Washington Rebel

Reliving '29

Stimulus Program

Because of the ideological grindbox Democratic monkeys have been cranking for three generations, we are told to believe that "the Republicans did nothing during the Depression.  Roosevelt rescued the economy."

Thank God for people like Henry Hazlitt and Thomas Sowell, who know better.  And thank God for Murray Rothbard (America's Great Depression), who has a piece out called Reliving the Crash of '29.  Check out these paragraphs with the propaganda you've heard over the years:

[T[he Republicans had never been the laissez-faire party. On the contrary, it was the Democrats who had always championed free markets and minimal government, while the Republicans had crusaded for a protective tariff that would shield domestic industry from efficient competition, for huge land grants and other subsidies to railroads, and for inflation and cheap credit to stimulate purchasing power and apparent prosperity.

It was the Republicans who championed paternalistic big government and the partnership of business and government while the Democrats sought free trade and free competition, denounced the tariff as the "mother of trusts," and argued for the gold standard and the separation of government and banking as the only way to guard against inflation and the destruction of people's savings. At least that was the policy of the Democrats before Bryan and Wilson at the start of the 20th century, when the party shifted to a position not very far from its ancient Republican rivals.

The Republicans never shifted, and their reign in the 1920s brought the federal government to its greatest intensity of peacetime spending and hiked the tariff to new, stratospheric levels. A minority of old-fashioned "Cleveland" Democrats continued to hammer away at Republican extravagance and big government during the Coolidge and Hoover eras. Those included Governor Albert Ritchie of Maryland, Senator James Reed of Missouri, and former Solicitor General James M. Beck, who wrote two characteristic books in this era: The Vanishing Rights of the States and Our Wonderland of Bureaucracy.

Check out Classical Liberal's Lindsay's No Mystery.  And Either is Inflation.  Damn Fine Bloggin'.

Ideology: A Dull Man's Substitute for Intelligence

Cover Me

A persistent irritant of mine are my so called "liberal" friends who can't handle alternative thought.  If I send them one of my posts I can feel the alarm bells ring back over the ethers.  They jutht don't know what to thay!  As das and I have frequently remarked, "liberal" ideas have to be digested by us.  It's impossible to attend school in the United States, listen to the news in the United States, read book reviews in the United States, without getting the prissy little school girl version -- that is to say, the "liberal" view -- of life.  Once, when meeting for lunch with several influential bloggers, the question was posed: what turned you conservative?  With the exception of das, who was shocked into reality by 9/11, the rest of us had been challenged by books we read when we were younger.  For example, two books that challenged my Seventies worldview were

The Incredible Bread Machine

and

The Mainspring of Human Progress

Both of these books are zippy, tremendously interesting, and very, very mind-bending.  Here is a pertinent review of The Mainspring of Human Progress:

Thoughts on Committees of Correspondence

Practices Zealously Pursued Become Habits

Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our Colonies which contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit. I mean their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers. But all who read, and most do read, endeavor to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the Plantations. The Colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal constitution . . . . . If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. This study readers men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources . . . . .They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.  Edmund Burke's Speech of Reconciliation.

Among the numerous problems our country faces, the primary spiritual or moral conundrums might be summarized as follows:

1) The growth of the Leviathan national state, commandeered by ideologues.  In other words, the debate between Republican and Democrat isn't really a debate.  The debate is whether our citizens choose slavery over self-rule.  That is the debate.

The Discovery of Freedom

The Incredible Bread Machine

2) Our Leviathan is a fascist state.  (See Michael Ledeen's review of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism.)  We haven't transitioned to socialism yet, nor do I think we ever will -- in part because no one has.  It can't be done because it contradicts human nature.  The great communist states are criminal enterprises, not Giant Daycares.  What's pawned off as socialism is analagous to the what Rome did: the upper classes held all the land and hired out its legions.  It kept Rome free from riots by bribery, "bread and circuses."  Everyone else was a slave, or so close to slavery you couldn't tell the difference.  Once the system broke down -- and Rome had several close calls, the big ones being in Cicero's time -- Rome was lost.  It had no middle classes, no religious structure, no cultural commonalities to fall back on.

Even the idealized "communism" of Native Americans is an illusion fostered by the Warm Fuzzy Liberal.  First, the Indians' technology didn't go very far.  You can't survive winters very well when you're living in a Neanderthal economy.  Second, Indian societies had their wealthy, their privileged.  It's built into human DNA.  Trying to legislate it away does just the opposite: you create a de jure ruling class that can't be removed.

Except by fire and blood.

Look at the folks from Goldman-Sachs who have taken over our government.

Probably the best solution to our problems would be 1) a consensus to restore the vitality of the Tenth Amendment (and also repeal the Seventeenth Amendment).  This would limit the corruption ideology of by restoring authority to states, where politial extremes are easier to contain; and 2) our politicians instituting the same sorts of financial reforms we have been imposing on debtor nations for decades, to wit . . . .

We'd have to dismantle the entitlement structures!

You couldn't do it all at once, of course.  It would have to be done strategically.

Our entitlement state is our slavery of Lincoln's time.  Those of us with guts know it can't be sustained.  The poofters among us can't think past the next bumper sticker.  And they vote Democrat.

Of course, we aren't going to institute those reforms, which means a social and legal breakdown is on the way.

Right?

Meanwhile, our Warm Fuzzies believe that man can have NO FUTURE!! unless people like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi regulate the markets.

If you believe that sort of drivel, you are truly pathetic, weak, and dangerous.

Taps

Citizens! A Progressive Triumph!

Call us what you will, but Cicero and I wrote-off America 30 years ago.  We could see what was coming, i.e., the people we saw from urban areas exemplified what we discussed in From Citizens to 'Stakeholders'.  Is there room for optimism?  More on that in a moment

John Perrazo has written a very instructive article called The Communists Behind Obama's Health Care Goals:

The polls have been clear for quite some time: By a substantial margin, Americans oppose the efforts of Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats to enact a massive overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system, one that would greatly expand the federal government’s role.

The fact is, our country is under a Leftist seige.  This is a huge powerplay.  A Revolution.  That's just how it is.  You're living through history.  In both the Soviet and the Nazi revolutions, there were opening years where things seemed normal, natural.  You know, those guys can't do that!  We'll change things!

But then Change took root, and people started going to prison.

Cicero and I take the position that to preserve a republic you nee a Republican Citizenry, i.e, one that puts individual and civic virtue before personal appetites.  We don't have that.  Haven't had that in 30 years.  30 years ago, the men and women who ran the shops in downtown Port Angeles had style.  Class.  They understood that private morality and public virtue determined the fate of this nation, America.  That's a big deal, you know: when you take pride in public virtue by nursing character, you're creating a safe environment for children, prosperity, and happiness.

How many of your children could understand the two sentences I just wrote?

That's your country, friends.

Newsflash for you "liberals": If virtue comes from the State, you may as well cut your throat now.  You're useless as a human being.

Dennis Prager gets his knickers in a knot with The Undoing of America.

Got news for you, Prager.

That's a done deal.  It's history at this point.

Is there room for optimism?

Yes, but not in my lifetime.

What I believe will happen is this:

1) The dollar will collapse;
2) America will either be brought under an international order or, more likely, a world war will break out over resources in the next 10-20 years; and
3) America will suffer a civil breakdown, in which the country breaks up into regional states.  America the superpower will be no more.

At some point in your children's, or grandchildren's, future, our spiritual heirs, American patriots, will establish a new republic.

This one ended 30 years ago.  You're just hearing Taps now. 

Make sure and visit our friend Liberalguy for news updates.  He's no Instapundit.  He's more succinct.

Mission Creep: The Goals of Obamacare

Get On it

   

Hentoff took to heart the words from his mentor, I. F. "Izzy" Stone, the renowned investigative journalist who died in 1989: "If you're in this business because you want to change the world, get another day job. If you are able to make a difference, it will come incrementally, and you might not even know about it. You have to get the story and keep on it because it has to be told."  America Under Barack Obama -- an Interview with Nat Hentoff

This is a Rebel Blog.  Some of the folks who read here -- or post here -- are more traditional in their Christianity than I am.  My "religion", if you would call it that, would come under the specific heading, Celtic-Dreamer-Jewish-Hindu-Egyptian.  Take your pick.

(On the subject of Christianity, I try to avoid disputes.  Suffice it to say I believe the literalists commandeered that historic moment called Jesus Christ and turned it into a Wal-Mart display.  That's all I have to say on the matter.)

As a Rebel, I take the position that America is a Roscicrucian nation.   (Some would say Masonic.)  What do I mean by that?  There was a critical period in European History (not taught much in the schools, I'm afraid) called the Rosicrucian Enlightenment.  It boils down to this: the very educated and rebellious European elite of the 17th Century saw formal religion as a detriment to science, and saw science as a method of proving and confirming religion.  It was the early Rosicrucians that gave us Deism (an outgrowth of utilizing Science to study the "Mind of the Maker"); who insisted that no civilization worthy of the name civilized proscribed or prescribed religion (by their standards, truly, Islam is, and remains, heathen); it was them who championed the idea, via secret societies, that liberty was the natural destiny of man and his sole key to happiness and should not be impeded by the State.  This alone is the single Key to understanding the precipice we're perched on.  You can read about that aspect in The Discovery of Freedom.

The Enlightenment, as we understand it, and, therefore, the United States, began in an intellectual rebellion with the publications of two controversial "manifestoes", the Fama Fraternitatis and the Confessio.  Didn't know that, did you?  Think ol' Cicero's pulling your leg, don't you?  Aren't Rosicrucians those dumb asses with the stupid ads in stupid magazines?

The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross is what people like Dan Brown are sensationalizing with his books (the People Magazine version of history).  Think of it this way: the rose super-imposed on a cross is symbol of the spiritual flowering of a human individual.  One bar of the cross is scientific inquiry (horizontal), the other bar revelation (vertical).  Think about that for a bit and ask yourself, Does this not describe the direction taken by the West?  Did you not know you were given a key to your freedom by these courageous geniuses, your spiritual forbears?

Whether you acknowledge it or not, that is what has shaped your destiny as a Westerner.  Think about what I just told you in light of this observation:

Climate Deal?

 

AWWWW Shucks!

"It is not what everyone has hoped for," Ban Ki-moon told reporters in Copenhagen. "We will try hard to have this legally binding treaty in 2010."  UN Climate Summit "Takes Note'' of Copenhagen Accord

The Revolt of the Warm Fuzzies

Byron York: Readers Question Dems' Motives on Health Care

"The Democrats are playing for the long term," wrote one reader. "They know that, once they've planted a new entitlement, it will grow as fast as they can water it with taxpayer dollars."

"The only way to fully understand the motivation for pursuing this legislation is that it creates dependency," wrote another. "The unstated, but ever-present, goal of health care reform is to make as many Americans as possible as dependent on the federal government as possible for as much of their lives as possible." The reader theorized that the bill's mandates -- requirements for everyone to have health coverage -- are designed to create what Democrats "have dreamed of for generations: total dependency and a universal entitlement that can never be voted out of existence."

Angry Liberals Edge Toward a Mutiny Wall Street Journal, by Naftali Bendavid and Peter Naftali

Liberals face somewhat of a paradox. Some want the Senate to pass a bill, and then seek changes during the process of merging the House and Senate versions. And they don't want to kill the overhaul outright and ruin their best chance in a generation to pass such a bill. At the same time, they are angry at the shape it is taking.

Then again, some of us wish we weren't having this discussion it all.  "Liberals" talk about greed all the time.  What, people in government don't have greed?  There's no greed for power?  No greed for ego?  "Liberals" have no greed where polar bears are concerned?  Who you guys kidd'n?

NYT: Liberal Revolt on Healthcare Stings White House   Float like a ballerina, sting like a Moonbat. 

Americans Growing Suspicious of Democrats?  Obama & Reid and Pelosi are Viagra for revolt.  Don't worry.  Super Bowl's on its way.  "Native American Intelligence" will make a come back.

Michelle Malkin: Welcome to the Democratic Party's Civil War

Now this is priceless:

President Obama’s Allies Try to Shield Him from a Potential Climate Catastrophe

  I live for news broadcasts of Democrats on ice chunks, floating down the Potomac.  Is that too much to ask? 
 

Andrew Bolt: This Time Al Gore Lied 

Is it too much to hope that a "leader" like Al Gore can change his mind when new data is evident?  Listen to this goofball.  For someone who worships Gaia, he doesn't seem to understand that Climate Change is Nature's Way. (via)  "International Global Green Infrastructure" is code for Al needs a job that involves sweat.  He's out of his mind.  Interesting questions from John in this interview.

One Cosmos: Scientistic Simpletons and the Church of the Immaculate Deduction

Jamie Glazov Interviews Victor Davis Hanson on the Palin Wonder.

She taps into a current of populist unhappiness in the country with Washington insiders, Big Money, and condescending elites in the media and popular culture. The Wasilla mom of five, married to the snow-mobile champ, is simply the antithesis of all that.

What's a human life worth?  Check out the Seventies haircut in this Milton Friedman video.  Kids sounded more intelligent then than they do now.  Marijuana hadn't quite damaged the gene structure as much:

Milton Friedman -- Morality & Capitalism

Via News Junkie

The Awakening -- Repost

 
The Awakening

Last fall we posted text from an email I received from a friend inside the corporate world.  Many of us conservatives tend to have a more tolerant view of private sector activities than many people inside the corporate world deserve, just as many conservatives tend to give law enforcement a pass because "they have tough jobs."  Got news for you.  Living is tough.  It's tough that improves you, or turns you into a "nuanced" (whiny) Democrat.

The question is always one of power, as I explain in What I Learned as a Prosecutor, Part I.  The person you owe money to has power over you; the school girl in a black robe judging you for a behavior you yourself can't explain has power over you.  There are only two questions you ever have to answer, whether it's your wife you're arguing with, or deciding where to stand on a piece of legislation: 1) Is this a power that needs to be legislated into a de jure power; and 2) if so, what sort of judicious limitations need to be placed on the exercise of that power?  If you tell me, "All policeman are heroes", I may agree with the sentiment, but what you're telling is that your thinking skills are those of an eigth grader, not a citizen.  It's the equivalent of saying "All policeman are pigs."  You haven't addressed constitutional limitations on state authority because you're wallowing in sentiment.  It's sort of like being a fat man yelling at athletes on the tv.  You need to get up from the couch, my friend.

Here is that original post:

Apocalypse

I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor

What we're seeing today is a growing symbiosis between politicians and the upper levels of business, particularly the grotesquely overpaid CEOs of the financial sector. We have the not-uncommon situation of sitting politicians being purchased or rented, as may well have occurred with Dodd and Rangel. (What did the financial chieftains get in return? Recall that much of the bailout and stimulus money was aimed precisely at these figures, who have spent the past year handing it back and forth to each other, with scarcely a dime making its way into the general economy. This is why the markets are booming in tandem with rising unemployment and stagnant growth.)

But we're also seeing a new phenomenon: business figures with fortunes in the hundreds of millions (if not billions) moving into politics in a big way. Consider Jon Corzine, who made a king's ransom at Goldman Sachs (which reportedly pushed him out of the firm) before moving on to become governor of New Jersey. Consider George Soros, international financial buccaneer of dark antecedents who has set himself the apparent goal of transforming Western politics. Consider (a slight reversal, but still pertinent) Al Gore, well on his way to becoming the first Green billionaire, Gaia be praised.  J.R. Dunn, the New Ruling Class

J.R. Dunn is wrong with respect to this statement: "The problem is liberalism -- what it is, and what it may become."  What we've moved into is oligarchy, not liberalism, not conservatism; what we're watching is the downside of a free market system: an oligarchic class that writes the rules.  To the extent we have private property ownership and rule of law, it has allowed some real numbnuts to dominate us politically.

What we need is more liberalism, not less, but those who identify themselves as "liberal" are anything but, and the American public, too effeminate to tell politicians to go to hell, will soon enough find itself in a worldwide banking collapse of its own making.  You think you're suffering now?  Wait a few years.

You might want to take up the study of Chinese soon.

I'm deadly serious.

J.R. Dunn is right in this respect: since our problem class identifies itself as "liberal", that is our problem: "liberalism."  But, to the extent he calls for greater government regulation of these assholes, that is not a Madisonian pitch for limited government.

We've already lost the war, my friends, if by winning you hope to keep something you think needs to be preserved.  We are on the edge of something new, and unprecedented.  If you're smart, you'll give up the old terms and start thinking fresh.

Can you feel it?

I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen.  It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... 

I can.

Preparing for Global Collapse

 
Preparing for Global Collapse – by Vasko Kohlmayer

“Société Générale has advised clients to be ready for a possible ‘global economic collapse’ over the next two years,” reported the UK Telegraph in a recent story.

Headquartered in France, Société Générale (SG) is one of Europe’s largest financial services companies. One of the oldest banks in France, it is also a quintessentially mainstream institution whose leadership is largely blind to the shortcomings of the world’s current monetary regime. As so many other mainstream outfits, SG failed to see the coming of the current crisis and had to be rescued to the tune of billions of dollars. Much of it, paradoxically, came from the American taxpayer via the AIG bail out.

To begin with, many governments currently find themselves on the verge of bankruptcy. Having tried to spur economic growth through vast injections of new money, they have contracted immense public debts. “High public debt looks entirely unsustainable in the long run. We have almost reached a point of no return for government debt,” concludes Société Générale in its report.

Leading the way is the United States which posted a deficit of nearly 10 percent GDP during the last fiscal year. The Obama administration projects that America’s national debt will exceed its annual economic output in the 2011 fiscal cycle. It will then continue expanding as far as the eye can see, reaching 107 percent of GDP in 2019. It should be remembered that these are the administration’s own figures, which almost always tend to be too optimistic. The reality is likely to be worse.

Of the several observations we can make about human nature:

1)  There are always Rahmesque vultures who have no qualms about feeding off the bones of those who constitute an "opportunty";

2)  When the documentaries show the horrors of what a generation lived through, everyone wonders, 'Why didn't anyone do anything?'

3)  Politicians, preachers and cons ply their trade on the gullible:

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.  H. L. Mencken

I Dreamed That the Great Judgement Morning

If we were serious about America's economic supremacy, we would have begun the process of disentangling the federal government from its level of entitlement and spending when Reagan was president.

Politics, bullshit, and greed won out.

Keep your powder dry.

Obama's Revolution

ReasonTV: Hollywood's Love Affair with Che

Joe Stalin: Pure Evil

Remembering the Victims of Communism

Obama's Two-Front Offensive

With the election of Barack Obama as president, the liberals have launched a massive, two-front offensive they believe will end in victory. They have judged that our public education system is so degraded that only a few Americans are left who even understand what a democracy is, and how the free market actually works. They are convinced that the majority of Americans are too frightened by the current recession to care about preserving the principles that made us the most powerful, productive and innovative country the world has ever known. In short, the liberals are reaching for victory because they believe that history now is on their side.

The speed of their offensive is breathtaking.

Herbert Meyer, Revolution

Bring up the Soviet Gulags, so meticulously detailed by Solzhenitsyn.  What is the response you invariably get from "liberals"?

Hitler.

Did you know Hitler -- a rightwing Christian, just like Glenn Beck and George Bush -- killed people?  Lots of people.  Never heard that before, huh?  Well, just say 'Stalin' and you'll get the Readers Digest Sex and the City version of World War II!  Almost as entertaining as a Michael Moore movie.  And just as flaccid.

Freedom, and the New World Order

 

Obama's UN Speech, Annotated

"Freedom is a lifestyle" as my Friend Fuchs says.

When the Pilgrims came to America, they nearly starved to death because they adopted communal agriculture. When William Bradford, leader of the Mayflower expedition, figured this out he reorganized the Massachusetts pilgrims in a regime of private property in land. The incentives created by private property promptly created a dramatic economic turnaround and the rest is history. Most history books ignore this reality, however, and blame the starvation crisis of the Pilgrims on corporate greed on the part of the Mayflower company.

Intelligent Gemma-Rebel Talk at the Classical Liberal.

Every time the price of gasoline goes up significantly, Congress convenes a Nuremburg Trial–style inquisition of oil-company executives. This practice began in the 1970s when the government's own foolish price controls on petroleum products caused massive shortages, and it needed someone to blame. Oil company executives are never praised when gasoline prices fall, as they have in the past year from over $4/gallon to under $2/gallon in many parts of the United States.  Government's Never Ending Lies About Markets, Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Belgian Prime Minister and first E.U. President Herman Van Rompuy Announces One World Governance.

More at Moonbattery.

She Drives Me Crazy, Ooh Ooh

National Betrayal

Historic Health Care Bill Clears Senate Hurdle  Weekend diddle-fest knocks up kid sister, "Freedom".  In sum, we're fu*ked, unless the Stasicrats can be stopped.  There's Still a Long Road to go until President Obama can Sign Legislation into Law.

Thanks Saul Alinsky, and Doctors Cloward and Piven. Even if it's not the change the two of you hoped for, we might just see if your ideas really work.  Calling Dr. Cloward and Dr. Piven.

Sabato: The Politics of Cloture Vote

Capitalism?  Who Needs it When You Have Government.

Brian Walsh and Hans Spakovsky: Criminalizing Health Care Freedom

Spread the Wealth Around

The Quantum Activist

The Quantum Activist : Dr. Amit Goswami Movie Trailer from BlueDot Productions on Vimeo.

In our current world, there is massive pressure to join a gym and get those glutes hard as rock.  Of course, there is daily, hourly, constant pressure to succeed materially.  We don't pressure each other into raising literary consciousness, or moral consciousness, or spiritual consciousness.  We reward and punish each other according to homes, belongings, activities.  In sum, we're a dreary bunch, enslaved to a toxic mania.  We're mad as hatters, and it's all self-generated.

Apart from the Rosary, apart from Alcoholics Anonymous, there is no general training available for the source of most of our conflicts: how do you clear the subconscious mind of clutter?  Most people are walking textbooks of neurosis, but you don't see any readily available methods for housekeeping in that regard.  People are left to suffer.  They replace mental hygiene with crazed evasion.

Nor does it do any good to maniacally pursue "spiritual enlightenment."  The "liberal" and New Ager consider themselves ahead of the game by going to drum circles and dream retreats, et cetera, but they are exactly where Jesus said you would be if you pour new wine into old bottles.  Isn't that analogy incredible?  It describes precisely the business of trying to graft  a new consciousness onto an old system.  Like putting new clothes on a decomposed body.  Even if it looks good, it still stinks.  The "liberal" who seeks to impose utopian neuresthenia on the rest of us is himself a victim of superficial reasoning and toxic emotions, and is far, far too cowardly to even consider that possibility.  The nuanced conspiracy theorist who sees evil only in business but not in state coercion is an accomplice to evil, but can no more see that than a child can understand the intricacies of economy.  The people who will show us how to live are themselves half-wits.

Everywhere you look, the quality of consciousness is under scrutiny, though most people probably don't see it that way.  Take the banking bailouts that started under Bush -- what became TARP after Obama took office.  We keep shoveling money into the Big Satan called American business, knowing full well the only result will be the destruction of the dollar.  Why?  Because of something called "toxic assets."  What would Adam Smith have called a toxic asset?  He would have been forced to utilize the 19th century term for "pig in a poke."  We are financing undertakings that have no future and yet, someone is being enriched for all our efforts.  Meanwhile, the U.S. government shoves us all toward the financial abyss.  Why?  What are we proving?  Who are we serving?

Like alcholics, we're going to have to reform ourselves once all is lost.

It doesn't have to be that way.

But that's how it is.

Ballad of the Warm Fuzzy Fascisti

No Popups for Kenny

K's Comment stirred up long-neglected historical memories of those "progressive" years Woodrow Wilson was president.  No, I'm not an expert on the Wilson presidency, but he did have some firsts in the civil liberties department.  First, some background:

During the post-Lincoln years, it was unusual to have a Democrat for president.   (The Democratic Party was for "crackers", racists, and southerners.  Think of it: the Northeastern U.S. was Lincoln country!)  Wilson was the first consecutive two-termer Democrat after Lincoln's assassination.  The first Democrat was the beleaguered, impeached Andrew Johnson, the poster boy for failed Democratic states' rights politics; the second was "Uncle Jumbo", Grover Cleveland, the only president to have two of the 44 presidential slots, as in, two non-consecutive slots.  Ideologically, "Big Steve" was closer to Calvin Coolidge than he was to Lyndon Baines Johnson.  He was not "progressive" by anyone's standard, I don't think.

Sons of X

We are All Liberals; We are All Progressives.  Woodrow Wilson was America's first "progressive" president.  The social climate of those years gave birth to the bumper stickers of our time: unprecedented prosperity juxtaposed with shocking inner city poverty, industrial slaughter of human beings, pollution you and I can't even conceive of, and so on.  Woodrow Wilson was elected president at the beginning of our era.  When you think of Woodrow Wilson, you think of Democrats like Barack Obama, not Democrats like Harry Truman or "Uncle Jumbo."  This is what Jonah Goldberg said about President Wilson:

Why Was a Socialist Senator Elected a One-Term President and Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

Lord Monckton, Ambassador Bolton, and the Copenhagen Treaty: Reflections on a Conversation (H/T)

If I can figure out where to write whoever produced this, I will inform them that 'rescind' is not spelled 'resend.'  (I am, however, sensitive to speed errors.  I'm always moving faster than my Inner Dictionary.)

Interesting point Lord Monckton makes: the communists who poured out of the Berlin Wall went into the Green Movement.  Interesting, huh?

Updates at Freedomworks.

Also Via Liberalguy, Mark Levin11062009: Maoist? Communist? Statist?  Discusses Ft. Hood Slaughter, Healtcare vote.

Chris Wallace Interviews Rushbo Limbabwe

Today's the Day

Nancy Pelosi won't allow for the 2,000+ page Socialist Healthcare bill to be posted on line before it is voted on.

The House votes on Nationalized Health Care today.  I you're going to call anyone, today's the day:

Obama scheduled a late-morning visit with House Democrats convening a rare Saturday session on legislation to remake the U.S. health care system, extending coverage to tens of millions now uninsured and banning insurance company practices such as denial of coverage based on pre-existing medical problems.  Obama Appeals for Healthcare Votes

Gateway Pundit's List of Blue Dogs

Phone Directory

E-Mail Contacts

DC Blast FAX

Obamacare: If It's Private, Kill It

What Socialized Health Care Will Look Like

Monday Whip

Annual Medicare Fraud: $60 Billion; Annual Profits of Top Ten Insurance Companies: $8 billion

We Love Rush.  Cool laugh when Chris asks him about keeping the country safe.  Great interview.  Rush voices the fear many of us have felt since Alinsky Central snatched the White House.  (We call the president 'Man-Boy'.  It fits.)

New Anti-Limbaugh-Beck Group Tied To Ex-Obama Czar Van Jones

The Villification of Rush

White House's Media Attacks Part of a Troubling Trend

WSJ: Pelosi's Bill the Worst Ever  Really?  It's straightforward and to the point.  I don't see the problem.

The Classical Liberal Has a Complete Analysis of Social Welfare Spending and Socialism.  Plus, pics.

Svetlana Kunin: Service.gov And Its Soviet Similarities  (Yes, we've linked it before.) 

Bad News for Democrats on Ethics Probes.

Revolt in New York: 

Saturday's decision by Republican Dede Scozzafava to drop out of tomorrow's special Congressional election in upstate New York is a potentially big political moment that could help to return the GOP to first principles—or could lead to internecine ruin. Much will depend on how GOP leaders and conservative activists respond.

Scozzafava Ex-Spokesman Speaks Out

Republicans Plot Coup

David Broder:  Key Votes in Virginia, New Jersey and northern New York state will tell us about 2010.

Times Online: When News is Good, Why are Americans Gloomy?

David Paton, who has died aged 89, was captured by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore and forced to work on the Thai-Burma "Death Railway".

"The Real Issue is Too Serious for Squeamish Silence"

American Lion

We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American.

How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin. Dismantling America

American Lion Thomas Sowell says he receives "pathetic letters and e-mails . . . . from people who ask why I don't write more 'positively' about Obama or 'give him the benefit of the doubt.'"   His answer?  The world is too dangerous -- and our president too naive -- for any more pretending.

As for the benefit of the doubt, no one — especially not the President of the United States — is entitled to that, when his actions can jeopardize the rights of 300 million Americans domestically and the security of the nation in an international jungle, where nuclear weapons may soon be in the hands of people with suicidal fanaticism. Will it take a mushroom cloud over an American city to make that clear? Was 9/11 not enough?

When a President of the United States has begun the process of dismantling America from within, and exposing us to dangerous enemies outside, the time is long past for being concerned about his public image. He has his own press agents for that.  Dismantling America II 

Patriot Joe Lieberman will back Republicans in the 2010 midterm elections.

John Perazzo: Democrats' Plan for Revolution

Herbert Meyer: Revolution

The Anti-Lincoln

The Emancipation Proclamation (1963); Inauguration Speech 1864

A subtlety not clearly understood by many, perhaps, is that Abraham Lincoln was not wild about unrestrained capitalism.  He once said:

“These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.”

From what I know about Lincoln, it is safe to say that he abhorred man's inhumanity to man.  That, more than economic policy, was at the root of his revulsion to slavery.  In this respect he was in alignment with the Abolition movement, the 19th century versionn of our own "warm fuzzy liberal" -- refomers who were frequently not playing with a full deck, a condition that seems to go with the compulsion to reform.  Idealists, not pragmatists.

What is discussed less often is how, in many of Lincoln's earliest writings, he expressed many sentiments that a contemporary of his, Karl Marx, would have agreed with, to wit: that which a man earns with his hands is too often exploited by those who don't earn, i.e., "industry" is frequently thievery dressed up as virtue -- a public posturing and sleight of hand most likely to be found wherever one finds politicians and businessmen darting among the marble pillars.  Lincoln had a real problem with that.  He was not a huge fan of the corporate man of his day, though he did earn his money representing railroad clients.  Lincoln was a pragmatist.

American Lion

 
So the Man-Boy Writes Like Caesar, Does He?

Funny!

Here's what a Lion looks like, boys:

Readers of Thomas Sowell's columns in IBD don't have to be told why he is considered one of America's greatest thinkers — maybe the greatest.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet has called him "our greatest contemporary philosopher," an opinion that British historian Paul Johnson shares in his book "A History of the American People."

Besides his weekly newspaper column, Sowell has written 43 books — 10 in the last five years — two monographs, 87 articles in periodicals and books, and 33 book reviews.

His latest two books, "The Housing Boom and Bust" and "Applied Economics," came out this year. The latter, subtitled "Thinking Beyond Stage One," is one of six he has written on economics.

Dr. Sowell has granted IBD permission to run one of the chapters of "Applied Economics" — "The Economics of Medical Care" — in its entirety. We are doing so because of its relevance to the debate over health care reform. The chapter will run in nine parts over the next week and a half. The first part starts below and continues in the Issues & Insights section, where the other eight parts will appear.

Sowell was born in North Carolina in 1930 and reared in Harlem. After dropping out of high school, he was drafted into the military and served in the Marines during the Korean War.

During his 20s, when he was a self-described Marxist, he attended and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a B.A. in economics. He also has a master's in economics from Columbia and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.

He has taught at Howard University, Cornell, Brandeis, Amherst and UCLA, and is now the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at Stanford's Hoover Institution.

Now, if the NEA guy said the President writes like Thomas Sowell . . . .

I'd kiss his ass and give him a week to draw a crowd.

Sowell's a man.  Can't say that about the fingerlings in the White House.

See what Dr. Sowell had to say about Eric Hoffer, the Longshoreman Philosopher.

Perky Cons

The Boys of Washington Rebel Awaiting White House Perk Appointments

Top Obama Fundraisers Get Posts

Is the White House for Sale?

Do you have to ask?  Well, I guess you do. The video at the CBS site asks a DNC spokesmen how Barack Obama is perfect, and his critics misguided.  I guess that's settled.

Republicans are up in arms over a Washington Times article on the DNC's alleged fundraising program. Democrats say there was no wrongdoing.

Republican leaders called for an investigation into perks President Obama handed out to top Democratic donors as campaign-finance groups expressed dismay Wednesday that the administration was not doing more to reform the culture in Washington.  Republicans Seek Probe

Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa Presses for Probe of Alan Solomont Nomination to Ambassador Post.  Solomont was part of Inspector General Gerald Walpin's termination.

Jake Tapper:  White House Faces Questions on Big Donor Maintenance Programs

Just part of Chicago World.

Tyranny at Our Doorstep

 
Mayor Kevin Johnson

Dismantling America

Does any of this sound like America?

Dismantling America, Part II

All our president's fascists . . . .

I.B. Stumped Speaks Truth to Power

Certainty of Death. Small Chance of Success. What Are We Waiting For?

Tolkien, Hitler and Nordic Heroism

The ideal . . . . is that all citizens shall be equal and shall be good, so that they shall all rule in turn, and all have an equal share of power; and therefore the friendship between them is also one of equality.  A Theory of Republican Character

That line from Gimli in Lord of the Rings, "Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?", came to me after I scanned John Jay's most recent effort(s), the title of which I have appropriately shortened to The Death of the Western World.  There may have been a time when John and I disagreed about this.  I have long predicted the self-destruction of the United States, even though I want to be contradicted.  Apparently John now shares my pessimism.

Here is a true tale of what happens when your leaders become like our contemporary Democrats:

From the first hour of the memorable twenty-ninth of May, disorder and rapine prevailed in Constantinople till the eighth hour of the same day, when the sultan himself passed in triumph through the gate of St. Romanus. …At the principal door of St. Sophia he alighted from his horse and entered the dome… By his command the metropolis of the Eastern church was transformed into a mosque…on the ensuing Friday, the muezzin, or crier, ascended the most lofty turret, and proclaimed the ezan, or public invitation, in the name of God and his prophet; the imam preached; and Mohammed the Second performed the namaz of prayer and thanksgiving on the great altar, where the Christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the Caesars.  A Day That Will Live in Infamy

Blood on the Streets

Continue reading "Certainty of Death. Small Chance of Success. What Are We Waiting For?" »

All The Liberal People

Frickin' Funny.  Why do they seem so dumb?

Billy O'Reilly Interviews Two Upscale Libs with Law Degrees (almost).  "You're saying it in the wrong way."

San Francisco Commies: From Warm Fuzzy to Moonbattery . . . .

All the Liberal People

All The Liberal People

Frickin' Funny.  Why do they seem so dumb?

Billy O'Reilly Interviews Two Upscale Libs with Law Degrees (almost).  "You're saying it in the wrong way."

San Francisco Commies: From Warm Fuzzy to Moonbattery . . . .