Support for “stimulus” going south

The Democrats’ porkulus bill is to government spending what the Comprehensive Immigration Act of 2007, S.1348 (and, before it, its predecessor, S.2611), was to immigration: the most irresponsible and dishonest legislative proposal in the history of the universe.

Thankfully, the people seem to be catching on. According to Rasmussen (via Powerline), support for porkulus has dropped from 45 percent to 37 percent over the last two weeks, while opposition to it has risen from 34 percent to 43 percent. From supporters leading opponents by 45 to 34, to opponents leading supporters by 43 to 37, is a reversal of 17 points. And this is the bill backed by the greatest human since Adam, still on his honeymoon.

How much of this dramatic turnaround had to do with the marvelous fact that the House Republicans voted unanimously against the bill? Something like that makes an impression on people. Indeed, it was the most impressive and admirable stand by the House Republicans since summer 2006, when they refused even to consider S.2611 after it had passed the Senate.

As the public takes stock of the party and president that attempted to shove this unprecedented fiscal horror down our throats, that will have to have an effect on perceptions of the Congressional Democrats and the messiah. Accordingly, to give the latter a designation befitting his character, I propose that his official acronym be changed from

POTUS

to

PORCULUS

(replacing the “k” with a “c” to make it Latin looking like POTUS).

However I’m not sure what the acronym stands for. Suggestions are welcome. My initial attempt, President of Retrograde Corrupt Untermenschen Leeching off the United States, seemed a bit too fragrant.

- end of initial entry -

February 5

Kristor writes:

Well, but the Norman “pork” derives directly from the Latin “porcus.” And, since “-ulus” is a diminutive ending, often used for endearments (the counterparts of “my little cabbage” in French), porculus literally means “little pig.”

LA replies:

Well that’s cute. Just as, by sheer coincidence, or one of God’s little jokes, the initials of the title of the executive officer of arguably the most powerful country in history just happen to spell out POTUS, which looks like (and is probably very similar to) the Latin word for power, so the joke-word constructed of “stimulus” and “pork,” PORCULUS, turns out to be the Latin word for little pig.

Maybe Obama’s official name should be PORCULUS AUGUSTULUS, a take-off of the name of the weak and pathetic last emperor of the western Roman empire before it was taken over by the Goths, Romulus Augustulus, meaning “Romulus [the founder of the city of Rome] little Augustus,” a name inadvertently and ironically signifying his weak and decadent state, the very opposite of that of the original Augustus who founded the Roman empire. The message it would convey would be that Obama, notwithstanding his messianic pretensions of leading and transforming the world, making the seas recede, etc., in reality hands out unprecedented tons of pork, crippling us with debt, while also appeasing and humiliating himself before the Goths of our time, the Muslims who want to take us over.

The problem with the name, though, is that while he may be little as an “Augustus,” as a pig he is very large.

Laura G. writes:

One of the more interesting aspects of this turnabout is, of course, that the entire bill is a huge grab-bag of giveaways, designed to ensure that everyone’s greed is set to the hottest setting. Given that fact, it is pretty amazing that in effect eight 1/2 percent of our spoiled, entitled, whining, ignorant, self-serving populus has realized that this bill will doom them and their children to poverty and worse and switched to opposing it. Eight 1/2 percent so far, that is. While I doubt that this is enough to stop the on-coming train, if this trajectory continues it just might derail the monstrosity. Daily calls to Congress, especially Republican senators, are in order. As with the Immigration horrors, it was the House that saved us, and the Senate that tried to “reach an understanding”. Lots of thanks and support to our House representatives is needed. Such as contributions of any size.

Mike Berman writes:

Here is the most outrageous part of the porkulus bill, the five billion for ACORN.

Kristor replies to LA:

Except that it is crucial—absolutely crucial—to remember that the Goths were men of the West, were Christians (Arians, mostly), were most emphatically not uncivilized—and that their whole nisus was, not to destroy and displace Roman civilization, but to become Roman, to enter and participate fully in Roman civilization. This is why what grew out of their junction with Rome was what we familiarly know as the West, instead of something wildly different. This is why our civilization still—1500 years later—considers itself continuous with classical Greece and Rome. We are the heirs of the Goths, the Gauls, the Britons, the Angles, the Belgi, the Franks, the Germans—and we still ape the Romans, we still reject the gods of our forefathers for theirs.

Note also that such infusions of barbarians were not a new thing. Barbarian invasions happened throughout Roman history. Or, rather, simply, wars happened throughout Roman history. In some cases, Rome conquered territory and the conquered began to think of themselves as Romans, while in others Rome lost territory and the conquerors began to think of themselves as Romans, or at least Romish. The incredibly long perdurance of Roman hegemony is largely due to Rome’s remarkable success at domesticating foreigners to its ways. The legions who fought the Goths had by then for centuries been largely constituted of, and led by, barbarians—all loyal Romans, in spirit, and the martial stiffness of the Roman spine. Augustulus was the son of a Germanic soldier who rose high in the service of Attila the Hun before being hired as magister militum by the Western Empire. Odoacer, the German war-leader of the Scirii—themselves vassals of the Huns—who deposed Augustulus, asked the Emperor in Constantinople to create him a patrician. The request was granted, and he ruled Italy under nominal Byzantine suzerainty.

When Romans conquered, they replaced the local system of civil order with their own, leaving the other institutions of society largely intact; when the barbarians conquered, they left the Roman civil system in place, and took for themselves the uppermost offices thereof. Not until the Carolingians was the Roman civil order really supplanted—and even then, the Carolingian system was run by clerics, obedient to bishops, whose diocesan domains were coterminous with those of the old Roman civitates.

The Gothic takeover of the West—and of Africa—was not what brought European civilization to its knees. No; it was the Muslim conquest of Africa, then Iberia, that knocked us down for a thousand years. Muslim piracy based in Algiers and Iberia meant the loss of the western Mediterranean as a trade route, and the European economy—organized around maritime trade and coastal financial centers—collapsed. It didn’t help that Africa and Iberia had been carved out of the Mediterranean market; a blow roughly equivalent to severing all today’s trade between, say, the eastern and western seaboards of the US. The same had happened in the Eastern Med, with the loss of Egypt and Syria. Finally, economic activity under Muslim rule withered as the old Greco-Roman order was supplanted by the Muslim order. It took several centuries—these were the centuries of the Arab Golden Age, when the Christians were still running the bureaucracies—but eventually almost all the Christians had been martyred, converted, or induced to emigrate, and the Muslims were on their own. That’s when the Muslim stagnation set in. At Lepanto, the Turkish galleys had all been built by shipwrights hired away from Venice. No Muslim state is today able to manufacture firearms.

Obama is rather like the Visigothic kings of Iberia who invited the Muslims in Africa to help them in their internecine spats.

But, you know, there is no reason to lose hope. When the Muslims killed maritime trade in the Mediterranean, the Europeans had to find a different way to trade with China. Thus the Age of Exploration, and the global hegemony of the West. When in the 16th century the ancient Christian kingdom of Ethiopia was threatened by Muslim invasion from Nubia, it was saved by the Portuguese Christians operating from Mozambique. The Muslims are now completely encircled by Christians. Eighty years ago, Islam was widely considered to be a dying religion. Essentially all the Muslim lands were ruled by Europeans. Then we gave them back the government of their own lands, and their oil fields. It has been all downhill since.

But that can’t go on forever. When you degrade a biological system, such as Western Civilization, all you do is kill off the weaker bits, and prepare it for a resurgence. If current demographic trends continue—the heterodox aren’t replacing themselves—in 100 years the only Europeans around will be the Orthodox Christians—i.e., the traditionalists. Meanwhile, the Chinese Christians have decided to missionize westward along the Silk Road. The name of the movement? “Back to Jerusalem.”

LA replies:

Quick reply: I think Kristor is simplifying the issue. By 713, when the Moslems invaded Spain, the Roman civilization and way of life had come to a complete end, as a result of the empire having been taken over by Germanic peoples who may have admired Rome, but were unable to carry it forward. The official church of the Roman world survived, but everything else was gone.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 04, 2009 11:23 PM | Send