Wednesday, November 19, 2008
InstaBlog - because I’m feeling lazy right now
Hmm, let me see here…
Eric Holder for Attorney General?
Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State (granted, just a rumor at the moment)?
John Podesta managing Obama’s transition team?
Are we sure it was Obama who actually won the Democratic primary?
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Holding Back the Tide
One wonders at the reasons for the desperate efforts of the US treasury and Federal Reserve Bank injecting mind numbing quantities of fiat "money" into the system in order to avoid price deflation. It is the same policy that was followed beginning in 1930 by the Hoover administration and continued by FDR's "New Deal". Those policies of protectionism (Smoot Hawley Tariff) and destroying agricultural products to prop up prices as well as raising taxes resulted in an ordinary and recurring recessionary event being prolonged into a decade long depression.
Apropos the present situation one need only ask: qui bono? Who benefits from price deflation (a decline in the market prices of goods and services)? Answer: consumers and savers whose savings will purchase more products. Conversely, who is damaged by deflation? Answer: Borrowers who must repay debts formerly contracted at elevated rates.
The greatest beneficiaries of inflation are borrowers who repay bonds and debts with devalued currency. Who are the greatest debtors in the history of civilization? If you answered "governments", go to the head of the class. That is the reason for the panic expansion of fiat currency by governments who have been financing their wars and Marxist social engineering with money borrowed or created out of thin air rather than raising the tax burden on the productive elements of society beyond the already confiscatory levels. I fear that in view of the falling prices of many commodities the Fed and Treasury will presently discover the futility of their policy; but the wreckage will not be a pleasant sight to behold.
cross posted at: Fighting in the Shade™
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Fran’s Sunday Ruminations: The Enemies Of Faith
WASHINGTON, D.C. — You better watch out. There is a new combatant in the Christmas wars.Ads proclaiming, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake," will appear on Washington, D.C., buses starting next week and running through December. The American Humanist Association unveiled the provocative $40,000 holiday ad campaign Tuesday....
"We are trying to reach our audience, and sometimes in order to reach an audience, everybody has to hear you," said Fred Edwords, spokesman for the humanist group. "Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion.1"...
Edwords said the purpose isn't to argue that God doesn't exist or change minds about a deity, although "we are trying to plant a seed of rational thought and critical thinking and questioning in people's minds.2"
The group defines humanism as "a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism, affirms our responsibility to lead ethical lives of value to self and humanity."
Last month, the British Humanist Association caused a ruckus announcing a similar campaign on London buses with the message: "There's probably no God.3 Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."
[Emphases and note-numbers added by FWP.]
Let's tackle the three emphasized assertions above in reverse order of appearance.
First, number 3: "There's probably no God." One aspect of the debate over the existence of a supernatural realm that enrages anti-theists is that there's no indisputable evidence either for or against the proposition. Their militancy is as unverifiable and unfalsifiable as any religious faith. Therefore, according to Porretto's Partition, it constitutes a faith of its own. (Beware: he who says that to an anti-theist had better have the number of the local ambulance service on speed-dial.)
So they fall back on the most fallacious of all pseudo-arguments: probability. But probability is a discipline of its own; it requires the ability, derived either from an analytical grasp of the phenomenon under study or a sufficient volume of experience with it, to estimate how often in a protracted series of trials the proposed event will occur. For example, we approach the question:
"How probable is it that this coin will come up 'heads' when flipped?"
...analytically by noting that the coin has two sides, that there's no measurable irregularity in the geometry or weight distribution of the coin, and that therefore, the probability is very near to 50 percent. He who doubts the analytical approach to the question -- perhaps our estimate of the coin's regularity doesn't satisfy him -- can perform a series of experiments: say a thousand coin-flips today, and a thousand tomorrow, and perhaps a thousand next Tuesday while eating lunch. His figures might vary from ours somewhat, in which case the argument will begin over whether his experimental series was consistently and accurately conducted, whether what's true of the coin he flipped might not be true of other coins flipped by other parties, and so forth.
In other words, assessments of probability worthy of respect require either analytical comprehension or substantial experience.
We have not the power to comprehend a proposed Being who, by postulate, stands outside Time and possesses complete control over the laws that govern our universe. Nor can we experiment on Him, nor sample His properties with the tools to hand. Therefore, the statement "There's probably no God" is completely inadmissible as a contribution to the debate. It has no substance, only form.
Now let's address number 2: "we are trying to plant a seed of rational thought and critical thinking and questioning in people's minds." This is pure arrogance. Many persons come to faith with the assistance of rational, critical thought. I am one such. I don't claim that one can reason one's way to God; by the arguments given above, that will forever be impossible. Rather, a combination of interior events -- inspirations, if you prefer -- and rational consideration of the objections to theism led me to decide that God exists, and that the Christian faith delineated in the Gospels is both rationally acceptable and ethically mandatory.
To question is human. God delights in our questions; that's why He made us what we are. Were His existence beyond all question, we would have no need for faith. Indeed, we would have no room for faith or doubt. But to question is not to deny, nor is an assertion that an untestable proposition must be false an intellectually respectable claim.
In this connection, it is particularly humorous to watch anti-theists preening themselves for their superior intellects. What they possess is superior arrogance, nothing more. They fail to distinguish among logic, evidence, assumption, and presumption, because to do so would compel them to grant respect to persons to whom they need to feel superior.
Finally, number 1: "there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion." This is both nonsensical on its face and a dissimulation about the campaign's obvious target. Christmas is the most secularized of all the originally Christian celebrations. To enjoy it imposes absolutely no requirement for faith. Indeed, Christmas is situated where it is because originally, the classical Romans celebrated Saturnalia on that date, while the druids and other animistic creeds made ritual obeisances to the forces they worshipped, pleading for the Sun to be allowed to return to the world. There's no reason in our hyper-tolerant age for a non-theist to feel excluded from the festivities.
Science fiction writer (and adult convert to Catholicism) John C. Wright poses the most pointed of questions in the most pointed of forms:
Are you an atheist because you want to be loved and smooched and patted on the head, Mr. Edword? Or are you an atheist because you think atheism is TRUE and REASON DEMANDS IT?If you are not willing to be loyal to the truth, no matter the cost, then do not take up arms for the truth. If you are loyal, why count the cost? You want to be a rebel against the vast Christian majority, and also want the victory to be free, without strain, without bloodshed?
But this is only the overt thrust of the anti-God campaign. The covert purpose is to undermine the attachments of Christians. More specifically, it targets the efforts of Christian parents to school their children in the genesis of the holiday: the Incarnation of the Son of God in human flesh. Adult believers are relatively well armored against so crude a program, but young Americans, to whom the Gospel of Secular Humanism beckons in multifarious ways, are more susceptible.
Hypocrisy, arrogance, and self-pity rolled into one big, purulent ball doth not a cogent argument make.
But the Christian faith has more enemies than just the militant anti-theists. Most deplorably, some of those enemies are Christian clerics.
I've written before on this subject, but it's a bug-bear that refuses to die. These past few years we've had scandals of several varieties afflict the Catholic Church. In the years before that, there were a number of scandals pertaining to the high-profile "televangelists," several of whom were permanently disgraced by the revelations of their behavior. The Inquisitions were a particular blot upon Christendom, one which is still used to defame Christianity today. If you're willing to go back to the Renaissance Papacy, we can find a succession of popes whose behavior was so appalling as to compel the question of whether God Himself had turned His Face against the Church.
Today's specimen is the cleric who treats things sacred as of lesser importance than things secular. Clerics who use the pulpit to preach politics in preference to the Gospel. Clerics who downplay the absoluteness of the Commandments to keep from "frightening" their parishioners. Clerics who treat their own ethical preferences as inseparable from the teachings of Christ. In other words, clerics for whom the faith is merely a useful means to some other end:
Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything—even social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner. Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that ‘only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and birth new civilizations’. You see the little rift? ‘Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.’ That’s the game. [C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters]
My parish is afflicted by one such priest. How many parishioners have flocked to his false banner, only God can know.
One more mini-rant and I'll close for today.
If you've been following these Sunday Ruminations, you might have noticed that they've not been as regular these past few weeks as they were before that. There are, of course, reasons.
First and least among them, I haven't been well. My health has concerned me for some years now, and recently it's taken a downturn. I speak not of some specific malady, but of my overall vitality, my ability to marshal my energies and attack large problems. As one's energies decline, one must adjust one's obligations and involvements, making certain always to put the former before the latter. Such adjustments come particularly hard to one used to being able to wrestle virtually any problem to the ground, and handle a prodigious amount of responsibility without strain. Among other things, the folks who've been leaning on you tend to resent the loss of their accustomed crutch.
Second, I've been in more doubt than ever about the suitability of my voice and my approach to religious topics. I'm a Christian -- "a serious Catholic," as Duyen recently put it -- and I prize my faith greatly, but that doesn't mean that I'm properly equipped to speak on its behalf. That's interfered with producing these Ruminations to an unknowable degree.
Third, and most important, I've been struck by the need to work on myself. A sincere Christian cannot speak of his faith or its dictates without simultaneously questioning how well he's been living it. In particular, this passage from Matthew has been much on my mind:
"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." [The Gospel According to Matthew, 5:43-45]
I have a very hard time with that. Intellectually I understand the force of it, for no man is irretrievable while he lives, and even the best of us can fail of our obligation of benevolence to one another. But it's harder to internalize it, and act on it, than it is to comprehend it.
One of the indicators of whether one is speaking necessary truths is whether one is being vilified for doing so. In the most dramatic Case, the Speaker was put to a torturous public death: excruciating in the exact sense of the word. By that standard, a Christian polemicist should rejoice at taking flak, as it means he's "over the target." But that doesn't guarantee that his response to denunciation and vilification will be in accordance with the teachings of the Redeemer, Granted, one must be superlatively strong to forgive one's torturers and executioners, as He did on the Cross. But forgiving the lesser barbs of the pretentious and malicious should be within human capability.
In closing: To all the foaming-at-the-mouth left-liberals, Obama worshippers, devotees of James Wolcott, and militant anti-theists who read these scribblings for their chuckle value:
- Merry Christmas, and may the miracle of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Redeemer of Mankind, fill you with joy and peace througout the holiday season and the year to come;
- In place of another electronic gadget, consider getting yourself a life.
May God bless and keep you all.
Eternity Road On The Air
The next segment of this adventure will air this evening, Sunday, November 16, 2008, at 7:00 PM New York time. It will be a fifteen-minute show, followed by text chat for those interested in commenting. I have a handful of topics for this one; please bear with me. Click the button below:
...to link to the program. If you miss it in "real time," it will be available from the BlogTalkRadio archive shortly afterward.
From now to the end of the year, Eternity Road On The Air will air Sunday evenings at 7:00 PM New York time, not the original 6:30 PM time at which the first few segments aired.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
The Hour Of The Knife Part 7: The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown
The time has come.
Remember the Bali bombings shortly after Black Tuesday? The ones that killed about 200 persons, including a number of children? Several of the conspirators have just been executed for their crime. Given the magnitude and horror of the atrocity, you'd think public opinion would be uniformly content with the outcome.
INDONESIA was on high alert for terrorist attacks last night after hundreds of chanting supporters buried the Bali bombers and demanded revenge for their executions.Police clashed with hardline followers who gathered in two towns in Java to bury the bombers, whose bodies had been flown by helicopter from the prison island where they had been shot in an orange grove early yesterday morning.
Amrozi, his brother Ali Ghufron, also known as Mukhlas, and Imam Samudra died more than six years after the atrocity they planned and carried out, the October 2002 nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
Authorities are worried about reprisals in the wake of the executions, and Australia has warned travellers to reconsider their plans to visit Indonesia....
Following their executions on the prison island of Nusakambangan, the bodies of Amrozi and Mukhlas were welcomed amid frenzied scenes in their home village of Tenggulun in East Java.
Some in the crowd wept and shouted, "Allahu Akbar!" (God is great) at the sight of three vultures over the village as the helicopter bearing the bodies landed in a nearby field.
"This is God's grace," one member of the crowd shouted. "The mujaheddin (holy warriors) will fight on!"...
The bodies of the two bombers, wrapped in shrouds, were later carried to two graves side by side in a specially cleared plot of land.
The site, which will become a shrine, features signs reading "Grave of the Islamic fighters, Amrozi and Mukhlas".
There were similar chaotic scenes in the west Java town of Serang as Samudra's body was paraded to a graveyard, shrouded in a black cloth bearing a Koranic inscription in Arabic. "There'll probably be retaliation," said Ganna, 26, who had travelled 90km from Jakarta to show his support. "What is clear is that no drop of Muslim blood is free. It has consequences." [Emphasis added by your Curmudgeon]
Yes, the above describes events and reactions in faraway Indonesia. Yes, our federal protectors have managed to avert further terrorist incidents from these shores since Black Tuesday. Yes, Americans are far less tolerant of such villainies than those of other lands. Yes, yes, yes.
None of that matters. Muslims are taught from the cradle that Islam is as at war with all the non-Islamic world. That's what's meant by Islam's partition of the world into Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. The war has no neutral zones; all the world is on the front lines. A "blow struck against Islam" in Indonesia is considered justification for atrocities in America.
Muslim jihadists are preponderantly young, are utterly consumed by their ideology, and will accept no outcome but the complete subjugation of Mankind. As Black Tuesday and less dramatic incidents have demonstrated, they're quite willing to die in service to their cause -- and a significant fraction of their supposedly "moderate" brethren back them with money, weapons, and concealment.
America remains the jihadists' preferred target. They strike at other nations only because, since Black Tuesday, our own vigilance has proved insuperable...so far.
Americans prefer not to believe any of that. It's too scary. We ignore the scurrilities that issue from the Saudi-funded, Wahhabist-trained imams. We close our ears to their slanders against Christians and Jews. We ignore the indoctrination in hatred Muslim children receive in their hopes and Saudi-funded madrassas. We take refuge in the seeming peaceableness of our Muslim neighbors. So what if the clerk at the Quik-Stop refuses to handle alcohol or pork? He couldn't possibly mean us harm. We call the active pursuit of a completely Islamified planet "Islamism," hoping thus to separate those pursuing it from their "moderate" co-religionists.
This is nothing but self-deception. As Ibn Warraq and Robert Spencer have observed on numerous occasions, there may be "moderate" Muslims, but there is no "moderate Islam." Worse, if the surveys can be believed, somewhere between a quarter and a third of American Muslims are openly in sympathy with the Islamists' campaign. Given the ease with which their "activist" brethren slip across our borders and shelter among them, that should give the most complacent person pause.
So "no drop of Muslim blood is free," is it? What if the world's Christians, or Jews, or Buddhists, or Amiable Agnostics were to make such a statement? What if Americans, whose nation commands more military might than all the rest of the world, were to make such a statement, and mobilize to act on it?
How Muslims get away with such bald pronouncements is plain: decent persons assume that only a Tiny Minority of Extremists ( © Robert Spencer ) harbors evil intentions toward us, and that we cannot allow ourselves the moral latitude of punishing their ideological brethren in expunging them. We glide blithely over the overwhelming support for those "extremists" captured in every poll of the Islamic world. We dismiss the obvious hazard of mingling with persons whose "religious faith" -- yes, those are "sneer quotes" -- demands our conversion, subjugation, or death.
We gaze upon the horrors occurring in Europe, Britain, and Australia, and assure ourselves that "it can't happen here."
We can no longer blind ourselves to the Islamic movement and its progress among us. Our lives and liberties are too gravely imperiled by it.
It has become obligatory to undo such self-deceptions. World Islam is our enemy. Its core doctrine is that a Muslim can have no higher loyalties than to Islam -- indeed, any other loyalty is forbidden. More, all Muslims are commanded to strive to make Islam the sole religion accepted on Earth. That's not conjecture; it's written in the Qur'an, the "immutable word of Allah."
When a Muslim declares that "no drop of Muslim blood is free," he should be answered that "in that case, no drop of Muslim blood is safe." Only the hardest and most unsparing stance will quell Muslims' perpetual "seething." Only implacable resolve -- the willingness to apply the harshest possible measures consistent with our laws -- will whip this snarling Arabian cur back into its cave.
What measures might those be?
- Admission of Muslims, or persons from Muslim-majority countries, to the United States to cease immediately.
- Registration of all self-declared Muslims as agents of a hostile foreign power.
- Registration of all mosques as the embassies of a hostile foreign power, and the posting of FBI watchmen over each and every one.
- Discharge of all Muslims employed by the federal government, in any capacity.
- Upon the commission of any felony classified as a terrorist act, the immediate internment of all known Muslims in camps of the sort used to pen Japanese-Americans during World War II. An internee's confinement shall end only upon his deportation to the Islamic nation of his choice.
These are all entirely consistent with a war footing. If we're not at war with Islam, it is surely at war with us. Let the other nations of the world follow what course they may.
Unfortunately, our president-elect has declared that in these matters, he's on the side of the Muslims. We will be required to force his hand.
There can be no "exit strategy." Only the complete expulsion of Islam from these shores will suffice to protect Americans' lives and liberty. The only acceptable outcome is the reduction of the Muslim sub-population here in the United States, as Muslims depart these shores for more agreeable climes and no more are admitted, all the way to zero.
The time has come. Actually, it came long ago.
The "Hour Of The Knife" essays:
- The Hour Of The Knife
- The Hour Of The Knife Part 2: Boundary Conditioning
- The Hour Of The Knife Part 3: Islam In Durance Vile
- The Hour Of The Knife Part 4: Game Time
- The Hour Of The Knife Part 5: Opening The Campaign
- The Hour Of The Knife Part 6: The Vanguard
- The Hour Of The Knife Part 7: The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown
Friday, November 14, 2008
Amusing Beltway Tidbits
Living in Northern Virginia for the last several months, I am continually struck by how odd, out of touch, and simply incredible life here can be. There are three amusing things that all came up in the course of maybe 20 minutes of listening to a local public radio talk show tonight, so I figured I’d pass them along.
One of the big political currents in DC is around DC statehood, and they take as their motto (it’s on the license plates!) “taxation without representation.” Clearly, DC is in no position to be a state, simply because of its size and the fact that it’s utterly dependent on the Federal government for every conceivable service, and those where it’s not, it consistently fails at. But there is certainly a solution. DC was split off from Maryland and Virginia to form a Federal district, so that the Federal government would not be held essentially to ransom by the powerful state governments. Stop laughing; this was one a real concern, when any given state had more power than the Federal government, before the late 1800s. But it’s clearly not a problem now; the Federal government so overpowers the states as to moot that argument completely. Indeed, the VA side of the river is not part of DC any longer, but has reverted to Virginia. Why not just give the Maryland side of DC back to Maryland? Then the district’s residents would get full representation, and they would get to pay state taxes, and they might even get better schools and other public services. I think I’ll mention this to a local some time, and get their response. Somehow, since the real deal seems to be to extract more money from the Federal government while giving more patronage power to the local (remarkably corrupt) politicians, I doubt they’d go for that suggestion.
Lately, there has been some bickering over tickets to the inaugural in front of the district’s government building. Some people are suggesting that the city should set up an area of a park along the route and only let people in if they have DC driver’s licenses or id cards. I find it highly amusing that they would put more stringent identification requirements on going to see the inaugural parade than on voting in the election. Maybe it’s just me.
There is a big debate about which school the Obama children will go to, and a lot of locals are pushing for them to be sent to a public school. Heck, not even the Mayor’s children go to public school in DC! No one with any option goes to public schools in DC, which is why the city is continually trying to foreclose the option. (The homeschooling laws are almost as bad as Germany’s, and that’s saying something.) Frankly, I really hope that President Obama has the character, wisdom or intelligence to send his kids to private school, where they can be properly and safely educated; they’re his children, not political props. And I am sure that the press would give Obama a wide pass on that, though they would likely not have done so had it been Sarah Palin’s children at issue.
Is The “Fix” In?
This weekend, the worlds G-20 industrialized nations will be meeting in Washington to discuss addressing the planet's monetary/economic crisis (arguably caused by the insane creation of fiat money and junk credit by those same nations). The "fix" (yes gentle readers those are scare quotes) will likely be the devaluation of the world's currencies by "monetizing" most outstanding debt. In other words:
They cease all gold sales and instead [of confiscating it], raise the current official central bank price of gold from its booked value of $42.22 an ounce — to a price that monetizes a large enough portion of the world's outstanding debts.That way, just like in 1933, the debts become a fraction of re-inflated asset prices (led higher by the gold price).
And this time, instead of staying with the dollar as a reserve currency, the G-20 issues three new monetary units of exchange, each with equal reserve status.
The three currencies will essentially be a new dollar, new euro, and a new pan-Asian currency. (The Chinese yuan may survive as a fourth currency, but it will be linked to a basket of the three new currencies.)
Under this nightmare(?) the new price of gold would range between $53,000 and $10,000 per ounce depending on the percentage of the debt to be monetized. One's first reaction to the possibility of such a scenario playing itself out is incredulity; but consider this: 1. The Constitution of the United States in Article I section 8 assigns the power to coin money to the Congress. The US currency has had NO connection to metal coinage since August of 1971. 2. Twenty years ago would we have foreseen that in 2008 a more or less admitted Marxist would be elected to the US presidency?
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
cross posted at: Fighting in the Shade™
Countermarch: One of These Things is Not Like the Other
Or, how the Republican party is broken, and why it can’t be fixed.
Three factions, each alike in principles,
In the Republican party, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the caucuses of these three foes
A difference of ideology drains their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their bickering birth their party’s strife.
I have to stop now. I cannot keep doing that to the Master and retain any dignity whatsoever. I mentioned, in Countermarch, that it’s time for libertarians and conservatives to work outside of the party system. Today, I’d like to talk a little about why that is so. Much of the political muddle we find ourselves in comes from the abandonment of the principle that words have a fixed meaning; thus I will start with a couple of definitions.
In my mind, a libertarian (note the lower-case initial) is a person who believes that the government exists solely to protect the natural rights of its people from force and fraud, whether domestic or international in origin. To the extent that the government does this, regardless of how the government is formed and structured, it is legitimate. A conservative (again, note the lower-case initial), as I think of them, is one who believes that the past has lessons to teach us, and thus that long-standing arrangements are best changed slowly, and with much provision for the possibility to undo changes should they prove harmful. To the conservative, if the government follows the documented processes for structuring itself, the making and execution of laws, and the operation of the courts — and so long as its actions are within its rightful authority — it is legitimate. There is significant common cause between the two groups at present, as the former arrangements of society (prior to the progressive onslaught on Western culture in general and the American ideal in particular) were decidedly pro-freedom, and this onslaught has proven to be at best a mixed bag, and at worse an epic disaster, and worthy of at least partial reversal.
It should go without saying that the Democrats, dominated as they are by their progressive wing, has been a radical party since at least 1968, and probably since 1932 as possibly since the late 1800s, and has no conservative or libertarian instinct in its structure at the national level. For progressives, the government is legitimate if and only if it follows progressive principles and policy preferences, and any alteration to rules (by them, not their opponents) is valid as long as it serves that end. That the Republicans are also neither conservative nor libertarian, despite cultural assumptions (and even the assumptions of those within the party, including conservatives and libertarians), is a more astonishing claim. And as rational people, we know that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. It is my intent to provide that evidence, which will also show that the Republican party, by its nature, cannot be fixed.
The purpose of a political party is to gain power for its members; it has no other. The method for gaining power depends upon the system, and in our system, that means winning elections which are structured so that the candidate with the most votes wins. This structure means that a candidate who gets 50%+1 of the vote is guaranteed to win, and this simple mathematical fact drives us into a two-party system. Any strong third party challenge has the effect of ensuring the defeat of the other party most closely aligned with itself.1 But there are more than two factions in America; we do not divide cleanly into Democrats and Republicans, or even into Democrats, Republicans and Independents. A faction differs from a party, because a faction is defined by a set of common characteristics that differentiate the members of the faction from everyone else and that influence political behavior, while a party is defined by which factions adhere to it, with the goal being to accumulate the votes of sufficient factions to ensure victory for the party’s candidate. Examples for the basis of a faction include a shared economic self-interest, a shared set of principles, and a shared heritage (racial, gender, religion, cultural, or several others).
The Democratic party is an odd duck. In its modern form, it evolved in the 1890s primarily as a reaction to the Republican party that developed following the Civil War. Because the Republicans had a lock on power for more than thirty years, there were large numbers of groups that were left out of power entirely, and these groups all gravitated over time into the Democratic party. Thus the Democrats include hundreds of tiny fractions, largely defined by shared heritage, and usually a heritage of real or imagined victimology. These include various racial factions, radical feminists, the sexually abnormal, fringe religious groups, fringe ideological groups (including but not limited to communists and radical environmentalists), non-productive and non-competitive professions and trades (journalists, professors, bureaucrats’ unions), and the economically dispossessed (including trade unions, originally, and they still try to sell themselves this way). Basically, activists for any cause that had no large base of support flocked to the Democrats, and by supporting each other, found strength they could not have had individually. That this coalition has largely held over time is rather remarkable, especially as the core issues of many of the factions have been addressed. I believe that the stability of the coalition largely comes back to the socialist roots of the progressive movement, because what ties all these factions together is a combination of victimology and rent-seeking, and both of those (and thus all the factions of the Democratic party) benefit from an ever-expanding government sphere.
The Republican party, with one exception, is still largely what it was in the late 1800s, though with a ideological twist. In fact, the Republican party is pretty simple, structurally, with few of the fringe groups that characterize the Democrats (exceptions would include the libertarian gays of the Log Cabin Republicans). Essentially, there are three major factions in the current Republican party: the big-business faction, which promotes the needs of large merchants above all others; the small-government faction, which promotes freedom, and thus small government, above all else; and the social conservative faction, which promotes Christian values above all else. The social conservatives coalesced in the Republican party in the 1960s, as the Democrats took a radical turn to the left and abandoned any pretense at social conservatism (inevitable, I think, given that the Democrats depend on the votes of many factions actively hostile to Christian values); the other two factions were the base of the Republican party since it was formed. Whether the neo-conservatives, who fled the Democrats for the Republicans in the 1990s, will become a large faction in the Republican party is unclear at this point. Certainly, their economic populism and foreign policy Wilsonianism has heavily influenced President Bush, but it is unclear whether this will have any lasting impact, or if this group will end up reattaching to the Democrats.
But one interesting ideological twist occurred in the Republican party since the late 1800s: the idea of fascism2 took deep hold among the big-business faction. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, large businesses are well served by limits to their competition, particularly by raised barriers to entry and by protectionism. Second, large businesses are well served by government growth generally, as the more regulations that must be complied with and the more taxes applied, the higher the costs to be passed on to consumers; and since profit is charges as a percentage, the more absolute profit that accrues to the owners of the businesses, and thus the more control the owners will grant the business’s executives. This combination of interests made the big-business faction quite welcoming of ever-expanding government control of business, which removes the executives’ responsibility and the possibility of failure while increasing their monetary and social rewards.
It is worth note at this point that the big-business faction has been in control of the Republican party for most of its existence, with the exception of Ronald Reagan’s presidency and Newt Gingrich’s speakership. The social conservatives made a bid for party control following Reagan, but this was largely shut down by Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton. Had a Republican been president, it is quite possible that the social conservatives could have, at least for a time, taken control of the party.
So let’s look at the primary goals of the three factions of the Republican party. The big-business faction is essentially mercantile, favoring expanding government at home (as noted above) and Hamiltonian foreign policy; that is, foreign intervention based on its impact on economic impact, and particularly based on whether it opens markets to US exports or facilitates cheap commodity imports. The small-government faction is essentially libertarian and Jacksonian, favoring the largest possible range of freedom consonant with social tranquility, and thus very limited government intervention in social and economic affairs (essentially, the government exists, in the libertarian sense, to protect its citizens against coercion by force or fraud), and favoring foreign intervention only when US security interests (not merely economic interests, unless they impact national security broadly) are directly threatened. The social conservative faction is united by a moral foundation, and essentially tends to be populist economically and all over the place on foreign policy. The primary goal of the social conservatives4 is to reimpose as many as possible of the pre-19600s restrictions on personal freedom to deviate without consequences from the norm, and as a political faction, they mostly seek to do this through government action. In other words, the big-business faction is defined by its economic interest in big government; the small-government wing is defined by its ideological interest in personal freedom; and the social conservative wing is defined by its moral interest in government action.
Looking at these in combination, it is clear that there is a tension between the big-business and small-government wings of the party. While they can usually find common ground on foreign policy (largely shared interests, though not perfectly congruent) and social policy (the big-government wing has no real social policy brief, and can find common ground with anyone), the economic interests of the two are in opposition. (In addition, of course, small-government types see big government as intruding in every sphere of life, not merely the economic sphere.) There is also a tension between the social conservative and small-government wings of the party. The social conservatives tend towards small-government ideals on economic policy, though not towards free markets (at least internationally), but nearly always support government intervention in social issues. On foreign policy, the social conservatives speak with many voices, and thus can find common ground with anyone. The social conservatives and big-business faction, on the other hand, have largely shared interests. On social grounds, the big-business faction gives way readily, while the social conservatives are unwilling to compromise. On foreign policy grounds, the social conservatives give way readily and the big-business faction happily gets its way. On economic grounds, there is sufficient common ground to come to a meeting of the minds.
Is it any wonder that President Bush, while largely a big-business Republican, is also an activist social conservative? Is it any wonder that John McCain, exemplar of the big-business Republicans, failed to win social conservative or small-government faction support until he nominated Sarah Palin, who is apparently a small-government type and a non-activist social conservative? Could Sarah Palin win the nomination in 2012, and would it matter in the long run? Yes, to the first; the Republicans tend to nominate the last campaign’s primary campaign second-place or VP candidate, so Palin is well-positioned in terms of party trends. She also has support of two of the three factions of the party, while the big business types are trying (in collusion with the media, and apparently in an effort to throw the 2012 nomination to Romney, one of their own) to tear her down. But she also has four years to make up the shortcomings in knowledge that she showed, and to solidify her base in the party. But in the long run, it will not make a difference, for one overwhelming reason: there is no reason to think that the big-business conservatives will not do exactly what they did after Reagan and Gingrich: turn to the Democrats long enough to purify the party of the most successful of their opponents, to put themselves comfortably back on top. They would, in Pink Floyd’s unimaginably beautiful phrase, rather have a lead role in a cage than a walk-on part in a war.
So because the big-business Republicans have a significant affinity to the Democrats’ social positions, and can often stomach the majority of the Democrats’ foreign policy and economic positions (short of higher personal taxes and nationalization of industries), the big-business Republicans have always maintained control by tipping as much to the Democrats as necessary to marginalize their internal opposition. This has generally resulted in long bouts of Republican presidents and Democrat congresses. Even now, in the wake of their own faction’s terrible electoral thrashing, their position tends to be towards “fixing” the Republican party by eliminating their internal opposition, most critically Sarah Palin, with a leftward shift. It should be clear at this point that the reason that the Republican party cannot be “fixed” to consistently favor free minds and free markets is that small-government leaders can take control of the party with the support of the social conservatives, but they cannot maintain that control without the support of the big-business Republicans, with whom they have deep differences on nearly all fronts.
The Republican party cannot be fixed to be permanently friendly to small government, libertarian principles of free minds and free markets, or conservative ideals of continuity and careful change. It can only move more to the left, if in fits and starts, until the Blue Dogs among the Democrats (a cultural faction that is generally socially conservative and foreign policy Jacksonian) breaks off along with neo-conservatives and a few other factions to join the Republicans. At that point, the Republican party will be indistinguishable from the Democrats of the early 1960s, and the Democrats will have gone over to full-fledged progressive lunacy. The libertarians will have no home at that point in any political party, and the conservatives will be tolerated but not given any power in the Republican party.
Rather than end on this somewhat down note, I would like to make two final points: political parties are not the only way to make changes in society, and political parties will seek out any power block that helps them win elections. My next posts will be about those two points.
UPDATE: I realized that there was a point I did not make clear here, so I wanted to clear it up. In no way am I saying that disassociation from the Republican party should be a mandate for libertarians and conservatives. Rather, what I am saying is that if the Republicans are no more likely to implement conservative or libertarian policies, why should we reward them for lip service? Money and votes, and most of the time in that order, are all that drive politics in the US, and giving either to a party or a candidate based on the party name, rather than based on the professed and demonstrated conservative and libertarian policy views of the candidate, is not only pointless, but counterproductive. It encourages the party to continue paying lip service (to get the money and votes) while not actually carrying out the policies (to get other people’s money and votes). So when I say withdraw from the party, what I mean is that if we libertarian and conservative principles want to be acted on in our society, it is necessary both to work outside the party system, and to forbid money and votes to parties and candidates who do not honor these principles.
1 Consider history, for example, with Nader siphoning votes from Gore, or Perot siphoning votes from Bush pere. This is also reachable by reason alone. Assume a voter pool of ten people, of whom four are Democrats, three Republicans and three Libertarians. If the Republicans and the Libertarians vote for the same candidate, they win. If each puts forward a candidate and votes for their own, the Democrats win.
2 I mean this not as a political program, as Jonah Goldberg meant it of the Left, but as an economic program. Politically, socialism and fascism are much alike, favoring totalitarian government. Economically, they differ in that socialists want to see government ownership of all or most property, and fascists want to see nominal private property ownership essentially under government control via regulation and taxation.
3 See Walter Russell Mead. A summary of his thesis is available in article form.
4 Note that I am talking about a particular set of social conservatives: the politically involved ones who make up the activists within the party. There are a large number of social conservatives who, while agreeing with the goals of the activist social conservatives, do not wish to impose government regulation of personal behavior, but to eliminate government support of non-normative behavior and to reestablish social disapproval instead. This type of social conservative actually belongs more properly to the libertarian faction, and this is shown both by how they vote and by the reasons they give for their policy positions. Our esteemed host, for example, clearly is a social conservative of this, rather than the political activist, type. I suspect that this group actually far outnumbers the activists, but that (at least within the party) the activists serve as their voice.
Conservatism And Its Discontents
(With apologies to Sigmund Freud, though he hardly deserves them.)
In the wake of the decisive defeat of the Republican presidential campaign last week -- yes, yes, and plenty of lower-profile campaigns as well -- quite a number of persons have been maundering over that hours-old question, "Whither the GOP?"
Your Curmudgeon has little patience for persons who ignore fundamental facts of reality in favor of their wet dreams. Anyone seriously uncertain about where the Republican Party will position itself in the immediate future is either intellectually deficient or has an advanced case of self-delusion.
The GOP will "move" in the direction its kingmakers believe will increase its vote totals. Which point of the political compass they'll choose will be determined by their perceptions, intelligence, and general knowledge -- in your Curmudgeon's opinion, not a cheerful prospect, given their performance to date.
The Republican Party stands at the verge of a permanent fracture. Its Reagan-Goldwater wing, badly battered by the two Bush presidencies and the disastrous McCain campaign, struggles to reinvigorate the pro-freedom-conservatism that animated those two giants' approach to politics and governance. Its Rockefeller wing, which the late Milton Friedman termed "aristocratic conservatives," is eager to slide the party further "toward the center" -- that is, leftward, embracing ever more traditionally private undertakings as legitimate functions of government, just as long as it's Republicans who run them. (Means more jobs for the idiot sons, don't y'know.) Its "pragmatic" wing is unconcerned with anything but putting party allegiants into office.
These three factions are irreconcilably opposed to one another's aims. They will not cohabit for much longer, however big the tent. The sex just isn't that good.
At this time, the "leadership" of the party is vague, its notions indefinite. The tolerance it's shown toward Republican officeholders dismissive of the party's platform, which remains a largely acceptable pro-freedom document, suggests that its priorities are not with the Reaganites. Its willingness to allow "insiders" to denigrate fellow Republicans of other factions suggests that it's not solidly aligned with the Rockefellerites, either. As for garnering more votes and winning more elections...well, judge ye the tree by the fruit it's borne. Your Curmudgeon already has.
As your Curmudgeon has written before, nothing is more likely than the continuation of the current trend, right up to the exact moment at which it's reversed. Past performance may not guarantee future performance, but as the stock market's "technical" forecasters have noticed, it can give one a pretty good notion of what the next move will be. Absent a truly dramatic upheaval in the body politic, about on the order of the National Enquirer discovering Barack Obama in bed with a sheep -- a male sheep -- the masters of the GOP will continue to trawl for support by sliding the party's de facto positions further to the left.
Anyone who'd like to oppose that trend is invited to run for the Republican National Committee. Your Curmudgeon considers it a long shot, but he'll cheer you on nonetheless.
The problem is compounded by the weakening of the pro-freedom orientation of American culture. The Left's "long march through the institutions" has come to maturity. The Left's annex in the Old Media, and its pseudo-intellectual bastions in our universities, have succeeded in quashing virtually all dissent from socialist doctrine. For no less than forty years, young Americans have been inculcated with the unopposed cant of the government uber alles Left. The present generation of voters sincerely believes that government should be an active force among us, that seeks out "problems," regardless of their genesis or ambiguity, and crafts "solutions" to them. We are near to the Swedish Condition -- that state of affairs in which "freedom" means sexual freedom, and nothing else.
How does one reorient minds forged from so polluted a crucible?
Aphorisms to the contrary notwithstanding, people do learn from history, but slowly and incompletely. Given current political trends, it would seem that one of the hardest lessons to absorb is that power corrupts -- more, that power attracts the already corrupt and the easily corrupted. How does one frame the argument for this historically well demonstrated bit of wisdom to persons bereft of an honest education in history? How does one argue political philosophy with one whose basic premise is that there are no eternal truths?
If, as your Curmudgeon expects, the GOP nudges its positions and candidates steadily leftward in its quest for new allegiants, we who still understand and love freedom will find ourselves without a political home, strangers in the land of our birth. There will still be "Republicans," but they won't be republicans of a sort with whom we could make common cause. Indeed, their willingness to betray any principle for political advantage would render them more dangerous to us than any Democrat.
The time for a merciful euthanasia of the Republican Party is drawing near. If permitted to go on as it's recently done, it will block all attempts to reanimate a freedom-oriented conservatism, the sort that gave rise to the most successful nation the world has ever seen.
The problems here are many. For one, the Republican Party possesses legal privileges. Even more than that, it's massively useful to the Left. In luring the GOP ever further toward a mythical "center," the Democrats can campaign against it effectively simply by noting that Republican candidates espouse policies that are merely weak-water versions of the Democrats' own. Why buy ersatz when you can have the real thing for the same price?
It's the barons of the Republican Party -- its political strategists and organizers -- who are conservatism's discontents. A Sarah Palin could not have arisen from their ranks, nor will her continued ascent toward conservative stardom go unchallenged by them. If Reaganite conservatives such as Governor Palin are unable to wrest control from the Old Guard -- considering the procedural and social fortifications around their bunkers, a dismal prospect -- it will be time for conservative Republicans to do what the Cleveland Democrats did in 1896: withdraw from the party en masse and find or make a new home.
Prepare for battle.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
They Didn’t Listen
Do you suppose this is just an oversight?
Lindsay Lohan used a derogatory term for African Americans most commonly used by racist character Archie Bunker in the 1970s sitcom "All In the Family.""It's an amazing feeling. It's our first, you know, colored president," the 22-year-old actress said in response to a question from Maria Menounos on "Access Hollywood" about her reaction to Obama's win in the 2008 presidential race.
The oft-troubled starlet muttered the offensive term in the midst of an interview about her role on "Ugly Betty," gay marriage, and cancer research.
No, I don't mean an oversight on Miss Lohan's part; I mean an oversight on the feces-for-brains reporter's part.
What's derogatory or offensive about "colored?" Haven't these clowns been demanding that we refer to them as "persons of color" for years? What's the difference?
Time was, the acceptable term was "black." They took offense. It shifted to "colored," a relatively inoffensive term, especially as they termed us "whites" or "ofays." They took offense. It shifted to "Negro," the technical racial classification. They took offense. Then it became "persons of color" -- or "African-American," even though the overwhelming majority of them have less connection to Africa than I have to Ireland or Italy. But no matter what term we use, they take offense.
They'll always take offense. It's part of their racialist strategy. Their whole strategy is based on preying on white Americans' unearned guilt. Meanwhile, they call each other nigger, on streetcorners across the length and breadth of this land.
If you haven't caught on yet, you haven't been paying attention. Their thrust isn't that any particular term is offensive as such; they simply want us to be so clutched up about the terms we use that we self-censor -- that we never, ever dare to say anything critical about them. Anyone who cares to subscribe to this new scheme of political correctness is welcome to it. I've already decided against it.
It simply doesn't matter that Lindsay Lohan is a bubbleheaded actress with a drug abuse problem. She said nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing uncomplimentary. And nothing to earn the condemnation that's being ladled upon her by our reflexively PC Main Stream Media.
I've had enough. The same "news" organs that gleefully perpetuated innumerable false-to-fact slanders about Sarah Palin, but didn't dare to breathe a word about Barack Obama's many unsavory associates or his complete lack of qualifications for the highest office in the world, are determined, on the basis of an entirely inoffensive comment, to pillory a defenseless young actress with problems of her own.
This ofay of mick-wop descent has had enough. That mulatto Communist we elected president gets no more rhythm. Fran Porretto declares war.
You're in for it now, racialist scumbags.
