Why isn’t the American Public believing its institutions? Certainly, a crushing indictment by Matthew Continetti at the Free Beacon aimed at the Big (and normally unaccountable) Government that Progressives have built. While we hear that the United States is ungovernable, that the Federal Government is unmanageable, the result is the same – a total lack of actually admitting and DOING the right thing and an unwillingness to realize that “gridlock” is THE safety brake that the Founders intended and should be a siren call to ask “hey, according to Constitutional Principles, are we on or off course? Instead, we get “Same old, same old” and a double down on status quo. Matthew gets it right and why people are just tuning out because the Ruling Class has tuned them out (the supreme mark of Progressivism (and incipient Totalitarianism) – “we know better what’s needed than you so sit down and shut up” (reformatted, emphasis mine):
Over the last few years the divergence between what the government promises and what it delivers, between what it says is happening or will happen and what actually is happening and does happen, between what it determines to be important and what the public wishes to be important—this gap has become abysmal, unavoidable, inescapable. We hear of “lone-wolf” terrorism, of “workplace violence,” that if you like your plan you can keep your plan. We are told that Benghazi was a spontaneous demonstration, that al Qaeda is on the run, that the border is secure as it has ever been, that Assad must go, that I didn’t draw a red line, the world drew a red line, that the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups involved not a smidgen of corruption, that the Islamic State is not Islamic. We see the government spend billions on websites that do not function, and the VA consign patients to death by waiting list and then cover it up. We are assured that Putin won’t invade; that the Islamic State is the jayvee team of terrorism; that Bowe Bergdahl served with honor and distinction; that there is a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.
And those are just the easy ones. Simpler and simpler – they believe that they can tell us that the yellow rain is simply that – rain. They know better. Shut up. Sit down. Behave as expected. We’ll tell you what that is. And we will always tell you the truth and do exactly what we’ve told you we will do. And then they are surprised that we aren’t believing them any more – that Trust in institutions (especially ? They have brought this upon themselves.
While the public remains pro-Israel, our government negotiates with Israel’s enemies. While the public wants to reduce immigration, the preeminent legislative objective of both parties is a bill that would increase it. While the public is uninterested in global warming, while costly regulations could not pass a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate, while the scientific consensus behind the green agenda is, at the very least, fraying, the president says that climate change is the greatest threat to the United States. While Americans tell pollsters their economic situation has not improved, and that things are headed in the wrong direction—while even Democratic economists acknowledge the despondent state of the middle class—the president travels to Chicago to celebrate his economic recovery.
These disjunctions and confusions, these missteps, scandals, and miscalculations, [and outright ignoring the public they are supposed to represent, not boss -Skip] have hurt Obama’s approval numbers. They endanger the Democratic Senate majority, contribute to the widespread sense of disorder and decay, shatter trust in government and in public institutions. They have put into stark relief a political class dominated by liberal partisans, captured by ideas and interests removed from those of ordinary Americans. The stories of ineptitude or malfeasance that appear in the daily newspaper are more than examples of high ideals executed poorly. They are examples of the pursuit of ideas—of equality and diversity and progress and centralization and environmentalism and globalization—to absurd and self-destructive limits.
It is precisely the intersection of Ebola and globalization that worries me. The only response to a virus this deadly is to quarantine it. Stop flights, suspend visas, and beef up customs and security. It can be done. If the FAA can cancel flights to Israel, why can’t it cancel flights to and from the West African countries whence the outbreak originated?
Amnesty is the best example – for the majority of Americans (and excepting those that would financially (or politically, which seems to be more important nowadays – politics has become EVERYTHING) profit from general amnesty and open borders), this is summed up by this: legal immigration YES, seal the borders YES, and we trust you all to do that NO. In almost every area, the Progressives has broken the Social Compact on which this country was founded – a limited government that knew what not to insert itself and do those few things well. A government that would understand that it CAN’T govern everything and shouldn’t – otherwise we are not a Free People but merely servants to our Public Bureaucrats and power hungry politicians on both sides of the aisle.
So why won’t they do the things that we believe to be true? Ideology, and the inability to offer “Oops, our bad” that really means something:
Simple: because doing so would violate the sacred principles by which our bourgeois liberal elite operate. To deny an individual entry to the United States over fears of contamination would offend our elite’s sense of humanitarian cosmopolitanism. For them, “singling out” nations or cultures from which threats to the public health or safety of the United States originate is illegitimate. It “stigmatizes” those nations or cultures, it “shames” them, it makes them feel unequal. It’s judgmental. It suggests that America prefers her already existing citizens to others.
It shows that we matter less to them than other non-citizens. That they have the intelligence and the charity that we supposedly lack (even though the US gives more through charity than any other nation on earth) so they will do it on our behalf – do as you are told!
Such pieties endanger us. They are the reason we were slow to contain the influx of Central American refugees, the reason we do not follow-up on illegal immigrants who fail to show up for hearings, the reason we remain unable to strip jihadists of U.S. citizenship, the reason that a year after two Chechen refugees bombed the Boston Marathon, America is preparing to expand resettlement of Syrian refugees. The imperatives of the caste, the desire to make actual whatever is rattling around Tom Friedman’s brain at a given moment, take precedence over reality.
Our culture, our traditions, our Principles seem to no longer matter to these transnationalist Masters of the Universe. And they continue to do so because we let them by our votes because our destruction isn’t clear enough. I have blogged many times about the “wall of America citizenship and culture” and that it can continue to stand firm if one removes a few bricks from it. I have also cautioned that in removing even more, it will be come unsteady and start to wobble.
And now, if you believe what Continetti writes, that wobbling (the disconnect) is now happening.
The system can withstand only so many shocks. For the last two years it has suffered nothing but blows, traumas, national and international concussions. The response by our government has been denial and delusion. But that has further alienated the public, and it won’t be long before things get really weird. Maybe it is time for the political class to panic, too.
The Republicans are yelling “WE CAN FIX IT”! Really? Nationally, I look back to the Reagan era when I became of age and of the O ‘Brien NH Speakership of 2010 – those are about the only times I can say that Republicans were doing what they claimed to do. While Reagan didn’t cut the size of the Feds, he did reset the economic field rules so that Capitalism could run – and boats did float upwards for 25 years afterwards. Here in NH, the size of Government did shrink with little to no harm to the ordinary citizen that seem quite comfortable to be more Left Alone (even as the Progressives were screaming “Mortal Blow, Mortal Blow”.
Naw, just proving that your alter of Big Government (forever and ever, amen) was about as real as that as Baal.
