lone_ghost Loc: Wisconsin

Excerpt from an article at:
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/is-it-wrong-to-be-anti-government_11132013

When the establishment mainstream applies the anti-government label, they are hoping to achieve several levels propaganda. Here are just a few:

False Association: By placing the alleged “anti-government” views of violent people in the spotlight, the establishment is asserting that it is the political philosophy, not the individual, that is the problem. They are also asserting that other people who hold similar beliefs are guilty by association. That is to say, the actions of one man now become the trespasses of all those who share his ideology. This tactic is only applied by the media to those on the conservative or constitutional end of the spectrum, as it was with Paul Ciancia. For example, when it was discovered that Arizona mass shooter Jared Loughner was actually a l*****t, the MSM did not attempt to tie his actions to liberals in general. Why? Because the left is not a threat to the elitist oligarchy within our government. Constitutional conservatives, on the other hand, are.

False Generalization: The term “anti-government” is so broad that, like the term “terrorist”, it can be applied to almost anyone for any reason. The establishment does not want you to distinguish between those who are anti-government for the wrong reasons, and those who are anti-government for the right reasons. Anyone who questions the status quo becomes the enemy regardless of their motives or logic. By demonizing the idea of being anti-government, the establishment manipulates the public into assuming that all government by extension is good, or at least necessary, when the facts actually suggest that most government is neither good or necessary.

False Assertion: The negative connotations surrounding the anti-government stance also suggest that anyone who defends themselves or their principles against government tyranny, whether rationally justified or not, is an evil person. Just look at how Washington D.C. has treated Edward Snowden. Numerous political elites have suggested trying the whistle-blower for treason, or assassinating him outright without due process, even though Snowden’s only crime was to expose the criminal mass surveillance of the American people by the government itself. Rather than apologizing for their corruption, the government would rather destroy anyone who exposes the t***h.

False Shame: Does government criminality call for behavior like that allegedly taken by Paul Ciancia? His particular action was not morally honorable or even effective. It helped the establishment’s position instead of hurting it, and was apparently driven more by personal psychological turmoil rather than political affiliation. But, would it be wrong for morally sound and rational Americans facing imminent despotism within government to physically fight back? Would it be wrong to enter into combat with a totalitarian system? The Founding Fathers did, but only after they had exhausted all other avenues, and only after they had broken away from dependence on the system they had sought to fight. Being anti-government does not mean one is a violent and dangerous person. It does mean, though, that there will come a point at which we will not allow government to further erode our freedoms. We will not and should not feel shame in making that stand.

I do not agree with every element of the “anti-government” ethos that exists in our era, but I do see the vast majority of reasons behind it as legitimate. If the establishment really desired to quell the quickly growing anti-government methodology, then they would stop committing Constitutional atrocities and stop giving the public so many causes to h**e them. If they continue with their vicious bid to erase civil liberties, dominate the citizenry through fear and intimidation and steal and murder in our name, then our response will inevitably be “anti-government”, and we will inevitably move to end the system as we know it.

I found this interesting as someone who has been labeled anti-government on several occasions.

jonhatfield Loc: Green Bay, WI

Well, now you understand how l*****ts felt back when McCarthyites stereotyped them as c****es. I was myself a McCarthyite in those days. I guess I still am, because despite your very thorough treatment of how wrong it is to stereotype your group of "constitutional" somethingoranothers, I consider you fellow travelers with some very h**eful rightwingnuts who post as a gang on this political forum...rightwingnuts who are as much a danger to our American republic today as the c****e nuts were yesterday...as radical and extreme, as much out in the swampland instead of in the American mainstream as your extremist parallel on the left, the c*******ts. Anti-govt. is a nice name for your camp...I call you Anti-America. You believe our govt. is nitty-gritty and turned upside down. I've got news for you--it's always been nitty-gritty imperfection. That's America the Beautiful. And it is beautiful, but you see only the ugly.

Yes, I also think government doesn't work efficiently and is too big and mistaken in all sorts of programs but I believe those problems should be worked out in mainstream politics not out in your radical extremist "anti-government" swampland. You may convince the libs with this argument that it's unjust to associate your fringe on the extreme right with the h**efulness, conspiracy fantasy thinking, radicalism, etc. etc. of some of your fellow travelers, but I see you as too close to them to trust the anti-govt. gang at all.

I apologize, Lone Ghost, for labeling you if you personally are a critic of our government flaws working to correct them in the mainstream. But if you're one of the anti-government rightwingnuts from the swamps making out that America has become Halloween, I regard you as poison to America and attach the label dangerous-to-America to you as I did to c****es, Trotskyites, and fellow travelers in the 1960s.

lone_ghost Loc: Wisconsin

No need to apologize for your beliefs, a discussion needs opposing view points to actually be a discussion.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s America was overwhelmed with concerns about the threat of c*******m growing in Eastern Europe and China. Capitalizing on those concerns, Joseph McCarthy made a public accusation that more than two hundred “card-carrying” c*******ts had infiltrated the United States government. Though eventually his accusations were proven to be untrue, and he was censured by the Senate for unbecoming conduct, his zealous campaigning ushered in one of the most repressive times in 20th-century American politics.

McCarthy created one of the most shameful eras in the history of our country by using his hunt for "c****e infiltrators" to silence and destroy the lives of over 300 prominent people who criticized him publically. The media was too terrified of being brought to trial as a c*******t sympathizer to speak out against him.

McCarthyism is an outstanding example of why ant-government sentiments not only do, but should exist in the first place. People become anti-government due directly to feelings of oppression through government action, it does not just pop up out of thin air. It is a reaction.

jay-are

Today those who the media calls anti-government, are actually anti-c*******t, but the media wants the government to be c*******t, so to them anti-c*******t is the same a anti-government.

Now that the c*******ts have the upper hand, we seem to be in an era of the opposite of McCarthyism - outing the capitalists and constitutionalists, and criminalizing them.

I think criminalizing the c*******ts was the right thing to do, and criminalizing the capitalists and constitutionalists is wrong.

alex Loc: michigan now imperial beach californa

I believe you are correct, and I believe McCarthy was right but the lib/c****es always use ridicule as their #1 weapon and continue to do the same today

jonhatfield Loc: Green Bay, WI

Thank you, fellow Wisconsinite, for understanding that my purpose was to get the discussion going. McCarthyism was awful but it did do one good--it made the left side of our politics very cautious about extremists. I wish the same thing were true about the right being very cautious about extremists.

Yours is the clearest explanation I have seen about McCarthyism, but already I see a post defending McCarthyism. And don't kid yourself--McC would be at the extreme of the anti-government camp if he were alive today. In fact, many in the anti-govt. extreme in this forum name Obama a Muslim and c****e--a current phantom practice of McCarthyism, and I haven't seen anyone in the anti-govt. camp on this political forum call them out. Sad. I call them rightwingnuts and keep hoping the label sticks enough that less extreme posters will be more cautious about associating with their nuttiness. So far no luck. ha. Yes, there is considerable disdain in the mainstream for extremes of anti-government politics but I don't think it goes quite to the extreme of McCarthy. The closer parallel and the real McCarthyism of our day is in fact from the anti-government extremes. Well, maybe the Dems need to be made a little more cautious about expanding govt. As a Dem now ever since Reaganism, I'm willing to meet the anti-big-govt. people half way...mind you, only half way and only if they leave the Cruz missle and the Pauly brat behind. Also IF our Walker gets dissed as the guy who escaped indictment only because none of his top aids would inform on him, were convicted of crimes without ratting. Well, at least our Wisconsin Badger state is one up on the Illinois Sucker state, they have governors in jail while ours is freely running all around the country making speeches. Cheeseheads win, Illinois loses again! Can you believe this Walker guy is the hero of the anti-govt. camp and being promoted as a 2016 candidate for Pres.? ha.

By the way, although I now live in Wisconsin, approximately 30 or 40 miles away from McC's home base, I lived in East Tennessee (however, originally from south central rural Michigan) when I was a McCarthyite in high school. I did realize he was a nut case by the time I went to U-T. As grad student at U-W Madison I was the token Republican at the Channing-Murray boarding house that was unofficial hdqtrs. for the U-W Young Dems & some of my fellow residents it turned out had circulated recall petitions in the McC recall e******n (which he won...as did our current gov. near 60 years later in his recall e******n...strange & extreme politics in Wisconsin, huh?). Interestingly I discovered I was more "liberal" (actually more interested) in civil rights issues than my Young Dem friends who were considered very liberal at the time (don't get your dander up, rightwingnuts, just libs, not extreme left). During my first weeks on campus, Dems sponsored a civil rights march to the Capitol grounds where Henry Cabot Lodge, Nixon's Veep candidate, was to speak. When I showed up with my Nixon button on, a cute earnest young girl in large glasses scolded me with raised finger that I couldn't march with them until someone explained to her that I could. (That was when I was first at U-W and before living at CM House.) Ironically a week or 2 later when the campus civil rights group sponsored a march to Kennedy's speech at the Field House, none of the Dems showed up to march, and I was the one who objected to a group carrying signs for unilateral nuclear disarmament marching with us civil rights marchers. ha. So we marched on opposite sides of the street, to the relief of Jim, the leader of the CR campus group who became a friend. Now mind you, the unilateralists were no doubt sincere and two of the women were pushing baby carriages but they were blind in their fanaticism for the cause to the fact their unilateralist position was crazy wrong and manipulated for extreme left purposes (soviet or Trotskyite, don't know which). The unilateralist march was sponsored by the U-W chapter of SANE (don't recall what the initial words were but for sane nuclear disarmament) and a year later I wrote to Rep. Kastenmeier, who was a member of the steering committee of the national SANE organization (Eleanor Roosevelt was also a member) enclosing a unilateralist pamphlet telling him that the unilateralists who had taken over the campus SANE chapter were discrediting the cause of mutual nuclear disarmament and pointing out that a small determined minority could do that at other campus chapters just as Lenin's Bolsheviks took over Russia. Shortly afterwards all SANE campus chapters were disaffiliated and disbanded,and the national SANE organization was able to be one of the main groups to advocate convincingly for mutual nuclear disarmament .

One of my arguments for the Republicans with my Young Dem friends the 2 years at U-W was that the GOP was the peace party and that if they were interested in nuclear disarmament (which to some extent they were) they might consider the reality that only a GOP President could with public credibility negotiate terms with c*******ts...as turned out to be the case with Nixon & China and Reagan with nuclear disarmament. I was told one of my friends became a Republican on that argument and later was on Rep. K's staff. For me this political forum is occasion for recall of personal past experiences that otherwise wouldn't happen if I weren't so provoked at the rightwingnut posts in this forum. Thank you, wingnuts. ha.

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

HAHAHA! How's that plan worked so far Jon? The government just keeps getting bigger, limiting more freedom, going further into debt and spending more money!
How, exactly, do you propose to get these guys attention?

lone_ghost Loc: Wisconsin

General Reply:

On the occasions that I have been labeled anti-government it was due to my criticism of the current administration and Obama's massive expansion of government control into our lives. I am not foolish enough to think that our society could function effectively with out some level of centralized government, because it can not. The point I wished to make on this topic was how the label anti-government is used to stereo type any one who speaks out against the ever increasing power and control of this administration as an evil person who h**es the government as a whole. This carries with it the public assumption that we are all s******nists looking to o*******w the US government. This also pushes deeper the civil unrest between the people, and distracts them from seeing the t***h. The four "levels of propaganda" I posted from the article are examples of how this is accomplished. I see our current government as a bloated, money sucking, ever invasive behemoth that has become unsustainable and Marxist in it's policies towards the general population. Does this mean that I am anti-government, a s******nist? It simply means that I believe we need to scale this monster back before it becomes a juggernaut that stomps its way through our country leaving nothing but devastation in its wake.

jonhatfield Loc: Green Bay, WI

hahaha right back at you, Mike. Gee, do you think in terms of a "plan"? I don't. I'm just an ordinary person who trusts the MAINSTREAM American political system to bring us through wh**ever this or that development...not perfectly and without mistakes because I realize politicians too are ordinary people. Is that trust the "that plan" you are referring to? If so, it's not going too well, everything just keeps getting bigger and various measures don't turn out perfect, to say the least.

You have a better plan, Mike? a radical extremely perfect plan to solve all the bignesses? hahaha One that won't upset the apple cart and create anarchy? Oh, you think that might be a good idea? You do realize, I hope, that it's no longer the day of apple carts whose cargo can be picked up and delivered by hand. We live in an age of train loads, not carts. We wish the situation of bignesses in govt. and economic consolidation could be so simple and resolvable.

There's a larger picture, Mike. We are the present culmination of a path to a civilization of individualism and representative govt. that began with the Renaissance, the rebirth of the classical civilization of Greece & Rome on the frontier edges in the ancient world--and this rebirth became on the frontier edges of this renewed civilization in Britain and new world America a new or renewed bigger form of representative govt. and individualism. Britain has sometimes been termed the new Athens and America the new Rome. Actually quite a bit more than that--much larger scale in governance and individualism, although Greece & Rome achievement in so short time & small place is simply extraordinary. The Greek city democracies lasted very short time before geopolitical bigness resulted in Alexander & empire--the Roman republic not much longer as a republic before economic consolidation and geopolitical bigness resulted in Caesar and empire, although the forms of the republic continued to be observed for more than a thousand years (the decline & fall of the Roman empire), individualism and advance of civilization in comatose state (the middle ages).

Have we reached the culmination and the point where geopolitical bigness and economic consolidation bigness becomes empire and individualism goes into coma? Our representative govt. and civilization of individualism & freedom have reached the time span of Greek democracies and the Roman republic. Is this as far as it goes? So much accomplished and new heights reached in a few generations to go into coma at our time? Don't panic yet. The invention of federal government solved the geopolitical bigness problem that was immediate cause of empire at the height of Greek-Roman civilization (although working federalism out on world scale is a work in progress--League of & United Nations on our model & at our initiation). Economic & govt. bureaucracy bignesses, on the other hand, remain somewhat more problematical and how to work through them to maintain individualism and creativity is not established. The bignesses are here and won't go away. Crashing the system won't change that reality, only cripple the means of possibly winning through. No simple answers. We have to work on workable ways through and then work through the blunders involved. We do need to be very critical but not radical and extreme. Yes, the edges, the extremes, the radicals come up with criticisms and potentially new solutions, define issues, but they regard their ideas as final answers, only answers, required answers, absolute answers, and end answers and their imposition could indeed be the danger of the total end. The problem isn't the ideas but the finality, requirement, absolutism, end game attitude. The attitude needs to be workability for now, affordability, improvement, reinvention, patience, moderation, pragmatism, compromise--the political mainstream American way, in other words. Yes, the nitty-gritty political mainstream American way seem broken and ridiculous today...hahaha...as it did yesterday and the days before (or do you think people in the day thought everything was hunky dory perfect, admired Lincoln, Teddy, Wilson,Hoover, FDR, Eleanor, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, etc.?) . Look what has been accomplished in all these broken and ridiculous days: America the Beautiful.

Yah, round up all these i******s & dump them back in Mexico. Is that the American way? Adopt a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Then what do we do when the next recession hits? Sounds "good" but not only unworkable but destructive. Oh but you shouldn't compromise on legality or economic responsibility. OK, destroy America, radicals and wingnuts...go right ahead, take us down. A small band of radical idealists of the left were able to take over the Russian Revolution in 1917 so a small band of radical idealists of the right could very well do it to us. The messages sound so goooood. hahaha

jonhatfield Loc: Green Bay, WI

In principle I agree we shouldn't stereotype anti-govt. people. In practice in this forum when so many label Obama h**er of America, monster, etc. it becomes difficult not to be prejudiced and label the whole camp as extremists, radicals, outside the mainstream, and wackos because the labels fit most of the group. However, that tends to be how fanatic partisanship works--total villainization of the other side and maybe this tendency of the extreme right should be viewed as only extreme partisanship rather than dangerous and comparable to c*******t extremists as I tend to view the situation. I should see it as simple partisan fanaticism, which I myself tend to. I was reminded today when my wife asked me where I was when I heard JFK was assassinated that I was so partisan against Kennedy fifty years ago that I exchanged negative comments about him with the first person I encountered afterwards in the hall of the school where I taught, an equally partisan anti-Kennedy fellow teacher. Fifty years later I realize he was a good Pres (even though I consider the Camalot aspect ridiculous) and suspect part of the negative was not so much Republican partisanship on my part as prejudice against Catholicism. I would have denied that in myself at the time, but I was raised Southern Baptist and Catholic ritual was "wrong." Perhaps my fellow anti-JFK teacher, daughter of a Methodist minister, was similarly prejudiced. Rather painful to recall being so wrong and h**eful, but that's how it was. Ironic that 25 years later I worked at a residential "school" for "exceptional children" run by a small group of nuns--40 children so severely and profoundly r****ded no place in all of northern Illinois could handle them--120 caretakers required for the 40, the "school" hours funded by the state despite the fact the school was parochial. ha. Fifty years later 3 of my grandchildren attend a parochial elementary school and while to me it is wrong on principle of church and school separation and on principle of equal education opportunity as opposed to special opportunity, I wish my other 4 grandchildren had the special opportunity to attend this parochial school specifically for the religious practice and for the religious example of all God's children together there--white, black, Asian, mixed and no feelings of differences. Otherwise modern life doesn't give the time for religious practice that there was when I was a kid. And while I am not Catholic and won't become one, I do recognize Catholicism as perhaps considerably more Christian in practice than my Protestant side--very considerably.

Maybe instead of railing about rightwingnuts and their fellow travelers I should lecture about excessive partisanship and the need to understand the good parts in the other side. Nah, that would be too reasonable. Onward with the war against wingnutism, and I take back my admitting I'm a wingnut too.

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

What is so wrong with limited Federal government Jon? It's not as if they've been doing such a great job managing the stuff they're supposed to be managing now...or haven't you noticed?

Labeling me an anarchist is just silly. Labeling those of us who are for personal responsibility as extremists is just rhetoric and asking me my plan when I've already stated it multiple times is just purposely thick. The plan begins with the Constitution - which people these days seen to know little about.

All those word and you still haven't answered my simple question...have you read the Constitution lately? You should. Everyone should. It's important.

lone_ghost Loc: Wisconsin

Well said. If any one looks at the quote on the bottom of my posts, it pretty much says it all. That government is best that governs least.

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

Modern men are too friggin' smart these days to pay attention to someone Jefferson.

lone_ghost Loc: Wisconsin

The fine line between genius and ignorance is easily defined. Genius has limits, ignorance does not.

The mark of intelligence is not measured in knowledge, it can only be found in wisdom.

The smarter a man perceives himself to be, the less he actually understands.

A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he believes, he becomes.

There are three types of people in the world, the moveable, the unmovable, and those who move.

These quotes are meant to emphasize your words.

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

Thanks friend. People act as if the Constitution is some sort of radical idea, or that the common person cannot understand it. I just believe in the wisdom of the men who brought it about. I think they were much smarter than I am.