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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katelew who wrote (154296)	1/13/2011 8:35:06 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543628

And dangerous as in? "Armed, as in armed with the facts."

To: Katelew who wrote (154296)	1/13/2011 9:02:30 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543628

Bachmann should hire you as her public relations person. You've just washed the quote of its full content. But then it wouldn't energize her base the way she intended it to. Put it back in the context of Bachmann's full resume, it's a classic example of the paranoid style in politics. One of the very unfortunate markers of our time.

To: Katelew who wrote (154296)	1/13/2011 9:48:52 PM
From: Sam	Respond to of 543628

EDIT: apologies for this being too long; most of it is quoting, though, in my defense. if you listen to the recording of the public event, she's verbalizing one contiguous thought. It goes like this. After stating that she has additional information on the topic , she then says: "And I have materials for people when they leave. I want people in Minnesota to be armed and dangerous on the issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back." But Kate you then didn't put the rest of her thought down: Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people -- we the people -- are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States and that's why I want everyone to come out and hear. Two comments on this: 1. First, she misquotes Jefferson. Here is the full quote: Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.[1] The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. wiki.monticello.org In other words, rebellions can result from ignorance, as the one he was talking about did (he was referring to Shay's Rebellion in MA). He was also saying that the rulers should "set them right as to facts." Of course, sometimes that might be impossible, because the people sometimes come armed with their own facts, and they won't listen to anyone who contradicts those facts. But Jefferson is being a little cavalier here, as he was wont to be for much of his life. Young people and rash people who don't have any real sense of history have used his comment, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed ... with the blood of patriots and tyrants" way too often, without having a clue what it really meant and what its consequences could be. 2. For heaven's sake, think about this: she is saying that a idea that originated with Republicans is a threat to "change the dynamic of freedom forever" in the US. Now, if that was true, if something really was that dire a threat, and she is talking about revolution, and being "armed and dangerous" with facts, don't you think that the implication is that if their arguments don't work, they would be justified in using violence to redress their grievances (to take more Jeffersonian words)? That surely is what she was driving at. If it was true that something was that big a threat to the country, heck, I would join her on the battlefield to fight that thing! But good grief this issue isn't that thing....