Translating Reality - From Marcus Aurelius to Hillary Clinton

So something odd that struck me today while watching headlines fly by my newsfeed, is that trying to figure out what is going on in the world around us today, seems in many ways to have a lot in common with trying to find out what someone said in a different time, and in a different place, and in a different language, through the many translations that are available to us, of what they themselves had to say.

Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't need translations?

I'm often frustrated with the fact that I've never learned to read Greek or Latin - I've taken a couple feeble stabs at it, but the usual excuses find there way into the moment, and... then the moment conveniently passes you by... and you need someone to translate that which interests you, for you, which means that I continue having to take my classical era 'food' in, second hand. In trying to counter that as best as possible, I enjoy reading different translations of the same work, sometimes, like today, at the same time, so that the differences that come through the different translators translations often seem striking, giving you a wider perspective on, and, hopefully, a fuller understanding of, what you're reading.

This morning I was reading the 2nd century Roman Emperor,Marcus Aurelius's, 'Meditations', through one 19th Century translation by George Long, and another recent translation by someone I often enjoy disagreeing with on other topics, Jacob Needleman, and John P. Piazza. Anyway, the different flavors that come through the translations range from mild to startling, but an example of mostly the routine, 'small' differences, that you come across, is this one, from section 1.7, where Aurelius's is reflecting on his thanks 'to a Stoic philosopher whom Aurelius valued highly', where he says, through these two different translators,

George Long translation:

"... and with regard to persons who have offended me by words, or done me wrong, to be easily pacified and reconciled, as soon as they have shown a desire to be reconciled; and to read carefully, and not to be satisfied with a superficial understanding of a book; nor hastily to give my assent to those who talk overmuch; and I am indebted to him for my acquaintance with the discourses of Epictetus, which he gave me out of his own collection."

Needleman/Piazza translation:

"...Also, to be eager for reconciliation and meditation with anyone who, having lost their temper and caused trouble, wishes to return. To read with precision and not be satisfied with the mere gist of things, nor to agree too quickly with clever debaters. Finally, to have encountered the discourses of Epictetus, which he provided for me from his own library...."

The differences in the translations of this passage seem like fairly straight forward differences of choice, and one does seem to complement the other, but that is often not the case with those who we've trusted to translate the words and wisdom of past masters, so that we can benefit by them. There are some translators (and in fact many of the celebrated translators of the 19th century), as Allan Bloom notes in the forward to his excellent translation of Plato's 'Republic' who often took it upon themselves to, in their translations, 'correct' the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, etc., by literally (!) putting those words into their mouths which they themselves felt sure should have been said by them, rather than simply translating those words that they actually wrote, and which they the translators were supposed to be translating, for our benefit.

A further interesting note, Marcus Aurelius, a Roman, like most Romans of his time, did not use his native tongue, Latin, to write or converse on philosophic matters, because they found it to be too 'clunky' of a language. So they wrote, even privately to themselves (as Aurelius was doing - his meditations were more like a personal diary of his thoughts, than something meant for public publication), in Greek. So here's lil' ol' me trying to learn from a Roman Emperor, who was writing in Greek, in the years between 167 - 180 a.d., which was then translated into English by a scholar in 19th century England, and by an American academic philosopher in 21st century America, which, for me, is fascinating. Fascinating to see the words that they agreed upon, fascinating to see the similar but not quite same terms they used in others, and how the choices of one, shed light upon the choices of the other, especially in regards to the (Long)

"nor hastily to give my assent to those who talk overmuch"

and (Needleman)

"nor to agree too quickly with clever debaters".

Anyway, what brought this to mind in more stark relief than normal, was that while reading these translations side by side, I was also seeing and hearing the different accounts of Hillary's leaving the 9/11 ceremony this morning, ranging from:

• MSNBC/NBC: 'Hillary Leaves 9/11 Memorial Early After Feeling 'Overheated', to
• UK's Express:'... leaves ceremony suffering from medical episode' to
• HeatSt's 'Hillary Clinton ‘Faints’ At 9/11 Memorial – Appears to Collapse Near Van as Security Panics', to
• The Gateway Pundit's ever subtle ' SHE DROPPED LIKE A ROCK! HAD TO BE LIFTED INTO VAN!!!'

, and it struck me how in hearing news reports from the likes of CNN, MSNBC & Fox and all the other options, our position as Americans attempting to find out what is happening in America, here and now, is very much akin to the difficulties, challenges, and fascinations to be found in reading different translations of a book that comes down to us from a long dead author in a different era, a different language and a different culture and land, where we have to rely upon how a translator not only picks and chooses to translate the words which the original author used, to match the translator's own sensibilities, to which they often add, drop, convey, or go to pains to explain what the author 'must have meant', rather than telling us what they actually said. So remember folks, that when reading or even (especially) watching the NEWS, do remember that we are engaging with our world through the translations of translators who are trying to tell us not only what was said and done, but through their interpretation of what was said and done (or should have been).

Bottom line, in reading the News of the day, or in reading what was once new, ages past - whether in your own language or on being translated into 'your' language - you must try your very best to not only understand what has been said and done, but to then think it through yourself in order to truly understand what needs to be understood, by you, in your life, here and now - otherwise it might as well all be Greek to you.

Identifying the Transgender Bathroom Issue: Flushing the West down the toilet

With all the media overload that's been put on the 'Transgender bathroom' issue, it might be worthwhile to look at it from a somewhat different perspective, one that goes in somewhere just below the froth of the spin-cycle. Unfortunately, there aren’t many of the typical articles floating around that are worth reading - mainly because most of them seem to think that the transgender issue, is about the transgendered, and if there's one thing that this latest drive towards 'toleration’ is not about, it's those afflicted with transgenderism.

Now wait, you say, these Transgender edicts and laws and demonstrations... they're all about the well intentioned concerns and efforts to make life easier for those unfortunate few afflicted with gender dysphoria... aren't they? Oh Hell no. You don't comfort the sick by inflaming their illness, nor do you afflict the healthy by forcing them to accommodate the delusions of the mentally unhealthy. What's worse, you don't impose restrictive behaviors upon all, which flatter one set of the mentally unhealthy, while enabling a more dangerously mentally ill set, the hetero sexual predator, with legal red carpet access to their prey in the most secluded and vulnerable condition - while at the same time preventing those who would defend them, from even identifying or acting upon the obvious threat. As you might be aware, identifying the obvious in that way, is... frowned upon. Why do you suppose that is?

There is one post on the issue though, by Heather MacDonald , that I can recommend, because rather than being too distracted by the transgender issues and laws themselves, she turns to some of the more fundamental issues involved. She identifies, lays fault and blame upon, the willingness of people to simply chuckle at the 'laughable' statements that have been flowing steadily out of Academia, for decades and decades. Because as she notes,

"One take-away from the transgender-bathroom wars is that the public ignores arcane academic theory at its peril. For two decades, a growing constellation of gender-studies, queer-studies, and women’s-studies departments have been beavering away at propositions that would strike many people outside academia as surprising — such as that biological sex and “gender” are mere ideological constructs imposed by a Eurocentric, heteronormative power structure. Even though skeptical journalists have regularly dived into the murky swamp of academic theory and returned bearing nuggets of impenetrable jargon and even stranger ideas, the public and most politicians have shrugged off such academic abominations, if they have taken note at all. (Senator Marco Rubio’s deplorable jab at “philosophy majors” during his presidential run demonstrated how clueless your typical politician is about the real problems in academia.)"

She's absolutely right, in that '...the public ignores arcane academic theory at its peril', but is simply noting that going to get that same public to look at these 'arcane' theories with any deeper interest? Sure, she notes how disastrous public policies have eventually followed from those who've been indoctrinated with these theories, yyyearsss down the line - as today’s issues stemmed from those theories two decades ago - but is that enough? I mean, seriously, can you imagine anything more worthy of being thought of as irrelevant by and to the public at large, than silly, unrealistic, academic theories about 'heteronormative power structures', and 'patriarchal hegemony's'? Why should they care about them? Yes, we should care, but unless people understand how to get the 'what', 'why' and 'how' of it, no one who's ignored them in the past, is going to take note of them in the future.

Isn't there something about those inane theories that should have stood out then, now and tomorrow, to alert people that they should be noted, refuted, denounced and derided as the clear and present dangers that they are to everyone from the most casual observer, to the parents of, and the students themselves, that are being subjected to them?

I believe that the answer to that is yes, there is a 'Tell' that any observer can easily identify and call them out on.

And the secret Identity Is...
There was, and still are, real, real time consequences, to the pernicious ideas of arcane wacademic theories, but it requires looking past the appearances and spin of things, it requires your not being distracted by those features that are meant to catch your attention and distract you from their real target, and thankfully in this latest issue, they've put that secret target right up front and center in their boilerplate - even though that secret is also their Achilles' heel.

To see it, ask yourself this one question:

• What do you mean by 'identify'?

At first it would seem puzzling that there is such confusion over these issues, as the words 'Identify', or plain old 'Identity' have some fairly cut & dry definitions. For instance: Identity:

i·den·ti·ty - ˌīˈden(t)ədē/ - noun - 1. the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.

, and Identify:

i·den·ti·fy - īˈden(t)əˌfī/ - verb - 1. establish or indicate who or what (someone or something) is.
synonyms: recognize, single out, pick out, spot, point out, pinpoint, put one's finger on, put a name to, name, know..."

Or IOW, to be able to identify something is to be able to distinguish one thing from another, and so become able to think more clearly about it - it is in fact one of the fundamental features of thinking itself. Now ask yourself, is that what you suppose these professors, activists and politicians are intent on doing, or avoiding doing? Is carefully Identifying what's what, what they are after? Do they themselves seem more able to identify the fundamentals of what they are yammering about - what men and women are - or do they seem astonishingly confused by the question? Look at this video, and forget about the transgender distraction for the moment, and just focus on the spectacle of the students unwillingness to identify the obvious fact that a white man identifying as a Chinese woman is and should be immediately ridiculous, but it isn't until the 5'9" man identifies as being 6'5", that finally causes some of these students to hesitate - what kind of 'education' are they receiving? What sort of education is it, whose ideas demand that you deny what you can clearly identify as being true?

The fact that they can't clearly identify or explain the positions they want you to comply with, has got to have you questioning their commitment to identifying what is real and true - doesn't it? Don't they seem more interested in passionately playing let's pretend that our positions - not reasons, but assertions - make us better than you are? It takes very little to rephrase their own statements, to identify what they intentionally evade, and to show them to be self refuting.

• Can it be true, that at that intellectual pinnacle of Western Civilization, the University, that understanding what Western Civilization is, and was made possible by, is unimportant to the Education of the best and brightest who will lead Western Civilization?
• Can it be true, that a course on English Literature, has no need to study those authors and poets which founded English Literature, and were so formative to our Culture - as is being proposed at Yale today, as it has been put into practice at UCLA several years ago?
• Can it be true, that learning good habits, virtues, morals and manners, aren't important to the reality of millions of people with differing interests and values living peaceably and civilly together in society?
• Can it be true, that socialism hasn't consistently led to disaster and destruction for those who've turned to it to make their lives better?
• Can it be true, that killing living, breathing children, is not murder?
• Can it be true, that telling lies is ok?

IOW, their "Tell" is that their reams of posturing verbiage is not meant to better reveal what is true, but to obscure the identity of what it is that they are claiming to support, they 'darken council with words without understanding'. Their 'Tell' is that their self important language of 'let’s pretend' and 'lets admire ourselves for our pretense!', consistently obscures your ability to be able to identify what it IS that they are talking about, making wise action unknowable, and unwise results probable.

Their "Tell" is to avoid identifying what they claim to be speaking about, their "Tell" is to make contradictory statements and demand that you let them get away with them, their "Tell" is to demand that, like Orwell's '1984', that we not only nod, but embrace the idea that 2+2=5, which is not simply inane, it is dangerous. And those agitating for norms and laws based upon these "Tells" are uninterested in identifying that obvious fact.

The one thing that they do seem to be interested in doing, is identifying just how much more, at this moment in time, that they can get away with, how much more they can remove from your ability to identify, and so to think clearly about, and to understand and stand up for in the world around you. No, this sudden cultural push is not about men or women 'identifying' as women or men, neither is it about being kind or tolerant towards the mentally ill, or 'fighting back!' against those who'd bully the dysphoric few, those serve as pretexts for, not the purposes of, the transgender agitators. The agitators are not being agitated up in order to help those few men or women who identify as being the opposite sex, but to take advantage of our best and brightest who have been 'educated' to the point of being unable to even identify what a man or a woman is.

And why? How well can a people who are unable or unwilling to identify what a Man or a Woman is, be counted upon to identify what an Individual Right is, or be counted upon to recognize when one is being wronged? Might that not present certain political opportunities for those whose passionate ambition is to use the power of the state to change how we all live (and even use the bathroom), for the greater good? Might that not present opportunities for those who long to live our lives for us... for us?

That, not transgenderism, is the identity of the serious issue facing us, in this and most other popular issues and causes. In much the same way that a 'Memorial Day Sale!' has far less to do with Memorial Day, than with increasing a stores' sales; the Transgender Laws, edicts and popular press, have less to do with 'the plight of the Transgendered', than with transforming and multiplying our laws into ever more versatile tools for imposing power upon the public at large, as justified on the basis of inflamed passions, rather than upon identifiable reasons – because that’s where the Power lies.

If you are unable to identify the essentials of an issue, then you become prey to any convenient pretexts serving not so hidden agendas. Just as identifying ‘undocumented workers’ or 'Dreamers', was not about identifying those who are in the country illegally, just as ObamaCare wasn't about Health care, but about govt gaining massive political power in every aspect of our lives; just as free contraception wasn't about contraception, but a means to distract us from infringing upon individual rights of choice and property; and just as gun laws and registration aren't about reducing gun violence, but as distractions from the aim of eventually eliminating even the expectation of self defense; it is because the ability to identify such fundamental distinctions, are vital to understanding and standing up for your individual rights, that they are being undermined and evaded, and it is why saying what is, and is not true, is frowned upon by those who benefit from that distinction remaining unclear.

The vast majority of the issues trumpeted in our headlines, are but useful pretexts for channeling the passionate grievances of a popular few - or many – so as to enable legislators, bureaucrats, media and educators, to exercise ever more power over the public at large; and how better to revel in that power, than to tell an entire people that the normal expectations and behaviors which they have long held, are no longer to be respected? That what they feel is Right, is Wrong. That their personal opinions and habits are to be forced to give way, not because a clearer understanding and delineation of Right and Wrong has been reached, but to make way for a mostly undefined and indefinable claim of some, against all?

And again, why? How many things are more infuriating, than feeling that you can't speak up, and must accept what is 'politically correct' at work, in a restaurant, at an event, family dinner or when trying to relax?

Contrary to popular belief, and as any bully can tell you, tyranny doesn't really need laws to tyrannize you, it only needs to be feared by you.

In a time such as ours, where ‘Political Correctness’ can result in the ruination of lives, careers and associations, then legally 'toothless' pronouncements such as Obama’s bathroom edict do not need to be enforced everywhere, or even anywhere, at all - it only needs to be asserted, and clamored after by mobs who are visibly ready to shout down or even violently attack, those who gainsay it. Not everywhere, only somewhere, publicly, in order for its threat to be felt everywhere. And so it is that corporations feel pressure to make statements and policies about it, people are afraid to speak out about it, or to be condemned about their own observations and beliefs about it, even though 'it' has no legal leg to stand on. This is the ultimate in spinning executive action ‘under color of authority’, knowing it will be bolstered by the fear of a threat from unseen forces, it is an abuse of Power all its own, that will cloud your ability to identify, to distinguish, to think, inducing anger on all sides of the issue (AKA Community Organizing).

The stupefying power of power
And once again, why? A useful quote to keep in mind, is one from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

"“Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. … The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other...."

What Bonhoeffer (in 1920's-1930's Germany) was observing, and what people like Saul Alinsky are adept at exploiting [see inset], is the stupefying power that power has, when exerted over people. It's not so much that the people are stupid, but that intelligent people find themselves unable to identify or act upon what the actual issue is, and so their actions become indistinguishable from someone acting stupidly. As Power is imposed upon their lives in ways that they are powerless to prevent... unless a person very consciously attends to it, identifies the nature of what is happening to them, then there is going to be slippage between their thought, and that which is thought about, and that slippage expresses itself as both cracks and pressure release valves. People become stupefied as that place where idea and reality should have been firmly connected in their minds, has instead been forced aside, and now anything, usually in the form of meaningless catchwords and popular sentiments, will pass easily through their thoughts and possibly into poorly thought out actions, and more likely than not, leaving a persistent anger in its wake.

Because more power is ever the desire of the powerful, and because heated passions are the time tested means to swaying popular opinion, that is what is repeatedly used to turn We The People to their latest purposes. Whatever momentary mask such causes might wear, from gay marriage, to Christians baking wedding cakes, Seals, Whales, AIDS, Global Warming, Acid Rain, Global Cooling, DDT, etc., it is their emotional appeal and the agitation which they induce, and together with the lack of clear identification which they make difficult, at best, which serves as a means to better gain and impose power upon society 'for the greater good', and for the benefit of those seeking or maintaining power over them.

Given all of that, the issue of the day, which just happens to be Transgenderism today, becomes more clearly identifiable as but a means to an end, and it's the tomorrows of their ends, that we should all be deeply troubled by. Worse, the true identity of the problems facing us, is that every time we let a ridiculous statement go by unchallenged and unchecked, to posture about as if it is a true and meaningful thought, we give those empty words the power of an actual point, and that point will be turned against us - that is its point. To fail to identify these issues as such, is what started us down the path to where we are today - is this where you wanted to be? What will be the tomorrows that follow from this today?

The real trouble with the Transgender issue, is what you and I fear to clearly identify it as, either by inducing an unwillingness in you to identify that which is as being what it actually is, or through requiring you to not say or act on what you know to be true. Such unchecked power is a clear and present danger in all of its forms - not only legislatively, but intellectually, socially and culturally - as it forcibly separates your thoughts from your actions, which effectively flushes the West down the toilet. Who needs an army to invade us, when we'll so willingly eliminate ourselves?

IOW, while you're busy bickering about Hillary/Bernie and Trump, what made their candidacies possible is slipping past you, unidentified, and growing ever more powerful over every aspect of your life.

Is that the America you want to identify as?

Measuring Eric Greitens' Conservative status by his own words - Is being Great all that good? pt. 4

Before getting into Eric Greitens' status as a Republican and a Conservative on the basis of his own words, I've got to take a moment to note this. In one of Bill Hennessy's early posts in support of Eric Greitens candidacy for Governor of Missouri, he made a comically failed attempt at prognostication, saying that if the dirty tricks 'whisper campaigns' (see my previous post), failed to hurt his candidate, then:

"...If none of that works, they’ll just lie and claim he’s a Democrat."

As it turns out, the only rumor that I actually had heard about Eric Greitens, was that he had strong democrat ties, and as it turns out, there were very good reasons for people to wonder about whether or not he was a Republican. Greitens himself later disclosed that he was, until recently, a Democrat!

Eric Greitens: Why I am no longer a Democrat: "...I was raised as a Democrat....I registered to vote as a Democrat, and several years ago some Democrats even tried to recruit me to run for Congress..."

I'm sorry, but that's funny. Poor Bill.

Greitens admitted to having been in discussions about running for office as a democrat, and despite his claims to not being a politician, when he first began to seriously consider a future political, to my mind, that's when he became an actual politician. When was that? We don't know, but presumably it has been longer than he's been a Republican.

So as it turns out, sadly for Bill, those particular concerns were ones that were worth not only whispering about, but raising voices over, but more than that, IMHO, Eric Greitens should have begun his campaign with that revelation right out of the box, rather than letting his supporters be sandbagged with it after a month or more of their denying them in his defense, as Bill was:

"Were you shocked when you learned that Navy SEAL, author, humanitarian, and charity founder, Eric Greitens, was born and raised and voted Democrat?

I was.

Sure, I’d heard the rumors. The whispers spread by some Republican campaign operatives. But I’ve learned to trust those campaign operatives about as far as I fund the national debt."

Is it just me, or, given that those particular 'whisper campaigns' proved to be true, does it seem as if Bill has placed his trust/mistrust with the wrong political operatives?

Ok, moving on....
It seems to me that the reasonable questions that should be pursued now, are how grounded and credible are Eric Greitens' claims to actually being a conservative Republican? Ironically, the only material we have to make that judgment from, is that same article that Greitens wrote to announce that he actually had, until recently (how recently he doesn't say), been a Democrat. And for me at least, his admission and conversion, although welcome, does very little to assure me of what his political principles are.

So that being said, it's time to look at his statement, and I'll explain why it is that I personally find it to be less than satisfying to me.

Take especial note, that he begins his article with this statement:

"I am a conservative Republican, but I didn’t start out that way. "

While his article could lay a credible claim to his being a Republican, he didn't stop with claiming to be a Republican only, he claims to be a Conservative Republican, and that qualifier 'conservative' requires a bit more information from him than simply having announced that he'd joined the GOP. After all - Lindsay Graham is a Republican too, but you're not going to find a whole lot of Conservatives or Tea Party members that are going to be too impressed by that, right? To make a credible claim as to being a Conservative, he needs to show a solid level of understanding of the principles behind the constitution (U.S. and MO), as well as a regard for, and commitment to, the U.S. Constitution itself. What has he said to place himself squarely on the Conservative and Tea Party Right, as opposed to being in the middle of the road, or even over there on the side of the road with the RINOs?

The only way to find out, is to begin taking a look at what he himself has said:

"I am a conservative Republican, but I didn’t start out that way.

I was raised as a Democrat. I was taught that Harry Truman was the greatest president ever because he was strong, stood up to the communists, and most important, he was from Missouri. I was taught to stand up for the little guy, and that bigger government was the best way to do that. I registered to vote as a Democrat, and several years ago some Democrats even tried to recruit me to run for Congress.

There was one rather large problem. As I got older, I no longer believed in their ideas. Even worse, I had concluded that liberals aren’t just wrong. All too often they are world-class hypocrites. They talk a great game about helping the most vulnerable, with ideas that feel good and fashionable. The problem is their ideas don’t work, and often hurt the exact people they claim to help."

Which is all very welcome, well and good. I personally have no problem in welcoming someone who's realized their political errors and corrected them, or with believing in the depth of their conversion, but I do need to see evidence of their understanding the principles they claim to have converted to.

Some obvious examples of others who have given ample evidence of just that sort of thing, would be Ronald Reagan, who didn't just switch parties because one 'worked better' than the other, he solidly expressed his grasp of the principles which separated the philosophies of the Left from the Right, in his Goldwater announcement speech, "A Time for Choosing", and he spent years acting consistently with his words. David Horowitz is another excellent that comes to mind, as someone who was once a deeply entrenched and radical leftist, and he not only switched parties, but has gone to great lengths demonstrating very effectively his understanding of why leftist ideas are faulty and corrupt. A little closer to home in time and place would be Dana Loesch, who began as a democrat operative but soon realized her error, left the Left, and has since demonstrated very well, through actions with the Tea Party, on radio, TV and in print, her solid understanding of, and commitment to, the principles which our Individual Rights rest upon and require.

But being as I'm not, as Bill put it, 'lazy' enough to accept someone's assertions alone, I need evidence that such a person didn't simply change party affiliations to find a snazzier party. And I feel zero guilt whatsoever in having questions about their status, especially when I see that the reasons which they've given for their conversion, are far short of being deep enough reasons to explain the error they claim to have corrected.

For instance, it's good that he realized that the leftist approach was hypocritical, that it hurt those it claimed to want to help and simply didn't work. But while that may be enough to explain his becoming a Republican, it isn't enough to assure people, especially me, that he now has a conservative understanding and approach to political issues. After all, again, Lindsay Graham will tell you the very same thing about the democrats and their policies, but you'd have an easier time selling space heaters in hell, than convincing conservatives that Lindsay Graham was one of them.

So what else has Mr. Greitens given us to go on? What deeds or reasoned insights, rather than simply assertions and labels, has he given us? After reciting a valid list of leftist policies that don't work, he says:

"I became a conservative because I believe that caring for people means more than just spending taxpayer money; it means delivering results. It means respecting and challenging our citizens, telling them what they need to hear, not simply what they want to hear. "

The first sentence, especially it's ending, reminds me of earlier statements of 'smarter', kinder, gentler, government social programs, which is a big red flag to me, of a republican not being a Tea Party compatible, Free Market Conservative, dedicated to upholding Individual Rights through the Rule of Law under constitutionally limited government.

I don't think very much of the 'compassionate conservative' shtick. I found it appallingly bad when William F. Buckley Jr. pushed it back in the 1990's (we'll go into detail why in later posts), it was the reason why I didn't vote for George W. Bush in the 2000 primary, and I think it pretty much wore its welcome out with the rest of the nation with W's administration. Demonstrating that you understand the principles that conservatism is derived from requires much more than delivering 'results' and telling people what you think they need to hear, we need to hear you demonstrate a desire for the kind of results that are consistent with conservatism, worthwhile and proper to achieve. So far, I haven't seen that.

"So what would I do? I believe in limited but effective government."

I'm sorry, but that 'but' makes his But look really big to me. When he says 'but effective', he's saying that as a qualifier on 'limited government', which makes it seem to me that his goal is less about ensuring that government remains properly 'limited', than about making its ability to deliver 'results' more efficiently, to be more important than its being limited. Believing in limited government is highly desirable, but Why should it be limited? I'm not seeing any indication from him as to why government should be limited, and that, for me, has to come before anything else. His words indicate to me that he thinks that there are lots of limitations to those limits on government, especially if they might deliver 'effective government'. That sends a shudder down my spine.

"I believe in replacing ObamaCare with something that actually works."

I most emphatically do not. I do not believe that ObamaCare is bad because Obama and the Democrats proposed it, but because govt CANNOT provide any solutions that will not impair the quality and liberty of everyone involved in the area of health care, and so any GovtCare is doomed to failure, and as such we should not attempt to 'fix' it, or replace it, but to remove it. I don't want to replace the devil I know with one I don't know, I want to exorcise the damn thing, bell, book and candle! I believe in repealing ObamaCare, as well as repealing all the other operational healthcare and insurance industry regulations/corporate favors, and I believe in exterminating every other interference into the free market. That means eliminating all intrusive government 'solutions' that prevent people from making intelligent decisions and acting on them for their own reasons. Only by doing that, can a Free Market, which gave us modern health in the first place, be restored.

I'm unable and emphatically unwilling to see anything less than that as a 'conservative' solution, though I've no doubt you could get Lindsay Graham to go along with it.

"I believe in putting working families and job creation ahead of special interests."

That sounds, at best, like recalibrating your spin cycle so as to swap one set of special interests for another, for political gain. Switching special big biz interests, for special little guy interests, ultimately means retaining one set of special interests to be doled out as privileges to some, at everyone else's expense. If you are a Free Market Conservative, dedicated to Individual Rights and the Rule of Law, then you will not seek or accept the swapping of one form of favoritism for another, but will instead desire to eliminate all such special privileges so that all are equal before the law. That would be acceptable. Anything less, and you might as well go talk to Lindsay Graham - I'm sure he's ready to listen.

"I believe that in a free society we have to defend religious liberties and the 2nd Amendment, and protect innocent life, so everyone has the freedom to pursue happiness."

This isn't too bad... but I'd be more comfortable hearing something like "Liberty requires that everyone's individual rights be respected, and those rights that are singled out in our Bill of Rights must be held like daggers in the faces of those who'd like to use power to help and improve our lives for us.", anything less, is... less.

"I believe in reforming welfare, so every person can have a chance at a life of dignity, purpose, and meaning."

I do not. I believe in eliminating it. Only then, can every person have a chance at living their own lives.

"And I believe America’s public schools should be the best in the world."

Yeah, well, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Bill Gates, Barrack Obama and Lindsay Graham all say the same things as well, but if you mean to use the centralized powers of the state or federal governments to accomplish that, then you will be saying nothing different than they would, which is nothing that I'd agree with or be willing to go along with.

"As Americans, we deserve much better than what we’re getting from our government. We don’t need more rhetoric. We want results."

Which of course is just more rhetoric. I don't want better results from our government, I want less of my government in my life so that I can get the results I deserve. As an American, I deserve to have my govt respect my right to live my own life, and anything more than that is, IMHO, significantly less.

"And that means changing politics as usual, which won’t be easy. But nothing worthwhile ever is. You have to fight for what you believe in, and I, for one, have never backed down from that kind of fight."

There are few things that sound more to me like politics as usual, than a politician saying 'that means changing politics as usual'; it's an easy thing to say, and it's a meaningless thing to say. Tell me something more meaningful, apply it to something more difficult, explain your principles and how you'd apply them to particular issues facing our state. Anything less than that is nothing more than politics as usual.

Summary
I've read his book "Heart and Fist", Eric Greitens is an impressive, admirable fellow, I'd love to have him on our side, and I'd love to be able to believe that he was solidly on our side by means of his principled understanding of what our side is, but to these concerns, as I've noted above, I've received no credible assurances or answers to, and have found no information from the candidate that clarifies or gives me reason to believe that the political principles that will drive his use of power in office, will be ones that would make me comfortable with entrusting him with the power of that office.

To date his comments have been shallow and trite, directed towards vague issues, not principles, and I'm not yet convinced that he even understands what our side is, let alone how to lead or fight for it. I'm very much open to listening to further information from him, and I'm very willing, eager even, to be convinced by him. But so far he hasn't found that to be very important to do. Instead, he has gone about the state on a 'listening tour', and sad to say, that sounds like just the sort of substanceless, image over substance, manipulative trick, that fits better on the Left - with Hillary Clinton for example - or with the establishment GOP, than over here on the Right.

And frankly I don't want to have a candidate listening to me when they're running for office - the only sound they need to hear from me would be my support or my vote - and the only way they're going to get that is by telling me what his ideas and beliefs and principles are, so that I can make up my mind about whether or not I want to entrust him with my vote. He doesn't need to listen, so much as to speak, debate, publish and otherwise let We The People know what it is that he thinks, feels and is driven by, that is relevant to the execution of the office of Governor of our state.

When I hear of his support for NGO's, his words that express little more than shallow associations with politically easy 'hot button' issues, I'm not learning anything about the political principles that he, particularly in a moment of crisis, or with a simply tough and unpopular decision, is going to be guided by in making his decision.

Understand, I'm not worried about his character - that, as far as I can tell, is unimpeachable - I have no worries that he won't do what he thinks is the right thing to do, my concern is that I don't know what he thinks is Right!

That's a problem for me, and to secure my vote I require his explanations, and demonstrations, of understanding those issues, and NOT simply the assurances of a flak who thinks he can peddle PR messages in lieu of a glaring lack of substance.

I have a huge problem with his entering this race without bothering to begin from the beginning. He, as a candidate, has a responsibility to demonstrate his having at least a fundamental understanding of the nature and purpose of the office he's seeking to be elected to, and of what he will bring to that. It didn't need to be a detailed set of position papers (though that wouldn't hurt), but just some general statements of principle and intent; but for him to enter the race without even a general formulation of that, particularly with his knowing how his own political history would unavoidably raise questions and concerns amongst those he's aiming to have as supporters, is, to me, a major lapse of judgment. The failure to do that would almost certainly leave those who would support him, who would be inspired by him, in the position of having to substitute their own personal sense of inspiration for his 'great qualities', for that relevant substance which he failed to provide, to carry them through any attempts at supporting and defending him.

That, to me, is an egregious failure of leadership on a philosophical and political level, and it was a failure of leadership on a personal level, to put his potential supporters in such a position on his behalf, over basic info that should have been a no-brainer to provide. Without that substance and proof from him, in his own words, and his visible ability to defend them, there is in terms of his political judgment, nothing there for me to support, only 'inspired substitute substance' that is worth less than the HTML it's written on.

When I come back to these posts, we'll get into the 'substance' of Bills five part thirty-five page 'defense' of Greitens involvement in the Franklin Project, 'Service', and the 'Serve America' act he has so far attempted to ignore.

Substituting for Substance - Is being Great all that good? pt2

Into the void
In my last post, 'Is being Great all that good?', I pointed to the dangers inherent in promoting or electing candidates for their great qualities alone, rather than for what makes them fit for office, which I think has to begin with demonstrating an understanding of the nature and purpose of the office they're seeking to be elected to. In this post I'll take a high level view, through one local example, at the sort of arguments that follow when a candidacy does not begin from the beginning, leaving its supporters to substitute the personal inspiration they feel for their candidate's 'great qualities', for the relevant substance which the candidates have not provided themselves. Over the next couple posts we'll look in more detail at the patterns which the inspired defender will often fall into, in order to defend what isn't there - an absence of substance which itself inspires a particular pattern of defense.

And this quote captures the sort of 'inspired substitute substance' that I'm talking about:

"I want a transformational leader who inspires common people like me to become better versions of ourselves. And the only candidate in the race who can inspire greatness in the people he touches is Eric Grietens."[BTW Bill, the candidate's name is misspelled]

That was not some MSNBC host frothing on about the thrill running up his leg, this statement came from Bill Hennessy, one of the original founders and instigators of the St. Louis Tea Party, the grassroots organization which formed around the popular demand that congress "Read the Bill!" rather than mindlessly peddle absurdities such as "You have to pass it to find out what's in it". The St. Louis Tea Party Coalition was one of the most effective Tea Party's in the nation at raising issues of limited government and individual rights to the national attention, which I had the honor to play a small part in, and whose theme, at that time anyway, could easily have been expressed as constitutionally limited govt over swallowing sight unseen the solutions being peddled by transformational leaders of the left or the right.

That Bill Hennessy was someone I never expected to see saying such things. This post is one I'm not enjoying writing, but that quote above is representative of the tenor of what he's been posting since Eric Greitens announced his interest in running for the Governor of Missouri, and Bill, as we'll see in a moment, has taken the rhetoric beyond what I can simply ignore.

The Inspiration
When you hear about Eric Greitens, you can't help but be impressed, he's a former Navy SEAL, a Rhodes Scholar, he has a deep interest in, and familiarity with, classics of history and philosophy (you know that pegged my interest meter), a self made man, philanthropist, successful author (I just finished reading his "Heart and Fist" - I recommend it), college professor, motivational speaker, and the list goes on. The first time I heard about Eric Greitens was as he was announcing his intention to consider running for governor earlier this year. I read Bill's post on it, and the articles it linked to, and I too was much impressed, but unfortunately before that inspiration could take root, my next thoughts were:

"I wonder what his thoughts and positions on Individual Rights, Law & Govt policy are?"

, and the inspiration faltered in me as I tried hunting around on the web for specifics about his ideas on such things, and it withered away as I found nothing of the sort, only more and more instances of 'Happy Talk' about how really impressive a guy he is. He is impressive, that much is a given, no argument there at all, but that doesn't make the argument for electing him to office. Despite how impressive he is as a person, as a candidate, if your political positions, and your demonstrated understanding and commitment to the principles behind them, aren't impressive in themselves, then neither will you be, as a candidate for high office.

If you care about what's true, about first principles, that's the way it has to work. And what's even harder, and I've really experienced just how much harder in working on these posts, is how hard it is not to fall into the same patterns in your responses to the faults you've found in others. And it's also difficult, particularly in personal and political issues, to not see that person you've found fault in as having base and dishonest motives for the wrong things you've found them saying. As you'll see in a moment, one of Bill's posts set me off, pegged my fury meter, and my responses to it have got me watching myself more closely. My first response I deleted. The second one too. This post I've revised several times, trying to take that non-objective edge out of it and focus more on what is universal in the danger of being led by 'greatness', than the particulars of the faults I see here (how successfully remains to be seen... your mileage may vary).

I haven't been 'toning it down' out of some silly 'must be nice' mockery of manners, but because I think you really do miss out on the more significant points, when you assume the worst (and that 'assuming' is part of the pattern). Far tougher, and frankly far scarier, is what you see when you presume that those who've drawn your ire, have done so with the very best of intentions. And your response to them, IMH (and heavily revised)O, is improved and clarified by approaching it from that perspective.

Not that that perspective will make me pull my punches, it's just that I see the value in throwing them at my own points too, before they get a chance to make it to print.

The lack of political substance which Eric Greitens has made available regarding the political office he's seeking, is concerning to me. Why? Because as media savvy as this fellow is, as experienced a leader as he is, as seemingly centered around empowering people as he is, he has somehow lacked the foresight to assemble and make available even an overview of the policies he intends to implement, or of the political principles that will guide his use of power once in office, etc. Nothing. Nada.

Why? I don't know, and that's the problem, for the fact that he chose not to do the obvious, I find concerning.

There were rumors from the start about his democrat leanings, which at that time were still only rumors (though he later confirmed them), and there were still other troubling issues left to be discovered by those, like me, who should have been his base, such as his endorsement of President Obama's "Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act" (which fits in with conservative ideas... how?), as well as other issues and unknowns about information that was known to the candidate. Information which he had to know would cause confusion and dissension amongst those whose support he'd want and need, and yet he chose to do nothing to proactively manage it. Is that an example of the exemplary political leadership that I should be inspired by? Or evidence of a blind spot the candidate doesn't realize he has?

There were (and still are) lots of questions unanswered, but

Is being Great all that good?

Is being Great all that good?
With all the 'Great' candidates we have running for high office around the nation today, we seem to be forgetting an important rule for a self governing people:

'Greatness' doesn't make you fit for office; demonstrating an understanding of the nature and purpose of the office you're seeking to be elected to, does.

To advance someone for high office because of their great qualities alone, and in spite of knowing little or nothing about how well, if at all, they understand the purpose of, and the restraints upon the power of, that office which they are campaigning for, and without knowing how they intend to use its power, is dangerous to everyone that that elected office has power over.

We are naturally drawn to those who demonstrate great qualities such as courage, honesty, integrity and intelligence, and one of the common responses which those who live in a republic often have to people who show that 'right stuff', is "You should run for office!". Nothing wrong with that at all. But once that person has made their decision to run for high office, no matter who they are, Ben Carson, Donald Trump, Eric Greitens, then they should do what would be expected of anyone else to do, that person should be actively demonstrating their understanding of the nature, purpose, laws, powers and principles of that office, which the proper and just execution of that office depend upon.

These great men brought great change - was it all good?

But there is an additional responsibility which those with such unique and outstanding qualities have, as it is doubly important for them, particularly when they have no history or track record demonstrating their convictions and political intentions, they then have the responsibility to proactively make their own understanding of the nature and purpose of that office clear to the electorate, laying out the key policies they intend to advance while in office, along with some indication of how they intend to do so.

For such 'great' candidates to not do everything they can to make their positions and convictions known, or even to actively avoid doing so, means that they've chosen to rely upon their own personal qualities to win them support, rather than risk their popularity with the public on information about how they actually intend to use their power over them while in office. Such a scenario is suspicious at best, but if We The People do not insist that they explain themselves, or worse, join in on promoting them for office because of their great qualities alone, that's a recipe for disaster.

The Great Why ask why?
Most people realize that good intentions alone can cause disastrous results, correct? Those disasters occur not because the well intentioned person meant to cause harm, but because they didn't understand what was important to understand, didn't understand what actions should or shouldn't be taken, and so they take actions without being aware of the pitfalls and unintended consequences that are sure to follow from such actions, and so disaster follows, right?

Well what do you suppose happens when you couple well intentioned ignorance with the great and dynamic qualities of 'the Great Man', fueled with the power of high office? Far and away the greatest restraint we have upon the abuses of power by those in power, is their own understanding of the proper purposes and limits of their powers, and their knowledge that those who elected them know it as well. Without that understanding on both sides, the subsequent errors and abuses are going to multiply, intensify and magnify the disasters that are sure to follow.

Mistaking Greatness of character with Fitness for office can be the greatest of dangers to a nation and its people; History is rife with examples as to why that should scare the hell out of you, and we don't need to reach very far back in time or place for examples of this, one of our own national monuments, Mt. Rushmore, being far enough. Those four Presidents that are carved upon its face, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt, were all great men who left their mark upon our nation by bringing about revolutionary changes.

But were those great changes all for the good? Did they lead us to make Progress in regards to realizing America's founding principles? If you understand and revere those principles, I don't think you can say that they all were. For instance:

George Washington, with his outstanding qualities of courage and integrity played a pivotal, indispensable role in our founding; as the father of our nation he led the battle in our revolutionary break from England, he helped to create and implement our Constitution and was elected to be the first president under it, and in so doing he helped bring about a revolution like none other in history - I'd call that progress for the good.
Thomas Jefferson, with his powerful intellect and passion for liberty, not only put America's ideals into the words of our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, but he also later led one of the most remarkable of revolutions, the "Revolution of 1800", the first peaceable overthrow of one political power in favor of another, by ballots, not bullets - I'd absolutely call that progress for the good.
Abraham Lincoln, who had the depth of character and wisdom to hold our nation together through the darkest times of civil war, helped to give this nation "...a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth" - I'd definitely call that progress for the good.
Teddy Roosevelt utilized his undeniably great qualities of energy and intellect to turn us away from what his fellows on Mt. Rushmore strove for, and he called that progress. Personally, I call that Pro-Regress, not progress, and I most definitely don't call it good; do you?

What did he do differently? It might be useful to first ask what he did differently than the mostly unremarkable presidents who came between Lincoln and TR - how many of those president's names do you recall? Probably not many, and for good reason - facing no great crises they didn't try to bring about any great changes to our nation, they only tried to do the job of President of the United States, as defined by the Constitution, while operating within the powers it defined for their office. Some did it better than others, but for the most part they all entered office under those terms, and were willingly bound by them.

Teddy Roosevelt was a very different president than his predecessors.

TR was full of energy, intelligence, courage and valor; he was remarkably widely read, a man who felt sure that he knew what was best for the nation and was devastatingly capable of putting his ideas into action. But to those great qualities he added a markedly shallow understanding of, and disdain for, the constitutional restrictions that the Founders, through our Constitution, put upon the office of President and by which they limited the powers of the government of the United States. It was his fellow Mt. Rushmorean, Thomas Jefferson, who said:

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution"

But TR would have none of that.

When he found himself in office upon the assassination of President McKinley, unlike his predecessors, TR explicitly refused to allow his powers to be bound by the office of President, and possessing those qualities of greatness that won him admiration and popularity around the world, he used them to resist and burst free of those restrictions, and in so doing he most definitely brought revolutionary change to the office of the President, and to the nature of the government he held such great power over, and those powers of office which he was instrumental is loosing upon the land, have been a plague upon us ever since.

It was Teddy Roosevelt, a republican by the way, who:

• first proposed a national income tax to 'do good' with,
• first proposed imposing American might upon the world stage,
• first proposed a national health care system,
• was the first president to consistently exercise his executive powers outside the defined powers of the office of the President of The United States,
• first proposed, and began to implement, the administrative state, and all the alphabet agencies we contend with today, followed from his innovations with what became the FDA.

He didn't accomplish all of those tasks himself, but by setting them in motion, together with what he did accomplish,Teddy Roosevelt proved that you don't have to be a bad man to do great damage; a great man with little understanding of his true purpose and place in office, can do enormous damage to even the greatest of nations, and Teddy Roosevelt did just that. Barack Obama, LBJ, FDR, Woodrow Wilson were only able to succeed in putting into practice what they have, because Teddy Roosevelt first introduced, legitimized and got the ProRegressive ball rolling for them - without him, they might have remained frustrated, small minded nobodies, harming no one's lives but their own.

TR's unbound greatness and lack of understanding and even disregard for the nature of the office he held, made his time in office, IMHO, the most truly disastrous presidency in all of American history. Not because he was a bad man, or a corrupt one, but because he was a truly Great man, invested with the great power of high office, who used his greatness to turn us away from our Founding ideals.

But of course Teddy Roosevelt didn't 'accomplish' what he did alone, he had the uninformed enthusiasm of the nation, won over by his greatness, who let him do and get away with what should never have been permitted.

Those who don't learn from history....
Am I saying that any of those today, such as Ben Carson, Donald Trump, Eric Greitens, who are being touted for their great qualities, are, or will be, as bad for this nation as I believe Teddy Roosevelt was? No. I'm saying that seeking after great men to 'fix' our problems on the basis of their greatness alone, when we've been given little or no substantive reasons for having confidence that they even understand the nature and intended limitations of their office, is a reckless and foolish thing for us to do.

I'm saying that when we don't know know anything substantial about a candidate's convictions or plans, because of what they have so far been content to not say, then we cannot have any idea what they will do with the power of their office, once it has been combined with their own great abilities, to exert those powers over us.

I'm not saying that I suspect our latest crop of great candidates of intending to do harm, I'm saying that I suspect them of not knowing what will, and what won't, cause us harm.
I'm saying that it's not their great qualities that concern me, but the little knowledge, understanding and conviction they've yet to demonstrate having about the fundamentals of our laws and their underlying principles.
I'm saying that without that understanding, which are the qualities that make any person, great or not, fit for office, and the lack of which makes anyone, great or not, unfit for office, then unrestrained by those convictions, they are liable, with the very best of intentions, to bring great harm to this nation and/or to our state. and at this point I'm not sure how much more of that we can take.

I'm going to take the next few posts to examine some of the arguments of those who knowingly promote such great candidates, without even themselves knowing or understanding what they will do with those qualities of greatness that they have. I'll also take a look at what some of those candidates have told us about what they believe, in their own words. And at that point, given that that is all we can know about them and their plans, you can decide how great an idea electing them might actually be.

Hoft V: Fighting for our Rights in foul weather and fair

What do you get when you combine 34* temperatures, rain, politicians lies and a hardy few willing to speak up against them? Why... a Tea Party rally, of course!

Band of Brothers: Me, Stacy Washington, Jim Hoft,
Virginia Kruta, Letitia Wong (photo JD Wilson)

The Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft, still recovering from an infection which caused him heart attacks, strokes, as well as the loss of one eye, one knee, and the health insurance policy which has enabled him to survive it, led a hardy band of Tea Partiers willing to brave the elements, in a rally outside Sen. Claire McCaskill's office in St. Louis.

We came with Jim to demand an apology from our senator for the lies which she and President Obama knowingly told, in order to impose their idea of fairness, upon us all.

Stacy Washington spoke as well, driving home the point that no one, no matter how well meaning, can make the best choices for another's life, for the simple fact that they cannot know their their needs, their hopes, preferences, means, desires and those risks they are willing, and unwilling, to take.

Yet proRegressive politicians have the hubris, the unmitigated gall, to believe that they not only can, but should, make the most critical decisions of our lives for us - and lightly brush off the fact that though some peoples lives are upset, harmed or even ended in the process... so be it - omelets require eggs to be broken.

There are however those who are willing to stand against this, no matter the odds, no matter the milquetoast GOP'rs who are willing to accommodate themselves to it, there are still enough of us who are willing to come out in the cold and the rain to fight the good fight. And for those who worry about being in the minority, pardon me, but I can't help thinking of Henry V's St. Crispian's Day Speech, when his comrades worried over being outnumbered in the battle of Agincourt, he chided them, saying that 'The fewer men, the greater share of honour', that,

"...This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered- We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day. "

A few daring old questions that keep cropping up.

Recent posts from friends & family ranging from legalizing drugs, to vile insults posing as self-righteousness wit and on to risking or abusing other peoples lives for their own good, prompts a few questions worth asking:

• Do you have the right to live your own life, or not?
• Do you have the right to use the govt to live other people's lives for them, or not?


• Does it matter how sure you are that you'll improve their lives?
• Does it matter how sure they feel they are about improving your life?


• Are drugs the only area of our lives these questions apply to?


• If you haven't bothered to understand what your rights, and govt's limits, are, what's the likelihood that those with the power to violate them, for your own good (and theirs), will be bothered about violating them?


• Does expecting others to respect your rights, require anything in return from you?

If these questions haven't overwhelmed you, here's a couple posts I pursued them a bit further on:

• You have No 'Constitutional Rights'. None. Nada.


• Rights from the source... so to speak

The next time you give your support, or opposition, to someone's political opinion, ask yourself these questions.

"...poor your-ick..."

I dare you.

I double-dare you to take the next step and ask them these quesitons.

More surprising NEWS of the day.

Ok, enough people have asked me, so here's my take on the latest NEWS from out of the White House, Washington D.C., Obamacare, Common Core and Foreign Affairs:

Oh. Look. Liars are telling lies.
Oh. Look. Hypocritical liars are responding as they've heard that the people they pretend to be, would have responded.
Oh. Look. The fools who elected the liars and hypocrites are upset that their lack of attention has put liars and hypocrites and thieves into positions of power over their lives.

Gee. What a surprise.

In other news, the head lying hypocrite in the White House thinks the flaws in the laws he 'wrote', to manage what he doesn't understand, can be fixed by giving more orders to control what he doesn't understand; meanwhile, the fools who thought they could make a buck from his plan, are upset his new plans to fix his old plans will bring them to ruin.

In other news, the diseducational system which made all of this possible in the first place, is frantically trying to adopt standards (which contain no standards) for that which it fears to define (namely Education, which is not to be mistaken for 'college & career ready skills'), promising that it will improve what it has consistently failed to do, by the very means with which it has already succeeded in creating such a colossal failure from an equally unprecedented success, in order to escape blame for what it is faced with having created today.

Gee. What a surprise.

In other news, the world wide wolves are eyeing our positions and lands with great interest.

Gee. What a surprise.

You want to fix this?

If you find any of this surprising, and want to know how to 'fix' it, start with fixing yourself. Here's a good starting point. If you can't do that, or can't even be bothered to attempt doing that, you have no business trying to fix anyone or anything else.

Gee. What a surprise.

Here's some 'NEWS' you can actually use, via Plato, 360 B.C., from "Laws - Book V"

"...The same praise may be given about temperance and wisdom, and all other goods which may be imparted to others, as well as acquired by a man for himself; he who imparts them shall be honoured as the man of men, and he who is willing, yet is not able, may be allowed the second place; but he who is jealous and will not, if he can help, allow others to partake in a friendly way of any good, is deserving of blame: the good, however, which he has, is not to be undervalued by us because it is possessed by him, but must be acquired by us also to the utmost of our power. Let every man, then, freely strive for the prize of virtue, and let there be no envy. For the unenvious nature increases the greatness of states-he himself contends in the race, blasting the fair fame of no man; but the envious, who thinks that he ought to get the better by defaming others, is less energetic himself in the pursuit of true virtue, and reduces his rivals to despair by his unjust slanders of them. And so he makes the whole city to enter the arena untrained in the practice of virtue, and diminishes her glory as far as in him lies. Now every man should be valiant, but he should also be gentle. From the cruel, or hardly curable, or altogether incurable acts of injustice done to him by others, a man can only escape by fighting and defending himself and conquering, and by never ceasing to punish them; and no man who is not of a noble spirit is able to accomplish this...."

You want to hear something 'new'? Stop looking for it in the 'news', that is, and always will be, the same old same-old. If you want something truly new, you'll only find it in the old truths applied to the new day.

Anything less than that, is going to be less than surprising.

Here’s one message conservatives do need to hear

From my second post on The Bell News"Here’s one message conservatives do need to hear"

There was only one undeniable issue in the last election, one issue that was the true cause of Obama winning, and the effects of it are to be found, not in what conservatives did or think they need(ed) to do, but in what it is that they think they are, and in what the nation thinksit is. The most obvious fact about the election was not that Romney lost because 10-15% fewer conservatives showed up to vote (or voted 3rd party), though that appears to be true, or that people when given a choice between a Leftie, and a Leftie-lite, chose the more authentic option, which is also to some extent true; those aren’t the true causes, and neither is whatever else you want to throw in regarding fraud, media spin, etc – those are all simply demographers noise.

The real issue, the true reason why Romney lost, was that given a choice of the policies represented by Obama and the Democrat party he leads,  more than 50% of the populace lacked a sufficient level of understanding of what America is and what its constitution means, is, and requires, to enable them to recoil in horror at the prospect of those policies becoming reality, hissing “No friggin’ way I can allow that – no friggin’ way I can vote for that!‘

That is the real issue, and the only issue of substance worth thinking about.

If you think your culture, or your memory of it, is attractive to the youth’… er… Millennials .. or appeals to the Hispanic… er… Lat… hell with it… to anyone, then you might want to check out these two articles, one  from NRO’s Kevin D. Williamson, his post “Risk, Relativism, and Resources”  & the other from Bill Hennessy, his post on “This is why I feel sorry for Millennials“. As Conservatives, we tend to think that our ideas are naturally attractive, I mean, who could possibly have a problem with having the liberty to blaze your own trail, making it on your own, etc. – that’s what America’s all about! Well guess what, not everyone seeks to take the risks that it takes to live that kind of life, and many, if not most, feel that a system which enables such risk taking, threatens those who prefer a life of safety and comfort.

Conservatism, the revolutionary ideals of classical liberalism that our Founders fought for, are not a threat to those who want a life of comfort and safety, but they won’t think so, not without  understanding them better, anyway. And not without your understanding them well enough to explain why your ideas are not a threat to the happiness they wish to pursue.

The problem is that our culture is no longer united in believing that, and that means it isn’t there to back you up.

Once the culture has been fragmented, as ours has, once a culture has reached the point where it is more likely to be referenced in mockery, than with respect, or in many cases may simply be ‘gone’ from people’s minds entirely (and thanks to our schools, that is pretty much the case), then it can no longer be referenced by people as an authoritative and substantiated word on an issue – the tank is empty – what it once had to say to the culture at large, is no longer there in their minds to be referenced in an argument, especially not in a political one.

If you try to pursue policies that seem conservative, without grounding them in the truths that conservatism springs from, what you will get will bear a striking resemblance to what John Boehner & Mitch McConnel have been demonstrating to the nation over the last couple months: Political spin on the half shell.

Conservatism, in the United States of America, is supposed to conserve the radical, revolutionary and only authentically new philosophical & political ideas of the last thousand years, ideas which were broadly understood at the time of our Founding Fathers – if neither the culture nor the people within it understand those ideas any longer, then your message will be received by them as the empty slogan it has no other means of being; without the necessary understanding – yours, theirs, or both – that it requires.

That message isn’t something you can ‘reach out’ with, if those being reached out to don’t already have some agreed upon understanding of it, it becomes simply ‘messaging’, spin – and to their ears, words spun in opposition to them.

I hate to break it to you guys, but Conservatism is not a bumper sticker movement, it is not a Gadsen flag movement, it is not an ‘appeal to the youth’… er… Millennials .. or ‘appeal to the Hispanic… er… Latinos, oh excuse me, ulllateennn-Ohhhs’ or an appeal to any goddamn other issue related movement. Messaging is fine and all when everyone understands what the message refers to, but once that is gone, it is no longer helpful.

The entire set of assumptions, of beliefs and ideas, preferences likes that conservatism typically depends upon, aka Culture, needs to be reestablished, before we can refer to them in a way that will again lend its weight to an argument.

• “Liberty will enable you to live your own life”, is a winning argument. ‘Liberty will enable you to live like Ozzie & Harriet‘ is not, not if that culture was raised on Family Guy.
• “Family values” are not a winning message to people raised in divorced, remarried, redivorced & reblended households. That culture reference isn’t there between their ears, and the cultural clutter conservatives typically try to prop their message up with, is weighing their message down.

A friend who was at a statewide conservative gathering with me last month, later said to me,

“…. many people don’t really have a consistent philosophy behind what they believe … in other words, they might believe the right things, but they don’t know why. Which is kind of the job of culture. We can’t all be intellectuals. Some of us got jobs.”

Which is exactly the case, and which is why culture, and respect for it, is so important (and why the left has been attacking it for so long) – it conveys the best understanding of the best of those the culture has produced, sparing every person, as it should, from having to do the due diligence of understanding every point themselves (Descartes, J.S.Mill, and other idiots aside, it is NOT sensible or even possible to doubt everything (see In Praise of Prejudice )).

Culture is a reflection of who you are and want to be, and represents the accepted answers to arguments most people likely don’t want to bother delving into. Except in rare instances, you cannot use your cultural example to win an argument against another’s cultural example, because a cultural reference is not a means of discussing an issue, but of answering one.

Cultures are not (and cannot be) won or defeated by means of being preached or imposed (short of total war), but only by means of people in one culture wanting to emulate that of the other. The attractiveness, the sense of something being worth emulating, is the only means of cultural change. It is how ours was changed out from underneath us, and if you don’t understand that, you are not going to be much of a help it righting it.

Are you, as a conservative, conveying your message in a way that anyone who isn’t a conservative, would like to emulate?

Conservatism is not the same thing as your favorite old movies or music, it isn’t allegiance to a party, or even your oh so consistent support of this political option or that one. Conservatism is, and only is, the response that is made by those possessing a particular set of ideas and their understanding; and that understanding, together with a basic knowledge of how they’ve played out in the history of mankind, together with a sense of why it is right that they should (hello to the Arts), such a person becomes one who chooses those choices which command a further respect for their fellow man and for the liberty of all; such a person recognizes their shared nature and Rights which ‘self-evidently‘ leads to those policies, and so seeks to conserve them.

Without that, you get people seeking the power of using networking to advance their causes – nullification, secession, Fed Marriage laws, ‘moderating’ the 2nd amendment… If you get your wish, that people become more effective and efficient in pushing what they want, without understanding what and why they should… we’ll just get the mirror image of what the left is selling… Power, which by any other name, would smell the same.

So… what?
So reach in, identify the core, the essentials that DO appeal to anyone and everyone, jettison everything else, and get on with it!

Don’t change your message – unburden it. ‘Liberty will enable you to live your own life‘, is the right message, it is a winning argument, and if you, and many others go about living a life worth living, others will notice it, and they will seek to emulate it, but not because you messaged your lifestyle or political opinions to them strategically, but because you live them in a way that others would like their own lives to reflect.

You cannot, if you are a conservative, expect to use the law as a means of changing a culture (unless your purpose is to corrode and destroy that culture), but that doesn’t mean that the principles of law (liberty), kept to their essentials, can’t be used to bridge the cultural differences we have, they can. There is no reason why security seeking and risk averse people who find themselves on the left today, can’t find security and safety under conservative ideas as well – it is in fact the only place they can – because those principles Are beneficial to any rational culture, and because those who find themselves within the other cultures can see them as being valuable and worthy of emulation and promotion (if the noise doesn’t keep them away) – that is why people have traditionally come to America.

Today we need to transmit that same sense to the people born in America, so that they will seek to become Americans as well, as did their forefathers.

For you part, present something worth paying attention to, without warding people off with your own personal preferences, and people will pay attention to it. In spite of themselves. The Truth that’s discovered from within, can lead to questions that will change a culture, even your own, from the inside out.

We all know that ‘the Truth is out there‘, find it, bring it in, make it yours, and it’ll spread…  Ring the Bell!

Please read the original posting here: "Here’s one message conservatives do need to hear"