Posted on 11/06/2012 10:42:38 PM PST by nathanbedford
I applaud and admire your optimism, but must aver.
This was it. The last chance to peaceably work to restore liberty and the Republic. The ballot box, and the soap box have been exhausted. The political options are done. It’s over.
All who love liberty have to face the hard facts: we are down to the third box. The only question before us now is how to honorably do our duty to future generations.
Hope remains, but it is dim indeed.
I applaud and admire your optimism, but must aver.
This was it. The last chance to peaceably work to restore liberty and the Republic. The ballot box, and the soap box have been exhausted. The political options are done. It’s over.
All who love liberty have to face the hard facts: we are down to the third box. The only question before us now is how to honorably do our duty to future generations.
Hope remains, but it is dim indeed.
>>>>Is it that we fail to see the world as it really is?
I don’t think it’s a matter of “right” or “wrong.” People vote based on their morality (regardless of how they might rationalize their vote). The morality of most people in the U.S. today is (in a nutshell): “I need; I want; I deserve; therefore, everyone else owes me.” I wish I could say that this breaks down according to class or race, but it does not. It cuts across all classes and and all races.
There’s a character in the novel “Atlas Shrugged”; I don’t remember his name, but he was an older executive of a competing company to “Taggart Transcontinental” whom the heroine, Dagny, was trying to exhort to join her in some challenge. He understood the significance of what she was asking of him, but he deeply believed that his own morality was “selfish and wrong” and that the opposing view of the majority was right. Dagny could see that he was defeated before he even began.
One of the networks asked voters, after the fact, why they voted for Obama. The answer was that “he’s the most likely to identify with who we are.” So if we claim that Obama was playing on the mindset of “revenge” and “class warfare,” it means that the typical Obama voter — the majority of the country, it appears — feels the need to take “revenge” on a certain class, most likely “the rich.”
I’ve pointed out the ugly scapegoating aspect of this to some liberals and it doesn’t seem to bother them. “They deserve it”; “they’re getting rich off of our backs”; etc. A number of them believe that “those Republicans are blocking Obama from doing everything he wants to do!” When I hear that, it tells me that they don’t want a republic, they don’t want a constitution, they don’t even really want democracy (except when their majority wins). They want a “strong leader” to take care of them . . . they want a dictator (except they want him to “look cool” and “talk like them”).
This is clearly a very dangerous situation, especially for anyone who values liberty, individualism, economic progress, etc., and the legal/institutional underpinnings of those things: private property, rule of law, objective constitutional constraints on central power.
We know from 20th century history what can happen when the majority of people feel that it’s all right to scapegoat one particular group, and that their troubles will disappear if only they give unlimited freedom to a political leader.
Personally, I don’t believe the U.S. will survive as a European-style welfare state. It simply goes completely “against the grain” in so many ways. I think the U.S. will either balkanize and fracture (geographical and politically, not just culturally), or it will very quickly go the way of Greece and collapse altogether (which, of course, might also lead to balkanization).
Sorry, but I don’t see any silver lining in this.
Republicans read Dr. Suess and Judy Blume.
So, okay, I’m seriously asking ... what now? Not fooled again means what — what is the plan now? Really, I’m trying to figure my way forward on this.
What middle? Obama campaigned to the left the entire year and still won. Mitt tried to wrap up the center and lost. The center of gravity is clearly left now.
I’m afraid that’s the conclusion I’ve come to, as well. Sure, on the surface work hard to pressure the House to do the right thing ... sure. But it’s time for stronger measures.
I guess it’s time for the radical conservative version of the weather underground — sons of liberty? — to form up and get busy. Not bombs, but certainly making the ‘system’ feel the pressure.
This election determined the nature of the reset that will occur. There is no way out of the economic box we are in without a deflationary crash or hyperinflation followed by a crash. The reset would have occurred sooner but gentler (gentle only by comparison) under Romney. Republicans would have been blamed for it. Now it will take longer to come and be much more difficult to endure. At that point, it is not clear that assessing blame will be meaningful. Acquiring power and then using it wisely will be meaningful.
Best case, I think strategizing needs to be around the notion of how to recover from the reset with a decent society. This is not dissimilar to the period when Churchill was a voice in the Wilderness before WWII. He was a consistent, derided voice. When the reset came, it was fast and dramatic. I don’t think we can expect such a good result here—I think things have to get much worse than England before WWII before the public is ready to listen to the argument that the modern progressive state IS the problem and we are living through its endgame.
Late night thoughts. They will probably look incoherent tomorrow.
This country has been split since 1993.
I’m past sixtie. So I’ll just try to wait it out until I die. Or, I may move to South America. Find me a socialist country that likes Gringos and has good medical care. Basically move to a socialist nation that’s already worked all the kinks out.
And I will not vote for or donate to another republican. I voted for mccain and feel like I wasted my vote. I voted for Romney and feel like I wasted my vote. I marched for W in 2000 during the recount and we see how that worked out.
I agree. I think the problem you’re describing is primarily a moral one. Until the people who care more about weed and free contraception than debt and dependency are elevated morally they will always vote Democrat-Left. No amount of electoral ground game or poll reading or debating ability will elevate these people. It has to from gut up, grass roots, a real culturo-civic rebooting of our voting public.
The most logical group to focus on are Hispanics because they already have the basic structure in them due to their historical religion, family and work cultural “settings”. Another generation or to and they will be hopelessly corrupted by the Lib mentality.
They block us from taking them over. We must start afresh and create our own institutions, including schools, news organizations, daily papers, and entertainment and markets of all sorts. I have been saying this for years. It is too bad that Conservatives have been so slow on the draw. We have behaved like dogs hoping for crumbs from their tables.
We could also play dirty and find out the dirt on these people and use it against them. I am sure that they blackmail many of ours because they haven't been perfect, while many of them have lived lives of incredible sin and crime. We also need to let our people off if they are repentant when something is revealed about their pasts, as long as they haven't been too bad. Ours usually get destroyed over things that are merely human faults, that most people have at one time or another. We have got to stop dancing to their tunes and create our own.
Of course, above and beyond everything else we HAVE GOT TO GET BACK TO GOD, trusting and learning what it means to have faith in Him and do His bidding. Then WE CANNOT LOSE. That is the greatest, by far, lesson that we have to learn. That is what it is ALL ABOUT. Faith has so dried up in this Country that it is unbelievable. We are reaping what we are sowing. Without God first, everything else has to fall apart.
Yes, yes, yes.
Sadly, I think Greece has an advantage over us. They run sort of a two-tiered country. Sure they have a massive entitlement/socialist culture on one level. That's what we see falling. But, they also have a robust individual entrepreneurship thing going on that we don't see ... an underground economy. They do a lot of bartering and there are a lot of small businesses. I don't think there are many families that are completely removed from this underground economy. I think that will support the people in some fashion if the gov’t completely fails them. It's as if they have an emergency economic backup system in place.
We’ve tried creating our our institutions. They get labeled “right wing” or “fringe.” We need to destroy from within.
It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick but we need to start on it.
No, not bombs. Rifles.
I’m past sixtie. So I’ll just try to wait it out until I die. Or, I may move to South America. Find me a socialist country that likes Gringos and has good medical care. Basically move to a socialist nation that’s already worked all the kinks out.
And I will not vote for or donate to another republican. I voted for mccain and feel like I wasted my vote. I voted for Romney and feel like I wasted my vote. I marched for W in 2000 during the recount and we see how that worked out.
—”Moderate to liberal GOP candidates for President don’t win.
Romney, with his horrible record as Governor and his support for Abortion and the Gay Agenda and with no clear, consistent limited government message was bound to lose.”
No, you’re tragically out of step with American culture if you think that’s why Romney lost.
American culture is sufficiently far to left that anyone an inch to the RIGHT of Romney does NOT have a chance at all. Wake up.
As the article pointed out if you had read it: Romney made some strategic missteps. As much as I liked Paul Ryan, the author is right that Marco Rubio would have probably won the nomination for Romney.
I agree.
But I think it would be easier to flip existing institutions like academia, which was originally more conservative but then was methodically infiltrated and changed. The weak points, the soft spots are there to be exploited we just have to get better at finding them and then more CREATIVE in the ways we manipulate these leverage points.
The media is an area where we are probably better off creating new institutions from scratch. There are already a lot of conservative new media outlets out there. These just have to be grow their reach and diversify their content beyond political news type stuff. Their has to be an appealing alternative in the pop culture for people to coalesce around. God I wish Breitbart was still alive.
In addtion we shouldn’t use the mechanics of the election as the primary vehicle to win an election. I think if you put yourself in a position where you have to perfect mechanics to even just squeak by you’ve already lost the game.
Conservatives have to stop defending the fort and start INVADING the culture on all levels. Combine this with the basic core conservative philosophy that we all know is better for humaninty as a whole, and we would win the big fight hands down 75% of the time. Which is all we need to sustain in order for the finer elements of civilization to survive indefinitely.
“Are we wrong and the people who vote their gender, their color, their tribe, their purse, right?” We’re right, but they are stronger, “they loved the darkness rather than the light” and they are now, sadly, the majority in our country.
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