Wednesday, June 18, 2014

“That sound you hear…is your government laughing at you”

Mark Steyn contrasts Rose Mary Woods’ transmutation into a figure of stand-up comedy fodder with Lois Lerner’s relative media-sponsored obscurity.

Low-information voter: “Lois Lerner…Lois Lerner…Isn’t she one of Superman’s girlfriends?”

BTW, I’m reading the first volume in Dumas Malone’s magisterial biography of Thomas Jefferson, and this morning I came across a memorable passage quoted from Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, written in the final years of the American Revolution:
It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in convulsion.
The question at this point with respect to our rights is obvious: revival or expiration? The use by this administration, and its allies in the Democratic Party, of the IRS as a weapon against conservatives is just about the most lawless thing, among a constantly growing number of lawless things, the White House has done. Will a sense of the ominous import of this crime trigger an alarm in the minds of the American people, or will the story simply disappear in a kaleidoscopic flurry of sequential news cycles?

The touchstones of a free people are liberty and the rule of law. Without these, politics is dross, idle spectacle and, in the worst of cases, the matériel of tyranny.

2 comments:

rinardman said...

Will a sense of the ominous import of this crime trigger an alarm in the minds of the American people....

Another one today. The Patent office dropping the Redskins trademark.

And the (lefty) crowd goes wild....for a day or two. Precedence, anyone?

Anonymous said...

Deborah.... When the visions of and for this country are separated by a vast chasm, and the people are so incapable of critical thinking as to embrace whatever koolaid fairy tale scheme is presented with a generous sprinkling of the promise of "free stuff" or justice, then the water in the frog pot is much hotter than previously perceived.

rman, the Redskins situation is the latest in outrageous actions. There is no offense meant by it now. In the Indian community there are those who wear logos of the Redskins and Atlanta Braves. As with any issue, there will be people who differ as in American Indian or Native American. There are those that bristle at the former, yet there is a paper titled "Indian Country News". The term "redskin" comes from the application of reddish minerals or clays such as vermilion. The bounties were abolished long, long ago. We still use vermilion. So embrace the name.