1. Historically speaking, free societies, such as ours, have been the exception and not the rule. I once read somewhere that ‘freedom is the luxury of self-discipline.’

   Strong self-reliant societies eventually give way to weak and corrupted ones that are unable to maintain their freedom. All to often, that freedom is not taken from without, but surrendered from within.

2. Good points Neo. Difficulty in changing the Constitution and separation of powers are key. Freedom of the press is also fundamental. However Chavez’ power being constrained by votes may at least deter him from some abuses and could open an avenue for his downfall, especially if his policies start to fail.

3. The “big man” is the norm of human governance from the beginning for groups larger than a family (and perhaps even there). The Athenians went through a long period where change in rule from one powerful family to the other. This not only ruined the economy and influence of athens each time, but alienated the lower classes. Why should they sacrifice for the city if they were only going to be robbed by the leadership. The proposal to include the “demos” in control was purely to gain national strength in the face of the Persian threat. It worked.

   Guys like Chavez get in when the populace is convinced that things are rigged against them, but it just substitutes one group of thieves for anthor. Chavez could have supported an ideological ally for the next term if “socialism” was all he wanted. The act speaks for itself.

   King George was purported to say upon hearing that George Washington was leaving the presidency voluntarily, that if it was true, he (GW) was the greatest man in the world. The US did not need term limits until FDR because for a variety of reasons, no President was running for a third term. That FDR did run for a third term does not indicate a sense of national government being something outside of himself.

   All offices should be term limited. The turnover alone is of immense value to democracy. The arguments against it are almost always from those favoring bigger government. New faces instantly devalue the degree of influence and favors due supporters of the incumbent.

4. You speak of corruption, and you are right. All the voting equipment in Venezuela is manufactured by a company called Smartmatic, established with funding from the Chavez government. Smartmatic purchased US voting machine manufacturer Sequoia Voting Systems in 2005, preceded to loot it until Congress noticed the ownership and forced a divestiture. The principals in Smartmatic were and are close friends of Chavez. You can rest assured; there has not been an honest election in Venezuela since Chavez took over.

5. Don’t forget, Hamas took power in Gaza after Bush pushed the “democratic process” and elections were held there.

   Tyranny is quite capable of utilizing democrat/republic mechanisms to gain power, after which those mechanisms are discarded and power is consolidated.

   Pure democracy is simply 2 wolves and 1 sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

   A republic is when the sheep has a gun.

6. I heard on the news that the Fairness Doctrine is gaining all sorts of traction. Religious radio stations may be required to broadcast programs that are alternatives to what they normally broadcast as a part of this “fairness”. This is beside what we have already heard of the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Boortz’ etc.

   This new administration and newly empowered house and senate are leaving little room for me to trust in any of their intentions. Surfing through the liberal TV news stations over the weekend, there is also saber rattling going on again about the 100 million gun owners in the U.S. More murders are caused by kitchen utensils, but no matter.

   Seriously, how long can I sit here, how long can I stare out my window and believe it is just me over reacting?

7. I suspect the Fairness Doctrine is not going to be reintroduced. It had its place in an era when space on the airwaves were limited and some people were only able to receive two or three TV channels over the air; today, with the proliferation of information sources, I believe the argument in favor of a public interest Fairness Doctrine is far less strong. Jimmy Carter has come out against it; Obama has no official position but my guess is this is not going to occur.

8. As to the application of the Constitutional right of the people to bear arms, I urge a reading of the opening sentences of the Declaration of Independence.

9. Neo, Neo, Neo, the Constitution is ignored or overridden all the time. It is no longer the bulwark of old. It has been trampled and will be trampled even more. Mitsu’s platitudinous remarks show us how blithely it is trampled.

10. Mitsu – once again you are being naive – but it is because you put forth (as you have in some of your other posts) that people in power are inherently good and reasonable. I think history around that world has taught us differently. Though there are multitudes of news sources available (in this country especially) and a majority of them are liberal that does not matter to the people who are pushing the fairness doctrine. For them it is about controlling information in order to keep power.

    And let’s face the facts – it’s all about talk radio. Liberals have never been able to make any significant inroads into talk radio – no matter what they try. Its not all that surprising when you think about it. The more “intellectual” (he says with more than a hint of sarcasm) of them listen to NPR – “All Things Considered” followed by classical classics. The majority of them get their news from CNN or the Broadcast networks so they are listening to music stations on the radio (often forcing the rest of us within a three block radius to do the same). Radio was the only outlet available to conservative voices and to the astonishment of many I am sure, totally saved and revived AM radio.

    If in fact the fairness doctrine is enacted it will create jobs – government jobs – in fact I predict a massive bureaucracy because they will have to monitor everything that is broadcast. It will, however have the opposite effect in the private sector. Many owners of stations will be forced to either carry a significant amount of programming that will not bring in enough revenue to pay for the programming (the revenue thing’s been proven by the repeated failures of Air America) or change formats. Either way it will cost jobs – probably a lot of them. That seems like reverse stimulus to me but then maybe they figure the government jobs will offset the private sector losses.

    But the liberals don’t care because it’s all about controlling the information stream. They are spurred on by their successes doing just that with the global warming thing and Obama’s election. My only question whether they will make their move before it comes time to replace a strict constructionist justice. If they don’t such a power grab may well get struck down. I also wonder if Dep Atty Gen. nominee David Ogden will fight against it if confirmed. After all he fought against filtering pornography from library computers on the basis that it abridged free speech rights. I wonder also if the ACLU will get on board in fighting it. If history is our teacher then the answer to that one would be no.

    In a way Mitsu – most conservatives went down the road you walk now – for two long. Thinking that the other side was reasonable and concerned with the constitution. They are not.

11. Oh, and I wonder – did nay one see Jimmy Carter in the vicinity of Venezuela? He was one of the ones who certified the last sham down there.

12. FDR expanded federal power immensely.

    Debate was trumped by big government liberals (including the 3 liberal Senators) because liberalism can’t win an argument ever.

    The only way liberalism can keep on advancing is with the suppression of facts or distortion of facts.

    It can’t keep advancing misery on people and expect people not to become smart to the problems of liberalism.

    The U.S. government needs to shrink. It hasn’t in 70 + years and it is the problem.

13. Consider all the above in light of the Obama administration’s announced intention to move control of the Census into the White House.

14. Mitsu — I appreciate your simpler, clearer posts in which you make clear your opinions.

    Of course I still disagree with you, but that’s par for the course.

    The current discussions about Venezuela, Obama, and the Fairness Doctrine are a bit like two sides arguing over whether an ink blot looks like a butterfly or a spider web. Time and events will settle the argument, but by then it will likely be too late to do much about it.

    These days I read Obama as a pragmatic machine politician looking to embed Democratic machine politics as deeply as he can into the US. Why else the move to absorb the Census into the White House?

    I doubt Obama will push the Fairness Doctrine, but if his Democratic colleagues do so, Obama won’t stop them either.

15. “I doubt Obama will push the Fairness Doctrine, but if his Democratic colleagues do so, Obama won’t stop them either.”

    That is exactly how I see this, and it is hard to argue with the logic of it. The Porkulus Bill is a case in point. That bill was not Obama’s bill; it was Pelosi’s and Rahm’s. I seriously doubted Obama was going to oppose his own party on that one, and that is precisely what came to pass. He is not a strong man or leader. He will cave in to his party on just about everything, which is why I agree that if he has a bill on his desk which reinstates the “Fairness” Doctrine he will sign it. Same with measures his party would like to take vis-a-vis the 2nd Amendment. He will cave in there too.

    I’m beginning to take Mitsu in a more light hearted vein. He’s a liberal Harvard man defending another liberal Harvard man. They stick together. They all share pretty much the same worldview. If Mitsu DIDN’T do this I would be shocked and surprised. Much as I often disagree with him, I suppose it is a good thing we let him stick around. It’s good to have a dissenting voice against us conservatives. Keeps us sharp. Good for some chuckles too.

16. We shall see about the Fairness Doctrine, but the reason I suspect it won’t happen is also political. I think it’s too politically radioactive and the policy justification is too weak to make it something I think Obama will waste political capital on. I may be wrong, but I hope not, as I think it would be both a policy and a political mistake.

17. Mitsu,

    Does this mean you’ll lead the charge to repeal “The Fairness Doctrine” if the democrats ram it through congress and Obamma signs it?

18. And…

    I don’t care if it’s “called” the Fairness Doctrine…

    … or it’s some implementation of local boards monitoring content on local radio stations

    Whatever it’s called if government keeps on expanding and expands their role in free speech

    it’s wrong.

    And the liberal fascists already showed their cards when they flexed their fascist muscle on the documentary that was supposed to say the truth about Bill Clinton’s negligence and role in 9/11 on ABC a few years ago.

    They are drunk on their power and people like Debbie Stabenow and Harkin who have been talking about expanding the role of government in talk radio are so out of touch.

    Scottie,

    Mitsu needs to lead the charge no matter what it’s called. His tendency towards big government answers will gain him some respect if he leads the charge against government role in free speech no matter if it’s “called” the fairness doctrine or implemented in some other manner.

    I won’t hold my breath given his show of dishonesty the last few days. Truth matters.

19. We had this debate December 19th.

    http://neoneocon.com/2008/12/19/waiting-for-the-fairness-doctrine/#comments

    Is there any actual news, or are we rehashing?

    huxley is right: it is too early to be sure. I just wish we had a better view of the real Obama.

20. Scottie, I don’t think “dishonesty” is the right word to describe Mitsu. Here he is on this thread, doing a nice job. He needs encouragement.

    Mitsu, to Scottie’s question, if the Fairness Doctrine were re-introduced, would you do anything about it? Or would you say, “Oh, well, that’s water under the bridge” and move on to new issues?

21. Pelosi is not opposed to the “Fairness” Doctrine. She pretty much has stated this in the past, using circumlocutory speech. If important people in her party, elected and NGO greater lights, want it, she will do it and Obama will sign it.

    I don’t dicker over these things like lawyers parse over evidence. I know we cannot prove that Obama would, beyond a reasonable doubt, sign it. But he would, because all of his actions, his past, his worldview, and where he is in the pecking order all dictate he would do the deed.

    If this thread is supposed to be about Chavez’ reminder of how fragile “democracies” are, then we have an example of this boiling right in our own country over the First Amendment. The fact is that the Democrats do not like opposition of any kind. Even though they control the government by overwhelming majorities now, they don’t like the fact that there is still opposition out there in the country. How else can one explain the fact that many of them desperately want conservative radio shut down? If conservative talk radio was not a problem for them, they wouldn’t bother. But they think it is a problem.

    Just as Chavez wants to remove all realistic possibility that he could lose his power…

    I was thinking: how dare we castigate Venezuelans for their preference for The State to be the Daddy? When we have a majority of American citizens who think the same way. Yes, we have the Constitution that interposes itself from a Venezuela “solution.” Yet, since when did the Constitution stop the Left from getting what it wants? They don’t need five liberal judges on the SCOTUS to do this. They can control all the other federal courts.

    Socialism is already here. Now, it’s just a matter of how far they go with it.

22. I have been putzing around on the net since 1988 when there was not much available besides science information. Hobby sites began to appear, then slowly, political blogs among other things.

    Many moons ago, Jimmy Carter made me become a republican. Ronald Reagan allowed me to cast that belief in stone. I have been to some left wing blogs and read a bit, during the W administration. I do not believe as they believe, so I never commented, and no longer visit them at all. It has been a few years. I just have no interest in “going there”.

    But “left wing” types are always venturing into “right wing” blogs, usually spewing, but relentlessly pointing out what is wrong with right wing believers. I have never understood why they do that. On some blogs, they come in and get run off by the others when they can’t master an argument. They are quickly “replaced” by another, then another.

    So, my question is, Mitsu, is this blog a “pet project” of yours, or perhaps an “assignment”?

23. br549,

    I participate in two other weblog sites, both of them conservative. And we see our share of Leftie trolls, often the same people. They usually get their a*s handed to them, but often they can at least hoist up their flag correctly. It’s a mixed bag. Some are pretty smart and some are pretty dumb. I’ve occasionally gone over to the Leftie blogs, but I never post anything – just content to read the lead-in articles and some comments to get the lay of the land. I know people who have commented at these sites, but their comments are removed and they are banned. They all doth protest that their comments were not worthy of removal and they know that once you are identified as a conservative Republican you probably will be banned. Which is why I don’t even bother to leave comments. Total waste of time. I used to be on the Left many years ago (seems like a lifetime ago), so I know they have no respect for alternative viewpoints.

24. When the Supreme Court can “find” in the 1960s and 1970s a federal constitutional right to privacy (somewhere!) that precludes regulating or outlawing abortion, and can “construe” in the 2000s “public use” to include the government-forced sale of private property from one private party to another private party, the Constitution has been effectively rendered completely malleable with or without formal amendment.

25. Freedom of the press is also fundamental.

    Exactly, but it’s also important that the press not be heavily biased in one direction. Not in any given source (pace the Orwellian “Fairness Doctrine”), because that’s impossible, but the integral over all the press should ideally evaluate to roughly zero net bias. That’s why we get upset when so many media sources are so blatantly biased in the same direction — it’s anti-democratic, because journalists then wield disproportionate influence on elections. If the press hadn’t been so uniformly in the bag for the Messiah we might not be stuck with him right now. No member of the press asked Him a single question more challenging than “Can I have Your autograph?”

    However Chavez’ power being constrained by votes may at least deter him from some abuses and could open an avenue for his downfall, especially if his policies start to fail.

    Start to fail?

    …may at least deter him from some abuses…

    Shouldn’t we be moving to the perfect tense and subjunctive mood by now?

    I also think you may be exaggerating the constraining power of votes. Chavez’s predecessor in enacting an “Enabling Act” scuppered democracy within two months of taking office. To be fair, Chavez hasn’t done that; but he’s not done yet, either.

26. Well, I highly doubt I have much sway with members of Congress, but if they did choose to consult me on the matter, I would certainly tell them that I think the time for the Fairness Doctrine has passed. The fact is, I do think there was a time when it made sense, as I said before … what has changed is primarily the explosion of other sources of information, the Internet, cable and satellite television, etc. Because of this, the Fairness Doctrine I don’t believe any longer makes sense. It’s always been a fine line between the First Amendment preference for unrestricted free speech and equal access to the public airwaves, and in this case I don’t believe the argument is strong enough.

    Whether I’d spend a lot of energy arguing for its repeal would depend on precisely how it is implemented. If the effect would be to force Rush Limbaugh to give equal access to politicians or commentators of the opposing view on HIS program, I think that would be something I’d vigorously oppose. If it were something more like — if a given radio station has 3 conservative talk shows, it needs to have 3 liberal talk shows to balance it out — I’d still be opposed to this, but with less fervor. It could be implemented in even weaker terms, i.e., a station could be exempted from the Fairness Doctrine if it could be demonstrated that there were other stations in the area presenting the opposing view, in which case I would be much less opposed to it.

    I do think that something was lost with the end of the Fairness Doctrine, which is something I alluded to before, which is why I post here. That is, people these days tend to only talk to and listen to people who agree with them. This happens on the left (Daily Kos, TalkLeft, etc.) and on the right (FreeRepublic, etc., etc.) I think this is unfortunate, and I think it weakens the Republic and has led to a less sophisticated and less interesting political discourse. It’s a sort of political tribalism. Keep in mind that something like a strong version of the Fairness Doctrine would work both ways — NPR and Air America would be required to feature equal time from conservatives (well, NPR has been doing this to a large extent, recently, anyway, but certainly not Air America). Would this be so bad?

    On balance, however, I think the original argument that the public interest and the limited access to the airwaves made a bending of the First Amendment justifiable is no longer the case, and so even if the Fairness Doctrine were to be put back in effect, I think it might not survive a court challenge anyway.

27. br549, Mitsu is a real person writing under his own name. I have heard that some “progressive activists” are assigned to monitor and disrupt conservative sites, but I haven’t seen anything to make me think Mitsu is one of them. (Mitsu, stop me if I am wrong.)

    On the other hand, we have seen spewing of the type you mention, and we have had a fair amount of discussion about why they do it.

    Mitsu, color me unconvinced about the reliability of the courts, and I don’t think we have really worked out how symmetrical the impact would be, but otherwise a good post.

28. Keep in mind that something like a strong version of the Fairness Doctrine would work both ways – NPR and Air America would be required to feature equal time from conservatives (well, NPR has been doing this to a large extent, recently, anyway, but certainly not Air America).

    In theory but I doubt that’s what Democrats have in mind. From what I can tell, they consider NPR not to be biased–and thus not in need of “fairness”–and greatly resent intrusions of conservative thought into public radio.

    My other problem with the Fairness Doctrine is that, even though I often refer to the red-blue dichotomy, I don’t think things break down that simply. A Fairness Doctrine would reinforce two-sided thinking.

29. I used to comment at liberal sites like Kos, but gave up when I got tired of taking on non-stop personal attacks and little substantive discussion. I’ve been accused of being a Karl Rove plant as well.

    The worst experience I had was on David Brin’s site, Contrary Brin, despite my admiration for Brin’s science-fiction and enjoy his non-poltical writing. See http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2008/07/win-over-those-conservatives-who-still.html for an example of how vicious an otherwise decent, bright person can get when it comes to politics.

30. Huxley, sorry to hear about your encounter with David Brin. I haven’t read or heard him in years so I’m not current, but you will find that the science fiction community has lots of people who simply cannot see conservatism as anything but stupid and evil, and who feel compelled to inject their leftie politics into every topic.

31. Sorry Mitsu, but your response is just a bit weak and couched in a number of what ifs. You also did not state that you would clearly lead a charge against such an action.

    Basically, and please correct me if I’m wrong, it look as if you’re saying it depends on the circumstances.

    You also seem to be completely missing the point that free speech would be regulated, and that any speech – especially political speech – that can be regulated can be controlled out of existence or it’s voice drowned out under a mountain of red tape.

    You would literally have government listening in on what was said and determining which speech was permissable and which wasn’t, which speech would require a “counterbalancing view” and which wouldn’t.

    From the views of people on the center and center right, it’s clear that anything not left wingish would be in for a level of examination normally reserved as the domain of proctologists, while speech on the left would get a free pass – as it generally has all along.

    To perhaps drive the point home a bit more clearly in your world view, is this a hammer you’d really want a future republican controlled government to wield over the heads of left wing media?

    Would you have been happy for Bush to have had this power while the republicans controlled congress?

    It was the left, of course, that screamed that Bush was shredding the constitution – this would have legitimized such efforts had he chosen that path.

    After all, neither party is going to establish permanent total control without really dictatorial tendencies, something this “Fairness Doctrine” would legalize for whoever happened to be in the seat of power.

    Do you really…really…want government to determine which speech is allowed?

32. We would not be in this position if it were not for the fact that the scholars at law schools like Harvard and Yale felt that it was time to using the “living Constitution” as the hermeneutic de rigeur. Now, a judge is going to decide what the Constitution means and the odds are you are not going to get a strict Constructionist or some version of the same to hear your case.

    And now that Pelosi’s daughter has produced an HBO “documentary” that defines Republicans and conservatives as rubs and racists, it means that those who are in the “living Constitution” tradition are not going to favor our defenses of our 1st Amendment rights. In the end, as this ramping up of the war between the Gramscians in our society and the true liberals and conservatives on the other side, it may come down to the exercise of our 2nd Amendment right.

33. Scottie — I have been in the lone advocate position as Mitsu is now. I’m uncomfortable with the repeated question format and the insistence that the lone advocate take action to the satisfaction of his opponents.

    As I read Mitsu, he’s harkening back to a previous time when there were a limited number of broadcast stations, and a Fairness Doctrine made some sense to prevent a monopoly on politics available to listeners/viewers.

    Mitsu also believes that the old Fairness Doctrine made it more likely for citizens to hear both sides than they are today. I wish people were listening more to both sides but I don’t see a FD as a solution at all.

    Like you, Scottie, I’m not nearly sanguine about a new Fairness Doctrine, or that Mitsu would be so philosophical if it were being legislated by a White House and Congress heavily controlled by Republicans.

34. Mitsu, I basically agree with your take on the Fairness Doctrine. In principle, it wouldn’t be so bad. In practice, however, in the current climate, it would be a thinly veiled attempt to shut down all views other than that of the liberals, and I think everyone appreciates that.

    If it were to be implemented again, the Fairness Doctrine would be aimed at Rush Limbaugh, not at Bill Moyers, and at Fox News, not MSNBC, and therein lies the problem.

35. I remember a couple grade school teachers sneering about the US not being a democracy while teaching. Since I respected the founders more than them, my though at the time was ‘find out problems with democracy according to founders’ and not that this was a problem…. sort of a ‘but they have new shoes’ moment…

36. Occam’s Beard Says:

    “in the current climate, it would be a thinly veiled attempt to shut down all views other than that of the liberals, and I think everyone appreciates that. ”

    Sure. Its all about talk radio…. and not making CBS, NBC, and ABC TV news more balanced.. which says everything about the bias of those pushing it…

37. huxley Says:

    “Mitsu also believes that the old Fairness Doctrine made it more likely for citizens to hear both sides than they are today.”

    I work in media (alas, in a technical role) and all the old timers say it made it so you heard no side. They wouldn’t say anything controversial so they wouldn’t have to deal with the fair time complaints.

    If you like government, well, this works for you any way you slice it….

38. “I remember a couple grade school teachers sneering about the US not being a democracy”

    They were right. The United States of America is a Constitutional Republic. Leftists prefer democracies, because then the mob can control the purse and impose socialism at the ballot box. Thus, Venezuela IS a democracy – on the way to dictatorship solidified.

    Those teachers resented the fact that their tribe (the socialists) were not in control at the time. Now they are.

39. A modest proposal: in the unlikely event that the Fairness Doctrine ever rises from its coffin, we compromise by agreeing to it pertaining immediately to TV, but not to radio for, say, a decade.

    That should do it.

40. Mitsu Says:

    “I may be wrong, but I hope not, as I think it would be both a policy and a political mistake.”

    A: if you think NPR is fair to conservatives, you can’t be taken seriously on judging fairness.
    B: Obama has taken a vested interest in talk radio. By bashing Rush he did a no no. He can’t claim to be disinterested and simply making public policy decisions. He’d obviously be shutting down his opposition (ah la Chavez)… and I think it would be a good basis for removal from office… If he were smart, he would have never commented on Rush… Now we can see if he wants to double down on stupid…

41. Got this link below from a Glen Beck email. Looks like the Obama people are setting things up to say it is up to the FCC as far as “Fairness Doctrine ” goes. It has been my understanding all along that the FCC, without Congress, can re-instate the Anti-First Amendment “doctrine”.

    http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/174265-Obama_Aide_Declines_Comment_on_Fairness_Doctrine.php

42. I don’t expect the Fairness Doctrine per se to make a comeback. If it ever revives, the liberals will rename it something different, but equally Orwellian, such as the “Let Every Voice Be Heard Doctrine,” or something of the sort.

    Then they’ll crush anything that doesn’t hew to the Party line, and can bitterly dispute that they’ve revived the Fairness Doctrine.

43. Oh, it’s more than talk radio now. Check this out:

    In All Fairness

    The House Energy and Commerce Committee is also looking at how it can put in place policies that would allow it greater oversight of the Internet. “Internet radio is becoming a big deal, and we’re seeing that some web sites are able to control traffic and information, while other sites that may be of interest or use to citizens get limited traffic because of the way the people search and look for information,” says on committee staffer. “We’re at very early stages on this, but the chairman has made it clear that oversight of the Internet is one of his top priorities.”

44. The USA is most certainly a democracy, pedantic nitpicking to the contrary notwithstanding.

    democracy (dé®-mé²k´re-séª) noun
    plural democracies
    1. Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.
    2. A political or social unit that has such a government.
    3. The common people, considered as the primary source of political power.
    4. Majority rule.
    5. The principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community.

    [French démocratie, from Late Latin déªmocratia, from Greek déªmokratia : déªmos, people + -kratia, -cracy.]

    The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from InfoSoft International, Inc. All rights reserved.

45. Thank you for a fantastic blog. I’ll keep coming back now. I’ve come to the conclusion that the conservative movement needs to get back to the basic art of teaching. You’re doing that well here.

    Thanks again.

    DCM

46. ELC Says:

    “The USA is most certainly a democracy”

    Sure, a hyphenated one (re: liberal-democracy or to get nit picky, a liberal democratic-republic…)…

47. If there is an actual Democratic proposal to re-institute the Fairness Doctrine by that or any other name, it would be important news.

    People argued here in December that Democrats would not try to do so because it would not be in their political interest. The corollary of this argument was that conservative talk radio brings more recruits to the Democrats because it repulses moderates. The Lefties ascribed talk of the Fairness Doctrine returning to conservative paranoia.

48. “The USA is most certainly a democracy, pedantic nitpicking to the contrary notwithstanding.”

    Mind your manners and put aside your snarky insult, ELC. Strictly speaking, I am correct. The reason we are a Constitutional Republic is because the Founders saw that it would be possible, under a strict democracy, for citizens’ rights to be bartered away. They wanted a firewall against that happening, which is why we have a Constitution and a republican form of government. They wanted to prevent mob rule, which is exactly what happened in France a few years later. Modern socialism is a lineal descendant of the French Revolution. Under French socialism, the intellectuals thought that they should be the natural heirs of political power, not the old aristocracy. Socialism is just another form of feudalism, where one class of rulers is replaced by another, except that the redistribution is intended to make sure that no upstarts can accumulate wealth and large enterprises to challenge the power of the new elites. Notice that across Europe and North America those elites who favor some form of Euro-socialism are extremely wealthy individuals and enterprises? That is no accident. They are the new oligarchy who appoint themselves the masters of the commoners. The Enlightened Ones who will make sure we have three hots and a cot – and little else.

49. The Fairness Doctrine, it should be noted, only applied to radio and television, and was never applied to newspapers or cable TV. It certainly could not apply to the Internet, as it would clearly fail a First Amendment test. Keep in mind that the Court, when it ruled the Fairness Doctrine constitutional in the past, said that this was only in the special case of the airwaves which have limited access. This was explicit in Court rulings in the past, and they have further said that if expanded competition showed that the Fairness Doctrine was having the impact of chilling, rather than expanding, speech, they would revisit their past rulings:

    “As we recognized in Red Lion, however, were it to be shown by the Commission that the fairness doctrine “[has] the net effect or reducing rather than enhancing” speech, we would then be forced to reconsider the constitutional basis of our decision in that case.”

    So, even in the worst case, this would not affect Fox News or any other cable network, it would only affect talk radio.

    Obama has, in the past, said that he opposed the return of the Fairness Doctrine, but he has recently said that he would discuss it. I am certainly hoping he does not agree to reimpose it, at least not in the same form it existed in the past.

50. Mitsu — Remember that talk radio is a prime mover in the conservative movement. It’s not your ox that might be gored here.

    Those of us to your right have noticed Obama’s singling out of Rush Limbaugh in one of his recent scoldings, and during the campaign when he said, “I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls.”

    What you call pragmatic about Obama often strikes me as unprincipled — like Obama’s reversing his promise not to run in 2008, then reversing his commitment to run with federal campaign financing.

    Obama is a “That was then; this is now” politician. If supporting a Fairness Doctrine wouldn’t cost him too much capital and would help his administration, I believe he would do it.

51. We’ll see. I think he’ll realize it’s not only bad policy but bad politics, and the idea will simply fade away.

52. Well, that’s a ringing commendation of your guy.

    So, if it weren’t bad politics, Obama would have to stroke his chin and do some calculating.

53. That’s not what I said — I think he’ll also see it’s bad policy, because at this time in our history I believe the original justification for the Fairness Doctrine in its original form no longer applies, and First Amendment considerations are more cogent. One of the cornerstones of our system is that it is structured to protect the rights of the minority. This protected liberal rights during the time of conservative ascendancy, and it protects conservative rights in a time of liberal ascendancy. This is, in fact, a good thing, in my view — something not often appreciated by those who simply want to “defeat” the other side at all costs (again, the point of Neo’s post here, and the real meaning of a liberal democracy, as Neo correctly points out).

    In fact, I really do think Obama understands this, and despite some pressure in some quarters to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine I think Obama will see that this is not a good policy goal to pursue. The fact that it is ALSO bad politics isn’t a bad thing — that’s the whole point of our liberal democracy, to make bad policy coincide with bad politics at least some of the time.

54. I should add that I don’t think it’s totally impossible that Obama might reinstate some weak form of Fairness Doctrine, but any move that would actually take Rush Limbaugh or any other conservative talk show off the air I am absolutely sure would be a nonstarter. My hope is, however, he will stick to other means to try to promote diversity in the airwaves, ownership caps in single markets, etc.

55. “…he’ll also see it’s bad policy” unabbreviated is “…he will see it’s bad policy” which means that as far as you know, he has not performed that calculation yet.

    “I really do think Obama understands this” implies that you don’t know that he understands this.

    For those of us with a principled commitment to freedom of speech this isn’t something we have to figure out and understand some time in the future.

    Given Obama’s moral flexibility when it comes to principles and his word, I am not reassured.

56. >a principled commitment to freedom of speech

    Well, liberals are typically the ones who are more protective of the First Amendment, in general, whereas conservatives seem to place more emphasis on the Second Amendment. In any event the key question, as I’ve said before, comes down to the Supreme Court precedent with respect to airwaves access. This is not a black and white issue but rather one that has shifted gradually over time, from a time when nearly everyone got all their information from the limited broadcast spectrum to now, where there are many more avenues. Of course I don’t *know* what Obama is going to do, I’m merely speculating here, but I think that he will see that in this case, the landscape has shifted enough that reinstating the old rule in its original form would have a chilling, rather than enhancing, effect on speech. There are arguments on both sides but he has stated in the past where he stands on this, and I believe this indicates what his general proclivities are.

57. http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2009/02/16/on-bushs-and-lincolns-laws-of-war-and-the-lefts-complete-lack-of-perspective/

    There goes the dishonest Mitsu again playing identity politics.

    Big govt liberals are more fascist – out of need. The bigger the liberal the more the need.

    Total govt leftists like Hugo and Fidel do what they do and have no opposition. Leftists like Obama are very uncomfortable with opposition. You can tell.

    The rest of your post makes it clear Mitsu you are a fascist working and wiggling your way into some sort of ‘explanation’ for the big govt leftists fascist policies.

    Here – it doesn’t work.

    Political speech should not be censored no matter how much you try to wiggle in some sort of explanation. We love it when leftists show their dishonesty. We don’t want to censor you. We just wanted you and Obama to be honest BEFORE the election!!

58. Speaking of ownership caps Mitsu….

    Let’s apply that to ABCCBSNBCCNN

    http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2009/02/16/democratfcc-sources-fairness-doctrine-should-also-apply-to-the-internet/

    Don’t read the above link if you have high blood pressure or love freedom!

59. http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/02/16/the-fairness-doctrine-returns-it-just-wont-be-called-that/

    Bunch of fascists…

    Can’t win in the market place of ideas. So they lie and stifle debate..

60. Again we go back into a “political hack” idea – that is certain individuals (more than one) immediately realize that the idea is bad when applied to themselves.

    As soon as the people who are OK with Rush, talk radio, and Fox News being “regulated” are just as OK with CNN, MSNBC, and the rest of the leftist media getting the same treatment (lets put Newt Gengrich in charge of regulating leftist media – no worse than the ones proposed to be put in charge of conservatives) I may pay some attention to what those individuals say.

    Even then you can not be in favor of free regulated speech – such a thing does not exist. Outside of hings like yelling “fire” and libel (and libel has to be narrow in definition) you can not regulate it and still be “free”. Conservatives have always known this – hence the idea of the first being the mouth and the second being the teeth. Liberals have had some idea of regulating free speech and feel that makes them some guardians of it – yet things like a fairness doctrine are inherently non-free speech. “Balanced” and “unregulated” are *not* the same things. When conservatives moved to being “republicans” is when said principles were mostly abandoned.

    At the least some here are honest enough to note that regulating conservative thought is OK whilst regulating liberal is not. Though I bet they would balk at the way that was stated (they didn’t really mean it that way, though that is the way it works out).

61. Obama is not the one who will make the decision to bring back the “Fairness Doctrine”. He will be at least once removed from the actual decision, whether he is one of the driving wheels behind it or not. I love the observation made lately that Obama’s statements have time limits. Almost without exception, they do.

    If the doctrine is reenacted, the networks will be involved over the air waves, but will be able to escape it over cable. It will be interesting to view the separate news casts. It should invigorate the economy via TIVO sales alone.

    ELC, go to the CIA web site. It will tell you what type of government we have. Look us up, we’re in there.
    http://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook.html

    Democracy too easily becomes mob rule. A mob gets together and votes as a pact. With a republic it is one person one vote. A majority forms after the votes are counted, not before.

    My sister is a teacher. She votes as the union says, because she’s scared not to. It’s that simple.

62. I am forever concerned more with government bureaucrats than elected officials. That is also the portion of government that is growing constantly.

63. Although we will never know the true extent of voter intimidation and/or outright fraud

    These common allegations that keep coming each time there are voting in different places around the world.

    But let compare Venezuela voting with all the environments around this voting and compared it with first Iraqi voting for election when the country was in chaos statues and we saw US media and Bush prising that voting despite wide spreads “the true extent of voter intimidation and/or outright fraud” in voting system and process with some voting box vanished for three hours and then comes back, also the Iranians paid $USD100.0 for each voting paper .

64. huxley,

    While I empathize with the inclination to keep tihngs civil, my remarks earlier that were directed at Mitsu specifically were made simply because he postulated the following:

    “Whether I’d spend a lot of energy arguing for its repeal would depend on precisely how it is implemented. If the effect would be to force Rush Limbaugh to give equal access to politicians or commentators of the opposing view on HIS program, I think that would be something I’d vigorously oppose. If it were something more like – if a given radio station has 3 conservative talk shows, it needs to have 3 liberal talk shows to balance it out – I’d still be opposed to this, but with less fervor.”

    By supposing what he would or would not do under different circumstances and providing examples of the same, he made himself and his judgement part of the equation being discussed.

    Please note that I wasn’t calling anyone out, and I’ll go ahead and say I was not trying to be uncivil in the discussion, but I was specifically attempting to tie down exactly where his viewpoint was coming from so as to better understand what backed up his reasoning that I just quoted.

    It wasn’t an attempt to single anyone out for any sort of *attack*.

    However, the quote does clearly illustrate that his viewpoint, I believe, has some serious holes in it that the left has not really contemplated – namely what happens when this political *weapon* leftists in high places want to create ends up in the hands of those opposing them.

65. Regarding the entire “republic” vs “democracy” debate, the US is in fact a republic.

    The US citizen has rights, both enumerated and non-enumerated, and those rights may not be simply voted away by majority rule.

    There are checks and balances throughout the system to ensure that the rights of the relatively less powerful are just as secure as the rights of the most powerful (at least in theory).

    For instance, even the smallest state has an equal say in the US Senate, even though by every other measure it’s not going to compare favorably to a much larger state.

    The state may not bring charges against an individual in the more important types of charges unless they go through a grand jury proceeding – and even then the state still has to go through a court trial with a jury if it wishes to exercise authority against a specific individual.

    Even if 99% of the population decides to deprive 1% of their legitimate rights, the majority cannot do so constitutionally.

    The consent of that 1% is still a bulwark against simple majority rule.

    A democracy in it’s purist sense, is whatever 51% decide to do and to hell with what the other 49% desire.

    For further reading, simply research the words of the Founding Fathers. They were quite familiar with both the word “democracy” as well as word “republic”, and clearly made a distinction between the two.

    While an argument can be made today as to what the words mean currently, in the late 18th century they had a slightly different meaning than is assumed today and this slightly different meaning is very important to understanding why we have the government that we do.

    As for another statement that the left prizes the 1st amendment while the right prizes the 2nd amendment, I would disagree.

    In my perspective, it’s crucially important that I exercise my 1st amendment rights specifically so I don’t have to contemplate exercising my 2nd amendment rights.

    That’s yet another reason the Fairness Doctrine should stay dead and buried. The fact that some leftists in high offices or positions of power seek to reinstate such an abomination speaks volumes regarding their intent and those of us in the center and center right are justifiably concerned.

    I prize all of the rights inherent in the entire bill of rights.

66. opposits needs a bit more effort to get all the votes needed to beat him in the future election, 10% can be done.

67. Mitsu, you need to give conservatives more relative credit for their commitment to free speech.

    In addition, I don’t count defenses of pornography and flag-burning, for examples, as defense of free speech. I note that the campus Speech Codes that chill free expression are aimed at and used against young conservatives. Shifting PC standards define social taboos that keep some ideas out of the realm of discussion: witness the Passion of Larry Summers as President of Harvard. (No, Mitsu, I’m not starting a Harvard thread, it’s just a notorious example.)

    The record suggests that the Left supports free speech when it is their free speech, and they are free to skewer the bourgeoisie or undermine the war effort.

68. Oblio,

    I’d go a bit farther, and state that the record also shows that the side most likely to seriously attempt to infringe on free speech are those on the left.

    I am curious though as to what serious attempts at free speech infringements generated by the right could be offered as examples similar to those already offered on the left (PC speech codes, Fairness Doctrine, etc.).

69. Mitsu — I consider myself a classic liberal: individual freedom, free markets, and limited government. These days that makes me a conservative.

    I do not consider Obama, nor any of the current Democatic leadership, to be classic liberals.

    I’m struck by your constant hedging language about Obama and the Fairness Doctrine. You are not sure what he will do in the future about the FD.

    You are correct.

70. I just wish we had a better view of the real Obama. –Oblio

    I sure struggled with that one. Here’s where I landed: Obama is a machine politician who uses radical populist rhetoric, or whatever else is at hand, to win elections.

    Obama is a postmodern Huey P. Long. And like Long, Obama is building monuments to himself.

71. Excuse the italics in the second and third paragraphs.

72. I just love beating a dead horse, so I thought I’d toss a few quotes in on the whole democracy vs republic thing:

    ” … that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.”

    1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph

    “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

    John Adams

    “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”

    Chief Justice John Marshall

    “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.

    Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of Government, have erroneously supposed, that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions and their passions.”

    James Madison’s Federalist Paper #10

    “[To establish republican government, it is necessary to] effect a constitution in which the will of the nation shall have an organized control over the actions of its government, and its citizens a regular protection against its oppressions.”

    Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1816

    “[The first step is] to concur in a declaration of rights, at least, so that the nation may be acknowledged to have some fundamental rights not alterable by their ordinary legislature, and that this may form a ground work for future improvements.”

    Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1788

    “The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.”

    Thomas Jefferson 1790

    Seems pretty consistent. These guys had a very dim view of what kind of government they considered a “democracy” to be, and were pretty adamant in their position that we had a republican form of government.

73. Mitsu Says:

    “The Fairness Doctrine, it should be noted, only applied to radio and television…”

    I’m going to add a point to yours; also, because of the internet and cable, radio and tv stations are more affordable (these new markets have softened the market for old over the air stations)… So they’re not really limited at the moment. Any group can probably afford one. Whether they can get anyone to listen is another matter. Which is another change to the whole thing. Its not about equal time on a limit resource; its about making it uneconomical to carry Rush by forcing you to devote extra time to the other side that no one wants to listen to in the same numbers (since liberal news is already available in so many other places; the market is divided).

74. Mitsu Says:

    “Well, liberals are typically the ones who are more protective of the First Amendment, in general, whereas conservatives seem to place more emphasis on the Second Amendment.”

    I don’t agree. Typical lefty free speech movements are about protecting their own speech. Also, I think abortion rights are the lefty version / mirror of second amendment rights to righties.

75. Scottie Says:

    “I am curious though as to what serious attempts at free speech infringements generated by the right could be offered as examples similar to those already offered on the left”

    To the left, any opposition is ‘conservative’. So, any problems they had with free speech was caused by conservatives. Whether anyone involved ever read National Review, voted for a conservative republican, et cetera… not important. Its a sort of double think… as sometimes the people on their other side were simply older lefties or moderates…

76. As a veteran of the Left, admittedly from many years ago, I would suggest that the place to look in order to get an idea of what they consider to be their interpretation of the First Amendment: look at our college and university campuses, or even our schools. There you will see what THEY mean by free speech.

    That’s the model.

    Any questions?

77. Unfortunately a law is constitutional until the courts say no, so much harm can be done in the meantime as in the Alien and Sedition Acts of Adams or the Sedition Act of Wilson. That is why we should be careful who we elect as we WERE NOT in 2008.

78. FredHjr: You’ve got mail. Please check you email inbox.

79. I’ve always been opposed to political correctness on campus, and I agree it’s quite disheartening to see left-wing students or faculty shut down conservative speech on campus. This kind of phenomenon is hardly unique to the left; the right has done it as well… and it’s not strictly speaking a First Amendment issue, as the issue is the venue where the speech occurs (and the assumption of some sort of approval given by the institution when allowing a speech to occur at a given venue), not whether or not the speech can occur at all in the United States. For examples of this on the right, for example, the same thing happened when Ahmadinejad was going to give a speech at Columbia, and right-wing opposition was fierce. Similarly, conservative pressure caused a number of speeches by Ward Churchill (the notorious University of Colorado professor) to be cancelled, as well as speeches by Bill Ayers.

    I know there’s a lot of paranoia in forums like this — both on the right and the left. It’s rather ironic that liberals perceive conservatives as closet fascists, and conservatives believe the same of liberals. The reality is, while there are those with police state instincts on both sides, the vast majority on both sides are committed democrats, who believe in liberal democracy, freedom of speech, etc. My views are not entirely in line with those of my mostly liberal friends — but on this point we are all in total agreement. Commitment to the First Amendment runs very deep among liberals.

    For example, the ACLU has not only filed suit to protect things like flag burning (which I completely applaud) but they have filed suit to protect the right of Nazis to hold demonstrations. The whole point of the First Amendment would be void if it did not extend to those whose speech liberals or anyone else found repungnant, with very few exceptions.

    In the case of the Fairness Doctrine, I don’t know if I should keep repeating the same argument, but again, it is not a black and white issue, so those of you claiming it is are simply making an error. The Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional *because of limited access to the airwaves*, something which *might change in future* (and I believe the future is now). The Fairness Doctrine was considered compatible with the First Amendment in the past because it was thought to enhance, rather than chill, diversity of speech. However, today I believe the effect would be certainly the reverse. The fact that some people disagree is not evidence that liberals in general are not committed to the First Amendment. If one were to present the First Amendment argument to those supporting the reintroduction of the Fairness Doctrine, I believe that argument would have some bearing on the issue for those on all sides.

    In other words, those of you who think liberals are “only” concerned with freedom of speech on their side — well, it’s just a cartoon idea of what liberals really believe. It’s false. Yes, of course, there’s a tendency in any group to be more concerned with advancing your own point of view, but that does not mean that upon sober reflection most liberals wouldn’t take a First Amendment argument seriously. Furthermore, I’m also certain that even those pushing some reintroduction of some sort of Fairness Doctrine do not have in mind removing conservative talk radio from the airwaves, but rather want to legislate some sort of balance where liberal views are also put on the air in the same communities. To actually shut Rush down would be anathema I think to the vast majority of liberals today.

    I know the more paranoid amongst you won’t believe me, and there’s not much I can do to convince you. However, I think I might pop over to Daily Kos or something and see what people are saying about this, and make my argument there. It’ll be instructive to see what the response is.

80. ps Just to clarify. It is not that I applaud flag burning per se, but I certainly applaud the ACLU for protecting the right of students or whatever to do it. (Note that this is one of those weird red herring issues, as the actual practice of flag burning hasn’t occurred in the United States for many years).

81. Mitsu — I don’t think anyone here believes that Democrats would attempt to shut down Rush Limbaugh.

    We, or at least I, believe that some Democrats would like to control and dilute Limbaugh et al. more and force talk radio to carry liberal shows that otherwise could not garner their own audiences. Nor do we believe that such a FD would be enforced in a balanced fashion on PBS, NPR or other MSM channels.

    And we don’t understand, if Democrats and progressive are as concerned about freedom of speech issues as you say, why Dem leaders keep bringing the subject up and why Obama, who could scotch all such talk, does not do so.

    I really don’t understand why this takes any “sober reflection” at all.

82. “this is one of those weird red herring issues, as the actual practice of flag burning hasn’t occurred in the United States for many years”

    Wrong!

    Every now and then I see a news report of a flag burning. Google this and you’ll see. For instance, in April April 2007 some Yale University students were arrested after they burned a neighbor’s American flag.

    Some New York Muslims released a video recently in which they desecrated an American flag.

83. >why Dem leaders keep bringing the subject up

    Because it’s not a black and white issue; some people think the FD is still constitutional today, but I believe they haven’t thought it through. Obama has said he opposes it in the past, but probably because of the pressure from some Democrats, he’s willing to revisit the issue, but I hope that he’ll see that that was then and this is now, and will stick to his original position.

    I’m not saying all liberals see the issue as I do; all I am saying is that I believe most liberals would take seriously the argument that the First Amendment considerations trump the “scarcity” argument in today’s climate — in response to several comments above that suggested that liberals don’t care at all about protecting conservative speech. That is simply not the case.

    Anyway, I posted my argument on Daily Kos and I’ll see what sort of response I get, if any.

84. >Yale students

    I stand corrected. In any event, it’s not a widespread phenomenon. However, as irritating as flag burning is, I feel very strongly that it is protected speech and ought to remain such. Weakening the First Amendment to stop a relatively rare and basically harmless practice would be, to my mind, a massive error, and would be a terrible precedent to set.

85. Mitsu, did you know that some liberals who were involved in the original Fairness Doctrine have admitted that their motive in instituting it was indeed to mute or silence conservative opinion?

86. Mitsu, it’s good that you don’t want to weaken the First Amendment. I hope that you will change your mind about the “Fairness” Doctrine and oppose any law which would allow the government to dictate what opinions will be published or broadcast.

87. Why is it that the flag burners, who obviously hate their country, will not just up and leave? If they don’t like the United States of America, why won’t they go to some socialist country they DO agree with?

    Because that’s what flag burning is: it is the symbolic expression of hatred for the United States of America.

    Again, protected under the Constitution is hatred for the country that protects that right.

    But, they’ll never leave because they are like the 16 year old male (or female) who chafes under parental authority, but will never leave home because too much is provided.

    Somehow I don’t think, contra Mitsu, that if Robert Spencer wanted to go to Harvard to give a talk about the Qur’an, Sunnah, and Sira and how they are the foundations for jihad that he would be allowed to do so. That’s because a scholarly presentation like that would be considered “hate speech” and “racism” (the obliviousness of that epithet should be obvious to the learned, since Islam is not a race).

88. Mitsu,

    There is a major difference between the speech codes and FD that have been denounced here, and the examples you provided of invitations to speak that were extended to Ahmadinejad and Ward Churchill that were later withdrawn or controversial.

    In speech codes, you have people in positions of authority deeming what speech is acceptable, and even taking steps to punish speech deemed unacceptable. The authorities controlled speech.

    In the Ahmadinejad and Ward Churchill examples, the invitations were extended to these egregious examples of human beings BY THE AUTHORITIES themselves who were in charge.

    The ruckus created by the invitations to speak that were extended to these individuals – that you in turn lambast as an example of stifling free speech – were in fact legitimate protests by people who were NOT in positions of authority, and were simply exercising their own freedom of speech to rightfully denounce these creeps.

    It makes a huge difference as to who the authority is, and the protestors did not violate either of these individuals ability to speak – they simply expressed their own opinions of the stupidity of the authorities as well as the speakers that was on display, and they did so in a non-violent, non-threatening manner that did not impair the speakers ability to “get their message out” so much as it provided a countering viewpoint to anyone paying attention.

    Contrast such protests by the right with protests by leftists who physically attack speakers that they disagree with, such as Ann Coulter and others on the right who had their own freedom to speak abridged not by protests exercising freedom of speech but rather by physical assault, or in the case of campus speech codes by faculty (that would be the authority figures) who disdain anything not adhering to the leftist orthodoxy.

    HUGE difference…..

89. >I hope that you will change your mind

    I’m not sure what you want me to change my mind to, since I already oppose the reintroduction of the Fairness Doctrine.

90. Although we will never know the true extent of voter intimidation and/or outright fraud by Chavez and his goons, the outward appearance of democracy was maintained.

    This is false… we DO know… we CHOOSE not to see.

    We DO know what happened in the Soviet Union, china, etc….
    We CHOOSE not to include that history or any part of it in our discussions or world views.

    Just to let you know that we DID know…
    “It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.” Josef Stalin

    Well, we give them the power to do things against our will… (because they already had the power to do what we wanted, just not against us).

    I have yet to actually meet people who have read all these works other than me. most have NOT read das capital, mein kampf, and all these works and histories. When my liberal friends were sitting around calling me, a liberal, a person who hates people and wh is way on the right! I just asked them at what point did freedoms definition start to include coercion? (Since I was arguing against coercion).

    Democracy does not mean that the majority cannot accommodate a tyrant. Au contraire, as our framers were well aware.

    No.. of course not. the Soviet union called itself a democratic state. it calls itself one now.
    We now call ourselves one, now that we are communist.

    But we are a REPUBLIC, not a democracy… and if our democracy wasn’t changed in its checks and balances, it would halt the tyrant a democratic majority would vote in.

    See how much they changed things? We cant even talk about what we are in real terms as to what we are!!!

    Our framers were aware that we were NOT A democracy. Something our people no longer know.

    At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, a Mrs. Powel anxiously awaited the results, and as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the long task now finished, asked him directly: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” “A republic if you can keep it” responded Franklin.

    A republic is not a democracy… we only ELECT our leaders through democracy!

    It was the communists that moved to convert a democratically elected republic into self destructive mob rule so that we would do the same thing the romans did and germans did and others.

    Vote in a left populist (populist communist like sasha pushkin), leader that would then get us to vote things in through illegal means and mob rule and propaganda.

    Failure to understand how deep the change has gone is why we cant understand whats going on.

    In the many posts I’ve written attempting to explain the basic neocon attitude towards the spread of democracy-(see this and this) I’ve tried to be careful to use the term “liberal democracy” to describe what is advocated. Why? Because democracy alone is not enough.

    You never studied the terms FIRST, before learning how they misused them.

    Neocons are technically communists… one cant create a new conservative.. a conservative would be interested in conserving the old state… it would not look to the spread of democracy, since our country is a republic, not a democracy. We moved it to a democracy which our founding fathers said was mob rule and could not function, which is why it was done through subversion, not debate.

    And liberal democracy now is democratic socialism… which is what the menshiviks were, not what the founding fathers were..

    Coercion has no meaning in freedom, and so liberal democracy would not have socialist programs if it was a liberal democracy and not something else with the wrong name tag on. after all, it’s the name tag that counts not anything else. which is why infanticide called abortion is ok, and bureaucratic health rationing is ok rather than euthanasia.

    In other words under hegel creating neo con fractures the conservatives and allows you to pit two groups of people against each other. watch james bond specter. Where they have the fighting fish scene. He goes, watch how the third fish stays ot of the fight, it lets the other two waste all their energies on each other. then removes the winner with ease.

    Well, divide conservative into various factions, then set them upon each other.

    And you call them movements. No one wants to be with the old one! its old… so neo conservativism is a way to recast things that shouldn’t be, into conservatism and set those who should be on the same side against each other.

    Of course there are books on this stuff… but again… most read some idiots summary of them, not read the actual books… so we don’t knw the games, and don’t know that things we think of as accidental are actually on purpose and can be traced.

    Not only are we a republic rather than a pure democracy, but our republican form of government is designed with an exquisite system of checks and balances in place among the three different branches.

    The ONLY democratic thing we have in our republic is elected officials.

    We are supposed to remove them when they make laws we don’t like. But now since we pretend to vote on the laws, we have no reason to remove the persons. The whole argument as to pure democracy and repuiblic is a “false argument” since we only elect that way.

    Consensus voting is communist…. And its like a union, a soviet, a committee… so when we move to direct voting on issues we are moving away from our republic and to the communist one…

    Go here and see how much we don’t know as to false arguments
    skeptixhome.com/id22.html

    read that list, but rater than think these things are inserted by accident, imagine that someone has studied them to achieve an art where winning by other means is the goal!

    taken together, these present a library of skills and methods for selling people on things that they never would be sold on through rational normal educated debate.

    There are actually many more, but they wouldn’t be fallacious argument, but techniques on lies that work with fallacious arguments.

    For instance, omitting all the history of the agencies when discussing why things are the way they are. any discussion tha leaves out a huge portion of salient data, is a worthless discussion.

    The other thing are also things such as arguments for consumption. In which the argument is never to be resolved, but is intended to create a permanent crisis that keeps the politically motivated on a endless loop and out of the way of other things. abortion is such an argument… so is race… norming is another…. and so are things like fracturing us into so many parties that each individual represents a variation on a party theme, but no one actually belongs by definition… (which is how you sum up votes and power without a real consensus. Obama got people to vote for mutually exclusive outcomes)

    History teaches that the Bill of Rights was adopted with an eye to limiting the power of both the executive and the legislative branches, as well as to make clear that all powers not specifically listed in the Constitution as belonging to the federal government were retained by the states and the people. But what would prevent the people from voting away any of those rights?

    The fact that we are a republic meant that the people could never get that vote!!!

    The slight change to our beliefs that we are a democracy and the right thing to do is deliver the vote for critical things to the people, is now you do an end around and get that vote in when its not legal to do so. (having advocate judges helps, so does teachers, and psych doctors who write papers to reinforce those thigns).

    Look to the actual rules. Read them. the people ONLY get to vote for the people that represent them, and these people get to vote those rights.

    So its actually scarier… and there is a way to ratify that has never happened, but in which our states currently potentially have the situation to accomplish it. its way too long for me to type. Yall hate me for what I do type…

    As Lincoln wrote, our government is “of the people, by the people, for the people.” But the overwhelming power the people would wield in a pure democracy is limited by the powers and balances among the three branches, the fact that we have a representative republican form of government rather than a pure democracy, and by the aforementioned difficulty of amending the constitution.

    Wrong. the power the people would wield in a democracy is limited by the people we vote for to do the acts. And THEIR power is limited by putting them against each other. So WE ARE NOT LIMITED by the state, the LEADERS ARE LIMITED, and we vote the leaders.

    And a key part of this which is in violation everywhere, is that leaders cant delegate powers!!! We violate that. CPS can walk into a home without a warrant and take children… a cop cant even enter the home, but a clerk can take children away!

    Hitler came to power without ever winning a majority vote for his party, but the German government had another weakness–under its constitution, it was relatively easy to suspend civil liberties and establish a dictatorship.

    Its actually more complicated than that… having to do with HOW the voting worked and HOW runner up voting happened.

    The suspension of the constitution was only a way to SEAL THE DEAL, not make it happen. we have the SAME ability to suspend civil liberties and constitution..

    And both FDR and Lincoln used them.

    Which is why I brought attention to the show laws for hate speech and things they created. they are not valid with a constitution in effect, but become instantly valid once its temporarily suspended. In this way, they have been loading the law books with the laws to secure and insure a take over without the lag people assume needed to get orderly.

    This is how chess is played… do everything in the distant abstract… then its all ambiguous… then no one believes things till it “all comes together”

    it was done by republican means; the Reichstag obligingly voted to abolish itself, although not without the “persuasion” of Hitler’s storm troopers surrounding the building with cries of ““Full powers–or else! We want the bill–or fire and murder!”

    This is NOT how it was done… and this is WHY we don’t see it happening here.
    Your leaving out the fact that the Weimar republic granted younger people the vote, and granted women the vote (And that Hitler worked these two naé¯ve groups just as our leader did). it took the leader of the Weimar republic to grant the things you are saying, but by fiat, not vote, after Hitler convinced the current leader to do so.

    What your referring to is gliechschatlung… but those didn’t happen till 33…
    Gliechschatlung is the same concept in german that perestroika was and what CHANGE is to us.

    Gleichschaltung [ˈglaié§ÊƒaltÊŠÅ‹] (help-info), meaning “coordination”, “making the same”, “bringing into line”, is a Nazi term for the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control over the individual, and tight coordination over all aspects of society and commerce. The historian Richard J. Evans offered the term “forcible-coordination” in his most recent work on Nazi Germany.
    One goal of this policy was to eliminate individualism by forcing everybody to adhere to a specific doctrine and way of thinking and to control as many aspects of life as possible using an invasive police force.

    Failure to understand HOW it happens is why until now, we are nto seeing it happen.

    Here is how much your missing.

    The Gleichschaltung also included the formation of various organisations with compulsory membership for segments of the population, in particular the youth. Boys served as apprentices in the Pimpfen (“cubs”) beginning at the age of six, and at age 10, entered the Deutsches Jungvolk (“Young German Boys”) and served there until entering the Hitler Youth proper at age 14. Boys remained there until age 18, at which time they entered into the Arbeitsdienst (“Labor Service”) and the armed forces (Wehrmacht). Girls became part of the Jungmé¤del (“Young Maidens”) at age 10, and at age 14 were enrolled in the Bund Deutscher Mé¤del (“League of German Maidens”). At 18 BDM members went generally to the eastern territory for their Pflichtdienst, or Landjahr, — a year of labor on a farm. In 1936 membership of the Hitler Youth numbered just under 6 million.
    For workers an all-embracing recreational organization called Kraft durch Freude (“Strength through Joy”) was set up. In Nazi Germany, even hobbies were regimented; all private clubs (whether they be for chess, football, or woodworking) were brought under the control of KdF and, in turn, the Nazi Party. The Kraft durch Freude organization provided vacation trips (skiing, swimming, concerts, ocean cruises, and so forth). With some 25 million members, KdF was the largest of the many organizations established by the Nazis. Workers were also brought in line with the party through activities such as the Reichsberufswettkampf, a national vocational competition.
    

    So the process your talking about has already begun YEARS ago… we are NOW considering that they are coming true… but that’s bevause we are waiting for the symbols of the FINAL image, not the signposts along the way.

    We have a very poor knowledge of HOW it happened… and the common explanation is off slightly…

    As CS lewis points out in the screwtape letters…. One only needs one to be a slightly bit off to miss marks, one doesn’t need huge grand things. so we only need to have a slightly wrong history in our knowledge to not see the same thing happen.

    We know the final version, not the process to that version… (which is what I have been talking about all this time).

    Go here and read the list of specific measures (its good enough): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung

    Also realize that we have refined these processes and changed them, while keeping the goal conserved.

    The biggest difference is that the population never got to vote away the Reichstag, it was set on fire by hitlers people on feb 27th… hindenberg acting at hitlers request issued the riechstag fire decree. This decree suspended the new constitution, and then started the restructuring, change phase.

    One should realize that when one reads this history, one should ask, who worked a lot of this stuff out and provided it to these people to attempt? And note that the franfurt school did their work in germany during the Weimar republic to prepare them for a change!!! when Hitler took over, he chased them out… and they came to the US and started the same desease!

    Now we are ready here for the same change.

    Gleichschaltung, as a compound word, is better comprehended by those who speak other languages by listing its predecessory uses in German. The word gleich in German means alike, equal, or the same; schaltung means something like switching. The word Gleichschaltung had two uses in German for physical, rather than political, meanings:
    1. A locking clutch, as used in some machines for connecting two shafts that would otherwise rotate freely such that they rotate at the same speed when in the locked condition.
    2. A certain means of wiring an alternating current electrical generator, and AC electric motors, so that when the generator is made to turn at a given speed, or even turned a certain angle, each motor connected to it will also turn at that speed, or to the same angle. This is the meaning which is most commonly referred to explain the Nazi use of the word: the political party is considered the generator, and every member of a professional group or society is considered a motor wired to it. See selsyn.
    However, because of the Nazi associations of the term, its use for these physical meanings has largely been abandoned since the war.
    

    Now everything will be focused on accelerating the change, while preventing the counter revolution which ALWAYS occurs when people realize what they have done.

    And recent less dramatic, but similar and still worrisome, events by which Venezuelan dictator Chavez has seized power with the full cooperation of the Venezuelan legislature–which, as in Germany of old, can amend the constitution by a mere 2/3 vote–demonstrate once again that there are not only “democratic” ways to seize power, but “republican” ones as well (and please note the small “d” and the small “r”).

    Actually this is a perversion that comes from not understanding the systems

    It’s the same kind of perversion that allows us to consider a CEO thief as a natural part of capitalism!!!

    Chavez first had to convert to democracy… he had to remove the republic people and does so by moving the vote for the republic “to the people”. this is the end around of the republican government.

    So its not right that there is a way there through republicanism… beause there isnt. In the US it took the people forcing the republicans from policing subversion, communism, and such before they could do the same thing here.

91. Regarding flag burners — I have no idea what is in the minds of the tiny few who bother to burn the flag today, but I know quite a few people who oppose United States foreign policy who love their country and are protesting because they love their country. Even some flag burners may be doing so because they want US policy to change not because they hate the US but because they want the US to improve, in their view.

    >HUGE difference

    I wasn’t railing against conservatives who protested Ahmadinejad or Ward Churchill or whoever. I was pointing out that conservatives and liberals both protest speech by those they disagree with in the context of a university setting which they feel confers some sort of legitimacy on the speech. Obviously physical assault is totally beyond the pale, however. I have read a number of cases where people are drowned out by protester shouting, but as for actual physical assault, that’s certainly out of line. However in any event none of this has to do with the general First Amendment right of Ann Coulter or anyone else to give speeches in other venues, and I know of no liberals who would presume to question her right to do so.

92. Why do people use two leftist anti-american notions to demonstrate some sort of “balance” or “fairness” from the ACLU? Flag burners and National Socialists represent the same side of the political spectrum, the left.
    Perhaps Mitsu could come up with an actual right of center or far right group or case suppored by the ACLU. But socialists are socialists, whether “national” or “international”.

93. Oh come on, the Nazis were (and to the extent they still exist, are) a right-wing movement in nearly every respect; they were allied with the right on nearly every issue, despite the term “Socialist” in their name. They are associated today with the right in Europe (ask any European), and the few in Europe who still subscribe to some sort of Nazi ideology consider themselves on the right. They were vehemently anti-Communist, suppressed trade unions, persecuted artists, gays, Jews. But I don’t want to devolve into a Godwin’s Law morass, so I’ll leave it there.

94. Stephen Jay Gould, widely regarded by liberals as some sort of scientist-saint, was a radical leftist who incited students to disrupt the classes of professors whose opinions he disapproved of. Some of those disruptions involved actual assault.

95. just as our checks and balances work to protect us from one branch of the government easily gaining ascendance over the others, and our Bill of Rights works to protect our liberties from encroachment by any branch, the entire edifice rests on the difficulty of changing any of this.

    Really?

    Then how can you have feminism? Feminism would not be allowed. How can a politician violate their oath of offices and the constitution by favoring one group over another group? Affirmative action is a violation of equal treatment under the law! Its now communist, where its ok to treat people differently under the law to achieve “equal” outcomes.

    Socialism… where in our constitution does it say that the state has the right to redistribute wealth? Read “not yours to give” to know how far we have gone.

    Where can it delegate powers to entities like CPS?

    Where can it violate “knowing the accuser” in court if that accuser is a child or a woman?

    And abortion? That’s a violation in spirit as well as word. Unless you believe in penumbras and ignore the preamble.

    These hurdles placed in the way of easy amendment do not, of course, assure that our liberty will be protected. But they certainly make it more likely than it is in most countries.

    And this is the BIGGEST Fallacy of them all….

    Its like an alien arrives looks at our highways and believes that red lights actually can stop a 2 ton vehicle.

    The paper means nothing if the people can’t call their democratically elected representatives on the things they do.

    We have no right redistributing wealth… but the moment we let tthem do it, and didn’t do so through an amendment, we tore up and threw away the constitution!!!!

    Trying a bit of socialism destroyed the constitution… just as eating white mushrooms of a certain type will doom you to death days later.

    It’s as if we can see fast poison (war, battle, etc), but slow poison we wont pick up on…

    In the end, of course, even the constitution only rests on the general social contract and the consent of the governed (and, by the way, this is where the guarantee of the right of the people to bear arms comes in handy; at least it gives them a fighting chance against a possible runaway military).

    Yup, that’s the point…

    And it clearly shows you that what the leaders are promising we already had!!!
    So change would mean losing it, not gaining it.

    However if you believe in socialism, feminism, affirmative action, unions, and such…

    You’re a communist… for all those things are communist doctrines and planks…

    For the free market did those things before the state TOOK THEM OVER by force and now uses force.

    You may belive in the constitution, but that might mean that you have not understood the game, and that neo con game was to get you to accept that some changes were ok, like socialism, feminism, etc… which violates the sanctity of the structure…

    You cant be a little bit pregnant, and you cant be a little bit socialist…

    We no longer thing that freedom from state coercion is freedom
    We no longer understand the limited personal freedom with responsibility.

    Both have been inverted… state freedom is now full of cercion, and personal freedom no longer is limited to the tip of your nose.

    We did not CONSERVE the ideas that kept the document safe.

    We violate it with separation of religion
    Affirmative action
    Gender politics (Where is the 5 billion dollars for stopping violence against men? )
    Taxing to redistribute wealth (to other people, other nationals in residence, AND other states as aid)
    Seizing property (first from evil drug users, who unlike mothers, have no right to their bodies)
    Random searches

    And tons of other things.

96. “However in any event none of this has to do with the general First Amendment right of Ann Coulter or anyone else to give speeches in other venues”

    “Merely” keeping conservative opinions out of academia, so that students can be properly indoctrinated in leftism without any inconvenient dissent.

    Coulter and Rush are famous examples, but in fact the Left has a long history of using disruption and harassment to silence all sorts of people who could in no sane mind be characterized as “shock jocks” or “sensationalistic” in their style of speech.

97. “Oh come on, the Nazis were a right-wing movement in nearly every respect”

    Sorry, wrong. They were big on all sorts of social-welfare, and their primary differences with the international socialists were their embrace of nationalism as a unifying myth and their preference for government control of the economy rather than government ownership of it. But regardless they wanted total government control. Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.

    If you read what the fascists of the 20’s and 30’s wrote, you will see that they thought of themselves as socialists, and what’s more that other leftists also thought of them as such–heretics perhaps, but nonetheless belonging to the same religion. Consider: The religious wars of the Reformation were bloody but the Catholics saw the Protestants as heretics, not as pagans, while the Protestants saw the Catholics as Christian but corrupted and fallen away from the true faith. The same applies to earlier heresies and to the violence they engendered.

    “Right-wing”

    When Lenin and others first called the fascists right-wing, they were right in a sense: The fascists were sort of right wing of the left wing. But that doesn’t make them the right wing of the entire political spectrum. Later, of course, the Left changed its propaganda line and tried (rather successfully) to portray fascism as the opposite of socialism, but no matter how many times that lie is repeated it is still a lie. I unthinkingly bought into it for many years until I started to look into the real history and philosophy of the matter.

    Are you sure? I’m not absolutely sure what they are today, since they are such a small force that

    “they were allied with the right on nearly every issue”

    What alliances there were, were alliances of convenience against the international socialists. Furthermore, the right (as well as big business interests in general) hoped to be able to use the fascists or at least ride the wave of left-wing populism that seemed to be sweeping Europe. Or should I say ride the tiger, since there is an old saying about the inadvisability of doing so and the necessity of hanging on tight if you do.

    “They are associated today with the right in Europe…consider themselves on the right”

    Then I would suggest that they have mutated–something that has happened to political movements in the past.

    “They were vehemently anti-Communist, suppressed trade unions, persecuted artists, gays, Jews.”

    Unlike communists, who violently suppressed all rival leftist groups, suppressed all independent trade unions, persecuted artists, gays, and Jews….

98. Mitsu,

    pst314 beat me to the punch.

    The Nazi’s were not right wing during the 1920’s and 1930’s, and were not too far off from what constituted mainstream socialist theories of the day.

    Simply because it’s assumed that Nazi’s were on the political right doesn’t make it so, and probably derives from some on the left overzealously calling anyone they disagree with a nazi or a fascist.

    Consider that Stalin signed a non-aggression treaty with Hitler and cooperated in divvying up portions of Europe prior to open war in the late 1930’s.

    Consider also that Stalin was surprised by the German assault on the USSR when it did occur.

    Stalin was a mass murdering socialist sonofabitch who died too many years too late – but he really did feel he could deal with Hitler (at least at arms length) until it hit the fan, and then it was two blood thirsty bastards going at it until one was dead.

    BTW, the term “Nazi” stands for “Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – or in English – the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

    Socialists generally aren’t right wingers….

99. Oh come on, the Nazis were (and to the extent they still exist, are) a right-wing movement in nearly every respect; they were allied with the right on nearly every issue, despite the term “Socialist” in their name..

    This is UNTRUE…

    Take this from a person whose family (as I said) is Latvian. This means that people we knew, and some family we no longer know, was part of the Latvian corps. Look up the Latvian corps, they were Waffen SS who sided with Hitler to avoid being taken by Stalin (Hitler being the lesser of the two evils). So it’s VERY hard to listen to young useful idiots talk about things that they know very little of, when I grew up attending Janis festivals where the old men talked about their days and how thinks really were and what they were ordered to do against their wills, among other things.

    STALIN ordered that the Nazi party would be treated as on the right. So Mitsu, you are an idiot of Stalin if this is what you believe. This is not what I was taught by the people who were there, and who were telling me how things are happening here but much slower.

    If you draw out the whole spectrum. you will see that on the left is totalitarian rule, on the FAR RIGHT is basically libertarian minimal state and free individuals.

    Stalin was as far left as you can get…
    this makes EVERYONE to the right of communism.

    Hitler being only a tiny bit more right than Stalin (he said you can own property if you use it the way he said you can use it, Stalin said you cant own anything).

    Obviously when I said to go and look at these posters from BEFORE Stalins orders

    You didn’t… Which is why I make such long posts…

    when I link the person refuses to go there, so by not going there, they pretend to win the argument and keep spouting the lies.

    At this link is a photo of a communist turning jews over to the SS man
    http://www.sovietstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/soviet-and-nazi-officers.jpg

    At this link you can look at the posters that were made BEFORE stalins decree…
    http://www.sovietstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/stalin-hitler.jpg
    and
    http://www.sovietstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/nazi-soviet-posters.jpg

    and this is what I mean that Mitsu and others have read REVISIONIST (Stalinist) history!!! Mitsu is like Reverend wright who still spouts that AIDS was invented in US biological labs, which the Russians have admitted was an active measuer by them.

    well, everyone who has read the history without revisionism to make Hitler and stalin seem apart, so as not to poision communism, knows the truth of.

    From dissecting leftism
    The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin’s Communism. The very word “Nazi” is a German abbreviation for “National Socialist” (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler’s political party (translated) was “The National Socialist German Workers’ Party” (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
    ray-dox.blogspot.com/2006/05/american-roots-of-fascism-american.html

    So your Harvard professors in the name of utopia have filled your head with lies.

    And most of the time us old time conservatives who like history and study it and really read the texts of the actual authors, know this… which is why you have such a problem winning discussions.

    there are so many lies on the left, one can say that they are living in a world that never actually existed!!!!!!!!!!!!

100. and mitsu,
     hows this piece of history out today?

     France guilty of deporting Jews in
     http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25066165-23109,00.html

     Some 76,000 Jews were arrested in France between 1942 and 1944 and transported in appalling conditions to Nazi concentration camps such as Auschwitz.

     so your beloved french socialists knew what hitler wanted, and they thought it was just fine too. as the soviet officers did too.

     and mitsu… the list of things you said the germans went after, was not correct.

     stalin went after that list more, as did mao and even more for other things…

     by the way… ever notice the european nazi were not racist? did they kill the north africans, or the arabs? or did they mostly kill a small sect of caucasians like them?

     ALL socialist groups USE the fringe to get power, and then eliminate them after they acquire it.

     so they use the perversions of the fringe to destroy the culture… and buy the fringe off!!! so the gays, the lesbians, the freaks, and so forth, feel their time has come, and they work hard.

     when its a done deal, they are exterminated.

     this is why lenin referered to people like you as useful idiots.

     they were useful in helping the enemy achieve its ends in their extermination.

     in other words the freaks and the fringe are willing to sell out their own people who grant them existence, a voice (they abuse), a place in society, and then hand it all over to a peoples whose documents at the core have always called for their extermination!!!

     but they dont read those, they read the fronts documents and the readers digest versions so that the idiots don catch on.

     richard wright the author wrote about the process in his later story, too smart to be a communist. he caught on, and so unlike langston huges, never went thought he period of helping, followed by the period of dispair over what they did.

     A counter-revolutionary is anyone who opposes a revolution, particularly those who act after a revolution to try to overturn or reverse it, in full or in part. The adjective, “counterrevolutionary”, pertains to movements that would restore the state of affairs, or the principles, that prevailed during a prerevolutionary era.

     so those counter revoluitionaries, rather than be the old guards last breath.

     are the students the gays, the other groups who when they find out that they are not the favored, but the dysgenic, seek to revers the course and return it back to the kind of state that let them change it in the first place!!! (the false model which is only one of many potentials is the jacobites).

     The word counterrevolutionary is often used interchangeably with reactionary; however, some people considered reactionary (like the CCP) used the term counterrevolutionary to describe their opponents – even if those opponents were advocates of a Marxist revolution. In general, the word “reactionary” is used to describe those who oppose a more long-term trend of social change, while “counterrevolutionaries” are those who oppose a very recent and sudden change.

     The clerics who took power following the Islamic Revolution became counterrevolutionaries; after the revolution the Marxists were driven out of power by the mullahs. Thousand of political prisoners who opposed the Islamist regime were killed especially during the 1988 Massacre of Iranian Prisoners.

     Sometimes it is unclear who represents the revolution and who represents the counterrevolution. In Hungary, the 1956 uprising was condemned as a counterrevolution by the ruling Communist authorities (who claimed to be revolutionary themselves). However, thirty years later, the events of 1956 were more widely known as a revolution.

     mitsu… if you wore glasses… you would have been removed by mao or many of the asian sociaists.

     today. the asians, whites, and jews are in the same boat…

101. ROFLMFAO…ok, I waded through Artfldgr’s post.

     It reminded me of yet another non-right wingnut aspect of Hitler and his ilk.

     The SA, the organization that helped initially propel lil adolf into power, was led by openly homosexual males.

     Now, I’m not taking any positions on homosexuality, only pointing out that this is not a group generally known for associating with republicans and right wingers.

     The SA was eventually absorbed and subjegated to the SS and such and it’s leaders murdered, but it wasn’t due to their sexual preferences that they were pretty much destroyed so much as it was they were seen as a potential threat to Hitler once he had gained power – and he discarded them when they were no longer useful idiots….

     Anyone think this sounds like a familiar pattern?

     Anyone?

102. and on FD today for mitsu…

     Senior FCC staff working for acting Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps held meetings last week with policy and legislative advisers to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman to discuss ways the committee can create openings for the FCC to put in place a form of the “Fairness Doctrine” without actually calling it such.
     Waxman is also interested, say sources, in looking at how the Internet is being used for content and free speech purposes. … Copps has been a supporter of putting in place policies that would allow the federal government to have greater oversight over the content that TV and radio stations broadcast to the public, and both the FCC and Waxman are looking to licensing and renewal of licensing as a means of enforcing “Fairness Doctrine” type policies without actually using the hot-button term “Fairness Doctrine.” …
     The House Energy and Commerce Committee is also looking at how it can put in place policies that would allow it greater oversight of the Internet. “Internet radio is becoming a big deal, and we’re seeing that some web sites are able to control traffic and information…,” says one committee staffer. “We’re at very early stages on this, but the chairman has made it clear that oversight of the Internet is one of his top priorities.”

     Thanks to the stimulus package, we’ve established that broadband networks – the Internet – are critical, national infrastructure. We think that gives us an opening to look at what runs over that critical infrastructure.

     yup… so much for obama and his people doing the right thing!!!

     mitsu is right… fairness will disappear under that name, but will come back bigger and stronger as some other underhanded total control of what we see and hear.

     Pravda is still running… so businesses know, that siding with the regime, even if it collapses is better than the alternative… as long as your useful.

103. oh… and mitsu… please read the history of the ACLU… the organization was started by a communist who said the same thing as kruschev, that we would get socialism a bit at a time, and have it without knowing it.

     the ACLU was created to use the tools of freedom against itself…

     Roger Baldwin, the first director of the ACLU, was a communist. He explains in his book, Liberty Under the Soviets, “I joined. I don’t regret being a part of the Communist tactic, which increased the effectiveness of a good cause. I knew what I was doing. I was not an innocent liberal. I wanted what the Communists wanted…”
     William Z. Foster, then National Chairman of the Communist Party USA and an ACLU co-founder, is famous for this 1932 quote: “The establishment of an American Soviet government will involve the confiscation of large landed estates in town and country, and also, the whole body to forests, mineral deposits, lakes, rivers and so on.” He was the author of “Toward Soviet America”.
     

104. let me know if this suonds like our leftists when talking chavez, or obama..

     “Fidel Castro has strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice, the need to restore the Constitution….but it amounts to a new deal for Cuba, radical, democratic and therefore anti-Communist.” (Herbert Matthews, New York Times Feb. 1957.)

     “This is not a Communist Revolution in any sense of the term. Fidel Castro is not only not a Communist, he is decidedly anti-Communist.” (Herbert Matthews, New York Times, July 1959)

     “It would be a great mistake even to intimate that Castro’s Cuba has any real prospect of becoming a Soviet satellite.” (Walter Lippmann , Washington Post July, 1959)

     “Fidel Castro is a good young man trying to do what’s best for Cuba. We should extend him a hand.” (retired president Harry Truman July, 1959)

     “That’s a cute Puppy, Fidelito! When will you visit us again? And will that be with the beard or without the beard?” (Edward Murrow, CBS Feb. 1959).

105. Nazis and communists are opposite ends of the political spectrum, huh? Both emulated Engels and Marx. Communists promoted the rise of the “New Soviet Man”, vs. the nazi “Ubermensch”. Both employed secret police forces (NKVD, later KGB, vs. Gestapo) and interred political dissenters ( gulags vs. concentration camps). Both elevated the peasentry ( working class, or proletariat vs. the working class, or folk) over the moneyed elite ( bourgeoisie vs. international Jewry) Both persecuted religion to elevate worship of State.

     “Workers of the world, unite”
     “Work shall set you free”
     “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”
     “National Socialist German Worker’s Party”

     http://thewwp.blogspot.com/2006/07/10-reasons-nazis-were-left-wing.html

106. The only difference between “National Socialists” and Socialists is that National Socialists “redistribute the wealth” to those who look like they do. Socialists “redistribute the wealth” to those who think like they do.

     By such fashion, Socialists can proudly claim to be non-racist and ‘intellectual’, but they are just as totalitarian.

107. “When Lenin and others first called the fascists right-wing, they were right in a sense: The fascists were sort of right wing of the left wing.”

     Don’t confuse the two. Socialists are not fascists. Fascism is “the corporate state” and is a right-wing ideology. The association with fascists and nazis began June 22, 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Stalin stopped referring to his former allies as “Nazis” for fear that any reference to them as socialists would reflect on his regime, as well. Henceforth, the nazis became “fascists”, and the projection lives on to this day, just ask Mitsu.

108. Lee – on the political scale it truly is left not right.

     The scale starts at total government (on the left) and moves towards the right which is anarchy.

     In between in the center is freedom with government providing national security, a system of laws and regulations and protections for rights.

     We are moving closer and closer to socialism and fascism as the private sector shrinks and the government controls more and more in our lives…

     Economic terms:
     Capitalism by definition is the people choosing who gets what resources.

     Socialism is the government choosing who gets what resources.

     Fascism is government control:
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

     Fascism is an authoritarian nationalist ideology focused on solving economic, political, and social problems that its supporters see as causing national decline or decadence.[1][2][3][4] Fascists aim to create a single-party state in which the government is led by a dictator who seeks unity by requiring individuals to subordinate self-interest to the collective interest of the nation, a race or even a social class.

     Another excerpt:
     Fascist governments permanently forbid and suppress all criticism and opposition to the government and the fascist movement.[10] Fascist movements oppose any ideology or political system that gives direct political power to people as individuals rather than as a collective through the state

     By the way, libertarians want a cut in government to the tune of 80%. This is as far right as you can get before you hit anarchy. This is a lot of individual freedom and very little government.

     As a centrist conservative (I want government spending to remain the same for the next 10 years as we reprioritize what we spend on), I would love it if we return as much as possible to capitalism becuase the people choosing who gets what resources is the most efficient way.

     This would also strengthen this nations ability to provide a safety net and national security.

     Currently, all of our spending on 130 + government programs dilutes our ability to provide for the safety nets and national security.

     Sad – but that’s what big government leftists fascists are doing to this country. And they want us to shut up about it. That is fascism

109. Like Lord Acton puts it, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

     There’s a reason for term limits but politicians usually come up with justifications to extend them. If they’re truly good enough for the country, there’ll always be places for them to contribute.

     Nobody gets what they want all the time and underdogs should have a chance to rise. Nonetheless, if the underdogs can’t live up to voters’ expectations, they’ll get kicked out some way somehow.

     First thing is to accept that people have different opinions:
     http://www.newsy.com/videos/ch_vez_plans_perpetual_presidency

110. Ah, neo it’s comforting to live in lotus land. You say “my guess is that our constitution just might be the most difficult on earth to change. Yes, the first step is a vote by two-thirds of the legislature (with a never-used alternative form of proposal, two-thirds of the state legislatures calling for a special convention for the purpose of making an amendment).” You should be afraid, be very afraid.

     Article V of the Constitution sets forth the amendment procedures. If 2/3, or 34, state legislatures so vote, a duly constituted constitutional convention can meet immediately thereafter. Several Supreme Court Justices have pronounced on this topic in the past. There is NO LIMIT to the reach of such a convention. It could, if it so wished, approve as its first motion the rescinding of the present Constitution in its entirety.

     More frightening still in the fact that 32 state legislatures HAVE ALREADY VOTED YES to hold a constitutional convention. If two more states vote yes, a constitutional convention will be realized. According to Chuck Baldwin, presidential candidate of the Constitution Party, the left has targeted the Ohio state legislature and is working diligently to get the 33rd vote of approval.

     You’re right, any draft revised constitution would require a 3/4 vote of the same state legislature but get real. Just imagine the opportunity for national chaos that would arise from the unfolding of a convention in this time of uncertainty and crisis. Apropos to this, Obama quietly issued a new directive on the charter of the “Civilian Expeditionary Workforce” (non-uniformed personnel) to remove the word overseas and add “restoration of order” and “stability operations” to its roles.

     It’s still not clear if these and the many other troubling issues, e.g the Fairness Doctrine, the census, “national service,” etc., are organized towards a purpose or just random events. But even if it is the former, the structure could be used at some future time to install, for want of a better term, the levers for a tyrannical government machine.

111. Scottie Says:

     “The Nazi’s were not right wing during the 1920’s and 1930’s, and were not too far off from what constituted mainstream socialist theories of the day.”

     I’ve argued with Goldberg about this a little in email. I’d say they were right wing in Europe at the time… it’s just the right wing in Europe was anti capitalist and bunch of other things in common with the left.

     Its closer to the facts to say the right wing in the US isn’t really right wing… at least it has very little in common with the tradional meaning in Europe.

     Example… I have right wing relatives in Europe. One is big Chomsky fan… even sent me ‘failed state’ to read…

     Goldberg admits as much if you look at his wording. example of his wording: IF we define THIS as leftwing, then the Nazis were leftwing and not right…

112. Lee Says:

     “Don’t confuse the two. Socialists are not fascists. Fascism is “the corporate state” and is a right-wing ideology.”

     Actually, corporate doesn’t translate right. It means something similar to soviet. Mussolini was a socialist and Fascism has many things in common with the left… It tends to not have Nazism’s mystical mumbo jumbo but it does have some Euro right wing aesthetic flavors mixed in (Spirit over materialism, et cetera). So, I’d say its another right wing socialism…

113. Baklava and Thomass,

     “So, I’d say it’s another right wing socialism”

     Probably closer to my interpretation. Baklava spoke of a political spectrum with anarchy on the right and totalitarianism on the left. I tend to think in more of a circle. Extreme right and left are indistinguishable from each other. Theocracies and communist regimes, while different ideologies, operate on the same level, with the same methods.

     Baklava’s links to fascism demonstrate my assertion that communists and liberals have redefined nazis away from themselves as a similar ideology, for I also found this on Wiki:

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_fascism

     “Granted that the XIXth century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean the XXth century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy.”

     “Fascism is the precise negation of that doctrine which formed the basis of the so-called Scientific or Marxian Socialism.”

     “The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production.”

     In the book “Interpretations of Fascism” by Renzo De Felice, he describes it as “imperial capitalism”.

114. BTW, Mitsu, I don’t follow, believe in, nor subscribe to “Godwin’s law” (probably invented by a nazi to deflect criticism). If the analogy is appropriate, the analogy is apporpriate.

115. Lee,

     I respect what you are saying but I have a hard time with the circle approach because very little government seems to be left out.

     Where is anarchy in the circle approach? In the center?

     The approach I agree with the most that has a 2 dimensional graph (as opposed to a straight line). That is because there are more factors than just economic freedom. There is also personal and religous freedom.

     No matter the approach though – it is not lazze faire or less government folks (people on the right) that are fascists.

     Respectfully, there should be no confusion on this topic. Confusion only started because the press LOVEs to get it wrong. Just as they do with economics, science, climate, race, etc.

     And also respectfully, the last few paragraphs had an oxymoron. Capitalism by definition is the people choosing who gets what resources.

     This happens as such:
     1) People choosing who they work for or what they want to be when they grow up.
     2) People choosing where they spend their money
     3) People making choices in how much they spend on food, shelter, entertainment, etc.

     Imperial capitalism can only be socialism which is by definition the government choosing who gets what resources.

     In this case, it is to the left. It is government control over your life more or less. It is the furthest you can get from anarchy besides communism or totalitarianism or dictatorships.

     It’s funny how people muddy up things. It’s the fault of the press I know…..

116. If people are arguing that because of anarchy that corporations can run amock and therefore those entities are choosing who gets what resources – I’d empathize and say that yes that is bad.

     That is why I’m a centrist who believes in the rule of law, a nation that has a strong national defense and even a strong safety net.

     Within a nation of the rule of law, corporations cannot run over individual rights and cannot enslave the people or make conditions too hazardous to work in.

     BUT MAKE NO CONFUSION, in that state of anarchy, it is not fascism. The governments that were fascist were strong and controlled very heavily. Therefore it was to the left

     Does that make sense?

     I know this is contrary to may people’s belief but it really is rather simple. More government is not good.

117. The collectivists, I think, have a vested interest in making sure that Jonah Goldberg’s book and thesis gain no traction. It benefits them to maintain the false dichotomy of Right and Left, because that obfuscation serves to hide the collectivists’ goals. Label anyone who is against collectivization a right-winger and a nazi and you stand to make it stick in the minds of most people.

     We’ll see how far they get with that project. Problem is, the Genie is out of the bottle and I haven’t seen any serious rebuttals of Goldberg’s thesis yet.

     And I think a new constitutional convention would pretty much end the United States as we know it. How in the hell did the collectivists manage to get so many states to sign on to that idea? Especially given the fact that most Americans have no idea about this or were consulted about it. It seems eerily like what the apparatchiks in Brussels have done to the people of Europe.

118. “The collectivists, I think, have a vested interest in making sure that Jonah Goldberg’s book and thesis gain no traction.”

     Looking back, it’s astounding to contemplate just how many of the academics I knew were shameless liars and propagandists.

119. I have said before that the political spectrum these days is more a square than a line. The four corners are : 1) Global Left-ex:UN/ EU, probably leadership of the Democratic party 2) global Right : Ex : Those who support free trade at all cost which includes free flow of labor- Multinational corparations, portions of the Republican party leadership 3) Global Muslim Jihadists 4) Nationalist -people who still believe in the Nation- State:can be either be isolationists (paleocon) or interventionists (neo-cons).

     Obviously individuals will not necesarily fall right on the corners but may appear somewhere in between one or more.

     speacial note: if you inderstand the role open borders play in Europe with the muslims and in the US with our Southern border- you understand that the first three groups want open borders for their own reasons….to brake the nationalists once and for all.

120. Lee Says:

     “In the book “Interpretations of Fascism” by Renzo De Felice, he describes it as “imperial capitalism”.”

     Calling it late stage capitalism is classic period Marxism btw. I have to note period because even some Soviet political scientists revised their opinion of Fascism later on to something more benign (rather than late stage, it was considered early stage and/or developmental nationalism… and even then, I think their notion it was capitalism was biased via being socialists… anything without public ownership would be capitalism from within their view).

     And in Fascism a corporate was a sort of legislative council and/or a representation system designed to get rid of the liberal democratic one man one vote system (always hated by the Euro right). Guilds, producers / workers, owners, and other groups would get votes in a corporate based on… group memberships. This is what is meant by Corporate State.

121. “And in Fascism a corporate was a sort of legislative council….”

     Yes, that’s what was meant by “corporatism”. Leftists often try deceive us with the lie that it means “corporations” and hence “government controlled by big business”. A key tactic of leftism is to twist language. You can’t seem to have progressivism without Orwellian Newspeak.

     Thanks for reminding us of this.

122. In reading through, it seems a lot of perception problems we have are due to ignorance of history as well as the english language and words sometimes mean different things considering time, place, or circumstances.

     Too bad we don’t have something like, oh I don’t know, say a public education system to address such shortcomings.

     Yeah! That’s exactly what we need.

     Oh, wait…..

123. Let’s be a little careful about wikipedia. As the “people’s encyclopedia” it is not necessarily a definitive or scholarly source, albeit convenient.

124. Let’s be a little careful about wikipedia. As the “people’s encyclopedia”

     Nothing with the word “Public”, “Peoples”, or “People” in it is worth a damn.

125. But let’s be clear, fascism is on the opposite end of the spectrum of very little government (no government is anarchy).

     People keep leaving that out in their circular and square graphs.

     Fascism is as close to total government as you can get without being total

126. How that can be called to the right is beyond me…

127. “I tend to think in more of a circle. Extreme right and left are indistinguishable from each other.”

     As various commenters have pointed out, they are NOT “indistinguishable.” Far from it.

     I’ve been hearing the “circle” argument for over 30 years. When I was young and ignorant I unthinkingly accepted it because I didn’t really know that much about the actual history. Now I realize that it has absolutely no basis in reality and, in fact, was concocted by leftists to confuse the issue.

     There is an old joke about the Stalinist playwright Lillian Hellmann: “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” Sadly, this applies to much of the left.

128. Okay, guys and gals, here’s enough political graphs and spectrums to start a political graph and spectrum factory:

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Political_spectrum

129. That might’ve been the WORST wikipedia link I’ve ever seen…

     especially bad was the table near the bottom which had listed right wing people as wanting to expel non-white people (when referencing the immigration issue.

     Horrible!

     Who wrote that?

130. Yeah, Baklava,
     Remember earlier when Mitsu said Nazis were obviously associated with the right because they “were vehemently anti-Communist, suppressed trade unions, persecuted artists, gays, Jews”?

131. You can have warring factions on the left. It doesn’t mean one of the warring factions are on the right.

     Mathematically speaking…

     It’s actually funny seeing them war with each other…

132. pst314 Says:

     “I’ve been hearing the “circle” argument for over 30 years.”

     I was proponent of the circle system before it became popular. I think I actually came up with it on my own / without hearing anyone else argue it. Then again, I was still a student and didn’t know what I know now about the Euro right. Now I too reject it.

     Now I think western culture creates a certain number of people with similar personality problems that push them towards collectivism (totalitarian / holistic visions) and make them indifferent to reality and/or the actual real people who live in it.

133. Lee Says:

     “Remember earlier when Mitsu said Nazis were obviously associated with the right because they “were vehemently anti-Communist, suppressed trade unions, persecuted artists, gays, Jews”?”

     Obviously some of the most anti-Communist people were the Communists themselves. It is a wonder the USSR lasted as long as it did with so many saboteurs. The US progressives play the same game, indicting behaviors and attitudes that their own group pushed in the past… 🙂

134. “Now I too reject it. ”

     Yes. When somebody says “Oh to be young again” I reply “but only if I won’t be stupid again.”

135. TDoc,
     thats not the quote… your leaving off things… this is a COMMON thing on the left because the left copies the parrot that they like, and never actually reads the source!!!!

     lets go down a list of examples starting with yours.

     Like Lord Acton puts it, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

     first of all, Acton is dead, so he doesnt put it, he is not in the present tense. a stranger readign you would think he was still alive.

     second, you chopped up the quote.

     “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

     so…. its not power always corrupts, its TOTALITARIAN power is always corruption…

     changing it makes us accept this totalitarian state as enevitable because some power is now equal to absolute power.

     another example.

     “war is hell”

     the left loves it… but whats the full quote and who said it? oh yeah, william tecumsa sherman… and the WHOLE quote is

     “war is hell, and i intend to make is so”

     very different meaning too, no?

     this is teh basic difference between the intelligent, who are actually smart and learned, and the intelligentsia, who copy kitshce and coolective info, and pretend to be smart by parroting the mass line figuring how can millions be wrong.

     ask the germans, how millions can be wrong…

136. the third example is

     “money is the root of all evil”

     all three of these examples are leftist half truth cahnges that they then promote.

     anyone here enough of a BIBLE scholar to know the WHOLE quote?

     for the secular parrot who doesnt know the actual facts but repeats what their owners say:

     [so you can pick your alternate version bible.cc/1_timothy/6-10.htm]

     For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
     

     so again… if you accept the full version, its ok to be a capitalist, beacsue you see money as a tool in a shed, a means to doing good things.

     but if you take in the cut down version stolen from the bible in a piece cut from the whole, you will abandon all your money as being the righteous thing to do.

     so those who love money changed the qyuote so you would hate money adn give it to them. and waht have they done with it?

     created more misery…

     so how far off is the new left quote, and how far off is the original bible one from reality?

137. thanks boqueronman for explaining in detail what i said in passing…

     but note how long my posts get because the OTHERS dont know what the more educated know…

     which is the point… dumbed down this way, its too much work for the listener or the teller to get the truth across.

     thanks. so few listen to me, but will listen to others say the exact same thing…(but in parts)

138. Goldberg admits as much if you look at his wording. example of his wording: IF we define THIS as leftwing, then the Nazis were leftwing and not right…

     goldberg knew that if he didnt leave all those “outs” the book would never ahve been publised and read. period. end of story.

     did yo look at the campaign posters i linked to?
     nope, i can tell.

     because its ahrd to make that argument after seeing all the cooperation.

     by the way… chavez is not nazi, right? the nazis are gone as a party for the most part right? well how come the same old anti semitism is at the fore front?

     because they ARE The same, the only difference was teh same difference between the bolshiviks and the menshiviks… means… not ends.

     fascism is a means to a socialist end
     communism is a means to a socialist end

     ALL such ends are totalitarian…

     why?

     because all promise to control outcomes

     and you cant control outcomes unless you control every action of the agents that create that outcome (presumably)…

     so you either accept the natural flow of history and its ins and outs… OR you seek to make history (stalin and hitler BOTH said so), and control the people in fine detail to force the outcome you want.

     so the argument you are making is VERY old, and a false argumetn for consumption.

     period.. end of story on it.

     the problem here is that no one will read the examples that prove the alternative point.

     the parrots just keep spitting, but are not really interested in learnign, but only in winning power. so they NEVER go back and check the two sets of acts to see which is correct.

     they dont care what the facts are, they only care that they get the FALSE end result…

     read this if you dont believe me (anyone want to bet that the parrots will keep blindly asserting the false left right dichotomy, and will not read this, and will instead assert FDR and obama?)

     “On the Case of a Certain Man who Is Never Thought Of” (1884) by William Graham Sumner..

     this is how far back this all goes…
     so how old are the neo’s?

     The type and formula of most schemes of philan-thropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C’s interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man. For once let us look him up and consider his case, for the characteristic of all social doctors is that they fix their minds on some man or group of men whose case appeals to the sympathies and the imagination, and they plan remedies addressed to the particular trouble; they do not understand that all the parts of society hold together and that forces which are set in action act and react throughout the whole organism until an equilibrium is produced by a readjustment of all interests and rights. They therefore ignore entirely the source from which they must draw all the energy which they employ in their remedies, and they ignore all the effects on other members of society than the ones they have in view. They are always under the dominion of the superstition of government, and forgetting that a government produces nothing at all, they leave out of sight the first fact to be remembered in all social discussion – that the state cannot get a cent for any man without taking it from some other man, and this latter must be a man who has produced and saved it. This latter is the Forgotten Man.

139. Ignorance makes everything old seem new again -Artfldgr

140. And I think a new constitutional convention would pretty much end the United States as we know it. How in the hell did the collectivists manage to get so many states to sign on to that idea? Especially given the fact that most Americans have no idea about this or were consulted about it. It seems eerily like what the apparatchiks in Brussels have done to the people of Europe.

     fred… americans are dull witted, and strategically inept… tactically the do ok…

     in fact, ask the average person to define those two terms and see what happens.

     let me let you in on how it works.

     on the chess board, the opponent has to bring his forces to bear on you right in front of you. with you knowing all the variables.

     this is why the russian leaders and (leaders in the past) often loved the game of chess, or the similar ones. (chinese chess takes it to another level, and go and such games which are different are even MORE abstract and harder to follow where a winner becomes a complete loser with the placement of one piece out of 360 or so)

     once you get this concept of reality and thought and such down pat.

     you are now ready to spend time to maneuver disparate things so that they converge and ‘happen’

     the soviets always said..

     they make history.

     so they ahve ALWAYS told us that they are playing a chess convergence game.

     of course, the way they set the public up, only that which is overt and in the open exists… covert, and such is always denied and never in the discussions.

     of course, because thats where the analusis of such conversion is. wouldnt a chess player love to be able to hide pieces?

     this is why i saw the unconstitutional laws being made as a ‘move’… of course the players will not say what the real reason is any more than bush would tell the public what the real objective of the war is. that is a game to force the opponents to always play with their hands exposed. (now imagine chess with one side open and the other side hidden… who has the advantage?)

     when this convention happens, and i am sure it will… the suspension of the constitution even for one minute, makes all those laws viable.

     so you can have a law that is unconstitutional that abolishes the constitution. but since its never acted upon, its never tested… since its nver tested by a person harmed by it, and the people dont know or protest it, it stays on the books.

     the second the constitution is temporarily suspended, the law that destroys the constitutio are now valid…

     checkmate by our own rules.

     they are playing the game to the letter of the rules, forcing us to comply with what hurts us. while we are playing by the intent and spirit of it recognizing that language is not exact.

     so which wins if the opponent refuses to hold everyone to the same level?

141. baklava, your points are 100% dead center correct… and said, as always, better than i can…

142. pst314 Says:

     “Yes. When somebody says “Oh to be young again” I reply “but only if I won’t be stupid again.””

     Yes, I’d like to be young again but to know everything I know now. 🙂

     Then again, the reality helps create the result. Being young (regardless of wisdom) just might help make you dumb. I remember a good twighlight zone about it… a group of friends got along well in their old age (passions were tamed) but became young again, and then ran right back into their old games / bad patterns.

143. Artfldgr Says:

     “by the way… chavez is not nazi, right? the nazis are gone as a party for the most part right? well how come the same old anti semitism is at the fore front?”

     They’re the same in some ways and different in others. They were two seperate movements but yes, in some ways they can seem quite similar.

144. No, the Nazis are not gone as a party:

     http://www.americannaziparty.com/support/index.php

     Then you have so-called “libertarian” sites such as American Free Press and Alex Jones’ Infowars.
     This always riles people up, so let me clarify. Obviously, not all those who claim to be libertarians are nazis, but many nazis call themselves “libertarians” to give their extreme opinions a modicum of legitimacy. Like Ron Paul, for example.
     For true libertarians, check out the Independence Institute, or Cato.
     A little like communists calling themselves “progressives”.

145. Christopher Hitchens was beaten up the other day by a gang of Syrian Nazis. (The fascist Syrian Ba’ath Party supports it and uses it as an enforcement arm and death squad.)

146. For more consideration regarding the entire nazi vs communist and who is really a socialist debate – there were quite a few nazis in the old nation of East Germany who quickly and relatively painlessly switched hats after WWII and became communists and stayed in power.

     In hindsight it doesn’t appear to have been too great a burden on them to have made such a change.

147. Now that you mention it, Scottie, I knew a lot of commies back in the 70’s. Nearly every one of them that I still run into not only supports commie terrorists and tyrants but also today’s fascists such as Chavez, the Syrian Baath Party, and so on.

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