NATHAN'S COMPLAINT

Vanity ^ | April 5, 2009 | nathanbedford

[nathanbedford]

This vanity is a compilation of two replies on two different threads. The first has to do with the lament over the breakdown of our democracy by a FReeper precipitated by the revelations about the payments going to Larry Summers. The second has to do with the protesters in Europe wanting to replace capitalism because it is "unfair." I publish it here as a vanity at the suggestion of spectre (wife).

Nathanbedford

[nathanbedford]

When I shop, invest, sell short or go a long, rent, possess and occupy what I own, discard, consume, give away what I own, or trade my time and effort for salary, I am acting as a capitalist. More important in most of these instances most of the time I am acting as a relatively free agent. I can act or decline to act. I have freedom of choice and I know that the person making those choices is intimately familiar with my wants and desires.

In a sense, I have 100% control and therefore 100% democratic responsiveness working on my side.

The protesters want government to make these decisions for me because they believe that I cannot cope with the freedom of the capitalist system offers because it is "unfair" and it would be "fair" or at lease be more fair if government were controlling it.

[Let's be scrupulous here and not engage in the common practices of the left which is to exaggerate and set up straw men only to be knocked down. I do not claim that the left says that it wants to eliminate the capitalist system. I stipulate that it says quite the contrary. I do not say that the left admits that it will limit our freedom of choice, to the contrary it maintains that my freedom of choice is illusory that it bestows no real freedom of choice upon me. Finally they will say that they are seeking not to junk the existing system but to reform it, keeping the best parts and eliminating and reforming the worst.

What follows is a post directed to a FREEPER who laments that the system itself has become so perverted as witness the revelations, for example, about Larry Summers receiving money from the very entities he presided over saying that one can no longer have confidence in the system. But this system which is so obviously broken down is the very system which the left now wants us to entrust with some level of our freedom of choice. I do not think the system as currently constituted is trustworthy as the following reproduced reply will demonstrate.]

Before I give up my freedoms of choice which seems to be quite extensive when one looks over the landscape, I would like to know that the government which the protesters want to take over the power of choice from me is benign and minimally responsive, which is another word for democratic. Here is a reply from early this morning discussing responsiveness of our present Democrat led government:

I have been preoccupied by your two laments since reading them. I found them profoundly affecting.

Let me project of my own perspective onto you. We're probably both middle-class, college-educated and often beyond, perhaps business owners or middle to high management. We probably live in suburbia in our own homes, and have sent or are sending our kids to college. We have a hobby, perhaps golf, and aspire to a decent retirement with some travel.

What do we have in common with anyone that you can think of in the Democrat party in positions of national office? What do we have in common with the intellectuals at Harvard who provide the intellectual rationalization for what the Democrats in national office do? What do we have in common with the Harvard educated, Democrat registered, financial elitists who are running our international banks and hedge funds? What do we have in common with the likes of Larry Summers who moves elegantly from Harvard Square to Wall Street to Pennsylvania Avenue? Do we have access to their information? Do we have access to their social circle? Do we have entry-level opportunities to aspire to their positions? Do these people in government and finance, and also at the top levels of media, see themselves as more connected to Lexington, Kentucky or London England?

Do you use the same language, I do not mean the same words I mean the same language of, as the people at Harvard use when they speak to elitists in finance, government, media, etc.? Does the word "amnesty" mean the same thing to you as it does to these people? Does the word "investment?" Do the words, "hope" and "change?" What about words like "free exercise of religion," "right to bear arms," "reserved to the states or to the people?"

When your children come back from the University to which you sent them hoping they would learn to read, write, think, debate, cipher, program, invent, and fear God, do you find them speaking another language, denying God and barely tolerating you? That is to be expected and has been the result of real education from time immemorial but there is a difference now, our children have not being educated but indoctrinated. Just as slick as that we have been defrauded and we are terrified not to send our next child into the same process to be defrauded again lest he miss the next step up life's ladder. Our universities are not designed to turn out Thomas Jeffersons but Barak Obamas; not Renaissance men but revolutionaries. Mostly, they are taught the new language, Orwell called it "Newspeak", we call it "Orwellian," which might entitle them to gain entry into the closed circle of elites. We thought we were sending them to university but we were in reality sending them to The Frankfurt School. Their new language is the badge of the indoctrination.

Raise your sights to even more rarefied heights and consider the likes of George Soros. Born in Hungary, evaded the Nazis as a teenage Jew, emigrated to England and graduated from the London School of Economics, turned against the country that took him in and educated him and broke the Bank of England. Acquired United States citizenship but seems to prefer to live in Europe and certainly does not confine himself to residency in America. Influenced the politics of many of the former Soviet republics to the point where he is regarded to be a persona non grata. Has invested part of his billions in influencing the American political process including elections and governance. And by the way, if you wish to invest in his Quantum fund, it is very unlikely that he would let you in. What fraction of the control over the Democratic Party that George Soros enjoys does your vote entitle you to? Are you more or less patriotic than George Soros? Can you believe that he would hesitate for a minute to break the bank of America? What part of the set of moral values held by George Soros do you share? How much has George Soros' money and influence diluted your share of stock in our corporate adventure called America? Can you rectify that at the ballot box?

When we are asked to cast our vote for one party or the other we are induced to react to and vote upon issues that are usually quite irrelevant to what should be our concerns. We vote against a sitting senator because he uttered the word "macaca" which no one then or now can satisfactorily define. We elect a president who uses words which he flatly refuses to define and which the media would not require him to define-after all he did not use the word, "macaca." We do this because the media has so conditioned us and funneled our ken to trivialities charged with emotional overtones. The electorate knows about Sarah Palin's children and grandchildren but do not know whether she is the vice presidential candidate of John McCain or of Barak Obama. We decide more politics in America on race than on any other consideration. Small wonder that the people who do not speak our language are content to fly over us figuratively, financially, politically, culturally, as well as literally.

Democrats lament an alleged growing gap between the very wealthy and the middle class in America and they express concerns for the plight of the lower middle class. They see these gaps in themselves as the problem. I see them as symptoms of the problem. The lower middle class does not attend college and does not learn to begin to speak the language. The middle and upper middle class attend college and have a grasp of the language, but are not let into the game. The elites become more and more detached, they begin to speak an even more and more insular dialect.

The gaps grow as a result of the breakdown of our institutions. When 40% of the graduating kids in Detroit can't read, when more than half the kids in Detroit will never graduate, the educational system at that level has utterly broken down. When whole sections of the country are immune to a two-party system such as Massachusetts or Chicago, the electoral process is broken down. When the entire financial industry must be flooded with trillions of dollars and taken over by the government, our financial system has broken down. When the courts become super legislatures and write in Orwellian language, our jurisprudence has broken down. When trillion dollar bills go through Congress unread, when lobbyists like Larry Summers can distribute hundreds of billions of dollars to their former associates, probity in government has broken down. When the House of Representatives is run by the Speaker in a fashion that would shock Sam Rayburn, governance is broken down. When one party rule effectively dominates two branches of government and extinguishes all opposition, the system of checks and balances has broken down. When the media abandons its proper role to become sycophants in favor of one party because of ideology and one candidate because of race, our very democracy itself has broken down.

Our democracy has moved by stages from a very restricted franchise of white men of property only to include everyone, whether seized of property or not. In practical terms "everyone" includes illegal aliens who are evidently now voting quite regularly and who dilute your franchise. So the power in government has moved from a Lockean conception, or even a conception of Rousseau, which is a collection of individual choices by people with a stake in society, to a society which is governed by money, influence, elitism, cronyism, and group collectivism. If you want to influence government effectively, the last place you should think of devoting your time and energy is in the casting of your own vote. Think George Soros. Think Walter Reuther. Think Jesse Jackson. Think Katie Couric. Think LaRaza. These people need not even trouble themselves to go to the polling place, they undo your vote a million times over every election. Political power in America has thus moved away from the ballot box. It is much more effective to organize, contribute and lobby than to vote.

From this state of affairs it becomes very easy to cease thinking as an American and begin to think-this will sound at least superficially to be contradictory-at once tribally and transnationally. As one who has been living three seasons every year here in Germany and one season in Florida for about 20 years, I see the world from a different platform today. Since the time of my birth the population of America has doubled. As a kid we had a party line and waited all day to get a phone call through to the relatives only 200 miles away on holidays. There was no interstate highway system and it took forever to travel those 200 miles.

Today, I can speak at no charge to anyone around the world on Skype and send a letter instantaneously also at no charge. The doubling of the population in America has distorted the democracy I was born into. The technological revolution has likewise distorted it. It has tended to make people think less in national terms and more in terms of web connections and airports. It is creating a culture of 21st-century transnational gypsies. It is instructive to see how the idea of nationalism has been practically washed out of the German character. Obama would like to do the same in America. He does not see America as the shining city on the hill, but as a sinister force abroad in the world. So the Germans here confine their nationalism to their soccer team now that they had to give up on their deutsche marks. If one does not think as a patriot, one thinks as a hobbyist, as a sports fan, as an industrialist, a financier, a hot shot with a new derivative fresh off the computer, as a salesman looking for markets, as a taxpayer looking for havens. In short, one thinks to protect his family, becomes tribal, and focuses his sights on evading the systems including the system of nationalism. The Germans were disillusioned by the nationalism of the Nazis and so that disillusionment accelerated this process. As Americans become disillusioned with their culture, their government, and their stake in the nation, we will see more and more John Gaults. So we become the oxymoron, like gypsies, internationalists of opportunity but tribal in loyalty.

We are all on our way to becoming small time George Soros. The smart money says get there first. The odds are against us as conservatives and patriots on Free Republic. When Whittaker Chambers defaulted communism and became a patriot he was sure he was joining the losing side. He thought the on-march of communism was irresistible. He did not foresee Ronald Reagan tearing down that wall. I confess, I see no Ronald Reagan on the horizon either. I hope I am as wrong as was Whittaker Chambers.

Good Sunday morning to you, the sun is shining here in Germany this morning and I intend to go out into the day smiling.

[The Californian]

bttt

[stylin19a]

what democracy ?

[Travis McGee]

Haven’t you heard?

“Global economic prosperity is indivisible.”

That’s the new Marxism, from our own president.

[basil]

Sorry -—I got no further than your “Break down of our democracy”. FYI, we are not a democracy-—we are a Republic. Maybe that’s part of the problem—folks are uninformed about the very basics of our country.

[rlmorel]

Ping for later read...

[Don Corleone]

Haven’t you heard?

We are ARROGANT and must say three Our Fathers and Three Hail Mary's. Go Amerika and sin no more!

[Thommas]

Woot.

[nathanbedford]

Sorry -—I got no further than your “Break down of our democracy”. FYI, we are not a democracy-—we are a Republic. Maybe that’s part of the problem—folks are uninformed about the very basics of our country.

I think you must concede that when we are talking about the governance of society in terms of its responsiveness we are talking about its democratic aspects whether we call it a Republic, a representative democracy, or, in the generally accepted shorthand simply, "a democracy." The use of the latter term was in no means intended to be definitional

The post is intended to open the subject of the responsiveness of our government.

[nathanbedford]

Is that spelled "invisible?"

[piytar]

Great piece! (One nit: It’s John Galt, not John Gault.)

[wintertime]

nathanbedford
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You have defined the problem well. Any suggestions on fixing it? I would suggest that we immediately start on two fronts. One is long term in its effects. The other is short term.

1) Schools ( especially K-12). Conservatives must set up a system of tuition-free private **conservative** schools ( K-12, college, and university). Yes, it is a long term project but who ever controls educations wins elections in the next generation.

2) Conservative media and film. This would have short term effects.

I fear though that it may be too late to save our freedom. My husband accuses me of being a Dagny Taggart. He says that I still believe that we can turn things around.

[Pfesser]

Ben Franklin said, “we are a republic, if we can keep it. “Can we?

[TheConservativeParty]

Guten morgen! I visited Germany for the first time last October, spending the 10 days as the guest of my husband’s german relatives. In Munich, where we stayed for 2 nights, I could really get the feel for what a large city in a country without a representative republic was like. There was something very different about the people. We saw many cities of course, Nurnberg comes to mind, and many small and more friendly towns like Rotenburg and Hoenschwangau. Munich left a big impression on me. Not necessarily a good one though. It was dirty, smoggy, and had a very “diverse” population in the shopping district we stayed at. Most disturbing to this midwestern gal, were the muslim women covered in black, except for their eyeballs. These same specters were at the airports in Frankfurt and Chicago. Covered from head to toe, in flowing loose black garb. We were required to be quite close to them in the lines at the airports. Bombs were all I could try not to worry about when close to these people. Airport security seemed to not care that their faces were covered, and they had abundant room to hide bombs and weapons.

While I enjoyed seeing Darmstadt where my husband was born, enjoyed meeting his german relatives, who were warm and friendly and good folks, I could not wait to get back home to the USA. Freedom is a lot easier to see when you have been somewhere less free. After returning home,I read that the german tax rates are outrageous. Everyone I met, had very small homes, and lived a less boisterous life than most Americans do. There was just something different in the air there. The memory of Hitler was part of it, as many places we went to had some connection to him. Even at Schloss Neuschwanstein, we found that Hitler had hidden stolen art works and treasures there since he figured the Allied Forces would not bomb the castle. Nurnburg and Munich had public areas with somber memorials to the Nazi crimes against humanity.

Well, no point really, just a few thoughts on Germany. I do like how Angela Murkel is standing up to some of the G20 nonsense. I agree more with her than the boob who is pretending to be our president. Der Fuhrer Obama has always struck me as Hitlerian. I pray we can take back the country starting with 2010 elections and of course the biggie in 2012. The silent moral majority here is awakening. I think there is a great amount of chance that the far left will see defeat after their blatant unAmerican power grab, underway right now. I predict we will win over a lot of average democrats who are also disturbed at what is happening. Tschuss!

[spectre]

Thank you, Nathan.

I'm going to sit back and enjoy the responses...

sw

[nathanbedford]

Let me address your second idea, conservative media and film.

A conservative film is as difficult to find as a straight school teacher at a NARAL convention but when they occur they are usually of the John Wayne variety war movie or the sudsy kind that Walt Disney used to make. If it is a film in which virtue is rewarded, it comes off as schmaltzy. The drive in Hollywood, of course, is to present something edgy which gets attention and sells tickets.

I believe there is a possibility that this can be done but with a conservative bent. Consider the treatment of the typical Protestant evangelist or preacher in every movie. If we are lucky, he is revealed to be only a hypocrite and not a child molester. Consider the role of the CIA in such movies as Three Days of the Condor and the Bourne Supremacy series. In these movies, the government has gone wrong but it's the wrong part of the government, that is, the part of the government of the left believes is already wrong-the part that defends America.

There is no reason why the the right cannot write a film which is edgy and portrays those who subvert our government as the villains. For example a movie about Plame affair could be as edgy as All The Presidents Men but with Valerie and her husband the villains, conspiring with rogue members of the CIA out to commit treason against an embattled president. They could be portrayed the way Hollywood now portrays evangelicals.

The plot possibilities exist, the dramatic appeal certainly is there, but there is no money because the structure of Hollywood is so McCarthyite (actually McCarthyism in reverse) that would-be investors in such films are intimidated away.

I believe the way to challenge all of this is with satire. We need our own Saturday Night Live etc. Make clowns of these self-important moguls and humiliate them into patriotism.

[BarnacleCenturion]

Interesting. But Germany is also a republic (since 1949).

[esopman]

Nathan:

I don’t post much (lurker 1998-2003), but have been watching this Greek tragedy in slow motion for many years.

I am a great fan of your posts. And since I don’t live very far from the hospital where the hero of your tag line recovered from a skin disease during WWII, it got me to thinking about...character.

The character of the Halseys of that time and the citizenry in general is now massively diluted in this populace to an amorphous and mindless Weltanschauung with little ability to distinguish good from evil. There are pockets of rationality and appreciation of this Constitutional republic, but they are clearly in the minority.

The character of Zero is extraordinarily narcissistic, megalomanic. He will be one of the most powerful catalysts of division this nation has ever seen. He is a precursor of Tyranny...but too much of a lightweight at all levels to be an Anti-Christ (sure is a lot of silliness out there among my coreligionists). He is nonetheless a type antithetical to all that God desires.

Outcome? America will ultimately be Balkanized. The pockets of sanity will have to become tough, Godly, resourceful self-organizing communities. The change will not be smooth and linear, but sharply discontinuous.

Recommendations are self-evident: Continue the promulgation of constitutional conservatism in all ways possible. When it is no longer possible, that too will be self-evident. Against that time: 1) Get out of the cities; 2) Become more self-sufficient; 3) Acquire the means of substantial self-defense (BLOAT); 4) Work to build a cohesive neighborhood community (e.g. I teach Sunday school in the local church).

Pray.

Blessings on you and your house.

[nathanbedford]

Obama Backs Turkey for EU but France Says No

http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/*/index

[Mind-numbed Robot]

You and your respondent are arguing the success of the Left’s redefinition of our society whether you know it or not.

We are a Free Enterprise system, not a Capitalistic system, per se, although we are really both. Free Enterprise is the free bartering of goods and services, money being the common medium of exchange. Capitalism is the manipulation of that money by our financial institutions.

The Left pictures us as, and in turn presents us as being, the evil manipulators of money and so when they are in a position to they do just that, corruptly manipulate the money. They see us as corrupt so when they have the opportunity they are corrupt, conveniently blaming us, the moral citizens, of what they are doing. That is how we ended up with the present economic “crisis”, the corrupt manipulation of our financial instruments.

Your respondents questioning of the meaning of words as used between the two sides is another example of the influence of the Left. Orwell’s 1984 is about just that, the confusion of the language. The Leftist icon, Noam Chomsky, was a linguist who encouraged that, confusing the language to confound their opponents. That is how we end up with groups like the ACLU, etc., who pursue policies exactly the opposite of what their names sound like they do.

Not too many years ago there was no confusion about what commonly used words meant. At that time financial institutions were also generally to be trusted. Of course, human nature being as it is, there have always been liars and outlaws and there always will be. The Left are liars and outlaws who use our freedoms to destroy them and take control of this country.