If Americans Are ‘Scared to Death’ — It’s Because Government Has Failed Them

[Valin]

National Review:

Jonah Goldberg

December 18, 2015

 

‘We have people across this country who are scared to death,” New Jersey governor Chris Christie declared loudly at this week’s Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas. Virtually the entire debate was based upon this premise. Which is understandable. Since the bloody Islamist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, terrorism has shot up as the chief concern for most Americans, particularly Republican voters.

 

(Snip)

 

But I don’t think that economics explains everything. Seventy percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Many of those people are doing just fine economically.

 

No, I think the missing piece of the puzzle is the fact that Americans — on the left and the right — think that the folks running the country have an agenda different from theirs. The Left has a much richer vocabulary for such claims, given its ancient obsessions with greed and economic determinism. They see big corporations and the so-called 1 percent pulling strings behind the scenes. (Watch literally any Bernie Sanders speech on YouTube to learn more.) Paranoia about the influence of big money in politics has inspired the Democratic front-runner to make revising the First Amendment a top priority.

 

But while there are a great many people on the right who also complain about crony capitalism and special interests, such concerns don’t get to the heart of the anxiety, at least not for conservatives.

 

(Snip)

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________

 

One man's opinion, freely given and worth almost that much.

 

Both The Left and The Right are complaining about the same thing...we (The People) are no longer in control (if you think we ever were I have a bridge I can sell you cheap), the solutions are different, but the complaint/worry is the same.

 

If my idea, that human society is changing in a radical fundamental way (Hinge Of History), we should expect to see more of this.

 

The good news is, humans may be moving into an era of unprecedented freedom and prosperity. The bad news is when the mob gets scared/angry they have a tendency to tear everything down...consequences be damned we're mad as hell.

/rant

 

 

[nickydog]

"...we should expect to see more of this." More of what?

[Valin]

"...we should expect to see more of this." More of what?

 

What we have been seeing in politics, foreign affairs, the economy...ie disruption...chaos....change.

[SrWoodchuck]

@Valin Sweet @nickydog

 

Pat Caddell: Country Closer to Revolution Than Ever

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/17/pat-caddell-country-closer-to-revolution-than-ever/

 

 

 

Veteran pollster Pat Caddell says he agrees with the premise that America today is closer to another revolution than at any time in recent history, adding, “The strength of this country comes from its people and it has a political system that is run, now, to the exclusion of its people … you have three quarters of the American people saying the government in Washington does not rule with the consent of the governed.”

 

Caddell told Breitbart News Daily host Stephen K. Bannon that the current $1.1 trillion 2,000-plus page omnibus bill is “the greatest disaster anyone ever saw because of the deals being cut.”

 

Caddell cited elements of the bill that are still being discovered, such as the upping of the number of foreign visas. Caddell was referring to a provision that was outrageously “slipped into the bill” without the knowledge of many lawmakers.

 

The provision could more than triple the number of H-2B visas for foreign workers seeking jobs at hotels, theme parks, ski resorts, golf courses, landscaping businesses, restaurants and bars. The move is intended to boost the supply of non-agricultural seasonal workers.

 

The $1.1 trillion omnibus funding bill includes language that would dramatically increase the number of visas available for foreign workers, setting off alarm bells among conservatives and labor unions.

Congressional leaders quietly slipped the provision into the 2,009-page funding bill, with rank-and-file lawmakers only discovering it Wednesday morning. The move immediately sparked protests from across the political spectrum.

 

“By the time you get through this bill, every special interest will have been paid off,” said Caddell. “Everyone will have done what they wanted to do. The Republicans … will have sold everything out to please the oil companies”. Caddell also chastised Republican presidential candidates for not saying anything about it in the recent debate. expressing his frustration that the issue doesn’t seem to be being addressed by any candidates, Caddell said.

Breitbart

[Draggingtree]

The Virtue That Has No Name

 

More essential to freedom than rights or laws is something like chivalry.

 

By F.H. BUCKLEY • February 17, 2016

There has in recent years been a revolution in American politics, one so at variance with how we think of ourselves that it is remarkable how little it is noticed. We are used to imagining America as the land of the free, yet we have dropped to 12th place in the rankings of economic freedom produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation. The libertarian Cato Institute is even more doubtful about us, and in their Human Freedom Index we come in only at number 20. In both rankings, we trail countries that uniformly have single-payer government healthcare systems. We used to be number two or three, behind Hong Kong and Singapore, but now we’re embarrassed to find we’re far behind ostensibly socialist Denmark.

 

For this we have a number of people to thank. With George W. Bush we took a hit, but with Obama we’ve been in free fall. The rise of an all-powerful executive branch has put paid to an imagined Madisonian constitution of a separation of powers and has permitted Obama to rule as what the never-too-much-to-be-praised George Mason called an “elected monarch.” The very point of the Constitution was to prevent the plenitude of political power vesting in a single person, yet that’s where we find ourselves. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-virtue-that-has-no-name/