To My American Friends on the Right

This is an appeal, from a foreigner to my conservative friends in America, or more specifically to the few serious people on the Right who post on Political Forum. I haven’t read the childish drivel that comes from Left and Right following Obama’s victory. But I know if I had I would be there with the best of them, albeit a little sheepish at my status as an outsider, throwing the superficial emotional insults that arise from the triumph of belief over reason. Because, with the result tonight, we have seen a triumph of belief over reason, of emotion over logic, in some cases of prejudice over virtue, or at best the nodding instinct of a people for moderation and wisdom over extremism and hysteria.

I know this because I type this in Beijing, which is the city facing its own leadership transition. Only here it is all done in secret. I can read, in Hong Kong newspapers who owe their freedom to British democratic tradition, how a possibly reformist leadership will be restricted by a conservative politburo, at the request of octogenarian remnants of a prior regime. All the decision making here will be done behind closed doors. No-one knows the outcome. Because, like the USA, the situation may actually go right to the wire and the rulers of China may be decided right at the last minute. And China is a Republic, by any credible scholarly interpretation of the meaning of that term. It is not however a democracy.

It does bring to mind the words of Churchill: that democracy is the worst form of government known to man, apart from all the other ones. And in this sense I find the words of Mitt Romney utterly convincing: that voting is about love of country, rather than any feeling of revenge or vindictiveness by assuring some sort of result. For me, a person who aspires to Tom Paine’s “the world is my country, to do good is my religion”, this is a conviction which sees the United States of America, and all the other democracies in the world who’s own democracy the USA has helped sustain, continuing to be that lamp, beside the golden door. I know there will be those who will mutter darkly about a “Republic”. The will of the people will be dismissed in a warped sophistry as a dark (sic) tyranny. It is to this point alone that I appeal: to those who are tempted to embrace the real tyranny of xenophobic, fundamentalist extremism and to reject the values on which America, and thereafter the whole free world, is founded.

Democratic republics are based on the principles of the rule of law, determined by the will of the people. There is no dissection of that principle which is coherent or rational. From the yearnings for English liberty that emerged from the common people of England, suppressed by the Norman yoke, through the idealistic vision enshrined by the great constitutional document o f Magna Carta, to the English Republic and finally the American and French Revolutions, it has been the will of the common people which has formed the basis of “inalienable sovereignty” in modern times. To the surprise of many liberals, who consistently fail to trust the innate common sense of the people, the result of the General Election in the USA is another timeless reminder of the innate wisdom of the people.

It is not the absolute verdict that contains this wisdom, but the reasons for this verdict. A Romney victory would not necessarily have been a triumph of evil totalitarianism over sweet liberty. We liberals should not overstate the case, even with the rush of emotion that we feel as the lies, deceit and fraud of the conservative campaign lie utterly crushed. Romney could have won. But he lost because he courted an extremism which my rightist friends would be well advised to acknowledge. There was not some “grave horrible mistake” to be righted when Obama was first elected. The people chose a rational choice of a centre rightist leader. There was not “a country to be taken back” as if from an alien (sic) invader, intent on destruction. There was only a choice for one democratic form of government over another. If conservatives would only read the quoted views of those floating voters who voted for Mitt Romney, after deliberating carefully, they would find no hatred for a “Chicago muslim atheist communist”. They would only find a respect for Obama tempered by a feeling that “business orientated” Romney could do better. Romney was only harmed by the bigoted evil scum who persistently – and showing nothing but evidence of their own severe mental retardation – claimed that Obama was a foreign alien MOD EDIT* Bypassing language filter who was out to destroy America.

And this was Romney’s error. He sold his soul to the devil. He backtracked and slithered and as the CEO that he is, he sought out to placate worried shareholders. He tried to be all things to all men. That was his mistake, but an undertandable one from a pragmatist. It was just possible that he might have squeaked past a Democratic candidate who had ultimately been – not the Antichrist but – a damp squid of a centrist tinkerer in world affairs. But – as GK Chesterton remarked – “the devil is a gentleman, and never keeps his word”. The great, innately wise, American public, albeit led by the women, the black people, and the Latinos amongst them, weren’t going to trust such a “flipper”. Once you have supped with the “Tea Party” – those mindless apostles of the Koch brothers and other power crazies whose semi-anarchist agenda is as incoherent as it is opaque – you are tarnished with an extremism which can only mark you out as a grave threat to democracy, the rule of law, the will of the people and liberty itself. If you want evidence of that – and I have not read the threads but I know they are there – read the totalitarian venom that the Right are now posting on PF. Theirs is not the America of Paine, Franklin or Jefferson. A President Romney may well have ignored troglodytes such as Connie Mack (thank-you Florida!), and governed as the reasonable consensus seeking luminary that successful CEOs must be. But how could he be trusted? The American people gave the verdict. The leader of the free world must not be a prisoner of extremists. He must be in a pretty broadly defined centre. Only Obama fitted that bill.

That's the Big Picture. And seeing this question as an American living in America is not always easy. America is, as it's chief ideologue wrote, "the cause of all mankind", even now, over two hundred years later. Those who would see "inalienable rights" as only for Americans, or who would place superstition over science, or dogma over belief, or prejudice over fact, are only British Tories in modern dress. The USA may have made an imperfect choice - in a hesitant, self conscious, appeasing (and I'm talking about his attitude to Congress), ditherer. But it made such a choice entirely in accordance with America's own political DNA.

The America people have rejected dangerous GOP totalitarians, whose kissing cousins are to be found amongst Iranian theocrats, mysogenists and and homophobes. The USA continues to be a beacon of liberty to the world. Inward looking isolationism, xenophobia and nationalist arrogance has been defeated. But America still stands strong and a Leader amongst the Nations of the World. God Bless America!

 

tl;dr

OBAMA!!!!!!!!!

 

Are you and the rest of your Enlightened Red Chinese brethren still murdering newborns for the crime of being born female?

Your "kissing cousins" can be found in Red China itself, of course, Pol Pot's killing fields, the ovens at Berchenwald, the Gulags, and, last but not least, the Democratic Party, the champions of eugenic abortions, and ACTUAL totalitarianism.

 

We are losing our liberty day by day. The idea that we trade freedom for the pablum of bread and circuses will lead us quickly to totalitarian democracy, or what I call tyranny with a smiley face. If you think that GOP are totalitarians, then you have not paid attention to the last 100 years of progressive ideology.

 

The phrase "totalitarian democracy" puts you in the camp of the "democratic centralist" tyrants that denied Russians and Chinese people a say in their "people;s republics". This concept that the will of the American people is illegitimate if it upholds the social contract that was at the centre of the Amerian Revolution, is precisely the same Tea Party bollocks and extremism that has been rejected by the American people. They rejected it. You reject them. This says it all. Principled liberty loving conservatives will reject the evil ideology of the Koch brothers hirelings in the Tea Party. Your ideology, that the will of the people is illegitimate, is a Tory ideology and a betryal of the American Revolution. Nothing could be clearer today. The USA voted for a ditherer and a windbag demagogue just to let you know that!

And the GOP in the last hundred years is not the GOP that has been taken over by the Tea Party today.

 

Unfortunately, while Romney most certainly laid a cornerstone for bipartisanship, some will follow, other would rather stay bitter.

 

You have profoundly misread America, the American people and Barack Obama, Heroclitus.

In case you haven't noticed, the American people - for the second presidential election in a row - have embraced dangerous Democratic totalitarians, whose kissing cousins are to be found in the ruins of the Communist bloc and its gulag archipelagos.

When our Forefathers founded this country, they understood that for Man to be free, rights and responsibilities must be derived from the Individual, and thus power was invested in the Individual. This was the Founding Principle of the United States of America, and this principle guided the spirit, intent and word of our Constitution. Under the Democratic totalitarians the American embraced in 2008 and re-embraced yesterday, that principle has been eviscerated. Thanks to this, we have become a country where rights and responsibilities are derived from the state/collective and dictated to the individual.

God bless America? America died on June 28, 2012. It was a good run - 223 years - but as our Forefathers feared would happen, we have lost the Republic they gave us.

By the way, Barack Obama does not fit the bill of a centrist. Instead of pledging to fix what ailed America and revive what made it great, Mr. Obama pledged to fundamentally transform our country. This is not the agenda of a centrist or moderate. It is the agenda of a nihilistic extremist.
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I'm afraid not, Heroclitus.

Contrary to your claim, lies and deceit have not been defeated by the American people and the people are not sovereign as the Founding Fathers intended. When the Democrats, President Obama and Chief Justice Roberts finally managed to eviscerate the Founding Principle and the rule of written law in this country on June 28, 2012, they eviscerated both the constitutional restraints our Founders placed on our government and the sovereignty of the individual.

If only that was true. He pledged to fundamentally transform America and when he eviscerated the Founding Principle by granting the government the authority to arbitrarily force Americans to purchase a private product/service or pay a regulatory penalty, he succeeded in doing so. As Justice Kennedy (and others) pointed out, Mr. Obama's mandate and Mr. Roberts' illegal and arbitrary sleight of hand (which ignored and re-wrote the language in a statute ex post facto) fundamentally changed the relation of the individual to the government. This is not the position of some wild-eyed "Tea Partier", it is the position that was maintained, rightly and constitutionally, by four judges on the Supreme Court of the United States of America, not to mention the majority of the American people who still oppose this mandate.

I will grant that there are people who have called Mr. Obama many a foolish thing, and often the people leveling these accusations are, indeed, bigots, but it is equally foolish to ignore the fact, and the evidence substantiating the fact, that Mr. Obama is a nihilistic extremist in the mold of socialist ideologue Saul Alinsky. He is not a centrist or a moderate, and he has, with a lot of help from his fellow authoritarians, fundamentally changed our country and the relationship between the individual and government in a very profound way (granted, this change is subtle and even imperceptible to those who are not intimately familiar with our Constitution and what transpired during the enactment of this law).
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So you are talking about Obamacare being the beginning of the end of the world. This is why you guys are ridiculed - the best healthcare systems in the world are objectively in France and Germany which effectively compel people to buy insurance. You prefer people to die and the abusrd inefficiency of the US system (miles more inefficient than France) to continue. I do however actually agree with you a little in seeing Justice Robert's decision as quirky to say the least. A conservative reading of the US Constitution would outlaw the super effective French healthcare system, which is a mixture of private and public sector, because it compels people to spend money, but would allow the Statist/socialist taxpayer funded systems in the UK. I was surpised that Roberts - a conservative - would deem compulsory insurance a tax. But there is definitely a logic for that, even if it is not the obvious interpretation. And the US State has the right to tax.

You overstate the case.

This sole issue is not a Tea Party monoploy, I grant you that, but the "end of the world is coming" conclusion arising from it certainly is.

You seem reasonable here until the last bit. Fundamental change is not subtle and imperceptible. There's the clue as to why you argument is fundamentally flawed. And anyone can understand your Constitution. You don't need a US passport to do so. So the xenophobic slur is misplaced.

 

Mitt isn't trying to make a buck. He did so, in spades.

Now he's trying to give it away. The rest of your OP appears to me the result of a quasi-intellectual, more in love with his prose and favorites list highlighted by thesaurus.com than anything else.

 

That's absolute poppycock. Thomas Paine and Common Sense did not strive to invest in the Government over the people, nor the collective over the individual.

Yet that is precisely the ideology upon which your screed is based.

Non sequitur. States have every right to pass health care for their citizens; it is Federal Government which does not possess that right, as it is not a power enumerated in the Constitution, your liberal word twisting not withstanding.

Or...that's you simply projecting what you'd love to be the reason that Obama is reviled. You do not understand the mindset of the American you seem to despise.

Mod Edit* insult

Cool story. Rest comfortably knowing that a tremendous percentage of your constituency are teat-sucking imbeciles who voted for handouts rather than self-made opportunity.

 

The arrogance of this post is amusing. I can't be arsed to research it now but there is in another publication (I think the Rights of man but I'm not sure) a whole ream of Paine arguing for welfare to be funded from the public purse. I couldn't care less if you don't belive me or choose not to as I know this to be true and have cited it several times on PF. Educate yourself.

As to the other juvenile abuse I'm not sure much of it merits even a fart in response.

 

Does china give out EBT cards to illegal aliens?

 

Your pithy hollow response amuses me. I'll look for a substantive rebuttal. Let's see if I find it.

Yeah. That's what I thought. You can be arsed, though.

Ah...and - in this imaginary publication - can you find a defense for you moving the goalposts and shucking and jiving?

Woah! With such an excoriating refutation, who wouldn't be humbled to bow down to the great Heroclitus because...well, because he says so, and he's said it....before!

Please, tell me more, oh mighty Heroclitus who deigns to accuse someone of arrogance while arrogantly assuming that because he said so, it's true. Compelling stuff - really.

 

The Irony of Defeat.

 

I am not surprised that a Statist would demonize fiscal responsibility and smaller central government, the fundamental foundation of the Tea Party.

 

If you deny Paine said it without having read his complete works then the arrogance is all yours. Your post implied that Common Sense was all Paine wrote. I can't be arsed to be your teacher. If you hadn't responded with such a rude mixture of arrogance and ignorance I might have found the text for you. But given that your posts contain no insights or revelations of any worth whatsoever and are just one long continuation of fratboy shrillness on this site, why should I?

 

LOL, pot meet kettle.

 

Drivel. Appalling English which makes no sense. You can't demonize anything but a sentient being.

This stuff wouldn't get you a High School certificate!

 

That's a hyperbolic exaggeration on your part. I am talking about how the passage of the ObamaCare individual mandate eviscerated the Founding Principle that rights AND responsibilities are derived from the individual, not the state. This doesn't constitute the beginning of the end of the world, just the end of the Founding Principle, the constitutional restraints on government power associated with that Principle, and, as Justice Kennedy pointed out, the relationship (or position) of the individual to government that was established in the Constitution and remained in place for 223 years. Again, I will reiterate that a majority of American people opposed and still oppose this mandate, and I believe it is because they know, or intuitively understand, the implications of the mandate and the legal precedent that was established here.

Your dishonest misrepresentation of my position is ridiculous, sir. What I want is for Americans to continue to be free to choose whether or not they want to pay for their healthcare out of pocket or purchase health insurance. I also want the broader broader issue concerning the Founding Principle, individual freedom and the individual's superior and sovereign relationship/position over the government upheld, as the Founders and Framers intended.

Of course, the government's right to tax was never an issue here. As Justice Kennedy pointed out in the dissenting opinion, the question was whether or not the exaction in the statute was defined as a regulatory penalty or a tax, and the language in the bill specifically defines the exaction as a regulatory penalty, not a tax. Furthermore, as the dissenting opinion stated in regard to Judge Roberts' own actions:

[T]o say that the Individual Mandate merely imposes a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it. Judicial tax-writing is particularly troubling. Taxes have never been popular, see, e.g., Stamp Act of 1765, and in part for that reason, the Constitution requires tax increases to originate in the House of Representatives. See Art. I, §7, cl. 1. That is to say, they must originate in the legislative body most accountable to the people, where legislators must weigh the need for the tax against the terrible price they might pay at their next election, which is never more than two years off. The Federalist No. 58 “defend[ed] the decision to give the origination power to the House on the ground that the Chamber that is more accountable to the people should have the primary role in raising revenue.” United States v. Munoz-Flores, 495 U. S. 385, 395 (1990). We have no doubt that Congress knew precisely what it was doing when it rejected an earlier version of this legislation that imposed a tax instead of a requirement-with-penalty. See Affordable Health Care for America Act, H. R. 3962, 111th Cong., 1st Sess., §501 (2009); America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009, S. 1796, 111th Cong., 1st Sess., §1301. Imposing a tax through judicial legislation inverts the constitutional scheme, and places the power to tax in the branch of government least accountable to the citizenry. [...]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs...ot-rewrite-statute-be-what-it-not_647952.html

You understate the case, and that's easy to do when you don't have to live with the consequences of this ruling and the legal precedent that was established. Furthermore, as I pointed out, not only did the justices on our Supreme Court recognize the implications and magnitude of this case, the states who sued obviously recognized it, too.

"Xenophobic"? Not by any stretch of the term. I simply don't assume that every person, American or otherwise, is intimately familiar with everything that is expressed in our Constitution, much less intimately familiar the entire process, most notably at the Supreme Court level, that resulted in the passage of this statute and its coercive mandates (some of which were overturned by the SCOTUS).

As for the fundamental change that occurred here, it was anything but subtle and imperceptible to anyone who is familiar with our Constitution and the profound implications of this case. This was rightly considered the most important case to be brought before the Supreme Court in decades (unless you considered Kelo v. City of New London more important). I think the vocal opposition to the mandate and the constitutional restraints on government power, etc., was indicative of the recognition by many American citizens that this case did fundamentally change many things about our country, its government and the rights, freedom and power of the individual.

 

Elections in the US are popularity contests. It makes no sense to me either.

 

Your arrogance is in making assumptions at all, and in presuming that people would believe something you say simply because you said it.

No, it didn't. It clearly stated that Common Sense - Paine's primary work - refutes the claim of what you promise us is true of what he wrote in other works. So let me respond to you with Paine's own words, which I find wholly fitting of your purpose here:

“Attempting to debate with a person who has abandoned reason is like giving medicine to the dead.”

And I'll give you another, also perfectly fitting quote:

“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.”

No, you most certainly cannot. If you are interested in learning, here's another quote from Thomas Paine which sticks your ideology directly in the 'arse':

“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”

Yeah. That's the guy who claims that Government should be our Nanny. Right. Definitely.

Pot, meet mirror.

 

Entrepreneur’s Credo


I do not choose to be a common man,
It is my right to be uncommon … if I can,
I seek opportunity … not security.
I do not wish to be a kept citizen.
Humbled and dulled by having the
State look after me.
I want to take the calculated risk;
To dream and to build.
To fail and to succeed.
I refuse to barter incentive for a dole;
I prefer the challenges of life
To the guaranteed existence;
The thrill of fulfillment
To the stale calm of Utopia.
I will not trade freedom for beneficence
Nor my dignity for a handout
I will never cower before any master
Nor bend to any threat.
It is my heritage to stand erect.
Proud and unafraid;
To think and act for myself,
To enjoy the benefit of my creations
And to face the world boldly and say:
This, with God’s help, I have done
All this is what it means
To be an Entrepreneur.

― Thomas Paine, Common Sense

​

Yeah. Thomas Paine is pretty much the anti-Heroclitus.

 

I must say that I think it is unfair and intellectually dishonest of Heroclitus to smear Tea Partiers as a bunch of racists based on the actions (or rumors of actions) of a few people associated with the TEA Party movement. All of the people that I personally know who have been or are active in the TEA Party are decent people who are standing up for the limited government established in our Constitution and the fiscal responsibility any person possessing a modicum of common sense would demand of their government. The smear that TEA Partiers are nothing more than a bunch of white racists is preposterous:



Yes, there are some dumbasses who have associated themselves with the TEA Party, but I can tell you from experience, I've seen far more hateful idiots amongst the ANSWERniks in the "anti-war" movement that I've seen in the TEA Party movement.

 

The TEA Party is as constructive an American movement as we've had in our history, and I am quite sure that Thomas Paine would consider himself a proud member of the movement.

One need only read what he wrote to understand that.