Posted on 04/16/2012 9:09:37 AM PDT by EnglishCon
Been reading many threads on FR recently and have been horrified and saddened by the general feeling of defeat pervading the threads. So I want to share something that happened back in 1979, here in the UK.
We had an economy so far down the toilet that it could see the sewage works. A Labour government that was frantically bribing it's traditional supporters to keep power. A strong conservative leader, very unpopular, who was mounting a challenge. She won in one of the biggest landslide victories ever recorded.
Had the election been 6 months earlier - our elections are called at the will of the Prime Minister, on a successful vote of no confidence or after 5 years, whichever comes first - Margaret Thatcher would have remained Leader of the Opposition instead of not only becoming the first female PM but a conservative icon. Even 3 months earlier and she would not have won, though it would have been close. Remember it well, it was my first voting election, as a snot nosed kid stationed in Germany.
There are three people who get almost constant respect here on FR - Churchill, Reagan and Thatcher. Not one of them had victory handed to them, they all had to fight like hell for it.
I see people giving up. Already drawing lines in the sand, when they should be fighting hard for the last conservative in the race.
To me, conservatives do not quit. We fight. We may lose, but we do our best not to, because we know what is important. Family, God and keeping our word and our freedom.
I know I have not been here terribly long as a posting member, but a lot of people here I consider friends already, and their sadness affects me, and makes me feel mad at the same time.
To modify a quote, "As America, so the world." Like it or not, that is a truth that the only remaining superpower cannot ignore. We had that burden for a couple of hundred years - you have had it for less than a century.
Unlike most posters here (not all), I have actually met and talked to Obama. You look into his eyes and there is nothing there. No soul, no feeling. It is like looking into the eyes of a shark. Watching Romney, who I have not met, I feel the same basic revulsion.
Please friends. There are still 40% or so of the primaries to go. To give up now is to disenfrachise 40% of the population and to kill any chance of America becoming once more that infuriatingly proud country that acts as a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world.
I got kids too, and grandkids for that matter. Your fight goes way beyond the borders of the continental USA. Please .....
Try.
Ms Thatcher, even in her present state, still has quite a few IQ points over the Obamaloon.
Totally agree in RINOmney...he is a vapid dork.
I’m worried, but preparing for CW-II....which appears to be our only way out.
Thank You for your encouragement. I’m part of the 40% and I will be voting for Newt next month.
yes I remember it well, I had just entered the workforce as a 16year old technician apprentice and was making the princely sum of 95p/hour for a 40 hour week. After taxes I had 26quid in my weekly pay envelope. Whilst I realize the unions were out of control and needed to be reined in, I would have preferred it not be done at the cost of the countries manufacturing base.
Thanks, I needed that.
Good post!
Thanks!
Still fighting. I have great hope in heaven, but little hope for America. Thirty years ago, people talked about the political pendulum swinging left and then right. Unfortunately, we’re not seeing anything swinging right. Single moms, the number one cause of poverty, are now hero’s. ABC is now gAyBC. Europe is succumbing to Islam. Africa is falling to Islam. South America is moving towards Communism. Freedom is not expanding.
The quality of a Democracy can not exceed the qualify of the press. The lamestream press has gone from bad to corrupt, and is now unrepentant when caught in a lie. Fox is moving to the left. Romney may slow the slide, but he’ll keep moving us left.
My fellow Christians need to prepare for a severe persecution.
This is of course not any kind of endorsement of Romney's policies (I did NOT vote for him, BTW) just offering some perspective into the guy's personality (or perhaps his affected personality?)
Our system was never designed to allow a President (ANY President) to be the unconditional spoiled darling of the MSM.
An MS with an unchecked and wholesale bias (in either direction) was never in the equation and should not continue. It compromises the political dynamic, it hobbles our strength, unity and stability as a nation and it disfigures our national character.
Voters MUST reject leaders who gratuitously polarize Americans, AS policy! This will keep the media honest as well.
Yes indeed. They don't look...they glare at best. Thank you for you posting this thread.
Times going to run out soon....and if this Primary goes to Romney I will be planning for the worst...both Romney or Obama will simply be the pawns being used to carry out what we know is coming.
You should have tried the forces - think I was pulling down about a fiver a week after deductions (was married with a kid and another on the way, so most of my cash went straight home!)
I am, unlike most folks here, mildly pro-union. My Grandfather helped set up one of the first serious unions in the country, he was an ironstone miner, and unions worked well as a check and balance. Then they got politicised and greedy.
Heaven is the source of all hope.
My first Priest, the Father who welcomed me into the Church had a little quirk. He’d tell us to roll our sleeves up before we prayed.
God answers prayers, he’d say, but you better be ready to work for it!
That is an idea I can live with.
It is. There is no balance any more - the MSM does not report the facts but interprets the facts. Anything inconvenient is swept under the rug, to be ignored for as long as possible.
English Common Law and the Declaration and Ammendments were designed for a time when news took days or weeks to travel.
I think of the Founders some times. They wrote letters to each other, that had to be carried for days. The Federalist papers are basically that - letters which build a case slowly and logically from the ground up.
Not exactly our soundbite culture with it’s 20 second attention span ....
And that's supposed to cheer me up? You can't even own a handgun anymore, much less carry one. Your country has no freedom to speak of, and that's just one example.
Thatcher was an anomaly (I'm beginning to think Reagan was, too). After her, the UK went back to socialism as usual.
You want to be like us?
Didn’t think so.
Wake up and fight.
I’d considered the RAF, having been a cadet (ATC) for 3 years but they wouldn’t take me until I was 18. I’m not really complaining, I got a great education out of it.
Thanks very much!
You get it!
Our primaries are NOT over!
Nothing is set in cement, like our corrupt lamestream would have us believe.
We conservatives do not surrender. We reload.
We fight, we pray! We trust in Him.
VOTE NEWT!
Thats right.
But, I am convinced that journalists compromised themselves long before real time reporting became an issue.
Real time reporting as a fact of life in broadcasting, has only magnified the problem and if anything, has exposed just how unprincipled and reckless these people have become.
Where is it written that media may fulfill the role of primary arbiter in American politics and elections ... much less function as the apparently FINAL arbiter, they presume to be?
Thanks to the equally dishonest system of public education in this country, the natural human tendency to doubt, challenge and question has been systematically bred out of each successive generation of voters.
With educators and journalists preempting voters natural and wholesome reservations about government (reservations, without which no vote cast may honestly be called free and valid) . the rug has been yanked out from under us.
I agree, for many many years in this country changes made were well thought out, discussed and mulled over. Most people now expect, no demand instant solutions and changes. No thought is given to consequences of actions taken or not taken. Many things that on the surface seem like good ideas or solutions turn out to be disasters when put in action. We now seem to do things like children, act impulsively and then have to deal with unintended results.
Thanks for the words of encouragement, EnglishCon! I needed this today. :-)
Great post — and much needed. Conservatives these days tend too much toward gloom and resignation. These sentiments are especially unworthy of Americans, with our long and glorious history of winning against expectations and adversity. We instead need to emulate the courage and determination that Thatcher and Reagan demonstrated throughout their careers.
It is. There is no balance any more - the MSM does not report the facts but makes up the facts.
Thanks. There are two conditions in the USA that might interest you.
* The US economy is far worse than broadcast in both sponsored and government propaganda (see political/regulator class sponsorships).
* Regulatory efforts in the USA against economic activities and even owner-builder activities—regulatory efforts using irrelevant environmentalist and animal “rights” arguments—have saturated all levels of government down to even very remote and sparsely populated areas. Establishment interests of both political parties drive those efforts against new small production businesses and even small private projects (e.g., storage sheds).
We’ll resume personal spending and political gestures, when the problem is remedied.
The aforementioned media have been saying for about five years that Asia is collapsing. They’re blowing smoke. Watch Asia, as it rises, with western sponsors continuing incomes from debts (The City, government interests, other western globalists).
“I have actually met and talked to Obama. You look into his eyes and there is nothing there. No soul, no feeling. It is like looking into the eyes of a shark. Watching Romney, who I have not met, I feel the same basic revulsion.”
Great post - great line.
But there is a difference between you and me :)
Watching Romney, you feel like looking at a shark.
I feel like looking at a venomous snake.
“We conservatives do not surrender. We reload.
We fight, we pray! We trust in Him.
VOTE NEWT!”
Here’s anecdote I’ve just finished reading:
“In one instance towards the end of the Reagan administration, Gingrich discussed complaints about things left undone. Writes Hayward of the president that Jack Kemp fondly nicknamed the “Oldest and Wisest”:
“Reagan put his arm around the young Georgia Congressman and said in his typically gentle fashion, “Well, some things you’re just going to have to do after I’m gone.””
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/01/24/reagans-young-lieutenant/4
"History comes and goes, but principles endure and inspire future generations to defend liberty, not as a gift from government, but a blessing from our Creator."
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/01/24/reagans-young-lieutenant/4
I couldn’t not post it.
You have a friend who is down, you help them back up. My old Drill Sarge would have put it blunter!
That is exactly right. Instant gratification is demanded, from probably the most spoiled generation in history. Lets face it, we are getting older. The talk, intense aguments and eventual concensus we are used to has been replaced by an exchange of emails and a refusal to agree on anything.
Age doesn’t mean wisdom. As I said elsewhere, Experience is knowing IF you should say no, wisdom is knowing WHEN you should say no. Seems to me that the only time we say no is as a negative, not as a positive.
NEWT remains cheerful.
He knows whats possible. “;^)
Our system was never designed to have an MSM, period. I was already approaching 40 yo before it came clear to me that journalism wasnt objective, and I spent decades agonizing over why that was so. After three decades of studying on it, I have a model which explains the situation approximately to my satisfaction. I even know what must be done - but there is always the issue of who will bell the cat.First, we should abandon talk about the media. TV and radio and the movies have their systematic influences, but the real problem is intrinsic to journalism as we know it. Instead of using generalities like the media, we need to look directly in the eye of wire service journalism.Although the wire services are plural in number, that is no thanks to the Associated Press, which was the first wire service in America and which would have gladly strangled all competition in the cradle. But no matter that there is more than one wire service, they all inherently have the same effect - they homogenize - and empower - journalism. Before the wire services, newspapers were fractiously independent of each other (and often directly connected to political parties). With the advent of the AP, the editorial page of the newspaper became a ghetto of idiosyncrasy in a sea of conformity of AP style stories written the way the AP itself would write it.
The homogeneity of AP journalism empowers the reporter who signs on to a member of the AP. Because what is good for journalism is what is good, so the journalist can say, for the country. But a moments serious thought would tell you that that cant be true. Journalism promotes itself by denigrating the people and institutions upon whom/which we depend. But bad news for society is good news - a great story - for journalism. A war? Just think of all the overtime for journalists! Meanwhile the people suffer.
At present we have the Trayvon Martin affair in the news. Its a gripping story, and it sells newspapers. The fact that to all outward appearances it is a given that the arrest and charging of Zimmerman is a travesty makes it terrible news for society, which makes it all the more difficult to ignore. But what is really a danger to society is the fact that journalism - NBC News, exhibit A - is actively promoting lawless thought and threatened behavior among the segment of American society least resistant to demagogic appeals. If there were actual diversity in journalism, NBC would have known before it demagoged the Zimmerman police call tape by putting Zimmermans reply to an explicit police question in a context which made it appear to be blatantly racist, when it was no such thing, that it would be sharply criticized for its tendentiousness.
The fact that NBC could think it could get by with that is of a piece with Dan Rathers assumption that he could stonewall charges that the Texas Air National Guard Memos were patent frauds. Why was Dan Rather, why even at this late date did NBC, make the assumption that the rest of journalism would circle the wagons with them, and use their propaganda power to carry the day? Because that was precisely the tradition of wire service journalism. The only unforgivable sin of journalism, far from being a failure to be objective, was criticizing the lack of objectivity of a fellow journalist. The solution is bound and gagged, and lying on George Zimmermans doorstep (even in prison). He should sue NBC News for every dime they own. But he shouldnt stop there. He should also sue the rest of journalism, jointly and severally. The Associated Press, and all its membership. The result would put the fear of God into the whole MSM.
But George Zimmerman is only the most obvious victim of this demagoguery; society as a whole is endangered by it. There ought to be a way to launch a class action lawsuit against that whole bunch, alleging not only fraud but collusion between all journalism outlets and between journalism and community organizers everywhere. With the community organizers being the source of the threatened muscle. Call them out for the racketeers they are, and sue for treble damages under RICO.
An MS with an unchecked and wholesale bias (in either direction) was never in the equation and should not continue. It compromises the political dynamic, it hobbles our strength, unity and stability as a nation and it disfigures our national character.
Voters MUST reject leaders who gratuitously polarize Americans, AS policy! This will keep the media honest as well.
The AP was too big to fail when SCOTUS held it to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1945. In the laser/fibre optic/microwave/satellite era, its mission - the conservation of bandwidth in the transmission of news - is an anachronism.It can be obliterated without being missed.
After they make up the facts the MSM tries (successfully in many cases) to tell us the meaning and how to “feel” about their made up facts.
My father-in-law years ago would yell at Cronkite, calling him a communist and liar. Said the news was mostly lies, we should not believe their propaganda. At the time we thought FIL was losing it, nope he “got it” and was trying to sound the early warning alarm.
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