Tea Party

Quote of the Day

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Leo Linbeck III, from a comment he left in response to this post at Belmont Club:

The good news is that we can fix our nation’s problems. How? Well, the first step is to reverse this trend toward centralization and scale. We have to stop concentrating power, and start dispersing it. Corruption and regulatory overreach are political pollution, and the solution to pollution is dilution.
 
And, believe it or not, voters in both parties support the idea of moving decision-making closer to the people. Republicans call this “federalism,” and Democrats call this “local control.”
 
The media tries to divide us, but we’re really together on the need to move money and decision-making closer to the people. The Ruling Elite don’t want this to happen, of course, so they try to convince us that we are enemies of each other. Don’t believe it.
 
Yes, we disagree on policy. But we agree on governance, we believe in self-governance, and it is the current governance system that is broken.
 
There is lots of room for disagreement and political fights. But those fights must be engaged at the local level, because they’re the only level at which we can come to consensus. The problems are literally unsolvable at the federal level.

The genius of the Tea Party lies in its emergent ability to concentrate voter attention on a common political denominator of core public-finance issues.

Humor as we slouch toward. . .

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An entertaining aspect of Perry’s entry has been commentary explaining Aggies (even in Texas, one says, Aggies are considered hicks;yuh think). As the t-sips describe the yell leaders and Aggies boast of National Merit scholars, true outsiders may not realize the Corps was compulsory for much of its first century. Today Perry was ably (or at least energetically) commended by a t-sipper (Plan 2) and poliltical rival. Perry’s a mensch Kinky Friedman concludes. Friedman’s style is discursive; he never edits a good one-liner. And he acknowledges that at this point he’d choose Charlie Sheen over Obama. Still the piece is affectionate and, in the end, forceful: “A still, small voice within keeps telling me that Rick Perry’s best day may yet be ahead of him, and so too, hopefully, will be America’s.” (With Kinky irony & sentiment are often paired.)

Mark Steyn, too, is a nail that hasn’t been hammered down – he, too, argues “that there are already too damn many laws, taxes, regulations, panels, committees, and bureaucrats.” (It’s about an hour.) He, too, sometimes sacrifices coherence for humor. But, in the end, his arguments for human rights and self-reliance, the core of After America, have a steady aim. His historical context is not the southwest but northeast; he chose the granite state and citizenship. And Steyn reminds us why someone – someone who thinks and someone who is a nail too stubborn to be hammered down – would choose what we too long took for granted.

Palin … Palin?

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OK, I now think I was wrong.

I now think she is running.

This article is pretty convincing.

One experienced observer, seeing the Palin operation in Iowa, says this:

“They are very organized, and the team they have in place is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in this state before — and I’m totally impressed by the way they’ve gone about it,” she said. “It’s going to be a major upset if she gets in because I think these people are very underestimated.”

Maybe this really is all just hype, to sell books. But it is looking more and more like an extremely unorthodox but serious effort.

Say this for the GOP nomination race: It is first rate political theatre. A thrill and a chill a minute.

Maybe it will even produce a candidate that can beat Mr. Obama.

God bless America.

Quote of the Day: John Robb

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Global transition points like this are so rare, it’s a great time to be alive.

John Robb

Right on. Yes. Yes.

More of this type of thinking, please.

If I could live at any time in history it would be now.

(If you are not a regular reader of Mr. Robb’s Global Guerrillas, get that way.)

(Also check out Mr. Robb’s way cool new Wiki MiiU, which is all about resilience. I eagerly await his book on resilient communities.)

(Here is an xcellent John Robb talk about open source ventures, but full disclosure, a lot of it sailed over my head.)

(And if you have not read his book, Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, go get it.)

Friends, please let me know in the comments, on a scale of 1 to 5, strongly disagree to strongly agree, how you respond to this quote. Put me down as a 5, obviously enough.