It’s a free country!
Back when I was a child, there were a few choice phrases that were in every kid’s repertoire of snappy repartee.
The first was the all-purpose sarcastic, “Har de har har har” (already discussed in this post and the comments section following).
The second was “Bounces off me and sticks to you,” a nifty way of deflecting all insults.
And the third was “It’s a free country!,” handy for simultaneously declaring patriotism while defending any questionable acts of the speaker.
The following tape, brought to us by Boston WTKK radio personality Michael Graham, features Massachusetts Governor (and Obama buddy) Deval Patrick, with an interesting variant on that third theme:
So, what did Patrick mean? Was he joking? Was he referring to something else, as Graham seems to think? Or was he revealing the anti-libertarian heart of the liberal mind, as in “Ah, if only we could shut people like Glenn Beck up, imprison them, and throw away the key?”
“Ah, if only we could shut people like Glenn Beck up, imprison them, and throw away the key?”
Yes he was saying that and they would also like to shut up all those ‘bitter clingers’ attending all those racist tea party rally’s.
They would like to shut down Fox News because they don’t toe the line for The Won.
They would also like to shut down all right wing blogs. 🙂 Neo have you noticed them watching you?
Deval Patrick was regretting that he and his friends didn’t have the freedom to shut down and permanently shut up Glenn Beck. If that could be arranged without Beck’s imprisonment, so much the better.
This reminds me of a quote from an interview the Boston Globe had with Al Gore way back in 1992. When asked what he thought about global warming skeptics he said something like, “I wish I could find a way to shut them up.” Same sentiment.
Sounds about righ to me. It was n’t so long ago, Obama offered these thoughts about being a little too freee:
“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that high on the truth meter,” Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia.
“With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation, some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction. All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.”
He’s right about the pressure it puts on democracy. It makes what politicians say far too accessible, forcing them to be accountable for the things they say, particularly when they hope nobody is listening.
I think a lot of these parlor pinks wouldn’t, themselves, do the work.
But they’d sure enjoy it if somebody else did.
One only need look at that big continent to our East and South, for a glimpse of what might be here given the right circumstances. Two years ago, I might not have made such a statement, but now, oh yeah. I can easily see more outrages without oversight. Think Kagan being short-listed to the bench a stretch?, try Louis Farrakhan. Think the Justice Dept. going after one of our states disgusting? With Idi Obama-for-life, I can easily envision Arizona receiving multiple airstrikes from the USAF’s new commandant, Van Jones. November is coming, lest we forget.
There was also “I know you are but what am I? and “so’s you’re old man/lady”. Then, too in a hurry to act ‘cool’ we took up the hipster affectation of adding ‘-ville’ to everything, as in coolsville, squaresville, gonesville, and so on. Deval Patrick would have definitely been uncoolville, or heavyville (either weighty or villainous).
“It makes what politicians say far too accessible, forcing them to be accountable for the things they say, particularly when they hope nobody is listening.”
It also means that what they said publicly last year, last decade or whenever, is now easily accessible. And it makes for an amusing contract when what they said then flatly contradicts what they are saying now.
Using the repertoire of juvenile put-downs, I’d like to think what will happen to the House and Senate Dems and RINOS in November in this classic middle-school taunt: “You’ll be chopped so low, you can play ‘Sea Hunt’ in a loogie!”
Ayn Rand
Let no man posture as an advocate of peace if he proposes or supports any social system that initiates the use of force against individual men, in any form. Ayn
It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.
Vladimir Lenin
From the rostrum of the United Nations, we shall convince the colonial and semicolonial people to liberate themselves and to spread the Communist theory all over the world. General Bondarenko
Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. Heinlein…
And The abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! and rightly so. the abolition of bourgeois individuality, independence and freedom is undoubtedly aimed at. by freedom is meant, under the present bourgeoisie conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying” first written in 1848, then rewritten 1888. Communist Manifesto
I thought the “I wish it wern’t” was in respect to the question “are you troubled that it (the glen beck rally) was when it was, where it was?”
in other words, he wishes the ralley wasn’t held there, not that the country wasn’t free…which is apparantely rick lazio’s and newt gingrich’s position.
Manju…I might be more inclined to believe this interpretation if Deval Patrick hasn’t previously referred to opposition to Obama as “almost at the level of sedition”
http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2010/05/24/gov-deval-patrick-d-ma-opposition-to-obama-is-almost-at-the-level-of-sedition/
What could be simpler in time of economic stress and bewilderment than to imagine a few greedy old fat capitalists clutching all of the nation’s wealth in their money bags, while exulting maliciously over the hardships of the unemployed, the unemployed advancing upon them, cracking them over their heads and “re-distributing the wealth” in their bags to the needy? An ending as simple and happy as the arrival of Santa Claus with toys, with the added satisfaction of taking revenge on the villain.
In reality millions of Americans, a greater proportion of the population than in any other country, own farms, homes, property, stock, savings, or a business of some sort and are capitalists on a larger or smaller scale.
When a Socialist tells the “old one” about a half dozen or so capitalists controlling all of the wealth in the United States, he should be sent to read the volumes of names of owners of property listed on the tax books of various districts and to poll the store keepers and business men of any “Main Street” to ask them how many of their concerns are owned by the half dozen big, bad, capitalists, and how many are privately owned.
Anyone who owns any investment, property, or business nowadays knows that profits are doubtful, dividends and interest are not being paid, taxes are almost confiscatory, that capitalists who have large holdings are distressed, tax eaten and gloomy, and that some of them commit suicide. The Socialists’ mythical capitalist exulting over the present depression is not to be found in real life, nor is it conceivable that any capitalist would deliberately deprive himself of profits in order to deprive his employees of the prosperity wages paid when business is run at prosperity speed.
Who, then, should be cracked over the head? How can wealth that is not produced be re-distributed? Property, tools, business, factories, cannot be eaten, hoarded in bags, or hidden under the bed. These produce wealth only when they can function at a profit for everyone. When they do not, their owners are “property poor.”
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Back then we were ignorant, whats our excuse now?
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Ellery Walter, fascinating author and lecturer who, after living under the “planned society order” of Russia, became depinked, told how he stood looking at a long line of tractors which were out of commission and asked his Russian girl guide what was the matter with them. She said they had broken down from lack of greasing. Noting a peasant’s cart rumbling along with a bucket of grease swinging from the axle, he pointed it out and said to her: “Those peasants know enough to grease their wagons. What is the matter with them that they don’t know enough to grease the tractors?” She happened to know the peasant and merely replied, “O! that wagon belongs to him.”..
still think that the discussions of the Great Depression reflect the discussions and the great sea of swell against communism by the silent majority…then as now, hayek became popular… and we suddenly changed course… took them till now to make another attempt because it took so many generations to throw off their parents and in ignorance dance with the devil…
What have socialistic experiments ever achieved, except deficits or failure?
While Russia was primitive under the Czars, it danced on holidays and worshipped God with a full stomach. The Ukraine, now starving, was, in fact, called the bread basket of Europe. Famine, spy and shot gun ridden Russia now turns out more propaganda than produce.
Dr. H. Parker Willis, Columbia U. professor, one of the authors of the federal reserve act, and a monetary authority, said before the American Economic Association, Dec. 28, 1933, that he had had difficulty in analyzing the recovery program because of “a lack of consistency and frankness on the part of those identified with its origin and administration. One fully accredited spokesman of the recovery administration stated that the New Deal was devised after a careful study of European Socialism, Russian Communism, and Italian Fascism. But almost at the same time, another equally high and equally authoritative spokesman denied that there was anything revolutionarv in the undertakings.
“But taking the most recent and official exposition of the recovery, I find it based upon a fundamentally false premise. It rests upon the assumption that the depression was due to a breakdown of laissez faire. When did industry lose its freedom? Certainly not on March 3, 1933, but many years earlier.
“As a matter of fact, the panic of 1929 grew out of the existence of too much interference with some industries and nursing, spoon-feeding, and coddling others. It is not true that uncontrolled excessive individualism has destroyed itself. What we are suffering from today is an undue governmental interference with business.” (Chicago Tribune, Dec. 29, 1933).
How long to hide the basic facts till we no longer could sit in a room and talk? we cant get past the fake and real in 1933, and its 2010…
A capitalist business must efficiently produce goods for use or it can make no profit. State works on the other hand, need not be either useful, necessary, or efficiently run, since the tax payers pay the bills out of the proceeds from private efficiency.
Even the U. S. Post Office piles up a large yearly deficit (112 million dollars in 1933).
Capitalism is a system of spending which pumps profits into every part of society. Buying goods is spending for the products of industry, while buying investments is spending to maintain and develop industry. Even savings are loaned out to be spent for home building and business enterprise, or else the banker realizes no profit. New investment means new industry, new employment, new spending, new investing, and so on around the circle again.
still think this is all different? i said its EXACTLY the same… because i read the books and stuff that showed that the US people were not ignorant, they knew what was going on in the world, what changed was the spin we were willing to swallow, and the time that passed to erase history, separate children from parents, sexualize them, etc.
Even Obama’s idea of how much you can spend is an old old trope.
No capitalist can actually use for himself a great amount of the world’s goods. As the old British jingle about being able to sleep in only one bed or wear one hat at a time goes:
“You can only wear one eye-glass in your eye,
Use one coffin when you die don’t you know!”
The rest of a capitalist’s profits are not hoarded in bags, but invested, and that is spent, for further development of industry and further profits for others as well as himself.
When it no longer “pays” to own property or run a business, it means
that capitalism or “private ownership” is being squeezed to death. Socialism
is killing it. Only when Socialism is throttling legitimate profits does the big and little capitalist stop investing, that is, spending, and try to hide a little of his fast disappearing money from the tax collector, but “New Dealers” have devaluated even money now. The State seems about ready to gobble up all private ownership rights.
In the face of all evidences of the success of capitalism and of the failures of Socialism, one can but marvel at the ever gushing zeal of Socialist propagandists…
the cure then, is the same as the cure now
Bernard Shaw, one of the world’s most outstanding propagandists for Communism-Socialism, lives in England where he can enjoy the huge profits from his writings and other capitalistic ventures.
Portly Maxim Litvinoff, who visited the United States while hunger was rampant in Russia, bore no marks of suffering, nor, as the Chicago Tribune remarked at the time, was there any direct evidence that he had been “especially fattened for the occasion.”
He demonstrated the well-known fact that political commissars, everywhere, eat, regardless of whether others starve or not.
The cure for the temptations inherent in politics which give rise to its widespread corruption, is not more political offices, more temptation, more politicians, more political power, more graft, more taxes in other words more Socialism but less, and a return to the individualistic sense of responsibility, the private initiative and capitalism which has actually hewn and chiseled American greatness out of a primitive wilderness
sigh… probably will get edited down…if we only knew what we knew then
we were so much older then
we are younger than that now…
[to twist a phrase]
[edited for length by n-n]
“But the present world-wide breakdown could more properly be charged
to a collapse of the socialist system. Every important power in the western
world today, except the United States, is under either socialist parliamentary
control, or that dictatorship to which socialism leads as in Italy, Poland,
Germany and Russia.
“Beyond this effect of direct socialist control, the menace of political
ownership of property and destruction of individual liberty and enterprise,
and the meddling with the established monied systems, are the chief factors
in the slowing down of business enterprise. It is not to be expected that
productive enterprise will go ahead full steam when enemies of all private
enterprise are busily engaged in trying to tear up the tracks and burn the
bridges just ahead.
“In western Europe, under the threat of socialism and bolshevism, money
was withdrawn from productive enterprise in thousands of cases and went into
hiding. In this country political demagogues and doctrinaires who are at
heart socialists whatever their outward party profession, have been busily
engaged in threatening all business enterprise, and hampering and hamstringing
it wherever possible. What they cannot immediately destroy by
socialist legislation, they try to tax and restrict and handicap to the point of
extinction. In this they are joined by those international adventurers of
capitalism who seek by this method to kill off all independent enterprise in
the belief that they may gain profits not only through national but worldwide
mergers. . . .
“The failures of socialism in the Old World are resulting in dictatorships.
Socialism centralizes all power in the politicians. It hands over to them
complete control of the life, property and liberties of the people. Thus it builds
up a giant machine ready for the hand of dictators.
Will we venture into such chaos?”
I think he got tongue tied, and what he really meant was that he wishes the rally were not held there on that day.
In other words, he wishes people did not exercise their right to peaceful assembly on public grounds, which is just as disturbing as intepretting it as he wishes the country were not free.
I heard two bits on NPR over the last few days that seemed along similar lines. One was on the morning show today – what is it, “All Things Considered”? The host was interviewing Tony Blair, and at that moment, talking about the Cold War. The host’s comment was that the appeals of the Soviet system were easy to counter, simply by saying, “But we’re rich! Look at how much we have!”
Blair correctly pointed out that it was by no means clear in the early days of the Cold War that the Soviet economic system would prove so very inferior to the West’s. But what he didn’t mention, no matter how loudly I yelled at the radio, was that the longest-running counter wasn’t “We’re rich,” but “We’re FREE!” Even if it was the Levi’s that sealed the deal, the far greater civil liberties and the more appropriately aligned economic incentives were the backdrop.
The second bit was on Marketplace: an Indonesian economist whose parents were Chinese disagrees that Indonesia should go all the way with China. The host thought that fact was “ironic” rather than “obvious.” Because in his mind, apparently, the “obvious” opinion of the economist descended from refugees from China should be that Indonesia should do anything it can to be best friends with China. (In other news, I think it was the Indonesian economic minister in the same story? said that China was the girl Indonesia hung out with, whereas America was the woman it wanted to marry. Then he laughed a little and deprecated his own analogy.)
“In other words, he wishes people did not exercise their right to peaceful assembly on public grounds, which is just as disturbing as intepretting it as he wishes the country were not free.”
Scott: your postion seems to contradict itself. If wishing people did not excerise their right is just as bad as not wanting them to have a right…then how is your criticism of patrick’s excercise of his free-speech rights not “just as distrubing.”
The fact that it’s not part of a conversation between the President and a governor?
Patrick may get his wish if some version of the Fairness Doctrine/Net Neutrality gets passed which is why this November and the intervening lame duck session is so crucial to our freedoms.
I’m also concerned about this trend in the internet
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1301792/Google-Verizon-insist-net-neutrality-affected-internet-superhighway-plans.html
Could it be a backdoor channel towards censorship by denying high bandwidth to ‘political unfavorables’?
“The fact that it’s not part of a conversation between the President and a governor?”
The conversation Scott disapproves of was not between the President and a Govenor either.
Obama was inserted into the issue (by neo-neocon) to make a guilt by association argument, not to imply he actually asked the question.
It was just a (Kinsley) gaffe.
My bad, then, Manju; I don’t have speakers, so I tend not to watch video clips. And besides, I was snarking. The real answer to your question is this: the second persons’ expressing displeasure at the first person’s right to free speech specifically when that first person was expressing HIS opinion that he wishes OTHERS should NOT so exercise that right – well, that doesn’t seem to me to be as disturbing as the first person’s exercise of his right. If you follow. I know that construction was horribly convoluted.
Analogy with the right to freedom of religion: which is “more disturbing,” the religionist who goes to an unpopular church, or the religionist who, while attending his church, uses his pulpit OR his position as a leader in that church to denounce that unpopular church’s right to exist? Even if he doesn’t start a crusade to wipe it out, is not that attitude disturbing, though permissible?
(I should have said, “I was only snarking.” It’s obvious I was snarking!)
Manju,
Good to see your disturbed mind is back. Hopefully you can let us know the answer to this question.
Who should be the decision maker of who can have a rally when and where and why?
This is in response to your statement, “are you troubled that it (the glen beck rally) was when it was, where it was?””
I’m glad you aren’t the decider ! If I was the decider – Manju could never speak and you couldn’t speak anywhere !
“Who should be the decision maker of who can have a rally when and where and why?”
i don’t see the relevancy but it should be the person who holds the rally…outside of viewpoint neutral time place and manner restrictions carved out by scotus.
“This is in response to your statement, “are you troubled that it (the glen beck rally) was when it was, where it was?””
Thats not my stateent. That’s from the reporter video.
“the religionist who, while attending his church, uses his pulpit OR his position as a leader in that church to denounce that unpopular church’s right to exist? Even if he doesn’t start a crusade to wipe it out, is not that attitude disturbing, though permissible?”
well, denouncing a person right to exist is anti-freedom. However, denouncing a person’s existence is not. Patrick’s not denouncing Beck’s right to free speech, just his speech.
I’m denouncing your speech.
You aren’t a thinker.
Manju:
Unmitigated pettifogging. In another era, you would have debated how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
I thought the “I wish it wern’t” was in respect to the question “are you troubled that it (the glen beck rally) was when it was, where it was?”
Hmmm. Let’s see:
“Are you troubled that it (the glen beck rally) was when it was, where it was?”
“I wish it weren’t.”
To which the only conceivable response would be: “Huh?”
Are liberals now doing to syntax what they’re doing to the country?
Nice try, though. Tell Axelrod I said, “Hey.”
Contrast:
“It’s a free country. I wish it weren’t.”
Clearly the “I wish it weren’t refers to what he’d just said, not to something he said earlier in the day.
Sheesh.
Btw, please come back on November 3rd, after you Reds take the beatdown you so richly deserve.
“Unmitigated pettifogging. In another era, you would have debated how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.”
Its not trivial at all. The disticntion between oppossing someone rights and oppossing someones excercise of their rights is critical in our regime.
Without the distinciton, any criricism of the mosque at gorund zero would become tantamount to advocating the denial of first ammendment rights. Now, some critics have crossed that line (lazio, for example) but they should be segregated from those who haven’t (Harry Reid).
If they weren’t, the first ammendment becomes unworkable. Sarah Palin apparanetly doesn’t get this basic principle either. I guess its is a tad nuanced, so just try to keep up, Gringo.
Manju, “nuance” went out the door as a valid political argument at least by the time John ” I voted for it before I voted against it” Kerry made those words famous.
If you want to frame your arguments in pettifoggery and incoherence, be my guest.
“If you want to frame your arguments in pettifoggery and incoherence, be my guest.”
No problem, I’ll just adopt your argument. Without this distinction, I can now accuse a huge % of republicans of advocating the violation of the first amendment rights of the ground zero mosque people.
This means of course they are anti-freedom, not unlike Dr Laura’s critics, as the next GOP nom for POTUS (if Bam has his way) apparently believes.
late to this thread, but I don’t think he said he wishes it weren’t a free country – more so, `I wish it weren’t there, but it’s a free country.’