Blog Stop Shouting
A good long read and also with comments.
http://stopshouting.blogspot.com/2010/11/my-rebuttal-to-progressive-who.html
Saturday, November 20, 2010
My Rebuttal to a Progressive who Admonished Me to Play Nice ....
The following rebuttal is mine alone. I do not speak for my husband, for my friends, for my children, but solely for myself.
I am tired of being told to sit down and shut up.
I am tired of being told what I can and can not say.
What is “acceptable”, while my ideas and values are mocked and trampled.
Enough. I have had enough.
I remained stoic when your acolytes spit on my car and called my husband a “baby killer” when I crossed through your phalanx at Walter Reed to take my children for medical care. I refused to respond as you smashed your fists into the hood of my car, destroyed my mirrors with bottles and keyed my doors in California, my children mute and terrified as you screamed your hate and bile.
I remained calm the day after 9/11 when the progressives in my office, in typical overwrought hyperbole of your side, were shrieking about “TANKS IN THE STREETS”, when in fact it was nothing more than two National Guardsman, fresh-face boys of about 19, stationed at an intersection, armed with whistles and a Humvee, deployed as extra eyes and ears two blocks from the White House.
I stayed silent when your leadership called my friends and my husbands' colleagues “Cold Blooded Killers” and judged them guilty in the court of media opinion.
I turned the other cheek when your liberal propaganda outfits refused to report on the humanitarian success stories in Iraq and Afghanistan, but delighted in the roll call of the lost as a way to bludgeon and demoralize our military.
I stopped listening to CNN and MSNBC when they openly reported lies about Marines in OIF – I know-- my husband was one of them.
I began paying attention to FOX news when only they – Oliver North, Bill Hemmer and like-minded conservatives like G. Gordon Liddy, had the courage to travel into the most dangerous parts of the battlespace to actually report on the successes of the surge, rather than filing reports that affirmed the narrative of the LSM from behind the Jersey barriers of the Green Zone.
I have been silent long enough. I have bent, I have yielded, I have endured slander, dishonesty, ad hominem attacks and actual physical threats.
Anger is a powerful motivator.
I began to push back. The first time was when I decided to counter demonstrate against the Code Pink harridans who had set up shop outside the Pvt Bolio gate at the Defense Language Institute on November 18, 2007 to ostensibly run a “Torture Teach-In” and to demonize and excoriate our troops.
Approaching them first with logic, facts and civility didn't work.
I explained that the School of Americas isn't even on the west coast (it's on the east coast), and has nothing to do with the mission of DLI.
That pertinent fact was “irrelevant” and dismissed.
I then patiently explained that the SOA does not teach “torture”, and that policy is in contravention to the doctrine of our military forces.
I was called a liar.
I tried a third time to explain that my husband had just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq where he was an advisor to the Iraqi army, and he had specifically advised them against torture as a method of intelligence gathering and intimidation.
I was called naïve.
So, you see, I have had multiple first hand encounters where it has been obvious that your side is intellectually lazy, refuses to do their own research, and dismisses facts that don't fit with the pre-established narrative.
I then disengaged, but not before telling them I was personally very proud of my husband, and the thousands of other men and women in uniform, who chose to defend their right to conduct protests, (even fallacious ones) against US policy and the military, but asked simply that they honor that by being at least honest with their facts and information.
No acknowledgment.
My girlfriends and I then retreated to my home where we elected to play by their rules and stage a protest against their encampment and Islamofascist “love-in”. We tried very hard to channel our best moonbattery, but it was difficult, since we were still tethered to reality.
Some of our signage included:
I will never be a Dhimmi.
Hands off my clitoris.
Got Freedom – Thank a Vet!
My husband fights for your right to protest!
We staged ourselves on the sidewalk on Lighthouse Avenue, with our backs to Camp Pink(o), and facing the oncoming traffic.
We got honks, cheers, chuckles, and a plethora of thumbs-up out of the windows of passing cars.
In very liberal, deep blue Monterey.
The Pinkies were very pleased with this turn of events, and started to cheer as well when cars gave us an energetic “toot-toot” of approval.
Then we turned around to face them and showed them our signs.
Some moments in time are priceless. That is one I will cherish for a long time. The look of the faces of the Camp Pink(o) will be forever etched in my mind.
The Left likes to use what they believe to be witty signage (although I am not sure how BUSHCHIMPHITLER qualifies as “witty”), props and sheer numbers of die hard believers and rent-a-students to validate the “justness” of their cause-du-jour and to manufacture a sense of widespread support for their “issue”.
So we took your tools and began to employ them against you. And you don't like it very much. Except we don't have to pay anyone to come to our rallies, and that just infuriates you further.
I don't “do” protests, because I think the time and resources are better employed elsewhere. I also don't do sarcasm and contempt well either, because I prefer to discuss facts and measurable outcomes, but you have framed the terms of the engagement, and I am learning as fast as I can.
Contrary to your false accusations against the genesis of the Tea Party, I began protesting the bailouts before Obama was selected and around the time that McCain had elected to suspend his campaign in order to rush back to Washington to sell us all out.
I went to the big April 15th rally with a “violent” sign forged from pink posterboard which simply stated, “Give all of Congress Pink Slips”. Frightening imagery, I know.
I went to the first 9/12 rally in DC, which you did your best to disrupt by shutting down the orange metro line and turning away buses, and which your scribes and stenographers diminished and which the White House refused to acknowledge. We weren't deterred. We were there. We knew the size of the crowd – and more importantly – the fastness of their determination. A sleeping giant had been awakened.
I went to 8-28 and to the following 9-12 rally. I began commenting on blogs, writing letters to the editor, and showing up for Tea Party strategy sessions.
I donated money to outlier Tea Party candidates who were mocked by the “all knowing” media and had been dismissed by the Establishment. Some of them actually won. They are the hired mercenaries of the Tea Party. Do not underestimate or misunderstand their mission and their support. They are on the front lines in the upcoming battle of ideas and the direction of our nation.
No where in the history of civilization has the welfare state succeeded over the long term. From Plato to Thatcher, warnings about the propensity for the professional politicians to expand the looting of the public treasury and to debase the currency as a mechanism for retaining power has been well documented and a rallying cry for sound money and conservative principles.
I challenge you to name one state where it has survived longer than two generations, for it is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme predicated on the willingness of our youth to voluntarily shackle themselves.
You have seized the public schools and the universities and conducted a purge of any non-compliant conservatives; a massive re-education for the faculty was in order. You believe you can turn our children against us. Unfortunately for you, all it takes is one look at their first paycheck as working adults for them to question the validity of your wealth redistributive economic policies. Homeschooling, constitutionally upheld, is on the rise; Ron Paul now fills college auditoriums, while the Won struggles to fill them without piggybacking on the coat tails of a free pop concert.
Your side knows you can not prevail on the battlefield of open and honest ideas, so you retreat behind the fortification of expanded regulation, unelected czars who rule by decree and diktat, and a boy-king who is being urged by the janissaries to complete the transformation to a totalarian state by executive orders.
Except, that to emplace your policies and “vision” requires the consent of the people. You can not hire enough guards, build enough prisons, operate enough courts to entrap and control the whole population of these (for-now) united states. It only takes a small percentage of dissenters, non-conformists and cascading acts of strategic civil disobedience to bring your entire command-and-control crashing all around you. Decapitating by legal and tax retributive means, a few titular heads of the resistance, will only serve to strengthen and embolden the diffuse movement. Look back at how the Solidarity movement was organized and how it ultimately prevailed before you declare Victory.
Your side has chosen to engage in a low-level, asymmetric campaign for decades. Deceit, dishonesty and exploiting the mechanisms of state have been your weapons.
Unfortunately for you, you can no longer hide and your methods have been revealed and exposed for what they are. The Fabian operational concepts are only successful when they are hidden and cloaked in disingenuous “narrative”. Thousands now are aware of, and have read, Alinsky and his fellow socialists and have formulated a counter strategy.
At first, your team mocked and lied and delighted in debasing our ideals and beliefs. Why wouldn't you feel confident? It had worked so well in the past, and you had the stenography class to support you.
Then you lowered yourselves even further by deriding anyone not in agreement with your viewpoint as “low information voters”. Given what we know now about the mortgage fraud, the chicanery of the stimulus, the hidden deceptions of Obamacare … who, pray tell, is the “low information” voter?
You were jubilant November, 2008. You strutted, you crowed, you reveled. Newsweek triumphantly declared, “We are all Socialists Now!”.
Except for one thing. You misunderstood the battlespace. You failed to recognize the numbers who stayed home rather than vote for a progressive RINO like McCain. You misread the temperment of the people, who wanted an end to the theft, the lies, the spending, the corruption and the deceit. Instead, you doubled down.
The people went underground. Everyday work folk, alarmed at the rising tide of tyranny and the rhetoric of hate, weary of the false accusations and the lies, joined the libertarian and conservatives and forged an underground resistance. The town halls in that raucous summer were not an aberration – they are the new norm. Get used to it.
Word spread – from uncensored blogs, to private e-mails and forwarded commentary, meet-ups large and small, the resistance grew and strengthened. There were gatherings of the clans across the nation. The movement began to grown organically, a leadership structure evolved, and a long term plan developed.
“Burn down the House”.
Yes, in your world, graphic or martial imagery is only to be exploited by the Left.
“We bring a gun”
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/06/14/obama-if-they-bring-a-knife-to-the-fight-we-bring-a-gun/
“Get in their faces”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCMDur9CDZ4
Oh yes, your side “went there”. Not only was there no outcry about the “violent imagery”, there were claps and cheers of agreement. You framed the imagery. Own it.
“Retreat and Reload”and “Burn down the house”. Get used to it. Don't think for a moment you've earned the right to open your mouth in protest.
Here's some more martial imagery for you.
Yes, we will burn down the house of Progressive Democrats and lay waste to the entire construct of the welfare state. It will be a long, decades-long battle, but we will prevail because we learned the consequences of not teaching our young ourselves. We delegated that to you, and that was our first mistake. We assumed you were honest brokers, but now we know better.
Carthago delenda est.
I accept that's the intellectually lazy response, but I have to work with what you can understand.
My preference is more of a “Thucydides account of the no-mercy overthrow of the oligarchs at Corcyra” type of historical reference.
Either way, I am confident you can deduce the “tone”of my rebuttal.
Realizing that you are losing your grip on the public schools, that the youth that propelled the boy-king to victory have abandoned you, that the bitter, blue collar white workers are now Tea Party grandmas and grandpas, that you have lost control of the federal checkbook and the legislative calendar,
now you want to petition for peace?
now you cry out for civility and consensus?
I have a message for you:
Go. To. Hell.
When you retreat back to the comfort and safety of your salon filled with like-minded Hopeium addicts, perhaps you can rouse them from their stupor long enough to send them this message.
We don't want civility.
We don't want to “play nice”.
We don't want to “compromise” with you.
From coffee shops to soccer fields and everywhere in between, the message has been clear.
Draw a line in the sand.
Those who we have sent to Washington this January who yield will be removed from the field and replaced. Make no mistake about it.
We came to you with ideas and a sincere intent to find common ground.
Our emissaries were told,
“I won”.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/01/23/obama-to-gop-i-won/
We tried to engage you and bring alternative solutions to the health care crisis. We met in good faith at Blair House. Our concerns and our emissaries were rudely dismissed.
So, this is our message to you:
The scorched earth policy is in effect.
A court of accounting will be convened.
Fix bayonets.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Update:
Sent to me via e-mail from an Infantry officer:
“The bayonet charge remains one of the most frightening acts an enemy can face and there is nothing better to prepare your men for battle than issuing the order to fix bayonets," said a senior Army officer.”
Source: Evans, Roger D. C., and Stephens, Frederick J., The Bayonet: An Evolution and History (Milton Keynes, 1985).
Thanks! - Fix Bayonets, Indeed !
Update #2:
Thank you to Prof Jacobson for linking me as "Post of the Day".
I'm humbled, sir.
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/
Wow! Instalanche! Was only kidding that an Instalanche would make my day. Now I can rightfully claim that more than 3 people read my blog ;)
It seems to have hit a nerve. Thank you, Prof Reynolds!
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/110212/
Posted by Stop shouting... at 3:27 PM
Labels: Bayonet, Carthago delenda est, Code Pink, Corcyra, Dhimmi, Progressives, Rebuttal, Tea Party, Thucydides
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