Tuesday, March 23, 2010

THIS IS NOT WATERLOO

Lady Butler's British Squares holding at Quatre Bras


I am referring to yesterday's passage of the 'Healthcare Reform' Bill in the United States House of Representatives, of course. Of course - this Bill has nothing to do with Healthcare, or Reform of any kind. Nor is it a decisive victory for the side that prevailed in this legislative effort - the Democratic Party.


Queen Nancy Signing the Democratic Party's Suicide Pact


The Battle of Waterloo was the utter rout and total destruction of Napoleon's Imperial French army by the combined armies of the Seventh Coalition; the Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington, and the Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher; fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in what is now Belgium.

Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo put an end of his Hundred Days' return from exile and marked the end to his rule as Emperor of the French.



End of the Line for le Empereur


Yesterday's events in the House of Representatives was far from such a decisive victory. Au contraire - the Leadership of the Democratic Party had to resort to bribery, blackmail and good old-fashioned strongarm tactics to accomplish their purpose. By now everyone is familiar with the year-long saga - the Louisiana Purchase; the Nebraska Buy-off Exemption; the infamous Rahm Emmanuel Nude Shower Incident; Bart Stupak's little shuck-and-jive two step there . . . this is what it took for the Democratic Party to pull off their so-called 'decisive victory' - hardly an overwhelming 'Will of the People' . . .

. . . AND . . . the Republican Party is FAR from destroyed!

The Republicans have the power and support to defeat these bastards in November. We will wipe them out. We will chase them out of town. We will elect conservatives in the primaries and defeat the Democrats - every last one of them - and then we start the repeal process.






We have much power, still. We will use every single legislative and bureaucratic tactic to obstruct, derail, and defeat them. We're going to turn out en masse in November and stop the Liberals. We have seen that the law will not stop them, the Constitution will not stop them, hoping that they will do the right thing will not stop them because their definition of "the right thing" has nothing in common with ours.






They will be hounded out of office. Every single Democrat who voted for this knows that they are going to be exposed and hassled and chased from office.






No, this is by no means a victory for the Democrats along the lines of Wellington's victory at Waterloo. For it to be such, the Republicans would have had to have been utterly destroyed. If anything, this is a 'Pyrrhic Victory'.

The phrase is named after King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC:



Roman Legionnaires in close combat.


In both of engagements, the Romans had more casualties than Pyrrhus did. However, the Romans had a much larger supply of men from which to draw soldiers, so their casualties did less damage to their war effort than Pyrrhus's casualties did to his.


Pyrrhus' battle report: "Another such victory and I come back to Epirus alone."


There is a North American equivalent of such a Pyrrhic victory: on March 15, 1781 the Battle of Guilford Courthouse was fought in present-day Greensboro, North Carolina. 1,900 British troops under General Lord Cornwallis, fought an American force of 4,400 under General Nathanael Greene.


The Battle of Guilford Courthouse


Despite the relatively small numbers of troops involved, the battle is considered decisive. Before the battle, the British appeared to have successfully reconquered Georgia and South Carolina with the aid of strong Loyalist factions, and thought that North Carolina might be within their grasp.

The battle had lasted only ninety minutes; the British took the field, fighting with accustomed tenacity when engaged by superior numbers. Technically and tactically the British were the victors of this contest. However, their victory cost them over a quarter of their own men.

Seeing this as a classic Pyrrhic victory, British Whig Party leader Charles James Fox echoed Plutarch's famous words by saying, "Another such victory would ruin the British Army!

In the wake of the battle, Cornwallis retreated via forced march south (through present day Fort Bragg) to Wilmington, where his forces embarked upon ships to Yorktown, Virginia and ultimate defeat and surrender.


Surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown


Waterloo was a decisive battle in more than one sense. It definitively ended the series of wars that had convulsed Europe, and involved many other regions of the world, since the French Revolution of the early 1790s. It also ended the political and military career of Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the greatest commanders and statesmen in history. Finally, it ushered in almost half a century of international peace in Europe; no major conflict was to occur until the Crimean War.

Barack Obama and every Democrat in Congress could only wish of such a victory - they know they will pay a heavy price for yesterday's events.






We are not defeated. Not by a long shot.




9 comments:

  1. Sean, I like your thoughts. I am not giving up the fight and I refuse to advocate a violent solution.
    I'm going to wait for SCOTUS and the States to hash out their part in the play. While I'm waiting I'll be getting heavily involved in Republican politics. My dander is up and I mean to change the way things have been done. I'm proud of the way they held fast on this issue but soft conservatism got us to where we are now and can no longer be tolerated. Hell, I'll run myself if I have to.
    Give things a week or so to settle and I think you'll find that many more will come around and see the true path to victory.
    November isn't that far away. It's time, right damn now, to be working for that election and the end of this national nightmare.
    To anyone who doubts remember. "In planning any operation, it is vital to remember and constantly repeat to oneself two things: 'In war, nothing is impossible provided you use audacity,' and 'Do not take counsel of your fears."
    General George S. Patton
    We. Will. Win. Never doubt that, not even for a second.

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  2. More like the Ardennes, with Pelosi in the role of Sepp Dietrich, trying to drive her overweight armor across bridges that couldn't support it...

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  3. Absolutely right. This 'victory' will cost them more than they can imagine. It sounds like a cliche, but it is true: they cannot imagine why anyone would want to vote against giving themselves free money. They just don't get it.

    It's up to sober-minded, honorable men and women to show them what they're missing.

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  4. I hope you are right. I also hope the elections prove to be above board. If we the people lose confidence in that function all hell will break loose. Until then we need to find and support good able candidates and talk to friends and family alike about what this nation is about. we need to get everyone out on election day and step on these elitist little bugs.
    maxx

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  5. Don't forget the GOP had a hand in getting us to this point. When have they ever reduced the size of the federal bureacracy? The problem goes beyond the current coup. Can the GOP ever restore our limted Federal government to it's enumerated powers? That would take "undoing" many many acts of Congress since starting the Fed in 1913. In recent years they offer to manage a slower statism.

    "I don’t give a runny shit about the prospect of Republicans’ political profit at the polls: they can all go to hell unless and until they swear their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to ridding me of these commissars."
    -Billy Beck

    If the GOP doesn't overturn this coup d'etat and become the "Liberty" Party, then it will be irrelevant. The GOP cannot restore anything - maybe just slow and then tweak the marxism. But they don't have the clarity of purpose to root out all those three letter tyrannts and all the nanny state legislation of the last 90 years. Best we can hope for from the GOP - is nibbling at the fringes while the marxism invests itself throughout society. It's what the Dems are also expecting. And frankly I'd bet they're right.

    What we need is restoration.
    We'll have to do that ourselves.

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  6. It is not about Reps and Dems anymore. I am a lifelong Dem who sees what is happening and I know lifelong Reps who get glassy-eyed and almost swoon in talking about their Messiah.
    This is between rational Americans and loonies.

    We need to make all representatives accountable no matter what party they are with.
    Get TERM LIMITS and require that they follow the same laws/rules as the people they govern.

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  7. The Republican Party does not have the spine to do what needs to be done. I give it two months and they will go right back to the same old Washington two step and John McCain can go back to giving reach-arounds to what ever Democrat is holding a press conference at the moment. Meanwhile, The last semi-free place on earth slides over the precipice into statist oblivion. And we all have front row seats. Buckle Up.

    J.

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  8. Excellent post. This article from Big Government compares passage of Obamacare to passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

    http://yumurl.com/F1rOfC

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