Paul Quotes David Frum saying:
Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama—whatever his policy errors—is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he’s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) “the only place in the world where it doesn’t matter who your parents were or where you came from.”
to which Jay from Boston Replies:
A serious question is, what will likely happen when these characters completely control all three branches of government?
What will happen when (conservatives) control all three branches of government? Not much really. The stalemate will continue indefinitely.
However, if we’re lucky, we will restore our search freedom over equality, restore merit over Harrison-Bergeron’ing, support commercial invention over redistribution, restore the western tradition by eliminating the DOE and teaching history, philosophy and literature, mandate our anglo language, restore our common law and constitution, return sovereignty to the states, and thankfully, reverse the anti-white-male bias and narrative.
The west is special because of balance of power. Balance between states. Between classes. Between the church and state. The anglo west is special because of its class-based system of government, and its use of constitutionalism, common law, and property rights. Despite being the poorest, most remote from the first cities, and the least populous civilization, first Greece then England developed the industrial revolution – science, logic, reason and debate. And it did so because the militial culture of the aristocracy wished to retain their sovereignty while cooperating toward common ends and had to develop debate to do so. This set of affairs led to the last most important talent of the west – which was, that despite small numbers, they were the best warriors on earth.
That is what made the west special and nothing else. And it is that special nature that the left seeks to replace — with the same poverty-inducing authoritarian, egalitarian tyranny-of-the-bottom that had eventually taken over the rest of the world — and which we escaped for nearly half a millenium, until the 20th century liberal took on faith that he had discovered the end of history, and could abandon the political and economic system that made prosperity possible.
The foolhardiness of Schumpeterian Public Intellectuals is writ large on these pages daily. It is silly public intellectuals that bring about tyranny.