{"id":511473,"date":"2010-04-03T23:05:49","date_gmt":"2010-04-04T03:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=76672"},"modified":"2010-04-03T23:05:49","modified_gmt":"2010-04-04T03:05:49","slug":"late-night-democracy-clearly-not-a-%e2%80%9cconservative%e2%80%9d-virtue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/511473","title":{"rendered":"Late Night: Democracy Clearly Not a \u201cConservative\u201d Virtue"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I have my issues with Obama & the Democratic Party, but the idea that the 2008 election was illegitimate is not one of them. Like it or not, Obama and the House and Senate Democrats won in ‘08, and that means that they get to run the country. It’s the system we have. This ought not to be a particularly difficult concept to grasp. Oh, hello, Mark Steyn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Ever since this health care “debate” got going, I’ve worried that American conservatives underestimate the ability of Big Government to transform the character of a people. After all, the Euro-weenies weren’t always Euro-weenies – else how would they have conquered the entire planet?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the good old days it was kicking the crap out of the coolies abroad and the yobbos at home. Now it’s all free healthcare! Boo! Violent assault upon the lesser races? Huzzah! Your own citizens going to the doctor? TYRANNY!<\/p>\n

Whatever. For what Steyn calls a cheerier take, though, there’s this<\/a>, from some make-pretend academic on the wingnut gravy train:<\/p>\n

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If the program passed in the House of Representatives on March 21st and signed into law thirty-six hours thereafter is fully implemented and left in place for any considerable length of time, it will complete the project begun by the Progressives when they first took control of the federal government in 1912. We will, as Mark argues, be indistinguishable from the Canadians and the Europeans; our character as a people will change; we will be transformed into subjects and wards of the state, and we will no longer be citizens; our economy will stagnate; and we will have neither the resolve nor the resources with which to defend our country and its way of life. If we acquiesce, we really are doomed.<\/p>\n

This is what gives me hope. For we are not yet a people apt to acquiesce in dictates handed down by our lords and masters. When Britain and Canada drifted into socialism, there were no tea parties spontaneously formed by ordinary citizens to buck the trend. The British and the Canadians lacked the spirit of resistance \u2013 though, to be fair, it lived on in the likes of Margaret Thatcher.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is horseshit for a number of reasons. For openers, for most of this past low dishonest decade (shit, century) it wasn’t exactly the progressives in charge, and if you don’t want to say the economy “stagnated,” that’s because you’re too polite to say it “got flushed down the shitter.” Beyond that, the country isn’t even run by progressives now<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But what kills me is the idea that Britain and Canada are the totalitarian hellscapes that they are today because of evil Usurpers. Uh, they got and keep better healthcare systems than ours because of democracy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Heck, I’m beginning to wonder if that’s what our “conservative” friends are really afraid of, with their hyperventilating over an impractically centrist healthcare reform. Could be!<\/p>\n

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I have my issues with Obama & the Democratic Party, but the idea that the 2008 election was illegitimate is not one of them. Like it or not, Obama and the House and Senate Democrats won in ‘08, and that means that they get to run the country. It’s the system we have. This ought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4364,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-511473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4364"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}