Posted under Election 2012 & Mitt Romney & Obama
This debate is the best argument I’ve seen for voting third party. I’ll let our readers comment, but I have two observations. I could have a hundred, but have neither the time nor the inclination.
First, Romney bragged that as Governor of Massachusetts he engaged in brazen affirmative action for women. So affirmative action is conservative? Will there be any pushback from conservatives on this? If not, “conservatives” are worthless.
Second, America IS NOT a nation of immigrants! We are a nation of settlers. Any “conservative” who babbles such nonsense should be immediately excommunicated from the ranks. Not only is it trite and cliched, but it’s completely hostile to a conservative understanding.
Vee on 17 Oct 2012 at 3:14 am #
There is no doubt that President Obama won this debate, he was back being the man, and preformed the way he should have done in the first debate.
Matt Weber on 17 Oct 2012 at 3:45 am #
Obama shot himself in the foot near the end, basically telling the Rust Belt to go take a hike. Sorry blue collar workers, you have no choices this round.
Conservative American on 17 Oct 2012 at 5:25 am #
It is becoming more and more clear to me that this website is nothing more than a bunch of deep cover liberals masquerading as conservatives as an attempt to tarnish the true conservative brand. Are you left wingers really that desperate that this is what it has come to? You are now lowering yourselves to this in order to ensure a second term for Obama. You should all really be ashamed of yourselves.
RedPhillips on 17 Oct 2012 at 5:31 am #
CA, I’m not sure that you are not a troll, but I’ll play along anyway.
So, as a conservative you support affirmative action?
So, as a conservative you support nation of immigrants and we want more legal immigrants blather?
Conservative American on 17 Oct 2012 at 5:36 am #
RedPhillips,
I am a conservative of the heart. I see myself as a compassionate conservative and I see nothing wrong with helping those that need it most. In fact I would say not doing so goes against Christian teaching. Coming in contact with new immigrants gives the church a grand opportunity to spread the gospel to a new people. What is it you have against women and brown people?
aware on 17 Oct 2012 at 10:01 am #
“Conservative” American, You are perfectly within your rights to help whomever you please. But what you advocate is making me, through the State, “help”. This puts a gun to my head and threatens me with all manner of coercion up to and including my life. Some “compassion”.
Worse, you are twisting the Gospel to suit your worldview. Instead of going to the nations you advocate the nations coming to you. And you are trying to make the State the instrument of spreading the Word which makes it very easy for you, doesn’t it? All you have to do is vote and your good deeds are done. As easy as buying insurance, huh.
Apparently the corruption, the theft, the murders, the wars, the privilege peddling, the lies, and the general destruction of society practiced daily by the State has gone unnoticed by you. You are in good company as lots of others have seen the State as the instrument of “good”. Like Mao, Hitler, and Stalin. Sometimes building a “better” world requires a few million dead.
Kirt Higdon on 17 Oct 2012 at 11:00 am #
I didn’t watch the debate. I never watch debates and very rarely speeches by any politician – probably fewer than 10 in my entire life. Neither Romney nor Obama was ever in the running to get my vote.
I’m not sure what the distinction is between immigrants and settlers unless it is that the latter go to relatively less crowded land. In that case there have been probably a lot more immigrants to the US than settlers, although some people would qualify for both categories; i.e. immigrants who arrived in the crowded eastern cities during the 19th century and then headed out for the relatively empty west. But in any event, the vast majority of Americans are and always have been natives. Alexander Hamilton is conspicuous among the founding fathers for being an immigrant (settler?). The rest were all born in the colonies unless there were other exceptions I don’t know about.
Bruce on 17 Oct 2012 at 11:39 am #
Auster on “Nation of Immigrants.”:
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/005334.html
Bruce on 17 Oct 2012 at 11:43 am #
Red,
Romney or anyone else who wants a shot at the presidency has to say these things because there is no conservative majority in the U.S. The left has a much more unified vision and has or is pretty close to having a majority. The “right” in this country is a constellation of often unrelated and sometimes conflicting beliefs and ideas. It is impossible for a true conservative to be elected by the American people of the 21st century.
I might vote for Romney simply because he is probably less bad for my children’s (and, in general, my posterities’) future.
Bruce on 17 Oct 2012 at 12:22 pm #
Also, see Alien Nation, pp. 204-206 for more on “Nation of Immigrants.”
Jared on 17 Oct 2012 at 1:07 pm #
@Bruce
There is still a conservative majority, and a sizeable one at that, in Dixie. Obama winning is better for White people, because if that happens a lot of Southern Whites WILL start talking about secession and begin despairing that all hope is lost within the US empire. Under the Union, there is no possibility of curbing immigration and doing away with anti-White “civil rights” laws.
If Romney wins, conservatives in the South and everywhere else will go back to sleep, while he continues the same US policies that are replacing our people with Latinos. Sure, taxes may be lower and the economy might improve, but what is the value of that compared to your children/grandchildren becoming minorities? Even if you live outside of the South and don’t like the idea of moving here, an independent Dixie will still be for your benefit because it will serve as a buffer zone against Latino immigration.
People who think Romney is saying all these moderate-liberal things just to win, and that he is going to turn into some kind of all-star right wing conservative after he is elected, are foolishly mistaken. That never happens. The only time someone running as a “conservative” changes their tune while in office is when they become more liberal, never the other way around. I
Matt Weber on 17 Oct 2012 at 1:19 pm #
Liberals are now doubling down on the blatant lie Obama told about Libya. It is the biggest thing that could backfire on him, so it’s probably a wise strategy. Romney was caught off guard by it and didn’t effectively respond.
Missed opportunities for Romney elsewhere also. He should have hammered Obama on his immigration lie, that his administration gives half a crap about it. He should have brought up Obama’s executive amnesty. Illegal immigration is a winner for the Republicans if they’d ever push it.
He did hammer him pretty effectively on the economy, and Obama didn’t have much of an answer beyond that 5 million jobs were created in the past year. I didn’t get to see whether he hit Obama on free trade and his statement that ‘some jobs are just not coming back [so screw you losers]‘ Probably not, because the Republicans are free trade fanatics and have nothing to say.
Romney also got weirdly distracted about Obama’s investment portfolio at one point.
Really, not a dime’s worth of difference, as the story goes. Just like 6 months ago, I would love to see Obama lose but don’t really care to see Romney win.
Matt Weber on 17 Oct 2012 at 1:33 pm #
I think ‘nation of immigrants’ is just a shield from accusations of xenophobia or nativism or whatever epithet du jour the left is hurling around. Even taking the phrase seriously, it doesn’t tell us anything about what America’s immigration policy should be. Even a country whose population was established largely through immigration (not an unfair characterization of the US) has to settle into a constancy at some point.
Kirt Higdon on 17 Oct 2012 at 1:42 pm #
@Bruce
The referenced Auster article throws another term into the mix – “colonists”. Clearly the founders of the US were colonists, but just as clearly they rejected that status; that’s what the war of independence was all about or so I’ve heard. “Nation of immigrants” is an inaccurate cliche, but “nation of settlers” or “nation of colonists” would not only be inaccurate but just weird. As I stated above, most people who live in the US were born there.
HarrisonBergeron2 on 17 Oct 2012 at 1:44 pm #
Jared,
I totally agree. A Romney win will lull conservatives to sleep. Don’t forget that it was W the Conqueror who nearly pushed through amnesty for illegals. Romney will succeed there where W failed.
Bruce on 17 Oct 2012 at 3:20 pm #
Jared,
I’m saying that conservatives are divided into different types e.g. “fiscal” conservative, “social” conservative, “national question” conservative and that their basic ideas often conflict. I don’t think that Romney is only saying left-liberal things to get elected and that he’s really a conservative. I’m saying that (thanks to half a century of leftist media propaganda) only a liberal candidate like Romney has a chance of cobbling together something close to a majority. I’m not sure how different this situation is in the South unless you define conservatism restrictively such as I think you did above e.g. “national question” conservatism (which I’m with you on btw, I think the national question is the most fateful one for my children’s future.)
I doubt secession will happen. What happened last time? The empire crushed it. I would like to see it but it’s hard to imagine.
Bruce on 17 Oct 2012 at 3:23 pm #
Kirt,
I see the U.S. as a nation of Anglo-Saxon colonists/settlers and those who joined them later and largely assimilated. The Anglo-Saxon colonist/settler is the American prototype. I say that as a person who is of (patrilineal) German-Immigrant descent.
Karen on 17 Oct 2012 at 6:10 pm #
I think “Conservative American” perfectly articulates what’s wrong with the GOP and “conservative movement” today/. the Neocons have completely bamboozled people into thinking that they are the “real” conservatives. CA thinks he is conservative because….why? Because he (or she) doesn’t like Obama? Because he is not literate in the immigration debate? Because he thinks Romney’s statism is better than Obama’s statism. It might well be but it’s still statism and corporatism. TAC has an interesting piece on the stability of conservatism (which I am really beginning to doubt) that outlines the first formal articulation in 1937 in a “conservative manifesto” drafted by a coalition of Democratic and Republican Senators opposed to the extension of the New Deal. The manifesto includes the following goals, which Romney doesn’t seem to embrace:
1. Lowering the capital gains and undistributed profits taxes.
2. Balancing the budget.
3. Establishing “just relations between capital and labor” based on the “right of the worker to work, of the owner to possession, and of every may to enjoy in peace the fruits of his labor.”
4. Rejecting government competition with private enterprise and private capital.
5. Defending the right to a “reasonable profit” and recognizing that “[o]ur American competitive system is superior to any form of the collectivist program.”
6. Upholding the “soundness and stability of values”, i.e. opposing inflation.
7. Reducing income and consumption taxes.
8. Preferring state and local control to national standards.
9. Assisting the “deserving” unemployed on the basis of “individual self-reliance”.
10. Defending “the American system of private enterprise and initiative, and our American form of government.”
Alice Lillie on 17 Oct 2012 at 10:07 pm #
Pro-gun??? Romney????? Not! Even though I knew Romney was at best luke-warm on gun rights, I was surprised at his anti-gun remarks last night, which were basically just like Obama’s.
This is one of the reasons why I am a Libertarian who supports Gary
Johnson.
Anyone who says we should enforce, rather than *repeal* the gun laws we have and not make any new laws is either fiercely anti-gun (both Romney and Obama are anti-gun…are you also?) or woefully ignorant of the tens of thousands of federal gun laws on the books and how the rogue BATFE conducts itself.
Every last federal gun law is unconstitutional. The Second Amendment says what it means and means what it says. To keep and bear arms is a *God-given right!* No-one should have to go groveling to bureaucrats for a license or permit. No inanimate object should have to be registered.
One reason why this is not a free country any more and government
agents can do almost anything they want to anyone they want is that We the People have been all but disarmed and cannot fight back. Remember what Thomas Jefferson said!
The American Revolution was not won by pleading with the British! It was won by regular people who were *armed!*
Alice Lillie
Kirt Higdon on 18 Oct 2012 at 12:06 am #
Bruce,
I’d agree that the Anglo/Saxon settler colonists might be considered the American prototype, although even then you had a lot of Scotch/Irish and not a few French Huguenots in the mix. But to define the US of today as a “nation of colonists” when no one has been a colonist since 1776 or a “nation of settlers” when no one has been a settler for well over a hundred years is pretty strange. Immigrants have always been a small minority compared to the general population, but at least there are always some immigrants around. You don’t define the entire American auto fleet by the prototype Model T.
Bruce on 18 Oct 2012 at 11:16 am #
You could say nation of “descendents of colonists” I suppose. This emphasizes a connection with our forefathers. I think these sorts of connections are important.
Sean Scallon on 18 Oct 2012 at 11:42 am #
Can’t wait for the foreign policy debate which in both sides will be in agreement on 90 percent of the debate questions.
Kirt Higdon on 18 Oct 2012 at 2:43 pm #
My guess would be that there are way more descendents of immigrants than of colonists and of course numerous people (myself included) who are descendents of both. The importance of a connection with one’s forefathers doesn’t depend on the forefathers having been colonists.
Bruce on 18 Oct 2012 at 4:33 pm #
It’s hard to say Kirt. A lot of people don’t emphasize (or even know about) their English or British ancestry because people seem to think it’s more interesting to be “ethnic.”
Matt Weber on 18 Oct 2012 at 6:00 pm #
It’s not really a purely biological thing anyway. The ‘nation of immigrants’ thing doesn’t really say that most of us are descended from immigrants in some way, because that is pretty trivial. The goal is more to portray American culture as some sort of mishmash of the best aspects of every culture of the world, and from there to conclude that more immigration should be allowed to both continue this progress and to allow the best and brightest of the world to share in the fruits of the experiment. The competing view, mostly dormant in the mainstream, is that American culture is a specific offshoot of British culture, established by the British colonists, and that while there have been additions they have almost all been European in origin and they haven’t had an effect on the core idea of what is to be American. IOW you could delete chop suey or bourbon or jazz without doing any violence to the essence of America, but not trial by jury or something like that.
Bruce on 18 Oct 2012 at 6:36 pm #
Well said Matt.
Karen on 18 Oct 2012 at 6:43 pm #
Jazz has a lot more to do with inherently American musical forms that people like to give it credit for. I recommend Randy Sandke’s Where the Dark and the Light Folks Meet for a revisionist and well documented history. http://www.amazon.com/Where-Dark-Light-Folks-Meet/dp/0810866528/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1350585743&sr=8-3&keywords=randy+sandke
Aaron Gross on 18 Oct 2012 at 7:47 pm #
America WAS a nation of settlers.
America IS a nation of immigrants, and has been for at least half a century.
America will NEVER AGAIN BE a nation of settlers, at least not of Anglo-Saxon settlers.
(“Nation” defined loosely in all the above, including the first.)
This is about what America was, is, and will be. I’m not talking about what it should be.
Aaron Gross on 18 Oct 2012 at 7:50 pm #
In the above, I’m distinguishing between “a nation of ______” and “a ______ nation.” I think everyone else should observe that distinction, too.
America is an Anglo-Protestant nation. America is not a nation of Anglo-Protestants.
(Again, with the disclaimer that “nation” is used loosely.)
JDP on 19 Oct 2012 at 5:46 am #
The foreign policy debate would be more interesting if the GOP had turned against Obama’s soft version of Bush’s democratization strategy
of course, that would’ve put them in the line of attacks like “so you like Mubarak do you? huh????” but it’d certainly be more interesting.
as is no one is going to criticize Obama’s seeming confidence that every Islamic party that isn’t al Qaeda is moderate-able (whatever it means in a M.E. context — if they enact sharia peacefully is that “moderate?”) so long as they’re democratically-elected
Why capital-L Libertarians don't win on 19 Oct 2012 at 5:47 am #
Hey, what about weeeeeed, man?
Bruce on 19 Oct 2012 at 11:55 am #
Aaron,
Are you the Aaron whose comments I’ve been following for years at Takimag, WWWtW, Alt Right, etc?
Just curious.
Bruce on 19 Oct 2012 at 6:43 pm #
Aaron,
I think your distinction is useful and adds a lot to the discussion.
Bruce
Aaron Gross on 20 Oct 2012 at 4:36 am #
Bruce,
Yup, as I’ve been following yours.
Weaver on 21 Oct 2012 at 2:04 pm #
Aaron, the US might not be a state of Anglo-Protestants, but there might one day be a nation (ethnic identity) of Anglo-Protestants, or something approximating. Whites are already a minority among the young, and that’s official statistics which are likely skewed.
Phil on 24 Oct 2012 at 12:28 pm #
Thanks for this interesting post and the good comments section. In my opinion the problem is that the system is rigged in such a way that the people are only allowed a “lesser of two evils” choice. But when it comes right down to it, most people (I pray) will vote for the “Mormon not the moron”. (Found link to your page via @Sir_Geechie)