Posted on 06/22/2006 12:20:56 AM PDT by Cato Uticensis
Thursday, June 22, 2006
What's the Matter With Massachusetts?
I'm growing quite weary of the arrogant bi-coastal elites and their tired old Marxist cliches. Our Leftists call themselves "Progressives" as if their ideas are new and fresh and the wave of the future. A certain analogy goes that nations walk to the top wearing hobnailed military boots and descend into obscurity wearing silk slippers. Only within this idiom are Liberals the future of our society (if we let them be) and Conservatives the past.
But in all other regards our Liberal friends are way out of whack. I frequently hear "Progressives" argue that Middle American and Bible Belt voters vote against their "economic interests" in favor of some supposedly illusionary righteousness. Thomas Frank articulated this delusion in his tripe-work "What's the Matter With Kansas?" (short answer:nothing). But you know, even if we assume that an overbearing socialist bureaucracy is in the "economic interest" of middle class and poor red staters, that being taxed off their farms and out of their small businesses into an overbearing welfare state is for their greatest good, sacrificing one's principles for monetary gain has a special word for it. That is prostitution. So Frank wants us to prostitute off our cherished beliefs to jump on the welfare state bandwagon. And he asks what's the matter with US.
Frank wrote once, "For us it is the Democrats that are the party of workers, of the poor, of the weak and the victimized. Figuring this out, we think, is basic; it is part of the ABCs of adulthood. " Frank shows a lack of knowledge of history. The Republicans are the party of the working people. The Democrats are the Party of a welfare state and people who want freebees without earning them. The Democrats are the Party of the Predators, not the victimized.
What's more, this is not a new phenomenon in history. Republics are invariably destroyed from within by the self-appointed champions of the poor. Welfare states are set up not to benefit the recipients of the largesse, but rather the politicians who dole it out. The poor in Rome loved Caesar, but after a time of dictatorship, clamored for a return to the Republic. But it was too late to say no by the reign of Tiberius Caesar. The Romans had been mobilized by the growing Welfare State. The Caesars took control and once they had, there was no going back.
The truth is, the Democratic Party has always backed slavery. Frank writes as if it would be axiomatic that Abolitionists would be with him were they around today. Personally I believe John Brown would probably gun him down five minutes after meeting him. I'd like to see Liberals come to Fudametalist Abolitionist stronghold towns and tyrannize them telling them no school prayer, no Bibles in school or no Ten Commandments in public areas. They'd be very quickly run out of these towns.
The Democrat politicians supported Civil Rights not out of geuine altruism, but to bolster a sagging voting base. Democrats were and are demogogues who wile the very poor into giving them power via political machines. The GI Generation Democrats who ran the party from the late 1940s to the late 1960s(of whom Zell Miller is the last) were, mostly decent men, not the cynics of the New Deal or New Left, but nonetheless, Civil Rights was far more pragmatist than originally imagined.
The movie "Gangs of New York" dramatizes the utter hypocrisy and dishonesty by which the Demos under Boss Tweed built their Irish machine. Boss Tweed was a con artist and thief who gave the Irish crumbs of charity, not because he loved them, but because he wanted their votes and to have a lock on power and with that power be able to do pretty much whatever he wanted. And he did until Republican muckrackers took him down and packed him off to prison.
The Irish had opposed the abolitionists. The Democratic machine consisted of New Immigration immigrants such as the Italians and Poles, as well as the Hibernians. And poor White Southerners.
But after 1945 things were changing. The Irish, Italians, Poles and, more slowly and less totally, White Southerers began moving from the poverty stricken masses needing a demagogue champion into an independent Middle Class. Many of these who supported FDR in 1932 liked Ike in 1952. The machine was losing its cogs and needed spare. Where would Demos find a mass of poor, underpriviledged people to build a new machine? That's when they turned to Black people. And the Demos lost the South due to the emergence of the new independent middle class. If we presume that one has to be racist to win in the South, then Jimmy Carter (who won 12 of 13 Southern states in 1976) and Bill Clinton (6 of 13 in both 1992 and 1996) would both have to be flaming racists. Not to mention a majority of Southern Congressmen and goverors were Democratic until 1994. Walter Williams today wrote an excellent column on Marx, the racist.
We need to ask, What's the matter with Massachusetts? Why do they continue to re-elect the real-life inspiration for Jabba the Hutt, Ted Kennedy for forty years? Why do effete Yankee Brahmin Liberals continue to fight in support of America's every enemy? The Viet-Cong, Khmer Rouge, Sandinistas, El Salvadoran Communist FMLN, Fidel Castro, the USSR, Saddam Hussein and others have all enjoyed the benefits of support by American Liberals. Now who's interest is it to help these people? No loyal American.
I got a scholarship to go to an elite prep school with the children of limosine liberals for my junior and senior years(1985-1987). I had come home from travels in Europe and America was a beloved, cherished homeland that I had desired to return home to. I never imagined that there was a large movement of Americans who hated America so much. "I'm not into America" a classmate named Rachel put it mildly. How is it in anyone's interest to be self-loathing and to hate your country? Self-hatred is a severe mental illness. Someone who hates themself has nothing to offer or teach anyone.
Frank and other Libs say that Kansans voting Republican vote against their "economic interest." I say no. The prosperity that comes from free markets benefits everyone. Massachusetts votes against its interest in voting for Ted Kennedy the Hutt. If the terrorists win this war, Liberal Americans will no longer be able to continue on in their ivory towers, insulated from reality. It will come crashing in on them. Like 9-11 and then some.
> It will come crashing in on them. Like 9-11 and then some.
Excellent.
"Personally I believe John Brown would probably gun him down five minutes after meeting him."
That, Wild Man from Borneo, John Brown, would probably eliminate the man after the first minute...
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