Fundamental Corruptions

First, one of Bill Whittle’s most striking videos:

For those Gentle Readers who prefer text – I do, most of the time – here’s Whittle’s haymaker:

This smiling, normal-looking woman is Ann Ravel. She heads the FEC — the Federal Elections Commission. She’s a Democrat in a Democratic administration pursuing the Democratic party’s goal of intimidating, jailing and otherwise harassing their political opponents, who are mean because they don’t like being told what to do, or to think — the way nice people do. So she has been ordered to weaponize the government against unregulated speech — we don’t call it “free speech” any more because that term is archaic and also probably racist.

It’s not like she doesn’t want to! As a typical progressive Democrat, Ann Ravel has two overriding psychological needs:

First, regulate everything. How on earth with people like Ann Ravel and, for that matter, the President of the United States, ever be able to feel secure when the American people are just running around starting businesses willy-nilly, or irresponsibly making internet videos that don’t conform to the Official Truth, or reading news stories — “news stories!” — on places like Fox or the Drudge Report.

No, the idea of something being unregulated — like, say, the internet — is anathema to these control freaks, so the chance to regulate something — anything — is good to go right out of the gate.

Even better: Ann Ravel not only wants to regulate the internet, she wants to target those regulations against conservatives on the internet.

And here’s Mac Slavo’s comment on the matter:

As Whittle highlighted in the video above, government officials are working to discredit anything that is not part of the mainstream narrative.

They’ll use the Federal Elections Committee to shut down any free political thought. They’ll use the IRS and the threat of prison to intimidate organizations and individuals that don’t tow the party line.

But they aren’t just targeting the organizers or those who produce content and videos that run counter to their ideals. They’re coming after the people as a whole. Your social network pages, forum comments, emails, and phone calls are being monitored .

Moreover, there is clear evidence according to a Department of Homeland Security insider that the very communities where people get together to share ideas are being targeted en masse by paid disinformation agents whose sole purpose is to destroy the credibility of the message through targeted web site takedowns and direct attacks against their users.

Then, you will see the internet being regulated in a manner that will serve only the agenda of this administration. Either right before or during these events, so-called citizen journalists will be particularly vulnerable. Watch for a serious crackdown of bloggers, online news publications and websites, but not in the way that will be immediately obvious.

The ‘plumbers team’ have coordinated their efforts with Internet Service Providers to identify the people like you and others who publish their information on web sites.

At first they will cite violations of terms of service. Then, they will select a few ‘troublemakers’ and identify them for criminal prosecution. Others will experience hacking and other electronic attacks. And during all of that, there will be the Obama team flooding the internet with misinformation and disinformation. In fact, that is already taking place.

The attacks are coming from all sides – this is asymmetric warfare against the American people.

Time was, the above sentiments would have been dismissed as “conspiracy talk.” I would have been among those dismissing it. No longer. Ask Dinesh D’Souza and Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. Ask the CEO of Gibson Guitars. Ask Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. And ponder this as well: Might any of the “SWATtings” aimed at conservative commentators and luminaries have been ordered by commanders fully aware of their malevolent genesis?

Think it over.

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“The people, sir, are a great beast.” – Fisher Ames

“Never tease an old dog. He might have one bite left.” – Robert A. Heinlein

The recent elections have evoked the usual calls from the Left for “compromise” and “collegiality.” I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that we’d never have heard those pleas had the Left carried the field. I’m equally sure that you don’t need to be reminded that to the Left, “compromise” means “let’s do it my way.”

Fisher Ames’s “great beast” has awakened in anger. The electorate isn’t thrilled with the Republicans – God knows the GOP hasn’t exactly over-performed in recent years – but it knows who’s been raping it most recently, and by a hefty majority it’s said that it wants them out of power. So what now?

From the Right, the signals are mixed. There are indications that the Republican Establishment is alive to the danger to its perquisites should it continue to ignore its Constitutional duties and denigrate the conservative base. Yet there are also indications that several GOP kingmakers intend to proceed with “business as usual:” i.e., a slightly more leisurely march into the totalitarian abyss, so the power-brokers themselves won’t be displaced from their perches. The predominant trend won’t become definite for some months.

From the Left, there’s a sense of panic and the “last chance:” “If we don’t act now, we’ll lose our last chance to make America into another Euro-communist state!” The lineaments of their reaction can be seen in Obama’s drive for amnesty for illegal aliens and for the rigid regulation of carbon dioxide emissions in the name of “global warming,” both of which are being cheered on by his left-liberal base. (He really did mean it when he spoke of “fundamentally transforming” the U.S., you know.) Given that it will be only two years more before the Democrats must again face the electorate and a substantial probability that the next president will be Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, or Scott Walker, their panic has a rational basis.

But there are problems for the kakistocrats on both sides of the aisle. Their names? Why, Gentle Readers, how could you need to ask? They’re your names...and mine.

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“Too many people know too much.” – Old slogan

We know too much. Far too much to please the political elite. Worse, we’ve begun to act on our knowledge.

In an analogically comparable situation, Garet Garrett wrote as follows:

Now regard the credit reservoir as a lake fed by thousands of little community springs, and at the same time assume the point of view of a government hostile to the capitalistic system of free private enterprise. You see at once that the lake is your frustration. Why? Because so long as the people have the lake and control their own capital and can do with it as they please the government's power of enterprise will be limited, and limited either for want of capital or by the fact that private enterprise can compete with it.

So you will want to get rid of the lake. But will you attack the lake itself? No; because even if you should pump it dry, even if you should break down the retaining hills and spill it empty, still it would appear again, either there or in another place, provided the springs continued to flow. But if you can divert the water of the springs—if you can divert it from the lake controlled by the people to one controlled by the government, then the people's lake will dry up and the power of enterprise will pass to government.

Garrett’s subject in the above passage was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Social Security scam. Yet the pattern is equally applicable to the dissemination of information. When information, particularly news about important current events, flows freely along multiple conduits easily accessed by any private citizen, the “lake of public knowledge” is kept full and fresh. The political class cannot easily get away with much. The “springs” in this analogy are the information carrying conduits of today, with the Internet most prominent among them. The “lake” is the ultimate enemy, but the Left’s crosshairs are on plugging or diverting the “springs.”

To have a fighting chance of totalitarianizing America from their current disfavored position, the Obamunists must seize control -- absolute control, for nothing less will serve them – over the Internet.

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In light of the above, anything you hear from a political source about “net neutrality,” “illegal in-kind campaign contributions,” or other denigrations of the free and open Internet should be regarded as hostile propaganda, aimed at destroying the Right’s bastions in the last medium open to the free exchange of ideas. Any suggestion that Internet communications, whether textual or by audio or video, should be regulated must be resisted fiercely. This must be our last stand, for once we have been separated from one another, our effective capacity to resist further encroachments on our remaining liberty will dwindle to nothing.

It will be more difficult to defend the few non-Internet bastions for conservative views. There are too many legal and quasi-legal avenues by which the political class can attack and harass them. It approaches certainty that the Obamunists will mount a fresh assault on cable narrowcasters such as FOX News. That battle might need to be fought in the courts.

The more insidious attacks mounted by discreditors and “trolls” are also part of this campaign, and must be combated relentlessly. If you’re a blog proprietor, don’t be afraid to “censor” such villainy. Resist the suggestion that you “owe” the totalitarians a place to spew their deceits. Be forthright in asserting your privileges.

The Left has lost the battle over private ownership of firearms. Its grip on American education is slipping as we speak. The fight over communications freedom is its “Battle of the Bulge,” its win-or-die engagement. Let’s make it “die.”