On the contrary: Sometimes it can be effective at intimidating opponents, and a large demonstration can serve the purpose of showing that a cause has many supporters. Perhaps these are some of the reasons that liberals do not want their opponents to use any tactics that liberals have used to good effect.

Anything I can do, a trained professional can do better … so I will not think for myself, but wait for the trained professional to tell me what to do.

We have been led to believe that “experts” are better suited than we are to solve almost any problem we face, even if they are:

> Highly detached from your individual situation.

> Susceptible to adverse influences that distort the decision-making process … like political pressure.

> Limited in resources and methods they can apply to the problem.

In the case of government, rightly so — to protect our rights, their ability to coerce moral/ethical and other personal choices is limited, as is their ability to “discriminate” and demand different requirements to match individual needs — but that leaves government, particularly at the Federal level, effectively with only two tools to use in problem solving — a bag of money, and a set of handcuffs. Neither of which can completely resolve the individual challenges we face as people.

> Limited in perception and cognitive ability, relative to the scope of the problems.

People sometimes ask, “If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we solve >i>(insert problem here)?”. When they ask this question, they apparently do not comprehend how easy — relative to the problems we are trying to get our Best and Brightest to solve to day — the Herculean effort of putting man on the moon was. As I describe this, keep track of the magnitude of the numbers.

***The thousands of men and billions of dollars we spent on the space program culminated in a total of only thirteen Saturn V launches … of which, only nine went to the moon; only six led to a moon landing.

***While planning and preparation for future missions overlapped, only one mission was flown at a time.

***Each Saturn V was comprised of several hundred thousand parts … most of which only had to work for a few minutes to a few hours, before being discarded.

All this was deemed too expensive to sustain, so we stopped going to the moon.

Now, compare the above number of variables to the number of variables presented by 300 million SIMULTANEOUS “missions”, each of which has multiple needs and problems that diverge/from conflict with the other “missions” … and the solutions for each have to work for years to a lifetime.

That is the challenge we face when we rely on government to facilitate the delivery of health care … and as an engineer, to think (as this Administration and the Congressional leadership does) that a relative few Best and Brightest could effectively and efficiently facilitate that delivery requires, to coin a phrase, a willing suspension of disbelief.

For one side of the aisle, also add this fallacy to the list … that an entity who publicly declares their intent to make a profit from their efforts is inherently less trustworthy than an allegedly “non-profit” entity … be it activist, academician, or government official.

The profit motive can still affect the decisions of the latter … the activist wants to keep the contribution revenue stream rolling in; the academician wants that next grant; the government official wants to progress up his career ladder. All these influences can bias the decision making process, leading the supposedly “non-profit” entity into making decisions that undermine their service to their client — while enhancing their personal or institutional care-and-feeding.

That last part deserves a little more attention … for it is the heart of the problem with political parties. Like all institutions, their own care-and-feeding becomes their primary objective, over time … and they will take the path of least resistance to assure it, even if it compromises their stated principles or even their very reason for existence.

That is why, if we are going to move beyond griping about our leaders and “work the problem, people”, we are going to have to change the way both We the People and Congress operate, to render the institutional parties obsolete … not ban them, render them obsolete.

Jonh…please….that tired old argument. We have not seen ANYTHING like the retro-productive juveniles sit in bullshit from conservatives that we have from liberals in the last 30 years….if for no other reason that we have actual jobs and responsibilities to attend to….being a Starbucks barista leaves liberals with the morning shift to attend all sorts of protests. A demonstration attended by people of many politcal stripes …in the form of the tea parties does not compare to the bullshit juveniles stuff from the left. You are so typical of leftists….the kind who hate Fox news….but not because they are biased…which they are..but because you disagree with them.

you need a healthy dose of intellectual honesty…you and all the rest like you…

The problem is not that we can’t rely on the two parties; it is that we can’t rely on our fellow Americans to understand some basic ideas for keeping or recreating a nation based upon individual freedom and economic prosperity based upon meritocracy. It may be that I am the deluded one, but I see the majority of voters as venal, (and/or) ignorant and shallow.

Shannon’s arguments may be implicit and therefore this may not be what he meant; it is what statements like his seem to me to imply:
You can’t solve a problem when you don’t listen to other solutions than the one that clearly isn’t working;
It is generally not a good idea to go about rediscovering the wheel – especially when you seem to have invented the same square that the last century saw applied over and over to get your goods to market and somehow it just didn’t roll but instead ate up the road (and killed a hundred million).
You aren’t likelky to be a good representive when your subordinates greet your constituents with a middle finger.
And I would argue that you can’t propose useful laws if you have are unwilling to think about human nature. Our founders understood that aligning the axis of our personal desires with that of the community’s needs might not make Utopia, but would sure as hell make a happier, more productive nation than one that tries to encourage our worst traits.

The current administrations distrust of history, facts, traditions, and the best in man is, well, discouraging. That an early backer of Obama has only contempt for her constituents reveals much about her.

We’re facing a major crisis which could bankrupt our country and we’re arguing about which side’s protestors are worse or what some silly people in a senator’s office did or who the media is more unfair to…blahblah blah.

Well, the parent post is about what this particular incident tells us about how leftists view their fellow citizens. It’s not a post about taxes or health care “reform”. If you want to talk about what you want to talk about, write on your own blog.

As a practical matter, WE need to quit paying our personal income taxes. Why should we pay taxes to corrupt officials who are dedicated to a “cult of personality”? If you know for a fact that your money is gonna be pounded down a rat hole, why do it? The IRS depends on voluntary compliance. A General Strike will get attention, people.

Words have meaning. Call things what they really are. Leftist-marxists posing as democrats aren’t democrats that love their country. So call them what they are. Call what their agenda is what it actually is. The marxist playbook has been around for quite a while. If you don’t know their tactics, then shame on you!

So the characteristics of all of the above are germane to the discussion.

And I agree with you that some regulation is necessary … regulation of the “striped shirt” variety that works to prevent the trampling of our right to pursue happiness by another … not the “coach’s jacket” variety that seeks to pre-determine the direction, if not outcome, of said pursuit, as so many of the proposals coming from this Administration are designed to do.

It IS possible to be consistent. I’m consistently for constitutional democracy in America. That means government by elections, not street mobs. Street protest has long since ceased to mean anything in this country. Anyone can get a big crowd for anything

You can’t have it both ways. The threat they poise is directly proportional to their political effectiveness. You can’t logically state that demonstrations are both politically ineffective but constitute mob rule.

I agree that the time when large demonstrations exerted a powerful effect on politics has passed… on the left. Leftists turned political protest into a form of entertainment and socialization. If you read most non-leftists critiques of the anti-democracy rallies during the liberation of Iraq, you will see that the major critique centered on the immaturity and fecklessness of the demonstrators. Leftists protest at the drop of a hat, mostly because they’re either young or they’re old with no responsibilities.

On the other hand, there is no protest party culture among non-leftists. It really means something when even a small group of middle-aged, middle-class people with families and economic responsibilities take time to show up at demonstration. Politicians can reasonably assume that for every adult body at such a demonstration there are hundreds and perhaps thousands of voters who fill the same way but just don’t think about physically protesting or can’t make time in their busy schedules to do so.

The other major factors is what the protestors are upset about. No one really takes much notice of pro-life protestors but no one has seriously physically protested taxation and government spending since…I’m going to say the late 1700’s.

It is they … not us … who have acted like losers, by so many of them becoming Dim Lite when it came to spending-in-the-name-of-political-advancement — knowing that we weren’t going to undercut the support of the President while the war in Iraq was hot (I guess they, like Rahm Emanuel, knew when not to let a crisis go to waste?) — and/or becoming Dim Lite to avoid the painting process I described in the last post, so they would be well thought of.

IMO, the reliance of We the People upon two institutional parties — or three, or any number — is an exercise in foolishness … when it has been made clearly evident by human history that ANY institution, no matter what its original intent, will inevitably gravitate towards making its own care-and-feeding its primary objective in the absence of effective checks-and-balances to preclude that behavior.

Like Sarah Palin has indicated, it’s time to support the man/woman … not the party.

We have done the opposite, because it is more convenient for us to do so — just check to see if they’re (D) or (R), and vote accordingly. As we have recently seen, that is an abdication of our responsibility as voters that comes back to bite us.

Frankly, I’d like to see all political parties — and their supporting infrastructure of professionals who emulate Wall Street wonks in their attempts to leverage the political market process and its trends, instead of selling us on the fundamentals — rendered obsolete by an engaged populace … reinforced by changes in the ways our Congress operates that would negate the field-tilting effects of seniority and party membership that now allow a few refugees of Woodstock Nation to set the agenda for all of us.

If they accomplish little, then why are the numbers at these events growing? Apparently more and more people are seeing them as a worthwhile expenditure of their time.

Winning elections is important … but you can’t cede the battlefield of public discourse between elections, either. And for years, we used the civil, erudite route … exclusively, staying out of the streets … and ceded that battlefield to the statists to our detriment, allowing them to frame the debates to the point that they were able to further their agenda even when alleged conservatives held Congress and the WH.

If we are silent now, the statists will simply ignore us and press on with their agenda. We don’t have another election to stop them until 2010 … and they can do a lot of damage before then.

Methinks the American people see the difference between the Tea Partiers and our counterparts among the statists.

> When, at a DC antiwar protest a couple of years ago — counter-protested by many of the same people you now see at the Tea Parties, including myself — the score was 183 to 0; that is, 183 antiwar leftists (pretty much interchangeable with statists) arrested to ZERO among the pro-victory contingent.

> When, at the Parties I have attended here on Long Island over the last few weeks, these citizens are NOT blocking the streets … and in fact, make a point of cooperating with police to keep walkways clear.

> When they don’t see displays of vulgarity and incivility, such as the repeated dropping of the F-bomb through language and signage.

> WHEN THEY SEE THE PRINCIPLED BASIS FOR THE POSITIONS SUPPORTED BY THE TEA PARTIERS, IN STARK CONTRAST TO THE EMOTIONALLY-APPEALING FOOLISHNESS SUPPORTED BY THE STATISTS.

Over the years, we have, in our civility, allowed the statists to paint us as ignorant and lacking in compassion, and themselves as compassionate experts who have a virtual birthright to rule us. When we have tried to dispassionately correct them, we have been shouted down … and these misperceptions were reinforced in the eyes of the American public, keeping reasonable people silent as the statists worked to move us toward the stagnation and impotence exhibited by their role models in Europe.

We don’t have to sink to their unprincipled, vulgar level … but we shouldn’t think that high-school debating principles are going to be effective against those who, in their relativism, have no problem destroying reputations to further their ends.

That’s like bringing a knife … no, make that a Fun Noodle … to a gunfight.

SILENT NO MORE!

I find it even more interesting that it’s OK to criticize a tactic when it’s used by the other side, but it’s fine when your side does it. Just because right wing protesters haven’t yet developed the, erm, expertise of the left is not an excuse for starting down that path. Street protests make everyone attending feel better (we’re speaking truth to power! look at us!), but accomplish little. Winning elections matters, not carrying signs. Protests change no minds, except to convince people to vote the other way. That’s my experience. Win the elections. They matter more than feeling better about having a crowd block traffic.

What’s even more incredibly interesting is that I am an imperial warmonger and still get accused of supporting leftist astroturf.

It IS possible to be consistent. I’m consistently for constitutional democracy in America. That means government by elections, not street mobs. Street protest has long since ceased to mean anything in this country. Anyone can get a big crowd for anything. It’s just a tactic, and a particularly ineffective and annoying one. It diverts attention from the government to a few people who show up to wave signs. It’s purpose is just to give people a chance to look around and see there’s a lot of people who agree with them. Well, that’s nice, but it’s better to win the election. Ask the left how all the antiwar protests worked out in 2004. Why would we want to duplicate that feat? By 2008 the demonstrations were gone. Street protests are for losers. Winners don’t use them because they don’t have to.

This is the first time in my life that the Republican party is acting like complete losers. Stop it. Get off the street and win some damn elections.

http://www.DumpChrisDodd.com

MUST SEE!

John,
Perhaps you can point me to the link where Tea Party protestors are pooping on the doorstep of a Senator? Hmmm?

As to power having its rules, I’m reminded of Belmont Club who recommended winning the war on terror quickly because otherwise we’d find ourselves agreeing to things that would shock us a few years back. And so I’d like to recomend a destruction of the Left before we find ourselves doing things we’d rather not have to.