Roger64

Mansfield's statement on the power of the presidency is simply the most honest and direct statement of a theory of government we have seen before. The model is not so much Machiavelli’s _The Prince_ as it is Thomas Hobbes' _Leviathan_, or Edmund _Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution_. This is not American conservatism, but old fashioned, European, pre French revolution, defense of aristocracy, conservatism. It can be called fascism, but the motivation for that was very different. The Germans called this theory of government Das Furherprinzip.

...and some of our founders called it, far from pejoratively, the "natural aristocracy". At the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton advocated life terms for presidents. As Treasury secretary - and recognized leader of the the nascent Federalist faction - he attempted to pay off the new republic's war debts on the backs of farmers with his notorious whisky tax, thus attempting to move upward what little wealth the new republic had into the hands of speculators. John Adams thought the president should have "the title of majesty." He thought the title of "highness" not "high enough." By 1790, he was advocating another Con Con "for the express purpose of electing a hereditary president." About this time he wrote Benjamin Rush to assert that "Americans are particularly unfit for any Republic but the Aristo-Democratical-Monarchy."

These New World monarchists have a long and venerable history. Why else would those K Street lawyers call their club "The Federalists"? Hmmm?

Forgive me if someone has already cited this telling anecdote about Bush's attitude about Constitutional law; I fast forwarded from page 19 to here.

Surely noone has forgotten Bush's memorable quote in 2005 during a discussion regarding renewal of the Patriot Act:

"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper."

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2005/091205pieceofpaper.htm

Real men don't read the Constitution, or evidently much of anything else, as Hume's Ghost has pointed out.

Southern culture didn't come "from England"

had_enough says, "These dumb mofos came over with us from England." Just for the record, what we think of as Southern culture is (as I understand it) largely a product of Scotch-Irish immigration. Its epicenter was therefore Northern Ireland, which also has some pretty violent, backwards mofos (although none I've met personally; I've been there several times and thought it was a perfectly lovely place).

Yes, but earlier, beginning in 1642, Royalist from Southern England began to settle in Virginia. The wave peaked during the 1650s when Cavalier refugees came during the puritan ascendancy.

It was later, from the early eighteenth century, through to the onset of the Revolutionary War, that migration began from the English-Scotland borderlands, Northern Ireland, and the Scottish lowlands. They settled in the back country of Appalachia. Many from a warrior culture, they formed the buffer on the colonies' frontier.

They refused to sign any nuclear treaties for years and then went off and created their own atomic program success in 1960. They pulled out of NATO and left everyone else on the hook for that. They hung on to Algeria to the cost of a 100,000 dead and Indochina to twice that. The history Former French Africa, with the exception of Cote d'Ivoire is nearly as bloody and bleak as that of the Belgians. Plus they so hated the Germans they effectively cornered into starting WW1 that their punishments at the Treaty of Versailles lead directly to the rise of Nazism. Ok they're wonderful and we suck. Gotcha.

This is pretty much true, but so is Mahar's schtik; however, his is also delightful political satire.

you said:

Obviously this is not a point against the speech, but an excuse for the Administration's belief in WMD. I don't recall actually hearing that any weapons inspectors had made this claim. Specifically Scott Ritter is on record many times as saying unequivocally that that our case was fiction.

I recall that of all the information I was getting at the time that raised doubts about this administration's assertions about WMD in Saddam's Iraq, Ritter's article in the New Yorker was the most compelling.

That "everyone" - including those in the top tiers of government - believed there were WMD is a canard that should be soundly refuted once and for all. All those people demonstrating against invading Iraq in the run up and sporting "No War" bumper stickers and lawn signs certainly didn't believe the conflations and lies either.

you have redeemed yourself from Paglia.

I realized what has been troubling me about these guys: all of them have dressed themselves in a contrived persona as the uber-conservative of the party. Consequently they all come off as caricatures of both themselves and conservatism.

If any one of them is actually articulate, informed, rational, and intelligent, there is no way of discerning that.

in Detroit, so it's not competitively priced. We take the Dish satellite basic package. Yes, most of the programs are crap; after all, it's TV.

What we do get worth that's worth watching, along with better reception than from an antenna:

-C-Span and C-Span2, but, alas, not c-Span3

-Above all, the independent, progressive channels Link and Free Speech TV. They aren't available anywhere else and alone are worth the price.

-The Documentary channel, and CNN only when there is some exclusive of interest such as the debates this week, which were almost as entertaining as Stewart. Oh yeah, we watch John, too.

All the rest is garbage.