[detbuch]

Originally Posted by spence

You did say "The issue, then, is choosing either principle or progressivism. The former are adherents, the latter are the strategists" just after claiming that all politicians lie. Sure sounds slick to me...

There you go again. I didn't say all politicians lie. I said they are expected to lie. Why--because they are politicians. The post was mostly meant to be provocative. The neutral tone I took regarding political lying was meant to be ironic. If I was so accepting of government by lies, how explain my posts that followed, or the many posts in other threads. Did I all of a sudden convert into a Machiavelli? I detest the lying, even the lying by that Gordon fellow in the 60 minute Benghazi piece. I prefer statesmanship over politics. Politics is usually looked at as a mean, mendacious process. One that not only destroys opponents' character, but also eats at our founding principles, destroying them and the entire constitutional system. The founders warned about the dangers of politics, factionalism, but Madison relied on there being so many factions that they would nullify each other. But when partisanship has grown so huge and two-sided, each side incorporating many otherwise diverse and competing factions, rather than neutralizing each other they induce the
destruction of our political process. Politics becomes a dirty word. John F. Kennedy once quipped "Mothers may still want their favorite sons to grow up to be President, but . . . they do not want them to become politicians in the process."

The more serious "choosing principle or progressivism" bit was a departure from the rest of the post. I intended no irony there. By choosing principle I meant adherence to the founding principles and particularly the Constitution. Adherence not requiring strategy, but compliance to the rule of law. Strategy being a means to circumvent it or even twisting truth to adhere to the Constitution.

By choosing progressivism I meant abandoning principles and ruling by the whim of the moment. I don't know of any stated principles of progressivism.

At this point in the post I had departed from the ironic view of political lies, and certainly didn't refer to the concept of principled lies, whatever that is.


So why be so critical? Hey, everybody does it.

I was being ironic, not in agreement that everybody does it.

Interestingly enough there's a video of Obama with House Republicans discussing the bill back in 2010 where Obama admits at least 10 million will lose their old plans. If this is some big lie I'd think he would have been called on it quite some time ago.

So not only was he told about the paltry sum of 10 million losing old plans but he even admitted it before he kept repeating that you would not. Period. I don't know if that's a "big" lie, but potentially a very effective one for election purposes, especially to the "vast majority" of those unaware of the video.

The hate machine started well before his first term and has eclipsed anything we've witnesses in recent memory. Yes, some of the opposition is legitimate policy differences, but the bulk of it is personal...

If you say so, must be true . . . nah.

I think my body of work here on this site alone would likely keep me from public office. Unless I ran as a conservative, the libs really don't know how to exploit the Internet that well

-spence

I think your body of work would be high qualification to be a politician. The "conservative politicians" would love to have you on their side. I think the "libs" would more so. And the libs are very good at exploiting the internet.