Shorter Everyone

August 28, 2010 | Posted in Politics | Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 49 Comments ↓

Giving the condensed version of yet another “I know you are, but what am I” column, this one from Dennis Prager, the foul (really) enemies-within (your head) at Sadly, No! summed up the conservative unity position on everything these days as follows:

All liberals are assholes because they all make negative generalizations about all conservatives as a group whereas conservatives never make negative generalizations about all liberals as a group. Take this column for instance.

Someday, but more likely never, I may learn to express myself as economically as the enemy of all that’s right and good who blogs as “Tintin.”

49 comments on “Shorter Everyone”

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  1. One approach to honest communication is to be able to ask/answer two questions,what do you want? How are you going to get what you want?

    What I want is for those within the Republican,Tea-Party,CONSERVATIVE circuit,to get what they want. The only way that is going to happen,is to segregate the nation,because,what I want is to live in an America in which FDR’s 2ND Bill of Rights is incorporated into our Constitution. But I don’t want those opposed to that to suffer. The answer is,of course,the two state solution,right here. Everybody votes with their feet,and moves to Blue USA,or Red USA.
    I believe that those Conservatives want is something they have never experienced,and probably never will,so the only way for them to experience what they think they want,is for birds of a feather to flock together,and experience what happens.
    As far as Blue USA,where I would choose to live,I would structure that on the lines of America as it was under Eisenhower,minus the paranoia of the WOT.
    As a Blue Resident,we will probably stick with Mr Obama as our leader,the Reds have a wide variety to choose from,I recommend Mr. Ryan as a thoughtful Red CIC,but,I don’t really care.

    Reply

  2. @ Rex Caruthers:
    Had a big argument about that already, 150 years ago, though it was the other side trying to force the issue. The good guys won.

    The 2nd BOR wasn’t up for discussion, of course, but most of the same arguments apply.

    Reply

  3. The world is an unpredictable place. Truman won a surprise victory in 1948 because nobody expected him to carry states like Iowa, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, etc.
    In 1936, two states voted Republican: Maine and Vermont. Maine today is iffy, but Vermont is Democratic.
    As I have said before, Laura Bush and Vice President Cheney support gay marriage.
    African Americans typically vote Democratic, but are likely to be socially conservative. They are probably the most religious group in the United States.

    Reply

  4. Had a big argument about that already, 150 years ago

    Nothing was resolved,nothing ever seems to get resolved.

    Reply

  5. Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Conservatism, Dennis Prager, Glenn Beck, Howard Portnoy, James Taranto, JE Dyer, JEM, Jennifer Rubin, Jonah Goldberg, Karl, Lotus Feet, miguel cervantes, Peter Wehner, Populism, Rich Lowry, Sarah Palin, Scientific Socialist, Sully, Tea Party, Victor Davis Hanson, Zoltan Newberry

    The above,and myriad others have taken the place of the left in the sense that they are the UTOPIANS. Like the Leftist/Communists of the past,these new Utopians will sacrifice millions to make their fantasies about society come true,but,like the LEFTISTS,they will not be able to remake mankind to their specifications.

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  6. ‘Surely you can’t be serious, and don’t call me Shirley’ Rex, have you missed the whole point of the last two years, it can’t be done. And you
    call neocons utopians, ‘irony it’s whats for dinner’. How do we risk millions of lives, pressing for a smaller state, are you having a flashback to 1968

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  8. MC/call neocons utopians, ‘irony it’s whats for dinner’. How do we risk millions of lives, pressing for a smaller state

    MC,give me an example,just one,anytime in history,of a Government that meets your standards,and I know you can’t. Without a social safety net,(FDR’s 2ND Bill of Right),Millions starve under a small Government scenario.
    The Monarcy of Louis 16th is a good example of the endgame for small Government. The Ayn Randians are the most unrealistic Utopians in history,and I can’t wait for the rise of the Union of Free AynRandians to watch the slaughter.

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  9. Really, in Vietnam we had close to 500,000, in Iraq, 150,000, domination seems smaller and smaller by my lights, I know it’s arguable
    that economies of scale, render that comparison a little invalid

    Reply

  10. Mr. “I am the State” really, he’s just a tea partier at heart. I guess you could pencil in, Catholic Center leader Henry Bruening, the so called ‘Hunger Chancellor’ but then he got a bad rap for that. Now
    someone may inevitably encounter the fate of Louis XV111, an illustration of the consequences of massive debt,or Czar Nicholas,

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  11. Mr. “I am the State”

    That would have been Louis XIV, “L’eta c’est moi.” By the time things rolled around to Louis XVI (“he was the worst, since Louis the First!”), it’s was more “L’etat, say whuh?” Though maybe not a great example for Rex’s thesis – unless he’s thinking two or three breakdowns ahead… Other examples can be found from the period between 1776 and 1787, when virtually every thought about relationship between government and individual/family/people was thought, and a very wide range were tried out, right here in the future USA, including some that look forward to council communism and anarchism (also soviet communism before it went bigtime). But trying to imagine what would take place under a successful and continued relatively controlled major devolution of power from the central government is difficult. It’s easier to imagine a great deal of disruption and destruction being done on the way to some reactive version of corporatism or socialism (is that what Rex is hinting at?). I get the sense that a lot of people are already practicing to call it whatever their eventual masters require them to call it.

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  12. OK, now you’re being ahistorical, Shay’s REbellion really doesn’t resemble any communal arrangement, although it was a challenge to the Confederation’s authority. Where are you get this, from Draper, Page Smith, Morgan, et al

    Reply

  13. @ miguel cervantes:
    From South to North, between 1776 and 1787, there was broad and wide-ranging experimentation in all 13 former colonies. The Pennsylvania Constitution was much different from the Massachusetts Constitution, and both were very different from the South Carolina Constitution, and not everyone was so sure that any constitution was better than no constitution, or any state better than no state (above, say, township level). Shay’s Rebellion was the result of one set of peculiar circumstances, though its origins were typical in some ways of the disagreements being thought, worked, and fought out during those years in diverse locales. The willingness to adopt a relatively strong and limitedly democratic-popular state under the 1787 Constitution came about as a reaction to disruption, chaos, violence, and disillusionment, even despite generally improving economic circumstances.

    I take this largely from my reading of Wood (THE CREATION OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC) and a little bit Huyler (LOCKE IN AMERICA).

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  14. MC/

    A Utopia that places freedom and Property rights above basic human needs is just as deadly as a Utopia that places equality or justice as its centerpiece.

    Reply

  15. We’re not talking of the utopia, heck even Ryan isn’t talking about slashing social security and medicare, even in your reformulated
    currency (the Rothbard. perhaps) there is only so much the government can accomplish in the domestic sphere, specially without
    raiding the citizen’s private sphere

    Reply

  16. miguel cervantes wrote:

    We’re not talking of the utopia,

    Palin, Beck, and the rest of the Tea Party wing speak a utopian language, as do their main boosters. Sure, it’s largely meaningless, but that doesn’t prevent large crowds from imagining the defeat and destruction of the evil progressives and their evil regulatory and entitlement-disbursing administrative state. Many on the right have even co-opted revolutionary language, and can be found going on in the Standard and National Review about the “ruling class,” as though the insurrection lies somewhere around the corner.

    As to what they would actually do if given power, that’s another question. You seem to believe that they’re just the demagogues they seem to be, and that all of the “Don’t Tread on Me,” “Take Our Country Back,” “Social Security is unconstitutional,” “Woodrow Wilson is the son of Satan” stuff is for the easily led.

    Their unity position is tax cuts and they claim to be in favor of attacking entitlements. So, they could be expected to give that a try, at least for a while. If it didn’t work big-time and relatively fast, then things might start to get interesting, especially since the conservative foreign policy establishment is dominated by traditional hawks, and since what otherwise unites the right is cultural revanchism and populist xenophobia. Amidst whatever economic, security, or combined emergency, a lot of that small state constitutionalism might disappear, or at most provide a cover. Alternatively, they could just turn out to be ineffective, and we could muddle along amidst continued erosion of the economy and state, punctuated by occasional crises, eventually swinging left again as a weary and frightened populace seeks meaning and security within the loving arms of the strong state. Judt called it the “social democracy of fear,” and you might add “pain” to it, though it also has a positive aspect.

    We could head there in any number of ways, however. I’m far from convinced that the right is on the way back to full control – even of itself, much less of the government.

    Reply

  17. As opposed to ‘hope and change’ CK, a stimulus bill that proven not to work, because it wasn’t designed to, government managed auto companies, an inpenetrable layer of bureaucracy due to Dodd/Franken,
    the cap n trade fraud, the axfixiation of even more of our industrial capacity, more scientific shamwow like the embryonic stem cell scam

    Reply

  18. @ miguel cervantes:
    Yes, I know, the big argument for the right is “we’re no worse than they are!” based on the usual political MRE – chicken tetrazzini and the “cap n trade fraud.”

    Reply

  19. The first rule of holes, is stop digging, not bring extra dynamite. Don’t tax cuts on balance aid the economy more than hurt it, I know it seems counterintuitive. Has appeasing Iran, won us any praise, or just
    their contempt. More inportantly, how did spending TARP funds on everything except their intended target ‘toxic assets’ solve anything

    Reply

  21. @ miguel cervantes:
    We already know that you’re a hardcore ideological conservative. I suspect we could list 50 Tea Party Republican platform points, and you’d come down on the right side on every single one.

    Reply

  22. @ Fuster:
    It depends on how you define “the economy.” For free market true believers, “the economy” means “business,” and everything that stands in the way of business is “inefficient.” Where each neo-Reaganite stops on the way to totalized libertarianism is impossible to guess. They’re not worried about such details. They’re too busy dreaming about the gay work of destruction ahead, on the way to a republic of virtue.

    Reply

  23. That’s not really a response, CK, the question is do you want more of this, or do you not, What use is the stimulus in your neck of the woods
    for instance, of course even considering the prospect of “Governor
    Moonbeam” suggests mutant sheep if not demon sheep. Of course, Governor Wilson wasn’t a real improvement either.

    Reply

  24. @ CK MacLeod:
    Doesn’t much matter if the emphasis is on business. Tax cuts for people who take the extra funds and buy property in Ulan Bator, powdered rhino horn, or take advantage of a price dip on Zimbabwean diamonds ain’t gonna help as much as a tax cut for people with fewer options and more unmet needs.

    Reply

  25. I don’t think yak yurts are a profitable investment, one has discovered in this last cycle, that those who were more fervent in pushing higher
    taxes were less diligent in paying their own, Geithner, Rangel, and Mr.
    El Gamal. for instance. Now revenue actually increased when rates were cut, as with capital gains after 1995

    Reply

  26. miguel cervantes wrote:

    a profitable investment

    and people who are wealthy often don’t require that investments be profitable in other than in the long-term, miggy, nor are they as likely to be spending and/or investing directly in the US economy.

    Reply

  28. Fuster wrote:

    @ CK MacLeod:
    Doesn’t much matter if the emphasis is on business. Tax cuts for people who take the extra funds and buy property in Ulan Bator, powdered rhino horn, or take advantage of a price dip on Zimbabwean diamonds ain’t gonna help as much as a tax cut for people with fewer options and more unmet needs.

    We’re mainly in the realm of faith here. Conservatives begin with the presumption that all taxation and regulation are objective reductions in ideal free market efficiency. Where they establish their baseline of necessary spending varies, but they’re mainly convinced that taxes are already too high. Where people put their money is skewed by other factors, which on the way to the neo-Reaganite libertarian small-state would increasingly be in red white and blue we’re number one job-creating business of America is business, not rhino horns.

    Reply

  29. MC/

    A good indicator if a concept is Utopian is that there is no previous example of that plan in recorded history,thus it becomes an act of faith if the concept is viable. The leftists have created a few such “Utopias” which proved to be quite Hellish,National Socialism,International Socialism etc. If the Conservatives are able to sieze power anywhere,(they’ll never win by election),they may have a chance to implement AynRandism,and if that’s not Utopianenough for you,how about BeckHannityism, or even JRUBISM.
    But the fact remains that there is not one historical example of the system you so desire.

    Reply

  30. CK,
    BTW,Today was JRUB day at Contentions,8 posts of which 7 are hers,(The Usual/No Surprises)

    Do you think she’s paid by the volume of posts,or by the word?

    Reply

  32. @ Rex Caruthers:
    I presume they pay JRub just to be her very special self, loving her to pieces whatever she does. As little as I care for JPod, I wouldn’t insult him with the suggestion that he’s actually aware of her writing.

    As for Conrad Black’s piece, I wouldn’t endorse every word of his analysis. I’d like to believe that his diagnosis is correct, and that the rot is only skin deep, but, even if I could, I see no, none, zero sign that his prescription could be administered under the current terms of our national political debate.

    Reply

  33. Conrad, “Bless his heart” is not a laissses affair, he likes strong figures, Duplesssis, in his native Canada, FDR, he’s no gold bug. Because of his strong pro Israeli stand, and his support of neocons, he was targeted by Fitzgerald and co,

    Reply

  34. Beck as you’ve now doubt now by now, is a much more aggressive dissident from monetary and even other dogma, having invited Ron
    Paul and even the disreputable Alex Jones,on one occasion Hannity is more an orthodox conservative, Palin is more libertarian, tempered by the unique circumstances of Alaska’s political geography.

    Reply

  35. analysis. I’d like to believe that his diagnosis is correct, and that the rot is only skin deep, but, even if I could, I see no, none, zero sign that his prescription could be administered under the current terms of our national political debate.

    The Debate is the Crisis as it was from 1845-61,we have to settle what has never been settled(A House Divided)/you keep telling me that things were settled then,but were they? BTW,I’m a big believer in the benefits of Divorce. We need a Las Vegas style Divorce,Rick Perry style,let Texas lead the charge away from from this stalemate.

    Reply

  37. Hannity is more an orthodox conservative

    I wonder what W Chambers would have thought of Hannity;it wouldn’t be pretty.

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  38. Rex Caruthers wrote:

    you keep telling me that things were settled then,but were they?

    The things that were on the agenda to be settled, were settled. The country was less than 1/10th its current population, the vast majority still living a rural/agricultural existence. So, no reason to expect everything to be settled forever. It’s been twice as long in years from Civil War to 2010 as from 1787 to Civil War. In both human and material terms the differences are much greater and more profound.

    On the narrow issue of your Divorce plan, it’s just a terrible as well as fantastical idea, and, whenever you bring it up, I naturally assume you’re joking to make a point. Now, if Conrad Black turns out to be a cockeyed optimist, and a bunch of other bad things happen, sure, the vast inland empire could break up, but I doubt that it would be a clean, non-violent, fair, and cost-efficient Rooseveltland vs Randland operation. In the meantime, no one has the right to give up some section of the country and designate it for Free Market Libertarian Absolutists, without regard to the rights, investments, expectations of all the people who happen to be living there already, arent FMLAists, and don’t feel like moving, not to mention the rest of us who’ve been investing in the FMLA-area for generations.

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  40. On the narrow issue of your Divorce plan, it’s just a terrible as well as fantastical idea, and, whenever you bring it up, I naturally assume you’re joking to make a point.

    If the Federal Government had decided to allow secession in 1861,which I would have supported,there would always have been the possibility of reintegration on a voluntary basis/East-West Germany. If there were a serious secession movement today,I would support it,as opposed to forcing the secessionists to be yoked to a system that they despise.

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  41. Chambers one recalls had thought he had joined the side likely to lose,
    he did remark on the Conservative tendency to ‘shoot their wounded’
    Burnham was much more an ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here’ as close to a Spenglerian in the national zeitgeist

    Reply

  42. miguel cervantes wrote:
    Chambers one recalls had thought he had joined the side likely to lose,
    he did remark on the Conservative tendency to ‘shoot their wounded’
    Burnham was much more an ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here’ as close to a Spenglerian in the national zeitgeist

    The Bad News:Nobody in the current Conservative movement has the intelligence of either Chambers or Burnham
    The Good News:Some Conservatives today are waking up to some degree. See Conrad Black above and his work on FDR;read the following by Jed Babbin,”After seven years of American occupation, those goals are as distant as they were in 2003.”
    http://spectator.org/archives/2010/08/30/what-mission-was-accomplished

    Reply

  43. George,CK,Fuster,MC,I think this is an important article,and I would like your opinions,also,what would the CONTENTIONS line be on this?
    Thanks

    “WILL Israel remain a Zionist state? If so, what kind? These are the important questions in Israeli politics today, and will be looming over the direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority scheduled to begin Thursday in Washington.
    The secular Zionist dream was fundamentally democratic. Its proponents, from Theodor Herzl to David Ben-Gurion, sought to apply the universal right of self-determination to the Jews, to set them free individually and collectively as a nation within a democratic state. (In fact, the Zionist movement had a functioning democratic parliament even before it had a state.)
    This dream is now seriously threatened by the religious settlers’ movement, Orthodox Jews whose theological version of Zionism is radically different. Although these religious settlers are relatively few — around 130,000 of the total half-a-million settlers — their actions could spell the end of the Israel we have known”
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/opinion/30taub.html?_r=1

    Reply

  44. Yes because pulling out of Hebron and Rafah, really worked out, remind me again. Then again the same complaint could have been
    made of certain settlers in the former Mexican territorities, in fact that ultimately led to the Civil War

    Reply

  45. miguel cervantes wrote:
    Yes because pulling out of Hebron and Rafah, really worked out, remind me again.

    So Taub is mistaken,that’s OK,I’m not personally/emotionally involved in these issues;I just find them interesting,like a really good chess game. I hope you send him your opinions.

    Reply

  46. The op-ed is entierely reasonable. On the other hand, it is the Palestinians–and the Arab world–that have prevented the establishment of an independent Palestine. Had Arafat accepted the offers of 2000 and 2001, the settler issue would now be moot. If the Arab states meeting in Sudan in 1967 had not issued the Three Noes of Khartoum, Palestine would already have existed for 43 years and would have been a prosperous state.
    Most timely and relevant of all is the fact that Israel gave Gaza the gift of independence in 2005. Sharon (is he still alive?) said that if it worked out, Israel would unilaterally withdraw from most of the West Bank. “Occupation!” screamed the world. Gaza elected Hamas, which started launching rockets. “They’re hardly effective,” said the world. “Why should Israel mind a few scattered deaths every now and then?”
    And so Israel’s religious nuts grew more powerful. “We always knew Israel was bad,” said the world.

    Reply

  47. George,#47,

    So by removing all the what ifs from your statement,the bottom line is that the Palestinian/Arab strategy of “NO” might be sucessful in that it is turning Israel into a “Radical” Theocracy/Fundementalist type of Zionism,as opposed to a secular,cosmopolitan Zionism

    A side thought: Maybe the Republican strategy of “NO” is turning us into a Christian Fundementalistcentric nation,which has a high probability of turning anti-Semitic as well as anti-Islamist.

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  48. Right, Kadima lost it’s raison d’etre, because of what happened in 2006,
    the world will not allow Israel to retreat from Palestine, they must have vengeance inflicted upon them. With resolution 242 and 338,
    there was an attempt to claim what could not be accomplished on the battlefield.

    Now it is true we are a propositional nation, what one author, called a Crusader State, that is unlike many of our fellow interlocutors, in publications like the Guardian miss,

    Reply

  49. No, it encapsulates Abba Eban line about the “Palestinians never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity’ Now Shas interestingly
    enough, was one of those who pushed Netanyahu to give up Hebron, that worked out well,

    Reply
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