The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

HuffPo Blogger Talks About Liberty Like It’s A Bad Thing

Posted on | July 25, 2011 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

This Fred Goldring rant is a valuable summary of the disease afflicting the Progressive mind: Dear Tea/Republican Party: Be Careful What You Wish For — And I Want My Country Back!
Shorter Goldring:

  1. You need government.
  2. Specifically, you need federal bureaucracies.
  3. If I say that mine is the majority opinion, that makes me correct.
  4. If I clutter a federal argument with local points, I can point fingers at the opposition.
  5. If I claim to confront ‘some actual realities’, and then slander the Founders, that makes me sound cool.
  6. By spinning a ‘demography is destiny’ argument onto ‘Whites’, then I can project a paranoid narrative onto them.
  7. We Holy Progressives gave you a black President to purge your raaaaacist hearts, but, in your fallen Whiteness, you perversely rejected Holy Progress and somehow became more raaaaacist.
  8. Strangely, fear-mongering is an evil weapon only used by conservatives.
  9. If I can build an argument that liberty is against the self-interest of Americans, that will make me sound cool.
  10. No matter how many times I characterize protecting the integrity of the vote as conservatives trying to disenfranchize voters, I still get a chuckle.
  11. The debt ceiling fiasco may be a turning point.
  12. In closing, I must sound a shrill alarm that the end of the Progressive Era nearly makes me wet myself.

Godlring Smitty
If the Tea-Party-dominated, no-tax-increase-under-any circumstances Republicans in Congress do not vote to raise the debt ceiling by August 2, they may finally be granted their ultimate wish to “get the government out of [their] lives” — completely. It is perhaps only then that these ideologues will realize how much of their daily lives are actually dependent on “the government” being able to do the multitude of things it does for “the American people,” and how our free democratic society cannot function without a properly funded “government.” Not a bad opening statement here. It is true that the drunk doesn’t always realize their blood alcohol level. Yes, there is going to be pain involved. But, as an old physical fitness saying goes, ‘Pain is weakness leaving the body.’ Fred writes as though all pain can be avoided if we just pay enough taxes, which pain must be considered a pleasure, one supposes.
It is one thing to continue to spout intransigent dogma; it will be quite another to have to deal with the ultimate reality of the actual damage following through with shutting down the government and ruining our financial standing in the world will bring. The FBI, the FAA, FEMA, the U.S.Postal Service, FDIC, Social Security, Medicare, the federal judicial system, college loans, regulating the safety of food, drugs and our drinking water — are all “the government.” Try living without them even for a few days, and we’ll see how you all feel about having the government out of your life. Fred talks as though funding government services through tax receipts in a way that is, honest, transparent, and answerable to the taxpayers is somehow a bad thing. A likely scenario in all this is that, once the federal government is right-sized per the Constitution, successful states such as Virginia and Texas will truck along nicely, and failed states like California will continue to eat Progressive cake until she chokes, croaks, and elects some capitalist blokes.
I think that just like a lot of socially progressive, fiscally moderate people in America — the majority of people in this country — I say to these Tea Partiers, we’ve had enough of your ridiculous antics; it’s time to stop trying to ignorantly drive our country off a cliff. Yeah, I was probably in the laid back crowd until I read . Goldberg and a few other writers really led a revolution in thinking. Now, one sees through your false moderate pose, Mr. Goldberg. You claim to in the majority: prove it. Maybe the Democrats got whacked in 2010, and have a bigger reckoning afoot for 2012, precisely because your Socialist antics are what is driving the country off a cliff.
The sheer hypocrisy and inconsistency of the various positions taken by the Tea Party are just incredible. On the one hand, they “don’t want the government telling them what to do” and “want government out of their lives.” On the other hand, they want their even more intrusive version of “government” to regulate the choices that women can make with regard to their bodies and lives, dictate whom people can choose to marry, void the ability of workers to organize and collectively bargain, and inject the teaching of solely religious concepts such as “intelligent design” into school curricula. Wasn’t this country founded on the principles of religious freedom and the separation of church and state? Try telling that to potential Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry who is, of course, organizing a huge Christian “Day of Prayer.” I’m sorry: who in the Tea Parties has been for ObamaCare? There is actually some nuance to which you should pay some attention. The Tea Parties are substantially about fiscal responsibility. While there is massive Social Conservative presence, and interest in protecting life itself, in addition to important abstractions such as marriage and liberty, your attempt to characterize Tea Partiers as hypocritical and inconsistent doesn’t wash. Ancient commenter Jesus of Nazareth might have termed you a “. . .blind guide, which strains at a gnat, and swallows a camel.” (Matt 23:24) In other words, when criticizing the federal government, local concerns of producing another generation, and the societal institutions that support reproduction, are tangential at best.
To see how we got here, let’s look at — and confront — some actual realities. The United States is a fantastic melting pot, the first and most ambitious social experiment in human history where people from almost every culture and religion in the world have come together to live, work, co-exist, share — and meld. And on top of that, we now live in a world of ever expanding global communication and connectivity, which will make the world even smaller in years to come. To many this scenario is exhilarating, exciting and hopeful. But, unfortunately, to a large segment of the American population, this change absolutely scares the crap out of them. These people grew up in a country where white Christians dominated the population, and they long for the “good old days” where the Blacks, Jews, Muslims, Latinos, Irish Catholics, Asians and other minorities “knew their place” and pretty much socialized amongst themselves, where pop culture was safe and harmless, and where American life was idealized like a Norman Rockwell painting. These “Whites” controlled everything and life on top was good for them. These States United began as colonies, and delegated limited powers to a federal government. The ugliness of slavery was overcome. The historical fact that the Founding Fathers were white, male, and (some of them) owned slaves does not mean they were raaaaacist, sexist bigots. Unless you’re going to take the FFs completely out of context for some demagogic point. But I’ll attribute your silliness to ignorance, rather than bad faith, Mr. Goldberg.
Then something happened and things changed so fast that it literally caught them off guard. Somehow while they were sleeping, “The Others” had taken over and the Whites were on the fast road to becoming a minority themselves. Latinos took over many of the manual labor jobs that hadn’t yet been shipped overseas, women were holding positions of high executive authority, and brilliant and hardworking Asian, Indians and other minorities were occupying many spots in institutions of higher learning. And the Whites became terrified that their long dominance of all things American would soon come to an end. Hooey. Serving in the military, I’ve taken orders from Americans of all stripes. You’re projecting a vague anxiety onto other people that simply may not exist. Are you, perhaps, raaaaacist? Is it possible that all humans have the same number of chromosomes, and the only people really getting spun up about it are the Lefty twerps like you, Mr. Goldring, who are trying to stoke xenophobia to feed a power base? That’s my guess.
And then, suddenly, the previously unfathomable happened; an African American (whose father was actually an African) with a Muslim name was elected president of the United States. To these terrified Whites, this became the symbolic sum of all of their fears. What had happened to the country they knew and loved and had become so comfortable controlling for so long? Whatever it was, one thing was clear to them. They needed to “take their country back” from the nameless Others who they perceived were taking it away from them as embodied by this interloper Barack Obama. And, as candidate Obama astutely and accurately, but perhaps imprudently politically, recognized, “it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” The unfathomable piece of the 2008 election was that there could be such a brilliant propaganda campaign carried out on American soil. No snark here. I admire the work of the Progressives and their media minions. We have a worked example of how precious liberty is. How fragile. How readily stolen and replaced with an inferior substitute if We The People are not diligent. I get that. I also would have voted for any number of other great Americans: Allen West, Condi Rice, even Colin Powell, if we’re going to behave in a raaaaacist way and require a certain ethnic background as a prerequisite for office holding. In other words, the only way you can avoid the charge of raaaaacism yourself, Mr. Goldring, is to refrain from using it as an argument against legal voters. I didn’t vote for John McCain for any reason other than disdain for the asinine, anti-capitalistic policies of BHO.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party figured out that their ticket to gaining and maintaining their power and influence was to keep people scared with easy to understand oversimplified, dumbed-down sound bytes amplified by loudmouthed talk-show hosts and Fox News. As incredible as it may seem, the Republicans used this tactic and others to get a large part of the American population to vote completely against their own self-interests. And seeking to expand their base, the Republicans embraced the Tea Party and all of their craziness with open arms. As a result, they convinced every “Joe The Plumber” dreaming he will one day become rich that he needs to stand up to the “government” which is going to some day take his hard-earned over $250,000 a year, job-creating, dollars (which, of course in reality he will probably never actually ever make). This is not the worst statement in the whole blog. It seems true that the Republicans are a pack of cynical Ruling Class dogs (try not to notice my linking an article by a writer with one of ‘them Latin names’, as it would diminish the argument that I’m some kind of raaaaacist). The GOP does seem frequently more interested in the party as such than the good of the country. And yet, to paraphrase Rumsfeld, you go into the election cycle with the party you have, not the party you’d wish for. Convincing every Joe the Plumber to strive for a quarter million a year is precisely what liberty is about, eve if one ‘probably never actually ever make’ it. So what? Most people will be quite satisfied to work hard and make $200,000, so long as some slack-jawed Socialist clown doesn’t skulk behind them, calling them a raaaaacist, stealing taxing half of the cash earned to give it to lazy slobs whose chief accomplishment in life is voting Socialists into office to write redistributionist tax laws.
Wherever possible, the Republicans have been attempting (in many instances successfully) to change the rules and laws to make it increasingly difficult for young people and minorities (who by large measure usually vote Democrat) to cast a vote, and they want to use extreme measures to deport illegal immigrants (many of whom have been working hard in this country for years) rather than giving them a path to citizenship. And it seems they have no actual interest in supporting public education reform and financing in this country perhaps because they realize that uneducated are much less likely to look behind their sound bytes, and explore and digest the substance of the real issues. They know all too well that by keeping people dumb, fearful and focused on religion and social issues 24 hours a day, a large segment of the American population can be much more easily “controlled” and thus susceptible to easy manipulation and dependency. (Similar strategies have been used by many totalitarian regimes throughout history). I have voted in Virginia for the last decade. When I vote, I show government issued ID. These arguments about making the vote less secure are simply non-sensical. In fact, this paragraph is so bizzarre that I am left to conclude that it is a ‘tell’; I think that Progressives may have, themselves, been manipulating the vote for a long time. The recent New Black Panther case in Philadelphia is the cockroach on the floor pointing at the roach convention behind the wall.
So maybe, just maybe, we are now finally at a turning point. The debt ceiling negotiations fiasco has now shown a bright spotlight on the Tea Party and their tactics, making it clear that in hijacking the Republican Party, they are potentially taking this country into dangerous, uncharted territory. The Tea Partiers are using honest, legal means to express political will, and you make it sound like a bad thing.
What is clear is that the many moderates and progressives in this country who have been up until now watching the Tea Party and their tactics with bemused detachment from the sidelines may have finally had enough. They are starting to see that it’s time to arise from their slumber before it’s too late and take their country back from these irresponsible ideologues (and the rich corporate titans and interests behind the Tea Party who are backing them). They are driving us right to the precipice — beyond which may lay a place of no return. As an understandably exasperated President Obama has experienced firsthand, the new Republican Tea Party has no interest in governing based on reality or compromise — and the time for trying to negotiate at all with these people is now over. Holy Chicken Little, Batman! You’ve gone from bemused detachment, in your slumber, to refusing to negotiate with these Tea Partiers who, irrationally, refuse to see things your way!

Lord, have mercy on the Goldrings out there, who don’t seem to grasp liberty, but do know how to grasp after other peoples’ liberty through legislation.

Update: Van Jones would be kinda funny. If he was back in Soviet Russia.

Category: Uncategorized

Comments

Comments are closed.