In response to the QOTD;
Ah, but Mr. Coolidge, and the Republican Party leadership, apparently never understood the game. The assertion that building up the weak is the Left’s goal is one thing. Taking that assertion at face value is another. It’s the Big Mistake of the 20th century, and has resulted in perpetual confusion (to say nothing of the stagnation, decay and destruction around the world). The preponderance of the evidence regarding the Left’s goals points elsewhere. Their objective is statism for its own sake, and the tactic, stated openly in some circles time after time, is to bring down “The System” so it can be remade– “Redistributive Change” in Obama’s own words, and it’s been said in other ways throughout the generations.
Republicans, as they occupy themselves trying to understand and argue the details, the costs and so on, of the “healthcare” bills, are demonstrating their utter cluelessness (or is it their complicity?). “Why, this could end up funding abortions with taxpayer dollars, and that would be bad, and I’m not so sure we can afford this other bit over here…”
That’s not the point, Skippy. The point is, the whole thing is a massive power grab. What more do you need to know, for crying out loud?
Weigh down the economy with debt, entitlements and restrictions, then blame what remains of the private sector. Take advantage of the chaos and the public demands for an altogether new approach that they hope will ensue. They’re telling us every day; “Never let a crisis go to waste” is only part of it. The other part is their understanding that they can manufacture the crises. Chip, chip, chip, chip, and sooner or later even the hardest stone will crumble, after which (they believe) they can swoop in and take it all.
So far as I can tell, the Republicans have been playing along for decades. “Oh, but you’re crazy, Lyle. Look at the differences between Republicans and Democrats! Are you willfully blind, or what? Surely you must be mad! Look! Just look! LOOOOOOOOOK, MAN!”
Uh huh, and there’s a world of difference between that “good cop” and that “bad cop” too. The bad cop is a real, dangerously scary, out-of-control sonofabitch, but that good cop– why, he’s a sweetheart! Look at him! Just look! He brings you coffee and food and he talks nice. He doesn’t like that bad ol’, meany mean bad cop at all, either. No Sir, not at all. Such a nice fellow, and he really cares. He listens. He understands. He’s my advocate in this time of uncertainty. I want to work with him, by golly gosh oh gee. Yessiree. No doubt about it. Without him, that bad cop would have beat the living shit out of me by now, for sure. Man, am I lucky to have Good Cop! Wow! Thank God! This must be an angel sent from Heaven to deliver me from despair!
Right. Both cops are working to take you to the same place after they’re finished with your sorry, dumb ass.
OK; got that out of the system. Now I’m all ears.
Once a staunch Republican who voted a straight party ticket except for a very few times when I knew the Democrat candidate was actually a better man and representative than the Republican, I have come to realize in the last 10 years that both parties are so corrupt that they are essentially two arms of the same monster.
I remain conservative, but the Republican party no longer represents my views. I am closer to being a Libertarian, but their total lack of international thought or responsibility is impossible to embrace, so I remain a conservative independent.
Unless the American people take it upon themselves to effect CHANGE, we are doomed to go down the same road as Great Britain, Germany, and every other once great democracy.
The only CHANGE that will work is to throw ALL of them out, and start anew, with strict term limits, and limiting those elected to doing what the Founding Fathers intended, have a truly representative republic.
George Washington did not WANT to be president, he tried to avoid it, but was begged to accept the position, and did so for the good of the country. Abraham Lincoln felt much the same way. Their experiences in life prepared them for the presidency. Where is that similar experience in our last 6 Presidents? (The exception is Reagan, who had broad political and life experience before his election.)
We must seriously start thinking of effecting CHANGE by tossing all the elected royalty out of office in Washington DC, and then in the respective states. Without doing so, we will surely fail, and with that failure, our country will disappear in any form that we recognize it.
Ha! I’ve only voted the “straight party ticket” once in my life — and that was when the Bill Clinton impeachment happened. Otherwise I pick and choose, but they are all about the same.
I watched something on HLN news this morning where a woman said that she felt “healthcare was a privilege.” I just don’t even know where to go with that.
Spot on. I am starting to think the anarchy guys have some potential.
I’m not sure how we can correct the mess we are in. 50 years of bad decsisions will not be turned around over night unless we go off a cliff. Palin might be able to slow the slide down, but we are very close to the cliff.
3 minutes with out air, 3 days without water, 30 days with out food. That is off the cliff.
“Unless the American people take it upon themselves to effect CHANGE, we are doomed to go down the same road as Great Britain, Germany, and every other once great democracy.” I’m not sure that Britain or Germany were ever “once great democrac[ies],” (what with Britain being a Constitutional Monarchy). The United States was not designed as a democracy, it was designed as a republic with limited democratic interfierence at the Federal level. The president was supposed to be elected by an electoral college (which sort of happens. States can choose electors however they see fit and all have chosen to force their electors to vote for the popular vote winner) and senators were selected by state legislatures, until the 17th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution.
Democracy is not a form of government, it is a method of selecting government officials. Infuse too much democracy into our American Federal system and the end result is what we have – a behemoth that perpetuates itself and cannot be stopped. Too much democracy has led to our current one party system (because there truly is very little difference between Candidate (D) and Candidate (R)).
The only chance that Conservatives have is to get involved in their local senate and house districts (both state and federal). Get involved in your respective caucus and attempt to create change from inside the system. Unfortunately, this can be difficult as caucus goons tend to toss anyone who isn’t going to toe the party line. I find it ironic that those who claim to love freedom most demand loyalty to the party, above all else.
“Unless the American people take it upon themselves to effect CHANGE, we are doomed to go down the same road as Great Britain, Germany, and every other once great democracy.” I’m not sure that Britain or Germany were ever “once great democrac[ies],” (what with Britain being a Constitutional Monarchy). The United States was not designed as a democracy, it was designed as a republic with limited democratic interfierence at the Federal level. The president was supposed to be elected by an electoral college (which sort of happens. States can choose electors however they see fit and all have chosen to force their electors to vote for the popular vote winner) and senators were selected by state legislatures, until the 17th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution.”
Well stated! It was what I intended to say, but stated it poorly!
You actually don’t have to become involved in party politics. If we as voters simply tossed all Representatives from the House, and started over, and the 1/3 of the Senators that are up for re-election this year were tossed as well, the parties would get the message VERY FAST that “business as usual” is over, and they had better start paying attention to what the people are saying.
Conservatives working within the Republican party simply won’t work, for the very reasons you point out. Plus, nothing would happen at all within the dimmocratic party.
Without actively tossing them all, we have no chance!
I hear the term limits thing come up often when a discussion turns to political corruption. I can understand the sentiment, but I utterly fail to understand how limiting out no matter what you’re doing in Congress, makes for less corruption. It could just as likely lead to more corruption, as some hack, knowing he’s out next year, can do anything he wants without worrying about the next election. Seems to me, if you have someone good in there you’d want to be able to keep her there.
Does anyone do business this way?
“We’ve got some sloppy and incompetent employees in this firm, and virtually all of them are stealing from the company, so here’s what we’re gonna do; we’ll instate a policy that says no one can work here for more than two years. Period. Problem solved.”
Seriously. Anyone?
Lyle,
Your analogy of our elected officials being akin to employees of a business is false. We elect congress persons to guard our freedoms. Not to produce a product for sale.
Electing someone to a life time job at taxpayer expense has turned out to be a bad idea. I don’t think the founders had this in mind. Have you heard any of these elected elite on either side of the isle question his/her exclusion from the “health care” the masses are going to be saddled with? Nope. These people are doing as little as possible to rock the boat. They like their easy ride and figure they have a chance at a lifetime of living very high on the hog. And a tall hog it is.
It was never the intent of the Founders for ANYONE to remain in office. It was intended as a short term, “Serve Your Country” plan.
Since we now have a country run by professional politicians, the ONLY way to fix the situation is to turn them all out of office and start over.
The country is not a business, those elected should be SERVING, not being served, which is what has developed.
Besides that, name ONE national level politician who is not beholden to some major player or corporation in some way.
IF we could find honest men who wanted to be politicians, it would not be this way, but long ago, honest men were run out of the national scene, and so far as I can see, there are none left!
It isn’t simply a matter of trying to build up the weak by tearing down the strong. The weak are to be built up only by transferring power to their representatives, who wield this alleged power by proxy. It is the same result as if trees were given standing in court to sue for their own protection. The real power lies with the humans who are appointed the trees’ representatives. The tree (and similarly the weak and poor people) are still powerless.
And another thing. Term limits places too much power in the hands of the career politicians who advise the elected politicians. I recall a Congressional representative saying once that it takes about 2 years just to learn how things work, If he’s out too soon, he is at the mercy of his unelected staff who will be there after he is gone, who will, at his first briefing, give him three options for every problem, “do nothing”, “go nuclear option”, and “sweet reason”, the option the staffers want anyway. If you know it’s happening you can send them out to bring back three more options, but without a grasp of procedures it’s too easy to succumb to “sweet reason”.
Windy,
I’ve heard the “career bureaucrats would control the politicians” argument for years, but it doesn’t work that way in states where there are term limits, and I don’t think it would work in the federal situation either. I think you vastly underestimate the people who would be elected if we had term limits.
If you think it through, it would be impossible to run for office unless you had been successful in some way in life. You would have to be relatively financially set, since the job would only last a few years, and you would have to return to life as it was before, earning a living at a real job. That means that people who actually had accomplished something besides getting themselves elected would have to run. Those people tend to be “take charge” people, not “lead me around” people.
Second, the big corporations couldn’t afford to keep buying off people every election, so their influence would be limited to some degree.
Third, if we elected enough of the right people, it wouldn’t be long before they realized that they didn’t need to hang out in DC all year, and that they could actually get done what needed to be done in a lot shorter time than our currently elected career royalty does.
In reality, it was never envisioned by the Founding Fathers that the Congress would stay in session year round. They believed that the Executive branch would run things, after they had set the rules, and that Congress would work as necessary to keep the checks and balances when they returned to session.
Regardless, it hasn’t worked that way, and I don’t think we have enough honest men to return to any semblance of a truly representative republic without a new revolution. Perhaps Jefferson was right when he said:
“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
WE have become lethargic, and are reaping the rewards of that lethargy.