Squaring the Culture

The story about ACORN is getting at least 1/2 of the attention it deserves in the press, which is truly remarkable this election season. There’s clearly a pattern of fraud that assaults the confidence of the public in the voting process and raises the likelihood of widespread fraud by Democrats. Barack Obama’s ties to the organization run very deep indeed, and not only did he funnel $800,000 of precious campaign funds to the organization, he clearly attempted to hide the fact that he was doing it, and hide it in a manner that was fraudulent. This fact by itself gives the lie to claims that ACORN’s activities have no impact on the election, to Obama’s claim that he has no meaningful connection to the organization, and to Obama’s implication of innocence. Clearly Obama thinks ACORN is pivotal to his campaign, and knows that his connection to their activism makes both them and him look bad.

The part of the story that’s missing, though, is the part that explains why they’re doing it. No, it’s not just that Democrats historically cheat, though that’s actually true. So do Republicans, though not usually at the same level or in the same numbers. It’s funny, in a way, that there’s a certain level of corruption that’s going to appear in any democratic system, but that’s not really a symptom of a corrupted system, just of original sin. Anything run by humans will be tainted at some point by corruption; that’s just who we are. It is vital that we not excuse it, and that we prosecute it diligently and patiently, lest it get hold of the system and destroy it, but its presence does not mean the whole system is going to hell.

What we’re seeing this year, however, is something worse. What we’re seeing is the outworking of the belief by a large fraction of the electorate that the system cannot protect their rights, and that they must take the system down in order to protect their safety. We’re seeing it from lunatics; their fears are illusions, and their rights are actually secure. However, because they’re lunatics, they cannot be convinced that they’re safe. No evidence will penetrate their fears. They’re taking their fears and using them to justify a pattern of destruction that is demolishing the system that protects us all.

Progressives in America genuinely believe, in the core of their souls, that the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were stolen. There’s no evidence of either, of course. Democrats actually took their claims of fraud in Florida into federal court in 2000, and after hearing their presentation of the facts demonstrating this alleged fraud, Judge Sanders Sauls of the Leon County Circuit Court in Florida did not even require the Republican party to offer a defense; there were simply no facts in evidence suggesting any fraud at all. There were other, more relevant parts of the decision (which eventually made it to the US Supreme Court,) but that part was clear, and court-tested: there was no evidence of fraud.

This is doubly true for the 2004 election, in which Progressives claim that the introduction into the state of Ohio of electronic voting machines manufactured by Diebold precipitated a state-wide conspiracy in which Republicans defrauded the electorate and stole the election. Never mind that their sole reason for claiming the machines were the source of fraud is that the President of Diebold registered Republican, and that exit polls didn’t match voting results. Never mind that it’s several orders of magnitude simpler to rig exit poll results than it is to rig voting machines throughout an entire state. Never mind that there is not a single, plausible claim of a machine actually being tampered with. Never mind that none of the Diebold machines were even used in the state of Ohio that year. They are absolutely certain Republicans stole the election by rigging Diebold voting machines, and cannot be dissuaded from it. They also complain of long lines and broken machines at polling places, an artifact of a new system and unexpectedly large turnout among black voters; they delusionally blame Republicans for the difficulties in heavily Democratic areas, and interpret Republican attempts to see fair voting laws enforced as attempts to intimidate voters. They lost, and they blame illusory frauds.

This year, apparently, they decided they would steal Ohio back. The only difference is, their frauds are real, not imaginary.

It starts with Jennifer Brunner, who ran for Secretary of State back in 2006 apparently with the goal of affecting the outcome of the 2008 election for the Democrats. Her first actions in office were attempts to bully Republicans out of county election mechanisms, and replace them with Democrats. Then she tried to raise an alarm about the state’s voting machines, in a report that even participants criticized as relying on “over-hyped leaps of logic.” Then she unlawfully attempted to disqualify Republican absentee ballots for failing to check a box that was simply advisory. Then she unlawfully changed the rules for voter registration to allow individuals to vote on the same day they register, a move that’s clearly an opportunity for fraud. Then Ohio Democrats prevented Republican poll watchers from entering the polling area. Now she’s doing her best to prevent local voter registration boards from weeding out hundreds of thousands of improper voter registrations gathered by leftist activists, many of them illegal. (Freedom’s Right has a pretty complete run-down of Brunner’s activities.) Plus, we’re discovering broad-based Progressive activism to register out-of-state voters in Ohio.

It’s clear from their own web sites that they feel this sort of activism is necessary to counteract fraud and intimidation by Republicans — fraud and intimidation that simply do not exist. Here are a couple of lines from the web site of Vote Today Ohio, the Progressive’s organized drive to take advantage of Brunner’s illegal suspension of Ohio’s voter registration laws:

Why is this important? Because early voters will avoid long lines, broken machines, and GOP intimidation that disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Ohioans in 2004. Every early voter reduces the strain on polling places on Election Day, and that means more Obama votes get counted.

We’re looking for volunteers to help us lock down Obama votes before they can be lost to long lines, broken machines and GOP tampering on Election Day.

There it is; they’re going to take advantage of an illegal window of opportunity to prevent imaginary illegalities by Republicans. Bad people imagine wrong has been done to them, a typical reaction of an infant having its will frustrated; they respond by doing a similar but very real wrong against the people they think wronged them. Vengeance is bad even when it’s based on real wrongs; it’s an order of magnitude worse when it’s prompted by delusions. It leads to the demolition of society.

Voter fraud = the decline of the West? Getting a little depressive, aren’t we?

No, I don’t think so. It’s not that a single, stolen election is going to end Western civilization. It’s that the reason we’re seeing so much fraud this year epitomizes the overall decline of the culture, and illustrates how we’re going to go the way of all civilizations. This is some of the same line of thinking that produced The Screeching Inversion back in February, only this goes farther. It illustrates why moonbattery is not just funny, not just dangerous, but ultimately fatal to a civilization.

The process goes like this, in the broadest terms:

• Incorrect ideas about human behavior take root in the culture.
• Parents believe these ideas and stop teaching their children the core virtues of the culture.
• The children grow up unrestrained and incapable of questioning themselves or of allowing themselves to be crossed.
• The emotionally and morally stunted adults don’t get what they want, and blame others for it.
• They decide to get what they want by any means necessary, and to take revenge on those who wronged them.
• Systems of maintaining order break down, tyrants rise to restore order, and civilization crumbles.

There are lots of other factors, involving declining patterns of education, corruption in government and business, health considerations, laziness, world politics, etc., but those are the core steps we’re seeing in practice just now. In this manner, the failure to teach consistent morals leads ultimately to the collapse of civilization and the loss of liberty, prosperity, and culture. It takes hundreds of years for the process to work completely, but we seem to be near the end of a 400-year trajectory that will leave the West in ruin and poverty.

If the Progressives manage to steal Ohio and the election, their Favorite Son as President seems likely to suspend fundamental liberties and attempt to ensure an ongoing, unassailable Progressive majority. If this occurs, and with the recent moves by Western governments to nationalize the banking system, we can expect reactions from libertarians among us that will either lead to secession or civil war. I personally favor secession, since I don’t believe the US Constitution is suitable to managing two, competing moral systems in a single political system; it was written assuming that all sides in the body politic at least share a common moral system, which was the case when it was written but is no longer. I would like to see Red American and Blue America separate into two nations, however difficult that may be to accomplish.