I have a lot of time for David Horowitz. He has written important books and a fine memoir. His organizational work on college campuses commands respect.
For those reasons, I am grieved to see that his attempted rebuttal of my post below on Glenn Beck conforms exactly to the pattern I described in my original piece.
My original piece observed:
When Glenn Beck made his Fox debut, some shrewd conservatives responded with a wink. Maybe the show was paranoid and hysterical. Maybe Beck was none too scrupulous about facts and truth. But why be squeamish? The other side did as bad, or nearly. And see how usefully he mobilized the base!
David’s response:
I don’t have a big quarrel with Frum’s view that Beck’s view of Cass Sunstein is “over the top” or off target. … Frum is right that Sunstein is not a raving leftist. … [But] Our country is under assault by a determined, deceitful and powerful left which will stop at nothing to realize its goals. Facing them, I would rather have Glenn Beck out there fighting for our side than 10,000 David Frums who think that appeasing leftists will make them think well of us. No it won’t. It will only whet their appetite for our heads.
In other words: Horowitz agrees that Beck’s attack on Sunstein was false. Yet that falsehood does not worry Horowitz. The country is “under assault.” (As the broadcaster Mark Levin has said, President Obama is “literally at war” with the American people.) In a war, truth must yield to the imperatives of victory. Any conservative qualms about the untruth of Beck’s defamation of Sunstein amounts to “appeasement” – an appeasement that will end with the left decapitating the right. This is the language and logic of Leninism. There is no truth or falsehood comrades, there is only service to the revolution or betrayal of the revolution.
Three thoughts in reply.
First, even in Leninist terms, Beck’s attack on Sunstein was stupid and counter-productive. Every legal conservative who cares about the issues of regulation and deregulation agrees that Cass Sunstein is the very best choice for the OIRA job to be hoped from a Democratic president. Had conservative opposition somehow derailed the Sunstein nomination, President Obama’s next appointment would almost certainly have been worse – very possibly, a lot worse.
Second, this right-wing Leninism exacts a terrible moral price. Notice that David Horowitz calls the left “deceitful” in his blogpost. Presumably that’s a bad thing. Likewise, when Rep. Joe Wilson shouted “You lie” at President Obama, he did not intend that as a compliment. So truth is important to conservatives, or at least we talk as if it were. Yet now David Horowitz tells me that it’s 10,000 times more important to “fight for our side.”
Third – how do we define “our side”? Horowitz harshly condemns Obama appointee Van Jones. Van Jones was eventually forced to resign not because of any of the allegations Glenn Beck hurled at him, but because the Gateway Pundit blog unearthed evidence that Van Jones had consorted with 9/11 denialists. So that’s the other side, right? Except… the American politician who most closely associates with 9/11 denialists is Congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul. And who acts as Paul’s chief TV enthusiast and publicist? Glenn Beck of course.
David Horowitz has strong feelings about 9/11 and the post-9/11 world. He helped to lead the campaign against Ward Churchill, the disgraced University of Colorado professor who argued that the United States had brought 9/11 on itself. Question for David: If Ward Churchill is “the other side,” on which “side” do we find Ron Paul? And isn’t that the same “side” where we find Glenn Beck?
Why would David Horowitz want to place himself there?
210 responses so far
1 Churl // Sep 14, 2009 at 12:19 pm
I don’t watch Beck (I don’t have a television) and, if he is on the radio, I don’t hear him. But from what I read on the internet, he is on the side that wants to keep ACORN from skewing the 2010 Census and thinks that a Communist 9/11 Truther ought not to be in charge of passing out huge amounts of money for “Green jobs”, whatever those are.
2 sinz54 // Sep 14, 2009 at 12:32 pm
The challenge of any political movement is to channel the anger and emotions of the masses into positive political action.
Howard Dean and DailyKOS channeled the anger and Bush-hatred of the Left into a positive political force for change, and that’s how Obama got elected.
Today, the GOP has failed to channel the anger of these Tea Party protesters into a positive force for change. Because to the protesters, the GOP betrayed them by endorsing Bush’s Big Government Conservatism, including Medicare Part D, bailouts of Wall Street and even General Motors, and huge budget deficits.
These protesters are listening to Beck because they don’t trust Steele and the GOP leadership to do the right thing.
The way to fix that is for the GOP to grow a new generation of leaders, like Pence and Shadegg, who might be trusted by the protesters–and give those leaders real power in writing the GOP platform.
Also, the GOP needs to make some single, symbolic move to show they share the concerns of the protesters. Such as demanding to hold Congressional hearings on each and every one of Obama’s “czars.”
Then Beck won’t matter as much.
3 Forde // Sep 14, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Beck is on the side of Beck. Beck found an audience that requires very little actual information and a lot of emotion and he’s enriching himself feeding their basest needs.
Our country had a vote and they voted against the Beck audience’s ideas. Instead of being productive and reevaluating their stance they found it easier to let Beck tell them it’s not they who are wrong but everyone else. Beck comforts them all the while feeding their deepest fears.
Until this becomes unprofitable expect beck to continue on this destructive course.
4 balconesfault // Sep 14, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Horowitz was a communist when he was a liberal. The man has always embraced extremism. When he moved to the right, it was RJ Rushdoony’s vision for America he embraced.
He doesn’t want the same things you do, David. Back away.
5 brandon // Sep 14, 2009 at 12:44 pm
I have no idea if Beck is sincere in his beliefs. My guess is he is just an entertainer who has found a niche that is profitable.
But the average voter is never going to read newmajority.com, National Review, Wall Street Journal editorial page, Policy Review and they certainly aren’t going to read Russell Kirk or William Buckley’s books. So someone like Beck or Rush Limbaugh can be useful in conveying a conservative message to the masses which is something they won’t get from the MSM.
The question becomes, do the Becks of the world with their unhinged ravings turn more voters off of the conservative movement than they attract.
6 rbottoms // Sep 14, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Let’s not slander David Horowitz. He wasn’t a Communist.
He was a Marxist.
Funny how so many far Right loons used to be far left Communists and Marxists, for real. Not this weeny campus version but the armed revolutionary full blown 60’s radical version.
You’d think they hatched a plan thirty or forty years ago to appear to switch sides. If they worked really hard America could be brought to near collapse from a trillion dollar war it might still lose, a second trillion dollar war it might also lose, the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, to have 40+ million citizens with no health insurance.
Best of all it could all be blamed on the Democrats.
7 Forde // Sep 14, 2009 at 1:22 pm
I thik the bigger problem with Beck is that he is mobilizing a minority of the republican party which when active and vocal makes it harder to win national elections and goverern once elected.
8 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 1:56 pm
The funny thing is, that in Europe, no matter how they coddle Muslims, they are still going to end up in a similar position that Israel is in. The same Israel that Leftwingers have been bashing as racist imperialist oppressors. They will have to implement “Apartheid Walls,” security checkpoints, and the whole shebang. Not because every Muslim is the most vile sort, but because Islam itself is, and thus a large chunk of Muslims will be aching to wage violent Jihad. Others will be waging political and legal Jihad promoting Shariah, and through democratic institutions promoting Muslim supremacy, special respect rights, protections, etc for Mohammad and Allah and Islam and Muslims….which promotes dhimmitude for the other.
You need to wake up and smell the stink that is Islam.
As many as go on tirades against Christians on the Left and also on the Right, you aint seen nothing until youve seen the Islamic Right in action. The West was founded upon Christian metaphysics, Christians built the most liberal and free-est progressive nations on Earth.
A cursory preview of Muslim Majority countries on this Earth is not inspiring.
9 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Oops, wrong thread.
Even if we accept your slanderous version here. The Democrats dont win without 37 percent of Democrats that are and were Truthers, in 2008.
10 VCF // Sep 14, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Its obvious at this point that the GOP exists to oppose President Obama and nothing else. The GOP should replace their elected representatives with robots, as robots can press the NO button and not require that expensive socialized medicine and retirement benefits.
Back to the point… Glenn Beck is a loon, which is why the GOP base loves him. Nothing says conservative like paranoid middle-aged white people fearing that the Negro is coming for his job or his daughter. So while Beck gets the 30% of the base all excited, he makes every moderate look at the crowd and ask, “Do I really want to hang out with these clowns?” Since that answer is usually no, the Dems are going to win a lot of elections. Thank you, Glenn Beck!
11 mycelf // Sep 14, 2009 at 2:38 pm
It’s good no see that we’re focused on the important issue (Glenn Beck), rather than wasting our time and energy with such insignificant trivialities like: health care reform, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, increasing unemployment, etc.
Ah well … there’s still conservatives and their dogs.
12 el gato libre // Sep 14, 2009 at 3:23 pm
One thing that I haven’t seen talked about much is the question of who Glenn Beck’s audience is. It’s easy to look at Beck’s ratings–as well as all the publicity he whips up for himself–as a great boon to Conservative recruitment. Hey, with all this attention he’s getting, he’s turning on a whole new crowd to conservatism!!! Right on!!!
It doesn’t seem like most people around here watch Beck’s show. I’ve been catching it whenever I can for about a month. The advertisements they play on the show are pretty interesting. Around seventy percent (and that’s a low estimate) are directed towards seniors. Lots of ads for scooter chairs, bladder control products, etc. Sure, all the cable news networks play ads like these sometimes, but I’ve never seen this high of a concentration of ads for seniors before. And all those financial service ads that MSNBC and CNN run all the time? They’re not here, but an ad featuring G. Gordon Liddy as a pitchman is. It’s really striking. And it tells you a lot about who’s watching Beck.
Lower income white people above the age of 60.
You might think that it’s a leap to say this just based on the ads that they run on Beck. But look at the tea parties and the 9/12 march, sure there’s some variance, but the meat of this audience is white seniors, usually of a decidedly rural flavor.
There’s nothing wrong with white seniors. I’ve got a bunch of them in my family and we get along fine. And white seniors tend to show up to vote, and they’re into organizing. So far, so good.
The problem is, to be blunt, that this demographic is literally dying off. Later waves of seniors will not replicate their views and voting patterns. Add that together with the fact that the GOP seems to be doing everything it possibly can to alienate the Hispanic vote–you know, America’s fastest growing population?–and the fact that they have already alienated the black vote. What do you get? A demographic bombshell that threatens to leave the GOP unelectable in 10-20 years. Beck isn’t bringing in anyone new, he’s just stoking the embers that were already there.
Whatever you think of Mr. Frum, he has the clarity to see this. That’s why he’s hating on Beck.
13 jjv // Sep 14, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I have never seen Glen Beck’s show or heard him. But a lot of people have. Horowitz does not think Beck lied about Sunstein, only that he misses the mark. Cass Sunstein is on the short list for the Supreme Court. That there were 40 votes against him, including six Democratic Senators is a good thing. It is a shot acros the bow. Sunstein has intimated that comment sections like this ought to open the host to libel laws. He has written a slander against conservative Justices Scalia and Thomas called Judicial Radicals. He recognizes no second amendment rights that actually protect people, and is touch and go on the First as his internet machinations indicate. The fact that he is beloved by Harvard ought not insulate him from criticism. Beck has put Obamite scalps on the wall. He has helped expose ACORN when all of the Republican Party and the WSJ could get nothing going against it for years. As Taranto says today, Beck and Breitbart are pounding the One and their capitulation, by the termination of the truther and the severence of ACORN from the Census are prooff, not of a liar but an effective campaign against the extreme portions of the Democratic Party. Your points about Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders are off the mark. I understand that Beck likes Pauls libertarianism not his trutherisms, and Bernie Sanders is an NRA guy and a free speach guy and has plenty of “conservative” reasons to vote against Sunstein.
14 rbottoms // Sep 14, 2009 at 3:55 pm
And who does the Scooter Store promote as the source of their wonderful chairs… Uncle Sam. The same socialist regime these people rail against will, they hope, pick up the tab for the mobility devices.
Keep the government’s hands off my scooter!
15 balconesfault // Sep 14, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Sunstein has intimated that comment sections like this ought to open the host to libel laws.
Really? That would be eggregious. I would certainly like to see a much more specific cite and contextual quote on this one.
He has written a slander against conservative Justices Scalia and Thomas called Judicial Radicals.
Slander? Please. It is a differing opinion. Scalia and Thomas clearly favor rejecting legal precedence if they feel it contrary to their interpretation of the original intent of the Constitution – Sundstein favors a more minimalist approach, marked by narrow, incremental decisions rather than broad rulings, a respect for precedent, and judicial restraint. From where he sits, Scalia and Thomas, in being ready to overturn decades of precedence based on their Constitutional reading, are most certainly radical.
He recognizes no second amendment rights that actually protect people
Sunstein wrote in a letter to Saxby Chambliss: “I strongly believe that the Second Amendment creates an individual right to possess and use guns for purposes of both hunting and self-defense. If confirmed, I would respect the Second Amendment and the individual right that it recognizes.”
People keep citing that Sunstein says that the Constitution does not favor an individual right to bear arms. What he has said is “And if the Court is right, then fundamentalism does not justify the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms.” Now, I know this takes a bit of thinking to deal with – but remember that (as noted above) Sunstein rejects fundamentalism as a framework for interpreting the Constitution. His contention is that those who approach the law from a fundamentalist viewpoint must consider the “well-regulated militia” as the source of a right to bear arms, while those who see the Constitution as more protective of individual rights (eg – the right to privacy) can see an individual right to bear arms as guaranteed by the Constituti0n.
In essence, he’s kind of calling Scalia a hypocrite. But that shouldn’t bother anyone – Scalia is a hypocrite.
is touch and go on the First as his internet machinations indicate
I have no idea what you mean here, but it is a lot like the type of innuendo that’s Beck’s stock in trade.
As Taranto says today, Beck and Breitbart are pounding the One
Ahh – “the One”. You’ve proved that it’s pointless to discuss specifics with you. Sorry for wasting your time.
16 Churl // Sep 14, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Also sprach el gato libre, “The problem is, to be blunt, that this demographic is literally dying off. ”
Well yes, certainly if Rahm Emanuel’s brother Zeke (advisor on healthcare matters to the Obama administration) has anything to say about how things are run:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574374463280098676.html
I especially like the phrase “reaper curve” accompanying the diagram.
There will be plenty of old folks spooked over this sort of thing and they will be alive to vote in 2010.
Would el gato let us know specifically what conservatives ought to do to win over Hispanic voters? I would be most interested to hear his ideas.
17 el gato libre // Sep 14, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Churl –
I’m not sure what the GOP can do to win over Hispanic voters, but they could start by not demonizing them all the time. Yes, I know that ALL conservatives are not out there doing this, but a very vocal minority is, and the more moderate Repubs are terrified that if they speak out on immigration, they’ll get excommunicated from the movement. So the GOP then gets branded as the anti-Latino party. That’s part of the reason Beck, and people like him, are such a devil’s bargain for Conservatives. Beck, Limbaugh and their ilk can stir up a whole lot of noise and opposition right now. But in 15 years, the angry old Right wingers will be dead. If the GOP keeps playing to the the Palin/Beck/Teabagger wing of the party, they’ll continue to alienate a large swath of the under 50 set, who in large do not respond to the same tactics or share the same fears as the current crop of seniors. They can make a big noise now, but this approach will quite simply leave a gigantic deficit in GOP electoral margins within the next two decades.
18 fert // Sep 14, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Whenever I hear about how bloggers are ruining journalism and print media, I have to sigh a little. Print media is ruining print media because they don’t learn and they print crap like that wsj article Churl links to. And then people link to the crap and consider it fact.
Churl, here’s Betsy McCaughey’s interview with Jon Stewart about health-care reform (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-20-2009/exclusive—betsy-mccaughey-extended-interview-pt–1) since you’ve mentioned you don’t have a tv. She does a good job with not playing into Stewart’s hand, but makes logical leaps about that big pile of paper she brought along… logical leaps the size of Texas. All of that after having to look through the damn bill for quite a while to find the quote that she said ‘proved’ that the bill was going to make doctors kill our elders. And that’s the woman you just quoted to prove your point, making your argument a lot weaker. It makes me question your knowledge and judgment, which in turn makes me more likely to skip over all the other posts you put on the comments thread, no matter the content of your posts.
That is why Glenn Beck is making the Republican party and Conservatism weaker. Because people will quote him and defend him and rub his belly for good luck, making a lot of others (Democrats, Independents, Libertarians, sane Republicans) doubt the knowledge/judgment of the quoter.
19 Churl // Sep 14, 2009 at 5:05 pm
el gato, I’m not convinced that Hispanics are being demonized, unless “Hispanics” is a euphemism for “illegal aliens”. Conservatives seem pretty uniformly in favor if legal immigration, it is only the illegal ones who draw conservative ire. Do you know of many conservative politicians or commentators who are against Hispanic citizens or those legally pursuing citizenship? I don’t.
Why is the USA the only country in the world not allowed to have a border?
20 el gato libre // Sep 14, 2009 at 5:05 pm
aaaannnnddd…Yes!
Beck is live as we speak. He’s hyping the fake Daily Mail figure of 2 million for his 9/12 rally.
Also–he showed lots of photos, but fuzzed out most of the signs people were showing. Is even he embarrassed?
21 jjv // Sep 14, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Another thought struck me, slander against sarah palin (including dozens of dismissed ethic complaints) was never taken up with the ferocity we see here for exagerations directed at Cass Sunstein. Defend your own. Glenn Beck is on Glen Beck’s side but he is taking liberal scalps. He is laying down markers against a powerful advocate for a constitution unmoored to text or history. The White House, heretofore unafraid, must now ask before a particularly egregious appointment “How will this look on Beck?” or “What will Beck do with this?” That is useful.
And balconesfault, here is a link to a fellow who seems less appalled than I on communist iconography on Sunstein’s internet views. http://techliberation.com/2009/01/08/what-impact-will-cass-sunstein-have-on-obamas-internet-policy/
His tone is respectful even if the site “look” is extreme, and he points out real problems with Sunstein.
Finally, on the second amendment Mr. Kopel knows more than I ever will and he takes a mixed bag approach over at Volok’s conspiracy. http://www.volokh.com/posts/1252441367.shtml
The last paragraph of that link is exactly what I’m afraid of.
Finally, the idea that animals can sue in their own right is simply an invitation to Left Wing attacks on agriculture and hunting interests. That is quite different from opposing animal cruelty. Sunstein has given assurances on this aspect of his work and I have no reason to disbelieve him but Holder gave assurances on prosecuting the CIA as well.
22 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Mexican and Latino hard working Catholic immigrants are great.
However them being turned into a Victimization Identity Group of Racists looking for special priveleges and protections and preferences is terrible.
But the dastardly Left is what it is.
23 el gato libre // Sep 14, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Do you think legal Hispanics are going to listen to a conservative tirade against “illegals” and then think more favorably about the GOP? Lots of Repubs are running around spouting America-for-Americans nativist rhetoric. Sure, they’re not out there saying “we hate even the legal Immigrants!” but if you look at some of the rhetoric, they’re talking about preserving white America. Again, this is just a minority of the GOP, but the more moderate elements are too scared to step in and attempt to cool off the rhetoric. So the only message re:Hispanics from the GOP is an antagonistic one.
24 David Frum Misses The Point « NewsReal Blog // Sep 14, 2009 at 5:20 pm
[...] Frum has responded — sort of — to my NewsReal critique of his blistering attack on Glenn Beck in tones you [...]
25 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 5:29 pm
I think that there is certainly some truth to what you say.
And certainly the Left and their media allies that dominate the MSM will paint them that way, as the most vile haters and supremacists.
However Nativism isnt the boogeyman you make it out to be. Opposition to open borders is based on self interest. With the flood gates open and to just anybody any country will be destroyed, and quality of life severely reduced. Furthermore, you must realize that not all immigrants are equal…..Europe is finding out the hard way that mass Muslim immigration is a dissaster.
There are real reasons to oppose immigration of groups based on religion, race, ethnicity, etc. Especially given the Leftwing zeitgeist which turns every group into a victim and resentful of WASPs that are due special favors, have their culture celebrated and promoted by the government, etc.
Furthermore there real reasons to oppose mass immigration, based on strain of services, resources natural and otherwise, environmental concerns, etc.
The demonization of White Anglo Saxon Protestants and Western Civilization is a disgrace….nothing good will come of it.
26 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 5:35 pm
The ferocious attacks on Sarah Palin were in part racist and culturalist. Anti Typical White Person.
27 Glenn Beck Is On Our Side « NewsReal Blog // Sep 14, 2009 at 5:41 pm
[...] censorship, News, NewsRealblog, podesta, Politics, Ron Paul, soros by David Horowitz David Frum has responded — sort of — to my Newsreal critique of his blistering attack on Glenn Beck in tones you [...]
28 balconesfault // Sep 14, 2009 at 5:58 pm
slander against sarah palin (including dozens of dismissed ethic complaints)
Do ethics complaints (notably many were brought by Alaska Republicans) now constitute slander? There’s some serious revisionist history to be done by Republicans about the Clinton legacy, starting with Whitewater, given that no charges were ever brought on that “scandal”.
He is laying down markers against a powerful advocate for a constitution unmoored to text or history.
Sunstein has stated that he gives significant weighting to the precedence of past decisions. Thus, the term “unmoored to text or history” suggests that someone is unawares of exactly what legal precedence is.
from the article you linked In his own words: “A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government. Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom’s name.” In other words, as I noted in my review of his book in Regulation magazine back in 2000, Sunstein is essentially saying that the Internet is breeding a dangerous new creature: Anti-Democratic Man. And government should not hesitate to act to counter it.
This truncated description of Sunstein’s argument is a disservice to the argument … since it ignores what Sunstein has stated more recently about any governmental involvement:
Yes – technology has been evolving. Yes – the internet has been evolving. Yes – Sunstein never specifically called for government involvement in addressing the problems he saw in the internet, but just ruminated that such involvement might “not be rejected”. And after thinking about it more, he has concluded Most problems are best solved privately, not through government.
Which is good, considering that he’s working in the Obama Administration, and Obama has stated repeatedly that he considers open access to the internet to be more important to our political discourse than any “fairness doctrine” for the media.
As for Volokh … the concern stems from a quote from “a White House source”.
If there is anything that we Americans should have learned over the last 8 years, it’s that quotes from unnamed sources are absolutely worthless.
Holder gave assurances on prosecuting the CIA as well.
Which were?
29 Churl // Sep 14, 2009 at 6:04 pm
el gato, Hispanics (or others) who endured the tedious process of naturalization may not be too eager to help illegals get the benefits of citizenship by merely crossing the border. On the other hand, maybe ethnicity does trump legality in this country. The Democrats have had considerable success using this principle so it might be so.
30 el gato libre // Sep 14, 2009 at 6:05 pm
There were some over the line attacks on Palin, but the main reason she caught so much flack is that she came off like a fool in several interviews and displayed no knowledge of issues beyond tired talking points that she couldn’t even regurgitate in a coherent way. It’s not because America hates whitey. I’m not going to defend identity politics as I am not a fan of identity politics. But when you say that WASPs and Western Civilization are routinely “demonized” in mainstream America you are GROSSLY overstating the case. Please give me some evidence on the great American plot to disenfranchise whitey.
And as to the immigration debate, you are either going to have to deal with the rising (legal and illegal) Hispanic population in America, or you are going to have to mount a jihad against them. And it’d be a massive government project. To secure America from the Mexicans, you’re going to have to have to put a massive new federal apparatus in place to regulate business–since the illegals are coming here because they know they will get hired. You’re also going to have to mount a massive police operation to locate and deport millions of people. It’s almost like a funhouse mirror version of the paranoid fears of the right wing militias. It’s also not realistic and won’t happen. So the nativists can go on and on about immigration, but all it will do is alienate Hispanics, and a good slice of the business community that relies on immigrant labor.
31 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 6:16 pm
That is false, the attacks on Palin came swiftly and before any interviews.
32 el gato libre // Sep 14, 2009 at 6:22 pm
“Hispanics (or others) who endured the tedious process of naturalization may not be too eager to help illegals get the benefits of citizenship by merely crossing the border.”
I’ve seen this argument made by many on the right. It won’t wash. I’ve known a lot of legal and nonlegal Hispanics, and I can report that, at least from what I see, there is not only no sense of resentment, there is a sense of community. I mean, if you’re a legal Latino, what do you think when you see a guy with an (R) by his name talking about “illegals” and “aliens”–people who are from your own ethnic background–that are invading our country and starting up gangs, commiting crimes, raping women, and generally trashing the USA. I think it is rather obvious that you would dislike the guy with the (R) by his name who is trashing people of your ethnic group.
Also, the legal Latino will know that the vast majority of these “illegals” are coming to America not to join gangs and terrorize the white folks, but to work hard to save up money to send back home, or to build up a kitty to start a business in Mexico. Most of them work 2-3 jobs and clock 65-90 hours a week. They have no interest in causing trouble. They’re here to work and make money. Trust me cause I’ve known hundreds of these guys on an everyday basis.
33 el gato libre // Sep 14, 2009 at 6:25 pm
escape…
Newly unveiled vice presidential candidates are going to get attacked from the get-go, no matter who they are. It’s called modern American politics.
And are you going to try to say that she didn’t come off like an imbecile in her interviews?
34 sinz54 // Sep 14, 2009 at 6:31 pm
rbottoms:
I’ve thought about that.
Men like Horowitz changed their political side (from Left to Right)–but not their moral side. They still have this messianic-Utopian view of what the correct leadership can do. In Horowitz’s past, his Marxist side told him that government could create a new Communist man, altruistic, non-egocentric. When some of these former socialists became neo-conservatives, they still remained messianic-Utopian. But now their message was that America could use its power to reform the benighted parts of the world–like Iraq.
Those of us old-style conservatives believe in the permanence of human nature, good and bad. We don’t believe government can “perfect” anybody, either here or overseas. Government’s main job is to act as a guarantor of rights–by checking the evil of those who would abrogate those rights.
And Muslim nations like Afghanistan will continue to remain the world’s pestholes. They like it that way. So be it.
35 sinz54 // Sep 14, 2009 at 6:34 pm
vcf:
On the contrary, polls like Rasmussen have found that Obama’s biggest drop in support has been among moderate and Independent voters. (Obama still has the Left and the blacks–and the Right never liked him anyway.)
And without moderate and Independent voters, the Dems are going to have a tough time in 2010.
Negative campaigning works.
It always works.
Because fear and anger are among the strongest human emotions.
36 balconesfault // Sep 14, 2009 at 6:35 pm
That is false, the attacks on Palin came swiftly and before any interviews.
Just to be clear … what are you calling an “attack”?
Pointing out that her claim, repeated incessently during the first couple weeks after she was tabbed by McCain to have rejected Federal dollars for the bridge to nowhere, was in fact false … and that she had actually passed along the request, taken the money from the Feds, and then just reassigned it after Alaska received the dollars? Or that while the bridge was “killed”, Alaska spent a lot of federal dollars building an “access road to nowhere” that served no purpose once the bridge was off the books?
Now I will admit that there was one unfair attack on Sarah, although this really just came from internet bloggers, and not from the establishment media – and that was over whether Trigger was really hers, or her unwed daughters child. That speculation really had no place in politics. Although it was ironic when it turned out that Bristol was pregnant out of wedlock, after all.
As for attacks … I can only imagine what kind of hell the Clintons would have been put through had Chelsea gotten pregnant out of wedlock. Snark from David Letterman would seem like kids play as the religious right would have descended with their full wrath against the immorality and depravity hatched by liberal parentage.
And funny enough – the next (or is that the first?) time the daughter of a prominent Democratic candidate gets pregnant out of wedlock … I fully expect the hell to come anyway.
37 sinz54 // Sep 14, 2009 at 6:44 pm
el-gato-libre:
In 2004, Bush got 44% of the Hispanic vote.
If the GOP had kept around 44% of the Hispanic vote, they would have a permanent lock on the West (except for the coastal states).
How did Bush do that?
He did it by promoting policies that Latinos liked, such as providing illegal aliens with a path to citizenship, and a guest worker program that would bring them out of the shadows in the meantime. He also did it by addressing Hispanic crowds in Spanish, symbolizing his effort to understand THEIR culture. Finally, Bush had already established his own bona fides with Hispanic voters years earlier, when he was governor of Texas.
Bush showed that the GOP can reach out to Latinos successfully. The problem is that he ran right into the nativist wing of the GOP, which thinks of Hispanic immigrants as invaders, and fears that Hispanics will grow in numbers to the point that they will “outvote the white folks.” (But if roughly half of Hispanics can be courted to vote Republican anyway, then what’s the problem???)
The media figure who drummed up all this nativism wasn’t even Limbaugh. It was Michelle Malkin, who made stigmatizing Hispanics as a culture into her personal crusade.
38 balconesfault // Sep 14, 2009 at 6:44 pm
On the contrary, polls like Rasmussen have found that Obama’s biggest drop in support has been among moderate and Independent voters.
Note that 43% of white America voted for Obama in the general election … and 43% of white America still says that they support Obama.
The Republicans, with a non-stop full frontal attack on Obama (”I hope he fails”) from the day he took office, managed to make sure that the early honeymoon phase of his Presidency was very short. Meanwhile, the most recent CNN/Opinion Research poll is showing a bounce for Obama over last month – up 5% on the economy (54% approval), 4% on foreign affairs (58%), 7% on healthcare (51%). The danger with the “go all out to destroy the Obama Presidency” strategy that the Republicans have taken is that it is an all or nothing strategy – if it fails, if Obama passes legislation that proves to be popular, if the economy begins a substantive recovery by next fall and the dollar doesn’t collapse – Republicans will be viewed as a laughingstock by independent and moderate voters, and could end up being crushed in the polls.
They could have decided that being “statesmen” truly meant working with Obama, but they decided “statesmen” meant complete obstruction. We’ll see how it plays out.
39 sinz54 // Sep 14, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Churl:
Mark Krikorian of National Review is against even LEGAL immigration. In fact, he believes the United States has too many people (read: Hispanics) already, and that the population of the United States should shrink.
What is this person doing at the most respected conservative journal in the U.S.???
40 balconesfault // Sep 14, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Bush showed that the GOP can reach out to Latinos successfully. The problem is that he ran right into the nativist wing of the GOP, which thinks of Hispanic immigrants as invaders, and fears that Hispanics will grow in numbers to the point that they will “outvote the white folks.”
This is the danger of having your policy dictated in large part by talk show hosts.
Right wing media knew that there was dissatisfaction brewing against Bush. But they couldn’t channel that against the war, since they were all on board. They couldn’t channel that against bureaucratic incompetence, or the deficit, since that threatened the entire Republican brand.
They settled on channeling it against Bush’s immigration reform – a place they could attack Bush from the right. And they let some of the most xenophobic voices in the party get their hands on the microphone for periods of time during the debate. And Latinos listened.
41 sinz54 // Sep 14, 2009 at 6:58 pm
escapevelocity:
Yes, but that’s because those particular Muslims are coming from some hard-line countries like Pakistan (where polls show that a MAJORITY of Paks admired Osama bin Laden, even after 9-11). They are coming with their anti-Western ideological baggage.
I’m convinced that the vast majority of Mexicans are coming to America, NOT because they want to avenge the Treaty of Hidalgo or the Mexican War, but simply to find work. And most of them are devout Christians.
Yes, there are a few radicals mixed in there who wish that the American Southwest were still a part of Mexico.
But that’s an argument for reinstituting the practice of ideological exclusion, which was abandoned (thanks to liberals like Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank) because it had been misused to keep out gay and lesbian immigrants.
Ideological exclusion helped the U.S. keep out a flood of Nazi sympathizers and Communist sympathizers. But liberals got rid of it, so that now even anti-American Islamists can come to America and not be questioned about it.
But ideological exclusion is NOT the same thing as exclusion based on ethnicity. I would rather welcome hard-working Mexican agricultural laborers to America’s shores, than some radicalized Marxist or Islamist professors out of Oxford University. The latter will stir up far more trouble.
42 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 7:09 pm
I need to catch up.
But it must be stated clearly that the biggest appeal of the GOP to hispanics is in its commitment to Social Conservativsm of the Christian variety.
43 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 7:14 pm
And all you jokers attacking the Christians in the GOP are kidding yourself, that sidelining the Christians are the ticket to fiscal conservative libertarian majorities.
The Hispanics are the key, African American populations are in decline, as a percentage of pop and in real terms.
Immigration and fertility rates will drive Hispanic growth in real terms and in percentage of population.
I know its hard for you folks to face reality. But it is what it is.
Hispanics from the Catholic Christian view however are Welfare Statist, at least in the Lite Catholic Paternal Lite version.
The Compassionate Conservative Christian GOP.
Pro Business and Economic Prosperity, Pro Family, and Pro Christian, Traditional Values.
44 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Please give me some evidence on the great American plot to disenfranchise whitey. — el gato
Check out New Left discussions, books, dissertations, political action, unequal treatment before the law, institutional policies, etc for the last 40 years…..my friend. It isnt like its a big secret.
Frankly that you require proof is a big turnoff. Im all for educating the ignorant, but not the willfully ignorant. You are obviously an educated and well read person.
45 anniemargret // Sep 14, 2009 at 7:19 pm
As I said earlier: the teabaggers want THEIR America back. Which translates into a deep distrust, and in many cases, hatred , for Hispanics (aw, give up the pretense….almost every Republican out there lumps the illegals with the legals), for blacks, for American Muslims and anyone else not certified WASP
46 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Men like Horowitz changed their political side (from Left to Right)–but not their moral side. They still have this messianic-Utopian view of what the correct leadership can do. — sinz
This is false.
It is true that they think the US can be a force for good in the world, in spreading democracy, human rights, etc.
But the journey’s these men made were from the radicalism of Utopian visions to a realist and realistic position based on reality. From the perfectability of man or nation to the understanding that no man nor nation is perfectable. That the imperfect Western Democracies could be changed for the better, but would never be perfect. That capitalism while not entirely fair, can be made fairer and regardless does far more to lift people out of poverty than the likes of Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega. That trade unions were actually allowed to operate in the Weste, while the Leftist creations in the image of Utopia smashed them as dissent, and enslaved the workers.
Your characterization is false.
In a way it is a journey that many young people make less well known. From ideology and idealism of Leftwingism to more Conservative politics as they grow older (and wiser more experienced).
47 anniemargret // Sep 14, 2009 at 7:26 pm
….and right wing radio, TV stokes the flames of fear, mistrust. And what people fear and mistrust is just a quick slide into hate.
The GOP long ago opened that Pandora’s box. The furies are flying.
They also will not be getting the 20-30 something vote – this generation is not prejudiced. Women will not vote Republican either. I find the mysogny of Limbaugh, and the anti-gay, anti-intellectualism, anti-big city theme of Republicanism offensive.
48 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Post 41 to sinz,
I am basically in agreement with your comments there.
Im not anit Guest Worker program, I think it should be expanded and these people documented, but not necessarily granted citizenship and voting rights.
Furthermore, real legal immigrants to this country should be encouraged to assimlate, and not to cling to their heritage of the past and recreate it here. Now this doesnt have to be on the order that it was done in the past, but it should be done.
None of this calling people racists and nativists does anyone anygood, it just creates more conflict, ill will, and hard feelings.
To the degree that the Left demagoges this, its very destructive. They are not welcoming immigrants to the American nation. They are trying to create a resentment filled isolated identity group that they can count on through votes……paid off with special priveleges, preferences, and rights.
And that most certainly is destructive to the US as a nation. But that is what the Left is, dispicable to the core. Encouraging racist seperatest politics among minorities instead of integration and assimilation.
49 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 7:44 pm
The ugly push back will eventually come, as it is in Europe, created by the Leftist zeitgeist, that has abandoned the Western Lower Class Whites, in favor of racist identity politics of minorities.
But it wont be the GOP’s fault. The GOP upholds, individualism, equality before the law, equality of opportunity, for all.
Its the Left that is driving this country and all of the West towards a very nasty conflict that could of and should of been avoided, through sane policies and the ideology not of tribalism and groupism, but of individualism and liberty for all.
And they dont have the decency to be ashamed of themselves and their bigoted anti Westernism.
50 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Read em and weep, Leftwingers…
Immigration raids yield jobs for legal workers (plus wages rise)…
Que surprise!
http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2009-09-13-plants_N.htm
51 brandon // Sep 14, 2009 at 8:03 pm
sinz 54: “Mark Krikorian of National Review is against even LEGAL immigration. In fact, he believes the United States has too many people (read: Hispanics) already, and that the population of the United States should shrink.”
I’m not saying I agree with Mr. Krikorian, but do you have any data that would prove that his thesis is wrong.
California has gone from being #1 in education to #49. Would it be incorrect to say that much of the reason is because the state has had more immigration than they could logistically handle.
Is it not true that after an era of heavy immigration that the U.S. put a moratorium on most immigration until 1965 and that allowed these immigrants and their children to assimilate with American culture.
Again, I’m not saying I agree. Just that his thoughts are worth examining and we should be able to seriously discuss limiting Mexican immigration or all immigration without being accused of any kind of ism.
52 Churl // Sep 14, 2009 at 8:29 pm
fert,
(1) The link to the Jon Stewart show did not work for me.
(2) Which is good, because Jon Stewart is one of the many reasons I don’t have a television. I might pay some attention to your point if the referenced support was not to be delivered by a contumelious, face-pulling snark peddler.
(3) Did Ezekiel Emanuel (brother to White House Chief of Staff and healthcare advisor to the Obama administration) write the Lancet article referenced by Ms McCaughey or didn’t he?
53 el gato libre // Sep 14, 2009 at 8:43 pm
sinz at 37
I pretty much agree with you on that. I think Bush’s embrace of Latinos was truly compassionate and truly heartfelt. Bush was, on matters of race, a tolerant and open minded guy, and doesn’t get enough credit for it. But, as you acknowledge, his efforts and tone on immigration were met with an enormous GOP backlash. And now, the backlash rules the GOP, and the immigration moderates dare not speak out. So Bush really didn’t “show that the GOP can reach out to Latinos successfully” as you said. He showed that the GOP, in it’s current configuration, refuses to reach out successfully to Latinos because reaching out raises the hackles of a large part of the base. As to your comment at 41 about there being some “radicals” mixed in to the immigrant population, I really don’t see it. I don’t think any of these guys (and it’s mostly guys) are coming here to start a revolution. They’re here to make more money than they could at home.
54 agentprovocateur // Sep 14, 2009 at 8:46 pm
The Democrats dont [sic] win without 37 percent of Democrats that are and were Truthers, in 2008.
Do be sure to provide evidence that supports that claim.
el gato, I’m not convinced that Hispanics are being demonized…
Well, unless one of the Hispanics in question happens to be named Sonia Sotomayor.
The White House, heretofore unafraid, must now ask before a particularly egregious appointment “How will this look on Beck?” or “What will Beck do with this?”
Oh look, it’s today’s comic relief. I’m sure they are just shaking in their wingtips and high heels over in the White House about the supposed power of Glenn Beck.
However them being turned into a Victimization Identity Group of Racists looking for special priveleges [sic] and protections and preferences is terrible.
But the dastardly Left is what it is.
I would imagine that escapevelocity has some sort of shrine in the corner of his/her room dedicated to the evils of the Left. It probably contains dolls of Snidely Whiplash, Boris Badenov, and Natasha Fatale with evil liberal epithets written all over them. Such would match his silly, cartoonish ranting.
How did Bush do that?
And many of the things that Bush wanted to do have been sharply criticized by many conservatives and Republicans. Does anyone seriously believe that today’s GOP would ever call for providing illegal immigrants with a path to citizenship or a guest worker program?
55 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 8:47 pm
I just looked at the Horowitz article referenced in the OP.
Fantastic, couldnt have said it better myself David. Keep up the good work!
56 el gato libre // Sep 14, 2009 at 8:54 pm
escape at 44
Sure, you can drag out a lot of radical leftist tracts that are reflexively censorious of America, and go way overboard on identity politics issues. I do not agree with these people in the slightest. But the thing is these people have never been mainstream in the way that the far right is mainstream now. Carter and Clinton and LBJ–and Obama–just were not on the same page with these people. I can’t deny that radical leftism is fairly mainstream in academe…The thing is the influence pretty much stops there. You can’t just trot out some far, far left Marxist analyses of race and politics and then say “that’s what most left-of-center people believe” because it’s not true. It’s not mainstream (even for most on the left)
However, all this far right stuff we’re talking about–hating on Latinos, Nativism, Teabagging, Palin, etc.–may or may not be the mainstream views of average repubs, but it looks that way because any attempt at moderation on these issues gets you branded as a RINO or “cocktail Republican.” So the loud, brash, ugly side of the GOP drowns out everything else.
57 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Its mainstream and in fact is in control of the Democrat Party.
Van Jones, Sunstein, Black Panther Voter Intimidation pardons, Weathermen Friends, Rev. Wright, Maxine Waters, John Conyers, Khalidi, Chrisopher Dodd, Ron Dellums….
the list is very very long.
It may be that you think that since the New Left Radical positions and thought have been mainstreamed on the Left….that they are no longer radical. That is false.
58 el gato libre // Sep 14, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Escape, you are so wrong.
The Black Panthers died out in the 70’s. Maxine waters is an idiot, but she is hardly a mainstream Democrat. And give the Bill Ayers thing a rest. Obama was an acquaintance, that does not mean he is a disciple. That’s some ludicrous guilt by association BS. Van Jones is a black eye on the administration, this I’ll admit. But if you are so sure about Obama’s “radical leftist” bent, why don’t you tell me the specific policies of Obama’s that are Marxist/Radicalist/New Leftist in origin, in your opinion.
Meanwhile, Beck, Teabaggers, Palin etc. are DEFINING the tone and agenda of the GOP right now.
59 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 9:32 pm
That Joe Lieberman was drubbed out of the Democrat Party, is a priori evidence of the radicalization of the Democrat Party.
People like Horowitz, Ron Rodash, Peter Berman, Michael Waltzer moved centrist from Leftwing Radicalism towards a centrist Leftist position.
You seem to be unable to understand that just because the country was pushed Left via radical political activism, strategies, and tactics (like focusing on Polical Correctness, Multi-culturalism, Education Cirricula, Revisionist History, Media Domination) that the Center moved Left and thus the Reaganite Conservatives are now the far Right. This is essentially the anti Christian position. Both Parties membership in 1960 would be called Christian Radical, by today’s standards. The Christian Right is not radical, but to the radical Left and its successful campaign against Christianity and other Western Institutions and History, that it seems to be now, only from the perspective of no history….or the Leftwing zeitgeist.
You really need to think deeper.
Its true that the Left has power in the media and in academia to paint an ugly picture of the GOP and especially Christians and Conservatives. But that distorted view is not reality….though it is certainly effective.
And here you are claiming that the GOP is run by radicals and that the Democrats are mainstream centrists. You are merely parroting the zeitgeist, being fed to you on a silver platter. Then again, you probably “want to believe.” And none are so gullible as those.
60 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Meanwhile, Beck, Teabaggers, Palin etc. are DEFINING the tone and agenda of the GOP right now. — el gato
There is nothing extreme about those 3 entities.
Sarah Palin is a soccer mom with a nice family, a good marriage and has served with distinction as Mayor and Governor in the State of Alaska. She fought corruption within here party there and won, and had a stellar approval rating from Alaskans across the political spectrum. Furthermore she vetoed denying state employee benefits to partners of homosexuals.
Painting her as some kind of radical, clearly demonstrates that you are out of touch with reality…and have bought the Leftwing party line hook line and sinker.
Maxine Waters is more than just an idiot, Maxine Waters is the mainstream of African American politics, fully supported by the Democrat Party and is mainstream in teh Democrat Party.
Cynthia McKinney is a nutjob, Maxine Waters and Sheila Jackson Lee are mainstream and representative of the controlling wing of Democrat Party.
61 UncleZeb // Sep 14, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Yeah, Beck is a buffoon.
1. Van Jones – resigned/booted
2. NEA head – reassigned
3. 2 million people in Washington
4. Acorn Exposed
5. Senate votes to halt Acorn funding for housing
I hope he stays a buffoon. He is doing work that Frum doesnt have the balls to do much less the MSM.
62 balconesfault // Sep 14, 2009 at 9:58 pm
John Conyers? His wife is a loony, but he’s hardly farther left than the mainstream of the Republican Party is to the right these days.
And Chris Dodd? Jesus H. Christ. The man is a subsidiary of the banking industry.
63 balconesfault // Sep 14, 2009 at 9:59 pm
3. 2 million people in Washington
Running from reality as fast as you can …
64 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 10:00 pm
ACORN, the community organizing Pimpin Child Sex Slaves from El Savador organization with 14 state election fraud investigations currently being undertaken, and 50 convicted members for election fraud already……is the mainstream of the Democrat Party. They were invited to help with the Census that has been taken into the Political Wing of the White House.
Obama is a Rev. Wright ingratiating himself to the mainstream political power machine of the African American community……was an ACORN proponent. An Alinsky “Rules for Radicals” community organizer.
This isnt crazy talk…..this is reality.
If you arent interested in reality, but in furthering the Radical Lefts agenda by smeering anybody opposed to it as an ugly hater of the most vile sort…..that is your problem. And unfortunately that makes it my problem too, as I and rational people like me have to deal with this situation.
65 Churl // Sep 14, 2009 at 10:02 pm
agentprovocateur
el gato, I’m not convinced that Hispanics are being demonized…
Well, unless one of the Hispanics in question happens to be named Sonia Sotomayor.
You call that demonization? If the Wise Latina was demonized, how would you describe Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings?
66 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Conyers and Dodd have a long history during the Cold War of connections with Radical Left and Communist and Soviet Front organizations. Especially Conyers.
Dodd was out front on the attempt to prevent US assistance to the Contras, and de facto support of the massive human rights abusing Sandinistas who were pro Soviet Totalitarians.
This is not controversial. This is just reality.
67 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Conyers was out front on the drive to impeach Bush.
A complete nutter.
68 Roddy66 // Sep 14, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Posting like these are so divisive, why do you have to tag on a real conservative , doing a great job for the republic. Why don’t you find a communist or liberal target and go after them, type something about van jones or acorn or pelosi and stop creating diversion to the our focus.
69 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Indeed Churl.
And what about Estrada?
Why isnt that a sign of hatred towards hispanics by the Left?
Its not reality but Leftwing media portrayals that are the problem for the GOP.
And that is why they cant stand people like Beck and Limbaugh….they know that they can no longer control the media and expect media complacency and outright propagandizing and cheering. The Right has a national television megaphone and the internet has ripped a gapping hole in their domination of the media.
70 agentprovocateur // Sep 14, 2009 at 10:19 pm
That Joe Lieberman was drubbed out of the Democrat [sic] Party, is a priori evidence of the radicalization of the Democrat Party.
What a crock. Actually, the reason that Joe Lieberman is no longer a Democrat is because the Democratic Primary voters in Connecticut did not like his stand on the Iraq War and he found a way, by leaving the Democratic Party, to keep his Senate seat.
Conyers and Dodd have a long history during the Cold War of connections with Radical Left and Communist and Soviet Front organizations.
I see we have more comic relief for the day. Where oh where is the modern-day Joe McCarthy to bring these comsymps to justice?
71 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 10:35 pm
McCarthyist charge, right on cue.
The facts are the facts.
These communist sympathizers are the base and in control of the Democrat Party…..prominent members and mainstream in the Democrat Party…..as well as the Left.
72 Addie // Sep 14, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Wow you guys are funny. I’m not old and I am a BECK FAN! I’ve been to 3 Tea Parties in 2 different states and each time was shocked to see MORE YOUNG PEOPLE then old! Did you even check out the photos and videos of DC? There are FAR more young then old!
Let’s see because of Beck, Van Jones has been booted out of the White House Green Czar job. Because of Beck’s 9-12 project, over 1 million people descended on Washington, because of Glen Beck millions of people are more aware of the corruption on ACORN and the corruption in government. Now, tell me exactly what Frum has done other then show PURE jealousy and whine?
The problem with the GOP is they are hell bent on destroying it from the inside out! They are battling among each other and demonizing each other. They are demonizing the birthers and demonizing the tea party people. Like I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, “I did not leave the republican party, the party left me!”
The GOP has split their party and as a result, they may not win another election again. It will be very cold day in hell before I even vote republican again. 3rd party all the way and don’t think that I am alone. There is a very strong network of regular folk (NOT OLD FOLK like you all seem to think) out there that feel the GOP is a heading in the wrong direction….to far to the left!
73 Addie // Sep 14, 2009 at 10:45 pm
roddy66 // Sep 14, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Posting like these are so divisive, why do you have to tag on a real conservative , doing a great job for the republic. Why don’t you find a communist or liberal target and go after them, type something about van jones or acorn or pelosi and stop creating diversion to the our focus.
____________________________________________
roddy – you are exactly right! But no, these stupid, dumb M’F “liberal republicans” would rather demonize their own CORE CONSERVATIVES. Methinks they are MoveOn members claiming to be conservatives.
This is exactly why the GOP is falling apart! People like Frum who claims to be conservative (LOL) would rather demonize real conservatives for actually getting people up off the coach and down to DC. Frum hates that Beck is a better man the he.
74 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Conyers frequently posts at Daily Kos and Democratic Underground.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1987
75 lord_wilhelm // Sep 14, 2009 at 10:48 pm
How dare someone actually delve into investigative reporting without first obtaining approval from Mr. Frum.
Better watch out Mr. Frum might call you a Commie! and label you as a hypocrite to demonstrate Mr. Frum’s ignorance with respect to comparing Van Jones with Ron Paul.
This article is laughable! No wonder the MSM is going out of business.
76 stuiec // Sep 14, 2009 at 10:52 pm
OK – the original post debunking Glenn Beck’s stand on Cass Sunstein said that Beck’s entire argument was based on the faulty presumption that Sunstein and Peter Singer are soulmates:
“Beck instead relies instead on an argument from pure assertion: Sunstein opposes animal cruelty, the Princeton philosopher Peter Singer also opposes animal cruelty, therefore Sunstein must agree with everything Peter Singer has ever said or written.
“This is beyond sloppy, beyond ignorant, proceeding straight toward the deceptive.”
The basis of this new piece on Beck makes the same logical error, assuming that because Glenn Beck likes Ron Paul, he must therefore endorse all of Paul’s views:
“Except… the American politician who most closely associates with 9/11 denialists is Congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul. And who acts as Paul’s chief TV enthusiast and publicist? Glenn Beck of course. … on which ’side’ do we find Ron Paul? And isn’t that the same “side” where we find Glenn Beck?”
The difference between Beck associating with Paul and Van Jones “associating” with the Truthers is that Van Jones signed a petition that actually defended Trutherism. Has Glenn Beck ever endorsed Paul’s Truther views or friends per se?
Maybe the question of “sides” is an unduly restrictive view, and a reason why the “new conservative majority” is a pipe dream. You can’t expect to create a majority of Americans who share the same political agenda in each of a panoply of particulars; you can expect to create dynamic coalitions of Americans who share similar views on a particular issue, and perhaps a stable coalition around a core set of conservative values. When it comes to getting a Van Jones out of the Obama Administration, Glenn Beck is on the side of a majority of conservatives and moderates. When it comes to Cass Sunstein, he’s on a minority side.
As far as Ron Paul is concerned, if Paul votes in the House against the Obama stimulus bill, do we have to rack ourselves with self-doubt and guilt for being “on his side”? Do we demand that Paul’s vote be ignored because it “contaminates” the other No votes?
When Glenn Beck is wrong on an issue, feel free to speak out in opposition to him. When he is right on an issue, accept his effectiveness in moving that issue forward. Leveraging his popularity in pursuit of a political goal you share with him doesn’t make you a bad person or a Beckslave.
77 Addie // Sep 14, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Glen Beck has millions of fans…how many do you have David Frum? 5? I had never heard of you before, I just had to look you up and wasn’t really impressed. I’m guessing you couldn’t rally 5 people to go to DC even if you paid their way.
78 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 11:15 pm
ACORN Founder Wade Rathke Wanted Terrorist Attack on Republican Convention to Succeed
By Matthew Vadum on 9.13.09
American Spectator…
ACORN founder Wade Rathke didn’t have a problem with domestic terrorists trying to kill delegates at the Republican Party’s national convention in 2008
http://spectator.org/blog/2009/09/13/acorn-founder-wade-rathke-want
79 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Let’s not forget Barney “my homosexual lover ran a queer prostituion ring out of my condo” Frank.
Another leadership position in the Democrat Party.
80 gmca // Sep 14, 2009 at 11:41 pm
You know that when you quote someone and then have to say, “In other words …” that your argument is a strawman, right?
81 Michael Babbitt // Sep 14, 2009 at 11:49 pm
Sorry, David F but David Horowitz is on the mark here. You just don’t get it. Your niceness approach is a loser from the get go. Is Glenn Beck sometimes a bit much? Yes, sometimes. But what is striking is his ability to embody a lot of the emotion of common people, actually their shock to the idiocy that is Washington today. I think you and many others of the punditry do not really understand the reality of Barack Obama. He is extremely smart and gifted — but unfortunately as a BS artist, adept at manipulating people. He is a radical who doesn’t even know how radical he is. But he knows how to operate his PR talents. To think that people are not shouting about the deficits he and the Dems are proposing is to realize that something has gone very wrong. And being mild mannered and good tempered is not facing the reality of our times. I want no part of your tranquilized majority; it sleeps while the country is steamrolled into silliness.
82 EscapeVelocity // Sep 14, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Obama Calls Kanye West A “Jackass”
83 Kanzeon // Sep 14, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Mr. Frum,
Do you seriously think there has ever been a scrap of difference between Glenn Beck and David Horowitz?
On Thursday, Mr. Horowitz wrote an article calling Obama “The Manchurian Candidate.” Seriously: the man who hired Larry Summers, Tim Geitner, and Cass Sustein, and FIRED Van Jones, and proposes a healthcare reform package more conservative than Nixon’s, is a dangerous, anti-American far left plant, head of a radical regime. He said this., in print. I know, you won’t believe me: it’s just too crazy to bear, but please look it up. He thinks this is sane discourse.
Here, he openly defends false (or at least exaggerated) attacks. He’s stupid enough to go down in print as not caring what is true or false, and then will turn around nitpick statements from Democrats, looking for a stray comment, another “spread the wealth” admission.
Your mission is hopeless. There’s no one left but the clowns, and they don’t like you.
Palin/Beck 2012!
84 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 12:05 am
Horowitz knows the Left way better than Glenn Beck. You would be wise to listen to his council.
That being said. Go ahead with your charges of McCarthyism.
They arent working anymore, just like the Racism charges. They game is up.
85 Kanzeon // Sep 15, 2009 at 12:20 am
Is Kayne West not a jackass?
86 JD2k10 // Sep 15, 2009 at 12:37 am
Glen Beck is not on anyones side, and If I recall he never said Cass Sunstein was a raving leftist nutcase. I think what he said was the guy is a solid academic, and from all accounts a nice guy, but he has some wacky Idea’s. And while I do not always see eye to eye with Beck, he is right, Cass Sunstein has some crazy Idea’s in his book “Nudge” and Mister Frum, If you think the Idea’s that MR. Sunstein postulates in his book Nudge are good Idea’s, that Might be the reason you don’t understand what Beck is saying. Because you one in effect part of the problem , and the Question you should ask your self is: who’s side are you on? then ask your self what makes you think that the people of the United States are Republican or Democrat’s pawns to anger or mold to serve your will? Is it not, you guys work for the people, not the people work for you? I know I am Naive to think that still, but guess what, before every thing is said and done, we will flush all of the people that think like you from Washington and Hopefully get people that wish to serve the People into Washington.
Sheesh David Frum, smart as can be and Dumb as a box of rocks all at the same time!
87 suedi52 // Sep 15, 2009 at 12:40 am
Haven’t seen Glenn? He’s on the CONSTITUTION’S side. At least he reports the news, which is something the media doesn’t like to do. And, he tries to get it right. And has, in most respects. Why 30 Czars? And some loons at that? Why 800 billion in earmarks and other crap? Why nationalized healthcare? Why a tariff on tires? Why an allegiance to SEIU? Why do we now own GM? The American people are sick of the waste, the lack of clarity, the huge deficit, the push for an over the top healthcare bill. Don’t give me it started with BUSH. It started even before him. And now it’s time for the American people to demand an end to corporate, union, private interests running this country to the profit of our elected officials. The revolution is on!
88 Doh // Sep 15, 2009 at 12:47 am
What side? Whatever side David Frum isn’t on would make a good start. Loser.
89 Roddy66 // Sep 15, 2009 at 12:52 am
Your situational awareness sucks big time, the game rules have changed, is not politics as usual anymore, you have one side that have polarized the country to the highest level in 200 years, their take no prisioners, I will pass this bill message and posture can not be defited with timid behaviour, Sen Mccain would have lost by a huge margin for being timid and unemotional, Gov Palin saved his ego ass.
This establishment and his brainless minion of the MSM , dkos and huffington are pulling no breaks, are breaking every law they can get away with, intimidating, bribing, lying etcc.. to destroy our democratic and capitalism system, our faith believes.
So to whomever is reading this, you have to act, the real silent majority was not silent anymore last Saturday and has not being quiet for a while, this Canadian may have the name but not the spirit of the true patriot silent majority. Now is the time to move out your butt and start rejecting those that makes you break, that don’t report the truth, roll over the ones wanting you to stop. There are no more stops until these illusory bills have been defeated and the congress and senate returned to a more balance mix.
90 kagiso3741 // Sep 15, 2009 at 1:12 am
Frum, you have messed up big time this article .. David Horowitz was not conceding that Beck was wrong! He only was exaggerating his point in a hypothetical sense! Your tone of shock in this article is childish when you consider what the leftists said about President Bush for the past 8 years! And Beck has never lied . He uses videos and facts to make his point! You are the one propulgating a lie by saying Beck lies. Just like you misrepresented David Horowitz’s comment! Some journalist you are —NOT.
91 Shyster // Sep 15, 2009 at 1:17 am
While stating that Glenn Beck has little regard for facts, Frum does his usual job of ignoring facts that are at variance with his admittedly demented view.
Give it up, Frum. You’re a lightweight and merely a useful idiot of the left.
How does one have a discussion with someone so devoid of intellect he can’t construct an intelligible argument? Does Frum even have the foggiest notion of the structure of discourse?
It wouldn’t appear so…
92 redpetunia // Sep 15, 2009 at 1:38 am
I really don’t understand why you would be offended by Beck characterizing Sunstein as a radical. By all accounts including my husband’s law review memories Sunstein is radical. And proudly so. Apparently he is a nice guy, so. That doesn’t make his views on animal rights any less radical….. One radical advisor is an interesting choice. But Obama doesn’t seem to have any normally thinking friends. They all seem to be on the furthest fringes of thought on every topic.
Right now there is only one person in the Media who is really willing ask the hard questions and give a voice to the qualms many of us have about Obama’s unprecedented power grab. And that is Glen Beck.
When I first heard Beck I was cautious too. My daughter kept talking about him… It took me a while to get him. He doesn’t come from a academic background and doesn’t speak that language that you are comfortable with. But Beck is smart and he is right about most things. He communicates in a way that you probably find off putting. But he is right. And he is braver than anyone else out there right now.
Don’t dismiss Beck he is doing important, good, work.
It take a whole bunch of guts to go up a man as powerful as Obama and demand he answer to the people of this country. Glen Beck is making real, dangerous, enemies. And Obama may not be a violent thug. But many of his friends and supporters are. Obama is part and parcle of the Chicago/Union machine. How many suspicious deaths come out of that machine? I don’t see you going up against that machine much these days.
Maybe you don’t recognize your better when you see him.
93 mickster99 // Sep 15, 2009 at 1:49 am
suedi52, escapevelocity:
Trust no one but Glenn. Only he has the revealed truth. Only he knows the secret Commie Conspiracy being executed even now under the veiled secrecy of the Trilateral Commission . The Trilateral Commission is the super-secret elite that brought Obama as a child from Kenya secretly and planted him with a white mother in Hawaii. They also control Acorn as well their most insidious front organizations: the Sierra Club, the ACLU, and FEMA. Together they are plotting to destroy the american way of life. Glenn has secret information that he will reveal on his show detailing the secret plans for the mass incarceration of all Republicans. This list of “enemies” will be obtained by the U.S. Census Acorn agents with the express intent to round up and confine in secret detention facilities already build by FEMA in both Louisiana and in both Canada and Mexico. Mexico’s first step will be to create a legal drug paradise and then concentration camps designated specifically for conservatives. Where you will be given drugs and possibly euthanized for the good of new Republic. This all true. I can only reveal this to you if you pledge to secrecy until Glenn’s broadcast later this week.
94 Kanzeon // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:00 am
mickster99:
You didn’t even mention, as did redpetunia, that Obama’s minions are trying to kill the poor truthteller, or that he goes up against the forces of evil for free, at great personal risk, without collecting a paycheck. A man of his talent could sell out and praise the Obama administration, and become a multimillionaire overnight, but chooses not to – he chooses to tell the unpopular truth, no matter how he might suffer financially.
95 SFTor1 // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:36 am
On another note:
I am a European-style liberal, let that be said. But I do not mind listening to conservatives who can present a cogent argument, whether it is George Will, or back in the day William Buckley.
Glenn Beck? Come on, folks, he is an embarrassment to political commentary, an embarrassment to television (no small feat,) and certainly a massive embarrassment to the conservative side.
This is really not a matter of judgment.
96 rbottoms // Sep 15, 2009 at 4:00 am
Is the GOP determined to own the title of most insensitive political apparatus ever?
97 mickster99 // Sep 15, 2009 at 4:33 am
kanzeon
Yes Beck is a saint. As redpetunia has testified. Despite his self-confessions of being a Dirtbag and drunken loser he is a testament to the self’s will to purification. I believe he has dedicated much of his incredible wealth to fund world wide sanctuarys named Dirtbag 9/12 Houses that will prove most effective at purifying and troubled by John Barleycorn. those who suffer under the sway of demon run. I am aware that John Ensign and Mark Sanborn will be committing themselves to the Dirtbag 9/12 house this next weekend to exorcise their demons. Thanks for pointing out thr good work being done by redpetunia. Glenn deserves all our and protection from godless demons of the left. And please send your love gift to Protect Glenn. Thank you Brother.
98 Rick Moran // Sep 15, 2009 at 6:53 am
Not exactly sure Ron Paul is a “Truther.” But there is little doubt he pandered to their doubts by hinting during the campaign that he might be willing to reopen the 9/11 Commission. I don’t believe he ever went so far as to say that he believed 9/11 was an inside job.
Not a Paul supporter in the slightest but in a post about “truth,” best we stick to the facts.
99 JeninCT // Sep 15, 2009 at 7:35 am
It’s amusing to read all about Beck audience from people who don’t watch the show. Beck’s audience includes my 14 year old son and his Grandmother. Imagine, two generations apart and they talk about their love of country and the beauty of the Constitution.
Beck is singlehandedly accomplishing what all the over-educated, self-important, stuffed shirts couldn’t. He’s getting people off their couches and onto the streets.
You’re all jealous.
100 balconesfault // Sep 15, 2009 at 8:49 am
Whose side is Glenn Beck on?
Glenn Beck’s side.
As I said elsewhere … Beck’s audience is around 2.6-2.7 million. Republican Party membership is around 45 million.
I suspect that over time, Beck is likely to slightly increase the first number … and cause an erosion of the second.
This serves Beck’s purposes in two ways. First – more viewers, more money. Second – his schtick works far better with the Democrats in power than when the Republicans are spending the money.
101 Conservatarian // Sep 15, 2009 at 9:48 am
David Frumm, you are so very, very wrong on this one. Since when is “over the top” o r”off target” an acknowlegement that something is “false.” It is obvious you do’t like Glenn Beck manner of presentation and just as obvious that you did not actually listen, I mean really listen, to lenn Beck’s criticisms of Cass Sustein. Beck never said Sustein was a Communist, Marxist or even “raving leftist.” He pointed out that Sustein has some far out, nutty ideas, which raises questions about his ability to have authority over government regulation. It is another argument altogether to say, as I understand you are saying, that Sustein is the best of a bad lot.
Glenn Beck is an independent thinker. He may be right. He may be wrong on some issues. I like his presentation manner, myself. But don’t let your dislike blind you to what he is actually saying.
And he is doing this: he is motivating thousands of conservatives to get involved. I do not see you or David Horowitz (who I also admire) being that successful.
102 sinz54 // Sep 15, 2009 at 9:55 am
escapevelocity:
Evidently you have not been reading Michelle Malkin’s columns, or Mark Krikorian’s columns in the National Review.
They don’t treat Hispanics as individuals. They go out of their way to denounce them and their culture: They get drunk too much. They cause too many automobile accidents. They cause crime. They take jobs away from poor white citizens and poor black citizens. Most of them go on welfare. Etc.
And Mark Krikorian really lays it on the line: America should just slam the door even on LEGAL immigration because we have enough Americans (read: enough WASP Americans) already.
The right wing of the GOP has turned Hispanic immigration into a kind of invasion, hinting darkly that it will permanently change American culture.
103 sinz54 // Sep 15, 2009 at 9:57 am
sftor1:
What does that mean, exactly? In what ways do you differ from “American-style liberals”?
104 sinz54 // Sep 15, 2009 at 10:08 am
addie & mbabbit@hotmai: There are two sides to a movement.
One side deals with campaign tactics: Firing up the base, inspiring crowds, leading demonstrations and protest marches.
The other side deals with exploring new ideas and policies–if the movement ever does take real power, how should it govern?
The first side is typified by blogs like RedState.com and Glenn Beck’s show. They care less about eventual governance than they do about tactics: Opposing Obama and organizing the true believers to turn out in demonstrations and at the polls. If those are the things you care about, then you need to go to RedState.com and not to New Majority.
The second side is typified by New Majority and probably the Heritage Foundation. They care more about having a consistent set of policies that could lead the nation–if the GOP ever won any more elections. And policies that would lead the nation must necessarily be centrist and involve lots of messy compromises with one’s political opponents. As presidents, Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41 all came to that realization.
And as a result, this side is frequently slammed by the first side for not being “pure” enough or angry enough. (RedState.com slammed the Heritage Foundation for willing to accept a modification of ObamaCare–if co-ops replaced the public option and the entire package were made cheaper. To RedState, we must oppose Obama on everything and anything he does–no compromises, no deals.)
I didn’t come to New Majority to learn how to fire up the base. We’ve already got machinery for that–and judging by some of the posts, the base is as fired up as can be. I came here to discuss how an eventual Republican Administration can do a better job than the last one, and keep its approval ratings high.
105 Mountainaires // Sep 15, 2009 at 10:13 am
Exactly what do conservatives stand for anymore? I used to be a “conservative.” But, now, I don’t want to be associated with the ideologues and neocons who lied this country into war in Iraq–that is certainly not a “conservative” policy. And, I don’t want to be associated with David Horowitz any more than I want to be associated with Michael Savage; the two are virtually indistinguishable in their hate speech. I applaud your questions, Mr. Frum, but frankly, you lost me in the first sycophantic sentence. If you “respect” David Horowitz, well, there’s your problem, right there. And, rbottoms, 96, you nailed it.
106 tim.or.tom // Sep 15, 2009 at 10:20 am
Another disappointingly dishonest piece from Mr. Frum. He seems to be in a contest with Chucky Johnson as to who can smear the Right in the most dishonest way before next year’s elections.
[quote]In other words: Horowitz agrees that Beck’s attack on Sunstein was false. Yet that falsehood does not worry Horowitz. The country is “under assault.” (As the broadcaster Mark Levin has said, President Obama is “literally at war” with the American people.) In a war, truth must yield to the imperatives of victory. Any conservative qualms about the untruth of Beck’s defamation of Sunstein amounts to “appeasement” – an appeasement that will end with the left decapitating the right. This is the language and logic of Leninism. There is no truth or falsehood comrades, there is only service to the revolution or betrayal of the revolution.[/quote]
This is staggeringly dishonest. Horowitz disagrees with Beck on the issue of Cass Sunstein. Frum extrapolates this – dishonestly – into meaning that Horowitz will blithely ignore the facts because he values Glenn Beck’s rabble-rousing abilities more.
This would be more convincing if people were gods and never made mistakes. David Frum, dare I say it, has been inaccurate in the past, and stubborn, at times, in defending positions he believed accurate when they were actually not. Mr. Frum has also defended colleagues who have been accused, rightly or wrongly, of being inaccurate. If we apply the standard David Frum has applied to Mr. Horowitz and Mr. Beck, David Frum does not come up smelling like a rose.
Perhaps Mr. Horowitz has weighed Mr. Beck’s apparent misguided focus on Sunstein and determined that it is a small part of the whole of the man’s work and not enough to cut ties with him the way Frum obviously thinks people should do. This is a debatable position, but it is far more reasonable than the one Frum dishonestly says Horowitz holds. One also wonders where Mr. Frum gets off thinking that accusing people of Leninist thinking and behavior will convince anyone not already ardently on his side.
[quote]Second, this right-wing Leninism exacts a terrible moral price. Notice that David Horowitz calls the left “deceitful” in his blogpost. Presumably that’s a bad thing. Likewise, when Rep. Joe Wilson shouted “You lie” at President Obama, he did not intend that as a compliment. So truth is important to conservatives, or at least we talk as if it were. Yet now David Horowitz tells me that it’s 10,000 times more important to “fight for our side.”[/quote]
Deceit is the hallmark of David Frum’s posts. Deceit is the foundation of his entire political philosophy. David Frum lies every time he puts his hands to a keyboard. This is demonstrable. This post of his here is another perfect example of it. David Frum has no credibility whatsoever to be criticizing people for being deceitful or overlooking the alleged deceitfulness of others.
[quote]Third – how do we define “our side”? Horowitz harshly condemns Obama appointee Van Jones. Van Jones was eventually forced to resign not because of any of the allegations Glenn Beck hurled at him, but because the Gateway Pundit blog unearthed evidence that Van Jones had consorted with 9/11 denialists. So that’s the other side, right? Except… the American politician who most closely associates with 9/11 denialists is Congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul. And who acts as Paul’s chief TV enthusiast and publicist? Glenn Beck of course.[/quote]
Mr. Frum, your hypocrisy is stunning. Here you are, constantly whining on your site how the ‘extremist’ or ‘fringe’ Right, whatever slur you wish to use on this particular day, has ostracized you and unjustly tried to take over the Right and throw people like you out of it. Yet here you are, castigating David Horowitz precisely because he will not kow-tow to YOUR line as to who should be in and who should be out of what you feel is the real conservative movement.
Mr. Frum, what have you done in your life again for conservatism, other than stabbing it in the back in 2008 and this year, to display such arrogance and such an inflated idea of your standing within the conservative movement?
[quote]David Horowitz has strong feelings about 9/11 and the post-9/11 world. He helped to lead the campaign against Ward Churchill, the disgraced University of Colorado professor who argued that the United States had brought 9/11 on itself. Question for David: If Ward Churchill is “the other side,” on which “side” do we find Ron Paul? And isn’t that the same “side” where we find Glenn Beck?
Why would David Horowitz want to place himself there?[/quote]
Kruschev couldn’t have given a better denunciation speech.
There’s a reason why the David Frums and Meghan McCains and Charles Johnsons of the world are being left behind by conservatism: they aren’t conservative, they repeatedly and dishonestly attack conservatives and conservatism, and they are generally arrogant and unpleasant people to deal with. Please Mr. Frum, go back to your hole and don’t come out.
And by the way, you won’t find very many people who despise Luap Nor more than I do, so please don’t horribly insult me by saying I’m defending that insane asshat.
107 tim.or.tom // Sep 15, 2009 at 10:25 am
This is the typical liberal dishonest style of attacking. How do you know that the measure wasn’t filled with other nonsense that was the reason Enzi and the other Republicans voted against it? Typical, typical liberalism. Introduce a measure full of bullshit, add one provision that will allow you to browbeat conservatives emotionally if they vote against it, and then browbeat them emotionally when they do. I could introduce a bill tomorrow closing a loophole that allowed pedophiles to have unsupervised visits with little boys, but if I then proceed to cram ten million dollars of bullshit earmarks into it as well, it shouldn’t pass, no matter how much wailing and gnashing of teeth it will cause among dishonest liberals. I suspect that the language of this measure did not solely deal with that terrible pre-existing condition loophole, and I suspect that the closing of that loophole is not why Enzi and the others voted against it, and I suspect that once again we see the alleged future of conservatism showing its true liberal colors.
108 12-String Infidel // Sep 15, 2009 at 10:25 am
-Glen Beck is a manic Libertarian clown…we need more of those in this Country. He is often right.
-Cass Sunstein needs a good toupee, a full-time job outside of the public sector and a copy of the U.S. Bill Of Rights tattooed on his palm (for easy reference purposes).
-David Horowitz is an American patriot. I have a hard time with alleged ‘conservatives’ who slag him for the left-wing mistakes of his youth that he has more than atoned for over the years at university campuses nationwide. The only significant difference between a ‘conservative since birth’ and a reformed-leftist-turned-conservative is that the latter probably has a better record collection.
109 Rodak // Sep 15, 2009 at 10:49 am
the latter probably has a better record collection.
Good line. Did you steal it?
110 balconesfault // Sep 15, 2009 at 11:01 am
sinz: What does that mean, exactly? In what ways do you differ from “American-style liberals”?
Well, for one, people are called “liberal” in America who would be centrists (if not moderate-conservatives) in Europe.
111 Chris Balsz // Sep 15, 2009 at 11:01 am
“”from the article you linked In his own words: ‘A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government. Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom’s name.’ In other words, as I noted in my review of his book in Regulation magazine back in 2000, Sunstein is essentially saying that the Internet is breeding a dangerous new creature: Anti-Democratic Man. And government should not hesitate to act to counter it.”
This truncated description of Sunstein’s argument is a disservice to the argument … since it ignores what Sunstein has stated more recently about any governmental involvement:
‘But the kinds of regulation that would respond to my concerns, they’re not really feasible and they probably wouldn’t help. Most problems are best solved privately, not through government. There’s a problem of discourtesy in the world, which is best handled through social norms, which are indispensable. But you wouldn’t want the government to be mandating courtesy.’
Yes – technology has been evolving. Yes – the internet has been evolving. Yes – Sunstein never specifically called for government involvement in addressing the problems he saw in the internet, but just ruminated that such involvement might “not be rejected”. And after thinking about it more, he has concluded Most problems are best solved privately, not through government. ”
Then he ignores the Constitutional guarantee of free speech, untrammelled by regulations as to content. It is not a question of what could be made to function, or whether we would think a society burdened by such regulation would be “best”. It’s proscribed.
112 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 12:29 pm
mountainaires,
Do you want to be on the same side as Louis Farrakhan and Noam Chomskey?
113 balconesfault // Sep 15, 2009 at 12:40 pm
<b.Do you want to be on the same side as Louis Farrakhan and Noam Chomskey?
Sheesh. Intellectually facile.
If that’s the best argument for the modern Republican Party, you might as well blow away on the wind, following your intellectual heirs the Tories and the Whigs.
114 balconesfault // Sep 15, 2009 at 12:49 pm
The words of a raving socialist, according to some here:
One of the unique and wonderful things about America has always been our self-reliance, our rugged individualism, our fierce defense of freedom and our healthy skepticism of government. And figuring out the appropriate size and role of government has always been a source of rigorous and, yes, sometimes angry debate. That’s our history.
…
You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter — that at that point we don’t merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.
Who else is socialist in America these days? Apparently, the membership of the AMA, as well.
Most doctors — 63 percent — say they favor giving patients a choice that would include both public and private insurance. That’s the position of President Obama and of many congressional Democrats. In addition, another 10 percent of doctors say they favor a public option only; they’d like to see a single-payer health care system. Together, the two groups add up to 73 percent.
115 alpha247 // Sep 15, 2009 at 12:53 pm
David, this post summarized everything that has really been bothering me about conservatism over the past several years. Possibly it was just the mythology I was raised with, but I always believed we were the ones to whom truth mattered, the ones who wouldn’t sacrifice it for mere political gain over an adversary. Granted, politicians, even (gasp) GOP politicians have told people what they wanted to hear in order to get elected. But there was always a sense that, as a conservative, if you were wrong, or the facts of particular case didn’t appear to support you, the one thing you didn’t do was make stuff up or, worse, pretend that the truth wasn’t really the truth. In other words, we were the ones (so we thought) who believed that the end did not justify the means.
Sadly, this seems not to be the case anymore. Here, we have someone in Horowitz specifically arguing that the end does, in fact, justify the means. And it appears that millions more agree with him, either consciously or unsconsiously. Does truth then really matter? I always thought the whole point of the maxim “the end does not justify the means” was that if it does, all you are really left with is power. And I was taught that it didn’t profit a man to gain the whole world, but lose his soul.
Along with that is this argument I see more and more of, which is that They did it first. As if that makes a thing OK. Didn’t we learn in kindergarten that just because Johnny did something wrong didn’t make it OK? When did “everyone else is doing it” become a moral absolute? If you criticize someone’s behavior as morally unacceptable, how does adopting their approach allow you to maintain the moral high ground?
116 anniemargret // Sep 15, 2009 at 1:04 pm
alpha7: “Along with that is this argument I see more and more of, which is that They did it first. As if that makes a thing OK. Didn’t we learn in kindergarten that just because Johnny did something wrong didn’t make it OK? When did “everyone else is doing it” become a moral absolute? If you criticize someone’s behavior as morally unacceptable, how does adopting their approach allow you to maintain the moral high ground?”
Beautifully said. As a left of center Democrat, I second it, even though you probably prefer I not.
We are all speaking over each other’s heads in America now. We are now as divided as we ever were, and an internal civil war is rising by day. This is not good for our country. Somewhere along the line, grown-up politicians, along with talking heads on the left and the right, and most importantly American citizens, must stand up and admit that both sides have their extremists, but that extremism never wins. Never. It just stirs the pot, but it eventually always boils over.
Our national discourse is now plunging more and more into an immoral abyss. We can make their arguments without resorting to hate-filled rhetoric. We are going to pay for the price for all this ‘debate’ – sooner or later, violence will ensue. Then the same people inciting the violence with incendiary talk will pretend they had nothing to do with it.
Is that what we want as a nation? Do you not think Bin Laden and the global terrorists are not laughing in their soup as they witness the breakdown in a civil society that once was ours?
117 anniemargret // Sep 15, 2009 at 1:08 pm
sinz54: “I didn’t come to New Majority to learn how to fire up the base. We’ve already got machinery for that–and judging by some of the posts, the base is as fired up as can be. I came here to discuss how an eventual Republican Administration can do a better job than the last one, and keep its approval ratings high.”
You’ve taken the road less traveled. It is a strong argument and you deserve kudos for it. Here’s mind…KUDOS!
118 Roddy66 // Sep 15, 2009 at 1:23 pm
“You sit there with that permanent smirk on your face and contribute nothing,” Levin said.
119 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 1:33 pm
This is just false,
Conservatives arent liars.
Joe Wilson called Obama a liar, 2 days later, the Senate added enforcement provisions to the impotent language in the Health Care Reform Bill that had been specifically rejected before.
Joe Wilson wasnt lying, Obama was in fact a liar. And lying to the American Peoples faces.
This idea that the Conservatives must lay there like scared dogs as the lying viscious Left tells an assortment of propaganda, half truths, outright lies, slander and smear, in academia and the media is utterly ridiculous.
I agree that sooner or later violence is going to ensue…..but its the Left that created the zeitgeist that will lead to violence. They always do. And when the violence comes they will blame conservative “haters” no doubt.
The real problem that the Leftwingers seem to have, is that Conservatives have grabbed the Lefts playbook and are starting to use the strategies that made the Left so effective in the past. “Now its time to stop this nonsense.” No it was time to stop that nonsense a long time ago. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
120 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 1:38 pm
There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
I think it’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away
We better stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, now, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
121 alpha247 // Sep 15, 2009 at 1:52 pm
escapevelocity: “Conservatives have grabbed the Lefts playbook and are starting to use the strategies that made the Left so effective in the past. ”
I don’t know if you were replying to me, but this is precisely what I was objecting to and what it appeared to me DF was objecting to in his post. If conservatives didn’t like it when it was done to us, why is it OK now? When did the Golden Rule cease to be a guiding principle in conservative morality? Why are all bets off now? Is there anything now that isn’t permissible? Maybe I’m missing something, but I still think DF is staking out the traditional conservative position here and I just don’t get the Horowitz mentality.
122 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 1:56 pm
If that’s the best argument for the modern Republican Party, you might as well blow away on the wind, following your intellectual heirs the Tories and the Whigs. — balcone
Its a response to the statement that he doesnt want to be associated with Michael Savage and David Horowitz.
Directly countering such foolish arguments is not the best argument for the Republican Party.
Yes, I think the Tories are fixin to make a giant comeback in the UK as Labour has imploded and their multiculturalism, abandon the white working class, mass immigration, has created a volatile mix over there….combined with their mishandling on the economy and financial sector.
But the argument is worth considering.
The thing about the Tories is that they have become the Party of Left-lite. There only argument is that they can run the Leftist Welfare State better than Labour. And that truly is an ideologically pathetic place to be.
123 balconesfault // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Its a response to the statement that he doesnt want to be associated with Michael Savage and David Horowitz.
OK – let’s see Republican leadership directly repudiate Savage and Horowitz, the way Democrats have repudiated Farrakhan.
Yes, I think the Tories are fixin to make a giant comeback in the UK
Yes, but here in America, they were the Conservatives of their time. And they lost big in the Revolution.
There only argument is that they can run the Leftist Welfare State better than Labour. And that truly is an ideologically pathetic place to be.
Actually, there’s kind of a similarity to Clinton there – he continued the Reagan revolution on many fronts, except that he ran a much more competent bureaucracy than Reagan or particularly Bush Jr. Which is why Alan Greenspan calls Clinton’s the most successful Republican Presidency in the last half century.
There is actually a great value to having Presidents who above all do a good job of running the ship of state. But unfortunately, such competence only lasts as long as the voting public realizes the value in it. Then some ideologue idiot like Bush slips into office, undervalues competence, and in 8 years the ship is broken.
124 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:13 pm
alpha,
Its war, my friend, not a friendly game of tennis. The Left is not interested in a friendly match of back and forth, they are interested in promoting and furthering an agenda. And they have been very efffective at doing so.
When the Nazis came at the French and British with Blitzkreig in 1940, it may have been terrible to adopt Nazi war strategies in defeating them…..but the important thing is that they are defeated. Similarly in the Cold War or now the War on IslamoFascism……that the US and its Western Allies did some dastardly things pursuing the goals of these endevours is without question…..but we didnt become as bad or worse than the enemy. The enemy doesnt and didnt win, when we break our principles in order to win…..we are clearly breaking our principles….and after we win, we will return to them. That is why winning is important. Because if we dont win, then we will return to Stalinist principles or Islamist principles.
The Indecent Left already has enough advantages. We uphold the principles of Free Speech, even for them, and we respect their rights to speak. However they dont respect our rights to speak. This gives them the advantage of shouting us down in the public sphere with smears, lies, if it doesnt work, then violence.
In the UK you can see that the Anti Shariah, Anti Jihad, Anti Islamification of Britain protesters leader was arrested (even though he had permits to protest) because a 1000 Muslims eager for violence gathered at Mosque where the protest was to be held. What happened? Those folks were effectively silenced. Bloodshed was avoided by capitulation to threats of violence by the state, with the result being the de facto limitation on free speech. The lesson here seems to be that violence works, and other groups should adopt it. Sticking to your prinicples of Non Violence only ensures that Great Britain will be Islamified…..as one side’s speech is not limited and the others is.
Do you see what Im trying to say?
The war is more important to win, than the principle is to keep untarnished.
Its more important that we win and can continue to persue individualism, equality before the law, and equal opportunity…….so that racism and tribalism of the Left, nor totalitarianism of the Left doesnt become the reality of the future.
125 balconesfault // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:22 pm
escapevelocity: Do you see what Im trying to say?
Yep – you’re so buried in your (and Beck’s) particular form of victimology, that you have no real grasp on reality anymore.
126 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:26 pm
OK – let’s see Republican leadership directly repudiate Savage and Horowitz, the way Democrats have repudiated Farrakhan.
and Chomskey?
I think that is an excellent analogy.
Farrakhan and Chomskey have been defended by the Left and the Democrats. Farrakhan continues to be invited to gigs like Tavis Smiley’s State of the Black Union, along with noted nutter Harry Belafonte.
It is in fact the Left that has persued the canard “no enemies on the Left.” The Republican Party ran David Duke out of town when he tried to convert from a Democrat to a Republican. The racists on the Right have been disempowered by the Republican Party, not empowered.
On the Left Racists like Rev. Wright, Andrew Young, Farrakhan, Mumia Abu-Jamal apologists, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Julian Bond, have been coddled and supported.
I suggest that instead of pointing out the mote in Republicans and Conservatives eyes, you concern yourself with the Beam in the Lefts and the Democrats eye.
But hey, that is just me. Continue the lies, slander and propaganda.
We now have the playbook and its going to get really interesting real fast. Who is going to blink first? That is why you are over here supporting Frum as he tries to backstab the Conservative Movement. Because you couldnt give a rat’s arse about the Beam in Democrats and Leftwingers eyes. But you are afraid of a Conservatism playing out of the Leftwing playbook.
You continuously rant about Beck, yet Keith Olbermann, nary a peep. The key is to attack Beck and silence him, but to let Olbermann continue on. Its not the principle of the matter to hold both sides to account, its just a tactic to win the war. Alinsky rules for radicals #4 Hold the opposition to their own principles.
127 alpha247 // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:33 pm
ev, I see what you are trying to say, just as I saw what Horowitz was trying to say. What I am saying is that don’t agree with him and I agree with DF. To just say this is a war doesn’t address DF’s points and it doesn’t really answer my questions; it just gives us a pass on directly addressing them at all.
I believe, and you seem to be stating it explcitly, that its precisely this perception that we’re at war that is used to justify means that otherwise would not be determined acceptable. Even so, VP Cheney, et al, notwithstanding, there are rules even in war; we do not set aside basic moral principles solely for the sake of victory. Or because the other side is doing this or that.
But what this is is a public debate about ideas, about how we want our government run, not a war. This is no more a war than a football game is a war. I will be going to a war soon; I have friends who have been there and back; I have presented flags to the mothers of sons who went there but didn’t come back. So if we could keep this whole thing in its proper context, that would be great.
128 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Yep – you’re so buried in your (and Beck’s) particular form of victimology, that you have no real grasp on reality anymore. — balconesfault
It really upsets you that the Right is now playing the victimization raquet now doesnt it. A very effective strategy that the Left used and continues to use to mobilize groups to vote and support them.
Reality left the Left a long time ago.
Speak Truth to Power
I continue to suggest ot the Left that they abandon all of this, that you are now criticizing the Right for. However they dont seem interested.
The Left is driving the poltical environment….if they dont like it, I suggest they change their ways. Because you can see that many conservatives dont like it, and so the Right will immediately draw back.
But if you dont, then as you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind.
129 tim.or.tom // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:37 pm
The problem Frum and his supporters here have is that with Alinsky’s tactics and strategy being taken to heart by conservatives, they (Frum and co.) have no place of power in the new structure. No one needs them. No one needs their arrogance, their elitism, their intellectual snobbery. We don’t need you.
Whose side is Glenn Beck on? Judging from his role in the current ACORN controversy, which has the potential to become a national political scandal on a Monicagate/Watergate scale (and I don’t mean this will directly affect the president the way Clinton or Nixon was affected, I mean that it could become a scandal that grips the entire country for an extended period of time), judging from that, Glenn Beck is on the side of the law and the American taxpayer.
So which side is David Frum on?
130 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:38 pm
That should be racket not raquet.
LOL!
131 theod // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Shorter Horowitz: Beck may be a factually challenged, hyperbolic, media clown but at least he is our factually challenged, hyperbolic media clown
ps: Beck is really on the side of milking his audience by selling stuff on his website. Eric Hoffer: “Every great cause begins as a movement, degenerates into a business and ends up as a racket.”
132 balconesfault // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:45 pm
On the Left Racists like Rev. Wright, Andrew Young, Farrakhan, Mumia Abu-Jamal apologists, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Julian Bond, have been coddled and supported.
You can tell when escape is being pinned … because he goes for the biggest shovel imaginable, and tries to bury the truth with it.
But keep playing to white victimhood card. It is probably your most consistent tactic. In other areas, you range into intellectual incoherence way too often.
That is why you are over here supporting Frum as he tries to backstab the Conservative Movement. Because you couldnt give a rat’s arse about the Beam in Democrats and Leftwingers eyes. But you are afraid of a Conservatism playing out of the Leftwing playbook.
I have a belief that conservativism plays an important role in our political system (as does Obama, as I quoted in 114 “You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom.”. I also believe that progress is derailed by radicalism – and that if the Democratic Party doesn’t have a intellectually honest Republican Party to play off of, then it could be dragged more towards the radicalism that caused it to implode during the 70’s.
Obama is a post-radical black politician. You will never accept that – if only because in your eyes no progressive can ever be anything but radical – but both he and Clinton are the type of centrist, good-governance oriented politicians who the Democratic Party produced because of a strong Republican Party in opposition.
We see the worst, the most demagogic congressmen come from districts that have been gerrymandered to the point where there is no chance of the opposition party winning.
The Republicans are going into an extreme mode where the Presidency might be gerrymandered far into the future to elect Democrats … and that might produce a Democratic President who would be as bad as Bush. For the sake of my country, I don’t want that to happen.
133 tim.or.tom // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Is this supposed to be serious, or a satire? Because you really cannot be serious. Barack Obama is a centrist, good-governance oriented politician? He’s not radical? Have you ever listened or read or watched any of his remarks other than campaign speeches and remarks to Congress?
And centrist? Centrist, where? Venezuela? Yeah, he’d be a centrist there.
Good governance? Good governance? Good God, we have someone who’s been living in a cave since January 20 here. Good governance? Good grief you’re either ignorant or seriously deluded.
134 urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:54 pm
I think you are over analyzing this. There is one major reason that the Glenn Beck, and the most vocal of the people on the right nowadays are doing a disservice to the party: Everything they are crying about now they fully supported when the GOP did it during the last administration. They go nuts over the cost of the health care reform package currently being discussed, but were silent when the GOP passed a $900 Billion Medicare drug coverage expansion a few years ago, they call Obama a socialist because he “nationalized the banks”, of course being too ill-informed or ill-equipped to remember that the bank rescue plan was engineered by the GOP and enacted months before Obama was sworn in, they scream at out-of-control spending, but were silent as the GOP added $5 trillion to our national debt 2000-2006. Can you say hypocrisy?
And insisting on calling the most pro-market Democrat this country has ever seen a socialist and/or communist makes them look ridiculous. Do they even realize what those terms mean? Has Obama called for an end to individual ownership of property? Has he said the government should control the means of all production in this country? Of course he hasn’t. What he has done, time and time again, is say that our free-market economy is the best system in the world.
It is the same cognitive dissonance that sends people to evangelical churches where they tell you that God wants you to be successful and have a lot of money. Hello?!? Didn’t Jesus specifically say that the pursuit and accumulation of wealth is a sin, and that a rich man cannot enter the kingdom of heaven? Didn’t he say that you cannot worship the Father and money? Facts don’t mean anything to these people, which is why their “movement” will falter
135 alpha247 // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:54 pm
“Because you couldnt give a rat’s arse about the Beam in Democrats and Leftwingers eyes. But you are afraid of a Conservatism playing out of the Leftwing playbook. ”
So we are quoting Jesus in one sentence and repudiating him in the next? We want our moral cake and we want to eat it, too. You say when the “war” is over, we will return to our morality. Isn’t the lesson of history that you can’t do that? That you end up damaging yourself in the process? Why is Lincoln’s suspension of habeus corpus still debated? Why is FDR’s imprisoning of Japanese-Americans something we’ve apologized for as opposed to defended?
Is the conservative moment really so bereft of ideas (I recall that we were once proud of being “the party of ideas”) that we have to resort to these strategies?
136 urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 2:57 pm
timortom: Next time try to refute the post with facts or examples, other than froth.
Name some programs and/or actions by Obama that you consider radical.
137 balconesfault // Sep 15, 2009 at 3:11 pm
And insisting on calling the most pro-market Democrat this country has ever seen a socialist and/or communist makes them look ridiculous. Do they even realize what those terms mean?
Urban – welcome to the discussion.
a) no – they do not seem to know what those terms mean (along with fascist)
b) they actually don’t care, and become very critical of you if you try to educate them as to what the terms actually do mean
There is a belief expressed here that socialism means “redistribution of wealth”. You can explain until you’re blue in the face that it means, as you noted “an end to individual ownership of property”.
It won’t sink in. They have been immunized against learning.
138 NotFooledTX // Sep 15, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Mr. Frum, I do believe you’d have a more productive time having conversations with your dining room table than trying to have an intelligent conversation or debate with todays republican.
I’m an independent, but I’ll tell you, after what I’ve seen since the run up to the election to the present day, you could hold a gun to my head and I still wouldn’t vote for a republican. They are acting like children playing an adults game. I know they’re trying to score political points, but political points don’t reduce the cost of my health care. I’d much rather they tried to score political points by actually accomplishing something positive for the majority of Americans instead of for the republican party. The republicans to day represent the absolute worst in America to me – belligerent, ignorant (they have repeatedly shown distain for intellectuals, now I know why because they’ve shown that they’re not too bright themselves) – with a doses of hypocrisy and racism thrown in for good measure. They have been fearmongering and race baiting the bottom dwellers – agitating them against their own best interests. Nope, right now there’s nothing that could convince me to join the republican party or vote for a republican – nothing.
139 anniemargret // Sep 15, 2009 at 3:22 pm
balconesfault: “The Republicans are going into an extreme mode where the Presidency might be gerrymandered far into the future to elect Democrats … and that might produce a Democratic President who would be as bad as Bush. For the sake of my country, I don’t want that to happen.”
Excellent. As I posted much earlier on this blog, I am deeply concerned about the direction our country is going. OUR country…meaning Democrats and Republicans. I am deeply concerned that extremism is taking over for intelligent debate and compromise. Yes. Compromise. Governments are not effective unless there is compromise.
There may be ‘trolls’ here from the ‘left’ who are trying to dissemble, but I also think there are some here who are interested in hearing what the Republicans are saying…and hoping they hear some sanity coming forth. Liberals can always go to liberal blogs for pats on the back, I don’t think that’s why I’m visiting here, nor some others- it’s not pats on the back we are looking for. I want to hear good ideas for the problems affecting Americans and America…
I applaud balconesfault’s position on why is very important that Republican party gives up a good choice for their party…because it will do the same for the Democrats. If both parties serve up good men or women, then our *country* wins. One party loses, the other wins. So what? It has been thus so for hundreds of years. When you lose, you have to demonstrate to the majority why you are the better party, no?
The country wins. What a thought! Thank you balconesfault, for articulating what I was trying to say, and not doing it well.
140 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 3:35 pm
John Conyers is good friends with the Truther movement.
John Conyers speaks and gives ligitimacy to groups like ANSWER.
Nazi obssessed collectors are being assigned at the HRW to investigate Israeli war crimes.
Obama Adminstration officials made the list of dealerships of Chrysler to close down which punishes opposition party supporters and rewards those who donated to Democrat candidates and party.
ACORN is Obama’s people, pimping, hoing, and child sex slaver tax evaders.
I mustve dreamed a thousand dreams
Been haunted by a million screams
But I can hear the marching feet
Theyre moving into the street.
Now did you read the news today
They say the dangers gone away
But I can see the fires still alight
There burning into the night.
Theres too many men
Too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Cant you see
This is a land of confusion.
This is the world we live in
And these are the hands were given
Use them and lets start trying
To make it a place worth living in.
Ooh superman where are you now
When everythings gone wrong somehow
The men of steel, the men of power
Are losing control by the hour.
This is the time
This is the place
So we look for the future
But theres not much love to go round
Tell me why, this is a land of confusion.
This is the world we live in
And these are the hands were given
Use them and lets start trying
To make it a place worth living in.
I remember long ago -
Ooh when the sun was shining
Yes and the stars were bright
All through the night
And the sound of your laughter
As I held you tight
So long ago -
I wont be coming home tonight
My generation will put it right
Were not just making promises
That we know, well never keep.
141 NotFooledTX // Sep 15, 2009 at 3:46 pm
jeninct // Sep 15, 2009 at 7:35 am
It’s amusing to read all about Beck audience from people who don’t watch the show. Beck’s audience includes my 14 year old son and his Grandmother. Imagine, two generations apart and they talk about their love of country and the beauty of the Constitution.
Beck is singlehandedly accomplishing what all the over-educated, self-important, stuffed shirts couldn’t. He’s getting people off their couches and onto the streets.
You’re all jealous.
—
No, jeninct – not jealous, appauled. I’m appauled that so many could be lured in by such nonsense. And to subject your 14 year old child to such ignorance is doing a disservice to your child. Claiming what beck does is promoting “love of country” is sheer lunacy. It’s obvious you have distain for the over-educated because you are showing your personal ignorance and gullibility – and passing it along to your child. Stupid is as stupid does.
Have you ever fact-checked Beck? (Do you even know how?) – I’d strongly suggest it so you can see exactly how you’re being played – you’re a lemming for his propaganda – you know, like the nazi’s used.
Yeah, he’s getting people off their couches and out on the streets to protest against policies in which they would be the direct beneficiaries – they are protesting AGAINST their own personal interests at the prodding and benefit of lobbists. Yeah, that’s pretty smart.
As long as the republican party is run by drug addled blow-hards and idiots like beck – and the elected officials are too spineless to stand up and take their party back, all that will remain of the gop is the uneducated and the elderly – that’s not the way to build a winning party. But they are good for laughs!!
142 urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 3:46 pm
escapevelocity, put quite simply you are the problem.
“ACORN is Obama’s people, pimping, hoing, and child sex slaver tax evaders.”
-Patently false (and disgusting)
“Nazi obssessed collectors are being assigned at the HRW to investigate Israeli war crimes.”
-Has nothing to do with Obama or the Democratic Party
“Obama Adminstration officials made the list of dealerships of Chrysler to close down which punishes opposition party supporters and rewards those who donated to Democrat candidates and party.”
- Again, do you have any proof of this? OR do you just think it so because some idiot you heard on the radio said it was?
143 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Im ready for the round up for the re education camps urban.
Locked and loaded.
Come and get me.
144 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 4:00 pm
“Nazi obssessed collectors are being assigned at the HRW to investigate Israeli war crimes.”
-Has nothing to do with Obama or the Democratic Party
It has to do with the New Left that controls the Democrat Party and is a threat to Western Civilization.
145 urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 4:08 pm
escapevelocity:
“Im ready for the round up for the re education camps urban.
Locked and loaded.
Come and get me.”
- Delusional, just sit there in your trailer and wait for it.
“It has to do with the New Left that controls the Democrat Party and is a threat to Western Civilization.”
- This statement has no real meaning. What is the New Left? How do they control the Democratic Party (name some members???) And in what way are they a threat?
Please at least make an attempt at a rational explanation
146 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 4:10 pm
David Frum, being a Canadian style conservative, is essentially the Tory or Whig that agentprovacateur or balconesfault, pointed to earlier.
With nothing to offer but how he can manage the Leftwing Massive Welfare State better than the Leftists. Devoid of purpose.
My advice to you, David. Join the Federal bureacracy…..where you can manage to your hearts content.
147 balconesfault // Sep 15, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Urban – as I said before -
<b.You can tell when escape is being pinned … because he goes for the biggest shovel imaginable, and tries to bury the truth with it.
148 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 4:16 pm
What is the New Left?
And there you have it folks. The level of historical and political that is calling me irrational.
Indoctrination and propaganda do not an informed electorate make.
149 balconesfault // Sep 15, 2009 at 4:24 pm
escapevelocity: “I’m ready for the round up for the re education camps urban.
Locked and loaded.
Come and get me
urban: Delusional, just sit there in your trailer and wait for it.
Unfortunately, Richard Poplawski taught us that some of these delusional sorts, armed to the gills, eventually get tired of waiting for the “rounding up for re-education camps” that will never come.
So they finally take matters into their own hands. And in Poplawski’s case, 3 good honest police officers are dead because of it.
150 urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 4:25 pm
escapevelocity: I notice you (once again) failed to provide any sort of answer. Your name should be evadevelocity, since that is all you seem to be capable of…
151 balconesfault // Sep 15, 2009 at 4:25 pm
I’m partial to escapereality
152 JeninCT // Sep 15, 2009 at 5:07 pm
notfooledtx //
.
As I said before, I am amused by your attitude and would guess by your response that you don’t watch Beck regularly. You insult me by asking if I know how to fact check, and then imply that I’m a stupid parent for allowing my child to watch Beck. Love of country is something that runs very deep in my veins. I take Beck (and every other TV personality and blogger) with a grain of salt. And by the way, Beck doesn’t ‘run’ the Republican party. He’s a libertarian.
You’re assuming an awful lot if you think that my children and I would be direct beneficiaries of policies like card check, cap and trade, and public healthcare. You’re entitled to your opinion about what you think is best for me and my kids, but I’m still free to protest and write letters and yes, fact check my news sources, my congressmen and my president and do what I have to do to ensure my personal liberties and those of my children.
153 urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 5:22 pm
jeninct//
/
There is nothing libertarian about Glen Beck. He is for completely open borders? He is for the legalization of all drugs? He is for the end to all foreign involvement in wars? He is for abolishing the public school system? He is for the dismantling of Social Security, Medicare, the FAA, the FDA?
Didn’t think so. He is not libertarian, he is a book-seller. And he opposed any attempt to protest the government when the GOP was in charge, calling those that opposed Bush’s policies traitors who hated their country…
154 balconesfault // Sep 15, 2009 at 5:31 pm
And he opposed any attempt to protest the government when the GOP was in charge, calling those that opposed Bush’s policies traitors who hated their country…
That’s why I have to laugh when Beck’s 9/12 rally was about “bringing back the feeling we all had on 9/12″.
On 9/12/01, anyone who would have held a major rally against the President of the United States would have been condemned by every media outlet, branded as the most dangerous kind of radical, outcast from their job and society as a whole.
While I don’t advocate Glenn Beck getting Ward Churchill treatment, it’s useful to remember what the mood was on 9/12/01. Beck isn’t trying to bring back a patriotic support for the people trying to lead our country from a disaster …
Although there is one apt comparison. Had Al Gore been President in 2001, and 9/11 still occurred, the sentiment from the Republicans on 9/12/01 would have been very much like the sentiments from the Republicans toward Obama on 9/12/09. Probably worse – I suspect impeachment proceedings would have been initiated within a month for Gore failing to protect America.
155 Michael Babbitt // Sep 15, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Sinz54,
Okay so there might be 2 sides to a movement. But does one side have to try to marginalize the other? Boy that makes sense.
156 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Now we have 4 Leftwingers discussing how to remake the Republican Party and Conservatism on this blog.
Kind of the sums up David Frums appeal, doesnt it.
Urban, I cant singlehandly educate the woefully ill informed. If you would like to know what the New Left is, I suggest you read David Horowitz, since he was a New Leftist.
On 9/12/01, anyone who would have held a major rally against the President of the United States would have been condemned by every media outlet, branded as the most dangerous kind of radical, outcast from their job and society as a whole. — bals
Too bad that didnt happen. In fact they now have prominent positions in the Democrat Party and the Obama Administration.
157 JeninCT // Sep 15, 2009 at 7:03 pm
urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 5:22 pm
/
There is nothing libertarian about Glen Beck. He is for completely open borders? He is for the legalization of all drugs? He is for the end to all foreign involvement in wars? He is for abolishing the public school system? He is for the dismantling of Social Security, Medicare, the FAA, the FDA?
Didn’t think so. He is not libertarian, he is a book-seller. And he opposed any attempt to protest the government when the GOP was in charge, calling those that opposed Bush’s policies traitors who hated their country…
Yes, you make very good points. I guess I should have said he’s a self-proclaimed libertarian. I agree with most but not all of his views, and he goes after both parties, so I think it is funny when people claim he ‘runs’ the Republican party. Obviously they’ve never seen or heard his show if they think that. I like that most (if not all) of his research is actual quotes and footage of the people he’s discussing. THen, he just asks questions about what could be going on and lets the chips fall. Is he hysterical and passionate and slightly nutty? Sure, but he’s also immensely entertaining. I believe he loves this country and is doing the work few other media outlets are doing.
158 Chris Balsz // Sep 15, 2009 at 7:20 pm
“And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter — that at that point we don’t merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.”
Actually, if you don’t know that I own my income and my property free of the commonweal, that you cannot just “discuss” what should be allowed to keep, and demand I “prove” why I should not fork over– let’s make up a number like Senator Bacchus just did–$3800 a year to a state-mandated, state-regulated, state-subsidized industry…if that’s the civil discussion, ‘why shouldn’t I lose as much as you feel like robbing, “to help people”‘, then you are unAmerican. You are definitely unconstitutional, opposed to the Bill of Rights, against every political development that separates us from the ancien regime.
And yeah, if you want a permanent bureaucracy to own and operate for-profits, you’re a socialist. It’s not as if a socialist only wears a Mao cap or something.
159 JeninCT // Sep 15, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Balconesfault:
” That’s why I have to laugh when Beck’s 9/12 rally was about “bringing back the feeling we all had on 9/12″.
On 9/12/01, anyone who would have held a major rally against the President of the United States would have been condemned by every media outlet…….”
Actually, the feeling I thing Beck’s referring to is the willingness we all had to do whatever it took to protect our country and stand together as Americans.
160 balconesfault // Sep 15, 2009 at 8:49 pm
chris-balsz wrote: if that’s the civil discussion, ‘why shouldn’t I lose as much as you feel like robbing, “to help people”‘, then you are unAmerican. …And yeah, if you want a permanent bureaucracy to own and operate for-profits, you’re a socialist.
in another thread, Chekote wrote: Helping those who can’t get help themselves is noble.
Mandating equal results independent of effort is socialism.
Could you guys at least get together and form one unified wrong opinion? From here, it looks like Chekote’s “noble” (and yes, he was talking about the state providing healthcare to those who can’t afford it) is chris-balsz ‘ “unAmerican”.
Meanwhile, you’re both wrong on what socialism/socialist is.
Yes, single payer healthcare would be socialism. As is single payer fire departments, single payer sewage systems, single payer highway departments, and single payer schools. All forms of limited socialism, but socialism nonetheless. Across the country, many many metropolitan areas or other governmental bodies still own and operate electric power plants and their local grid. That is also a form of socialism. Socialism isn’t some form of redistribution of wealth. It’s government running stuff.
Supporting these, however, does NOT make you a socialist, unless you believe that all businesses should be owned and operated by the government, and that private property ownership should be abolished. Now, some might say that government being able to regulate how businesses and individuals operate, and to tax property and business to do other things with the money (like operate a school system) means that we’re already a socialist country. I’d say that’s a significant dumbing down of the term, to the point where every government on the planet pretty much instantly becomes socialist.
161 urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 8:49 pm
jeninct//
/
“Actually, the feeling I thing Beck’s referring to is the willingness we all had to do whatever it took to protect our country and stand together as Americans.”
But do you really think that what Beck is doing is asking that we stand together as Americans? It seems he is asking some Americans to stand together against the President. That’s the opposite of standing together in support of the President, as we did on 9/12/01. At no point did they give Obama the benefit of the doubt. They were calling him a Communist and un-American before he even took office. You think they could have waited until he did something they didn’t like before attacking him. To me that is un-American…assuming the President and our government are trying to destroy us. Then why are they here?
162 urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 8:53 pm
chris-balsz : so you are for ending social security, medicare, police and fire departments, public schools and the military? I mean, if when the government takes money from you to provide this stuff it is “socialism”, you must be agaisnt all of that. And add in roads wile you are at it…do you believe all roads should be pay to use, even the one you live on?
You also write: “And yeah, if you want a permanent bureaucracy to own and operate for-profits, you’re a socialist. It’s not as if a socialist only wears a Mao cap or something.”
Who in the heck is saying we want the government to operate all for-profit companies? Not me, not anyone else here, not Obama, not the Democratic Party.
163 Is Glenn Beck a Disciple of Crackpot Ron Paul? « NewsReal Blog // Sep 15, 2009 at 8:56 pm
[...] David Horowitz about the place of Glenn Beck and other bold talkers in the Conservative Movement Frum shot out a claim which threw Horowitz off guard: Third – how do we define “our side”? Horowitz harshly [...]
164 urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 9:01 pm
escapevelocity: I didn’t ask you to educate everyone. I asked you to make one valid point, to name one thing specific you feel is going on you disapprove of…something you have been unable to do in the last 7 posts. The only thing you can do is call people names, which is par for the course as far as I’m concerned. Some of us want to have an actual discussion about America – others want to froth at the mouth and scream nonsensical drivel. I mean Chomsky? Really? How is he relevant? He tours the country giving talks to rooms full of 50 semi-anarchists. What the heck does that have to do with anything? And how is that comparable to several mainstream media personnel that have audiences of millions? You aren’t seriously arguing that some aging hippies from the 1960’s have the same influence ad Beck and Rush
And I am aware of what people like you think the New Left is, I was asking you to explain who in government is currently a member. As far as I know the New Left existed 50 years ago, and haven’t been heard much from since. And they were in their 50’s then. Do you think a bunch of 100 year old hippies no one has heard from in 50 years are running the government?
165 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 9:03 pm
You Leftwingers that would like to see the Republican Party turned into a deflated Tory party, of Democrate Lite, vying with Labour for who can manage the massive welfare state better…..so someone will keep the Democrats honest…
Should be overjoyed that the Convervatives now have voices in the media, which are holding the Democrats and Left to account…..because the MSM is totally missing in action.
It seems however that your are very angry at the people that are exposing ACORN and Van Jones (wouldnt want radical Leftwingers in the whitehouse would we), and the like.
But alas, you wouldnt know a radical Leftwinger if you looked in the mirror. Chavez and Castro are only slightly objectionable to you.
From the Radical Left, everyone to the Right of Joe Lieberman looks like a raging hatefilled white supremacist capitalist imperialist warmongering running dog.
I contend that the major fight and focus that the Conservatives need to make is Media pressence and penetration, which is being effected right now, with the increase in bandwidth and the complete lack of faith in the MSM, as polls show.
And just as important a drive to put conservatives in teaching positions and faculty….to take our schools and universities back.
Whoever said that radical leftwingers are in academia and therefore unimportant is a moron. They are indoctrinating the children which will vote and march through the institutions tommorrow. Revisionist history, tribalism, resentment, Marxist analysis of Western literature, villification of the values and ideas of Western Civilization, promotion of deviant sex, and disrespect for the nuclear family…..etc et al ad naseum.
This indoctrination moves the center Left. Without addressing this, everything else are a series of phyrric victories as the Western Left destroys Western Civilization.
166 el gato libre // Sep 15, 2009 at 9:11 pm
escapevelocity…
I think people might take you more seriously if you didn’t spend your entire life trolling these threads. If you hate Frum and RINOs so much, why do you spend all day, every day, spamming this site? You’re probably responsible for half the traffic on newmajority.
Isn’t it about time for you to go powerwash your house again?
167 urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 9:20 pm
More froth…no actual arguments escapevelocity. More name-calling. How are they destroying Western civilization? Can you give one example? One?
“Deviant sex”, homosexuality, adultery, etc, etc…have been going on since the beginning of time my friend. Nothing new here. When did this perfect Western civilization exist? When we were all murdering each other over food, money, and religion?
And concerning your massive welfare state….wasn’t it your beloved GOP, not the Democratic Party, which just oversaw the largest expansion of the federal government in modern times? Wasn’t it the GOP that just added $5 trillion to the national debt? Didn’t the GOP just pass a $900 billion expansion of Medicare? Wasn’t it the GOP which passed the Patriot Act?!?! And you accuse the Democrats of limiting freedoms? You are delusional my friend
168 JeninCT // Sep 15, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Urban:
” But do you really think that what Beck is doing is asking that we stand together as Americans? It seems he is asking some Americans to stand together against the President. That’s the opposite of standing together in support of the President, as we did on 9/12/01.”
Yes, I do think Beck is asking us to stand together as Americans in defense of the Constitution, not against the president. The most American thing any of us can do is defend the constitution. It’s not about the president or congress. It’s not personal. They’re temporary. The constitution is (hopefully) forever. Beck blames Bush for alot of the government growth and weakening of the Constitution as well. He’s not simply anti-Obama.
And frankly, Obama didn’t waste much time using fear to push through the stimulus bill which almost instantaneously broke several campaign promises against pork barrel spending, special interests and lobbyists in his administration, and for transparency and fiscal responsibility.
And then his Czar appointments and other power grabs kind of sealed the deal for those of us who were willing to give him a chance.
169 urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 9:28 pm
In what ways has Obama weakened the Constitution? And/or in what ways do you feel he is threatening it?
170 el gato libre // Sep 15, 2009 at 9:30 pm
urban…
I’ve discovered the folly of trying to converse with escapevelocity. It was fun for about two days, but what always happens is that when you press him for specifics about the nefarious Obama Socialist agenda that he’s always on about, he just sprays out “Maxine Waters!!!ACORN!!!SOCIALISM!!!DASTARDLY LEFT!!! LIBERALS ARE RACISTS!!!”
He also has a habit of getting more and more bellicose and unhinged as the night goes on. But he’ll prove this within the next few hours.
171 anniemargret // Sep 15, 2009 at 9:33 pm
The stimulus bill was needed and is softening the recession. Instead of Beck screaming about the Constitution, he should put his entertainment power to encourage all those new college graduates out there to go into new green energy, and create a new industry. Imagine the U.S. leading the world in green energy and getting off oil and the wars for oil? Before China does, they already have our IOUs.
Power grabs? oh…please.
172 urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Thanks for the warning….I was beginning to expect as much
173 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Well, I guess Ill leave Frum to his brood of Leftwingers to slander Christians and Conservatives.
Enjoy.
174 urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 10:08 pm
yeah buddy…we were doing the slandering. go back and read some of your earlier posts with that thought in mind
175 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 10:14 pm
What is difficult is that you are in such a different reality, that discussing issues with you, means that we have to have lengthy definition sessions and agreements on history and philosophical and political terminology. So much so that we would write books on the subject before we could ever reach any kind of place where we could actually have a meaningful discussion.
Its just not worth it.
Much better to focus on taking the schools and universities back.
If you are really interested in Conservative ideas, there are tons of books out there for you to read. Thoroughly researched, footnoted, and better written than I could ever do in spare time on an internet blog.
May I suggest that you broaden your readership to include conservative sources and rags. Instead of hatin on Glenn Beck, could I point you to Mark Levin’s recent effort, Liberty and Tyranny…which was the New York Times No. 1 non fiction book for 18 weeks straight this spring.
Burkes Reflections on the Revolution in France
Comparing Burke to Thomas Paine is a worthwhile endevour. Paine was a radical, Burke a conservative…both were liberals.
Better yet….Russel Kirk’s Conservative Mind, which discusses many more Conservative thinkers than Burke.
Or you can pow wow with Frum about turning the GOP into a ideologically weak Tory party, so that you can have a 2 party system of Center Leftists and Radical Leftists. That whole concept and project is utterly ridiculous.
Liberty matters.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
We see Europe falling into chaos and tribalism, a state dedicated to taking from those according to their ability and distributing it to those who vote for their special protections, priveleges, rights, and public largesse.
It will descend into violent chaos soon…for those reasons and for other realities of the day created by the Western Left in their infernal drive to socially engineer via state power.
I weep for the Republic.
176 SFTor1 // Sep 15, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Sinz:
What I mean by a European-style liberal: a social democrat, basically. Capitalist markets, social programs for individuals and families to level the playing field. Taxation of the very rich to dampen the growth of the leisure class.
The approach has resulted in higher social mobility in many European countries than we currently see in the U.S., not to mention lower poverty rates, universal access to health care, and real unemployment protection. These approaches turn out to be cheaper in the long run than current U.S. policies.
Not that people don’t grumble about the government, but they are getting some bang for their taxpayer buck.
177 urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 10:55 pm
We’ll have to agree to disagree then sir. For the record I have degrees in history and political science, so am familiar with all of the schools of thought you reference. I just don’t agree with your conclusions at all. And my readership is already fairly broad, and daily it includes many conservative sources. I certainly don’t need to familiarize myself with your philosophy, I know it through and through. I even held some of those beliefs in my youth, before I realized how utterly unrealistic your vision of utopia is. Ayn Rand was an idealistic fool. If you really desire to live in a libertarian paradise, where there is no governmental intervention in your life, then I suggest you move to Somalia – It is a perfect example of a society where people have complete liberty. Everyone is armed to the teeth and there is no dastardly government there to control you. You’ll love it. I’ll keep America, I like it here….
You need to get over your paranoia about this organized left. Believe me, if there is one thing they are not…it is organized.
And I have read that quote, or others similar to it, many times over the years. It doesn’t hold water. What are these supposed democracies that have descended into largess and then into dictatorship in 200 years. Can you name some? Considering that modern democracy only really began about 250 years ago, I think you’ll be hard pressed to find examples of Western nations that have turned into dictatorships from democracies in the last 50 years
178 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 10:59 pm
This should be posted in full. (Dont think I didnt notice someone presuming to insult me with “trailer” a code word slur and also showing the classism of the Left (but only in regards to a certain race).
I think the reason why I am so virulently attacked here, is because Im so well informed, and the truths I speak are dangerous to the Left. Just ask David Horowitz, whom the Left continues to virulently attack.
The Rise of the Uncouth
Victor Davis Hansen
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-rise-of-the-uncouth/2/
American Stasis
The historian Thucydides warned about the escalating violent language and behavior that we are witnessing. More on that later.
For now, tes, I thought Rep. Joe Wilson was a boor to scream out at the President during a Joint Session. If everyone were to do that, we’d descend into some sort of Third World Parliament in short order, or end up caning each other, as on the eve of the Civil War. He apologized to the President, and should have.
Tit-for-Tat?
But sadly, I put no credence in liberal outrage. Dozens of Democrats booed Bush during his State of the Union address in 2005; an unhinged Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) called him a liar from the House floor. The currently outraged, like Maureen Down and E.J. Dionne, said little about the 2005 interruption of the President of the United States with catcalls. Congressional efforts at censure failed. Stark, for all I know, remains not an albatross, but an icon of the Left.
Do As I Say, Not As I Do
President Obama called for more civility on 60 Minutes the other night. A noble effort, all would agree. But he has himself been serially accusing his opponents of disinformation and lying about his health care plan—even as his own accounts of how many are currently uninsured, the status of illegal aliens under his plan, or the nature of his end of life counseling programs seem to change weekly.
The President in his calls for moderation, of course, said nothing about Van Jones’s profanity and racism—or his czar’s charging Bush with planning the deaths of 3,000, charging whites with being mass killers in the schools, and polluters, and on and on.
Wasn’t There Someone Once Upon a Time Called Van Jones?
Any President devoted to the notion of restoring civility would have never nominated such a boor. Imagine instead a contrite Obama saying: “We have got to do better in the way we talk to each other. My own White House green jobs advisor should never have said the things he did, and that’s why he had to go.” Instead, Jones got out of town, screaming about smears at midnight. Obama voted present as the Left charged racism at Jones’s departure—although the President warned school children not to post things on the Internet, the implication being you too can be a poor Jones done in by Google.
The Wages of the Sixties
The truth is that a new generation of boors has come of age without sober wise people to teach them how to act. A Rep. Stark or Rep. Wilson, whether left or right, were Sixties people, a generation known for its hip crassness and uncouthness. The baby boomers themselves abdicated the role of elder statesmen, and instead need in their dotage to be taught before they can teach anyone. The proper censors are in the graveyards, a better mannered generation used to hardship and war, whose legacy of standards we have squandered.
Boors Everywhere
The result? Turn to tennis and we see this week a pathetic Serena Williams in a profanity-ridden rant, because she is being beaten badly on the court and apparently cannot handle the self-induced humiliation, and so goes ballistic over an apparently bad call. I am sure she would have preferred, as in the past, the racist- to the profanity-card, had not the targeted umpire herself been a person of color. Of course, John McEnroe, Ilie Natase and Jimmy Connors set the present low standards in tennis. Ms. Williams is only following in their ends-justify-the-means footsteps. In about a week, her father will weigh in with his customary slurs on spec. Who knows, maybe even McEnroe will claim, “Even I would never do that!”
Steal the Show
Then a buffoonish rapper Kanye hijacks a music awards show, to scream out that he prefers the loser to the poor embarrassed winner, standing mute before him with the trophy. But how can the audience that honors the violence and degradation of hip-hop / rap, then be outraged that they get a live version of such crude behavior before them of what they buy on CDs? Had Kanye only put in a plug for green jobs, he might have escaped without the boos. So we need a Juvenal (‘Who will police the police”) to note the irony of a crass music industry being out-crassed on its formal night out.
Not So Long Ago
The Left is now furious that, as the new establishment, the rules of discourse are not more polite. But from 2002-8, they (Who are “they”? Try everyone from Al Gore to John Glen to Robert Byrd to Sen. Durbin), employed every Nazi/brown shirt slur they could conjure up. NPR’s folksy old Garrison Keiler was indistinguishable from mean-spirited Michael Moore in that regard.
The New York Times gave a discount for a disgusting “General Betray Us” ad. The Democratic Party head Howard Dean flatly said he “hated” Republicans. Hilary Clinton all but called Gen. Petraeus a liar in a congressional hearing. The New Republic ran an essay on hating George Bush (not opposing, not disliking, but “hating” the President). Alfred Knopf published a novel about killing Bush. A Guardian op-ed dreamed of Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth coming back to kill Bush. And on and on.
So What?
No one objected. A Dan Rather said nothing—but tried to pass off forged documents to alter the election. A Bill Moyers piled on. There was no voice of “Now, wait a minute, this is going too far.” Did the Left assume that they were going to be perpetually bomb-tossers, forever on the outside of Karl Rove’s ballyhooed three-decades of Republican supremacy to come?
What Comes Around, Goes…
And then something strange and quite unexpected happened. The Democrats nominated a charismatic African-American, won the presidency, after obtaining large majorities in Congress, and suddenly became the Establishment, demanding respect for the Commander in Chief in direct proportion to their efforts to deny respect to his predecessor. Then just as suddenly two tropes appeared after January 20th of this year:
One—cannot we all get along? We deplore this resort to barbarism and crudity.
Two—if you dare sound off like we just did, then you are now a racist.
Not So Fast
The problem is that the public is not really stupid and has a long memory. It hates hypocrisy as much as it does crudity. Part of Obama’s decline is precisely because of this sudden disingenuousness in which one rises to the top on hardball, Chicago politics and playing identity politics (remember Rev. Wright, Ayers, “typical white people”, clingers, etc.), and then of course wants an end to the crudity (like hoping the music stops only when you have grabbed that last chair).
Or so Obama said that he wanted a sort of end to the acrimony. But once he was elected, we got Eric Holder slurring the nation, the President slurring the police, the environmental jobs czar slurring almost everyone, and a host of satellites like Charles Rangel and Diane Watson leveling charges of racism.
So where do go from here?
The standards of civilly, torn down during the 1960s, were obliterated completely after 9/11 (hours after, actually, when Michael Moore (Jimmy Carter’s hero) wished a red-state had been hit instead). We have no more “Wise Men” in Washington and New York, but rather graying children of the Sixties, aging badly. A large segment of the left—from Code Pink and Moveon.org to Acorn and the unions—believe that they really can smear and defame and then retreat to mythical standards of decency when they are now on the receiving end. Does anyone believe that the amateur hit journalists who caught Acorn red-handed used tactics any different from Mike Wallace and the 60 Minutes team?
Back to Corfu
The historian Thucydides has a wonderful chapter in his third book on the stasis at Corcyra on all this. In short, he says when rules, decorum, respect, and commonly accepted behaviors are jettisoned for short-term advantage, then the thin veneer of civilization, in other words the law, is scratched away and we peer at our natural Rousseauian selves below. And quite a scary sight that is, natural man without civilization.
Even more brilliant is the historian’s irony. When those on the outs, who excel through seeking the ends by any means, soon find themselves as the establishment, they want no more like themselves. (I don’t think First Lady Michelle now wishes anyone to charge her nation with being a mean country, or would want any guest to her White House to tell her that he is not proud of suddenly liberal America; cf. Obama’s sudden distrust of the community-organizing Tea Partiers and Town Hallers who are out-organizing Acorn).
But too late. Once the walls are stormed, and ramparts of decency in rubble, it is very hard to rebuild the stones to fend off the barbarians, given the power of natural coarseness, and the problem of legitimacy and irony (Why should we believe that you are shocked at Joe Wilson now, when you booed George Bush not long ago?)
Enough?
The solution, of course, is for the majority to simply say enough is enough, and declare a personal code of decency: “I will not stoop to smear and slur, won’t interrupt a speaker, won’t call anyone a Nazi, won’t do to others what they’ve done to me.” Only that sort of code will end the craziness.
In the short-term it is a losing political formula for conservatives, but in the long term it is the only way to restore sanity and a winning strategy. The New York Times is moribund for reasons other than the Internet. Most (I have not bought a copy in 5 years) won’t read it because of the vitriol of a Maureen Dowd or Frank Rich, and the crass editorials disguised as news accounts on the front page. Obama’s ratings have dived because of the Gates mess, Van Jones, and the Chicago political style. Even Oprah is having problems, once America’s sweetheart went out in a fury on the campaign trail, and used her stature to play on identity politics.
No one needs to become Pollyanna or shocked at occasional tough hits (I’ve been booed and shouted down at a few public lectures by mostly middle-class students parading as “the people” on the barricades), but instead simply refrain from calling your enemy a Nazi or screaming at an official in the middle of a speech, or, like Maureen Dowd, dreaming of kicking Dick Cheney at a reception. The point is not to ostracize or point fingers at others in moralistic fashion, but just simply say, “That’s not my way.”
179 The Movement And One George W. Bush And One Cass Sunstein « Around The Sphere // Sep 15, 2009 at 10:59 pm
[...] Frum responds: In other words: Horowitz agrees that Beck’s attack on Sunstein was false. Yet that falsehood does not worry Horowitz. The country is “under assault.” (As the broadcaster Mark Levin has said, President Obama is “literally at war” with the American people.) In a war, truth must yield to the imperatives of victory. Any conservative qualms about the untruth of Beck’s defamation of Sunstein amounts to “appeasement” – an appeasement that will end with the left decapitating the right. This is the language and logic of Leninism. There is no truth or falsehood comrades, there is only service to the revolution or betrayal of the revolution. [...]
180 balconesfault // Sep 15, 2009 at 11:01 pm
If you really desire to live in a libertarian paradise, where there is no governmental intervention in your life, then I suggest you move to Somalia – It is a perfect example of a society where people have complete liberty.
Don’t even have to make that decree.
I always ask – what county in the world that provides less social services than the United States would you want to live in?
I never get an answer.
181 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 11:10 pm
The Left, especially the New Left Radicals, are about gaining power, by any means necessary, so that they can use that power to transform America into their Utopian Visions.
They have created the degraded level of decency and morality in this country. They have created a political environment in which nothing is beyond the pale….almost any ally can be apologized for. Anybody no matter how radical on teh Left is no enemy.
Sow the Wind, Reap the Whirlwind.
There is gonna be a reckoning in this country. The Conservatives cannot go on shuffling along with phyrric victories on the long march to the desstruction of all they hold dear. Maintaining the status quo and civil order, decorum…will not stem the ill winds that the Left has created.
The Greatest Generations kids will have managed to destroy what their parents built in one generation.
They should be ashamed of themselves, but all they are worried about is their cushy welfare state bennies for retirement.
I weep for the Republic.
182 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 11:13 pm
sftor, those countries are dying. They will become Islamic States within 3 generations.
Your European paradises will most likely turn into the ugliest sort of fascism in the very near future.
Ye of limited vision.
183 urban // Sep 15, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Your “greatest generation” taxed the rich 91% (Eisenhower).
When exactly were Americans decent and moral to one another? Was it before Jim Crow and the lynchings or after? Was it before the national guard was hired by industrialists to shoot strikers or after?
And there you go again with these New Left Radicals. New rule: If you refuse to name the leaders of a movement, you cannot claim to know who they are, or what they are supposedly doing.
And did you just seriously claim that nothing is beyond the pale for Democrats? As opposed to the decency and decorum of the GOP?
I’m beginning to suspect you have some sort of psychological illness. Your paranoia is truly astounding. How sad it must be to live like that. Prediction: nothing radical happens to American society for the rest of your life, and you leave this earth convinced the revolution is right around the corner….just like so many before you
184 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 11:20 pm
I keep on telling Leftwingers to go live in Cuba or North Korea. North Korea…corporation free since 1952….a citizen and workers paradise.
185 Art Telles // Sep 15, 2009 at 11:24 pm
David Horowitz is Right and David Frum is Wrong…
David Horowitz…
“I don’t have a big quarrel with Frum’s view that Beck’s view of Cass Sunstein is “over the top” or off target. …
“Frum is right that Sunstein is not a raving leftist. …
“… [But] Our country is under assault by a determined, deceitful and powerful left which will stop at nothing to realize its goals.
“Facing them, I would rather have Glenn Beck out there fighting for our side than 10,000 David Frums who think that appeasing leftists will make them think well of us.
“No it won’t.
“It will only whet their appetite for our heads.”
So, David Frum, now that the dust has settled a little re: Van Jones, Mark Lloyd, Cass Sunstein and the corrupt ACORN nuts dropping hard, uh, how much of the Barack Obama ‘change’ and ‘transform America’ rhetoric are you willing to admit is ‘Lenin wanna be’ rhetoric that is meaningful to the Liberal / Progressive cadre?
What are you doing to deny the ‘Lenin wanna be’ change-agent-in-chief fulfillment of his version of the dung heap ancient ideology that is approved by that world renowned historian and commentator Hugo Chavez who cautioned Fidel Castro (Socialismo O Muerte … Socialism or Death) that they would soon be to the Right of Obama if Obama manages to ‘change’ and to ‘transform’ America… into what I call Obama’s ‘Lenin wanna be’ image… the 21st Century “New Communerde” movement.
And you misrepresented David Horowitz’s words, “Frum is right that Sunstein is not a raving leftist. …
David, you said. “In other words: Horowitz agrees that Beck’s attack on Sunstein was false.”
No, David, “… not a raving leftist…’ obviously does not mean “false” of course… it simply means not a “raving” leftist… but still a leftist… obviously.
And leftists are whom Obama surrounds himself with because they obviously make him feel all warm and cozy and sooooo secure in his agenda to ‘transform America’ with, as David Horowitz said, an “assault by a determined, deceitful and powerful left which will stop at nothing to realize its goals” that is spooky in it’s similarity to the ‘Cloward – Piven Strategy’ that Rudy Giuliani mentioned by name at the time of the New York City bankruptcy.
I’m sure you know what the ‘Cloward – Piven Strategy’ is, but if not, just ask future (hopefully) New York Governor Giuliani… I’m sure he has not forgotten.
One Glenn Beck has been so inspiring recently that even Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Bill O’Riley have been playing catchup to Glenn, but what you have written about Glenn, ‘Whose Side Is Glenn Beck On?’ is not even on their radar screen.
David, have you taken the road less traveled… along with David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, Kathleen Parker… et al? I hope not, and I’m only guessing, but Sarah Palin probably would also like you and the other recalcitrant and tacking left Republicans to straighten up and fly Reagan right again… to undo Obama’s negative big government and ‘transform America’ policies… unless letting Obama have his way because he was elected is what it means to be on what you called ‘our side.’
Is that it, hmmmm?
Ps. You may find this fair and balanced review of you conservative bona fides interesting… ‘The Two Faces Of David Frum’
>> http://race42008.com/2009/09/09/the-two-faces-of-david-frum/#comment-583049
186 agentprovocateur // Sep 15, 2009 at 11:34 pm
I keep on telling Leftwingers to go live in Cuba or North Korea. North Korea…corporation free since 1952….a citizen and workers paradise.
Which would help to explain why you sound so deranged and are an object of ridicule. You see, many “Leftwingers” love this country just as much as you claim you do and don’t want to leave it.
187 balconesfault // Sep 15, 2009 at 11:39 pm
would also like you and the other recalcitrant and tacking left Republicans to straighten up and fly Reagan right again…
The Reagan who signed off on tax increases in 7 of his 8 years in office? The one who promoted total elimination of nuclear stockpiles by both the US and the USSR?
188 EscapeVelocity // Sep 15, 2009 at 11:58 pm
A Former Radical Goes Back to the Future at the 9/12 March
She takes to the National Mall again forty years later, marching for very different reasons.
September 15, 2009
- by Barbara Curtis
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/a-former-radical-goes-back-to-the-future-at-the-912-march/
Speak Truth to Power
Disregard the Power Structures Media Dissemblers
Fight the Powers that Be!
Sow the Wind, Reap the Whirlwind!
189 EscapeVelocity // Sep 16, 2009 at 12:07 am
Something happened to my VDH post…
Read em and go pull that Beam out your own eye, Leftwingers. Or shut the Hell up, and get out the way. As you sow, so shall ye reap.
Pajamas Media
Victor Davis Hanson
September 14th, 2009 7:20 pm
The Rise of the Uncouth
American Stasis
The historian Thucydides warned about the escalating violent language and behavior that we are witnessing. More on that later.
For now, tes, I thought Rep. Joe Wilson was a boor to scream out at the President during a Joint Session. If everyone were to do that, we’d descend into some sort of Third World Parliament in short order, or end up caning each other, as on the eve of the Civil War. He apologized to the President, and should have.
Tit-for-Tat?
But sadly, I put no credence in liberal outrage. Dozens of Democrats booed Bush during his State of the Union address in 2005; an unhinged Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) called him a liar from the House floor. The currently outraged, like Maureen Down and E.J. Dionne, said little about the 2005 interruption of the President of the United States with catcalls. Congressional efforts at censure failed. Stark, for all I know, remains not an albatross, but an icon of the Left.
continued…
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-rise-of-the-uncouth/
190 EscapeVelocity // Sep 16, 2009 at 12:40 am
Why Did Holder’s Justice Department Dismiss the Black Panther Case?
The attorney general apparently believes that civil rights legislation protects only certain races.
September 15, 2009
- by Jennifer Rubin
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/why-did-holders-justice-department-dismiss-the-black-panther-case/
The New Left Radicals march on through the institutions.
191 Art Telles // Sep 16, 2009 at 1:14 am
The Reagan who signed off on…
Yeah, THAT Reagan… who won two whopper elections.
The same Reagan known as the great communicator who also said ‘trust but verify’ for the purpose of strengthening America, and did not go around the world apologizing for America’s greatness and for America being a God ordained ‘Shining City On A Hill’ blessing to the rest of the planet.
See, agreement.
Reagan… the father of Ron who still doesn’t realize how great his own father’s legacy transcends the leftist / progressive ideology of Air America.
>> http://sarahpalintoday.blogspot.com/2009/07/ronald-reagan-time-for-choosing.html
192 sinz54 // Sep 16, 2009 at 10:22 am
balconesfault:
YES!
As Reagan explained in his own autobiography, he was never against taxes. He was against excessive marginal tax rates . When he took office, the top marginal tax rate was 70%. That meant that your reward for working harder or smarter was to see 70% of your additional income get confiscated. This was a disincentive to productivity. It also was an incentive to move your money into unproductive tax shelters, such as overseas tax havens.
And Reagan did lower the top marginal income tax rate from 70% to 28%, you have to admit that.
As for proposing to eliminate nuclear weapons, that was because Reagan believed strongly in his ballistic missile defense program, which you liberals hated. He believed that if missiles could be intercepted safely, that would be a more stabilizing force than Mutual Assured Destruction.
That contrasts sharply with liberals who want to get rid of nuclear weapons but who don’t propose any other realistic way to deter aggression. They put their faith in something called “international law,” and even in the United Nations. Neither of these has ever deterred aggression in the entire history of the world. A determined aggressor will tear up or ignore treaties and do his own thing. Reagan knew that. You liberals don’t.
193 Chris Balsz // Sep 16, 2009 at 10:27 am
“Could you guys at least get together and form one unified wrong opinion?”
No. I speak for myself.
“Yes, single payer healthcare would be socialism. As is single payer fire departments, single payer sewage systems, single payer highway departments, and single payer schools. All forms of limited socialism, but socialism nonetheless. Across the country, many many metropolitan areas or other governmental bodies still own and operate electric power plants and their local grid. That is also a form of socialism. Socialism isn’t some form of redistribution of wealth. It’s government running stuff.
Supporting these, however, does NOT make you a socialist, unless you believe that all businesses should be owned and operated by the government, and that private property ownership should be abolished. Now, some might say that government being able to regulate how businesses and individuals operate, and to tax property and business to do other things with the money (like operate a school system) means that we’re already a socialist country.”
I don’t agree with your broad definition of socialism.
I definitely do not agree that, however you define “socialism”, a person who advocates “socialism” is not a “socialist” if he refuses to support total socialism. Arguing “I am not a socialist, because what I want is not socialism” is defensible. Arguing “I am not a socialist, because the socialism I propose is limited and anyhow the stigma of the term ’socialist’ annoys me” is laughable.
“chris-balsz : so you are for ending social security, medicare, police and fire departments, public schools and the military? I mean, if when the government takes money from you to provide this stuff it is “socialism”, you must be agaisnt all of that. And add in roads wile you are at it…do you believe all roads should be pay to use, even the one you live on?”
Social Security and Medicare, certainly; but I won’t have to lift a finger to see them gone. Police and fire departments and the military, probably not, because they need training and I’d hate to see a for-profit police department. Public schools, definitely, God willing. In my county property owners are taxed per foot of road frontage. And if you don’t live on a county road, the county is not gonna fix that 8′x4′x2′ pothole, ever. A mileage tax has been floated, quietly, among the think tanks in Washington. So I’m not sure where you think that road leads.
I made two separate arguments– the Constitution limits the ability of the government to dip into my pocket willy-nilly. Second, the socialist goal of this robbery is a waste.
“You also write: “And yeah, if you want a permanent bureaucracy to own and operate for-profits, you’re a socialist. It’s not as if a socialist only wears a Mao cap or something.”
Who in the heck is saying we want the government to operate all for-profit companies? Not me, not anyone else here, not Obama, not the Democratic Party.”
Who said “all”? Obama and the Democratic Party think it great that the federal government owns 42% of a car company. That’s socialism. Proponents of socialism are socialists.
“I always ask – what county in the world that provides less social services than the United States would you want to live in?
I never get an answer.”
Kenya has a large English-speaking population, relative stability and a decent climate. They also are serious about limiting immigration to useful people, so I couldn’t get a visa, to answer your next question.
el gato-libre
If you met an Anglo who put ethnicity ahead of national loyalty, would you feel empathy?
194 sinz54 // Sep 16, 2009 at 10:31 am
urban:
Even a mental health professional would never psychoanalyze anyone from a blog. And you certainly have no right to.
All we can agree on, is that “escapevelocity” has misread history.
The notion of America prior to 1960 as a peaceful idyllic paradise where everybody got along in harmony and everybody had golden opportunities to succeed is inaccurate. Indeed, no such conditions existed anywhere else in the world either.
You can search the writings of men and women who lived prior to 1960, and you won’t find hardly any who are saying “Wow, isn’t America an idyllic paradise now! We can only go downhill from here!” You wouldn’t find that in the 19th century or the early 20th century.
You ask “When exactly were Americans decent and moral to one another? ” It certainly wasn’t during the Civil War, when brother literally took up arms against brother–and the casualty rate was huge.
“escapevelocity”: If you’re reading this, can you answer me this question:
What period in American history would YOU like to have lived in?
195 sinz54 // Sep 16, 2009 at 10:35 am
chris-balsz:
Obama NEVER said it was great. In fact, at a press conference he said he wants to disinvest in General Motors as soon as possible.
Obama maintains that these were EMERGENCY measures, needed to stave off an imminent economic depression. You can disagree with him about whether there was indeed an emergency serious enough to take such drastic steps. But IF you believe there was a state of national emergency, THEN you must accept that the Government may have to do things it would NEVER do in peacetime.
This wouldn’t be the first national emergency in which the Government did excessive but temporary things. What Obama did to General Motors pales by comparison to what FDR and the hysterical Californians did to Japanese-Americans living there after Pearl Harbor. But those Japanese-Americans were released after the war ended.
196 txanne // Sep 16, 2009 at 1:32 pm
It seems this Beck blend of conservative, libertarian, theocratic ideal rejects any academic conversation outside their narrow minded point of view.
The greatness of this nation has always been dependent upon diverse opinion, open discussion without fear of the “thought police”.
Beck is preaching every day that only he and his allies have the answer to fix America. The case against Sunstein is just one example of hit jobs on good and decent Americans.
It is time to speak out against this and I thank David Frum for doing so.
197 Chris Balsz // Sep 16, 2009 at 2:34 pm
‘Obama NEVER said it was great. In fact, at a press conference he said he wants to disinvest in General Motors as soon as possible.’
Yes. He did say that. Those words did emerge out of his mouth, yes.
Since he sent his guys into federal court and fought thousands of people with actual ownership of GM, to strip them, and do it his way–and has no plan to sell GM anytime soon– I still maintain he thinks socialism is a great idea.
198 balconesfault // Sep 16, 2009 at 3:09 pm
chris-balsz: “I don’t agree with your broad definition of socialism.”
Great. Continue to be ignorant of the terms you use. Don’t expect to be taken seriously by those who don’t share your ignorance, or those who seek to manipulate peoples ignorance for power or profit
Once again, when government collects taxes and performs a function that could arguably be performed by the free market, that is socialism. When government owns all real property and means of production, that is a socialist state
I definitely do not agree that, however you define “socialism”, a person who advocates “socialism” is not a “socialist” if he refuses to support total socialism.
Great. Then every Republican who is out there defending Social Security right now is a socialist. Enjoy your foxhole.
Arguing “I am not a socialist, because the socialism I propose is limited and anyhow the stigma of the term ’socialist’ annoys me” is laughable.
We are talking about rhetorical precision, which may not serve your purposes of maintaining ignorance, but which is necessary for the discussion. One is not a “socialist” if they don’t favor government owning all real property and means of production.
I’d hate to see a for-profit police department
So you are, by your definitions, a socialist. Just because you hate the idea of the private sector doing something doesn’t mean that it isn’t socialism if the public sector takes it over.
199 balconesfault // Sep 16, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Kenya has a large English-speaking population, relative stability and a decent climate.
Kenya
Per capita GDP – $1,087
Trade balance (% of GDP): -16.2
Inflation (%): 25.8
Add that Kenya was badly wracked by violence after their last election, badly damaging many of the industries in the country.
As for Social Spending?
The Kenya government devotes a significant proportion of its resources to investments in human capital—health and education. In 2006/07, more than a third of the government budget was allocated to these social sectors.
200 balconesfault // Sep 16, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Since he sent his guys into federal court and fought thousands of people with actual ownership of GM, to strip them, and do it his way–and has no plan to sell GM anytime soon– I still maintain he thinks socialism is a great idea.
chris-balsz – do you think that Obama is a natural born American citizen?
Just wondering…
201 urban // Sep 16, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Please guys, just move to Somalia. It is the exact definition of how you wish the United States to be. No taxes, no governmental control…complete liberty! You are free to do whatever you want without socialists trying to regulate anything….they don’t bother to keep up transportation, food distribution networks, water safety, electricity or oil supplies. You can have as many guns as you want and do whatever you please!
202 Jim // Sep 16, 2009 at 6:19 pm
As soon as the socialists move to North Korea, Nicaragua, Venezuela or Cuba, urban.
203 Chris Balsz // Sep 16, 2009 at 7:27 pm
“So you are, by your definitions, a socialist. Just because you hate the idea of the private sector doing something doesn’t mean that it isn’t socialism if the public sector takes it over.”
But by your definition, I would not be a socialist if I sought government ownership and operation of every factory in town, except the florists. Because a “socialist” wants government ownership and operation of ALL means of production.
Most Communist states in the Warsaw Pact failed to meet your definition of “socialism”; they tolerated limited private agriculture.
“Do you think that Obama is a natural born American citizen?”
Probably. Hawaii is apparently pretty relaxed about helping anybody born there, prove it.
“Great. Then every Republican who is out there defending Social Security right now is a socialist. Enjoy your foxhole.”
Interesting point: how should political economists categorize putting over a Ponzi scheme, for the benefit of a state? Uberlumpenproletariat? It sure isn’t honest, or prudent.
204 agentprovocateur // Sep 16, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Even a mental health professional would never psychoanalyze anyone from a blog.
It is a pity that Charles Krauthammer has never learned that.
205 EscapeVelocity // Sep 16, 2009 at 8:55 pm
The greatness of this nation has always been dependent upon diverse opinion, open discussion without fear of the “thought police”. —txanne
Yes, now anyone who speaks out against the Left is a McCarthyist and Crypto Racist.
Thought police indeed.
Politically Correctness is running wild!
206 balconesfault // Sep 17, 2009 at 8:57 am
But by your definition, I would not be a socialist if I sought government ownership and operation of every factory in town, except the florists.
Interesting reducto ad absurdum. But meaningless to this discussion – because nobody could conceive of such a government, except for someone intentionally gaming the system to avoid the label of socialist. Clearly the intention of such a government would be complete ownership of all the means of production in society, with florists being a special exemption, so such a government would be socialist.
Most Communist states in the Warsaw Pact failed to meet your definition of “socialism”; they tolerated limited private agriculture.
There you have it – they “tolerated” this. The presumption was that ownership was by the state – with special permission granted for private ownership. I do not see any serious Democrat advocating such a position, or being anywhere near a slippery slope to such an argument.
Yes, now anyone who speaks out against the Left is a McCarthyist and Crypto Racist.
Nope. There are many serious conservatives who are neither McCarthyite, or racist.
The label is best saved for those who are.
As soon as the socialists move to North Korea, Nicaragua, Venezuela or Cuba, urban.
A reasonable point. Although Nicaragua and Venezuela both have active stock exchanges, which is a great indicator that a country is not “socialist” – but I’ll grant that Chavez is trying to move it to being a socialist country.
But anyone who would like government to completely own and control all property and means of production should look at North Korea and Cuba (and the former Soviet Union) as instructive.
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