Subtlety and Threat

Time and again I see where Wretchard and I are looking at the same larger panoramic. He does a marvelous job of piecing together the fabric -- the pixels if you will -- of that larger picture. In that sense, I am merely a customer of his.

But beyond that, he and I appear to be equally alarmed (though I could be wrong) by the same developments. The big difference in our responses, however, is that he somehow manages to write of what he sees with subtlety, and I don't think I've ever been accused of that.

Last night I responded to Wretchard's clever and typically subtle White Lies and Promises (which begins: "Who said the Minority Report was science fiction?") with a wry comment that didn't quite convey all of my thoughts (and was grammatically faulty to boot). I will try to fix that error here.

When what appears to be a trap is being built around one, one may feel at leisure to remark at the contraption with subtlety and seeming disinterest. Any threat it might impose may seem too far off.

The danger of course is that at some point one's subtlety may have become a comfortable old habit. For once the walls of that trap you so calmly watched being built have closed in, do you really hope others will say that you must have felt your bones were crunched oh so subtly?

A Progressive Rant

I started to write a screed in July in response to a Belmont Club post, Definitions, entitled Those Hellbent On Leading Us Into A New Dark Ages. But I cooled off after I answered a misunderstanding posted by BC commenter 3Case.

In June I wrote "Progressives" Are Demonstrably Dangerous to Human Life, but I still wasn't satisfied. This was to be followed by a part II that had been provoked by Mark Alger here. Instead, it languished incomplete for a couple months. I was feeling downright low about how hard a nut this was going to be to crack.

Many years ago I wrote this of Progressives. My wry humor sprung from the fact that it didn't take long for the Progressive reform movement that grew out of the late 19th Century American Populist movement to degrade into a comfy home for deceptive power seekers who succeeded in breeching our government's constitutional limits incrementally for "only the best of reasons."

In early August, Our Curmudgeon, in the pursuit of another topic, wrote of the treachery of "Progressives" as I've always wished him to do, but it still was not enough. For, on that same day, I had heard parts of a speech by Hilliary Clinton that got me started on another screed that I never finished: The "Progressive" Hatred for People.

And now this last week, Mark Alger needled me with the thought that we who are representative of true progress ought steal the progressive label from the phonies.

ARRRGGGGHHHHHHHH! 8/17/07

Continued on 9/05/07

The people who have been granted (by the PC crowd) the leave to wear the label Progressive are anything but. In addition to having long ago become the home for those whose lust for power may well set a new standard for perversion, they are well on their way to making a pejorative of the word progress just as they have made an unbearable burden for anyone who is truly liberal. Those who would wish we will not progress could not be happier.

More and more I run across both writers on the Internet and casual conversants who see that "Progressive" must be put in scorn quotes whenever we refer to those who claim that label.

This is unacceptable. This is Orwellian Newspeak being thrust upon us because we people who must speak with each other in order to counter this road to serfdom and a new dark age do not control the mainstream news media's effluent. We so badly need a new and widely influential means of communicating our viewpoint so that we can counter the anti-language corps. Where is our John Galt who can pirate, even for a little while, all media outlets away from those who relentlessly destroy our language?

A few days ago I had to contend with the confusion over what is a "Progressive" at The Belmont Club. After my initial comment to Wretchard, I had a short interchange with two of his active readers, Charles and LarryD, over the words Postmodern and Progressive. I think I stumbled on the best way verbally to deal with our tormentors: call them Postmodern Progressives.

In the end I think we were all dancing around the same idea at core. Today's Progressives are not advancers of civilization even if there were once some who could rightly claim to have been. Just as "Liberals" view as progressive the liberal growth of government -- and thereby the growth of restrictions on the liberty of individuals (anti-liberalism) -- so too when something will lead to mankind's diminishment, that is what "Progressives" view as progress (anti-progress).

I think we all understand that "Progressives" are NOT. But what are we who really love to see progress going to do about it?

I am convinced that most "Progressives" fall under the category of the misled. The most troublesome of them are the true-believers who allow themselves to become useful idiots. But the task that we who are optimists must find is how to unmask the mostly quiescent troublemakers who lend their support to the useful idiots, thereby accomplishing what they themselves could never achieve: mankind's self-destruction.

I know from what I've read throughout the web on the Right that most Right thinkers see that the label of Progressive has been stolen every bit as much as classical liberals have had Liberal stolen from them.

We must fight to take back the label Progressive so that those that follow us will be able to progress. So that those that follow do not find themselves under a yoke that so many Americans have fought to keep from being institutionalized on these shores. This is a patriotic battle. This is a battle that the bulk of humanity will always have with the effete elite. Understanding it does not require rocket science. It does not require knowing what Postmodernism is, only that it is something that wants you to return to times of enslavement over men's minds. It wishes for nothing less than a new Dark Age.

My friend Og often suggests that at some point the need to argue must end; that it is time for the cricket bats. He may be close to right.

On Balance, Jay Leno Owes Us One

I have to admit I've had trepidations about Fred Thompson announcing on Jay Leno tonight.

The primary reason is that last actor to do so was Arnold Schwarzenkaiser, the radically green, anti-conservative governor of California.

Since most conservatives know how to pray, I think this might be a good time to pray that it is the progressive statists who will be sold out this time.

She Thinks Her Shit Doesn't Stink

I grew up where the vernacular expression for someone who believes themselves more important than anyone else was "He thinks his shit doesn't stink." It was invariably heard about a man whose attitude fit the expression.

I don't know if there were women then who rated such an observation, but given experience which shows that human foibles cross the sex line, I suspect there must have been a few. Only the niceties of the times prevented most men from using it to describe her haughtiness. "Niceties." Right. Reality was that any man who dared use such language risked running up against other men who'd ride to the damsel's rescue whether or not she deserved such gallantry. And the woman who used it on another woman or man would have caused a scene since women were believed to be above such gutter-level language no matter how accurate. Afterall, such a line appears only to be a derogatory statement of opinion about someone else's attitude. And are you not warned against judging others lest ye too be judged?

Well, to cap it all, the intent of my raising this issue is that civilized behavior often prevents noting that civilization's shit doesn't stink. Somehow we just don't bury what we know to be our toxic waste-products as more primitive cultures have done without giving their crap a second thought. No. We pick it up and carry it around and force our subsequent generations to learn to live with it and even venerate it.

Let's be clear so that our elected officials cannot hide their behavior no matter what banner they serve under. In our time, Leftism is not only practiced by the official Left, but also by members of our Right in high office.

Among the worst shit that Leftism still refuses to admit stinks is Marxism and its fundamental determination to secure "social justice." In their relentless grasping for power, today's "progressives" will harass anything and everything that is or may be successful in its insane attempt to secure Nirvana for everyone equally. But what they ultimately achieve is an awful outcome for everyone as they stifle the creativity (the least negative of its known behaviors I can think of) that is buried within the few who would be our culture's future champions.

The legacy of Marxism is a trail of human tragedy unmatched in the annals of history. Yet our Leftists still think that shit doesn't stink.

And we now have a major candidate for one party who has always been focused on aims that are clearly seen to be Marxist. And that's even before we bother to note her unmistakable bearing which provoked this commentary.

Well, now that the period of nicety is over, let me be the first to put this in print: Hillary thinks her shit doesn't stink. Do you really want that for President?