I will repeat for the sake of argument that since you don’t know what purges are, what constitutes totalitarian governments, nor how they are sustained, you are not qualified to judge what is or is not totalitarian thinking. You can certainly read what others say and accept their judgments, but those aren’t your own. Somebody told you what you then accepted as true or knowledge. Btw, knowledge and history doesn’t come down to you via your ancestry. What your parents experienced will have no bearing on who you are until you work to make it so. Simply the statement that your blood carries with it some kind of superior talent or ability, has no validity with me. Nor does it have validity with most Americans. If your mother was a doctor and your father a lawyer, you can’t use it to lawyer your way to getting a medical license to practice surgery, you know.

People can be as ignorant as they wish. It doesn’t mean I’ll ignore their meanderings. I don’t really accept the tribal idea that there is a side, and I am on somebody’s side, and that this means I am duty bound to defend them. If there is a dead body in a classroom, I won’t defend the right of that dead body, once a teacher, to pension. But Unions would. Bad of them, of course.

Likewise, you have the audacity to summon the name of George Washington for your effort to tar those of us who disagree with you as being worthy of purging.

Your ideological system that claims George Washington as your own is rather pathetic. Try something called logic. It doesn’t always work, but it feels better, at least.

I certainly would not suggest that you be made to leave the Republican party, as I am willing to accept that people with your opinion are part of the party.

Who cares what you suggest or not about me. Certainly not me. As I said before, your problem is that you think you know things you don’t really know. ANd you compound this problem and mistake with more mistakes in the form of trying to describe people’s positions on purges, which you can’t do accurately. You don’t know what people’s positions on purges are. You don’t know what a purge consists of. And you wouldn’t know what the consequences to the Republican party or a totalitarian system from a purge would be.

Your solipsist view of what others do, based entirely on what you think you would or would not do, is not valid. It is not that it could have been right, but just happened to be wrong. It is invalid.

Your preference for making a claim and then not backing it up might sound adequate to you, but then again, your standards are a bit lower than would be expected.

As a simple fact of life, your belief about ideological purges is wrong. I stand as evidence of this. ANd some of the Communists would stand evidence as well, if I wished to bring them up. ANd if you wished to contest the view.

And why is your ideology about purges wrong? Because they aren’t ideological purges. They aren’t ideological.

Has that gotten through to your brain yet, or will you continue to persist in the delusion that the word ‘purge’ must only relate to the purging of those individuals based upon ideological factors?

Yes, Obama and Sotomayor are “where they are.” One was elected in a democratic election and the other confirmed by the Senate, both happenings that have been occurring on a regular basis since the founding. And these events are supposed to spur all of us to “Eternal Vigilance?” The election and the confirmation are supposed to be evidence of … a need for … “Eternal Vigilance”? Talk about undue significance. Whew!

Involving Acorn in sensitive government management of anything with voting implications looks like an obvious and deliberate criminal conflict of interest.

I’m no lawyer and so wouldn’t know about “criminal conflict of interest.” But the fact that some dirty pool players are trying to rig elections is not credible evidence that the Republic is about to fall since similar attempts have occurred regularly throughout our history and the Republic still stands. I hate to harp about undue significance but it can’t be helped if it is constant.

Civilian Inmate Labor Program
http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r210_35.pdf

set up years ago… and manned… next point…

NOT “set up years ago,” and NOT “manned.” These proposed facilities are NOT built or, as the commentor puts it – “set up.” And of course what doesn’t exist cannot be “manned.” The Civilian Inmate Labor Program was a contingency contract offered by the Bush administration primarily to house undocumented workers in case the Congress ever decided, as per the oft-stated desire of the anti-immigration folks, to round’em all up and ship’em all home.

Another contingent use would be to house great numbers of refugees in case the economy or government or both of a neighboring nation, such as Mexico, collapses and there came to be a huge influx of refugees across the border.

Still another use discussed was to relieve the overcrowding of the Federal Prison System and provide work for the convicts if the convicts wanted to participate in such a program.

And lastly, such facilities were seen as temporary quarters for victims of Katrina-like natural disasters. The pdf link provided by the commentor is a policy paper, one of many generated each year by the government. If the commentor is disturbed by a policy paper such as this he must be going nuts over the fact that we have a vast Federal and State prison system already “set up” and “manned” … next point …

http://tinyurl.com/mkzaab

The commentor earlier: Not talking doomsday scenarios of Weatherman firing squads here either.

My reply: Really? Then what are all the allusions, sometimes vaguely elucidated, to violence all about? What does the worry about soldiers firing on civilians signify?

My comments were very specific, you’re not reading, you’re just grandstanding “commentor” gracky.

It should have been obvious to the commentor that I was referring to the entirety of the comments up to then rather than his specific comment, the main clue being my phrase about “soldiers firing on civilians,” which came from another commentor. But he’s reading and I’m not. Whoa.

Obama doesn’t have to prove anything? Sure he does,

No, he doesn’t.

in his position, when it’s that easy to vindicate his representation as a natural born citizen;

Obama doesn’t have to “vindicate his representation as a natural born citizen.” The ludicrously held belief by the Birthers that he does can only be described as delusional.

If he’s just being obstinate, he goes down in history with a cloud over him as a possible or probable fraud.

Only in the delusion-ridden minds of the Birthers.

Is he afraid of being impeached for an unimportant little technicality like “ah did not have sex with that woman”…?

Here the commentor gets a bit incoherent, with the puzzling reference to Clinton. He does not bother to explain the … analogy?

If he’s discovered eventually, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to have been lying about this it is tantamount to perjury.

And if elephants had wings they might be able to fly but they don’t so they can’t(used before but if it’s good for one it’s good for two).

So, what’s the Joker got to worry about, doesn’t he care about his broader constituency?

Broader constituency? Meaning the Birthers? Like I said before if the Birthers did not exist Obama would do well to invent them … hmmm …. WOW! I GOT IT!

The Birthers are really a secret invention of Obama!

Oh, that DIABOLICAL rascal!

Thanks, Perfected democrat! You’ve done your nation a great service.

Remember readers … you read it here first.

It was reported yesterday that the number of BATF background checks on gun buyers indicated that Americans bought over 1,000,000 guns last month, a 12% increase over the previous month’s total (and that total is not even counting private gun sales between individuals).

Yippee!

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

John C, P.T. Barnum may not have understood epistemology, but he certainly knew something about human nature. A lot of people got fooled last fall, but a lot of them are getting unfooled. That reminds me of a line from Blake:

If a fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.

I agree with huxley that there will be a price for such folly, but I suspect that it will turn out to be terrible, and probably greater around the world than in the U.S.

No, I don’t think the US will escape from Obama unscathed. We will pay a terrible price for Obama and all the flavors of leftism, wishful thinking and irresponsibility that underlay the support for Obama.

My point, my sense, my prediction is that we aren’t looking at the loss of our constitutional republic or the advent of violent civil war. I say that the United States is strong enough and resilient enough to avoid those outcomes.

But oh yes, we are going to pay a price. Exactly how much of a price remains to be seen, but there will be a price.

Huxley – – I respect your views. I’ve watched the evolution in your thinking about Obama. If I am correct, your perception of him is now essentially that he is an inexperienced politician who has made so many (too many) mistakes to rise to full glory again or even anything close to it. And I believe that you believe that he is driven mostly by a fixed ideology, an inflexibility, and this will explain his failures as much or more than any other personal weakness. I think you have rejected the theory of him as a 3-dimension chess player, primarily because you believe he is not capable of the sort of strategic ability that requires.
I’ve also watched you come to the conclusion that we as center and center-right grown ups need not be particularly worried that he will destroy our democratic institutions, forms, and processes. No real reason to be alarmed I believe is your prediction. You argue that our country is basically strong at its core and in the end our political culture will protect us and defeat Obamanation. A corollary is that many people can now see through his behavior to his weaknesses and to ideologically driven motives. My questions are pretty simple. How can you be so confident? Am I missing something? It wasn’t long ago when I saw many (otherwise) intelligent colleagues and friends allow themselves to be duped by Obama. Nor can I square the fact that millions of nitwits (and I call them that without arrogance) also supported him; nitwits who apparently don’t know how to process simple facts iwhen they are in front of their noses. What makes you believe that our people (re: our country) will be safe from this dangerous manipulative con artist? I know. I too have seen the anger at the town hall meetings. I know. I’ve seen some people change their perceptions. But I haven’t seen enough yet anywhere to convince me that we are anywhere near safe from that animal and his minions. What makes you a believer? Please explain.

My comments were very specific, you’re not reading, you’re just grandstanding “commentor” gracky. Obama doesn’t have to prove anything? Sure he does, in his position, when it’s that easy to vindicate his representation as a natural born citizen; If he’s just being obstinate, he goes down in history with a cloud over him as a possible or probable fraud. Is he afraid of being impeached for an unimportant little technicality like “ah did not have sex with that woman”…? If he’s discovered eventually, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to have been lying about this it is tantamount to perjury. So, what’s the Joker got to worry about, doesn’t he care about his broader constituancy? You’re not really reading grackle, so you’re not worth reading…

Factionalism isn’t the subject of Neo’s post so it is not surprising at all that the issue of factionalism is mentioned infrequently. The commentor himself is of course a “devout factionalist.”

That wasn’t really my purpose.

For example, Huxley asked in a previous thread for a scenario concerning Obama’s campaign against the US Constitution. I could have given him one, but I didn’t do so. Now if I was arguing to prove a threat that I was trying to claim existed, I would present such scenario complete with theoretical or physical reasons and evidence.

Art may be hammering on the threat issue that somebody here isn’t aware of or don’t want to be aware of, but I am not Art. His priorities are not mine, even though we share some commonalities at the base.

I find it more important the way people think rather than what they think. A simple reference to the charge that a Republican purge would necessarily be one based upon ideology and not loyalty to goal and principle can give you an idea of what I mean. It is not what position they take in the party that matters, they should be purged because they are disrupting productive goals and plans for the defeat of Democrats, the resurrection of the US Republic, and the enforcement of just laws. They can be against Palin or for Palin. Against McCain or for McCain. Against the war or for the war. None of that matters as much to me as what they actually contribute or don’t contribute to the party, the conservative philosophy, and the nation at large.

You are quite right that we have squandered some victories over the Left, mainly in not pursuing them into their sanctuaries after 1948 and 1989

Unions give around 99% of their total political PAC funding to Democrats. That percentage reminds me of Saddam’s ‘popular’ support in the days before the invasion. But unions probably aren’t their largest voting slave base. I think those that self-identify as African-American would constitute the majority of such. And that started from the Civil War and Reconstruction. Way before international progressivism came on the scene, or the Left. In America, at least.

The history is very long. It’s not the mistakes of one generation, like the Baby Boomers, deciding everything. It’s a little bit at a time, adding up to a check mate. Blacks think Lincoln was a Democrat. THey believe the Republicans were for slave owning, for Jim Crow. Not so. The fact that the Dems can sustain this propaganda barrage by essentially keeping a whole culture, sub-culture, under their delusion, speaks well of their power. The power of a cult. Small, yes, but very extreme and very dangerous.

Therefore, let us not quarrel or insist that any of us owns the whole truth. It will take all of us to defeat the Left

I’ll raise the issue of faith, which complements reason and logic. If a man has faith in his cause or his principles, he can put his life on the line to preserve to achieve his goals. This is a demonstration of faith and of strength. He may not succeed in the end nor may he have chosen the right side, but his decision to take the risk speaks well of his character and virtue.

In the end, it doesn’t matter who has the truth. For God and the martial field will decide who is right, who is wrong, who is true, who is false, who is dead, and who is alive.

The future will decide what man’s behavior will lead to. I am not optimistic, but I also don’t fear it. Life consists of sacrifice and duty. And as the Japanese were wont to say, duty was heavy as mountains while death was light as a feather.