Quote of the day

I was an atheist and an agnostic for a long time.  Finding God, or perhaps accepting the God I always knew was there, was transformative in too many ways to describe.  But one of the most important things God did was make a realist of me.  There’s a great joke for you.  The atheists preen themselves on their realism and accuse the faithful of wishful thinking, but for me, God freed me to develop a full, honorable and tragic sense of life, to perceive both the nobility and the sinfulness of every individual, and to understand why no system will make us good or fair but that there are systems that can keep us free so that we can choose whether or not to be good or fair.  That understanding – plus a sense of peace in the face of the left’s slavering insults and hatred – were gifts of God to me and it turns out they’re very helpful in maintaining my conservatism. Andrew Klavan

Rahm’s secret strategy

The Hegelian Dialectic. It’s a three step operation consisting of a Thesis/Anti-Thesis/Synthesis.

Step one is the problem or the thesis that party A presents.

Step two is the opposition to the thesis or reaction to the problem by Party B.

Step three is the solution to the problem by (artificial) synthesis of the problem.

I use the word artificial because in step one the problem is often already solved or it doesn’t really exist. It’s just put out there to cause fear or panic so that Party A can provide the solution. Often Party A already has the solution because he created an artificial problem.

An example:

Present the problem (crisis) or create one: a national cyber attack.

Opposition/reaction to the crisis: mass panic, fear that could lead to hysteria.

Synthesis or solution: martial law, government shutdown of the internet.

See how easy this works? Instead of a cyber attack, it could be a flu pandemic that puts the scene in motion. And when the “crisis” is bad enough, big and scary enough, the people will give up their rights for government protection.

This is what Rahm means when he says “never let a crisis go to waste.”