Individual Freedom and Responsibility

Renewing the American Social Contract: A New Vision for Improving Economic Security | NewAmerica.net.

Reading this report from the New America Foundation goes to highlight the two competing ideological factions in the Democratic Party today. And how we view what the role of government especially the Federal Government should play in the economy. The Progressive or as I tend to call them the Social-Democratic faction of people like U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders the only self identified. Socialist in Congress and the New-Democratic or Liberal faction of the party that I come from. With people like John Kerry and Bill Clinton. The Progressives not only want to protect current social-programs in the country but to expand them and create new ones. And tax more and basically view the Federal Government as underfunded and too decentralized to take care of the entire country and. Would like to create new programs and take more power way from the private-sector to give to government to take care of us. Like nationalizing the retirement-system to use as an example as we see in this report.

Todays Progressives would go much further the Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson perhaps ever even imagined. And would like to see a big centralized government that’s common in let’s say Europe especially in Scandinavia. That would be there to protect us and take care of everyone to prevent us from making mistakes with our own lives especially financially. The theory that once power is given to the states and individuals and things become decentralized. There’s less security in the system and they are right about that but you can have so much security to the point that. Individualism and creativity get’s stifled because we are all dependent on the same source in this case the Federal Government. To take care of us for us and I do not want to see all of the power in the hands of a central government or any government. Or all of the power in the hands of organizations corporate or otherwise. But most if not all of the power in the hands of an educated workforce and individuals. To be able to control and manage their own lives for themselves after getting the tools to be able to do that for themselves.

In this report from the New America Foundation and the link of it is on this blog. You see proposals to nationalize the retirement system and make Social Security the lone provider of. Pensions in this country. A proposal to nationalize the unemployment insurance system to give the Federal Government complete control over it. Right now the states play a role helping their own unemployed workers and help them get back to work. A proposal to nationalize the Medicaid system so the Federal Government has complete control over the health insurance program for the poor. We are a huge country with fifty states, we do not need a top down approach when it comes to health. Insurance and there are developed countries that are much smaller than us like Germany that have a. Decentralized health insurance system including health insurance for their poor as well. And have universal health insurance for their entire country. And todays Progressives would also like to go back to the old Welfare system pre Welfare to Work of 1996. Where people on Welfare Insurance weren’t expected to go back to work.

Middle-class Americans are not under taxed especially if they are struggling right now. And if anything thanks to the expiring payroll tax cut they are probably overtaxed right now. We do not have an underfunded government with too little authority over our lives. We have underfunded workers with too little authority over their own lives. And I separate the social-contract from the safety-net and to have real economic-security in this country. Not that it would ever be perfectly secure, no system could provide that, all developed countries have a certain level of low-income. And struggling middle-class workers but to have a real social-contract that provides as much economic-security as possible. We need a social-contract that empowers more Americans to be able to take care of themselves. And that get’s to things like a modern infrastructure-system and actually rebuild this country. So we can all get around and move products around better, efficiently and affordably. And real universal access to quality education in America that’s life long. That would also be there for the unemployed and low-income workers so they can get themselves better jobs.

The difference between a social-contract and a safety-net. The social-contract is the foundation that empowers Americans to be able to do for themselves what they need to take care of themselves. And live in freedom in America. The safety-net is a social-insurance system that people collect from when they need it and have nowhere else to go. So they can take care of themselves in the short run as they are working themselves to becoming independent. Perhaps for the first time in their lives and what New-Democrats or Liberals want to do is build a real social-contract in. America so we can all live in freedom and what todays Progressives are really talking about is creating a centralize welfare-state run by the Federal Government. That would be there to take care of everyone and this is main difference between the two factions in the Democratic Party on. Economic-policy and where we want to take the country.

Joel Kotkin has an interesting piece Class Warfare For Republicans:

‘As a Truman-style Democrat left politically homeless, I am often asked about the future of the Republican Party.’

The Tea Party probably might not agree, nor maybe many social and religious conservatives.

—————————-

Walter Russell Mead seems to be envisioning a reinvigorated liberalism 5.0, arguing that the current union fights, ecotopia, high-speed rail plans, and progressivism aren’t necessarily the best way forward given America’s challenges.  There’s been a fundamental shift that we must adjust to, and it involves technology and globalization for starters.  Repost-Via Youtube: Conversations With History – Walter Russell Mead…

Interesting post here:

‘It is important to note, however, that rampant government dependence and economic mismanagement are not exclusively blue-state pathologies. Corrupt and crony Republicans can be every bit as sleazy and dangerous as their Democratic counterparts. South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi are on this list for good reason.’

————————-

Perhaps conservative Briton Roger Scruton is just being nostalgic for what he describes as the old humanism:

“There is no need for God, they thought, in order to live with a vision of the higher life. All the values that had been appropriated by the Christian churches are available to the humanist too.”

And he laments the new humanism, which lacks the noblility of purpose of the old, and offers nothing positive:

“Instead of idealizing man, the new humanism denigrates God and attacks the belief in God as a human weakness”

————————-

Copied from Will Wilkinson’s piece on Gerry Gaus’s new book:

In sum, OPR defends public reason liberalism without contractarian foundations. It is Kantian without being rationalistic. It is Humean without giving up the project of rationally reforming the moral order. It is evolutionary but not social Darwinist. It is classical liberal without being libertarian. It is Hegelian and organicist without being collectivist or statist. It shows us how political authority can be justified but only by accepting that moral authority limits it. It pushes us to look towards the practical and reject the utopian while simultaneously maintaining that a truly free and equal social order is within our grasp. It rejects the aspiration of political liberalism to neutrality among conceptions of morality while simultaneously retaining its spirit by sectioning off social morality from other normative domains.

————————-

Theodore Dalrymple on the new atheists.

Dalrymple:

‘The search for the pure guiding light of reason, uncontaminated by human passion or metaphysical principles that go beyond all possible evidence, continues, however; and recently, an epidemic rash of books has declared success, at least if success consists of having slain the inveterate enemy of reason, namely religion. The philosophers Daniel Dennett, A. C. Grayling, Michel Onfray, and Sam Harris, biologist Richard Dawkins, and journalist and critic Christopher Hitchens have all written books roundly condemning religion and its works. Evidently, there is a tide in the affairs, if not of men, at least of authors.’

People on the modern American right take issue with Rawls, but have they addressed his depth?:  From The American Conservative: Going Off The Rawls–David Gordon On John Rawls…Utilitarianism leads to problems.  Will the Rawlsian center-left hold up?:

From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’… From The Reason Archives: ‘Discussing Disgust’ Julian Sanchez Interviews Martha Nussbaum

Robert Nozick merged elements of Kant and Locke in a strong, libertarian defense of the individual A Few Thoughts On Robert Nozick’s “Anarchy, State and Utopia”…From Slate: ‘The Liberty Scam-Why Even Robert Nozick, The Philosophical Father Of Libertarianism, Gave Up On The Movement He Inspired.’

It’s the “machinery” part of libertarianism, or often a certain commitment to abstract structures into which “individuals” would fit that is a little troubling: Youtube Via Libertarianism.Org-David Friedman: ‘The Machinery Of Freedom’.

…Some Friday Quotations: (On) Kant, Locke, and Pierce

Progressive Democrat

Nixon Library's Oral History with George McGovern – YouTube.

George McGovern was someone with one hell of a political and professional resume. Who represented South Dakota in both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate as a Leftist-Democrat in one of the reddest. States in the union and yet he represented South Dakota in Congress for twenty two years. Who served as Director of the U.S. Food For Peace Program, who won the Democratic Party nomination for. President in 1972, who rebuilt the Democratic Party almost on his own by bringing in so many new Democrats. Who thought the Democratic Party was still the Dixiecrat Party that didn’t welcome ethnic or racial-minorities or women and so fourth. Which benefited the Democratic Party by 1976 with Jimmy Carter being elected President in 1976. Who was a Liberal-Democrat from the South but not as far to the left as the national Democratic Party. George McGovern was a man who truly believed in public-service that it was about representing the public and not furthering your career financially.

George McGovern grew up in the New Deal era in the Democratic Party era. The Democratic-Socialist or Progressive era of Franklin Roosevelt and thought this was the politics of the future and. Something that he believed in and was the dominant political philosophy up until the late 1960s or so. The problem that Senator McGovern had was that by the time he was a national-Democrat and becoming a major contender. For President of the United States, Senator McGovern was still a New Deal Progressive-Democrat. During a time when the country was moving to the right on economic-policy and when high taxes, Welfare, big government were becoming unpopular.Yet Senator McGovern was not just running as a New Deal or Great Society Progressive-Democrat but as someone. Who in his 1972 Presidential Campaign wanted to create round three and create a real welfare-state in America. And create a national healthcare-system to use as an example. When high taxes were becoming unpopular.

The main difference between Barry Goldwater and George McGovern’s landslide Presidential losses. Is that Senator Goldwater was ahead of his tome and the country wasn’t quite ready for his let’s call. It Conservative-Libertarianism in 1964 at the heart of the Great Society era in the country. But in Senator McGovern’s case the country moved past his and LBJ’s Democratic-Socialism and that we just. Didn’t need t have the New Deal and Great Society but that we needed to expand it and create a real welfare-state in America. Like they have in Scandinavia to use as an example. With things like a national healthcare-system universal higher-education run by the Federal Government. A lot more Federal funding for public-schools in this country as well as regulations. And so fourth and the country simply didn’t want to pay the taxes to finance all of these new public-programs.

By 1976 the New-Democratic wing in the Democratic Party the real Liberal wing of the party. That has a healthy skepticism of governmental-power in the economy and our personal-lives but not. Antigovernment was already forming and were replacing the Dixiecrats in the party that were becoming Republicans. Jimmy Carter perfect example of that so by 1976 the Democratic Party and country were moving past Progressive policies. Of Lyndon Johnson and George McGovern but what I call the McGovern wing of the Democratic Party. Thats different from the FDR or LBJ wing, was forming but hasn’t had the power to nominate another McGovern Progressive-Democrat to run for. President in the Democratic Party and we are now seeing McGovern-Democrats running for President in Progressive third-parties.

Our weekly wrap… Sunday to Sunday… Please share! Ask Marion

• Amnesty – Solidifying the Marxist Control of America for Decades, If Not Permanently
• New Twinkie Maker to Hire 1,500 Workers – But No Union Labor
• United States Senator Sarah Palin
• Russian security forces nab alleged Muslim extremists
• TIME 100: Rand Paul (By Sarah Palin)
• Are Democrats from the Red Planet…
• Victory! Or what passes for it in Congress
• The Event File – TheBlaze
• Rush Limbaugh – Friday, April 26th, 2013 – Morning Update
• The Council Has Spoken!! This Week’s Watcher’s Council Results – 04.26.13
• Will the Amnesty Bill Lead to Gun Confiscation in 2035?
• Bush Library Opens As His Approval Rating Is Up
• She Said What?
• Secretary Napolitano Caught Lying To Congress about Saudi Implicated In Boston Bombing
• We’re Building Too Many Houses. We Need To Be Building Factories!
• Cass Sunstein: The Poster Boy for ‘Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out’
• Obama Counts on Media to Shift Blame for Flight Delays
• Cruz: Obama Pushing Citizenship Because He Wants Immigration Reform to Fail?!?
• Watcher’s Council Nominations – One Day In Boston Edition
• Fox News: Boston Bombers were "welfare” recipients
• Obama’s Plan to Destroy America Hatched at Columbia Says Classmate
• Ann Coulter on Boston Bombing Suspect’s Wife and ‘The Five’ on Immigration and Extremism
• Amnesty Rubio Style?
• Sleeping with the Saudis
• Understanding the Islamic Bombing of the Boston Marathon
• 43rd Anniversary of Earth Day
• Beck Breaks Exclusive Information on Saudi National Once Considered a Person of Interest in Boston Bombings
• How Jihad Incubates – The Boston Bomber’s Mosque
• It’s a Wrap… Ask Marion – 04.21.13

Also See:

• HORRIFYING: Hidden Camera Catches NYC abortion worker telling woman to “flush it” if baby is born alive
• Obama’s 5 Most Controversial Statements About Abortion and ‘Women’s Rights’ During His Planned Parenthood Speech
• ONIONS…
• Despite Doctor’s Order, School Bans Girl for Not Getting Chickenpox Vaccine
• Startling ruling in Gosnell abortion trial
• Obamacare is headed for collapse: Here’s why there won’t be enough doctors to maintain the "sick care" fiasco
• Nestle CEO seeks to control the world’s water supply
• Death Doc Kermit Gosnell’s Silent Co-Conspirators
• Frenchie Dad Plays with His Pups
• Human Medical Treatment Brings New Hope to Critically Injured Pets
• Busts of presidential pets Barney and Miss Beazley at George W. Bush Library
• Animal photos to make you smile
• Sidestep This Feline Vaccine – Despite the Potentially Fatal Disease Outcome

We are living in amazing times, good and bad, the kind of times that truly try men’s (and women’s) souls and that make or break countries and shape (or reshape) societies. Please get involved, pray for guidance, prepare for the worst (for yourself and to help others), then educate yourself and share what you learn with as many people as you can. All our futures depend on it!!

Be sure to come visit us here at Ask Marion regularly and subscribe to receive the latest posts first… as well as visit:

Just One More Pet, True Health Is True Wealth!!, Knowledge Is Power, and the Daily Thought Pad.

Liberal Democracy

Neoliberalism Vs Democracy – YouTube.

If you look at what Progressives or Social-Democrats call Neoliberalism. They say it’s forced Liberalization on societies, think about that forced Liberalization on societies. Forcing people to live in freedom, that alone kinda gives it away that Liberalism is about Liberalizing people so. They can live in freedom because Liberalize is a Liberal word and besides we are not talking about forcing people to live in freedom. But simply giving people as many as possible the opportunity to live in freedom by empowering them to get the tools that they need on their own to be successful. In life rather creating a big state or big government and letting the Federal Government collect all of the country’s resources. And empowering government to decide what people need financially and so fourth in order to live well in life. And empowering the state to also decide how much personal-freedom that we can have as well.

We need to be careful here when we talk about the Progressive or Social-Democratic model of Democracy. Because there are multiple version of Progressive or Social-Democracy. But economically they both revolve around the central government. The national government being there to provide a lot of the human-services that people need to survive in life. Education, healthcare, health-insurance, pension and a generous safety-net for people who for whatever reasons are out of work. Or income or are working but not making enough money to survive on their own in life. That collects a lot in taxes to make sure that no one is too rich or too poor in their minds that everyone has. What they need to live a good life. Then you have what I call Socialist-Liberals like Noam Chomksy to use as an example that believes in a high degree of personal-freedom like Liberals or. Libertarians and then you have what I Progressives-Statists people who not only believe that government should take care of us economically. But there to make sure we aren’t making bad decisions with our personal-lives and skeptical about personal-choice and personal-freedom.

Liberal-Democracy or Neoliberalism is you want to call it that, which is a term that I do not buy. To me anyway Neoliberalism would apply to todays Progressives or people who are called modern-Liberals. But the Liberal form of Democracy is about the individual and where government comes in is to see that everyone. Has a good shot at being successful and living in freedom both economically and personally. And with Progressive or Social-Democracy it’s about the state and that the state’s job is literally there. To take care of people and to see that we are not making bad choices.

Libertarian Socialist

The Ideas of Chomsky-BBC interview – YouTube.

I was in a debate about a year ago with someone who self-describes their politics as Libertarian. And we were talking about Professor Noam Chomsky and this person was describing Noam Chomsky’s. Politics as Socialist and told this person that Professor Chomsky is a Libertarian-Socialist. Which might sound like an Qxymoron because how can someone be both a Libertarian and a Socialist. Libertarians are always looking to shrink the size of government and Socialists are always looking to grow the size of government. Libertarians tend to think that government is way too big and Socialists especially in America tend to think that government is way too small. This person said that you can’t be both it’s sorta one or the other and what I trying to get across to them and not. Believing I was successul is that you can be both as long as you aren’t Socialist or Libertarian on both economic and socia-issues. That you have to believe in a high deal of individual-freedom at least as it relates to personal or economic-freedom.

So what is a Libertarian-Socialist. It’s someone whose Liberal-Libertarian on social-issues meaning they. Do not want government interfering with our personal lives including as it relates to Prohibition and in America are even in favor of gun-rights. Against the War on Drugs, censorship even as it relates to hate-speech. Doesn’t really sound like someone who would be a Progressive today but what they do have in common with Progressives. Again Libertarian-Socialist, people who are Liberal-Libertarian on social-issues but Progressive-Socialist on economic-policy and believe. In things like the welfare-state, high taxes for social-spending and so fourth. Big regulations on private-enterprise, big believers in the right to organize and so fourth. Libertarian-Socialism is a form of Progressivism at least in it’s Liberal not Paternalistic form. That government shouldn’t try to run our lives but be there to provide us the services. That can’t be trusted to the private sector.

Libertarian-Socialism is the only form of Socialism or Progressivism that I respect as a Liberal. Because even though they believe in a big state as it relates to the economy. They do not believe that government should be trying to run our lives for us and are not pure Statists at least and. Even believe in a high deal of economic-freedom as long as it’s highly taxed and regulated. So no one get’s left behind in society. This is not my philosophy but it’s a lot better from what we are hearing from so called Progressives today. Who seem to be believe in a big role for government in the economy but also in our personal-lives. As far as what personal-choices we are allowed to make.

California and Atlantis

Blasted Fools/TPN: Could these people possibly do a worse job of running California than the Democrat legislature? I can’t see how. They’d probably do better purely by accident.

It used to be that ‘Inmates running the Asylum’ was just a facetious toss off phrase in reaction to hearing something odd and random and out of order. As things go in California however, the odd, random, FUBAR (if you don’t know it, I’m not translating it), and out of order are the order of the day, literally. Now that the Democrats – with the help of the brain dead voters, have achieved one party rule here, they are drunk and disorderly with power and going Ape guano with ‘laws’ that virtually define ‘progressive fetish’.

There are essentially no adults in the room any more in Sacramento. That’s not exactly true, there are a few but they’ve been tied up and gagged and therefore rendered impotent to call a halt to any of the insanity that rules the day. The lack of perspective of California Democrats is nearly beyond comprehension to anyone without a disordered mind. Whereas the state’s citizens suffer from some of the highest unemployment and businesses (that aren’t leaving) are hanging on by their fingernails – the Democrats’ priorities have nothing to do with practical matters and everything to do with an early Kwanzaa list made to order to delight the nuttiest of the nuts in San Francisco.

It was only a few days ago that the Assembly pushed a bill through, (AB5) also known as the ‘Homeless Bill of Rights’. Ironically enough, the heaviest impact of this bill is going to rest on the shoulders of some of the largest liberal cities in California, (San Francisco, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz). Those cities presently remove homeless from the sidewalks and other places where their encampment in the path of public ingress / egress is a nuisance factor. What hypocrites! Now, police will be prohibited from disenfranchising panhandlers and what have you.

I must say parenthetically, that I have no innate bias whatsoever against homeless people. While it is true that some have grown to prefer that lifestyle, many still are there because of a swirling cycle of circumstances complicated by toxic family relationships, finances, mental health issues, addictions and poor choices. But for the Grace of God, right? I hope you said right. And there are many others that are the victims of the very same rapacious bankers that reaped a windfall from the TARP bailouts and showed their gratitude for it by tossing families into the street. That’s quite another whole topic aside from the one at hand.

Nevertheless, the California Legislature is not about solutions, but about empty compassion and symbolism. Let me give you kind of a personal illustration of the difference between Conservative action and Liberal ‘good vibes’ devoid of nutritional value. I think of it as ‘empty calories’ social policy. I’m sure the situation I’m about to describe has happened to you at least once. You see someone in a parking lot of a fast food restaurant or nearby and they approach and ask you if you could spare some money so they can get something to eat. In my family, we’ve encountered this on several occasions. This is aside from the hackneyed panhandling routines involving cardboard signs and freeway offramps along with bogus stories of ‘our car ran out of gas’. I’ve asked “Where is your car?” They walk away.

I don’t dip into my pocket or wallet and peel off some money. Instead, I offer to take them inside and give them their choice of a combo meal and I pay for it. The reason is that I’m street wise enough to know that if I hand them money directly – more often than not, that money is going to find its way into the hands of a drug dealer or be spent on a bottle of liquor. The homeless person may obtain the drugs or booze from somewhere else, but it won’t be from me. Jesus taught us to feed the hungry but not enable and perpetuate their habits. Sound anything like tough love?

I’ve had situations where I could see the wheels turning in the person’s mind, realizing that they are not going to get cash from me for their real purpose, but rationalizing with themselves that they actually are hungry and now would be as good an opportunity as ever. There are others who curse you for recognizing their intentions and yet others that just flat do need a meal and humbly accept your generosity. I’ve even on a few occasions, been led to approach people who are obviously displaced and were not panhandling for baksheesh and given them assistance and you can tell they are slightly shocked by the random act of kindness unsolicited. The point is that there are real solutions for this problem and most of them don’t involve government. Sending the message that ‘the street is the place for you’ is not one of them.

I’ll not dwell too long on any of the other ‘Democrats are from Mars’ initiatives that have become law or will shortly, but there are some remarkable ones. Restrictive gun laws that do nothing to inhibit criminals, but infringe on legal citizens’ 2nd Amendment rights, sanctuary for illegals provisos, bullet trains to nowhere that will crater the state finances, doubling down on foolishness with climate change regulations for a problem that doesn’t exist, promoting the gay agenda in public schools, banishing the evil plastic bag, etc. Off the hook stupidity. Nero would blush at it.

The latest looney tunes legislation was announced today and really had the effect on me of one of those classic hand shake buzzer gags. The jokesters in the California Assembly passed a bill on Thursday that would make the state the first in the nation to allow non-citizens who are in the country legally to serve on jury duty. Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, according to the AP, said his bill AB1401, would help California widen the pool of prospective jurors and help integrate immigrants into the community.

It’s just stunning on the face of it. The Constitutional guarantee of a jury of one’s peers – just out the window? The arrogance of Democrats in this state defies rational understanding. California is on the leading edge of a new wave of states that are creating a test lab environment for an alternate universe where the Constitution has been disposed of as a curious relic, sealed in a time capsule and buried for some future civilization to find in years to come.

That future civilization, if they are smarter and wiser than us – will recognize the brilliance of the document (the Constitution) and be truly puzzled at any society that would trade it for confusion and failure. They will see how it ended and it didn’t end well.

Related:

California May Become First State To Allow Non-Citizens To Serve On Juries

CA Assembly Considers Jury Duty For Non-Citizens

Cass Sunstein: The Poster Boy for ‘Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out’

The Last-Six-Mass-Shootings-By-Left-Wing-Liberals

ZONATION: Oh, How Liberals Contradict Themselves

Report: Liberals and Conservatives Have Different Brains

Socialist-Liberal

McGovern's 1972 Democratic Convention Acceptance Speech – YouTube.

Former U.S. Senator George McGovern who served a total of twenty two years in Congress. Served in the House of Representatives from 1957-61 before serving in the Kennedy Administration from. 1961-63, then getting elected to the Senate in 1962 and serving there until 1981. A victim of the 1980 Reaagn-Revolution and lost his Senate seat. Was a public-servant and man who knew himself very well and where he stood and what he represented and what he believed in. He ran for President in 1972 as what I would call a true Socialist-Liberal, really the last one we’ve seen as a. Presidential nominee, someone with strong Liberal positions on social-issues who believed in a good deal of. Personal-freedom but someone who was more Progressive/Socialist on economic-policy. And ran on raising taxes, creating a real welfare-state in America and building off of both the New Deal and. Great Society in America and cutting the defense-budget. So you knew what you were getting from George McGovern and where he stood.

One thing that I respect about George McGovern was that he didn’t meet all of the stereotypes that have been thrown. At Progressives at least since he ran for President in 1972 but ever since. This was a man who grew up in South Dakota and was proud of it and represented South Dakota in Congress. For twenty two years winning five Congressional-elections, two in the House and three in the Senate. He was not from Boston, or New York or Washington, or Chicago or San Francisco or Los Angeles. Stereotypical Progressive cities in America where a lot of Progressives either come from or live now. Senator McGovern was an American-Patriot who served his country proudly in World War II, not a Pacifist. He was a devout-Christian not an Atheist and also simply because of his honesty and consistency. He was against the Vietnam-War when it was popular in the mid 1960s and was against it when it was unpopular the rest of the way.

George McGovern’s legacy in the Democratic Party is a positive one at least in this sense. Because of his political judgement and he knew how the civil-rights laws and the Great Society of the. 1960s were going to cost the Democratic Party in the South, that the Democratic Party were going to need new voters. Similar to the Republican Party of today and they were going to need new voters. So what he and his campaign did was change the rules of the Democratic Party to get more Democrats represented in the party. African-Americans, Latinos, Jews, women and others and making the Democratic Party a true national party. That didn’t have to have the South to be a competitive party nationally.

From Ann Coulter

My thought is, maybe we should consider admitting immigrants who can succeed in America, rather than deadbeats…But we’re not allowed to “discriminate” in favor of immigrants who would be good for America. Instead of helping America, our immigration policies are designed to help other countries solve their internal problems by shipping their losers to us.

The problem isn’t just illegal immigration. I would rather have doctors and engineers sneaking into the country than legally arriving ditch-diggers…since 1969, about 85 percent of legal immigrants have come from the Third World. They bring Third World levels of poverty, fertility, illegitimacy and domestic violence with them. When they can’t make it in America, they simply go on welfare and sometimes strike out at Americans.

During the three years from 2010 through 2012, immigrants have committed about a dozen mass murders in this country, not including the 9/11 attack. The mass murderers were from Afghanistan, South Korea, Vietnam, Haiti, South Africa, Ethiopia and Mexico. None were from Canada or Western Europe…We ought to be able to do something about the people we chose to bring here.

Read it all here: The Problem Isn’t Just Illegal Immigration

DJH

In this latest effort, terribly offensive words such as “freshman” and “watchmen” have been eliminated, protecting all from serious injury. However, new ground is being broken with the elimination of not-so-obviously offensive words such as “penmanship”.

How could we have survived so long being bombarded by these harmful words? We are finally coming out of the semantic Dark Ages that have been “keeping our legal terms anachronistic” and replacing them with neutered words that “respect our current contemporary times”.  It’s a shame our intelligence doesn’t get such respect.

Liz Watson, a National Women’s Law Center senior adviser, tells us: “Words matter…This is important in changing hearts and minds.” Ahhh…”changing hearts and minds” – how quaint – or should we say anachronistic?

In an attempt at preventing the word police from banging down your door, it would be wise to refrain from using several other words that may soon be found to be offensive: mandolin, Mandella, German, humane, mention, manager, and so many (oops, there’s another one) more. The list is endless and it may become necessary to hire more word police, but that would at least help lower unemployment.

One has to wonder, though, why “mandate” is not yet on the list since it’s already been replaced with “tax” by the Supreme Court.

David J. Hentosh

Indeed, a few pages into the lecture, Rorty says:

If we look for people who made no mistakes, who were always on the right side, who never apologized for tyrants or unjust wars, we shall have few heroes and heroines. Marxism encouraged us to look for such purity. Marxists suggested that only the revolutionary proletariat could embody virtue, that bourgeois reformers were “objectively reactionary,” and that failure to take Marx’s scenario seriously was proof of complicity with the forces of darkness. Marxism was, as Paul Tillich and others rightly noted, more of a religion than a secularist program for social change. Like all fundamentalist sects, it emphasized purity. Lenin, like Savaranola, demanded complete freedom from sin and undeviating obedience. (p. 45-6)

Those of us who grew up with religion (me: Catholic) know about sin and obedience. This is why we usually end up fucked up and why it will take some years to undo the damage done when we were young. (Not our faults, of course, since we didn’t have any say in, for example, being baptized or sent to Sunday school when we were too young to decide for ourselves.) With modern-day feminism, we have another religion, and one that preaches about sin (viz., ignoring, neglecting, or negating the “feminine”) and and obedience (viz., you lose your job if you don’t toe the party line). It’s ideology run to the extreme.

Rorty says that the American Left of the Progressive Era could have done fine without Marxism. Marxism muddied the waters in recent decades with its emphasis on ideological purity, and using a vocabulary that supports this purity. In contrast, the Progressive Leftists were more concerned with the experimental nature of American life, which began with Madison and Jefferson. Rorty cites Herbert Croly, a preeminent Progressive, and his book The Promise of American Life. In summary, Croly believed that the problem lay with the traditional American emphasis on individuality and individual freedom, which, in turn, fostered a climate of unequal distribution of wealth. In other words, when everyone is “looking out for Number One,” the society as a whole suffers. The question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” comes to the front. If we are staunch individualists, we have the tendency to ignore our fellow citizens and focus only on ourselves. One can see that this detrimental to society, as a whole. But, of course, the issue is more complex.

Rorty goes on by saying that Croly eventually looked to the state as the means to redistribute wealth, in tune with a drive to counteract selfishness and excessive individualism. In this respect, Croly is sometimes called a “socialist,” as was his intellectual successors. And, Rorty adds, “we Americans did not need Marx to show us the need for redistribution, or to tell us that the state was often little more than the executive committed of the rich and powerful.” p. 48) In other words, it wasn’t necessary for we Americans to use Marxian categories to frame some sort of workers’ revolution, which is classical Marxism from the social, and not the economic, standpoint. Instead, it would have been sufficient to concentrate on the American values of responsibility to one’s fellow man, in order to head rampant selfishness and greed off at the pass.

“The history of leftist politics in America is a story of how top-down initiatives and bottom-up initiatives have interlocked.” (p. 53) The difference, according to Rorty, is the following. Top-down comes from people who are safely and securely ensconced in the upper echelons. They got this way through hard work, entrepreneurship, or, yes, maybe through inherited money. They then take this time and money and devote it to those that are below them, because they’re worried about the have-nots and how little security they have. Why this is so is largely immaterial, and Rorty doesn’t comment on it. With bottom-up, it’s a rebellion — a rebellion from those that don’t have the money and security, and who feel that they’re getting a raw deal. Strikes fall into this category. Bottom-up took the risks and made the sacrifices, but this would have gotten very far if the top-up, with relatively little risk, had not joined in the struggle, and provided safe spaces and cover for the bottom-up. This is a truism, as evidenced by many example from the period.

Then came Vietnam. That same left, Rorty says, that was a combination of top-down and bottom-up, and who believed that the state (a commonwealth) could be used to address inequalities, became splintered. The students’ sense of what the country was like during that time changed, and not for the better. Now there were calls for revolution. This wasn’t what the Progressivists were all about. Rorty then cites example of the New Left that started to form, the theoretical underpinnings of which were Christopher Lasch and C. Wright Mills.

Rorty concludes the lecture by saying that the period between 1964 and 1972 was, despite the rage, a good thing. If nothing else, it fomented feelings and activity to get something done. Otherwise, the US might have turned out to be a far worse place than it is today (Rorty writing in 1997). The revolution didn’t take place, and that was a good thing. The hue and cry managed to get the troops out of Vietnam, and get the unions to push through for 40-hour weeks and collective bargaining agreements. Again, it could have been worse; the military-industrial complex, which Eisenhower warned us about, could have continued unabated.

Related articles

• “Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America” by Richard Rorty

Also, the fact that the bombing brothers had Muslim affiliations is to be overlooked. Had the brothers been Christians, their religion would certainly have been fair game, but we are to make nothing of their association with a “religion of peace”. As an Atlantic headline chastised all: “The Boston Bombers Were Muslims. So?”

Had the brothers been the first or only Muslims to use terror and random murder for their “cause”, one might agree with the Atlantic. However, only blind, foolish adherence to an agenda allows someone to embrace pretense rather than the reality that another terrorist attack has been perpetrated by Muslims; not Buddhists, Christians, Jews or Scientologists.

The far left’s severe disappointment that the bombing brothers are not white, right-wing, anti-Obama fanatics is being compensated with accusations that “we” are the ones somehow in the wrong. Let down again by their failing idealism, they are spinning as fast as they can to validate an agenda dependent upon denial.

Chris Matthews, a hard core liberal, jumped the gun wondering if Tax Day was a motivation while planting the idea (wish?) that domestic terrorists always come from the right. Once it became known the bombers were Muslims, he spun around and wondered why it was necessary to find out the reason they did it. He not only wants to deny the truth, he wants to bury it to keep his dream alive.

The Obama administration has presented a false sense of security for political gain. Obama’s drone war in a far-away land allows him to pretend he has defeated terrorism. Terrorist threats on US soil are a political liability that shatter the illusion and interfere with his “transformation of America”.

The spin starts at the top.

David J. Hentosh