July 04, 2022
Happy July 4th!
Things might look grim now, with riots, shootings, shortages of fuel and a looming food shortage. We have a governing cadre that holds us in contempt as it imposes these unpleasantries and further seeks to impose far greater restrictions on our freedom than were even conceived by the British Parliament of the late 1700s.
However, perspective is important. When we hear from people who are convinced, for instance, that civil war is imminent...
I mean..nobody in particular
...remember that they lack the age to fully understand that we've been through this before.
This is not to say they are dumb. A lot of the doomers are just a few years too young to grasp just how bad the things were in living memory. By the late 1970s, we had much the same situation with stagflation and shortages. domestic terrorists planting bombs from coast to coast, and overseas defeats that emboldened our enemies, and we had drugs tearing apart communities and other crime skyrocketing. We ALSO had 22,000 nuclear weapons aimed at us by a nation that claimed it was dedicated to world peace, and defined peace as our enslavement.
A few years later we were rebounding, and we saw a time of peace and prosperity that lasted with minor fuctuations for nearly 40 years and survived the abuse of multiple unenlightened leaders until the various long simmering calamities that came to a head in 2008 began the slide into our current malaise.
The United States is robust. It is so because it is founded on the principles of the enlightenment and the ability of people to both cooperate and say no. We have a federal system that allows all 55 states and territories to set up their own ways of doing things and that also allows cooperation on matters of mutual importance.
This dual dynamic of cooperation and individualism was not codified for some years after our founding, and remains an ongoing experiment.
But today is the day that we remember those flawed and human but extremely wise individuals who 246 years ago signed a document that was not a law or set of governing documents, but an affirmation of principals and a declaration of our independence from those who presumed they had the divine right to rule us...
On this day, 246 years ago a group of delegates set in motion our very imperfect but quite magnificent experiment, that has faced myriad obstacles, some of our own making, but has always bounced back better and stronger than before.
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring
Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
The Signatures.....
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
10:22 AM
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1
I'm actually a lot less concerned today about a civil war than I was over the last 5 years or so. What I'm seeing looks like the beginnings of a preference cascade where people realize that what they thought the majority believed about wokism is not what they themselves believe and are willing to act on it. Glenn Reynolds described this in https://web.archive.org/web/20030910002544/http://www.techcentralstation.com/031302A.html
For all the bad of the covid lock downs, I think having people at home with no real distractions from watching Wokists burn down and loot cities like ancient barbarian hordes and hearing for themselves what was being taught to their children caused enough people to talk to each other and realize that they weren't alone in opposing all of this. While some collage-aged may be willing to fight for it, without a major portion of the population being willing , they won't have the infrastructure to support it. Their attempts to purge and control the military will just break it and cause it to be replaced by local militias (not a long term good thing, IMHO). Militaries aren't just weapons they are people and volunteer militaries need the support of The People.
On the Country Club Republicanism of most of the Republican leadership, it's never been truly popular, and Trump for good and ill has reoriented the bases' energy away from them. Their power is hollowing out and they will collapse.
I just don't see there being enough support among the people for a civil war and if the Elites try, than they will motivate the population to fight... against them.
For all the bad of the covid lock downs, I think having people at home with no real distractions from watching Wokists burn down and loot cities like ancient barbarian hordes and hearing for themselves what was being taught to their children caused enough people to talk to each other and realize that they weren't alone in opposing all of this. While some collage-aged may be willing to fight for it, without a major portion of the population being willing , they won't have the infrastructure to support it. Their attempts to purge and control the military will just break it and cause it to be replaced by local militias (not a long term good thing, IMHO). Militaries aren't just weapons they are people and volunteer militaries need the support of The People.
On the Country Club Republicanism of most of the Republican leadership, it's never been truly popular, and Trump for good and ill has reoriented the bases' energy away from them. Their power is hollowing out and they will collapse.
I just don't see there being enough support among the people for a civil war and if the Elites try, than they will motivate the population to fight... against them.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Mon Jul 4 12:18:57 2022 (Y7jiM)
2
I concur that a preference cascade model is likely.
I'm not sure if my opinion is much independent of Stargazer's, I think the Reynolds explanation may have been where I was first exposed to the concept.
My quibble is age of the doomers. One of the younger guys in my circles believes that he sees a lot of /older/ doomers.
The older doomer model hangs together theoretically. A lot of those people would be expected to have information processing habits vulnerable to the old disinformation scheme running on automatic. Furthermore, they grew up when the opposition's information manipulation was a bit more comprehensive.
My issues are a) I am relying on someone else's perceptions b) I don't know how reliable the samples are c) I don't know how representative the samples are.
The 70s were the tail end of the last time the communists thought that they could take over by violence, and were trying. That failed, the theoretical cookbook that they were using was so stupidly false that they decided that they needed to corrupt the system from the inside instead of using the violence. Now, those idjits are at the top of the system, desperate for fear of mortality, and trying to use violence again. They are failing at the violence, again, because of how spectacularly wrong their understanding is of Americans in particular and humans in general.
I'm not sure if my opinion is much independent of Stargazer's, I think the Reynolds explanation may have been where I was first exposed to the concept.
My quibble is age of the doomers. One of the younger guys in my circles believes that he sees a lot of /older/ doomers.
The older doomer model hangs together theoretically. A lot of those people would be expected to have information processing habits vulnerable to the old disinformation scheme running on automatic. Furthermore, they grew up when the opposition's information manipulation was a bit more comprehensive.
My issues are a) I am relying on someone else's perceptions b) I don't know how reliable the samples are c) I don't know how representative the samples are.
The 70s were the tail end of the last time the communists thought that they could take over by violence, and were trying. That failed, the theoretical cookbook that they were using was so stupidly false that they decided that they needed to corrupt the system from the inside instead of using the violence. Now, those idjits are at the top of the system, desperate for fear of mortality, and trying to use violence again. They are failing at the violence, again, because of how spectacularly wrong their understanding is of Americans in particular and humans in general.
Posted by: Pat Buckman at Tue Jul 5 09:48:56 2022 (r9O5h)
3
Dutch Farmers Bring Tank To Fertilizer Protest; Cops Shoot Tractor
Of course it is not just in the US where this preference cascade is starting to happen. On the one hand it is heartening to see others opposing the global elites. On the other, these elites aren't smart enough to change course to stay in power.
Of course it is not just in the US where this preference cascade is starting to happen. On the one hand it is heartening to see others opposing the global elites. On the other, these elites aren't smart enough to change course to stay in power.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Wed Jul 6 05:40:40 2022 (Y7jiM)
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