Point of No Return (Mark Steyn)

NRO ^ | Oct. 25, 2008 | Mark Steyn

[Mr. Blonde]

Across the electric wires, the hum is ceaseless: Give it up, loser. Don’t go down with the ship when it’s swept away by the Obama tsunami. According to newspaper reports, polls show that most people believe newspaper reports claiming that most people believe polls showing that most people have read newspaper reports agreeing that polls show he’s going to win.

In the words of Publishers’ Clearing House, he may already have won! The battleground states have all turned blue, the reddest of red states are rapidly purpling. Don’t you know, little fool? You never can win. Use your mentality, wake up to reality. Why be the last right-wing pundit to sign up with Small-Government Conservatives For The Liberal Supermajority? We still need pages for the coronation, and there’s a pair of velvet knickerbockers with your name on it.

Yes, technically, this is still a two-party state, but one of the parties is like Elton John’s post-Oscar bash and the other is a church social in Wasilla. As David Sedaris put it in The New Yorker:

“I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. ‘Can I interest you in the chicken?’ she asks. ‘Or would you prefer the platter of s—t with bits of broken glass in it?’

“To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.”

Well, to be honest, I’ve never much cared for chicken.

McCain vs Obama is not the choice many of us would have liked in an ideal world. But then it’s not an “ideal world”, and the belief that it can be made so is one of the things that separates those who think Obama will “heal the planet” and those of us who support McCain faute de mieux. I agree with Thomas Sowell that an Obama-Pelosi supermajority will mark what he calls “a point of no return”. It would not be, as some naysayers scoff, “Jimmy Carter’s second term”, but something far more transformative. The new president would front the fourth great wave of liberal annexation — the first being FDR’s New Deal, the second LBJ’s Great Society, and the third the incremental but remorseless cultural advance when Reagan conservatives began winning victories at the ballot box and liberals turned their attention to the other levers of the society, from grade school up. The terrorist educator William Ayers, Obama’s patron in Chicago, is an exemplar of the last model: forty years ago, he was in favor of blowing up public buildings; then he figured out it was easier to get inside and undermine them from within.

All three liberal waves have transformed American expectations of the state. The spirit of the age is: Ask not what your country can do for you, demand it. Why can’t the government sort out my health care? Why can’t they pick up my mortgage?

In his first inaugural address, Calvin Coolidge said: “I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people.” That’s true in a more profound sense than he could have foreseen. In Europe, lavish social-democratic government has transformed citizens into eternal wards of the nanny state: the bureaucracy’s assumption of every adult responsibility has severed Continentals from the most basic survival impulse, to the point where unaffordable entitlements on shriveled birth rates have put a question mark over some of the oldest nation states on earth. A vote for an Obama-Pelosi-Barney Frank-ACORN supermajority is a vote for a Europeanized domestic policy that is, as the eco-types like to say, “unsustainable”.

More to the point, the only reason why Belgium has gotten away with being Belgium and Sweden Sweden and Germany Germany this long is because America’s America. The soft comfortable cocoon in which western Europe has dozed this last half-century is girded by cold hard American power. What happens when the last serious western nation votes for the same soothing beguiling siren song as its enervated allies?

“People of the world,” declared Senator Obama sonorously at his self-worship service in Germany, “look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”

No, sorry. History proved no such thing. In the Cold War, the world did not stand as one. One half of Europe was a prison, and in the other half far too many people — the Barack Obamas of the day — were happy to go along with that division in perpetuity. And the wall came down not because “the world stood as one” but because a few courageous people stood against the conventional wisdom of the day. Had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan been like Helmut Schmidt and Francois Mitterand and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter, the Soviet empire (notwithstanding its own incompetence) would have survived and the wall would still be standing. Senator Obama’s feeble passivity will get you a big round of applause precisely because it’s the easy option: Do nothing but hold hands and sing the easy listening anthems of one-worldism, and the planet will heal.

To govern is to choose. And sometimes the choices are tough ones. When has Barack Obama chosen to take a stand? When he got along to get along with the Chicago machine? When he sat for 20 years in the pews of an ugly neo-segregationist race-baiting grievance-monger? When he voted to deny the surviving “fetuses” of botched abortions medical treatment? When in his short time in national politics he racked up the most liberal – ie, the most doctrinaire, the most orthodox, the most reflex — voting record in the Senate? Or when, on those many occasions the questions got complex and required a choice, he dodged it and voted merely “present”?

The world rarely stands as one. You can, as Reagan and Thatcher did, stand up. Or, like Obama voting “present”, you can stand down.

Nobody denies that, in promoting himself from “community organizer” to the world’s President-designate in nothing flat, he has shown an amazing and impressively ruthless single-mindedness. But the path of personal glory has been, in terms of policy and philosophy, the path of least resistance.

Peggy Noonan thinks a President Obama will be like the dog who chases the car and finally catches it: Now what? I think Obama will be content to be King Barack the Benign, Spreader of Wealth and Healer of Planets. His rise is, in many ways, testament to the persistence of the monarchical urge even in a two-century old republic. So the “Now what?” questions will be answered by others, beginning with the liberal supermajority in Congress. And as he has done all his life he will take the path of least resistance. An Obama Administration will pitch America toward EU domestic policy and UN foreign policy. Thomas Sowell is right: It would be a “point of no return”, the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America. For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence.

If a majority of Americans want that, we holdouts must respect their choice. But, if you don’t want it, vote accordingly.

[Mr. Blonde]

Two things, this: "More to the point, the only reason why Belgium has gotten away with being Belgium and Sweden Sweden and Germany Germany this long is because America’s America. The soft comfortable cocoon in which western Europe has dozed this last half-century is girded by cold hard American power. What happens when the last serious western nation votes for the same soothing beguiling siren song as its enervated allies?"

Is from his excellent book, and is so very true.

And for a man who is usually right, he is even more right with this statement, "For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence."

[Mr. Blonde]

Steyn Ping

[jackv]

The five-pointed red star, a pentagram without the inner pentagon, is a symbol of communism as well as broader socialism in general. It is sometimes understood to represent the five fingers of the worker's hand, as well as the five continents. A lesser known suggestion is that the five points on the star were intended to represent the five social groups that would lead Russia to communism: the youth, the military, the industrial labourers, the agricultural workers or peasantry, and the intelligentsia. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels used the red star as a symbol[citation needed]. It was also one of the emblems, symbols, and signals representing the Soviet Union under the rule and guidance of the Communist Party, along with the hammer and sickle. The star has since become a symbol. Check out his store. It's everyone in obama's logos. WAKE UP AMERICA!!! http://www.democratnationalcommittee.com/candidates/barack_obama.htm?gclid=COTRgvrYwpYCFQykagodZj8FygtAmericans

[goldstategop]

Mark Steyn writes the Age Of Obama would set America down the path of Eurosocialism. The era of America as a hard power and the last distinctive redoubt of Judeo Christian civilization would be effectively over. We can't stop fellow Americans from taking the country over the cliffs. But we can all vote against such a future. It is literally a point of no return.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Kenny]

That would be a GREAT soundbite! Obama wants to write the “Declaration of Dependence”.

Needs to get out there.

[combat_boots]

Steyn.

Atta boy.

[mojito]

Another masterful column by Steyn.

[Chipper]

And for a man who is usually right, he is even more right with this statement, "For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence."

That is such a brilliant line and frighteningly true.

[bert]

......A vote for an Obama-Pelosi-Barney Frank-ACORN supermajority is a vote for .....

The resulting revolution. We don’t need to accept the rat domination. It can be overthrown

[Momto2]

Standing ovation!!

[VR-21]

“I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. ‘Can I interest you in the chicken?’ she asks. ‘Or would you prefer the platter of s—t with bits of broken glass in it?’

Just Damn!

[keeper53]

Excellent piece. I’m emailing it around! Thanks.

[griswold3]

Tell Mr. Steyn, We have only begun to fight! Time for a little ‘tough love’. They’re going to have to face the reality that their ‘utopian perfection’ is doomed.
For decades, we have pacified ‘progressives’ with little programs when we should have stood firm on principles.

The Host (producer) will not support the parasite (government). Socialism cannot succeed without capital and our goal should be to cut off the oxygen.

[Finny]

Another masterful column by Steyn.

To quote Col. Jessup: "Is there any other kind?"

Sowell and Steyn ALWAYS deliver the goods. No "stopped clocks," either one -- they're both right all day long every day.

[goldstategop]

The siren song of having the state take care of all your needs is awfully intoxicating. Who wouldn't want to have the government take care of them? It can work - but only for awhile.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[TXBlair]

...the only reason why Belgium has gotten away with being Belgium and Sweden Sweden and Germany Germany this long is because America’s America. The soft comfortable cocoon in which western Europe has dozed this last half-century is girded by cold hard American power. What happens when the last serious western nation votes for the same soothing beguiling siren song as its enervated allies?

So true. Europe has been free to lap up what ever policies they choose because deep down they've known they could count on the U.S. to pick up the tab in a pinch. Once the U.S. is in all ways bankrupted, the comfy Europeans will crumble. They're well on their way.

I can't help but think of the U.S. as going the way of the Dixie Chicks: on top of the world for a glorious period of time, and then plunged into impotent irrelevance by a couple of foolish ideas/mistakes, never to be heard from again. Of no use to anyone. I pray that does not happen on OUR watch.

[goldstategop]

Well if we do opt for Eurosocialism and become a Canada Lite, we'll be left with one big hangover. The Canadians are just digging themselves out from the wreckage of Trudeaupia.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[SumProVita]

To say it’s over is a tactic which I DEFINITELY do NOT believe.

[tonyinv]

"If a majority of Americans want that, we holdouts must respect their choice."

Being in a majority doesn't make you right and it wont change reality. Eventually their formular will fail and there will fewer and fewer holdouts (suckers) who they can depend on.

[Noumenon]

“It can work - but only for awhile.”

And not very well while it does ‘work’.

But cheer up - your chocolate ration will be increased from 100 grams per month to 50.