A Voyage To Lilliput
The Rutland Herald reports that they a Vermont is about to decide whether to arrest President Bush and Vice President Cheney should they set foot in the state. "Brattleboro residents will vote at town meeting on whether President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in Vermont."
"Everybody I talked to wanted Bush to go," he said, noting that even members of the local police department supported the drive. "This is exactly what the charter envisioned as a citizen initiative," Daims said. "People want to express themselves and they want to say how they feel."
He said the idea is spreading: Activists in Louisville, Ky., are spearheading a similar drive, and he said activists were also working in Montague, Mass., a Berkshires town. The article asked the town attorney to "draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities."
The article goes on to say the indictments would be the "law of the town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro police ... arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro, if they are not duly impeached ..." Daims said people in Brattleboro were willing to "think outside the box" and consider the issue.
The culture wars are in full swing. One of the most amazing sights I've seen today is the flood of comments at a Pajamas Media article which describes a boycott directed against the Ford Motor Company for promoting the gay agenda as part of its corporate policy. It's will be an everlasting mystery to me how a car company and parts of the public came to tangle over a subject, which on the face of it, has nothing to do with cars.
Similarly, it staggers the imagination to think of a town planning a largely symbolic vote to arrest the President and Vice President over the prosecution of a war which a Democratic Congress has declined to un-fund; and which a previous Congress authorized. When Johnathan Swift talked about the endless war between the Big Endians and the Little Endians -- factions which quarreled over which end of a boiled egg to open -- little did I think he would be describing the enlightened societies of the 21st century.
History plays strange tricks on those who believe in the self-evident righteousness of their "side". I think it's more than likely that the peculiar mania playing itself out in Vermont will one day be compared to Orval Faubus' insistence on Little Rock being a law unto itself. But then again, who knows?
posted by wretchardthecat at 1/28/2008 06:03:00 PM
38 Comments:
send in the marines, arrest the town fathers, and try them for treason.
To put Brattleboro in perspective (native Vermonter here), it's a town that can't even pass a town ordinance prohibiting public nudity. The worst part is that those who enjoy walking nude around downtown Brattleboro wouldn't look good in the best of clothes.
No need to send in the Marines, this is just Brattleboro being itself.
I recall that back in the mid-80’s Cambridge, Mass declared itself a “nuclear free zone.” Notwithstanding the fact that Cambridge is the site of MIT as well as Charles Strake Draper Labs, one of our leading missile guidance research establishments, I wondered how we would explain to the Soviets that Cambridge was off limits in the event of a nuclear exchange.
For that matter, how do we explain to the residents of Cambridge that they will not be able to share in the bright new post-Cold War world, given that they chose to opt out of the war that produced it?
When nuts and dictators overseas look at actions such as the town in Vermont and are encouraged, as we know they will be, we can be sure that people will die because of it. People pay dearly because of the arrogance of small groups of people in the U.S. and of dictators elsewhere. The dictators and their people pay when they must. Our military pays to make them pay. What I want to know is when do the people who encourage them pay – because they never seem to.
I hope Vermont is prepared to have a store of body bags for its law enforcement people if the President and Vice President, either in office or out of office, ever pass through, because their Secret Service detail will respond with appropriate lethality.
These people live in an alternative universe that, unfortunately, is not without casualties one way or another. For their narcissistic, controlling instincts, these insignificant people are allowed to get away with their madness only because they gather together into their enclaves, barking at the moon.
I hope they pay for their insolence.
"These people live in an alternative universe "
Unfortunately not in the less fashionable end of the spiral galaxy.
Capt'n Ed must have it right, aside from a little "Hey look at us everybody, we are a real town with real people with our own self-righteous opinions". Maybe they are hoping the news will be published in Germany. These arrogant little turds will only garner attention when they collectively swallow their own colons and disappear.
"Ned I said.
RWE, re: "nuclear free"
The MIT Plasma Lab on Albany Street was in the heart of Cambridge, MA, and was one of the last places you might be able to find parking just down the street from the golden dome of MIT, and within walking distance of many excellent Indian restaurants.
It was the early '80's, I'm thinking: this is not the Jetsons! How the hell can I park right outside a normal industrial-looking door with a sign on it that says MIT Plasma Lab?
What's so funny 'bout Plasma, Love and Understanding?
What will bin Laden think about this, reading it by candlelight in his cave?
I often find myself wondering:
Why are there so many moonbats?
I think the two main reasons are entropy and inverse Darwanism.
Entropy is simply a fact of life. Any process that produces useful work will also produce useless heat or energy (entropy). Moonbats are the unwanted consequence of a stable democracy and well functioning economy.
Where inverse Darwanism comes into play is through the agency of war and famine. Three hundred years ago, one could count on the occasional war or famine to kill off most of the moonbats. However for the last 50 years, things have been so good that idiots/moonbats can flourish and have large families.
What we may have here is an example of a system that carries the seeds of its own destruction. If a political and social system are too successful then the moonbats eventually take over and destroy it through stupidity.
eggplant said...
"I often find myself wondering:
Why are there so many moonbats?"
Because we humor and protect them, no other reason. If we allowed reality to intrude, they would no longer exist. Think of Berkeley and al-Qaeda unfettered.
eggplant asked:
"Why are there so many moonbats?"
I ask, why moonbats, period?
I‘ve come around to the notion that the myth of the evilness of Western civilization is a kind of “consolation prize” for those lunatic Chiropterans.
When myth disappears, people have no shared agency which personally orients them to eternity. This absence is not easy to bear. Folks who lack a degree of personal assurance, have (I think) extreme reactions to the absence of our former shared Christianity.
So on the “right,” such individuals can become arch-reactionaries. Religious literalists, fundamentalists, who have no answers to Pandora’s modernity, other than to scream “close the frigging box!”
On the “left,” a similar kind of bird comes home to roost – but rather than convince us of the existence of the Old Testament God, this nasty buzzard croaks about the malignant domain of the dreadful Machine – the anti-god… industrial capitalism, dead white guys, and other trolls who lurk in the footnotes of sociology texts.
Though moonbats flounder about in the same riptide of popular Christianity’s recession as the rest of us, their “text” of the Christian West’s “oppression, greed, manipulation and intolerance” betrays a persistent need to come to terms with their own discontent.
Just my two bits.
Wm_Edwin: Those were wise words and food for thought.
I fancy myself being in the middle between the moonbat and the arch-reactionary. Perhaps I'm tainted by both sides?
Maybe wrongness is a conserved quantity? All that varies is the type of wrongness that one is burdened with....
Hmm... That sounds like something a moonbat would say, i.e. all morality is relative. I know that's wrong. There are absolute truths.
Not clear. I'll have to think about this one for awhile...
Captain Ned - you forgot to mention the Morris dancing in the streets ;)
The City council of Berkeley, CA also declared itself a nuclear-free zone, and spent a pretty penny having large sturdy signs with easily-readable letters on'em set at the city limits on all the main thoroughfares.
What a bunch of morons.
Many questions leap to mind, especially considering how much it costs for such signs to be designed, printed, and set up, screen-printed with all-weather Brown paint, high-visibility white letters, massive stanchions, stove bolts, and vandal-resistant yet eco-friendly locking washers and nuts. Probably had to be put out on bid, after a scrupulously-principled Request for Proposals, so that internationally-accredited monitoring staff could certify that bid proposals were solicited from contractors by a process that respected and celebrated all approved ethnic / gender / bias-free sexual-orientated / macro-biotic / biodegradable / organic /guaranteed-conflict-free ... um, I lost my thread...
Oh, yeah... As it was splained to me by a passionate and deadly-earnest resident, the City of Berkeley wanted to send a message to the nation, by outlawing the transport of nuclear materials, wastes, or weapons, on their municipally-maintained public streets.
I wonder if that means they will refuse to avail themselves of evil X-rays for their fractures just because the ones at the hospital are indistinguishable from the X-rays that come outta bombs. Or will they let their cancers fester and bubble, foregoing diagnostic and therapeutic use of radioactive cobalt or cesium? Will they eschew the use of radio-isotopes that help doctors trace and identify the most subtle physiologic and metabolic processes for diagnosis and treatment? Will they let their architectural constructions collapse because they refuse to let industrial X-ray machines check for flaws?
(*SNORT* Excuse me while I wipe the spittle from my cheeks...)
The idiots in Vermont are like so many turd-for-brain liberals who keep supporting the precious Jihadis who would slit their liberal throats the instant they install a new Majlis in Montpelier. The idiots in Vermont protest the only government that has made a serious effort to protect them from the murdering bastard sex-with-goats Islamic Jihadists, the same folks who would install a New Revolutionary Islamic Republic of Vermont in Montpelier, then array every construction crane in the state along State Street. Then they will round up, try and convict, then hang by the neck until dead all the dissidents, union organizers, boy scout troop leaders, followers of Bahu'ullah, Episcopalians, gay & lesbian, trainers of dogs-for-blind, intellectuals, designers of push-up bras, police officers, school teachers, adulterers, fornicators, insufficiently modest young women, Baptists, atheists, agnostics, et cetera. And LEAVE'em hanging from the industrial cranes "pour encourager l'autres."
Vermont College will be remade into a Wahhabist Madrassa, the churches and temples converted to Mosques. The practice of Christianity nor any other religion than Islam will be outlawed, on pain of imprisonment or death. (Look up the number of Christian Churches there are dotting the municipal landscapes of the Saudi Peninsula.) The 10-foot-wide handicapped accessible paths along Winooski river will become excellent places to watch the bodies of beheaded dissidents floating placidly off to feed the fish in the Atlantic. Ironically named Peace Park along the Dog River Road will be re-named "Park of the Great and Merciful Allah", and the Main Street Bridge will be renamed "Bridge of the Unwilling Martyrs to the Great and Merciful Allah." The Tower in Hubbard Park will become the Place where the muezzin will call the faithful to prayer with a stack of Marshall speakers that would shame the producers of Woodstock.
Don't the idiots in Brattleboro have the reading skills of a six-year-old??????
Every horrifying crime I've described in my rant has been reported in the world press, inflicted week after week after week upon the Iranian population by the Revolutionary Islamic Government of Iran. It has been so since the brave and wise James Earl Carter abandoned Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, after the Western News Media --- heros of unimpeachable ethics --- had been calling for the end of his rule because he had ("GASP!") SECRET POLICE!!!!!!
So in exchange for the Shah's measured brutality, the world has seen a bloodletting and methodical slaughter on a scale that makes the Shah's methods seem like puppies nibbling with milkteeth. Thank you Mr. Peanut.
Mad Fiddler,
The world is still paying the price for Jimmy Carter. Given how demonstrably bad he was, why does the Left worldwide still honor him?
IBD did a whole series on the Malaise Maestro recently to attempt to remind people:
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/special3.aspx#cartoon264632789805053
Why is it important to remember? Barrack Obama is just Jimmy Carter in blackface.
Brattleboro...Brattleboro? Is that where the word "Brat" comes from? And is their town slogan: "The Constitution means whatever we say it does!"
Prattleboro.
I am sure all those "nuclear-free zones" made sure there was no radiology department in any of their hospitals, or any radioactive material in any of their universities (material for a dirty bomb). Of course not, since logic is not part of their enui.
You have to remember, as the current world population surpasses all the people who ever existed previous to today, the equivalent of every crackpot, despot, criminal, serial killer, brain-dead idiot, etc. who EVER existed are alive right now and that is a more than I care to consider of bad stupidity wlaking around our world creating mayhem.
I'd like to see the President and Vice-President pay a visit to Brattleboro after their term expires and dare them to follow through with arrests. And I'd live to see the town arrest them.
The massive attention would be a great forum to show the nation just how ridiculous the left has become. I think conservatives should happily indulge more of these opportunities for comparison - seek them out, even.
Not clear. I'll have to think about this one for awhile...
Might I suggest that you steer clear of the term "Christianity" while you're thinking? It's been my experience that religion(s) just muddy the waters.
Brattleboro has been doing this sort of stuff for several years now, which makes me wonder who the Cindy Sheehan-type fanatic is behind these pompous tantrums. Too bad the media isn't interested in reporting on who introduces and then pushes these various policies, since probably no self-respecting conservative blogger would live among such loons to be able to report on their activities.
Narcissism, denial, projection, paranoia.
There are a lot of people on the Left who are "reality challenged".
Visit Dr. Sanity for the clinical analysis.
Generally, leftists have small or no families, the fertility rates for the blue states resemble the EU, yet the fertility rate for the US as a whole has just climbed back up to steady state.
So it's pretty much the long peace our homeland has known (plus the fact that the violent crime occurs in places the moonbats don't live), that accounts for their numbers.
Mad Fiddler,
I think that your parade of horribles is most entertaining and, if we allow ourselves to imagine the eventuality of an Islamist takeover of the US, likely to happen in many places - just not in Brattleboro. My read is that the good citizens are more likely to be zealous, even Kurtzian, converts. So you had better watch your six if the Brattlebombers start getting active.
I posted this earlier here at BC on a story about North Korea, but I will repost it because it is appropriate (vis a vis the "moonbat question") and because... well... I am just so smart! (pat, pat... ow!)
--
It's about Hate. Pure and simple. Hate is actually fun. Quite enjoyable, satisfying, elevating (of oneself over the hated certainly), and highly gratifying. That is why so many humans and their leaders have indulged it for millenia.
The people in question (the moonbats) need to Hate, on a grand scale, and they have chosen to despise the civilization they live in. In doing so they are IMMDEDIATELY better than all of us who choose not to. It is not possible to Hate without feeling superior in a very genuine sense, be it moral or whatever.
So they Hate Western Civilization with relish, they Hate it's leaders particularily, and Hate you and I for supporting, or even just participating in the perpetuation of same.
Like minded crew together naturally. Kim and Castro and Mugabe share their Hatred.... and are very SUCCESSFUL at it, having not only palaces and gold, but weapons with which to confront that which is Hated, and the ability to force the Hated leaders to turn this way in that in reaction to them. By every measure, these are in fact the Tiger Woods and Tom Brady's of the Hate Brigades.
So the master Haters can stand on six million, twelve million, fifty million human corpses to proclaim their Hate, and their fellow travellers will not care. The feelings these Titans inspire in such people could almost be described as sexual. That is the essence of Hate.
In the end, as with so much of today's politics, it is all about what makes them feel good. On such "feelings" and related unthinking nonsense lies the fate of whole peoples and civilizations.
Wow...two posts mentioning Orval Faubus on the same day? Who would have thought
eggplant:
Thank you, but wiser men then I articulated the principle ideas.
Google "George Mosse lectures" and at or near the top of the list will be a series of recorded lectures this awe-inspiring historian made in 1982, at the University of Wisconsin (Madison). This man ignited my passion for history.
Credit must go to Dr. Jerry Pournelle for his sobering notion of liberalism's power as a "philosophy of consolation" for a falling West.
As for truths being/not being absolute - heck, I'm no sage. You're on your own there, I'm afraid. :>
Wretch:
"The Rutland Herald reports that they a Vermont is about to decide"
Huh? Say again? ;)
________
This sort of strikes me as similar to the antics of a spoiled kid who embarks on a series of escalating naughtinesses to see how far he/she can go before being slapped down. It's also probably from a desire to seem relevant despite all evidence to the contrary.
eggplant and wm_;
All truths, by definition, are absolute. But you can never know or state them accurately.
If Bush were anything like Teddy Roosevelt, he'd wait till the ordnance was passed, and then go visit with a squad of Secret Service agents.
On the other hand, maybe it's best to just leave them as a laughingstock.
Wm_edwin: I thhink you're on to something. It was either Chesterton or C. S. Lewis who said that when you believe in nothing, you'll believe anything.
Why are there so many Moonbats?
P.T. Barnum said "There is a sucker born every minute."
And the production rate clearly has increased markedly since then.
brianfh:
On reflection I have to ask you on what level your comment is aimed. There’s TRUTH, which rarely visits us, and is so powerful it displaces our workaday egos, for a time at least. So far as that goes you may be right.
Then there’s “truth.” On this level I dispute your characterization.
Truth is “good enough” for our happiness when it is adequate to secure our lives, fortune, and honor. In this sense, any man may state the truth with perfect accuracy, if it is stated with integrity.
nahncee:
I note that after you advised eggplant to disregard Christianity in his ponderings, you went on to wonder why it is that the MSM, yet again, declines to fulfill its mandate, and impartially inquire into the identity and motives of the promoter of the Vermont hysteria.
Let me be clear. I take no position on the Christian revelation, or on how it may bear on any man’s faith. I merely observe that crying “F**K the environment!” in a crowded lefty street-theatre will get you fistfuls of fives… *just as yelling a blasphemy even sixty years ago would have gotten you the same on any American street.*
We are not post-Christian in the sense of being post-mythic, I argue. “Moonbatism” is not a substitute for Christianity – or is there in it any primary substance for any kind of civilization at all. It is rather a coping strategy for cultural disorientation and rage.
I may be wrong, it’s just a theory.
But if there’s something to it, mightn’t it be that the news media doesn’t want to risk… “blasphemy?” If not “blasphemy,” perhaps the nearest analog to it we have?
zzmike:
Point taken.
I spent many months in Vermont while younger. My family owns property up there.
Vermont is where aging hippies go live out their final days. Of course these "progressives" keep their official residence in places like Florida (which has no income tax) to avoid VT's confiscatory income taxes.
Is great to support progressive policies when other people are paying for it!
BrianFH said:
"All truths, by definition, are absolute. But you can never know or state them accurately."
"Truth" is a slippery word. The following statement:
"There are no absolute truths"
misrepresents an absolute truth and is false due to being self-contradictory. Consequently the opposite statement:
"There are absolute truths."
must be true. This line of logic is related to the "liar paradox", e.g. Everything I say is a lie then I say "I am lying".
There are probably only two things that you can say to yourself and know they are absolute truths, i.e.
1) I think therefore I am.
2) There are absolute truths.
I would call these "essential absolute truths". There are also perceived absolute truths, e.g. "entropy can be created but never destroyed". The statement itself is subject to the limitations of human language and observation. The statment as a perceived absolute truth, models or symbolizes an essential absolute truth.
People who say things like "All truths are relative" or "The truth is what we say it is" are probably moonbats. Their error is in confusing a perceived or modeled absolute truth as an essential absolute truth. A defining aspect in being a moonbat is to start with this confusion about absolute truth and then use the misconception as license to believe in nihilism.
Why are there so many moonbats?
There's an elaborate hypothesis here or two, but I think it's quite simple, really.
We have, for some number of decades now, seen a trend of the educated having smaller families. The uneducated reproduce at a markedly higher rate, and we end up with a larger and larger percentage of the population who don't really understand critical thinking, our nation's history, and even simple concepts like cause & effect. Moreover, because they have never had to fight for anything, there's an inherent sense of entitlement in the generations who have reached adult-hood having never had a member of their immediate family who had to fight for what they have.
These people have precious little understanding of the practical realities of the world, and an ideology that is nonsensical to those who can place things in a historical perspective seems entirely reasonable to those who don't have such a perspective.
We have, for some number of decades now, seen a trend of the educated having smaller families. The uneducated reproduce at a markedly higher rate, and we end up with a larger and larger percentage of the population who don't really understand critical thinking, our nation's history, and even simple concepts like cause & effect.
Seems to me that the definition of a moonbat is the "educated elite", not the uneducated man on the street. The Marxists in our universities, the career bureaucrats in the State Department, and the political hacks in the Capital are *all* products of the West's own form of brain-washing madrassa's.
Not all forms of "education" are equally predictive of moonbattery, of course. If you want to be a doctor or an architect or a hardware engineer, then you HAVE to build upon the experience of what others have learned and educate yourself to those maxims, theories and techniques.
However, if you want to be a college professor or a journalist or an actor then what sort of "education" is required of you? Where do all the women's studies and black history majors go? What does one do with a PhD in French or in English Renaissance Literature? You are undoubtely "educated" but it seems to me that the ego involved in your self-worth from proclaiming that you are now DR. Thus&So could very well be the first step down the slippery slope towards moonbattery.
Arrest Bush and Chaney? How stupid can you get? Might want to start with Ted (killer) Kennedy if you want to start arresting people. Next lets get the Bill Clinton for giving up military secrets to the Chinese. Or, maybe we should try the state of Vermont for treason? Just arrest everybody in Vermont and put them behind razor wire. See how really stupid this stuff gets. Bring back Hitler...Right? Is this what Vermont wants? You can always vote yourselves out of the union. Try living without federal money? Go ahead, I dare you..
NahnCee said:
"Seems to me that the definition of a moonbat is the "educated elite", not the uneducated man on the street. The Marxists in our universities, the career bureaucrats in the State Department, and the political hacks in the Capital are *all* products of the West's own form of brain-washing madrassa's."
The worst moonbats are the intelligent and highly educated ones. However I have also encountered moonbats who are tradesmen of minimal education (they are less common).
What I find a deep mystery are the moonbats who are intelligent, highly educated, competent at their jobs and loving, competent family members.
Believe it or not, these sorts of moonbats exist and are not even all that rare. Paradoxically these same people think that Che Guevara was really cool, socialism is the answer to all of mankind's problems, the world is doomed from global warming and 9/11 was a conspiracy of Jews, capitialists and war mongers.
There is a total disconect between the rules that govern their day-to-day lives and their political beliefs. I see this paradox frequently. It's like "2+2=5". How can successful, normally honest and decent people believe in such evil crap. I am totally perplexed.
On education and moonbats:
Yes, I’m not sure that education level is the whole story.
I’d recommend anything by Eric Hoffer on this topic. He thought deeply on the nature of elites in our time, and pointed out how, among the educated in America, there lurk personalities which may be called “scribes.”
This title of course refers to the privileged right-hand men of the old despotisms, whose words were vital instruments of state.
Men of words have no inherent antimony to men of power; scribes were happy to keep their literate monopoly for thousands of years, before the phonetic alphabet made a more universal literacy possible.
The problem that men of words have with the U.S. is that the United States is a nation that respects, and is still largely run by, practical men.
I just realized something. Just as terrorists are prone to come from the population of educated young men who see no future for themselves in their own lands – in leadership, in commerce – so it is that the “underemployed” scribes in the United States find themselves subject to the dominant political will of practical men. They see no future for themselves, either, in a leadership role in the United States.
The U.S. is alien to their outlook. Is it any wonder there’s such forbearance, if not outright lionizing, for terrorists among academic moonbatdom?
Again, education is not in itself a curse. yashmak is right in that knowledge is an essential component of exercising – and defending – one’s franchise. But there are those who seek to use their education… to make the U.S. less alien to intellectuals.
The audacity of that aim is breathtaking.
eggplant/nahncee,
My last comment was unclear, and indeed the issue has always been mysterious and conflicted to me.
Yes, there are the intellectual elite liberals, who do make the most noise.
However, in California, it's a different group I believe carries the most weight, and that's the blue-collar working lower middle-class and poor, who depend on government entitlements to make ends meet. Their dependence upon entitlement programs blinds them to any damage the extension/expansion of these programs causes to our nation or economy. They easily bite the "Bush must hate children to veto S-Chip. . .blah blah blah" sort of headlines.
Sorry for any confusion or nonsense-sounding in my last comment. It was early and I was sleepy still :)
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