Two Must-read Posts and Weekend OTA

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Two posts I highly recommend you read. One is the (one day early) Veterans Day Post at The World According To Carl. The graphic alone is worth the trip.

The other is found in Jerry Pournelle’s comments in his Thursday Chaos Manor in Review (page down a few paragraphs). His observations on the vote Tuesday are brief, considering his extensive knowedge and experience, but very important, IMO. A couple of paragraphs may whet your appetite, but I highly recommend CLICKing on over to read the rest:

As to the elections: the Republicans did not deserve to win. I do not believe the Democrats have earned the right to rule, and the very close election seems to bear that out: there’s no mandate here. The Republicans abandoned Reagan and his principles, and reverted to the typical Optimate attitudes of the Country Club oligarchs. They went on a spending spree to reward themselves for their labors in opposition, loosed a flood of earmarks, raised discretionary spending to new heights much of it for projects that make no sense, and made war on Federalism and states’ rights. Far from leaving things to the states, they decided to interfere.

Having abandoned fiscal conservatism and what I would call the conservative principles of the people I would have called conservative, they embraced the Trotskyite idealism of the neoconservatives. Trotskyite is a modern name for good old fashioned Jacobinism. Jacobins don’t really want “the people” to rule, of course; they are sure they know better what the people want than the people do, and if the people don’t realize that, why Rousseau himself told us that sometimes people must be forced to be free.

DO click over and read the rest. His is a much more moderate tone than I would take (have taken :-)), of course, but his knowedge, experience and historical perspective all lend real weight to his very reasonable views.

Also t-b-ed to Carl’s OTF.