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Buy the Book
The Kultursmog Is Kaput
Dr. Tyrrell’s obituary for the Obama era — but will the zombies retain control for another four years?
The Death of Liberalism
By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
(Thomas Nelson, 208 pages, $19.99)
In the army of American conservatives, Bob Tyrrell packs a unique punch. Not for him the heavy artillery of a Charles Krauthammer or a George Will, nor the shock troops of the Kristols and Podhoretzes, père et fils. Instead, Tyrrell resembles the Navy SEALs: a special force who operates behind enemy lines, light on his feet and breathtaking in his daring. He has been harrying the forces of the left for nigh on half a century, but he has never lost his taste for hand-to-hand combat, nor his impish wit. When Bill Buckley died, the American Right lost its intellectual leader, and he has yet to be replaced; but as long as Bob Tyrrell has anything to do with it, conservatives will go on taking the fight to their opponents. It is not in his nature to adopt the comfortable role of Grand Old Man; he may be a veteran of countless journalistic campaigns, but his eagle eye is firmly focused on the future of the republic. In fact, the aptly named R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. may only just be reaching his prime. Proof that Tyrrell possesses the elixir of eternal youth is his new book, The Death of Liberalism. This obituary for the Obama era is as sprightly and mischievous as we have come to expect from his pen, but it gains additional force from two factors.
The first is the sheer awfulness of the destination toward which the land of Manifest Destiny seems to be headed under the enlightened despotism of the Community-Organizer-in-Chief. Thus the diagnosis of what ails America that Dr. Tyrrell has been giving us for forty years has now been overtaken by events; hence his prognosis is more likely to be taken seriously. It will be taken seriously, that is, at least by those Americans (the vast majority) who love their country, do not relish the wave of pessimism now sweeping it, and, rather than treating its decline as a given fact, want something to be done about reversing it. It is not, after all, America that is in decline, but American Liberalism. Only someone who identifies completely the fortunes of Liberalism with those of the United States; who regards those who do not share his Liberal politics as Un-American; who thinks those who “cling to guns or religion” are of no account; only such a person could occupy (I use the word deliberately) the White House for three years without any discernible inkling of what makes America exceptional.
The second factor is the thoroughness of his post mortem on the cadaverous relics of Liberalism. Whether in theory or practice, the grisly evidence that rigor mortis set in long ago is laid out here on the slab for inspection. Tracing the history of the movement from its heyday in the Thirties and Forties, through the Coat and Tie Radicals of the Sixties to the Stealth Socialists of the present, Tyrrell gives the reader chapter and verse of who said what, when, and to whom. But that is not all. The intellectual defects of the Liberal project are also set out in clinical detail, from Rousseau to Rawls and Rorty, along with the follies of the academic and journalistic cheerleaders for the (now somewhat moth-eaten) New Politics, who have done their best to indoctrinate generations of students with the historical inevitability of Liberalism.
Tyrrell follows Buckley in making an orthographical distinction between the classical liberals of the remote past—for whom the preservation of liberty really was a touchstone—and the Liberals of modern times. That capital “L” stands for a radical ideology that is the very opposite of the political creed of the Founding Fathers and their greatest successors, from Lincoln to Reagan. They all subscribed to ideas which are nowadays regarded as conservative—fidelity to the Constitution and the Rule of Law, to the Judeo-Christian ethics of the Bible, to the freedom of the market, a limited government, and representative democracy. Tyrrell traces the origins of postwar Liberalism back to the Progressives of the late 19th and early 20th century. One of their leaders, Woodrow Wilson, demonstrated a characteristic Progressive attitude when he demanded “permission…to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle,” by which he meant that “a nation is a living thing and not a machine.” But as Tyrrell points out, the Founding Fathers intended no such thing. Their checks and balances, their separation of powers, already incorporated the evolutionary principle that Wilson invoked, allowing interests to compete but preventing the tyranny of the majority or of Big Government.
THE ARROGANCE OF the Progressives was inherited by the Liberals, whose sense of moral superiority sometimes renders them incapable of engaging in debate with conservatives—especially when that moralism is augmented by intellectual and social snobbery. It is ludicrous to suppose that the Liberal media would condescend to give a white working-class Catholic the same generous treatment as they once gave a black middle-class Harvard academic. Yet former Senator Santorum has at least as strong credentials to run for President as Senator Obama had four years ago.
The suffocating self-righteousness of the Liberal establishment blinds it to the fact that it has, as Tyrrell shows, turned its back on the very people who once formed the backbone of the Democratic Party. And those electors in turn have turned their backs on the Liberals: the striving, upwardly mobile working and middle classes that elected Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson have mostly given up on a party that no longer speaks for them or the things they hold dear. Hubert Humphrey was one of the last of the old-style Democrats who could properly claim to speak for this grand coalition of working and middle-class voters, which used anti-Communist labor unions, church, and synagogue to incorporate ethnic communities into Democratic politics. The coalition had proved so formidable that even an arch-conservative like Nixon was obliged to trim his sails in order to defeat Humphrey in 1968. Yet within a few years, the Democrats had chosen George McGovern, a Liberal of the most extreme hue, as their leader. Ever since McGovern, the Democratic Party has been held hostage by well-heeled Liberals, even if most presidential candidates have run as moderates. And, as Charles Murray shows in his new book Coming Apart, these upper class Liberals loathe middle-class values.
What is the explanation for this hijacking of one of the world’s most formidable electoral machines? In a word—and it is a word of Tyrrell’s coinage—it was the Kultursmog. Back in Truman’s time, his aide Clark Clifford observed with great prescience: “The ‘right’ may have the money, but the ‘left’ has always had the pen.” Throughout the New Deal and the war, FDR enabled Liberals to avoid making hard choices: they could flirt with Communism without embracing it. Then, in what Tyrrell calls “Liberalism’s first civil war” of the late Forties, the Liberals had to decide whether to support former Vice President Henry Wallace, who ran against Truman on a Progressive ticket, surrounded and manipulated by the Communists and fellow travelers he ludicrously dubbed “Gideon’s Army.” To their credit, the Liberals chose Truman. But over the next few decades, the tough-minded Liberal anti-Communism typified by Max Ascoli and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was supplanted by the sentimental, paranoid, and illiberal Liberalism that has gradually come to permeate so much of American public life. The Kultursmog is the cultural-political complex—Liberalism’s answer to the military-industrial complex.
Some of the characteristic vices of Liberalism have been there from the start: the arrogance and smugness; the readiness to spend other people’s money; the sense of entitlement, as if they owned the political mainstream and all other views were extreme. Other vices, however, have emerged mainly since the Sixties: the fear of progress and prosperity, propped up by a self-serving industry that feeds on apocalyptic anxieties; the assumption that the West in general and America in particular are always to blame and always in decline; the fatal embrace of libertine lifestyles and of moral and cultural relativism; the refusal even to engage with conservatives, let alone to compromise with them for the sake of all; the ascendency of feelings over facts, public displays of emotion as a substitute for action; above all, a total and lethal lack of any sense of humor.
Contemporary Liberalism does not add up to an attractive package of beliefs. This ought not to matter to those who are not Liberals and have no stake in their privileged status. But the regulation of professional and personal relationships by political correctness and the usurpation of the legal system by the hypertrophy of human rights mean that Liberal ideology has insinuated itself into more and more spheres of private and public life. Because Liberals have insisted that countless fields in which people used to mind their own business should instead become the Government’s business, dealing with the Liberal mindset has become everybody’s business. That is why Bob Tyrrell’s book is indispensable.
THE TITLE OF THE BOOK ALONE should lift the spirits. This is not one of those gloomy tomes that list endless outrageous case-histories of ordinary folks being humiliated by officialdom or that play on the conservative penchant for pessimism. In 2009, when the euphoria surrounding Obama’s victory had yet to be dispelled, Sam Tanenhaus rushed out an ephemeral exercise in Schadenfreude: The Death of Conservatism. With the birth of the Tea Party that year, even the most fanatical Liberals were forced to concede that reports of the death of conservatism had been exaggerated.
Tyrrell believes on the contrary that it is Liberalism, not conservatism, that is moribund, having been intellectually dead for decades, and he sets out to prove it. Marx claimed that capitalism would collapse under the weight of its contradictions; he was wrong, of course, but in 1989 his own brainchild, Communism, actually did just that. Its collapse did grievous collateral damage to social democracy (the European term for what Americans call Liberalism). The left suffered a mortal blow to its credibility everywhere at the hands of the peoples of Eastern Europe. Various bids were made to resurrect the old Liberal doctrines under new guises, but all failed. The most successful center-left politicians have been those, such as Tony Blair, who conceded that the game was up and embraced a more limited role for government, at least in the economy.
Then the financial crisis exhumed Liberalism from the graveyard of history. Barack Obama may not look like a zombie, but in Tyrrell’s view that is precisely what he is. His administration has no new ideas and can have none because Liberalism is intellectually dead. The President himself Tyrrell describes as the Stealth Socialist, because of his relentless drive to bring the U.S. economy under his control, while leaving posterity to pay the check. In just three years, he has nearly doubled national debt from 40.3 percent of GDP to 72 percent. Even if he loses in November, his legacy will be the fiscal equivalent of the Augean stables—but where is the Republican Hercules to clean them out? It is not easy to imagine Romney, say, getting his mitts dirty in the ways that will be necessary to get America back on track.
What, though, if Obama wins again? Stealth Socialism is not the end of the story. After that, argues Tyrrell, comes Friendly Fascism. Given a second term and control of both houses of Congress, the President would mutate into a dictator in all but name. “The blueprint for the future of the American left, if it can ever resurrect, is fascism with a friendly face.” From Obamacare to the Dodd-Frank Act, the net effect of Obama’s policies is to reduce democratic oversight over the executive. Sinister new agencies, such as the Consumer Federal Protection Bureau, will enforce the new order.
Tyrrell is not the first to issue such warnings: Jonah Goldberg wrote a book and a blog entitled “Liberal Fascism,” and others too have played variations on the theme. On this point I part company from Tyrrell, for the same reason that I don’t like it when Liberals accuse conservatives of being fascists—as the late Tony Judt denounces Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich in his posthumous book Thinking the Twentieth Century. Mussolini may have started out as a leftist schoolteacher, but Obama is no Mussolini.
Tyrrell, though, concedes that this Liberal fascism will remain “an unrealized American nightmare” if the electorate follows through the repudiation of the Democrats that began in 2010. “The numbers,” as Tyrrell repeatedly reminds us, “are against the zombies. They are outnumbered two to one by the conservatives, and when we throw in the moderates, or independents as they are called, it gets worse…President Obama is dead in the water.”
Amen to that. But there is a real danger: conservative pessimism. The Kultursmog would have us think that Obama is sailing to an easy victory. If the Republican candidate, whoever it may be, loses heart and starts to believe this, he may appear as what used to be called a trimmer—a wavering, havering appeaser, jettisoning moral principles as he goes in a last desperate attempt to ingratiate himself with voters. The danger to America is not that, given a chance, Obama would morph into il Duce in designer gear. It is that a pseudo-conservative Republican, lacking what the late James Q. Wilson called “moral sense,” will hand over the White House to the zombies for another four years.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (148) | Leave a comment
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Tweety| 5.18.12 @ 6:46AM
I think one of the worst aspects of Obama is that he is a psychopath if the type that, at the time he uttering his lies, he actually believes them. Hitler had the same trick, and it makes it that much harder to argue against.
Alan Brooks| 5.18.12 @ 3:02PM
May of 1996, three and a half years into Clinton's administration, you guys were writing his obit.
Not so fast.
TLP| 5.18.12 @ 6:56AM
You'll pardon me, if I don't share your enthusiastic Man Crush, on Mr. Terrell.
Evidently, you were too busy in the Bathroom, with this Month's Spectator, and the bottle of Jergens, to notice that we have just Crossed the line of No Return, and Inevitable Ruin. The Rubicon of what has made this Country in to the Greatest, Freest Nation in the History of the World.
We have just become a Majority Minority Country.
If this were a Video Game?
GAME OVER would be flashing on and off on the screen, right now.
The Death of Liberalism?
If you ask me, we're looking at AFRICA, after the Europeans left.
Think: Rhodesia vs Zimbabwe.
Mimi| 5.18.12 @ 9:48AM
Tim...not so fast..the African American is 13% of the population...what they are calling MINORITY births includes hispanic also.
We need to solve our immigration problems. That dept. needs a complete overhaul. A moratorium done before in our history would benefit! We have been too welcoming and need to step back and assimilate the NEW people to maintain our culture but more importantly our democracy and American ideals!
gearjammer| 5.18.12 @ 4:18PM
In mixed marriage, the democrats ignore the white family tree and just ackowledge the minority part of the person( unless you are Zimmerman). Anyhow say a hispanic marries my son. I tell you right now that will not change him into a liberal. He did have a half hispanic girl frien for a few years and let us say a first hand look at us white folk altered alot of her biases.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 7:19PM
Apparently, she didn't have the same effect on the "white folk" in the opposite direction.
gearjammer| 5.18.12 @ 9:04PM
I had not been raised or my children raised in a way that was anti hispanic. She was raised in an urban anti white, anti traditional American world. Much of this was preached to her by white teachers and others. We and my family and friends did not fit what she was told we were like, and we were not cowardly pc whites we were ourselves. You don't own people of color-they own themselves.
emilio lizardo, PhD| 5.18.12 @ 9:55AM
You are hitting the bullseye today, first in your assessment of BHO vs Romney, and in the above. Death of Liberalism? You have got to be kidding. Tour any public school in the country or any institution of higher learning, public and private, to witness the indoctrination of the next generation of liberals, the sanitization of our language, the revision of our history, the preaching of the liberal dogma. The comparison to Africa above is apt: Detroit, St Louis, New Orleans, most of DC, Baltimore, Philly= Johannesburg.
janie| 5.19.12 @ 11:45AM
Yes, I must agree w/emilio, wake up and smell the dead roses. America will look assuredly like all areas of the country with a "gimme" attitude that are now bankrupt morally and fiscally. The children have been being "indoctrinated" in the schools to the ignorance of the parents in their indoctrination by the liberal press. What's truly unfortunate is that their so called "intellectuals" will go down (with the rest of America in strength) in history as blowhard idiots to the nth degree.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 12:35PM
Wow - what a racist you are .. and you don't even try to hide it like most.
What do you have against Europeans anyway - you are descended from them I presume?
George True| 5.18.12 @ 12:42PM
You are the racist. He who pulls the race card IS the racist......always.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 2:30PM
So you condone that language? Surprising - well, maybe not. And your little trick ... "he who pulls... " is such an overused lame device. Doesn't change that he certainly is espousing racist jargon.
seeyoucant| 5.18.12 @ 2:34PM
That isn't a valid assessment, George True.
emilio lizardo, PhD| 5.18.12 @ 1:24PM
you are the true face of Liberalism- when confronted by fact, like the fact that many of our big cities are wastelands of crime, murder,mayhem and sociopathy, you offer only name calling as a means of rebuttal. Didnt like my comparison of same to Johannesburg? Fine. Let me offer Caracas, Sao Paolo, Rio. Does that still make me racist? Which I am not. But I am European.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 2:32PM
Are you talking to TLP? I was. I wasn't talking to you at all. Guess you couldn't figure it out.
Von Mises Jr| 5.18.12 @ 3:02PM
Did you figure out what Von Mises books you read yet, troll? You said that Von Mises, unlike me, knew what he was talking about.
Unless you read Mises, how would you know, troll? Can't answer my riddles and won't take my Mises quiz???
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 7:17PM
I graduated "simma cum laude" like you said your poor son did. That makes me a Von Mises expert, huh?
Von Mises Jr| 5.18.12 @ 11:45PM
"simma?" You can't even spell it and I am supposed to believe you averaged better than 3.8 GPA. You are truly a blithering idiot.
Purp| 5.19.12 @ 12:49AM
"Von Mises Jr| 5.18.12 @ 2:56PM
You did not graduate simma cum laude like my son.
What books did you read other than comic books, troll?" - Gee, look where I got the incorrect spelling of "simma cum laude" from ... from YOU, idiot. I thought you were stupid before and not even remembering what you said and that you were being mocked proves you're stupid. My God where does the right get these morons. And you think Von Mises isn't rolling in his grave - laughing at you? hahaha.... your poor son.
TLP| 5.19.12 @ 8:13AM
I think he meant that he Graduated semen cum a lotta. Referring to how he acquired whatever nonsensical, make believe Degree, one gets, when one spends his Class Time under the Prof's desk.
Help us out, Appleby.
What was your Semen Cum a Lotta Degree in, sweetheart?
Von Mises Jr| 5.19.12 @ 8:20AM
I guess that semen cum lotta is Perps new coffee drink inspired by Starbucks.
He is an "A" student that doesn't realize that "I" is next to "U" on the keyboard and missing the key by about an inch is enough of a reason not to answer any questions.
If dip stick doesn't know any Von Mises books, I will discuss Hayek books with him. But the troll will NOT ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS.
Because he can't.
Purp| 5.19.12 @ 10:35AM
Sign of a low intelligence individual that has to resort always to name calling and bodily fluids to make a point.
Purp| 5.19.12 @ 10:36AM
TLP, you shouldn't talk that way about Von Mises son ... that's who he and I were talking about. I can't believe you would be that nasty to your boyfriend's kid. Or did you do him too?
Von Mises Jr| 5.19.12 @ 9:54PM
Guess you can't answer questions on Von Mises or Hayek, troll?
What do you know? Try philosophy?
Aleena| 5.18.12 @ 2:18PM
There are no more cards in the race card deck. Every time you don't have the facts on your side or a good answer you whine about racism. It's not even annoying anymore; it's a bore.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 2:32PM
So you agree with TLP? Really?
TLP| 5.18.12 @ 4:03PM
I don't usually lower myself to respond to your Stupidity. But, for the sake of clearing the air, I will, just this time.
I used AFRICA, because, since the Europeans left, Africa has been a Hell on Earth, with repeated Genocides, Famines, Wars, and Piracy.
Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) used to EXPORT FOOD. Now they can't even feed themselves. South Africa used to be a Jewel. Now it is a Crime Infested Pig Hole. Somalia is a Death Infested, Crime Infested, Mess. Liberia is a Sewer, and Sudan, Uganda, and You Name It, are Pathetic Shells of what they used to be.
Facts are Facts, and The Truth is The Truth.
Deal with it.
emilio lizardo, PhD| 5.18.12 @ 4:31PM
as are the necrotic cores of most large American cities in the post-welfare state, where the police dont even bother to go any more, and life is nasty, brutish and short.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 7:15PM
Oh, and you are aware that many white people live in those "necrotic cores" aren't you? I wonder, have you ever lived there ? It would be interesting to know how you are so positive of your description.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 7:13PM
"we have just Crossed the line of No Return, and Inevitable Ruin." - what has that to do with Africa please?
"We have just become a Majority Minority Country." - what has that to do with Africa please?
"GAME OVER would be flashing on and off on the screen, right now." - what has that to do with Africa?
You set up the racial argument to be very afraid of the Minority Horde coming - and you think that isn't race-baiting and a racist screed?
It's just the latest in your diatribes against those that aren't like you. Not because of facts, but your prejudices and bigotry.
YOU deal with that.
Had you left the racism in your first post above off, you might have an argument to consider. But your overt racist rant completely destroys your own argument.
TLP| 5.18.12 @ 8:02PM
I already explained what I said.
If you're too Stupid to comprehend what I wrote, which you obviously are, then I can't help you, and will no longer waist time trying to.
Purp| 5.19.12 @ 12:51AM
You got that backwards, Chuckles - you don't even understand what you said apparently ... so move along, there isn't enough time to save your sorry dumb a**.
Alej| 5.19.12 @ 7:50AM
"What has that to do with Africe?"
It has to do with AFRICANS, sport. People like you.
Purp| 5.19.12 @ 10:32AM
did you bother to read what TLP said? How dumb can you be? You must be racist...
Oh, and for your information - calling someone African is not a perjorative - unless you are a racist. Thank you for outing yourself, pig.
KennesawJack| 5.18.12 @ 7:04AM
Daniel, you are so wrong about Obamarx not being a Mussolini. He is. From his fascist takeover of GM and Chrsyler to his jutting "chin-in-the-air" haughtiness to his narcissism. This is a dangerous man made more so by his disdain for the Constitution.
scotchieguy| 5.18.12 @ 10:24AM
I agree with your assessment, but Americans are not stupid. They rarely make the same mistake twice. This is looking alot like 1980 when the polls showed Carter was doing way better than he actually was doing. He lost in a landslide, and I predict Obama will too. The question is, will Romney have the stones to undo the damage?
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 12:35PM
You just hate Obama ... everything else comes from that, not facts, not truth. 'nuf said.
George True| 5.18.12 @ 12:46PM
The "hate" you speak of, if it is actually hate, is a hatred of lies and those who foster them.
Dustoff| 5.18.12 @ 2:17PM
Really. And the left SO loved Bush right.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 7:04PM
No, neither did the right... so what?
carnot| 5.18.12 @ 10:26PM
what the heck! there's a non sequitur for ya!
idalily| 5.18.12 @ 3:20PM
Purp seems to believe that hating Obama and facts/truth cannot co-exist. This is a perfect example of his complete lack of critical thinking skill. Thanks, Purp, for demonstrating your inability so well.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 7:07PM
"Purp seems to believe that hating Obama and facts/truth cannot co-exist." - Please explain in a careful, cogent argument how I believe that? How are they mutually existent?
Jive Bomber| 5.19.12 @ 3:03AM
My gosh, no one needs a "careful, cognent argument" to illustrate your shortcomings. Your own words have always sufficed.
Alej| 5.19.12 @ 7:52AM
Purp is a paradigm of why the old folks thought educating a knee grow was an exercise in futility, and a pimple on the derriere of culture.
Purp| 5.19.12 @ 10:29AM
Alej - Huh?
Purp| 5.19.12 @ 10:29AM
Okay, so we know you can't explain it now. move along.
Jack in Wi.| 5.18.12 @ 7:15AM
Bob Tyrrell wrote a couple books many years ago called ' The Liberal Crackup ' and ' The Conservative Crackup. ' They were pretty good. The culture was lost in the 1960's with the pill and the drive for legalized abortion. Since then homosexuality, divorce, slumping birth rates among the old line populations in both the USA and Europe have led to the influx of huge numbers of 3rd world people. a new culture is being built that I frankly don't like. There is nothing you and I can do about it. Things will sort themslves out.
Liberalism has been brain dead since the 1930's. Old line Conservatism has been dead since the 1990's when Buckley let the Neocons take control of his magazine. The only intellectual heft left in the conservative movement is in the Libertarian and Paleoconservative sections. They are the young people packing the halls for Ron Paul.
Romney has no intellectual gifts. He is poorly read on history, economics, and politicsal science. He is led around by the nose by his handlers and consultants. The fact that he may well be the next president is more due to the fact that Obama has been such a terrible one, then any love the people have for him. The only reason that his supporters give for voting him is that, he is not Obama.
Well I voted for McCain in 2008. He was an extreme warmonger who would of had us into wars with Iran, China, Russsia, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Venezuala, and Turkey. The Mad Bomber was unstable and would, of in my opinion, would have been worse then Obama has been. It would have been the final death of Conservatism.
Now we have Romney. Who isn't as unstable as McCain, but still is surrounded by the same old Neocons who have led the Party and movemnt to disaster after disaster. For me the fianal straw was when Kristol got up and said Liebermann would be Romney's Secretary of State. No thank you. I have had enough of wars led by chicken hawks for no sane reason.
chuck| 5.18.12 @ 7:30AM
Feeling a little bitter and angry this morning, Jack?
Mac Jehoff| 5.18.12 @ 7:45AM
Chuck, the old phart posts such crap so that his pals reading TAS will post comments about him and make his sorry day brighter.
Gary B| 5.18.12 @ 8:28AM
So, Mac... other than insulting Jack, what's your point? Are saying RINO Romney is okay with you?
After getting rid of Obama and his enabling Progressives, the Republican establishment is Public Enemy Number Two.
Truncheon| 5.18.12 @ 9:39AM
A cursory reading suggests that he's rejected the premises completely. Thus, your RINO insinuation is pointless.
In summary, his point would be that both you and Jack are comedic expressions of gratuitious self-validation as a substitute for actual thoughtfulness.
Gary B| 5.18.12 @ 10:20AM
Well, well... what we have here is a regular name-calling jamboree. Is this your definition of "actual thoughtfulness?"
I know it's a typo, but the use of "gratuitious" brings a chuckle. It's like a drill instructor yelling at recruits with his pants on the floor.
carnot| 5.18.12 @ 10:28PM
cool!
one step at a time it is.
Tom| 5.18.12 @ 8:01AM
Totally agree Jack in Wi.
Gary B| 5.18.12 @ 8:12AM
Jack, that's a good analysis. Is there a force for good anywhere out there? Seems the Tea Party, with its growing disgust for lying Republicans, is leading the way, along with the young Paul crowd that seems to really get it.
The more our young soldiers are sent out among foreign civilian populations in the largely bogus War on Terror, the more sense Ron Paul's anti-undeclared war argument makes.
Can kow towing to the criminal, drug-dealing president of Afghanistan and releasing Taliban fighters back into the wild to resume killing our young soldiers really be called an honorable war? The whole thing stinks to high heaven.
emilio lizardo, PhD| 5.18.12 @ 10:41AM
Agree Jack in Wi. And the only reason for voting for Romney is that he is not BHO is just gonna have to do.
TLP| 5.19.12 @ 8:16AM
Works for me.
janie| 5.19.12 @ 12:05PM
Call me a disheartened Tea Partier, but I can't vote for Romney. Since the republican money machine took away my voting rights by assaulting Santorum and other more worthy candidates, I will now allow them to then have my vote. Sitting out this one at "my choice," not theirs. I have ended up in the past having to vote for their choice as the "better of two horribles," but in conscience cannot allow it ever again.
janie| 5.19.12 @ 12:07PM
I meant "not allow them"
W| 5.18.12 @ 2:16PM
Jack
You prefer Obama who expanded the Afhgan War, sent troops to Central Africa, and the Libya War, all without congressional approval?
TLP| 5.19.12 @ 8:21AM
Now, you're just confusing him. Hold on.
Hey Jack? Jew. Lots of Jews. The Bildabergs. Aipac controls the Media. Jews are drinking the blood of Christian Babies.
There.
I think that should put him back in his Happy Place.
Jack. You all right?
Jack says yes.
martin j smith| 5.18.12 @ 7:27AM
The first thing to do is to stop using the word Liberal to describe Socialists or Communists. Then we can get somewhere. At this point with an Obama Presidency and his hooligans in his government along with his merry Czars it is plain for all who want to see that this is not "Classical Liberalism" and perhaps if the truth be told there maybe there never was. To my mind the word Liberalism is a watered manner of describing a much more problematic and perhaps sinister force in this country. Most people so not want to admit that a major political Party actually is a Trojan Horse to destroy this nation from within but with Obama as the President it is difficult to avoid the truth. And here we have the matter of Jeremiah Wright. Romney would prefer to avoid this issue because it represents exactly my point. This force--so called Liberalism is in fact a sinister Anti-American movement which must be exposed. The excuse that we need to focus on the Economy is interesting. The reason for that is that it is policies of the Marxist/Communist/Socialist/Fascist Obama that has accelerated
our demise. Yet we must ask ourselves what about Compassionate Conservatism a misleading moniker if I ever heard one. Can one not say this this is Socialism Light or some other term basically in the same ball Park ? If wde are to ever fix our nation the first thing we have to do is to face the truth. There is no MSM on TV,Radio etc that will do that NONE. Except for alternative Media Americans are lied to daily.
RJ| 5.19.12 @ 8:00AM
I could not have said this any better! Nice job...well done, right on the money. And to think the "new" word to describe Obama-Mao's actions is "amateur" makes me laugh. Why are these super smart people so scared to voice a "real" word to describe potus (lower case my choice)?
Anthony| 5.18.12 @ 7:46AM
"It's all a mistake!!!" And so with that simple dismissive lie from the publisher hawking Obozo, the truth of Obozo's true origin once again is safely buried. Move On!!!
So where did the publisher come up with the idea Obozo was Kenyan born, raised in Indonesia and Hawaii?
And why did the reference remain until Obozo began his run for the presidency and the bio was changed to say Hawaii?
And why did Obozo say on a PBS segment that he was not eligible to run for president?
Orwell would be rendered speechless at the audacity performed right before our eyes, in real time.
THE THREE GREATEST HOAXES PERPETRATED ON MANKIND:
1) Organized Religion
2) Anthropogenic GlobalWarming
3) Barack Husean Obama
Gary B| 5.18.12 @ 8:15AM
"Move along, folks. Nothing to see here."
Gary B| 5.18.12 @ 8:17AM
My kingdom for just one secretary of state who refuses to put Obama on the ballet for lack of proof of citizenship. Arizona looks like the best chance. That would be first class entertainment.
Petronius| 5.18.12 @ 12:08PM
Gary
Rahm Emanuel is on the ballet, not Obama. Left foot 5th position front, croixe'.
NeilBJ| 5.18.12 @ 6:05PM
I am an Arizona resident and I am not optimistic about Secretary of State Ken Bennett's preventing Obama from being on the Arizona ballot.
According to the news on azcentral.com, he has requested that Hawaiian officials provide him with verification of Obama's birth in lieu of a certified copy of his birth certificate.
SoS Bennett said he personally believes that Obama was born in Hawaii. This suggests to me that he does not understand the definition of natural born citzen, and he will place Obama's name on the Arizona ballot merely upon confirmation of Obama's birth in Hawaii.
The only question I have is what if Hawaiian officials refuse? Bennett said he first made the request 8 weeks ago and again contacted them 4 weeks ago. If Hawaiian officials haven't responded in 8 weeks, will they ever respond?
kwan| 5.18.12 @ 10:16AM
According to birth certificate # 32018 a certain Barack Hussein Obama II was born at the Coast Province General Hospital Mombasa, British Protectorate of Kenya on the 4th day of August 1961 at 7:24 PM. He was 7 pounds 1 ounce and 18 inches long. Attending doctor was James O.W. Ang' Awa. I guess our Founding Fathers were right about only allowing American born citizens to become President for as it turns out the worst President in the history of the United States was born in a foreign country.
Gary B| 5.18.12 @ 10:26AM
Right and, except for a few brave souls in the alternative media out there, everyone is afraid of this fraud. Or, at least they're afraid of his black half. Not even Hillary could overcome the PC steamroller. We voters will have to do it.
kwan| 5.18.12 @ 3:06PM
I suspect Obama Sr. wanted his son to be born in the land of his tribal ancestors. And wouldn't the world be a much better place had Barack remained in Kenya herding goats in the Kenyan outback rather than getting elected President of the United States by a bunch of brain-dead imbeciles.
RCV| 5.19.12 @ 12:41PM
According to birth certificate #6664217 a certain Kwan was born at the Coast Province General Hospital Mombassa, British Protectorate of Kenya on the 8th day of September, 1959 at 3:33 am. He was 8 pounds 2 ounces and 6 inches long. Attending doctor was Ohimsoso Gullabel.
kwan| 5.19.12 @ 5:33PM
According to the Acton & Dystel literary agency, “Barack Obama was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii and Chicago. His first book is ‘Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.”
Kenyan MP James Orengo at one point asked the nation’s parliament, “How could a young man born here in Kenya, who is not even a native American, become the president of America?" Good question James so would millions of American citizens like to know.
RCV| 5.19.12 @ 5:56PM
Millions of Americans know he was born in Hawaii. You, and a few other nuts, can continue to wonder.
kwan| 5.19.12 @ 8:24PM
That's right continue to ignore the mounting evidence and play Dumbo-the-Useful-Idiot. It won't matter in a few months when this communist bum is thrown out of office and all your hopes and dreams of living in a replica of the Soviet Union go down the drain.
The American Hitman| 5.18.12 @ 8:30AM
You're right...Bob the Special Ops Hitman did a real pro job on Gingrich when called upon by his superiors.
Louis Jenkins| 5.18.12 @ 8:40AM
The Bamster has truly made a mess of things, but then so has socialism since day one. Our dear author says that social-communism-liberalism is dead or dying, but we shall always have them with us just like the poor. Even Jesus told the poor to heal themselves, which could be done. However, that healing is believed to be on taxes levied on the rich, the well to do, or those who are making it day by day. I believe that Jesus asked them to do it own their own, the teach a poor person to fish concept. But then, Obama, along with his history of lies, essentially, has declared war on Christian thought , not just the machination of the church, but upon the entire Western Culture as we know it. Truly, if and when Obama is relected this Nov., the USA is in a world of hurt, and having the Republican candidate thrust upon conservatives, is a grave dis-service. I know that I will vote for Romney. Why? Because I have no other choice.
George True| 5.18.12 @ 1:17PM
You bring up an interesting point, Louis. The poor must be able to believe they can help themselves. And that belief in self is exactly what has been taken away from them by the nanny state.
When Jesus healed the paraplegic, he demanded that the man first stand up. When He healed the man with the withered arm, He first demanded that the man reach out his hand. A vital component of the healing was that the person being healed first had to believe he could be healed and ACT on that belief.
Liberalism, which as others have stated here, is just a misnomer for Socialism or Communism, robs the poor and disadvantaged of the very belief they need in order to prosper. Instead, it instills in them a spirit of covetousness, which is a fundamental violation of the Tenth Commandment. As such, Liberalism is at its core ungodly, and violates Natural Law. Thus it is perpetually doomed to fail. Unfortunately, it ruins tens of millions of lives in the process, particularly the lives of the very people it purports to help.
tsd| 5.18.12 @ 8:44AM
We have but one objective... GET RID OF OBAMA!!! We can all talk smart after that. Enough mental masturbation and get with the program or be ready to face the deep dark hell of 4 more years.
gearjammer| 5.18.12 @ 2:44PM
Give that man a cigar. And, money all about money-the DPPM-democrat party political machine needs billions and billions a minute to stat alive. It is a maniacal ever hungry beast and people get it more and more-save places like California. If we get power and start to curb spending in the most bemign manner it is life threatning to this monster. A hungry beast with their fangs and claws and power is dangerous-we must support those who dare to stop feeding the monster. Their lives will be in danger. The last thing they need is people who attack them for not being pure conservatives. Winning the election is just the begining. These people are evil, criminals. That includes every liberal on earth and their are millions of them quite highly places. Many are media and they dip their pens in arsenis and stab anyone they see as an obstacle to their dominance. They are worst tham Mussolini. He made no bones about who he was and was willing to fight face to face. If, only we could form two armies and fight the battle in actual manly combat. We'd have destroyed them decads ago. The money the money stop feeding the beasts and that includes feeding their media and entertainment conglomerates. They will then wither and die. You must have the guts to see a California collapse and suffer. The mightiest people there must beg beg us for salvation. Are terms shoild be unconditional surresnder.
Von Mises Jr| 5.18.12 @ 8:57AM
I don't understand why we would not call Obamanomics exactly what it is: FASCISM.
In Von Mises "Socialism," he points out that Marx was not able to defend his Dialectical Materialism with economics and logic, so he used AD HOMINEM attacks against his critics. For 165 years, socialist simply attacked critics as did Marx when asked to explain "material productive forces," Innovation under central planning and formulation of prices in a "One World (socialist) Government."
FASCISM is an accurate word for Obamanomics. Fascism as described by Von Mises and Hayek is the "Third Way" that was simply substituting ownership of the means of production with CONTROL. It is moot. It is like saying I don't own my dog when he bites someone, and that he owns himself and I simply control him? Stupidity?
So they now label FASCISM as "Crony Capitalism." This is just a play on words to connect fascism with capitalism. When ObaMao calls Jamie Dimon a "Fat Cat," and blaming them for losing his $2B, it is simply fascist propaganda. Dodd Frank renders the banks virtually nationalized since they CONTROL their activities and turn them into a virtual money machine for the Treasury. And all you have to do is look critically at GE, GM, Chrysler, Fannie and Freddie, GS, and there is no better description for the relationship than FASCISM.
JimH| 5.18.12 @ 11:29AM
Yes, I also have been arguing that point here. The O, like Roosevelt is a fascist, though his type of fascism is of an internationalist flavor. He and his friends do use socialist progressive language as a cover. Getting back to Marx, one thing I’ve always wondered, if I recall my Marxian theory correctly, it claims that people are compelled to behave and think in certain ways because of their membership to a particular class. Hence no real argument is possible across members of differing classes. It claims to be a scientific refutation of free will. In light of this, how the mostly rich and college educated came by their collectivist enlightenment remains a mystery.
Von Mises Jr| 5.18.12 @ 11:51AM
Yes, JimH, you are correct about classes having their own economics in dialectical materialism or Marxism. Earlier socialist schools such as Historicism denied any economic truths could be learned and applied in the future. Positivism simply said there were no rules to be learned at all. But Marx taught that there were "proletariat" and "bourgeoisie" economics, as I recall reading.
The leftist have been doing the same thing since the Industrial Revolution. When the nobility lost their privilege, they used the intellectuals to try and take the wealth back from the newly created bourgeoisie and reconstruct a class society reinstating their position. It is still going on today and can be witness in their own words at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=TzEEgtOFFlM
Von Mises Jr| 5.18.12 @ 11:54AM
If you can't watch the video via the link, you can find it at Agenda21 YouTube "for dummies." It is hte global fascism you are referring to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzEEgtOFFlM
DRed| 5.18.12 @ 2:49PM
Fascism wasn't primarily an economic system. Even if you were right about your economic analysis (which you are not), it still wouldn't make the Obama administration fascist. This is really simple stuff.
Von Mises Jr| 5.18.12 @ 2:58PM
Perhaps it is simple stuff to a simpleton? If you were a little smarter, you would realize Mises and Hayek are not simple at all. Just common sense expressed with brilliance.
DRed| 5.18.12 @ 4:49PM
Engelbert Dolfuss's government, which Von Mises worked for, was far closer to being fascist than any contemporary American governments. So yes, I'd agree that Von Mises was not a simple man. Have you read any other studies of how fascist governments actually worked? I'm guessing you haven't, but you should. I don't expect they'd turn you into a liberal, but you should really stop with this nonsense about our government being fascist.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 7:03PM
No, they are just plain wrong. But you have swallowed their spirit hook line and sinker ... to your own detriment.
Von Mises Jr| 5.19.12 @ 8:24AM
I am glad you asked moron. We bailed out GM to the tune of $80B and they have (11) new business ventures with China. It is described on the video as fascism.
You like slave labor, right DRed? You want to see fascism and Obama in action watch this video "GM is becoming China Motors:"
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Lvl5Gan69Wo
DRed| 5.20.12 @ 11:54AM
I'm not sure what you think I asked Von, but you certainly didn't answer my question.
Anyhow, I watched your video. I'm not sure why you think GM's Chinese ventures proves Obama is a fascist. GM's joint ventures in China started in the 1990s-your video is misleading and almost all of the 11 'new' GM-Chinese joint ventures were started years before Obama became president. In any event, fascists didn't like foreign trade. They were strong believers in autarky.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 12:49PM
Von Mises knew what he was talking about - you don't.
Corporatism is the problem we have today - both right and left. Money is the root of the evil in politics, both right and left ...
Von Mises Jr| 5.18.12 @ 1:18PM
What books have you read by Von Mises, troll? I read many of them and will do like I did with my son in college. You will get a quiz.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 2:28PM
Just because you use his name does not confer brilliance or any particular amount of knowledge upon you.
Good luck with your quiz. I am not under your thumb like your son is.
Von Mises Jr| 5.18.12 @ 2:56PM
You did not graduate simma cum laude like my son.
What books did you read other than comic books, troll?
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 5:47PM
Apparently, neither did you - it's summa cum laude, Sunshine.
Von Mises Jr| 5.18.12 @ 11:49PM
And what Von Mises books have you read, troll? I may not spell well, but I have read several Von Mises books. So tell me which ones you read?
I know you haven't since you can't answer any of the riddles that Mises explains. Nor Hayek for that matter.
Purp| 5.19.12 @ 12:53AM
Worry about what books you read - you're very narrow minded. Did you go to college at all?
Von Mises Jr| 5.19.12 @ 9:56PM
Hayek, Von Mises. Friedman? I'll even debate you on Keynes or Marx. What have you read troll?
W| 5.18.12 @ 4:24PM
Purp
Give up. Nobody takes your seriously.The more you post the more you prove your ignorance. You have been reduced to posting tired lefty cliches.
idalily| 5.18.12 @ 3:21PM
Bullcrap. Purp, do you even know what a corporation IS?
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 5:48PM
Yes, I own one.
idalily| 5.18.12 @ 6:48PM
Yet corporations are to blame for all our ills. Again, your lack of critical thinking never ceases to amaze.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 7:02PM
Big Corporations, ditz, Big Corporations. I am not going to buy any politician. Do you know what it takes to be a Corporation or not?
Are you that uninformed? And you think YOU are a critical thinker - don't make me laugh. Your thinking has holes in it large enough to drive a bus through.
Apparently, you don't see the coming danger of the highest bidder owning the government. Critical thinker, yeah, that's you, Sunshine.
Von Mises Jr| 5.20.12 @ 9:30AM
Big corportations? You mean like Obama's pet car company Gm who got $80B and opened 11 fascism relationships in China?
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Lvl5Gan69Wo
W| 5.18.12 @ 7:43PM
Purp
Owning a corporation when you play Monopoly is not the same as a real corporation doing business in the real world.
Purp| 5.19.12 @ 12:54AM
Really? Did you just that blinding flash of brilliance? Do you know how to start a Corporation? Do you?
chuck| 5.19.12 @ 10:06AM
Yeah, I do. Was the president/owner of one. Simple. Fill out the paperwork, Articles of Incorporation, public notices, and such; file the papers with the Secretary of State's office in whatever state you will be doing business in; submit the public notices to the paper of record in the county you will be based in; pay the fees; resubmit the paperwork because the typical government employee in the SOS office screwed it up the first time; receive your correct paperwork from the SOS, hopefully right this time; open all accounts at a financial institution; file for EIN from the IRS; file with state revenue agency, state unemployment agency, and if by this point you haven't decided to just say "fuck it" to all this bullshit, you have your corporation.
And now for the honor of having a corporation, you get to fill out W-2s, 1099s, w-3s, w-4s, federal unemployment, state unemployment, federal corporate tax, state corporate tax, and a host of other forms on a regular basis, plus collect and submit taxes to the state and federal government because in addition to the business that you are now running, you also get to be the tax collector for the welfare state.
What a joy!
chuck| 5.19.12 @ 10:09AM
Oh, and then we get to hear assholes like you, purp, complain that we're not paying our "fair share".
Go perform a physical impossibilty on yourself!
Purp| 5.19.12 @ 10:19AM
Sorry, bud, no sympathy here, I had to do the same thing, but I made money - guess you didn't. Whine, whine, whine - why do you on the right want everything for free? You want a big, powerful company that makes you bundles of money without having to pay for the privilege of owning a company in this country? Why do you selfish bastards deny that you must "fill out paperwork" (poor baby) to play the game?
You live off the public dole (roads, armed forces, sanitation, police, fire, schools, hospitals, etc. ) and you want it all for free ... freeloaders all, is all you are.
chuck| 5.20.12 @ 8:59AM
Actually, I made out very well, as I worked my ass off. And I don't mind paying for roads and national defense. Police, fire, and schools come out of my property taxes, not the Fed, although the Fed provides a meager amount, state and local providing 90%+ of education funding. Sanitation and hospital care I pay for myself. I do resent my tax dollars going towards EBT cards that people are cashing out to buy booze, cigarettes, and lottery tickets. I think most people that are "poor" are there because of their own bad choices. I resent paying for their Section 8 housing, EBT cards, their little bastards, and all the rest, while they sit in their housing that I paid for, watching cable on their big screen plasma TV that is nicer than the one I have, and hear them, and people like you, bitch about how I am so "lucky" and "won life's lottery" because I'm successful, and how I don't "pay my fair share".
I don't want anything for free. I'm just tired of supporting the moochers and welfare brood-mares.
Like the guy in Tennessee that has fathered 30 children with about 12 different mothers. WTF? Guy makes minimum wage, and some of the mothers get $1.55 per month in child support. Who the hell do you think pays for all the little bastards? Why in the hell should I, you, or anybody else have to pay to take care of these kids and the "baby-mamas", when our own kids have to do without?
Call me a greedy asshole all you want, I don't care. I'm too tired to give a shit.
chuck| 5.20.12 @ 9:05AM
And you lost the original point completely, which is not surprising.
The government required paperwork is overwhelming, time-consuming, costly, and does nothing productive for your business. It produces nothing, costs a pant-load of money, and diverts the use of valueable resources from the productive, to the non-productive.
Kind of like the welfare state. Steals from the productive, and gives to the non-productive.
Chuckles| 5.19.12 @ 12:25PM
You purchased a pair of 'KOOKS'. Purchasing a pair of Kenyan Oral Obsession Kneepads (TM) does not mean you purchased any ownership in the corporation you bought them from. No matter what the Kenyan told you, Joseph Robinette.
Still no check in today's mail for the pair of 'PURPLES' you've got on order. We are not sending out the pair of Pretend U R Pudstained Lewinsky Elbowpads (TM) until we get that check. And, no Joseph Robinette, purchasing each pair from our product line does not entitle you to an ownership stake in our corporation, either. No matter what the Kenyan told you.
Joe Callan| 5.19.12 @ 10:11AM
Purp, you almost got it right this time. Money isn't the real problem, money is a tool. The desire for POWER is the root of all political evil. The underlying mistake in all your liberal thinking is that Corporations are so greedy that they want us all poor. They do not, for one simple reason, if we were all poor noone could afford to buy their products and they would go broke and lose their grip on power. Therefore it it in the corps best interest to keep us Middle Class.
Purp| 5.19.12 @ 10:24AM
Hey Joe - you lost me at "mistake". Sure they want customers, but they see 1 Billion in India and 1.5 Billion in China, and a paltry 300 million in the US. They gladly are exchanging us for them. As the Chinas and Indias of the world get richer, we matter less. It has been a 100 years conspiracy to degrade the American system in order to take over the world economically.
Take the money out of politics (we are the only nation that wields money as a political weapon) and you would see our country go back to the democracy the Occupiers and the Tea Partiers want - responsive government to their constituents.
Derek Leaberry| 5.18.12 @ 9:03AM
Mr. Tyrrell's triumphalism is misplaced. The Left overwhelmingly dominates the culture. Movies and television are institutionally left-wing and aggressively push for all novel perversions. So today 40 % of births are illegitimate when the rate was 5 % in 1960. Homosexual marriage is supported by half the population when perhaps 2 % might have supported it in 1980. Half of all marriages end today in divorce when a century ago divorce was rare. Pornography is widespread and accepted. Abortion claims the lives of about one million a year when it was illegal in all fifty states fifty years ago.
I would ask how conservatives are winning when the conservative retired vice-president, Dick Cheney, supports homosexual marriage and open homosexuals serving in the military, has one daughter who is openly homosexual and has given birth to a test tube baby, and has one daughter who is a feminist who refuses her husband's surname. No, conservatives are not winning and the Gramscian left is winning. Instead we are a remnant in a world in the midst of disintegration and collapse.
Truncheon| 5.18.12 @ 9:43AM
31 states have defined marriage traditionally, more such amendments are in the works. What fraction of 50 is 31?
Dick Cheney is one man.
42% of Americans self-identify as Conservative. 20% as liberal.
Kindly wander off to your rusty cast-iron bathtub under that dangling, exposed lightbulb, and open your wrists in private. Thank you very much...
Gary B| 5.18.12 @ 10:37AM
Gee, Truncheon, I guess you are the only person who has the right to be here. Perhaps we should all shutter in your presence lest we say something and risk intellectual humiliation.
The rest of us can go practice in some other forum then, when we think we're ready, we can come back and here and try again.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 2:34PM
Guess people vote more liberal than they are willing to tell pollsters, huh?
idalily| 5.18.12 @ 3:23PM
Keep drinking that Kool-Aid. Grape your flavor, Purp?
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 5:58PM
so how do you explain 2006 and 2008?
idalily| 5.18.12 @ 6:50PM
How do you explain 2010? See, two can play this game. It doesn't make your comment about pollsters any less stupid.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 6:58PM
You haven't proven that the liberal vote is dead or very small. I never said the opposite. it's your job to prove what you said .... 2006 and 2008 were huge Blue Waves - there's my proof. Where's yours? My God do you know how to debate or not?
gearjammer| 5.18.12 @ 9:15PM
The democrats ran on balancing the budget, ending both wars overnite, and jobs jobs jobs-the big media was all in. It will go down as their last hurrah. Pelosi was presented as the wonder Catho;ic grandma. What grap -the suckers bought it. Not now, 2010 happened. If Walker wins-that would be be more evidence the con job is over/
Purp| 5.19.12 @ 1:00AM
And the Republicants ran in 2010 on jobs, jobs, jobs and have been trying to ram through anti-women legislation ever since. They haven't balanced a budget, they haven't cut spending, and they haven't created any jobs.
But Iraq War IS over, they created 4 million jobs since Obama took over, and the Republicants won't help do anything. Romney is a joke, a Mormon for cripes sake, who tortures dogs, is a plastic man, and makes his money off of others' sorrows. Yep, a quality candidate. He who gave us Romneycare, and 47th in jobs while Guv of Mass. Yep quite a candidate.
Oh, and if Walker wins in Wisconsin, it just means 25:1 spending will buy an election. Nothing more. And that people are suckers for a good ad, whether it's a pack of lies or not.
gearjammer| 5.19.12 @ 8:59AM
They've blocked most of Obama and the dems dreams and schemes as possible. It was a restraining order on liberals spending regs whatever-just the house is not enough-that is why in 2012 it will all go to the GOP. The campaign against Walker has been going on endlessly-so much has been spent-Senate recalls, judge election, constant , constant drumbeat against him and GOP forever it seems, and he could win. You should be gulping.
Purp| 5.19.12 @ 10:27AM
If he wins, it is only because he divided the population and demonized the union movement. Instead of asking "Why do union members make more than I do? ", Wisconsinites should be asking "Why don't I make what the unions make?" - but the Koch Bros would have a heart attack if they did that and they are spending like drunken sailors to stop it - by the way, all the recalls, etc are on the public funds.
g wayne| 5.18.12 @ 1:35PM
Derek, Von, Jim H...good conversation. As one of you mentioned 3rd way politics will be the result of the rejection of Obama and the election of Mitt. Mitt is not a traditional conservative so he will seek a middle ground. A melding of the 2 camps that will try to leave out the far left (communist) and the far right (true conservatives). This was the philosophy espoused by Newts freinds the Tofflers and Bill Clinton. It is no mistake those gaining the most ground among the right today are libertarians. These are simply fiscal conservative and social liberals. Liberalism may be dead but I hate to break it to you, so is traditional conservatism. Just turn on your t.v., open your newspaper, visit any classroom and you will see. Sure, there are pockets of conservatism on the net and radio, but when you have national review online defending homosexual marriage then you know at least a portion of what we would have called conservatism is in fact liberal-lite. All of our major cities have been run by liberals for over 50 years now and there is nothing on the horizon that is going to change that. They vote themselves of the public coffers and even when they run out of money they borrow more and blame it on others. I predict Mr. Tyrell will write a book in 4 years titled, "What went wrong." I am not a pessimist, I am a realist, and above all, a Christian. In the 20's you could still call England christian, then they became not christian and now they are neo-pagan. Apart from a great awakening, was is to keep America from following this same path?
Barn Cat| 5.18.12 @ 10:15AM
The title is idiotic. Liberalism isn't dead. Liberals control the educational establishment and the media. Obama is turning America into a european-socialist state. Liberals are currently bankrupting the country and destroying the currency. The Fed has created trillions in bogus dollars. It's only a matter of time before we have hyperinflation like Germany had in the 1920s.
Gary B| 5.18.12 @ 10:43AM
Good point. If Liberalism is dead then what is that government hand doing around my throat?
Maybe Tyrrell is saying Liberalism is dead but it doesn't know it yet. Maybe he's counting on the conservative (common sense) sleeping giant becoming fully awake and cleaning house. Wouldn't that be nice?
gearjammer| 5.18.12 @ 2:50PM
Cut off the money. Tax dollars and private dollars. it is media and entertainment conglomerates keeping the democrats afloat. Our private dollars can stop funding hollwoood and manhatten media. Demand one of the 3 networks be located someplace other than NEW YORK NEW YORK !
Vern Crisler| 5.18.12 @ 10:26AM
RET, like Ann Coulter, lost his chance to be "leader" of conservatism when he supported Mitt Romney against Newt or Santorum.
At present, there is no leader of conservatism. Rush comes the closest but he is not so much an original thinker as a conduit for conservative thought.
There are a lot of good conservative-leaning writers out there, but the days of WFB, Reagan, Thatcher, Pope John II, are long gone, and Rush, Newt, Sarah, and other conservative leaders won't be around forever.
The golden age of conservative legends is over and we have now entered into an age of iron, politically speaking.
Andy Texan | 5.18.12 @ 11:59AM
What about the revelations concerning Obama's falsified literary biography? Is this too divesive for American Spectator? Will your Georgetown invitations cease if you mention the Prez's mysterious background?
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 2:35PM
Give it a rest, we all know who Obama is... vote for him, don't vote for him - otherwise get a life.
gearjammer| 5.18.12 @ 4:21PM
Too many don't know. The national media see to that. We fight our fight-don't need you and your advice. We will fight our way and win.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 6:00PM
Oh, it's the media again ... blame the media, that's right, it's all their fault. Listen, if there was any real dirt out there on Obama, Fixed News and Rush would be talking about it every single day and you know it.
gearjammer| 5.19.12 @ 9:09AM
The media is your best weapon and you know it. 3 Networks outa NEW YORK NEW YORK says it all-then hollywood and the media conglomerates which control all the rest on television. And, despite that,,,,,you are not an honest person. I admit our side owns talk radio but know doubt you see the national mdia as what ? Objective truth seekers ? C'mon-wake up. Go without smoking dope for a week and just read here and elsewhere-do not participate. Listen to Rush Hannitty, Levin, Savage etc for this week-see if that helps you. I remind you most of us grew up in a world were liberal media dominated for decades. How many here watched meet the press thinking it was about truth and honest info. We broke through-so can you.
9thID| 5.18.12 @ 12:30PM
"The danger to America is ... that a pseudo-conservative Republican, lacking what the late James Q. Wilson called “moral sense,” will hand over the White House to the zombies for another four years."
Yes, this is Mitt RomneyCare...
Anthony| 5.18.12 @ 3:51PM
Emmett, I'm a bit perplexed here, probably because my dear parents imbued me with a superior mind, a hefty dose of common sense, and the ability to reason.
How exactly do you justify your analysis that the leftist kultursmog and hegemony is dying, when we are currently living in an era where we have a president and a media who are brazenly lying to us right before our eyes, yet nothing is being done about it? As I said earlier, probably one of THE greatest hoaxes perpetrated on mankind.
The Breitbart revelation is being treated by the conservative media as toxic, even the Breitbart blog leads with a disclaimer that "acknowledges" that Obozo was born in Hawaii. On what proof?
Limbaugh evades the topic entirely by attempting a clever dodge that this Kenyan born publicity blurb is the kind of thing Obozo wants us to discuss, as a distraction to the economy, et al.
Oh really, Obozo wants yet another self inflicted wound to his murky and questionable past discussed, do tell?
And then Limbaugh opines that Obozo did it to "jazz " up his resume. Does a man, who at this time has presidential asperations, want to advertise the fact that he was Kenyan born, just to jazz things up?
And does not the reaction to this story by the MSM also not pass the smell test?
Sorry Emmett, only a few brave souls are daring to go where no person, conservatives included, want to go.
If this is the conservative response to this amazing disclosure, leftism is truly alive and well!!
James Van Dorn| 5.18.12 @ 4:58PM
It is highly likely that the American people have come to the conclusion that Liberalism or Liberal Socialism is a DEAD form of politcal philosophy. In the Arena of Ideas, Conservatism will trump Liberalism EVERY time. Liberalism/Liberal Socialism are simply illogical forms of government and simply unworkable. Hitler and the Nazis came close to making Socialism work, but even THEY quickly ran out of other people's money. War was Hitler's solution. War is ALWAYS the end result of Socialism, which Liberalism has morphed into.
Purp| 5.18.12 @ 6:03PM
Pragmatism is not dead. Consumers buying products provides demand which = jobs. Billionaires getting tax cuts gets billionaires more money. But they can buy only so much food, clothes and housing.
Sure they can invest - but in what? If there are no consumers, there is no demand, and therefore no investment will create jobs. This is the same thing that happened in Great Depression I. This depression of GW Bush's is not quite as bad, thanks to the social safety net, but giving tax cuts to the rich has done nothing and will do nothing to create jobs.
idalily| 5.18.12 @ 6:58PM
Have you ever heard the term "venture capital" in your life? Tax cuts to billionaires = more money for them to invest = creation of more companies = more jobs + more tax revenue and a broader tax base. This is why tax cuts leads to greater tax revenue. Honestly, your lack of knowledge of wealth creation never ceases to amaze.
And your comment, "Sure they can invest - but in what? If there are no consumers, there is no demand, and therefore no investment will create jobs" makes no sense. There are always consumers and there is always demand. Always. The key questions are, "Consumers of what? Demand for what?" and the only answer is provided through free market capitalism and venture capitalists who form corporations (those evil entities!) and HIRE PEOPLE. Yes, it really is that simple.
carnot| 5.18.12 @ 10:39PM
what planet do you live on?
the financial crisis was driven...at it core....by government engineered social policies intended to "spread the wealth". read Reckless Endangerment. wall street capitalized on the stupidity......but it was bad policy at the heart of the entire debacle.
gearjammer| 5.18.12 @ 9:17PM
The Pope just shit in your mouth Tyrrell-wants to tax all transactions tp fund one world government. Sure the libs are finished-sure.
RJ| 5.19.12 @ 7:53AM
Haven't read anything so sickening in it's narcissism and outright flattery since Tacitus. Made me puke after the first few paragraphs, couldn't finish this crap....
Dick crawford| 5.19.12 @ 11:43AM
An excellent review. I look forward to reading the book. But characterizing Nixon, the president who gave us the EPA, OSHA, detente with the Soviets, opened relations with China, wage and price controls and released the dollar from god, as an "arch conservative" is misinformed to put it mildly.
Andy Texan | 5.19.12 @ 9:47PM
It's no co-incidence that the most cowardly, faux conservative sites like this one and NRO are allergic to discussions of O's shifting biography and hero worshipped that mush-mouth Romney. It's time for line-drawing and Gingrich was the only candidate able and willing to do it. What good is it to elect Mr Mush-mouth and postpone the difficult medicine until it's too late. As for the editor in chief, Tyrrell, his Romney cheerleading has left a bad taste that cannot be removed.
Andy Texan | 5.19.12 @ 10:11PM
This theme of this book is ridiculous. Western Civ has lost it's nerve. The barbarians are at the gates, nay, have penetrated our walls and are all round. Either by demographic imperative or pure cowardliness, we are surrendering., with Europe in the van. It's time to start naming names and assessing the blame. I can think of only a few men who are blameless (Coolidge, Churchill, Reagan). However, the culpable are legion, including that moronic Bush, GW. Can anyone with an iota of interest in world affairs actually believe that the "arab spring" is a fountainhead of democracy?