Bfgrn
Gold Member
- Apr 4, 2009
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- #221
"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie deliberate, contrived and dishonest but the myth persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
President John F. Kennedy Commencement Address at Yale University, Old Campus, New Haven, Connecticut, June 11, 1962
Wisdom? Really? Are you a literal idiot? Let me ask you this Einstein, what government policies did Karl Marx implement? None you say? Then how can there be Marxism?
Because Marxism is a economic, social, and political system developed by Marx. Even if no one had ever tried to implement it it would still exist. Are you really that stupid, or do you just think that because you are incapable of reasoning other people are not.
So, the current radical right wing ideology of cutting taxes to increase revenues, mass privatization, dismantling of the government safety net, and the mantra that the only thing wrong with government is that it gets in the way of the private sector would be attributed to whom? Jimmy Carter?
I don't care who you attribute it too. The Reagan revolution never happened because Reagan, and his successor Bush, both grew government and interfered in the free market. If I wanted to try to pin the blame on one person I would put it on Clinton, he is the one that said the era of Big Government is over.
And how, exactly, did Reagan do any of that? He campaigned on one thing, and did the opposite, just like every politician in history before him. What you are describing as revolution sounds a lot more like what the right wing tried, and failed, to accomplish through him.
You are aware of that, yet you think he cut taxes. That, in my opinion, makes you ignorant.
Ronald Reagan created an ideology of a federal government from what he critically called, a tax and spend policy, to a borrow and spend policy. The government continued its heavy spending, but used borrowed money instead of tax revenue to pay the bills. The results were catastrophic. By the end of the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administrations, the national debt had quadrupled to $4 trillion dollars.
No one had ever done "borrow and spend" before Reagan? How did we manage to accumulate a debt without borrowing?
So, aptly named one, can we have a critical discussion of our current economic disaster? Should we start with Carternomics or Obamanomics???
We should start with a simple fact. The only way to run a deficit is to spend more money that you have. You cannot blame that on either party, or any single person, no matter how much you want to. The fact that you are trying do defend your position that Reagan led some sort of revolution that single handily created the problem is proof that you do not grasp simple facts.
You really ARE a 'literal' idiot. You really don't 'get it'. The mantra and propaganda that has taken over and totally consumed what used to be called 'conservative' can be directly attributed to Reagan. He is the patron saint of 'government is THE one and only problem'. It is absurd thinking, when you consider that our government was THE seminal achievement of our founding fathers.
The days of the Everett Dirksen Republican are over.
Victor Gold, former speechwriter for George Herbert Walker Bush is a Goldwater conservative in his book explains how the GOP was hijacked away from conservatives by far right theocrats and far left neocons...starting in 1980...Does THAT date ring a bell?
Book Review:
Invasion of the Party Snatchers
By Victor Gold
After four decades as a Republican insider, Victor Gold reveals how the holy-rollers and the Neo-Cons have destroyed the GOP. Now he's fighting to get his party back.
As a man who served as press aide to Barry Goldwater and speechwriter and senior advisor to George H. W. Bush (in addition to co-authoring his autobiography), Victor Gold is absolutely furious that the Neo-Cons and their strange bedfellows, the Evangelical Right, have stolen his party from him. Now he is bringing the fight to them.
Invasion of the Party Snatchers is a blistering critique not only of the Bush-Cheney administration but also of the Republican Congress. Gold is ready to tell all about the war being waged for the soul of the GOP, including the elder Bush's opinion of his sons work domestically and abroad, the significance of the newly elected Congress, and how Goldwater would have reacted to it all. Gold reveals, among other explosive disclosures, how George W. has been manipulated by his vice president and secretary of defense to become, in Lenin's famous phrase, a "useful idiot" for Neo-Conservative warmongers and Theo-Conservative religious fanatics.
Although there have been other books by dissident Republicans attacking the Bush-Cheney administrations betrayal of conservative principles, none have been by an insider whose political credentials include inner-circle status with Barry Goldwater and George H. W. Bush.
Review:
"Make no mistake: author Gold, a former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush and aide to Barry Goldwater, is one disgusted Republican. The GOP of the 2006 midterm election, he writes, is 'a party of pork-barrel ear-markers like Dennis Hastert, of political hatchet men like Karl Rove, and of Bible-thumping hypocrites like Tom Delay.' Gold looks to Goldwater, 'a straight-talking, freethinking maverick,' as the yardstick by which to measure just how far the party of Lincoln has fallen.
He traces the beginning of the end to the 1980 Republican National Convention and the presence of 'a militant new element...personified by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.' The other half of the equation, the neoconservatives, are embodied by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, 'two cuts from the same Machiavellian cloth.' In efficient prose, Gold scrutinizes a significant swath of recent GOP history, in particular Newt Gingrich's 104th Congress and the Bush II White House, without losing momentum.
He also has choice words for 'the Coulterization of Republican rhetoric,' the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street, and 'sideshow' legislation like the Flag Protection Amendment. Gold sees a promising future for the Republican Party, but not until they lose some major elections and are able to keep down a slice of humble pie; for those disillusioned with the state of the GOP, this quick, uncompromising polemic provides substantial support, along with a large dose of cold comfort." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Synopsis:
The last real Goldwater conservative in America attacks the current state of his movement and his party.
Powell's Books - Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP by Victor Gold