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Chapter 6: Popular Religion in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 7: The Best Schools

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Trust Us, We Care

by Christopher Chantrill
March 16, 2005 at 11:22 am

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REMEMBER the stolen gubernatorial election of November 2004 in Washington State? Seattle blogger Stephan Sharkansky (www.soundpolitics.com) got a look last week at some poll books in Democratic King County. At the Denny Terrace polling station (a public housing project) the records show that a total of 30 machine-readable provisional ballots were illegally inserted into the AccuVote counting machine. That is 30 out of 869 ballots cast at the polling station. How could this happen in squeaky clean progressive Seattle?

But that is the whole idea behind the modern Democratic Party. It fronts the party of patronage and go-along-to-get-along with the scrubbed faces of earnest high-born experts, and nowhere better than in Seattle. Democrats believe in passing out benefits and pensions to its supporters not because they can but because it is right. And if we can help the little people, they lecture us, why bother with a few pettifogging rules about provisional ballots?

Democrats almost had us all convinced. Should Democratic journalists pay for their libels? Certainly not! Should Democratic teachers be held responsible for actual educational results? What an idea! Should Democratic city governments check up on people scamming the system? Why pick on the little guy when Enron is getting away with murder? Democrats are the good guys, and their hearts are in the right place. How dare you suggest otherwise! But counting provisional ballots without even checking? Are you sure?

Democrats are the good gays; for them the rules need not apply. But woe unto evil corporations, Republicans, and Christian fundamentalists if they break the rules! There can be no wiggle room for them. They are crooks, racists, and bigots, and deserve what is coming to them. And thus emerged the great American tradition that whenever a Democrat was caught in flagrante delicto a Republican should resign.

The idea that we should trust the Democrats because they are the good guys is what the postmodernists call a narrative, the myth that a ruling elite tells to justify its power. Don’t believe a word of such discourse, the professors of English Literature tell us. OK, we won’t. We understand now that the Democratic narrative about helping the little guy is just a naked bid for power.

And the facts seem to back up the postmodernists. Here are three stories about government and the little guy that came in over the transom the last month.

A friend was worried about his aging mother, and her ability to look after herself at home. Unfortunately she had substantial assets that made her ineligible to receive government “chore” services. But he and his siblings had gradually relieved her of her assets, and now a relative that worked in for social services had shown them how to get her the taxpayer-paid services she needed.

He also spoke wryly about a neighbor who had “retired” on government industrial insurance in his forties and was now developing a number of businesses.

Another friend has a son working as an apartment building manager. He had been working to restore electricity and plumbing in his building after a fire, and had foolishly allowed a couple of troublesome friends to live there rent free. After he had kicked them out one of them went to the City of Seattle’s Department of Design, Construction and Land Use (DCLU) and applied for relocation assistance. It was only after they had given him a few thousand dollars that DCLU found out that the applicant had been living rent-free and was therefore not eligible to receive the assistance.

It’s a great concept, and it has worked so well for so many years. Democrats set up programs like chore services, industrial insurance, and relocation assistance as noble, compassionate initiatives that help people. Of course, stripped of their hegemonic discourse, they are merely handing out free money to their supporters, that too often turn out to be small-time hustlers that live by scamming the system. But everyone benefits: the recipients, their families, the government workers that hand out the benefits, the enforcement officers that cluck around looking for violators, and the Democratic politicians who gather in the provisional ballots of their loyal servitors at election time.

But should Senator Clinton (D-NY) be co-sponsoring the Democrats’ Count Every Vote Act in Congress to further loosen the rules for voting? The bill would impose Election Day voter registration on the states so that anyone could turn up at a polling station (social security number, drivers license, proof of citizenship not required) and cast a provisional ballot to be “counted in the same manner as a vote cast by an eligible voter who properly registered during the regular registration period.”

Does this really work? A Clinton as poster-girl for “Trust Us, We Care” voter registration?

One day middle-class America is going to wake up and say: Enough already. Maybe it already did.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at americanmanifestobook.blogspot.com.

Buy his Road to the Middle Class.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.”  —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches... they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

presented by Christopher Chantrill

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