The Lessons Of Arnold

Steven Den Beste has another excellent essay on the real lessons of the Schwarzenegger victory and other subjects. A notable quotation:

Were California an independent nation, it would have the fifth largest economy on the planet. Its economy is larger than that of France, and its population is comparable to Canada (a member of the G7). Yesterday its citizens ousted their leader, and he meekly accepted the result. They selected a political outsider to become their new leader, and he will become their new leader. Almost anywhere else in the world a change like that would have required bloody revolution, if the citizens could rouse themselves enough from cynical apathy and resignation to even make the attempt. In France, about the only way this kind of voter unrest manifests is in things like the first-round protest votes which put Le Pen into the runoff for President against Chirac. Ultimately that made no difference, nor did French voters really expect that it would.

Yesterday the citizens of the State of California performed a coup without firing a shot, and equally important, the government didn’t resist it. On the contrary, the government ran the election by which that coup was implemented, and counted the votes honestly, and its leader accepted the result.

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The lesson for the world from yesterday: Do not underestimate the power of the American people.