Readers who started with the original Meaning in History blog (it’s still there, and searchable) will recall that I was fond of referencing Bill Haydon’s views, as expressed in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Haydon maintained to George Smiley—while being debriefed before being shipped off to Russia—that the health of an intelligence service is a good measure of the health of a society. I used that view to express my own view with regard to the US Intel Community and the health of American society. After all, now that the only standard left—as it seems—for employment is to not being convicted of a felony. Moral and ethical standards of character are considered discriminatory and non-diverse, and have been replaced by formalistic standards rather than substance based standards. In that type of society, you can expect to see this kinda stuff (h/t to a friend for the links to articles today):
SCOOP: “The demand for white supremacy” coming from FBI headquarters “vastly outstrips the supply of white supremacy,” said one FBI agent. “We have more people assigned to investigate white supremacists than we can actually find.”
Does that mean the price for white supremacists will go up? It would certainly seem so. Thus, I would expect more white supremacists to show up and act accordingly. After all, it's the law (of economics).
How many multi-term politicians do you know that are not millionaires? My view is that after their first term, the blinders come off as to who they work for and it certainly isn't their constituents in most cases, but the leadership. If the leadership is corrupt, well... They only pretend to work for their constituents at re-election time. There are a few senators who appear to be honest brokers, such as Rand Paul and Josh Hawley, but all of McConnell's lieutenants are likely as not GOPe weasels who worship at the Deep State altar. Not until McConnell and McCarthy are replaced with conservatives with a conscience will the Republican party turn the corner away from conspiring with the Uni-Party.
EVERYONE in the Republicon House and Senate "leadership" needs to be removed. The problem is that people like McConnell and Thune are so in control of their state Republican apparti that they cannot be removed until they die or retire. Also, the RNC (and McDaniel) support them and are the enemy of MAGA. The answer is to elect enough reps who will stand against them from other states. As of now not enough people (even Reps) understand the GOPe is anti-American and anti-Freedom. This is a significant part of the value of President Trump. He is opening lots of eyes and realigning centers of power.
My one quibble with this excellent article is in the statement "the health of an intelligence service is a good measure of the health of a society." How do you define 'society.' If you define it as the 'body politic', the point is well taken. If it refers to the people as a whole, it is not unusual that the people feel detached from the body politic and their supposed government. "Laws are made to be broken" is a common phrase. Sometimes it is a moral obligation to disregard the law. As Bastiat put it “When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”
The great danger now is that we are no longer a nation of laws. As our government finds it convenient to overlook the fundamental protections afforded the private citizen in the interest of maintaining the power of the State, so may the private individual disrespect all the laws, and craft a way of life with as little attention to the State as possible. The State will glory in that they have the power of enforcement. The public will allow them this illusion, and proceed to give little more than lip service to all the rules and regulations foisted on the citizens from Washington.
With the Dems, at least you know that what you see is what you get. We just got another lesson here in AZ that the GOPe are closet saboteurs. AG Brnovich reached a settlement with current SoS (and current Dem gubernatorial candidate) Katie Hobbs to subvert an election integrity measure duly enacted by the AZ legislature. The measure involved cleansing voter rolls of non-citizens and non-residents this year. Enactment will now be postponed until 2023 thanks to Brnovich's decision to do his impression of GA's Brad Raffensperger and his unethical consent decree with Stacey Abrams.
This much is clear: America First Republicans have as much work to do internal to the party as we do against Dems. The GOPe / RINOs must be politically nuked, nuked again, and the rubble salted repeatedly.
Remember all the GOP happy talk in Obama's second term about how Obama had been responsible for a huge wave of GOP gains in the state houses? Well, guess what: those gains were largely just RINOs doing what they do best--running fear porn campaigns against Dems while representing a very marginal improvement over Dem representation. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors that fought the audit tooth and nail, ignored/delayed subpoena responses, and covered up by deleting election data--were 100% "Republican" (the McCain Wing). I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't faster to just start a new party from the ground up.
I get what you're saying too, but after watching the American political scene for nearly sixty years, I'm not sure that whole "don't make the perfect the enemy of the good" thing holds the wisdom I used to think it does. I would rather have trustworthy warriors in my foxhole than greater numbers of soldiers who might fight like hell--or who might just as well surrender and point out your location to the enemy. Can we "fix" the FBI or do we have to destroy it and start over? What have we gotten out of our half measures and capitulations to the weaklings in the party? We have gotten an electorate that is (rightly) convinced that there is little real difference between the parties. I don't require ideological purity, but there are certain red lines for me:
1. Getting immigration and the border under control. Stop the lawless chaos.
3. Supporting law enforcement and ensuring citizens are safe from crime.
4. Reducing the out-of-control spending that is driving rampant cost of living inflation.
5. Stopping transfers of American jobs overseas and bringing critical industries back to America.
6. Focusing resources on America’s national interests and stopping meddling in foreign wars.
7. Ending the medical tyranny of vaccine and mask mandates and lockdowns.
8. Providing parents choice of safe schools that teach instead of focusing on gender & race ideology.
9. Freedom of speech and religion. End Big Tech’s censoring of conservative speech.
10. Freedom for Americans to provide unfettered 2nd amendment protection to their families.
I hate to disagree, but we did not get to where we are because some on the right found Trump distasteful. Biden cheated and won because RINOs enabled it. We got where we are because Trump threatened the rice bowl of a bunch of corrupt, unprincipled GOPe crooks--and they would rather destroy the country than allow the deplorables to have any say in who governs and how. We do not have minor disagreements with them over which we can compromise. They are weaklings in all manners save one: they grasp and hold onto their power and prerogatives like honey badgers. They don't give a shiite about any one of my red line items--so am I too demanding or are they just in it for themselves? They will vote with the Dems on any of that list and have done so even though it helps Biden destroy the country.
We don't really disagree--I'm just very frustrated having left CA for AZ and seeing GOP politics here from the inside. The cancer of the McCains still has too much influence.
In the end the only way to truly right the ship is to rid it of all the mutineers. They can either go ashore of their own volition, or we can throw them to the sharks, but ultimately we cannot allow ourselves to be held hostage by those in our own party who hate their own base.
Your view is interesting Mark. As a reader of your columns (BTW my first and best read on substack! Other interesting authors, but none with your evenhandedness), for the last few years, I would say that your views have evolved. Everyone’s does with the passage of time and new information, and it has been interesting to sense your evolution. Do you want to comment on this?
Very true, I think. However, what the courts can do is refuse to be party to what's going on--follow the law. That will only last as long as we have decent judges. Which is an argument for voting GOP no matter what.
Supply/Demand problem:
Kerry Picket
@KerryPicket
SCOOP: “The demand for white supremacy” coming from FBI headquarters “vastly outstrips the supply of white supremacy,” said one FBI agent. “We have more people assigned to investigate white supremacists than we can actually find.”
Does that mean the price for white supremacists will go up? It would certainly seem so. Thus, I would expect more white supremacists to show up and act accordingly. After all, it's the law (of economics).
Do they do it for their ideology or is there money involved?
There is ALWAYS money involved. Money (and its associated power) is the tail that wags the ideology dog.
How many multi-term politicians do you know that are not millionaires? My view is that after their first term, the blinders come off as to who they work for and it certainly isn't their constituents in most cases, but the leadership. If the leadership is corrupt, well... They only pretend to work for their constituents at re-election time. There are a few senators who appear to be honest brokers, such as Rand Paul and Josh Hawley, but all of McConnell's lieutenants are likely as not GOPe weasels who worship at the Deep State altar. Not until McConnell and McCarthy are replaced with conservatives with a conscience will the Republican party turn the corner away from conspiring with the Uni-Party.
EVERYONE in the Republicon House and Senate "leadership" needs to be removed. The problem is that people like McConnell and Thune are so in control of their state Republican apparti that they cannot be removed until they die or retire. Also, the RNC (and McDaniel) support them and are the enemy of MAGA. The answer is to elect enough reps who will stand against them from other states. As of now not enough people (even Reps) understand the GOPe is anti-American and anti-Freedom. This is a significant part of the value of President Trump. He is opening lots of eyes and realigning centers of power.
My one quibble with this excellent article is in the statement "the health of an intelligence service is a good measure of the health of a society." How do you define 'society.' If you define it as the 'body politic', the point is well taken. If it refers to the people as a whole, it is not unusual that the people feel detached from the body politic and their supposed government. "Laws are made to be broken" is a common phrase. Sometimes it is a moral obligation to disregard the law. As Bastiat put it “When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”
The great danger now is that we are no longer a nation of laws. As our government finds it convenient to overlook the fundamental protections afforded the private citizen in the interest of maintaining the power of the State, so may the private individual disrespect all the laws, and craft a way of life with as little attention to the State as possible. The State will glory in that they have the power of enforcement. The public will allow them this illusion, and proceed to give little more than lip service to all the rules and regulations foisted on the citizens from Washington.
With the Dems, at least you know that what you see is what you get. We just got another lesson here in AZ that the GOPe are closet saboteurs. AG Brnovich reached a settlement with current SoS (and current Dem gubernatorial candidate) Katie Hobbs to subvert an election integrity measure duly enacted by the AZ legislature. The measure involved cleansing voter rolls of non-citizens and non-residents this year. Enactment will now be postponed until 2023 thanks to Brnovich's decision to do his impression of GA's Brad Raffensperger and his unethical consent decree with Stacey Abrams.
This much is clear: America First Republicans have as much work to do internal to the party as we do against Dems. The GOPe / RINOs must be politically nuked, nuked again, and the rubble salted repeatedly.
Remember all the GOP happy talk in Obama's second term about how Obama had been responsible for a huge wave of GOP gains in the state houses? Well, guess what: those gains were largely just RINOs doing what they do best--running fear porn campaigns against Dems while representing a very marginal improvement over Dem representation. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors that fought the audit tooth and nail, ignored/delayed subpoena responses, and covered up by deleting election data--were 100% "Republican" (the McCain Wing). I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't faster to just start a new party from the ground up.
I get what you're saying too, but after watching the American political scene for nearly sixty years, I'm not sure that whole "don't make the perfect the enemy of the good" thing holds the wisdom I used to think it does. I would rather have trustworthy warriors in my foxhole than greater numbers of soldiers who might fight like hell--or who might just as well surrender and point out your location to the enemy. Can we "fix" the FBI or do we have to destroy it and start over? What have we gotten out of our half measures and capitulations to the weaklings in the party? We have gotten an electorate that is (rightly) convinced that there is little real difference between the parties. I don't require ideological purity, but there are certain red lines for me:
1. Getting immigration and the border under control. Stop the lawless chaos.
2. Ensuring election integrity. Free, fair, verifiable, valid elections.
3. Supporting law enforcement and ensuring citizens are safe from crime.
4. Reducing the out-of-control spending that is driving rampant cost of living inflation.
5. Stopping transfers of American jobs overseas and bringing critical industries back to America.
6. Focusing resources on America’s national interests and stopping meddling in foreign wars.
7. Ending the medical tyranny of vaccine and mask mandates and lockdowns.
8. Providing parents choice of safe schools that teach instead of focusing on gender & race ideology.
9. Freedom of speech and religion. End Big Tech’s censoring of conservative speech.
10. Freedom for Americans to provide unfettered 2nd amendment protection to their families.
I hate to disagree, but we did not get to where we are because some on the right found Trump distasteful. Biden cheated and won because RINOs enabled it. We got where we are because Trump threatened the rice bowl of a bunch of corrupt, unprincipled GOPe crooks--and they would rather destroy the country than allow the deplorables to have any say in who governs and how. We do not have minor disagreements with them over which we can compromise. They are weaklings in all manners save one: they grasp and hold onto their power and prerogatives like honey badgers. They don't give a shiite about any one of my red line items--so am I too demanding or are they just in it for themselves? They will vote with the Dems on any of that list and have done so even though it helps Biden destroy the country.
My two cents.
We don't really disagree--I'm just very frustrated having left CA for AZ and seeing GOP politics here from the inside. The cancer of the McCains still has too much influence.
In the end the only way to truly right the ship is to rid it of all the mutineers. They can either go ashore of their own volition, or we can throw them to the sharks, but ultimately we cannot allow ourselves to be held hostage by those in our own party who hate their own base.
Your view is interesting Mark. As a reader of your columns (BTW my first and best read on substack! Other interesting authors, but none with your evenhandedness), for the last few years, I would say that your views have evolved. Everyone’s does with the passage of time and new information, and it has been interesting to sense your evolution. Do you want to comment on this?
Not sure what you have in mind.
Very true, I think. However, what the courts can do is refuse to be party to what's going on--follow the law. That will only last as long as we have decent judges. Which is an argument for voting GOP no matter what.