Showing posts with label Liberalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liberalism. Show all posts
Thursday, April 2, 2015
LIBERALS NEED TO WAKE UP AND DO THE RIGHT THING
In a recent article in The Nation, Eric Alterman is putting out a "Wake Up Call for Us Liberals." He starts by citing the dinner Barack Obama had with arch conservatives like George Will, William Kristol and others. It was a misplaced confidence the newly elected President had that the extreme right could temper its ideologies and work with the left. No such luck. Alterman explains why defining the differences in beliefs: "The primary difference between liberalism and conservatism, at least in theory, is that the latter is an ideology and the former isn’t." He continues with an observation from Lionel Trilling, ” Liberalism is a large tendency rather than a concise body of doctrine.” In other words, the Progressive is free to be...progressive. The conservative is narrowly limited by its ideologies. Our political dysfunction has several sources but one of the most important is allowing, "...conservatives to define the terms of debate at a time when conservatives have lost all sense of moral, intellectual and especially practical responsibility."
Monday, January 28, 2013
Obama gets tough in opening second term
![]() |
Mitch McConnell doing Obama |
It looks like the President is tired of taking the crap that
the Republicans have been dishing out for the last 4 years. It started with a comment by Senate Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell in October of 2011.
He said: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for
President Obama to be a one-term president.” He wasn’t, and McConnell turns out to be the
idiot he looked like for the last four years.
He and House Speaker John Boehner, since the GOP took over the house in
2010, have spewed a non-stop diatribe of what a failure Barack Obama had
been. They were wrong and the American
people knew it.
And because the Republicans were trounced last November in
the elections, Boehner now is taking a new approach. He is saying that “Obama’sfocus is to annihilate the Republican Party.”
Actually, Obama doesn’t have to do anything. The GOP, led by the Tea Party, is doing that
all on their own without any help. The
remark from Boehner made at a Ripon Society luncheon was confirmed by the
Speaker’s spokesperson. Even with a
Republican majority in the House that can block the President’s legislation, it
is obvious that this gang of obstructionists is running scared, as they should
be.
David Gergen, who has advised
four Presidents, said: “Years from now, historians are likely to look back upon
Barack Obama's second inaugural address as a rich treasure trove for understanding
his presidency and possibly the course of American politics.” It’s the sort of thing you say about a great
President. Another interesting comment
by Gergen was that not only was Obama more confident, but that he was also
“liberated.” Gergen thinks that refers
to the comfort of a second term and not having to run again, as well as showing
that Republicans are not willing to compromise.
Either way it is very promising.
Obama’s inauguration
speech reminds us of Lyndon Johnson’s brand of liberalism and the Great
Society. It is a welcome return to
values that espouse equality with the emphasis off the wealthy and now directed
at middle America, lower income brackets and the needy. Another famous Mitch McConnell comment following
Obama’s speech was: “The era of liberalism is back.” How fitting that it comes at a time when we
must pass new laws on gun control, comprehensive immigration reform and
improving the environment. The President
also plans to work on his 2010 Obamacare.
Gergen says, “He emerged as an
unapologetic, unabashed liberal -- just what the left has long wanted him to be
and exactly what the right has feared.”
Pulitzer Prize winner Historian Gary Willis writes about
Lincoln’s maneuvering of the Declaration of Independence into the “founding
creed of the country.” In it, Lincoln
says, we are all created equal, which was mirrored by Martin Luther King 100
years later in 1963, and what President Obama was talking about when referring
to the declaration as our “founding creed.”
Gergen maintains that Obama has made equal opportunity the “central goal
of his presidency.” He adds that the GOP
expected a plea for partisanship but received something of an ultimatum to
cooperate, or else.
The question is whether Americans support Barack
Obama in what he wants to accomplish in his second term. According to a CNN/ORCInternational survey released Jan. 22, the percentage of those believing
global warming is a fact resulting from cars, power plants and factories has
doubled to 49%. On immigration, 53% want
a path for illegal immigrants to legal residents compared to 43% who want to
deport them. Today, 51% favor all or most of the Affordable Care Act
(Obamacare) with 44% opposed to all or most of it. Is there any doubt why the President would
demand cooperation from Republicans?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Donald Trump is Satan struck
Just like with Elon Musk, who was hugely responsible for T-rump winning the 2024 election, the Oval Office lunatic is enamored with Satan be...

-
This week marks a change of format in Nasty Jack posts featuring parody to illustrate just how hilarious and absurd the political scene ca...
-
Dorothy Parker said, "People should be one of two things, young or dead." I am neither young nor dead, but... Dorothy Parker at ...
-
Bden Trump 2024 Debate To begin with, there is no amount of political strategy that will take away the impressions garnered by those who s...