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Viewing Progressivism With Perspective Allie Winegar Duzett, November 10, 2009 “To see what is truly afoot,” the Heritage Foundation’s Matthew Spalding argued, current events need to be looked at with “perspective.” “Nothing that is being proposed right now, including health care, is a new idea,” Spalding said at last week’s Bloggers’ Briefing. “These are old, tired ideas that all go back about a hundred years or so. The first time national federal health care was proposed was in 1904; it was in the 1912 Progressive platform. These are ideas that have a pedigree in this country.” Spalding explained that while...

Marching out of Yorktown to surrender, the British Army played the song “The World Turned Upside Down.” As I drive to Mega Lo Mart to make my latest deposit of monopoly money in a Chinese savings account all I can do is mumble the final tag-line of the Wicked Witch of the West, “What a world? What a world?” There’s a massive unspoken problem in America today floating like the iceberg in front of the Titanic waiting to sink the unsinkable ship. Founded by revolutionaries crying “No taxation without representation!” the Republic these revolutionaries devised devolved into a society where...

Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected. To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for...

Roughly a quarter of a century ago, when the manager hired me to a much coveted job in the lowest echelons of management in a reputable corporation, I believed it was on the merits of my resume and real time presentation. It was the easiest conclusion to make, having been endowed with a healthy dose of self-esteem by my farm boy upbringing, reinforced by a series of academic scholarships through college and graduate school. Then picking an “Americanized” name was one of the top three issues he addressed in the job orientation. He opined that most people would find pronouncing...

Thursday, October 29, 2009 dawned like any other day, not too hot, even a little cool. What follows is a tale, befitting the Halloween period. The lid was lifted off of the cauldron, known as The House, in Washington DC. Trusty aides lifted out a whopping 1990 pages of a HealthCare Bill! Jaws dropped. Hands went up in the air. The Good witch from the West (San Francisco), crooned about bringing in a horror care, er healthcare plan that would heal the sick, make the blind see, and put the country further in debt, up to seven generations hence. Oops,...

After giving a talk to a group of family values minded Freeport, Illinois area residents addressing three major threats facing the United States – which I term “The Perfect Storm,” and a solution to a problem that safeguards the US Constitution, I found myself personally and ideologically assailed by a letter-writer to a local newspaper, a Ms. Patricia Wemstrom. I take issue with her critique not only because she mischaracterized each and every point that I made at the event, but also because she wasn’t even in attendance. The critique was caustic and hateful in nature: “I am surprised by...

This is the original manuscript that I submitted to the Crimson White, my campus newspaper. While I understand their need to edit the size of the article, they truncated much of the content that I believe was necessary to explain my position. I know that they could have included it because I was under the 800 word limit. The published article can be found at the source URL. Anyhow, here goes... (Begin) Candidate’s Progressive Views Troubling Gregory Poole I am appalled at the brazenness of State House candidate Susan Pace Hamill’s approach on taxation as quoted in the October 15...

I was doing research tonight for a paper I am working on and this article popped up deep down in the info chain I was looking in. It is the Progessive Blueprint to take over the government in 1996 and gives talking points on the people helping the cause...this is 13 years ago...some of these names look familiar to you? Thought so. The next campaign - http://www.populist.com/11.96.Edit.html Being of the Irish persuasion, I naturally am attracted to lost causes, like the idea of democracy. Still my response to the recent election was: What were we thinking? The only reasonable answer...

Freepers mentioned in video.... CAUTION HUGE SATIRE AREAD: Hitler RANTS about OBAMA Healthcare and Right Wingers LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRvtWEG_vhQ

Self-Evident Truths Held by: Allie Winegar Duzett, October 13, 2009 Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation was the speaker at a recent Hillsdale College event. Spalding is the author of the upcoming book, We Still Hold These Truths, which will be released later this month. Spalding’s presentation focused heavily on America and the conservative movement in a historical context. He began by pointing out that the issues we face now have their roots in the far past—most certainly not recent history. The first compulsory national health care, he noted, was promoted by the Germans in the early 1900’s. “[The Kaiser]...

Making Progress? Writing on the occasion of Ronald Reagan’s death, the NY Times columnist David Brooks articulated the roots of Reagan’s success in as accurate and succinct a way as I’ve seen. Reagan “revolutionized” American conservatism insofar as he transformed it from what had been a disposition to defend tradition and custom – and thus one with an orientation toward the past – to a movement motivated by a deeply optimistic belief in progress – and thus, marked by an upbeat view about the future and America’s providential role in advancing progress. As Brooks wrote, To understand the intellectual content...

She’s Madge the manicurist for the new millennium. Stephanie Courtney, also known as “Flo,” the perky Progressive Insurance salesgirl with the red lipstick, is the commercial break’s new sweetheart. And in an age when the DVR is said to have killed the television pitchman, Courtney is attaining TV ad icon status.

After some real soul searching as well as a good deal of time management planning, I decided it was time for me to get back online and resume doing what I could to show Americans conclusively that rights are lost, curbed, changed, or ignored by the powers that be on a daily basis. Since most of the bad news tends to be the direct result of political machinations of one kind or another, I came back with not only with a plan to point to the relevant stories but to promote and facilitate political activism by individuals every chance I...

The week ending September 2009 and ushering in October 2009, was very eventful, in terms of exposing the diminishing role of the US as a world power. The “sleeping giant,” under its new leadership, has been snoring while dictatorial powers have been partying! Party like it is 2009! China did have a birthday party and it celebrated with the help of its biggest debtor, the USA. “And it is three cheers for the red, white and blue!” Factually, it was light up the Empire State building with the two colors that have come to symbolize repression. Yep, there in a...

"Hear our cry, Obama." "Deliver us, Obama." Video at link.

Big business. Big labor. Big government. These are not entities in opposition but in balance, much like the three branches of the federal government. Each jealously guards its power from the other. They do not argue about acquiring power, but about how that power is divided or shared. Regardless of what any idealist on the Left may think, this is the inevitable ruling troika that socialism requires to govern and function in the future. Whether you choose to label this relationship as fascist, communist or socialist is irrelevant because above all it is totalitarian. Whether you choose to label its...

Try to imagine the 4th congressional district of Georgia. It is a mostly black district represented by second term Congressman Hank Johnson. The district was represented for many years by one of the most celebrated nutcases in congressional history, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. It is a district which proves, if nothing else, that fools and idiots have a right to be represented in Congress just like everyone else. After being defeated in 2002, McKinney served as a member of the 9/11 Commission... apparently under the theory that only another insane person could possibly understand the insanity of flying planeloads of innocent...

The Diversity Czar of the Federal Communications Commission, Mark Lloyd, believes in racial exceptionalism. It is not enough to provide equal opportunity and a level playing field, Mr. Lloyd desires minority supremacy and the control of the media by “social justice” elites. Like the former White House green jobs Czar Van Jones, whose radical statements made him a shoo-in and a shoo- out for the new administration, Lloyd was picked because he lives in the echo chamber of radical leftist academia and adheres to beliefs that are so far out of the mainstream and so divorced from reality that most...

When Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouted, "You lie!" in the middle of President Barack Obama's address to both houses of Congress, his outburst opened up a far bigger can of worms than mere accusations of partisanship or even rudeness. A certain faction on the left took less than 24 hours to insist that Wilson couldn't possibly have been calling the president a liar because he was lying, but rather was calling him a liar because he was black. And in America, despite being some 40 years past the civil rights upheaval that did so much for so many, the "R"...

When are American whites and blacks going to realize that they need each other and stop the damn nonsense of seeing race and racism under every rose bush? Those of us who try to live by the Martin Luther King dictum of character over color, are tired of the games being played to try to eternally divide and probably eventually destroy this country! Today a half black, half white man is leading the US. Not even Hollywood could have written such a perfect script. A president split right down the color wheel, takes over, elected by whites, blacks and every...

Let’s begin by defining epistemology simply as the branch of philosophy that asks this essential question about knowledge: “How do you know that?” That job taken care of, we can turn to the topic of materialists and morality. It’s apparently no big deal to materialists (many of whom proclaim themselves intellectuals of one sort or another), but most of them aren’t interested in asking and then answering the epistemological question regarding their moral assertions. To complicate matters, this problem doesn’t represent just an academic exercise; for materialists disproportionately favor the liberal side of the American political spectrum and therefore exhibit...

Everyone routinely called them the Mainstream Media. Rush now calls them the State Controlled Media. I’ve called them the Mainstream Media, the Poodle Press, and the Lap-Dog Media. Whatever you’ve called them the time’s come to call them irrelevant? Out with the old and in with the new. When news organizations consistently slant their coverage and ignore major stories because they don’t fit their template or further their agenda it’s time to re-evaluate what they are. They portray themselves as objective yet everyone can see they’re partisan publicists for a particular party and a particular radical left-wing of that party....

Some of you know that I used to work in the news media. Maybe it's that insider viewpoint that makes it especially disgusting to me when I see the state of journalism—and I use the term loosely—today. It wasn't so very long ago that news was news, editorials were editorials, and the line between the two was both clear and sacrosanct. Today, there are times I'm hard pressed to tell the difference. Worse than that are the times where the difference is obvious but the labels are backwards. I like to catch up on the news every morning while I'm...

Beginning in the 1930s, during the depth of the Great Depression, Democrats began repeating over and over again that it was the fiscal policies of a Republican president that brought on the Great Depression, that the Republican Party was owned by the “robber barons” of Wall Street, and that Republicans were the enemies of working men and women...the “common” man. It was all a big lie, but for the poor and the working classes, anxious to receive more and more government handouts or envious of those with wealth and economic security, it was a believable lie. It was a poison...

Candidate Barack Hussein Obama promised "Change", and spouted a campaign's slogan pledging, "Change we can believe in." Tired of Washington politics, a majority of American voters went to the polls and voted for that Change. Sadly for the nation, that Change was undefined. Now the nation is learning the folly of electing a president and congressmen on the basis of an undefined catch slogan. The Democratic Party now assumes they have a blank check to impose their will on the American voter. Too late we are finding out what that promised "Change" really is. Obama has certainly lived up to...

Obama News- Progressive Oppression of Blacks and other Minorities- the proof and the solution- #obama #news 16. September 2009 by admin. Obama News- the Progressive Slave Machine- the death of minorities under progressive oppression http://bit.ly/12diiy #obama #newsplease RT this if you are on Twitterfrom the article..Empowered Blacks will do what empowered blacks have always done, lead, right beside the rest of the great peoples of America. Rise up against the progressive slave machine. Beat back the Uncle Toms and slave merchants that rule your cities with ruthlessness.Form your own parties. Do not rely on outsiders, though let us help any...

The American people, left and right, by and large opposed TARP, seeing it as corporate welfare with numerous government strings attached. President Bush persisted and both candidates McCain and Obama rushed to Washington to vote the monstrosity into existence. What was transparently obvious was that no politician gives anyone money without expecting something in return, whether it is direct remuneration, influence or political support. Healthy banks were forced to take TARP funds and not allowed to repay them since that would sever the government string attached to that money. The American people, mostly from the right but with some from...

Off Their Meds, Installment 6,432. Tommy Friedman was allowed out without supervision again and managed to produce and another stunningly oblivious assessment of the world as he perceives it to be outside of the Manhattan Media Bubble. Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. The only logical place to go from there is to indict the one party in a Democracy that's got too much power,...

Just had this e-mailed to me from Progressive after I along with my entire family got rid of every policy for Progressive Insurance when they pulled out of the Glenn Beck show on Fox. Dear __________,Recent media reports have created the incorrect impression that Progressive pulled advertising in response to specific comments made on The Glenn Beck Show, but that is not the case. The fact is that we did not intentionally place any of our advertising on the show, so when we learned that our ad had aired, we corrected the error. Our goal is to reach a broad...

Ten days ago, the Los Angeles Times published an Op-Ed by an Israeli Professor from Ben Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). The article called for a boycott of Israel. It was neither on the front page nor written by a known anti-Semite, but the community is up in arms. Suddenly, the local Jewish community in Greater Los Angeles finds the message delivered daily by the Los Angeles Times unpleasant. I say suddenly, but over the past three decades, there have been repeated calls to cancel subscriptions and withdraw advertisement dollars, to very little or no avail. The Los Angeles...

In deference to those on the radical left who may never open the pages of a Bible, the term “Land of Nod” is taken from the Book of Genesis and refers to that locale as a place of sleep. Truly, Americans were in the Land of Nod during the many months of the previous presidential campaign. They had to be sleeping to have allowed such a radical and destructive administration to gain power. When the army of the far left marched into Washington last January, they were already in friendly territory. A Democrat-Socialist majority in Congress, willingly assisted by the...

The Lefties are at it again. Having completely destroyed that fine word, “liberal,” along with the enlightened 18th century sensibilities that went with it, they have now moved on like locusts through the lexicon, and want to be called “progressives.” An astonishing number of conservative commentators are going along with it. Not me. It is always easy to point out the flaws in liberal ideology so big you could drive a truck through them. But recent events keenly expose the utter absurdity of referring to liberals as “progressives.” The policies they advance, the behavior they display in support of them,...

Stating the obvious passes for folk wisdom in remote tribal areas such as the Southside of Chicago and since we now live in the Chicago-on- the-Potomac perhaps we should start to take some of this obvious wisdom into account. Take statistics, here is a science that’s used to make judgments and to justify actions. And what’s statistics just numbers and what’s in a number? And as the Chicagoism goes, “Figures don’t lie but liars figure.” How does this help us understand our new Omerica? Contrary to popular belief as nurtured by the Mainstream Media, President Obama is not the most...

Watching the seemingly endless line of people parading past the flag-draped coffin of the late Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy, one wonders what it’s all about. Yes, liberals and Democrats are fond of conjecturing about “what might have been” had JFK and Bobby Kennedy not been assassinated, or “what might have been” if Kennedy had not driven his mother’s Oldsmobile off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island that fateful night in July 1969, killing Mary Jo Kopechne in the process. For most objective observers the attraction of Ted Kennedy will always remain a great mystery. Throughout history, those men and women whose...

Regarding the current healthcare debate, it is inarguable that to cover the entirety of The Bad and The Ugly alone, one needs to write more pages than those that make up the bill Obama et al. have been incubating in congressional backrooms where something else having to do with chickens is produced by the tons every day. What to do, then, except to conscientiously limit this piece, an endeavor that not only gives emphasis to a few very important details but also displays a keen sensitivity to politicians so brutally overworked that they can’t find time to read bills they...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The young senator inspired a new generation of voters with his message of change and extended America's hand to the global community in an effort to promote a different kind of diplomacy. One magazine characterized him as having a "quick charm, the patience to listen, a sure social touch, an interest in knowledge and a greed for facts." A biographer recalled that he "had to touch the secret fears and ambivalent longings of the American heart, divine and speak to the desires of a swiftly changing nation -- his message grounded on his own intuition of some...

Let me put it to you straight: We desperately need to raise $90,000 in the next two weeks to keep going. We’ve got no money in the bank, and we have payroll to meet on August 31, and our printer to pay, and other creditors hounding us. We’ve got to shell out $130,000 in the next two weeks, but we’re only expecting to bring in $40,000. That’s why I urgently need your help with a tax-deductible donation by clicking here. Please be as generous as you can. The Progressive is a nonprofit, legally and all-too-literally these days. Aware of our...

The liberal wing of the House Democratic caucus is launching a counter-offensive to efforts by the White House and Senate Democrats to back away from a health care reform bill that includes a strong public option. Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., who heads the 84-member House Progressive Caucus, said she sent a letter to Heath and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius telling her that her faction will not support a bill that does not include a "robust" government-run plan. If most of the Progressives stick with Woolsey on the threat, the House would be unable to pass a final health care...

Once an entitlement program is started it never stops. It never shrinks. It never stands still. It always grows. According to the Mainstream Media it’s merely rightwing spin to say ObamaCare is meant to become a single-payer one-size fits all public option. However, President Obama’s own words easily found online plainly tell us this is his goal. When the Best-Congress-Money-Can-Buy returns they’ll pass something, calling it Insurance Reform until signed by the Commander-O-Chief when it becomes National Health Care. It’ll start small and grow. This is merely the beginning of the re-making of America. Then comes Cap-N-Trade, mandatory pre-K, paid...

Four Democratic senators want to put off the proposed cap & trade legislation. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad both of North Dakota are urging the Senate to delay legislation that puts caps on greenhouse gas emissions and instead, pass a narrow bill that sets requirements on the use of renewable energy. Senators Lincoln and Dorgan are up for re-election in 2010 and are from states that would be hurt economically from a cap and trade bill similar to the one passed by the House in June. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid...

Mind you, this is a guy who beat Hannity — a show that airs in primetime — in both total viewers and the demo last Friday at 5 p.m. Every last one of these advertisers is simply biding their time, wondering how long they have to wait until nutroots wrath is appeased and they can start advertising on Beck’s show again. I give it six months. Less if Greta gets dumped and GB ends up moved to 10 p.m. Twenty companies have pulled their ads from Beck’s show in just the last two weeks. The moves come after the Fox...

<p>Glenn Beck fans are fighting back against a campaign led by a black activist organization prompting major advertisers to withdraw from Beck's top-rated Fox News Channel program.</p> <p>Now a husband and wife team of Beck fans has launched a website – DefendGlenn.com – that lists the contact information for advertisers for Beck's and other Fox News programs and provides users with information and suggestions to contact those companies to urge their continued sponsorship. The site also asks users to contact Beck's current patrons to thank them for their loyalty to the Fox News star's program.</p>

How is it “progressive” to go back to the days of absolute monarchs ruling powerless subjects? Louis XIV boasted, “I am the state.” But even he did not seek to control what medicines doctors prescribed and what toilets people used. Modern “progressives,” on the contrary, have no limits to their lust for control. Perhaps their motivation is less political than it is psychological. How else can one explain an urge to control toilets?

[Editor - this article appeared in print in 1953] Progressive education is not a new idea. Jean Jacques Rousseau experimented with it in the eighteenth century, but his startling succession of illegitimate children proved too much of a handicap to get his notions accepted; in the nineteenth century a Swiss preacher, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, declared: "We ought to read nothing; we ought to discover everything," and he set up an experimental school to carry out this theory; and an Italian woman doctor named Maria Montessori developed a system of education in Rome which is now widely known as the Montessori...

So “progressive” media watchdog group Media Matters decided to take a shot at CNN’s Lou Dobbs for his interpretation of Barack Obama and congressional Democrats‘ policies: CNN’s Lou Dobbs has touted himself as politically “independent,” and CNN president Jonathan Klein has reportedly referred to Dobbs’ CNN show as “a relatively straight newscast.” But echoing others in the conservative media, Dobbs has repeatedly used his radio and CNN programs to attack President Obama and other progressives, claiming or suggesting that they or their policies are “socialist,” “fascist” or “un-American.” The main thing that Media Matters is ticked about is that Dobbs...

The comparisons between Rome and America are legion. Recently I listened to a Bible scholar declare that Revelation Chapter 18 which has traditionally been associated with a veiled prophecy of the fall of Rome is in reality a direct reference to the fall of America. Google “Compare Rome and America” and it reveals a cottage industry dedicated to perpetuating or debunking the premise. Every segment of American society the church, education, business, Hollywood and main street have been warned that the enemy is within the gates paraphrasing a Roman, Marcus Tullius Cicero who said, “The enemy is within the gates;...

If you are a Baby Boomer you, no doubt, remember the television series Bewitched, starring Elizabeth Montgomery. Ms. Montgomery played Samantha Stevens, a witch who was married to a mortal and who lived in a quintessential American suburb. One of the regular characters – and one of the funnier characters – was a neighbor of the Stevens’, Gladys Kravitz, played by Alice Pearce and then Sandra Gould. An incredibly nosey neighbor, Gladys Kravitz was always just moments away from being able to prove to her husband, Abner, that “something very strange is going on over at the Stevens’ house.” Gladys...

The presidents of Jewish organizations in the United States were craven accomplices to the Holocaust. They refused to support imperiled Jews abroad because doing so would have created controversy at home. As six million of their brethren were being slaughtered, American Jews recoiled into the fetal position. Six decades later, the current American Jewish hierarchy has just visited the White House to demonstrate that while the names may have changed, the cowardice remains. Jewish leaders in America know that supporting Israel requires opposing Barack Obama, which as Hillary Clinton and John McCain learned means being marginalized as racists. It is...

Progressive Carnevale by: Mytheos Holt, July 17, 2009 On July 8, 2009, the Center for American Progress (CAP) hosted their annual “Campus Progress National Conference” at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. Headlining with such speakers as Obama Administration Green Job Czar Van Jones, Daily Show Correspondent John Oliver, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Former President Bill Clinton and featuring panels on subjects such as “Am I Hip Hop” and “Keeping the Faith: Moving Religious Communities From Tolerance to Advocacy on LGBT Issues,” the progressive gathering gave young activists the chance to bond with their elders. And...

It is difficult to discern which civilizations Samuel Huntington was referring to when he espoused a “clash of civilizations.” Those who think he wrote about Islamic civilization on the one hand and the West on the other, make a mistake. There is no such conflict. It is inherently impossible. The events of the latest decades show that the civilizations in question are far from clashing. On the contrary, they cooperate and complement one another. Any conflict assumes that both parties have ideological oppositions, pride, courage, and a desire to fight. If one of the parties doesn’t possess these characteristics, nor...