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You are here: Home / Economics / Free Markets Solve Everything / The Light Flickers Briefly, And Then Just as Quickly, Dies Out

The Light Flickers Briefly, And Then Just as Quickly, Dies Out

by John Cole|  August 30, 20106:56 pm| 27 Comments

This post is in: Free Markets Solve Everything, Glibertarianism, Clown Shoes

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The Fonzi of Freedom:

For me, the strangest and most off-putting element of the day was the disjuncture between the anti-authority dimension of the rally – our leaders have disappointed us and must be called to account! – and the whole-hog deference to militarism – we need to thank our soldiers for following orders so honorably and self-sacrificingly. While there were plenty of wounded soldiers on the stage, there was absolutely zero discussion of why these guys were being sent overseas and whether we should expect the same pols who lie to us on domestic policy to be any better on foreign policy.

They’re Republicans, you clown. How many polls do you need to see before you finally realize that the tea party/Glenn Beck movement is nothing more than Republicans. They’re the same people who were calling everyone traitors and wearing purple heart stickers to mock John Kerry.

Nick and the others at Reason have spent the last year running rhetorical cover for the angry fringe of the GOP, repackaged as a grass roots movement of patriots, hoping upon hope that the libertarian movement they dream of is finally gaining momentum. And even here, Gillespie isn’t really sure of what he is witnessing. They aren’t anti-authority. They’re anti-Democrat. Does he honestly think this would be taking place if McCain/Palin were in charge? The moment Republicans are running things again, that “anti-authority dimension” will cease to exist- as if it really exists now in the first place.

Maybe Nick can bring this up for discussion at his next Fox news appearance.

And I won’t even bother going into the “Obama is Bush on steroids” nonsense Gillespie barfed up earlier in the piece.

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Reader Interactions

27Comments

  1. 1.

    General Stuck

    August 30, 2010 at 6:58 pm

    They’re anti-Democrat.

    Or anti Yankee when you break the code.

  2. 2.

    wvng

    August 30, 2010 at 7:03 pm

    As Kthug wrote this morning: “Anyone who remembered the 1990s could have predicted something like the current political craziness. What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don’t consider government by liberals — even very moderate liberals — legitimate. Mr. Obama’s election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn’t, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage. ”

    What else it there to understand about this.

  3. 3.

    gnomedad

    August 30, 2010 at 7:04 pm

    Tag proposal: Liberty, My Ass!

  4. 4.

    El Cid

    August 30, 2010 at 7:05 pm

    It really bothered me how so many of the 1990s militia movements would talk a lot about democracy and the Constitution but would use really authoritarian rhetoric and rumors and propaganda and methods and even murderous violence.

    If only they had been more like my hallucinatory fantasies rather than being what they actually were and were so easily proven to be.

  5. 5.

    Keith G

    August 30, 2010 at 7:16 pm

    …there was absolutely zero discussion of why these guys were being sent overseas and whether we should expect the same pols who lie to us on domestic policy to be any better on foreign policy.

    Meanwhile, Lt Col John Nagle (ret) is on PBS flogging his belief that we can be successful in Afghanistan.

    *A segment on Beck is up next.

  6. 6.

    Mark S.

    August 30, 2010 at 7:17 pm

    Fonzi really puts to rest the idea that teabaggers are racist. When they scream about Mexicans and Muslims, what they are really saying is they want less government!

  7. 7.

    Scott

    August 30, 2010 at 7:22 pm

    Reminds me of my anarchy-loving youth, actually. I finally made a break from that because a lot of the people I was reading believed that what anarchists needed to do was begin partnering up with the right-wing militias — after all, they wanted to overthrow government, too!

    The fact that none of them ever, ever twigged to the fact that the militias wanted to overthrow the government so they could install a vastly more authoritarian government in its place was what got me thinking I should throw my lot in with less loony people…

  8. 8.

    Silver

    August 30, 2010 at 7:22 pm

    @Mark S.:

    No, they want huge government to dispose of Mexicans, faggots, atheists, Muslims, and everyone darker than a very light tan.

    Small government after that is an imperative, however.

  9. 9.

    jwb

    August 30, 2010 at 7:25 pm

    @Silver: By the time the purging was over, the government would be very small indeed, because the logic of such operations leaves a population of one.

  10. 10.

    El Cid

    August 30, 2010 at 7:32 pm

    @Keith G: As in Iraq, we can continue to be successful in Afghanistan forever, increasing the level of our victories which is also proven by the setbacks which occur as proof of how much we have already achieved and if allowed will be able to keep achieving for as long as we have the will to do it.

  11. 11.

    Svensker

    August 30, 2010 at 7:43 pm

    @wvng:

    “Anyone who remembered the 1990s could have predicted something like the current political craziness. What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don’t consider government by liberals — even very moderate liberals — legitimate. Mr. Obama’s election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn’t, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage.

    ”

    I think that’s pretty much it. After trying to engage a cousin and a some of his friends, very politely and respectfully, to find out exactly what honor was lost and how and when and exactly what are they “taking back”, I find that all I got was basically — “people not like us aren’t doing what we want them to do, we’re supposed to be in charge, ‘real Americans’ aren’t liberals.”

  12. 12.

    Annie

    August 30, 2010 at 7:50 pm

    What is truly ironic is saying that we have to “get back to our roots,” while saying that we have to return to “God.” Our founding fathers gave us a secular Constitution. So getting back to our roots means not privileging one religion over another, or no religion for that matter.

    The day that the government really starts to impose conservative Christianity on the rest of us — controlling our reproductive health, outlawing divorce, imposing tiding, controlling what we watch on TV and read, forcing prayer, making women go home and not rule over men, etc., is the day many of these people start realizing what it is that they are rallying for and against.

    Again, it is ironic that supposedly conservative Christianity is under seige at the same time, a nut can organize a rally and preach on the Mall with no repercussions.

  13. 13.

    HumboldtBlue

    August 30, 2010 at 7:51 pm

    Because true achievement can never be measured in actual achievements. True victory is an ongoing battle to achieve the goals we aimed for when we started to achieve the success we are currently achieving. If we stop now we can just kiss all those achievements goodbye because we’ll never be able to make such achievements again.

  14. 14.

    Cacti

    August 30, 2010 at 7:52 pm

    One of the most brazen aspects of “Whitestock” was the pom-pom waving for militarism, while invoking the spirit of the MLK.

    MLK was unwaveringly anti-imperialist/anti-interventionist. His opposition to the Vietnam War made him unwelcome at the Johnson White House near the end of his life, and frequently earned him epithets of traitor and communist sympathizer from the MSM.

    If King was alive today, I have little doubt Larry Elder and Juan Williams would be calling him a “race hustler” on the O’Reilly factor.

  15. 15.

    geg6

    August 30, 2010 at 7:58 pm

    Gawd, libertarians are truly the stupidest people on earth. They’ve got their conjured up fantasy land where god is called The Market and god is always benign. It’s even more stupid and ludicrous than almost all other religions and that explains why a Morman rodeo clown and his massive following of pasty, angry, evangelical Christian white people who can’t spell are able to scam them. Just too stupid to live, these people are.

  16. 16.

    monkeyboy

    August 30, 2010 at 8:04 pm

    After reading some of the recent BJ posts on Confederate Honor, and doing some research on the term honor I have been seeing various behavior in a different light.

    “Honor” is used to structure a hierarchical class system. It is seen as an essential fluid of men (similar to how Nobility was inherited through blood relations) and the more honor one has the more superior one is. This is is why Confederates thought that one Southern soldier was as good as 10 Northern ones – because the Northern ones had no honor.

    Since one’s honor is so important people are quick to take offense if it is besmirched. The South is more polite because politeness rituals are needed to enforce the class structuring and help prevent accidental sullying of people’s honor.

    So basically neo-Confederates are anti-authority but pro-honor where what might look like obeying authorities is really someone showing their honor by respecting the honor of their superiors.

    So soldiers are honored for bravely defending the honor of our country.

    Leaders like Obama have no honor and deserve no respect while honorable leaders like Palin and Beck need to be defended against attacks on their honor – and the most important thing is to quickly react in their defense, not make sense.

  17. 17.

    jl

    August 30, 2010 at 8:42 pm

    Whine, whine about the dying of the light.

  18. 18.

    Suffern ACE

    August 30, 2010 at 9:51 pm

    So, for a year we’ve had to listen to howling that “Obama won’t call it a war!” as proof that the President doesn’t understand the nature of conflict…and he’s surprised that cultural militarism might be a central part of this group?

  19. 19.

    Uloborus

    August 30, 2010 at 10:39 pm

    @monkeyboy:
    I mostly agree here. Honor is a loose catch-all for Being A Superior Person. Each of them inserts whatever virtues they think are important – honesty, piety, bravery, whatever.

    Then filter this through the mindset of someone who is mildly narcissistic and inclined to tribalistic thought processes. The most important trait here is that they see their own honor as automatic and unquestionable. They don’t HAVE to earn it. Whatever virtues they think are honorable, they themselves must have those virtues. And anyone in their in-group must have these virtues. And because they have ‘honor’ they are superior to you and deserve to be treated accordingly. This includes it being outrageous to question their honor. You are not part of their group, so you are unlikely to have honor, and deserve no respect.

    So. The *end result* of this thought process is that ‘honor’ becomes synonymous with ‘validating me’. The country has lost honor because these idiots’ heroes are not in charge and their opinions are not unquestionably dominant. Obama has no honor because he doesn’t agree with them. Even if he did agree with them he isn’t *one* of them, so his honor would still be pretty low.

    This is the same thinking that goes into ‘rude is not giving me what I want’. It’s all narcissistic personality disorder stuff.

  20. 20.

    Comrade Kevin

    August 30, 2010 at 11:20 pm

    @wvng: and I saw someone on Twitter this morning point to that column as evidence that Krugman has the worst tin ear in politics.

  21. 21.

    Quiddity

    August 31, 2010 at 12:17 am

    For all the talk about “restoring honor”, there was no discussion about how (dis)honorable it was for Bush to lie about WMD in order to convince the nation to go to war.

  22. 22.

    monkeyboy

    August 31, 2010 at 12:32 am

    @Quiddity:

    You don’t understand how this “honor” stuff works. I was honorable for Bush to lie about WMDs because he was defending the honor of the US after the dishonorable Muslim 9/11 attacks. All that matters was that Iraq is Muslim, not that they had anything to do with 9/11.

  23. 23.

    frosty

    August 31, 2010 at 12:38 am

    @monkeyboy: Have you read Jim Webb’s “Born Fighting?” I’d say there’s a couple threads of Southern honor going on. The one that weaves through Webb’s book comes from the Scots-Irish culture, which settled in the Appalachians and headed west. He makes a good case that it’s the basis of American culture.

    Completely different culture than the plantation South.

  24. 24.

    psycholinguist

    August 31, 2010 at 1:01 am

    Wowsers, I had never actually read the comments section over there – Jesus H. Christ, those are a bunch of true believers aren’t they?

    I’m beginning to rethink my dismissal of Freud and his idea that some boys get stuck in that anal retentive stage, I think I found a whole passel of them.

  25. 25.

    Bulworth

    August 31, 2010 at 10:26 am

    They’re Republicans, you clown. How many polls do you need to see before you finally realize that the tea party/Glenn Beck movement is nothing more than Republicans. They’re the same people who were calling everyone traitors and wearing purple heart stickers to mock John Kerry.

    Not sure why our still not liberal media continues to refer to the teabaggers as some sort of separate bowel movement independent of the republican party. They are one and the same.

  26. 26.

    HyperIon

    August 31, 2010 at 1:25 pm

    @psycholinguist wrote:

    Wowsers, I had never actually read the comments section over there – Jesus H. Christ, those are a bunch of true believers aren’t they?

    Yeah. Hit and Run used to be on the blog roll here and I would occasionally venture over and often found the comments better than the post. But they have really degnerated. Twice in the last week I have ventured into the comments and rather rapidly retreated.

    I sure hope that this site never switches to nested comments. That approach really focuses attention on “the crazy” among us.

    And yes, many commenters at Hit and Run these days are suffering from testosterone poisoning.

  27. 27.

    HyperIon

    August 31, 2010 at 1:32 pm

    @monkeyboy wrote : about honor.

    Falstaff says:

    Well, ’tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honour set-to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honour? A word. What is in that word “honour”? What is that “honour”? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ’Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon. And so ends my catechism.

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