Rats want you to believe that they're the party of 'we' when they are actually the party of 'me'. They wouldn't know how to do something for the good of 'we the people' over 'me, the pompous, snobbish a..hole'.
Nice article. Too true.
BTTT
-Eric
I've been trying to put my finger on this whole diversity cr@p forced on us at work (and everywhere else), and that statement right there nails it!
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This doesn't say much. Yes, we are divided into groups. It would be nice if it were not so, but it is. Wishing won't change. Compromise is not always appropriate. Some things are worth fighting over, some things are worth dividing over. The best thing we have going for us is that we are a nation of 50 States. The Dems hate that and want to compromise down to a single one-size fits all polity. In large part they have succeeded. Social Security, Section 8, Medicare, these are not programs States can opt out of.
I have no interest in compromise with Socialists. They are misguided, but certainly THINK they are doing the right thing for everyone. If you told them "think we" they would say they are: that's why we need more free clinics and free food. Whatever.
The author may be a great thinker but he fails to say anything meaningful in this essay. Next!
The author is condemning individuality, while stressing the need for the collective.
And he claims individuality is the reason Americans started voting themselves money from the public treasury?!
Um, excuse me but the painfully obvious fact is ALL the taxes and socialistic entitlements that follow come putting the collective over the individual!
If people kept their own money (gee, maybe that has something to do with individuality) and stopped taxing others for "the common good" NONE of this would have happened to begin with!
And then he has the raw nerve to blame individualists for socialistic behavior!? And if only we stopped thinking for ourselves, socialism would end??????? Now that's ignorant.
While JB makes some valid points, he also sets off some alarms. It is not America that is great, but the people that make it great. I cringed at the use of the communal 'we'. The greatest heritage of our country is it's commitment to individual freedom.
While denouncing the 'me first' school of thought, there has to be a degree of acceptance to individuals who subscribe to that selfish position. To champion individual freedom means to accept some of the inherent inequities and negative aspects that come with it.
The real threat to our country from within, is not the 'me firsters', but those who seek to manipulate them in collectivist fashion to further entrench their reliance on government for the sustenance of that selfishness. Those that seek to mislead the citizenry into believing that compassion is not an individual trait, but something doled out by government. That is the premise behind entitlement programs, defining compassion as a willingness to not give of oneself, but to take from some to redistribute to others. All the while, abdicating the individuals personal responsibility to show compassion to their fellow man, because government will do it for them.
Defend individual freedom and liberty, and you defend what makes this country great. 'We the people' refers to the people as individuals, not as a collective. The Bill of Rights spells out individual rights, the rights of each person. If, in the effort to champion our individual beliefs, we lose sight of this basic concept, we begin to erode those very individual freedoms we all hold dear.
James Madison
TUESDAY, JUNE 26TH. 1787
"... It ought, finally, to occur to a people deliberating on a government for themselves, that as different interests necessarily result from the liberty meant to be secured, the major interest might, under suden impulses, be tempted to commit injustice on the minority. In all civilized countries the people fall into different classes, having a real or supposed difference of interests. There will be creditors and debtors; farmers, merchants, and manufacturers. There will be, particularly, the distinction of rich and poor.
It was true, as had been observed (by Mr. PINCKNEY), we had not among us those hereditary distinctions of rank which were a great source of the contests in the ancient governments, as well as the modern States of Europe; nor those extremes of wealth or poverty, which characterize the latter. We cannot, however, be regarded, even at this time, as one homogeneous mass, in which every thing that affects a part will affect in the same manner the whole. In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we should not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce. An increase of population will of necessity increase the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings.
These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of intelligence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the former. No agrarian attempts have yet been made in this country; but symptoms of a levelling spirit, as we have understood, have sufficiently appeared in a certain quarter, to give notice of the future danger. How is this danger to be guarded against, on the republican principles?"