In an opinion piece in yesterday's USA Today, Glenn Reynolds quotes from Two Cheers for Anarchism, by Professor James Scott:
""One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called 'Irish Democracy,' the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people, than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs."
...And, as it turns out, most of the people signing up for Obamacare aren't the uninsured for whom it was supposedly enacted, but people who were previously insured (many of whom lost their previous insurance because of Obamacare's new requirements). "At most," writes Bloomberg's Megan McArdle, "they've signed up 15% of the uninsured that they were expecting to enroll. ... Where are the uninsured? Did hardly any of them want coverage beginning Jan. 1?" It looks that way.
If the program fails, it won't be because Republicans stopped it, despite all the House votes and defunding efforts. It will be because millions of Americans' passive resistance brought it to its knees. Irish Democracy, indeed.
...So, despite all the federal laws on the books, Colorado has de facto nullified them, and started a process that may very well snowball, all without directly attacking the federal laws, or the federal government, at all. Meanwhile, millions of Americans may be in the process of effectively killing Obamacare simply by staying home.As we struggle, mostly in vain, to rein in the metastasizing power of a federal government that has grown out of control, perhaps Irish Democracy offers a solution. Sometimes it seems like that's the only kind of democracy that's likely to make a difference."
Insty
21 comments:
To paraphrase Gandhi -- three million federal bureaucrats cannot control three hundred million Americans if those Americans refuse to cooperate.
I would hope that Irish Democracy would involve a lot of drinking.
Trooper York said...
I would hope that Irish Democracy would involve a lot of drinking.
Go ahead -- blame it on Bushmills.
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Glenn Reynolds's's's USA pieces are good. Very good. Each one I read I go, "Damn, that guy is good."
Then open Facebook comments to catch the reaction. The reaction from Facebookland.
ex: "and besides, what does Colorado marijuana law have to do with Affordable Care Act anyway?"
Good one genius. Pow, ya frogged me right on shoulder.
It's an example of resistance by nonparticipating, by carrying on as you will. Behaving as if they don't count. Pow I frogged ya back.
Not said so far so I'll say it first, yay me!, allow me to appeal to your inner Hippy, "what if they waged a war and nobody came? " Hip, hip, hip, Hippy Chick.
Because that is what is happening.
And all this having government reflect your values, reflect back to you, reflect you back to society at large, and not the other way around where government dictates the values you will be compelled to live out is all well and good but it does overlook we are entering the most dangerous period of all for this administration, so ideologic to act aside of Congress out of frustration with this lack of cooperation, and says so. The massively obscenely oversized and unaccountable and malevolentextraconstitutional regulatory agencies will not be ignored.
I hope he's right, but Reynolds also keeps typing 'tar and feathers' as comments on fascist behavior by the leftists in government, as if anyone would will ever do anything like that.
I'd say we're in a mess of shit if all we can do is refuse to comply without physical force.
Because force is what comes next.
It strikes me that no force is needed, other than garnishing wages when it comes to such thing as not paying taxes or your obamacare premium.
Gandhi's plan only worked because the Brits refuse to shoot or imprison or torture.
Hitler and Stalin and Mao had no such compunction against such methods.
Obama has shown no hesitancy to use every legal measure against his opponents, including the IRS, EPA, NSA, and FBI.
We are each of us guilty of some felony somewhere. He'll use that for coercion.
Failure to comply will mean jack shit when you're broke and sitting in jail.
The problem for them would be sheer numbers, though.
Sheer numbers was the Chinese problem, too.
After awhile, nobody is making anything except prison garb and meals. So it eventually fails, every time.
Going through it is a bitch, though.
One hardly ever sees the word "underclass" used anymore.
Mysterious Meade:
"https://www.magnetmail.net/actions/email_web_version.cfm?recipient_id=1512374778&message_id=3262228&user_id=REDCROSS1&group_id=1206940&jobid=16659755"
I guess he's one of those eccentric millionaires.
Bat, now it's the working poor.
I would hope that Irish Democracy would involve a lot of drinking.
From what I've observed, "Irish [anything]" involves lots of drinking. Examples seen in real life:
Irish poker
Irish driving
Irish courting
Irish sobriety
So Scott knows my family intimately. Truculent Irish indeed.
He's right about ChoomCare, but the marijuana thing will have to wait a while until we see how it works out (of course, the Petri dish being CO, it may take decades to see if it makes things weirder).
Eric the Fruit Bat said...
One hardly ever sees the word "underclass" used anymore.
They're holding that for all the poor unfortunates who come here for AmnestyCare.
PS If anyone thinks he'll stop short of violence, remember how he bragged how many people he's droned.
PPS The more I think about it, the more the old Ahnold movie "The Running Man" seems prophetic.
Gandhi's plan only worked because the Brits refuse to shoot or imprison or torture.
Bzzt! Not only did the British imprison dissidents -- Gandhi's plan relied on it. It relied on the regular physical abuse of Indians by British forces. It even accounted for the fact that the British can and DID shoot dissidents now and again, most famously at Jallianwala Bagh in 1919. He simply relied on the fact that the British lacked the will to kill *millions* of Indians.
"He simply relied on the fact that the British lacked the will to kill *millions* of Indians."
Which confirms my response.
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