I know we are all supposed to be outraged at Lois Lane, er, Lerner's neat little trick of taking the Fifth right after her self-justificatory statement.
Yeah, what would Clark Kent down at the Daily Planet say about that?
But let's be practical. Lois Lerner is merely telling Congress a simple fact. Hey, pal, you want information, you gonna pay for it. Immunity for Information. Pay for play. That's the First Commandment in the Beltway.
Immunity for Information. That's how things go in the Obamian Culture of Intimidation.
Look. We conservatives finally get to come up for air and have a good laugh. Because liberals did this to themselves. They believe in the chimera of Good Government. Ethical activists and credentialed experts think up beneficial legislation and then the administrative state executes on it.
Settled science alert: Hayek told us half a century ago that the Good Government/Expert/Administrative state model was bound to fail, because the man in Whitehall (he was still in Britland at the time) could never know more than a million consumers.
On top of that liberals believe in a kind of salvific politics. Only elect the right man, the young and vigorous JFK, the charismatic policy wonk Bill Clinton, the intellectual Barack Obama, and the oceans will start to recede.
(Do these people not understand how religious this sort of thing sounds?)
But government is force. Politics is division. Administration is domination. If you don't limit all three you lose society. It turns into an internment camp. Liberals think that because they are virtuous and well intentioned and intellectual that they can design a beneficent society administered by large-minded people like them.
But the philosophy of limited government says that anyone, no matter how virtuous and large-minded, is corrupted by power. It says that the more government you have, the more force you have. The more politics you have the more society will be divided. And the more that you systemize things into administrative bureaucracies the more domination you have.
Well, now, five years after liberals went into a multiple political orgasm over the OMG! First! Black! President! we are starting to see the wages of folly. That wonderful intellectual president has been presiding over an IRS that has specifically targeted grass-roots political organizations for delay and harassment. The wonderful politician who was going to move beyond red and blue has tapped the telephones of AP journalists. Not just right-wing nut-cases at FoxNews, but good liberal AP journalists! And the most transparent administration in history is tangled in a web of lies and obfuscations over the murder of a US Ambassador.
Look liberals. Politicians are merely professional specialists in winning elections. That is all. Activists are activists, narrow, driven people with an agenda. Experts are thinking about their next grant. And bureaucrats are thinking about keeping their noses clean for the next few years until they collect their pensions. That is what you believe in.
There is such a thing as society; it's just not the same thing as the state. Society evokes the idea that humans are social animals; we cooperate and work and play together because that's who we are. But government is force; politics is division. The more government you have, the less freedom you have. the more politics you have, the less unity you have. With more government and more politics, the less society you have, because you have reduced society to an internment camp of force and division, mediated by systematic bureaucratic domination.
I don't think liberals really understand what is coming. They are safe in the soothing NYT-NPR bubble. But people are hurting. They are hurting as they get stripped of their health insurance by Obamacare, as they are stripped of a future by the sluggish economy.
Think of the next three years as Oklahoma in the tornado season. There are black clouds all around, but nobody knows when a line of thunderstorms will touch down into a twister. And nobody can know whose house it will rip apart and whose life it will tear in pieces.
Conservatives and Republicans are notorious for being stupid about politics and messaging and tactics. But when something big is in the air the minutiae of tactics usually don't matter as much as the professionals would like to believe. What matters instead is what the Soviets used to call the "correlation of forces" or the "contradictions" of the existing order.
All we can know for sure is that the lives of millions of Americans are going to be ripped to shreds in the next few years as the tornado of bankrupt government touches down on the ordinary American heartland.
And all the while the job-for-life IRS myrmidons that dutifully ragged on mom-and-pop Tea Parties will be taking the Fifth and bargaining about Immunity for Information.
Yeah, what would Clark Kent down at the Daily Planet say about that?
But let's be practical. Lois Lerner is merely telling Congress a simple fact. Hey, pal, you want information, you gonna pay for it. Immunity for Information. Pay for play. That's the First Commandment in the Beltway.
Immunity for Information. That's how things go in the Obamian Culture of Intimidation.
Look. We conservatives finally get to come up for air and have a good laugh. Because liberals did this to themselves. They believe in the chimera of Good Government. Ethical activists and credentialed experts think up beneficial legislation and then the administrative state executes on it.
Settled science alert: Hayek told us half a century ago that the Good Government/Expert/Administrative state model was bound to fail, because the man in Whitehall (he was still in Britland at the time) could never know more than a million consumers.
On top of that liberals believe in a kind of salvific politics. Only elect the right man, the young and vigorous JFK, the charismatic policy wonk Bill Clinton, the intellectual Barack Obama, and the oceans will start to recede.
(Do these people not understand how religious this sort of thing sounds?)
But government is force. Politics is division. Administration is domination. If you don't limit all three you lose society. It turns into an internment camp. Liberals think that because they are virtuous and well intentioned and intellectual that they can design a beneficent society administered by large-minded people like them.
But the philosophy of limited government says that anyone, no matter how virtuous and large-minded, is corrupted by power. It says that the more government you have, the more force you have. The more politics you have the more society will be divided. And the more that you systemize things into administrative bureaucracies the more domination you have.
Well, now, five years after liberals went into a multiple political orgasm over the OMG! First! Black! President! we are starting to see the wages of folly. That wonderful intellectual president has been presiding over an IRS that has specifically targeted grass-roots political organizations for delay and harassment. The wonderful politician who was going to move beyond red and blue has tapped the telephones of AP journalists. Not just right-wing nut-cases at FoxNews, but good liberal AP journalists! And the most transparent administration in history is tangled in a web of lies and obfuscations over the murder of a US Ambassador.
Look liberals. Politicians are merely professional specialists in winning elections. That is all. Activists are activists, narrow, driven people with an agenda. Experts are thinking about their next grant. And bureaucrats are thinking about keeping their noses clean for the next few years until they collect their pensions. That is what you believe in.
There is such a thing as society; it's just not the same thing as the state. Society evokes the idea that humans are social animals; we cooperate and work and play together because that's who we are. But government is force; politics is division. The more government you have, the less freedom you have. the more politics you have, the less unity you have. With more government and more politics, the less society you have, because you have reduced society to an internment camp of force and division, mediated by systematic bureaucratic domination.
I don't think liberals really understand what is coming. They are safe in the soothing NYT-NPR bubble. But people are hurting. They are hurting as they get stripped of their health insurance by Obamacare, as they are stripped of a future by the sluggish economy.
Think of the next three years as Oklahoma in the tornado season. There are black clouds all around, but nobody knows when a line of thunderstorms will touch down into a twister. And nobody can know whose house it will rip apart and whose life it will tear in pieces.
Conservatives and Republicans are notorious for being stupid about politics and messaging and tactics. But when something big is in the air the minutiae of tactics usually don't matter as much as the professionals would like to believe. What matters instead is what the Soviets used to call the "correlation of forces" or the "contradictions" of the existing order.
All we can know for sure is that the lives of millions of Americans are going to be ripped to shreds in the next few years as the tornado of bankrupt government touches down on the ordinary American heartland.
And all the while the job-for-life IRS myrmidons that dutifully ragged on mom-and-pop Tea Parties will be taking the Fifth and bargaining about Immunity for Information.
No comments:
Post a Comment