And Paine as a marxist style activist seems a bit of a stretch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine

Paine became more and more of a radical socialist later on in life. But he started out as a demagogue, albeit an Enlightenment derived one.

But I always preferred the war take. Anyone can do war, right, even one big with a tomahawk hunting down Indians that killed his wife. Oops, cultural appropriation trigger alert.

That’s what it is, 4th generational warfare.

Kennedy and Johnson — ran on the same ticket.

It was not a love match.

&&&&&&

I’m astounded that Ted is so tone deaf as to waste words on Trump.

His faithful are totally invested in the Donald.

The only votes up for grabs or the not-Trump voters that are wasted on Kasich.

Every speech must be oriented towards that faction.

The LAST thing you want to do is create even more division within the GOP — as it’s all too likely that Trump will head the ticket.

Which is unfortunate.

You have to hand a LOT of the blame to the GOPe — which permits open primaries in the critical early states… or early voting…

Hillary is an un-convicted felon many times over — yet Trump is considered — by many — to be far more dangerous.

She’s already knocked over the apple cart in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya…

ALL of those civil wars have bread crumbs leading straight to Foggy Bottom — and Hillary.

And folks yet say Trump is WORSE than Hillary ?

So, best he can do is get a contested convention and hope Cruz has maneuvered enough of the uncommitted delegates his way. If not, I nominate Rick Perry. Or Mitt Romney.

Anyone but Cruz/Kasich/Trump if it goes beyond the 2nd vote.

Now that many of members of the gope have come to their senses and realize the need to boost Cruz to head off the possible DJT disaster in November; it is time for serious arm twisting aimed at Kasich. The message should be stop your campaign, you will never win an open convention, and if you refuse you will be viewed as an outcast.

I’ve seen it for quite some time now.

On the other hand, “Tuesday, Cruz began his short press conference by saying:

“It’s striking that the day after Donald Trump called for America weakening NATO, withdrawing from NATO, that we see Brussels, where NATO is headquartered, the subject of a radical Islamic terrorist attack. Donald Trump is wrong that America should withdraw from the world and abandon our allies. Donald Trump is wrong that America should retreat from Europe, retreat from NATO, hand [Russian President Vladimir] Putin a major victory, and while he’s at it, hand ISIS a major victory.”

That is an intentional misstatement of Trump’s position, which is that the other NATO nations should pay their fair share of the costs of NATO, which they have never done. Very disappointing. Especially as no amount of help can save a Europe unwilling to save itself.

“American founders we very unreasonable” Artfldgr

Historical documents demonstrate otherwise. Prior to the revolution, the founders bent over backwards in making entreaties to the Crown and Parliament. Once England made war unavoidable, then the founders were ‘unreasonable’.

Eric,

I’m having a bit of trouble with the assertion that, “our nation’s founding fathers were Marxist-method activists”. Have ALL activists been Marxist-method operatives? Are you defining activism itself as inherently Marxist? How does the founder’s publicly speaking out against the injustices they endured, qualify as Marxist?

Well yeah. That’s because our nation’s founding fathers were Marxist-method activists before there was Marx and his social economic theory and activism. The founders inspired Marx.

If war is politics by other means, then activism is war by political means. And martial means to, if it comes to that. Like war, there is more than 1 kind and degree of activism. Also like war, the objective in the activist game is to win the contest by whatever means necessary because woe to the loser.