Posted on 04/04/2015 11:38:36 AM PDT by Bratch
Earlier this week, Drew M wrote another chapter in his long running “Let It Burn” saga, Can The GOP Be Reformed? Some Say No, Others Are Wrong. It's a good essay, I encourage anyone who missed it to take a moment to read it, because I'm about to take issue with it.
The issue I have with Drew's thread has nothing to do with it's content. I happen to think that his observations are spot on, and I agree with them. The GOP isn't a conservative party. It isn't going to ever be as conservative as he, and I, and I suspect most of you, would want. The United States will never be as conservative as it should be, and in fact it never was as conservative as we like to pretend. Even if one views the Constitution as the greatest governing document devised by man, which it is, it still has its flaws, and from the day it was ratified efforts from all sides have been ongoing to change or modify its provisions. The problem I have with Drew's essay is that I think he misunderstands the role that we absolutely HAVE to play in the system.
Let It Burn
First, lets dispense with the canard that Conservatives need to just step back and let the worst happen. Let the inevitable collapse occur with an eye towards rebuilding a more traditional, freer, country from the ashes.
It ain't going to happen.
I can think of no situation in the history of mankind where societal or governmental collapse was not followed by a tyrannical government. Remember, oligarchy is the natural state of mankind, once all of the underpinnings of American law and government are destroyed, an oligarchy WILL form to reestablish “order” and to provide “security” for the people. Betting the house that we'd be able to form a successful, American version of the White Army to prevent this strikes me as gambling against very long odds indeed. I understand the seductive nature of let it burn, really I do, and sometimes in frustration or cynicism I waiver towards it's siren call, but ultimately I think it's a fool's gambit. That's not a world I want to live in or want my children or my grandchildren to inherit. Life there is nasty, brutish and short.
Third Party
Now here's a good idea. If the GOP no longer represents the values of a significant portion of it's members, those members should form a party that does. The two parties could then duke it out for the hearts and minds of the right side of the population, with one emerging triumphant. Assuming that it's the breakaway Conservative party, we would then be able to steer the country back in the direction of prosperity and freedom. Sign me up! Except....
I don't think we have the time. The Republicans deposed the Whigs in six years. But without an issue as divisive as slavery to drive the confrontation, I think it would take much longer than that. We don't have six years. A President Hillary or Warren with a Dem controlled House and Senate would probably cause a collapse in six months. Unfortunately, a serious attempt at forming a third party right now would do nothing but bring about the let it burn scenario.
The GOP is useless!
It's hard to argue against the thesis that the GOP is useless. Citizen push back against the leftist policies of the current Democrat party have given the GOP strong majorities in the House and Senate, and they've done nothing with them, squandering the leverage given them by the Constitution to control the budget, showing their belly on illegal immigration and refusing to even consider using Constitutional measured to bring an out of control Executive to heel. It's hard to see how anything is going to change in the next two years either.
On the other hand, it's easy to forget or overlook things that the GOP has accomplished, either intentionally or unintentionally. For the former, we need look no further than gun rights, which are the best in 40 years. If the burning times ever do come, you can thank your lucky stars the GOP never went full squish on these, as you'll probably be depending on one to survive. In the later camp is global warming. Suppose Gore had won in 2000, and instituted cap and trade and a whole bunch of other nonsense. Not only would the economic growth of the 2000s not have taken place, but we'd be in a world where the 18 year halt in rising global temps would be touted every day as justification for some new government program or another. “We acted on global warming in 2000 and stopped it!” would be the left's first line of defense against any push back from conservatives, and it would be very hard to refute.
Fine. So what is our role?
Our role, as William F. Buckley so succinctly put it, is to stand athwart history, yelling "Stop!". All of the natural forces of history and humanity are constantly working against us. The natural state of mankind is poverty, with a small wealthy elite ruling over the masses. We have a system of government that is based upon individual freedom and responsibility, but like everything else, it's constantly reverting to the mean. Entropy in politics is no less real than it is in the universe. We can never stop it, but we have to work very hard to slow it down. We send conservative Republicans to Congress. Over time, as they get seduced by the DC political class, we replace them with others. Lather, rinse, repeat. This is our way of slowing the Overton window. If we can do that, if we thwart not just the natural tendency of human societies to revert to the mean but also those people who actively work to subvert the system and accrue power to themselves, then once in a while, every generation of so, an inflection point arrives where things are so bad that we actually have a chance to jump start the system again. Reagan was one such point, but what great conservative policy victories did he hand us? He didn't eliminate any government agencies, even though he promised to (bet he would have if he'd had the House). He got suckered into a bad immigration bill that's set the stage for so many of our problems today and he frankly got rooked by Tip O'Neill on spending cuts. Why then do we revere the Reagan presidency? He stood on principle and won the cold war. His conservative policies jump started the economy for 20 years, making the country prosperous enough to support collectivist garbage. He revitalized the concept of conservatism as a vibrant, viable option, such that it only took two years of Democrat malfeasance for the country to give the House to the Republicans in 1994 to put on the brakes. The 1994 conservative wave doesn't happen without Reagan, and without it we would have gotten Hillarycare. How much worse a shape would we be in today if that financial albatross had been hanging around our necks all this time? We got a 16 year reprieve from nationalized healthcare by electing the GOP in 1994, even though the vaunted “Contract With America” was for the most part a paper tiger.
The good news is that as long as we are able to stave off total collapse, we are guaranteed to get these inflection points, because the policies of the Left create them. 2016 is just such a point. I don't see things getting better in the next 2 years, in fact they'll get worse (maybe much, much worse). A President Cruz, or Jindal, or Walker or Perry could very well engineer the same kind of turnaround that Reagan did.
So we win, right?
No. We don't win. That's the tough part in all of this. We can never win. The forces of entropy are always going to be working against us. Any victories we get are eventually going to be undone. Obamacare came along and made the victory over Hillarycare moot, but that victory did buy us 16 years. All we can do is slow things down and every so often pump some more energy into the system, keeping it going. Our job is to be the adults in the room. We have to get up every Saturday morning and cut the grass. No matter how good a job we do, cutting, weeding, trimming and edging, next week the grass needs to be cut again. And the following week, and the one after that. Forever. When we die, our kids have to cut the grass, and their kids, and their kids. The grass never stops growing, the same job always has to be done again next week. If we give up, slack off, stop cutting the grass, pretty soon we don't have a nice lawn, we have a weed choked lot. I don't want to live in a weed choked lot, so I cut the grass. It's boring and redundant and frustrating, but I do it. My (metaphorical) neighbors across the street don't bother, and their lawn looks like [crap]. Our political opponents don't bother, and their country looks like [crap]. [crap] has one thing going for it: It's easy. It requires no work. I don't want my country to look like [crap], so I do the work. It's Sisyphean, so I'll close with Camus:
The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be
unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or
at least there is but one which he concludes is inevitable and
despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his
days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his
life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he
contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his
fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon
sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of
all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the
night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds
one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that
negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well.
This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither
sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of
that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle
itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must
imagine Sisyphus happy.-The Myth of Sisyphus
Our role is to be the absurd man.
Exactly.
We didn’t outfilibuster the King.
We didn’t use a leeter writing campaign to impose regime change.
We didn’t vote Third Party.
We didn’t try to work from within a system set up to keep us in our place.
We grabbed our guns and FOUGHT for our freedom.
Anyone thinking anything less will restore to us that same freedom is delusional.
Ready when the rest of you are....
You haven't taken the time to read their blogs, their articles, and their lecture notes, like I have.
Leftists always telegraph their punches. They tell you what they're planning on doing, knowing that you are too weak to stop them.
And what they've been telling you since the 60's is, they want you dead.
Yes.
And I'll tell you why.
Your military has been "fundamentally transformed" into something that did not exist two generations ago. The service of that age saw its ranks filled with patriotic Americans who understood the death struggle with Soviet Russia and its minions across the globe. We had leadership possessed of resolve and purpose. Our men and women in uniform had superior training and spirit, and were focused on the mission of securing freedom.
Now, fast forward to today. The service has been emasculated on the battlefield, with rules of engagement which essentially prevent the soldier from engaging the enemy; in the garrison, with emphasis on promoting perversion in the ranks and social experimentation; and over all, a command structure determined to destroy the fighting spirit and will to resist.
The military and the government minions who comprise this regime are loyal to their oaths, indeed. They swore to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic - and those enemies have been redefined - as YOU. And they will prosecute this war against you, the new domestic enemies, to the fullest extent of the law and the uttermost end of strength.
This contemporary military no longer has patriotic warriors in their hierarchy. Those whom we would call "patriots" have either retired, been forced out, or otherwise purged from the ranks. The current generation of soldier - from the lowliest sailor manning the rails to the loftiest flag-rank officer spouting regime talking points - are there for myriad reasons, which include college tuition and education benefits; they reenlist to qualify for cash bonuses; they receive taxpayer-funded salaries, tax-exempt and duty-free goods and services, and taxpayer-funded health care; and when they reach retirement, they then receive taxpayer-funded pensions, further health care, and in the case of the higher ranks, their dachas by the lake, just as their Soviet counterparts did.
The current generation of military members are, indeed, mercenaries. They fight for pay and they fight well. They are committed to upholding the regime that funds their present and future lifestyle. And they are committed to collecting intelligence of the enemy they have been ordered to fight: the domestic terrorists, as defined by their chain of command.
Now, many of you will ask, "Sarge, how can you possibly say all these things?" Here's how: having spent 26 years in that uniform as an officer and as an NCO, seeing both sides of the conduct and training and corporate culture;
Having spent years as a recruiter, knowing all the training, benefits and bonuses (aka "entitlements") that a young mush-brain could be enticed with to enlist, and re-enlist over and again;
Having watched comrades with whom I served, bled, dined and drank with, evolve over time into apologists for the regime, fully supportive of the usurpers of the nation, and who will carry out each and every order against their own fellow citizens, to their uttermost conclusion;
Having beheld the current crop of leadership - MY generation, the ones who remember the "shining city on the hill" - utter pusillanimous words of aid and comfort to the enemies of freedom, both here and abroad. Folks, do not deceive yourselves into believing all this "oathkeeper" talk. It's a lie, perpetrated to spread false hope. The true oathkeepers of the military have left the service, either in disgust or dotage - or to live their golden years in their own dachas by the lake.
Ping to my #23.
Those of us in the “old guard” outnumber your mercs.
We have more of a reason to fight as well.
If it comes down to that, we still win.
Well then, Old Sarge, I hate to say it but we’re going to have to fight a nasty, ugly guerilla war against them, and treat them exactly the same way we would the worst Muslim terrorist. Car bombs, snipers, poison in the water supply, the whole bit.
However, while there are elements within the military who would do as you say, I also know from some sources in, or just recently in, that there are a lot of guys who wouldn’t, too.
Jacquerie, the articles are good, but the remarks are the dressing on this thread.
Threads like this make FR.
In the meantime a lot of people suffer and die for the pipe dream of the few, who never learn that their closed, cramped, stifling society does not work, but instead learn well how to deflect the blame for it. The liberty of free men and women is far more chaotic, far more creative, and the order conservatives are defending represents the conditions under which it may best flourish. The purpose of government is to protect the rights of individual citizens, not impose order upon them.
Utopians don't think this way. For them it is the individual citizen who must bend, must be re-formed to fit an artificial blueprint. This is not Sisyphus rolling a rock because it makes him alive, it is an infinite number of Sisyphuses chained to that rock forever, equally futile but not allowed to live any other way. The free Sisyphus suffers for his own dream, the slave, for someone else's.
<>the articles are good, but the remarks are the dressing on this thread<>
Your metaphor is worth plagiarizing.
Completely agree.
If you recall a line of dialogue from the 2012 movie version of “Red Dawn”, the Jed character simply states, “In Iraq we were the good guys - now we have to be the bad guys. And we know how they fought.”
Example of a Self-fulfilling prophecy ... But “we can’t do that, because third parties never win!”
"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."
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