Blitzer Asks Erickson About Conservatives' 'Mount Vernon Statement'
Wolf Blitzer asks RedState's Erick Erickson about their latest bit of, as Paul Waldman calls it, Founding Father Fetishism:
Today, a group of movement right muckety-mucks released "The Mount Vernon Statement," meant to be a guiding document for their side. You've got the heavyweights -- Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform -- and a few lesser lights, such as professional gay-basher Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness. The document itself is about as vague as it could be. There isn't a single policy issue mentioned; just a lot of repetitions of phrases like "founding principles" and "limited government."
But you'll note that it's presented on yellowed paper, with clip art of quill pens at the top! And the signatures are in ornate, Hancock-esque script! And it's called the Mt. Vernon statement -- like George Washington, get it? Read on...
And for another great breakdown of this nonsense, check out this post over at Lefty's Last Cry, a progressive blog from Notre Dame -- Conservative Constitutional Pornography.
This just looks like more of the same gripes from conservatives that we've been listening to for, I dunno, how many years now? And there's this from Digby -- Over Before It Began:
Wolf Blitzer just wondered if this "Mt Vernon Statement" will launch" a new era of conservative ascendance." I thought, already? Did the era of liberal ascendance come and go when I popped out to Starbucks for a cappuccino?
In case you were wondering what this bold, new conservative manifesto contains, here it is. My God, what ever will we do in the face of this fresh, exciting breakthrough?
And as she notes, here's the initial list that signed off on this thing. Hardly fresh faces to say the least.
Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America
Edwin Feulner, Jr., president of the Heritage Foundation
Lee Edwards, Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought at the Heritage Foundation, was present at the Sharon Statement signing.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council
Becky Norton Dunlop, president of the Council for National Policy
Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center
Alfred Regnery, publisher of the American Spectator
David Keene, president of the American Conservative Union
David McIntosh, co-founder of the Federalist Society
T. Kenneth Cribb, former domestic policy adviser to President Reagan
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform
William Wilson, President, Americans for Limited Government
Elaine Donnelly, Center for Military Readiness
Richard Viguerie, Chairman, ConservativeHQ.com
Kenneth Blackwell, Coalition for a Conservative Majority
Colin Hanna, President, Let Freedom Ring
Kathryn J. Lopez, National Review
They are nothing more then one sided, greedy liars.
republicanism/conservatism is a mental illness!
Because there is no such thing as objective fact. /snark
Corruption favors the wealthy.
And possibly genetic. And there's no cure!
We're not going to get very far if you keep injecting logic into the conversation!
Forefathers blah blah blah. Constitution blah blah blah. Lower taxes blah blah blah. Smaller governement blah blah blah. God bless America.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
Our forefathers were not humans, they were Gods and able to see 200 years into the future.
They need to read, compare and contrast the Federalist Papers with the Anti-Federalist Papers, as well as the original platforms for the Democratic Republican and the Whig parties.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
it's not 1776 and we are unlikely to turn back the clock, as much as conservatives would like to do that.
double spaced no less than 1500 words! I wonder what slant the paper might take?
Only when the last tree has died
and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught
will we realize we cannot eat money.
soft, doughy, pudgy, pasty white, chickenhawk conservative. A tiresome bore really.
... in the dumbing-down of America, horseshit like 'our Founding Fathers were Christians' and 'America is a Christian nation' get repeated without critical thought or review.
We can laugh, but the truth is, the signatories of this piece of tripe get a hell of a lot more airtime than anyone on the progressive front.
not because their arguments are better, but because airtime is controlled by people who fund and promote said propaganda. very convenient.
which goes hand-in-hand with the rightwing theocratic puppets taking over school boards and pushing an agenda that is ahistorical, and anti-science. (see, NYTimes story on the Texas state school board)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14...
he who controls the education... hm, i'm sure there is a quote in there somewhere....
This is how conservatism survives. But with this new conservative manifesto, there are some obvious falsehoods that need to be directly challenged--hopefully it will cause someone to think.
As they point out at Lefty's Last Cry, the document says,
But the constitution does not outline or even suggest a specific form of ECONOMY--the constitution speaks only to government, providing an outline for democracy. This conservative bullsh*t about how the constitution "encourages" free markets is just a very thin excuse to get tax breaks for the rich, and to allow corporations to run roughshod over the American people. We liberals need to argue this point until we're blue in the face--the so-called Mount Vernon Statement is factually challenged and self-serving.
Beware of anyone promising a future full of yesterdays.
Without disagreeing with the basic premise of your post, the Constitution not only lays out the structure of government, but protects the rights of the people as well. One of the enumerated rights is the right to "property."
The right to property is broader than just a right to own material things or even land. You own yourself. You own your body. You own your life.
Nevertheless, the right does have at least some implications for economy.
Everyone is equally entitled to the pursuit of happiness. Wasn't that once self evident?
...but the "right to property," at least in my understanding (take with grain of salt), is more of an exclusionary statement, intended to defend individual property against central ownership, or claims to property by monarchies or other oppressive regimes. So the constitution suggests what type of economy is DISALLOWED, like national communism (if you take this to it's logical end), but it doesn't prescribe "market solutions" in the way this conservative nonsense intends.
"Market solutions," by the way, is a very nebulous statement intended to give constitutional authority to the group's real goals: Lower or nonexistant taxes, "small" government, and deregulation. But if the constitution codifies "market solutions," then police departments, fire departments, social security, public schools, and even the military are unconstitutional. Obviously, that's NOT what the founders intended (even though my last three examples came much later).
Bottom line: the words "market," "enterprise," and "economy" are NOT in the constitution, so I fail to see how it can "encourage" these principles.
Beware of anyone promising a future full of yesterdays.
That's exactly correct. And that's exactly what the Constitution does on the whole. It says what kind of government actions are disallowed. It limits the government from taking certain actions.
I agree with you wholeheartedly.
Everyone is equally entitled to the pursuit of happiness. Wasn't that once self evident?
"Did the era of liberal ascendance come and go when I popped out to Starbucks for a cappuccino?"
Remember in 2006 after the repugs got thumped, they said it was a victory for conservatism. In 2008 when Obama won with the largest House and Senate majorities any president has had in generations, we had to hear the right wing idiots crow about this still being a center right country. The traditional media is mostly useless.
while surfing, you should. He is at CPAC speaking truth to lunacy.
Highly entertaining, this guy is smart. I use KTALK. I get up early just to listen to Stephanie Miller.
WORTH LISTENING TO
All (conservative white heterosexual Christians) are created equal. Just about every other American has to fight to get and keep the rights doughy pantload Erikson and his ilk attempt to take away.
Wolf at the very end of the clip: "Thanks for coming in, good guy". WTF was that all about? STFU Wolf you stooge.
You left out the gender...Male......Women are just for making coffee and babies. And they should preferably have flat heads.
n/t
God these people are stupid.
Go back to the founders principles?
Like denying women the right to vote?
Like not allowing us to vote for U.S. Senators?
Like slavery?
Like not even allowing white men to vote unless they had about a year's worth of income in savings or property?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Bingo. That is exactly what today's conservatives crave. More so, I think that's really what conservatism is all about.
they were Gods capable of seeing 200 years into the future.
Didn't you know that?
the founders would have to have looked 200 years into the past to have anticipated having to deal with these knuckledragging fucktards.
Thanks for making me snarf(reverse snort)coffee all over my keyboard.
I solved your Gore problem.
"That's fu*#ing retarded."
Big City Mayor
... a nation where citizens participated in government, taking the time to educate themselves as well as serve.
They neither anticipated or safeguarded against the deliberate malice and rampant ignorance found in the conservative mainstream and tea bag crowd.
rampant ignorance when they rebelled against the monarchy. These overpampered shitheels flatter themselves when they even try to compare themselves to the crafters of the constitution.
Study the symptoms not the virus...
you'll have to excuse me, i have a slave that needs a little *wink* guidance.
thomas Jefferson
They talk about the founding fathers as if they got it right. THere's no way you can talk about going back to their principles without acknowledging that the original Constitution denied so many Americans their basic human rights.
Because everyone who wasn't a landed Protestant white man in 1776-78 was under the white man's thumb, whether slave or white female. Terrible time, really, for everyone but landed white men. In the meantime, the US population has grown 150-fold and the states have grown from 13 to 50. There's so much more diversity. No wonder they want to go back to Mt. Vernon's heyday, when white man was king. Or President.
charles beard--an economic interpretation of the constitution
the majority of the FFs crafted the constitution in order to substitute one ruling class (brit) for another (amer).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXK6V9hAaW0
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
What did that jackass say about the Supreme Court not being the one to decide the constitutionality of laws passed by the Congress?
What you said. For a group of people that claim to know what the Constitution means, they clearly have not read it.
I don't think he is happy with the potential spoiler in... The Tea Party is evidently cutting its ties with the GOP in Nevada
finally got it. :-/
Study the symptoms not the virus...
A nice list of the usual suspects. What's frustrating is that the vast majority of americans either agree with these people (20%'ers) or they have no idea who Brent Bozell, Al Regnery and Grover Norquist are. And therein lies the threat.
"Someday somebody related to some of these sufferers, these victims, these collaterally damaged souls, may try to kill you. And I have to tell you, I think you’ll have it coming." - Christopher Cooper
AUSTIN, Texas: A small plane has crashed into a building housing offices for the IRS, though officials are presently saying this does not appear to be associated with crime or terrorism.
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared...
"That's fu*#ing retarded."
Big City Mayor
I was alerted to this by my wife, who got it in an e-mail entitled "Traffic Delay." Shows you the degree to which Austinites are gripped by hysteria over terrorism.
"That's fu*#ing retarded."
Big City Mayor
if Miss Perry filled his panties when he heard about this.
already got burned down. He lives far south now.
"That's fu*#ing retarded."
Big City Mayor
You mean where he keeps his head?
closer to the border in case he has to run for it.
"That's fu*#ing retarded."
Big City Mayor
Planes didn't crash into buildings when W was President.
I don't remember a W. It was Reagan, then Bush, then Clinton, then Obama. Right?
Absolutely NOTHING happened between Jan 2001 and December 2008.
honor restoring,
deciding,
brush clearing
and some pretty exciting book readering contests.
"That's fu*#ing retarded."
Big City Mayor
Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.
That is near.....Crawford, Ft. Hood, and Branch Davidia
Lots of speculative opportunities on the old blogosphere.
"That's fu*#ing retarded."
Big City Mayor
Very curious what his motives were because the idea of crashing a plane into a building is not new.
But CNN reports he set fire to his house before taking off in his own plane. He was orininally from California where he had financial problems and a dispute with IRS. He left behind a website that contained an account of his dispute with IRS.
"That's fu*#ing retarded."
Big City Mayor
...and tape it to that stupid friggin' statement and throw it over the nearest bridge.
All you'll be out is twenty five cents.
Lower the retirement age.
Meet the new cons, same as the old cons.
Statement to Vern:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hXxBHVY3tw
"That's fu*#ing retarded."
Big City Mayor
Of course I agree about the Founders' errors as to voting rights, gender, slavery, etc., but look at how different the first paragraphs of the Constitution and the Mt. Vernon statement are:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
and
We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding. Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law. They sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government.
Look how the founders prioritized their aims:
1. Form a more perfect union
2. Establish justice
3. Insure domestic tranquility
4. Provide for the common defense
5. Promote the general welfare
6. Secure the blessings of liberty
The neocons rewrite this as:
1. Secure national independence
2. Provide for economic opportunity
3. Establish true religious liberty
4. Maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government
Where's the establishment of justice? Where's promotion of the general welfare? Where's plain old liberty (not qualified as "true religious")?
These idiots never watched Schoolhouse Rock.
1. Guns
2. Guns
3. Jesus carrying a gun
4. Just give us guns, we'll work the rest out ourselves
and wet my pants a little.
with the need for wooden teeth?
"That's fu*#ing retarded."
Big City Mayor
Shadowgm said it! We think they're tiresome, they're full of crap, etc., but they've got the pulse of a majority of "dumbed-down" Americans and they've got the airwaves. Unfortunately, their media exposure gives them all the legitimacy required by too many unthinking Americans.
I just went and read the Mount Vernon Statement. In my opinion, it's just more conservative interpretation of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. It cites no specific statements to support the conservative interpretation. It only says "it is so". To state that these truths are under attack on a daily basis is just inflammatory language which is completely and utterly unsupported by facts.
I could easily interpret the founding documents in a different manner, and do, in fact. Surely our constitution is not under attack on a "daily basis". In point of fact, it is being supported now much more than it has been over the eight years of the previous administration. Not as much as I would like, but certainly more than during Republican administrations. In truth, it is being supported more than it has been since 1994, when the conservatives took over the congress.
So the right continues ad hominem attacks without specificity. This won't change. They just want their power back, regardless of how bad that is for the USA and the world.
I for one, welcome our doughy pant-load overlords...
I loves how electing Obama president has freaked their shit completely out. A lot of this "crazy" has traditionally been hidden under a thin veneer of sober, conservative respectability.
Not any more!
Sorta like picking a rock up and seeing all the slimy, scurrying critters underneath.
Can they ever get back to some semblance of sanity/relevance?
Like slavery, aristocracy and bigotry? Or the actual revolutionary principles of liberty? Because I don't see conservatives paying anything more than lip service to the latter.
Yeah, by conservatives. Unless, of course by "true religious liberty" they mean the freedom to oppress non-Christians and the freedom to establish Christianity as an official state religion. That conservatives are fighting for. But it comports more with Orwellian Newspeak than the Constitution.
I agree! One hundred percent! I'm so sick of the "Unitary Executive" nonsense. And how terrorism is such a threat that we need to forget about the Constitution. I'm sick of hearing about how our limited government can't handle fair criminal trials for anyone we label an enemy in the war on terror. I'm sick of warrantless wiretaps. I'm sick of . . . . wait . . . I don't think this is what they're talking about, huh?
Yeah. Just don't go getting any ideas about how the pursuit of happiness includes marrying the partner of your choice, controlling your own body, thinking differently from society at large or anything like that. That was not the self evident part. The self evident part about pursuing happiness is apparently just the pursuit of more and more money, by any means available. The United Scrooges of America.
Unless you're gay, atheist, Muslim, in need of health care, female, hinting that you do not like living here, merely suspected of being a terrorist-sympathizer or a Democrat.
Especially to the extent that those things undermine individual liberty.
Everyone is equally entitled to the pursuit of happiness. Wasn't that once self evident?
I think you just gave the definative definition of the teabagger and CONservative beliefs than the baggers and CONs could have given.
When angry, count four, when very angry, swear.
-Mark Twain-
I suppose it should come as no surprise that CNN would lend prime time to this kind of raw meat for the rubes PR campaign by a bunch of neocon second stringers.
ROF.... just more drooling on the floor... Not me - them !! They STILL haven't figured out that NO ONE CARES what they say... Platitudes is worth ONE ROLL OF TOILET PAPER... MAYBE..
Here’s a gift for the person who has everything. Because I’d feel pretty safe in betting they don’t have THIS – a gen-u-wine roll of embroidered Sarah Palin toilet paper. You betcha.
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_...
As soon as I get my breath back from my uncontrollable laughter I may order a roll just so I can TP the CPAC loon-gathering. Since sister won't be there (the CPAC folks won't pay her to speak) we gotta find a way to get her message to limberger!!! Maybe we can TP HIM!
BBBBBBWWWWWWHHHHHHHhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaa........
... if they just ratified the Golden Rule as interpreted by the GOP—and a few DINOs—:
I wish someone far more clever than I am would write up a Mount Vernon Slaves' Statements by any of the 277 slaves at Mount Vernon in 1799 that George and Martha owned.
It's always specious to assume that if you had a time machine, the founding fathers (or Jesus for that matter) would agree with you. That goes for us as well as them. Sure would be educational, though.
is highly suspect right from the start.
Americans for Tax Reform is nothing more than Give Tax Breaks to the Wealthy.
This guy promotes the Fair Tax, which is the biggest giveaway to the rich since Reagan and W.
There is NOTHING new to see here. Just the same old shit wrapped in a new piece of toilet paper.
Give them credit for one thing though. They know how to name their organizations, even if they promote the exact opposite of what an intelligent person might think they mean.
Do you have to be a pasty faced, doughy pantload, spewing conservative idiocy and bullshit like a pez dispenser to get on t.v. these days?
Jeebus H. Criss!
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
Another puffy faced republican dough boy AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! talking nonsense.
stephen
Huh?
Mount Vernon. You know, where Washington lived.
In Washington?
No, George Washington. The first president.
Right...Did he say this?
No... Look, it's just a name, okay? This makes it look really heavy, like Washington _would_ have said this if he'd have thought of it.
Oh, I get it! So, people will think--
Right! Now, sign here at the bottom...
What's with all the big signatures? I don't usually write that big.
Just put a big first letter, then scribble. You know, like those Revolution guys. NOT THAT BIG, IDIOT! Okay, more like that.
But I wanted to be John Hancock!
Sorry, Grover gets to be John Hancock. He called dibs.
Oh yes, these clowns were screaming these terms during the Bush years. I need a drink.
NOBODY 2012
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