To My American Friends on the Right

And here I present the final fusillade directed at the skulls full of liberal mush who so consistently and ignorantly attempt to rewrite history:

 

And here I present the final fusillade directed at the skulls full of liberal mush who so consistently and ignorantly attempt to rewrite history:

 

Good stuff.

That being said, when we discuss Mr. Obama's nihilistic agenda to fundamentally transform the United States of America, I think a reading of our Constitution and The Federalist Papers is more in order here. Heck, I'd put the man I consider the chief ideologue of the Revolution, Samuel Adams, out there before I would put Paine, but I admit that's a personal preference:

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

 

Although they would never admit it outright, the Left's panicked and vitriolic reaction to the TP is a tacit acknowledgement of that fact. There's no greater threat to "progressives" than the emergence of an organic conservative grassroots movement that values limited government, fiscal responsibility and individual freedom. Hence the continued histrionics over the TEA Party bogeyman...

 

This was written by Dean Alfange, not Thomas Paine, nor is it from Common Sense. I won't say you were lying because the web is filled with rightwing blogs which attribute this wrongly to Paine, so I daresay that your intent was honest. But someone in the Tea Party or in the radical right in the USA has been lying through their teeth attributing this to Paine. However, anyone with the slightest knowledge about Paine (and I don't mean anyone who has read a few out of context quotes) would know that this meaningless schmalz could not be Paine. If you know Paine, the clues that this was not Paine would be jumping out at you.

Firstly Paine was not a businessman, in fact he started off as a customs officer collecting TAXES in England. After that he was a professional politician and pamphleteer. Second, this is written as a poem. Has anyone on here actually read "Common Sense" (the pamphlet that won Amerian opinion to independence almost by itself)? It is not a poem. Thirdly it is not written in the dense eighteenth century English that Paine constructs his elaborate arguments, but a sickly sentimental style that would quite literally have made a muscualr philsopher like Paine puke. Paine's style was dialectic, and Aristotelian, juxtaposing ideas against each other to show balance. This reads like something you buy on a poster in a tourist shop. The smug sanctomoniousness of it is a million miles away from Paine's style.

The other thing is that it does not concern the subject of Common Sense, which does indeed talk about the evils of government but is not about business or entrepreneurship. This is a pamphlet which talks about the NECESSARY evils of government which are required to protect the desired wants of SOCIETY, which Paine sees as a thoroughly good thing (this is clear in the very first paragraph). He extols the virtues of democratic government as restraining the vices of men and derides the government of Kings, which was of course the whole point of the pamphlet that lit the touch paper of the American Revolution. Moreover, in Paine's time the government lookied after hardly anyone - this dreary poem by Afange is clearly a protest against a twentieth century welfare state that did not exist when Paine was alive.

The slightest understanding of the American Revolution, Common Sense etc. would have indicated to a serious thinker that attributing this drivel to Paine was a FRAUD, a LIE and an INSULT to a man whose penmanship would never stopp to pen such sickly bollocks, even if he agreed with the twentieth century sentiments within it which to an eighteenth century philosophe like Paine would have been alien. At a very minimum it would induce the reader to search their copy of Common Sense to see how this garbage was totally different from the style and content of the real Common Sense.

This is why you won't be able to reference a single link to a full text of Common Sense with this garbage within it. Because it isn't from Common Sense and Paine didn't write it.

I don't take great issue with the content of the "poem". It's greatest fault is its nauseous style and arrogant self congratulation. It is mediocre and oozes ordinariness despite its opening two lines. Paine oozes greatness when you read his masterpieces. It is also likely that this is a corrupted version of the twentieth century original because the last word of Alfange's poem was probably "American" which is better stylistically. But the act of FRAUD and DECEIT that the AMERICAN RIGHT commit by attributing this to America's founding political agitator, is just par for the course today, and a perfect example of their utter inability, malicious dishonesty and political illiteracy and failure to understand the context and substance of the American Revolution, how it was against the superstition that they clamour for today, how it favoured reason over religion, and how it opposed to the death a government that was actually an image of what the American Right now want a government to be - a war machine and nothing else. Bring in the current distaste we read from the right as to the will of the people, and you have it perfectly. Paine is the bitterest enemy of the new Tories in the Tea Party.

So there's your lesson. Is it surprising that I hesitate to give them when I see the utterly appalling ignorance posted by the Right on this subject. The appallingly low level of knowledge is disheartening. Take a hint. Pick up your Paine and read it, if you can. Try Common Sense first but then Agrarian Justice where he calls for taxes on property owners to finance welfare payment to the old. Read why he's called the "Father of Social Security". Educate yourself by reading more than just quotes out of context. Read his beautifully constructed intriate prose. See if you can distinguish his exquisite sentences from a third rate sentimental schmaltzy "poem". Reflect. Think. And try taking these issues seriously for a change.

Talon, I actually agree with your analysis of the SCOTUS decision (on balance) as well as agreeing with socialized healthcare. You seem like a serious person and so I'll get back to you on how I square those two contradictory things.

 

I don't think the whole Tea Party are racists. I think that phrases like "we have made a terrible, horrible mistake" and "we have to take our country back" are statements that thinly veil racism. America has always elected Democrats and Republicans. Most Democrats have been far lefter than Obama. Only on healthcare was Obama significantly to the left of George Bush. The extreme hatred that is in the language used to deniunce Obama and the idea that he is exceptionally bad, rather than just another Dem Pres, is obviously inspired by racism. There is simply more venom than can be explained by simple partisan argument. America has a lot of racist bigots and many of them support the Tea Party now but not all Tea Party members fall into this camp.

 

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Screw the United States. Long live America.

 

The Social Contract in the US is the Constitution. It enshrines the classical liberal ideal of individual liberty. It doesn't mention social justice. Trying to bootstrap social justice into the contitution is a breach of the social contract.

 

It is unfortunate that you perceive these statements and sentiments as some manifestation of racism, when in fact they are not. First of all, it's hardly unique, much less new, that the opposition political factions in this country would characterize the victory of their opponents as a terrible mistake by the electorate and for the country. We heard this same rhetoric out of the Left after the shellacking they took at the polls two years ago and after George W. Bush was elected and re-elected president, and if you go back through the history of our politics you will hear this refrain over and over going all the way back to the aftermath of the 1796 elections. Secondly, the statement that "we have to take our country back" refers to returning our country to the principles and practices of limited, enumerated constitutional government and fiscal responsibility. There's nothing even remotely racist to be found in this political aspiration.

Except for the times when we elected Federalists and Whigs.

Actually, very few Democrats are left of Mr. Obama's ideology and agenda - our president is no Blue Dog Democrat. This is a man who launched his political career in the living room of Weatherman terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn and spent decades in the congregation of a Black Liberation "theologian" before his associate with Jeremiah Wright became an all-too illuminating political liability for Mr. Obama. All this, and I haven't even begun to talk about Mr. Obama's Alinskyite background and politics. To be quite honest with you, it's somewhat astonishing that a man this radical could ever be elected president, but he managed to do so by concealing his radicalism with the help of his like-minded Journolist allies in the media. Fouad Ajami wrote a brilliant article in 2008 about Mr. Obama's tactics:

The political genius of the man is that he is a blank slate. The devotees can project onto him what they wish...He has been different things to different people, and he was under no obligation to tell this coalition of a thousand discontents, and a thousand visions, the details of his political programs...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122533157015082889.html

When many Americans first saw this - especially those amongst us who used to be Leftists and were familiar with this dissembling and what it revealed about its practitioners - we knew immediately what we were looking at in Mr. Obama. His background and associations merely confirmed what we already recognized in this man and his politics.

Only on healthcare was Obama significantly to the left of George Bush.

If you take a close look at Mr. Obama's background, politics, agenda and record, not to mention the company he has kept, one finds that this is not the case. Mr. Obama is clearly significantly to the Left of his neo-conservative predecessor. Don't let the similarity of their foreign policies and approach to combatting terrorists obscure that fact.

Then how do you explain the similar heated rhetoric and denunciations of Hillary Clinton, one of the most polarizing figures in American politics? Obviously, the charge of racism that you are leveling at the majority of TEA Partiers and Mr. Obama's opponents simply doesn't stick. Certainly, there are racists out there who pour their bigotry on the president, but the majority of his opponents are motivated by their own ideology, convictions and agenda, and fair-minded people recognize that they should be entitled to their differences and passion without being subjected to gratuitous slander.

Admittedly, the partisan anger is there, but this same anger existed on the other side of the aisle when George W. Bush was president. In fact, you can find this anger going back all the way to the early years of the Republic, and often the partisan vitriol was far more venomous and libelous than it is today. The conflict between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr is perhaps the most famous and worse examples of the partisan venom that has always been a part of American politics.

Duly noted.

 

Brilliantly and succinctly articulated, Albert. A well-deserved rep point for that post.

 

I do not agree. But this is not a question of logic but of judgement so I can accept that there are some who use this argument on the basis of their view that the USA is not a democracy but merely a country governed by a Constitution which prevents the government from doing anything but fighting wars( and then some conservatives don't even like governments doing that). I also see your argument concerning George Bush. There has always been vitriol from the Left towards Republicans. This is perhaps no less nasty than racism, and I bring to mind the attacks on Reagan for being inarticulate when many knew that he was siffering from pre-senile dementia symptoms particularly in his second term. But the castigation of Obama as an outsider, the outrageous proposition that Obama is a muslim, the lies that he is a foreigner, are all evidence of a shrill hysteria that is most sensibly judged as evidence of racism. The lynch mob can no longer use the n-word any more without embarassing other conservatives, but the tens of millions of Americans who castigate Obama as a muslim are the successors of these bigots. Conservatoives are very sensitive about this, as evidenced by the fact that when I have made this point my posts have been deleted, under the pretext that I bypassed a profanity filter that is designed to stop people using the n-word against black people, something that there can be absolutely no question that I was not doing. But the sensitivity only demonstrates the truth of my argument. There are of course principled conservatives, but there are also tens of millions of racist bigots in the USA and conservatrives should face up to this and stop pretending it 'aint so. The GOP cannot win again without people of colour. Even if I am wrong and my judgement is awry, the GOP need to give millions of non white people a different impression if they wish to reverse what appears to be a terminal demographic decline.

You got me there.

I don't really know whether this is true or not but I am pretty sure that Obama did not engage in any acts of terror. Apart from that my response is "so what?". Do you think everyone stays with the same politics they have in their youth, for their whole life? You must be very young if you think so, because you seem pretty smart. I think there are morons on Left and Right who lack so much curiosity, analytical capability, inability to reason or lack of judgement, that they stay with the same political and philosophical views all the days of their life. These types (and I really appeal to you to think about this because it doesn't seem to be you) can only see a changing mindset as a sign of deceit or weakness. It is in fact a sign of wisdom, and sound judgement. Plenty of conservatives understand this - where do you think the saying "socialist at twenty or you haven't got a heart, conservative at forty or you haven't got a brain" comes from? All you see with people like Obama (and me) is a realization that idealism is betrayed by evil and tyranny and that the dreams of your youth can only be achieved in different ways. This even happens to conservatives. Gertrude Himmelfarber and her husband Irving Kristol (father of Bill and known as the "Father of neo-conservativism) started out as Trotskyist Marxists and in later years showed little self reproach for this. The journalist and writer Christopher Hitchens - prominent supporter of the Wars in Iraq - started out in a similar way. A journey from Marxism to classical liberalism is fairly easy once you spot the dreary apparatchiks who poison your dreams. By classical liberalism I mean an embrace of the free market as the key distributive force of wealth in a modern society and the promotion of individual liberty and democracy. The journey is not so difficult because Marxists see the American Revolution, and thinkers like Paine, as liberators and progressives. A Marxism that sees capitalism as a progressive force that needs to give way to socialism as it ripens only has to ditch the last bit to be coherent. I don't know how Obama's journey has gone but he is clearly a man of the Centre Right, whose policies are almost the same as George Bush's except for two - socialized healthcare, which is just the most efficient way devised by man to organise healthcare, and tax cuts for the rich, which is a populist measure that puts him in the same camp as all democrats. If you suggest he is a communist or something you need to produce the evidence, and if all you have are things he did when he was young you should explain why you weren't trying to take your country back from Jean Kirkpatrick when she worked for reagan (Marxist youth), or protesting at Francis Fukayama who not only started out studying under Marxist professors but initially went to France to seek them out.

This makes Obama the same as Romney - an opportunist who will say what he needs to do get power. Bush was like this too, as was Clinton. You could even describe all US Presidents as like this - driven by a desire to make a difference, but prepared to do anything and adopt any position to get power. I am sure you don't need me to go onto all the details to make these arguments of Romney's flip-flopping (just a CEO who does the best job in the situation he's in, whether that's liberal Massachussetts or the conservative GOP), Bush's shallowness and lack of ideology (or maybe a brilliant manager of competing talents that seeks the smartest solutions irrespective of whether they come from social democrats like Blair, moderates like Powell or extremists like Cheney and Rumsfeld), Clinton's cowardly lack of principle (or maybe the brilliant realist who knew he had to trade a pure ideology for power that could actually help his constituency)... Obama is no different unless you start with conspiracy theories, and conjure up the alien, infidel, outsider, the hurdy gurdy man coming to eat babies. And this, with the tens of millions of morons who believe that Obama is a muslim, is what the Tea Party (or at least many, many of its supporters) has been spending a large amount of its time doing.

So you saw yourself in the mirror? Are you planning to eat babies, or have you, like Obama, moved on? You should recognize that Mr Obama has saved capitalism as GWB did, and most world leaders did. Letting the banking and automotive sectors go bust would have been the truist act of a leftist posing as a moderate hopiing to create the crisis of global capitalism that needs to precede a socialist revolution. To any leftist Obama is a traitor. That should be clear if you were once on the Left.

Let's stay with record. The other stuff is fluff. As I have explained.

Hilary may be denounced out of a vindictive sexism. I don't detect the same venom nowadays as before. I didn't say that everyone was nice to everyone except Obama. I didn't even say that Republicans have not been on the end of some very disgusting nastiness. I said that my judgement is that there are tens of millions of bigoted racists on the Right in the USA and the evidence for this is the dumb as a rock insistence by such a number of Americans that Obama is a foreign born muslim. This is code for the n-word. This is the essence of the irrational vitriol of many, though obviously not all.

 

Why have you constructed a straw man that someone is trying to bootstrap social justice into the US Constitution?

And your assertion that social justice is a BREACH of the social contract is made without argument or evidence. What can be asserted so easily can be dismissed as easily.

The social contract is the basis for individuals subjugating their will to the general will of the people. If the general will of the people is for welfare, then this is equally as valid as the general will of the people being for roads or militia. If all will benefit from the general will, then all will contribute as the general will decrees. The social contract holds that the general will of the people is sovereign, and not the Sovereign. It is the Tea Party who are now adopting a Proudhon version of the social contract (an anarchist) that denies the sovereignty of the general will.

 

Your comment is offensive, stupid, and totally unrelated to the OP.

If you would like to accuse anyone of, or debate Chinese infanticide, start another thread.

 

Ah Albert, is this a proposal for the dismantling of the USA at the same time that it proclaims the virtues of the New World as a continent?

It would be interesting to see all the Red States secede from the Union. I think this would still leave the USA as the worlds biggest economy but the Tea Party dominated rump, should it choose to collaborate as a new Federation, would probably rank somewhere near Poland in its economic significance!

That's the irony of the USA. All the wealth, intelligence, creativity and culture comes from states which vote Democrat. The 47% that Romney despises dominate not only his own base, but the States that voted for him.

 

Well, I see you're going to have a hard time explaining the attitudes and thinking of the black Americans - particularly Black TEA Partiers - who believe in the Jeffersonian principle that the government that governs best governs least and that government should operate within its means. The fact is, these values and the calls to uphold or return to these principles didn't suddenly materialize upon Obama's election in 2008. Hamilton's Federalists fought with Jefferson & Madison's Democratic-Republicans over these matters just as Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk's Democrats fought Henry Clay's Whigs over them and now the TEA Partiers are fighting Obama's Alinskyites over them. This fight has been going on for centuries, and the question over the role, size and expense of the government won't end when Obama leaves office.

As for those who allegedly believe that "the USA is not a democracy but merely a country governed by a Constitution which prevents the government from doing anything but fighting wars", I have never even encountered these people. Conservatives, whether they be TEA Partiers, Libertarians, Neocons or paleo-conservatives have always recognized the necessity of government and that its responsibilities extend beyond that of the power to declare war and provision the military. This Constitution is clear on this, as well. It's not a question of whether or not the government should be limited to declaring or waging war, it's a question of the role of government (which effects the size, scope and expense of our government).

I'm inclined to agree with you here, and the GOP recognizes that it needs to do a better job of selling its message to minorities and getting them to run for office. The problem with the GOP is that its positions on individual freedom and responsibility, entitlements, immigration and some other issues simply isn't going to sell to a lot of people. The challenge is maintaining your values and principles and doing a better job of selling them. The presence of blacks and Latinos in the GOP is proof that the values that the GOP claims to stand for appeal to people regardless of their race, sex or creed.

It's true, however I never intended to imply that Obama has or would engage in or sympathize with the commission of any acts of terror. That having been said, Obama's association with men like Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright are important because you can tell a lot about a man by the company he keeps. You certainly would NEVER find me or my lifeless corpse in the living room of two unrepentant New Left terrorists. As for Mr. Obama's age, he was 34 when he launched his political career in Ayers and Dohrn's living room and he was a 47 years old and running for the Democratic nomination for president when he was forced to throw Rev. Wright under the bus to protect his political fortunes. Mr. Obama and his politics were and remain those of a fully grown middle-aged man, not some youth who was still trying to formulate his views and politics.

As I said earlier, Mr. Obama is neither a centrist nor a moderate. The center right in this country isn't dedicated to fundamentally transforming the United States of America - the radical, nihilistic Left is dedicated to that proposition. As for Mr. Obama's political background, that has been explored at length so it's not difficult to find the evidence illuminating his radicalism. One of the better articles summing up his background was this piece written by Melanie Phillips back in 2008:

Revolution You Can Believe In
http://www.trugop.org/PDF_Documents/Revolution_you_can_believe_in-Obama-Phillips-UK.pdf

As for Obama being a traitor to the Left, he is already being praised by the Left in this country as one of the greatest presidents ever. He enshrined himself in the Pantheon of the Left when he rammed ObamaCare through Congress and past the courts.

It is true that Obama may be right of the ANSWERnik Left, but Alinskyites are really not that far removed from that lunatic nihilist fringe. Obama comes across as a moderate simply because Alinskyites are pragmatic political animals. They know full well that they can't be fully open and honest about their beliefs and agenda - that would be political suicide.

 

It is true that Romney, and to a lesser extent GW Bush and Clinton were like this, but none of them had to conceal their political backgrounds the way Obama has had to do. Certainly, all presidents have to appeal to just about everyone to get elected, but I don't think I would go so far as to say that all of them were dissemblers of Obama's order. A recent example would be Ronald Reagan - the man was feared by many because he was so open about his conservative beliefs and agenda.

We recognized that Obama subscribed to the same ideology and agenda that we abandoned and that he was resorting to the tactics that are consistent with people who subscribe to that ideology and agenda. We didn't see our present selves mirrored in Mr. Obama - we recognized our former selves and former political comrades.

LOL - Bush and Obama didn't save capitalism.

First of all, Bush began the financial bailout and Obama continued it. Secondly, Obama bailed out the auto industry because Democrats are beholden to private and public sector union money and votes. This is one of the major reasons why Romney was willing to let GM & Chrysler go through bankruptcy.

I don't think you understand our Alinskyites and how they operate. Unlike our New Left which is open and impatient, Alinskyites are pragmatic incrementalists who aren't open about their goals. This is why they talk in vague terms such as "fundamental transformation".

I don't know that there are tens of millions of racists on the Right - I think that's an exaggeration. This not to say that they don't exist - we all know that they do. However, my original point was that the TEA Party is not the Ku Klux Klan as some would have people believe.

 

LOL. Typical mindless drivel from the left.

First you start out addressing your "conservative friends in America", and then end slamming the entire conservative philosophy. Stay in China where your ideology is most appropriate.

 

I'll be darned. All this time I assumed my brain wasn't working as well as it used to because I was getting old. Now I know it is because I moved from a blue state to a red state. Who would have imagined that would happen?

 

You've misinterpreted my post completely. Screw the United States. Time for it to die.

 

Classical liberalism is the basis of the US Constitution. The US Constitution went into effect in 1789.

Social justice arises from the French Revolution which began in 1789, and couldn't have been part of the Social Contract for the United States. Btw, (*)(*)(*)(*) the US.

 

Cheap personal abuse. No arguments. Talon and I are getting along quite well thank you as he is a civilized conservative who can string an argument together. Composing a response to him may take a few minutes.

The USA is based on inalienable rights. These rights are as inalienable to Chinese people as they are to Americans. To suggest otherwise is a racist argument. I have been infracted for saying that but it remains true. Only a racist ideology denies the relevance of inalienable rights to Chinese people.

 

The observation remains accurate: the vast majority of America's wealth comes from Blue States. Red States form the majority of Romney's 47%. A United Red States of America (or a confederacy thereof) would be a minor economic power in the world. Its universities would be regarded largely as third rate theology colleges. Of course it would have islands of civilization in liberal Austin and parts of North Carolina, but the snake oil salesmen of the New Right would be vindicated in their small government philosophy by the sheer inability of the new federations inhabitants to fund it through any meaningfully effective tax regime.

 

[Duplicate post]

 

More venom than your average snake farm. Only have to read this thread to see it. It's at once ridiculous and sad.