Well, look. Victory in the midterms was bound to cool some people’s ardor. Conservatives were irate over unchecked Democratic governance, and now there’s a check in the form of a Republican House, so the temperature had to come down. The difficulty here isn’t convincing grassroots righties that they need to get their message out 24/7, it’s figuring out how to raise that temperature again to the point where people are out in the streets, knocking on doors, volunteering, organizing, donating, and so forth. Candidly, I don’t know how you do it; the best fuel is anger, but having just won a major legislative victory in Wisconsin — imperiled though it may be — some conservatives just may not be feeling the rage right now, no matter how vicious or intimidating the left tries to be.
Instapundit has more on the subject here. One has to have a grasp on exactly what politics is, and how you win elections. Only a small minority on either side of the political spectrum, however loosely we define it in this country, have put any serious thought into, or have bothered to educate themselves, on the issue of the day. They are motivated by far more superficial considerations than most people who follow what’s going on would be comfortable with. The process of winning elections involves bending these pliable voters over to your side. Neither side is capable of winning elections without bringing these voters along with them.
It’s an open question in my mind as to whether a republic can survive with universal suffrage. Limiting suffrage in this country, however, has been littered with racism and sexism. We’re not keen on the idea, and given the history understandably so. But we’ve developed a notion that voting is a civic duty, rather than something you should only do if you’ve bothered to learn something about the issues. I think being able to vote should be harder, to weed out those who are only casually interested. That could be as simple as requiring people to go to the county seat in order to register.
This obviously is not a workable idea, because we’ve all been raised to revere democratic governance. I’m just not convinced you can have lasting and stable republican government with a voting population that doesn’t want to pay taxes or cut spending. Something has to give.
How depressing. We are so screwed….
Not necessarily…. the 2012 elections will be a key indicator. Just because people have better things to do than take to the streets won’t necessarily mean the left necessarily wins.
I’ve been procrastinating on writing such a post on my blog, but I’m convinced that we should have a “continuous” voting mechanism, that is divorced from geography and time.
When I was in New York, I was given only two choices for representative: Sweeney and Gildebrand. Even though I got something in the mail where Sweeney bragged about how he got money for his district, and even though there were allegations in the news that Sweeney and his wife beat each other, I held my nose and voted for him.
Gildebrand won. How could I call such a person my “representative” when I didn’t vote for her? I didn’t vote for her precisely because I knew she wouldn’t hold my views!
And it was weird to have to write to Hillary Clinton, or to Chuck Shumer, to express my political views.
Having said all this, I’m also convinced that those who don’t care about the politics of things, shouldn’t vote at all!
Heinlein Federal System… if you wanna vote, you gotta serve in the military/government.
He actually had it thought out quite well.
Rah, Rah R.A.H.
Most of the time there is very little choice for the average voter. It is hard to see how more information would help very much in making the decision between parties. It isn’t like voters can mix and match the candidate’s views to suit their own. Even the very passionate and well informed have to make their choice based on party as much as anything else.
I think that maybe you are wrong on this one. There is certainly a lot of noise coming from the ends of the spectrum, and as usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Just as we are mostly gun rights orientated when we vote, most people favor one issue over all of the others. There are plenty of people in my neighborhood that could care less about guns. But don’t bring up abortion unless you’ve got some serious time on your hands. The people that I know that are truly appethic about voting, don’t actually vote. Let’s be honest here, there is plenty to be appethic about in our political system. Maybe that’s the real problem here.
Wither the Tea Party? Why not?
First a few terms and assumptions:
(1) Military service as a prerequisite to citizenship is a red herring. I say this with forefathers who were very wealthy, very “everything to lose and lost it” Patriots in 1776.
Peasants have fought and died in wars from the beginning of time. We must not confuse Patriotic action of free men with compulsory obedience to military orders as the two are not by any means congruent. In fact, in the Athenian sense and by the example of Cincinnatus, they are paradoxically incompatible. It ought to be a last resort, although practice is required to obtain skill.
(2) Specious charges of “racism” and “sexism” are also red herrings. Does anyone here care that both, and all “isms” are a primary Marxist-Leninist construct? It is the basis for the “international” adjective of “international socialism”. No American worth his Liberty thought men and women equal until the commencement of Communist agitprop in the early 20th C.
As to the matter at hand, we must ask how it came to be before we can offer meaningful proscriptions for restoration.
Again, one need look no further than the post WWII agitprop from our erstwhile “allies” the USSR. Remember, FDR invited Soviet agents to American in their thousands. After the war, they simply never left — the essence of McCarthy’s ham-handed presentation of charges.
Most all of our problems subsequent to WWII have been related to our inability to defend national (i.e., blood) interests in favor of The Other. How many “Americans” today can honestly claim American heritage, meaning ties to the founding of American during the English colonial period?
Not many, I will speculate. Consequently, the default position is to confuse the somewhat arbitrary legal status of US citizenship with “American” which is an adjective used to describe the Anglo-American colonials that captured the world’s imagination in the 18th C.
Now seriously think about this — especially if you have an immigrant history. Colonists come to build. Immigrants come to take a job and earn money. This distinction has been all but obliterated, given the social mandate to minimize tension and hostilities between essentially incompatible groups, especially those that killed each other and terrorized natives in the urban ghettos of the Great Wave (mainly Boston and NYC).
And so today, “American” as a word has been significantly diluted to describe something closer to a “job market” or “social club” that one may join at will, with no particular commitment required.
In other words, it’s all about the money, liberty and Christianity be damned in the cause of “everyone get[ting] along.”
Now I understand how many would see universal military service as a corrective to this problem, but as with so many “politically correct” nostrums, it misses the unspeakable true problem in favor of a proxy that lacks a full correspondence with the unspoken. In other words, agency interests diverge and unintended consequences apply.
What to do?
First of all, all authentic Americans must demand a return to the ancient meaning of “American” which is as much a noble title as mere adjective relating to things of the American continent.
Secondly, it must be acknowledged, even enthused, that there is only one way to be authentically “American” and that is by membership in the family. This may be through birth or adoption — the kernel of Heinlein’s idea (himself hardly an Anglo-American but observant none the less).
When my American forefathers stood against King and country it was not for money. They were rather prosperous on arrival at Plymouth Rock. They came here for Liberty. This is the animating ideal for “America” as a concept and as the light unto the nations my Pilgrim blood sacrificed so much to create.
Secondly, we must understand that those citizens or inhabitants who seek only money, opportunity, or other selfish end are not “Americans” in this ancient sense. They are merely rent seekers, wage seekers, food seekers, opportunity seekers, etc.
Now we come to the nub of the Tea Party.
So long as it focuses merely on money, it misses the point. So long as it pretends a family of ten year’s presence on American soil has equal claim to American bounty as a family of 400 years’ presence (and all the entailed sacrifice and bloodshed implied), I for one will say “To the devil with you all! Damn you in the name of my fathers!”
Why? Because it reduces noble America to an ATM machine.
My forefathers did not sacrifice, suffer, shed and spill blood for the benefit of Huddled Masses and Wretched Refuse. They did so for their blood offspring — their “posterity”, their children’s children. Me. My sons. My brothers.
All others are guests, hangers-on, or worse. I do not care how “hard” they work” or how “good people” they are. This is irrelevant. This land is emphatically not their land.
And the mellowing/decline of the so-called “Tea Party” is the proof. Who would endure so much abuse, and potential bloodshed, for filthy lucre? You’ve got to be kidding me! Yet any gain by the Tea Party favors immigrants — legal or not — equally as it does the Founding families of America, let alone the United States government (two completely separate things).
I will no longer toil and sacrifice in my life for the benefit of alien foreigners. I have my own sons to raise.
Further, the contemptible disrespect, slander, libel, and accusation directed at authentic Americans, almost exclusively at the hands of US citizens or inhabitants of immigrant extraction, boils my blood. If I and my people are so evil and (insert racist/bigoted/homophobic here), Why on Earth did they impose themselves on American shores in the first place?
So the long and short of it is, I will never fight for them. Apparently, quite a few of us won’t either.
And why should we? It is a sucker’s game. It detracts from the interests of our own flesh and blood — and the invaders have not paid us even the minimal respect of assembling an actual invasion force.
So I say this to the Tea Party and those that might support it:
Why? Why would you impose your will, at great personal cost and sacrifice, for the benefit of foreign, alien ingrates who were only too happy to take American dollars — but who in the next breath did all they could to insult and destroy everything our Fathers held dear?
To the devil with them all — and with the imperial* government that has protected them at our expense.
The Spirit of 1776
– Host of the original Tea Party (felony, first class: treason)
– American since AD1620
– Much abused and misunderstood ever since
Post Script:
If you’re going to argue for something, it’s best to understand what you’re arguing about:
Nation: a people related by blood and history, with a common destiny
Country: a land, a region, a place with commonly understood boundaries
State: a controlling government, the sovereign
Civilization: a concept of life accepted by inhabitants of a given land
Examples:
The American Nation: descendants of the English colonists and those that were able to “assimilate” to them
(i.e., “making toward the same thing”, to be indistinguishable from the original, “a” toward, “simil” same, “ate” a positive action).
America: the 13 original English colonies in North America, especially with respect to New England, and the lands conquered and colonized by their descendants. (See Toqueville.)
The federation of the United States of America: a trade and mutual defense commitment for the benefit of the 13 Free and Independent States of America (since corrupted and now our would-be master)
American: the American civilization of Liberty and Freedom to live the Christian life as envisioned by New Englander, Southron, Borderer and Quaker alike. Since then, semantic shift has expanded the term to be coincidental with anything coincidentally existent on the land-mass of the north American continent.
*imperial in the classic sense of an entity that spans many nations, whose interest is the enrichment of the regime at the expense of the rest.
Spirit of 1776,
Your misread your calendar; today is April 1st.
Sincerely,
Tam
PS: Your wife called. She’s pissed about the eyeholes in the pillowcases again.
I am not so sure this is the case. There is not a ton of point or resulting effect from rallies when there is no action to be encouraged.
We’ve completed a voting season (a small one). Granted, there could be tax day protests in the near future, but are those effective every year? Or do they become sounding brass…
Such activities are most beneficial before (to encourage voter participation) and shortly after elections (to clearly express expectations to new electorate). But become less so during the periods of lower influence.
That said, I receive emails all the time from a number of Tea Party related organizations for town halls, speaker get togethers, training and educational events.
I’d say this is more of a period of sharpening swords, and teaching others how to wield them.