Pick Up Your Own Crap. The crazy denunciations and demands of populist forces .....

NRO ^ | May 09, 2006, 5:57 a.m. | By Jonah Goldberg

[jordan8]

A long article that says little. Sometimes populist movements get out of hand, and 'tis the American way to limit the mob. No sh*t, Sherlock. Goldberg is a typically dishonest psuedo-conservative who doesn't have the nerve to say what he really believes, so he rambles on in an obscure rant about populism. Let me guess here, J-Go favors open borders in part because they're good for bidness and he took some heat for it so now he's labeling his opponents with the pejorative word "populist." He doesn't have the nerve to say racist, though that is what he means, because saying racist is just a little too PC, and exposes the collusion between the liberal establishment and Ye Olde Loyal Opposition.

Second, I’m not trying to say that conservatives who resort to populist arguments are crypto-left-wingers or anything like that.

Nah, nothing like that.

From the mobs storming Versailles

The ancien regime in France didn't fall because of a populist uprising, it fell because a decidedly unpopulist feudal system had driven it into bankruptcy. Sometimes the bogeymen are real.

[.cnI redruM]

I wonder if that would work on populists as well.

[.cnI redruM]

In Then Year Dollars, it just might be close.

[.cnI redruM]

No, they just form a big mob and yell "Si, se puede!"

[.cnI redruM]

Some probably would argue that we should have fought that one out and actually made them hold the filibuster.

[woollyone]

hmm...donno...we'll have to let'm take a poll first...gotta first see what everyone else wants, dontchaknow.

[Vicomte13]

"Some probably would argue that we should have fought that one out and actually made them hold the filibuster."

I'd be among those who would argue that. If they want to do it, make them actually DO IT. Have C-Span showing these guys live...droning on and on. And make sure that nothing else gets done while they do it either.

But I don't run the Senate, so that's not what happened.

[untenured]

Being on the wrong side of “the people” is automatically seen as betrayal, rather than mere disagreement.

I will shamelessly note that I recently made much the same point ("The People" and Their Frailties). For purposes of preserving our freedom we are probably best served by thinking of the world as one in which there is usually no such thing as "the public interest," only eternally quarreling factions arguing in its name.

[LowCountryJoe]

Many FReepers love to don their pitchforks. It's no wonder why, either. O'Reilly, Savage, and other assorted haters of free-market-capitalism that tout their conservatism have huge followings on the Right side of the spectrum and wield much influence on their audiences.

I'll take it a step further, if one finds themself on the spectrum in any way, they're a populist to some degree. In some ways, I'm on the spectrum...but I sure the hell strive to stay off of it.

I, myself, strive to promote markets and hope that people, through voluntary interaction, using they're own preferences, can self-govern and be the beneficiaries of personal and desirable outcomes. Utopian and impossible? Yes! But history has shown what happens to a society when it gives up on the self-governing and market embracing ideals. I'll stick my Utopian dreams, thank you.

By the way, thanks for posting this editorial. It's one of the most important editorials to kick off a thread on this website in the last few weeks...and the saddest part of that is that the people who should be reading it will either quit three-quarters of the way through or not even bother to respond to it with their comments.

[.cnI redruM]

t the populists on the Left have gotten better PR than The Brown Shirts ever quite managed.

[.cnI redruM]

Darn, lost half my comment. Basically I meant to say the populists on both the right and the left represent the worst in minimal IQ thinking. The ones on the left just get better PR for some reason.

[khnyny]

"Just after the completion and signing of the Constitution, in reply to a woman's inquiry as to the type of government the Founders had created, Benjamin Franklin said, "A Republic, if you can keep it."

That about sums it up.