"America is at that awkward stage.
It's too late to work within the system,
but too early to shoot the bastards."
- Che Guevara
Anyone who believes these seditious, murderous, hopeless words has no business being on FreeRepublic, IMHO.
Posted on 04/01/2002 5:42:41 AM PST by B. A. Conservative
How many times have you heard this statement? Have you used this phrase yourself? Is FreeRepublic just a support group (form of group therapy) for burned-out or recovering conservatives much like the function served by AA for alcoholics?
I have a list of questions to which I don't have the answers, but believe that these are questions that deserve answers. If you have asked yourself more than a few of these questions or even entertained the thoughts that these questions express, then I am inviting you to participate in an exchange of ideas. I hope that enough Freepers will provide their thoughts in order that we can use your answers to end and reverse the damage that is being done to our country and our way of life by Democrats and other liberals.
I intend to provide the complete list as part of this post. I am going to post each question one at a time for its own thread. Each posting of a question will be several days apart to allow time for those willing to participate. I hope that anyone willing to participate will hold their replies to specific questions until each question is asked as a topic of its own with the first question to be posted on Thursday. I am hoping that you will use replies to this post as a means of attracting Freepers whom you know might have an interest in this discussion and the direction in which it goes. Here is the List:
I suspect most Freepers share my frustrations, but have not let their thinking run as far afield as I have let mine. Quite frankly, I am not at all happy with my answers to these questions. And while this may prove to be a fool's errand, I assure you it is not intended as an April Fools. As is so common on this site, feel free to Freep This Poll.
We continue down this road to an authoritarian marxist/fascist coalition ran for the benefit of the statists or they kill us
The Civil War was fought, in the megapolitcal sense, as a cultural clash between the powers of the old economy agrarians and the new economy industrialists. 500,000 plus died.
Freerepublic and its frequenters recognize that the Industrial Age is coming to an end (accept the paleo-cons who think somehow a third party candidacy will save the day)in favor of a borderless Information Society.
Many of us are no longer nationalists, even though we remain patriots in the true sense: we love the land of our fathers. We favor policies and politicians that will make the transition to a new age as violence free as possible, hoping to avoid the cultural divide that caused a war of horrific proportions in the 1860s. We see a land splitting apart, on a way course to a violent clash that we will not be able to control in any sense.
The other piece to the puzzle requires a historical reference. In the 1920s, many a judge in Germany had an opportunity to put Hitler and his Nazi Party in jail for numerous frauds and thefts, let alone political murders that numbered in the hundreds. The names of these judges have been lost to history even though as the interpreters of the law, they were suppose to be the bulwark against the will of the people.
However, in this age, for the sake of history, we work to name the names of the corrupt seawards of power and in a book yet to be written a hundred years from now, let their names be the villains to a peaceful and Judeo-Christian sense of liberty.
IMO
The absurdities of a few deconstructionists notwithstanding, there's nothing at all unclear about the Second Amendment. Yet government's minions turn ghostly pale at the suggestion that a private citizen has a perfect right to obtain and carry any weapon an Army soldier is issued. Inasmuch as the point of the Second Amendment was to guarantee that the citizenry could rise up and depose the State when it deemed that the time had come to do so, there can be only one reason for this.
Secession, the only remedy for usurpation of authority beyond that granted by the Constitution, has been rendered too dangerous to contemplate by the disarming of the citizenry. In all probability, Washington wouldn't order a nuclear bombardment of a seceding state. It wouldn't have to. How many of your neighbors own tanks, rocket launchers, or fully automatic weapons?
"Paper constitutions raise smiles on the faces of those who have observed their results." -- Herbert Spencer.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
Anyone who believes these seditious, murderous, hopeless words has no business being on FreeRepublic, IMHO.
To be honest, I was devastated by the sentiments expressed by an overwhelming number of people post-9/11. I couldn't believe these were the same people who earlier were preaching against a coercive State and claimed to be promoters of Liberty.
The word "fascist" kept coming to mind as the cheers for "lock up anyone who disagrees with Bush" got louder.
I've come to believe that the vast majority of people here use FR to let off steam ... and they like to hear themselves sound "patriotic." I've also discovered that many here who call themselves conservative really are nothing of the sort. They are neo-conservatives.
As far as America being too far gone to be salvaged, I believe you are right. Garet Garrett thought it was too far gone over fifty years ago. And things have only gotten worse since then:
There are those who have never ceased to say very earnestly, "Something is going to happen to the American form of government if we don't watch out." These were the innocent disarmers. Their trust was in words. They had forgotten their Aristotle. More than 2,000 years ago he wrote of what can happen within the form, when "one thing takes the place of another, so that the ancient laws will remain, while the power will be in the hands of those who have brought about revolution in the state."
Worse outwitted were those who kept trying to make sense of the New Deal from the point of view of all that was implicit in the American scheme, charging it therefore with contradiction, fallacy, economic ignorance, and general incompetence to govern.
But it could not be so embarrassed and all that line was wasted, because, in the first place, it never intended to make that kind of sense, and secondly, it took off from nothing that was implicit in the American scheme. It took off from a revolutionary base. The design was European. Regarded from the point of view of revolutionary technic it made perfect sense. Its meaning was revolutionary and it had no other. For what it meant to do it was from the beginning consistent in principle, resourceful, intelligent, masterly in workmanship, and it made not one mistake.
The test came in the first one hundred days...
I didn't read anywhere in the mission statement which says FreeRepublic is a group therapy session for hopeless conservatives who think all is lost to fascism and socialism and nothing can be done to get our freedoms back short of a bloodbath. The ones being trolls are those who promulgate and proselytize wacko militia nutcase ideologies.
I stand corrected. I knew it had belonged to an ideologue, though.
foreverfree
That is not to say we should not defend ourselves, nor work to prevent further attacks. But at the same time we need to answer these questions. I have heard it said that you define your self by your enemy, defining yourself by what you are not.
If I might make a few suggestions:
1. Group the questions into logical topics so a discussion of the topic can address all aspects
2. Focus the discussion on the positive, if it just turns about to be a complaining session, then interest will wane.
I think we are to change direction, each individual; needs to make a contribution. Let’s use this forum to determine what those actions might be.
First and foremost, you have to convince welfare recipients that giving up their welfare and actually working for a living is good for them. Win that battle, and all may not be lost.
As long as politicians support taking money from the some to give to others, they won't be voted out of office... and the downward slide will continue.
But you don't recognize the differences in their ideologies to have known there was something very wrong with that attribution before you posted it?
The powers not granted to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the People.
If the Tenth Amendment were obeyed, this country could have 50 Republics governing in 50 unique and diverse ways, all within the protection and constraints of the Constitution.
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