Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim in CT
Spence, in anoher thread which you are hiding from, you mentioned that the GOP clearly isn't interested in the best interests of our country.
Jim, you first have to understand that you and Spence see the best interests of our country from different perspectives. You look at it from a "conservative" and somewhat to mostly constitutional point of view. He sees it from a so-called "centrist" mostly progressive position which believes that the Constitution has outlived its usefulness.
Progressives have faith in government to rule in a much more powerful way than the Constitution prescribes. They essentially believe that societal good derives through government, and that the concept of "individual sovereignty" is not only highly overrated, but a fiction that stands in the way of efficient government--that individual rights only come from the grant of government and the "best interests of our country" are therefor served by government.
So Spence, since Obama's only financial proposal calls for billions in tax hikes, no spending cuts, INCREASED spending in the form of another stimulus, and unilateral power to Obama to raise the debt ceiling
The cost of government largesse, both to individuals and to groups or communities, must not be viewed as businesses or as individuals view cost, but as what is necessary to maintain and expand that largesse. The appropriate cost is whatever it takes. And what is best for our country must be left to government, not individuals. As John Dewey, one of the founders of the progressive movement stated in his essay LIBERALISM AND SOCIAL ACTION:
"The only form of enduring social organization that is now possible is one in which the new forces of productivity are cooperatively controlled and used in the interest of the effective liberty and the cultural development of the individuals that constitute society. Such a social order cannot be established by an unplanned and external convergence of the actions of separate individuals each of whom is bent on personal private advantage . . . Organized social planning, put into effect for the creation of an order in which industry and finance are socially directed in behalf of institutions that provide the material basis for the cultural liberation and growth of individuals, is now the sole method of social action by which liberalism can realize its professed aims."
(who cares about checks and balances, anyway)...please Spence, enlighten me, tell me how Obama's proposal represents our best interests?
Good luck.
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Progressives not only don't care about checks and balances, they absolutely see them as an impediment to good governance. As Woodrow Wilson said in his essay WHAT IS PROGRESS:
"The Constitution was founded on the law of gravitation. The government was to exist and move by virtue of the efficacy of 'checks and balances.' The trouble with the theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing . . . It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life.
No living thing can have its organs offset against each other as checks and live."
They have managed to create a more unitary, centralized, form of government over the years from Wilson, especially FDR, LBJ, and now Obama, with all the lesser progressives of both parties in between. Even the SCOTUS has been brought into the sphere of one centralized government. The FDR court in 1938 introduced the idea of different levels of scrutiny to apply to the cases brought before it: strict scrutiny; intermediate scrutiny; and rational basis test (minimal scrutiny). It was not intended, originally for the Court to have this latitude. This, as well as newer methodologies of "interpretation" were introduced over the years and encouraged by progressive law schools so that the Court has not only rubber stamped legislation that once would have been unconstitutional, but it has also become part of the legislative process acting in accord or supplementary to the Congress. You may have noticed the decision on Obamacare? The Constitution is mostly paid lip service, and the Federal Government, rather than three branches that check and balance one another, has become a more unitary system which really has no legal restraints.
Which is all to say that what Obama is doing, according to progressives, is in the best interests of the country, no matter what the costs and by phrasing the argument that the Repubs are for the rich hearkens back to another Wilsonian progressive idea that the wealthy have too much power by which they can control the levers of government. He said in WHAT IS PROGRESS:
"By tyranny, as we now fight it, we mean control of the law, of legislation and adjudication, by organizations which do not represent the people . . . we mean the alliance, for this purpose, of political machines with
selfish business."
This message has been pounded into our consciousness over the years by the left so that it has become an obvious truth that individual wealth is a threat to the liberty of the people, and it must be checked, and its "excessive" properties must be redistributed to the rest of us. And the formula that leads to the repetition (if you repeat a lie often enough . . .) was outlined by Wilson in his STUDY OF ADMINISTRATION:
"Whoever would effect a change in modern constitutional government must first educate his fellow-citizens to want SOME change. That done, he must
persuade them to want the particular change he wants. He must first make public opinion willing to listen and then to see to it that it
listen to the right things. He must stir it up to search for an opinion, and then manage to
put the right opinion in its way."
Obama has successfully done that. And however much it costs to transform society in the best interests which the people have been persuaded to want, that cost must somehow be provided, not diminished.