"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Along with the classic Eight Most Terrifying Words in the English Language (“I’m from the government; I’m here to help”), this colorful thought:
“You may not like the effing government, but the government likes effing you.”
Take that thought to the polls on November 4th, would you?
Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Allie is Wired, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
While I believe a two-party political system has many advantages, the problem with our two-party system nowadays is that it isn’t, really. One wing of our uniparty talks about unity, while doing everything it can to be divisive, while the other wing talks about bipartisanship, meaning “surrender our principles and accede to the other wing of the uniparty’s demands.” And so we end up with R.L. Dabney’s prophetic 19th Century utterance,
“Conservatism’s history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward to perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It tends to risk nothing serious for the sake of truth.”
Yes, he was talking about conservative vs. “progressive” as to both political and social matters in the 19th Century–which were somewhat more separate in the 19th Century than today. How much more valid are his words today? (OK, so there is some small difference between the two “major” parties. The Dhimmicraps–leaders and rank-and-file, it seems–want to drive the country over a cliff into the abyss of socialism/communism at a brisk 100mph, while the Repugnican’t “elites” demur. They feel a more sedate 75mph is in order… )
So, some would “send a message” to one party or the other by voting for a third- or fourth- or firth-party candidate. The problem with that is that nobody’s listening to the so-called message. The only way a third-party candidate can send a viable message is by either winning an election or getting a plurality of the vote. Apart from that, third-party candidates are dismissed by very nearly everyone as simply cranks. No, the only way an “independent” (ain’t no such critter*) or third-party candidate can make waves big enough to be heard is to have a big enough base of the candidate’s own to actually win office… and then be successful in making changes that are positive, whatever base deems positive.
By that set of criteria, Joe Lieberman is an almost successful third-party (a party of one?) candidate/officeholder. To be truly successful, he’d have to have effected positive change in the party he left, at the very least, and he’s not done so.
When I see a viable third party form that espouses my views, I’ll jump on board lickety-split. Until then, unfortunately, I’ll probably still be limited to votes against the worst candidate, more often than not. Fortunately, reviewing this year’s offerings at local, state and national level, I can vote with some degree of positivism on almost half the races. Heck, adding Palin to his ticket even gave me a positive reason to vote for Juan Mexicain (and hope for a Palin presidential candidacy down the road, a candidacy that may well be a step in reform of the Repugnican’t Party).
But third-party? Not until someone with a positive record of accomplishments and genuine reform comes along to challenge the Uniparty.
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When I saw the article below, it was attributed to “…the San Francisco Chronicle (the most liberal newspaper and city in the nation),” but I can find nothing to verify that, and found it elsewhere at a website that styles itself as, “a counter force to the liberal advocacy so dominant in today’s media.”
False attrribution where I first saw it or not, it’s a pretty clear outline of the financial meltdown we’ve recently witnessed:
“The average American listening to all the news of bank failures, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (who?) being taken over by the government, and now a “bail-out” of large, privately owned and well known companies, is at first bewildered, and then angry. The average American should be furious.
But with whom should Americans be furious? That seems to be the big question as political fingers are pointing in every direction. Was it greedy CEO’s with their “golden parachutes?” Was it the Democrats? Was it the Republicans? Was it Wall Street? (Who, exactly IS “Wall Street?”) The simple answer is that it is all of the above.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Jr., and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke were on Capital Hill taking a verbal beating from some of the very people who should not be asking the questions, but answering them and answering those questions under oath.
Senator Chris Dodd, (D-Conn.) and Congressman Barney Frank, (D-Mass.) are the first two who should be grilled, not by fellow politicians, but by an independent and hopefully very clever, angry, and mean attorney hired by the American people. No one from the present Justice Department need apply. Both should be asked how much money they have taken from lobbyists hired by the CEO’s of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Since that is public record, they should then be asked what Fannie and Freddie got in return for that money. Barney Frank should be questioned about his House Bill, H.R. 3838, that is clearly designed to keep Fannie and Freddie afloat as long as possible despite all the signs that there was serious trouble ahead. But all his bill did was make the hole bigger in the side of the Titanic. Basically all H. R. 3838 did was: “To temporarily increase the portfolio caps applicable to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, to provide the necessary financing to curb foreclosures by facilitating the refinancing of at-risk sub prime borrowers into safe, affordable loans, and for other purposes.”
…
It’s time for Americans to go to their windows and throw them open and yell, “We are mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore!” Then, in November, vote the lot of them out of office!”
Read the rest here
Trackposted to , Rosemary’s Thoughts, Allie is Wired, Faultline USA, A Blog For All, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Perri, of the eponymous Perri Nelson’s Website, asks, “Shouldn’t we look at why we want to vote FOR a candidate when we’re choosing one?”
Well, of course we should ask ourselves that, Perri! In fact, it’s usually the first thing I do ask myself when looking at candidates for office. Unfortunately, I have rarely found a political candidate who offered me much in the way of valid reasons to vote for them. In fact, I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the total number of political candidates–national, state and local–who have offered me much in the way of legitimate positives in their candidacy or persons.
Ronald Reagan was one such. After voting in several other presidential races for the “least bad” choice (and being monumentally wrong with one, to my shame–and no, I’m not referring to votes cast for Nixon), my first vote for Reagan was a relief.
Bob Xxxxx–(in a local race). Good guy, Honest. Does his office credit.
Kevin Zzzzz–yeh, not an interesting speaker, but a decent man for a state senator.
Ummm, just about running dry here. I guess I could include our district’s Representative to the House. He’s a blowhard who gives me a rash, and he has his head up his _____ on several issues, but overall, he’s been an “honest politician” (that is, he’s stayed bought). I’ll vote for this blowhard again this time based on his (few, IMO, though in one case profound–his son’s turned out to be a better man than he is) positive accomplishments and the fact that his opponent’s a snake.
That about covers the pols who’ve given me valid, positive reasons to vote for them in the past.
Perri notes some positives for McWhatsisname, and I have to admit they exist, though some of the ones he mentions as reasons to vote for McWhatsisname are negatives in my estimation. A commenter on Perri’s post mentions his reasons for supporting The Obamassiah. Funny thing, none of his reasons involve any actual accomplishments or anything else I’d count as a positive.
Frankly, I’d like to embrace Perri’s idealistic search for reasons to vote for political candidates and avoid voting against a candidate for the candidate’s negatives, but while I always look for positive reasons to vote for a candidate, in the last 4 decades, I’ve found few. Perhaps that’s just my natural ability to spot flaws–an ability that has served me both well and ill in the past–but almost every time I hear a politician speak my B.S. meter pegs out, and that can’t be a good thing. *heh*
(Of course, it’s the rare, exceedingly rare instance when a Mass Media Podperson doesn’t overload my B.S. meter, but that’s another problem.)
For now, I think I’ll concentrate on dumbasses who proclaim themselves “undecided” and fools (yes, fools–those who aren’t themselves active poisoners of the body politic) who have swallowed the Obamassiah’s sugar-coated cyanide capsule and attempt to compare and contrast those few McWhatsisname’s and Sarah Palin’s (many more than McWhatsisname’s) positives with the truckload of poisoned B.S. from The Obamassiah.
That’s about as positive as I can be about this election cycle’s presidential offerings, and frankly, one-on-one, the method has shown some apparent success. I’ve had former Obamaites and Obama-leaners come back to me with negatives they’ve discovered on their own once their eyes were opened… and in one case, simply pointing an Obamaite to facts about the McWhatsisname health care proposals opened blind eyes to the lies Obama’s been spouting about that. That alone was enough to persuade one more vote for McWhatsisname/Palin.*
Heck, that’s about as positive as I think I can be in our local (Sheriff/County/City) and State (rep/senate/etc.) races this year. Well, perhaps a bit more positive about the Democrat running for governor in my State. In fact, he could well be my fifth candidate in the last 40 years I can actually vote for in good conscience. (Heck, even my dad has had good experiences with the guy, and he lives in another State!) I don’t even have to think about what a snake the Repugnican’t candidate is.
Politicians *spit*. Can’t live with ’em; can’t live with ’em. I’d be happy to live without ’em. Heck, a constitutional monrchy could scarcely be as bad as the mess we have now. I’d probably be better. See the header quote on this blog for a part of the reason…
But not all opinions are equal, regardless the opinion that many express to the contrary.
To mangle an otherwise perfectly fine comment by a character in a James Doohan/S. M. Stirling novel, Ah, Congress, “…[w]here mountains of supposition are constructed from molehills of [mis]information and presented as incontrovertible fact.”
*heh*
Let me back up to the question of authority. There are three basic types of authority: divine (whether modern pagan humanists recognize it or not), natural and constructed.
Setting aside divine authority, for most humans–apart from the proclamations of The Church of Anthropogenic Global Waming nutjobs and satanic phony “Christian” pastors and their siblings in other cults–do not presume to possess divine authority, I’d like to briefly address the other two classes.
…is telling you that the political elite are about to screw up by the numbers. Again.
In my adult lifetime, the “feddle gummint” has made some sizeable screwups, and the Boys n Girls on the Hill seem about to do it again with the WallStreet Bailout. Just a few low points in “feddle gummint” meddlin’ should suffice to articulate a pattern of stupidity we can reasonably expect to apply to current events:
In the 60s, Johnson gave us the inception of the greatest expansion of the government “welfare” plantation with the Great Society programs. That’s worked out well, now hasn’t it? (You’ll excuse the sarcasm.)
Then, toward the end of the next decade, Dhimmi Kahtah gave us BOTH the “Department of Edumacationizing” which has accelerated the slide of public education in this nation into the toilet, AND the government interference in the housing market with low income housing “incentives” that have resulted in the collapse of mortgage banking and the current economic woes. Good going, Dhimmi!
Now, Congress is about to enact a $700billion “welfare for stupid, greedy bankers” bailout of their problems when Congress itself created the environment that led to the stupid, greedy bankers getting caught with their shorts around their ankles.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
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