Instilling Fear
In any society that hopes to maintain its liberty and avoid tyranny it is necessary for its people to instill fear in its political leadership. In best case scenarios this needs only be the fear of the consequences of misbehavior. In other all too common situations it is necessary to fill the politicians with the fear of reprisals by the people.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
โ Attributed to Thomas Jefferson
America is at a point where it is dealing with a middle case scenario where politicians need to be instilled with a combination of preventative and punitive fears.
Fortunately, Americans have exercised some of the means at their disposal to instill the needed fear in the political elite. They banded together as the TEA Parties and elected representatives to Congress who were of strong purpose and character.
In the degenerate system that America’s federal government has devolved into, honest and patriotic men an women who have chosen to shoulder the burden of providing correction to that system and who are willing to disregard the personal cost to themselves for doing so are an acute source of fear for all the professional politicians who are heavily invested, often literally, in maintaining the current broken status quo.
Nothing scares professional politicians more than actual statesmen, and nothing scares the Liberals and Progressives more than American statesmen, even though they whine and rant when their own sort don’t behave similarly.
Tags: America | Debt | Deficit | Democrats | Fear | Federalism | Freedom | Instilling Fear | Leftists | Liberals | Liberty | Media Bias | Patriots | Politics | Pork | Pork Barrel | Progressives | Republicans | Spending | Statism | Statists | Subsidiarity | Tea Parties
August 16th, 2011 at 9:35 pm
[…] this fantastic statement. Jonolan deserves a bit of traffic, whatever may come from my readers, so give it a look. Speaks […]
August 16th, 2011 at 9:35 pm
Borrowed, with full credit.
August 17th, 2011 at 7:08 am
Enjoy! Everything of mine here is free for the taking under Creative Commons.
August 18th, 2011 at 9:12 pm
Obama is trying to instill fear in S&P. They are now investigating S&P for the mortgage securities foul ups. Not that S&P shouldn’t be accountable, but what about the other agencies who did not piss Obama off?
August 19th, 2011 at 6:49 am
No really, Alan. Obama and his coterie know that S & P have little or nothing to fear from such an investigation.
This is just another case of Obama shucking & jiving and trying to blame everyone and anyone else for failure. He needs his base to stay angry at those “Evil Old White Men” if he’s to have any real chance of getting them out to the polls in 2012 in enough numbers to do him any good.
August 19th, 2011 at 11:11 pm
Jonolan,
I brought this up on Holland’s blog and she criticized me because she says the S&P investigation preceded the down grade. I find that hard to believe but I do not know yet. I know that now the SEC is also investigating S&P on possible insider trading in advance of the down grade.
August 20th, 2011 at 6:21 am
This is a case where facts and truth aren’t the same thing, Alan.
Moe’s right, in that S & P and the other credit ratings agencies were already being “investigated” by the Obama Regime in order to pin blame on more of the financial community. That’s a fact.
She’s spinning though, since their downgrade of the US debt – behavior not consistent with the Obama Regime’s complaints about inflated ratings – will be used to change the outcome of that “investigation” and allow the regime to take punitive confiscatory action against them. That’s the truth.
August 20th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
Jonolan,
This is changing the subject a little but still ties in with the overall topic of Obama punishing political enemies. The administration is punishing Exxon over it’s lease on the Julia field in the Gulf of Mexico. If Barry had half a brain and really wanted to get the economy moving he would be doing everything in his vast power to up American oil Production.
This field is the biggest potential find in the Gulf of Mexico. But you know our beloved Barry will always put politics ahead of his country. After the BP disaster he has to show his green zombies that he can be tough on big oil. Exxon failed to do something and now the leases will revert back to the government . All of this will delay production and tax revenue to the pig trough in Washington. But Barry has to get his base fired up soon.
August 20th, 2011 at 7:06 pm
While Obama does everything that he does to placate those whom he hopes will still vote for him, the issue of Exxon’s lease of the Julia field and its estimated 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil is a complex issue.
Exxon never put any effort into exploiting the lease and it expired. They were denied an extension at least partially because their lack of use of the lease gave the Obama Regime the opportunity to kick them.
August 21st, 2011 at 12:28 pm
Jonolan,
I’m glad to see your knowledge of my latest detour post exceeds my own. Energy production is one of my points of interest. Every new oil or gas field and every new left wing attempt to shut down those new fields grabs my attention. I troll the left wing blogs and am simply amazed at their hatred for any energy source that actually works.
To further detour, I am pleasantly finding that all is not well in Obamaville. Right now they are at one another’s throats. Jane Hamsher, one of their big guns seems to be having revenue problems and other leftwingers are openly attacking her. Whether this means anything at all, I have no idea, but after almost 3 years of Obamanomics I take comfort where I find it.