Everybody likes the day off, but nobody cares about why we have one.
That's the American approach to holidays -- and long weekends -- and its rise corresponds with our decline as a nation.
Boy, that just puts you in a cheery mood to listen to 3 Chords & the Truth, doesn't it? Sorry about that, Chief.
But it's true.
Let's go down the line, shall we? Christmas . . . uh, it's about a manger and wise men and Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer in the little town of Bethlehem, right? Now where's my presents?
Memorial Day . . . uh, baseball. Start of summer. Yeah, that's the ticket!
Labor Day . . . uh, the Jerry Lewis Telethon? Wait . . . Jerry's not doing it anymore. Oh! The end of summer! What else? We got nothin'.
That. my friends, is why the Big Show is here -- to clue you in on stuff. Well, that and play lots of great music.
This is Labor Day weekend. That would mean we're celebrating something having to do with . . . wait for it . . . labor? Not, not hours and hours of excruciating childbirth -- labor as in "workin' hard for the money."
Labor as in "labor union." Back when politicians and greedmeisters hadn't made "union" a dirty word yet. Back when people thought there was a certain dignity to labor, and that the dignity of workingmen (and women) ought to be protected.
Back when it was considered a good thing that an Average Joe could make enough money to take care of his family. Maybe even put the kids through college . . . upward mobility and all that stuff.
WE STILL believe in all that quaint stuff here at 3 Chords & the Truth, and this week, we're saluting labor for Labor Day. Our "work" set is tasty, indeed. Why not give it a listen, huh?
In other words, you don't have to check your brain -- or your conscience -- at the door to be well and properly entertained on the Big Show.
Over the past couple of years, writers at The American Thinker have had trouble keeping their demagoguery straight. Basically, they can't decide whether President Obama is a mortal threat to the republic because he's too Nazilike or because he's not Hitlerian enough. If you ask me, it'd be a trip to sit in on their editorial meetings.
For his part, Washington "investigative journalist" Matthew Vadum comes down squarely on the side of "more Hitler, dammit!" The least the government could be doing, he writes this week, is to keep the parasites away from the voting booth.
You don't say.
ACTUALLY, I took liberties in describing his position. Vadum didn't actually call the poor "parasites." He just referred to "nonproductive segments" and how the poor "burden society."
And said that "empowering" them is "antisocial" and "un-American."
Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?
Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.
Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.
(snip) Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor. It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money. It's about raw so-called social justice. It's about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers.
Registering the unproductive to vote is an idea that was heavily promoted by the small-c communists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, as I write in my new book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.
In an infamous 1966 Nation magazine article, the radical university professors urged that the welfare apparatus be used to destroy the American system. Borrowing a phrase the ultra-leftist Leon Trotsky used in one of his many anti-Stalin tracts, The Platform of the Joint Opposition (1927), they titled their blueprint for radical change "The Weight of the Poor."
By "weight," Cloward, Piven, and Trotsky meant power or influence. All three wanted to use the poor as a battering ram against the systems they sought to overthrow.
Trotsky thought too many bureaucrats and middle-class people were involved in the Soviet Communist Party and that it was moving too slowly in its efforts to change that society. He wanted more poor people in the party in order to overthrow Stalin's obstructionist bureaucracy and clear the way for "true" communism.
Stateside, Cloward and Piven wanted to use the "weight" of the poor to bring down American capitalism and democracy.
IT IS but a small leap one makes from lebensunwerten das Wahlrecht to lebensunwerten Lebens -- "life unworthy of the right to vote" to "life unworthy of life." This is especially true when one uses rhetorical trampolines such as "antisocial," "un-American," "nonproductive segments" and "burden to society."
Vadum's paranoid vision is that of a Marxist Obama destroying society with all manner of collectivist insanity made possible by registering parasitic hordes of poor Americans and making sure they vote early . . . and often.
A couple of years earlier, though, Cliff Thier fretted over the president's nascent "Obamacare" plan for polar-opposite reasons -- that a Naziesque Obama would deny medical care to old folks because they no longer were productive. From The American Thinker of Aug. 24, 2009:
Under ObamaCare, the older you get, the more likely it will be that you will not be permitted to have an operation, or to receive the optimal medicines. The reason is that you likely will be taking more out of society than you will be contributing in taxes. Which leaves us with a simple question: Who in his right mind would dare to retire?
[An aside. In Nazi Germany, the mentally ill and physically disabled were labeled as "unproductive members" of society. As were, of course, the Jews. Euthanasia was the inevitable and logical result of such thinking then. It is also the inevitable and logical result of such thinking today.
The prophet Ezekiel was supposed to have resurrected the dead. That it is an Ezekiel authoring the Obama Administration's "Robert's Rules of Death" must be God's little joke.
That it's an Israeli doctor who is advocating this system of rating the values of different human lives must be Dr. Mengele's little joke. ]
You and I will have no choice but to continue to work into our 80s (God willing) and beyond. We will have to do everything we can to convince the government that we put more into society than we take out.
If, however, you are younger than 15, older than 40, you've got a problem. If you're younger than 2, or over 65, or mentally ill, or physically disabled, you've got an even bigger problem.
If you love someone who is over 65 or physically disabled and they contribute something important to your life, that won't count. Only if they pay taxes will their lives be rated as worthy.
Good luck to you.
AND GOOD LUCK to The American Thinker and its contributors as they wrestle over whether they want to fight phantom Nazis or, instead, become real ones.
I am one of those Catholics who believes in God, not cultural self-identification. I believe that God exercises a "preferential option for the poor." I believe that's in the Bible -- somewhere toward the back.
I believe that how we govern ourselves, and how our governing structures implement a basic vision of social justice, is a direct reflection on a democracy's citizenry, which grants consent to its agents.
I believe that God does not sleep, that nations come under judgment and that we are in big, big trouble.
I ALSO BELIEVE that Louisiana -- my home state -- is working hard to sink from mere banana republicanism to fascistic banana republicanism, and that this stinking turd some self-righteous collegiate twerp left on the opinion pages of LSU's student newspaper is Exhibit A. From the soiled July 28 edition of my old stomping grounds, The Daily Reveille:
Obama and the Democrats love to paint a picture of the "poor" as innocent people "just trying to stretch every dollar as far as it will go."
I wonder how many Democrats have ever been to a Third World country to see what poor really means. For two weeks I stayed with a family in Costa Rica who had no air conditioning, no hot water, no washer or dryer, and the roof of the house was raised above the walls so that air could circulate in and out. And yet they washed all my clothes, gave me meals every day and never complained about it.
There are definitely some Americans who are truly needy, but it would be ridiculous to think the 47 percent of Americans not paying federal income tax are eating food out of dumpsters.
It's sickening to hear Obama and the Democrats portray the poor as blameless people in dire need of government help when our poor live lives of luxury in comparison to the poor of other countries.
It isn't the rich who are paying less than their fair share in taxes. To the contrary, they're paying much more than everyone else. It's America's poor who get free health care and new SUVs who aren't sharing the sacrifice.
And if we don't start taxing the rich, Obama wants to withhold Social Security checks. How about the government withholds welfare checks from the "poor" instead of Social Security to those who have actually paid their fair share?
It's about time the so-called poor Americans share the sacrifice and pay their fair share of taxes.
BACK IN MY DAY, the "f*** the poor" crowd complained about "welfare Cadillacs" and ghetto dwellers buying bottles of Mad Dog and Colt 45 tall boys with food stamps. Now, apparently, it's "free health care" and "new SUVs" that are the problem.
My assumption, though, is that the faces behind the stereotype are still brown ones.
What I don't understand is why the smug Reveille columnist, Austin Casey, didn't aim lower for whom he considers real poor people. Why not starving Somalians instead of Costa Rican peasants?
That could have made him feel even better -- or worse, depending -- about how rich America's poor are in the grand scheme of things. After all, it doesn't look quite so bad that the richest 1 percent of Americans controls 40 percent of its wealth and takes home a fourth of its annual income if we get to put quotation marks around our poor.
Sorry, make that "poor."
OF COURSE, the whole construct of inequality in the United States is unique to "socialists" like . . . well, me. I actually give a rat's ass about stuff like this. Austin Casey and the rest of Tea Party America don't.
When Austin Casey encountered the poor of Costa Rica, they sheltered him, fed him and wished him well. When Austin Casey encounters the poor -- sorry, "poor" -- of America, he pouts, stamps his feet and screams"Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"
Tea Party America is not the land of e pluribus unum -- out of many, one. Instead, it is the land of adtesorbet -- it sucks to be you.
The good news is the United States has all the money it needs to slash the national debt. It has all the money it needs to maintain critical social services, too.
And to stimulate a sick economy.
It has all the cash necessary for rebuilding our crumbling national infrastructure.
We also have all the money we need to help poor children and their families.
The bad news is that we'd rather spend it all on s*** like this instead of stuff like that:
A University of Miami booster, incarcerated for his role in a $930 million Ponzi scheme, has told Yahoo! Sports he provided thousands of impermissible benefits to at least 72 athletes from 2002 through 2010.
In 100 hours of jailhouse interviews during Yahoo! Sports’ 11-month investigation, Hurricanes booster Nevin Shapiro described a sustained, eight-year run of rampant NCAA rule-breaking, some of it with the knowledge or direct participation of at least seven coaches from the Miami football and basketball programs. At a cost that Shapiro estimates in the millions of dollars, he said his benefits to athletes included but were not limited to cash, prostitutes, entertainment in his multimillion-dollar homes and yacht, paid trips to high-end restaurants and nightclubs, jewelry, bounties for on-field play (including bounties for injuring opposing players), travel and, on one occasion, an abortion.
Also among the revelations were damning details of Shapiro’s co-ownership of a sports agency – Axcess Sports & Entertainment – for nearly his entire tenure as a Hurricanes booster. The same agency that signed two first-round picks from Miami, Vince Wilfork and Jon Beason, and recruited dozens of others while Shapiro was allegedly providing cash and benefits to players. In interviews with federal prosecutors, Shapiro said many of those same players were also being funneled cash and benefits by his partner at Axcess, then-NFL agent and current UFL commissioner Michael Huyghue. Shapiro said he also made payments on behalf of Axcess, including a $50,000 lump sum to Wilfork, as a recruiting tool for the agency.
While there may not be many boosters with such an over-the-top story, Shapiro knows he wasn’t the only fan doling out the under-the-table money. Maybe most damning for the sport is the fact that while he took care of current players, he says Miami coaches never asked him to buy a football recruit. Mainly because they felt it was fruitless.
“Miami is not the school where payouts are made to prospective student athletes,” Shapiro said. “Miami is a private institution, it’s in a transient city. We didn’t have the money to pay recruits. There is so much more money in big public universities. In the SEC, the money is an endless river.
“If Miami relied on cash payoffs for players to come to Miami, they’d be out of business. They’d lose every bidding war.
SO, YOU SEE the problem isn't, per the Republican Party, that poor little rich people couldn't possibly afford to be "job creators" any longer if they had to pay a tax rate commensurate with Joe Six-Pack's.
No, the problem is that the priorities of well-to-do Americans are, too often, completely f***ed up. Come to think of it, so are ours.
We get the leadership we deserve, and we get the society we tolerate. Boosters, hookers, football gods, rogue "collegiate" athletic programs and all the rest.
We're high for a poor country, in terms of inequality, and we're a rich country. We're about the same level of inequality as China. And, of course, China, half the population are rural peasants who are not part of the modern world.
And if we were to compare us with African countries, dictators in different places, you know, taking a lot of the wealth from normalpeople, we wouldbe among the top halfoftheAfricancountries of inequality. So, the U.S. really has reached an extraordinary level of income inequality.
No matter what asshats Republican politicians might be (and they are), ordinary Americans still hate you worse. This is Tuesday's lesson from the Wisconsin recalls . . . and from numerous other elections across America the past four decades.
I have opinions on why this is.
One, you hate Joe Six-Pack just as much as the GOP pols, basically. You'll go to the wall for the eugenicist swells of Planned Parenthood in ways you'd never consider going to the wall on behalf of -- for lack of a better word -- the proletariat.
In a world of political priorities, you know and I know that you think it's more important to abort babies (many of them poor and brown) than it is to fight like hell for jobs, education, social services and basic f***ing human dignity for the poor, working and middle classes. Many of these people can't articulate it that way, but they know it just the same.
And this is why so many of them either stay home on Election Day or go out and vote against their own economic and class interests by filling in the oval or pulling the lever for tea-party nutwagons, bomb-throwers and (oftentimes) your average, modern-day "conservative" protofascist.
This is the lesson from Recall Tuesday in Wisconsin. No matter how outrageous the GOP's sins against the poor and working class, regular folk think their chances are better going with their enemies than with their "friends."
Good luck with that paradigm in 2012, Democrats. And God help us all.
4:48. That's where you need to go in the above video.
At 4:48, we find Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., confirming that, yes, congressional Republicans are, too, a bunch of extortionists and political terrorists.
4:48. That's the point, at the end of Monday's interview with CNBC's Larry Kudlow, where McConnell vows there never again will be a "clean" debt-ceiling bill.
IN OTHER WORDS, Republican legislative policy now is to hold the government and the economy hostage -- just like what we've witnessed the last excruciating month or so -- in order to ram savage spending cuts down Americans' throats while ensuring tax rates increase not a whit for the rich or big business.
"What we have done, Larry, also is set a new template. In the future, any president, this one or another one, when they request us to raise the debt ceiling, it will not be clean anymore. This is just the first step. This, we anticipate, will take us into 2013. Whoever the new president is, is probably going to be asking us to raise the debt ceiling again. Then we will go through the process again and see what we can continue to achieve in connection with these debt ceiling requests of presidents to get our financial house in order."
WHEN YOU TELL an entire nation that you are perfectly willing to let the government default in 2013 as a means of getting your fiscal way (because if you aren't, you don't have a bargaining chip), you are announcing you are a terrorist. Or, to be polite about it, an extortionist on a global scale.
If a group makes demands, then plants a nuclear bomb in an American city, then announces that if the United States doesn't commit to policies X, Y and Z, there will be a mushroom cloud to pay, no one would hesitate to use the T-word to describe what was going on.
Likewise, if a political party makes demands, then says that if the United States doesn't commit to policies X, Y and Z, it will make sure the country defaults, thereby blowing up the stock market, shutting down most of the government and causing all manner of economic carnage . . . how exactly would that not be political terrorism? This is what a top GOP officeholder has just publicly stated will happen if his party still holds a majority in at least one house of Congress in a year and a half.
History is showing signs of repeating itself. Last time, it took a mountain of corpses -- nearly 700,000 of them -- to finally crush the life out of an earlier era's extortionist politics and moral and political dysfunction.
The first-term Democratic president faced a dilemma. A radicalized political faction had threatened to wreck the whole nation if he did not accede to its surrender-or-else political demands.
Facing a choice between the merely catastrophic and Armageddon, the president caved. Political terrorism had triumphed.
Barack Obama vs. the Tea Party in the 2011 debt-limit crisis?
No, James Buchanan vs. the Southern secessionists, 1857. The Kansas Territory had just, in a sham vote by a small band of hoodlums, approved a pro-slavery constitution in defiance of the president's demands for a free, fair and representative political process.
Here's how Columbia University history professor Allan Nevins described the scene in the August 1956 issue of American Heritage:
For a brief space in the spring of 1857 Buchanan seemed to stand firm. In his instructions to Governor Walker he engaged that the new constitution would be laid before the people: and “they must be protected in the exercise of their right of voting for or against that instrument, and the lair expression of the popular will must not be interrupted by fraud or violence.”
It is not strange that the rash proslavery gamesters in Kansas prosecuted their designs despite all Buchanan’s lair words and Walker’s desperate efforts to stay them. They knew that with four fifths of the people already against them, and the odds growing greater every year, only bra/en trickery could effect their end. They were aware that the South, which believed that a fair division would give Kansas to slavery and Nebraska to freedom, expected them to stand firm. They were egged on by the two reckless southern Cabinet members, Howell Cobb and Thompson, who sent an agent, H. L. Martin of Mississippi, out to the Kansas convention. This gathering in Lecompton, with 48 of the 60 members hailing from slave states, was the shabbiest conclave of its kind ever held on American soil. One of Buchanan’s Kansas correspondents wrote that he had not supposed such a wild set could be found. The Kansas News termed them a body of “broken-down political hacks, demagogues, fire-eaters, perjurers, ruffians, ballot-box stuffers, and loafers.” But before it broke up with the shout, “Now, boys, let’s come and take a drink!” it had written a constitution.
This constitution, the work of a totally unrepresentative body, was a devious repudiation of all the principles Buchanan and Douglas had laid down. Although it contained numerous controversial provisions, such as a limitation of banking to one institution and a bar against free Negroes, the main document was not to be submitted to general vote at all. A nominal reference of the great cardinal question was indeed provided. Voters might cast their ballots for the “constitution with slavery” or the “constitution without slavery.” But when closely examined this was seen to be actually a piece of chicanery. Whichever form was adopted, the 200 slaves in Kansas would remain, with a constitutional guarantee against interference. Whenever the proslavery party in Kansas could get control of the legislature, they might open the door wide for more slaves. The rigged convention had put its handiwork before the people with a rigged choice: “Heads I win, tails you lose.”
Would Buchanan lay this impudent contrivance before Congress, and ask it to vote the admission of Kansas as a state? Or would he contemptuously spurn it? An intrepid man would not have hesitated an instant to take the honest course; he would not have needed the indignant outcry of the northern press, the outraged roar of Douglas, to inspirit him. But Buchanan quailed before the storm of passion into which proslavery extremists had worked themselves.
The hot blood of the South was now up. That section, grossly misinformed upon events in Kansas, believed that it was being cheated. The northern freesoilers had vowed that no new slave state (save by a partition of Texas) should ever be admitted. Southerners thought that in pursuance of this resolve, the Yankees had made unscrupulous use of their wealth and numbers to lay hands on Kansas. Did the North think itself entitled to every piece on the board—to take Kansas as well as California, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Oregon—to give southerners nothing? The Lecompton delegates, from this point of view, were dauntless champions of a wronged section. What if they did use sharp tactics? That was but a necessary response to northern arrogance. Jefferson Davis declared that his section trembled under a sense of insecurity. “You have made it a political war. We are on the defensive. How far are you to push us?” Sharp threats of secession and battle mingled with the southern denunciations. “Sir,” Senator Alfred Iverson of Georgia was soon to assert, “I believe that the time will come when the slave States will be compelled, in vindication of their rights, interests, and honor, to separate from the free States, and erect an independent confederacy; and I am not sure, sir, that the time is not at hand.”
And the well-informed Washington correspondent of the New Orleans Picayune a little later told just how aggressively the Chief Executive was bludgeoned into submission: “The President was informed in November, 1857, that the States of Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, and perhaps others, would hold conventions and secede from the Union if the Lecompton Constitution, which established slavery, should not be accepted by Congress. The reason was that these States, supposing that the South had been cheated out of Kansas, were, whether right or wrong, determined to revolt. The President believed this. Senator Hunter, of Virginia, to rny knowledge, believed it. Many other eminent men did, and perhaps not without reason.”
Buchanan, without imagination as without nerve, began to yield to this southern storm in midsummer, and by November, 1857, he was surrendering completely. When Congress met in December his message upheld the Lecompton Constitution with a tissue of false and evasive statements. Seldom in American history has a chief magistrate made a greater error, or missed a larger opportunity. The astute secretary of his predecessor, Franklin Pierce, wrote: “I had considerable hopes of Mr. Buchanan—I really thought he was a statesman—but I have now come to the settled conclusion that he is just the damndest old fool that has ever occupied the presidential chair. He has deliberately walked overboard with his eyes open—let him drown, for he must.”
As Buchanan shrank from the lists, Douglas entered them with that gaudium certaminis which was one of his greatest qualities. The finest chapters of his life, his last great contests for the Union, were opening. Obviously he would have had to act under political necessity even if deaf to principle, for had he let popular sovereignty be torn to pieces, Illinois would not have sent him back to the Senate the following year; but he was not the man to turn his back on principle. His struggle against Lecompton was an exhibition of iron determination. The drama of that battle has given it an almost unique place in the record of our party controversies. “By God, sir!” he exclaimed, “I made James Buchanan, and by God, sir, I will unmake him!” Friends told him that the southern Democrats meant to ruin him. “I have taken a through ticket,” rejoined Douglas, “and checked my baggage.” He lost no time in facing Buchanan in the White House and denouncing the Lecompton policy. When the President reminded him how Jackson had crushed two party rebels, he was ready with a stinging retort. Douglas was not to be overawed by a man he despised as a weakling. “Mr. President,” he snorted, “I wish you to remember that General Jackson is dead.”
As for the southern leaders, Douglas’ scorn for the extremists who had coerced Buchanan was unbounded. He told the Washington correspondent of the Chicago Journal that he had begun his fight as a contest against a single bad measure. But his blow at Lecompton was a blow against slavery extension, and he at once had the whole “slave power” down on him like a pack of wolves. He added: “In making the fight against this power, I was enabled to stand off and view the men with whom I had been acting; I was ashamed I had ever been caught in such company; they are a set of unprincipled demagogues, bent upon perpetuating slavery, and by the exercise of that unequal and unfair power, to control the government or break up the Union; and I intend to prevent their doing either.”
After a long, close, and acrid contest, on April i, 1858, Lecompton was defeated. A coalition of Republicans, Douglasite Democrats, and Know-Nothings struck down the fraudulent constitution in the House, 120 to 112. When the vote was announced, a wild cheer rolled through the galleries. Old Francis P. Blair, Jackson’s friend, carried the news to the dying Thomas Hart Benton, who had been intensely aroused by the crisis. Benton could barely speak, but his exultation was unbounded. “In energetic whispers,” records Blair, “he told his visitor that the same men who had sought to destroy the republic in 1850 were at the bottom of this accursed Lecompton business. Among the greatest of his consolations in dying was the consciousness that the House of Representatives had baffled these treasonable schemes and put the heels of the people on the neck of the traitors.”
The Administration covered its retreat by a hastily concocted measure, the English Bill, under which Kansas was kept waiting on the doorstep—sure in the end to enter a free state. The Kansas plotters, the CobbThompson-Floyd clique in the Cabinet, and Buchanan had all been worsted. But the damage had been done. Southern secessionists had gained fresh strength and greater boldness from their success in coercing the Administration.
The Lecompton struggle left a varied and interesting set of aftereffects. It lifted Stephen A. Douglas to a new plane; he had been a fighting Democratic strategist, but now he became a true national leader, thinking far less of party and more of country. It sharpened the issues which that summer and fall were to form the staple of the memorable Lincoln-Douglas debates in Illinois. At the same time, it deepened the schism which had been growing for some years between southern Democrats and northwestern Democrats, and helped pave the way to that disruption of the party which preceded and facilitated the disruption of the nation. It planted new seeds of dissension in Kansas—seeds which resulted in fresh conflicts between Kansas free-soilers or jayhawkers on one side and Missouri invaders or border ruffians on the other, and in a spirit of border lawlessness which was to give the Civil War some of its darkest pages. The Lecompton battle discredited Buchanan in the eyes of most decent northerners, strengthened southern conviction of his weakness, and left the Administration materially and morally weaker in dealing with the problems of the next two and a half critical years.
For the full measure of Buchanan’s failure, however, we must go deeper. Had he shown the courage that to an Adams, a Jackson, a Polk, or a Cleveland would have been second nature, the courage that springs from a deep integrity, he might have done the republic an immeasurable service by grappling with disunion when it was yet weak and unprepared. Ex-Senator Foote wrote later that he knew well that a scheme for destroying the Union “had long been on foot in the South.” He knew that its leaders “were only waiting for the enfeebling of the Democratic Party in the North, and the general triumph of Free-soilism as a consequence thereof, to alarm the whole South into acquiescence in their policy.” Buchanan’s support of the unwise and corrupt Lecompton constitution thus played into the plotters’ hands.
The same view was taken yet more emphatically by Douglas. He had inside information in 1857, he later told the Senate, that four states were threatening Buchanan with secession. Had that threat been met in the right Jacksonian spirit, had the bluff been called—for the four states were unprepared for secession and war—the leaders of the movement would have been utterly discredited. Their conspiracy would have collapsed, and they would have been so routed and humiliated in 1857 that the Democratic party schism in 1860 might never have taken place, and if it had, secession in 1861 would have been impossible.
BAD THINGS HAPPEN when American presidents get bullied by political extremists up to no good.
For good reason, the U.S. government, as a matter of policy, refuses to negotiate with terrorists, much less acquiesce to their demands. The theory behind that is as simple as it is obvious -- if terrorists' extortionist tactics prove successful, they'll keep doing what works.
Give us what we want, or the little lady . . . the children in the schoolhouse . . . the jetliner full of passengers . . . the hostages in the American embassy . . . the city of New York . . . the economy and government of the United States of America gets it.
Look where caving into the politics of extortion led us a century and a half ago. Over the past day, several national commentators have rightly noted the bloody obvious --it's back. They have stared the obvious in the face and acknowledged what cannot be denied, that President Obama's monumental collapse in the face of legislative terrorism will lead to the repeated use of a tactic as effective as it is despicable.
We suspect we now are a nation as divided as we've been since 1861. We know what happened then and how we got there. Historians look at James Buchanan's actions, and inaction, in the runup to the Civil War and proclaim him one of the worst presidents in American history -- likely the worst.
SO . . . what do we do? Naturally, we do exactly as Buchanan did.
You know what John Boehner's problem is in getting his debt-ceiling bill through the U.S. House? Pell Grants. Tea Party lunatic leges are furious, saying there's too much money set aside for helping poor kids attend college. Pell Grants, to a certain subset of the Republican Party, are this decade's "welfare Cadillac."
Now we know why the speaker of the House often needs a drink and a smoke.
Me, I'm pretty much just speechless. This takes some doing, and the Tea Party jihadists just did it.
Legislation crafted by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to raise the debt limit by $900 billion would directly appropriate $9 billion for Pell Grants in 2012 and another $8 billion in 2013.
This has shocked some conservative House freshmen who say they were elected to cut spending, not increase it. Some House Republicans think of it as being akin to welfare. “I really don’t understand why we’re increasing spending in a bill supposed to be cutting spending,” said Rep. Andy Harris, a freshman Republican from Maryland. “It was negotiated without the input of a lot of members.” Harris has indicated to The Baltimore Sun that he will vote no. House Republican leaders say they included concessions to Democrats in efforts to forge a compromise that could pass both chambers.
(snip)
The inclusion of the extra money for Pell Grants could cost Republican votes. Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) has compared Pell Grants to “welfare”. "So you can go to college on Pell Grants — maybe I should not be telling anybody this because it’s turning out to be the welfare of the 21st century," Rehberg told Blog Talk Radio in April. "You can go to school, collect your Pell Grants, get food stamps, low-income energy assistance, Section 8 housing, and all of a sudden we find ourselves subsidizing people that don’t have to graduate from college.”
DEAR LORD, we humbly beseech Thee . . . HELLLLLLLLP!
It's official. I am nostalgic for the Carter Administration.
You have to go back about that far to find someone -- in this case, then-National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski -- who can quickly cut to the chase in calling out the tea-party insanity gripping Washington . . . and the laissez-faire raping of the poor and middle class that we now mistake for mainstream Americanism.
And he does so brilliantly (with agreement from conservative Republican Joe Scarborough) on MSNBC's Morning Joe, as seen above. This, as reported elsewhere on MSNBC, is the kind of society in which we now live, and which Brzezinski rightfully decries:
As Congress and the White House wrestle whether to raise taxes for the wealthiest Americans, a new analysis of Census data shows that the wealth gaps between whites and blacks and Hispanics widened dramatically during the recession.
The analysis by the Pew Research Center, released on Tuesday, found that from 2005 to 2009, inflation-adjusted median wealth fell 66 percent among Hispanic households and 53 percent among black households, compared with a 16 percent decline among white households.
Those declines increased the wealth gap between white and minority households to the largest since the census began collecting such data in 1984. The ratio of wealth for whites to blacks, for instance, is now roughly 20 to 1, compared to 12 to 1 in the first survey 25 years ago and 7 to 1 in 1995, when a booming economy lifted many low-income Americans into the middle class.
The wealth ratio for whites to Hispanics was 18 to 1 in 2009, also up from 7 to 1 in 1995, the Pew analysis found.
The declines from the recession left the median black household with $5,677 in wealth (assets minus debts, where assets include items like a car, a home, savings, retirement funds, etc.) and the typical Hispanic household with $6,325. White households, by comparison, had $113,149, the study found.
Sliced another way, the data from the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), showed that 35 percent of black households and 31 percent of Hispanic households had zero or negative net worth in 2009. The comparable rate for white households was 15 percent.
The SIPP income questionnaire is considered to provide the most comprehensive snapshot of household wealth by race and ethnicity.
THE REMEDY for this kind of inequity -- obviously -- would be as complex as it would be elusive and drawn out.
Failure to pursue a remedy, however, is to put our seal of approval on a society not of free men and women but, instead, one of haves and have-nots -- of masters and serfs.
Tea Party America not only chooses not to endorse a society where the downtrodden are lifted up, but also abjectly repudiates Jesus' injunction that "unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more."
Let me put it thus: What part of Matthew 25 don't these so-called "God and country" types get?
31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: 32 and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
IF THIS, for individuals, is a non-negotiable condition for avoiding eternal hellfire, why then would it be any less binding upon communities of individuals -- the context in which we either do what we're told . . . or don't?
Are not nations judged just as readily as men? Is not the Bible of America's "God and country" crowd -- which is the same one upon which members of Congress take their oaths of office -- replete with the sad fates of nations tried and found wanting by the Almighty?
Did not President Lincoln -- a Republican, by the way -- believe the Civil War to be a divine judgment upon this land for the abomination of slavery?
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it--all sought to avert it. While the inaugeral [sic] address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissole [sic] the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether."
ONCE AGAIN, we are becoming a society of master and slave, though we haven't the stomach to call it what it is. In this, we have one political party that cheers on this abomination -- some within it more heartily than others -- and another so compromised by "do what thou wilt" as to be morally and politically self-neutering.
It is in this context that we have the congressional spectacle so aptly described Monday night on CNN by Democratic strategist James Carville:
"The Democrats ... keep trying to surrender. They're saying, 'We'll cut Social Security, we'll cut Medicare, we'll cut Medicaid, we'll give you a plan that doesn't have any tax increases,' ... and (Republicans) keep rejecting it. This thing is a rout. The Republicans are winning this thing in a rout in terms of getting what they want.
"And poor Speaker Boehner came up with a plan today, and ... the Tea Party didn't even want that. So I think that you can't negotiate if one side is not interested in negotiating. This is like Napoleon and Moscow in 1812. 'I don't want to negotiate. There's nothing to talk about here.' So I don't know where this is going to end up. Maybe the Democrats can find somebody to take the white flag. So far, they haven't been able to do it."
WHY AM I not surprised?
And why am I not surprised that America's original sin comes back to haunt us in slightly altered form, or that we're so willing to accommodate it and perpetuate it for the love of money -- another Top-7 smash hit on the cardinal-sin survey?
Don't you be surprised if our love of money above all else -- especially social justice and human dignity -- takes away what we have left of it, through the actions of the self-styled "God's Official Party."
Judgment's not only a bitch -- assuming now be its moment -- it's also exquisitely ironic.
Repeat after me: Justice without mercy is no justice at all.
During this sad season of empty wallets and cold hearts in America, one small-town Georgia mayor understands this. It probably will end up costing him dearly.
Acting like a true Christian usually does. It was for no small reason that Jesus told His disciples, "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me."
Today, in state after state across this country, the cross we take up will look something like what Cable News Networkilluminates here:
Paul Bridges leans toward his desk, picks up the phone and punches in a number with the fast, laser focus of a man on a mission. The mayor of this tiny town in South Georgia is ready for battle -- and looking for a new weapon.
"I need some help getting a website," he said, spelling out the words of the domain name he wants for a site promoting immigration reform.
The man on the other end says he'll try to help. But that isn't enough for Bridges.
"I really don't know what your beliefs are on this issue," he said, "but I'm going to persuade you."
Bridges wants the federal government to come up with a solution that gives the millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States a chance to work here legally.
"You get me an invite to that Tea Party meeting and I'm going ... I'd like to give the contrary viewpoints. Surely one person in the audience is going to be sympathetic."
(snip)
Bridges is one of more than a dozen plaintiffs suing Georgia and its governor, trying to stop the state's new immigration law. They won a reprieve Monday when a federal judge temporarily blocked parts of the law scheduled to go into effect July 1.
One of those sections would criminalize exactly what the mayor of Uvalda does almost every day: knowingly driving a car with illegal immigrants as passengers. The judge also put on hold parts of the law that allow police to ask about immigration status during investigations of criminal violations.
But the legal fight is far from over. It could drag on for months and reach the chambers of the nation's highest court. It's a struggle that pits Bridges against many members of his own party and could hurt his political future. But that doesn't stop the mayor.
THE HEART of Georgia's law -- like so many others that have been, or will be, passed across the United States in these times -- is a basic indifference to the humanity of its targets. Justice is one thing, as is upholding the law. Intentional cruelty and a one-size-fits-all approach to a vast array of humanity and motivations is entirely another.
It is here that American "respect for the law" begins to ape that championed by monstrous regimes we once fought to the death.
Bridges sits on a wood bench in the front row of a courtroom in Atlanta, clutching a notebook. The atmosphere is tense, quiet. He is nauseous and alone.
Friends are waiting in a van in a nearby parking deck. The family has lived in Georgia for more than a decade, but now they are afraid to walk outside.
Bridges is fighting for them, and for countless other friends and former students. His decision to be "the mayor for everybody" led him here.
The family is willing to sit for hours in the heat so he can drive them to a shopping mall after the hearing. Uncertain how the law will affect them, they have canceled plans for the 14-year-old's coming-of-age quinceañera party in case they have to leave the country. They hope to get their deposit back on a dress.
"All rise. Court is now in session," the bailiff said.
Omar Jadwat, an attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union, mentions Bridges in his opening argument, describing him as "Mayor Bridges, who on occasion helps undocumented friends come from Florida to Georgia."
U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash Jr. grills the attorney representing the state.
He asks what would happen if police pulled over an 18-year-old citizen for speeding while he was on the way to the grocery store with his illegal immigrant mother.
As the judge speaks, Bridges nods so intensely that his whole body rocks back and forth. He is encouraged by the questioning. The judge seems to see what he does: a law that makes criminals out of good citizens and tears families apart.
But he grimaces at the attorney's answer.
"It would be no different than if his mother had pockets full of cocaine, and he was knowingly transporting her to go sell it,"said Devon Orland, senior assistant attorney general for the state.
THINK about that for a minute.
Repite conmigo:La justicia sin lamisericordiano es justicia enabsoluto.
It is a finer line than we think between "truth, justice and the American Way" and "ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer." That line usually is crossed when scared people blame THEM! -- and then do evil, calling it good.
EASTER . . . uh, bunnies laying eggs . . . ham for Sunday dinner . . . and, uh . . . bonnets?
