Ades to Corruption

aide

–noun
1. nurse's aide.
2. an aide-de-camp.
3. an assistant or helper, esp. a confidential one.

-- from Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)

I've long wanted to have a short word that I and others could use that would be an apt label for one who helps forestall or prevent reforms to decadent institutions.

The closest historical word, antidisestablishmentarian, is way too unwieldy to use for reformers to make any headway with.

I initially thought about using the near acronym ADET. This is comprised by taking the first letters of antidisestablishmentarian's two prefixes (Anti and Dis), the the first letter in Establishment and the first letter of the suffix (Tarian). While it has the advantage of a unique appearance, it sounds way too diminutive in speech. Hence I think it sounds far too benign to convey the nastiness that protectors of bad bureaucracies have been known to resort.

However, the word aide already exists, and the word antidisestablishmentarian is clearly a subset of aide definitions 2 and 3. So, I think I've found my answer.

I propose the semi-acronymic word ade be adopted. It is far less cumbersome a word than antidisestablishmentarian, and so lends itself well to public speaking, and better, to public acceptance. Good public speakers should be able, with proper inflections, to make it clear that they are speaking of ades and not the wider aides. And ade also separates such people from the true aids for our woes, the reformers who we so desperately need to stop the growth of Leviathan.

I intend to speak out in print using the word ade, so I just wanted to prepare the way.

**Update**

A reader has suggested this following line helps drive home the point about how much damage antidisestablishmentarians (ades) make inevitable because ades stymie society's natural defenses. Ades hinder society from reforming needed institutions and thwart her from eliminating unneeded and bad ones.

What AIDS does to the body, ades do to society.

Help Me Defeat Leftist Social Engineers

People generally do not like being manipulated. I believe that the more people understand how they and their neighbors are manipulated the better are the chances that the majority can mount a defense against the divisive, dissembling demagogues.

A long time ago I explained the mechanics of how social engineering works to various technical engineers I work with. Each and every one understood. More recently I wrote an entry for my Glossary in an attempt to make more concrete what I mean by social engineering.

Social Engineering is used by those in a position to implement their plans or schemes, or defeat the plans of schemes of someone else, but who are afraid of the consequences should they try and fail. The selling of a political idea more than anything involves overcoming resistance to that idea. Pushing too hard or too fast will anger or scare the general public. When that happens, a large enough bloc of the public is more apt to revolt. Thus most politicians and their backers will only feel comfortable in forcing their plans upon the public when the resistance to the plans are suitably fractured so as not to infuriate too large a bloc.

Hold on. I fear I'm getting to deep too fast once again. Look, if you can find the patience, please try reading social engineering and come back.

What I haven't gotten done in all these years is the simplifying of the concept so that more people can understand. I'd like to break the analogy down into small soundbites that may capture the imagination of more people. At least enough people so that the discussion that might emerge would help the larger body of people be able to foil the most rotten plans and schemes proposed by our ever more arrogant (thinking they can't be stopped by puny, unorganized and ignorant rabble) power-seeking class.

Help me make myself more clear.

Made My Day!

I received a telephone call out of the blue today from a young professional of my acquaintance.

"I thought I should let you know that my wife and I had a daughter about a month ago. I don't know if you recall our conversation, but it was your comments about the influence of death cults that encouraged us to try even harder. Thank you."

I had only just returned from an enjoyable visit to France, and I might never have received his message had he called two days earlier. It's not the kind of thing I'd have left on a voice mail. The trip was nice, but this was wonderful.

I'm in such a good mood, I'll share two photos from my trip.

A double sized bronze sculpture of Charlemagne on war horse with two warrior attendants guards the entrance to Notre Dame de Paris. I noticed that he was glaring at the Préfet de Police across the street. I think Og the Neanderpundit would fit in here.

And here is the rear of Notre Dame that isn't often publicized.

If you'd like a high resolution copy of either photo, let me know.

Some Problems On Our Right

I have since as far back as I can remember been associated with the Right by those who know me. That was primarily because of my archly conservative nature compared within my family and circle of friends. Still, because of familial influences, I considered myself a liberal politically up to 1972. I knew of one vocal conservative in high school, and that was from a distance. My exposure to Right thinking was pretty much limited to warnings from my Dad about using my common sense. What more need be said for the well-rounded (not!) early 60s secondary education on Long Island?

It was in my freshman year at Michigan when the first Teach-Ins were staged that my conservative nature began to kick back in to affect my political viewpoint. But even after witnessing those early Viet Nam war protesters and how quickly they turned viciously anti-liberal on anyone who dared question them earnestly, I was slow to associate their behavior with what liberal politics was becoming.

That was mostly because I was somewhat oblivious to the blow-hards. The presence of the Right on any campus stage was almost non-existent except for the engineering students in general who would turn up for student votes in large numbers and set-back the hopes of the radicals, who were mostly from the school of Literature, Science and the Arts. That is when they weren't "professional students" like Tom Haydn (Did he ever earn a degree?) and others in his chapter of SDS. The campus Leftists would mostly rejoin after every student defeat of whatever anti-war, anti-American resolution they tried to foist with the threat ( I can still hear her raspy whine today) "oh, we will educate you." (It is now too apparently clear what it was they were planning to take over.)

I started to write simply what is to immediately follow, and decided to fill in the above background first. Go figure how my own mind works. It surprises me constantly. I guess this is the price I ask of my readers if I'm going to write more material.

Some problems I identify on the Right.

• Too calm for our own good. Almost always arguing with a calm facade when it takes thoughts like that expressed by Michael Savage (but too polite or fearful to admit it) to drive many people to act against even the worst affronts by the Left. The Right needs less "country-club rules of behavior" Republicans and more street fighters to be installed in GOP leadership if the GOP is to mean anything. God grant us far less Bushes and at least one more Reagan.

• The Right's kowtowing to the mythical political center voter. Provide leadership and the Right will shift the center to the right rather than letting radical Leftists dictate the march. The Political Center is hardly middle politically since even yesterday. It is left of last week, and widely left of last year. The term Progressive was used for self-description by left-leaning Republicans even before the Dems abandoned their Liberal label (because by their owning it they had made it a dirty word) to try and gain some ground under Progressive (before they brought a pejorative sense to that word too). The Right needs to strip much if not all of the authority it has allowed its Progressives because they keep forcing the party to move Left and thus allowing the middle to shift left. WTF are you saying Pascal? I am saying that our society is being dragged left because the Dems and the GOP Progressives are constantly placating the Left fringe. And then they have the balls to call progressive their stupid responses to anecdotal hardships both real and staged, and their cowardly giving into interest group tantrums and threats of even wilder antisocial behavior. Or is it really stupid and cowardly? I think that perception most heavily depends on which side of the tax bill and liberty infringements you are sitting on. It is hardly news that both government lovers and corporate financiers gain when the central government grows. But the depth of the corruption brings on more corruption because govt's vast inefficiencies guarantee that the bulk of the largess and power will go to the providers of whatever service yesterday's radicals had been given the microphone to ask for. The perpetual charade of responding to radical demands is insane only to the taxpayers, not to the taxers. We are funding our own long term destruction for the short term feather-bedding of those whom we allow to run our institutions.

• Who today on the Right, in a notable leadership position, is arguing consistently at all the last highlighted segment of my last point? It is maybe the biggest problem of the Right that I do not know of a single one.
  

Regarding that last point. C'mon you allegedly brilliant writers on the Right out there: show me how wrong I am.

 

Those Who Are Beyond Embarrassment

With Roasted Chickens Roosting, Wretchard calls our attention to the continuing self-serving trail of destructiveness that Ward Churchill wallows in. Be careful not to misread the last word in that title as roasting. For it is one thing for us to see dead people who don't know they're dead, and entirely another to continue to let their specter ruin us.

For you see, this is one heluva "cooked goose." A dead chicken come home not just to roost but to tear up the place as poltergeists are said to do to the domains from which they were unwillingly snatched.

Not satisfied with contributing to the intellectual bankruptcy of an academy, Churchill and his fellow travelers will now attempt to fiscally bankrupt it too.

I somehow doubt it will come to that though. Nihilists, having long been nurtured and protected by the Ivory Towers, are expert at avoiding annihilating their own home.

One more thing. Churchill is not at all embarrassed by his misconduct. He derives comfort from the evidence that CU let him slide until his outspokenness brought their hiring malfeasances to the attention of the outside world.

I have often said that the one thing the deepest cynics cannot abide is the possibility that someone somewhere is not corrupted. The corrupt are necessary for cynicism's existence, and so the corrupt are welcomed. But the very idea that innocence could exist becomes terrifying, because the existence of a single innocent becomes a devout cynic's self-condemnation to hell.

God, if there were only some way to sentence Churchill and ilk to life in perpetual embarrassment, it would provide a veritable stake through the heart of such destructiveness.

Oh dear fellow Americans: is it not time to bring back public stocks precisely to weal some small measure of appropriate punishment to such desperately needy reprobates?

The Conservative Voice -- A Great New Beginning

This is a follow on both to the current (final?) defeat of the Senate amnesty bill, and to my earlier post today.

I think the point I am about to make is in the tone of my blog post of yesterday (and noticed by Mark Alger in comments there).

In order to counter the extremely loud voices of our adversaries, you can no longer continue to whisper your displeasure.

You must find your own voice. You must be heard above the incessant din at least once -- then resort to more measured tones. Like a meeting moderator calling a meeting to order, strike your gavel, slam it down if needed.

Hey you. Mr. conservatives. You've been voting Republican for longer than you care to remember. You've been getting less and less for your efforts.

You want a change? Then you will need to change.

If you continue to whisper in country-club voice, you will continue to get country club Republicans at the head of your party. If you want more of your kind, then raise your voice so that the country-clubbers are forced to deal with you.

So blow your loudest whistle, like you're about to miss the most important taxi ride of your life. After you get into your taxi, then you can tone it down.

Take control conservatives.
Today's drubbing of American Leftists and Statists are just the beginning.