A People’s History: The “Progressive” Version
Excuse me while I question your patriotism, progressive comrades. The Fourth of July is coming and you will not be celebrating it — not with the same thoughts and emotions as the rest of your countrymen. If you have been undermining this country for most of the year, why should this day be different?
A critical look at history always helps if it is based on objective reality and an understanding that our age, just like any historical age, is only a flight of stairs in an endless stairwell leading us up, away from barbarism, towards civilization. Trying to cut corners will only bring you down.
Another sure thing to bring you down is the multiculturalist idea that “up” and “down” are morally equal. If that were true, nobody would have risen above his surroundings, because going down is easier and more natural. But humans are different from the rest of the physical world in that in a free state we tend to go up. Moving upwards is in our nature. Leave us to our own devices and watch. “Up” is where we go to pursue happiness – in more ways than one. That brings us back to the Fourth of July and the different ways to look at it.
The history that we know does not corroborate anti-American talking points. Could there perhaps be some hidden version of history that we don’t know? An alternative secret history of the world from which the “progressive” activists, journalists, and politicians draw their talking points? Social criticism implies the existence of an alternative. We never hear much about the alternative to American history or, for that matter, a hypothetical world history without the United States.
“Prior to July 4, 1776, not a single person in the world starved, got sick, worked hard for a living, or experienced any pain nor anxiety.”With so many zealots simmering in the anti-American melting pot of “progress,” one might think they had already cooked some shared historical narrative in which anti-Americanism actually makes sense and the entire Leftist agenda doesn’t appear so absurd. What is it?
Most “progressive” critics either don’t think that far, or they don’t have the guts to give their views a full exposure. So let’s do it for them. Let’s connect the dots with logical lines and reconstruct a historical narrative that would validate all the liberal bumper stickers.
*** The Alternative Secret History of the World According to the Liberal Left ***
Prior to July 4, 1776, not a single person in the world starved, got sick, worked hard for a living, or experienced any pain nor anxiety. No one had ever been oppressed or unfairly exploited because the oppressive and unfair American system had not yet been created.
“Habeas Corpus was the law of the land, along with Exit Strategy and Geneva Conventions.”Since the beginning of time employment had been equally guaranteed to anyone who cared to work, along with an equal pay of exactly $1,000 a week regardless of outcome, occupation, or geographical area. All work was equally pleasant and enjoyable. Those who chose not to work also received $1,000 a week in unemployment compensation and union benefits. Other guaranteed rights of the people included the rights to housing and free universal health care, as well as the right to 100% literacy through federally funded public education.
People never heard of war, crime, corruption, slavery, torture, murder, cannibalism, and man-made hurricanes. Peace and harmony reigned supreme because the concepts of greed, selfishness, and private property had not yet been invented by the American corporate interests and maliciously spread around the world as part of the American cultural hegemony.
Each person in that ideal world practiced his or her own peaceful spirituality, worshipping Earth, Nature, and the Sacred Feminine, while honoring the spiritual traditions of everyone else. Benevolent chieftains dispensed benefits to each of their subjects according to their needs, taking care that ethnic and sexual minorities were equally and proportionally represented in all spheres of public life. Habeas Corpus was the law of the land, along with Exit Strategy and Geneva Conventions.
“This Golden Age lasted from about 20,000 BC up until the American Revolution.”
Family planning, effective birth control, and early sex education ensured that every family had exactly 2.2 children per household, which prevented overpopulation and famine. Commerce, travel, and international trade were uncommon; everyone lived and died within not more than a five-mile distance from their birthplace. People didn’t feel the need to migrate, set up colonies, take over other countries, create empires, settle in uninhabited areas, or fight one another over a creek in the desert.
All farming was organic and for subsistence purposes only. The environment was clean due to reliance on alternative fuels and invigorating manual labor. As a result, everybody lived in comfortable, carbon-neutral houses, eating plenty of good food on a regular basis, and driving fuel-efficient automobiles when they weren’t riding their 18-speed urban cruiser bicycles.
This was an amazing achievement of indigenous cultures considering that there had been no division of labor and most people lived on farms. In the free time that remained after toiling the soil and tending to the animals, the indigenous farmers discerned the laws of nature, developed vaccines for deadly illnesses, stretched out the average lifespan prodigiously, and fed the starving in far away places.
This Golden Age lasted from about 20,000 BC up until the American Revolution. After 1776 everything just went downhill.
Immediately upon declaring their Independence, the Americans began the theft of native Indian lands, industries, highways, and communications infrastructure. The Americans used black slave labor to invent things that would give them an unfair edge over other cultures: the cotton gin, bifocals, steam power pumps, self propelled amphibious vehicles, coffee pots, sewing machines, power tools, ether anesthesia, mechanical refrigerators, the cylinder printing press, passenger elevators, burglar alarms, oil well drilling, repeating rifles, pin tumbler locks, roller skates, offset printing, barbed wire, the dental drill, the mimeograph, the telephone, light bulbs, hearing aids, electric fans, the skyscraper, disposable cameras, escalators, the motion picture camera, safety razors, air conditioners, airplanes, assembly lines, frozen foods, radio astronomy, television, the chair lift, nylon, defibrillators, microwave ovens, the atomic bomb, carbon dating, Polaroid cameras, the polio vaccine, integrated circuits, oral contraceptives, lasers, computers, operating systems, optical fiber, calculators, product barcodes, the space shuttle, the artificial heart, the internet, and the graphical user interface.
Once they stole enough wealth and power, the Yankees moved on to exploit the rest of the world, setting up corporations on every street corner in order to oppress and humiliate people of other cultures, races, and religions. “American TV commercials insulted the refined tastes of subsistence farmers so much that they often threw organic eggs…”The corporations launched wars and endemic diseases to create economic need and political chaos from which, like Venus from the sea foam, the greedy bourgeois class was born. With the help of the local bourgeoisie, the Americans overthrew all of the free world’s honest and caring chieftains, replacing them with corrupt democratic regimes in order to steal their oil and destroy local ecosystems.
American preachers and missionaries confiscated all means of birth control from the aboriginal tribes, causing disastrous demographic explosions, followed by famine and more wars. Once the world was subdued and demoralized, Americans lowered indigenous peoples’ salaries to ten cents a day, at the same time forcing them to buy American goods by way of boldfaced advertising.
The American TV commercials insulted the refined tastes of subsistence farmers so much that they often threw organic eggs and vegan burgers at their plasma screens, destroying them, and unwittingly creating a demand for even more TVs. With all the commotion they missed the advance of Global Warming, a clandestine project executed from the secret climate change centers paid for by American imperialists.
***
This alternative history may never be officially acknowledged, yet it is being implied in news radio and TV programming, film documentaries, Hollywood movies, UN resolutions, comedy shows, and political speeches — including those delivered by Democrats running for President — let alone millions of stickers, placards, T-shirts, and buttons sold at “progressive” junkets.
If I didn’t know the real history and was a little more gullible, as many public school graduates are today, such a narrative might also become a part of my perspective. I might conclude, along with such “progressive” minds as Sean Penn and Ben Affleck, that the United States is a force of evil. I might agree with Noam Chomsky and Ward Churchill that the world’s oppressed would be damned fools if they didn’t hate America and yearn for the destruction of this unspeakable beast. As a fair-minded person I might even give them a hand – as Ramsey Clark and Lynn Stewart have done, making the support of America’s enemies their full-time job and a life-long commitment.
I’d probably share a utopian belief that once America as it exists today is eradicated, peace and harmony will be restored worldwide, and people will finally have a chance to live as one happy family without wars, greed, corruption, and evil corporations pursuing their racist agenda of climate change. Minority subsistence farmers will hurl their remote controls into the jungle, and everyone’s pay will go back to $1,000 a week plus union benefits.
I would certainly decide that the Fourth of July should not be celebrated. Why should we honor the greatest setback in the history of world progress? Rather than watch air-polluting fireworks, we must instead grieve with the rest of progressive humanity over the dark day that gave birth to the evil entity that is the United States of America.
*** Q&A ***
But then again, if I were an intellectually honest public school graduate I might read a few books besides %%AMAZON=0060528370 A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present%% by Howard Zinn, an anti-American volume that had impressed Ben Affleck and Matt Damon so much that they featured it in “Good Will Hunting” (“That book will blow your hair back”), and even considered turning it into a TV mini-series starring Winona Ryder.
If I were to read about real history I might find out to my great astonishment that for many thousands of years the world’s wonderful cultures had been at each other’s throat, engrossed in feuds, rape, pillaging, slavery, theft of the neighbors’ resources, torture, murder, treachery, corruption, assassinations, and cannibalism. I’d learn that from the beginning of time, human history was a never-ending string of wars, famines, diseases, exploitation, poor hygiene, high infant mortality, and an average life expectancy of about 30 years. I’d gather that the world was mostly run by either ignorant witch doctors or ruthless tyrants who went to war for personal enjoyment, constructing pyramids out of the skulls of slain enemies.
“Turks conquered cradles of ancient civilizations with turn-key cities and pre-existing infrastructure.”I’d also discover that people had been migrating all the time, moving to other lands and continents, setting up colonies and empires without asking permission from the natives, who often assimilated into one nation with the conquerors. The latest example is the Turkish Ottoman Empire whose conquest of heavily populated countries in Europe and the Middle East was happening simultaneously with the colonization of the sparsely populated Americas by the Europeans.
The Turks had come from far-away lands, stole the entire Asia Minor from the Christian natives, renamed their cities, and settled on their land for good. As the Americans fought a war against slavery, the Ottoman Empire continued to grow and expand its slave trade, bordering simultaneously on Austria, Morocco, Poland, Sudan, and Persia. The number of people killed, enslaved, converted, and driven from their land was much greater in the Ottoman Empire than in the entire Western hemisphere. Where is the outcry and demands of reparations?
If I were an inquisitive public school graduate I’d ask a question: if land theft and slave labor is what had made America so rich, why isn’t Turkey the richest country in the world? As opposed to the bare lands and deserts of the New World, the Turks conquered cradles of ancient civilizations with turn-key cities and pre-existing infrastructure. However, apart from oil deposits, the formerly Ottoman lands remain dirt-poor, with Turkey itself not far away in the lead.
But let’s not single out the Turks. Before them were the Mongols, who made no distinction between the civilians and the army, and whose conquest had lead to the creation of the world’s largest empire ruled by fear and iron discipline. How many millionaires does Mongolia have today? And before that were the Arabs who came as conquerors from the Arabian Peninsula, stole all of North Africa and Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) from the Christian natives, forcibly converted them to Islam, and settled on their land for good. And before them there had been conquests by the Huns, the Chinese, the Celts, the Greeks, the Romans, the Goths, the Persians, the Slavs, and many others who settled on other people’s lands simply because they could.
All cultures practiced slavery in one way or another. It stopped in Europe around the Middle Ages but continued to thrive in Africa, Asia, and in the Middle East. Through the contacts between the Arabs and the Portuguese it was reintroduced to Europe and the Americas. Although the European and American abolitionists eventually brought an end to slavery and slave trade on their territories, it still exists in various ugly forms in other parts of the world.
To get a glimpse of the thousand-year-old dark historical reality, look no further than Sudan where even today Arabs are practicing a racist form of slavery. Black African villages of Darfur are being ransacked, men and women killed and raped, their children taken away as slaves (and also raped repeatedly). Nothing can be done now to change old history, but something can and should be done to change the fate of black slaves today. Only the activists and “community leaders” who usually initiate such actions are so busy fuming over the suffering of black slaves in America seven generations ago that they have no time for the suffering of black slaves in today’s Sudan. Could it be because their real concern has never been the suffering of black slaves – but rather finding an excuse to trash the United States?
Another huge slaving outpost waiting to be freed is, of course, North Korea. Why aren’t there any calls from the “progressive” camp to abolish a form of neo-slavery called socialism? Why did the “progressives” call the USSR a “workers’ paradise” when it was being built by slave labor in concentration camps? If slavery is a certified path to prosperity, why didn’t half a century of suffering and millions of lives wasted in the gulag make the Soviet Union richer — but the new economic freedom did, despite the botched reforms and the ubiquitous government corruption? China had emulated the Soviet slave-labor economy with an even bigger army of political prisoners – and with an equally disastrous outcome. But when the Communist rulers abandoned slave labor in favor of capitalist reforms, the economy started to grow — and so did the standard of living.
If putting an end to slavery and giving people a small amount of freedom can bring forth such sizeable growth within only two decades in Russia and China, how much economic growth and prosperity can be achieved by a nation whose people have had two centuries of full economic and political freedom? “Have all cultures already arrived at the final point in their development?”To find the answer, look at a country that starts with “United” and ends with “States.” And that’s the end of the silly argument about America owing its prosperity to slave labor.
The continent of North America was settled in several waves by Siberian hunters, each wave accompanied by the theft of land and conquest. In what bank is that stolen wealth kept today? The arriving Europeans discovered a collection of half-naked warrior tribes killing one another for land, water, game, wives, and simply as a sport – just like anywhere else in the world thousands of years ago. Only some cultures had grown out of it, others had never risen, yet others had gone over the hill and slid back into barbarism. This begs a question: by what measure do we determine which stage of cultural development is the correct one and deserving of being frozen in time?
The multiculturalist dogma of the equality of all cultures raises even more questions. Have all cultures already arrived at the final point in their development? Is cultural achievement meaningless? Is the history of arts and sciences irrelevant? Is the complexity of social structure inconsequential? Is the respect for human dignity and individual rights an empty sound? Is there no difference between “up” and “down” on the stairwell of human progress? And if you believe all of that, can you still call yourself a “progressive” and maintain a straight face?
History answers negatively to all those questions. World cultures aren’t equal and never have been. Humanity is a living, breathing, and evolving organism that thrives on cultural interaction and development, in which cultures compete for survival — and yes, fight with each other — but also learn from the best.
Today we are witnessing a major fight between two of the world’s cultures, one of which — the Islamic fundamentalists — got stuck at the lower steps of societal evolution and would like to drag the rest of the world down to their level, so that there would be nothing left above their heads to distract true believers from focusing on their toenails and pondering existential issues such as the foot hygiene of airline passengers.
If you listen to the “progressives” and believe that all cultures are equal, you might as well not resist and descend to their level as John Walker Lindh did. “If we want answers we shouldn’t be stopping the pioneers.By the time you discover that the difference between “up” and “down” is not a fancy post-modernist notion, but a reality as essential as the difference between life and death, it may be too late. Not just for you but to those around you as well, within the kill radius of the shrapnel in your explosive belt.
Equating our two cultures is not just unnatural – it’s suicidal. We should consider ourselves lucky that a few generations ago Western nations managed to lift themselves out of the sewer in which humanity lived for thousands of years. These nations have mastered science, arts, medicine, increased life expectancy, and developed a legal system that grants more rights and freedoms to individual citizens than any other culture in history. The advancement is reciprocal: the more freedoms the individuals have, the better off the nation is economically. At the head of this upward movement is the United States, the first nation to put individual freedoms above the government’s interests. Placing the government in the service of the people at an age when the rest of the world viewed the people as mere servants to their governments.
The vertical map of the world’s cultures is never a still picture; they are moving along the entire visible length of the stairwell of progress. The invisible flights of stairs are still ahead of us – a terra incognita. How far up does the stairwell go? Is there an end to it? How soon will humanity get there, and how much has already been covered? If we want answers we shouldn’t be stopping the pioneers. We must celebrate them.
As for the poor bastards still down at the bottom, you may empathize with them all you want. But you may also feel a relief that at least some part of the human race has found the ability to clean up their act and show the way to other nations — and a hope that one day, with the right attitude, the others may also climb out of the sewer.
And that is what the Fourth of July means to this author. Fireworks, barbecues, and department store sales are optional.
Oleg Atbashian – writer and graphic artist from Ukraine, currently lives in New York. Creator of ThePeoplesCube.com, a satirical website where he writes under the name of Red Square.
Today we are witnessing a major fight between two of the world’s cultures, one of which – the Islamic fundamentalists – got stuck at the lower steps of societal evolution and would like to drag the rest of the world down to their level, so that there would be nothing left above their heads to distract true believers from focusing on their toenails and pondering existential issues such as the foot hygiene of airline passengers.
Excellent essay, as someone with an advanced degree in history, I often wonder why I never read in any history books about how when we bought Manhattan from the Indians for beads, it already included the Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, etc. Yes, the Indians had land, but the amount of incremental thought and planning that went into converting that land into what we see today as Manhattan dwarfs anything the Indians would ever have accomplished with that land, even assuming a rapid ramp-up in Indian cultural capabilities in engineering. It would be the equivalent of going from the ancient Germanic tribes to modern Germany in 200 years, not 2,000, and there is no reason to assume that the Indians would have developed 10X faster than the Germans. The idea that somehow we “stole” their wealth and converted it into the physical forms we see today is a form of “magical thinking”.
But, I think you give Islam too much credit for what would happen after it defeated the West, which I obviously hope for my ancestors’ sake doesn’t happen. There would be no air flight in a fully Islamized world. Those idiots can’t even maintain their own oil wells, never mind a fleet of aircraft. You see how often those Iranian aircraft crash?
Your analysis not only works on a civilizational level, but on an individual level. Muslims are at the same logical level I was at when I first heard the word “logic” and tried to imagine what it might mean. Had I never deviated from that original interpretation of “logic”, I would probably have converted to Islam by now.
They do seem to focus a lot on foot hygiene, though, so I guess as a culture, they lead in not getting athlete’s foot. Whoop di do.
Bravo!
“America’s Servants”
by Steve Kellmeyer, 12/21/06
http://skellmeyer.blogspot.com/2006/12/americas-servants.html
Comments on this appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
What they tell you
Progressivism – Is a political philosophy whose adherents promote public policies that they believe would lead to positive social change. Today the term refers to movements on the left ranging from liberal to social democrat.
What it means
The socialist idea sounded altruistic to those who began it long ago, and it sounds altruistic to the naive who believe in it today. In practice, however, it creates self-centered individuals and a narcissistic society. So while it may have begun as a way to help others, it has come to mean a way of evading responsibility for oneself and for others. It is intended to produce a more evenly spread distribution of wealth. They just simply changed the name to make it sound more appealing. Implicit in the word “progressivism” is the assumption that the policies advocated by progressives are a form of progress. Those policies are nothing than redistribution avenues of your wealth, aka SOCIALISM.
This article is almost entirely one long string of straw men. Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive. Its just like “liberals” and “islamofacists” you are really against those words and just make up whatever you want that sounds bad to define them… this is how racism thinking works… try reason… it is what the founding fathers was REALLY thinking…
UPDATE:
Howard Zinn Imitates the People’s Cube: http://www.progressive.org/media_mpzinn070106
Just as Pajamas Media publishes this essay that makes fun of Howard Zinn’s version of history, a magazine called The Progressive publishes Howard Zinn’s Independence Day essay “Put away the flags” that illustrates all the points covered above.
At the same time James Taranto in his Best of the Web Today comments on Howard Zinn’s essay, ending it with the words, “Finally, someone whose patriotism we can question!”
It’s funny how it all came together on the night before the Fourth of July.
Brilliant!
Gerald Gibson said…
“This article is almost entirely one long string of straw men. Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive.”
I think you’ll find quite a bit of difference between a “progressive” from Roosevelt’s day and the modern version of said ilk.
“Its just like “liberals” and “islamofacists” you are really against those words and just make up whatever you want that sounds bad to define them… this is how racism thinking works… try reason
Just like the “progressive” staff at Duke university rushed to the conclusion that three young men just had to be guilty of interracial rape because they were male, white and from well-to-do families and the false accuser was female, black and poor.
Even now that the falsely accused three have been declared innocent and that no crime ever occured, the “progressive diversity and equality” brigade still insist “something must have happened”.
When is hating someone based on skin color not racist?
When the hated are white.
Mr Atbashian,
This oxymoron of a term and movement called “progressive” simply means to conservatives and other clear minded individuals who can think logically and with a modicum of common sense, regressive. Your sarcasm is right on point and is very well deserved. While this progressive mindset is rooted in some imagined utopian ideology it is void of truth, history, reality or experience. It can be no more aptly or accurately described than Dr. Michael Savage’s best selling book entitled, “Liberalism is an Mental Disorder”. We have reached a time in our nation’s history where the progressives are seeking to “re-define” even the most simplest of thought. Right is wrong, wrong is right, up is down and down is up. This mind numbing twist on the psyche of this country and the attempt by the liberal progressive to convince the rest of us of it’s merits presents the greatest evidence of this disorder. When we have reached the point where a sitting President of the United States of America attempted to redefine the meaning of “is”, the fall to rock bottom can only be a rung or two away. The liberal progressives, who are now blatant in reveling their true agenda and hypocrisy, are being exposed for what they are on a daily basis now. It is not lost on us.
Still, I am optimistic about my country for I firmly believe that our nation is a force for good in the world, that the brave men and women our military past and present, who have given the ultimate, their lives, so that we may live in freedom and liberty are to be praised and honored, that the incredible genius and foresight of our Founding Fathers lives on. I am not so much concerned with the stated enemies of this country because we will, when it comes right down to it, destroy them. My concerned is with the “enemy within”. Today, the 4th of July is a day to celebrate the independence, the freedom and the liberty that our Fore Fathers and those that came after them spilt their blood for. May God Bless the United States of America.
I’ll leave all of you with this:
“A nation can survive it’s fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.
For the traitor appears not as a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear”.
——Marcus Tullius Cicero
Roman orator, statesman 42 B.C.
Capt. David B. Caudle
Gerald Gibson, Roosevelt put japanese americans into camps, he would be labeled a neocon nazi by “progressives” everywhere if he’s alive today.
BTW, “progressive” is what many lefties choose to label themselves in order distiguish themselves from the average liberals. It ain’t a label created by conservatives to belittle liberals.
If the US never did become a nation in 1776, THE FOLLOWING COUNTER FACTUALS COULD HAVE HAPPENED :
During World War 1, without US intervention, Britain and
Germany would have called it a draw and the humiliations of the Treaty of Versailles would never have been experienced by the German people and Hitler could never have come to power because the only way Hitler came to power was because he exploited the humiliations that the German people suffered under the Treaty of Versailles.
Without US intervention in World War One; Germany having defeated Russia, Lenin would never have come to power because a strong Germany would have prevented communism from developing in Russia and with both Nazism and Communism not flourishing, tens of millions of lives could have been saved if the US never became a nation in 1776.
If the US was not a military power, Hawaii would not have become a US colony and the Pearl Harbor attack would not have taken place and Mao Tse Tung would not have had the opportunity to kill tens of millions of people because Japan would have controlled China.
Without US intervention in World War One, today, Jews would be living peacefully in Palestine under the rule of the Ottoman Turks which was an ally of Germany during World War One.
Without US intervention, the Vietnam war which killed millions could have been avoided and Pol Pot would not have come to power in Cambodia because the only reason he came to power was due to the Vietnam war and the massive bombing of Cambodia by the US.
The Cambodian people who were terrified at the US bombing, practically ran to the arms of Pol Pot who in turn ended up killing millions and Pol Pot was eventually stopped by Vietnam.
If the US was not an expansionist power since becoming independent, TODAY, North America would most probably be divided between Canada and Mexico… If the US never did become a nation in 1776, TODAY, Germany, Britain, Russia, Japan and the Ottoman Empire would be the present world powers AND NUCLEAR BOMBS MIGHT NOT BE PRESENT TODAY BECAUSE THE ONLY REASON NUCLEAR BOMBS WERE INVENTED WAS BECAUSE OF WORLD WAR 2 AND NUCLEAR SECRETS WERE STOLEN FROM THE US BY THE SOVIETS…………..so no US, no World War 2 and thus no nuclear bombs and no nuclear secrets to steal and no nuclear arms race.
So between the way America treated the native Americans by deliberating pushing native Americans off their lands, the savagery committed on black slaves and the US causing conditions in which Nazism and Communism flourished by intervening in World War 1, what Bill O Reilly said about America freeing people , does not bare out due to America’s short sighted foreign policies in history.
IF AMERICA NEVER DID BECOME A NATION IN 1776, ABOUT A HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE MIGHT HAVE BEEN SAVED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, BECAUSE NAZISM AND COMMUNISM WOULD NOT HAVE EXISTED ………….BUT THE EXISTENCE OF THE US AS A NATION in 1776 HAS RESULTED IN THE RISE OF NAZISM AND COMMUNISM THAT HAS KILLED ABOUT A HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE BECAUSE BETWEEN HITLER, LENIN, STALIN AND MAO TSE TUNG, AT LEAST A HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE HAVE PERISHED WHICH
INCLUDED MILLIONS OF CHILDREN AND BABIES….
MR O REILLY DOES NOT SEEM TO REALIZE THAT WE CANNOT FREE PEOPLE BY KILLING THE VERY PEOPLE WE ARE TRYINGTO FREE ; FOR EXAMPLE IN WORLD WAR 2, the US was involved in CARPET BOMBING, FIRE BOMBING AND ATOM BOMBING CITIES ………..every war that the US has got involved in has resulted in many more times children and babies dying than the actual enemy
I just plain don’t even know where to start. “If the US was not a military power, Hawaii would not have become a US colony and the Pearl Harbor attack would not have taken place and Mao Tse Tung would not have had the opportunity to kill tens of millions of people because Japan would have controlled China.” Except for the fact that the Japanese empire still killed millions of people as well so either way you’re boned.
“Without US intervention in World War One, today, Jews would be living peacefully in Palestine under the rule of the Ottoman Turks which was an ally of Germany during World War One.” If by peaceful you mean subjugated and enslaved then sure. “IF AMERICA NEVER DID BECOME A NATION IN 1776, ABOUT A HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE MIGHT HAVE BEEN SAVED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, BECAUSE NAZISM AND COMMUNISM WOULD NOT HAVE EXISTED ………….BUT THE EXISTENCE OF THE US AS A NATION in 1776 HAS RESULTED IN THE RISE OF NAZISM AND COMMUNISM THAT HAS KILLED ABOUT A HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE BECAUSE BETWEEN HITLER, LENIN, STALIN AND MAO TSE TUNG, AT LEAST A HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE HAVE PERISHED WHICH”. Define “saved”. So far you have done nothing but blame the United States for the murders committed by how many other communists that you probably also claim haven’t hurt a single person the other 354 days a year that you aren’t writing your foolishness. Country is leading in medical, communications and technology research. It is leading in wealth generation and production. For every person who you claim was killed by the US(but in fact was killed by people you support) 100 have been saved or made more wealthy or have lived twice as long as a result of the States’ dominance in almost every field.
“Just like the “progressive” staff at Duke university rushed to the conclusion that three young men just had to be guilty of interracial rape because they were male, white and from well-to-do families and the false accuser was female, black and poor.”
The staff of Duke suspended students who were charged with crimes by an idiot DA. Suspected rapists involved in a media frenzy aren’t good for a school environment. Since when is Duke progressive anyway?
Seems like all of you have your minds made up already about this topic, I kinda feel bad for you, but then I remember that your ignorance makes for some great entertainment on a 4th of July night.
Just please don’t vote, I’m tired of you ******* messing up this, my adopted country.
Matt,
Guess where you can stick your pity? The same place your head resides. Clearly, there were a group of “progressives” who agitated against the Duke lacrosse players in spite of the ever-growing evidence that there was no crime committed.
Feel free to “unadopt” this, my native country.
Brian, it is one thing to have counterfactual history based on realistic premises and another to base them on just plain out there assumptions. Communism, in particular, would not have been stopped because its rise was intrinsic to the era of mass manufacturing, with its concentrated labor forces in cities. WWII may not have been avoided, but more likely war would have continued on indefinitely on the European continent. The conflicts you magically wave away in your contra-world were driven by things tangential to the existence of the US, so would have happened in one form or another, probably in ways very similar to the ways they happened.
Also, for “progressives” in general, the most logical thing to do is to leave the US and build the necessary “progressive” infrastructure in other countries around the world. Maoists, the most radical of your “progressive” brethren, already have written off the US as too bourgeiose to ever experience a socialist revolution (well, except the prisons, which they consider ripe recruiting grounds. Hey, they got Mike Tyson!), so all your “efforts” are for naught in the US and will be for naught, until other post-revolution countries take us over, I guess is how the theory goes. So, logically, the most “progressive” thing possible is to move to another country to hasten its revolution. I suspect that deep down you already know this, but enjoy the perks of living in the US and are lazy and lack the courage of your convictions.
TFS III is right about the label ‘progressive’–it is used now quite differently than in TR’s day. Consider how much the Progressive Librarian’s Guild has in common with TR’s progressivism. If one disagrees with Gramsci’s absolute historicism and Marcuse’s notion of repressive toleration, one is right to scrutinize carefully anything in the present labeling itself ‘progressive’.
Wow. Oleg starts with the false premise that progressives and liberals hate America and just runs with it.
Such stupidity works only to circle the wagons, but it fails miserably in the real world. The Republican revolution has ended, consumed by its own vision of moral superiority.
venividivici
You can be sure that if things get worse, i will pack my bags and move back to Europe. I didn’t come here by choice, I think that my parents just made a mistake. Another mistake was trying to apply for Citizenship, because I had it rejected for a drug arrest, not a conviction. How do you like that? Innocent until proven guilty my ass.
Lumping progressives in with Maoists and Stalinists is ignorant. I agree there are some poeple on college campuses that are vocal in supporting those ideologies, but they don’t represent the majority of us. Just like people who bomb abortion clinics don’t represent all conservatives.
What exactly do you think we evil “progressives” are trying to do to your homeland? In the past progressives have only made this country better. Food safety laws, child labor laws, civil rights laws and the programs of the New Deal can be attributed to them. You can’t deny that you have enjoyed those perks in some way. The fact is that nobody wants a violent revolution or redistribution of wealth. How about just some healthcare, less war and less corrupt, responsible represenetatives in DC.
> Without US intervention in World War
> One; Germany having defeated Russia,
> Lenin would never have come to power
> because a strong Germany would have
> prevented communism from developing
> in Russia
Good lord, such a fantasy world… Lenin was allowed to return to Russia to end the war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin
Key quote:”The Swiss communist Fritz Platten nonetheless managed to negotiate with the German government for Lenin and his company to travel through Germany by rail, on the so-called [']sealed train[']. The German government clearly hoped Lenin’s return would create political unrest back in Russia, which would help to end the war on the Eastern front”
Matt,
Had a reply typed out but IE crashed. Such is life. Anyway, point being that most of the items you mention fall under what may have been called “progressivism” in its day, but today’s “progressives” aren’t advocating things that are nearly as “commonsensical” as what ended up passing, e.g. where is the “progressive” equivalent of food safety today? Giving away condoms in public schools to promote safe sex? I think that’s a bit more controversial than telling meat packers that they can only use 5% rat anus in their hot dog mixture, don’t you?
As for healthcare being the “commonsensical” platform of today’s “progressive”, I disagree. I was just speaking to someone from
Buffalo, NY who told me that the hospitals up there are filled with Canadians trying to escape rationed care. Even the Canadian Supreme Court has found issue with their system and its contravention of human rights laws, because of the long waiting times, which are inevitable under a publicly financed system.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/10/international/americas/10canada.html?ex=1183867200&en=b817e1fb8dc18de9&ei=5070
Furthermore, the legacy of the New Deal is mild almost entirely because Franklin Roosevelt was unable to pack the Supreme Court with extra justices when his early proposals were found unconstitutional. The US would be much further down the road of a command economy had that happened, so portraying the New Deal era as one of enlightened moderation doesn’t fit the facts of what the architects of the New Deal wanted to accomplish.
Yeah, the rationing issue wrt universal health care is bogus. Do you think that government gridlock is responsible for the delay? Because the government is paying, doctors can suddenly only see two patients a day? Have you ever seen the mountain of BS paperwork that insruance companies require?
Any increase in delay will come from patient volime which will come form people who are not being treated now, who are effectively having their health care “rationed” to emergency visits to hospitals. We already pay for these emergency visits via taxes and higher health care costs.
Yes, your wife might have to wiat a few months for her breast enhancement, but people who need care will get it. Not just the wealthy ones either.
Boris – are you old enough to have been in an average (not elite) Soviet hospital and experienced the attitude? Something about you strikes me as fishy.
As for the “false premise that progressives and liberals hate America” please see the latest example of a “July 4th hate fest” showing just what this article had predicted:
Anti-American July 4th
( from http://www.zombietime.com )
I doubt you can change your mind on anything at this point, but other readers may find it very educational.
Even my perverse imagination could have hardly prompted me to do a parody of Che Guevara as a founder of this nation. I’d be afraid that would be over the top, thinking that even the most progressive radical wouldn’t go that far. But apparently it can, as shown in this representative sample of “propaganda art.”
Too bad one can’t link images to these comments.
Boris,
I suppose the Canadian Supreme Court is a bunch of morons, then? Maybe, just maybe, they realized upon objective review of the data, that a single payer system doesn’t work. Or, doesn’t work in a way compatible with human rights. And I don’t think the plaintiffs in that case were looking for breast implants, either. They were probably supporters of the system until they got caught up in it and became conscious of the mismatch between promises and reality that inevitably occurs in monopolies.
Insurance is one of the most highly regulated industries in the US, so all that “paperwork”, or a good chunk of it, is to fulfill government regulatory requirements. The other part is to gather information to create better policies and pricing for consumers to gain market share and make current customers stick with the company longer. Do you have any idea how much it costs to get a new customer versus keeping a current customer? Of course you don’t, because you likely have no business experience whatsoever. But, Boris, I fear that if the human race geared its aspirations to be in line with your intellect, we’d still be sticking twigs down anthills to get our dinner.
Finally, “progressives” or whatever you are going to be calling yourselves, your greatest and grandest experiment in progressivism, the Soviet Union, collapsed. Went kaput due to a mismatch between “progressivism” and human nature. I suppose Boris will complain that the Soviet Union wasn’t “progressive” and that those stories about waiting in line for toilet paper were also bogus, just like healthcare rationing.
I just read today that the people who oversee Medicare are going to recommend that Medicare payments to doctors be reduced by 9%. Doctors surveyed regarding the change said they were more likely to stop seeing Medicare patients. That’s how rationing ends up happening. Fewer people become doctors. In a single payer system where the government changes the rules of the game at its whim, the cost of becoming a doctor goes up, therefore you get fewer doctors. Far better to become a government parasite under those circumstances.
Excellent! I shall pass it around to others as well.
Wonderful essay, but our country is The United States of America not the “United States.”
I know it sounds like a petty quibble, but I’m constantly having to straighten this out with various South Americans when they complain about citizens of the USA calling themselves Americans.
Genius. Stinkin’ genius. This matches up very nicely with what most middle America people think. You know, the folks in flyover country who have a practical, common sense perception of how things are and how they should be. Thanks for putting it into words, Red. I will seek out your writings from now on.
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