House of Eratosthenes

Where do we go from here? It’s an uncomfortable question. This country does have a history of trying to find mid-point compromises where they do not exist and cannot exist; and then trying and trying throughout decade after decade until the whole thing erupts into a bloody civil war. Okay, it’s only gone that far once. But the fact remains that the search for a halfway compromise is a fool’s errand. You achieve a claim over money by earning it, or by lusting after it after someone else has earned it. One or the other of those two things, not both.

I don’t know if a secession or split is coming, or if it will actually lead to a violent conflagration. But I do know this stink is going to keep hovering over our heads until the day we make a unified, conscious, unapologetic decision to embrace socialism wholeheartedly, or reject it just as emphatically.

And now it’s time for the geek question …. is the dude to Santelli’s right who makes the “moral hazard” comment actually wearing a Star Trek shirt?

Sure looks like it to me. 🙂

I don’t know how it’s going to go, but there’s a culture war going on right now, and it’s come to a head in the last 10 years. It’s been going on for quite some time, but it’s come to a head.

And that last sentence of yours above is really it. There are a bunch of us who are trying hard to wake up our friends and neighbors. Those actively fighting for the other side are for the most part already lost. But we’ve been a center-right country mostly because our friends and neighbors still have an inkling of what America is in the backs of their minds.

They are like embers that need blowing back into a fire.

Because if we don’t succeed in re-kindling that fire, the “embrace socialism” thing is going to happen, and we’ll be swept along with it or die resisting.
- philmon | 02/19/2011 @ 21:05
All democracies evolve into socialist states by necessity: the people want the benefits. Socialism in all forms is authoritarian, and it often becomes totalitarian as in Nazism, Fascism and Communism. The European Union is a good example of this process, but America is only a generation or so behind them.

The only way to prevent this evolution is to severely restrict the franchise to something along the lines of Colonial America and to restrict or reverse immigration, which of course is impossible. In case you are hoping for a military coup d’etat, please remember that Franco’s Spain and Pinochet’s Chile had more or less socialist economies, and ultimately the counter-revolutions failed.

So, enjoy your coming socialist state. The internal contradictions of socialism will make it short-lived, although it could last a few hundred years.
- Bob Sykes | 02/20/2011 @ 06:32
Well, maybe the tenth amendment is the answer. Our federalist model is somewhat unique against the backdrop of world history, and we have shown some success in bleeding off the pressure, letting the blue-staters have their blue states. Patton would never approve, and the experiment is in constant danger every time the blue-staters try to take over the fed. But they’re putting forward a lot of attempts there that aren’t succeeding. FDR and LBJ succeeded; Obama, through the Obamacare bill, is still waiting to see which way it will go.

Trouble is, as you say, people want the benefits — so once they start getting them they’re locked in. But it does seem there is a cultural resistance in America that isn’t present anywhere else. Maybe that’s the most effective strategy we have, to spend those centuries ahead just repeating “Before you implement this nationwide mister liberal, in what states has it worked? Where has this benefit been offered, where it cost what it was predicted to cost, and not a nickel more?” Just keep imposing that test, repeating it over and over again like a parrot.
- mkfreeberg | 02/20/2011 @ 07:56
But they can’t continue to get those benefits. Ultimately socialism is unsustainable, due to things in human nature that the founders foresaw, warned against, and tried their best to design around.

However, over the years we have blown by sign after sign, warning after warning. We are not supposed to be a “democracy”. We are a republic that uses democracy as a tool. That Constitution of ours wisely restricted democracy. People talk about democracy if it’s an end-all/be-all. But it is a check/balance against other elements of our government, just as other elements in our government are checks/balances against democracy. Democracy, as I believe several of the founders noted (but I think notably Jefferson) is really nothing more than mob rule.

If we can re-educate people to that fact and lead them to understand why, I think it CAN be reversed to some degree… and at any rate if it isn’t reversed, the system will collapse under its own weight anyway. So there’s no good reason not to try.
- philmon | 02/20/2011 @ 12:51

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

Santelli Day 2011Saturday, February 19th, 2011

Santelli Day 2011
Saturday, February 19th, 2011