From Sultan Knish
Politics is a profession with a practice that runs completely counter to its ideals. The best politicians believe nothing they say. Whatever commitments they make to the voters are left behind once they enter the white halls of government. Like police officers who are forced to become criminals in order to do their job right, they discover that the practice of their profession requires the comprehensive corruption of their ideals. Only by discarding their principles and commitments can they actually get the things they want to do done.
The successful politician does not believe in absolutes except when he is delivering a speech intended for the ears of the voters, what he knows to be true is that everyone has a price at which a bargain can be made. ...
"Forty billion dollars for clean energy subsidies? Ridiculous. My family will starve and my children will have to beg in the streets! Forty-two billion? Now that's more reasonable. Make it forty-three and I'll give you that cowboy poetry festival and steel tariff you wanted."
Think of Washington D.C. and every state capital and every local bunch of elected officials as a Middle Eastern bazaar and you come close to the truth. And while this system works well enough when stocks are limited, when the merchants can dispose of unlimited assets that they don't own and drive their constituents deep into debt to pay for their latest deals, then the real nightmare arrives.
The fact is that politicians operate within a consensus that is created outside of the halls of congress.
Politics is based around a consensus. The left does not operate on a consensus, it is a revolutionary movement and it works by subverting the consensus and presenting its revolutionary position as the new consensus. All that is left for the politicians then is to affirm the new consensus. This has happened over and over again in the lifetimes of even the youngest person reading this article and the process has been accelerating lately because it s a revolutionary process.
There are two types of conservative politicians. Gatekeepers and revolutionaries. The gatekeepers are consensus builders, they talk a great deal about traditional values, and are elected to keep change out. This defensive strategy is a dead end because the real changes are happening outside the direct purview of the gatekeepers, who usually lack the imagination and courage to do anything about them. When the left pushes hard enough, the gatekeepers fold and add the new order of things into their panoply of American values.
The gatekeepers will put up a vigorous show of fighting gay marriage and then ten years later they will proclaim gay marriage as the embodiment of our family values. They will make a great show of fighting Global Warming legislation, and then five years later they will say that our courage to confront climate change is the deepest sign of our values of responsibility for the world around us.
If you are a conservative, support the revolutionary.
There are few things more powerful and liberating than spitting in the face of authority, tearing down the sacred symbols and violation the taboos of those in power. In a democracy political power is based on a consensus. Defying that consensus, trivializing that consensus and walking all over it gets you called an extremist, but if you do it right then you have weakened the psychological power of the establishments over the minds of men.
Defiance is the fundamental virtue of the revolutionary. The left defied the accepted norms and values of America, and that defiance paved the way for a cultural revolution. The power of the left will never be broken until the right defies their values and norms the same way. Until it publicly destroys, mocks and violates everything that they consider sacred in the spirit of revolution.
Revolutions begin as culture wars against the established order and they connect cultural defiance to political change. The fundamental message of every revolution is a defiance of authority and if the revolution succeeds then those in power are forced to give way and accede to change. It can be done. That populist spirit is out there, it is abroad in the Tea Party, it is there in blogs and social media, and even occasionally on talk radio. But all that goes to waste empowering a political establishment of gatekeepers who sometimes talk like revolutionaries, but don't act like revolutionaries.
Why is the Tea Party revolutionary while OWS was not?
The answer is transparently obvious. Because it is the left that is in power. Why bother demanding an activist and progressive government when we already have one of those? At most the left can demand a "more" activist and progressive government, but how enthusiastic can protesters be about calling for more authority and more power for the existing system? That is why OWS was basically incoherent, it was little more than a loincloth for the naked emperor already sitting on his throne and looking for the plebes to cry out for more chains.
The revolution of the left is the stratified revolution of Barack Obamas and Elizabeth Warrens, greedy political activists feeding at the watering hole of government and crying out for more. More power. More laws. More chains. Parse the rhetoric and all you get is the powerful demanding that we give them more power. This revolution of the greedy and corrupt would already be dead if it had not used the momentum of its ideological fervor to embed itself into every institution and seize control of the educational system and the cultural dialogue to program succeeding generations to give it even more power.
Rush Limbaugh keeps pointing out that the establishment Republicans tell us that we can’t be mean to the Democrats because that will scare away the all-important “moderates.”
The time is ripe for a true cultural and political revolution of the right, but that revolution has been hijacked over and over again by the gatekeepers who warn us that it's time to play nice, that we must think of the long game, that some issues have already been lost and we need to fight only for the core issues that matter to them lest we alienate people. The long march never ends in a last stand, only another tactical withdrawal on issue after issue.
Let's show some contempt and ridicule ...
Revolutions begin with an open contempt for and anger at the existing order. The left knows that. It is why it fears talk radio and populism more than it fears the latest set of dapper gatekeepers we send to the Senate. The contempt and anger are here, the more they go public, the more the power of the left is shaken.
No quarter.
Thanks for the link Glenn.
The attraction of Newt Gingrich is that – when he defies the MSM, when he spits in their faces – he’s the cultural revolutionary that people want. They are afraid that Mitt Romney will be the caretaker who “fixes” some of the problems while staying within the consensus. That’s his M.O.
Mitt, Ron Paul, Santorum, and all the rest all want good press. Gingrich at his best knows that “good press” is a pact with the devil. The vast majority of the people who are not Obamabots know this deep down and rise to their feet when someone who is vying for leadership shows he’s not afraid. “Fight the power” was once a slogan of the Far-Left, it’s now owned by the people.
9 comments:
"Revolutions begin with an open contempt for and anger at the existing order. The left knows that. It is why it fears talk radio and populism more than it fears the latest set of dapper gatekeepers we send to the Senate. The contempt and anger are here, the more they go public, the more the power of the left is shaken."
Look at how every expression of anger by the right is portrayed as violence/hatred. For example, after a left-wing nut (whose political statements online included lauding Arafat and Obama, but not Reagan or Palin) shot a congresswoman in Arizona, the left spoke in unison to say right-wing enthusiasm was responsible. Any right-winger who was confident and communicated forcefully was said to have blood dripping from his hands.
Our response to that cannot be to say "you're wrong, we're not angry." We need to explain (to ourselves as much as to the left) that it's okay to be angry, and get in touch with our anger, and continue to express it in healthy ways.
If you aren't angry at left-wing excesses, you're kind of stupid, aren't you?
Wow.
And God knows, there's plenty to mock. From the Alice-in-Wonderland speech codes and segregated dormitories of today's universities, to the inevitable sex-trafficing and graft which accompanies every UN deployment, to the cartoon understanding the Left has of history, economics and finance.
They've made it this far only because the rest of us have been preoccupied with creating the society and wealth they can only co-op and undermine, but not create themselves.
High time. High time, indeed.
> Mitt, Ron Paul, Santorum, and all the rest all want good press.
Ron Paul wants good press?
You're obviously talking about a different Ron Paul than the one I know. He knows better.
James, One of the most common complaints of Ron Paul and his followers is that the press is not paying him his due; not paying enough attention.
I agree with this, but we've got to be careful about just getting riled up by someone's rhetoric. "Newt at his best" is one thing - and I agree, he can be brilliant.
"Newt at his worst" is quite another - ethics problems, personal and public - Paul Ryan, the only person in the U.S. Congress to have proposed serious, conservative solutions to our budgetary problems is guilty of social engineering? C'mon. Have a memory longer than a day, folks.
The Left is the lemmings - leave the blind running to them. We have to, each one of us, be Madison, Washington, and Adams. We have to act like free people and the only way to do that is to be adults. An Adult Revolution.
Good article. I've raised a couple of revolutionaries whose screaming eventually gave way to reason when they reached--23? What is missing is a revolutionary that will stand on a POLICY and defend it completely. Gay marriage? Why are we debating gay marriage as a right to a subset of the population "born that way" when we have complete DNA analysis available for $5,000? Either it is or it isn't, and if it is, then the argument will turn back on abortion. Over spending? When your payroll clerk is cutting checks to unknown "workers" you would fire them, but they'd still be required by government to file W-2's and 1099-MISC. It is time for government issue 1099-GOV for all the help they give to individuals so that we can stop reading stories about the millionaire on the lake getting aid.
Judith: "We have to, each one of us, be Madison, Washington, and Adams. We have to act like free people"
I could not agree more.
It is accurate to say that among the population today there is a tremendous and dangerous ignorance - and even denial - of authentic America versus what it has devolved into.
I believe that (to co-opt a favorite phrase of the left) 'raising the consciousness' of Americans about the real foundations of America and so the tenants of individual freedom and responsibility America is based upon is a vital part of the necessary revolution.
We will once more be the America defined by our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and founders, when our culture reflects, and so the people again understand, accept, and promote the self-evident truth, as stated by Jefferson, that:
"The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits."
My greatest concern though is that too many people have already had their "consciousness" corrupted to the point where they irreversibly believe in the idea that the government's role is to take from others to provide them with all the money, services and "things" they happen to believe they are entitled to by their "constitutional rights".
And Benjamin Franklin provided this chilling warning: "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
"The gatekeepers will put up a vigorous show of fighting gay marriage and then ten years later they will proclaim gay marriage as the embodiment of our family values. They will make a great show of fighting Global Warming legislation, and then five years later they will say that our courage to confront climate change is the deepest sign of our values of responsibility for the world around us."
"The attraction of Newt Gingrich is that – when he defies the MSM, when he spits in their faces – he’s the cultural revolutionary that people want. ... Mitt, Ron Paul, Santorum, and all the rest all want good press. Gingrich at his best knows that “good press” is a pact with the devil."
You live in a delusion where these two ideas can live side by side. Whereas the cognitive dissonance of simultaneously believing both of your assertions would kill lesser mortals -- you are blessedly immune from logic and reality.
Newt is the "revolutionary" conservative?
Really?
He may well be a "revolutionary" given his ideology and plans for a post-industrial, environmentally-sensitive utopian society in which gay marriage and other traditionally abnormal social constructs are considered not only moral, but MORE moral (i.e. righteous).
But, he's no conservative.
But, let's vote for "Hope and Change" by electing Anybody But Obama.
We are not a society that plays "because I said so". Generally all the bits of tyranny are codified in laws, rules, regulations, taxes, and fees. The forces of repression on the left depend on you
1. not being able to read it all
2. not being able to process it
3. being able to stick it back in later when they are caught out.
Given modern information technology, there is no reason for any of this to be true.
We need to
1. Get a list of all the taxing and regulatory authorities in the USA (believe it or not, it doesn't exist right now)
2. enter in every single law, rule, regulation, tax, and fee
3. review them all and put pressure on each government to repeal the socialist ones.
4. remember that the map is not the country and keep an eye out for unwritten understandings that are tyranny not actually covered by legislation. This is where the prosecutors get involved.
As one state or another gets ahead of the pack and cleans up its act, its attractiveness to people and business should also go up and it should rise up in the state rankings.
We can all do a little bit. Very little of this stuff is rocket science. So let's go!
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