Two are One

From Mangan's blog in response to the RNC Chairman's statement that Republicans are against "self-deportation" of illegals:

The only thing the Republicans seem to be good for anymore is debating abortion and slightly lower taxes. I saw a remark the other day to the effect that the Soviet Union would still be around if only they had had an opposition party that was effectively identical to the Communists, except for their position on abortion. That is close to what we have today with our two major parties. So I guess that means that the country has a future.

In other words, the Republicans are what Moldbug calls the Outer Party to the Democrat's Inner Party--or, in old Communist terms, the Republicans are simply "useful idiots."

Pay for Failure

A judge has decided that a test is discriminatory against blacks because they score lower on it than whites: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/nyregion/22vulcan.html?hpw And those who failed the test now get compensation payouts or unearned jobs with the fire department, including "retroactive seniority." How long will it be until black groups in this country manage to get all forms of testing outlawed as racist? I cannot think of a widely administered test on which blacks come close to matching whites. Therefore, ipso facto, all must be discriminatory. The title of this post fairly summarizes socialist political philosophy. It seems like all the liberal constituencies have policy agendas that weaken this country. They are the party of national self-destruction. Also, these are all collectivist groups, who disparage the dignity of the individual. They tolerate parasitism and encourage dependency.  To be fair, conservatives tend to be too uncritically fond of militarism and corporatism, neither of which conduce to individualism either. And they are overswayed by religionists and give disproportionate consideration to monetary priorities over others (eg, culture, environment, aesthetics, health, education, national strength, etc). In large part, the dementias afflicting both parties are set on by the corrupt procedure of gerrymandering political districts: the result of such is to segregate leftist voters in one voting district from rightists in another. Both sides then evolve "purer" forms of their underlying ideologies and place these ideologically pure types into office. First, both ideologies have serious problems, as above noted. Second, this process encourages a dogmatic, unthinking, inflexible, uncompromising, backward-thinking attitude among all politicians--which means stagnation, lack of useful innovations in the public sphere.

A Republican in Name

I think in the end those who should be most pleased with the Bush administration and its consequences are the Democrats. Bush (and the congressional peons who enabled him) has inflicted more damage to the Republican party than anyone since Nixon--though Nixon was more competent in certain respects, he was probably still worse than Bush in a total accounting. It must be recalled that Nixon got a lot of people unnecessarily killed in Vietnam, that he was an extremely aggressive regulator, a most enthusiastic socialist, an architect of race-based selection in America, an inept manager of the economy, a totally cynical politician, and, of course, Mr. Watergate. And his timing was wonderful too, continuing the disastrous momentum built up by LBJ. Bush was simply never energetic enough to do as much long term damage as these catastrophists. All that now remains for Republicans is to wait, and hope that the Democrats blow their chance at once again building up the kind of political dominance that FDR created for them after Hoover's failed regime. In any case, it looks like the Republicans are in for a long period of reflection on the mistakes of the last 8 years.