Newsweek - 'we have become an intolerant nation, and that's what gets you elected'

Michael Hirsch, web editor for Newsweek Magazine, manages iconically to encapsulate the bitter angst a generation of losses has formed in the heart of the eastern elite classes (I live in Maine) against the philosophical descendants of Andrew Jackson, the 'south'. He displays, one might say, an ignorance he wants to hold onto.

Essentially he argues that the south has won the war after the civil war, and the nation has lost. He argues that the coarse fighters of Andrew Jackson's time, racially naming Scots-Irish via King James I, as historical justification, became the (in their own eyes) morally superior working class hero fighters, and religious nut cowboy sheriffs ignoring the more cultured and egalitarian eastern and New Englandish know betters to our national detriment.

I have a less sweeping and far more factual interpretation, dude. The eastern elites of Virginia and the northeast, ignoring the needs of western farmers and others heralded a minor revolution as their populations increased, causing INEVITABLY the shift of political strength which resulted in the election Andrew Jackson, and his war on the bankers, among others.

Never the less of key import, and signatory relevance, is the line quoted in the post title. We know in black and white the attitude of Newsweek.

We haven't listened to those who know better, instead becoming intolerant. We are stiff necked and bring calumny on ourselves AND THE NATION as it is perceived, in disregard of our parents, who know what is correct.

Can you just imagine the blind, galactically arrogant, self involved, self satisfied monumental solipsis such an attitude requires? Can you imagine the superciliousness necessary, and the glaucoma required to put that in print?

Michael Hirsh covers international affairs for Newsweek, reporting on a range of topics from Homeland Security to postwar Iraq. He co-authored the November 3, 2003 cover story, "Bush's $87 Billion Mess," about the Iraq reconstruction plan. The issue was one of three that won the 2004 National Magazine Award for General Excellence.

Hirsh writes a column on Newsweek.com entitled "The World from Washington" focusing on foreign policy issues and serves as Washington Web Editor for Newsweek. He also edited Newsweek's "Issues 2007" special issue, which explores all facets and issues of globalization.

Excuse me for disagreeing with the immutable words of all knowing daddy (ies), but it is one thing to argue that conservatism has lost by allowing itself to be identified with the likes of Pat Robertson and his ilk, but it quite another to say the Scots Irish, "the same ethnic mix King James I sent to Northern Ireland to clear out the native Celtic Catholics" have won for themselves political power in america now, and are an intolerant, over religious breed.

The coarsened sensibility that this now-dominant Southernism and frontierism has brought to our national dialogue is unmistakable. We must endure "lapel-pin politics" that elevates the shallowest sort of faux jingoism over who's got a better plan for Iraq and Afghanistan.

We goin ta find out where u live, boy, un weeere fixin' to gitya.

DUH.

Intolerance? Do these kinds of people hear themselves?

Try the mirror ....my son.

Oh and BTW...

In 1835, a would-be assassin pulled a pistol on Andrew Jackson as he was walking through the Capitol. He pointed it at Jackson and pulled the trigger at point-blank range, but nothing happened. Jackson's aides were stunned -- it was the first assassination attempt on a US President in history. The man, Richard Lawrence, then pulled another pistol and attempted to shoot, but Andrew Jackson, ever the badass, pulled out his cane and beat him down. Today, Andrew Jackson remains the only President man enough to have beat up his own assassin.

A tolerant man would simply have DIED, I suppose.