Republicans? Democrats? Government of the few, by the few, for the few.
Posted by freedomforall 1 month, 1 week ago to Politics
Excerpt:
"One of the most exasperating things about the times in which we live is that it’s hard to discuss them – on account of what R. Emmett Tyrrell of the American Spectator coined the kultursmog. What he meant by that was the way our language has been infested by the mendacious verbiage of authoritarianism; terms that we use in conversation and writing that convey a meaning we don’t intend yet – by using the term – implicitly validate.
“Republican” is as good an example as any.
As in the Republican Party, the party founded by Abraham Lincoln – a man who believed in republican ideas like the abortion fetishists who style themselves “pro choice” believe in my body, my choice – when it comes to anything besides the extinction of the inconvenient lives of others.
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe were republicans – small “r” – in that they were advocates of America as a republic, with the lawful power of the federal government being not much and strictly delineated, the remainder diffused among the individual states and deriving, ultimately, from the people. Whose consent was a necessary precondition.
The full, formal name for them was Jeffersonian republicans – after the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Almost all of the Founders spoke with approbation of what they styled republican virtues – by which they did not mean a consolidated central state with near-omnipotent powers, as the founder of the Republican Party (Lincoln) believed.
The latter turned (by force of arms) what had been a republic into something very similar to the empire of Great Britain – with the main difference being our king is periodically elected.
Is it any wonder Republicans – today’s definition – are so confused about who they are and what their party actually stands for? Is it any wonder that the reach of the consolidated federal government relentless expands under Republican leadership?
Republicans – voters and politicians – talk vaguely about “less government.” Whatever they mean by that. They do not mean less government spending on the military, which has become the standing-in-perpetuity army that Jefferson’s republicans dreaded (this was one of the abuses enumerated by Jefferson in the Declaration). How does one have “less government” when the military is practically a fetish object that consumes more than half of all “discretionary” federal spending? When there has been continuous warfare of one kind or another without any constitutional declaration of war for the past 70 years ongoing?"
"One of the most exasperating things about the times in which we live is that it’s hard to discuss them – on account of what R. Emmett Tyrrell of the American Spectator coined the kultursmog. What he meant by that was the way our language has been infested by the mendacious verbiage of authoritarianism; terms that we use in conversation and writing that convey a meaning we don’t intend yet – by using the term – implicitly validate.
“Republican” is as good an example as any.
As in the Republican Party, the party founded by Abraham Lincoln – a man who believed in republican ideas like the abortion fetishists who style themselves “pro choice” believe in my body, my choice – when it comes to anything besides the extinction of the inconvenient lives of others.
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe were republicans – small “r” – in that they were advocates of America as a republic, with the lawful power of the federal government being not much and strictly delineated, the remainder diffused among the individual states and deriving, ultimately, from the people. Whose consent was a necessary precondition.
The full, formal name for them was Jeffersonian republicans – after the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Almost all of the Founders spoke with approbation of what they styled republican virtues – by which they did not mean a consolidated central state with near-omnipotent powers, as the founder of the Republican Party (Lincoln) believed.
The latter turned (by force of arms) what had been a republic into something very similar to the empire of Great Britain – with the main difference being our king is periodically elected.
Is it any wonder Republicans – today’s definition – are so confused about who they are and what their party actually stands for? Is it any wonder that the reach of the consolidated federal government relentless expands under Republican leadership?
Republicans – voters and politicians – talk vaguely about “less government.” Whatever they mean by that. They do not mean less government spending on the military, which has become the standing-in-perpetuity army that Jefferson’s republicans dreaded (this was one of the abuses enumerated by Jefferson in the Declaration). How does one have “less government” when the military is practically a fetish object that consumes more than half of all “discretionary” federal spending? When there has been continuous warfare of one kind or another without any constitutional declaration of war for the past 70 years ongoing?"
