Posted on 05/14/2005 3:33:42 PM PDT by neverdem
The great kings of old were leading their soldiers in the battle. And the rank of the nobility was derived from the bravery in war.
But we live in the times of moneybags:
Rainer Maria Rilke
from Book of Hours
The kings of the world are grown old,
inheritors they shall have none.
In childhood death removes the son,
their daughters pale have given, each one,
sick crowns to the powers to hold.
Into coin the rabble breaks them,
today's lord of the world takes them,
stretches them into machines in his fire,
grumbling they serve his every desire;
but happiness still forsakes them.
The ore is homesick. And it yearns
to leave the coin and leave the wheel
that teach it to lead a life inane.
The factories and tills it spurns;
from petty forms it will uncongeal,
return to the open mountain's vein,
and on it the mountain will close again.
(Translated by Albert Hofstadter as part of Heidegger's What Are Poets For?)
I bet 76 percent of all Republicans believe that, and only 14 percent of all Democrats believe that.
I know plenty of non-poor (is that a word?) people who do not believe hard work, works.
I recently was talking to a coworker (someone who earns about $85K/year) who said rich people should not get social security, because social security was never intended for rich people, FDR just had to propose every body would get social security so it would pass congress.
I answered with two words: Define rich.
He refused.
What is this all about?
You don't have to be a genius to figure out that if most households in this country are massively in debt (net downwards social mobility staved off with plastic) and saving nothing they are one job loss or major illness away from disaster.
They can change this behavior. Being massively in debt is a choice in most cases. Usually a pretty stupid choice. Want out? Sell all of your crap, set up an emergency cash fund, don't ever take on debt again exept for a mortgage. http://www.daveramsey.com/
And I could quote you quite a few scriptures about pride, presumption, a haughty heart, charity in the Christian sense (and that doesn't mean giving a quarter to a panhandler) and being thy brother's keeper. Frankly, I see nothing in the least covetous about working people not wanting free traders pulling the rug out from under them by glutting their labor market.
When household debt levels reach the level they have and savings rated drop to nothing it cannot be attributed to smug lectures about the innate spendthriftiness of the lower orders. It is net downwards socio economic mobility.
Listenhillary, you are what I like to call the Liberty League Republican. The Liberty League were a GOP pressure group formed to fight against FDR and the New Deal. It came off as a swell on a polo pony lecturing a guy on a breadline about bootstrap rugged individualism. It backfired badly.
A dichotomy Lester Thurow once created is very useful.
An establishment vs an oligarchy.
An establishment is like the Founding Fathers. They are powerful and wealthy but with a strong sense of public spirit and civic virtue. They believe in duty and consider the well being of the country as their own well being.
An oligarchy is like a definition I once heard of "upper crust". A bunch of crumbs held together by dough. They are like Brezhnev's nomenklatura and Yeltsin's oligarchs and the Mexican ruling elite and the boards of Enron and Tyco and Global Crossing. The country is just something to be milked for their own benefit. They are parasites who build nothing. Its wealth is something to be drained into Swiss and Cayman Island bank accounts. They are devoid of any conception of duty or responsibility.
A distinction he didn't make is that the sons of an establishment will do their duty in time of war. The sons of Prescott Bush and Joseph Kennedy were in high casualty front line positions. There is nothing safe about being a carrier pilot or a PT boat commander. But as we move away from WW2 the sons of the powerful are further and further away from harms way. The sons of an oligarchy will save their own butts and leave the dying to others. When things go south they will, like Arab officers, abandon their men and hightail it out of there.
FDR did more damage to this country than any other president in our nations history. He terrorized business, prolonging the depression and harming those he was trying to help. He was stubborn socialist that refused to see his plan wasn't working. In 1938 I believe, steel production dropped from 80% of capacity to 20% of capacity all due to his inept handling of the economy. The newspapers of the day started referring to him as a dictator because of his far reaching grabs for power.
You are what I like to call a blind fool who enthusiastically cheers those who have traded security for our freedoms.
A fool who believes government dependency is a compassionate gesture instead of slavery.
Being your brothers keeper doesn't mean taking wealth at the point of a gun with government force. It means practicing individual responsibility and individual charity. Not institutionalized, faceless funds appearing on your government debit card each month.
Sure. FDR was the blundering incompetent who built the majority coalition that dominated American politics for the next 40 years until it was fragmented by the social upheavals of the 60's. And built it so well that Reagan Democrats are still Democrats because they are New Dealers at heart who want their party to junk moral deviance and return to its roots.
He was such a fool that he got elected more that two times. The Constitution was amended because of his success. And the 1950s were the result of New Deal.
Gosh why would I have antipathy toward a place that overwhelmingly votes for upChuck Schemer and Hitlery Clinton? A place whose representatives vote more liberal than MA and CA? Whose voters are so stupid that they love socialism and the socialists they elect. Can't understand it.
You're the one dreaming. The "old grey whore" is increasingly irrelevant as it is continuously challenged and exposed for the liberal propaganda rag that it is. It is taking its place with Dan Blather, the dodo, the network news, and other extinct or soon to be extinct evolutionary dead ends.
Unfortunately, Thurow's analysis would place a large percentage of State and Federal legislators in the 'oligarchy' class.
There is little concern for the common good--but a great DEAL of concern for the Party's good--and, of course, the Friends of the Party.
Gingrich's recent conversion to HillaryCare has more to do with the desire of Fortune500-types wishing to ditch medical-insurance costs than any 'common good' theme. Gingrich, a good student, cannot possibly have missed the lessons taught by Canada's medical system.
But the people most often the victims of socialized medicine are old, infirm, and potential, if not actual, "useless eaters."
Who needs THEM?
FDR over-reached in some areas. But he was handed the opportunity on a silver spoon (that's intentional) by the reactionary right and took it.
The Reagan revolution was NOT about the re-emergence of unfettered capitalism. It was a reaction to the corruption of the Dimowits, who were unknowingly mimicking the Pubbies of the '30's and '40's.
IMO, that's not exactly something to be proud of, considering that the democrats have run Pittsburgh for the last 70 years, and the city and Allegheny county is an economic basket case.
Uh no the economic boom of the 1950's was because America was the only industrial power not decimated by WW II.
I also think the author left a key word out of this sentence:
You've got poor Democrats who oppose the war and tax cuts, but are socially conservative and hate immigration.
Really? They hate ALL immigration?
Are you saying that GI Bill, progressive taxation and other wealth redistribution schemes had nothing to do with it?
So you are for protecting our jobs with tariffs and taxation on imported goods? Americans should pay whatever the domestic market charges for goods to protect American jobs? Or are am I misunderstanding what you are tying to convey?
Yes. Those schemes fell apart as the other industrial nations decimated by WW II had caught up to the US in the 70's.
It was Reagan's cutting taxes that brought us out of the 70's malaise started by FDR's economic policies.
I am. Having tariffs and distinct citizenship are the key elements of being a nation.
Agree with this?
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