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Entry: You Say You Want a Revolution? Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/you_say_you_want_a_revolution#26364 Post contents: A Republic demands a curious, skeptical, reasoning and , most importantly...a discursive people. While the lapsed-Republic has spectators and dutiful factotums in abundance, Public and Higher Education, combined with a lush but cockeyed popular culture insures that discursive thinking is a lost art. The Socratic Method is something to be avoided at all costs in favor of this cute little assembly line of sophist box-checking called "No Child Left Behind". Indeed, with the Deecider In Cheef's blessed program, no child will be left behind because no child will actually go forward. The scum has risen to the top in this boiling pot. In the end however, the wisecracking Mr. Bush is not to blame, he's simply the dream date for a public that would prefer to stay drunk on itself. Mr. Paul's message is easily distorted and derided by a passive-aggressive media that knows how to tweak the levers of sentimental irony in order to appeal to the baser instincts. The people graze as much on fast thinking as they do on fast food. Grinning fools like David Books, Bill O'Reilly, Karl Rove, William Kristol, David Frum...etc etc are accorded an important place in the forming of public opinion and it shows. Even if Mr. Paul were elected.... in someone's sentimental dreams....the vast majority of our sophist-swilling public would be mortified by what he espouses. Just as we claim to be historical isolationists while acting like imperialists, our people claim to be self-reliant independent citizens while demanding levels of nanny-state socialist programs that are more at home in the serf-redoubts of Europe. Our diffident and amateur citizens deserve the politics they now wallow in, claiming they detest it while surrendering to it's every blandishment. The proof of this is in Mr. Paul's popular reputation as an anachronism, a crazy uncle with a lot of supporters but they must be tad nutty or, heaven forfend, idealistic too. Before anyone with the chaste sense of historical prudence of the likes of Mr. Paul can be elected, and listened to, the people who purport to call themselves citizens of a Democratic Republic must live up to their presumptions. This would appear to be a dim chance at best. The fact that George W. Bush remains at large and continuing to babble incoherently is Exhibit A in why Mr. Paul remains unelectable. In the end, it might just be that we have to taste poverty again to respect the truth of our predicament. We aint getting a little steamy under the collar because of carbon-induced global warming, it's because the ghosts of Mencken, Twain, Bierce et al are laughing their crepuscular asses off about their old nation reduced to a dark comedy that surprises even their lowest expectations. Sent at: 2008 12 02