COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Monday, August 27, 2007

It is Past Time to Fight Back and Restore (and Impose) Values.


Western society has a lot of work to do to undo the incredible damage done by the progressive left. What is needed is a social surge. How we go about doing it without charging, breeching and tearing down the ramparts is a challenge. If it cannot be done peacefully, a Darwinian struggle will emerge and it will happen the old fashion way. The problem is slowly being recognized. Some thoughts from The Telegraph :

...When the great progressive movement for personal liberation took hold of our public institutions - when the concept of authority itself was trashed by the education system, the media and the mainstream culture, and the idea of individual guilt was replaced by the assumption that all crime and bad behaviour had a socially determined "cause" - it was not the educated, affluent classes who were cut adrift.

They usually had the confidence and the connections to cultivate their comfortable rebelliousness and cope with their wayward children. (But not always - the odd drug overdose hit even the most smugly "enlightened" household.)

What everybody failed to notice as all those "repressive" old prejudices were gleefully dismantled was that it was the poor - struggling to keep their families on the straight and narrow - who depended on devices such as stigma and shame to police their own communities.

There was a time when parents who were not all that secure in their own ability to supervise the young - who themselves may not have been particularly rigorous in their moral standards, and perhaps did not have the psychological resources to maintain consistent order - could rely on the support of public institutions.

"Got by without MTV."

They could expect the schools to encourage outer discipline and the inner self-discipline of structured learning. They could expect the State to attempt to deter single girls from having babies on their own. They could expect the police and the courts to side unfailingly with the law-abiding rather than offer excuses for the criminal.

They could, in other words, count on the idea that all of the forces of adult life were joined together to uphold the structure of civilised life: that we all had pretty much the same conception of right and wrong, and the will to enforce it.

The British elites persuaded themselves that their great crime was to impose bourgeois values on everyone. In fact, it is the undermining of those values that is destroying the lives of the poor.
The entire essay


21 comments:

  1. Welcome to Sharia Law, US style.

    That is, duece, what the pre-modern mussulmen are fighting for. Fighting back against the values of the "Western lifestyle" that you and many others of us, distain.

    Against Britney and Paris and Ms Lohan's new and approved "Standards of Behaviour".
    Against Elvis's gyrations
    Against co-ed dancing at the church socials.

    An omnipresent culture of permissiveness, one that values money over morals, marketing over substance. A culture that worships the rights of the individual over responsibility to community.

    We demand a "reformation" of Islam, to make them more "like us".
    Then complain about the results of our modern Western culture, of the fat, lazy and immoral.

    The mussulmen wish to restore order and morality to the World. To destroy who they see as Satan's minions, here on earth.

    Not many fatties in the mosques.

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  2. DR, there is irony in your words. It is all a matter of degree, proportion,and common sense.

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  3. Exactly right, amigo mio.

    A matter of degree.

    It's all about McDonalds, that Frenchmen may have been right.

    Where does one draw the line?

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  4. The culture wars continue, in France, in the fields
    Burning down the maize

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  5. This one is for doug.

    He'll appreciate it.

    A capsulated history, by someone that agrees with him, about the development of the "Plan", in Iraq.

    How the US fell of the tracks, abandoning the "War" for nation building. Who, where, why & when

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  6. We who lived through the Vietnam era understand that the lesson of Vietnam isn’t that we have to win the “hearts and minds” of the peoples of the Middle East. We know it isn’t that we cannot pull out of Iraq prematurely. We know that we can be in Iraq for another sixty days or another sixty years and the situation will not improve much while Iraq’s neighbors continue to man, fund and arm the insurgency.

    The lesson of Vietnam is much different from the one the President apprehends. The lesson is this: if you fail to fight a war in a manner calculated to win it decisively, you will lose it inevitably.

    By waiting for the Iraqis to establish democracy and failing to deal with the terrorist nations that surround them, we have enabled our enemies to control the pace and direction of the war. It is time for the President to “Trump” the neocons: tell them they’re fired. And get on with the business of fighting a war that will end the threat to America.

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  7. Another of the Texican cronies bites the dust.

    WACO, Tex., Aug. 27 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. A senior administration official said he would announce the decision later this morning in Washington.

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  8. There's discrimination everywhere. Never trust a man with a moustache, they say. Discrimination Against Men(and women)With Facial Hair Judge a man by the content of his character, not the amount of his facial fuzz.

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  9. And by the way, I read a type of sharia is coming to Atlanta, Ceorgia, what with everyone being ordered on how low they can wear their pants. A kind of burka for butts law. (Actually I kinda like the idea but it would be impossible to enforce and the courts will probably through it out.)

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  10. I think we need some dress codes in the schools. What's wrong with the students in something almost amounting to a uniform, and the teachers in suits?I've always thought such a move might help to change the atmosphere of some of these schools and school yards. Make the school a set off, special place, a sacred ground which you don't approach except with a certain level of respect.

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  11. The first public school west of the Mississippi was established on Maui at Lahanaluna.
    It joined the church schools already here in teaching English to the Hawaiians.
    Until the 1940's Hawaiians excelled scholastically.
    Then came liberalism, welfare, Hawaiian Nationhood BS, and not Multiculturalism.
    Now Hawaii politics is dominated by the Teacher's Union, scores are near the bottom nationally, and drop out rates soar.

    Sign in front of the Catholic Church offers services in Spanish:
    Really helping everybody out, aren't they?

    Couldn't teach them English so they would excel the way Hawaiians once did, oh, no.

    Very old school and ethnocentric, not to mention elitist and oppressive.
    Let them smoke Crack!
    Viva, La Raza!
    Hawaiian Nation!

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  12. Plus, like Politicians, the folks at the Church just want everybody to like them in their Dhimmitude, attend in Droves, and Swell the Coffers with Grant Money for helping dismantle our Culture.

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  13. ...and Feel Cool about how hip, liberated, and Avant they are, so they can berate old-fashioned Fuddy-Duddies trying to preserve the culture.
    Racist, Zenophobe, Elitist, Exclusionists!
    Compassion Nation.

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  14. I do appreciate it indeed 'Rat:
    Too Simple.
    Just ask Trish!

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  15. Like the educational establishment, our government requires s belief in Dogma that mandates failure.
    All others not welcome.

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  16. Ya gotta admit, State and the CIA sure no how to gaurantee long-term full employment.
    Simple:
    Long Non-Wars.

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  17. General Garner relates how one State Dept guy had worked for years on plans from Iraq.
    When he met him and found out, he asked if he could have him.
    They said yes, then they said no, just as he was assigned to Baghdad and quickly removed.
    ...so the Admin could be rightfully blamed for not having a plan!

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