As I described in the previous post,, the Ruling Class is composed of people who simply think it is their right (if not their duty) to tell other people how to run their lives, and the People Class is composed of people who just want to get on with their own lives and don't have that urge to tell other people what to do. These Whips document the various activities of the Ruling Class.

And they're very, very, very active, unfortunately.

This Whip category pertains to what I call the People Class--my name for the "Country Class" as identified by retired Boston University professor Angelo M. Codevilla in his influential essay America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution.

This would be the "us" as opposed to the "them" of the Ruling Class. The difference is that people in the People Class don't want to run anyone else's life--they just want to be free to run their own lives to the best of their abilities. The people in the Ruling Class think that they're qualified to tell the rest of us how to run their lives--up to and including demanding that the People Class give money to the Ruling Class because they're somehow "owed" some kind of reparations to make things more "fair." So yes, the Angry Poor are, in fact, part of the Ruling Class, not of the People Class, in that they think they have the right to order other people to provide for their "needs."

This is the fundamental political issue of our time--despite what the journalists and "opnion-makers" (but I repeat myself) in the Ruling Class would have you believe.

The issue IS the Ruling Class, and more specifically, how long the People Class will continue to put up with their increasingly shrill and unreasonable demands.

I'm going to a new Whip format here for a while. Back to categories, with perhaps a lead comment/rant/editorial on things that really get me going. Today, that's nothing much. But, onward, to the Whip!

Wolfe’s lost road: Discovering an author’s personal essay on J.R.R. Tolkien

Wolfe’s (essay) says that The Lord of the Rings taught him that right and wrong can be absolutes, and that absolute moral equivalency is another piece of Mordor. In addition, it taught him that “progress” is not necessarily progressive, and with change comes inevitable loss.

The difference between knowledge and wisdom is also a feature of Tolkien's greatest work. The "progressives" confuse knowledge with wisdom. This is their great weakness. They believe that intricate and complicated concepts must be correct, because they're hard to understand. Conservatives believe that intricate and complicated concepts are best judged with deep suspicion, and that the basic truths are actually quite simple to comprehend. The "right thing to do" is often difficult to actually do, by we imperfect humans in this imperfect world, but it is often quite simple to understand.

Five Minutes With Andrew Breitbart

Q: Anything else folks should know about this or about Andrew Breitbart?

A: Believe it or not, one of my primary motives on this planet is to stop this racism, and to stop the Democratic Party's use of race that divides us intentionally. Google me and Clarence Thomas. I went from left to right because I watched this tactic happen to him and I aligned myself with black conservatives. Free thinkers recognize the Democratic Party will do or say anything to instill fear into black Democratic voters. . . . Shirley Sherrod in that video said those who disagree with Obamacare are coming from a racist point of view. That is a troubling racist sentiment.

And this is the greatest tragedy--the greatest crime--that the neo-feudalist left has committed against this country with the Sherrod affair--and with so many other instances of rabidly shouting "RAAAAACIST!" as a craven political tactic to shut up and shut down opposing voices. The dirty secret is that the festering pus of lingering racism in the United States is flowing from the left--from the "progressives"--from the very same neo-feudalists who organize intellectual lynch mobs against anyone who really, really took to heart Martin Luther King's words about judging people on the content of their character.

What the neo-feudalist "progressives" do to the "national conversation on race" is obscene. They're the ones who should be shouted down--not the brave few on the Right like Breitbart who stand up to the neo-feudalists.

This is gonna be a long one . . . stuff has been piling up . . .

‘JournoList’ E-mails Show Media Plotting to Kill Stories about Reverend Jeremiah Wright: Daily Caller -- Almost all national journalists for the "mainstream" media are lying to you. On purpose. With reasons they think are good and proper. But the fact remains that they daily--hourly lie to you, in order to advance what they think is the "correct agenda." After all, these people went into journalism to "make a difference in the world." If they have to lie and deceive in order to do it, well, the ends justify the means, don't they?

Video: “Same As It Ever Was”


And, if you're missing the parody, here's the original:

Yeah, it's weird. That's kinda the point.

"My God, what have I done?"

The Aristocracy Of The Left -- They want nothing more or less than to re-establish a kind of feudalism--with them as the lords and masters, and you and me as the peasants. That's the game. That's why they're so upset at the Tea Parties. They see it as simply a revolt of the peasants. At some point, they will put it down--probably with the traditional tactics used throughout history with unruly serfs and peasants--all the while loudly claiming that it's all the peasant's fault, and we had it coming, for daring to challenge our "betters." Unless, that is, the peasants can manage to "storm the castle" via the ballot box in the next couple of national elections. If not, it will be a future of either resignation to feudalism, or revolution. Seems to me like voting the bums out is by far the preferable strategy and outcome for everybody concerned--even for the neo-feudalists themselves, who in that scenario will not be at any risk of being lined up against a wall should they actually provoke a popular revolution which and succeeds in overthrowing them in the USA (which is, as always, the "last hope of Man on Earth.")

Everybody's got skin in this game. It's all a matter of understanding what the game actually is.

TARP audit claims Obama admin destroyed “tens of thousands” of jobs in dealer closures -- But, see, this is a good thing, because all of those car dealership employees were probably rich Republican fat-cats who had it coming for being racists, anyway . . .

The Next Great Wave -- Featuring this, which brings into sharp focus the fact that the "progressive" agenda is now, in the 21st Century, actually quite backward-looking. You might almost say . . . "conservative" . . .

The Progressive ideology much of the western world has labored under for a century or so is a product of the industrial revolution. It will die and be replaced by something else as the technological revolution sweeps all before it. Political wonks live in the sort of bubble where they give primacy to politics over everything else, little understanding that politics grow from more basic factors, and those factors are currently being rearranged, rebuilt, newly created or destroyed by forces far more powerful than politics or ideology. Even the oldest ideology of all - religion - sways and teeters in the face of the oncoming storms.

The fact is, if you hold "progressive" political views, you're not anywhere near the cutting edge of political thought. In fact, what you believe is largely a return--not a return to the Progressive days of the late 19th and early 20th century, the days of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, but a return to a kind of feudalism last ascendent in European culture after the fall of Rome. Let's call it neo-feudalism. Consider the society of the early European Middle Ages, where those few who, by wisdom and intellect are chosen as the Wise (that would be them) lead the many, the poor, the ignorant. That would be you. The last time around, the few, wise people represented the Catholic Church. Now, they represent "progressive, compassionate policies." But in operation, there is very little difference. The rulers, and the ruled. It is this system against which the American Revolution was a decisive--if momentary--defeat, and ever since, the rulers have been seeking another path to unlimited power. They think they've found it. Are they right?

If you really want a better life for the poor, but are voting for Democrats, you are on the wrong side. Period.

The truth on domestic violence just isn’t sexy enough -- Including this gem of a final paragraph, which could well apply to most "issues of the day" raised by Old Media:

Why do these myths persist? Because they make great copy and because there is something mesmerizing about a statistic that freezes journalistic brains, especially when the statistics bolster common cultural biases or trends. And one especially pejorative but persisting cultural trend is the impunity with which all men can be demonized. The moral of these hoaxes is to view statistics that paint a negative picture of unusually high numbers of men with deep suspicion.

Emphasis mine. What you hear from the Old Media is, more often than not, a carefully selected subset of what happened, presented in an astonishingly slanted, biased way to favor one set of policy prescriptions (generally "progressive") and breathlessly presented with a desperate "the sky is falling!" breathlessness. (Sometimes it's not even necessary for something to happen--it's enough for somebody, somewhere to say that something happened--like for instance Congressmen being verbally abused or intentionally spit on, on the Capitol Steps) . . .

Want Economic Stimulus? Don’t Build a Sports Stadium! -- It's hard to decide what's the bigger scam: public 'light rail' mass transit, new stadiums, health care "reform," "stimulus," or "green industries." Each of them has just about as much objective scientific support behind them--i.e. very, very little--to suggest that they will actually do what their proponents say they will do. All represent the triumph of Hoping Real Hard over actual reality.

Two words shoot all of these down when these Good Ideas come into contact with the Real World: Opportunity Cost.

Lack of jobs increasingly blamed on uncertainty created by Obama’s policies

Rasmussen: Investor confidence hits 2010 low -- Nobody--especially smaller businesses--are going to do much of anything until they have an idea how much more the Democrats are going to try to hurt them via taxes and regulations. Which may mean no significant recovery until Palin defeats Obama in November, 2012.

Video: New Black Panther Party President Admits Voter Intimidation -- Evidence:


Racists. And not with five A's, either. The real thing, this time. Imagine a white supremicist movement leader standing up and talking like this. Try to imagine it. Then try to imaging that guy and his organization NOT getting the legal cluebat upside the head.