Joe, I admire your optimism. Many disaffected “dead hedgehogs and cats’ eyes” (I’m an Englishman) thought Kier Starmer was the sensible centrist who made the Labour Party electable and gave him an electoral landslide. He ran as a centrist but the minute he got power he has reverted to form. Do you really believe VP Harris won’t follow the same form book?
Yes, primarily because she won’t have anything like the legislative majority that Starmer has. Both the House and Senate will have, at best, tiny Democratic majorities. In the case of the Senate , VP Walz may wind up breaking as many ties as Kamala did. And the hard progressives are currently a touch chastised. It is actually staggering toward a nice era of centerism and sanity if everything goes right.
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing else to lose” … we have a choice; a government that will have ‘ordered freedom” parceling out ‘freedoms’- a large government at that. Or a small government that where it’s citizen’s will willing limit their freedoms for the safety and prosperity of society. You know the government of, by, and for the people.
Could I make a point which is tangential to the main argument in this column? There is nothing contradictory in Trump's opposition to a congressional ban on abortion and his appointment of Justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. I, for one, agree that this is not a constitutional issue.
Abortion was well on its way to being settled legislatively by the mid-1970's. First trimester abortion was legal in states covering half the country's population. I believe the legislative process would have come up with a stable resolution of the issue long before now if the Roe decision in 1974 (?) had not brought an end to it. Why?
The rest of the modern world managed to settle the issue legislatively without the issue dominating political debate to a degree far exceeding its importance in the scheme of things. Abortion before 14 or 15 weeks is legal everywhere. No other country found it necessary to make it a constitutional issue.
Do liberals understand that the Roe decision ushered in years of conservative revival? Do they understand that returning the issue to the legislative process is one of the best issues they have going?
You're absolutely right. And I've always been in favor of a legislative solution...but Trump was bragging about getting rid of abortion and now he's backtracking as fast as he can. But, again, you're right. It was a sloppy sentence.
Until the late ‘60s, it was legal in the State of Massachusetts to shoot a Rhode Islander on sight on Mondays. Apparently, in colonial times, Rhode Islanders were coming across the border and undermining the carefully constructed price controls they had imposed - and Monday was market day. I like the idea of some Rhode lslander setting up a booth next to some Masshole, undercutting his chicken sales and yelling at him “What’re you gonna do, shoot me?” And the General Court passed a law to allow him to do exactly that. The law stayed on the books, long forgotten, until a lawyer used it to help a Mafia hit man beat the rap (history has its uses, kids!) at which point it was quickly rescinded.
Our New England forefathers had a very specific view of liberty that did not include freedom of religion, feeedom of speech or freedom for natives to stay on their homelands. Which doesn’t make them terrible people, just men of their time. In general, it seems to me that “liberty” has the more troubling track record - its most famous usage (“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”) was written by a bunch of slaveholders - and the Revolution that followed ours, that also had “liberte” as a central concept, had a few, shall we say, excesses. “Freedom” on the other hand, a word more rooted in the abolitionist and civil rights movement, has a somewhat cleaner record. It may well be “just another word for nothin’ left to lose” but that’s the way I’m leaning forty years after 1984.
Joe, I admire your optimism. Many disaffected “dead hedgehogs and cats’ eyes” (I’m an Englishman) thought Kier Starmer was the sensible centrist who made the Labour Party electable and gave him an electoral landslide. He ran as a centrist but the minute he got power he has reverted to form. Do you really believe VP Harris won’t follow the same form book?
Yes, primarily because she won’t have anything like the legislative majority that Starmer has. Both the House and Senate will have, at best, tiny Democratic majorities. In the case of the Senate , VP Walz may wind up breaking as many ties as Kamala did. And the hard progressives are currently a touch chastised. It is actually staggering toward a nice era of centerism and sanity if everything goes right.
Can I officially join the Dead Armadillo wing?
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing else to lose” … we have a choice; a government that will have ‘ordered freedom” parceling out ‘freedoms’- a large government at that. Or a small government that where it’s citizen’s will willing limit their freedoms for the safety and prosperity of society. You know the government of, by, and for the people.
Could I make a point which is tangential to the main argument in this column? There is nothing contradictory in Trump's opposition to a congressional ban on abortion and his appointment of Justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. I, for one, agree that this is not a constitutional issue.
Abortion was well on its way to being settled legislatively by the mid-1970's. First trimester abortion was legal in states covering half the country's population. I believe the legislative process would have come up with a stable resolution of the issue long before now if the Roe decision in 1974 (?) had not brought an end to it. Why?
The rest of the modern world managed to settle the issue legislatively without the issue dominating political debate to a degree far exceeding its importance in the scheme of things. Abortion before 14 or 15 weeks is legal everywhere. No other country found it necessary to make it a constitutional issue.
Do liberals understand that the Roe decision ushered in years of conservative revival? Do they understand that returning the issue to the legislative process is one of the best issues they have going?
You're absolutely right. And I've always been in favor of a legislative solution...but Trump was bragging about getting rid of abortion and now he's backtracking as fast as he can. But, again, you're right. It was a sloppy sentence.
Until the late ‘60s, it was legal in the State of Massachusetts to shoot a Rhode Islander on sight on Mondays. Apparently, in colonial times, Rhode Islanders were coming across the border and undermining the carefully constructed price controls they had imposed - and Monday was market day. I like the idea of some Rhode lslander setting up a booth next to some Masshole, undercutting his chicken sales and yelling at him “What’re you gonna do, shoot me?” And the General Court passed a law to allow him to do exactly that. The law stayed on the books, long forgotten, until a lawyer used it to help a Mafia hit man beat the rap (history has its uses, kids!) at which point it was quickly rescinded.
Our New England forefathers had a very specific view of liberty that did not include freedom of religion, feeedom of speech or freedom for natives to stay on their homelands. Which doesn’t make them terrible people, just men of their time. In general, it seems to me that “liberty” has the more troubling track record - its most famous usage (“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”) was written by a bunch of slaveholders - and the Revolution that followed ours, that also had “liberte” as a central concept, had a few, shall we say, excesses. “Freedom” on the other hand, a word more rooted in the abolitionist and civil rights movement, has a somewhat cleaner record. It may well be “just another word for nothin’ left to lose” but that’s the way I’m leaning forty years after 1984.