"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying "Jew swine," collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in ö your nation, your people ö is not the world you were in at all."
THIS is where I am, right now, this instant. I've been here for a while. This gentleman codified and clarified it.
@wrabbit2000, yeah, "go in for the kill" was probably a little over the top, as rhetoric goes, but the demise of the Republican party, a figurative "kill", ought properly to be the goal of both Progressives and Conservatives. In the matter of the progressives, perhaps an "assimilation" rather than a "kill" is more in order to accelerate the demise, as the Republicans and the progressives have much more in common philosophy-wise than the Republicans and the Conservatives do.
Item: both progressives and republicans (of the modern, "neocon" variety) yearn for, and work towards, bigger government, MORE government, as the cure to all evil. Perhaps they desire that goal for different reasons, perhaps not, but the goal is the same. There is nothing "conservative" about a desire for MORE government - by it's very nature, it upsets the system that was... it doesn't "conserve" it, it annihilates it.
Personally, I don't think the actual motivations towards bigger government are in line with their public justifications for it, in either case. Progressive have the tag line of it being "for the children" or "for the women", while neocons claim it is "for the businesses" - but in both cases, I believe it's simply "for the power". There is, in my mind, no other way to justify in reality a lust for more power.
I think, now more strongly than ever, there is a real need for me to do that thread on the history of the neocons, and WHY they are anything but "conservative" - despite the fact that both they and the progressives try desperately to paint them as such... just another common cause between the two.
Sure, there IS need for cooperation in government - that is not what we have. We have two alleged "opposites" towing the same barge line towards the same goal.
That can't be good for the nation, since the goal is ever increasingly heaving into sight and it ain't good.
One of them has to go. I pick the Republicans to go, because the progressives, whatever faults they may have, are much more honest in their quest for subjugation.
The Republicans have to go - and that's coming from a former republican, from back in the bad old days when republicans were conservative in action as well as name. Now, republicans have a name as "conservatives", but their actions are more in line with Fascism - which is just another collectivism, with a different ruling collective.
Collectivization, with the resultant centralization of power, was the problem with both Communism and Fascism. Once it was accomplished, and the power was collected centrally, it was an easy matter for an oligarchy to seize it, and seize it they did. They always do. Both Progressives and Neocons are furiously trying to get that power centralized, so that their own favorite oligarchy can seize it and take absolute control of the collective. That's the reason for the steady flow of power OUT of localities and states TO the central ("Federal") government for the past few years. They want to get it collected all in one place, so that decrees from on high can be more easily handed back down to us proles.
Bad idea. They either need some opposition, or burn this mother down and start again from scratch.
We used to have a saying, back before centralized collectivization for purposes of mass subjugation was fashionable - "I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees". Let's get on with it.
Stop trying to slow roast us, or kill our freedom with the death of a thousand cuts - just lop off our heads quick like, and get on with governing the wasteland of the Brave New World.
Last Edit: Nov 18, 2014 14:13:44 GMT -6 by Deleted
During the 1980 election, an up-and-coming Washington think tank called the Heritage Foundation undertook a massive task: to examine the federal government from top to bottom and produce a detailed, practical conservative policy vision.
The result, called Mandate for Leadership, epitomized the intellectual ambition of the then-rising conservative movement. Its 20 volumes, totaling more than 3,000 pages, included such proposals as income-tax cuts, inner-city “enterprise zones,” a presidential line-item veto, and a new Air Force bomber.
Despite the publication's academic prose and mind-boggling level of detail, it caused a sensation. A condensed version -- still more than 1,000 pages -- became a paperback bestseller in Washington. The newly elected Ronald Reagan passed out copies at his first Cabinet meeting, and it quickly became his administration’s blueprint. By the end of Reagan’s first year in office, 60 percent of the Mandate’s 2,000 ideas were being implemented, and the Republican Party’s status as a hotbed of intellectual energy was ratified.
I honestly don't know what to say in response. To me, the evidence seems clear. The Heritage Foundation has been a fundamental part of the conservative movement since the time of Ronald Reagan as the reference above explains (as would multiple other references). I'm not sure why you don't see or appreciate the importance of the source of the individual mandate, but it is really clear to me.
As is the fact that the Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act was introduced by Republican Senator John Chafee as the Republican alternative to Clinton's plan in 1993 and included an individual mandate.
You've already expressed your opinion of Romneycare ... but ... for most that's a pretty direct example of Republican support for an individual mandate.
Every significant healthcare reform plan put forth by Republicans always contained an individual mandate. Every one.
Added in Edit: I would be content to follow President Washington's advice and do away with all political parties. I would much rather see each of our Representatives and Senators responsible for their own votes and their own beliefs and their own actions and stop twiddling away the wealth and grandeur that was/is the United States on their own pathetic little political careers and the welfare of their Party.
Last Edit: Nov 18, 2014 15:27:27 GMT -6 by Deleted
The only thing I think I would add to what you've said Ninurta, is that Republicans within the political class are simply the same piece of garbage as democrats in the political class.
Of course I clarify that in those words because I number some democrats as good friends these days, as well as some very conservative republicans. What neither group, which I choose to associate with, represent are the politicians and office holders. I think I universally agree with those on both sides who I know in the real world to chat with, that both sides really are equally corrupt at the level of the politicians themselves.
Of course, we're talking more nationally held elected office and the party structures (down to county level) which make that all possible.
An English instructor I came to really respect while I had his class and afterward, for that matter, explained it simply for me. He had tried to run against Senator Blunt here in Missouri as a Republican. The instructor is a very conservative but generally inactive republican for politics, but like you and I, just had his fill of the B.S.. He only found more of it, actually.
He told me that quite literally, from the Clerk's office at filing to everyone within the party he had contact with, the questions were the same. It wasn't asking what he thought, believed or cared about. No one cared one bit for that, he explained. What they all seemed to want to know from him was who HE knew and how much $$$ that represented to his own campaign and the national party as a whole. Money.....nothing more, nothing less and ideals weren't even a part of the conversation. (sigh)
I have no question in my mind, the situation is the same or worse for an average person to find if they attempted a cold run to national level on the Democrat side.
Republican politicians couldn't DEFINE Republic if they had a go/no go test asking just that one question.
Democrat politicians couldn't properly define Democracy if their own careers hung on the answer being accurate and without the use of text book quotes.
I don't think anyone has an Army big enough to force me into that job. lol.....
We'd either be at war within a month, as I told a few people what I personally thought of them (Putin...Oh..yes, a few words please?) or folks who didn't like my ideas would be in full revolt in about the same period.
First? I would use MY executive pen for something a bit more special. I would write my first Executive Order to indicate that until Congress gives bills up/down votes...regardless of who wrote one...I decree the American people pay the Internal Revenue Service what THEY FEEL their Government is WORTH. Furthermore, I would include a clause to federalize the National Guard of whichever state may see IRS agents push to force the issue.
When the Government eventually works in at least it's theoretical form? People can again be expected to pay their 'fair' share. Not 1 day before.
You know, we're joking about it but someday, sometime, something like "Wrabbit for President" is going to have to happen.
There is no reason at all for these rich entrenched a$$es to do a danged thing for the American people except continue to paddle us across the ping-pong net.
They're killing us. They've outsourced our jobs. Divided and conquered us. Dangle a hope carrot, dangle a change carrot, how many more people are now TRULY cynical about politics than 6 years ago? Some of you think that the lack of turnout meant that the American people are tired of Obama and the Democrats, but I say it's pretty danged certain that we're just tired of ALL OF THEM.
What kind of government is it that mandates that you buy something and if you don't, punishes you?
When you can answer that question, then you'll know what kind of government we have in the US.
Yes...and I know of one lady that works in my husband's doctors office that dropped her insurance after all these years because of the high premiums and even more higher outrageous deductibles
Since she can no longer afford to pay for her health ins, she now pays the 'fine' , which she said was a lot cheaper to do anyway
You know, we're joking about it but someday, sometime, something like "Wrabbit for President" is going to have to happen.
There is no reason at all for these rich entrenched a$$es to do a danged thing for the American people except continue to paddle us across the ping-pong net.
They're killing us. They've outsourced our jobs. Divided and conquered us. Dangle a hope carrot, dangle a change carrot, how many more people are now TRULY cynical about politics than 6 years ago? Some of you think that the lack of turnout meant that the American people are tired of Obama and the Democrats, but I say it's pretty danged certain that we're just tired of ALL OF THEM.
Ummm... I wasn't joking.
I'm brainstorming ideas for a YouTube video to kick off the campaign, right now.
Do it right, make it viral. that all starts with Youtube.
I'm thinking "internet viral" for a truly "budget campaign", and starting at Youtube for the viral effect as well as making it truly populist.
Wrabbit doesn't get to say "no". That's not an acceptable answer.
He's drafted.
Just like George Washington was after he said "no". We've got to write another "man of the people" into the office, and scare the hell out of the R+D department we've already got entrenched there.
Last Edit: Nov 19, 2014 20:51:37 GMT -6 by Deleted