The IRS—not the usual “scandal”
Peggy Noonan is coming along:
Because people think the IRS has always, in various past cases, been used as a political tool, they think we’ll glide through this scandal too. We’ll muddle through, we’ll investigate, the IRS will right itself, no biggie.
But when a scandal is systemic, ideological and focused on political ends, it will not just magically end. Agencies such as the IRS are part of what Jonathan Turley this week called a “massive administrative state,” one built with many protections and much autonomy.
If it is not forced to change, it will not…
What does it mean when half the country””literally half the country””understands that the revenue-gathering arm of its federal government is politically corrupt, sees them as targets, and will shoot at them if they try to raise their heads? That is the kind of thing that can kill a country, letting half its citizens believe that they no longer have full political rights.
Those who think this is just business as usual are ahistorical, and those who think nothing can be done, or nothing serious should be done, are suffering from Cynicism Poisoning.
Unfortunately, there are plenty such people, but I don’t think Peggy is diagnosing most of them accurately. It not cynicism that’s poisoning them, it’s the vision of the anointed and the seduction of power. They’re the anointed, the good guys, and therefore the ends justify the means.
So I’m afraid that many liberals would say who cares? We’ve got the power, we’re on the side of right, let’s stick it to that other half.
[ADDENDUM: Don’t miss Mark Steyn, either.]
I thought Peggy was spot on with this essay.
But I haven’t heard many calling for real reform of the Internal Revenue Code. The only exception has been Mark Levin.
The ability to write the Code gives Congress power and, most importantly, campaign money.
To get an idea of compliance costs and the drag on the US economy check out the market cap of H & R Block.
Russia has a simple and flat income tax. Why not us?
The candidate that pushes massive tax reform wins in 2016.
Addendum: a real tax reformer should win but won’t.
Too much money on the other side.
And too many people don’t pay taxes or think their refund is so type of gift; not an interest free loan to Uncle Sam.
I know one guy who contributes money to federal pols just based on one obscure Code provision. A big part of his business depends on it.
This shows how corrupt, wicked and evil the government types are. (Evil here in the classic sense as lacking the good that it should be). These people are rotten.
All Dem voters are likewise corrupted. They don’t know it, but what corrupted person knows it is corrupt? All people act for the good, but not all people know what is truly good.
The real alarm is not that Obama is a gangster who can talk. He is and we should expect no different from this vile and vicious man.
The real tragedy is not wicked IRS or EPA or this or that AGNCY. They are Sovietesque, and getting worse.
We could withstand Obama and all the Bureaucracies. We could contain their excess starting today if we wanted.
The real alarm is that the majority of American Voters are corrupted and rotten to the core themselves. They may be our friends and neighbors. They may be you, me, and the butcher, baker and candlestick maker.
The truth is the truth. If we think that we are not THE problem – with special kudos for corruption going Dem voters and Liberals of every sort – we are in total denial and things will only get worse.
The members of the Greatest generation gave us almost everything we had, including decency and principles and morals. We took what we wanted and pillaged the cultural and civilization savings account.
Soul searching anyone? First we better decide do we have souls at all. If we do, then we might start searching.
“What does it mean when half the country–literally half the country–understands that the revenue-gathering arm of its federal government is politically corrupt, sees them as targets, and will shoot at them if they try to raise their heads?”
Obama has always been perfectly clear about who he sees as the enemy – the 1%, the ones not paying their fair share, the private jet owners, the ones who cling to their guns & bibles in fear of the other, etc..
No one should be surprised that the IRS and other federal agencies are acting acting on it, whether it’s IRS audits, raids on businesses (Gibson Guitars), being put out of business (GM dealerships owned by conservatives), stymied by an illegally appointed NLRB (Boeing), targeted by Obama-loving Lefty groups (Koch brothers), etc.
So I read a lot of federal employee sites, partly for my work and partly for sick fascination. Most of them would agree that there is either nothing to see here or the IRS was justified in its actions. In other words, if they had the opportunity to do so, they would act in the same way.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/340553.php See this from Ace of Spades. He’s correct. It’s another D interest group and as such its power needs to be neutered.
If the GOP fixates on nailing some IRS bureaucrats rather than using this revelation of tyrannical aristocracy to champion a reduction in the size and scope of go’varmint (however modest), then we need a third party. The last thing we need is for Republicans in Congress to repeat their performance of trading the momentum of the “Contract with America” for the chance to rub a certain dress under Bill Clinton’s nose.
The frustrating truth is that there is little chance of the real problem being understood or addressed. Our tax code of carrots and sticks is tailor-made for dominating citizens. The tax deductibility status of certain groups obscures the real issues of their freedoms of speech, assembly and petition. The entire venue in which that abuse occurred should be abolished. There should be no tax deductions, just an honest tax rate (or rates, as graduation is not the crucial problem). Then, there would be no levers for bureaucrats to misuse. The government would rightly remain agnostic about whether citizens lobby, campaign or buy an electric car.
Lizzy,
Do you know who I see as the enemy? Not the 1%, but the upper 10-15% who have their cushy (government or diversity administrator) jobs who look down on the rest of society because they don’t shop at Whole Foods and don’t support gay marriage and abortion without parental consent for 13 year old.
I’ll be spending the next few months at Princeton after a 3 week sojourn at my brother’s in a conservative more rural area. I’m am suffering complete culture shock. It is so pretentious here. Everything seems doused in moral superiority. I saw a sign in a store window saying that they were against racism. A food store was offering tasting samples, and the employee was going on and on about the nutritional content. A woman at the university told me she didn’t shop at Walmart because she didn’t approve of their policies.
I hope I make it back to Germany without having an exploded head.
A few small corrections to Noonan’s rhetorical question and observation;
What does it mean when half the country–literally half the country–understands that the revenue-gathering arm and other major agencies of its federal government are politically corrupt, sees them as targets, and if they try to exercise their unalienable rights, will unhesitatingly use the regulatory and justice arms of the state to persecute them? That is the kind of thing that will kill a country, when half its citizens know that they no longer have full political rights.
America’s greatest living poet, Walt Erickson, posted this at Belmont Club:
(I’m perfectly serious, by the way. Granted, I don’t read a lot of poetry, but Walt is the best that I do read. And whipping up a poem that is exactly on topic, often within the first dozen comments, is quite a skill. Walt does it routinely.)
“So I’m afraid that many liberals would say who cares? We’ve got the power, we’re on the side of right, let’s stick it to that other half.”
Yet another reminder that there is no virtue in being a ‘moderate’ who works with dems and that those who advocate this path are fools.
And that’s exactly why I predicted civil war the moment Obama was elected.
I hope that Noonan is right for the possibly the first and only time in her opinionated life.
There is anger in the land. Will it motivate action? I believe that it will take a lot to overcome the innate lethargy in the country.
“that’s exactly why I predicted civil war the moment Obama was elected.”
Well, that’s a valid possibility but not a certainty.
Whether that reality manifests, hinges I believe upon whether liberals will cling to the memes they’ve been indoctrinated with, when faced with the undeniable reality of the Far Left. At some point, the Far Left will not be able to resist the blatant, undeniable and repetitive physical and Constitutional abuse of power.
Yes, that is what the Obama administration has done but their abuse hasn’t reached the ‘even for liberals’, undeniable category, as of yet. Though they are approaching it with the MSM, they are yet far from it with the typical liberal low-information voter upon which their power depends.
Remember, “useful idiot” liberals do believe they’re the good guys. When they see their leaders acting like NAZI’s, that illusion will be impossible to continue to maintain.
At that point, they will have an impossible to deny choice; tyranny or freedom and that declaration will be impossible to avoid nor deny. If they choose tyranny, then the second American revolution will have begun.
Mike –
I agree pretty much completely. Not to be a broken record, but what you said has been the basis of my notorious pessimism for going on six years now. Two propositions:
1) Any people stupid enough to elect Obama once is stupid enough to elect him twice;
2) Any people stupid enough to elect Obama twice, WILL elect him twice.
The implications of thoroughgoing corruption of the people are all in those two maxims I’ve sworn by since the nakhba (heh) of 2008. We threw in the towel on the idea of belief and behavior corresponding to reality when we elected the One. We chose to decisively divide ourselves internally as well as publicly – opting for what Milosz, in The Captive Mind, called “Ketman.”
I know there aren’t a lot of fans of Sartre around here – and, indeed, we must never forget he became a deplorable apologist (even a court theorist) for evil – but there’s a lot of insight to be squeezed out of his early concept of bad faith, applied to here-and-now America.
As a first stab at this, I’ll try out some speculation. The Greeks, recall, had a concept for action that specified it as not mere activity, but meaningful activity – they called this “praxis.” Painting with a broad-brush, we might say that praxis requires struggle, and struggle requires the possibility of genuine suffering, if not disaster. Victor Davis Hanson hits this theme a lot in his work on the agrarian worldview.
Struggle today is by and large an ethereal, abstract matter – choosing bad school x because good school y rejected you; getting a 30 inch LCD flatscreen instead of a 45 inch LED smart TV; etc. I don’t mean to make light of modern problems – I suffer them myself, in spades – but at the same time, it must be acknowledged that there are problems and there are Problems. With the exception of unavoidable sickness and death, we don’t face too many Problems in our day-to-day lives (this is truer the closer we get to my generation and after; that is, post-1980).
In any case, the idea is: no Problems, no genuine struggle; no struggle, no praxis. And yet, we need praxis, we crave praxis, it sprays an odor of sanctity on life, as it were. It’s a human thing.
Consequently we have to invent pseudo-meanings for actions and the thoughts (such as they are) behind them, making them seem more important and significant then they really are. This gives publicly acknowledged reality a bizarre, fun-house mirror quality, a kind of monstrous misshapenness.
Everything is weird and disproportionate – big, conspicuously expressed feelings about nothing much; ideas brandished like Big Thoughts that signify squat; the absorption and regurgitation of pop culture ephemera as though it were anything but a grab bag of transient bagatelles; and so on.
And this extends, obviously enough, into politics. Sartrean bad faith is, at root, a freely chosen abdication of freedom, a self-imprisonment performed by defining oneself in terms of “things.” It’s essentially an attempt to forget that we are free.
Why would we want to do that? Because we’ve come to feel that there is nothing intrinsically meaningful to be chosen with our freedom – no possibility of praxis. So, instead, we cloak ourselves in bromides and liberal shibboleths – they at least make us feel good, and that’s something – defining ourselves as the Good Sort, all while electing and promoting the Bad Sort.
In other words, the Good Sort want the strife and struggle that comes from setting us at loggerheads with each other; it smacks of a condition in re for praxis, for real struggle. But this is the kind of thought the Bad Sort would have, so we split the baby in half. We elect the Bad Sort to give us what we want while averting our eyes, colluding with them in the promotion of the Feel-Good Liberal Culture of Stupid.
The Culture of Stupid gives we, the people, the sense of being solid normal old American centrists; it gives the malicious power-wielders cover for their misdeeds; and it functions as a declaration of war on the just-under half the country that rejects it.
Do we really not know what we do? Like Sartre I would rather say that there is a sense in which we know and a sense in which we don’t. The sense in which we don’t is that the free act of bad faith is made in that nebulous region of consciousness where we’re something like semi-aware – the region at work when we drive, ride a bike, walk, talk, etc.
On the other hand, we know in the sense that this is semi-AWAREness. If we don’t focus on it, don’t appropriate it into full consciousness, it is (partly or wholly) because we don’t want to. And as Sartre pointed out at length, if we don’t want to be conscious of something, it’s because we’re already conscious of it. Thus, bad faith.
Be all of that as it may, I really wish someone would write a book on the corruption of democratic people from this sort of “philosophical psychology” angle (that is, not from the rational choice/institutional angle of Schumpeter, Macur Olson, etc.). I’m just taking a stab at it here, but regardless of the details, the pathology of the American public is undoubtedly a deep blue sea of grotesquery.
Geoffrey Britain Says:
June 3rd, 2013 at 9:11 pm
In other words, liberals will have to admit they were wrong. I don’t think very many of them are capable of that. I expect to see them engage in ever more elaborate mental gymnastics to convince themselves that they are right, and to justify their hatred of the political right.
Meanwhile, the literal dehumanization of conservatives and Tea Partiers continues apace.
Also, throw into the mix the fact that blacks will never, ever, ever admit that Obama is guilty of any wrongdoing whatsoever. Any attempt to remove him from office will be taken as proof of white racism and will trigger violence in every city in the country.
This will not end well.
ExPat – spending the next few months at Princeton – Well, I drive through there every day and the Obama bumper stickers alone make me want to puke! God bless you!
Kolnai,
I am thoroughly depressed now, but I think I will watch some American Pickers to consciously avoid that thought.
🙂
All people act for the good, but not all people know what is truly good.
It’s a grave mistake to assume that everyone acts for the good, except that some are mistaken.
If you believe that it’s in your best interest to be a person of character, then you’ll make your decisions on that basis. You might be mistaken about what precisely will advance you to your goal, but when you do something that sets you back, you learn from it and adjust accordingly.
If you believe that it’s in your best interest to Not Be Mocked By Jon Stewart, your decisions will follow that contour. As soon as you know what will make you look foolish to the Cool Kids, you adopt that stance.
And if you believe that it’s in your best interest to be powerful, thus to punish your enemies, then your actions will follow from THAT goal.
The monsters of the 20th century were not pursuing the good; they had insatiable appetites for power and glory. Some of those who enabled them believed that Nazism and Communism and Maoism were the keys to improving society for everyone, and some of them were “Viva the Victors” types, who just wanted to make sure they didn’t get on the wrong side of the powerful.
Those who were determined to be people of character fled, hid, or were executed.
The book was written just at the dawn of the new era begun-without repeal-when Darwin cast his mighty scythe and taken, smoking hot, by modern Prometheus.
“No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself. My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence. We felt that they were not the tyrants to ule our lot according to their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights which we enjoyed.When I mingled with other famalies,I distinctly discerned how peculiarly fortunate my lot was, and gratitude assisted the development of filial love.”
Lizzy says, “Obama has always been perfectly clear about who he sees as the enemy — the 1%, the ones not paying their fair share, the private jet owners, the ones who cling to their guns & bibles in fear of the other, etc..”
BHO has achieved his goal of being a member of the .01%. Its not simply a matter of how much wealth one has accumulated, its a matter of power both financial and political. Little Lord Barry is chums with the private jet owners who don’t “pay their fair share”. His populist blather is for the masses, the big money boys know they are in with Barry’s in crowd.
BTW, these are not the ones clinging to guns or bibles. These are the ones sitting on the council of economic advisors and the board of mega banks and corporations like GE. From his dope smoking teens in Hawaii to his burgeoning career in Chicago Barry has aimed at being the prima donna of the in crowd. He’s so cool: http://tinyurl.com/67alxle And he loves talking trash.
rickl,
No, not very many people are capable of admitting that they were wrong but many people are capable of following someone who admits they were wrong.
Especially when the weight of evidence extends beyond reasonable doubt.
Elaborate mental gymnastics will only take you so far. Liberals are not going to be able to maintain their conviction that they’re in the right, when the left starts trampling upon everyone’s rights. Witness the outrage of the MSM with the DOJ case.
People can admit to being wrong when they can label it as being betrayed.
And the left is constitutionally incapable of permanently refraining from tyranny, their ideology demands it and their very nature is to assert control of others. As evidence, I point to NYC mayor Bloomberg.
There’s an excellent chance that Obama will never be charged with anything. And were he to be impeached, Blacks would ascribe it to racism and, regrettable as the ensuing violence would be, it’s about time for blacks to face up to some truths, which sooner or later will have to happen.
holmes –
Sorry about that. Me and the American public are going through a rough patch right now. Surely I have some of the hyperbolic outrage of the jilted former lover.
Still… not too much hyperbole. Which is the sad thing.
Basically I am just filled with disgust, repulsed by everything I see and hear in the popular culture these days. I’m so filled with disgust that I’m beyond disgust; I feel almost nothing about it anymore. I just cynically laugh at it all. I cynically laugh when Peggy Noonan tells me I’m suffering from Cynicism Poisoning, because Dame Paggy has no idea what that is. What she thinks of as cynicism is my optimism; her “poison” is a tall glass of club soda for me.
You get the point.
I used to think Allan Bloom – one of my intellectual heroes – was exaggerating in his diagnosis of it in Closing of the American Mind.
Turns out I was rosy-eyed and he saw clearly, as he almost always did. Sucks. As someone I love used to say when she was saddened, “What a pity.”
kolnai,
I understand the basis of your (and others) disgust and intellectual despair; but where does that lead? I too fear for the society my children and grandchildren will inherit. Yet, I see nothing positive in indulging in despair and disgust. Negativism gets you nowhere. Bottom line is that in the end they can only kill you. But they take your spirit when you succumb to disgust and despair.
As far as Ms. Noonan is is concerned, well f+*% her too. 😉 Maintain a locked and loaded condition, but never give up as long as you breathe the atmosphere and piss water.
parker –
I understand your point, and I agree with it on a theoretical level. But you mistake me when you view me as “indulging” in despair and pessimism.
In the first place, I never told anyone (or myself) to stop fighting. Despair, even unremitting doomsaying, is not incompatible with fighting. Whittaker Chambers believed the West was doomed; but he fought anyway, and advocated fighting. There is no straight line of entailment from that mysterious mixture of temperament and conjectural foresight we all have to what one ought to do.
So, simultaneously, I believe we are doomed and I advocate fighting. For I do not know we are doomed; I just believe it, because everything I see and reflect on the implications of tells me that. But I’m not a prophet; my sanction is my narrow human mind. And that ain’t much.
But even if I did know for a fact that we are doomed, even my stupid human brain was infused the omniscience of God Himself, I would still advocate fighting. Because it is right. I don’t need to be convinced of victory to fight. You fight with all you’ve got regardless, because you’re fighting for what’s right.
One could argue further that that is the best kind of warrior. The one who doesn’t need to convince himself that the sunny uplands are always right up yonder. Reality will eventually puncture those motivating fantasies, and then what? Where do all the happy warriors go?
No. You step on my throat and rip my tongue out and I’ll grab a lion by the balls and let his roar be my voice. Kill the lion, and I’ll strap its meat to your car and let the hyenas run wild. I don’t stop, I don’t commend, I don’t advocate stopping until the sweet figs are well and truly finished and we’re on the other side of the river.
I hope I’ve been clear.
“.. let the hyenas run wild.”
Yes, let the hyenas run wild. Never stop until you no longer are able to run. And when we are on the other side of the river, reach back and grab a hold.
You have been clear. However, my little brain thought it took too many words. But then, I am a rather a simple man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDl3bdE3YQA
Until we on the right realize the water is shallow and begin communicating on that level we are butting heads against the wall.
kolnai,
I forgot to mention that we are not “doomed”. We are never doomed. We shall, it may take decades and the deaths of many millions, but in the end we shall prevail.
If it were just the IRS, that would be worthy of civil war. But it’s not. It’s every agency in the government, to some degree at every level. I’m not cynical so much as lazy. I know the problems, have seen them becoming worse, and while the getting was good most people were willing to poo-poo things. I say most people let it happen while there were more plums to go around. Now, the cure may be much worse, in the short run, than the disease. The fear is radiation treatments may be involved… a civil mutual assured destruction detente might even occur.
And people are going to get hurt, killed, in the fixing. Beyond, success is by no means assured. At least to my mind.
More? Even if “we” win, it won’t be back to business as usual. There will be winners and their will be losers. There will be changes and their will be draconian measures implemented. The only way to know if “we” won, is if voting is restricted to tax payers, and perhaps beyond that. Changes are coming, either way, and pain.
parker –
Ok, we’re never finally doomed forever; granted. But we’re never victorious forever either. Transience is transience, for the bad and the good.
If a catastrophe comes, even granting that we “win” at its conclusion, I consider that doom enough.
It will be itneresting to see how we “win,” in any case, when more than half of country is ghettoized, more or less anti-white [conservative] minorities and immigrants who would never even think to reclaim and return to the heritage they, after all, made it their mission in life to destroy.
Keep the faith. I don’t share it. That is all.
On the other themes –
“…too many words…”
Sorry.
“…plain man…”
Fair enough. But the problem is not shallow waters. It’s waters that think they’re sophisticated and informed when they’re really just so polluted we can’t see the bottom. Not no ideas, but bad ideas, backed by insane and destructive theories imbibed, these days, from grade school up.
Liberals attained ascendancy by using very many words indeed, and their entire goal was to theorize the country into pliant decadence. The revolution began in the schools; if it will end, it will end there too.
The plain men will need their theorists of the counter-revolution. No one else is going to refute the sophistry that turns their children and grandchildren against them.
We’re in this together, my friend. Just understand that my wordcraft is honed for a purpose, a large part of which consists in defending the plain men in this country at the point of attack.
Said it before:
We are now in a position to watch our lib acquaintances taking themselves to very dark places in order to support their original positions.
What’s going on is not sufficient to alarm them to the point of changing.
They are not where they are because of facts. Thus, facts cannot change them. Facts will, instead, require increasingly vile rationalizations and excuses.
The Democrat party is not just any old cult.
“If we think that we are not THE problem”
in a sense, the slaves are the problem, but not in the sense that the common perception thinks.
Once a person becomes a slave, they are no longer a moral agent, thus whatever good or evil they do is in the hands of the master, the tool user. When a tool does evil, it is not the tool’s fault.
Because the Leftist alliance has already created a good spawn cache of slaves in this nation, the Republican tendency to blame ‘individuals for problems” is starting to back fire.
A slave does not think for themselves and does not think their lot in life is their “fault”. Whatever punishments you do against them, they only perceive it as coming from a Slave Master or overseer (white institutional racism aka). So they would prefer the kind, compassionate master (Democrats and Leftists) over harsh whips from Republicans.
Those who get how to resolve the problem, don’t care about the Grand Vision either way. They, like Harriet Tubman just do one thing. Free the slaves, whether they Want to Be Freed Or Not.
“rickl ”
When people present to me a method that they have used to convince Jim Jones cultists to stop believing in Jim Jones, when people present to me a method that they have used to convince Iranians and Cubans to stop believing in the Revolution before they got purged by the Sharia counter-revolutionary corps or the Cuban counter-revolution death squads, then there’ll be something to talk about when it comes to civil war being non inevitable.
Until then, civil war is inevitable in the US. It is far too late for anything else.
And if Civil War is not inevitable? Does anyone think when Islamic Jihad conquers Europe and gets the nukes, we’ll win with the Left beside us still?
It’s already time to plan for checkmate, this is the end game. It’s far too late to try to reverse time and go back to the opening for “another chance” at things.
Excuse me for the multiple simul comments. Keep reading interesting things/convos I want to reply to. Last comment was directed towards rick + Geoffrey = convo.
“So, simultaneously, I believe we are doomed and I advocate fighting. For I do not know we are doomed; I just believe it, because everything I see and reflect on the implications of tells me that.”
Kolnai, I think only in facing death square on, can people find the courage to truly live. Only when facing evil straight on, can people truly do good. It is only when one’s doom hovers above one’s head like the Sword of Damocles, that people are tested.
That emotion right there, is a sign of personal change. If only the majority felt that, they would be motivated to do something useful. They don’t feel it. And because they don’t feel it in their hearts, nothing you send to their brains will matter.
Only those who believe human extinction is eminent, that their own personal death is tomorrow, can they output the maximum will and resolution that the human species can produce.
Fighting in a war takes more than guts, more than courage of the heart. It takes a will so strong that it can erode one’s own soul and mind. To do the things that will be necessary to win, one cannot rely on abstract things such as “victory” or “eventual triumph”. Those will not help you maintain the motivation to fight, to kill, to watch your comrades be destroyed by evil and injustice while only you still strive on.
A commander’s role is to keep calm and keep his people motivated. This is in essence a white lie. Even if the commander believes the cause is doomed, he will still give his subordinates hope for the future rather than destroy morale by acting afraid or tense.
But we are not commanders nor are our troops here with us. The people here are merely peers and amongst peers, the truth should be told.
After WWII, the American Army did a survey about what veterans thought they fought for. The number 1 reason was “their comrades”. They fought to their utmost to keep their comrades from being killed on the battlefield. Second and tertiary reasons were “for family” and “for country”. The second and third reasons were often given by those who had not faced much if any combat, or who had yet to be sent to the front lines.
It is not that the veterans lost their belief in family and country. It is just that in the horrors of war, one must have a concrete reason to keep fighting. That reason cannot be justified with abstract phrases like “for the country” or “for a family that isn’t here” or “to defeat evil”. That concrete motivation, that personal goal, becomes a soldier’s strongest motivator. Many fight primarily for their comrades. Others utilize love of their country as their primary reason for fighting. Still others use their family and their loved ones as the primary reason. There’s no monolithic answer, just a personal and an abstract answer. A short term goal and a long term goal, set by each person, even if they are a soldier that cannot disobey orders.
In desperate situations, desperate solutions are required. Those who believe victory is inevitable, will lack the motivation to stain their own hands with the blood of those that needed killing. They will tell themselves that this is wrong, that victory won’t require such things, because our victory is inevitable. It is not necessary to do what is necessary to win when victory is inevitable. Those of us that believe victory is impossible, or improbable, are motivated by something different. A miracle needs to occur. Human effort beyond mortal limits must be achieved and acquired.
Salvation does not come from sitting at the mall waiting for better men and women to shed their blood and treasure for me. Such a person does not deserve Salvation nor Victory. It is not a matter of civilians being cowards and the military always fighting. It’s a matter of how much a person is willing to sacrifice, do, kill, and die for a cause.
The will of Nathan Hale was good enough I thought.
“I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged that my only regret is that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service.”
“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
If victory was such an easy and cheap thing to acquire, why would anyone need to offer up more than one life? Why would they even need to offer up 1 life?
The only things worthwhile to human beings are the hard things. The only causes worth fighting for are the causes worth killing and dying for.
It doesn’t really matter what people think their chances of victory are, to me. Their motivations and what they are willing to do for victory may be a bit different, however. So long as they are willing to fight in the war, it’s good enough for me. But if people start making excuses because they are afraid of staining their own hands with blood… I’m not sure if they really want victory, nor deserve it.
The nice thing about having the Leftist alliance and Islamic Jihad as enemies is that it requires that an individual, who seeks to not be a slave, really look at themselves. At their own minds, bodies, and souls. For the enemy will find your weakness, if you do not.
Ymarsakar –
Well said.
Here’s a concrete reason why the strategic vision isn’t particularly optimistic.
At 100% predictive optimism, the war against the Left will begin and end soon, with no blood shed, and we will win.
Then what?
Then Islam comes over and conquers Europe, that’s what. Because the time and resources spent against the Left, even at 100% optimistic predictions, will mean Islam will have obtained nuclear weapons from Europe through the re conquest.
That’s my most “optimistic” strategic prediction. The pessimistic strategic prediction is that Islam, given resources and inside info from their Leftist allies, will just nuke all of us together, as we weaken each other in a civil war. They’ll blame it on Right wing extremists even.
Islam, after all, took out both Persia and the Byzantine Roman Empire (eventually), because the Persians and Romans were too busy fighting each other. And Emperor Justinian sent Belisarius, the military genius of his age, to fight barbarians in the Western Roman Empire. Wonder how much that cost. This is right around a few years before Mohammed was born.
War is interesting because it’s never about Good vs Evil or Our Beloved Perfect Nation vs their Rotten Corrupt Nation. It is complicated. But that is precisely why life and death matters. That is precisely why vision matters in strategy. Why logistics is more important than strategy, strategy more important than tactics.
Will Islam and the Left combine together to crush us first? Will Islam backstab the Left and destroy us and the Left together? Will the Left attempt to backstab the fearsome Islamic jihad armies to side with us, their former slaves? Will American patriots attempt to destroy the Left first or Islam first?
Those who think America’s fate is decided by our internal conflicts is partially right. But never forget… there is always something more powerful on the horizon. The Left is capable of so much more, even if they don’t believe their cause is worth killing and dying for (killing your children is okay, dying themselves is not). What will Islamic Jihad be capable of with a higher will? What will the Russians be doing? What will the Chinese be doing? What will evil be doing as we fight evil in the US?
You can’t maintain an army when your state is bankrupt and the economy is made out of slaves and is also bankrupt.
Geoffrey Britain Says:
June 3rd, 2013 at 6:17 pm
I see that you formulated much the same point I did in another thread, even using much the same language and framing. Only you said it 20 hours earlier than I did.
I really should read through all the comments before making my own.
Late to the party as usual, but still listening for the signal when I get to shot then down on Main St in my town; oh well, the signal may not arrive. I’ll have to trust my insticts and begin burning down their houses when I deem they believe thiertime is right. This day of if reckonig approaches in a winding gyre. It is a rough beast