The winger across the hall from me is taking the passage of health care reform pretty hard. But he insists that he isn’t angry, he just doesn’t want to hear about politics for a couple days. I can understand that.
I can sort of understand this too:
The roughly 250 activists, some of them wiping away tears, cheered for Martin, then belted out “The Star-Spangled Banner,” then recited the pledge of allegiance. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) slipped through their ranks unnoticed, then politely took the megaphone for himself.
I see plainly that Western civilization, over my lifetime, has been a slow-sinking ship. The few who have known what is happening have worked desperately to seal the watertight doors, repair the fissures, pump out the flooded zones. It’s been a losing fight, though. The tilt of the decks is harder and harder to ignore. Last night, a major bulkhead gave way. Soon a funnel will topple over with a great crash and a shower of sparks. Yet still the band is playing, the people are dancing, the food coming up from the galley.
Steven Hayward, writing about my latest in the Claremont Review of Books, says it is “surprising that Derbyshire never raises the obvious question: without the conservative movement of the past 50 years, how much worse would things be?” Not much, would be my answer. Certainly those working the pumps have been engaged in a noble endeavor, which I’m proud to have been associated with. They could hear the dance music too, though. It got their feet a-tapping; then an ex-colleague came down from the ballroom to mock and tempt, and soon there was one less pair of hands on the pumps, and one more government program, one more subsidy, one more tax, one more restraint on freedom of speech or association, one more futile war.
The phrase “one less pair of hands on the pumps” is a lot more apt than Derbyshire probably realizes.
CatStaff
I hate to keep repeating Jon Stewart’s immortal line, but I’m going to. ” You lost the election. It’s supposed to taste like a sh*t taco!”
Or something like that.
cleek
this just in: conservative blowhard laments state of nation. demands return to The Old Ways.
fuck them.
M. Carey
Just WHO is pushing these futile wars ?
Quaker in a Basement
I dunno. I think that metaphor might be a little understated. Was he talking about boats or something?
Dave
John Derbyshire? This John Derbyshire?
What a wanker.
Scott
Derbyshire should feel free to shut the hell up.
DougJ
@Dave:
This much talent.
me
He’s free to move to Costa Rica if he’s unhappy.
soonergrunt
But does Steven Hayward, when writing about John Derbyshire’s latest in the Claremont Review of Books say anything at all about the creepy Humbert Humbert vibe that the Derb gives off from time to time?
The guy’s one redeeming value is that he’s slightly less nauseating than his Corner co-bloggers.
MattF
The “Decline of the West” has been proceeding for the past several centuries, and that’s not going to change for the foreseeable future.
fourlegsgood
*snort* Excuse me while I laugh myself silly. I just got a mental picture of Derbyshire and his friends sitting around weeping while singing verses of “My Heart Will Go On”
Hey GOP!! thanks for 2006, 2008 and March 21, 2010!!!
Nancy B.
I’m glad to see we’re finally joining the rest of the industrialized world wrt healthcare, but seeing the teabag people cry like little bitches over what would in a sane world be a non-controversial bill is icing on the cake. Far out Richard Thomspon reference, btw.
JGabriel
John Derbyshire:
The reaction is especially melodramatic given how little was actually accomplished. This is not single-payer or nationalization, it’s incremental insurance regulation, accompanied by a mandate that nearly everyone must purchase health insurance with a promise to pour taxpayer dollars into the insurance corps pockets to cover those who can’t afford it themselves.
I supported it because it’s better than what we have, and I’m happy it passed, both for its real benefits and its strategic political boost. But this is nowhere near the sociaIist ideal that conservatives are pretending it is.
.
EdTheRed
Sawed off shotgun, hand on the pump
Left hand on a forty, [puffin onna blunt]
Pumped my shotgun, [wingnutz didn’t jump]
Lala la la lala la laaaaa…
Chat Noir
Good lard. What a bunch of drama queens on the right. These people really need a heaping cup of STFU. They are positively mental.
Brian J
Wow, Obama is impressive! He managed to bring the destruction of Western civilization in little more than a year. Now that’s efficiency!
Ash Can
Even though this puts it overly mildly, stopped clock, twice a day, and all that.
beltane
@JGabriel: I didn’t realize that uninsured cancer patients losing their homes to pay for treatment was a bulwark of western civilization. You learn something new every day. Next up we will hear how prosecuting serial killers is an unpardonable infringement on freedom of expression.
Chuck
One more futile war? Wait, so it’s liberals who drag us into wars now? Oh come on mister Derbyshire, why not blame liberals for drought and swine flu too? It’s not like you or your readers need to use inconvenient metrics like reality or plausibility after all.
Matt
Aren’t we supposed to tell them to move to a different country if they hate it so much? Isn’t that what they used to say to us?
kindness
Please, please, please….OH PLEASE Go GALT on us unworthy Americans. Please?
flukebucket
That is so funny to me. I know it probably shouldn’t be but damn it is. Cryin’ and singin’ the Star-Spangled Banner and reciting the pledge.
Just sounds like something off of a Coen Brothers movie.
If they had said the Lord’s Prayer it would have been complete.
jayjaybear
How can one convincingly sing “My Heart Will Go On” when one doesn’t even possess the organ in question?
soonergrunt
Randy Neugebauer, (R, TX19) is the wingnut who called Stupak (wingnut-lite) a baby killer.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Neugebauer
Apparently, Little Russert has confirmed this, and it is already on wiki.
I don’t know if anybody saw this yet.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
So, he’s finally blaming Bush for the downfall of America.
Corner Stone
God. Where to start?
toujoursdan
If I see one more Facebook post that says “I can’t afford Obamacare” I am going to chuck my computer out the window.
Bunch of computer owning, internet paying babies. We don’t know how much healthcare will cost in 2014, how the insurance exchanges will work or how the subsidies will be passed on or anything.
licensed to kill time
Well, if Derbyshire and his fellow cons end up like Leo in Titanic, I think it’ll be awesome to finally see them go blue.
And Another Thing...
See, you just don’t understand what Derbyshire means when he says “Western civilization.” He’s talking about the world being run by English speaking, white males with the “proper” connections. He’s a card carrying member of the wacko brigade that spends most of their time quivering in fear ’cause we’re all going to be living under sharia law in large part because white wimin aren’t having enough babies. He and Mark Steyn drink from the same fetid sources. Spend some time over at the National Review, and check out their pathological writings. It’s the patriotic thing to do.
Ash Can
@JGabriel:
Further proof that these mopes believe their own bullshit.
Redshift
It must be sad for them to see the approach of a time when America no longer lets people die from lack of money, to prove our faith in the Church of the Free Market.
Socraticsilence
I can kind of get it I took a week off from school (when I really couldn’t afford to) and was up 72 hours straight down the stretch in 2004, and I cried when early returns proved false and Bush was re-elected, but then again I also knew people in fighting in Iraq, and people who wanted to get married- unless you actually believe in “death panels” I can’t understand how this bill passing would destroy you to that degree (I can get it to an extent from the progressive side if you view this as dealing the death knell to further reform in your lifetime)- I mean wtf, worst case scenario you’re paying a couple of grand a year in penalty fee’s (and this is only assuming you make a good living say 40,000 plus at least for a single person) is that loss of two grand really so bad that you’re going to cry? Or is it the thought of poor people getting healthcare or what? See I got strongly opposing this if you don’t believe the government should help with healthcare, but crying after losing- why? The only reaction that makes less sense to me is how Goppers react on gay marriage- unless you literally believe that an angry God will smite us, why the hell would you care who someone else married?
freelancer
HCR is Conservative 9/11, the squeakquel.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Hmm. For most of the last couple of years, when we weren’t winning a big election, Dems were heard on the blogtubes talking about how Dems are just hapless, spineless, and without discipline. Can’t get things done. Don’t know how to be a majority. Blah blah blah.
So today, Dems have done something really spectacularly useful and good, and all the attention is on …. the morons we beat. The righty meltdowns. The frantic screams of the real losers in this scenario. The fools. The idiots.
I’m more interested in the reactions of Democrats, and the planning that needs to be done for the fall elections to put us in the best possible position in the next congress. The Dem thinking and strategerizing that enabled us to survive a run toward self-proclaimed loserness and ignominious defeatiness and end up on the winning side of the biggest political fight in many years.
jeffreyw
@licensed to kill time:
FTW
Sad_Dem
“Futile wars”??????? My head assplode.
liberty60
I just posted something about this in the open thread below, about how the standard riff on the Right is how we are losing our mojo, that our proud forebears had.
Total BS.
The Good Old Days? Does Derbyshire mean in the 1950’s when 1/3 of all workers were unionized, top tax rates were 90%, and government regulated the price of gas?
Or the 1930’s/ 40’s when a large number of American were proud members of the Soshulist Party? No, the real thing, with hammer and sickle and everything.
Fuck, it amuses me to no end to think that the parents and grandparents of the typical NRO reader were probably unionized government workers/ military vet living in a VA/FHA-financed house riding to work on a metro bus, giving birth to their little Johnny Galt in a military hospital at taxpayer expense.
wenchacha
And here I was, listening to Richard Thompson.
I hope he writes a sob-story song for all the sad whiny ass titty baby teabaggers.
It really is tragic that our fake President rammed all this health care reform down their tiny little mewling throats without so much as an attempt at bipartisanship. He is so so mean.
Don
I see plainly that Western civilization, over my lifetime, has been a slow-sinking ship
Interesting perspective. I think about what it’s like to be black in our society or gay or in an interracial marriage (which you can be in now, unlike when he was born in 1945) and am a little amazed at how far western civilization has come in that time. Sometimes (gay marriage) it doesn’t go as fast as I’d like but I think that it’s somewhat amazing how much better it is to be a non-white and/or non-male in our society than it was just a few generations ago.
If this is sinking then you can keep the lifeboat, buddy.
Some Guy
@MattF: Indeed, the narrative of the West in Decline has been stock and trade since industrialism kicked off. Conservatives especially have been predicting the end of all things valuable, in different ways, for quite some annoying amount of time. The left has its own way of saying this too. Its a basic narrative frame that can be used to express dissatisfaction with the state of things, whatever the things, whatever the state.
Osprey
What’s amazing about this collective bed-wetting, thumb-sucking, emo-laden fit of despair from the right is that…nothing for them is really going to change. Sure, some of the more down-trodden freedom-humping teabaggers might be forced to pay for health-care (many of those fugglies could use some dental work).
Their reaction is akin to what the Canadian reaction would have been if their team lost the gold medal to the U.S. squad. Or any Patriots fan when the Giants beat them (haha) in the Super Bowl. Yeah, ya lost…but life will go on…
Time to go see if they’ve euthanized Grandma yet.
Brian J
@toujoursdan:
Well, we have some idea, maybe not of the cost but of the subsidies. We can’t be sure, but it’s not going to completely blindside us.
goblue72
This has been a glorious Monday morning watching the rank-and-file wingnutters choke on the taste of Obama’s Chicago-sized teabags, while the “leaders” of the wingnut movement in Congress and the media woke up and realized “they’re gonna have healthcare wrapped up by April with some EPIC WIN, which means they still got 6 months to smack Wall Street around and hand out some goodies. (oh crap they slipped in student loan reform with HCR) and if Obama starts bringing the troops home from Iraq by Labor Day….oh double crap, we may be toast”
I hear Obama is toying with immigration reform on the agenda – split the Repubs in two and watch the nativist teabagging right go “all-in” on the racism fail-sauce in time for the november elections.
electricgrendel
Yes. Because if there’s anything conservatives love its freedom of speech and freedom of association. I mean- George Bush and the RNC love free speech so much they created its own zone for it at their events! And since the fragile gift of free speech is so…uh…fragile, they had to make sure that the free speech zones were far away from the actual event.
Because that’s how conservatives respect free speech: by caging it out of sight.
hal
I really have to say, even I am completely surprised by the level of mental breakdown on display throughout the right. Jesus Christ folks, you would think Martians just landed and demanded anal probes for everyone. It makes me laugh, because in the end, I can only shudder at the constant attacks from the right had healthcare reform failed to pass. All in all, I’m thrilled, imperfections and all. Hopefully this is the first step in real change for this country.
And Another Thing...
Jake Tapper to Robert Gibbs just now…”Does the President feel any obligation as a man who campaigned on bridging the partisan divide to reach out to Republicans for future legislation or to improve the spirit in Washington that has now been so poisoned by this very vicious debate.”
They don’t pay Gibbs enough for the self-control it must take to not just eviscerate Tapper.
Redshift
@liberty60: And they’re endlessly blathering about how we’re betraying “what the Founders intended,” too. Because even leaving aside their egregiously false statements about what the Founders believed, obviously a bunch of idealists who led a revolution against a major world power were conservatives who wouldn’t want anything to change after them.
I had C-SPAN radio on to catch news of HCR, and I’d forgotten they streamed Meet the Press, so I happened to catch this gem from Michael Steele. He’s set the bar high enough that it’s rare to have something that’s “incredibly stupid, even for Michael Steele,” but I think this qualifies:
Bulworth
@Chat Noir: Heh, indeed.
TR
There’s one sure way for John “Apres Moi, Le Deluge” Derbyshire to prove to us how effective conservatives have been at keeping this country afloat — they should jump overboard, go Galt already, and let us all see just how much worse off we’d be without them. That’ll teach us.
Little Dreamer
@Socraticsilence:
But, see, you hit the nail on the head. Their God will smite them if they gay marry; if they open up the borders to any and all immigrants (who will overrun our way of life and institute their own form of government); if they don’t worship the baby Jesus correctly which means children must be made to say the holy prayer in schools; and especially if they allow the poor to have free access to services that make the lives of the poor simpler and more enjoyable, because of course, those poor people are totally HELLBOUND (if they weren’t, they’d be rewarded monetarily during this earthly existence by the God of Prosperity) and those undeserving poor should do nothing while on this earth except suffer pain and hardship (unless they are in utero, of course).
/putting away wingnut crystal ball
mcc
@flukebucket: Next to of course god america i love you land of the pilgrims’ and so forth oh say can you see by the dawn’s early my country tis of centuries come and go and are no more what of it we should worry in every language even deafanddumb thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-iful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voice of liberty be mute?
licensed to kill time
@And Another Thing…:
Yeah, it always fries my giblets when I hear Obama being blamed for the partisanship. When one side not only refuses to play ball but actively plows up the field, plants land mines and trip wires plus moves the bases up into the stands it makes playing rather….difficult, to say the least.
RSA
This makes no sense at all, if “the conservative movement” is taken to be “movement conservatives”. The Department of Homeland Security? Medicare Part D? Warrantless wiretapping? The Iraq war? Derbyshire seems to want to blame someone other than conservatives for all this. For God’s sake, he’s even apologized for supporting the Iraq war. Anyone with intellectual honesty might have mentioned that, rather than spouting off about being proud of what he’s done.
cursorial
I really shouldn’t go to the Corner anymore, but they’re quoting Palin’s Facebook page.
I’m guessing she means “Congressional votes have consequences” but something about the loser of the last election mindlessly using the phrase “Elections have consequences” to make her point is just priceless.
Yes, Sarah, we finally agree on something. Elections do indeed have consequences.
Little Dreamer
@And Another Thing…:
Obama wanted to play ball with Republicans and give them a voice at the table, they refused, so he played without them. Now Obama is the one who has poisoned the environment?
someguy
Hey, shut up about that fool Derbyshire. He’s goading the right into giving up. That’s what we want, isn’t it? Seems to me we oughtta buy the guy a medal or something.
georgia pig
Whatever ship Derbyshire is on, put another torpedo in her just to make sure. I doubt western civilization would notice the ripples as he goes under.
Batocchio
Derbyshire mourns that we have a democracy. How shocking.
russell
fugleman?
liberty60
@Redshift:
Oh, and the endless deification of “The Founders”- damned if they wouldn’t spit on Thomas Jefferson if he were alive today! [edited to add- he might return the favor]
The man making all those disrespectful comments about religion, (notably not wearing a flag pin).
I love how we hear the whine about how America doesn’t do Great Things anymore, how we don’t have the muscular mojo of the White Men who built transcontinental railways, dammed the Colorado, built the Empire State Building…
by the very same snivelers who greet every….efffing….new development from green architecture to health care to high speed rail with curled lip cynicism, bellyaching about how they might possibly someday have to pay a nickle more in tax.
Not to mention the hilarity of how Derbyshire and the NRO crowd fancy themself to be shouldering the White Man’s Burden of saving WESTERN CVLTVRE (not culture- CVLTVRE), when a more sensible person might ask WHAT THE FUCK have any of these welfare cases done except pass through the birth canal of the right sort of people? (Jonah Goldberg, I am so looking at you!)
Wm. F. Buckley famously said he would rather be governed by the first 400 names in the Manhattan telephone directory than the graduating class at Harvard;
I would say that the graduating class of Watts Vocational College has done more to lift the ship of America than an army of John Derbyshires lounging on the deck sunning his pasty white ass.
Mike G
It’s been all downhill since they abolished slavery, brought 6-year olds out of the coal mines and ended privatized fire departments who would watch your house burn down if you hadn’t paid your bill this month.
One would think that the ‘free marketeers’ would notice the 2×4 price signal upside the head that American health care is chronically overpriced and underdelivered relative to other countries. They tout the superiority of Wal-Mart’s low prices and logistics, yet somehow the screaming cost disparity and shitty outcomes of American health system are completely taboo to the ‘meritocrat’ crowd — private markets have become a religion, an unquestionable totem to be worshipped unchallenged.
Tonal Crow
@flukebucket:
Our Deceiver, who art the GOP,
Hallowed be Thy Rove,
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,
To libtards and to all the heathen.
Give us this day our daily whine,
And protect us in our trespasses,
As we trespass against the treasonous DFH.
Lead us not into self-reflection, but deliver us to emo.
For Thine is the bunko, the propaganda, and the projection forever. Amen.
rs
@cursorial:
I realize this is pretty minor in terms of criticisms of crap the Palin says, but that does not make any sense. She seems to be trying to say that “Votes have consequences” or that “Election losses are consequences.”
It’s always entertains me when she just completely misuses statements that she’s heard other people say before.
b-psycho
@Redshift: Considering that the activist business class spends most of their time extracting favors from government, I can’t blame the average person for asking “where’s mine?”.
tamied
@liberty60: Whoa! Way to rant (clap, clap)!
superking
Well, with Western Civilization out of the way, what should we do now? I guess we can always take down Eastern Civilization. The world is round, and logically, they’re next.
Maybe after I get a sandwich and watch some TV.
Jeremy
DougJ, you always cull the best lyrics to use as titles!
burnspbesq
@wenchacha:
Well, Pelosi did dance on their heads like Arthur Murray
different church-lady
I’m still not convinced that this reform is the best thing for health care or the country…
…but to me, watching a guy like Derbyshire completely and utterly lose his last tentative gasp on reality while his spirit crumbles into dust makes it all worth it.
burnspbesq
@different church-lady:
It’s not. Single payer would be better. A plan with a robust public option would be better. But try telling a single parent making $60K/yr. who’s got a diabetic, ADD, or asthmatic kid that they should patiently wait for a single perfect solution to all the problems with the current system. You may get an earful.
Gotta start somewhere.
Brett
Taking a note from Charlie Wilson’s War, “Here’s to you, you motherfuckers!”
Go ahead and cry, conservatards. We’ll add your tears to the ocean of tears shed by those left dead and despondent by our health care system over the decades, the tears that might never had been shed if you and your ilk hadn’t fought every reform at every step of the way.
Sui Generis
Toe tapping? They were doing toe tapping en mass?
Yep, Republicans.