Progressive's and liberal's (mostly young people) think they have discovered a great new way of doing things that nobody's ever thought of before. They also think that digging dirt and converting it to cars and kitchen appliances is destroying the planet. Nothing could be further from the truth. These liberals totally miss truth.
Before America, the world ran entirely by central planning. Progressives think that if only we had a smart enough and benevolent enough dictator, then he could get things accomplished "for the people." And this is exactly the way hundreds of countries ran for thousands of years. One dictator after another. Until America came along. America said, enough. Enough with the dictators and enough with central planning.
America grew and prospered. When America started, over 95% of the country and the world were farmers, scratching out a meager existence. Poverty, pestilence and squalor were the norm. But, America changed all that. By adopting "right-wing" principles of freedom, America achieved the highest standard of living the world had ever seen. Taken for granted by today's progressives, this American revolution raised billions of people out of poverty.
Now the progressive liberal asks us to return to central planning? He points to the relatively minor bad-actors (e.g. slavery, pollution, etc.) as examples of why freedom can't be allowed, yet he forgets pollution and slavery existed (and still exists) under central planning? Right-wing America cleaned up its pollution and eliminated slavery on its own, so these minor quibbles are no justification to return to the dictatorships of socialism or communism. The filthiest countries in the world are run by central planners, because without private ownership, nobody cares about taking care of property.
Yes, there is a fundamental battle for the future between young "progressive liberals" and the "right-wing." And the battle must be fought, not papered-over as the article suggests. Either we are going to be free (as the right-wing advocates) or we are going to have dictators, as the progressives want? There is almost no middle ground. Half a dictator makes everyone mad. And that's exactly what we have today; half a dictator.
Umm, don't you realize that "government manipulation of production" means it's still limited within the economic sphere?
Same goes for "control over business activity, regulating supply, and allocating resources" as well as "wealth redistribution"
Yes it is all part of economics and is a means of a central government ordering what society is expected to be. And that is what we were talking about in this context.
And that includes every single government before America's founding. Thousands of trials, endlessly seeking a benevolent dictator to guide people to utopia, but failing in every single case.
Besides the other things pointed out already, perhaps you've never heard of the Democracies of Greece or maybe you don't know that Rome started as a Republic or that Britain had a house of Commons and House of Lords.
The bold sentence is the kind of ignorance I would expect from a leftist.
Besides the other things pointed out already, perhaps you've never heard of the Democracies of Greece or maybe you don't know that Rome started as a Republic or that Britain had a house of Commons and House of Lords.
It's good that you at least recognise the vast gulf of ideology and application which lies between the foundations of the United States and the principles of governance attributed to the Jewish God.
Now if only you could understand that your founding fathers did not invent their political philosophies out of whole cloth, from nothing more than their own imaginations, you might one day be bright enough to acknowledge the many incremental steps which occurred between the bronze age and the enlightenment... and which have continued to occur in the centuries since.
Your simplistic binary, romanticized, teleological way of imagining history is not entirely without hope of redemption
When the government dictates what rights the people will have and can take away those rights at will, when the government designs and orders the society that will be allowed, you have a central government doing 'central planning' in its broadest context.
Now everybody can keep nitpicking and splitting hairs and objecting to the terms used to describe the phenomena and be personally insulting instead of stating a preferred term for the phenomena and focusing on the topic to be discussed. Or they can get into the spirit of the OP and recognize that there is more than one point of view and different ways of looking at things.
It doesn't matter whether a government calls itself a democracy or a republic or that Britain had a house of commons and a house of lords. When the government dictates what rights the people will have and can take away those rights at will, when the government designs and orders the society that will be allowed, you have a central government doing 'central planning' in its broadest context. And this was true in ancient Greece as much as elsewhere even though it was happening in what is sometimes referred to in history as the 'cradle of democracy.
Now everybody can keep nitpicking and splitting hairs and objecting to the terms used to describe the phenomena and be personally insulting instead of stating a preferred term for the phenomena and focusing on the topic to be discussed. Or they can get into the spirit of the OP and recognize that there is more than one point of view and different ways of looking at things.
In this case the U.S.A. was the first nation in the history of the world in which the people would tell government what its authority would be and what its responsibilities were and then they would govern themselves and form themselves into whatever societies they wished to have. Short of treading on anybody else's recognized rights, the people had complete freedom to be who and what they were, to aspire to be who and what they wanted to be, to speak what they believed and thought without fear of a central government authority punishing them for it. And they were unrestricted by circumstance or class or ordered society to be able to benefit from whatever opportunities were offered to them or that they created. And that concept, never before tried, created the greatest nation the world has ever known.
No, that is a dictatorship
All these other races and sexes had complete freedom?
Jefferson's leap was an advancement of epic proportions. Yes, there were plenty of discussions about liberty during the enlightenment, vague discussions about source of man's nature, but Jefferson made the leap and set it down in two-pages of refined brilliance.
Jefferson's epiphany was greater than Newton's or Einstein's. It was an incredible feat, not fully appreciated by the average man to this day.
Liberals have watered Jefferson's great accomplishment down, but its core remains. Our rights are inalienable and Jefferson was the first to prove it and codify the source of those rights. Jefferson is therefore vastly underestimated as a mere founder, when in fact, he was also one of the greatest philosophers of all time.
msnbc, 24/7, 365.please show me all the lies and innuendo and fearmongering of the left wingers, as well as the 24/7 broadcast stations that inflict it on the masses of left wing sheeple.
There is a difference, you're just too courteous to see it.
Bush did it before him. It's both sides and has been going on for a long time.
Someone has to stand up and be the bigger man. It's clear Obama has no interest in doing that, we can only hope the next president does.
Philosophers and theologians had conceived and discussed 'God-given' or 'natural' or 'inalienable' rights long before Jefferson was even born.
a handful of late 18th century white males, pretend that their accomplishment was the grand telos of human history, claim that everything outside America was and is fundamentally different and inferior, and that America itself has somehow 'fallen' from what you assert it should be.
This childish morally relativistic pointing and say we'll he did it too is part of the problem.
A very good OP article and I would love the believe the sentiment and actions could come true. Alas, I believe pandora's box has been opened and the hate, disgust and dehumanization of one side and the other may be too wide of a gap to bridge at this point. Perhaps a figure yet to be determined has the courage and ability to bridge that gap and gain the trust of both sides, but to me that is a pipe dream. The reality of many is that one side is hell bent on destruction of the world through their world views and policies.
At one time early in the 2008 campaign I thought this figure just might be Obama. Within 6 months I knew I was very wrong. The derision and ability to demonize and ideologue that has come from Obama has further polarized the electorate to near Hatfield and McCoy levels. I don't see that changing any time soon and if anything, it will get worse.
Have the strength to doubt and question what you believe as easily as you're so quick to doubt his beliefs. Live with a truly open mind -- the kind of open mind that even questions the idea of an open mind. Don't feel the need to always pick a side. And if you do pick a side, pick the side of love.
Under the Declaration, they did and because of the Declaration, now they do. It took a few years, but American principles freed the slaves and made all men (and women) equal. Without America, it's very likely slavery would still run rampant throughout the world today. America (as founded) is the shining beacon that leads the way. America single-handedly showed the world how to virtually eliminate poverty.
Liberals try to tear it down and maximize poverty through welfare and minimum-wage, but the rest of the world saw what America did in the nineteenth-century and most adopted those principles. Now, the whole world prospers and benefits by America's example. Only liberals decry it. Liberals who openly praise and advocate returning to a barbaric agrarian, tribal lifestyle, without electricity or running water. A more "natural" way of life, they call it. Because they never lived outdoors and never faced the flies and pestilence that outdoor liberal living breeds. One has only to spend a day at an Occupy Wall Street event to gain a hint of how bad living conditions are under liberal nirvana?
The founders created the opportunity to self-correct and Republican's took advantage by eliminating slavery and cleaning up the environment. Progressives and liberals opposed. Why don't you liberals study up on Democrat legacy and then decide which principles to follow? I'll bet most will find themselves are actually conservative, once they see the evils of liberalism (along the way) and the end result of liberalism (poverty and squalor).
me of being a Liberal?
Make a liberal argument and face the wheel.
Liberals argue that since the founders were all white, their words are illegitimate. That since they were all Christian, they couldn't possibly have anything worth listening to, much less adhering to. Since they were all male, the words of the founder's are intended to strip others of their rights. These liberal arguments are provably wrong. The words of those Christian white males revolutionized the world for the better. Those words freed the slaves and gave women the vote. Liberals have it entirely wrong, as they seek to run from the founder's words. Progressive's seek to delegitimize the very words that make the world a much better place. The rare and precious words that raised mankind out of darkness and serfdom.
Were you home-schooled by any chance?Make...serfdom.
But since you seem to want to talk about it, then, yes, the founding fathers were wrong in their implementation of government. The rise of socialist ideals perpetrated by liberals is definitive proof that they did it wrong.
At least one of those founding fathers, on at least one occasion, expressed views that seem almost socialist themselves:
Property: Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris
The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law.
All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.
Thomas Jefferson, at least as far as inheritence was concerned ("right of regulating descents"), apparently agreed that it was the creature of public convention:
Popular Basis of Political Authority: Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
The portion occupied by an individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society. If the society has formed no rules for the appropriation of it's lands in severality, it will be taken by the first occupants. These will generally be the wife and children of the decedent. If they have formed rules of appropriation, those rules may give it to the wife and children, or to some one of them, or to the legatee of the deceased. So they may give it to his creditor. But the child, the legatee, or creditor takes it, not by any natural right, but by a law of the society of which they are members, and to which they are subject.
Funny thing is, there's just as many liberals complaining that America borders on plutocracy as there are conservatives complaining that it borders on socialism. Everyone has their concept of an 'ideal' society of course: Some folk project their concepts onto their idealized notion of the country's founders (eg. RespectTheElect), others argue that the founding fathers and the American people have simply got it all wrong, and some portray their political opposites as malign forces destroying the country.
Seems to me the more sensible approach is to accept, as Jefferson so clearly and persuasively argued, that a country's people have the right of determining what manner of governance they wish to have. Pushing for a government more accountable and responsive to the will of the people is laudable (eg. electoral reform), and attempting to persuade others of one's views is appropriate: But for someone to pretend that there is an objectively correct way to do things, and those who disagree with them are simply wrong, seems rather arrogant and divisive at best.
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