Some Freeper named Jim Robinson has an off the deep end post up at Free Republic that illustrates in a nutshell why no one is taking conservatism very seriously these days.
You have to read the whole thing to grasp the underlying hysteria, the exaggeration, the misperceptions, and the paranoia, but a few choice passages should suffice.
It is entitled “If we could get millions of Americans to march on Washington, what would we do?”
It cannot be denied that the central government has become destructive of our unalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness and our rights to live free. The government is no longer responsive to we the People. They have stretched and shredded the constitution to the point that they have illegally seized for themselves virtually unlimited powers over the citizens and act as if we have no rights and no powers of our own. They are acting without our consent.
First, I could have lifted the exact same verbiage from any of 50 lefty blogs while Bush was in office. It was stupid then and it’s stupid now. Positing the idea that we are unfree or living under some kind of authoritarian regime is so far beyond the pale of rationality one wonders if this guy sits in the dark, cradling his gun, waiting for the secret police to bust down his door.
Gross exaggeration, hyperbolic, hysterical, paranoid, full of nonsensical statements that fly in the face of reality - and that’s just the second paragraph.
Our Founders established that when our government becomes destructive of our rights then it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
We have reached the point where the government’s long train of abuses and usurpations has achieved absolute Despotism, therefore it is our right, it is our duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for our future security.
Therefore, We the People of America choose to exercise our right to throw off and alter the abusive government by peacefully recalling and removing from office the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States and all U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives effective immediately.
Oooh goody! A revolution. Can I play too?
An interim provisional Chief Executive and congressional representatives will be established as follows:
The Secretary of State shall immediately assume the office of interim Chief Executive. The Chief Executive shall appoint and the interim Senate shall confirm an interim Vice President.
An immediate election shall be held within each state legislature to appoint two interim senators to represent each sovereign state.
A special election shall be held by all states within 30 days to elect interim members of the House of Representatives.
Elections for regular government offices shall be conducted in November, 2010 as previously scheduled, except that elections will be held for all elective offices, including President, Vice President and all U.S. Representatives. U.S. Senators will be elected per class schedule by the various state legislatures.
I suppose Obama, Biden, the cabinet, 100 senators and 435 Congressmen are just going to take one look at that million crazies this guy wants to bring to Washington and turn over the government to…who? Who is going to appoint this “Provisional Chief Executive?” No doubt Mr. Robinson who, as the leader of this revolt of patriots, will also be responsible for “convincing” our elected leaders to leave town.
No matter. Just what kind of government does this new Founding Fool want to establish?
The Constitution of the United States must be kept intact and must be adhered to and strictly followed by all government entities as originally intended.
As it was originally intended? Well, that solves the Obama problem. Mr. Robinson can sell him into slavery.
We must restore and reestablish the sovereignty of the people and the states and restore the constitutional balances between the central government, the various states and we the people. The constitution severely restricts government powers and guarantees unalienable freedom and Liberty to the people.
For an ignoramus, he actually got pretty close - to a third grade understanding of the Constitution. Perhaps defining “freedom and Liberty” might be a start so that we can figure out what’s “unalienable” in those vague concepts, as well as telling us how to “restore and reestablish” states rights and the “sovereignty” of the individual (which hasn’t gone anywhere as far as I can tell). But of course, that would require a mind not entranced with its own lunacy.
Then come the specifics: Repeal the 16th and 17th amendments, abolish the IRS (hooray!), transfer federal land, buildings, and military bases to control of the states, kill social security, get rid of abortion rights, the Fed,…
Well, you get the picture. He concludes with this ringing call for revolution:
Need lots of help with this document, folks. Please chime in. Would love to see a committee formed of members of every state to complete and finalize it. Then we should form and send delegates to a special national congress to work out the kinks and plan its presentation and execution.
This concept is an entirely peaceful altering of our despotic government per our unalienable right and duty. No where do I call for violence. The only force I call for is the force of numbers. We need millions of our citizens to sign on to this petition and execute its provisions. Will require millions to march on D.C. to block the government’s ability to do business as usual. This is our right and duty as Americans.
Yes, every American has a right to make an utter, complete ass of himself. That right is protected by the Constitution as surely as the right to sit in the dark with a gun waiting for Obama’s goose stepping brownshirts to arrest patriots like Mr. Robinson is guaranteed by that document.
The problem with all of this isn’t that the guy is a loon whose understanding of what America is all about is that of a 6 year old. The problem is in the comments to this post, as well as comments I’ve seen on just about every big conservative blog out there that support and mimic these extraordinarily idiotic and laughably exaggerated claims of what the government has been doing since Obama took office and how these actions affect our personal liberty.
There will always be a certain portion of both the right and left who are basically nuts. The hysterically exaggerated dangers of a Bush putsch were written about endlessly by the left for 8 years. Now it’s time for righty crazies to crawl out from under the rocks and dark places where they’ve been hiding to make conservatism look like an ideal home for kooks, paranoids, and other unbalanced denizens who inhabit a creepy reality of their own making that bears little resemblance to the real world.
Conservatives will laugh this kind of thing off as an aberration. But I am telling my fellow righties that we ignore this crap to the detriment of the rest of us who oppose the administration’s actions. With pop-cons like Hannity, Beck, Coulter, and other conservative celebrities mouthing some of this nonsense (while implying even worse) on a daily basis, more and more of the base are turning into unhinged, screaming maniacs who believe America is being “destroyed” by Obama and the liberals.
This screed is symptomatic of the sickness of thought and reason that afflicts many conservatives today - more than we are prepared to acknowledge and far more than one would normally expect from a philosophy that supposedly prides itself on prudence, rationality, and probity.
You can dismiss Robinson and his unhinged followers. But they aren’t going away and their influence can only grow if we ignore them.
UPDATE
Ooooh my bad. Jim Robinson isn’t just any ordinary schmuck. He is founder of Freeperland.
If I were to seriously analyze Robinson’s thoughts in that post, I would say that anyone who advocated the kinds of changes he does would make Obama look like a piker in the “change” department. Robinson’s ideas are beyond radical — they are ill-informed, impossible, and reactionary.
How reactionary? Robinson posits a government that does not return us to our constitutional roots but rather to a pre-constitutional system not unlike the Articles of Confederation. Anyone who can’t see that in all of his state’s rights bullshit doesn’t know much about history.
Someone should wake Mr. Robinson up and inform him that we are a continental, 21st century industrialized nation of 300 million people and not an 18th century agrarian coastal republic of 7 million.
Not that it would make much difference to Robinson. We have to revolt to ban abortion and toss out social security and the IRS.
