so much easier to call a king a king when that's what he calls himself

Forget Burke. If you want a real pre-21st century depiction of the political landscape and the blogosphere on both sides, only C. Dickens will do

"It appears, then, that the Eatanswill people, like the people of many other small towns, considered themselves of the utmost and most mighty importance, and that every man in Eatanswill, conscious of the weight that attached to his example, felt himself bound to unite, heart and soul, with one of the two great parties that divided the town -- the Blues and the Buffs. Now the Blues lost no opportunity of opposing the Buffs, and the Buffs lost no opportunity of opposing the Blues; and the consequence was, that whenever the Buffs and Blues met together at public meeting, town-hall, fair, or market, disputes and high words arose between them. With these dissensions it is almost superfluous to say that everything in Eatanswill was made a party question. If the Buffs proposed to new skylight the market-place, the Blues got up public meetings, and denounced the proceeding; if the Blues proposed the erection of an additional pump in the High Street, the Buffs rose as one man and stood aghast at the enormity. There were Blue shops and Buff shops, Blue inns and Buff inns -- there was a Blue aisle and a Buff aisle in the very church itself.

Of course it was essentially and indispensably necessary that each of these powerful parties should have its chosen organ and representative: and, accordingly, there were two newspapers in the town -- the Eatanswill GAZETTE and the Eatanswill INDEPENDENT; the former advocating Blue principles, and the latter conducted on grounds decidedly Buff. Fine newspapers they were. Such leading articles, and such spirited attacks! -- 'Our worthless contemporary, the GAZETTE' -- 'That disgraceful and dastardly journal, the INDEPENDENT' -- 'That false and scurrilous print, the INDEPENDENT' -- 'That vile and slanderous calumniator, the GAZETTE;' these, and other spirit-stirring denunciations, were strewn plentifully over the columns of each, in every number, and excited feelings of the most intense delight and indignation in the bosoms of the townspeople. "

1-202-225-0100 DEMAND IMPEACHMENT. ( I'm betting Mr. Burke would call)

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for reminding us of what makes this country truly great. We seem to have forgotten that if the Founding Fathers were Conservatives, they would have sided with the King.
It's long overdue that we take back our heritage.

A nice post Jonathan and though it is quite true that George is doing his best to neuter Congress has there ever been a Congress that was so willing to be neutered? The sad truth is that the Democrats believe in our imperial endeavors as much as the Whitehouse does, their only real complaint is they ain’t the ones doing the imperial-izing. Mostly they believe they could do it better than old George. Chalmers Johnson recently said the following in an essay:

"None of the Democrats vying to replace President Bush is doing so with the promise of reviving the system of checks and balances…. The aim of the party out of power is not to cut the presidency down to size but to seize it, not to reduce the prerogatives of the executive branch but to regain them."

I agree with that and it should be part of the message that bloggers are spreading. You cannot fix a problem until you know the nature of it.

HJC Screws Up, Gives DOJ Whistleblower Email Addresses to Dick Cheney
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/10/26/22518/945

unfrigginbelievea.... ahk, who am I kidding, nothing these dinks do is surprising. Seriously sad, these are peoples lives and livelihood they are toying with, this will be seen as deliberate rather or not it was, just as torture is purely for the shock value. In other words deliberately meant to silence dissent.

Bravo, Jonathan Schwarz! And bravo, Edmund Burke! May we soon find a way to end this backward slide into ever deeper barbarity.

Was there ever a greater tyrant than Thomas Jefferson? He owned and whipped slaves and made slavery legal. He also committed ethnic cleansing against the Indians.

Hang on.

Ultimately, Burke was a conservative with some progressive ideas; he showed his true colors a couple decades after the writings cited above-- and had a falling out with admired friend Tom Paine, who by this time had returned to England to spread the gospel of the Rights Of Man-- upon realization that his head was gonna wind up on a pike with the rest of England's ruling class if he kept up his defense of the rights of the masses outside his ivy-covered gates.

He turned on Paine, and devoted a few pamplets of his own to bad-mouthing him, and since Burke had more juice in England than Paine did, they were hanging Tom Paine in effigy come the following Guy Fawkes day.

Paine got outta Dodge-- left England, that is-- about twenty minutes ahead of law enforcement armed with arrest warrant.

Burke kept his mouth shut.

The Founding Fathers weren't exactly strong advocates of the rights of the common man either, having an aristocracy and estates of their own to protect, and Paine returned to a different America than that which had appauded his "Common Sense" and went, as they say, to a Pauper's grave.

Sad, really.

George III didn't try to neuter Parliament. Lewis Namier debunked all that crap long, long ago.

Burke is best known (certainly to Goerge Will and the rest) for his Reflections on the Revolution in France, a wonderful defnese of social continity and oderate change vs. radical overhaul. He wrote the book because, as Chris Vosburg indicates above, the French Revolution scared the hell out of Burke and wiped away much of his past progressivism. He was the first "useta bee," and for him France's revolution "changed everything" (as the current phrase goes).

How unfair. Using the words they quote against them.

Great post.

I saw this video on youtube of this guy singing a great song he wrote about how the Democrats are failing us. I think he is expressing exactly what many of us are feeling too.

Link to youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTODrQqIXU8

Sorry, i don't get the connections. it would help to have a modern translation/interpretation of what he said/meant. so it goes.

How are you going to get Joe and Jane Beercan to understand these parallels? They are stupefied with trash TV and gulled by Administration lies. They are incapable of critical thinking.

But let's not blame only Joe and Jane Beercan. I have plenty of educated, sophisticated friends who have chosen to bury their head in the sand and not even light that "small candle".

Sorry to sound so downbeat, but I behold the demise of critical thinking on all sides.

Yes, well indeed. This just shows that most People, dare I say "sheepel" will jump on one side of the bandwagon before doing any critical thinking. Today, it's the reds and blues. How sad. What I find is that most people can't or won't spend the time and research to find out what is REALLY going on. Which is to say, divide and conquer the age old story, and of course the ugly goal behind that today - one world global fascism. I hope I don't live long enough to see it come to fruition. Bush or Kerry, Bush or Gore, Clinto or ? It matters not. They are all pawns in the game, two sides of the same coin. The REAL tyrants are pulling their stings. Can anybody say North American Union? The Amero? RFID chip? Dwindling oil resources? No more bees? Chemtrails? Remember the Manhattan Project? Oh my, this list is so long one could read the rest of their life and never cover it all.