Daley makes some good points, but I particularly liked this portion of the column (emphasis mine):
So let me have a go at explaining why Americans are not kidding when they talk about the intentions of the nation’s founding fathers, and why their reverence for and constant appeals to the Constitution are not an excuse for prejudice, but the precise opposite.
The British, particularly – who feel that, for historical reasons, they should be in a better position to understand America than anyone else – find it almost impossible to believe that ordinary, not particularly well-educated, US citizens could be genuinely concerned about fidelity to an abstract notion of freedom embodied in a document that underpins their concept of government....
What is unique about the US – and indispensable to the understanding of it – is that it is a country of the displaced and dispossessed: a nation which invented itself for the very purpose of permitting people to reinvent themselves, to take their fate into their own hands, to be liberated from the persecution and the paternalism of the old cultures they had left behind.Daley's analysis goes a long way toward describing not only why the Europeans fail to understand us, but why the modern Democratic Party fails to comprehend the push-back taking place in the country.
The election of Barack Obama and the Democratic sweeps in 2006 and 2008 were taken to signal a change in the American attitude towards centralized government, but in reality, those events were anomalies in which a variety of unique historical factors came together.
The modern Democratic Party, beholden as it is to unions and welfare-state sycophants in the European style, embodies attitudes which are alien to this nation. Three generations of leftist education have resulted in a substantial minority of the population who accept that we should be like Europe, but still a minority.
The notion that everything we have and are devolves from the state is not natural to this country, but the modern Democratic Party can't comprehend why that is so. It is inconceivable to them that people would not want their form of health care system; it must be that we don't understand how good it will be for us.
Our failure to understand how good their handouts are for us really is their failure to understand that we want to take our own fate into our own hands.
A government safety net for those who, through no fault of their own, fail is one thing; a smothering net in which -- to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher -- the state becomes master not servant, is something quite different.
When Tea Party and other protesters demand to take the country back, it has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with rejecting the alien European model of society being forced upon us.
They can keep talking, but we're not buying what they are selling.
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...and in Britain, the parliamentary system is soooo different and they just don't understand that. Europe has always been the senior partner even though we went on to surpass all of them and help them recover from WWII.
ReplyDeleteWe are the lesser intelligent and sophisticated. We are the country bumpkin relatives Yet guess who they let provide missile shields, etc. We are the students; they are the lecturers. We will never graduate from our schooling from them.
"Three generations of leftist education have resulted in a substantial minority of the population who accept that we should be like Europe, but still a minority."
ReplyDeleteIf we don't take back our education system, it won't be long until that minority turns into majority.
MBS;
ReplyDeleteYou got it exactly right. People better wake up and throw out these pro(RE)gressives from the school boards and superintendant positions. It takes half a lifetime for these kids to outgrow the social poison being poured into them by this so-called education system. Teachers unions should be outlawed. THEY ARE PUBLIC EMPLOYES. Unionizing against the public interest is insanity.
Gordon
Mr. Jacobson,
ReplyDeleteOne could make the case that --
"The election of Barack Obama and the Democratic sweeps in 2006 and 2008 were taken to signal a change in the American attitude towards centralized government, but in reality, those events were anomalies in which a variety of unique historical factors came together."
-- 06/08 were also reactions to over bearing government intrusion. For in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks there was a rush by the legislature to 'do something'. As a consequence we have the Patriot Act, DHS and a slew of other consequences that in a cooler period would not have been enacted. Not that a realignment was in order, it was. The creation of the DIA is proper but many of the provisions of the Patriot Act clearly in violation of the Constitution.
People see this and react accordingly.
The GOP hopefully gains control of the House. But their first order of business is not MORE legislation for ELIMINATION of much of what is on the books. If they don't, many may take to another political route than shuns both parties for the sake of the country.
Psuedoprogressives , and they have no clue ... this article made my week thank you so much !
ReplyDeleteTucanae: my sentiments exactly. I watched Gingrich being interview by Chris Wallace this morning who asked him if he was not, in fact, advocating a return to the policies of Bush? Newt waffled but pretty much confirmed that he was. And also implicated Boehner as being in the same camp.
ReplyDeleteAs we return control of the House to an unrepentant GOP this November, we should greet their return with a few swift kicks to the groin to remind that how we left off as we were kicking their butts out of town in 2006 and 2008. Today, there are more of us and we are not as happy today as we were then.
Let the games begin!
If it wasn't for Americans that were dedicated to their Constitutional liberties, all the Eurolibs would now be speaking Deutsche...
ReplyDelete"The election of Barack Obama and the Democratic sweeps in 2006 and 2008 were"...
ReplyDeletelargely achieved by the leftist groupthink of the American and world mass media, which mounted a six-year negative campaign against the Bush administration, and a one-year campaign of fawning propaganda for one B.H. Obama.
As that media is the principal opinion-forming force in the country today, its savagely biased "news" presentations can take most of the credit for the swing to the left after 2004, and for the Pelosi-Reid Congress.
The independent Internet media is beginning to show some corrective effects on public opinion, but is still massively outgunned by mass-media groupthink. Let's hope the trend continues.
We, the United States are the ulitmate conquest. They did not drive planes into any part of Europe. They choose us because of our Freedom and Constitution. Let's not mistake ever that our lives changed because a Religious War, was thrusted upon us because of Sharia Law.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, we would have maintained our solid place a nation, aligned by none other. Because of the EU and their compliance to becoming marginal to Islam. Now, we have touchy feely debates and consider letting Sharia Law, inch in, bit by bit, to prove how tolerant and constitutional we really are. That would be the minority speaking.
But the majority is speaking and although we are at the crossroads, we know with absolution that we are neither, Racist, Homophobic, Islamophobic, Bigots, KKK Members and Anti-Patriotic.
You tell me who I am, go on and on. I will prove to you who I am not and conquer you everytime.
We really are the LAST BASTION of freedom in the world. Why can't we export that ideal? Because we let our definition of freedom die at the waters edge! If all our aid, grants, visas...any tax funded venture....REQUIRE a country follow the First Amendment, Second Amendment, and Article 1, section 2(ie. controlling the tax man/goverment EVERY two years) we'd be acting on PRINCIPLE. Dealing $60 BILLION worth of weapons to a shariah compliant kingdon...not so much.
ReplyDelete> A government safety net for those who, through
ReplyDelete> no fault of their own, fail is one thing; a
> smothering net in which -- to paraphrase
> Margaret Thatcher -- the state becomes master
> not servant, is something quite different.
I like that statement. I would like to see the metaphor put forward by a prominent blogger like you, professor, and then repeated and spread far and wide that the social safety net has become a gill net that is now used by the statist machine to scoop up and exterminate the middle class.
SenatorMark4 - Give the Aussies some credit. The Canadians, too, who have done better than we have in many ways over the last five years. (Hell, even the Swedes are making free market noises now.) Still, point taken.
ReplyDeleteI have long maintained that liberals do not disagree with other POV's. They simply don't understand them, but believe they do. Their understanding of non-liberals - not only the various types of conservatives but the regional, ethnic, issue, and union constituencies they try and exploit. They succeed with some of these through fear and bribery, which are effective political tools (so they do understand something), but are ultimately unstable. Liberals are 19% of the population, but leverage that by manipulating black and union (especially government union) votes into Democratic Party dominance, which is leveraged in turn in national politics.
This is not to say that conservatives or libertarians have a field ripe for harvest. We have smaller core constituencies than the liberals. But separating out the numerous competing interests at least allows us to highlight those principles, as above, that remain common to most Americans.