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The state despotic ... Mark Steyn
Steyn Online ^ | June 2009 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 06/02/2009 1:53:18 AM PDT by Rummyfan

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To: freekitty

However America still has her spirit and I believe it is being revitalized.


21 posted on 06/02/2009 3:34:21 AM PDT by freekitty (Give me back my conservative vote.)
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To: Rummyfan

It’s interesting to contemplate the states resolutions concerning the 10th amendment in light of this article.


22 posted on 06/02/2009 3:49:52 AM PDT by saganite (What would Sully do?)
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To: thecabal
“Amazing. 200 years ago, de Tocqueville was more insightful about our society than most of our own citizens are today.”

And people spend their lives trying to decipher Nostradamus, while the writings of de Tocqueville and others clearly predicted the future.

23 posted on 06/02/2009 3:59:27 AM PDT by Never on my watch (The people in charge now could not run a lemonade stand on a beach in Miami in the middle of July.)
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To: Rummyfan

When an idiot OSHA bureaucrat stops at a construction site to chew out the straw boss for his workers not wearing aproved federal safety hemets, and his $60,000 government SUV is pushed into the nearby river, then the revolution will have started.

Until then we are all slaves on the government plantation clucking “Yassuh, master.” There must be consequences, even tiny itty-bitty ones, enacted against state tyranny before we can take back the country. I believe once these punishments are enacted against the state, it will catch on and escalate. Government must once again fear the citizens.


24 posted on 06/02/2009 3:59:34 AM PDT by sergeantdave (obuma is the anti-Lincoln, trying to re-establish slavery)
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To: sergeantdave

When an idiot OSHA bureaucrat stops at a construction site to chew out the straw boss for his workers not wearing aproved federal safety hemets,

He shouldn’t have to, everyone should have their “hemets” on.

.... but your right, the gov shouldn’t have to legislate common sense.


25 posted on 06/02/2009 4:17:51 AM PDT by CFW
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To: thecabal

There is more just like it in Democracy in America.

I think Robinson Jeffers must have read his Tocqueville:

Ave Caesar

No bitterness: our ancestors did it.
They were only ignorant and hopeful, they wanted freedom but wealth too.
Their children will learn to hope for a Caesar.
Or rather—for we are not aquiline Romans but soft mixed colonists—
Some kindly Sicilian tyrant who’ll keep
Poverty and Carthage off until the Romans arrive,
We are easy to manage, a gregarious people,
Full of sentiment, clever at mechanics, and we love our luxuries.


26 posted on 06/02/2009 4:25:55 AM PDT by oblomov (Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods. - Mencken)
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To: Rummyfan

Good job, Mark.

I would put this essay beside Alexander Solzenytsin’s speech analizing what’s wrong with America (You are a nation of law - but where is the morality? Your “law” is being used against you as your airplanes full of people were used against your skyscrapers) and Pravda’s recent trenchant analysis of our present troubles (you, unlike us, caved in to the Communist revolution without a struggle).

What if the American electorate had been as well-read as Mark Steyn last November? We might have written on our ballots something like: “I don’t see a candidate on the ballet I can in good conscience vote for! Go back to your respective political conventions and come up with something better.”.


27 posted on 06/02/2009 4:58:24 AM PDT by RoadTest (For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus - I Tim 2:5)
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To: Never on my watch

“the writings of de Tocqueville and others clearly predicted the future.”

I agree - and Huxely and Orwell and Eliot and Isaiah and Jesus and John - - - “ We just aren’t paying attention!


28 posted on 06/02/2009 5:02:27 AM PDT by RoadTest (For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus - I Tim 2:5)
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To: AndyJackson

“Dick Cheney’s hyperobsession with metal detectors, and how many US soldiers died because of the outrage over the indignities at Abu Ghraib, etc. that his so-called legal team spent so much time trying to find legal justification for.”

That was the media doing that.


29 posted on 06/02/2009 5:04:19 AM PDT by RoadTest (For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus - I Tim 2:5)
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To: Rummyfan

I’m impressed with any man who can use the word “ennui” and still maintain his masculine charm.


30 posted on 06/02/2009 5:27:41 AM PDT by HonestConservative (http://web.me.com/pac8185/Site_2/Podcast/Podcast.html)
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To: Rummyfan

mark for later - need more coffee before I can read an entire Steyn column.


31 posted on 06/02/2009 5:28:58 AM PDT by Scotswife
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Comment #32 Removed by Moderator

To: Scotswife

Ha! I was thinking the same thing. We ran out of coffee this morning and my sweet husband ran to the store to pick up some beans. I need all cylinders firing before I can consume a Steyn piece.


33 posted on 06/02/2009 6:45:11 AM PDT by Aggie Mama
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To: RoadTest

Bump. Mark Steyn is the greatest writer alive today IMO.


34 posted on 06/02/2009 7:27:29 AM PDT by zeugma (Will it be nukes or aliens? Time will tell.)
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To: GeronL

“Would it even be possible to hold the American revolution today?”

Yes, it is possible. I do feel in my soul that people are going to be pushed too far. All it takes is a spark, probably seemingly insignificant.

I am just watching and waiting.

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT ADVOCATING ANY VIOLENCE IN ANY MANNER. I AM JUST STATING AN OBSERVATION.


35 posted on 06/02/2009 8:31:12 AM PDT by waxer1 ( "The Bible is the rock on which our republic rests." -Andrew Jackson)
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To: Rummyfan
I attended the local Tea Party to observe and learn the general feeling of a very conservative local population that has never taken to the streets for any thing. I expected 75 or a hundred and was astounded at perhaps 1,500 in attendance.

The photo below encapsulates the mood. Note three examples of the Gadsden Flag. It was predominate in the form of large waving flags, depiction on posters and on clothing. The Yellow flag out numbered the Stars and Stripes.

There is awhiff of rebellion among the folks of fly over country


36 posted on 06/02/2009 8:48:51 AM PDT by bert (K.E. N.P. +12 . The boy's war in Detriot has already cost more then the war in Iraq.)
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To: Rummyfan

BTTT


37 posted on 06/02/2009 9:54:47 AM PDT by spodefly (This is my tag line. There are many like it, but this one is mine.)
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To: zeugma

“Bump. Mark Steyn is the greatest writer alive today IMO.”

- - - and he didn’t graduate from any college. I think this essay sent the college grads to their dictionaries, although the Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary doesn’t have some words that I’ve looked up.


38 posted on 06/02/2009 11:55:52 AM PDT by RoadTest (For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus - I Tim 2:5)
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To: RoadTest
Any dictionary published after 1965 or so -- that is, when the prescriptive approach (documenting how educated people ought to speak and write) was replaced by the descriptive one (recording how people actually speak and misuse words, thereby legitimizing ineptitude) -- is culturally suspect.

Remember the micro-flap last year when the Oxford Children's Dictionary axed dozens of historical and "religious" terms (including "coronation," "monarch," "empire," "abbey," "chapel," "christen," "psalm," and "saint" -- not to mention "fern," "dandelion," "porcupine," "spaniel," and the much-missed "stoat")? Take away the words and you take away people's ability to frame their thoughts. Without that ability, the capacity to think withers away.

Oceania is at war with Eurasia. We have never been at war with Eastasia.

39 posted on 06/02/2009 12:53:09 PM PDT by Tenniel2 (Memo to politicians: Don't worry about "shovel-ready." Worry about "pitchfork-ready.")
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To: Tenniel2

” Without that ability, the capacity to think withers away.”

I think you’re right. Thoughts are expressed in words, and we can’t even express thoughts to ouselves unless we have the words to do it.


40 posted on 06/02/2009 1:34:35 PM PDT by RoadTest (For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus - I Tim 2:5)
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