Posted on 02/27/2020 7:31:33 PM PST by karpov
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Now I have to decide if Id support Bernie Sanders over Trump.
We all start from personal experience. I covered the Soviet Union in its final decrepit years. The Soviet and allied regimes had already slaughtered 20 million people through things like mass executions and intentional famines. Those regimes were slave states. They enslaved whole peoples and took away the right to say what they wanted, live where they wanted and harvest the fruits of their labor.
And yet every day we find more old quotes from Sanders apologizing for this sort of slave regime, whether in the Soviet Union, Cuba or Nicaragua. He excused the Nicaraguan communists when they took away the civil liberties of their citizens. Hes still making excuses for Castro.
To sympathize with these revolutions in the 1920s was acceptable, given their original high ideals. To do so after the Hitler-Stalin pact, or in the 1950s, is appalling. To do so in the 1980s is morally unfathomable.
I say all this not to cancel Sanders for past misjudgments. I say all this because the intellectual suppositions that led him to embrace these views still guide his thinking today. Ive just watched populism destroy traditional conservatism in the G.O.P. Im here to tell you that Bernie Sanders is not a liberal Democrat. Hes what replaces liberal Democrats.
Traditional liberalism traces its intellectual roots to John Stuart Mill, John Locke, the Social Gospel movement and the New Deal. This liberalism believes in gaining power the traditional way: building coalitions, working within the constitutional system and crafting the sort of compromises you need in a complex, pluralistic society.
This is why liberals like Hubert Humphrey, Ted Kennedy and Elizabeth Warren were and are such effective senators. They worked within the system, negotiated and practiced the art of politics.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The Leftists are not remotely liberal.
Yes, David Brooks is about as “conservative” as Barack Hussein Obama.
IOW, 0%.
David Brooks is desperately grasping for a way to justify his embrace of far-left policies, which have led to this communist takeover of the Democrat Party.
Sorry Mr. Brooks. You’re reaping the whirlwind.
The NYT’s token Conservative. Yeah, right.
What populism is destroying is anti-American globalist corporatism, which never had any legitimate claim to the name "conservatism."
Sanders is a transparent leftist. This jerk sees the frog getting boiled too quickly, and disguises his ideals as somehow different.
Sanders is a transparent leftist. This jerk sees the frog getting boiled too quickly, and disguises his ideals as somehow different.
“There are some ideas so stupid, only an intellectual could believe them.”
To compare Humphrey, Kennedy, and Warren in the same sentence.
Humphrey type Democrats are extinct. He wasn’t a bad guy, at least by comparison, though I’d have to check up on him a little closer. Now it is true Sanders is not an effective legislator. He was kicked out of a hippie commune because he was too lazy. I’m not making this up.
Now don’t confuse hollywood or LA “hippies” with genuine back to the land types. Comrade Bernie is even more lazy, and useless, than you’ve been led to understand. Real hippies don’t want anything to do with nutbars.
Kennedy was a complete twatwaffle. Dave is smoking his shoelaces here.
“Populism” is a dirty word with our intellectual betters. The idea that our elected representatives should do what we elected them to do - what they promised they would do, the platforms they campaigned on - the issues that they raise money on - “Populism” is just not gonna work for folks in credentialed, rarified air of Academe. Notice how he slyly interjects this notion that the “GOP” has been destroyed - as if this is somehow comparable. What’s worse, the democrats finally get a real fascist as their leader? Bloomberg is everything they accuse DJT of. The projection is off the charts.
It will be amusing, in a twisted bizarro world way, to watch these experts ‘splain to us poor benighted Unpeople in flyover JesusLand why the “principled conservatives” will be, and we should too, voting for the Communist, instead of a successful president. It’s very “Nuanced” you see, you probably wouldn’t understand.
What I understand, numerous executive orders by Truman, Eisenhower et al., made Communists unable to obtain employment in the Federal government. That’s right boys and girls, it’s actually fvc&ing illegal to be a communist and work for the government. So what the hell is Comrade Bernie doing in the US Senate? Whete is his FBI file? Has that been scrubbed too?
He’s not even a Democrat. Why, if this is such a Big Deal And Must Not Be Allowed, did they let the SOB run in the democrat primaries?
But this twat acts like there is any sort dilemma on who to vote for? Really?
<>Traditional liberalism traces its intellectual roots to . . . John Locke . . . <>
What nonsense.
Who covered the Soviet Union and is scared about Bernie. Guess he's feeling The Bern.
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