Monday, July 26, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The Ruling Class vs. The Country Class
Angelo M. Codevilla has written an excellent piece over at American Spectator entitled
America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution. It's an excellent read, though a bit long.
He divides the nation into two classes - a ruling class and a country class. The ruling class, is by and large, blue state-oriented, govt.-oriented, non-producers who believe they know what's best for everyone, and they should rule. The country class, is by and large, red-state oriented, private enterprise-oriented, producers who believe that individuals know what's best for themselves, and that individuals should rule themselves. The ruling class desires authority, the country class desires autonomy.
From Codevilla's piece:
Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters -- speaking the "in" language -- serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct.
--
The point is this: though not one in a thousand of today's bipartisan ruling class ever heard of Adorno or McCloskey, much less can explain the Feuerbachian-Marxist notion that human judgments are "epiphenomenal" products of spiritual or material alienation, the notion that the common people's words are, like grunts, mere signs of pain, pleasure, and frustration, is now axiomatic among our ruling class. They absorbed it osmotically, second -- or thirdhand, from their education and from companions. Truly, after Barack Obama described his opponents' clinging to "God and guns" as a characteristic of inferior Americans, he justified himself by pointing out he had said "what everybody knows is true." Confident "knowledge" that "some of us, the ones who matter," have grasped truths that the common herd cannot, truths that direct us, truths the grasping of which entitles us to discount what the ruled say and to presume what they mean, made our Progressives into a class long before they took power.
---
2004 - both major candidates for president were members. Was there a conspiracy? No. They're just members of the same ruling class. The secret society is a coincidental symptom, the ruling class is the disease. Unless you're Alex Jones. Then they're all reptilians.
---
Caroll Quigley, historian and professor, who had an influence on Bill Clinton and his Rhodes Scholarship:
"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies."
Quigley may have brought this up as part of his belief in conspiracy theories... or may have brought it up as a model of what an individual political party should do (as in the rapidly evolving idea that Obama's weaknesses are going to be exploited by Hillary Clinton in 2012, to the effect of unelecting Obama's overt radical leftism and electing Hillary's not-as-overt radical leftism). It ties in with the idea that there is a ruling class - a class that rules by patronage and pull.
It also backs up the idea that there isn't a dimes worth of difference between the two parties in the US, much less branches of those parties. With RINOs on one side and democrats on the other, it's a convincing case. With the illegal immigration debate in 2007 - where the ruling class of republicans and democrats were united against the country class - the people - it was made pretty apparent.
It's also why the media selected a RINO candidate for pres in 2008 - by choosing the one the ruling class approved of. McCain was and is a member of the ruling class. Thompson, Tancredo, Hunter, and especially Ron Paul, were not.
It's important to note that the media itself is part of the ruling class. Consider NPR's griping about the "Tyranny Of Constituency".
The NPR poll shows why individual House members wind up being more loyal to their own jigsaw piece of the national puzzle than to the national puzzle itself. Only their own micro-constituency can vote for them (or against them).
NPR considers it terrible when representatives actually represent the people who elected them, rather than go along with the national ruling (leftist) class.
National Public Radio promotional still from a telathon. Seen with sunglasses.
Unless you're Alex Jones, then this is pretty much all you see everywhere. Without the sunglasses.
--
But individuals with principles who adhere to them aren't rulers. Originialist judges don't rule on a whim. Constitutionalist legislators don't write things because they feel like it.
And there is a simple way to tell apart the ruling class from the country class.
I use what former Texas State Representative Dr. Suzanna Hupp said:
"How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual... as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of."
It's a litmus test for whether a politician is part of the ruling class. If they don't trust you with your own security, and if they don't trust you with physical power, they're ruling class. If they trust you, they're country class who work for you, the citizen. Even if they harbor some ambitions of the ruling class, they're still someone you can reason with, because at the basic physical level they believe in self-determination and individual autonomy.
America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution. It's an excellent read, though a bit long.
He divides the nation into two classes - a ruling class and a country class. The ruling class, is by and large, blue state-oriented, govt.-oriented, non-producers who believe they know what's best for everyone, and they should rule. The country class, is by and large, red-state oriented, private enterprise-oriented, producers who believe that individuals know what's best for themselves, and that individuals should rule themselves. The ruling class desires authority, the country class desires autonomy.
From Codevilla's piece:
Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters -- speaking the "in" language -- serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct.
--
The point is this: though not one in a thousand of today's bipartisan ruling class ever heard of Adorno or McCloskey, much less can explain the Feuerbachian-Marxist notion that human judgments are "epiphenomenal" products of spiritual or material alienation, the notion that the common people's words are, like grunts, mere signs of pain, pleasure, and frustration, is now axiomatic among our ruling class. They absorbed it osmotically, second -- or thirdhand, from their education and from companions. Truly, after Barack Obama described his opponents' clinging to "God and guns" as a characteristic of inferior Americans, he justified himself by pointing out he had said "what everybody knows is true." Confident "knowledge" that "some of us, the ones who matter," have grasped truths that the common herd cannot, truths that direct us, truths the grasping of which entitles us to discount what the ruled say and to presume what they mean, made our Progressives into a class long before they took power.
---
2004 - both major candidates for president were members. Was there a conspiracy? No. They're just members of the same ruling class. The secret society is a coincidental symptom, the ruling class is the disease. Unless you're Alex Jones. Then they're all reptilians.
---
Caroll Quigley, historian and professor, who had an influence on Bill Clinton and his Rhodes Scholarship:
"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies."
Quigley may have brought this up as part of his belief in conspiracy theories... or may have brought it up as a model of what an individual political party should do (as in the rapidly evolving idea that Obama's weaknesses are going to be exploited by Hillary Clinton in 2012, to the effect of unelecting Obama's overt radical leftism and electing Hillary's not-as-overt radical leftism). It ties in with the idea that there is a ruling class - a class that rules by patronage and pull.
It also backs up the idea that there isn't a dimes worth of difference between the two parties in the US, much less branches of those parties. With RINOs on one side and democrats on the other, it's a convincing case. With the illegal immigration debate in 2007 - where the ruling class of republicans and democrats were united against the country class - the people - it was made pretty apparent.
It's also why the media selected a RINO candidate for pres in 2008 - by choosing the one the ruling class approved of. McCain was and is a member of the ruling class. Thompson, Tancredo, Hunter, and especially Ron Paul, were not.
It's important to note that the media itself is part of the ruling class. Consider NPR's griping about the "Tyranny Of Constituency".
The NPR poll shows why individual House members wind up being more loyal to their own jigsaw piece of the national puzzle than to the national puzzle itself. Only their own micro-constituency can vote for them (or against them).
NPR considers it terrible when representatives actually represent the people who elected them, rather than go along with the national ruling (leftist) class.
National Public Radio promotional still from a telathon. Seen with sunglasses.Unless you're Alex Jones, then this is pretty much all you see everywhere. Without the sunglasses.
--
But individuals with principles who adhere to them aren't rulers. Originialist judges don't rule on a whim. Constitutionalist legislators don't write things because they feel like it.
And there is a simple way to tell apart the ruling class from the country class.
I use what former Texas State Representative Dr. Suzanna Hupp said:
"How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual... as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of."
It's a litmus test for whether a politician is part of the ruling class. If they don't trust you with your own security, and if they don't trust you with physical power, they're ruling class. If they trust you, they're country class who work for you, the citizen. Even if they harbor some ambitions of the ruling class, they're still someone you can reason with, because at the basic physical level they believe in self-determination and individual autonomy.
Monday, July 19, 2010
The New York Times Lies
A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
Much as the Tea Parties aren't racist, and as Malkin, Zo and Pierson are denigrated by the left - insulted and more - and Gladney was beaten and called n*gger, the left itself is racist.
And to knock out one more anti-Tea Party slur, much as the left mocks the Tea Parties as astroturf - when they aren't - the left sees only itself - as all they do is astroturf.
- Vladimir Lenin
The New York Times has a story from July 17th about how the Tea Party isn't racist because it's just a bunch of racist hatemonger bigots, it's because they're old hatemonger bigot racists.
First off, that's outright bullshit. No matter how many times Alfonzo Rachel or Katrina Pierson show up at Tea Parties and are celebrated as leaders and spokespeople thereof... well, the racist left simply calls them names and ignores them.
The second lie is this one from the NYT:
There have been scattered reports around the country of racially charged rhetoric within the movement, most notably just before the vote on the new health care law last March, when Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, the legendary civil rights leader, was showered with hateful epithets outside the Capitol.
It's total bullshit.
Andrew Breitbart even offered $10,000 of his own money if anyone could prove the n-word was said even once.
From Breitbart's challenge to the leftists:
There were dozens of camera phones (even my old clamshell phone has a video recorder) and there were dozens of video cameras at the event. Dozens of people were taping and recording it. But the slurs didn't happen. Yet the left continues to repeat the slander against the Tea Parties.
Why? It's their narrative. They hate the Tea Parties, and the worst thing to call them is racist. In a multiculturalist tolerant society, that's the worst thing to be. That's why anyone who's black, brown, red, yellow, or off-white at a Tea Party gets the kind of names hurled at them like Michelle Malkin does every day in her email. Because the left can't write them off as just racist - and when the left's ideological worldview doesn't work, it gets angry.
Just like when leftist liberal union members beat up a black dude named Kenneth Gladney and called him n*gger.
The New York Times has a story from July 17th about how the Tea Party isn't racist because it's just a bunch of racist hatemonger bigots, it's because they're old hatemonger bigot racists.
First off, that's outright bullshit. No matter how many times Alfonzo Rachel or Katrina Pierson show up at Tea Parties and are celebrated as leaders and spokespeople thereof... well, the racist left simply calls them names and ignores them.
The second lie is this one from the NYT:
There have been scattered reports around the country of racially charged rhetoric within the movement, most notably just before the vote on the new health care law last March, when Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, the legendary civil rights leader, was showered with hateful epithets outside the Capitol.
It's total bullshit.
Andrew Breitbart even offered $10,000 of his own money if anyone could prove the n-word was said even once.
From Breitbart's challenge to the leftists:
If we let them get away with Saturday’s stunt — using the imagery of the Civil Rights era and hurtful lies to cast aspersions upon the tea party whole — then they really will have won the day.
It’s time for the allegedly pristine character of Rep. John Lewis to put up or shut up. Therefore, I am offering $10,000 of my own money to provide hard evidence that the N- word was hurled at him not 15 times, as his colleague reported, but just once. Surely one of those two cameras wielded by members of his entourage will prove his point.
And surely if those cameras did not capture such abhorrence, then someone from the mainstream media — those who printed and broadcast his assertions without any reasonable questioning or investigation — must themselves surely have it on camera. Of course we already know they don’t. If they did, you’d have seen it by now.
THOUSANDS OF TIMES.
Rep. Lewis, if you can’t do that, I’ll give him a backup plan: a lie detector test. If you provide verifiable video evidence showing that a single racist epithet was hurled as you walked among the tea partiers, or you pass a simple lie detector test, I will provide a $10K check to the United Negro College Fund.
---There were dozens of camera phones (even my old clamshell phone has a video recorder) and there were dozens of video cameras at the event. Dozens of people were taping and recording it. But the slurs didn't happen. Yet the left continues to repeat the slander against the Tea Parties.
Why? It's their narrative. They hate the Tea Parties, and the worst thing to call them is racist. In a multiculturalist tolerant society, that's the worst thing to be. That's why anyone who's black, brown, red, yellow, or off-white at a Tea Party gets the kind of names hurled at them like Michelle Malkin does every day in her email. Because the left can't write them off as just racist - and when the left's ideological worldview doesn't work, it gets angry.
Just like when leftist liberal union members beat up a black dude named Kenneth Gladney and called him n*gger.
Much as the Tea Parties aren't racist, and as Malkin, Zo and Pierson are denigrated by the left - insulted and more - and Gladney was beaten and called n*gger, the left itself is racist.
And to knock out one more anti-Tea Party slur, much as the left mocks the Tea Parties as astroturf - when they aren't - the left sees only itself - as all they do is astroturf.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
No Mosque at Ground Zero
The Jawa Report links to Brit Pat Condell when he puts up really good videos like this one, and I feel that their statement that "more folks should see it" is quite correct. Thus:
It's also a quick primer in case you're not up to speed on the story - basically, an Islamic group wants to build a mosque at Ground Zero in NYC. Pat Condell points out that Cordoba is also the location of the major mosque built in Spain when the Muslims invaded and conquered Spain. They built the mosque because they conquered. Here in the US, they plan on doing the same.
Now, if they wanted to build it at the Trinity Ground Zero, I wouldn't have a problem.
It's also a quick primer in case you're not up to speed on the story - basically, an Islamic group wants to build a mosque at Ground Zero in NYC. Pat Condell points out that Cordoba is also the location of the major mosque built in Spain when the Muslims invaded and conquered Spain. They built the mosque because they conquered. Here in the US, they plan on doing the same.
Now, if they wanted to build it at the Trinity Ground Zero, I wouldn't have a problem.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Dont' Be That American
Personally I like some of Jay Leno's stuff though I do not watch his show regularly. One thing I do enjoy that he does is his "Jaywalking" segment. This time he's interviewing Americans who don't seem to know what the 4th of July holiday is all about. At the end of the clip Jay will ask a grandfather of a family who hadn't been able to answer any of the simple questions and the grandfather answers every single one.
Please citizens of the United States please don't be these people, be the grandfather who knows his history and his heritage.
Please citizens of the United States please don't be these people, be the grandfather who knows his history and his heritage.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Celebrate Your Independence
Image via Wikipedia
Celebrate it Independence Day and remember what happened on this day so long ago. Our forefathers gave us the Declaration of Independence. It stated that a people had the right to be free. That every man, woman and child has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It addressed the grievances they brought against King George III in a clear argument as to why they should break their political and economic bonds to Great Britian.
Today, we as an American people are facing some of the same arguments as our founding fathers. We face increasing interference from our federal government in our lives to include our rights to see to our own bodies' health, to create a living for oursleves without government saying how much we can or cannot use for our own benefit, and to hand pass on something tanglible to our children when we pass from this world.
Americans, enjoy this day. This is a day of freedom from all it was enshrined as such when the Declaration was read to the people in 1776. The document still stands and is just as applicable to our current overgrown, powerhungry federal government as it was to the government of King George III of Great Britian. Think on these things today as you are with your friends and family celebrating the very essence of which this amazing country was built on.
Happy Independence Day. Be Safe.
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