The Political Pendulum

Politics, like many other systems, moves in cycles or swings between opposing views.  The political spectrum is typically divided into Left and Right.  The "Left" includes "Liberals" and Progressives". The "Right" is made up of "Conservatives" and "Libertarians."  These labels, of course, are generalizations.  Some who have very "Conservative" fiscal views can hold "Liberal" social views or vice versa.  As with any range, there are also extremes.  The "Far Left" includes "Socialist" and "Totalitarians."  The "Far Right" includes "Survivalists" and "Anarchists."  The majority of the population are somewhere in the middle...between the extremes.

A pendulum can be used to illustrate the movements of the political cycles.  The pendulum, hanging still in the center of its range, in the state of equilibrium, represents the views of the majority of the population.  Depending on what party wields control of the levers of government, the political pendulum moves toward one end or the other of the political scale.  As policies and practices of the government move farther and farther from equilibrium, the majority of citizens become more and more dissatisfied.  This dissatisfaction leads to political action by the majority to swing government back toward the middle.  As with a pendulum, however, the range of the swing can many times be directly correlated to the initial deflection from equilibrium.  In other words, a 40% move to the Left will eventually swing back to the Right by a proportionate amount...but seldom is it in equilibrium.

What the Left has attempted over the years is to move their positions farther and farther Left.  Then, they say that The Right must meet them in the Middle.  They also tend to point at anything on the Right and characterize it as extreme.  In this way, they attempt to move the Middle more to the Left.  This has been called "the fallacy of the misplaced middle" by some.  The Middle of the political spectrum is not the center point between extremes, but the place where most of the population lives...philosophically.  It could also be depicted as a bell curve.

As I pointed out in an earlier blog (No Left Turn), The results of the Gallup poll, released July 6th, 2009, found that Americans “by a 2-to-1 margin, say their political views in recent years have become more conservative rather than more liberal.”  Additionally, Gallup polling shows that “Conservatives" are the single-largest ideological group in America.  By a margin of about 2:1, more Americans call themselves Conservative than Liberal.  Moderates are also a much larger group than Liberals.  So while Liberals try very hard to define the Middle as more left, clearly, more of the population is Conservative and Moderate.  This is the true middle.

 

With President Obama's and the Democrats' approval numbers low and going lower, it seems to me that the pendulum has begun to swing back in the opposite direction from where they have tried to lead the country.  This swing may be very large indeed...since this current government has pushed farther to the Left than at almost any time in our history.  Hang on the swing will be quick and it remains to be seen how far back it swings...but this was brought on by the very Leftists themselves.

Some of Us Knew It All Along

In the past few months many revelations have become public that show that so-called man-made Global Warming is a fraud.  The man at the center of the Climategate affair, Professor Phil Jones of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) has admitted that there has been no statistically significant global warming in over 15 years...that warming periods have happened in the past - but NOT because of human activities.  The famed "hockey stick" graph, and its supporting data and assumptions have been exposed as an utter sham.  Himalayan glaciers are not melting...Antarctic ice caps are not receding and the rainforests are not dying because of global warming.  It seem like every week that goes by brings news of debunked Global Warming myths.

The hysteria and industry that has grown up around the Global Warming myth was not an accident.  E-mails uncovered at the CRU showed a pattern of obfuscation and deceit aimed at covering up the true results of climate studies.  It has been revealed that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was intentionally eliminating climate measuring stations in cooler locations around the world to drive up the average measured temperature.  And all the while Global Warming apologists, lead by Al Gore, spewed the lies to the public and our school children.  In effect, the whole scare seems to have been one big, orchestrated hoax aimed at gaining unprecedented control over industries, economies and people around the world.   And yes, some of us knew it all along!

Now that the curtain has been drawn back and the truth has been revealed, some still try to cling desperately to their charade.  They try to say that the colder than normal whether being experienced around the world is actually proof of Global warming...excuse me?  That if you can't understand the subtitles of "Climate Change," you're just not too intelligent.  "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

The tide has truly changed.   Where those of us who spoke out against the Global Warming story were cast as stupid, planet-hating, corporate stooges...we have been vindicated.  The truth is that those who believed in man-made Global Warming were the stooges of the statist government elites and their willing accomplices in the media and academia.  We were right.  The data was wrong...falsified. Climate Change is really just...weather.  So, at the risk of being rude...

We told you so! 

I won't wait for any apologies, though.  That would be too much to ask or expect.

Lech Walesa - America is "getting weak"

You may not have heard that Lech Walesa was recently in Chicago.  Walesa is the former president of Poland and the leader of the Solidarność (Solidarity) movement that stood up against the former Soviet Union to gain Poland's independence.  If you didn't hear about it, don't feel bad.  There was almost a total news blackout on the events.  You see, Mr. Walesa was in town to speak at a Tea Party event and to support Adam Andrzejewski, the Republican candidate for governor of Illinois.


Mr. Walesa said, through an translator, "This is the first time when I am so strongly supporting someone.  But here I see a great chance for the region and for Poland.  The world today needs some order...some values.  The world needs Solidarity...the new Solidarity."  And remember, Solidarity stood against communism and helped to bring about the end of the "Evil Empire"...the Soviet Union.

"The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations.  There was the hope, whenever something was going wrong, one could count on the United States.  Today, we lost that hope."

 
At another event, Mr. Walesa said, "The United States is only one superpower. Today they lead the world. Nobody has doubts about it. Militarily.  They also lead economically but they’re getting weak. But they don’t lead morally and politically anymore.  The world has no leadership.  The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations.  There was the hope, whenever something was going wrong, one could count on the United States.  Today, we lost that hope."  In an interview with Founding Bloggers  (video below) Mr. Walesa spoke of his concerns that America is moving in the direction of socialism.  "There's big challenges with the State taking care of people.  While  a subject for political campaigns are good.  But when the government starts doing it...it basically puts a lot of money and wastes it."  He continued, "The government will waste all the money.  They just build the bureaucracy, just for itself...support itself.  So we have to be very careful in following this." Remember, Lech Walesa knows the effects of socialism first hand.  He risked his life to publicly stand up against it in the old Soviet puppet state of Poland.

In the 1980s, Walesa was a media darling.  The media could not cover him enough.  Today, they ignore what he has to say because it does not fit the narrative they wish to impart. I believe that if Lech Walesa were beginning his Solidarity movement today....with a press who idolizes communist thugs like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and an administration who travels the world bowing down to foreign leaders and apologizing for America's achievements, and who sides with the would-be dictator in Honduras...he would be roundly characterized as a rogue and a troublemaker.

So, I agree with Mr. Walesa...America is getting weaker.  We are losing more and more of our freedoms and we are letting our own elected officials and bureaucracies take us down the path of statist control.  Will we heed the warnings of Walesa and and others who have lived under the tyrannies of modern socialist dictatorships?