This is apparently what The Powers That Be want us to endure next year: the Pauls, Father and Son, holding forth endlessly, and bringing the operations of the Government to a grinding halt while they propound about the Constitution As It's Supposed to Be (cf: the Confederate Constitution) and the Universe twirls around them, first around the one and then around the other.
I put the Son before the Father (sacrilege, I know) for the simple reason that he will be seated as a Senator from Kentucky, and as a Senator, individually, he will have essentially unlimited power to bring the body to a screeching halt. This is a power all Senators have, but only Republicans are allowed to exercise it according to the rules and ancient traditions of the body. The Father cannot single-handedly bring the House to a halt, but he will no doubt do his best, and likely will achieve his objective by strategy -- a strategy of burying the House in investigatory fervor, everything being "wrong" and all. Since 1787. So it all has to be "reviewed."
Why The Powers That Be would want this is something of a Mystery, but clearly they do, and no doubt while the Government is completely paralyzed, they will set in motion their Final Solution. The outlines have been obvious for years. They don't believe in Constitutional Self-Government and they want to replace it with something more like a "Directed Democracy" in which the constitutional forms of the past are retained in large part, but they are non-functional. Instead, Rule is achieved through and from what amounts to the Throne, which is not so much an independent executive as it is the agent of the Ruling Faction of Private Interest. The People, essentially, have no say in the matter, nor are they even expected to know what's going on. The Government is to exist as the enforcement arm of the Ruling Faction of Private Interest, nothing more. The heady days of "self-government" will be well and truly over.
A dictatorship? Well, it could be, especially if the Pauls, Father and Son, are able to completely paralyze the functioning of Government. There will have to be a sharp -- and quite possibly final -- intervention from... somewhere... which will have the effect of irrelevating Congress altogether. If Obama can't engineer it and implement it appropriately, I have little doubt he will be replaced, and not with Joe Biden. The most likely replacement would be General St. David Petraeus who would step in as a kind of Interim Protector, the Presidency and Vice Presidency being temporarily vacant.
That role could easily become permanent.
It's already quite clear that internal factional disputes within the Ruling Class have reached critical mass. There will be a fierce and potentially violent struggle between factions for ultimate control, a struggle that will make the internal factional disputes of the Clintonian Interregnum seem almost quaint. How it will resolve is difficult to tell. But whatever the result, the New America that emerges will look little like what we once knew, its path will be set in a different direction, and just like today, many around the world will follow.
Whatever the case, it is not our struggle.
[Note: I am recovering from pneumonia. I refused hospitalization -- for the simple reason that the last time I was hospitalized I was nearly killed (twice) through medical error and neglect. Recovery will be long and slow at home, but it wouldn't have been any faster in the hospital...]
In all the verbiage spilled over the Tedious Little Peckerhead, Rand Paul of Kentucky, one of the things that pops out at me about Libertarians as a class and Puritans in general is a complete failure to recognize that living in a civilized -- or even just a civil -- society involves trade-offs.
As the poet put it:
You can't always get what you want...
People who have adapted to living in a civil society accept that as a fundamental tenet. You can't always get what you want, and there are always trade-offs -- sometimes ugly ones -- in establishing and maintaining relatively peaceful and mutually rewarding civic, social, and economic conditions.
And if you try sometime you find you get what you need...
The example that is the focus of the current controversy over Rand Paul is that of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which no one under 40 is thoroughly cognizant of on the one hand, and people over 60 still remember the struggles over it as if they were yesterday. The measure is that important to the way society in this country functions, and it took major upheavals and some very bold leadership in Washington, in the States, and at the local levels to get from where we were in matters discriminatory to where we are.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the subsequent civil rights and voting rights legislation undid the strange and twisted Apartheid state that Jim Crow legislation and long-time social custom had imposed -- and not just in the South.
It was as radical a transformation of American society as there has ever been, and its effects appear to be lasting and profound. At least so far as we know, most Americans under 40 wouldn't even dream of reverting to the Jim Crow past, not even in the Heart of Dixie. The idea is absurd to them. They've seen a couple of generations of relatively peaceful, more or less racially integrated living, and the genuine liberation of all sorts of groups, including women, from the restrictions of a straight-laced discriminatory and overtly oppressive white male privilege society.
There's no going back.
But we didn't get where we are without some pretty heavy, and to some extent catastrophic, trade-offs.
We should be discussing those trade-offs much more than we are.
Jim Crow wasn't overcome without a massive trade off. The United States is now a prison society, incarcerating and adjudicating the lives millions upon millions of Americans. Approximately one in three black men being ground up in the prison state mechanisms. Liberation for all has meant imprisonment for many.
This trade off has devastated black families.
The liberation of women from the home has come with a trade off: the stagnation of worker wages over generations. It now takes two workers -- instead of ordinarily one -- for typical households to support families in a comfortably modest lifestyle.
We could go on and on with examples of trade offs for liberation, and we should recognize that both "liberated" society and oppressive, discriminatory society involve trade-offs, and we should recognize what they are and evaluate their social, economic, and political worth.
For example, is the trade-off of living in a prison society like we do right or just or necessary in order to implement the "equal rights for all" premise that underlies civil rights legislation?
Do we have to have the Drug War, "fought" primarily against black and brown men, in order to overcome the racial fears and animosities of a shrinking middle class?
Does liberation of women require flattening and eventually reducing household living standards?
Puritans and libertarians don't accept trade-offs in their pursuit of Liberation to do what they want, when and how they want, with no regard for others if they don't choose to have such regard. They are would-be petty tyrants within their own spheres, which they would endeavor to increase as much as possible. They don't accept trade-offs; it's their way or no way. However, adopting their political, social and economic determinism would mean certain very obvious trade-offs that most rational people reject out of hand. Accepting Puritan/Libertarian "liberation" means the vast majority would be subject to outright and potentially very fierce tyranny.
The Puritan/Libertarian Motto: "I demand the Liberty to impose my Authority on you." The only way the tiny faction of Puritan/Libertarians can have their "Liberty" is by imposing their Tyranny on everyone else.
Which is their goal.
No wonder most people reject it.
On the other hand, there is not nearly enough discussion and consideration of the trade-offs that have been made in order to secure the Blessings of Liberty implicit in the concept of Equal Rights for All.
That's where social, economic and political discussion needs to go.
And I went down to the demonstration To get my fair share of abuse Singing, "We're gonna vent our frustration If we don't we're gonna blow a 50-amp fuse" Sing it to me now...
[NB: I have seen the Rolling Stones... but I have never seen... "Glee" ]
I want to expand just a little bit on my closing thoughts in my previous post on the KY It-boy == about process with regard to "opening the discussion," whether it's a discussion about torture, restriction/elimination of civil liberties for accused terrorists, or the current ill-informed discussion about "re-visiting" public accommodations aspects of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the laws that have grown out of it.
Once these discussions have been "opened" the course of events only moves (easily) in one direction. And the direction it moves is typically that which those who open the discussion desire. It is the Ratchet Effect in action.
Torture was not open to "reasonable" discussion prior to Alan Dershowitz putting for this notorious notions on numerous television appearances shortly after the tragedy of 9/11. Widespread restrictions on basic civil liberties were not open to discussion prior to the "reasonable" discussion of doing so concomitant with the advent of the Patriot Act and all the hinking of due process and worse that went with it -- thanks to Joe Lieberman and Little Lindsey Graham. Non discrimination in public accommodations was not open to "reasonable" discussion prior to Rand Paul running his yap on NPR, Rachel Maddow and a raft of other places.
And now that these issues have been put in the Public Square, look! It's almost magical. Torture is accepted by the millions, civil liberties are considered quaint, and no doubt the public accommodations aspects of civil rights law will be found to have fallen into disfavor ("no longer needed," don't you know) and private businesses will once again be allowed to discriminate any way they see fit.
Which was the objective of opening the discussion in the first place.
Much as I mock and disparage him, I don't actually blame Rand Paul for this; I get the sense from him that he doesn't have any real grounding among the Peoples of the Earth, he's just a floating head, operating on automatic. No, the responsibility for this should be put where it belongs, with the factions of the Ruling Class who are and have long been intent on reversion -- or as they call it: Progress -- to a Liberated Utopia, for them.
They've been doing everything they can to throw off legal restraints on their behavior and profits for generations, and they are utterly focused and relentless. The "reasonable" discussion of workarounds for, repeal of, or ignoring the public accommodations provisions of civil rights law is just one more step down that path.
This comes out of the desires of the Ruling Class and their media enablers. It is not, solely, the responsibility of Li'l Rand.
[Tedious little peckerhead (h/t gunnison @ FDL) Rand Paul, MD]
I've commentated about Li'l Paul, who I've dubbed the KY "It-Boy", in several fora, mostly lambasting him for his mind-numbing Propertarian clap-trap and general incoherent babbling, but it's looking more and more (at least for the moment) that he actually might represent a Problem for The Powers That Be.
He's supposed to be a part of the Establishment like his Daddy. Oh, his designated role within that Establishment is to be on the Farthest Right Propertarian Fringe and to get the Cracker Vote all riled up and to appeal to some of the younger elements in the Propertarian/Libertarian firmament.
But he's journeyed off the reservation on the matter of the Civil Rights Act and apparently other things, and though he's apparently been provided with study material and the appropriate talking points -- "Moi? Why I support the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in its entirety; I can't imagine why you would think otherwise. Ha ha ha ha ha." -- I've got this sense about him that he may try to break free of his handlers, somewhat like Half-Term Sarah did, and go for something else again. Something even more populist... shall we say.
The fear of Rightist populism is completely justified given its blood-soaked history in the 20th Century -- and I'm not just talking about the Nazis.
Rightist populism has a long history in this country, too, not least in the South.
And this nitwit comes along and starts pumping it up again, after several decades of deflation.
"We've come to take the Government back." Not take the country back, you notice. That was Dr. Dean's theme, and some observers would say that Dean and the Deaniacs got pretty much what they wanted -- or at least what they were working for, whether they knew it or not -- with the capture of all three branches of Government by Democrats.
What a disappointment that's been. But that's another topic. One day I'll have to go into some of my experiences working on the Dean campaign, and how some of the same enthusiasm and personnel were transferred to the Obama campaign, as were some of the delusions. But not just yet.
"Take the Government back..." There's a lot of code-talk in the KY It-Boy's campaign designed to appeal to the fine upstanding Southern white boys who have felt their Government was taken from them by all these uppity darkies and wimmen, especially the darkie in the White House, but including dames like Mrs. Pelosi and the Always Arch She-Demon, Hillary.
So they're gonna send Ron Paul's nitwit son to sit in the Senate to git 'er done. Don't laugh. It could happen.
Nitwit though he may be, and with a birdsnest of curls on top of his very swelled head (h/t some commenter at FDL), Rand Paul strikes me as quite possibly the charismatic Rightwing Populist leader Half-term Sarah has been pretending to be on her road show. It's more than obvious that Half-term Sarah is in it for the money -- which she is making hand over fist -- just like Glenn Beck, the other potential RW Populist leader -- until the KY It-Boy came along.
Despite the fact that the Big Republican Leadership is trying to train up Li'l Paul to behave on the stump, it looks like this babbling boy is bucking the grownups and forging his own path. Half-term Sarah was apparently purchasable for hard cash, but I'm not at all sure Rand Paul can be bought. And if he can't be, Katie Bar the Door. He's got an immense ego, and he's already let his primary victory swell his curly haired head up so much he can't even get it through ordinary doors anymore.
If he continues to try to rally the reactionary Crackers -- which he's doing with every teevee appearance -- it's possible the Government will have (another) BIG problem on its hands.
The Arizona Thing was kind of a harbinger, along with the huge amount of public approval Arizona's pissant reactionary behavior is garnering.
We're going down a path we've been down before, and it's one that doesn't end happy. ---------------------- UPDATE:
Here's Rachel asking some questions of America:
But I think she's being somewhat disingenuous. The little Cracker twerp has backflipped and backtracked all over the place for the last 24/36 hours over the "Civil Rights" Thing -- scare quotes intentional -- and in the process has managed to convince a portion of the Big Media that the Controversy is meaningless, a tempest in a teapot, he's just a Normal Guy who wants to be Free, come on, anyway.
And of course plenty of his partisans and flacks, who believe as he does on the larger question of the Sacredness of Property Rights (as opposed to Human Rights), are styling him as Perfectly Normal as well. The "Civil Rights" Thing being long settled. You see.
Rachel touches on it toward the end of her soliloquy, but it is in a very arch and abstract way, laying out "questions" issue-by-issue, just barely relating them to the whole, ie: the Libertarian World View.
But it is really more fundamental than that.
Is it the Right to and in Private Property more important to Americans in the 21st Century than Human Rights?
Should interest in Property trump every other interest at all in the law?
Should the acquisition, holding, and defense of Property be the central focus of American society, law and custom?
Does the Constitution protect and defend Property at the expense of all other rights and interests?
When the questions are asked this way, the inherent dangers of Pauliac Propertarianism to all other rights and interests takes on focus. Its fundamental anti-Constitutionalism, and the impossibility of Constitutional Self-Government under Pauliac Propertarian law is revealed.
So long as the focus remains on the "Civil Rights" Thing, the danger that Propertarianism represents to all mankind is masked. ("Of course I believe in Civil Rights! Heh.") Of course. And if those civil rights -- and the concept of Human Rights -- are trumped by Property Rights... oh well!
-------------------
Furthermore: The process of "opening the discussion" of the Civil Rights Act and the Public Accommodations provisions reminds me a whole lot of the means by which the issue of torture was put in the Public Square when time was, and how, over the course of the "rational discussion" that ensued, and the careful weighing of the pros and cons, the ethical and moral "dilemmas", and all the practical considerations -- along with plenty of field practice -- it was determined that the public was actually split on the issue, and while the Obama White House promptly prohibited "torture" -- which wasn't going on anyway according to the Cheneys -- everyone expects it's still going on. And few care.
Transfer that same process to key civil rights issues, whether focused on accommodation or otherwise. We've already seen what's happened with the Arizona law requiring you to produce your papers. Americans by and large are all in favor. Well, if the civil rights and accommodation issues are "aired thoroughly" -- as they will be as long as people keep yapping about Rand Paul's outrageousness -- we'll find, surprisingly enough, that the Public is "split" on the issue.
And won't that enable justification for ignoring the laws?
