The Moral Case for Supervillainy

(The following is an extended excerpt from something I'm working on - kind of a Galt speech for a character. Basic concept - a real life sort of "Bond Villain" who runs an 'evil' corporation that tries to overthrown foreign governments and the like for profit and that is building a SuperWeapon on its island. What I think of this really depends on my mood). The Moral Case for Supervillainy I want to tell you the story of my Grandfather. I didn’t know him personally very well - he died when I was young and, even when I knew him, he was an exhausted old man. But I know his story very well indeed. When he was thirty-four, because he happened to have ancestors born in Japan, the government came along and took everything that he had in the world. They took everything that he owned - and everything that his family owned. Fishing boats and farms. Furniture and homes. They took it all. And then they put him in jail. But, through all of that, somehow he never lost his faith. He was never overcome by the desire to sit in place and die. When the war was over, they let him and his young family out. They left them penniless, destitute, and in the middle of nowhere. So, my Grandfather started walking. He wasn’t legally allowed back on the West Coast yet However, fishing was his vocation and he could hardly do it from Alberta. So he left my Grandmother and my Uncle in an abandoned shack and made the trek on home. And so he went to work. He worked damned hard every day that he lived. And he built something again. Day-by-day he worked until he was able to buy a house in Vancouver for his growing family. Himself, my Grandmother, my Uncle, my Aunt, and my Dad. Then someone murdered my Uncle. He was just a child. Not even ten years old. The oldest boy. Someone murdered him. We don’t know who - even more than half a century later. But one day his oldest boy was just gone. They found him floating in a pool. And my Grandparents blamed themselves - they seemed foreign, they thought. It had made them a target. So they went back to work, now working even harder to fit in - to be model members of the community. They all worked for decades more. Joined by another boy, they worked on the boats and they worked in the canneries. And I really think that the struggle - that all of those burdens - broke the man’s health. By the time I knew him, he had retreated into himself - sitting and watching Japanese soap operas and meticulously recording all of them on the early VCR that my Dad and my uncle had purchased for him as a retirement gift. Why, I don’t know - my strongest memory of his home was that he had cabinets and cabinets full of video tapes. That home - that was the reward for all of his years of work. He bought it. He owned it. That was the financial legacy he had to pass on. And what a legacy! First, of course, it went to my Grandmother. My Aunt and her daughter lived there as well. In the overheated real estate market that prevailed by the time my Grandmother passed on it was worth the better part of a million dollars. I remember when he died - almost twenty years ago now - he spoke of the opportunities that he wanted me, the oldest Grandson, to have. But it was not to be. After my Grandmother’s death, we discovered that my Aunt had managed to have the house - the only real asset of the estate - transferred into her name at some point in the past. And there was nothing that could be done at that point to challenge that, the period for having done so long since passed. My Aunt, who had never held a steady job in her life and who raised a wild and worthless delinquent of a daughter, had taken the whole thing. Then she lost all of it - blowing through the money and then some on cars, fancy vacations, and unwise real estate purchases. In the end all that my Grandfather passed on to me was his own unbreakable will. Though, I wonder, to what end? After all, what lesson is there to be drawn from this story other than that sometimes, when you’re down, if you look up with hope in your eyes the universe will kick you in the face, put a boot into your back, and then take a piss on you? More broadly, the lesson to be learned here - the lesson I have taken away and I wish to impart upon you - is that the weak will take every opportunity to prey upon the strong. After all, it was the weak - weak and pathetic people - who bought the stolen property of the Japanese. Note here, the people who bought it were not strong enough to take it themselves, or to acquire it of their own will. Instead, they sought the intervention of some higher authority who then gave it to them. And it was the weak and pathetic - my Aunt - who destroyed so much of what my Grandfather had built. In our society, the demands of the weak - who will die useless, unloved, and unremembered by history - have been repeatedly allowed to carry the day over the needs of the strong. This is the most glaring disadvantage of an egalitarian and democratic society - in a world of “one person, one vote” - the voices of ten worthless peons such as my Aunt, who will make no mark on history and no contribution to humanity, civilization, or the world beyond the unproductive consumption of resources, are worth ten times that of one great man. And so we have a political class and economic system that is increasingly tilted towards pandering to the whims of the unworthy many over the requirements of the productive few. And in a similar way, so was the next generation and the one after that victimized. My father grew to become a Banker. And he was, I am not ashamed to admit, well-compensated for his services. Or, at least he was in theory. Except he was earning money in a time where socialism, both overt and covert, had come to hold sway over the halls of government. And, during his prime earning years - and my own formative years - he was saddled with a ruinous rate of income taxation that topped out at 54% at barely more than $70,000. Why was this? Were the years of my youth those of some great national or international emergency? No. It was because the political class, beholden to the whims of the parasitic money, decided that my family deserves to have less and others who did no work to earn it deserved to have more. I remember, and this is an indignity that burns to the present day, how during some of those years - in order to maintain just a simple Middle Class lifestyle while saving for the future - my Mother had to take menial jobs. I remember having to spend my days, while my friends were off enjoying their youths, helping her to deliver phone books. Phone books, ladies and gentlemen, because that was the state that socialism had left our economy in and because that was what was necessary to pay for the things that a Middle Class existence required. I think of that, and a fire within me burns. I remember how I lost out on things - important things - because I spent my weekends delivering newspapers in order to buy things that other people were just given. I remember how, in High School, I missed so much because I was working night shifts at a Safeway while my contemporaries were off being teenagers. And I’m sure that, if you are listening to my message, that you have memories of you own that you would like to share. Of how you may feel victimized by a society that seems to irrationally demand that some of its members work significantly harder than others and give so much more of themselves in the service of ungrateful masses. Yet, ladies and gentlemen, for all that you may feel you and I and everyone like us may feel the victim here, the truth is that you, me, my Mother, my Father, my Grandfather - all of us - we share in the guilt for all that has passed. We share in it because we have, for far too long, been the passive enablers of our own exploitation. Far too few of us have dared to stand athwart history, shouting stop. We have, like so many victims of abuse, meekly accepted the established order as just and eternal. But it is not just. I know it. You know it. Even the huddled and parasitic masses know it. It is not just and it cannot and it will not stand. “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves.” That, my friends, is true today as it was true then. All of us have, for far too long, been willing to accept a system that binds over the talented with chains of servitude. We have been too willing to accept moral, economic, and political constraints which serve no purpose other than to conscript us into the service of those whose lives will be little noted nor long remembered. In the natural world, the weak will submit to the leadership of the strong because it is necessary for their own survival. However, as we have been removed progressively further away from all evolutionary imperatives we have increasingly created a society wherein the strong, creative, and intelligent minority is made the keeper of the majority. Increasingly we have created a society where the labour of a productive few is expected to support a vast parasitic class that is sapping our will and resources. What the proponents of this system fail to recognize is that it is unsustainable in the long term. The incentives for the productive to cease to use their talents and instead depend upon others to provide for them are very strong. And so it is that we increasingly find ourselves living in a land of men who are not truly men in any sense of the word. Men who cannot provide for themselves or be counted upon to defend our civilization, their families, or even themselves. Young men who are a burden, and not a blessing, upon our country and our economy. And our enemies - and we still have many enemies in the world - watch this great hollowing-out with alacrity and interest. Consider, all of you, how much of your money goes and will continue to go in the future, to provide for the extended retirements and extremely long lives of people who contributed nothing to any of the rest of us. And consider not only the better uses that you could put that money to, but how those better uses might actually advance the human race as a whole rather than merely ensuring that some people may continue to consume oxygen. Think of that. Or, think of this: if you’re a relatively young person working full-time at a professional job, you probably have the exact same (or less) disposable income than some random person going through an extended adolescence at home. In fact, in their infinite wisdom, through various tax credits and subsidies, wealth is probably more or less directly being transferred from yourself to that individual. Imagine - if you are a young person today and the present system is allowed to prevail, then you are going to probably pay ruinous taxes for most if not all of your life to support the long and indolent retirement of a generation that squandered almost everything that their parents passed on to them and, in many cases, spent the years that they should have been raising our generation on various pseudo-adolescent exercises in “self-discovery.” In short, my friends, if you play by the rules then the system is going to screw you time and time again. Some people will tell you that this is a selfish creed. That’s nothing more than projection. What could be more selfish than demanding that other people live their lives an offer of themselves on behalf of others, only to then berate and demand more of those people? We are rapidly approaching a moment where we will have to make a choice about our own survival. If we continue to allow those around us to insist upon such an ahistorical social and economic system - with the best and the brightest being weighed down by anchors of indolent uselessness - we shall all drown. Because, ladies and gentlemen, the math is not in our favour. Not only will more people retire with each passing day, but also the advance of technology will increasingly render more and more people with no aptitude for anything beyond manual and closely-directed labour - economically obsolete. Like the starving mobs of old, these people will consume our resources, our reserves, and - when all of that is gone - the seed grain as well. Unless we can find the will to assert ourselves we shall find ourselves the victims of increasingly-onerous burdens of taxation and regulation and then, when even those shall fail to meet the demands of the mob, we shall likely be faced with ever-more odious measures such as demands for rationing, conscripted labour, and the forced seizure of wealth. If we take it, as we have in the past, then the universe will curb-stomp us. You know, I think that supervillians have gotten a bad rap over the years. Sure, some of them may have unwise and maniacal plans to poison cities for sport or to steal the British Crown Jewels but there are many others whose actions were nothing more than a reaction to a society that never valued or allowed them to claim an adequate reward for their talents and labour while, at the same time, demanding that those talents and that labour be turned to the use of ungrateful and undeserving others. All that many of them are guilty of is defying a society that doesn’t value them in the first place. We should keep them in mind as we learn to fight back. We should do so because most supervillians have one key feature in common: they have liberated themselves from the collective sense of guilt which demands that those of ability ought to allow themselves to be conscripted to the service of others. Going forward we must remember, as they already do, that we are not seeking to take anything from others that rightfully belongs to them, but that we are merely seeking to serve our own desires and our own interests and that, in so doing, we are doing nothing wrong. After all, what are the masses we are supposedly called to serve doing if it is not that? I, for one, tire of the argument that a society should be judged by the least among it. I do not know if there were any groups among the earliest humans who felt that way because, if there were, they all surely perished during the early years of man somewhere in Africa. It is the strong, the bold, the creative, and the brave who mark a civilization in the pages of history. Let us now join together to do what we know in our hearts is morally right: to refuse to be the guardians of a society that demands that we provide of ourselves that others may enjoy things that we cannot have. Let us recognize that the below-average cannot hope to save our civilization from destruction. Only we can do that and we will not do it if we are bound over and our resources devoted to those who cannot possibly assist. Let not our efforts be ultimately unrewarded. The epitaph of our civilization must be something more than, “they meant well.”

The Revolution of ’10 and Onwards

My first thought on seeing Scott Brown elected to the United States Senate - to fill a seat that was last held by a Republican during the Truman Administration - was of Churchill’s reported reaction to Pearl Harbor. “So,” he thought, “we had won after all.”

The decisive blow to the Democratic agenda, coming one day short of a year from when Barack Obama took office, also brought to mind Churchill on the balcony of the Ministry of Health in May 1945. “This is your victory,” he told the crowd. And so it is today. To everyone who never gave up on the American spirit, to those who never surrendered, to those who were undaunted by the odds and the ceaseless and merciless attacks of the enemy: this is your victory. It is the victory of the American people and of all of the people, wherever they might be, who must have freedom and know the price that must be paid that it may be preserved.

But, having quoted certain words of Churchill, some others seem appropriate. “This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Hubris, that age-old enemy of the victorious, led the Democrats into error. They advanced on too broad a front, without a plan for victory. They thought that we were defeated and that many of us would be passive and weak. They thought wrong. Our line held. But the war is not finished yet.

At Marathon, the Athenians, fighting against incredible odds, stopped the Persian army cold. However, as soon as the battle was concluded the exhausted Greek soldiers had to rush back to Athens to thwart a Persian attempt to take the city by sea. Likewise, we must be increasingly on the alert for the inevitable Democratic effort to use their remaining forces to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

The real danger is not that the Democrats will now force the Senate bill through the House. Nor is it that they will delay the seating of Senator Brown. Personally, I would welcome either development as they would likely fail in either and, in any case, they would be politically suicidal to attempt. No, the danger is that President Obama will take this as an opportunity to pivot politically, put some distance between himself and the Democrats in Congress and perhaps even support those elements among both Democratic caucuses who would like to see new Congressional leadership. Remember: President Clinton was re-elected two years after the Republicans took control of the Congress. Victory now emphatically does not guarantee victory later.

In 1950, General MacArthur nearly won the Korean War by forcing a landing behind enemy lines at Inchon. The North Koreans were routed and their army was almost-totally destroyed in the battles that followed as the UN forces broke out from the Pusan perimeter. However, as they approached the Yalu River, half a million Red Chinese soldiers joined the fight and suddenly the Allies were faced with what MacArthur described as, “an entirely new war.”

What we learned last night was simple enough: Obama cannot and will not be re-elected if he runs on the issues that he’s highlighted and pushed over the last year. He can be - and he will be - however if he now pivots and draws Republicans into a series of the same sort of overreaches and punches into the air as Clinton did in 1995-1996 and, for that matter, has has happened to the Democrats over the last year.

We must internalize the lessons of the last few elections - and act upon them.

First, the American people are looking for change. They’ve repeatedly voted for it and they haven’t gotten it yet.

Second, the change that they are looking for is non-ideological, at least in the sense that the people who are swinging these elections are not voting based on ideology but rather on what they think might work.

Third, there is a widespread feeling of general disgust for the political class as a whole that is rather unlike anything that we’ve seen in our lifetimes - at least in America.

Fourth, Americans are willing to sacrifice if the reasons for those sacrifices - and the rewards that may come from them - are explained clearly and honestly.

I, for one, suggest that Republicans look abroad for inspiration. Specifically, I would suggest that they study the course of three Provincial Governments in my native Canada: Alberta in 1993, Ontario in 1995, and British Columbia in 2001.

Each of those provinces elected a new government (or re-elected an old one with a new leader, in the case of Alberta) that came into office promising a fairly radical reduction in the size of government. Each, with varying degrees of success, came to office and slashed government services, cut taxes, and cut spending. Each of them was re-elected. In Canada.

This was because voters, like I believe American voters do now, recognized that their governments were too large and too expensive. It wasn’t, for many voters (who, in two cases, had just previously voted to put admitted socialists into government a few years earlier) a debate about theory, it was a reality-based discussion. It’s easy to get lost - and to lose the debate - when you’re arguing the theoretical merits of smaller versus bigger government, especially since the liberals have pretty much all of the emotional cards in the deck sitting in their hand. It’s easy to win the argument that, “we cannot afford it” when you have high taxes, a stagnant economy, and massive deficits to cite.

The moral case against big government is hard to sell to a lot of voters. The practical case practically sells itself.

Second, in each of these places, conservatives were able to win office by making a good-government argument. They argued that they would be better managers of those government programs that voters liked than their opponents would. This should be the core of a winning Republican message for 2010 and beyond: government should do fewer things overall but, those things that government should do, it should be the best in the world at.

Run against government itself, and Obama can take up the mantle of the defense of downtrodden, etc, etc - rally his base - and maybe be narrowly re-elected against an unappealing Republican opponent in 2012. Obama can pivot from his current position and launch counter-attacks against “uncaring” Republicans and so forth. You want to freeze him.

Attack his base. Part of all of the campaigns that I cited above was widespread disgust at the antics of public-sector workers. Forget attacks on “welfare queens” and the like - those are yesterday. The welfare Mom with the Cadillac no longer moves voters who don’t already belong to us. The mid-level public servant with a Cadillac and pensions and benefits to match, on the other hand, makes a very compelling public enemy.

Attack the “community organizers” - who Obama can’t abandon. People don’t get, except in the abstract, Trillions of dollars. Let’s comb through the Federal budget and attack every single “community organization” that’s collecting tax dollars and gives us an opening. Those people won’t vote for us anyways and they’re Obama’s base - he can’t abandon them, no matter how nuts and repellant they appear to the public as a whole.

The battle is begun, but now the hard part begins. Today is a great day, but there will be trying days ahead.

Conan O'Brien: Simpsons Showrunner?

NBC President Jeff Zucker is reportedly threatening that, if Conan O’Brien leaves NBC, he will enforce a non-compete clause in his contract that will keep Conan off the air for three to five years.

Now I, personally, have never been a particular fan of O’Brien’s late-night show. What I am a gigantic fan of, however, is his work as a writer-producer on The Simpsons. He has the writing credit for exactly two episodes - both of which were masterpieces.

The first, Marge versus the Monorail is the story of Springfield’s ill-fated adventure in mass transit and features the famous “Monorail Song.”

The second, Homer Goes to College, is a perfect example of why I’ve been watching The Simpsons for twenty years. As a kid, I loved it for it’s silly jokes about college pranks and Richard Nixon. These days I love it for it’s underlying premise that, in O’Brien’s words, Homer is too stupid to understand the difference between reality and “bad Animal House knock off movies.”

So, if NBC does keep O’Brien from hosting another late-night show, then I suggest that Fox step in and offer him the chance to be the showrunner on The Simpsons. (Well, a Google search reveals that Cracked beat me to the idea, but yeah) I like Al Jean but, really, he’s been at it for a long time and might even welcome a berth somewhere up the the line. If Fox will do this I, for one, promise that I’ll be sure to watch their shows live and not fast-forward through the commercials.

Perhaps regrettably, The Simpsons is probably America’s most recognizable modern cultural institution. One need not pause for long to discuss the sad decline in the quality of that show over the last decade or so. It’s tough to say what exactly went wrong - whether it was the subtle influence of Fox’s other, cruder shows, whether everything that can be done has been done, or whether people are just tired of the show. Whatever it is, pretty much everyone who isn’t actually employed by the series agrees that there’s something wrong.

It is mostly residual affection for the early days that keeps me watching (when I think about it closely, I can see some far-off day in the future where the Simpson family walks off into a sunset, the soft version of the theme playing, while I shed a tear). But Conan could make them relevant - and great - again.

Not only would, I am sure, Conan be able to contribute some truly great material, but his presence might well allow the show to both attract back the talent that has gone elsewhere (if you look at some of the other great material being done in animation, the odds are that the creative force behind it will have some connection to The Simpsons) but also to draw top-shelf creative talent from other shows. What comedy writer, anywhere in the world, whether a Simpsons veteran or not would not want a chance to write for Conan O’Brien’s Simpsons?

Why not, Conan? What greater work have you, sir? After all, you’ve been doing the late-night TV thing for the better part of two decades now - and you’ve hosted the show to host in that realm. NBC has sealed their fate anyways.

Besides, think of it this way, the way things are sliding if you wait out the five years somewhere else, by the time you get back on television you’ll probably be allowed to scream obscenities live on the air.

And why not, Fox? The move might do more than simply give you a chance to return the show to it’s former glory - it would also give you the chance to get O’Brien under contract with terms that would allow him, once whatever legal entanglements he’s sure to have with NBC get sorted out, to finally launch you into the waters of late-night entertainment. Indeed, even if his non-compete officially keeps him off the air for half a decade, the likely end result of the criss-crossing web of lawsuits that is likely to result from this mess is a settlement that releases him from his contract somehow.

And, if they have compelling reasons to get behind the concept, I put it to you that all of us have a better reason: the man can make us laugh, one way or another.

Obama Appointee, Coakley Aide, Shoves Reporter

The scene in Washington, DC last night was ugly for Democrats in every possible way. The Senate race in Massachusetts is one that, quite simply, there’s no way in hell should even be competitive, let alone seemingly winnable for the GOP. The Democrats have found themselves in a perfect storm of failure there: a terrible national political climate, a faltering economy, an incompetent and unexciting candidate, and a Republican with a genuinely exciting personal story and an ideological profile that might bring him victory in the Bay State. Plus, of course, I think that everyone recognizes that it would be cosmically ironic if it was the seat made vacant by Ted Kennedy’s death that sunk health care reform. So one can understand why the Democrats are under pressure.

In view of all of that, one can understand why a Democratic aide would want to shove a Weekly Standard reporter asking about Attorney General Martha Coakley’s “there are no terrorists in Afghanistan” gaffe to the ground.

Following a fundraiser in Washington, DC last night (an excellent example, for what it’s worth, of the ineptitude of the Democratic campaign. One assumes that it was scheduled some time ago, a week before what was to be her coronation as Senator and they didn’t see a way of backing out of it at this point without being seen as on the defensive, even though it meant losing a vital night of campaigning in the final week of a down-to-the-wire race), Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack approached to ask his question and was ignored by Coakley.

At this point, Michael Meehan, a Democratic staffer and Obama Appointee, approached McCormack and shoved him to the ground. McCormack’s suit pants were apparently a casualty of the incident.

The first couple of videos I saw of the incident weren’t terribly clear. Frankly, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the whole thing. Then, this afternoon, I saw this longer view of the affair.

However, it passes so quickly, that I wasn’t quite able to see what exactly had transpired until I downloaded the video and watched it blown up and slowed down. I hope that the creator of the video won’t mind that I’ve done the same thing for everyone else.



To review what’s in the video, this is the sequence of events:

First, McCormack approaches Coakley to press his question about her latest gaffe.

Second, Meehan approaches McCormack and makes physical contact with him.

Third, McCormack goes to the ground.

At this point, Meehan states, he helped McCormack up. I will grant this - you can clearly see on the video that he does this. However, in so doing, he maneuvers himself into a position to stop McCormack from continuing to approach Coakley. The body language does not appear to be remotely friendly.

As to whether that’s appropriate behavior for a White House appointee and a senior Democratic aide - well, I’ll leave that up to you. I’ll simply state that, were I McCormack under these conditions, I would file a police report alleging that an assault had occurred.

Minority of Canadians Opposed to Prorogation: Poll

I love how ridiculously slanted this CBC story on polling numbers related to the prorogation of Parliament is.

First, we begin with the headline. They can't say "majority opposes prorogation of Parliament", since that's not supported by the facts in the story. So, they come at it from the opposite direction, noting that there's "little support" for the decision, which is relatively unremarkable since it's probably fair to say (indeed, quite fair to say) that something approaching a majority (and I would argue an actual majority) have no idea what's actually going on.

The poll obviously didn't give them the number they wanted - majority opposition the decision - so instead they use weasel math to give them numbers that sound impressive that aren't. Here are the two key numbers they use:

67% of voters are at least "somewhat aware" of the decision to prorogue Parliament.

Of that 67% who are at least "somewhat aware", 58% oppose the decision to to some degree.

In other words, of the polling sample as a whole 38.86% of Canadians oppose the decision. To dig even deeper into the internals of the poll, 40% of those in the 67% who are aware of the decision are "strongly opposed."

So, of Canadians as a whole, 26.8% are "strongly opposed" to the decision. That number, it should be noted, is pretty much an exact match for the percentage of Canadians who voted for the Liberals in the last election - and an awful lot lower than the 62.35% that voted for parties other than the Conservatives (a point I've made before and I'll make again, I am sure).

Not only does a majority of the electorate either support or not care about the prorogation, but the point cannot be made often enough that it's not necessary (or even, in my opinion, desirable) under the present conditions for the Conservatives to be making decisions that win the favour of a majority of the electorate - if the Tories govern in such a way as to win the approval of 40% of Canadians they can be in government pretty much indefinitely.

The Massachusetts Miracle

Rarely has history delivered to us an opportunity as sweet as the one that now lies before us. The election of Scott Brown to represent the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States Senate would represent the most comprehensive rejection imaginable of the abomination that the Democratic Party is attempting to force down the throats of the American people. Imagine: the only state that voted for McGovern could vote to send a Republican to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat. Yes, we can.

Public Policy Polling, in a brand new poll out today, has Brown - presently one of the handful of Republicans in the Massachusetts State Senate - in the lead by a single point. Earlier this week, a poll from Rasmussen showed Brown trailing his Democratic opponent, State Attorney General Martha Coakley, by nine. Again - this is in Massachusetts.

A victory by Scott Brown next Tuesday would mark the end of the Democratic health care bill. Make no mistake about it - for all of the talk already swirling around Washington about last-ditch end runs to push through a bill in the event of a Republican victory - there is absolutely no way that you’ll find sixty votes in the Senate or two hundred and eighteen in the House for anything that even remotely resembles the present bill if Massachusetts sends a Republican to the Senate for the first time in thirty-eight years. A GOP victory there would be a political H-Bomb. (Indeed, as with a 1 Megaton warhead, a near-miss here might well be as good as a win).

Consider the practical politics. If we win, we win. And even if we do not, a narrow defeat by Brown might win us a dozen seats in the Congress by inspiring wavering Democratic Congressmen and Senators to call it a career.

The conditions are ripe for a Massachusetts miracle:

Republicans have the right candidate for this race in the form of Scott Brown - a moderate with a proven record of winning in deep blue areas but without, it would seem, a history of attempting to curry favour by blatant appeasement of the left. Brown, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army National Guard and an attorney, is attractive and has a sort of neighborly appeal that is excellently conveyed in ads that show him touring the state in his truck. He’s a family man with a daughter who was an American Idol semi-finalist.

There’s more to that. This man fights. It takes courage to run for office as a Republican in as fiercely liberal and partisan place as this. When faced with obscene attacks from socially liberal fascists who hurled obscenities at him (and his daughter) for not supporting gay marriage, Brown called out the attackers by name.

Conditions in the state are bleak. If you punch “Massachusetts” into Google the first two suggestions you’ll get, after the state’s motor vehicle branch, are “Massachusetts lottery” and “Massachusetts unemployment.” Democratic Governor Deval Patrick, elected with the help of Obama’s guru David Axelrod using a prototype version of the “hope and change” campaign, has an approval rating of 34%.

More than that, Democrats are saddled with, in the form of Coakley, about as unappealing a candidate as one can imagine. A careerist Democratic hack, her most notable accomplishment, prior to sweeping into the AG’s office on the Democrat ticket, was working to keep an obviously innocent man, convicted of nonsensical charges of “Satanic ritual abuse”, in prison. She’s run a lazy campaign, seemingly hoping to coast into the Senate.

Many Republicans are less-than-eager to engage in this campaign, for fear of being seen to try and fail in a hopeless state. “Why waste money,” they ask, “in a bluest-of-the-blue state where defeat seems certain?”

Well, I put it to you that the chance for a political Inchon is too enticing to pass up. With one deft move we may position ourselves behind the enemy’s lines and roll up their entire position. This may not be the only chance to defeat the Democratic effort to socialize and bankrupt America - but it sure is the cleanest. One shot, one kill and, if we do lose, it’s Massachusetts and no one ever expected that we would win anyways.

So long as brave Republicans - and there are Republicans in Massachusetts - are willing to fight, how can we abandon them? Our brethren are already in the field, why stand we here idle? Consider this: given the anticipated turnout for a Special Election, we could send Scott Brown to the Senate in a landslide if only half of the people in the state who voted for George Bush in 2004 were to turn up and vote.

More than two centuries ago it was a distant relation of mine, Captain John Parker, who commanded the militia at the Battle of Lexington. On his orders the men under his command stood their ground and fired on the British regulars. As America’s spirit of liberty was born in Massachusetts, let it be preserved there as well.

Now is time. Oliver Cromwell once advised, “You must get men of a spirit that are likely to go as far as they will go, or you will be beaten still.” This is apt.

Those of spirit all across the land, all across the world, can assist in this endeavor. The task before us in this war of the secret warriors is to spread the word, as far and as wide as is possible, of what we are doing and what we may achieve. By Facebook, by Twitter, by e-mail, by phone - on the air and in the streets - one by one may we recruit to our banner those willing to stand their ground.

There are those in this world who say that the United States is finished as a world power - that it will be just another country - but together you may yet prove them wrong.

Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Obama’s Stalingrad

As we enter the second year of the Obama Presidency, with a castrated health care bill limping towards the finish line, we are left with a vexing question: how did this much-heralded savior, with a super-majority in the Congress, virtually the entire media on his side, overwhelming goodwill overseas, and stratospheric approval ratings fail so quickly and comprehensively?

The Health Care bill may well prove to be Obama’s Stalingrad. His forces having advanced against a disorganized and poorly-led opponent only to discover that the enemy possessed surprising strategic depth. Rather than adjusting to the situation they continue to fight on, wasting resources that might have proven to be the key to victory on other fronts.

That might be a unique way of putting it, but I think that it’s apt and that it goes to a central reason for the failure of the Obama Administration: none of its strategists seem to have the poetry of war in their hearts. By this I mean not merely dreams of military glory, but the deeper understanding of history that allows one to understand the subtle twists of fate that guide the destiny of men. Having brought so much of his campaign team into the White House - people who were politically born on third believing that they hit a triple - Obama appears to lack the valuable counsel in his inner circle of anyone who has truly thought deeply on the lessons of the past.

You might wish to point out to me that the Germans were defeated at Stalingrad and that the bill is likely to pass. Regarding the latter point - we’ll see. As to the former I would suggest to you that the passage of the neutered remnant of the original plan to remake the entire health care system - a plan that raises taxes now, offers no benefits to the middle class, and pays real benefits to a group of people who either don’t vote or mostly vote Democratic already years down the road - is no more a victory than the extraction of some troops from the pocket was one.

Before I return to that thought, we should consider whether it is a fair judgement to describe the Obama Administration, up until this point in time, as a failure? I believe that it is.

In a single year Obama’s approval ratings have fallen farther than those of any other new President. That might be an acceptable loss if he had accrued disapproval while making some sort of structural policy changes that offered the potential for long-term gain, but he has not. At the end of his first year in office the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are still ongoing, Guantanamo Bay is still open, much of the ‘stimulus’ money has already been spent and the economy is still sputtering, GM is still failing, none of his diplomatic initiatives have had any positive effect whatsoever, no new financial regulation has been undertaken, and even his signature health care bill - already shredded by the Congress - has yet to become law. If that is not comprehensive failure, I don’t know what is.

Polls now not only give Obama an average approval rating of lower than 50%, but they also show that a race between him and George W. Bush would be a toss-up. They show him and the much-maligned Sarah Palin in a dead heat. That, given where we were a year ago, is the definition of failure.

Could Obama have wrung a victory out of the last year? Absolutely. If he and his advisors had grasped the opportunity that they had alluded to - a crisis truly being a terrible thing to waste - and had convinced and then executed a strategy for pushing through an agenda while waging war against the Republican Party they absolutely could have won.

First, if they were determined to go with health care as an issue (and, were I a Democrat, I would have), then they should have done it first and presented it as a core economic issue.

They should have begun the campaign for health care reform on or before January 20th.

They should have pitched the health care reform battle in economic terms - with the argument being made that the present health care system is sapping the ability of American companies to compete globally and driving jobs overseas while, at the same time, draining consumers of the money they need to reflate the economy. In a classic sleight-of-hand health care should have been presented as an economic issue.

All of the sob stories didn’t work because, first, most people who want to make public policy based on them are already Democrats and, second, tales of other people’s woes don’t sell when people are worried about themselves. Health care as a means to create jobs, to make business more competitive, and to put more money into your pocket - that’s a message that would have sold a lot better.

Second, they should have used the Obama brand (while it had value) to drive the plan, rather than outsourcing it to the Congress. Leaving the health care plan in the hands of the Democrats in Congress was, frankly, an incredibly stupid decision. Obama should have come out on the first day with a plan that consisted, at its core, of a half dozen simple and easy-to-understand points. Then they should have hammered at those points as the “Obama Plan.” Instead, they let health care turn into a Congressional sausage-making fest - a process that gained them absolutely nothing.

Third, in terms of what was in the plan, they should have swung for the fences. A single-payer plan, or something like it, would offer the most long-term political gain the Democrats because it would massively increase the number of public sector workers and the overall dependence of the population on the government. Also, unlike the present bill, it would be damned hard to undo.

Instead, the Obama people bumbled throughout the year - letting themselves be led rather than leading - finding themselves a year older and without most of their political capital holding the bag for a bill that no one believes is satisfactory. Instead, they found themselves getting drawn into bizarre struggles with Republican political figures that offered them absolutely practical gain. The better part of a year on, does anyone have any idea why the Obama people through it would be a good idea to go to war against Rush Limbaugh?

Does anyone have any good ideas as to the political reasoning that went into the gigantic “Stimulus” bill? They blew the better part of a Trillion dollars to give the economy a jolt that’s going to wear off before the mid-term elections and, in the process, probably ended up costing a number of the people who voted for it their seats.

A smarter approach would have been to break the bill up into a series of regional and sectoral stimulus bills - perhaps at a rate of one a month or so. Not only would this have provided more sustained aid to the economy, but it would also have created the all-important appearance of Obama moving from victory to victory while giving him and Congressional Democrats a chance to pander to various constituencies. At the same time, it would also probably have saved the Democrats some Congressional seats since this approach would allow some members of Congress to vote against all of the wasteful spending while simultaneously voting for those obviously non-wasteful projects that happen to help the people who voted for them.

Rather than move strategically in order to enact their agenda, the Obama people - because their egos were so inflated from their fluke win last November - tried to bluff and bully their way through the thing. They have failed miserably. Obama’s first year in office offered them a rare “unlocked wheel” moment in American politics where they might have shifted the centre of political life far to the left and forced their opponent to reposition or lose all relevance.

Indeed, while Obama’s reign may continue, the threat that he might fundamentally transform the nation is receding as the political calendar moves forward. His first year having passed, this one will be about the Congressional elections, then the next two about his re-election campaign and then, even if he does win in the end, come January 20th, 2013 he’ll be a lame duck.