The Distrust of the Federal Government, a cause currently being championed by the right, has begun reaching critical mass. With the tea parties, 9/12 marches, and bloggers blaming all the worlds' ills on the Federal Government in general, and Obama specifically, something was bound to happen.
And happen it did, with the murder of Bill Sparkman, a Federal Census Bureau field worker, who was found strung up in a remote section of the National Forest in Kentucky, with the word "Fed" written on his chest.
Currently, people like Glen Beck are trying to fan the revolutionary flames, with his quoting of obscure provisions of the US Constitution, mis-interpreting what the founding fathers intended in States vs. Federal power, taking portions of our history and lamenting a golden age and laws that were in actuality not about States rights, but about continuing slavery indefinately. The founding fathers disagreed amongst themselves whether power should be centralized in the Federal Government or in the States, and they never specified which. We decided to mix them when we went to war with the South, prohibiting them from secession in order to keep the Union strong, which is why we won World Wars I and II, not to mention the Cold War. We wouldn't have been able to win any of them had we been a fractured nation of State-Countries with nothing more than a Federal Mail service for the president to preside over.
I only forsee more of this in the current political climate. While the anti-government sentiment is currently being sown by the Republican Right, it wasn't too long ago it was the Democratic Left when Bush was in office. Both sides are guilty, and both sides forget their own atrocities when the other is in office. The PATRIOT act, Gtmo, wiretapping, and extraordinary rendition are quickly forgotten by the right, while the left forgets it was Clinton who repealed Glass-Steagall, and it is them that currently is printing trillions of dollars to stop a recession and reinflate the bubble that burst last year.
This has got to stop. The Federal Government, for the most part, does what it is supposed to do. Looks out for the common good. It overreaches at times, and that's why we have checks and balances. But labelling someone as treasonous because they support one party or another is ridiculous, and it needs to stop. Otherwise, more people are going to get strung up on trees.
I say Jamás to Hamas!
11 months ago
11 comments:
This is a sad post. Devoid of any fact when you blame someone on TV for an attack on a census taker. Do they even have any people of interest?
Honestly...
You can't really believe the government has your best interest at heart. Well, maybe I was wrong. Maybe you do.
I'm not blaming Beck for it. I'm just saying he's one of the ones out there using faulty logic. Just like the Governor of Texas implying Texas could secede, because it couldn't.
I don't think the government has anyone's best interests at heart but themselves, Republican or Democrat, but that's why there are checks and balances.
My point was that people labeling others as treasonous, or anti-american, for disagreeing is ridiculous, and indirectly leads to this sort of mob mentality, on both sides. First it was the labeling of Bush as a Hitler, now Obama, and both sides calling the other Brownshirts. In a mob mentality, people snap and do things like string up people and carve "Fed" in their chest.
Yet another misconception. Perry said that we could secede, not that he was trying to. And, yes, we could. It's in the Texas constitution.
Beck is only guilty of using the constitution and I doubt that if you listened to more than snipets of his show or read anything he's written that you could disagree.
No one called obama hitler, but they did says that his healthcare plan recalled the nazi party and all the media jumped immediately on the bandwagon.
Perhaps actually listening to what these guys say, just as I am forced to listen to maddow, matthews, couric, and olbermann, would give you a better understanding and you might even be a little more objective.
Blue, just because the state constitution says you could secede doesn't mean you'd actually be able to. Federally, you couldn't. Again, in the civil war we ruled that the union was more important than the individual state, because losing any one state would make the union weaker. If Texas tried to secede, it would be overruled federally.
Beck is using the constitution, yes. But he is using parts that advocated slavery, and using it to show some sort of golden age which never existed. He's using parts out of context.
The point of my post is that both sides tend to label the other as treasonous when in power. And yes, people did label Obama as hitler. I've seen it on the blogs, seen pictures of tea partiers with signs. Both sides are guilty, and both sides distrust the federal government unless their side is in power.
"Perhaps actually listening to what these guys say, just as I am forced to listen to maddow, matthews, couric, and olbermann, would give you a better understanding and you might even be a little more objective."
Who forces you BPB? Don't you have a remote? How could you be watching these folks and Beck, O'Reilly, and Hannity at the same time?
Sure Tao, a nice logitech universal remote. Unlike you, I won't sit there claiming that those guys are just hacks for the president unless I know what they are saying outside of a two-second sound bite. Somehow I can't see you sitting down and listening to Rush or Beck.
I used to listen to Rush. I remember him saying we couldn't sfford to nation build and occupy Bosnia when Clinton was president. But now he thinks we can.
James is absolutly correct by the way. Why would a responsible media outlet give airtime to a kook that compares the president, any president, to Hitler. Calls for secession or advocates violence?
Wait, so that means that you don't listen to him. That means it's difficult to comment on him since you don't.
You guys are blaming commentators for attacks on obama, and yes, you are.
obama isn't what people thought he was. No big surprise there. Now he will ride out the rest of his term and hopefully keep his head down and shift center or else he is likely to encounter a hostile congress in 2010.
Blue, I wasn't blaming a commentater. I'm saying that the rhetoric of "treason!" being pointed at the other side by both sides is helping the sentiment. It happened to Bush, Clinton, and now Obama, and others are taking the hit, like this census guy.
This was an op-ed piece, btw.
"No one called obama hitler"
I saw someone doing just this at the tea party I attended. It was a black mark on otherwise good points made by other signs.
There are still other boneheads who say Obama is Hitler at the various events, and I doubt that they are plants by liberals.
Truth said: "I used to listen to Rush. I remember him saying we couldn't sfford to nation build and occupy Bosnia when Clinton was president. But now he thinks we can."
Iraq and Afghanistan have been nations for decades now. No nation building. I suppose that the "nation building" would apply to the modern sitation if we were to, as some have wanted, split Iraq into three different nations. Nations that have never exited before.
Yes, I posted on this too (with the typical liberal bias those of the right love to hate), but I am not here to engage in the sandbox logic of "you started it first."
Years ago when I was living in a foreign country, there were expressions I used to hear from natives who wanted to mentor me into their culture: "Thats just not done." "That's just not said."
Nothing ensconced in law, there is nonetheless a tacit understandings about what constitutes decorum and protocol, i.e. proper social behavior.
We have lost that in our culture. It seems people are now locked in mortal incivility, who can insult, bash, denigrate, jeer, and demolish others without hesitation or remorse. Politeness is no longer valued. In fact, it is a decided liability.
Too bad. Politeness is peaceful. Verbal violence is is only a hair's width away from actual violence.
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