Some
times brilliant, sometimes tragically ordinary observations on life from a pistol-packing neo-con

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

THIS IS NOT YOUR FATHER'S OLDSMOBILE

I generally don't write too much about politics here--save that for Twitter and Facebook. But tonight's blockbuster win by Scott Brown in Massachusetts made me think about something I need to get off my chest.

I want to say something about how politics in America have changed, perhaps forever, and what that means to each of us.

This has always been a two-party political system. No one designed it that way, it just developed more or less organically. In fact, in the beginning there were no political parties. Washington didn't belong to a party because there weren't any for him to belong to (he probably wouldn't have joined in any case because he thought they were dangerous).

At any rate, as the system developed there were almost never more than two major parties at the national level. Parties were born, some died--the Whigs--and others were born out of the ashes of the dead parties--the GOP. But pretty much the only third parties that ever went anywhere were the Populists and the Bull Moosers.

The third parties sprang up whenever there were serious issues not being addressed by the two major parties, but eventually, many of their issues were co-opted by one of the big boys.

There was never a huge difference between the two parties because the American polity has always been centrist, moving slightly left or right of center as conditions changed or one party screwed things up. By in large they agreed on about 70% or so of issues and differed on the rest, but there was a comity between them that was largely honored. Nobody was out to break the other guy's rice bowl.

You can make a pretty compelling case that this all began to change with the advent of the Progressive movement in the early 20th century, but there were plenty of periods when the country became rather quiescent and ideology was largely shelved--the 50s of Eisenhower being the best example.

This is a long way of getting to my real point: that comity, that sense of shared Americanism is gone. As wacko left as George McGovern was, he was still not that far out of the mainstream. His progeny, however, are another story altogether.

The Alinskyites now in power--thanks in no small part to George Soros and his billions--do not share many traditional American values. For them it's all about power and they'll use any means necessary to get it and keep it. They want to turn us into a socialist paradise--France or Germany writ large.

There is no Democratic party like our fathers and grandfathers knew. All the moderates and conservatives are gone, replaced by far-left wackos largely from California, New York and Wisconsin. There is no comity with these people, no grand bargain to be struck. These are people with a Soros agenda who will say and do anything to fundamentally transform us into their version of Europe.

So it serves no one's purpose on the Republican side to negotiate with these people or to make nice with them. These are not nice people and hold fundamentally un-American views. We must beat them down and kick them while they're down and stomp on them like you would a poisonous snake--which is what they are.

We really do need new GOP leadership in the Senate especially. These guys have been around far too long in this most exclusive of clubs where comity once ruled the day. We don't need nice guys representing us in the Senate, we need streetfighters who know how to slash and burn. Jim DeMint gets it, Mitch McConnell does not. One has to go and the other needs to step up.

The House leadership is in much better shape. There are a lot of young Turks there who really do get it and have the intellectual firepower to make a case for our kind of government: small, limited and low-spending.

The bottom line here, folks, is you have to choose sides. There's no more sitting on the fence feigning independence. You have to make a choice: do you want to keep the American we've largely had for the last 230 years or do you want some socialist utopia? It's that simple.

We are at one of those watershed moments in history. Either we get back to our roots as a free, capitalist country with limited government or we slide into the oblivion of welfare statism.

It's your choice American. Shit or get off the pot.


No comments: