They Wanna Be Loved By You

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Or actually, they wanna be loved by government.  Or maybe not.  In the heads of the people on the left there seems to be a curious kind of confusion between government and all of us.

They didn’t snort-giggle when Obama came up with “Government is the name for what they choose to do together” (Was it Obama or Warren?  Those leftists all look alike to me.)  Instead they nodded their heads with pseudo-wisdom.

Well, brothers and sisters, I’m 54 years old.  In my life, I’ve chosen to study with people, to go to movies with people, to cook with people, to have sex with people (husband is demonstrably a people), to watch kids with people, even to have writers’ groups with people and to work with people.  I have never in my entire life sat around in a circle of friends on a Sunday, when there’s nothing good on the telly and said, “Hey, let’s set up a government and organize some sort of enforcement so we can tell people what to do.”

Maybe that’s just me.  Or not.  I don’t think most people decide to “do” government together, and please, don’t push me down the path of the multiple meanings of “do” because it’s early morning and I haven’t had coffee, and I’ll start giggling.

But in all honesty, it is important to be kind to our friends and acquaintances on the left and remember they have an unsteady grasp on the difference between government and society.

They don’t understand the American idea of government (which to be fair is not difficult since the rest of the world doesn’t either, by and large), they’re not aware of the protections afforded them by the constitution, protecting them from the things the government could do TO them.  (Which is why they continuously try to do things TO other people in the name of unicorn farts and utopia.)

They don’t get the bill of rights or the importance of negative rights.  The long list of things the government is NOT supposed to impinge on.  (To be fair, our school system never taught them that, or the importance of keeping a system that can put you in jail from sticking their nose into everything you do.  They also never taught them that countries who don’t have that protection end in mass graves.  To make it worse, the politicians they support also seem blissfully unaware of how we’re different from other lands, particularly hereditary monarchies.  Remember when Obama assured us he would be “ready to rule on day one” and thereby proved how little he understood of our form of government? Which ended in rule by pen and phone, which like passing health care was swept under procedural fig leaf but is still D*MN unconstitutional for the purposes he used it?)

Keep that in mind when you see them running around with their hair on fire because the whitehouse.gov website suddenly doesn’t have an entry for whatever the heck category they were taught encompasses all that they are and all that they do.

Yep, because an administration changed — have they no memory of other switchovers?  Are these summer children mired in perpetual now? — and therefore its priorities and what it promised people is what is highlighted on the website, they’re SURE armed men are going to start collecting them to put them in camps.

We can leave aside the insanity of expecting an administration to promote another priorities, and the insanity of believing that because Obama made a lot of noise about various minorities he did anything good for them.  (Listen sweetie, to the extent the alt.right exists (though it’s not right, of course) it is the creation of Obama, the master divider.  Did you really think you could make everyone else into a victim deserving of reparations and love, and keep “White cismales” as the perennial bad guy?  And not make them aware they’re also a group, they’re by and large unjustly accused, and they will realize the power they wield and form their own movement?  Be glad right now it’s just the wounded fringe, and the majority of people in America, whatever their color, still trusts our form of government, still wants rule of law and a “fair go” as the Australians say, [Yes, I had Austrians, but it was a typo caused by remote-linking.  It ate two letters.  It’s slower than my typo.  It wasn’t even a dig at ex-president Obama]  and simply want someone who doesn’t actively hate America at the helm.  If you keep up dividing Americans into arbitrary groups and assigning victimhood and blame to groups not people (Yeah, you think Obama’s daughters are more oppressed than a the white son of a single, unemployed mother?  You have rocks in your head.  They’re made of calcified stupidity.)

Division and giving prominence to any of your characteristics except “Americans” is not a recipe for uniting or healing the country.  It’s a recipe used for centuries by various tyrants.  Divide the people into tiny splinter groups at each other’s throat, so they’ll need the “good king” or in this case government, or president, to keep them safe from each other.  And none of them will realize Iegev– I mean, the ruler is a louse.  Any tyranny that lasted for more than a blink used that technique.

When I was seventeen and crazy (Ray Bradbury was right that the two often go together,) I used to be terrified of walking alone.

Not alone in the middle of a forest, understand.  There are tons of reasons a seventeen year old woman would be afraid of doing that.

Not even alone at night on city streets or alone in deserted streets.  There were tons of reasons in that time and in that place to be afraid of that, as I found out when I did it.  (Eh, I walked away.)

No, I was terrified of walking without a friend, a relative, someone who knew me and knew I was there.  I would walk in the middle of a crowd, at lunchtime in downtown Porto, and it seemed to me my steps sounded fainter and fainter, and that I’d vanish.  And no one would notice.

This was insane, and possibly an early sign I was supposed to write sf/f.  Or perhaps just insane.  But the point is that I needed others to know I existed in order to affirm my own existence.

I say this to explain that I DO understand why you’d feel you stopped existing because a whitehouse.gov tab went away.

But if your hold on your idea of yourself i so precarious that you must check a government website every morning, to make sure you still have a right to exist, you might want to read our founding documents, the declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  It should reassure you.  Sure, of course, the first is mostly magnificent poetry, and the others are the nuts and bolts of making that poetry into something solid.

I retain a bit of the seventeen year old.  I prefer the poetry:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

In our debased times, when you must be mentioned by name or you think you don’t exist, I feel compelled to note that “men” encompasses women, and children, and anything of the homo sapiens sapiens genus, including but not limited to those who are transitioning to the sixth gender of alien which uses tank pronouns.

The beauty of taking language at its root is to realize grammatically “men and the male pronoun” are different from having the genitalia of the male sex.  Very progressive of the language after all, to realize you couldn’t list every single gender, orientation and idea of self, and there was no point it it, really. This thing of taking offense at the structure of a language is a thing of “rich privilege.”  You are rich beyond the dreams of your ancestors, and you’ve come up with little hobbies.  Like claiming the language oppresses you.  We get it.  But understand that even the Founding Fathers couldn’t understand how wealthy and bored you’d be.

And their words still cover you.  Their words are what made this country.  you’re endowed with unalienable RIGHTS, rights which no government (or other person) can LEGALLY take away from you.  And we have the laws to stop them if they try.  And the people who will stand between you and any attempt to take these rights away from you.  Most of them are called army and Constitutional experts, but in the last resort there’s us, the citizens who swore fealty to that idea of unalienable rights.

Sure sometimes, for a little while, we stray from the path.  Though it’s been a while. The internment of Japanese will remain a dark blot, but notice it’s not happened again.  Yes, there’s also slavery — but the difference is this country STRIVES not to do those things, and that those words pull us towards the ideal of the founding documents. We the people have not lost our frigging mind. And if you’re going to use the times we fell short and didn’t cover ourselves with glory to scare yourself, do remember all of them were a long time ago, and generally we’ve moved away from such abuses. We have more protections than other nations, and our history shows it.

Even if the tabs on a website no one in their sane mind goes to very often no longer reaffirm your existence, you’re an American.  And that’s all the affirmation you need.  Everything is else you are is a right, based on the founding documents.

You are fortunate beyond and above the dreams of citizens of other nations.  You don’t need to be divided into groups and you can only be conquered if you allow yourself to be.

Now go on with your life.  The government can’t and won’t give you affirmation and love.  To do so it would need to oppress others not-like-you.  It can’t do that.

But you can find affirmation and love and purpose in your own life.  It’s under that “right to the pursuit of happiness” thing.  Go and pursue.

246 thoughts on “They Wanna Be Loved By You”

    2. From the best ever Red Skelton flick …

      … not that that is a particularly high bar to clear, even if many of Red’s gags in his films were the result of Buster Keaton’s reworking of old silent film bits.

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  2. But understand that even the Founding Fathers couldn’t understand how wealthy and bored you’d be.

    I have now seen, though it is not yet filled, a refrigerated display case in the pet food aisle of a store. Maybe it’s already commonplace elsewhere, but it’s a bit jarring to see such here in $HOOTERVILLE. As someone once famously said, “What a country!”

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    1. You certainly do live out in the sticks, my friend… Don’t worry, though, if my local stores are any indication, they’ll disappear again within the year. Apparently there are not enough Zsa Zsas around here to support even that tiny little thing. (Now, they may still exist up towards the “frou frou” part of Tucson. I haven’t been in a store up there for quite a while.)

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      1. I was surprised years ago that $HOOTERVILLE got a Starbucks. I was utterly unsurprised when it closed. It’s now a realty place… not sure if they use the drive-through for anything.

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        1. It’s alive and well in suburbs of Dallas. We did have a dog barkery for a while but it closed. I get my baked goods for people in the supermarket. I’ll get baked goods for my dog at the supermarket as well. There are some weird stores in my neck o the woods: There was a store that sold nothing but popcorn. I didn’t know that there were that many flavors available.

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          1. We’ve got two of the superpopcorn places. I luuuuuv the hot cinnamon. I enjoy the white chocolate. The ‘Smores was a little rich. I think the two-cheese flavor may be next on my sample list.

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          2. There’s a place at a local mall that mostly cells popcorn in many flavors (also soda and some candy) at a decent price. There’s also a movie theater. I am appalled to watch people enter the mall via the movie theater, purchase a snack from the movie theater, then roam the mall with it. They could any of that for a third the price 500 feet away. The only reason it makes any sense to buy any food/drink from the concession stand is so you can bring it into theater proper.

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      2. I’ve seen the doggie cooler at the local Fred Meyer (Kroger owned, but also a decent department store), but no takers. We’ll spoil our dogs with morning Vita-bones and the occasional 4-H treat, but they’ll only get something from the fridge if we’re dealing with a seriously upset stomach. (Boiled hamburger and (rice or rice-bread) nuked in water FTW.)

        ‘We had a Starbucks in the Safeway, but when Haggen’s bought the store, then went toes-up, $tarbucks built a stand-alone place. It’s new and busy for now, but Dutch Bros and Human Bean have the coffee shack business sewn up. Actually, Coffee Paws at CC pet supply does well, too.

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      3. They still have them on the west side, all three grocery stores on Silverbell between Congress and Grant Rd.

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              1. That pun took extra time to process; like any good resident of Baja Arizona my brain automatically processes two “l”s to make a “ya” sound…

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        2. Probably if I shopped at the stores out towards Rita Ranch and Vail, I’d still see them. I pretty much stick to the stores around DM, though.

          I do wonder what happened to the ones they took out, though – the wife would really like to have something like that with a glass front for her wine coolers…

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  3. Years ago (before Obama crawled out from under that rock), I tried to read a book/article titled “Conversation between a Liberal and a Conservative).

    The first thing I noticed was that the Liberal woman wasn’t actually talking with a Conservative.

    She was talking to a “Strawman Conservative man”.

    Of course, she “won” the discussion. :sad:

    The big thing I noticed was that she believed that Conservatives “didn’t believe in helping others or working with others”.

    Thus things like “barn-raisings” by private citizens were a Liberal Thing not a Conservative Thing.

    Of course, then she “confused” private citizens getting together with government doing something.

    Idiot. :sad:

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    1. Back in my misspent youth, the wife and I tagged along with a fellow (Air Force) officer to participate in the amazing one-day construction of a small Baptist church in rural Georgia. Not a liberal in the bunch; just a bunch of good ol’ boys who could swing a hammer and work a crane, and their wives who were fascinated and delighted to meet my Tex-Mex wife. We got that church up, had a belt-busting potluck supper and a sermon of thanksgiving afterwards, and passed the hat so the pastor could get his motorcycle (his only transportation) fixed and running. Probably the most inspiring weekend of my entire life.

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    2. All the barn raisers I know, and my next door neighbors are Mennonites, so you know I live in barn raising country, are anti-abortion and have lots of children. And they hunt and kill wild animals for food. Some of them even process their hides and wear them. And since they’re Mennonites, they don’t have and aren’t required to have insurance under the ACA. They take care of their own. They don’t believe in insurance. I think they’re stuck with it for their automobiles. The liability portion. Haven’t found one yet that believes in SSM. And despite having 6 or 7 kids in tow, and probably therefore being eligible for food stamps and WIC, I’ve never ever seen a Mennonite woman holding up the line at Wal-Mart while they process her vouchers and separate out eligible from ineligible items for the EBT card, Pretty much the opposite of modern day liberals.

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  4. The layers of editors and fact-checkers in most of the media failed to notice that the change to WhiteHouse.gov was announced in advance. The Trump team put in pages about their concerns, but the national archives preserved the Obama version of the WhiteHouse.gov site. It’s at ObamaWhiteHouse.gov. (Well, it’s actually at ObamaWhiteHouse.archives.gov but ObamaWhiteHouse.gov redirects there.)

    I’m not surprised that most people didn’t know it immediately; I didn’t know about it until I started looking to see what happened after the freakouts about vanishing pages on Twitter yesterday.

    The Obama version of WhiteHouse.gov even had a page listing what was going to happen to all of the digital assets posted last Tuesday. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2017/01/17/obama-administration-digital-transition-moving-forward

    A rational and responsible press would have figured this out and let people know about it at least by the evening news last night. We don’t seem to have one of those.

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    1. Of course, the fact that the press failed to notice that the Obama version of WhiteHouse.gov was being archived (while still remaining available) and replaced in no way invalidates your point. I’m just annoyed that the general freakout over changes to a government website wasn’t put to rest as soon as some news organization set an intern to finding out what happened.

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      1. Ah, I see someone left the interdimensional commenting link enabled on the blog again – my guess is that the connection from the timeline where Adam Baldwin just was inaugurated after winning the presidential election in a libertarian landslide is switched on again, as that’s the only one relatively congruent with ours that has anything close to a press that is remotely rational and even somewhat responsible.

        Well, either that one or the one where the dinosaurs hang around outside the bars in the South so they can eat annoying patrons…

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  5. Morning, Sarah. You might want to replace “Austrians” with “Australians” in your 10th paragraph…

    You’re preaching to the choir with this, here, of course. The precious snowflakes who need to learn this lesson and understand it viscerally won’t see it, and if by chance they do they’ll feel “triggered” and have to retreat to their coloring books, puppies, and hot chocolates. You know, it’s amazing that they act like kindergartners and we still afford them the right to vote and influence the direction of our society. Perhaps we should pass a law that only people who haven’t claimed to be microaggressed, claimed to be triggered, or retreated to a “safe space” for a period of at least one year are allowed to vote. Anyone not meeting those criteria is not mature enough to make a reasoned and valid choice.

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    1. I am a horrible person. I think we should re-establish poll taxes. If having to pay for the cost of an election causes you to abstain from voting then your vote isn’t worth much anyway.

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      1. Hmm. Could we ask people to pay with a $2 bill? That will weed out the people who can’t be bothered in the first place, the people who don’t want to pay, and the people who can’t figure out how to go to a bank or post office and get a $2 bill.

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        1. Eh, then you’d just have the Progs standing at the door of the bus handing out Jeffersons to the “voters” as they got off.

          I’d rather make voters put up a large, as in thousands of dollars, bond to be eligible to vote. There would be a delay between depositing the bond and voting, say six months to a year, and you could surrender your eligibility and get your money back, with interest, at any time. That will keep people like Soros from buying huge blocks of voters. They’be be glad to take his money, but then they could turn around and get the cash for themselves.

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      2. Not a poll tax–a requirement that the person have a substantial investment in the financial markets (and government bonds don’t count). This can be retirement plan savings, health care self-insurance, or family wealth accounts. The important thing is that the individual is not insulated from what politicians do to the economy, so he’ll feel some of what he does to the rest of us when he votes for BigGer GOVErnment you-didn’t-build-that “They take care of us” fantasy-fetish-fascists.

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        1. Experiments in universal democracy continue their history of failure. Let us return to the principles of representative democracy.

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    2. Somewhat related, I’m having a facebook discussion with a liberal right now, friend of a friend who commented on my post, and I’ve told him several times he’s a racist and asked him to defend his racist views. He feels that Blacks and Latinos are too stupid and lazy to obtain voter IDs, that it’s something only Asians and whites can do. And that requiring such ID is voter suppression. He had proved unwilling to explain why his views that blacks are too stupid and lazy to obtain voter ID, something easily done by whites and Asians, isn’t racist. He said courts agree with him, that requiring IDs is voter suppression. And I told him that having racist jurists agree with him and Justice Taney that blacks are inferior and unable to participate in citizenship rites the way whites do isn’t something to be proud of. He just doesn’t get it. We really need to start calling it like it is- liberals, who insist people be grouped into other then citizen or non-citizen, are the real racists. Insisting that people be equal and judged as individuals is not racist. Treating people as individuals and being color blind will result in different outcomes for different groups. But that’s the breaks of the game.

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      1. Blacks and Latins are not too lazy or stupid to obtain photo ID for purposes of buying liquor. Maybe the reason they don’t care about getting voter ID owes much to their experience of Liberal rule whereby their wishes and needs (e.g., school choice) are ignored while the ruling elite get rich. Since such liberal goods as minimum wage laws and “affordable” housing tend to render Blacks and Latinos unemployed and living in ghettos your friend might begin to grasp why they don’t find it worthwhile to exert themselves to vote for which bunch of crooks exploits them.

        If you are a Black or Latino in Chicago, Watts or Bed-Stuy why would you care who gets the sheep shearing franchise?

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  6. I have never in my entire life sat around in a circle of friends on a Sunday, when there’s nothing good on the telly and said, “Hey, let’s set up a government and organize some sort of enforcement so we can tell people what to do.”
    Because you are obviously not a socialist left wing progressive. Isn’t what you just described exactly what they do ad nauseum? And once they’ve more or less agreed on the narraive they take it to the street and demand that we all fall in line with their grand and glorious plan.
    And the simple truth that their plans always have all the logic of an underwear gnome never even occurs to them in spite of failure after failure.

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  7. Sigh. On Book of Face a woman whom I was best friends with in elementary and middle school has just now put up the image of Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia with the logo “A Woman’s Place is in the Resistance.”

    I haven’t commented, since I truly do not want to set off a Book of Face ruckus with her, but I am fairly certain it is to do with the Trump inauguration, since she was a Hillary fan. She is Jewish, intellectually-inclined, a public school science teacher, and has lived in California all her life, although she is very attached to Israel. I just hold my tongue and refrain from pointing out the dissonance.

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      1. Bwahahahahaha! Snort. That shouldn’t have made me laugh so hard. I’m obviously not insulated against puns today.

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      2. Isn’t “crazed leftist” a redundancy?

        I acknowledge it is possible to be crazed but not a leftist, but I cannot recall a single case of a contemporary leftist who is not crazed.

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          1. Or like the windshield in that moment between the rock that came off a dump truck hitting it, and it falling into a thousand shards and an insurance claim?

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            1. We discovered last year that Safelite does windshields so cheap that it’s less than the deductible on our insurance. When we came back from Anime Matsuri in Houston with a nasty crack in our van’s windshield, we ended up paying the whole thing out of pocket as a result.

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    4. I’ve a couple of FB friends (and some of the RL friends as well) who have posted that one. And are doing the women’s march thing (protesting losing rights they…haven’t actually lost and aren’t going to lose….).

      I’m just keeping my mouth shut and metaphorically patting them all on the head and thinking “You poor dear things, but I love you anyway.”

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      1. I was wondering this AM what Elizabeth Cady Stanton would say to the idea of marching while wearing a pink knit hat with cat ears to protest something that’s not going to happen in a time and place where women have more rights than she ever dreamed of asking for.

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      2. Sounds to me like that’s a more than appropriate time to apply the southernism “Bless your heart”…

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      3. If you wanna get nasty, ask if she’s buying any firearms to actually be useful to said resistance.

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        1. I am tempted, seriously.

          Someone on Insty commented earlier today that all these lefty-luvvies getting all moist in the panties about “The Resistance” have seen too damn many WWII movies.

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          1. The ones that show the French Resistance “running circles” around the Germans not the ones where active French Resistance Groups have a very short lifespan.

            IE The Germans quickly find the groups and kill them. :sad:

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            2. Obviously the French Resistance ran rings around the Germans. Everybody in France was part of the Resistance, just ask them (or their descendants).

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              1. It’s my understanding that “everybody was a member of the Resistance” was somewhat a joke in France after WW2.

                IE Even the French found it “funny” about how many people claimed to be members of the Resistance. :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin:

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                1. I believe there were analyses done that determined La Resistance was largely ineffective during the war but served an important political propagandistic purpose in the aftermath. Its myth made it possible for the Frogs to reclaim their honor and pretend the Vichy regime was not representative.


                  Such face saving helped return France to the ranks of civilized world powers.

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                  1. I have it on good authority that the Resistance was mostly concerned with chasing after a painting of a Fallen Madonna with big you-knows.

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                  1. to be sure, Bill Maudlin, talking about the condition of cities after capture, observed that the French cities were much better off than the Italian ones, because a lot of Frenchmen came out of the woodwork as soon as the Allied forces were in sight and helped them capture their own cities.

                    Which is not nothing.

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      4. aren’t going to lose

        That isn’t entirely clear yet, the pendulum can swing.

        Nationalize the APA, put intersectionalist feminism in the DSM, and abuse mental health reform (and the pseudo mental health reform that the media-left has been trying to abuse as a weapon against veterans) as a weapon against them.

        But Trump is more likely to govern as a competent reforming centrist than to do that.

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      1. Again, sigh … she has just posted pictures on Book of Face of her niece and a couple of other gullible idiots of the female persuasion all wearing those stupid pink knitted hats at the Washington protest.

        So, yup. Confirmed that old school friend is a coastal, over-educated lib.
        The tongue-biting commences.

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  8. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

    “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

    Emphasis added. You know the source.

    “Government is the name for what they choose to do together”

    Government is a name for what we choose to do together. Other names for things we choose to do together are church, fraternal/sororal organization, league, association, guild, corporation, cooperative, partnership, fellowship, coalition, confederacy, alliance, federation, syndicate and mob.

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        1. Well labor unions now use government guns. Mafia supposed to be underworld. Should be sobering comparison

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        4. There’s a good argument that the reason the government cracks down on the mafia is that it doesn’t like the competition.

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    2. “Government is a name for what we choose to do together.” Stealing this!

      And because it’s so important to know the founding documents of our country, here’s a link to “The Declaration of Independence Song,” an easy way to memorize the introduction and the preamble (and decently sung so that you don’t want to strangle the children singing it):
      https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003EYFK5E

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      1. Yup. They keep overlooking this point, because the deplorable flyover sheep are incapable of knowing what to consent to. You know, with all that internalized oppression and false consciousness and stuff.

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      1. OOH OOH you mean there are Condo associations with Tanks and Strike aircraft? Hmmm might be worth moving.

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  9. “our funding documents”
    I’m not sure if that is a typo, or an unconscious admittance of how the left view all government documents.

    “If its not for funding, what good is it?”

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        1. Spellcheck? Spellcheck!!!!! Oh carp! All these years I’ve been relying on Spellczech!

          So much I did not understand becomes clear to me now …

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  10. So, the new administration set up a new website?

    Horrors! Fascists! Censorship! Brownshirts! Science deniers! H8ers! Bigots and homophobes! Concentration camps! They’re coming to take you away ha ha! It’s The End Of The World As We Know It! Run for your lives, peeps, the chow hall’s closing!

    Good grief. Did somebody lace their corsets too tight and now they need smelling salts?

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        1. That seems like a VERY bad idea. Perhaps Bolo Vs Ogre? Although given our luck they’d negotiate and ally.

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  12. Back in 1970, when I was a skull full of mush, I thought of myself as a feminist. I attended “consciousness raising” meetings where I learned what feminists say in private. At a meeting in Ann Arbor, I heard a national feminist leader speak about the upcoming agenda. Abortion was included but was down the list. The important topics were changing current rape laws and changing the language. You know, no more policeman, fireman or chairman. The speaker openly acknowledged that woman did not currently think of themselves as being excluded by the use of the generic “man” but the goal of the movement was to change that. Their plan was to make women believe that “all men are created equal” did not include them. She then went on to say that this was only the first step in a bigger agenda. The ultimate goal was to move from public language use to church and Bible, which would eventually destroy belief in the Fatherhood of God and therefore result in the total destruction of Judeo-Christian influence. I sat stunned as the women around me cheered. I don’t remember her name. It is good that her name should be forgotten.

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      1. The thing is, that that is their goal is obvious. And they engage in taqiyya to cover it up. Just like if you lived in the late 1960’s early ’70’s, and you’re familiar with radical literature of the time, you know that SSM was designed not to give homosexuals equal marital rights, but to break up the idea of marriage entirely.

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          1. There is a way to like posts, but I don’t know the details. I know I’ve gotten e-mail notices of people liking some of my posts in the past, though.

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            1. If someone replies to your post, a like button shows up. I’ve never found it anywhere else. But then I’m no WordPress guru.

              WordPress delenda est.

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            2. There’s a “reader” associated with Word Press where you can “like” a post.

              Many don’t “mess” with it.

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      1. My whole family done give up on me
        And it makes me feel oh so bad
        The only one who will hang out with me
        Is my dear old granddad
        And we drink alone, yeah
        With nobody else
        Yeah, you know when I drink alone
        I prefer to be by myself

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  14. The schools no longer teach Tocqueville, neither his book in high school nor his concepts in 6th grade Civics, and I suspect that most of our teachers have never heard of him, and fewer have read him or about him.

    In Democracy in America he made the point that in America “the Associations” — private citizen groups — did much of what was done by government in Europe, and ordinary citizens, not hereditary aristocrats, led these efforts in America. It was a marvel to him, but it worked very well.

    There were such efforts even when I was a child, and they were rallying against the Depression; but government assumed they would be unsuccessful and took over their functions, Perhaps that was needed in the Depression; we’ll never know. The War came before we could get back to normal, and when it was over the Democrats were convinced that only government could save us. If government did not do it, it would not be done.

    Even then we had Civil Defense, mostly local organizations led by retired military, for natural disasters. It was replaced by FEMA, which was to streamline it and make it more efficient. It stands to reason that bureaucrats in Washington would know better how to manage crises in New Orleans, or Earthquakes in California, or hurricanes in Florida than people who lived in those places. People can’t take care of themselves; they need management by experts with credentials and degrees. After all, deplorable people turn to someone like Trump.

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    1. In World History class, I point out Tocqueville’s argument that the French Revolution continued the centralization of state power that had begun under Louis XIV, simply taking it to new heights. I don’t get to talk much about the US, although I point out that the Constitution takes a very different approach to government, and that a people giving a few powers to the government is quite different from the assumption that government gives a few rights to the people. Does it sink in? No idea, but you never know where seeds will fall.

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      2. Consider having each class discuss how best to preserve an American Flag if it suddenly became illegal to own one. Maybe one of those weekend assignments?

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        1. I might possibly sneak that into a Cold War chapter, but not easily. They get two full years of American history next, so I don’t want to short everything else, since they won’t see global history again as a course until college (if they still have to take a real history class once they get to college. Several plan on going to California flagship universities or the Iveys.)

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      3. It was pointed out to me once a few years ago that the two revolutions (American and French) were different in how they worded their rights. In America it was rights of MEN (or individualism) where as in France it was rights of MAN (or collectivism). Where one revolution has continued onwards with peaceful (mostly) government, the other quickly fell into bloodshed and led to tyrants during and finally after.

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    2. I encountered Tocqueville in social studies while attending a Catholic elementary school in the 1980’s, and in history at a private high school in the early 1990’s. But when I’ve brought him up Tocqueville in the years since, most have given me blank stares. I fear you’re correct, and that his many insightful observations are foreign to most Americans these days.

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      1. I first encountered references to Tocqueville in the pages of the Orange County Register. The Register is the only thing I miss after leaving California. Well maybe the beaches.

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          1. They do. But reading about SoCal is just depressing. Glad that I fled to Nevada. Except Nevada is getting Californicated.

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              1. Like it or not, the process will continue. There are a lot of Californians, and there will always be those who want to move elsewhere. A few people in California is a lot of people just about anywhere else. The only solution is to reconvert the state. Hunkering down in your home states is just another form of “good men doing nothing” and will eventually end in failure. You’re going to have to figure out a way to go on the offensive.

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              2. And Colorado and New Mexico. Heck, Texas would be in trouble if it weren’t so large and innately hostile to Progressive ideas.

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    3. Jonah Goldberg makes the point in ‘Liberal Fascism’ that much of the progressive effort has been put to attempting to bring about the perceived advantages of having a massive army-type organization, without the messy war that is required to justify the presence of a an actual massive army.

      Liked by 1 person

    4. There was an “American Government” elective at the high school I went to. I don’t know what they taught, it conflicted with the ROTC schedule. I don’t know if the others were ever part of the curriculum; they weren’t available in the mid-70s, anyway.

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    5. Alex, the French Disease, briefly drew a lot of attention when Gingrich led the Republican Revolution to the promised majority back in ’94 … but people fund it required reading, including some mighty big words, and quickly lost interest.

      To paraphrase the misquote: It isn’t that self-governance has been tried and found wanting; it has been tried and found difficult—and abandoned.

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    6. The Boy Scouts in America were frequently used for local search and rescue efforts, and sometimes, but rarely, are engaged for that today. They were employed as Coastwatchers and message runners during WW1. They ran scrap metal drives during WW2.

      And I was truly surprised reading an article the other day. There are more volunteer firefighters in the United States then professionals. And apparently one of the larger obstacles to becoming a volunteer firefighter is the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, in order to HELP, has vastly increased the amount of training required to qualify. And stay qualified.

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      1. To a large extent the restrictions of volunteer assistance such as the Boy Scouts (and seriously, who better understands the local terrain than a troop of Boy Scouts?) have been imposed due to fears of feral tort lawyers, hunting in packs and eagerly pouncing on the unwary.

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      2. The total cost of my training, certifications and recertifications over the past decade are easily 3000-5000. Thankfully my state pays for volunteer FF classes and former dept paid for ALS so I’m only out 1000 or so for tests and such.

        But one item that has bitten us is FLSA stuff. It is technically illegal for me to get paid by a department if I cover for a full time employee or work per diem and volunteer. So you get two levels of compensation and cut your response pool in half

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      3. When we had Civil Defense rather than FEMA the Scouts were definitely part of it, and were relied on for doing things that took no complex training, but needed doing; mostly assisting the professionals, of course. They are never called upon by FEMA, which clearly knows more about everything than locals know about anything.

        As to volunteer fire departments, that king of civic activity is no longer encouraged, but the Feds will give you permission to carry the coffee for their Senior Executive Service experts if you ask in the approved way.

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  15. Sarah, you have a monster sentence fragment due to the intrusion of the Obama girls. (That seems appropriate, somehow.) Otherwise, congratulations on hitting another 5-run homer :)

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  16. Leave it to Sarah to put into words exactly what I want to shout to all the stupidity floating around my social media newsfeeds today.

    Thank you for this article, it’s really cheered me a lot on this dreary, foggy day.

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  17. a little off topic, but I would like to reflect on the good that the no longer President has done in 8 years.
    yes, like a broken clock can be right one a day, he has done 2 things that I can think of
    1 he got Osama-bin-Ladin
    2 he did not pardon Hillery
    and I would like to note that even with a new Administration, Posner remains a moron.

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    1. About that first item … he didn’t want to, he pulled the abort switch on several earlier occasions and by all reports had to be badgered into letting Seal Team Six do their job when they got him.

      He also buried the summaries of the intelligence collected, shafted the informant who fingered ObL and violated the first rule of good command by claiming credit for his troops’ actions even as he violated security protocols by naming the assault team.


      Seal Team Six “got” ObL; Obama watched t on TV.

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      1. agreed.
        that said, he was the president at the time, it happened on his watch, he gets credit for it. (just like a president gets the blame for actions taken that were “bad”. said president gets credit for “good”.
        no he did not pull the trigger, he gave the order. weather he wanted to or not, at the end of the day, Osama was dead.
        2 he did NOT pardon the Mafia Queen.

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            1. I just realized my comment may make it sound like I’m defending Obama for only pardoning one of three traitors. Let me make it clear that it was no defense, merely a note that the disposition of those two is now out of Obama’s hands.

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          2. From my understanding Manning’s sentence was commuted. Not pardoned just an early release. He still has all the charges against him on the books to follow him for the rest of his days.

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            2. But in the meantime Manning got the taxpayers to pay for his (her? xir?) sex change. Whereas if Manning got the punishment he deserved, it would probably look like something out of a Tom Kratman novel:

              “Turn him into what he most despises, a man. Then crucify him/her/it.”

              . . . That said: I predict that Manning, who is not just a traitor but a profoundly unstable and damaged individual (I suspect that was Obama’s excuse for commuting his sentence) will be dead within ten years. Most likely by his own hand, or at the least by an unintentional overdose or something similarly self-destructive.

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              1. Maybe, maybe not on the surgery. It hasn’t been performed yet, and it’s not clear whether the government will still be on the hook for it after his release.

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      2. I’ve read Bowden’s book on the subject. It’s an interesting read.

        It’s also quite obvious that the only sources Bowden spoke to were from the administration (which is understandable, mind you).

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  18. Sarah has warned of the dangers of the Great Leader in populism and I must admit that I might find it very seductive … watching the entertainment offered for the last couple of days, I feel refreshed and relaxed by its wholesomeness. Jackie Evancho is a national treasure. Irish dancing troupe, black gospel ensemble, twin trumpeters (literally, the orchestral instrument) dancing while playing the unforgettable riffs of “Soul Man” (how is that even possible?), the Piano Guys, country musicians of various flavors, choral groups of traditional trending … never a moment of thinking that my next sight might be something about Beyonce that I cannot ever unsee … yes, I could live in that kind of totalitarianism. Scary to find that out about myself.

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    1. I’m with our gracious hostess here. I held my nose and voted for Trump despite not liking him, but the tears and vapors of my used-to-be friends* are making it harder and harder to remember that I don’t like him as I start reflexively bristling on his behalf.

      *I’m still their friend. They are explicitly not mine after explaining at length how Trump voters are evil/stupid/subhuman/cannot POSSIBLY have had any reason beyond horrid horrid $ism to withhold their vote from Hillary.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Yup. Feel the pain.

        My daughter is going out to California to help my sister with the care of my rather crotchety, mostly-paralyzed mother. The Daughter-Unit is metaphorically armoring herself, since we are pretty certain that a good portion of the family are lefty lovivies. At least the wife of my younger brother is. We have hopes that my sister and her hubby are not. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long six months for my daughter, who is even more ferociously conservative than I am.

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        1. Why should your daughter be the one to give in?

          If they want her help, they’ll have to grit their teeth and put up with the whole package. Just like we do them.

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      2. but the tears and vapors of my used-to-be friends* are making it harder and harder to remember that I don’t like him as I start reflexively bristling on his behalf.

        Honestly, the freakouts are making me pray hard that he becomes the best US President for at least half a century. Or at least is the President that gives a catalyst for a change from the gibbering inanity that seems to be held up by the vileprogs as ideal.

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        1. I second this sentiment.

          I’ve always been of a mind to pray for our Commander in Chief, regardless of who they might be. It’s just that from time to time, what I’m asking for in my prayers might be a bit different. ;-)

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          1. This is why I fervently pray that Hitler and Stalin and Mao are in Heaven — for that would mean they had recognized their evil and repented it, which must surely be more painful than any torments Hell could ever inflict.

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  19. The problem with Divide and Rule is that your little sub factions eventually stop seeing the Designated Oppressors as the enemy, but the other little sub factions. It’s the other oppressed minority that is in competition for slices of the benefit pie.
    Thus the rise of the whole Intersectionalist thing to score who gets more brownie points.

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    1. A skillful tyrant can shift between sub-factions as needed. When your allies start turning on each other, you shift some of them into the out group, and bring in some of the out group factions.

      Most tyrants are not skillful.

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      1. All tyrants are mortal, after all. Usually things fall apart after the bastard takes his rightful place in hell, and the next guy can’t quite make things work.
        Or, the tyrant starts getting old and actually believes his own propaganda.

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        1. And tyranny is particularly bad at choosing successors. Note that the Byzantium empire was much more stable after the dynastic principle set in, as opposed to Rome’s free for all. And that North Korea is surviving by the same rules.

          The structural problem being that living under a tyranny is not conducive to developing the traits that lead to being a good an effective tyrant (the word “good” admitting of many meanings). You have some hope if you cultivate the select group, your own children, specifically for tyrannical skills.

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    2. Leftists have been doing that for a long time. Decades. Unfortunately, it doesn’t cripple them so much as we might wish.

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  20. I’m having a run-in on Michael Rothman’s FB with a fellow who’s SO well educated that basically all his arguments boil down to You have white privilege, so what do you know!

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  21. Just in case anybody hasn’t heard, the bust of Churchill has once again been lent out by Britain and is sitting in the Oval Office. :)

    Hows does this relate to the batch of whiny special snowflakes that are the topic of the post? Well, most Californians are Leftists. Many also frequent the numerous beaches. Churchill once said “We shall fight on the beaches.” I think its clear we must bring the fight against the Left to the beaches of California!

    (OK, that reasoning might stretch logic just a tad.)

    Liked by 1 person

      2. It might be like when you throw a bug bomb in one room of the house. All it does it run them to a different part of the house, and they come right back when it dissipates.

        You have to do the whole thing at once to be effective.

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      3. That would be VERY effective, though hard on everyone East of Cali, probably to the Mississippi River, as without the aqueducts, LA has about 12 HOURS of water reserves, and about 18 hours food reserves.

        Between road and rail, there are maybe 10 volume routes in or out of SoCal, if an earthquake has not closed them, as they all use multiple bridges or major excavations on their routes.

        An earthquake or other occurrence which isolated SoCal for a long period of time could result in deaths up to the seven figures, from thirst, hunger, or violence as the population tried to get out, or as they “accessed” resources in the areas to which they evacuated.

        I REALLY hope this doesn’t happen.
        JPDev

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        1. The old joke is that most city dwellers are only three days away from cannibalism.
          It still gets me that these idiots don’t get how fragile the conditions are that allow them to not be starving. And they want to change those conditions.

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          1. Yep – city folk rarely have heard of the ‘Survival Rule of 3’:
            Don’t expect to survive longer than:
            3 minutes w/o air,
            3 hours w/o shelter,
            3 days w/o water, and
            3 weeks w/o food.

            Of course, in ideal circumstances – you might be able to get by longer than 3 hours w/o shelter, or 3 days w/o water, or ever 3 weeks w/o food – but when what the last time you ever heard of an emergency occurring in an ‘ideal’ way? Every emergency that I’ve experienced showed signs of Murphy’s hand at work…

            …which makes me wonder how many ‘urban folks’ know what Murphy’s Law is – and methods to minimize its impact? ;-)

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      1. And the MSM first reported, then retracted, a story that Trump had removed the bust of MLK. Nope. The busts of two Republicans, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, continue to grace the Oval Office, along with the re-lent bust of that great American-British statesman. May some of their wisdom guide our new President.

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        1. This appears to have been an honest mistake. The guy who posted it noted in his correction that the actual location of the bust had been blocked from his view.

          Unfortunately, as is invariably the case, nobody ever pays any attention to the retraction.

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          1. Obama had a rug with MLK quotes? I thought his Oval Office rug had the text of the US Constitution, the better to trample on.

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      2. Like every President has done? My opinion of the Left’s temper tantrum has gone from gleeful, through shocked and bemused, and is now at morbid fascination. How many more shades of purple can their faces reach? How much longer can they keep screaming? What other trivialities can they find to completely freak out about? One would think that they’d reach physical and emotional exhaustion by now.

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        2. Unfortunately, there’s a full industry of people whose livelihoods depend on keeping the screaming going.

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        3. They’re moving from “freak out” to “Trigglypuff.”

          Unfortunately I don’t know what the state after Trigglypuff is…

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            1. Which makes me want to scream “What the HELL do you MORONS think you’re doing?!” at them.

              Though a darker side of me wants to see them start one, just to see what happens to them. Then I feel terrible because I know those idiots aren’t the only ones who are going to suffer horribly from a 2nd American civil war.

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              2. “Though a darker side of me wants to see them start one, just to see what happens to them.”

                This is where I start thinking about the scene in LOTR where Frodo says he occasionally wished for an invasion of dragons because it would make the inhabitants of the Shire realize that the peaceful life they lead is not accidental.

                Except the snowflakes need it worse; at least the hobbits were concerned with the real things of raising their children and feeding their families.

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            3. Honestly, I think I like snelson134’s answer better. :-/

              At least the damage would be contained to those doing the ‘freaking out’, and not the *far* too many who would be hurt by a Civil war (regardless of how much they deserved to find out what that really means).

              In the darker days of the last 8 years, I’d heard far too many hot-heads on ‘our’ side talking about pressing the ‘reset’ button. Any time this was someone I knew – I tried to educate them on just what they’re asking for, and the cost they (and their loved ones) would likely bear with such a course.

              Shooting wars, even ‘Civil’ ones – are only done when all non-violent options have played out ineffectively, AND tyranny cannot be escaped in any other reasonable way. I have no problem using lethal force to protect myself and innocents that I’m responsible for, but I’d rather use my reason to persuade others who disagree with me regarding the too often under-appreciated value of personal liberty, and it’s associated costs of personal responsibility. Both of these things work best in the framework of small government.

              We’re seeing what happens when those that believe that government is the answer (rather than the problem) loose ground. It’s a matter of difference of vision.

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              1. Actually, I’ve been one of those advocating for a reset, because we are again confronting a fundamental question: will we submit to the slavery of those who think they are entitled to rule us, or not?

                There is no fundamental difference between a plantation and a collective.

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        4. Well, the mental pretzels they have to come up with in order to come up with “satanist atheist” and the accompanying rationale (“atheistic satanists use ‘satan’ as a metaphor for natural human nature, not an actualy deity.”)

          …kind of lends proof to the Einstein quote about him not being sure about the infinite state of the Universe, but tacitly being sure of the infinite state of human stupidity.

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          1. They pick “satanist” so they can screech HYPOCRITE at Christians if they balk. Then use that as an excuse to restrict displays of religious faith in public.

            Or the usual leftist definition of “hypocrite” which doesn’t match the actual definition.

            Liked by 1 person

          2. Actually, it makes a certain amount of perverse sense. I believe it’s the movie “The Usual Suspects” that has the line “The Devil’s greatest trick was convincing the world that he doesn’t exist.”

            So, yeah. I could see the pretzel logic involved.

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  23. Most websites that undergo a change of ownership or management often see extensive changes in content and organization. But if you must, I’m sure you can find it archived on the wayback machine archive.👹

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  24. But you can find affirmation and love and purpose in your own life. It’s under that “right to the pursuit of happiness” thing. Go and pursue.

    (in the most atrocious Valley Girl accent imaginable) B-but Saraaaah!!! That’s expecting them to know what would actually make them happy, and then have to pursue happiness! Have you SEEN most of the dummy-spitters? Like, OH MY GAWD, isn’t that like, just asking too much of them!? *fans hand* They’re supposed to TOTALLY like, get all that respect and money and fame handed to them on a silver platter!

    /end accent

    …I apologize for any brains that may have set to twitching. I know MINE did, just writing that up.

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