Shattering the Overton Window, by Robert Gore | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Posted by straightlinelogic 4 years, 12 months ago to Politics
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Heaven forbid anyone appear too extreme. Our rulers keep discourse safely within the Overton window by allowing debate about the details of what the government does or doesn’t do. However, those who question the necessity of particular government agencies or programs, or government in general, are beyond-the-pale extremists and cast into the Abyss of the Unacceptable, one zip code over from the Abyss of the Deplorable.

This is an excerpt. For the complete article please click the above link.
SOURCE URL: https://straightlinelogic.com/2019/12/27/shattering-the-overton-window-by-robert-gore/


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  • Posted by $ 25n56il4 4 years, 12 months ago
    Now we have heard it all. That baby killing governor of Virginia is daydreaming of sending the National Guard to take residents' legal guns and if they don't surrender them, putting them in jail for 5 years. What NG person is going to attempt to enforce an 'Unlawful Order'? They swore to uphold the Constitution of the U.S. not the dreamings of their Governor. Let's see if the Bill passes the Virginia Legislature.
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    • Posted by mccannon01 4 years, 12 months ago
      The problem here is the assumption the NG person is versed in Constitutional knowledge and can discern an unconstitutional order. I'm willing to venture a guess that many who have taken the oath to defend the Constitution have never actually read it or understood what they've read if they did. They have, however, been trained to follow orders from above, whatever those orders may be.
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      • Posted by freedomforall 4 years, 12 months ago
        To make your point, consider the actions of the troops with tanks under MacArthur, Patton, and Eisenhower in the slaughter of the 17,000 WWI veterans "bonus army" protesters in June 1932 violating the Posse Comitatus Act.
        Hoover should have been impeached and MacArthur and Patton court-martialed and executed for murder.
        This event may have been the factor that cost Hoover the election in Nov 1932 and inflicted Americans with FDR - leading to the socialist government enslavement of Americans.
        US government federal had started on that road when the Constitution was forced on Americans (with no Bill of Rights) by the traitor A. Hamilton and his comrades.
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        • Posted by mccannon01 4 years, 12 months ago
          Excellent point, FFA. I read about that incident a long time ago. There are many more recent examples of "following orders" in the USA as well.

          Looks like things are heating up in Virginia.
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  • Posted by freedomforall 4 years, 12 months ago
    Georgia secedes while Atlanta remains in the Union. Ditto for all the fly-over country except those large cities filled with bankers, lawyers, and other government looters.
    👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
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    • Posted by 4 years, 12 months ago
      A refinement on your concept: all the states that voted for Trump form one or more countries, except for the large cities filled with bankers, lawyers, and other looters (I left out government because it's redundant).
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      • Posted by freedomforall 4 years, 12 months ago
        Yes, I think many would join together, perhaps too quickly and without enough consideration. The Articles of Confederation could be a way to gather them without too much interference with individual sovereignty.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 4 years, 11 months ago
        It's kind of a joke, but this is what the Founders wanted: no distant, expensive, intrusive central gov't. Jefferson imagined cities have vastly different rules, varying even by neighborhood, so everyone could live free.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 4 years, 11 months ago
    My understanding of the thesis: The Overton window sets the bounds of questions we can ask. These boundaries limit discourse about large structural issues, e.g. the root causes of financial crises.

    I think people don’t discuss it because it arcane to people outside of the financial industry, not because it’s taboo. The article says it must be a taboo because the financial system is so god-awful. I don’t see that at all. Central banks give people more confidence in the banking system. They allow money to be created to fund the creation of new forms of means of production. They’re not perfect, and maybe they’ll go obsolete like phone monopolies, which served a purpose before we had technology for competing phone services.

    Apparently contrary to the thesis about taboos, the article says “an ever-increasing percentage of the populace know in their bones that contemporary governance is rotten to its evil core.” I do think there’s some kind of spiritual crisis going on, but it’s not that people have caught on to gov’t problems. Respect for rights has increased enormously in the past few centuries. It was only a few hundred years ago we started experimenting with a practical democratic republic. It took a century to end out-and-out slavery and longer to respect everyone’s right to vote. In living memory, it was considered bad form for people to travel alone in pursuit of happiness (i.e. job opportunities, money, following their deams) and not be discriminated against by their physical attributes. It sounds insane to me after this amazing achievement to say gov’t is evil at its core.

    This does not excuse all the abuses government and/or corrupt individuals in the gov’t commit. It’s wrong though to judge a real-world functioning government against a utopian ideal.

    I don’t follow how the Overton window is related to coverups like the Afghanistan papers, nonsense about jobs being a limited resource like meal tickets, and global warming denialism. It just seems like saying a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories with a taboo offered as the reason people aren’t into conspiracy theories. It’s actually a good thing people don’t by this crap. I believe we will see liberalization of monetary policy in my life time, possibly with cryptocurrencies as a competitor to national banks. I believe we’ll see reforms to try to prevent future Afghanistan Papers and maybe a healthy dose of “Vietnam syndrome”, reluctance to act as a global empire. I believe a combinations of measures to deal with the effects of global warming and limit its extent.

    We’ve already drastically reduced poverty, disease, crime, and increased respect for rights. The people of Earth need to stay focused on continuing the trend of prosperity.
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