Logical Conclusion
By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
I posted this to an earlier thread but it deserves more thought:
Have you thought through the implications of your defense, [regular commenter Emery, whom some of the Mitchketeers think is long-banned former comment-section regular “Doug”; I don’t think it’s him, unless he’s been on some serious meds]?
You suggest IRS agents misused the power of their office for partisan political purposes, not because Obama ordered it, but because he was incompetent to stop them.
That implies government agents are predisposed to abuse their powers but are restrained only by competent managers, i.e. Republicans.
The sensible conclusion is to give over as little of our lives to government agents as possible, and in those areas, put Republicans in charge.
I completely agree with the conclusion that flows from your analysis; I’m surprised you do.
See also: Fast and Furious, Secret Service hookers, government conventions in Vegas, AP wiretaps . . . the logic could apply to almost every scandal and for the exact same reason: we shouldn’t have given them that power in the first place. The Framers were smarter than we know.
Joe Doakes
To this I’d add that this blog has noted that the government and its handmaidens in the media and the lefty “alternative” media have spent the past six years demonizing every form of conservative thought, from fever-swamp leftybloggers chanting “Conservatives are Racist” to Janet Napolitano putting every form of conservative thought on a terror watchlist.
If you build a government around the notion of demonizing your opponents, your government will demonize your opponents.
May 21st, 2013 at 5:53 am
“your government will demonize your opponents.
one historically consistent byproduct of socialist governments is their willingness to identify disposable populations (Emmanuel Goldsteins) among their subjects and then to set about disposing of them – it is an often necessary adjunct to their process of governance. In fact socialist ideologues whether it the leadership (Pol Pot) or the insignificant (DG) cannot survive long without falling back time and again on the demonizing eliminationist cant.
May 21st, 2013 at 8:04 am
We refer to Emery as “Doug” because he lifts Doug Grow’s comments word for word from the “news” and repeats them here, and because he could be Doug Grow. In that he is occasionally lucid, that precludes him being the “late” and unlamented “Doug.”
May 21st, 2013 at 9:04 am
Dang! I thought I had created a better nickname for “Emery”/Doug Grow:
“Not Sure”.
Emery/Doug Grow responds that “I’m ‘not sure’ is usually the best response” when pressed for specifics. Anyway.
Another ‘Joe’ – Joe Klein of Time Magazine posited the same theory. (I’m pressed for time – someone want to put Emery/Doug Grow’s comment in the way back machine and see if it pops up as word for word from a Klein column?) Klein thought that by now the Rethuglicans would give up their fight against Obamacare and help the Democrats implement the behemoth so that it could/would be done competently. His argument was that Obamacare was being implemented so poorly (ED: as if by design?) that Democrats would face a political price for their inability to execute. And in a few sentences, and likely unknowingly, Klein described the whole game.
Democrats, when in power, create these massive, complicated programs that anyone who can balance a checkbook (which sadly is fewer and fewer) can see will lead to higher cost, poorer service and more dependence. After their consultant buds, big business contributors, big government union leadership and they themselves (with their post government service consultant jobs for the businesses they used to regulate pay off) get paid, society is left with a program that only perpetuates itself through higher taxes and more government coercion. Republicans are supposed to stand against this stuff, but the party is so chock full of its own rent seekers as to render it impotent in combating this way of governing.
May 21st, 2013 at 9:18 am
kel-
One of the distinguishing characteristics of marxist-leninist communism is that the party does not represent the people it governs, it is at war with them.
May 21st, 2013 at 10:14 am
Obama is the first President who grew up surrounded by hate. Jimmy Carter grew up in the Jim Crow south, but over all was a fairly traditional christian (well, except for the Jewish question). Clinton just wanted to get laid.
Obama grew up, raised by an America-hating Atheist mother. Eventually ended up in Chicago where he surrounded himself with such people as domestic terrorist Billy Ayres and the radical cleric Jeramiah Wright.
He never marched in a July 4th parade. Never was in the Boy Scouts. Didn’t play in the park as a youngster. Probably has never personally known anyone who goes to a traditional Christian church. Never volunteered to help clean up after a storm.
His whole life was about hate and confrontation. Destroy you “enemy”.
May 21st, 2013 at 10:53 am
Well, if you predicate your political existence on the infallibility of socialist political structures to solve things, you’re going to be looking for someone to blame when things go wrong. Since socialism and Communism have an intrinsically false idea of the nature of man–basically good and eminently moldable instead of von Mises “man acts”–they’re inevitably going to be looking for someone to blame when things go wrong. And, since they’re to blame, they’re inevitably going to be blaming and attacking innocents.
(or, with reference to Chuck’s comments, I’m thinking that the hate of Obama is really more of detachment from reality…..might be a quibble, but I think a significant one)
May 21st, 2013 at 11:34 am
Obama isn’t some kind of evil genius. He’s an affirmative action Harvard Law grad who made a career in one of the most corrupt political machines in the country.
That’s all he’s ever been, he is way over his head trying to run a country where demonizing your opponents has unavoidable, negative consequences.
In Illinois, people who don’t like being f*cked over by politicians can move. In the U.S. people who don’t like being f*cked over can’t leave, so they fight back. Get used to it, Barack.
May 21st, 2013 at 12:53 pm
Take your analysis one step further, Terry. In Chicago-style politics, the Boss of the Machine isn’t necessarily the figurehead holding office, he’s the guy who PUT the figurehead in the office that he holds. He’s the guy who can give orders to the ward heelers to turn out the correct vote, and mean it.
Obama holds the office, but is he the Boss? He certainly doesn’t act like it. So who IS Obama’s “Boss?”
May 21st, 2013 at 5:03 pm
I don’t think that Obama has a single ‘boss’, Joe Doakes, any more than Clinton, Bush, or Reagan had a single ‘boss’.
The people who put Obama in office are the media bosses, who are upper-middle-class boomers.
Orwell was correct when he wrote that revolutions are always the work of the bourgeois.
May 21st, 2013 at 5:59 pm
You guys amaze me. Don’t you think this has been thought through before?
@ Terry
Obama’s coalition won because it was a coalition of people who didn’t want things to change. It isn’t hard to find people who are conservative in the small c sense. There isn’t a majority of Americans in favor of any government reform at present, but there is a majority in favor of “don’t take away what I’ve already got”, and that was his platform. That leaves Obama with two problems. One, his mandate is to do nothing, which isn’t a really inspiring legacy. Two, he can’t afford to do what he implicitly promised, and avoid cuts to programs, unless he raises taxes (on everyone, not just the rich), for which he has no political support. So Obama’s in for a disappointing and bitter 4 years. The country is waiting for a program of reform that they can get behind. Obama is the stopgap until that happens.
May 21st, 2013 at 7:25 pm
What Obama can do is expand his coalition by bestowing citizenship on millions of poor, uneducated foreigners. He is being assisted in this by stupid Republican senators, but I believe that the ‘gang of eight’ may have overplayed its hand. The immigration debate is starting to look like 2007 all over again.
May 22nd, 2013 at 7:33 am
“There isn’t a majority of Americans in favor of any government reform at present, but there is a majority in favor of “don’t take away what I’ve already got”, and that was his platform.” So, people who oppose change, i.e., Conseratives, were Obama’s base.
I remember “Hope and Change.” I remember “Yes, We Can.” I remember “Forward.” Those were the Obama campaign platforms I recall.
I don’t remember “standing athward history, yelling stop” from either Obama campaign. Doug, you claim Conservatives were the coalition who got Obama elected. Could you provide a cite to some authority for that, please?
.
May 22nd, 2013 at 7:25 pm
@Joe Doakes
“It isn’t hard to find people who are conservative in the small c sense.”
Let me dial it down a couple clicks for you Joe.
The take away is there were not *enough* big C conservative voters to make a meaningful impact on the outcome of the 2012 presidential election.
The results of the 2012 election will be my (“cite”) citation of authority.
May 23rd, 2013 at 5:37 pm
The 2012 election must have been a land slide. Either that or you really don’t cite much in the way of authority, Emery.
May 23rd, 2013 at 8:19 pm
American politicians, while often venal and occasionally corrupt, actually have a pretty good feel for the feelings of their constituents. In the debate between “let’s compromise to fix the country” vs. “let’s guard what we’ve got”, I think the American public is firmly in the latter camp. They don’t want a higher retirement age, a less generous Medicare, or an end to mortgage interest deductions, or higher taxes. They also believe the status quo, while not ideal, is sustainable. So they only support raising other people’s taxes and lowering other people’s benefits. The actions of the representatives reflect the beliefs of their constituents.
Americans have grown to dislike most other Americans. Since the late 1960s we have embraced a live and let live morality, where diversity is good, people should be allowed to live as they choose, have sex with whomever, have abortions, do drugs so long as it’s out of sight, dress as they please, say what they want, engage in amoral acts of commerce, cheat as long as you’re not caught. In other words, our fellow citizens feel they have fewer obligations to conform to majority norms of the tribe. In return, though, the tribe feels little obligation to help those who are different, and everyone’s different in some way (ethnicity, politics, age, sexual orientation). It is very hard to find compromise, to find consensus, amongst a group of strangers who have little in common, which is what we have become. When Americans picture where those entitlement benefits are going, their image is of people who look differently and act differently than they do.
In truth, Americans still have a lot in common. It’s not so much that we have become more diversified, but after a couple of generations of self-empowerment, we are most proud of however we are different, and we wear our differences proudly on our sleeves (or bumper stickers, or blogs). In a country where we have learned to be proud of our differences, we regard compromise and consensus as a moral failing, where it once was a virtue. When we take an uncompromising stance, we see ourselves as Martin Luther King Jr., Ghandi, Ronald Reagan, or Barry Goldwater, a hero standing firm amidst chaos. We are so self-empowered, so proud of our background and beliefs, we virtuously accept utter failure today for us and our foes rather than partial success for both. We have learned to value differences and diversity, but only in ourselves relative to others, rather than the actual diversity of our fellow citizens. That is the source of our anger, our dissatisfaction, and that problem will linger. We need to find some common virtues that we can rally around so that we can learn to respect each other once again. That will require some leadership. I don’t see that leader in Washington, today.
I expect that continued fiscal crises and cuts like the sequester are necessary to show Americans that the status quo is not sustainable, and that we are on a path to lose much of what we already have. At that point, we may be prepared to compromise a little to find a better status quo, or we may find a leader who can unite 60% of us to screw over the other 40%. But we haven’t fallen far enough yet for either outcome. The third option requires finding a leader who teaches respect rather than pride, which might lead us to a better future of mutually beneficial compromise, but that leader hasn’t shown himself yet.