America Votes to End Modern Civilization

November 12, 2012
By Daren Jonescu

Did you happen to catch the end of civilization on TV last week?

The 2012 U.S. election will likely be judged by men thousands of years hence as a world historical event, on a par with the Peloponnesian War, the assassination of Julius Caesar, the Copernican Revolution or the Battle of Waterloo. If this seems hyperbolic to you, that is probably because we have never seen an epoch-making moment quite like this one. For this is perhaps the first time history has been "fundamentally transformed," if you will, by an electoral majority.

Consider, first of all that although democracy, in any recognizable sense, began in Greece 2500 years ago, it also died in Greece 2300 years ago. Subsequently, it existed only rarely and in very limited forms throughout most of the centuries prior to the modern era. General elections of the modern sort, then, in which governing bodies and policies are broadly chosen or altered by public vote, actually have a very short cumulative history.

Furthermore, consider that we usually judge the ultimate significance of elections in retrospect, rather than in anticipation. We speculate, for example, on how different America, and consequently the world, might have been had Abraham Lincoln not been elected in 1860, or Ronald Reagan in 1980. Events that unfolded after the election cause us to wax philosophical about things that might have been, just as we can wonder how the modern world might have evolved had Shakespeare never taken up writing. But rarely if ever has the election itself, rather than its aftermath, been the historically defining moment.

In addition, most democratic elections are limited in their primary significance to the nation that is voting. The election of Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party, for example, had international ramifications of great import, but these were nevertheless merely byproducts of Thatcher's significance as the melody of Britain's swan song, a once-great nation's last dalliance with reason and righteousness.

In general, even the most important elections in the histories of nations have lacked the defining characteristics of those temporal events that we normally regard as being of world historical relevance. Such events may be seen, at least with benefit of hindsight, as having essentially altered the trajectory of civilization (for better or worse), which is to say that the times that followed cannot properly be understood at all independently of those monumental, redirecting moments. Once again, actions taken in the aftermath of democratic elections have occasionally had this kind of importance; elections themselves have not.

The election of November 6, 2012 was different. It was, as I have argued, a referendum on the principles of modern civilization itself, and a referendum which, for very concrete reasons, was a world event.

At the core of modern civilization is, or was, the project of practical freedom -- the effort to build societies consistent with the principle of ethical individualism. From the Platonic-Aristotelian conception of the individual rational soul, to the Gnostic divine spark, to the Christian emphasis on individual salvation, to Thomas Aquinas' injunction that human law must respect man's spiritual need for earthly freedom to choose virtue, to Locke's natural rights -- from all of this, and more, evolved a central theme of modern civilization, the effort to establish a society fully respectful of the dignity of the individual human being.

This was modernity, and America was the highest practical manifestation of its spirit. Flaws, blind spots, missteps, and squandered opportunities notwithstanding, America came closest to realizing the specifically modern hope of a society rooted in the rights of man. What it may have sacrificed in the appreciation of legitimate distinctions of merit among human types, it gained in the humane principle that, in practical political terms, no man ought to be regarded as essentially subject to the will of any other.

Contrary to the reactionary snobbery of contemporary European fops, this trade-off was not evidence of America's inferiority, but rather the deliberate fulfillment of the project of the greatest modern minds, and their greatest Renaissance forerunners (all Europeans, by the way), namely the project of building a civil society in a firm foundation of practical reason. In this society, by intention, there would be room for the theoretical and spiritual life, but not at the expense of the freedom of all men to pursue the means to their own practical well-being.

All of which brings us back with a crash to November 6. For decades now, the remainder of the Western world has forsaken that great modern project. The basic idea of individual liberty, meaning the combined notions of natural rights, self-determination, individualism, and the pursuit of earthly happiness, is no longer an animating principle in the governing processes of any other nation on Earth. Whatever practical freedom remains in other countries is tolerated merely as a matter of pragmatic economic policy (it creates wealth), or as a ploy to palliate civil unrest. (This latter goal is made explicit in the UN's "World Happiness Report," which blithely opines that the masses can be quelled by maintaining institutions which promulgate the "feeling of freedom" -- regardless of whether they actually produce the real thing.)

Only in America, then, has individual freedom remained an explicit founding principle, and a moral ground of society. What this means, in historical terms, is that the entire thrust of modernity, from its pre-modern roots to its defining achievements, has evaporated from every political corner of the planet (though still residing, of course, in the hearts of some men) with one glorious, desperate exception. America's increasing cultural isolation in recent decades is directly attributable to this: the rest of Western civilization has turned away from modernity's noble heritage, and has long been striding "forward" into a new Dark Age -- not into a more ancient conception of man, but into a prehistoric one. To state the intended outcome, we may assign a suitable name: brutalism.

The forces of this late modern brutalism have been at work in America for a long time, and have, of course, scored many victories small and large. The beast has slowly eaten away most of the meat of America's educational establishment, artistic vision, material treasure and moral virtue, leaving little but an insubstantial fare of fat and gristle.

This gradual devouring of America, against the brave resistance of an intransigent conservative minority, brought her to a climactic moment. At last, all the cards were on the table. In 2008, the nation had, for the first time, elected as its president a man whose calls to join the anti-modern drive "forward" were explicit and unequivocal. His ideas were Marxist in origin; his mentors -- childhood, adult, and professional -- were communists, Islamists, anti-Semites, racists, sexual deviants, terrorists, and plain kooks. All attempts to explain 2008 away as a mere mistake, a pitiful self-inflicted wound deriving from a twisted desire to overcome residual collective guilt, rested on the next presidential election, the election of 2012.

Obama repeatedly and consistently enjoined Americans to reject their most cherished notions, and their moral traditions: the self-made man, he argued, was a lie and a moral outrage ("You didn't build that"); the wealthy have no logical claim to the product of their achievement ("shared prosperity"), and ought to be seen as the enemy of the people, refusing to "pay the same tax rate as their secretaries"; freedom of religion, he demanded, must be sacrificed to the new goal of subsidized sexual promiscuity; and the most primal premise of America's and modernity's political project, the right to self-preservation, must be renounced in the name of egalitarian healthcare.

All of this was placed before the American voting public in the fall of 2012. None of it was concealed by the leftist media -- this was, in fact, the official, media-assisted platform of the Democrats and their dear leader during the election campaign. Class warfare, anti-individualism ("you didn't get there on your own"), redistributive justice, and the devaluation of human life -- the policy essence of European post-Marxist socialism -- was on trial in the land of the free, the land of milk and honey, the land of immigrants from impoverished and oppressed nations who came seeking refuge and opportunity.

For the first time in America's history, a major party had been bold enough to make its challenge to the basic premise of America herself -- freedom -- the central issue in the election. It should not have been close.
And it was not close: Obama's invitation to complete the dismantling of America won the day by a landslide. 

It was not just the sixty million who voted for him. It was also the even larger number of eligible voters who did not vote at all. Whether by active vote or passive consent, more than two thirds of eligible U.S. adults chose to join the march to nothingness.

But in light of the fact that America was the last nation standing in modernity's long struggle to achieve practical political freedom for mankind, those Americans were speaking for all of us, everywhere. They were choosing, not only for their own future, but for all those whose nations no longer give them a voice on the question of liberty. The question in this grand, final referendum was, in short, "Will mankind continue to keep one candle burning for modernity?"

Thus, we can say, without a scintilla of hyperbole, that on November 6, 2012, America elected to end modern civilization. Not all Americans chose it, to be sure. But such is the nature of democratic elections, once they have become unmoored from limiting principles. Once America put aside (small-r) republican considerations of constitutionality in government, and set out on the long march to mob rule -- call it the welfare state, socialism, or what have you -- this moment was almost preordained. It was bound to come to this.

The stakes could not have been higher or more straightforward: freedom or coercion, individualism or collectivism, modern civilization or uncivilized brutalism. America, meaning her voting and abstaining majority, chose the latter option in each case.

In simple terms, on November 6, America joined the rest of the lost world in declaring once and for all that private property is an illusion. The product of a man's labor does not rightfully belong to him, which means his labor itself -- his time and effort -- does not belong to him, which means his life does not belong to him. 

Modernity's project is nullified. Milton, Locke, Swift, Diderot, Montesquieu, Jefferson and all the rest -- obliterated at the ballot box.

What comes next remains to be seen, and to be fought for by the minority of us who are unwilling to accede to this mindless rush to barbarism. But for now, as of November 6, self-ownership, also known as individual sovereignty, is dead on this planet. Men are not free.

No election can rescind that truth, until the conditions that brought the world to this sad outcome have begun to be undone. We have a lot of work to do, and the clock is ticking, because victorious oppression has a way of accelerating exponentially with each little triumph.

Brutalism's political empire is now, for the first time in many centuries, universal -- and the chief brutalists know it. They will not tarry in forging ahead with long-delayed measures to suffocate the last twitches of hope out of those who see what has happened, and refuse to surrender to it.

With perfect, nearly poetic irony, modern civilization was ended by popular vote. If you cannot accept this -- if you are like the Republican Party establishment, the Washington pundits, and all others in whom the balm of incrementalism has produced the intellectual and moral paralysis of disbelief -- then you are of no use to us now. Get out of our way.

American Thinker

The Great Rediscovery of American Values

By Jeffrey Lord on 8.2.12

Cruz in Texas, Walker in Wisconsin, Romney on Palestine and Poland.

 August, 2012.

The Great Rediscovery is in the headlines:

"Senate Candidate in Texas is Known as an Intellectual Force " -- The New York Times

"Romney: Media trying to 'divert' from real issues with focus on foreign gaffes."

"Romney praises Poland as model of economic liberty"

To borrow from Bob Dylan: "The times, they are 'a changin'"

There is no accident in all the headlines cited above, you know.

America is in the midst of the next chapter in what Ronald Reagan called "the great rediscovery" of American values.

And the Other Side knows it. Which is why the aroma of desperation that emanates ever more distinctly from Team Obama and its media allies.

Let's take the eagle eye view here, shall we? From about, oh, September 14th of 1901 until today, August 2nd of 2012.

On September 14, 1901, William McKinley's popular Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became president with McKinley's sudden death at the hands of, ironically, a leftist man of anarchy named Leon Czolgosz.

With that accident of history, the first of America's "progressive" presidents moved into the White House. A century-plus of "progressivism" was launched, its political tide ebbing on occasion (the Harding-Coolidge years) but increasingly flowing with all the force of the Atlantic in the grip of an endless series of hurricanes.

From TR to Woodrow Wilson to Herbert Hoover (yes, myths aside, Hoover was a "progressive Republican") and on to FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society, the color of America's political waters ran from blue to bluer to bluest. Whether elected or appointed Republicans (the moderately blue Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford), there was, seemingly, no way to stop the whirlwind.

The first effort to seriously put a halt to all of this was, of course, Barry Goldwater's 1964 nomination. Goldwater's loss became the ultimate victory -- the first serious step forward for the conservative resistance.
 It was here to stay. By 1980, the Reagan Revolution had begun.

The mistake made by some was to think the Reagan Revolution was somehow over. It wasn't. As Ronald Reagan was the first to say, Reagan himself was not a "Great Communicator" because of his personal skills. He won the affectionate nickname because, as he said, he "communicated great things."

Those "great things" are at their core utterly American. Said Reagan in his Farewell Address:

They called it the "Reagan Revolution." Well, I'll accept that, but for me it always seemed more like the great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values and our common sense.

The great rediscovery of our values -- American values -- and common sense. American common sense.
It is precisely this "great rediscovery" that finally is beginning to give conservatives the edge over progressives. Why?

Because the progressive movement is at base a foreign -- which is to say "non-American" -- idea that had zero to do with America's founding principles based on English liberty.

Our friends at National Review devoted the considerable part of an issue back in December of 2009 to "The Four Horsemen of Progressivism: The Men Who Created Our World."

In four articles by NR's Jonah Goldberg, the University of Dallas's associate professor of politics Tiffany Jones Miller, Bradley C.S. Watson (of, respectively, St. Vincent College, the Claremont Institute and the Ashbrook Center), and the Manhattan Institute's Fred Siegel -- the political creation of progressivism was put under the microscope.

Using four men the group collectively considered as what we might call progressivism's "founding fathers" -- exploring how America got here from there. "There" being late 19th and early 20th century America.

Their careful analysis can provide for a considerable understanding of today's political headlines from the Ted Cruz victory in Texas to the Romney remarks on Palestine and Poland. Not to mention the polls showing Romney on the verge of upending Obama's progressive presidency.

First, the "Four Horsemen of Progressivism."

• · Richard Ely -- A professor at both the John Hopkins University and the University of Wisconsin from the 1890s forward.
• · John Dewey -- A graduate of John Hopkins who taught at both the University of Chicago and Columbia University.
• · Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. -- Holmes was, famously, a Theodore Roosevelt appointee as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
• · Herbert Croly -- A progressive activist who founded the New Republic magazine.

Ely, wrote Goldberg, laid the foundation on which is built today's "house of contemporary liberalism." Ely "wrote dozens of books, on monopoly, taxation, land use and urban reform, and several standard texts on general economics."

But politically speaking in today's climate, a fact of progressive history that would doubtless pack political punch if better understood, Ely was a "leader of the new generation of German-trained or-inspired Ph.D.s" -- who began his teaching career at John Hopkins. That would be the John Hopkins that was, in Goldberg's words, "conceived as a German-style institution in 1881."

Which is to say, Ely was what we might call today a Europhile. A political trait vastly popular still today among American progressives (does the name Barack Obama ring a bell?) who are correctly accused of wanting to turn the U.S. into a European-style socialist state. Without doubt Ely's most famous student when teaching at Johns Hopkins was a young Woodrow Wilson, while he counted among his ardent fans others such as Teddy Roosevelt and Wisconsin's Governor Robert La Follette Sr.

John Dewey spent a half-century in American academia after leaving what Jones calls "the seedbed of progressive academia" that was Johns Hopkins. Dewey's entire career was devoted to progressive principles that were obtained from a school of thought that was, says Jones, "an academic phenomenon far removed from American politics." Jones cites the progressive Charles Merriam as approvingly citing the "intoxicating effect of the undiluted Hegelian philosophy upon the American mind" or, back to Jones, progressivism "articulated a critique of America that was as deep as it was wide. It began with a conscious rejection of the American founding and the promotion of a new understanding of freedom, history, and the state in their stead."

Meanwhile, over on the Supreme Court, Mr. Justice Holmes was deeply taken with all of this. Says Watson: "Holmes set forth the essence of progressivism as a legal theory…". And did it using his power as a Justice.

Which meant a member of the Court was using his constitutional perch to lead "the charge to eradicate judicial reasoning that was based on principles of natural law or natural rights" that were central to the founding of America.

Last but not least in all this was Herbert Croly. Writer Siegel calls Croly and his fellow progressives "America's Bismarcks." "To achieve a better future," said Croly, Americans had to be "emancipate[d] from their past." Which is to say the American founding principles as put forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution should be jettisoned in favor of a Bismarckian-style nation "placed under skilled professional leadership" with other "special lines of work… subordinated to its particular place in a comprehensive scheme of national economy."

The latter, of course, is precisely the thinking behind both Obamacare and the Obama stimulus.

The shorthand here, politically speaking?

Progressivism now stands in the historical dock as a foreign faith -- a decidedly non-American (or, if you like, un-American) belief system. After 111 years of progressivism, with America now awash in the inevitable results of massive debt and obsessive government interference in every crack and crevice of American life -- with Obamacare looming -- the country is in open rebellion. A rebellion that is specifically about the "great rediscovery" of American values -- precisely as Ronald Reagan suggested.

The political impact of this is easy to see -- and the Obamaites see it all too clearly. Hence the ferocity and or impulsive stupidity of their attacks on Romney for Bain or his dog or his wife's horse and so on.

Ted Cruz won the Republican nomination for Senator in Texas because Texas Republicans have had it with a GOP Establishment that was acceding to what they understand instinctively are the decidedly foreign values of the progressive movement. Values that have no relationship to the founding principles of America.

The Obama media is trying to make Mitt Romney into a gaffe-prone idiot because they understand in spades that his message on the culture of free markets in Israel is in fact a threat to the socialist culture that has combined with a messianic violence in not only Palestine but throughout the Arab world. Mr. Romney has wisely and bluntly spoken the truth about Palestine's real culture and it has nothing to do with being Palestinian. (He also correctly called Jerusalem the capital of Israel -- a decidedly unpopular truth with progressives.)

And American progressives certainly have no tolerance for former Polish President Lech Walesa -- a onetime union leader who was famously a Reagan ally -- giving Polish kudos to Romney. Kudos? Walesa, who invited Romney to Poland, essentially endorsed the Republican. Running as far away from the American progressive values that for decades acquiesced in his country's submission to the Soviet Union.
Said Lech to Mitt:

I wish you to be successful because the success is needed to the United States, of course, but to Europe as well and to the rest of the world, too. So, Gov. Romney, get your success, be successful.

Catch that?

Again: "I wish you to be successful because the success is needed to the United States, of course, but to Europe as well and to the rest of the world…."
 Which is to say, Lech Walesa believes American values…..the values Ronald Reagan hailed when he spoke of his time in office as a "great rediscovery" of American values….are necessary for the success of Europe and the rest of the world.

What's happening in America -- whether in 2012 in Texas with Ted Cruz, Wisconsin with Scott Walker, Israel and Poland with Mitt Romney, or 2010 in the GOP landslide -- is an open rebellion against 111 years of progressive politics. A furious revolt against the deliberate injection of decidedly non-American values into the body politic.

Americans are insisting on the "great rediscovery" of American values that were central to the success of the Reagan presidency. Not to mention the values that were at the core of America's founding itself.

They are voting for everybody from Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio (Latinos both, it should be added) to Mitt Romney and on and on because they understand instinctively that the great foreign experiment with their lives that was and is the progressive movement has failed.

From the staggering debt to the massive size of the federal behemoth that sits astride the Potomac to the vast governmental intrusions into their personal lives -- they have had enough.

Halting and overturning all of this is a long term proposition.

But as the results of the latest election in Texas show quite clearly -- the times they are a'changin'.

The great rediscovery of American values and common sense that Ronald Reagan spoke about continues.

Can you say Senator Ted Cruz?

American Spectator

Is This Republic Worth Saving?

June 22, 2012
By Kyle-Anne Shiver

There's been a great deal of talk lately on the likely demise of this Grand Republic of ours.  Very wise and scholarly Americans have taken to opining publicly on the dire state of things, all asking the basic question, "Can this Republic be saved"?

Some historians have compared our current plight to that of the Roman Empire in its fall-apart days.  Some Hollywood doomsayers point to the end date of the Mayan calendar:  2012.  Biblical prophecy experts see an apocalyptic climax forming.     

Sociologists study the decline in marriage, the tsunami of out-of-wedlock childbirth, the failed public education system, the rising disparity between rich and poor and come to the conclusion that without desperate measures, America cannot sustain herself.  Demographers point to drastically declined birth rates in every outpost of Western Civilization and remind us that demography is destiny; without new citizens civilization itself is unsustainable.

Economists pore over the unemployment rates, the inflation rate, the creeping stagflation, the stock market jitters and see the most dire danger signs all around.  Our inextricably linked global economies and unmoored-by-gold currency fluctuations make us all vulnerable to every financial hiccup and belch in other regions.  The IMF goes begging; leaders of failing economies sign worthless promissory notes.  Workers are told they'll have to work a couple more years to get their pensions and violence erupts.  Our American Fed gets out its printing press and prepares to "prime the pump" with yet more Monopoly money.

Meanwhile, political polarization grows more and more heated and less restrained.  Things seem to be reaching fever pitch here at home while communists and Islamofascists join forces for war games in the Middle East.  Wise watchers see an ominous similarity between pre-WWII economic conditions and rising totalitarian political systems, warning that what happened then could be about to repeat itself -- this time, with nuclear weapons. 

In short, this looks scary as hell, foreboding in the extreme, and it would surely take a ninny of historic imbecility not to at least be quite angst-ridden over the future. 

So, can this Republic be saved?

Well, of course, it can. 

The real question for every American citizen ought to be:  Is this Republic worth saving?

If the vast majority of us do not answer that question in the affirmative --with all the guts and gusto we've got -- then there isn't one chance in hell that this Republic can be saved. 

We've got the means to save ourselves.  But if we don't have the will, the means will surely come to naught.  

Means never used never succeed.   That's just an immutable fact of real life.   

Where there's a will, there's a way.

Take away the will to save America, and what have you got?

Well, I'll tell you. 

You see him -- whether you want to or not -- just about every single day on television, on the internet, standing at the teleprompter, jiving on late-night comedy hours, delivering his lines in the Rose Garden, yucking it up with brainless movie stars, leaking national security secrets, pontificating on his final-4 basketball picks, spinning tall tales about his  "roots" narrative, throwing coming-out parties, juking onstage with Paul McCartney, playing golf, golf, golf, and more golf.

You've seen him at the Vineyard.  You've seen him in the surf in Hawaii.

You've seen him in flip-flops, sipping Slurpees, playing ping-pong on the Continent.  You've seen him bowing to dictators and chatting it up with banana-republic warlords.  You've seen him giving the "President of Cool" wink, nod and shout-out to adoring groupies.  You've seen him on The View, yak-yak-ing with Whoopi and Barbara.  You've seen him on Oprah.  You've seen him singing the praises of Solyndra, even as owners prepare to shut it down and laugh all the way to the bank with your millions.

You've see him in all his "Choom Gang" glory announcing this or that czar's plan (You thought he devised the plans?  It's the czars stupid!) to ignore the rule of law and unilaterally bypass democratically-passed statutes.  You've seen him pretending to get Bin Laden all by himself.  You've seen this president pivot to jobs so many times that your head is spinning.  You've seen him role-play a chief executive claiming executive privilege to cover for his Department of Injustice. 

And this now-going-on-four-long-years spectacle of an Eddie Haskell presidency is what it looks like, my fellow Americans -- wait for it -- when a Grand Republic does not want to save itself.  This is what it looks like when a going-on-250-year-old Republic decides to elect a celebrity B.S. artist pretending to be a statesman. 

This is an adolescent block party, not a presidency.

This governance by a committee of nitwits deemed czars, with an actor playing the role of Commander in Chief/Chief Executive of the U.S.A., is nothing but a poseur-presidency for the cosmic-joke record books.  

You couldn't make a movie out of it because this truth is too strange to pass the "suspension of disbelief" test for good fiction.

And there is not a single American who was eligible to vote in 2008, who does not bear at least some of the blame for it.

Oh, I can intuit what you patriotic, conservative, McCain/Palin voters are thinking right this minute.

You're probably thinking in terms of those tacky, childish bumper stickers that read:  Don't Blame Me!  I voted for the other guy!   

And you call yourselves patriots?

Oh, please.  That excruciating sound you just heard came from a heavenly realm, where all the millions of Americans who've died to make you free let out one unrestrained, in-perfect-concert, cosmic scream of utter disgust and frustration.

You want to call yourself an American patriot?  Then, speak up now or prepare to perish. 

President Barack Obama has the keys to your kingdom only because too many "patriots" sat on your hands and applied duct tape to your mouths in 2008. 

You went to family gatherings and listened politely to your liberal-ninny wives, daughters, nieces and nephews babble on incessantly about their "Obama crush."  You paid for junior and junior-ette to go to those liberal indoctrination centers, euphemistically called "colleges," to imbibe the Obama Koolaid and you stood around with your mouths agape while they prepared to cast votes that would all-but-kill your own country.   

And you said nothing! 

Instead, you went home, got on your PC, went to some conservative chat-room and let off your steam with your flying fingers.  For nothing.

You showed up at dinners and cocktail parties and social gatherings of all kinds, with old friends, and allowed them to prattle on about Barack-this and Barack-that -- his alluring dark skin, his preacher-man voice, his GQ look, his exotic, B.S. "narrative," his cool, his posh -- every single thing about him but his sorry-as-good-for-nothing character and empty resume.  And what did you say to those 52% about to give this poseur the keys to your kingdom?  Nothing!

Instead, you put their 'ittle feelings above your freedom and went home to blast out an email of frustration to your favorite conservative columnist.  Wow.  That's surely the modern equivalent of Paul Revere's courageous ride and crossing the Delaware with dysentery and frost-bitten toes.

Where there's a will, there is indeed a way.

One summer.  Lots of get-togethers to go to.  Lots of Americans to interact with.  Lots of opportunities to put a few grown-up facts to lots of Barack-wasted minds.  Lots of Tea Parties to get involved with.  Lots of pocket-Constitutions to hand out.  Lots and lots and lots of moments not to waste blaming the other guy.

Gotta run now.  There's a neighbor lady two doors down who still thinks Barack is cool and that cool makes a country go, and I'm about to clue her in with the most calmly insulting tirade I can conjure -- over coffee.

Happy hunting, my fellow Americans. 

Oh, but if you don't believe this Republic is worth saving, then just do exactly what you did four years ago and go have a beer while you indulge a long, bitter whine to your choir on the internet.  I'm quite sure our patriot forebears will be mightily impressed with your good intentions.

Kyle-Anne Shiver is a frequently ranting American commoner.  And darned proud of it, too.

American Thinker