Howard Dean is Numero Uno.

Seconded - Howard is Always first!!

Mrs Clinton also made a campaign stop in Kentucky, where her main theme was jobs and the economy.

Race for delegates

Mr Obama was in Pennsylvania, where he distanced himself from Mr Leahy's comments.

"My attitude is that Senator Clinton can run as long as she wants. Her name's on the ballot and she is a fierce and formidable competitor," the Illinois senator said.

"I think that she should be able to compete, and her supporters should be able to support her, for as long as they are willing or able."

Analysts say a bitter, drawn-out fight between the two contenders, going right up to the Democratic convention in August, could damage the eventual nominee's chances of beating their Republican rival, John McCain.

Printable version

Edwin has a HOWARDLY project going with the progressive's values documentation

This morning on Chris Matthews Sunday show, Andrea Mitchell suggested that Obama might team with Bloomberg as his running mate among other things, Mitchell said, to combat Obama's (not a quote but a paraphrase) "Jewish problem" which Mitchell alluded to earlier in the program.

I really hadn't heard about Obama's 'problem' with Jews before. Is it the traditional black/Jewish issue or has he not paid enough attention to AIPAC? This is the first I've heard frankly. Or is Mitchell a Hillary supporter (I've always figured she was a Repug) trying to invent an Obama "Jewish problem"?

"justice" (in it's broadest sense) as in the phrase from the pledge "liberty and justice for all)"

but more importantly for all

value or principle?

Maybe Andrea's right (and Joan, looks like you will always be at the end of this thread?)

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0...

Obama's Jewish Problem

It's a hard thing to pin down, Barack Obama's Jewish problem. But in the halls of the AIPAC Policy Conference yesterday, there was no denying that the members of the pro-Israel group -- largely Democrats, though they tilt right -- feel a real, if kind of inchoate, skepticism about the Illinois senator.

Now, an Iowa Democrat and AIPAC member, David Adelman, has written Obama a letter asking for clarification of Obama's remark to the Des Moines register that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people," a statement Adelman writes he found "deeply troubling."

March 13, 2007

By Ben Smith 03:32 P

11:38 PM EDT

*r

Love you man, but updates?  You can  express more.  I know though - we all do the same.  I am just tweaking you because of time and place.  Nothing personal...more a commentary on the state of the blog.

+++

Paine -

Huh ?

paine isn't a soccer fan rdorgan or if he, is isn't ready in March, is how I took that 

and it does seem incongruous to be playing baseball outside in snow flurries too

What is it you want from us Values? An essay maybe!?!
Or should we be worried that we haven't all subscribed to a few consensus one-liners

... exactly like the rethuglicans.
Maybe a conference, yacht ride or pillow fight party to have this big discussion and achieve those catchy phrases would be swell. Then we can condemn anyone whose area has it's own issues that don't fit the wording!?!

Meanwhile, back at the realworld(where i spend my time)

Yesterday we sealed the deal on the funding for a progressive lady to run again for the GA State House, at least be on the primary ballot. I'd bother linking and all that but i know noone here, or at HQ, will donate or help in any way.

I think last time i was told any moneys had been poured into uhmmm, must have been some backwater non-progressive red state, uhmmmm, let's see where was it, uhmmm

... that's right, Connecticut.

... :~(

progressive lady

~~~~~~~~~~

what makes her "progressive"?

11:52 AM EDT

Annilow
Sun, 03/30/08

Reply to this

Maybe Andrea's right

...

+++

Annilow -

Whenever someone brings up an issue, you need to look at the surrounding circumstances --

-- for example, I often talk about Sierra Leone, West Africa largely because my wife was born a Salone (a Sierra Leonean) --

-- well in Adrea Mitchell's case, maybe it's partly due to who she is awho she is married to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Mitchell

...

Mitchell, who is Jewish[1],

...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan

...

Greenspan was born in 1926 to a Hungarian Jewish family[2] in the Washington Heights area of New York City.

...

shortcut to last thread

http://www.blogforamerica.com/view/24606#comments

Or should we be worried that we haven't all subscribed to a few consensus one-liners

~~~~~~~~~~~

Deaniac makes a strong argument for "diversity" as a progressive value

11:53 AM EDT

paine isn't a soccer fan rdorgan or if he, is isn't ready in March, is how I took that 

and it does seem incongruous to be playing baseball outside in snow flurries too

+++

Phil -

Sometimes I can't figure out Paine (reminds me of my late grandfather, who told a joke with such seriousness, often my laughter was delayed because it took me that long to figure it out).

As for soccer, this was opening day at Foxboro, MA for the N E Revs. It was a great day weather-wise here, a tad cold but sunny.

Since Paine has been brought up (and i just reveiwed the last couple of threads) WTF is his problem... besides blogging under the influence?

Some here apparently have met him and say kind things of him. His biggotry, love of war and bigotry towards the South are deal breakers for me - and i hope not to meet him at any of our functions, ever.

12:02 PM EDT

youthful (Gambian) enthusiasm, as in work, so in play:

Sainey Nyassi didn't slow down after he used his speed to get into position to score his first MLS goal. (STEW MILNE/Associated Press)

http://www.boston.com/sports/articles/2008/03/30/revolution_as_good_as_new/

By Frank Dell'Apa

Globe Staff / March 30, 2008

FOXBOROUGH - The Revolution's new-look lineup hit the ground running last night. Teenagers Kenny Mansally and Sainey Nyassi, and fellow second-year pro Adam Cristman ignited a high-octane attack as the Revolution took 3-0 victory over Houston in a rematch of the last two MLS Cups, both won by the Dynamo.

Three players (Chris Albright, Mauricio Castro, and Kheli Dube) made their Revolution debuts and Mansally and Nyassi their first professional starts as the Revolution opened the Major League Soccer season at home for the first time, improving to 3-7-3 in season-openers.

...

DEMOCRATIC DELEGATE RACE BARACK OBAMA: 1,623States won: 25
HILLARY CLINTON: 1,499States won: 16
Delegates needed to secure nomination: 2,024.

These "states" numbers are fudging on the actual contests which have been held or will be held.

They are Guam, Puerto Rico, American  Somoa, Democrats Abroad, Virgin Islands, Wash D.C., and Texas Caucuses.

Of those already held, Obama has won four, and Clinton won one of those already held.

Contests won:

Obama - 30

Clinton - 14

Pledged Delegates:

Obama 1418

Clinton 1251

(Guam and Puerto Rico not yet held)

...Analysts say a bitter, drawn-out fight between the two contenders, going right up to the Democratic convention in August, could damage the eventual nominee's chances of beating their Republican rival, John McCain.

======================

There are two sides to this coin.  Clinton is forging Obama's metal and bringing the skeletons out of the closet (i.e.:Rev. Wright) before the election.  This is a huge advantage.  The other side of the coin is that we will need time for the Clinton supporters to heal and warm up to Obama.  If the Clintons and their supporters are cooperative and rally around him, this should not be such a problem.

OTOH, if the Clintonistas feel cheated, that would be a recipe for disaster and a Republican victory, not only for the presidency but for the Dem coattails as well, if they don't vote.

"His abrasiveness, love of war"... oh, i'll just leave it there.

BTW Paine is in the same league as Sen. Lindsy Graham when he rails on Iran - which hasn't done a crappin' thing to us, or we'd be seeing the evidence video wound over and over.

Having a Jewish running mate worked well for Al Gore in 00.

My kid brother was off the coast of Iran with (count um) TWO carrier groups, the only flight squadron to be made to do so.

If anyone doesn't like Iran causing our military problems it's me. But the facts are that they didn't kill the diplomats in Tehran, if anything they were in leagues with the Republicans against Pres. Jimmy Carter by the end.

Graham was livid that Iran be blamed for everything going on in Iraq - there is just no evidence that they are doing anything but waiting for us to finish our quagmire efforts there.

"I find your statement in yesterday's Des Moines Register that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people,” deeply troubling. I would greatly appreciate a response clarifying your statements.

The Palestinian people democratically elected their leadership, part in which, Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. It fails to recognize the right of Israel to exist and encourages terrorist attacks against innocent Israeli Jews, Christians and Arabs."

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0...

================

When are the right wing Zionists going to recognize Palestine's right to exist?

AIPAC will only support someone who is a cheerleader for their one-sided mentality. Based on "God's word"

This Defines the Democrats

1222:pm

anni,

Thanks for this link: http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0...

It appears that the Clinton campaign has a serious problem with paying back bills. That may soon signal the end of her campaign. Money is not rolling in for her. Even Obama's campaign has backed off asking for contributions for their supports because the campaign says the small contributors have already been giving so generously. They may also feel they don't need much more but will need these contributors for the general election campaign.

~~~~~~~~~

Andrea Mitchell's statement about Obama's "Jewish problem" is something Obama himself has address directly to the Jewish population.

The problem has more to do with Iraq and Isreal than for any personal reasons. Consider Joementum's postering about wanting the war to continue (erroneously) because he believes it will ultimately help Israel.

These may not be voters who will ever come out and vote for BO since he was so opposed to the war from the beginning and to the continuation of it except for security purposes.

Obama is certainly not going to tell them anything they do not need to hear or to pander for their vote. I do not see him reaching out to them much more than he already has. It may be a lost cause except on domestic issues.

OTOH, (only) if the Clintonistas (or Obama backers) feel cheated, that would be a recipe for disaster and a Republican victory, not only for the presidency but for the Dem coattails as well, if they don't vote.

did you know that the medi army in iraq is riding around in our humvees? the iraqie army which hates us gave them some of our humvees.

someone step in and stop this crap/

Having a Jewish running mate worked well for Al Gore in 00.  

In fact, exit polls showed that it did help in Florida and who knows where else until the SC moved in to nullify the popular vote.

IRAQ--SAME OLD, SAME OLD

http://www.counterpunch.org/fantina03292008.html

The choice to be offered to the American voter in November is clear, even with the selection of the Democratic nominee still in question. Mr. McCain, the Republican standard-bearer, offers the U.S. and the world more of the same: imperial war, death, carnage. Illinois Senator Barack Obama and New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton timidly suggest change: withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, but how and when remain important questions. There is not much difference between the latter two and Mr. McCain, but at least Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton talk of change, whereas Mr. McCain wants to emulate President Bush's tired, used and useless mantra of 'stay the course.'

What it will take to end U.S. involvement in Iraq can best be suggested by history: ending U.S. involvement in Vietnam only came about as a result of an overwhelming people's movement that even the imperial president at the time could no longer ignore. Unless and until the country sees a rebirth of that movement, Senators McCain, Obama and Clinton will continue to dance around the truth while Americans and Iraqis die in unspeakable numbers.

12:30PM

Can't take any more of this blog's musical chairs problems. I can't even find my own posts anymore.

bbl

Maybe they'll have it fixed later in the day:)))))))))))))))

IMO - Barack Obama will never be able to please AIPAC, because BO is running on a "unity" theme of ending the bickering that divides us all.

Applying that to the I/P issue is a wrench in the Zionist gearbox. Regardless of which side is to blame, the right wing form of "Iron Wall" Zionism has consistently used division and violence to their advantage is gaining land and hegemony. Peace and compromise does not work their advantage, and history has shown conflict to be advantageous to them.

Israel has seldom shown interest in peace when it was their advantage. Lands gained during wars and conflicts have only been given up under pressure from the USA or from moslem guerrillas.

CORRECTION

Israel has seldom shown interest in peace EXCEPT when it was their advantage. Lands gained during wars and conflicts have only been given up under pressure from the USA or from moslem guerrillas

Clinton bringing up Rev. Wright again has backfired on a number of levels, giving Obama a chance to talk about his faith (which isn't Islam), solidifies once and for all total AA support, shows they will stoop to anything, and doing it with Scaife worries partisans (which practically defines a super delegate)

Another test for the Democrats (which they are almost certain to fail), is whether they can stop mad King George from attacking Iran in the near future

12:51pm

andrea mitchell is a clinton person.

G'morning, all.

Barack Obama's magnanimous remarks encouraging Hillary to stay in the race speaks volumes to me about his character. Gotta say, I'm liking him more and more.

I still believe he'll be our candidate and I'm becoming more and more encouraged about his chances in the general election despite the pastor's commentary.

That said, Hillary is not to be blamed for Barack's Pastor Wright problem...Wright's remarks were not revealed by Hillary' campaign. To her credit, on THIS one, she did not even comment on it until she was pressed by the press....ANYONE would have said what she did when asked...."I'd have left his congregation" (paraphrasing).

McCain has an indian problem.  Seems he authored a bill that removed thousands of Navajo from their land.  Native American lands out west are a current topic.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/30/navajos_wary_of_plans_to_mill_uranium_in_new_mexico/ 

The matter of uranium didn't come up in Richardson's Campaign, but it would have.  Perhaps what really soured him about Clinton was their friendship with the guy who's buying uranium in Kazakhstan or Uzbekhistan or wherever.

BTW, here's what was interesting other people about Bosnia on the day Hillary was making claims about snipers.

http://www.dailynews.lk/2008/03/17/fea02.asp 

The unilateral declaration of independence by the Serbian province of Kosovo on February 17 has once again put the Balkan tinderbox in the international spotlight.

[...]

It was Clinton who unleashed the three-month-long North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)-led war in 1999 against Yugoslavia mainly on the pretext of human rights violations in Kosovo by the Yugoslav state. The assault wrought great havoc on Yugoslavia’s infrastructure.

Bridges, passenger trains and television stations were among the targets hit by NATO planes and missiles. That war had led to the occupation of Kosovo by the West under the umbrella of the United Nations. A permanent U.S. military base was concurrently established there.

An independent Kosovo fitted into the grandiose plans of the U.S. to gain hegemony over the strategic Balkan region and isolate Russia further.

The U.S. military base in Kosovo, called “Camp Bondsteel”, is among the string of bases that have come up since the 1990s in the Balkans, East Europe and Central Asia. It has been used for “rendition” flights, and the interrogation and torture of suspects in the U.S.-led “war on terror”.

[...]

I've been watching the polling since Wright came into the picture and they are encouraging. I believe Obama will transcend this problem.

Before it's all over we'll likely hear a public statement from Wright indicating contrition. mho.

Margaret Kimberly on prospects for invasion of Iran

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?

"There’s no need counting down the days until Bush and Cheney leave office. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are as war-crazed as the Republicans when it comes to Iran."

1:03pm

One of the things you heard a lot from Obama supporters over the last couple of weeks was the rueful observation that the Jeremiah Wright controversy would at least greatly reduce the whisper-campaign-fed perception that he's a Muslim. Not so, says a new Pew poll.

There is little evidence that the recent news about Obama's affiliation with the United Church of Christ has dispelled the impression that he is Muslim. While voters who heard "a lot" about Reverend Wright's controversial sermons are more likely than those who have not to correctly identify Obama as a Christian, they are not substantially less likely to still believe that he is Muslim. Nearly one-in-ten (9%) of those who heard a lot about Wright still believe that Obama is Muslim.

The percentage of Americans believing Obama's a Muslim ranges from 14% among Republicans, to 10% among Democrats, to 8% among independents. At the risk of repeating one of those misleading triple-loaded poll findings, 23% of white Democrats with an unfavorable opinion of Obama think he's a Muslim.

Moreover, a third of poll respondents--and a third of Democrats--say they don't know what religion Barack Obama observes.

Otherwise, the Pew poll has a lot of welcome findings for Obama, showing a positive reaction to his "race speech," and leads over HRC and McCain roughly the same as they found a month ago.

But it's beginning to become obvious that the "Obama is a Muslim" thing has become one of those ineradicable myths that evidence to the contrary can't shake.

http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/

Personally, i don't think McCain will make it to november.  The Rep convention is after ours on Sept 1-4.  They could choose a dark horse.

The new Pew poll {....} has some bad news for Republicans beyond Barack Obama's success in rebounding from the Wright controversy.

Its "right track/wrong track" assessment shows "[j]ust 22% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the country, the lowest percentage observed in any Pew Research Center survey since the fall of 1993." We all remember what happened to the party holding the White House in 1994, eh?

Undergirding this latest lurch of public opinion into a great dismal swamp of dissatisfaction is a dramatic deterioration of confidence in the economy.

The percentage of Americans saying the economy is "poor" has doubled--from 28% to 56%--in just the last two months. Altogether, 11% rate the economy as "excellent" or "good," and again, that's almost exactly how Americans felt in August 1993.

55% of Republicans currently say the economy is in recession or depression.

The current upsurge in violence in Iraq may be the least of the incumbent party's problems come election day.

http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/

Actually, huron, i knew the election was lost when lieberman was announced.  i swore on the spot that i wouldn't vote (the spouse reminds me) but, to my regret, i finally did.

Lieberman was bad news.  His holier-than-thou attitude toward Clinton and his thing about the music and video lables was the clue.  Tipper, of course, shared that media obsession, but she wasn't going to be elected and i always think spouses are entitled to be a bit ditzy.

Ditzy Hillary was fine until she got to be a candidate. 

Huron that was a funny funny cartoon.


+++++++++++

The other day I heard a story about a soldier who killed a young girl in Iraq b/c she wouldn't put down something that might have been a weapon, then the soldier comes home to his family where there is a sister of the same age as the girl he killed. He has had a lot of trouble working through this, of course, but b/c I know the family, the story touched me.

Iran will not be attacked as long as our troops are hostages on the bases in Iraq.  The threat to Iran is pre-emptive--designed to discourage what they could easily do.

I heard on TV somewhere that Bush is going to throw out the first ball at some new baseball stadium and this is soon. I wouldn't think they would let him do that for fear of being booed.

Deaniac I'm in the South and sensitive to bloggers who put us down and I've never read anything Paine wrote that was negative toward the South - in fact, he's always seemed very gentlemanly to me.

Progressive is another word for Reform,  Innovation or LIBERAL.  Read this Ralph Waldo Emerson lecture presented by Thomas G. Miller, it explains what LIBERAL progressive innovation is, which is totally opposite of CONSERVATIVE;  one can not be a CONSERVATIVE and be a Progressive innovator at the same time, as Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman purport to be:

Liberal, --- or Conservative?

For all who want to know what the meaning of Liberalism, "Innovation", and Conservatism is, Ralph Waldo Emerson explains both in "The Conservative, A Lecture delivered at the Masonic Temple, Boston, Mass.  December 9, 1841.

For all who would condemn Liberalism, "Innovation" and praise Conservatism, if you are a part of the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION as a Class and Culture, I strongly recommend that you read the full text of "The Conservative", as follows:


"THE CONSERVATIVE", a Lecture by Ralph Waldo Emerson - Essays and Lectures; Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:  83-5447

THE TWO PARTIES which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.  This quarrel is the subject of civil history.  The conservative party established the reverend hierarchies and monarchies of the most ancient world.  The battle of patrician and plebeian, of parent state and colony, of old usage and accommodation to new facts, of the rich and the poor, reappears in all countries and times.  The war rages not only in battlefields, in national councils, and ecclesiastical synods, but agitates every man's bosom with opposing advantages every hour.  On rolls the old world meantime, and now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities.

Such an irreconcilable antagonism, of course, must have a correspondent depth of seat in the human constitution.  It is the opposition of Past and Future, of Memory and Hope, of the Understanding and the Reason.  It is the primal antagonism, the appearance in trifles of the two poles of nature.

There is a fragment of old fable which seems somehow to have been dropped from the current mythologies, which may deserve attention, as it appears to relate to this subject.

Saturn grew weary of sitting alone, or with none but the great Uranus or Heaven beholding him, and he created an oyster.  Then he would act again, but he made nothing more, but went on creating the race of oysters.  Then Uranus cried, 'a new work, O Saturn! the old is not good again.'

Saturn replied.  'I fear.  There is not only the alternative of making and not making, but also of unmaking.  Seest thou the great sea, how it ebbs and flows?  so is it with me; my power ebbs; and if I put forth my hands, I shall not do, but undo.  Therefore I do what I have done; I hold what I have got; and so I resist Night and Chaos.'

'O Saturn,' replied Uranus, 'thou canst not hold thine own, but by making more.  Thy oysters are barnacles and cockles, and with the next flowing of the tide, they will be pebbles and sea-foam.'

'I see,' rejoins Saturn, 'thou art in league with Night, thou art become an evil eye; thou spakest from love; now thy words smite me with hatred.  I appeal to Fate, must there not be rest?' --- 'I appeal to Fate also,' said Uranus, 'must there not be motion?'  --- But Saturn was silent, and went on making oysters for a thousand years.

After that, the word of Uranus came into his mind like a ray of the sun, and he made Jupiter; and then he feared again; and nature froze, the things that were made went backward, and, to save the world, Jupiter slew his father Saturn.

This may stand for the earliest account of a conversation on politics between a Conservative and a Radical, which has come down to us.  It is ever thus.  It is the counteraction of the centripetal and the centrifugal forces.  Innovation is the salient energy; Conservatism the pause on the last movement.  'That which is was made by God,' saith Conservatism.  'He is leaving that, he is entering this other;' rejoins Innovation.

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.  It affirms because it holds.  Its fingers clutch the fact, and it will not open its eyes to see a better fact.  The castle, which conservatism is set to defend, is the actual state of things, good and bad.  The project of innovation is the best possible state of things.  Of course, conservatism always has the worst of the argument, is always apologizing, pleading a necessity, pleading that to change would be to deteriorate; it must saddle itself with the mountainous load of the violence and vice of society, must deny the possibility of good, deny ideas, and suspect and stone the prophet; whilst innovation is always in the right, triumphant, attacking, and sure of final success.  Conservatism stands on man's confessed limitations; reform on his indisputable infinitude; conservatism on circumstance; liberalism on power; one goes to make an adroit member of the social frame; the other to postpone all things to the man himself; conservatism is debonnair and social; reform is individual and imperious.  We are reformers in spring and summer; in autum and winter, we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night.  Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.  Conservatism is more candid to behold another's worth; reform more disposed to maintain and increase its own.  Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory.  Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.  It makes a great difference to your figure and to your thought, whether your foot is advancing or receding.  Conservatism never puts the foot forward; in the hour when it does that, it is not establishment, but reform.  Conservatism tends to universal seeming and treachery, believes in a negative fate; believes that men's temper governs them; that for me, it avails not to trust in principles; they will fail me; I must bend a little; it distrusts nature; it thinks there is a general law without a particular application, --- law for all that does not include any one.  Reform in its antagonism inclines to asinine resistance, to kick with hoofs; it runs to egotism and bloated self-conceit; it runs to a bodiless pretension, to unnatural refining and elevation, which ends in hypocrisy and sensual reaction.

And so whilst we do not go beyond general statements, it may be safely affirmed of these two metaphysical antagonists, that each is a good half, but an impossible whole.  Each exposes the abuses of the other, but in a true society, in a true man, both must combine.  Nature does not give the crown of its approbation, namely, beauty, to any action or emblem or actor, but to one which combines both these elements; not to the rock which resists the waves from age to age, nor to the wave which lashes incessantly the rock, but the superior beauty is with the oak which stands with its hundred arms against the storms of a century, and grows every year like a sapling; or the river which ever flowing, yet is found in the same bed from age to age; or, greatest of all, the man who has subsisted for years amid the changes of nature, yet has distanced himself, so that when you remember what he was, and see what he is, you say, what strides! what a disparity is here!

Throughout nature the past combines in every creature with the present.  Each of the convolutions of the sea-shell, each node and spine marks one year of the fish's life, what was the mouth of the shell for one season, with the addition of a new matter by the growth of the animal, becoming an ornamental node.  The leaves and a shell of soft wood are all that the vegetation of this summer has made, but the solid columnar stem, which lifts that bank of foliage into the air to draw the eye and to cool us with its shade, is the gift and legacy of dead and buried years.

In nature, each of these elements being always present, each theory has a natural support.  As we take our stand on Necessity, or on Ethics, shall we go for the conservative, or for the reformer.  If we read the world historically, we shall say, Of all the ages, the present hour and circumstance is the cumulative result; this is the best throw of the dice of nature that has yet been, or that is yet possible.  If we see it from the side of Will, or the Moral Sentiment, we shall accuse the Past and the Present, and require the impossible of the Future.

But although this bifold fact lies thus united in real nature, and so united that no man can continue to exist in whom both these elements do not work, yet men are not philosophers, but are rather very foolish children, who, by reason of their partiality, see everything in the most absurd manner, and are the victims at all times of the nearest object.  There is even no philosopher who is a philosopher at all times.  Our experience, our perception is conditioned by the need to acquire in parts and in succession, that is, with every truth a certain falsehood.  As this is the invariable method of our training, we must give it allowance, and suffer men to learn as they have done for six millenniums, a word at a time, to pair off into insane parties, and learn the amount of truth each knows, by the denial of an equal amount of truth.  For the present, then, to come at what sum is attainable to us, we must even hear the parties plead as parties.

That which is best about conservatism, that which, though it cannot be expressed in detail, inspires reverence in all, is the Inevitable.  There is the question not only, what the conservative says for himself? but, why must he say it?  What insurmountable fact binds him to that side?  Here is the fact which men call Fate, and fate in dread degrees, fate behind fate, not to be disposed of by the consideration that the Conscience commands this or that, but necessitating the question, whether the faculties of man will play him true in resisting the facts of universal experience?  For although the commands of the Conscience are essentially absolute, they are historically limitary.  Wisdom does not seek a literal rectitude, but an useful, that is, a conditioned one, such a one as the faculties of man and the constitution of things will warrant.  The reformer, the partisan loses himself in driving to the utmost some specialty of right conduct, until his own nature and all nature resist him; but Wisdom attempts nothing enormous and disproportioned to its powers, nothing which it cannot perform or nearly perform.  We have all a certain intellection or presentiment of reform existing in the mind, which does not yet descend into the character, and those who throw themselves blindly on this lose themselves.  Whatever they attempt in that direction, fails, and reacts suicidally on the actor himself.  This is the penalty of having transcended nature.  For the existing world is not a dream, and cannot with impunity be treated as a dream; neither is it a disease; but it is the ground on which you stand, it is the mother of whom you were born.  Reform converses with possibilities, perchance with impossibilities; but here is sacred fact.  This also was true, or it could not be:  it had life in it, or it could not have existed; it has life in it, or it could not continue.  Your schemes may be feasible, or may not be, but this has the endorsement of nature and a long friendship and cohabitation with the powers of nature.  This will stand until a better cast of the dice is made.  The contest between the Future and the Past is one between Divinity entering, and Divinity departing.  You are welcome to try your experiments, and, if you can, to displace the actual order by that ideal republic you announce, for nothing but God will expel God.  But plainly the burden of proof must lie with the projector.  We hold to this, until you can demonstrate something better.

The system of property and law goes back for its origin to barbarous and sacred times; it is the fruit of the same mysterious cause as the mineral or animal world.  There is a natural sentiment and prepossession in favor of age, of ancestors, of barbarous and aboriginal usages, which is a homage to the element of necessity and divinity which is in them.  The respect for the old names of places, of mountains, and streams, is universal.  The Indian and barbarous name can never be supplanted without loss.  The ancients tell us that the gods loved the Ethiopians for their stable customs; and the Egyptians and Chaldeans, whose origin could not be explored, passed among the junior tribes of Greece and Italy for sacred nations.

Moreover, so deep is the foundation of the existing social system, that it leaves no one out of it.  We may be partial, but Fate is not.  All men have their root in it.  You who quarrel with the arrangements of society, and are willing to embroil all, and risk the indisputable good that exists, for the chance of better, live, move, and have your being in this, and your deeds contradict your words every day.  For as you cannot jump from the ground without using the resistance of the ground, nor put out the boat to sea, without shoving from the shore, nor attain liberty without rejecting obligation, so you are under the necessity of using the Actual order of things, in order to disuse it; to live by it, whilst you wish to take away its life.  The past has baked your loaf, and in the strength of its bread you would break up the oven.  But you are betrayed by your own nature.  You also are conservatives.  However men please to style themselves, I see no other than a conservative party.  You are not only identical with us in your needs, but also in your methods and aims.  You quarrel with my conservatism, but it is to build up one of your own; it will have a new beginning, but the same course and end, the same trials, the same passions; among the lovers of the new I observe that there is a jealousy of the newest, and that the seceder from the seceder is as damnable as the pope himself.

On these and the like grounds of general statement, conservatism plants itself without danger of being displaced.  Especially before this personal appeal, the innovator must confess his weakness, must confess that no man is to be found good enough to be entitled to stand champion for the principle.  But when this great tendency comes to practical encounters, and is challenged by young men, to whom it is no abstraction, but a fact of hunger, distress, and exclusion from opportunities, it must needs seem injurious.  The youth, of course, is an innovator by the fact of his birth.  There he stands, newly born on the planet, a universal beggar, with all the reason of things, one would say, on his side.  In his first consideration how to feed, clothe, and warm himself, he is met by warnings on every hand, that this thing and that thing have owners, and he must go elsewhere.  Then he says; If I am born into the earth, where is my part? have the goodness, gentlemen of this world, to show me my wood-lot, where I may fell my wood, my field where to plant my corn, my pleasant ground where to build my cabin.

'Touch any wood, or field, or house-lot, on your peril,' cry all the gentlemen of this world; 'but you may come and work in ours, for us, and we will give you a piece of bread.'

And what is that peril?

Knives and muskets, if we meet you in the act; imprisonment, if we find you afterward.

And by what authority, kind gentlemen?

By our law.

And your law, --- is it just?

As just for you as it was for us.  We wrought for others under this law, and got our lands so.

I repeat the question, Is your law just?

Not quite just, but necessary.  Moreover, it is juster now than it was when we were born; we have made it milder and more equal.

I will none of your law, returns the youth; it encumbers me.  I cannot understand, or so much as spare time to read that needless library of your laws.  Nature has sufficiently provided me with r