...to define this term we use alot these days, "extremism", and how often do these roundtables meet to clarify what is extreme, moderate, conservative, liberal, politically eccentric, flaky, provocative in a charming way, radical, off-the-charts...ok kids today the Subject is Welfare.
Now in the Olde Days a person was ashamed to be on welfare, couldn't wait to get off it. Those were the truly sad cases, a woman with kids whose husband just dumped her...oh God how times have changed! Now I've had my spans of being out of work but it never even dawned on me to start fondling the Government Tit. Maybe it's the way I was brought up but during these depressing timeframes I automatically filled out a certain number of applications and wasted tons of postage sending the resumes out, this was in the days before the preferred online methods. It's just the way I'm programmed, wired, it's like breathing drinking and sleeping, you work as St. Paul says otherwise you don't eat...and so who exactly are these people who say if you don't believe in the Welfare State, the safety-net you're an extremist? Now class let's review once again z's main principle that in the end everything tends towards liberalism, even the vast majority of conservatives these days accept the need for welfare, just yesterday Sean Hannity said we still have a safety-net. I recall years and years ago RUSH said to just end welfare, just end it and people will be forced to work but you see RUSH is a bit of a paleo-con, never got with the program and while it seemed harsh to me at the time and likely to give conservatism a bad name I've lived it, I know with a strong family and a good community it's possible. This is the Marvin Olasky position which so influenced Newt Gingrich at the time when he was the Speaker of the House and got welfare reform through. Cooking is my thing not installing fences which I did at one time, you just did whatever got you through the day and blocked it out of your mind. Now some rather old radio interview has just surfaced with the self-avowed non-socialist Barack Obama saying the Supreme Court should get involved in redistributionist change, now if that isn't something out of Chiller Theatre I don't know what is. I'ma gonna vote this Tuesday of course but maybe I just won't watch any election coverage at all that night......get hammered.
I still hope you are wrong about the pendulum never swinging back towards conservatism.
ReplyDeleteI'll get hammered with ya, in spirit at least, lol.
I always find these presidential elections tense, they're that important and it's alot like the World Series when you really really want your team to win. I can't take the tension anymore, wake me up when it's over.
ReplyDeleteI've lived through a LOT of elections and never have I been as scared as I am with this one. I watched Bill Clinton win twice and I watched Jimmy "who" Carter win, I saw Al Gore win and then lose and then win and then lose, I saw Johnson and Kennedy win, but it never disturbed me like this time. This one's different. This time our way of life, and our very government is at stake. The types of changes NObama wants to make will be almost irreversable.
ReplyDeleteI really believe we are going to pull this one out of the fire, but it is still ulser causing. I'll be glad to see Wednesday, except for the hangover I will undoubtably have!
& expect a slow return to the Welfare State. Now as I remember when they passed welfare reform one of the things was the bennies don't really cut off until after 5 years, repeat that one, in 5 years! and yet you had libs like Nat Hentoff and the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan saying the Republicans were kicking it to the poor, even John Cardinal O'Connor expressed his concern. Sheesh!! it wasn't exactly the abolition of welfare but just goes to show how we are so used to it. BTW that woman I mentioned in the olde days with the kids whose husband dumped her and she had to go on welfare, she would have been off it well before 5 years.
ReplyDeleteThe election is ulcer-causing Joe and what's really disturbing is even knowing what we know about Obama his poll numbers have remained the same or gotten stronger, goes back to my OP that half the country may have a hankering for the radical themselves. Of course the very term "radical" never seems to apply to the left-wing, you never hear the Radical Left but the Radical Right was really in vogue quite recently. Now the users of the term Radical Right never stop to explain what they mean by radical (opposition to abortion, gay marriage? if so then millions of Americans are radical-rightists) but we give example after example of Obama's radicalism and it's a teflon deal. Look at it this way though, if Obama loses we'll hear the last of him. As I've said here if he doesn't win this time around come '012 he'll be yesterday's novelty.
ReplyDelete