Analysis of Romney's defeat

[Formaldehyde]

I think a lot of Jewish Americans are stealthily atheistic/agnostic. This alone would explain antipathy towards the Republicans.

Or perhaps they remember who were blatantly anti-Semitic not all that long ago. And what parallels there are towards those who are racist, Islamophobic, and openly hostile towards Latinos and most any other minority.

Most American Jews are quite socially liberal whether they are observant or not. They know what it is like to be persecuted and discriminated against.

 

[Lone Wolf]

It's possible to be a Jew and actually be atheistic/agnostic, just like, to borrow an expression from Winner, it's possible to be an Atheist Bosnian Muslim.

 

[AlpsStranger]

True.

I think a lot of American atheists are something like non-practicing Christians. I would put my father in that category. I think I'm more just a straight unbeliever.

 

[Arakhor]

Classical needs to stop quoting John Adams. He was a Federalist and so what he had to say is pretty irrelevant anyway. Bonus points since he passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. I don't really care what he thought about our government.

Isn't he one of your saintly founding fathers? I'm all for people not quoting antique texts as if they were scripture, but you can't just casually strike off one person from your hagiography simply because you disagree with a thumbnail sketch of his activities.

 

[Mr. Dictator]

Isn't he one of your saintly founding fathers? I'm all for people not quoting antique texts as if they were scripture, but you can't just casually strike off one person from your hagiography simply because you disagree with a thumbnail sketch of his activities.

Several were more like founding uncles.

 

[Leoreth]

I'm an atheist Christian. I don't believe in any tenet of Christianity, but I still tend to view religions through the Christian/Abrahamic lens simply because that's what I'm used to.

 

[Dachs]

NO government is going to work well for a non-moral people, but I don't see why the American constitution is special in that regard.

Since when does some made-up notion of popular morality have anything to do with the prosperity of the populace in a given state?

 

[dexters]

Isn't he one of your saintly founding fathers? I'm all for people not quoting antique texts as if they were scripture, but you can't just casually strike off one person from your hagiography simply because you disagree with a thumbnail sketch of his activities.

The lack of intellectual rigour and will-full ignorance of reality by the tea party and the deification of the founding fathers is really at the core of what is wrong with the Republicans.

The constitution is scripture and like early Christianity, you have the followers taking characters around Jesus's circle that don't quite fit the narrative being cast out of the story.

I read McCullough's book on John Adams and watched the HBO series, he's a great patriot and his disagreements with Jefferson forms the core of the Democratic/Republican schism that haunts the country to this day.

His arguments are certainly a great counterpoint to Jefferson's. Adams is only ignored by the far-right because it undermines their 'Obama's Amurikah' narrative of the black Kenyan stealing their rights and that somehow the founding fathers had a single vision for the country and that somehow the Democrats are bastardizing it.

They did not have one vision. Washington disliked a two party system for example. So was he an autocratic commie one party statist? Let me check what Limbaugh thinks!

 

[GhostWriter16]

Isn't he one of your saintly founding fathers? I'm all for people not quoting antique texts as if they were scripture, but you can't just casually strike off one person from your hagiography simply because you disagree with a thumbnail sketch of his activities.

The Hamilton/Adams branch deserves to be ignored because they were the anti-liberty faction at the time. And their modern descendents (The Democrats and Republicans) should be opposed by everyone because they viewed individual rights as something to be casually discarded (Adams wasn't necessarily wrong about the thing Classical quoted him on, but Adams still shouldn't be quoted ideally.)

 

[Cutlass]

The Hamilton/Adams branch deserves to be ignored because they were the anti-liberty faction at the time. And their modern descendents (The Democrats and Republicans) should be opposed by everyone because they viewed individual rights as something to be casually discarded (Adams wasn't necessarily wrong about the thing Classical quoted him on, but Adams still shouldn't be quoted ideally.)

They were the pro-liberty faction at the time. Jefferson-Madison was the slaver faction.

 

[GhostWriter16]

They were the pro-liberty faction at the time. Jefferson-Madison was the slaver faction.

Are you saying they were slavers because they literally owned slaves (In which case you'd be right but it wasn't like Adams and Hamilton objected any more strongly to slavery) or are you being hyperbolic again?

 

[Cutlass]

Are you saying they were slavers because they literally owned slaves (In which case you'd be right but it wasn't like Adams and Hamilton objected any more strongly to slavery) or are you being hyperbolic again?

The point is that Hamilton and Adams were for liberty for everyone. And for a prosperous free market economy. (The era was a bit pre-capitalist). Jefferson and Madison were for there to be nothing that might restrict the rights of slavers, no matter what effect that might have on any person who was not a slaver. So the H&A side, which you should recall Washington was also actively on, was the side that was more for liberty.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

They were by no means in favor of a prosperous free market, but rather a mercantilist market where government force is used to give massive advantages to the politically connected.

 

[Arakhor]

The Hamilton/Adams branch deserves to be ignored because they were the anti-liberty faction at the time. And their modern descendents (The Democrats and Republicans) should be opposed by everyone because they viewed individual rights as something to be casually discarded (Adams wasn't necessarily wrong about the thing Classical quoted him on, but Adams still shouldn't be quoted ideally.)

So, now the Founding Fathers are to be revered only if you agree with them? That's a particularly idiosyncratic worship, wouldn't you say?

 

[Nick Carpathia]

They were by no means in favor of a prosperous free market, but rather a mercantilist market where government force is used to give massive advantages to the politically connected.

So in other words they won.

 

[Cutlass]

They were by no means in favor of a prosperous free market, but rather a mercantilist market where government force is used to give massive advantages to the politically connected.

Not so much, no. If you look at how it played out, many, many, more people in the North were able to own their own property. Were able to start and run small businesses. Were able to create their own fortunes, or at least make the attempt to do so. Compare that to the slave states, the elite were the elite, they were the political leadership, and it was a nearly closed aristocracy. And the only way in to that aristocracy was to become a slaver.

 

[GamezRule]

What he had to say is pretty irrelevant because he was a federalist?

edit: I see I missed a page.

 

[dexters]

They were by no means in favor of a prosperous free market, but rather a mercantilist market where government force is used to give massive advantages to the politically connected.

It's the same thing as a modern free market.

The 18th century equivalent of a free market was a mercantile trading economy in the model of Great Britain.

The free market is a fairly modern thing.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It is very similar to the modern market economy. That is very different from the Free Market, which is an ideal that they never existed in the real world on any large scale. Classical liberals going back at least to Adam Smith have argued how mercantilist policies are antithetical to the free market and harmful to the world at large.

 

[potatokiosk]

Yeah, the way things are gerrymandered (wide Dem districts, narrower GOP districts), the GOP's hold of the House will get crushed in a wave election that is pro-Dem. The GOP apparently learned nothing from 2006 and 2008. 2010's gains were a combination of a wave and getting back two waves.

That's true, but what are the odds of a pro-Dem wave happening any time soon?