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I came across this years ago, and found it quite relevant to today's problems. Despite what some might think, blaming G.W. Bush, despite all his failings, isn't going to fix anything.

Please take a few minutes to read over the following and share your thoughts.

Please note - Off Topic Whining/Ramblings/Rants will be reported as spam. - Thanks


**************************************************************************

"Leaving the Left"

The San Francisco Chronicle essay I later developed into my book- Keith Thompson.

Nightfall, Jan. 30. Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.

My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.

Like many others who came of age politically in the 1960s, I became adept at not taking the measure of the left's mounting incoherence. To face it directly posed the danger that I would have to describe it accurately, first to myself and then to others. That could only give aid and comfort to Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and all the other Usual Suspects the left so regularly employs to keep from seeing its own reflection in the mirror.

Now, I find myself in a swirling metamorphosis. Think Kafka, without the bug. Think Kuhnian paradigm shift, without the buzz. Every anomaly that didn't fit my perceptual set is suddenly back, all the more glaring for so long ignored. The insistent inner voice I learned to suppress now has my rapt attention. "Something strange -- something approaching pathological -- something entirely of its own making -- has the left in its grip," the voice whispers. "How did this happen?" The Iraqi election is my tipping point. The time has come to walk in a different direction -- just as I did many years before.

I grew up in a northwest Ohio town where conservative was a polite term for reactionary. When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of Mississippi "sweltering in the heat of oppression," he could have been describing my community, where blacks knew to keep their heads down, and animosity toward Catholics and Jews was unapologetic. Liberal and conservative, like left and right, wouldn't be part of my lexicon for a while, but when King proclaimed, "I have a dream," I instinctively cast my lot with those I later found out were liberals (then synonymous with "the left" and "progressive thought").

The people on the other side were dedicated to preserving my hometown's backward-looking status quo. This was all that my 10-year-old psyche needed to know. The knowledge carried me for a long time. Mythologies are helpful that way.

I began my activist career championing the 1968 presidential candidacies of Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, because both promised to end America's misadventure in Vietnam. I marched for peace and farm worker justice, lobbied for women's right to choose and environmental protections, signed up with George McGovern in 1972 and got elected as the youngest delegate ever to a Democratic convention.

Eventually I joined the staff of U.S. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio. In short, I became a card-carrying liberal, although I never actually got a card. (Bookkeeping has never been the left's strong suit.) All my commitments centered on belief in equal opportunity, due process, respect for the dignity of the individual and solidarity with people in trouble. To my mind, Americans who had joined the resistance to Franco's fascist dystopia captured the progressive spirit at its finest.

A turning point came at a dinner party on the day Ronald Reagan famously described the Soviet Union as the pre-eminent source of evil in the modern world. The general tenor of the evening was that Reagan's use of the word "evil" had moved the world closer to annihilation. There was a palpable sense that we might not make it to dessert.

When I casually offered that the surviving relatives of the more than 20 million people murdered on orders of Joseph Stalin might not find "evil'" too strong a word, the room took on a collective bemused smile of the sort you might expect if someone had casually mentioned taking up child molestation for sport.

My progressive companions had a point. It was rude to bring a word like "gulag" to the dinner table.

I look back on that experience as the beginning of my departure from a left already well on its way to losing its bearings. Two decades later, I watched with astonishment as leading left intellectuals launched a telethon- like body count of civilian deaths caused by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Their premise was straightforward, almost giddily so: When the number of civilian Afghani deaths surpassed the carnage of Sept. 11, the war would be unjust, irrespective of other considerations.

Stated simply: The force wielded by democracies in self-defense was declared morally equivalent to the nihilistic aggression perpetuated by Muslim fanatics.

Susan Sontag cleared her throat for the "courage" of the al Qaeda pilots. Norman Mailer pronounced the dead of Sept. 11 comparable to "automobile statistics." The events of that day were likely premeditated by the White House, Gore Vidal insinuated. Noam Chomsky insisted that al Qaeda at its most atrocious generated no terror greater than American foreign policy on a mediocre day.

All of this came back to me as I watched the left's anemic, smirking response to Iraq's election in January. Didn't many of these same people stand up in the sixties for self-rule for oppressed people and against fascism in any guise? Yes, and to their lasting credit. But many had since made clear that they had also changed their minds about the virtues of King's call for equal of opportunity.

These days the postmodern left demands that government and private institutions guarantee equality of outcomes. Any racial or gender "disparities" are to be considered evidence of culpable bias, regardless of factors such as personal motivation, training, and skill. This goal is neither liberal nor progressive; but it is what the left has chosen. In a very real sense it may be the last card held by a movement increasingly ensnared in resentful questing for group-specific rights and the subordination of citizenship to group identity. There's a word for this: pathetic.

I smile when friends tell me I've "moved right." I laugh out loud at what now passes for progressive on the main lines of the cultural left.

In the name of "diversity," the University of Arizona has forbidden discrimination based on "individual style." The University of Connecticut has banned "inappropriately directed laughter." Brown University, sensing unacceptable gray areas, warns that harassment "may be intentional or unintentional and still constitute harassment." (Yes, we're talking "subconscious harassment" here. We're watching your thoughts ...).

Wait, it gets better. When actor Bill Cosby called on black parents to explain to their kids why they are not likely to get into medical school speaking English like "Why you ain't" and "Where you is," Jesse Jackson countered that the time was not yet right to "level the playing field." Why not? Because "drunk people can't do that ... illiterate people can't do that."

When self-styled pragmatic feminist Camille Paglia mocked young coeds who believe "I should be able to get drunk at a fraternity party and go upstairs to a guy's room without anything happening," Susan Estrich spoke up for gender- focused feminists who "would argue that so long as women are powerless relative to men, viewing 'yes' as a sign of true consent is misguided."

I'll admit my politics have shifted in recent years, as have America's political landscape and cultural horizon. Who would have guessed that the U.S. senator with today's best voting record on human rights would be not Ted Kennedy or Barbara Boxer but Kansas Republican Sam Brownback?

He is also by most measures one of the most conservative senators. Brownback speaks openly about how his horror at the genocide in the Sudan is shaped by his Christian faith, as King did when he insisted on justice for "all of God's children."

My larger point is rather simple. Just as a body needs different medicines at different times for different reasons, this also holds for the body politic.

In the sixties, America correctly focused on bringing down walls that prevented equal access and due process. It was time to walk the Founders' talk -- and we did. With barriers to opportunity no longer written into law, today the body politic is crying for different remedies.

America must now focus on creating healthy, self-actualizing individuals committed to taking responsibility for their lives, developing their talents, honing their skills and intellects, fostering emotional and moral intelligence, all in all contributing to the advancement of the human condition.

At the heart of authentic liberalism lies the recognition, in the words of John Gardner, "that the ever renewing society will be a free society (whose] capacity for renewal depends on the individuals who make it up." A continuously renewing society, Gardner believed, is one that seeks to "foster innovative, versatile, and self-renewing men and women and give them room to breathe."

One aspect of my politics hasn't changed a bit. I became a liberal in the first place to break from the repressive group orthodoxies of my reactionary hometown.

This past January, my liberalism was in full throttle when I bid the cultural left goodbye to escape a new version of that oppressiveness. I departed with new clarity about the brilliance of liberal democracy and the value system it entails; the quest for freedom as an intrinsically human affair; and the dangers of demands for conformity and adherence to any point of view through silence, fear, or coercion.

True, it took a while to see what was right before my eyes. A certain misplaced loyalty kept me from grasping that a view of individuals as morally capable of and responsible for making the principle decisions that shape their lives is decisively at odds with the contemporary left's entrance-level view of people as passive and helpless victims of powerful external forces, hence political wards who require the continuous shepherding of caretaker elites.

Leftists who no longer speak of the duties of citizens, but only of the rights of clients, cannot be expected to grasp the importance (not least to our survival) of fostering in the Middle East the crucial developmental advances that gave rise to our own capacity for pluralism, self-reflection, and equality. A left averse to making common cause with competent, self- determining individuals -- people who guide their lives on the basis of received values, everyday moral understandings, traditional wisdom, and plain common sense -- is a faction that deserves the marginalization it has pursued with such tenacity for so many years.

All of which is why I have come to believe, and gladly join with others who have discovered for themselves, that the single most important thing a genuinely liberal person can do now is walk away from the house the left has built. The renewal of any tradition that deserves the name "progressive" becomes more likely with each step in a better direction.

San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, May 22, 2005

Disregard This Post. (Duplicate)

Interesting.

Do you suspect a silent majority, Connor, that agrees with this person?

Goddard wrote:Interesting.

Do you suspect a silent majority, Connor, that agrees with this person?

I do agree that there is a large percentage of America that is a silent Majority. What they believe, I cannot say, as I do not know them.

I suspect that given the recent events in the political realm, the upward republican swing of the mid-term elections and the pundits vastly favoring the Right's assumption of power in 2012... I would have to bet and say yes. Many might agree. But it doesn't matter what I think, you can tell how I feel from the post.

How do you feel (think)?

Connor McKane wrote:

Goddard wrote:Interesting.

Do you suspect a silent majority, Connor, that agrees with this person?

I do agree that there is a large percentage of America that is a silent Majority. What they believe, I cannot say, as I do not know them.

I suspect that given the recent events in the political realm, the upward republican swing of the mid-term elections and the pundits vastly favoring the Right's assumption of power in 2012... I would have to bet and say yes. Many might agree. But it doesn't matter what I think, you can tell how I feel from the post.

How do you feel (think)?

I suppose my question was unfair. I have no idea either.

(America must now focus on creating healthy, self-actualizing individuals committed to taking responsibility for their lives, developing their talents, honing their skills and intellects, fostering emotional and moral intelligence, all in all contributing to the advancement of the human condition.)

That particular passage strikes a chord though. I want to believe that is a real possibility for this country. For any country.

(Edit: pressed enter, and it submitted post for some reason.)

Weather you agree with this post or not I suggest subscribing to it and read it out loud to your self a few times. This is defiantly food for thought.

@ Goddard - I believe that it is a possibility for a few countries, and a 'definite' in this one.

It all comes down to "Will you do what is necessary to be successful?"

I chose not to study in school, so I did not get good grades. So I didn't get into a good college (or any college for that matter) so I have no college education.

I was smart enough to realize that without college my choices were:

1. Manual labor with my father

2. "Thank you for choosing McDonalds would you like to try our Super Cheesys Baconator Double Value Meal?"

3. Life-o-Crime

4. Military

I chose the U.S. Army instead. Was it easy, hell no, not during the Gulf War. But it gave me the things I needed, drive, determination, and the knowledge that all it took was Heart, and I could accomplish anything.

I took responsibility for my life and now I have it very good.

True, I did win the "Triple G Crown" Lottery (Geographic, Genetic and Gender - See 'American White Male')

But Nothing came easy, and nothing worth having does....

I think both primary political parties are fethed up beyond all reason and recognition and that our government is little more than a corrupt cesspool controlled by lobbyists from all sides of the political spectrum.

America is controlled by the elite. Their political ideology is irrelevant because they don't give a feth about the average person. Why is our education system complete crap? There are no standards and there is no discipline. The people who want to excel go out of their way to get into AP/Honors/GT classes and prepare for college and a successful future career. Everyone else floats on by.

It's not the middle class or the rich that are hurting America. It's the ghetto that no one refuses to deal with, because if you bring it up you're a damned racist. You have these inner city communities where there is little respect for education or hard work. You have slums controlled by pimps, gangsters, and drug lords. How can you expect to have a strong nation when the core of your major cities is rotting and dying from neglect?

The worst part is that it's not their fault. I have worked many manual labor/minimum wage jobs where I was the only white guy there with a bunch of Hispanics and blacks. There are great, intelligent, hard working individuals out there who got fethed because of where they were born. How can you expect a typical kid to succeed when he's expected to work at 16 to help support the family? How can you expect a boy to become a man when the only people he sees making money are doing it illegally? You think the average guy is gonna up and become a doctor. No, he's gonna mimic his surroundings.

At times I really think that there is a plot to destroy blacks in America. There are next to no positive role models in media for them to emulate. Money is being thrown ignorantly into programs that are not working and no one seems to care. Black men are being thrown in prison for smoking pot. You see white guys getting imprisoned for toking? Hell no.

Kanye almost got it right. It's not that George Bush doesn't care about black people, it's that the American government doesn't. gak.

Oh no, I didn't ignore Trade skills. Please dont assume that. I said "unskilled" but what I should have said was "Manual Labor" I will fix it.

I dug ditches with my Father, a Master Plumber of 30 years, from the time I was 13 till I was 17. He owned 2 companies, and I (or one of my 2 brothers) were supposed to take over both...

But I didn't want to do that... I wanted something "better."

Would I have made alot of money? Hellz yeah! Would I have been happy. No. I would not be.

I chose a different route and became a White collar sell out affected by the "Bush Tax Cuts."


...Yay me?

Interesting article, and one that raises some good points. I do agree that there is plenty on the left wing that should frustrate and annoy. I lament that politics has become so identity driven that one can consider themselves having something to leave - thinking oneself a liberal or a conservative and therefore (somehow) accountable for all the nonsense their side puts up is ridiculous. The author, like everyone else, is just a guy, free to see the strengths and weaknesses of each movement, and take what he likes from each and challenge the rest.

We should be arguing policy, not identity.



Meanwhile, as a counter to the article I posted, though, it's a very sad and rather pointless effort. If you would (please) read the article I posted, you'll see it isn't about one person's general feelings about a vague movement they once identified with, but with an actual political party, with specific and very loathesome objectives on how they plan to gain power.

Anpu42 wrote:Weather you agree with this post or not I suggest subscribing to it and read it out loud to your self a few times. This is defiantly food for thought.

I copied the post into Microsoft Word.

Certainly a worthy read.

Connor McKane wrote:Oh no, I didn't ignore Trade skills. Please dont assume that. I said "unskilled" but what I should have said was "Manual Labor" I will fix it.

I dug ditches with my Father, a Master Plumber of 30 years, from the time I was 13 till I was 17. He owned 2 companies, and I (or one of my 2 brothers) were supposed to take over both...

But I didn't want to do that... I wanted something "better."

Would I have made alot of money? Hellz yeah! Would I have been happy. No. I would not be.

I chose a different route and became a White collar sell out affected by the "Bush Tax Cuts."


...Yay me?

And I will edit my post as well. My apologies.

Thanks for posting this.

I consider myself a moderate conservative, so reading this beautiful essay helps to high-light that someone of different philosophical bent as myself is just as frustrated with the party that is supposed to agree with them.

I think both parties have become totally vindictive and self-serving. They seem to lack the very basics of the philosphosies that birthed them.

I think conservatives think of government as a means to protect them from external threats.

I think liberals think of government as a means to protect freedom and rights.

I think the republican party thinks of government as a tool to benefit their friends.

I think the democratic party thinks of government as a tool to control the poor and punish the rich.

I wish I lived in an America where the citizens cared enough to protect their peer's rights and their nation's laws. I wish we all held ourselves accountable and did not look to the government to take care of us. I wish regular people tried to help the less fortunate instead of expecting the federal government to do it.

I know there are still people like this, but I don't know if there are enough . . .

Connor McKane wrote:...and anyone not agreeing with you is pointless and sad. I know. I am just... well... just awful.

I get the impression you haven't read anything Sebster has written, as your response only makes sense if you have no idea what he is saying. You do help prove the point of the Republican staffer.

Amaya wrote:And I will edit my post as well. My apologies.

No need to apologize, you were totally justified to point out my error.

I agree with you that many believe that College = Success / No College = Failure.

We look down on the dirty guy digging up the sewer line on in our backyard while we work our 9 to 5 jobs with HMO Health Care and 75K a year salary...

Meanwhile he pays 50K a year for his Country Club Dues, and gets into a Maserati once he parks his gak smelling Plumbers Truck...

Interesting don't you think.

Bastion of Mediocrity wrote:Thanks for posting this.

I consider myself a moderate conservative, so reading this beautiful essay helps to high-light that someone of different philosophical bent as myself is just as frustrated with the party that is supposed to agree with them.

I think both parties have become totally vindictive and self-serving. They seem to lack the very basics of the philosphosies that birthed them.

I think conservatives think of government as a means to protect them from external threats.

I think liberals think of government as a means to protect freedom and rights.

I think the republican party thinks of government as a tool to benefit their friends.

I think the democratic party thinks of government as a tool to control the poor and punish the rich.

I wish I lived in an America where the citizens cared enough to protect their peer's rights and their nation's laws. I wish we all held ourselves accountable and did not look to the government to take care of us. I wish regular people tried to help the less fortunate instead of expecting the federal government to do it.

I know there are still people like this, but I don't know if there are enough . . .

Not even close to being enough. We still have hopeless idealists trying to fix a broken system. Individuals too ignorant (not stupid, ignorant) to even understand what is going on and of course the bastards in control who have been dominating the increasingly corrupt American government since the mid 19th century.

Ahtman wrote:

Connor McKane wrote:...and anyone not agreeing with you is pointless and sad. I know. I am just... well... just awful.

I get the impression you haven't read anything Sebster has written, as your response only makes sense if you have no idea what he is saying. You do help prove the point of the Republican staffer.

No I read his post. And I read yours. So now I have ready something BOTH of you have written.

Republican Staffer's Point? I wrote nothing about a Republican Staffer...Sounds off topic to me.

Connor McKane wrote:

Amaya wrote:And I will edit my post as well. My apologies.

No need to apologize, you were totally justified to point out my error.

I agree with you that many believe that College = Success / No College = Failure.

We look down on the dirty guy digging up the sewer line on in our backyard while we work our 9 to 5 jobs with HMO Health Care and 75K a year salary...

Meanwhile he pays 50K a year for his Country Club Dues, and gets into a Maserati once he parks his gak smelling Plumbers Truck...

Interesting don't you think.

I'm really tempted to say it's a plot. Get everyone into college, indoctrinate them into the system, and have them spend the rest of their days in cubicle. Meanwhile, screw over small business in an attempt to destroy free thinkers. Outsource production jobs and rely on vagrants and immigrants for unskilled manual labor.

God, it's like fething 1984.

Connor McKane wrote:...and anyone not agreeing with you is pointless and sad. I know. I am just... well... just awful.

No, that's simply not what I said. I said it was an interesting article, that raised good points.

I said that you positing it as a response to my article was pointless and sad. Pointless, because my article was talking about the real problem within an actual political party, to which your article about an outsider who's become disaffected with a general movement - one is simply not like the other. And sad because it was such a predictable response to a criticism of someone's "side", seeing an article in which a former insider criticises . It's politics as football - "no your team sucks!"

Some things matter more than "yay team" and "boo team". Like, you know, the governance of the most powerful country in the world.

Amaya wrote:Not even close to being enough. We still have hopeless idealists trying to fix a broken system. Individuals too ignorant (not stupid, ignorant) to even understand what is going on and of course the bastards in control who have been dominating the increasingly corrupt American government since the mid 19th century.

Agreed. The system is corrupt as it has strayed so far from the founding fathers ideals. Ever increasing government is a recipe for massive failure.

Anything run by fallible men will fail.

Connor McKane wrote:Anything run by fallible men will fail.

Humanity is in and of itself flawed. I think we must rely upon ourselves to govern ourselves.

sebster wrote:

Connor McKane wrote:...and anyone not agreeing with you is pointless and sad. I know. I am just... well... just awful.

No, that's simply not what I said. I said it was an interesting article, that raised good points.

I said that you positing it as a response to my article was pointless and sad. Pointless, because my article was talking about the real problem within an actual political party, to which your article about an outsider who's become disaffected with a general movement - one is simply not like the other. And sad because it was such a predictable response to a criticism of someone's "side", seeing an article in which a former insider criticises . It's politics as football - "no your team sucks!"

Some things matter more than "yay team" and "boo team". Like, you know, the governance of the most powerful country in the world.

Sebster you desperately want this to be You Vs. Me or Your post Vs. My Post.... I refuse to participate.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

WarOne wrote:

Connor McKane wrote:Anything run by fallible men will fail.

Humanity is in and of itself flawed. I think we must rely upon ourselves to govern ourselves.

Very true, very very true.

Connor McKane wrote:Sebster you desperately want this to be You Vs. Me. Your post Vs. My Post....I refuse to participate.

The only person that thinks that is you. I would go so far as to say that is how you want to frame it so that instead of having a dialogue you can keep posting nonsense such as this instead actually engaging in a discussion on the subject.

Connor McKane wrote:Sebster you desperately want this to be You Vs. Me. Your post Vs. My Post....I refuse to participate.

I think when you posted a counter thread to another thread that on the surface expresses an opposite viewpoint, I think you set yourself up for a debate irregardless of whether or not you wanted to participate.

It is like a heckler shouting at a lecturer for a debate. When the lecturer asks for the heckler to step up to debate, the heckler folds his arms and refuses to debate.

Ahtman wrote:

Connor McKane wrote:Sebster you desperately want this to be You Vs. Me. Your post Vs. My Post....I refuse to participate.

The only person that thinks that is you. I would go so far as to say that is how you want to frame it so that instead of having a dialogue you can keep posting nonsense such as this instead actually engaging in a discussion on the subject.

Why in the world would I enter into a discussion with Sebster, or you for that matter, on this topic? Nothing I say will be heard, and you will find no value in it. I am well aware of your silly games and refuse to participate in them. Please evacuate the thread if this is all you can contribute.

If you want to have this discussion on the awesomeness of your ideals, and threads not mentioned by anyone but you, do it elsewhere, as I am sure you personages of Liberal Ideals have PLENTY of places to discuss your Left-agenda attack patterns.

Connor McKane wrote:Why in the world would I enter into a discussion with Sebster, or you for that matter, on this topic?

Ah...I have reached a conclusion similar to this, but it is because I actually rate the worth of my own input at less than slag (self depreciation and all).

The thing is is that sebster actually has good things to say, but are very hard to refute and contradict especially since given his educational background and intellectual level, it would be foolish not to listen.

In short, I would listen- even if you do not wish to enter discussion.

WarOne wrote:

Connor McKane wrote:Sebster you desperately want this to be You Vs. Me. Your post Vs. My Post....I refuse to participate.

I think when you posted a counter thread to another thread that on the surface expresses an opposite viewpoint, I think you set yourself up for a debate irregardless of whether or not you wanted to participate.

It is like a heckler shouting at a lecturer for a debate. When the lecturer asks for the heckler to step up to debate, the heckler folds his arms and refuses to debate.

You keep saying this is a counter thread... as if the repetition makes it true. Amazing.

It is a poignent post, and I agree with it totally, it is also not discussing anything even remotely close the the other thread. But I suppose any view point not shared by you would be considered an attack... as this was.

And as usual when it comes to a silent majority, your shouts of OPRESSION will quiet those who agree with me, and bolster those who agree with you. But you can shout all you like. I am not gonna agree with your point of view because I think it is immoral and wrong.

So lets just agree to disagree and let the language of our supposed "Dueling Threads" be on topic. Thanks.

Connor McKane wrote:You keep saying this is a counter thread... as if the repetition makes it true. Amazing.

Just as a frame of reference, that was my second post in the entire thread and my first one was a comment regarding your comment that men who are flawed will fail.

Connor McKane wrote:Sebster you desperately want this to be You Vs. Me or Your post Vs. My Post.... I refuse to participate.

I don't want it to be you vs me. I don't want any sort of vs at all. I want people to take a good look at the modern Republican party and what it represents, and really think about how worrisome that is, and how they might change it.

To the extent that you responded by posting a "your side too" thread, is the extent to which I'm going to explain to you that that isn't the answer, and the extent to which you (so far) appear to be doing your best to ignore that.

Please, just go and read the article.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Connor McKane wrote:Agreed. The system is corrupt as it has strayed so far from the founding fathers ideals. Ever increasing government is a recipe for massive failure.

Anything run by fallible men will fail.

Anyone insisting that the government considered by the founding fathers is the government the US should still have is labouring under the assumption that the economics of the world haven't changed in the last few centuries.

Which I would have considered a ludicrous thing, but it seems quite common.

I'm sad to see this thread drop so swiftly into this...