What do Conservatives have to offer America?

He was not a Washington, Jefferson, Adams, or Franklin. Not even close. He was a writer.

Samuel Adams was a key figure in the revolution, like Paine. Neither were Founding Fathers.

 

History doesn't agree with your opinion.

 

Excellent post.

It is obvious that Texas Republican, like most right wingers on this forum, does not know his history. The fact that Thomas Paine was one of our Founding Fathers - and indeed, among the most influential of them - is a truth that cannot be disputed. Previously, I have posted links to this Agrarian Justice which clearly and unequivocally show his essential role in the establishment of our economic system. The fact that Tex Rep has ignored this post (like others which prove every stand I take on this forum) proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is he who is deficient in the understanding of USA politics and history.

Happens all the time - Small wonder why we patriots always defeat right wingers in PF debates.

 

I am not an historian.
But google makes it sooooo easy to see who is telling the truth and who is posting tRUMPisms(BS).
Yet, they still believe their fake posts mean something.

 

... in your opinion.

Paine had nothing to do with the founding of the government. He was not an elected representative, and had no input in the writing of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.

 

Republican Government is no other than government established and conducted for the interest of the public, as well individually as collectively.

Thomas Paine: Rights of Man, 1792
http://foundingfatherquotes.com/founding_fathers/Thomas_Paine

Has nothing to do with my opinion. It's written into history.

Who said anything about founding gov't? We're talking about founding the country. The Revolution from Britain.

 

and if the Founders had not fought that Revolution (bearing in mind that Paine's writings were used for recruitment) there would not have been a Constitutional Convention, the Constitution, and the USA


this is Texas Republican third strike - three strikes and yerrrr OUT !!!

 

With tRUMPers, all one has to do is show links, facts, and history to prove them wrong.
Yet, they will continue on fakeness.

 

That's not a belief you've examined in any depth.

Thanks for making it plain that everything that follows is sure to be an idiot's delight.

 

So ... as usual, this thread wanders down various sidepaths.

'Mr Truth': supposedly a leftwinger, but .. believes the Jews of Wall Street financed the Bolshevik Revolution!!! Ye Gods!!! Usually this insanity has only rightwingers in its grip as we can see from a couple of posters in this forum. But the virus has jumped species! Assuming the leftwinger it has infected is really such.

YGuy: well, what can you say? Religion doesn't necessarily make you stupid and inarticulate, but it doesn't help you either. I hope someone besides he and me has read our exchange about Soviet influence in the US -- it's actually a serious topic.

Various: Thomas Paine as 'Founding Father'. Depends on what you mean by a 'Founding Father' (or should we say 'Founding Genderless Parent-person'? Actually, in a few more years the very idea of a 'parent' will be under attack as insufferable authoritarian domination.)

He was not in the actual political-military leadership of the Revolution, but he was part of the collective of Enlightenment thinkers who, in various ways, led this profound world-historical movement. As a propagandist, first rate. And I'm using 'propaganda' in the highest, complimentary sense: he gave ordinary people an explanation of what was happening and why it was worth their risking their lives in the struggle. He explained why it was not just this particular monarchy, who had indeed behaved stupidly towards its colonies, but any monarchy whatsoever, which needed to be overturned.

Today there are those -- mainly on the Left -- who denigrate the American Revolution as no revolution at all, just a struggle of one group of rich land- and slave-owners to get out from under the control of another. But Paine understood the importance of this struggle, regardless of the motivations of this or that leader. He knew that it was not just a geographic rebellion, but part of the advance of The Age of Reason. His view is honored on every one-dollar bill, with the slogan that explains what those men did: they founded a Novus Ordo Seclorum: a New Order of the Ages. The 'shot heard round the world' ... which still reverberates.

And he didn't have a material stake in the outcome. On the other hand, he was off on one particular wing of the thinkers who founded the Republic, the most 'radical' wing. Lots of people subsequently wished that he hadn't been involved. I think Theodore Roosevelt called him a 'dirty little atheist'. And even that kooky Christian pseudo-historian who tries to show that the Founders were all Bible-bashers talking to Jesus couldn't squeeze Tom Paine into the pews. A thoroughly admirable man. There ought to be public schools named after him in every city.

As to whether there is racial discrimination in America today -- as proven by some obscure coach's stupid statement about Black football players. Well, of course there is!!!! My friends, in every single polity on this sad planet, where there differences -- of race, religion, sex, age, hair-color, whatever -- there are people who 'discriminate' in various unfair ways against 'the other'.

In Kenya, if you're of the wrong tribe after an election, you can be pulled off a mini-bus and hacked to death by machetes. All available for your viewing pleasure on YouTube. (Well, okay, machetes don't kill people, machete-wielders do.) I could easily write another five thousand words, going from one country to another, showing the atrocious things that happen to minorities in other countries -- I mean outright lethal violence not stupid comments. (I could, but, despite the undoubted desire of many people that I do so, I will refrain.)

In America, if you're a Jew, or a Catholic [Oh yes -- I can find you ultra-Protestants in the Deep South and perhaps elsewhere who are very alert to the Romans among us. Not seventy years ago, we had a liberal writing American Freedom and Catholic Power. causing some wag to say that 'anti-Catholicism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals'. Don't think these views have vanished. (And like all negative feelings of one group toward another, there is always one or two grains of truth to sustain them.)]

Anti-Semitism in America? Sure, according to the last Pew Report I read on the subject, about ten percent of the American white population has anti-semitic atttiudes, although we're well outnumbered by Blacks, a full 35% of whom harbored such feelings. Louis Farakhan is open about it, and Al Sharpton has to struggle to keep his anti-Semitism from being expressed too often.

But what you have to ask is, apart from occasional hurt feelings, are the real problems of Blacks today caused by white racists? I'm talking about the Blacks who have real problems, not the football millionaires and actors and TV commentators, the Black middle class kids admitted on affirmative action to the best universities, etc etc. Are the young Black males in South Chicago who kill each other by the dozen every weekend, responding to white racism? Get real! If you're a member of a minority group, thank your lucky stars, or Zeus, or Allah, or Seth, that you live in America.

 

Likewise, if Hillary was the dems best, who is left? I don't see anyone in the democrat party that is moderate enough for my vote. I will never vote for a socialist, far left progressive!

 

Jim Webb?

 

That's one way of looking at it. Here's another: it takes some intelligence to realize that a wall of text inspired by nothing more intelligent than casual contempt for the Creator of the Universe isn't worth a second glance.

 

I understand the emotional comfort that clinging to a non-existent supernatural creature provides. And I understand the added benefit that it brings the person who does this: he need not read anything, or think about anything. Back to the flat-screen!

But this is a site for debate. Which means you need to bring something to the table besides a few prejudices and ridiculous conspiracy theories. This sort of thinking kept mankind in the caves. But critical thinking and science are taking us to the stars. No doubt a few people will be left behind mumbling over their holy beads and sacrificing goats to the local rain-god.

I hope some Lefties are reading this and get curious about the CPUSA and its role in the government, McCarthyism, etc. Over the last thirty years or so a myth has grown up among the Left, assiduously promoted by some academics, that the CP was just a collection of nice innocent liberals fighting for unemployment insurance and other good things. The same sort of falsehood is also being taught about the Black Panther Party. This view is just as wrong as the crazy Bircher view that the conquest of academia by leftists was all part of a satanic KGB plot. It's worth arguing about ... but, of course, only with people who can read.

 

You would do better to reflect on the comfort provided by debating caricatures of your own invention as a means of avoiding the risks that accompany talking straight across to the person you are putatively addressing.

 

I've given you some arguments. You don't want to reply to them. Fair enough, it's a free country.

Here's what you, and all of us, should think about, however.

Truth is a fragile thing, because it doesn't always make us happy. Some people on the Left are, at the moment, engaged in a hysterical attack on Brett Kavanagh, not because of something he may -- just possibly, although probably not -- have done 30 years ago as a teenager, but because he is a conservative. They were perfectly happy with Bill Clinton, but strain at the gnat of Brett Kavanagh. They care nothing for truth, unless it serves their political ends. For the people with the suddenly-recovered memories, the ends justifies the means.

Now consider the argument that the Leftist domination of American academia, and those areas influenced by it, is because of a KGB/Soviet plot. This assertion is either true or false. It's not 'true' because it might be convenient for conservatives to believe it's true. You've got to have some evidence -- even if the evidence is, "There can't be any other possible explanation", which is all that most people I've come across, who believe this, can provide. [There is more to the argument, as I indicated in a previous post, but most people who believe this stuff don't know about it. They're of the same mentality as the John Birch Society people who believe Eisenhower was a Communist.]

I claim this is not true, and that it's wrong for conservatives to argue that it is true when it's not. It degrades consciousness, it accustoms people to a very bad method of arguing politics. Another minor disadvantage is that it makes conservatives look paranoid and stupid to any intelligent person. It comes out of the same garbage pail the Left is now rummaging around in to prevent a principled conservative from becoming a Supreme Court judge.

If you, or anyone else, has any evidence, or any rational argument, that shows that the KGB, or the Soviets in general, did something to decisively, successfully, influence American academia, then put it forward and it can be discussed. Leave the unsupported accusations to the Left.

 

The author never wanted a real conversation to begin with, and is now making that even plainer by not using the quote function.

 

Here ya go:

So go ahead. Give us some evidence of "the efforts of the USSR to demoralize America through propaganda, pursued by Stalin and his successors".
But some friendly advice: stick to wooly generalities about the supernatural beings you think exist, and don't get involved in arguments about things you know zero about.