Voting our way out of this?
I’ve often told people that, while I hope Billy Beck is wrong, I don’t think he is. RTWT:
Freedom doesn’t even have a place in the prevailing intellectual framework of this country right now, so it’s not terribly surprising that it’s not a value, either. Most people don’t even know what it is, much less how to act for it.
I don’t advocate not voting or not participating because, maybe, this ship can be turned around.
October 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
I think it can be turned around, Unc, but voting is not going to do it.
I repeat: that’s how we got here.
October 13th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
oh i understand that.
October 13th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Voting is the ONLY way we can turn it around.
But it took many years, if not decades, to make it this bad and it will take a long time to straiten it out.
But don’t loose hope. We did it on the 2nd Amemdment with the NRA, so I think we can do it and save the other Amendments of the Constitution.
October 13th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
We need to call them bigots every chance we get and always and forever vote out the incumbent. Unless the incumbent is one of the few who actually believes it is about public service (only one comes to mind right now)
It is close to late, but I view the problem as a pendulum. We are at the high arc of “liberalism”. It can come back down with a vengenace.
We just need to adjust the frequency of the pendulum so that the “democrats” high arc occurs with decreasing frequency.
October 13th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
#4 is Paul B….Not same Paul as #3. Even though I agree with #3
October 13th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
I don’t think we can vote our way out. We have reached the point of no return. More than half the country pays less in taxes than they get in return. Once you hit that point, the people will never vote to give up their “entitlements” and pay more taxes.
A good example is medicare and social security. Any elected official that touches that political third rail is done politically.
Who will you elect to fix this? The republicans? no way. The democrats? Do you really believe that the TEA party can change anything?
The good ship USS of America is sinking in a sea of fiscal irresponsibility, and no matter how much you rearrange the deck chairs, the red ink will soon lap over the deck plates.
From a historical viewpoint, it will be interesting to watch as the mightiest empire the world has ever known falls to pieces.
October 13th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
I think it can be turned around, Unc, but voting is not going to do it.
Agreed. The problem is that so long as freedom is not valued by the citizenry nothing is going to do it.
October 13th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
We can vote our way out, just like we voted our way in. To me the question is how far do we have to fall before people get angry enough to keep voting our way out of it. We put the GOP in charge in 1994, then went back to sleep. That didn’t help much. Times were good in the 1990s and no one gave a crap about making wholesale changes.
The root problem is that when times are good, people don’t care to change much, and times have been good for most of the post-war period. I think that period of prosperity was largely a function of favorable demographics. The pyramid scheme works well for those on the top of the pyramid, after all.
Now I that’s changing. We’re entering a period of demographically driven crisis. Things are going to suck for a while, and much like the progressives understood during the 30s, there’s opportunity to change the whole political paradigm to something else. Dropping out, to me, is the fastest way to make sure others get to mold that paradigm. The root problem has been all along that people who value increasing freedom don’t value it enough to do anything about it. Dropping out isn’t doing.
October 13th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
“Things are going to suck for a while…”
You’re a fool, Sebastian. I don’t mind saying it because I’ve never minded it before.
With all that, this is all I have to say:
1) Things are going to suck for the rest of your life.
2) It does you no good at all to talk about “dropping out” when you don’t fucking know what you’re talking about to begin with.
October 13th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
The entitlement mentality is irredeemable; nobody is going to vote themselves less money (except Democrats who routinely vote for other Dems, knowing the result will be higher taxes).
What will happen is that the economy will fail to one degree or another, more than it has already, and the votes for “hard decisions in hard times” will appear for a short time period. If the leadership elected under that banner is decisive enough, a huge amount of change can be accomplished – just as Obama accomplished the nationalization of several industries within his first two years in office, the privatization of most public charity can occur with just a few presidential signatures.
Vote well and vote often.
October 13th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Beans, bullets, and bandaids.
October 13th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
I agree that freedom is, at most, a tertiary issue with many (and probably most) people.
Most Americans think mostly about creature comforts and lifestyle and not about the Constitutional underpinnings of our country which accomodate their lifestyles.
Most people would happily trade freedoms for perceived safety – it would be a no-brainer.
I plan to vote and I am encouraged by what I see on the electoral horizon.
But I know that, even under the very best circumstances I can envision, there will be a good bit of downward social mobility and strife (and likely social upheaval) in the next 3 – 5 years.
I plan for that likelihood, because I believe it is inevitable.
I seem to spend more time at the farm and less time at the office these days.
I plan to live free or die trying.
October 13th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Well, you can vote your way out of it, but only to the extent that you can get others to agree with you. Social safety nets like Social Security and Medicare are “political third rails” precisely because they’re extremely popular, even among those who don’t directly depend upon them.
As for us being at a “high arc of liberalism” right now, that’s just crazy talk. Obama’s starting point was slightly to the right of Clinton’s end point, which wasn’t exactly advocating for Hippietopia. The horrible, dreadful, going-to-destroy-us-all “Obamacare” bill that passed last year was little different from the GOP‘s health care reform proposals from 1993 (offered as a conservative alternative to “Hillarycare”).
Regarding fiscal (ir)responsibility, we’re never going to make any progress on that count unless we drive a stake through the heart of bullshit supply-side economics once and for all, bury it at a crossroads at midnight, slather the whole thing with garlic and holy water. A dollar spent is a dollar taxed, period, and until people are made to realize that (and realize that Reagan & W’s “you can have your low tax cake and eat your robust social services, too” bullshit is exactly that), you’re going to continue to have runaway spending with no end in sight. You’re simply not going to “fix the deficit” by cutting taxes, the way establishment Republicans and some tea partiers seem to believe.
October 13th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Sebastian- The Republicans are no more the guardians of your money than the Democrats. The National debt rose:
George W Bush increased the debt by 187% in 8 years
Clinton increased the debt by 140% in 8 years
George HW Bush increased the debt by 170% in four years
Reagan doubled the debt in his 8 years
Carter increased the debt by 150% in 4 years
Ford increased the debt by 147% in 3 years
Nixon by 135% in 5 years
Johnson by 116% in 6 years
Both parties have been doing it for half a century.
October 13th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
divemedic,
I’m well aware of that. I don’t think the GOP, as it’s currently constituted, has an answer to the problem. But the constitution of the GOP, nor the Democrats for that matter, is not etched in stone. Either party can change if enough people wish it to be.
Billy,
I see you’re still as charming as you always have been.
October 13th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
I have always hoped that if a revolution were needed that it would come soon, while I am fit to fight, rather than later when my kids will have to do it.
However, if we (limited government, states rights, RTC, however you define the good guys) ever had enough people to make fighting an option, we would have more than enough to make voting an option.
But that would no longer be true if the states band together to get rid of the electorial college. The only reason Presidential candidates pay any attention to the flyover states now is they need the electorial votes. If enough gun clingers felt disenfranchised you could have individual states revolting. That would be the suck.
October 13th, 2010 at 11:51 pm
Voted Absentee last week, then went to Breda’s Blogshoot, now buying replacement ammo this weekend, will be ready either way it goes. But I’m a Belt AND Suspenders kinda guy.
October 14th, 2010 at 12:45 am
This is all about the money. When will folks figure that out? And, we should not forget the egos. Give a person some money, the first thing they will do is try to IMPRESS someone with it. It makes them feel better. The same can be said for material possessions, or any type of asset. We all want to show the other person up.
I don’t seem to get that. Being competitive is one thing. Fighting the good fight. Change, just because it is change, is another. FDR got lucky, made promises he could not keep, and then he died. He didn’t have to explain himself. Could I have done his job better? I don’t think so.
As for borrowing money that you can’t pay back, BAD IDEA. Okay, I’ll shut up.
October 14th, 2010 at 8:26 am
>>Agreed. The problem is that so long as freedom is not valued by the citizenry nothing is going to do it.
No, the problem is that we’ve allowed ourselves into a position that our liberty has become dependent on what the masses, unwashed or not, think and do.
We can bitch and moan all day about how 50%+1 of our population fails to comprehend that true social liberty isn’t possible without economic liberty, but as long as they do, and as long as they think the .gov *belongs* in the retirement planning and healthcare biz, or that death is a taxable event, the Extraconstitutional confiscations of our labor’s fruits will continue.
October 14th, 2010 at 8:35 am
Edited to add:
Look, at this point, the demand that government actually conform to the written Constitution that forms and gives it any credence whatsoever is deemed to be so outrageous and radical that demanding anything beyond that becomes entirely superfluous, as it sails right over the heads of most folks, even many with a glimmer of understanding.
Hell, even Constitutional adherence sails over the heads of many whose demands of government far exceed its textual mandate.
October 14th, 2010 at 11:58 am
Paul: Voting is the ONLY way we can turn it around.
Yeah, and the horse might learn to sing. Not the way to bet though.
October 14th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
This ship WILL be turned around, but only when the crew finally gets sick and tired of the Captain, and as mutineers, we all take over the ship.
October 14th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
To the extent that the government no longer adheres to archaic understandings of the written constitution, it’s largely because when it did so, almost everyone hated it. 🙂