dagblog - Comments for "The Morphing of The American Right. From Burke and Buckley to Baptists and Falwell"

I keep hearing that we're

Ramona — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 17:09:36 +0000

I keep hearing that we're trying to go back to the glory days. It's not a matter of going back and reliving them again. It has nothing to do with nostalgia and everything to do with what it takes to build a healthy economy. We thrive best when the majority are working at jobs that can actually sustain them and allow them to participate. We grow a healthy economy by recognizing that sharing the wealth is more than just altruism.

There are no perfect answers, no perfect heroes, and I'm not so awash in nostalgia that I pick and choose what I want to remember about the so-called glory days. Bad things happened but it's sometimes necessary to be reminded of what did work.

We came out of a miserable depression, fought a deadly, costly war, and still managed to build a healthy economy where the working class could actually afford to live in a manner that was as close to rich as they were ever going to get.

That's gone now, and if we tend to look back with many sighs, trying to remind a new generation of what can be accomplished with a lot of hard work, all I can say is it can't hurt.

Ramona, civil rights and

Michael Wolraich — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:45:59 +0000

In reply to Interesting thoughts on

Ramona, civil rights and racial tolerance were not always core elements of the Democrats' platform--certainly not in the 19th century but not even in the first half of the 20th. Many of the old unions excluded blacks. Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal government. FDR interned Japanese citizens. Civil rights and racial tolerance didn't become Democratic priorities until after World War II, at which point the great Southern realignment began.

And speaking of religious orthodoxy, one of most progressive anti-corporate Democratic presidential candidates was Williams Jennings Bryan of Scopes monkey trial fame.

As for change, I would say that today's right wing has far more aggressive plans than liberals, who are mostly trying to hang onto the status quo--or else trying crawl back a couple of decades to liberalism's glory days.

Democrats love wage

Resistance — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 04:25:14 +0000

In reply to The South was Democrat (well

Democrats love wage slaves.

These same wage slave owner democrats, want to give amnesty to a million more wage slaves, in order to force wages and benefits down.

The Republicans fought slavery back then; the democrats were all for it.

FDR the democrat used Socialism to get American Capitalism back on it's feet

What makes people think the democrats want to return to FDR's plans or methods to save America?

Democrats love slavery. Wage slaves to support the government who'll relieve the plantation owners of their responsibilities.

The government will give you healthcare, the government will give you a place to live, the government will feed you through the food stamp program. The government will do all these things as long as the wage slaves pay their taxes.

The slaves are now responsible for their own upkeep.

You plantation owners should be grateful for the new Democrats. You plantation owners no longer have to worry about what the middle class wage slaves demand, the government will just open the border and allow 20 million more wage slaves under an Amnesty program, to under cut the uppity middle class.

WTF you slaves. because the Obama administration has no plans to deliver you.

Can you slaves say Uncle?

Lincoln made it illegal to own Black slaves, the democrats figured a way to enslave everyone else.

The South was Democrat (well

cmaukonen — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 03:31:09 +0000

In reply to Interesting thoughts on

The South was Democrat (well Dixicrat) because they blamed the republicans for the Civil War and more importantly reconstruction. Which was an abysmal failure.

Interesting thoughts on

Ramona — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 02:43:27 +0000

In reply to The Morphing of The American Right. From Burke and Buckley to Baptists and Falwell

Interesting thoughts on fundamentalism and orthodoxy. Both are equally destructive, I think, in their need for rigidity and intolerance. Change is to be feared, a concept fully in line with Conservatives, and probably the reason we're always going to butt heads.

I never understood why the South followed the Democratic Party ever. There is nothing in the Dem's platform that would ever have appealed to the South. Labor Reform? Hah! Civil Rights? Hah! Justice? Hah! Tolerance? Double Hah!

But I am surprised and dismayed at the numbers of Christian fundamentalists now holding positions of power. They would like us to believe that they're the majority, but I don't buy it.

Still, they're somehow pushing enough buttons to get the results they want, and I still haven't seen an explanation for that. I just don't get it. There's a psychology there that's beyond me, I admit.