Okay, one more political post for the night, and then I have to do things like eat and, uh… write, that’s it. Anyway, I’ve been reading some conservative Canadian and British blogs and columnists on the election, and they all seem to share one attitude in common — shock at the way the American voting public seemed to turn 180 degrees to the left. But I’m here to tell everyone now that the problem isn’t some sort of sudden brainwashing syndrome. The fact is that the problem with my country isn’t that it’s suddenly fallen to some sort of delusion, it’s that for at least the past twenty-five years if not longer, around half of the population has been delusional to a greater or lesser degree. Yes, some elections had a bigger majority than others on one side or the other, but in this one at least the division was almost even between the two candidates. Unfortunately the wobbly center is what splits the halves, and this time it wobbled towards Obama — probably because the wobbly center consists of people whose primary desire is to be “nice.” Obama’s campaign could be boiled down to “if you don’t vote for me you’re not nice” even more so than “you’re racist.” I’ll bet a significant number of Obama voters just wanted the whiners to shut up, and also thought McCain was a cranky old man even though his crankiness seemed quite absent this campaign. In fact, he’s been and is still being accused of being too… nice.
So the problem is long-standing (half a population of enablers and victims is half too much) and right now insurmountable, because the only way to break people of life-long bad habits is to force them to face the truth, and that’s not very nice. (By the way, the older usage of “nice” included meanings such as overly-fussy and delicate, as well as discerning. Now we mean it to mean “amiable,” “bland,” “non-trouble-causing.”)
I forgot to add — the problem is also the other side of the coin; people who aren’t “nice” enough. What I mean by that is not only are they needlessly rude and angry, they lack discernment. Many of these people either didn’t vote or voted for one of the third-party candidates out of some misplaced sense of pique — the most common reason I came across was that neither candidate was perfect. Third-party voters are probably worse than the stay-at-homes, because they know that their choice won’t mean anything except that they’ve taken a vote away from the Imperfect Ones, stuck it to the Man, whatever. I think in a situation like this past election such an action is irresponsible. There hasn’t been a third-party candidate with any sort of pull since Ross Perot, and we know how that turned out.
And yes, someday when I have extra cash I’m going to buy this book. Of course, right now I have several sacks of books I’m trying to get rid of, not to mention several e-books and two library books to read.
Update: Iowahawk sticks the knife in so nicely that you don’t even feel it until everything starts to go dark and fuzzy.
4 Responses to “Half-and-half belongs in my coffee, not in my country”
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November 6th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
I’ve been floating the idea that people who receive benefits from the government must trade off their right to vote. This would include “public servants”, and would have to include the military.
It’s the only arrangement I can think of that introduces some negative feedback into a system which will (even without non tax payers getting “tax cuts”) get to the point where the majority can vote themselves largesse to be paid for by the minority. If it isn’t already there.
All this was of course anticipated by the earliest critics of universal suffrage.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Maybe we should go back to property owners only being allowed to vote. Since women can now own property they won’t be cut out of this. Of course, that means I’ll have to go back on my vow to be a renter for life.
Anyway, I think this guy should be the next conservative candidate’s campaign manager, if not run for office himself. (Via Kathy.)
November 8th, 2008 at 7:32 am
The USA is falling victim to an irrefutable law of democracy, as reliable as the law of gravity. No matter how hard we try or that the evidence of decay is before us, there is nothing we can do about it. And the law? Many centuries ago, it was written that democracies are inevitably doomed to failure once citizens realize they can enrich themselves by confiscating other people’s wealth. The link is:http://thatsthewayiseeit.blogspot.com/2006/11/stages-of-democracy.html, and here is the verbatim quote from that blog:
The following was in an email that I received several months ago. I was unable to track down the name of the original author (sorry). But I HAVE heard much of what it has to say before in political science lectures while at college. It bears some serious thought….
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“About the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.” (emphasis mine – he continues…)
“The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these
nations always progressed through the following sequence
1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage ”
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota… believes the United States is now somewhere between the “complacency and apathy” phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of democracy, with some 40 percent of the nation’s population already having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.” (end quotation)
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IF that really is so – then the only stage left is #8 – From dependence back into bondage. What might that look like I wonder? Possibly the welfare state becoming openly socialist and increasingly totalitarian – possibly even a dictatorship? One thing is for sure – our civil liberties will become extinct in the name of “the public good” or “safety.”
You know, the Founding Fathers saw this coming and cemented our inalienble human rights in the constitution so that all future laws and govt. actions had to keep these in the center of their thinking and rulings. But social progressives constantly want to redefine these rights and the constitution so that it can be “applied” to modern situations. In the end, all that does is make it easy for some dictator(s) to “redefine” our rights and the constitution so that they can “legally” take them away (so much for inalienable). Pretty scary!
What do you say?
Put this in local perspective (Medicare, bank bailouts, auto industry loans, the “right” to medical care, etc, etc., and you begin to see the larger picture. And it matters not at all whether the country is governed by Republicans or Democrats. They are all guided by the same template. The only question of real importance is where is the United States today?
November 9th, 2008 at 5:23 am
Somewhere between Canada and Mexico.