Erykah Badu & FA Hayek:This is Postmodern America

“””””””””At a time when most movements that are thought to be progressive advocate further encroachments on individual liberty, those who cherish freedom are likely to expend their energies in opposition. In this they find themselves much of the time on the same side as those who habitually resist change. In matters of current politics today they generally have little choice but to support the conservative parties. But, though the position I have tried to define is also often described as “conservative,” it is very different from that to which this name has been traditionally attached. There is danger in the confused condition which brings the defenders of liberty and the true conservatives together in common opposition to developments which threaten their ideals equally. It is therefore important to distinguish clearly the position taken here from that which has long been known – perhaps more appropriately – as conservatism……Let me now state what seems to me the decisive objection to any conservatism which deserves to be called such. It is that by its very nature it cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance.””””””””””””””””

–FA Hayek  

 
“””””They who play it safe are quick to assassinate what they do not understand-
They move in packs, ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another they feel more comfortable in groups, less guilt to swallow.
They are us, this is what we have become: afraid to respect the individual.   A single personal event or circumstance can move one to change, to evolve and love themselves.”””””

-Erykah Badu

yes the word that bleeds out of her head at the end of the video is “group think”.

How often do the principles of an old-school “Conservative” such as Hayek exist in such harmony with those of a contemporary “Liberal” such as Badu?  More often than what you’d think because both “conservative” and “liberal” are fabricated terms used to divide us against ourselves through the popular vices of lazy intellectual and moral habit.  Why these seemingly divergent principles are in such actual harmony is because both are fundamentally American-  they both demand that the individual person take account of their humanity as individuals and be bold enough to not be ruled or lead by simple ‘group think’.

I really hope we are not as close to this as it seems

Really big things happen when those in power underestimate the rage and resolve of an inflamed populace.

btw…most people are of the mind that if something like this happened here that some American soulless military machine would crush the resistance.

Yet even the hard-core Soviet Military refused to mow down its own citizens en mass and the attempts of the Communists to take over the Russian government failed miserably.

Taking the military out of the equation, and via the second amendment, any anti-American citizen police forces would be easily overwhelmed by a determined American populace in the case of any kind of real revolt.

“This is not reality”, is now reality.

Jensen describes the order of the world today (from Network- turn up the volume)

George Carlin fills us in on what we know but don’t want to hear

Speaks for its self

Why we need the Old Dons Back

There was once a day when ‘organized crime’ simply meant a tight knit group of neighborhood strong men.  They would run numbers and involve themselves in relatively minor rackets- no one really got screwed by these schemes and the strong men would simply ‘take a cut off the top’.   They were brutal men who wore suits and ties, took pride in their appearance, their traditions of family and brotherhood.

Some friends of ours.

These strong men would host lavish community festivals and destroy any man who crossed them.  But no one really had a reason to cross them and their brutality was reserved almost entirely to their own, other men within the same organization who had broken with tradition.  If you had a problem in the community, you went to these guys and they would ether mediate a solution or implement a hard-nosed practical resolution.

(Video Caption:  an old-school German Strong-Man of apparently high rank is being interviewed by a film crew about his efforts to revitalize the area, the money he put into it, the changes he made, the various clubs and shops he owns-he seems to own them all.  He is rudely interrupted by some riff-raff  talking non-sense.  The Gentleman gives the riff-raff the opportunity to leave and when this is numbly declined, he does what any strong-man wanting to keep riff-raff of his block would do. )

These strong men had all the local cops and government officials paid off.  Crime and Government are always inexorably linked.  The more powerful the Government, the more widespread and organized the crime.  Authority when it is localized facilitates localized crime (the strong men), authority when it is monolithic, facilitates monolithic crime.  Those truths are part of the reason why minimal, self-limiting government is always best.   There is something of an organized crime-government complex that is absolutely true in every case, anywhere you look where there is government.    The differences between organized crime and government are surprisingly few and many people would argue that any State which derives its legitimacy from anything other than the sovereignty of the individual citizen, is a criminal entity in its self.

There was a point in time (or maybe this ‘point; is actually even timeless), a point in American History that government authority became less local and more federal.  Accordingly as Government authority become more federalized, so to did organized crime.  The strong men in suits on the corner, for the most part, have been rounded up and put away.  They are replaced by weak men in suits on Wall Street, a gang not so tough but simply shrewd and politically well connected.  Want to see the actual historical process unfold before your eyes in news clips and video?  Look no further than Rudy Giuliani s crusade against the mafia.  He did no less than root out the Little Corruption of Strong Men to clear the way for Big Corruption by Weak Men.

"Bankers" courtesy of http://www.lataco.com

These new Dons, the wall-street bankers and their gang,  unlike their predecessors, can care less about their communities, about any kind of pride or tradition.   Their  “cut off the top”, is the to the tune of nine trillion dollars. They are blindly committed to filling their own pockets with cash.  Their buttonmen, their enforces, the thugs that carry out their orders and enforce their decrees are no longer the suit-wearing strongmen who open doors for old ladies and toss trouble-makers off the block, instead they now wear badges and black uniforms and put the old ladies in jail while doing everything they can to avoid offending the troublemakers on the block.

The depth and magnitude of the corruption and dishonor of the new organized crime cartel of bankers and big business executives is so great that I believe the American popular fascination with the “old school mobster” derives not from the old-school mobster as a celebration of vice and violence, but rather from the old-school mobster as a symbol of  relative innocence.

One thing they, the new cartel, do not know that the old-schoolers do know- the thing that will be their ultimate undoing:  The People instinctively recognize that some small degree of corruption is inevitable and is part of the price paid for clean, safe communities and good jobs, and order in the neighborhood.  But once this degree of corruption passes a certain mark, once the communities are no longer clean, no longer safe, once the jobs are no longer good and once order is lost in the neighborhood, the people’s tolerance of corruption ceases and they rise up to cast down their oppressors.

“No more Butchy, no more of this…”

Keynes vs Hayek: The ultimate rap battle

This is probably the best concise explanation of economics that exists today.  Listen to the rap and be schooled by old-schoolers who not only knew the way, they invented it.

psst…..Hayek is right, in fact he totally explains exactly what is happening to our current economy.  In other words, why it sucks.

Links update: Savage Agitprop

Michael Savage’s “The Savage Nation”, the web counterpart to Savage’s fantastic radio program.  Michael Savage is a rare breed, an old school, multifaceted individual.  Savage (and the few left that are like him, like many of our Fathers and Uncles and Mentors from childhood) is often unfairly criticized for being ‘radically conservative’, anti-this or anti-that.

The only substance to this criticism is that he is “one-sided” in his views.  But even this shred of critical substance is deeply hypocritical:  note that as how the old-schoolers slowly die and their numbers dwindle that as a society we have fewer and fewer multifaceted individuals.

Note that as they leave us (how sad we are that they go!), any true dissent in this Nation fades and pales, loses its color.  True old-school dissent is replaced by “dissent” as mere establishment propaganda, dividing us against ourselves, punishing real civil discourse and encouraging blind obedience.  Few people in the media could ever live up to the example set by those such as H.L. Mencken.  Michael is one.

May you live forever, Dr Savage!

Bob Hope Rocks, and Zombies

Defined (from The Urban Dictionary):

“Obama Zombie
One who has political beliefs motivated by social image.

One who refuses to make political decisions independent of the media.

Obama Zombies present themselves as very political.”

Jason Mattera even wrote a book on the phenomenon:

….and these good folks even have a pretty huge forum on the subject of surviving the “Zombie Apocalypse”, though the degree to which ‘zombie’ is meant to be allegorical is up to you to decide:  Zombie Hunters

Now you can’t leave

The allegory of this video won’t be lost on anyone who has a clue.  We, Americans, have been tolerant of ‘a new way’, of different kinds of people and world views.  Despite the obvious recklessness and failure of their appearance and manner, we once said, “have a seat at our table”.    They tried to wreck our table and now we are kindly (via the tea parties etc) offering them the opportunity to ‘get out’.  One can only wonder if our kind, CIVIL, warnings will be heeded.

Excellent, moving video.

Note to America: Snap the F out of it and start kicking ass like YOU KNOW HOW

Considering I plan on posting a lot of media content, this is an initial test.  This clip sums many things for me:  The Saxon attitude in general, why societies (including value-systems) evolved in harsher climates generally tend to do better than those evolved in more mild climates, and really a dose what the western world needs today.

The clip is from the short-run HBO show “Deadwood”, set in the late 1800’s.  The guy doing the talking is Al Swearingen, the ‘Boss’ of the town of Deadwood.  Al is a multi-faceted character who will do whatever it takes to keep his town running.  It is interesting to note that this character is an “Englishman” (emigrated from England in his early childhood).  To me, the character is a clear allegory of the English (Saxon) conquerer of America, and the show its self an allegory of the English conquest of ‘the new world’.