Partials

1. Randians are Statist Dupes:
On the same Belmont Club thread that prompted my post of yesterday, a fan of Ayn Rand opined less than gratefully about those we commemorate on Memorial Day.

"For some, this 'sacrifice' is no sacrifice at all, if it means preserving what they most value in life." 

That struck me as a bit too much like:

"I agree. It's important we fight them. Here: let me hold your coat."

It compelled me to write down this explanation that I've long had stewing about Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism. Even she gave fair warning that it may not be all that pleasing for the common man.

In my comment I support the claim

What Marx provided the Leftists, Rand provided the Statists: a nifty false flag behind which they hide their true intentions from the gullible.

In fact Rand's philosophy aids Statists to both hide their true intentions with talk of freedom's blessings while at the same time legitimizing their gains over our liberties. Here's is what got my Spidey-sense tingling:

So what first alerted me to the deceitful side of Rand? The actions and words of her most lauded acolyte, Alan Greenspan. 

When Greenspan said “who in their right mind would buy a 4.5% fixed mortgage when a 3.75% variable is available?” I knew he either was intentionally deceitful, or someone had something terrible they used — and he succumbed — to get Greenspan to abandon those who trusted him. Like Rand did Willers.

(Comments inspired me to write more on this.)

2. The Problem with Conservatism.
The label Conservative is a conflicted banner under which to fight tyranny. The reason should be obvious. In a word: Inertia. Last week's outrageous collectivist demand has become today's status quo. Conservatives, as a whole, feel comfortable with the status quo. "Wake me when they really do something."

We got to today's status quo because "Progressives" understood that conservatives will not fight a simple request in light of far more unsettling demands.

"What's a penny to you? A nickel? A quarter?
What's incremental? LOL You slippery-slopers make me laugh."

They know that there are plenty in the conservative community who may be relied upon to relinquish a little ground just so long nobody lets the boat be rocked too violently (as the radicals, the Progressives' ally, threaten). And especially if it is only another conservative who has to pay. How much evil advances this way?

Ironic isn't it? The lines attributed to the godfather of conservative philosophy, Edmund Burke, states the paradox we face simply:

"All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

A chief problem of conservatives is that we tend not to want to move unless forced to do so. When the Progressives of the nineteenth century started labeling their adversaries as reactionaries, they weren’t far off. It still takes a palpable threat to get us off the dime. Please: find some way to demonstrate how I’m wrong about this.

3. Bookends to the Age of Reason:
I have often thought of Blaise Pascal (d 1662) and Clive Staples Lewis (d 1963) as these bookends.

When Pascal developed the mode of satire with which he undermined the scoundrels who used the Counter Reformation for their own elevation to power, he helped tumble the old order. Reason and rationality were used to great effect in The Provincial Letters and the public grew fond of it. By the time of Thomas Paine. it showed commoners to be the equal of kings in standing before the Lord, and ushered in the era that proved that human advancement would be the better for it.

But by the time of Lewis, the Fabians had brought England to the brink, and the postmodern era was about to embark shortly after the end of WW II. My favorite of his writings, perhaps because they were dry and to the point even as he needed to say what he did discretely, was The Abolition of Man. Simply contemplating that title, I pray you can see why I call him the other bookend to the Age of Reason.

A man's most effective weapon is his brain. "Progressives" have long aimed to gain control, and indeed have gained control of education. How well do you read and figure? How well does the up and coming generation? The trend is telling.

Memorial Day: Especially Important Today

This is my response to Richard Fernandez' excellent Memory and Survival.
[Note: the red text is to remind PF that he should endeavor to explore a subject further]

Wretchard, the Judeo-Christian moral ethic carried this along generation to generation. The “Progressives,” have long worked to eradicate its continuance a various ways.

Interestingly the success of the IPD [iterated prisoners dilemma] is contingent on the existence of memory, which in the human context is an awareness of history. History allows members of a society to understand their individual existence and well-being is somehow inseparable from that of the group.

How do I know my assertion is true?

There is our experience as we lived it. We have witnessed the lengths the “Progressives” have gone to to allow any small grievance be amplified by court order to suppress the continued mention of anything related to God and the institutions that were formed in His name. That concept of the Creator, even flying in the face of horrid misapplications, has influenced many a man to comprehend the natural law of the universe with an eye towards justice — not simply personal advantage.

And there is the evidence provided us by C.S. Lewis in 1943. He saw what the “Progressives” were up to and forewarned where they were taking us. I summarize “Men Without Chests”

The teachers who were to teach the postwar generation had been indoctrinated in Utopian prewar beliefs. (As the Left escaped all blame for its contributions for WW II, it easily came to dominate the academy, passing off the blame to “old” thought (a pre-WW I notion), we can see why they gained domination. And it continues still despite the Left’s hubris and repeated failures.)

The lesson was: Eschew all that has gone before. See the world with fresh eyes. Don’t be tied in any way to the nastiness of the past.

Lewis summed up where that was bound to lead. When “We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” When we fail to build the heart that cares for the future — to inoculate people with our societal antibodies, the ones we gained from the painful lessons that have arisen out of human excess — and then expect of them only virtue and enterprise, it’s on a par with “castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

And we living in the postmodern world are its product, although the Left and its propaganda arms constantly denies there is anything wrong with the product — except for those [insert ad hominem here] who disagree with it.

And that suits those who hunger for power over us. They aim to be the supermen who remain — after what we might recognize as men have been abolished.

An essential reason to think back of our heroes on Memorial Day — in contradistinction to Obama dissing it — is to think of why they gave up their futures for ours.

In that thought nurtures the seed to carry on the Golden Rule. “Do unto to others what thou would have done unto thee” is anathema to those who wish to rule all the world. “Hah, what can you puny people do to me, the Great One? Morals are for lesser men.”

Those better “puny” men that we honor today wound up to beating back the nasty things that men can do as they claim to pursue, both then and today, their vision of Utopia for all.

The Left continues to try to impress the gullible that man is perfectible, and is thus naturally good. It’s a nice wish, but it is a lie. The Left in the service of Statism needs us to forget, forget. FORGET!

Mankind must from time to time arise to beat back tyranny, sometimes against great odds, and these heroes showed us how it can be done.
So we do not forget. Yes, it is in their honor and it is for their sacrifices. It is our duty.

It imbues in us an understanding that, in Wretchard's words, our “individual existence and well-being is somehow inseparable from that of the group.” [emphasis added]

Middle Class General Strike

I'd really like to know: what is forestalling such a series of actions?
The competent in our society have the means to force the incompetent to cry "uncle." But do we have the nerve?

Is it simply a lack of leadership? What is preventing that? Same thing?

**Update**

A funny thing happened while I've been awaiting an answer from the working world. I discovered that on Thursday, Mark Steyn published a screed that pretty much touched upon the reason that prompted my interrogatory to you.

We’re too broke to be this stupid

Mr Steyn Concluded:

Across the developed world, a beleaguered middle class is beginning to understand that it’s no longer that rich. At some point, it will look at the sheer waste of government spending, the other shoe will drop, and it will decide that it no longer wishes to be that stupid.

More Progress-of

Today I became aware that the video I had embedded in my last charting of the "Progressive" advance on their power and the face they are willing to reveal to us, Progress-of, has been removed.

Allegedly "due to terms of use violation."


The video displayed in living color her infamous response "Are you serious? Are you serious?" to the question "Where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority for enacting an individual health insurance mandate?"

Fortunately there are still audio recordings.



But still -- can you not envision the evil doer forcing the removal of proof of their evil doing?

Chalk this up to the ever more sneering demonstration of the Progress-of power.

For You Who Easily Attack Those With Standards

 This commentary by Og the Neanderpundit prompted the following.

How to answer the Great Man's agents who apply Alinksy Rule #4 ( “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”) to those of us who have standards?

Our standards makes room for the fact that we are not perfect. We are prepared to forgive those who ask forgiveness for transgressing against us as we would ask to be forgiven.

Mr. Great Man: You pass rules willy nilly, expect us to obey, and then proclaim when we fail that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" as you mete out harsh judgment.

To whom do you ask forgiveness when you fail, oh Great One?  Dare you judge yourself as you do the rest of us?

Permitting Leaders to Be Shameless Dumps the Shame Onto Us

Regular readers know I have charted the ever increasing boldness of they who aim to rule us. My most recent additions to that chart may be found at Progress-of.

My point of the charting was to highlight how fast the "Progressives" have moved since they decided they would no longer feel shame for seeking the power they've always lusted after. It is now our shame -- to our heritage and to our posterity -- that we let them advance so far.

The Left's hatred for America has never found resonance in anyone in so high an office as now. Its icon, President Obama, keeps finding new ways to demonstrate his disregard for our country's constitution and its moral foundations, and now, with his shunning his head of state honors on Memorial Day, for our nation's fallen heroes.

Michael Savage yesterday, after expressing his dislike for Obama's shunning of Arlington, summed up a number of the screened calls with the question that prompted the following rant. (This is was transcribed from The Savage Nation podcast archive:)

1:01:45
Caller's question: "Why is Obama Doing this?"

Am I making too much of this?

Okay, let's start again.
I'm an alarmist. I'm just a right wing alarmist.

We should be haaaappy that Obama's not going to the Arlington National Cemetery.
We should be happy that he's not going to the breakfast for the Goldstar Families who've lost loved ones in a military conflict.
We should be glad that he's not a militarist.
We should all be happy that he's downplaying the military.
Because we don't really need a military.

What we need are... well, not the military exactly. We certainly don't need guns.

We need something along the lines of, ummm, men who march with wooden guns. And sort of wooden tanks.
And the ships are being used properly: I'm glad that they're not firing a shot.
It's very good that we haven't fired one shot at Iran or at North Korea.

It's better that they are used basically as social service agencies with propellers.

It's good to take children from the inner cities and give them a uniform and shoes and let them become pregnant on the ship.
Because that's what the feminists want. That's what they expect out of the military.
The military is not meant for defending America. The military is meant to get the children off the streets so they can just have sex on the ships, get pregnant, and then raise a child on the taxpayers' dime.

You don't want to know any of that because no one tells you that.

It's the best kept secret in the U.S. Navy.

It's why not a shot is fired anymore.

It's why we have to call in the Spanish or the Portuguese navy to take on the pirates because our navy has become useless.
Worthless.
Worth nothing.

I have no idea why we have ships. They do nothing.

I don't know how a commander on a ship can take this anymore. I guess they know that if they won't do what they're told they get fired.
I know that if any of them spoke out they'd be fired by Mullin, the usher in chief there. Admiral Mullin, the usher from Hollywood.

Look -- ughhhhh -- what can I tellya? Something's wrong with this picture. Why is Obama doing it? I have no idea -- it's a disaster [pause] for the Democrat Party." 1:03:40

 As for me, I feel what Obama is doing, so I know.

What is Obama doing Doc Savage? 
Obama is rubbing our noses in our shame.  The sooner we get used to it, the better.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever. -- George Orwell, 1984

MiniTrue Lies Would Be Capital Crime, Except...

The various media outlets, like AP, that spread lies such as:

APNewsBreak: Bubble of methane triggered rig blast

would lead to that media entity's demise due to wide-spread public distrust.  

There is a very rotten exception though.

The media outlet that justly dies of such infamy will rise again due to the fact that the regime for whom they are lying will bail them out -- with your tax dollars. 

From such backroom deals your Ministry of "Truth"* is foist upon you. 

*Editor's note: In later years Pascal Fervor began referring to American media as the Agency of Lies because he saw that we were not an Orwellian world quite yet, and felt it best that he speak the truth while he still could. He also used the acronym SKUNCs instead of RINOs for much the same reason.