The title of this post is an ironic slogan from the 1980s. It was coined to mock the “term limits” movement, which was (and is) a push to restrict senators, congressmen, and other elected politicians to a fixed, small number of terms in office.
The idea of term limits is absurd on the face of it. Just think — its proponents want to pass a law to prevent people from voting for someone they might otherwise prefer to vote for. And expect sitting politicians to pass legislation that would shortly put them out of office — how likely is that? As a strategy for civic improvement it seems at best quixotic, and at worst authoritarian.
Yet I can sympathize with the movement’s advocates. Once they are firmly ensconced in office, congressbeings continue for decade after decade. They accumulate power and perks, become part of the corrupt D.C. apparatus, and cease to represent the interests of their constituents. Name recognition, face time on TV talk shows, and the franking privilege — the perk that allows them to spam their constituents as much as they like via the U.S. Mail without having to pay postage — give them a leg up against any upstarts who might challenge their sinecures.
To attempt to fix this corrupt system with term limits would be analogous to putting a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. The problem is far deeper and more systemic than can be corrected with yet more freedom-limiting legislation. Something in our social and political systems is obviously badly broken.
A similar process is underway in Western Europe. Even though the situation there is quite different from the bizarre political circus on this side of the Atlantic, the two political cultures have a major commonality: the political elites remain firmly entrenched in power without regard for the interests of the electorate. And yet that same electorate keeps voting for them over and over again in Europe, just as American voters do here.
This phenomenon first drew my attention back in the 1980s, when I read the results of opinion polls on mass immigration. Voters were (and are) overwhelmingly opposed to mass immigration. A substantial proportion of them considered it an extremely important issue. Back then it seemed a wonderful opportunity for some savvy politician to take up the issue as a means to gain elected office. Yet it was another thirty years before Donald Trump beat the odds to get elected president, and even then it was with a minority of the popular vote.
Immigration is the most prominent issue in the populist program, but there are many more — gay marriage, gun control, the push to completely cleanse the public square of religion, and other battlefronts in the culture wars. Voters have strong opinions about those things, but for some reason keep voting for politicians that ignore their concerns.
What’s going on here? Why don’t they ever throw the rascals out?
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Over at Western Rifle Shooters they have a slogan: “There Is No Voting Our Way Out of This”, or TINVOWOOT for short. Empirically speaking, that seems to be the case: the rascals remain in power and continue their rascally ways, election after election.
Strictly speaking, however, voters do have the power to change their leadership. The German people can still mark their ballots for the AfD, and if enough of them did so, the political situation in the country would change dramatically. But that doesn’t happen. Despite their opinion about immigration (as revealed by opinion polls) voters keep voting for the same old establishment parties, all of which support the importation of migrants. In Germany, TINVOWOOT is definitely the rule.
Last September, when I was interviewed by José Atento in Quebec, he asked me what I would advise people to do in order to reverse the Islamization of the West. I said, “The steps [that should be] taken are the same as everywhere: the people should vote for somebody else than the people they are usually voting for. But they don’t…”
For more than I decade I’ve been emphasizing that Islam is not the problem. It is simply a virulent pathogen that is taking advantage of a severely weakened host. Our political and cultural leaders are enabling the destruction of our societies by Muslims.
Yet those treasonous politicians and media snoids are not the problem, either. We, the voters of the West, keep putting those politicians in power. And we, the media consumers of the West, keep turning on the TV and listening to the talking heads who explain to us why all of this is a good and moral thing. In the USA — where media outlets depend on viewership to maintain their advertising revenues — the viewers tune in to the propaganda in sufficient numbers to keep MassMediaCorp awash in cash.
Once again, what’s going on here? Why do we keep doing these foolish things?
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South Korea reported 800 new cases of the Wuhan Coronavirus in a single day, while the Italian total has risen over 1,100, with 29 deaths. Meanwhile, the first death from the disease in the USA was reported in Washington State, where the governor declared a state of emergency. However, no cases of the coronavirus have as yet been confirmed in Hungary or Poland.
