15 thoughts on “Democrat?”

  1. I’ve often thought of a similar quiz, “Democrat or Fascist,” inspired by quotes from Hitler, Mussolini, et al in Goldberg’s LIBERAL FASCISM and Von Kuehnnelt-Leddhin’s LEFTISM, and their similarity to the utterances of various prominent Democrats, including the two contending for the presidential nomination the last time around. Just recently I was reading a biography of William Butler Yeats, who at one time flirted with fascism and admired Mussolini, and some of the Mussolini quotes in the book reminded me of Obama. And then there’s Michelle Obama’s Evita-like, “My husband will not let you return to your ordinary lives. . . ” speech.

  2. Marxists have been winning the language war. Most of us use marxist terminology without realizing it. We need to fight and win this war as well as the others.

    We are a republic and need to repeal the 17th amendment.

    We don’t need to make the world safe for democracy. We need push back against those that would take liberty away… foreign and domestic.

  3. One aspect IMNSHO is calling them “statist” instead of Leftist, Socialist, Marxist, etc. It sums up the core: they’re for more government intervention, period.

    The second one flings the normal terms (socialist etc.), the view is “Ok, but you’re a fascist!” Because “everyone knows” communism and fascism are opposites. But “statist” applies to both fascists and communists.

    The opposition to anything remotely paintable as “fascist” has completely wiped out the “conservative Democrat.” That is: one that have an even moderately sane view on fiscal policies.

    Obama honestly thinks the New Deal wasn’t big enough. And as the Cold War fades into history, the fiascos of the Five Year Plans aren’t trumped by the opponents of the Soviets as much… meaning there is a large pool of people who can say “Well, they must not have tried very hard. We can do better!”

  4. “Obama honestly thinks the New Deal wasn’t big enough.”

    Uncle Frank probably pointed out to young Barry that FDR was a Wall Street lawyer with ties to the Morgan financial empire* and that the New Deal was a sham, an attempt to
    fool the masses into thinking the capitalist classes were concerned with them and avert a REALworker’s revolution that would give the laboring classes TRUE power. “You know, Barry, like they have in the Soviet Union.”

    “Gol-lee, Uncle Frank, when I grow up I’m going to make the United States a REALl socialist republic!”

    *Essentially the thesis, from the Right, of Anthony C. Sutton.

  5. “We … need to repeal the 17th amendment.”

    Which would place the selection of Senators into the hands of the state political parties and completely out of the control of the voters.
    Have you actually LOOKED at your local party recently? Take oh, I don’t know, Illinois or South Carolina as examples. Those are the people who would be deciding how your life would be lived.

    It also means that, for many of the states who had their state Constitution rewritten during the Reconstruction, their senators would be Democrats- no matter what the state’s population felt about this- because a whole bunch of state Constitutions were rigged to effectively insure that Republicans were kept in the minority (e.g. North Carolina and Texas). Adding onto this is the fact that some states are under Federal mandates to gerrymander ‘minority representation’ districts, no matter how illogical and unrepresentational- read: safe districts for Democrats (NC is one of the most egregious but there are others).

    That’s what you want, right? A Senate controlled by an unelected, unremovable (and highly corrupt) body in each state and with a built-in bias towards one political party, and with no voter remediation possible?

  6. Oh, and sidebar: The method you favor- the pre-17th Amendment model- is essentially how the European Union sends EU Assemblymen (or MP’s or whatever they’re called) to Brussels. How’s that working out for them, in providing representational government that is responsive to the needs of the citizens?

  7. In this particular instance, Dave is correct. I wouldn’t trust the parties at the state level (I spent the 1st 40 years of my life in The People’s Republic of Massachusetts) with that kind of power.

  8. The argument for repealing the 17th amendment is that the founders intended for the Senate to represent the states’ interests. The House was to represent the people, and was popularly elected. The 17th amendment was a giant step away from the republic created by the founders and towards a pure democracy. The founders knew that democracy would lead to ruin, and we are now seeing that play out right before our eyes.

    The 16th and 17th amendments together, both ratified in 1913, marked the beginning of the runaway growth of the federal government at the expense of the states’ authority.

    Maybe a Senate chosen by state legislatures would be beholden to corrupt party organizations, but at least they wouldn’t have to pander to the lowest common denominator among the voters.

    I am also in favor of eliminating any sort of racial gerrymandering or quotas.

  9. The theory, at least, would be that state legislatures would become actually important again, leading to some light (other than in places like Illinois) shining into the horrible gunk that has built up inside them the last few decades. This would also provide a slower, more controlled change of a seat, rather than the winner-take-all-every-6-years that we have today. Rather than building up decades of power because his party feared losing the seat if they replaced the man, a senator could get punted if he sufficiently annoyed the state legislature, and the state legislature could have its ranks decimated if it supported a disliked senator (or replaced a popular one).

    Surely somebody’s done some heavy research into senatorial behavioral modification in the 1800s? How long did most senators serve, and what were the causes for their replacement?

  10. Also, I would like to know how the Texas Constitution ensures a permanent majority of the Democratic Party…

  11. Senators can be booted in mid-term by the same process that any Federal/State official can: Impeachment (by the State Legislature(s), in this case).

  12. There was an interesting argument in the 19th century about whether a state legislature could instruct their Senators how to vote on any particular issue, or whether the Senator, once elected, was free to vote his conscience unless and until recalled.

    I find the argument for increased influence of corrupt parties unconvincing. The great era of machine politics in the United States followed the 16th and 17th Amendments, and the reason is relatively easy to see. Only with a fat Federal treasury does it become possible to buy votes through a machine — and only with direct election of Senators is there a point to that.

    What is also overlooked is the fact that Senators directly appointed by the legislature were almost always members of the legislature, too, and had strong ties and loyalties to the state government. They could be expected to greatly resist any expansion of Federal power at the expense of the states, and in fact did so throughout the 19th century. That’s the point — for Federal power is the only real ultimate tyranny. You can always move out of a state that goes off the deep end, while fleeing the country to escape Federal oppression is far more problematic.

  13. Five Year Plans actually worked very well in the early days of the Soviet Union. They enabled the transformation of the Soviet Union from a backwards and rural country which had been devastated by civil war into a superpower which put the first satellite and human into space.

    Planned economics work very well for migrating a backwards country into a more advanced, yet well known, technological level. They enable rapid construction of infrastructure, which requires large capital investments hard to accumulate in a developing economy otherwise.

    The same planned economy techniques were successfully employed long before in Meiji Japan, and Prussia. The Soviet Union was not the first case.

    Planned economics do not work well once you reach a certain technological level compared to other nations. Once you reach that point the major problem is no longer how to get enough capital accumulated to enable modern infrastructure. The major problem then is how to efficiently allocate available capital. Meiji Japan and Prussia eventually realized this, as does China. The Soviet Union did not and failed as a result.

    Planned economics work in a suboptimal fashion on a local level. Market economics work in a suboptimal fashion when there is a global crisis which requires a concerted response. These traits are common with any other top-down versus bottom-up management strategy.

    Market based mechanisms stochastically solve economic problems in a more optimal fashion than any other presently devised economic system. As any stochastic process there may be bubbles on occasion, but the market tends to be self-regulating and self-healing to a large degree.

    There is no other viable alternative to market based economics given present economic theory. Even the Chinese gave up on their planned economy to a large degree. But people like predictable deterministic systems and someone, somewhere, will try a globally planned deterministic economic system again.

  14. “Five Year Plans actually worked very well in the early days of the Soviet Union. They enabled the transformation of the Soviet Union from a backwards and rural country which had been devastated by civil war into a superpower which put the first satellite and human into space.”

    Citation needed. Your second sentence may or may not be true, but the five year plans never came anywhere close to meeting importent targets like production goals.

  15. They could be expected to greatly resist any expansion of Federal power at the expense of the states, and in fact did so throughout the 19th century. That’s the point — for Federal power is the only real ultimate tyranny. You can always move out of a state that goes off the deep end, while fleeing the country to escape Federal oppression is far more problematic.

    ^^^ThisE+10

    That’s what you want, right? A Senate controlled by an unelected, unremovable (and highly corrupt) body in each state and with a built-in bias towards one political party, and with no voter remediation possible?

    Given a choice between various corrupt bodies, I’ll take the one which stands a chance of defending Federalism instead of the one we have now which conspires against it.

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