Category: Uncategorized

by Smitty

Writing in the late 1800’s, and looking back to the French Revolution, Le Bon sees a spontaneous crowd as a truly dumb beast:

The creation of the legends which so easily obtain circulation in crowds is not solely the consequence of their extreme credulity. It is also the result of the prodigious perversions that events undergo in the imagination of a throng. The simplest event that comes under the observation of a crowd is soon totally transformed. A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first. We can easily conceive this state by thinking of the fantastic succession of ideas to which we are sometimes led by callup up in our minds any fact. Our reason thus us the incoherence there is in these images, but a crowd is almost blind to this truth, and confuses with the real event what the deforming action of its imagination has superimposed thereon. A crowd scarcely distinguishes between the subjective and the objective. It accepts as real the images evoked in its mind, though they most often have only a very distant relation with the observed fact. (Le Bon 60-61)

I would contend that what Le Bon is saying is that information disperses poorly in a crowd. A piece of information is not a drop of india ink in a glass of water. Signals are attenuated in a brutal way. This is why politicians communicate via bumper stickers written in crayon. Only the briefest monosyllables can get through.

Technology has improved matters to a degree. PA systems mean a speech can be heard at some distance. When cellular networks can take the load, they permit people to traded text messages, or even pull information from the internet.

Also deserving credit for keeping things calm: the Second Amendment. ‘An armed society is a polite society’ as Heinlein noted. The notion that individuals need not be defenseless, even in a crowd, adds calm to any situation, and maturity to actions.

Unfortunately, the Progressive mob that seems to be in charge also seems to take Le Bon too literally, projecting its own fear onto the mob. Believe me, Princess Pelosi: the only threat to you and your ilk is your own evil, not the Tea Partiers.

Previously. . .

1. Celebrating The Crowd At CPAC, i
2. Celebrating The Crowd At CPAC, ii

by Smitty

I made it up to the Marriott Wardman Park to get the conference package for CPAC12. The blogger lounge was the same room as two years ago, but they have cut down on the actual seating. This will make it harder to sit down and blog, but might make the bandwidth more reasonable for those who do find seating.

Ladd Ehlinger and Pete Ingemi were there in the lobby, along with The Lid and his wonderful daughter. Conspicuously absent was the Rarely Silent Man, but we had very studiously avoided making any plans to meet, so disappointment was impossible. Also absent: #Occupy goons. I remarked to Ladd that I thought the AFL-CIO’s trash-talk may have been a stunt; if they really wanted to make mischief, they should have shown up as a surprise.

I couldn’t hang out, needing to get home for daddy duty. Keeping the domestic peace is crucial, especially if I’m going to be flaking off significantly over the next three days.

by Smitty

Noted 2010 thought criminal Justice Samuel Alito must feel some satisfaction at the news that #OccupyWhiteHouse has blessed the efforts of Priorities USA.

Let’s have the entire dextrosphere relax here. BHO is no hypocrite. Only conservatives, especially of the white male persuasion, can be hypocrites. More at Da Tech Guy.

via The Moderate Voice

by Smitty

Gateway Pundit has a short clip of the Florida AG on Greta:The claim is made that Pam Bondi stated Romney is desirous of RomneyCare isn’t in the clip. A direct quotation would be helpful, with context. I can envision Mitt saying that, if states choose to implement a RomneyCare-style plan, that’s their prerogative.

The idea that federally mandating an state-level individual mandate is somehow a swift idea, after proudly repealing ObamaCare, is really stupid. And Romney is anything but stupid.

Let’s go back to FDR and the moment we Sold Our Soul For Rock’N’RollProgress:

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
2. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
3. The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
4. The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
5. The right of every family to a decent home;
6. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
7. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
8. The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

Why was FDR’s crack so good? Because the 16th & 17th Amendments kneecapped the states, and the Federal Reserve gave FDR the deep pockets to kick-start the party, and for his Progressive offspring to keep it rockin’:

Follow me now and you will not regret
Leaving the life you led before we met
You are the first to have this love of mine
Forever with me till the end of time

(N.i.B.: I’m not saying that FDR was Satan, merely that, politically, FDR carried out the diabolical Progressive bidding.)

And so what have we bought for FDR’s idiocyswell intentions?

1. The right to a job has evolved into 99 weeks of unemployment, idiocy like Lilly Ledbetter, and unions running amok. Note that even FDR wasn’t so stupid as to overlook the conflict of interest inherent in public sector unions. Such idiocy would come later.
2. Minimum wage laws that achieve the opposite of the desired results.
3. Farm policy that is a classic disaster.
4. Wildly idiotic policies that have chased American jobs overseas.
5. Idiocy like the Community Reinvestment Act, and its brace of abortions, Fannie and Freddie.
6. Moronic takeovers of medicine like RomneyCare and ObamaCare.
7. Protection from fear? The only thing we have to fear is Progressivism itself, it having bailed out the balance of the fears.
8. The Department of Education, ensuring that American children are too confused to discern rational thinking, but are intimately familiar with all manner of sexual variations by second grade.

So where do we go from here?

• Admit that the Progressive project is just a flop. Woodrow Wilson and FDR are dead. We can forgive them the unintended consequences of their failed ideas. I guess the reader retains the right to hate dead people, though that seems as useful as Progressivism itself.
• Agree in advance that those locked into the entitlements won’t be thrown under the bus.
• Agree that every decision has to advance liberty and decrease federal involvement with individuals. DC has to return to its Constitutional, multi-state and international role.

I’d argue those three ideas are necessary but not sufficient to improve the situation. Conversely, if we aren’t continuall moving in a direction of increased liberty, we’re dead. Done. Living on borrowed time. Touching ourselves.

Full circle, then: someone needs to find out if Romney really does intend to produce a state mandate that will suck as bad as the individual mandate, only be implemented by state capitals. This would be an even higher-level urination upon Amendments IX and X than BHO’s efforts. It could achieve the same result of destroying liberty, but be even harder to argue against.

I really, really hope that speculation is false. The gnawing sensation in the gut undermines the confidence.

NAPLES, Fla.
After driving all night from Orlando, I arrived about 5 a.m. here at a gated community where Dan Collins’s father has a condo. “Guest of Doctor Collins,” I told the guard at the gate.

“Your name, sir?”

“McCain.”

The gate swung open and I cruised along the beautifull landscaped drive, up to the stuccoed building, let myself in — after some hassling with the combination on the keybox — and found myself in the living room, gazing out the glass doors at the sweeping view of the pond, with the golf course off in the distance. Posh.

Alas, no WiFi. But I was so tired it didn’t matter. Slept six hours, then got up about 1 o’clock today, went into town and finally found a Best Buys, where I paid $129 for a Verizon mobile WiFi card. The device-installation process, however, required technical skills exceeding my aptitude. So I just spent an hour on the phone with a tech-support to figure that out.

And that’s what I’ve done today. Kind of a wasted day so far. Mitt Romney will have a noon rally Sunday here in Naples, so I guess I’ll cover that. Then Rick Santorum has 4 p.m. speech in Punta Gorda, so I’ll go to that, too.

A new poll today shows a dead heat, but it’s an outlier, as every other recent poll shows Romney ahead by between 7 and 9 points. The intensity of the Newt-Mitt arguments is starting to annoy me, because people are acting as if the Florida primary is the end of the world, which it’s not. Howard Fineman at HuffPo tries to explain what’s gone wrong for Newt this past week, but I don’t know if Fineman’s any more insightful than anyone else.

Last night I talked to Cynthia Yockey and suggested she compile an aggregation of campaign headlines with a vintage pinup girl, which she has done. You should hit her tip jar. I did.