Boycotting Domino’s Pizza was easy. For one thing, with its carbs, fat and empty though delicious calories, pizza is bad for you. Second, the owner of Domino’s is Tom Monagan, an extreme right-wing Catholic who is a major funder of Operation Rescue and the developer of Ave Maria, Florida, a newly built town in which he allegedly attempted to establish theocratic rule.
But boycotting Whole Foods will be more difficult. While it is way over-priced, it tends to have stuff that is hard to find in regular supermarket chains.
However, not only is the owner of Whole Foods, John Mackey, a libertarian union buster, he has just come out against health-care reform in the Murdoch-owned right-wing press:
While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment.
There are calls now to boycott Whole Foods, and the momentum is growing:
Joshua has been taking the bus to his local Whole Foods in New York City every five days for the past two years. This week, he said he’ll go elsewhere to fulfill his fresh vegetable and organic produce needs.
“I will never shop there again,” vowed Joshua, a 45-year-old blogger, who asked that his last name not be published….
Michael Lent, another Whole Foods enthusiast in Long Beach, Calif., told ABCNews.com that he, too, will turn to other organic groceries for his weekly shopping list.
“I’m boycotting [Whole Foods] because all Americans need health care,” said Lent, 33, who used to visit his local Whole Foods “several times a week.”
“While Mackey is worried about health care and stimulus spending, he doesn’t seem too worried about expensive wars and tax breaks for the wealthy and big businesses such as his own that contribute to the deficit,” said Lent.
Mackey’s specific beef is with a single-payer system, which is odd because there is no proposal for a single-payer plan on the table. But in these tough times, liberals need to be careful about where they spend their money. They should be aware that money they spend at Whole Foods eventually lines the pocket of an opponent of progressive causes.
This could be a particularly good time to get a message to Whole Foods management because sales at the chain have been slipping.
This makes it a good time to support locally owned healthy food markets and progressive-owned chains like Trader Joe’s.
- Topic: News & Comment
- Topics: Whole Foods boycott
“Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment.” (John Mackey)
Whenever I hear anyone say “I want choices” or “Individual empowerment” it’s always coming out of the lips of a wealthy, priveleged person. The truth is for most of us dependent on our employer’s health plan (if we’re lucky to even have that!) is that we have NO choices right now. Give me single-payer anytime!
Jon,
Monagan hasn’t owned Domino’s for years. He sold it several years ago. I stopped buying Domino’s while he did still own the company when I heard he was an ultra-conservative Catholic hell bent on carrying out Vatican dogma worldwide such as trying to stamp out birth control in countries where children were already dying of starvation. But it was easy for me because Domino’s was always a second-rate pizza, in my opinion. It was under cooked and very pedestrian at best. Even though Monagan hasn’t owned Dominos for years, I still don’t buy the stuff because I don’t like it.
Hey Garry – Yeah, he sold it 1998. I try to avoid pizza, as noted, but when we do order in, we buy local. – J
Anyone in support of a single payer system has not considered ANY of the various viable alternatives. Those who support alternatives, that do not force everyone to accept government health care, want reforms! We just don’t believe that the government has any right to invade this industry in the way it invaded the agricultural, financial and automobile industries. It’s like we ignore the gov’t and corporate corruption that creates the problems and then look to gov’t to fix what it screwed up! Are we mentally ill? What part of the US Constitution says that this kind of government take-over is okay? Health care is not an inalienable right despite what many have chosen to believe. We all have a right to life, but we don’t have a right to force someone else to keep us alive for free. That would be called stealing. Where does it end? There are more logical and financially sound reforms out there. You just have to research them and look for them rather than accept the propaganda that is spewed all over the whitehouse.gov webpage. Insurance companies and lawyers need reforming first. The doctor/patient relationship does not.
Salia,
Spoken just like a wealthy, pampered ideologue. While all this talk about “choices” and “doctor patient relationships” may sound great, it’s not going to cover the tens of millions of uninsured. Maybe you don’t think health care is a right because you have enough money to pay-as-you-go but most people don’t. Health reform will have nothing to do with the doctor-patient relationship. If anything, it will improve that relationship because the newly-covered will be able to see any doctor they so choose, a choice most don’t have with the current private health insurance system.
Where does US Constitution say that this kind of government take-over is okay?
Answer: Article 1 Section 8 That’s where! Salia, you should actually read it. The congress shall make laws to help the General Welfare of the people. I bet you didn’t have this opinion when Teri Shivo was being kept alive by the Republicans? Single payer would reform the insurance companies…propaganda…you spew Sean Hanity and Rush Limbaugh chapter and verse.
Give us one logically sound reform other than the one you choose to ignore, single payer?
What Garry and DLawand said. What’s scary here is that the right wing has convinced its followers that the role of private health insurance companies is somehow sacrosanct, when, in fact, these companies are blood-sucking leeches that produce nothing.
More often than not, insurance companies stand in the way of care in order to protect their profitability. They certainly ration care, and have for years, by over-ruling doctors when they order tests and prescribe treatments and by refusing to cover people with pre-existing conditions — a bizarre practice that we take for granted but that happens in no other country on the planet — and by kicking people off their rolls when they have accidents or receive a bad diagnosis.
The fact that 50 million or so people are uninsured is not an accident. It’s the insurance company’s system for remaining profitable. They have deliberately created this piece of the crisis. They could insure everyone tomorrow if they chose to, but they won’t.
The United States operates under a regulatory capitalist system. When industries perform well and contribute to the health and well-being of the nation, they receive little or no regulation. But when they perform badly and are a detriment to the safety and productivity of the nation, they have to be regulated. In extreme cases, they must be nationalized, at least temporarily.
The health insurance industry raked in $240 billion in 2008, essentially for doing nothing, for which they took 40 cents of every dollar spent on insurance premiums in profits and to pay the salary of their bureaucrats. The industry could have reformed it by now. It could have solved this crisis, but they have chosen not to. It’s cheaper for them to pay Republicans to make up shit and send it out as propaganda that their Dittohead-Teabagger-Birther-Deather base will buy into, hook, line and sinker, than it is to clean up their collective act.
how is it that people were so united and furious in their hatred of “big oil”, and yet big pharma and big insurance remain anonymous and safely peeking out from behind the curtains ?
is the right to cheap oil more precious than the right to health for americans?
Sorry right-wing-rabble-rousers, you are STILL the minority, vocal as you are, and the tide is turning; gov’t sponsored healthcare improvements ARE coming down the pike. But, fear not! They will not be anywhere near dreadful as you imagine (or pretend to imagine), as the ultra-wealthy, ultra powerful insurance industry won’t allow any major changes. Bottom line, there will be some small imrpovements that will barely cut into insurance companies bottom lines, and in fact will actually help improve insurance companies through competition, which is the bedrock foundation of capitalism. In another year or two people will wonder what all the fuss was about.
[...] but also to a very conscientious clientele, don’t write to a very conservative publication to take a position against a progressive ideal, because then your customers might freak out and find some place else to get their organic [...]
I’m shopping at WF and will continue to do so. Ths thing about this country is that we have the awesome freedom of voicing our opinion. He has a right to feel this way…
I’m not going to try to censor people for not agreeing with me.
But Sheryl, we serfs should not line the pockets of our oppressors. That’s what this is really about.
I can’t believe anyone out there thinks the government can actually improve anything. So far, everything the government becomes involved in goes to hell. The public education system is a very good example of that. If we are going to start reforming healthcare then start with medicare. Medicare dictates what is and is not covered, paid, etc… then the other insurance companies follow. Our President could do a lot for the uninsured just starting there. We cannot afford what has been proposed and therefore doesn’t make sense to implement. The fact that its being shoved down everyone’s throat before they even have time to read it tells me there is something wrong with it. The government also has a history of implementing programs that they do not monitor, like welfare, which has become a way of life for so many, instead of just a helping hand like it was supposed to be. Welfare reform has helped some there but it sure took a while just for that. I believe the more you ask the government to do for you, the more freedoms you give up. The real problem is people not wanting to have to do for themselves. Too many people think they are owed something. People want the government to save them from their own bad choices. We have the power to help ourselves if we would just exercise it. We don’t need a government telling us what to do in every facet of our lives.
It’s sad that so many right-wingers like you hate this country and its government so much, Betsy. Here’s a news flash: Your side ran the government for 30 years, and your side and its trickle-down, gusher-up policies have put this great country in the fix it is in.
You need to get other facts straight, too. Medicare doesn’t dictate what “other” health insurance plans do. Only Medicare Part B has a private component, and those companies are free to do what they want to with the 99 percent of their business, which is covering people under 65.
The proposed bills are online and have been up since July. That’s plenty of time for anyone — even people educated in public schools — to read them.
There is also no truth — no proof in real world experience — that the more govt does for you, the more freedom you lose. That’s just right-wing radio propaganda that you have apparently swallowed without chewing.
I’m really confused about this article, and maybe it is better now, it being 2010, to look back and actually critique it in today’s context. It’s like I’m from the future…..!
Now, I’m almost 100% sure that this website will censor my post, which is their right being a private website, but of course allowing those the sites moderators agree with, to express their views.
Well as a student of Advertising, I’m not really partisan in the sense, things have black/white/gray areas. I’m more concerned with the product and selling it.
But one of the most left wing stances is freedom of speech, granted in our first amendment, so lets see how far I can go, not being political, with the commentary(which is all this is) this article and site stand for:
“The Free Market is evil, let’s boycott it”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but is it not the stance of Progressives that an idea of the free market is in poor taste? Because as I understand, Progressives would rather an economy be centralized and controlled by government intervention, correct? Well if this is true, then how do Progressives explain using devices of the free market (the boycott) to expel their dissent against anything? The Free Market, a real free market, which believe it or not this country hasn’t had since 1913 with the passing of the Federal Reserve Act, is probably one of the most democratic tools given to the people. You vote with your cash, on which product and company to support or not to, by going somewhere else.
Now, these quotes from normal folk are what bring me to a paradox in this article, let’s go over them:
Joshua has been taking the bus to his local Whole Foods in New York City every five days for the past two years. This week, he said he’ll go elsewhere to fulfill his fresh vegetable and organic produce needs.
“I will never shop there again,” vowed Joshua, a 45-year-old blogger, who asked that his last name not be published….
Joshua, thank you for supporting the free market, you have the unbridled choice to support everything and anything you want, thanks to the free…erm…semi free market we have here in America.
Michael Lent, another Whole Foods enthusiast in Long Beach, Calif., told ABCNews.com that he, too, will turn to other organic groceries for his weekly shopping list.
“I’m boycotting [Whole Foods] because all Americans need health care,” said Lent, 33, who used to visit his local Whole Foods “several times a week.”
Michael , thanks again! You may have helped a smaller or bigger business grow due to your distaste for another! I can really see that invisible hand Adam Smith spoke of working at full capacity. As for healthcare, I understand your opinion, I do, but just ask yourself, do you and every American have a right to someone else’s goods or services? Try that logic in the organic market, please just take whatever you want and don’t you even think about paying, go on then, I doubt you will be arrested because as Americans we probably should have a right to food that someone else grew….right?
Well as classic liberal economist, Ludwig Von Mises said “When we call a capitalist society a consumers’ democracy we mean that the power to dispose of the means of production, which belongs to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the consumers’ ballot, held daily in the marketplace.”
food for thought…
“While Mackey is worried about health care and stimulus spending, he doesn’t seem too worried about expensive wars and tax breaks for the wealthy and big businesses such as his own that contribute to the deficit,” said Lent.
Well interesting talking point, but this wasn’t about expensive wars and tax breaks for the wealthy and big business was it? This is a pretty biased thing to throw in the article..well this whole article is biased, its great advertising though, well played Mr. Ponder.
I have an equal conduit, Rand Paul now Senator Elect Rand Paul, was demonized as a racist for disagreeing with 1/10th of the Civil Rights Act, that 1/10 was the blurring of private and public sector institutions.
In an interview with Rachel Maddow, she asks him, knowing how he feels, whether or not businesses should have the right to discriminate. (Keep in mind business owners are not monochromatic)
As Rand states, he has faith in the American people to make the right choices, in this case he used the free market as an example to help society progress, move forward, Rand believes any institution that would discriminate against colour would fall to the will of the people via the free market and its tools, boycotts, freedom and choice to shop elsewhere.
As Rand was demonized for this by Progressives and other echelons of the far left, weeks later Arizona and their “controversial” immigration law budded. As they did to Rand, the same people called this law “Racist” and how did they fight against it? Boycotting Arizona made goods. Good one guys, now tell me how is it “Progressive “ to cast a sheet and cover all in the state and boycott their businesses? Hurting the little and big guy ends up hurting those who work for them, wouldn’t you agree?
Oh, wait….that wasn’t much of a conduit at all, sorry.
“A slice of bias”
The introduction to this article is also a little iffy and I might need some things to be cleared up but Tom Monaghan from what I understand is huge philanthropist and according to Wikipedia “The Ave Maria foundation donates resources to help alleviate poverty in Central and South America”, that doesn’t seem too bad, are Progressives more inclined to dissent against things like this or better, more inclined to agree with charity when it agrees with their ideology? If the latter is true, which I suspect it is, then Progressives shouldn’t have any issue with Tom Managhan as he only contributes to things he agrees with ideologically, as it seems he only supports Catholic organizations and sets them up. Not much different than most of the links or groups you folk create….
Also the town Ave Maria was privately funded and was meant to be exactly what this article says it is, a Catholic town.
Don’t like it? Don’t live there. Similar to a bumper sticker I saw that said “Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one “. Ah, choice how it longs to be preserved or in the case of this article quelled if it doesn’t abide by the rule of those who disagree. I guess theocratic rule is way worse than political rule, which is what Jon Ponder thinks but also seems to harbor a despotic view of how things should work, himself.
“Lastly, in part”
I like the way this Jon fella writes, he gets to demonize without it sounding like his is, but it doesn’t work on everyone.
In the middle of the article Jon writes,
“However, not only is the owner of Whole Foods, John Mackey, a libertarian union buster, he has just come out against health-care reform in the Murdoch-owned right-wing press”
Alright, look at how he states this. He adds the fact that John Mackey is a Libertarian “Union Buster” as if its a bad thing.
His stance on unions is more like this:
“It’s illegal in the United States for there to be company unions — special unions which are formed and controlled by the employees and managers of the company to represent their interests and collectively bargain on their behalf. These type of unions are legal in many countries such as Japan, but are illegal in the United States. Instead the law requires that all unions be outside unions. I believe this law should be repealed and that company unions should be as legal as any other kind of voluntary association.” – John Mackey’s Blog, Whole Foods Market.com. October 20, 2005.
What is wrong with that? A union controlled by employees and the owner of the business? This is a bad thing why?
Also, so what is wrong with being a Libertarian? What are the core values of Libertarianism you don’t like?
“Libertarianism is the advocacy of individual liberty, especially freedom of thought and action “Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of libertarianism
Now, you guys aren’t upset by that, you can’t be, you reap the benefits of such an ideology, even as you wrote this article, Jon, you were in that moment a individual expressing yourself, under the protection of Liberty.
“On to the quote”
“While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment.”
I see nothing wrong with this, he sounds like he doesn’t want this legislation (and I’m happy part of it was recently declared unconstitutional, no government has the right to force anyone to buy something and no government has the right to make it so that people that work hard, are rapped by those who do little, this of course is opinion, mine, deal with it)
This article did little for being fair or balanced, the likes of any fact are covered up by partisan talking points. I find it odd that there is so much distaste for things like Fox News and “ Conservative” radio shows, websites etc…mean while you never think to actually review your own actions or MSNBC’s ( owned by GE) You have no idea what a real Conservative is , you polarize a group that has not any of the issues you claim. Most and I’ll bet everything on black here, that your “progressive critique on conservatives or the right wing is more an issue with Neo-Conservatives, who ARE Left Wing.
“Neoconservatism… originated in the 1970s as a movement of anti-Soviet liberals and social democrats in the tradition of Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and Henry (’Scoop’) Jackson, many of whom preferred to call themselves ‘paleoliberals.’ [After the end of the Cold War]… many ‘paleoliberals’ drifted back to the Democratic center… Today’s neocons are a shrunken remnant of the original broad neocon coalition. Nevertheless, the origins of their ideology on the left are still apparent. The fact that most of the younger neocons were never on the left is irrelevant; they are the intellectual (and, in the case of William Kristol and John Podhoretz, the literal) heirs of older ex-leftists.- Michael Lind”
Thanks for reading.
p.s
“There is also no truth — no proof in real world experience — that the more govt does for you, the more freedom you lose. That’s just right-wing radio propaganda that you have apparently swallowed without chewing.”
That is total nonsense, Communist Russia, National Socilaist Germany, Corporatist Italy……honestly man, pick up a history book.
All these were sold on Nationalism, which Progressives advocate, otherwise they wouldnt be so big on BIG Government.
That is a very convincing imitation of Glenn Beck, Will. And like your thought master’s rambling, nonsensical ravings, what you’ve written is cleverly packed with disinformation, half-truths and spin, all resting on a foundation of lies. It would be fun to go through them one by one but I learned long ago that it’s a waste of time to argue with cultists.
For others who happen upon this page, a couple of points, however.
1. Liberals do not support big government. That is a right-wing lie. Liberals want smart government, just as they want businesses, schools and, what the heck, even churches to be run intelligently with one eye on the bottom line and the other on having a beneficial or at least non-detrimental effect on society.
2. Businesses screw up just as often or more than government. Prime examples: BP oil spill, the Wall Street crash, the real-estate collapse, the various mining disasters. The health-care crisis in the country today is a direct result of the willful incompetence and greed of the private health-care companies. These companies could fix the crisis tomorrow, if they chose to, but they refuse to insure everybody and keep costs down. The point is that any and all human endeavors are susceptible to screw-ups because people are imperfect. Seeking profit does not imbue an activity with nobility nor does it excuse failure.
3. Government has a successful track record, and it does produce jobs. Government won World War II, built the Interstate highway system and put men on the moon. All of those endeavors generated private sector jobs. In our own time, the Bush administration funneled tens of millions of dollars to Halliburton and other private contractors — and all of which produced jobs in the private sector. The Stimulus produced more jobs in 18 months than the Bush tax cuts have in 10 years and counting.
You are correct that there is a conspiracy underway in this country today, Will, but you’re wrong about who is involved in and what they are up to. The fact is, you and the rest of the Beckerheads, Dittoheads and tea baggers are an unwitting tools of it. The American right is working night and day and spending billions of dollars at the behest of its corporate sponsors to upend the American democratic republic and replace it with a corporate oligarchy.
This new regime will look much like Mexico does today or the way the United States did in the late 19th century. A handful of uber-wealthy people will control 90 percent of the wealth — they control 25 percent of the US wealth right now, up from about 5 percent before the Reagan “trickle down” era — sitting atop a small middle class, just enough doctors, lawyers and merchants to satisfy the needs of the oligarchs. Underneath the fortunate few, the rest of America, as many as 300 million or more, will be desperately poor, living in shipping crates and sifting through trash dumps for food.
That’s the America Glenn Beck and his co-conspirators at the Republican Party’s Fox channel are driving us toward. That is their true, dark vision of our future. And all of you Beckerheads are complicit in their evil scheme. You’d should pray that normal Americans do not wake up and realize what Beck, Limbaugh and the rest of you are up to because if they do, there will be hell to pay.
Alright, now we’re getting somewhere…
But for others who happen upon this page, a couple of points, however.
You said:
“That is a very convincing imitation of Glenn Beck, Will. And like your thought master’s rambling, nonsensical ravings, what you’ve written is cleverly packed with disinformation, half-truths and spin, all resting on a foundation of lies. It would be fun to go through them one by one but I learned long ago that it’s a waste of time to argue with cultists.”
First off, I’d like to thank you for your response and the not deleting of my comment, perhaps I jumped the gun when I thought you Progressives were all about censorship, my apologies….but I have feeling I might change my mind in the middle of this post.
I read over my post and yours several times, and I’m having an issue connecting what I’ve written to the Controlled Opposition spewed by Glenn Beck. Now I’ve followed Glenn Beck for a long, long time. This is the guy that flip flops on what he believes…almost every show, he’s an opportunist…that is all.
Here are some videos, which I cannot believe haven’t had more views but, take a look at the real Glenn Beck. Watch them all and in length.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFGr-SYyrZE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1_yaJ2Wz0E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSwlxJM5Chc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEzWhPFb0HQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSxu2v6yvUM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9hfkCrCE5s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M806u1brf2I
Alright, so if you have given this a fair view, what say you now? This man has been a thorn in the side of the Constitutional and Libertarian movement for well over two years. He is the reason why, when people say like what I’ve posted only a few days ago, get thrown out the window because it sounds “Beckian”
Now, you accused me of being something of a Beckian thinker, you claimed I’ve fallen for his lies. Now that you know this man is a major issue for legitimate political thought, will you still cast your partisan daggers at me?
I agree with you 100% on Glenn Beck, he is a liar, an outright liar. He slips Libertarian and Constitutional talking points in to his web, and because everything else he says is just total nonsense, people see everything he says as nonsense…this doesn’t help anyone.
You ever think Beck is part of that Operation Mockingbird program? He might not be, but God damn does he fit the bill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
Now, Jon. Tell me who fell for his lies, you or me? If you say me again, you’re as lost as the Beck followers.
Hopefully you will critically think this a little more.
As your post threw me under the bus as a Glenn Beck guy and I’m clearly not.
p.s I don’t agree with most of anything Alex Jones says, I know he’s all NWO this NOW that and yeah, the idea of the NWO has total possibility and probable ( god forbid ) and I would of course be against anything that compromises our National Sovereignty. Yet, Jones is actually exposing this guy so lets give him credit, for the sake of the argument.
But to answer two of your points, because the rest you made have nothing to do with what I was talking about:
“1. Liberals do not support big government. That is a right-wing lie. Liberals want smart government, just as they want businesses, schools and, what the heck, even churches to be run intelligently with one eye on the bottom line and the other on having a beneficial or at least non-detrimental effect on society.”
This is nobel, I agree but its a spun interpretation, I assume because you are a Liberal and no one thinks their “shit” stinks.
But…
If liberals do not support big government, than explain how each Progressive/Modern Liberal ideal is about using Government to legitimize the movements actions?
How is it a “right wing” lie if the political folk of the left, use the verbage ” Big Government” and explain similar Progressive actions?
Lefty’s like Jeff Madrick seem to think differently than you, ever read his book, The Case for Big Government?
I brought up the Neo-Cons before, you said nothing about it,I assume you don’t like them, right?
Glenn Beck is Neo-Con, but I guess you because you really believe he believes in small government( bah! )and that its a “Right Wing” lie, it wasn’t worth talking about.
I guess you might be right though, Bush was big governement (and he’s also a Neo-Con) and I remember the left screaming against big government during the Bush days when he implemented the following expansions of Government:
Patriot Acts I & II:
Defined in my opinion as “chameleon legislation”; it’s designed to be “open to interpretation” by officials and to be modified for whatever purpose they happen to deem fit at the moment. Ultimately, both Patriot Acts opened a terrible gateway to a world where any freedom is expendable, especially if it means stopping terrorists and “evil doers”. Of course, the manner in which terrorism is defined by proponents of the Patriot Act is wildly general. ANYONE could be defined as a terrorist, and any threat could be construed as a matter of national security. The true goal of this legislation was not to protect the public, but to untie the hands of the establishment when implementing further destructive actions, as well as to plant the fog of doubt into the minds of Americans as to the continued validity of the Constitution itself.
Were you not against this, Jon? What about
The Enemy Belligerents Act:
This Act is a perfect example of how the leadership caste of the Democrats and Republicans (who are neo-cons, not true conservatives) work in tandem to institute globalist policy. In this case, the act was introduced by the dastardly duo of John McCain and Joe Lieberman. To put it simply, this legislation, if fully imposed, would allow the government to label any person they choose, even an American citizen, as an enemy combatant. This means you could be arrested without being officially charged, imprisoned without a trial or legal council for an unspecified length of time, and no one, not even your family, would be told where you were. They should just re-name it the ‘Shanghai Act’, because it basically legalizes government piracy. The only problem is that this shanghai is less likely to end with tropical island adventure and more likely to end with you being tossed in a dark stinky hole in the middle of another Abu Ghraib surrounded by Blackwater mongoloids with a penchant for naked man dog-piles. Again, this is the kind of poison our government thinks up on a regular basis…
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-645
And….
The John Warner Defense Authorization Act:
A bill passed by George W. Bush in 2007 with very little initial media coverage. Allows the Federal Government at the direction of the president to subvert Posse Comitatus and use the military within the borders of the U.S. as a police force without any consent from state governments. Also gives the office of the president unprecedented powers over the National Guard. Just add any real or engineered national disaster and what you get is a perfect recipe for Hurricane Katrina deluxe.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-5122
And so on…
Presidential Directive 51:
A presidential action shrouded in secrecy and general cloak and dagger spookiness. When ignorant yuppies accuse the Liberty Movement of “paranoia”, I always point out PDD 51, and ask them if they are at least intelligent enough to be concerned. This order was initiated by George W. Bush and continued by Barack Obama, and is designed to give the president virtual dictatorial powers during a state of “national emergency”. It dissolves all states rights and places the entire country under the purview of Northcom, and Homeland Security. The guise of “continuity of government” is used as a rationale. Also allows the president to declare a state of emergency for almost any reason. Members of Congress and even some members of Homeland Security who have requested to read the entire directive have been denied. The bill is apparently so disturbing that Obama doesn’t even want those with security clearance to view the full document. Though I’m sure there is some grey area that can be exploited where classified materials are concerned, as far as I can tell from my research, Obama’s withholding of information on a directive such as PDD 51 from Congress is wholly illegal.
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-51.htm
Maybe another….?
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA):
Supported by both Bush and Obama. The word “foreign” is highly misleading. FISA allows telecom companies to supply the personal data and communications of anyone, including Americans, to the government without threat of civil retribution (lawsuit). Under Constitutional law, any invasion of privacy by government authorities must first be approved through an individualized warrant. The person or premises to be monitored must be specified, and the reason behind the surveillance must be clearly explained. FISA does away with all of these protections to your privacy and gives free reign to government to spy on whoever they choose without any oversight whatsoever. It even allows for mass surveillance, or data collation, on entire subsections of the populace. What I find most interesting about FISA is the way in which it brazenly breaks the barrier between government and corporate power. We all know about the revolving door in Washington, but in the past, the idea of the barrier was at least somewhat maintained for appearances, if nothing else. The trick to FISA is that “technically”, it is the telecoms that are doing the actual surveillance, and not government. This is, I’m sure, the argument that will be used by the Feds if FISA is ever taken to the Supreme Court under the Fourth Amendment. The reality, though, is that the telecoms and the government are one in the same, and to treat them as two separate legal entities is to blind one’s self to the facts. Now, Mussolini’s definition of fascism (the melding of government and corporate infrastructure into a single entity with a single purpose) absolutely seems to apply to the U.S., wouldn’t you agree?
Last one
Bailout Bills (All Variations):
I find that a lot of people like to blame our current economic doomfest on one political party or the other, stumbling about in the dark in a sad attempt to trace the roots of the credit and mortgage collapse back to Obama, Bush II, Clinton, Bush I, etc. Everyone is desperate to play cheerleader for their team, not realizing that both teams are fake and almost every president since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 is to blame for selling out the American people to global banks. Let’s not forget, both Obama and Bush supported bailout legislation which is now widely considered to be an abject failure. The majority of Americans according to most polls opposed these bills, and yet they were still passed. What do the bailouts have to do with the loss of Constitutional rights? When the entirety of your country’s financial future is poured into the coffers of international banks and your currency is subsequently debased if not destroyed, leaving you with nothing but debt and supranational centralization.
Where are you lefties now with these issues? Or are you doing what I thought all along, raging against one form of Big Government until your sides version was put in place?
Again you didn’t really answer anything I wrote, instead you lumped it all up into one big left vs right argument.
“2. Businesses screw up just as often or more than government. Prime examples: BP oil spill, the Wall Street crash, the real-estate collapse, the various mining disasters. The health-care crisis in the country today is a direct result of the willful incompetence and greed of the private health-care companies. These companies could fix the crisis tomorrow, if they chose to, but they refuse to insure everybody and keep costs down. The point is that any and all human endeavors are susceptible to screw-ups because people are imperfect. Seeking profit does not imbue an activity with nobility nor does it excuse failure.”
I agree with this, kudos.
The rest, again doesn’t have anything to do with what I posted.
You can either answer it and explain why you feel that way or leave it. But don’t make this a left vs right issue because I can believe in neither.
Thanks again.
Will – We mostly censor racist hate speech. We put the disclaimer up to let people know in advance that if they leave vile, epithet-laden, content-free messages on the board, we will delete them. I doubt we have deleted comments by more than five or six people in the nearly six years we’ve been publishing.
If you want to experience censorship, go to Free Republic or any similar right-wing site and leave a comment that says something good about Pres. Obama or bad about George Bush and see how long it stays there. Would recommend not blinking.
Free speech — freedom of thought — is at the core of liberalism. Without it, liberalism would not exist. It’s what makes us so fractious. It is the fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives. At the core of conservatism is the impulse for rigid conformity to ideology — to goosestep in lockstep. It’s the right that clamps down on the free expression. To suggest otherwise is just projection.
Of course Glenn Beck is a liar. But he’s no worse than Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Hugh Hewitt, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, etc. etc. etc. In fact, all conservative thought leaders are compulsive, habitual liars.
The reason for this is that the entire conservative ideology is a fraud — a fairy tale based on romanticized history, fantasies and magical thinking. (The best take I’ve heard on it lately is that conservativism is not really an ideology, it’s a temperament.) Current-day conservativism is a stalking horse for the corporatocracy. It plays on the fear and bigotry of the lower classes in order to trick them into voting for corporate control and against their own self-interests.
Where you mirror Beck is in your elision of progressivism, socialism and statism. Socialism is simply the pooling of resources by a community or society. It is not intrinsically evil. Quite the opposite. In fact, socialism is as American as apple pie.
If you went to a government school, if you rely on government security (a police department) or emergency services (fire, EMT), if you have government libraries and a government hospital in your town, if your parents or grandparents receive a government pension (Social Security) or government-provided health care (Medicare), then you are a socialist. No ifs, ands or buts about it.
Conservatives turned the word socialism into a dirty word during the McCarthy era as part of their enduring strategy of using fear and lies to wield political power. Because of this, in America, we call European-style democratic socialism “regulatory capitalism.” The only difference is semantics.
When conservatives say things like “each Progressive/Modern Liberal ideal is about using Government to legitimize the movements actions” what liberals hear is coded speech.
Let me back up. The use of the word “legitimize” here is telling. Liberals see our system as working this way: We the people — that is, the voters — or our elected representatives debate and vote on issues that affect the community. The vote becomes law and then we, the people — that is, the government — enforce the law or regulation.
This concept is fundamental to any civilized society. The alternative would be for each citizen to enforce laws as he or she saw fit, or for groups of citizens to band together as vigilantes.
Except for right wing militia types, perhaps, even conservatives generally agree that government enforcement of laws is better than rough justice. In this sense then, when conservatives agree with the underlying laws, they are just as likely as liberals to “use the government to legitimize” their objectives.
For example, conservatives have for decades advocated giving government the power to force each child-bearing female in America to carry her pregnancy to term. Since the 1970s, conservatives have worked tirelessly to pass laws that would give the government unprecedented new powers to monitor tens of millions of pregnancies every year and then arrest women and/or their doctors who violate the law by terminating a pregnancy.
Talk about big government! Think of the bureaucracy, the government bureaucrats, the invasion of privacy — the databases — this would require.
Similarly, conservatives demand that the government round up all 20 million illegals in this country and ship them back to Mexico or wherever. This would be by far the biggest forced migration in the history of the world. It would require setting up and staffing thousands of detention centers — on top of the dozens that Halliburton has already built for the government — in which families would live while their cases were adjudicated. Sound far fetched? It’s going on right now. The Obama administration is exceeding all Bush records in deportations. And these adjudications can last weeks and even months, which means, if conservatives get their way, the government — at the behest of the American right — would be staffing up and spending billions to feed and house millions of people for indefinite periods.
That’s the sort of big government conservatives are eager to use to “legitimize” their ideological objectives.
So the disagreement comes down, not to using the government to legitimize ideological objectives, but rather to the underlying issues for each side’s objectives. This is where the coded speech comes in.
The first thing that comes to mind for liberals when conservatives accuse liberals of using government to enforce their ideological objectives is the protection civil rights/equal rights of minorities.
Liberals support laws that protect these rights — which means that government, not vigilante groups, must enforce the laws. Conservatives oppose these laws because, to put it bluntly, the laws are targeted at them.
The right has an apparently involuntary, reflexive impulse to trod on the downtrodden and to single out for abuse people who are different. If it weren’t for this impulse, the laws would not be necessary — which is why liberals dismiss conservatives’ complaints about the laws as the whining of bullies.
The assertion that liberals use government to legitimize their causes also shills for Beck-Limbaugh-Hannity-et-al’s latest Big Lie — that progressivism is a push toward big government which eventually morphs into statism, which, in the context of their disinformation campaign, they call “socialism.”
Statism is evil. It rises up when extremists gain unbridled power. It happened under Stalin, and is alive and well under Kim Jong Il. It also happened on the right under Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Pinochet, and it is alive and and well in Iran and Myanamar. The drive to force the world to live under right-wing theocratic statism is what animates al Qaeda.
Both — all — ideologies are susceptible to it, which is why liberals opposed the Patriot Act, the Bush torture regime, illegal wiretapping and the rest. Unlike conservatives who never publicly criticized George Bush, the most unpopular president in the history of polling, liberals have loudly criticized the Obama administration for continuing some of the Cheney-Bush-Rove right-wing anti-democratic practices.
I am convinced to my core that our political system is broken beyond fixing. I don’t believe the nonsense that both sides are equally responsible for it. The right has done this almost single-handedly. They can’t win elections on their own merits because their ideology can’t stand up to the truth, to facts, to the light of day, so they must lie, cheat and steal to win. If that means filibustering 112 times in one year — a number never even contemplated before 2009 — against laws that were proposed by a president who, unlike George Bush, for example, won election handily by promising that these laws would be passed — laws that were passed by duly elected representatives in the House — so be it.
That is anti-democratic and un-American.
What has permitted this failure of American democratic ideals is our system of government. I believe the only solution is to do literally to the Constitution what Republicans have done figuratively: Shred it.
I believe we should replace our antiquated federal system with a more modern parliamentary one. For example, filibuster reform in the Senate doesn’t go far enough for me — what we need is to get rid of the Senate altogether. Ditto the Executive Branch, as far as I’m concerned.
One legislative body with members representing fewer people than our current House districts would give more citizens a voice in the government. A parliament would also make it easier for additional parties to form and share power. A limit of just five weeks for elections, which is the rule under many parliamentary systems, would also help drain some of the money influence in politics.
Sound bizarre and communist-ish? Consider this fact. With the exception of the American Confederacy and the Philippines, in every country the United States has conquered, including Germany, Japan and Iraq, we have installed parliaments, not federal, bicameral systems like our own. In fact, the only other federal system like ours is the one we installed in the Philippines over a century ago. Every other democracy — Britain, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Indonesia, South Africa, you name it — operates under a parliamentary system.
An American parliament would not be the panacea to all our problems — it wouldn’t end corruption or eradicate the dominating influence of corporatism — but it would make our democracy run more smoothly and better reflect the will of the people.
“right wing militia types”-
You must mean the people who organize on a community level who pool resources to support their societies in time of forest fire, flooding, in addition to the backing of the 2nd amendement in the eventual case of rule without law. You know, socialists.
“For example, conservatives have for decades advocated giving government the power to force each child-bearing female in America to carry her pregnancy to term. Since the 1970s, conservatives have worked tirelessly to pass laws that would give the government unprecedented new powers to monitor tens of millions of pregnancies every year and then arrest women and/or their doctors who violate the law by terminating a pregnancy.”
States, an affiliation of villages, essentially, populated with individuals who share mutual social goals seem grown up enough to make their minds. With today’s myriad ways to travel, it doesn’t seem ludicrous to suppose that if you’re going to make such a serious decision as abortion, you go to a neighboring state with favorable laws condusive to taking what you feel is a comfortable course of action. That seems like a liberal conclusion. Dropping the widespread iron hammer either way the pendulum swings is unreasonable and tyrannical.
Now, Jon, I don’t care much for how things are either, but I don’t hear someone who is fed-up and thinking outside the box. I hear someone just pounding against the wall yelling,spinning an argument a certain way and not seeing fact that’s clearly out there. There’s such thing as objective observation.
Jon, I come from a lineage of people who have risked lives to step out of the system, and come back in with productive things to contribute to their nations in the form of some of the reforms you would seem to be a fan of.
What is alarming is how the other half, sounds straight out of the mouths of the very despots who shackled them, beat them and threatened them with death.
You reach some very draconian conclusions that seems very emotional, and not based in alot more.
A few notes from first hand experience and years of study:
1)Socialism, communism and their little bastard step-sister fascism, all share the fact that they are unsustainable. For the most part after roughly a decade, every system enacted plateaus, and the populace purges its rulers by force, maybe even death for a reason.
2)Liberalism in the United States is a joke. If you used the term in a correct, academic manner, you would have to be your country’s equivalent to a libertarian. I always found this very strange, and a major misuse and perverted way to look at things.
Finally, on the topic of Whole Foods:
As a former devout leftist, and former Whole Foods employee, I can honestly say it’s to this day the best employer I’d ever worked for.
I had to listen to constant bitching by employees about ludicrous things. Finally once, I turned and said to a woman, you’re voting between options A-F for your insurance plan. Are you out of your mind?! You’re a totally hypocrit.
As for the argument of everything being overpriced. Sorry, not the case. They just happen to have more high end brands of the things you seek in addition to the organic generics. Overwhelmingly, they’ve succeded in seeking suppliers who are condusive to making organic food more accessible to EVERYONE. Also, FYI they take food stamps.
In regards to the Unions, if you know any union folk, they will openly tell you that the system is continually abused.
In my city, I know a couple of construction workers who laugh about spending half the day running the clock and chatting. They make upper-middle class money.
Will is right though, it kills Mackey that he can’t start a union internally and it’s a major source of stress. Unfortunately laws in the US dont permit this.
Rest assured, for the non-hairbrains that don’t buy into this article, Mackeys stands by his vision to slowly reform all grocery stores by example as his weapon to influence broad change in how little organic food is accessible.
In fact in one employee meeting, someone raised the issue that WalMart was sweeping into farms and buying out suppliers under Whole Foods nose. The response given was along the lines of ‘well, we can always find a way around this. By influenicing/educating people you let them think critically about the evils of alot of food industry and show the beauty of living healthy. If realized demand fuels change where they shop. We know we’re doing right if WalMart is bumrushing organic farms to answer to their market. There will be more organic farms that can stay in business and the industries can grow that way. If they’re trying to steal our suppliers, we’re accomplishing our mission
On another note, I don’t identify with alot of these characters in this horse race, false left-right paradigm, you name it. However, working at whole foods was educational and really got me thinking critically and re-evaluating my formerly naive convictions. All I’m urging is that you, Jon open your mind and realize you are re-enforcing the evil game you spite.
As for Will’s comments, those are astute observations, and all leads to very interesting topics. I’ve already done research into the evolution of the Neo-Con beast, and it’s mind boggling. Those are true trojan horse liberals.
I think its fair to surmise at this point that this is score – 1 for keeping intellectual debate like a game of pong, instead of taking concrete action based on a clear paper trail of deceit by folks who play for the same team, but wear different masks.
I have no passion about the Whole Foods boycott. They put their stores in liberal enclaves because their marketing research showed that liberals understood the value of their service, whereas conservatives are happy to buy pesticide-infused food harvested by child slaves in Asia. In other words, Whole Foods wanted liberals’ money. Liberals, like most people in the world outside the United States, also underestand that health care is a right not a commodity. It was therefore a dumbass move for the owner to start spouting right-wing corporatist dogma during the health-care debate.
The thing about putting the stores in liberal enclaves is that that’s also where there are alternatives to buying locally produced, non agricorp products. We don’t “need” Whole Foods. At my house, we stopped shopping there way back when and won’t be going back. Like good liberal capitalists, we are voting with our dollars, and we vote “no.” End of story.
You’re wrong about fundamental facts as well as the definitions of social systems. Fascism is strictly a right-wing construct since a fundamental aspect of it is a rigid adherence to ideology, which liberals, by definition, cannot tolerate or abide. For example, in World War II, the resistance movements against Nazi-Italian-Spanish fascism were comprised of liberal free-thinkers. That’s why American liberals rushed to Spain to fight Franco before WWII.
Fascism may be unsustainable, but socialism, also known as regulatory capitalism, is alive and well in the Europe, Asia and right here at home.
Every time you hear a police or fire siren going by, that’s American socialism going to work.
Every time a life is saved by an EMT unit, that’s a life saved by good ol’ American socialism.
Every time a kid graduates from a government school, it adds another American socialist success story to hundreds of millions that have gone before it.
Every time a child checks out a book from a local library, it’s a triumph of American socialism.
Every time a senior buys groceries and pays rent with a government pension check instead of sleeping in a shipping crate and eating garbage, it’s a triumph of American socialism.
Every time an elderly person survives an illness because Medicare paid for the treatments, red-white-and-blue American socialism triumphs again.
Socialism is not only sustainable, it is beating U.S. style corporatism — which is the evil stepsister of capitalism — all over Asia and Europe. You are oblivious to it because you only watch the Republican “news” channel and listen to Republican radio — which is obvious because what you’ve written here is imbued with their false dogma and propagandist jingoism.
Conservative nihilism is killing this country. That is an objective fact. It’s happening in front of your face. Turn off Fox. Turn off Rush. Open your eyes. Think for yourself.
Jon,
The last post you sent, I have to say, was so well written. I commend you on your writing skill.
I disagree to a major extent on some of your talking points, and since this is all commentary and means nothing. My next post I’ll have cited sources to follow some issues to keep this fair.
Again, I’m pretty sure that none of those people above, and I thank them for their defense, are establishment Republicans…I think they’re Libertarians…and “G” or whoever said it, is right. Libertarians are by definition the offspring to what Liberalism was before it factionalized and went far left.
If you want to make this fun, balanced and fair…perhaps give me a shot at writing for your site….
No I’m kidding, but it would still be cool.
Thanks, man. I’ll post very soon
Libertarians have no historical relationship with liberals. That’s just nonsense. Libertarians are just smart-ish conservatives. Libertarians agree with liberals on social issues, but then most intelligent people do — but libertarians are, by definition, anti-government. Liberals believe, as did the Framers, that we, the people, are the government. There is no common ground between liberals and libertarians on that and never was.
As adherents to regulatory capitalism, we believe that when corporations act in ways that are detrimental to national interests, it is up to us, the people, through the government, to regulate them. As we saw in 2008, when Republicans get their way and corporations go unregulated, these corporations put national security at risk. This cannot be allowed to stand.
Libertarians and Republicans adamantly oppose regulation. They believe in a 19th century “free market” system in which corporations are only limited by their own enlightened self interest. This system had a disastrous effect on the economic well being of the United States in the latter 19th century, which is why Teddy Roosevelt, a progressive Republican, busted the trusts and put the US on the path toward regulatory capitalism. This belief that an economic hidden hand will always put the country to rights is part of the fraud that is libertarian/conservative ideology, the magical thinking I mentioned earlier.
It’s also ridiculous to say that the American left is “far left.” That is a “tell” that you are regurgitating Republican propaganda without bothering to chew it over. Really, read some European news if you want to see how people on the “far left” behave. Similarly, the most ridiculous idea floated by the GOP-Fox channel is that Obama is far left. He’s a DLC centrist just like the Clintons et al. If you believe otherwise, then you really have been watching Republican media outlets too much.
Thanks for the comments back and forth but all this GOP-Fox propaganda is old and boring. You need to understand that we hear the Republican propaganda outlets as well as the reality-based news and commentary that conservatives have been trained by their thought masters to avoid. I have heard all this disinformation over and over. It’s not new or original. Not hardly.
Jon,
I think that I understand your confusion. Unfortunately, though, you could not be more wrong in your presumption. The Framers, at least those of who made significant contributions to our founding documents, were staunch advocates of republicanism and individualism. First, I should say, the message of the Tea Party is by no means a sufficient representation of the Framer’s views. The party lays claim as a “grassroots” movement [a certainly vague concept], which allows the ignorance of its membership to spread far and wide. However, Neo-Conservatives make up a large part of this group. Neo-Cons are those who support an immoral foreign policy [nation-building and policing the world, they are also as leftwing wing as they are rightwing], and also tend to bring faith and religion [unconstitutionally] into the political arena. These are the people who you should criticize. They are the traditionalists and social conservatives who favor the status quo. They say they want small government, but then support policies and mandates that keep it growing. Typically, today’s use of the term “liberal” means “contrary to the status quo.” So hey, let’s all be liberals if the status quo is “Neo-Conservatism.”
What you obviously do not understand is the difference between classical liberalism and modern day liberalism. U.S. Framers were NOT conservatives in their historical context of the term. Conservatives were those in support of centralized, monarchial rule [like Britain]. They were traditionalists or social conservatives [sound familiar?]. Our Framers were “liberal” because they were advocates of LIBERTY. You, however, are an advocate of a soul-killing socioeconomic philosophy [sorry, that may sound vituperative], which elevates the “Will” of society, i.e., the collective good or welfare of the people, over the freedom of the individual. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, et cetera, were opposed to that idea, be it the Will of God, the Will of a group, or the Will of King–freedom means the inviolate sanctity of the individual.
Excerpt from a great thinker: When the framers of the American republic spoke of “the people,” they did not mean a collectivist organism one part of which was authorized to consume the rest. They meant a sum of individuals, each of whom—whether strong or weak, rich or poor—retains his inviolate guarantee of individual rights.
Another excerpt [not my own]: Throughout history the state had been regarded, implicitly or explicitly, as the ruler of the individual—as a sovereign authority (with or without supernatural mandate), an authority logically antecedent to the citizen and to which he must submit. The Founding Fathers challenged this primordial notion. They started with the premise of the primacy and sovereignty of the individual. The individual, they held, logically precedes the group or the institution of government. Whether or not any social organization exists, each man possesses certain individual rights. And “among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”—or, in the words of a New Hampshire state document, “among which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; and in a word, of seeking and obtaining happiness.”
In other words [I'll try to put it in layman terms], government is to be a neutral institution, one that must never deal with opinion or preference, but only with action; namely, to protect individuals against force and fraud, and to promote and protect trade. It [government] must never endorse race or religion. An individual is FREE. He or she may be a racist and a bigot who claims their is no god but the Christian god; he or she may be a well educated and thoughtful atheist [like myself] who craves economic freedom and civil liberty for their country; he or she may be flamboyantly homosexual and recycle too much. Doesn’t matter. The government is not to be in the business of determining or favoring social values. You should also look up the difference between a Democracy and a Republic. The constitution protects individuals and states’ rights. The U.S. is still a Republic, even if our political process is democratic. You have a great deal to learn, Jon.
Ray,
What is the right-wing small-government solution to outlawing abortion? How will a small government monitor tens of millions of pregnancies every year?
What is the small-government solution to rounding up 12 million undocumented men, women and children? How will a government so small it can be drowned in a bathtub investigate, arrest and house these people while their deportations are being adjudicated?
You have been indoctrinated with a romantic view about what motivated the Framers. The fact is they created the Constitution to protect the rights of people like themselves — a small group of elites, all of whom were white male landowners. It is anti-factual to suggest they designed the Constitution to be neutral about an individual’s status or class. The Framers specifically excluded the guarantee of rights to everyone who was not white, not male and not a property owner. The Framers also very carefully preserved the institution of slavery, which was, obviously, antithetical to the pursuit of liberty.
Over the years, America has become a better reflection of democratic ideals because liberals, and liberals alone, have pushed to end the disparities the Framers wrote into the Constitution. They have accomplished this by gradually expanding the classes of citizens the Constitution protects. As a result, the system we live under now is a far more accurate reflection of the phrase “we, the people” than the Founders could have envisioned.
Expanding the covered classes has been a struggle at every turn because conservatives, desperate to cling to the status quo, have fought the expansion of civil rights tooth and nail — all too often shedding the blood of the oppressed in order to preserve repression. That is the record. That is a historical fact.
It is reflexively conservative to want to suppress the rights of people based on their status, their skin color and other superficial attributes. When conservatives accuse others of advocating repression, it is, again, projecting.
So it’s collectivism now, huh? If memory serves, it was that old collectivist Ben Franklin who popularized the lending library — as socialistic an institution as exists.
Quoting myself, sort of, you can sneer at it as socialism, collectivism, communism, Stalinism or whatever Beck-Hannity-Limbaugh propaganda codeword you choose, but if you attended a public school, you’re a collectivist. If your granny lives on Social Security and receives Medicare, she is a socialist. Every time you drive on an Interstate highway, you are benefiting from gubmint central planning collectivism. Every time the police, fire department or EMTs answer a 911 call, that’s red-white-and-blue collectivism at work. Every time a life is saved in the ER at a public hospital, it is a triumph of American socialism. Every time you use the Internet, you are enjoying the fruits of socialist scientists and technocrats who developed the network on the taxpayer’s dime.
We just saw what happens when the right puts its small government theories into practice: Financial markets run rampant and then collapse, which puts national security at risk. The quality of food and medicines goes largely unmonitored, resulting in outbreaks of disease and death. Jobs are shipped overseas. Infrastructure deteriorates. The nation declines.
To be a conservatives requires a level of gullibility, of wishful thinking, that liberals find astounding. Apparently, conservatives will believe anything a white guy says with sufficient authoritarian conviction so long as it suits their dark world view. For example, ask a right winger whether Reagan raised taxes and you’ll get a resounding “NO!” The reality, of course, is that Reagan raised taxes at least seven times, including the biggest corporate tax increase yet. He also blew a hole in the deficit.
That’s right. Ronald Reagan was a tax-and-spend commie.
Conservatism is built on fantasies because its rests on a foundational flaw. Quite simply, it does not work. It’s all theory, magical thinking that at its core is a salve to ease conservatives’ minds about their own self-absorption and selfish impulses. These theories invariably collapse when put into practice. The last time the United States operated non-theoretically under a Randian “free market” was the late 19th century, a time when the robber barons controlled the countries wealth, the middle class was so tiny as to be negligible and the vast majority of Americans lived in hopeless Dickensian destitution and blight with no way out.
Conservatism is a millstone hung around the neck of this great country by a group of hucksters and shills for the corporate elite. It is dragging the United States down while other more liberal and enlightened countries are advancing in productivity, technology and, yes, enlightenment.
The real obscenity here is that the decline of America benefits the corporate oligarchs who run the conservative movement because, among other things, it drives wages down. In the small-government, regulation-free free-market system they want, they would no longer have to go overseas to hire child laborers for 50 cents a day because, without regulation, without the sort of safeguards liberals have demanded, child labor and other evils would be abundant and available right here at home.
Jon,
Such partisan trash talk makes me feel very welcome….Before I start Jon, you need to understand I have no political preference. I study and teach history, I know enough about political paradigms to tell you that everyone is full of shit. I will play Devils Advocate because I find you interesting.
I’ll answer a few of your questions for the hell of it, though I do have serious problems with your analysis and as I have respected you and read each and everyone of your posts, I shouldn’t be surprised that you will do the same for me.
“What is the right-wing small-government solution to outlawing abortion? How will a small government monitor tens of millions of pregnancies every year?”
(I love the fact that you add right wing to the idea of small and limited government, because according to people who talk a lot like you the “right wingers” are Fascists…So how are you making the connection between small and Status Quo?
Is it because of who had been in office? The same people I mentioned earlier? Neo-Conservatives? Is this a reason why you interject theology into most of your rebuttals against conservatives? I assure you…Libertarians probably feel the same way as you do about religion. But it is sad, Jon…very sad.
What a perfect patsy you are, that you’d compare every Republican or Conservative and even Libertarian to the Trotsky minded swill of the Neo-Con. It is somewhat like saying ” Because one Jew stole my money, they’re all bad” good one Jon, so much for projection. You have cleared a lot of my intellectual questions I’ve had about you.)
Jon,
Why outlaw abortion? Is it not a right of the individual to choose what he or she does with their body? Our Government cannot stop this as it is limited due to the constitutionality of the subject. This is reason for the first amendment, that group of words in the constitution, written to only benefit the elite who wrote it at the time…
Limited Government is very, very left wing, it always has been. The compromise of the ratification of the constitution was the bill of rights, but that means nothing to you, right?
( I believe I’ll come back to this many times in this rebuttal, I really hope you never get in legal trouble…because according to you, you have no rights..but for the sake of our Framers, they made sure you knew you were BORN with them but I digress.)
If a state wants to ban abortion, that is constitutional and has many times been held by Federal Courts. But that is Democracy. The people of one state my oppose it, while another grants it.
“What is the small-government solution to rounding up 12 million undocumented men, women and children. How will a government so small it can be drowned in a bathtub investigate, arrest and house these people while their deportations of are being adjudicated?”
Well I think a small government solution would be again the 10th amendment. The Federal Government cannot even enforce its own immigration laws (but they can arrest people for selling raw milk -http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/fda-agents-invade-amish-farm-in-pa/,http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2008/05/01/2008-05-01_raw_milk_lovers_upset_over_amish_arrest.html) states can.
Having the last name Alvarez, this usually surprises people when I say this. I believe in boarders and following the law, I think it should be made easier for people willing to become citizens. Some states have more issues as they are on the boarder, and laws should be made more conducive to these states that are directly affected.
As this is less about race and more about people being here illegally, you might find most of your evil Libertarians are supportive of a mass influx of undocumented workers being here. Not me though, I like laws…pesky Libertarians and their liberty mindedness…
Anyway, it is very easy to round all of those people up and we have many the detention center to do it too. Never heard of REX 84? That’s OK because many big government supporters haven’t, then again…No one ever talks about the time big government suspended the rights of 110,000 Japanese Americans, locked them away in concentration camps either…but who cares about them, right?
Now, for children born here, just like their families who live here illegally, they have all of the rights you and I do under the constitution and they are protected no different.They should pay taxes though. And While the parents may not be citizens their children are natural born Americans ( granted by our 14th amendment, but I guess its of no use defending it, as you even said the constitution was written to benefit only those who wrote it ) God Bless’em. May they go on and enjoy their life and pursuit of happiness, I wish them well as they are many parts of us. But a state can still ban it if the people choose to do it, Democracy again.
“The Framers created the Constitution to protect the rights of people like themselves — a small group of elites, all of whom were white male landowners. They excluded from the protection of the rights they awarded themselves everyone who was not white, not male and not a property owner.
The Framers also very carefully preserved the institution of slavery, which is, obviously, antithetical to liberty.”
I love these arguments, my bread and butter of debate. So since you gave a very broad and generalized argument…I’m just going to give a few broad and contextual rebuttals back to any of your issues with our founders ( with who you demonize but at the same time use to promote your political agenda for example: “If memory serves, it was that old collectivist Ben Franklin who popularized the lending library — as socialistic an institution as exists.” Not true at all and I’ll tell you why in a second ) and our Constitution.
Most people enjoy the advantages of freedom and are naturally conservatively liberal towards government, whether they realize it or not. Because of the rather unsavory past actions of the Neo-Cons (globalists), the word “conservative” has been sullied, and is now associated with corporatism and big government, so we’ll use the word Classic Liberal or conservative liberalism in this context.
However, real liberal conservatism has always been quite revolutionary. True conservatives believe in the principle of limited government, and individualism above collectivism, which means they usually find themselves the target of establishment fury. True conservatives are almost always in rebellion against the system, because the system is almost always operated by those who are anti-freedom. Show me a self proclaimed conservative who supports proliferation of government with a smile and I’ll show you a very confused man.
The label “Conservative” should really be interchangeable with “Constitutionalist”, and once this is understood, anti-Constitutional arguments can be viewed without the blurred distractions of the false left/right paradigm. We begin to understand that the conflict is not between Democrat and Republican, Liberal or Conservative, because those terms have been warped and their meaning eroded. The conflict we face is instead between individualists (Constitutionalists), and collectivists (globalists).
I’ve heard the gamut of anti-Constitutional arguments in the past, but almost always through the left/right filter. Let’s set that filter aside for a moment and consider a few of them once again more objectively…
Argument 1 – The Constitution is an outdated document and is no longer practical for the modern world:
I’ve heard this argument from both sides of the aisle once again indicating that left vs. right is all fantasy. Does a good idea ever become outdated? What about inborn instincts? Can the desire for freedom ever be impractical?
The suggestion that the Constitution is “too old” is ludicrous for many reasons.
First, the idea of an independent republic is painfully new compared to the long wash of human empires filled with vast stretches of feudalism and tyranny. Globalism is often touted as the next step in the cultural evolution of man, but is it not really a giant leap backwards compared to Constitutionalism? Representing yet another old centralist autocracy marketed in a modern way? A global feudal state is still a feudal state, no?
Second, the guidelines of the Constitution are built upon social necessities that have never and will never disappear. The right to speak openly one’s opinions or observations without fear of government reprisal is not a right that we will ever find ourselves too modern to appreciate. The right to bear arms and defend oneself will always be essential to a culture that wishes to prevent despotism in its various forms. The right to privacy from all people, including the government, will never be programmed out of the public entirely.
Every man has an innate need to live without being examined and judged as though he were under constant suspicion. Every aspect of the Constitution is archetypal, and therefore, as much a part of us our own eyes and ears. These things do not lose their usefulness, no matter what era we live in.
Third, I have yet to see a political dynamic that is more sincere and honorable than the U.S. Constitution. I have yet to see a social concept presented as an alternative to the Constitution that does not have an ulterior motive attached. If someone, anyone, can present a new system that improves upon the Constitution while retaining the liberties described in the Constitution, I would love to see it.
I hear a lot of criticism of the Constitution by globalists, but I have never seen any of them present a workable replacement that the public would respect, or willingly accept.
Argument 2 – Some rights must be given up for the greater good:
I’ll tell you a little secret; there is no “greater good”, unless you are talking about personal conscience. If your version of the “greater good” demands that you supplant your personal conscience, then it is not “greater”, and it is not “good”.
Safety is usually the catalyzing issue that leads to relinquished liberties, but safety itself is an illusion. No government can promise you true safety. Life is dangerous, and filled with the unexpected. Get over it and stop projecting your fears on the rest of us. If someone really feels that they are in immediate danger of a terrorist attack, then they should build a concrete bunker for themselves and stay in it, instead of trying to impose a collective bunker made out of unconstitutional laws and government surveillance around all of us.
Ultimately, what IS the greater good in this situation? Is it an unaccountable globalist nanny state and the dissolution of all individual and national sovereignty for the sake of a few people’s delusions of security? Maybe I’m just reckless, but I’m not buying it…
Argument 3 – National sovereignty must be removed if we are to achieve world peace:
World peace sounds very nice, I admit, but anyone who thinks removing Constitutional boundaries and bowing to globalism is the cure for war is smoking something laced with a serious amount of something. Almost every war of the past century alone has been funded, facilitated, or outright ignited by the same types of global elitists who now demand that we centralize world economic and political power into their hands to end war. This isn’t irony, it’s actually very well thought out Hegelian gaming; a sort of anti-Karma that rewards evil and punishes the respectable.
We have been led to believe that peace requires some kind of Faustian trade; freedom for harmony. But, legitimate freedom is a harbinger of peace, and nothing, not even the promise of harmony, is worth trading it away.
Argument 4 – The government could never undo Constitutional liberties because we would just vote them out:
This argument shows a serious lack of insight into how our government actually functions. As I have pointed out, most of the anti-Constitutional legislation described by the other poster Will was supported by both major parties. Therefore, it would be logical to then consider that voting out one party and replacing them with the other makes little difference as to the policies the government pursues. Unless you are voting for third party or liberty based candidates, your stop at the ballot box was a big waste of time. Sorry, that’s just reality. The people who write in Mickey Mouse have more sense than most of the voting public. The point? Elections change very little on a federal level.
The argument is also sometimes reversed by nihilists, who claim that the American public is to blame for government corruption because they voted for said politicians in the first place. Again, how the public votes has little bearing on most major elections because they have not been given a real choice. I get more excitement when deciding between Coke or Pepsi.
Argument 5 – The Founding Fathers couldn’t live up to their Constitutional ideals:
Yes, Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, and he also tried to implement a gradual emancipation for all slaves. It’s a contradiction. Jefferson, like all the Founding Fathers, was living in the midst of a revolutionary age filled with contradictions and conflict. The fact that they were able to sort through much of this and form a nation that at least aspired towards equal rights and independence is nothing short of a miracle. Washington made many mistakes, and so did Adams. In the context of the era in which they lived, they still did extraordinarily well, and this world is immensely better off because of their contributions.
This argument is perhaps the most dishonest of those I’ve heard, because it seeks to dismantle the very tangible and beneficial accomplishments of the revolutionary period by defaming men who cannot defend themselves because they are long since dead. It is successful when used to target people who know only historical events or dates but do not know more about the characters of the figures involved. That is not to say we should blindly idolize the Founding Fathers, on the contrary, we should endeavor to see them as real human beings with strengths, as well as flaws. Those flaws do not discredit what they built. What men are able to achieve in spite of their flaws is often far more meaningful and valuable than what they lose because of them.
And for your revision of Ben, yeah he was no Federalist like..I’d say you would have been in his day…Ben was way more Democratic-Republican, like Jefferson. Have you never heard his quote?
Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Now you say that lending libraries and all these other things are socialist, and use the men who created them while demonizing them, to prove your point. Both analyses’s are ill-concived and have nothing to do with what you call socialism but I guess you can see it like that, if you want. As it turns out, we have free public libraries because early Americans – lead by none other than Benjamin Franklin – realized that a free public lending library would serve the common good.
That is fine, and a non-partisan action, Private Charity is for the common good .You can spin it anyway you like..I like Jefferson’s concept a little better than yours
“Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.”
Thomas Jefferson
or
“Information is the currency of democracy.”
Now that is not democracy is the political sense, that is democracy is the free choice sense. That you may pick up something for free and do what you will with it is your individual right.
Call all those things “collectivist” call it ” socialist” it doesn’t matter, all polarized situations that you use to make your argument stand. But on feet of clay they rest.
Here is another quote from Jefferson, the Framer who was elite but a Liberal or wanted big government
“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.”
VERY BIG GOVERNMENT, RIGHT?
Jon,
If you believe that the society owns the individual, then you will put the society’s perceived needs over the rights of the individual. Go for it!
One group may want to stamp out immorality. Another group may want to stamp out unhealthy foods. Both groups are willing to resort to the coercive power of government to accomplish their goals.
All for your own good of course.
Some want to rule. Some want to be ruled. Both groups want a strong government with wide ranging authority.
All for the public good of course.
Some want their version of history taught in schools. Others want a revised history. Neither group wants you asking too many inappropriate questions.
It’s the American way.
All these groups I have mentioned are threatened by one thing.
An individual who does not conform to their rules.
Politicians don’t want problems that they can’t stage manage. They depend on you to do as you are told, meekly and without question, unarmed before the might of the State. If there are problems, you are expected to sacrifice. And there are always problems.
Individuals are too messy, too unpredictable. Too unpatriotic.
So for an individual, the question becomes something different.
How much sovereignty over yourself do you give up to preserve peace?
Of course we know how at least one of the Founders felt about it.
Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither security nor liberty.
— Benjamin Franklin
I’d like you shed a little light on this for me :
You called Franklin a collectivist, cited without actually citing him supporting certain political apparatuses, you claim the framers were Liberals and continued to say “Liberals believe, as did the Framers, that we, the people, are the government.”
But then you say:
“You have adopted a romantic view about what motivated the Framers. The fact is they created the Constitution to protect the rights of people like themselves — a small group of elites, all of whom were white male landowners. To suggest that they designed the Constitution to be oblivious to an individual’s status or class is just anti-factual. The Framers specifically excluded the guarantee of rights to everyone who was not white, not male and not a property owner. The Framers also very carefully preserved the institution of slavery, which was, obviously, antithetical to the pursuit of liberty.
Over the years, America has become a better reflection of democratic ideals because liberals, and liberals alone, have pushed to end the disparities the Framers wrote into the Constitution. They have accomplished this by gradually expanding the classes of citizens the Constitution protects. As a result, the system we live under now is a far more accurate reflection of the phrase “we, the people” than the Founders could have envisioned.”
Jon, I don’t play in doublespeak….So what game are you playing here? You call our Framers “elite” and say they wrote the constitution to support only them and their views, then you talk about rights of children born here that are granted in the constitution, how the framers never supported small government and how they’re liberal. So the Liberals who supported big government believed “we the people” are the government, but at the same time were this selfish bunch of racists…who were socialist, collectivist minded also supported slavery….this is your idea of our Founders?
Or did you just use the Framers to prop up your argument? To make it seem like you’re right because you’re a liberal so you say the Framers were too?
Honestly?
You either don’t read what you post or you never correct yourself, I think I’ll choose the second reason. You clearly read what you write, and you probably find it to super intellectual and “smart”, such is your right. Yet you never correct the contradictions you make, you have this circular logic that I assure you isn’t new to being partisan.
And of course its conservatives who suppress the rights of people, all of them…not just a select few…But what about all those liberal democrats who do the same thing? You never bring them up, or at least haven’t in any of these posts. Andrew Jackson the Father of the Democratic Party, the man who ended private banks, said fuck you to the supreme court on not removing to Cherokee Nation and forcing them to walk the trail of tears…oh and his slaves, can’t forget them….
Again, you use these partisan talking points but have issue with people like Beck or O’Reilly ( who by the way, in my opinion, is more of a Contrarian than anything ) doing it. You add some truth to your dissent but most of it is just emotional commentary because you argue in absolutes.
“We just saw what happens when the right puts its small government theories into practice: Financial markets run rampant and then collapse, which puts national security at risk. The quality of food and medicines goes largely unmonitored, resulting in outbreaks of disease and death. Jobs are shipped overseas. Infrastructure deteriorates. The nation declines.”
Oh yeah?
What right winger in the last 40 years has made government smaller?(Again since you believe Right Wingers to be this big powerful entity, how could you even cite these mens polices as Small Government?) Not GW Bush, not his father, not Reagan not Nixon. All Neo-Con’s and man, if you want a fact, that sure is one. So, yeah you’re right about Reagan, I actually agree with you. Like most Neo-Con’s, they are former Trotskyites. They are far left ( and no that isn’t a “tell” of anything, that is the opposite of what you consider Stalinism which would be on the far right of Communism)
So all the complaining about the GOP, so called Conservatives and Republicans even Libertarians…you admit Reagan wasn’t small government and some how praise him being a “tax and spend commie ( Reagan sucks btw ) but then say “We just saw what happens when the right puts its small government theories into practice”
Where was the small government? Where is it Jon? Show everyone what you know.
Yet another contradiction in your thought process, I believe.
And we have never really had what the free market were described to be, you can blame certain men on that. You believe the free market to be evil? What about the Salem Witch trials? You know that people were executed not because they were “witches” but because they were wealthy, but I assume they were witches in your eyes as wealth means to you something evil, right?
These people were killed because of their wealth by…you guessed it…the people. And while you folks aren’t killing anyone now..or yet…I have a feeling you’re not too far off from a tipping point.
I should ask your views on the private central bank the Federal Reserve, you don’t blame them for any of these economic problems? I mean wouldn’t you rather the government print and coin money, have the government decide the value thereof? Because the constitution says it should be that way, and I guess you could consider that socialist.
Why don’t you team up with those Libertarians and take on the Central bank that devalues the dollar, creates business cycles, recessions and depressions?
Or why not go after all the companies putting High Fructose Corn Syrup and Aspartame into food? These are toxins, these are bad.
Maybe go after Trader Joes for supporting slave labor http://humantrafficking.change.org/blog/view/is_trader_joes_selling_slave-picked_produce
But hey, this is a Progressive business you say to support in the the article above. “This makes it a good time to support locally owned healthy food markets and progressive-owned chains like Trader Joe’s.” and I’d like to compare and contrast that quote with another from you
“They put their stores in liberal enclaves because their marketing research showed that liberals understood the value of their service, whereas conservatives are happy to buy pesticide-infused food harvested by child slaves in Asia”
Apparently you’re no better than a conservative, but then again…I’ve been saying that the whole time.
Also Whole Foods did join in to stop slave labor they also did this:
“Whole Foods was criticized for its refusal to support a campaign by the United Farm Workers (UFW) on behalf of agricultural workers laboring on strawberry farms. During the late 1990s, the UFW persuaded several large supermarket chains to sign a pledge in support of improved wages and working conditions for strawberry pickers. Whole Foods chose instead to support the farmworkers directly by holding a “National 5% Day” where five percent of that day’s sales — $125,000 — was donated to organizations which provide social services to farmworkers.”
I guess I am asking why are you so hellbent on demonizing things that are not really any different than you, aside from name alone? What cause do you fight for, if not your own self interest in seeing your perception of what government should be, fulfilled at the cost of everyone? Because lets face the truth, Jon. Not everyone is going to agree with you or version of government, action etc etc.
What if people dissent against you parliamentary government in favor of our Constitutional Republic? What do you do with those people? Do you quell their voices and generalize them all as evil Republican Conservatives, as evil big brothers that need be silenced?
Or will you listen to their issues? Case by case, critically analyze why they feel the way they do, not being influenced by unions, corporations and lobbyists?
In any case, I must say our system in not perfect, nor is any other system. Systems are ideas, concepts that have been and are actualized. We’re never going to represent everyone, and the status quo you so believe only the Right Wing adheres to, I believe the Left Wing falls to as well, such things are common, such thing are the messes of man.
My conclusion ( I know, thank God )
Jon. I buy what you’re selling as much as I buy what Beck or Olbermann offer .I have spent so much time and money becoming a Professor of American History, that your revisionist claims about our Framers and the intent of our Republic and its Constitution fall to pieces when actually looked into.
Not to mention our legal system, which uses the constitution daily.
Stick to your Progressive era stuff, clearly that suits you better than anything. I also have some comments about that too, perhaps better saved for a later date.
My observations throughout our discourse has lead me to believe you use the typical Neo-Conservative names like Beck, Hannity, to defuse any dissent against your idea of what history is or your views. It’s pathetic in a way, that you do the same things as MSNBC and FOX. The same old argument from the same ilk.
I’m sure after you have read this you will come back with something saying that I’m a Beck fan, and I watch too much Fox News and that you know you’re right because you watch Reality ( define reality) news channels and so on.
Save it. Put your time to better use, studying our constitution, our history not through the eyes of Moveon.Org or some other partisan think tank. Practice what you preached to the other posters. “Turn off Fox. Turn off Rush. Open your eyes. Think for yourself.”
Turn off MSNBC. Turn off Matthews. Open your eyes. Think for yourself.
And if you want a country that is better or by your definition “more liberal and enlightened”
Be my guest, move to one. But I’d ask you respect the fact that our government is never supposed to be partisan. Read up on Madison’s Federalist 10 and let me know how you feel about that.
Here is an example of Fed 10’s application in our modern society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Democratic_Party_v._Jones
Talk with you soon, Jon. Be safe till then.
I see you deleted the comment?
Your comment was held for moderation because it contained many links. Except for racist and similar hate speech, we don’t censor — again, that’s projecting. Censorship is a conservative impulse.
Conservatives are constitutionalists? Please, Mr. Beck. Two words: Citizens United. Three more words: Bush v. Gore.
You say you’re non-ideological but I’ll bet you voted for Bush-Cheney both times and McCain-Palin in ‘08. And you certainly roll out the right-wing, GOP standard issue talking points and buzzwords. “Collectivists?” Come on.
The phrase “we, the people,” suggested a radical idea in 1787, because, until then, official government documents always originated from the king or the royal government. In choosing that phrase, the Framers were absolutely referring to their own elite group of white male landowners — they would be astonished that anyone would think that “we, the people” referred to women, children or slaves. Their impulse was democratic, however. They laid the groundwork and, as I said, in the ensuing years, liberals — collectivists, socialists, whatever buzzword you want to use, but anti-conservatives — have worked diligently to expand the classes of citizens whose rights are included for protection.
But, yes, even in its original meaning, it was a liberal, even collectivist, assertion. They certainly did not say, nor did they mean, as right wing “constitutionalists” suggest, “We, as separate non-aligned individuals who happen to live in the same country but acting in our own personal and private selfish interests, do hereby establish” the Constitution.
As I said before, conservatives, constitutionalists, fascists, whatever label you want to put on them, fought against the expansion of these rights, often by shedding blood — hanging men, bombing school children and terrorizing families — all to keep the rights protected under the Constitution for themselves.
This struggle is not over. As your great “constitutionalist” jurist Antonin Scalia (who ruled in favor of both Citizens United and Bush v. Gore, of course) just pointed out. Women are technically not covered by the Constitution — only males are covered. That’s why liberals pushed the Equal Rights Amendment — in order to prevent conservatives/constitutionalists from legally chipping away at women’s rights. Law means nothing to conservatives/constitutionalists/neo-cons, of course. We saw the right wing’s disdain for the law in action on a nearly weekly basis during the Bush Cheney regime.
You can split hairs about who is and who is not in the club, neo-cons, libertarians, tea baggers, etc., etc., but please know that normal folks see the right wing as one big ol’ hot mess of half-wits, hucksters, haters and fantasists.
Well, thank you Editor (Jon) for proving my point and not reading more than half of my comment.
The bias partisan-ship, fullly flagged and armed.
Like I did for all of your posts, Jon. I will look into them and see what is real and what isn’t.
However,
Your diatribe only polarizes my argument against you. You didn’t surprise me at all, though I were hopefull you’d drop the “kid in the sand box” routine and I’m concerned for your mental health.
You have a dim vison of what America is supposed to be and honestly, you frighten me as much as Neo-Conservatives do.
You cannot stand anyone going against your world view because it is absolute. I have no idea how you think you’re going to create a new government with this partisan fire spitting you mask as factual news.
The conspiracy theories you pump out are just insane, the likes of David Icke. Should I assume you believe all the right-wingers you hate are also Lizard people and part of the Illuminati too?
I mean, you assume of me that I’d vote for the same people I wrote in dissent of, Bush and Cheney? Come now, are you 15 years old? I don’t vote!
That shit doesn’t change anything, politics are meaningless to me. That is why it is so easy to pick you and your arguments to pieces. There isn’t one thing that you could answer to aside from your skewed interpretation of the constitution. There wasn’t any way that you wouldn’t compare me to Glenn Beck and I even called it!
“I’m sure after you have read this you will come back with something saying that I’m a Beck fan, and I watch too much Fox News and that you know you’re right because you watch Reality ( define reality) news channels and so on.”
Fantastic!
My favorite part was you noting that I used a real word “Collectivist” to decribe a Faction that even you used to decribe our Framers. This alone was enough for me to be compared to Glenn Beck and be shot down as a “right winger”.
You know all the “buzzwords” for defining “half-wits, hucksters, haters and fantasists” but what about all the fancy words you use to describe all that you hate?
Dittohead-Teabagger-Birther-Deather-Right-Wingers-Beckerheads-Conservative Thought Leaders-Right Wing Militia Types-Smart-ish Conservatives
Yes, the “We the People” means exactly what you think it means. It doesn’t mean at all what everyone thinks it does, it doesn’t mean “We the People” because the people were granting powers to the government.
It doesn’t at all means that the constitution, the laws of this country, were passed down from a king, and were not established by the citizenry, as the people were not represented by their congresspeople.
I mean forget the first constitution of the United States, which failed and was the reason for the constitution we have today.
The Articles of Confederation were nothing to worry about.
And Law of course means nothing to the Constitution and its protectors, the people and the government.
Everything we learned in gradeschool and highschool is a lie. God damn, I guess it is true….Public Schools are failing the children.So much for the triumph of American socialism.
As for Antonin Scalia, The justice argued that “the Constitution tells the current society that it cannot do [whatever] it wants to do… Now if you give to those many provisions of the Constitution that are necessarily broad–such as due process of law, cruel and unusual punishments, equal protection of the laws–if you give them an evolving meaning so that they have whatever meaning the current society thinks they ought to have, they are no limitation on the current society at all.”
OK? What is your point? He has a different view of the constitution, so do you…(and wait a second here, you say you don’t believe in the constitution..why the hell do you care if you hate it so much?) I may not agree with his view, I really don’t but I respect his concept of it.
He’s saying the constitution doesn’t protect special interests. The constiution also doesn’t allow for the police to protect you or your property. But I don’t see you complanin
Warren v. District of Columbia is one of the leading cases of this type. Two women were upstairs in a townhouse when they heard their roommate, a third woman, being attacked downstairs by intruders. They phoned the police several times and were assured that officers were on the way. After about 30 minutes, when their roommate’s screams had stopped, they assumed the police had finally arrived. When the two women went downstairs they saw that in fact the police never came, but the intruders were still there. As the Warren court graphically states in the opinion: “For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of their attackers.”
The three women sued the District of Columbia for failing to protect them, but D.C.’s highest court exonerated the District and its police, saying that it is a “fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.” – Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981).
There are many similar cases with same results.
Riss v. City of New York, 22 N.Y.2d 579, 293 NYS2d 897, 240 N.E.2d 860 (N.Y. Ct. of Ap. 1958);
Hartzler v. City of San Jose, (1975) 46 Cal.App.3d 6, 120 Cal.Rptr. 5
Davidson v. City of Westminister, (1982) 32 Cal.3d 197, 185 Cal.Rptr. 252
Westbrooks v. State, (1985) 173 Cal.App.3d 1203, 219 Cal.Rtr. 674
Ne Casek v. City of Los Angeles, (1965) 233 Cal.App.2d 131, 43 Cal.Rptr. 294
Susman v. City of Los Angeles, et al (1969) 269 Cal.App.2d 803, 75 Cal.Rptr. 240
Antique Arts Corp. v. City of Torrence, (1974) 39 Cal.App.3d 588, 114 Cal.Rptr. 332
Bowers v. DeVito, (1982) 686 F.2d 616. (No federal constitutional requirements that police provide protection.)
Calgorides v. Mobile, (1985) 475 So.2d 560.
Davidson v. Westminister, (1982) 32 Cal.3d 197, 185 Cal.Rep. 252.
Stone v. State, (1980) 106 Cal.App. 3d 924, 165 Cal.Rep. 339.
Morgan v. District of Columbia, (1983) 468 A.2d 1306.
Warren v. District of Columbia, (1983) 444 A.2d 1.
Sapp v. Tallahassee, (1977) 348 So.2d 363, cert. denied 354 So.2d 985.
Keane v. Chicago, (1968) 98 ILL.App.2d 460, 240 N.E.2d 321.
Jamison v. Chicago, (1977) 48 ILL.App.3d 567.
Simpson’s Food Fair v. Evansville, 272 N.E.2d 871.
Silver v. Minneapolis, (1969) 170 N.W.2d 206.
Wuetrich v. Delia, (1978) 155 N.J.Super. 324, 382 A.2d 929.
Chapman v. Philadelphia, (1981) 290 Pa.Super. 281, 434 A.2d 753.
Morris v. Musser, (1984) 84 Pa.Cmwth. 170, 478 A.2d 937.
Weiner v. Metropolitan Authority, and Shernov v. New York Transit Authority, (1982) 55 N.Y. 2d 175, 948 N.Y.S. 141.
DeShaney v. Winnebago County Social Services, 489 U.S. 189, 196, 197 (1989).
More of a reason to own a gun I suppose…
Moving on,
OK, Winston Smith. Lets get all of this straight
Aside from 2+2 equaling 5 and you being locked up by the Ministry of Love…
What else have we learned?
Well clearly Public Schools have failed us and our children, a short coming of socialism?
and
Republicans, Libertarians, Conservtives, Tea-Baggers and Constitutionalists all are Dittohead-Teabagger-Birther-Deather-Right-Wingers-Beckerheads-Conservative Thought Leaders-Right Wing Militia Types-Smart-ish Conservatives-Illuminati, Lizard People, Responsible for 9/11, every world war, communism, fascism and national socialism and they eat children and worship Jesus, The Constitution and other Liberal institutions but were tricked because the constitution doesn’t protect them because the men who wrote it were elite oligarchs, socialist collectivists hell bent on creating a New World Order…
Well now that we know this, I think if you’d start teaching at these public schools we might be in better shape.
Also Jon, if you’re a Regulatory Capitalist…you’re pretty much a Neo-Con too, I mean your Twitter says ” We’re regulatory capitalists like Pres Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan etc. — but if it makes you feel better to call us socialists, that’s fine too.”
So you compare yourself to all of those Neo-Cons, but you’re not one of them? Explain..
And I’d like wish you safe in your endless struggle that you’re fighting.
I know it is hard fighting the forces of evil and concervative big government when your side looks almost identicle to that of your foe.
But good luck breaking that 3rd wall! Let everyone know how it goes..
I read it all but only responded to the parts I could make sense of. I am surprised you don’t vote — not even for Ron Paul, the libertarian who, like his son, nonetheless wants a big government program to eradicate abortion?
If you don’t vote, your opinion on politics is irrelevant. Nothing is easier to do than monkeys tossing poo.
Your grasp of political science is shoddy, which is why it comes off so Beckian. Neo-cons are globalists whose primary focus is on expanding American empire. Like libertarians, they are invested in the fantasy that business is good and pure and can do no wrong, but unlike libertarians, their economic policies rely on continually expanding the empire in order to open up new markets and resources that giant international corporations can plunder. They are on the opposite end of the spectrum from regulatory capitalists because, like libertarians, they oppose any form of government regulation of capital.
Regulatory capitalism has been our system since the first Roosevelt administration, in 1901. Along with the labor movement, regulatory capitalism created the middle class in the 20th century. Conservative presidents — particularly Coolidge, Hoover, Reagan and Cheney-Bush — have tried to upend the system by de-funding or under funding regulators, as the current crop of GOPT baggers in the House will try to do over the next 18 months. Of all these Republican regimes, Cheney came closest to killing regulatory protections.
Today’s conservatives use word games — a weird mix of patriotic populism and libertarian jingoism on one side and, on the other, propaganda campaigns on Fox and the radio to convince their low-info, paranoiac followers that words like “liberal,” “progressive” and “socialist” have dark and scary meanings that are completely fabricated — to mask their true intent which is to kill the middle class and take the country back to the late 19th century “free market” system, in which unregulated capital controls everything. Their objective is to replace regulatory capitalism with the sort of Darwinian economic system we had in the Industrial Age — a system that would reduce millions of Americans into abject poverty and make the United States a Third World country again.
The Framers installed a firewall between government and religion, because, until the United States came along, governments either controlled religious practice or answered to the Pope. We need a similar barrier between government and business. When government and business meld into one unit, that is, by definition, fascism. That’s what Hitler and Mussolini had in the 1930s, and it’s what Cheney and the neo-cons want now.
And that, Ray, is the end game for the puppet masters — the Koch brothers, Dick Armey, Sal Russo and the rest — who run the tea party mobs. If you want proof of this, just ignore what they say — all the phony populist, libertarian patriotic jingoism — over the next year and watch what they do, and you will see a mad rush to crush democracy (Bush v. Gore, Citizens United) and hand over more control of the country to multi-national corporations.
“If you don’t vote, your opinion on politics is irrelevant.”
So what you’re saying is if I don’t take a side, I can’t have an opinion? How does that fit into Liberal thinking? I have the freedom of opinion, right? Than I can talk about how stupid you and all of these other factional thinkers are.
Being non-partisan is a study in natural law, people have rights, we have law and we have history. We either learn from it, change the laws or we repeat it.
I must assume from our discourse that you hate history, you hate the idea of a Republic and you don’t read enough about political factions. If you did you would see that comparing groups into one leviathan, is wrong and provides misinformation. But then no one would read your posts or your readers would do you like you do to anyone that dissents, cry some sorta McCarthyism or blame it on racism (which you haven’t done so I will retract that) and win by default.
I don’t vote because I’m not represented, end of story. I do agree with Ron Paul on the Federal Reserve though. I do not agree that a Gold Standard would work and or not cause a bubble. I’d much rather have our government print and coin money than a private bank that devalues the currency and answers to no one. So yeah, I am happy Ron Paul will oversee this in the future and I believe him to do well with it.
I’m fine with greenbacks, but while I believe people need to make money and we should reward prosperity not failure. I am beyond money, I believe in people, if you have a few good minds and an idea, you’re already 100% better off than the rest. This only works on the small scale though.
“Your grasp of political science is shoddy, which is why it comes off so Beckian.” You stole the word Beckian from that Will guy, btw. Give him credit.
By far, I do not think anyone today knows anything of what they’re talking about and that is why History is the only thing that makes sense.
You keep using this word jingoism to describe Libertarians. Why? Libertarians are anti-war and cannot stand Neo-Conservaive foreign policy. Show me a libertarian that supports neo-con agendas and or war. You wont because you can’t.
I have shoddy grasp on political science? Mean while you can’t even figure out if the Framers were “Liberals” ( when you need them to be ) or this “Elite” group trying to create this NWO you talk about.
I have my masters is Political Science and my Doctorate in American History, thanks.
You run a partisan website that preaches conspiracy and overall hate, in my opinion. You’re not fair or balanced, again you’re no different than Fox or MSNBC. Quit trying to say you’re different when you sell the same shit. Talk about “thought masters”, Jon. Your entire website her is a perversion of facts to accommodate your view point.
I pointed out semi-major idealogical flaws in your arguments. You cannot even respond to them? No retort at all, eh?
I find it funny that you only responded to things you could make sense of, each post of mine was me trying to make sense of what you were talking about, go figure.
I also provided cited sources, again…you didn’t.
Admit this is commentary based site, admit you think you’re better than other people because you fit in some stupid faction, just admit it.
Did you get your degrees from private schools, or did you submit yourself to socialist-collectivist indoctrination/re-education centres? If the latter, how do you reconcile your libertarian hatred of government with your participation in the American collectivist education system?
1. Yes, Private Schools, thanks Mom and Dad!
2. No, the only public program in the form of schooling was grade school, and we already went of the short comings of socialism via public school social studies.
3. I’m not a Libertarian- do you know what Non-Partison means? Also, No Libertarian hates government, they understand that government is a compromise between government and the governed.
Better question to be asked is where did you get your degree in journalism, Newscorp or General Electric?
Also, have you ever read anything by Nat Hentoff?
I’ve just become a fan of his after read Free Speech for Me But Not For Thee.
You should check that out and par that up with this quote from you post earlier
” Censorship is a conservative impulse.”
Books are great Jon, read some of them.
I think he was a columnist at the Village Voice when I lived in NYC in the ’80s.
Yes, he has written many things for many papers. How do you feel about him? Him being a civil libertarian and all that.
I haven’t read Hentoff’s columns in 20 years. I don’t have much respect for Chris Matthews, whom you mentioned earlier. He’s come around lately but he came to fame as a Clinton-hater in the 1990s and was an early worshiper of George Bush. The ugly shock that resulted from that momentary delusion seems to have taught him a lesson, but who can say.
Matthew’s calls himself a follower of Marx now. I remember MSNBC being slightly Neo-Conservative back in the day. Eric Altermann made a great list of all the Neo-Con media out there.
I’m not really sure what MSNBC has turned into though…I guess they swapped the right for left on progressive ideals
Chris Matthews is not a Marxist. What utter nonsense. He’s a DLC-type conserva-Dem.
Hey man, not my words, his. He could be a black panther and a neo-nazi, wouldn’t change the fact he said he was.
Also Lawrence O’Donnel also calles himself a socialist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxKd5lpZwLY
O’Donnell, yes. But then, so is every American who uses a public library, drives on public roads, relies on police, fire and EMT service and attends public schools or universities. Socialism is as American as red, white and blue apple pie.
You will have to prove Matthews said he is a Marxist. I am very familiar with his history and he has never said he is a follower of Marx. The guy is thisclose to being a moderate Republican, like his brother.
I don’t consider myself a socialist because of any of those things. And I’m pretty sure he means a very different type of socialist. All of what you mention means more of economics than anything. O’Donnell is also a guy who wants to disarm American and I guess that too is socialist? The progressive income tax is pretty socialist, no?
Chris says ” I’m Marxist when it comes to analysis ”
Call it a long shot, but I’m pretty sure when you look at things from a Marxist view, that makes you a Marxist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbwfq6-RTbQ
Ray, I do not believe you have studied, much less hold degrees in, either history or political science. If you have those degrees, and they did not come from Glenn Beck U, then the supposed private schools that awarded them to you are frauds and your mom and dad should demand their money back.
Socialism is an economic system. Nothing more. That’s it. It is not a predictor of whether someone wants to disarm or not.
Tony Blair is a socialist, and he’s as big a war monger as your beloved Dear Leader George Bush. Hell, Stalin was a communist and he was as big a warmonger as his right-wing conservative extremist analog, Adolph Hitler.
Today, we have the communist Kim Jung Il on the extreme left and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the ultra-conservative theocrat extremist, on the right. Both are war mongers.
Like capitalism, there are many variations and forms of socialism — and, Ray, you are a socialist, as is every American alive today. But nothing — zero, zilch, zippidity-doo-dah — about socialism has anything to do with disarmament.
Nobody who has studied political science would suggest that it does.
But that quote you sent from Matthews tears it. He says, “I’m Marxist when it comes to analysis. People judge their current economic circumstances. Then they make political judgments.”
From that statement, you derive that Chris Matthews is a Marxist. Period. Based on the fact that he said “I’m a Marxist when it comes to analysis” and then said, per Marx, people make political judgments based on their own personal economic circumstances — you and your Dittohead high-fivin’ right-wing psuedo-constitutionalist pals snicker and call him a Marxist.
No looking a Matthews’ complete record, no interest in his true history. That one statement made in passing condemns him in your kangaroo court. If you had bothered to look into it before you smeared him, you would know — like him or hate him — Tweety is not a Marxist when it comes to economics or social policy. Not hardly.
Worst of all — and this is where you really humiliated yourself — you completely ignore whether what he, or Marx, said was true.
Do people consider their own current economic circumstances before they make political judgments, Mr. Political Scientist?
Instead, you focus on the naughty words and then go all Beavis and Butthead.
“He said ‘I’m a Marxist.’ Heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh.”
What are you, 12?
You say you’re an expert in history. That is a lie. If you were, you’d know how dangerous it is to casually — knowingly — try to smear people that way. You’d also know that that sort of witch-hunt thinking is an irresistible predilection of right wingers and that it always has dire consequences for them eventually. It’s that sort of tactic — taking something out of context then using it as a smear — that is the definition of McCarthyism.
And since you obviously have no clue about American history other than the twisted version Beck and your other thought masters have indoctrinated you with, McCarthyism was the great Republican fascist purge of alleged and former communists and gays in the 1950s, an assault on the First Amendment conducted by GOP “constitutionalist” Sen. Joe McCarthy of Appleton, Wisc. At the end of it, McCarthy was censured by the Senate and disgraced personally. He died a lonely alcoholic in 1957.
If you are old enough to remember when Gingrich was sworn in as House speaker in 1995, he repeatedly crowed that he had brought the Republicans back to power after “40 years in the wilderness.” What he didn’t say — and, of course, no “liberal media” reporter bothered to ask him to explain what he meant — was that American voters had driven Republicans into the wilderness 40 years earlier as punishment for the reign of terror they’d inflicted on the nation under Joe McCarthy.
This McCarthyite attempt to smear Chris Matthews is despicable. It is a product of lazy and sloppy thinking, which makes it a typical, off-the-shelf tactic of followers of Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity and the rest of the soulless un-American, anti-American degenerates who are McCarthy’s ideological descendants and standard bearers.
It’s back into McCarthyite disgrace that Beck et al are leading you, Ray. It’s clear from what you’ve posted here that you’re totally on board the fascist band wagon with them, so please take your silly games over to Free Republic and play with the paranoiac half-wits and haters over there.
AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.
By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.
There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.
It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.
The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.
No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail. Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes, and probably by neither with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.
It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.
The inference to which we are brought is, that the causes of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.
If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. Let me add that it is the great desideratum by which this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind.
By what means is this object attainable? Evidently by one of two only. Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression. If the impulse and the opportunity be suffered to coincide, we well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control. They are not found to be such on the injustice and violence of individuals, and lose their efficacy in proportion to the number combined together, that is, in proportion as their efficacy becomes needful.
From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.
The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.
The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose. On the other hand, the effect may be inverted. Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people. The question resulting is, whether small or extensive republics are more favorable to the election of proper guardians of the public weal; and it is clearly decided in favor of the latter by two obvious considerations:
In the first place, it is to be remarked that, however small the republic may be, the representatives must be raised to a certain number, in order to guard against the cabals of a few; and that, however large it may be, they must be limited to a certain number, in order to guard against the confusion of a multitude. Hence, the number of representatives in the two cases not being in proportion to that of the two constituents, and being proportionally greater in the small republic, it follows that, if the proportion of fit characters be not less in the large than in the small republic, the former will present a greater option, and consequently a greater probability of a fit choice.
In the next place, as each representative will be chosen by a greater number of citizens in the large than in the small republic, it will be more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried; and the suffrages of the people being more free, will be more likely to centre in men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established characters.
It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, on both sides of which inconveniences will be found to lie. By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representatives too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests; as by reducing it too much, you render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects. The federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures.
The other point of difference is, the greater number of citizens and extent of territory which may be brought within the compass of republican than of democratic government; and it is this circumstance principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former than in the latter. The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. Besides other impediments, it may be remarked that, where there is a consciousness of unjust or dishonorable purposes, communication is always checked by distrust in proportion to the number whose concurrence is necessary.
Hence, it clearly appears, that the same advantage which a republic has over a democracy, in controlling the effects of faction, is enjoyed by a large over a small republic, — is enjoyed by the Union over the States composing it. Does the advantage consist in the substitution of representatives whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices and schemes of injustice? It will not be denied that the representation of the Union will be most likely to possess these requisite endowments. Does it consist in the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties, against the event of any one party being able to outnumber and oppress the rest? In an equal degree does the increased variety of parties comprised within the Union, increase this security. Does it, in fine, consist in the greater obstacles opposed to the concert and accomplishment of the secret wishes of an unjust and interested majority? Here, again, the extent of the Union gives it the most palpable advantage.
The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.
In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government. And according to the degree of pleasure and pride we feel in being republicans, ought to be our zeal in cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of Federalists.
Enough said.
Wow, “Publius,” you and “Ray” have the same IP address. What a coincidence!
No shit, Publius were the name the Federalist’s used when writing the Federalist papers.
It’s cheeky.
But really, lets tone this shit down, man. After what just went down in Arizona…I just can’t see debating and name calling with fun or smart anymore.
I respect you and your opinion, I think it is best we just use the energy to work on never seeing an attack like we had yesterday.
No more drama, savvy? This is just very sad and very depressing and I’m praying for that woman to pull through.
with you* fun or smart anymore.
But really man, I’m serious. Put your thoughts about me being a republican or conservtive aside, I am not one or the other. You might be, but it is hearing and seeing things like this happen that just make me pull further from either side. Unity might be a better road for us to travel
Be safe Jon.