Read the major biographies on Wilson, TR, and FDR...what you find is hatred of the Constitution. This simple, thoughtful document, which protects our rights through a division of federal from state authority...is hated.
Progressives want to find ways around the Constitution,not to work through it.
That’s a fact.
PREDICTION: We will be hunting down Progressives with dogs before this wrecking of our country and economy over. My dog recognizes them by their stink.
Get that? She thinks it is prima facie evidence that the law is constitutional simply because the executive branch didn't defend it! This woman is just plain stupid.
No kidding they don’t like America. I’ve been listening to them complain for the last forty years. We keep institutionalizing their ideas, and they still don’t like America. I’m waiting for the American public to figure this out.
As John Galt said, the only obligation one has to his fellow men is reason and respect for their right to be free from force.
The article doesn’t talk about it much, but the title states that Progressives do not like the US. They really don’t like people very much and the US is just the worst of the lot.
Mankind is seen as despoiling the idyllic earth for its rightful owners, the animals with all our commerce, evil corporations, and the like. They see these activities as the driving force for the ruination of the planet. The US are the ring leaders in the commerce and evil corporations department, so they get the brunt of the hate.
China would probably have trouble with these types but China wouldn’t pay any attention to them after they threw them in jail or just disappeared them.
A lot of authoritarian, liberals hate individuality and the individual person making decisions and choices without the approval from their so-called wisdom which is really dominance and control.
From each according to his shared responsibility....and we’ll decide what that responsibility is.....to each according to how loud he complains or how many votes he has.
Karl would love these people.
This is the crux of the issue. Progressives see our "obligation to one another" i.e. the greater good for society, as something that must be elicited from the citizenry by way of government regulation. Government seizes our assets via taxes toward that end. It is no accident that at a recent prayer breakfast Obama likened paying tribute to government as consummate with attending to Jesus' mandate to "feed the hungry, clothe the naked and heal the sick."
Whereas, it is true that freedom cannot endure within a society that pays no mind to our "obligation to one another". . .it surely will not endure when government takes it upon itself to dictate what those obligations are, how they should be carried out and what are the penalties imposed when those obligations are not met. This is why the Founders stressed that our Constitution would only function with a "religious and moral" populace. President James Monroe said it very succinctly:
“Republics demanded virtue. Monarchies could rely on coercion and “dazzling splendor” to suppress self-interest or factions; republics relied on the goodness of the people to put aside private interest for public good.”
Obama's vision of America is one that must be controlled by "coercion and dazzling splendor" . . .in other words, a soft tyranny.
The challenge that we face is on two important fronts. Clearly, Obama's mad grab for power must be rejected and our Constitution upheld. However, this is not the only work that must be done to revive our liberty. Recent studies have shown, that Americans no longer agree on what morality or virtue really is nor what is the public role of virtue in society. The Left has made sure that we relinquish our firm hold on the culture consensus on values that once defined our common heritage as Americans. Common values consummate with being American, is the emulsifying agent in the melting pot.
Tocqueville, in observing America in the 1830's, noted that
"Americans combine the notion of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds that it is nearly impossible for them to conceive of one without the other."
The Left, on the one hand, destroys the moral foundation of the nation, while, on the other hand, insists that our moral obligations are simply to acquiesce to government tyranny. Our freedom, "a gift of God", demands we resist the tyranny of unconstitutional government, however, ultimately, it is the "goodness of the people" as Monroe noted, that must revive the Republic and make it pleasing to God. (sorry for the windbag post. . .it's Sunday morning and, also, its the third cup of Joe!!)
That's because the word itself is tailored to imply some relationship with progress, but in reality, it does not.
Progressives don't want to make our country better, they want to make it different.
By equality, in a democracy, is to be understood, equality of civil rights, and not of condition. Equality of rights necessarily produces inequality of possessions; because, by the laws of nature and of equality, every man has a right to use his faculties in an honest way, and the fruits of his labor, thus acquired, are his own. But some men have more strength than others; some more health; some more industry; and some more skill and ingenuity, than others; and according to these, and other circumstances the products of their labor must be various, and their property must become unequal. The rights of property must be sacred, and must be protected; otherwise there could be no exertion of either ingenuity or industry, and consequently nothing but extreme poverty, misery, and brutal ignorance.
Of the Several Forms of Government, Section VI, St. George Tucker, "View of the Constitution of the United States" 1803
Their concept of 'social justice' isn't about equality rights, but equality of condition. That's what wealth distribution is all about!
A totally socialist concept if there ever was one, IMHO.
“Progressives Simply Do Not Like The United States”
I don’t think there’s much that progressive like. As a generalization I find them to be the most sour and joyless people I’ve ever encountered, and they just don’t enjoy the miracle of being alive so they spend all their effort trying to nanny state others into their own state of misery.
Lithwick's profoundly ignorant comments and Hunter's reaction to them have triggered exactly the kind of discussion among Freepers that needs to be going on all over America today.
As a matter of fact, this is the discussion which GOP presidential candidates need to have with voters for Obama's so-called "progressive" "redistributive" vision for America conflicts with his oath to uphold the Constitution.
Those, like Lithwick, who come up with the touchy, feely "shared responsibility," or "obligation to others" descriptions never bother to tell us that the "progressive" vision requires a heavy-handed political regime to enforce its mandates, and that regime, in whatever combinations it may try to manifest itself, is precisely what the U. S. Constitution is designed to prevent.
That is why they are frustrated. The Constitution stands in the way of their custom-designed method of "changing" America from a free society to one in which some imperfect people plan, direct, manage and control all the other imperfect people.
That is their perverted vision of "justice," and they cannot enforce it without "changing" the Constitution, and they know that they cannot "change" it according to its own provisions; therefore, they must use Trojan Horses like "health care" and "shared responsibility" to trick "the People" into abandoning individual freedom.
"Until the people have, by some solemn and authoritative act, annulled or changed the established form, it is binding upon them collectively, as well as individually; and no presumption or even knowledge of their sentiments, can warrant their representatives [the executive, judiciary, or legislature]; in a departure from it prior to such an act." - Alexander Hamilton
In the first of the eighty-five "Federalist Papers," Alexander Hamilton emphasized that:
"... it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection or choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."
The Framers knew that the passage of time would surely disclose imperfections or inadequacies in the Constitution, but these were to be repaired or remedied by formal amendment, not by legislative action or judicial construction (or reconstruction). Hamilton (in The Federalist No. 78) was emphatic about this:
"Until the people have, by some solemn and authoritative act, annulled or changed the established form, it is binding upon them collectively, as well as individually; and no presumption, or even knowledge of their sentiments, can warrant their representatives in a departure from it prior to such an act."
Last 5 paras. excerpted from:
Our Ageless Constitution - Part VII (1987) "Do We Have a Living Constitution?" (Publisher: W. David Stedman Associates; W. D. Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Eds.) ISBN 0-937047-01-5 (Essay adapted by Editors for publication in this Volume in consultation with Dr. Walter Berns from Berns' article by the same title in National Forum, The Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Fall 1984)
I tuned on Leftist talk Radio on Friday, the Mike Malloy show. He seriously was saying the Supreme Court is now “illegitimate” and should be done away with, because 9 people should never be able to overturn law passed by congress. He also advocated another Civil War, but this time kicking “bumpkin land” as he called it out of the Union, referring of course to the red states. This is how sick and twisted and dangerous the left has got.
This is NOT the Democrat party of your parents and grandparents.
This is the woman who told Obama to nominate “some cross between Rachel Maddow and Emma Goldman” to the Supreme Court.
Nothing burns me up more than Canadians or Brits who run like hell away from their tax-heavy, dead-end living, success limiting socialist crap-holes and the first , fore most and never-ending thing they do when they get here is go on loud and long about what a rotten country America is and how we should be like the socialist crap-holes they ran away from.
A great column. If Pubs were smart and most are not, they would make this a feature in some campaign material in the Red and Purple states. It would be wasted in the soviet Blue states.