When civility disappears you have tyranny
I left a comment over at Mr. Z's place after seeing how those on the Left were following various marching orders for how to 'stop disruption' at town hall meetings held by Congresscritters: bus people in with the same outfits, with pre-printed pamphlets, surround the Congresscritter to 'protect' them, and then work to shout down citizens who were vocally complaining about health care, the stimulus that isn't stimulation, bail outs, not actually reading bills before passing them, expectations of the National Debt crushing the Nation, and so on.
Here is the comment verbatim, all spelling errors and such left intact for the amusement of the audience:
The mask slips on the Left and we now see organized violence, unions threatening to 'confront' people like the SEIU and disrespect of our elders by organizations purporting to support their wishes... and forget that those people are from The Greatest Generation and will not go down without a fight when opposed by tyrants be they monsters at the head of mighty nations or sweet mouthed deceivers looking to snooker them out of the very care they say they will provide.
Yes there is an 'astroturf' campaign going on... HCAN, SEIU and others are all following a script... saying the same things, intimidating their fellow citizens and seeking to end debate by their presence and closing out those who disagree with them.
If this were Bush doing that, the Left would howl in outrage over 'civil rights violations' and corruption at the highest levels of government. Instead we get the sockpuppets of repetition who are part of the campaign, itself. Those wishing to dissent are not starting this fight. That takes those wanting to intimidate, coerce and stifle debate to do that. It is clearly stated, clearly laid out and enunciated.
Not by those wishing to hold their Representatives accountable.
But by those wishing to stop speech and democracy in action.
Amazing how the Left decries 'astroturf' campaigns after committing so many in the past few decades on everything from 'global warming' (or is the PC term now 'climate change', as if the climate never changes?), 'race relations', housing, expanding 'entitlements', and doing such lovely things as attacking the character of a US General during an active military campaign. Yes the Code Pink, MoveOn, anti-war groups, global warming/climate change priests, million being marches that don't get 10% of a million... all of the usual suspects have been 'astroturfing' with Big Money backing from various individuals and corporations for years. The problem was that they got so used to that style of money-backed 'organizing' in politics that they didn't ever expect to see any other kind... and aren't able to RECOGNIZE any other kind due to the hot house theatrics the Leftist 'organizers' have been staging for decades.
The nature of American political movements is not top-down, but bottom-up.
Martin Luther King showed up a couple of years after protests were actively going on and were bolstered by men coming from the integrated Armed Forces who had fought with their fellow Americans of all races in Korea. The bottom part of racism in the south, that held by individual men of a young age, had changed due to military service post-WWII.
The Anti-Viet Nam war movement did not start out as a National scale movement, but one of isolated protests in the early to mid-1960's. The civil rights 'organizers' who moved to that venue saw success of a limited kind, and their grand idea that this would 'save lives' overseas proved to be drastically wrong with the North Vietnamese killing their way through the south, the collapse of Laos to Communism and the take-over of Cambodia by the genocidal Pol Pot. Those dominos plunked on the beach with no further to follow, but the wash of red, in blood, told a tale quite different than the lovely scenario painted by the 'activists' of how everything would just go perfectly once the US left. Well, the silence of the grave is a form of perfection, I guess, but not the one predicted.
That 'activist' generation has a lot to answer for on that, but no one ever held their feet to the fire to put forward that the ideology presented was self-serving, nihilistic and lethal to those we supported overseas and those that depended on us to hold a line we said we would hold.
That generation also got the space program gutted and then ensured that the authoritarian presence of government would stifle private space industry by limiting space access. When I hear complaints about global warming/climate change and the dangers of nuclear power, plus how industry is so very, very bad... I look back to Gerard K. O'Neill's group of engineers who had put forth a perfectly good plan to start removing fossil fuel based power stations via a system of expanding space based presence and industry. That was done from 1968-1972. Somehow the idea of expanding industry to the one, guaranteed, non-polluting basis that is still available so as to expand the economy and start getting industry moved off the planet just never did get to those who wanted to get more money spent on welfare and expand the power of government. Say, did all those billions put out in anti-poverty programs actually end poverty?
Just asking.
Wanting government to do the hard work for you misses the point that government is non-productive: it has a negative role in our economy and our lives by design. Any government that tries to get a 'positive' role seems to end up being expensive, authoritarian, expansive against personal liberty, and starts to dictate your life, your health and when you should die to you. And stifle your freedom of expression, your liberty and your pursuit of happiness to boot. I don't need to go back to the 1930's for that! I just have to see a President wanting a 'snitch list' of Americans who have the temerity to DISAGREE WITH HIM and that self-same President getting up and saying that those who 'caused the health care problem' need to shut up.
Say, that's the LEFT! They have been the #1 cause of inefficiency via government through increased regulation and encroachment on personal liberties AND productivity for decades, now. Congress, too. And the President himself, come to that.
Meanwhile 'youths' in decaying France hold more 'car-b-que' events, and that sort of thing is now spreading to Germany not on the ethnic 'youths' side but from the LEFT. In Great Britain, meanwhile, those in constant back pain don't get to have access to medication for it via 'the government plan', so that the POOR are deprived of pain relief. Why, that is just so compassionate, isn't it? And forget about defending yourself or your home in the UK: try to do that and YOU will be arrested on assault charges and tried. They disarmed the public a few years ago, the Red Mafia saw fertile fields to deploy lots of illegal automatic weapons, and the UK police, the grand, old 'Bobbies' are now in body armor and ALSO toting rifles and automatic weapons.
That worked out so well, didn't it?
All these lovely, grand, multi-culti ideals of the Left tend to wind up with property destroyed, economies in the doldrums, birth rates below sustaining levels, crime on the rise, and individuals oppressed by government in large ways and small: from their life to their health, there is no end to the 'good' government can't do.
I remember, clearly, going through university in the mid-1980's that the largest, number one, by far out distancing all other Leftist complaints, bar none, no exceptions was the following: that the American people weren't 'activist' and wouldn't join marches, etc.
And now... now... when the American people actually do start to attend meetings, rallies, and hold protests, what do we get from the Left?
Complaints that this is 'organized'!
One...
Two...
Three....
AWWWWWWWWWW!! Poor Babies!!!
You got what you wished for.
Deal with it.
The people most effected by 'health care reform'? You know the ones that are being called 'fascists' for complaining?
Yeah, as I put up above, 'The Greatest Generation'.
Amazing to think that men who had stormed the Beaches of Normandy, Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Sicily... these guys who fought and killed fascists for years are being called 'fascists' by an ungrateful, wretched Left that can't appreciate just how much they have twisted the language around to protect themselves from reading history and understanding what fascism is. I am not seeing anyone in protests standing up for more government, for socialism, and for fascism.
No only those following the lock-step orders on the Left are doing that. They did, indeed, read 1984 as a training manual. That describes Europe, however, not America. When you follow socialist doctrine aimed towards limited transportation societies with a history of authoritarian regimes going back centuries, you can get Orwell. When you do that in America, however, you get Alice in Wonderland and find yourself not supporting Big Brother but the Red Queen with her races and your words meaning just whatever you want them to. Which is Duckspeak.
That winds up with 'Off with their heads', in case its been forgotten.
Yes, 1984 through the Looking Glass... what a grotesquely horrific thing these events portend.
As civility decreases on the part of the Left, we hear the voice of ordering authority.
The Big Red Queen arises.
In the most well armed civilian population on the planet.
The violence has already started from the Left.
They either step back, now, and disown the authoritarianism... or they find out just what happens in a Nation like America when the public actually DOES become active.
And it is not what they wanted, I'll tell you that right now having seen their expectations from the '80s onwards.
6 comments:
I meant to mention this earlier (on a post more aligned with the question), but kept forgetting. I've run across a variety of trouble with trying to explain Jacksonianism from the point of view described here, and finally realized why: Most people's view of the philosophy (if they know enough to have a view) is based on what one finds here, which is materially different... or so I perceive. It would be very handy to have a brief (or not so brief) rundown of the differences, similarities and misconceptions regarding Jacksonianism. In particular, it would be useful to be able to easily:
contrast it with modern Democrat Party views
compare it with Jeffersonianism
differentiate it from Libertarianism
These things are confused or conflated an awful lot.
Actually, I should clarify that while I've been able to elucidate Jacksonian positions for some time, there seems to be a disconnect between that philosophy and the general view of Jackson as seen in the previous comment's link.
John - I think that Walter Russell Mead put it best:
"A principal explanation of why Jacksonian politics are so poorly understood is that Jacksonianism is less an intellectual or political movement than an expression of the social, cultural and religious values of a large portion of the American public. And it is doubly obscure because it happens to be rooted in one of the portions of the public least represented in the media and the professoriat. Jacksonian America is a folk community with a strong sense of common values and common destiny; though periodically led by intellectually brilliant men—like Andrew Jackson himself—it is neither an ideology nor a self-conscious movement with a clear historical direction or political table of organization. Nevertheless, Jacksonian America has produced—and looks set to continue to produce—one political leader and movement after another, and it is likely to continue to enjoy major influence over both foreign and domestic policy in the United States for the foreseeable future."
Jacksonianism is not, of necessity, conservative: good methods of doing things are preserved, and those create good ends, thus allow society to adapt to a changing world. Because of that 'conservatives' speak of such things as 'strict constructionism' but then look to modern views on society when trying to implement the strictly constructed means put down in the Constitution. That is not using the construct, as it was created and designed. Thus Jacksonianism is a view of the working of government as an artifact of society as mechanism - Jacksonians are craftsmen and tradesmen.
The modern Democratic Party is into a group-association form of government (when it is out for anything but more power for government, that is). That is best described by John Fonte's Transnational Progressivism concept in which elites designate groups to get 'rights' and thus divide up society and set faction against faction with an elite ruling over all.
Modern Jeffersonians have failed to understand that society creates laws to restrict the worst abuses of society. The law is to be upheld, but in jury trials the jury, itself, can say the law is invalid. That over-ride of government is rarely given as an instruction to juries, and forgetting to do so means that juries rarely debate the merits of the law and if it was drafted well for their case.
Modern Libertarianism has slipped into a form of not only Libertineism but has sought to degrade the need of society to curb abuses by individuals to society. All rights do start with you, as an individual, but you yield up some negative liberties to society and its organs for your self-protection and so that these negative liberties can be kept in check. In not sponsoring ideas of reciprocity and honor there is no positive system of accountability amongst citizens without authority involved.
Teddy Roosevelt's effort to re-make the Republican Party into a Progressive one did work. The direction of both parties in the 20th century has promoted power for government, less liberty for the people and less freedom for all. Libertarians don't help when they see a 'good role' for government in 'helping people' which is the modern form of Progressivism.
As I read more of the Anti-Federalists the more I see our modern world falling into their warnings of what would happen with government due to its faults in the Constitution. The avenues of abuse to power were predicted in those few short years and we now see them come to pass into reality. Now I examine their works to see that they also offered solutions to keep the National beast at bay. This is no modern happening, although it has modern trappings. Reading their warnings I fear for our future... yet reading Paine I see that the way out is with the people, not government. That is where Jacksonians always place their faith: with the good people of the land, not with its governing organs.
Thank you, that was lovely! Now remains only for me to find a way to express that with sufficient brevity and simplicity to penetrate the Average American Skull, but accurately enough so that they are denied the option of falling back on "So you're a libertarian."
John - The simplest answer: I honor you as a citizen of our Nation, for that is better than my liberties run wild.
I truly am distressed that Libertarians don't get the concept that government is a place for us to put negative liberties and that we agree to civility to create society. Instead they talk about rights, when they should be talking about personal responsiblity to ourselves, our family and our Nation... for without the latter we would be hard pressed to defend the former. Unstructured rights are barbarism and seen only in the Law of Nature. Honor gives structure and meaning to our rights and we demonstrate that by civil use of them. That lets folks know that attacking the Nation is the same thing as attacking YOU. Libertarians don't seem to get that all too often from what I've seen, at least.
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