Sadly, No! cites VodkaPundit
Steven Green re Huckabee and Iowans, It is a
magnificent rant, if damn near a decade belated.
It seems the VodkaPundit has discovered why us "Godless Liberals
TM*" have dismissed the center of these Disunited States as "flyover country," or less politely,
Dumbfuckistan.
It's not because of what party they support, VP. It's why they support it!
I know you have read all that cold war history stuff, and I bet you have read "The Gulag Archipelago" and all kinds of anti-commie-pinko stuff. So I know you know the concept. So when you ask "what the fuck is wrong with you people," well, if you would just think on it, you would realize you already know. It's just that before, the stupidity worked in favor of furthering YOUR interests, so you pretend that people this stupid don't exist.
Dear Iowa Republicans,
I’ll put this in language even your tiny little Iowa brains can understand: What the f*** is wrong with you people?
The news coming out of Des Moines (literally, French for “tell me about the rabbits, George”) tonight is distressing in the extreme. 32 years ago, your Democratic brethren took one look at Jimmy Carter — the worst 20th Century President bar Nixon, and the worst ex-President ever — and declared, “That’s our man!”
Three decades later, and along comes Mike Huckabee. Same moral pretentiousness, same gullibility on foreign affairs, only-slightly-less toothy idiot’s grin. Then you so-called Republicans took a look at Carter’s clone and said, “That’s our man, too!”
And by a pretty wide margin. […]
Mike Huckabee? Really? We’ve seen this game before, and its name is… every other single stupid, un-winnable candidate you’ve ever picked — which is most of them.
So I repeat the question: What is wrong with you people?
All my love, you corn-sucking idiots,
VodkaPundit
Hell, they grow corn for ethanol, because of government handouts, when they could sew switchgrass and do not a damn thing nor spend a cent for 11 months of the year, and then take advantage of a free DEA ethanol license to ferment and distill it into fuel. Or they could figure out how to ferment the agri-waste instead of the actual corn. It's not like you have to drink the stuff - and making corn into ethanol is a waste of good corn liquor, as well as being a net energy loss.
But never mind, welfare pays the difference.
Never mind that they think they are different than people in inner cities getting "crop support" for children of suspiciously dark colors. (They grow WHITE corn in Iowa!) Somehow, the crop of actual people is less worthy of government price supports and subsidies than surplus corn.
There ain't no hate like the hate of a really stupid WHITE "welfare queen" for an actually deserving inner city welfare recipient of nonspecific color - assumed, of course, to be "black" in every sense of the word.
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*"Liberal" in this instance is anyone for whom reality trumps Rovian talking points and the common "wisdom" about coastal values spread by Ann Coulter, Bill O'Rielly and Rush Limbaugh. Or in other words, "liberal" in this sense includes Barry Goldwater and Adam Smith.
Or in other words, a "Liberal" is anyone who is both too intelligent and not cynical enough to blow smoke up the asses of the corn-fed idjuts of Dumbfuckistan.
In that sense, and ONLY in that sense am I Liberal, much LESS "progressive." What I AM is a centrist, politically, with a strong bias toward anti-authoritarianism.
This is not due to disrespect for worthy Authorities. On the contrary.
It's due to an understanding of how difficult it is to be Knowledgeable, wise, authoritative and worth following that I feel it proper to discourage people from delegating their personal authority and power to those who neither deserve it and are clearly both unqualified and uninterested in the hard work of exercising power in the interests of "the little people."
I'm neither left, nor right. I'm a cynical, distrustful individualist who, having been exposed to
competent governance, knows the depths of uselessness our own government sinks to.
I am, in other words, a Libertarian and further, a person that realizes that all good things, all things of worth, all good things that occur are as a result of the efforts of individuals working in concert or alone, and governments, marketplaces, roads, churches and corporations are all means to those ends, contrivances for leveraging the efforts of individuals. As such, it is the individual who concerns me, not any sort of fictional "corporate entity."
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Eric Clapton - Signevia FoxyTunes
2 comments:
I don't know how well a libertarian can be a "centrist" in this political climate, where the spectrum ranges from big government Dems to big government Repubs.
Also, if governments and corporations can leverage the efforts of individuals, it's only the individuals in the top tiers of the government or corporation. In practice, at least -- you'd disagree?
Canada is an up and coming surveillance state, with vast big-government social programs (OK but hardly libertarian), that is steadily yielding more and more of its sovereignty to the US. MORE competent, I'm sure. But I wouldn't overstate it.
I guess I'm just trying to get where you stand.
Actually, all the candidates, with the exceptions of Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich are on the Republican side of the left/right divide. Authoritarian Parents, as opposed to Nurturing Parents.
But you see, Ah is all growed up!
Politically, I'm in the center of that axis, - I prefer a balanced approach to government - but with a very strong anti-authoritarian bias, which I share ONLY with Paul and Kuchinich, it seems.
And while it's very counterintuitive to suggest that Canada is more libertarian than the US - I'd have snorted at this reflexively prior to living there for many years - I'm afraid it's true.
It's not so much the mechanisms and infrastructures of government, the existence or lack of social programs, but rather whether the government respects your individuality and individual choices. Does it respect you, or does it require that you respect IT? Does it dictate your choices, or act to increase the number of positive choices available to you, and then trust that enough people will make the right choices to have whatever positive effect is hoped for?
Go to any Canadian government office - and then visit the equivalent US office. The distinction is palpable. The easies t example is to cross a border, one way, then the other.
I'm not a true minarchist - but I'm in favor of governments trying to do fewer things, better.
I think that we do need a better social services infrastructure, not as charity, but as investment in our human capital - each other. Frankly, having seen the Canadian welfare system in operation, it beats the socks off the US clutter of block grants, local development initiatives, cultural grants and all else, doing it mostly by happy accident.
Canada doesn't have a separate FEMA archatecture for giving people money during disasters, either. That's what welfare is for - their whole job is dealing with people in crisis, any person, any sort of crisis. It's called Social Insurance for a reason.
And the crime rate... woo! Canadians are simply less likely to turn to crime, and far less likely to turn to violent crime.
So cheap at the price - and (shockingly enough) the Canadian civil service generally operates with a bare minimum of staffing and funding.
And this gets me to the leveraging of individuals.
Canada does this at the local level, not the federal or provincial level, simply by putting people in a position where they CAN afford to volunteer, and by economic leverage - they are poor, so they tend to live in the places they are needed. The tendency is enough, it doesn't need to be legislated. Churches, community groups, etc, do the organization - but first, people need to be available.
Unemployment, disability and welfare does this - while keeping skills current and putting people in touch with other people - which is of course how jobs are actually found.
Ultimately, freedom exists in a context. It really is practically impossible for any individual to have any meaningful degree of freedom without infrastructure - roads, commerce, a well-regulated commons, a decent standard of personal security and the ability to connect with others.
One is not free huddling in one's fortified cave - no matter how well-appointed; it may be a comfortable prison, but it is a prison nonetheless.
Anyone who can help themselves, should. But in practice, all the "self-made-men" I've known owed a great deal to many folks they might well dismiss as "lusers."
Well, our political culture is dominated by those who are in that category - ungrateful and greedy "winners."
Personally, I wouldn't trade places with them on a bet. For one thing, I don't have what it takes to keep it, but more importantly, I just plain don't want it. Too many things to keep track of, too much crap to deal with, just to prove that I can deal with that crap.
I'd have to hire someone.
Fact is - society, in order to function at all - requires not just many kinds of folks, but as many kinds as possible, with many different ideas of what success looks like. That's how you can have an operating economy - because of gradients in value, relative to personal need.
Canada's social safety net fuctions more as lubrication, so that, among other things, labor can move from where it is to where it needs to be. It's health care system functions to reduce hassle and stress for everyone involved in the health care system, most powerfully by minimizing paperwork - probably the largest single expense in our system, far larger, i'm sure, than any taxes we "save" by virtue of "free enterprise" employing hundreds of thousands of people pushing millions of pieces of paper.
A libertarian society is pragmatic, rather than punitive, it rewards good choices rather than hammering bad ones. Most of all, it's government is passive, but responsive and available at need.
And that's where I stand.
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