"It's Inevitable": Jefferson

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin says bloodshed may be needed to protect conservatism

"Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said conservatives may need to turn to physical violence in order to protect the United States against contemporary liberalism.

The Republican governor put forth the controversial suggestion after speaking of the “degradation of society” during an impassioned, 15-minute speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. The provocative comments started to gain national attention at the start of this week.

“America is worth fighting for ideologically. I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don’t have to do it physically. But that may, in fact, be the case,” he told the crowd.

Bevin suggested that if Democrat Hillary Clinton were elected president, she would set the nation on a dangerous course that might require bloodshed to correct. He told the audience that the “candle” of liberty might go out “on our watch.”

To hammer home his point, he paraphrased a famous quote from Founding Father Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

“Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children,” he said. “It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something that we, through our apathy and our indifference, have given away. Don’t let it happen.”

Bevin encouraged young conservatives to speak up, be bold, sound the alarm and wake up others. He told the conference attendees to not keep what they’ve learned from speakers and their books to themselves.

According to Bevin, too many people these days are following the example of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who infamously tried to appease Adolf Hitler and promised “peace for our time,” as opposed to his successor, Winston Churchill, who is widely celebrated for understanding and combating the threat of Nazism.

He said liberals mock conservatives into silence by accusing them of being intolerant when they speak their minds. He lamented, for instance, that many conservatives have remained silent concerning “the atrocity of abortion.”

“It’s a slippery slope. First we’re killing children. Then it’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ Now it’s this gender-bending kind of ‘don’t ask, don’t be a bigot, don’t be unreasonable, don’t be unenlightened, heaven forbid, just keep your mouth shut.’”

On Friday, at a banquet in Washington, D.C., Bevin was awarded the Distinguished Christian Statesman Award from the D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship, a ministry of Evangelism Explosion International.

Bevin’s office has not responded to a request for comment from Yahoo News, but he did post a statement on Twitter encouraging people to listen to his comments in their entirety. He suggested that the mention of bloodshed in his remarks was a reference to military sacrifice and that “any intelligent person will easily understand the message” if they listen to the speech."

When the executive branch, the judiciary, the billionaire cronies and half the population prefer tyranny, then the candle is effectively out. Every bureaucracy is now fully provided with the equivalent of its own military. It would have to be a 4th Generation war, otherwise the patriots would be mowed like a lawn. And most likely the USA would emerge either totalitarian or Muslim (but I repeat myself).

Mark of the End Times for Democracy?

Government Workers Now Outnumber Manufacturing Workers by 9,932,000

Almost all government employment is unconstitutional. As Pelosi said, "Constitution?? Hahahahahahahaha!"

Manufacturing is the grounding for a nation's independence and internal integrity. Government is a cancer upon that, when it expands beyond its intended limits. The cancer now far exceeds the grounding, and is drowning the grounding with regulations which are obviously intended to restrict manufacturing activities by making many mundane activities into mountains of paperwork or even restriction or abolition.

Headline of the Day

Was Thursday the moment when the rise of the left began to slow…

[...]

[NOTE: The title of this post is, of course, a riff on this famous speech by Obama.]

Sea change? Maybe. It depends on whether there are more liberty-oriented voters than there are elitist oligarchs and their utopian stooges.

An Actual Man

In my reading various sources on the subject of today's child-man epidemic, I came across the story of a real man, a man anyone, well most anyone, would be proud to know: Rick Rescorla.

Col. Rescorla, I didn't know you, but rest in peace.

IRAN, If you Like Your Nukes, You Can Keep Your Nukes: Obama

From The Weekly Standard:

"Historians and political scientists will have much to say, after its collapse, about contemporary liberalism’s propensity to be at once tough on American citizens and soft on Iranian mullahs. Today’s liberals are pleased to use the power of the state to nudge—not to say bully—their fellow Americans, while shunning the exercise of power abroad, preferring to accommodate—not to say appease—the nation’s enemies. It would seem to be a paradox."

No, it can't be a paradox; in the Leftist world there is no truth and no falseness so there are no paradoxes either. That will be in the next law they pass.

Why I'm Not On FaceBook

Headline at Freebeacon.com:

Government ‘Mining’ Social Media for Information on Health Behavior

A government without a moral base (outside the Leftist narrative) knows no boundaries. When the messiah class is in full control, we are all victims.

No Limits

When there is no obtaining morality, there are no limits. When the "mandated" vision is undefined “Change”, then what happens is indiscriminate behavior which will favor the “changers” and persecute the stabilizers.

The changers, i.e. Progressives, came into power fully armed with ideas of dealing with their enemies by using their Victimization list as the trigger. Their enemies are those who don’t believe as Progressives believe, to wit: that there are earth-bound messiahs whose only yet supreme moral position is to eradicate opposition to their aspirations of world-wide salvation:

one world + one thought process = universal happiness and flourishing.

If only the (immoral) opposition were eliminated, everyone would be morally happy.

Brought to the fore, then is the freshly opening view of the tactics being used by the Progressives in order to achieve their objectives. For example, the leader of the free world is now able to ignore all legislation with which he does not agree, and to issue presidential decrees which serve as legislation ex-congressio (to coin a much needed term). Abetted by the SCOTUS, the president is now nearly supreme in doing whatever he wishes to do, or not to do. And his vast executive organization is similarly enabled:

Under the U.S. president, his minions are able

(1) to define certain groups as terrorists; to ship weapons off to drug lords for their use in murdering both Mexicans and Americans;

(2) to use the full weight of the tax code to eliminate activity which might influence their re-election adversely;

(3) to give corporations to unions while stiffing actual investors, and then providing funds to the corporations to “pay back the loans”;

(4) to implement massive payouts to “black farmers” with no oversight;

(5) to use taxpayer cash to pay off bankers, environmental boondoggles, abortion providers, and election manipulators;

(6) to ignore pleas for help from diplomats under attack;

(7) to ignore border security with token changes while demanding citizenship for all who get into the country, forever.

Now it is revealed that the Justice Department has been instrumental in organizing demonstrations against George Zimmerman, who, at this moment, has not been convicted or exonerated of criminal activity in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. This is just one of the many racist actions implemented by the Justice Department. The president added to the racism when he declared that, if he’d had a son, he would look just like Trayvon, a seemingly deliberate poisoning of the well of fair justice, now tainted racially. It is highly likely that Trayvon was a pot smoking serial criminal, as shown in his email brags, but that information will not be accessible to the jury. And it will make no difference to the rioters, who are waiting in the wings to destroy whatever they come across as their own racial statement. Perhaps they will be funded or even led by the US Dept of Justice for whom there are no limits.

The 21st century has started off as one with no limits, certainly no moral limitations and obviously no legal limitations either as the Progressives in government show with their disdain for law, the constitution, and in fact anything which stands between themselves and power, such as a robust nation full of individualists, entrepreneurs, and liberty seekers (as opposed to groupthinks, anti-capitalists, and libertines). What Progressives need is a nation full of fully dependent sycophants, willing to trade liberty (and votes) for government doles.

In the illegal immigrant, Progressives have found the mother lode of such chronically sycophants. Accordingly there are no limits on what the Progressives will do, including not deporting them, and turning many of them loose on the streets, of course, as well as prohibiting individual states from doing so, but also struggling to legitimize them as future voters. The law is no limiting factor to Progressives, for whom all new labels redefine their obstacles: "illegal" becomes "undocumented"; "abortion" becomes "choice" and "women;s healthcare"; "criticism" becomes "racism"; "homosexual becomes "gay"; "morality" becomes "hate".

When the government has no limits, it is violation of the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution – not that anyone cares, it appears. The people of the United States of America are no longer the moral, free people of character of yore; and as always, the people deserve the government which they allow to exist over them.

Government Cheese; the Rainmakers:

”Give a man a free house and he'll bust out the windows
Put his family on food stamps, now he's a big spender
no food on the table and the bills ain't paid
'Cause he spent it on cigarettes and P.G.A.
They'll turn us all into beggars 'cause they're easier to please
They're feeding our people that Government Cheese

Give a man free food and he'll figure out a way
To steal more than he can eat 'cause he doesn't have to pay
Give a woman free kids and you'll find them in the dirt
Learning how to carry on the family line of work
It's the man in the White House, the man under the steeple
Passing out drugs to the American people
I don't believe in anything, nothing is free
They're feeding our people the Government Cheese

Decline and fall, fall down baby
Decline and fall, said fall way down now
Decline and fall, fall down little mama
Decline and fall, decline and fall

Give a man a free ticket on a dead end ride
And he'll climb in the back even though nobody's driving
Too ******* lazy to crawl out of the wreck
And he'll rot there while he waits for the welfare check
Going to hell in a handbag, can't you see
I ain't gonna eat no Government Cheese”

I Might Have to Make a Donation To the ACLU

According to Wired on-line, there is a massive NSA facility being built in the middle of Utah’s desert. The facility, which is near Bluffdale and just off Beef Hollow Road, will be five times the size of the US Capitol, and will house the most intrusive capability of spying on Americans devised to date.

”Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: ‘Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.’”

Even though they can’t legally access any more than the addresses and IP numbers, they can store information in the messages. How could this possibly go wrong?

Well, Wired supplies that for us to consider, too. Were you aware, as I was not, that there is such a thing as a secret court ruling? Or that spies are granted secret powers by these secret court rulings?

” Two Democratic senators urged the Obama administration Thursday to declassify secret court rulings that give the government far wider domestic spying powers under the Patriot Act than intended. The 10-year-old measure, hastily adopted in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks, grants the government broad surveillance powers with little oversight that can be used domestically. While much has been written and debated about the bill’s powers and efficacy, there’s evidently much more going on than the public knows. A secret tribunal known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court has issued classified rulings about the Patriot Act that U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colorado) say expand the government’s surveillance powers even more.

At issue, the lawmakers said, is section 215 of the Patriot Act. The sweeping power, one of the most controversial in the law, allows the secret FISA court to authorize broad warrants for most any type of record, including those held by banks, internet companies, libraries and doctors. The government does not have to show a connection between the items sought under a section 215 warrant and a suspected terrorist or spy: the authorities must assert the documents would be relevant to an investigation.”

To put this in some sort of perspective, if that is at all possible, Wired provides a third puzzle piece. The FBI issues National Security Letters, NSLs, in which they demand from communications providers such as ISPs data on their communications customers. The NSLs demand not only the data but also that the demand be kept secret. In 2010, some 24,000 NSLs were sent, seeking information on 14,000 persons.

14,000 terrorists running around this country? Only 14,000? Remember that Big Sister issued warnings which covered all conservatives, gun owners and Southerners (just for a start). I think the FBI is running behind.

More seriously, I think that the FBI, NSA and the Federal Government in general is running amuck. Oops, someone’s at the door with AR’s and flash bangs…

Gotta git.

Fred on Everything

Fred on Disengagement.

The US Human Rights Report Drops Religious Freedom

The mandated Religious Feedom Report disappears from the US Human Rights Report:

”As the issue of religious liberty appears to become more and more of a lost cause to the Obama Administration, the issue takes on a critically important role in the world. From the regime changes underway in Egypt and Tunisia, to the ongoing crackdown of religious believers in China, to the horrid depravity committed against religious believers in Eritrea, to the devolving rights of religious believers in Russia and Venezuela, the impact of religious discrimination and persecution has a direct impact on so many other interrelated issues, not the least of which is counter-terrorism and national security.

“By not updating the annual human rights report with new information and trends of interest, the State Department clearly demonstrates that the issue is of no concern or interest to them. This is an enormously dangerous signal to be sending, especially at a time when the world is in such transition and abuses can easily occur and systems changes can harm fundamental rights of individuals if the Department does not stay active and engaged on the issue.

“Unfortunately, by not updating and incorporating religious freedom in the Annual Human Rights report, the State Department failed at what Secretary Clinton said was its very purpose: "And we hope that this report will give comfort to the activists, will shine a spotlight on the abuses, and convince those in government that there are other and better ways."

Joseph K Grieboski; The Case of the Disappearing Religious Freedom Report.

Obama spent nearly 20 years listening to the religion of Social Justice being shrieked at the church of Black Liberation Christianity, an inverse of Biblical Christianity. Religion of the form: Biblical Christianity, is a problem, a social issue, for Black Liberation Christianity and presumably for acolyte Obama; Biblical Christianity certainly doesn't warrant defending. But Biblical Christianity is not aggressive in a form that can be litigated against; it is best just ignored and its punishment left to others. And Islam, in which Obama was raised, is his target of deference, along with his agenda of Social Justice.

So there are few major forms of religion that are of actual concern to the administration, certainly not the Christianity which is receiving the brunt of punishment from Atheist China, Russia, and Muslims worldwide. And Islam is still seen as the religion of peace and is not to be blamed for the actions of Islamists worldwide according to current policy.

Perhaps if Christians were dealing out the misery rather than receiving it, there might be an outcry. Otherwise, what is there to worry about?

But there is also a legitimate possibility for dropping religious persecution from Human Rights considerations. If religious freedom can be inferred to support the Islamic vision of a worldwide caliphate under Sharia, and to interfere with that Islamic vision can be inferred as a violation of religious freedom, what then? The concept of religious freedom can be easily corrupted into religious totalitarianism, and the freedom to assert that total control over all people. In this sense, religious freedom is a hazard.

Traditionally religious freedom meant the freedom to worship – or not – as one chooses. Implicit is the constraint against forcing religion on others. But for Islam, the religion is force and the practices of the Qur’an advocate and even demand force. Islam is incompatible with Western freedoms and the clash between imposing it and resisting it is inevitable.

This Islamic religious paradox which produces a violent certainty might be a valid reason to avoid the pursuit of religious freedom by the US Government.

Even further, would the USA choose Shia or Sunni? If the USA becomes Shiite, then we must battle the Sunnis who have nukes and control a whole bunch of oil. If the USA becomes Sunni, then we must battle Shiites who foster a whole lot of terrorism and will have some nukes. Well, that’s just a mess, so the USA had better not think about it.

Much less write reports about it.

Massimo Watch 04.01.11 De Dora: And Yet He Writes.

Michael De Dora posts an attempt to define conservatism and liberalism. De Dora is sequestered in New York City along with Massimo Pigliucci, and like Pigliucci who admitted to not actually knowing any conservative, non-Atheists, De Dora proves that he has not actually encountered any either.

It is common for the sequestered Leftist to fantasize about those who don’t agree with him, and to conjure the vile qualities that it must take in order for a person to have such unthinkable opinions. As Barack said, they must hold onto their religion and guns out of fear of change. To the Leftist, the presumed irrationality of anti-statism suggests not just supreme immorality, it also suggests insanity or at least horrendous stupidity.

It is from this point of view then, that De Dora writes,

“The conservative mindset tends to value traditional institutions and values because they are traditional.”

There it is. There is no principled argument for conservatism. The conservative is merely a mindless obstruction to change. De Dora has pegged conservatives to a fantasized vile behavior. And this fabrication characterizes a category of opinion which he does not personally encounter or experience.

De Dora defines the liberal approach, on the other hand,

”… is that institutions and values are only worth following if they are correct or serve a worthwhile purpose. If they are false or outdated, they deserve to be thrown into the scrap heap and replaced with better and more worthwhile ways of doing things.”

Here De Dora is claiming the moral ability to decide for society which values it should have and follow; which institutions are false or outdated and are to be scrapped. It is an accurate statement of elitism, the arrogation of moral authority. The statement is purely Consequentialist, a rejection of moral absolutes disguised as pragmatism.

De Dora even attempts to associate modern “liberals” with the benefits derived from the French Revolution. This is either from ignorance of the actual revolution and its historical consequences for France, or maybe he thinks that bloodbaths really are a good thing, as “more worthwhile ways of doing things”. Says De Dora,

”For example, Enlightenment thinkers did not call for an end to government (anarchy). They called for a change in government.”

Yes, from tyranny A, to tyranny B which although massively bloody, failed, giving rise to tyranny C. Liberte’ was not achieved by the French Revolution: liberte' was guillotined along with all opposition members and suspected opposition including entire towns. No, the statist Left is not for liberte’. Nor is it for tolerance, free speech, and other iconic slogans, unless they apply strictly to themselves. Curse and threaten to kill Bush? Free speech. Criticize Obama’s programs? Racist.

As a matter of consistency with his previous history of writing about things of which he knows nothing, this essay appears to be a name-dropping defense of statist Leftism, based on the weighty premise that “Left is good; Right is bad.” And very little more. And he left out Hobbes, Hegel, Galton and Nietzsche as influences on the Statists.

De Dora again:

”For example, many American conservatives argue that the definition of marriage should remain the same as it has always been, thereby resisting its extension to gays. Yet, there has actually never been one universal definition of marriage. Rather, the concept has evolved and changed over the past few thousand years. As such, the “conservative” position simply reveals itself to be a mask for bigotry — a way for straight people who don’t like gays to display their abhorrence of a different lifestyle in a manner that is politically acceptable.”

There is no behavior that is wrong or abhorrent to statists, except possibly behavior that limits the behaviors of the Left, which is the only immorality. It is society which is responsible for the bad behavior of its “victims”, those who are called criminals by the bigoted conservative. Any criticism of virtually any behavior is now “bigoted”, according to the statist. So privileges such as marriage cannot be denied anyone based on behaviors. Does this apply to man-boy marriage? Well, not yet. But the logic is in place to support it as “the concept of marriage evolves”. How about woman-donkey marriage? Father-daughter marriage? Cloud marriage of huge groups of non-defined types of organisms? That would eliminate bigoted discrimination once and for all. Marriage would be meaningless as it is already becoming.

De Dora concludes,

”But, while liberals ought to be willing and able to defend the need for change on a case by case basis, it is equally unacceptable for conservatives to defend the status quo simply because tradition is important above all else. If the conservative believes in the defense of a particular custom, he or she must have reasons beyond the fact that we have always done things in a certain way. They have an obligation to make their reasons clear or they risk defending tradition for its own sake — a rather sterile position.”

De Dora seems completely ignorant of any actual principles that conservatives might have, and in fact seems unable to believe that such might exist. However, “sterility” seems most appropriately applied to the intellectual atmosphere that De Dora has chosen for himself. Actual research into conservative principles beyond the slant of the New York Times and wiki infobites are just not necessary in the De Dora’s statist world, where strawmen are made fresh daily and actual knowledge of opposing views is eschewed in favor of demonization of fabricated targets. In this regard then, De Dora is a shining example of Leftist intellectualism.

The Ruling Class in the USA: Why Voters Don't Matter.

This article by Angelo M. Codevilla in the Spectator is long and very punchy. You do yourself a disservice if you do not read it. Here is an excerpt pertinent to this blog:

"At stake are the most important questions: What is the right way for human beings to live? By what standard is anything true or good? Who gets to decide what? Implicit in Wilson's words ["to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible"] and explicit in our ruling class's actions is the dismissal, as the ways of outdated "fathers," of the answers that most Americans would give to these questions. This dismissal of the American people's intellectual, spiritual, and moral substance is the very heart of what our ruling class is about. Its principal article of faith, its claim to the right to decide for others, is precisely that it knows things and operates by standards beyond others' comprehension.

While the unenlightened ones believe that man is created in the image and likeness of God and that we are subject to His and to His nature's laws, the enlightened ones know that we are products of evolution, driven by chance, the environment, and the will to primacy. While the un-enlightened are stuck with the antiquated notion that ordinary human minds can reach objective judgments about good and evil, better and worse through reason, the enlightened ones know that all such judgments are subjective and that ordinary people can no more be trusted with reason than they can with guns. Because ordinary people will pervert reason with ideology, religion, or interest, science is "science" only in the "right" hands. Consensus among the right people is the only standard of truth. Facts and logic matter only insofar as proper authority acknowledges them.

That is why the ruling class is united and adamant about nothing so much as its right to pronounce definitive, "scientific" judgment on whatever it chooses. When the government declares, and its associated press echoes that "scientists say" this or that, ordinary people -- or for that matter scientists who "don't say," or are not part of the ruling class -- lose any right to see the information that went into what "scientists say." Thus when Virginia's attorney general subpoenaed the data by which Professor Michael Mann had concluded, while paid by the state of Virginia, that the earth's temperatures are rising "like a hockey stick" from millennial stability -- a conclusion on which billions of dollars' worth of decisions were made -- to investigate the possibility of fraud, the University of Virginia's faculty senate condemned any inquiry into "scientific endeavor that has satisfied peer review standards" claiming that demands for data "send a chilling message to scientists...and indeed scholars in any discipline." The Washington Post editorialized that the attorney general's demands for data amounted to "an assault on reason." The fact that the "hockey stick" conclusion stands discredited and Mann and associates are on record manipulating peer review, the fact that science-by-secret-data is an oxymoron, the very distinction between truth and error, all matter far less to the ruling class than the distinction between itself and those they rule.

By identifying science and reason with themselves, our rulers delegitimize opposition. Though they cannot prevent Americans from worshiping God, they can make it as socially disabling as smoking -- to be done furtively and with a bad social conscience. Though they cannot make Americans wish they were Europeans, they continue to press upon this nation of refugees from the rest of the world the notion that Americans ought to live by "world standards." Each day, the ruling class produces new "studies" that show that one or another of Americans' habits is in need of reform, and that those Americans most resistant to reform are pitiably, perhaps criminally, wrong. Thus does it go about disaggregating and dispiriting the ruled.

There is much, much more to this... Read it all.

Rebellion, Freedom and Reality

When the movie, “Rebel Without a Cause” came out in 1955, I felt as if they had made it about me. Being adolescent in a time of gang warfare, football hero worship, drag racing, and back seat bingo – none of which applied to me – put me in a peripheral category. Being a peripheral adolescent is not fun, especially if it includes life at home, a place where I was pretty much just in the way. Mom and Dad both had careers and their expectations for me were that I be a scholar and keep quiet. Neither of which appealed to me, both which I ignored. I felt marginalized and without a definition of being anyone.

In those days, they cracked down on peripheral slackers. These days I suppose slackers and peripherals get lots of sympathy, and co-dependent support. I got cracked down on. James Dean got co-dependent support in the movie. Either way, rebellion is inevitable, because there is no way to develop a sense of ownership of one’s own self, if that self is controlled by someone else. Adolescent rebellion is one of the ways that youth sheds dependence and becomes. It is the need to become that drives rebellion, the need to differentiate oneself, to become autonomous, and in control. In adolescents, it is normal.

Not long after the James Dean movie, the James Bond movies started coming out. Talk about cool and in control. Bond always survived the worst attacks and then had sex with the most beautiful women. Not so the peripheral adolescent. The lack of control became omnipresent and painfully so.

Yet with the acquisition of adult age, a self-financed degree, a good professional job, the peripheral adolescent in me should have disappeared. It faded, but never really seemed to disappear, in the sense that rebellion against authority was always still just subcutaneous, barely repressed but also not really visible to the casual observer.

Rebellion is a destructive force. When it is not released, it becomes an attitude, a worldview. As it gets worse, it metastasizes into internalized negativity, then externalized as a substitute for rational thought. In an adult, it is a toxin.

Here’s what I mean by that. Rebellion might originally have legitimate causes such as seeking oneself by eliminating the forces that control. But it has illegitimate tactics that go along with that, including a thoughtless rejection of articles that are perceived as threats, which really are not. The pursuit for autonomy can and frequently does eliminate every input from standard cultural sources as wrong, and then: evil.

Such rebellion, when not abated in adulthood, can become stultifyingly irascible, belligerent, reflexive, uncompromising and destructive to rationality. This sort of individual finds support from like minded belligerents who come to feel that their pain is a source of moral superiority, a source that cannot be comprehended by the “Other”. Rebellion thus becomes a moral statement, a decree against almost everything cultural which might inhibit or control the rebel. Rebellion becomes a force against the tyranny of others, the tyranny of external control, of standards, of rules, of mores and of ethos. Rebellion leads to a reflexive rejection of most everything which the host culture values.

It is this reflexive rejection that gives chronic rebellion its irrational character. The adult rebel will immediately reject or deny a cultural standard without a shred of evidence to support his premise. The common path of rebel thought includes rejection, Reductio Ad Absurdum, ridicule, Ad Hominem attacks, and verbal violence upon foes. The adult rebel automatically knows better than his foes, still without a shred of supporting evidence. Generally seen as a fractious belligerent, the rebel will not succumb to reasoned debate, but will frequently explode tangentially into a non-coherent tantrum in the face of persistent logic.

This sort of worldview is seen by the rebel as freedom, total freedom of thought. Rather, he is captive to negative reflexion away from standards, all standards, whether rational or not, beneficial or not, moral or not. The rebel’s morality is merely to reject.

What suffers for the rebel is the loss of contact with universals. To present universals to a rebel is to meet with instantaneous rejection. Sometimes the rejection is based on scientism. No matter, the just the idea of universals is an idea of external control: psychologically anathema to the rebel.

But for rationality, universal reality is the only guideline we have. Coherence can only be derived from a condition of universal consistency, a trait that we can observe ourselves without external coercion. In fact, universal reality is deduced after inductive observation of the characteristics of the universe; it is falsifiable by continuous observation, and philosophical observations over millennia have observed some consistent characteristics that are inherent to the basic construction of the universe, and which render it coherent. These principles allow the deduction of First Principles, which apply to reality, and how we can think about reality coherently and produce valid thoughts through structured processes of thought. Such structured thinking about universal realities is called “logic”. And symbolic math. And ultimately science.

But rebellion is against the external control of things like roots, which demand subservience as they require recognition of their validity. Here again, reflexive rebellion goes astray, goes awry, as it rejects the implacable validity of the universal characteristics to which we are subject. Misreading roots as threats rather than foundations for valid thinking is endemic in rebels.

The freedom that rebels crave, they also reject because freedom of thought comes with the ability to apply rationality to every and all propositions, at least those subject to rational analysis.

And this brings us to morality. The rebel’s presumed morality, mentioned above, is derived from the pain produced by the rebellion, which the rebel presumes confers moral authority upon himself. But it can be seen that irrationality rules the rebel; so why would morality be invested upon such an individual? And invested by whom?

The intellectual world is infested with rebels of the sort discussed above. Their forte’ is to reject all the norms for thought and behavior that are present in the culture which provides for them. And they self-anoint (in Sowell’s terminology) with mantles of extraordinary morality, priests of differentiated thinking and Consequentialism. They gather into groups of self-appellated intellectuals, remaining in and taking control of university lounges, and venturing into government advisory positions from which to pontificate and maneuver the masses.

But their rebellious rejectionism remains a distinctive characteristic, the immediate defiance in the presence of rational alternatives to their “moral advances” and progressivism for the herd. Again, a mark of the irrational rebel is that they know better than us about everything (and in a moral way), without a shred of supporting evidence, in fact despite the masses of evidence to the contrary. Morality is not influenced by evidence, if you are possessed of irrational rebellion. The lack of personal freedom that the rebel incurs for himself everyday is to be compensated by the removal of personal freedoms from the Other, leveling the field once and for all, and this is morality. As Alinsky said in his tenth rule, “…clothe it in moral garments.” He didn’t mean be moral. He meant, make it look moral, regardless of the tactic: make the ends look moral, and the means will justify themselves: Consequentialism.

The inevitable Consequentialism of the rebellious is merely a self-justification for doing whatever they wish (frequently to whoever they wish). This illusion of freedom results in either incarceration of the Consequentialist in a just world, or abuse of the Consequentialist’s fellow man, in a Consequentialist world. Frequently in history it has been the latter, at least for those who aspire to control rather than be controlled. Rebellion in adults is not without victims, not in the victimology sense of co-dependence, but real victims. The first victim is the rebel himself, trapped in a fearful state of perceived persecution by forces that want to control him, unable to free himself into rational thought and worldview behaviors, because that requires his submission – subservience – to outside forces, the universals which cannot be recognized. Rejection of these necessary roots is fatal to rationality, and the rebel suffers under his own constrictions, imprisoned away from the reality of the universe as shown through its coherence.

In short, the rebel is miserable and frequently without recourse. The rebel is frustrated by the refusal of the Other to abandon rationality and join him in his irrational, miserable state. So he is also angry. And an angry, miserable, irrational Consequentialist is not a pleasant companion. Or correspondent. Or politician.

Rebels are beyond help, at least logical help. It is a deep seated psychological issue. But like most mental issues these days, it is not considered pathological until an actual crime is committed. The damage they do can be controlled, until they seize the three branches of government. Uh oh. Our reality is changing, and not to the more rational state.

Name That Document

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Death of Exceptionalism

Perhaps they are right. The American experiment is so easily brought down that it actually was not exceptional at all. Maybe it was at one time. Like when it fought two simultaneous wars against two fascist aggressors, and won. Or when it met the soviet challenge, and won.

But those abilities are gone, long gone. Now our own government cannot seal our own border. Rather, it wishes to control us. It now passes two kinds of laws, those to spend more money, and those to clamp down on our freedoms.

All it took was a long Hegelian march to the Left, one that promised more and more entitlements – read “sending my money to those guys” – to more and more non-producers. The crises thus created have burst one by one, and now with the government’s full assistance we are in a depression, accompanied by massive and exponentially growing debt. The U.S. Congress has decided not to even produce a budget this year; too much trouble for a meaningless document.

The three alternatives for our fiscal future, forfeiture, inflation, taxation, are all possible, but maybe only serially as they fail, one by one. Taxation is being increased selectively, now it is banks being taxed more heavily, and that taxation will escalate but fail to produce the trillions in revenue needed. Then inflation will be fired up to reduce the actual value of the trillions owed. Only after that fails, and brings on the massive social discomfort and unrest that hyper-inflation always produces, will forfeiture be exercised. Forfeiture will produce international enmity and increased tensions with China, which is arming itself at a magnificent rate right now.

It is forecasted that by mid-century the USA will be dominated by minorities, meaning non-whites. How many of these accept the values that created a free and strong USA is not known. But it was the minority vote that handed the country over to an unknown and unknowable pretercommunist in 2008. The future, even if it is temporarily in the hands of the Republican limp rags, is decidedly on the side of permanent social discomfiture and reduced standards of living. The exceptionalism of the USA is being destroyed in favor of punishment of its citizens and wealth producers, on the track to third world status and permanent peasantry.

On our current path, a permanent peasantry under a class of elitists looks imminent. In fact we are almost there, at least we are in the third act. Living as a peasant, possibly under Sharia, is not a desirable outcome. But even Rome fell to its excesses and barbarian incursions. In our case, the barbarians are running the show.

Accellerating the Culture Clash

Today is Everyone Draw Mohammed Day. The idea behind this heresy-in-your-face is explained quite well by Zombie. And a cartoon archive is located here.

After some initial hesitation I support this idea and effort. There seems little choice, given the totalitarian death squad approach of the Muslim murderers and arsonists. As Zombie explains, there are next steps and steps after that; the Muslim capacity for being offended is total. Their response is self-righteous violence and death.

This approach offers two things. First, it spreads the risk. Second, it allows the Muslim to know that the 21st century western world will not grovel in fear.

Another thing. As Zombie points out, it will likely bring on the conflict sooner, an advantage over waiting until the 6th century barbarians acquire nuclear capability. It truly does appear that the conflict is both inevitable and that it will be catastrophic. It doesn't have to be that way except for two things: the words of Mohammed, and the uncritical minds of Muslim totalitarians.

In his book, "The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created The Modern Islamist Crisis", Robert R. Reilly documents the internal Islamic war between reason and revelation, and how revelation won, stamping out reason in the Islamic world.

Reilly:

"Neither communism nor fascism has worked for the Arabs - because they have not worked for anyone - but the Islamists have ingested their totalitarian programs and mixed them with their Ash'arite interpretations of Islam. That is why one can compare the features of these ideologies and even some of the language they use almost exactly. As Maulana Maududi wrote,

'In reality Islam is a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals. 'Muslim' is the title of that International Revolutionary Party organized by Islam to carry into effect its revolutionary programme. And 'Jihad' refers to that revolutionary struggle and utmost exertion which the Islamic Party brings into play to achieve this objective.'

With changing the only two words, 'Islam' and 'Muslim', to either 'Nazism' or 'communism', and then rereading the sentence above, one will immediately see the nearly complete ideological affinity between them, as no other word changes are necessary to Nazi or communist revolutionary points of view." [note 1]

It is also possible to see the reason for the affinity of western Leftists and their One World Government for the one-worlders in the Middle East. The Left is drawn to any and all totalitarians from Castro and Chavez to the Palestinian rocket launchers.

While Reilly confers some of the blame for Islamic totalitarianism on the western varieties that fed into Islam in the 20th century, it is also apparent from the Qur'an that Mohammed himself was a violent despot, and that Islam has that built into its most revered foundations. Violence and Islam are handmaidens: they will not be separated. So if the western nations and culture are to survive the exponential Islamic threat, ultimately Islam will have to be defeated, thoroughly. Perhaps not exactly now, but the time is coming. And it won't be pretty.

It's not that they won't leave us alone so that we could just ignore them. They cannot.


Note 1: Reilly, "The Closing of the Muslim Mind", pg 181.

America, Land of the Triumvirate

If "Deem & Pass" is deemed a legitimate process, unassailable by the scrutiny of any court, then the USA is ruled by a triumvirate - a threesome of amoral, power hungry socialists.

Deem & Pass is the notion that a bill may be sent to the president with the understanding that it is "deemed" to have have been passed by the leaders of both houses. This notion is being considered by Reid and Pelosi to mean that they, personally, may send anything they wish to the president merely by deeming it. This allows them to circumvent the pesky voting process.

If successful, it means that laws can be formulated and passed by the actions of only three people; dissenting opinions need not be considered; congress itself could be disbanded and the three in the triumvirate would be able to do as they wish.

If, as is feared, the Supreme Court will be packed with Leftists and Far Leftists by the president (and possibly deemed by the two other triumvirateers), there will be no non-violent recourse available to the people short of periodic elections, and with the possibility of fresh gerrymandering, even those might be rendered harmless to at least two of the three for several very uncomfortable years.

The Land of the Free is being stolen before our eyes.

Declaration of Health Care Independence

Representative Michele Bachmann has initiated a Declaration of Health Care Independence, a list of principles that should guide any federal intervention into private healthcare issues. Here is the text of the Declaration:

In order to retain the Blessings of Liberty as secured to us by our Founding Fathers and as expressed in our Constitution, We the People reject the imposition upon us of a new, Washington-controlled system of government-run health care. We demand Constitutional protection of the right to make our own health decisions and our own health care choices free of government denials, bureaucratic red-tape, and greater intergenerational debt.

A Washington takeover of American health care will

1) Deny fundamental personal and economic liberties and indisputably violate the Principle of Limited Government as established by the Constitution;
2) Impose increased costs and taxes upon individuals, families, and businesses, as well as taxpayers at the federal, state, and local levels;
3) Irreparably cripple the American economy, at the cost of jobs, businesses, productivity, and quality of life;
4) Create an inescapable new tax by imposing individual and employer mandates;
5) Institutionalize a massive, ever-expanding federal bureaucracy that is impersonal and impractical;
6) Empower bureaucrats to interfere in the doctor-patient relationship, undermine the quality of care, limit choice, and increase the cost of health care.

We have appealed to the decency of the elected majority to respect the rights of all Americans, but their leaders have been deaf to the Voice of the People. We are appalled by their cavalier disregard of the Constitution and of the demands of the People. We are repulsed by their blatant political bribes and kickbacks.

We, therefore, the People and Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, do solemnly Publish and Declare that health care reform, as a matter of principle must

1) Protect as inviolate the vital doctor-patient relationship;
2) Reject any addition to the crushing national debt heaped upon all Americans;
3) Improve, rather than diminish, the quality of care that Americans enjoy;
4) Be negotiated publically, transparently, with genuine accountability and oversight, and be free from political favoritism;
5) Treat private citizens at least as well as political officials;
6) Protect taxpayers from funding of abortion and abortion coverage;
7) Reject all new mandates on patients, employers, individuals, or states;
8) Prohibit expansion of taxpayer funded health care to those unlawfully present in the United States;
9) Guarantee Equal Protection under the law and the Constitution;
10) Empower, rather than limit, an open and accessible marketplace of health care choice and opportunity.

Apparently over 100 congressional lawmakers have signed the Declaration so far. And WND has set up a place for citizens to sign also. It is doubtful that this will influence the social engineers in charge, but it is a venue for free voices to take a position.

Stopping ObamaCare For $10

Hugh Hewitt over at Townhall.com::Blog has one of the best ideas for a positive grassroots response that I have seen to date. His idea is based on the race for Harry Reid's Senate seat in Nevada, a race that Harry Reid is LOSING! Reid is 11 points behind his opponent, Danny Tarkanian.

Here's Hewitt's idea: Send Tarkanian $10. Then email Reid and tell him that if ObamaCare passes, you will support Tarkanian with even more donations. If this goes viral, the effect could be electric!

Here's Hewitt's page, here's Tarkanian's campaign website, and here's Reid's email.

If you send this on, think of the grassroots effect on both Reid and the Tarkanian campaign to remove Reid!

My donation and email to Reid are done.

Help this go viral: send it on!

Is This Dissenter A Racist?

Obama's speech in Arizona was met with protests, including this man:

"I'm exercising my right as an American in Arizona," he said. "I'm actually totally against healthcare in this way, in this manner, stealing it from people. I don't think that's appropriate."

The man also carried a hand gun on his hip and a round of ammunition in his back pocket, all completely legal.

He said he's fighting both health care and his right to carry a firearm in public.

"I come from another state where open carry is legal, but no one does it, so police don't really know about it, and they harass people and arrest people falsely," he said. "In America, people have the ability to fight back and resist."

YES WE CAN!