Obama leaves the folks what brung him
Now that the primary is over for Barack Obama, now that he squeezed past Hillary Clinton using her voting record on the war in Iraq, Democrats get the feeling that Obama is leaving them behind on their top issue – the war in Iraq (Washington Times link);
“If a perception takes hold that a candidate is flip-flopping on core convictions, that will hurt,” pollster Scott Rasmussen said, noting that nearly a third of voters are “up for grabs” this fall.
A Fox 5/The Washington Times/Rasmussen Reports poll shows 19 percent of voters classified as “other” – neither Republican nor Democrat – think that on the Iraq war, Mr. Obama is “abandoning voters that got him nominated.” (Eleven percent of Democrats agree.) About 20 percent of independents think Mr. Obama is “not really going to change his opinion” on a U.S. withdrawal within 16 months of taking office, a pledge he has made repeatedly.
A Newsweek poll found similar dissatisfaction among voters over Mr. Obama’s shifts in policy positions. In the survey, 53 percent of voters said he recalibrated his stances on key issues such as the war and President Bush’s new electronic surveillance law in order to gain political advantage.
But Democrats should be accustomed to their candidates leaving them in the dust. John Kerry did it, the Democrats did it after the 2006 mid terms. Bill Clinton did it in 1993 and after the 1996 election. In 1993 he promised a middle class tax cut, instead we got the biggest tax hike in our history, Before the 1996 election he promised Democrats he’d restructure the welfare reform bill he signed that year, and then he ignored them for four years and changed nothing.
That can be credited to two things – the Democrat platform and the Far Left voters are detached from realityand the candidates know the Far Left’s agenda will destroy the nation and Democrats candidates will say anything to win no matter how looney it makes them sound. Also, the Far Left is a gullible bunch who wouldn’t accept reality if it was handed to them on a platter soaked in gravy.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Politics
Well I hope Obama can hang on over the next few months and not screw his chance at being Pres. The reason I say this is not because I’m a supporter of Obama, but because I want the Dems to see that their candidate will disappoint just as much as Bush did over the last 8 years. Politicians always disappoint and its time the Dems see that their party is no different. I think it is a good thing that we had the past 8 years of complete ineptitude and blundering by Bush that has alienated over half the US population… and now we have the other half who will have their hopes dashed by Obama. Hopefully this will lead to a grand awakening of Americans that both parties and the State are disastrous to the general public’s interests.
Jonn wrote: Rooney, your memory is a bad as your ability to reason. President Bush didn’t alienate half of the population. Half of the population voted against him to begin with – how can you alienate people who don’t want you in the office to begin with?
As far as your reasoning ability goes – what you’re suggesting is that, since politicians are so terrible, we should stop electing politicians to office. So who should we elect? Gardeners? Seems to me that as soon as you elect someone to office they become politicians just by the virtue of occupying the office. You’ll have to be more specific. Or smarter.
Jonn- good points (and I’ll forgive the jab). I should clarify. As far as Bush alienating the populace- he has lost a huge amount of support from his own party as well as energized a big following for Obama chanting like robots “we want change” (which I think we both agree is BS and I clearly think he will fail to deliver).
On your point of politicians being so terrible that we should stop electing them- Yes! I agree! That is why although Ron Paul has some interesting ideas that overlap with my own I would still never vote for him either. Rather, I subscribe to a Voluntarism school of thought. Thus- I can not vote for someone like Paul even though he has pledged to dismantle the State because by doing so I would be legitimizing it by participating the the electoral process.
So my big picture outlook would be as follows- there is no way to bring about change within the established system. Rather, it is inevitable that the State will fail under it’s own weight and collapse of it’s own doing. Only at this point can we learn from our mistakes that brought about that collapse and go to work creating a new society from the ashes… one that provides true liberty and peace.
How much do you pay for Xanax each month Rooney?
Jonn wrote: I had to look that one up; Xanax is in a group of drugs called benzodiazepines (ben-zoe-dye-AZE-eh-peens). Xanax affects chemicals in the brain that may become unbalanced and cause anxiety.
Xanax is used to treat anxiety disorders, panic disorders, and anxiety caused by depression.
Guys- I will gladly exchange ideas and debate with you but if you continue to resort to the insult crutch what is the point? You said I needed to clarify. I did. Your response to ideas that aren’t the same as yours is just to discount them with insults? I admit- that is the easy way out.
Well, partially because every other time I have tried to debate you, you disappear like a fart in a wind tunnel. Or, you will focus on some unrelated fact or argument, and beat it into the ground. The only apparent way to get your attention is to insult you.
Don’t worry- you have my attention always. And I would never just disappear. I have taken all the barbs and arrows in the face and come back for more.
Then explain to me how in the anarchy that occurs under the Rooney plan society continues to evolve, and specifically, your renunciation of the view of the life of natural man as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. (Tell me how Hobbes was wrong, and you, Paul et al are correct)
How can you prove Hobbes’s theory wrong when it has never been put to the test? Fact is almost all violence is committed by the State whether it is against it’s own people or the people of another State. Remove the State and remove the violence. All that is needed is the law of natural right and the individual’s inherent good to defend it.
Jonn wrote: You mean that guy that tried to mug me last year on North Capitol Street was from the government? Summbiches.
That was too easy and simple Jonn. Come on man- do you want to be serious about this or not? Compare your mugging and every other one like it in the world against the violence committed by the State and it doesn’t even come close. In fact, in absence of the State those crimes of individual desperation would be less.
Jonn wrote: Now, who’s not being serious? See, that’s why no one talks to you, Rooney. You make unsubstantiated, fantastical statements that can’t be proven and you act like it’s an indisputable fact. But this is TSO’s discussion. He’s in a meeting across town at the moment and he’ll be back later.
You don’t think more violence is committed in the name of the State than between individuals? I wouldn’t call that fantastical. If you can dispute that then please do so. I’m not stopping you Jonn.
Jonn wrote: I’m talking about this gem; In fact, in absence of the State those crimes of individual desperation would be less. Maybe in your world (which is still an 19th century agrarian world).
Jonn speaks: “So who should we elect? Gardeners?”
They couldn’t be any worse then say Murtha, Kennedy, Hanoi John, etc
So you concede that the State commits more violence than individuals.
It is my contention that the State’s interference leads to less wealth stifled innovation. Less wealth and human advancement goes hand in hand with more crime.
Rooney- Than in so called “failed states” like Somalia circa 1992, that would be your ideal, correct? Waziristan? What about almost all of Afghanistan? Since the argument is that Karzai is a puppet with no control outside of Kabul, then that entire country must be in a natural state, not so?
In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. In a stateless society, the first dude to join up with another has twice the power as anyone else, and will assume control. To assume that all of mankind is waiting to fall into this euphoric shagri’la, save for the evil influence of the state is simply assinine.
Rooney –
What do you mean Hobbes’ theory has never been put to the test? Somalia has been a Hobbesian nightmare for years, as was Afghanistan before the Taliban got the upper hand (that worked out great for everyone in the end, didn’t it?). How about Rwanda circa April-July 1994? If recent history won’t suffice for you, take a look at the breakdown of social order that occurred during the plague that wiped out much of Ancient Athens during the Peloponnesian War. I could go on and on…
I’m all for limited government, but your anarchist proposal is a wreckless fantasy that is completely divorced from human nature and history. More often than not, the complete breakdown of social order leads to tyranny and war, not liberty and peace.
Jonn wrote: However, the prospect of Rooney never voting has merit.
Jonn. Chauncy Gardener for Pres! Movie Quiz one of the greats
MN: Six men remain in the Scott County jail following what police call a brutal assault on a father trying to protect his daughter.
Shakopee police say as the crowd was leaving Valleyfair Amusement Park around midnight on the 4th of July, the victim’s daughter was confronted by two men.
Or how about Modesto: Gang members apologized when they realized the Modesto man they were attacking was not their intended victim, The Modesto Bee reported Tuesday.
Four men kicked down the door of the south Modesto, Calif. home while the 32-year-old victim was sleeping. They punched, kicked and stabbed the man in the upper right side of his back before realizing they had the wrong house — and the wrong man.
So, I suppose these things were caused by state intervention in the right of people to grab a 12 year olds ass, and to stab whoever you want?
So since anarchy results in tyranny and violence we should just abandon the ideal of man’s ability to coexist and just accept the inevitable violence, death, destruction, and genocide that comes with State power? Hobbes’s view that countries on a world scale act as man would in absence of State control just leads us to the same conclusion doesn’t it? Except with State power the violence is just organized on a massive global scale. Are we conceding defeat before we even give it a fair try? Such apathy is truly the result of the sad state of affairs we find ourselves in.
Not at all, rather, in a situation with numerous state entities, the best one can hope for is parity, or at the least, that the benefits of cooperative relationships outweigh the benefits of seizing the others stuff. If you have 2 guys of equal strength and both want the other guys stuff, nothing will likely happen, assuming they are rational actors. So it is on the state level, and the international level. What will keep states from not engaging in such acts are multiple, the reputational costs that come from such actions, and fear of reciprocation by a conglomerate of other states.
What keeps state power internally at a minimum is the understanding that man will excell best when the benefits acrue to the individual. Society and states should be entered into solely to provide a framework wherein individual man can optimize his output. When the state tries to take too much, one faces either internal rebellion, or (think Soviet Union) where individuals pretty much half-ass everything, lowering collective output.
But TSO- how could this balance and cooperation apply on the Global scale between Nations and not on the individual level? Isn’t that a double standard? And history has proven through all the violent acts of the State that the Nations have failed to keep up their end of this balance and restraint.
Perhaps man is just doomed to fail. That is something I struggle to comprehend every day. The minute we concede we need laws to protect individual liberty we ignite a spark of State control that can’t be stopped and just it spirals out of control until we reach where we are now. We have States carrying out violence against each other and against their own people. Maybe eventually the US will collapse once people withdraw their support for the coercive control, and we can start from scratch rebuilding… and we start the tragic cycle all over again. I have searched for an answer to this problem and if you have one I would gladly embrace it.
Rooney –
This balance does exist at the individual level, but I’ll leave it to TSO to respond in detail.
To your comment that perhaps man is doomed to fail, I offer you this from William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech:
“…I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance…”
The US is not going to collapse on account of a withdrawal of citizen support for our civil and political institutions, because we exist in a participatory democracy, unlike truly coercive autocracies such as Zimbabwe, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc., etc. Granted, our government is way too big and our system of governance isn’t perfect, but it’s preferable to the alternatives. Given the huge number of people seeking to enter, versus flee, our country, it’s clear we’re doing something right. There’s no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
TSO is going to pass right now, envisioning a long post in response, probably tomorrow or Thurs.
Mike- I could take your Somalia/Rwanda/Afghanistan and raise you a Mao/Stalin/Lincoln etc… but I don’t want to bore you with swapping casualty figures and besides one death isn’t any more significant than another and I don’t want to marginalize a Somalian murder just because there are less of them. But I would say that those examples you sight are still framed within a State system. One group asserting its control over another in hopes of gaining State control or power. Those groups, just like governments, produce nothing. They simply take. Maybe these poor victims could just run away except that there are National borders preventing this. They are legally bound to their land through laws and restrictions of freedom. Hobbes’s theory was a purely hypothetical vision of man before civilization and States, not one of failed State control or power vacuums. So when I say his theory hasn’t been put to the test what I’m saying is there is no way we can return to a time before the State system was our frame of reference. But please, don’t get me wrong, I feel very fortunate to have lived in the US as opposed to other parts of the world. I have benefited from our Nation’s use of coercion. But that is simply a coincidence of geography and says very little for the other 6.3 billion geographically challenged individuals in the world.
Mike- I also appreciate your optimism in the quote you present. But I still can’t see a way we can successfully shed the State system framework I mention above and not end up with catastrophe. Thus my pessimism and doom will remain until I can find the answer.
Rooney –
Of course, we cannot successfully shed the “State system framework” without bringing the worst aspects of anarchy upon ourselves, and why is this so? Because it is human beings, not the “State system framework”, that has to change first. Consider the following statement made by historian Christopher Dawson in 1937:
“It has been the fault of both pacifism and liberalism in the past that they have ignored the immense burden of inherited evil under which society and civilization labour and have planned an imaginary world for an impossible humanity. We must recognize that we are living in an imperfect world in which human and superhuman forces of evil are at work and so long as those forces affect the political behaviour of mankind there can be no hope of abiding peace.”
In theory, it would be great if we could live free of governments and/or States, but as Dawson pointed out, this is a utopian fantasy – the human race has not evolved to the point where we can rely on all of its members to respect the inalienable rights of other individuals. Hence, as TSO has pointed out, the State does serve the useful purpose of instituting and enforcing a system of governance, based on the rule of law, that is intended to preserve the rights of individuals against any aggressor who seeks to deprive them of their rights to life, liberty, property, etc. Of course, as with anything involving human beings, this system (the American model where rights evolve from the individual, not the State or collective) is anything but perfect, but once again, it is preferable to the alternatives of Anarchy or Communism.
Given Man’s timeless capacity to behave in an absolutely uncivilized manner, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on whether or not Hobbes’ theory is applicable to human behavior within failed states or territories that have reverted to the completely anarchic conditions of our uncivilized ancestors.