lightningBugout wrote:Actually, Stefano, nowhere in this thread have I even remotely associated the oath keepers with "supremacists".
True. I just assumed you had because I thought you were attacking my attack on the two bloggers.
lightningBugout wrote:To be a true constitutionalist necessitates paying attention not just to sexy fantasies that the feds are going to take away rural people's guns, but also acknowledging that things like institutional racism are about as unconstitutional as you can get. I have never, ever, not once seen a patriot / constitutionalist / militia group incorporate combating the constitutional violations inherent to social inequity / racism / sexism / homophobia into their platform.
I think you're reaching a bit there wrt what the Constitution says. It definitely doesn't contain a snappy line like "
The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth". The only mention of equal rights for all races is an amendment giving equal
voting rights. So the only race issue that's strictly speaking constitutional is the disenfranchisement of black voters. You're definitely reaching with sexism and homophobia: the Constitution doesn't say anything about homosexuality and had to be amended in 1920 to give women the vote. It's basically a set of procedures (including how to count Indians and how to claim runaway slaves), but some of those procedures are pretty good checks on a too-powerful executive.
lightningBugout wrote:You apparently have no clue where I am coming from. It feels like your responses to me are directed at some generic "liberal' on whom you've projected a bunch of assumptions.
Possibly. In fact, after reading that longer post of yours, I'm not sure what we're arguing about. But I wouldn't have had that idea of you if your first post in this thread had been clearer, or if you hadn't posted that "be careful, you're starting to sound racist" crap in the other thread (you're right, I didn't read any more of it). In this thread, I'm criticising bloggers who attack a group that publicly declares its refusal to obey unconstitutional orders, because the bloggers lump them (without even looking for real evidence) in a category with militias, neo-Nazis, the KKK, etc. I think that's bullshit and said so, that's all. What's a lot more pernicious is that this liberal snobbery is used as a driver to paint a defence of the Bill of Rights as extremist behaviour. Have another look at that cartoon: "constitution" is as much blah blah as "birth certificate" and "detention camps". Funny, hey?
lightningBugout wrote:Obama doesn't have a Marshall Plan to swiftly rebuild it and may well be allowing the ruins to fester.
"May well be"? Come on. Anyway, his role in the game isn't really to advance authoritarianism, it's just to prevent any outbreaks of common sense or socialism. The next Republican administration will move the machine rightward again. I don't know where this is originally from and it must be on here already, but I quite like it:
The American political system, since at least 1968, has been operating like a ratchet, and both parties — Republicans and Democrats — play crucial, mutually reinforcing roles in its operation. The electoral ratchet permits movement only in the rightward direction. The Republican role is fairly clear; the Republicans apply the torque that rotates the thing rightward.
The Democrats’ role is a little less obvious. The Democrats are the pawl. They don’t resist the rightward movement — they let it happen — but whenever the rightward force slackens momentarily, for whatever reason, the Democrats click into place and keep the machine from rotating back to the left. Here’s how it works. In every election year, the Democrats come and tell us that the country has moved to the right, and so the Democratic Party has to move right too in the name of realism and electability. Gotta keep these right-wing madmen out of the White House, no matter what it takes.
I'm not blind to the contradictions and hypocrisies in the right-libertarian movement, but the salient fact about these people in the current environment is that they want to defend the constitution. Of course they're more concerned about the police state's effect on them than its effect on other people, but at least they're semi-conscious.
