Quote of the day - Will Durant

It is easier to rule a state in its decline than in its youth; diminished vitality almost welcomes subjugation.

Will Durant, The Renaissance, p. 699 (writing of late-Renaissance Florence)

The consequences of tyranny; Perugia.

In case you are wondering what happens when a society succumbs to one-party despotic rule, read the following passage on the city-state of Perugia (in Renaissance Italy). The author describes the result of one party (Baglioni) seizing total power after expelling their opponents (Oddi) around 1445 A.D. Keep in mind the lesson for our own future and the ultimate price of selling your liberty in exchange for a few government handouts. You will not merely be hurting "the rich," the "tea party," "big insurance," Sarah Palin, Republicans in Congress or some other devil scapegoat that the left happens to target. You will be creating chaos for yourselves and destroying your own livelihoods and peace of mind. Tyranny has consequences.

From the day the Oddi were expelled, our city went from bad to worse. All the young men followed the trade of arms. Their lives were disorderly, and every day divers excesses were divulged, and the city had lost all reason and justice. Every man administered right unto himself, by his own authority and with royal hand. The pope sent many legates, if so be the city could be brought to order. But all who came went back in dread of being hewn to pieces; for the Baglioni threated to throw some from the windows of the palace, so that no cardinal or other legate durst approach Perugia unlesss he were their friend. And the city was brought to such misery that the most lawless men were most prized; and those who had slain two or three men walked as they pleased through the palace, and went with sword or poignard to speak to the podesta and other magistrates. Every man of worth was trodden down by bravos whom the nobles favored, nor could a citizen call his property his own. The nobles robbed first one and then another of goods and land. All offices were sold or else suppressed; and taxes and extortions were so grievous that everyone cried out.

Francesco Matarazzo, Cronaca (as quoted in Durant, The Renaissance, p. 242.)

Quote of the day - Will Durant; Lorenzo De Medici; Florence

The merchants preferred economic prosperity to political freedom; the proleteriat was kept busy with extensive public works, and forgave dictatorship so long as Lorenzo [De Medici] supplied it with bread and games.  Tournaments allured the rich, horse races thrilled the bourgeoisie, and pageants amused the populace.

Will Durant, The Renaissance, p. 117 (writing of Florence circa 1480-1490).

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

It may be that the strange synchronicity between the president and the permanent bureaucracy is mere happenstance and not, as it might sound to the casual ear, the sinister merging of party and state. Either way, they need to be pried apart. When the state has the capability to know everything except the difference between right and wrong, it won’t end well.


Mark Steyn - June 7, 2013

Arizona immigration law; Seth Meyers; late-night comedians; Goerge Orwell - 1984; two minutes hate.

For all of its weaknesses, the MSM/DNC still has the ability to flog a talking point to death, especially on an issue as crucial to the MSM/DNC as flooding our borders with illegal aliens.

In the "debate" over Arizona's border protection law, the MSM/DNC has given up any pretext at rational argument and simply vowed to repeat the "fascist/Nazi/Hitler" talking point until Americans are intimidated into giving up any attempt to protect the border. Hitler would have loved to have such a fifth column operating in the countries he invaded.

One example comes from SNL's Seth Meyers, who attacked the Arizona law by asking, "I know there are some people in Arizona worried that Obama is acting like Hitler, but can we all agree that there's nothing more Nazi than saying, 'Show me your papers?'"

Really? Nothing more Nazi than saying "show me your papers?"

What papers?

• Do you mean proof of a social security number, without which Americans cannot work or obtain credit?
• Or do you mean tax returns, for which your failure to file results in prosecution?
• Or do you mean all of the documentation that will soon be necessary for law-abiding Americans to comply with Obamacare, including proof of participation in (and payment into) Obama's socialized insurance pool?
• Or do you mean the new national ID proposed by Democrats that would contain biometric information on every law-abiding worker in the United States.
• Or do you mean all of the "papers" contained in the FBI files that the Clinton White House improperly obtained and used against political opponents in the 1990's?
• Or do you mean the various registrations and permits that the government has used for decades to "control" guns and (only law-abiding) gun owners?

Of course Seth Meyers and the other late night "comedians" do not mean those papers. He means only the papers that would protect our borders and the lives and pockets of law abiding Americans.

The welfare state has turned "show me your papers" into standard policy ever since the New Deal. The welfare state propoganda machine known as "late night comedians" have voiced no objection. Indeed, for the past year and half, they have even forgotten that a man named "Hitler" ever existed. It has become "hate speech" even to draw comparisons between Obama's statist policies and the failed totalitarian regimes of the past.

But now that one state demands basic "papers" to protect its citizens against foreigners who would overwhelm the very welfare systems created by the left, the late night propagandists suddenly rediscover Hitler.

The very notion of comedians becoming the number one weapon in the hands of a statist regime is unsettling. We are being told that if we oppose Obama's policies of increased government control and increased statism, we will be singled out for character assassination.

Late night comedians and their coastal audiences are the equivalent of the "two minutes hate" from George Orwell's 1984. Crowds are gathered. Enemies are identified. Instead of anger, the audience is encouraged to laugh at this evening's enemy of the state, no matter how uninspired the joke. Slowly, but surely, the viewers at home learn to keep silent for fear of being laughed at themselves.

As the ratings for the evening news decline, and as sales and advertising revenue plummet for all major newspapers, the welfare state has one weapon left - the late night comedian and his obedient audience.

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

The same day that Mayor Newsom [of San Francisco] took his bold stand [against Arizona], I saw a phalanx of police officers doing the full Robocop – black body armor, helmets and visors – as they marched down the street. Naturally I assumed they were Arizona State Troopers performing a routine traffic stop. In fact, they were the police department of Quincy, Ill, facing down a group of genial Tea Party grandmas in sun hats and American-flag T-shirts.

Mark Steyn 4-30-2010

Obama attacks the Supreme Court; Mark Steyn; Hugh Hewitt; Justice Kennedy; Robert Mugabe

After last week's "State of the Union" speech (during which President B. Hussein Obama attacked the Supreme Court), Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn discussed Obama's attack in the context of today's politics and future decisions of the Court:

BHO: With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations to spend without limit in our elections.

HH: Now Mark Steyn, that is not accurate. The Austin decision is 20 years old, it had never been directly challenged. This was explained in the Chief Justice’s concurrence. But putting that aside, he attacked the Court which is non-partisan, and is supposed to represent the rule of law. It’s really unprecedented.

MS: Yes, and it’s very interesting. I would be interested to know what Nancy Pelosi thinks of that, because Nancy Pelosi’s comment, best known comment on Supreme Court decisions is that oh well, they’re sort of like God. In other words, once the Court has ruled, that’s it. It’s chiseled in tablets of stone, brought down from the mountain, and delivered in this case by Justice Kennedy. I mean, what I find so odd about this is that Justice Kennedy is the new Sandra Day O’Connor on that Court. He’s the swinger. He’s the swing vote. And I think, I don’t think it’s strictly in naked political interest, it’s sensible for Obama to actually publically sneer at Justice Kennedy when he’s sitting a few feet away from him. It just seems to me a very odd thing to do, and yet another example of how isolated and detached from the facts on the ground this Oval Office is.

Steyn's point is that Obama made a political mistake by attacking a swing voter on the Supreme Court, which attack will adversely affect future Court decisions.

What Steyn does not mention is that Obama (and the left) does not care so much about a few decisions of the Court. He cares about destroying the institution and its ability to check and balance the other branches of government. By attacking the Court publicly in this fashion, he has helped diminish the Court in the eyes of the 40% of the poll respondents that will follow Obama no matter how badly he performs in office.

Obama has promised to transform America. He means it. He has taken many steps designed to bankrupt this country. He has taken over industries. These are transformative steps. Destroying what is left of the rule of law is another such step. Diminishing the Supreme Court is necessary to the destruction of the rule of law.

Obama and the leftist utopians envision a world where the President can give any order without worrying about a pesky court getting in the way. The left can not get to that promised land without constant attacks on the Court. Obama's 40% must be mobilized against the very institutions that stand in the way of the progressive, populist dictatorship. (Whether Obama is the ultimate beneficiary of this dictatorship is irrelevant to the "progressive" masses. There will be a dictator someday - the name of the puppet that dances on the end of the strings is irrelevant.)

Did Robert Mugabe worry about the attitude of the swing voters on the Zimbabwean Supreme Court as he was seizing farms and turning the currency into confetti? Obama and his allies have a broader agenda than bean counting votes on the Supreme Court.

Red Decade; Eugene Lyons; thug persecution of anti-Obama dissent

We have had more than a year to observe the religion that is Obama-worship and the Obama cult of personality. But worse than the unearned praise and unearned rewards are the personal attacks on those who refuse to worship Obama. Right now we are witnessing coordinated attacks upon "Fox News," the Chamber of Commerce, "big insurance," Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, etc.

This type of attack is nothing new. In the 1930's, American supporters of the Soviet Union would not tolerate criticism of their faith. Anyone who pointed out the brutality of the Soviet system was attacked [I am referring to attacks by American fifth columnists for the Soviet Union - not persecution by the Soviet government in Russia]:

People shut their eyes and their ears and their minds to anything which might reflect on their new religion. Supposed "intellectuals" were sure they were demolishing detailed reports on Russian realities by insulting the authors. I shall have more to say about the arts of character assassination as practiced against infidels. The process served essentially as a psychological trick for ignoring their views with a clear conscience.

One day an apologetic stranger came to see me. He told me a heart-rending tale. It seems that his wife, a high-strung and warm-natured woman, had devoted years of ardent effort to the communist movement. Several weeks before, she had heard me speak at a forum meeting at the Community Church of New York. What I had to report on Russia had shaken her faith. She came home that night and suffered a nervous breakdown. Now her husband came to plead that I go to the hospital and assure the woman that I had lied, that everything in Russia was lovely . . . .

I became familiar with high-pitched, hysterical hecklers; with insulting letters. As I came out of the auditorium after talking to a few hundred schoolteachers gathered at the Ethical Culture School on a Sunday afternoon, a wild-eyed, dark-visaged woman shouted obscenities at me and tried to scratch out my eyes. She was one of the "activists," I was told, of the communist local of the New York Teachers Union.

And my own experience was mild compared with those of dozens of others who dared to tell aloud what they knew of the bogus Utopia. Eye-scratching and name-calling and sneering were in the temper of the Red Decade. The methods seemed even less edifying when disguised as "literary criticism" in the New Republic or as "economic analysis" in the Nation, or as slapstick humor in a column by the late Heywood Broun.

Red Decade, p. 194

Only when we see the thugs through the eyes of history can we see them for what they really are.

Sgt. James Crowley; scandal; DUI; police brutality; drugs; alcoholism; bribery

I am trying another experiment. Last year, I attracted google traffic from idiots looking for dirt on Sarah Palin. This past April, I attracted google traffic from idiots looking for dirt on Carrie Prejean, the former Miss California whose crown was removed because her views on gay marriage agree with those of the majority of Americans.

Both posts drew tremendous amounts of traffic (especially the post on Carrie Prejean).

Now, I want to see how many people are trying to find dirt on Sgt. Crowley so as to somehow justify the race card comments of Barack Obama this week.

Quote of the day - Dick Morris - Obama health care bill

The Obama plan effectively repeals Medicare, putting a Federal Health Board between the elderly and their doctors. This board will instruct public and private insurance carriers on what procedures are to be approved, at what cost and for what patients.

The bulk of this rationing will fall on the elderly. We’ll have to revisit the idea that the elderly have, in the words of former Colorado Gov. Dick Lamm, “a duty to die.”

The more word gets out about what the bill contemplates, the firmer opposition will grow. That’s why Obama wants to push it through now, while he retains some popularity.

And if the bill passes? The howls of protest from the elderly the first time they’re denied care will be something to behold. It will become evident that the health-care resources being denied to the elderly are going instead to immigrants — legal and not. The anger will be enormous and instant.


Dick Morris 7-21-09

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn - paying for socialism

There aren't enough of us to pay for all this – for government health care, government banks, government mortgages, government automobiles, government horses, government burros, for cap-and-trade, for stimulating phony-baloney nonjobs like Deputy Executive Associated Assistant Stimulus Resources Manager on the Stimulus Co-ordination & Compliance Commission.

Mark Steyn - July 17, 2009

Socialism and union control; On the Waterfront

Here is a three (3) minute clip from the movie, "On the Waterfront." This clip is 55 years old, but it shows our future.

In this clip, the union boss hands out small chips to the dockworkers. Having a chip allows the worker to work for that day and collect a paycheck. Those workers who have an "in" with the union leadership get a chip. The others either receive nothing or must fight each other for the remaining chips while the union bosses watch and laugh.

Either give kickbacks to the union bosses or don't work. A classic example of "pay to play."

The priest observes the situation with the sister of a dockworker who was recently murdered by the union/mob so he could not testify about union/mob activity on the docks. At one point, she intervenes to help her father obtain a chip.



This is how health care, automobile jobs and other perks of socialism will soon be handed out. These conditions will prevail in any industry that is dominated by government/unions. It is already beginning to happen. Note the Chrysler dealers that were terminated solely because they had not donated money to Obama.

Imagine being seriously ill and having to fight this way for the few health resources that might remain in our soon-to-be socialized medical system.
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Michelle Malkin posts a more specific video about the future of socialized health care.

Quote of the day - Dana Milbank - planted questioners at "press" conference

The use of planted questioners is a no-no at presidential news conferences, because it sends a message to the world -- Iran included -- that the American press isn't as free as advertised. But yesterday wasn't so much a news conference as it was a taping of a new daytime drama, "The Obama Show."

Dana Milbank - Washington Post - 6-24-09

Quote of the day - Bloomberg News - Kevin Hassett

I’ve finally figured out the Obama economic strategy. President Barack Obama and his team have been having so much fun wielding dictatorial power while rescuing “failed” firms, that they have developed a scheme to gain the same power over every business. The plan is to enact policies that are so anticompetitive that every firm needs a bailout.

Once that happens, their new pay czar Kenneth Feinberg can set the wage for everybody and Rahm Emanuel can stack the boards of all of our companies with his political cronies.

Kevin Hassett - Bloomberg News - June 8, 2009

Quote of the day - Dick Morris - Obama War on Prosperity

President Lyndon Johnson’s administration was known for his War on Poverty. President Obama’s will become notable for his War on Prosperity.

Dick Morris - 3/3/09

Tim Geithner tax cheat stamp

h/t Where's the Change

Check out "Where's the Change" for an idea on how to register our displeasure at Tim Geithner's hypocrisy.

Porkulus bill; What was the hurry?

There is a reason that the administration was in such a hurry to pass the 787 billion dollar porkulus bill (aside from the fact that Democrats don't know the difference between a million, a billion and a trillion), even though no congressman had time to read the actual bill. I think Thomas Sowell got it right this week:

The great sense of urgency of the Obama administration to get legislation to authorize slow-moving spending projects may seem inconsistent. But the urgency is real, even if the reasons given are not. The worst case scenario for the administration would be to have the economy begin to recover on its own before this massive spending bill is passed, reducing their chances of creating the kind of politically directed economy they want.

Note that retail sales and jobless numbers this week showed slight improvement and began to present a more ambiguous picture of the economy, despite MSM/DNC spin regarding those numbers.

In the world of the MSM/DNC, the economy is all about the numbers. If the numbers are good, then the economy is good, even if the U.S. destroys its own industrial base in order to placate union demands or environmentalist religious doctrine [e.g. 1970's through 2008]. At some point, the numbers will turn around so that the economy will once again appear strong. If that turnaround occurs before Obama can impose one party rule and censor his critics, then he will be unable to accomplish these goals. If the numbers turn around after Obama signs Porkulus legislation, then Obama will take credit for something that was happening anyway.
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update - Sunday - 2-15-09

My theory here has been supported by Obama's weekend vacation, after which he will sign the bill on Tuesday:

The push to get the bill through before the holiday weekend was so frantic, members of Congress didn't have a chance to read all 1,071 pages of the document before they could vote.

NY Post 2-15-09

If the bill is so urgently needed, Obama would have signed the bill on Friday night and started printing money right away to pay for it. But Obama has what he wanted. What he wanted was not "stimulus" for the economy, but the tools to impose tyranny. He can take his time now.

Quote of the day - Kevin O'Brien - Cleveland Plain Dealer

If all goes as scheduled -- and barring an exquisitely timed meteor strike on Washington, D.C., it will -- on a holiday formerly dedicated exclusively to the president who saved the union in hopes of "a new birth of freedom," the president we have today will sign freedom's death warrant.

............

The deeper problem is two-fold: This bill will do almost nothing to ease the current financial crisis and, far worse than that, it tightens the federal government's fist on the future of education, energy research, industrial policy and especially health care. And all without so much consideration as a congressional committee hearing.

Kevin O'Brien - Cleveland Plain Dealer - 2-12-09

William Buckley; 1968; centralized government

William Buckley speaks in 1968 about the plans of the central government for every detail of our lives.



As it turns out, he was underestimating the reach of big government. The above video was part of a larger segment broadcast on ABC on election eve, 1968.

Jim Jones 30th anniversary; Jonestown; American Thinker; Orwell's Children; Bruce Walker

Bruce Walker commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown cult suicides in American Thinker:

Jonestown ended in mass suicide, but the real horror was that ordinary people, Americans like you and I, had become so decoupled from reality and morality that they could be led to surrender everything, even their lives, intoxicated only with the venom of modern Leftism. These were Orwell's Children.

We are drifting into the sort of horrific future he described. Too many of us for comfort or solace have become just like the denizens of Jonestown: Orwell's children -- a new generation of creature enraged into constant militancy against eternal enemies, oblivious to the notion of a Blessed Creator, melded into the consciousness of the party hive, divorced from history, hypnotized by images, inoculated against reason, stripped of family, and existing only to serve the cause.

Jim Jones was not simply "another religious preacher" as the left has (and will) undoubtedly repeat. He was a leftist who used leftist tactics and methods:

Jim Jones, the communist leader of Jonestown, Guyana, had become "Big Brother." Soviet and Communist Chinese propaganda films and condemnations of capitalist and imperialist America blared continually to the subjects of this island of Leftist Hell.

In other words, Jonestown was like a DNC convention or editorial board meeting at the New York Times.

Read all of Walker's article.

Also, read my post from 2007, in which I detail some of the connections between Jones and the San Francisco Democrat machine. Jones was as responsible as any other single individual for the Democrat takeover of San Francisco city politics. The politicians of the San Francisco Democrat party (including some famous names) rewarded him well.