Rebane's Ruminations

Ideologies and Governance – a structured look

Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the budget and sticking by the country's Constitution be labeled as "extremists".

George Rebane

Hereabouts and in more distinguished forums the governance debate continues as to which types belong to the Left or the Right.  The confusion from the Left’s academics seems to be with monarchy and fascism, and that stems from their use of the wrong set of coordinates that can productively frame the discussion.  In the minds of some pundits, the attributes of a given governance type are totally absent.  But when all is said and done, the modern progressives do accept a right/left view that is approximated in the figure below.
Without stopping to quibble about the specifics of what constitutes the ‘center’ or ‘moderate’, the single dimensional spectrum above does have some curious bookends.  The leftmost one ends in ‘communism/totalitarianism’, which state of affairs is reached after passing through a region where anarchism rules.  And the rightmost ends in ‘fascism/monarchy’ after also passing through anarchism.  The better read student here will immediately point out that the Left’s anarchism is not the same as that of the Right’s.  This is indeed correct, and I’ll have more to say about that below.  However, in this fractured view, regardless of each having traversed the swamp of anarchy, both sides terminate in totalitarian forms of governance under the absolute control of a great leader.

A more accurate, useful, and historically exercised representation of ideologies and their supportive types of governance is given in the figure below (click to enlarge).  Here we use a representation common in the system sciences wherein one significant dimension/attribute is isolated as being perpendicular (orthogonal) to a plane that contains all the other dimensions/attributes.

For the discussion of ideologies and their supportive forms of governance, the dominant dimension shown in the figure is the level of government control of the land and the affairs of its people.  This ranges from a 100%, suffered under the absolute rule of a totalitarian dictator, to 0%, wherein anarchy is the order of the day and there are no visible institutions of state.  In the figure the variation in this level of control is shown by the thick red line in the plane (dimension) perpendicular to the field (multiple dimensions) of the types of government control, hence governance.

Understanding this framework immediately clarifies the debate over what labeled ideology belongs where.  I have shown the various collectivistic labels distributed on generalized trajectories of governance as they proceed leftward (orange lines) in the direction of greater government control of wealth creation/distribution, property ownership, class memberships, and behaviors (liberties) permitted to the individual.

The Great Divide – ‘We don’t need no stinking Constitution’

George Rebane

Bit by piece America’s Left is unraveling the role of our Constitution as the foundation of our country's governance.  Undoing the legacy of our Founders has now progressed from dancing the progressives' constitutional sidestep to a growing chorus of calls to do away with the Constitution altogether - a document they see filled with “evil provisions” that has long held us in “bondage”.  This is the conclusion that constitutional law professor Louis Seidman presented in his 30dec12 NYT op-ed ‘Let’s Give Up on the Constitution’.

And I don’t think that Seidman is the only academic who has been denigrating the Constitution in our halls of ivy.  Progressives have correctly concluded that the Constitution does stand squarely in the way of their desire to fundamentally transform America into the next attempt at a socialist paradise.  So, as Seidman, they claim that it is the restrictions of our Constitution that have caused everything from our dire fiscal cliffs (yes, plural) to the heartbreak of psoriasis.

While agreeing that certain parts of the Constitution need to be retained, Seidman advises that we can govern ourselves through some TBD ad hoc process that we make up as we go along.  He claims that “(our) obsession with the Constitution has saddled us with a dysfunctional political system, kept us from debating the merits of divisive issues and inflamed our public discourse”, and asks us to “imagine that after careful study a government official — say, the president or one of the party leaders in Congress — reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for the country.”  Should such judgments and courses of action be then reviewed in light of the Constitution?  Absolutely not, according to this prominent maven of constitutional law.

Cirino’s Nevada City, RIP

George Rebane

The Progressive Plague that has ravaged California for some years, and with every passing day is becoming even more virulent, struck down a local landmark establishment.  In Nevada City Cirino’s Bar & Grill is shutting its doors according to owner Jerry Cirino because “The state and federal government has taken the most valuable asset of a business (employees) and made it a liability.  They have disrupted, irreparably, the triangular relationship between customer, employee, and employer.”  (reported in the 3jan13 Union)

In these pages I have evangelized that important relationship and its financial implications to a business, especially a small business.   The target audience for these soap box lectures has been the independent reader who is not yet convinced about the contributions of capitalism and free enterprise to his wellbeing.  The pushback on these clarifications has always been from the progressivists who are beyond redemption (aka butt stupid), and now cover the land like locusts destroying every shred of wealth creating commercialism that they can.  And in the dust and debris of their plunder they leave unemployed workers who are among the most needy, workers who must now become wards of the state and learn quickly on which side their bread is buttered.

One more tombstone in California's Business Cemetery.  And what again is the alternative to the Great Divide?

Ruminations - 13nov12 (updated 17nov12)

George Rebane

Mitt Romney is definitely being disposed of under the traditional bus.  Conservative sage Thomas Sowell joins with his ‘Nice Losers’ that begins –

Mitt Romney now joins the long list of the kinds of presidential candidates favored by the Republican establishment— nice, moderate losers, people with no coherently articulated vision, despite how many ad hoc talking points they may have.

A flavor of America fighting a real war can be gleaned from these quality PR photos that were assembled by a Russian blogger.  For those whose ‘back there’ includes the 1940s, these pictures take you there.

Finished reading Cloud Atlas by Mitchell.  Excellent book; now look forward to seeing the movie with Tom Hanks, Hugh Grant, and Halle Berry.  Even though Mitchell misses the mark on the impact of smart machines on the future of Man, the novel with its unusual structure does have an interesting take on our dystopic future.  I don’t read many novels, but this one held me.  (My next book in the reading stack is Kurzweil’s How to Create a Mind.)

Interesting breakdown of how the counties votes last week.  Them socialists sure pack themselves into small areas, and have a definite and transformative plan for doing that to the rest of us.  (BTW, I agree that the colors should be changed to reflect the leanings of the Right and Left.  Whoever the imbecile, who first designated the currently used wrong assignment, was innocent of both history and ideology.)


Nobel laureate Paul Krugman concludes that “Gods, guns and gays didn't swing voters into supporting corporate interests; instead, human dignity for women swung votes the other way.”  And that’s how it all came down in his Welcome to the Real "Real America".  It was oh so simple when the true Americans had their say last week.

In becoming acceptable to the nation's Hispanics, does the Republican party really need to embrace open borders and amnesty?  Isn’t that already the political posture of all the leftwingers under the Democrat umbrella?  Where then will be the political choice for maintaining America as a sovereign nation-state?

Tracking the number of informal petitions to secede that are submitted to the WH website will be of interest.  Over 30 states now have groups collecting and submitting such Great Divide (q.v.) signatures.  Glenn Beck advises that the feds will keep the names of the signatories and get ugly on them later.  We shall see.

Exit question: After 2008 and 2012 will the blacks ever admit that they are racist minority, even unto their own worst interests?

[14nov12 update]  President Obama met with the leftwing activists and unions yesterday, and today seeks to give the impression of 'equal time' to the capitalists.  He is doing this by meeting in the WH with the heads of big corporations as I write.  These are outfits that cannot exist without heavy cooperation, or is it collusion, or is it corruption with government.  Meanwhile, the middle and small businesses are going to be trampled by Obama's tax increases.  American manufacturers are already 20% behind global competitors in their costs.  On top of this they will now see their tax and regulatory burdens increase.  Instead of creating the millions of jobs needed in America, they will be busy seeking new and innovative ways to shed cost in order to survive.  Socialism marches on while the sheeple watch in awe.

[15nov12 update]  As often mentioned here, the world is looking at the United States with various levels of disbelief in how we are managing to inflict evermore egregious wounds on our dumbing population, wealth creation capacity, and body politic.  In the 10nov12 London Telegraph columnist Janet Daley wrote –

The United States has now acquired an electorally powerful liberal bourgeoisie who are convinced, as their European counterparts have been for several generations, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that public spending is inherently virtuous, that poverty can be cured by penalising wealth creation, and that government intervention can engineer social "fairness." But just when some of Europe's political class has begun to appreciate the dangers of this philosophy—that taken to its logical conclusion, it leads to economic stagnation and social division—America seems to have decided that it is the quintessence of enlightened sophistication.

[17nov12 update] We saw 'Assassins', the Stephen Sondheim musical, at the Off Center Theater in Grass Valley last night with friends.  It was a marvellous if somewhat disquieting performance, and unfortunately the production closes today.  Jo Ann summarized it artfully in an email to friends which follows -

Thinking about the play - certain actors, all the main ones, were absolutely terrific.  JWBooth was smooth and cunning, the women played off each other very effectively, the guy with the stomach ache, the bottle maker & Emma Goldman, and Oswald  were played well.  Guiteau and Santa Claus were exceptional portraits.  The little boy was great in his role.

The topic, troubled/mentally ill people doing the awful, was hard let alone entertaining.  Sondheim's music was also hard.  But the talented cast rose to those challenges.  I'm glad I saw it.  Next, I want a jolly good comedy or sweet Christmas carols.

We all are fortunate to live in a community with so much talent and culture pouring out of every pore.

Autocracy in our future (updated 1nov12)

The lesson for Americans is clear enough.  Our growing size and diversity make republican government, whether democratic or oligarchic, impossible.  Thomas Fleming

George Rebane

Wholesale democracy across a diverse nation is an enduring goal for collectivists, and the bane of those conservatives and libertarians who understand the functions of a republic.  Long have I lamented on the increasing scope of democracy in our beloved land.  Mine is a lonely stance since it is so widely opposed and misunderstood.  The November 2012 edition of Chronicles, the flagship publication of the Rockford Institute, features a series of essays that explore ‘The Failure of Democracy’.

Perhaps the closest example of the dangers of broad-based democracy is found right here in California where long ago our politicians cracked the code on how to use democracy to their own ends, and in the process be innocent of any of its excesses – our notorious initiative process in which we can be manipulated to vote for taxes, constitutional changes, added regulations, new laws, and all manner of things that the Legislature in Sacramento does not want to touch.

And in the interval of the last half century or so, we the sheeple have been convinced to vote this way and that, to give us today an internationally recognized dysfunctional state.  The next objective on the domestic agenda is to spread democracy across America until the last vestiges of our republic disappear under the feet of a nationwide ignorant mob.

The embrasure of Obama as the man on a white horse in 2008 confirmed what many have thought about the degeneration of our electorate.  Half of the country is ready to welcome autocracy on the autocrats’ promise to drain the pockets and redistribute the wealth of the rich.  They totally believe that all good things come through the benevolence of government – Ronald Reagan was wrong.

In ‘Voting for Monarchy’ editor Thomas Fleming examines some historical background and precedents that have led to our current state of national mind.  I extract some relevant passages that should not surprise long time RR readers –

The political credulity of American grown-ups cannot be blamed entirely on propaganda or even on the media.  We actively want to be deceived; we desperately want leaders to believe in to the point of reverence.  As every American with the right to vote should know, political reverence of this sort is incompatible with republican government, but, then, hardly anyone relly wants republican government.  What they want is monarchy – a Kennedy, Clinton, or Bush dynasty – and the only reason we have failed to achieve this desire is the persisting competition of the two crooked factions that divide power between them in much the same way that the North Side Mob and the Capone boys divided up Chicago.

As much discussed in these pages (see under Great Divide), multi-kulti in an expanding democracy surely leads to the dissolution of republics.

The Roman order idealized by Cicero could not effectively rule a diverse polyglot and multiethnic population of subject peoples, any more than the U.S. Constitution can serve as the political framework within which  Yankees and Southerners, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims and Santerians, Africans, Mexicans, and Asians can function as citizens of a republic.

Smaller, more cohesive populations have given us the accoutrements of civilization that we all enjoy.

City-states and republican commonwealths have given the human race its civilization, but the painful truth is that, however we define it, republican governments are short lived, anywhere from a few generations to perhaps 500 years. … The lesson for Americans is clear enough.  Our growing size and diversity make republican government, whether democratic or oligarchic, impossible.

So where does all this pull an under-educated and disinterested citizenry, here in America and worldwide.  Fleming posits that –

Monarchy is the default position for human politics; republican self-government, a hard enterprise that can only be taken up by a brave and self-reliant people who possess a common culture and religion.  With every cry for effective leadership, whether it comes from the leftists or conservatives, we can hear the sound of an oligarchic regime hardening into a party state. … Liberty is only for the free.  It cannot be given to slaves, and if someone has to be liberated, he becomes the slave of the liberator.

In the same edition of Chronicles, Clyde Wilson (a “recovering professor”) in ‘The Imperial and Momentary We’ observes how emotion has necessarily replaced critical thinking for most of our voters.  He writes

A regime of feelings cannot be a regime of law, because laws are fixed things.  It must become a regime of edicts from rulers.  The founders did not think that centralized tyranny and mass democracy were opposites.  They recognized them as boon companions. … For mankind, a sense of shame has always been the source of good behavior and social health.  People might do wrong, but they knew the were doing wrong.  The founders could not imagine a self-governing community that was not a morally governed community.

In our land shame was banished long ago in favor of nourishing unmerited self-esteem.

[1nov12 update]  Of the plethora of available examples of sheeple yearning for autocracy, I offer the current leaning of California for passing Moonbeam’s tax bamboozle – Prop30.  It takes very little digging to discover that the main argument – ‘it’s for education’ – is patently a lie embedded ever more deeply by the daily pounding of union sponsored sound bites.  The tax money is needed to maintain some tolerable level of funding teachers’ pensions; almost none of it will be used to enhance our children’s educational standards or experience.

But Moonbeam is using the well-oiled liberal threat of reducing classroom education for the kids if Prop30 fails to pass.  That he can guarantee, and will do in a heartbeat to see that his teachers’ union supporters are placated – the kids can go to hell.

California is not broken because it doesn’t tax or regulate enough.  The state is in the toilet with its tax and regulation policies, along with cohorts like Illinois, New York, and New Jersey.  But the sheeple realize none of this.  When El Lidder says we need to tax the rich more to school our kids, we simply bleat and genuflect.  This is now the democracy about which Jefferson warned, ‘A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’

Past the Tipping Point – 27oct12 (edited)

George Rebane

Readers know that I believe our country is already past the tipping point and headed for a bad transition.  For me the tipping point represents that unfortunate state of affairs in our nation from which recovery by 'normal' or historically successful corrective measures will not be enough to save us from a disastrous transition.  If we are to be saved, we now must prepare for more dramatic efforts and draconian events to restore the republic.  But not to lose heart, dear reader, we have been through such dire straits in the past, the last one was called the War Between the States, The War for Southern Independence, or erroneously The Civil War.

Let me be clear and state that there are also other ways that nations have navigated such waters, Germany’s Weimar Republic comes to mind.  And we all know its aftermath.

Evidence of our being past the tipping point is what I want to memorialize in these offerings.  I am reminded that all posts on the internet will survive ‘forever’, so that these offerings could inform or amuse a future cyber-anthropologist digging back into the history of the early 21st century.



Two major national institutions are now beyond normal repair – K-12 public education and our justice system.  Since the feds’ Great Society (1964-68) started the destruction, we have revamped public education by spending trillions and getting nothing out of it save a workforce ever more out of touch with the realworld labor markets.  (See figure and the Friedman Foundation report and more details here.)   Instead we have built up an extremely ignorant and state-dependent teacher class, led by their corrupt unions, that in the aggregate is barely smarter than the students they claim to matriculate.  Socialism is openly taught in government schools as the correct way to organize society.  Nevertheless, education remains the Republic's ONLY hope.

The Big Asymmetry (Addended)

George Rebane

A recurring theme on RR has been debating the fundamental asymmetry giving rise to the polarization between conservatives embracing liberty and free market capitalism, and liberals embracing big government socialism.  The Great Divide is one foci of the debate about how to resolve this asymmetry.  The nearby graphic communicates the essence of this resolution, and drives liberals into apoplexy as these pages have witnessed.  But it doesn't have to end that way.  Just a thought.

[Addendum]  Bob Crabb’s series of ‘Yes We Con’ essays on the Republican lovefest (aka convention) in Tampa highlights the polarizing truth of my little statement above.  Now before going further, Bob is a friend and a man whose work (both graphic and lexicographic) I admire.  While doing his best to cast a gimlet eye on both parties, according my compass, Bob still steers his ship of slate a bit left of center.

This assessment is apparent in his recounting of the recent damp days in Tampa.  There Bob’s reportage again percolates the notions that the conservatives and their Republican flag bearers are basically evil in thought and deed, and out to do the little guy in along every aspect of life – his job, his health, his education, …, and, here’s where it get a bit gritty, also his opportunity to better himself, his family, or his situation.

The Left, on the other hand, is just a bunch of good-hearted, ecologically sensitive, bureaucratic bunglers with deep souls who do their best to deliver social justice within a tough and rapacious environment ruled by rule-breaking capitalism.  But they are learning, and if we give them just one more chance, they will get it right and there will be happy dancing in the streets.

This then is the middle ground in which we are invited to gather for the great journey ‘forward’.  But it turns out that the so-called middle ground today is inhabited almost entirely by expatriates from the Left who have been shocked by the realities that their more devoutly radical brethren have delivered.  They recall being true believers themselves before they saw their dreams turn into dysfunction, and then decided to quietly emigrate to a land of no clear ideology.  There they would remain in that everlasting political calm, looking at both sides, and periodically clucking their tongues at what now from their new vantage appeares as the polarized extremes.

It turns out that the problem with these middle roaders is they ended their journey a little too soon – they never reached the middle, because it was hard to completely cast off those delightful, simple, and pure certitudes that first clarified a complex world to young minds.  Some of those wonderful tenets, or at least their echoes, must surely still hold – let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water and all that.  And so they came to homestead a patch of ideologically barren turf where they sit today and sarcastically judge the quick and the dead, and issue their plaintive calls for the rest of us to join them.

What these self-declared middle roaders fail to see is that they have neither old nor new solutions to attract, let alone bind, the collectivists and the classical liberals.  There is no there there. They stopped where the ground is still slippery and still slopes to the Left.

Why it’s so damn hard to be a Democrat (updated 30aug12)

George Rebane

I have long maintained that I don’t understand why self-proclaimed ‘patriot’ Democrats are doing everything possible to torpedo this fair land, and make it into a shadow of a failed socialist state, or worse.  I’ll start with the worse.

Radical Islamists are already entrenched in the US among the non-radicalized silent majority of Muslims living here.  The DNC will sell anything or anybody for votes.  They consider that America’s Hispanics are in the bag by blatanty ignoring their La Raza, MALDEF, and Spanish language calls by Hispanic leaders for Reconquista, along with the open borders and illegal alien amnesty programs.  So now it’s time to pander to America’s Muslims.


The DNC is going to have a big Jumah (a Muslim group prayer meeting) from which Christian ministers have been specifically excluded.  TheBlaze.com has the story.  (H/T to reader)  [also see 29aug12 update]

And then, in addition to the scheduled 1jan13 Taxmageddon, the Democrats are hell bent to go forward with the ‘sequestration’ of funds that will completely redefine America’s military capability, and its ability to contain ever more aggressive nationalistic actions by Russia, Iran, and China, in addition to becoming a non-partner in Israel’s defense.  The response of already castrated Europe will be a wild card.  Look at this schema of Democrat 'balanced' spending cuts – 43% of which come out of the 11% defense budget share of total spending.


Finally, the Dems continue screaming about the ‘rich’ not paying their ‘fair share’.  Ask any progressive about what maximum fraction of the GDP should be paid to the goliath government – they won’t be able to tell you, because by their lights ‘you neither built it nor earned it; it all belongs to the people’ and the government is there to make sure they get it.



There’s a lot more, but don’t get me started.

[29aug12 update]  With considerable enthusiasm - "It looks like RR has run out of cards and has to blatantly make things up to please the crowd." - some liberal readers have pointed out in the comments that the Jumah reported on above is not an event explicitly endorsed by the national Democratic leadership, but only by 'Charlotte in 2012' the official hosting organization of the Democratic National Convention (DNC).  Googling this event reveals that this connection, no matter how indirect, has created some considerable debate on the matter.  Hard to find is any clarification from the Democratic party setting the matter straight.  TheBlaze.com stands with its story linked above.

I stand with my commentary on the Democratic Party, and want to emphasize my belief that radical Islam knows it is through the ideology-shy and intellectually bereft Democratic channels of power and public policy machinery which provide it the easiest path to subvert America to the Islamic ideal.

[30aug12 update]  I have to include the Fox News story of a Pakistani 11-year-old facing execution - "An international coalition of churches representing more than half a billion Christians will meet in Geneva next month to take up the plight of an 11-year-old Christian girl who faces execution under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws."  Now do we take these mobs demanding the little girl's death as the norm for 'moderate Muslims', since their sentiments can, are, and have been replicated in thousands of Muslim communities in the middle east (and around the world?); or are they just an isolated clutch of ragheads (q.v.) that the unfortunate Christian family had counted as their neighbors?  (H/T to Mr Tozer for bringing this to our attention in the comment stream below.)

The Liberal Mind – Examples of separate worlds continue (corrected)

George Rebane

The 'Liberal Mind' segment of RR is dedicated to the analysis and illustration of how fundamentally different are the highways and byways of reason in the liberal (progressive) mind that give rise to their heartfelt and fervent efforts to create what to the rest of us often seems like a perverted and insane world.  In these pages we have another confirmation of this which is so clear and compelling that it needs its own posting.

I began ‘Ruminations – 29jun12’ with a segment on another instance in which the Left seeks to summarily shut down and eliminate media voices with which it cannot compete in ideas and new reporting.  Specifically, I reported on the latest of longstanding efforts by the Soros funded Media Matters to shut down Fox News, a media channel that has eaten alive the competing left-leaning lamestream outlets in news and commentary offerings.  I argue that such tactics are totally asymmetrical from the polarized political poles.

The gauntlet, to revealingly argue the other side, has most prominently been picked up by Mr Steven Frisch, a long-time reader and welcome (when being civil) antagonist of RR.  Mr Frisch is CEO of the Sierra Business Council, and is also a leading regional progressive intellectual and apologist for collectivist causes who has repeatedly denied any such biases and resents leftwing appellations as "name calling".  Its name notwithstanding, SBC is a regional NGO that promotes liberal policies and is funded by public and foundation grant monies.

The following comment stream from the cited Ruminations post is repeated here in my continued effort to illuminate the liberal mindset.  An unfortunate artifact of the progressive debate on these issues is the progressive penchant for reducing the arguments to the address and critique of specific individuals.  Their ability to generalize and to embrace an ideological issue per se is often limited.   The exchange in the relevant comment thread follows -

States enforcing federal laws

George Rebane

Today SCOTUS handed down a decision to strike down major provisions of Arizona’s attempt to enforce fallow federal laws against illegal aliens – both illegal immigrants and illegal entrants.  The 25jun12 WSJ reports – 

The court backed a section of the Arizona state law that calls for police to check the immigration status of people they stop. … That section was one of four at issue before the high court. The others make it a crime for immigrants without work permits to seek employment, make it a crime for immigrants to fail to carry registration documents, and authorize the police to arrest any immigrant they believe has committed a deportable offense. Those other three provisions were struck down.

The question which now comes begging is ‘what other federal mandates – laws, regulations, executive orders, … - are the states no longer required or permitted to use their own resources to enforce?’

The SCOTUS ruling has an effect on Dream Act Jr that President Obama seeks to impose by executive order.  My KVMR commentary on this has been addended.