The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for the first Watcher's Council match up of 2012, carved eternally in the akhasic records of cyberspace.
Great ideas and eternal truths never die - or as the megilla written by Ecclesiastes put it so well long ago "There is nothing new under the sun" - because human nature never changes.
This week's winning essay, The Noisy Room's 2011 – Turning Our Backs on the Gods of the Copybook Headings takes an old and very prescient poem by Rudyard Kipling, applies its lessons to our present day and turns in a real cri de coeur. Here's a slice:
Rudyard Kipling:
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
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Welcome to 2012… Buckle up because it will be one hell of a ride as Obama goes for broke and his mask comes off, displaying the full intent of his Marxist agenda. Interesting times indeed.
2011 was a year replete with Progressivism running wild in America and across the globe. A year that freedom slipped away and tyrants gathered collectively in gleeful anticipation of a coalescence of power, wealth and control. The year that many patriots woke up in America and realized they did not recognize their country any more.
Economics
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
The Keynesian economists blather on and on… Every channel you turn to, they proclaim that we are in a recovery, albeit slow, but, recovery nonetheless. And they actually think we are stupid enough to believe that. Elitist arrogance run amok.
Silly Marxists, we know the markets are rigged. All they do is go up and Americans know it is a lie. Gold and silver markets are being manipulated. Stocks are a bad joke. The dollar is junk. While firms such as IMF Global rip investors off, publicly and brutally, individual banks are stealing their clientele blind a few dollars at a time. Why? Because they can. The collective mentality dictates that you should steal all you can before the ship goes down for the last time. After all, what does it matter? Get it while you can, is their reasoning. Screw everyone, time to look out for numero uno. What they forget is that their actions will have a cost, just like it did in the days before the Russian empire came tumbling down and the KGB changed their clothes from chic jack booted thuggery, to sleek government de regeur.
We are trillions in debt here in the US. Forget untenable, it’s un-survivable. But our leaders keep printing money in a Weimar frenzy, declaring: “What inflation?” While Americans go to the store and weigh what they can afford to eat this week as opposed to keeping the heat on.
Regulations are strangling capitalism to death and company after company is down-sizing or folding altogether. Three years into Obama’s bleak utopia and unemployment is staggering. Don’t believe the government’s numbers – they are a lie as well. Rigged to make gullible taxpayers believe things are better than they really are. Thy story is entitled Animal Farm. How very anti-laissez-faire. Welcome to 1932 redux.
I sense Cass Sunstein chuckling sardonically behind the Marxist curtain of the EPA and other agencies stealing our land, telling us what we can and can’t buy and where we can and can’t live. Herding us into cities where we can be stacked and packed and controlled. They are engineering tenement Hell.
In our non-Council category, the winner was an old Watcher's Council favorite, Sultan Knish with The Year We Lost Afghanistan, Etc. submitted by The Political Commentator.
Here are this week’s full results.New Zeal was unable to vote this week, and was affected by the 2/3 vote penalty:
Council Winners
- *First place with 3 votes! The Noisy Room – 2011 – Turning Our Backs on the Gods of the Copybook Headings
- Second place *t* with 2 1/3 votes – Joshuapundit- A Bridge Too Far: CAIR Versus Bare Naked Islam
- Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Right Truth –Taliban to Gitmo: Bye-Bye!
- Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – New Zeal-Communist Party Targets Veterans for Recruitment: How Will Their Skills be Used?
- Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Bookworm Room-A tour de force post taking us from Google interviews, to self-esteem, to dancing men
- Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – The Razor-Israelis Stand Up to the Haredi
- Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Rhymes With Right-Where Non-Discrimination Principles And Aiding Students Conflict
- Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – The Mellow Jihadi-I Gotta Move to Texas
- Fifth place with 2/3 vote – Simply Jews – Hugo Chavez Reflects
- Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Colossus of Rhodey – Civilization Continues to Crumble
- Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – VA Right! – Why the Iowa Caucus Is (Almost!) Irrelevant
Non-Council Winners
- First place with 3 2/3 votes! – Sultan Knish- The Year We Lost Afghanistan, Etc. submitted by The Political Commentator
- Second place *t* with 2 votes – Gates Of Vienna – Driving Out The Infidel submitted by Joshuapundit
- Second place *t* with 2 votes – Jon's Deep ThoughtsMilitary Intelligence is an oxymoron? I think not. submitted by Bookworm Room
- Third place with 1 2/3 votes - Small Wars Journal – Thinking the Unthinkable about Napalm and Flamethrowers submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
- Fourth place with 1 1/3 votes - Daily Mail/Dominic Sandbrook –The spectre of 1932: How a loss of faith in politicians and democracy could make 2012 the most frightening year in living memory submitted by The Noisy Room
- Fifth place *t* with 1 vote - Confessions of a Closet Republican – <After Christmas Day Bombings Boko Haram Tells Nigerian Christians They Have 3 Days To Get Out submitted by Simply Jews
- Fifth place *t* with 1 vote -Alex Knapp/Outside The Beltway – Ron Paul Versus The Fourteenth Amendmentsubmitted by The Glittering Eye
- Sixth place with 2/3 vote -Wolf Howling –Obama Signs On To Silencing Criticism Of Islam submitted by Rhymes With Right
- Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote -National Review Online –Repo Men submitted by The Razor
- Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote -Powerline –Keynes Was Right–About the Jews? submitted by The Watcher
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yes good post
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