Where are We Going, and Why are We in This Basket?

Here's hoping this post makes it past the Google censors.  

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area – crime, education, housing, race relations – the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.” ~Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional?, 1993

Add nearly three more decades to that record.  

(C)onservatism is not so much based on ideas, but on simply observing what works, and then generalizing from there. - Dr. Robert Godwin

After the preceding sixty years, I am now an almost perfect "enemy of the Left."  I'm an old(er) white cisgendered heterosexual male who drives a pickup truck and owns guns.  The only checkbox I don't tick is that I'm not a Christian, but then I am not an "anti-theist" either.  Because I'm in favor of maximum individual liberty and minimum government power - what used to be called a "liberal" - I am now labeled a member of the "Alt-Right," which (deliberately) carries with it ominous implications of "White Supremacy." And I'm a Donald Trump voter, so I am Evil Incarnate.

If not for my heresy of voting for Trump, I might be redeemed - but I would never be trusted.

I started blogging in May of 2003 after spending time in the trenches of Usenet, on bulletin boards, and as a contributor to a failed experiment known as Themestream.  Why?  Because I was pissed.  I forgot to mention that in my CV.  I'm a pissed off old(er) white cisgendered heterosexual male. 

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know that this pissed-off white cisgendered heterosexual male is also a Debbie Downer.  I'm a pessimist by nature.  I've said that being a pessimist is generally a pretty good way to go through life - you're seldom disappointed and occasionally pleasantly surprised.  I've had very few pleasant surprises recently.

This post is no different.  You've been warned.  Logorrhea to follow.

Endgame

This blog has been, for me, a seventeen-year exploration of other people's ideas.  If you've been here long, you'll know that I use short quotes and long excerpts from other people's writings to make the points I write about.  Like most people, I am not an "original thinker."  I try to expose myself to as much as I can, and weigh it against my experience and reason to determine truth.  Then I put it down in pixels to help me get my head around it.

Over these past seventeen years (hell, over the last 25), I have slowly come to some conclusions that I'm not happy about.

Remember that last nearly 10,000-word überpost?  I told you that so I could tell you this.  Hopefully I won't be as long-winded this time.

President Trump Starts to Drain the Swamp

J. Christian Adams weighs in on the weaponization of the Justice Department.

Justice is no longer blind. Investigations, charges, and even prison terms depend on the ideological views of the targets.

If you are a friend of the president, the Justice Department “career lawyers” will do all they can to find a venue in the District of Columbia where they know a rabid population of Democrat jurors will do all they can to send you to Big Sandy.

If you doubt me, you haven’t heard of Tomeka Hart, the nasty partisan jury foreman in Stone’s trial who should have never been on the jury in the first place.

The Scales of Justice come in two versions, one for Democrats and one for Trump.

Let's examine those Justice Department “career lawyers.”

It is now plain that “career lawyer” isn’t a euphemism for unbiased and impartial. It’s exactly the opposite. It usually means Democrat, leftist, elitist, culturally hostile to middle America and feverishly anti-Trump.

Read the whole thing.

Deregulation

I've always liked Stossel:

Quote of the Day - Wolves and Sheep

I don't know who came up with this, but I cannot disagree with it:

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding on what to have for dinner.

A representative republic is 5000 wolves and 4000 sheep voting 5 wolves and 4 sheep into office to decide what to have for dinner.

A constitutional republic is a similar situation but with a constitution saying that lamb cannot be for dinner, with a Supreme Court of 5 wolves voting against 4 sheep to determine that mutton is not lamb.

Government has no real restraints in reality.

Quote of the Day - Glenn Reynolds Edition

Even if it’s pure incompetence, it’s Third World level incompetence. And that’s a best-case scenario. 

 -- Glenn Reynolds, commenting on the death of Jeffrey Epstein.

Two+ Years and No Results

Is Rachael Maddow melting down?

I've gotta replay this:

Quote of the Day - New York Times Edition?!?

‘Most of Government Is Unconstitutional’

No shit, Sherlock.

Quote of the Day: Larry Corriea Edition

From his Monster Nation post The 2nd Amendment is Obsolete, Says Congressman Who Wants To Nuke Omaha:

In something that I find profoundly troubling when I’ve had this discussion before, I’ve had a Caring Liberal tell me that the example of Iraq doesn’t apply because “we kept the gloves on”, whereas fighting America’s gun nuts would be a righteous total war with nothing held back… Holy shit, I’ve got to wonder about the mentality of people who demand rigorous ROEs to prevent civilian casualties in a foreign country, are blood thirsty enough to carpet bomb Texas.

You really hate us, and then act confused why we want to keep our guns? But I don’t think unrelenting total war against everyone who has ever disagreed with you on Facebook is going to be quite as clean as you expect.

RTWT.

OMFG

Just ran into this over at Quora.  Had to share.  Or run around screaming. The question asked was "Why is the US Federal Government incompetent?" Just read this answer:

US federal government programs are NOT incompetent. They are UNDERFUNDED.

What I mean is this. When the government first initiates a new program—any program—the program has to be written into legislation. That’s how it gets funded in the Congressional budget. Normally, when a new program begins, it’s given the funding (or most of it) that was estimated it would need to run the program. But every Congressional budget cycle thereafter has a tendency to trim the budget.

The problem is that the program’s charter is defined by law, which means the program’s management doesn’t have the ability to cut back services to match the cut they received in the budget. The program is still expected to perform all of the services they’re required to by law. It’s not like a private corporation that can make cuts in products or services until they become profitable. The government programs have to perform all of the services they are chartered to perform, UNLESS they are specifically given reprieve in the law. This does happen sometimes.

So as the budgets get trimmed year after year, these government programs will INEVITABLY become dysfunctional. They can no longer perform their services with the funding they receive. That’s why federal programs are so challenging.

The answer to this would be to require Congress to cut services as they cut the budget. This is happening more frequently these days, but it hasn’t always been the case.

(Bold my emphasis. ALLCAPS and italics, his.)

"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for." - Will Rogers. Only in Washington, D.C. is a 5% increase in a budget a "cut" when that program or department expected a 10% increase.

But this is how too many in the voting public THINK. This guy? "Campaigned (his) ass off for Bernie, from New York to Las Vegas."

My shocked face is worn out.

Oligarchy

I knew that D.C. was corrupt, but I was unaware just how bad it actually is.  Elect someone new to Congress or the Senate?  They can't represent the people who elected them because they have no power.  That is in the hands of the Power Elite, and through them the staffers and the lobbyists.  And if they don't toe the line, the RNC and DNC will do everything in their power to make sure that they don't get re-elected.  We don't have a Representative Republic, we have descended to an Oligarchy.  Watch all four parts of The Swamp.  If that doesn't piss you off, nothing will.  And note that the only members of Congress that agreed to be part of this documentary series are Republican House members - no Democrats, no Senators.

Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:



Part 4:



Torches, pitchforks, tar and feathers anyone?

SCOTUS

I know Mike Lee is being promoted for the opening Supreme Court seat, but he's currently part of the (tiny) Republican majority in the Senate.  Should he be the successful nominee, his most likely replacement would be Mitt Romney.

Trey Gowdy, on the other hand, is a member of the House and is not running for reelection. He's a supporter of the Tea Party, and if you've watched any of the videos of him grilling department officials and others, he's pretty damned impressive. He's qualified, and I think he'd be an excellent choice.

What say you?

Quote of the Day - Totalitarianism Edition

Inspired by a comment on my previous post, I went looking into Jean-Francois Revel and his book Last Exit to Utopia: The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era. In a Wall Street Journal review of that book, I found this, the QotD:

The totalitarian phenomenon is not to be understood without making an allowance for the thesis that some important part of every society consists of people who actively want tyranny: either to exercise it themselves or — much more mysteriously — to submit to it. - Jean-Francois Revel

Calls for aggressive disarmament of the American public ring that alarm bell emphatically.

Discuss.

Other People's Content

As you may know, I frequent Quora.com. Recently someone asked the question:

What are the great ideas of progressivism distinct from liberalism?

This answer by Charles Tips is one of the best, most concise responses I've ever read, and I asked him if I could archive it here on my blog.

He said yes:

All of progressivism is distinct from liberalism. It rests on an idea I hesitate to call great, but which certainly has been workable. And that idea depends on a number of ancillary ideas and methods.

The modern reordering of politics

Monarchism enjoyed a long run of more than two millennia before being beset in short order by three new politics: Liberalism kicked in in the late 17th century. Bonapartism commenced in the early 19th century followed by Marxist socialism in the mid-19th century.

It was a rough time to be a monarch or aristocrat, institutions propped up only by myth (some are made of better stuff and are more beloved of God), militia (the finest knucklebreakers money can buy) and corruption (we give ourselves titles, offices and land; you can barely survive without paying us). If Napoleon wasn’t running roughshod over your turf exposing you as not so hearty as you claimed, Old Karl was filling your subjects ears with nonsense about class-free society.

But the real kicker was liberalism, which, with its economics of productivity, stood as a rival power center. When Richard Arkwright, a poor tailor’s son, died near the end of the 18th century worth half a million pounds from his inventiveness and enterprise, it sent shock waves through all of European society. The reverberation was especially strong in the courts of kings—scientists and tinkerers and commercial men now had an engine that could produce real wealth and offer useful employment to our subjects!

The gentry had laughed up their sleeves at the very notion of the United States of America—a class-free society… with no titles of nobility… with subjects made full citizens… and the leaders of government construed as public servants!!?? Preposterous! But it kept succeeding—not preposterous but prosperous.

Napoleon came and went, and his nephew was not the adroit he was. Socialism threatened wide-scale revolution then went quiet. But liberalism had bestowed commoners with the goose that lays golden eggs. What were thinking layabout sycophants to do? And then the United States threatened to split in two. Maybe liberalism was a dead end.

Monarchy rallied and soon King Wilhelm I charged Prince Otto von Bismarck to go out and get the many German principalities and duchies to submit to his rule. He needed an incentive, and the strongest appeal to the masses was socialism. He decided to explore and so had a famous series of private meetings with Ferdinand Lassalle, leader of an early social democratic party (that being the name communists had had to resort to in order to get around sedition laws).

Bismarck soon concluded, by God, this man is every bit the monarchist I am, just for the House of Lassalle rather than the House of Hohenzollern. I know how to work with such opportunists!

And so he stole Marx’s entire scheme and implemented it in the name of the King. He hired leading social democrats into his government, united all the German states under now-Kaiser Wilhelm I, created the paternalistic welfare state, and not long after made socialism illegal. As Bismarck explained:

My idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare.

The new myth: We Care. By swallowing socialism whole, he had lucked upon the means to protect privilege against liberalism. Item #2 in The Communist Manifesto had been a graduated income tax. Implement that and the political class then has a throttle on the personal wealth of the rising entrepreneurial class. All the goodies capitalism produces can be kept—the goose can keep laying the golden eggs; we just get our eggs off the top. And we need a lot of them because We Care.

Social democracy comes to America

The United States was birthed at the zenith of liberalism as the pinnacle of liberalism. Our Constitution guaranteed a society that was flat and free. Citizens were free to pursue their own self-interest because Adam Smith had shown that turns out to be good for everyone.

In order for an enterprising man to succeed, he has to create a win for his workers so that they willingly stay engaged in production. He has to create a win for his customers so that they keep buying his products. He typically must use the profits that eventually begin flowing in to shore up the business. It is only with a great deal of risk and fortitude that he himself can gain a win.

Modern free-enterprise economics had supplanted pre-modern non-productive economics, which was zero-sum (win-lose) and therefore produced no new wealth. In fact, the old non-productive economics was now referred to as corruption. Only, for those who were well-situated, it was so much less toil than productive economics. One could become wealthy not by getting in harness for the long haul but simply opportunistically by taking advantage of one’s status.

As word of the Bismarckian bombshell began arriving in the US, several things were going on.

• Resentment, reaching well into the North over Reconstruction and the three amendments with the effect of making former slaves full citizens

• Former slaves from the South and Swedish farm boys arriving from the Upper Midwest looking for factory and trade work

• The steady arrival of “new immigrants” on the eastern seaboard—Jews from Eastern Europe and Catholics and Orthodox from Southern Europe

• The rise of industrial might and industrial tycoons

• A rising number of politicians unwilling to be content in the role of public servant

• The widespread adoption in genteel families of Victorian morality

Progressivism, the movement to implement Bismarckian social democracy in the US soon dominated both parties. However, the movement faced a huge impediment in the Constitution, a document crafted as a bulwark against statism. Here are some of the methods employed by progressives over the years in service of their great idea.

• Law schools at Harvard, Yale and other leading universities devoted themselves to a democratic reading of the Constitution—majority rules rather than the republican idea that no law is valid that impinges on the rights of anyone

• Doubling down on democracy with new voting methods—ballot initiatives, recall elections, referenda, direct election of senators and so on

• Adoption of the Prussian Volksschule, geared to indoctrination, as our public school model

• Alliance with the Conservative Democrat faction in the South

• Scientism—Spencer’s popularized version of Darwinian evolution becoming the basis for eugenics and white supremacy

• William James’s The Moral Equivalent of War

• Amending the Constitution (XVI) to permit a capitation tax (previously disallowed) on income

• The rise of Keynesian economics, an economics conceived specifically to allow for political control of the economy

• After progressive numbers were halved in the wake of Prohibition, an increasing reliance on Fabian deception

• The rise of administrative law together with federal agencies having police units not publicly accountable

• Approval of public-sector unions, which has seen a rise in public-sector compensation outpacing that of all productive sectors and with union dues going directly to the Democratic Party

• Alinskyite Rules for Radicals street politics

• The long march through the institutions, which saw progressives increasingly in control of courts, news media, the arts and other influential social sectors

• Political Correctness—the use of Gramscian ideas to control thought, meaning and culture

• Identity politics

• The politics of intractable problems and nursing grievances

• The rise of the deep state and “weaponization” of public agencies

To be sure, there are many branches to these methods, and this list is far from exhaustive. But all such methods are in support of the great idea of progressivism. In a nutshell…

And so our wealthiest neighborhoods now surround our political capitols, especially Washington, DC, and our politicians no longer see themselves as lowly public servants: United States order of precedence.

Damn, Charles, that was beautiful. And frightening.

Quote of the Day - Jerry Pournelle Edition

We have always known that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. It's worse now, because capture of government is so much more important than it once was. There was a time when there was enough freedom that it hardly mattered which brand of crooks ran government. That has not been true for a long time — not during most of your lifetimes, and for much of mine — and it will probably never be true again.

We voted our way into this.

We won't be voting our way out of it.

"Rule of Law" has been Dead for Awhile Now...

Today they just admitted it out loud.

"...what country can preserve its liberties..."

...if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? - Thomas Jefferson

Not exactly "the blood of patriots & tyrants," but I like the cut of this man's jib:

Greenwood man hangs trailer from tree in front yard to prove point

GREENWOOD, Ind. (Mar. 2, 2016)-- Greenwood councilors will hold a public hearing Wednesday evening to hear about a property rights issue after a resident decided to hang his utility trailer from a tree to make a point.

Claude Tate suspended his trailer from a tree in his front yard to express his frustration with a City ordinance.

Last year, he received a notice from the City telling him he was violating an ordinance by parking his trailer in his yard. That ordinance prohibits residents from parking trailers or RVs on top of grass.

"The City can tell you what you can and can't have in your yard," said Tate. "I find that outrageous and oppressive!"

Instead, Tate was told he'd have to put pavement down if he wanted to park in his backyard; a task that would cost hundreds of dollars out of pocket.

So he hung up his trailer just high enough above the grass to make a point.

"What you do in your backyard oughta be your own business."

"American Healthcare is All Over But the Screaming"

I've covered the Obamacare debacle here at TSM for quite a while, with the earliest post on the topic being Multiply by the Zip Code from 2009, and going on from there. The "Primum, Non Nocere" (First, do no harm) T-shirts (2010) are still available, too.

In 2013 I reviewed some Obamacare Predictions. A bit later in the year, the GeekWithA.45 provided post materials with a comment on the state of the healthcare industry. His conclusion: American healthcare is all over but the screaming.

Obamacare survived not one, but two Supreme Court challenges that were decided on the basis of - well, let Antonin Scalia say it, from his scathing dissent to King v. Burwell:

Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.

But it cannot be saved from itself.

Investors Business Daily reports this week:

Aetna Joins Growing Chorus Warning About ObamaCare Failing

A chorus, I'm sure, that has about as many members as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at this point. IBD reports:

ObamaCare was supposed to be on a roll by now, promising 20 million signing up, low cost and stable premiums. Turns out it’s on a roll all right. It’s rolling towards the cliff.

Insurance giant Aetna (AET) has joined a growing number of insurers warning that the ObamaCare exchanges are failing in just the way critics said they would. (My emphasis - Ed.) This year’s anemic enrollment won’t help.

This week, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini warned that “we continue to have serious concerns about the sustainability of the public exchanges.” Aetna lost more than $100 million last year on the 750,000 enrollees it has through ObamaCare exchanges.

Bertolini’s warning comes after UnitedHealth Group (UNH) announced that it might pull out of ObamaCare entirely next year, after getting hit with a $475 million loss in 2015. It expects to lose another $500 million this year. Last fall, CEO Stephen Hemsley said that “we can’t really subsidize a marketplace that doesn’t appear at the moment to be sustaining itself.” That, he said, “basically is an industry-wide proposition.”

Now, refer back to the GeekWithA.45's comment from 2013, where he said:

Coming off my yearly engagement with the think tanks, I've heard, for the first time, a series of data points coming from hospital CEOs that add up to one thing: the admission that exercising a hospital's primary function is no longer a source of value and revenue, it is viewed as entirely cost, risk, and liability. Consequently, they are no longer building any capacity, and are in fact looking for ways to reduce their capacity and eliminate hospital beds.

The aging boomers are gonna love that when it comes home to roost.

Again, I think it bears repeating: the healthcare industry now views exercising its particular expertise and primary function as primarily a source of cost, risk, and liability.

That, as they say, isn't sustainable.

Reality is what exists even when you stop believing in it.

But the Affordable Care Act must be saved!

Holiday Wishes from the State

Got this in an email last night. I'm sure others have seen it before, but it was new to me:

Tye-Dyed Tyranny

Bill Whittle's latest:


Best pullquote:

What kind of patchouli Senate is there in Washington and coming for the rest of us?  Well, this kind:  Let's say the you and your children are hiking in beautiful Olympic National Park.  Oh, look!  Moose antlers!  If you or your child - who didn't shoot the moose, I hasten to add, you simply found the molted antlers lying on the trail - well, if you pick up the antlers - again, not leave the park with them, but simply Pick. Them.  Up. Well, that's a five thousand dollar fine and up to six months in jail according to Federal law, 36 CFR 2.1 subchapter (a)(1)(i).

To wit:

§ 2.1 Preservation of natural, cultural and archeological resources.
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, the following is prohibited:
(1) Possessing, destroying, injuring, defacing, removing, digging, or disturbing from its natural state:
(i) Living or dead wildlife or fish, or the parts or products thereof, such as antlers or nests.

You can bet someone has been prosecuted under this law.  But at least it's not a felony!

Watch the whole thing.