Insurrection

 

For What It’s Worth 

There's something happening here.    

But what it is ain't exactly clear    

There's a man with a gun over there.    

Telling me I got to beware.    

I think it's time we stop,    

Children, what's that sound?    

Everybody look, what's going down. 

What is going down? When did things go wrong? 

Many fine people have called the storming of the US Capitol on January 6^th, 2021 an insurrection.  Those fine people apparently do not include many Republicans.  So this division must be a recent phenomenon, correct?  Actually it goes back at least to my childhood, which is as far as I can remember. Barry Goldwater said, “Extremism in defense of liberty is not a vice and moderation in pursuit of freedom is no virtue”  Ronald Reagan said, “Government is the problem”, Nixon said that he was the Law-and-Order president.  George W Bush said Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Each of these statements was false. 

If extremism is a vice and moderation, liberty and freedom are all virtues, then together the vice of extremism (a negative) and the virtue of liberty (a positive) ARE a vice (a negative).  If moderation and freedom are both virtues then together they ARE a virtue.  

The policies of government might be thought to be a problem, but government, as the collective will of the people, can not by definition be the problem. 

Those who break the law can not be the Law-and-Order president.  

Weapons of Mass Destruction were not found in Iraq.  

"You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts."  Hearing Daniel Moynihan's phrase uttered by Vice President Pence during his pre-election debate was cringe worthy from an administration that prided itself on having its own alternate “facts”. 

The insurrection was a long time coming.  There is something happening here, but its has been happening for a very long time.