I know a lot of people who believe that.
Posted on 01/19/2005 4:30:53 AM PST by billorites
"I think we have to play the game of authenticity."
Then there's sincerity, and if you can fake that, you've got it made!
They never LOST it. The HEART of America has always been conservative.
This guy is another example of an ivory-tower poser who knows nothing of the real world he supposedly describes. If he seriously believes that "populist conservatism" got its start with Wallace's candidacy in 1968, he needs to step away from the crack pipe until his head clears.
LOL...when I got to the line "Democrat centrists got their candidate in 2004", I stopped reading. That JF'nK is this looney lefty's idea of a centrist is ludicrous. Obviously, he is still under the severe delusion that Howard Dean could have beaten Pres. Bush. I pray that the Dems really come to believe this. They will be extinct in 8 years if they do.
I know a lot of people who believe that.
It's this idiot's smug attitude which is exactly why the Dems have lost the heartland.
The question, on the other hand, that is not asked is what we are to make of wealthy liberals who vote against their economic self-interest by voting Democratic. Of course, we don't really need to ask that question, do we? The Steven Spielbergs and George Soroses and John Kerrys of the world vote leftist because they're smart or insighful or because they care about the country as a whole, beyond their own narrow interests. The notion that the little guy could be smart or insightful or care wbout things beyone his own narrow self-interest is never entertained - no, the little guy votes against his own interests because he's a retarded monkey who's been duped by others. This is why the left is doomed to wander in the desert for a while longer, I think. Any political strategy that starts out with the basic premise that the average Kansas voter is an idiot is facing serious problems right from the start.
the Left's sad devotion to economic determinism is leading them to destruction.
They're constantly saying that we, or their so-called "working class", are voting, mysteriously, "against their (our) interests".
How on earth would they know what our "interests" are? Man does not live by bread alone.
It is precisely because common people have recognized that electing Democrats works exactly against the things that they value most that we are in a period of GOP ascendency.
...about things beyond...more coffee...yes, sir, you betcha...
Big, powerful, controlling government is somehow in the interest of "working class Americans"??? That's why people living under Soviet communism lived such lavish lifestyles.....
Old tiresome rat droppings. These people actually know very little about America, especially Red State America. They spend years studying Sociology and various related subjects, they are studying a country that, thankfully, does not exist.
Please God...Let the Dims listen to this doofus.....
First, we don't have "unrestrained" free-market capitalism.Secondly, the Constitution is not the friend only of tradition but also of innovation which may prove to be beneficial. And it is partly because of the stabilizing influence of tradition that America has been so good at beneficial innovation.
But anyone who thinks that John Kerry is a centrist is patently so far out on the antitraditional looney-toons left that he can think of labor unions as the great new thing of the 1930s - and also as being traditional. In the conceit of this interview, FDR is the founding father of the country.
Just another case of academy Marxism in shabby camoflage. Someday some liberal is going to come up with a new idea but I wouldn't hold my breath until it happens.
I'm going to say it again: people who don't believe in G-d have no business believing that anything is right or wrong, just or unjust. For some reason liberals can see that the disappearance of G-d destroys sexual taboos, but they expect "thou shalt not kill" (and all their "social justice" hangups) to survive intact. Do they honestly think that "science" confirms their ethical systems? Why is the "oppression of man by man" any more wrong in a random, meaningless, purely material universe than the enslavement of aphids by ants?
I wonder if this ****off has the same objections to Black Fundamentalism that he does to that of "white populists?" Will the Left ever make the damands on Black Fundamentalists that they have made on white ones for decades?
And finally, when will Black Fundamentalists notice that their "friends" attack their beloved creationist beliefs? The phenomenon of racist creationism vs. anti-racist evolutionism is one of the most bizarre in history; it could have come right out of a drug dream. What everyone seems to forget is that the whole point of evolution is not commonality but differentiation. Even if atheist evolutionists claim to believe that all mankind is a single species at present, the whole point of evolution is speciation; we all came from a single-celled organism and are still branching off into different directions, which means that if evolution is true, mankind will not always remain a single species.
I wish someone would build a time machine just so jokers like this could go back to the 1890's and preach "gay rights" to the populists and see what their audience's reaction would be.
He wishes the cold war had never happened, or the left had won it. His economic thought is unreconstructed New Deal socialism, if not clear back to WJ Bryan. The economic reality is decisions on resource allocation can be made reasonably well by business (not due to brilliance, mostly just due to incentive) or can be botched by faceless bureaucrats with engineering degrees a thousand miles away. But he thinks everyone can get whatever they want by just voting it to themselves out of the hands of "the rich".
His cultural and political thought is reasonably awake and nuanced. His blind spot is economics. On that subject, he has convinced himself that capitalism is nothing but a con game, because he has seen a lot of ad copy and bubble boosterism. He ignores the real record of economic history, because to him everything is rhetoric and spin. If there are shallow salesmen whose rhetoric is poor, capitalism must be a joke. Not a sound syllogism, but his actual thought process on the matter.
It's not voting against your economic self interest when you vote for the party that prefers tax cuts to tax increases.
What this author refers to as "economic self-interest" means nothing more than send all your money to D.C. and let them dole it out to you as they see fit. IOW, line up at the federal teat.
Bryan? Are you kidding??? Everyone knows that Bryan was a rightwing neanderthal creationist and therefore unacceptable to members of backwater Black churches in rural Mississippi (who are so progressive and intellectual).
Seems to me that times of crises are exactly when it is easiest to organize people into some movement meant to deal (or at least claiming to deal) with the crisis. It's times of calm and prosperity that people feel less inclination to take action.
A true intellectual would at least consider that maybe, just maybe, people in the Heartland believe that they DO vote their economic self interest when they vote Republican. Mr. Franks, predictably, makes the intellectual error of assuming the very point at issue.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.