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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Suma who wrote (19444)	10/27/2004 9:51:54 AM
From: sandintoes	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

However, the social conscience of the Nation at that time encompassed the majority of Americans. Do not single out those who acted on the innate rage that was part of the period. No it did not, and that was the purpose of my post. Most Americans thought we were in the war to fight Communism, and the men who served were for the most part were drafted. They were called by their country, served honorably only to come home to filthy hippies high on drugs who attacked them for doing the right thing. The media was controlled by LIBERALS who wanted to cut and run, so they followed the great unwashed like an army of unlearned school journalist, anxiously awaiting their next headline. Liberals are those who founded this Country and if you go back into our early American History you will read about Jefferson.... and others. Even Lincoln in his day was called a Liberal. usconstitution.net If you will notice almost to a man, they were called Patriots, in the case of liberals today, I would hardly call them Patriots. They do not want Our country to be a sovereign nation, but merely a puppet to the the UN's dictates. However, the social conscience of the Nation at that time encompassed the majority of Americans planetpapers.com This statement is misleading also...meeting of these brave men had to be held in secret because there were many enemies in their mists, ready to report back to England..so to say they had the backing of the country was simply untrue. They had a hard time raising money and men to put together an Army to fight the British.

To: Suma who wrote (19444)	10/27/2004 11:42:23 AM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Suma, your problem in this argument is trying to hold on to a long-ago co-opted term, "liberal", that no longer means what it meant in the first days of this country. Being a liberal once meant - well, Webster's still lists these, but they should, sadly, be preceded by "archaic" as is the one about "befitting a man of free birth" - things like: adj - "associated with ideals of individual, especially economic, freedom, greater individual participation in government, and constitutional, political and administrative reforms designed to secure these objectives" or noun - "an advocate or adherent of liberalism especially in individual rights" or re "liberalism", from the American Heritage dictionary: noun - "A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority." or in economic terms, a belief in individual freedom, private property rights, free markets and the power of competition. In short, "liberalism" is all about individual rights. Now, do any of these definitions sound anything like John Kerry or the Democratic party of today? And never mind that some on the right - i.e. the "religious right" - would restrict personal behavior of others that should be none of the government's business. We're not comparing un-liberal extremists here, we're discussing what it used to mean to BE liberal. John Locke was a liberal. Adam Smith was a liberal. These are the thinker's who shaped the thinking of our founding fathers. Edmund Burke, OTOH, was a "conservative", resistant to liberal reforms in the UK of the day. And Jean-Jacques Rousseau was neither conservative nor truly liberal, in spite of his influence on revolutionaries among his countrymen. He was an advocate more of group rights and, as he put it, "the general will" than individual rights. He is, IMO and that of many others, the perhaps unintentional father of, interestingly, socialism, communism AND fascism. Belief in group rights ahead of individual ones is the stuff authoritarian systems are made of - the very antithesis of liberal government. IMO, there is little truly liberal about Kerry OR his party, though I'm sure there are individuals within it who would qualify. Besides the tendency to think in terms of group rights, on many issues he and his party are the ones resistant to change, even where reform is clearly needed. Think, for example, of social security where they resist all reform in spite of the inevitability of it's bankruptcy or of health care where they would impose the failed Canadian system rather than market-based reforms. With the exception of a few on the "right" who would declare this a "Christian nation" and police our bedrooms, the GOP is actually the party of classical liberalism. Regards, Bob