| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
18 May 2006 05:11:38 AM |
| Object: |
OT: An American idea shatters |
An American idea shatters
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1777104,00.html
The reawakening of a virulent nationalism is tearing apart Bush's
conservative coalition
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday May 18, 2006
The Guardian
President Bush's nationally televised address on immigration on Monday
night was intended as a grand gesture to revive his collapsing
presidency, but instead he has plunged the Republicans into a political
centrifuge, breaking the party down into its raw elements, whose
collisions are triggering explosions of unexpected and ever greater
magnitude.
The nativist Republican base is at the throat of the business
community. The Republican House of Representatives, in the grip of the
far right, is at war with the Republican Senate. The evangelical
religious right is paralysed while the Catholic church is a mobilising
force behind demonstrations by Hispanic immigrants. Every effort Bush
makes to hold a nonexistent Republican centre generates an opposing
effect within his party.
Nationalism
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/37c000c6962672d9
.
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: OT: An American idea shatters |
19 May 2006 09:00:11 PM |
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On 18 May 2006 03:11:38 -0700, "maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote in
alt.atheism
An American idea shatters
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1777104,00.html
The reawakening of a virulent nationalism is tearing apart Bush's
conservative coalition
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday May 18, 2006
The Guardian
President Bush's nationally televised address on immigration on Monday
night was intended as a grand gesture to revive his collapsing
presidency, but instead he has plunged the Republicans into a political
centrifuge, breaking the party down into its raw elements, whose
collisions are triggering explosions of unexpected and ever greater
magnitude.
The nativist Republican base is at the throat of the business
community. The Republican House of Representatives, in the grip of the
far right, is at war with the Republican Senate. The evangelical
religious right is paralysed while the Catholic church is a mobilising
force behind demonstrations by Hispanic immigrants. Every effort Bush
makes to hold a nonexistent Republican centre generates an opposing
effect within his party.
Bush's victory in 2004 depended on the management of highly volatile
constituencies: the religious right was shepherded by referendums
against gay marriage; the abortion issue was used to elevate Catholic
conservatives and isolate progressive-minded bishops; nativists were
captivated by hosts of enemies in the whirlwind of September 11.
Bush's political handlers were determined to suppress immigration as an
issue. Hispanics made up 14% of the population in 2004, and Bush's
ability to capture Catholic and Hispanic voters was one of the decisive
factors in winning a second term. However, as Bush's neoconservative
foreign policy has been discredited, a virulent form of isolationist
nationalism has filled the vacuum. Bush conflated the fears arising from
September 11 with Iraq, but the fear of the other is now being directed
at immigrants - a nativist tradition that goes back to the Know-Nothing
party of the 1850s and the Ku Klux Klan.
The house has approved a bill that would make it a felony to hire or
help undocumented workers. On the right this is considered a
precondition for the deportation of more than 11 million such workers,
and anything short of this solution is branded a treasonous "amnesty".
Bush's modest proposal to allow undocumented workers to stay and
eventually be granted citizenship has incited contempt on the right. His
dispatch of thousands of troops to the border with Mexico was derided as
a "Band Aid" by California's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Meanwhile, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has identified the
church as the moral guardian of immigrants and the proponent of social
services and citizenship. Last month, when the Family Research Council,
a prominent religious-right group, tried to summon support for the house
bill, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference warned it
would break away, and the religious right was stymied.
The Republican party as a whole is repeating the self-destruction of the
California Republican party. In 1994 the governor, Pete Wilson,
advocated proposition 187, which threatened to deny social services,
healthcare and education to undocumented workers, and it aroused the
Hispanic sleeping giant. From that moment California became one of the
safest Democratic states, and only an anomaly like Schwarzenegger, an
immigrant, could emerge as a viable statewide candidate. Ronald Reagan's
party is a thing of the past.
The delicate coalition Bush put together in 2004 is shattered. And in
losing control of the immigration debate he has lost something more -
the capacity to speak for the American idea. In 1938 Franklin Roosevelt
confidently spoke to the nativist Daughters of the American Revolution.
"Remember, remember always," he said, "that all of us, and you and I
especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists."
· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is
the author of The Clinton Wars
/end
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
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| User: "wbarwell" |
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| Title: Re: OT: An American idea shatters |
18 May 2006 06:47:28 AM |
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maff wrote:
An American idea shatters
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1777104,00.html
The reawakening of a virulent nationalism is tearing apart Bush's
conservative coalition
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday May 18, 2006
The Guardian
President Bush's nationally televised address on immigration on Monday
night was intended as a grand gesture to revive his collapsing
presidency, but instead he has plunged the Republicans into a political
centrifuge, breaking the party down into its raw elements, whose
collisions are triggering explosions of unexpected and ever greater
magnitude.
The nativist Republican base is at the throat of the business
community. The Republican House of Representatives, in the grip of the
far right, is at war with the Republican Senate. The evangelical
religious right is paralysed while the Catholic church is a mobilising
force behind demonstrations by Hispanic immigrants. Every effort Bush
makes to hold a nonexistent Republican centre generates an opposing
effect within his party.
Nationalism
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/37c000c6962672d9
Bwahahahahahahhahahahah!
--
Asked to explain, Eichmann said, "My fellow officers
and I coined our own name for our language. We called
it amtssprache -- 'office talk.'" In office talk "you deny
responsibility for your actions. So if anybody says, 'Why
did you do it?' you say, 'I had to.' 'Why did you have to?'
'Superiors' orders. Company policy. It's the law.'"
Cheerful Charlie
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