Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal ascendancy (James Carville) into a full retreat. Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the “bitter” people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging “to guns or religion or” — this part is less remembered — “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”
That’s a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.
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Updates:
1:44 pm EDT, August 27th, 2010 — The Most Fiscally Irresponsible Government in U.S. History
1:46 pm EDT, August 27th, 2010 — It’s Crazy Day for Democrats
1:47 pm EDT, August 27th, 2010 — Bernanke Signals Fed Is Ready to Prop Up Economy
1:48 pm EDT, August 27th, 2010 — UK economy growth overshadowed by US risk
40 year ascendancy? What did they learn their lesson from the “1000 year Reich”?
Better than pretending REAL intolerance doesn’t exist, which is what a lot of righties are doing right now, even as some pretty blatant statements come directly from their own camps.
Why should anyone have to tolerate idiocy?
In the USA there is fair and balanced Fox to represent both sides of issue. In Canada only the left side of the issue is represented. We need Sun TV.
I still have the disgusting image of Lisa LaFlamme covering for the violent protesters in Toronto at the G20. I was thoroughly disgusted when she was rewarded with Lloyd Robertson’s job a few days later. Something has gone terribly wrong with the decision making at CTV. When you have craig Oliver, Trudeau’s best friend Canada deserves better. Tom Clark in a relationship with Martha Hall Findlay, it is not hard to understand Peter Donolo is exerting such influence.
Liberalism at it’s best is well meaning and idealistic, and oppressively dictatorial at it’s worse, when the ” Liberal Elites ” take over and the system ends up being top down rather than the socialist Utopia of everyone being equal, resources being distributed equally and the Central Economic planning actually working as planned making everyone richer. ( Central Planning never works because no one is smart enough to factor in all the economic variables and human nature ).
What actually happens is a dictatorship of the Elites, and every little detail of life being controlled by some bureaucrat and regulations.
Looking at the extreme basket cases of Liberalism, Socialism and Communism like North Korea: The Presidency or Chairmanship ( Whatever they call the guy in charge ) has become a hereditary leader ( Emperor ) having nothing at all in common with the ideal of everyone being equal and treated fairly.
At some point what we call a countrie’s Government Right, Left, Capitalist or Socialist makes no difference when Government, laws and regulations plus high taxes and unmanageable debt exceed a tipping point: it all can be summed up to TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT and this is what the Tea Party people and a lot of other people are reacting to because they are still free enough to be able to protest.
Re#2: Oh, and Cy: Some may not see racism that is there, and some see racism everywhere, because there can always be some to be found if one looks for it hard enough ! Real racism shouldn’t be ignored but bringing it up in almost every topic to the point of derailing topics by making it only about racism is counter productive.
Not that you shouldn’t bring racism up but please do move on, eventually, to the other relevant parts of the discussions. ( Just my opinion you are perfectly free to ignore it, so I’m not telling you what to do, just my perceptions :^D ).
Actually Cy if you notice I never denied intolerance rather I point out that it resides mainly on the left side of the political spectrum.
Excellent post Jean.
Re #6 – The only “intolerance” you care about is what you perceive to be against Euro-Christians and even there the definition has been rewritten to include any instance where you are not allowed to replace secular laws with superstition or ram your beliefs down everyone’s throats. That is not and never has been intolerance.
Re #5 – It is not logical to scale back pointing out racism if it goes through the roof. And we know it went through the roof as soon as Obama won the Democratic nomination. The same conservatives that would have outlawed his parents marrying, tried to keep his father at the other side of town, and tried to use Southern Strategies against him now have to contend with the fact that he’s in office. Worse yet, they’re in an environment where slurring will actually cause them to LOSE the argument. They’re bitter. I’m not going to pretend I don’t see the veiled slurs just so a handful of posters don’t have to face an ugly reality. Even if I did, the reality would still exist. Some of us don’t have to look in caves overseas to find examples of people who want to destroy what we’ve gained.
Regarding central planning, you may be right but we’re going to have to be honest that free market capitalism will never take over the entire world because for us to have all those cheap goods and “competition” there needs to be people getting paid well below their labour value to produce it. If African miners were paid a fair wage for their labour nearly all of our goods would be too expensive for most people to consider the 2500sq.ft house with an SUV. Walmart wouldn’t have a chance in hell of offering such low prices if not for the Chinese sweatshops. In any nation where underpaid labour exists, there’s going to be a revolt against the market system behind it. Hence, many more failed socialist experiments are on the way, and people will cling to that socialism even if their quality of life is well below that of the west.
Cy “And we know it went through the roof as soon as Obama won the Democratic nomination”
No “we” did not know racism went through the roof but that’s what the Obamarx gang is peddling. However, out of fear of being called a bigot voters for Obama have been slow to now call the Obamarx gang even more incompetent than the Carter regime. But that is changing just like coming out of the closet and voting for Rob Ford is changing, we’re fed up with the political correctness weapon used against common sense.
“we’re going to have to be honest that free market capitalism will never take over the entire world because for us to have all those cheap goods and “competition” there needs to be people getting paid well below their labour value to produce it”
That’s what Marx was counting on. But it hasn’t happened. Because as the writer Tom Wolfe says “it’s hard for workers to be thinking about class struggle when a typical worker is a plumber on his honeymoon with his 3rd wife on a Disney Cruise”
To elaborate, assuming the Obamarx hatred of capitalism doesn’t cause more impediments, it will continue to invest in technology that enables knowledge based workers to leverage productivity gains that allow them to earn good salaries while China still only competes on low cost labour.
Ohh and “African miners are not paid a fair wage” by the Chinese because the Chinese just pay off Mugabe and the tribalism continues there.