Tuesday, March 03, 2009

 

Thinking the Unthinkable

Jared Diamond, who wrote the interesting Guns, Germs and Steel and the slightly more tedious Collapse (never cut down all your trees) never seems to see what caused the mistake and disasters in the New World or the cutting down of all the trees in Greece, Turkey, the Yucatan and Easter Island--it's bad leadership, Jared. I see in every collapse the shaky hand of bad, sometimes horrendous leadership.

We have here in America now bad, possibly horrendous leadership. I have before mentioned in the non serviam posts that I am willing to do whatever I can, in a non-violent way, to oppose the horrendous policies of the Obama administration and the Reid-Peolsi axis in Congress. Since those posts, the market has continued to tank (about 50% down from just over a year ago), absolutely nothing effective has been done to solve the originating problem of loans which should never have been made (and but for the liberal launched and enforced CRA, would not have been). Indeed, nearly every single action of the liberals in charge has been the wrong move, designed to destroy private industry and grow government power. The likes of Glenn Beck and Jim Cramer, and other even more level headed media types have been saying and writing things nearly indistinguishable from the things people wearing "The End is Nigh" sandwich boards on street corners are usually spouting. So is it time to think the unthinkable?

Is it time, in a purely academic exercise of thought just now, to take up arms against the people ruining our country?

Let's look at the pros and cons.

Pros:

1. More people on the right own guns and know how to use them.

2. More people on the right have military and police training.

3. More people on the left are unarmed and generally harmless.

4. From time to time, the tree of liberty must be wetted with the blood of tyrants.

5. Few things are more worth fighting than for freedom and against tyranny.

Perhaps there are more, but those are the highlights.

Cons:

1. The guys who have to resort to violence to get their way have already lost the rational arguments.

2. The first guys any armed resistance would have to fight are police and military units, who are generally our brothers and sisters politically.

3. It will be bloody, messy, difficult, expensive, destructive and there is no telling how far it will go or how long it will last.

4. We could well lose.

5. It is very difficult to go from armed resistance to a republican form of government, even if successful and if we are unsuccessful, the left will take away even more freedoms and ruin the economy even more than a civil war/rebellion.

At this point, the cons clearly overwhelm the pros. I'll come back to this subject in a year or so.

A pro-gun nut was on the radio this morning talking about HB 45, the gun registration legislation not yet pending in Congress. I had pretty much decided not to obey that, if it passed into law. The gun guy felt the same way and said that everyone he knew would do the same, let the chips fall where they may.

I do recall that the American Revolution began when British troops were dispatched to seize the guns in the villages outside Boston. Unlikely that history would repeat itself, but...

Labels:


Comments:
Dear Roger,

If you largely responsible for the subprime fiasco, it is difficult to countenance any of your other arguments as being rational.

Only 30% of subprime loans were made by institutions governed by the CRA.

I continue to maintain that the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act by the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999is what made the subprime fiasco possible. Q: Why would a bank lend $ to a person without determining whether that person could repay the loan? A: If the bank could securitize the loan and sell it, the bank could care less about whether the borrower could repay the loan.

T
 
Who do you mean "you"? The CRA was enforced by Clinton's administration against all lenders. Where do you get the 30%? And the 1999 repeal of regulation you (and I mean you, T) was also during the Clinton administration. I repeat, who do you mean "you"?

The Bush admin and many Republican legislators tried to stop FNMA et al. from completely screwing the pooch and were blocked in these efforts by Democrats. That's just relevant history.

I agree, if the bank or other lender could sell the loan what do they care if the lendee can't pay, but the buyer of the loan certainly cared. What, in your opinion, went wrong with that part of the transaction?
Trivia tonight if you can make it. Spankys at 7:30
 
The guys who have to resort to violence to get their way have already lost the rational arguments.

Perhaps I misunderstand your point. Had Jefferson, Adams, et. al. lost the rational arguments? I don't consider it "losing" the argument when the other side effectively just sticks beans in their ears, shrugs, and sends agents of the state to extract ever more plunder from the productive class.

From my point of view, the situation now is not one of either winning or losing the rational argument. It's that there's no basis remaining for rational argument. When the Constitution itself has become little more than a security blanket we can wrap around ourselves in an attempt to remain convinced that we're still "free", and the federales clearly have little use for it (e.g. the bill which recently passed [Senate?] granting D.C. voting representation in the Congress), where is the basis for rational argument? We can point, again and again, to the failures of Marxist states, and socialist programs in states that aren't yet openly socialist (England, anyone?). Is anyone listening? To the extent they are (I'm referring here to our elected representatives mostly, but also to the mindless sheeple who vote them in year after year), they just dismiss the argument out of hand, invoking the newspeak notions of entitlement, etc. -- to the extent that they reply at all.

Irrespective of whether we've lost the argument, or have just given up in disgust, I can't characterize it as either a "pro" or "con". It's just a condition informing the question of whether it's time.
 
I see your point and agree about the disprespect the Constitution is getting from those who swore an oath to protect and defend it, but Jefferson et al. were dealing with a foreign monarch; we're dealing with another party whom we could beat in elections if we could convince the sheeple of the righness of our arguments. It's clearly not time to take up arms because we still have free and somewhat fair elections regularly. If that is diminished in any way, I would be much more open to armed rebellion because election and persuasion were no longer available. That's the point I was trying to make.
 
Rog,

Sorry about the typing. The first sentence should have read: "If you think the CRA is largely responsible for..."

The GBLA Financial Services Modernization Act was signed by President Clinton in 1999 in the face of a veto proof Congress.

As for the 30%, that came from a reputable source. I read that particular statistic sometime in the last 12 months. My initial attempt to retrieve the info was unsuccessful b/c the info is all over the blogosphere to the point where it is now sui generis. If I have time, I will try and find the original source.

My point is simply this: Blaming the subprime foiasco on the CRA is both incorrect and stupid. It is stupid b/c that particular theory is not supported by the facts and has been completely discredited although people who are conservative nutters cling to the idea b/c in their Ptolemaic solar system of belief, the government in general, and Jimmy Carter, in particular is the root of all evil.

There are many reasons for the subprime fiasco. It never would have occurred, or in the alternative, the poisonous assets would never have become systemic, w/o the GBLA.

That's from me,

T
 
I know that there are many factors and a long history, the mortgages had to be turned into securities, but you have not dissuaded my belief that the CRA (as enforced by Clinton) is the point source for the toxic securities which nearly (and may yet) bring down the whole credit organization. You say my belief is Ptolomaic. I believe yours is riddled with Democratic blind spots. I can wait for a history from someone with knowledge. Do you believe one exists already?
 
I don't believe you can characterize George III as a "foreign" monarch, since at the time, the colonies were British colonies. Distant, yes. Foreign, not so much. Even the Declaration of Independence speaks of "the political bands which have connected them with another". And of course there are the various contemporaneous writings in support of the 2nd Amendment as protecting the means to throw off tyranny. And they weren't referring to only foreign conquest, where we would indeed be fighting a foreign invader.

I don't view things any longer as a struggle between the two major parties in elections. It's been clear to me for quite some while that the politicians of both are incapable of reining in leviathan. Indeed, few even have the desire or will. Perhaps paradoxically, I wonder why no such representatives can be found, but then I note that I surely wouldn't want to hold public office (at least not in the current climate).

And, as bad as things are now, we have not yet seen the limits of Jefferson's observation that "that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." And I've written about that in the past. The comforts of modern living are a sort of inoculation against unrest. As long as we have the house, car, TV (now in HI-DEF!) etc., we're not easily aroused.

I'm fond of quoting Jefferson. Perhaps some day it'll get me arrested (or at least denied boarding). But I also like Churchill:

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

The Declaration speaks about just powers derived from the consent of the governed. If 52% of the people are voting the other way, how do you withdraw consent?
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?