Comments

Who is susceptible to Obamalove, and why? — 83 Comments

1. The new boyfriend likes Obama and considers me his wacko, right wing girlfriend (despite the fact I voted Dem through the Clinton years). We have spirited debates 😉 I do not see the love dimming for him yet. I had to show him the You Tube video of the 57 states remark before he would believe it. I suspect there is a lot of it going on. I wish I could suspend disbelief and believe that Obama is going to heal the economy. Somehow, I don’t see it happening.

2. Heal it? He’s hacking it to death with an ax.

3. I am beginning to think Obama is so bizarrely twisted he’d register on a Geiger counter.

   I think neither of your suppositions fits. I think if we really knew Obama we’d find somewhere something very like “Rosebud.”

4. You cannot dismiss the role of rank stupidity in evaluating liberals and leftists. One of my remaining leftist friends never did catch on when I sent him a jpeg of an AIG honcho in a Che T-shirt. Several e-mails later I sent him a clue through a link to The People’s Cube. He is ordering a T-shirt from them.

   Dumb, dumb, dumb!

5. Has anyone thought much about the fact that three of the most significant people in Obama’s life – Michelle, Jeremiah Wright, and Bill Ayers – really, really don’t like America? You can probably add his father, step father, and mother to that list.

6. This recognition of what Obama really is is going to be slow. Not only do those 52%ers not want to admit his off the charts radicalness. They don’t want to admit how incredibly duped they all were.

7. “Those mushy idealists can turn into manipulative, angry, ruthless, power-hungry tyrants quite easily, and do so with depressing regularity:”

   Exactly, and true to typical form of radical left-wing regimes, having now consolidated political power in the legislature as well as the executive branch, the Democrats are now issuing (control) laws and a crash spending program at such speed that no opposition can be effectively mounted, and which can only result later in the dollar’s destruction and catastrophic inflation. The resulting economic debacle will enable them to institute martial law. There’s already discussion in those circles of eliminating the law which limits the presidency to two terms. Watch as the Tea Party phenomena grows in popularity and numbers. The Dems will badly need their newly proposed domestic security force to control the irate populace. In that regard, and talk about an effective chess game, one has to admit the the (Democrat) “Party” is obviously thinking several moves ahead. Typical of many leftists in history, this is a group of very dangerous people… What’s coming is going to make the demonstrations of the 60’s pale by comparison. But this time it will be a backlash and resurgence of classical “America” reclaiming it’s roots. The “fan” is only just turned on and running on low, wait till it’s running on high…

8. Perhaps one reason that I’ve never considered myself a liberal is that I was never able to take the leap of faith required by idealism. Maybe this is one of the legacies of growing up in a household where Jimmy Carter was routinely criticized by my parents as being hoplessly naive (I was 10 when Carter was elected), but I never could imagine that our enemies in the world were so easy to change or that social problems of any sort would ever be easy to solve.

9. I believe the best place to start for seeking out the clues as to who the hard core Obonga supporters are is demographic information from voting and polling data. I realize that exceptions do exist to the patterns, which is why we have to qualify our generalizations. Once we have a good handle on the lay of the land here, we can begin to make educated assumptions about the dynamics inherent in those demographics provide some explanation for the attraction to Obonga.

   Here are some of the opposing groups: (Left hand side, self-explanatory; Right hand side, ditto)

   Urban centers vs. rural populations

   Single women vs. married women

   Young voters vs. older voters

   Un-churched vs. churched voters

   Non-military vs. military and veterans

   Union vs. non-union workers

   Government workers vs. non-government workers

   And so you should get the idea. THE core of Obama support is the under-30 voter, urban, and single female. The cities and the universities are solidly supportive of him.

   Never underestimate the power of large numbers of kids who are indoctrinated, poorly educated (even if they have degrees or on their way to getting them), and lacking in a lot of life experience. ACORN really signed these people up big time. Also, ACORN did massive work in the ghettos of minorities and illegal immigrants.

   It was not the economy that did in George Bush and his party. Why? Because Obama’s popularity was already solid long before the economy was even on the radar screen. It was the war. The very day after 9/11 the Left was already hard at work building the anti-war coalitions, and on college and university campuses this was already up and running. Then, the MSM went to work on George Bush and his party, selling the alternate reality. Everything else, which was substantial, was ancillary to that major theme: the war. Guantanamo, “torture,” electronic eavesdropping, the Patriot Act, etc. No effort was spared to create an atmosphere where George Bush and his party were made to look buffoonish or criminal. In truth, sometimes George Bush did make mistakes and he was especially wrong on the issue of illegal immigration. Thus, you had a considerable minority of Republicans who already were inclined to simply not vote.

   I have a hard time assigning malevolent motives to most of the kids. However, to most of their teachers and professors I have an easy time assigning malevolent motives, simply because I got to know that culture very, very well and noted their revolutionary intent.

   Antonio Gramsci really did have the right blueprint. Lenin and Stalin did not. By the time Andropov and Gorbachev were true disciples of Gramsci, it was too late for the Soviet Union. But Gramsci’s work has been an astounding success.

10. Fred,

    ACORN is now going after AIG bonus takers. Click on Fausta’s blog on Neo’s blogroll. And just wait till they start training census workers. The half-educated will never wake up. They just can’t get beyond their high-tech savvy and Michelle’s fashion trends.

11. You’re right again about all of this stuff, Fred.

12. I don’t think I could have ever, ever in my college days ever succumbed to Obama-love… for one, by the time I graduated, I had already spent a couple of years as a volunteer to help resettle Vietnamese refugees. And that experience kind of made me wary of people who spoke in sweeping, airy words and grand, amorphous concepts… oh, like giving peace a chance in Southeast Asia. It was my bitter experience that when the whole thing came crashing down, the people who made grand speeches weren’t around to help clean up the mess.

    And I had also read Eric Hoffers’ “The True Believer” by then, and recognized too many of his descriptions in the last few 1960’s radical holdouts in the academic world.

13. My view is that Obama is a very malevolent, scheming clown, and if even half his plans for America come to fruition, it will push us well down the road to tyranny, if not usher in tyranny itself.

    My perception is that, under the guise of remedying the financial emergency Democrats and their housing policies were largely responsible for initiating, and in the crisis atmosphere Obama then helped intensify, he and the Democratic majority that controls both houses of Congress are enacting major pieces of “emergency” legislation so swiftly that no actual comprehension of or debate about these bills is possible, and, when taken together, these pieces of legislation will initiate transformations so radical, that they amount to a coup d’etat.

    His actions in these first 60 days or so of his administration are not those one would take to quell panic and right our financial ship but are, rather, the steps of someone who is trying to consolidate his power, emasculate his foes, create new power bases, and set things up to weather the inevitable protests; why immediately try to directly control the Census, which is used to apportion congressional districts, why attempt to restrict the availability of ammunition to civilians, why try to acquire the emergency power to disconnect portions of the Internet, why try to re-impose the “Fairness Doctrine,” why propose a massive and well funded “Civilian National Security Force,” why push legislation for “mandatory” public service, why attempt–over and over–to direct billions of dollars to ACORN and, now, propose that ACORN hire Census enumerators, why change the tax code to greatly increase the percentage of citizens who pay no federal tax from the current 38% to 50% –a vastly expanded dependent class, receiving tax credits i.e. checks from the government–re-enlarging the welfare system, why stoke and direct the country’s hatred at the entrepreneurial class, seek to expropriate their wealth via sky high taxes, and transfer that wealth to the less productive members of society?

    Obama is creating a power base outside the military, a mob, loyal to him because dependent on the handouts from his administration; those people–who have a lot of free time on their hands because many do not work, can be used for a lot of things; doing the work that will insure Obama and the Democrats stay in power is one use, intimidation of Obama’s foes is another that immediately comes to mind. At the same time, Obama has pointed his finger at who is responsible for all of our problems, who has been robbing us, and who we can hate.

    This is not a President seeking to mend the country, this is a President seeking to raise a mob, divert attention from his actions and, instead, fix our attention on scapegoats, so that he can get away with radically transforming and, ultimately, dominating this country.

14. Bobby Kennedy was the last politician from whom I expected real change without concern for some personal agenda or some egotistic desire to be “somebody.” Perhaps Reagan was also like that in many ways. So, abandoning the liberalism of the days of my yute was more a process of “waking up” than anything else, especially after twelve months in Vietnam. Hated the war after returning more than before I went there – but not because it was “wrong” in the “liberal-hippie-flower power-Jane Fonda” sense, but because our folks were being killed for nothing because our government was not letting us win it. The post-war holocaust in Vietnam and Cambodia affirmed this position. But, up until O’Bama, I had grown used to politicians who were in it “for themselves.” O’Bama is a new species – ideologically-driven and smoooooth with a teleprompter. Why the “goo-goo” love for The One?” With the media, it’s easy – he’s a far left liberal. For the other folks? IMHO, he’s the “man on the white horse,” the “Fairy Prince” who will slay the dragon. The dumbed-down state of our populace opened the door for this. “The One” is a video game come to life, with even a “Fairy Princess” planting gardens on the White House lawn as her hero goes forth to battle the evil capitalist “Greeders” and other assorted monsters. Fortunately, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed on this, it appears that the “Prince” is so blatantly incompetent that the “LUV Boat” is soon going to run aground. The fear I have is the damage the “Prince,” upon realizing that “they don’t love me no more,” might do out of spite. He seems to be an angry, angry man, and that is what scares those of us who are “awake.”

15. Spengler wrote a column over a year ago on the influence two women — his mother and his wife — had on Barack Obama (Obama’s women reveal his secret). It begins:
    “Cherchez la femme,” advised Alexander Dumas in: “When you want to uncover an unspecified secret, look for the woman.” In the case of Barack Obama, we have two: his late mother, the went-native anthropologist Ann Dunham, and his rancorous wife Michelle. Obama’s women reveal his secret: he hates America.”

    Another snip:
    “Barack Obama is a clever fellow who imbibed hatred of America with his mother’s milk, but worked his way up the elite ladder of education and career. He shares the resentment of Muslims against the encroachment of American culture, although not their religion. He has the empathetic skill set of an anthropologist who lives with his subjects, learns their language, and elicits their hopes and fears while remaining at emotional distance. That is, he is the political equivalent of a sociopath. The difference is that he is practicing not on a primitive tribe but on the population of the United States. ”

    and another:
    “There is nothing mysterious about Obama’s methods. “A demagogue tries to sound as stupid as his audience so that they will think they are as clever as he is,” wrote Karl Krauss. Americans are the world’s biggest suckers, and laugh at this weakness in their popular culture. Listening to Obama speak, Sinclair Lewis’ cynical tent-revivalist Elmer Gantry comes to mind, or, even better, Tyrone Power’s portrayal of a carnival mentalist in the 1947 film noire Nightmare Alley. The latter is available for instant viewing at Netflix, and highly recommended as an antidote to having felt uplifted by an Obama speech.

    America has the great misfortune to have encountered Obama at the peak of his powers at its worst moment of vulnerability in a generation. With malice aforethought, he has sought out their sore point.”

    Read it all, and weep: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB26Aa01.html

16. Nell: Excellent article. Amazing that it was written a year ago, yet speaks with such specificity to what is happening today. Confirms my developing belief, expressed previously here, that O’Bama’s repressed anger is the most dangerous component of his personality and the biggest danger to our Republic.

17. While I agree with most of Spengler’s article, I don’t agree that Obama has a brilliant wife. Perhaps he made this assessment before we knew how Michelle got into Princeton and before we knew how she got her $300,000 salary. He probably also missed the fact that her father was involved in Chicago ward politics and that she babysat for Jesse Jackson Jr. A few connections, a sport celeb brother, and an affirmative action degree can get you a long way in Chicago. She strikes me as a mediocre mind who is working hard to live up to Obama’s social pretensions, although she does feel entitled and aggrieved. Obama needed her to learn the language of his South Side constituency and to play out his own role a model black family man.

    Perhaps the Obama love thing will diminish as Michelle nausea sets in.

18. I’m reminded that Obama became disillusioned by his failures as a community organizer. He quit to go to Harvard Law. This seems to me the idealist faced with failure of his worldview, started the process to transform himself into manipulative, angry, ruthless, power-hungry tyrant. He may not be there yet, he may still cling to the idealist but he is on the road to our ruin.

19. I see Drudge has a link to a NY Times article that the administration may start regulating the executive pay of banks THAT ARE NOT receiving Tax money. do you really think they will stop there. This is a step towards nationalizing banks without calling it such. Last night on a comment I mentioned a bill, HR 875 Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, that has been proposed in Congress that would require cattle men and farmers to get a liscence from the Feds and be subject to unnanounced inspections and fines up to $1,000,000 per violation of the proposed code. Do you think it will end there? No. this is a step towards nationalizing farms.

20. Uh…when do you think the Fools in Congress, i.e. the Democrats, and “The Messiah” in the White House are going to propose regulating the pay, and putting caps on, the amounts received by their buddies in Hollywood? Or those in organized sports? Or common thieves such as Terry McAuliffe ? Waiting….waiting….waiting………

21. Fred sets out the contrasts nicely, and more could be said about each of those splits. It fits well with David Warren’s speculation. Liberals in general do not know where the center is because of their inability to conceive of the question in anything other than progressive/retrograde terms. Obama is blinder than most on this score. I think he genuinely believed he was appealing to the center rather than center-left during the campaign, and his more full-throated leftism at present is simply the “practical, political, messy Chicago” way of putting the government in charge of that center-left agenda. That putting the government in charge of things is in itself a move leftward does not seem to occur to him. Like most liberals, he believes that the only alternative to government control is business or military control. That individual people should be largely in charge of their own destiny is simply opaque to him. It is a very dangerous opacity indeed.

22. I read that Spengler article last year when it came out. I too do not agree that Michelle is brilliant. In fact, I don’t think either of them are. They truly do not understand the modern world. They live in a different world of fantasy socialism where they are its saviors and royal couple. The reek of a sanctimonious sense of their own superiority and wise vision.

    I do not think he is going to succeed. And I don’t think his attempt to craft a mob that will make possible his takeover of the country. That mob had better watch out, because the mob’s opponents (veterans like me), if pushed too far, will fight back – and not just with words. Ideas have consequences – even sanguinary ones.

23. One important piece of the puzzle that might help explain Obama’s pathology, is the mentor who he turned to for companionship and advice during his teen age years. During the campaign the British press was doing the research that our American press did not want to do for fear of what they would find out about Obama, and what they would have turned up, had they cared to do their jobs, was the name and background of Obama’s mentor during his teen age years, Frank Marshal Davis, who Obama referred to in his autobiographical “Dreams From My Father” as just “Frank.”

    Frank Marshal Davis was an “angry black man” who was an active member of the Communist Party with a long FBI dossier, a newspaperman and poet working in Honolulu, a hard drinker and marijuana user, and a self acknowledged sexual pervert, who liked to be urinated on and humiliated, was a bisexual, a sado-masochist, and a voyeur who scouted Honolulu for sexual partners for his wife and himself–men, women or children. Davis wrote an autobiographical hard core pornographic memoir about his perverted sexual tastes and his sexual encounters under an assumed name, but when someone who knew his writings asked Davis if he wrote this pornographic memoir, Davis acknowledged that he had.

    Now what kind of influence do we imagine Davis was on Obama, and what was the nature of their year’s long relationship?

24. “Those mushy idealists can turn into manipulative, angry, ruthless, power-hungry tyrants quite easily, and do so with depressing regularity”

    Here’s an example from “climate change” fanatic James Hansen:

    “NASA scientist and leading climate expert, James Hansen, said on Wednesday that more drastic measures may be needed in order to change the course of climate change policy.

    “The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash,” said Hansen as he headed to a protest against power firm E.ON in Coventry.

    “The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes. So, I’m not surprised that people are getting frustrated. I think that peaceful demonstration is not out of order, because we’re running out of time.”

    Of course, he’s talking about peaceful demonstrations now but it’s a pretty short jump to non-peaceful demonstrations when peaceful demonstrations “don’t work”. So, in short, if he doesn’t get what he wants from the democratic process, then something is wrong with the democratic process. Well, to that I say “Boo hoo!”

    That’s how democracy works. You have to earn your earn your place in public policy, you can’t just appoint yourself genius-in-residence and start telling everyone else what to do because you’re “frustrated”. There are plenty of other frustrated people out there and they don’t resort to this ridiculousness when they don’t get what they want. What’s so special about you?

    This is the beginning of all tyranny, i.e. someone assuming he knows what’s best for everyone else and having the ego to appoint himself to the role of telling everyone else what to do.

    Dr. Hansen, go away and leave us alone before you break something. And study your Constitution while you’re at it because all the available evidence indicates you’re not nearly smart enough to tell everyone else what to do.

    From the same article, a specific example of the towering stupidity of Dr. Hansen, “In an interview with the UK’s Observer in January, Hansen warned that Barack Obama has only four years to save the world.”

    As I say to all statements of this nature regarding “climate change”, prove it.

25. Neo,’

    Great post and great comments. Especially Nell’s.
    As for whether, “… you think he is primarily a naive and idealistic idealogue or a cold-blooded egomaniacal narcissist, or some combination of the two…”
    I have to say that for me at anyway, the evidence is becoming increasingly clear that he is mostly the latter. Though I have always thought that of him since I first learned about him.

    It is chilling to see how quickly he and his minions vilify and resort to personal attacks whenever they encounter opposition. Always as a substitute for answering any criticisms directly.

    To my view, this seems like the final act in the tragic farce of the boomer generation’s death match with itself, which has been ongoing since the 60’s. The extreme left has completed their ascendancy. First the long march through our schools and universities and other cultural institutions. Add to that the left’s strangle hold on the mainstream media who virtually dragged this incompetent across the finish line in the last election.

    The protege of Bill Ayers and student of Alinsky as the front man for the so called progressive left is finally in the White House and with a congress controlled by the so called progressive wing of the democrat party.

    They will try to drive this country towards socialism and their leftist agenda even if it ruins the country. Many of them hate America anyway and others are simply along for the opportunistic ride.

    They intend to let nothing stand in their way and I suspect only their own arrogance and incompetence will save us. That is if we are still able (and willing) to save ourselves.

    As Obama, his administration and the democrat congress increasingly flail about. The public will begin to wake up from whatever was in the kool-aid he served them and I predict that the backlash will build. It seems to starting already.

26. Tim P,

    Excuse me, but I’m a Boomer “on a death march?” The demographics of the voting in November clearly bear out the fact that it was mainly Gen Y and Gen X folks who are his core of support, along with single females, and primarily all in the urban areas. His core of support is not the Boomers, who are a deeply divided generation and by no means is it a done deal that most Boomers are Far Left. I may have been a Marxist at one point in my youth, but I left that ideological direction in 1987, which was over 20 years ago.

    Plus an awful lot of us Boomers – Older and Younger ones (I’m a younger Boomer) served in the military and a lot of them in the Republic of Vietnam. Proudly.

27. neo-neocon: Why does heading to my posting at 6:37 P.M. contain the phrase: “Your comment is awaiting moderation.” I didn’t think it was all that radical. After all, as Barry Goldwater once said, “Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virture.” Please advise.

28. There is no lack of a deep stack in the “inbox” of articles and analyses of Barack Obama. The Spengler article attests to the quality of writing about Obama out there. But very startlingly few people have partaken of the extant material. I think THAT is the most worrying trend, from where I view things.

29. Fred — Love you guy, but Obama is the sixties redux of boomers. Obama would not be possible without boomers. Obama was inspired, formed and shaped by boomers.

    Even though many of us boomers have moved, ahem, on since then, Obama is the lightworker, Woodstock Nation, Abbie Hoffman & Jerry Rubin guy who slipped right through the barricades to plant the sixties Weather Underground flag in the White House.

    It’s an astounding prank and there will be a hell of a hangover.

30. huxley: As a certified Boomer, I think O’Bama is far beyond anything to do with the Boomer take on the world. The Boomer philosophy of “peace and love” was totally unrealistic. O’Bama is VERY realistic in the sense that he appears to be devoted to destroying the system. The only thing Boomers have in common with O’Bama, IMHO, is that we, too, thought we were just “too precious” to clean up our own messes.

31. O’Bama as a clown? John Wayne Gacey?

32. Barack Obama is a Communist, and not all of the Leftist Boomers of the Sixties remained Communists. Furthermore, maybe most were patriotic during the Cold War and supported the war effort in the Republic of Vietnam.

    In February of 1968, during the Tet Offensive as we were viewing it on t.v. and reading about it in the papers, I was only 13 years old. As far as I was concerned back then, I wanted my country to win that war, and our military performed brilliantly even if our political leadership failed. From 1967 through 1969, while at a Catholic grammar school across the yard from the church, I was an altar boy who every now and then had to leave class to serve the funeral Mass of a young man come home in a flag draped coffin. I served six of those funerals. I will never forget them and I still remember a couple of the names.

    My journey has brought me full circle back to the better instincts I was raised into. I believe that this is true for perhaps most of the Boomers. But the few diehard Communists who were ensconced within our universities and education system have ruined the seed corn of the nation: Generations X and Y. But this is not on ALL of us Boomers. Most of us did not perpetuate the miasma of cultural Marxism and post-modernism.

    Besides, I have my grave doubts that Obonga is even an American citizen. And I believe some day, long after he’s gone from office, the truth about this will come out. It will shock the nation and reveal how most of our government conspired to cover this up. Additionally, it will mean that everything he ever ruled on or signed will be rendered illegal.

    It is most urgent that the people of this nation grow up. For far too long we’ve been too fat and complacent about a lot of things. Moreover, I believe that part of the reason for the appeal of socialism owes to the fact that we as individuals and communities have shucked our moral responsibilities to help each other out when in need. It has led to more people seeking that help from government and then government compelling it from us through confiscatory tax rates.

    Compelling redistribution does not make us virtuous and instill character and the Christian habit of charity. We have failed utterly as a people, and for this we are given over to the calamities which will most certainly attend this man’s rise to power.

33. This is a bit off-topic, but perhaps of interest. Le Figaro reports that Obama has written Chirac (sic), seemingly congratulating him with his opposition to the intervention in Iraq, and hoping to work with him during the next four years.

    It’s not clear from the article whether or not Obama realized Chirac is no longer President of France. Not sure what to make of this.
    http://tinyurl.com/cq52lo

34. Idealist never stop to consider a world where their ideas are rendered the “establishment”. These are people afflicted with “the grass is always greener” syndrome.

    This is how we’re about to arrive at poverty’s doorstep. As a soulution to imperfect prosperity.

35. It’s always unwise, to “Psychoanalyze” your opponents. Our emotional nature will mislead our analysis, possibly making things worse. A more objective analysis of capabilities and intent-through-history is more reliable.

36. I fear Stockholm Syndrome will take hold before we can vote these people out.

37. Before Obama’s reign is over, we will be living either in a socialist police state, complete with polituburo, KGB and gulags, or a military dictactorship, complete with disappeared and concentration camps. The only substantial difference will the inmates in the camps and the murdered dead. The Republic is finished.

38. It is my opinion that the Boomer generation did a substandard job of raising their children to be responsible adults. That subsequent generation (more or less mine, as I was born in 1960) did an even worse job, leading to the present, where we seem to be a nation overrun with narcissistic and shallow citizens, who are lacking in critical thinking and who also lack the moral and intellectual safeguards of religion.

39. fan,

    Yes it was OT, but that info about the letter to Chirac was fascinating. I hope that Obama’s supporter Colin Powell will set The One straight on Chirac. But then again, Powell’s usefulness is over. He may as well be under the bus.

    Fred2,

    I don’t think we are attempting to psychoanalyze Obama in any classical sense. We are confronted with a person who now has great power over our lives and who, at the level of our experienced gut instincts, is somehow wrong, as in “There’s something wrong with that guy.” His words, his actions, and his hidden past simply do not add up. We sense that he has used white guilt and pretended empathy to manipulate us and we want to be on the lookout for further manipulation. We also worry about how he will react when his evasions no longer protect him from reality. As I said, he has great power. What will he do with it if his outstanding temperment cracks? I don’t think there is anything wrong with considering the possibilities so long as we are not dogmatic about having a diagnosis.

40. I voted for him and I will definitely be critical or give praise when either are due.

41. “Bob Sykes Says:
    March 22nd, 2009 at 7:28 am

    Before Obama’s reign is over, we will be living either in a socialist police state, complete with polituburo, KGB and gulags, or a military dictactorship, complete with disappeared and concentration camps.

    Loose babble.

    Solipsism is not a virtue — this is the other side of the coin we saw of unfounded criticism against Bush.

42. The problem is that we in America have never really had to deal with a President who looks like he is truly intent on becoming a dictator, and who, with his Democratic majorities in Congress, is very quickly taking a calculated series of steps to implement massive changes aimed–not, as claimed, at fixing our economy in this “disaster,” this “emergency situation,” but, in actuality, aimed at reshaping our entire country, consolidating his power, and establishing the instruments of control, coercion and domination–things like the White House attempt to control the Census, the WH proposal to control Cybersecurity and Internet connections, the re-imposition of the “Fairness Doctrine,” attempted WH restrictions on availability of ammunition to civilians, massive funding for ACORN, nationalization of major sectors of the economy, attempts to expropriate a good chunk of the wealth of the entrepreneurial class, and its transfer to fund a vastly expanded class of dependent welfare recipients, proposals for “mandatory” public service, vast expansion of “voluntary” public service organizations and the creation of a myriad of new ones–all to be folded into the enormous “Civilian National Security Force” Obama proposed several months ago–a potential alternative power base, a device for government control of citizens, and source of manpower loyal to Obama outside of the military–attempts by the President to deliberately create panic, Presidential fingering of those to be hated (AIG executives are like “suicide bombers”)–and, if things go well for Obama down the line, the potential for the use of ACORN and many of those welfare recipients as agents of coercion.

    Routine Banana Republic stuff in South America, methods taken from the toolkit used by Robespierre, Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao and Castro, but we have just assumed “It Can’t Happen Here”; we have no experience with such a power grab, it is not one of the categories we think in, and we need to find out–in a hurry–how to comprehend it before it is too late to stop it.

    The Left created a totalitarian narrative, a fantasy–a giant projection–in which Chimpy BushHitler, Halliburton and his evil henchman Cheney and Rove were taking our freedoms away and creating a totalitarian regime. Now, we can see, in the swift moves by Obama in just the first 70 days of is administration, how a President–if he desires–can really begin to assemble the weapons of domination and coercion, and we have to grapple with the very real possibility that we will have to fight to preserve our freedoms in the face of a President’s efforts to forcibly wrench our country onto a totally new direction–a hijacking–forcibly changing our course, and aiming us towards an actual “revolution” and in the process, achieving a dictatorship; this will require a totally different way of thinking and a drastic reordering of our priorities, our perceptions, and our actions.

43. Wolla Dalbo,

    Do you think that by 2010 he will have succeeded in preventing the loss of many Democratic seats in Congress?

    Have you considered the law of unintended consequences as he screws up the economy, foreign policy, and truly pisses off the military? I see a steady stream of unfolding incompetence. I see most of those Republicans who did not vote, voting. I see many of those in the Middle Muddle who voted for Obonga, voting the other way next time and then again in 2012.

    I see a very weak recovery followed by rising inflation, resulting in stagflation. Is the American public going to abide that?

    Next time I see the under-30 crowd, the single females, and the urban reffraff being swamped at the voting booth, despite ACORN manipulation. I’m willing to bet the feverish, enthusiastic support for the Big Mack Daddy on college campuses not being as much of a factor.

    Once the effects of cap and trade really begin to be felt in 2011 (not 2012), it is going to slam this economy like a sledgehammer.

    Unintended consequences will provide the context for a wide conservative revival. I see socialism being thoroughly repudiated by the public and the Democrats being out of power for a very, very long time. All these kids need is the same lesson we got when we were young during the Seventies. Most of us got that lesson (a little delayed for me, but it did not escape my observation).

44. Love and infatuation dies hard. It took me 4 years of Clinton before I turned against his malicious incompetance. I’m personally surprised and even a little thrilled to see such clumsiness from the BO administration so soon. But I need to caution myself to avoid being too excited. Clinton also stumbled at the starting gate but wound up with a popularity close to 60%. And this media will prop BO up. They don’t want the tag of ‘lynching’ the presidente no matter how badly he governs. I fear after 4-8 years of this mess, most of his groupies in the press will STILL be wedded to their love interest.

45. FredHjr–We may not have the luxury of being able to wait until 2010 to protest and start to “turn the rascals out.” The problem is that Obama & Co. are moving so swiftly to put their agenda into place in this “EMERGENCY” atmosphere (one assumes in anticipation of citizen’s voting their disapproval of them in 2010 and 2012), that enough key elements of Obama’s program may be in place and operating by 2010, that it may extremely hard to root them out; with the speed with which events can happen these days, if Obama is really aiming at a dictatorship, and his massive changes are enacted into law and policy, by then it might just be too late.

46. FredHjr–You must remember, too, that the mechanics of seizure of power and “revolution” are not unknown to Obama. Obama’s mentor from ages 12 or 13 to 17 was Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis, in “Dreams From My Father” Obama wrote of how he deliberately chose to hang out with Marxists in college and talked revolution long into the night, he is a disciple of Marxist agitator Saul Alinsky, and applied Alinsky’s ruthless, amoral techniques for seizing power when he was doing his “community organizing,” and he socialized with and worked for many years with Communists and unrepentant urban terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn, whose efforts helped launch his political career in Chicago.

47. Kurt Says:

    “I was never able to take the leap of faith required by idealism.”

    One problem is it is not really even idealism. It’s still a negative hate. Just the enemy is the domestic conservative. If only not for the military industrial complex / system / ‘them’ we would not have wars or enemies around the world (and everything would be great). The base is built on angry radicalism. When they sing about peace they usually mean we’d have it if not for their political opponents…

48. Kurt, I’ll take it a step further. Its not even the makers of war they hate. The mere response preparedness and contingency plans are enough.

    Their idea of a defense for America lies in words and windmills.

49. Got confused. Meant to direct that at Thomass.

50. Is Obama himself an example of this phenomenon? Perhaps. It partly depends on whether you think he is primarily a naive and idealistic idealogue or a cold-blooded egomaniacal narcissist, or some combination of the two. — neo-neocon

    And we’re still wondering just who this guy is. Although it’s clear that most of us have taken a jump to the left and towards the dark in our estimations.

51. Fredhjr: “Moreover, I believe that part of the reason for the appeal of socialism owes to the fact that we as individuals and communities have shucked our moral responsibilities to help each other out when in need. It has led to more people seeking that help from government and then government compelling it from us through confiscatory tax rates.”

    I agree. I have long thought that the greatest ally the socialist could have is ironically a greedy capitalist. I don’t want the government forcing companies to make this or that change to the payroll, but I have long thought that CEO’s who make multiple millions make capitalism look bad if they do not pay their lowest paid guys a decent wage.

    On a side note, and somewhat related, one of the local pastors, whose church has thousands of members, had a series of sermons for several weeks that emphasized adoption. He said we were right to oppose abortion, but Churches had failed to support adoption as much as needed. After the series, the Church then had follow up meetings with interested potential parents and is prepared to even help with the financial cost of adoption. If I am not mistaken, the first such meeting had about 300 interested people, so I guess about 150 couples, though singles could be involved if they desired.

    That pastor is now bringing attention to the proposed caps on charitable tax free giving that is being proposed in “tax Reform’ by the administration.

52. SteveH Says:

    “Their idea of a defense for America lies in words and windmills.”

    Even those types need a reason or boogie man to blame for the utopia not showing up. Thats us… Not Hamas, not the USSR, et cetera…

53. Wolla Dalbo,

    The riffraff that Obonga draws into his orbit may be idiotic idealists who get off on that Marxist revolution drivel, but he has no idea and these people have no idea of the kind of violence they could bring down upon themselves if they went too far. Most of these people are dopes. Even the president is an idiot when it comes to things military, and I doubt he’d have most of the military on his side if he and Eric Holder decided to attempt what King George III and Gen. Thomas Gage failed to do from 1773-1775.

    Even in my Marxist days (1977-1987) I was not a hard core idealist. Reality and its best arguments would always interpose themselves and I directed my own development as an intellectual by focusing in on the weaknesses in socialist thinking. Those were the moral arguments and the utopian thinking. Human nature is what it is. The actual socialist experiments in history were evil and were failures. The arguments of the Left here were that “it wasn’t done right” or “we can find a way to change human nature to make it possible.” Well, I took it to the limit by intensely studying insightful articles in psychology, neuroscience, and genetics. No “perfected technique and experiment” in socialism will change the fact that there are monsters among us and the all of us have a dark side. And getting rid of religion and traditional morality will not make for a more moral man. Objectively, when you look at all of the countries where socialism was attempted, the extent of immorality and brutality is shocking. Instead of creating more moral human beings, socialism makes us more beast like.

    We are already in a war to save and salvage civilization from its diminution at the hands of shockingly amoral people.

    Gen. Gage was unable to disarm the men of the New England colonies. He was not able to get all of the powder stores and ammunition. The people resisted, and the men I know (many are fellow veterans and also active duty) are determined to resist the encroaching tyranny. We will not let him succeed. Furthermore, we are determined to exhaust completely every means of political resolution to this crisis. So, revolution is the last resort and only when the situation is in a dire Constitutional crisis. We are going to smart, patient, and disciplined about it every step of the way.

54. I have stated elsewhere I think a time will come where we bring our military home to stand at our borders, protecting us from outside influence while the rest of us “figure out” just what we’re gonna do here. But they won’t be brought home by the current administration – at least not for the above reason.

    I have faith in our incredible military. They are sworn to defend the CONSTITUTION from all threats – foreign and domestic.

    There are millions in this nation who seem to actually want things to head in the direction they are going. I am not one of them. I can’t even comprehend what it is they are thinking.

    “Honk if I’m paying your mortgage” is a joke i have a hard time snickering about. Foreign banks stupid enough to buy up those B.S. loans are getting paid off by me, my kids, and my grand kids. I’m not at all happy about that either.

    I’m all for paying my fair share of the care and feeding of the goose that lays the golden eggs. But I am not at all happy being forced to pay (what the hell else is it then?) for this mess. As I read elsewhere today, this nation is on the road to one day becoming too expensive to live in, on top of many other things many of us see going on.

55. br549,

    One way or another collectivist/utopian ideologies that run cover for old-fashioned oligarchies must be defeated. We cannot – CANNOT – put off this show down indefinitely. We are going to have it out with these people, either peacefully through the political process and seeing their ideology discredited through failure, or, God save us from it, through revolution or civil war. Those people are not going to just fade away without a fight. And we are not going to fade away without a fight. I believe we are at a critical historical crossroad and that this moment has been building for many years. Our nation cannot endure with both sides dancing away from each other indefinitely.

    I’m fully committed to the political process, but I and like-minded men and women ARE NOT going to allow our weapons to be confiscated by these people. We are already planning on how to disobey the government on that score.

    We have no other choice, if we want to avoid something bitterly sanguinary, but to vigorously and intelligently fight the good fight in the realm of advancing our ideas through academic and political endeavor. I’ve made this observation plain to more than a few men, and to a man they agree with me. We are embarked upon a project to retrieve our sense of liberty and responsible citizenship.

56. Incompetent or not, Obama’s administration is gunning for my rochefort cheese, who knows what they’ll take away next. . .

57. One weird thing…have you all noticed…where are the trolls who like to flaunt our comments in twisted ways? I have looked at site after site…they are gone. What happened?? Maybe they have nothing to say because we tell the truth of the goal they have been trying to reach all along.

58. Yes, Army Mom, I have noticed that too. For the most part, although over at PJM there are still the usual ones… but yes, the absolute numbers of them have dropped. Maybe David Axelrod has the Obamabots doing other things?

59. FredHjr,
    You said, “Excuse me, but I’m a Boomer “on a death march?” I said death match.

    Anyway, I don’t intend to quibble with what you say in your comments, you usually have something to say that’s worth reading. I just wanted to make that correction.

    Regarding boomers, I too am one.

    I was among the first group of 18 year olds who voted in ’72. I voted for Nixon. I went to Kent State, though I was still in High school (nearby) when the murders on May 4th occurred and yes, they were murders. I have gotten to see from an early age just what leftist agitation is, up close, live and in person. It’s ugly. I was a student on campus and saw the busing onto the campus of ‘professional demonstrators’ in ’75. They were protesting some building project on the grounds where the students were shot if I recall correctly. I got to see Jane Fonda live & up close at a May 4th ‘remembrance’ celebration which was nothing other than a leftist rally similar to Wellstone’s funeral.

    I never drank the Kool-aid. When you see things live & up close, you get to see what hateful, mean-spirited trolls these people really are. They never seem to be happy or laugh unless it’s at someone else’s expense.

    However, I also know that the left is not the only group capable of such hatred and viciousness. There’s plenty of that all around, regardless of political bent. So though I tread on the emotional minefield of the ’60’s, boomers, etc, I have to agree with your statement that, “A more objective analysis of capabilities and intent-through-history is more reliable.”

    Indeed, looking at who Obama’s teachers and mentors were, his present colleagues and what they wrote and say worries me.

    I look at the opportunistic vultures in Congress rushing through a punitive tax to punish executives and it reeks of demagoguery to a mob, of class hatred and envy, but most of all it reeks of hypocrisy and cowardice.
    I just hope that this county’s citizens have what it takes to reverse this trend before the damage is irreparable.

60. > I am beginning to think Obama is so bizarrely twisted he’d register on a Geiger counter.

    Only if he could get all the others present disqualified.

61. Tim P,

    So, that makes you a year older than I am. Wow, being that close to Kent State and all. I’ve read the accounts of the event and it seems to me that the mob was very ugly and threatening towards the Guardsmen. I’ve seen some of the photos of the scene many times. There is one photo that really sticks in my mind and is almost emblematic of the Left: a young kid who was in no way part of the demonstration is lying dead on the pavement and a woman is furiously trying to wave down anyone to come and help. Most of the people walking by seem to not care at all and just coldly look away. That is so typical of so many of those people. I read that the kid was hit by a stray bullet from quite a ways away from the fracas.

    I did not get to vote until 1976, because I did not turn 18 until January of 1973. I was away in the Army after high school and did not vote until after I had done my three year hitch and came home. I voted for Carter. And again in 1980, when most of my classmates voted for Reagan. I didn’t leave the Left until 1987. I am totally ashamed of having voted for Carter.

    When I was growing up I didn’t like the older kids who plugged into the anti-war movement. That group was, in general, to my perception at the time, an unappealing rabble of spoiled rotten idiots.

62. The folks I socialize with are mostly well-paid professionals. Their recreational gun ownership is widespread, but there’s been a shift for 6-9 months. Sidearms, semi-auto rifles and ammo are literally flying off the shelves to these folks. Concealed carry instructors are common, and busy.
    This gives me comfort.

63. Re: … trolls … numbers … dropping.

    I think buyer’s remorse is setting in with trolls too. Even if you voted for Obama, this can’t be the caliber of performance you expected.

    I’m sure that’s why Mitsu has made only one token appearance since the Obama administration began heading indubitably south.

64. Who is susceptible to Obamalove?

    Me !

    Obama is sooooo hot !

65. “One way or another collectivist/utopian ideologies that run cover for old-fashioned oligarchies must be defeated. We cannot – CANNOT – put off this show down indefinitely. We are going to have it out with these people, either peacefully through the political process and seeing their ideology discredited through failure, or, God save us from it, through revolution or civil war.”

    We will not see it peacefully – of that I am almost totally sure of. There *will* be some form of bloodshed over it – when, where, and how much remains to be seen.

    At the least I think these people (and there are not that many – I do not think Obama is one of them either, just a product of their edumacational system) will not let it be so in either reality or in their minds. They come from a revolutionary background and will end in that method too. They would prefer that it be non-violent but have no issue with violence.

    Nor do I think a “pre-emptive” strike is good – I think it would result in one of the highest amounts of bloodshed because they are *very* good at manipulating events in their favor (not to mention that such an act violates our own ideas – what good is an idea if it must be raped to come about?). Any thing short of them being forced to act through being thoroughly discredited will end in massive bloodshed.

    To me the big question is can we discredit them enough that they are a fringe group when they try or will they be still have a large enough group of so called “useful idiots” in their ranks that we have a real and true civil war? I think we can

    IMO I think if they continue to try and seize the opportunity with Obama it is too early, too many are not buying it (while high approval he also has *really* high disapproval). If they realize that and back off their agenda then we will end with massive blood shed – indeed, if they are smart they keep Obama as a true moderate and then use the next 20-30 years to slowly enact their agenda as they have thier shining example of “Those guys are nuts!”. I think that, while they are smart enough to do so, greed has overtaken them and they will extend too far (too many are in their 60’s and know that another 30 or more years of battle will most likely seem them die before the end – note that the ideology is selfish at its heart).

    If we (and we have to realize that except for a few the national Republicans are part of the problem too) fight correctly it will end with them rallying under 10,000 people to fight everyone else in a mistaken belief that once they start all those “other’s” will jump to their aid (that being the core of the true believers – there really aren’t that many). If we fight wrong, then the opposite will occur and those will jump to their aid. For my part I think playing honestly and openly is the best policy in the long run though there will be battles lost – used car salesmen (to use the term loosely and in a derogatory manner – yes I know there are WAY more honest ones than not but the term is a common one) may make a quick buck for a time but they almost never last long.

66. There’s another crisis-opportunity here. You pack 300+ million people into one place, and the only way to keep them reasonably peaceable is by feeding them lots of goodies and distractions. Keep them sedated with credit cards. As we all know, that’s over. So we’re entering a very unstable situation where it may be necessary for Obama to take drastic steps to preserve public order. He’ll be happy to.

67. I’m awaiting delivery of ‘A Conflict of Visions’ by Thomas Sowell, in which he delineates that divide between idealism (the unconstrained vision) and pragmatism (the constrained vision). As you indicate, it is becoming adult which should lead us from the former to the latter.
    I’m afraid few of us in the West now do actually cross that boundary, most preferring to remain in the fuzzy youthful domain of ‘hope’ and ‘change’, or as in the case of some of my contemporaries (mid 50’s), hoping to attract fuzzy young-ish women.
    Neo, do females find moving beyond idealism harder than men, or is it my imagination?

68. Steve Fox: It just so happens that I’ve been wrestling for quite some time with the answer to the question you pose at the end of your comment. Of course, I don’t know, nor do I know of any statistics that would answer the question. But my guess is that the answer is “yes,” in a very general sense.

69. Neo, do females find moving beyond idealism harder than men, or is it my imagination?

    I’ve thought about that one a lot too, and (assuming it is true) suspect that the reason is that some proportion of women are more insulated from harsh realities than men, and at least subconciously expect that someone will help them out if they miscalculate. (Men have no such expectation.) I call it “flat tire syndrome.”

    It also explains why the young are idealistic: until and unless something bad happens to you, it’s hard to believe anything bad can happen. That’s a can’t miss recipe for starry-eyed idealism.

70. Neo, Occam’s Beard, thanks. Fair answers.
    Re the young, it took me till I was 40 or so to really accept I was mortal like everyone else. I knew it must be so, but didn’t quite believe it.

    Neo, excellent blog, which speaks volumes to many of us who have been through similar changes in our world view. I read ‘a mind is a difficult thing to change’ right through. Thank you so much.

71. I spend my life trying not to be careless. Women and children can be careless, but not men.

    — The Godfather

    I remember noticing how so many more women than men couldn’t see through Yasser Arafat while he was around.

72. Neo, I don’t think the answer to your question about the idealism of young women has anything to do with the principles of political philosophy or economics. Instead, we should be talking about why young, unmarried women are particularly exposed to social pressure, and why the claims of traditional religion are so threatening in their context. I think you will find status anxiety related to sex and marriage at the bottom heart of the mystery.

73. Oblio: I was talking about older women, actually. The young are idealistic in general. But older women (at least the ones I know) indulge in a lot of misty wishful thinking about the way the world of politics, war, and economics works. Many of them are so repelled by these subjects that they don’t read or learn much about them, either, except what the MSM tells them. Obviously this is a HUGE generalization with many exceptions, but I have observed that the women I know are less interested in those things than the men I know, and also less realistic about them.

74. Personally I don’t know any women who study politics, history, and economics as the participants in this blog do. Several of my male friends do this and deeply.

    I know a few women who learn enough of the left’s talking points to be so suitably indignant now and then, but that’s it.

    I wonder if this does not go back to paleolithic warriors sitting around the campfire figuring out how to protect the tribe.

75. neo,

    My wife must be an exception to the norm. She is more realistic than most. In fact, she was a conservative before I was. Like, when I first met her. I had only recently put Marxist thinking behind me when I met her, but was sort of a soft “liberal” after that for awhile. She tolerated it. More than that, she would make very good arguments and I would listen to her, as she listened to me. Occasionally, she would even agree with me. Today, she remarks about how far I’ve traversed the spectrum from what I was when I first met her back in ’87. Interestingly, her sister and her sister’s husband were Reagan supporters back in the Eighties and are now damn near socialists in their thinking. They’ve gone in the opposite direction from me.

76. OK, Neo, I’ll bite, and ask the question again. Are the women you are talking about still exposed to social risk? Are the biggest stories of their lives still tied up in their romantic relationships past, present, and future, and do those stories have a lot to do with where and how they fit in? What would happen to them if they started espousing heterodox views about war, economics, history, culture, and politics?

    I attended a cocktail party a few weeks ago where everyone was in their 60’s and 70’s, and every woman I met defined herself in terms of what she wasn’t encouraged to do 40 years ago (study science, become a doctor, whatever). Even the ones who became doctors were still complaining.

    I will accept that ignorance of history, war, and economics makes it impossible for them to examine the atmospherics of the MSM with anything like critical detachment.

    But it still seems to me that we need to look at this as a social phenomenon, and not a matter where we will be able to use facts and reason to much avail. These opinions are deep-seated, but they aren’t based on knowledge.

77. huxley, my wife is well-equipped to tell me a thing or two on these topics. But perhaps she is exceptional. I think so.

78. Oblio,

    Why do you think it is that most women are not interested in history, economics, government, and philosophy and war? After all, they examine and explore the nature of the world and its workings. Who would not be curious about these things? Even back when I was an adolescent I was fascinated with the questions about the world and how it works.

    It most certainly is not the case that they are less intelligent than we are. But they are less curious and exploratory about these things and many seem to fall in line with the Leftist cant (o.k., I know… social conformity). You may have something about that. My wife, as intelligent and curious as she is, does have her spots where she defaults to female conformity and it’s quite unconscious. In all fairness, there are men who are like this too. However, most guys my age and older could give a rat’s ass about conforming. They do what they are required to do at the office and that’s it.

79. Individual women might be quite interested in studying any and all of these topics. I am interested in what happens when women discuss these topics in a group setting, and in even more when they discuss them with men present. I would expect some different behavioral dynamics to be present.

    In my experience, men often compete with each other by arguing through opinions about sports, history, business, economics. Depth of knowledge about these topics, command of the facts, and forcefulness of logic increase your status among other men.

    I think that status displays work differently among women, and that command of these particular areas is not relevant to the large majority of women…to specialists, of course it is relevant for professional reasons.

    Fred, you should ask your wife for her insight on the question.

80. To trot out one hoary chestnut, that nevertheless has some truth to it: men are more interested in things and/or abstractions, women more interested in people.

    Comparison of Spike TV with the Lifetime channel, or guy movies with chick flicks, suggests that that chestnut has some merit.

81. I guess the “why can’t a woman be more like a man” question from “My Fair Lady” has still to be resolved.

    At least for some. After 51 years of life, being a girl before a woman, I have decided for myself that women are different. Here are a few of my observations from work and life:

    Women have excuses like PMS, PP Depression, change of life to explain bad behaviour. Women have hormones, evidently men don’t.

    Women don’t play professional basketball at the same level as men.

    Women don’t like each other as much as men like each other.

    Women emphasize relationships, men emphasize missions. Women relate face to face, men work shoulder to shoulder.

    Women will backstab and tattle in the work place on co workers. A man will tell off another worker to his face or challenge them to a fight in the parking lot after work.

    Women are still the nurturers, by law and nature, but that does not mean they are nice.

    The fact that dads play with the kids is important. I was at a family gathering last year. It was an outside affair with kids, dogs, adults. The women stayed on the patio, talking, getting food ready, and the men were in the yard playing with the kids and dogs. Everyone said they had a good time.

    I am an architectural technician, and for the most part, it is still a woman’s house and a man’s garage and basement for a married couple.

    Women don’t go into the hard sciences as often as men, just a fact.

    Women, even young independent ones today, still ultimately want to find a nice guy, get married (with 6 bridesmaids, cakes with fountains, etc.), have kids and even, surprise, not work while the kids are little. Men still want a good woman, kids and a home too, it is not all about sex.

    I could go on, and I am not saying that women are inferior, just different. Many liberal policies and postitions are based on equality doctrines, that ignore sex differences, that is why women are more likely to favor liberal policies. Many women want to have babies, careers, etc. without having to make trade offs. Liberalism is a safety net.

    I don’t know if it is reality or idealism; having babies, raising children is a real (important) thing to do. I think the reality of family is different than the reality of the world. Men are still seen as the protectors. I have a single friend who thinks we should pass a millage to add more police. We live in a small town that has very little crime, mostly small things. I have a husband, who when I hear something, I make him get up and see what it is. Strong marriages and families make less government intervention necessary. I am not saying my husband and me both could not be shot in our home, only that I am not as afraid as my single friend that I will be alone confronting danger (of all kinds).

82. Thanks, Becky. Your comment speaks to the marvelous richness of social life. My wife also makes me get up to check out noises in the night, and if I am slow to shovel the snow off the driveway, she admonishes me to get after the “man work.”

83. Most snipers are men. Work of evolution. Most caretakers and those involved in social communication/networking are women. Work of evolution.

    Even as our technology allows us to modify our social standards and free us from certain biological restrictions, evolution still remains the best and most important decider of human behavior.

    Which is why reason and logic are so sparse these days in the United States. The sacrifices made, by men and women, have long since gone depleted in this nation of ours. The military has held us safe from foreign enemies, mostly, but they cannot protect us from ourselves.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>