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Vote buying, that is bribing the voters to vote the way you want, is a very old American tradition. Social Security is one big modern example. The Roman Empire worked so long as Rome could afford huge "government contracts" for "services" and to operate their "social welfare" system. The list is endless.

I understand all that already. The meta-problem (if you will) is that the political problem is described in terms of the following alternatives: a small additional bit of socialism to bribe the masses (a la No Child Left Behind, for example), versus a large dollop of socialism to bribe the masses (a la Social Security, WPA, etc.).

But no matter, the ultimate effect is the same, only the slope of the function with time is different. Your choice as posed offers the alternatives of totalitarian socialism by next Tuesday or the following Wednesday, so the argument goes, well, the rate associated with the following Wednesday would of course be the obvious choice!

Are you familiar with the analogy of the frogs being slowly cooked in a pot of increasingly hot water? That is the view of conservatives with respect to any agenda involving proposed increases of any sort for taxation, spending, and the concurrent restrictions on rights and property ownership. The choice you offer is illusory if the objective is to stop, not merely to slow down, incremental socialism.

You would like to stop creeping socialism. So would I. If I honestly thought there was a faster way to accomplish thwarting the Left's plan than the arduous road I recommend, I would eagerly pursue it.

I see no road but the "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" that Churchill trod, and losing Tuesday is worse than losing Wednesday, since, who knows, by Wednesday the enemy might give up, we might all die of natural causes, or maybe God will intervene. If we give up we accept defeat.

The frog boiling I first heard about 1970. As far as "conservatives" as a class, I last saw the universe that way in about 1990. I've gone through all those arguments, libertarianism, Marxism-Leninism, Roosevelt socialism, Original Intent Constitutionalism, Paleoconservatism, Neoconservatism, Jeffersonianism, Andrew Jacksonism, Voltaireism, Rouseauism, Spenglerism, Reaganism, Goldwaterism, de Maistreism, and a bunch of others. I have come to the conclusion that man's will to power is what powers Leftism, and that the virtues I admire, liberty, loyalty, honor, and Christian love (in reverse order!) are in dire danger.

I can see several scenarios that could set the Left back generations, perhaps more than a hundred years. Technological change, egged on by Chinese competition as to which is the most militarily powerfull state, with fear of nuclear war, in a world of space weapons, could allow enough social discipline to set the Left back 20 to 40 years.

A successful campaign to persuade the voters that the Left was responsible for the death and destruction here in the USA because they prohibited timely response to Chinese aggression would be a powerful blow to the enemy.

There are other, more peaceful scenarios that lead to the same results. We need time and working together to accomplish any good, and delaying the crush by even one day is worth it. And electing Schwarzenegger can give us many decades of time.