Category: Constitution

Gramscian damage

In a previous post on Suicidalism, I identified some of the most important of the Soviet Union’s memetic weapons. Here is that list again:

  • There is no truth, only competing agendas.

  • All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.

  • There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.

  • The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.

  • Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.

  • The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)

  • For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.

  • When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

This sounds like today’s Democrats.

Source: Gramscian damage

Cultural Marxism Is the Main Source of Modern Confusion—and It’s Spreading

The cultural Marxists believe that someday they will be the sole holders of power and be able to dictate to the masses how to live and what to think. Yet the neo-Marxist intellectuals are in for a surprise. When socialism should come, indeed, the “dictatorship of the intellectuals” will be anything but benign—and not much different from what happened after the Soviets took power. The intellectuals will be among the victims. This was, after all, the way it happened in the French Revolution, which was the first attempt at a revolution by intellectuals. Many of the victims of the guillotine were prominent intellectuals who had earlier supported the revolution—Robespierre among them.

Source: Cultural Marxism Is the Main Source of Modern Confusion—and It’s Spreading

The Democrats’ Constitution Problem

Now, when a judge the Left doesn’t like is, in Brett Kavanaugh, seated on the high bench, the complaining starts about how the senators who confirmed him didn’t represent a majority of the voters. “It’s not about Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged behavior. It’s about justices who do not represent the will of the majority,” says a column in the Times by no less a figure than Michael Tomasky.

That, of course, would be like complaining that the justices do not, say, take in home sewing. It’s not their job to take in home sewing. Their job is decide actual cases and controversies. Nor is it the job of the senators to represent the will of the majority. That is the job of the Representative House, the only house whose seats are apportioned by population. The job of the Senators is to represent the states.

That’s the Senate’s very purpose. The Left likes to suggest that the only reason for this was to protect slavery. Yet even the original Constitution anticipated an end to slavery. It still made the equal representation of the states in the Senate the only feature of the parchment that could never be amended absent the consent of the state being denied equal representation.

I blame the 17th Amendment. The Senate is no longer chosen by the State governments but by the people, same as the House. In effect we have two Houses of Representatives. The State governments are unrepresented.

Do you really think that a Senate that represented the States would vote unfunded mandates on their States?

Source: The Democrats’ Constitution Problem

Democrats: The Constitution Is Unconstitutional!

The left argument simply assumes that the “popular vote” in the aggregate nationally is, or at least ought to be, the standard by which the presidential election is judged to be legitimate; anything else is illegitimate and “unrepresentative”, and the Senate inherently so. But there was never any intention to have “one man, one vote” be the appropriate standard of legitimacy on the national level as it was at more local levels. The founders wanted to force a widespread consensus across a whole collection of local majorities to balance different interests. This prevents ten or a dozen urban aggregations (NY, LA, SF, Chicago…) from dominating without having to balance other interests. The “popular vote” in the aggregate nationally is just a journalistic construct that is entirely extra-constitutional.

Source: Democrats: The Constitution Is Unconstitutional!

The critical fraction

That means that in order to stop attempted gun confiscations dead on a purely force-on-force level, only one in 317 American gun owners needs to remember that our first American Revolution began as spontaneous popular resistance to a gun-confiscation order. Only one in 317 American gun owners need to remember their duty under the U.S. Constitution as members of the unorganized militia – “the body of the people in arms”. Only one in 317 American gun owners need to shoot back.

Is that a plausible fraction? Yes. Yes, I think it is. Count me as one of them.

Me too.

Source: The critical fraction

The Intoxicating Effects of Socialist Benevolence

These folks mean well. They seek to boost all mankind up to their own plane of enlightenment. Inequality outrages their sense of justice. They regard conventional habits of behavior as so many obstacles to be overcome on the path to perfection. They see tradition as the enemy of innovation, which they embrace as a lifeline to moral progress. They cannot encounter a wrong without seeking to right it. The idea that some evils may be ineradicable is anathema. The notion that the best is the enemy of the good, that many choices are to some extent choices among evils—such proverbial wisdom seems quaintly out of date. The result is a campaign to legislate virtue, to curtail eccentricity, to smother individuality, to barter truth for the current moral or political enthusiasm.

For centuries, prudent political philosophers have understood that the lust for equality is the enemy of freedom.

The Constitution was written to ‘secure the blessings of liberty’ not equality. That’s why Democrats hate the Constitution.

Source: The Intoxicating Effects of Socialist Benevolence

Justin Welby reimagines a poorer and less free Britain

Economic mistakes permeate Welby’s ideas, but they stem from a deeper philosophical omission: Forced actions do not have the same moral value as actions which are freely chosen. It is more valuable for an individual to freely decide to pay for healthcare for someone who cannot afford it than for that same individual to be forced by the government to provide that care.

Exactly.

The United States Constitution was adopted to “…provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty…”. Note it is Liberty, not force, that is to be established. Force is evil and is to be used sparingly.

Source: Justin Welby reimagines a poorer and less free Britain

David Limbaugh – The Democratic Party’s Christian Problem

When leftists aren’t denying their prejudice, they often selectively cite Scripture to “prove” that Jesus Christ was a social justice warrior or that the Bible mandates open borders. Oh, yes, and Jesus didn’t judge people as we dastardly conservatives do. In a 2010 piece, liberal professor Michael Shermer quoted the oft-misinterpreted passage in which Jesus begins, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Then Shermer declared: “Would any red-blooded, gun-(toting), Hummer-driving, hard-drinking, Bible-(toting) conservative today (say) anything like this? (Matthew 5:43-44): ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.'” (It is astounding that leftists see themselves as tolerant and nonjudgmental, but I’ll let their record speak for itself on this.)

I’ve never met a ‘Hummer-driving’ anybody. They are, or were, expensive. Only rich liberals could afford them.

Source: David Limbaugh – The Democratic Party’s Christian Problem