Fundamental Concepts - Born on Third Base [Weirddave]

In 1988 a Texas Politician, Jim Hightower, addressed the Democratic National Convention at Atlanta, Georgia, on July 19. In his speech, he famously said that the Republican nominee for President, George H.W. Bush, “Was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple”. It's a pithy turn of phrase, and today a lot of people credit Hightower with coining it.

That's nonsense, of course. Hightower, who at the time was the Texas Agricultural Commissioner (he lost a reelection bid to Rick Perry in 1991 amidst a bribery scandal), is the worst kind of progressive (his career has involved supporting Jessie Jackson, Ralph Nader and Jerry Brown for president), naturally he stole the phrase. The actual phrase goes back to at least the Depression era, maybe further, but whoever coined it originally certainly knew how to turn a phrase.

I've been thinking about this phrase a lot lately, although not with regard to Bush 41 (I wonder just how “privileged” Bush felt floating in the Pacific after his Avenger was shot down). No, this phrase comes to mind not as pertinent to individuals, but to groups as I watch a generation of gibbering idiots wail and gnash their teeth as they gleefully strive to tear down the foundation of the very society that makes their existence possible.

Societies change over time, I get that, and theoretically at least I have no problem with it. However that change should be an evolution, and not a devolution. That's what bothers me the most. None of these ideas trumpeted by the Left are new. They have all been tried before, and we know the result. Socialism does not lead to an egalitarian society, it produces a stratified one, with a little pocket of wealth and a whole lot of serfs. Jettisoning the rule of law for the rule of man doesn't result in prosperity, it results in poverty. Silencing freedom of speech creates intellectual stagnation. Forcing people to deny reality in favor of mandated, government approved “facts” gives a dysfunctional, paranoid population incapable of functioning as a greater whole. Unlike Caesar, these things ARE as constant as the Northern Star (and whoa Buddy, there's an historical precedent that's uncomfortable to examine closely). I can point to history, I can show where in the world today these policies are being implemented and the results. This isn't speculation, this isn't hypothesis, it is fact: cold, hard, demonstrable fact.

Nobody cares. This third base on which we find ourselves, this brilliant, shining city on a hill, why, of course it's the natural order of things. Things have been like this for their entire lives, there's no way life could be any different. Freedom and prosperity weren't created, they aren't the result of generations, no, millennia of human trial, effort, thought and debate, they just are.

You and I know that that's not the case, and the inability of many on the left to recognize this is one of the things that is so frustrating when interacting with Progs. Their flat out denial that it's true is one of the few things that fill me with a full-blown rage. The really sad thing is that by the historical evolution of current society, if they are successful they will find themselves in a world antithetical to their own best interests. Here's an example.

Activist gays never tire of pushing their agenda on society at large, an effort that culminated this week with the vilification of some poor Newfie jeweler who had no problem making rings for a lesbian couple's “wedding”, but when they found out that he personally believed in traditional marriage, it was Katy bar the door time. He was immediately cast as the week's Emmanuel Goldstein and the SJW and Gaystapo went into a frenzy.

What they claim they are doing: Fighting for “equality”. This is obviously bullshit because they were treated absolutely the same as any other customer. This is the third base they were born on (or at least the third base that exists today). Twenty years ago everyone would have looked at them askance if they claimed that two people of the same sex could get married, and 50 years ago their lesbianism would have been classified as a mental disorder. Instead, today, they walk into a shop, order a pair of custom rings for their “wedding”, are treated with courtesy and respect, and go on about their business. Equality is here. They made it. That's not even third base, that's home plate.

But that's not good enough, these people think they are still in the batter's box, desperately dodging chin music from a homophobic pitcher, so, since the jeweler personally believes in traditional marriage, he must be destroyed. So what happens, if, having achieved an objective, having convinced society at large of the rightness of their cause, a group keeps pushing further, demanding not just equal treatment, but preferential?

Backlash. This backlash can, in this case, take one of two forms. Either it occurs withing the context of the culture and outrageous demands for preferential treatment start being routinely ignored as spurious and even mocked by the population as a whole. This is a best case scenario, what I would call the normal functioning of a free society. On the other hand, if western society has been so weakened by constant attacks on its founding principles that it recoils from those principles and allows the demanding minority to get its way in the name of fairness or in fear of being called homophobic, then that society is ripe for takeover by a society more confident in its own founding principles. That's what is happening in Europe, the confident interloper is Islam, and I really don't think it all ends well for the gays.

Bottom line: We live in an incredibly free and prosperous society, one unmatched by any in human history. In our comfort and wealth, we have forgotten why this is so, and we are allowing the very things that created that freedom and prosperity to be destroyed by Leftists. THEY claim what will replace it will be better. Conservatives are pointing to history and demonstrating that it will not, but we're working from behind the 8-ball because so many people are (purposefully) ignorant of how we got here. That makes it childishly easy to take it all away.