I agree that Bush will go down as one of the more incompetent presidents we’ve had in the last 100 years but plenty of presidents have implemented policies more abhorrent than Bush. FDR imprisoned over 100k Japanese-Americans without charges. Andrew Jackson carried out a fairly vicious campaign against Native Americans. Teddy Roosevelt (one of my favorite presidents) backed a Panamanian separatist group just so he could build the Panama Canal. McKinley started the Spanish-American War (albeit reluctantly) on flimsier evidence than Bush and presided over the Philippine-American War which had twice as many civilian casualties as the current Iraq war and far more torture by American forces. Many presidents made pacts with the devil in the name of opposing Communism. Looking at the full scope of American history Bush’s actions are fairly routine. That doesn’t make it right but we’re talking about comparative evils. Relatively speaking none of these presidents come close to Saddam Hussein and the only one in the discussion is Jackson.
Gonzo, you get a lot of flack for what I think are mostly irrelevant accusations. IOW, style not substance.
Having said that, would that some/many members would really try to get what you’re saying in your above post – because it is right on point simplistic as it may seem on first read.
Take care, pal.
Well, hafta go as I need to make an omelet, clean my closet, start working on New Year’s dinner, do my laundry and tend to a myriad of business and family related matters.
~The Busy Well Fed Liberal.
Flak. From the German word for anti-aircraft fire, Fliegerabwehrkanonen, that had a tendency to shake one up and scare the shit out of one even when it did not kill one.
A flack is a publicity promoter, particularly for celebrities and politicians.
(Yes, I am aware that so many people spell flak with a “c” that it has begun making it into dictionaries as an alternative spelling, but it is just wrong.)
If a mere gadfly like Limbaugh can make the list, then I nominate “Always Wrong About Everything” Bill Kristol.
Julian Simon.
Thanks, Tom, informative as always. You’re also right in that some dictionaries allow my (mis)spelling/usage. BTW, I wasn’t aware of the original meaning either – no origin listed at that link. Interesting.
BG, don’t for a second underestimate the power of Rush and many of his Brown Shirts – I mean, I realize you don’t, but to call Rush a “gadfly” is a bit unjust if only due to his ratings. Whether he belongs there instead of any number of his cohorts is, well, a mater of taste? :dubious:
If interested, here’s a rather longish excerpt from Jeffrey Feldmann’s book that tackles this very issue:
The Violent Language of Right-Wing Pundits Poisons Our Democracy
Oh for pity’s sake. Andrew Jackson is being mentioned in the same breath with Saddam Hussein now? This is getting way beyond ridiculous. Some salient points for the Jackson bashers:
[ul][li]The Creek War (or Red Sticks War) for which Jackson is often castigated on these boards, began in earnest with the slaughter by the Creeks of some 500 settlers, including men women and children, at Fort Mims, north of present-day Mobile. The victims were mutilated, including pregnant women having fetuses torn from their bodies. Children’s brains were bashed out against the walls of the fort. This massacre hit the US with the same sort of emotional force as 9/11. Jackson and his troops didn’t start the fight, they were responding to the Fort Mims attack.[/li][li]At the battle of Horseshoe Bend (part of the Creek War), Jackson gave safe passage to women and children. This was certainly more than the red stick Creeks had done.[/li][li]Jackson did not invent the idea of removing the the eastern tribes beyond the Mississippi River. The idea had been on the table for years. Thomas Jefferson was an early proponent.[/li][li]In Jackson’s day, the US was still in its infancy, and still under threat from foreign powers. The Creeks and Seminoles had demonstrated that they were willing to ally themselves with foreign powers against the US, and so the idea that these tribes presented a security threat on the southern US frontier was not an unreasonable one.[/li][li]The Cherokee were ultimately removed pursuant to treaty, not pursuant to the Indian Removal Act, which the Supreme Court struck down. (Jackson did not defy the Court, contrary to popular myth.) Granted, the treaty under which the Cherokee were removed really carried the authority of only a small faction of the Cherokee.[/li][li]The US was obliged to extinguish Cherokee claims in Georgia, as part of Georgia’s agreement to cede its claims to the western territory which became Mississippi and Alabama. Jackson did not seek Cherokee removal because of some personal grudge or because his heart was two sizes too small. He was carrying out longstanding policy and fulfilling US obligations.[/li][li]Much of the land taken from the Cherokee in northwest Georgia was land they had themselves taken from the Creeks only a couple of generations earlier. Not exactly ancestral homeland.[/li][li]The Cherokee removal was not actually carried out under Jackson, but under Van Buren. If the removal was botched, it wasn’t botched by Jackson.[/li][li]The Cherokee had earlier been given the option of taking 160 acres of land per household and remaining in the East as citizens.[/li][li]Jackson never sought to exterminate any tribe. He and his successors forced them from their land, but that does not put Jackson in the class of Hitler or Hussein.[/li][*]The harm Jackson inflicted on the Indians must be balanced against the dramatic expansion of suffrage rights during his presidency. We couldn’t have an Obama without a Jackson coming before him, insisting that political power belonged to people of all classes, not just the wealthy elite. There’s a reason he’s on the $20 bill. [/ul]
Flack does not bother me.
The point of course is if the Chinese are really dedicated communists,by taking our manufacturing facilities and our intellectual properties there, we have given them the tools to beat us. They can and will dominate the industrial base . They will have the strongest economy. They are accelerating as we dwindle. The course has been set. Whatever capitalism offers, the Chinese have taken. Whatever threat communism offers,it is still there. They have been handed the keys to world domination. They have shown they will embrace whatever strengthens them. That was such a stupid thing for us to do.They are American businessmen but they are still communists.
Or as Bill Bryson points out, there are 20 letters in that word and not one of them is a C.
Whew! Switch to decaf, dude!
China has some pretty serious problems. The Chinese Communist party is very much worried about the impact that the global economic mess will have on China. Even when the economy was booming, there were literally thousands of “disturbances”* every year, and the party’s hold on political power is a lot shakier than it looks. China’s population is ageing due to the Party’s one child rule, and a graying China is going to have a lot of problems finding ways to support its growing population of elderly. There are huge discrepancies between city and country when it comes to distribution of wealth, and corruption is rampant. Some observers think China could be dangerously unstable.
There is certainly cause for concern, and I’m not saying they’re about to collapse like the Soviet Union did. But China isn’t exactly the lean, mean fighting machine you seem to think it is.
*I put “disturbances” in quotes because the government apparently considers a “disturbance” to be anything from an all-out riot to a handful of people peacefully demonstrating.
Of course, not even the Party leaders are dedicated Communists any more.
Just as a note, this proposal was floated but ultimately never implemented. An option similar to it was given to the Chocktaw at Dancing Rabbit Creek (640 acres plus half fthat for every unmarried child over 10, and a quarter for every child under 10). Also, the Indian Removal Act was never struck down by the Court. It was under the provisions of the Indian Removal Act that the various treaties were negotiatied (Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, Treaty of New Echota, etc.). The Indian Removal act didn’t itself remove any Indians. It gave the President the right to give government land west of the Mississippi to the tribes in exchange for the land they held east of the Mississippi.
As I understand it, the 160 acre proposal was not implemented because the Cherokee rejected it. They, as a tribe, were given the option, but declined it. I’d have to go back and refresh my memory on this.
As for the Indian Removal Act, again, I’d have to refresh my memory on the particulars, but my larger point was that Jackson did not defy the Supreme Court (contrary to popular myth). The Supreme Court required that the land be ceded by treaty rather than by act of Congress, and so it was. (Though admittedly the treaty did not reflect the will of the majority of Cherokees – only the minority of realists among them.)
Jackson didn’t defy the Supreme Court, that’s correct, but the Indian Removal Act was never challenged before the Supreme Court. It was the state of Georgia that defied the Supreme Court (in Worcester v Georgia), after the court overturned a Georgia law requiring non-Cherokee on Cherokee land take an oath of allegance to the state of Georgia.
The 160 acre thing was also a Georgia thing. In 1828, Georgia announced the annexation of Cherokee land, and that each Cherokee head of household was allowed 160 acres of (non-deed) land, and that the rest of the land be distributed by lottery to the white citizens of Georgia. The 160 acres given to the individual Cherokee by the land lottery law were, as I said, non-deeded, and title could be revoked by the legislature at any time. A law was also passed at that time saying that no one with indian blood could bring suit or testify against a white man. So those 160 acres really weren’t secure at all.
Im quite surprised to see Jefferson Davis on some peoples lists and even more surprised to see Robert E. Lee.
Is violence a correct response to succession? It seems to me if we are to blame someone for the civil war it should be Lincoln who apparently thought that the preservation of the union was more important than anything else, including freeing slaves and many peoples lives.
Robert E. Lee felt that he was defending his homeland (Virginia) and for part of the war did not go on the offensive because he though he could get away with just defending the south.
I meant secession not succession in case anyone was gonna get nitpicky.
Well, the South did fire the very first shot of the war.
As you put it yourself, Lee thought his “homeland” was Virginia, not America. Doesn’t that make him a bad American pretty much by definition?
The first shots were fired by South Carolina forces at Fort Sumter, not by any under Lincoln’s command. Could you kindly clarify why you think *he *started the war?
And, in hindsight, it was more important, and not for America alone. One of the things Lincoln was fighting for was to make sure that “government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this Earth.” It was far from clear at that time that democracy was destined to be the way of the future; there were few republics in the world, fewer still actually deserving of the name, and some states where republican government had been tried and had not lasted. If the American experiment failed through secession after a mere eight decades (and an independent Confederacy would not have been a democracy in any meaningful sense even for its whites, of that you may be sure), what would the world think of democracy, but that is was something doomed always to self-destruct?
No, Cap, upon further review, it was actually part of the Treaty of New Echota: