I had just been looking out my kitchen window and saw a pair of cardinals looking for seed in the bird feeder and on the ground, where I always put some seed. I realized the feeder was empty, and we had had a dusting of snow last night. I went and filled the feeder, and watched again from my window. The pair came right back; Mr. Cardinal in his red, red glory and Mrs. watched over by him….

The Left fears that which they cannot control, they must have group think; ironically, they are threatened by the power of the individual!

The flutter of a butterfly’s wings touches mankind in ways one may never know. I try to remember that a smile may touch a stranger’s life in a moment of need, that I may not know about, but surely God does.

A beautiful and strengthening diary this Sunday morning, Ausonius, thank you.

Because now I don’t get to recommend it! (I know, recommending a front page diary misses the point of recommendations, but I heartily recommend this front page diary!)

All those little butterflies are what produced the Tea Parties. We need to keep our wings beating! Who knows what we will produce by this time next year!

instead of going on his tirade and calling for a Tea Party style revolt…..?
The butterflies were flappin’ pretty hard that day.

…I had a fairly similar piece on my blog about a week ago dealing with bottom-up leadership and the conservative movement – and how the Republican Party needs to embrace that framework rather than attempt to drive the movement from Washington.

Check it out here if you’re interested…

and recommended a few dozen times so it sticks around more than a few ours.

: )

Chaos as related to individualism is a novel thought. When you think about the synergy at work in the conservative and tea party movements, you can’t help but be uplifted.

The best thing about the movement right now is that it isn’t led by any one person. It is led by a multitude of individuals and coalitions of individuals. As more are called to elective positions, the chaos will assume a structure as individuals not only oppose the governemnt, but become the government.

Some may say the tea partiers are no more than the cheering fans at the football stadium.I think of the tea partiers as the embodiment of the drill sergeant who takes a bunch of recruits with no cohesion other than willingness to serve, and channels their passion for country into a fighting machine.

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Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

………

citizen deciding on his/her own to just do something is a power the collectivists simply cannot torlerate or endure.

Excellent diary! It is good to preach to the choir from time to time to remind us that we are doing good out there.

In my mind, the concept of the individual is one of the biggest ideas that sets conservatives apart from the left. I have never understood why someone would want the government to tell them what to do. I won’t let my husband tell me what to do, why whould I want some entity that doesn’t even know me tell me what to do?
(OK, I admit I do listen to my husband occationally! (-; )

Excellent essay.

Many times in my life I’ve heard someone say, or have read someone write, that his or her view on something was dramatically altered by a single comment made by someone (sometimes it was as little as a throwaway sentence), or by an unexpected observation.

In some cases, the individual became aware of an idea (or a writer) that led to a transformation of his or her thinking or worldview. The idea (or a particular writer’s works subsequently pursued) was the seedling that turned into a mighty oak.

I recall that former atheist Whittaker Chamber’s sudden realization that there must be a God after all by noticing, really noticing, his baby daughter’s ear: how astonishingly complex just a human ear was, not to mention….. The realization that followed — along with many other experiences detailed in his autobiography, WITNESS — led him away from atheism and Communism and to Christian belief and more.

I think that if each of us ” flaps our wings” by, say, writing to our feckless representatives (flap-flap) sending even small donations to good people who are running in serious, can-win races (all those small donations add up; they can even become a tsunami: flap-flap-FLAP) and also becoming involved in some of the political organizations, holding the line against BIG, be it spending, government, etc., etc. (flap-FLAP-FLAP) we will make a difference.

Another matter: More of us have to understand conservatism — what it really is (no, it’s not libertarianism) — and the profound brilliance and embodied wisdom of our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. When more of us really understand all of these matters, I suspect we can count on a mighty FLAP, FLAP, FLAP!

I’m doing my part (flap-flap-flap). That’s all each of us can do.

Indeed, each of us must do our parts.

Again, excellent essay. Thank you for writing it.

ideally, to become a voting member of the Party — a precinct committeeman — so you can vote for the Party leadership (or run for a leadership position yourself) and help the best conservative candidates win the all-important, traditionally-very-low-turnout primary elections so they go on to the general elections. If you can’t, for some reason, become a PC, then at least volunteer for something. Anything. We conservatives need to UNITE, and in my humble opinion the best place to unite is the Republican Party.

I just added to my blog ( www.theprecinctproject.wordpress.com )a comparison of the Republican and Democrat Party Platforms: Liberty vs. Secular Socialism.

Thank you.
ColdWarrior
No More Scozzafavas!

As a fellow admirer of the works of Hans Rott, I cannot help but observe that a great number of brilliant European composers of the classical and early romantic periods are virtually unknown today, at least in America. Even the discography of one of today’s staples, Anton Dvorak, was extremely limited as recently as twenty-five or thirty years ago. With the advent of the CD there was a brief period when a few of the works of these more obscure composers were recorded, but most are no longer available and for many years we have been back to the three Bs, plus a few others. While some names such as, say, Boccherini, have become better known of late, It is unfortunate that so many Americans are deprived of the music of so many more of these composers.

There is one source I know of for discovering these lost treasures. That is a Swiss internet station that streams primarily music of the classical and romantic periods and features much of the little heard music of the periods. They do so with no commercials and with a very informative website. It takes a little trial and error to navigate the site, but it is well worth the effort. The web address is http://www.radioswissclassic.ch/en
Dr. Botkin

I have to admit, I had never considered linking the parable of the sheep and goats to the butterfly effect.

It’s always nice to be able to think of something familiar in a new way, especially in a way that can apply to anyone regardless of their political stripes.

When individuals are “given” the maintenance and status quo” what happens? They forget how to really LIVE!! When I was in East Berlin and the people were serving me, they never once looked me in the eyes and they were emptied of everything. They had blank looks in their eyes and expressions.

2 years later when the wall came down, these same people were now free to do and be anything they had ever hoped to be. And their western counterparts resentful to a degree that they were now free. How can that be, but for a different time, they might all have lived under the Iron Curtain?

Let liberty and the individual prevail. Let it die and the collective in all it’s “glory” becomes a hollow shell where everyone suffers at the hands of few.

In that summer of 1989, we also saw the spot where, in February of that year, Communist guards had shot an escapee of the Workers’ Paradise, who had actually reached the West Berlin.

If he had waited until November, he could have walked across through the Wall. However, given the guard towers, the machine gun nests, the spies everywhere, etc. we had no indication even in July that by November you would be able to walk through the broken Berlin Wall.

Yes, the stories of people rsiking their lives for freedom need to be preserved and retold to every generation, especially the rather spoiled children here in America.

You say “preaching to the choir” may or may not affect change. What if someone in the choir passes on something in this message that triggered a change that would not have happened if you had rejected the idea to post. Our choices, no matter how small they may seem to us at the time do matter.God is not a puppeteer. He wants to work through us to bring about good. There is also an evil force that brings thoughts to us to either act on or reject. Yes, our choices do matter.

I think that what people are starting to realize is that the individual, in pursuit of their own interests, can have far effect than a top down approach. And this is why statism always ends up failing. Statism assumes that government knows what’s best. Any rational person realizes that it’s impossible to control millions of free agents in such a way without using draconian measures. And that’s the reason we see the democrats pushing more and more for outlandish legislation: because they know that punishment is the only true method to get people to do what you want (cap-and-trade, health insurance mandates).

…for being tardy to comment on this excellent piee of scholarship.

We all the old Murphy’s laws that whatever can go wrong, will, but I agree that everyone who considers the world politically, culturally, even spirtually, must keep this in simple law of Chaos in mind when considering an “engineered” world. (Don’t forget Dr Ian Malcolm in Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park.)

It’s the immutable laws we must always consider, and the Left’s entire world view contradicts these.

Thanks