IIRC, wasn't Massachusetts one of the original 13 colonies?

[RandomKoolzip]

Y'know, where America STARTED and all that?


So, where do these conservative fucknuts get off impugning that somehow being from Massachusetts is "Un-American?" It could be argued that "Massachusetts Liberalism" is the thing that kicked American democracy into action.

Every time I hear "Northern Liberal" or "Massachusetts Liberal" bandied about like a code word for "Communist," I both shake my head in confusion and get more than a little pissed. If it weren't for Massachusetts and the other states in New England, you dipshit conservatives wouldn't even HAVE a country to prtend to love.

[aquart]

1. Unlike Texas, you mean?

[RandomKoolzip]

4. No, I mean "Tejas."

It used to be called Mexico, anyways.

[Bluebear]

2. Random.....

[RandomKoolzip]

5. Thank you! Enjoy the buffet, everyone!

Las Vegas audiences are the grrrreatest audiences in the world! Give yourselves a big hand.....you deserve it.

[alevensalor]

3. Hear, Hear!

True enough. I don't remember hearing about Texas during the recolution. You can bet we'll hear about it in the next one, though.

~A!

[olddem43]

6. Repugs are a little weak on history

or rather very weak.

[NMDemDist2]

7. ya know Plymouth Rock? the pilgrims, the Mayflower?

those guys?

Massachusetts is the place

Later Significance of the Mayflower Compact

The Mayflower Compact is believed by many to be one of the earliest examples of democracy in America.

Here was a unanimous and personal assent by all the individuals of the community to the association by which they became a nation.
John Quincy Adams, 1802

Some historians, although not all, consider it to be the forerunner of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

American democracy was not born in the cabin of the Mayflower,
or in the Boston town meeting,
but on the farming, fighting frontier of all of the colonies.
Samuel Eliot Morison

[RandomKoolzip]

9. In other words....Not the Crawford Ranch.

I grew up in New England. After high school I moved to the South.


Snide remark self-deleted..

[baldguy]

8. "Massachusetts Liberal" is a code-word for "Catholic"

Just like "New York Liberal" is a code-word for "Jew" i.e. "not insane fundie Protestant"

[flyingfysh]

10. Massachusetts did more than start the revolution

It was also the birthplace of the abolitionist movement. If I remember correctly, William Lloyd Garrison was from Newburyport. Some people said that abolitionists were "too extreme". Today everyone recognizes that the abolitionists were right.

Massachusetts was causing trouble for the British governor in the late 1600s; he wanted to build a church for soldiers, and nobody in Boston would sell him the land. So he put it in a tiny space on the edge of a public cemetery. (King's Chapel, on Tremont Street, Boston)

Still standing today is Park Street Church (Congregational - the denomination of the Puritan immigrants), located on the corner of Boston Common. It was built in 1809, and was strongly abolitionist from the start.

Have you seen the movie "Glory"? (about an all-black regiment sent to fight in the Civil War). It is a true story, and the monument to them still stands across the street from the State House.

Many of the Congregational Churches joined the Unitarian movement in the early 19th century (Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the leaders of the movement; Theodore Parker, grandson of John Parker, the militia captain at Lexington April 19 1775, was another).

Today the Unitarian churches continue to be leaders in the anti-war movement. Last year, when a huge anti-war demonstration went past Arlington Street Church (a Unitarian church which had its insurance cancelled during the Vietnam era for opposing the war), it played tunes on its church bells in support of the marchers.

Massachusetts has a habit of being ahead of everyone else in doing the right thing.

[IronLionZion]

11. What's a conservative and what's a liberal?

seriously? Because Democrat Thomas Jefferson was supposedly the conservative by which all other conservatives are judged, yet his views are similar to Michael Dukakis, a "flaming Mass. liberal".

Internationalism and promoting democracy has always been extremely liberal ideas...until now. It seems internationalism is liberal but spreading democracy throughout the world is conservative?

Free enterprise is supposedly conservative, but every economist knows that it is neo-liberal, always has been, always will be.

That's why I hate labels. It's important to realize that there are more than two ideologies out there.

It's also important to realize that one can support a single-payer health insurance and privatized roads/bridges/ at the same time. I do. Hell there are even instances of "greedy" multi-national corporations cleaning up the environment after a "liberal" government polluted it. (Some rivers in India were royally fucked up by the socialists but private companies need that water to be clean so they simply cleaned it up)

put that in your pipe and smoke it.

[shraby]

12. Maybe they are still pissed about all

the tea that was tossed into the Boston Harbor to protest people just like today's Republicans. "They called them Kings"

[RandomKoolzip]

14. Well, we don't have a truly conservative administration right now.

It's a NEOconservative administration. The old tenets of traditional American conservatism (isolationism, resistance to spending, etc.) have been stood on their heads by guys who supposedly used to be "liberal" but sorta defected reality, as well, in the process of shedding that label. Leo Strauss figures in here somewheres, although a recent article in the New York Review of Books claims that Strauss wasn't nearly the bellicose ideologue that the left has painted him as.

Basically, what were looking at is a radical re-definition of conservatism; I think the more proper term might be "militaristic corporatism..." Although that term leaves out the hateful pretentions to divine righteousness that Reagan's cronies (Robertson) ushered in. "Corporate Christian Militarism?"

Anyhow, Neoconservatism is still a far more noxious presence than old-style conservatism ever was.

[IronLionZion]

17. old-fashioned conservatives seem liberal by today's standards

and old-fashioned liberals seem conservative. Those labels seem to have changed but it appears the two parties have changed drastically as well. I understand Vietnam was a Democratic undertaking. And the abolition of slavery was largely a Republican undertaking. Then they switched off as the Dems fought for civil rights and the Repubs love war and spreading democracy throughout the world.

Flaming liberal patriots overthrew the British colonial government while the conservative Tories wanted to stay part of the Empire. Overthrowing a government sounds pretty liberal to me!

[JVS]

13. I don't think Mass. was always so liberal. Remember Salem?

[kskiska]

15. Listen, my children, and you shall hear

of the midnight ride of Paul Revere…

Massachusetts Bay Colony. Lexington and Concord. I guess these people have never heard of this, or of the Boston Tea Party, for that matter.

And the way they talk about "trial lawyers," I guess they don't know that at the time of his candidacy, Abe Lincoln was one of the most successful trial lawyers in the country, representing big businesses and railroads.

And what was going on in Texas on the 18th of April in ’75?

[RandomKoolzip]

16. What was going on in Texas?

Lots and lots of pollution, corruption, and state-sponsored executions, if history is retroactively consistent.

[IronLionZion]

18. That's why Republicans want to return to "good old days"

[montieg]

19. Concerning Texas

I saw a post earlier today by a DU'er from Mass. He or she was plenty pissed about the "Mass. Liberal" epithet. I can relate to that pain, as this thread shows. See, I'm from Texas, and it gets to me how so many think all of us are hydro-cephalic cretins down here. Remember, Bushit is from Connecticut-- Educated at Andover, then Yale. None of which are in Texas. Sure, we have our problems (Need I say Delay), but many of us detest what Texas has become since so many moved here in the 70's from back east.

[RandomKoolzip]

20. In my experience.....

I grew up in New England, after high school I moved to New Orleans to attend college. After college, I moved to Nashville.

In my experience in the South, all of the hate seemed to flow in one direction: towards the Northerner. I gave everyone I met the benefit of the doubt, but whenever I'd talk politics or even talk about my upbringing, I'd almost always have to endure cracks about "carpetbagging," "elitists," and "The War of Northern Aggression." Plus, there was always this vague free-floating notion that "Damn yankees come down here and try to tell us how to run things." Okay....specifics, please. Don't get me wrong; I met a lot of good friends down there. I met my wife in Nashville!

But, oh yeah: almost everyday someone tried to convert me to Christianity.

I live in Chicago now. There was a lot of beauty in the South and a lot of undeniable greatness. I had a lot of good times there. But I rarely felt welcome.

[RandomKoolzip]

21. Oh, and another thing....

No northern Democratic politician has ever used his opponent's southernness as an insult. In fact, I could argue that Northerners (specifically New Englanders) often get singled out for being "out of the Mainstream" and "elitist" merely by dint of location, but rarely, if ever, is Southernenss a liablity in politics. Who was the last president from New England? Kennedy, killed in Texas, 1963.

From where I sit, it's the South in the driver's seat.