Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be

This is taken from the Onion, a satirical online newspaper. I thought it really described most of the far right's [misguided, mistaken] beliefs about the Obama Administration and it also includes a small bit about the far left's [misguided, mistaken] beliefs about the Obama Administration.

Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be

ESCONDIDO, CA—Spurred by an administration he believes to be guilty of numerous transgressions, self-described American patriot Kyle Mortensen, 47, is a vehement defender of ideas he seems to think are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and principles that brave men have fought and died for solely in his head."Our very way of life is under siege," said Mortensen, whose understanding of the Constitution derives not from a close reading of the document but from talk-show pundits, books by television personalities, and the limitless expanse of his own colorful imagination. "It's time for true Americans to stand up and protect the values that make us who we are."

According to Mortensen—an otherwise mild-mannered husband, father, and small-business owner—the most serious threat to his fanciful version of the 222-year-old Constitution is the attempt by far-left "traitors" to strip it of its religious foundation.

"Right there in the preamble, the authors make their priorities clear: 'one nation under God,'" said Mortensen, attributing to the Constitution a line from the Pledge of Allegiance, which itself did not include any reference to a deity until 1954. "Well, there's a reason they put that right at the top."

"Men like Madison and Jefferson were moved by the ideals of Christianity, and wanted the United States to reflect those values as a Christian nation," continued Mortensen, referring to the "Father of the Constitution," James Madison, considered by many historians to be an atheist, and Thomas Jefferson, an Enlightenment-era thinker who rejected the divinity of Christ and was in France at the time the document was written. "The words on the page speak for themselves."
According to sources who have read the nation's charter, the U.S. Constitution and its 27 amendments do not contain the word "God" or "Christ."

Mortensen said his admiration for the loose assemblage of vague half-notions he calls the Constitution has only grown over time. He believes that each detail he has pulled from thin air—from prohibitions on sodomy and flag-burning, to mandatory crackdowns on immigrants, to the right of citizens not to have their hard-earned income confiscated in the form of taxes—has contributed to making it the best framework for governance "since the Ten Commandments."
"And let's not forget that when the Constitution was ratified it brought freedom to every single American," Mortensen said.

Mortensen's passion for safeguarding the elaborate fantasy world in which his conception of the Constitution resides is greatly respected by his likeminded friends and relatives, many of whom have been known to repeat his unfounded assertions verbatim when angered. Still, some friends and family members remain critical.

"Dad's great, but listening to all that talk radio has put some weird ideas into his head," said daughter Samantha, a freshman at Reed College in Portland, OR. "He believes the Constitution allows the government to torture people and ban gay marriage, yet he doesn't even know that it guarantees universal health care."

Mortensen told reporters that he'll fight until the bitter end for what he roughly supposes the Constitution to be. He acknowledged, however, that it might already be too late to win the battle.
"The freedoms our Founding Fathers spilled their blood for are vanishing before our eyes," Mortensen said. "In under a year, a fascist, socialist regime has turned a proud democracy into a totalitarian state that will soon control every facet of American life."
"Don't just take my word for it," Mortensen added. "Try reading a newspaper or watching the news sometime."

GOP: A Pure Minority is Still a Minority

Read this over at Republicans United, formerly The Progressive Republican, and thought it hit the nail on the head. I have had, here and at other blogs, many right-wing Republicans tell me that as a RINO, I need to "get out" (often in more colorful terms) and that the GOP doesn't need anymore RINOs or moderates or Progressives in the party. Got news for all of you: You're wrong.



A Pure Minority Is Still A Minority

by Pat Edaburn


Ever since the election last fall we have seen an ongoing debate in the Republican party over which direction it should take in the future. Hard liners in the party have stated that they need to swing hard to the right to become as ideologically pure as possible. Web sites like Redstate.com and Polipundit.com regularly rail against so called RINO’s for being insufficiently pure.
In recent weeks however another voice has emerged as leading Republicans call for the party to be more of a big tent organization. Calls for the party to tone down social issues like gay marriage and abortion have been met with contempt by the web sites above.
Well I’ve got a message for those hard liners, being ideologically pure may be a nice idea but if you are in the minority it doesn’t do you very much good since you lose almost every vote. I certainly understand the desire to have people in office who you agree with on all of the issues, but the fact is that absent a situation where I become King of the World this isn’t going to happen very often.
If the GOP is going to succeed in the future they need to consider the impact of the hard line attitudes being pushed by the evangelical right.
Let us first consider the advantages of having a party that is ideologically pure, only allowing those who follow the party line 90-100% of the time to be members. On the bright side you are, as a hard liner, going to be happy with the way your party caucus votes most of the time. You can count on a 90-100% satisfaction rate.
But there is a problem when it comes to actually winning elections and getting policies implemented. I think it is fair to say that right now about 40% of voters will tend to support Republican/conservative views, about 40% will tend to support liberal/Democratic ones and about 20% will shift from one side to the other.
We can debate demographic trends but I’m not sure that it will change too much from this in the future. Even in our most one sided party periods there was a pretty solid middle set of voters that held the balance of power. I’m someome who likes to play with numbers so I ran up the following calculations.
So if you restrict your party to only the hard liners that are GOP/Conservative oriented voters, you’re gonna win about 40% of the votes, which means you are not going to control much more than 40% of the seats. This means you might be able to pull off wins about 10%-20% of the time at most.
So taking 90-100% satisfaction and factoring in 10-20% success on legislation and you end up with a ‘victory quotent’ of about 10%-20% of the time, and that isn’t very good.
On the other hand if you work to a broader coalition in your party, reaching out to those 20% of swing voters and maybe even some of those on the other side you will probably lower your satisfaction figures from 90-100% down to 70% or 80%. But you raise your success rate to 80-90% because you are winning elections.
This gives you a victory quotent which could approach 75% which is a whole lot better than the 15% or so that you had before. You might not get success on all of the social issues or the harder line domestic and foreign policy debates but you do win most of the time.
To put it another way, while I understand that subjects like abortion, gay rights, etc might be important to you and you might not like the inability to get your agenda passed. But the fact is you are not going to get that agenda passed no matter what.
Either you’re going to be in the minority and fail or you’re going to be in the majority and have to give ground.
When it comes to these kind of polarizing topics majority or minority status isn’t going to matter, whether you are on the right or on the left. But when it comes to the other 90% of the agenda, being in the majority is quite important.
In addition the future is only going to exacerbate these conditions.
Younger voters are far more libertarian in their attitudes towards social issues. This is unlikely to change as they get older. But when it comes to domestic and foreign policy issues there is much more room for movement, and in there the GOP has an opportunity.
I’m not saying you should give up your core beliefs. There is nothing wrong with the Republicans having a strong pro life element, but there is also nothing wrong with including voters who agree on most other issues, but happen to be pro choice. There is nothing wrong with having a strong evangelical contingent in the party but it should not be able to dominate.
During the 60’s and 70’s the Democratic party forgot the rule of broad inclusion and the result was a serious of major defeats. So far the Republicans have suffered two losses in a row and if they do not change things they are likely to see many more.

Leftwing vs Rightwing vs liberal vs conservative vs moderate vs progressive...

I was reading this article on Progressive Republican about the terms that get thrown around. I liked it a lot, so I'm going to paste much of it here. Basically, the author, William Golden, is tired of labels being thrown at the other side and back as insults. Especially when "liberals" or "progressives" are labelled as "left-wing" and "conservatives" are called "right-wing"...

Here are his definitions. I think I agree with them:
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Left-wing and Right-wingers often sound like liberals and conservatives but are not afraid to trample truth in order to achieve their political goals. “Propaganda” is often too strong a term to even begin to describe the logic and the veracity of what passes as political discussion from both ends of the spectrum.

Liberals and Conservatives both have principles and represent what is best in America. They just disagree. They may even see truth differently but they both try to put America first. America is not a victim when these two meet — preferably over a beer or some other wholesome American pasttime. America is blessed because at the end of the day we all, liberal and conservative alike, are challenged in our views and there wisdom and answers from both.

A Moderate is absolutely the finest blending of red, white and blue. Moderates are perhaps the most practical of all Americans — their focus is on consideration of the facts and selecting the best solutions. Unlike liberals and conservatives they seldom have the hurdle of having to get past their pride to get on with getting on to finding an answer. Unfortunately perhaps, being a political moderate does not work everywhere in the USA and the result is that moderate politicians are often caught crossing the street when the light turns against them. God bless them.

Progressives are made up of liberals, moderates and conservatives. A progressive will normally claim fondness for one of the aforementioned political outlooks. The two greatest differences between progressives and their other American kinfolk is that they are proactive, rather than reactive; and they live in the land of ‘why not?!’ Progressives sometimes share the same challenges that moderates do, except they’ve figured out how to run like hell across the street when they see the lights change.
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I like these definitions. Anyone want to add to them?

Pro-Life

So here's where I show my conservative roots.

I'm Pro-Life.

Yes, that's right, I'm anti-choice. Anti-abortion.

I believe life begins at conception, and should be protected at implantation as much as possible.

Women have a choice. To not have sex. To try something called birth control.

To say, "its not fair that men don't have to carry the baby..." blah blah blah. Its not fair. Its nature. Tough. There's always adoption.

But Pro-Life goes beyond just abortion.

The consistent life ethic, or seamless garment, or even total pro-life standpoint is about supporting life from birth to death.

That's why I'm also against torture and rendition. And unjust wars.

From wikipedia's consistent life ethic entry:

This viewpoint was especially emphasized by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical, 'Evangelicum Vitae' (1995). In it he emphasized the value and inviolability of human life. In the United States, several organizations have promoted the "consistent ethic of life" approach, including both Catholic groups (e.g., the National Conference of Catholic Bishops), and broader coalitions, such as Consistent Life, founded in 1987 as the Seamless Garment Network. The ethic and its organizational expressions are difficult to define in terms of the conventional U.S. political spectrum, since those who subscribe to the ethic are often at odds with both the right wing over capital punishment, war, and economic issues, as well as the left wing over abortion, embryo-destructive research, and euthanasia.