FLASHBACK 2004: NEWSMAX:"Ned Lamont uses it in his Connecticut Senate race. President Clinton is scheduled to speak on the idea in Washington this week. Bob Casey Jr., Pennsylvania candidate for Senate, put it in the title of his talk at The Catholic University of America - then repeated the phrase 29 times. The term is "common good," and it's catching on as a way to describe liberal values and reach religious voters who rejected Democrats in the 2004 election. "It's a core value that we think organizes the entire political agenda for progressives," said John Halpin, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress."What would Hitler have to say about that? We don't need to guess. The term can be translated into German as "Gemeinnutz" and that lovable German-speaking rogue used the term a lot -- as encapsulating what HE stood for: "Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz!" was one of his great slogans ("Common use before personal use!", literally). And who preceded Hitler in such ideas? Friedrich Engels (Karl Marx's co-author) at one stage ran a publication called Gemeinnuetziges Wochenblatt ("Common-use Weekly"). The Democrats sure make it clear where they fit into history. [Umph added.]
Sen. Clinton exposed her socialist agenda during a speech Monday in San Francisco (which the Associated Press dubbed the "leftiest big city on the Left Coast"). But don't take our word for it. We'll go straight to the horse's mouth. "Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you. We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you," she said at a fund-raiser for radical Sen. Barbara Boxer. "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good," the former first lady admitted.Conservatives - and libertarians - think YOU know what is good for YOU, and the State should BUTT OUT! Or, as Reagan always used to say, "You know how to spend your money better than the government knows how to spend YOUR money." And the Bush tax cuts - just like the Reagan tax cuts before them - proved that this moral good is also good for the economy.
Let's NOT turn back the clock by electing Democrat majorities in Congress. GET OUT AND VOTE GOP! But if you WANT to pay more taxes, and if you want to abandon the Iraqis and the Afghanis to al Qaeda, and if you want to treat Israel worse and Hamas and Hizballah better, and if you want to have a higher risk of another 9/11 here - by rolling back the Patriot Act and by curtailing the NSA intercept program,... THEN BY ALL MEANS....VOTE DEMOCRAT!
Thanks for posting Hillary's very telling comment. She reveals the psychology of the left. If you examine her statement, she threatens real people with really confiscating their real money, on behalf of an abstraction. "We're going to take away from you" WE -- the statist nomenklatura -- are going to TAKE away from YOU -- the productive members of society -- for the "common good" -- an elastic abstraction, a portmanteau concept that can be filled up with whatever corrupt filth the bureaucratic elite decide is the po-mo multi-culti order of the day. Hillary's revealing ejaculation shows that the emotional thrill of leftism is not in the altruistic dispensation of beneficence to the impoverished masses, but in the TAKING, the grasping TAKING away from others.
ReplyDeletewell said
ReplyDeleteHere is the quotation from Jefferson's First Inaugural Address.
ReplyDelete"During the contest of opinion through which we have passed, the animation of discussion and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good."
That's the only time he used the phrase in the speech.
You will note that the emphasis is entirely different --in fact the opposite-- of the way Hillary and the current Democrats use the phrase "common good." Jefferson says that all Americans will now unite in common efforts for the common good.
In contrast, Hillary says WE are going to TAKE AWAY from YOU for the "common good." To Jefferson, the common good was a uniting concept, to Hillary it is a dividing concept.
The same is true of James Madison's use of the phrase in the Federalist Number 57, which you cite, and Federalist Number 10, as well. In number 10, he writes about the causes of "faction" which prevent people from uniting for their common good.
No, the Founding Fathers were not socialists at all. But you are right, the current crop of Democrats are socialists, and the socialism they seek to impose on America would have the same stultifying, impoverishing results here that bureaucratic, centralized, inefficient, corrupt socialism has everywhere.
I find it interesting that this line of discussion on "The Common Good" places Clinton into the light of a raging socialist who is trying to take money from the hands of hard working people.
ReplyDeleteThis, as recent political coverage has shown, illustrates the lack of depth that opponents to Democratic rhetoric have in judging anything that goes against the "what's mine is mine--I did it, so why can't you" course of logic.
If Clinton is the "socialist" as you say she was, why was she, then, the only one in the Democratic arena arguing for a stay of gasoline tax for the summer? Why do the polls that her campaign staff present routinely have her sited as the one democrat who polls best against the GOP candidate?
Now let me state that I am not for or against Clinton, but remain neutral throughout this election. However, I am a catholic Democrat, who falls into an ideology, and theology for that fact, which is strongly rooted in the "Common Good." I see myself first as a Catholic, and then as a Democrat, since religious belief transcends that of political fortitude, in so much as I will stop being an American citizen after I am pronounced dead, however my belief (as is that of a majority of Americans who identify themselves as christians) is that striving for a "Common Good" is not a will of government, but a will of humanity. It is, simply put, the thing that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom, who rely on that need for fulfillment of instinctive desires: that which feels good to me does not mean it is good for the whole, but that which might bring about discomfort to me verywell might be good for the whole.
A believer in this "Common Good," with the understanding that at times I might need to share or sacrifice--in order for others to succeed--allows me to find great joy in paying my taxes. As an American, until the day I die, I see my taxes as a due necessary for making this one of the greatest political systems that has existed in human history. Without paying these dues, I would have not been able to attend public school, both in primary and higher education; I would not have been able to get around via mass transit, since I am blind and unable to drive a car; and for those who can drive, they would have had a bumpy ride without paved roads and highways. I, also, would not be able to watch television for free, or at least without the interference of my neighbor trying to create his or her own low watt TV station that bled into my living room, because the government would not have regulated the airwaves, creating a crazed saturation of messages. Nor, could I watch my cable news channel, since my tax dollars helped lay the infrastructure for my local telecommunications lines. Now that I think of it, I wouldn't even have the Internet, if it wasn't for my taxes helping to fund the inception of this computer network that was based on the idea of the interstate system.
Indeed, the ideas that supporters of the "Common Good" (both on the Democrat and Republican sides) have are the same ideas that make America the great country it is. There is no greater patriotism, next to perhaps dying for your country, than paying your taxes. It's something we all can do, even those who can't vote. Voting simply is our way of determining who will decide what happens with the money we give to support our country. But one thing stands true: to ignore the "Common Good" would be to ignore that fundemental will of the people that has brought great progress to our country. A resident of manhattan, I've never walked down Wall street and been brought to teers. But each time I'm at the National Mall in D.C., or even a few blocks from Wall street at the World trade center, my eyes water up beside the memories of sacrifice that millions have made, in order for my life to be pretty darn good compared to that of most of the world.
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