Political Caucuses Tilting at Free Will

The St. Charles Caucus made the news last week, but it was hardly the only one to go bad in Missouri. Personally, I despise everything about a caucus, it is blatantly open to manipulation - it's entire purpose is to manipulate caucus goers into aligning themselves for one candidate or another.  A caucus banishes the possibility of what the privacy of the ballot box guarantees - the ability to cast your vote as you choose.

The political expression of, and protection of, individual Free Will, which our society is then moved and formed by. Far too little is said of that astounding concept.

And it is trampled, in public, by the very structure of a caucus. I did not go to the St. Charles 'Raucus Caucus', because I have no intention of standing up for whichever politician I manage to convince myself that I dislike least, which of course has the adverse affect of strengthening the position of those I like even less.

A caucus is a way of manipulating the actions of voters to reflect the will of those who are best at manipulation. And this post on the Jefferson County Tea Party site, by someone going by the moniker of WrongOnRed, "Central Committee Hijack- Contrary Caucus View" gives an excellent description of similar goings on in the Jefferson County caucus, and videos as well, of people engaged in, with the best of intentions, I'm sure, of manipulating political power to impose their will, unseen (they hoped) upon their fellows - for the greater good, no doubt.

But even better than the political blow-by-blow, he goes deeper towards the true issues involved, including this passage,

I say all this to lay a foundation for what I am about to say. I have always been intrigued and drawn to the concept of  “Free Will” in Christian Scholarship and Theology, but only in the last 2 years, have I come to realize and internalize that  “Free Will” of which St. Thomas wrote and “Liberty” of which Dr. Paul writes and speaks are actually the same thing."

Leaving aside the Ron Paul issue for the moment, Free Will is more than liberty, liberty is the political condition that is conducive to exercising your Free Will, without impeding others from doing the same. But Free Will is much more than that, Free Will is the seat of You in life, it is how you are able to live as a human being, human life, rationality, reason, love, morality, Right & Wrong, would vanish without Free Will - or the ability to exercise it.

We perceive reality, we see what is and in so doing we have our first choice to make - to acknowledge and respect reality, conforming our will to what is true 'Nature to be commanded must be obeyed'; or to deny it, choosing to attempt to impose our will upon it, freely choosing to lie to ourselves and everyone else. Every child at some point chooses to use the magical power of words to lie about reality in order to get what they want, some never learn how harmful that is, to choose to pursue Power instead of Truth.

Every person in exercising their Free Will has a central choice to make, whether to choose based upon reality and truth, or upon what we wish were true. The first is the path of truth, virtue, morality, and that is the path upon which you can choose to pursue happiness.

The other choice is to reject reality where it conflicts with what you wish it were, in order to make your will more real than reality, that is the path of power and it knows and can know nothing of truth, virtue or morality, and it pursues nothing, it is in perpetual flight from reality, and it will never, ever, know happiness.

A life where you were not free to exercise your Free Will, would be inhuman. Those points in your life where you must make a decision, nearly every second (pay attention some time, count 'em), are those moments where your life is you in action - you are never as much actively in your life as at those moments when you choose, and what follows from your choices is a life created by you - one worth living because by your nature you created it.

When someone prevents you from making your own choices for your own life, they do much more than perhaps violate laws, they forcibly remove you from those points in your life where life is lived, and insert themselves in your place in your own life - they are hijacking your life... forcing you into the passenger seat of your own life, bound & gagged, unable to steer your own course, no longer free to live your own life, staring out the windows with no idea or clue as to where you are going.

There's an evil there that makes zombie movies look cute.

A 'human being' without Free Will, would be nothing but a robot bouncing off of obstacles in a pin ball machine. The secret to the Left is that, beginning with Rousseau, that is what they believe, that you do not have Free Will, that your actions are not chosen by you within your life, but are necessarily determined by outside events. In modern philosophy, which is to say Leftism, you simply react to outside events, and 'happiness' is nothing more than a pleasing arrangement of bumpers and with flippers padded to make the least jarring impact to the robots zooming around within the game. The entire purpose of the Leftist State is to replace those moments where you would exercise your Free Will, with their state imposed bumpers and flippers, directing your life from without.

Tilt.

But there is a danger in exercising your Free Will that no one ever escapes, left, right or center, the left simply is more explicitly in favor of it than the rest, and that is separating yourself from reality by saying that 'the ends justify the means', that it is OK to exert your power over others, because in the end, it'll all work out for the best.

If you read or watched The Lord of the Rings, Sauron's ring, the Ring of Power, doesn't force itself upon people, it lures them, lures them with promises of being able to bring about the Good they seek to do, what they know would be best for all concerned. Gandalf and Galadriel see the temptation and turn away from it, knowing that True power comes from making choices, not imposing them... Boromir didn't, and he sucummed to it, even though he never wore Sauron's One Ring.

What "WrongOnRed" didn't mention, in his support of the Ron Paul people, is that they did the very same thing, he is so upset that Bryan Spencer did, as this from Brent Stafford, the person at the center of the St. Charles fiasco, makes clear:

Let me digress a moment. We had prepared very well ahead of time. I won't get into all of the details, but the Mitt Romney people agreed to support me for Chairman. This was an incredible vote of confidence in my ability to chair and to convene a fair process. I had also hire the President of the Missouri Association of Parliamentarians who I intended to appoint for that role. I never got that chance.
Eugene Dokes appointed the Creditials Committee, Rules Committee, and Parliamentarian. These are all appointments made by the elected Chairman, not the temporary Chair which is what Eugene Dokes was acting as. The body loudly booed and started making all kinds of points of order and other declarations of disgust at the blatant disregard for the proper process."

Power. It always looks good to those who seek it 'for the best of intentions'.

There are two videos in the post which show people, doubtlessly good, well intentioned people, seeking power over others, with the best of intentions.

Tilt.

'Tea Party Express' - more like a boil, than on the boil

The national political action committee known as the 'Tea Party Express' is rolling into St. Louis today to tell us locals that they've determined who the best grassroots 'Tea Party' candidate is for Missouri's U.S. Senate race, and we should all be good little folks and rally around them.

There are a number of problems with this, not the least of which is the fact that the official filing period for those who'd like to run for the senate hasn't closed yet, so there is a possibility that we, here in the actual grassroots, haven't even seen all of the potential candidates yet.

Another is that the primary has barely begun, we've barely heard from any of the candidates, let alone heard enough to determine who would be the best candidate to support.

But the part which disturbs me most has to do with what the Tea Party is, and what it is not - I hope.

The Tea Party has from the beginning, been the result of local citizens whose outrage at government gone wild got them up off their sofa's to come out and tell their representatives 'No more!', and in doing so, they looked around and noticed that they were not only not alone, but a force to be reckoned with.

Some individuals rose to the top of these groups, either by being the first to publicly say 'No!', which others heard and rallied to, or because they were willing to put in the time and effort to keep in touch with their new found fellows, and continued to let them know when and where they could best meet again to question their representatives and communicate to them that enough was enough, to communicate a message that might be summed up as:

"We are Americans, and we have Rights that are ours by our nature as men, they are not given to us as gifts from our government, and we have a constitution that was designed to make that relationship clear, and to constrain our government from thinking otherwise; We have a Constitution, it is time to follow it!".

Some of these people have followed where their new paths led, into political campaigning, media or simply sustaining their local rallying points, supplying their fellows with important information and ideas on how to keep the pressure on... but what pressure exactly was that, and for what?

The pressure has always been in the form of one person communicating questions, information and ideas for action, from one to another, occasionally meeting together again at a protest or rally, or a politicians appearance, or at the capitol rotunda, or the ballot box, but whatever the case, it has always been a movement that originated from the ground up, a true grassroots movement.

In this context grassroots has a particular meaning: it began, and continues to be, individual citizens communicating with each other, whether through email, blogs, rallies and/or other media, it's substance and momentum has come from We The People.

Even when there were national coordination’s, it was between those who had found themselves as... leaders isn't quite the right word, in fact it easily leads into the opposite of what they truly were and still are, they were people who organically found themselves at a focal point, the confluence of their fellows concerns, and coordinated ideas and actions with others who found themselves in similar positions, around the nation.

There were no elections, there were people who stood up, and who found that their fellows agreed with them, and urged them on. The people at those focal points have shifted and changed over the last few years, some still there, others tiring of the strain, slowed or stepped aside and another took their place.

These were not elections. They were not representatives. This was not a political party. They were not a form of government. They were people who were moved to action and found that they were not alone. They did not set the agenda, they simply expressed best what their fellow citizens were trying to say.

That is not the case with the so-called "Tea Party Express".  This organization is a political action committee, funded by donors, perhaps sprung from the same original issues that the local Tea Parties were, but it is another animal entirely. By it's very nature it is NOT 'grassroots', it has it's own agenda, and while it may have had the same origins, it purposefully pulled itself out by the roots and transplanted its original growth into a tended planter, watered and cared for by financial contributors and beholden to others concerns.

Whether or not they still promote the same ideas is not the issue. They are NOT representative of the Tea Party, because they are NOT what the Tea Party IS. They've, on their own, without connection or even consultation with local citizenry, selected and decided to promote one candidate in our Senatorial primary, over the others. Why? Because they feel that that candidate is 'electable'.

If that's not the mating call of the entrenched establishment, I don't know what is.

And the fact that they expect to simply roll into town and tell us what we think or should think... makes my blood boil at a far higher temperature than any tea pot has ever whistled on the fire before.

Their endorsement of any candidate in our local elections, is foolish, futile, infuriating... and doomed to failure, because they have no roots here... or at least not amongst the local grass. Weeds perhaps. But no grassroots in sight.

There is a Method behind the Left's Arbitrary Madness - The Rush to Slut-Gate and Esau’s Pottage, pt 2 of 3

I said in the last post that it was pointless to argue with the accusations which the Left heaps upon us, because the truth of the matter is less of a concern to them than what they can make people believe is true - it is pointless and self-defeating to ask what they mean by their accusations. Rather than risk getting sucked into furthering their purposes, it’s better to ask

• What they are seeking in making the accusations,
• Why they are seeking it, and
• How do they intend you to help them accomplish their aims.

That last, the How, is the most important to grasp first, because in making their claims, it is that How that they use in order to claim that they are just being 'realistic', practical, that they are more concerned with the real world rather than those supposed fantasies and nefarious intents of Conservatives who are so concerned & obsessed with mere 'Western-Centric Rights and Morals'… and it is through exactly that pretense that they manage to avoid reality entirely, imperiling us all.

ar•bi•trar•y/ˈärbiˌtrerē/ Adjective: 1. Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system. 2. (of power or a ruling body) Unrestrained and autocratic in the use of authority.

Though they claim to be practical, the so-called ‘reality based community’ discards what enables man to understand reality in the first place, a principled regard for Truth, and the erratic behavior which results from that rejection, is the key to what conservatives find so jaw-dropping about the left. What's more, if you're not very careful, engaging in their arguments will pull you into the relativistic quicksand with them - if you give in to their premises, if you slip into arguing over whether 20% or 60% tax rates would be better, or even about the 99% vs the 1%, then you will concede the only solid ground you had to stand upon to begin with – that of Principle.

How do we get sucked into it? Ask yourself this,

• when they have you arguing over whether it is better to keep income tax rates at, say, 30%, or to raise them to 55%... what is it that you are Not discussing or arguing over?
• When they have you arguing over what should be done with the richest 1% who are hurting the interests of the 99%, what is it that you are Not discussing or arguing over?

Once you've followed them into their argument you are reinforcing their premises, and even if you disagree with them in your conclusions, they are not going to justify or explain themselves to you – that would require reaching beyond the moment to the larger principles and truths which they just succeeded in getting you to discard - they will simply reassert their current position more emphatically, and more accusingly and more insultingly than before, because that's the only option left, such as,

"I'm simply speaking out for contraceptive rights [insert conservative objection here] Are you serious? You would deny that to women? How could you violate such a fundamental right? IT'S LIKE YOU WANT TO WAGE A WAR ON WOMEN!!!"

– sound familiar? How do they do that?

The answer is that when they suck you into discussing and arguing over their particulars, one more outrageous than the last, what you are NOT discussing, or even thinking about, is whether or not a government that is concerned with the liberty and Rights of its citizens, should consider having such a power in the first place. What you are not arguing or discussing is whether or not such powers and actions are compatible with "Equal Rights for All", what you are not arguing or discussing is whether or not it is Right to even discuss dealing with any percentage of the population in a more, or less, favorable manner, than any other percentage of the population; in short, what you are not discussing or thinking about, is whether such actions are in any way compatible with your fundamental principles, and the reason why you are not discussing or arguing those important fundamental questions, is because you allowed their attention getting, but unimportant non-essential particulars, to make you forget to consult your principles.

When you mislay your moral compass of Right and Wrong, you become lost at sea. For Conservatives, that's a problem. For Leftists, that's their destination.

For the proregressive leftist, when conservatives oppose them, when they line up detailed arguments about why it is that what they say can’t be true (which, remember, was never a concern of theirs to begin with) they aren’t going to refute that argument, they will simply accuse their opponent over the real reasons (the hidden code words!) that conservatives are attacking them - and if you pay attention, you'll notice they are making your motivations into being decidedly non-conservative ones (that'll be a key issue in my next post on this).

The DailyKos recently had a good example of this tactic in action with one of their moon-bat’s explanations of why it was ok that Bill Maher insulted Sarah Palin, and yet how it was truly shocking that Rush Limbaugh insulted Ms. Sandra Fluke – sorry for the language, it’s his:

“When Rush called Sandra a slut and a prostitute he was bullying an powerless innocent.
When Bill called Sarah a twat and a cunt he was bullying a powerful bully.”

David Axelrod, smearing lipstick on the proregressive pig, gave what amounted to the same position, that:

“"But understand that these words that Maher has used in his stand-up act are a little bit different than — not excusable in any way — but different than a guy with 23 million radio listeners using his broadcast platform to malign a young woman for speaking her mind in the most — in the most inappropriate grotesque ways. And and nor does Bill Maher play the role in the ... Democratic Party that Rush Limbaugh plays in the Republican Party, where he's really the de facto boss of the party. ”

, prettier words more finely spun into glossier lipstick, but it’s still a Pig.

Still, the Conservative, when presented with these statements, will typically bristle as if they were arguments that expressed ideas concerned with reality, and then work to expose their errors – errors being those points where their argument departs from reality – and we’ll work our darndest to show how Fluke was in fact not innocent, that she selected Georgetown in order to cause an incident, and that Palin has never used her power to attack anyone or to shut anyone down, that Mahr himself has a show which he uses to provide powerful politicians and other ‘opinion leaders’ a platform to promote those positions he agrees with, and ridicule those he doesn't, to millions of viewers. But the fact is that even if the conservative were to write an airtight brief proving that and more... the leftist will simply dismiss it as being mean-spirited, or some such, dropping the conservative’s jaw yet again.

Why? Because we miss their point entirely: the reasoning behind their statements, and the supposed argument of ideas, is irrelevant to the Left, such reasoning is of concern only to those who believe that Ideas have a basis in reality and are important because of that – the left does not. The left believes that ideas express positions, not an understanding of what is real and true, but of what they’d like to be real and feel they can get away with making work for the moment. The Left holds Positions; NOT , strictly speaking, Ideas, but opinions which are popularly agreed to – and in such a view it’s not the positions that need explaining – they are simply assumed to be ‘correct’ because the Leftist feels that they are. To their minds their positions are improved not by the demonstrable quality of their argument, but by what passes for conviction amongst the left, large quantities of like minded others who agree with them (hence their almost talismanic regard for the power of polls) – and with such a scale of value, only the positions and motivation for upholding, or attacking, those positions matters.

When the conservative sees the words ‘bully’ and ‘innocent’, their thinking is directed to the meaning of the concepts involved, for instance,

"Hmmm... to bully means to force someone against their will, to initiate Force against someone means violating a persons Rights, Rights derive from the essential nature of man as a reasoning being, Reason requires choosing to ask questions, checking your answers and assumptions against reality, checking to see that you don't go astray and so arrive at what is True, and if true, acting in accordance with that. If that is True, is anything else related to this that raises contradictions and would indicate an error? Does it integrate with other concepts and reasoning's... citizenship? Manners?..."

And so on. Whether or not a person does that implicitly or explicitly, well or poorly, that is the nature of conservative thought, of Western Thought, the nature of logic - if a person was engaging in bullying behavior, forcibly violating the rights of others, a conservative would have to acknowledge that and stop defending them, or be a hypocrite. Conservatism requires Principles and and a respect for Truths that extend and integrate with other concepts and situation.

The dyed in the wool proregressive leftists doesn't go through that process. They don't seek long range, integrated reasoning and cohesive answers, they simply ask whether or not a person is for, or against, the current position of the Left, and if not, attacks them, somewhat like this:

I want this, it'll get me that. Others will support me on it. Is this guy arguing with me a conservative? Have they done or said anything that in anyway can be construed or spun in a mean spirited way? Is there anything they've said, that on its own would resemble that? Is there?! Then that'll work for the moment, "You're a Bully!" Boom Winning!

The leftist is not looking for answers, but for doubts, doubts that can be humored at will, arbitrarily, doubts are what enable them to wish for how things should or shouldn't be - as the old Capital Hill button said, 'Reality is negotiable', and they negotiate unilaterally, dropping the conservative’s jaw yet again.

We shouldn't be surprised though, the truth of the matter was never their point, accomplishing the stirring up of opposition was, and that opposition chips away at the public’s perception of what they are opposing. See Bill Lind’s excellent article, Political Correctness: Cultural Marxism for a deeper explanation, but in a nutshell, they are practicing 'Critical Theory', as in "Critical Race Theory", and every other variation that has evolved from Descartes original 'Method of Doubt':

" What Critical Theory is about is simply criticizing. It calls for the most destructive criticism possible, in every possible way, designed to bring the current order down"

'Is it True?' is a question that is entirely beside the point for the leftist, as Nancy Pelosi so eloquently demonstrated when she was asked where in the constitution the authorization for ObamaCare could be found, she replied:

“Are you serious? Are you Serious?!”

Translation: ‘Do you really mean really? Who cares! What is important is that it helps get what we want and helps sully and silence those who we oppose!’

Their Position is what is important to the left, and they do not seek or desire any basis in reality for it – they Want it. Period.

Dismiss the Arbitrary So here we are, yet again, what do I mean by ‘The Left’, or the Proregressives? Aren't there 'conservatives' who behave this way as well? Yes there are, in fact if you went to college, unless you were forearmed, it's highly unlikely that you don't have a touch of it yourself, which is why when I use those terms, I’m not referring to only Democrats or even Proregressives, or excluding those who place themselves on the Right, I am instead referring to all of those whose thoughts follow from the broad, fundamental philosophical principles (!) which formed, and which are peddled by, modern philosophy.

“There is also a third kind of tyranny, which is the most typical form, and is the counterpart of the perfect monarchy. This tyranny is just that arbitrary power of an individual which is responsible to no one, and governs all alike, whether equals or better, with a view to its own advantage, not to that of its subjects, and therefore against their will. No freeman, if he can escape from it, will endure such a government. ” Aristotle Politics Book IV

From Descartes, Rousseau & Hume, to Bentham, Kant, Hegel and all those who have followed in their footsteps, such as J.S. Mill, Marx & Keynes, this includes not a few amongst those of the Right and of Libertarians as well (Mill in particular, is admired by many among the Right and Libertarians, as a paragon of ‘Classical Liberalism’ – but in fact he was not, he was the one who ended the movement and in his own life as well, going to the grave as a socialist).

The people who learned their reasoning from these guides, are people who, in all of their fundamentals, promote the rule of unreason, the arbitrary desire over reality and that is the rule of power, it is the elevation of the arbitrary to a ‘respectable’ option, or as the New York Times said last year, it is using ‘ "Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth"’, and sadly the most successful means of peddling it, is that of America’s chief contribution to modern philosophy, Pragmatism, best summarized by one of its originators and popularizers, John Dewey – the Father of Modern American Education (you wonder why our schools are what they are), as being

“There is no absolute and unchanging truth, but rather, truth is what works”

, or in other words “What works at the moment, is what is ‘true’ enough” – which amounts to the highly ironic elimination of principle… on principle.

Pragmatism buys them the ability to decide upon how one particular thing appears at that particular moment, without worrying about the next moment; it frees them from having to be consistent in either thought or deed that extends beyond the moment, and as we see daily, such a narrow minded, short term view, is compatible with Power only, and is entirely incompatible with liberty.

But it takes thinking beyond the moment, it takes having a regard for what is true, over what you wish were so, to be able to even form complex conceptual hierarchies, such as the Good, Beautiful and True, to see the unity between them, let alone concepts such as Individual Rights, Property Rights, Right Reason and Natural Law. The left is literally blind to the fact that an Income Tax is a violation of Individual Rights or that Property Rights are the basis of Liberty. Do most conservatives see the ties between these concepts today? Sadly, not so many, no... but that is because they haven't been taught them, our schools having discarded all reference to such matters over the last century or two, but they could understand them if taught, while the leftist, bound to what works for the moment, will see no further than the tangible particulars in front of their face and burning in their desires. Individual Rights and particularly Property Rights, require a respect for Reality, a passion for Truth and an understanding of, and willingness and desire to abide by Principles which extend beyond the given moment, they are the means of pursuing happiness, which cannot be had without them.

Such a short term, narrowly focused view gives a person a dangerous sense of certainty, a hubristic approach to life that says “If I don’t see it, it ain’t so”, as is on display with quick witted but exceedingly shallow sorts such as Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher, to whom some of the wisest people in all of history, such as Thomas Aquinas are dismissed out of hand

“They believed in talking snakes… I should listen to him?!”

. It can also be seen more alarmingly in those many instances of regulations gone wild, such as are pointed out in John Stossel’s “Illegal Everything, again and again you see a perspective which refuses to look beyond the fixed particulars involved. 'Something is being sold without a mfg license”, the fact that it's Lemonade in a lemonade stand, or Girl Scout Cookies being sold on the front lawn of two children.. cannot make it past their particularized and dis-integrated point of view.

Their self-satisfied, self-sufficient and underfunded excuse for ‘common sense’ is what enables the leftist to believe that when Bill Maher refers to Sarah Palin as a despicable conservative, he is simply ‘speaking truth to power’ (what an embarrassingly childish phrase, I've always expected it to be followed by "But MOM! I'm ELEVEN years old!"), and justifies any other insult that comes to mind.

That is the Left. It is always and relentlessly seeking to breakdown any and every far reaching or long term rule or custom or anything else which holds up standards which are concerned with the long term. Modesty, manners, respect for parents, respect for authority, postponing engaging in various activities until an adult or married or anything else – to whatever extent something is based upon the long term and wider truths, by their very nature they are in opposition to and frustrate what can pragmatically be done now, right now, to make something work! - for the moment.

There is no need for conspiracies here, no need for organized cabals, it is simply what results when you seek what you want, more assiduously than your respect for what is and must be – when you put your desires over what you know to be True, you will begin a progressive collapse from the highest, broadest and deepest of integrated understandings possible of life and your place in it, downwards to the shallowest, shortest term, most particularized of desires focused upon pleasure and power you can achieve for the moment – that is just the way ideas work out when put into practice. The expediency of the moment is the fulfillment of the desires they seek - that is the only ‘Truth’ that can be cared about by those who willfully seek the short term over the long term, stimulation over happiness – Principles, in-depth concepts, logic, even reality itself, come into opposition with the Left, and it is unavoidably so.

The best way to rid ourselves of the Proregressive Left, is through the same method that they used to gain a foothold in America in the first place – through Education. But this time that Education must be one that respects reality, as a whole, rather than one that denies it, one track of thought at a time.

Left Alone
So how do you respond to the left, whose accusations are not based in reality, but only in how they arbitrarily want reality to be? One clue can be found in one of the Founding Fathers of Western Civilization, Aristotle, who said that the only proper response to an arbitrary statement, was to not respond to it, but to dismiss it out of hand as being arbitrary, and he’s right.

You cannot correct the arbitrary – it isn't that it's false, it's that it isn't even false - correction requires an adherence to reality that the arbitrary has by its nature discarded. It's as if someone told you they were using 2+7 = 4, not because they thought it actually added up to 4, but because they wanted it to, they like 7's and don't think it's used often enough. What can you do with that? You can't argue with that, that would require their having a concern for what numbers actually signify, they don't care if it adds up, they like the look and they want you to accept their arbitrary whim. As Aristotle said, you can't argue with that, you simply dismiss them. However Aristotle was never faced with people who buy ink by the barrel and video by the mega bandwidth… we do have to respond, but how?

Don’t bother pointing out that their statement is false – that implies an attempt at logical reasoning which they never even tried for, and as Rush found out, it only spreads the accusation - as with our arbitrary mathematician, they don't care that 2+7=4 is wrong, they just want people talking about 7's, and your arguing with them about it accomplishes their purpose. That is ‘the How’ of their method, that is how they enlist your aid in helping them to spread their accusations, like a virus - you spread it by replying to it, your treating their arbitrary positions as worthy of arguing against, always, always works to their favor in the end.

Don’t play their game, make them play by yours, and you do that, not by responding that contraception is not a right, but by asking them to define what a Right is, and then asking them to define the basis for that. Don’t reply that contraception is not a right, laugh at them - after all they did just say something no more sensible than 2+7=4 - and say something like:

“Contraception’s purpose is to turn procreation into recreation... you want a constitutional right to recreational equipment? You're seriously asking for a governmental policy on recreational sex? What next, Dept of Homeland Orgasmic Delight?!”

, and then bring them back to reality,

“It's not possible that we're talking about the same things here, what is it that you think a Right is?”

, and if they balk,

" What, you just want to hear the sound of your own voice? Let's not waste time, make this mean something, what do you think a Right is?"

The real answer to the question of ‘how do you win an argument with a proregressive leftist?’ is that you cannot win an argument with a leftist, the Left cannot be defeated… but it can be dismissed, it can be left behind, it can be replaced, by refusing to carry it any further forward on the strength of your own willingness to grant them legitimacy.

The truth is that we’ll never be able to defeat the left, but as its adherents disappear through embarrassment and attrition, it can be replaced with people who respect reality and revere the Truth.

Allow the Left to be left behind.

The Rush to the Reality of Slut-Gate and Esau’s Pottage pt. 1 of 3

The Left delights in being accused about what it’s accusing others of doing… ever notice that? Whether or not their accusations are accurate isn’t the reason why they make those accusations – for the Left, particularly the Proregressive Left (Alinsky and the like), their accusations are the point of the accusations they make - not what the accusations state, but that an accusation is made. If you respond to them, you accomplish their purpose, that being legitimizing and spreading the message that accusations have been made. Even if you are right in your response, they do not lose – you do.

I almost fell for a variation of this myself, in talking with a friend on my side about this picture you see here to the Right. My friend didn't make the silly mistake which Rush Limbaugh recently did, in fact he even made the very important observation that 'Illiberals tend to use quantity instead of quality to debate', (I'd say always, rather than tend, but that's quibbling at this point), he was concerned that in posting this picture on my facebook page, I was  inadvertently making a straw man argument which would weaken our position against them. What he didn't realize was that he himself was enabling their position against us, by assuming a position ourselves, rather than insisting on sticking to ideas.

My friend's particular concern was that in using the comment of the pictures caption('We can get free sh*t from the government!'), when Sandra Fluke didn't technically use those words, that:

...as dumb as Fluke's argument is, she never argues for free stuff from the government. Rather, she is demanding that religious employers and charities need to put contraceptives on their health insurance plans.... I just want to be clear when making arguments against the left and it is completely false to say she's asking for free stuff from the government....The leftists will use that crack in logic to try to LOL in mass you out, even if your arguments are better. Illiberals tend to use quantity instead of quality to debate.

While I fault his assessment of her true position, he is right in his assessment of their response (though I think he failed to see that he would come in for it as well) - how do you respond to that?

After all, the left is still thoroughly enjoying being all aghast and aTwitter over Rush Limbaugh’s recent Slut-Gate demonstration of how not to respond to them. When he wondered whether the word “Slut” might apply to a women who laments about a friend needing $3,000 worth of contraception in order to get through law school, his statement, and especially his apology for it, enabled the left to demand that companies boycott and remove Limbaugh from the air, but it did more than that. It also bolstered the visibility of their carefully crafted issue high enough to demand that presidential candidates, as well as every other conservative politician in range of a microphone, should apologize for Rush's comments and pointedly distance themselves from him, which is a source of power to the Left that depressingly few seem to comprehend. And then of course you can't help noticing that these very same leftists, journalists, comedians, talk show hosts, etc, who have been so outraged over Rush's comments, were delightedly twittering and snickering over how Bill Maher called Sarah Palin a c**t, and they found no issues or difficulties whatsoever with politicians then going on his show to discuss his many other fascinating comments and insights.

The person on the Right looks at this and says WTH?! And the person on the Left says… What?!

How do they get away with this? How does it make sense? To reasonable eyes, they are lying, they are getting called on it, and yet they are getting away with it, over and over and over again. What you may not be seeing, is that their behavior, and their accusations, and their re-accusations to your reactions, are the primary means of ginning up the public furor they need to gather the social currency, acceptance and the political power they need in order to take that which a respect for Individual Rights and Liberty would otherwise withhold from them.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about the Nuclear Freeze movement in the 80's, or the anti Iraq war protests of a few years ago (during Bush's term only, of course), or even a seemingly small policy issue such as ‘minimum wage; they accuse, we respond, and then they accuse louder, more self-righteously and more viciously. Our responses to their accusations enable them to attack, sully and obscure the issue, and in doing so the real principles involved, such as Individual Rights, are pushed to the background, replaced by whichever particular things or actions they happen to be calling for today, and how very useful or practical they are. The accusatory tool, such as contraception, things which seem sensible when looked at in isolation: 'Nuclear War would be bad', 'a barrel of oil isn't worth an Americans life', the need for 'a living wage'; become the only things discussed - and by that means, step by step, the critical principles are forgotten as the left edges their way closer and closer to being able to brush the conceptual barriers aside and take what they want.

And we help them do it every time. If Rush owes an apology to anyone, it is to his audience for taking the bait and enabling the left to vent their spleens and further obscure the boundaries of our Rights and Liberties, even further than they were before he responded, logically, to what the left's accusations clearly meant.

A word of advice to all when trying to understand how to respond to the left - don’t bother looking for the answers where the left isn’t concerned with your finding them - IOW what they are saying, and the implications of what they are saying - no matter how outrageous or hypocritical, or even on occasion, sensible, they may seem - it is all safe ground for them, and they know it; it is after all the position they've prepared for you, and if you take the bait and engage them on it - you lose.

The key isn’t so much that the leftist see’s themselves as being lying hypocrites – they don’t - as that those things which they think of as being true are never more than instances of isolated ‘factoids’ and positions which they feel will work for them for the moment. In the eyes of the Left, holding these varied, even fragmented, positions are seen as being examples of ‘intelligence’ (it's actually more will power, than intelligence, but they don't understand the difference), and when someone is able to hold these fragments together simultaneously in their mind, no matter how contradictory they are when taken together, is a skill that is admired by the left, as with Bill Clinton, and are seen as impressive traits of complex people who are ‘very compartmentalized’, nuanced, etc.

On the other hand, the Right sees their varied positions not as discrete instances, but as fragmented parts of a whole, clearly contradictory positions, often despicable and unprincipled ones at that - which is precisely what the Left sees as evidence of conservative’s ignorance and moribund stupidity. The Left sees conservative’s reverence for timeless truths, particularly those which come from religion, as being nothing more than examples of their being obsessed with traditions that have been handed down to them from time out of mind and as having no value other than their being old. To the Left, these are simply how conservatives escape from thinking (’clinging to their guns and religion’), mere stand-ins for thought which the Right clings to without thought, to escape from making the effort to do what the Leftist does, ‘bravely’, that of dealing with ‘what works at and for the moment’ and refusing to pretend that there is, or could be, anything more to it than that.

The disconnect is that the Right seeks general truths which if followed would reward the practitioner with a worthwhile life, principles which integrate into larger Truths without contradiction, because far from being impressive to those on the right, the refusal to tolerate contradictions is in fact THE fundamental starting point of logical thought (see Aristotle’s rule of non-contradiction). In the conservatives mind, the person who manages to do this consistently, overcoming the urges and desires that are ever tempting us towards taking the easier path, that person becomes Virtuous and worthy of their highest respect and admiration. But that is a view and practice that has long since become an exiled and alien view to the Left; those urges and desires are what they pursue (again, see Bill Clinton for reference), the leftist does not even attempt to integrate their views into something beyond that current single and slender track of thought they are engaged in, consequently they don’t really see contradictions, instead they see separate tracks of thoughts and actions to be taken and judged one at a time. When you call them on it, they can honestly say to your face ‘What?!’

Calling them on what appears to be hypocrisy, misses a key essential of what it means to be a hypocrite – namely that of believing one thing and doing another. At no time does a full blown proregressive leftist believe One thing – or at least not in the way that someone on the Right would understand that concept; that of expecting that each thing you do, one way or another, to integrate into One, Big, Whole of what is good, right and moral. Not so for the leftist, they simply believe that their disparate beliefs and positions (contradictions) help them to advance towards a better position, and the splintered edges that are often exposed from attempting to hold such positions are simply opportunities for clever compromises in order to artfully cover them over with. The more of these positions a person can manage to maintain, the more complex and nuanced they are, and as long as they help them to achieve the greater goal, it’s all good – for the Left, the Ends truly do justify the means.

Reality is your Friend - Don't turn your back on it!
To even give the benefit of the doubt to what Fluke said, as not being a desire and claim for being given free stuff from the govt, is to concede vast amounts of territory to their attack. Did she verbally ask for free contraception from the govt? No. Was she actually asking for free stuff from the govt? You're damn right she was. She is demanding that businesses, churches and individuals, be forced to offer or provide products or services, not through honest efforts of negotiation, but through shear thuggery - and whether or not they are 'allowed' to offer them for money, or are forced to offer them for free, are small, secondary issues - don't take that bait.

I wouldn't personally bother with pointing out that they are demanding free stuff, because that is a secondary issue, nonetheless it is true that she is demanding free stuff, free compliance, free concessions, through the muscle of govt intervention.

To restate that more clearly: She is NOT simply insisting that it is 'right' for religious employers and charities to put contraceptives on their health insurance plans, while being careful to not be mistaken for demanding something for free - if she wanted to ask for them to do that, I'd tell her she had every right to seek it. But that isn't even close to what she is doing. What she is doing is demanding that govt force religious employers, charities, individuals, to put something particular on their health insurance plans, in this case contraceptives, and she in particular, and the Proregressive Left in general, deserve zero respect, zero toleration and zero sympathy for that, and as much indignant opposition as can be mustered (one of the best features of this caption my friend and I were disagreeing over, was that it came from a cartoon, and is clearly more concerned with mocking the proregressive left, than with making a reasoned response to them, and mockery in such matters is always preferable to a seemingly logical response) - and with NONE of your response being on the grounds that they are attempting to drag us onto, that being women's health, 'contraceptive rights' or any of the rest of it.

The fact is that the primary issue is that she is demanding that Rights, and I mean the very concept (Quality) of Rights, be erased from the argument in favor of various quantities of benefits and privileges being offered to some particular people, in this case women, who have conned a favored place from those in power in exchange for their support. What she in particular, and the Proregressive Left in general are seeking, rabidly so, is an end to the concept of Individual Rights, which is the only true source of equality available to any in society, in favor of collective benefits and privileges, which are to be doled out unequally to those who best beg favors from those with the power to offer them.
Pure barbarism... and not a little bit of evil to boot.

Do Not give them the benefit of the doubt in these matters, don't offer up technicalities for their convenience, such as

'Well, she didn't actually say she wanted the govt to offer free stuff'.

And above all don't respond to what they are demanding, or try to refute their reasoning - they have none, they are the Arbitrary incarnate - demand that they step onto your ground, Reality, demand that they deal with what is True, demand that they explain how their positions (and they have nothing else but positions, no ideas whatsoever - I challenge any leftist out there to prove otherwise) are compatible with even the ghosts of America's concepts, which they can't yet pretend don't exist - Reality, Truth, Principles & Rights - and they will break themselves upon those concepts or run like a troll back under their bridges, lickety-split.

Ask them to define their terms. The Stock-in-Trade of the Proregressive Leftist, is your willingness to assume that because you both use the same words, you are talking about the same things, and they use your generous willingness to gain ground over you that they are entirely incapable of seizing on their own power. When you ask them to define their terms you accomplish two huge victories.

1. you begin the process of insisting that they deal with Reality.
2. you put them back into the alien world (to them) of concepts and principles from which they exiled themselves long ago (more in following posts).

For instance, when a Sandra Fluke insists you are denying them their right to contraception, waging war on women, etc, do not take the bait, do not reply to what she's uttered, instead, ask, repeatedly (believe me, repeatedly will be an understatement) that she identify what it is that she means by "Rights".
You will get one of two responses to this:

1. having never really thought of it beyond what they heard someone else once say (either in school or on The Daily Show), they will give you some boilerplate fluff about 'human rights'... which is begging the question and telling you nothing - don't accept such intellectual beggary, do not accept nothing in payment for your time and effort, demand payment, demand that they identify what it is that you are both supposedly discussing - ask again: 'What are Rights?'
2. or from the more corrupt sorts, you will get every diversionary tactic under the sun, they will call you names like you wouldn't believe, they will insist you are using secret code words for racist, misogynist, class-warfare, etc, but what they will not tell you, is what Rights are - you can declare victory here as they turn mental tail and run .

Sorry to say to all my conservative friends, but the 1st Amendment issues are not the primary violations here, this is an assault against liberty itself. Religious liberty is secondary in this issue, and Free Speech as well. Though it is true that both are being violated, debating the proregressive left on this issue as if who is paying for any part of this, is any part of the actual issue, or even that religious liberty is the issue, is getting suckered into responding to the arbitrary, and it's all down hill from there - see Rush's slut-gate gaffe for reference.

The primary issue involved here, is that the left is agitating for the govt to force its will upon individuals, violating their Individual Rights, their Property Rights, their right of contract, and above all else, everyone's ability to live their own lives!

Focusing on any other issue, IMHO, is a losing proposition all around.

More to follow in the next post, on how those who claim they are just being 'realistic', manage to avoid reality entirely.

Abolishing Freedom for the 99%

The new Breitbart site has this post "Exclusive: SEIU Helps Occupy ‘Abolish Capitalism’", which you should read and listen to very, very, carefully.

As you do so, you should keep in mind that "Capitalism" was the term which Marx used to rename the Free Market with... why? Why do you think? Who could possibly stir up a free people against Freedom? But against money/capital? That's as easy as stirring a pot.

Why should you care? Try this out, read that headline again, but this time try reading it as what it actually means: "SEIU Helps Occupy 'Abolish Freedom'... now how's that working out for you?

Nothing short of Evil.
In the video, during a panel at the "New School" (I'll come back to that in a moment) in New York City, you can hear such luminaries as David Graeber from the University of London Anthropologist and Anarchist, who coined the phrase "We are the 99%", as he says:

"What strikes me is that if one is going to pursue this to its logical conclusion, the only way to have a Democratic society, is also to abolish Capitalism in the State."

And another panellist, Marina Sitrin, Attorney for Occupy Wall Street, nails it with this comment:

"But, um, we can't have democracy and capitalism. We could make more representation I think, but democracy and capitalism don't work together."

On that point, our Founders, such as John Adams thoroughly agreed. And for that reason they did everything they could to ensure that we would never, ever, become a Democracy, as they, and these people, understand the term to mean.

Why? Because he knew, as do these scum, that Democracy means nothing other than mob rule. They knew that it meant that no one's property could be secure or safe under a Democracy, and they understood that if no one's property was safe, then no one's lives could be safe because no one could possibly have any rights at all; unless all individuals have the means to retain their property and make their own decisions about their own lives, then no one can have anything they could possibly refer to as being 'their own lives'.

No Mob can rule, if individuals have rights. Period. No Property Rights, no Individual Rights, no Liberty and no Freedom, can endure or even exist, under Mob Rule, aka: Democracy.

Welcome to the 99% who occupy the Gulags. Oh, and as to the "New School", those of you in Missouri who have memories longer than a news cycle, you'll love this one; how many of you remember Missouri State Senator Jeff Smith? Do you remember him as he likes to be remembered, and as his new employers at the New School,  who employs him as a Professor of Political Science, would like him to be known as:

THE NEW SCHOOL MILANO SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, MANAGEMENT, AND URBAN POLICY 2011–2012 CATALOG Faculty Full-Time Faculty Jeff Smith
(PhD, Washington University), assistant professor of politics and advocacy. Smith majored in Black Studies and Political Science at UNC-Chapel Hill before going to graduate school in Saint Louis. He has taught political science at Washington University (Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence) and Dartmouth College. At the Milano School, he teaches and conducts research on campaigns and elections, the role of race in urban politics, policy advocacy, and the legislative process. He served in the Missouri Senate from 2006 to 2009 as the nation’s only white state senator from a majority-black district. As a co-founder of a group of inner-city charter schools, the Confluence Academies, he became the senate’s leading voice on education reform. He writing a memoir about his experience in state politics and contributes to The Recovering Politician, a blog for former elected officials. His articles have been featured in Inc. and New York, and he has been profiled in Harper’s, The New Republic, and other magazine. In 2004, he ran for the congressional seat vacated by Dick Gephardt, losing narrowly to Russ Carnahan. His youth-powered grass-roots campaign was chronicled in the film Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?, which was lauded by the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune, and short-listed for an Academy Award.

Or do you remember him as he should be remembered,  as David Birdnow remembers him, as a locus of political corruption, criminal behavior, and as a felon:

"...in the summer of 2009. Smith had committed perjury and filed a false affidavit with the Federal Election Commission in 2004, in connection with an investigation concerning election fraud in the congressional primary. In January, 2009 the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern Missouri, reopened the criminal investigation after uncovering new information concerning the obstruction of the FEC inquiry. Smith pleaded guilty to two felony counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice, with each count punishable by up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. He resigned his office on August 25, 2009 and was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison, and a $50,000 fine. Smith served his prison term in a federal facility in Manchester, Kentucky and spent three months in a halfway house in St. Louis. He was released from federal custody in late November of 2010. Doctor Jeff Smith is now a professor of political science at the New School in New York City..."

Sure hope none of you have any children, or friends (I'm afraid I have one friend there) being 'educated' at the New School... yeah, it's new all right, very proregressive.

Be sure to read that article, because your St. Louis Post Dispatch has the same amnesia as New York's New School does... apparently that's one Missouri Newspaper which has absolutely no understanding of what "Show Me" means.

How about you? Are you going to wait until the people behind Occupy Wall Street shows you what Democracy looks like?

A Warrior Poet goes unexpectedly to rest - RIP Andrew Breitbart

A Warrior Poet goes unexpectedly to rest.

A picture swiped from a friend,
from the dinner I missed

Damn... the news today knocked the wind right out of my sails as I turned on the radio this morning and heard that Andrew Breitbart had died during the night at the too young age of 43. So young, but what an impact he made in that short time, truly amazing.

On one of his stops through St. Louis, Dana Loesch invited a number of us to dinner with them, and to my regret then, I couldn't make it, regrets that are all that much greater today.

It may be a bit odd, but the image that has always come to mind when I think of Andrew Breitbart, is Stephen, the crazy Irishmen in Braveheart, the one who says

"Ireland, it's my island!" and "The Lord tells me he thinks he can get me outta this, but he's pretty sure you're fooked."

, a slightly manic, happy warrior, who sees the battle clearly, knows what must be done, and does his best to do it, no matter the consequences. My heart goes out to his wife and children, and his many, many friends and fellow warriors, and among them especially to Dana & Chris Loesch.

Here's a repost of mine from  last year, from picking up his book, "Righteous Indignation", a book I heartilly recommend: 

************************************************************************************

 Strolling through CostCo yesterday waiting for our pizza order, I idly picked up Andrew Breitbart's "'Righteous Indignation' Excuse me while I save the world!'" from the book table. It wasn't on my list of books I wanted to read next, but the rest of the stack was even less interesting, so I opened it up and began thumbing through it, and caught my eye on the introduction

"To my Dad Gerald Breitbart, and Clarence Thomas, two decent men who inspired me to act."

Hmmm. Thomas is my favorited Supreme of the last century +... and he wasn't what I expected to find in Breitbart's book.

Okayyy. Thumbing forward, I glanced over the first couple pages and then saw this on page 3,

"When the Soviet Union disintegrated, the battle simply took a different form. Instead of missiles the new weapon was language and education..."

Ok. Now I'm actually reading, not just glancing,

"... and the international left ahd successfully constructed a global infrastructure to get its message out.
Schools. Newspapers. Network news. Art. Music Film. Television.
For decades the left understood the importance of education, art, and messaging.
Oprah Winfrey gets it. David Geffen gets it. Bono gets it. President Barack Obama gets it. Even Corey Feldman gets it.
But the right doesn't. For decades the right felt the Pentagon and the political class and simple common sense could win the day. They were wrong."

Yeah... ok, this book is bought. Mine. In the cart it went.

I began reading it late last night, and through this morning, not finished yet, but so far it's a rollicking good read. His descriptions of his parents matches mine pretty darn well, down to the stern talk with his Mom at the depths of his college disollution; substitute his college years at Tulane, Louisiana, with my decade at Travelling Rock Band U, West Coast Campus, and there's a lot of fun (and embarrassing) recollection points.

Those superficial points aside, so far it's a very entertaining and accurate summary of events from the last two decades, and very interesting to get the view from the interior of the early internet Drudge Report worlds entrance of the New Media, and the old media's horror at the noisy uninvited guest.

What sealed the deal and prompted me to post this recommendation of the book, was chapter six, 'Breakthrough', which begins with his wondering how it was that things came to be the way they are today. He (correctly) assumes that today's Marxist left didn't just spring fully formed out of the 1960's, so where did the flight from our American roots come from?

He makes a brief essentialized summary of our Founding Father's conception of things, and then nails it with something I very rarely see, and always am thrilled by when I see that someone else see's what I see. From page 107,

"The Founders' realistic view of human nature and call for limited government and individual liberty found its opponent in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and, later, Karl Marx. Rousseau thought that people were naturally good and were corrupted only by the development of the surrounding society (he himself was not naturally good, fathering five children out of wedlock and abandoning them all to orphanages). He also thought that modern society, created as it was to protect property rights and life, had destroyed the natural communism that prevailed before the advent of society."

YES!!! Damn I love to see that in print. Hard to fight an enemy if you don't know who it is, and too often people pin the our problems to developments that came far too late in the game, and then unknowingly buy into aspects of the real problem, in an attempt to fix things [insert most of modern proregressive republicans here]. As I noted in a recent post,

"Modern political philosophy began when Jean Jacque Rousseau declared that he’d traced the origins of injustice to the first man who fenced off property and called it his own, married a woman and started a family. Everything else in political modernity is rooted in that thought, and it is in absolute opposition to what this nation was founded upon, Property Rights and the family."

Back to the book, Breitbart continues,

"To people like Rousseau, the solution to the evils of the current society was the creation of a new "social contract," one based on the "general will." The "general will" didn't need any checks and balances, because it embodied the entire will of the people. And if individuals argued with the general will, they lost.
Karl Marx's ideas picked up where Rousseau's left off. Unlike the Founders or even Rousseau, he didn't care much about human nature - for him, human nature didn't really exist. In fact, he went further: human natue was produced by surrounding society. If human nature was to be changed, it could be changed only by destroying the surrounding society."

Aside from, IMHO, cutting just a little too much slack to Rousseau, and giving too much originality to Marx, I give that a hearty "Yeah Baby!", and a thumbs up recommendation of the rest of the book for anyone looking for a very readable, entertaining and also informative book on where we are today and where the battle needs to be taken in order to save the day.

It's not often that someone gets the essentials like he does, and can pin the start of the rot to Rousseau and Marx, without getting distracted by all the rest. I wonder if maybe because of his background in the entertainment industry, Brietbart wasn't overly impressed with where most libertarians and Ayn Rand Objectivists seem to stop and peg as the first cause of our modern troubles, with Immanuel Kant. As important as ideas are, the imaginative expression of them, trumps their sheer cataloging and explanations of most philosophers, Kant especially.

Kant, it's true, was a game changer in philosophy, after him, Nazi Germany and the killing fields of Communism from the USSR through Red China & Cambodia, were all but garaunteed, but Kant mostly just put tomes worth of intellectual justificaiton under the ideas of Rousseau (not that any of Kant's misosophy is valid or worthwhile, but it's long, and B.S's enough to successfully tell the self impressed whim worshiper exactly what it is they want to hear in order to justify whatever it is that they want to do).

But Kant is about as exciting to read as a manual on how to kill yourself by reading dense, boring, twaddle, and he would have gone nowhere, would never have been recognized, without being able to ride upon the inspiration of Rousseau's siren song of naturalistic self indulgence, posing as intellectualism.

And, skimming ahead, that looks like that's probably more than Brietbart bothers the reader with, looks like he moves on to a very brief sentence or two on Hegel and Marx, the path to Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson and the Proregressives, identifies a couple quick quotes that capture the essentials of them, from Teddy Roosevelt,

"To hell with the Constitution when the people want coal!"

. and Wilson,

"Justly revered as our great constitution is, it could be stripped off and thrown aside like a garment, and the nation would still stand forth clothed in the living vestment of flesh and sinew, warm with the heart-blood of one people, ready to recreate constitutions and laws."

and

"Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals".

, then jumps to Gramsci & the Frankfurt School, but just that one mention was a thrill for me to see in popular print.

Anyway, if you're looking for a good read, and a guide for how you can help take the battle to where it's going to be the most effective, pick up Brietbart's "Righteous Indignation", and enjoy joining in on saving the world.

Ok, going back to reading the book.

Note: Buy the book.