November 6, 2012
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An Election Day Tradition
I post this poem by Kipling.
"Here is nothing new nor aught unproven," say the Trumpets
"Many feet have worn it and the road is old indeed,
"It is the King--the King we schooled aforetime!"
(Trumpets in the marshes--in the eyot at Runnymede!)"Here is neither haste, nor hate, nor anger," peal the Trumpets,
"Pardon for his penitence or pity for his fall,"It is the King!"--inexorable Trumpets--
(Trumpets round the scaffold at the dawning by Whitehall!)"He hath veiled the Crown and hid the Sceptre," warn the Trumpets,
"He hath changed the fashion of the lies that cloak his will.
"Hard die the Kings--ah, hard--dooms hard!" declare the Trumpets,
(Trumpets at the gang-plank where the brawling troop-decks fill!)Ancient and Unteachable, abide--abide the Trumpets!
Once again the Trumpets, for the shuddering ground-swell brings
Clamour over ocean of the harsh, pursuing Trumpets--
Trumpets of the Vanguard that have sworn no truce with Kings!All we have of freedom, all we use or know--
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw--
Leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the Law--Lance and torch and tumult, steel and grey-goose wing,
Wrenched it, inch and ell and all, slowly from the King.Till our fathers 'stablished, after bloody years,
How our King is one with us, first among his peers.So they bought us freedom--not at little cost--
Wherefore must we watch the King, lest our gain be lost.Over all things certain, this is sure indeed,
Suffer not the old King: for we know the breed.Give no ear to bondsmen bidding us endure,
Whining "He is weak and far;" crying "Time shall cure."(Time himself is witness, till the battle joins,
Deeper strikes the rottenness in the people's loins.)Give no heed to bondsmen masking war with peace,
Suffer not the old King here or overseas.They that beg us barter--wait his yielding mood--
Pledge the years we hold in trust--pawn our brother's blood--Howso' great their clamour, whatso'er their claim,
Suffer not the old King under any name!He shall mark our goings, question whence we came,
Set his guards about us, as in Freedom's name.Here is naught unproven--here is naught to learn,
It is written what shall fall if the King return.He shall take a tribute; toll of all our ware;
He shall change our gold for arms--arms we may not bear.He shall break his Judges if they cross his word;
He shall rule above the Law calling on the Lord.He shall peep and mutter; and the night shall bring
Watchers 'neath our windows, lest we mock the King--Hate and all divisions; hosts of hurrying spies;
Money poured in secret; carrion breeding flies.Strangers of his counsel, hirelings of his pay,
These shall deal our Justice: sell--deny--delay.We shall drink dishonour, we shall eat abuse,
For the Land we look to--for the Tongue we use.We shall take our station, dirt beneath his feet,
while his hired captains jeer us in the street.Cruel in the shadow, crafty in the sun,
Far beyond his borders shall his teachings run.Sloven, sullen, savage, secret, uncontrolled,
Laying on a new land evil of the old--Long-forgotten bondage, dwarfing heart and brain--
All our fathers died to loose he shall bind again.Here is naught at venture, random or untrue--
Swings the wheel full-circle, brims the cup anew.Here is naught unproven, here is nothing hid:
Step for step and word for word--so the old Kings did!Step by step and word by word: who is ruled may read.
Suffer not the old Kings: for we know the breed--All the right they promise--all the wrong they bring.
Stewards of the Judgment, suffer not this King!Both candidates seek to increase the power of government; it cannot even be said they differ in HOW they wish to increase it, except in small ways. Both will continue to support torture, imprisonment without trial, and to hide their actions from public scrutiny under the guise of "executive privilege". Both will continue to make war without Congressional approval, against nations which have attacked neither us nor any allies we have sworn to defend. Both will support the "war on drugs", warrentless search and surveillance, and assassination by executive order of American citizens on American soil. (All of which began long before Obama was elected, to the hearty applause of conservatives who were fine with granting a WHITE guy that kind of power.)
On the issues that matter most to me -- personal liberty -- there's not much choice to be had, though if forced, I'd have to say Romney is worse than Obama, in the same way that being broken on the wheel is worse than being torn apart by wild horses. Neither is good. But Romney has promised to enforce laws against "obscenity", to support the Defense of Marriage Act, and to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will repeal abortion rights, and has allied himself with some of the most radical factions in the Republican party, while Obama has at least made an effort to pretend to distance himself from the radical left. (One of my standard tests for moral character is not "Does this person refrain from wrong-doing?", because that's a fool's game, but, "Does this person at least have enough grasp on basic human decency to understand that what he's doing is commonly seen as wrong?" It's not "Do they randomly strangle strangers?" or not, it's "Do they at least try to hide the bodies?" Obama understands he ought to at least appear ashamed of being associated with people like Rev. Wright, regardless of what he actually feels; Romney refuses to disavow people like Donald Trump.)
Neither candidate will do much, if anything, to change things in terms of economic liberty. Government spending will not be cut meaningfully, because every piece of pork has a powerful faction behind it. Taxes will not be cut meaningfully, because no one's going to lend us more money and we can't cut spending. Any budgetary changes will be over meaningless trivia like PBS, NASA, or some random piece of military hardware outdated a decade ago and kept in service due to kickbacks to the contractor. Any changes to regulations will be likewise trivial. Both candidates, and both parties, are controlled by existing power players, and the main function of regulations is to keep upstarts from joining the club. (If current FCC regulations on EMF were in place in the 1970s, there would never have been a personal computer. You can bet they won't let something like THAT happen again! Look for 3D printers to be crushed under new laws and restrictions, no matter who is in office.) And, need I mention that "Obamacare" is just "Romneycare" on a Federal level, and that in a not-too-distant alternate reality, Romney would have been proudly campaigning, as a Republican, on a platform of "doing for the United States health system just what I did for Massachusetts"?
Actually, things are so wretched lately, this election merits TWO Kipling poems.
Macdonough's Song
Whether the State can loose and bind
In Heaven as well as on Earth:
If it be wiser to kill mankind
Before or after the birth--
These are matters of high concern
Where State-kept schoolmen are;
But Holy State (we have lived to learn)
Endeth in Holy War.
Whether The People be led by The Lord,
Or lured by the loudest throat:
If it be quicker to die by the sword
Or cheaper to die by vote--
These are things we have dealt with once,
(And they will not rise from their grave)
For Holy People, however it runs,
Endeth in wholly Slave.
Whatsoever, for any cause,
Seeketh to take or give
Power above or beyond the Laws,
Suffer it not to live!
Holy State or Holy King--
Or Holy People's Will--
Have no truck with the senseless thing.
Order the guns and kill!
Saying --after--me:--
Once there was The People--Terror gave it birth;
Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth
Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, 0 ye slain!
Once there was The People--it shall never be again!
Comments (2)
I'm reluctant to post this, because it makes it look like the only reason I follow your blog is to snipe disagreements at you, and that's not the case. But...
When it comes to Romney's abortion and especially porn positions, I disagree with you on a meta level. To me, a candidate's views on a given issue have to be tempered with the probability that he can actually succeed in implementing those views. As I said in a previous comment, I think abortion is here to stay regardless. Only details and tangential issues are up for significant change. Porn is even more so. If they didn't succeed with the CDA back when the Internet was new and scary, they're not going to succeed now, when people watch porn on their cell phones and seemingly half the people on the Net are buying or selling naked pictures of each other. It's not that Romney wouldn't get very far down that road. The car's not even going to start when he turns the key. That being the case, his statements on it matter only slightly more to me than if he'd vowed to dig a Pacific/Atlantic canal with a teaspoon.
The other thing I disagree with is also a meta-level thing. Now, obviously some rights are more important than others to any given person. But some rights are rights-reinforcing --"the soapbox, the ballot box, the jury box, and the ammo box" -- and others exist in isolation. Consider Romney's anti-porn stance versus Obama's desire to restrict political speech (cf. the Citizens United ruling). You can defend your right to watch porn by using political speech. You cannot defend your right to political speech by watching porn.
@emamid - Ah, but the thing is, I was not entirely random in my examples. The President cannot set budgets, raise or lower taxes, or enact regulations -- that's up to Congress, and all the President has is a bully pulpit when all is said and done. (Note how Obama, with his party in control of both houses, STILL couldn't enact most of his early agenda. Gridlock is a feature, not a bug.)
BUT.... what the President CAN do is appoint Supreme Court justices, and control how the Executive chooses to *enforce* the laws Congress has passed. It is entirely within Romney's power, if he wins, to direct the FBI to stop looking for terrorists and start enforcing obscenity laws, which require only that they manage to log on to NaughtyBustyAsians.com from, say, Utah, thus causing "transportation of obscene materials across state lines". Likewise, the states (at least the more socially conservative)have passed a number of abortion laws that are de facto bans, which have been generally knocked down by the SC. Change even one vote, and we could see a major change. I do not consider "You must get a sonogram, and have a waiting period, and also build and paint a nursery, before you can have an abortion" to be a trivial issue of detail. Likewise, designing "health regulations" so that it is impossible to legally perform an abortion is not the same as arguing over parental consent for minors. (I tend to be against it, but I see the logic that we generally, by definition, restrict the rights of minors to make decisions when we do not do so for adults.)
Now, I agree on Citizens United, and other challenges to free speech. And Kagan is on my "Do not trust!" list when it comes to free speech issues, as her tenure at Harvard was marked by the kind of speech suppression we've come to expect from the left. So, at best, Obama is neutral.
I'm quite happy to roll my eyes at the predictions that Mitt Romney, if he wins, will start grinding the poor up into sausages and repealing the 19th amendment. This is not to say he won't have the chance to enact policy changes I will find personally disagreeable (as will Obama), and I find the balance tips *very* *slightly* to Obama having less ability to do actual harm to my interests. (Yes, I'm selfish. This should come as no surprise.) If I believed Obama could enact every law and policy he'd ever want to, the balance would be quite tipped the other way. But with a hostile and divided Congress, and, at best, a very slight victory, his worst instincts will be constrained, and thus far, his ability to manipulate the Executive towards selective law enforcement is either "No change with Romney" (torture, assassination, secret trials will all go on under Romney, though at least maybe the left will find some hint of a spine and start remembering these things are bad), or things I approve of (not defending DOMA, focusing obscenity enforcement mostly on child porn). I don't want to excuse Obama's flaws in general... if "Fast and Furious" isn't as convoluted and illuminati-backed as the tinfoil hat brigade might have it, it's still pretty darn bad on the face of it, a genuine scandal that does need closer examination by the kind of activist journalists who only get concerned when Republicans are involved. I could list many other issues. We are compelled to choose between the marginally lesser of two very great evils. Like the likely margin of victory in Florida, it's a pretty slim balance.