Okay, You Tell Me, Then

Yesterday I suggested a way to change Conservative rhetoric to create openings to persuade Progressives, but the comments mostly agreed that it was too late for persuasion:

raven: I have given up, and I largely avoid them. I do not believe they can be trusted, not on any grounds of compassion, but because they accept orders unconditionally, and will perform mental contortions to reconcile the new belief with the old. The gulag is the gulag and they always end up putting their opponents there....

Mississippi: Wow, I back Raven's comments. She is correct. Progressives are smug. They deem non-progressives as inferior....

Eric Blair: I think Raven has the sense of it....

Krag: I view this as an exercise in extreme futility. I think we are far past reconciliation with the left. The views for the future are too different for one nation to move forward. One side has to win, through bloody means, before America will take any more steps forward....

Anonymous: I disagree. Progressives are a manifestation of arrested development and the infantile, Nietzschean "will to power," unrestrained by any sense of reason born of maturity, discipline, reason, or Christian temperance. ... I have become convinced that this cannot be reasoned with....

So what have you tried? What convinced you that persuasion isn't possible?

And what's your solution? Or, if you don't think there's a solution, how do you think things will play out?

18 comments:

Grim said...

My sense is that the next step is to organize at the state level, against the refusal to abide by the 10th Amendment. We will lose, of course, if Clinton appoints the next (several) SCOTUS justice(s).

Failing that, the next step is that Constitutional Convention. Even so, we will have a nonfunctional SCOTUS that feels its job is to interpret the Constitution according to their sense of what it would be nice if the government had the power to do. Thus, new Constitutional amendments won't fix anything. We'll have to dissolve the union, and set up new nations at least one of which will abide by the norms of limited, Constitutional governance.

E Hines said...

So what have you tried? What convinced you that persuasion isn't possible?

Logic and facts. I decline to use emotional "arguments." Sometimes logic and facts work, sometimes the other is too married to his predetermined notions and denies outright the facts. Those no longer are worth the trouble.

How will it play out? We saw an example of that in 2009-2010, when the Democrats ignored the Republicans and rammed through Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, and again a year or two later when the Democrats in Wisconsin and Indiana deliberately left their States explicitly to block democratic processes because they weren't getting their way. We've seen it, too, in the unions during those State Democrat assaults on liberty when they encouraged their union members to lie to their employers about why they were absent from work so they could go take part in the "protests." We saw it, too, when Richard Trumka explicitly refused to renounce union violence as a means for getting the union's way. We've seen it in the present naked attacks on liberty by the BLM "movement."

The Left, not just the Progressive Left (on Progressives, I've cited Croly, Wilson, FDR, HClinton, and Obama often on their war on liberty) has made this an open war: their naked power vs justice and liberty.

We have to recognize the fact of the Left's open war and do the same. We have to build on the gains we've made, and then use the resulting majorities to completely and utterly remove the government edicts they've put in place, completely rescind the regulations and rules they've put in place, call out judges and Justices who violate their oaths of office and their Constitutional requirement for good Behavior from their presuming to amend the Constitution or to rewrite statutes from the bench and then remove them from the bench.

We need to call out, in no uncertain terms, the inherently destructive nature of the Progressives and their movement and to destroy the movement as thoroughly as we destroyed the NAZI movement in an earlier time, and for broadly overlapping reasons.

I don't propose to try to live through another 800-year Dark Age.

Speaking of Dark Ages and net progress over 1,000-year cycles, I recommend Canticle for Leibowitz. (I'm not a member of the "right damn now" camp, but 1,000 year cycles are too slow to suit me.)

Eric Hines

E Hines said...

We'll have to dissolve the union....

I disagree. They can leave my nation. I won't. Thus: they'll have to dissolve the union, not us. Nor am I inclined to let them. They can leave. They cannot--may not--take any part of the union with them. Full stop.

Eric Hines

raven said...

My vision is so dark on this I have deleted many comments on the subject before posting.

On R.Fernandez's last blog post "subotai badahur" summed up his vision of what the future is likely to be. 4gw to the knife. I concur, although normalcy bias is hard to shake.

raven said...

Addendum- the left is solidly convinced the police and the army will be destroying the "rebels". They have no idea of what a 4GW involves, perhaps because they have little military or practical skills. Thus they do not realize THEY will be the very first targets. And it will not be a top down war,against heavily defended targets, but a bottom up relentless pruning. They will find their favored adage "think globally, act locally", applied with a vengeance.

May God help us all.

Tom said...

Thank you all for your comments so far.

Raven, I don't know any rank-and-file Progressives who actually believe there'll be a civil war. I really think they just assume the Conservatives will submit, just as they have in Europe, the UK, Australia, etc. I think they think any violence would be more along the lines of what happened in Oregon with the Bundys.

I've never read Canticle for Liebowitz, but I've seen it referenced several places now. Looks like I have some more reading to do.

Eric Blair said...

The Oregon incident was a comedy of errors.

The Nevada incident showed a different outcome.

In anycase, The cops will have to choose sides.


Anonymous said...

RE: "And what's your solution?"

Mine is fairly obvious from my comment - violence. Regardless of how any one person feels about states rights vs a strong federal government, the US Civil War decided that issue effectively. A similar violent solution will be needed to determine America's course going forward. The losers will need to be killed, driven from the country, or cowed into silence for generations. I certainly have a preference for which side wins, but I consider it far more important that ONE SIDE wins and one loses, decisively.

The sixties/early seventies left us with a broken national will that has never healed. That fissure has grown into an unbridgeable chasm where the only joy to be found in politics is in blocking the other side's goals. I believe the lack of a civil war in the US will be more destructive in the long run due to the stalling effect on national power our current situation produces.

So I am most definitely in the "let it burn" camp now. The sooner the reckoning starts, the sooner it is over and the victors, whoever they are, can move forward again. I therefore see attempts at reconciliation or compromise with the left as not only futile but counter productive. Let the lines be drawn clearly, sharpen the differences for all to see.

Enemies, domestic.

-Krag

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Raising two children past the age of eight is marvelously instructive. Starting a business is also. I don't think one can persuade, but we can encourage people to put themselves in places where they will learn on their own.

E Hines said...

So I am most definitely in the "let it burn" camp now.

My problem with this is that it exposes us to conquer by our external enemies--enemies that are both far more dangerous and far more powerful than they were in the 19th century. And the tools available are far more prompt and far more invidious.

Eric Hines

raven said...

I actually don't think we can "do" anything. The factors in play dwarf human initiative at this stage, the collision is too close for a change of course to work.

Grim said...

That's a reasonable point. One of the things that struck me traveling to Philly was how intricate, but also how unsupported, were the structures of its urban life.

For example, it has a fantastic subway system. Because it inherited so many rail lines from its industrial age, it's able to devote some to local trains, and others to 'express' trains that enable rapid transit from one end of the system to the other. They're like rockets, far superior to any other transit system I've ridden.

But they exist only because they inherited industrial rail lines that no industry still exists to sustain. Without the industry to maintain the rails, and without the tax base of the old industry either, the system that sustains Philadelphia can only wither away.

It's a huge, intricate community far too complex for us to alter. They can't live on our terms. Yet they can't survive on their terms. They're in real trouble, and there's nothing we can do to save them.

Nor, very likely, to persuade them that the only solution is to abandon their whole way of life -- including their political ideology, which calls for ever-increasing public support of transit systems they rely upon, but which are increasingly removed from having any real economic basis. It's all going to fall apart, and when it does, they're going to die. A lot of them are. And I'm not sure there's anything we can do to save them.

Tom said...

The cops will have to choose sides

Some will choose one side, some the other. I suspect most will choose to follow orders. In the end, we've given their education over to sociologists (the parent of criminology), and it's lefter by the day. That means the other side would have to get comfortable with killing cops. And soldiers in US uniforms, for that matter.

Krag: I believe the lack of a civil war in the US will be more destructive in the long run due to the stalling effect on national power our current situation produces.

Interesting. How's that?

Mr. Hines brings up a good point as well. The drug cartels will definitely benefit. China and Russia will probably get into it. Other countries will circle and look for opportunities.

raven & Grim: I don't know if we can make big changes or not, but I do believe we can take actions that make things better or worse.

Anonymous said...

You are asking the age old question of how to change a person at the fundamental level. It happens, but only when the person wants to change. So how can one put them in a crisis that triggers change?

The problem is that any pathology (and Progressivism is a pathology) creates an environment in the host that is hospitable to the pathology. Cancer, for example, creates an acidic environment where it can thrive because a base environment is deadly to it. Alcoholism creates depression and negative, isolated, paranoid patterns of thinking that support the need for a drink. Progressivism protects itself with willful, stubborn blindness to history, reason, and reality.

I understand how to change people. Horses are a good example. If you cross the ditch first then turn and face the horse to encourage it to cross, it won't; it interprets that as confrontation. You have to take it by the bridle and cross with it. Likewise, in The Commedia, when Virgil asks Dante to step through the wall of fire in the Inferno, Dante is afraid and Virgil must step through with him, shoulder to shoulder.

I am a firearms instructor and I have "converted" many anti-gun people using my understanding of how and why people change. And that was very satisfying.,

I have converted Progressives from anti to pro gun! But they are still Progressives, unwilling to join the NRA or "vote their guns"! I really think that the only way for a Progressive to change is if they experience a crisis on a level that we, as law abiding citizens and decent human beings, can not effect. And when they bring that kind of change down on the heads of all of us, their pathology will defend itself by blaming us!

Stuart

Ymar Sakar said...

Persuasion isn't possible because evil only turns to good via religious self change and conversion, through spiritual purification and the pain of death.

First of all, people who tried to persuade Leftists, made the mortal sin of assuming the Left was merely a political party. They weren't. Thus they used facts and political rhetoric to try to convince someone who had a death cult backing them. If they were to accept that the Left were religious fanatics first and foremost, they would change the way they "persuaded" them into something that might actually work.

Then there's the issue with converting, not persuading, Muslims and death cultists into something else, which is an entirely different range of hurdles.

Tom said...

Stuart, I agree, but I kinda thought our nation was going through a crisis. Bernie supporters are. I know a number of Progressives who are horrified by Clinton and are very open to discussions about election integrity.

Ymar Sakar said...

Raven, I don't know any rank-and-file Progressives who actually believe there'll be a civil war.

And they have good reason, Tom to think so. Even Grim was against a US Civil War 2 in 2009-2012.

They, like the Southern Baptists and slave lords, believed their enemies were push overs, not warriors. It is underestimating the enemy, which often starts wars.

The Republicans or patriots in the US, by pretending to some common morality or pacifism, has convinced the Leftists that there will be no "fight" they can't handle. By promoting peace, they have convinced the other side that war will cost little, but reap a lot of treasure. If all factions had prepared for war, then they might have had peace, after a little fighting. But humans don't do that, they didn't in pre WWII either. Britain prepared for Peace in their time, and the Axis prepared for war. The German military, when they saw how easy the conquests became, welded themselves even more to the Regime.

War is like violence. Leaders use it when they think they will get something useful out of it, at little to moderate cost. Convince the leaders that war and violence won't get them anything except a swift execution... and people might think twice, apart from the fanatics.

The Pax Americana used to do just that, promise swift and total retaliation. But the Pax Americana is dead, Americans watched over it as Hussein's Regime killed it. And people don't even speak about the carcass, but pretends it is still living.


As for external enemies that might attack America, the scenario I envisioned is that Islam takes over Europe's nukes, and while the US Patriots are busy expending all their firepower on internal traitors and Demoncrats, Islam will take it all over or merely destroy what's left.

The US Civil War 2 must be brought to a conclusion, even now it is getting quite late. If the US is caught in a civil war, it will take more damage than the last several hundred years combined. But civil war 2 is unavoidable and inevitable. Thus it must be brought to a conclusion as soon as feasible, if America is to stand united against foreign threats. Currently, the foreign threats will take a long time to conquer or stabilize themselves, Russia and China included with Islam's new Caliphates. Hussein Obola hastened the work by funding terrorists, however. Without US support or funding, they would have needed at least another 25-50 years to get set, had Iraq and Afghanistan sucked in Islam's firepower and resources for at least a few more years.

However, until a culture emerges that is entirely anti Left and hates the Left's very existence, Civil War 2 cannot be fought except as a one sided slaughter. Until the advent of the Alternate Right coalition and alliance, that culture did not exist as I perceived it. Now, it is potentially feasible at least.


Also, even without a hot civil war, can America fight off Islam and the rest, while Leftist traitors open the gates to the barbarians? I seriously doubt that. The refugees and Islam boys they are importing, will destroy the women and children, spiritually and physically. America will not have any women to continue the generations, under Islamic or Leftist occupation.

Ymar Sakar said...

Stuart, I agree, but I kinda thought our nation was going through a crisis.

A personal crisis is required for change. The pain of death is required for a person to challenge their own flaws and weaknesses.

A "crisis" by your leaders, isn't it, it isn't personal and it is something that can be delegated or rationalized. Besides, power struggles happen all the time in large organizations, doesn't mean the average commoner is forced to change their life identity because of it.