Joseph Farah, the editor of the right wing news site, Worldnet Daily is organizing a conservative event in Miami called "Taking Back America".
The very name of the event reveals the myopic, absurd, and un-American neo- fascistic mentality of backward thinking conservatives. They think America "belongs" to them. But even more absurd is their gross ignorance of American history and the founding of the country since these are people who want to "take back" something that was never theirs in the first place. In fact everything America is from 1776 to now had to overcome conservatives standing in the way, from the Tories of the Revolution to George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door to prevent black children from going to "white" schools.
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence ( for those conservatives going to school in Texas) called the United States at its inception, a "liberal Democracy".
Not a "conservative Democracy" but liberal.
it was the liberals in the colonies, radical liberals like Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton and Thomas Paine who wanted revolution and separation from England. It was the conservatives, or Tories who were loyal to King George and opposed revolution.
Every shred of progress the country has made, from Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" whose ideas inflamed and began the revolution, to the revolution, the constitution itself to the civil rights act, equality for women, environmental laws and questioning authority, is the product of liberal thinking.
There are no conservative ideas that either created the country, sustained it, or made it better than it was before. None. All conservative ideas have ever done is what they have been doing the last two years -- stand in the way.
When conservatives run the show, the country gets what it got between 2001 and 2008: the 911 attacks because Bush and conservatives dismissed terrorism as a threat and concentrated on reviving Star Wars; the Iraq invasion to defend the US against WMD that hadnt existed in 10 years; the blowing of the balanced budget; a return to record deficits; the blowing of a $ 5 1/2 trillion budget surplus; and the worst economic crisis since the Depression.
The very name of the event reveals the myopic, absurd, and un-American neo- fascistic mentality of backward thinking conservatives. They think America "belongs" to them. But even more absurd is their gross ignorance of American history and the founding of the country since these are people who want to "take back" something that was never theirs in the first place. In fact everything America is from 1776 to now had to overcome conservatives standing in the way, from the Tories of the Revolution to George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door to prevent black children from going to "white" schools.
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence ( for those conservatives going to school in Texas) called the United States at its inception, a "liberal Democracy".
Not a "conservative Democracy" but liberal.
it was the liberals in the colonies, radical liberals like Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton and Thomas Paine who wanted revolution and separation from England. It was the conservatives, or Tories who were loyal to King George and opposed revolution.
Every shred of progress the country has made, from Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" whose ideas inflamed and began the revolution, to the revolution, the constitution itself to the civil rights act, equality for women, environmental laws and questioning authority, is the product of liberal thinking.
There are no conservative ideas that either created the country, sustained it, or made it better than it was before. None. All conservative ideas have ever done is what they have been doing the last two years -- stand in the way.
When conservatives run the show, the country gets what it got between 2001 and 2008: the 911 attacks because Bush and conservatives dismissed terrorism as a threat and concentrated on reviving Star Wars; the Iraq invasion to defend the US against WMD that hadnt existed in 10 years; the blowing of the balanced budget; a return to record deficits; the blowing of a $ 5 1/2 trillion budget surplus; and the worst economic crisis since the Depression.
Maybe some Democratic political strategists should remind people about that when voters have to make a choice about where they want the country to go.
In the 18th century, "liberals" were more like contemporary conservatives. They advocated unregulated markets and use of resources and minimal taxation, especially for social services (which were the responsibility of the established Church and funded by mandatory tithes). For most colonists, the antiestablishment clause meant the freedom to join whatever whacked Christian sect you wanted, the sects that have evolved into the right-wing evangelical churches that blight our political landscape today. It was the Tories who supported worker protection and land conservation (albeit from a paternalistic and aristocratic perspective) and state (i.e Church) sponsored education and healthcare. Certainly some of the founders were Enlightenment free-thinkers (Franklin, Jefferson, Paine; not Adams or Hamilton) as individuals, but to claim them as a group to be in line with contemporary progressive politics (or fetishizing them at all) is almost as revisionist as casting them as Christian conservatives. The American Revolution was primarily an independence movement, not a radical ideological shift. The word "liberal" has drifted so far from its original meaning that I'd personally like to scrap it. I choose "progressive" myself.
ReplyDeleteI agree 110%
ReplyDeleteI stand in complete awe, as I applaud you sir.