A Republican Is Someone Who Thinks . . .
*That unemployment compensation for laid-off workers is socialism and multibillion-dollar bailouts for banking and stock swindlers is capitalism.
*That killing women and children with high explosives in remote corners of the earth is defending “our way of life.”
*That the purpose of education is to train good workers.
*That immigration is good because it supplies good cheap workers.
*That Earl Warren, Nelson Rockefeller, Gerald Ford, George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Colin Powell, and Mitt Romney are great American statesmen.
*That the main reason not to train women for combat is that it is inefficient.
*That the 10th Amendment means that the federal government should tell the States what to do rather than do it itself.
*That criticism of Lincoln is near treason.
*That the President is “Commander-in-Chief” of the country, especially when he is a Republican.
*That freedom is protected by undeclared wars and military tribunals.
*That “right to life” is a good campaign gimmick, but not to be taken seriously.
*That any campaign promise or slogan should gull the saps who are not in the know but is not to be taken seriously.
*That the way to beat the Democrats is to take up whatever they propose and promise to do it better.
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"That the way to beat the Democrats is to take up whatever they propose and promise to do it better."
Dr, Wilson,
The above comment reminded me of something the former Senator David Boren, a Rhodes Scholar,and the longest-serving chair of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee wrote some years ago. He is a former Governor of Oklahoma, and has served as President of the University of Oklahoma for the past fourteen years, --- no doubt much happier, healthier and productive than he was among the demagogues in Washington D.C.. He is referring to conversations that took place 20 years ago while neo-cons were taking complete control, smearing dissenters as unpatriotic,and getting every war they wanted, which Lord Tennyson described as one of the two great tragedies in life.
"I vividly remember conversations I had with then-president George H. W. Bush and his national security adviser, General Brent Scowcroft, near the end of the first Persian Gulf War. I was chair of the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence. We had just swept the forces of Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Little stood between our forces and Baghdad. I urged them to finish the job by taking over Iraq and removing Saddam from power. The senior President Bush forcefully disagreed. He first asked me to describe my exit strategy. I admitted that I did not have a good one. He and General Scowcroft then educated me about the long-standing division between the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis. They argued that Iraq would disintegrate into civil war, making it difficult for us to leave. Finally, they spoke of the balance of power in the Middle East and explained that the implosion of Iraq would tend only to strengthen the power of Iran in the region and place in greater jeopardy both Israel and moderate Arab states friendly to the United States.
While we beat our chest and proclaim ourselves the largest superpower, it is foolish to expect that we Americans, with only 6% of the world's population, can automatically impose our will on everyone else."
Sorry for the length but the "On to Iran!!" republican crowd is now growing restless.
*That politics is really just marketing---salesmanship rather than substance.
"*That the way to beat the Democrats is to take up whatever they propose and promise to do it better."
Also: That conservatism means defending what the Democrats did yesterday from the consequences of what they propose doing today.
...that modern politics is more than an advanced exercise in consumer fraud.
That MLK was a conservative. That GWB was a conservative.
That the Confederacy was, in the words of NATIONAL REVIEW, a dishonorable cause.
That Robert E. Lee was a traitor.
That John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King would be conservatives today.
That the Declaration of Independence is a governing document.
That property rights should be absolute.
That Wall Street should be deregulated to a great extreme.
The business of America is business.
That Budweiser and Miller should have an eighty percent monopoly of the American beer market.
Absolute free trade is an absolute truth.
"That the Confederacy was, in the words of NATIONAL REVIEW, a dishonorable cause."
A Republican is someone who thinks....That National Review is an honorable cause run by intelligent men !! (instead of kids.)
A contribution:
. . . that the Democrats are the liberals.
And a reaction to "That John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King would be conservatives today"
Today, they definitely would be.
That treason is opposition to an incumbent federal government, especially if it happened to be Republican.
That there is no patriotism independent of the conglomerate of abstractions of the centralized state.
That the federal government won the Civil War through strictly honorable means, and when this is proven untrue, that the dishonorable means were justified because of rebellion against a righteous government, and when this is proven untrue, that southerners should get over it because the federal government won.
"That property rights should be absolute."
Yeah right. They have no problem with Civil 'Rights' laws.
It's disappointing to me to see some here believe the myth that Republicans are believers in a free market. No, they have no problem at all with crony capitalism; in fact to them that is 'free market'.
When the Union was started, property rights (yes, of the 'evil' Lockean variety) were much more secure, and by no coincidence we were much more free.
The Republican party has never been the party of free markets. Its entire reason for existence has been crony capitalism---private ownership and profit with government subsidy.
That the "Civil War" was a civil war.
Frankly, with the exception of phony appeals to "right to life" and "family values," I don't see much difference in Dr. Wilson's descriptions of Republicans and today's (and going back many years) Democratic Party, which is part of the problem. Perhaps George Wallace was being overly generous in saying there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the two.
Mr. Flinn,
I agree with you and would extend it to this false debate about health care. First the federal government banishes the expression of religious faith in public,(except for opening congress of course) then takes over state governments, then takes over state eductation, and now wants to establish state medicine. The study of theology, law and medicine have always been the staples of a culture. Ray Charles could have seen this health care thing coming. What surprises me is all this staged surprise and hysteria. Once the exercise of charity toward God and neighbor (such as the practice of law, medicine and education has always been in in our long tradition)once this becomes a "humanitarian gesture" as understood by say Christopher Hitchens, or social work as understood by Leon Trotsky, or the "business of America" as understood by both republicans and democrats, then why all the surprise that potential nuns that once ran hospitals head for Daytona Beach, Bishop's conferences take the Prufrock road and form committees, health care costs sky rocket, estranged men buy Harleys and head for Sturgis, while the yankees who started it all,get rich by buying stocks in anti-depressants, long puts on life insurance companies and foreclosure firms.
#15: Robert, well put in a nutshell. Frankly, I always find it amusing that people really believe the federal government gives a tinker's damn about our health anyway. It's a bit of a stretch to believe the feds care about health when they are in such a dither to pack in all the pro-abortion funding they can into this monstrosity. A government that ok's the killing of the innocent unborn certainly doesn't give a flip about anyone' health. The Dems and the GOP brung each other to the dance and we ain't even invited.
* That it is right and proper for a global corporation with no ties to America to possess all the rights of an American citizen, none of the duties of an American citizen, and exponentially more representation in government than an American citizen.
Mr Toddard, at one time Dr Fleming didnt seem to mind fusionism with some of the better libertarians. Perhaps 'praise' is the wrong term, but an example of a libertarian with the good sense he says is lacking would be nice.
@18
That post was made for another thread. A mistake my part, sorry for cluttering your comments board Dr Wilson.
Recall that it was the reconstructionist Republican regime that, in Section 1982 of the CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1866 effectively laid the groundwork for the destruction of personal property rights. That section grants all citizens the same right "as is enjoyed by white citizens" to purchase and lease real property. In JONES V. ALFRED H. MAYER CO. (1968) the U. S. Supreme Court held that Section 1982 prohibited a racially motivated refusal to sell a home. The Court’s decision went even further than the Republican supported Civil Rights Act of 1968 which, In Title VII, also prohibited the right to freely choose to whom one which wished to sell his own property (although Title VII did exempt private homeowners). Where a society tolerates a government that imposes restrictions on the right to dispose of one's property or to refuse to dispose of it, for whatever reason, it should not be shocked if it finds one day that all personal property rights are in the government's hands.
*That “right to life” is a good campaign gimmick, but not to be taken seriously.
*That killing women and children with high explosives in remote corners of the earth is defending “our way of life.
I guess when the federal government uses the term 'life' for any endeavor you know the ulterior motive is abortion, euthanasia and collateral damage. We have come a long way from the original meaning of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence.
Ultimately, the government wants complete control over life and death and if all health care eventually is provided by the government it will control who is born and who will die. Read the current issue of the Economist which details the massacre of 100 million females (Gendercide) by 'developing' authoritarian regimes that are greatly admired by the same people designing the new national health care system. This is the future that the elites have in store for us.
That in order to acheive a 'social good' a man may be punished for his motives in refusing to sell his own property.
Just in the interests of accuracy, Mr. Leaberry @6, the Declaration of Independence is part of the Organic Law of the United States, along with the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance, and the Constitution, as adopted by the first Congress of the United States. As such it is a governing document.
re: #23
I interpreted Mr. Leaberry's comment about the declaration to mean that the document is not understood or taken seriously.
In all humility, and considering my nearly 30 years as an attorney, let me opine that the Declaration may be many things, but it is most certainly not “law.” It was never meant to govern mans actions, but was a statement of intent to take certain actions. As much as any statement by politicians can be, it may also be a real insight into the philosophies of its authors - or at least a consensus among competing philosophies. There was contention over the Declarations’ final form. Thus, the Declaration may be compared to pre-legislative debate - not "law" but of possible assistance in giving context to law. Of course, like FDR's "day of infamy" speech, it also served to stir passions in anticipation of war. At any rate, raising the Declaration to the status of law is akin to raising local church tradition to the status of doctrine.
Mr. Kamka, You may wish it to be as you say. I have sympathy for your point. But it is a fact that the "Organic Law" of the United States is contained in the documents listed above, and therefore are indeed governing laws. How our system chooses to use them is another matter. But they are governing laws, and have been since 1789 when Congress so declared it.
One of my problems with the Declaration as a governing document is that neo-conservatives tend to use it as some sort of proclamation of universal liberty and equality for all. I don't think that Thomas Jefferson meant the Declaration to be what the neo-conservatives, and for that matter the Left in total, want it to mean. After all, Jefferson owned slaves, did not support women's political equality, and had some notions regarding homosexuality that were not necessarilly progressive. Nor did Jefferson think that the Declaration would be misused to support the neo-conservatives' desire for world liberation and equality for all.
Mr. Leaberry, I couldn't agree with you more. And that doesn't change the basic point at all. If the first Congress had left the Declaration out of the Organic Law many evils would have been prevented, and the Northwest Ordinance perhaps could have been a better and more accommodating guide to our western expansion, along with the Common Law. But it didn't.
Mr Willson, wouldn't the Louisiana Purchase also be part of this 'organic law'? I ask this because I heard once that this document forbade property taxes in the Louisiana Territory and those states created out of it forever. Indeed, they are outlawed in the Arkansas constitution, even though that doesn't stop me from being forced to pay rent on my property every year. This concept is quite intriguing, and perhaps could be used to advantage, though there is obviously danger.
That criticism of Lincoln is near treason.
This is demonstrated ad nauseum by the rhetoric of the Republican "right" (better known as the Wilsonian globalist wing of the government.) Despite their foreign policy, which is thoroughly congruent with Wilson, these "conservatives' and their media shills, like O'Reilly, O'hannity, O'Beck, O'Coulter and O'Limbaugh, seek to undermine the big government social policies of the democrats by courageously attacking the early 20th century progressives. Is this not political and moral courage abounding?! They do this, of course, that they may seize the reigns of power and institute more of their big government Wilsonian utopianism. This is very cleaver, attacking Wilson that they might gain power thereby and institute more of Wilson's policies upon a populace utterly bereft of the faintest sense of historical knowledge or insight. This is right out of Monty Python--no, it's even too absurd for them.
Despite this courageous stand against people who lived a century ago and cannot defend themselves (not that they really have a defense) the O' crowd kowtows to the ghost and geist of Lincoln, without whom no progressivism could have been established. He was, as we all know here, in many ways the arch progressive and Jacobin. Yet there is only praise from their lips for the one who "saved the union." I recall Mark Levin giving one of his "history lessons," talking about the evils of the south and then saying, "Then there arose on the scene A GREAT MAN,... A GREAT MAN!!! ABRAHAM LINCOLN." All uttered in the most sermonic of tones. Only minutes later he was ranting against centralized government and the Progressives. And Beck, if anything, is worse, much worse, and living proof you can't trust man who keeps telling you how transparent and honest he is––just whom is he trying to convince? Beck always speaks of needing duct tape to keep his head from exploding due to the madness and inconsistencies of his adversaries (the ones he's told to oppose this week by his Neocon handlers)--but Beck sells more duct tape than anyone. And so it goes. Has politics always been this mad? If so I'm surprised mankind made it past the cave entrance.
Allen,
I wonder why the property tax (here in Texas we have one of the highest in the nation) is not challenged and declared unconstitutional. Perhaps attempts were made a failed? It seems to me the tax is a direct affront to the right of ownership. No only pays what is tantamount to a lease fee on something they really own. If you buy a hot tub you don't keeping paying the government for it year after year---because you own it. But if we must pay for the property every year, whatever name you call it, you never own it, you're only leasing and you could be thrown off the land by your default. I'm historically challenged here, but did the founders allow this? Did the states charge property tax in 1790? When did this start?
#28 John Willson writes:
"If the first Congress had left the Declaration out of the Organic Law many evils would have been prevented, and the Northwest Ordinance perhaps could have been a better and more accommodating guide to our western expansion, along with the Common Law. But it didn’t."
The opportunity to indulge two of my favorite pastimes at once (troublemaker and editor, if they are not the same thing) was too great to pass up. So here I offer Clyde Wilson's comment on the Common Law's proper place:
"How then could Congress pass such a law as the Sedition Act? Because the Federalists, Hamilton and Adams and their supporters, justified their legislation by invoking the Common Law’s provisions about the punishment of “sedition.” The Common Law existed in each State to the extent that State had found it worthwhile to adopt it, but it had no place in a written document of delegated powers such as the Constitution for the United States. If the feds could ignore specified power limitations by grafting Common Law jurisdiction into the Constitution, then literally everything under the sun could be brought under their power. Not only that, but everything under the sun could be ultimately disposed of by the federal courts, which would become the new sovereign. This had to be stopped."