[Hac-announce] Election 2012 What's tearing us apart? 7/7, 2:30p

[L.M.C. Harvey]

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Conversations
July 07, 2012  ---
 In
preparation for the 2012 Election we might ask the following
questions.  “Who
are we as a nation?  And what is it that’s tearing us apart?”
[ quoted from Brookings notes. ] 




On
May 29, the Brookings1
Institute hosted a discussion with E. J. Dionne about the lost
balance between individualism and community, its corrosive
implications for the political environment and policymaking....
“

“E.J.
Dionne’s new book, Our
Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age
of Discontent (Bloomsbury
USA, 2012), argues that
from the very beginning, our country has been characterized by a deep
but healthy tension between our love of individual liberty and our
devotion to community. 






We'll
watch this Webcast in which
Dionne talks about the book and follows up with lengthy answers to
audience questions.  We can discuss our own questions and answers.  





http://www.brookings.edu/events/2012/05/29-political-heart









Here are two examples of
somewhat florid language from somewhat divergent, if not very
extreme, points of view.




>===<
 ...The
GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is
ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise;  unmoved by
conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and
dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When
one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly
impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the
country’s challenges.  ... From a book by Thomas E. Mann and Norm
Ornstein, " . . . . The Republicans Are the Problem.”  
Mann is a fellow in governance studies of  Brookings and Ornstein is
a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute.  






>===<   From
Preserving Liberty to Destroying
It  ….  Roberts decision turns role of government on its head....





…. Some GOP hacks are blithely
celebrating the Roberts Court’s despotic repurposing of taxation as
some kind of political opportunity. This is like the magician who
directs our attention toward one thing in order to distract us from
what is really taking place. The truth is that if this outrageous and
perverse repurposing of taxation is allowed to stand, Americans will
have been robbed of what Lincoln called the right to eat the bread
earned in the sweat of our brows. The government will dictate the
eating. Moreover, we will be subject to a government unlimited in its
power to extort our obedience to its will in every detail of life.
Chief Justice Marshall observed that “the power to tax involves the
power to destroy.” Now Chief Justice Roberts and his elite-faction
cohorts mean to use the threat of that destruction to endow the U.S.
government with an unlimited power to command. Thus ends America’s
decent, free way of life. 






By
Alan Keyes  Once a high-level Reagan-era diplomat, Alan Keyes is a
long-time leader in the conservative movement. He is well-known as a
staunch pro-life champion and an eloquent advocate of the
constitutional republic, including respect for the moral basis of
liberty and self-government. He has worked to promote an approach to
politics based on the initiative of citizens of goodwill consonant
with the with the principles of God-endowed natural right.2





http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/from-preserving-liberty-to-destroying-it/

	
	1 
About
	Brookings  --- 
	The
	Brookings Institution is a private nonprofit organization devoted to
	independent research and innovative policy solutions. 
	
	
	
	

	


	2  WND
	names itself as independent news but there is no mission statement
	as is found on many sites. 


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