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Legal Insurrection is 9 years old, and filled with dread

Legal Insurrection is 9 years old, and filled with dread

Thinking through what it will mean to live without institutions.

Nine years ago today Legal Insurrection published its first post, Obama is Door No. 2.

For background on how we got started and have grown over the years, see our 7th Anniversary post, or scroll through our  tag.

Last year I noted that while it was a difficult year personally, I was optimistic. That’s been one of my roles over the years, keeping hope alive. But there’s no pep talk this year. Just dread.

The attempts to unwind the 2016 presidential election have changed everything.

I’ve written before how the attempts to intimidate the Electoral College electors into changing their votes was a game changer for me. That went beyond politics into attempted coup territory. It wasn’t just a matter of opposing Trump or Trump policies, which is legitimate, but an attempt to nullify an election. Criticize Trump all you want, I certainly did during the primaries, but respect the vote. If you don’t respect the vote, then you are not just political opposition, you are a danger to our system.

If the assault on the Electoral College was the game changer for me, a runner up was waking up to implications of the concentration of power in a small number of social media and internet companies who have been weaponized to shut down speech and expression. Google, Facebook, Twitter and two handfuls of other companies now completely control our ability to communicate with each other, while internet backbone companies are poised to block internet access altogether.

Imagine living in a repressive country in which the government blocked access to and suppressed internet content. You don’t need to move. It’s coming here but from private industry. This is, in many ways, more dangerous than government suppression of free speech because at least in the U.S. the government is subject to the First Amendment, and can be voted out of office.

I don’t know if there are any uncorrupted institutions left that matter. The education system, from public grade school through public and private higher ed, is gone. The frontal assault on free speech on campuses is the result. If you think this is just a Humanities and Social Sciences problem, stay tuned. In 3-5 years, if we’re still here, we’ll be writing about how the social justice warriors have corrupted the STEM fields. It’s happening now, it’s just not in the headlines yet.

There is a rising tide of absolutism in ideas and enforcement of ideological uniformity that is palpable. I feel it in the air, even at Cornell which is far from the worst. Incredibly, the new Cornell President has charged a newly-formed task force to explore, among other things, “legal mechanisms [which] are available to the university to prevent, address and counter situations in which protected expression on campus is harmful to those vulnerable to its effects.”

Even language as a means of communication is corrupted, with terminology manipulated and coerced to achieve political ends. It started on campuses, and it’s moved into the AP stylebook and the mainstream.

The press could stand as a bulwark against this slide, but it too is corrupted. The greatest threat to freedom of the press is not Donald Trump’s bloviating about FCC licenses (which has been a favorite threat traditionally of Democrats), but the mainstream press itself which has abdicated even the pretense of neutrality and joined #TheResistance.

The lack of respect for the vote is also what has alienated me from the so-called conservative movement. There now is a cottage industry of self-appointed guardians of conservatism whose main job is to delegitimize the vote, and to encourage a soft coup because they didn’t get their way in the primaries.

The Republican Party? Hah. Don’t get me started.

So I’m thinking through what it will mean to live without institutions.

Sorry to be a downer on our blog birthday. I’ve always tried to be honest with you, and honestly, this blog birthday I’m filled with dread, not good cheer.

I’d like to extend my thanks to the editors and authors, who have helped cover for me as I continue to grapple with unresolved personal issues. And to the readers, who keep coming back for more, and whose messages of support help keep me going.

[Featured image: Me standing during Cornell ‘Take a Knee’ protest]

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Comments

Hey Prof.

Don’t be discouraged we are still fighting and as long as we still fight there is a chance at winning.

You and your crew do great work here, I can get more real news here in 5 minutes than I can going pretty much anywhere else.

Also, even though some institutions may fall I believe that others will rise in their place and people like you will be a part of that rise.

Thank you Prof, Thank you for your work and dedication and Thanks to the entire LI staff.

    Agree wholeheartedly, but let’s not fall into the trap of seeing the takeover of ed and the media as distinct initiatives. They are both part of a distinct effort to use cultural institutions to alter prevailing consciousness and eventually culture itself.

    In honor of the decision to pull the US out of UNESCO, we should appreciate why they call it Media Education. http://invisibleserfscollar.com/decreeing-the-interdependence-of-environment-economy-society-and-cultural-diversity-in-the-21st/ lays out their current Scientific Humanism agenda.

    We can only fight against what we accurately grasp. Preventing accurate perception is the bullseye of much of the media and education efforts.

      Tom Servo in reply to Robin. | October 12, 2017 at 6:01 pm

      I sympathize completely with you, Prof, but I’ve got to say that I AM excited! Because you, and reasonable thinking people like you, have finally come around to what I have been thinking every minute since November 7, 2008.

      This is a system that has been full of lies and coercion and manipulation for ulterior goals for a long long time – but now all the masks are coming off. Good people like you are FINALLY starting to see the monstrosities we are fighting for what they really are.

      Yes, they have destroyed the institutions – that’s past, it’s done. Time for us to finish the job of burning them done, so that something new can arise in its place.

Thank you for this, Prof. Jacobsen. I oftentimes wonder if I have allowed my cynicism to get the better of me. It is somewhat comforting to know that I am not the only person who is deeply disturbed about the direction in which our culture appears to be headed.

    As I try to explain to my 30 YO SJW, it’s all about FREEDOM. Once lost it’s not easy to recover. I truly don’t think the kids want their freedom to disappear; they just don’t realize it could actually happen.

      Tom Servo in reply to CBKC. | October 13, 2017 at 12:08 am

      The citizens in Caracas didn’t think it could ever happen.

      And now it has, and they are realizing it’s too late to get it back.

Prayers for you and your family. I am grateful to our Legal Insurrection family, who have helped me keep feelings of dread at bay. Hugs.

Your blog is a staple in our home for all of us old enough to pay attention to politics. It is like an old friend with whom we are walking through the years, and we are grateful. Your optimism is always a breath of fresh air, but the fact that you’re still grounded in reality is what makes it a fantastic blog. We have to accept reality, but press on in hope.

THANK YOU!!

When a person turns off the news and lives in his own physical surroundings, it’s amazing how normal the world feels. Living on the front lines of the culture wars, you unfortunately don’t have the option to turn it off. Never forget that there were 63,000,000 other people said “no” last year, and they’re not going away, not to mention that a case can be made that the left’s increasing brazenness and stridency is actually sowing the seeds of its own destruction.

smalltownoklahoman | October 12, 2017 at 12:22 pm

If their is one good thing about the election of Trump, it’s that it’s caused a whole lot of masks to come off in so many sectors of our country, especially in the entertainment areas. America’s internal enemies are exposing themselves like never before and it does seem to be causing the American public to reject them in greater numbers, which is a good thing. We’ve also seen that these internal enemies don’t really have much of a spine when the authorities are allowed to do their jobs. Then there’s the NFL controversy which has hurt the league so badly in just a few weeks that they are now desperately scrambling to do damage control and get their players to stop disrespecting the flag. This latest disgusting story out of Hollywood? Yeah, whole lot more Americans are gonna start calling BS on them and shoving their hypocrisy right back in their faces when a number of those involved in that try to start getting preachy and moralizing to the public. Our internal enemies may have gone on the warpath when Trump got elected, but their antics have caused a lot of the country to turn against them, GOOD!

    Subotai Bahadur in reply to smalltownoklahoman. | October 12, 2017 at 4:42 pm

    Agreed about the masks falling off, but may I add that it also has exposed the fact that with the collapse of our institutions who have gone all in on tyranny, that there is no longer any electoral, judicial, or other non-violent means to redress grievances or allow consent of the governed. Thomas Hobbes’ works keep coming to mind, and the realization that we no longer have a social or a political contract has dire implications.

    People tend to see that observation of fact as being equivalent to desiring that outcome. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Ignoring the reality will not make it go away. Hard times are coming. Hobbes’ “state of Nature” where life will be “nasty, brutish, and short” is going to return. I don’t like it. I have children, soon will have grandchildren. I have a large extended family who I would see survive if at all possible. Preparing for hard times and defending that which you hold dear is mere prudence.

Everything that you said makes it that much more important for you to continue your work.

The electorate is depressingly uninformed. They care more (and know more) about the bloody Kardashians than they do about current events and our system of government. They are aided and abetted by the media, because the media understands that a uninformed electorate is a malleable electorate.

Things were already heading in the wrong direction when Øbama won in 2008. He was a totally unqualified candidate who got elected based on his race, his charisma, and his glibness. He knew—and followed Alinsky’s rules—as far as he could go, and look what happened. More divisiveness and bifurcation in our country than ever in our history or at least since the Civil War.

We need you Professor Jacobson. We need you and thousands more like you. Where else will we get the perspective we so badly need? The NYT? NBC?

I send some $$ every year to your mailing address. I send cash which I hope you get. I want no paper trail, and I see no reason why you should pay even 1¢ of the money I give to the government. When I think of all the leftist fat cats (Soros) who set up these huge, politically active 503(c)(3) (or whatever) corporations that are tax exempt, it makes my blood boil.

Keep the faith, Professor. You’re doing important and necessary work. We may not stop this death spiral, but we can slow it down.

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” – George Santayana [or Winston Churchill’s paraphrase – “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it”] sums up the roots of the current situation which we find ourselves in.

People have not really changed since we were living in caves. The same things drive us. And, yet, people tend to ignore the amassed knowledge of millennia in favor of their own delusions.

The history of the last 100 years in the US so closely resembles the last century of the Roman Empire as to be terrifying. The rise of the welfare class. The breakdown of societal standards. The importation of foreign labor. The surrender of the control of the state to politicians without citizen oversight. It is all there to see. The only difference is that the citizens of the US are fighting back against the trend here in the 21st Century, something that the citizens of Rome did not do.

Many of the citizens of this nation have either never heard, or have chosen to ignore, sage advice dispensed over the decades. “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” “Constant vigilance is the price of liberty.” “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” “A penny saved is a penny earned.” And, of course the Santayana and Churchill quotes. So, rather than work hard to maintain what they so enjoy, many have succumbed to the lure of the free lunch, the bread and circuses, and have abandoned their duty to protect that which made their lives great. They whine about perceived “injustice”. And, the population of much of the world laughs at them. Who can take a people seriously who enjoys three square meals a day, access to excellent healthcare, almost total freedom from government oppression, and whose poorest member is obscenely rich by the standards of 60% of the world’s population?

These are troubled times. It has taken us 100 years to reach this point. It will take at least a decade to push us back from the brink of destruction. But, unlike Rome, a significant proportion of the citizenry is striving to reverse the trend in this country. They are now demanding an end to the horrible social experiments of the last 50 years and demanding true equality for all. They are demanding that their elected representatives actually represent the interests of their constituents. They are demanding that they be given control over who enters their house and how long those people can stay. They are demanding that they be allowed to control their destinies, rather than having those destines be control by some faceless cabal of obscenely rich men and women. They are demanding that they be allowed to rise or fall, within society, based upon THEIR efforts, not based upon the will of others.

It is a revolution against those entrenched in power which we, unfortunately, allowed them to accumulate. They will not willingly give up that power. So, you have a revolution in progress. And revolutions are always messy. We can only endeavor to persevere. And, hope things are better for our offspring.

    alaskabob in reply to Mac45. | October 12, 2017 at 2:30 pm

    “Rome on the Potomac”. I’d go further back to Sumer and the first recorded history. History is important…you want to learn from someone else’s mistakes. But “we” don’t and every generation considers themselves superior to the past…. I would put the deliberations that led to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (in lieu of the Articles of Confederation) as being a learned path.

      Lord Whorfin in reply to alaskabob. | October 13, 2017 at 8:35 am

      Most people do not learn from other’s mistakes, nor do they learn from their own. It takes a wise man to learn from his own mistakes, and an extraordinary and intelligent man to learn from other’s mistakes.

Professor, I often share your cynicism; I’d buy you a strong drink or three if I could.

Keep doing what you do, you’re making a difference.

I was on the subway just outside of Capitol Hill when I saw a nine year-old group blog looking at my press pass. “Mister?” it asked in a trembling voice, “What is this chill wind that blows through this nation’s soul, freezing the inner warmth of mankind? How far have the forces of evil progressed such that we seek to ignore the wisdom of nation for temporary political power? How do we stop the slide towards shooting those with whom we disagree?”

And I replied “I gotta stop drinking before noon.”

Happy birthday, Legal Insurrection!

Countless thanks, Professor, for soldiering on in the thankless world of conservative blogging!

Remember The Man Who Was Thursday.

buckeyeminuteman | October 12, 2017 at 1:19 pm

Congratulations for making it to nine years. These certainly are perilous times but as they say, “the night is always darkest just before the dawn.” Your articles have taught a lot of people a new way to look at situations and have encouraged us to speak out when we see wrongs against the rule of law. Please, keep up the good work!

Despair not, Professor. You’ve made a positive contribution to our society (something not easy to achieve) and your troops are with you.

LI is a daily read. I’m pleased to support it financially.

And may those personal issues sort out as favorably for you as this life permits.

With gratitude, wishing you all the best.

Sometimes, it’s real useful to bear in mind that this nation still produces exceptionally fine young men and women who volunteer to serve in uniform. I doubt there have ever been better.

Also, ponder Harvey, and the people of Texas and Louisiana.

Keep your head up, Prof.! Don’t let ’em wear you down! Illegitimi non carborundum.

    Don’t worry, Rags, they’re fixing that:

    https://medium.com/@UlisseRJ/open-letter-to-grads-from-ltc-ret-heffington-659dac71511f

    The recent coverage of 2LT Spenser Rapone — an avowed Communist and sworn enemy of the United States — dramatically highlighted this disturbing trend. Given my recent tenure on the West Point faculty and my direct interactions with Rapone, his “mentors,” and with the Academy’s leadership, I believe I can shed light on how someone like Rapone could possibly graduate.
    First and foremost, standards at West Point are nonexistent. They exist on paper, but nowhere else. The senior administration at West Point inexplicably refuses to enforce West Point’s publicly touted high standards on cadets, and, having picked up on this, cadets refuse to enforce standards on each other. The Superintendent refuses to enforce admissions standards or the cadet Honor Code, the Dean refuses to enforce academic standards, and the Commandant refuses to enforce standards of conduct and discipline. The end result is a sort of malaise that pervades the entire institution. Nothing matters anymore. Cadets know this, and it has given rise to a level of cadet arrogance and entitlement the likes of which West Point has never seen in its history.

    Read the whole thing.

      Ragspierre in reply to SDN. | October 12, 2017 at 3:45 pm

      Reeeeeealy…?!?!? Why I never heard tell of such a goin’s on. (Do I need a sarc tag…???)

      See if you can tell the difference between the PEOPLE I referred to and West Point. I bet even you can.

      And I DON’T worry. I believe in people. Not a false god like your cult worships, but people. And principles.

Can this country achieve a peaceful rebirth in the foreseeable future? By all precedents, it is not likely. But America is an unprecedented phenomenon. In the past, American perseverance became, on occasion, too long-bearing a patience, But when Americans turned, they turned. What may happen to the Welfare State is what happened to the Prohibition Amendment.

Is there enough of the American sense of life left in people – under the constant pressure of the cultural-political efforts to obliterate it? It is impossible to tell. But those of us who hold it, must fight for it. We have no alternative: we cannot surrender this country to a zero – to men whose battle cry is mindlessness…

–Ayn Rand, DON’T LET IT GO, November 22, 1971

Prof. Jacobson,

We needed to hit bottom before could make it back. We have: the obama “perves in the little girls’ room” presidency and the subsequent candidates for president hillary clinton and jeb! bush. It couldn’t have gotten worse.

But then a funny thing happened: we elected Donald Trump.

Now the fascist left, aided by the GOPe, has initiated an offensive akin to that of the desperate German army at the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans lost the battle, and ultimately the war. (Who knew after all that they’d destroy themselves from within by electing Merkel?) The left is losing this offensive, too.

Another great turning point will be when state taxes are no longer deductible on federal returns, and we will see tax revolts in parasitical liberal states like California, who rely on the rest of the nation to pay the way for their insanely high income taxes.

Obama/jarrett had eight years to infect just about every part of the federal government with the cancer they spread. Even West Point was corrupted.

But there is a new sheriff in town: he’s an alpha male of extraordinary talent and his name is Donald Trump.

The nation may not survive as, in obama’s mind, as 57 states. But ‘America’ will ultimately survive, though the map may change.

The media has been outed as completely corrupt. Our educational system has been outed as completely corrupt. Hollywood has been outed as completely corrupt. The clintons and obamas have been disgraced by their knowingly enabling weinstein. (Btw, if you wonder why obama was so insistent in enabling pervs to go into the little girls’ room, look no further than into his support of weinstein.) The democrat party has been outed as completely corrupt – or insane.

Finally, the GOPe has been outed as completely corrupt. Ahhh.. and there lies the problem: it’s as if we must fight a war and most of our high command – aside from its commander-in-chief – wants to capitulate for position and profit. Until we decimate the rino rot/flakes/corkers/mccains/romneys/mcconnells within the GOP, we cannot take back our education systems, nor pass tax reform that will destroy liberal states’ free tax ride and causing their populations to turn on the leftist politicians running them.

Remember: Trump is us. We are Trump. His successes are ours. His failures at the hands of the GOPe are ours.

The fecklessness and corruption of the GOPe is the main reason the nation has rotted to the extent it has. “Weinstein” the GOPe and we’ll see miracles.

The battle is just beginning, but we tide has turned.

Support Trump like he’s the only person standing between the left and our Constitution.

Stay strong, Prof. The worse the outlook for freedom, the more we need you.

Thank you for 9 years of LI. You are making a difference.

I don’t want to give the impression that I think we should just sit back and wait for God to take care of things. I do think that ultimately, if America is to survive, we (or at least a critical mass of us) do have to turn back to God. I truly believe that revival in America is essential.

But in the meantime, those of us who are Christians need to do more, a lot more. We are far too silent. Why have we been steadily giving big hunks of the cultural ground to the Left? We keep silent because we don’t want to be called bad names or it is just too much trouble. But what if we all stood up and raised our voices? I share Prof. Jacobson’s concerns – the news and social media would try to put a lid on it. But I don’t think they would be successful. That is, they wouldn’t be successful if enough people got engaged. And sadly, there is the rub. Far too many simply don’t want to get involved.

I set up a website for my small group at church. The motivation was to keep us informed and suggest actions we could take, but naturally it would cover more stuff. I work on the site almost every day, but the people who demanded it pay little attention to it. They are a great bunch of people, but actually doing something seems to be too much. A nationally organized protest at Planned Parenthood to protest funding PP? Since I couldn’t count on folks actually checking the website, so I sent emails to everyone (some 40 people – mostly retired) about the protest. Who showed up from our group? My wife and I, that was it.

End of rant, but if interested, check out our website ( https://www.unshackledaction.com/ ).

    As John Kennedy stated- in between sexual romps in the White House with women other than his wife – “God’s work must truly be our own.”

    We know he didn’t write it, but it is a great quote.

tobinwilliams | October 12, 2017 at 2:25 pm

I love your content and have done so for many years. I’ve met your son at my daughter’s wedding (she recently graduated Cornell Law) and told him how much i enjoy your writing.

I am in agreement with you that the extra-legal means of opposing President Trump that right and left embrace are the real enemy. I don’t care that people oppose Mr. Trump and his agenda. That is legitimate and healthy for the body politic. The endorsement of non-legal or non-Constitutional means to address his presidency is beyond belief in my opinion. The shortsightedness and malice through stupidity of the Opposition (including, of course, the media) is terrifying. Nothing is permanent, especially a remarkable and wholly unique Republic such as ours.

Keep up the good work!

A fan…

    William A. Jacobson in reply to tobinwilliams. | October 12, 2017 at 10:09 pm

    I met your daughter at my son’s wedding! She approached me, introduced herself, and told me that she’s under strict orders from her father that she has to tell me how much he (you) love the blog. Made a great night even better.

WhatsaSeawolf | October 12, 2017 at 2:45 pm

Long, long time reader here (then under a different name.) Remember the original blog format and everything.

Thanks for all the hard work over the years! And I’m with you on the feeling of dread, but there ARE glimmers of hope.

More and more the masks are slipping, be it among the media, academia, former ‘conservative’ allies etc.

And most importantly, more and more of the public are seeing these former mask wearers as what they truly are.

We’re in a battle for the soul of America. Our side is still waking up, their side has been at it for a century.

And we haven’t lost yet. Keep up the fight, and thanks again.

Thanks Prof for keeping up the good fight. You cover things I don’t see anywhere else on the Web. I always make the Insurrection the first site I check every day. Hang in there, together we can beat the bastards.

I, too, am a daily reader, and I thank you for legalinsurrection and your insights- and the LI family. We’re in this together. Let’s remember to
“Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” And this: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
― Winston Churchill

Yes indeed, things are going all to hell, and even our Constitutional safeguards offer little protection.

Our useless Congress actually passed a law making it a federal crime to criticize the government. (Naturally, they didn’t word it that way; the crime was making false statements about the government. And of course government employees got to determine which statements were “false”.) The President signed it into law, and several Americans ended up in prison.

That was in 1798.

The good news is … things have been getting better ever since.

DouglasJBender | October 12, 2017 at 4:24 pm

Legal Insurrection is one if my favorite websites, and one I check several times per day. Thank you, Professor Jacobson, for your work in keeping us informed on important issues.

I hope your wife’s neurological issues clear up completely. I personally know of a woman who was completely healed of a progressive paralysis overnight. Google “Laura Nauman” plus “healed”, and the first result that shows up should be a Facebook page I created called, “Laura Nauman — Healed”, and which essentially consists of photos I took of several articles in The Elkhart Truth (the October 1, 1995 Sunday edition, if I remember correctly) that describe her being healed (2-3 weeks prior to the articles being written). Her being healed was the top story in The Elkhart Truth that Sunday. Hers was a legitimately, and basically documented, healing.

DouglasJBender | October 12, 2017 at 4:25 pm

“legitimate”

“the assault on the Electoral College was the game changer for me”
This really was the moat outrageous thing that’s happened in the US in the last few decades. Thank you for highlighting it – we should never forget or forgive those who tried to take away US citizens’ voting rights. Just awful.

I hope your personal issues have a positive resolution soon Professor, I know how stressful it can be.

I enjoy your blog, great insights, numerous writers all talented

God Bless,

LI is just flat out good work. I appreciate what it chooses to report, and how it avoids fudging on details. But burnout isn’t just real, it’s real understandable. If you do step back, keep your options open. Prof. Jordan B. Peterson seems to be a hit at video lectures, discussions and personal appearances. You might venture toward a similar endeavors. The universe of honest, respectful discourse and dialog is drying up. No matter how bad it’s going to get, keeping dialog alive will be the way out.

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”

Great post.

Your ability to talk to your readers and not lecture them is what brought me to LI 9 years ago.

I doubt I’m not the only one that left in exile, somewhat banished by “real conservatives” for supporting Trump early on.

Wish you the best, Professor.

Take a minute and look at that photo – it’s hilarious: whether he meant it or not, Prof. Jacobson photo-bombed the “knee-in.”

This is a “must read” site because of its unique blend of legal insight, human interest and wide range of topics. It is a conservative outpost deeply embedded in Progressive territory which in itself is heroic! Hoo-rah!

Kyklos: anarchy–>monarchy–>tyranny–>aristocracy–>oligarchy–>democracy. Rinse and repeat. We had a good run.

Congratulations, LI. I look forward to the sane commentary and analysis found here (oftentimes), and pray your wife’s pain will be more bearable.

When freedom and independence is destroyed, there is only one logical response: violence!
The old view has been: “America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”
However, now we begin to see that the awkward stage is coming to an end.
I just hope that more of the bastards die, than the common man. But that is an unlikely hope. The federal bureaucracy is going to need to been torn out, if this country is to survive.

Excellent read! Thank you!

Thinking through what it will mean to live without institutions.

Institutions that have collapsed, because they were asked to do things far beyond their capability … as though they and their operatives were all-seeing and all-knowing … things that are better left to individuals and neighbors in an environment of freedom, where they are expected to exercise responsibility and initiative, and respected for it.

The demise of our institutions has been over seventy years in the making, bricks cemented together with a mortar mixed from elitist hubris and an induced lack of confidence in the ability and insight of the ordinary person to chart their course through life.

We relied upon them to solve our problems FOR us and impose the day’s definition of the “common good” upon us, when they should have been focused upon respecting and protecting individual liberty … so we could find the solutions and “good” that we ourselves, and our neighbors, needed.

We thought we could turn these institutions into factories of fairness, industries of instruction, manufacturers of morality, because we had concentrated Smart People™, their SCIENCE! and much of our wealth within them … thinking that if we gave them enough power, and they made enough rules, we ourselves wouldn’t have to deal with the failings of ourselves and our neighbors … and could get through life without having to do the due diligence that would mitigate and/or prevent those failings in ways beyond the capability of Social Industry, because that due diligence gets in the way of an easy, “fun” life.

We assumed that they were functionally omniscient, and beyond the reach of corruption merely because they didn’t work in a place with a (publicly-stated) mission of making a profit. In hindsight, that is a faith far more blind than anything coming out of any church, synagogue, temple or mosque … but even many of us who thought ourselves “conservative” indulged in such blind faith where it would benefit us, instead of fundamentally challenging the status quo.

Dread is somewhat justified … for very, very few of us have known life outside the Blue Social Model mirage of industrialized guidance. It is going to be a painful transition, but we are at the stage of “what can’t go on, won’t” and we are going to have to figure out how to go on outside the status quo.

Better to do so now, before the total collapse of these overburdened institutions takes place.

Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?! Hell NO!

Felt that way on election eve when I figured all was lost and went to bed.
Fairy tales sometimes do come true. Keep up the good work, I’m sure lizzy warren hates what you’ve done to her lies.

bob aka either orr | October 12, 2017 at 10:32 pm

Professor, you and your crew have been mandatory reading for nine years now. God be with you all on your journey. Keep up the faith. Prayers for your wife’s health to improve and for your ability to be someone upon whom she can always rely.

Colonel Travis | October 12, 2017 at 10:39 pm

Thanks for this site, prof. Please keep fighting the good fight.

I was filled with dread on November 7, 2016. Real dread.

I agree with the professor. Things aren’t all that rosy. But, we’ve got Justice Neil Gorsuch, whom we wouldn’t had my dread not been lifted late on the evening of November 8.

There have been massive institutional and societal failings in the last year, but things are looking up. More and more are coming to grips with the moral and ideological failings of the left, and their hypocrisy. Exhibit 1 is the Weinstein affair and its attendant coverup by the MSM. More and more are attuned to the Wasserman-Schultz house server debacle. More and more are finding out that most leftist politicians are amoral poseurs.

And thank heavens for the Democrats. If the Republicans had to run against any other party, they’d lose for sure.

Nah, we’ll be fine. The left is self-destructing and the Republican base is starting to cull the dead wood. These are the heady days of the beginning. The Reconquista.

Washington DC swamp needs a cleansing. Enema style. Both parties.

Enter Donald Trump, our weapon. Latest I heard he’s going around the Rs and Ds whose puppet masters WANT to keep Obamacare – – – and Trump will remove government obstacles, with help from Dr. Rand Paul, so PEOPLE can form their own health groups even across state lines.

This is YUGE.

I see greatness out of Trump’s actions daily. I liked Cruz and Trump equally in the beginning, but Trump dominated and pulled FAR far awaaaay from ol’ lyin’ Cruz… but some, like this blog, thought Cruz wouldda been better. WHAT?!

Trump is SLAYIN’ it.

He’s the weapon. I thank GOD daily Killary was thwarted. Cruz, too.

I can see why someone who works at a college would be depressed though.

Maybe you should work elsewhere. Start teaching online courses. Most colleges and universities are leftist pits of lies and more lies.

GET OUT while you still can!

And if Dems, Rs and Hollywod and universities ALL PERISH, who gives a rats patoot… I’ve worked in IT for over 20 years… without ANY COLLEGE DEGREE!

Think Mike Rowe and forget college… unless you’re going to become a doc or engineer, college is WAAAAY over rated.

(so is being a lawyer… sorry prof)

have a nice day

Congratulations Professor on your blog’s anniversary. I understand your dread, but try to stay positive. Chazak ve’ematz! Be strong and of good courage. You are making a difference!

For me, as an Israeli, the difference you make is huge. The fact that we have a friend, hundreds, thousands of friends like you is a great encouragement and helps us stand strong in the face of our own adversity.

Keep up the good fight! You have more influence than you realize.

aguyfromjersey | October 13, 2017 at 6:34 am

Professor 9 years, great insight, must read at least twice a day. Thank you and everybody else.
What does not kill you make you stronger. Pass the popcorn. Hold on tight, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

It turns out the peppers were right. Our forefathers were brilliant when they wrote the second amendment.

I’m far from being the brightest bulb on the tree, but I feel encouraged by what I see. The election of Donald Trump has flushed the enemy into the open where they can be dealt with. It won’t be with bullets and bombs, but with conservative judges who value the constitution. It was a long walk getting here and it will be a long walk back, but we are headed back.

Thank you Professor Jacobson, for all that you do, I will keep you and your wife in my prayers always.

Some 37+ years ago I immigrated to the US from the Soviet Union. There were three main reasons why my family decided to leave the USSR:

1. To escape anti-semitism and anti-Israelism
2. To escape socialism
3. We wanted to live in a free country

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been thinking about possibly leaving the US — ironically, for the exact same reasons we left the USSR all those years ago.

BierceAmbrose | October 13, 2017 at 3:16 pm

Well, when institutions are corrupt and attract the corruptible (per Iwahawk and Hayek), maybe less institutions, better.

So I’m thinking through what it will mean to live without institutions.

“Institutions” have a kind of autonomy, often missed by people within them. We wouldn’t care about University officials’, or the dept of Ed’s personal preferences, if they weren’t able to enact them via the institutions they’re in. Institutions are stable in structure, and power, but not in goals. Consider the ACLU, I mean the “American Social Justice League.” Or the migration of the Sierra club from preservation of the natural world for use, to aggressive anti-human utopianism: they won’t be satisfied until the last breeding pair is hunted down and shot with sustainably-produced bamboo arrows.

The stable alternative is protocols and conventions. Fortunately, the “by any means” progressives, and endlessly tantruming D-party are drawing attention to the value of protocols and conventions. They are recruiting people who never would have thought of it, nor especially come down on the side of “process matters.”

I am cautiously optimistic that with the wranglers of manufactured consent not caught up on the reality of a printing press in every basement. Goo-book-twit-zon can try to restrict what they’ll channel, but their utility is intrinsically bound to their ubiquity and variety. As they restrict what they propagate, they become internal house organs. Pravda’s circulation came from it’s overlords’ guns, and even then, nobody believed what they published.

I have some faith in the insular, suspicious riders at the edge of the system, the folks who simply set up their stills outside the system in this country vs. the old, and who had their whiskey rebellion when pushed too far. Their descendants hold large measure of that skepticism and independence.

Salina Zeto called this last presidential election, not on politics, policy, and even institutional backing, but on who was going to step up and vote their own interests. The people who shop at Wally-World are getting a better deal in their own terms. They notice when they can’t get one, because their keepers won’t permit it “for their own good.” In the end, physics wins. Even Jeff Bezos (Is he trying to look like a Bond villain, or is that just an accident?) can’t sway the national understanding much even owning the Washington Post, and has to go “down market” to make Whole Foods make sense.

The institutional(ized?) idiots have finally sucked up enough of the surplus from people who actually do stuff, that the people who do stuff have to take notice. The deal used to be: “A stipend and delusions of relevance, if you’ll otherwise let us be.” They’ve declined to not meddle, so much that it’s not worth it to pay them off just to have them gone.

It isn’t people watching Fox News. (And how elite / institution driven is that notion that the idiot proles follow what’s put out there to program them?) It’s people yelling at Fox News, not “That’s wrong, that’s a lie!” which they do plenty of to every other damn channel of institutional effluvia. They’re yelling: “No, the better argument is …”

Regardless of whether one supports Trump or not, or whether it is genius or luck, he has the gift of making the progressives and US haters show their insanity. Day. After. Day. How will that turn out? Time will tell, though I think we cannot discount the possibility that it will heat up the cold civil that has been going on in this country for decades. As noted in my profile, I am a 1972 graduate from a high school in a small town about 18 miles north of Ithaca (west of Cayuga lake) where my family lived on a small farm. I received a national merit scholarship (albeit as an alternate) and acceptance at Cornell; my dad was an engineer at Morse Chain and I planned the same career. As a teenager, I saw and read in the local newspapers of the nonsense in higher ed. as it played out at Cornell (e.g., the black power takeover of Willard Straight Hall in ’69 and the seemingly frequent suicides). I woke up one day in late August of 1972 and decided that I was not going to immerse myself in that seemingly poisonous swamp, so I joined the USAF and chose electronics. After graduation from electronics school, I served three years in the Strategic Air Command, and was fortunate enough to break into engineering with that wonderful training and experience. Sorry for the lengthy background, but it puts the present into context. There are many people out there like me, and, despite the now full-scale assault on our culture, I believe that the younger generations will be “woke” in the same way that I was in 1972. So back to my original point, regardless of how you feel about Donald Trump, he is forcing both the cultural and institutional idealogues in the far left to show their true colors. And I do not believe that they will go silently into that good night. But go they must.

The idea that criticism of Trump from the right means that these conservatives or libertarians don’t “respect the vote,” and that such non-respect is bad, is dumb. I’m a free man, and I’m not required – morally or politically – to demonstrate respect for those who would vote away my rights out of some emotional impulse to give the bird to the establishment.

This “respect the vote” crap is just populism, outside the American tradition of liberty.