rcl on August 1, 2009 at 11:43 AM
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Well, in the case of the authors I’ve read, I’ve come to expect good storytelling, but also debate over possible future directions society and technology could take us.

Yes, the statist-Dems (Soros-backed) are trying to replicate something like European-style socialism, while the non-statist Dems (non-watermelon greens, anarchists) are willing to go along since their opposite numbers are getting their oxes gored.

Mew

We need to either re-ignite this debate (and I’m not sure how to achieve this on a broad enough basis) or we’re doomed to be dragged along behind the solidly statist Dems.

Mew

* I like the Pournelle Axes (http://www.baen.com/chapters/axes.htm) myself.

acat on August 1, 2009 at 10:46 AM

The “debate” is happening in a way. It’s never going to be on GMA but the huge sales of Mark Levin’s book and the heavy traffic on political blogs proves there’s interest. But the core proponents aren’t going to be swayed and the mass media appears to be aligning with the authoritarian party. I don’t think there’s much chance of swaying the polls by much.

You can’t deny the Democrat Party, with Soros and others funding the effort, are working to fix the electoral process in their favor. If that succeeds what option is there besides armed resistance? I’m certainly hoping there’s a conservative rebound from the financial calamities I think are around the bend but it’s possible the DNC can counter their effect printing $$$ and massive propaganda.

BTW, I think Pournelle should swap the Bottom Right square of his chart with the Top Right. Various Conservatives are way more rational than Communists. Fascism works, Socialism doesn’t. The combination of private industry with authoritarian goverment is rational. Do-Good Government, Socialism and Communism, totally discount human nature and are inherently irrational.

What can you expect from a Science Fiction author?

Unfortunately, if you refuse to acknowledge the potential for using violence, you have already lost – the clock is simply counting down to the moment you are steamrollered.

LimeyGeek on August 1, 2009 at 9:11 AM

The Limey’s right. With billions in the “Porkulus Bill” for ACORN getting out the vote we very well may have had our last winnable election. The Chicago Way does not allow for the possibility of losing. A sitting President Obama’s campaign chest will be even bigger than in 2008. With the friends he’s made on Wall Street he could have a billion dollars to spend. The odds of 2012 being a fair fight are very slim.

The only route to a Constitutional Republic may be through insurrection. That won’t be a bunch of Bubbas causing trouble. It would have to come from the Armed Forces. I guarantee Obama’s commie Czars are already working inside the Pentagon with their people. I would expect at some level Oathkeepers are doing their prep to defend the Constitution. I think (and hope) there’s a chess game being played we can’t see inside the Pentagon and Langley.

Myself, I’d prefer a military coup over what our Democracy is becoming. I’ve lost my faith in Jeffersonian Democracy. We’re in the Bread & Circuses phase of decay. We may need to clear the table and start over.

The right question is “are most Americans statists?”

Claiming a “center-right” population, and seeing the slide toward European-style socialism (even while the Euros are deciding to try something else…) makes it obvious that the metrics used, left-right, conservative-liberal are not sufficient to describe reality*.

The problem that I see is the debate over whether statism is good is essentially over in the media – they’re assuming it’s the way things are. Republicans can’t get traction to pull the state to the right because they’re too busy arguing with each other about statism.

We need to either re-ignite this debate (and I’m not sure how to achieve this on a broad enough basis) or we’re doomed to be dragged along behind the solidly statist Dems.

Mew

* I like the Pournelle Axes (http://www.baen.com/chapters/axes.htm) myself.

“Big government conservatism” is an oxymoron. I certainly understand big government Republicans, but they are not truly conservatives. They are much closer to “statist” as Mark Levin defines them. We are probably splitting hairs and not really in disagreement, but since my two-cents-worth buys less every day I thought I’d throw it in the pot to add thread count.
SKYFOX

As I wrote above, I think people have fallen into the embrace of the State because they’re tired, confused, and frightened. They didn’t get that way primarily due to flagging religious faith, but a resurgence of faith and family can help to bring them out of it.
Doctor Zero

Tired, confused and frightened is no way to live and certainly no basis on which to vote. We have to get angry and, in the words of Clint Eastwood “mad-dog mean”. Our religious faith will be our strength to withstand the tribulations, but our reasoned anger will be our motivation to act.

logis on July 31, 2009 at 5:58 PM

Good insight.

This is indeed what it will come down to.

Sadly, there are too many of ‘us’ that subscribe to the fairy-tale-pantomime-view that “violence is never the answer”.

Unfortunately, if you refuse to acknowledge the potential for using violence, you have already lost – the clock is simply counting down to the moment you are steamrollered.

We need to recognize the very real possibility that those of us that value America will have to direct our weapons at our neighbours. Freedom isn’t free, and the parasites amongst us need to learn that lesson.

Maybe I’m still carrying a bit of Reagan’s optimism from the Eighties, and its embers have never cooled.

I’m with you on wanting to continue the legacy of Reagan’s optimism. Unfortunately, many Democrats felt the same way about their hero JFK. They did an excellent job of making certain that Obama was seen as the new JFK from the moment he spoke at their 2004 Convention. People were willing to glaze over the facts of Rev. Wright, Ayers, et al. – and Obama’s very clear message of wanting to “spread the wealth” – because they were filled with dreams of re-living their glory days.
So, I am optimistically looking forward to the day when those dreamers wake up and realize the terrible mistake they’ve made…and pay freaking attention during all future elections! Then we will see some serious conservatism sweeping across America.

I am ending every post and non-work correspondence between now and the ‘10 election with the following, which is what I will use to close this post as well:

Kirk delenda est.

loneloc on July 31, 2009 at 7:08 PM

I think you should also consider throwing in a random line of Ricardo Montalban’s from Star Trek II. “I’ve hurt you, Kirk… and I wish to go on… hurting you…”

If we were, you wouldn’t have to ask the question.

cjs1943 on July 31, 2009 at 7:39 PM

Point taken, but I think it’s an important question to ask, because influential conservative writers commonly assert that America is a “center-right” country (Hugh Hewitt can scarcely make it through a paragraph without saying it, for example.) If this is true to any significant degree, then the task for conservatives is to “wake the public up” and take them back to their center-right roots. If it’s not true, then proceeding along those lines would be disastrous. Recent history would suggest such a strategy has been disastrous. Too many people spent the 2008 campaign waiting for the country to wake up and see what Barack Obama really was, John McCain prominently among them. America needs a lot more than a wake-up call from conservative thinkers and politicians. It’s time to bust out the defibrillator paddles.

On the other hand, as that Gallup poll suggests, conservative ideas continue to enjoy majority support with the public. The growing resistance to Obama’s policies, and his plummeting poll numbers, also speak to a certain degree of centrism among the population, or at least enduring skepticism about extreme liberalism. The many thoughtful comments in this thread show an interesting split between people who passionately believe America is, at heart, a conservative country, and those who believe we’re incurably cursed with a flabby liberal mass that must be dragged along by a diminishing core of hard-working folk with traditional values.

Are we a conservative country that has been led astray by liberal corruption of our culture, and seduced by the empty promises of big government? Or are we a liberal culture doomed to follow the Marxist death spiral of capitalism, except for brief shining moments when a leader like Reagan convinces us to stand tall and fight the enervating tide of history? The answer helps conservatives shape their political strategy, and the approach they take to persuading the electorate.

I’m increasingly convinced we’re a nation that believes itself to be more conservative than it actually is, occupying the right side of a center that has move much farther left than we like to think. I can’t quite accept the Nockian view that we’re doomed, and the conservative Remnant should just stock its bunkers with intellectual Meals Ready to Eat, and prepare to rebuild society from the ruins after it crashes. Maybe I don’t accept that because I don’t want to… I want to be a part of the battle to pull America out of that death spiral, and I don’t see any point in saddling up unless you’re determined to win. Maybe I’m still carrying a bit of Reagan’s optimism from the Eighties, and its embers have never cooled.

Church and family are two of the strongest bulwarks against statism. When those go south, what else is left? We need the state to mediate our “domestic partnerships” and to give us meaning.

evergreen on July 31, 2009 at 7:24 PM

The persistence of liberalism undoubtedly owes much to the deterioration of religious faith and solid families. However, it’s important to remember that the rise of modern liberalism was frequently surrounded by explicitly religious language, especially in the case of the Wilsonian progressives and the New Dealers. I don’t think we can quite square the circle of a population that identifies itself as conservative, but votes liberals into power, entirely by citing the decline of religious values. As I wrote above, I think people have fallen into the embrace of the State because they’re tired, confused, and frightened. They didn’t get that way primarily due to flagging religious faith, but a resurgence of faith and family can help to bring them out of it.

Also both D’s and R’s have an unshakeable belief in the Whig view of history. The R’s especially in the last few years with the glorious and transformative expansion of freedom into the Middle East.

aengus on July 31, 2009 at 8:53 PM

In the case of the Republicans, especially ironic given that they claim Burke as a progenitor. Burke was a Whig politician, but most assuredly not a subscriber to the Whig school of history.

Kirk delenda est.

As compared to which other country(s)?

Ancient Athens, Ancient Rome, Austria under the Hapsburgs, the British Empire etc. The answer is obviously no. Comparing America with contemporary countries doesn’t count because they are all essentially under the Wilsonian world order which America created under Woodrow Wilson. For instance all countries have to join the UN which America set up (after it set up the League of Nations) and pays for. The only country to ever leave the UN was Indonesia and they quickly rejoined.

We might have been a conservative nation at one time, but that went out the window with the passage of the 16th Amendment.

We are now center-left, at best.

We do have the our work cut out for us. Hollywood & the liberal MSM has deemed Conservatives as racists and uncool dontcha know.
redridinghood on July 31, 2009 at 7:39 PM

This is one of the very few liberating things about what’s going on.

The whole process of respectable men and women trying to get self-congratulating reprobates to like us is what got America where it is today. That urge is the first thing we need to strangle to death. And the coming collapse is going to help.

I have no doubt whatsoever that America will swing more to the right after the collapse. The important thing is that we don’t just slow the growth of liberalism for a few years and pat ourselves on the back.

We need to kill it. Forever. And salt the earth that the vile week sprouted from.

Church and family are two of the strongest bulwarks against statism. When those go south, what else is left? We need the state to mediate our “domestic partnerships” and to give us meaning.

Oh, and the other day, my Congressman, John Shimkus, invited me to attend a teleconference with “our next Senator,” Mark Kirk. Mark Kirk voted for cap-’n'-trade. William F. Buckley, Jr., destroyed Lowell Weicker in favor of Joe Lieberman in Connecticut to prove a point; I think that the time may have come to prove such a point on the national level. I don’t know about a third party, but I think I may be ready — I’m sick of this one. (For the record, I still really like Mr. Shimkus, but he needs a higher class of friends.) I am ending every post and non-work correspondence between now and the ’10 election with the following, which is what I will use to close this post as well:

Kirk delenda est.