The Republican Utopia

[Moiraine]

To summarize, half of the GOP want us to be Russia or maybe even North Korea.

[knapplc]

^^^ Yep

 

[Danny Bateman]

 

I'll just place this here. The only bone I care to pick with this news is this. From a Kid Rock campaign graphic:

 

“I believe if you work your butt off and pay taxes, you should be able to easily understand and navigate the laws, tax codes, health care and anything else the government puts in place that affects us all,” one image read.

 

No. Just no. This is where populism fails. Sure this sounds good on paper. So does Ted Cruz's pledge to let you do your taxes on a postcard.

 

THERE'S A REASON THINGS LIKE LAWS, TAX CODE AND HEALTHCARE ARE EXTREMELY DENSE AND COMPLICATED. We shouldn't entrust any schmo off the street to "easily understand and navigate them." If they could, healthcare and tax reform wouldn't be so damn hard.

 

I'm all for getting people engaged and teaching them basic political literacy. But you can't simplify everything down to an easy to understand form, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a bill of goods.

[Danny Bateman]

I've read and heard a lot of people say Dems need to drop identity politics or they'll never regain relevance. People are tired of being told about -isms and "systemic" something or other, as the story goes, and politicians need to focus on helping everyone instead of elevating specific groups. Certain circles will tell you that Democrats have hemorrhaged the white working class to Trump and that without it they cannot hope to have any significant degree of electoral success.

 

Here's an interesting (and spot on, IMO) argument that Trump is simply taking identity politics in the other direction: he is benefiting greatly from white identity politics.

 

[zoogs]

 

This fall -- assuming he makes it past the primaries as he looks likely to do (http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/14/judge-moore-republicans-alabama-senate-241592) -- Roy Moore will win the adoring votes of hundreds of thousands of Alabamans. At least.

[zoogs]

 

Way To Go, Republicans.

 

And:

 

Edited August 16, 2017 by zoogs

[zoogs]

 

Josh Barro is a former Republican and prominent center-right columnist for Business Insider who left the party in 2016 to register as a Democrat. Read more about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Barro

 

The Left is not happy about even more of this taking hold in their camp. For the rest of us, perhaps a template to follow.

[Fru]

"Pediatricians say Florida hurt sick kids to help big GOP donors"

 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/health/florida-sick-kids-insurance-eprise/index.html

 

That good ol' virtuous GOP. Always concerned about heartbeats and every life mattering. 

[zoogs]

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/buchanan-shameful-defense-of-white-supremacy/

 

I'm glad to see these ideological fault lines rupturing among the American Right. Indeed it seems that it's now come to a point where you must have a very limited set of pretty odious priorities, if you do not repudiate. Buchanan, seemingly without irony, is offering a full-throated defense of white supremacy. So did University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax recently: http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/commentary/paying-the-price-for-breakdown-of-the-countrys-bourgeois-culture-20170809.html. The line is draw in the sand, so to speak. Who are we? From The American Conservative article linked at the top of this post:

 

Quote

It is abhorrent, and must be rejected in the strongest terms by conservatives. If this is where the Right is going, it can go right off that racist cliff without me. This is what white supremacists did to black people in the American South.  And this is the terrorism white supremacists inflicted on black citizens in my own town a few years before I was born. This was really inflicted by white people on black people made, like them, in the image of God. It is a blood-red stain on this country, and in particular on my ancestors.

It grieves me to see a conservative writer and thinker I have long admired, even if I did not always agree with him, descend to the gutter like this. But it has happened, and it is shameful. It is intolerable. He has crossed a bright red line. No, no, no!Conservatives, this is not us. It cannot be us. We cannot put up with this.

 

 

 

[Danny Bateman]

Man, those excerpts from Robertson's original article are LOONEY TUNES.

 

Quote

Looking back over the history of a Western Civilization, which we call great, were not the explorers who came out of Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and England all white supremacists?

 

They conquered in the name of the mother countries all the lands they discovered, imposed their rule upon the indigenous peoples, and vanquished and eradicated the native-born who stood in their way.

 

Who, during the centuries-long discovery and conquest of the New World, really believed that the lives of the indigenous peoples were of equal worth with those of the colonizers?

“All men are created equal” is an ideological statement. Where is the scientific or historic proof for it? Are we building our utopia on a sandpile of ideology and hope?

 

Gross.

[Moiraine]

What happened to those indigenous people was wrong, and I guess he seems to be arguing against that.

 

And the ability of the colonists to conquer them did not make the colonists of a superior race or even superior individuals.

 

Anyhow, all men/women are created equal in God's eyes, imo, but humans place more value in some traits than others.

[zoogs]

Oh look. It's the reasonable, old guard, anti-Trump conservatives in the building.

 

From National Review.

 

[ZRod]

1 hour ago, zoogs said:

Oh look. It's the reasonable, old guard, anti-Trump conservatives in the building.

 

From National Review.

 

News flash: gangster rap is extremly popular with the white kids too, liberals didn't give them guns or life for a third drug offenese, and liberals didn't cut their school budgets.

[TGHusker]

On 8/18/2017 at 8:54 PM, zoogs said:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/buchanan-shameful-defense-of-white-supremacy/

 

I'm glad to see these ideological fault lines rupturing among the American Right. Indeed it seems that it's now come to a point where you must have a very limited set of pretty odious priorities, if you do not repudiate. Buchanan, seemingly without irony, is offering a full-throated defense of white supremacy. So did University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax recently: http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/commentary/paying-the-price-for-breakdown-of-the-countrys-bourgeois-culture-20170809.html. The line is draw in the sand, so to speak. Who are we? From The American Conservative article linked at the top of this post:

 

 

 

This commentary was too important to quote in part.  I agree 1000% with this statement:  If this is where the Right is going, it can go right off that racist cliff without me

The article:

 

I was stunned just now to read the disgusting, racist, indefensible thing that Pat Buchanan has written in his syndicated column in response to the Confederate statue controversy:

Looking back over the history of a Western Civilization, which we call great, were not the explorers who came out of Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and England all white supremacists?

They conquered in the name of the mother countries all the lands they discovered, imposed their rule upon the indigenous peoples, and vanquished and eradicated the native-born who stood in their way.

Who, during the centuries-long discovery and conquest of the New World, really believed that the lives of the indigenous peoples were of equal worth with those of the colonizers?

More:

“All men are created equal” is an ideological statement. Where is the scientific or historic proof for it? Are we building our utopia on a sandpile of ideology and hope?

With that, Buchanan repudiates not only the founding principle of our Constitutional order, but also a core teaching of the Christian faith, which holds that all men are created in the image of God. It is fine to disbelieve in egalitarianism as an ideology and as a basis for policy. Most conservatives do, and most conservatives rightly reject the idea that all cultures are equally good. And it is reasonable to argue against the puritan iconoclasts who would destroy monuments and historical memory in the name of a mindless, ideological dogmatism.

But that’s not what this is. Buchanan is not meditating on the tragic nature of history, as any conservative worth the name must do. No, in this column, Buchanan is defending white supremacy, straight up.

It is abhorrent, and must be rejected in the strongest terms by conservatives. If this is where the Right is going, it can go right off that racist cliff without me. This is what white supremacists did to black people in the American South.  And this is the terrorism white supremacists inflicted on black citizens in my own town a few years before I was born. This was really inflicted by white people on black people made, like them, in the image of God. It is a blood-red stain on this country, and in particular on my ancestors.

It grieves me to see a conservative writer and thinker I have long admired, even if I did not always agree with him, descend to the gutter like this. But it has happened, and it is shameful. It is intolerable. He has crossed a bright red line. No, no, no! Conservatives, this is not us. It cannot be us. We cannot put up with this.

UPDATE: Link to Buchanan column fixed.

UPDATE.2: Mona Charen says of the column:

Jefferson’s words were not a statement of human sameness. Obviously some people are smarter, handsomer, taller, and more athletic than others. It was a philosophical and ethical commitment to the idea that all human beings are morally and politically equal — that they are entitled to respect and to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” just because they are members of the human family. Buchanan asks for evidence, as if this were an empirical question. It’s not. It’s a moral one. A belief in human equality arose out of the Enlightenment and before that from the Judeo-Christian tradition. That tradition teaches that each human is made in the image and likeness of God. This is the foundation of equality. Jefferson, for all his personal shortcomings, understood that, which is why his words have inspired people around the world and particularly in our land for centuries. Buchanan dissents. Just underline this: He is rejecting the American idea.

I’m more radical about this stuff than Mona Charen is. If Buchanan wanted to reject the American idea of a polity based on universal moral and political equality, I wouldn’t necessarily condemn him for that. It would depend on his reasons. Because whites deserve to rule over others by nature of their racial superiority is not a good reason, to put it mildly. I, too, hate the radical egalitarianism of the contemporary Left, but by no means because I believe in racial superiority.

[Danny Bateman]

5 hours ago, zoogs said:

Oh look. It's the reasonable, old guard, anti-Trump conservatives in the building.

 

From National Review.

 

 

It appears that NR just purtied up the classic old Trump line "You're living in Hell, what have you got to lose?" behind a thin veil of conservative "high-mindedness."

 

But make no mistake, this "Democrats get black votes by using plantation politics" belief has existed in conservative circles for a long time.

 

But honestly, who wrote this - the adults from Reefer Madness?