We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
The bigger the Big Government, the smaller everything else: First, other pillars of civil society are crowded out of the public space; then, the individual gets crowded out, even in his most private, tooth-level space. President Obama, Commissar Sebelius and many others believe in one-size-fits all national government – uniformity, conformity, supremacy from Maine to Hawaii, for all but favored cronies. It is a doomed experiment – and on the morning after it will take a lot more than a morning-after pill to make it all go away.
No president has behaved in anything close to this manner since FDR in the mid-1930s.\
This president is not Bill Clinton, or even Jimmy Carter; he is not Lyndon Johnson or JFK. He and his administration have broken with America’s trademark political mindset of gradualism and respect – however grudging at times – for the people. So why is the narrative by which his administration’s actions are explained the same one the MSM has used for decades? Why is this administration being interpreted on the same terms as its predecessors, when its actions and perspectives, in both domestic and foreign policy, are so very different?
I’m not sure I have an answer for that. But the outcome is consistent. The longer we go in this presidency, the less relation MSM headlines have to reality. If you asked a random sample of journalists at WSJ what the practical effect of Obama’s “retreat” on the contraception mandate would be, I’m betting more than 50% of them would get it right. The Catholics are still stuck with paying for contraception services. But the misleading headlines march on of their own accord, even at WSJ.
I liked Gerard's post on immigration quite a bit, even said so over there at this place.
I am somewhat dismayed that many of the commenters on his post don't seem to understand that if you give the government the power to round up the mexicans and send them home, some later coalition will be able to use those same powers to purposes they would not like.
And to those who would build a fence with gun towers: I believe you envision those gun towers used to keep people out; I can envision them also being used to keep people in.
I know, I'm crazy that way.
Now, after having dropped that stink bomb in here, I'm off to watch Arsenal down at the corner bar. I'm 9 hours ahead of Maggie's territory, so I won't participate much in the debate.
From the 'Lincoln's Birthday' link, one of the essays, "A Rebel's Recollections", an excerpt:
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Now, in view of the subsequent history of these belligerent orators, it would be a very interesting thing to know just what they thought a war between the sections promised. One of them, as I have said, was colonel of the two or three hundred militia-men mustered in the county. Another was lieutenant-colonel, and the third was captain of a volunteer troop, organized under the militia law for purposes of amusement, chiefly. This last one could, of course, retain his rank, should his company be mustered into service, and the other two firmly believed that they would be called into camp as full-fledged field-officers. In view of this, the colonel, in one of his speeches, urged upon his men the necessity of a rigid self-examination, touching the matter of personal courage, before going, in his regiment, to the battle-field; "For," said he, "where G. leads, brave men must follow," a bit of rhetoric which brought down the house as a matter of course. The others were equally valiant in anticipation of war and equally eager for its coming; and yet when the war did come, so sorely taxing the resources of the South as to make a levy en masse necessary, not one of the three ever managed to hear the whistle of a bullet. The colonel did indeed go as far as Richmond, during the spring of 1861 but discovering there that he was physically unfit for service, went no farther. The lieutenant-colonel ran away from the field while the battle was yet afar off, and, the captain, suffering from "nervous prostration," sent in his resignation, which was unanimously accepted by his men, on the field during the first battle of Bull Run.
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---having read a ways into both "A Rebel's Recollections" and "Charleston Under Arms" (so far only in parts, as they're long pieces and yet so well-organized they lend readily to random paragraph-picking), i can say, the folks at Atlantic in Lincoln's honor have provided what he so often offered: a delightful refresher in how-to communicate in the English language.
Lincoln may have been our greatest President, but, the loser of the American Civil War was America.
The result of that war was the strengthening and enlargement of the Federal government. We are now in a great fight to stop and reverse that result.
--i could not agree more. Tho the looser confederation ante bellum and its prime (and natural) feature of minimalist subsidiarity may've collapsed later anyway, under the 20th century totalitarians and their world-wars. Had they still occurred, which is arguable.
Huge change is usually not purely good or bad. So it was with the War of Norther Aggression (Civil War to you Yankees). The abomination that was slavery was abolished and although it was really a secondary reason for the war, it is its most welcome result. However it was also the first step in killing States Rights which eventually changed the face of our country and government and is part of the reason our freedoms are being eroded.
People get all excited when they hear somebody say "slavery was a secondary condition for the war" - I don't know if it's true or not, but I do know there's a stronger argument for it than many will allow. Certainly at the time many people saw it that way, North and South.
But I think it was a necessary condition - without it the war probably wouldn't have happened, at least not when it did.
The Constitution was built with the history of power's abuse well in mind, and people's natural tendency to seek and expand its powers for myriad reasons. In those terms slavery was a kind of original sin built into the Constitution - of course a lot of the framers knew it, but they thought the compromise was worth it.
The long run will probably prove them right, even if the Constitution collapses here as a governing document. If it does, maybe in a few hundred years (or even sooner!!) some bunch of revolutionaries will look back to its example, its wisdoms and flaws, the same way the Framers looked back a few hundred years in English history, and thousands to the Greeks.
--scroll down about a third (of the 'single page' setting) to the paragraph beginning with:
“And our people believe that the States are independent and have a right to recede from the Confederation without asking its leave. With few exceptions, all agree on that; it is honest, common public opinion.
...and then read the next few paragraphs, and their dialogue, at last through:
“Well, — I admit it; that is precisely it."
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It's pretty instructive, considering the article is written by a Connecticut Yankee journalist moving fairly freely through Charleston during the several months after South Carolina had seceded but before the onset of hostilities. The dialogue offers a real-time picture (assuming no 'spin', or at least the minimum, from this 162 year-old piece) of the state's rights and the slave/property issues as being the same thing, the one being the abstraction and the other being that application to the speaker's operating commercial and social culture.
Anyhoo, it strikes me as a sort of stand-off (slavery needed ending but by THAT sort of war?) and thus rather useless for any conclusive argument by either side of the hot partisan debate still a-going --which in itself is instructive in that whole nother way.
My understanding is that the "real" reason for the War of Northern Aggression was States Rights. The North thought the South shouldn't be able to enslave people, and legislatively punished the South for it. However the
Constitution did not prohibit it. The reason it didn't is that our founders had to fight one battle at a time - First, get out from under England and the only way that was remotely possible would be for all the colonies to be united. As you say, this required a compromise from the abolitionist Framers.
--no straight lines, that's for sure. Especially shocking is the penalty paid for the founding compromise. A population one tenth of today's lost 700,000 young farmers and workers in the days of daily bread by muscle labor.
That would be 7,000,000 today --the population of Virginia or Massachusetts.
One dead young man for every four slaves freed.
A cost that high is ipso facto proof there was far more at stake than slavery --else they could've been freed at some cost less than the almost unendurably catastrophic.
I never much cared for Whitney Houston's style of singing, a bit too loud I always thought, too much vocal ornamentation (I don't what else to call it, sort of 87% pop + 13% jazz), which smacked of bragging: look how good my voice is. Even worse, she spawned several generations of untalented Whitney Imitators who carried her style to excess, which guaranteed I'd be switching to another channel or station.
re: the WSJ's editorial on Self-Insurance and the Contraception Mandate
Far more important is the fact that the ObamaCare law specifically provides an opt-out from all provisions of the healthcare law for the Amish and for Moslems, based on religious objections. There is no excuse, then, for the Obama administration's refusal to provide Catholics a permanent waiver for any provision of the law that is in conflict with the tenets of their faith. That is a strong legal argument that the Church can take to court.
We older folks also remember that the military draft long provided for "conscientious objector" status for those who were opposed to wartime combat on religious or other moral grounds. If the government was able to offer a waiver in that extreme case, how can it now disallow a waiver to Catholic organizations in the case of health care legislation?
Chris Matthews just had Obama's new chief of staff on his news show, and asked him more or less that same question. The answer? "Because it's our policy."
--yes, but it'd have to get in line behind about fifty dozen others of equal merit that ain't been brought neither.
For example, the big settlement announced last week, the big banks to pay damages to harmed MERS foreclosees --or that is, to about eight percent of the deep underwater leaving 92% with no more right to redress --it's all 'settled' now, you see.
Let me ax you --did you hear a word, that is to say "one" single word, in the MSM about (see below)this?
Funny thing of it, for this settlement, the TBTF Banks payment will equate out to around $2k\underwater mortgage. Pretty much, one payment.
Oh, sure, its a Mi Copa, but, they admit no wrong-doing, plan to investigate their practices, and look into oversight, but little else - business as usual.
Bluntly, they committed forgery, predatory business practices, filed false documents and legal papers, and not ONE employee of the TBTF Banks will ever see jail time for their actions. All the while, land\property rights, the management of land trusts, and the (often) empty investment vessels (on which the mortgages were packaged) that were sold aren't worth the paper they were issued upon.
Yeah, we may have averted a legal tidal wave, but turned our backs upon the (still) approaching financial one...
Tracked: Feb 12, 09:04
Tracked: Feb 12, 10:04