How to Cope with the Re-Election of President Obama

The election is settled.  Barack Obama's tenure as president of the United States is to continue.  America's race off the edge of the cliff will continue unabated.

With the failure of the Republicans to capture either the White House or the Senate, it is clear to see that America is ruled by a majority that believes that the pillars that once made us great, Freedom, Strength, Prosperity, and Morality, are instead problems to be solved.  And the Democrats have shown, in their legislation, their policies, and their words, that they have the will to solve those problems.

Remembering the words of Ronald Reagan, we see that government of the people, by the people, for the people, is now to become government AT the people.  Or, to paraphrase a video from this year's Democratic National Convention, we all belong to the government now.

Republicans, meanwhile, will momentarily be in full blame mode.  It's what they do instead of winning -- they blame.  Some will blame Romney, as a poor nominee.  Some will blame his advisors or his poor campaign.  Some will blame his choice of running mate.  Many, of course, will blame social conservatives, those who want to protect the unborn, or defend traditional marriage, or religious liberty, or the right to bear arms.  Some will blame "birthers", as though a desire to assure that the president actually meets the Constitutional qualifications for his office is a fault.  Some will blame "the religious right", and others, more up-to-date, will blame the Tea Party, those racists!  Some will blame the media, but they are too modest to accept credit for their triumph.  Let me cut this short:  nobody's off the hook.  There's plenty of blame to go around, and the GOP will spend the next several months on little else.

Meanwhile, what can we little people do?  we ordinary folks, who've been out working our jobs or running our businesses, saving our money, raising our kids, paying our bills and our taxes and our debts, and living our lives?  Us ordinary people who have never voted for our own pay raise, or considered moving our yacht to another state where it will be taxed less?  We've been playing the game by the rules.  And now, for once and all, we've been shown to be fools.  We've been playing a fools' game, and now the playing field and the rules have officially and permanently changed.  If we don't change with it, we'll be the ones ground into dust when the economy comes grinding to a halt.

And grind to a halt it will.  The economy, and probably our entire social and governmental structure is going to collapse dramatically.  Nothing can stop it now.  We are in the predicament of a woman in labor:  the only way out, is through.  Therefore, the best thing to do is to bring it about as quickly as possible, in order to reduce the pain to everyone involved.  Otherwise, the political, social and economic collapse of the United States could stretch out for the rest of this century.

Republicans, and much less conservatives, will never govern nationally in the United States again.  The relationship between the government and the governed has changed, and this election has cemented the change in place.  It will never be possible to go back.  Under the old rules, this would be a time to congratulate on their victory the people who are about to complete the final subjugation of the decent, hardworking people  who still play by those rules.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, goes the old saying.  We couldn't beat 'em.  It's time to join 'em.

We have to recognize that the rules have changed, the playing field is different, the goals have been moved.  Things that were once considered honorable or shameful no longer are.  Honor and shame have both been eliminated.  Pride is no longer the reward of virtue, but the celebration of what we used to call sin.

All the advice that follows should be read with the following two imperatives in mind:

I.   Don't break the law.
II.  Don't do more than you must.

Nothing of what follows should be taken to contradict either of these things.  Now, if you are what we used to call a decent person, some of this advice may shock, dismay, or offend you.    Hang on anyway, because I have a special message for you at the end.

And obviously, I can't tell anyone what to do.  You must act as you think best, and avoid responsibility as best you can -- but you can't put the responsibility off on me.  Here's my advice, you might want to think about whether it's right for you:

1.  If you own a business, sell or liquidate it.  America is now ruled by people who believe that they are entitled to as much of your business as they may want, and that you are entitled to no more than they deign to allow.  You're working for them now, and many new taxes, regulations, licensing requirements, zoning restrictions, etc., will be heaped upon the old, with no consideration of or respect for your rights.

2.  If you are an employee, especially a public sector employee, don't do more than you must to keep your job.  Take your full entitlement of sick days, vacation days, personal days, etc.  Take full advantage of all your benefits.  Ask for more.  If you are in a union, go on strike as often as possible.  If you're not in a union, unionize if you can.  Don't stretch, don't work overtime without being paid for it, don't (if you're a supervisor) require overtime or extra effort from the people under you.

3.  If you are unemployed, don't try to look for a job.  Apply for every public and private handout you can.  Don't let your pride stop you, if you've any left.  Pride is for the rich.  Get as much as you can.

4.  If you have a mortgage, default on it.  If you have a loan, default on it.  If you have credit card debt, stop paying on it.  If you can, file bankruptcy.  If you have student loan debt, put it in forbearance or default on it.  Get out of debt if you can, avoid debt as much as possible, but don't pay it off unless you have no other choice.  (You would be amazed at how long you can stay in a house you've stopped paying the mortgage on.)

5.  If you donate to a church or religious organization, stop.  If the churches had been doing their jobs the past sixty years instead of hopping into bed with the sexual revolution and the Democratic Party, we wouldn't be in this mess.

6.  If you pray, stop.  God could have raised up better leaders for our nation, could have given us the grace we needed to elect someone better.  God could have preserved our freedoms, ended abortion, saved traditional marriage and ended war and corruption.  You've been praying for these things for years.  It's time to face up to the fact that the answer to your prayers is "no".  How many people have prayed "deliver us from evil," of the God who has now delivered our nation into evil?

7.  If you donate to charity, stop.  Help your friends and family if you can, but don't give to charitable organizations of any kind.  Under the new rules, that's the government's job.

8.  If you are a college student, stay in school as long as you can.  Get another degree.  Take out another federal student loan, apply for another grant.  And if you're unemployed, try to go back to school.

9.  If you are serving in the military, don't re-enlist, unless you are gaining some benefit from serving.  The American values you signed up to defend are no longer honored in America.  Are you really so willing to lay down your life for Obamacare, abortion, gay "marriage", and the auto-industry bailout?  If you are considering military service, only join if you are assured of a benefit you can't get another way.

10.  Adopt a new moral code, better adapted to the new realities we face.  Part of that new reality is that all morality is relative, and no one may force their moral code on anyone else.  Divine revelation has been overthrown as a moral authority.  That leaves you to be your own moral authority.  (The fact that all law enforces someone's morality is to be disregarded in the New America.)  If someone objects to your new moral code, just tell them they can't force their morality down your throat.  You're no longer allowed to cite God as an objective moral authority equally binding on everyone.  So why should you allow anyone else to cite any lesser authority to be binding on you?

11.  If you have children in private or parochial school, or if you homeschool, put them in public school instead.  They will need to learn how to survive in the new world, which will require skills you cannot teach.

12.  Don't buy anything new that you can buy used.  Don't spend a lot on anything you can buy cheap.  Don't dine out at Morton's or Ruth's Chris, go to Applebees, or better yet McDonald's.  Reuse anything you can, but don't recycle unless you have to.  Don't see movies at the theater.  Don't buy DVDs or download movies, either, rent them.  Netflix, not iTunes.  Hit the thrift store, not the furniture store, CarMax, not the dealership.  Wal-Mart, not Saks.  Give up or curtail expensive hobbies.  Don't buy new golf clubs, and if you must play a round, do it at the municipal course; drop your country club membership.  And as much as you can, avoid activities that are attended by fees or taxes.

13.  Don't speak up, don't stand out.  Don't write letters to the editor; in fact, cancel your subscription to the newspaper and any news magazines you may take.  Don't post your opinions to Twitter, Facebook or your blog.  Don't comment on political, religious, or social issues.  Cultivate interests in sports, pop music, arts & crafts, cooking, home improvement, and reality television.  Don't vote.

14.  Consistent with #4 above, don't build or buy a house!  Rent your home.  If you own a home you can't get rid of, rent it out if you can, and live somewhere cheaper.  But do treat your tenants well, I might be one.

15.  If you are an alien, legal or illegal, return to your country of origin if you can.  Things are about to get bad here.  If you are a naturalized citizen, or an alien who cannot go home again for whatever reason, then I'm sorry.  The American Dream you probably came here for has now been officially abandoned.

16.  If you are an orthodox Christian minister of any denomination, start making plans to go into hiding, unless you nurture an ambition to become a martyr.  Orthodox preachers will be martyred in America in the near future for the "hate crime" of preaching traditional Christian morality.  It happened in Mexico less than a century ago.  It can happen here, now.

17.  If there's something you've always wanted to do but haven't because it was immoral, indulge yourself.  We now live in a degraded culture, where anything goes.

18.  Buy a gun.  Buy ammunition for your gun.  Buy more ammunition for your gun.  Learn to shoot it and take care of it.  Buy more ammunition.  Soon there will be a complete breakdown of law and order.  But in the meantime, know and follow the laws regarding guns in your area.  And buy more ammunition.

19.  If you are in the stock market, get out.  If you have cash, buy gold.  Soon, stocks, bonds, financial instruments of every kind, and even cash, will lose most or all of their value.

20.  Demand as your due anything you can possibly get from the government.  Under the new rules, you have a "right" to anything you want to argue for.  And unlike the old rules, if it's a "right" then you're entitled to have the government provide it for free, or make someone else provide it free to you at their expense.

21.  Do not have any more children.  Children are a great blessing and source of much wealth, economic and otherwise.  They are also a short term financial burden comparable to little else. 

22.  The time for "tolerance" is over.  Those who disagree with you or disapprove of you will not extend tolerance to you, and you should get out of the habit of showing tolerance for them.  Call them names, make them mad, do to them what they do to you.  Reject their morality just as forcefully as they reject yours.  We're in the minority now, let's take a lesson on how to effectively be in the minority.

The America of the future has three classes:  A ruling class, a productive class, and a dependent class.  The ruling class will tax and regulate the productive class in order to give largesse to the dependent class, who will then continue to vote to keep the ruling class in power.  One class is to be hosed for the benefit of the other two.  The election of 2012 was our last chance to forestall this from coming about, and we blew it.  We all belong to the government, remember.  The only concern now is not to be in that productive class who will be forced, like the Horse in Orwell's Animal Farm, to work ever harder, even until he drops, for the benefit of others.  If you're pulling the wagon, it's time to take a break, climb aboard, and let the other fools pull you.

Now, if you are a "decent person" as we used to say, you're probably not very happy about this advice.  I promised you a special message, but I didn't promise it would make you happy:  Most people -- all the people who just voted to re-elect Obama -- are already doing most of this.  If you're not, you're a fool.  Maybe a proud fool, or a godly fool, or a holy fool, but a fool, and you will soon be parted not only from your money, but also your freedom.

For myself, I don't believe that there will long remain many who can afford such pride or righteousness.

Now, you may well ask, "what if everyone did this?"  Of course, "everyone" won't.  But if enough people do enough of this program, then the entire national structure, the economy, the banking system, the monetary system, the investment system, the political structure, everything, will come crashing to the ground, sometime around next July, I think.

And then, if we haven't completely forgotten what real virtue is, we can rebuild America from scratch, and maybe this time we won't listen to that minority that wants to force us to call good evil, and evil good.  In the meantime, whether you take my advice or not, we're all in for some rough times.

The End of American Military Power

We haven't yet reached the end of American military power, but you can see it from here.  Wes Pruden has the story:

Many of these soldiers, sailors and Marines feel betrayed by the senior officers of the services, beginning with the commander in chief. The old customs and traditions which have held the services together through war and peace have been scorned and trashed, replaced with the politically correct attitudes and regulations that gag real men. Even saying so is a sure way for an officer to ruin a career. The men in the ranks understand this, too.

The Army’s Center for Army Leadership at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., asked 16,800 commissioned and non-commissioned officers whether they think “the Army is headed in the right direction to prepare for the challenges of the next 10 years.” Their answers, as reported by CNS.com, ought to be enough to scare a commander in chief straight. His defense chief, too. But it won’t, because they’re exactly the men responsible for the survey results.

Only 26 percent – 1 man in 4 – say they think the Army is on track to continue as the scourge of evildoers who yearn to do the republic ill. Nearly 40 percent say the service is headed in the wrong direction, and 36 percent say they don’t have an opinion (and no doubt if they did, they’re smart enough to keep it to themselves).

The pessimists – or “realists,” as they might be called – cite two reasons. One is the hollowing out of the military as proposed by President Obama, and the other is the stifling effects of the politically correct run amok. They don’t understand why the men entrusted to manage the Army go along without protest with the nonsense mandated by the White House. Generals and admirals, just like shavetail lieutenants, know who punches their tickets.

 The Politically Correct Army depends on a poor economy for its recruits, and the public schools training those recruits will, increasingly, produce men and women who are poorly suited to the discipline of military service.  One shudders to consider what will be left of the military after four more years of President Obama. 

And yet, consider it we must.  With the automatic budget cuts coming to the military at the end of this year, which no one has acted to prevent, new projects will have to be cancelled, old ones scaled back.  Ships will be mothballed, without being replaced.  Manpower will be cut, but it may still be difficult to find sufficient recruits of adequate quality.  Personnel currently serving should not be counting on pay raises between promotions.

Moreover, with declining discipline, I predict a day when we see surveys rating military bases as the best "party bases", much like we now people rating colleges as the best "party schools."  I can't wait to have my tax money go for that; can you?

The Question

George Weigel is beginning to get it:

What's coming won't be this pretty.

If everything in the human condition is plastic and malleable—if there are no givens—then claims to “my truth” on which you cannot legitimately impose “your truth” make sense. If, on the other hand, some things simply are—such as the human dignity of the unborn child or the nature of marriage—then we can learn what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is conducive to human happiness or conducive to human misery, by pondering those givens and trying to discern the deep truths they teach us about ourselves and how we should live: truths that have been illuminated for centuries by biblical religion.

America began with the assertion of deep truths written into the human condition by “Nature, and Nature’s God” (as the Declaration of Independence put it). In an election season likely to be dominated by very practical (and important) questions about the economy, it will be well to keep a deeper, more searching set of questions in mind: Are we still a nation dedicated to certain moral truths? If so, how do we recover an ability to talk about those truths together?

And if not, what have we become?

Weigel doesn't offer an answer.  I would argue that to ask the question is to answer it.  No, we're not still such a nation, and what we've become is something that will quickly devolve into something horrible.  Orwell's character Winston Smith wrote in his diary that "freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two is five.  Once that is granted, all else follows."  That freedom is fundamentally at risk.  

(Pretty girl H/T: Stormbringer)

How Hatred Became a Liberal Value

Paul Rahe explains (H/T:  Dyspepsia Generation):

Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl in "Batman & Robin"

I remember when liberals sported on their automobiles bumper stickers reading, “Hatred is not a Family Value.” Then, back in 2003, in The New Republic, Jonathan Chait wrote an essay explaining why it was legitimate to hate George W. Bush, and the dam burst. Civility is no longer a liberal ideal. And now – as yesterday’s armed attack on the Family Research Council in Washington, the five-hour delay in President Obama’s condemnation of the act as he calculated whether it was in his interest to comment or not, and the mainstream media’s initial reluctance to report on the event, much less highlight the activist LGBT connections of the shooter suggest – left liberals are willing to wink at violence. It may be regrettable, they think, but, like stealing elections, it is all in a good cause – and before figuring out how to respond to an outbreak of violence on the part of their allies, they pause to calculate the political consequences. You will not hear liberals arguing for a crackdown on the use of force by animal-rights activists, environmental activists, union thugs, and the Occupy movement.  [Emphasis added.]

Read it all.   Liberals have been about hating what is good for a very, very long time.  They hate babies and children, they hate authentic religious faith, they hate traditional marriage, they hate economic prosperity.  And they hate, they hate, they hate the people who stand in their way as they try to destroy these things.

Cardinal George on How the Culture is Changed

But will he figure out how to do it himself?

Chicago Archbishop Francis Cardinal George revisits the Chick-fil-A issue, and observes how the left has moved the culture by excluding entire vistas of context (H/T:  BackyardConservative):

An argument is always made in a context that determines what can be considered sensible, and it seems to me that some of us are arguing out of different contexts. 

There are three contexts for discussing “gay marriage”: 1) the arena of individual rights and their protection in civil law, 2) the field of activities defined by nature and its laws, and 3) the realm of faith as a response to God’s self-revelation in history.  Unfortunately, when the only permissible context for discussing public values is that of individual rights protected by civil law, then it is the government alone that determines how it is acceptable to act.  Every public actor (including faith communities) then becomes the government’s agent.  This is a formula for tyranny.

We can see how appeals to pluralism and toleration gradually become tyrannical in the development of how we are now expected to regard the killing of unborn children.  When the individual civil right to abort a living child was discovered in the Constitution, its justification began as a “necessary evil” for the sake of a woman’s health; it was then applauded in nobler terms as a positive symbol of a woman’s freedom; it is now part of the value system of our society and everyone must be involved in paying for it, either through taxes or insurance.  It is mainstream medicine and settled social policy.  Its opponents are relegated to a quirky fringe, outside of the American consensus not only on what it is legal to do but also on what it is good to support.  When the government, the media and the entertainment industries agree to agree on how to use words and shape the argument, society itself is deliberately transformed in ways that bring academics, judges, legislators, lawyers, law enforcement officers, newspaper editors, actors, psychiatrists, doctors and every other public professional into public agreement, all portraying themselves as original thinkers.  Anyone opposed to the new consensus, no matter the reason, is dismissed as a throwback to an earlier age, to be tolerated, perhaps, but removed from public life and, eventually, punished.  It’s a very old story.

The Cardinal is exactly right.  But he's been standing on the sidelines watching it happen his entire life.  Now what's he going to do about it?  People on the wrong side of these issues go to communion every Sunday, every day, some of them, in the Chicago Archdiocese.  Evidently, it's OK with Cardinal George for someone to stand up in his territory and say "I'm Catholic and gay is OK!  Abortion is OK!"  There are no consequences for this, even for the most famous and power Catholics.  Until the Church starts flexing its muscle, and getting into the game, it's going to be relegated to a seat on the 50-yard line to watch as western culture completes its slide into the gutter, taking the economy with it.

A Fool's Game

a manifesto

Western culture has all but fallen.  Only a few dominos are left, and little stands in the way to prevent their fall.

Our culture has been nearly been defeated not by people who exploited its weaknesses, but by those who abused its strengths:  its generosity, its liberty, its sense of order and justice, its courtesy, its idealism, but most of all its tolerance.  In balance, these things made for the richest, most free, most virtuous society in history.  We fought wars for good causes, we went to the moon in peace, we elevated the highest moral values, we treated each other with respect and goodwill -- not perfectly, never perfectly, but better than any human society had ever done in history.

The America of the future has three classes:  A ruling class, a productive class, and a dependent class.  The ruling class will tax and regulate the productive class in order to give largesse to the dependent class, who will then continue to vote to keep the ruling class in power.  One class is to be hosed for the benefit of the other two.  The election of 2012 is our last chance to forestall this from coming about, and our only hope, God help us, is Mitt Romney and the Republican Party. 

It's really not fair.  If President Obama is re-elected, and particularly if the Republicans fail to decisively take control of Congress, America will be locked into course for at least a generation that no future president will be able to substantially alter.  The relationship between the government and the governed will have been altered.  Government will no longer exist for the people, but the people for the government.  People will no longer be self-reliant, they will be reliant upon the government.  The exceptions will be despised, reviled, and eventually hunted down and eliminated.

But if Obama is not re-elected, or if the GOP takes Congress to such an extreme extent as no one is today predicting, it won't mean that we are saved from that outcome.  It will only mean the the outcome will be, temporarily, less certain.

Our choice is not between good and evil, but between mediocrity and evil.  The good work of the Tea Party remains incomplete.  It must now unseat a president if it hopes to gain time to complete its reform work.  This is a completion that is by no means certain.  In the last 70 years, only three incumbent presidents have been defeated for re-election.

The rules of the game of life in America have changed fundamentally.  Increasingly, those who have tried to play by the rules find that the game is rigged against them.  Advancement, at least by honorable means, is less easy, and much less common, than it used to be.  Advancement by dishonorable means, on the other hand, has been easier and more common.  Costs have risen faster than wages.  Government growth has outstripped population growth.  Interlocking directorships, crony capitalism, liberal redistributionism, conservative apathy, and greed at every level have combined to place the middle class everyman in the sights of a cannon that will blow him away entirely.  His slavery is nearly complete, the last of his shackles has only to be locked.

The re-election of Barack Obama will put the seal on a time of public dependence and government oppression unheard-of in the history of the North American continent.  Government will choose whether a man will be born, when he will die, how he will be educated, and what will be his work.  Government will dictate what he is to believe, how he is to be entertained, and how he will live.  It will be done in the name of "fairness" and "equality", but the result will be neither.

This prediction may seem extreme.  But things in America are far worse under Barack Obama than anyone predicted in 2008.  Did anyone in 2008 predict the outrages, the enormities, the privations we have in fact experienced?  No.  As it is, things in most sectors are worse than most people realize.  Our economy is depressed, our culture degraded, our freedom denigrated, and our military decimated.  Morality has been turned upside down.  Virtue has become a weapon used by the immoral against the virtuous.  Courts, once the guardians of justice, have become our black-robed masters, who ride roughshod over law, and precedent, and justice itself, to rule like feudal lords over legislatures and their constituents alike.  Judges in America now order legislatures to pass laws, wielding power that executives can only dream of.

Our borders are porous, and, lured by tales of streets lined in gold, uncounted millions illegally cross them, a silent invasion that depresses wages, and creates a sullen, exploited underclass beyond the protection of law, at once both perpetrators and victims of crime.

A million or more of our children die each year by abortion, and those who disapprove are sued or legislated into silence, and forced to pay for the procedure through both their taxes and their insurance premiums..  The federal government has declared open war on traditional religious morality, and with the approval of huge swaths of the populace, notably those influenced by the mainstream news and entertainment media, academia, and those seeking benefits from government cronyism.

The much pleaded-for (by liberals, gays, and other minority groups) age of tolerance has been brought to an end as these groups have gained ascendance, and turned upon authentic Christians with a level of bile and vitriol never before seen in modern America, nor, indeed (outside of communist nations) since the days of ancient Rome.  The sole societal institution oriented towards the care of children has been weakened to the point of collapse, and the wrecking ball is poised to destroy it utterly.

The rules of the game have changed, the playing field altered, the goalposts have been moved.  If you are still playing by the old rules, you are playing a fool's game.

With this blog, I will discuss these trends, and how you can address them.