What can be done?

Slurping my cornflakes in artificial milk this morning, I realized I have no answer to the question, “What can be done?” I share the blame for the present condition of governance in America, having not noted until retirement either the political landscape or the politicians that enrich themselves in office. I thought about ‘our’ Barney Frank, a crooked gay, long-serving Representative now retiring not in disgrace, but in anticipation of marrying his long-time companion. What can be done?

Victor Davis Hanson penned the answers yesterday, but can they be implemented given the status quo? Americans with a great number of freedoms and rights ( we again fell a few notches on the Free Countries list in 2011), exercise few of our concomitant responsibilities. Victor worries that our country could be lost in a generation of these responsibilities cannot be reclaimed:

1. Respect for the law
2. A tough-minded education
3. Collective thrift
4. Private investment
5. Common codes of behavior and civility

No citizen should be exempted from these ‘rules’ but our Obama administration ( and previous administrations have been complicit) flouts these rules and encourages people to do so too.

1. Cold-blooded murderers rarely are executed even though given the death penalty.
2. The pouring of money into the ignorance pit, known as government schools, has not raised the level of or interest in learning for decades.
3. Virtually no one saves or sacrifices from their paychecks.
4. Virtually no one actively invests money for their retirement; instead they count on social security as their sole support when the time comes.
5. Name-calling and indecent dress partner with the never-ending search for insulted feelings which delight lawyers who reap financial benefits.

What can be done, for example, to overturn an illegal, judicial Roe v. Wade decision. If the major premise that human life begins at conception cannot be accepted, how can logical or common sense extrapolations follow?

The Road to Obama

Alexis de Tocqueville praised and evaluated America in 1831. But he was most afraid of tyranny setting in. He said that once all outstanding classes had been eliminated, all disparities banished, the societies of the future would be defenseless against all forms of oppression.

Tocqueville was a convinced adherent of representative government, as distinguished from the choice by the whole populace. His belief in political dualism is a pertinent reminder today of the happy reconciliation of local self-rule while national government. Centralization certainly might mean efficiency, but it was not conducive to liberty.

His best advice: Let the laws continue to be national, but let the administration of those laws be decentralized. If citizens could be encouraged and locally trained, to take a larger share of their own communal government and its affairs, the results would be, not a loss of unity, but a tremendous increase in energy, satisfaction and stability. In fact, let everything be done to encourage and bolster the individual and the small local groups against the crushing weight, and the annihilating philosophy, of a superior State.

With his fears of the mob, however, poor Tocqueville did not allow for the ingenuity of the designing few and the potential indifference of the many. Obviously, the 1830’s are history. Reality is President Obama and his ‘superior State’ choosing sides - denouncing the Tea Party ( a majority? ) and praising Occupy Wall Street ( a minority?). Reality is Obama’s present, populist approach to political campaigning. Reality is Obama announcing that all students must remain in high school until 18 or graduation. The only way this system can ‘succeed’ is for teachers (and schools) to cheat, warehouse or tutor, meaning more taxpayer money poured down the pit of ignorance.

One hundred eighty years on, 2012 the tyranny of the left-wing, liberal, minority thrives. Always hibernating when not flourishing, its 20% never dies. An added twist, however, to the present ruling classes’ oppression and suppression of our liberties ( and share the wealth appeal of socialism), is its continuous propagandizing of class warfare and inequality, rich vs. poor. Obama’s tyranny is in itself a lie and betrayal of the principles upon which our great nation was founded. It’s a slap in poor Tocqueville’s thin, tubercular face, a genuine insult to truths he unearthed in his visit to America.

Nothing’s new

The (1929) Depression proved to be the “…unhappy confirmation of the heartless verities of supply and demand.”

But the New Deal failed in its central aim of restoring economic prosperity nationally and in the states, especially Washington state, called the soviet state of America ( for its progressive and soviet sympathies).

Who is the blame? Washington D.C. political policies or the irrationality of the public? After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, fear-driven irrationality was abundant.

Between 1941 and 1946, the government expended $378 billion and the federal debt increased fivefold to $260 billion for war production and financing. These war actions effectively wiped out unemployment; virtually every able-bodied adult was at work – but at what expense to future generations?

Fast forward to 2012 and the state of our Union. Spending and debt have NEVER decreased even though government cannot literally create jobs ( WWII inspired them).

Our Alinsky President tonight will NOT talk about anything new. He will not acknowledge the truism of the free market, a neutral ( and sometimes cruel) exchange for the buying and selling of goods and services ( if not abused by immoral greed). Spreading the wealth through government intervention will be his mantra. The only self-interest evident tonight will be Obama’s own re-election.

America’s path to perdition has been paved with debt since FDR’s first metaphorical footprint ( life for him being confined to a wheelchair). Our leader, Obama will stride ( head up and away from reality) down our decline.

Destructive Populism

Of whom was the writer below speaking? The Tea Party? Occupy Wall Street? Radicals, socialists, right-wing conservatives, libertarians who? Answer, any disliked minority or perceived, destructive minority.

In 1885, in Washington State, this comment appeared in the Tacoma Ledger asking if American citizens would allow “an army of leprous, prosperity-sucking, progress-blasting Asiatics to befoul our thoroughfares, degrade the city, repel immigration, drive out our people, break up our homes, take employment from our countrymen, corrupt the morals of our youth, establish opium joints, buy or steal the babe of poverty or slave, and taint with their brothers the lives of our young men?”

Therefore, in 1886, the Chinese encountered violence or expulsion. The legendary time when men and women worked together in frontier towns with a sense of community was disappearing. Labor and business – the lower element and the better element, began to view themselves and each other from different perspectives. Again, does any of this sound familiar today?

Forces responsible for the anti-Chinese movement created the People’s Party, the 1st reformist organization in the Northwest; even though dissociated from socialists, anarchists and other extremists, party members nevertheless fought the business men.
Change the names but not the animus, and surely there’s relevance to our current political and cultural climate.

Playing God?

The path of conservatism is like an artery carrying the lifeblood of a country. The red line is a continuum of success. Yet liberals somehow create or allow a cause, a stoppage, a bubble if you will, to form in the line. Consequently, the patient ( our country) will ultimately die. Liberalism ( socialism,communism, progressivism ) never sustains the lifeblood of a nation on its path to greater prosperity. Why does this liberal behavior predictably and consistently repeat failure after failure over time? The perversity of human nature to usurp the role of personal freedom and play God?

Three Strike Outs

Three strikes and I'm out of credulity. #1. A casino in Ohio supposedly will provide 2000 jobs at the cost of $400 million dollars. That's $200,000 per job. #2. I heard that a 'certain' non-profit cannot only survive with federal funding. #3. A representative of a major league sports team spoke about the "key components to what they're doing here." Yes, it's not worth my knowing the facts of life because my credulity is tested beyond endurance.

Six Greatest

Six Greatest
Ataturk… 31
Mao Zedong … 30
FDR … 30
Stalin … 29
Lenin … 28
Ho Chi Minh … 27

The top six great rulers of the last century. So says, Arnold M. Ludwig concluding his 18 year study contained in his 2002 book, “King of the Mountain.”

Political genius, said Bismark, consisted of hearing the distant hoofbeat of the horse of history and then leaping to catch the passing horseman by the coattail.

Thomas Carlyle, was advocate of the great-man theory of history.

William James subscribed to the view that the “mutations of societies from generation to generation are in the main due directly or indirectly to the examples of individuals whose genius was so adapted to the “receptivities of the moment, or whose accidental position of authority was so critical that they became ferments, initiators of movement, setters of precedent or fashion, centers of corruption, or destroyers of other persons whose gifts, had they had free play, would have led society in another direction.”

Hegel subscribed to the “world-historical” hero who “actualizes his age,” an expression of the “spirit” or “soul” of his times.

Sidney Hook advocated the “event-making” man, as opposed to the eventful man, who brings about momentous happenings not just by what he does but also by what he is.

Ludwig believes greatness belongs to the “political catalyst,” the “facilitator/inhibitor of historical events.” At the top of the page are his top 6 Political Greats. His determination was based upon the 7 pillars of political greatness: dominance, contrariness, presence, change agent, vanity, courage, and wary unease ( a variation on ADD personality).

What do you think? Personally, I don’t care – they are/were all successful nutcakes responsible for more sadness than glee in the human condition.

BUT Bismark had it right when it comes to President Obama; he’s riding high now.