Student of Ideologies - Hello!

Perhaps I'm missing something here. When it comes to corporations, you're for a strict interpretation of the Constitution, including original documents against them? For everything else, you are for an evolving interpretation?

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"We are fighting today for our life, for our liberty, for our all, we cannot go on being led as we are. Somehow or other, we must get into the Government men who can match our enemies in fighting spirit, in daring, in resolution and in thirst for victory."~Leo Amery 1940, while staring at Chamberlain

Thank you, BFgrn, for expanding on my theme, here.

Yes the above is exactly where the Supreme Court, in my opinion, screwed the pooch when it comes to corporations.

We have essantially granted entities which are immortal enormous legal and financial powers and rights which are determimental to the democratic part of our democratic republic.

Annie, I will allow Robert F. Kennedy Jr answer your question...he frames it perfectly IMO...

There is nothing wrong with corporations. Corporations are a good thing. They encourage us to take risks. They maximize wealth. They create jobs. I own a corporation. They're a great thing, but they should not be running our government. The reason for that is they don't have the same aspirations for America that you and I do. A corporation does not want democracy. It does not want free markets, it wants profits, and the best way for it to get profits is to use our campaign-finance system -- which is just a system of legalized bribery -- to get their stakes, their hooks into a public official and then use that public official to dismantle the marketplace to give them a competitive advantage and then to privatize the commons, to steal the commonwealth, to liquidate public assets for cash, to plunder, to steal from the rest of us.

And that doesn't mean corporations are a bad thing. It just means they're amoral, and we have to recognize that and not let them into the political process. Let them do their thing, but they should not be participating in our political process, because a corporation cannot do something genuinely philanthropic. It's against the law in this country, because their shareholders can sue them for wasting corporate resources. They cannot legally do anything that will not increase their profit margins. That's the way the law works, and we have to recognize that and understand that they are toxic for the political process, and they have to be fenced off and kept out of the political process. This is why throughout our history our most visionary political leaders -- Republican and Democrat -- have been warning the American public against domination by corporate power.

This White House has done a great job of persuading a gullible press and the American public that the big threat to American democracy is big government. Well, yeah, big government is a threat ultimately, but it is dwarfed by the threat of excessive corporate power and the corrosive impact that has on our democracy. And you know, as I said, you look at all the great political leaders in this country and the central theme is that we have to be cautious about, we have to avoid, the domination of our government by corporate power.

Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, said that America would never be destroyed by a foreign power but he warned that our political institutions, our democratic institutions, would be subverted by malefactors of great wealth, who would erode them from within. Dwight Eisenhower, another Republican, in his most famous speech, warned America against domination by the military industrial complex.

Abraham Lincoln, the greatest Republican in our history, said during the height of the Civil War "I have the South in front of me and I have the bankers behind me. And for my country, I fear the bankers more." Franklin Roosevelt said during World War II that the domination of government by corporate power is "the essence of fascism" and Benito Mussolini -- who had an insider's view of that process -- said the same thing. Essentially, he complained that fascism should not be called fascism. It should be called corporatism because it was the merger of state and corporate power. And what we have to understand as Americans is that the domination of business by government is called communism. The domination of government by business is called fascism. And our job is to walk that narrow trail in between, which is free-market capitalism and democracy. And keep big government at bay with our right hand and corporate power at bay with our left.

http://www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/speeches/2005-09-10rfkjr.asp

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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Thanks for that. Robert was a genuine good guy.

"It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war." Abraham Lincoln in a letter to William F. Elkins, November 21, 1864.

A piece I wrote years ago. end of democracy

Indeed, that is part of what I was suggesting above, but many of us get hung up on youthful idealism, and that is the crux of the matter; our expectations about both our side and the other side are unrealistic or extreme in our appraisal of our own or the other sides motives and intent. Conservatives are forced to consider the ideas of the other side (because they are reacting), liberals can ignore conservatives in the lawmaking process until they experience dissent from their own side. Even if they fail to pass their initiatives they benefit from having the issue. In that event conservatives gain by being able to hone their facts to bring practical development to the change. Even the media's left lean helps conservatives by honing their skill to be constructive, while it handicaps the liberals because they have it as a crutch to lean on.

True, but conservatives, those who are thinking people, look backward to the foundations of the institutions worth saving, while trying to understand what the demands for changes will mean in practical or real terms. Many liberals and conservatives are ardent 'true believers' who won't look realistically at the flaws in their ideology, or will forgive or ignore any transgression as necessary and a part of what's needed because of the frailty of the people who make up their movement; the ends justify the means.

I can see that, and it always has been, but things have changed drastically since the time of the first liberals and conservatives as opposing forces in the earliest political systems of a republic. But we see the same from liberalism, as it advances ideas and defends them ruthlessly, even when they are risky; and even though they are theoretically worthy, they need to be joined with conservative discipline (understanding the power of incentives for good and ill) to work in the real world.

This is true, and I call it pragmatism as opposed to idealism and to claim to act on "principles" regardless of outcome.

Excellent standard.
Which side is most likely to adhere to it?

Thanks for the links....AH

Robert JR still IS a good guy midcan...and he does have his dad's genes...

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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Mark Twain said it a little more direct...

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935

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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Welcome. You really don't need to be a "timeless" anything. The more you learn, the more you'll know that adherence to strict ideology (party-first attitude) is what causes societies (like ours) to fail. It causes anger, resentment, and ultimate polarization and gridlock. No country can remain in civil war for any length of time. Eventually, we need to climb out of the ring and face reality.

That's odd. I see nothing in the rules and regulations making such stupid determinations as to what is acceptable on this message board or not.

That's great. I was reminded of the commerical (can't remember what it was for) of the white and black children having fun on a playground together and the white mother dragging her child away saying she couldn't play with those kids. The child just says "Why?" And the screen goes dark.

And please...no racial tone was intended. Just the fact that children LEARN from their parents how to react to social situations starting very very young.

Most do. The problem is you only read about those who don't because of the current hysterics so you just assume "all" libs/dems must be as you describe. That's hardly the case.

My own brief analysis of the difference between conservatives and liberals is that the right always lives in a "what if" state of mind; the left lives in a "what is" state of mind.

That's a keeper, and so much more "current" than dragging out the ol' history books for similar statements.

Ideology is for fools who cannot think.

Otherwise, welcome aboard.

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How about one at a time.

To understand the liberals of today, it is important to recognize the forces and themes that serve as their provenance began as far back as the early 20th Century.

1.The modern liberalism began as “… a revolt against the masses. Liberal thinkers accused the great unwashed of smothering creative individuals in a blanket of materialist, spiritually empty cultural conformity. The liberal project was to replace its business civilization—a “dictatorship of the middle class,” …with a new, more highly evolved leadership…liberals also embraced government economic planning, which depended on making people more predictable, …by proposing to place power in the hands of scientists, academics, artists, and professionals, a new and truly worthy aristocracy that could govern based on what was good for both leaders and the led.”

2. H. G. Wells, known primarily for his science-fiction works, was also a prime mover for the intellectual elite of the time. As George Orwell wrote: “I doubt whether anyone who was writing books between 1900 and 1920, at any rate in the English language, influenced the young so much.” Reviling the masses, Wells was both antidemocratic and elitist, and gained great popularity and influence in America, “not just through his defense of liberal freedoms such as free speech but through his hostility to population growth, capitalism, and democracy itself.” The direct line to modern liberals can be seen in the antipathy to business, favoring legislating by activist judges, and in the attempts to shut down any contrary opinions.

3. “More than any other intellectual of the time, Wells spoke to two enormous nineteenth-century shifts: the growth of giant industries, which undercut the old assumptions about the sovereignty of the individual; and Darwinism’s concussive reassignment of humanity from the spiritual to the natural world.” Here are axioms which still resonate in the modern liberal, who abhors businesses, especially the successful ones, like Wal-Mart, and roils against those who do not accept evolution as the only explanation for the species. As with our modern liberals, Wells rhapsodized on the permanent misery of the urban working class, and he loathed “the idle, parasitic rich.” How often we hear echoes of this on our board.

4. Wells’ ideas of scientific socialism, parallel to other paths toward utopian reform, such as Marxism, which he felt were too class-war-oriented, “called for a different kind of struggle, a “revolt of the competent” against the confines of conventional middle-class morality.” Modern liberalism resonates between these analogous philosophies, at times reviling the ‘common man,’ while at other times claiming to champion same.

5. “In A Modern Utopia, written in 1905, Wells updated John Stuart Mill’s culturally individualist liberalism in light of the horizons opened by Darwin and Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics.” Margaret Sanger, a leading feminist, militant proponent of the First Amendment, and champion of birth control and eugenics—all causes shared by Wells—believed that the author had “influenced the American intelligentsia more than any other one man.”

6. Liberal hopes in the postwar period found Lenin “ascribing the war to the cupidity of capitalism and offering Communist internationalism as the means to peace.” Wells, in another of the common themes we see today, wrote the two-volume Outline of History (1920) which was the secularist Bible, the creation according to Darwin, and redemption if man were “to minimize the scourge of nationalism [and patriotism] by creating a world government led by” [the intellectual elite], or perhaps a President seen by many followers as their ‘messiah.” The ‘new world order would be filled with followers who would “lead lives of deliciously complete sexual and emotional fulfillment.” Indeed, how seductive is liberalism?

7. How ironic that the way Wells refers to the fascists and Communists could apply to today’s liberals: “they embody the rule of a minority conceited enough to believe that they have a clue to the tangled incoherencies of human life, and need only sufficiently terrorize criticism and opposition to achieve a general happiness,…” And even more prescient, when we consider the current administration against the backdrop of Wells’ criticism of Soviet Communism as central-planning with “police-state thuggery.”

Read more about Wells and Liberalism:

“The Godfather of American Liberalism”
The Godfather of American Liberalism by Fred Siegel, City Journal Spring 2009

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People are most conservative on issues that they know most about. --Ann Coulter