disagree with them. Extremists in the media and in Congress have been using allegations of "right wing violence" to sustain proposals to suppress views that diverge from "progressivism". One extremist, writing in one of the "progressive" organs, has called for bans on "hate speech", in other words for a program to transfer the authoritarian policies of politically correct universities to the nation at large.
When the left was subjected to Palmer Raids and McCarthyism in the early to mid twentieth century (and labor leaders were convicted of violence in the late 19th century) the left claimed to support freedom of speech. Now that left-wing extremism has come to dominate American political discussion, the left, as it generally has wherever it has come to power, favors violent suppression of speech with which it disagrees.
Walker makes an excellent point:
"We've heard ample warnings about extremist paranoia in the months since Barack Obama became president, and we're sure to hear many more throughout his term. But we've heard almost nothing about the paranoia of the political center."
I would, though, take issue with Walker's depiction of the current power elite as representing a "center". American politics is divided among several disparate points of view, and there is no longer a viewpoint that can be called center, any more than there is a "center" between alligators and elephants. A creature that is part alligator and part elephant is not a midpoint between the two, rather it is an absurdity, and there is likewise no midpoint between those who believe in state suppression and those who believe in freedom.
Walker quotes Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" in which he argued that right wing extremists adopted the practices of left-wing extremists. Hofstadter wrote:
"It is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is on many counts the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable aspects of the self are attributed to him...The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through 'front' groups..."
In the same way, the "progressive" left, now that it has power, can be expected to emulate the fascist suppression that it has long claimed to oppose by accusing moderate Americans who believe in freedom of "extremism".
Walker reviews the history of labor leader Walter Reuther's urging the Kennedy administration to use the FBI to politically attack the right. In other words, today's dominant "progressives" mirror the authoritarian right; and the authoritarian right has often reflected the views of "progressives". Neither is "moderate".
In fact, the only moderates are those millions who demonstrated in the tea party rally yesterday, the same people that the propaganda outlets aim to marginalize, demonize and accuse of extremism.
One of the fascinating points in the essay is Walker's remark that Kenneth Stern, author of the tendentious Force Upon the Plain argues that all who advocate decentralization are racists. Then, it would seem that all advocates of modern management theory are racists since decentralization is fundamental to it.
Stern typifies the thuggish, authoritarian tendencies in American progressivism. He argues that anyone who does not want to obey centralized authority is "objectionable." Walker quotes one of Stern's particularly ugly passages:
"When a political movement rejects the idea of common American values and says, 'Let me do it my own way,' it usually means it wants to do things that are objectionable, and yearns to do them undisturbed and unnoticed."
Walker notes that Timothy McVeigh's extremist violence made it possible for the Clinton White House to turn the tables on the Gingrich Congress. This is similar to concepts of Fourth Generation Warfare: public sympathy is a potent weapon. Indeed, in labor history public opinion typically went to the victims of violence. Thus, if a labor union committed acts of violence the public became sympathetic to management while if management committed acts of violence the public became sympathetic to labor. This was the case in the 1920s following the Colorado Fuel and Iron strike in which a number of workers' children were burned to death by Pinkerton guards employed by the Rockefeller owned firm, CF&I.
Conservatives are well counseled to keep violent rhetoric out of the debate. That is, until the point where a revolution is necessary. This was John Locke's argument. While individual rights are sacrosanct and the state is a thuggish institution that violates them, the right to defense needs to be tempered by political reality.
The Obama administration leaped at the opportunity to use federal government apparatchiks in the Department of Homeland Security to issue a report about "right wing extremism". Naturally, the state is itself reflective of extremism, not the right wingers, and one can predict an effort by Congressional and federal thugs to institute violent action against Americans with whom they disagree. Walker describes an "infamous dossier produced by the Missouri Information Analysis Center devoted to...the militia movement" that said "it is not uncommon for militia members to display Constitution Party, Campaign for Liberty or Libertarian material. These members are usually supporters of former Presidential Candidate Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin and Bob Barr."
Hence, the Obama administration already engages in incipient totalitarianism. The reasoning the left uses to support state suppression (that those who disagree with Obama fuel the motives of murderers) is so circuitous that it is evident that their agenda is to silence the speech of any who disagree with their incompetent economic ideas, their mean-spirited stealing in the name of "equality" and the inevitable redistribution of wealth from those who work and are ambitious to Nacy Pelosi-Mussolini, George Soros and their welfare-recipient clients.
Overall, Walker's article is sensational. If you don't subscribe to Reason I urge you to do so. If you're still reading Democratic Party propaganda and not supporting the information sources that agree with you you are part of the problem, not the solution (to project a left-wing phrase).
There is little reason to continue to watch, pay attention to or care about the "news" as presented by Democratic Party organs. Fox is no better because it is a Progressive Republican mirror.
In the current issue of Reason Magazine Jesse Walker has an excellent article on the Democrats' and Rockefeller Republicans' use of allegations of "extremism" to aim to suppress the speech of moderates who disagree with them. Extremists in the media and in Congress have been using allegations of "right wing violence" to sustain proposals to suppress views that diverge from "progressivism". One extremist, writing in one of the "progressive" organs, has called for bans on "hate speech", in other words for a program to transfer the authoritarian policies of politically correct universities to the nation at large.
When the left was subjected to Palmer Raids and McCarthyism in the early to mid twentieth century (and labor leaders were convicted of violence in the late 19th century) the left claimed to support freedom of speech. Now that left-wing extremism has come to dominate American political discussion, the left, as it generally has wherever it has come to power, favors violent suppression of speech with which it disagrees.
Walker makes an excellent point:
"We've heard ample warnings about extremist paranoia in the months since Barack Obama became president, and we're sure to hear many more throughout his term. But we've heard almost nothing about the paranoia of the political center."
I would, though, take issue with Walker's depiction of the current power elite as representing a "center". American politics is divided among several disparate points of view, and there is no longer a viewpoint that can be called center, any more than there is a "center" between alligators and elephants. A creature that is part alligator and part elephant is not a midpoint between the two, rather it is an absurdity, and there is likewise no midpoint between those who believe in state suppression and those who believe in freedom.
Walker quotes Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" in which he argued that right wing extremists adopted the practices of left-wing extremists. Hofstadter wrote:
"It is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is on many counts the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable aspects of the self are attributed to him...The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through 'front' groups..."
In the same way, the "progressive" left, now that it has power, can be expected to emulate the fascist suppression that it has long claimed to oppose by accusing moderate Americans who believe in freedom of "extremism".
Walker reviews the history of labor leader Walter Reuther's urging the Kennedy administration to use the FBI to politically attack the right. In other words, today's dominant "progressives" mirror the authoritarian right; and the authoritarian right has often reflected the views of "progressives". Neither is "moderate".
In fact, the only moderates are those millions who demonstrated in the tea party rally yesterday, the same people that the propaganda outlets aim to marginalize, demonize and accuse of extremism.
One of the fascinating points in the essay is Walker's remark that Kenneth Stern, author of the tendentious Force Upon the Plain argues that all who advocate decentralization are racists. Then, it would seem that all advocates of modern management theory are racists since decentralization is fundamental to it.
Stern typifies the thuggish, authoritarian tendencies in American progressivism. He argues that anyone who does not want to obey centralized authority is "objectionable." Walker quotes one of Stern's particularly ugly passages:
"When a political movement rejects the idea of common American values and says, 'Let me do it my own way,' it usually means it wants to do things that are objectionable, and yearns to do them undisturbed and unnoticed."
Walker notes that Timothy McVeigh's extremist violence made it possible for the Clinton White House to turn the tables on the Gingrich Congress. This is similar to concepts of Fourth Generation Warfare: public sympathy is a potent weapon. Indeed, in labor history public opinion typically went to the victims of violence. Thus, if a labor union committed acts of violence the public became sympathetic to management while if management committed acts of violence the public became sympathetic to labor. This was the case in the 1920s following the Colorado Fuel and Iron strike in which a number of workers' children were burned to death by Pinkerton guards employed by the Rockefeller owned firm, CF&I.
Conservatives are well counseled to keep violent rhetoric out of the debate. That is, until the point where a revolution is necessary. This was John Locke's argument. While individual rights are sacrosanct and the state is a thuggish institution that violates them, the right to defense needs to be tempered by political reality.
The Obama administration leaped at the opportunity to use federal government apparatchiks in the Department of Homeland Security to issue a report about "right wing extremism". Naturally, the state is itself reflective of extremism, not the right wingers, and one can predict an effort by Congressional and federal thugs to institute violent action against Americans with whom they disagree. Walker describes an "infamous dossier produced by the Missouri Information Analysis Center devoted to...the militia movement" that said "it is not uncommon for militia members to display Constitution Party, Campaign for Liberty or Libertarian material. These members are usually supporters of former Presidential Candidate Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin and Bob Barr."
Hence, the Obama administration already engages in incipient totalitarianism. The reasoning the left uses to support state suppression (that those who disagree with Obama fuel the motives of murderers) is so circuitous that it is evident that their agenda is to silence the speech of any who disagree with their incompetent economic ideas, their mean-spirited stealing in the name of "equality" and the inevitable redistribution of wealth from those who work and are ambitious to Nacy Pelosi-Mussolini, George Soros and their welfare-recipient clients.
Overall, Walker's article is sensational. If you don't subscribe to Reason I urge you to do so. If you're still reading Democratic Party propaganda and not supporting the information sources that agree with you you are part of the problem, not the solution (to project a left-wing phrase).
Tea for Two Million
Darren Pope in the Washington Examiner reports that between 1.2 and two million Americans attended the anti-Obama tea party in Washington yesterday. Wow! The Examiner reports that Nancy Pelosi-Mussolini, the fascist from Frisco (yeah, I know those SOBs hate to hear the People's Republic on the Bay Frisco called Frisco), is unlikely to be booted out by her goose stepping constituents, but more than a few of her fellow national socialists may be in danger.
Pope writes:
"Rally-goers said they are not strictly anti-Obama, or anti-Democrat, but instead are fed up with big government, corruption, high taxes, and runaway spending. They said they have had enough of politicians who don't listen to their concerns and are more afraid of special interests than they are of the voters. Many in the crowd said they were Democrats or independents. The protestors were clearly from across the political spectrum, young and old, black and white, male and female. It will be hard to dismiss them as being only angry Republicans."
America has become a class-based society. The Democrats represent the wealthy, the professionals and government workers, and welfare recipients. The Republicans the working class. America is divided, and the Democrats' eight-decade long Roman policy of pretending to feed the plebes while supporting George Soros and Wall Street is to blame.
Pope writes:
"Rally-goers said they are not strictly anti-Obama, or anti-Democrat, but instead are fed up with big government, corruption, high taxes, and runaway spending. They said they have had enough of politicians who don't listen to their concerns and are more afraid of special interests than they are of the voters. Many in the crowd said they were Democrats or independents. The protestors were clearly from across the political spectrum, young and old, black and white, male and female. It will be hard to dismiss them as being only angry Republicans."
America has become a class-based society. The Democrats represent the wealthy, the professionals and government workers, and welfare recipients. The Republicans the working class. America is divided, and the Democrats' eight-decade long Roman policy of pretending to feed the plebes while supporting George Soros and Wall Street is to blame.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Exchange with Doug Ross Re Minor Parties
In response to my post regarding Phil Orenstein's blog on tea parties legendary blogger Doug Ross writes:
>As Mark Levin and Hugh Hewitt have stated on a number of occasions, any attempt at forming a third party would be disastrous: it would simply split the conservative vote when, even united, the job ahead will be monumentally difficult.
We must not and can not endorse the formation of a third party. It represents suicide for the conservative movement. We must instead reshape the Republican Party behind the aegis of Liberty vs. Tyranny.
Best Regards,
Doug Ross
Doug Ross @ Journal
My response:
I disagree with Hewitt and Levin as to the lack of viability of third parties. Third parties do not win but they influence future elections. There have been quite a few examples. One was the Anti-Masonic Party which never won but was instrumental in the formation of the Whig Party, and the Whig Party (a second party) was instrumental in the formation of the Republicans. Another was the Populists, which never won but succeeded in seeing the nomination of William Jennings Bryan. Although Bryan lost in 1896, his ideas were ultimately adopted via Franklin Roosevelt. This pattern also occurred via the Progressive Party in 1912. Although the Progressive Theodore Roosevelt lost, his socialist ideas, which were similar to Bryan's, ultimately won in 1932. Thus, there is typically a multi-step process involving third parties. They do not win but the major parties adopt their ideas.
This multi-step process has to be the case with a within-party insurgency as well. The reason is that there are no Republicans capable of leading a Lockean insurgency, and the party infrastructure is missing. Either way (insurgency or third party) there will have to be a multi-year process. An in-party insurgency will require several election cycles. The Goldwater election of 1964 was an insurgency that paved the way for Reagan in 1980. Similarly, the Bourbon Democrats, the pro-gold conservative Democrats, were around after the Civil War and saw their candidate, Grover Cleveland, win in 1884.
Messers. Levin and Hewittt overstate the distinction between an in-party insurgency and a third party. Either way (insurgency or third party) Lockean Republicans have little chance in the next two presidential cycles.
Additionally, I suspect that any Republican Presidential candidate who is put up to run in '12 will be just another big government type masquerading as a small government type unless there is a radical ideological cleansing of the entire Republican Party now. But I don't see how that could happen. So in a word, the Republicans serious about ideas ought not to think about winning an election in '12. If they do, they will just get more garbage. It is better to work on two things: building a new party and destabilizing the Democrats.
To give you an idea of how bad the Bush administration was, I went to Washington in 2005 to protest the accreditation of the National Council on Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), a left wing extremist body that has taken control of accrediting education schools. Rather than abolish the Department of Education, the Bush administration used the DOE as a patronage plum. But who received the patronage? Left wing extremists who supported NCATE---Many of the appointees on the board before which I spoke argued with me in favor of NCATE. So Bush appointed Lockean Republicans' enemies. It was more important to him to be able to do this than to abolish the DOE. That's how incompetent and stupid the incumbent Republicans are.
Do you really think a perpetuation of the current Republican Party is crucial? One of two things must occur in order to change: a third party or a serious insurgency. Otherwise, we will keep running around in circles forever.
>As Mark Levin and Hugh Hewitt have stated on a number of occasions, any attempt at forming a third party would be disastrous: it would simply split the conservative vote when, even united, the job ahead will be monumentally difficult.
We must not and can not endorse the formation of a third party. It represents suicide for the conservative movement. We must instead reshape the Republican Party behind the aegis of Liberty vs. Tyranny.
Best Regards,
Doug Ross
Doug Ross @ Journal
My response:
I disagree with Hewitt and Levin as to the lack of viability of third parties. Third parties do not win but they influence future elections. There have been quite a few examples. One was the Anti-Masonic Party which never won but was instrumental in the formation of the Whig Party, and the Whig Party (a second party) was instrumental in the formation of the Republicans. Another was the Populists, which never won but succeeded in seeing the nomination of William Jennings Bryan. Although Bryan lost in 1896, his ideas were ultimately adopted via Franklin Roosevelt. This pattern also occurred via the Progressive Party in 1912. Although the Progressive Theodore Roosevelt lost, his socialist ideas, which were similar to Bryan's, ultimately won in 1932. Thus, there is typically a multi-step process involving third parties. They do not win but the major parties adopt their ideas.
This multi-step process has to be the case with a within-party insurgency as well. The reason is that there are no Republicans capable of leading a Lockean insurgency, and the party infrastructure is missing. Either way (insurgency or third party) there will have to be a multi-year process. An in-party insurgency will require several election cycles. The Goldwater election of 1964 was an insurgency that paved the way for Reagan in 1980. Similarly, the Bourbon Democrats, the pro-gold conservative Democrats, were around after the Civil War and saw their candidate, Grover Cleveland, win in 1884.
Messers. Levin and Hewittt overstate the distinction between an in-party insurgency and a third party. Either way (insurgency or third party) Lockean Republicans have little chance in the next two presidential cycles.
Additionally, I suspect that any Republican Presidential candidate who is put up to run in '12 will be just another big government type masquerading as a small government type unless there is a radical ideological cleansing of the entire Republican Party now. But I don't see how that could happen. So in a word, the Republicans serious about ideas ought not to think about winning an election in '12. If they do, they will just get more garbage. It is better to work on two things: building a new party and destabilizing the Democrats.
To give you an idea of how bad the Bush administration was, I went to Washington in 2005 to protest the accreditation of the National Council on Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), a left wing extremist body that has taken control of accrediting education schools. Rather than abolish the Department of Education, the Bush administration used the DOE as a patronage plum. But who received the patronage? Left wing extremists who supported NCATE---Many of the appointees on the board before which I spoke argued with me in favor of NCATE. So Bush appointed Lockean Republicans' enemies. It was more important to him to be able to do this than to abolish the DOE. That's how incompetent and stupid the incumbent Republicans are.
Do you really think a perpetuation of the current Republican Party is crucial? One of two things must occur in order to change: a third party or a serious insurgency. Otherwise, we will keep running around in circles forever.
Phil Orenstein on the Tea Parties
Phil Orenstein, a seminal blogger and activist who introduced the Academic Bill of Rights to New York State and is active in the Queens (NYC) Republican Party, has written an important blog on the recent "tea parties". I am gratified that hundreds of thousands of Americans have begun to stand up to the collectivism of the Bush-Obama years and have started to reject the failed two-party system. Contrary to multi-millionaire Nancy Pelosi's self-serving claim that the tea party participants are wealthy people, I know better and you know better. These are hard working Americans for whom government does not work. It does not work because it oppresses the public; imposes excessive, tyrannical taxes; regulates business to death; creates economic instability via the advice of quack, university-based economists like Paul Krugman; and imposes secular humanist values on those who do not share such views.
Millionairess Pelosi's reaction to the tea parties is indicative. Like any tyrant, Pelosi blames the victims of her tyranny. Imagine if 100,000 people demonstrated against a private firm, say Toyota or Hewlett Packard. Would the managements of those firms say: "Oh these are all millionaires who were put up to it by the competition. Their views do not count." No, only in government, where tyrannical bigots enjoy power without responsibility and do not need to concern themselves with the effects of their decisions are such opinions possible.
Phil notes that hundreds of thousands gathered on April 15 to protest excessive government, taxes and subsidies to incompetent big businesses of which Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Krugman have long been affiliated. These big businesses on the Democratic and Republican Gravy Train do not create value but rather loot the public with the full support of Barack Obama, Republicans and Democrats.
Obama, probably the most divisive president in American history, has achieved the support of Congressional Republicans, who no longer represent their constituents. Obama is a president who has "signed a pork laden stimulus package of $787 billion". Calling this legislation "stimulus" is a joke along the lines of calling the medieval ideology of today's mercantilists "progressive". The Bush-Obama legislation does not help the economy. It transfers wealth from poor to rich. It is the most divisive legislation in American history, signed by the investment bankers' water boy, Barack Obama and his assistant, Millionairess Pelosi.
Orenstein observes that "Days before the Tea Parties, Janet Napolitano released an alarming Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report on 'Rightwing Extremism' targeting War Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and ordinary Americans holding conservative viewpoints as potential terrorist suspects." Thus, the divisive Obama administration takes its cues from the early days of Mussolini. It is rather pathetic that Obama's followers think that the nation can unite behind this totalitarian thug and his half witted appointees, tax cheat Timothy Geithner and Black Shirt Wannabe Janet Napolitano.
Phil attacks the opinions of investment banker shill Paul Krugman, who has spent his journalism career saying how he dislikes income inequality but fights as hard as he can to create as much income inequality as possible, specifically through transfers to his former students and Princeton donors on Wall Street. It is Krugman who has worked tirelessly for Ken Lay at Enron and the Ochs Sulzbergers, and who aggressively argues for ever greater subsidies to Goldman Sachs's clients. Then, he suggests that taxes be increased on working people who work two or three jobs and take home $100K.
The Democratic Party has been a cancer on American working people since 1896. The fact that so many are bamboozled by apologists for the super-rich like Krugman and Pelosi is a testimony to the weakness of democracy: You can fool all of the people some of the time.
Phil notes:
"The Tea Party participants utterly reject the Republican Party and its pathetic leadership, in their eyes. Not only do they believe Republicans are part of the problem for the past eight years of big government spending, but also that the McCain campaign purposely threw away the 2008 election...They are even more disgusted with the performance of the GOP today..."
I think this movement will amount to something only if (a) it creates an insurgency within the current Republican Party and throws out all past leadership, from Gingrich on down or (b) it starts a third party. Any association with the past 20 years of Republican leadership is poison. The current Republicans are equal to the Democrats. That is the worst insult I can think of. As Phil points out, the New York Republicans are the worst of all.
Phil's post is excellent and should be read in full here.
Millionairess Pelosi's reaction to the tea parties is indicative. Like any tyrant, Pelosi blames the victims of her tyranny. Imagine if 100,000 people demonstrated against a private firm, say Toyota or Hewlett Packard. Would the managements of those firms say: "Oh these are all millionaires who were put up to it by the competition. Their views do not count." No, only in government, where tyrannical bigots enjoy power without responsibility and do not need to concern themselves with the effects of their decisions are such opinions possible.
Phil notes that hundreds of thousands gathered on April 15 to protest excessive government, taxes and subsidies to incompetent big businesses of which Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Krugman have long been affiliated. These big businesses on the Democratic and Republican Gravy Train do not create value but rather loot the public with the full support of Barack Obama, Republicans and Democrats.
Obama, probably the most divisive president in American history, has achieved the support of Congressional Republicans, who no longer represent their constituents. Obama is a president who has "signed a pork laden stimulus package of $787 billion". Calling this legislation "stimulus" is a joke along the lines of calling the medieval ideology of today's mercantilists "progressive". The Bush-Obama legislation does not help the economy. It transfers wealth from poor to rich. It is the most divisive legislation in American history, signed by the investment bankers' water boy, Barack Obama and his assistant, Millionairess Pelosi.
Orenstein observes that "Days before the Tea Parties, Janet Napolitano released an alarming Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report on 'Rightwing Extremism' targeting War Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and ordinary Americans holding conservative viewpoints as potential terrorist suspects." Thus, the divisive Obama administration takes its cues from the early days of Mussolini. It is rather pathetic that Obama's followers think that the nation can unite behind this totalitarian thug and his half witted appointees, tax cheat Timothy Geithner and Black Shirt Wannabe Janet Napolitano.
Phil attacks the opinions of investment banker shill Paul Krugman, who has spent his journalism career saying how he dislikes income inequality but fights as hard as he can to create as much income inequality as possible, specifically through transfers to his former students and Princeton donors on Wall Street. It is Krugman who has worked tirelessly for Ken Lay at Enron and the Ochs Sulzbergers, and who aggressively argues for ever greater subsidies to Goldman Sachs's clients. Then, he suggests that taxes be increased on working people who work two or three jobs and take home $100K.
The Democratic Party has been a cancer on American working people since 1896. The fact that so many are bamboozled by apologists for the super-rich like Krugman and Pelosi is a testimony to the weakness of democracy: You can fool all of the people some of the time.
Phil notes:
"The Tea Party participants utterly reject the Republican Party and its pathetic leadership, in their eyes. Not only do they believe Republicans are part of the problem for the past eight years of big government spending, but also that the McCain campaign purposely threw away the 2008 election...They are even more disgusted with the performance of the GOP today..."
I think this movement will amount to something only if (a) it creates an insurgency within the current Republican Party and throws out all past leadership, from Gingrich on down or (b) it starts a third party. Any association with the past 20 years of Republican leadership is poison. The current Republicans are equal to the Democrats. That is the worst insult I can think of. As Phil points out, the New York Republicans are the worst of all.
Phil's post is excellent and should be read in full here.
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