Watch this side-by-side of Lady Nan and John Boehner discussing their respective positions on “governance”, and grade it as an English teacher might an oral presentation.
On points, Nancy won hands down…she spoke directly to the audience, and to the cameras, she spoke with clear unaided recollection of what she wanted to say, and with full confidence that what she was saying was the truth.
And every single word out of her mouth was a lie.
On the other hand, Boehner used notes, and fumbled through them, as if searching for the right words. He appeared a little befuddled, and regardless about what it was that was bothering him (could have been his tie clashing with his shirt), it appeared his puzzlement was about the subject he was talking about, governance. Compared to Pelosi, Boehner told the truth, only he did not convey that he was actually sure he knew what the truth was. He did not speak with conviction or self-assuredness. Or perhaps it was embarrassment. In any case, he hedged his convictions, letting pass every opportunity to nail the Democrat Party’s hide to the wall.
End result, the liar appears to be on offense, the truth-teller was on defense. Why?
Recently it was reported that a few black students at Washington & Lee University extorted the school’s administration to remove the Confederate flags from school property, where they had flown as decorative symbols since 1930. (I say extorted, because it is a private school and I know of no law suit that could have prevailed to force them.) The media largely applauded this decision, or surrender, of the school. The school also made the usual obligatory apology for slavery in its past. I have my own opinion about the removal of those flags, and the absolute senselessness of an apology for a practice that no living person or institution should ever be made to bear guilt. But this incident did bring to my mind what Ayn Rand wrote in 1972 about the student takeover of the administration building at Berkeley in 1964. “The Cashing In; the Student Rebellion“, an except of which can be read here.
Her analysis gives us a lot of insights as to why Democrats appear to win when they lie and GOP leadership appears to lose when they tell the truth.
Miss Rand laid out the psychological reasons why this 2014 rendition of the W&L administration caved as easily as did the Berkeley administration in 1964, the key being the shallowness of the moral and philosophical core of the administrators. So if you think we’d learned anything from those ugly days in California 50 years ago, well, we haven’t. In fact., from the conduct of the Republican Party, even during the Clinton administration, it seems whatever was in the university water fountains in Berkeley in ’65 have been in Washington’s for at least 20 years.
Miss Rand’s 1972 analysis lays out the so-called philosophical thinking that links Berkeley, the W&L cave-in to the Pelosi pummeling of Boehner all together. In the except (above) she describes the utter vacuity of the student-Left’s philosophical argument. In essence, their religion is anti-truth, even anti-fact, making it impossible to debate politely without eventually having to raise your shillelagh above your head. This is how inmates take over an asylum. This is also why moms sometimes swat their loudmouthed, bawl-baby kids on the behind in Walmart, as they march them out into the parking lot. They should have been driven out with bulrushes, just to be merciful.
I’m not really telling you anything you don’t already know about the Left here. The Left lives in another universe and has for a long time. But in her longer essaywhich you may find on the internet, or in her book of essays, Return of the Primitive, Rand goes on to detail as to why the Berkeley administration caved so easily…and how the manner of their surrender was telegraphed (as a dog can smell fear) so easily as to energize and grow the student revolt beyond their wildest expectations. The original take-over had grown to become a carnival, a comedy, even, as the administration had become a farce. Within days the original occupying students, their list of silly leftwing demands, so easily gained, found themselves joined by small student groups with even sillier causes, just for the sport of it, (and the iconoclastic drugs and sex), Party Time!, while the administration trembled, instead of sending in uniformed men with nightsticks and hauling the criminals away. In a tiny corner of a major university in California all civilization had broken down, all because a few men didn’t know what to do when confronted with a bunch of strangelings from another universe…all because they were completely and utterly unarmed.
I get that same feeling when any member of the GOP leadership speak of “the people.”
Miss Rand proved out that when people with a strong belief, however deranged, confronts a groups with no real beliefs of their own, beyond that of their status, living only under the protection of vain repetitions of ancient beliefs, and no real confidence in those beliefs because they have for so long gone untested, strong beliefs win almost by default.
University presidents in those days were by nature hand-wringers, their most serious disciplinary actions having to do with panty raids. Their bible was the school code of conduct and other regulations. Bureaucrats by nature, you can perhaps understand why a strong, vile hater such as Lois Lerner could snowball an entire wing of the IRS into trembling fear, as she storm-trooped her campaigns against citizens.
The Truth and most of the philosophical virtues we associate with morality are not bullets in a bandolero we wear across our shoulder, to be used only when it is politically expedient. They are the foundation beneath out feet. Or should be. The modern Left is as vacuous as those children who first stormed the offices of Berkeley, only now live in swank neighborhoods and have secure teaching positions in the same universities they brought to their knees.
Their flim-flam worked, and will continue to do so until they confront men and women who stand on solid ground.
