The Sense of Losing Control

Townhall.com ^ | August 18, 2015 | Bill Murchison

[Kaslin]

A searing sentiment driving debate in the presidential race is that ordinary Americans are losing control of their lives -- watching the right to moral decision-making wrested away from them. Wrested away by whom? By those who "know better."

The know-better crowd -- heavily represented at the opinion-making level -- tighten their grips every second, it seems.

Last week, Connecticut's supreme court tossed out the death penalty on grounds that it "no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency and no longer serves any legitimate penological purpose." The decision to absolve from capital punishment 11 death row denizens had about it certain complexities. The legislature, in abolishing the death penalty three years ago, had allowed it to stand for those previously sentenced, including the murderers of a woman and her two daughters, one 17 years old, the other only 11. That signaled to the court's one-vote majority that maybe chronology alone was standing in the way of mercy according to the newly discovered standards.

The citizenry of death row, irrespective of their deeds, got off en masse. Never mind: kill a couple of innocent young girls, and the state will feed you for life. Have a nice day. Changed standards, you know. What we might have performed 50 years ago, in the retributive justice line, is, um ... off now.

Who says so? We say so. Who's we? Well, your judges -- your arbiters of rightful opinion, and of other such bilge and bunkum.

We see this kind of thing all the time, often at a more general level, as when Justice Anthony Kennedy regaled us last June, in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, with the knowledge that "changed understandings of marriage are characteristic of a Nation where new dimensions of freedom become apparent to new generations."

In the folds of the Constitution, 42 years earlier, the court found a never previously suspected constitutional right to an abortion. We are getting used to this: Judges tell us that we, the people, don't know what we're talking about. Oh, but their honors know, and are pleased to share with us their insight into how community standards managed to evolve without the community necessarily noticing.

The media, including the Huffington Post and all the Jon Stewart types, the "progressive" intellects embedded in academic pastimes, who write op-ed essays and give oracular interviews -- these people notice, too, and are pleased to pass on their insights. The delicious sense of cutting-edge endeavors that expose Old Follies and overcome Injustice is a pretty part of the package. It isn't frequently enough remarked that defenders of ancient beliefs (e.g., the justice of proportional punishment by the state) can get sleepy at their posts, can lose sight of the duty to guard against attackers swarming the walls. Such as pundits and judges.

The Trump phenomenon (which I had originally hoped to escape the duty of mentioning in print) is not a pretty thing: Blowhard blows hard and hundreds of thousands eat it up. You have to back off for a second. Why do they eat it up? Because of his not-too-gentle touch on an open sore?

Among the sorest of sores in 21st century America is the one I mentioned earlier -- the sense of losing control to people whose authority to preach at you seems to proceed chiefly from their delight at preaching. The present U.S. president is conspicuous in that category. Whenever he talks, you know who's right. He's right; just ask him.

The apparatus of beliefs that more or less supported an older America -- religious faith, inherited wisdom, localized attachments, devotion (imperfectly expressed and executed at times) to freedom -- is disintegrating slowly. Those aforementioned know-better folks apparently find this out in law school, or in the television studio, and assuming they are molded of brass and a reforming disposition, they know what to do. Into the moral vacuum they go, scattering reproofs, trampling on the habits and procedures that most offend them. And pretending that the cheers and pompoms for Brother Trump are just fodder in today's news cycle.

[TigerClaws]

We need to go hard, hard right to redefine the middle position.

Leftists have pushed things to the point of insanity. If you ask for a man only restroom it’s a hate crime these days.

[Noumenon]

What we need is a cleansing of Biblical proportions. With everything that implies.

Mordecai: What happens after?
The Stranger: Hmm?
Mordecai: What do we do when it's over?
The Stranger: Then you live with it.

from High Plains Drifter

[ought-six]

Leftists have pushed things to the point of insanity.

That's a fact. That is also why, when the SHTF, it will be so much fun to shoot them.

[Biggirl]

Time to take America back!

[servantboy777]

White people suck at civil disobidience. We are letting our country die. I don’t have the answers, but when folks talk about time to take our country back...what does this mean?

Sending emails to congressman? Tea party events? Voting? Calling?

The crooks up in D.C. are laughing at cocktail parties at average citizens attempts to exact change.

They have all the power, money, influence...and they damn well know it.

We (including me) belly ache on FR to what end?

[Mr. Jeeves]

White people suck at civil disobedience.

We can do it. Remember when Gore tried to steal Florida?

[Biggirl]

See all the interest as of late in Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, very large crowds, that is the start.

2016 is coming, 2016 is coming.

[Biggirl]

It can be done!

[Biggirl]

The “know-betters” I hold in comtemp.

[servantboy777]

The establishment republicans and democrats along with corporate elites like Zuckerburg and the MSM is working overtime to derail the conservative voice.

This is exactly why I believe there are 17 republican candidates. Of course, it's not quite going the way they'd intended. I do feel we will end up with a squishy moderate in the end. Hope not, but my gut tells me so.

I just don't know what to think of Trump. I want so much to distrust the guy. I am for Ted Cruz, but if Trump makes it (big if) to the convention, I'll be surprised.

Something just doesn't feel right about Trump.

[humblegunner]

The “know-betters” I hold in comtemp.

Some who know better use a "T" on the end of that word.

"Contempt"

Guess they know better English.

[Biggirl]

“The establishment republicans and democrats along with corporate elites like Zuckerburg and the MSM is working overtime to derail the conservative voice.”

Yet I sense a backfiring effect that is starting to happen. People are getting fed up.

Prediction: the establishment will have their rearends handed to them.

[Biggirl]

Folks, ignore posting number 12. As of now, I will not feed anymore TROLLS.

[DuncanWaring]

We see this kind of thing all the time, often at a more general level, as when Justice Anthony Kennedy regaled us last June, in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, with the knowledge that "changed understandings of marriage are characteristic of a Nation where new dimensions of freedom become apparent to new generations."

And then there was the Øbamacare ruling, in which they came right out and admitted "The law clearly says 'this', but we don't like 'this', so now, per our decree, the law says 'that'".

[servantboy777]

I sure hope. At this point in America, I believe this is probably the most important election of my lifetime.

I thought the last one was, but we’ve been betrayed by congress. Now, this is kinda Custer’s last stand to turn this country around...in a civil way.

[humblegunner]

I will not feed anymore TROLLS.

It takes a troll to point out your errors?

[Yosemitest]

First IDENTIFY the DemocRATS PRETENDING to be Republicans !
EXPOSE THEM TO THE PUBLIC !

The word "neocons" is ONLY used by LIBERALS, trying to insult Conservatives.
The is no such thing as a "NEW" Conservative.
Conservatives ARE Conservative, plain and simple.

But read this"

Liberals, Conservatives, and Neocons — Learn the Difference!
March 12, 2014

Almost everybody is confused about the word "neoconservative" and its shortened form, "neocon."
I find that liberals/Democrats seem to use it as a sort of disrespectful form of "conservative,"
and probably have no idea the the words have distinct meanings.
On the other hand, I know of some conservatives who define it as "new conservatives,"
meaning people who were formerly something else, but have converted to conservatism.
Both are wrong.
As near as I can tell, "neo-" doesn't apply to any other word that way —
formerly not X, but having become X.
No, "neo-" almost always refers to an ideology that is different from the root word in a significant way.
Neoconfederates are not people who want to secede and become a separate country.
They want the ideals of the Confederacy to be applied to modern politics, more or less, but not all of them.
Neoliberal is a more vague term,
but it specifically applies to people who may have SOME of the attributes of liberals,
but who contradict liberalism in their advocacy of free trade and privatization
and other ideas usually thought of as conservative.
And, finally, neoconservatives are mostly those moderate cold war LIBERALS who defected to the Republican party when the Democrats got totally flaky with McGovern and his ilk.
Their ultimate origin, however, is not the Democratic party but the Trotskyite movement.



Jack Kerwick elaborates.

Read this:

Most "Conservatives" Are Secretly Neoconservatives
12 March, 2014, by Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.

A colleague of mine has drawn my attention to a Washington Post blog post — “Why Most Conservatives Are Secretly Liberals” — by a Professor John Sides, a political scientist at Georgetown University.

Sides agrees with fellow political scientists Christopher Ellis and James Stimson, co-authors of Ideology in America.
Ellis and Stimson CONTEND that
America is, at bottom, a “center-left nation,”
for while “30 percent” of self-described “liberals” are consistent in endorsing “liberal” policy prescriptions,
the same sort of consistency can be ascribed to only “15 percent” of “conservatives.”
And another “30 percent” of “conservatives” actually advance “liberal” positions.

In short, Americans may TALK the talk of “conservatism,” but they WALK the walk of “liberalism.”
That is, they favor Big Government.

Sides, Ellis, and Stimson, it seems clear to me, are “liberals.”
It doesn’t require much reading between the lines to discern this.
That they associate “liberals,” and “liberals” ALONE, with such virtues as “consistency” and such lofty ideals as “a cleaner environment” and “a stronger safety net” is enough to bear this out.
Yet in peddling the ridiculous, patently absurd notion that
“conservatives” see the media as PROMOTING “conservatism,”
the verdict regarding their “liberalism” is seen for the NO-BRAINER that it is.

There is, though, another CLUE that unveils Sides’, Ellis’, and Stimson’s ideological PREJUDICES:
They equate the term “liberalism” with a robust affirmation of Big Government.
They treat “liberalism” synonymously with its modern, “Welfare-Statist” incarnation.
There is no mention here of the fact that, originally, “liberalism” referred to
a vision that attached supreme value to individual liberty,
a vision in which government played, and had to play, a minimal role in the lives of its citizens.
And there is no mention of the fact that, if “liberalism” is now “an ugly word,”
it is because the very same socialists who made “socialism” an ugly word hijacked “liberalism” when it enjoyed a favorable reception
and visited upon it the same fate that they secured for “socialism.”

In other words, if Sides himself wanted to be bluntly honest, he’d have to admit that “liberals” are secretly socialists.

Still, though their premises are bogus, Sides and his colleagues draw the correct conclusion that
most “conservatives” are NOTHING OF THE KIND.
The truth of the matter is that
the vast majority of contemporary “conservatives” are neoconservatives.

Now, “neoconservatism” is a term that hasn’t the best reputation.
It has ALWAYS BEEN CONTROVERSIAL,
and most of its proponents have DISAVOWED IT to the point of, preposterously, condemning it as an “anti-Semitic” SLUR.
But George W. Bush and his party inflicted potentially irrevocable damage upon the label.
“Conservatism” is a more marketable label.

Nevertheless, the reality is that neoconservatism is indeed a distinct school of political thought.
Beyond this, it is fundamentally different in kind from classical conservatism.
Irving Kristol, the so-called “Godfather” of neoconservatism, an appellation that he readily endorsed, ADMITS this in noting both
that neoconservatism exists
and that “conservative” “can be misleading” when used to describe it.

Neoconservatism, you see, is THE INVENTION OF LEFTISTS like Kristol himself.
When the Democratic Party began veering too far to the Left in the 1960s, Kristol and more moderate leftists began turning toward the Republican Party.
So as TO DISTINGUISH THEMSELVES FROM traditional conservatives, they coined the term “neoconservatism.”

Neoconservatives, Kristol asserts, are “not at all hostile to the idea of a welfare state” —
even if they reject the “vast and energetic bureaucracies” created by the Great Society.
Neoconservatives ENDORSE “social security, unemployment insurance,” and “some kind of family assistance plan,” among other measures.
But what’s most interesting, particularly at a time when ObamaCare has DIVIDED the country, is that Kristol reminds us that
neoconservatives SUPPORT “some form of national health insurance.”

In all truthfulness, however, neither a degree in political science nor an IQ above four is required to know that
neoconservatism has always championed Big Government
for it is its foreign policy vision more than anything else that distinguishes it from its competitors.
For neoconservatives, America is “exceptional” in being, as Kristol puts it, “a creedal nation,”
the only nation in all of human history to have been founded upon an “ideology” of equality, of “natural rights.”
The U.S.A., then, has a responsibility to promote this ideology throughout the world.

And it is by way of a potentially boundless military — i.e. Big Government — that this “ideological patriotism” is to be executed.

Had the foregoing political scientists been looking in the right places, they would BE FORCED TO CONCLUDE that most “conservatives” are secretly neoconservatives.

So, you see that those WHO THEY CALL "neoconservatives", are really nothing more than the old moderate side of the DemocRATS.
It's just THAT SIMPLE .

[RKBA Democrat]

Civil disobedience in the MLK sense no longer works. The powers that be would happy to throw half of the population in jail and tax the other half to pay for it.

Judiciously disregarding edicts and loudly speaking truth to power on the other hand....

Well, that’s just good fun.

[RKBA Democrat]

I remember that very well. We need our own people to stand up and mouth off to those in power. Our own “rent-a-riot”