Wrong. “Conservatism” is an evil in itself, and always has been.
Wrong; he was RE-elected. Americans knew what he was and voted for him anyway. It was only the disastrous results of him doing what the people wanted that turned America against him. Bush is the true reflection of America’s essence; greedy, stupid, fanatical, ignorant, malignant, arrogant, bloodthirsty and sadistic. He represents what America has been corrupted into; he reflects the typical American, just with more money.
And there hasn’t been any “switch from liberalism” for a long time, because liberalism hasn’t been a significant force for a long time. And it isn’t now, either; Obama is no liberal.
While I don’t think you’ll find them much worshiped, breaking free of the most powerful empire on Earth with the aid of another foreign superpower and founding a government from scratch that dealt with the needs of the colonies to see themselves as both part of a whole and as 13 separate self governing entities while remaining out from under the thumbs of England, France, Spain, or other imperialist nations with serious holdings and interest in the New World and incomparably more money and military might- that was pretty marvelously original.
Not. They had lived under a monarchical system, but they were more concerned with non-monarchical models, such as those of the ancient Greeks, the Roman Republic, and far more recent to them, the Dutch Republic. The Dutch war of independence from Spain (16th-17th centuries) and the subsequent governments they established afterwards were very much studied by them. Some argue the influence of the Iroquois League- I don’t dispute them but I’m not well read enough on that aspect to do so.
Calling the Republic established in the Constitution a modified monarchical system is roughly akin to calling Protestantism a modified form of Akhenaton’s sun worship. There are definitely similarities, but it’s at the same time something new entirely.
That the president not be above the law was of extreme importance. Read the Declaration of Independence- the entire document is an indictment of George III and his ministers.
Even the Bill Clinton kind? You don’t think we needed welfare reform?
2004 was a failure of the opposition party. The the fact that Rove made Kerry look worst than Bush does not mean everyone liked Bush.
I put the switch from liberalism to conservatism in 1980, when Regan tapped into voter frustration over the Carter government and made them believe that government interference would always make things worst.
The jury is out on Obama. We’ll just have to wait and see.
No. I remember what “welfare reform” was about; I listened to the hatred and contempt of the poor. “Let them freeze, let them starve” was the general attitude; not some desire to “reform” anything.
They voted for a fool, a liar, a torturer and a mass murderer. I don’t care in the slightest if they liked him or not.
Reagan tapped into America’s worst qualities and encouraged them. America’s bigotry, it’s arrogance, it’s selfishness, it’s malice, it’s religious fanaticism. That’s how he got elected, and re-elected. When the poor were cast out to freeze on the street, when gays died of AIDS, when American backed and trained death squads and dictators raped, tortured and murdered; those were the sort of things that Reagan stood for, and why he got into power and stayed there.
Lets pretend for a second that they did want to reform welfare and did not want to kill all poor people. Would you be OK with it then?
Well it should matter if they liked him more than Kerry. They might not have approved of Bush, but they weren’t exactly given a better alternative. The point is that the country was never on the same wavelength as Bush. The switch from Liberalism to Conservatism did not turn the country into fanatics. Our leaders took that course, and the public was slow to realize that this was not the conservatism that they signed up for.
We do these things regardless of our politics. These things did not happen because the nation became center right. LBJ was our most liberal president and yet he gave us Vietnam. A war that caused much more harm than what Bush managed in Iraq.
The failings of bad politicians did not happen because we suddenly became conservative, they were always around and the public always denounced them when they figured out what was happening.
A sluggish reaction to Bush doesn’t prove that the country became conservative and because of that they now want to torture and murder.
Kerry was better than Bush. Nearly anyone would have been. They liked Bush better because he is ignorant, stupid and evil, like them.
No, the economy crashed, and the war turned into an embarrassment. There was no moral upheaval, no revulsion at what Bush had done. Just embarrassment that he did it badly, and fear of the economic problems.
Garbage. There’s been no “denouncement” by the general public; just irritation at Bush screwing up.
Again, garbage. Americans reelected Bush, because America is collectively evil. We represent torture and mass murder, something we confirmed we wanted by re-electing him.
I disagree. I don’t think enough people follow politics closely enough to realize what politicians are really about. Ignorance doesn’t always mean evil. The public just didn’t know.
We voted for Democrats in 2006 before the economy collapsed. There was always moral upheaval about domestic spying and torture.
2006 is as good of a denouncement of extreme conservatism as you are going to get. The backlash against Sarah Palin this year was another. The only election where it looked like we upheld extremism was 2004, but that was because of political ignorance. The country was never turned evil by the conservatives.
So did we represent torture and mass murder when we elected LBJ?
