Civilization Ends, Not With A Bang....

[PoliticalChic]

...but with a whimper.


1. T.S. Eliot concludes 'The Hollowmen" this way:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Exactly how I see it, too.



2. Just reading a tribute to the recently passed journalist, Jimmy Breslin, I found this particularly grating passage:
"A total urbanite, Jimmy had never learned how to drive—he was raised by a single mother who earned a meager salary as a social worker, and drank to excess. The Breslins couldn’t afford a car."
Jimmy Breslin, RIP



WHAT????

"The Breslins couldn’t afford a car."
But...." he was raised by a single mother who .... drank to excess."

I guess that 'drink' was free, huh????




3. This is the sort of absurdity that guides so many and, so many of our social pretenses.

"couldn't afford a car" ...or would rather have a buzz on much of the time????
It was a choice! A decision by the decision maker in the family.
Just as abortions are the choice between sexual restraint, or the ending of a separate and unique life so as to enjoy that moment of passion.

Can't we admit the truth.....or is it too painful and self-deprecatory?



4. Seems that our 'Liberal' society demands that we never judge the decisions others make...even if said choices hurt the individual and/or society.

In his best-seller, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010," Charles Murray states:
"One change in societal attitude has been the “ecumenical niceness”…don’t fight, share toys, take turns….and never, ever be judgmental. As a result, the upper cultural class, which has stabilized by returning to more traditional ways, survives, yet these individuals will not criticize the behaviors which are destroying the lower cultural class."



Two ways to view this divide....by morality or via economics.
Next...

 

[Fenton Lum]

Well there can always only be two ways to look at anything in america.

 

[Damaged Eagle]

*****SMILE*****

 

[PoliticalChic]

5. Choices aren't solutions.


F.A. Hayek was an economist and philosopher, who pointed out that there are no solutions, merely tradeoffs.

For example, right out of the headlines, if you come up with a way to provide healthcare insurance to all the uninsured…but at the cost of dismantling the healthcare system to the remaining millions?
Rationing, shortages, abuse, delay and injustice.
And worse medical care than the original.


Liberalism is just such a tradeoff.
One gives up both personal responsibility and rectitude, for the promise of being taken care of, cradle to grave.

Tocqueville explained it long ago.


6. Alexis de Tocqueville, writing “Democracy in America” in the 1830’s, described “an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate.”
As he predicted, this power is “absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle,” and it “works willingly for their happiness, but it wishes to be the only agent and the sole arbiter of that happiness. It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their testaments, divides their inheritances.”

It is entirely proper to ask, as he asked, whether it can “relieve them entirely of the trouble of thinking and of the effort associated with living.”

 

[PoliticalChic]

Just reading a tribute to the recently passed journalist, Jimmy Breslin, I found this particularly grating passage:
"A total urbanite, Jimmy had never learned how to drive—he was raised by a single mother who earned a meager salary as a social worker, and drank to excess. The Breslins couldn’t afford a car."
Jimmy Breslin, RIP

WHAT????

"The Breslins couldn’t afford a car."
But...." he was raised by a single mother who .... drank to excess."
I guess that 'drink' was free, huh????




Just to know, I asked Google how much a heavy drinker spends....

"If you're a heavy drinker, you probably aren't getting your alcohol from a bar; that would be crippling to your monthly budget. With most people spending $10 on a bottle of wine, it would come to over $200 per week including taxes, or over $800 per month. That's two or three car payments right there. Annually, that's almost $10,000."
Here's How Rich You'd Be If You Stopped Drinking


The cost of owning your car? $9,000 a year - USA Today
www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/16/aaa-car-ownership-costs/2070397/



Gads....I'm sick and tired of Liberal hand-wringing and excuses.
Their 'solutions' don't solve problems....they facilitate 'em.

 

[PoliticalChic]

7. The Liberal Welfare System is yet one more of the choices that masquerade as a solution.

It was sold as a solution to poverty..."the War on Poverty"....but half a century later we are $trillions short and no real change in poverty.


Fact is, we have engendered social decay and decline.


‘Welfare’ as a wholly owned subsidiary of the government, and its main result is the incentivizing of a disrespect for oneself, and for the entity that provides the welfare. As more folks in a poor neighborhood languish with little or no work, entire local culture begins to change: daily work is no longer the expected social norm. Extended periods of hanging around the neighborhood, neither working nor going to school becoming more and more socially acceptable.


Since productive activity not making any economic sense because of the work disincentives of the welfare plantation, other kinds of activities proliferate: drug and alcohol abuse, crime, recreational sex, illegitimacy, and family breakup are the new social norms, as does the culture of violence. Peter Ferrara, “America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb,” chapter five.

 

[PoliticalChic]

8. The acceptance of Liberal 'solutions' weds America to an unending downward death spiral: it means discarding values, such as personal responsibility and individualism, for some chimera that ends in Utopia.



“Values” is one of those ‘oh, you know what I mean’ terms….when its usage has changed over time. Gertrude Himmelfarb, in her book “The De-Moralization of Society,” spends a good deal of space defining it in its various interpretations.

We no longer think of virtue as the classical virtues of wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage, or the Christian ones of faith, hope and charity, or even the Victorian ones of work, thrift, cleanliness, responsibility, self-discipline, perseverance, honesty and self-reliance.

Generally, what comes to mind is the sexual connotations of chastity and marital fidelity.




From a historical view, in the sense that history is that which is experienced by ordinary folks, “Victorian values” are actually what we call middle-class values, and include thrift, cleanliness, responsibility, self-discipline, perseverance, honesty and self-reliance…but also those values that are crucial to the “work ethic,” promptness, regularity, conformity and rationality.


Note, this constellation is of value to capitalism, and changes agricultural workers into an industrial proletariat.
See Gertrude Himmelfarb,“The De-Moralization of Society"

 

[edthecynic]

Just to know, I asked Google how much a heavy drinker spends....

"If you're a heavy drinker, you probably aren't getting your alcohol from a bar; that would be crippling to your monthly budget. With most people spending $10 on a bottle of wine, it would come to over $200 per week including taxes, or over $800 per month. That's two or three car payments right there. Annually, that's almost $10,000."
Here's How Rich You'd Be If You Stopped Drinking


The cost of owning your car? $9,000 a year - USA Today
www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/16/aaa-car-ownership-costs/2070397/

You can't even park a car in NYC for $9,000 a year!!!

For Parking Space, the Price Is Right at $225,000

In Houston, $225,000 will buy a three-bedroom house with a game room, den, in-ground pool and hot tub.

In Manhattan, it will buy a parking space. No windows, no view. No walls.

 

[Timmy]

Society is just fine . What a bunch of drama queens.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Just to know, I asked Google how much a heavy drinker spends....

"If you're a heavy drinker, you probably aren't getting your alcohol from a bar; that would be crippling to your monthly budget. With most people spending $10 on a bottle of wine, it would come to over $200 per week including taxes, or over $800 per month. That's two or three car payments right there. Annually, that's almost $10,000."
Here's How Rich You'd Be If You Stopped Drinking


The cost of owning your car? $9,000 a year - USA Today
www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/16/aaa-car-ownership-costs/2070397/

You can't even park a car in NYC for $9,000 a year!!!

For Parking Space, the Price Is Right at $225,000

In Houston, $225,000 will buy a three-bedroom house with a game room, den, in-ground pool and hot tub.

In Manhattan, it will buy a parking space. No windows, no view. No walls.

As you have voluntarily subscribed to this thread, one is lead to believe that something in the indictment of Liberalism has irked you.

As it should.



Yet....your best efforts to respond is no more than a vapid note about some imagined parking space.....

....in no way pertinent to the issue.
This:

....particularly grating passage:
"A total urbanite, Jimmy had never learned how to drive—he was raised by a single mother who earned a meager salary as a social worker, and drank to excess. The Breslins couldn’t afford a car."
Jimmy Breslin, RIP

WHAT????

"The Breslins couldn’t afford a car."
But...." he was raised by a single mother who .... drank to excess."
I guess that 'drink' was free, huh????




Your post is spectacular evidence for this axiom:
If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain.

And....clearly, you are not a Conservative at 35.


Dismissed.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Society is just fine . What a bunch of drama queens.

And so we find that you have brought to the table.....what you always bring to the table.

 

[PoliticalChic]

9. Let's remind all that, aside from those with a mental condition, the numbers who are starving and/or homeless in this society falls to an insignificant or non-existent number.
That's right: non-existent.
America is the most generous nation on earth.
Just stop the hand-wringing.

Soooo.....when we hear "A total urbanite, Jimmy had never learned how to drive—he was raised by a single mother who earned a meager salary as a social worker, and drank to excess. The Breslins couldn’t afford a car," recognize that 'afford' is hiding a trade-off: car vs. drink.


It's called freedom! Drink if you'd rather, or don't work hard, don't be ambitious.....but don't accrue sympathy or funds from the public fisc when you make those decisions.





10. There is a very simple set of rules that would remove one from the event of poverty, and it almost always involves personal responsibility.

"The Brookings Institution has spent a great deal of effort studying this issue. Brookings whittled down a lot of analysis into three simple rules. You can avoid poverty by:

1. Graduating from high school.

2. Waiting to get married until after 21 and do not have children till after being married.

3. Having a full-time job.


If you do all those three things, your chance of falling into poverty is just 2 percent. Meanwhile, you’ll have a 74 percent chance of being in the middle class.

Applies to everyone
These rules apply to all races and ethnic groups. Breaking these rules is becoming more commonplace, unfortunately, for all racial groups." Three rules for staying out of poverty


Wise up, Liberals.

 

[whitehall]

Funny how the Irish managed to endure more than hundred years of poverty and alcoholism and bigotry but they never complained about discrimination and never saw themselves as victims The bigoted legend of the "drunken", "fighting Irish" has been perpetuated by Hollywood for so long that it turned into a cliche. While Indian Tribes have been encouraged by liberals to be outraged that the sports world uses their nomenclature, the Notre Dame football logo continues to use what some would consider an intolerant racial stereotype but the Irish turned it into a success story.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Funny how the Irish managed to endure more than hundred years of poverty and alcoholism and bigotry but they never complained about discrimination and never saw themselves as victims The bigoted legend of the "drunken", "fighting Irish" has been perpetuated by Hollywood for so long that it turned into a cliche. While Indian Tribes have been encouraged by liberals to be outraged that the sports world uses their nomenclature, the Notre Dame football logo continues to use what some would consider an intolerant racial stereotype but the Irish turned it into a success story.

That is an exceptionally good comparison, bringing up the Irish as a discriminated minority.

1. The Irish were the first ethnic minority in American cities, and their history shows the classic pattern of new comers to the urban economy, and society. Starting at the very bottom of the urban occupational ladder, with the men as laborers and the woman as maids. Housing was far worse than urban slums today.
Thomas Sowell, "Ethnic America," chapter one.

2. "The French sociologist, Gustave de Beaumont, visited Ireland in 1835 and wrote: "I have seen the Indian in his forests, and the Negro in his chains, and thought, as I contemplated their pitiable condition, that I saw the very extreme of human wretchedness; but I did not then know the condition of unfortunate Ireland...In all countries, more or less, paupers may be discovered; but an entire nation of paupers is what was never seen until it was shown in Ireland." Slaves in the United States had a greater life expectancy than peasants in Ireland." The West Awake: Barry Clifford: The Democide Of Ireland In The 1800's

a. “The first blacks to move into Harlem were middle-class Negroes who left the black enclave in mid-Manhattan around the turn of the century to get away from the Irish living nearby.”
Thomas Sowell, “Ethnic America,” p.39.

3. Their average life expectancy was forty years, thus the 19th century observation, “you seldom see a gray-haired Irishman.”




4. Ann Coulter writes: " It was the misfortune of black Americans that they were just on the verge of passing through the immigrant experience when damaging ideas about welfare and the lenient attitude about crime took hold. It could have happened to the Italians, Germans, Jews or Irish, but luckily for them, there were no Liberals around to “help” when they arrived. "