There is a strange irony in the name "progressive," for the progressives' "living constitution," in replacing enumerated powers and the sovereignty of the people with the unlimited sovereignty of government, resembles the British constitution we rejected over two centuries ago. The next historic act in America’s constitutional drama is to recover the Founders' Constitution.
A few years ago Martin Peretz wrote in The New Republic that “It is liberalism that is now bookless and dying. . . Ask yourself: Who is a truly influential liberal mind [on par with Niebuhr] in our culture? Whose ideas challenge and whose ideals inspire? Whose books and articles are read and passed around? There’s no one, really.” Michael Tomasky echoed this point in The American Prospect: “I’ve long had the sense, and it’s only grown since I’ve moved to Washington, that conservatives talk more about philosophy, while liberals talk more about strategy; also, that liberals generally, and young liberals in particular, are somewhat less conversant in their creed’s history and urtexts than their conservative counterparts are.”
While there is something to this lament, it seems slightly overstated. Even leaving aside the popularity of fevered figures such as Noam Chomsky, one can point to a number of serious thinkers on the Left such as Michael Walzer, or John Rawls and his acolytes, or Rawls’ thoughtful critics on the Left such as Michael Sandel. However, the high degree of abstraction of these thinkers—their palpable distance from the real political and cultural debates of our time—is a reflection of the attenuation of contemporary liberalism.
“The founders of our country were great men with a vision,” Justice Ginsburg said. “They were held back from realizing their idea by the times in which they lived.
But, she added, their notion was that society would evolve and that the clauses of the Constitution would grow with society.
“The Constitution would always be in tune with society that the law is meant to serve.”
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
McCarthy said he had the names of 57 communists or communist sympathizers working in the State Department who needed to be investigated. Separately, he cited a 1946 letter from former Secretary of State James Byrnes to Congress stating that there were 205 known security risks still working there.
His point, misconstrued by Democrats at the time and since, was not to accuse specific individuals, but rather to indict the Democrats for turning a blind eye to ridiculous security risks in important government jobs, even after Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Alger Hiss. (Sorry, Nation magazine, they’re still guilty.)
McCarthy gave his Wheeling, W.Va., speech two weeks after Secretary of State Dean Acheson had defended celebrity communist spy Hiss on Jan. 25, 1950 — the day of Hiss’ criminal conviction for denying under oath that he was a Soviet spy.
Even after Whittaker Chambers had produced documents proving that Hiss was working for the Soviet Union while advising President Roosevelt, the Democrats were still defending a traitor. Chambers said of Acheson’s disgusting defense of Hiss, “You will look in vain in history for anything comparable to it.”
2. The facts that every Romney-Ryan supporter needs to memorize and repeat at every opportunity: The Ryan budget spends just as much on Medicare as the Obama budget. The Ryan budget keeps traditional Fee For Service Medicare for those who want that option. The Ryan budget also allows future seniors to have choices of other plans that might offer the same or better service at a lower price. The Obama budget just cuts Medicare spending centrally and leaves future working-class and middle-class seniors with no realistic options other than just taking what the centralized rationing board chooses to give them (or not give them as the case may be.)
3. And something else that can’t be repeated enough: It isn’t just that the Obama budget raises taxes. The Obama budget raises taxes and cuts Medicare. And it isn’t just that the Obama budget raises taxes and cuts Medicare. It is that the Obama budget raises taxes, cuts Medicare and still leaves us on the path to national bankruptcy. This isn’t a bad starting place for Romney-Ryan.
You know what will kill Medicare as we know it? Medicare as we know it.
But America is more than just a place...it's an idea. It's the only country founded on an idea. Our rights come from nature and God, not government. We promise equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.
This idea is founded on the principles of liberty, freedom, free enterprise, self-determination and government by consent of the governed.
This idea is under assault. So, we have a critical decision to make as a nation.We are on an unsustainable path that is robbing America of our freedom and security. It doesn't have to be this way.
The commitment Mitt Romney and I make to you is this:
We won't duck the tough issues...we will lead!
We won't blame others...we will take responsibility!
We won't replace our founding principles...we will reapply them!
CHICAGO—With campaign rhetoric becoming increasingly heated and both presidential nominees releasing more attack ads, a new 30-second spot from the Obama campaign this week accuses his opponent Mitt Romney of committing the 1996 murder of 6-year-old beauty pageant queen JonBenét Ramsey.
Titled “He Did It,” the advertisement asks if anyone can truly remember where Romney was the night of the child’s murder, and whether the U.S. populace wants a president capable of strangling a little girl and dumping her body in her parents’ basement.
President Obama appears at the end of the advertisement to approve the message.
“I think this is a fair ad, and I think Mitt Romney owes an explanation to the American people as to why he murdered JonBenét Ramsey,” said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, who called the commercial’s black-and-white reenactment of Mitt Romney carrying a kicking and screaming child to her death “accurate.” “Ultimately, voters need to know who they’re getting with Mitt Romney: a job- and child-killing businessman who is so deceitful he won’t release his tax returns or admit to a senseless murder that shook the nation to its core.”
Scheduled to run in multiple swing states, with significant airtime in Ramsey’s home state of Colorado, the ad criticizes Romney not just for killing the prepubescent girl, but for going to extreme lengths to cover it up. It also states that Mitt Romney paid former school teacher John Mark Karr to falsely come forward as the murderer, and accuses the former Massachusetts governor of being a sex offender.
Over a silhouette of Romney walking away from the Ramsey mansion—blood dripping from his hands—the commercial’s narrator asks, “If Mitt Romney kept the murder of JonBenét a secret from the American people, what else is he hiding?”
Moreover, at the end of the spot a smiling Romney is seen at a campaign event saying, “I killed her, and I had a good time.” Sources from the Romney campaign were quick to announce that the audio and video had been cobbled together from different statements he made during that particular rally.
“Personally, if I killed JonBenét Ramsey, I would have come clean and told the American people that on day one,” Obama’s communication director David Axelrod said on Sunday’s installment of Meet The Press. “But I think that’s a key difference between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Barack Obama never murdered a child, and Mitt Romney did.”
According to sources at Obama’s Chicago headquarters, the “He Did It” commercial is just the first in a new series of attack ads that accuses Romney of drowning actress Natalie Wood in 1981, convincing cult leader David Koresh to burn down the Branch Davidian ranch in Waco, TX, and causing the Challenger disaster.
“I think these ads will end up being very effective,” former Bill Clinton campaign strategist Dick Morris said. “If you are an undecided voter and you are constantly seeing images of Mitt Romney standing over a child’s lifeless body, or, as in the case of the ‘Zodiac’ spot, shooting two high schoolers at point blank range on their first date, that’s a pretty persuasive image right there.”
Added Morris, “This ad very effectively reminds us that no child murderer has ever been elected into the White House.”
Though the Obama campaign has denied it, many Beltway observers have said the advertisements are retaliation for the Romney camp’s highly controversial ad, “Boom,” which accuses the president of being the fertilizer bomb that destroyed an Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.
