WHO ARE WE THEN, HILLARY?

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WHO ARE WE THEN, HILLARY?

Post by thelivyjr »

THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR FEBRUARY 26, 2017

Paul Plante: “WHO ARE WE THEN, HILLARY; The Candid world would really like to know!”


My goodness, people, if you are into drama that makes the TV drama “Game of Thrones” seem pedestrian by comparison, and hey, let us face, people, we’re all adults, afterall, we all are, what a time it is to be alive!

These times we are in right now, with earth-shaking events occurring pretty much 24/7 now with the cable news cycle, make the 60s look positively dull and boring by comparison, and so they should when you think about it, since that was in a whole different century, before RAP and HIP-HOP, when all there was, was the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean and Linda Ronstadt and surf’s up and the little old ladies of Pasadena ripping around all over town in Dodge Hemi-Chargers and all that kind of stuff that was popular back then, because, let’s face it again, people just did not know any better.

It took Duane Eddy and his rocking guitar to break us out of our funk back then and now, wow, the future is here, and what never-ending drama it has brought us.

People out in what used to be sunny California are getting drenched with sewage-laden floodwaters, which is pretty icky, when you think about it.

Texas, meanwhile, is getting overrun with feral hogs according to the CBS NEWS article “Fearing “feral hog apocalypse,” Texas approves drastic measures” on 22 February 2017 where Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller announced the “feral hog apocalypse” in Texas where an estimated 2.5 million feral hogs in Texas are doing untold damage to suburban yards, God forbid with the cost of good landscaping and lawn maintenance services in America today.

Meanwhile, Chicago is plagued by some kind of bugs in their subway system, and hang on to your hats, folks, for “Flip or Flop” reality TV star Christina El Moussa is back on the market, having split with contractor Gary Anderson, her boyfriend of several months.

And then reappearing after a long absence, Lindsey Lohan has found religion and as a consequence was mistaken in an English airport for a Muslim terrorist because she was wearing a headscarf and had just been in Turkey where she just had had an audience with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

And SNOOKY of “Jersey Shore” fame has gone completely off the radar and seems to be nowhere to be found.

And how about that Mariah Carey, people!

If you can believe it, she is still bitter about the way her 2017 kicked off with that disastrous New Year’s Eve performance in Times Square and as a result, according to cable news, she’s already parted ways with her longtime creative director, dancer and tour choreographer Anthony Burrell over the live disaster, and now the diva is blaming “everybody” from the production crew to the backup dancers in a new interview with Rolling Stone.

“It’s just something where if I can’t explain it to the entire world, then they’re not going to understand it, because it’s not what they do,” Carey said, “Just like I wouldn’t understand somebody who had a desk job and how to do that.”

“I couldn’t.”

“I literally am incapable of being in the real world and surviving.”

end quotes

And if that is not enough drama for you, people, we have America’s most favorite politician Hillary Rodham Clinton ✔ ‎@HillaryClinton, TWEETING her little heart out, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the…Congress,” at 3:54 PM on 22 Feb. 2017 while taunting Republicans on Twitter Wednesday for dodging town hall events amid the growing protests from liberal activists infuriated by President Trump’s agenda, according to an article in THE HILL entitled “Clinton taunts GOP lawmakers for dodging town halls” by Jonathan Easley on 22 February 2017 where we were informed as follows:

The former Democratic presidential nominee, who has kept a low profile since losing to Trump in the November election, linked to an editorial in the Kansas City Star called, “Cowardly members of Congress should show up and face the public at town hall meetings.”

end quotes

WAHOO, people, talk about tough talk, alright, that is showing them Republicans something, alright!

And that is after being quoted in an earlier article in THE HILL entitled “Clinton: ‘This is not who we are’” by Brooke Seipel on 29 January 2017, where we were told as follows:

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Saturday tweeted in support of numerous protests that sprang up Saturday over President Trump’s executive order banning many refugees and others from predominantly Muslim nations.

“I stand with the people gathered across the country tonight defending our values & our Constitution.”

“This is not who we are,” Clinton tweeted.

end quotes

And that brings us to the title of this thread above – if that is not who we are, and I am not even sure at this point as to exactly which “that” we are even talking about, then who are we instead?

Since it was such an important American political icon as Hillary Clinton who has posed that question to us, I think it is incumbent upon all of us here in the United States of America who take our citizenship responsibilities seriously to pause and reflect on that question for the moment, and since it was Hillary who brought that question up for us to have to ponder today, I thought it would be informative to go back to the 1960s, specifically, 1969, when I was off in VEET NAM fighting GLOBAL COMMIE-NISM to keep it from spreading over to here, and at the same time, Hillary Clinton was at Wellseley College giving a commencement address that went a long way towards defining who Hillary thought we were then, anyway, on the theory that if you don’t know where you started, any direction is as good as any other, since if you don’t know where you started, you don’t then know where you are, which seems to describe us in this country today.

As to that address, we were informed in the April 13, 2015 Counterpunch article “From Nixon Girl to Watergate – The Making of Hillary Clinton” by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair as follows:

What first set Hillary in the national spotlight was her commencement address at Wellesley, the first time any student had been given this opportunity.

Dean Acheson’s granddaughter insisted to the president of Wellesley that youth be given its say, and the president picked Hillary as youth’s tribune.

Her somewhat incoherent speech included some flicks at the official commencement speaker, Senator Edward Brooke, the black Massachusetts senator, for failing to mention the Civil Rights movement or the war.

Wellesley’s president, still fuming at this discourtesy, saw Hillary skinny-dipping in Lake Waban that evening and told a security guard to steal her clothes.

end quotes

Now, that is real drama, people!

As to Hillary’s political views back then, according to the Counterpunch article, while I was out near the Cambodian border in VEET NAM fighting off the Commie hoardes, the militant summer of 1969 saw Hillary cleaning fish in Valdez, Alaska, and in the fall she was at Yale being stalked by Bill Clinton in the library.

For Hillary, and this is back then, of course, when many of us still had an idea of who we were, especially those of us fighting off the Commies in VEET NAM to keep Hillary safe back here, the first real anti-war protests for Hillary at Yale came with the shooting of the students at Kent State, and this is of interest to us today, as we watch all these riots and demonstrations and mass shouting matches and group chanting that Hillary seems very much to be encouraging, back then Hillary saw the ensuing national student upheaval as a culpable failure to work within the system.

end quotes

Culpable failure to work within the system, people!

Said Hillary back then: “I advocated engagement, not disruption.”

But, of course, that was back then when we still knew who we were.

So really, people, who are we then today?

And more importantly, will Hillary ever deign to tell us?

Or will she leave us on our own to have to figure it out for ourselves?

Stay tuned!

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thelivyjr
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Re: WHO ARE WE THEN, HILLARY?

Post by thelivyjr »

THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR FEBRUARY 27, 2017 AT 12:43 AM

Paul Plante says:

So who really is Hillary Rodham Clinton to be telling us who we are, and who we aren’t, as if only she could know, and the rest of us could never know, this in the light of Hillary telling us in the article “Hillary Clinton rallies DNC members in video message” by Max Greenwood in THE HILL on 25 FEBRUARY 2017 as follows:

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Friday showered praise on the wave of protests sweeping the country and urged party faithful to set their sights on elections to come.

“After the primaries we came together as a party to write the most progressive platform in history,” she said in a video message posted on the Democratic Party’s Twitter account.

end quotes

I ask that question from the perspective of someone who is older than Hillary Clinton, and from the perspective of a grandfather with granddaughters – who is Hillary Clinton to be telling any of us what it means to be an American citizen?

How came she to be the only one in this country gifted with that special knowledge?

As we consider Hillary’s claims in The Hill about the 2016 Democrat Party Platform being the “most progressive platform in history,” and Hillary’s claims to “progressivism,” which is defined as a philosophy based on the idea of progress, which asserts that advancements in science, technology, economic development, and social organization are vital to improve the human condition, in the April 13, 2015 Counterpunch article “From Nixon Girl to Watergate – The Making of Hillary Clinton” by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, we are told as follows with respect to Hillary’s beginnings as a political and cultural icon in this country, to wit:

Hillary Clinton has always been an old-style Midwestern Republican in the Illinois style; one severely infected with Methodism, unlike the more populist variants from Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa.

Her first known political enterprise was in the 1960 presidential election, the squeaker where the state of Illinois notoriously put Kennedy over the top, courtesy of Mayor Daley, Sam Giancana and Judith Exner.

Hillary was a Nixon supporter.

end quotes

Having been around back then, I do not recall anyone ever pinning the label of “progressivism” on Richard Milhaus “TRICKY DICK” Nixon, but hey, a future American cultural and political icon has to start somewhere, and so that is where it was for our dear Hillary.

Moving forward in time as we continue to explore Hillary’s claim to “progressivism” and her claim to know who we are from who we are not, the Counterpunch article continues as follows:

Her public persona was that of a Goldwater Girl.

She battled for Goldwater through the 1964 debacle and arrived at Wellesley in the fall of 1965 with enough Goldwaterite ambition to become president of the Young Republicans as a freshman.

end quotes

As I remember it still, Barry Goldwater, Hillary’s chosen presidential candidate in 1964, scared the hell out of people in America back then; they thought he was a belligerent, bellicose “warhawk” extremist who was going to get us into a nu-q-lar war with the Soviet Union, just to see how big a bang a hydrogen bomb can really make.

For those who don’t remember the man or the times, the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign of 1964 began when United States Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona elected to seek the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States to challenge incumbent Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Early on, according to Wikipedia, before officially announcing his candidacy for the presidency, Goldwater was accused by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller of attempting to galvanize southern and western Republican support while neglecting the industrial northern states, eventually becoming one of Goldwater’s primary opponents in the race for the Republican Party’s nomination in 1964.

Following a battle with moderate and liberal Republicans in the Republican primary, such as Nelson Rockefeller and with moderate conservatives such as William Scranton among others, Goldwater won the party’s nomination for president.

From the beginning of his campaign, Goldwater fought an uphill battle to unseat an incumbent president under favorable economic circumstances, and he consistently refused to moderate his views, which may well have galvanized the support of Hillary Clinton, but which alienated a significant portion of the more moderate wing of the Republican party from his campaign, so that with the assistance of the media, who in large part also had an unfavorable opinion of Goldwater, President Johnson used this fissure in the party to portray him as an extremist.

In the general election, Goldwater lost in a landslide to Lyndon Johnson, carrying only six states to Johnson’s 44 and 38% of the popular vote to Johnson’s 61%.

While Hillary’s candidate Barry Goldwater enjoyed enthusiastic support from the conservative movement, he was opposed by liberals and moderates in the party, particularly New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who cast Goldwater as an opponent of civil rights and an isolationist that wanted to withdraw from the United Nations.

Goldwater was the perceived leader of a grassroots movement in the American southern, southwestern, and western states staged by the more conservative wing of the party, while Rockefeller, on the other hand, disagreed with most of the fiscal and social positions held by Goldwater, advocating a more progressive, mainstream approach to government for the Republican platform.

In July 1963, Rockefeller took aim at what he viewed as “extremist groups,” targeting Goldwater specifically, and Goldwater responded by accusing Rockefeller of blurring the line separating the Republican and Democratic parties.

In attacking Goldwater’s politics and advocating his own, more progressive agenda, Rockefeller said to voters “Americans will not and should not respond to a political creed that cherishes the past solely because it offers an excuse for shutting out the hard facts and difficult tasks of the present.”

With respect to Hillary’s claims today of “progressivism,” shortly after the assassination of President John Kennedy in November of 1963, an event I still remember quite well, Lyndon Johnson defined the goal of his administration as continuing those of the Kennedy administration in front of Congress, which included the proposal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Hillary’s candidate Goldwater supported civil rights to varying degrees, but opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, reasoning that it undermined the sovereignty of the states to govern themselves.

Goldwater’s opposition to federal civil rights legislation and advocacy for state sovereignty led to a rise in popularity in the southern states, support that would prove to be indispensable in both Goldwater’s pursuit of the Republican nomination and general election campaign.

On Friday, January 20, 1964, at the planned press conference from the patio of his home in Phoenix, Goldwater officially announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination for the office of President of the United States, justifying his candidacy by stating that he had “not heard from any announced Republican candidate a declaration of conscience or of political position that could possibly offer to the American people a clear choice in the next presidential election.”

With respect to who Hillary Clinton was back then, before she became the “progressive Democrat” she claims to be today, Barry Goldwater in 1964 emphasized the need for a federal government that is “limited and balanced and against the ever increasing concentrations of authority in Washington” that encourages personal responsibility among American citizens while pledging his candidacy to “victory for principle and to presenting an opportunity for the American people to choose.”

Goldwater promised “a choice, not an echo” in the election, and positioned himself to the right of Nelson Rockefeller.

Two days after the announcement, Goldwater appeared on Meet the Press, and afterwards, critics Rowland Evans and Robert Novak noted that even Goldwater supporters deemed the interview a “flop”.

After that, Goldwater left for New Hampshire, beginning a 19-day campaign swing, and at every stop, including his first major campaign speech at St. Anselm College, Goldwater criticized President Johnson for his liberal policies and expansion of the federal government, asserting that Johnson was trying to appeal to Washington insiders as a New Deal liberal, while hoping to present himself to the public as a conservative.

In early February, Goldwater embarked on a campaign tour of Minnesota and during a stop in Minneapolis, he leveled what the Associated Press labeled his “toughest campaign attack on Johnson’s foreign policy,” accusing the administration of failing in Vietnam and Panama and arguing that Johnson was “off making promises to buy votes at home while the world smolders and burns.”

Afterwards, Goldwater arrived in Chicago for a fundraiser and announced his support for a tougher blockade against Cuba, and he continued his dialogue on the Cold War during a stop in San Francisco, he argued that the U.S. had no policy on the issue.

He proposed an outline to maintain peace that included the encouragement of Communist “eviction from positions of control” in the world, and maintenance of American strength to keep the Soviet Union in check.

As the New Hampshire primary neared, Rockefeller began to attack Goldwater, claiming he supported a voluntary social security plan that would bankrupt the nation.

Voters grew wary of Goldwater’s stances on social security, Cuba, the military and the role of the Federal government, and as a result, the electorate sought out other candidates.

After his primary loss in New Hampshire, Goldwater focused his efforts on California, remarking that it was “the only primary [he was] interested in.”

Goldwater won the backing of the party at the convention, increasing the number of volunteers to his California campaign, so that Rockefeller was angered by the result and declared that the convention had been overrun by radicals.

At the end of March, Goldwater traveled to Detroit and continued to criticize defense secretary McNamara, calling him an “all-time loser.”

Ahead of the Illinois Primary, Goldwater traveled to Chicago and announced that he would change the campaign’s media policy to avoid overexposure to the press, which he believed was reporting negatively on his campaign.

With respect to scaring the hell out of people back then, at the end of May, at a rally planned at the Phoenix Municipal Stadium, Goldwater came under fire for mentioning that low grade Atomic bombs could be used to expose the supply of Communists in Vietnam.

Michigan Governor George W. Romney mustered a veiled attack on Goldwater, proposing to add an amendment to the Republican platform, excluding “extremists of the right” from the party.

Back then Lyndon Baines Johnson was known for his ability to manipulate the press in order to provide favorable coverage of his own campaign, so that Johnson, along with the media, portrayed Goldwater as a political extremist, with Johnson using Goldwater’s speeches to imply that Goldwater would willingly wage a nuclear war, quoting Goldwater: “by one impulse act you could press a button and wipe out 300 million people before sun down.”

While Johnson campaigned on a platform of limited involvement in Vietnam and continuation of funding for social programs, Goldwater called for substantial cuts in social programs, suggesting that Social Security become optional, and suggested the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam if necessary.

Goldwater believed that the Tennessee Valley Authority should be sold into the private sector, and on foreign policy, Goldwater’s beliefs differed sharply from those of his opponent, who advocated limited involvement in Vietnam, maintaining that he would not send “American boys nine or ten thousand miles from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

For his part, Goldwater then accused Johnson and the Democratic party of having given in on the issue of Communist aggression.

In reference to Goldwater’s policies regarding the use of nuclear weaponry, the Johnson campaign launched a television ad that would come to be known as the “daisy ad” in which a young girl pulls the petals off a flower until the screen is overtaken by an exploding mushroom cloud.

After Johnson accused Goldwater of being willing to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam after stating the United States should do whatever was necessary for victory, Goldwater clarified that he was not an outright advocate of using nuclear weapons there, bet despite that, the Johnson campaign continued to portray Goldwater as a warmonger.

According to Wikipedia, the negative media attention to the Goldwater campaign continued with the publication of an article by Fact Magazine in which the publication claimed to have sent questionnaires to 12,000 psychologists asking them to assess whether or not Goldwater “was psychologically fit to serve as president of the United States,” and among the 1,800 replies, there were claimed to be assessments by some psychologists classifying Goldwater as unfit for office, for which Goldwater was eventually compensated $75,000 in a libel suit after the election.

Throughout much of the campaign, Goldwater was on the defensive, using television commercials to respond to accusations from Johnson and clarify statements that he had made previously, and in turn, Goldwater attempted to launch a counterattack against Johnson via television, featuring a commercial showing Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev shouting “We will bury you!” over children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

In response to Goldwater’s attacks, Johnson began reversing Goldwater’s campaign slogan “In Your Heart You Know He’s Right” to slogans such as “In Your Head You Know He’s Wrong” and “In Your Guts You Know He’s Nuts.”

Johnson’s campaign also broadcast an advertisement, Confessions of a Republican, in which the actor William Bogert, a genuine Republican, expressed his concerns over Goldwater.

On October 27, actor Ronald Reagan, who had not yet entered politics, gave his official endorsement to Goldwater in what would come to be known as the “A Time for Choosing” speech, in the speech, emphasizing issues such as the spread of Communism, taxes and the national debt and advocating limited government, aggressive tactics against the Soviet Union and laissez-faire capitalism.

That speech was Reagan’s “unofficial entrance to politics” and played a crucial role in his election as Governor of California in 1966.

Throughout October, the media emphasized the lead Johnson had over Goldwater, stating that Goldwater had little chance of winning the election, which negative coverage of the campaign caused many independent voters, who were not strong supporters of either candidate, not to vote, for they believed the result of the election had been already determined.

On Election Day, Goldwater lost the election to Johnson by what was then the largest margin in history, with Goldwater accumulating 52 electoral votes to Johnson’s 486 and 38.5% of the popular vote (27,178,188) to Johnson’s 61.1% (43,129,566).

Goldwater’s strong showing in the south was largely due to his support of the white southern view on civil rights: that states should be able to control their own laws without federal intervention.

Goldwater lost the popular vote in both the male and female electorate with 40% and 38%, respectively.

Goldwater’s most narrow regional loss was in the South, with 48% of the popular vote, but he lost by greater margins in the East, Midwest and West with 32%, 39% and 40% of the popular vote, respectively.

Johnson was heavily favored over Goldwater among Catholics (76% to 24%), and by a smaller margin among Protestants (55% to 45%).

Goldwater lost the Independent vote to Johnson (56% to 44%).

Johnson won the white vote over Goldwater (59% to 41%) and was heavily favored by the nonwhite electorate (94% to 6%).

Goldwater lost the college-educated, high school-educated and grade school-educated population to Johnson (52% to 48%, 62% to 38% and 66% to 34%, respectively).

So there, people, is a capsule summary of Hillary Clinton’s entrance into the high-stakes world of American presidential politics, and an inauspicious entrance it certainly seemed to be, with our dear Hillary backing one of the biggest losers in American political history.

But our Hillary is a true political phoenix, rising again out of the ashes of her own political destruction, so stay tuned, people, and we shall see where Hillary goes next from here on her road to becoming the one person in America who knows who we are, and more importantly, who we are not, and thank you for your attention to this matter of interest and concern to us all in this nation today.

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Re: WHO ARE WE THEN, HILLARY?

Post by thelivyjr »

THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR FEBRUARY 27, 2017 AT 10:14 PM

Paul Plante says:

In terms of getting a sound political education for a future American political superstar with rock star appeal such as Hillary Clinton has, a political education aimed at helping Hillary gain freedom from what she called in her famous commencement address of 1969 the “burden of an inauthentic reality” that holds so many others here in the United States of America so firmly in its grip, being so heavily involved in the Goldwater campaign as a Goldwater Girl as Hillary was, was a veritable Ph.D. in how high-stakes presidential contests are really decided.

But for Hillary, and for the nation that loves her so, and cherishes her presence among us mere mortals, that was only the beginning, as we can see from this following from the April 13, 2015 Counterpunch article “From Nixon Girl to Watergate – The Making of Hillary Clinton” by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, to wit:

The setting of Hillary’s political compass came in the late Sixties.

The fraught year of 1968 saw the Goldwater girl getting a high-level internship in the House Republican Conference with Gerald Ford and Melvin Laird, without an ounce of the Goldwater libertarian pizzazz.

end quote

So, as of 1968, our precious Hillary was still a Republican.

Getting back to the Counterpunch article:

Hillary says the assassinations of King and Robert Kennedy, plus the war in Vietnam, hit her hard.

The impact was not of the intensity that prompted many of her generation to become radicals.

She left the suburb of Park Ridge and rushed to Miami to the Republican Convention where she fulfilled a lifelong dream of meeting Frank Sinatra and John Wayne and devoted her energies to saving the Party from her former icon, Nixon, by working for Nelson Rockefeller.

Nixon triumphed, and Hillary returned to Chicago in time for the Democratic Convention where she paid an afternoon’s visit to Grant Park.

By now a proclaimed supporter of Gene McCarthy, she was appalled, not by the spectacle of McCarthy’s young supporters being beaten senseless by Daley’s cops, but by the protesters’ tactics, which she concluded were not viable.

Like her future husband, Hillary was always concerned with maintaining viability within the system.

end quotes

In 1968, when Hillary, now a proclaimed supporter of Gene McCarthy, was appalled, not by the spectacle of McCarthy’s young supporters being beaten senseless by Daley’s cops, but by the protesters’ tactics, which she concluded were not viable, I was an enlistee in the United States Army in training to go to Viet Nam to keep Hillary safe from the RED MENACE and the falling dominoes, and to this day, I well remember seeing the spectacle from Mayor Daley’s Chicago of those protesters rioting in the streets being broadcast on the evening news on TV.

What a time in America that was, alright!

For those too young to have been around back then in what can rightly be considered Hillary Clinton’s political coming of age, where she went from being a Republican to being a Democrat literally overnight, the Eugene McCarthy presidential campaign of 1968 which drew in our Hillary as a fervid supporter was launched by Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota in the latter part of 1967 to vie for the 1968 Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States.

As Wikipedia informs us, and as I well remember it, having been there while it was all “going down,” the focus of McCarthy’s campaign was his support for a swift end to the Vietnam War through a withdrawal of American forces.

His campaign appealed to youths like Hillary Clinton who were tired of the establishment and dissatisfied with government.

Early on, McCarthy was vocal in his intent to unseat the incumbent Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, which is an interesting perspective, given Hillary Clinton’s switch from the Republican party to the Democrat party so that Hillary could be a McCarthy supporter, in that by being for McCarthy, Hillary in turn would have been against LBJ and his civil rights programs which Hillary claims to be a staunch champion of today, because it is politically expedient today for her to do so.

As history tells us, following McCarthy’s 42% showing in New Hampshire, Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.) entered the race, which then forced President Johnson to withdraw.

After Johnson’s withdrawal, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey then entered the contest but avoided the primaries, while Bobby Kennedy fought it out with McCarthy in the primaries, as Humphrey used favorite son stand-ins to help him win delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

Hillary’s support for McCarthy over Bobby Kennedy in that contest is of interest given that in Hillary Clinton’s speech to the American Legion touting “American Exceptionalism” on Sept. 1, 2016, Hillary told the American Legion members, of whom I am one, as follows:

If there’s one core belief that has guided and inspired me every step of the way, it is this.

The United States is an exceptional nation.

I believe we are still Lincoln’s last, best hope of Earth.

We’re still Reagan’s shining city on a hill.

We’re still Robert Kennedy’s great, unselfish, compassionate country.

end quotes

If in 2016, we were still Robert Kennedy’s great, unselfish, compassionate country, one has to wonder why Hillary did not support him for president in 1968, as opposed to Eugene McCarthy, but in any event, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, leaving Humphrey as McCarthy’s main challenger.

But as it was to be, Humphrey’s organization was simply too strong for McCarthy to overcome, despite the support of a political powerhouse like Hillary Clinton, and his anti-war campaign was split after the late entrance of Senator George McGovern of South Dakota just ahead of the Democratic National Convention.

Despite winning the popular vote, McCarthy lost to Humphrey at the convention amidst the protests and riots which Hillary Clinton concluded back then were simply not viable political tactics, if, like Hillary, one was always concerned with maintaining viability within “the system” that in our times today, Hillary Clinton has become such a symbol of, to the point of where people in this nation think Hillary should be president because she is entitled to be.

As to Eugene McCarthy, Hillary’s choice for United States president in 1968, he was first elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1948 as a member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party and he served five terms before winning a seat in the United States Senate in 1958.

As Wikipedia tells us, McCarthy’s speech at the 1960 Democratic National Convention in support of Adlai Stevenson placed him on the national stage and President Johnson considered selecting him as his running mate in 1964, but instead chose fellow Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota.

As was stated above, McCarthy vehemently opposed the Vietnam War, and months prior to his announcement, McCarthy hinted that he would challenge President Johnson for the Democratic nomination due to his contrasting views with the president on the Vietnam War.

The Americans for Democratic Action announced that they would support McCarthy’s campaign if he decided to run and Lyndon Johnson took these mentions seriously, privately confiding to Democratic congressional leaders that McCarthy could gain the support of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dr. Benjamin Spock, splintering the party.

McCarthy is said to have privately explained his intentions to Vice President Hubert Humphrey with whom he had served Minnesota in the Senate for nearly two decades, commenting that he did not believe he could win, but that he had “lost interest” in the Senate and felt “very strongly about the war,” believing that the best way to express himself was to “go on out and enter the primaries.”

In turn, Humphrey stated that McCarthy was “more vain and arrogant than his supporters wanted to admit.”

In an announcement those of us around back then still remember for its stirring and soaring rhetoric, McCarthy said:

“I run because this country is now involved in a deep crisis of leadership, a crisis of national purpose – and a crisis of American ideals.”

“It is time to substitute a leadership of hope for a leadership of fear.”

“This is not simply what I want, or what most of us want.”

“It is, I believe, the deepest hunger of the American soul.”

Citing the importance of preventing President Johnson’s nomination, and the continuation of the war in Vietnam, McCarthy entered his name into four Democratic presidential primaries on November 30, 1967, and upon his entrance, the Senator articulated that he believed there was a “deepening moral crisis” in America with the rejection of the political system by citizens, and a helplessness he hoped to alleviate as president.

A few days later, the Johnson administration made an announcement on the war in Vietnam that, according to McCarthy, was akin to an escalation which he believed would only strengthen his own campaign.

McCarthy began January by making no promises about a potential challenge of the president on the Florida primary ballot, but reaffirmed his goal to defeat the president in New Hampshire, and the next day, he appeared as the first guest of the half-hour ABC news series Issues and Answers, and discussed his views on pertinent campaign issues.

McCarthy claimed the North Vietnamese government was willing to negotiate, and that any further bombing should be halted to forge an end to the hostilities.

Later in the month, McCarthy delivered a speech in front of 6,500 students at University Park, Pennsylvania wherein he criticized the Johnson administration for being “afraid to negotiate” with the North Vietnamese.

Near the end of January, McCarthy campaigned in St. Louis, where he continued his anti-war rhetoric, describing the Vietnam War as against “American tradition” and declaring that “no nation has a right” to “destroy a nation” with the rationale of “nation building.”

Keep that thought in mind, people, as we consider the tragedy in Syria today and the role Hillary Clinton played in creating that huge humanitarian crisis in the name of “nation building.”

Getting back to McCarthy, he then discussed his support for normalized relations with Cuba, but after seven weeks of campaigning, McCarthy concluded that his speeches were coming across more as poetry than substantive campaign messages.

As he traveled through California, a stop in Stanford was greeted by newspaper headlines that asked the candidate whether he “wanted to make righteous speeches…or end the Viet Nam War.”

With respect to the continuing political education of Hillary Clinton and the power politics Hillary came to represent here in the United States of America in her most recent failed bid for the White House, as her then-candidate McCarthy planned to visit Miami, Florida, Democratic bigwigs decided to stage their own rally in the state, diversionary tactics that were used to take away attention from a McCarthy appearance when establishment Democrats scheduled a meeting of their own on the same days in Tallahassee.

The purpose of McCarthy’s visit was to campaign and begin discussion about the presidential nominating slate for the May 28 Florida primary.

During that trip, McCarthy discussed civil rights, remarking that “it would take 30 to 50 years of constant action and concern to carry out all promises to the emancipated Negro who has been treated as a colonial people in America.”

Following the speech, the Conference of Concerned Democrats unanimously decided to award him pledged delegates from the state of Florida.

The month of March kicked off with charges from the media that McCarthy’s campaign was just dragging along.

However, three precincts in Minnesota elected McCarthy supported delegates to caucuses, to the detriment of Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, and President Johnson decided to abandon Massachusetts, giving 72 delegates to McCarthy, who described the news as “encouraging.”

McCarthy spent a large amount of time campaigning in New Hampshire, hoping to improve his standing before the state’s critical primary, while that master politician President Johnson’s campaign circulated the slogan that “the communists in Vietnam are watching the New Hampshire primary…don’t vote for fuzzy thinking and surrender.”

Although opinion polls prior to the New Hampshire primary showed that McCarthy’s support stood at only 10 to 20 percent, he stunned spectators of the race by winning a surprising 42.2 percent of the vote to Johnson’s 49.4 percent, which media outlets described the results as a “moral victory” for McCarthy, which in turn influenced Robert Kennedy’s decision to enter the race on March 16.

Kennedy’s announcement did not affect McCarthy’s campaign and McCarthy remained committed to the “young people” like Hillary Clinton who had supported his campaign all along, remarking that he was “better qualified to run for the presidency” than Kennedy.

McCarthy set his sights on Wisconsin and began to prepare for the state’s April primary, running advertisements in newspapers throughout the state and including his platform wherein he called for “more federal aid for education,” collective bargaining rights for farmers, “a guaranteed minimum livable income for all Americans,” the construction of “at least one million new housing units each year, and more “federal funds to stop pollution.”

While in Wisconsin, he criticized the government of South Vietnam, saying that it would be “too kind” to label the entity as corrupt and a dictatorship, referring specifically to Nguyen Van Thieu who had been the Leadership Committee Chairman in Viet Nam between 1965-1967 and President of the Republic of Vietnam between 1967-1975, who in 1963 had joined a military coup to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem, who was assassinated in that U.S.-backed military coup.

As history informs us, during his years as president, Thieu was accused of indulging in corruption and his struggle for power with vice-president Nguyen Cao Ky led to the choosing of Thieu loyalists instead of decent commanders to lead the Army of Public of Vietnam (APVN) forces.

McCarthy traveled to Pennsylvania later in the month, to prepare for the state’s primary in late April and while there, he discussed North Korea’s seizing of the USS Pueblo, stating that the United States should “expect once in awhile to pay ransom…if you have ships adjacent to countries that don’t respect international law.”

The next month, McCarthy took advantage of Robert Kennedy’s decline in the polls, trailing the former frontrunner by two points for second place in the race behind Vice President Humphrey, and at the time, polls suggested that McCarthy was more likely than his Democratic rivals to defeat Republican frontrunner Richard Nixon in a head to head matchup, leading 40 to 37 percent in a Harris poll.

While campaigning in South Bend, Indiana prior to the state’s primary, McCarthy criticized the approach of his two closest Democratic rivals, stating that there were three kinds of national unity; Humphrey’s approach of “running things together indiscriminately,” Kennedy’s approach of a “combination of separate interests…or groups,” and his own approach of “calling upon everyone…to be as fully responsible as they can be,” which the candidate labeled as the approach for 1968.

Four days later, McCarthy received the most votes in Time Magazine’s national presidential primary, which poll counted votes of over 1 million students in more than 1,200 campuses.

McCarthy ended the month by defeating Kennedy in the Oregon primary by a margin of 45 to 39 percent, a victory which allowed the media to observe that McCarthy was “back in the race as a major contender,” and forced an attention shift to the looming primaries in South Dakota and California, scheduled for the next month.

McCarthy and Kennedy vigorously campaigned throughout California in the beginning of June, and the two candidates each appeared in televised forums, which McCarthy criticized for not being in a debate format.

Then on June 5, Robert Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles after winning both the California and South Dakota primaries and died the next day, shifting a large number of his delegates to Humphrey while popular opinion seemed to shift to McCarthy.

With the primaries wrapped up, McCarthy spent July attempting to woo uncommitted delegates and clarify his positions on the issues, continuing a strong anti-war sentiment and mentioning that he might travel to Paris, France to discuss peace with the North Vietnamese, which chief negotiators called a mistake, stating that the talks were too important “to interject partisan politics.”

After that, Hillary’s candidate McCarthy was cited by the emergency committee for gun control chair John Glenn as being one of five presidential candidates who endorsed the group’s movement to control firearms, with McCarthy arguing for a national registration of handguns, and the development of a system to sell mail order guns only to qualified individuals while also arguing that the sale of shotguns and rifles should be left to the discretion of individual states.

The following week, McCarthy proposed a “war on hunger” to help the millions of Americans he claimed were starving, commenting that “our first concern is the health of each hungry individual,” but the Department of Agriculture disputed his claims on the matter.

McCarthy challenged Humphrey to a series of debates on an assortment of issues, which the Vice-President accepted, but he in turn modified the proposal by requesting there be only one debate prior to the Democratic National Convention.

As the month ended, and with the Democratic Convention speedily approaching, McCarthy tried to change a few rules of the convention, focusing a great deal on “unit voting” rule, which gave party bosses more control, tactics which were meant to compensate for Humphrey’s delegate lead, and which were previously used by Dwight Eisenhower in his successful 1952 campaign, while battling Robert A. Taft for the Republican nomination.

McCarthy’s plan to gain more delegates was complicated when Senator George McGovern of South Dakota entered the race as the successor to the legacy of Robert Kennedy, an entrance which had the effect of splitting the anti-Humphrey vote.

With shades of the more recent Wasserman-Schultz scandal in the contest between Hillary and Bernie Sanders for the Democrat nomination in this last presidential race, back then, the McCarthy campaign alleged that Democratic National Chairman John Bailey was giving preferential treatment to Humphrey, to the detriment of McCarthy.

The McCarthy campaign, and presumably Hillary as one of his supporters, asked for the chairman’s resignation, but he rejected the claims and argued that the two candidates were receiving “exactly the same treatment in hotel space, amphitheatre space, telephone service, tickets, transportation and every other phase of convention activity.”

As the eve of the convention dawned, Humphrey appeared to hold a lead over McCarthy among the delegates with McGovern in a distant third, but with many delegates still uncommitted, the three men battled it out.

Meanwhile, on the streets of Chicago, anti-war protests raged as 6,000 federal troops and 18,000 Illinois National Guard defended the premises of the convention.

Humphrey won the nomination on the first ballot, despite the fact that McCarthy had won a plurality of the primary vote.

Riots intensified, and supporters of McCarthy urged the candidate to run a fourth party campaign against Nixon, Humphrey and George Wallace.

Announcing that he would not run such a campaign, McCarthy stepped down while denying an endorsement to Humphrey, and at the end of his campaign, McCarthy stated that he “set out to prove…that the people of this country could be educated and make a decent judgment…but evidently this is something the politicians were afraid to face up to.”

McCarthy’s refusal to endorse Humphrey wavered somewhat by October, as the former candidate laid out conditions for the Democratic nominee including a shift in his stance on the Vietnam War, a change of the military draft, and a reform of the Democratic machine politics, all of which were rejected by Humphrey, who responded that he was “not prone to start meeting conditions.”

Nixon, who Hillary had previously tried to keep out of the White House, after being for him before that, eventually won the election, and McCarthy received 20,721 write-in votes in California, and 2,751 in Arizona, where he was listed as the nominee of the anti-war New Party.

During the 1980s, McCarthy was a supporter of the Reagan administration.

So that, people, is another and further look at who Hillary Clinton was in 1968, a very pivotal year in American presidential politics.

From it, do we glean any insights into who Hillary Clinton really was herself?

Did she support Eugene McCarthy because she was passionate about his cause?

Or did she support Eugene McCarthy because she was passionate about her own cause, and McCarthy was just a stepping stone on Hillary’s own road to the Washington White House?

Stay tuned, more is yet to come!

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Re: WHO ARE WE THEN, HILLARY?

Post by thelivyjr »

THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 1, 2017 AT 7:02 PM

Paul Plante says:

And as we continue our search in here for clues as to what it is that we are not, at least according to Hillary Clinton, who has appointed herself the voice for all Americans when it comes to who we are and who we are not, what a year 1969 was to be, not only for Hillary Rodham Clinton, but for the United States of America, and the world itself, as well, what with Woodstock, and Country Joe and the Fish and their “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag (Take 1)” with its famous military recruitment message to the patriotic youth of America at that time, “Well, come on all of you big strong men, Uncle Sam needs your help again, yeah, he’s got himself in a terrible jam, way down yonder in Vietnam, so put down your books and pick up a gun, gonna have a whole lotta fun,” and who can forget the 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Z-28, and topping all of that off, up at the very pinnacle of earth-shaking events that year, was Hillary’s famous Wellesley College commencement speech, which speech made Hillary nationally famous as the orator and rhetorician on our times, bar none, as well as the American political icon and superstar politician that she is in our present age, and wherein she so passionately stated on behalf of the youth of America at that time the dreams of the youth of America at that time, as follows:

“We are, all of us, exploring a world that none of us even understands and attempting to create within that uncertainty.”

“But there are some things we feel, feelings that our prevailing, acquisitive, and competitive corporate life, including tragically the universities, is not the way of life for us.”

“We’re searching for more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating modes of living.”

“And so our questions, our questions about our institutions, about our colleges, about our churches, about our government continue.”

end quotes

Those words above about “searching for more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating modes of living,” and “our questions, our questions about our institutions, about our colleges, about our churches, about our government continue,” were uttered by Hillary Clinton, then just plain Hillary Rodham, before she formed her power duo with Bill Clinton, on May 31, 1969.

As to the immediate prelude to those times in 1969 which gave rise to all those questions Hillary and hers had about “our institutions, about our colleges, about our churches, about our government,” at p.37 of his excellent history “Dereliction of Duty – Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that led to Viet Nam,” H.R. McMaster captured them thusly:

Although U.S. advisors were fighting with South Vietnamese units and U.S. pilots were flying combat missions in South Vietnam, Kennedy denied that Americans were involved in combat, and Vietnam attracted little public or congressional attention.

Vietnam was far from front-page news and Americans still believed that their government told them the truth.

end quotes

Yes, people, that was true – there actually was a time in this country when Americans like me believed what is supposed to be our government told us the truth, but by 1969, we all know it lied, instead, and hence, the questions Hillary and hers had about “our institutions, about our colleges, about our churches, about our government” in 1969, and rightfully so.

As for me, about two weeks after Hillary made that earth-shaking speech of hers to the world, wherein she voiced these now famous lines, “Every protest, every dissent, whether it’s an individual academic paper or Founder’s parking lot demonstration, is unabashedly an attempt to forge an identity in this particular age,” and “that attempt at forging for many of us over the past four years has meant coming to terms with our humanness,” and “within the context of a society that we perceive—now we can talk about reality, and I would like to talk about reality sometime, authentic reality, inauthentic reality, and what we have to accept of what we see—but our perception of it is that it hovers often between the possibility of disaster and the potentiality for imaginatively responding to men’s needs,” on 13 June 1969, on the other side of the world, I was confronting authentic reality as opposed to inauthentic reality, as I got my second Purple Heart getting wounded in the face after flying into a firefight on a Huey helicopter to evacuate some wounded.

While Hillary and her crowd, and God bless them for it, as Americans they are entitled to it, were searching for more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating modes of living, as a combat infantryman in Viet Nam holding off the Commie hoardes over there so Hillary and her people could in fact search for more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating modes of living over here, over there, I was pretty much focused on simply staying alive, so I must confess I missed out completely on Hillary’s search for more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating modes of living, and I’ll probably always be a lesser person than Hillary because of that, but to my credit, I did at least take the mental time to meditate quite a bit while in Viet Nam on the absolutely surreal nature of hearing the Fifth Dimension singing about the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, “When the moon is in the Seventh House And Jupiter aligns with Mars Then peace will guide the planets And love will steer the stars,” when I was coming back from flying aerial sniper missions out near the Cambodian border, so my mind was not completely wasted, anyway.

Getting back to the pending unanswered question of who it is that we are not, and perhaps who we never have been in the first place outside of the fertile imagination of Hillary Clinton that wants an America that’s “hopeful, inclusive and big-hearted,” we need to search for those answers, if there even are any, against the backdrop of the turbulent 1960s, the time in America when Hillary Clinton politically came of age, a time in American where in 1968, on the streets of Chicago, anti-war protests raged as 6,000 federal troops and 18,000 Illinois National Guard defended the premises of the Democrat National Convention, which serves to define who we were, at least that once in our history as a nation.

Think about that, people – 6,000 federal troops on the streets of Chicago along with 18,000 Illinois National Guard to defend the premises of the Democrat National Convention in that city in 1968!

I was in the military then, and I can state that there were many discussions at that time as to what people would do if deployed to face down rioting Americans at a political convention such as was the case there in Chicago.

People in America today forget these things, or never knew they happened in the first place, and so they make a huge thing out of what is happening in America today, such as Trump’s travel ban, as if these things had never happened in America before, and up until Trump, all has been political peace and quiet in this country, which is a crock.

In that vein of who we were as a nation and a people back in Hillary’s formative years as the politician she has become today, the first time a friend of mine deployed on a combat mission with the 82d Airborne Division with live ammo and “shoot to kill” orders was in July of 1967 when he was sent, not to Viet Nam to fight the Commie hoardes who were trying to make the dominos fall, but to Detroit, Michigan, to put down what was then called a “civil disturbance”, or as the 1969 Wellesley commencement speaker who preceded Hillary that day, U.S. Sen. Edward Brooke, a Republican moderate and World War II combat veteran who was also the first African-American popularly elected to the United States Senate, was to call it, “coercive protest,” to wit:

“When all is said and done, (quoted in the Fitchburg Sentinel of June 2, 1969), I believe the overwhelming majority of Americans will stand firm on one principle: coercive protest is wrong, and one reason that it is wrong is that it is unnecessary.”

end quote

“Coercive protest,” people, keep those words from 1969 in mind today as you ponder the political demonstrations Hillary today is a champion of, where the goal is deny Republican members of Congress a voice in their own home districts, which in turn gives Hillary a platform to launch political attacks from, such as her recent link to an editorial in the Kansas City Star called, “Cowardly members of Congress should show up and face the public at town hall meetings.”

As to that 1967 Detroit “civil disturbance,” the result was 43 dead, 1,189 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed and the scale of the riot was surpassed in the United States only by the 1863 New York City draft riots during the U.S. Civil War, and the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

The Detroit riot was prominently featured in the news media, with live television coverage, extensive newspaper reporting, and extensive stories in Time and Life magazines and the staff of the Detroit Free Press won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for general local reporting for its coverage.

While it may not be who we are anymore, people, and that is highly questionable, that is who we most definitely were in this country, once upon a time – a violent people, indeed.

And this theme of “coercive protest” that was very much with us as a people back in the 1960s, both on the Wellesley College campus where Hillary was safely ensconced, and in the nation, remains with us all these years later as we read in the article in THE HILL entitled “Clinton: ‘This is not who we are’” by Brooke Seipel on 29 January 2017:

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Saturday tweeted in support of numerous protests that sprang up Saturday over President Trump’s executive order banning many refugees and others from predominantly Muslim nations.

“I stand with the people gathered across the country tonight defending our values & our Constitution.”

“This is not who we are,” Clinton tweeted.

end quotes

When Hillary says on 29 January 2017 “I stand with the people gathered across the country tonight defending our values & our Constitution,” what “values” is she really talking about, and whose “values” are they, really?

Are they “American” values that Hillary is promoting?

Or are they “Hillary” values?

And if they are “American” values, from whence do they come then, given that even a cursory reading of American history from the time of this nation’s founding, that being taken as 1776 for the sake of this discussion, demonstrates a concern with “national security,” which in turn implicates the supposed “rights” of people not born in this country subsequent to its establishment as a nation to freely cross its borders.

Take Peletiah Webster, for example, writing “The Weakness of Brutus Exposed” as “A Citizen of Philadelphia” in January 1787 in support of the proposed United States Constitution which Hillary Clinton claims to be supporting along with her domonstrators intent on shutting down our national government today because they don’t like the direction it is going in:

“There can be no doubt that each State will receive from the union great support and protection against the invasions and inroads of foreign enemies, as well as against riots and insurrections of their own citizens; and of consequence, the course of their internal administration will be secured by this means against any interruption or embarrassment from either of these causes.”

end quotes

“Protection against the invasions and inroads of foreign enemies, as well as against riots and insurrections of their own citizens ….”

HMMMMM, ain’t it, people?

“Inroads of foreign enemies …”

So, are those “un-American” thoughts expressed above here by Peletiah Webster?

Was he wrong to express such sentiments?

And who is Peletiah Webster in the first place to be telling us anything about what it might mean to be an American citizen?

What does he know about it?

And where on earth does he get off having a contradictory opinion on American “values” from the opinion Hillary Clinton and her followers have as to who we are, or who we ought to be?

As to who Peletiah Webster is, in the essay “Our Republic’s First Economist” by Percy L. Greaves, Jr. on July 4, 1951, we were told as follows about the man:

Pelatiah Webster (Nov. 24, 1726–Sept. 4, 1795) was not only America’s first economist, an American Patriot, and “Forgotten” Founding Father,” but he was officially recognized by the U.S. Senate as “The Architect of Our Federal Constitution” on May 4, 1908!

On the fourth of July we pay homage to our Founding Fathers—the men who gave us our freedom.

One of the greatest of these 18th century “giants” was our Nation’s first economist, Pelatiah Webster.

end quotes

Hmmmmmmm.

Does that put him on a par with a modern political luminary like Hillary Rodham Clinton, I wonder?

Does that make his judgment as to what it means to be an American as sound as any judgment Hillary Clinton might have on the subject?

Something to think about, anyway, people.

Getting back to Pelatiah Webster, that essay continues as follows:

Webster was more than an economist.

He was also an ordained minister, a preacher, a teacher, a merchant, and statesman.

He understood, more than most men of his day and most men since, the interrelationship of moral and economic law.

Webster, was among the first, if not the first, to see the need for our present Constitution.

His early writings, setting forth many principles later adopted, led his admirers to call him the father of that document.

When the Declaration of Independence was signed, Webster was a mature man of fifty and a keen observer of the Continental Congress.

In April, 1777, while en route to Boston with a cargo of flour and iron, he and his ship were seized by the British.

He was held prisoner for several weeks in Newport, Rhode Island, before being permitted to return to Philadelphia.

One night in February, 1778, he was again arrested by the British “on account of his order in the patriotic cause.”

He was imprisoned for four months and a large part of his property was confiscated for the King’s stores.

His only son served in the Continental Army.

The war so destroyed his business that he found himself with considerable leisure.

He devoted most of the war years to studying “the original, natural principles” of economics and “to suffer my mind to be drawn on without bias or any incidental prejudice, to such conclusions as those original principles would naturally lead, and demonstrate.”

He saw that the war created “new problems which America had never seen before and, of course, knew not how either to obviate or solve them.”

The Madison Papers, published in 1841, cite Pelatiah Webster as the author of the 1781 pamphlet, which suggested that “The authority of Congress at present is very inadequate to perform their duties, and this indicates the necessity of calling a Continental Convention for the express purpose of ascertaining, defining, enlarging, and limiting the duties and powers of their Constitution.”

In February 1783, Webster published his most famous pamphlet, A Dissertation on the Political Union and Constitution of the Thirteen United States of North America, Which is necessary to their Preservation and Happiness; humbly offered to the Public.

This pamphlet, written four years before the Constitutional Convention, proposed a new Constitution to provide three separate and distinct departments, a legislature of two chambers, and a judicial system based on the supremacy of Federal law.

The new Federal Government was to be one of delegated powers with the residuum remaining in the States.

A Yale biographer of Webster reports that “It is a matter of tradition that Members of Congress, especially the Connecticut delegates, were in the habit of passing evenings with him, to consult him on financial and political concerns.”

Among his friends in the Continental Congress were such youngsters as Madison, Pinckney, Randolph and Hamilton—the men who were later to write his ideas into our Constitution.

In editing a collection of his pamphlets in 1791, Webster wrote, “It is probable that politicians and statesmen who may be involved in these inquires, might find benefit in an attention to American experience….”

“We have an opportunity of learning wisdom from it….”

“Most people at the time were wrought up to such a passionate attachment to the American cause, that they had no patience to examine and consider coldly the means necessary to support it.”

Those who lived through our Revolutionary era profited from their experience.

They read and understood the facts and fallacies exposed by Webster, the Republic’s first great economist.

Our own generation might well profit by the many wise words of Pelatiah Webster.

But as he said: “The great Creator has not given to all men equal discernment; some politicians are short-sighted, and cannot see the distant ill consequences of measures which yield a present advantage, but he must be a stupid blockhead who cannot see such effects when they stare him in the face, and stand in full fact before his eyes.”

end quotes

And on that note, here for the moment I will end.

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Re: WHO ARE WE THEN, HILLARY?

Post by thelivyjr »

THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 2, 2017 AT 8:02 PM

Paul Plante says:

As we ponder the existential question of who we are and who we are not in this country, and whether or not we in the United States of America, and yes, the candid world, as well, since the internet has made us all essentially one today, have an opportunity of learning wisdom from the experiences of those called the “founding fathers” of this country, that in the light of the admonishment of Virginia’s own James “Jemmy” Madison, an American president known as the “father of the United States Constitution, of which he was the original strict constructionist, to not separate text from historical background, because if we do, and let us face it, we have, we will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in the distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government we seem to have in dysfunctional Washington, D.C. today, I would like to reach out at this juncture to anyone just stopping by here for the first time who might be wondering what the heck all the history is about, and why I am quoting all these old dead dudes from some other century when there are so many people alive today who are begging to be quoted from, to explain that all of this discussion stems directly from this following sentence from an article in THE HILL entitled “Clinton taunts GOP lawmakers for dodging town halls” by Jonathan Easley on 22 February 2017, which informed us as follows:

The former Democratic presidential nominee, who has kept a low profile since losing to Trump in the November election, linked to an editorial in the Kansas City Star called, “Cowardly members of Congress should show up and face the public at town hall meetings.”

end quote

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Constitution Hillary says she and her supporters are supporting has in it this clause from Article I of the U.S. Constitution

Section 6.

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.

They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

end quotes

According to the section on “Privilege of Speech or Debate” in the ANNOTATIONS TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION:

This clause represents ”the culmination of a long struggle for parliamentary supremacy.”

“Behind these simple phrases lies a history of conflict between the Commons and the Tudor and Stuart monarchs during which successive monarchs utilized the criminal and civil law to suppress and intimidate critical legislators.”

“Since the Glorious Revolution in Britain, and throughout United States history, the privilege has been recognized as an important protection of the independence and integrity of the legislature.”

So Justice Harlan explained the significance of the speech-and-debate clause, the ancestry of which traces back to a clause in the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and the history of which traces back almost to the beginning of the development of Parliament as an independent force.

”In the American governmental structure the clause serves the additional function of reinforcing the separation of powers so deliberately established by the Founders.”

”The immunities of the Speech or Debate Clause were not written into the Constitution simply for the personal or private benefit of Members of Congress, but to protect the integrity of the legislative process by insuring the independence of individual legislators.”

The protection of this clause is not limited to words spoken in debate.

”Committee reports, resolutions, and the act of voting are equally covered, as are ‘things generally done in a session of the House by one of its members in relation to the business before it.”’

Thus, so long as legislators are ”acting in the sphere of legitimate legislative activity,” they are ”protected not only from the consequence of litigation’s results but also from the burden of defending themselves.”

end quotes

How encouraging the shouting down of Republican legislators at town hall meetings by Hillary Clinton translates into supporting the Constitution frankly eludes me, but then, I am not a lawyer like Hillary, so it is more than likely that the nuanced language of that clause is simply beyond my ability to comprehend.

Getting back to authentic reality in here, that mocking of the Republican Congress people by Hillary was then followed up in THE HILL in the article “Hillary Clinton rallies DNC members in video message” by Max Greenwood on 25 February 2017, as follows:

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Friday showered praise on the wave of protests sweeping the country and urged party faithful to set their sights on elections to come.

“We as Democrats must move forward with courage, confidence and optimism, and stay focused on the elections we must win this year and next,” she said.

“Let resistance plus persistence equal progress for our party and our country.”

Clinton’s loss in November was a stunning political upset for a candidate who many considered all but certain to win.

President Trump emerged victorious in the Electoral College, while Clinton took the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots.

Since then, the former secretary of State has kept a relatively low profile, scarcely making public appearances or chiming into political debates.

end quotes

“Let resistance plus persistence equal progress for our party and our country.”

Now, people, there is a sound bite, alright, and how radical that sounds, as if it were taken from the “Rules for Radicals” by Saul Alinsky, who was the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis in 1969, while a senior at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

Alinsky states as follows:

In this book we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace…. “Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.’ This means revolution.” p.3

“Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing.” p.6

“A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage — the political paradise of communism.” p.10

“An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth — truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing…. To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations….” pp.10-11

end quotes

So where was Hillary?

And why is it that she is surfacing now, with all of these protests now going on?

I ask those questions rhetorically in here even though I don’t ever expect to see them actually answered by Hillary Clinton because it is those questions which form the underlying basis for this discussion and all this political history, and all these quotes by all these admittedly dead people.

Which takes us back to this quote from long-since-dead Peletiah Webster writing “The Weakness of Brutus Exposed” as “A Citizen of Philadelphia” in January 1787 in support of the proposed United States Constitution which Hillary Clinton claims to be supporting along with her demonstrators intent on shutting down our national government today because they don’t like the direction it is going in:

“There can be no doubt that each State will receive from the union great support and protection against the invasions and inroads of foreign enemies, as well as against riots and insurrections of their own citizens; and of consequence, the course of their internal administration will be secured by this means against any interruption or embarrassment from either of these causes.”

end quotes

“There can be no doubt that each State will receive from the union great support and protection against riots and insurrections of their own citizens; and of consequence, the course of their internal administration will be secured by this means against any interruption or embarrassment from these causes.”

Riots and insurrections, people, where insurrections are defined as “a violent uprising against an authority or government.”

Indeed, in FEDERALIST No. 6, entitled “Concerning Dangers from Dissensions Between the States” for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York in 1787 by Alexander Hamilton writing as Publius Valerius Publicola, wrote of one of our more famous ones, this just the other side of the mountains from where I am, as follows:

THE three last numbers of this paper have been dedicated to an enumeration of the dangers to which we should be exposed, in a state of disunion, from the arms and arts of foreign nations.

I shall now proceed to delineate dangers of a different and, perhaps, still more alarming kind—those which will in all probability flow from dissensions between the States themselves, and from domestic factions and convulsions.

A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that, if these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other.

To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.

To multiply examples of the agency of personal considerations in the production of great national events, either foreign or domestic, according to their direction, would be an unnecessary waste of time.

Those who have but a superficial acquaintance with the sources from which they are to be drawn, will themselves recollect a variety of instances; and those who have a tolerable knowledge of human nature will not stand in need of such lights to form their opinion either of the reality or extent of that agency.

Perhaps, however, a reference, tending to illustrate the general principle, may with propriety be made to a case which has lately happened among ourselves.

If Shays had not been a DESPERATE DEBTOR, it is much to be doubted whether Massachusetts would have been plunged into a civil war.

end quotes

Shay’s Rebellion, people, and civil war in Massachusetts long before our great civil war in the 1860s.

And there was the Whiskey Rebellion, which was put down by federal troops, and the John Fries Rebellion, also called Fries’s Rebellion, the House Tax Rebellion, the Home Tax Rebellion, which was an armed tax revolt among Pennsylvania Dutch farmers between 1799 and 1800, the third of three tax-related rebellions in the 18th century United States, the earlier two being Shays’ Rebellion (central and western Massachusetts, 1786–87) and the Whiskey Rebellion (western Pennsylvania, 1794).

In Fries Rebellion, thirty men went on trial in Federal court, and Fries and two others were tried for treason and, with Federalists stirring up a frenzy, were sentenced to be hanged, although President John Adams pardoned Fries and others convicted of treason, by a narrower constitutional definition of treason, and he later added that the rebels were “as ignorant of our language as they were of our laws” and were being used by “great men” in the opposition party.

“Great men” in the opposition party, people, today, that is Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

And with respect to the existential question of who are we really as the “American” people, today, this in light of the statements in the 2016 Democratic Party Platform July 21, 2016 As Approved by the Democratic Platform Committee July 8-9, 2016 – Orlando, FL. in the section “Fixing our Broken Immigration System” that “The United States was founded as, and continues to be, a country of immigrants from throughout the world,” and “It is no coincidence that the Statue of Liberty is one of our most profound national symbols,” at the time of Fries Rebellion, Congress had recently passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, criminalizing dissent and increasing the power of the executive branch under John Adams.

For those unfamiliar with them, the Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed by the Federalist-dominated 5th United States Congress and signed into law by President John Adams in 1798.

They made it harder for an immigrant to become a citizen (Naturalization Act), allowed the president to imprison and deport non-citizens who were deemed dangerous (Alien Friends Act of 1798) or who were from a hostile nation (Alien Enemy Act of 1798), and criminalized making false statements that were critical of the federal government (Sedition Act of 1798).

The Federalists argued that the bills strengthened national security during an undeclared naval war with France.

Three of the acts were repealed after the Democratic-Republican party of Thomas Jefferson came to power but the Alien Enemies Act remained in effect, was revised and codified in 1918 for use in World War I, and was used by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to imprison Japanese, German, and Italian aliens during World War II.

Following cessation of hostilities, the act was used by President Harry S. Truman to continue to imprison, then deport, aliens of the formerly hostile nations.

In 1948 the Supreme Court determined that presidential powers under the acts continued after cessation of hostilities until there was a peace treaty with the hostile nation.

The revised Alien Enemies Act remains in effect today.

The Alien Friends Act allowed the president to imprison or deport aliens considered “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States” at any time, while the Alien Enemies Act authorized the president to do the same to any male citizen of a hostile nation above the age of fourteen during times of war.

The Alien Enemies Act, however, remains in effect as Sections 21–24 of Title 50 of the United States Code.

Now, how any of that authentic reality from our own American history squares with what is the decidedly inauthentic reality of the 2016 Democrat Party Platform that Hillary Clinton proclaims as “the most progressive platform in history” in a video message posted on the Democratic Party’s Twitter account eludes me, but the fact is and remains, Hillary and the Democrat National Committee are both dead wrong when they mouth the specious sentiment that “The United States was founded as, and continues to be, a country of immigrants from throughout the world.”

The “united” States was founded as a “nation” in a time of war.

As Peletiah Webster, writing “The Weakness of Brutus Exposed” as “A Citizen of Philadelphia” in January 1787, informed us:

“Most people at the time (of the American War of Independence) were wrought up to such a passionate attachment to the American cause, that they had no patience to examine and consider coldly the means necessary to support it.”

end quotes

That is what we were given to do, people, by virtue of having been born CITIZENS of this nation, and that in light of these following words of Peletiah Webster, writing “The Weakness of Brutus Exposed” as “A Citizen of Philadelphia” in January 1787, to wit:

Another benefit they (the states) will receive from the controul of the supreme power of the union is this, viz. they will be restrained from making angry, oppressive and destructive laws, from declaring ruinous wars with their neighbours, from fomenting quarrels and controversies, &c. all which ever weaken a state, tend to its fatal disorder, and often end in its dissolution.

Righteousness exalts, and strengthens a nation; but sin is a reproach and weakening of any people.

They will indeed have the privilege of oppressing their own citizens by bad laws or bad administration; but the moment the mischief extends beyond their own State, and begins to affect the citizens of other States strangers, or the national welfare, – the salutary control of the supreme power will check the evil, and restore strength and security, as well as honesty and right, to the offending state.

It appears then very plain, that the natural effect and tendency of the supreme powers of the union is to give strength, establishment, and permanency to the internal police and jurisdiction of each of the particular States; not to melt down and destroy, but to support and confirm them all.

end quotes

That, people, is the historical background “Jemmy” Madison, the “father of the United States Constitution, admonished us to not separate text from, because if we did, and let us face it, we have, we will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which has led to the distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government we have in dysfunctional Washington, D.C. today.

This thread asks the question of why is Hillary Clinton then spinning an alternative version of American history now that she has emerged once again from wherever it was that she was hiding in seclusion after her stunning loss to Donald Trump as American president.

On that note, I will end with these following two definitions which seem very relevant to our times, and the role Hillary Clinton has chosen to play in sowing the seeds of disruption and dissension in this country with her divisive rhetoric:

SEDITION: conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state.

SUBVERSION: the undermining of the power and authority of an established system or institution.

Hillary, what game is it that you are at here?

The candid world would truly like to know!

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Re: WHO ARE WE THEN, HILLARY?

Post by thelivyjr »

THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 3, 2017 AT 7:42 PM

Paul Plante says:

Being a student of cosmic confluences such as I am, cosmic confluences such as the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, the little old ladies of Pasadena, Dodge Hemi-Chargers, Duane Eddy, twangy guitars, Ho Chi Minh, Vo Nguyen Giap and Linda Ronstadt all existing on the planet at the same time, and what are the odds of that, I ask, besides astronomical, like the odds of James Madison, Tommy Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and Mozart all co-existing, or Julius Caesar, Pompey Magnus, Cicero and Cleopatra VII Philopator, I must admit that there is more than a bit of surreal irony in here, at least for me as a VEET NAM veteran, anyway, that at the same time the executive branch of the United States government is seemingly saturated root and branch, lock, stock and barrel with COMMIE DUPES, stooges of Putin and his KGB if I understand United States Senator Charley “CHUCK” Schumer of New York correctly this morning in the Albany, New York Times Union, the name of Saul David Alinsky, an American community organizer and writer generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing who is often noted for his 1971 book Rules for Radicals should be entering into this discussion of who Hillary Clinton is, and how it is that she knows who we are as Americans, but the rest of us don’t, and apparently cannot know, without Hillary to tell us.

As to the name Saul Alinsky, whose ideas were adapted in the 1960s by some U.S. college students and other young counterculture-era organizers, who used them as part of their strategies for organizing on campus and beyond, and of whom Time magazine wrote in 1970 that “It is not too much to argue that American democracy is being altered by Alinsky’s ideas,” and what possible connection he might have to this discussion, we return to the April 13, 2015 Counterpunch article “From Nixon Girl to Watergate – The Making of Hillary Clinton” by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, where we find as follows:

After the (1968 Democrat) convention Hillary embarked on her yearlong senior thesis, on the topic of the Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky.

She has successfully persuaded Wellesley to keep this under lock and key, but Gerth and Van Natta got hold of a copy.

end quotes

So there is Saul Alinsky coming into the picture back in 1969, when I was off in VEET NAM, fighting off all the COMMIE hoardes that wanted to come over here in the name of the international COMMIE-nism that Saul Alinsky was said to be an adherent of, in this country.

In Rules for Radicals (his final work, published in 1971 one year before his death), Alinsky wrote at the end of his personal acknowledgements:

Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer.

In the book, he addressed the 1960s generation of radicals, outlining his views on organizing for mass power.

In the opening paragraph Alinsky writes:

What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be.

The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power.

Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.

end quotes

At about that same time, by coincidence, if not cosmic confluence, in the Soldier’s Handbook I was issued by the United States Army in 1968, on page 4, there is this interesting message to us soldiers as to why it was we were serving in uniform in a time of war:

Today, communism is the major threat to our nation.

This threat is the primary reason for the Army to constantly train men as part of the U.S. fighting force.

Your training and eventual performance of duty with a unit is a vital part of this Nation’s defense.

end quote

The way Washington, D.C. is now overrun with Russians, who seem to be in control of the White House, and that is without having had to fire a shot, is a clear testament to the fact that we failed that mission given to us so long ago by the American people, who at that time wanted to keep the COMMIES out, not put them in charge of our federal government.

But I digress.

Getting back to Hillary Clinton and her connection to Saul Alinsky, in the Washington Post (Democracy Dies In Darkness) article “Hillary Clinton’s breakout moment at Wellesley College” by Frances Stead Sellers and Marilyn W. Thompson on August 14, 2016, we have this background on Hillary and her famous commencement speech, background that leads us directly to Saul Alinsky, to wit:

Hillary Clinton’s moment of glory at Wellesley College came when she mounted the stage at her commencement ceremony and took on a powerful Republican U.S. senator, culminating four years of what her campaign now describes as “social-justice activism” on the burning issues of the time.

end quotes

“Social-justice activism” on the burning issues of the time, people, that is what our Hillary was doing while young Americans were fighting and dying in VEET NAM so Hillary would have the freedom to be able to do her “social-justice activism” on the burning issues of the time, chief of which was VEET NAM and the use of NAPE, or napalm in VEET NAM.

With respect to “social-justice activism” on the burning issues of the time and napalm, which I saw used in “combat” on many occasions, on October 18, 1967, what came to be known as the Dow Riot took place in Madison, Wisconsin.

The so-called Dow Riot was a response to a series of student protests against the Vietnam War at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Days before the event, UW students protested against the makers of the weapon napalm, Dow Chemical Company, who were recruiting at the Madison campus.

The University Chancellor called for police to disperse the students, and the police used tear gas to clear the protesters, an action that spurred several confrontations between the students and the protest.

The belief that the police and administration were attempting to silence their voices radicalized many formerly apolitical students and as a result, even more students came out for a general student rally on Bascom Hill on October 18th.

The three thousand students clashed with police and counter-protesters.

The Dow Riot was part of an anti-Dow protest that had begun months before the company’s representatives arrived on campus.

During the 1960s, the University of Wisconsin-Madison had gained a reputation as one of the nation’s most radical campuses, and in response to the escalation of the Vietnam War, students and professors began to organize teach-ins on the war in 1965.

These teach-ins were large forums for discussion between students and faculty about the history of Vietnam, its people, and the war, and within a year, opposition to the war grew throughout the university and nation.

Students at Wisconsin became among the first to organize marches that protested America’s actions in the Vietnam War and by 1967, student protests included the burning of draft cards and direct confrontation of military recruiters.

end quotes

Now that does not answer the question as to who it is that we are not today, but believe me, that is who we were back then, and none of it was pretty, especially from the perspective of someone like me who had actually enlisted in the Army, an establishment so many young people in America were quite hostile to, which I was to have direct experience of as a soldier.

Getting back to the Washington Post (Democracy Dies In Darkness) article “Hillary Clinton’s breakout moment at Wellesley College” by Frances Stead Sellers and Marilyn W. Thompson on August 14, 2016, we have:

On graduation day, the onetime Goldwater Girl reinvented herself as a provocative voice speaking for her angry generation.

end quotes

An “angry generation,” people.

If you were alive and aware back then, you would call that understatement.

The Washington Post article then continues as follows:

With the national media closely following campus upheaval that spring, Clinton stole the spotlight by rebuking a Washington symbol she had helped elect.

Her performance surprised everyone, even her close friends.

“We’re not interested in social reconstruction,” she corrected the speaker, Sen. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts.

“It’s human reconstruction.”

end quotes

Human reconstruction, people, ponder on that concept for a moment if you will, to see if it gives you a warm and squishy feeling inside.

And that Washington symbol Hillary rebuked as being “pusillanimous,” i.e., showing a lack of courage or determination or being timid with respect to civil rights issues in Hillary’s estimation, that according to an eye-witness account by her poetry professor at Wellseley, was the featured Wellesley Commencement speaker for 1969, U.S. Sen. Edward Brooke, a Republican moderate and World War II combat veteran who was also the first African-American popularly elected to the United States Senate, who addressed the assembly as follows:

“When all is said and done, (quoted in the Fitchburg Sentinel of June 2, 1969), I believe the overwhelming majority of Americans will stand firm on one principle: coercive protest is wrong, and one reason that it is wrong is that it is unnecessary.”

end quotes

“Coercive protest,” of course, was a reference to among other things, the Dow Riots.

Getting back to the Washington Post article:

Clinton’s remarks transformed her, virtually overnight, into a national symbol of student activism.

Wire services blasted out her remarks, and Life magazine featured a photo of her, dressed in bold striped bell-bottoms.

end quotes

By pointing her finger at that U.S. Senator on May 31, 1969, and essentially calling him a coward in front of some 2,000 people plus the assembled news media, Hillary Clinton, the superstar American politician who today is calling Republican Congressmen cowards, was born.

Two weeks later, on the other side of the world, on June 13, 1969, in an event which would receive no press coverage, I was to earn my second Purple Heart getting wounded in the face after flying in on a Huey helicopter to rescue some wounded in a fire fight which also did not get any press coverage, although I think there might be mention of it in the book “The Tunnels of Cu Chi.”

Anyway, getting back to Saul Alinsky, since nobody really gives a damn about VEET NAM, anymore, the Washington Post article continued as follows:

As senior year began, Clinton had concluded that the Republican Party was drifting too far to the right.

She marched into (thesis advisor Alan) Schechter’s office and announced her intention to devote herself to social equality.

Schechter said she was “the most passionate I’ve ever seen her.”

Schechter helped her shape a thesis comparing the effectiveness of intervention models — the grass-roots approach espoused by Saul Alinsky vs. top-down government support.

Clinton said later that she had a “fundamental disagreement” with Alinsky’s theory that change could come only from outside the system.

Clinton interviewed Alinsky twice to produce her thesis, “There Is Only the Fight.”

Schechter gave the paper an A, and Clinton noted in her paper that Alinsky offered her a job working at his Chicago foundation, which she declined, to go to law school.

But Clinton’s focus on the social activist later proved controversial.

In the early 1990s, Schechter was camping in Montana when the White House contacted him and asked him to help keep the first lady’s early academic work under wraps.

Schechter viewed the move as a mistake.

“If you hide it people will use it against you,” he said he argued to the staffer.

Ever since, the thesis has been cast by Clinton’s critics — including Ben Carson at the 2016 GOP convention in Cleveland — as evidence of her early association with radicals.

end quotes

Yes, people, Hillary Clinton is an enigma, and to be truthful, at least to me, so is her vision for us as the American people.

Who is it that Hillary really wants us to be?

And more to the point, are we even capable of living up to her expectations?

And if we are not, what then – human reconstruction?

But what is that?

Stay tuned and we will try and see.

And in the meantime, does anyone have a clue as to why the White House wanted her thesis on Saul Alinsky buried?

Now there is a question for our times, alright, and again, thank you for your interest and citizenship.

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Re: WHO ARE WE THEN, HILLARY?

Post by thelivyjr »

THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 6, 2017 AT 12:01 PM

Paul Plante says:

Can we assume from your comment, Marita, that you get all your news and political views via TWITTER TWEETS, which only tax the mind with 140 simple characters, as opposed to a lot of actual words such as I use in here?

In a letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Wythe, 13 Aug. 1786, old Tom stated as follows:

“I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. no other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness.”

“Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people.”

In a letter from Thomas Jefferson to St. John de Crèvcoeur, 15 Jan. 1787, he stated, “ours are the only farmers who can read Homer.”

And in an extract from Thomas Jefferson’s “Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,” Dec. 1778, it was stated “experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large …”

Pardon me, Marita, for taking all of that seriously, but when I was young, my teachers were all women, and they made it real clear to me starting the first day of kindergarten that in this country, I had no right be remain an ignorant dolt, and for the betterment of society, I had a duty to educate myself, and being a great respecter of women, especially my earliest teachers, I took them at their word, as is reflected in the words on these pages that are so taxing your mind right now.

Perhaps if you had had the same teachers, you wouldn’t find these words so hard to read, assimilate and comprehend.

But alas.

Can a nation full of ignorant people incapable of understanding what is supposed to be the common language of the nation remain a nation, do you think, Marita?

That may well be one of the most pressing questions of our time, when you come to think about it, presuming an ability to think.

And let me apologize in advance for using so many words in this response to you for it was not my intention to further overburden you with more words than you can handle at one time.

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Re: WHO ARE WE THEN, HILLARY?

Post by thelivyjr »

THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 6, 2017 AT 12:10 AM

Paul Plante says:

So who is it that we are not, people?

Where does the answer to that existential question lie?

With what system of logic can that answer be found?

To which I would respond, to understand the present, it is vital to understand the past, as while those who use a mirror of brass can see to set their caps, it is those who use the mirror of antiquity who can predict the rise and fall of nations, and so, position themselves accordingly.

It is not by accident that the authors of America’s The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, evoked some powerful ancient symbolism by using the pseudonym “Publius” in honor of Publius Valerius Poplicola or Publicola (d. 503 BC) who was one of four Roman aristocrats who led the overthrow of the Tarquin monarchy in Rome, and became a Roman consul, the colleague of Lucius Junius Brutus in 509 BC, traditionally considered the first year of the Roman Republic.

In 509 BC, Valerius was one of the leaders of the Roman revolution, together with Lucius Junius Brutus, Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, and Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus.

Winning over public opinion while the king was campaigning away from the city, they deposed and banished Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the seventh and last King of Rome.

In place of the monarchy, they established a republic, together with the office of consul.

Brutus and Collatinus were elected the first consuls.

The so-called founding fathers had a great knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome, as did many of the so-called common people in America at that time, and as such, they had great knowledge of human nature and human government.

They were very well aware, based on that knowledge of antiquity, that how you start determines the path you then must take, and so it is with us in the highly divided nation today.

With respect to that knowledge, and who we are today based on our own unique national history, a newly surfaced letter from Thomas Jefferson, penned on June 20, 1816, was sent to a Jefferson contemporary who was a confidante of three U.S. presidents and was penned a decade after Hamilton was killed in a duel with his life-long rival, Aaron Burr.

In the letter, Jefferson writes that Hamilton’s mind “was really powerful, but chained by native partialities to every thing English; who… sincerely believed it for the good of this country to make them their model in every thing; without considering that what might be wise and good for a nation essentially commercial, and entangled in complicated intercourse with numerous and powerful neighbors, might not be so for one essentially agricultural, and insulated by nature from the abusive governments of the old world…”

“You have fairly stated the alternatives between which we are to choose: 1. licentious commerce and gambling speculations for a few, with eternal war for the many; or, 2. restricted commerce, peace, and steady occupations for all,” Jefferson writes to his confidante.

end quotes

Regardless of how Hillary Clinton and her crowd might see it, there are the two choices this country faced at its beginning, or more properly, there are the two roads it could have taken.

As it was to turn out, the nation chose, or perhaps had imposed upon it, licentious commerce and gambling speculations for a few, with eternal war for the many over the alternative of restricted commerce, peace, and steady occupations for all, which may never have been more than a utopian dream of Thomas Jefferson.

Having made that choice at this nation’s beginning, a die was cast, and the casting of that die, like Caesar crossing the Rubicon, created ramifications the like of which we still experience today in this nation on the heels of the so-called Great Recession.

In her speech to the American Legion, of which I am a life member, as reported in the TIME article “Hillary Clinton’s Speech Touting ‘American Exceptionalism’” on Sept. 1, 2016, Hillary stated as follows:

If there’s one core belief that has guided and inspired me every step of the way, it is this.

The United States is an exceptional nation.

I believe we are still Lincoln’s last, best hope of Earth.

We’re still Reagan’s shining city on a hill.

We’re still Robert Kennedy’s great, unselfish, compassionate country.

end quotes

But those are slogans, people, the stuff of soundbites.

Reagan’s “Shining City On a Hill” speech was his farewell speech given to the nation in 1989.

In that speech, he started out by saying:

We’ve been together 8 years now, and soon it’ll be time for me to go.

But before I do, I wanted to share some thoughts, some of which I’ve been saving for a long time.

end quotes

From there, he went, not surprisingly, into some presidential back-slapping as follows:

The way I see it, there were two great triumphs, two things that I’m proudest of.

One is the economic recovery, in which the people of America created — and filled — 19 million new jobs.

The other is the recovery of our morale.

America is respected again in the world and looked to for leadership.

end quotes

Doesn’t that all sound so familiar in our own age today?

With respect to who Reagan thought we were in his “Shining City On a Hill” speech in 1989, we have this:

Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: ‘We the People.’

‘We the People’ tell the government what to do; it doesn’t tell us.

‘We the People’ are the driver; the government is the car.

And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast.

Almost all the world’s constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are.

Our Constitution is a document in which ‘We the People’ tell the government what it is allowed to do.

‘We the People’ are free.

This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I’ve tried to do these past 8 years.

But back in the 1960’s, when I began, it seemed to me that we’d begun reversing the order of things — that through more and more rules and regulations and confiscatory taxes, the government was taking more of our money, more of our options, and more of our freedom.

I went into politics in part to put up my hand and say, ‘Stop.’

I was a citizen politician, and it seemed the right thing for a citizen to do.

end quotes

That is who Ronald Reagan as president thought we were as a nation in 1989.

With respect to Russia, in that speech in 1989, Reagan stated as follows:

Nothing is less free than pure communism — and yet we have, the past few years, forged a satisfying new closeness with the Soviet Union.

I’ve been asked if this isn’t a gamble, and my answer is no because we’re basing our actions not on words but deeds.

The detente of the 1970’s was based not on actions but promises.

They’d promise to treat their own people and the people of the world better.

But the gulag was still the gulag, and the state was still expansionist, and they still waged proxy wars in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Well, this time, so far, it’s different.

President Gorbachev has brought about some internal democratic reforms and begun the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

He has also freed prisoners whose names I’ve given him every time we’ve met.

end quote

Contrast that with our relationship with Russia today.

And then we get to the heart of Reagan’s speech, as it applies to this discussion we are having in here with respect to who it is that we are not as a nation, to wit:

Finally, there is a great tradition of warnings in Presidential farewells, and I’ve got one that’s been on my mind for some time.

But oddly enough it starts with one of the things I’m proudest of in the past eight years: the resurgence of national pride that I called the new patriotism.

end quotes

Now, in my mind as one of this nation’s many veterans, Hillary cannot call up Reagan’s “Shining City On a Hill” speech in her speech to the American Legion on what she calls “American exceptionalism” without calling up that “resurgence of national pride” Reagan called “the new patriotism,” and yet, we never hear that word “patriotism” from Hillary at all.

How come one wonders.

Is it because the word “patriotism” was anathema to Hillary the anti-war protester in the VEET NAM times, and remains so today?

Getting back to the speech:

This national feeling is good, but it won’t count for much, and it won’t last unless it’s grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge.

end quotes

Think about those words “grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge,” if you will, for a moment.

Getting back to the speech:

An informed patriotism is what we want.

And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?

end quotes

There actually is a question underlying this discussion – what kind of American history are people in this country being taught?

Getting back to Reagan’s speech, we have:

Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America.

We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American.

And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.

If you didn’t get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio.

Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school.

And if all else failed you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture.

The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special.

TV was like that, too, through the mid-60s.

But now, we’re about to enter the nineties, and some things have changed.

Younger parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children.

And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style.

Our spirit is back, but we haven’t reinstitutionalized it.

We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise.

And freedom is special and rare.

It’s fragile; it needs protection.

So, we’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important — why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant.

end quotes

To teach what any of that means, or meant, we first have to know that those things even happened, which in too many cases, we don’t, and then, we really do have to think seriously on whether any of that old stuff means anything to us in the 21st century, and those are discussions that are not happening in this nation today, so the past is lost, and whatever lessons might have been learned from it are lost, as well.

Reagan then continued as follows:

If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are.

end quotes

How true those words are, if only we could realize that.

Getting back to the speech:

I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.

Let’s start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual.

And let me offer lesson number one about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table.

So, tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking begins.

And children, if your parents haven’t been teaching you what it means to be an American, let ’em know and nail ’em on it.

That would be a very American thing to do.

And that’s about all I have to say tonight, except for one thing.

The past few days when I’ve been at that window upstairs, I’ve thought a bit of the ‘shining city upon a hill.’

The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined.

What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man.

He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it.

But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.

And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.

That’s how I saw it, and see it still.

And how stands the city on this winter night?

More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago.

But more than that: After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm.

And she’s still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

We’ve done our part.

And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for eight years did the work that brought America back.

My friends: We did it.

We weren’t just marking time.

We made a difference.

We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands.

All in all, not bad, not bad at all.

And so, goodbye, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

end quote

There is the “Shining City On the Hill,” people – it is a vision, it is a dream, and yes, it is a goal, but it is not an actuality as Hillary the utopian would have it be.

And let us face it, that was a self-serving, back-slapping political speech touting Reagan’s perceived achievements as an American president, just as Hillary’s speech to the American Legion invoking that Reagan speech was itself just another political speech touting Hillary as a presidential contender.

So we are not Reagan’s “Shining City On the Hill,” people, because outside of our imaginations, it does not exist.

So who are we then today, Hillary?

The candid world would really like to know!

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Re: WHO ARE WE THEN, HILLARY?

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THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 6, 2017 AT 8:06 PM

Paul Plante says:

And as we continue to ponder who it is that we are not as a people, and as a nation, one has to wonder, or at least I do as a disabled Viet Nam combat veteran who is a life member of the American Legion, who exactly Hillary Clinton thought it was she was speaking to when she appeared before the American Legion at its convention as a presidential candidate, a candidate to be this nation’s next military commander-in-chief, and in her speech, as reported in the TIME article “Hillary Clinton’s Speech Touting ‘American Exceptionalism’” on Sept. 1, 2016, told the assembled members and the media and press as follows:

“If there’s one core belief that has guided and inspired me every step of the way, it is this.”

“The United States is an exceptional nation.”

“We’re still Robert Kennedy’s great, unselfish, compassionate country.”

end quotes

A core belief?

And Robert Kennedy’s great, unselfish, compassionate country, people!

That is who we are, because Hillary Clinton has said so, which makes it so.

So who is it that we are not then?

And incidentally, the use of that slogan “Robert Kennedy’s great, unselfish, compassionate country” by Hillary Clinton at the American Legion convention on September 1, 2016 reminded me of something U.S. secretary of state and failed Democrat presidential contender John “JACK” Kerry said on September 27, 2010, to wit:

We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or truth or what’s happening.

end quote

Amen, John, right on, dude!

And with regard to our being “exceptional,” that is the same John “JACK” Kerry who in testimony before subcommittees of the U.S. Senate in April, 1971 told it as to exactly how it was that we were “exceptional” back then, as follows:

There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones.

I conducted harassment and interdiction fire.

I used 50-caliber machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people.

I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages.

All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down.

And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant [William] Calley, are war criminals.

end quote

Yes, I know, people, strong stuff, but then, it would have to be, wouldn’t it, since we are so exceptional in Hillary Clinton’s star-filled eyes?

Did Hillary think that she was inspiring us, then, with her soaring rhetoric about being “exceptional,” based on what her political stable-mate John “JACK” Kerry had said about us before subcommittees of the U.S. Senate in April, 1971, which political rhetoric of Hillary in 2016 was in turn based on the soaring rhetoric of Bobby Kennedy in his “Remarks at the University of Kansas,” March 18, 1968, which was yet another self-serving political speech by an American presidential candidate?

By telling us that we were exceptional, was Hillary Clinton telling us who we really are?

Or did she think we were in fact a bunch of ignorant dolts who simply would not know the difference and would blindly accept that we were exceptional because Hillary said it was so?

As to the Bobby Kennedy speech in question, according to a transcript of the Kennedy speech, which Hillary informed the American Legion members was proof that we were exceptional, transcribed from the original recording by the Kennedy Library of Robert F. Kennedy at the University of Kansas on March 18, 1968, that soaring rhetoric of Bobby Kennedy which leads us to Robert Kennedy’s “great, unselfish, compassionate country” begins humbly but compassionately as follows:

Thank you very much.

Chancellor, Governor and Mrs. Docking, Senator and Mrs. Pierson, ladies and gentlemen and my friends, I’m very pleased to be here.

I’m really not here to make a speech.

I’ve come because I came from Kansas State and they want to send their love to all of you.

They did.

That’s all they talk about over there, how much they love you.

Actually, I want to establish the fact that I am not an alumnus of Villanova.

end quote

Love, people, keeping in mind that we are back in the sixties, there, when as the Beatles told us all, all the world needed was love, love, love.

And in a political speech, people, it is important to capture your audience’s attention right away, and in this speech, Bobby Kennedy showed himself to be a master at that, which is perhaps where Hillary got the art from, although there are many who say she was born for greatness as was Cleopatra VII Philopator, and seeing that both achieved greatness who can argue with that?

Getting back to the Kennedy speech, we have as to who we once were as follows:

In 1824, when Thomas Hart Benton was urging in Congress the development of Iowa and other western territories, he was opposed by Daniel Webster, the Senator from Massachusetts.

“What,” asked Webster, “what do we want with this vast and worthless area?”

”This region of savages and wild beasts.”

”Of deserts of shifting sands and of whirlwinds.”

”Of dust, and of cactus and of prairie dogs.”

“To what use,” he said, “could we ever hope to put these great deserts?”

“I will never vote for one-cent from the public treasury, to place the west one inch closer to Boston, than it is now.”

And that is why, I am here today, instead of my brother Edward.

I’m glad to come here to the home of the man who publicly wrote: “If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all the youthful vision and vigor, then there is something wrong with our colleges.”

”The more riots that come out of our college campuses, the better the world for tomorrow.”

And despite all the accusations against me, those words were not written by me, they were written by that notorious seditionist, William Allen White.

And I know what great affection this university has for him.

He is an honored man today, here on your campus and around the rest of the nation.

But when he lived and wrote, he was reviled as an extremist and worse.

For he spoke, he spoke as he believed.

He did not conceal his concern in comforting words.

He did not delude his readers or himself with false hopes and with illusions.

This spirit of honest confrontation is what America needs today.

It has been missing all too often in the recent years and it is one of the reasons that I run for President of the United States.

For we as a people, we as a people, are strong enough, we are brave enough to be told the truth of where we stand.

This country needs honesty and candor in its political life and from the President of the United States.

end quotes

Now, how about that for soaring rhetoric, people?

This is the brother of the man who said to me and many young Americans, “ask not what the country can do for you; ask instead what you can do for the country!”

It was those exact words which had me enlist in the U.S. Army in 1967 when the **** was really hitting the fan over in VEET NAM and it became clear that despite projections to the contrary, there was no light at the end of the tunnel, and the dominoes were falling as the U.S. searched for COSVN in the jungles of VEET NAM in vain.

Getting back to Bobby Kennedy in 1968:

But I don’t want to run for the presidency – I don’t want America to make the critical choice of direction and leadership this year without confronting that truth.

I don’t want to win support of votes by hiding the American condition in false hopes or illusions.

I want us to find out the promise of the future, what we can accomplish here in the United States, what this country does stand for and what is expected of us in the years ahead.

And I also want us to know and examine where we’ve gone wrong.

And I want all of us, young and old, to have a chance to build a better country and change the direction of the United States of America.

end quotes

Examine where we’ve gone wrong, people!

Have we ever heard Hillary Clinton call for such an examination today?

Is it because we no longer need one?

Getting back to Bobby Kennedy:

This morning I spoke about the war in Vietnam, and I will speak briefly about it in a few moments.

But there is much more to this critical election year than the war in Vietnam.

It is, at a root, the root of all of it, the national soul of the United States.

The President calls it “restlessness.”

Our cabinet officers, such as John Gardiner and others tell us that America is deep in a malaise of spirit: discouraging initiative, paralyzing will and action, and dividing Americans from one another, by their age, their views and by the color of their skin and I don’t think we have to accept that here in the United States of America.

end quote

There is who we were, people!

I know, because I was there.

And how much like today this sounds:

Demonstrators shout down government officials and the government answers by drafting demonstrators.

Anarchists threaten to burn the country down and some have begun to try, while tanks have patrolled American streets and machine guns have fired at American children.

I don’t think this a satisfying situation for the United States of America.

end quote

Nor did I, to be truthful, nor do I today.

Getting back to Bobby Kennedy:

Our young people – the best educated, and the best comforted in our history, turn from the Peace Corps and public commitment of a few years ago – to lives of disengagement and despair – many of them turned on with drugs and turned off on America – none of them here, of course, at Kansas – right?

All around us, all around us, – not just on the question of Vietnam, not just on the question of the cities, not just the question of poverty, not just on the problems of race relations – but all around us, and why you are so concerned and why you are so disturbed – the fact is, that men have lost confidence in themselves, in each other, it is confidence which has sustained us so much in the past – rather than answer the cries of deprivation and despair – cries which the President’s Commission on Civil Disorders tells us could split our nation finally asunder – rather than answer these desperate cries, hundreds of communities and millions of citizens are looking for their answers, to force and repression and private gun stocks – so that we confront our fellow citizen across impossible barriers of hostility and mistrust and again, I don’t believe that we have to accept that.

I don’t believe that it’s necessary in the United States of America.

I think that we can work together – I don’t think that we have to shoot at each other, to beat each other, to curse each other and criticize each other, I think that we can do better in this country.

And that is why I run for President of the United States.

end quotes

Has anything changed in America between then and now?

Getting back to Bobby:

If young boys and girls are so filled with despair when they are going to high school and feel that their lives are so hopeless and that nobody’s going to care for them, nobody’s going to be involved with them, and nobody’s going to bother with them, that they either hang themselves, shoot themselves or kill themselves – I don’t think that’s acceptable and I think the United States of America – I think the American people, I think we can do much, much better.

And I run for the presidency because of that, I run for the presidency because I have seen proud men in the hills of Appalachia, who wish only to work in dignity, but they cannot, for the mines are closed and their jobs are gone and no one – neither industry, nor labor, nor government – has cared enough to help.

I think we here in this country, with the unselfish spirit that exists in the United States of America, I think we can do better here also.

If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us.

We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.

And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year.

But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction – purpose and dignity – that afflicts us all.

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.

Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product – if we judge the United States of America by that – that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.

It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them.

It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.

It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.

It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.

It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in world.

From the beginning our proudest boast has been the promise of Jefferson, that we, here in this country would be the best hope of mankind.

And now, as we look at the war in Vietnam, we wonder if we still hold a decent respect for the opinions of mankind and whether the opinion maintained a descent respect for us or whether like Athens of old, we will forfeit sympathy and support, and ultimately our very security, in the single-minded pursuit of our own goals and our own objectives.

I do not want, and I do believe that most Americans do not want, to sell out America’s interest to simply withdraw – to raise the white flag of surrender in Vietnam – that would be unacceptable to us as a people, and unacceptable to us as a country.

But I am concerned about the course of action that we are presently following in South Vietnam.

I am concerned, I am concerned about the fact that this has been made America’s War.

It was said, a number of years ago that this is “their war” “this is the war of the South Vietnamese” that “we can help them, but we can’t win it for them” but over the period of the last three years we have made the war and the struggle in South Vietnam our war, and I think that’s unacceptable.

I don’t accept the idea that this is just a military action, that this is just a military effort, and every time we have had difficulties in South Vietnam and Southeast Asia we have had only one response, we have had only one way to deal with it – month after month – year after year we have dealt with it in only on way and that’s to send more military men and increase our military power and I don’t think that’s what the kind of a struggle that it is in Southeast Asia.

I think that this is a question of the people of South Vietnam, I think its a question of the people of South Vietnam feeling its worth their efforts – that they’re going to make the sacrifice – that they feel that their country and their government is worth fighting for and I think the development of the last several years have shown, have demonstrated that the people of South Vietnam feel no association and no affiliation for the government of Saigon and I don’t think it’s up to us here in the United States, I don’t think it’s up to us here in the United States, to say that we’re going to destroy all of South Vietnam because we have a commitment there.

The commander of the American forces at Ben Tre said we had to destroy that city in order to save it.

So 38,000 people were wiped out or made refugees.

We here in the United States – not just the United States government, not just the commanders of and forces in South Vietnam, the United States government and every human being that’s in this room – we are part of that decision and I don’t think that we need do that any longer and I think we should change our policy.

I don’t want to be part of a government, I don’t want to be part of the United States, I don’t want to be part of the American people, and have them write of us as they wrote of Rome: “They made a desert and they called it peace.”

I think that we should go to the negotiating table, and I think we should take the steps to go to the negotiating table.

And I’ve said it over the period of the last two years, I think that we have a chance to have negotiations, and the possibility of meaningful negotiations, but last February, a year ago, when the greatest opportunity existed for negotiations the Administration and the President of the United States felt that the military victory was right around the corner and we sent a message to Ho Chi Minh, in February 8th of 1967 virtually asking for their unconditional surrender, we are not going to obtain the unconditional surrender of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong anymore than they’re going to obtain the unconditional surrender of the United States of America.

We’re going to have to negotiate, we’re going to have to make compromises, we’re going to have to negotiate with the National Liberation Front.

But people can argue, “That’s unfortunate that we have to negotiate with the National Liberation Front,” but that is a fact of life.

We have three choices: We can either pull out of South Vietnam unilaterally and raise the white flag – I think that’s unacceptable.

Second, we can continue to escalate, we can continue to send more men there, until we have millions and millions of more men and we can continue to bomb North Vietnam, and in my judgment we will be no nearer success, we will be no nearer victory than we are now in February of 1968.

And the third step that we can take is to go to the negotiating table.

We can go to the negotiating table and not achieve everything that we wish.

One of the things that we’re going to have to accept as American people, but the other, the other alternative is so unacceptable.

One of the things that we’re going to have to accept as American people and that the United States government must accept, is that the National Liberation Front is going to play a role in the future political process of South Vietnam.

And we’re going to have to negotiate with them.

That they are going to play some role in the future political process of South Vietnam, that there are going to be elections and the people of South Vietnam, are ultimately going to determine and decide their own future.

That is the course of action, that is the course of action that I would like to see.

I would like to see the United States government to make it clear to the government of Saigon that we are not going to tolerate the corruption and the dishonesty.

I think that we should make it clear to the government of Saigon that if we’re going to draft young men, 18 years of age here in the United States, if we’re going to draft young men who are 19 years-old here in the United States, and we’re going to send them to fight and die in Khe Sanh, that we want the government of South Vietnam to draft their 18-year-olds and their 19-year-olds.

And I want to make it clear that if the government of Saigon, feels Khe Sanh or Que Son and the area in the demilitarized zone are so important, if Khe San is so important to the government of Saigon, I want to see those American marines out of there and South Vietnamese troops in there.

I want to have an explanation as to why American boys killed, two weeks ago, in South Vietnam, were three times as many – more than three times as many, as the soldiers of South Vietnam.

I want to understand why the casualties and the deaths, over the period of the last two weeks, at the height of the fighting, should be so heavily American casualties, as compared to the South Vietnamese.

This is their war.

I think we have to make the effort to help them, I think that we have to make the effort to fight, but I don’t think that we should have to carry the whole burden of that war, I think the South Vietnamese should.

And if I am elected President of the United States, with help, with your help, these are the kinds of policies that I’m going to put into operation.

We can do better here in the United States, we can do better.

We can do better in our relationships to other countries around the rest of the globe.

President Kennedy, when he campaigned in 1960, he talked about the loss of prestige that the United States had suffered around the rest of the globe, but look at what our condition is at the present time.

The President of the United States goes to a meeting of the OAS at Montevideo- can he go into the city of Montevideo?

Or can he travel through the cities of Latin America where there was such deep love and deep respect?

He has to stay in a military base at Montevideo, with American ships out at sea and American helicopters overhead in order to ensure that he’s protected, I don’t think that that’s acceptable.

I think that we should have conditions here in the United States, and support enough for our policies, so that the President of the United States can travel freely and clearly across all the cities of this country, and not just to military bases.

I think there’s more that we can do internally here, I think there’s more that we can do in South Vietnam.

I don’t think we have to accept the situation, as we have it at the moment.

I think that we can do better, and I think the American people think that we can do better.

George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “Some people see things as they are and say why?”

” I dream things that never were and say, why not?”

So I come here to Kansas to ask for your help.

In the difficult five months ahead, before the convention in Chicago, I ask for your help and for your assistance.

If you believe that the United States can do better.

If you believe that we should change our course of action.

If you believe that the United States stands for something here internally as well as elsewhere around the globe, I ask for your help and your assistance and your hand over the period of the next five months.

And when we win in November, and when we win in November, and we begin a new period of time for the United States of America – I want the next generation of Americans to look back upon this period and say as they said of Plato: “Joy was in those days, but to live.”

Thank you very much.

end quotes

And there it is, people – that is who we were in 1968!

So who is it, then, that we are today?

And who is it that we are not?

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Re: WHO ARE WE THEN, HILLARY?

Post by thelivyjr »

THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 7, 2017 AT 7:35 PM

Paul Plante says:

March 18, 1968, people.

Just two months later, in June of 1968, Bobby Kennedy was going to be shot dead, and to this day, I wonder if his calling for negotiations with the National Liberation Front in Viet Nam had anything to do with that, but that is something we just will never know.

In the meantime, Hillary Clinton, then Hillary Rodham, was safely ensconced and cloistered inside the protective walls of elite Wellesley College in the neat and proper New England town of Wellesley, Massachusetts.

As the Washington Post article “Hillary Clinton’s breakout moment at Wellesley College” by Frances Stead Sellers and Marilyn W. Thompson, August 14, 2016 tells us:

Clinton’s parents — she was known then as Hillary Rodham — dropped her off at tranquil Wellesley College in the fall of 1965.

Hugh and Dorothy Rodham from placid Park Ridge, Ill., saw the campus — with its weekend curfews and restrictions on male visitors — as “a place where we would be safe,” recalled Clinton’s friend Constance Hoenk Shapiro.

end quote

“A place where we would be safe,” people.

Now, isn’t that an American dream, people – a place to be safe in?

In fact, isn’t that why there was a “United” States of America formed in the first place, to give we, the people, the citizens of this nation, a place safe from the machinations and intrigues and threats from the nations of the world around us?

As for me, in 1965, I was a student at a local community college studying construction technology so that I could be a functioning part of the society around me, as opposed to being a burden on that society, which was an American value to me, anyway – if you want something, get off your *** and work towards it, and maybe, just maybe, with hard work and some effort, you will achieve your goal, and four years later in 1969, there I would be in Viet Nam, defending what were then called this nation’s “values,” which may or may not be its values anymore, but who can really tell?

Getting back to Hillary, who was destined for greatness from the time she was born, the Washington Post article tells us:

Clinton thrived in the women-only setting.

She became active in the Young Republicans and urged students to help Brooke (the African-American Senator she later accused of cowardice at the Wellesley graduation on May 31, 1989) become the first African American elected to the Senate since Reconstruction.

“The girl who doesn’t want to go out and shake hands can type letters or do general office work,” she told the Wellesley newspaper.

Clinton held up Barry Goldwater, the senator from Arizona who lost the 1964 presidential race, as an icon.

end quotes

And yes, Barry Goldwater was an icon – as the Lyndon Johnson campaign put it, “In your guts, you know he nuts!”

What drew the young Hillary to Barry Goldwater remains a mystery to this day.

But we are talking about March 18, 1968, and Barry Goldwater is now long since gone from the American political scene, to be replaced in Hillary’s political world with Senator Eugene McCarthy, of whom then-President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s campaign circulated the slogan that “the communists in Vietnam are watching the New Hampshire primary…don’t vote for fuzzy thinking and surrender,” which was a direct reference to Eugene McCarthy, Hillary’s chosen presidential contender that year to replace Goldwater as her icon.

Despite that slogan, McCarthy stunned spectators of the race by winning a surprising 42.2 percent of the vote to Johnson’s 49.4 percent, which media outlets described the results as a “moral victory” for McCarthy, which in turn influenced Robert Kennedy’s decision to enter the race on March 16.

Two days later, as we see in his “Remarks at the University of Kansas” above on March 18, 1968, Bobby Kennedy said these words to the American people:

I’m glad to come here to the home of the man who publicly wrote: “If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all the youthful vision and vigor, then there is something wrong with our colleges.”

”The more riots that come out of our college campuses, the better the world for tomorrow.”

end quotes

The more riots that come out of our college campuses, the better the world for tomorrow, people.

Does that sound at all rational or sane?

And as we have all this kerfuffle today about what role the attorney general plays in our lives in terms of “law enforcement,” keep in mind that when Bobby Kennedy was speaking those words on March 18, 1968 about the more riots that come out of our college campuses, the better the world for tomorrow, which happens to be the world we are living in right now today, a world that came to us from those times, Bobby had been the 64th U.S. Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, serving under his older brother President John F. Kennedy and his successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson.

So what is up with that, people?

What is up with a former United States attorney general and a Democrat presidential contender telling us that he was glad to come to the home of the man who publicly wrote if our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, then there is something wrong with our colleges?

As we have this discussion in here of American values and who it is that we are, and who it is that we are not, at least according to Hillary Clinton, what message comes across from that, given that on May 31, 1989, a year and a couple of months after Bobby Kennedy spoke those words, according to the Washington Post, Hillary, the onetime Goldwater Girl, reinvented herself as a provocative voice speaking for her angry generation, and eight months after that, in January of 1970, that angry generation Hillary Clinton had become the provocative voice of was waiting for me and other returning Viet Nam veterans at the airport in San Francisco, California, the city of Haight-Ashbury, Janis Joplin, the Jefferson Airplane, Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead and above all else in 1970, LOVE, to howl at us and yowl at us and holler and chant and spit at us, which is treatment worse than that afforded immigrants to this country by that same angry generation?

What lessons on American values emerge from that, I wonder, and exactly whose values are they, anyway, besides Hillary Clinton’s?

As to Hillary, who was born for greatness, as was Cleopatra VII Philopator before her, it was simply her time to shine back then when American college campuses were erupting in riots and demonstrations, even at Wellesley College where Hillary was, as the Washington Post tells us:

The campus was alive with student protests, reflecting the growing unrest of the times.

There was a string of student petitions demanding greater racial diversity in enrollment and faculty hiring, notices for meetings of national student protest groups, and mounting local opposition to the draft and the Vietnam War.

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The Viet Nam war, and those who fought in it, as if we were the enemies of the American people.

Hillary’s moment had come.

As she was to say in her famous May 31, 1989 Wellesley College graduation speech:

Part of the problem with just empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn’t do us anything.

We’ve had lots of empathy; we’ve had lots of sympathy, but we feel that for too long our leaders have viewed politics as the art of the possible.

And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible.

The question about possible and impossible was one that we brought with us to Wellesley four years ago.

We arrived not yet knowing what was not possible.

Consequently, we expected a lot.

Our attitudes are easily understood having grown up, having come to consciousness in the first five years of this decade—years dominated by men with dreams, men in the civil rights movement, the Peace Corps, the space program—so we arrived at Wellesley and we found, as all of us have found, that there was a gap between expectation and realities.

But it wasn’t a discouraging gap and it didn’t turn us into cynical, bitter old women at the age of 18.

It just inspired us to do something about that gap.

What we did is often difficult for some people to understand.

Our love for this place, this particular place, Wellesley College, coupled with our freedom from the burden of an inauthentic reality allowed us to question basic assumptions underlying our education.

Before the days of the media orchestrated demonstrations, we had our own gathering over in Founder’s parking lot.

We protested against the rigid academic distribution requirement.

We worked for a pass-fail system.

We worked for a say in some of the process of academic decision making.

And luckily we were at a place where, when we questioned the meaning of a liberal arts education there were people with enough imagination to respond to that questioning.

So we have made progress.

We have achieved some of the things that we initially saw as lacking in that gap between expectation and reality.

Our concerns were not, of course, solely academic as all of us know.

We worried about inside Wellesley questions of admissions, the kind of people that were coming to Wellesley, the kind of people that should be coming to Wellesley, the process for getting them here.

We questioned about what responsibility we should have both for our lives as individuals and for our lives as members of a collective group.

Coupled with our concerns for the Wellesley inside here in the community were our concerns for what happened beyond Hathaway House.

We wanted to know what relationship Wellesley was going to have to the outer world.

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The outer world, people, that is where I was back then with respect to Hillary Clinton, as were most Americans, and truthfully, it still remains that way.

And that brings me back to “A Citizen of Philadelphia,” that being Peletiah Webster in Philadelphia January 1787 in “The Weakness of Brutus Exposed,” where he informed us as follows:

The Romans rose, from small beginnings, to a very great extent of territory, population, and wisdom; I don’t think their constitution of government, was near so good as the one proposed to us, yet we find their power, strength, and establishment, were raised to their utmost height, under a republican form of government.

The Carthagenians acquired an amazing degree of strength, wealth, and extent of dominion, under a republican form of government.

Neither they or the Romans, owed their dissolation to any causes arising from that kind of government: ’twas the party rage, animosity, and violence of their citizens, which destroyed them both; it weakened them, ’till the one fell under the power of their enemy, and was thereby reduced to ruin; the other changed their form of government, to a monarchy, which proved in the end, equally fatal to them.

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'Twas the party rage, animosity, and violence of their citizens, which destroyed them both, people!

Just as party rage, animosity, and violence of our citizens may well destroy us today.

Webster continued as follows:

The same causes, if they can’t be restrained, will weaken or destroy any nation on earth, let their form of government be what it will; witness the division and dissolution of the Roman empire; the late dismemberment of Poland; the intestine divisions, rage, and wars of Italy, of France, of Spain, and of England.

No form of government can preserve a nation which can’t control the party rage of its own citizens; when any one citizen can rise above the control of the laws, ruin draws near.

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Is he talking about us today?

Getting back to Webster:

’Tis not possible for any nation on earth, to hold their strength and establishment, when the dignity of their government is lost, and this dignity will forever depend on the wisdom and firmness of the officers of government, aided and supported by the virtue and patriotism of their citizens.

But after all, the grand secret of forming a good government, is, to put good men into the administration: for wild, vicious, or idle men, will ever make a bad government, let its principles be ever so good; but grave, wise, and faithful men, acting under a good constitution, will afford the best chance of security, peace, and prosperity, to the citizens, which can be derived from civil police, under the present disorders, and uncertainty of all earthly things.

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Are there any American values hidden away in those words, I wonder?

A question for our times.

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