As an addendum to Karl’s post about O!’s fibbing, Barry states
“Surely we can agree that no party or political philosophy has a monopoly on patriotism.”
Surely, I can disagree.
Surely, I can state categorically that any political philosophy that has as its core value some variation of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is antithetical to American values and, therefore, unpatriotic.
Surely, I can state categorically that any political philosophy makes the “world’s” feelings a priority over American interests or sovereignty is antithetical to American values or survival and, therefore, unpatriotic.
Because dissent, especially from O! Enlightenment, is patriotic.
Surely.
UPDATE: Insta-launch!
Comment by JD on 6/30 @ 12:52 pm #
Brava, Darleen.
Comment by SevenEleventy on 6/30 @ 12:54 pm #
I wonder if ☻ ! got his patriotic dissent lessons from William Ayers!
Comment by Lisa on 6/30 @ 12:58 pm #
Sighs. Bangs head against desk. Sobs.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/30 @ 1:00 pm #
Lisa, there are medications that are quite effective at treating depression.
Comment by Ouroboros on 6/30 @ 1:01 pm #
Surely, the idiot that got decapitated by the roller-coaster wasnt so sad…
..but this is heartbreaking
The world doesn’t enough of these as it is.. Now ther’s one less..
Comment by Christopher Taylor on 6/30 @ 1:10 pm #
I can see where Marxism could be patriotic (about a Marxist nation) but anarchists, for example, are inherently anti-patriotic. Some strands of leftist ideology are anti-patriotic as well.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/30 @ 1:16 pm #
“Comment by Christopher Taylor on 6/30 @ 1:10 pm #
I can see where Marxism could be patriotic (about a Marxist nation) ”
Sorry, Marxism is International Fascism, and as such owes alliegence to no one nation.
Although Stalin dropped this during the German National Socialist invasion and appealed to the Russians intense love of the Rodina.
Comment by Roland THTG on 6/30 @ 1:23 pm #
Let me be Frank:
Don’t call me Shirley.
Comment by Neo on 6/30 @ 1:35 pm #
Surely a Soviet can be patriotic, but not as an American.
Comment by B Moe on 6/30 @ 1:40 pm #
Honestly it would be much less tempting to question his patriotism if he could ever manage to define it.
Comment by Daryl Herbert on 6/30 @ 1:42 pm #
Just because there are some unpatriotic philosophies doesn’t mean that there is only one patriotic philosophy.
Comment by JD on 6/30 @ 1:43 pm #
BMoe - It is patriotic to raise taxes. Gasoline at $5 a gallon is patriotic. Ignoring the 2nd Amendment is patriotic. Throwing people under the back of the bus - uber patriotic. Dissent? Don’t get me started.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/30 @ 1:47 pm #
“Nice beaver!”
“Thanks, I just had it stuffed.”
Comment by Sdferr on 6/30 @ 1:59 pm #
Ms.Temple-Black objects. As does my mom.
Comment by barbara cole on 6/30 @ 2:55 pm #
Did you see the speech…Obama said at the end of one statement…”period”…”full stop”… written to make the point….or was that the directive on the Teleprompter?…The audience applauded….as he made that full stop….
check out my site barbaracolebythesea.com local politics…state…national and more…
Comment by ruddiger on 6/30 @ 2:58 pm #
Insta-lanche
Comment by tim maguire on 6/30 @ 3:01 pm #
Dissent may well be the highest form of patriotism (it isn’t, but never mind that for now), but it does not follow that all dissent is patriotic. It may be true that no party or philosophy has a monopoly on patriotism, but it does not follow that all parties and all philosophies are patriotic.
Obama is pandering to the self-satisfied and stupid vote. The quesiton is, are there enough of them for him to carry the day?
I don’t think so.
Comment by Sissy Willis on 6/30 @ 3:01 pm #
Johnny, what can you make out of this?
Comment by Pete on 6/30 @ 3:09 pm #
A la Daryl, above: This is extremely stupid. Pointing out that certain political philosophies are NOT patriotic (from an American perspective) does nothing to disprove Obama’s point that no political philosophy has a MONOPOLY on patriotism.
You are free to have your snark, but it looks suspiciously like you either didn’t read the quote or you didn’t understand it.
Which would mean, I suppose, that you must have your snark and eat it, too.
P.S. Using the Marx paraphrase is something of a non sequitur here, unless you think that Obama is a Marxist. If that’s the case, then I’m definitely sticking with option two above: you didn’t understand it.
Comment by spion on 6/30 @ 3:18 pm #
But yet, Pete, you ask us to understand what it is you are saying without having explained what we didn’t understand. Understand?
Comment by AJB on 6/30 @ 3:23 pm #
Patriotism is overrated anyway. Go ahead and question mine because there isn’t that much to question. I don’t see too much value in blindly loving a nation-state simply because I live in it. Especially one that often engages in international policies that I find to be fundamentally immoral and just plain arrogant.
When all is said and done, America may be a great place to live, but it really needs to get over itself. It can’t just act like a bully on the global stage and expect its citizenry to defend it out of pure loyalty forever.
Comment by dicentra on 6/30 @ 3:24 pm #
Patriotism. Crap, I guess I’ll have to drag out my thoughts on What Patriotism Is. And Ain’t.
Because there are various strains of patriotism, and we’re probably not all talking about the same thing when we use the word. To wit:
Nostalgic Patriotism  This is the type of patriotism that arises from your emotional connection to your homeland. It is not related to political philosophy or system of government; it’s just the natural attachment to Home. It’s the kind of patriotism displayed by the immigrant to the U.S., who loves the U.S. and all, but who hangs a flag from the home country in the living room as a reminder of those they left behind.
Home Team Patriotism  This type of patriotism is similar to a sports fan’s boosterism for the home team. It’s most often displayed at the Olympics, where you wear team colors and wave the team flag and scream your lungs out. Then when your team wins, you are also covered in glory.
This type of patriotism, in its ugliest form, takes on the jingoistic “my country, right or wrong” attitude represented by Frank Burns on M*A*S*H. It is revulsion for this charactature of Patriotism that causes people like Barack Obama to remove his flag lapel pin, calling it “false patriotism.”
Silly lefty: waving the flag and saying Go Team is not the same as jingoism; you’re just blinded by your disdain for Those People who DO wave the flag, and do it enthusiastically.
Ideological Patriotism  This type of patriotism might be unique to the United States, because it denotes loyalty to the Enlightenment ideals that are enshrined in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. The ideologically patriotic are loyal to those ideas no matter where they are found: on this piece of dirt, on dirt where they speak another language, dirt on the moon, if necessary.
This type of patriotism is what leads many if not most people to sign up for military service: to preserve the ideology that brought this nation into being and has kept it free and prosperous. Those who would replace the Enlightenment principles with others are considered to be unpatriotic on these grounds.
This type of patriotism is not incompatible with the previous two.
Idealistic Patriotism  This type of patriotism denotes loyalty to How Things Could Be, If Only We Got The Right People In Charge. It is not a desire to destroy the country but to pull it forward, just as the Founders pulled us forward from Monarchy.
However, this type of patriotism does not necessarily denote loyalty to the Enlightenment principles that are enshined in our founding documents and in fact often insists on leaving those principles behind, thus to honor the promise of A Better America.
(Especially an America that isn’t the planet’s big mean bully. I mean, crap, it’s embarrasing to be in the most powerful country when Everybody Knows that Powerful = Oppresive = Evil. If we’d just keep our stupid troops and industry and ideology to ourselves, Our Betters in Europe would discard the disdain they’ve held for us since 1620. Really. That would be good.)
This type of patriotism is almost always incompatible with Ideological Patriotism, and although it is not incompatible with the first two, may who adhere to this last type of patriotism do not care for what they see as “flag-waving jingoism.”
So if you want to accuse someone of being unpatriotic, you could at least specify which patriotic they’re not.
Comment by Techie on 6/30 @ 3:27 pm #
AJB, you’re right.
Zimbabwe and China are the tits right now, who are we to think we’re better, amirite?
Comment by Gabriel Hanna on 6/30 @ 3:27 pm #
I’ve got to back the people saying that you didn’t get the quote.
I agree that Marxism is unpatriotic, for an American. I also agree that no political philosophy has a monopoly on patriotism.
Obama didn’t say that there’s no such thing as an unpatriotic philosophy. If he had, Darleen’s rejoinder would be appropriate.
Comment by Techie on 6/30 @ 3:29 pm #
I am also reminded of C. S. Lewis who once stated “We mock the concept of honor and duty, and are then shocked to find traitors in our midst”.
If you don’t get people to love, or at least like their nation, it’s going to be hard to get them to fork over over 40% of their paycheck to it, at least not at gunpoint.
Comment by JD on 6/30 @ 3:34 pm #
AJB - Yours was not in doubt.
Comment by Gabriel Hanna on 6/30 @ 3:35 pm #
Churchill lost the 1945 election because he accused the Labor party of being fundamentally unpatriotic. He said that socialism requires a Gestapo to make it work, and it might wear a happy face at first. Bear in mind that Atlee, his opponent, had been Churchill’s number 2 during the war.
Atlee responded with class. He said Churchill’s rhetoric was clearly intended to signal to the voters that they would not be voted for CHURCHILL, the man who saved them during the war, but Churchill the party politician. He said that Churchill clearly thought that his wartime strength and stature made him too strong an opponent, hence he was presenting himself as a party politician to even things up!
Well, it was a landslide against Churchill. The “Gestapo” comment was way over the line.
The postwar Labour government did a lot of things that it took Britain years to recover from, but their patriotism was never in doubt.
Comment by Darleen on 6/30 @ 3:35 pm #
Obama didn’t say that there’s no such thing as an unpatriotic philosophy
::::sigh::::
You’d think Barry had made his statement in a vacuum, or without the years and years of multi-culture chic that has as its core dogma “all cultures are equal … who are YOU to judge any one better than the other.”
Barry takes a non-starter statement “no party has a monopoly on patriotism”…something no reasonable person can disagree with, then tosses in the “political philosophy” stink bomb. IE if you agree that each American political party has some element of patriotism, then so do each political philosophy.
It’s not an invitation to dialogue, it’s a strategy of enforced silence.
Comment by mitydk on 6/30 @ 3:39 pm #
Hey, if you mean
“From each state of the US according to its ability to produce unreconstructed marxist opportunist empty suit vacuous blowhard rhetorically skilled know nothing do nothing of value politicians, to each archaic, rotting, despotic communist regime country’s need for them”
Then I think that political philosophy is absolutely patriotic and we should start acting on that principle as fast as possible. I suggest Illinois be partnered with North Korea.
Although I dunno, I feel bad about punishing the North Koreans so harshly.
Comment by dicentra on 6/30 @ 3:39 pm #
He said that socialism requires a Gestapo to make it work, and it might wear a happy face at first.
Um. This is pretty much true, no? Or do you know of a socialist state (state controls all means of production) where they didn’t have to lock the doors to keep people in and then Gulag the non-cooperative?
The postwar Labour government did a lot of things that it took Britain years to recover from, but their patriotism was never in doubt.
I don’t know what that means: “their patriotism was never in doubt.” If knowingly taking your country in a destructive direction is patriotic, then count me out.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 6/30 @ 3:44 pm #
unless you think that Obama is a Marxist. If that’s the case, then I’m definitely sticking with option two above: you didn’t understand it.
Just out of curiosity, can you present any evidence (voting record, personal associates, non-vacuous public statements) which is inconsistent with the thesis that Obama is a Marxist?
Comment by JHoward on 6/30 @ 3:46 pm #
The guy who said to ask not what your country can do for you is dead. Therefore, long live the same-partied guy who said, well, to just grasp any old thing you believe government owes you.
Because government is my provider. So service me.
Comment by JHoward on 6/30 @ 3:49 pm #
Speaking of which, AJB, do you remember Kennedy?
Comment by Jonathan on 6/30 @ 3:57 pm #
If the Commander-in-Chief is leading the nation in a war against an enemy which poses an existential threat, and your dissent clearly articulates a better method for defeating, marginalizing or co-opting the enemy without sacrificing the values enshrined in our constitution, your dissent may indeed be patriotic.
Otherwise, you serve the enemy.
Pingback by Oxymoron examined | Cold Fury on 6/30 @ 3:59 pm #
[...] hammers the point home: Surely, I can state categorically that any political philosophy that has as its core value some [...]
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 6/30 @ 4:00 pm #
your dissent may indeed be patriotic.
Jonathan: “May” and “is” don’t mean the same thing.
Comment by Gabriel Hanna on 6/30 @ 4:07 pm #
@Darleen: I’m sorry that you didn’t understand the quote, and I don’t know how to help you if you persist in misunderstanding it. Shall I draw the Venn diagram?
“No one party or political philosophy has a monopoly on patriotism.” All he is saying is that other people besides Republicans are patriotic. This is true, and vapid. Typical meaningless stump blather–a defense against a charge no one actually uttered–”you’re questioning my patriotism”. But you don’t get to make up words and put them in his mouth and call yourself an honest commentator. There is no way his statement says or implies “all philosophies are equally patriotic”.
There are no circumstances under which I would vote for Obama. He has said plenty of things I already disagree with. We
do not need to make up things he didn’t say.
@dicentra
Being wrong about what is good for your country is not treason. If it is, then who will escape hanging?
Comment by sashal on 6/30 @ 4:09 pm #
darleen - always with the stupidest straw man posts about non-existing fantasies in her head.
Watch out, commies are coming .
Comment by Mike on 6/30 @ 4:09 pm #
“…and your dissent clearly articulates a better method for defeating, marginalizing or co-opting the enemy …”
Ah, but see, that’s just it. It doesn’t. All the Dems have managed to come up with in the way of a “better method” so far is cutting and running from Iraq, and a return to the same law-enforcement approach that got us 9/11 — after years of unanswered attacks, and a handful of prosecutions in the wake of those attacks.
Comment by Gabriel Hanna on 6/30 @ 4:13 pm #
@sashal-quit being a troll. Communists are real, and they have done great evil in the world–and never were able to accomplish as much evil as they desired to. They see people as cogs in their imaginary societies–it is a philosophy worse than inhumane, because it is inhuman.
@dicentra–I can think of times and places when it would be better, morally, to be a traitor than a socialist. But not in the West, not in the last hundred years. If you’re judgement says what’s best for your country is to be socialist–a patriot wants what is best. And patriots can be wrong, even disastrously so, and still be patriots. Think of all the WWII blunders.
Comment by kelly on 6/30 @ 4:17 pm #
“If the Commander-in-Chief is leading the nation in a war against an enemy which poses an existential threat, and your dissent clearly articulates a better method for defeating, marginalizing or co-opting the enemy without sacrificing the values enshrined in our constitution, your dissent may indeed be patriotic.”
Funny how those dissenting over, say, OIF, never actually got around to any of this articulating you speak of. Because it seems all I saw and heard was carping, protesting, prognostication of doom, political hit jobs, cries of defeat, grandstanding, and general pissiness (to put it mildly) towards the evil Bush.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 6/30 @ 4:17 pm #
“Being wrong about what is good for your country is not treason. If it is, then who will escape hanging?”
- The last woman standing.
- The last woman because no man would to live on a planet with no one to iron his shirts, and then then she’d nag him for the shirt off his back ’til he hung himself.
SEXIST PIG!!!111eleventyone111!!!
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/30 @ 4:18 pm #
“Comment by sashal on 6/30 @ 4:09 pm #
darleen - always with the stupidest straw man posts about non-existing fantasies in her head.
Watch out, commies are coming .”
The commies were here.
Joe McCarthy proved that.
Comment by kelly on 6/30 @ 4:18 pm #
And what Mike said.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 6/30 @ 4:21 pm #
“Watch out, commies are coming.”
- No sashal, they’ve been here for a long time. We’re just pointing them out to you so you don’t get a parking ticket for political ignorance.
Comment by sashal on 6/30 @ 4:24 pm #
Joe McCarthy did a great job then. The ones he scared the most turned to neoconservatism….
Comment by sashal on 6/30 @ 4:28 pm #
BBH, and how much influence those individual have and how many are there?
I bet that there are more members of AA in the town of Independence, then commies in all of USA.
Like I said, darleen- straw-man scaremongering tactics.
Comment by Techie on 6/30 @ 4:30 pm #
Yeah, you might want to go talk to my political affairs professors from college. They take that whole neocon fiction of “the Cold War” waaaaay too seriously.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 6/30 @ 4:31 pm #
- Actually sashal, most of them went back to their old jobs in Hollywood and the Democratic party.
- Truman had to shut Joe down. He was getting to close to the big bosses.
Comment by Gabriel Hanna on 6/30 @ 4:34 pm #
@sashal–In the professoriate of my university there are people who are actually Communists. Not rhetorically or metaphorically Communists. I’m not at Berkeley either, just a mid-size state university.
They have little influence outside their departments, fortunately–but you have to watch them. Communists have never been a majority in any country. Lenin’s party was a minority even in the socialist government before he toook the whole thing over.
Comment by Gabriel Hanna on 6/30 @ 4:38 pm #
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.
Among other traits of Communist countries–rigid censorship and sexural puritanism.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 6/30 @ 4:40 pm #
- And sashal, we all know that the Left has been in deep remorse ever since the fall of the CCCP. At present the neo-Marxists hold no significant power, and we intend to keep it that way by being vigilant, and stomping them like cockroaches whenever they come out of the hidey holes.
Comment by dave on 6/30 @ 4:53 pm #
I’m not even completely opposed by the Marxist line as it is written, but I do recoil violently from the idea the GOVERNMENT should be the one deciding one person’s ability and another’s need.
I can work, make a living, care for my family and still make charitable donations, especially of time. This IS “from me according to my ability”.
And I suggest humbly, as a human being aware of my own failings and remembering my own bad behavior, that many many people who insist on receiving according to their needs are not honestly giving their best, according to their ability. Just because one is in need does not remove one’s obligation to do one’s best, just to minimize the amount of giving required of others in order to care for him.
All over America we hear people moaning about their right not to be poor, but who among them is honestly, positively, determinedly giving it his best, performing to the best of his ability?
We have obligations to care for the weak, elderly, incapacitated, just like we should care for the very young. But at no time in the Bible or anywhere else until the latter half of the eighteenth century does anyone even begin to suggest that an all powerful government ought to be the arbiter of who keeps what and who gets what. This is a development roughtly traceable to a late enlightenment time in which efforts on every level were made to eliminate God from the human equation. Marx is not off target for human beings in terms of how we should live together, but the impetus to live this way comes from God; government cannot provide it and certainly cannot be fair and thorough in the application of such a scheme. And for such a scheme, unfairness and ultimate power, together, are known by another name–
TYRANNY.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/30 @ 5:18 pm #
sashal:
BOLSHEVIKS!!!!
Seriously, sashal, STFU. You’re tedious and ignorant.
Comment by Karl on 6/30 @ 5:35 pm #
Darleen,
Congrats on that ‘lanche. We hit the trifecta today!
Comment by The Lost Dog on 6/30 @ 5:44 pm #
Comment by sashal on 6/30 @ 4:09 pm #
“darleen - always with the stupidest straw man posts about non-existing fantasies in her head.
Watch out, commies are coming .”
Well, I know “Commies” is now politically incorrect, but I have to wonder what you call government “employees” (Congress), who advocate taking from the rich and giving to the poor? And if you say Robin Hood, you are less informed than you appear to be.
“Wealth redistribution”? Nah. FAIRNESS! You (not specifically “you”) sit on your lazy ass, complain and bitch, and WE will take money from people who DO NOT sit on their lazy asses, work 80 hours a week, and give it to you - no strings attached!
So, Sashal. How long do you think it will be before NOBODY wants to work anymore? You take away the rewards of individual effort, and you actually think that ANYONE is going to bust their balls to have their money confiscated at gun point? Ridiculous, and the false promise of the proggs in a nutshell.
Of course believing, that their is a finite pile of money is just another set of smoke and mirrors to help you believe that YOUR money has ben stolen by those “rich mofo’s”. We have spent 7 TRILLION dollars in the “War on Poverty”, and, maybe I’m blind, but I see no difference in poverty since this “feel-good” baloney was started.
All we have done is to destroy families and communities.
Yeah! Good idea!
Just how lacking in logic skills are you? What is it about this bankrupt philosophy that hasn’t been proven to be an abject failure, OVER AND OVER AND OVER again, throughout history? What are you missing here that you think that tens of millions of people have been murdered in the name of this philosophy has no bearing on the present?
Did you see ProggZero say that people should be thrown in jail for their THOUGHTS in a previous thread? Did that bother you? Do you believe in the First Amendment? I do - no matter what someone wants to say.
Wake up. Do some crossword puzzles, read some books, and see if you can leave that junior high mentality set behind.
What? You don’t even know what history is?
Apparently not.
Comment by The Lost Dog on 6/30 @ 6:00 pm #
I hate it when I blow it so spectacularly!
Hasn’t = HAS
Comment by dicentra on 6/30 @ 6:07 pm #
@dicentra–…If your judgment says what’s best for your country is to be socialist–a patriot wants what is best.
That would be the idealistic patriotism of which I spoke. If you think that being a socialist is best for the country, you have to yield up claims to loyalty to the principles in the founding documents, i.e., you’re not ideologically patriotic. Can’t have it both ways in that case.
And patriots can be wrong, even disastrously so, and still be patriots. Think of all the WWII blunders.
Those were not errors of ideology but errors of tactic, and they almost all resulted from the fact that (a) we always start one war as if we were fighting the last one (b) no plan survives first contact with the enemy.
The blunders of WWII did not result from people rejecting or embracing Enlightenment principles or of pursing any given ideology. Sorry, no parallels with opposing the Iraq invasion on this point.
Comment by ccoffer on 6/30 @ 6:08 pm #
By Scumbama’s retarded logic; Tom Hayden, The Weather Underground, Timothy McVeigh, etc.. are all to be regarded as patriots “in their own way”(which is akin to saying Andre The Giant was a ballerina “in his own way”) Its a rhetorical scheme designed to destroy the meaning of the word.
May he choke to death on a gay, married cock.
Comment by Christopher Taylor on 6/30 @ 6:16 pm #
Good stuff, Dicentra, well stated analysis of the different kinds of patriotism. In my experience the left generally are the kind of patriot you define as Ideological Patriotism - the guys that love what their country would be like if only everyone did and believed what I told them to thus Michelle Obama’s “never proud of my country before.”
Ultimately patriotism is love and reverence for one’s country while recognizing its faults and working for it to be better. Not an idol, but affection. The left has no such patriotism, they have an affection and love for their ideology, and tend to despise their country.
Comment by dicentra on 6/30 @ 6:22 pm #
Heh. Jonah “IN UR FAEK HISTRI, FINDIN UR FASHISTS” Goldberg tackles the definition of patriotism here
Money quotes:
Comment by dicentra on 6/30 @ 6:23 pm #
In my experience the left generally are the kind of patriot you define as Ideological Patriotism
Idealistic Patriotism, that is. Yeah, I shouldn’t have chosen words that were so similar.
Comment by Gabriel Hanna on 6/30 @ 6:30 pm #
@dicentra: I don’t know who wants to pull Iraq into this–since I still do support the original decision, and forgive the mistakes, you’re not talking about me anyway.
But what are these “founding documents” in the case of the UK? They have Magna Carta, but it’s not a constitution. They have the common law, but it’s not written down.
There is nothing in what the Labor party did in 1945 that amounts to treason.
As for the US, “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
There are Communists who can plausibly be accused of this, but I can’t think of any Democrats.
Comment by dicentra on 6/30 @ 6:41 pm #
Gabriel:
We are obviously talking past each other. You from the U.K.? I’m not very good with post-war British history, so I’m not sure what Churchill’s loss has to do with the definition of patriotism.
However, let me be clear: I do not hold that “unpatriotic” = “treasonous.” They are two very different things. Treason means that you actively do something to betray the U.S., such as sell nuclear secrets to the enemy or join the other side in a war.
“Unpatriotic” is more of an attitude. Traitors are a subset of the unpatriotic, but the vast majority of the unpatriotic are not traitors.
Comment by Pablo on 6/30 @ 6:47 pm #
How about Tratriotism? Loyalty to an America that could only exist after destroying the one we have.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 6/30 @ 6:51 pm #
There are Communists who can plausibly be accused of this, but I can’t think of any Democrats.
Jane Fonda.
Next!
Pingback by Questioning Obama’s Patriotism : Stop The ACLU on 6/30 @ 7:02 pm #
[...] Darleen Click responds: Surely, I can state categorically that any political philosophy that has as its core value some variation of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs†is antithetical to American values and, therefore, unpatriotic. [...]
Comment by Gabriel Hanna on 6/30 @ 7:12 pm #
dicentra@: No, an American with a fondness for Churchill, both his strengths and his foibles…
The connection is that saying Atlee wants to set up a Gestapo, when Atlee was his valued ally in defeating the Gestapo, was calling Atlee’s patriotism into question, on no basis other than that Atlee was a socialist. Well, so was Hitler, and Atlee fought Hitler as much as Churchill did. Churchill’s wife pleaded with him to take that part out, but Churchill wouldn’t and it was a major factor in the massive Conservative defeat.
I can’t see that love of country and socialism are incompatible. If you think capitalism is harsh and unjust you should work to end it, like we did with slavery and Jim Crow. I do not think that capitalism is unjust, but I don’t condemn those as traitors who wish to replace it with something else. I just think they are wrong, not evil. Their actions may well have evil consequences, but much evil is done by well-meaning good men who don’t forsee the consequences of what they do.
Comment by Gabriel Hanna on 6/30 @ 7:13 pm #
@SPB–I had forgotten Jane Fonda. Yeah, that’s plausible.
Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/30 @ 7:14 pm #
once again, sub-sapients.
it is primally counterproductive to snipe at O! from here in your pathetic echo chamber.
you are all just singing campfire songs, like Burke in Aliens.
this is a profound waste of spacetime.
they only voters that read this are going to vote for mccain anyways.
you need to deal with the anti-mormon bigots that are gonna screw you in this election just like they did in the primary by voting Huck.
otherwise…….
“..then we’re stupid….and we’ll all die.”
–Priss, Bladerunner
i think that should be the new slogan for the Republican party.
;)
Comment by maggie katzen on 6/30 @ 7:16 pm #
says the troll that can do little more than cut and paste and mangle.
lulz
Comment by maggie katzen on 6/30 @ 7:19 pm #
or better yet, you wouldn’t know an echo chamber even if it walked up to you and boxed your ears.
Comment by geoffb on 6/30 @ 7:19 pm #
Pris is Blade Runner.
Priss is Bubblegum Crisis.
Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/30 @ 7:21 pm #
maggie, im a realist.
you are so fucked.
you should be trying to popularize mccain and romney.
else, you are doomed as doomed can be.
look at dy/dx.
divergence
Comment by maggie katzen on 6/30 @ 7:24 pm #
BWAH HA HA HA HAAAaaaaa, more paste!
Comment by maggie katzen on 6/30 @ 7:24 pm #
maybe if you say it one more time, I’ll buy it. I think I missed it the first ten.
Comment by sashal on 6/30 @ 7:40 pm #
the lost dog, are you completely lost? what a mess in your head, do you even know what are talking about and who are you talking to?
Do you even realize that I never advocated any redistribution schemes or similar crap, never, including this board ?
Jeez, man, and you live in CT?
Come to casinos, give me a call, I’ll talk to you…..
Comment by McGehee on 6/30 @ 7:52 pm #
The only reason I can think of to haggle so about the definiti0on of patriotism, is if we’re in the process of writing a law, wherein a precise definition would be not only useful, but essential.
Under the actual circumstances, I think we can live with an, “I know it when I see it” approach. Most Americans do.
Near as I can tell, that’s the only reason anybody wants to wax meticulous about defining the word — because only by taking control of the definition can they avoid being recognized as unpatriotic.
Comment by maggie katzen on 6/30 @ 7:56 pm #
oh, McGehee, that reminded me of the Patriot Corporation Act
Comment by McGehee on 6/30 @ 8:01 pm #
The prosecution rests.
Comment by B Moe on 6/30 @ 8:11 pm #
maybe if you say it one more time, I’ll buy it. I think I missed it the first ten.
She keeps forgetting to click her heels together when she says it. She also seems unaware of the past accuracy of summer polls regarding fall elections.
Comment by maggie katzen on 6/30 @ 8:13 pm #
you could quite right there and still be alright.
Comment by TmjUtah on 6/30 @ 8:16 pm #
Tom Hayden should have been hanged.
Lynn Stewart.
Patrick Leahy.
Any Democrat who cast a vote for war who later claimed he was lied to… nope, that last one won’t fly. Cowardice and dishonesty aren’t treason.
Those qualities do seem to pass for job qualifications on the left, though.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/30 @ 8:51 pm #
That was beautifully written, Darleen. The posts today they are so many and I haven’t read them all, but I think if I had to only read one it would be this one I think.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/30 @ 8:51 pm #
Is Jeff back from Chicago anyone know?
Comment by happyfeet on 6/30 @ 8:54 pm #
I just heard Seymour Hersh call Baracky “Mr. Obama” on the NPR and it sounded so funny. Mr. Obama is it now. As if.
Comment by David D on 6/30 @ 9:00 pm #
“. . . to each, according to their needs.”
Well, sure. I’m in favor of feeding people who are starving; providing shelter to those who might freeze to death in winter; donating blood, lest those exsanguinating die. That’s not patriotism, that’s human decency.
“. . . to each, according to their wants.”
Hell no. That’s not patriotism, that’s greed.
Comment by Kathy on 6/30 @ 9:07 pm #
Surely, I can state categorically that any political philosophy makes the “world’s†feelings a priority over American interests or sovereignty is antithetical to American values or survival and, therefore, unpatriotic.
Of course you can. You would be wrong, but you can surely state it as categorically as you wish to.
Surely, I can state categorically that any political philosophy that has as its core value some variation of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs†is antithetical to American values and, therefore, unpatriotic.
Sounds like a pretty unexceptionable philosophy to me. And given the complexity of this country’s history, and how many ethnicities, religions, nationalities, and ways of believing have played a part in making this country what it is, I would also say that it’s a philosophy that fits very well with American values.
Comment by McGehee on 6/30 @ 9:09 pm #
All the more reason to keep the government out of it.
Comment by maggie katzen on 6/30 @ 9:09 pm #
well, that would be because you’re stupid.
Comment by McGehee on 6/30 @ 9:10 pm #
You’ll be expected to expand on this.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/30 @ 9:10 pm #
Not again with the marxism on an empty stomach.
Comment by maggie katzen on 6/30 @ 9:15 pm #
go get something to eat, happyfeet. maybe a beer, too.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/30 @ 9:19 pm #
I will. It’s getting later sooner cause I didn’t get home at the usual time.
Comment by The Lost Dog on 6/30 @ 9:19 pm #
AJB-
“When all is said and done, America may be a great place to live, but it really needs to get over itself. It can’t just act like a bully on the global stage and expect its citizenry to defend it out of pure loyalty forever.”
But, hey. Sometimes, you have to look over your shoulder to make sure that you aren’t going to be run over by a steamroller. At least in the real world.
Steamrollers don’t hurt in your mind, but, let me clue you in. In the real world they make you dead when you get caught under the roller.
And if 9/11 didn’t convince you of this, you belong in the Special Olympics. I lost seven good (and innocent) friends that day. How many did you lose?
Yeah. No big fuckin’ deal, right?
We don’t need no steenkin’ oil! Let the Indians and the Chinese take it all. We just don’t need it anymore, because in twenty or thirty years, we MIGHT have an alternative. So let’s just sit on our hands, starve, and wait for the UN to feed us. Forget the fact that we have more reserves than Saudi Arabia!
NO! NO! NO! NO! We will destroy this economy before we let ANYONE drill for reserves that would probably halve the price of fuel. And if you believe the morons that tell you more product would not lower the price of oil, you are an absolute moron.
FUCKING STUPID MORONS! Logic 101 says you are prime candidates for the Darwin Awards.
Comment by maggie katzen on 6/30 @ 9:22 pm #
ah. I’m thinkin’ it’s Friday. w*rk has me all messed up the last couple weeks.
Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/30 @ 9:26 pm #
sry maggie, but u still arent gettin it.
see the slope?
the. blue. line. is. going. up. up. up.
the. red. line. is. going. down. down. down.
Comment by dicentra on 6/30 @ 9:30 pm #
Their actions may well have evil consequences, but much evil is done by well-meaning good men who don’t forsee the consequences of what they do.
And much evil is also done by men who make like they are good and well-intentioned, but who refuse to learn from history, refuse to consider that their “well-intentioned” acts have resulted in the opposite of what they have intended, and who very well could and should know what the effects of their actions will be but who have other priorities above doing good.
For example, when we pulled the support out from under the South Vietnamese, everyone who supported us was murdered post-haste, and the resulting bloodshed was terrible to see.
So when people who are old enough to have seen for themselves the consequences of betraying our friends (also see Gulf War I), and who really ought to know better, nevertheless call for us to betray our friends again, all in the name of opposing the current administration, thus to aggrandize oneself…
…well, I cannot call that patriotism. I can only call it criminal, narcissistic ambition.
I would also say that it’s a philosophy that fits very well with American values.
Which American values are those? The ones that say that if you’re good at something, you’ll be more heavily exploited than the others? The one that says that you don’t own anythingâ€â€not even your own mindâ€â€but that everything you are belongs to the collective? The one that makes skill and ability a liability and weakness and sloth an asset?
Go read Atlas Shrugged, the chapter where it explains what happened at the car factory that went socialist.
American values are exactly opposite socialism, which is monarchy by another name. It takes some serious pretzel-logic to assert otherwise.
Comment by maggie katzen on 6/30 @ 9:31 pm #
who doesn’t get history?
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 6/30 @ 9:31 pm #
Sounds like a pretty unexceptionable philosophy to me.
Hint: that would be because you are a communist.
It’s a direct quote from Marx.
Comment by Joe on 6/30 @ 9:33 pm #
” any political philosophy that has as its core value some variation of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs†is antithetical to American values and, therefore, unpatriotic”
Very well stated. And for completeness, here are a few more unpatriotic, anti-american examples:
–
Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. — Matthew 19:23-24, Mark 10:23-25
But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. — Luke 6:24
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. — James 5:1
There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. — Luke 16:19-25
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 6/30 @ 9:35 pm #
And for completeness, here are a few more unpatriotic, anti-american examples:
Hint: Jesus isn’t running the government.
Comment by maggie katzen on 6/30 @ 9:37 pm #
no, SBP, you’re, um, supposed to render all to Ceasar. I think.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 6/30 @ 9:43 pm #
I sort of think that Patriotism is my political philosophy, so, indeed, it is monopolistic, but within which we may have disagreements about what is best.
My political philosophy doesn’t demand that the entire Nation, its culture, ideals, traditions and institutions be uprooted and turned on its ear fortnighly, but rather that the United States can improve itself through the force of its own institutions and the will of the People.
My political philosophy doesn’t require that I slander the men who first won my Nation’s Independence, risking life and treasure, and who chartered a government securing the natural rights of man.
My political philosophy does not permit that a patriot expresses a natural aversion to the American Flag in any respectful iteration, nor the boorish analogizing of Old Glory to the Swastika.
My political philosophy recognizes and celebrates the gallantry of the American Fighting Man, and I have an involuntary hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck reaction to the playing of the Marines’ Hymn or Anchors Aweigh.
My political philosophy does not allow me to entreat God to Damn America, nor to associate with anyone who does.
I think that about sums it all up . . .
Comment by Alec Leamas on 6/30 @ 9:48 pm #
“Hint: Jesus isn’t running the government.”
Might have less fetal arms and legs laying around though.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 6/30 @ 9:50 pm #
Maggie, if Barry is Caesar, he’s one of the later, crappy ones. He sure as hell isn’t Julius, Augustus, or Claudius.
Joe thinks he’s scoring points by pointing out that the early Christians were organized along communistic lines — which, of course, they were. So are most families, for that matter. Mom and Dad dole out the shared goodies and give the orders. It hasn’t occurred to him that communism a) doesn’t scale and b) is utterly dependent on the good nature of the strong man (or woman) at the helm.
One would think that the stench from that pile of 100 million dead bodies it produced in the last century would cause the Joes and Kathys of the world to think twice, but it doesn’t.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/30 @ 9:51 pm #
All I know is I love America. Starting with Texas but I really like that town that was in The Goonies. That was a nice town with neat houses and diverse individual people living there that you really understood why they risked their lives to save it and all.
Comment by dicentra on 6/30 @ 9:55 pm #
unpatriotic, anti-american examples
So, if you make a ton of $$$ under a capitalist system, yet you give it away as fast as you can, you’re un-American?
Marxism is a counterfeit of Christianity, which is why you’re confused. Jesus wasn’t telling people how to run the government, he was telling them where their hearts needed to be.
Marxism (as it’s believed today) holds that people are innately good but that they are provoked to evil by being trapped in corrupt, unjust systems. If you create a just system, people will stop being bad.
Judeo-Christianity holds that humans are innately fallen, and that we can’t get up without divine intervention.
Marxism would take the man out of the gutter, but Christ takes the gutter out of the man, who takes himself out of the gutter.
It’s a subtle difference, but it’s also the fault line between SecProggs and Classical Liberals: the former would create Heaven on Earth (by coersion if necessary), whereas the latter accept that People Suck, so you have to set things up to minimize the suckage and maximize the good stuff.
Comment by JHoward on 6/30 @ 10:02 pm #
About twice that, actually, but if a collectivist ignores one history, he’ll ignore them all.
Comment by JHoward on 6/30 @ 10:08 pm #
Seconding dicentra: You sound like just the expert, then, to elaborate on those postmodern beliefs and values, if that isn’t self-contradictory. I look forward.
Comment by Joe on 6/30 @ 10:15 pm #
The point I was trying to make is that Christian philosophy and values are just as collectivistic and anti-American as the leftist-Marxist, which is why Christian conservatives are just as useless as the left in upholding American values like free markets and strong national defense.
Comment by The Lost Dog on 6/30 @ 10:17 pm #
Nishiwhatever -
“…the lost dog, are you completely lost?”
Oh, you bet, but lost in a way completely unrelated to your “lostness”.
You sound very young, and very much in love with your “android of the future” image. You obviously have no clue about American history, or how America worked before the left took over in the late sixties - early seventies.
Your whole approach is that of an incredible egotist who KNOWS that she is smarter than anyone in the history of the world, and paradoxically, insists on ignoring the history of the world.
Not a good combination, my friend. You (and your ideological comrades) will probably achieve what you want somewhere down the road, and you are going to find the reality of it hard to swallow. Like most commenters here, I am no bobo, and have been around the block many times in a life that most people would consider “blessed”.
There is no reasoning with people who have never known how this country worked for two hundred years, and believe that the Constitution is but a piece of paper to wipe their ass with. The government has already screwed this country so badly, that it is almost unrecognizable to anyone born before 1960. To you, that’s a victory. To us, it is a crying shame.
Families destroyed.
Communities destroyed.
The true “safety net” of American society ripped to shreds by liberals (and, unfortunately, some Republicans) who have destroyed our culture in search of buying votes.
And worst of all, the government schools have destroyed the idea that anyone should EVER be ashamed of what they do. I can tell that you have no shame. Unfortunate, because shame is what makes us grow as people, and it appearsw that you believe that you are so smart that there is no more growth possible for your nimble little mind.
Self esteem no longer comes from achievement, but from teachers and government workers telling people that self esteem can be given away - a total load of disingenuous bullshit. I don’t respect jerks, but the attitude that our schools have fostered in the last forty years is liable to get me shot, just for ignoring a Neanderthal asshole. The government has replaced humanity with attitude.
Yeah. Great idea, don’t you think?
Like your Texas sized ego. I can tell you, right here and now, that your ego is the heaviest load you carry, and your biggest obstacle to learning what being a “human being” REALLY means (if you were even interested, that is).
It is actually quite sad to see so many intelligent people nominating themselves for the “Darwin Awards”.
I don’t really give a shit what you think about me. I spent a lot of time exactly where you are. And it turned out to be just as empty and lonely as your “new millennium” philosophy.
But I doubt you will ever be able to endure the panic and the pain of being hit with the truth of being a human being, and what it really means. The founding fathers knew, but it is much easier to look down your nose, be a pretend intellectual, and look for those “perfect” gametes.
I feel sorry for you, and all of the misled people who crowd your snooty little corner of “world view”. You are going to get what you want, and you are going to regret it.
My real problem is that my eight year old son is probably never going to understand what “freedom” actually means. And, apparently, neither will you.
Very sad. It really is.
Comment by Joe on 6/30 @ 10:21 pm #
dicentra:
So do you want Americans to do voluntarily what the leftists want the the governmet to force them to do:
So, if you make a ton of $$$ under a capitalist system, yet you give it away as fast as you can, you’re un-American?
Marxism is evil not just in its means, but its ends - submission of the individual to a higher authority, which is the exact same end as Christianity. This is completely at odds with the the values of this country, where your own life and pursuit of your happiness are yours by right - moral and legal right.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/30 @ 10:22 pm #
The point I was trying to make is people need to decide that some things are worth defending and then defend them instead of just picking at the scab all the time. I don’t think you even know you you’d rather have in your foxhole, but me I’d take a Christian conservative over a leftist-Marxist anytime the chips are down, and no I don’t think anyone would ever accuse me of being a Christian conservative.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/30 @ 10:24 pm #
Oh. That should be *who you’d* … and I was talking to Joe, who is sort of overthinking this I think.
Comment by maggie katzen on 6/30 @ 10:26 pm #
unless choosing to submit to a higher authority makes you happy. or something. right?
yes, the voluntary bit is important.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 6/30 @ 10:26 pm #
“Marxism is evil not just in its means, but its ends - submission of the individual to a higher authority, which is the exact same end as Christianity. This is completely at odds with the the values of this country, where your own life and pursuit of your happiness are yours by right - moral and legal right.”
Sometimes you need to read about Christianity and the United States before expressing opinions about them. I find it that way, personally.
Comment by The Lost Dog on 6/30 @ 10:33 pm #
Holy shit!
sashal - my apologies. I had just read a nishi… post and somehow juxtaposed it to you. Now I have to go back and find the post you were talking about.
“I’m a man of constant sorrow”…
Sorry.
And nishi -
sort of apologies to you for misreading the author.
Other than that, I really think I nailed you pretty good. It’s not like I haven’t been around (!)
Comment by The Lost Dog on 6/30 @ 10:50 pm #
sashal,
I was commenting on the PC-ness of not saying “communist” anymore.
They are here, and always will be, but have managed to make it improper to say the word.
I haven’t been through all your posts, but I just got the feeling that you were a redistributionist from your general comments.
If I am wrong, I apologize.
I am just an old fart who remembers when Americans took care of Americans. Being stupid and/or poor was shameful, and the communities helped anyone who needed help. No one stayed in the “poor” category for long, because they were ashamed of it, and worked their butts off to be self sufficient. The problem with destroying shame is that not only did we destroy shame for the poor, we destroyed it for the rich, too. OOPS! Played right into the leftards hands, didn’t we?
And then came the sixties and the beginning of the destruction of the real American way….
And I will spot you segregation, but that situation has changed, and is still changing. Stay tuned…
Comment by lee on 6/30 @ 10:51 pm #
Christian conservatives are just as useless as the left in upholding American values like free markets and strong national defense.
You’re joking, right?
Comment by dicentra on 6/30 @ 11:05 pm #
which is why Christian conservatives are just as useless as the left in upholding American values like free markets and strong national defense.
Depends on the Christian. Christians who get it know that it’s more important to allow people to choose their moral path than it is to make sure that everyone is good. My religion says that the difference between Jesus and Satan is that the latter wanted to force us to be good whereas Christ knew that we’d be better off choosing for ourselves.
Conservative Christians don’t see a conflict between upholding the current system and living a Christian life; it’s the lefty Christians who try to conflate the collective nature of the covenant family with the government. Liberation Theology and all that.
Comment by lee on 6/30 @ 11:42 pm #
Depends on the Christian.
He did specify the Christian, as conservative.
This is a guy with a fuzzy(at best) interpretation of Christianity.
I am constantly amused at people who imagine themselves, having read about Jesus, more learned than those who have experienced Christ.
Jesus was here to fulfill spiritual truths, not rule the world. He did not approach the task as a pacifist, what with wandering with armed disciples, whipping bankers, calling the religious leaders of the day “whitewashed tombs, full of moldering bones”, and “hypocrites”, and purposely defying laws imposed by man, not God.
Anyone that thinks Jesus a doormat is unacquainted with the Jesus of the Gospels.
Comment by nishizonoshinji on 7/1 @ 6:12 am #
maggie, dy/dx in the kerry/bush race is quite different.
kerry/bush is parallel slopes,
obama/mccain are divergent, positive slope vs negative slope.
Obama is simply moving back to center.
He had to tack left to secure the nom against hilary, and now he’s resuming something closer to his original positions.
And lets face it, Obama is adaptive and opportunistic. He will shape his positions to appeal to the broadest spectrum of voters that he can reach. And he does it with grace.
Even my beloved Dr. Krauthammer is sounding petty and churlish lately.
Are you guyz going to be sore losers?
Comment by Dread Cthulhu on 7/1 @ 6:22 am #
There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip, Nishi.
Who is ahead at the start of July is not always the fella who gets sworn in at the end of January, or am I misremembering Carter’s second term and Dukakis’ first…
As for being sore losers, I think you’ll find you’re thinking of the whining, mewling invertebrates like Kerry supporters. I would remind you that there is a technical term for candidates who count on the youth vote as a party of their strategy — they are called “also-rans.”
Conservatives don’t get mad. We roll up our sleeves and get to work.
Comment by Education Guy on 7/1 @ 6:26 am #
Obama is simply moving back to center.
Obama is the most liberal Senator in the Senate, he is moving to the center for the first time. It’s new ground for him, and thus sure to be a rollicking good time for those who get to watch it.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 7/1 @ 6:29 am #
We’re better than you.
(BTW — are you ever going to write like an educated person? Or are you simply making it clear from the beginning that you’re a moron?)
Comment by Carin- on 7/1 @ 6:35 am #
And lets face it, Obama is adaptive and opportunistic. He will shape his positions to appeal to the broadest spectrum of voters that he can reach.
I thought he was the candidate of hope and change? Politics that were a new way? Amazing that you’re not disappointed to discover the O! man is politics as usual.
No, the word I wanted wasn’t “amazing” … it was “pathetic.”
Comment by N. O'Brain on 7/1 @ 6:36 am #
“Marxism is evil not just in its means, but its ends - submission of the individual to a higher authority, which is the exact same end as Christianity. This is completely at odds with the the values of this country, where your own life and pursuit of your happiness are yours by right - moral and legal right.”
Communism: between 80,000,000 and 120,000,000 dead.
Christianity: not so many.
Comment by Education Guy on 7/1 @ 6:42 am #
Marxism is evil not just in its means, but its ends - submission of the individual to a higher authority, which is the exact same end as Christianity.
Nope. The end is different because the higher authority is different. Submission to the one that made you and everything that exists is not the same as submission to a man made ideal that falsely promises what it can never deliver.
Comment by Ric Locke on 7/1 @ 7:19 am #
People like Joe depress me. Christ’s ministry was to teach people how to get to Heaven. The point of all the parables about rich people was to point out that envy and jealousy won’t do that. Rich people don’t get to Heaven because they take their eye off the ball. They’re so busy managing and protecting their wealth that they don’t take time to see to their spiritual fortune. A person who turns those teachings around into an excuse — rich people are bad! it says so in the Bible! therefore it’s virtuous to punish them by taking their riches away! — manages a double whammy. Not only do they give way to their own jealousy, envy, and concentration on worldliness, thus taking their own way far from the path of righteousness, they force the rich to spend even more time defending themselves and less time seeking the favor of God.
God doesn’t need assistants, people. He most especially doesn’t need toadies and goons to enforce His regulations. You get to Heaven by accepting a hand up from the living Christ, and if you have actually done so you won’t even feel the desire to interfere with other people’s lives. There is nothing you can do in the World to better your chances. That most assuredly includes volunteering as an enforcer. Ah, dat Vinnie, he’s loyal, shoot his own mother if I said so is not a principle applicable to the Maker of All Things.
As it turns out, this principle also works spectacularly well in a worldly context. Hoe your own garden, and don’t waste time looking over the fence. If your neighbor lets the weeds run wild, offer to help and show him how it’s done, and if he won’t, sigh and keep your own side of the fence-row clear. Calling in the Guard will just get your cucumbers trampled. If your neighbor’s tomatoes grow better, ask for his help, and if he won’t give it, sigh and concentrate on your own cultivation. If everybody does it that way, the harvest will be amazing.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by Gabriel Hanna on 7/1 @ 7:32 am #
@dicentra:
And much evil is also done by men who make like they are good and well-intentioned, but who refuse to learn from history, refuse to consider that their “well-intentioned†acts have resulted in the opposite of what they have intended, and who very well could and should know what the effects of their actions will be but who have other priorities above doing good.
Hardly applies to the 1945 Labor party, does it? They had just got through a time when extraordinary collective effort accomplished extraordinary things. Even Churchill said that if Britain could pull together like that for the war, why couldn’t they do it to guarantee everyone a minimum standard of living? But that victory came at the cost of much suffering and waste, which they didn’t know then they couldn’t plan their way out of.
You really think socialism was some kind of plot?
“The conspiracy theory of society comes from abandoning God and asking, who is in His place?” — Karl Popper
The Left thinks that being wrong is a crime. I disagree.
In small, ethnically homgeneous countries it seems to work out all right–the Right has been predicting the collapse of Sweden as long as I can remember. I think the evidence shows free enterprise would work better for them too, cf. Hong Kong. But it’s not up to me. If some cultures value egalitarianism more than prosperity, well, no one’s forcing me to move to Sweden, and any of them don’t like it they can move here, or vote their socialists out.
Communism is a different animal, a socialism imposed by force that allows no opting out. To me, that’s the biggest difference. Sweden doesn’t have armed thugs keeping Swedes from leaving their workers’ paradise.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 7/1 @ 7:38 am #
“Hardly applies to the 1945 Labor party, does it? They had just got through a time when extraordinary collective effort accomplished extraordinary things.”
In wartime. Trying to apply the same thing in peace is fascism.
“In small, ethnically homgeneous countries it seems to work out all right–the Right has been predicting the collapse of Sweden as long as I can remember.”
What’s Sweden’s suicide rate again? Is that the mark of a healthy society?
“Sweden doesn’t have armed thugs keeping Swedes from leaving their workers’ paradise.”
Feet first is still leaving.
“You really think socialism was some kind of plot?”
Yeah, the seizure of power by those who are wrong. About everything.
Comment by BJTex on 7/1 @ 7:42 am #
Ric: Well said.
Should I judge the Democratic Party on the basis of Cindy Sheehan? How about Amanda Marcotte? Al Sharpton? No, no, no, replies the great washed and coifed masses of donkeyites. We are more than our fringe. That is why in almost every circumstance we talk about Progressives when detailing our complaints of Marxism or Socialism.
So is Christianity and the fellowship of believers.
For the gazillionth time Paul wrote that it is the love of money that is the root of all evil. Jesus was not a redistributionist nor a top down manager. He laid out the rules and then left it up to the individual to decide, in his heart, whether those rules made sense to him or her and, if so, to voluntarily submit to the rules.. Of course there are some believers who are convinced that they save souls and that unless we have a Christian leader of a Christian nation that all kinds of horrible torments will befoul us. They are not the mainstream, nor are the new agey social conscious “reformists” who see their path to “personal heaven” in an organic garden or a Prius. Both are mistaken IMHO.
Judge the totality of the message but don’t apply a broad brush on the basis of the loudest or the most exploited. It’s why I find the cries of “Theocon” most insulting. If Obama is elected, I may not be happy but I’m willing to “render until Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.”
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Speaking truth to liberals…
…
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 7/1 @ 7:45 am #
the Right has been predicting the collapse of Sweden as long as I can remember.
And it’s happening.
Comment by Gabriel Hanna on 7/1 @ 7:57 am #
@SPB: Sweden has been about to collapse as long as I can remember, just like how back in the thirties they were saying we have twenty years of oil left, and in the eighties, and in the nineties.
@Neil O’Heret Brain:
No, they didn’t impose fascism. Different words, different concepts. Fascism is one kind of socialism.
What’s Sweden’s suicide rate again? Is that the mark of a healthy society?
Is America’s murder rate the fault of capitalism? This is dumb.
I think an essential part of conservatism is facing facts. Swedes get along. So do Norwegians and Danes and Icelanders and Finland. I think our way is better, but their way is not evil. It may work out less well in the long run.
Comment by nishizonoshinji on 7/1 @ 8:05 am #
well..you are gonna have to find a new way is all.
will the neocons have to become the neolibs?
Comment by BJTex on 7/1 @ 8:09 am #
nishi: Two questions.
1) What is the current approval rating of Congress?
2) Which party controls Congress?
Take your time.
Comment by Good Lt on 7/1 @ 8:22 am #
>>Obama is simply moving back to center.
He had to tack left to secure the nom against hilary, and now he’s resuming something closer to his original positions.
And lets face it, Obama is adaptive and opportunistic. He will shape his positions to appeal to the broadest spectrum of voters that he can reach. And he does it with grace.
LOL - if by grace you mean throwing everyone under the HOPECHANGE Greyhound the second a poll number drops by a percentage point.
So in other words, he’s a politician. Not a lightworker, not a saint, not divine, not graceful.
He’s a just another in a long and not-so-graceful line of opportunistic pandering Democrats who say what they need to say but don’t really mean what they say so long as it is politically adventageous to lie.
Congrats. You just broke Obama’s halo and rendered neutered the HOPECHANGE express meaningless.
Keep on truckin’ on, gentle hippie. You’ll reach that promised land in your dreams someday!
Comment by Good Lt on 7/1 @ 8:23 am #
>>1) What is the current approval rating of Congress? NEOCON!
2) Which party controls Congress? NEOCON!
Comment by Dread Cthulhu on 7/1 @ 8:25 am #
Nishi: “The signs of Republican trouble are everywhere. Eighty-one percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, the worst number since The New York Times and CBS started asking the question in 1991. Consumer sentiment in May, as measured by the University of Michigan, was at its lowest level in 28 years. Republicans have lost three consecutive special elections for House seats in rock-ribbed Republican districts, a particularly ominous harbinger of electoral catastrophe.”
1) A competant, if unscrupulous, surveyor can craft the questions to nearly guarantee whatever outcome they desire.
2) Given the source, I *have* to ask whether or not they surveyed beyond the border of Michigan, which, under Democratic management, has been a one state recession, using the actual definition of the word.
3) And in at least two of those races, the Democrats ran candidates who were more conservative than the Republican candidate. You don’t seem to understand the differnce between “Conservative” and “Republican.”
Go back to your manga and leave the discussion to grown-ups.
Comment by dicentra on 7/1 @ 10:05 am #
The problem with the Swedish version of doing things is that it converts people into zoo animals, which are notoriously un-fertile in captivity. Sweden and the rest of the soft-socialist countries in western Europe are suffering a demographic collapse. The ethnic Swedes aren’t reproducing enough to replace themselves, and they’re definitely not staffing the workforce with enough people to support their aging population.
That’s why they’re willing to admit so many immigrants to fill those empty slots. But unlucky for them, they’re not importing Latinos or Filipinos, they’re importing Muslims, who hate the Swedes and will destroy or overrun them when they have the chance.
Maybe their way of life isn’t evil, but it is surely foolish. And it’s twice as foolish for Americans to want to pursue that life even though we can see the consequences where the earlier Europeans did not.
We’re better off as wild animals, with all the risks and pain that entails, than being zoo animals, who are well taken care-of but whose spirits are dead inside.
Comment by Good Lt on 7/1 @ 10:45 am #
There was an interesting article in this week’s NYT Magazine on the rapidly declining birthrates of the socialist utopia/worker’s paradise known as Europe. The continent is going to collapse on itself because the younger generation is not going to pay for the entitlements promised to the older generations. And the older generations are not replacing themselves.
It’s going to be a glorious lesson in how TEH AWESOME socialism and collectivism as national and continental policy truly is.
Worth reading, especially for the advocates of such states of being.
nishi.
Comment by Gabriel Hanna on 7/1 @ 11:37 am #
@dicentra: I agree with you re: socialism and zoo animals.
But without copious immigration America too would be in demographic decline. I think this has to do with industrialization more than anything else–children, for most people, are a liability and not an asset.
Japan’s birthrate is actually negative. This is happening to all the developed nations, not just the socialist ones.
America’s free economy attracts the immigrants, but we’re not reproducing ourselves either.
Comment by Pete on 7/1 @ 1:25 pm #
@ Spies, Brigands, and Pirates - Comment 31
You ask a painfully easy question: “Just out of curiosity, can you present any evidence (voting record, personal associates, non-vacuous public statements) which is inconsistent with the thesis that Obama is a Marxist?”
Why yes, I can. Off the top of my head.
Let’s see, he made (and did not redistribute to peasants) several million dollars off the sales of his two books. He owns property. He is a practicing religious believer.
Need I go on?
Are you sure you know what Marxism is?
Comment by McGehee on 7/1 @ 1:52 pm #
Marxism is the political fig leaf thugs use when they want to control all the wealth of a nation for their own purposes.
Comment by lee on 7/1 @ 1:59 pm #
Need I go on?
Obama is using the country he is in, not living in the America he wants.
Comment by Kathy on 7/1 @ 3:24 pm #
It’s a direct quote from Marx.
No shit! Wow. You learn something new every day.
Comment by Kathy on 7/1 @ 3:47 pm #
Which American values are those? The ones that say that if you’re good at something, you’ll be more heavily exploited than the others? The one that says that you don’t own anythingâ€â€not even your own mindâ€â€but that everything you are belongs to the collective? The one that makes skill and ability a liability and weakness and sloth an asset?
You decide. Here are some names:
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dorothy Thompson
Sinclair Lewis (Thompson’s husband)
Upton Sinclair
Eugene Debs
Woody Guthrie
Jane Jacobs
Edward Bellamy (and his brother, Francis)
Noam Chomsky
Amy Goodman
Ed Asner
Elizabeth Montgomery
Myla Goldberg
Walt Whitman
Albert Einstein
Helen Keller
Charlie Chaplin
Jack London
Lincoln Steffens
Lillian Hellman
Ben Shahn
Jacob Lawrence
Susan B. Anthony
Elizabeth Blackwell
Alice Paul
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Lucy Stone
Eleanor Roosevelt
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Comment by Ric Locke on 7/1 @ 9:22 pm #
Well, let’s see.
Martin Luther King, Jr. — Important as partial originator of the Civil Rights movement. Assassinated, and (as usual) since quoted a lot by people saying the opposite thing he did.
Dorothy Thompson — Nazi-hating journalist. After WWII she bitterly opposed the founding of Israel, finding the Nazi-trained and Nazi-allied Arabs of Palestine more congenial.
Sinclair Lewis (Thompson’s husband) — Fabian writer whose bitter critiques of capitalist society were underwritten by his inherited fortune.
Upton Sinclair — “muckraker”. Singlehandedly responsible for roughly half of U.S. bureaucracy.
Eugene Debs — Turn of the (twentieth) century labor leader and Socialist, primarily remembered for two things: running for President while in prison, and introducing the “doctrinal purge” to American Socialism. His activities resulted in cutting the American Socialist Party’s membership in half. It never recovered.
Woody Guthrie — Folksinger and Stalinist apologist.
Jane Jacobs — “Urban designer” and theorist with a distinct controlling bent. If you lose your property under Kelo, the city’s lawyers will almost certainly quote her extensively.
Edward Bellamy — Writer, most famous for the Utopian novel Looking Backward from the Year 2000 (written in 1887). Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four describes an intermediate stage of development.
– (and his brother, Francis) — Wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, inspired by European loyalty oaths.
Noam Chomsky — Near-definitional fraud who built on Einstein’s procedure (see below) to claim wide-ranging expertise. The difference is that Einstein’s work is still valid, where Chomsky’s has been revealed as almost totally devoid of merit.
Amy Goodman — modern-day “journalist”. Her hallmark is discovering human-rights abuses in Western-oriented countries and ignoring all others. Godmother of Air America.
Ed Asner — Actor, portrayed Lou Grant (a fictional editor). SAG president.
Elizabeth Montgomery — Good-looking actress. Marshall(ette?) of the Gay Pride parade(s).
Myla Goldberg — Modern-day writer. Notable for villains whose evil depends upon religiosity.
Walt Whitman — Writer and poet, most notable for depicting a Chicago without machine politicians. His other mythologies didn’t catch hold as well.
Albert Einstein — Genius-level theorist in physics, and prototype of the “transferable expertise” model that assumes that a physicist (say) is entitled to comment in other fields with the same authority. The role was more or less forced on Einstein by his admirers; later examples (Chomsky, most egregiously) do it on purpose.
Helen Keller — Blind, deaf woman, genius or better, whose experience of being totally dependent led her to assume that everybody else should receive the same treatment.
Charlie Chaplin — Silent-movie actor and director, first famous for the “prat fall”, later for a management style that made Stalin look like a New Age mother.
Jack London — Writer with a sad and self-destructive early life. Prototype of the “wandering bad boy” in American letters.
Lincoln Steffens — another “muckraker” and advocate of bureaucracy, most famous for having endorsed Stalinism (”I have seen the future, and it works”). Like most socialists of his era, depended on inherited wealth for his lifestyle.
Lillian Hellman — Communist playwright seen as a hero by the Left for defying HUAC. Noted plagiarist.
Ben Shahn — Painter and photographer of the Socialist Realism school. Especially good at caricaturing “fatcat capitalists”. If you look up his work, follow up by visiting http://www.shorpy.com for another look at his subjects.
Jacob Lawrence — painter of the “primitivist” school. Major source of the set of behaviors and stances currently regarded as Authentically Black.
Susan B. Anthony — Suffragette, abolitionist, and temperance worker.
Elizabeth Blackwell — Pioneer woman physician, progressive (meaning “eugenicist” in context).
Alice Paul — Activist for woman suffrage, widely credited as a major influence toward passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Abortionist and eugenicist.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton — Associate of Susan B. Anthony, not much noted today because she also raised a family.
Lucy Stone — Abolitionist and suffragette, seemingly inspired mostly by rebelling against a father who was strict and may have been an abuser in modern terms.
Eleanor Roosevelt — Wife of Franklin Roosevelt. Noted internationalist, one of the founders of the original UN. Hillary! would like to be Eleanor Roosevelt, but isn’t smart enough.
Ralph Waldo Emerson — American philosopher and writer. Marvelous orator, enjoyed by people who had no idea what he was saying. Admirer of Vedic doctrine; Sixties rock stars who hired “gurus” were imitating Emerson.
Henry David Thoreau — Protoge of Emerson, part of the Luddite tradition begun by Rousseau.
It was a little amazing to me how few of those I really had to look up, although I did Google most of them just to see if I remembered things correctly; the only one I had wrong was Lawrence.
Your point being?
Regards,
Ric
Comment by Kathy on 7/1 @ 10:37 pm #
the only one I had wrong was Lawrence
What did you have wrong about him?
Your point being?
No, no, no! That’s MY question to YOU! (Although I admit to finding your descriptions very entertaining.)
Comment by maggie katzen on 7/1 @ 10:39 pm #
a list of people is a question?
Comment by McGehee on 7/1 @ 10:53 pm #
I really liked their songs. Especially “Old Hippie.”
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 7/1 @ 11:14 pm #
No shit! Wow. You learn something new every day.
Here are some names for you:
Stalin
Mao
Pol Pot
Kim Jong Il
Kim Il Sung
We’re not going to let you murder another hundred million people, Kathy.
Sorry about that.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 7/1 @ 11:18 pm #
Let’s see, he made (and did not redistribute to peasants) several million dollars off the sales of his two books. He owns property.
So? The Party bosses in the USSR had plenty of luxuries.
Are you sure you know what Marxism is?
Yes, I do, actually.
You don’t.
It’s a method of convincing idiots to sell themselves into slavery.
Hint: that would be you.
Comment by Rich Rostrom on 7/2 @ 1:33 am #
Obama is not a convinced Marxist. I have no doubt that he absorbed a lot of “Evil Corporate Rich People” thinking from Frank, his Communist childhood mentor, and from Ayers and his ilk, and from various hard-left professoroids at college.
But genuine full-redistributionist socialism such as Marx advocated is dead, except in the deepest fever-swamps of the left. The Left was always as much about social issues as economics. The homosexual software magnates financing hits on Republican state legislators opposed to same-sex marriage are leftists. So are the collectors who pay millions for “transgressive art”. So, to be fair, was the civil-rights movement (which had many wealthy supporters). But they’re not yearning for the Proletarian Revolution. The Left long ago noticed that the actual working class was indifferent or even hostile to much of their agenda - so ____ ‘em, the dumb rednecks. The most liberal neighborhoods in America are also the wealthiest.
These people may support higher taxes (which they don’t expect to pay), but they aren’t giving up their wealth, and Obama doesn’t plan to seize it. Also, genuine Marxists assume capitalism is doomed to a crash which will bring Revolution - the champagne Left expects the party to continue indefinitely.
Obama is clearly of this group.
Comment by Kathy on 7/2 @ 9:45 am #
Here are some names for you:
Stalin
Mao
Pol Pot
Kim Jong Il
Kim Il Sung
None of those people were or are Americans. How do they exemplify American values?
Comment by Alec Leamas on 7/3 @ 5:11 am #
“How do they exemplify American values?”
They don’t. They exemplify your values.
Examplars of American values would include George Washington and Chesty Puller; Amy Goodman and Noam Chomsky less so.
Comment by Kathy on 7/3 @ 1:09 pm #
They don’t. They exemplify your values.
Well, let’s see. I oppose disappearing and torturing people. I oppose throwing people in prison indefinitely with no evidence. I do not believe the president is above the law. I don’t believe that the president has unlimited power to break any law he wishes for any reason or no reason. I don’t believe the president has the right to sign legislation and then put out a statement saying he is not bound by the provisions of the law he just signed. I don’t think the president has the authority to order private companies to break the law and then indemnify them from any legal consequences. I don’t believe the president has the right to sweep up the electronic communications of millions of Americans and do with it what he wishes, with no probable cause (obviously; how could there be probable cause to spy on millions of people?), no warrant and no meaningful court review. I object to kangaroo courts and show trials. I reject the idea that opposition to government policy is equivalent to treason. You are the Stalinist — not me.
You, otoh, support all those things. I think it’s you whose values are stalinist and maoist et al. — not mine.
Examplars of American values would include George Washington and Chesty Puller; Amy Goodman and Noam Chomsky less so.
George Washington owned slaves. Slavery is an American value?
Please cite the basis for your authority to decide that George Washington’s American values are authentic and Amy Goodman’s and Noam Chomsky’s “less so.” You can’t, because there is no such basis.
There isn’t just one set of American values. There are many, and some of them are in conflict. The values underlying slavery in this country (federalism, property rights) are American values. So are the values that inspired the abolitionist movement (human freedom, equality under the law, self-determination). Your analysis of values is narrow, shallow, and one-dimensional.
What a shock.
Comment by alppuccino on 7/3 @ 1:16 pm #
Well, let’s see. I oppose disappearing and torturing people. I oppose throwing people in prison indefinitely with no evidence. I do not believe the president is above the law. I don’t believe that the president has unlimited power to break any law he wishes for any reason or no reason.
I’m curious Kathy, do you oppose these things strongly enough to make war over them? Of course not, because then you’d be ok with the war in Iraq, seeing as you’ve described Saddam Hussein’s regime to a T. Oops.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 7/4 @ 5:58 am #
General Washington wagered his life and all of his property, with little chance of success, to live or die a free man and to secure the Liberty of all Americans. His virtues of physical and moral courage, and the way in which he prized Liberty are quintessential American Values.
Goodman and Chomsky display no virtue. They actively incite the Nation’s youth to hatred of the United States.
“George Washington owned slaves. Slavery is an American value?â€Â
General Washington freed those slaves – and liberty is an American value. How many slaves have Goodman or Chomsky freed? What have they done out of principle or for the sake of Liberty of others on pain of almost certain humiliation and death?
“Well, let’s see. I oppose disappearing and torturing people. I oppose throwing people in prison indefinitely with no evidence. I do not believe the president is above the law. I don’t believe that the president has unlimited power to break any law he wishes for any reason or no reason. I don’t believe the president has the right to sign legislation and then put out a statement saying he is not bound by the provisions of the law he just signed. I don’t think the president has the authority to order private companies to break the law and then indemnify them from any legal consequences. I don’t believe the president has the right to sweep up the electronic communications of millions of Americans and do with it what he wishes, with no probable cause (obviously; how could there be probable cause to spy on millions of people?), no warrant and no meaningful court review. I object to kangaroo courts and show trials. I reject the idea that opposition to government policy is equivalent to treason. You are the Stalinist  not me.â€Â
I believe that you are willfully misstating the case, as none of these crayon scribbles approaches the actual circumstances at issue. Nevertheless, it is your political movement that accepted all of the above and much, much more – as you characterize it – in its open support of Joseph Stalin and others. Funny how you and your ideological cohorts actually kept images and idols of Stalin, and now you point fingers at the men who fought the expansion of his crimes and the crimes of others like him.
“Please cite the basis for your authority to decide that George Washington’s American values are authentic and Amy Goodman’s and Noam Chomsky’s “less so.†You can’t, because there is no such basis. There isn’t just one set of American values. There are many, and some of them are in conflict.â€Â
Sure. At the founding of this Nation, there were in existence institutions and traditions that were essentially American and which breathe life into the Republic. I adore them, and you are repulsed by them and actively seek their destruction.
For example, I value the franchise and its integrity, and the right of citizens to Petition their government for redress.
Amy Goodman giddily supported lawless mobs of alien non-citizens, present in the country illegally, attempting to hijack my (not their) government for their desired ends.
When you see an advertisement for the United States Marine Corps, you reflexively think “American Schutzstaffel†and “fascists;†this is anti-American.
When a panel of four or five lawyers in robes usurp the right of people and the several states to govern their affairs, subject to the enumerated liberties of the Bill of Rights, and you support those lawyers, this is Anti-American.
When you lie about the United States Constitution and say that it guarantees a right to abortion and does not guarantee a right to the instruments of liberty – viz, arms – this is Anti-American.
When, in 2004, you secretly cheered each time reports of five or ten dead soldiers or Marines were broadcast because of the advantage inuring to Senator Kerry – this is Anti-American.
When you support efforts to de-fund and ostracize the Boy Scouts of America because they will not capitulate to your demands – this is Ant-American.
Look, I’m not the first to call you Anti-American. When you think no one is watching – on a college campus or somewhere else you feel comfortable, you identify yourselves as such.
Comment by Kathy on 7/4 @ 6:52 pm #
I’m curious Kathy, do you oppose these things strongly enough to make war over them? Of course not, because then you’d be ok with the war in Iraq, seeing as you’ve described Saddam Hussein’s regime to a T. Oops.
Your question and comment make absolutely no sense at all, given the fact that it’s us, the United States of America, that is disappearing and torturing people, throwing people in prison indefinitely with no evidence, and allowing the president to assert and use powers the Constitution doesn’t allow him.
YOU are the one, among others, who defends and justifies all of the above when it’s the United States that’s doing it.
Comment by Kathy on 7/4 @ 7:31 pm #
General Washington freed those slaves
When he died!!!! He knew he couldn’t take them with him, so he let them go! How self-less and liberty-loving of him!
What have they done out of principle or for the sake of Liberty of others on pain of almost certain humiliation and death?
They’ve both done plenty out of principle. Their whole adult lives have been dedicated to the principles they believe in. As just one example, Amy Goodman and her colleague Allan Nairn were severely beaten because they witnessed a massacre committed by government soldiers. Two Australian journalists had been murdered by the Indonesian government earlier, and Goodman has speculated that the only reason she and Nairn were spared that fate was because they were Americans. The Americans, you see, were funding the atrocities and mass murder being committed by the Indonesian government, so they thought better of killing two journalists who had U.S. passports.
At the founding of this Nation, there were in existence institutions and traditions that were essentially American and which breathe life into the Republic. I adore them, and you are repulsed by them and actively seek their destruction.
There have been 250 years of history since the founding of this nation, Einstein. Literally millions of immigrants, pioneers, farmers, writers, artists, laborers, factory workers, women, blacks (both as slaves and as free men and women), Hollywood moguls, poor people, working people, inventors and businessmen, philosophers and clerics, labor organizers and hoboes, women and men of every skin tone and religion and ethnicity and national origin were part of that history and helped make this country what it is today. I am not “repulsed” by the men who founded this country; I just don’t believe, as you apparently do, that they are the only Americans whose values count.
Your demented litany of “proofs” that everyone who does not agree with you or share your conviction that colonial America was the last period in the history of this country that was truly American, and the founding fathers the last and only set of people who embodied American values, is more anti-American than anything I could dream of coming up with. You reject and condemn the legitimacy of 250 years of Americans whose values and beliefs literally became part of America’s lexicon of values — and you have the chutzpah to tell ME that *I* am anti-American? If you think that only the America of George Washington’s day was authentic and genuine, and everything since then is fraudulent, then you don’t love this country at all. If you can’t accept and acknowledge and value the “all” of America, then you have no business lecturing anyone — *anyone* — about what is American and what is not.
Comment by Kathy on 7/4 @ 7:39 pm #
“Allan Nairn were severely beaten because they witnessed a massacre committed by government soldiers.”
In East Timor; the government soldiers were Indonesian, and Amy Goodman and Allan Nairn were there to report on the conflict.
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