The republican revolutions of the Eighteenth Century, hand in hand with the steadfastly secular-humanist Enlightenment, were all about individual participation in government and individual economic freedom. Like anything else, though, the accepted meaning of these words is found not so much on the page as it is in common usage.
I play golf, I golf, and I was confused for thirty years about the meaning of “hit down on the ball.” All I could picture was someone with a golf club making a double-handed, overhead hammer swing straight at the ball, “hit down,” what were they talking about? The swing, of course, comes in the form of an arch, a circular movement, and the words simply mean, begin the swing forcefully.
Words mean different things to different people, or to different political parties. To wit:
“Family Values”
Party “A:” Stay with one spouse and make an eternal commitment to one set of children.
Party “B:” If your wife loses her looks, feel free to dump her and the children and find a younger, richer, better looking woman and start a new family.
“Freedom”
Party “A:” Recognize Constitutional principals in the lives of all citizens, individual or corporate, with the proviso that the freedoms so provided should not infringe on the common good.
Party “B:” Observe Liaise Faire capitalism, with no government regulation or interference; and allow individuals to accumulate unlimited assets which can remain untaxed in hands of the individual’s heirs in perpetuity.
“Prosperity”
Party “A:” The greatest degree of financial security for the greatest number of citizens and their families.
Party “B:” The greatest number of billionaires.
“Security”
Party “A:” Safety for the country’s citizens, and security for the country’s borders and interests.
Party “B:” An acceptable level of outside threat which can be used to control citizen’s votes and enrich a thriving defense industry.
I could go on, but the pattern is already clear. So please listen carefully, oh voters, to what the political parties are saying, and think carefully about what they really mean.
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13 comments:
Im sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
Ive had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
Money for dope
Money for rope
Ah, Im sick to death of seeing things
From tight-lipped, condescending, mamas little chauvinists
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth now
Ive had enough of watching scenes
Of schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth
No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of soap
Its money for dope
Money for rope
Ah, Im sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now
Ive had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth...
J.L.
You make a great point, Fred: I'm a republican even though I'm a "registered" Republican, and I know that you understand the distinction (and so do a few others out there). One of my pet political peeves is that most American voters (even otherwise well-educated voters)don't understand the true meaning of certain words, within the political lexicon, such as democracy and republic. e.g., if one were to conduct a nationwide poll and ask the question: "Under our American system of government, do you, as an American citzen, live in a democracy or in a republic?", most of the respondents would answer "a democracy". That response brings to my mind Good Ol' Ben Franklin's answer to a citizen's question: 'What kind of government did you give us, sir?' Franklin's response was, "A republic, if you can keep it!" And it has indeed turned out to be a tough "keep", in no small part, due to the 16th and 17th amendments being added to The U.S. Constitution in 1913. When some of my Republican friends talk "economics" and say that we're in a "free market system", and talk about "free trade" with countries such as China, and throw out terms such as laissez-faire and caveat empior I often cringe. For in my opinion, there never was and never will be, in pratical terms, a purely "free-market system" in the U.S.. And I don't believe that that is necessarily a bad thing.
P.S. I posted this "anonymous" because I'm having a password problem . . . Rory Cripps
"Truth," if only. Lawyering I lost track of, and confidence in, TRUTH.
Thanks, Rory, for the kind words, and the affirmation. We grew up in a Middle-Class Society, a political compact between the government, business and working people. I miss it. (Along with Probable Cause, which I can tell you, is a big advantage in life.)
Fred: "Probable Cause" is a legal concept near and dear to my heart due to a "po-po" experience that I had a few years ago. i.e., I was driving home one Christmas-Eve night on a dark deserted road, obeying the traffic laws, and minding my own business. Out of nowhere, an SUV (I've got a problem with many SUV drivers) pulled up on my tail with the "brights" on. I assumed that the driver of the SUV was just some drunk or drugged-out yahoo. I stopped at the intersection and the SUV pulled up along side my vehicle. The passenger in the SUV rolled down the window and opened his mouth and I, consequently, flew off the handle (I know that it was a stupid thing for me to do). The SUV followed me home, I parked on my driveway, opened my garage door with the remote control, and as I was getting out of my vehicle, one of the guys in the SUV ran into my garage and the other guy ran towards my front door. My front door was locked but I wasn't sure if the door inside my garage, which leads to the inside of my home, was locked and my wife and daughter were in bed at the time. I, therefore, took the quick decision to confront the guy in my garage. The problem that he faced (and that I faced) was that I had a nine millimeter Glock (cocked and locked) stashed under a shelf in my garage and which was within my reach. By the way, I've got a Florida concealed weapons permit. Thank Goodness that at that momemt, a sheriff's deputy vehicle pulled up with its lights flashing. It turned out that the two yahoos in the SUV were off-duty cops . . . one a sergeant, the other a corporal, and I pissed them off because I "called them" on their obnoxious and idiotic driving methods. I had been up since four that morning, and I had about three beers in me. In other words I had enough alcohol in me to reach the .08 legal limit. I was subjected to a field sobriety test (which in my opinion, virtually no one can pass sober or not)cuffed, and hauled off to jail. The outcome was that the judge (a big African-American lady, God Bless her) accepted my attorney's "motion to suppress" my BAL evidence. In her written opinion, she essentially stated that the off-duty cops had no probable cause to "stop" me and that the cops were "full of it" as far as any of their justifications for "stopping" me. Prior to that time I had not been arrested and it was an eye-opening experience, to say the least. The worst of it is that I've got a well-to-do friend down the road who owns a couple of airplanes and a big house and he keeps bugging me to sue the Sheriff's Office. I've seen how burdensome and time-consuming the "discovery" process can be and at this point, in my life, it's not worth the effort.
Funny if you had pulled your glock and been blasted into pink chunks by the cops HA! You can never tell who youre mouthing off to. Your Republican pals would have said you deserved what you got
I think the cops (at least one of them for certain) would have deserved what they got. But I'm thankful that no violence occurred. It's a pretty scary thing when two guys, driving like yahoos, follow you home in the dead of night and you have no idea who they are. Also, if I did in fact shoot the cop in my garage (or if he shot me)the off-duty cops would not have been able to lie about the fact that they entered my home illegally, which is what they did at my hearing. Another interesting tidbit: one of the cop's pals, a deputy that acted as bailiff during my hearing (a big boy with tattoos that gave me mean looks), pulled out in front of a truck, a couple of months later while on his motorcycle, and was pronounced Dead On The Scene. Talk about "pink chunks", whew! Sad the way things turn out sometimes, isn't it, HA! Thanks, anonymous, for your input and concerns.
Stunad, E: I love your tough-guy act . . . I really do. But the reality is that the town that you and I grew up in (College Point, New York) was not as "tough", or as vile and putrid, as you make it out to be. And I wonder what would have become of a punk like you; I repeat: a punk, like you; if you were, in fact, subjected to "growing up" in say, East New York, Bensonhurst, or the South Bronx, to name a few places in NYC where things were, in fact, really nasty. If you, by chance, had a dysfunctional home-life, and suffer emotional scars as a result, I'm truly sorry and my heart goes out to you. I suspect that that was, in fact, the case . . . for based on your sophomoric writings, I firmly believe that you were "damaged goods", from "day-one", and that to this day, you're not playing with a "full deck",as it were.
That was close. For a minute there I thought somebody was talking about me.
Thanks Fred: for providing a cathartic venue and for permitting the resultant (and inevitable) expurgations to splash your BLOG. I love to joke around; and throughout the past few years my favorite "joke" has been asserting (to a select few individuals that have a sense of humor), that I am the sanest person that they will ever come in contact with, HA! And the funny thing is that a few of them actually fall for my assertion until I provide them with certain and select anecdotes pertaining to my home town experience.
Perhaps, "That was close . . . ." Seem's to me, Fred, that you were aware of the wall; confronted it; and, ultimately, climbed over it and got on with your life. I did the same (and my word is true). Consequently you and I shun the vitriol below the surface throughout our discourse. And in my opinion you and I can discouse, freely, about things near and dear to our hearts. For I believe that we have the ability to joke about things that were, by-no-means, a "joke" (to us) forty or fifty years ago. In my opinion, it's the luck of the draw and I'm a fan of both Jesus and Arthur Schopenhauer.
Yes Fred, This time it wasn't you...this Mr. Cripps seems to have some serious paranoid delusions that someone is on his case and calling him on shennanigans and his pompous-ass style of writing. Plus, he must be a doctor, since he can analyze people's psyches better than the best psychiatrists since Freud. He is simple amazing. Or maybe just amizingly simple...
Perhaps the good Dr. Cripps can look up "projection" one more time in his Abnormal Psych textbook. BTW, where did you get your M.D. from, Dr. Cripps?--the Creedmore School of Nutjobs?
"The sanest person you'll ever meet?" Sometimes I go a step further and tell people that I stand at the right hand of god and speak for god. I'm pretty careful not to overuse this technique. Is it true? Depends on your tolerance for metaphor.
Dear "anonymous" of September 11, 2008: Thanks for your input and thanks for the laughs (and I mean it sincerely) as your input and my laughs pertain to my mental state. At least you didn't describe me as a fop or popinjay. If you're interested, I prefer B.F. Skinner's work with pigeons to that of Shlomo's "couch work". Are you the one that writes in a Sinclair Lewis style . . . i.e., providing a brief, one-sentence, description of a subject and then, subsequently, providing much briefer descriptions of the subject preceded by the article "a"?
Dear anonymouse and anonymice,as it were, HA: do you know which book the following was "extracted" from (and does some of the "extracted" apply to you?)
A fly-buzzing saloon; A soiled man; A footstep; An odor; A girl-child; A touching fumble at beauty; An impressive barricade; An air of frankly metallic enterprise; A one-room shanty; A show window; A raw red-brick Catholic Church; A score; An early-wrinkled young-old mother; A lugubrious bay-window; A couch.
'There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasn't a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.'
'"We'd get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all."'
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