Posted on 02/16/2016 12:38:09 PM PST by rickmichaels
Last week in New Hampshire, Republican presidential candidate John Kasich gave what many considered a gracious speech. He had just finished second, keeping his dim campaign hopes alive. The Ohio governor congratulated Donald Trump on his victory and then went on to talk about his own vision for America. It boiled down to the fundamental conservative doctrine of government as a last resort and the need to make sure no American is left behind.
But then he said something curious. He said on that night in New Hampshire the country had turned a page in what he called a dark period in America. It was a beautiful thought, indeed, but disconnected from the reality unfolding around him. He seemed to forget Mr. Trump, the winner that night by a large margin, was continuing to turn his long-shot campaign into a sure thing. The polls show that he is ready to trounce his opponents in South Carolina.
Mr. Trump, who was underestimated by nearly every political pundit, is very likely to win the Republican nomination — though there are still pundits proclaiming him dead in the water. If they were honest they would say the truth, the thing they most fear: that at this moment he is the presumptive Republican nominee. And to my way of thinking the dark period that Mr. Kasich hopes is gone is just getting started in earnest.
Mr. Trump represents the darkest side of America. His platform consists of identifying the “other†and then bragging about how he will deal with this nearly mystical threat to the American people. When this sort of thing happens in Europe there is always talk of a right-wing resurgence and memories of Nazism and fascism. It is seen as a return to a darker age, and with good reason.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalpost.com ...
You best watch your back or some mental deviant is gonna gang up on your sorry behind.
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I’m soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo scared of DT’s brown shirts.
Sorry not drinking the Kool Aid.
You bet your ass.
Too dumb to be scared, of your own lack of intelligence.
Although our modern socialists' promise of greater freedom is genuine and sincere, in recent years observer after observer has been impressed by the unforeseen consequences of socialism, the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under 'communism' and 'fascism'. As the writer Peter Drucker expressed it in 1939, 'the complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany.'No less significant is the intellectual outlook of the rank and file in the communist and fascist movements in Germany before 1933. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.
What is promised to us as the Road to Freedom is in fact the Highroad to Servitude. For it is not difficult to see what must be the consequences when democracy embarks upon a course of planning. The goal of the planning will be described by some such vague term as 'the general welfare'. There will be no real agreement as to the ends to be attained, and the effect of the people's agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go: with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all. - F A Hayek,
The Road to Serfdom (Reader's Digest Condensed Version)
As a poster here has indicated, when citizens find themselves in seemingly hopeless personal situations related to feeding their families or achieving their goals for a new career, they find little solace in high-sounding ideas or principles.
At times like these, they cannot link bad ideas with the consequences they are feeling and experiencing. And those who wish to become their masters count on their vulnerability, as they may offer solutions which will assure their own elevation to positions of power.
In Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov," Ivan relates a fictional story to his brother. It posits that Christ refused the Devil's temptation to create bread from stone so humanity could remain free, and that by doing so Jesus made freedom the ultimate gift from God, because man would happily enslave himself for free bread. "So, in the end, they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: 'Enslave us, but feed us!' And they will finally understand that freedom and the assurance of daily bread for everyone are two incompatible notions that could never co-exist!" "Christ may have been able to turn stone into bread or feed 5,000 with three loaves and two fish, but the state is no miracle worker. Any time the state embarks on a miraculous quest, it is always an act of power, not faith or charity." - Peter Marshall
Whether the prospective tyrannical power-seeker comes from what we call the "Right," or from the "Left," the "consequences" of tyranny are the same.
Only the American Constitution has limited the coercive hand of government. Once its limits are disregarded or erased, the consequences of tyranny will be loosed.
American voters of the Year 2016 might keep that in mind as they contemplate the futures of their grandchildren and succeeding generations.
Living generations of Americans today, of all races and creeds, are beneficiaries of the ideas of 1776, as they were implemented in the Constitution of 1787, as that Constitution has been honored by action.
"Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what has happened once in 6000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world." - Daniel Webster
GOPe propaganda
The only lies and hate I see are from this author.
Well said.
The words "Conservative" and "Republican" are becoming more and more irrelevant.
The "Conservatives" have been either completely failing or totally screwing us for nearly 30 years.
We now see the ACTUAL RESULTS of immigration and NAFTA. No more need to do projections and analysis. We are living in the reality of those two policies.
Most people would vote for a hamster if it could stop illegal immigration and restore American jobs.
Trump is the happiest warrior on the stump. His vision for America is anything but dark. Go Don!
Yes, and fascism couldn’t succeed in America, so long as conservatism provided a viable opposition to the communists, because reasonable people will join a more reasonable opposition, as long as they believe it can succeed.
If that opposition is no longer viable, then we will either get fascism, or communism. There really isn’t an alternative.
Sweet post. And to add, we have witnessed the change in public education from learning how to reason on your own to becoming sheep. Reinforced in the little ones when everyone gets a trophy just for playing.
-— Only the American Constitution has limited the coercive hand of government. Once its limits are disregarded or erased, the consequences of tyranny will be loosed. -—
Beautiful.
The urgency for passing on to rising generations the ideas essential to liberty was clear and constituted the primary imperative for education in America.
Since the late 1800's, those who self-identified first as "liberals," and now as "progressives," gained control of the mechanisms of education in America as a primary tool in dimming the understanding of "the People" of their (the citizens') role as "Keepers" (Justice Story) of that Constitution.
The restoration of liberty may well depend on "the People" rediscovering the ideas.
The following excerpt comes from the concluding paragraphs of an essay in a 1987 volume entitled Our Ageless Constitution:
It was John Adams who said: "The foundation of every government is some principle or passion in the minds of the people." Clearly, the Founders' passion was liberty, and in order to secure that liberty, they sought out and incorÂporated into the United States Constitution those ideas and principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
The French historian, Guizot, once asked James Russell Lowell, "How long will the American republic endure?" Lowell replied: "As long as the IDEAS of the men who founded it continue dominant" Herein lies the answer to the question, "Will the Experiment Succeed?"
It can and will succeed IF the motivating "principle or passion in the minds of the people" is LIBERTY, and if that passion causes them to exert the determination and will to complete the needed restoration of the IDEAS upon which the great American experiment was based.
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