Curtis Dahlgren
We're not stuck on "No," stupid; we're just counter-contradistinguishmentarians
By Curtis Dahlgren
"Possessing a chosen country . . acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensation proves that It delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter — with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
"Still one thing more, fellow-citizens — a wise and frugal Government . . If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it . . . " - Thomas Jefferson (first inaugural address, emphasis added)
"The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself." — Winston Churchill
WE REAGANISTAS HAD A DREAM TOO, YOU KNOW. Our dream was to preserve the Union in a healthy state for as long as possible (that's the Webster definition of 'conservative').
President Obama and the Congress are not only trying to change the republican "form" of the Federal government, but they are contemplating ways to use our government against us — to make it very "dangerous" for reason to combat error of "opinion."
Little Johnnie: But Mrs.. Fairfax, why are there more polar bears and caribou now than when we started drilling on the North Slope?
Teacher: You're not paid to think, Johnnie.
Little Johnnie: But I'm just trying to understand.
Teacher: That comes next year, or the year after. Here, take your Ritalin.
Johnnie: I don't want any Ritalin. I want an answer. Why is the earth getting colder?
Teacher: We don't have time for any more debate, Johnnie.
Johnnie: WHY?
Teacher: Class dismissed. Tomorrow we're going to talk about panda bears.
Johnnie (under his breath): I wonder what that has to do with the price of peanuts in Russia?
TEACHERS AND LAWYERS just assume that they are the smartest people in the room, but there's always some Little Johnnie out there.
President Reagan said, "For many years now we have been shushed like children and told that there are no simple answers . . that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people." Alexis de Tocqueville said:
"In the United States, the majority [read 'mainstream'] undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own . . .
"Above this race of [lay]men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate . . It chooses to be the sole agent and only arbiter of that happiness: it . . regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances — what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living . . [and get this:]
"It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd."
As Winston Churchill put it, "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." When told that a conservative Member of Parliament was switching to the Liberal party, he said that that's:
"The only instance of a rat swimming toward a sinking ship."
Socialism as "the vanguard wave of the Future" — whether you label it progressivism, secularism, humanism, or whatever — is a delusion. As Orwell said:
"So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot."
George Bernard Shaw put it this way: "The captain is in his bunk, drinking bottled ditch-water; and the crew is gambling in the forecastle [think Congress]. She will strike and sink and split. Do you think that the laws of God will be suspended in favour of England because you were born in it?"
I don't know — for certain — where the President was born, but God has not yet suspended "the Laws of Nature, and of ages." Since coming back from Norway and Copenhagen, it seems like the fear of God may be flickering for the first time in his eyes. He certainly got an eyeful when he landed and was driven through snow-bound Washington. His helicopter couldn't get off the ground, and neither will his revolution, I suspect. William Seward said:
"The Constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to defence, to welfare, and to liberty. But there is a higher law than the Constitution . . . I know, and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backward."
The President says that "the last train is leaving the station." What he means is, this is the Liberal party's last chance to make "history" before their ship strikes and sinks and splits. It's now or never, which is the reason for their rather sacrilegious Christmas sessions of Congress.
One of the Laws of Nature is that when one tries to make everyone happy, you make everyone UN-happy. The standing ovation that Yugo Chavez was given in Copenhagen must have really irritated our President. And then to be lectured on economics by the Russians and the Chinese must have taken the cake (ironically, the Russians are probably even making the Trotskyite Chavez' ears burn).
Now I don't make a big deal of Christmas because , personally, I think winter was the time of Christ's conception, not his birth (it would have been dang cold in December for the shepherds keeping their flocks "by night"), but isn't it ironic that Congress is "working" at Christmas when they are forever lecturing us about respecting other people's cultures (of course we know that that claim rings as hollow as Gore's claim that the oceans are going to rise nearly two feet)!
Speaking of conflicts of interest, I was hoping that Blood and Gore were right and that we would have a mild winter up here for a change. Alas, it wasn't to be; I had to chop my canoe out of the water the other day. I drove across the local lake on the first day of spring this year, and I was tempted to drive across to celebrate the first day of winter. I'm sure I could have made it too, but I didn't want to be the first one to go "in." The winter swimming season has begun for snowmobilers, etc, for some tragically.
Speaking of tragedy, we all know the reason for these special sessions of Congress, don't we? They hope they can sneak "change" past us in the middle of the night while the nation is asleep. But this is not Cuba. This is America. Trying to "sneak" a revolution past Americans is like trying to sneak a fastball past Henry Aaron and the Boys of Summer.
The summer — no sweeter was ever;
The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The greyling aleap in the river,
The bighorn asleep on the hill.
The strong life that never knows harness;
The wilds where the caribou call;
The freshness, the freedom, the farness -
O God! How I'm stuck on it all.
-Robert William Service
Call us stuck in the 50s. Call us stuck on NO. Call us stuck in "the politics of yesterday.." We have "long memories" and we remember hearing about the Great Depression from our parents. My dad farmed through the "hottest decade," and the "hottest year" (1934, when he had to cut thistles in the fence rows to keep his cattle and horses alive).
By the way, the people who ran the old Family Farms were opposed to the coming agriculture of chemicals and so on, but the elitists didn't care. They would just let the old farmers die off. The USDA intruded itself into the free market, and soon the Family Farm was on the way out. BTW:
America's life expectancy stats are still improving, despite government interference in the health-care system and "growing costs." There are many minor changes that could make major improvements in the overall system, such as getting lawyers and government out of it, but what's so hard to understand?
If it looks like a power-grabber, and grabs power like a power-grabber, it's probably not a duck. The Plan, man, is to take over, period. And if we don't like the lump of coal in our stockings, we can lump it (just "let them die off" like the Family Farm did). But people don't like being lied to, and if they'll lie to you about "global warming" you can be sure they'll lie to you about "HELL-thCare reform."
Did you read about the poll of the Top Ten "scandals" of 2009. Sarah Palin is on the same list as Tiger Woods, and in fact beat out Tiger and ACORN for top billing in the headline:
"Divisive former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has stoked controversy throughout 2009"
[Yahoo! News]
When Congress attempts to ram down our throats a 2,000 plus page "reform," that's not controversial? When the "safe schools czar" recommends ramming unspeakable things down your throat, that's not a "scandal"? When we spend money to emigrate Palestinians to the U.S. — and actually encourage illegal immigration — that's not a "scandal"?
WHEN UNCLE SAM THREATENS TO JAIL YOU FOR NOT BUYING HEALTH INSURANCE, NOW THAT'S A "SCANDAL" IN THIS PART OF THE COUNTRY.
Oh, speaking of that (I love to ramble because it drives the Sophists nuts), there's an interesting "study" (tax-payer funded, I suppose) that lists the happiest and least happy states in the Union. New York is evidently the least happy of all, and California isn't much higher on the list. Most of the Top Ten states are conservative low-tax states, while virtually all of the Bottom Ten are highly taxed states (and, paradoxically, bankrupt). The Senators from California and New York are voting for HillaryCare II.
That should tell you something. If you don't "get it," start over at the top and read again what Tom Jefferson said about what we need to be a "happy and a prosperous people"!
P.S. The word for the day: Can you say "counter-contradinguishmentarians," boys and girls. Spell-check doesn't even recognize it, but it's synonymous with "antidisestablishmentarians." It's the "disestablishmentarians" like our aging hippies in Congress, including Robert Byrd that you have to be afraid of (not to use the word afraid there loosely). I'm talking about the "tutelary power" that Alexis de Tocqueville warned you about — those who would, as Rush says, probably just as soon have you die off like the Family Farmers.
If Sarah Palin is "scandalous," what does that say about the rest of us? I wouldn't want to be compared with her, and in fact the reason that the Sophists hate her so much is because she's so squeaky clean. "They" even tried to burn down her church. She did use the term "death panels," but so have a LOT of people who are honest. We're against death panels. Or, to be precise, Big Brother's supercomputer that would "reduce costs" and "reduce the deficit" — by adding 20 or 30 or 40 million "insurance" policies to a "network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd."
Think 2,000 page "Laws" with 700-plus page amendments. You connect the dots. What are they really trying to "insure"? A law with over 100 new bureaucratic agencies isn't likely intended to create new jobs in the private sector. Only the government sector jobs are being "created or saved" by the Sophists.
PPS: Enough said? Well, I don't know if this will be my last column of the year, but in case it is, I want to echo the preacher who once said on Christmas Eve:
"To those I won't see until Easter, I want to wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."
OOPS! Hope I didn't offend anyone there. The latest Battleground Poll showed once again that nearly two-thirds of the American people call themselves "conservative" and that only 8% call themselves 'very liberal.' Probably 90-plus percent have no problem with "In God We Trust" on our currency, or with the Pledge of Allegiance, or "Merry Christmas."
The problem we have with our dollar bills is that Uncle Sam is printing too many of them for the reelection stash for that 8 percent who are trying to do away with government "of" the people and create in perpetuity a government of the judges, by the judges, and FOR the judges.
PPPS: Speaking of that, Alexander Hamilton once said:
"To grant that there is a supreme intelligence Who rules the world and has established laws to regulate the actions of His creatures; and still to assert that man, in a state of nature, may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, appears to a common understanding altogether irreconcilable. Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory.
"They have supposed that the Deity, from the relations we stand in to Himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature . . Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind."
Did you "get" the point there? Neither my mother nor my father finished high school, but they understood this concept perfectly. As mountain climbers and tree trimmers put it:
"Gravity isn't just a good idea. It's the law."
There are some things you just can't learn in a college classroom, eh?
© Curtis Dahlgren
December 22, 2009
"Possessing a chosen country . . acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensation proves that It delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter — with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
"Still one thing more, fellow-citizens — a wise and frugal Government . . If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it . . . " - Thomas Jefferson (first inaugural address, emphasis added)
"The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself." — Winston Churchill
WE REAGANISTAS HAD A DREAM TOO, YOU KNOW. Our dream was to preserve the Union in a healthy state for as long as possible (that's the Webster definition of 'conservative').
President Obama and the Congress are not only trying to change the republican "form" of the Federal government, but they are contemplating ways to use our government against us — to make it very "dangerous" for reason to combat error of "opinion."
Little Johnnie: But Mrs.. Fairfax, why are there more polar bears and caribou now than when we started drilling on the North Slope?
Teacher: You're not paid to think, Johnnie.
Little Johnnie: But I'm just trying to understand.
Teacher: That comes next year, or the year after. Here, take your Ritalin.
Johnnie: I don't want any Ritalin. I want an answer. Why is the earth getting colder?
Teacher: We don't have time for any more debate, Johnnie.
Johnnie: WHY?
Teacher: Class dismissed. Tomorrow we're going to talk about panda bears.
Johnnie (under his breath): I wonder what that has to do with the price of peanuts in Russia?
TEACHERS AND LAWYERS just assume that they are the smartest people in the room, but there's always some Little Johnnie out there.
President Reagan said, "For many years now we have been shushed like children and told that there are no simple answers . . that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people." Alexis de Tocqueville said:
"In the United States, the majority [read 'mainstream'] undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own . . .
"Above this race of [lay]men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate . . It chooses to be the sole agent and only arbiter of that happiness: it . . regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances — what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living . . [and get this:]
"It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd."
As Winston Churchill put it, "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." When told that a conservative Member of Parliament was switching to the Liberal party, he said that that's:
"The only instance of a rat swimming toward a sinking ship."
Socialism as "the vanguard wave of the Future" — whether you label it progressivism, secularism, humanism, or whatever — is a delusion. As Orwell said:
"So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot."
George Bernard Shaw put it this way: "The captain is in his bunk, drinking bottled ditch-water; and the crew is gambling in the forecastle [think Congress]. She will strike and sink and split. Do you think that the laws of God will be suspended in favour of England because you were born in it?"
I don't know — for certain — where the President was born, but God has not yet suspended "the Laws of Nature, and of ages." Since coming back from Norway and Copenhagen, it seems like the fear of God may be flickering for the first time in his eyes. He certainly got an eyeful when he landed and was driven through snow-bound Washington. His helicopter couldn't get off the ground, and neither will his revolution, I suspect. William Seward said:
"The Constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to defence, to welfare, and to liberty. But there is a higher law than the Constitution . . . I know, and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backward."
The President says that "the last train is leaving the station." What he means is, this is the Liberal party's last chance to make "history" before their ship strikes and sinks and splits. It's now or never, which is the reason for their rather sacrilegious Christmas sessions of Congress.
One of the Laws of Nature is that when one tries to make everyone happy, you make everyone UN-happy. The standing ovation that Yugo Chavez was given in Copenhagen must have really irritated our President. And then to be lectured on economics by the Russians and the Chinese must have taken the cake (ironically, the Russians are probably even making the Trotskyite Chavez' ears burn).
Now I don't make a big deal of Christmas because , personally, I think winter was the time of Christ's conception, not his birth (it would have been dang cold in December for the shepherds keeping their flocks "by night"), but isn't it ironic that Congress is "working" at Christmas when they are forever lecturing us about respecting other people's cultures (of course we know that that claim rings as hollow as Gore's claim that the oceans are going to rise nearly two feet)!
Speaking of conflicts of interest, I was hoping that Blood and Gore were right and that we would have a mild winter up here for a change. Alas, it wasn't to be; I had to chop my canoe out of the water the other day. I drove across the local lake on the first day of spring this year, and I was tempted to drive across to celebrate the first day of winter. I'm sure I could have made it too, but I didn't want to be the first one to go "in." The winter swimming season has begun for snowmobilers, etc, for some tragically.
Speaking of tragedy, we all know the reason for these special sessions of Congress, don't we? They hope they can sneak "change" past us in the middle of the night while the nation is asleep. But this is not Cuba. This is America. Trying to "sneak" a revolution past Americans is like trying to sneak a fastball past Henry Aaron and the Boys of Summer.
The summer — no sweeter was ever;
The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The greyling aleap in the river,
The bighorn asleep on the hill.
The strong life that never knows harness;
The wilds where the caribou call;
The freshness, the freedom, the farness -
O God! How I'm stuck on it all.
-Robert William Service
Call us stuck in the 50s. Call us stuck on NO. Call us stuck in "the politics of yesterday.." We have "long memories" and we remember hearing about the Great Depression from our parents. My dad farmed through the "hottest decade," and the "hottest year" (1934, when he had to cut thistles in the fence rows to keep his cattle and horses alive).
By the way, the people who ran the old Family Farms were opposed to the coming agriculture of chemicals and so on, but the elitists didn't care. They would just let the old farmers die off. The USDA intruded itself into the free market, and soon the Family Farm was on the way out. BTW:
America's life expectancy stats are still improving, despite government interference in the health-care system and "growing costs." There are many minor changes that could make major improvements in the overall system, such as getting lawyers and government out of it, but what's so hard to understand?
If it looks like a power-grabber, and grabs power like a power-grabber, it's probably not a duck. The Plan, man, is to take over, period. And if we don't like the lump of coal in our stockings, we can lump it (just "let them die off" like the Family Farm did). But people don't like being lied to, and if they'll lie to you about "global warming" you can be sure they'll lie to you about "HELL-thCare reform."
Did you read about the poll of the Top Ten "scandals" of 2009. Sarah Palin is on the same list as Tiger Woods, and in fact beat out Tiger and ACORN for top billing in the headline:
"Divisive former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has stoked controversy throughout 2009"
[Yahoo! News]
When Congress attempts to ram down our throats a 2,000 plus page "reform," that's not controversial? When the "safe schools czar" recommends ramming unspeakable things down your throat, that's not a "scandal"? When we spend money to emigrate Palestinians to the U.S. — and actually encourage illegal immigration — that's not a "scandal"?
WHEN UNCLE SAM THREATENS TO JAIL YOU FOR NOT BUYING HEALTH INSURANCE, NOW THAT'S A "SCANDAL" IN THIS PART OF THE COUNTRY.
Oh, speaking of that (I love to ramble because it drives the Sophists nuts), there's an interesting "study" (tax-payer funded, I suppose) that lists the happiest and least happy states in the Union. New York is evidently the least happy of all, and California isn't much higher on the list. Most of the Top Ten states are conservative low-tax states, while virtually all of the Bottom Ten are highly taxed states (and, paradoxically, bankrupt). The Senators from California and New York are voting for HillaryCare II.
That should tell you something. If you don't "get it," start over at the top and read again what Tom Jefferson said about what we need to be a "happy and a prosperous people"!
P.S. The word for the day: Can you say "counter-contradinguishmentarians," boys and girls. Spell-check doesn't even recognize it, but it's synonymous with "antidisestablishmentarians." It's the "disestablishmentarians" like our aging hippies in Congress, including Robert Byrd that you have to be afraid of (not to use the word afraid there loosely). I'm talking about the "tutelary power" that Alexis de Tocqueville warned you about — those who would, as Rush says, probably just as soon have you die off like the Family Farmers.
If Sarah Palin is "scandalous," what does that say about the rest of us? I wouldn't want to be compared with her, and in fact the reason that the Sophists hate her so much is because she's so squeaky clean. "They" even tried to burn down her church. She did use the term "death panels," but so have a LOT of people who are honest. We're against death panels. Or, to be precise, Big Brother's supercomputer that would "reduce costs" and "reduce the deficit" — by adding 20 or 30 or 40 million "insurance" policies to a "network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd."
Think 2,000 page "Laws" with 700-plus page amendments. You connect the dots. What are they really trying to "insure"? A law with over 100 new bureaucratic agencies isn't likely intended to create new jobs in the private sector. Only the government sector jobs are being "created or saved" by the Sophists.
PPS: Enough said? Well, I don't know if this will be my last column of the year, but in case it is, I want to echo the preacher who once said on Christmas Eve:
"To those I won't see until Easter, I want to wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."
OOPS! Hope I didn't offend anyone there. The latest Battleground Poll showed once again that nearly two-thirds of the American people call themselves "conservative" and that only 8% call themselves 'very liberal.' Probably 90-plus percent have no problem with "In God We Trust" on our currency, or with the Pledge of Allegiance, or "Merry Christmas."
The problem we have with our dollar bills is that Uncle Sam is printing too many of them for the reelection stash for that 8 percent who are trying to do away with government "of" the people and create in perpetuity a government of the judges, by the judges, and FOR the judges.
PPPS: Speaking of that, Alexander Hamilton once said:
"To grant that there is a supreme intelligence Who rules the world and has established laws to regulate the actions of His creatures; and still to assert that man, in a state of nature, may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, appears to a common understanding altogether irreconcilable. Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory.
"They have supposed that the Deity, from the relations we stand in to Himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature . . Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind."
Did you "get" the point there? Neither my mother nor my father finished high school, but they understood this concept perfectly. As mountain climbers and tree trimmers put it:
"Gravity isn't just a good idea. It's the law."
There are some things you just can't learn in a college classroom, eh?
© Curtis Dahlgren
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
