The Political Inquirer

Out: Telling Israel how many months or years they have to bomb Iran.

In: Telling Israel how many days they have to bomb Iran.

Yes, the window is still closing on Israel’s chance of survival, and it’s now down to only eight days! (Update: He has since revised it to three days!)

I don’t think there is a more pathetic fearmonger in the world than John Bolton, he makes a living writing/reporting the same thing over and over: bomb them soon!

He was running around doing the same thing in early March, in an interview with WND reporter Aaron Klein:

“Right now we know about the facilities. … We know where they are,” he said. “We know exactly what their dimensions are, and I think they are susceptible to an Israeli attack.”

Bolton said an Israeli military option “isn’t there forever. … If Israel is going to use military force, it needs to use it sooner rather than later.”… “Since I don’t see any possibility that the Obama administration will use military force, I think what that means – to cut to the chase – is this comes down to a decision by Israel whether or not it will use military force against Iran’s program.”

Bolton said he believes there is no doubt Israel possesses the military capability to hit Iranian nuclear sites, but he said the Jewish state would need to act soon.

“I think the problem is that the military option is declining day by day,” he said. “Every day that goes by is another day where the Iranians can build alternative facilities for uranium conversion, uranium enrichment weaponization, that are in unknown locations that are deeply buried or hardened and that Israel’s capabilities just can’t reach.”

In 2009 Bolton wrote a column for the Washington Post titled “Time for an Israeli Strike?” Apparently not as no strike occurred last summer either.

Rewind even further to June 2008 when Bolton, in his infinite wisdom, said Israel was sure to attack Iran between the time of the November election and when the new president was sworn in.

Israel, however, still had a determination to prevent a nuclear Iran, he argued. The “optimal window” for strikes would be between the November 4 election and the inauguration on January 20, 2009.

“The Israelis have one eye on the calendar because of the pace at which the Iranians are proceeding both to develop their nuclear weapons capability and to do things like increase their defences by buying new Russian anti-aircraft systems and further harden the nuclear installations .

“They’re also obviously looking at the American election calendar. My judgement is they would not want to do anything before our election because there’s no telling what impact it could have on the election.”

The new excuse is that the radioactive fallout from the atomic plant will hurt civilians. I’m sure John Bolton would lose sleep over that. What he fails to mention is that an Israeli strike, even if it were to avoid civilian casualties, would likely bring chaos to the region and would lead to the deaths of both Iranian and Israeli civilians.

Lately in the news we have been seeing a lot of what I call the “tyranny of negative emotion”. Common sense issues become controversies because someone, or a group of people, are negatively effected emotionally by it. The biggest story of this type is the mosque that they are planning to build in Manhattan. A basic understanding of freedom would tell us that as long as it is their private property, and they are not breaking laws, that they have the right to do with their property as they please. But now it is being made into a fuss because it will bring more pain to the 9/11 families. Despite talking the good talk cultural conformity always trumps freedom for conservatives.

On another much more pointless story a mother of a soldier killed in war has been speaking out against the new Medal of Honor game coming out in October. In this game players can be on the Taliban. Just like every other multiplayer war game in existence there are (at least) two opposing sides. As a gamer myself I have played as America, Nazi Germany, terrorists who plant bombs, fictional world factions, counter-terrorists who chuck smoke grenades, Soviet Russia, and so. And I can say with confidence that no one really cares, no one thinks anything of it.

This individual makes the case that “it isn’t a game” and that her son didn’t get to start over after he died. She will never have to see this game, yet she is annoyed by it merely knowing it exists. During the interview she also makes the claim that WW2 enterainment is “not based on real people” — yet this game is? They are all fictional stories based on real events. My grandfather was in WW2 and he knows there are movies and games based on it, yet he does not go around pretending he is entitled to weigh in on these matters. Maybe he has a better understanding for what they fought for than this lady does. Why not let them release their game and let the market decide?

Lastly there is the tyranny of “new laws”. Not long ago a little girl was shot in her inner city neighborhood by a stray bullet. Like any situation of this kind there is immediately a campaign to make a new law (the law is almost always named after the individual) to either further restrict gun rights, make harsher punishments for drunk drivers, or whatever the case may be. Why is this done? So that the families involved can lessen their negative emotion by “working towards a greater good”, which makes the pointless and undeserved death of their loved one have “meaning”. Suddenly you have more laws (in harshness and quantity) than you really should have.

All to avoid bad feelings.

Class conflict. The very term takes the mind to thoughts of Marxism, class consciousness, and revolution. But there are other ways to view class conflicts besides that one paradigm. In the 21st century America will face a crisis. The desires of the ruling class will clash with the desires of the country class — the final result of this fight is unknown. I will attempt to merge two different ideas into one — my belief that postmodernism is the ideology of the ruling class, one that hasn’t ended well for America — and Angelo Codevilla’s description of the ruling class recently found in The American Spectator. These two sources together are lengthy reading, so I will summarize them both before moving forward.

What is Postmodernism?
The term “postmodernism” has a very allusive definition. It applies to many things. Postmodernism is also includes styles of architecture and literary criticism. I have a very specific definition of postmodernism that I will use here. Postmodernism is a reaction against Enlightenment thinking and Western civilization prior to the twentieth century.

To be more specific, Robert Struble Jr defined it: “The postmodernist worldview dismisses all forms of absolutism from eras past, especially Judeo-Christian faith and morals; yet the postmodernists idolize absolutely their new secular trinity of tolerance–diversity–choice.” The rejection of knowable truth, sometimes called hyperrelativism, flourishes under this worldview. Stuble’s definition brings two key points to the discussion: the rejection of absolutism and truth, and the secular trinity of tolerance-diversity-choice.

It is no longer a mystery as to where the “living document” view of the American Constitution has emerged from. Instead of being an absolutist document that guarantees certains rights and restrictions, it is now a flowing document that can be molded into what society (or the ruling class) needs it to be at the time. Woodrow Wilson and the progressives were forerunners to today’s ruling class. Wilson was very keen to note that the constitution was an obstruction for government and the desire for power that those who control it inevitably have. Codevilla writes:

In Congressional Government (1885) Woodrow Wilson left no doubt: the U.S. Constitution prevents the government from meeting the country’s needs by enumerating rights that the government may not infringe. (“Congress shall make no law…” says the First Amendment, typically.) Our electoral system, based on single member districts, empowers individual voters at the expense of “responsible parties.” Hence the ruling class’s perpetual agenda has been to diminish the role of the citizenry’s elected representatives, enhancing that of party leaders as well as of groups willing to partner in the government’s plans, and to craft a “living” Constitution in which restrictions on government give way to “positive rights” — meaning charters of government power.

The secular trinity aids the ruling class in their goals. Using the power of the democracy and majority rules the ruling class will essentially “bribe” voters using government programs. These individuals get meager assistance and in return they give the ruling class electoral support. And the power of the ruling class grows exponentially. Good deal for them. So it is no wonder why Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and most other ruling class members are completely satisfied with leaving the Mexican border open. Once they are here you can then argue, as most do, there’s no way to deport or jail that many people — we just have to give them citizenship eventually. Twelve million or more people near the poverty line that will get bribed by the ruling class.

There are a slew of other superficial arguments that get thrown out into the discussion. They do jobs Americans won’t do (incorrect). They want to be Americans. As Europeans are quickly learning, immigrants flooding into the west do not want to assimilate because under the current regime of tolerance-diversity-choice they have no need to. I of course will not speak for everyone, but a segment of illegal immigrants do not want to be Americans. Desecreation of American flags, exalting of the Mexican flag, and anti-white racist rants are not uncommon at immigration demonstrations.

Postmodernism has inevitably led to today’s political correctness, identity politics, and government power grabs. It will only get worse until the tipping point is reached.

What is the Ruling Class?
The ruling class is a conglomerate of individuals including business leaders, public policy leaders, politicians, and academics. Most of them went to elite schools for their higher education. Unlike most other times in American history, the ruling class today is politically and ideologically homogenous. From their education they get their fair dose of brainwashing from “thought leaders” — almost exclusively advocating left leaning politics and postmodernism. Since all these “thought leaders” hold these views, students begin to believe that if I believe this I must be smart too. In fact the ruling class has slowly been dumbing itself down over time, but during this process their belief that they have intellectual and moral superiority over all others has remained in tact.

Meanwhile the American people, or “country class”, are brutish, selfish, unthoughtful bigots. They will run wild if not properly controlled. It is the job of the ruling class to control them and improve humanity as a whole. The country class tends to be white, rural, and conservative. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule. Therefore, these people are the main targets for ruling class contempt. At an elite fundraiser in San Francisco Barack Obama famously said that small town people cling to guns and religion.

Does the ruling class have a political party? Codevilla writes:

Democrats say that Democratic officials represent them well, only a fourth of the voters who identify themselves as Republicans tell pollsters that Republican officeholders represent them well. Hence officeholders, Democrats and Republicans, gladden the hearts of some one-third of the electorate — most Democratic voters, plus a few Republicans. This means that Democratic politicians are the ruling class’s prime legitimate representatives and that because Republican politicians are supported by only a fourth of their voters while the rest vote for them reluctantly, most are aspirants for a junior role in the ruling class. In short, the ruling class has a party, the Democrats. But some two-thirds of Americans — a few Democratic voters, most Republican voters, and all independents — lack a vehicle in electoral politics.

Democrats are the party of the ruling class. Some Republicans attempt to represent their country class constituents while others try to “get in on the action” and join the lower ranks of the ruling class. Under this paradigm it is no surprise that formerly Republican politicians are so quick to make changes to try to get in the ruling class — think Arlen Specter and Charlie Crist. Or even those who remain Republican, like Lindsay Graham. The Democratic Party is made up of the ruling class, the media elite, thought leaders, and country classers who have been “bribed” or duped into supporting them via government programs or being brainwashed by their education. Most country classers seem to realize Republicans don’t represent them well either, but vote for them reluctantly as “the better of two evils”.

It is possible to gain political power while not being liked by the ruling class. Ronald Reagan became president, and Clarence Thomas became a Supreme Court justice. They did not take Reagan seriously, and often condemned him:

When in 1983 Ronald Reagan characterized the Soviet Union as an “evil empire,” the reaction from his betters was swift. Writing in the New York Times, Anthony Lewis called it “primitive”—and wondered (naturally) what the Europeans would think. A headline in Time referred derisively to “The Right Rev. Ronald Reagan.” All agreed on one thing: this kind of black-and-white moralizing had no place in American politics.

Remember postmodernism’s rejection of absolutism? It also is no surprise that Supreme Court nominees viewed as strict constructionists are always attacked by Democrats in Congress. Robert Bork was ferociously attacked and failed the nomination process. Clarence Thomas was attacked too, but narrowly overcame it. Democrats threatened to fillibuster Samuel Alito. Their intellectual roots show disdain for the Constitution as it limits the ability of the ruling class to transform society to fit their desires.

These are just two brief summaries of the ruling class and postmodern thought. The rest of this article and the source links provided above flesh out these concepts even further.

The Self Perpetuating System Explained
Below is a visual representation of the system I am going to discuss. As a framework it is necessarily reductionist. Life is always more complex than a flow chart. Also continue to remember that there are always exceptions to the rule. Not all teachers are liberal, and not all country class people are white, and so on. Once I briefly explain this visual representation I will begin to go through all the supporting evidence for it and how everything fits together. I contend that only by understanding this new class paradigm can we understand the forces shaping us and our country, and how those forces may be working against our own interests. America’s founding principles of freedom will one persevere is we empower ourselves to defend our country class interests.

The ruling class today is actually a child of past intellectual movements including 20th century progressivism and postmodernism. They sought to better humanity. Improvements had to be made to America and the world. Some have wondered how a “progressive Democrat” (Woodrow Wilson) and a “conservative Republican” (George W. Bush) could share the same view that they need to “make the world safe for Democracy”. This demonstrates just how intellectually homogenous they are. And by the early 1900′s they were already forming as a class.

All the parts of their machine were being prepared at this time. Their drive to improve and control humanity needed to get funding. Not coincidentally the Federal Reserve Act was passed. Banking needed to be centralized in the name of collectivism and progress. In his book Freedom Under Siege Ron Paul states:

Academics, as is still the case, provided intellectual cover for these crimes. Thornton Cooke, writing in the pro-big government American Economic Review in 1911 explained why banking needs to be centralized: “American banking has made little use of the principle of cooperation, yet for a generation that principle has been the greatest single factor in American economics.” The railroads have their ‘community of interest arrangements’, so now, he said, it’s time to consolidate banking.

A commission met at a luxury resort (the ruling class never sacrifices on expense) to draft the legislation. The debate was between partial or total centalization. Not unlike today the legislation was written by those who would be effected or would benefit from it. What would become the Federal Reserve Act was drafted by the following individuals:

The elite came together knowing what their goal was. It was just a matter of getting it accomplished and making it acceptable in the eyes of the country class:

Senator Aldrich, who strangely did not understand why centralization could not be presented outright, was overridden by the more politically astute Warburg, who endorsed the Morawetz version of regional banking centers under the cover of decentralization. The board of directors in the original Aldrich plan was to be chosen solely by bankers, but that was later changed in the spirit of decentralization to make half of them appointed by the President of the United States.

The Federal Reserve and its ability to manipulate the economy and print money is what finances the grand schemes of the ruling class. I use this example to show why intellectual mileu and academia are placed early on in the flow chart. The influence on the ruling class itself is heavy. Both the ruling class and the media elite receive education from elite schools. Here they are all prone to accepting the ideas of thought leaders, if they haven’t already before that time. The ruling class puts the ideas of the thought leaders into practice while the media elite act as the PR division of the ruling class. Just as a reminder there are real journalists out there that are not shills but among the media elite they are few and far between.

The ruling class generally returns the favors to their partners by advocating policies that will help the traditional media and the education system along with the teachers. A plan for the state aid bill would raid the food stamp program and reward teachers and union workers — they’re higher up on the food chain. The country class too goes through the education system and are also prone to accepting the homogenous thought process of the ruling class. Others are bribed by the elite via government programs. For this meager assistance they will lend political support to the party of the ruling class, the Democrats. People are all too quick to think “what has/will the government do for me?” This leaves the ruling class with support from academia, the media, and portion of “common people”. This bribery is necessary because if everyone realized this as a fight between ruling and country classes, the ruling class party would never win an election given their small numbers.

These bribes are portrayed to the masses as “reforms” (that word generally has positive connotations). The ruling class has the moral high ground by portraying their agenda as “helping people” while their opponents are “obstructionist”. I do not deny that people are helped by such programs, but one needs to consider that the “helping people” part is actually way down on the ruling class list of reasons. It is well below “power” and “ego”. Some even benefit financially from these legislative “reforms”. These relatively meager benefits result in electoral support from those who benefit. But the ruling class is playing with fire. In an economic downturn what happens when there isn’t enough to go around? We recently saw in Atlanta.

Those who oppose the ruling class are the country class. They come from an entirely different intellectual and cultural background. America’s founding was heavily influenced by Enlightenment thinking. The nation then developed into one of freedom, individual rights, and free market economics, among other characteristics. The country class hails the Constitution as a good thing while the ruling class views it as a limit on their agenda. Traditionalism and financial conservatism also tend to be traits of the country class. All of these conflict with the ruling class. If postmodernism is a reaction against enlightenment thinking, then is it not also a reaction against America as we know it?

Academics, the media, and the ruling class are demonstrably hostile to the country class. This idea will be developed further below. That is a brief explanation of the visual representation above of our current ruling class dominated system.

The Agenda is Always Power
Does the ruling class really want complete control over the masses? The short answer is .. yes. Without the guiding hand of the morally and intellectually superior ruling class the people would degrade into racist, inefficient barbarians. Peter Stark (D-CA) recently echoed the ruling class belief that they shouldn’t have any limitation, including the Constitution:

At a July 24 Town Hall meeting, Democratic Congressman Pete Stark of California may have inadvertently articulated the Political Class view. In responding to questions about whether or not the recently passed health care law is unconstitutional, Stark said, “I think that there are very few constitutional limits that would prevent the federal government from rules that could affect your private life.” In response to a follow-up, he added, “The federal government, yes, can do most anything in this country.”

Surely people do not agree with this bizarre belief of unlimited government power? No they do not. But it gets more complex than this. According to a Rasmussen poll 86% of Americans believe there should be limits on the federal government. Only 9% believe the opposite. This belief actually unites America across ethnic, economic, and party lines. Not surprisingly there is one subgroup in American life that agrees with Pete Stark:

The only exception is America’s Political Class. By a 54% to 43% margin, the Political Class believes the federal government should be allowed to do most anything. Mainstream voters reject that view by a 94% to three percent (3%) margin.

The ruling class literally believes there should be no limit on their power. Under such a view holding the Constitution in high regards becomes impractical if not impossible. Suddenly everything starts to make sense. Lawmakers do not read any of the bills they vote on because none of it is relevant to them. All they need to know is that it increases government power and can be paraded to the masses as “reform”. Why waste time reading 2,000 pages?

The Racist Inferiors
The ruling class believes the country class to be a bunch of racist, kooky malcontents. In their new holy trinity of tolerance-diversity-choice the charge of “racism” is the worst thing that can happen to someone. While trying to torpedo the Rev Wright story Spencer Ackerman said Journolisters should pick “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.” The term “racist” today is what the term “heretic” used to be during times of religious extremism. In the end all Jeremiah Wright was doing was yelling what the ruling class quietly believes — anti-white, anti-America, anti-West.

To put it simply: the ruling class doesn’t think much of you. An opinion piece by William McGurn in the Wall Street Journal noticed the harsh hostility toward regular Americans that disagree with the ruling elite:

Now cut to today, where moralizing about the ugly motives of the American people has become common. Whether it’s a federal judge declaring there exists no rational opposition to same-sex marriage, a mayor railing against those who would like a mosque moved a few blocks from Ground Zero, a Speaker of the House effectively likening the majority of her countrymen who did not want her health-care bill to Nazis, or a State Department official who brings up the Arizona law on immigration in a human-rights discussion with a Chinese delegation, the chorus is the same: You can’t trust ordinary Americans.

Nancy Pelosi dismissed Obamacare protesters as people “carrying swastikas”. The belief that common folk are ignorant fascists is well engrained in the ruling class ideology. So engrained that none of them can probably tell you where their belief originated. Codevilla writes:

As their number and sense of importance grew, so did their distaste for common Americans. Believing itself “scientific,” this Progressive class sought to explain its differences from its neighbors in “scientific” terms. The most elaborate of these attempts was Theodor Adorno’s widely acclaimed The Authoritarian Personality (1948). It invented a set of criteria by which to define personality traits, ranked these traits and their intensity in any given person on what it called the “F scale” (F for fascist), interviewed hundreds of Americans, and concluded that most who were not liberal Democrats were latent fascists. This way of thinking about non-Progressives filtered down to college curricula. In 1963-64 for example, I was assigned Herbert McCloskey’s Conservatism and Personality (1958) at Rutgers’s Eagleton Institute of Politics as a paradigm of methodological correctness. The author had defined conservatism in terms of answers to certain questions, had defined a number of personality disorders in terms of other questions, and run a survey that proved “scientifically” that conservatives were maladjusted ne’er-do-well ignoramuses.

Mayor Bloomberg is no better, he recently said that the 61% of New Yorkers who don’t support the Ground Zero mosque should be “ashamed of themselves”. American must sacrifice itself on the alter of tolerance and diversity, even if that means destroying itself. In this regard the ruling class also wins. It becomes fully understandable to see why they leave the border open for decades making little effort to seal it. By flooding the country with poverty prone immigrants, and by shrinking the middle class, the elites will no longer have to pander to the country class for electoral success. By keeping this huge amount of people in poverty they will be more open to the bribes from the elite. Millions of illegal immigrants are here, now the ruling class focus is on making them legal and putting them into the electoral system, which has earned heavy backlash from the country class. Ruling elites from George Bush to Barack Obama have tried to finish the process.

The Media vs The People
As shown in the chart above the media elite come from the same ideological background as the ruling class. Therefore they are prone to supporting the party of the ruling class (the Democrats) and spewing hate toward the country class and their politicians. Their methodology is actually simple and immature. It is a trifecta of insults they use to discredit you and promote memes that you are one of the following:
1) You’re a kook – You disagree with the ruling class, you must be crazy, especially since you common folk tend to be backwards and irrational.
2) You’re stupid – These are the smartest people in the country and you’re arguing with them, so what does that make you?
3) You’re racist – Explained in the previous section.

These are applied equally to country class politicians and regular people alike. The Tea Party is racist. The likes of Ron Paul and Sarah Palin are kooky and or stupid. Sarah Palin is the best example to use for this. Barack Obama was seen as a smart, articulate, thoughtful man (as the ruling class always is). On the other hand Sarah Palin has folksy mannerisms and comes from a rural western state. She gets asked “what do you read?” A member of the ruling class would never get asked such a thing. Video was later revealed showing Katie Couric mocking Palin and her children.

It would be a shame if I did a section about the media and did not mention ruling class shill Chris Matthews. Every night the ghostly white Matthews gets on MSNBC to talk about how the Tea Party is racist. And kooky. And stupid. Because a country class populist movement HAS to be these things, by definition, as per ruling class ideology. After his primary win Rand Paul appeared on Rahcel Maddow’s show where she hammered him about “racism”. Paul, who merely discussed a philosophical issue with the civil rights legislation, went to the wrong place. I nearly expected Maddow to rise from her chair abruptly while shouting “repent!”

No love is returned from county class activists. Palin regularly calls them the “lamestream” media. They are often mocked by Andrew Breitbart and Matt Drudge on the internet. The biggest proxy war in the ruling vs country class fight is between the country class and the media shills, who are the PR wing of the ruling class. Academics provide intellectual cover for government power grabs, while the media supports the moves and denegrates the opponents. Not all media fits in this system, especially the new media. But among the traditional media this is rampant. Favors are considered in return for their services. Democrats, including the president, have considered bailouts for newspapers.

For most media critics the Journolist revelations really weren’t that surprising. If you come at the Journolist story from this paradigm it becomes even less surprising. Academic and media postmodernists all gathering in one place for one massive groupthink party. David Weigel followed the conservative movement for the Washington Post before it was found he said some not-so-flattering things about conservatives on Journolist.

But the fallout seems to have been a net-gain for Weigel: His public profile shot up, MSNBC hired him as a contributor and Slate.com — owned, ironically, by the Washington Post Company — hired Weigel.

Yet again, no surprises. Actually all of this is so predictable it’s a little boring. If a “journalist” gives unflattering remarks about the country class and they are made public that individuals stock will inevitably rise among the media elite and ruling class – he’s one of us. He basically got hired back by his old company under a different venue, and got picked up by the shill station MSNBC.

A Message to Country Class Liberals
What happens when those who say they are fighting against the man actually ARE the man? That is the status of today’s Democratic Party. Democrats are always talking against the “bigs”, as I call them. The big oil companies, the big insurance companies, the big drug companies. Those darned Wall Street fat cats. But let us not forget who helped write and support various legislation. As I pointed out near the very beginning the Federal Reserve Act was written by big banks for big banks. It was advertised as reform to make the economy more stable. Since then we’ve had a number of crises including 1929 and 2008. Big Pharma could not have gotten a better deal out of Obamacare. Big groups lobbied heavily for the new healthcare legislation, flooding lawmakers with money.

So I guess my message for country class liberals is this: realize that they aren’t your friends. Stop showering diety-like praise on Barack Obama, Ted Kennedy, and all the others. They may talk a good game but they aren’t in it for you. Realize that their interests do not coincide with your interests. The ruling class believes they’re better than you, and they know what is best for you. They believe they know what is best for everyone else too. Electing another ruling class president isn’t going to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan quicker. Obama has already broken his pledge in that regard.

Liberals will also fight against the super rich. But the Democratic Party, as the ruling class party, are the rich. RealClearPolitics analysis recently showed affluent voters are sticking by Obama in oddly steady numbers:

Affluent Americans are Barack Obama’s most secure class of support. They have stuck by this president at three to six times the rate of all other income groups since early 2009, based on a RealClearPolitics analysis.

It’s a familiar story that wealthy voters have moved toward Democrats in recent years. But the remarkable steadiness of Obama’s affluent support has continued with little notice. The national media has instead heavily covered Obama’s tepid flings with populism.

It isn’t possible to get any more elitist than the ruling class. They live in extravagance when the rest of us are struggling, and they do not care. While the nation has 10% unemployment Chelsea Clinton had a $2 million dollar wedding with a $10-12,000 wedding cake. She married Marc Mezvinsky who she met at Stanford, he now works at an elite bank (Goldmann Sachs), and his father is an ex-Democratic congressman who went to jail for fraud. Yawn.

Michelle Obama’s trip to Spain that cost over $300,000 got the attention of many, and criticism from even those on the left. Columnists are regularly comparing this to the times before the French Revolution. We have a president right now who almost seems more interested in being a celebrity than a president. He has played more golf in two years than Bush did in eight!

Only when everyone, conservative and liberal alike, in the country class comes to realize that our rulers and thought leaders disdain us and do not work in our interest can real reform take place. What that reform will look like and how it will play out is currently unknown. Something tells me that during our lifetimes we are going to find out.

A lot has been made of Michelle Obama’s trip to Spain, racking up hundreds of thousands in expenses. Meanwhile President Obama is trying to get the little people to “sacrifice” even more. All over the media people keep saying all these different things about the current political environment: they’re deaf, they’re ignorant, they don’t listen, they don’t get it!

This fallacy drives me nuts. Why? They hear you, they know exactly what you want and what you think, they just don’t care. That’s a major difference from being “deaf”. Welcome to the mindset of the political class.

The Democratic push for votes continues to amaze. Most people are aware that liberals have utilized dead people, convicts, and multiple votes for a single person. They also have a few plots working with an eye to the future — statehood for Puerto Rico, and allowing millions of unaccounted lawbreakers (or “undocumented Democrats” as some have called them) into the country. Now Matt Miller is advocating the lowering of the voting age to ten.

Development research has showed “an adolescent’s brain reaches the weight of an adult brain by about age fourteen due to myelin accumulation and dendritic branching. At this time the potential for contribution to insight, judgment, inhibition, reasoning, and social conscience are possible. Synapse formation continues despite ongoing pruning. The remaining dendrites continue to branch, grow, and form new synapses in response to new experiences. Continued psychological and cognitive development in adolescence is due to this dendritic growth. The prefrontal cortex responsible for reasoning and judgment continues to develop.”

If this happens at around age 14, then Matt Miller is advocating voting rights for individuals who cannot think critically or reason for themselves. Is this surprising to anyone? Add this in with numerous activist and liberal teachers and the end result is toxic. Does anyone remember some of the Obama brainwashing of children during the 2008 campaign? There are numerous examples of crazy liberal teachers around the country, in one case two teachers held anti-war signs at a high school assembly honoring 6 students who enlisted. Kids are also highly prone to accepting their parent’s and/or teacher’s political views until later in life.

At 22, I am just a kid to many who follow politics. And yet I am advocating an increase in the voting age to 30 because I am willing to make that sacrifice to stop school kids and college students from voting. I came to this conclusion based on years of experience in the public school system, and then college.

My elementary school years were interesting. The principal along with almost every teacher were in the tank for Democrats. At the time I was ignorant of politics and its consequences. Every single morning around 9AM we were herded into the school gymnasium. Did we use this valuable time to learn history, math, or english? Of course not, that’d be asking too much. Each and every morning we had to chant and listen to others talk about tolerance and diversity. Everything had to be done in a politically correct manner, and if you ever did anything otherwise you were reprimanded. Looking back on this bizarre practice, I’m quite disgusted at the progressive rally we were forced to endure every day. But none of us knew any better.

Under Miller’s plan we would not have been able to vote. Our elementary school was first through fourth grade, or ages 6, 7, 8, and 9. But by the time age 10 came around we would have gone through four years of indoctrination before finally being “ready” to vote. Miller would almost surely be proud of us.

This all happened in the 90′s. Bill Clinton was a rock star in the school, especially among the teachers. My final year in the school also happened to be the year of the 1996 presidential election. One day our teacher had us raise our hands to see who supported Clinton and who supported Dole. Sure, we were in New York state, but in the suburbs of upstate New York a lot of people tend to be Republican. When the Clinton kids beat out the Dole kids by a margin of about 10 to 1 the teacher seemed pleased. The day after the election there was euphoria. All the teachers and kids were excited that Clinton had won, and were quick to mention it was a landslide!

The rest of my public school days were a little better than the horrors of elementary school, but the bias was still present. The climax of human learning capability is during childhood, and often precious time from this period were taken to go over how other cultures celebrate their holiday season or how the environment was going to be destroyed within just a few years. The verdict is in on that method of teaching.

High school was the era of 9/11 and the Iraq War. Most teachers weren’t happy with the war and they made that perfectly clear to everyone. The euphoria of 1996 was quickly replaced with mellow whispers in 2004, “Kerry just conceded,” one teacher said to another, obviously not happy judging from his tone.

Now comes the next part of this discussion: why not just keep the voting age as is, why raise it to 30? I attended a state college with some of America’s future, supposedly some of the finer students in the state, and what I saw did not impress me. College professors regularly taught and advocated on subjects ranging from very liberal social science theory to open borders to socialism. And most students ate it up. I’m certain many of them thought if I believe this I must be smart. And if you encountered another left leaning student, they were smart, but if you found a conservative student that usually ended with hushed and snarky comments of condemnation.

On election night 2008 the euhporia was back, baby! Sometime between eleven and midnight EST (if I remember right) California was called for Obama, putting him over the edge in electoral votes. Drunk (or high) college students shouted out their dorm windows. A few days later, before class began, another student leaned over to me and asked “isn’t it great we have a black president?” The beauty of identity politics. Agree or disagree, there was no mention of him being smart, experienced, or even agreeing with her political philosophy — he was black, and that mattered first. College students are no better at thinking for themselves than younger kids — they have drank the koolaid.

Following Matt Miller’s brilliant idea is the end disclaimer that he works for the Center for American Progress and co-hosts a show on public radio. Or in other words, another leech on society. All his “concerns” that young people should have are basically a list of liberal talking points — global warming, making other people pay for your college education, and at the end is this beauty:

Are you really going to keep letting senators who represent less than 15 percent of the population stop any legislation they want? What about majority rule?

.. dislike for the American system, and bowing down to “Democracy”. Majority rules counts and we need more drones to vote!

The only thing that is likable in the entire article is that he discusses the issues of debt. And even that has to be taken with a grain of salt. Judging from his “talking points” it doesn’t seem like he is willing to cut spending. It’s a matter of raising revenue and not limiting the overreach of government.

Is it really a national priority to borrow billions more from us to keep taxes for the best-off 2 percent of Americans lower than they were during the Clinton boom, when we’re in the midst of two wars and already piling up trillions in fresh debt?

We have to tax the rich more and keep on with the entitlements!

And, of course, a shout out to those who are providing liberals with fresh new recruits:

Why do you say Social Security can’t be touched, even though you’re planning real benefit increases for future retirees now in their 40s despite trillions in existing unfunded promises? Why rule out questioning these built-in increases when there’s no similar “trust fund” for great teachers or for universal pre-school?

We should raise the voting age to 30. By that age, hopefully, you will have had a job, you will have gotten a pay check to witness all the money that gets taken out, and you fully understand the world around you. Meanwhile Matt Miller’s idea … is a very childish one.

New York state just passed its budget, four months late. It’s a state with one of the highest debt loads and deficits in the nation, rivaling and perhaps exceeding California in some respects. Here is a micro example of how benefits have been shaved off over time, permitting some sweet deals for those in previous generations but not for those now, as reality has finally set in.

New York workers have different tiers that they are in based on the date they joined the retirement system. The tier determines how long you pay into the system and what kind of benefits you get and when you can get them.

Tier 1
Join Date: Prior to July 1, 1973
Contribution to Retirement System: None required

Tier 2
Join Date: July 1, 1973 to July 26, 1976
Contribution to Retirement System: None required
-”Normal retirement with full benefits is possible at age 62. Membership provides retirement benefits at age 55 (reductions apply to Tier 2, 3, and 4 members under age 62 unless they have 30 years of service).”

Tier 3
Join Date: July 27, 1976 to August 31, 1983
Contribution to Retirement System: 3% of salary for the first ten years of membership
-”Tier 3 and 4 members are vested (entitled to a pension benefit at retirement) after 5 full-time years of service credit.”
-”Normal retirement with full benefits is possible at age 62. Membership provides retirement benefits at age 55 (reductions apply to Tier 2, 3, and 4 members under age 62 unless they have 30 years of service).”

Tier 4
Join Date: September 1, 1983 to December 31, 2009
Contribution to Retirement System: 3% of salary for the first ten years of membership
-”Tier 3 and 4 members are vested (entitled to a pension benefit at retirement) after 5 full-time years of service credit.”
-”Normal retirement with full benefits is possible at age 62. Membership provides retirement benefits at age 55 (reductions apply to Tier 2, 3, and 4 members under age 62 unless they have 30 years of service).”

Tier 5
Join Date: January 1, 2010 and after
Contribution to Retirement System: 3% of salary for entire duration of membership
-”Tier 5 members are vested after 10 full-time years.”

This process has been happening, and will continue to happen in basically every retirement system, including social security for the foreseeable future.

A video that was done some time ago, but it feels oddly good to watch these days. Jason Mattera confronted Charlie Rangel on ethics issues:

A lot has been made of plans to build a Mosque in New York City. The reason being is that it is close to the 9/11 site. The term being used for this controversy is “the ground zero mosque” but this biases the discussion from the start. Why? Because the mosque isn’t at ground zero, and is in fact blocks away from it.

What this phrase provides is imagery of the evil enemy planting their flag of victory on the rubble of our dead. Except that isn’t the case.

If you accept that a mosque should be prohibited from that location then you need to answer a new question: at what point does it become ok to build a mosque? Give a measurement in feet/meters/blocks/miles from the 9/11 site.

The judge who decided the Proposition 8 case in California yesterday is gay:

The biggest open secret in the landmark trial over same-sex marriage being heard in San Francisco is that the federal judge who will decide the case, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, is himself gay.

It’s funny I didn’t hear of this until today. Of course, I haven’t really kept up with the issue, I had little doubt it would be ruled unconstitutional. His reasoning seemed really horrible, too, from the little bits and pieces I heard yesterday. I’ll try to read his decision and post my thoughts on it if I get a chance.

A freshman Utah congressman has complained about the pointless bills that Congress deals with — honoring race tracks, golfers, and Stanley Cup winners.

I say: let them do their ceremonial sports votes — if that’s all they did we’d be better off!

Angelo Codevilla’s latest article in the American Spectator chronicles the rise of the “Ruling Class” in America.

Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.

The two classes have less in common culturally, dislike each other more, and embody ways of life more different from one another than did the 19th century’s Northerners and Southerners — nearly all of whom, as Lincoln reminded them, “prayed to the same God.” By contrast, while most Americans pray to the God “who created and doth sustain us,” our ruling class prays to itself as “saviors of the planet” and improvers of humanity. Our classes’ clash is over “whose country” America is, over what way of life will prevail, over who is to defer to whom about what.

Codevilla outlines the rise of the Ruling Class and the development of what he calls the “Country Class”, those who make up middle America: mostly white, Christian conservatives who make up the single largest plurality in the country.

The analysis is in depth and lengthy, but time well spent. Codevilla does not have any mercy for Republicans, either. He points out that the Bush family has been just as guilty of establishing this “Ruling Class” as the Clintons or Obama. He details the history of the Republican Party and its aversion to being a true principles-based organization–when Goldwater and Reagan attempted to transform it, they were met with opposition from those in the Republican Party who want to be (or are) members of the Ruling Class.

I’m a fan of these terms Codevilla uses, particularly Ruling Class. There really is no better way to put it. Here at the decline of America our ruling class is not made up solely of CEOs and the President, but a hierarchy of government agents from school teachers to Supreme Court justice nominees, all bent on protecting each other and voting for the only party that is cohesively serving the interests of the Ruling Class: the Democrats.

From the National Enquirer:

The ENQUIRER reports in an exclusive bombshell exclusive that police have investigated charges from TWO MORE WOMEN who claimed they were abused by former VP AL GORE!

The allegations come hot on the heels of an ongoing Portland, Ore., police investigation that reopened after The ENQUIRER exclusively revealed accusations by a licensed massage therapist who says Gore groped her in 2006.

The ENQUIRER recently uncovered shocking allegations, from two other massage therapists.

The first incident allegedly took place at a Beverly Hills luxury hotel when Gore, 62, was in Hollywood to attend the Oscars in 2007.

The second reportedly occurred a year later at a hotel in Tokyo.

It looks like Al Gore is in a competition with Tiger Woods to see who can be the biggest scandal.  The most observant point to be made, however, is the mainstream ABC/CBS/NBC media has refrained from breaking any stories on one of their beloved. The John Edwards story made it clear who’s side they were really on.  Now the National Enquirer gets the dirt and does true investigative journalism.

It really is sad to read about a bunch of grown men holding back tears over such a thing. They mostly look like a bunch of writers and academics. The point of interest here is: the goal was to get a black president. It was not to get a COMPETENT president. Welcome to the era of identity politics! How has it worked out for us?

DAVID ROBERTS, GRIST: It’s all I can do not to start bawling.

LUKE MITCHELL, HARPER’S: I’m picturing something like VJ Day in Times Square. Seriously!

JOHN BLEVINS, SOUTH TEXAS COLLEGE OF LAW: It’s all I can do to hold it together.

MOIRA WHELAN, NATIONAL SECURITY NETWORK: I’m looking across the street at my polling place, and the line is wrapped around the block. I nearly burst into tears when I saw it. I’m feeling like today is closing the door on a terrible era, and opening another. I’m glad you started this thread because I was feeling kind of like I was the only one who is deeply emotional today.

HENRY FARRELL, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: I had to close my office door yesterday because I was watching YouTube videos of elderly African Americans saying what this meant to them and tearing up.

JOSH BEARMAN, LA WEEKLY: 11 months ago I burst into tears by myself on a plane while watching Hardball when my mind wandered to the image of President Obama being sworn in. I’ve been fighting it ever since.

EZRA KLEIN, AMERICAN PROSPECT: OHIO!

ALEC MCGILLIS, WASHINGTON POST: If you need further proof that VA is looking to go blue, check out what’s going on in VA-5 in deepest Southside Virginia, where Tom Perriello, my college roommate and a very good guy, is now up .06 percentage points — 2,000 votes — against Virgil Goode with 88 percent reporting.

GREG ANRIG, THE CENTURY FOUNDATION: This is really happening.

ADELE STAN, THE MEDIA CONSORTIUM: At last I can breathe.

SPENCER ACKERMAN, WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT: YES WE DID!

STEVEN TELES, YALE UNIVERSITY: I’m not sure why, but this part of the Battle Hymn of the Republic came to me . . . . Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Since God is marching on.

SPENCER ACKERMAN: [quoting Obama] “…we may not get there in one year or in one term, but America I promise you, we as a people will get there.”

HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT.

MICHAEL TOMASKY, THE GUARDIAN: I’m just jelly. Lord!

HAROLD POLLACK, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: I am awed by the responsibility we have taken on. Tomorrow a desperately ill African-American woman will present at my university hospital for care, and she will be turned away.* She will expect us to live up to what we feel tonight. So we’ve got a lot to live up to.

In other news Politico wonders what happened to the post-racial era. Tensions are higher than they have been in a long time — I guess that is what happens when immigration is ignored, Arizona is demonized, police actions are called stupid, and the DoJ is playing anti-white politics.

Those darned teabaggers, they’re just too darned angry. That seems to be what we get told often by analysts and pundits. But it seems those very same journalists and pundits are just as hateful as everyone else.

In comments send to Journolist, Sarah Spitz openly stated that she wanted to see Rush Limbaugh die during a heart attack with his eyes “bugging out”. Afterward even she seemed shocked at her own hate.

Furthermore, in true totalitarian fashion, others advocated the complete shut down of Fox News by the government. Whatever happened to protecting the first amendment?