Progressivism - Populism - Tea Parties

Procrustes Stretched

And you say, "Oh my God, am I here all alone?"
Dec 1, 2008
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Progressivism - Populism - Tea Parties: It's really easy to sum up where I stand on them all.

To quote Robert Ingersoll:
There are many people, in all countries, who seem to enjoy individual and national decay. They love to prophesy the triumph of evil. They mistake the afternoon of their own lives for the evening of the world. To them everything has changed. Men are no longer honest or brave, and women have ceased to be beautiful. They are dyspeptic, and it gives them the greatest pleasure to say that the art of cooking has been lost. - Is Avarice Triumphant

There is nothing new about the Tea Party movement or any other nitwit movement that rises up in America. Demagogues have always hid behind the coming demise of the republic to whip up the lost, angry and frustrated among us. These hyper-patriots usually wrap themselves up in the symbols of this great republic while preaching the end of the republic.
 
Poor Internet(s) Tools @ USMB and elsewhere

Progressivism - Populism - Tea Parties: It's really easy to sum up where I stand on them all.

To quote Robert Ingersoll:
There are many people, in all countries, who seem to enjoy individual and national decay. They love to prophesy the triumph of evil. They mistake the afternoon of their own lives for the evening of the world. To them everything has changed. Men are no longer honest or brave, and women have ceased to be beautiful. They are dyspeptic, and it gives them the greatest pleasure to say that the art of cooking has been lost. - Is Avarice Triumphant

There is nothing new about the Tea Party movement or any other nitwit movement that rises up in America. Demagogues have always hid behind the coming demise of the republic to whip up the lost, angry and frustrated among us. These hyper-patriots usually wrap themselves up in the symbols of this great republic while preaching the end of the republic.
 
Populist Progressives

Anyone (besides CG) ever heard of this patriotic American Progressive?:

Robert M. La Follette, Sr. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
In 1957, a Senate Committee selected La Follette as one of the five greatest U.S. Senators, along with Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and Robert Taft.

Robert Marion "Fighting Bob"[1] La Follette, Sr. (June 14, 1855 – June 18, 1925), was an American Republican (and later a Progressive) politician.


Was McCarthy A Political Heir Of La Follette?

JSTOR: The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Autumn, 1961), pp. 3-9
 
Anyone (besides CG) ever heard of this patriotic American Progressive?:

Robert M. La Follette, Sr. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
In 1957, a Senate Committee selected La Follette as one of the five greatest U.S. Senators, along with Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and Robert Taft.

Consider THIS populist:

Huey Long - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


A leftist, progressive "populist"? An anti-Semitic demagogue?
Progressivism and Populism know no ideological bounds.
 
Anyone (besides CG) ever heard of this patriotic American Progressive?:

Robert M. La Follette, Sr. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Consider THIS populist:

Huey Long - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


A leftist, progressive "populist"? An anti-Semitic demagogue?
Progressivism and Populism know no ideological bounds.

Agreed here; populists can be of many different ideologies. Kingfish is perhaps best remembered.
 
"Demagogues" have rarely asked for so little as a balanced budget and a minimum of government interference in their daily lives. It's downright reasonable and necessary in a time of historic national debt. No one has ever been as broke as the the U.S.A is now in the entire history of the planet.

We may not be doomed just yet but "the end is nigh"-er every day if we don't get serious.

Mark Steyn: Gradual insolvency about to speed up | budget, debt, percent - Opinion - The Orange County Register
When you're spending on the scale Washington does, what matters is the hard dollar numbers. Greece's total debt is a few rinky-dink billions, a rounding error in the average Obama budget. Only America is spending trillions. The 2011 budget deficit, for example, is about the size of the entire Russian economy. By 2010, the Obama administration was issuing about a hundred billion dollars of Treasury bonds every month – or, to put it another way, Washington is dependent on the bond markets being willing to absorb an increase of U.S. debt equivalent to the GDP of Canada or India – every year. And those numbers don't take into account the huge levels of personal debt run up by Americans. College debt alone is over a trillion dollars, or the equivalent of the entire South Korean economy – tied up just in one small boutique niche market of debt which barely exists in most other developed nations.

"We are headed for the most predictable economic crisis in history," says Paul Ryan. And he's right. But precisely because it's so predictable the political class has already discounted it. Which is why a plan for pie now and spinach later, maybe even two decades later, is the only real menu on the table. There's a famous exchange in Hemingway's "A Place In The Sun." Someone asks Mike Campbell, "How did you go bankrupt?" "Two ways," he replies. "Gradually, then suddenly." We've been going through the gradual phase so long, we're kinda used to it. But it's coming to an end, and what happens next will be the second way: sudden, and very bad.


The doomed crowd is often wrong however no more so than the "it couldn't happen here", "nothing to see here" or "everything is fine" crowd. Steyn may well be modern day's most prominent doomsayer (see: America Alone and After America) but more and more of his detractors are coming around to his point of view.

Bury your head in the sand if you like. I'll be to busy outfitting my Toyota Solara Mad Max style to say "I told you so" when the economy collapses.
 
Lived through the sky is falling times. Just like air pollution and acid rain in the USA. Sometiimes it takes a huge effort to get the US to act, but act we will

"Demagogues" have rarely asked for so little as a balanced budget and a minimum of government interference in their daily lives. It's downright reasonable and necessary in a time of historic national debt. No one has ever been as broke as the the U.S.A is now in the entire history of the planet.

We may not be doomed just yet but "the end is nigh"-er every day if we don't get serious.

Mark Steyn: Gradual insolvency about to speed up | budget, debt, percent - Opinion - The Orange County Register
When you're spending on the scale Washington does, what matters is the hard dollar numbers. Greece's total debt is a few rinky-dink billions, a rounding error in the average Obama budget. Only America is spending trillions. The 2011 budget deficit, for example, is about the size of the entire Russian economy. By 2010, the Obama administration was issuing about a hundred billion dollars of Treasury bonds every month – or, to put it another way, Washington is dependent on the bond markets being willing to absorb an increase of U.S. debt equivalent to the GDP of Canada or India – every year. And those numbers don't take into account the huge levels of personal debt run up by Americans. College debt alone is over a trillion dollars, or the equivalent of the entire South Korean economy – tied up just in one small boutique niche market of debt which barely exists in most other developed nations.

"We are headed for the most predictable economic crisis in history," says Paul Ryan. And he's right. But precisely because it's so predictable the political class has already discounted it. Which is why a plan for pie now and spinach later, maybe even two decades later, is the only real menu on the table. There's a famous exchange in Hemingway's "A Place In The Sun." Someone asks Mike Campbell, "How did you go bankrupt?" "Two ways," he replies. "Gradually, then suddenly." We've been going through the gradual phase so long, we're kinda used to it. But it's coming to an end, and what happens next will be the second way: sudden, and very bad.


The doomed crowd is often wrong however no more so than the "it couldn't happen here", "nothing to see here" or "everything is fine" crowd. Steyn may well be modern day's most prominent doomsayer (see: America Alone and After America) but more and more of his detractors are coming around to his point of view.

Bury your head in the sand if you like. I'll be to busy outfitting my Toyota Solara Mad Max style to say "I told you so" when the economy collapses.
 
Lived through the sky is falling times. Just like air pollution and acid rain in the USA. Sometimes it takes a huge effort to get the US to act, but act we will

"Demagogues" have rarely asked for so little as a balanced budget and a minimum of government interference in their daily lives. It's downright reasonable and necessary in a time of historic national debt. No one has ever been as broke as the the U.S.A is now in the entire history of the planet.

We may not be doomed just yet but "the end is nigh"-er every day if we don't get serious.

Mark Steyn: Gradual insolvency about to speed up | budget, debt, percent - Opinion - The Orange County Register
When you're spending on the scale Washington does, what matters is the hard dollar numbers. Greece's total debt is a few rinky-dink billions, a rounding error in the average Obama budget. Only America is spending trillions. The 2011 budget deficit, for example, is about the size of the entire Russian economy. By 2010, the Obama administration was issuing about a hundred billion dollars of Treasury bonds every month – or, to put it another way, Washington is dependent on the bond markets being willing to absorb an increase of U.S. debt equivalent to the GDP of Canada or India – every year. And those numbers don't take into account the huge levels of personal debt run up by Americans. College debt alone is over a trillion dollars, or the equivalent of the entire South Korean economy – tied up just in one small boutique niche market of debt which barely exists in most other developed nations.

"We are headed for the most predictable economic crisis in history," says Paul Ryan. And he's right. But precisely because it's so predictable the political class has already discounted it. Which is why a plan for pie now and spinach later, maybe even two decades later, is the only real menu on the table. There's a famous exchange in Hemingway's "A Place In The Sun." Someone asks Mike Campbell, "How did you go bankrupt?" "Two ways," he replies. "Gradually, then suddenly." We've been going through the gradual phase so long, we're kinda used to it. But it's coming to an end, and what happens next will be the second way: sudden, and very bad.


The doomed crowd is often wrong however no more so than the "it couldn't happen here", "nothing to see here" or "everything is fine" crowd. Steyn may well be modern day's most prominent doomsayer (see: America Alone and After America) but more and more of his detractors are coming around to his point of view.

Bury your head in the sand if you like. I'll be to busy outfitting my Toyota Solara Mad Max style to say "I told you so" when the economy collapses.
 
Lived through the sky is falling times. Just like air pollution and acid rain in the USA. Sometimes it takes a huge effort to get the US to act, but act we will

"Demagogues" have rarely asked for so little as a balanced budget and a minimum of government interference in their daily lives. It's downright reasonable and necessary in a time of historic national debt. No one has ever been as broke as the the U.S.A is now in the entire history of the planet.

We may not be doomed just yet but "the end is nigh"-er every day if we don't get serious.

Mark Steyn: Gradual insolvency about to speed up | budget, debt, percent - Opinion - The Orange County Register
When you're spending on the scale Washington does, what matters is the hard dollar numbers. Greece's total debt is a few rinky-dink billions, a rounding error in the average Obama budget. Only America is spending trillions. The 2011 budget deficit, for example, is about the size of the entire Russian economy. By 2010, the Obama administration was issuing about a hundred billion dollars of Treasury bonds every month – or, to put it another way, Washington is dependent on the bond markets being willing to absorb an increase of U.S. debt equivalent to the GDP of Canada or India – every year. And those numbers don't take into account the huge levels of personal debt run up by Americans. College debt alone is over a trillion dollars, or the equivalent of the entire South Korean economy – tied up just in one small boutique niche market of debt which barely exists in most other developed nations.

"We are headed for the most predictable economic crisis in history," says Paul Ryan. And he's right. But precisely because it's so predictable the political class has already discounted it. Which is why a plan for pie now and spinach later, maybe even two decades later, is the only real menu on the table. There's a famous exchange in Hemingway's "A Place In The Sun." Someone asks Mike Campbell, "How did you go bankrupt?" "Two ways," he replies. "Gradually, then suddenly." We've been going through the gradual phase so long, we're kinda used to it. But it's coming to an end, and what happens next will be the second way: sudden, and very bad.


The doomed crowd is often wrong however no more so than the "it couldn't happen here", "nothing to see here" or "everything is fine" crowd. Steyn may well be modern day's most prominent doomsayer (see: America Alone and After America) but more and more of his detractors are coming around to his point of view.

Bury your head in the sand if you like. I'll be to busy outfitting my Toyota Solara Mad Max style to say "I told you so" when the economy collapses.

It's not a question of getting the government to act, it's how to make it stop. Yearly trillion dollar plus deficits can't go on forever. It's a massive bipartisan problem that could turn catastrophic in the very near future.

Nations fall. All the time. If it happens to America, it will be a global mess.
 

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