the Founding Fathers & The Rise and Fall of Conservatism.
Doug Bashford
Thoughts for Independence Day.
The mix of Conservatism and Liberalism define the society and
economy in the same way that soil and climate define which plants
and animals will survive.
in alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, On Wed, 01 Jul 2009, Mr.B1ack said
about:
Re: Al Franken; - Al Schmanken! ...Guess what, folks?
> (Doug Bashford) wrote:
> >Gandalf Grey said about:
> > Re: Franken Wins!
> >> "Milt" wrote...
> >> On Jun 30, 11:32 am, "5034 Dead wrote:
> >> > 60
> >> >
> >> > Oh, I know the number doesn't really mean all that much, but you know how
> >> > invoking it just drives the right wingers batshit. I can't resist.
> >> I won't be satisfied until it's at least 65, and at least 50 of them
> >> at least lean to the progressive side...
> >>
> >> Of course, given the current state of the GOP, it could happen sooner
> >> rather than later...
Bashford:
> >Stop the dancing. Now we must go to work.
> >Many Lefties have been arguing very well that
> >the Dem leadership doesn't really want 60.
> Of course not. Then they couldn't blame failures
> on the Republicans, could they ? :-)
You got it.
> >No more passing the buck folks. Time to see
> >who's really on the take from the lobbiests.
> >Time to see what's really happened to democracy.
> >Get ready to be disappointed.
> Been there, done that already.
>
> The system was pretty much rigged before the
> ink had dried on the constitution.
I don't know about that, but
my blood aint dried up yet. It's fresh.
> >They took "single payer" off the table, and
> >just about "public option." ...not to mention
> >a dozen other things.
> >
> >Time to separate our ideals from the crooks.
> >It's time that WE CHANGE. No more acting like
> >the Repubs who think politicians run the nation.
> >It's time that WE CHANGE.
> >
> >Will our real motto be: "No we didn't!" ?
> >
> >Tag, your it.
> One thing worth considering ... does the country
> work BETTER with a rigged system than it would have
> without ? 'Democracy' is, deservedly, a dirty word
> amongst political philosophers - has been since
> Plato. It empowers the mob over all else - and
> is a recipe for disaster. The mob is greedy, the
> mob is poorly educated and can't even spell 'logic',
> the mob is spiteful and vindictive. The mob is the
> last group you want running a country.
Not quite.
That's certainly what the founders of Conservatism thought,
such as Edmund Burke(1729-1797), Leo Strauss (1899 � 1973)
and Russell Kirk (1918 � 1994). And that's the argument that
kept representative government out of the world until the Age of
Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson -- until 1776.
Those are the people Limbaugh, Buckley, and neocons etc,
quote with adoration.
Check it out! Google "Edmund Burke" "middle class"
(keep the quotes) -- Conservatives hate and distrust the
middle class as you suggest. And they believe in deceiving
us Little People, and keeping us under control with deception,
tradition, and religion. You want some quotes?
There's another theory that says individuals may be foolish
but We The People are not. That would be (most of) our
founding fathers such as Jefferson, and summed up in the
famous first sentence of the Declaration of Independence.
> Our illustrious Founders, after rigging things to
> serve themselves, set about finding some fixes for
> democracy. They did a fair job ... but even that
> plasterwork is showing its age now.
One of their worst mistakes was underestemating the future
power of monopolisic corporations in both bribing government
and owning their cherished holy Press. But in fairness, in
their world incorporation was only granted to serve the
common good, and was easily and often undone. In fact the
burden of proof for their very existance was on the corporations.
> The people who rig the system for their benifit are
> the better-educated better-bred lot for the most part.
> They're the kind capable of running a government.
Yep, that's EXACATLY the Conservative philosophy of the
three Conservatives above.
What you describe below is the failure of Conservativism.
> In helping themselves they usually help (or at least
> "helpED" the country as a whole.
>
> Alas ... even these 'elite' have failed. The latest
> generations have switched from 'building empires' to
> just building their own wealth - and ONLY their own
> wealth - at the expense of the people and system
> that created that wealth. Hyenas, vultures ... it's
> a whole different mentality that, in its own way,
> is just as destructive as letting the mob loot and
> burn at its whim.
>
> 'National Health' combined with several other 'welfare
> state' initiatives and horribly misguided borrowing
> schemes WILL completely wreck the USA.
You frightened bimbo. ...just like it ruined all the advanced
nations in the world? Funny how Conservatives always
butt-clench, loudly squeal and assume Capitalism is such a
brittle and fragile institution when it must face the slightest
adjustment not of its own making.
Why is that?
I say Hogwash.
> It is not a
> sustainable course given todays economic realities.
On that we agree. At the momement, and I mean this week,
this month, possibly this year, not next year or later, we face
the potentential end of both traditional American Capitalism,
and traditional American government.
The reason for that simple. Power follows money,
which gives power which attracts money in a never
ending, self-feeding unstoppable vortex.
Tipping point.
> America ain't #1 anymore ... and is looking more and
> more like #2 in comparison to those rising stars in
> the far east. Big-Spending-R-NOT-Us anymore.
Bumper sticker that ignores the rest of the advanced
world. They were NEVER number one. They did it.
What in your mind makes Americans less capible or
(more likely) less worthy?
> So - the mob is ... well ... what it always was and
> the economic 'elite' have turned traitor. Neither is
> gonna save us.
>
> So who's left ?
Uhm...you might read the Enlightenment thinkers
and revamp your opinion of the mob?
========quote from "Major Themes in The Enlightenment"
John Locke and Thomas Jefferson are just two of the many notable
thinkers and writers who share Enlightenment values.
A basic list of these values would include the following:
* a deep commitment to reason,
* a trust in the emerging modern sciences to solve problems
and provide control over nature,
* a commitment to the idea of progress in material wealth and
in human civility,
* a belief in the essential goodness of human nature,
* an emphasis upon the individual as master of his fate and
fortune, and
* an engagement with the public sphere of discussion and
action.
In short, the Enlightenment thinkers believed in the powers of
humankind and saw themselves as part of a revolutionary
development in history that would replace superstition and tired
rituals and corrupt traditions with reason and productive energy.
www.temple.edu/ih/Enlightenment/
============end quote
As you can see, those are liberal ideas, many of them
in direct oposition to Conservatism. I figure within a
decade or so, Limbaugh & Co will be calling Thomas Jefferson
an Evil Liberal. ...it's difficult to avoid.
You guys and your world view have really fucked up America.
Sadly, you are too rigid to change now, it's your nature,
in fact your heros banner that trait.
>
> Might not BE anyone. The military will likely take
> charge somewhere along the way here. We'll be broke
> AND have a rifle pointed at our heads. Then we'll
> be #3 ... as in '3rd world'. Our America-hating
> 'liberals' will rejoice, briefly anyway ... before
> it all bites THEM in the ass too.
I rest my case.
Thanks for your support.
edi...@netpath.net
with the Third World - as bankrupted Kalifornia - nor an America with
an expansive welfare state at the same time its underclass was allowed
to vote themselves higher benefits.
http://www.Internet-Gun-Show.com - your source for hard-to-find stuff!
None4U
<edi...@netpath.net> wrote in message
news:757fe6ce-e3a7-4fd5...@g1g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
They never envisioned an America lasting more then 200 years either. They
predicted centralized government debt would destroy America. Without the
people working hard to keep it a Republic. They knew a centralized
goverment running amok and destroying the America they envisioned was
likely. So the States were to keep the Federal government in check and
allocate their budget and agenda to them. This was reversed with the 16th
and 17th ammendment, The Creating of the Federal reserve, and the removal
of the gold standard. And a slew of other moves by dictator wannabe
presidents as far back as 1870 ish.
The people of the country have the power , But are split up, uneducated,
and devided into not doing the right things.
Socialism will follow , then Totaltarian Society. Orsen Wells wasnt wrong.
edi...@netpath.net
> <edi...@netpath.net> wrote in message
> > The Founding Fathers never envisioned an America with joke borders
> > with the Third World - as bankrupted Kalifornia - nor an America with
> > an expansive welfare state at the same time its underclass was allowed
> > to vote themselves higher benefits.
>
That's a lame excuse; it's hardly realistic to believe that the
Founding Fathers first revolted against the main colonial power at
that time - then wrote up a long, complex set of rules for governing
their newly-free nation - in any hope their new nation would only be a
temporary thing lasting only a few years.
Rod Speed
> <edi...@netpath.net> wrote
>> The Founding Fathers never envisioned an America with joke borders with the Third World - as bankrupted Kalifornia -
>> nor an America with an expansive welfare state at the same time its underclass was allowed to vote themselves higher
>> benefits.
> They never envisioned an America lasting more then 200 years either.
Thats very arguable.
> They predicted centralized government debt would destroy America.
> Without the people working hard to keep it a Republic. They knew a centralized goverment running amok and destroying
> the America they
> envisioned was likely. So the States were to keep the Federal
> government in check and allocate their budget and agenda to them. This was reversed with the 16th and 17th
> ammendment, The Creating of
> the Federal reserve, and the removal of the gold standard. And a slew of other moves by dictator wannabe presidents
> as far back as 1870 ish.
You wouldnt know what a real dictator was if one bit you on your lard arse.
> The people of the country have the power , But are split up, uneducated, and devided into not doing the right things.
The political system they devised is designed to work regardless of that.
It has done that quite well, a hell of a lot better than
any other alternative we have yet discovered has done.
> Socialism will follow ,
It already had even when they started, most obviously
with public education, the judiciary and the police etc.
> then Totaltarian Society.
Nope, There is no inevitable move towards that. In fact there
is arguably an inevitable move away from that instead.
> Orsen Wells wasnt wrong.
Yes he was. So was George Orwell, completely wrong.
zzbu...@netscape.net
> The Founding Fathers never envisioned an America with joke borders
> with the Third World - as bankrupted Kalifornia - nor an America with
> an expansive welfare state at the same time its underclass was allowed
> to vote themselves higher benefits.
That's mostly because the 18th century founding fathers never
imagined
anything beyond plantations, share cropping farming, or wooden
ships.
Which is also why the California idiots, just like the internet
cranks
are constantly told that the people who know what's what, in the
21st Century
work on GPS, Weather Satellites, UAVs, AAVs, Digital Terrain
Mapping,
Atomic Clock Wristwatches, Holograms, Electronic Books, Fiber
Optics Signal Lines,
All-In-One Printers, XML, USB, HDTV, Laser Disk Libraries, On-Line
Publishing, On-Line Banking,
Drones, Cruise Missiles, Phalanx, Thermo-Electric Cooling,and Self-
Replicating Machines.
Rather than the 18th Century or California anything.
>
> http://www.Internet-Gun-Show.com- your source for hard-to-find stuff!
Gunner Asch
Bashford) wrote:
>Check it out! Google "Edmund Burke" "middle class"
>(keep the quotes) -- Conservatives hate and distrust the
>middle class
Sigh...poor bastard has gone off the mental reservation again.
"Lenin called them "useful idiots," those people living in
liberal democracies who by giving moral and material support
to a totalitarian ideology in effect were braiding the rope that
would hang them. Why people who enjoyed freedom and prosperity worked
passionately to destroy both is a fascinating question, one still with us
today. Now the useful idiots can be found in the chorus of appeasement,
reflexive anti-Americanism, and sentimental idealism trying to inhibit
the necessary responses to another freedom-hating ideology, radical Islam"
Bruce C. Thornton, a professor of Classics at American University of Cal State Fresno
hal
<gun...@NOSPAMlightspeed.net> wrote:
>On Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:06:17 GMT, see.m...@theBeach.edu (Doug
>Bashford) wrote:
>
>>Check it out! Google "Edmund Burke" "middle class"
>>(keep the quotes) -- Conservatives hate and distrust the
>>middle class
>
>Sigh...poor bastard has gone off the mental reservation again.
it's true, conservatives have been waging war on the middle class for
decades. Conservatives don't like the middle class because they do
things like vote.
Gray Ghost
> On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:42:53 -0700, Gunner Asch
><gun...@NOSPAMlightspeed.net> wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:06:17 GMT, see.m...@theBeach.edu (Doug
>>Bashford) wrote:
>>
>>>Check it out! Google "Edmund Burke" "middle class"
>>>(keep the quotes) -- Conservatives hate and distrust the middle class
>>
>>Sigh...poor bastard has gone off the mental reservation again.
>
> it's true, conservatives have been waging war on the middle class for
> decades. Conservatives don't like the middle class because they do
> things like vote.
The Dems should hire you as a spokeperson, put you on TV. In clown makeup.
>
>>
>>
>>"Lenin called them "useful idiots," those people living in
>>liberal democracies who by giving moral and material support
>>to a totalitarian ideology in effect were braiding the rope that
>>would hang them. Why people who enjoyed freedom and prosperity worked
>>passionately to destroy both is a fascinating question, one still with us
>>today. Now the useful idiots can be found in the chorus of appeasement,
>>reflexive anti-Americanism, and sentimental idealism trying to inhibit
>>the necessary responses to another freedom-hating ideology, radical
>>Islam"
>>
>>Bruce C. Thornton, a professor of Classics at American University of Cal
>>State Fresno
>
--
Always remember:
Bull Connor was a Democrat!
Larry
wrote:
> hal wrote innews:7q2u45hj266pq7m28...@4ax.com:
>
> > On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:42:53 -0700, Gunner Asch
> ><gun...@NOSPAMlightspeed.net> wrote:
>
> >>Bashford) wrote:
>
> >>>Check it out! Google "Edmund Burke" "middle class"
> >>>(keep the quotes) -- Conservatives hate and distrust the middle class
>
> >>Sigh...poor bastard has gone off the mental reservation again.
>
> > it's true, conservatives have been waging war on the middle class for
> > decades. Conservatives don't like the middle class because they do
> > things like vote.
>
> The Dems should hire you as a spokeperson, put you on TV. In clown makeup.
But he is not alone in that view. See http://www.newsweek.com/id/202620/output/print
Some extractions from this article:
Regarding true conservatism: "government's role was to preserve
tradition and social order, not to speed the accumulation of great
power and wealth among the elites or to enact sudden or overreaching
reforms."
Regarding Republican's conservatism: "the party had gone calamitously
awry. The conservative can all too easily drift into a morally
bankrupt and intellectually shallow defense of those who have it made
and those who are on the make..."
Regarding JFK and democratic party: "it had at least treated the
American people as citizens, as men and women with a shared stake in
the national destiny."
___________________________________
Why? Reagan Was Wrong
To conservative Cassandra Henry Fairlie, Republicans sowed their
present-day destruction from the start.
Jeremy McCarter
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Jun 29, 2009
When Henry Fairlie came to America, the editors of this magazine
deemed his arrival sufficiently momentous to run a page-long story
about him. The 42-year-old writer had been called "the most
controversial political journalist in England" and "the first of the
Angry Young Men" for his piercing and heterodox columns in the British
press—including his most celebrated one, in which he coined the term
"the establishment." After his 1966 move to the United States, he
would write some of the liveliest and most provocative essays of his
time about what NEWSWEEK called "the American scene."
Fairlie's sharp eye, stylish pen and outsider's perspective let him
capture why he loved this country (our freedom, our gadgets, the
endless space) and attack us natives for how we sell it short (our
wavering belief in America's greatness, our uptight yuppie ways). Even
now, decades later, these pieces hold up beautifully: while editing a
new anthology of his work, Bite the Hand That Feeds You:Essays and
Provocations, I found funny, timeless examples of his writing in The
New Republic, The Washington Post, The New Yorker and other papers and
magazines that published him.
Read today, when America's political ideologies are in flux, some of
these arguments turn out to be surprisingly, urgently timely. Fairlie
arrived when the Republican Party was regrouping in the wake of Barry
Goldwater's loss, and he lived long enough (until 1990) to see it
assume power under Ronald Reagan. The trajectory horrified him. For
Fairlie—a lifelong, if idiosyncratic, Tory—the ideology that came to
dominate American conservatism after World War II didn't live up to
America's best traditions. It was, in fact, no conservatism at all. He
didn't explicitly predict that in 2009 we'd watch this ideology fall
rather spectacularly to pieces, but he knew it couldn't last long.
When a rudderless Republican Party seems in danger of humiliating
itself to death, Fairlie—a conservative who saw from the era's
beginning how badly it was going to end—deserves a fresh hearing.
Fairlie was no theorist. And while he wrote five books—including The
Kennedy Promise, an early, critical account of the Camelot years—he
wasn't a pamphleteer. He was a freelancer, a position he held for
nearly 40 years. This choice was rooted in principle, because he
demanded the independence to write what he wanted when he wanted. It
was also a function of his genius for burning bridges. (He drank, had
endless affairs and distilled his relationships with editors and
proprietors to the title of his unfinished memoir, Bite the Hand That
Feeds You.) So Fairlie's critique of American conservatism needs to be
assembled from pieces scattered over several decades and many
publications. He stated its theme most clearly in an essay for
Harper's in 1984: "The fundamental and persistent weakness of American
conservatism is that it is not nourished by any distinct tory spirit."
Fairlie's views of toryism, like his views of most things (America,
women, Parliament, Scotch), were deeply romantic. He described his
kind of conservative as one who stands alongside "the King and the
People, against the barons and the capitalists." In other words,
government's role was to preserve tradition and social order, not to
speed the accumulation of great power and wealth among the elites or
to enact sudden or overreaching reforms. He warmed to this view as a
boy, when summers on a family farm in Scotland taught him that
"nothing very much changes, and then changes only slowly." He refined
it as an adult, coming to revere the leadership of Winston Churchill,
whom he called "the greatest tory of them all," and absorb the
writings of Michael Oakeshott, "the most formative conservative
political thinker of his generation." When he arrived in America, he
expected to find conservatives with similar beliefs. Instead he found
the Republicans.
Fairlie's critique of American conservatism began with a GOP heresy:
that by embracing the free market so completely, the party had gone
calamitously awry. "The conservative can all too easily drift into a
morally bankrupt and intellectually shallow defense of those who have
it made and those who are on the make," he wrote. Without a humanizing
tory influence, conservatives were apt to forget "the ugly face of
capitalism"—the way that the market tends to coarsen and destabilize
society, making the gross national product fodder for our "gross
national appetite." Republicans, he argued, could never succeed in
uniting the country as long as they supported business interests so
completely with both their policy choices and their rhetoric: "The
nation cannot be brought to you, as if it were Masterpiece Theatre, by
a grant from Mobil Oil," he wrote.
Though Fairlie distrusted John F. Kennedy—making a good tory's case
that his charisma and outsize promises gave the country false
expectations for change—the market worship and hyperindividualism of
Reaganism led him to think more warmly of JFK's inaugural. Whatever
the excesses of the speech, he wrote in 1986, it had at least treated
the American people as citizens, as men and women with a shared stake
in the national destiny. A comparable call in the 1980s, Fairlie
wrote, would have been: "And so, you fellow Americans, buy your
condominium and your Volvo—that's your war effort." In this, he turned
out to be more right than he knew. Fifteen years after that essay ran,
George W. Bush tried to rally the nation in the wake of the September
11 attacks by telling everybody to go shopping. His failure would have
disappointed Fairlie, but it wouldn't have surprised him.
Tax-cutting regulation-haters weren't the only false conservatives in
the Reagan coalition, Fairlie argued: the bedroom-snooping, morality--
legislating social conservatives were just as misguided. He was no
libertarian, but he thought that much of the social agenda of the
American political right (then and now) consisted of things that were
nobody's business: "Let one homosexual, coke-snorting student bum get
hold of two food stamps, and the whole apparatus of government is
brought into play," he wrote.
While Fairlie wanted government to be big enough and strong enough to
unify society, relieve material want and maintain global order (his
defenses of American empire were so forceful and frequent that Sen. J.
William Fulbright derided him as "a British Gunga Din"), he had little
use for leadership that agitated people needlessly. The history of his
homeland gave him a reason to think that government shouldn't meddle
in personal affairs: "One may say that the English aristocrat has
always been the truest tory because he knows that his own family has
survived the most eccentric and often reprobate conduct of its members
for centuries."
This question of class plays a crucial part in Fairlie's contempt for
American conservatism. Though he wasn't an aristocrat (his father had
been a hard-drinking Fleet Street prodigy before him) and genuinely
relished spending time with people far removed from the Washington
media overclass, he was repelled by the GOP's pandering to the common
man. It struck him as vulgar. And it led to his most notorious feud.
During the 1980 Republican convention, he wrote a column for The
Washington Post describing the delegates as members of the "booboisie"
once mocked by H. L. Mencken, by which Fairlie meant they were:
"Narrow minded, book banning, truth censoring, mean spirited;
ungenerous, envious, intolerant, afraid; chicken, bullying; trivially
moral, falsely patriotic; family cheapening, flag cheapening, God
cheapening; the common man, shallow, small, sanctimonious." William F.
Buckley replied with a column attacking Fairlie for being an English
interloper, a bad grammarian and a snob. When Buckley included the
column in an essay collection five years later, Fairlie panned the
book in The New Republic, dissing Buckley as unconservative,
overexposed and "the quintessential Common Man of our time." This so
incensed Buckley that he bought a full-page ad in a subsequent issue
of the magazine to reprint his original attack on Fairlie.
When I first read Fairlie's column about the convention, it seemed
overheated. Then I watched Sarah Palin speak. Fairlie's disgust at the
GOP's impulse toward small-minded demagoguery anticipated the day when
it would reach its fullest expression—when the movement would have no
farther to fall.
Fairlie didn't assail American conservatives because he was a liberal
in Burke's clothing: he was just as quick to castigate the Democrats
when they screwed up, and with just as much spiky humor. But however
much they erred, he argued, the Democrats remained "the normal
governing party of the most powerful and most restless free nation in
the world." The vital difference between the parties lay in their
views of government itself. Like many Democrats, he believed that the
political realm was the only place where a free people could contend
with the tyrannies of all the other realms—especially the economic
one. Even after reporting on political malfeasance in more than a
dozen countries on three continents, Fairlie insisted that politics
was "essentially good" and politicians "the most hopeful messengers of
a society's will to improve."
Conservatives, by contrast, showed an infuriating hostility for
Washington, nothing like the "gusto" brought to politics by Fairlie's
beloved FDR. "The Reaganite conservative does not trust the political
system, and so is always trying to circumvent it; he does not trust
the instincts of Congress, but places profound faith in the wisdom of
the executive if he is in charge; he does not trust the deep religious
instinct of a people, unless it is decked out in the tawdry costume of
a minute of silent prayer in school. The only loyalty that eight years
of Reaganite conservatism has inspired is of each to the country of
his self." Extend Fairlie's argument to the present, and Dick Cheney,
with his consistent and inventive transgressions, begins to look like
one of the least conservative leaders we've ever had.
Fairlie didn't offer any bullet-pointed plan for how American
conservatives could reclaim the soul he believed they'd lost (and
needed to reclaim, since "conservatism more than liberalism needs a
soul"). But if he were writing now, he would find any attempt to
rebuild the Reagan coalition, or to reassert the principles that
elected him, foolish and unconservative. He would argue instead that
Republicans need to try once again to "civilize and broaden"
conservatism, even though they've failed so many times before.
This doesn't mean making marginal improvements to the racial mix at
the voting booth. It means finding a way to uphold our best traditions
while ceasing to profess "a conservatism that is just one long grouch
at the twentieth century." It means bringing a genuine compassion to
government, as opposed to the sloganeering kind. And it means learning
to love America in all its messy kaleidoscopic glory, as Fairlie did.
During last year's campaign, he would have been thrilled by Barack
Obama's story and what it demonstrates about the possibilities of
American life (though quick to chasten his Kennedy-esque ambitions),
and he would have eviscerated Palin's notion that there's such a thing
as "real America." For someone who never learned to drive, Fairlie
contrived to spend much of his time away from the Eastern Seaboard,
falling more and more in love with this immigrant nation. "Ameri-ca
must be kept open," he insisted in 1983—"no technique, no system, no
ideology, must be allowed to close it down."
That, too, is a romantic view, but one that Fairlie never abandoned,
not even when he had good reasons. During the 1980s, his fecklessness
with money and increased drinking led him to lose his apartment in
Washington. The years that other writers of his caliber might have
spent in suburban comfort, putting together the anthologies that would
outlive them, Fairlie spent living in his office at The New Republic,
since he had nowhere else to go. Even as he went on skewering the
Republicans and immoderately praising the country he understood so
much better than they did, he didn't grow bitter. Far from it. The
most direct counsel he offered to American conservatives was the
advice that the great journalist Walter Bagehot had offered to their
British counterparts a century earlier. It's even more worth heeding
today, when their spirits are so low: "Try a little enjoyment."
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/202620
hal
(Gray Ghost) wrote:
>hal wrote in news:7q2u45hj266pq7m28...@4ax.com:
>
>> On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:42:53 -0700, Gunner Asch
>><gun...@NOSPAMlightspeed.net> wrote:
>>
>>>On Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:06:17 GMT, see.m...@theBeach.edu (Doug
>>>Bashford) wrote:
>>>
>>>>Check it out! Google "Edmund Burke" "middle class"
>>>>(keep the quotes) -- Conservatives hate and distrust the middle class
>>>
>>>Sigh...poor bastard has gone off the mental reservation again.
>>
>> it's true, conservatives have been waging war on the middle class for
>> decades. Conservatives don't like the middle class because they do
>> things like vote.
>
>The Dems should hire you as a spokeperson, put you on TV. In clown makeup.
the conservatives are the party of the rich, by definition. They
exploit the stupidity of social conservatives, mainly Christians
because they are stupid enough to want to hate gays and birth control
and want to enforce their idealogy on others. But economically,
conservativsm is the worst thing that could ever happen to the middle
class because it favors the wealthy at the expense of the working
class and has done things like ship all our jobs overseas and destroy
unions and government regulations designed to protect the people.
Dan
> On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:42:53 -0700, Gunner Asch
> <gun...@NOSPAMlightspeed.net> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:06:17 GMT, see.m...@theBeach.edu (Doug
>> Bashford) wrote:
>>
>>> Check it out! Google "Edmund Burke" "middle class"
>>> (keep the quotes) -- Conservatives hate and distrust the
>>> middle class
>> Sigh...poor bastard has gone off the mental reservation again.
>
> it's true, conservatives have been waging war on the middle class for
> decades. Conservatives don't like the middle class because they do
> things like vote.
Don't confuse Republicans with conservatives. There is no connection.
Dan
Dan
> hal wrote in news:7q2u45hj266pq7m28...@4ax.com:
>
>> On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:42:53 -0700, Gunner Asch
>> <gun...@NOSPAMlightspeed.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:06:17 GMT, see.m...@theBeach.edu (Doug
>>> Bashford) wrote:
>>>
>>>> Check it out! Google "Edmund Burke" "middle class"
>>>> (keep the quotes) -- Conservatives hate and distrust the middle class
>>> Sigh...poor bastard has gone off the mental reservation again.
>> it's true, conservatives have been waging war on the middle class for
>> decades. Conservatives don't like the middle class because they do
>> things like vote.
>
> The Dems should hire you as a spokeperson, put you on TV. In clown makeup.
Why? You got a "thing" for clowns?
Dan
Strabo
True.
And don't confuse Republicans with 'republicans'.
>
> Dan
HH&C
> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009 15:56:15 -0700 (PDT), "edi...@netpath.net"
>
> <edi...@netpath.net> wrote:
> >The Founding Fathers never envisioned an America with joke borders
> >with the Third World - as bankrupted Kalifornia - nor an America with
> >an expansive welfare state at the same time its underclass was allowed
> >to vote themselves higher benefits.
>
> belonged to someone else. They didn't need no welfare class, they had
> slaves.
Did you apologize for slavery yet? How many slaves did you own? When
did you set them free? Were you in the Army of the North?
HH&C
> Dan wrote:
> > hal wrote:
> >> On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:42:53 -0700, Gunner Asch
> >> <gun...@NOSPAMlightspeed.net> wrote:
>
> >>> Bashford) wrote:
>
> >>>> Check it out! Google "Edmund Burke" "middle class"
> >>>> (keep the quotes) -- Conservatives hate and distrust the middle class
> >>> Sigh...poor bastard has gone off the mental reservation again.
>
> >> it's true, conservatives have been waging war on the middle class for
> >> decades. Conservatives don't like the middle class because they do
> >> things like vote.
>
> > Don't confuse Republicans with conservatives. There is no connection.
>
> True.
>
> And don't confuse Republicans with 'republicans'.
Now you're doing it.
I've seen the smudge and Winston making some distinction between
something in lower case vs something in upper case.
Explain.
Rod Speed
> On Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:03:46 -0500, grey_ghost47...@yahoo.com
> (Gray Ghost) wrote:
>
>> hal wrote in news:7q2u45hj266pq7m28...@4ax.com:
>>
>>> On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:42:53 -0700, Gunner Asch
>>> <gun...@NOSPAMlightspeed.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:06:17 GMT, see.m...@theBeach.edu (Doug
>>>> Bashford) wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Check it out! Google "Edmund Burke" "middle class"
>>>>> (keep the quotes) -- Conservatives hate and distrust the middle
>>>>> class
>>>>
>>>> Sigh...poor bastard has gone off the mental reservation again.
>>>
>>> it's true, conservatives have been waging war on the middle class
>>> for decades. Conservatives don't like the middle class because
>>> they do things like vote.
>>
>> The Dems should hire you as a spokeperson, put you on TV. In clown
>> makeup.
> the conservatives are the party of the rich, by definition.
Thats just plain wrong. There just arent enough of the rich to elect any govt.
In fact the conservative party appeals to the rich most of the time.
> They exploit the stupidity of social conservatives, mainly Christians
> because they are stupid enough to want to hate gays and birth control
> and want to enforce their idealogy on others. But economically,
> conservativsm is the worst thing that could ever happen to the middle
> class because it favors the wealthy at the expense of the working class
Thats irrelevant to the middle class.
> and has done things like ship all our jobs overseas
Nothing even remotely resembling anything like all the jobs could
have been shifted overseas if the unemployment rate bottomed
at 4.x% with an immense legal and illegal immigration rate.
> and destroy unions
Could have SWORN that they were still there in GM and Ford
and the education system and the public service etc etc etc.
> and government regulations designed to protect the people.
Another lie.
Michael Coburn
> hal wrote:
>> On Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:03:46 -0500, grey_ghost47...@yahoo.com
>> (Gray Ghost) wrote:
>>
>>> hal wrote in news:7q2u45hj266pq7m28...@4ax.com:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:42:53 -0700, Gunner Asch
>>>> <gun...@NOSPAMlightspeed.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:06:17 GMT, see.m...@theBeach.edu (Doug
>>>>> Bashford) wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Check it out! Google "Edmund Burke" "middle class" (keep the
>>>>>> quotes) -- Conservatives hate and distrust the middle class
>>>>>
>>>>> Sigh...poor bastard has gone off the mental reservation again.
>>>>
>>>> it's true, conservatives have been waging war on the middle class for
>>>> decades. Conservatives don't like the middle class because they do
>>>> things like vote.
>>>
>>> The Dems should hire you as a spokeperson, put you on TV. In clown
>>> makeup.
>
>> the conservatives are the party of the rich, by definition.
>
> Thats just plain wrong. There just arent enough of the rich to elect any
> govt.
>
> In fact the conservative party appeals to the rich most of the time.
The virus seems to confuse itself here. Call the keepers.
>> They exploit the stupidity of social conservatives, mainly Christians
>> because they are stupid enough to want to hate gays and birth control
>> and want to enforce their idealogy on others. But economically,
>> conservativsm is the worst thing that could ever happen to the middle
>> class because it favors the wealthy at the expense of the working class
>
> Thats irrelevant to the middle class.
The virus makes yet another totally vacuous assertion.
>> and has done things like ship all our jobs overseas
>
> Nothing even remotely resembling anything like all the jobs could have
> been shifted overseas if the unemployment rate bottomed at 4.x% with an
> immense legal and illegal immigration rate.
The virus now makes historical errors and misplaces events.
>> and destroy unions
>
> Could have SWORN that they were still there in GM and Ford and the
> education system and the public service etc etc etc.
>
>> and government regulations designed to protect the people.
>
> Another lie.
>
>>>>> "Lenin called them "useful idiots," those people living in liberal
>>>>> democracies who by giving moral and material support to a
>>>>> totalitarian ideology in effect were braiding the rope that would
>>>>> hang them. Why people who enjoyed freedom and prosperity worked
>>>>> passionately to destroy both is a fascinating question, one still
>>>>> with us today. Now the useful idiots can be found in the chorus of
>>>>> appeasement, reflexive anti-Americanism, and sentimental idealism
>>>>> trying to inhibit the necessary responses to another freedom-hating
>>>>> ideology, radical Islam"
>>>>>
>>>>> Bruce C. Thornton, a professor of Classics at American University of
>>>>> Cal State Fresno
--
"Those are my opinions and you can't have em" -- Bart Simpson
Dan
Fair enough.
Non-useful labels should be avoided whenever possible.
Dan
Dan
Typically, when the argument comes up, lower case words have real
definitions and meanings, and upper case word (otherwise identical) are
political labels, sometimes self-identified and sometimes applied by the
opposition.
A "republican" is somebody who believes in or works toward/for the (a)
republic. A "Republican" is a political party in the US&A.
A "liberal" is somebody who believes in or works toward progress,
individual freedoms, representative governments, tolerance and freedom
from bigotry, open-mindedness, and generosity (def. per personal
experience and the Random House Webster's College Dictionary). A
"Liberal" is someone who is 'not Republican enough' or 'one of them'
(per St. Ronald of Reagan).
A "conservative" is one who resists unnecessary change. A
"Conservative" is merely another name for a Republican.
Get it now?
Dan
Dan
zzbu...@netscape.net
> On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:42:53 -0700, Gunner Asch
>
> <gun...@NOSPAMlightspeed.net> wrote:
> >Bashford) wrote:
>
> >>Check it out! Google "Edmund Burke" "middle class"
> >>(keep the quotes) -- Conservatives hate and distrust the
> >>middle class
>
> >Sigh...poor bastard has gone off the mental reservation again.
>
> it's true, conservatives have been waging war on the middle class for
> decades. Conservatives don't like the middle class because they do
> things like vote.
Conservatives have been waging war on logic, sanity, science,
education,
advanced technology for centuries.
Which is why the modern middle class just keeps making GPS, Digital
Terrain Mapping,
Atomic Clock Wristwatches, Light Sticks, Holograms, USB, All-In-One
Printers,
C++, Electronic Books, On-Line Banking, On-Line Publishing, On-Line
Shopping.
Cyber Batteries, Microcomputers, Optical Computers, Distributed
Processing Software,
Fiber Optics, Pv Cell Energy, Solar Energy, neo Wind Energy, Blue
Ray, HDTV, UAVs, AAVs,
Cruise Missiles, Drones, Phalanx, Biodiesel, Hydrid Electric Cars,
Self-Replicating Machines,
and Self-Assembling Robots, And just keeping tell the conservative
idiots that if your
Coal Mine or Diamond Mine is Stalled just call some Relativity
Stooge to tow the thang.
>
>
>
>
>
> >"Lenin called them "useful idiots," those people living in
> >liberal democracies who by giving moral and material support
> >to a totalitarian ideology in effect were braiding the rope that
> >would hang them. Why people who enjoyed freedom and prosperity worked
> >passionately to destroy both is a fascinating question, one still with us
> >today. Now the useful idiots can be found in the chorus of appeasement,
> >reflexive anti-Americanism, and sentimental idealism trying to inhibit
> >the necessary responses to another freedom-hating ideology, radical Islam"
>
> >Bruce C. Thornton, a professor of Classics at American University of Cal State Fresno- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Curly Surmudgeon
C++ is not a positive invention... I question whether OOPS in general is
of any benefit to mankind.
But I agree with the brunt of your presentation.
--
Regards, Curly
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://tinyurl.com/lpcbrm
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Rod Speed
manage to make adequate provision for its own time past working, claiming to be
Michael Coburn desperately attempted to bullshit its way out of its predicament
and fooled absolutely no one at all, as always.
No surprise that its completely unemployable and so pathetically bitter and twisted.