We need to stop calling foreigners who enter our country illegally "immigrant" or "migrants". They're not; immigration is a legal process. And using the vocabulary of the progressives sets up the political dynamic they seek. "Immigrants" evokes sympathy, justifying the help our governments force our citizens to give them. "Illegal aliens" sounds less noble, and using that designation exposes the realism of the fact that we have no obligation to support them with social services instituted by Americans for Americans.
Before you call me a hater, I do respect these unfortunate people and dilemma facing them as they try to escape bad conditions in search of better lives. I know and have known, quite a number of people from south of our borders, who, as one of them put it, "have problems with their papers". They're nice people, generally, just seeking to improve their lot in life, and some individuals I've helped do that.
However, their challenges do not oblige us to sacrifice our own well-being, our culture, our social order, for the sake of improving their lives. And to those who think it does, I suggest offering them places in your own homes and supporting them yourselves, rather than expecting the rest of us to fund your chosen endless, self-imposed task of rescuing the world. Opening our borders to all comers indiscriminately will destroy our country; you can't have a "country" without borders.
Fair point. I move between "illegal alien" - a legal term in US code that describes them - and migrants more a matter of style and grammar. Nothing hateful about being legally accurate.
IMO, Republicanism has morphed from a political party to an ideological entity if it is in fact an entity. Hardly heard from that group is an appeal to a republican form of government.
Political participation is not a timed event but a process especially one that provides maximum participation by the voters to select representatives. A curtailed period to count votes would tend to disenfranchise particularly military service personnel not to mention expats. Moreover, an abbreviated time period would tend to favor the very emotional-laden choice mechanism that concerned the authors of the Constitution.
Affording he electorate within the 350 million US residents a reasonable period of time to case a ballot enhances the participatory nature of voting. Community sensibility currently is reflected in the level of participation in the voting process which has increased in recent years. What's to fear?
Your vote for representatives opposed to "twisted versions of socialism" is your right. Fascism and naziism hardly fit into that bucket. Hunter's laptop is a red herring. The promise by the leading Republican candidate to extract retribution upon opponents and his plan to deconstruct the national government are redolent of fascism and naziism.
The US Senate and Electoral College were created as structural bulwarks against popular government and as a measure to ensure an "elite expert class" persisted to guide the nation. Sound like Trump and his acolytes?
One pundit's normalcy is extremism to others. While disparaging early voting, a pundit citation offers that the criticism of early voting is misplaced:
"Huge percentages of Americans have already determined how they will vote this November in a likely rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. In the fall wave of the TLP/YouGov presidential tracking poll, 88 percent of voters say they will support either Biden or Trump, with 12 percent unsure or leaning towards a third candidate or saying they won’t vote." Where's the beef? Cater to the undecided 12% while risking a polling drop off reflecting a higher participation percentage?
Among other questionable assertions, gasoline prices in 2018 under Trump averaged $2.79, not $2.00 per gallon. Methinks the combination of political nostalgia and ideology have caused tunnel vision.
The beef is that polls can be used to obtain predesired results. That 88% is contingent on the feeling that as of now, Trump & Biden will be the choice before us. Other polls show percentage far in excess of that leftover 12% who are dissatisfied with that choice. And in reality, of course, voters will vote almost exclusively for the two major party nominees when the time comes.
Post-election polls show that many Biden voters would have gone differently had they known about Hunter's laptop. Now, the media did their best to keep that story under wraps, but this later change of minds shows that late information can and does shape people's votes, even those who thought they were committed to one side. Let campaigns run their full length.
I would prefer Election Day be made a national holiday, or a day set aside for voting on which it is understood employees can take limited paid time off to vote, without penalty. Rare exceptions can be made for people who know ahead of time they won't be able to do that then. Same with mail-in voting -- it should be rare and apply only to specific cases of disability. But a fact of life is we can't be everywhere at once; often things come up that prevent us from doing what we had planned to do. So, no, not everybody would be able to cast a vote, but that will be true regardless of the schedule. Most (free) countries conduct their elections on designated election days; is their turnout worse than ours? Besides, having everybody vote the same day makes it a community event and enhances the sense of civic connection with our neighborhoods.
As an aside, I have another beef: labeling Mr Johnston, or this column, "ideological" is preposterous. What's the ideology? He strikes me as a practical, experienced person with a history of deep, long involvement in the political process, both as participant and observer. We can disagree (sometimes I do); he is not attempting to inflict a certain world view on his readers, unlike practically everybody on the progressive side and in their propaganda arm in the media/censorship complex.
Only progressivism is ideological -- for it starts with a view of how the world, and people, should be, and then seeks to impose its vision on everybody else. It is predicated on the belief that society must be run by an elite expert class that knows what is best for us, and that human begins can be shaped to fit that mold. Starting with the French Revolution, with its mass executions of different factions as they succeeded each other in power, this gave us, among others, Marxism, historical determinism, fascism, nazism, communism, and the other twisted versions of socialism -- all in the name of manifesting some sort of vision of Utopia, all ultimately tyrannical and deadly.
Nowhere do I see that inclination with this author, nor, for that matter, with the Republican Party in general, and least of all with Donald J Trump. But progressives and DC insiders seek to impose ideologies of scientifically dubious belief in man-made global warming, or the idea that sex is fluid (even if they call it "gender" instead"), or that we can "impose" democracy, or must accept foreign invaders and give them more charity than we give our own (except when those same foreigners come knocking at the doors in Democratic run bastions of "sanctuary cities" -- another prime example of ideological imposition!) Worse, they seek to force everybody to accept their version of "truth" when that is factually, scientifically or philosophically debatable.
We need to stop calling foreigners who enter our country illegally "immigrant" or "migrants". They're not; immigration is a legal process. And using the vocabulary of the progressives sets up the political dynamic they seek. "Immigrants" evokes sympathy, justifying the help our governments force our citizens to give them. "Illegal aliens" sounds less noble, and using that designation exposes the realism of the fact that we have no obligation to support them with social services instituted by Americans for Americans.
Before you call me a hater, I do respect these unfortunate people and dilemma facing them as they try to escape bad conditions in search of better lives. I know and have known, quite a number of people from south of our borders, who, as one of them put it, "have problems with their papers". They're nice people, generally, just seeking to improve their lot in life, and some individuals I've helped do that.
However, their challenges do not oblige us to sacrifice our own well-being, our culture, our social order, for the sake of improving their lives. And to those who think it does, I suggest offering them places in your own homes and supporting them yourselves, rather than expecting the rest of us to fund your chosen endless, self-imposed task of rescuing the world. Opening our borders to all comers indiscriminately will destroy our country; you can't have a "country" without borders.
Fair point. I move between "illegal alien" - a legal term in US code that describes them - and migrants more a matter of style and grammar. Nothing hateful about being legally accurate.
IMO, Republicanism has morphed from a political party to an ideological entity if it is in fact an entity. Hardly heard from that group is an appeal to a republican form of government.
Political participation is not a timed event but a process especially one that provides maximum participation by the voters to select representatives. A curtailed period to count votes would tend to disenfranchise particularly military service personnel not to mention expats. Moreover, an abbreviated time period would tend to favor the very emotional-laden choice mechanism that concerned the authors of the Constitution.
Affording he electorate within the 350 million US residents a reasonable period of time to case a ballot enhances the participatory nature of voting. Community sensibility currently is reflected in the level of participation in the voting process which has increased in recent years. What's to fear?
Your vote for representatives opposed to "twisted versions of socialism" is your right. Fascism and naziism hardly fit into that bucket. Hunter's laptop is a red herring. The promise by the leading Republican candidate to extract retribution upon opponents and his plan to deconstruct the national government are redolent of fascism and naziism.
The US Senate and Electoral College were created as structural bulwarks against popular government and as a measure to ensure an "elite expert class" persisted to guide the nation. Sound like Trump and his acolytes?
One pundit's normalcy is extremism to others. While disparaging early voting, a pundit citation offers that the criticism of early voting is misplaced:
"Huge percentages of Americans have already determined how they will vote this November in a likely rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. In the fall wave of the TLP/YouGov presidential tracking poll, 88 percent of voters say they will support either Biden or Trump, with 12 percent unsure or leaning towards a third candidate or saying they won’t vote." Where's the beef? Cater to the undecided 12% while risking a polling drop off reflecting a higher participation percentage?
Among other questionable assertions, gasoline prices in 2018 under Trump averaged $2.79, not $2.00 per gallon. Methinks the combination of political nostalgia and ideology have caused tunnel vision.
The beef is that polls can be used to obtain predesired results. That 88% is contingent on the feeling that as of now, Trump & Biden will be the choice before us. Other polls show percentage far in excess of that leftover 12% who are dissatisfied with that choice. And in reality, of course, voters will vote almost exclusively for the two major party nominees when the time comes.
Post-election polls show that many Biden voters would have gone differently had they known about Hunter's laptop. Now, the media did their best to keep that story under wraps, but this later change of minds shows that late information can and does shape people's votes, even those who thought they were committed to one side. Let campaigns run their full length.
I would prefer Election Day be made a national holiday, or a day set aside for voting on which it is understood employees can take limited paid time off to vote, without penalty. Rare exceptions can be made for people who know ahead of time they won't be able to do that then. Same with mail-in voting -- it should be rare and apply only to specific cases of disability. But a fact of life is we can't be everywhere at once; often things come up that prevent us from doing what we had planned to do. So, no, not everybody would be able to cast a vote, but that will be true regardless of the schedule. Most (free) countries conduct their elections on designated election days; is their turnout worse than ours? Besides, having everybody vote the same day makes it a community event and enhances the sense of civic connection with our neighborhoods.
As an aside, I have another beef: labeling Mr Johnston, or this column, "ideological" is preposterous. What's the ideology? He strikes me as a practical, experienced person with a history of deep, long involvement in the political process, both as participant and observer. We can disagree (sometimes I do); he is not attempting to inflict a certain world view on his readers, unlike practically everybody on the progressive side and in their propaganda arm in the media/censorship complex.
Only progressivism is ideological -- for it starts with a view of how the world, and people, should be, and then seeks to impose its vision on everybody else. It is predicated on the belief that society must be run by an elite expert class that knows what is best for us, and that human begins can be shaped to fit that mold. Starting with the French Revolution, with its mass executions of different factions as they succeeded each other in power, this gave us, among others, Marxism, historical determinism, fascism, nazism, communism, and the other twisted versions of socialism -- all in the name of manifesting some sort of vision of Utopia, all ultimately tyrannical and deadly.
Nowhere do I see that inclination with this author, nor, for that matter, with the Republican Party in general, and least of all with Donald J Trump. But progressives and DC insiders seek to impose ideologies of scientifically dubious belief in man-made global warming, or the idea that sex is fluid (even if they call it "gender" instead"), or that we can "impose" democracy, or must accept foreign invaders and give them more charity than we give our own (except when those same foreigners come knocking at the doors in Democratic run bastions of "sanctuary cities" -- another prime example of ideological imposition!) Worse, they seek to force everybody to accept their version of "truth" when that is factually, scientifically or philosophically debatable.