More readers’ responses to the election

Here are comments sent two days ago but just posted now. Since they all deal with our responses to the election, I am putting them in this one entry, but have provided the links to the original entries to which they were replying.

How people are affected by the Catastrophe

Richard S. writes:

I’m slightly puzzled by Karl D.’s strong reaction to Obama’s re-election. Evidently, I was following a different campaign in which the candidates not only had a paper-thin space of difference between them, but had spent the entire final debate agreeing with each other. What’s the big disaster here? That the implementer of Obamacare has defeated the original architect of Obamacare? That staunch conservatives like John Roberts won’t be nominated to the Supreme Court? That an immigration amnesty will be passed to compliment Reagan’s amnesty of ‘86?

It’s fascinating how otherwise rational individuals get suckered into this kabuki theater every cycle.

LA replies:

Richard S.’s comment exemplifies the mindset of a certain kind of conservative. Such conservatives think they’ve understood everything about liberalism, think that the worst of liberalism already occurred decades or even centuries ago (e.g., the paleocons who think that America ceased to be a morally legitimate society in 1865), and that they know it all, and therefore whatever is happening now is no different from the past and that people who think something terrible has just happened and are deeply upset about it, such as Karl D., are silly and irrational. These conservatives, blinded by their complacent pessimism and a kind of spiritual pride, fail to grasp that things can get much worse and have gotten much worse.

Such conservatives naturally all declined to vote for Romney, and so have helped deliver us into the nightmare tyranny of Obamacare, not to mention other nightmares. For these conservatives, Obamacare is no worse than Medicare or Social Security, because all liberal statist measures are the same as all other liberal statist measures.

Nihilism could be defined as the refusal to distinguish between good and evil. Well, then, to refuse to distinguish between radically different degrees of evil is also a form of nihilism. And such nihilism, apparently evinced by a significant number of conservatives in this election, has helped seal the destruction of the American Republic.

Richard B. writes:

I feel the same way, but I’m dealing with at least four stages at the same time. I think we will see the country, or at least half of the country go through this. Look at all of the businesses laying off people just two days past the election. More than anything, I want to see everyone who voted for him suffer.

Ed H. writes:

I was feeling utterly defeated. There seemed no hope, no recourse. Every institution was corrupt, completely in the service of lies and beyond reach of even reality. Patriotism, civilization, hope for the future, homage to the past,everything had been degraded, spit on, betrayed, covered in lies. What would come to our aid? Who was not in common party with the universal failure of morality and courage? The schools? The media? The Republicans? The mass public? I sat there in semi dark room not wanting to talk to anyone. My wife came in and put a cup of tea down and left, more hours past. But then something happened. I realized that the truth had finally come out. I realized I was no longer alone, I did not have to convice anyone about the impending catastrophe I saw building for years. I didn’t have to deal with perplexed stares who couldn’t understand what I was talking about. It was here, now. Everyone who had called me racist, fascist, hate monger, now knew what I was warning about. The left was even stupidly owning up to its planned deceptions and boasting about them. The most mediocre “conservative”commentators had dimly caught on. The enemy was before us, it had a face, a name, and its deceptions were fully known. I could now use my imagination on how to fight back. I would find comrades in the struggle. People would draw together and talk and curse, and feel closer together, not isolated and indifferent. It would be a battle but out in the open with clear reference points. I began listening to some fighting songs from previous human conflicts. “Ay Carmela” from the Spanish Civil War got my blood moving. Then some Mozart, then some Vivaldi, then bagpipes playing “Scotland the Brave,” then more “Ay Carmela.” I had all of Western Civilization on my side. Obama had Chris Matthews. I snorted. I felt a massive weight come off my shoulders, and gave a sigh. I got up and walked out in the cold crisp air, it began to drizzle a bit, I pulled my hood up and buried my chin in the collar and began walking, it felt great. It will be a long fight, but its what the human mind is built for. We love this kind of stuff.

The Republic—gravely injured, or deceased?

David P. writes:

Well, dead really. It has been dead since 2008, or else it would have seen the sham that is Obama.

As for the “the greatest assembly of political philosophers in history is torn and bleeding,” well they got it wrong. You can have as much philosophy you like, but what actually transpires depends on the people that make up the nation.

Here is Mozart’s Requiem-Lacrimosa.

Still, one must not give up hope

Will conservatives abide in the terrible truth, or revert to their usual optimism?

Bill Carpenter writes:

Statement by Mark Levin on RealClearPolitics:

We conservatives, we do not accept bipartisanship in the pursuit of tyranny. Period. We will not negotiate the terms of our economic and political servitude. Period. We will not abandon our children to a dark and bleak future. We will not accept a fate that is alien to the legacy we inherited from every single future generation in this country. We will not accept social engineering by politicians and bureaucrats who treat us like lab rats, rather than self-sufficient human beings. There are those in this country who choose tyranny over liberty. They do not speak for us, 57 million of us who voted against this yesterday, and they do not get to dictate to us under our Constitution.

We are the alternative. We will resist. We’re not going to surrender to this. We will not be passive, we will not be compliant in our own demise. We’re not good losers, you better believe we’re sore losers! A good loser is a loser forever. Now I hear we’re called “purists.” Conservatives are called purists. The very people who keep nominating moderates, now call us purists the way the left calls us purists. Yeah, things like liberty, and property rights, individual sovereignty, and the Constitution, and capitalism. We’re purists now. And we have to hear this crap from conservatives, or pseudo-conservatives, Republicans.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 10, 2012 01:04 PM | Send