George Rebane
Politics – Purposed pandering intended to sway a wider audience under the guise of communicating with another party.
The local Wrong-way Corrigan collectivists seem to have trouble untying their bundled undies. With one side of their mouth they are continually describing our community as being “purple”, and with the other side complaining that recently arrived progressives are being rejected. From this morning’s Union piece by Ms Cheryl Cook (former member of the paper’s editorial board who resigned in a huff), it is clear that Democrat party leader Jim Firth has an equally sour soulmate. Both are singing the ‘Too Many Conservatives Blues’. (Jim Firth’s sad tale was covered here.)
Let me see if I can shed a little light into their fog bank –
First, just because someone thinks your ideas are cockamamie, and your ideology is terminally broken does not mean that you are being muzzled, or not welcome to proselytize collectivism in these foothills. Don’t worry, the Right is strong enough to take you on in the battle of wits that both sides wage for the benefit of the undecided and/or undeclared voters. But that doesn’t mean that we automatically become hugging buddies and start sending each other Christmas cards (do progressives still do that?).
As an example, one of the Left’s big ideas is to be a ‘welcoming and caring community’ for the indigent who range from locals temporarily on hard times to the ‘y’all come!’ bums from all over the northern parts of California and Nevada. And then we wonder why we have the drug and MJ nuisance and crime problems in our public spaces and neighborhoods. One only needs to look at the published ‘curricula vitae’ of the culturally deprived that adorn our police blotter, and the (now hidden inside) stories of murder and mayhem in the Union. We don’t need to import more of the kind of problems we are already having trouble solving with our own, no matter how politically correct, inclusive, and heartwarming it feels.
Second, continuing to sing the ‘Now We’re All Purple’ song is misleading. The reality of Nevada County’s ideological distribution is an ongoing disappointment to our local liberals. Purple implies a mixed amalgam, a population of people whose belief systems, in the large, are in that great, undefined muddle-of-the-road. And as Mr Firth and Ms Cook have discovered (while some progressive bloggers remain forever confused), that ain’t necessarily nor even actually so. The community is truly polarized, with a big hump of people on the left, and a slightly bigger hump of people on the right of the ideological spectrum. The middle lowland remains confused and looks to both sides beseeching ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’
Get over it. You guys told us that you are here to “fundamentally transform America”. And we believe that America is nowhere close to needing any kind of fundamental transformation whatsoever. But you and yours have already doubled down, especially here in California, and shown all what kind of devastation your public policies can wreak on what arguably was the world’s best rendition of the Garden of Eden. We on the right like the steady evolutionary pace of social, economical, and technological change that has been with us since 1865, the kind of change that thrives with personal freedoms, limited government, and open markets.
And last (for now), we don’t trust you. You guys on the left are sneaky. You never spell out what you really believe, what your objectives are for social values, governance, economic structures, foreign policy, and world order. You present your big ideas through hearthrobbing anecdotes while hiding the real stuff in the seldom read and little known writings of Marx/Engels, Webb, Debs, Proudhon, Chomsky, …, and your operational field manuals are obscure documents like the UN’s Agenda 21 objectives brought to bear by a subrosa worldwide network of local ICLEIs promoting ever more regulatory shackles through the watchwords of ‘sustainability’ and ‘smart growth’ that resonate with the unlearned.
So yes, we will oppose your ideas wherever we find them. But do not confuse that with opposition to your ability to air them to whomever will listen to you. Just don’t be surprised if you see us in the same forum doing our best to show people the error of your ways – that's called freedom of speech guaranteed by that pesky First Amendment.
