re: "The ideologue’s fairy tale"

Karl at Patterico's Pontifications ("Harangues that Just Make Sense") considered election strategies for 2012.

Money quote(s):

"(T)he fact that the 7%-10% of voters who end up deciding elections are almost by definition not swayed by ideology does not lessen the importance of making the case for smaller government, economic freedom and personal responsibility."

The unstated (and mostly correct) assumption that the remaining 90+% of voters split evenly (more-or-less) between each of the two major candidates.

Most election years, that's true, regardless of whether those voters self- identify as Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, moderates or independents.

In other election years, one candidate (or party platform) is simply so discredited or another is simply so overwhelmingly popular, that this breaks down into a landslide. Wooing of "independents" in those years is unnecessary; they're self-wooed.

"(O)ne of the fundamental cliches of the progressive left is pragmatism, i.e., that they are simply doing “what works.” It is also one of the progressive left’s fundamental falsehoods.

The past century has been one in which progressives have put forth the idea that Soviet communism is what works, that Eurofascism is what works, that Maoism is what works, and that Eurosocialism is what works. The actual history of the past century is one in which Eurofascism was defeated in WWII, Soviet communism was defeated in the Cold War, Maoism has degenerated into a fascism and crony capitalism that only Tom Friedman finds attractive, and Eurosocialism is taking its own road to the dustbin of history."

5/6

re: "Managing decline"

David Warren at DavidWarrenOnline ("newspaper columns") argued against the inevitability and necessity of declinism.

Money quote(s):

"Gideon Rachman got his otherwise much-ignored Financial Times column linked on the Drudge Report, this week. (Drudge is "the bull" in this scenario.) In his smuggest, most superior, British tone, he lectured the Americans on "the management of decline." "

Even last October (when this saw print), it was far too late for any Europeans (even the British) to be lecturing Americans on this topic.

"(T)he phrase was meant to be droll: to ridicule the mindset of people who were destroying the British economy through nationalizations, while walking away from her responsibilities "east of Suez"; who portrayed Britain's decline as inevitable, and themselves as the ingenious lords of this great recessional dance."

The British have always done droll quite well.

"We "running dogs of American imperialism" (as the Maoists used to call us) regret the decline of American power, not necessarily from adoration of everything American, but because the alternative to American power in the world is Chinese power, and the rise to consequence of an array of regional powers perhaps nastier. For as America goes down, these unspeakable powers go up, relatively, and get their opportunity to throw their weight around."

True enough. America's decline, to the extent that it is real and not merely public relations in advance of reality, does not occur in a vacuum. Nature, and international relations, abhores a vacuum.

"In a similar way, in a previous generation, many not British themselves, cheered on the works of "British imperialism." For imperialism is always with us, and the British form was rather more benign than, say, the German form.

That is a point characteristically lost upon "progressive" minds, with their underlying, usually unexamined, utopian premises. This has been on exhibit throughout the Arab Spring, where it is assumed that the overthrow of Arab dictators must naturally lead to roses."

Clearly Mr. Warren's crystal ball was working pretty well last year, since he saw where the Arab Spring would almost inevitably lead in places like Egypt.

"Decline is of two kinds, relative and absolute. The relative decline of the U.S. was inevitable, as other countries which had destroyed themselves through war and totalitarianism gradually recovered, and wealth with its accompanying powers was disseminated through the world. The misfortune here is that America's allies in Canada, Europe, and elsewhere, declined their share of military expenditure. All were content to let the U.S. carry the weight of NATO, while they embarked on nanny-statist ventures more advanced than the American.

These in turn contributed to absolute decline: and to the effective bankruptcy of states across the European Union, as well as America and Japan. Behind the budgetary catastrophes are the demographic realities of aging societies, which can never catch up. They simply don't have enough working young to pay all the "entitlements."

Relative decline was unavoidable; but absolute decline was a choice."

Relative decline isn't such a bad thing when a rising tide is lifting other countries out of poverty. It's less of a good thing when poor countries are getting poorer.

""Managing decline" now means making the best of the fallout; of choosing what we can still afford and what we can no longer. The British "managed their decline," and now sneer at Americans whose turn it is to manage theirs.

There was in Britain a Churchillian force that did not accept decline. It "won the war" on its last sprint, then snuffed out just after.

There is likewise in the United States today a force - call it Tea Party - that does not accept inevitable decline. It is allied with every other faltering life force in American society. And, as an exponent of this "rabid right" myself, I will not only cheer them on, but continue biting their detractors. "

10/19

re: "The United States should breathe new life into the Atlantic community"

Joerg Wolf at the Atlantic Review ("A Press Digest for Transatlantic Affairs") commented on an essay by Prof. Charles Kupchan of Georgetown U.


Money quote(s):


"Europe welcomed the election of President Obama. America is much more popular than before, but European policies have not changed that much. The US is not getting that much more support from Europe. When Obama surged in Afghanistan for instance, Europe has also increased troops, but not at a level to justify the term "surge". I think Democrats had illusions regarding support from Europe before Obama's election, but now they don't have them anymore."


Nothing to add to that.


"I thought the term "progressives" referred to only the very left wing of the Democrats, but this seems to have changed as Kupchan seems to adress the party mainstream."


I laugh every time I read that sentence. The former parts of the Democratic Party which are not "progressives" (i.e., what used to be "the very left wing") are primarily two: the so-called "Reagan Democrats," many of whom are still members of the party, but not comprising many of its party or elected officialdom; and those known as neo-conservatives. That is, once the party moved too far left, they found themselves to be conservatives-by-default.


The "progressives" are like Europe's 68-ers, except that since the Soviet Union was safely and so far away they never had to grow up.


"(I)t seems to me that Kupchan is trying to convince the Democrats that Europe and NATO are important, while acknowledging that conservatives already recognize this."


Just so.



1/2

re: "Useful Idiots, Part II"

MikeM at Confederate Yankee ("Because liberalism is a persistent vegetative state.") knows a Marxist mob when he sees one (or more).

Money quote(s):

"There are many parallels between the rebels without a clue of the 60s and these equally clueless children of privilege, including no understanding of the system they wish to overthrow or the horrors unleashed should they be successful.

As history has revealed, the protestors of the 60s really were "useful idiots," a derogatory term used by Marxists for their lackeys in democratic nations working toward the destruction of their own freedoms."

The protesters of the 60s are now in their 60s (and 70s) themselves, at the very lingering peak of their political and academic careers. And still misunderstand their earlier (and continuing) roles as dupes.

"For any member of Congress, or the President, circa 1965 to utter support for Marxist protesters would have been unimaginable."

It's acceptable today because Marxists have re-branded themselves as Progressives.

"Marxists care nothing for "the people," who are merely an abstraction, useful only in their temporary, situational utility to the state. Marxist leaders and their states have no conscience, recognize no limits on their power, and if history is any judge, inflict upon 'the people" terrible suffering such that it eventually destroy the very state they claim must be immortal, for Marxist theory can never be wrong, it can never be falsified even as the state crumbles around their ears.

Marxism is utterly incompatible with democracy. When these world views conflict, one must give way, which in our democracy causes Marxists to settle for varying degrees of Socialism just as leftist Bill Clinton was forced to settle for centrist policies."

In practise, Marxism is all about gaining, and maintaining, power. It's not about liberating anyone.

""The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

What, such Americans wonder, would be sufficient cause for rebellion? What would cause Americans to rise against the federal government?"

Disquieting questions, to be sure. But thinking-the-unthinkable is sometimes part of the job discription.

"(H)ow can those contemplating our foundational principles be radical? Our Founders well understood that freedom, once gained, is not eternally secured. They knew that the threat of armed conflict to regain freedom lost would always be present. They knew that it would once again become necessary to preserve liberty and to secure the inalienable rights of men, among them, life, liberty and property.

Marxists recognize and honor no such rights. They admit only to state-bestowed privileges which may be altered or revoked without notice or concern for the welfare, health or the very lives of "the people," they rhetorically claim to love and represent.

Here are the seeds of Revolution, but not the safe, secure Revolution imagined by the pampered children of privilege. Weak, unschooled mentally and physically in the arts of survival, they would be among the first to perish in the kind of conditions they foolishly seek to create. What might be the triggers of the real kind of Revolution the Founders foresaw?
Colonial Americans were far from united on the specific usurpations, or their degree, which might spur them to armed conflict against their Government. So it is today. Marxists recognize only that Revolution which brings them to power and which maintains it. American patriots seek that bright line, that trigger, hoping it is never necessary to cross it."

Mr. McDaniel expounded on some very predictable results from current policy objectives that could prove catastrophic. Each of which alone could prove sufficiently antagonistic to the American way of life that it would suffice to inspire rebellion.

"(T)the rebels without a clue occupying Wall Street foolishly seek to implement policies that will inevitably unleash forces they are utterly unprepared to resist and which they will not survive.

Am I advocating armed rebellion? Certainly not, but even as staunch a liberal as Hubert H. Humphrey understood these issues:

"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible." "

10/10

re: "Is the GOP going extinct? And if so, is conservatism to blame?"

Jeff G. at Protein Wisdom ("because not just anybody can summarize the news") remarks upon an entire paragraph of wrong.

Money quote(s):

"(T)hat single paragraph is so densely packed with wrong — from the idea that Bush was a “conservative” to the notion that waterboarding, to conservatives, is a thrill rather than a necessary evil — I won’t bother deconstructing it."

"(I)t reinforces a manufactured narrative that the progressives are hoping to push as consensus opinion; it enables the Big Lie about “what Americans want” (gay marriage? according to what polls? higher taxes? terrorists treated as criminal defendants in a courtroom?); and — and here’s where it’s supposed to really work, as a piece of propaganda — it serves notice to the leadership in the GOP that, should they not move the party more toward what leftists are out to portray as “centrist,” the party is doomed to fail."

&

"Bush’s presidency was a success in that it kept Americans safe and beat back a dangerous enemy — not because he was a “conservative” or classical liberal."