It is axiomatic that the political class of a society is a reflection of the culture. That culture is what grows out of the biology of the people, but there is an interplay between culture and biology. The ethnic differences between Swedes and Danes, or even Swedes and Prussians, are trivial, at least in the purely biological sense, but, the culture of Swedes, Danes and Prussians are different in important ways. For that matter, the culture that produced The Lion of the North was very different from that of modern Sweden.
Another way of looking at this is that the type of men in leadership of a society are a reflection of the political culture. At the Founding, the political class of the American colonies was fertile ground. Even adjusting for two plus centuries of propaganda, the men that birthed America were extraordinary in quality and quantity. One or two great minds makes for a special generation of men. The 18th century colonial political class produced many great minds, indicating an amazingly fertile political soil at the time.
On the other side of this, during the same period, is the French aristocracy. One of the remarkable things about that period is that the political class had no able men. The history of the French Revolution is the story of one missed opportunity after another to reform and respond to the changes sweeping the country. All the famous names from that period are from well outside the political elite. The only reason anyone remembers Marie Antoinette is she lost her head over remarks attributed to her that she most likely never said.
Anyway, this comes to mind when seeing a story like this one.
Conservatives should “fight back” against the alt-right and white nationalists, and do a better job reclaiming classic terms to stamp out identity politics, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said on Thursday.
“We have to go back and fight for our ground and re-win these ideas and marginalize these guys the best we can to the corners,” Ryan said. “Do everything you can to defeat it.”
Ryan made the comments in conversation with National Review senior editor Jonah Goldberg. The two conservatives spoke at an event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute. Ryan had harsh words for the alt-right, an umbrella term for extreme right-wing individuals who reject mainstream conservatism and often embrace racism and white supremacy.
“That is not conservatism. That is racism. That is nationalism. That is not what we believe in. That is not the founding vision, that is not the founders’ creed,” Ryan said.
That goes beyond stupid. It is offensively stupid. Even today, grammar school civics lessons make clear that the Founders were crafting a new nation. The entirely of the founding myth is based on “creating a new nation in the wildness.” The Founders were so nationalistic, they even wrote it into the preamble of the Constitution.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
That is the very essence of nationalism. Now, Paul Ryan is entering that phase that reminds everyone why it is best to make a change as soon as it is clear a change must be made. When the employee puts in their notice, pay them their two weeks and send them home. Ryan is now unburdened from the need to lie about his true opinions, so he is speaking his mind, what little there is of it. That just underscores the fact that this feckless airhead is the best the current political class has been able to produce.
Ryan is not an isolated example. His predecessor was a raging alcoholic who would burst into tears at public events. Before him we had Nancy Pelosi, a women on so many psychiatric drugs she rattles when she walks. Look around at the elected officials and it is hard to find someone you would trust to run the second shift at a convenience store. Our political culture is not just a garden overrun with weeds. The weeds took over a long time ago and now there is nothing but weeds. It produces no men of merit.
It is not just a consequence of democracy. Take a look at the conspirators involved in the sedition scandal. Former CIA Director John Brennan, who helped form the conspiracy, is a former communist. He supported the Communist Party candidate in the 1976 election and it was not an act of protest. He was an actual communist. Today he is an unhinged fanatic who goes on social media demanding a military coup against the President. Again, this man was the head of the CIA under Obama. The CIA. How is this even possible?
It does not just stop there. Look at the “intellectual” side of the ruling culture. Paul Ryan gave that interview to Jonah Goldberg, who is waddling around with the title “Senior Fellow” at what is supposed to be a prestigious think tank. Probably the most famous public intellectual in the academy right now is Steven Pinker, who is prone to the most basic logical fallacies. The American college campus is a doctrinaire breeding ground for narrow minded fanatics hellbent on pulling the roof down on Western Civilization.
The political culture of a society can break off from the general culture or even start as an alien over class, as in the case of invasion. The French political class in the 18th century was so divorced from the rest of the kingdom, they as well have been foreigners. The Russian political class, what little there was of of it at the end of the 19th century, was wholly disconnected from the culture of the Russian Empire. There’s certainly a strong whiff of that in present day America. Our rulers are nothing like us now.
Even so, whatever the source material for the current ruling elite, what it is producing is of such poor quality, it suggest a very bad end. Donald Trump is our guy, but let’s face it, he should not be President. If he is what is necessary to prevent the country’s political class from strangling the rest of us through staggering idiocy, it is past time to think weeding the garden is enough. This garden of idiots is beyond the point where a good dose of weed killer will work. It’s time to plow it under and salt the earth, starting fresh elsewhere.
In 18th century France, the only part of the country where the nobles stayed on their land and didn’t go off to the city to drink, womanize, and gamble was the Vendée.
And the Vendée was also the only part of the country where the peasants fought for their nobles to the bitter end after the Revolution came.
You’d think our political leaders would take some kind of lesson from this, but I’d be willing to bet that Paul Ryan knows nothing about France other than what he learned watching old Inspector Clouseau movies.
Ryan has a formidable wall surrounding his formidable Wisconsin property. Maybe he’s not a dumb as Z thinks.
Ryan is pretty dumb if he thinks that will matter when the balloon goes up…
That wall is nowhere near high enough to keep people from throwing Molotov cocktails over it – or strong enough to stop .50BMG rounds (brick walls won’t even stop 7.62×51 very well).
Just sayin………………
They need to be about the scale enjoyed by the stinkingly hypocrical Pope
https://venitism.wordpress.com/2017/09/10/vatican-walls/
“(brick walls won’t even stop 7.62×51 very well)”
You’d be surprised how few people know that.
Shhhh, the cultural marxist still thinks the AR “machine gun” is most powerful. Soon mayne they find out, no?
And pretty much nobody has ever heard of 30.06AP.
Turns cover into concealment in a lot of situations.
More people should watch Paul Harrell, then.
Ryan is no Rhodes Scholar, but he’s not stupid. He attended Miami U (OH). It’s a state school, but a bit of a boutique for well to do midwesterners who have good grades, and could model for Abercrombie.
Ryan was voted “Biggest Brown Noser” in his high school class. That explains everything you need to know. He’s purchasable. When he says, “That’s not what WE believe.” We = his funding sources and the elite.
Agreed. Long ago I was at a fundraiser where Ryan gave a speech, and I was impressed with his speech, and his conversation with the audience. I was also impressed at the time with his ability to explain complicated economic concepts to normal people, and to grasp the economic realities of the USA. Then he voted for TARP, which showed that it didn’t matter that he understood economics, the only thing that mattered to him was the donors. I’m sure when he retires he’ll surpass his partner in crime Eric Cantor to become the new highest paid board member in… Read more »
Ryan subscribes to the notion that people driving faster than him on the freeway are idiots, and those driving slower than him are morons. He should stay in the lane that is moving as fast as he wants to go, and then shut up.
The fatal weakness of the Philadelphia Constitution is that it depends on all parties involved to act in good faith, all of the time. Absent good faith, it can be subverted, as we can see. People won’t have much use for a constitution that can be turned against them.
And it is unsurprising that the feckless airhead Ryan was talking to that jelly-faced dicksucker, Goldberg.
We get the government we deserve. In other words, stupid and selfish people get stupid and selfish government. It is interesting to me that our government seems to encourage stupidity and selfishness. More than a little bit of self-interest in such a posture, on their part.
“We get the government we deserve.” This is a facile cliche. No one voted for the ruling order that’s been in place for the last several decades. In fact, every time there was a referendum on the worst aspects of our current clown world, the People responded with a resounding no. You can certainly criticize the people of the modern West for being too complacent in the face of slow-burning tyranny, but we have used every lawful means available to try to make our voices heard. It hasn’t been enough, because our elites do not act lawfully or in good… Read more »
As Sultan Knish said, it’s a moving dictatorship, a resiliant network of power.
If the President’s power is stymied, they resort to Congress. If not Congress, the Supreme Court. If not the court, the bureaucracy and lower-level judges. If not the agencies, then the corporations. If not corps, then academia, media, and NGO nonprofits. If not them, then ethnic mafias and terrorist cells. If not them, then organized street marchers, unions, and herd voters.
It does not matter which particle crests the wave. All that matters is that the shapeshifting Left rules in power.
And it shapeshifts and shrieks ever more quickly and loudly as it gets put down. At least we can hope it is getting put down.
The people did, in fact, vote for the ruling order. None of the transformations in America, Britain, or anywhere else happened without the consent of the rulers and, by extension, the electorate. If the ruling class does *not* support a particular movement, it is not at all difficult to effect a savage crackdown (see: China, Russia). What you are perhaps thinking is that the people *believed* they were voting for something else. That may be true, but it underscores the fatal flaw in democracy: maintaining power can only be achieved by either the elimination/devaluation of elections, or relentless indoctrination. It… Read more »
“by extension, the electorate.” Wrong. We elect politicians to do something, then they do the opposite, and even if we vote them out of office the next guy does the same thing. This is because it is more profitable for them to lose an election than to lose their donors. Eric Cantor is the perfect example. After betraying his electorate by voting for TARP he lost the election, and shortly afterwards became the highest paid board member in America. Around $3.5M/ year IIRC. Virtually everything that is screwing us over has always been unpopular. Non-white immigration was unpopular from the… Read more »
“We” voted for GHW Bush, B Clinton, GW Bush, and Obama. Now we are getting the payback good and hard. We were snookered by the two uniparties, and slow to respond to the lobster boil we have been in. The election of Trump is a recent thing, but the swamp he is contending with was decades in the making, because “we” were too complacent and placed too much stock in the system that was being twisted and manipulated all around us. Better late than never, but the white males have been too orderly and willing to go along to get… Read more »
The swamp *is* the system. That’s the one thing I wish all right-wingers could understand. The “deep state” extends at least as far back as FDR, his “fireside chats” and the NLRA, and probably back to the Pendleton Act of 1883 which made it effectively impossible for the executive branch to fire civil service workers. The system it replaced, affectionately referred to as the “spoils system”, was arguably even worse; we owe our “peaceful transitions of power” to the fact that there isn’t much power to transition. This isn’t some new phenomenon that started “decades” ago. This didn’t happen because… Read more »
agreed, subversion has been going on for a hundred years, it’s pretty unlikely anyone reading & commenting here will see the end of this fight.
unless the balloon goes up. then it will likely be impossible. I learned a thing or two from haji, I definitely will not see either victory or defeat.
God bless the young nationalists western civilization will be in their hands.
Until recently we were captives of the ruling class in terms of who we could vote for. They provided the candidates, their media told us who was appropriate and what was not. They told us what was important and what was not. We did out best and even when we won as with Prop 13, the Left used the courts to circumvent the will of the people. It was only with the advent of conservative news sites like BB and others that this changed. But we are still without a say in things. You want to change that? It means… Read more »
What you are seeing is “whatever it takes” progressivism. By the time “we” get to “vote”, the outcome has already been decided as the “candidates” we get to “vote” for have been preselected by the political machines which openly admit they serve their own interests and not that of the public. When this control process is disrupted and people elect an outsider he is quickly assimilated into the Borg or marginalized. Trump is President so it is hard to marginalize him and he seems to refuse assimilation (though this is weakening). The attempts constantly fail and have to be ramped… Read more »
That government is the product of allowing tens of millions of non-assimilating non-Anglo Saxon immigrants into the country over the last 180 years…Whose idea was that?
The Anglo-Saxons, obviously. Protestants, in particular. If they had wanted to close off the country in the 1700s, they could have done so, but they wanted homesteaders and skilled professions, and they had the universalist impulse within them since before they emigrated from England. Everybody seems to want to engage in selective historiography in order to conform to their political opinions. How are you so certain that WASP culture shifted to suit immigrants, and not the other way around, especially when there is WASP literature from before the American and French revolutions dreaming of exactly this kind of progressive “utopia”?… Read more »
The Jews. They proudly took credit for reversing our European based immigration Laws and our “Isolationism”. And they are still the Leaders though the whole thing is self sustaining now and accelerating as the Hispanics and Communists gain power.
The man who coined that phrase was Joseph de Maistre, an anti-Enlightenment monarchist. My favorite quote of is is , “All grandeur, all power, all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.”
He realized that every monarch that has ever fallen did so because they were too moderate, not because they were the despots they were accused of being.
So why don’t you run for office, at best, or become part of the government, at worst. if I woild imagine you are other than stupid and selfish?
No one should run for office at the moment. Rather, the cultural base needs to be built up. Z man does better work proclaiming the message instead of bashing his head against the managerial class.
Very few people hear the message. It’s an echo chamber here.
Running for office opens up doors for “normies” to listen to it. Sooner or later the “managerial class” has to be directly confronted. Otherwise, it is stupid and selfish to stay in the room rather than venture outside and engage in earnest a grass roots movement.
Whites, tolerant, hard-working, and generous, don’t make a stupid and selfish society. Notice I said whites.
Alzaebo,
Explain Sweden’s descent into chaos. Before opening their borders they were White as the wind driven snow.
Dan Kurt
The answer to that question is, simply, full female equality.
And who gave it to them and still support them even after it’s proven it’s a disaster? Swedish men that’s who.
Amen
From the Swedes I have known for the past 40 years, most have lost their Christian belief. Why I’m not sure, but that could also be a large cause for their socialist bent.
I’m all for tolerance, hard work and generosity, and yes, whites invented these attributes (under the long-term influence of Christianity, NOT ‘biology’). And yet here we are, in a stupid and selfish society, a “culture of narcissism” as diagnosed in the late 70s by the great Christopher Lasch, when whites were still in the saddle. To no avail, I have pointed out – to shitlibs old enough to remember that in roughly 1975 all they cared about was the imminent death of the oceans, overpopulation, the provocation of a nuclear war by being firm with Russia… Their mantra, inspired I… Read more »
Any people who don’t value themselves will disappear since they won’t fight to keep what they have. Thus what you call “romanticism” is most practical thing in the world. And in reality, we are pretty special, sorry you can’t see that.
We can be white, hard working and generous all we want but once you introduce “tolerant” you ruin the deal. Tolerance means accepting something or someone that you normally wouldn’t allow near you. You know, free speech for nazis and commies, freedom of religion for moslems and anti-theists, flag burners and anthem kneelers and Antifa, marraige for queers, and so many more examples of “Tolerance”. All those wonderful rights in the constitution were not put there with mohamadans, communists, anti Americans, illegal immigrants, homos in mind let alone blacks, browns or even women. Tolerance destroyed all that. When slavery ended… Read more »
“All those wonderful rights in the constitution were not put there with mohamadans, communists, anti Americans, illegal immigrants, homos in mind let alone blacks, browns or even women.”
Actually, the Founding Fathers enabled future generations to decide what additional liberties they sought.
“When slavery ended the former slaves should have been repatriated to their natural habitat.”
The natural habitat was the United States.
“But the absolute dumbest thing ever done in politics was giving the vote to women.”
It was actually a highly intelligent move on the part of white men.
It’s been less than 100 years, and Western societies are on the brink of cracking up.
Tolerance is fine when the differences between neighbors or citizens are small. When the differences are great, society breaks down.
The Constitution was designed to immunize the country from men acting in bad faith, and it did this reasonably well until 1861. The limiting parts have been stripped out.
The Constitution was designed to eliminate misgovernment in very much the same way that welfare was designed to eliminate poverty. At best, it does not appear to have performed its intended function; at worst, it has actually caused the problem it purports to solve – i.e. by creating factionalism and incentivizing expansion of the franchise. Nearly every country has a written constitution today, including the Congo, Guatemala, and Haiti. If this holy document doesn’t seem to work for any of them, perhaps the magic ingredient in America’s success is something else entirely? Such as, for example, a brilliant and conscientious… Read more »
The Constitution acknowledged the inevitability of misgovernment, but sought to disburse political power and throw checks and balances into the system (as the Romans did for a long time in their appointment of Consuls, as I learned here last night). The tolerance and support of the usurpations of power at the DC level were not factored into the system. Our forebears hoped for better from us, but the slippery slope seems to have accelerated in the 1860s.
Your chronology is basically correct; the 1860s imposed federalist rule, and the centralization of power in the hands of carpetbaggers and shrieking violent leftists definitely accelerated the decline. FDR’s reign was a similar leap leftward, abandoning the gold standard and enshrining socialism. On the other hand, there are so many other things you can point to in the timeline: the Civil Rights Act, universal suffrage, Wilsonian imperialism, and so on. Even the original Declaration of Independence was largely a bunch of spurious and nonsensical charges against a distant country in order to gin up outrage among the locals (sound familiar?… Read more »
The Constitution bears all the marks of something written before the Industrial Revolution, and before engineering principles like Murphy’s Law were well-understood.
Even if you don’t put the same name to it – I’m pretty sure that anybody who lives close to the land like most people pre Industrial Revolution did – knows damn well the principles behind Murphy’s Law.
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time pounding nails, sawing wood – and digging holes in the ground (all activities men have been engaged for thousands of years) – and I can tell you that Murphy’s Law most DEFINITELY still applies – even if you take the products of the Industrial Revolution out of the mix.
80% of people in the current US are now urban. Urban people interact quite differently with the government than small hold farmers do . In fact urban people rarely if ever want less government , they want better government and often more of that
Unless the Right is into bulldozing large cities and banning them they had better learn to govern an urban population
I’m into bulldozing cities and banning them. Look, I’m as appalled by what the Khmer Rouge did as anybody, but let’s be honest here – if you haven’t dreamed about hauling all the urban numales and cat ladies with soft hands out of their offices at digital media companies and corporate HR departments and forcing them out into farm fields to do real labor for their daily bread, you’re not really on the right.
Tired: White Sharia
Wired: White Kampuchea.
Both excellent points. Why not partition the urban and rural populations into separate authoritarian and libertarian regimes – with national borders between them?
Oh yes. I have more than once found my self thinking Pol Pot might have had a point or two. I do not think anyone will be allowed to do this though, cities generate vast amounts of money and some wealth and a lot of people even on the Right have their hands out Baring catastrophe, we are stuck with cities As to Lance_E’s point, the only way that the countryside would be safe by the authoritarian control freaks in the cities would be to make sure they had no food from anywhere. Your average urbanite with any political power… Read more »
It is certainly a pre-industrial document, but that is likely for the better. Industrial age thought was dreadfully utopian and crass by comparison. Bad faith breaks all bonds that aren’t explicit and immutable, like phenotype. The nations are re-learning this now. Too late for many, but those who survive will be blessed with coherence well beyond current imagining. The universal brotherhood of man died in the 20th century to be replaced by the universal marketplace of tribes. Now that the tribes are at war and the empire is dying, a pragmatic confederation of civilized tribes can assert itself and cleanse… Read more »
Some wag stated that is is really only the optimist who is in revolt. That is the most optimistic thought of the month.
Absolutely. It certainly wasn’t going to survive industrialism as the four times election of Roosevelt showed. The problem is while people will tolerate uncertainty in an agrarian society since no one can do anything about the weather , they expect actual order and stability in an urban society . They expect to be governed and always have. We have literal stone tablets from the dawn of cities about this. if it takes using the Constitution as toilet paper to ensure that they have food on the table, and note for all its flaws food in the Cathedral is everywhere than… Read more »
The Constitution like every thing else is subject to the ill effects of entropy on the system. Governing documents attempt to enshrine order and moral government but the principle of entropy gets in the way.
Where human beings are concerned, anything can be corrupted. There is no fail-safe. That’s why, every so often, blood must be shed to water the tree of liberty.
Went to the article on Paul Ryno. One of the most recent comments was: How about he does his job and attack the left?
A guy who does nothing but shoot into his own foxhole is asking to be fragged.
Look at how many of our people suffered personal losses after 2016. A number of our most effective people got banned from social media platforms. The destruction of Confederate heritage provoked an impotent response that ended in farce and a coup threat against Trump by the Joint Chiefs. Joining us carries tremendous personal risks, but betraying us gets you filthy lucre. A defecting e-celeb (Baked Alaska?) might score a six figure payday from the SPLC, Open Society or any other large foundation or media company.
Our political class now mainly consists or people who don’t exist outside of politics. In Zman’s Rome podcast he refers to the system where a man had to become somebody worthy of entering politics before he could stand for office and that offices were term-limited. We don’t have that anymore for either case. Complete morons like Ocasio-Cortez can run for office. Community organizers like Obama can become President without ever having done a useful thing in their whole damn lives. Another facet of these issues is that the political class are all just puppets for the donor-class and have no… Read more »
Rootless Carpetbaggers…Hey, Hill and Bill bought a house in NY, ergo, why NOT run for congress?
LOL.
You really think that they just magically bought a house in New York and then while sitting around the kitchen table one day thought ” Hey – here’s an idea Hillary – why don’t you run for Senator?”
” Damn Bill – why didn’t I think of that!”
LOL
Which came first – chicken or the egg?
Exactly. The Zman Rome podcast also I think made it clear that the original U.S. Constitution at least echoed the structural parts of the Roman Republic which worked to limit the development of a political class. If nothing else the choice of the name of the “Society of the Cincinnati” is a positive sign. Term limits and expanded qualifications for federal office would be great idea but would probably require a constitutional amendment, which will not happen. If we’re playing fantasy league football, my fun idea would be have elections and select officeholders by lot from the top three vote… Read more »
“The Zman Rome podcast also I think made it clear that the original U.S. Constitution at least echoed the structural parts of the Roman Republic which worked to limit the development of a political class.”
Except political parties, borne out of ideologies, had developed, which is a feature, not a bug, of societies that create government. Moreover, the Founding Fathers themselves were that “political class”.
One of my go-to examples of how useless-in-real-life politicians typically are is: Bernie Sanders. Because I’ve spent a considerable amount of time pounding nails and cutting wood and actually CREATING things, a comment I saw during the 2016 election cycle really struck home. Because Bernie was getting a lot of attention there was the inevitable “where did he come from” type articles showing up regularly. One in particular had some comments from a guy who either ran a framing crew Bernie was on in his younger days – or had worked alongside him in that crew. I don’t remember the… Read more »
I think President Trump is exactly the right man for the job. If we elected another Elder Statesman the liberal-left would have ate him alive.
The left are vile, disgusting people who know no bounds and will use whatever treachery they can to get their way.
The progs have shown their hand , the truth has come out . The gulag awaits any that oppose them. Will the real Americans rise up and drive these traitors out ?
Only time will tell.
Well as the Zman said, Donald Trump is our guy, but let’s face it, he should not be President. Having said that, of course his election was the best possible result in 2016. And he has a strong skill set for many parts of the job. But he’s sadly lacking in others. Maybe the best one can say of him is that he was necessary, but not sufficient. He turned over the table, and that needed to be done. But that’s just the beginning.
On reflection I think we might actually agree.
So in this place, and at this moment, who would you prefer as President, rather than DJT?
Zman, I suppose. But seriously, I don’t have a name in mind and I doubt anyone does. In 2020 (as in 2016) each of us will have to see who comes forward, support the worthy (if any) and vote accordingly, if voting is your thing. I was brought up to vote in every election so I keep doing it, knowing it’s pretty much pointless. But hey, voting gave us Trump. It might give us him again in 2020, but at some point we’ll need Trump 2.0.
There is no one of national political prominence who could be the ideal nationalist candidate. Being a nationalist prevents one from attaining national political prominence. There might be state assemblymen in the South, Midwest, or West who have the right policies, but they’ll never be allowed higher office by the Republicrats. You have to be a very rich outsider to take on the globalists. So far, only Trump has stepped forward.
Steve King from Iowa would be good in 2024 — he’s not afraid to discuss immigration and race issues and maybe the country will be ready for him by then. Unless the SHTF before then, which is possible as the Left will not stop agitating and persecuting every little thing until they have a cooperator take Trump’s place.
Trump’s only been in office for 18 months, it’s far from over and we have yet to see what will play out in the remainder of his (first) term. There have been other successful businessmen that attempted to do what Trump did. Remember Forbes? Ross Perot? Not even a flash in the pan compared to Trump. It took considerable quick, smart maneuvering to win the primary over 16 other Republican candidates and then go on to beat the cheating, billion-dollar Hillary machine. He has smarts, skill and talent, not only in business but in reading and understanding the public. And,… Read more »
Being the best of a very bad lot is not the same as being the right man for the job. Better than Hillary? You betcha. Better than any of the 2016 Repub candidates? Coitenly. But the one right man? No.
Mel;
With respect: This entire thread is Peoples’ Exhibit A in the futile fallacy of letting ‘the perfect’ be the enemy of the ‘good enough’. Trump is good enough and far better than we had any right to expect.
I look at our political class and time and time again the first thing that comes to mind is the guillotine.
I like how you think, TacoTown.
I’ve been fantasizing about guillotines and public hangings since the late 80s.
I know they’re coming at some point, but I’d really like to still be alive when they do.
Roving bands of irate citizens, lamp posts, lengths of stout rope….
My bumper sticker
Rope, Politician, Lamppost
Some Assembly Required
Taco Town–when I see the political class, all I see is a DUNG HEAP!
“Again, this man was the head of the CIA under Obama. The CIA. How is this even possible?” It’s possiible because people like Ryan cared more about their scrupulous “fairness” and let Obama place in power anyone he wanted, when they should have stood shoulder to shoulder with drawn swords, if that’s what it took, in order to prevent it. Trump may not be real presidential material, but we all owe him an eternal debt of gratitude for providing us with a defining moment. Everyone who is opposed to Trump is opposed to the people who elected him — and… Read more »
One problem we have had, is that we have assumed that others have the same desires for “good government”, or “public service” properly executed, that we would have, but simply with a different set of underlying principles. So someone like Obama, an angry shakedown artist, fills his adminsistration with people whose first order of business is to shake down the system for their own personal private benefit, and second order of business is to burn the house down on the way out. We need to get over the idea that those who stand against us have any redeeming motivations at… Read more »
“Trump may not be real presidential material…
MtnExile, why do you believe this?
In reaction to the crazy Left, our side is starting to think Trump is much greater than he is. It’s getting out of hand. I’m very thankful for him. Just saying, let’s keep it in the road.
Allow me a slight correction to your assertion that “Trump may not be real presidential material..” I would suggest to you that he is exactly the kind of man who should be president: (1) he’s not beholden to any donors or the usual monied interests; (2) he’s actively participated in the economy of this country, with real accomplishments as well as real failures; (3) he’s actually implementing the platform he ran for office on (when was the last time you witnessed that in an American president?) Trump may display an outsize ego more often than not, but is that a… Read more »
There is a great scene in “John Adams” when, after arriving in France, he walks into his first official dinner with the doyens of the French aristocracy. He is clearly appalled at the clothes, men wearing makeup, the general degeneracy…Paul Giamatti gave the perfect reaction that I would have thought any stolid New England burgher would have had to that spectacle.
That is a great scene. It often comes to mind when observing our ruling class.
Reminiscent of Guiliani.
My moment came when Bush the first went into a supermarket and was absolutely amazed by the product scanner at the checkout.
That was a complete fabrication – by one journalist. They were just as evil 30 years ago as they are now.
Thanks. I stand corrected. Hopefully there is a special circle of hell for journalists. The incident did make me think about the disconnect of our leaders though. At that time I probably had some weed in my garden too.
I’d make two changes that would solve quite a few problems. 1) Make elective office like free throws in college basketball — one and one. You can run for office once. If you win, you can run for one more term. If you lose, you’re out, and ineligible to run for anything in any other jurisdiction. This sets term limits, AND stops carpetbagging (I forget, which state is Mitt Romney from? He was governor of MA,and now he’s a senator from Utah? I guess “being a Mormon” is sufficient to establish Utah residency, the same as “changing planes at LaGuardia… Read more »
This is the kind of ridiculous nonsense I’d expect from intellectual featherweights like Bill Whittle. In order to create that type of term limit, you (that is, the collective “you”) would need to have sufficient power to enact and enforce that law. And if you had that power, term limits would only work against you. Term limits are an *entropic* force. They discourage good leaders from wanting to get into government and manage the country like an estate, and instead attract the kind of rabble who want to strip-mine it as quickly as possible in order to enrich themselves. They… Read more »
The republican form of government presumes an actively engaged citizenry. Not hard to imagine allotting government jobs by lot, where at some point during your life you are “called up” to a civil service position for a tour of duty. Senior positions can be filled as they are today by political appointees that leave office with the sponsoring politician.
I think it would be hard to argue that the citizenry isn’t actively engaged today. It’s just that the #Resistance isn’t the sort of “engagement” that leads to civilized society.
Republicanism seemed to work for a while in America because with America’s founding stock, and severely restricted franchise, it essentially functioned like an aristocracy. With one exception: in a democratic republic, the weaker faction can become the stronger faction by expanding the franchise. Thus, Republicanism inevitably becomes universal suffrage. The same thing happened in ancient Rome; why would America be any different?
Getting called up by lot was the way most government positions were handled in early Athens, when it was working well.
For some time, I’ve considered office-by-lot about as fool-proof a system as coukd be devised. It certainly wouldn’t be efficient, but efficiency isn’t the goal.
So, are you saying you’re all for the Professional Political Class? You’re in favor of all those do-nothings who are just politicians by profession? I’m not necessarily in favor of the one n’ one concept, but politics as a profession has to end somehow. Term limits in some fashion seems the only alternative.
Goodness, no. I’m in favor of absolute, uncontested executive power, such as the royal throne or a corporate CEO. The “professional political class” can only exist in a dysfunctional democracy (which is any democracy, given sufficient time to marinate).
I side with the folks who say that we get the government we deserve. My eye opener was the Obama reelection. By then it was obvious that he was a buffoon who hated our country. How could I be in the minority on this? Three things: First, many are low info voters who fall for the media blitz. My sister reads news on Facebook and she sends me articles being passed around that say all sorts of TrumpRussia nonsense. These folks follow the herd. Second, we have the usual voters always enticed by free stuff. You cant beat a Democrat… Read more »
I read somewhere recently that Facefuck has 1.4 billion users daily.
See what they have on you.here
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/07/no_author/facebooks-secret-file-on-you-is-big/
Facebook was funded in its beginning by the CIA, so in effect it is public property. Nationalization, by giving an offer of exile to Zuck that he can’t refuse, is the best course of option.
FB has changed the algorithms to ensure that conservative “fake news” doesn’t receive as many links/views as it did before the election. The same treatment isn’t given to the left. Not as well known is that Facebook is now a Boomer/X dominated platform. Millenials/Z tend to favor Instagram/snapchat/twitter.
This is more simple than that. In the early Republic people got the government they deserved–venal, corrupt, and small–because “people” were male, were not debtors, were not women, slaves, or indentured servants. We are definitely getting the government we deserve.
Obama won twice because of the liberal GOP buffoons he was running against: McCain and Romney.
Hard to argue with your conclusions, Z. For too long it’s been “in the land of the blind, a one eyed man is king”. We’ve settled for low rent minders and ward heelers to rule us and surprise, surprise, they’re driving us off a cliff.
Trump for his foibles is as close as I’ve seen to Diogenes’ honest man. He’s calling things what they are and the deep state rats are rabid. No telling how this turns out.
Wow! It’s very rare that I find an article (anywhere) that there isn’t something in it that I disagree with. This article is not one of those. For those interested, Kevin Shipp (former CIA agent who, as he always says, “comes from the belly of the beast”) gave a power point presentation back in late June in Texas. It’s on the Jason Goodman YouTube channel, posted on June 28, 2018. Entitled, “Clinton Foundation: Financial Conduit Between the Deep State and Shadow Government, with Kevin Shipp.” It is 2 hours and 27 minutes long and there is not one second of… Read more »
I think it’s time to go with Bill Buckley’s idea of the first 2000 names from the phone book. I just served on jury duty for a case that went to trial ending with a verdict. I was much more impressed by my fellow 11 jurors, then anyone in Washington these days.
Ryan: “That is racism. That is nationalism. That is not what we believe in.” Remarkable that he included nationalism, right next to racism in his list of evils. If your average American heard that they wouldn’t understand it. I wonder if he misspoke. I thought Goldberg must have quoted him out of context, so I went to the video. The part where they dis the real Right and rehash all their prime cuckstupidity is from 12:00 to 15:20.
P.S. Ryan describes almost every thought with his hands, a typical sign of the low caliber mind. (Unless you’re Italian, etc).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6I-VUGWHCo
Ryan may be stupid, but he’s seen the writing on the wall. He at least knows that his empty “that’s not who we are!” rhetoric is that of a beaten man, which is why he’s getting out of politics.
Monsieur “The Ryan” will not escape the consequences of his treachery and tyranny. His attempted escape down the “beaten path,” will lead him to where he belongs–into the fierce “BEATEN ZONE” of plunging incoming fire.
Beaten zone is a concept in indirect infantry small arms fire, specifically machine guns. It describes the area between the “first catch” and the “last graze” of a bullet’s trajectory. … Anyone standing within the beaten zone will be hit somewhere from head to foot.
Paul Ryan has positioned himself to earn big money, to live in large houses, to laugh at the the everyday poverty of his old constituents, and to get regular gigs on CNN and the like giving the “thoughtful conservative” line on policies and events, which is to say, attack President Trump.
Ryan is not stupid – he just lacks character, which in a twilight age like ours gives him an edge over the rest of us.
Bigger whore than Stormy. Just look at his paydays.
This post activates my lizard brain and I wholly approve of it.
Or, as Stephan Molyneux would say, “the time for arguments is over.”
Except for when he sits down, and to answer a civilian question at the end, Ryan never looks at the audience once. Not once in 28 minutes. This requires effort, as his seat is angled toward the audience. He has to cock his head toward Goldberg the entire time. It can’t be comfortable. He’s not in a one-on-one interview. In a public setup, you’re expected to look back and forth between attendees and interviewer. You have to at least glance at them now and then. It’s as if his inner self knows he’s bullshiting and can’t make eye contact with… Read more »
Unfortunately until the great unwashed masses of idiots the elected idiots represent, are cold dark and hungry under a Moslems boot, they will do nothing but grow fat while the goat-fuckers, spics, niggers and treacherous tattooed white women that lay with them overrun what’s left of the corpse. There is nothing to do now but set up a “stay behind operation” and hope for a rebirth of liberty in another 200 years after our progeny have been abused horridly.
Plow it under, and salt the earth.
As The Joker would say,”Now you’re talkin!”
I have said for a while now, it’s time for pitchforks and pine tar….
There’s buzz on the web that the Army “warned that, in this case of Trump’s assassination, it would take power, declare martial law, and shoot all the guilty, according to the laws of wartime. And there will be only three intelligence agencies – the Army, the Navy and the Air Force.”
Does this ring right, to those of you really in the know?
(See http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/anatomy-of-a-displacement-projection-syndrome/#comment-361316 .)
Jaqship,
I checked the Kunstler page and the comments are not numbered. Why not give the Name of the commenter or quote the comment?
Dan Kurt
I was quoting the comment of FincaInTheMountains, who has posted there for years, claiming to have connections to Russian and Israeli intelligence.
His main take is that we’re seeing a worldwide Cold Civil War, between the “Red Project” of FDR, the UK Royal Family, Netanyahu, Trump, etc., vs. the “Black Project” of Hitler, most Saudi princes, Merkel, Hillary, etc. It’s a gripping, tho speculative, theory.
I should add Putin to the “Red Project” (mostly-sincerely “constitutionalist”) list, and Theresa May to the “Black Project” (“hyper-elitist”) list.
If anyone still required more evidence that the Repubs are not our friends, this is it. Case closed.
“Look around at the elected officials and it is hard to find someone you would trust to run the second shift at a convenience store. Our political culture is not just a garden overrun with weeds.” This was my 1st clue that not all was as it seems. Basic Darwinian theory demands that the richest, most powerful nation in all of history would have cutthroat competition to get to the top of the hierarchy. Virtually every politician should have been of the caliber of B Clinton or Newt Gingrich. Instead there were “leaders” who could barely give a canned speech… Read more »
Zo; Well, there is the alternative theory that there *is* a ‘they’ (real hierarchy) and ‘they’ won’t let you get too far up the slippery pole unless ‘they’ have Kompromat on you. That would explain the sudden appearance of House Speaker Hastert back in the Bush II days, for example. The inexplicable rise of the Arkansas Grifters, aka The Clintons, likewise. They are an absolute goldmine of kompromat, starting with the Billy Goat’s hushed up trip to Moscow in 1969 from Oxbridge, mother of elite commie spies. A man with his reckless sexual entitlement would have willingly dived in to… Read more »
Screw Ryan and the scum voters of Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District who have kept the POS Ryan in power for 20 years !
Someone ought to point out to Ryan that the country has changed drastically since colonial times.
O Fortune, like the moon of ever changing state, you are always waxing or waning; hateful life now is brutal, now pampers our feelings with its game; poverty, power, it melts them like ice. Fate, savage and empty, you are a turning wheel, your position is uncertain, your favour is idle and always likely to disappear; covered in shadows and veiled you bear upon me too; now my back is naked through the sport of your wickedness. The chance of prosperity and of virtue is not now mine; whether willing or not, a man is always liable for Fortune’s service.… Read more »
I seem to recall a different translation:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nIwrgAnx6Q8
Kung Karl, den unge hjälte,
Han stod i rök och damm.
Han drog sitt svärd från bälte
Och bröt i striden fram.
”Hur svenska stålet biter,
Kom, låt oss pröva på!
Ur vägen, moskoviter!
Friskt mod, I gossar blå!”
and…
https://youtu.be/jM0zvTL7Adc
This poem about the “Lion of the North “ was once, I’m told memorized by Swedish schoolkids. I’m guessing not so much anymore.
And Al Stewart covers the subject well. Most pop singers haven’t written one song about an invasion of Russia. Al has two!
Where is elsewhere?
A different garden; that is, not reforming the Constitutional order, which is fatally broken, but starting fresh with a new set of basic assumptions. Absent something more intentional, those assumptions will probably be, “Do what I say and I won’t kill you,” as they have many times before. Or the anarchy may not go all the way before a new system takes over. Recall the fall of the Romanovs and the Hohenzollerns; one went all the way to civil war and anarchy, the other to the Weimar Republic, but both ended up in the same place. So if you don’t… Read more »
The problem I have with the “reform the Constitutional order” people is very simple: What part of the Constitutional order do we actually have any more? House of Representatives restricted to 435 members. How is this now a representative of the people? When states LOSE reps , even though their population may have increased – because other states have increased their population more – do you really have a house of “representatives” any more? Could a House with lets say 2000 reps – be controlled in the same manner that a House with only 435 members can be controlled? I… Read more »
Ref Militia – 28 yrs in the ARNG …. commanded through Bde level. Traditional and active Guardsman. Thought alot about this. The Guard is still structured with certain protections to ensure it serves it’s original role as the community’s Army. Last I looked, those things were still in place. For instance, a Guard unit is tied to a certain community, and ceases to exist if moved from that location. The real kill shot, though, is funding. Almost all of a Guard state’s money for pay and allowances, operations and maintenance, and “things”, comes from the feds. They own the states… Read more »
Addendum: pardon mistakes above; won’t let me correct/ edit.
Thanks for augmenting my point with actual details. IMHO one of the main issues with the Guard vs. Militia thing is the fact that the Guard can be used by the Feds for overseas missions. Which is something that the Founders of this country very specifically warned against doing. They warned against a standing army because of it’s usefulness in supporting a tyrannical government – but also because of it’s use in overseas adventurism. The “people” don’t typically benefit from empire. The ruling classes do however. Which is yet another piece of fundamental knowledge that so-called “conservatives” have failed to… Read more »
So true … this has been a long, slow process to get to the point where the changes began to pile so rapidly one on the other. Just in the realm of the Guard, there was the Dick Act — officially the Militia Act of 1903, or the Efficiency in Militia Act. Changed the whole game. It was a report on the organization, role and effectiveness of the Guard. States that could not measure up to the established standards faced severe repercussions — including, like Nevada, de-certification of the state’s organization. Quite a stunning outcome, and it embedded deeply into… Read more »
They confiscate our money via the income tax and dole it back out to us if we do what they want us to do. That was not the vision of the founders.
Certainly not, but they have long been ever so crafty.
Why are the counterexamples to constitutional democracy always Robespierre, Hitler, and Stalin? Why not Augustus, Pius, Louis XIV, Frederick II, Elizabeth I, Suleiman or Lord Cromer?
Indeed. Though we should remind folks that, to their credit, the Founders loathed Democracy or Mob Rule.
As CA says, the Con Con means War War. The Deep State would come out stronger than ever and we would be forced to rebel.
I’m standing by with my tractor, Zman.
Yo, my good man, Ep!
Trouble is: once ya bust the sod and flip ‘er over, ya gotta disc it, then harrow it, then begin planting.
We got enough farm hands for this season?
I believe so.
“Probably the most famous public intellectual in the academy right now is Steven Pinker, who is prone to the most basic logical fallacies. ”
Of course, I think the author ironically implies this, but pinker is not so much committing an inadvertent logical fallacy as using sophistry to promote something he really really wants. It’s akin to the “ain’t necessarily so” song from porgy and Bess. The same reason twentieth century communism had to be strangely yoked to atheism.
Fantastic, mind-blowing article. This one is good enough for editorial page of the Washington Post! Tougher times will create better leaders. Trump 2.0? Unrelated Why did MSNBC give Hugh Hewitt the boot? I liked to give HH the benefit of the doubt, thinking he sees himself as a true missionary (kind of like Hannity) to the MSNBC type radical leftists. He is a fighter and a great deal smarter than Paul Ryan. He kept supporting Trump even after Trump made fun of his radio show! Maybe they booted him because he had no ratings? Or were they afraid his ideas… Read more »
Many years ago when i said these things i was branded a traitor and a pariah. Hopefully someday people will wake up.
In that case, can you tell us what will happen next?
Civil war then invasion to secure our nukes.
I fear the same, among other unpleasant scenarios.
Actually, I have found a beneficial use for weeds from the garden: run them through a garbage disposal to a pail, the content of which then feeds the worms. Oh, and there is also the cathartic element of associating the ripping of then from the ground with “semi-animate pieces of detritus” such as the Hildabeast, Sick Cheney, thug Mueller, Eric [the race-baiter] Holder, V Jarrett, [the] Podestas, JC Juncker, Soros, Sharia Moozies etal. Hoo-wah.
yo “Z”, curious to know what is your location/’vision” of that “elsewhere”?
Those earlier politicos in France and Russia got what got what are current crop deserves.
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ANY BODY THAT THINKS THE RUSSIA CALLED ME TO TELL ME TO VOTE FOR TRUMP
IS DUMBER THAT DOG POOP>
THEY WANTED HILLARY TO WIN BECAUSE THEY COULD GET THE REST OF AMERICAS URANIUM>:
“Let’s face it, he should not be president” sounds suspiciously like a leftist spouting opinions in a no-questions-asked “this is a fact” manner. It’s sad when our best people do the ol’ “If you don’t believe as I do, you are wrong” intimidation thing.
Aha. A new Declaration- a declaration of war.
We must be stamped out.