Not Much Has Changed In 52 Years

[Strelnikov_]

I came across the following text of a Truman speech from May 1952.

http://irregulartimes.com/truman.html

"You can always count on the Republicans, in an election year, to remind the people of what the Republican Party really stands for. You can always count on them to make it perfectly clear before the campaign is over that the Republican Party is the party of big business, and that they would like to turn the country back to the big corporations and the big bankers in New York to run it as they see fit. They are just not going to do it.

Just leave them alone, and the Republicans will manage to scare the daylights out of the farmer and the wage earner and the average American citizen. They always do that....

This year they are at it again. The Republicans think they have been so successful with their campaign of smears and character assassination that they have the Democrats on the run. And they just can't restrain themselves enough to hide their true colors until after the election. They are too impatient. First one way and then another they are giving themselves away....

The main body of the Republican leaders are doing just what they do every election year. They are making it good and plain to the American people that so far as domestic policies are concerned, the Republican Party is the party of reaction and the party of special privilege...."

[LisaLynne]

1. That's almost ...

creepy it sounds so much like what's going on today.

[gumby]

2. not much has changed since

the beginning of civilization.

Those who have always want more and more and more from the less powerful.

[Lady Effingbroke]

3. sad to say, nothing seems to have changed. n/t

[newyawker99]

4. Hi Lady Effingbroke!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[krkaufman]

5. I think Bush's repeated statements...

... that he has no intention of trying to get the rich to pay any taxes are a good example:

"The really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway."
-- Annandale, Virginia, Aug. 9, 2004

... and in case you think this was a misspeakering, here he is just two days later...

"You know what else I think? You know what else I think when they say, tax the rich? Most rich people are able to avoid taxes, and if you can't raise enough money from taxing the rich, guess who pays the taxes? Yes, you do."
-- Albuquerque, New Mexico, Aug. 11, 2004

[porkrind]

6. Depressing, but true.

Here are some more applicable quotes for you:

"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last one of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all." --Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824.

There is of course no reason why the new totalitarian states should resemble the old. Government by clubs and firing squads is not merely inhumane, it is demonstrably inefficient and in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is a sin against the Holy Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to coerced, because they love their servitude...The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished not by doing something but by refraining from doing. Great is truth but still greater is silence about the truth.
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Foreword to 1946 edition

The secret of great wealth with no obvious source is some forgotten crime, forgotten because it was done neatly. — Balzac

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." - Groucho Marx

---

Read about the Right-Wing "Master Plan": http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-contents.html

Have you read "War is a Racket"?: http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

Read George Orwell's classic "1984" free online here: http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984

[bigtree]

7. .

:kick: