[lit-ideas] Re: Exodus
- From: Harold Hungerford <hh@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2004 23:39:42 -0700
Well, he thanked me for the clarity of my argument. The
characterization of Bush-Cheney was his; he had no intention of voting
for them, but was looking for affirmative arguments why he should vote
for Kerry instead of just against Bush.
in response to Yost, by the bye, I think this is another case of
spreading FUD. The fact that a task is hard doesn't mean we shouldn't
work at it, even if our goals are not perfectly realized -- as
President Roosevelt, supremely pragmatic, well knew. Half a loaf is
better than none, especially if we continue to go after the other half.
That doesn't satisfy perfectionists or FUD-ers. So what?
(Sorry about all those d--d =20 end-of-line markers. I edited them out
in this response.)
Hal
On Jul 4, 2004, at 11:18 PM, John McCreery wrote:
Good stuff, Harold. Any feedback from your friend?
John McCreery
On 2004/07/05, at 14:21, Harold Hungerford wrote:
> I wrote this today, to a friend who has been a lifelong conservative.
> It seems appropriate to the Fourth, so I submit it to this list.
>
> You were asking why people should support Kerry, as against being
> opposed to the duplicitous and incompetent Bush and Cheney. I support
> him because I think he will support the Bill of Rights and also
> President Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights far more than Bush-Cheney.
> It is easy to get hung up on details and fail to look at the broad
> picture. Kerry comes MUCH closer to giving Americans what FDR
> offered. It does not hurt that he is a decorated veteran -- as against
> the draft evaders in the Bush coterie.
>
> I turned 21 in 1952. My parents were Republicans; I remember wearing a
> Willkie button in 1940 and a Dewey button in 1944 and 1948. We were
> quite comfortably affluent throughout the Depression and, by and
> large, the war. But by 1950 I was a Democrat, in part because of
> Nixon's savaging of Helen Gahagan Douglas, in part because of Joseph
> McCarthy, but mostly because I had come to accept the basic tenets of
> the New Deal as I finally began to mingle with the unprivileged. I
> voted for Adlai Stevenson in 1952 because I thought, like Eleanor
> Roosevelt, that he would come closest to carrying on FDR's heritage. I
> have voted in every presidential election since then. I have never
> voted for a Republican presidential candidate because I knew that they
> would actively or passively seek to destroy that heritage, as Reagan
> and the Bushes have manifestly done.
>
> Here's a link to FDR's Second Bill of Rights:
>
> The Economic Bill of Rights
>
> Excerpt from 11 January 1944 message to Congress on the State of the
> Union
>
> <http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/econrights/fdr-econbill.html>
>
> I think, by the way, that Dahl (below) may be thinking of our rigid
> separation of the executive from the legislative, and perhaps also of
> the two-party system.
>
> Harold Hungerford
>
> On Jul 4, 2004, at 7:53 PM, Veronica Caley wrote:
>
> One of the things I find remarkable about this site is that they admit
> that they have the Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court. So
> much for checks and balances. And still, they can't manage to create
> a dictatorship.
>
> I just read a fascinating book called, "How Democratic is the American
> Constitution?" This book was written by a political scientist named
> Robert A. Dahl from Yale. He says that not one democratic country in
> the world has copied the American model.
>
> Veronica
>
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