POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY TOM VELK IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
Tom Velk, this is a remarkably poorly informed piece.
First, you start with a straw-man argument.
The fact is no one on earth thinks the Tea Party represents rebels.
In fact, they are the same tiresome bunch we've heard from dozens of times before in the U.S.
Back to political basics and origins.
It's a fad amongst the U.S. Right Wing, every once in while, we get a new bunch of them with slogans.
It's been typical for them to use words or phrases like “manifesto” or “revolution” so that they grab attention and sound like something other than the retro-grade folks they are: Patriots with four-car garages.
The Tea Party will disappear within a year or two. It has nothing to offer. Good God, just consider they’re using the brainless Sarah Palin as a keynote speaker. Kind of says it all.
As for Jefferson, you seem unaware of the facts of his life. He said that the country needed some blood shed every twenty years or so to keep the Tree of Liberty nourished, and he wasn’t using poetic language. He supported the bloody French Revolution right through The Terror, leaving behind some pretty awful statements.
Jefferson actually shared qualities with Cambodia’s Pol Pot: he believed in the honest yeoman type and was against industrialization and opposed Hamilton’s sophistication in finances. He was repressive as in the revolt of Haiti and his horrible embargo of England and his Inspector Javert-like pursuit of Arron Burr.
Altogether a confusing and rather unpleasant man.
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"4. Describing America's growth in the 19th century: "the giant did not grow by conquest (except of a figurative sort)" The War of 1812 was an attempt to do just that; The Mexican War? the forced death March of natives from Florida; the many 'Indian Wars' of conquest."
Yes, indeed. Don't forget the Spanish-American War intended to steal Cuba and other properties.
Then there's the theft of Texas.
The theft of New Mexico and California.
The story of Hawaii is a very sad one. America stole the place after the British were gone and ignored the pleas of natives who even petitioned Congress and were completely ignored.
Don't forget the many bloody uprisings in the "Empire of Liberty" stretching back to putting down the Whisky rebellion to the ghastly mass slaughters of blacks in the 1920s in Oklahoma and Florida and other places. Bodies by the hundreds dumped into mass graves and their property stolen.
Actually, America's record, for those who know it, very much resembles Germany's rise in the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.
Only the fact that the places America attacked and pillaged were thinly populated prevents its record from being one of deaths in the many millions like Germany's.
Of course, its ruthlessness goes right up to the fire bombing and atomic bombing of Japan and its mass murder in Vietnam with perhaps 3 million victims left behind. And a million victims in Iraq.
It ain't a pretty record.
I really think the editors of the Globe need to do a much better job in selecting the people they print. This piece is uninformed trash.
