While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquillity, who desire to abide by the laws and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country, seeing their property destroyed, their families insulted, and their lives endangered, their persons injured, and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better, become tired of and disgusted with a government that offers them no protection, and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocratic spirit which all must admit is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed—I mean the attachment of the people. Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of [our] population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision stores, throw printing-presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure and with impunity, depend upon it, this government cannot last. By such things the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it, and thus it will be left without friends, or with too few, and those few too weak to make their friendship effectual. At such a time, and under such circumstances, men of sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity, strike the blow, and overturn that fair fabric which for the last half century has been the fondest hope of the lovers of freedom throughout the world.
I know the American people are much attached to their government; I know they would suffer much for its sake; I know they would endure evils long and patiently before they would ever think of exchanging it for another,—yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.

Abraham Lincoln
The Lyceum Address
[Via email from Chet who pointed to Cliff Mass’s post, KNKX, James Madison, and Mobs. Mass quoted Lincoln. I then searched for the complete text of the Lincoln quote.

Lincoln goes on to offer this as the means to prevent the alienation of the people and their government:

The question recurs, “How shall we fortify against it?” The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and laws let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor—let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own and his children’s liberty.

We must not tolerate the enemies of liberty to ignore the highest law of the land.—Joe]

The Establishment blew off Donald John Trump only to watch with jaw agape as he was sworn into office on January 20, 2017.

Let’s not blow off Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. You may not see her appeal, but millions of Democrats do. She is the soul of the soulless Democrat Party.

AOC’s danger is that unlike Obama, Manchin, and the rest of the 50 and older crowd in the Democrat Party, she does not seek power. She seeks a revolution.

…

She is playing with racist fire. Her message is clear. Black and brown people are superior to white people.

This is not the Democrat Party’s worst nightmare. Democrats believe this rhetoric and the ideas it stands for will propel them to power.

No, this is America’s worst nightmare.

Wake the heck up.

Don Surber
December 23, 2020
Don’t blow off AOC
[He makes some interesting points. Particularly interesting to me is that the long time democrats who are despicable in their politics like Schumer (69), Feinstein (80), Biden (77), Durbin (75) are moderate by comparison with AOC. And most importantly they are old and won’t long have a “moderating” effect on the party. AOC and the squad want a revolution and they have serious potential to pull it off even with crazy ideas like defunding the police. Calls to defunding the police shouldn’t elicit derision. It should be a call to immediate action. This is the path Lenin took.

Look at other socialist/communist revolutions. Most (all?) of those started with someone who was disregarded and “blown off” as crazy, irrelevant, etc. in their first years.—Joe]

for the first time in my life i voted for a republican for president, congress, and senate leftist identitarianism and critical theory was the catalyst for me the democrats have refused to put an end to it in fact they’ve embraced it

TimcastFeed @TimcastFeed
Tooted on October 25, 2020
[We live in interesting times.—Joe]

Race (and sex, etc.) is yet another set of excuses for transferring power to the ruling class. The oligarchy is no more concerned about race than it is about education, or environmentalism, or sex, or anything else. It is about yet more discretionary power in the hands of its members, for whom not all blacks (or women, or whatevers) are to be advantaged—only the ones who serve ruling class purposes. In education, employment, and personnel management, co-opting compatible, non-threatening colleagues is the objective. As Joseph Biden put it succinctly: if you don’t vote for him, “you ain’t black.” A ruling class of ever-decreasing quality is a result.

Angelo Codevilla
September 23, 2020
Revolution 2020
[Via Kevin.—Joe]

The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia was, in every meaningful sense, a Marxist revolution. A parallel state based on participatory workers’ organizations was led by a self-consciously revolutionary party to topple the existing state and erect a new one in its place. Indeed, Lenin acted on clear definitions from Marx about what constituted “the state”: “armed bodies of men,” that is to say, police, courts, prisons and the military. The Bolsheviks did not simply take the existing “armed bodies of men” and use them for their own purposes. Nor did the Communists of Eastern Europe. They destroyed existing institutions and replaced them with their own.

Sam Jacobs
October 2020
Cultural Marxism’s Origins: How the Disciples of an Obscure Italian Linguist Subverted America.
[“They destroyed existing institutions and replaced them with their own.”

Nazi Germany also developed their parallel “armed bodies of men”, the SS. The SS had several components:

• Allgemeine SS (General SS)
• Waffen-SS (Armed SS)
• SS-Totenkopfverbände (Death’s Head Units)
• Gestapo (Secret State Police)
• Sicherheitsdienst (intelligence)

The defunding of the police doesn’t look so incredibly stupid now, does it?

Respond appropriately.—Joe]