Friday, January 17, 2014

The Council Has Spoken!! This Weeks' Watcher's Council Results

 

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

As some of my esteemed Council mates remarked during the voting, this was a tough week to try to choose amongst apile o' goodies. Hah! says I, because the quality this group pulls off each week is always pretty impressive,but yeah, this week we had a lot of great stuff to choose from. So you know the winners had to have come up with something pretty special,no? Something that really struck a chord?

http://nicedeb.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/right-planet.jpg%3Fw%3D780

Leave it to The Right Planet to pull that off, with his heartfelt I've Had It With The GOP. Here's a slice:

For several years now I have watched the GOP move toward the political center—even left of center at times. We have been told this was necessary; otherwise, we would have no chance of winning an election ever again. If this were true, how does one explain the overwhelming landslide victories of Ronald Reagan? Yet the GOP has seemingly learned nothing from the success of Ronald Reagan and his steadfast brand of conservatism.

Lately I have watched GOP stalwarts, like Sen. John McCain, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sen. Jeff Flake, Rep. Peter King, and political operatives like Karl Rove, trash the Tea Party and pummel their conservative and libertarian-leaning GOP colleagues, like Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Mike Lee, Sen. Rand Paul, Rep. Justin Amash, etc. Yet they withhold their vitriol and indignation for the Democrats and the president, literally treating them with kid gloves.

I have voted Republican all my life. Why? Well, the first election I voted in was for Ronald Reagan. It was a no-brainer for me at the time. I have been a longtime student of military history, particularly the history of the Second World War. I believe in a very strong defense, since it has been proven throughout history that there are many nefarious forces in the world who wish to see the U.S. wiped off the map. If we are not able to project power and defend ourselves, we might as well throw up the white flag and simply submit. This is utterly repugnant and unacceptable to me as an American who values foremost the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But when I voted in my first presidential election, at 18 years of age, I did not have the knowledge that I do now of the philosophy and ideology that drives the Right and the Left. It was simple for me at the time: who supports a strong defense? The answer was obvious to me at the time—Ronald Reagan.

It seems that all I have done for the past six years is study the history and ideology of the political movements within the United States since its founding. As I studied and studied, something became abundantly clear to me: there were profound changes to our form of government that occurred about a 100 years ago, starting with President Woodrow Wilson’s Administration. Of course one can argue it goes back farther than that. But I digress.

It was President Woodrow Wilson who first tried to re-brand the Democratic Party the “Progressive Party.” Some of the most significant and far-reaching changes to our present form of government occurred at this time around 1913 (a very bad year, indeed). These monumental structural changes came in the form of the Federal Reserve Act, the Sixteenth Amendment (progressive, i.e. graduated income tax) and the Seventeenth Amendment (the direct election of senators by popular vote). The Seventeenth Amendment effectively moved us toward direct democracy—something our Founders called “mobocracy,” and expressly warned us to avoid at all costs.


mobocracy

There are other reasons I decided at a young age to join up with the GOP. The Republican Party was originally formed in 1854 as the Abolitionist Party in opposition to the monstrous and evil institution known as slavery. Furthermore, I have identified myself as a Republican because that is the form of government that our Constitution requires in Article 4, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution—meaning: we are to have a “republican form of government.” There is not a single occurrence of the term democracy in our Constitution (check it our for yourself).

Many times I have heard people tell me that the Republican and Democratic parties are really just one and the same. “There is no difference between the parties,” they say. I always bristled a bit at this assessment … until now. I still think we should exercise caution and not throw the baby out with the bath water. But I will return to this later.

I can no longer stand by and be trashed by the very Party that I have so wholeheartedly supported for so many years with my time and money. I can remember times when I defended folks like George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Karl Rove and the like, when they seemed unwilling, or incapable, of defending themselves. But was this by design? By the end of George W. Bush’s second term, the GOP was in a shambles. There’s no denying it, no matter how you try to spin it.

Much more at the link.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Amil Imani with a piece entitled An Open Letter To The God Of Islam  submitted by Joshuapundit.I won't describe it further except to say that it is a must read if you have any interest in the subject at all.


Here are this week’s full results. Only The Mellow Jihadi was unable to vote this week, but was not subject to the normal  2/3 vote penalty:

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners

See you next week! Don't forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week's Watcher's Forum, as the Council and their invited guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day and weigh in...don't you dare miss it. And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..'cause we're cool like that!
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