Extremists gaining control - letter by Walt Zidack

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

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This letter writer is somewhat different from the typical in that he resists being a bomb-thrower, at least to some degree. Most of the letters I analyze are written by leftists whose scorch and burn prose succeeds in only confirming their True Believer status. 

Mr. Zidack's letter is not without its problems, problems which I consider significant. Let's read:

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It is becoming clearer that radical nihilist (I fasten onto this word because I think he misuses it. Nihilism: a. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence. b. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. We will have to read on to see if he's using this term correctly.)

minorities are increasingly gaining control of what, for most of U.S. history, has been a centrist democracy. (This is incorrect. We has never been a democracy. We are a representative republic, where we elect representatives to vote on our behalf. As far as being centrist, this isn't true either. The US has always been governed by factions who insist on getting their own way, demolishing the opposition wherever possible.)  

Though many of my Democrat friends revel in the discord in my Republican party, extremist politics is a bipartisan issue. We need representatives willing to sit down with the opposing side to discuss possible solutions to successfully represent their constituents in a statesman-like manner. (Is this really what we need? Frankly, I believe this is the problem. We have had "centrists" like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, gaining kudos every time they bash their own party, then when they don't play along by attempting to pass a tiny part of the conservative agenda, they are eviscerated by the selfsame Leftists who lionized their "centrism." 

It's this entirely one-sided compromise that has brought us to the brink of disaster. The Left insists on compromise, but they never do themselves. They are doctrinaire, inflexible, and focused on their agenda and its implementation. They never give up, they never yield. When they are defeated, they come right back and start pushing again. What they can't get all at once they get incrementally. But they never backtrack, never admit they are wrong, and never accept blame for the failure of their ideas.

Beyond that, it is the highest naivety to think that these people are or can be statesmen, or that they are at all interested in sitting down and discussing solutions to any problem. These people are interested in only one thing, power. They will do anything to destroy the opposition, to gain as much control as they can. There is nothing noble about what our elected representatives are doing, or what they intend. They are turning us into a third-world country, happily and by majority vote.)   

Some of our state legislators from the Bozeman area and elsewhere in Montana approach government policy rooted in an extreme, no-holds-barred, laissez faire stance that suggests no government is the best government. (This is a common meme of the Left. For them, the issue is either all the government they can possibly get, or no government at all. There is no middle ground. Any talk at all about scaling back government or returning it to its constitutional boundaries or eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse, is tantamount to no government at all.

You see, Leftists cannot countenance any limitation on government at all. Such ideas are heresy, to be shouted down, demonized, and silenced. To them, government can solve any problem, can do nothing but good, and is the go-to for any issue, large or small. Their world is governo-centric. So anyone who even so much as suggests that smaller government is worth considering is not only an anarchist, but they hate children, the elderly, the poor, women, gays...) 

While I sometimes fantasize about freedom from the burden of government taxation when I am writing my property or income tax check, the notion of roads, bridges, police and fire protection, and educated neighbors (Once again a common Leftist meme. See, when conservatives talk about limited government, they must be talking about roads and police. When conservatives complain about corporate handouts, NSA spying, and failed stimulus programs, and the Left starts talking about fire departments and education. It's a deliberate misdirection that appears every single time someone talks about limiting government power. This is vapid. But this is the way the issue is framed.)

provides a reality check on the fantasy. The answer won’t be found in the burden of government taking care of everyone’s problems nor will it be found in the anarchy of no government at all. (And here we have it confirmed. There is nothing in between these two. Either there is total government or none at all.)

Though time generally mitigates the perception of impacts from past political campaigns, it is important that voters bear in mind the effect that extremist politics, (Which we can now state unequivocally does not functionally exist.) 

fueled by dark money PACs, is likely to play in the 2014 primary races at both the state and federal levels. A bipartisan acknowledgement that the influence of undisclosed resources in any political campaign is toxic to the democratic process is a critical step in reducing extremism, and that the only means of detoxification is disclosure and transparency. To those that buy into the myopic propaganda promulgated by dark money interests, my only response is “caveat emptor (buyer beware).”

Walt Zidack Bozeman