Comments on: VDH: Obama’s Roman republic

By: Rufus

Rufus — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:16:19 +0000

Mr. Sideous,

I think it’s a bit more fundamental, and on that I agree with VDH. Like the typical Roman citizen near the end of the Empire, most of us Americans have gotten way too far away from the work we humans were built to do. It’s not quite the right term, but we’ve got way too much leisure and our big, homo-sapien brains have to make up stuff to keep us occupied in the absence of actual work.

Look at how much of our time as a society is spent on trivial issues. How many women do you know who are “stressed?” Feel completely overwhelmed? Yet they do 1/10th the amount of labor women in prior generations did. How many men do you know who complain about their jobs and their “workload?” Yet they do less than 1/10th the amount of labor men in prior generations did.

Our lives have become too easy. We don’t grow or harvest what we eat. We don’t kill and dress what we eat. We don’t build our shelters. We get in a car, turn a key and go wherever we choose. We don’t even change our own oil anymore. What percentage of kids under 25 now where the oil pan or oil filter is on a car? We don’t even learn to make music. We sample the music of composers who came before us, or we play colored keys in unison with patterns on a video screen and pretend we are “guitar heroes.”

We don’t appreciate the freedom and liberty we have, nor do we understand the cold reality that there are people in the world actively working to take it from us, because we have no concept of what it took to get us where we are. We don’t even understand where our breakfast comes from, how can you expect us to understand where our democracy comes from?

By: Mr. Sideous

Mr. Sideous — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:45:56 +0000

I think we are also seeing the end result of 45 years of hippie/leftist ideology. A couple of generations nurtured, whether they knew it or not, on the noxious gas of a Chomsky or Zinn. All this reinforced by the rise of technological thrills and gadgets.
the message is two fold: One – the reason we are a greedy faulty cowboy empire is because of capitalism. It is the root cause. If only the founder fathers had been founding comissars, then the nightmare of slavery, indian genocide, robber barrons, jim crow laws etc. would not have happened. They instead took the red pill, and all was lost. Liberals, and only they, are the ones who understand this. Two – PC is the true reality, not the profit based rape system of before. Wander off the reservation and we’ll take you to the woodshed. Look what we did to a sitting president, as well as palin, conservative media, etc etc. Believe it, and get back to work.

The problem they don’t see in their blindness is that 80%of the country is not buying this. No matter how big their megaphone, they cannot completely control the Narrative. And the more they attempt it the more they are revealed as sham.
The cure for liberals – put them out in the market place. Let them talk of what they really care about,what they really believe. the audience finds out rather quickly libs are strangers to reality. I can only hope they are stopped before they inflict, or start, damage to the structure itself.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:40:44 +0000

He didn’t do that while holding a chicken under each arm, did he?

‘Cause that’s my bit.

By: Rufus

Rufus — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:28:06 +0000

You nailed it, Jake!

By: Rufus

Rufus — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:27:32 +0000

Very well stated, Stosh.

By: stosh

stosh — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:14:02 +0000

Sounds a lot like Rich’s birthday party a couple of month’s back (great party, by the way).

By: Scott M.

Scott M. — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:57:28 +0000

Elagabulus was just a fun loving little teenage pervert…they say he would ride around in a chariot pulled by a bevy of naked girls.

By: RES

RES — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:45:29 +0000

The problem with Academia is that its structure is essentially that of a socialist state: actual achievement means nothing, vocal and vigorous adherence to an ideological ideal means all. Promotion is determined by vote of those most heavily invested in the dominant ideology. Remember, an “expert” is merely somebody whose mastery of the conventional wisdom is ratified by those who personify the CW. View this as an Ouroboros … or as a professor with head firmly planted in the other end of the g-i tract.

By: Kevin S

Kevin S — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:01:59 +0000

dang, just re-read my post…meant Pompey not Pompeii…Elagabalus, nice choice. Now, who else has a candidate emperor?

By: Raoul Ortega

Raoul Ortega — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:57:53 +0000

During the 1990s, when people would compare the Clintons to some Roman Emperor like Nero or Caligula, or how we were soon to collapse like the Empire, I liked to point out that we were more like that period after the Third Punic War and the time when Rome began a half-millenium of unchallenged dominance of the Mediterranean. That was the time when “bread-and-circuses” began, along with he first of the populists (damn I can’t remember their names, the Gracchi?) who advanced a crude form of socialism. They set the stage for the warring generals. I figured it would be decades before we encountered our Sulla or Caesar and the end of “republicanism”.

Instead, with Obama we seem to have skipped several centuries and gone straight to electing President Elagabalus.