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Think Trump was crude? The Founding Fathers were just as bad
boston.com ^ | BETH J. HARPAZ

Posted on 03/05/2016 8:18:40 AM PST by RoosterRedux

You could say politics has reached a new low with the ‘‘small hands’’ remarks from the Republican debate.

But the exchange over the size of Donald Trump’s, um, hands is merely the most recent vulgarity in American politics. The history of crude remarks goes back to the Founding Fathers.

In the 18th century, John Adams called Alexander Hamilton a ‘‘bastard brat’’ and wrote that Hamilton had ‘‘a superabundance of secretions which he could not find whores enough to draw off,’’ according to historian Ron Chernow.

One difference between then and now: ‘‘These were words written or spoken in private, not in public,’’ said Chernow, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Alexander Hamilton helped inspire the hit Broadway musical ‘‘Hamilton.’’ (Chernow says the comments were quoted in letters that survived the centuries.)

In the 1880s, rumors of Grover Cleveland’s out-of-wedlock child led to a song from his Republican opponents: ‘‘Ma, ma, where’s my pa?’’ When Cleveland won the presidency, the response came: ‘‘Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!’’

‘‘Old-fashioned American politics was full of those kinds of vile comments,’’ said Arnold Shober, who teaches government at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. ‘‘We’ve kind of lost that over the last 70 years, and I think it’s just coming back.’’

Not that 20th century politicians shied away from vulgarities. Here’s President Bill Clinton describing his 1970s El Camino pickup truck: ‘‘I had Astroturf in the back. You don’t want to know why, but I did.’’

(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
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To: RoosterRedux

Bump


121 posted on 03/05/2016 11:34:05 AM PST by gibsosa
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To: x

Cultural Marxism = Political Correctness

The antithesis of free speech.

Are you under the impression that the purpose of the First Amendment was to protect only speech that no one finds offensive?


122 posted on 03/05/2016 11:34:35 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum ("If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it." --Samuel Clemens)
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To: mouse1

The good old days: they were terrible!


123 posted on 03/05/2016 11:47:13 AM PST by miss marmelstein (Richard the Third: With my own people alone I should like to drive away the Turks (Muslims))
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Are you under the impression that the purpose of the First Amendment was to protect only speech that no one finds offensive?

Uh, no, but that doesn't have much to do with what I said.

Back in the 1950s when everybody in Congress had fought in the Second World War (or the First), there was a lot more fellow feeling in Washington. That is what a lot of people are comparing the present day to.

As ideas of political correctness have spread, politics has been getting less civil than it was back then. Political correctness isn't about manners or niceness. It takes offense at some things being said, but allows or encourages other offensive things.

124 posted on 03/05/2016 12:04:43 PM PST by x
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To: rey

Thanks back and have a good weekend.


125 posted on 03/05/2016 12:20:08 PM PST by tinyowl (A equals A)
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To: RoosterRedux
Not that 20th century politicians shied away from vulgarities. Here’s President Bill Clinton...

...and the cigar, and the stain, and the oval orfice, and the sink, and the groping, philandering and raping.

126 posted on 03/05/2016 12:32:49 PM PST by ROCKLOBSTER (Celebrate "Republicans Freed the Slaves Month")
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To: rey

You are completely uninformed. Nothing you have listed rises to the level of a serious concern. It is just as I said, “Opposition to Trump seems to be based completely on emotional reactions to hysterical perceptions.”


127 posted on 03/05/2016 1:16:25 PM PST by Louis Foxwell (Stop Islam and save the world.)
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To: georgiegirl

LOL DT lose? He’ll lose the money donated by supporters, but he can always get those who obey his orders to do whatever he commands and start more businesses. Oh, that’s right, there are fewer people playing golf, fewer people going to casinos, and fewer people going on vacation.

So now I wonder why he is applying for a job that comes with housing, lifetime perks, SS, paid for by the taxpayer, and all he had to do was call people names for a year, and promise to build a wall. Sounds like a really good deal to me.


128 posted on 03/05/2016 2:21:23 PM PST by huldah1776 ( Vote Pro-life! Allow God to bless America before He avenges the death of the innocent.)
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To: SuzyQue
But many of them were written in Boardsides and posted around towns and cities and then people read them, sometimes out loud, to the crowd.

Jefferson was probably THE dirtiest, nastiest one of the lot. He called Adams a HERMAPHRODITE in public!

129 posted on 03/05/2016 2:37:45 PM PST by nopardons
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To: Ajnin
So what; that's about the breathe of his accomplishments.

He has NONE, in the Senate.

130 posted on 03/05/2016 2:39:08 PM PST by nopardons
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To: Las Vegas Ron; Ajnin
[Ajnin] We know Trump by words and deeds that he will violate the Constitution whemever he sees fit.

Pure speculation.

It is just as easy to speculate that Trump knows exactly what needs to be don't to cure what ails business ...


It isn't pure speculation. FRiend asserts a collared speculation constrained by Trump's observed behavior and personal history. That is a reasonable speculation informed by Trump's considerable available history both business and personal-political (his personal donations and statements).

Donald Trump is not a big constitutionalist, always in his past life citing precedent and law before he made a move. That is not his style. He is instead a palimpsest on which so much has been written that he is like a blank sheet of paper: it's possible to read just about anything into his positions and asseverations. So unlike Obama, who had nothing there except his ghostwritten bios and his plunder checks from shaking down New York banks and the Agriculture Department (let's not forget he has a continuing scandal there linking him to a known notorious person and piles of government money), and his media "coverage" ie. complicity, Trump instead comes loaded with National Enquirer and People/Us scandal-sheet mustard-yellow journalism. Like a palimpsest, one can read in all the chicken tracks and smudges the outline of almost any reading one cares to hazard, particularly because he has strewn the political record with chum and tidbits and feed-corn trails leading, ultimately, to his deer stand overlooking the White House front door.

What one does not see in Donald Trump's many moves and moues is any concern for the Constitution and Bill of Rights. He asserts his rights but seems oblivious to the rights of others until instructed by a court to leave someone alone, as in the notorious Atlantic City case, where he had to be warned off harassing a woman whose property he wanted for casino parking. (He has also spoken in favor of Kelo takings.)

Our FRiend's point is a good one.

131 posted on 03/05/2016 2:39:50 PM PST by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutierrez)
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To: Political Junkie Too
BRAVO !
132 posted on 03/05/2016 2:41:52 PM PST by nopardons
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To: lentulusgracchus
Sorry, but Cruz's behavior is no better. I support Cruz over any establishment pos running, but I'm under no illusion he is without flaws, just like Trump.

My enemy is the DC cabal. We keep this up, say hello to a brokered convention and another rino getting shoved down our throats...then we can all say madame potus.

133 posted on 03/05/2016 2:44:51 PM PST by Las Vegas Ron ("Medicine is the keystone in the arch of Socialism" Vladimir Lenin)
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To: nopardons
See my post 112.

-PJ

134 posted on 03/05/2016 2:45:07 PM PST by Political Junkie Too (If you are the Posterity of We the People, then you are a Natural Born Citizen.)
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To: tinyowl
Stop listening to the droning on of your mind as if it's an authority. I know you mean well, but you can't do well so long as you are following the echo chamber reverberations going on in your noggin.

I've never, ever seen before one FReeper tell another to stop listening to his conscience and just do X.

It's a first.

135 posted on 03/05/2016 2:45:24 PM PST by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutierrez)
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To: nopardons
Thanks! I was too quick with my prompt to you.

-PJ

136 posted on 03/05/2016 2:47:21 PM PST by Political Junkie Too (If you are the Posterity of We the People, then you are a Natural Born Citizen.)
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To: Las Vegas Ron
However, it tells me he is more valuable as an attorney or a Senator [than] POTUS

Do you think people, even lawyers, who disagree with you should stay out of public life? Or just the highest office in the land?

You sound awfully frustrated and impatient to have it your way. Would you like to vet the voter rolls? Toss anyone who doesn't support zero taxation of (your) business?

By the way, there has never, ever been "zero" taxation of business in this country .... just crony-capitalist businesses who bought legislatures so they could "have it your way". They even bought a civil war, once.

137 posted on 03/05/2016 2:52:16 PM PST by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutierrez)
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To: RoosterRedux

Yeah, I was wondering when someone was going to write up something like this.

There is some truth to it, though it is also true the founders were also aware of a Creator....and many (not all) had a sense of responsibility to their fellow man.

The very FACT that so early in the Republic there was a sense that the wickedness of slavery needed to end is indicative of a regenerate mindset among our forefathers. God, in His Providence, provided for a way to see that it could end in a Constitutional way. The evil that men do fought against that need—and hundreds of thousands died in the conflict.

Nevertheless, we were founded by essentially God fearing men. And they would not be fighting tooth and nail to permit child murderers to be funded by the taxes of their fellow citizens. They would be APPALLED at the taxes of their fellow man being confiscated by a central government and distributing the monies to those who expected a free ride. And they would definitely (yes, even in the wake of the 14th amendment) want our borders defended.

Pray for a spiritual awakening, and the political and moral problems will take care of themselves.


138 posted on 03/05/2016 2:57:34 PM PST by SoFloFreeper (I am undecided between Cruz, Rubio & Trump...)
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To: lentulusgracchus
You sound awfully frustrated and impatient to have it your way.

Uh, you sound a little frustrated your self.

Look, a man who has a special talent should do the work he is best suited in. Cruz is an outstanding litigator who wins cases in front of the SCOTUS that preserve our God Given rights

So I am frustrated to think he should do what he does best??

By the way, there has never, ever been "zero" taxation of business in this country .... just crony-capitalist businesses who bought legislatures so they could "have it your way". They even bought a civil war, once.

Hmmm, that is exactly why I am for eliminating corp. taxes.

And by the way, corporations DO NOT pay taxes, their customers do.

139 posted on 03/05/2016 3:01:06 PM PST by Las Vegas Ron ("Medicine is the keystone in the arch of Socialism" Vladimir Lenin)
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To: SuzyQue
“One difference between then and now: ‘‘These were words written or spoken in private, not in public,’’”

Actually, people didn't have to look far to find out what the leading pols thought: They owned, controlled, or contributed content to leading newspapers and disseminated their thoughts -- and accusations -- that way.

Example: John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison's remarkable series of articles, which were often couched as replies to objectors (Antifederalists, who were actually the true republican federalists), in The Federalist, a newspaper editorially committed to a strong central government, "empire without the King", and friendly to the purposes of the writers of the Constitution, which at the time was a proposition and not yet the law of the land.

Newspapers everywhere bent to the sway of prominent politicians like Jefferson and Hamilton and the Adams family, and they raged back and forth with everything from appeals to principle to gutter-political accusations.

Alexander Hamilton once defended himself against accusations of having taken bribes at a skulduggery meeting, by throwing a woman's name in the street as his alibi. "I was boffing the wife of Captain So-and-so" became one of the more notorious exculpations in American history, and part of Hamilton's record .... want him in the White House? The scandal was worse, back then .... it was "Yuuuuuge!"

"Father of the Constitution," a back-stairs man who threw his GF under the bus when he needed it.

140 posted on 03/05/2016 3:08:01 PM PST by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutierrez)
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