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Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Making Amends Part 4: The Writing On The Politico-Ideological Wall
Fran here. This will be the last of these pieces. It's time to concentrate on strategies for mitigation and recovery from what's approaching. All the same, you can't solve your problems without accurately identifying and admitting to their genesis, which has been my aim in this series.
Despite the strong popular disapproval of Barack Hussein Obama and his Democrat co-partisans in Congress, the American public remains very evenly divided on the questions of what government is for, and what it ought to do. The ideological contest is between the Barry Goldwater / Ronald Reagan view of government as a carefully constrained protector against invasion and a guarantor of public peace and justice, and the Joseph Clark / Ted Kennedy view of government as the fount of all good things. Ideologically, each side regards its case as irrefutable. Politically, we're in the fifteenth round, with the point count tied and neither side able to score a knockout. With each jab or flurry, the judges careen from one side to the other.
There, in a capsule, you have the genesis of our political calamities.
We in the Right have only contempt for the anti-freedom ideology of our opponents. Historically, we've regarded them as misguided and uninformed; in more recent years, we've taken a harsher view. They of the Left regard us as either stupid or evil, and therefore unworthy of admission to any "serious" discussion of public policy.
Keep the steady hardening of those positions in mind as you read the rest of this essay.
Much of the disapproval of the Obamunists arises from The Won not having governed far enough to the left, as his Kossack and Huffingtonite boosters were sure he would. Therefore, it would be damaging to our interests as freedom advocates to assume that the disenchantment with him that the polls report is wholly to our benefit.
In John Pugsley's classic work The Alpha Strategy, he reminds us that American politicians are elected by majorities that are presumed to support what they do thereafter. In the case of Obama, a substantial fraction of the majority that put him in the White House is terribly disappointed with him -- which does not mean those voters would have preferred John McCain. Given the chance, those same voters would vote for someone even further to the left: a Henry Wallace, a George McGovern, or perhaps a Norman Thomas. They would expect their man, if elected, to do what they'd elected him to do.
It's highly unlikely that any great fraction of those voters could be won over to the pro-freedom cause. As Thomas Sowell has noted, theirs is a "vision of the anointed," a posture that assumes their superior wisdom and virtue. To renounce that vision would entail a radical reassessment of their attitudes throughout their lives. That's more honesty about oneself than most of us can endure.
But as we know, the verdict of the American electorate is usually determined by the "independent" voters: those of no particular ideology or party affiliation. Though these voters are reachable, they're not convertible: they decline to align themselves firmly and enduringly with a specific set of ideas about the proper role of government. Thus, an enduring grasp on power in Washington, by either ideology or party, is inherently elusive.
The way I've been talking about ideology and party alignment, it might seem as if the two go hand-in-hand. That's so far from the truth, the Hubble telescope can't see it from here.
The major political parties aren't ideological vehicles; they're devices for the pursuit of power and privilege. They exist to elect candidates and enlarge the influence of their kingmakers. The convulsions of 1896 and 1928 should have made that clear, though few persons are adequately educated about the events of those years.
The closest the parties come to ideological commitment is in their quadrennial party platforms. Each lays out a general philosophy of governance and policy positions based on that philosophy, but a party platform is not a binding document. Indeed, the Democrats' party platform of 1932 was a small-government / hard-money document, which Franklin D. Roosevelt immediately dispensed with upon assuming the Oval Office. Several of his Congressional boosters withdrew their support from him because of his departures from the platform, but to no avail.
Republican platforms are nominally limited-government / Constitutional fidelity manifestoes, but those documents have seldom been honored by Republican administrations or Republican majorities in Congress. The Eisenhower, Nixon, Bush pere and Bush fils administrations were barely more restrained in their expansions and exertions of federal power than the Kennedy, Johnson, and Clinton administrations. Their clearest differences were in foreign policy, yet even there, a certain tendency toward "the middle" was observable in all of them.
The most important fact about the major parties is that there are two of them.
Two parties means two sets of kingmakers and allegiants. Two sets of kingmakers and allegiants means what one gains, the other loses: offices, influence over policy, political privileges, subsidies, subventions, impositions, and other spoils of political victory. There's no room in two-party politics for "coalition governance," such as we see in parliamentary systems like Britain's. Even the tradition of putting one allegiant of the losing party into a Cabinet position as a gesture of amity has become rather strained.
I hope it's clear that one cannot remain faithful to any set of principles if one's highest priority is gaining and retaining power. Thus, the sharper the contest between the parties has become, the less interest their operators have taken in political principles of any description. Officeholders' oaths to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States" are broken almost immediately upon their being seated.
Politics in our time resembles nothing quite so closely as gang warfare.
At the level of the "common man," the instruments with which to pursue any particular direction in governance are pathetically few and limited. They consist almost entirely of the vote.
John Q. Public has been told innumerable times that "it doesn't matter how you vote, just so you vote." So he's voted, and voted, and voted again. But changes in our governments' vectors, whether in direction or magnitude, have been elusive. In consequence, Mr. and Mrs. Public have become ever more disillusioned about the power of the franchise. Yet the "public service" exhortations for all of us to vote continue unabated, because high vote totals are used by politicians as evidence that they have "a mandate to govern."
In recent years, activists and allied commentators have laid great stress on the nomination process. Putting better candidates forward, and supporting them with greater vigor, we've been told, will bring about the changes we desire. But until very recently, the parties have managed to shield their nomination processes against unwanted intrusions. The McCain and Scozzafava nominations were distressing examples of Republican nomination antics, while the vermiculations that raised Barack Hussein Obama over Hillary Rodham Clinton ("What a pity both these fine candidates can't lose." -- David Letterman) displayed Democrat machine politics at their worst.
These two years just past have seen a significant number of "outsider" candidates nominated to run for state and Congressional offices on major-party tickets. As heartening as these developments have been, I don't expect them to continue. State Boards of Election everywhere are heavily staffed with party loyalists, who can be counted on to work against such a trend by procedural obstruction. They, too, have rice bowls to protect, and they value the good will of the party power-brokers who help to protect them.
The other key asset the major-party kingmakers possess is the absence of a way to disqualify both major party candidates with a single ballot. Without that capability, every "vote against" (Robert A. Heinlein) is equally interpretable as a vote for, which reinforces one gang of power-mongers without fail.
Every "None of the Above is Acceptable" scheme has been derided by some and criticized as pointless by others. The former group is made up mostly of major party allegiants; the latter claims that third parties provide all the alternatives voters need. But third parties can only function usefully in a parliamentary system that features proportional representation; that's simply not the case in these United States. Besides, we wouldn't want that sort of arrangement anyway; it's too conducive to runaway government.
In summary:
- Aligned voters are about equal in number and essentially frozen into their alignments;
- Independent voters are uninterested in ideology, arguments about it, or the parties' treatment of it;
- The major parties, regardless of their supposed platforms, disdan all ideologies in practice as impediments to the attainment and retention of power;
- The vote has proved ineffective as a means to steer our governments into any particular channel;
- Popular awareness of all the above has been rising for some time, as has the popular frustration with the status quo;
- If greater citizen participation in major-party nomination processes displaces the party kingmakers to any significant degree, their allies in the offices of state Boards of Election will find a way to restore them to their previous immunity from citizen displeasure;
- Without a "None of the Above is Acceptable" option that really, officially disqualifies all candidates for an office, the vote cannot be prevented from reinforcing one major-party candidate and those who back him.
Therefore, our politico-ideological lockup will continue as it has begun, to the delight of principle-free politicians and the special interests who rent them. The Reign of Plunder will continue until the laws of physics and economics decree that it cannot:
Nevertheless, in the inexplicable universal votings and debatings of these Ages, an idea or rather a dumb presumption to the contrary has gone idly abroad, and at this day, over extensive tracts of the world, poor human beings are to be found, whose practical belief it is that if we "vote" this or that, so this or that will thenceforth be. Practically men have come to imagine that the Laws of this Universe, like the laws of constitutional countries, are decided by voting. It is an idle fancy. The Laws of this Universe, of which if the Laws of England are not an exact transcript, they should passionately study to become such, are fixed by the everlasting congruity of things, and are not fixable or changeable by voting![Attributed to an anonymous Englishman, in Herbert Spencer's The Proper Sphere of Government]
Pray.
Comments
You’re **ALMOST** there—SOOoooo close, and yet so far.
We don’t have a “2-party system”—we have one party with 2 branches—we have “The Government Party”
“The Government Party” is no different than pro sports. Every few years, the 2 “teams” have a big contest, and the “winner” is declared.
Like football, the trophy is the visible symbol, but nothing really changes. All “players” continue to draw their same salaries whether their performance was stellar or poor.
No matter who you root for, the NFL (and the players’ association) wins!!
Bob Goldthwait (comedian) summed it up best—“voting is like being taken to the adult novelty store at gunpoint - I’m forced to try to decide which one of these dildos is going to cause me the least amount of pain.”
I agree with all who say that the Republitards (the “Stupid” branch of The Government Party) are little better than the Demmunists (the “Evil” branch). The only real difference is that The Stupids will move us left in small steps, while The Evils will move in big ones.
We’ve long passed the tipping point where it is conceivably possible to turn things around in the ballot-box—A major, mass, violent revolt is about the only thing with any chance of fixing this mess.
I don’t wish for it - I pray daily it can be averted and work to help prevent it - but I see it as inevitable.
In sum, “Si vis pacem, para bellum.”
DD
Posted by Dedicated_Dad on 07/15/2010 at 12:01 AM“The Reign of Plunder will continue until the laws of physics and economics decree that it cannot”
...and when this irresistable force (the Reign of Plunder/corrupt government) meets the immovable object what, exactly, happens?
Will it be an implosion of the economy, a breakdown of the delicate, interwoven facets of our economy that results in a Mad Max scenario? Will it be an open dictatorship? Will there FINALLY be a revolution, much like the French one, to get rid of the parasite class once and for all? Inquiring minds would like to know Fran’s thoughts on this.
Oh, and I do pray that this can all be averted. All prayers are heard, I believe, but not all are answered - and even when they are, sometimes you don’t like the answer you receive.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/15/2010 at 11:05 AMI think the deflection point was at the 2008 election and we are close to reaching a minimum limit, or at least brief leveling off.
Race relations seem worse that what I can remember since being a child in the 60’s. And so are many other divisions of the population. Dems want to categorize everyone, and while it may not be a Republican’s ideas, they seem to be fellow traveler’s in the countries slide into mediocrity driven by bureaucracy and committee. They take for granted that because America seems to have a history of rising to meet the occasion, it will do so again. The current President should be a warning for those naive to believe that. We can’t be better than the guy at the top. The last good President was Reagan.
I think that will have more to do with either revolt or dissolution than economics or the war in Afghanistan.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/15/2010 at 06:24 PMYou may have indirectly suggested a novel solution - since the vote is the only way most can express their opinion (and there are so few worth voting for), the less-obvious approach is to vote for no one—just leave the ballot blank. The original idea comes from “Seeing”, written by Nobel-winning author Jose Saramago. If everyone voted, but all (or most of) the ballots were blank, nobody has a majority and the seat goes unfilled…
Now, would you prefer another crook in office or no-one? No more laws passed, no more meddling, no more do-gooding…It would be a shot heard round the world…Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/15/2010 at 11:41 PM“Race relations seem worse that what I can remember since being a child in the 60’s.”
They are worse, thanks to the deliberate actions (and non-actions) of the most divisive President America has ever elected.
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“They take for granted that because America seems to have a history of rising to meet the occasion…”The problem is that cream is not the only thing that rises to the top; so does scum.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/16/2010 at 01:36 AM
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