Don’t let this crisis go to waste:
Are the young struck by the dashed hopes of Obamacare? Give them a copy of Friedrich Hayek’s The Fatal Conceit. They can’t believe the Secret Service farce? Introduce them to James Q. Wilson on bureaucracy. They’re befuddled by the exploitation of an unfortunate incident in Ferguson? Have them read Edward C. Banfield’s The Unheavenly City (especially the chapter he titled “Rioting Mainly for Fun and Profit”). Liberalism’s domestic policies aren’t working quite the way they were supposed to? Acquaint them with Irving Kristol: “I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.”
Similarly, we should be running ads telling them that “We told you so.”
What does it mean if we lose this next election? It means the fix is in and we’re not looking in the right places.
This may be an example. There is no such thing as a teachable moment for the unteachable. It has to be personal. They have to be mugged first. Even then there’s no guarantee. Dennis Miller got it. How many didn’t?
We shall see how that will work.
Take the Wisconsin Governor candidate Mary Burke’s plagiarism scandal. The one good thing for Mr. Walker to come out of it is a negative ad showing Ms. Burke to be um-ing and ah-ing when asked to define plagiarism. Mr. Walker is supposed to be the college dropout and Ms. Burke the holder of the Ivy League professional degree, and Ms. Burke can’t even define or explain plagiarism.
But no one else cares about plagiarism let alone knows the definition either. The campaign ad could have said, “Mary Burke’s ‘carefully crafted’ Economic Plan for our state is a ‘Photo Shop job’, cribbed and pasted together from failed plans in other states . . .” or something to that effect. Her face could have been crudely edited into a 1920’s reel of some aviation invention falling apart on its first use.
Missed opportunity.
He wants to reach the youth of America with… books by Solzhenitsyn and Churchill and Hayek? Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick. Has he spent any time around 20 year olds lately?
They’re not reading tons of books. They are however all carrying smartphones. And playing addictive games on them. If you really want to reach young people you can’t do it by assigning them thousands of pages of densely packed political and economic arguments to read. You do it by writing a smartphone app. You teach them conservative principles through an addictive game.
Either that or you give them a movie like Serenity.
Excellent point Ed. There is no quick fix for this and we’re facing tons of push back. We’ve all but lost the education system. Ridicule may be the secret. We need to address a few points hard and clear so we can easily ridicule the push back. Then peer pressure keeps the point from being lost. Creating movies and apps that entertain while educating is not an easy task but may have the best hope of reaching through the leftist fog.
You’re pretty much right Ed, for free-for-all 20 somethings with no responsibilities.
Not only does it require an addictive game, it also requires someone standing up and asking them over and over:
” Just how many times will you allow yourself to be played for a dupe?”
And then tell them:
“You’ve been clubbed over the head over and over and over by liberals and socialsists. Vote for them again and you’ll deserve every last inch of the hell you’ll get.”
Call the game “Taxman” and you’ve got a winner.
And to Republicans who stayed home and didn’t vote last time, Here’s what Truman had to say:
“And when you do like you did in nineteen forty-six, when two-thirds of you stayed at home, you get just what you deserve “
If they give us another loser nominee like they did in 2008 and 2012, nothing the voters can ever do will make him or her a winner. Look at Obama, after all — won two straight presidential elections, still a loser.
Then we’ll get what we deserve…Hillary.
To me, a lousy GOP president is far better than any liberal/soccie.
A lousy GOP president is how you get an empty suit liberal. But there’s more going on. Even Los Angeles is much more conservative than liberal but they don’t have any fight in them (prop 13 was in the late 70s.)
Evidently the national GOP disagrees with you on that… or they would be running fewer liberal/socialist candidates, and doing less to protect them from primary challenges.
“Have you ever had the feeling that you’ve been cheated?”
“If they give us another loser nominee like they did in 2008 and 2012,” Anyone who thinks that Romney was a “loser nominee” doesn’t care about winning. A candidate has to appeal to somewhat more than half the country. Romney was extremely bright and competent, and conservative enough. And he chose Paul Ryan as his running mate. Demand more than that and you have no more right to complain about losing than if the Democrats would nominate Russ Feingold.
He couldn’t get people to the polls. The only candidate recently that got any enthusiasm from people was Sarah. They made a poor quality movie “the undefeated” where I never before or since seen such an audience reaction. The entire audience was on its feet cheering whenever they played a snippet from one of her speeches. Even that hatchet job with Julienne Moore had to acknowledge how well her speeches were received. The snobs that don’t like her mannerisms are a huge part of the problem. Our country was founded by farmers.
“The snobs that don’t like her mannerisms are a huge part of the problem.”
Absolutely. I know a lot of otherwise intelligent people conclude Palin’s ideas are whacky *totally* on the strength of her accent and delivery style.
Only a loser party would think that you send the architect of Romneycare against the guy who used it as the template for the most hated federal law since Prohibition.
Eh. Would he have won the Republican nomination without “vote flipping”?