Civil War revisited
Bensblurb #537 April 7, 2010
Civil War erupts again.
So Virginia’s Gov. McDonnell proclaims April, not as tax-haters month, but Confederate History month--without mentioning slavery. That’s like talking about atom bombs without mentioning Japan. My dog Lollipop isn’t in this fight, me being a native Texan. But I’m also “son” of a Confederate veteran. A great grandfather fought the Yankees as a sergeant for the Peach Creek Rangers in north Mississippi. And now I live where Yanks encamped between their crippling battles for Fredericksburg.
For my Lone Star State friends, I’m talking about the other town, in northern Virginia, where the Rebs fought in bloody defense of States Rights. So there.
Meanwhile, in today’s real TV land, here’s Tucker Carlson, on Hannity last night, about his major fear today: “The people in charge don’t know what they are doing.” To wit: Obama announces we won’t use nuclear weapons to retaliate if others strike us, unless of course his attorney general decides after due deliberation that the ACLU says it’s okay.
For an interesting take on our dear leader (Obama, not Hannity) and his Tea Party, etc., opponents, read these fine analytical comments by John Podhoretz , editor of Commentary.
“Obama really does seem to believe that the opposition to his core policies—the creeping nationalization of health care, the effective nationalization of the American automotive industry, the imposition of onerous regulations on energy production, and the expiry of tax cuts...is not principled. Rather, such opposition deserves to be dismissed as bad faith—the efforts of the status quo, big business, and the politicians in their pockets. Or it is to be explained away as evidence of psychological or spiritual impairment created by the wounds inflicted upon sorry and ignorant souls who are being manipulated by forces beyond their control.
How is it that Obama can fail to see that changes of the magnitude he is seeking would compel those who believe that those changes are dangerous...to marshal their forces to do whatever is in their power to prevent them from taking place? And that it would be wise not to dismiss or belittle the energy and resolve of the opposition, but rather to take their full measure and plan accordingly?
Obama’s failure may reside in his contempt for politics. For the national counter-assault against Obama is a manifestation of democratic politics as they ought to work. A rather vague promise of change during his presidential campaign morphed afterward into an agenda of astonishing size with an astonishing price tag...
Americans did not take this grandiose and ruinously destructive plan on faith, nor should they have. A majority of them may have voted for change, but that change was change from something, from George W. Bush primarily, and not necessarily change toward something, toward a wholesale revision of the relation between the state and the economy. In response to Obama’s call for an end to talk and a time for action, an engaged and concerned citizenry used whatever political means were at hand....In using politics to slow down and thwart him, Obama’s rivals are not simply talking. They are acting as citizens in a democratic republic. When challenged by their president, they, too, decided that the time for talk was over and the time for action had begun.
--Ben Blankenship
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Civil War erupts again.
So Virginia’s Gov. McDonnell proclaims April, not as tax-haters month, but Confederate History month--without mentioning slavery. That’s like talking about atom bombs without mentioning Japan. My dog Lollipop isn’t in this fight, me being a native Texan. But I’m also “son” of a Confederate veteran. A great grandfather fought the Yankees as a sergeant for the Peach Creek Rangers in north Mississippi. And now I live where Yanks encamped between their crippling battles for Fredericksburg.
For my Lone Star State friends, I’m talking about the other town, in northern Virginia, where the Rebs fought in bloody defense of States Rights. So there.
Meanwhile, in today’s real TV land, here’s Tucker Carlson, on Hannity last night, about his major fear today: “The people in charge don’t know what they are doing.” To wit: Obama announces we won’t use nuclear weapons to retaliate if others strike us, unless of course his attorney general decides after due deliberation that the ACLU says it’s okay.
For an interesting take on our dear leader (Obama, not Hannity) and his Tea Party, etc., opponents, read these fine analytical comments by John Podhoretz , editor of Commentary.
“Obama really does seem to believe that the opposition to his core policies—the creeping nationalization of health care, the effective nationalization of the American automotive industry, the imposition of onerous regulations on energy production, and the expiry of tax cuts...is not principled. Rather, such opposition deserves to be dismissed as bad faith—the efforts of the status quo, big business, and the politicians in their pockets. Or it is to be explained away as evidence of psychological or spiritual impairment created by the wounds inflicted upon sorry and ignorant souls who are being manipulated by forces beyond their control.
How is it that Obama can fail to see that changes of the magnitude he is seeking would compel those who believe that those changes are dangerous...to marshal their forces to do whatever is in their power to prevent them from taking place? And that it would be wise not to dismiss or belittle the energy and resolve of the opposition, but rather to take their full measure and plan accordingly?
Obama’s failure may reside in his contempt for politics. For the national counter-assault against Obama is a manifestation of democratic politics as they ought to work. A rather vague promise of change during his presidential campaign morphed afterward into an agenda of astonishing size with an astonishing price tag...
Americans did not take this grandiose and ruinously destructive plan on faith, nor should they have. A majority of them may have voted for change, but that change was change from something, from George W. Bush primarily, and not necessarily change toward something, toward a wholesale revision of the relation between the state and the economy. In response to Obama’s call for an end to talk and a time for action, an engaged and concerned citizenry used whatever political means were at hand....In using politics to slow down and thwart him, Obama’s rivals are not simply talking. They are acting as citizens in a democratic republic. When challenged by their president, they, too, decided that the time for talk was over and the time for action had begun.
--Ben Blankenship
##############
posted by Ben Blankenship at
6:30 AM
