Posted on 11/18/2012 5:16:47 AM PST by Kaslin
During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, Rodney King famously asked, “Can’t we all just get along?” The answer should be an easy and unequivocal “yes,” but it seems less and less likely these days.
King was speaking in term of race, but the same could be said of political ideology. Liberals, conservatives and every other point on the political spectrum used to co-exist fairly easily (with the exception of left-wing anarchists who don’t get along with anyone). But these days détente has given way to anger and open hostility.
Some, not all, people have become less civil to those with whom they disagree politically. The modern left, birthed with the start of the eugenics-loving, racist progressive movement at the turn of the 20th century, always has embraced, to varying degrees, the concept of silencing opponents. Through the factions of communism, socialism and fascism (all takes on the same philosophy), leftists have made continuous attempts to silence and punish anyone who doesn’t toe their line.
President Woodrow Wilson, a progressive hero, made it illegal to speak German in this country and, in the Sedition Act of 1917, outlawed the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” against the government, flag or military. Wilson’s rabid racism and implementation of segregationist policies in the federal government are routinely ignored by progressives today. But they are all too real and did enormous and lasting damage to our nation.
But that was (and still is) what progressives stood for. They were the elites, the smartest the nation had to offer. And, as such, it was up to them to “improve” the world through government action. They were white, so blacks were inferior. They were smart, so anyone they deemed not to be was inferior, and so on. They believed certain “undesirable” people should be sterilized and thus bred out of existence.
Those deemed worthy or necessary to be allowed to continue to exist would be ruled by them because they, the progressives, quite simply knew better what people needed than the people themselves. Constitution be damned, they were “progressing” the human race.
Although their tactics have changed over time, their motivation and ultimate desires haven’t – they want control and don’t care who or what they destroy to get it.
Fast-forward to today. Progressives are in the process of seizing control of the health care system. Regulations and laws are making more and more businesses effective wards of the state functioning in the ever-narrowing window of what’s left of the free-market.
But it’s not just economics. The sentiments behind President Wilson’s Sedition Act are alive and well. They’re no longer embedded in government; they’ve moved to the media and academia. Speech codes limit not only the words students can use but their ability to express thoughts and opinions progressives deem unworthy. Progressive media outlets frame opposition to President Obama as racist in the hopes of scaring critics into silence.
Now this disparate world view and loyalty to ideology over country/liberty/reality is metastasizing into more places it will damage beyond repair.
Union workers voluntarily have driven Hostess out of business. Seems they’d rather have no pay than less pay, no pension over a restructured one. They commit economic suicide, and pampered, over-paid union bosses such as Richard Trumka blame the Bain Capitals of the world.
Even on something as serious as the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, progressives aren’t interested in facts. Calls for truth-seeking are met with cries of racism because UN Ambassador Susan Rice, the sacrificial lamb the president sent out to lie for him, happened to be black. These progressives are not remotely interested in why Rice lied to the American people about what happened that sad night, nor do they care about being lied to themselves. They care about their agenda. Lying to the contemptible masses is acceptable and encouraged because the unwashed masses don’t know what’s best for themselves anyway.
This “progressive” attitude toward reality is now amplified by the web of social media, which empowers the spread of their fact-lacking desires to once-unheard drones who parrot it unquestioned to the world. Like a cold virus on a plane, it spreads. The truth, or even a desire to find it (as in the case of Benghazi), immediately butts up against a wall of willful ignorance built by a left-wing industrial complex of moneyed interests and true believers. No amount of contradictory evidence can convince them what actually is if they wish it not to be.
The right has its own version of this suborn, wishfully ignorant army. But it is smaller with much less funding. The reason this hive-mindset doesn’t translate to the right is we are not all of like minds. Priorities to one conservative are not priorities to another. Diversity of opinion not only exists on the political right, it is encouraged. Nothing less would be accepted from a philosophy based on the individual.
The progressive left doesn’t suffer from intellectual diversity. In spite of its penchant for bumper stickers calling for questioning of authority, celebrating diversity and “tolerance,” progressives tolerate deviation from their prescribed norm like Hamas would tolerate the suggestion they observe Rosh Hashanah. That’s why there’s so little dissent from anything its leaders propose. No group of nearly 200 clear-thinking individuals who swore an oath to the Constitution and hoped to sway a majority of Americans to their cause would ever elect a radical San Francisco leftist their leader, yet Nancy Pelosi…
When Rodney King asked his famous question, we really could have all gotten along. But the intervening years saw the rejection of a liberal, almost moderate, left and the rebirth of a philosophy spawned from hatred and division with the sole goal of control. Although a great many Americans support this goal, the wool has been pulled over the eyes of many more who’ve been fooled into thinking liberty is a chip to be bartered for a crumb of pie rather than the key to making your own.
I opt against trading my liberty to sing kumbaya with those who seek to impose upon me that which I do not want because they deem it in my best interest. Our president can bow to anyone he wants, but I will no bow to him, nor will I bow to his ideological brethren. I will not bow to anyone. We can all get along, but as long as my opponents seek to deny me any of my liberty, I choose not to.
“Price we’ll pay the piper boy’s,feeding the Liberty Tree”
Well said. Bump.
No, we can’t get along. Time for our own two-state solution.
Every large multi-cultural, multi-racial country in history has maintained unity (i.e. getting along) only by authoritarian, often totalitarian, means. When those means fail, they break up.
The alternative is the Swiss system - extreme decentralization in a federation. Our only hope off keeping the USA together without having a tyrannical government is to re-new and invigorate federalism in our country. The present regime is leading us in the opposite direction.
I hear this a lot, but, if you deny the Obamadeathcare financial mandates, you will have the IRS seizing your income and probably your assets, too. Once all the insurance companies are gone and private practice doctors are eliminated, you will be force to buy your insurance through a government-run "exchange" and get your health care at a government clinic.
How do you "bow" to that? Fly to Belize every time you need to visit a doctor? Leave the country? And how will you resist being shipped to the gulags during Hussein's fourth term?
God help us...please. Or we will become the greatest evil the planet has yet known. We certainly have the potential and personalities to make it happen. Just wish they weren't trying so hard to bring it on...please, God, help us to stop ourselves
Or, do it for us. Take our toys away and give us a timeout.
“Maybe We Really Can’t All Just Get Along”
Love it when reality sinks in.
If there is no Obama, can there still be Obama care?
... You now have two Americas. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand . . . I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.
I predict that this will be a banner year for homes becoming war zones during Thanksgiving dinner. Four little words will light fuses nationwide:
“How about that election?”
bttt
I hope that I never will see the day when it become necessary to “Refresh the Tree of Liberty” properly as suggested by Thomas Jefferson. But the direction things are going gives me pause to wonder. Unfortunately this would not be the first country heading down the same road. History has a nasty habit of repeating itself until people learn and quite trying the same thing over and over and each time expect different results. It just is not going to happen.
This strategy also worked for the Negros. They rioted in the ‘60s and burned down Detroit, Newark, and a few other places. Rather than stand up to the lawlessness, our politicians have “bought peace” by giving them welfare and affirmative action.
Now the Homosexuals, Hispanics and Illegals have seen this and are now after their piece of the loot. They will protest and threaten violence until our brave leaders in Washington cough over more taxpayer money (or money borrowed from China)
It’s all just merely a game of extortion that certain minority groups have learned to play because our elected politicians are too cowardly to stand up to them. There politicians just happy to buy their silence and their vote by giving them our money.
This is why I think the best solution if to push the USA over the financial cliff. If the country is bankrupt, our elected officials can no longer give money to these groups.
The left is no different than a drunk in a bar looking for trouble. There is no negotiating with a drunk.
The left is drunk with power and they want more. They are looking for trouble and there is no negotiation.
There’s no more FDR and we still have “Social Security.” There’s no more LBJ and we still have the enormous welfare racket.
And does any one wonder why certain politicians want to get a tighter hand on gun control, the hand writing on the wall is hard to overlook.
Agreeing to get along requires a huge evolution in human thinking, to accept an axiom that many people reject:
“Other people do not necessarily want to live the way I want to live, and unless they oppress me, neither I, nor the government, have the authority or right to make them change.”
As a great example of this, I knew a young man who was homeless. And he *liked* being homeless, and “not being part of the system”. He was quite happy doing what he was doing.
A young police officer was utterly mystified by this. In talking to the young homeless man, he was puzzled. “You could have a good job, a nice place to live, start a family and be a good member of society instead of being homeless.”
Just...like...me.
The young police officer could not grasp that anyone, for any reason, would *not* want to live their life just like him. He was filled to the brim with offers of ‘help’, endless government programs, even money out of his own pocket, in an effort to show the young homeless man “a better way to live.” All rejected. Politely, but firmly.
At the point it was becoming stalking, the young homeless man finally turned to a much older, senior police officer, asking him to have a talk with the young officer about “life and things”.
By then it was too late. Though the older officer did talk to him, and even order him to quit interfering with the lives of others, the young officer just could not abide the idea that other people had their own lives to lead, for better or worse. He soon left the police department and moved into social work, which he decided was the place to be to help people change their lives.
To be more...like...him.
In the final analysis, many of our national problems are based on the inability of people to let other people be, to let them succeed and fail, use their talents or neglect them, learn as much as they can or stay ignorant, and most of all, to stop resenting others for living their own lives.
If other people cross the line and interfere with you, that is one thing, a legitimate reason to individually and collectively make them stop. But if they are minding their own business, they should be left to do so in peace.
This is called “getting along with others”.
Pushing for CWII.
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