Mitt Romney and the Dialectic
Timothy Birdnow
Mitt Romney has a problem. Romney is the man the Establishment Republicans support because they see in him an accomplished individual who can appeal to the moderate middle. In the worldview of the RINO GOP, electoral victory is a matter of pure numbers; secure the base, then move to the left in the general election to appeal to swing voters. Get enough swing voters and you win. Simple. But this, much like raising taxes to raise revenue, is deceiving. Voters don't hold opinions set in stone - particularly the "moderate" crowd whose opinions tend to flap in the breeze like laundry in a tornado. People can be convinced of the righteousness of a cause, or the correctness of a certain viewpoint. They like to be on a bandwagon, too, and enthusiasm for a candidate may lead them to vote for that candidate even if they don't know or agree with what that person believes. Votes aren't static, aren't a matter of counting up credits and deficits and trying to get the most chits; they are dynamic, and can be influenced by a number of factors. Ingenuiousness, for instance, goes a long way; people don't like slick, produced politicians. They want a sense that the candidate is a real person and not Max Headroom. There Mitt Romney suffers, with his perfect hair, his puppet-like mannerisms, his careful, clipped speech. He is the perfect consultant's candidate, designed to be all things to all people.
But bold colors appeal to most rather than pastels, and the Democrats understood this concept, moving to the left under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. They understood that they would win with their base happy, even if they offended some of these same "moderates" that the GOP finds so necessary to electoral victory. Their problem is that their base is so far to the Left that they are in danger of horrifying middle America, which is self-identified as largely middle conservative; less then one in four people identify themselves as liberal or leftist. The Progressive wing of the Democratic Party has to walk a fine line. But the conservative wing does not, and it is merely a matter of explaining their policies and getting the public enthused. This is harder than it seems, because the media will twist and lie, squirm and subvert, to keep the public in the dark. Getting the message out depends largely on the candidate himself; he cannot count on doing it by proxy (as Barack Obama can do). Mitt Romney isn't going to promote a conservative message, because he believes in his heart in the "middle ground" vision.
When Karl Marx worked out the mechanisms of his "scientific socialism" he borrowed heavily from the German philosopher George Wilhelm Frederick Hegel, who postulated a mechanism for societal change based on what he called the Dialectic. In his concept there are two opposing forces at work - a thesis and an antithesis. These forces crash together, the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object, as it were. The result is a synthesis, a compromise between the two. Take the British Parliament; two houses, one for the aristocracy and one for the commoners. This was the result of a compromise that took centuries. Or the American Constitution with it's endless balancing. The small states lack representation in the House because they lack population, but they are coequal with the larger states in the Senate. Why7? Because this compromise was necessary to get the Constitution ratified; no small state would voluntarily choose to join a country that would be dominated by the larger cousins. These are but two examples of the dialectic at work.
Marx took the dialectic and employed it as the mechanism that, in his typically 19th century view, would lead history to it's ultimate fruition - a socialist utopia. The dialectic would produce a series of compromises that would move the world ever leftward, in his opinion, as the proletariate demanded more of the fruits of their own labor. Eventually a dictatorship of said Prols would be established, followed by the creation of a true socialist state. Eventually this state would wither away (as human nature conformed to the new ideal of sharing all things in common) and history would essentially end in a physical paradise.
Fat chance of that, but this model would be used to drive societal change through the 20th and into the 21st centuries. It is actually a tool; launch some act of moral or societal aggression, fight the resistance as much as possible, and then compromise, giving your side half a loaf. "Don't ask, don't tell" was a classic example of that; before Bill Clinton implemented this policy homosexual behavior was grounds for dishonorable dischanrge from the U.S. military. Clinton made it none of the military's business. Was that the end? No. Having established this as the new baseline, the synthesis has become new antithesis, and the new thesis is open homosexuality and no consequences, nay, it should even be celebrated with gay marriage and whatnot in the ranks. The result is a new synthesis put forward by Barack Obama and company that has made homosexual behavior a norm in the military. This was the goal of "Don't ask, don't tell" all along, but the time was not ripe. Better to bide your time, set the stage, then get the second half of the loaf when conditions permit.
Liberalism has advanced relentlessly by using the dialectic. They make ridiculous demands then work out a "compromise" which sounds good to people like Mitt Romney but which moves America ever leftward. We've seen this since the end of the 19th century, and there has been little in the way of pushback. It should be entirely possible for conservatives to use the same tools, but we are unable to get ourselves organized properly, and the media, academia, the public schools, all conspire to shut out the conservative message. Without access to the means of disseminating information it is quite difficult to make the dialectic work.
And there is the problem with Mitt Romney in a nutshell. Many Americans sense that we are on our last legs, that we are in the position of fifth century Romans facing the overwhelming of our institutions and practices by hordes of barbarians with no allegiance to our nation. America is bleeding to death by innumerable wounds inflicted not with swords or spears but with sheets of paper and letter openers. Many Americans sense that the wounds will be fatal unless we take the patient to a hospital, but the man representing our side wants to keep doing what we have been doing. He is like Nero; fiddling while Rome is burning.
Herin is the problem; conservatives are fighting not only the Democrats, but the media, academia, government workers, unions, schools, and their own side. Half of the GOP thinks this is just another election cycle, a normal wave in the endless tug-of-war that is politics. They do not grasp that nations can and do fall. Few Romans believed it possible that so great an empire could collapse, yet it did, and few RINO Republicans think America could collapse. In point of fact, they see conservatives as perhaps a greater danger to the Republic than liberals, because conservatives will screw up their plans. They are Fabian Socialists. The Fabian Society advocated the establishment of socialism in England through slow, creeping mechanisms rather than violent revolution. Their goals were not so different from the Marxists or Fascists; it was just gentler and slower. That is what the Establishment types in the GOP represent; the slow road to hell rather than the express.
One must ask; is it better to die in a plane crash or from cancer? This question misses an obvious third alternative; it's better not to die at all. Neither the radical socialists of the Democratic Party nor the RINO Republicans offer a very hopeful vision for America; in both instances we are doomed, it just is a matter of our pace.
The RINO wing is as much our enemies as is the Democratic Party and their radical friends.
Look, I get it; we can buy some time voting for Mitt Romney. America simply cannot survive another Barack Obama term. But ultimately we gain little, because we perpetuate the power of the FAbian GOP. Every election cycle we have been told to hold our noses and vote for the RINO candidate, because they are "electable". Every time it turns out the same; either they lose or they win and when they win the country moves to the left, often as much or moreso than during the liberal administration. George W. Bush, for example, was the savior to the right wing because he was considered electable. He moved this nation to the left with innumerable programs that come straight out of the Progressive think tanks, and in the end the nation moved that much closer to collapse (and toward one world government). Romney will be another Bush term, of that there can be little doubt.
And every time we hold our noses we surrender. There comes a point where one must question the value in walking backwards, in taking half a loaf when a full loaf is within our grasp. Dialectic materialism is killing us, one paper cut at a time.
I will vote for Mitt Romney, because I see no real alternative at this point. But we must work to take our party back, to break the power of the RINO Establishment wing. They ensconced themselves into power because their man - George W. Bush - had us bending over backwards to defend HIM while the RINOs moved in and coopted the GOP. They purged the old Reagan people, and the party itself is ruled by the David Frums. They rule by virtue of creating a state of fear, getting our side to fear the Democrats so much that we'll accept the candidates of their choice. We saw this during the last few years as the RINOs abandoned Tea Party favorites like Sharon Angle and then used their defeat to claim that conservatives cannot win. Nice trick. THEY don't mind losing to the Democrats provided they maintain their grip on "their" party!
This thing will not turn around as long as people like Mitt Romney are our candidates. We have to have a revolution inside the GOP. There is really no other option. Third parties sound wonderful, but in the end they hand victory the the Progressives. We have got to kick the Rockefellarian wing out of the GOP.
Time is short.
Mitt Romney has a problem. Romney is the man the Establishment Republicans support because they see in him an accomplished individual who can appeal to the moderate middle. In the worldview of the RINO GOP, electoral victory is a matter of pure numbers; secure the base, then move to the left in the general election to appeal to swing voters. Get enough swing voters and you win. Simple. But this, much like raising taxes to raise revenue, is deceiving. Voters don't hold opinions set in stone - particularly the "moderate" crowd whose opinions tend to flap in the breeze like laundry in a tornado. People can be convinced of the righteousness of a cause, or the correctness of a certain viewpoint. They like to be on a bandwagon, too, and enthusiasm for a candidate may lead them to vote for that candidate even if they don't know or agree with what that person believes. Votes aren't static, aren't a matter of counting up credits and deficits and trying to get the most chits; they are dynamic, and can be influenced by a number of factors. Ingenuiousness, for instance, goes a long way; people don't like slick, produced politicians. They want a sense that the candidate is a real person and not Max Headroom. There Mitt Romney suffers, with his perfect hair, his puppet-like mannerisms, his careful, clipped speech. He is the perfect consultant's candidate, designed to be all things to all people.
But bold colors appeal to most rather than pastels, and the Democrats understood this concept, moving to the left under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. They understood that they would win with their base happy, even if they offended some of these same "moderates" that the GOP finds so necessary to electoral victory. Their problem is that their base is so far to the Left that they are in danger of horrifying middle America, which is self-identified as largely middle conservative; less then one in four people identify themselves as liberal or leftist. The Progressive wing of the Democratic Party has to walk a fine line. But the conservative wing does not, and it is merely a matter of explaining their policies and getting the public enthused. This is harder than it seems, because the media will twist and lie, squirm and subvert, to keep the public in the dark. Getting the message out depends largely on the candidate himself; he cannot count on doing it by proxy (as Barack Obama can do). Mitt Romney isn't going to promote a conservative message, because he believes in his heart in the "middle ground" vision.
When Karl Marx worked out the mechanisms of his "scientific socialism" he borrowed heavily from the German philosopher George Wilhelm Frederick Hegel, who postulated a mechanism for societal change based on what he called the Dialectic. In his concept there are two opposing forces at work - a thesis and an antithesis. These forces crash together, the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object, as it were. The result is a synthesis, a compromise between the two. Take the British Parliament; two houses, one for the aristocracy and one for the commoners. This was the result of a compromise that took centuries. Or the American Constitution with it's endless balancing. The small states lack representation in the House because they lack population, but they are coequal with the larger states in the Senate. Why7? Because this compromise was necessary to get the Constitution ratified; no small state would voluntarily choose to join a country that would be dominated by the larger cousins. These are but two examples of the dialectic at work.
Marx took the dialectic and employed it as the mechanism that, in his typically 19th century view, would lead history to it's ultimate fruition - a socialist utopia. The dialectic would produce a series of compromises that would move the world ever leftward, in his opinion, as the proletariate demanded more of the fruits of their own labor. Eventually a dictatorship of said Prols would be established, followed by the creation of a true socialist state. Eventually this state would wither away (as human nature conformed to the new ideal of sharing all things in common) and history would essentially end in a physical paradise.
Fat chance of that, but this model would be used to drive societal change through the 20th and into the 21st centuries. It is actually a tool; launch some act of moral or societal aggression, fight the resistance as much as possible, and then compromise, giving your side half a loaf. "Don't ask, don't tell" was a classic example of that; before Bill Clinton implemented this policy homosexual behavior was grounds for dishonorable dischanrge from the U.S. military. Clinton made it none of the military's business. Was that the end? No. Having established this as the new baseline, the synthesis has become new antithesis, and the new thesis is open homosexuality and no consequences, nay, it should even be celebrated with gay marriage and whatnot in the ranks. The result is a new synthesis put forward by Barack Obama and company that has made homosexual behavior a norm in the military. This was the goal of "Don't ask, don't tell" all along, but the time was not ripe. Better to bide your time, set the stage, then get the second half of the loaf when conditions permit.
Liberalism has advanced relentlessly by using the dialectic. They make ridiculous demands then work out a "compromise" which sounds good to people like Mitt Romney but which moves America ever leftward. We've seen this since the end of the 19th century, and there has been little in the way of pushback. It should be entirely possible for conservatives to use the same tools, but we are unable to get ourselves organized properly, and the media, academia, the public schools, all conspire to shut out the conservative message. Without access to the means of disseminating information it is quite difficult to make the dialectic work.
And there is the problem with Mitt Romney in a nutshell. Many Americans sense that we are on our last legs, that we are in the position of fifth century Romans facing the overwhelming of our institutions and practices by hordes of barbarians with no allegiance to our nation. America is bleeding to death by innumerable wounds inflicted not with swords or spears but with sheets of paper and letter openers. Many Americans sense that the wounds will be fatal unless we take the patient to a hospital, but the man representing our side wants to keep doing what we have been doing. He is like Nero; fiddling while Rome is burning.
Herin is the problem; conservatives are fighting not only the Democrats, but the media, academia, government workers, unions, schools, and their own side. Half of the GOP thinks this is just another election cycle, a normal wave in the endless tug-of-war that is politics. They do not grasp that nations can and do fall. Few Romans believed it possible that so great an empire could collapse, yet it did, and few RINO Republicans think America could collapse. In point of fact, they see conservatives as perhaps a greater danger to the Republic than liberals, because conservatives will screw up their plans. They are Fabian Socialists. The Fabian Society advocated the establishment of socialism in England through slow, creeping mechanisms rather than violent revolution. Their goals were not so different from the Marxists or Fascists; it was just gentler and slower. That is what the Establishment types in the GOP represent; the slow road to hell rather than the express.
One must ask; is it better to die in a plane crash or from cancer? This question misses an obvious third alternative; it's better not to die at all. Neither the radical socialists of the Democratic Party nor the RINO Republicans offer a very hopeful vision for America; in both instances we are doomed, it just is a matter of our pace.
The RINO wing is as much our enemies as is the Democratic Party and their radical friends.
Look, I get it; we can buy some time voting for Mitt Romney. America simply cannot survive another Barack Obama term. But ultimately we gain little, because we perpetuate the power of the FAbian GOP. Every election cycle we have been told to hold our noses and vote for the RINO candidate, because they are "electable". Every time it turns out the same; either they lose or they win and when they win the country moves to the left, often as much or moreso than during the liberal administration. George W. Bush, for example, was the savior to the right wing because he was considered electable. He moved this nation to the left with innumerable programs that come straight out of the Progressive think tanks, and in the end the nation moved that much closer to collapse (and toward one world government). Romney will be another Bush term, of that there can be little doubt.
And every time we hold our noses we surrender. There comes a point where one must question the value in walking backwards, in taking half a loaf when a full loaf is within our grasp. Dialectic materialism is killing us, one paper cut at a time.
I will vote for Mitt Romney, because I see no real alternative at this point. But we must work to take our party back, to break the power of the RINO Establishment wing. They ensconced themselves into power because their man - George W. Bush - had us bending over backwards to defend HIM while the RINOs moved in and coopted the GOP. They purged the old Reagan people, and the party itself is ruled by the David Frums. They rule by virtue of creating a state of fear, getting our side to fear the Democrats so much that we'll accept the candidates of their choice. We saw this during the last few years as the RINOs abandoned Tea Party favorites like Sharon Angle and then used their defeat to claim that conservatives cannot win. Nice trick. THEY don't mind losing to the Democrats provided they maintain their grip on "their" party!
This thing will not turn around as long as people like Mitt Romney are our candidates. We have to have a revolution inside the GOP. There is really no other option. Third parties sound wonderful, but in the end they hand victory the the Progressives. We have got to kick the Rockefellarian wing out of the GOP.
Time is short.
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 6:03 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home