[ It’s common to hear that “democracy” is synonymous with freedom. ]
Democracy is synonymous with MOB RULE.. yes! by mobsters..
No democracy ever existed that was democratic..
Democracy is a lie.. No democracy was ever democratic..
Thats WHY?.... the U.S.. is a republic..
It is fashionable today to play the sophisticate and cynically dismiss both political parties as not having a "dimes worth of difference between them." But this is a cheap and easy analysis which does not do justice to either party. It fails to indict the Democrats for the Socialists and race baiting demagogues that they are, and it fails to credit the Republicans for their efforts, however inept and halfhearted, to bring fiscal sanity to the Republic.
Whether there is a major rupture or distortion of American politics depends on several factors and we must watch and abide events.
My expectation is that Obama will demagogue both race and fiscal issues right into the election because he really has no other option at this point. The economy is in such a wretched state that he must somehow change the game or lose the election. It is a common understanding that presidents do not get reelected with unemployment numbers in excess of 7.2% and we have an official number now of 9.1% and a practical number in the neighborhood of 20% with no reasonable prospect of reducing unemployment significantly before the election.
Obama look at this and that the gasoline prices and realize that he must change the subject or lose the election.
He will look at the demographics and start with energizing his base. That means he will play the race card to obtain 95% of the 12% African-American vote. He will certainly continue to play the immigration/race card to attempt to get in excess of 70% of the 14% Hispanic vote. Recently, he has pandered to the gays with his rulings in the military and he will hope to garner 80 to 90% of the + - 3% gay vote. They will probably still receive better than 50% of the Jewish vote despite his the trail of America's generations long support of Israel. He will further pander to the women's vote and he will demagogue Social Security and health care to frighten the elderly.
In addition, Obama will have at his disposal $1 billion to spend on his campaign which he will have gotten by cronyism or extortion of American business and by cronyism with American unions. This money will be liberally applied to demagoging the election.
Obama knows his negatives are high and therefore he must bring the Republican candidate down to his level by slinging mud and he has the money with which to sling a lot of mud. So we are destined to have one of the dirtiest elections in history and it will be a scurrilous example of the lowest kind of demagoguery. If Obama can bring the Republican candidate down to his level so that the Republican suffers from like negatives, and Obama can energize his base through demagoguery, the Republic might be sentenced to a final catastrophic episode of Obamaism.
But this is not to say that this political landscape means that we are in a 1860s condition. If we are in such a condition that must be because we are on the verge of some cataclysmic event not because of a general disillusionment with our American political parties. It could be a black swan event which in turn precipitates a fiscal calamity. If that should occur and Obama is reelected I cannot see how America can survive as a land of liberty. Certainly it would not survive if the Republicans do not hold at least one house of Congress.
Since before the last election, I have said that Obama is a demagogue and a potential tyrant. Even if Obama himself cannot marshal the forces to turn America into Zimbabwe, we are facing a demographic tsunami which is likely to prove irresistible within a generation and with this wave of aliens, both legal and illegal, comes a voting bloc with no understanding, much less appreciation or regard for democracy and capitalism.
So I do agree that the stakes in this election are as great as they were in 1860. This is so either because we faced an economic catastrophe or by operation over time demographic slide to the left. So, if liberty and freedom of enterprise are to survive we must not only win this election but we must install a leader who can by force of his vision radically change the course of the country so that all the demographic factors which weigh so heavily day after day against the forces of good can simply be neutralized and, as it were, detoured away. This kind of leader is one who rises to meet the time and it is difficult to foretell where he might come from. We have seen it before in our history as, for example, in 1860. We have seen the country radically change course respecting communism and capitalism beginning in 1980 with Ronald Reagan. We have also seen it go the other way with Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.
Somewhere among us there is the man for the time and we desperately need him to step forward. Is it Paul Ryan? Is it Gov. Perry? Could it be Sarah Palin?
Palin made comments to Hannity on FoxNews about a 3rd party threat if the GOP don’t come around to Tea Party principles but instead continue to do things as usual.
Would that we had a Lincoln.
Speaking of a third party; check out this Post from last night. 192 Posted Comments so far.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2729621/posts
Star Parker isn't predicting it, and neither am I, not quite yet. I'd say there is just under a 50% chance that the voters of 2012 will elect a conservative (Palin, Cain, Bachmann, or DeMint come to mind). If we do, I expect to avoid a second Civil War. If Obama or Romney wins in 2012, that war may be inevitable. The forces of freedom will more likely than not win that war, but I hope and pray that we will get energized prior to the November 2012 election and obtain the same result without bloodshed.
Nonsense!
Nobody, well hardly anybody, at the time argued that a new (or old) state didn't have the right to decide whether to permit or prohibit slavery.
Douglass argued that voters in federal territories during the period prior to their becoming states should be allowed to decide whether to allow slavery. This repealed, in the northern territories, the Missouri Compromise that was over 40 years old at the time.
The discussion became moot when the Supremes in the Dred Scott decision determined that neither territorial voters nor the federal government had power to prevent slavery in any territory.
But new and old states still had absolute power over slavery within their boundaries. At least till the Supremes got around to deciding states could not outlaw it, which some contend Taney and others were conspiring to do.
“No, I am certainly not predicting, God forbid, that today’s divisions and tensions will lead to brother taking up arms against brother.”
Nor am I. They are not my brothers.
I’m hoping it’s more like 1980 or 1984. The left needs to be slapped down and hard.
At least Star Parker could throw me a hat tip.
Like the Democrats of 1860, the GOP is two parties that cannot stand each other in one skin.
Again like 1860, the three-way race between radicals (Obama) and pro and anti slavery Republicans has so much potential for violence after it's over that there will inevitably be Bell-Everett "can't we all just get along" fourth party, with a goo-goo RINO at the top and some non-communist Democrat for VP.
And then...
Ping.
Kind of lost me right there. I haven't seen Pawlenty or Huntsman even come close to Palin, or for that matter, Herman Cain, in any credible poll. Only in a RINO wet dream.
Others have made this comparison before.
I agree. A “real” third party movement, however, will be one that either (1) displaces the GOP (takes over the party’s structure and remakes the party) or (2) replaces the GOP (forms a new party structurea).
Either way, a “third” party works in our system only once it has become popular and strong enough to become, essentially, one of the two MAJOR parties. The GOP, as we know it, either evolves into a true Tea Party or the GOP withers away as the Tea Party advances.
I’ve also been struck by the many similarities of this time in history to the 1860 election.
The Continental magazine of 1862 ran an article describing how the ‘free traders’ of the day fomented the American Civil War.
‘free trade’ is causing a similar division in the citizens of this country today.
I’d say there is more than one reason this election looks like 1860.
Then, of course, the question was can a country “conceived in liberty’, in Lincoln’s words, tolerate slavery.
Clearly he is mixing up things up, the reason for the war was states rights, slavery was the occasion not the cause. The Revolutionary war wasn't about tea and taxes.
Lincoln rejected submitting slavery to the vote, arguing that there are first and inviolable principles of right and wrong on which this nation stands and which cannot be separated from any issue, including considerations of growth and expansion.
More reconstructed history: Lincoln opposed slavery in the territories because he thought the new territories need to be all white. Lincoln was a racist to the nth degree.
A complete lack of parallelism. Worthy of an eighth grade cheerleader. She would have gotten an "A" for it in eighth grade and obviously hasn't progressed.
On it's current course toward fiscal/social collapse, preemption by secession might not be a bad idea and a more peaceful solution.
Not so much for the remaining Liberal-filled states, which would lose their productive citizens and likely end up in fiscal/social collapse anyway.
bring it!