ALTHOUGH THE DKOS FAQ DISCOURAGES calling out people by name, I've had enough. And reading the comments of late, so have a lot of other Kossacks.
Apparently, there are people around here who don't understand that the most important election of our lifetime is at hand. They seem to just want to sit in their ivory towers and criticize, ignoring what it takes to get elected.
They seem to bitch and moan about the FISA compromise with no understanding of practical politics. And they pay no attention to things like Olbermann's number one top recommended diary on the subject, or that Obama taught constitutional law.
Some here are willing to call them out in comments as purity trolls, while others just think it. And since DKos is a blog dedicated to electing Democrats, point out that these purity trolls come pretty close to being traitors to the cause as well.
So here's some purity troll comments I've culled together, and I'm calling them out by name...
In matters of Power, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
-- Thomas Jefferson
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
-- John Adams
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants.
-- William Pitt
No legislative act contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above the master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people; that men, acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.
-- Alexander Hamilton
Any time we deny any citizen the full exercise of his constitutional rights, we are weakening our own claim to them.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.
-- James Madison
The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
-- Justice Robert A. Jackson
It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.
-- Thomas Paine
The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.
--Patrick Henry
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country.
-- Theodore Roosevelt
If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates, but let there be no change by usurpation; for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.
-- George Washington
Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.
-- John Adams
Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
-- Daniel Webster
The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.
-- Samuel Adams
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin
If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.
-- Samuel Adams
History teaches us that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.
-- Thurgood Marshall
Emergency does not create power. Emergency does not increase granted power or remove or diminish the restrictions imposed upon power granted or reserved. The Constitution was adopted in a period of grave emergency. Its grants of power to the federal government and its limitations of the power of the States were determined in the light of emergency, and they are not altered by emergency.
-- Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
-- Thomas Jefferson
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
-- Henry David Thoreau
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
-- Thomas Paine
My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.
-- Barbara Jordan
And if you search google, there are hundreds more purity troll comments just like these.
And not one of them has a DKos UID under 150,000. :)