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Quote of the Day – Success and Failure
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. – attributed to Winston Churchill
I have used this quote before, but it felt appropriate for this week. Normals had a very successful week. I don’t say conservatives, because this was not a conservative coalition. Joe Rogan is not conservative. Elon Musk is not conservative. Tulsi Gabbert is not conservative. Nor is Robert Kennedy, Jr. Yet they coalesced behind Donald Trump to yield a massive victory for sanity. For the normal members of society, the Normals.
Yes, it is aligned with American conservatism (which conserves Classical Liberal values), but that is incidental. It is a victory of the working class and the constructing class in this country — of those who work with their hands and those who create things.
We have two years to do something with the victory, two years in which the coalition will support changes conservatives desire. Do a good enough job and the mandate will be renewed. Fail to do so, and the Republicans will be turfed out and replaced.
But even if we renew the mandate two years after that, and two more – and even two more, eventually this movement will culminate. It may culminate by achieving all of its goals or falling short of those goals. Either way, the current coalition will fall apart. Individual parts of the coalition have different needs and wants. Once the current movement has satisfied the goals they share in common, they will seek the achievement of the goals that differ from those of the Trump coalition — and leave.
This is neither good nor bad. It is simply the way things are. It is the nature of coalitions. Success is not final. Ultimate victory is achieved by recognizing this and preparing for the next round.
Will we? I doubt it. Human nature kind of follows Newton’s laws of motion. Once we are going in one direction we assume we will continue going in that direction forever.
We don’t. That is why we eventually fail. Fortunately, failure is not fatal. So enjoy the moment. Savor the victory. But plan for the next campaign. I guarantee, the Democrats are.
Published in Group Writing
You make a really good point, and one that had eluded me. There have been surveys showing that a large majority of Americans, from all parts of the political spectrum, are opposed to the extreme ideas of the progressive Left, and I have been saying for years that if we just had a political party with that as its platform, it would be unbeatable. Somehow I missed the fact that just such a coalition was forming already, and it just scored a big victory.
One thing that amazes me is that the 2024 election victory was as decisive as it was, despite the fact that it was led by a candidate that so many people find detestable. Just imagine what an awesome political force this movement could be if it were led by a less divisive figure, someone that everyone could get behind. I hope that that is what the future holds, once Trump is out of the picture.
I use Russell Kirk’s view of the American Constitution as a conservative document to define myself as a fiscally conservative small federal government advocate. The Constitution is very accommodating to such a viewpoint. That doesn’t mean other variants cannot be part of the process and much of that can be handled by states. Those specific people that you have named have demonstrated ability to work within such a framework as normals.
I happen to think that the 16th and 17th Amendments have been big contributors to unnecessary shifting of government responsibility from states to federal. We should have a discussion of how our federal government might look today if the taxation path for federal funding had been tariffs and taxes on common natural resource use and extraction had been taken instead of personal income taxation. Maybe we could still make a change.
I don’t want to step on your “quote of the day” @seawriter because it is an excellent and pertinent one. But I am in for American quotes and will offer the following from Thomas Jefferson’s talk he gave to his Albemarle, Virginia neighbors on February 12, 1790, whom he addressed as “fellow-laborers and fellow-sufferers” in “the holy cause of freedom” and he told them:
“It rests now with ourselves alone to enjoy in peace and concord the blessings of self-government, so long denied to mankind: to show by example the sufficiency of human reason for the care of human affairs and that the will of the majority, the Natural law of every society, is the only sure guardian of the rights of man. Perhaps even this may sometimes err. But its errors are honest, solitary and short-lived. Let us then, my dear friends, for ever bow down to the general reason of society. We are safe with that, even in its deviations, for it soon returns again to the right way. These are lessons we have learnt together. We have prospered in their practice, and the liberality with which you are pleased to approve my attachment to the general rights of mankind assures me we are still together in these its kindred sentiments.”
He had only recently returned from France and his final response to President Washington’s offer to serve as Secretary of State was still pending. He accepted that offer a few days later.
The quote sounds like he could be addressing today’s normals. Jefferson does not seem to be calling for emotional reactions to sustain the rights of mankind.
That is a very good quote. It really deserves to be featured in its own Quote of the Day post, instead of being buried in mine. I say that sincerely. Please repost it as such. Tomorrow is open. So is the next day. (Unfortunately all of the rest of November is open, except for Saturdays.) Sign up for a day here. (And what about the rest of you? Don’t leave LillyB hanging. She is too nice a person for that.)
I’ll post it tomorrow.
I see the Constitution as the means by which we fulfill the promises of the Declaration of Independence.
It is very interesting how many of the Virginia delegation to the Constitutional Convention left before the final document was ready for signatures or were still present but refused to sign without the provisions included in the Bill of Rights.
The text of the Constitution defines the structure and operating guidelines for the federal government and the Bill of Rights protects the people against abuses of those promises made to protect human rights. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence and he and George Mason, Patrick Henry, and other Virginians had already enacted a Bill of Rights for their state. James Madison, a Federalist, recognized the need to effect a compromise to save the fledgling nation and he did that.
Freedom of speech is an essential component of individual free agency which is the foundation for individual liberty. Many Americans today are lacking an understanding of how this works. That is what needs work today.
But it’s a fake quote.
I had hoped there were still normal Democrats around. By my definition of “normal” for a politician, I mean they hold the belief that having rational dicussions about issues and looking for acceptable compromises is part of the job of representing all the people in your distract, state, or country. The Democrat party has effectively been captured by irrationally thinking beings, while at the same time alienating normal Democrats who try to get them to stop . . .
The government level (federal versus state and/or local) at which the Left and the Democrat Party tries to settle every issue creates the break. The size, in functions and spending, of the federal government is not in accord with Constitutional intent.
The behavior of the Democrats reminds me of the irrational determination of the magter in Harry Harrison’s novel Planet of the Damned. In that book it turned out they were infected with a brain parasite. It might be time to do a CAT scan on some of the crazier Democrats to see if that is their problem, too.
I watched this video of Nigel Farage and following that I watched an interview with Elon Musk’s father. It will be interesting to watch how the interaction with the UK Labor government goes, assuming it survives long enough to go through such a process. Musk’s father is really on point insisting that what the Left calls Far Right Extremists are really merely normals.
Where is the Musk’s Dad interview?
When I closed out the Farage interview a number of options appeared and I selected the one featuring Elon’s dad. It was a South African TV news station’s video and I didn’t get a link. I think it’s Youtube.