Posted on 12/17/2002 9:24:10 PM PST by Pokey78
Edited on 04/23/2004 12:05:05 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Mark, I agree 100%. In comparison to 1948 we should ask ourselves if: Our education system is better or worse?: How does the homeless situation compare?: How do our health care systems compare?: Is drug addiction higher or lower?: Also the crime rate, how does that compare?: Etc.
Steele does not seem to realize that conservatism has never been a worshiper of "democracy" and the Founders feared it and tried to prevent this country from ever becoming a democracy.
The Neo-cons who get most of the media attention in the name of conservatism are big fans of democracy. Democracy is not the friend of freedom historically and the conservatives who failed to support every aspect of every Civil Rights Bill, Goldwater opposed the '64 Bill, supported the goals but not the means because of the extension of central power that they suspected would follow. In my estimation, Goldwater was right.
It's interesting to consider the following in the ongoing discussion of the 1948 American Society and the election of that year. In '48, segregation was Ok in some states, but abortion, illegitamacy, divorce, premarital cohabitation were wrong to just about everyone, everywhere. Now segregation is gone, which is a good thing, but look at all the rot that no politician dares to condemn.
BTW, I worked in Goldwater's campaign but couldn't vote yet. And I'm proud of it. If the country had followed my lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the last 38 years.
Regards.
I stopped here because I'm TIRED of blacks demanding that whites spend their lives sitting around and examining their psyches for traces of racism. I'm actually growing MORE racist the more I feel like blacks are smugly squirming with the delight of the moral superiority they are obviously convinced they have a corner market on. To heck with them. I think I'm just going to go ahead and accept being a racist, because the kind of groveling butt-kisser you have to be in order to convince them that you are a good little whitey is just not worth it.
Are you guys actually implying that Shelby Steele doesn't see these problems too?
And what any of it has to do with the issue of what to think and what to do about a mediocre Senate Majority Leader that put himself, his party, his President, and supporters throughout the nation, in a worse position through his own big mouth and small brain, well, I don't know.
It's changing the subject. We don't like it when Democrats change the subject, we shouldn't either.
Moreover, I don't think it's fear of the unknown that motivates racism. I think we all know pretty definitively that we do NOT embrace the same values. White Protestant culture as derived from the oldest wave of northern European immigrants (i.e., those who came in the 1600-1700s) is very different from most other cultures. We are individualistic, capitalist, independent, somewhat stand-offish... and every element of that is under vicious attack from the Marxist, Catholic, or Muslim-influenced minorities in this country. And I'm just... getting sick of it. I think many of us have undertaken more self-examination in this matter than most blacks, even Mr. Steele, who seem more interested in examining US than themselves.
And I have to say he was lamenting the lost opportunity for Whiggish Conservatism and not the lost opportunity for purity of Law.
This is also why a suprising two-thirds of this small forum is soundly disappointed in Senator Lott.
Sure there are some that bear a grudge for percieved failures at the time of the Impeachment Trial. There are some who are probably knee jerk afraid of any call of racism by the race pimps as well. But there are plenty, who see the situation for what it is--failure of a politician to lead.
As a young teenager, I was in the YAF and Rallied for Goldwater. I read the books and saw the promise. But I also, over the subsiquent years saw the most strident were sometimes those whose character and motives were not mine.
I heard the black Republican delegate at the Goldwater nominating convention recount the floor rally marchers that extinguished cigarettes on his suit with the elan of poor winners. And hearing it, I knew it for the truth and a sad truth it was.
True conservatism, the Whiggish Conservatism of Burke and John Adams has little to do with the States Rights ascendancy. Never did, and never will.
The conservatives' love of small, local and decentralized government isn't something that simple.
You must remember that you are so involved in the national political arena that you fail to see it for the collection of striving functionaries that most of us in the bulk of the nation know it to be on its normal course. Rightly composed and faced with the critical moment, it is true that statesmanship can arise, but overall, it is a device to be watched rather than pampered and nurtured.
I'm sorry to have seen this happen to Lott. Few deserve such a sorry capstone to a career. But it did and we need to be honest about it in a way that liberals can't be honest about their own. Whatever the Caucus deciedes is fine with me, but in the mean time, I'll not defend poor vision, even if done from too much good cheer.
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