I credit you woth honesty and straightforwardness. You want this subversion to succeed, and I want it to fail. I certainly don’t want the party to be weak and foolish in enabling its success, the way the Mensheviks did.
That far? Really? So, farther than Hillary, or Jeb for that matter? Are you sure you understand what the word means?
Or it’s just true, and we’re not refusing to see it. That doesn’t make us similar.
As it is right now, not too afraid, no. But I have extensively studied the history of the French and Russian Revolutions, and they, along with the campus PC movement, and rags like Salon, give me reason to fear for the movement’s potential. (Interestingly, in my younger and more orthodox radical-left days, I was much more sympathetic to the Bolsheviks–especially the Trotskyite faction–and the Jacobins.)
The only sense in which Hillary or Jeb are less demagogues is that they’re not very interesting to listen to when they speak. That’s not actually what a “demagogue” is, so all of them are about equally demagogues. It’s ridiculous nonsense to call Sanders a demagogue, entirely in keeping with your accusations that he’s committing extortion. Nothing you’ve said in this thread is serious.
At last, some insight into the mind of a rabid Clinton supporter. I was wondering where your fervor came from for such a MOR, centrist candidate.
All the movement wants is for the US to enjoy the advances of our peer nations. Nobody will be marched to the guillotines; they’ll be lining up for health care instead.
It’s more than subversion, it’s theft! Sanders is trying to take the Democratic Party away from its OWNERS, Hillary Clinton and the DNC, and their wealthy sponsors.
The “revolution” has consisted of donating to and voting for a progressive candidate. It’s operating within the system. If that scares you, then what you’re afraid of is democracy and the rule of law.
Both can be exploited by demagogues, and have been. Robespierre rose through a very democratic system as a man with very democratic ideals. And he never stopped believing his actions were in pursuit of those ideals, and on behalf of the people.
:rolleyes: American progressives are not Bolshevik Jacobins and will not be. (More’s the pity, perhaps.) This is a country where mainstream West-Euro social democracy is quite radical enough, and I know of very few Americans and none in public life who have the slightest interest in going any further left than that. Certainly Sanders doesn’t. Nor Ralph Nader nor Dennis Kucinich nor Elizabeth Warren. Even the Greens are scarier, and they’re not scary at all.
I know that like all the Third Estate delegates he was born and raised in an aristocratic absolute monarchy. This “republic” or “democracy” thing was new and untried and rooted in no traditions native to France, only in speculative philosophical ideas, of course they made some disastrous mistakes with it. But this is a country with democratic traditions more than a century older than the Revolution. If we can’t handle democracy, who can?
Sanders was elected to Congress in 1988. The articles document the fact that no he did not raise money for most of that time.
When he ran for Senate in 2006 he took money from the DSCC ($37,300) and help from the local party to which the DSCC gave another $100,000. He benefited from their fundraising apparatus. They also spent another $60,000 advertising for him. Yes, that was Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, etc., tainted dollars.
Why did the DSCC help this independent? Because he could beat the Republican and would at least caucus with them, giving them a narrow majority.
His fundraising for other Democrats really began in earnest in 2012 (a far cry from “always”) and was for clear self-serving interests. You want a position of power? You work to help the rest of us. OTOH we Democrats lose the majority and you got bupkiss my democratic socialist friend. That year the PAC gets moving and raises a relatively modest amount but donates wisely, in close races of moderates. Per one of your cites:
“Through the years”? The PAC has only been donating in modestly significant amounts in the 2012 and 2014 cycles! “Through the years” … oy. Well it is literally true in a Sandersesque way.
Yes, he also through those same years has had his hand out to the big donors and as per those articles did not say boo to them or object to their dirty money.
If you don’t see any parallels in this bio, you are just being willfully blind, IMO (“There are none so blind…”).
Remember, Sanders has said that he wants his movement to take to the streets, swarm on the Capitol, and demand change. Sounds an awful lot like the sans-culottes to me.
Germany was used as an example by someone earlier on. I merely actually explored what Germany’s college education looks like.
I have no idea why you think the example of one city college that had to ask students for more when the city went bankrupt is relevant to the history of higher education funding in general, but since you went there you should know that its story was never so simple.
So your experience in 1974 fell into the small six year window of a failed experiment with “free” (i.e. taxpayer funded) merit-based education at CUNY schools. Now in our horribly broken system CUNY provides “free” college education to almost half of its students, a vast number. If these are “square corners that capitalism put on” the failed experiment that you participated in, I will ask for more square corners please.
Bottom line though? A failed six year experiment in the '70s is not the wheel.
Then we’re all screwed, I guess. Can’t vote for Clinton either then, can we? She rose up through a democratic system, blah blah blah…probably have all us dissidents in camps by second quarter 2018.
The “system” was what, 5 years old, and being made up as they went along? Perfectly comparable to an election in a 227-year-old democracy.
But his fundamental argument is that the system is no good, that it’s corrupt and oligarchic, and needs to be overthrown through “political revolution”, including masses of young people taking to the streets. What does he ever say that speaks to the stability of a 227 year old democracy?
I bet at least half the Bernheads here, whether they’ll admit it or not, read that Robespierre bio and thought “man, that dude was awesome…I hope Bernie *is *like him!”
It was not a “failed six year experiment”. My cite was accurate. You need to read your cite more carefully. Do you understand the difference between matriculated students and non-matriculants?
I used one example based on personal experience, but there were others.
But yes as per your current cite, there is historic precedence for taxpayers picking up the public college tab:
So it is not quite untrue to state that such has been done in the past in the United States. All we have to do is have college only open to a very small percent of people again!
Sorry but that is not the wheel we should be returning to. Right now many many more get a free college education than did back in those days. My kids? No. And they shouldn’t.