Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

'The Real Burkean In American Politics Right Now Is Barack Obama'
NewsBusters ^ | Mark Finkelstein

Posted on 09/09/2009 6:24:13 AM PDT by governsleastgovernsbest

Jon Meacham strikes me as a knowledgeable man. Surely the author of a well-regarded biography of Andrew Jackson knows his history. Ignorance thus cannot explain how the Newsweek editor could with a straight face describe Barack Obama as "the real Burkean in American politics right now." Yet that's just what Meacham did on today's Morning Joe . . .

View video here.

(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: barackobama; edmundburke; joescarborough; jonmeacham

1 posted on 09/09/2009 6:24:14 AM PDT by governsleastgovernsbest
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: governsleastgovernsbest

I read his book on Andrew Jackson. Boring. He cut and pasted a bunch of stuff and strung it together with a lot of politically correct garbage. No scholarship. No insight. It seemed to have been written by a committee of interns.


2 posted on 09/09/2009 6:29:08 AM PDT by Mercat (Reluctant glenbeckian)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Mercat

Probably was.


3 posted on 09/09/2009 6:34:27 AM PDT by Mr. Jazzy ("I AM JIM THOMPSON!!!")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: governsleastgovernsbest

Meachum strikes horror in me. Of all the media intellectuals, he is, by far, the is the most dishonest among them, and the most brown-nose. If the Stalinist model didn’t already exist, Meachum would have invented it. He is a man in search of a tyranny to be consumed in.


4 posted on 09/09/2009 6:49:59 AM PDT by Havisham
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: governsleastgovernsbest

Meacham simply found a word he wanted to use in conversation on the TV to try to define himself as the smartest guy in the room. Edmund Burk had more common sense and class in his pinkie than Obama will ever have. Meacham actually downgraded Obama from God to Burk. These people are simply full of themselves.


5 posted on 09/09/2009 6:57:23 AM PDT by Texas Songwriter
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Havisham

He did seem to have a man crush on Andrew Jackson because he was such a strong leader. Other than that he was a white slave owning Indian killing bigot.


6 posted on 09/09/2009 7:04:10 AM PDT by Mercat (Reluctant glenbeckian)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: governsleastgovernsbest

More claptrap from our supposedly brilliant news commentators.


7 posted on 09/09/2009 7:08:28 AM PDT by popdonnelly (Yes, we disagree - no, we won't shut up - no, we won't quit.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: governsleastgovernsbest

Oh, Obama is an absolute reactionary. He’s trying to revive and make relevant a Marxist style of government that went out with the fall of the Soviet Union.


8 posted on 09/09/2009 7:10:32 AM PDT by popdonnelly (Yes, we disagree - no, we won't shut up - no, we won't quit.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Texas Songwriter

Newsweek and Meacham what a combination. Last July(I think it was the 7-24-08 issue)there was a cover story”what He Belioves” written by that fawning white guilter Meacham, who discussed “all” of BO’s philosophic and religious influeneces and NOT 1 NOT 1 mention of black liberation theology, its founder Rev. James Cone, NOTHING. NADA.ZIP. He thinks he’s “intellectually honest”? A big bullshitter is more the case. That’s OK though. It won’t be too long before we’re speaking of Newsweek in the past tense and he can go teabagging with KOthe JO over on that trustworthy msdnc.


9 posted on 09/09/2009 7:11:46 AM PDT by easttennesseejohn
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: governsleastgovernsbest

No liberal spouts the party line louder than a Southern liberal. Meacham is a Tennessean, born in Chattanooga, graduate of the University of the South at Sewanee, TN.

White Southerners are automatically suspect in liberal circles and they have to work doubly hard to prove their liberal authenticity over and over again.


10 posted on 09/09/2009 7:23:31 AM PDT by Malesherbes (Sauve Qui Peut)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Mercat; All
On the contrary, the Tea Partiers fit that description better. In his Speech on Conciliation, Burke displayed an uncanny understanding of what he called, "the spirit" of the then colonists, which, by the way, seems to be the same "spirit" exhibited today by the Tea Partiers and Town Hallers. The present American leader is in no way Burkean in that respect.

Burke observed then, ". . . it is the spirit that has made the country. . . ."

He went on, "Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new people is no way worn out or impaired, and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit. .. . This is a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it . . . This religion, under a variety of denominations agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in most of the northern provinces. . . . The Southern colonies are much more strongly and with a higher and more stubborn spirit attached to liberty than those to the northward."

He went on to refer to the "temper and character" of the colonists, "In this character of the Americans a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole. . . ."

By far the greatest indicator that Burke's qualities are not to be found where this writer attributes them is in the following Burke observation about their "untractable spirit" and "education":

"In other countries the people . . . judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle." Americans, he said, could detect "misgovernment at a distance and sniff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze."

11 posted on 09/09/2009 7:48:51 AM PDT by loveliberty2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Mercat

“He did seem to have a man crush on Andrew Jackson because he was such a strong leader. Other than that he was a white slave owning Indian killing bigot.”

Yes, precisely. Meacham is a creep.


12 posted on 09/09/2009 8:37:19 AM PDT by Havisham
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Texas Songwriter

“Meacham simply found a word he wanted to use in conversation on the TV to try to define himself as the smartest guy in the room. Edmund Burk had more common sense and class in his pinkie than Obama will ever have. Meacham actually downgraded Obama from God to Burk. These people are simply full of themselves.”

Best four successive sentences I will read for some time, I think.


13 posted on 09/09/2009 8:44:38 AM PDT by Havisham
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson