This is just a beginning

Liberals and moderates will pick all the negatives to highlight from yesterday's midterm elections, and the limited government movement will be framed as a disguise for social conservative moral control and set back for civil liberties. Then they will highlight positives to build up their side. They will ask twelve times a day about the Republican plan to create jobs now that they control the House and picked up a few Senate seats. The liberals and moderates will continue the narrative that Obama must communicate better the benefits of his policies, and they will predict the national temper tantrum dies down and the Tea Party goes away when jobs and economic growth return -- and when growth returns, they will say it's a delayed result of the stimulus.

In reality, the elections are just a beginning. The nation is moving away from statism, except for special interest groups dependent on the State. The country is transitioning from political means to economic means, and it won't be long before the public is demanding the end of the two wars and that all our troops be returned. Unless some lone psycho terrorist blows something up, organized terrorists like al-queda are not likely going to attack America -- the response would be too severe, and the countries harboring terrorists don't want to face the response. The nation will grow weary of the false alarms, even though some will say we are becoming complacent. America wants to return to the business of America, which is business.

If we maintain gridlock in government and if corporate taxes are abolished, we'll start creating new wealth and the country won't even listen to who takes credit, they'll simply start producing again and continue to stand guard against the return of statism. This is the beginning of a change in direction.

Moderates and liberals going in the wrong direction

A direction has been started that might leave moderates and liberals on the outside snarling in.  Conservatives who truly want to use government to establish political solutions to social problems are rightwing statists, and I will throw them in  the moderate/liberal basket, along with the Republican establishment who are basically moderates. The social conservatives are not moderates, or liberals, of course, but their special relationship to government intervention allows the left to use them as diversionary examples of why people shouldn't believe all the limited government talk.

There are many on the right who want to limit government and allow social issues to be settled in societal debate, and it's this growing group, along with libertarians who haven't morphed into liberaltarians, half modern liberal, half libertarian, who are being ignored or mislabled by moderates and liberals. The moderate/liberal ploy appears to be to throw everyone on the right into a basket designed for social conservatives, rightwing religious fanatics. Even the libertarians who speak kindly of the limited government conservative faction dedicated to limiting government are called closet social conservatives. I was called a social conservative just the other day. Amazing. This tactic isn't working -- it's not marginalzing the limited government movement, but, rather, turning independents away from the Democrat Party which has become captured by progressives. There's also a strategy to make a distinction based on civil liberties which frames the limited government faction as soft on civil liberties, therefore nor sincerely dedicated to limited government -- there's no evidence to support this claim.

Liberals and moderates are expending energy marginalizing/smearing the authentic limited government movement while they should be distinguishing themselves from progressives and trying to find common cause with the limited government movement. Now that the nation has been stirred from apathy, a legitimate limited government movement is quickly forming, and in the battle between progressives and limited government adherents, progressives will lose once political action turns them back. Bill Maher says people like winners, but that was when he though the progresives could win by pulling the hillbillies into the next century. I wonder waht people will hink of progressives losing?

People in the limited government are going to remember how they were treated by moderates and liberals, but they will not likely seek revenge -- they'll simply write off those whose loyalties appear to be with progressives, despite their liberal/moderate weak resistance to the absolute extreme aspects of progressivism. The compromises and defenses of progressive policies will mark the moderates and liberals as out of touch. 

Moderates and liberals have long believed that they could have their cake and eat it too when it comes to classical liberal principles and progressivism, trying to balance the two by playing a futile middle strategy, but, despite the double-talking, compromise, sophism and moderation, their actions have been in favor of progressivism -- the limited government movement and independents see  this and say -- you voted for progressives, and now you have a chance to vote against them and their policies, yet you defend them and attempt to marginalize us as kooks and freaks, using the excuse that we're too ignorant and apt to oppress women, gays, poor people, puppies, old people, and anyone who's not a God-fearing Christian to be a viable alternative. The limited government has basically stuck with the principles and haven't followed leaders. This makes it difficult for the left to attack them, unless they attack the principle of limited government itself, so the left, in large part, attempts to mischaracterize the movement. The public as a whole sees this, and they are apparently sick of it. The strategy no longer works. If it's not a strategy, and if the left really thinks that everyone on the right calling for a limited government is doing it as a ruse to establish moral control over the country, then they are simply wrong, but the outcome is the same, they are becoming irrelevant.

A fire-breathing centrist with a 12 point plan

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-10-13/manifesto-from-the-middle-a-moderate-gets-fighting-mad/

The problem with centrists is that the center is always moving. If the country is moving further to the left, then the center is more to the left. If by centrism it's meant that a moderate approach with reasonable comprises is the best way to govern, then that has little to do with the center. Moderating extremes always sounds like a good idea, but then it helps to know the extremes under consideration. Sometimes, extreme measures are called for, like when a country is broke and heading for collapse.

Mark McKinnon at Daily Beast is fighting mad because some of us believe centrists are unprincipled and misguided, that they contribute to the growth of statism by compromising with it. The first point in Mad Mark's 12 point plan is indicative of the mindset. He accepts the premise of the left that campaign money is the problem, or even lobbying in and of itself. Democrats want to remove the money now because they are being outspent. But that's not the point either -- statism is the point. We don't need laws preventing people from spending their money as they wish in an election, or anytime for that matter, unless it's for the purpose of blowing somthing up or financing an attack on the country, but then the money is the least of the concerns. Statism allows government to provide favors to some at the expense of others -- as long as we have this political system, people who want advantages at the expense of others will find ways to purchase the advantages. There's no comprising solution here -- you end statism, limit government and then you don't worry about it, because the government has no favors to sell.

The rest of the points are sensible center-right tweaks to the system, but they are useless because the system remains intact, and even if Republicans could get a few tweaks to the system through, just like in the past, if the powerful State is left intact, propped up by a statist, interventionist government with  a monopoly on coercion, then the State will shake off the little tweaks like a set of toy handcuffs.

What the centrists/moderates don't seem to understand is that we don't need reforms to the same system, we need an entirely new system -- we need a strictly limited government. Reformers and tweakers come and go, but Leviathan remains, marching on.

Moderate religious alliance

The push among moderate religious leaders to show solidarity and promote peaceful co-existence is a positive development, and hopefully if will have a positive affect on radicals, but each religion has to give up quite a bit to find real peace. Plus, I'm always suspicious when true believers compromise and join alliances of diverse religions with clearly different visons.

If so many religious tenets have to be ignored or re-interpreted to achieve peaceful co-existence and co-operative alliance, wouldn't a universal religion make more sense? Why hold onto some dstinguishing differences while rejecting others. Can a true believer accept some tenets of a religion that fit the world-view of the believer and reject tenets which don't fit? Is this person a true believer, and, if not, why even bother labeling the religions and expressing any differences at all?

If it doesn't matter whether it's Allah or God or Yahweh, Mohammed or Jesus, then why label one Islam and the other Christianity and another Judaism and so forth? If, however, a Christian believes that Christianity is the way and non-believers will be punished on Judgement Day, wouldn't this Christian believe that Islam, for instance, is a terrible religion which is leading millions to hell? And if this Christian tells a Muslim that Islam is leading people to hell, how can there be solidarity? The opposite also is a question -- If Islam states that Muslims shouldn't take believers of other religions as friends and these other religions are evil, how can there be solidarity unless everyone is a Muslim -- unless Christians recognize the superiority of Islam?

On a secular level, if I believe another political philosophy leads to suffering and death for many, then I will not accept this political philosophy as viable and will not seek an alliance with it. If I can convince believers of the other philosophy to join me in a watered-down compromise, or they can convince me to join and mutually compromise so that suffering and discord can be avoided, then the philosophies have been combined to create a third philosophy --- the combination of the two.

If the philosophies are compromised to achieve solidarity, then there is no reason to maintain distinctions between the two. I'm suspicious of those who say they are believers of a religion, yet say that an alliance is possible, because religions are exclusive by their nature, and they severely warn about false gods. Is the moderate Islam/Christian/Jewish compromise a social/political alliance, and not really based on true religious beliefs? And if it's a social/political alliance, does it lean toward progressivism/socialism or classical liberalism?

I'm no conspiracy theorist, but this is a good way to promote progressivism right out in the open, no conspiracy needed, by co-opting religion for support of the progressive agenda. The alliance is certainly not supporting any limited government or free market movements.

More on whining moderates

Trying to understand the mindset of moderates is difficult. They're still whining that O'Donnell won, and they're blaming the win on conservatives who don't live in the state and don't vote in the state. The best I can tell, the moderates think the voters in Delaware are blank slates and that Sarah Palin and the Tea Party swooped in and filled in the blanks, then the voters followed the orders. I wonder why Castle and the Republican Party could't fill in their marching orders?

If I was a Republican voter in Delaware, I'd be pissed off at the Republican establishment right now. How insulting it must be to Delaware voters to have a bunch of self-inflated blowhards from Washington D.C. framing them as a bunch of brain-dead automatons waiting to be programed.

The moderates are telling the Delaware voters that Delaware is different from South Carolina, as if the voters don't live in Delaware -- I mean, you have pundits who don't live in Delaware lecturing voters who live in Delaware about the demographics of Delaware. For God's sake -- shut up!