The Federalist: David Corbin & Matt Parks: What Should a Do Something Congress Do

Source:The New Democrat

In an era where the American people were actually crying out for something different and real that could bring the country together that was facing the most difficult economic and financial challenges since the Great Depression and I'm thinking of 2008/09, President Barack Obama gives us essentially a political slogan which is "Hope and Change". What is that other than what those two words mean even when you put them together, Hope and Change. What are we hoping for and what do we want to change from and what do we want to be instead.

Whatever you think of the New Deal from Franklin Roosevelt, or Fair Deal with Harry Truman, or Camelot with Jack Kennedy, or the Great Society with Lyndon Johnson, or the Reagan Revolution, these were all real agendas. With real policies, policy initiatives and policy goals designed to take the country in a certain direction for the good of the country. And a big problem that I've had with Barack Obama as President is that even though he's had real policy initiatives and goals and has wanted to move the country in a new direction, he's lacked the vision to move the country behind that agenda and support him.

You can make all the complaints about Congressional Republicans that you want especially in the Senate about blocking President Obama's agenda. But they haven't paid much of a political price for their obstructionism because except for President Obama's reelection as President he hasn't been able to bring Independents who may be politically more incline to vote for Democrats behind him. Because the President and other Democrats haven't communicated very effectively reasons to get behind President Obama and Congressional Democrats.

Where is and what is President Obama's agenda and policies when it comes to all the challenges that the country faces on a whole range of issues? I could probably give you a pretty good idea issue by issue, but I couldn't tell what that agenda is called because it doesn't have a name. Because even as political slogans might sound cheesy or like political gamesmanship today with how simplistic and even superficial American voters can be when it comes to choosing who to vote for and voting a lot of times for candidates and incumbents based on personality, political slogans can be very helpful in bringing voters behind you.

I don't believe even President Obama even knows what his political agenda is, or can at least tell you in a few words and make it clear for everyone. He instead goes issue by issue which I guess has its own effectiveness when he's successful. But he's gone from Hope and Change to at best Practical Progressivism (my words) which is not exactly and attention grabber for non-hard core political junkies and not something that expires Independents behind you.

CSPAN: Brian Lamb Interviewing Cal Thomas: Contemporary America: Condemning Culture, Media & Modern America

Source:The New Democrat

Cal Thomas standing up for traditional Anglo-Saxon America when Anglo-Saxons and to me that is people of British descent were essentially running the country both culturally and politically. People on the religious and cultural right in America who tend to be of Anglo-Saxon descent, but not all of them and Protestant as well essentially believe that America has been going down hill since the Baby Boomers came of age in the 1960s.

Pre-1960s America was a collectivist country culturally as far as how Americans tended to live. Dad worked, Mom stayed at home and essentially raised the kids, but not as a single mom because Dad paid the bills and saw his kids early in the morning, at night and on the weekends. African-Americans were second-class citizens and essentially around to serve Caucasian-Americans. Gays were locked in the closet and boys were raised to be live this way. And girls were raised to serve their men.

That all changed in the 1960s with the Baby Boom Generation and the hippy movement where millions of Americans figured out that they didn't have to live in the social and cultural box that their parents and grandparents created for them. And decided that is not how they wanted to live and rebelled and set out to live their own lives the way they wanted to. And the traditional values coalition paint back to the 1960s as the time when America started going downhill. And elements of the Tea Party has been trying to take America back to the 1950s ever since culturally and even though law.

Richard Nixon Foundation: President Richard Nixon's Farewell Address to White House Staff

Source:The New Democrat

This was the one thing that was missing from Richard Nixon's career that I believe could've made his career even better and more successful. And he did by most standards had a very successful career in public service even with the way it ended. Especially considering where he came from and how far he went and how much he accomplished. But I believe the one thing that was missing about his career was candor about himself and letting people into the personal world of Richard Nixon.

I believe he had two great lines from this speech that were lessons and advice that he gave the American people based on his own personal experience. "You'll never know what it is like to be on the highest mountain until you've been in the deepest valley". Meaning you'll never know what it is like on top until you've been at the bottom. Because success isn't given to anyone and before you achieve success there are certain steps you have to take first and even failures so you know how to improve and get to the top.

The other great line I believe from President Nixon's speech is. "Don't ever get discouraged and ever be petty. Because others may hate you, but they only win when you hate them and then you destroy yourself". Meaning people may hate or seriously dislike you, but that shouldn't bother you as long as you are doing your best and are a good person. So what if some schmuck hates you especially if you are a good productive person. What the hell they know and they may hate you for being what they are not which is a decent productive successful person.

The main problem that Dick Nixon had that I believed destroyed what otherwise would've been a great presidency what that he didn't live the advice that he gave at his farewell address. He didn't take his own advice and let people who did hate him and he had perhaps more than his share of haters from his days in Congress to being Vice President of the United States and out of office all together from 1961-69 and he let those haters destroy him by feeling the need and urge to destroy them even by using illegal means. And it cost him his presidency.

Kyungho Dean: Edward R. Murrow vs. Joe McCarthy

Source:Kyungho Dean- CBS News anchor Edward R. Murrow, I'm guessing with his son.

Source:The New Democrat 

"In 1958, Edward R. Murrow stated, "Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live."

Next year, Mr. Murrow's speech will "celebrate" its 50th anniversay...

The citizens in our free countries (I'm Canadian) are in such desperate-desperate need for Edward R Murrows. Not just on television, or in national printed media --but even at the smallest of local levels.

Yes, Washington and Ottawa affairs are important. But the day-to-dayness that most affects people's lives play themselves out at the local, municipal level.

I reached the sad and unavoidable conclusion that some of our "city halls" are dominated and run by a Corporate Repressive Evil Empire Power Structure.

I despair that I'm just not smart enough, tenacious enough, courageous enough to right the problem. I realize it isn't me whose most affected since I'm part of the comfortable class.

I despair though at the statistics of "The Others"

"Harvest of Shame" aired just after Thanksgiving 1960. The Dec. 5, 1960.

It was a documentary on the grinding poverty of migrant workers in Florida. 

Edward R Murrow made these closing remarks:

"The migrants have no lobby. Only an enlightened, aroused and perhaps angered public opinion can do anything about the migrants. The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruit and vegetables. They do not have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe we do. Good night, and good luck."

It isn't just migrants who have no lobby. Our working minimum-wage poor neighbours living right here in our own municipalities "do not have the strength to influence legislation." Or do not speak sufficient English.

From Kyungho Dean

To quote Edward R. Murrow: "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty." Which pretty much sums up the difference between people who believe in free speech and fascists. "We cannot defend freedom abroad when we are making it weaker at home". Going to other countries to defend freedom and American values as we are crushing those values at home for the American people. That is what this debate in the early and mid 1950s was about.

Ed Murrow and his nightly newscast See it Now and their investigation into Senator Joe McCarthy's committee hearings about supposed Communists inside of the U.S. Government put CBS News on the map as far as TV in this country. And probably led to the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite that eventually became a half-hour show. Because Murrow and See it Now took down a movement that was trying to destroy free speech and assembly for the rest of the country. Which is what Joe McCarthy and his supporters were about.

Dennis Prager: 'Why America is in Jeopardy'

Source:The New Democrat

Oh man Dennis Prager, well at least he is provocative and keeps bloggers in business. And I must say that I respect him in the sense that he tells you what he believes and I really believe he means well. Just like he says that "Liberals are good people to and that he just disagrees with them". I believe Conservatives or in Mr. Prager's case Neoconservatives generally speaking are good people to. I just tend to disagree with them, but Bill Buckley and Barry Goldwater are two of my favorite people and I'm a Liberal myself.

"America is not in jeopardy" as Dennis put it because we are becoming less religious. The real and I mean real threats in all due respect to Dennis have to do with a sluggish economy that is not growing fast enough and producing enough high quality jobs that keep people off of public assistance. And with the crazy world that we live in all sorts of terrorists that would want to hurt us. And perhaps the rise of Russia in Europe and Eurasia as well. But not because fewer Americans go to church every week, or even believe in God.

But if you look at what are called the moral indicators that give us an idea how the country is behaving so to speak and how we are treating each other we are doing very well. Crime is down which is really the main thing you want to focus on when it comes to morality how people actually treat each other. Instead of how we live our own personal lives. The religious-right may hate hearing this, but we live in a constitutional liberal democracy with basic individual rights that include personal freedom and privacy.

Morality is not how whether you believe in God or not. As both a Liberal an Agnostic I find the notion that you have to be religious and believe in God to be moral, offensive. Morality is not about how you live your own personal life. Whether you live with your boyfriend or girlfriend before you are married or not. Or have sex before marriage. Or date a person of the same gender. Morality is about how we treat each other as people and how we live up to our own personal responsibilities. Especially as it relates to our family and friends, but people we work with and are associated with.

I know for a fact that religion has been a huge factor and benefit for millions of Americans. I respect that and I do even as someone who has spent less than a handful of days in any house of worship period in my life. But you don't need to be religious to be moral. You need to be raised well and educated well, loved by the people you depend on growing up and later in life. As well as healthy sense for yourself and intelligence and conscience that stops you from doing bad things to innocent people. And treating people with the respect that they deserve.

Arthur Brooks: A Conservative Vision For Social Justice

Source:The New Democrat

I'm trying to think of a conservative vision for social justice and it's hard. Because it almost sounds like creating an Oxymoron. And what I mean by that is that social justice or economic justice tend to be socialist terms. It's Social Democrats running for office in this country and in other countries who say "I'm fighting for social justice"! Which is something that frankly makes Conservatives or people who are supposed to pass as today's Conservatives (which is different) want to puke. Because when they hear social justice people in the Tea Party and Libertarians talk about social justice they automatically think that is wealth redistribution.

But just to take the conservative vision of social justice seriously for a minute for the purpose of this blog (if nothing else) I guess Newt Gingrich would be the best spokesperson for it because it was something that he was truly interested in at least when he was Speaker of the House and throughout his congressional career. And something he talked a lot about post-Congress and when he ran for President in 20011-12. The 1996 Welfare to Work Act was an example of that where they took the best of liberal and conservative ideas to empower people on Welfare to get off of Welfare into the workforce.

Speaker Gingrich when he ran for President was constantly talking about what government of all things could do to empower people on Welfare and Unemployment Insurance to get themselves the skills so they can get themselves a good job. He was constantly talking about the amount of time that someone on Unemployment Insurance spends that they could use that time to get degree at a community college or a bachelors degree. Instead of trying to look for a job with the current skills that they have.

I mean if you are truly Conservative who believes in social justice that is empowering people at the bottom so they are no longer on the bottom and trapped in poverty, (and I'm trying to say this without laughing at least based on the Tea Party and libertarian-right) then you believe government has some role here unless you are simply only interested in wrecking the safety net in America. And that role from a conservative perspective is about using market values in government to empower people to be able to make it on their own. Getting good skills to pay the bills to use a pop culture analogy.

That instead of saying that "the problem is the rich are too rich, or just rich period and what government should do is take most of their money to take care of everyone else". Which is basically the socialist, or social democratic vision of social justice that "we as Conservatives should instead say wealth and work is a good thing in America and good thing about our system. And that these things should be encouraged not discouraged and that the problem is not that we have rich people or too many. But not enough and what we need to do as a country with government playing a role, but not the only role is to empower people at the bottom and near-bottom to become successful and even rich on their own."

Townhall: Terry Jeffrey: 'Pat Buchanan Chronicles the 1960s: The Greatest Comeback'

Source:The New Democrat

When it comes to Richard Nixon's political career at least pre-White House I'm mostly interested in his career from 1961 after he just left the Vice Presidency after losing the 1960 presidential election to Senator Jack Kennedy. Up until January of 1969 when he's sworn as the 37th President of the United States. Because during this period Dick Nixon is completely out of public office either as a politician or as a public official in any office for the first time since January, 1947 when he gets sworn in as an elected U.S. Representative in the House of Representatives.

This was a very rough, but very productive time for Dick Nixon post 1962 California governor's race debacle where he lost to California Governor Pat Brown in a major landslide. So Nixon was at a point where he didn't know what to do with the rest of life. He got addicted to politics and public office his six years in Congress both in the House and Senate. And was a very hardworking and productive Vice President for President Dwight Eisenhower. And which Jack Kennedy still President going into 1963 it looked like JFK would get elected with huge Democratic majorities in Congress once again in 1964.

So what was Dick Nixon to do a man who loved political and public affairs and serving in government. What he did seeing that it would be at least a while before he would have another real shot at the presidency 1968 at the earliest. And that might of depended on who the Democratic nominee might be that year, he decided to make a lot of money as a corporate lawyer in New York. Defending and representing companies across the country and become a party man inside of the Republican Party in his spare time.

And when he wasn't doing those things he was studying current affairs inside of the United States and challenges that the country was facing and would be facing. Especially when it came to foreign policy and sort of did what would be called a world tour and meeting foreign leaders all over the world. So when he decided to run for public office again especially for president that he would be completely ready for it.

There was a PBS 1990 film from their American Experience series that chronicles all of these changes in Dick Nixon's life. That I highly suggest and a clip of that is on this post. And it shows exactly how he came back and all of the Congressional Republicans he helped out and backed in the 1966 mid-terms when House and Senate Republicans made big comebacks and the same thing in 1968 when they picked up a lot of seats again with Dick Nixon winning back the White House for the Republicans.