By Left’s Standards, Abe Lincoln Is a Tea Partier
Writing on December 20, former Clinton Labor Secretary and current Berkeley Professor Robert Reich (who also serves, I am pleased to report, as the board chairman of Common Cause) sought to provide a lucid diagnosis of what he termed the “republican crack-up.” His article’s title caught my eye because our country faces some serious issues. We need serious leadership, which is in short enough supply without the Republicans unraveling.
So I read on, surmising that as a former cabinet member Reich would not sound this alarm without good cause. And sure enough, right in the first paragraph he said it’s “bad for America” that the GOP is threatened. Certainly I agree. After all, the core ideology of the Democrats, once known as liberalism, cracked up decades ago, and we have to get our grown-ups somewhere! (By the way, The Liberal Crack-Up is the title of an excellent book by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., which was published in 1984 and remains an entertaining reference for a continuing catastrophe.)
Mr. Reich lets us know up front that the crack-up isn’t just about Romney’s conservative credentials or the travails of the Republican congressional leadership. No, it’s more than that — an “underlying conflict” whose “very old” roots reach “deep into the nature and structure of the Republican Party.”
From these old roots, Reich explains, an ominous threat has grown. That, naturally, is … the Tea Party! And this is not your multi-great grandfather’s Boston Tea Party. Rather, Professor Reich lectures, “today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority — predominantly Southern, and mainly rural — that has repeatedly attacked American democracy to get its way.” For proof of this rather sweeping indictment, Reich proffers only the bald assertion that it is “no mere coincidence that the states responsible for putting the most Tea Party representatives in the House are all former members of the Confederacy.”
Much in the manner of a Janet Napolitano press conference, Reich proceeds to inform us that fencing in the former Confederacy will not suffice to stifle this unsavory movement. Alas, the Tea Party also infects “border states with significant Southern populations and Southern ties.” Its tentacles reach even to places such as California, although apparently only in tainted areas “whose political culture was shaped by Oklahomans and Southerners who migrated there during the Great Depression.”
Perhaps with the “Know Your Enemy” slide on the screen, Reich capsules the characteristics of “Tea Party Land” so that responsible citizens can be on the lookout. Pencils ready, class? The three markers are: “white” (ho hum), “Southern” (and that term becomes synonymous with “Tea Party” as it embraces the many flyover country folks deemed “Southerners” by Mr. Reich’s helpful and more expansive definition), and “rural.”
Now, lest we doubt that Southerners (or Tea Party sympathizers) are a threat to civilization as Mr. Reich envisions it, he zeros in with the big guns: polling data. Be on notice, people. These Tea Party troglodytes are more skeptical than most about global warming, less likely than Mr. Reich’s friends to think the Department of Education is doing a swell job, and more concerned than many about deficit spending in the age of Obama. And, in case you naively conclude that those findings merely describe people with common sense, Reich of course plays the obligatory “race card.” This he does by linking what he terms the “radical right wing” of the Republican Party (note for the vocabulary section on the final exam, this is another synonym for “Southerner” or “Tea Party”) to the “ ‘Willie Horton’ conservatives of the 1980s.”
Swift on the heels of smearing Southerners as racist bumpkins too stupid to appreciate the finer points of federal programs and the threat to life on the planet posed by climate change, Mr. Reich laments that the “gentlemanly conservatism” of his sort of Republican has been superseded by “bomb throwing antics.” Mr. Reich apparently does not consider it germane that the “teabagger” and “racist” epithets relentlessly hurled at “Tea Party” members, Southerners, and pretty much anybody espousing conservative political views these days have all originated on the left — which is, after all, the traditional home of bomb throwers.
Still, professor that he is, Reich purported to connect the dots, pointing out that “America has had a long history of white Southern radicals who will stop at nothing to get their way — seceding from the Union in 1861, refusing to obey Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, shutting the government in 1995, and risking the full faith and credit of the United States in 2010.”
Of course, everyone knows that the Southerners who seceded in 1861, and who engaged in “massive resistance” to the civil rights laws a century later, were all Democrats (and pretty much all gone to their rewards at this point, by the way). Mr. Reich’s attempt to link those historical (and obviously harmful) actions by Democrats to current Republican arguments against profligate federal spending is utterly without basis in either logic or fact. Not one to let this stand in the way of a talking point, however, Mr. Reich warns that this “stop at nothing radicalism” is “dangerous for America,” because we “need two political parties solidly grounded in the realities of governing.”
Wait a minute, I thought. Was it not “stop at nothing radicalism” when the Obama administration rammed the health care takeover through Congress, all 3000 pages of it crafted in closed-door negotiations rife with payoffs and log rolling? And does it foster cooperation between the two parties when the president ignores his constitutional obligation to seek the advice and consent of the Senate, circumventing Congress to make illegal appointments of left-wing ideologues and political cronies to positions of power? What about the billions in government loans and stimulus payments to campaign donors and unions, a virtual festival of looting of the federal Treasury by the president and his allies? Would it not be more accurate to say that it is the Obama administration, not the Tea Party, that “has repeatedly attacked American democracy to get its way”?
Oh lord, I can hardly wait for the Heritage and States Rights bunch to come out and start barking at the Tariffs and He Didn’t Care About Slavery crowd.
Clue: only individuals are born with Rights. States are not born.
The job of the Constitution is to prevent illegal governments from abusing said rights… such as South Carolina rewriting tariff laws in the South’s favor in 1857, or Kentucky raiders protected by a border after razing whole Ohio towns.
Not to mention the relentless attempts to expand of slavery, or the fact that the South seceded before Lincoln was in office, due to the North’s ‘growing hostility to slavery.”
Lincoln’s father left Kentucky because he could no longer bear to watch the injustice.
It was always ‘about the slavery’ to Lincoln.
He tried every compromise. No avail. Nobody wanted a war.
He just had to sell it to the money.
Jeff Davis and co. were writing letters to Lincoln saying “If you just leave us alone, we only want to create a new slave empire in South America.”
Lincoln was determined that this darkness never be born.
Hopefully someone will mention how literally every unjust race law has come from Democrat hands. Don’t forget to mention it was Wilson who banned interracial marraige, and reintroduced segregation.
I was waiting for this.
Race identity worked when Democrats were the White Party- they’ve just recycled it to become the Brown party.
Shared that little trick of dividing ethnic loyalty with the Soviets.
Today’s Left began when the children of the Confederates began to dream of reclaiming Grandad’s lost Empire.
Many plantation owners had taken their money and fled back to their relatives in New England. That money took over much of the Ivy League.
In the 1890′s, said families began abusing the military to ‘filibuster’ (raid) Central America and the Caribbean, resurrecting their practice of the 1850s.
After Teddy’s private army brought grief to Cuba, he used his position to further attack the Spain in the Phillipines. Meanwhile, his Ivy cohorts- making much money from supplying his imperialism- hid their money in tax-evasion trusts, started seizing university, and diverted their profits to eugenics.
When Eisenhower created the civil rights movement (Little Rock, Topeka, the Civil Rights Act of 1957), Senators Johnson and Kennedy blocked it until they could steal the credit for it. Programs ensued to buy voters (Great Society)and pack bureaucracies with loyalists (affirmative action).
Democratic cities such as Washington, DC and Boston were still segregated as late as 1964. White editors had successfully blocked black journalists’ stories about Selma and Birmingham for months.
The death knell for segregation came in 1962. Television.
After white America saw those contorted, screaming faces chanting “Segregation now and forever” on broadcast for the first time, the revulsion caused Klan registry to drop from 2 million to less than 20,000 in months. Previously, a politician could get nowhere in the Democrat South (and much of the North) without Klan machine connections.
The Democrat Party was nearly finished. Kennedy and Johnson had looked at the numbers and declared- (literal quotes)
Kennedy: “We never realized there were so many Negroes.”
Johnson: “I’ll have those n*ggas voting Democrat for 100 years!”
Meanwhile, ML King had collected $450 million from the black Southern Baptist network. He did do this by frequent orgies where booze, whores, and cash flowed like fountains. He was also “organizing” garbage workers in Memphis, and organizing for AFSCME. In other words, a mob boss. He could be bought- and imagine the Democrat shock when they realized all those poor Negroes had a heck of a lot of money too. And they wanted it.
The Democrats’ stalwart friends in Moscow helped revive the race wars.
Moscow’s allies in Islam began creating a breakaway Black Muslim identity with the extremely corrupt criminal Elijah Muhammmed. He was the first to propose a breakaway Islamic republic in Mississippi.
We are still paying for these ideas.
They nearly succeeded in starting a race war behind the ‘No War’ banner- while we were at war with a Russian client, Vietnam.
The Confederates, the Progressives, the Communists, the Racials, the Islamics, the Democrats, the Left-
all share one thing in common:
they NEVER, ever, ever want to learn they are wrong!
It’s all about Power games- and they have NO idea what to do once they seize it!
“Clue” the Federal government of the United States wasn’t “born” it was created by a document called the Constitution that clearly gave rights to the “states”.
Lincoln was, in this TEA partier’s opinion, the beginning of what we oppose; he ignored the Constitution when it got in his way, reinforced the notion that the federal government, not the people, is the power in the US, and also created the very first income tax.
The notion that he would have been for limited federal government is so ridiculous it’s probably being taught by the NEA occupied schools somewhere.
Abraham Lincoln was a brilliant (I can’t find a better word) writer and orator. The eloquence, skill and craftsmanship found in Mr. Lincoln’s prose is matchless. His knowledge of English — formal and idiomatic — and his commanding use of historical and Biblical allusions lends convincing weight to his writings and speeches. Had the circumstances of his life been different, we might know him now as a latter-day Milton or even Shakespeare.
While they ring with righteous certitude, the elevated sentiments expressed by Lincoln were in almost every case (some more egregiously than others) contradicted by the President’s behavior. That is particularly true of his hypocritical homage to the Constitution. I know of no other historical figure whose noble words and pernicious deeds were so much at odds.
JustAl’s assessment is correct. It might be added that Lincoln was an unapologetic racist (not in the corrupted sense of today’s usage, but by strict definition), he favored secession when it suited him, and he was a strong advocate of crony capitalism (the American System, or mercantilism). In my view, the Republican Party does itself no favors in calling itself the party of Lincoln.
Favored? When? Deep South seceded before he was sworn to office and he did his utmost to bring back the seceeding states by peaceful means, everything except additional concessions on slavery except telling he would respect the Constitution (had the South not seceeded the Constition couldn’t ahev been amended until well after 1900). At this point and in order to attract the High South, Jefferson Davis ordered the attack on Fort Summter.
And the people in the North were as angry about that unprovoked attack it as their descendenta about Pearl Harbor. Even initially neutralitic Newyorkers spoke of hanging Lincoln in case he let the agression go unpunished.
A wonderfully orthodox and sanitized view. Government schools at work. But let me answer your question directly in Lincoln’s own words:
“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, –a most sacred right–a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement. Such minority, was precisely the case, of the Tories of our own revolution.” –Abraham Lincoln, from the Congressional Record, Jan. 12, 1848.
The Fort Sumter narrative is similarly misinformed.
Right of rebellion was defended by both Unionists and (future) Confedrates. But right of rebellion supoposes you have been the subject of abuse by the government. Lincoln had not even been sworn to office, when the Deep South seceded. That is a fact.
Secession was never about the legitimate use of right of rebellion but about people who, thanks to the electoral system had run roughshos over the North (cf the Dredd Scoot case) were unwilling to accept the outcome of the 1860 presidential election and if they didn’t it is because they considered themselves to be a Hrrensvolk not only respective to Blacks but respective to other whites.
While we are it here is the enumeration of sme facts.
-Deep South secedes before Lincoln is even sworn to office
-While declaring its sympathies to the CSA ad its intentions to join it in case they were attacked the High South didn’t join them.
-By the beginning of the 1860 Spring CSA press and politicaisn were telling without the High Soth the CSA were not viable, about people’s enthousisam having falllen and fearing the CSA would end imploding and its memebers joining the Union.
-In the two weeks before the attack on Fort Sumter Jefferson Davis had a meeting with fireaeters from the High South where itwas greed the CSA had to
do smething (ven if I am not sure attacking Union troops was suggested) in order to rekindle secessionist symathies in the High South.
-In the month between his oath of office and the attack on Fort Sumter Lincoln made no moves threatening the CSA: no Army or Navy movements, no call for volunteers. The ships sent for supplying Fort Sumter along with their crews were unarmed.
-Tha attack on Fort Sumter was met with joy in the High South, there were mass deùmonstrations, secession conventions were joined and in Richmond the United States flagf was lowered and replaced by the Confederate one. At this point Lincoln had still not called for volunteers and had still not announced he would meet force with force.
I question your TEA Partyness. Your rant comes off as Anarchist! I also question your understanding of the Constitution and Abraham Lincoln. More personal study seems indicated.
Then, by all means, go study more. You might start by skipping down about two posts and enjoying my photo albums of the TEA events my wife and I have attended.
You are quiet welcomed to your opinion on Lincoln, even if you learned it from watching movies, as for your opinion of me; frankly, I don’t give a damn.
Oh well, it looks like the moderator disallowed the address to my albums. You can always google JustAlblogger photobucket to find them.
You might consider doing some reading from a perspective OTHER than Northern-is-good-Southern-is-bad-Lincoln-is-next-to-God.
I was raised on that viewpoint. I bought it for a long time. It’s what’s been promulgated in our state schools (once public schools, but that’s a long time ago) since at least the late 1800s. It’s presented pretty much as global warming is – a truth to be accepted on pain of being dismissed as evil, crazy, and stupid.
But it’s not true.
The truth is, the Civil war was NOT just about slavery and it was NOT just about states’ rights. It was both and a lot more.
The bottom line is that Lincoln certainly meant well as far as slavery was concerned. He was a racist as was virtually everyone in his day, but he saw the injustice of the slave system, as many did not. Good for him.
However, along with the good came quite a bit of bad. He trashed our Constitution and perverted the entire philosophy on which this country was founded. His actions were often completely illegal and tyrannical. NO, the end does NOT justify the means. The short term end was arguably very bad, and the long term end, the elevation of the federal government above the states, as though superior to them, has been terrible. In fact, so thoroughly did Lincoln trash the original understanding of what our nation is, that many today who call themselves conservative will read that line and think, “What is he talking about? Of COURSE the federal government is superior to the states!”
Lincoln is to blame for this.
He was one of the worst Presidents we’ve ever had.
In fact the Civil War would never have happened without the issue of slavery so you’re wrong. The other issues would’ve sorted themselves out.
Lincoln saved America from being two warring and competing enemies that could’ve been exploited by European powers with alliances and Southern invasions while we stared at each other when not actively fighting each other.
Those two American entities would’ve fought over the land West of the Mississippi for how many decades and with what consequences. Lincoln risked much to ensure much worse wouldn’t occur so you’re wrong about Lincoln too. What good is a frickin’ Constitution without a country?
By the Left’s standards all white folks are racists and that would include the National Hockey League. With the diabolical emergence of the concept of “white privilege” wherein all white people, mostly unconsciously it is stipulated, are the recipients of the enormous benefits of simply having other white cultural artifacts and white people surrounding them everyday, every white person has been officially forced into membership of the racist club. This is highlighted by posters strewn around Duluth, MN by racist-fighting stalwarts such as the YWCA/Avengers recently that say “It’s hard to see racism when you’re white.”
Of course this means that virtually all of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia also suffer the debilitating effects of black, Latino, Arab and Asian Privilege but the Left will deal with that goose/gander impasse when they figure out yet another Byzantine fantasy construct as to why it would still only apply to white folks. The Left is still busy working out why the Dem Party is granted the assumption to have changed since the Civil War but not anything else that formerly supported slavery.
It’s not easy being on the Left since morons like Reich have to expend enormous energy explaining away the simplest aspects of reality by employing “doublethink,” apparently in the mistaken belief Orwell wanted us to worship doublethink rather than avoid it.
“today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority — predominantly Southern, and mainly rural — that has repeatedly attacked American democracy to get its way.”
While I never attended a Tea Party event, like most I did pay very close attention. And did not see this.
I understand Democrats are frequently weird in their speech and actions, but this is simply delusional. Reich, get some platform shoes, you aren’t getting enough air down there.
The TEA events I’ve been too were, in fact, in the South (that’s where I live), but I didn’t see alot of angry vitriol, I did see a fair number of non-caucasion folks, and I don’t think the Dallas metroplex is considered “rural” by anyone with a concept of what either word means.
Too bad photobucket links don’t work well, but if anyone likes just copy these and past into the address bar to see the photos of a few events that I’ve taken.
http://s951.photobucket.com/albums/ad352/JustAlBlogger/Dallas%20Tea%20Party%20February%202010/
http://s951.photobucket.com/albums/ad352/JustAlBlogger/DFW%20T%20Party%20041510/
http://s951.photobucket.com/albums/ad352/JustAlBlogger/Southfork%20Tea%20Party%200709/
And with your own words in your last line you betray your own bigotry against short people. It’s a widespread and pernicious evil that goes mostly unrecognized. Just like that against fat people.
Let’s face it. By their standards the Founding Fathers were Tea Partiers and they’d be right. The farce of it all is they are living in a country stealing and getting richer by the minute that was founded by people whose ideas they despise and have been attempting to thwart and overturn for over a century. Since those in the Tea Party advocate for a return to the parameters of the Constitution, for once the left is right. George Washington and the others live in the hearts and minds of those who revere their creation.
It’s astounding, the level of ignorance the Democrat/Left has fostered in the last 60 years.
Starting with the seeds of ignorance in elementary education, and continuing well through higher education, and into adulthood.
We have the most active criminal Party and complicit media organization in American history, and there’s no end to the flagrant corruption in sight. The media, with it’s “gang mentality”, is actively using censorship against any naysayers, and there’s no protest by the citizens.
We have LAWS against “DISCRIMINATION”, yet the President of the United States forms a racist organization to promote himself for being elected again; And there’s no outrage at this action!
The ignorance, moral depravity, and fraudulent activity of the Congress of America, is circumventing the basic intent of the Constitution, and legislating the United States out of existence. The United States is being raped and plundered by it’s own administrators, who are getting their riches and enriching their friends at the cost of the general citizenry.
And we have no one of any “Party” to come to the rescue of the American People, much less even speak harshly of the overt corruption.
We are witnessing the destruction of the greatest nation to ever exist. THE nation Abraham Lincoln gave his most valuable asset to help create.
Does anyone believe Lincoln would not be condemned by the Democrats and the media for being a womanizer, drunk, racist, spendthrift, corrupt, country redneck, if he were running for office today? But, running as a Democrat, these would be badges of honor and qualification.
In the theater of my mind, every time I see Robert Reich on TV, I begin to sing, “♫ Come out, come out, wherever you are and meet the young lady, who fell from a star. ♫”
I can no longer even take these imbeciles insults seriously, while they are accusing me of “radical” or “extremist” racist, in the same breath they are referring to me as “bagger.”
Have these morons not noticed that even the poor, downtrodden minorities are flocking back south and southwest in record numbers?
Lincoln was the beginning of what is wrong with the government of our country in modern times. That people still revere him as some kind of saintly combination of Mother Teresa and Cincinatus in a stove pipe hat is a testament to the hogwash that passes as history in modern schools.
Keep saying that and you’ll likely find yourself tarred and feathered by people who have never questioned what they were taught int he government schools.
But keep saying it, because it’s true.
Mike;
It’s obvious that both you and your comrade in ignorance, are products of recent indoctrination of public schooling and media propaganda.
I know I’m wasting my time replying to dunces like you, but, you idiots always make baseless, unsubstantiated statements all the time.
I just want to inform you that there are not as many retards believing your B S as you think.
Wow. Such well documented and cogent argument. Perhaps the most ironic of Lincoln’s famous comments is apt, “It is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt.”
Have you included that “cut and paste” skill on your resume?
Robert Reich was the guy who early on in the Obama administration said that stimulus cash shouldn’t go to “white” contractors for all those shovel ready projects his new president saw out there.
Reality is such a relentless taskmistress that Barack was eventually forced to modify, if not outright retract, the shovel ready thing.
Bobby Reich would never retract a single one of his extreme ideological premises.
I diagnose him as mentally unbalanced.
“today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority — predominantly Southern, and mainly rural — that has repeatedly attacked American democracy to get its way.”
What a jerk Reich is. He should come to New Jersey where I live, hardly a bastion of the old south, where the Tea Parties are alive and well. But that’s what liberals do. If you disagree with them, it’s an “Attack on American democracy.” But if you just roll over, play dead, and allow the liberals to have their way with government, then you’re part of the “enlightened few.” What a pile of buffalo chips. This is why we must fight them in every election. This is why we must fight them on TV and, especially, in the mainstream media. Take the battle to them and show them up for what they are, a bunch of elitist snobs who think they know what’s best for the rest of us. Democracy is the LAST thing on their mind. Reich is part of the ACORN army, people who will stop at nothing at converting America into their own image, which has nothing to do with what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Nothing.
Stand up to these statists, these liberals, these people who would like nothing better than for us to become as impotent as France on the world stage. This is what is at stake this year in November, and we must resist it with everything we have. The Founding Fathers would expect nothing less of us and we’re not about to let them down.
Or he could take a walk in downtown Inglewood, CA, home of Maxine Waters. I doubt he would survive without many well armed body guards. Just because he’s white. He is white isn’t he? (sarc)
The video of Reich (“economic adviser” to the newly elected president) testifying before the committee of that paragon of virtue, Charlie Rangel, January 2009 has been removed due to “trademark claim by third party” (right, sure, uh huh)
Bobby told Charlie’s committee we need to…
“Keep stimulus money away from skilled workers and “white male construction workers”
Federal employment has increased something like 20% during Barack’s 3 year tenure. He has opined that federal workers deserve more respect.
In this video (yesterday) some people sucking off the federal teat agree …
Their (lifelong, benefit loaded, amazingly pensioned) jobs are more “complicated and difficult” than private sector jobs
By this man’s logic, we’re all secretly plotting to attack the UK, because we were part of a rebellion against it over 200 years ago. Jesus Christ.
The amount of misinformation, distortions and lies by the author and idiots like tanstaafl are simply amazing. Noone here ever bothers to ferret out the facts. You are all like lemmings going over the cliff
What distortions and lies, Bobby ?
Robert Reich, leftoid ideologue extraordinaire, is on record saying precisely those things.
Those are facts, which can be ferreted out, even by a ferret like you.
Now that you’ve exposed tanstaafl for what he is, where’s the facts and evidence supporting your tripe?
“By Left’s Standards, Abe Lincoln Is a Tea Partier”, and by the right’s standards GW and Romney are liberal. What is the point?
By my standards Lincoln was no better than Obama. He put newspeople in jail. He deported U.S. citizens who disagreed with him. He violated the constitution in so many ways. He started the wave that brought us Obama.
I agree with Prof. Reich. It’s a shame that the party of genteel conservatism has been taken over by bomb-throwers like Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Mitt Romney and others of their extremist ilk. But thankfully, the Democratic party continues to uphold the civilized traditions of Chicago 1968, Washington 1971, and, now, the civil and thoughtful Occupy movement. What a contrast.
I also agree that southern whites should not be allowed to have opinions because they lost the Civil War and yet they still have Rebel flags on their pickups. This should be illegal.
What the Tea Party opposes and what Abraham Lincoln would have found unimaginable…
The Obama-(Third)Reich vision of a “just” America…
Barry and Bobby’s wet dream come true
I love University of California having been a student & lecturer. Like so many I am disappointed by Chancellor Birgeneau’s failure to arrest escalating costs, tuition. Birgeneau has doubled instate tuition. On an all-in cost, Birgeneau’s UC Berkeley (UCB) is the most expensive public university. Tuition consumes 14% of a median family income.
Paying more is not a better university. Birgeneau dismissed removing much inefficiency: require faculty to teach more classes, double the time between sabbaticals, freeze vacant faculty administrator roles, increase class sizes, freeze pay & benefits & reform pensions, health costs. Birgeneau said removing such inefficiencies wouldn’t be healthy. UCB ranked # 2 in earning potential in USA. Exodus of faculty, administrators: who can afford them?
Californians agree it is far from the ideal situation. Birgeneau cannot expect to do business as usual: raising tuition; subsidizing foreign student tuition; granting pay raises & huge bonuses during a weak economy that has sapped state revenues, individual income.
Recently, Chancellor Birgeneau’s campus police deployed violent baton jabs on Cal. students protesting Birgeneau’s increases in tuition. The sky above Cal. will not fall when Robert J. Birgeneau ($450,000 salary) is ousted. Email opinions to the UC Board of Regents marsha.kelman@ucop.edu
Whatever you do, don’t remain aware of the actual bomb-throwing of William Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, and the rest of the radical leftist Obummer administration. Don’t remind your neighbors who has actually initiated force and fraud, or who wears T-shirts glorifying the murderers of millions of innocent people from Cuba to Russia to China and SE Asia.
A keen colonialist who forced his northern-favoring point of view on the south at the point of a gun.
A Tea Party man? Hmm.
As near as I can tell (and I’m hardly a scholar of history), Abe had to deal with two big issues as president. Slavery and secession. That’s it. Did he actually HAVE any other record in government? Obviously his place in history is huge, but that was a different time, and the problems of today aren’t fixed by beating somebody into submission.
That said, if a republican wins the next presidential election, they will obviously declare war on somebody. They can’t not declare war on somebody. The republican M.O. requires it. Otherwise, how are they going to conjure the sense of immediacy and lack of skeptical review they need to enact really stupid domestic laws? And how are they otherwise going to keep all those constituents happy? (and no, I’m obviously not talking about registered voters
)
Wait and see. There’ll be a war with somebody.