The Last Fourth of July
Get out your firecrackers, ladies and gentlemen. This may be the last Fourth of July – at least as we know it.
Yes, I realize that’s a bit hyperbolic. But this is the year our national character is up for a vote. American exceptionalism is on the line. If we lose it, we may never get it back. History will have made the Big Turn.
Now to be honest, just like our president, I was embarrassed by the term American exceptionalism, when I first heard it. I mean why were we special? Who were we to be the boss of the world?
These were the obvious questions that rattled around my brain as a college student and later as a young leftist-type in the period of the civil rights and anti-war movements.
Yet somewhere deep down I was a patriot even then. I knew the free world would not have defeated the Nazis without us. I knew the fight against Soviet communism was a good fight and that we must win.
But it wasn’t until much later — still about twenty-five years ago now — that I came to a deeper understanding of American exceptionalism, ironically from a French girlfriend. “Roger,” she told me, “you are the window of the world.”
The “window of the world”? I was taken aback. It was one of the moments when someone tells you something you already knew, but failed to acknowledge. For the last centuries, America had indeed been the “window of the world.”
If someone from a galaxy far, far away were to ask what was good, what was original about our planet, they would have to say our country, what it has struggled to achieve throughout its history and the ultimately positive manner in which it has influenced the human race at large. We protected the world from its worst impulses and pointed the way to freedom. And we led it toward prosperity while we did it.
That window is in danger of closing.
The same forces that made me embarrassed by American exceptionalism as a young man are shutting it, the same guilty feelings that propelled my generation from idealism to self-abnegation. And that generation now has as its standard bearer a somewhat younger president who eagerly does its work for it, our unfortunate son.
So here we are at the Fourth of July 2012, staring at what seems very much like a precipice.
The leader of our faction is a man who seems reasonably intelligent but conventional in the extreme, a moderate man in immoderate times, an undramatic man in an epoch that it is wildly theatrical in its implications, an era that calls for a Reagan or, better yet, a Washington.
But, as the cliché goes, you go to war with the army you have. We can take heart from the fact that it is not the leaders who are so important, but the people themselves. We are in a very real sense the army. It is our job to propel our leaders forward, to give them confidence.
Moreover, expecting leaders to be perfect in this internet era of total information is close to absurd. We all make mistakes and, fortunately or unfortunately, they are all reported almost instantly. We have to learn to shrug them off and move on, at least those that don’t rise to a significant level of importance. We should always remember this is a cataclysmic war being fought with the puniest of sound bites. Washington never had to deal with that.
We also all have to remember to “keep our eye on the prize” and not on each other. Those who want to protect American exceptionalism are perforce an unruly lot because they are protecting something inherently unruly. We are fighting for the ability to disagree, but we should holster some of those disagreements until election day.
The road between this Fourth of July and November 6 will be rocky, again in the extreme, perhaps terrifyingly so. In the worst economy since the Great Depression, it’s hard to believe roughly half our fellow citizens still favor the incumbent. But they do. Faced with that level of cognitive dissonance, the struggle ahead will be nothing short of titanic.
So get out your firecrackers and let loose. Let’s hope this isn’t the last time. (But remember to play safe. We need you on the hustings, not in the emergency room.)
I see American exceptionalism as an accidental force, something set loose by our Constitution, which is an analogue to “be fruitful and multiply” – something that just happened. Now, another great force, political correctness, equally accidental but without successful institutions, undermines our exceptionalism. That exceptionalism never really had any dogma per se, just a real presence that was a reflection of how we thought and did things.
PC has never had a reality to reflect – it is simply set up in opposition to successful institutions: capitalism, marriage, Christianity, traditional education. PC is an accidental agglomeration of dogma and tenets fiercely opposed to exceptionalism because PC is opposed to success. PC is opposed to success because it coalesced out of vague ’60s Marxist principles and Critical Pedagogy that says anyone not successful is oppressed in some fashion – social awareness trumps vocation.
That is no surprise since the people most in favor of PC are those who do the poorest in a free meritocracy, those who have no access to exceptionalism, ironically, by their own doing. Because think failure and that’s what you get. Live on blame and excuses and that’s what you’ll end up with.
The solution is to have a President who will paint success as Prince John and failure as Robin Hood. That’s a fun movie but in real life it’s a collective, a forced charity. It’s not surprise, none at all, that the U.S. Communist Party supports Obama. The SEIU is practically a PC hive-mind.
A President with the qualities you require only comes from a organism capable of producing such fruit. The solution is a people who will not except anything less than that fruit. WE get the govt we deserve. Stand up, be heard, do your part. No matter how small, all the parts of the whole are important so if you can only do a small part please do it.
We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, must be equal to the task. We must weed the garden in order to get sustenance not poison.
“Now, another great force, political correctness, equally accidental but without successful institutions”
It’s only slightly accidental. In the 50s the Communists came up with it to oppose “white chauvinism”. Eventually they used it for their internal witch hunts. Dalton Trumbo was severely criticized by his comrades for writing things like a black boy was “polished and dressed in his very best” because that implied he was dirty and disheveled the rest of the time! See “Red Star Over Hollywood” by Ronald Radosh. You can read a lot of it at Amazon using “look inside”.
“I see American exceptionalism as an accidental force, something set loose by our Constitution”
That presupposes that the Constitution was an accident, which I don’t think it was.
Interesting comparision. We consider “be fruitful and multiply” to be a commandment, the first one found in the Bible. Not that you need t oforce most people!
I wrote a brief commentary on this very topic, in honor of July 4, at my new blog. Posters may want to check it out.
If so, please go to – http://www.adinakutnicki.com, or just google my name and it will pop up.
My blog’s HOME section has running commentary.If you scroll down, you will also find some of my op-eds. Enjoy.
Great blog, Adina! Thanks for the link.
Thanks Adina,
You’re on my daily read list..
Thanks Arnold & Mayberry Lady. I will try and update my blog with running commentary, and add some of my own op-eds on a regular basis. Of course,you never know what the the Iranian Hitler-and his surrogates-are going to do from one minute to the next, therefore, if there is a lull in postings you will know why!
However, on the plus side, our guys are ready for all contingencies. Having two sons, who serve as IDF reservists, I keep a close eye on the fast paced events. Living in the heart of the Islamic beast is no day at the beach, but living in Israel is beyond compare.
As an American patriot, and a nationalist Zionist, I see their fates inextricably linked. Therefore, I created a blog to address both issues, as events warrant.
Outstanding link! Thank you.
The history of America’s past
He wants buried in darkness and shadows cast
Erased through all eternity
No more hope for humanity
‘Tis when the Hurdy Gurdy ObamaMan
Comes singing children songs of Marxist love
‘Tis when the Hurdy Gurdy Obama Man
Comes singing children songs of Marxist love
Your adaptation is stirring, yes, we adults might very well win this battle against the statist but our childred are still compromised, having been taught to sing the songs of Socialism, enviormentalism, governmetnalism, anti-exceptionalism and anti-patriotism. We still loose the war.
Don’t despair over ALL the children. They’re not all in Occupy camps or budding little socialists. I’ve 3 who are right-minded, freedom loving, exceptional Americans. My son is a senior weapons specialist on a Special Forces team in Afghanistan. His older sister was chair of the county Young Republicans. His younger sister is a straight-A staunch conservative who challenges her college professors when they come out with PC or liberal twaddle, defeating their emoting with fact and logic. Oh, and my son has taught his sister to shoot several weapons in the home arsenal, accurately. America still lives, honored and respected, in the hearts of many our young and strong. They will only take so much before they throw off this yoke of tyranny.
Thanks to your son for his service, God bless and keep him and his sisters. I’ve got a young budding conservative of my own. I worry endlessly if the country I’ve taught him about will be gone when he is grown.
Many who have been unemployed for years and/or lost their homes or who have graduated from college and been unable to find work will…vote for Obama in November. Many other countries have voted idiotically for repressive, incompetent regimes. The Gaza Strip voted in total barbarians when given the opportunity to select their own leadership. There’s no guarantee that Americans won’t obliterate their great heritage at the ballot box.
There are many reasons for this (academia, Hollywood, etc.). When for whatever reason the people themselves change, when their character changes, a country’s identity inevitably changes. The left has worked tirelessly to change the national character and they have succeeded in changing the country. Sadly, the right has often preferred to pretend that they are too dignified, too high class, too assured of coasting along on America’s legacy to have to dirty their hands with resisting the left’s machinations.
DJ, I don’t much disagree, but would add to your thoughts that the right has been systematically cowed by the left’s incessant personal attacks on high profile conservatives, be they politicians or just private citizens.
Nixon first described an aspect of this with his “silent majority”. Now we have to be so silent no one knows we’re here or we risk attack. Why do you suppose there are always more Democrat bumper stickers and yard signs? There could be something innate with conservatives which causes them not to be as outspoken as the left, but I rather think more than a little of our reticence is fear of retaliation. The same distaste keeps good men and women out of public life. I’d wager the Republicans could have notably more exciting and accomplished candidates but for the near certainty that they will be slandered in the media and by political opponents.
I write this from Texas, where the Hearst newspapers never let up on Rick Perry. Everything he does is wrong and probably malicious as well. Every decision to hold the line on the state budget is “polluting the environment, starving the children and the homeless, and favoring the rich”. The local television news organizations are not much better. Bear in mind, this is a staunchly Republican/conservative state. What would it be like if we were in, say Minnesota?
I’m reading Breitbart’s book, Righteous Indignation. It documents the rotten-to-the-core alliance of the Democratic/Media Complex, as he calls it. These people are vicious and will stop at virtually nothing to defeat their political enemies and change the narrative to suit their nefarious purposes.
I know that Breitbart died of a heart attack, but the timing is altogether suspect, isn’t it? One can’t help but wonder . . . Andrew’s loss, just at this crucial “hinge of history”, is, IMO, catastrophic. He yelled back at the progressives at the top of his lungs. Who’s doing that now? Yes, Sarah’s out there, but look what the Democratic/Media Complex have tried to do to her.
(To my American neighbours to the south: a very HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!! God bless America!)
Disagree. A heart attack victim is pale and clammy.
Breitbart was reported to be as red as a tomato at the time of his death.
Without question I suspect the worst.
His is not the only suspicious death.
You are very right about that, song dog. I never put bumper stickers or signs, because we can’t afford the vandalism that would ensue. Also, my husband’s life would become unbearable (he’s a teacher), and his vehicle would become a write-off if anyone knew how he might vote.
I agree, about the yard signs and bumper stickers. We’re definitely afraid of vandalism, etc. We’re in one of the most self-consciously liberal parts of a blue state–an ivy-league college town. Need I say more?
I think American progressives have a problem understanding that just because there are some things in the USA that needs improving hardly makes it an evil country. Segregation was bad, but a segergated US force defeated the SS. Women were not encouraged to have a career in the 1950s — but that hardly makes the miracle of recovery and prosperity of the USA at the end of a horrific war and depression any less of a good thing. People had “boring” life in the suburbs, a lifoh the horror — the genocides, famines, and secret police in the communist and third world certainly made life interesting there, didn’t they?
There, you go. Employing reason to attack liberal arguments. You might as well try to skin a bear with a spoon; it’s the wrong tool for the job.
Like all bullies, liberals are weenies. Like all bullies, a sharp punch in the nose is what they need, not an argument. Meanwhile, our side continually attacks the only people who really want to take the fight to them, because they’re “too extreme” or “rude”. I thought that PC crap was THEIR invention!
Well, they intend to destroy you. Get that through your thick skull, and perhaps the nicey, nicey BS can stop, and a real attack begin.
Who am I kiddin’? Our frikkin’ Army isn’t even allowed to actually attack our enemies, no holds barred. After all, the girls might get in the way, or you might accidentally kill a child, or you might make the New York Times angry.
Perhaps we’ve all become pussies, after all.
Washington is spinning like a GE turbine in his grave. I won’t even mention U.S. Grant or Patton. They’ve probably drilled to China, by now!
Stop arguing with all these liars, and get to work on a plan to defeat them. Don’t forget the RICO investigations into the Democratic Party, while you’re at it. If that ain’t organized crime, what is?
You are right John the left are bullies. They do need a punch in the nose. However, that might end up getting you into a lotn trouble, I know that for a fact. However, it might just be worth it!
You’ve hit it the progressive/NPR/HuffPo logic right on the head: because the USA is imperfect, it is no better than–in fact, it is exactly the same as–the worst dictatorships on earth. And the corollary is that therefore we have no business making judgements about those dictatorships.
I have an intuition that Mitt Romney’s very dullness just might be exactly what we need now. Remember C.S. Lewis’ canny observation that cultures are always on the alert against the very problems they DON’T have in a given era. Well, our time is one of hysteria and theatricality, and as such is always ready to oppose the cultural sin of conventionality. Perhaps someone conventional and moderate (in Maimonides’ use of the term) at our head is just what the doctor ordered to calm us the —- down!
Ya know, Ike was a boring old man. And to this day the left paints Reagan as a dottering disconnected “amiable dunce.” (Projection is funny, eh? As King Obama attends his umteenth fundraiser and plays his next round of golf before preparing to read yet another teleprompted speech written by someone else. “Corps” anyone?)
I would vote for Romney’s long departed dog over this man who told us his goal is to fundamentally transform this country. Seamus would be less dangerous and more competent.
The internet would be useless without your First Amendment. Thank-you America for keeping all the windows in the world open.
I had the same sad thought about this being the last Independence Day. I am from Philadelphia area so I think I will go down to Independence Hall for a Tea Party event.
But I am not optimistic.
I think, the fact that we have even gotten this close to ending America shows how far, collectively, we have fallen, how rotten, collectively, we have become.
Better we should all be in Church begging for one more chance.
I know exactly what you mean about American exceptionalism – I felt embarrassed too, but in retrospect realize I was far more patriotic than I knew. Put another way, I was a typical 60 intellectual – all Jeffersonian in my head. Later I discovered my heart was uncompromisingly Jacksonian. But the guy who fully woke me up about American Exceptioalism was Marco Rubio. Listening to his acceptance speech on YouTube when he won his Senate seat he talked about his family’s experience – how his father had fled Castro’s Cuba and had to give up his personal dreams and make his living as a bartender. As I listened I realized that was my family’s story displaced by 100 years. My great great grandfather emigrated from Germany in about 1850 and landed at Tallahassee. He met a New Yorker who helped him get to New York where he worked as a taylor and later ran a bar set up as a watering hole for the cronies of Tammany Hall. He died of pneumonia from a drenching he got out campaigning for Boss Tweed’s boys. His eldest son, like Marco Rubio, understood American Exceptionalism and went to work at the age of 14 to support his mother and brothers and sisters and became a millionaire. He was the guy who invented the electric billboard putting the punchcard technology used in the 1890 census together with Edison’s lightbulb to make the first animated signs that lit up Times Square. When Theodore Dreiser wrote Sister Carrie they were so new that when a character in the novel encounters them walking through Times Square he can only call them ‘fire signs’. Who will win the election and how it will work out is opaque. What is clear is that American Exceptionalism has become part of out character. We have not yet begun to fight.
Rubio’s an invention of political correctness infecting the Right.
He’s an unaccomplished and untested lifetime pol with a bad record on the very values you describe here. The few choices he made in the public arena were extremely bad choices — in crooked allies who siphoned taxpayer money into their pockets as he watched the door.
He couldn’t manage his own finances and in response, disgracefully, took a patronage job that shoveled money into his own pocket for an invented, no-show job — taxpayer money.
So, what’s his appeal? He wrote an autobiography? That sounds familiar. You can value his parent’s experience without whitewashing his record.
Look, tell me the Repubs need him to appeal to a demographic, and I’lll choke it down (though it’s a pipe dream, frankly, and an insult to those who would prefer merit).
But don’t tell me he’s a superhero in a shiny cape because he woke up and found his own face in the mirror this morning. I could have stayed in the Democratic Party for that ugly identity-preference-parading-as-virtue stuff.
Republicans need him because he is an impassioned and inspirational public speaker. You can’t win any race on poorly articulated ideas and rallying cries about the free market. The record voters most identify with the GOP is the failure to reign in bad mortgages or the banks who packaged and sold those bad mortgages. You also have the distinction of tax cuts accompanied by vastly higher borrowed spending. It is hard to sell that record as significantly different than Obama.
Well, I’ll take what you say about Rubio seriously and see if your view is justified over time. I do listen to what he says and read anything I see about him. I would agree with you about Republican political correctness if the Republicans were to run a first term senator for president because he speaks well and has ethnic appeal. I suppose that is why Condi gets mentioned a bit too quickly. In any case I was responding to Roger’s point about cringing at American Exceptionalism and I have heard no better defense of it than Rubio’s. I don’t think I put him in a superhero’s guise. As we are wont to say in Australia the only people who wear suits are politicians and bankers, because their job requires them to lie to the public. I’m perfectly well aware that I agree with him on some issues – like small business being the key to economic recovery, and I also notice that he is one of the few politicians of either party who openly says that our current situation is the fault of both partiers. On the other hand he gave a foreign policy speech that got cogent criticism from the right and which certainly raised questions with me. My personal preference for VP is Jindal, or any other figure with real accomplishments behind them. Like Obama, Rubio lacks experience at this point.
I just watched a spot on Fox about a commercial concern running an operation that gets 30,000 fresh pizzas, with very serious toppings, from America to Iraq and Afghanistan, simply to give the troops a taste of home. The logistics of such an operation, with the second dry icing at the ME distribution hub, can only be the envy of our best allies and our worst enemies. A nation that moves 30,000 homemade pizzas around the world on a whim to treat a beloved son or daughter to a taste of home is not a nation to be trifled with. Before China or Russia can even dream of surving, let alone winning, a war with us, they must crush our will to deliver pizzas before they even bother to overcome our sheer military might. The bad news? They have the Obamas and their ilk working on the pizza defeat for them.
A Conservative win in November. For the pizzas!
Imagine what the “operation that gets 30,000 fresh pizzas, with very serious toppings, from America to Iraq and Afghanistan” could do to get ballots from the troops back to the US. Just getting military ballots back to a few swing states like Florida could make a big difference.
A conservative coworker of mine keeps coming up with ideas of how to amend the US constitution to constrain a government that keeps growing in size and scope. I argue that conservatives can’t impose limited government on the general population. We need to reach out to people and persuade them that limits on the national government are good. We also need to undo the damage done by progressives in small steps at every opportunity. Bring important government functions like building highways back to the states. Sell off federal property to pay off debt. End the ethanol oxygenate mandate and boutique gasoline requirements in non-attainment areas one area at a time. Pass a law clearly stating that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant subject to Clean Air Act regulation. Pass a law putting clear limits on the EPA’s ability to declare property a “wetland”. Win the argument step-by-step in easy to understand stand alone bills.
“The logistics of such an operation, with the second dry icing at the ME distribution hub, can only be the envy of our best allies and our worst enemies. A nation that moves 30,000 homemade pizzas around the world on a whim to treat a beloved son or daughter to a taste of home is not a nation to be trifled with”
this is true american exceptionalism
And the important thing you forgot to mention was, if there was no American exceptionalism, where would the world turn to when there was REAL trouble? By real trouble, I mean another Hitler or a Stalin trying to make their megalomaniacal dreams come true. What if Iran gets a nuclear bomb and decides to incinerate Israel? What if China decides that all of the Pacific ocean is its “lake?” What if North Korea tries to blackmail countries in the Pacific with its nuclear weapons? Who will stand up to these threats if the United States is no longer the strongest nation on the planet?
Nobody will, and that’s the point. Like it or not, American exceptionalism has ushered in almost 70 years of a tentative or “dangerous” peace, with no major World Wars taking place since 1945. Sure, we’ve had small wars and major tensions with other countries, like the Soviet Union and Iran, but nothing on the scale of global war like World War II. If we retreat into our isolationist shell like we did prior to World War II, if we decide that we are no better than France and therefore are incapable of influencing events around the world, then this planet is going to get a lot more dangerous than it is now. In fact, like World War II, we may face a situation where a war in another part of the world will eventually drag us into it, simply because we were not there to end it before it began.
So, yes, this is the most important election in our lifetimes, probably in the history of this nation. In November we will be voting whether or not we want to become no better than France, or be the leader the rest of the world turns to for guidance and support.
The easy way out would be to become a social-welfare state like France, unconcerned about the rest of the world and content to just spend ourselves into oblivion, like the Greeks have right now. But that is not the spirit or the character of this nation. America has never taken the easy way out and we accept challenges because we know we can, as a nation, overcome them together. There are many in this nation like Obama that say that we are through, that we cannot lead without the rest of the world’s approval. That we must get in line and act and behave just like the other “enlightened” European nations, the same ones that are now broke and begging for money (like Portugal, Italy, Ireland Greece, and Spain, to name a few). To those people I say “BUNK.” We ARE Americans and we naturally take the lead. We are problem solvers and we want to leave this world a better place than we found it. And we also believe that any threat to our sovereignty will be met with force, and NOT by cowardly compliance.
THAT is what’s on the line in November. And for all those people out there who say that we are NOT special, that we SHOULD be no better than France, I say to all of you that is where we were in the 1930s, during another depression, and we all saw where that road lead us on 7 December 1941. Don’t do it. Stay strong, be brave, and vote to save this nation in November. The stakes have never been higher. But like the tough and independent people who came before us, we are up to this challenge.
Republics are built on a foundation of civic virtue. When the body politic becomes corrupt, can the election of corrupt leaders be far behind? Those who clamor for “free” medical care, “free” food and “free” rent, “free” education and “free” appurtenances barter their liberty for a box of trinkets. Our job is to remind them that the train ride to the gulag is also free.
De Toqueville observed almost at our founding that our exceptionalism would survive only until the people realized they could vote themselves the national treasury.
This we have done. Not only is the treasury bankrupt: our representatives have spent 16 thousand billion dollars more! The deed is truly staggering.
What Germany, Italy and Japan looked like at war’s end will pale to what happens to us when the reality of our financial ruin sets in.
That’s the inevitable fate of Republics, and the faster they expand the electorate the faster it happens … although I think this time the industrial and electronics/computer revolutions have pushed back the timetable by quite a bit. Pity our ruling class killed the latter Golden Goose with SarBox as the last nail in the coffin, but it was an amazing run.
But the above might get fixed, and if you remove intergovernmental debt and only count what we owe to real bond holders our debt is not yet unpayable. Something like 60% of GDP the last time I checked (a bit worse now, for sure), but far short of the 90% point of no return.
So don’t give up hope yet, we’ve got a bit of time to put ourselves back on the path to recovery.
Well said!
Ain’t over yet. I can tell, because I’m still breathin’.
Obamacare is the final nail in the coffin. Do you think the likes of John Bonehead, Mitch McMumbles and Romney will really undo it? These people do not give me confidence, neither does the Republican Party. Nor does an electorate that would elect the openly Marxist man with radical associations to the Presidency. Socialism is viewed as “normal” to most people and its ingrained in the psyche of the American people as in don’t take away my medicare and social security. It doesn’t matter that the U.S. is $16 Trillion Dollars in debt. We have mortgaged the future of our children and grandchildren.
And our institutions are so corrupt and all are aimed against the conservative citizenry. Every little faux pas of Republicans is resonated among the marxist media complex, while the likes of Madame Maxine, Charlie Rangle, Shirley Jackson Lee, Hank Johnson, Chris Dodd, and Barney Frank are given a pass. They revelled in the ability of Bill Clinton to outright lie and get away with it. Its was just sex after all. No matter that an adult man seduced an impressionable young woman who worked in his administration.
Whats left of freedom when the government can order you to buy something against your will? Really nothing.
You see things quite clearly, PatyMor. Hope you’ve gone Galt and got out of the way of the ObaMao bulldozer’s maw.
The true tipping point for the dissolution of this country will come when the average American, represented by the person who works every day, pays his taxes, serves in the military, and reveres his citizenship, finally realizes that the US government is populated by a criminal cadre of statist totalitarians who have no respect for the Constitution and, in fact, answer to the international masters of One-World-Order Leviathan collectivism. At that point, when the average American changes his view of reverence to what the country once was to outright hatred for what it has become, then the whole house of cards will collapse in a stunningly rapid manner, just like the fall of Rome and the unraveling of the USSR. This will happen because the very people who made things work will simply refuse to participate in their own slavery. Just like in Atlas Shrugged, where John Galt states “I will stop the engine of the world.” I believe we are fast approaching that tipping point.
“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
–John Galt/Ayn Rand
Our forefathers called it an individual’s God-given right to the pursuit of happiness. Our destroyers call it selfishness. Funny how the guilt they peddle only works on the producers, not the moochers.
>>the average American, represented by the person who works every day, pays his taxes, serves in the military, and reveres his citizenship
That’s not the average American at all. And we conservatives will lose a lot of elections if we think that it is.
You may be right. We’re already in a situation where half of us don’t do anything more than confiscate money from the other half; legalized theft at the point of a government gun. There may now be more “moochers” than “producers” from here on out. But if that’s so, then we’re truly past the tipping point and this next election will validate that fact. And its all over but the shooting…
If the original Constitution plus the original Bill of Rights had been left unaltered through today, America would not be in the mess we are now. America has been in a slow but steady death spiral since the passage of the 14th, 15th, 17th, and 19th ammendments, each of which were wildly popular and each of which have contributed the ultimate demise of a free America. It is certainly true that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Each one, if passed in a vacuum, would not have been enough to doom America, but in combination with each other, the inevitable decline of America has been in motion since at least the 1920′s.
Here are the ingredients to the American death elixer:
Add one part instant citizenship to any gastropod that breathes its first on US soil regardless of background or citizenship of parents.
Add a pinch of popularly elected Senators
Slowly fold in voting rights for all newly defined citizens regardless of property ownership (or even now English ability)
Bake under 400 degrees of media complicity for 80 years
And Voila! A socialist Utopia!
Your rallying cry is well taken. But please consider this. There is no generalized “we” in the fight to save America. The enemy is within and may well outnumber us. It may well be your close friend with whom you have never discussed politics. It probably includes family members. The enemy certainly resides among co-workers and social associates. As the “Shining City on the Hill” begins to burn you had damn well better find out who are the members of the fire department and accept the fact they probably aren’t your clergy, schoolteacher friends, the media, or the nice neighbor. It was easy to unite America when the enemy was a Nazi crackpot from abroad. But it’s going to be much different when the enemy is embodied in the guy sitting next to you at the Lions Club meeting who tells you that he doesn’t think ObamaCare is such a bad idea, or that he always votes for Democrats, or that the “tea-baggers” are a bunch of nuts, or that big corporations are the cause of our problems, etc. The enemy in that form is infinitely more difficult to defeat than the one who simply announces that he hates all of our guts and has plans to nuke us. “We” must recognize this and plan for the battle ahead while recognizing that it will likely cost us friends and the love of family members, or possibly employment opportunities, or the threat from some government agency to drain our finances. I have a Tea Party license plate holder on my car. I have had a neighbor laugh at it and close family members get pissed-off over it (and one compliment from a total stranger). There’s the face of the enemy. The challenge is enormous as we are approaching the point of “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” territory. Next job is to figure out how we go about winning the war and then looking inward to make sure that we are up to the task. Are you? I am. The election will define the landscape and then we must use this medium to begin to found a plan that is appropriate to the circumstances. No whining allowed.
“It was easy to unite America when the enemy was a Nazi crackpot from abroad.”
Not nearly so easy as the mythology makes it out to be. Both the left and the right were opposed to European intervention and the Left was opposed to any aid to the Allies until Germany invaded the USSR. Then the Left immediately started screamin, “Second Front Now.” With that background and Hitler’s declaration of war following our declaration of war against the Japanese the Country was largely united, but the Left and, especially, the unions were troublesome at time. The real test of unity would have come had there been a ground attack and a prolonged battle against Japan. Having stayed out heretofore, once Germany surrendered the USSR declared war and began snatching Japanese holdings. There is a good argument that the Hiroshima bomb was dropped on Japan, but the Nagasaki bomb was dropped on the USSR. Had there been a prolonged conflict in Asia, I don’t think there can be any doubt that the USSR would have turned on its opposition forces in the other Allied countries in order to further Soviet territorial and influence ambitions in Asia, and even with a nuclear-armed US, it only took the Soviets five years to test us, using their Chinese proxy in Korea.
Good point, Art. However, I was age 4 thru 7 during WWII. I can tell for a fact that you never had to be concerned about expressing full-throated patriotism then anywhere whether it be church, school, at work, among friends or in any American environment. The love of country and reverence for our founding principles was the accepted and expected way of life. Contrast that with the present. Old-timers like me find the difference between then and now to be unbelievable and heartbreaking.
I was fourteen tears old in 1945, so still retain vivid memories of the determined spirit in America during those times, very tired in 1945….but persevering. I see that Perseverance missing right now.
That second very horrific morning, enemy surprise attack #2, this one in September of 2001 seems now so localized…in comparison with the aroused national fury against the Japanese in 1941-2 and onwards. Shock in 2001 trumped that volatile, enduring, unifying anger of 1941.
And, I’m acutely aware of that stark contrast with the sickening entitlement “attitudes” of today….which are taken for granted now as our norm, and so grossly personified by that Chameleon-In-Chief Obama.
So, in stark contrast, today we must not now “hurt the feelings” of all of those inter-related-connected Muslims/Islamists who repeatedly declare their War against us Americans and our ways. We must adjust our long fought-for ways to the Muslim/Islamist viewpoint, and grant special operating privileges to our new enemy well ensconced mole-like in our neighborhoods with their mosques and madrassas,
It’s, all of it, a very telling comparison.
Sickening…..all personified by Obama.
Couple of points:
1 why Romney will lose: because you all are sounding exactly the same as you did in lead up to McCain and Obama. There is no enthusiasm for this guy. None. People aren’t going to vote in a guy that doesn’t sound, look, or plan better than the last guy. Better the devil you know kind of thing.
2 Republicans expect the electorate to be enthusiastic and concerned about the election when the Republicans sound as enthusiastic as a condemned man going to his execution?
3 Yes we could use another Reagan who points to the great about America and turns that into at least a 4 point plan on channeling that great into a strong American future but he or she doesn’t exist right now. They are all too busy only pointing out the evils that are about to beset us from Medicare, Social Security, energy and taxes. Where is the constructive ideas? Not front and center.
Bizarrely as it sounds I hope Obama wins again. We’ll be facing a stronger China, Russia and Iran, but the threats will be clear enough that people won’t go all squeemish when they are pointed out. The economy will suck just as much but people might be ready to stop sucking the crumbs off the government table and get on with building their own dreams.
Another 4 years and maybe we’ll finally get tired of accepting the decline of America as fore gone conclusion and actually start working to build again. Finally, maybe you all will be tired of being the biggest bunch of whiners I have ever heard and actually deserve a new Reaganite candidate.
Until then could you all wipe the snot off your face and go blubber somewhere in private? You are seriously starting to embarrass those of us who still believe in America.
Did we survive 9/11? Hell yes!
Go half way around the world with the smallest invasion army possible and kick the crap out of our enemies? Hell yes!
Install democracy in a country thats only known dictators? Hell yes!
So its a little shaky. Half the countries in the ME are now trying to get it. It might not look like us or act like us all the time, but hell, we don’t either.
The point here, boys and girls, is that we ARE the shining city on the hill that everybody looks up to. Why the hell are we sitting behind our golden walls snivelling like a bunch of whipped punks?
If you actually believed what you were saying we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Now, here’s a kleenex. Go away, blow your nose, wash your face and come back ready to fight.
Optimism is good. However you clearly aren’t paying close attention.
That would be hilarious if there wasn’t so much at stake. You put your big boy pants on and call everybody else whiners and then say you hope Obama wins as a wakeup call. Clueless, a little or what?
You took the words right out of my mouth.
If I was offered a buck for every “let them burn the village for a wakeup call” person on the internet, I would flat out refuse the money. To put it bluntly, my family happens to live there. And so does yours… and theirs.
Another point that many of these “village burners” fail to grasp; four more years of Obama, and America as we know it today will be irreversibly gone. For example, entitlements once bestowed and received are here to stay. To be blunt again, present day recepients do not and will not vote away their bennies.
Kat_Mo, however, is dead right about one thing.
Many should stop complaining, and instead man up and get involved.
Because it’s going to take nothing less than a tsunami of re-directed anger and participation from every patriotic American to keep this nation from dying with a whimper. Old saying or not, since when has freedom ever been free…?
Kat_Mo,
There’s an important difference between Romney and McCain. Romney fights. McCain permitted himself to be used as a doormat. That’s all the difference I require in *any* candidate. ^_^
“Bizarrely as it sounds I hope Obama wins again”
Yes, it sounds bizarre but familiar. This is the thinking that gave us Obama in the first place. After a second term there will be nothing left to fight fo.
Oh yeah Kat,
This time, Barack Obama has a record! I will use the famous quote from my familiar neighborhood watchman, “Barack Obama is not qualified to oversee picking up DogS^&* on the sidewalk in our community.” So true, enjoy your Pork and Beans today, thank Obama for the misery.
You do realize each of the accomplishments you cite was achieved by GW Bush against a chorus of hate from the left, many times led by your glorious Sen Obama?
“Half the countries in the ME are now trying to get it.”
Get what? That Islamic extremist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood are now welcome to take over? Iran has now stepped up its saber rattling, with US ships heading for the Persian Gulf. A fine kettle of fish there.
As for Obama, he’s headed for a loss. If he does win, it will be a reflection of success with voter fraud. If that happens we will have to learn to deal with the country as we don’t know it yet, snot-faced blubbering or not.
All your polemics, Roger, are the counting of angels on the head of a pin. Your Big Turn of history already happened. Your genertion started it in the 60s, and they have held onto the wheel ever since.
Do you remember what you thought of Goldwater in 1964? Were your antics then any different from the so-called Occupiers now? Or from the Bolsheviks of the turn of the last century? Or of the Communist cells of mid-century?
How different would the world be if the 60s pseudo intellectual elite young, hippies and flower children had instead played serious children? How different today if the 60s young were for Goldwater and not Johnson and the intervening social destructions had never happened?
You’re disoriented, Roger. The Big Turn is way behind you. What you feel is the final Big Nosedive.
Back in the good old 60′s, the young (under 21) did not have the right to vote – liberals clamored for change and indeed, 18 year olds got the right to vote. Bad mistake for the republic, as most young people do not have the wisdom and experience to decide these all-important issues. BTW, lots of teens in the 60s did NOT embrace the hippie/yippie movement, but just as now, the leftists got all the press. This divide is still with us – the normal people vs the “freaks,” as we called them…
My generation has much to answer for…THE generation that ignorantly destroyed the greatest hope of mankind…
“How different would the world be if the 60s pseudo intellectual elite young, hippies and flower children had instead played serious children? How different today if the 60s young were for Goldwater and not Johnson and the intervening social destructions had never happened?”
Nice story; too bad it isn’t true.
Let’s look at that ’64 election and all the ills of The Great Society and its aftermath that you blame on the “young” of the ’60s, the Baby Boomers. The generally accepted definition of “Baby Boomer” is someone born between 1946 and 1964. Nobody disputes the starting point of ’46 because that’s when “the boys came home” from WWII There is some dispute about the end, some thinking ’64 is too late but that’s pretty much irrelevant to this discussion. You posit that “The Big Turn” was the ’64 election of Johnson over Goldwater and you hold us, the ‘Boomers, responsible. You need to work on your arithmetic.
In that pivotal, to your mind, ’64 election, the only ‘Boomers who could vote were those born in ’46 and who lived in Georgia and Kentucky, the only states that extended the franchise to 18 year olds. Goldwater carried Georgia. That election was the greatest percentage margin of victory in any modern Presidential election, so somebody other than ‘Boomers must have voted for LBJ. By ’68, more states, but still a minority, had extended the franchise to 18 year olds and in those states ‘Boomers born between ’46 and ’50 could vote. Nixon, the bete noir of the Left, won that one fairly handily. Some ‘Boomers supported RFK before he was assassinated, some got “Clean for Gene,” and some rioted at the Democrat Convention, though none of the leadership cohort, the Chicago Seven and their ilk, were ‘Boomers, all having been born during or before WWII. By ’72, the 26th Am. had been adopted and all those born in ’54 or before could vote. While many ‘Boomers supported McGovern, Nixon won overwhelmingly garnering the largest margin of popular vote in modern history, so somebody other than ‘Boomers must have elected the guy who gave you the EPA. By ’76 most anyone who’d been a part of the protest and flower children scene of the late ’60s could vote and a conservative Southern Governor, Jimmy Carter, was narrowly elected. No matter what he’s become since, Carter was considered the conservative choice, especially when matched up with Governor Moonbeam of CA. The first election that all those in the accepted ‘Boomer cohort could vote was 1984 in which conservative icon and incumbent President Ronald Reagan was overwhelmingly re-elected and then succeeded by his VP, GHWB in ’88. The first ‘Boomer President was Clinton who, like Carter was perceived to be a conservative Southern Governor. I think he was faking it, but that was the perception.
Certainly all ‘Boomers could vote by ’94 and many were in positions of such wealth and power as to be able to influence the outcome of a National election. You might recall that the Republican Party gained control of the Congress that year and held it through six of George W. Bush’s eight years in the Presidency. GWB was a ‘Boomer, too, b. 1946. The first true leftist, though he faked being a moderate, and the first candidate openly backed by the Left to secure the Presidency was Comrade Obama in 2008. He too is a Boomer, but barely, b. 1961 as far as we know. So, those evil ‘Boomers must have elected the communist. Well, not really; the 45 – 64 years of age demographic split almost exactly down the middle, 50 – 49 for Obama. The demographic Obama did best with was those under 29, only the oldest of which are likely to even be the children of ‘Boomers.
I was born in ’49, went off to college in ’67, and saw my fair share of drugs, sex, and rock ‘n roll and a fair share of protesting and such; demonstrations were great places to get high and get laid. Even in Southern colleges the communists were there when I got there. Most of my humanities professors were leftists and many were open, outright socialists or communists. Opposition to the draft certainly caused many ‘Boomer aged men to stay in college and get advanced degrees and feminism brought many more women into advanced studies, which accounts in large measure for the leftist professoriate today, but they were helped to stay in school and mentored by leftist professors already there by the ’60s. One other thing you can attribute to the ’60s that is significant is the capitulation of the administrations of colleges to the left, but we can have a good argument whether that was a capitulation to the students or to the faculty. My take is that it was a capitulation to the faculty.
The Left was firmly entrenched in the US by the ’20s and in power in elite academia, the media, and entertainment by the ’30s. The pro-Soviet left made great strides in infiltrating the US and many state governments in the Roosevelt-Truman Era. They were thwarted by the anti-communism that gained influence,mostly but by no means exclusively in the Republican Party, in the aftermath of union and communist excesses in the War and demobilization. The Left enjoyed another ascendency in the Civil Rights Movement, which was far more communist influenced than the mythology admits, and in the anti-war movement of the ’60s and early ’70s but twharted again by Reagan and both Bushes, but this time with a difference; the fall of the USSR.
By Clinton’s time, the Left in the US was American-made and people weren’t taking instructions from Radio Moscow or the friendly guy from the Soviet Consulate. I have no doubt that Bill and Hill planned to be every bit as radical as Comrade Obama has become, but they, and especially she, overplayed their hand and provoked the Gingrich Counter-revolution. Clinton shrewly appeased the Republicans while using their porking proclivities and the generally good economy to funnel vast sums of federal money to Democrat/Left front groups. Republicans won the battle to outsource a lot of government work, but they lost the war due to the fact that most of the companies formed to do the work are for profit or non-profit Democrat front groups. A succession of Republican Congresses under both Clinton and Bush poured money into transportation and infrastructure product, almost all of it going to union contractors and thus to unions. By the middle of GWB’s second term, the Left was the strongest it had been since Roosevelt’s day, and they’d done it in large measure with money handed to them by Republican Congresses. We’re now living, and maybe dying, with the result.
Interesting stuff as usual, Art. In particular: “Left was the strongest it had been since Roosevelt’s day, and they’d done it in large measure with money handed to them by Republican Congresses.”
Lord help us. Is it even possible to guide the country in the right direction?
Dear Neighbours
Congratulations on the 4th!
But, as a Canadian, I have to weigh in a bit. First, the Marco Rubio example earlier cited is a story that can be repeated in any of the free countries that accepted lots of immigrants – Canada, Australia et al are full of such stories. And other countries too even – after all, Sarkozy is not a very French name, is it?
As to the defeat of Hitler, certainly we could not have done it without you but, don’t forget we were in the war (both of them) before you were. And what would have happened if Hitler had not gratuitously declared war on the USA after Pearl Harbor?
The true root of the exceptionalism I submit is to be found in England and has been relatively successfully transplanted throughout much of the Anglosphere.
All that having been said, I agree with Simon’s take – your coming election is of enormous significance for all of us. If you go down, there isn’t much hope for the rest of us.
When Obama was elected I comforted myself with the hope that 4 years of him might do so much damage to the dirigist/socialist/government-knows-best mindset that it would be killed at least for a generation.
Let’s hope that this is proved right and that you can re-ignite the fundamentally British faith in free people, free markets and free speech.
You are correct that the respect for individual liberty and freedom is an Anglo-Saxon construct and that Anglosphere countries that have implemented some form of that respect in a legal/economic/political framework have prospered. But the fact is that that respect is non-existent in today’s elite circles and all of the Anglosphere countries, including Canada and the US, are doing everything in their power to deconstruct and undermine their own successful framework. Today, there is no nation on earth that can claim to have a sound functioning economy that isn’t being roiled by the turmoil in the markets caused by the mad dash to One-World-Order Leviathan collectivism. We are now in the catastrophic end game, all over the world.
But, We shall be stronger because We have legislated that the poor, disabled, handicapped, mentally deficient, and uneducated shall run our government.
What I find both frightening and depressing is how our Anglosphere polities — which are based to a great extent on custom and practice — can be greatly weakened in a very short time by a Trudeau, Blair or Obama. It’s much more fragile than it looks.
But I have a great faith in the American people and their Constitution and hope they can lead us all back.
Patrick writes: “The true root of the exceptionalism I submit is to be found in England and has been relatively successfully transplanted throughout much of the Anglosphere.” And blackelkspeaks adds: “You are correct that the respect for individual liberty and freedom is an Anglo-Saxon construct . . .”
As another Canadian, I totally agree, but would add another word to the mix: how about “the respect for individual liberty and freedom is an Anglo-Saxon, CHRISTIAN construct”? I truly believe that the fact that the Anglosphere has largely turned its back on the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus has EVERYTHING to do with the precipitous decline we’re seeing. Most of the true believers I know have seen through Obama from day one, e.g., Sarah Palin.
“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings,/and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.” (2 Timothy: 3-4) We’re there.
The USA is/has been truly exceptional: the world needs you to stay that way. So, kick butt and God bless America!
The Anglo-Saxon construct of “liberty” is what’s being rejected by the Obama black dominant regime. They indicate they will not be satisfied until Lady Liberty is toppled from the island onto her face in the exact manner as the statue of Sadam Hussein in Iraq.
George Zimmerman and Eric Holder are only a sample of their fanaticism, which is completely antithetical to the concept of liberty.
On the other hand; What has any other race of people brought to the free world that has enabled any society to excel as much as the Americans in the same time frame? (Anglo-Saxons were conquered and crossbred with Greeks/Romans/Norwegians).
The only true competition are societies like the Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, which are basically very exclusive civilizations.
The United States is the only successful country that has been so diverse in it’s culture, even though it has, (and is) being portrayed as purely Anglo-Saxon.
Cybergeezer writes, “The United States is the only successful country that has been so diverse in it’s culture, even though it has, (and is) being portrayed as purely Anglo-Saxon.”
With due respect, I and others haven’t portrayed your great country that way at all: we’ve just pointed out that the FOUNDATION on which it’s built is Anglo-Saxon—and, IMO, CHRISTIAN—like the foundation of my country, Canada, and the rest of the Anglosphere. After the demise of the British Empire, the USA became the Big Kahuna, but all of the countries of the Anglosphere have been both particularly successful and diverse in their populations. (Not the latter re India, but its colonization by England gave it the rule of law and both a British parliamentary and judicial system.)
Yes, people from all over the world have come to the countries of the Anglosphere, but it’s the British foundation that has made those countries—with the USA, for the time being, still the top of the heap—what they are.
So, on this 4th of July—I’m flying the American and Canadian flags at the front of my house: my great grandmother and best friend were/are Americans—as a Canadian, I say both God save the Queen! and God bless America!
Hi, lookout;
I’m not discounting you or your country at all, just trying to add to the discussion; Simply my point of view.
As far as diverse, Canada has significant sections of French, Eskimo, and Indian. But, I never see news of them attempting to overthrow your system of government for their own advantage.
I have to confess I am arguing from a disadvantage of not being knowledgeable of much of Canada’s history, but, I was asserting that the combined Gross Domestic Product, per capita income, and military/industrial complex of the United States has risen within a “time frame” that no other country has been able to duplicate.
The Anglo-Saxon ethic including a symbolic greater being has absolutely been a significant element of the foundation, as is the case in just about every society that I know of. Some societies have built themselves around a superior being, such as Islam.
The United States has attempted to keep the religious aspect of life separate from the governmental entity in, as to date, a successful manner. And as far as Great Britian is concerned, they have had revolutions within their country as lately as Thatchers reign. (Well documented in “There Is No Alternative”, by Claire Berlinsky).
As far as I’m concerned, the path the U.S. is on, is in competition with France at this point in time.
Indeed, good neighbor; God save the Queen; God bless America; God bless us all. We’re going to need all the help we can get.
American exceptionalism resulted from our Founding Documents that said the Power resided with The People. Those documents specifically limited the power of the central government and they abolished the Divine Right of Kings. Those documents gave rise to “everyman” and that unleashed unimaginable innovation, creativity and prosperity. If you saw the need for a bridge then you built the bridge, if you saw a need for a building then you built the building. Now either task requires 20 years of environmental impact studies and countless bribes (oops, that should read “political contributions”) before your permit application is rejected.
American exceptionalism has been dead for quite some time. There is some hope as we’re still in the early days of “The Age of Bureaucrats” but, as Roger says, the window is closing and that window has a guillotine edge. Once it fully closes we’ll enter the “Dark Ages of Bureaucracy” and experience centuries of “bad luck”.
2010 and 2012 are close to if not THE two most important elctions since 1860. IMHO we are at a critical intersection in history. Down one road is the hell of socialism and eventual fascism. Down the other is a return to the rugged individualism and personal freedom that made this the greatest country on earth. Choose wisely in November.
It’s ironic that you write this article today (for me). Just yesterday I said this could very well be our last Independence day given the (not so) progressive vectors propelling us forward. America is all about independence, both personal and as a sovereign nation. That all appears to be changing. The supreme court seems to have asserted that fact with its latest rulings favoring the state. My change in perspective came about 12 years ago, and since then the inconsistency within the progressive narrative has gotten ‘progressively’ pronounced.
Happy Independence day to you and yours. Wear it proudly.
“In the worst economy since the Great Depression, it’s hard to believe roughly half our fellow citizens still favor the incumbent. But they do.”
They did in 1936, too. The Roosevelt Empire- start with either Teddy or Franklin- has lasted about as long as most.
Nonetheless, it took thousands of years to get here.
I ain’t ready to burn it all down just yet.
I find it strangely comforting to just shake my head and say-
“Tsk. It’s a wicked, wicked world.”
We still live in an age of miracles.
I am so fortunate to have been born and live in these times.
(Thanks, Mom. Thanks, America.)
We were young in the Golden Age!
Quitcher bitchin’, boys. You are still above ground!
“Quitcher bitchin’, boys. You are still above ground!”
Great quote.
Despair is a sin.
“American exceptionalism”
It’s a term I don’t recall hearing much, if at all, before the last decade or so.
I thought (think) it off putting too, as in bragging.
But I do recognize America as a beacon of liberty.
I don’t know whether or not I’m spreading propaganda, but…
Measured by many of the DHS parameters, I am a terrorist
It’s sobering, if not chilling (2 clichés in one) to think that Obamacare has now been reinforced in all 3 branches of government, legislative, executive and now, of course, judicial.
We were the “window to the world” because we served as the polar opposite to oppression and control. That is why it was so important to eliminate that example from world. Once removed there is no example to inspire the oppressed and dominated.
I’m calling it <strike>In</strike>dependence Day.
Our Prez lived in Indonesia up to the age of ten and his ideas about America formed and gelled in his mind. What he learned in Indonesia was blatant anti-Americanism. That is why he is anti American and does not believe in American exceptionalism. His upbringing as a Muslim in those formative years did also play a very strong role in forming his ideas about America.
He is now what he was way back then!!! What else would you expect from Mr. Teleprompter?? Alas, the naive Americans couldn’t see through his facade and even now they refuse to see what he really is!! that’s the travesty of America
Roger, you understand the situation very well and have written an excellent essay. Especially your next to last paragraph. Happy 4th!
i see American flags flying from houses that have obama posters up adjacent. i hear people i know are supporters of this known marxist talk about American patriotism. i see people wearing our country’s uniform brag about voting for this registered socialist; and, i watch as once honorable people vote contrary to their sworn duty to uphold the constitution.
if you don’t mind i will stay home this Independence day. being in the company of such traitors to our country and betrayers of our forefathers is nauseating. having to act in a civil manner to downright racists who voted for someone to destroy our country based on his race asks too much. personally, the stench is just too much in such heat. “A Bridge Too Far”, if you will.
I always tell my (fully indoctrinated) angry young students that American exceptionalism refers to the principles of our founding. Never before had a nation been conceived that located all the power of governance with individuals and not a monarch or an overweening state.
Yes, sometimes we fail to live up to our Constitution, but we are free to correct our course without bloodshed, and we usually do. In a world where life is usually nasty, brutish and short, it’s a miracle, a two-century miracle.
Actually the Dutch Republic was conceived in similar circumstances; throwing off the yoke of the Spanish crown, establishing a citizens republic in which aristocrats played a minor role, beating the English at sea, and going on to dominate world trade and banking for a century. The comparisons are there, but no one studies history anymore.
My dear friend, Roger…you and I are so similar. You are a bit my elder, so I bow to your additional years of experience.
I did not lean as left as you, however, if I saw wrong…I was against it. The politics of wrong never had an attraction for me. It still doesn’t.
Today, I will write the founding document for the New America. The Disunited States of America. We are such a divided people. There are those who are staunchly in favor of free market democracy, the rules and regulations that monitor our representative self-governance and hold fast to the checks and balances on power over …we, the people…who still believe that we…not an abusive dictator and his lackeys, minions, toadies, flunkies and appointed czars should run this land of ours.
We, the people, who believe in American exceptionalism without apology or false modesty. False modesty is true conceit. Going around apologizing for our monumental accomplishments and great deeds, is the greatest conceit of all. As if some dictatorial pissant could speak against an entire nation of greatness as the heir to its heroism, and wipe it away in a smug and pedantic wave of his hand.
We, the divided people of this nation who stand astride of its intentional pursuit of greatness, honor and integrity and the surrender of it, do not have an easy path. A government that has turned against itself and its people is the hardest enemy to confront.
Today, we can recite the Declaration of Independence with a hand over our heart and displaying a flag proudly, or we can drop our hands in front of us, fold them and declare that the “wrong kind of patriotism”, the new “patirotism” is to bow to the authoritarian iron fist of absolute power, corrupting our nation absolutely. It’s a choice, but not a simple or easy one.
Instead, we can recite the Declaration of Interdependence. Let us announce our surrender to the totalitarian regime. We may do so as follows:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the One World, we hereby surrender our separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, in fact, God has no place in our society, we officially separate ourselves from any and all faith-based beliefs.
We no longer hold any decent respect to the opinions of a certain kind of man, and that abject disrespect requires that we should declare the causes which impel us to this separation from our former way of life.
We hold these truths to be self-absorbing, that all men are created equal, but that some are simply meant to be put upon, that they are endowed by Green Nature with the instinct to obey their betters, that being followers by Nature they will bow, crawl and kneel in the presence of Authority.–That to secure this fealty, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their absolute powers from the surrender of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes complete of these ends, it is the Duty of the People to observe and exalt it, and to institute no new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their communal surrender to its might. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments so established should not be resisted for there exist no just causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their obedience, it is their fealty, that shackles them to such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future mandates of behavior, purchase and property–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present Fabian Socialists is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations of power, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
We, the People, hereby surrender to an Imperial Tyrant who:
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good, trampling our most sacred trusts in our founding documents
.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them to control our borders, secure our safety and provide for our national defense.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only, subjecting them to the indignities of lawsuits and threatening to turn them over to world bodies not consistent with our sacred devotion to fairness, integrity and human decency.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures, has passed massive usurpation legislation without it being read, presented to the people, under false pretense and has taxed the people with a Bait and Switch technique beneath the contempt of a civilized nation.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people, rendering no budget for the People to witness and abide, calling for recess appointments when no such recess was in fact, existent.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within, through orchestrated recalls, failure to secure polling places from armed and uniformed threat of violence, failing to allow military personnel to participate and the failure to protect the voting rights of our citizenry.
He has endeavoured to prevent the securing of the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations legally hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of goods, services and identities in these Lands to a level of unsustainability.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers, thumbing his nose at the third branch of power, if they do not bend to his will, having his lawyers present arguments contradictory and in full apposition to the issues as they were presented to the people and by running a Department of Justice in a non-race neutral fashion, preferencing certain creeds, colors and bloodlines of one class of person over another.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries, by holding a litmus test for their selection, in which they denounce our Constitution and abrogate precedence for the replacement of his will alone.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance, calling them czars and czarinas and circumventing the natural order of selection by our representative self-governance.
He has kept among us, in times of war, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures to engage, ordering the placement and action against nations not declared and against individuals without due process.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power, but has deconstructed its funding in a circumvention so complete that it will disempower it by half.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation over us, in an unproven science, so settled merely by executive fiat, and to a global body so corrupt it passes laws merely to harass a nation created to ensure the survival of a persecuted religious people:
For Quartering large bodies of terrorists among us:
For protecting them, by a lesser state, instead of military Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our alliance with allies in key parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent, knowledge or fair representation:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of full knowledge, instead having a Propaganda and Lies Ministry deprive us of truth, giving us distortion instead:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences in the Court of World Public Opinion:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has deprived us of our natural resources, plundered our ability to provide for our independence from our seas, ravaged our industries, burnt our savings and
Treasury, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of Occupiers and Union thugs to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken to protecting the streets in exception to the abolishment of their right to bear Arms, yet has run guns to drug cartels which use them against our Country, to become the executioners of our friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless gangs and drug cartels, the OWS occupiers, and has given license to terrorists, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions, waged against civilians, which he has reduced to merely petty crimes and misdemeanors.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Democratic Party brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here and how the rules governing such must be upheld. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representative self-governing People of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to completely surrender to the Small C Communists, we are no longer Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the unity of these states, and that all political connection between them and the State of a previously free People, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that we surrender as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce Clause abuses, and to do all other Acts and Things which Interdependent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine rejection of Providence, we mutually surrender to our RULERS our Lives, our Fortunes and our WE HEREBY DISAVOW OUR sacred Honor.
We surrender. It’s been a nice run. We are all Fabian Socialists now.
(Or not)
1775 – No taxation without representation!
2012 – No taxation through misrepresentation!
For the first time in my life I am sending money to political candidates. I’m sending money to Romney even though I’m not a Republican(Independent). I’m also sending money to Mia Love and Ted Cruz because their campaigns need funds.
The basic ideas of 1775 should resonate in 2012. They do with me.
Happy Fourth !
Thank you for this wonderful forum !
Excellent column !
And if the orcs will try to close the window…we will open it again. And again. And again.
Red coats or red flags of the commies, it doesn’t matter.
Freedom is a permanent revolution. The totalitarians cannot hang or put in a gulag all of us all the time, the fire will be reignited, always.
That’s why the totalitarians are always so angry. They know they can’t win.
You only have to go on the leftist blogs to gauge the ignorance, cultivated aggression, and mindless support for politicans and policies damaging to Normal People and just as much to themselves. It took years of poor education, a twisted media, and finally the internet, to bend tiny minds to work against their own constitutional and historical interests. And they hate us ! There is a destructive strain in human nature, it will get worse. You have to wonder about the 2012 elections, if they happen.
In 1775 there was no meaningful polling. There was no internet, no telephones, no cars, and it took way too long to reach a representative sample of the people. If they could have been polled, I’m pretty sure a majority of colonialists would have voted to remain British subjects. For the minority that cared, it didn’t matter. For them, the situation was intolerable. They voted with their actions. Now is different. We can be polled and vote. If voting fails, we can also act to redeem our country. If we are equal to the task.
firecrackers? in california?
i’m surprised they havent outlawed matches and lighters and flint yet
while everyone else gets the good stuff we are left with “safe and sane” wimp fireworks – and this is in the few cities which still allow it
serenity now
We should be flying our flags at half-mast today.
Roberts betrayed us.
Hussein enslaved us.
Americans cried
When liberty died.
(No time to read comments today and hope I’m not being repetitive).
You wonder how exceptional America is ? Just count the number of graves of American soldiers around the world. How many of those countries would come to the aid of the USA resulting in a like number of graves ? Few if any.
Thanks to John Roberts we now have all 3 branches lined up against the most exceptional country in the world. We now have but two classes: those who are politically connected, and the rest who are not. I am proud to be part of the second.
Happy 4th of July to the diminishing 50% who pay the bills.
I expect to see the new calendars with the 4th of July in regular print, and August 4 highlighted as a holiday deemed by Obama’s Congress next year.
Who’s gonna tell him no?
Reading a sad book called “The Fear” about the destruction of Zimbabwe under the wicked Robert Mugabe. I hate to even think it but Obama I think has that gene, of evil corrupt African despot. The institutions that restrain him are crumbling under constant assault in plain sight. I think beyond the esoteric , it is possible we won’t have many Independence Days left literally. What crisis would push us into totalitarianism is the question. I hope I’m an alarmist and wrong.
I think has that gene, of evil corrupt African despot.
That hokey collection of lies & misrepresentations, Nightmares From Dad, might have been alternatively titled Genes From My Father.
The guy is such a complete charlatan, it’s shocking the number of Americans who either don’t see it or don’t care.
Beyond restraint, it takes people who are willing and able to carry out such orders in order to permit them to occur. He does not, as yet, have that degree of control over the military.
I once read that the American Revolution had 30% public support at the start. (I don’t know who took the poll, maybe gallup:)But, as a vet married to a Daughter of the American Revolution, I’m not worried. Truth will prevail. Patriots are awake and ready. So, cheer up. Bring it on.November 6th I mean:)
Well, let’s try to see things in perspective; and this Jefferson quote should help:
“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
I see this as the political equivalent of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
In this respect, I am afraid, America has not been exceptional: government is gaining ground; but Jefferson seemed expect it.
Still, look at the Tea Party: where and when in human history have so many ordinary people got organized to peacefully fight, not government, but the growth of government? I am optimistic.
On this upbeat tone, I wish you all a Happy Fourth.
I’d also like to suggest that a special page could be set up where we could “comment” our best wishes to all the PJM staff.
In the absence of such a page this comment will have to do for me.
Roger,
Let me tell you why Americans are exceptional. Recently someone said, Europe is in trouble, because while the lazy Europeans stayed home the adventurers/risk takers left for America. And this is true for all emigrants coming to America. I know I’m speaking from a experience. What’s make Americans exceptional? is the thirst for a better more fulfilling life. Taking changes on to the unknown, being free to make ones dream became reality. Those of us who lived in not soo free socialites know what it means to be exceptional, more than native born Americans. Happy birthday dreamers and make your dream a reality. November is your last chance.
Unfortunately for America, not all, but too many immigrants come to our country expecting a hand out, not a hand up. They are promised all our freedoms and many of our benefits before they are even legal citizens. They are swelling the ranks of a country of independence to one of dependence, as one commenter pointed out above. In addition, I believe many of our immigrants are terrorists coming up through Mexico.
Don’t blame the emigrants, blame the native born Americans who allowed dependency that leads to modern day slavery. If you are stupid enough to throw your money away someone will pick it up. As for terrorists coming in again blame the Native born Americans. CLOSE THE BORDERS ENFORCE THE LAW
It’s both. As I said, not all immigrants, and I’ll add not all native borns, but too many of both. We can’t seal our borders because the Left we’re complaining about won’t let us. Arizona tried, but it’s been declared illegal to enforce the law.
Everyone’s bemoaning “Where is our Reagan?” I do believe God sent us Sarah Palin, but the dumbass media viciously attacked her, and we lost our nerve to support her.
Keep in mind Ronald Reagan didn’t get instant acceptance either. It was a while before we overcame our media-induced aversion to him as well. Even in the year he was nominated. But we did it! ^_^
So there’s no reason to think Mrs. Palin will not end up as our nominee in a future election as well. After all, I sure plan to live beyond this election and I hope that you do as well. ^_~
Agree. She was, and remains, the best person out there.
The problem is – she declined to run! I hate to say it, but that’s on her.
I truly believe she thought it was better for the conservative movement to be an outspoken loose cannon rather than a damaged (by the dumbass media) candidate who is a lightning rod for ridicule. I happen to think she was wrong about that, but I can’t fault her. She doesn’t seek power for herself. She seeks to return it to the People. Reagan would have loved her.
I love her too. She represents everything that used to be good about America. And it’s a testament to how degraded we’ve become that the Left has been able to demonize her so effectively.
It won’t be easy to dislodge Obamacare, impossible without unbreakable majorities in both houses and the presidency.
A point made by an infamous radio personality yesterday, when the chaos and the expense kick in, January 2014, that will be just fine with a president “re-select” Obama.
An excuse to call for more government oversight, more regulation to “fix” Obamacare, thus serving the only operable objective of this cabal, growing government, extending control & diminishing individual freedom.
Happy Fourth to my sanity checkers at PJM !
PRAYER TO OUR FOUNDING FATHERS
WE BEG YOU TO INTERCEDE TO THE SAME ALMIGHTY GOD, TO WHOM YOU PRAYED TO SAVE THIS GREAT COUNTRY FROM PERIL.
THE DEMISE OF YOUR COUNTRY IS VERY NEAR AND WE NEED YOUR HELP.
PSALM 109:8 HAS NEVER BEEN MORE TRUE THAN IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2012. LET HIS DAYS BE FEW AND LET ANOTHER TAKE HIS OFFICE.
PLEASE HELP US SAVE OUR UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
IN GOD’S NAME, WE PRAY.
Happy Dependance Day everyone..
another day to take my flag and hang it on the front of the house and wonder why I bother.
I’ll give it a few hours and go count flags in the neighborhood… another disappointment awaits.
We have gone full circle from a nation that resists a tyrannical government to one that welcomes the fundamental transformation to a tyrannical government.. that is because the people of the 1700′s grew up under the oppressive rule of the monarch and knew what it meant, this generation assumes that precious gift of freedom bought by patriot blood is their birthright and can never be lost.
so they are willing to pluck the low hanging fruit from the tree of slavery as tho it were inconsequential.
Well the house looks better with the stars and stripes even in the rain I suppose.
I guess we can pretend.
A Happy and Glorious Fourth to all! Hopefully, next year we’ll be able to celebrate the rebirth of an America more like that envisioned by The Founders but just in case we’re not, I’m off for a flightseeing trip to Mt. McKinley today just in case flying over and around our “wilderness crown jewels” gets banned by our betters when Comrade Obama is given more flexibility.
Time will tell if 2010 was the tipping point.
I was hoping that America had once again flirted with statism and didn’t like what it saw, then acted accordingly. My hope may have been short lived – America has not only grown weak, but fickle.
It took 40 years to get into this mess. I figure it will take two generations to get out of the mess. One election is only a start. We need desperately to fight the good fight differently than we are now. We need to destroy public education and remake it. We need to clean out our churches and synagogues of the filth that rots its core. We must hold activist judges accountable and remove them where necessary. Our social norms more resemble utter depravity. Hollywood and other various forms of entertainment do not deserve our support.
And I’m not convinced the pain has grown so great that we have the stomach for that yet. Too many of us have grown too comfortable to chance that it might take much greater sacrifice than simply attending to a voting booth.
Werewife…”Remember C.S. Lewis’ canny observation that cultures are always on the alert against the very problems they DON’T have in a given era.”
A very apt point. Lewis also wrote about the strength of the human desire to be part of what he called the Inner Ring, and I think that much “progressive” political belief is in fact driven by this factor.
Could you please give a reference for that? the 1st paragraph I men
Snorri…I’m pretty sure that the C S Lewis reference (to cultures being on the alert against the problems they DON’T have) is from The Screwtape Letters. (googles) Yes, that’s it.
“Cruel ages are put on their guard against sentimentality; feckless and idle ones against Respectability; lecherous ones against Puritanism; and whenever all men are really hastening to be tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey.
Thank you!
Say it often David, that is one one of the ten most influential ideas in my political philosophy.
In honor of the 4th of July, I’m going to the shooting range.
So let us make this a Rededication Day: when we promise ourselves and each other and God that we will not give up, and will keep looking for ways in which we can work to keep all the past thinking and fighting in support of the founding ideals from having been in vain.
I will probably post remarks more or less like this as comments on some other blogs where I see similar sentiments of discouragement and apprehension.
So far as the election is concerned, let us indeed do all we can to make sure that President Obama does not have a second term, but never forget that he is not an original thinker. He is merely the currently most important product and implementer of ideas that have been around much longer than his lifetime. If he leaves office next January 20, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will still be the leaders of the Democrats in the respective Houses of Congress and John Roberts will still be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. I agree with Tex Taylor @ 47 that we need to think far beyond the upcoming election, and I hope to offer some further thoughts on this subject soon in another venue.
If we really end up having National Health Care, as it now seems likely, I wonder what was the point of the Revolution back in 1776? We could have just stayed with England and gotten our National Health Service 60 years ago.
Go figure.
Maybe the president will go snorkeling with John Kerry just offshore at Cape Cod and play with the seals……maybe?
Take PacRim Jim’s World Cop Quiz
Does the world need a de facto policeman?
If you think so, which country or organization do you think would best protect human rights?
The God Squad?
Let’s put this in a different light: Our founders were also on a precipice that first Independence Day. They were about to put it all on the line for freedom. Plenty of their contemporaries felt things were pretty darned good, and so why stir up a hornets’ nest. An even larger number of others were not about to turn on Mother England. The founders’ hearts had to be in their throats as they signed the Declaration. But they were certain of the rightness of their actions, and they did not blather on about failing.
Our founders stood on that precipice and did the unthinkable: They proclaimed man’s freedom from man. We have enjoyed that freedom, but now it is under dire threat. Today, the conventional wisdom is that countries come and go, and once they go downhill there is no rescue. I say BULLSH*T. I say we stand on this precipice and repeat our founders’ proclamation of man’s freedom from man–and FIGHT FOR IT again.
NO. MORE. WHINING. Today is NOT the “last 4th of July.” It is our FIRST. Let’s act accordingly.
We the American People are not going to just stand by and let the current occupant of the White House deprive us of the inheritance of July 4, 1776 just because a drug-addled 50.01% of the alleged voting population choses the Marxist again in Nov., or he manages to steal the requisite number of votes. Win or lose he will go.
I was born a free American, I will die a free American.
I will not take the Mark Of Obama.
Thanks, Roger, for writing this article.
These comments are some of the finest and most inspiring I’ve seen at PJM yet.
Our “hope” shall overcome their “dope”.
Agree completely with your article. Romney and the non-tea party repubs may not be the perfect messengers, but they are miles ahead of obama and the dems, who are completely corrupt now. At least Romney looks like he is capable of putting up a decent fight against obama, is mostly saying the right conservative things now, and will also be able to run the exec branch honestly and capably. As for him possibly backsliding on conservative issues, that it what the tea party is for, to watch him like a hawk after he wins, and primary him out in 2016 if he betrays us. I think romney is the type that, if he knows he is being watched, and knows he will get hell if he backslides, will not take that risk. Basically any potential repub backsliders just have to know that the tea party will give them more hell if they backslide, than the dems or the crony capitalists will give in favors if they sell us out.
One thing we need to watch now is not to do any idiotic futile gestures, like these idiots that want to impeach everybody now. Any impeachment now would fail in the senate anyway, and just make us look extreme and stupid. And if we win the election, then obama and holder are out anyway. That does not mean we play nice, we should definitely place holder in contempt For F&F, and should strongly investigate the leaking scandal. It makes obama look bad, and makes it looks like Holder is hiding something (and he probably IS hiding something), and that helps us in the election. But any impeachments now are pure BS. Maybe after a winning election, we can impeach those who we cant just fire, like roberts and the 4 leftist judges, provided we have enough votes to actually convict in the senate, but now any impeachment is complete idiocy. And I think even impeaching the supreme court judges after the elction is an overeach, that will backfire the same way the clinton impeachment did.
Before the issue of impeaching any supremes can be seriously discussed, there has to be a case that one or more of them have committed an impeachable offense. The Roberts decision certainly is controversial but hardly reflective of a crime.
“The leader of our faction is a man who seems reasonably intelligent but conventional in the extreme, a moderate man in immoderate times, an undramatic man in an epoch that it is wildly theatrical in its implications, an era that calls for a Reagan or, better yet, a Washington.”
Wrong! The era calls for a Harper*, an accountant, a rock. To come out of turmoil, you need someone who is universally recognized as fair, competent, careful and hard-working.
If you want innovation, let it be Walker, Daniels or Ryan at the state and municipal level. If you want drama and excitement, let it be private. Justice Roberts had this part right: you need a president that will allow others to prosper.
Conservatives don’t need a hero. They can’t be saved by a hero. If they don’t save themselves, there will never be salvation.
*Canadian prime minister: exciting as Perry Como, determined as FDR.
I am sure Obama cringes at the term, ” American exceptionalism “, as he knows he is neither.
Open your eyes folks – Ellsworth Monkton Toohey is now President of the United States.