AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

I was talking about Sowell's comparison of the dynamics of modern liberals and why they seem to want to keep their 'brothers' down with Marx's views of revolution.

Well thank you for your thanks, but I gave absolutely no interpretation whatsoever of the German Social Democrats. And nothing I said suggested that I did.

Who cares about the German Social Democrats when the topic is American conservatism??

Beats me. I was talking about Sowell's comparison of the dynamics of modern liberals and why they seem to want to keep their 'brothers' down with Marx's views of revolution. Walter seems to think Sowell (and I) were talking about German Social Democrats. But it isn't the first time there has been confusion like that in these discussions.

Marx's intent with the language he used is relevant. And I think Sowell and I both have an accurate perspective on what that intent was and that perspective is supported by the full context of the passage.

It isn't taking it out of context if the sentence means the same thing standing alone as it does when it is in its full context. In this case the intent or meaning of the sentence did not change when it was separated from the entire paragraph.

I tried to tell you Walter. Fox knows more about German history AND probably the German language than you do. If only you would take Marx's statement in the context he obviously meant it, you would understand that Fox is correct.

I'm not sure what a MAC is, but the cartoons are great!

Modern American Conservatism/Classical Liberalism
(adapted from Wiki)

Modern American Conservatism (MAC)/Classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism[1], laissez-faire liberalism[2], and market liberalism[3] or, outside the United States and Britain, sometimes simply liberalism is a doctrine stressing individual freedom, free markets, and limited government. This includes the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, individual freedom from restraint, equality under the law, constitutional limitation of government, free markets, and a gold standard to place fiscal constraints on government as exemplified in the writings of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, David Ricardo, Voltaire, Montesquieu and others.

As such, it is the fusion of economic liberalism with political liberalism of the late 18th and 19th centuries. The "normative core" of MAC/classical liberalism is the idea that laissez-faire economics will bring about a spontaneous order or invisible hand that benefits the society, though it does not necessarily oppose the state's provision of some basic public goods with what constitutes public goods being seen as very limited. The qualification classical was applied retroactively to distinguish it from more recent, 20th-century conceptions of liberalism and its related movements, such as social liberalism.

MACs promote strong national defense and necessary regulation to prevent the citiziens/states from doing violence to each other, but are otherwise suspicious of all but the most minimal federal government necessary to perform its Constitutional mandates and object to most of a federal welfare state.