Here.
Midwest progressives with Northeast affiliations are simply no substitute for grounded centrist Southerners that are confident enough in their "fiscal responsibility" bona fides not to get brow-beaten by conservative and libertarian politicos. Do I really have to wait until 2016 for Mark Warner's presidential campaign???
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Bill Clinton isn't running for office. Ex-Presidents get to mouth off a lot with few consequences beyond a small media scrum.
ReplyDeleteNow this is out and out bullshit:
"This idea that the government is the source of all America's problems would strike the Founding Fathers as passing strange..."
With regard to Hamiltonians/Federalists he'd be right; but with regards to many republicans he's absolutely wrong. I wouldn't turn to Bill Clinton for any history lessons.
It always strikes me funny when politicians try to create some usuable history for their current cause. Clinton could not be more wrong and it would be nice if someone were to apply a bullshit alert to his claim.
ReplyDelete^LIKE^ & ^^LIKE^^
ReplyDeleteGary is on a roll.
It doesn't matter what the "Founders" think.
ReplyDeleteDammit people, they had to ratify what they had written down through the general public. It was not the Founder's vision, but other people's visions. The Founders had to conform to other people's ideas. It was about what other people at the time wanted.
Much the same way, it's about what you have to make do with your own place and time, not what any authority on what is right or wrong wants. If United States were to be reconstituted, under the same procedures that occured at its first constitution, would the result be the same Constitution? Would the public ratify the same document? Hell no, it wouldn't.
Gary, no. Just no. Jefferson and the republicans recognized plenty of problems outside of government. Don't be ridiculous. Clinton's claim here if anything is so obvious it's meaningless. Government is not the source of all of our problems? Who DOESN'T think that. Take a breath and count to ten before commenting and think about it. Don't you even think that? Certainly you have problems that have nothing at all to do with government.
ReplyDeleteSubhi - don't encourage him!
Now, can we get off of Gary's belligerent tangents and talk - perhaps - about the article.
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteYou're wrong; very many republicans thought that the sole role of the federal government was to occasionally field a army in times and trouble as a means to get the mail across the various states. If you read on in Clinton's statement he talks about "effective government"; to a radical Republican that would read the same as what the Hamiltonians called it - an "active government."
Prateek Sanjay,
Like it or not, the Constitution and what the ratifiers and founders thought has been the way Americans have dealt with issues like this since the early 1800s.