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friend-clarity · 6 years ago

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The Present American Revolution

Victor Davis Hanson, November 13, 2018

Destroying the Constitution and seeking state-mandated equality of result

The 1960s saw efforts to create a new progressive nation by swarming democratic and republican institutions. The sheer force of a left-wing cultural revolution would supposedly transform a nation, in everything from jeans, long hair, and pot to rock music and sexual “liberation.” It was eventually diffused by popular weariness with the extremism and violence of the radical revolutionaries, and the establishment’s agreements to end the Vietnam War, give 18-year-olds the right to vote, phase out the draft, expand civil rights to include reparatory action, legalize abortion, radicalize the university, and vastly increase the administrative state to wage a war on poverty, a war on pollution, and a war on inequality.

The revolution of 1776 sought to turn a colony of Great Britain into a new independent republic based on constitutionally protected freedom. It succeeded with the creation of the United States.

The failed revolution of 1861, by a slave-owning South declaring its independence from the Union, sought to bifurcate the country, More than 600,000 dead later, slavery was abolished, a Confederacy was in in ruins, and the South was forced back into the United States largely on the conditions and terms of the victorious North.

Our present revolution is more multifaceted. It is a war on the very Constitution of the United States that has not yet brought the Left its Holy Grail: a state-mandated equality of result overseen by an omnipotent and omniscient elite. The problem for today’s leftists is that they are not fighting Bourbon France, a reactionary Europe of 1848, or Czarist Russia, but an affluent, culturally uninhibited, and wildly free United States, where never in the history of civilization has a people attained such affluence and leisure.

Poverty is not existential as it once was, given high technology and government redistribution. The grievance is not that America is destitute (indeed, obesity not famine is our national epidemic). The poorer do not lack access to material goods (everything from iPhones to high-priced sneakers is in the reach of about everyone).

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Instead, the complaint is that some have far more than others, and the government, despite its $21 trillion in debt, seems unable to guaranteed universal parity, especially when the people seem unexcited about joining “taking a knee” protests or “swarming the homes” of counter-revolutionaries. In other words, millions of Americans will never join Antifa, Black Lives Matter, or Occupy Wall Street on the barricades; nor will they worry that in Texas 59 percent of white women voted for Latino Ted Cruz while 95 percent of black women voted for white male Robert O’Rourke. They apparently prefer instead to live private lives on their own terms.

Taking a drive in a Hyundai today is far more comfortable, reliable, and safe than touring in a 1970 Rolls Royce. An inner-city youth with an iPhone has more computing power and global access in his palm than did an estate owner in 1990 with a row of mainframe computers in his basement. So revolution is not so easy anymore and requires changing the very idea of the state, the law, and the ancient institutions that uphold them.

Immigration

Sovereign and secure borders do not lead to the sort of demographic upheaval that fuels progressive agendas. Measured, legal, meritocratic, and diverse immigration does not result in a vast impoverished shadow population in need of self-appointed advocacy; it enhances individual assimilation, integration, intermarriage, and Americanization.

If in the past nullification of federal laws led to the states’-rights crises involving southern states in 1828–32, 1860, or 1962, today there is apparently little worry about ignoring federal immigration statutes. We simply have allowed more than 500 municipalities, counties, and states to declare full enforcement of federal immigration law null and avoid within their jurisdictions — period.

Immigrants 1,000 miles away, intent on crashing the southern border and residing in the U.S. illegally, sue the federal government to force acceptance of their anticipated illegal entry. Again, the revolutionary idea is that progressive messaging cannot win 51 percent approval without changing the demography — and changing the demography is impossible without constitutional nullification.

Elections and Courts

Voting does not always result in the result that progressives desire. Unfortunately for the Left, more than half the country still believes America is uniquely good, blessed with a wonderful inheritance by its brave and ingenious ancestors, a beacon of freedom and security in a scary world, and constantly improving. Even a progressive media, university, Hollywood, and a progressive plutocracy, Antifa, and street theater cannot yet change that fact.

So the revolution again turns to upending the constitution and the law. In Florida, local violations of state election laws seek to warp the result and elect the more progressive candidate. More fundamentally, why does a Wyoming of 600,000 souls deserve two senators, the same number as in California with its 40 million? Are not 39,400,000 California citizens deprived of their “rights” of proportional senatorial representation?

Why is there an electoral college that violates the spirt of Athenian democratic direction elections? Why is there a Second Amendment that allows “automatic” assault weapons and “nuts” with handguns?

For that matter, why is there a counterrevolutionary First Amendment that protects “hate speech” and de facto promotes right-wing racists, homophobes, nativists, xenophobes, sexists, and climate-change deniers, allowing them to propagandize and pollute the public discourse and infect campuses with right-wing rhetoric?

The courts have become revolutionary. They now routinely overturn popular referenda, presidential executive orders, and legislative statutes, mostly on the principle that better-educated, more moral and experienced judges answer to a higher, more progressive calling and know what in the long run is best for the uneducated rabble. From now on out, every Republican-nominated Supreme Court nominee will probably result in a Kavanaugh-like circus, in which protestors in the gallery, disruptive senators themselves, and mobs in the street will attempt to create so much chaos that the wearied public will cave and just wish that conservatives would not nominate such controversial constructionists.

Campuses

Today’s university is in a revolutionary spiral. The U.S. Constitution does not necessarily protect students and faculty. By that dramatic statement, I mean, free speech is all but gone. A professor who confessed opposition to affirmative action, abortion, or global warming would face ostracism and even risk physical assault and yet see his attackers all but sanctioned by a neutral or complicit administration.

Due process is nonexistent in many areas. In accusations of sexual harassment or assault, there is little left of the presumption of innocence, the right to confront and question a transparent accuser, and the appeal to be judged by a jury of one’s peers. Most of the 1960s civil-rights agenda is moribund on campus.

Racial segregation in dorms and safe spaces is unquestioned. Racial biases can result in rejected admission on the premise that there are too many of one particular race on campus — and merit-based criteria are a prejudiced construct anyway. Censorship has returned, by both banning texts and demonizing classics now deemed to need “trigger warnings.” Free assembly and expression are on life support. Speakers and guests deemed “right-wing” are shouted down, swarmed, or disinvited by a terrified Bourbon administration.

The Mob

The mob is becoming in some ways as powerful as the French rabble who cheered on the guillotine, or the adolescent crowds that spoiled affluent kids such as Bill Ayers and Jane Fonda once used as demonstration fodder. Instead, it is vast and global — and linked by instant communications on social media and the Internet, and it remains often anonymous. Post or say one wrong word, and the electronic turba comes out of the shadows, swarming to demand career-ending confessions, or offering amnesty on promises of correct reeducation. One’s entire life can be accessed in nanoseconds to root out past thought crimes and counterrevolutionary speech. Be deemed a right-wing obstructionist or activist, and everything — from one’s cell-phone number and email address to private residence and office —can become known to 7 billion.

Logging on may mean using the public airspace and thus entering the domain of a traditionally regulated public utility, but the masters of the universe at Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, by the power of their trillions of dollars and loud progressive fides, are exempt from antitrust and monopoly legislation. So when the mob targets a public enemy, correct-thinking thirtysomething geeks and nerds in Menlo Park and Palo Alto gear up to shut down, censor, and recalibrate public transmitted speech and thought.

Almost everything we have seen in just the last three months — the Kavanaugh chaos, the “caravan,” the ongoing Mueller octopus, recounting election results until they are deemed “correct,” the Beto and Gillum neo-socialism craziness, the swarming of a Fox News anchor’s home, driving public officials out of restaurants, the media circus at presidential press conferences — are symptoms of revolutionary America. In this conflict, one side believes it is not only not fair but also not allowable that it lacks the necessary power to make us all equal — but equal only in the eyes of a self-anointed elite.

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itsworn · 8 years ago

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CAL Automotive Creations Rolls An 8—a Great 8—With Ted Hubbard’s 1930 Ford Model A

Ever been involved with, let alone behind the scenes of, a Ridler/AMBR project? If you answered in the negative, as I’m sure the majority of readers will as well, it’s more or less an orchestrated mess—both physically and mentally—for all individuals involved, from the beginning stages of the initial design all the way through till beyond the eleventh hour, and the moment the finished product is finally revealed … and judged on. I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing as an observer, and let me just tell you, the energy level alone is more than enough to power a tree-hugger’s hybrid for a year. As a mental frame of reference, picture a presidential election campaign headquarters in late October … minus the scandals.

Now, do you imagine anyone in their right mind would choose to commit themselves (and their shop) to complete a vehicle for the Detroit Autorama’s Ridler—six months before the show?! Well, right in the head or not, it was in August of 2016 that Andy Leach and Ted Hubbard decided Cobo Hall in February would be an appropriate setting in which to debut Ted and Colleen’s 1930 Model A coupe … not sure if “electric” is the best word to describe the atmosphere in Leach’s shop, CAL Automotive Creations, when that was officially announced, but from that moment forward things moved at lightning’s pace to meet the new deadline.

But the Ridler, nor that level of completeness, was ever a consideration back in 2015 when it all really began. “I met Ted through Tracy Weaver of Recovery Room interiors,” Leach recalls. “The project started by building headers and a few other odds and ends for the car … then, as things progressed, it turned into a full build and we started over with the project: correcting the stance, the proportions and lines of the body, and so on…” In essence, what started out as an odd-job to-do list of sorts eventually turned into a canvas for Leach and his CAL Auto Creations team to fully—and accurately—express their creative and constructive talents … in six months!

As Leach put it, “All things done were things that I (CAL Automotive Creations) came up with … things that I had always wanted to do to a Model A: the interior, headers, wheels, were all things that I had in my head that I wanted incorporate as a new spin on traditional styling that had not been done.” But what about the owner, how did his input factor in? “Ted was on board with everything once he saw the car progress … he wanted a cartoon stance, blown Ardun, and heavily chopped Model A that looked like a young kid whose father had way too much money owned back in the day.”

As a whole, the Hubbard Model A speaks volumes when it comes to that one single statement: “…a new spin on traditional styling.” I prefer to call it fresh—a deviation from the traditional-traditional approach that doesn’t stray so far off the beaten path that it comes off as such … it works. As a specific area that illustrates this, Leach reflected: “The rearend was another thing that; after lying under the car I knew we had to do something different than the same-old same-old quick-change banjo rear. I wanted cast-looking finned axle bells.” That thought process can be applied to any number of things on the coupe, from EVOD-whittled wheels capping the Winters Q-C (as well as the heavy Deuce axle leading before it) to the H&H Flatheads–built, Ardun OHV-equipped and S.Co.T.-blown aluminum Flathead that power it.

In a rather large nutshell, Ted and Colleen’s Model A, “Afterthought” (Leach will explain the name in a second), here’s what’s underneath all that Charley Hutton custom-mixed and applied Paleozoic Blue paint and Recovery Room custom-stitched distressed leather. The 104-inch wheelbase Deuce-esque chassis was built out by CAL Auto with its ’rails heavily kicked up front and rear, custom crossmembers integrated (the rear with built-in adjustable ride height), buggy springs and friction shocks, and Alan Johnson’s Kinmont-style brakes. H&H’s Mike Herman had already built the 1949 8BA at his shop in La Crescenta, California, long before the crew in Bennington, Nebraska, even got their hands on the car to begin with (which, by the way, also came from its original owner in California via eBay). CAL Auto further enhanced the impressive mill with a variety of machined components, from the custom PowerGen cover to the modified Tattersfield air cleaner atop a pair of Stromberg 97s, adding a Bowler Transmissions C4 automatic behind to complete the coupe’s drivetrain.

The custom machining also played a big part with the interior, as well—but more so from a 3-D–modeled/SolidWorks-drawn aspect that EVOD Industries physically translated into pretty much anything that the Recovery Room didn’t cover once the coupe made it over to their place in Plattsmouth, Nebraska. For instance, the bezels retaining the revamped 1957 Olds cluster and custom speedo meticulously done by Classic Instruments, the finned tranny tunnel and complementing column cover (with a one-off steering wheel attached above and Track Master box below), or the rubber mat floor trim—none of which is off-the-shelf type material. Even the headliner bows were custom-designed and made from scratch by TJ Zessin at Atomic Machining. Yet even with all that going on, the manner in which the shiny and satin hard surfaces intermingle with the distressed leather Tracy Weaver stitched and stretched.

As for the exterior, prior to going under the gun at Charley Hutton’s Color Studio in Nampa, Idaho, the solid-original 1930 Ford body was completely transformed by CAL Auto (Leach along with shop mates Erik Hanson and Luke Ward). The amount of work performed, from the 6-inch top chop/Deuce roofskin splice with eyebrow shave to the reverse-sectioned rear, flush-fit doors, and so on, it’s almost safe to say the body was built from scratch! And of course there’s more machinework outside, as well, such as the headlights (by Atomic), taillights (by Bowler), and the grille insert (by CAL Auto) wearing Advanced Plating brightwork that properly offsets the satin bronze-ish powdercoat courtesy of Trail Coatings.

I asked Leach what his thoughts were looking back now that the project’s done and the deadline met: “I think my team and I built the ultimate Model A for Ted and Colleen Hubbard. So many of these cars are all built and look the same … It’s hard to twist a traditional-style hot rod and make it unique, but I feel we did that! The car has lots of attitude and elegance.” But what about the name? I’ll explain that as I’d promised earlier: “The name ‘Afterthought’ was something that we came up with at the end of the build. The car did not start out to be a Ridler contender until six months before Detroit, as you’d mentioned. It was kind of a joke going around that everything done after the switch had been made to go to Detroit we called an afterthought. And at the end, it stuck!”

The post CAL Automotive Creations Rolls An 8—a Great 8—With Ted Hubbard’s 1930 Ford Model A appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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