It is sometime instructional to read what Leftists have to say. I appreciate the interns and junior assistants of the VRWC who cull through the chaff of the Huffington Post, etc for slave wages – so I don’t have to if I don’t want to. But still, to have even an inkling of what they Left thinks and how they come up with their loony ideas, it is necessary to read them directly.
Case in point, reliably loony Eugene Robinson:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/04/12/demanding_the_impossible_109517.html
“At issue is a fundamental question -- what is the nature and purpose of government”
This much is true. Sane people have observed as much. It is one of the things that is confusing Leftists. Back in the good old days of Rockefeller Republicans, the discussion was merely over how big Gov’t should be and whether Communists were fuzzy or smelly. Today, Conservatives have brought up a question Leftists thought had been answered – what is the nature and purpose of government?
Robinson, however, doesn’t know his History:
“-- that was first answered more than two centuries ago, when Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson duked it out as warring members of George Washington's first Cabinet. Hamilton's centralized government was victorious. There are those who have never forgiven him.”
It was answered over 2 centuries ago, but his answer is barely 100 years old. I am quite confident Alexander Hamilton wouldn’t feel too comfortable with the House Progressive Caucus. Robinson re-imagines Hamilton and Adams as disciples of Crowley and Wilson and Marx. Only in an alternate universe inhabited by Manhattan/Berkley Leftists.
“The far-right ideologues in the House seek to starve the federal government to the point where it can no longer fulfill its constitutional duty to promote the general welfare.”
You don’t have to be a Constitutional Scholar to know that a line in the preamble doesn’t constitute an enumerated power. Also that a particular benefit for a specific class or individual is incongruous with the general welfare, which – if words mean anything – means it the non-specific (not 'targeted') good (as in non-rivalous, ie: roads, defense, etc) (not benefice, tax shelter or direct payment) of the general population (not particular interest groups or individuals). Thus, EITC, medicare and Social security are a lot of things but not in any way promoting the general welfare.
“Their inspired tactic -- which has worked so well that they would be crazy to abandon it -- has been to take a wildly extreme position and stick to it with the obstinacy of a mule.”
Does it not strike him that the mascot of the Democrat party is in fact, the mule? Perhaps not. In any case, it seems to me that obstinately saying that the country isn’t broke, that $1T deficits won’t add to the debt, and that increasing taxes won’t decrease economic activity are wildly, crazily extreme. But then, to Eugene, I’m a far-right ideologue. I thought I was just someone who could do math.
“Ryan seeks not just to reduce the nation's long-term indebtedness but to change the essence of the relationship between citizens and their government.
“Restore” would be a better word. Obama et al have been intent on changing the relationship between citizens and their government. Read Wilson and Crowley and you will get an idea of what they have in mind.
