Friday, March 29, AD 2024 1:08am

Interesting Times

 

 

My favorite living historian, Victor Davis Hanson, has a new post in which he details bad signs aplenty of scary times ahead:

 

Read the News and Weep

That is not conspiracy talk, but simply a distillation of what I read today. On the last day of the year when I am writing this, I offer you just three sample op-eds.

A journalist, Donald Kaul, in the Des Moines Register offers us a three-step, presto! plan to stop school shootings:

Repeal the Second Amendment, the part about guns anyway. It’s badly written, confusing and more trouble than it’s worth. … Declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal. Hey! We did it to the Communist Party, and the NRA has led to the deaths of more of us than American Commies ever did. …Then I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control.

Note the new ease with which the liberal mind calls for trashing the Constitution, outlawing those whom they don’t like (reminiscent of “punish our enemies”?), and killing those politicians with whom they don’t agree (we are back to Bush Derangement Syndrome, when novels, movies, and op-eds dreamed of the president’s assassination.)

What would be the Register’s reaction should a conservative opponent of abortion dare write, “Repeal the First Amendment; ban Planned Parenthood as a terrorist organization; and drag Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi from a truck”? If an idiot were to write that trash, I doubt the Washington Times or Wall Street Journal would print such sick calls for overturning the Constitution and committing violence against public officials.

Ah Yes, Still More Redistribution

Turning to a column in The New Republic, John Judis, in honest fashion, more or less puts all the progressive cards on the table in a column titled “Obama’s Tax Hikes Won’t Be Nearly Big Enough” — a candor about what the vast $5 trillion deficits of Obama’s first term were all about in the first place.

Here is the summation quote: “But to fund these programs, governments will have to extract a share of income from those who are able to afford them and use the revenues to make the services available for everyone.”

Note that Judis was not talking about the projected new taxes in the fiscal cliff talks, but something far greater to come. He understands well that the “gorge the beast” philosophy that resulted in these astronomical debts will require enormous new sources of revenue, funds “to extract” from “those who are able to afford them” in order to “make services available for everyone.”

That is about as neat a definition of coerced socialism as one can find. Implicit in Judas’s formulation is that only a very well-educated (and well-compensated) technocratic class will possess the wisdom, the proper schooling, and the morality to adjudicate who are to be the extracted ones and who the new “everyone.”

The Constitution — Who the Hell Needs It?

The third item in my year-end reading was the most disturbing. A law professor (could it be otherwise?) named Louis Michael Seidman enlightens us with “Let’s Give Up on the Constitution” — yet another vision of what the now triumphant liberal mind envisions for us all:

As the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.

Did Madison force Obama to borrow a half-billion dollars to fund Solyndra and its multimillionaire con artists?

Note Seidman’s use of “evil,” which tips his hand that our great moralist is on an ethical crusade to change the lives of lesser folk, who had the misfortune of growing up in America — a place so much less prosperous, fair, and secure than, say, Russia, China, the Middle East, Africa, South America, Spain, Greece, Italy, or Japan and Germany (in the earlier 20th century history) . When I lived in Greece, traveled to Libya, and went into Mexico, I forgot to sigh, “My God, these utopias are possible for us too, if we just junked that evil Constitution.”

 

Go here to Works and Days to read the brilliant rest.  The Left in this country is no longer dominated by the liberals of yore like Hubert Humphrey or even George McGovern, people with generally bad ideas but who basically adhered to the American system of government and who were patriots.  Today, the Left is becoming increasingly dominated by bitter partisans who are not shy about attempting to harness the power of the State to shut their adversaries up and who are war with basic American liberties.  A great struggle is under way and it is time for those of us who cherish liberty to recall these words of Abraham Lincoln:

Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her. I know that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing; while on its bosom are riding, like demons on the waves of hell, the imps of that evil spirit, and fiendishly taunting all those who dare resist its destroying course with the hopelessness of their effort; and, knowing this, I cannot deny that all may be swept away. Broken by it I, too, may be; bow to it I never will. The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me. If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and alone, and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors. Here, without contemplating consequences, before high heaven and in the face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love. And who that thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt the oath that I take? Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so. We still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country’s freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in defending.

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T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, January 3, AD 2013 9:16am

More eliminationist rhetoric from this vile, lying scumbag (Donald Kaul):

“Declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal. Hey! We did it to the Communist Party, and the NRA has led to the deaths of more of us than American Commies ever did. (I would also raze the organization’s headquarters, clear the rubble and salt the earth, but that’s optional.) Make ownership of unlicensed assault rifles a felony. If some people refused to give up their guns, that “prying the guns from their cold, dead hands” thing works for me.

“Then I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control.”

Instapundit: “This kind of talk makes me want to buy an assault rifle. Or twelve. And really, dude, the fact that you’re angry doesn’t give you some sort of a pass from the norms of civil society. Or, if it does, be prepared to tolerate a lot of things that you’ll find intolerable. Because, you know, a lot of people are angry.”

And, this is selective stigmatization: It’s as if the NRA, GOP leaders, and 50 million law-abiding gun owners killed everybody that ever was shot.

Let us be consistent in stigmatizing: “What about the Children?!?!?!”

“What is the gun community going to do the Sandy Hook tragedy?

I dunno.

What is the gay community going to do about the massive (2,500,000 new AIDS cases each year) AIDS epidemic and about Penn State football abuses?”

What is the Islamic community going to do about 10,000 media-ignored massacres since September 2001?

The gay and Islamic communit are off-limits despite the deviant and predatory behaviors of their hundreds of thousands.

PS: I was about to refer to Judas. You beat me to it.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, January 3, AD 2013 9:18am

Forbes: “Assault Weapon” is just a PR lie used to agitate gullible, Obama-worshiping imbeciles.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, January 3, AD 2013 9:21am

Regarding the fiscal cliff excrement sandwich:

Victor Davis Hanson, “These are the most foreboding times in my 59 years. The reelection of Barack Obama has released a surge of rare honesty among the Left about its intentions, coupled with a sense of triumphalism that the country is now on board for still greater redistributionist change.”

Ross Douthat quoted at Instapundit, “If a newly re-elected Democratic president can’t muster the political will and capital required to do something as straightforward and relatively popular as raising taxes on the tiny [what 2%?] fraction Americans making over $250,000 when those same taxes are scheduled to go up already, then how can Democrats ever expect to push taxes upward to levels that would make our existing public programs sustainable for the long run?

“There is a significant constituency among Congressional Democrats that was already uncomfortable with the $250,000 threshold and wanted to push it higher — all the way to a million dollars, if a certain influential New York Senator had his way — and the possibility that these Democrats might go wobbly in a post-cliff scenario gave the White House a reason (or an excuse) to concede ground that Obama had once promised to defend unstintingly. Nor is this tax-wary caucus likely to grow weaker with time: It exists because many Democratic lawmakers represent (and are funded by) a lot of affluent professionals in wealthy, high-cost-of-living states, and that relationship is only likely to loom larger if current demographic and political trends persist.”

Phillip
Phillip
Thursday, January 3, AD 2013 9:43am

We live in interesting times. Prayer, mortification and action in converting the Public Square.

philip
philip
Thursday, January 3, AD 2013 9:48am

“And who that thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt the oath that I take?”

May all of us adopt your oath of long ago since the lava of bondage once again spews from the Washington White House.

Donald. Where is our Lincoln of today?

anzlyne
anzlyne
Thursday, January 3, AD 2013 10:29am

Awesome!! Great! Standing up and clapping!

“… moralist is on an ethical crusade to change the lives of lesser folk, who had the misfortune of growing up in America — a place so much less prosperous, fair, and secure than, say, Russia, China, the Middle East, Africa, South America, Spain, Greece, Italy, or Japan and Germany (in the earlier 20th century history) . When I lived in Greece, traveled to Libya, and went into Mexico, I forgot to sigh, “My God, these utopias are possible for us too, if we just junked that evil Constitution.”

Thank you Donald McClarey. How can we get Donald Kaul to read this?

Phillip
Phillip
Thursday, January 3, AD 2013 12:01pm
philip
philip
Thursday, January 3, AD 2013 1:14pm

“Standing in the wings..”

Your right. “Where sin abounds Grace abounds much more…”

The friends of tyranny ( many of Todays left )
make me wonder about the future Lincolns, and when they will step on to the stage.
Staying optimistic in the face of the above columns is an art form that I must practice.

Robert A. Rowland
Robert A. Rowland
Thursday, January 3, AD 2013 1:28pm

Our nation is more threatened now than it has ever been in my 85 years.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, January 3, AD 2013 4:27pm

Years before the national debt rose to $16 trillion (103% of GDP), the Chmn of Joint Chiefs stated that the gravest threat to the USA is the ruinous national debt.

Thank God we are in this World we are not of the World.

They hate the Constitition because it was an effective check on unlimited government and abusive power. But, their intentions are “pure.”

philip
philip
Thursday, January 3, AD 2013 4:32pm

Victor Davis Hanson’s point about the abuse of offering tenure without merit is spot on.
His 1,000 student per yr. example effecting the lives of 30,000 in a negative way is realistic if not conservative. He spoke briefly on unionized campuses. An eye opening documentary titled: Waiting for Superman, shines some light on the entitlement epidemic sweeping across this great land.
Thanks Donald for the clip above.

c matt
c matt
Monday, January 7, AD 2013 9:24am

that the cause approved of our judgment, and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in defending.

Well, therein lies the rub. No doubt Obama and the left feel as strongly for their cause, and it is no less approved of their judgment. The difference between the leadership of the left and that of the right is the left is far more convinced of the rightness of their judgment. And I don’t know if it could ever be different – one characteristic of true conservatism is a natural distrust of power, because of a natural distrust of man’s ability to wield it correctly (a distrust proven correct time and again). The left suffers from incurable hubris. Rather than a Lincoln, I think I would prefer a Cincinatus.

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