Mailvox: the probable irrelevance of the Tea Party

JM explains why he is dubious with regards to the Tea Party’s ability to achieve anything:

In the past, every president has shown great concern with how they will look, and what is said about them, this one has no concern at all, apparently, on those issues, but only regarding his intended goals. His party has remained true to its fundamental principles, it has handily tossed off the handicap of being expected to behave within the constraints of “republicanism”, because people have ceased to relate that notion to the Nation as a whole, and have allowed themselves to confine the term to the party, forgetting that our unique status as a Nation is entirely dependent on the principles of “republicanism”, as most who vote these days were never taught that in school, and won’t learn it by accident.

Add to this picture, the least responsible previous president as the head of a Nation in serious fiscal problems preceding him, and we have in essence, “the perfect storm”, a situation where the fact that playing offense in politics meshes perfectly, and makes for that much more effective gains….

The “tea party movement” has more citizens activated than any other movement in my life, and should, by rights, be sufficient to offset this advantage the social democrats have, however, there is far less real power in simply massing than appears and most protests in the past have made the most impact through the fear of those facing it, than any other factor. It would appear the social democrats and this administration were prepared for mass protests, and while they perhaps didn’t expect the numbers, they are not showing any fear.

I’ve watched riots close up from the crashing of the DNC in Chicago, in 68, and ever since, and from where I stood, each and every time, the entire issue was decided by the reaction of the administrators, not the crowd. If the administration and the party standing behind it do not flinch, the tea party movement will cease to have any influence unless the whole issue devolves into outright uprising and a physical outbreak of war against the illegal government is commenced.

Seeing the way in which Obama is confounding the Tea Party movement tends to remind me of the classic alternative history short story in which the Germans conquer British India and instead of facing imperial British troops, Gandhi finds himself confronting soldiers of the Wehrmacht. Needless to say, satyagraha is rather less effective in the face of a ruthless enemy that is indifferent to bloodshed.

Obama is entirely focused on his goals, not the polls. He is as indifferent to the political pressure from his left as he is to the Tea Party-led pressure from his right, in part because he has largely delegated his legislative priorities to the Congressional Democrats. And being a ruthless pragmatist who has never hesitated to discard others once they cease to prove useful to him, it is extremely unlikely that he is in any way concerned with the Democratic Party’s probable loss of the House in the fall. Obama will simply keep pursuing his progressive goals while relying upon Republicans to do what they do best, namely, crumble under media pressure.

The intrinsic weakness of secular society

I was not a fan of Ross Douthat in the past, but I have to admit that he has really risen to the occasion more often than not and is rapidly becoming the most readable and interesting columnist at the New York Times. In today’s column, he succinctly points out something that I have less successfully been attempting to articulate for some time:

In a way, the muzzling of “South Park” is no more disquieting than any other example of Western institutions’ cowering before the threat of Islamist violence. It’s no worse than the German opera house that temporarily suspended performances of Mozart’s opera “Idomeneo” because it included a scene featuring Muhammad’s severed head. Or Random House’s decision to cancel the publication of a novel about the prophet’s third wife. Or Yale University Press’s refusal to publish the controversial Danish cartoons … in a book about the Danish cartoon crisis. Or the fact that various Western journalists, intellectuals and politicians — the list includes Oriana Fallaci in Italy, Michel Houellebecq in France, Mark Steyn in Canada and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands — have been hauled before courts and “human rights” tribunals, in supposedly liberal societies, for daring to give offense to Islam….

Happily, today’s would-be totalitarians are probably too marginal to take full advantage. This isn’t Weimar Germany, and Islam’s radical fringe is still a fringe, rather than an existential enemy. For that, we should be grateful. Because if a violent fringe is capable of inspiring so much cowardice and self-censorship, it suggests that there’s enough rot in our institutions that a stronger foe might be able to bring them crashing down.

The intrinsic problem with secular society is essentially atheism’s warrant problem writ large. Just as atheism permits individual moralities, but no objective and universally applicable moral structure, secular society has no material foundations upon which to sustain itself. The attempt to manufacture theoretical foundations are fruitless, because the perfectly reasonable hypotheses of intellectuals working in the abstract have no connection to the way in which everyone else actually lives their lives.

Hence the irrelevance of those who suggest that morals “could be” based on a happiness/suffering metric or ask “why couldn’t” a society be founded on one proposed secular principle or another. Many of these ideas could, in theory, exist, but the empirical and observable reality is that they do not exist, they have never existed, no one abides by them, and no one is actually willing to risk anything to ensure their survival.

It is now eminently clear that those who are quick to criticize the Spanish Inquisition 176 years after its abolition would not have uttered a peep against it if they lived in Queen Isabella’s Castile. The ideals that the secularists have proposed to substitute for the Christian values of the traditional West are quite clearly counterfeit, and unlike Christianity, cannot survive in competition with more rigorous rivals. As can be seen in India, Africa, and parts of Asia, only paganism and Christian revival are capable of competing successfully with aggressive Islam, which is why it is increasingly apparent that the 20th century secular societies will turn out to be as unsustainable and nearly as short-lived as the financial system that made them possible.

There are already signs that secularism is devolving into pagan global Gaianism. I suspect that this new religion will become Islam’s primary rival in the post-Christian West, even as Christianity continues to grow exposively in the East and South. This is not to say that Christianity will not survive in the West, of course it will continue to be a significant influence, but it may not be the culturally dominant religion that it has been throughout previous centuries.

WND column

Offense Wins Politics

Defense wins championships. That is the mantra of the National Football League, and it is a valid concept. Last year’s Super Bowl was decided when one of the best quarterbacks in league history couldn’t take the ball downfield against a gambling New Orleans Saints secondary. Superlative defenses are why nondescript quarterbacks such as Trent Dilfer and Jim McMahon own Super Bowl rings while Hall of Fame passers such as Fran Tarkenton and Dan Marino do not.

But politics is not football. And in politics, it is offense that transforms the nation.

The calm before the storm

In response to Dr. Helen’s question, the answer is an unequivocal “yes”.

Glenn just got Vox Day’s new book in the mail, The Return of the Great Depression, so I picked it up and started reading. It is not for the faint of heart or the economically hopeful…. I have noticed that house sales (at least in the lower prices) in our area seem to be picking up and people seem to be out buying again–or at least, they are in the stores. I wonder if this is just the calm before the storm or whether things are improving?

This graph on debt outstanding by sector should explain why things look superficially as if they are improving, while they are actually doing absolutely nothing of the kind. Keep in mind that Q2 2010 – in other words, now – marks the beginning of the end of the massive federal stimulus plan that has allowed the substitution of G for C over the last six quarters. But as the first graph shows, that substitution cannot continue indefinitely. It would require deficits that are multiples of Obama’s record-setting 2009 and 2010 deficits and it wouldn’t ultimately work any better than either the Bush or Obama stimuli did.

And this is an amusing aside from Dr. Helen’s husband:

SORRY, WE’RE STILL SCREWED: Reihan Salam says we’re heading into a decade-long economic buzz saw. “We are propping up the most rotten sectors of the economy and diverting talent that would otherwise shift into the new interrelated systems that are slowly emerging—and this emergence will prove very slow indeed once the inevitable tax burden required to prop up aging yet politically powerful sectors hits.” Let’s hope this is wrong, but it’s basically an explanation of why a powerful federal government, unconstrained by traditional limits, is a bad idea. Oh, well, at least I’ve got Vox Day’s book to cheer me up . . . .

At the Black Gate

Yes, I’m still posting there. This one is for the old school gamers. It’s an interview with Marc Miller, the designer of Fifth Frontier War, Azhanti High Lightning, and, of course, Traveller. It offers substantial evidence in support of the hypothesis that designing games is a natural talent rather than the result of experience and interest in playing games.

The Gay Old Party strikes again

It would seem there are more gay Republicans than genuine conservative republicans in the Senate:

“US Senator Lindsey Graham is gay and while many people in South Carolina and Washington DC know that, the general public and Graham’s constituents do not,” Gheen said in the statement. Though Gheen claimed, both in the statement and at the Tea Party rally, that he does “not care about Graham’s private life,” he again said that Graham must declare his supposed homsexuality “so the public can rest assured he is not being manipulated with his secret.”

I am convinced that, with very few exceptions, there is something intrinsically and fundamentally wrong with the psyche of anyone who genuinely wants to be a national politician. I have no idea what is or is not true about Lindsay Graham, but what sort of lunatic would decide that what the good conservative people of South Carolina really need to represent their political interests is a closet dweller?

What you do is only your concern if you’re a private citizen, but not if you’re a politician positioned as a family values conservative. People have the right to know for whom they are voting.

Expanding interest

It appears to be rather obvious that a lot of people are not buying into the recovery argument. I was surprised to learn today that six months after its release, The Return of the Great Depression is the #6#3 bestselling Kindle book in the Economics category and #37#10 in Business & Investing. That’s not bad at all for a book that has not been reviewed in a single mainstream news, business, or economics publication. And, much to my surprise, at $1.99 it’s not even the least expensive in the top ten as the Economic Report of the President by Council of Economic Advisers is free.

UPDATE: It would appear InstaPundit is the culprit. Thanks, Glenn!

Always call their bluff

Never forget that the smarter and more knowledgeable act put on by many atheists is inevitably nothing more than that, an act, and one that has absolutely no basis in empirical reality except for a three-point average advantage in IQ which is almost surely a statistical artifact of their insignificant numbers and self-selected identification. Do ANY of them, from the Antipope of Oxford on down, know even the first thing about history? Here’s a lovely example:

WorldNetDaily columnist Vox Day bends over backwards to argue that James Watson’s recent criticism is worse than the Spanish Inquisition’s threats of torture against Galileo. Seriously.

I wouldn’t think a great deal of bending is required in order to establish that simple fact. Seriously. Monty Python had it right, no doubt Galileo wasn’t expecting them! And, I wonder, to whom has James Watson been directing his criticism of late?

On a related note, Chad the Elder quotes David Hart’s piece on the decline of intelligent atheism: “The utter inconsequentiality of contemporary atheism is a social and spiritual catastrophe. Something splendid and irreplaceable has taken leave of our culture–some great moral and intellectual capacity that once inspired the more heroic expressions of belief and unbelief alike. Skepticism and atheism are, at least in their highest manifestations, noble, precious, and even necessary traditions, and even the most fervent of believers should acknowledge that both are often inspired by a profound moral alarm at evil and suffering, at the corruption of religious institutions, at psychological terrorism, at injustices either prompted or abetted by religious doctrines, at arid dogmatisms and inane fideisms, and at worldly power wielded in the name of otherworldly goods. In the best kinds of unbelief, there is something of the moral grandeur of the prophets–a deep and admirable abhorrence of those vicious idolatries that enslave minds and justify our worst cruelties.”

And now we have the spectacle of Dawkinsian atheism, which warns of how a revival of the Spanish Inquisition’s terrible witchburnings during the Thirty Years War, which cost Galileo, Bruno, and Sarah Good their lives at the siege of Jerusalem, poses an imminent threat to science.