I disagree with the idea of trying to reintroduce religious ideals into any political party. Historically speaking it's a loosing recipe for diaster and it's not going to be received well.
"...While many secular Republican libertarians may balk at the inclusion of the concept of God at the top of the ideology’s hierarchy, the purpose is not to promote a state religion or even to force people to believe in a particular religious doctrine..."
It isn't just libertarians that balk at that, the failure of that argument is to say that Judeo-Christianisum is the only place morals or values can be found... It isn't.
It's also to confuse the concept of Nature’s God with Judeo-Christianisum and throw Deism out the window.
The issues of the left and right are unfortunately the fault of each side themselves because they largely can't operate by their own moral code. As a collective tribes they are no less subject to the effects of Parkinson's Laws than that of any government.
IMHO The issue of morals and making the right decisions is not at all based on the inclusion of any of the many variations of a God. Must I believe in a higher power to be a good human being to make the right choices and decisions in my life? My choices, morals and values are based on my own personal accountability and I doubt any of you would particularly mind being my neighbor.
We are, or should be a country of laws governed by the secular ideology of law based on omnism. Else you just wade into the same paradox of who's belief exactly should we be following?... Ask any one of the various religions and they will undoubtedly say "MINE" and NONE can help or resist that. Just about everyone of them has at one point or another dominated a country, state of territory (including the US) and at no point in history has it resulted in the ushering of peace and prosperity, usually it's the absolute opposite. Our founders, who were made up of both Christian and Deism belief knew this.
Our issue today is the same age old issue that happens when societies flourish. Inevitably tribalism rears its ugly head and we need to have a good'ole fashion fight about it. I'll will defend your right to believe with my life, I will also defend the right not to believe in the same way. That's not a hard balance to find if you're honestly willing to fight about it and I am! Both sides however largely are not and that's where Pogo comes into play and there is where conservatives are very much their own enemies!
Eventually we'll get there and have a nice big fight about all of this and after we do we'll remember that no we can't "all just get along" and "your feeling are not my problem"... but that respectfully agreeing to disagree in each corner of our own sandbox is probably the better option.
The prevalence of these types of views is exactly why the Left wins. Everyone sitting in their own corner of the sandbox provides no basis for organized opposition.
We're talking fighting over the sand box at present are we not?... I'm saying we need to quit fearing the idea of punching them in the nose and quit believing that not doing so is going to eventually lead to some type of spontaneous change for the better.
I'd also argue that both conservatives and liberals are victims of other large issues and there is another nose that needs to be punched.
What's the alternative? (I'm sincere in asking) The sandbox is never going to consistent of a cohesive society in agreeable terms. By the numbers in the most recent data I can find in the US those identifing as religious liberals and moderates out number the religious conservatives nearly 2:1. In terms of party association it's 44% Dem and 37% Rep. The golden age of Progressives was ushered in via prohibition, led by the religious factions.
If faith is the answer to progressive ideology and makes for better people I'm not seeing it.
"My choices, morals and values are based on my own personal accountability ..."
Every liberal also agrees with that--in the abstract. That's how we got where we are. And that's the kind of thinking that will keep us spiraling downward.
Sans having morals or values I would agree... But I am arguing that one's moral character is their own and not bestowed upon or granted to them by any religion.
I can see where you find a direct tie to this in your personal faith, it's a very admirable quality and something that commands great respect. God will or your personal choice is not something I would even touch out of respect, but I would generally say from what I know at a distance and have learned of you in the past two years, is that you are a good person.
However there is the other side of that in many faith based individuals or persons who are just horrible human beings. Their personal choice vs the will of any creator is something else entirely.
No matter how much I may agree or disagree with someone else views I do my best to respectfully debate the merits of the subject and avoid the lameness of ad hominem.
I'm sorry if I offended you by implying you were a libertarian. You are not a libertarian? What praytell are you then? What understanding leads you to come to Mark's site, which is thoughtfully constructed and thoughtfully moderated by the author along very clearly expressed philosophical lines of thinking, and seek to "debate" him on precisely those lines? But it's not so much debating that you are doing as it is extemporizing in a manner that the only polite inference one can make from it is that you are a libertarian ?
What praytell are you then? A conservative, but specifically better defined as, not a neoconservative.
What understanding leads you to come to Mark's site, which is thoughtfully constructed and thoughtfully moderated by the author along very clearly expressed philosophical lines of thinking, and seek to "debate" him on precisely those lines?
I didn't just *come here* Mark and I have disagreed MANY times in past subjects. His forum, or what I've in the past referred to as his "living room" has always been an open place for RESPECTFUL debate.
Most subjects we agree on wholly, some some subjects he and I agree to disagree on, many subjects we've disagreed upon one, or both of us have done complete 180's on over time.
Disagreeing with someone is a healthy process and in most cases a lost skill in open debate...
I know a lot of libertarians, they are not bad people. Mark is correct when he says their issue is being completely wishy washy or falling into the fallacy of believing that everyone should just get along. As he has mentioned many times most of them believe in absolute individualism and that fails the idea of what a cohesive society really is.
I just think their irrational in believing that any society can peacefully just side with the overall concept of "live and let live".
The oddity you are trying to understand in my perspective is that I am an atheist. I don't find the ties between religion and constitutional conservatism to be remotely related to each other.
I grew up a mix of Catholic, Mormon and Pentecostal. I understand religion, god and know it's workings. I don't detest it, despise it or judge it... It's not my place. Those who choose to believe in whatever their chosen brand is get my absolute support and respect. My line on any belief is when people try to force their beliefs upon others, Christian, Muslim, Agnostic, Atheist or otherwise, I'm gonna fight like hell against it.
Historically I don't believe faith is the answer to centering our society and ending up with conservatism on top. The great progressive age was ushered into the US on the ideals of religious values combined with the virtues prohibition for a more moral society. Both parties, republican (neocons, GOPe, RINOs) and democrat (liberals) suffer from poor progressive arguments that they "feel" are correct... That's the slippery slope of how we got where we are today, let's learn our lessons please!
There are no virtues to be found in shoving ones belief system down another's throat. I'm not saying that anyone in this forum has that type of intention... But many whom call themselves conservative are gleeful at that idea.
Historically all great societies hit these barriers. Eventually we'll get to the point of having a big'ole fight about it or cease to exist, or both. After you punch any billy in the nose enough times they either leave or learn to get along. We need to do some serious punching.
Well, thank you for your honesty. RESPECTFULLY, in the same way you don't believe there is a God, I don't believe you are a conservative. As it is, the moral relativism dripping from your posts really gets me going, as such moral relativism is what your basic leftist troll trots out as standard practice. What's more, the political hostility of Atheists to Christianity and other major religions is hardly distinguishable from the political hostility to them of the Left. You don't have to be religious to think that religions are a positive force, nay, a necessary force in a society. Which is one of the points I infer Mark trying to make above in his post. If you are not trying, in your "arguments" to goad those of us who are conservative and see such moral relativism as a bane of our society, then, respectfully, I don't know what you are trying to do, but I will refrain in future from being goaded to a response. Good day sir.
The article has the polling on popularity of 50 Governors which is useful. The analysis is spin, sorry, who cares about Vermont? Vermont is an outlier and deep Blue, along with HI.
What I stood out to me to is Gov. Ducey and Kemp being low in popularity for Governors. My guess is their aiding and abetting the 2020 Fraud. Abbot is also low, probably due to his handling of Covid.
Note Morning Consult is the official partner of the NY Times, Politico, and Bloomberg so I am SURE there is a bit of bias in the polling. They believe there is no bias against Conservatives in the Media, and there is no such thing as a shy Trump Voter.
I hate to make general observations about such a broad topic. Nevertheless, I offer the following:
A message (any message) - and certainly an ideology - has to have vehicles through which it is conveyed to its audience. That is where Conservatism has failed. Adherents of Conservatism have been too, well, Conservative, over the last 175 years and have stepped aside and watched while first the Progressives and then the Liberals and then the Big Government Technocrats and then the Neo-Cons and then the global elites have gradually but aggressively taken over all of the institutions of our society. It has now reached the point where Conservative messages that used to have a chance to be conveyed (such as the place of the U.S. in world history, our civic practices, and the uniqueness and justice and value of our governing principles) no longer do. THAT is the problem (not the nature of the Conservative message).
The mistake was allowing our elites (and in the U.K., too) to propagate Marxism, Fascism, Fabian Socialism, and eventually Globalism into our institutions (including of course our educational system). In the process, knowledge of our government as it was intended to be has been lost to the general public - and this was on purpose.
My point is let's not denigrate the Conservative message (which in my case I call Constitutional Conservatism) when the problem is really how to spread it. BTW, why would it be so evil to not add "World" to the motto? Nation states are a perfectly legitimate means of governance and have lots of advantages over global level governance as we have already seen.
One area in which the current crop of conservatives is an improvement over the previous generations is that conservatives nowadays do seem to have FUN. Not so sober sided.
Quite true. It is very heartening and hopeful to see! I admit that although I never considered myself a "ditto head" I do miss Rush in that way. He WAS consistently a lot of fun!
Salient points. The pathetic fact is this was all laid out back in the 1950’s with the published dispatch “The 45 Stated Goals of Communism” by the CPU & read into the Congressional Record in 1963 (if you haven’t read it go put it into your SE & read it; you’ll be stunned how far down the road they are). Why hasn’t this been front-&-center in EVERY GOP platform since? Incompetence/stupidity? Rank indifference? Republicans remind me of Italian 8th Army troops “anchoring” the flank @ Stalingrad in Dec ‘42 just as the Soviet counter offensive picked up steam.
If not the politicos how about talk show hosts? Anybody ever remember Rush talking about this? It’s possible he did maybe I just don’t remember.
I don't uderstand. You have 60% of the country believing the 2020 election was stolen according to Rasmussen, and I'm sure this doesn't include those who are delighted the election was 'fortified' which could mean as high as 80% doubt the legitimacy of the regime. You have Pelosi doubling down and staging an 'insurrection' so as to lock up under abominable conditions those who question the election. You have a Colorado judge asking 170K from lawyers for daring to do the same thing. You have Afghanistan, inflation and a supply chain disaster, an energy shortage reflected in gas prices and Biden embarrassing himself in public at every appearance. What more will it take-a full-fledged stock market crash which is on the horizon? Amid all this the politicians in Washington assume we are all rubes, deplorables and people incapable of reason so we have to be forced to behave as human beings by the powers that be. "Most Americans view government and politics as a means of enacting the best common-sense policies to govern their daily lives."? That was yesterday. Yes, "we’re up against a highly motivated and organized enemy that wants to put their boot on our neck." But now that their behavior is crass, outrageous and open, we are aware of this. I don't know the future, but only if you disregard the 'deplorables' who constitute the majority of the country can you say they now have the hearts and minds of the people.
A relief valve is Election Fraud is still seen as local to deep blue areas by most people, so their vote counts in most areas. So they can vote successfully to change their school board and local representatives, but statewide votes in some states get impacted by Fraud.
And people believe they can move to a more saner area.
Good article to supplement. I read the article twice, it's very thought provoking. What it misses is the echo chamber / Virtue Signaling feedback loop effect of Social Media. The GOP views the Left as mis-guided and stupid, and the Left views the GOP as Evil, and Hitler like, and the ends justifies the means, with Alinsky providing guidance that furthers the struggle, and abusing the high trust there was in the US.
The Left Projects A LOT. A great example is the Handmaid's Tale. They use this to tar the GOP with. Christianity is constantly used that the Right wants to have a theocracy. Which the reality is the Left is building a Woke Theocracy.
The Left has captured the FBI, DOJ, IRS, and other Government entities. It's the result of their infiltration of the education / credentialing system, where you will be indoctrinated, or you will be expelled, and once you have the right credentials doors open. The indoctrination starts K-12 and goes into the University System.
In Opposition to this are nationalistic, working class, libertarian, gun owners, and Christian groups. The country club, establishment GOP, are slowly losing power. What Trump did is he recognized the change in the voting population, and harnessed the frustration with the current situation.
Against this is the Left that includes the Media, Higher Education, Unions, Government, Tech, and Hollywood. As well as the traditional Blue Cities.
"...after all, we ultimately get the representatives who represent the majority of the electorate. There’s no getting around that."
Quite a statement of faith. I think that, in practice, we instead get pre-selected representatives who can project an image that corresponds well enough with a media-driven engineered consensus, and whose real allegiances are to the power elite behind the scenes. If that doesn't work out well enough, they resort to rigging the electoral machinery.
They mobilize our will to believe against us, we collude in our collective deception, and ultimately we get what we settle for.
This is a minor point, though. You bring up some really deep issues here. This is important stuff. I think I disagree with your conclusion, but I will read the source article and take some time to articulate why.
So I read Oleksiw's full text at AG. And all the comments, and I no longer have much appetite for all this posturing and wishful thinking. I do have some things to say about the current resurgence of explicitly religious politics on the Right, but I'll have to say them elsewhere. For now, I think what's good about this argument can be summarized concisely:
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." — John Adams
Pragmatically, neither party in a two-party system can have any enduring ideological core. It's a constant tug-of-war between shifting coalitions. Control of institutions, including the institutions of government, is simply a long-term game of strategy. Political ideologies and statements of principle only serve to catalyze and stabilize coalitions and group identities. They have little to do directly with the effectiveness of any real organization. We're in a crisis, and I think nearly all of this stuff is a distraction and a waste of effort.
Here's Realpolitik USA 2021: Party D is now comprised entirely of professional politicians and is effectively controlled, as an institution, via blackmail and bribery. It takes orders from the same locus that controls the legacy media and many other nongovernmental centers of power. Party R is also controlled, but less thoroughly and effectively. Its politicians are also mostly blackmailed grifters and con-men. Its current role is largely passive, and consists in maintaining the illusion of an effective opposition. It is thus vulnerable to dissolution in a rising tide of political participation from outsiders. That's our best hope, as a nation and a people. Keep the R tent big, welcome "walkaway" voters, and focus on the acute issues. There will be time for internecine squabbles again if we can survive that long.
Left and Right are illusions constructed to divide and maintained as reins to steer the body politic construed as a dumb beast. The war is between those who would enthrone themselves as gods and the rest of humanity. At present this is, operatively, the political establishment versus literally everyone else. Trump made this pretty clear, I think.
Bottom up change is the only answer--making the only question one of whether or not we can survive long enough for bottom up change to have a real world impact. I'm a PC in a western state and candidates for office make their pitches to us. Afterwards, we get to ask them questions. Every candidate for US Senator has been asked if s/he will vote to remove Mitch McConnell from leadership. It's a simple binary that several of the most well-heeled, best fund-raisers (hence presumably the highest odds candidates) have failed miserably.
If this were, say, a football game, we would have to tip our caps to our opponent for the shellacking they are giving us. They play to win, they use every tool at their disposal, and they NEVER give up. The left is kicking our arses due to good, old-fashioned planning, preparation, effort, and commitment that furthers their corruption. Give the devil his due.
You're talking straight past me. Nobody said anything about a charismatic leader. The entire article is about articulating a reasoned understanding of the real world as the platform for a political movement. Libertarians--who I knew would pop up--don't believe in anything in a principled way. They just want to be left alone--it's the idea of each individual as totally independent and free to invent their own version of reality and morality. Scalia's "sweet mystery of life" that each libertarian dreams up for himself. It's a recipe for how the Left wins--because they face no organized resistance based on principle and real conviction. Opposed to this is the true conservative concept of solidarity based on a shared human nature, which means that what right/wrong for one is for all.
I disagree with the idea of trying to reintroduce religious ideals into any political party. Historically speaking it's a loosing recipe for diaster and it's not going to be received well.
"...While many secular Republican libertarians may balk at the inclusion of the concept of God at the top of the ideology’s hierarchy, the purpose is not to promote a state religion or even to force people to believe in a particular religious doctrine..."
It isn't just libertarians that balk at that, the failure of that argument is to say that Judeo-Christianisum is the only place morals or values can be found... It isn't.
It's also to confuse the concept of Nature’s God with Judeo-Christianisum and throw Deism out the window.
The issues of the left and right are unfortunately the fault of each side themselves because they largely can't operate by their own moral code. As a collective tribes they are no less subject to the effects of Parkinson's Laws than that of any government.
IMHO The issue of morals and making the right decisions is not at all based on the inclusion of any of the many variations of a God. Must I believe in a higher power to be a good human being to make the right choices and decisions in my life? My choices, morals and values are based on my own personal accountability and I doubt any of you would particularly mind being my neighbor.
We are, or should be a country of laws governed by the secular ideology of law based on omnism. Else you just wade into the same paradox of who's belief exactly should we be following?... Ask any one of the various religions and they will undoubtedly say "MINE" and NONE can help or resist that. Just about everyone of them has at one point or another dominated a country, state of territory (including the US) and at no point in history has it resulted in the ushering of peace and prosperity, usually it's the absolute opposite. Our founders, who were made up of both Christian and Deism belief knew this.
Our issue today is the same age old issue that happens when societies flourish. Inevitably tribalism rears its ugly head and we need to have a good'ole fashion fight about it. I'll will defend your right to believe with my life, I will also defend the right not to believe in the same way. That's not a hard balance to find if you're honestly willing to fight about it and I am! Both sides however largely are not and that's where Pogo comes into play and there is where conservatives are very much their own enemies!
Eventually we'll get there and have a nice big fight about all of this and after we do we'll remember that no we can't "all just get along" and "your feeling are not my problem"... but that respectfully agreeing to disagree in each corner of our own sandbox is probably the better option.
The prevalence of these types of views is exactly why the Left wins. Everyone sitting in their own corner of the sandbox provides no basis for organized opposition.
We're talking fighting over the sand box at present are we not?... I'm saying we need to quit fearing the idea of punching them in the nose and quit believing that not doing so is going to eventually lead to some type of spontaneous change for the better.
I'd also argue that both conservatives and liberals are victims of other large issues and there is another nose that needs to be punched.
What's the alternative? (I'm sincere in asking) The sandbox is never going to consistent of a cohesive society in agreeable terms. By the numbers in the most recent data I can find in the US those identifing as religious liberals and moderates out number the religious conservatives nearly 2:1. In terms of party association it's 44% Dem and 37% Rep. The golden age of Progressives was ushered in via prohibition, led by the religious factions.
If faith is the answer to progressive ideology and makes for better people I'm not seeing it.
"My choices, morals and values are based on my own personal accountability ..."
Every liberal also agrees with that--in the abstract. That's how we got where we are. And that's the kind of thinking that will keep us spiraling downward.
Sans having morals or values I would agree... But I am arguing that one's moral character is their own and not bestowed upon or granted to them by any religion.
I can see where you find a direct tie to this in your personal faith, it's a very admirable quality and something that commands great respect. God will or your personal choice is not something I would even touch out of respect, but I would generally say from what I know at a distance and have learned of you in the past two years, is that you are a good person.
However there is the other side of that in many faith based individuals or persons who are just horrible human beings. Their personal choice vs the will of any creator is something else entirely.
You ask for a libertarian, and....Poof! One appears.
No matter how much I may agree or disagree with someone else views I do my best to respectfully debate the merits of the subject and avoid the lameness of ad hominem.
Please respectfully do the same...
I'm sorry if I offended you by implying you were a libertarian. You are not a libertarian? What praytell are you then? What understanding leads you to come to Mark's site, which is thoughtfully constructed and thoughtfully moderated by the author along very clearly expressed philosophical lines of thinking, and seek to "debate" him on precisely those lines? But it's not so much debating that you are doing as it is extemporizing in a manner that the only polite inference one can make from it is that you are a libertarian ?
You are not a libertarian? No I am not...
What praytell are you then? A conservative, but specifically better defined as, not a neoconservative.
What understanding leads you to come to Mark's site, which is thoughtfully constructed and thoughtfully moderated by the author along very clearly expressed philosophical lines of thinking, and seek to "debate" him on precisely those lines?
I didn't just *come here* Mark and I have disagreed MANY times in past subjects. His forum, or what I've in the past referred to as his "living room" has always been an open place for RESPECTFUL debate.
Most subjects we agree on wholly, some some subjects he and I agree to disagree on, many subjects we've disagreed upon one, or both of us have done complete 180's on over time.
Disagreeing with someone is a healthy process and in most cases a lost skill in open debate...
I know a lot of libertarians, they are not bad people. Mark is correct when he says their issue is being completely wishy washy or falling into the fallacy of believing that everyone should just get along. As he has mentioned many times most of them believe in absolute individualism and that fails the idea of what a cohesive society really is.
I just think their irrational in believing that any society can peacefully just side with the overall concept of "live and let live".
The oddity you are trying to understand in my perspective is that I am an atheist. I don't find the ties between religion and constitutional conservatism to be remotely related to each other.
I grew up a mix of Catholic, Mormon and Pentecostal. I understand religion, god and know it's workings. I don't detest it, despise it or judge it... It's not my place. Those who choose to believe in whatever their chosen brand is get my absolute support and respect. My line on any belief is when people try to force their beliefs upon others, Christian, Muslim, Agnostic, Atheist or otherwise, I'm gonna fight like hell against it.
Historically I don't believe faith is the answer to centering our society and ending up with conservatism on top. The great progressive age was ushered into the US on the ideals of religious values combined with the virtues prohibition for a more moral society. Both parties, republican (neocons, GOPe, RINOs) and democrat (liberals) suffer from poor progressive arguments that they "feel" are correct... That's the slippery slope of how we got where we are today, let's learn our lessons please!
There are no virtues to be found in shoving ones belief system down another's throat. I'm not saying that anyone in this forum has that type of intention... But many whom call themselves conservative are gleeful at that idea.
Historically all great societies hit these barriers. Eventually we'll get to the point of having a big'ole fight about it or cease to exist, or both. After you punch any billy in the nose enough times they either leave or learn to get along. We need to do some serious punching.
Well, thank you for your honesty. RESPECTFULLY, in the same way you don't believe there is a God, I don't believe you are a conservative. As it is, the moral relativism dripping from your posts really gets me going, as such moral relativism is what your basic leftist troll trots out as standard practice. What's more, the political hostility of Atheists to Christianity and other major religions is hardly distinguishable from the political hostility to them of the Left. You don't have to be religious to think that religions are a positive force, nay, a necessary force in a society. Which is one of the points I infer Mark trying to make above in his post. If you are not trying, in your "arguments" to goad those of us who are conservative and see such moral relativism as a bane of our society, then, respectfully, I don't know what you are trying to do, but I will refrain in future from being goaded to a response. Good day sir.
The article has the polling on popularity of 50 Governors which is useful. The analysis is spin, sorry, who cares about Vermont? Vermont is an outlier and deep Blue, along with HI.
What I stood out to me to is Gov. Ducey and Kemp being low in popularity for Governors. My guess is their aiding and abetting the 2020 Fraud. Abbot is also low, probably due to his handling of Covid.
Note Morning Consult is the official partner of the NY Times, Politico, and Bloomberg so I am SURE there is a bit of bias in the polling. They believe there is no bias against Conservatives in the Media, and there is no such thing as a shy Trump Voter.
https://morningconsult.com/2021/11/18/phil-scott-approval-vermont-polling-senate-race/
H. Kurtz just had John Karl on Fox, incl. on the 2020 election. It was subtly brutal.
The left usually wins because they have no ethics, or conscience and will stoop to any low in order to achieve their goals.
I hate to make general observations about such a broad topic. Nevertheless, I offer the following:
A message (any message) - and certainly an ideology - has to have vehicles through which it is conveyed to its audience. That is where Conservatism has failed. Adherents of Conservatism have been too, well, Conservative, over the last 175 years and have stepped aside and watched while first the Progressives and then the Liberals and then the Big Government Technocrats and then the Neo-Cons and then the global elites have gradually but aggressively taken over all of the institutions of our society. It has now reached the point where Conservative messages that used to have a chance to be conveyed (such as the place of the U.S. in world history, our civic practices, and the uniqueness and justice and value of our governing principles) no longer do. THAT is the problem (not the nature of the Conservative message).
The mistake was allowing our elites (and in the U.K., too) to propagate Marxism, Fascism, Fabian Socialism, and eventually Globalism into our institutions (including of course our educational system). In the process, knowledge of our government as it was intended to be has been lost to the general public - and this was on purpose.
My point is let's not denigrate the Conservative message (which in my case I call Constitutional Conservatism) when the problem is really how to spread it. BTW, why would it be so evil to not add "World" to the motto? Nation states are a perfectly legitimate means of governance and have lots of advantages over global level governance as we have already seen.
One area in which the current crop of conservatives is an improvement over the previous generations is that conservatives nowadays do seem to have FUN. Not so sober sided.
Quite true. It is very heartening and hopeful to see! I admit that although I never considered myself a "ditto head" I do miss Rush in that way. He WAS consistently a lot of fun!
Salient points. The pathetic fact is this was all laid out back in the 1950’s with the published dispatch “The 45 Stated Goals of Communism” by the CPU & read into the Congressional Record in 1963 (if you haven’t read it go put it into your SE & read it; you’ll be stunned how far down the road they are). Why hasn’t this been front-&-center in EVERY GOP platform since? Incompetence/stupidity? Rank indifference? Republicans remind me of Italian 8th Army troops “anchoring” the flank @ Stalingrad in Dec ‘42 just as the Soviet counter offensive picked up steam.
If not the politicos how about talk show hosts? Anybody ever remember Rush talking about this? It’s possible he did maybe I just don’t remember.
Oneminutebiblestudies.com
Across America June 2022
I don't uderstand. You have 60% of the country believing the 2020 election was stolen according to Rasmussen, and I'm sure this doesn't include those who are delighted the election was 'fortified' which could mean as high as 80% doubt the legitimacy of the regime. You have Pelosi doubling down and staging an 'insurrection' so as to lock up under abominable conditions those who question the election. You have a Colorado judge asking 170K from lawyers for daring to do the same thing. You have Afghanistan, inflation and a supply chain disaster, an energy shortage reflected in gas prices and Biden embarrassing himself in public at every appearance. What more will it take-a full-fledged stock market crash which is on the horizon? Amid all this the politicians in Washington assume we are all rubes, deplorables and people incapable of reason so we have to be forced to behave as human beings by the powers that be. "Most Americans view government and politics as a means of enacting the best common-sense policies to govern their daily lives."? That was yesterday. Yes, "we’re up against a highly motivated and organized enemy that wants to put their boot on our neck." But now that their behavior is crass, outrageous and open, we are aware of this. I don't know the future, but only if you disregard the 'deplorables' who constitute the majority of the country can you say they now have the hearts and minds of the people.
A relief valve is Election Fraud is still seen as local to deep blue areas by most people, so their vote counts in most areas. So they can vote successfully to change their school board and local representatives, but statewide votes in some states get impacted by Fraud.
And people believe they can move to a more saner area.
Good article to supplement. I read the article twice, it's very thought provoking. What it misses is the echo chamber / Virtue Signaling feedback loop effect of Social Media. The GOP views the Left as mis-guided and stupid, and the Left views the GOP as Evil, and Hitler like, and the ends justifies the means, with Alinsky providing guidance that furthers the struggle, and abusing the high trust there was in the US.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/what-relationship-between-political-left-and-globalism
It's an interesting article, but I wonder whether the people they're recruiting as enforcers are too much screwups to rely on if push came to shove.
The Left Projects A LOT. A great example is the Handmaid's Tale. They use this to tar the GOP with. Christianity is constantly used that the Right wants to have a theocracy. Which the reality is the Left is building a Woke Theocracy.
The Left has captured the FBI, DOJ, IRS, and other Government entities. It's the result of their infiltration of the education / credentialing system, where you will be indoctrinated, or you will be expelled, and once you have the right credentials doors open. The indoctrination starts K-12 and goes into the University System.
In Opposition to this are nationalistic, working class, libertarian, gun owners, and Christian groups. The country club, establishment GOP, are slowly losing power. What Trump did is he recognized the change in the voting population, and harnessed the frustration with the current situation.
Against this is the Left that includes the Media, Higher Education, Unions, Government, Tech, and Hollywood. As well as the traditional Blue Cities.
"...after all, we ultimately get the representatives who represent the majority of the electorate. There’s no getting around that."
Quite a statement of faith. I think that, in practice, we instead get pre-selected representatives who can project an image that corresponds well enough with a media-driven engineered consensus, and whose real allegiances are to the power elite behind the scenes. If that doesn't work out well enough, they resort to rigging the electoral machinery.
They mobilize our will to believe against us, we collude in our collective deception, and ultimately we get what we settle for.
This is a minor point, though. You bring up some really deep issues here. This is important stuff. I think I disagree with your conclusion, but I will read the source article and take some time to articulate why.
So I read Oleksiw's full text at AG. And all the comments, and I no longer have much appetite for all this posturing and wishful thinking. I do have some things to say about the current resurgence of explicitly religious politics on the Right, but I'll have to say them elsewhere. For now, I think what's good about this argument can be summarized concisely:
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." — John Adams
Pragmatically, neither party in a two-party system can have any enduring ideological core. It's a constant tug-of-war between shifting coalitions. Control of institutions, including the institutions of government, is simply a long-term game of strategy. Political ideologies and statements of principle only serve to catalyze and stabilize coalitions and group identities. They have little to do directly with the effectiveness of any real organization. We're in a crisis, and I think nearly all of this stuff is a distraction and a waste of effort.
Here's Realpolitik USA 2021: Party D is now comprised entirely of professional politicians and is effectively controlled, as an institution, via blackmail and bribery. It takes orders from the same locus that controls the legacy media and many other nongovernmental centers of power. Party R is also controlled, but less thoroughly and effectively. Its politicians are also mostly blackmailed grifters and con-men. Its current role is largely passive, and consists in maintaining the illusion of an effective opposition. It is thus vulnerable to dissolution in a rising tide of political participation from outsiders. That's our best hope, as a nation and a people. Keep the R tent big, welcome "walkaway" voters, and focus on the acute issues. There will be time for internecine squabbles again if we can survive that long.
Left and Right are illusions constructed to divide and maintained as reins to steer the body politic construed as a dumb beast. The war is between those who would enthrone themselves as gods and the rest of humanity. At present this is, operatively, the political establishment versus literally everyone else. Trump made this pretty clear, I think.
Bottom up change is the only answer--making the only question one of whether or not we can survive long enough for bottom up change to have a real world impact. I'm a PC in a western state and candidates for office make their pitches to us. Afterwards, we get to ask them questions. Every candidate for US Senator has been asked if s/he will vote to remove Mitch McConnell from leadership. It's a simple binary that several of the most well-heeled, best fund-raisers (hence presumably the highest odds candidates) have failed miserably.
If this were, say, a football game, we would have to tip our caps to our opponent for the shellacking they are giving us. They play to win, they use every tool at their disposal, and they NEVER give up. The left is kicking our arses due to good, old-fashioned planning, preparation, effort, and commitment that furthers their corruption. Give the devil his due.
Basically, yes. Without pressure from the grass roots we keep going downhill.
Perhaps by seeing the face of Godlessness?
You're talking straight past me. Nobody said anything about a charismatic leader. The entire article is about articulating a reasoned understanding of the real world as the platform for a political movement. Libertarians--who I knew would pop up--don't believe in anything in a principled way. They just want to be left alone--it's the idea of each individual as totally independent and free to invent their own version of reality and morality. Scalia's "sweet mystery of life" that each libertarian dreams up for himself. It's a recipe for how the Left wins--because they face no organized resistance based on principle and real conviction. Opposed to this is the true conservative concept of solidarity based on a shared human nature, which means that what right/wrong for one is for all.