Cuba is putting a US aid contractor on trial for the crime of helping Cuban Jews connect to the Internet. If convicted, he may be sentenced to 20 years. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she is “deeply concerned” and hopes the Cubans will let him go soon. Sources say a “political solution” will be reached soon, which probably means that the accused, Alan Gross, will be traded for something.
CNN has just announced the Gross’s trial is over, with no verdict announced. There was speculation he would be released to the US on humanitarian grounds. If Cuba weren’t so progressive people might get the impression it was a tyranny. Castro’s one-man-rule gets away with so much that if his name were Ian Smith or Augusto Pinochet instead of “Fidel” he would be mentioned in the same breath as Adolph Hitler, or at least, Mohammer Khadaffi.
There was a sentimental outpouring of sympathy for the passing of Alberto Granado, the man who accompanied Che Guevara through Latin America in a journey celebrated in the movie Motorcycle Diaries.
The famous trip across South America, begun in late 1951 on Granado’s old British motorcycle, supposedly awakened in Guevara a sympathy for the poor and desire for social justice that turned him into a leftist revolutionary.
Granado said, “What I appreciated most was Che’s honesty — and his ability to transform negative things into positive things. … he was not compromising. It wasn’t easy unless you shared his vision and believed in it.” Che certainly had the ability to turn the living into the dead; he served as an executioner for the Castro regime, which to this day considers helping people connect to the Internet a crime.
But it is not Che the executioner, or Che the incompetent commander who will be remembered, but Che the “Guerillero Heroico”. It is an image based on nothing more than Alberto Korda’s famous photograph of the 31-year old Guevara, which the Maryland Institute of Art called the “world’s most famous photo”. It is not based on Che’s life or his combat record, both of which are shameful affairs. But the Photo and the Motorcycle Diaries, both fantasies, will survive for far longer than reality because on some level it is better to have a glamorous name like “Che Guevara” than it is to have one like “Alan Gross”. Really. If “Che” had been called Myron and had bad teeth, would he even be remembered today?
The Citizen Renegade argues that the key advantage of the Left is that it understands that “framing” an argument is far more important the argumentation itself. “Frame the debate, win the hearts and minds. Take a page from the Alinsky school for radical revolution: the best defense is a good offense.”
That’s why Alan Gross is not being released because he is guilty of no crime; being set free simply because he deserves to be — but on “humanitarian grounds”. He is being released in this manner because of “framing”. And most everybody will buy the frame. Citizen Renegade believes that the public has been conditioned to live in a soap-opera news world which closely parallels the make-believe world of propaganda. We want to be saved by strong, bearded, glamorous figures because no other kind will do. In such a world, the Alan Grosses can never play romantic lead.
It’s odd at first glance that a tiny cadre of high IQ elites can direct the national conversation with such precision, but it starts to make sense when you realize that most people want to be led by a strong band of alpha males. The apolitical middle will heed the hatchet job of the Associated Press and the siren lies of humanities professors and maudlin TV documentaries, and they will fall in line …
Ivan Pavlov famously showed that dogs can be conditioned to salivate. What is less widely remembered is that humans proved to be conditionable too: conditioned hunger, conditioned sexual response. Today Cuba is remembered as a heroic country, the facts notwithstanding. El pais heroico. Why we should think that? Ah — there’s the shame.
“No Way In” print edition at Amazon
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During the wind up of the Tet offensive a fair number of the VC caught were summarily executed. There is a photo of one of those executions that was used by the left anti-war crowd, without any of the background explained.
http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0410/faas.html
The thing I take from it is not its use in “framing” but as an example of what can happen when people reach a point where they are past arguments, warnings, or conversation. The way things are going I can see someone coming up to some dofus in a Che T Shirt and shooting him point blank, no warning.
The Citizen Renegade argues that the key advantage of the Left is that it understands that “framing” an argument is far more important the argumentation itself.
A few decades back I noticed the Left focuses on “winning the argument” rather than “solving the problem.” And neither the arguments nor the problems are what they appear because they are mere proxies.
The left won the argument about closing Gitmo and against using drones for assassination of our enemies. A few years after they took command Gitmo is still open and using drones for assassinations is now essential and quite common. We were told we needed to provide insurance to x-number of uninsured (the number varied wildly depending on what was needed to win the argument) but we ended up with a law that will force young people with little income to pay much more for insurance in order to subsidize the insurance cost of middle aged people with much higher incomes (it called “community rating”). Meanwhile everyone’s health care cost will explode because of the costly overheads the law imposes on providers. None of this matters as long as The Left gets what it covets.
So the argument is never about any particular problem but about the only problem: The Left needs more power because The Left does not have enough power. So every problem, real or imagined (global warming, teaching Johnny to read about global warming) has the exact same solution: Give the Left more power.
Ever notice how prognosticators on the Left can consistently gets things wrong and still be considered experts? That is because they always get the “one big thing” right: The Left needs more power. (Thomas Friedman holding up China as the model for the US is an example — along with most of his other suggestions.)
@1 Toadold
“The thing I take from it is not its use in “framing” but as an example of what can happen when people reach a point where they are past arguments, warnings, or conversation. The way things are going I can see someone coming up to some dofus in a Che T Shirt and shooting him point blank, no warning.”
I agree with no conditions, something just feels ready to tip. Scent on the wind I suppose. But the WH handling of the crisis, and it is a crisis, in ME has thrown several logs on the fire. I think the first major incident comes from the left though…a black swan of sorts. After that, who knows how it metasticizes. I think we shall remember the hippy sit-in at Madison as the “good old days”.
If a Communist proudly announces his atheism, is it alright to ask him why he believes in Che Guevara? It is less fantastic to believe there is order in the universe than to accept that Ernesto Guevara was a humanitarian. Logically we don’t know the answer to whether God exists or not, but we do know with far greater certainty that Guevara was not the guerillero heroico.
But making such an observation will not matter in the least to a committed Marxist because come right down to it, nearly everyone, and Communist atheists in particular, needs to believe in something. They make up a narrative within which to lead their lives. These narratives hold their quotidian day up like a scaffolding and it would be a bold man who had nothing whatsoever and still kept going. In the fact “revolutionary commitment” is a synonym and is identical in all but spelling to the words “blind faith”.
Blind Faith is what keeps the Left going and why “framing”, however bereft of actual meaning it may be, is so powerful. Framing is always about juxtaposing the nonexistent paradise, justice, morality on earth with flawed reality. Obamacare is noble not because its implementation will be anything but a horror, but because it stands as a proxy for that shimmering vision of egalitarian health care to which alone anything may be compared.
The myth — the Hope — is always the standard of comparison with which a revolutionary condemns the world; but in its implementation the switcheroo unfailingly takes place, and once opened the box reveals a cheap, often shambolic article. ‘Framing’ is the box, the packaging, nothing else. Socialism, to be sure, can’t manufacturing anything, but they make the best boxes.
So Cuba remains a great “hope”; a singular beacon, whatever its seedy reality may be. Because whatever the betrayal, however large the crime, no matter how great the horror of repression, its adherents are always transcendent because they ‘meant well’. And I suppose some of them did. But it is a sad fact that only the smallest crimes in history were ever committed for money. To manufacture a really monstrous historical catastrophe, you have to do it in the name of good.
the point being the weight that one chooses to – can afford to – place on hope versus … versus what? if it’s versus the status quo, one comes to one set of conclusions. the problem is if it’s versus reality, than any conclusions will have, at best, random results.
and that’s the nut, when you’re in certain circumstances you might choose to put it all on red and spin the wheel. in sufficient straights you might even put it all on 22 and then let it ride, double down. hey, it worked in Casablanca.
The Citizen Renegade argues that the key advantage of the Left is that it understands that “framing” an argument is far more important the argumentation itself.
The very first news stories of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s move to reduce the power and (slightly) the compensation of its public employees unions set the ‘frame’ for the entire public discussion to date.
proposed bills curtailing labor rights…governor wants to cut union rights…Rust Belt at vanguard of backlash against organized labor…Hundreds protest Wis. plan to cut worker rights…bill taking away collective bargaining rights for workers…the elimination of collective bargaining rights for public employees plus sharp increases in their health care and pension payments…
The MSM frame was focused like a laser on a Republican attack on the civil ‘rights’ of the unions. The stories simply buried the monster deficits generated by unfunded health and retirement benefits, although they were the root cause of the legislation.
So easy, just get your ticket for Madison and fight for those ‘rights’. Let the billions of dollars of looming deficits be solved by the demonized Walker administration, while we sabotage their efforts by any means necessary. And shame, shame on Walker. And for extra points, you can fight bonus devils like Hitler and the Koch brothers, at no hazard whatsoever!
For the burning Middle East Hillary is a proven bust. Fear not, help is on the way. Oprah is headed to Cairo.
Do names matter? Ask Herr Shickelgruber and his partner Djugushvili.
It is a sad thing that people prefer faiths that remove limitations on their behavior, gives them the excuse to indulge in Heinous F285ardiness, and often puts nasty limitations on others. When it does put limitations on them it is usually trivial in comparison to the restrictions and mechanisms they wish to put on others. JudeoChristian beliefs are oft disregarded or not practiced because of the “Golden Rule” thingy that requires you do observe the restrictions that you would put on others in equal measure.
Those that embrace free love for example oft get free STD, retarded children, and nobody who can stand to be around them when they get old.
Notice the ‘frame’ includes blackout curtains as well, enabling the obliteration of inconvenient portions of the news. Such as the million Egyptians chanting for the reconquest of Jerusalem, while the ‘democratic’ Google executive is forbidden the stage, and the NYT sleeps.
We know the vague outlines of the fall of the Roman West. Peter Heather has laid it out the best of all the commentators. But it remains, unsatisfying…because we don’t know their mind. All we can see now is signals…unassimilated Muslim neighborhoods throughout Europe. When has any “minority” remained job-slaves and been content to remain so? Never. The real problem with the ME/NA rebellions is some folks will want to move to Europe, in numbers Europe cannot handle. And it will throw a match on a stack of gas cans that the Euros expect US to defend…good luck to our Euro friends, they will need it.
hope evermore
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1363424/Eight-SAS-men-undercover-mission-seized-Libya–rebel-forces-went-help.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Hess
On the expectations of violence:
I’ve noticed the in the US the violence seems to be left on right lately and the calls for violence are from the left. The Obama organization seems to be gearing up and organizing for full communist technique for the 2102 elections. Since so many of them live in a bubble of their own faith and fantasy I think they are going to step in it big time. People have lost jobs and are afraid of the future for their kids as much as anything else. This makes for a very volatile situation if there is no perception of corrections and blockage of the Obama folly.
Ken Salazar is deeply hated in a number of energy producing states but the realization is there that he is Obama and friends creature. $8 a gallon gasoline sounds just spiffy to an academic leftist but it sounds like starvation and civil war to others.
When confronted with a painting that he didn’t like, my old Grand-dad would growl “I like the frame”. Maybe he was onto something. The left doesn’t like the real picture, so they concentrate instead on the frame. This device allows them to magic up an imaginary picture from the labels they attach to the frame.
For example the real picture shows Union creatures intimidating Republican legislators in Wisconsin. The frame? Well the frame is labelled “citizens fight for their rights” and so the picture morphs into a vignette of heartless Republicans trampling on the aspirations of the working masses. Bingo! another instance of deniable intimidation – a definite frame-up.
It seems that the unfortunate Mr Gross may be a man of the left and/or he may not have been doing what he claims he was and/or he may have been misled by his employer. So far we have several frames for him but no real picture. I’m calling this one abstract art until the picture is finished.
As for Che Guevara and very long journeys over rough roads on an old British motorcycle? Thinking about that makes me wince. I think he started out as a baritone and ended up a soprano. Can’t have a male soprano as the voice of the revolution so they shot him, then immortalized him with a t-shirt.
The Japanese have words for what’s inside the box and what’s outside the box. Inside is “honne”, the private truths, which are understood to be often, if not always, contrary to what society expects. Outside is “tatemae”, and this is the presentation that is expected by society.
The thing is that the tension between the two is expected, but tatemae always wins out for the greater good. You might take the problem of the wife asking you if this dress makes her look fat, the one that got Honest Abe in dutch during the recent television ad campaign.
I was watching the movie, Freakonomics, recently which summarized the issue in the recent scandals in Japanese sumo wrestling. A couple Sumo wrestling insiders made allegations of rampant fixing of the matches. The day before they were to have a big press conference announcing their stories, both unexpectedly died, in the same hospital, on the same floor, from the same obscure respiratory problem. No autopsies were done, and no police investigations followed things up. It was, as the chief inspector said, “a good and reputable hospital.” Everybody had a little tatemae to peddle, the sumo community, the hospital, the police. And that was that.
You can’t have a level of deception, or of denial, to any kind of degree like this, _unless_ society wants it. Unless the society on the whole simply wants to keep up appearances, i.e., they demand the tatemae.
In the case of the Japanese, they have their Shinto, of which sumo is piece. On the Leftist side, they have their utopias, but why the larger society permits the leftists’ lies, I haven’t a clue.
A good, recent example of honne/tatemae in American culture was the problem of Bill Clinton and the question, “Does character count?”
Bubba was recognized far and wide to be an ethical trainwreck personally, what with the scandal-a-week presidency on virtually every front, until the blue dress focused the inquiry.
But his overall swellness won out, based totally on his public policy positions. We were asked to overlook his personal failures, what mattered was the great virtue in his public stances. That, we were told, is the final and true measure of a man.
Everything else is small stuff.
The frame that the left has constructed is that they are for humanity, love, decency, justice, and all other good things. *The modern right has at least tacitly accepted all of this.* The modern right response can be described as “Yes, but….” Yes, but those plans aren’t practical. Yes, but those policies will lead to less growth.
Further the left frames the choice as 1)do what we say or 2)children will starve, minorities will be beaten and killed, people will die in the streets. As is “Do you want the man to come back?” Put that way- as it always is- no, people don’t want the man to come back.
I personally don’t accept the moral superiority or moral authority of the left. I don’t share or accept their values and I don’t accept their right to force them on me. “Everyone should be equal”- everyone is not equal. “Minorities should not suffer any discrimination”- most discrimination against minorities is wholly justified, and in the instances it’s not, well, life is not fair. “Everyone should have medical care”- if they can pay for it or someone wants to provide it to them free or at reduced cost, fine, otherwise no everyone should not get medical care.
The modern right only influences the system a bit at the margins, for just this reason. Tacitly accepting the right of the left to say what’s good and bad, right and wrong, evil and good, is to accept slavery. To have it imposed on you might not be something you can resist, but to accept it is to accept a living death.
So here’s the news
Again the Jews
Just stirring up some trouble
The Internet?
We’ll make him sweat
And USA pays double
The Sec of State
Just cannot wait
Her hubby loves Havanas
She loves Fidel
And Che as well
And yes she has no bananas
Any liberal love of Che Guevara is ironic and tragic. Che was totalitarian, against any individuality, and even against jazz and rock n roll.
Cuban jazz legend Paquito D’Rivera: “Che hated artists, so how is it possible that artists still today support the image of Che Guevara?”
Woe to those youths “who stayed up late at night and thus reported late to work at government forced-labor.” Guevara wrote “Youth should learn to think and act as a mass. Those who chose their own path” (as in growing long hair and listening to Yankee-Imperialist Rock & Roll) were denounced as worthless “lumpen” and “delinquents.” In his famous speech he vowed “to make individualism disappear from Cuba! It is criminal to think of individuals!”
A collection of links about the real Che Guevara.
Che Guevara’s Message
“It’s odd at first glance that a tiny cadre of high IQ elites can direct the national conversation with such precision, but it starts to make sense when you realize that most people want to be led by a strong band of alpha males. The apolitical middle will heed the hatchet job of the Associated Press and the siren lies of humanities professors and maudlin TV documentaries, and they will fall in line”
-I think the “framing” phenomenon is actually poorly understood in terms of “alpha males” “directing” the conversation (not least because in our times it is just as likely to be a woman journalist or politico preaching the line.) Rather it is precisely the limts of alphaness – the inability of any one, however strong, to keep all the others in line, that explains the need for a distinctively human, as opposed to merely biological, social order, i.e. a human order centred around shared signs of what is sacred.
History is not a conspiracy of any elite, however smart. It requires all the gang to sign off on the idea, an “idea” that is often instigated by the Myrons of the world, though often no one remembers this as soon as the Ches take Myron’s half-formed revelation (not-yet-fully-understood, even by Myron) and give it their own populist spin. Myron comes to see what he has thought, only after the others take his precocious sign and change it. The world is “ruled” by the unknowing followers of Keynes’ defunct economists.
Consider, for example, the argument of von Mises (http://www.archive.org/details/TheoryAndHistory):
“The way toward a realistic distinction between freedom and bondage was opened, two hundred years ago, by David Hume’s immortal essay, On the First Principles of Government. Government, taught Hume, is always government of the many by the few. Power is therefore always ultimately on the side of the governed, and the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. This cognition, logically followed to its conclusion, completely changed the discussion concerning liberty…. There is virtually only one factor that has the power to make people unfree – tyrannical public opinion. The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion…. The worst and most dangerous form of absolutist rule is that of an intolerant majority. Such is the conclusion arrived at by Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill.
In his esssay on Bentham, Mill pointed out why this eminent philosopher failed to see the real issue and why his doctrine found acceptance with some of the noblest spirits. Bentham, he says, lived “in a time of reaction against the aristorcratic governments of modern Europe.” THe reformers of his age “have been accustomed to see the numerical majority everywhere unjustly depressed, everywhere trampled upon, or at the best overlooked, by governments.” In such an age one could easily forget that “all countries which have long continued progressive, or been durably great, have been so because there has been an organized opposition to the ruling power, or whatever kind that power was…. Almost all the greatest men who have ever lived have formed part of such an opposition.
[...]
[Bentham's] failure to distinguish correctly between despotism and liberty was accepted without qualms by most nineteenth-century writers, IN their eyes true liberty meant the unbridled despotism of the majority.
Lacking the power to think logically, and ignorant of history as well as of theory, the much admired “progressive” writers gave up the essential idea of the Enlightenment: freedom of thought, speech, and communication. Not all of them were so outspoken as Comte and Lenin; but they all, in declaring that freedom means only the right to say the correct things, not also the right to say the wrong things, virtually converted the ideas of freedom of thought and conscience into their opposite. It was not the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX that paved the way for the return of intolerance and the persecution of dissenters. It was the writings of the socialists. After a short-lived triumph of the idea of freedom, bondage made a comeback disguised as a consummation and completion of philosophy of freedom, as the finishing of the unfinished revolution, as the final emancipation of the individual.”
—
All of which is to say we should not fall into a depression over a “conditioned” humanity in the hands of an evil elite, but rather remind each other that the conditioning is our own, that the MSM fantasy is the mirror of the faux-aristocratic ambitions of the ordinary middling man and woman. When the true aristocratic spirit revives, the spirit which is also that of true democracy, then the Hilarys and Fidels and their media enablers will be chased from the scene.
The modern right only influences the system a bit at the margins, for just this reason.
That is because conservatives have never caught on to the fact that to the left, politics is all about religion. It’s like a hidden Iframe whose existence is denied but remains on the page passing data in and out; the object they rail against all the time but upon which they rely utterly. God is at the heart of the modern Left, all appearances to the contrary.
The idea of disestablishing religion rested on the idea that ultimate authority could be placed outside of the human sphere. If that put God outside the frame, it also made it impossible for any collection of human beings to claim absolute power. The effect of declaring Creator’s Kingdom “not of this world” was to outlaw the possibility of a theocracy on earth.
That is the conservative position; one which at all events the left must overthrow. For they must have their god and pull and the world in a single frame.
The key project of the left has been to re-establish religion while making the process look as ‘secular’ as possible. That is why public policy as effects don’t matter while public policy as attitudes, beliefs, articles of faith do. When the left talks about “progress” they don’t really mean more money or better things. Oh that’s the bait. But the real goal is a “better world” — one inhabited by a New Man. In Wisconsin they will admit to all the ruin the budget numbers suggest and yet gladly pay the price to enshrine their “collective” gain.
What the left calls progressivism has as its object not your paycheck, but your soul. The stars be damned, it power over man that Progressivism desires.
The ‘frame’ is really the essential part of their project. One day they will build the frame so large that it will define the allowable. What it may enclose — slums, inadequate public hospitals, mediocre services, etc — are nothing to the point. It is the frame, that collection of attitudes, motives and beliefs within which all these tawdry things are daubed which is the real masterpiece of socialism.
The impotence of conservatives stems directly from their unwillingness and even revulsion towards playing the God-on-earth game. To many conservatives, God is a settled thing: the source of rights, the ground of reality, the sea upon which the City on the Hill stands questing. They cannot recognize the god of the Left, which has come in through the postern gate. And when they meet in the market it is disguised, sometimes in the figure of Moloch, at other times as pure power. But they cannot recognize it as any god they know. It is too mean and altogether too worldly for something to fit the description of deity; and they would be right, but it is in the city, attended by its acolytes, as the conservatives look elsewhere …
Part of me doesn’t want the conservatives to wake up to that fact; to meet the new establishmentarians on their own ground. For the only thing that can be worse than one brazen idol is two brazen idols, each vying for the city. Rather it may be better for the Left to simply run their course, during which they will cast themselves into the voracious mouths of their New World. That is the way it has been through history. They destroy themselves. Ultimately. My only regret is that so many have to follow them into maw of their infernal paradise.
But we cannot play their game. We do not know — and perhaps should not learn — how.
Wretchard says: It is the frame, that collection of attitudes, motives and beliefs within which all these tawdry things are daubed which is the real masterpiece of socialism.
Maybe conservatives could make use of the old movie line: “We’ve been framed!”
Apropos of Wretchard’s comment that “We want to be saved by strong, bearded, glamorous figures because no other kind will do,” should we be grateful that Teh Won hasn’t (yet) grown a beard? (Not that he could if he tried, given those shirtless beach vacation photos).
All of which is to say we should not fall into a depression over a “conditioned” humanity in the hands of an evil elite, but rather remind each other that the conditioning is our own, that the MSM fantasy is the mirror of the faux-aristocratic ambitions of the ordinary middling man and woman. When the true aristocratic spirit revives, the spirit which is also that of true democracy, then the Hilarys and Fidels and their media enablers will be chased from the scene.
truepeers
That is factually incorrect.
Bezmenov makes it plain as day that the First Directorate of the KGB/SVR HAS been directly involved — placing their thumbs on the scales of political discourse in the West.
Active Measures ARE being used to shift our democracy to the Left. It is not an unforced error.
The influence of Central on the careers of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are now exposed. Moscow launched them. Without that support they were going to abandon politics as a career and attain gainful employment. Period.
Likewise it must be apparent that Bill Clinton was sponsored by Central. How else could he have circulated around the east of the Iron Curtain? Yeah, he had a minder.
And it’s passing strange that an avowed Marxist, Soetoro, manages to rocket from Occidental and into Columbia.
Bezmenov testified that monitoring such Leftists in their college years was his full time occupation — and that he was but one of the team! Moscow maintained file cabinets filled with names and addresses of such aspirants. While his beat was New Delhi, Central used the same approach everywhere.
——-
It is a cardinal error made time and again by conservatives to assume that alien influences are not part of the picture.
We kid ourselves that the pendulum will swing back upon exposure of the follies. Folks, the pendulum has left the fulcrum. Moscow greased it off the track.
Until this chronic campaign is called into the open we are doomed.
And, of course, Moscow has been joined by Riyadh. Hillary’s personal aid is a muslim with blood ties to die hard islamist fanatics: her parents! Hillary has no problem with it.
We’ve got talk show hosts kicked off of Washington DC airwaves for speaking up about Sharia.
We’ve got the King of Saudi Arabia completely capturing the pens of academe. Arabists are a whores. They’ve taken the thirty pieces — and we didn’t even get a kiss!
It’s had an impact on Bush, Rice, Clinton and Obama. They all live in a fantasy WRT islamism.
BTW, it’s possible to be a muslim Marxist. Enver Hoxha pulled that off for years.
——-
The only way that the pendulum will swing back is if the hidden hand of foreign manipulation is faced and called out.
Anna Chapman is the face of that threat. Not a classic spy in the le Carre mold at all, she was a First Directorate babe working the perversion of America beat. She is anything but alone.
PA cat…
He waxes…
blert #23
Let us hope he also wanes.
Wretchard @ 20
“The effect of declaring Creator’s Kingdom “not of this world” was to outlaw the possibility of a theocracy on earth.
That is the conservative position…”
-You might be interested in a recent school of historical thought that argues that the conservative position (in the anglosphere at least, where conservatism is much rooted in the thinking of the 17th century) emerged as the embrace of a specifically Hebrew theocracy/republic, one that, in the 17thC reading of the Bible, was understood to be the basis not of oppression but rather toleration. To follow God’s law was to empower civil authorities with the duty of upholding the divine law that required only the minimum of interference with religious pluralism, in order to serve God’s plan for civil peace and order. “Theocracy” meant rule by civil authorities as the ultimate guarantors of God’s will. This is the argument of a recent book, The Hebrew Republic, by Eric Nelson. Here is a reviewer’s take on the argument:
“In the final chapter of the book, Nelson makes what is perhaps his boldest claim of all: He argues that the modern concept of religious toleration does not, as is commonly supposed, emerge from the demand for a secular state whose sphere of authority will be “separate” from that of the church. Rather, Nelson attributes the rise of religious toleration in the West to views descending from the Swiss theologian Erastus, who in 1589 argued that the church lacked any legitimate authority to compel public acceptance of religious law because in the Hebrew Bible, it was the judges and kings who wielded the right to enforce religious legislation, and not the priesthood.[20] What became known as the “Erastian” view was thus a Hebraist theory that sought to overthrow the centuries-old Catholic doctrine of the “two swords,” which granted the church sovereignty in religious matters, by showing that the biblical and rabbinic political traditions endorsed no such thing. The Erastian position thus upheld the principle of religious legislation for the public good. But it placed the authority to decide on such legislation in the hands of the civil government, which alone should decide which religious precepts are desirable for the society as a whole, and which would lead to gratuitous persecution of otherwise loyal and peaceable sects.
This powerful line of argument was taken up by Grotius, Cunaeus, Selden, Harrington, Hobbes, and Locke—in short, by almost all the most important political theorists of the 17th century. From this, Nelson concludes that it was not atheism and the rejection of the Hebrew Scriptures (as proposed by Spinoza[21]) that brings about the triumph of religious toleration in Western political thought. Instead, it was the Erastian political theory that won the day for political toleration. And this theory drew its force and worldly reasonableness, not from the rejection of the Hebraic inheritance, but from the fact that it was rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Talmud, and later rabbinic commentators.
Nelson’s three examples can be seen as test cases for the thesis that the Hebrew Scriptures and rabbinic sources contributed to the emergence of significant modern political ideas. Having established his argument in these cases, Nelson concludes that the Enlightenment reading of the 17th century will have to be revised or even discarded, and replaced with a truer picture of these thinkers as pursuing a philosophical agenda that was modern, to a significant degree, precisely because it was biblically informed. As he writes:
“Once we are talking about a world in which a republican constitution is seen as a requirement of legitimacy, in which the state uses its coercive power to redistribute wealth, and in which broad toleration is the rule, we are recognizably talking about the modern world. And if that world was, to an important degree, called into being, not by the retreat in religious conviction, but by the deeply held religious belief that the creation of such a world is God’s will, then the traditional narrative will have to be significantly revised, if not discarded.[22])”"
http://via.readerimpact.com/v/1/3307b70367a36c44d65ee6a516f191146b7210346658c26c
blert, I have no doubt the facts you cite are true. But a case still exists that what we have is an unforced error.
Exhibit A: Wisconsin. Every way you turn it the unions and the Democrat Party in Wisconsin are acting fradulently. The case is clear: if you want fraud, graft and corruption in your polity, if you as a taxpayer want to be fiscally raped, go with those protesters and refugee senators.
It really is that simple. The light of day has shown down into the union-Democrat Party symbiosis, and it has found a mountain of rot in Wisconsin. But the result is as if you sprayed a can of RAID on a hornet’s nest but they kept coming.
The public isn’t buying. They are seeing fraud and dishonesty, it cannot be hidden, and they are choosing fraud and dishonesty.
Iowahawk put out an incredible, wrenching “spreadsheet” here:
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html
But it doesn’t matter. They ain’t biting. Rasmussen’s got Fleebags 52%, Walker 43%.
This kerfluffle has done us a great favor by presenting as a very, very simple test. Until the wheels come off the entire system, it isn’t going to get simpler.
Folks seem to be saying they’d rather take it as it is, and wait and see if the wheels come off. They want the fantasy to work. They’re choosing the lie.
Unforced error.
Blert @22
I don’t think my argument is incompatible with the idea that foreign powers try to influence opinion in the USA. Of course they do; we all do (I say this as someone who grew up in a town with an Enver Hoxha bookstore). My point is simply that they/we do it because they/we recognize that it is public opinion that ultimately rules. Now, to get into the question of how public opinion is shaped is to open a big door. I’ll just say that those who want to shape it cannot just willy nilly force their foreign ideas onto people; they/we have to engage on terrain that makes sense to their/our “targets”. But those targets will not just be spoon fed. If the targeting party succeeds in getting heard it will only be through a process in which the target re-presents, or mis-takes, what has been fed because it is only through reworking another’s signs that one can adapt an idea to make sense of it for oneself. Human freedom, to some degree, is unavoidable.
As for Barry, haven’t I seen you say that you have had a career with the CIA? and wouldn’t it make more sense to see Barry and his mother, grandmother, putative father, and Indonesian military step father as CIA agents rather than Soviets? After all Barry’s supposed biological parents met in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii, an institution know to be affiliated with the CIA, as was the bank that grandma worked at. Or is this bunk?
refugee senators
renegade, anti-democratic, sell-out senators…
Please correct….
fleebag senators.
I stand corrected.
truepeers…
I’m not Habu…
I’ve never worked for the Federal Government — except on April 15th — hell day.
You raise legitimate queries…
For Americans… Soetoro in Indonesia is like saying, “I’m a Kennedy.”
So, you THINK that Stanley adopted Barry into her step-husband’s family?
Take a guess.
As a Kenyan — Obama was DIRT in Kenya. Not only was he a mulatto — he’s got the WRONG name. Kenyan.
Stanley solves all of this.
——
So many questions. How in the world does a gal — of a Leftist family — get a first class Russian language education in Hawaii — by accident?
——
There was a time I thought that Barry born in Kenya made NO SENSE.
Then I realized: it’s a mulatto birth by a minor in 1961 Hawaii — It’s a felony!
Such a birth would absolutely require a police report — not any different than a victim of a bullet wound.
Get it?
FMD and the Durhams’ have their collective hair on fire.
Abortion is totally unrealistic.
Birth in Hawaii — exposure.
Kenya — down right attractive.
But that’s expensive.
Frank Marshall Davis: If it means that I avoid prison time figured in decades — I think I can stump up the money.
Soetoro is good to go for all offices — except the one he ran for: President.
The whole nasty statutory rape bit — it’s why you’re getting such a schtick from Honolulu. No one wants the kid to pay for the parents.
But there is a larger trouble. Soetoro’s been counter-indoctrinated against America. He just loves despotism.
Hence, it kills him to see the Duck of Death de-throned. Brutal, it is!
#14/#15.
That was very interesting. (I always wonder how you off a Sumo wrestler.)
In any event, it does appear that Japan is en route to tataeme-ing itself out of existence.
One can certainly understand.
The truth is so unpleasant, one has got to suppress it.
For the public good.
To save “face.”
To look competent.
To maintain one’s pride.
To protect one’s “investments.”
Etc.
But this is true not just in Japan. Some countries (and cultures) have made it lying/deceit/euphemism/tataime a veritable art form.
But it’s a bit strange. Culturally speaking, I’ve heard that it’s dishonorable for a Japanese to tell an untruth. I’ve heard that you can forget your bag on a Japanese train and not worry overly because when that train makes its return trip, you’ll find your bag exactly where you’ve left it. I’ve also heard that in China, as far as lying goes, there is only dishonor if you get caught at it.
Which is, I’ve heard, one of the reasons why Japanese look (or should I say, “looked”?) down at the Chinese. (To be fair, they look down at practically everyone. Not their fault, of course: it’s a cultural thang.)
(Could be, I’ve heard wrong. “All generalizations, etc.”)
“Tataeme”? No, not just Japan. Alas. And it’s a killer.
Blert, sorry for the confusion; i thought both you and Habu had spoken of the CIA.
I understand your statutory rape hypothesis, but not this: “As a Kenyan — Obama was DIRT in Kenya. Not only was he a mulatto — he’s got the WRONG name. Kenyan.”
what’s wrong with his name?
Anyway, who brought Obama Sr. to school in Hawaii? How did Grandma become a bank VP? What was Stanley doing in Pakistan?
I haven’t looked into FMD to know what idea backs your theory of paternity. It just seems to me that what embarasses Obama about his past may be not only that it differs from the idealized version in the official story – i.e. that he has been fibbing to build up his Africanness – but that his family was implicated, to some degree, in the brutal (anti-ethnic Chinese) repression of an American-backed regime in Indonesia.
“The truth is so unpleasant, one has got to suppress it.”
Ever seen the movie, “Awakenings”? If not, check it out sometime on a day in which you are prepared to be beaten up and laid flat by catharsis.
It’s about a group of children who became catatonics due to an encephalitic outbreak. Max Von Sydow remarks that the patients can’t possibly understand what has happened to them. Why?
“Because the alternative is unthinkable.”
(Penny Marshall directed it. Great director, if you can believe it, btw. Who apparently doesn’t direct anymore. Why?)
I often wonder if our situation isn’t like the move, “Awakenings”. In that movie, a viral disease condemned young kids into a catatonic state. Decades later, the young Dr. Oliver Sacks administered a new, cutting edge drug to them, and they emerged from comas to rejoin life with gusto.
Tragically, their bodies developed a resistance to that drug, and slowly the patients got hauled backwards into the catatonic norm that dominated their lives.
These days we’ve all grown up under the Progressive Mentality and its set of expectations, regardless of whether we are Progressives or not. We are an Enlightened People. We are, or at least a necessary number of us are, members of a “Smart Fraction”.
We hold and cleave to the stauch faith of evolution! There is only one way: Up!
History does not bear this out. Dark Ages and setbacks have happened. The history of human progress has been halting and fitful. The proposition in the last thread is true: for most of our time humanity has been consumed with war and tribal idiocies.
Quantifiably, it is not easy to build a civilization, yet it is very easy to lose one.
Makes you wonder if, like in Awakenings, we’re not headed back to Catatonia for now. Before the next big Awakening. If it comes.
Quantifiably, it is not easy to build a civilization, yet it is very easy to lose one.
What we may need is a frontier. So the proximate challenge of the next fifty years is to squirm free enough of the suffocating Necromongery to get out there. The frontier is not a sometime thing, but a condition of life. It must always exist simply because the world — the real world — is unbounded.
The progressives are at heart jailors. They would lower the skies and raise the earth, leaving only what we can attain to by filling out a form. Michael totten in Fatima Gate describes wandering through the Hezbollah’s Beirut headquarters, in search of the person he was supposed to interview. At every turn the answer was, “I don’t know” or “not here, try upstairs”. Reading through it, you had the feeling he was wandering through Franz Kafka’s Castle. And even when Michael found the Hezbollah press office it was “we are not authorized to speak …”
Always the frame, always the narrative. No life outside the narrative. The Left is king, but only king of their own prison. The real world is not like that. The sky is blue whether Hezbollah likes it or not. And Che Guevara is still a loser however often Korda’s photo is published. And therein lies our hope. It is not that West is dying. No. It is that new world is waiting to be found.
We are free; and there is nothing they can do about it.
The impotence of the conservatives also stems from the fact that they take seriously the left’s stated good intentions. They then try to argue logically with the “well intentioned” leftists trying to show them rationally that their policies won’t take them, or anybody else, to their openly declared and even desirable goals.
Thus, the conservatives almost always miss the left’s real intentions, worldview and point completely. A conservative could argue till kingdom come with a leftist, showing him by all possible ways that affirmative action will not turn and has not been turning the blacks into more prosperous, freer and better citizens. The conservative may have all logic and rationality on his side, but, whenever the leftist sees he cannot win this debate, he will always call his opponent a racist and, thus, emerge victorious from the discussion.
And what will happen then? Next step: the conservative will try to prove in good faith he’s not a racist, missing the point again. Because the leftist’s point is to preserve black citizens’ status as victims in order not only to get their votes, but also in order to be the one allowed to distribute guilt.
Framing the debate means, among another things, legislating its rules and setting the goals, something conservatives never do, because they think these are already there, implicit, logical and rational. But the only thing implicit for any leftist is that whatever he does, says or thinks, his goal is always the same: power, absolute power.
They don’t have to be high IQ elites.
When I think of the current administration and IQ, I get a mental picture of a house salad. Lots of lettuce, a sliver of carrot peel, a section of wilted celery and what was once might have been a radish. In my crueler moments I assign them names.
36. bartok
In other words conservatives make a presumption of reason in dealing with the left.
I have been saying for years to fellow conservatives, “They hate you, they hate the Constitution and they hate the United States. What is it you don’t get about that?”
But most conservatives just want to get on with their lives, raise their kids, perhaps pray to their God and have a good life.
And we are at the precipice.
Alas, Wretch may well be right. “But we cannot play their game. We do not know — and perhaps should not learn — how.”
I’m afraid I’m with Habu when the Left steps over the final line.
36. bartok
You describe my experience precisely. The lefties I talk to really believe that meaning well, as they think they do, will lead to the outcomes they say are desirable. Just last week, I queried an acquaintance of mine about the lack of property rights on aboriginal reserves. It was respectful, she said, of their culture not to criticize what I called a fundamental impediment to prosperity. I suggested to her that this respect was analogous to the notion that what goes behind closed doors in families does not concern the state.
In the end, I concluded that what mattered to her was having others see her as respectful.
http://ampontan.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/the-revolution-in-japan/
Japan just may be drifting into its own version of a tea party revolt.
The Frame. Up.
But, who is the Framer? Is that the wrong question?
…-
” * In 2006, then-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney signed mandatory health care legislation — which, as the story goes, is the basis for Obamacare. POLICY: FLAWED!
* Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is on his third wife — and his two prior divorces were not family friendly. ETHICS: FLAWED!
* Two-term Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is a former lobbyist — and, as a teenager, was more interested in watching girls than in remembering Martin Luther King’s speech in his home town. CHARACTER: FLAWED!
* Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels suggested to the party base that the next president would need to call a “truce” on social issues to focus on economic ones and he is several inches under 6 feet tall. SOCIALLY and PHYSICALLY FLAWED!
* Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is charisma challenged — allegedly way too boring and way too nice. PERSONALITY: FLAWED!
* Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s record raises red flags — he raised some taxes and commuted the sentence of a prisoner who years later murdered four policemen in Washington state. RECORD: FLAWED! And now with Huckabee’s latest “Obama was raised in Kenya controversy,” he is flawed by the prevailing media…. forever.
* Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is — well, let’s say too polarizing for a general election. ELECTABILITY: FLAWED!”
Meanwhile, Don’t look, Ethel:
“Was the White House concerned that images of Obama dancing and grooving on that tenuous evening would perhaps send the wrong signal to the nation and the world? Of course not! After all, Obama was honoring Black History Month for a televised show on PBS.”
>>> “After all, Obama was honoring Black History Month for a televised show on PBS.”
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/a-flawed-gop-field-vs-a-flawed-president/
Toadold #1:
I understand that the guy who took the .45 round in the head had just been captured in the act of blowing up a school bus full of children. Aside from the fact they were in the middle of combat, I have thought that the act was merciful. If it had been me I would have shot the guy a lot lower down and let him bleed to death. And by the way, note that the head of the SVN Security Service did it himself rather than telling an underling to do it; that probably was as much out of a sense of duty as it was and act of vengeance.
Wretchard #20:
I think that what the Left most hates about Christianity is not what Christians actually do but that there might be something somewhere that argues for a moral code other than what their collective minds tell them, to do. They simply can’t stand the idea. They embrace Islam to the degree they do because it allows you to do what you want to as long as it is in the name of furthering Islam. They may not embrace the Koran but they understand and agree with the underlying logic of the religion.
Jerusalem –> Athens –> Rome –> NeverNeverLand
Find a way to institutionalize status and coolness for young men so they can lord it over their neighbors and you have a world movement. It worked for Mohammed, and the Bolsheviks, and for the fantasy Che Guevera. It seems to be working for the Democrats as well.
The train wreck that Marx set in motion 150 years ago came completely off the tracks in the ’60s and that engine called Progress is still careening through the landscape knocking down structures that took generations of adults to build.
Obama gave two speeches last week insisting that “governments must live within their means” while creating more debt in two years than the previous two hundred.
I have to believe that Obama is the apogee of the Age of Idiocy because no society that disdainful of truth or reality can survive with only coolness as its highest civic virtue.
Cowboy@26
But it doesn’t matter. They ain’t biting. Rasmussen’s got Fleebags 52%, Walker 43%.
I suspect Walker has been in worse political fixes — polarizing figure that he is.
I’m not sure the Left can take much comfort in those numbers since they’ve pulled out all the stops on this one and are fighting on their home turf (Madison) with a sympathetic media and a sympathetic clientele whose “rights” they are defending (basically, suburban and middle class “public sector worker” friend-neighbor-relatives). In fact I expected it to go further South for Walker than it has. One reason the fleebaggers fled was to give the powerful left “argument” infrastructure in the state and nation time to work its magic. Problem is, that infrastucture cannot focus on one issue forever and when it lets up there can be considerable bounce back the other way.
I looked at that poll and here’s some more.
http://tinyurl.com/4gjk7oq
Now, if people have children in school they have structured their lives around the children being in school. They probably also know and like the teacher. So they would rather force a settlement than risk a walkout. In this instance these folks may support the left — and resent having to do it.
But there is another reason why the Left might regret their “frame-up” of governor Walker. In 2008 I noticed that a lot of ordinary Obama voters were moved off their support by arguments against the concentration of power in Washington. The Republicans were hampered because they had nominated a Washington insider to run for President. The arguments that work best are opposed to nationally controlled syndicates and cartels and returning power to states and localities (they are, in effect, balance of power arguments). But with McCain on the Republican ticket these Obama voters reasoned that if the game is fixed they would rather have a Democrat fixing it.
The attacks on the Republicans paint them as more of an outside force than they in fact are. Of course it will take some skill on the part of Republicans to capitalize on this new found image — and on the part of Conservatives to make that image real. Yes. I know. That’s a big problem.
Still, look at the generic ballot vote for Congress over at RCP: Republicans 50.7 and Democrats 41.3. Ten years ago Democrats needed at least a five point advantage just to break even come election time. That’s the old rule of thumb, perhaps mitigated by money spent on “get out the vote.” But right now they are down over nine percent, and that is going to take a lot of mitigating which, granted, they are capable of doing. After all, the Democratic Party is a powerful alliance of Special interest groups and their dependencies.
23. blert & 24. PA Cat
He waxes…
Let us hope he also wanes.
I pray for him every day:
Psalm 109:8 – “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.”
I pray for him every day:
Psalm 109:8 – “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.”
What was it they said in Fiddler on the Roof?
“God bless and keep the czar … far away from us!“
Michael Moore, who has meade tens of millions of dollars selling propaganda films, lives in a tony Manhattan neighborhood, and chauffers his kids to private school is in Wisconsin calling for a revolution against the rich. And to whom is he delivering this message? To unionized public employees who already make more money and have better benefits than the public they were hired to serve.
This is insanity.
Double insanity – and for which we all now hold some degree of culpability – is letting the Muslim Brotherhood and its front organizations:
Muslim Student Association (MSA)
Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA)
Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)
march through our civic and political institutions the same way that the Left has done for years.
Any time you see one of these orgainzations in the news or sponsoring a local event it is imperative to pay attention to who is running the show and which institutions or organizations are cooperating with them. It is quite likely that otherwise patriotic Americans are being expertly manipulated as useful idiots by these Muslim Brotherhodd front organizations. Let them know they are being used.
We cannot let this stealth destruction of core values succeed a second time.
Leftists in America have successfully plied at least two character traits that are quite characteristic of the inhabitants of this country:
1) Sentimental optimism. IMO the result of our historically unprecedented blessings of liberty and prosperity. Americans do not reflexively expect the worst because, historically, we have so seldom had the worst happen. This extends to how we deal with people as well. We have this unfortunate tendency to not believe the worst about some people, i.e. that they are just downright evil. Call it the middle-class bubble. First-hand acquaintance with blood-curdling savagery is so far outside the experience of so many Americans that the majority of us are completely unable to process evil people with evil intentions when we are confronted with them. “They don’t really mean all that, do they?” Yeah, they do.
Also note that secularism further disarms one’s ability to respond to real evil by substituting totems. Judeo-Christianty has historically been, among other things, the immune system of the West — that which fights off social and spiritual pathogens. So, naturally, Leftism attacks the immune system first, by injecting secularism and materialism into the national discourse. 100+ years and 5-7 generations later, here we are in topsy-turvy land: sodomy and fornication aren’t bad, it’s opposition to them that renders you uncool and socially unacceptable; desiring to keep your own money which you have worked hard for means you’re greedy, but endeavoring to use the hammer of government to confiscate the earnings of others to redistribute to those who haven’t earned it means you’re compassionate. Eat salted or fried food in Nanny Bloomberg’s NYC and, GAD, you might just as well put on an orange jumpsuit and turn yourself in to the cops.
The Left is all about jiggering the compass reading re: what’s right and what’s wrong. Staunch Judeo-Christian beliefs are a formidable obstacle to this project, but Americans’ sentimental optimism and the credulity of the majority re: the implacability of evil has been this country’s soft underbelly.
2) The American penchant to always cheer for the underdog. So long as the Left can cast itself as being on the side of the Little Guy in his battle against Da Man, this framing will work in the Left’s favor. For a long time there was just a naturally cussid anti-authoritarian streak in the American character. Of course the socialist takeover of institutions and government, decades in the doing (what Whittaker Chambers called the “ice cap” moving over this country), has made the Left the de facto Man. The question is whether the middle class, which seems to be beginning to tumble to this, has retained sufficient amounts of anti-authoritarian DNA.
Let’s hope the Left’s days of being able to exploit the underdog meme are ending.
Thanks wretchard for raising a discussion at a depth we usually don’t see. Yes, socialist groups often have little in the way of reason in their policies or position-papers, but what they do have is the support of a large number of Ph.D. wielding professors and leaders of academia. These socialist groups demand that their positions have authority by association with these professional intellectual elites. And often the price of admission to the Ph.D. class involves accepting a vague socialist set of ideas in addition to whatever academic specialization is officially being mastered. And this is even more so in moving from merely attaining a Ph.D. to becoming a member of the professorate at a “accredited” institution of higher ed in the West. The path to attaining such a privileged elite status is fraught with missteps, but one of the most treacherous is to dissent from the vague socialism required by the socially-constructed reality which frames the world-view of the higher-ed elite. This doesn’t mean that it is impossible for a conservative to make it into the elite of academia, but it does make it less likely.
Both conservatives and liberals live under the tutelage of this elite. Most of our science and technology savants are part of it (hence the allegiance to global warming of a sizeable majority of the scientific community). Wretchard’s insight into the heart of the socialist dreamscape and its denial of transcendence (that is, God) in both metaphysical and moral areas, proceeds precisely from the socially constructed reality of the elite of academia. It is not a rigid set of dogmas, since such a set would be easily voided over time, but a vague socialist mindset which has absorbed levels of feminism, post-colonialism, identity-politics, etc. It has claimed heros as diverse as Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Dewey, Lionel Trilling, Albert Einstein, Kinsey, W. E. B. Du Bois, Oppenheimer, Norman O Brown, Paul Tillich, Noam Chomsky, Bishop James Pike, Fr, Robert Drinan S.J., Theodore Roszak, Fr. Daniel Berrigan S.J., Angela Davis and many others. It subsists primarily of a unexplicated social code of beliefs and behaviors which govern the elite of academia. As long as this remains in place, popular political movements such as those of Perot or the Tea Party, will find it difficult to propagate across the generations.
One hope for conservatives is the present crisis in the U.S. system of higher education. As Wretchard has written, changing the socialist dominance of society at the present can only come about by that society undergoing a transformative crisis (much as the Depression accelerated the stranglehold of the present academic elite). I do think such a crisis is coming due to the federal budget deficits and their financial unsustainability.
At least one taxpayer over in the UK is resisting the tide of insanity. See the taxman replies – an actual letter sent by the Inland Revenue
hdgreene, those poll figures are more depressing than I thought. 67% of parents are with the unions? These teachers and parents are teaching their kids all the wrong lessons here. Fraud, conipition fits, the imposed paralysis of civic society, screw yer wards – no! use them as pawns, top dollar for sub-par education, the impossibility of reform or meaningful concessions, and the general lack of governability. All that stuff pays.
This brouhaha makes a mockery of democracy itself. And 67% of parents are for it. They are choosing the lie, choosing the fraud, choosing to kick the can.
I’ve given up hope that western civilization will shake itself out of its leftist-dominated torpor in my lifetime. Thankfully, life is fleeting.
Now that Che is being boiled in pitch, I wonder if he thinks being idolized by naive teenagers was worth it.
I confess – ‘the taxman replies’, wc@50 – must be a hoax, but it made me smile.
The penchant to raise up typological heros, rather than develop a coherent set of principles, lets the socialist mindset of the academic elite stay extraordinarily flexible and more akin to a folk-tradition, rather than a Soviet-style ideology. Che Guevarra or Sayyid Qutb fit into the lesser pantheon of the academic elite since neither were strictly speaking academics. People like Angela Davis or Howard Zinn are higher-up …
One can only hope that when the crisis comes to ahead, that people will see the goodness and reasonableness of true conservative solutions and not fall for easy, but ruthless totalitarian schemes. We shall see.
26. Cowboy: “But it doesn’t matter. They ain’t biting. Rasmussen’s got Fleebags 52%, Walker 43%.”
44. hdgreene: “I suspect Walker has been in worse political fixes — polarizing figure that he is.”
Scott Walker held the top elective office in Milwaukee County from 2002 until being elected governor of Wisc. in 2010. Like most (all?) major metro areas in the U.S., Milwaukee is a Dem stronghold. Walker never hid his political philosophy. In fact, it was his fiscal conservatism that kept getting him re-elected. So there are legitimate grounds to believe that he can come out on top in the current battle.
I believe there are 2 themes – one positive, one negative at center stage right now.
1. first the bad news – Walker is being harmed by the term, “collective bargaining RIGHTS”. (this is the term used in the Rasmussen poll question.) How many people are going to say they are opposed to any kind of “RIGHT”? There is much education being done on this subject, but more needs to be done. In a separate comment I will post a copy of my efforts in this area.
2. now the good news – like turning over a rock, this debate has exposed the nasty crawly things that result from the collusion of public sector unions and Dem politicians. Not only does this help in the public debate (those poll numbers could be much worse, you know), but it gives the “flee-bag” Dem senators an incentive to put this all behind them (fig leaf compromise perhaps?) before they are tainted by these nasty crawly things.
On polling data, how the question is asked or framed oft determines the results.
“Are you for free education?” Why yes Conan I am!
“Do you believe that teachers should be paid twice what they are worth in cash and twice as much in benefits as in an equivalent private sector job with your money?” Why heck no!
I rest my case of BC.
Here are my education efforts on “collective bargaining RIGHTS”.
If there is such a thing as collective bargaining “rights” for government workers, then why did President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR), a staunch supporter of organized labor, say this
“….The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”
And why did George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO 1955-1979, say this
“It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”
There are three primary reasons why even the strongest supporters of the union movement were opposed to collective bargaining in the public sector.
1. Rights are things that are held equally by ALL Americans. You neither relinquish any rights nor gain any rights when you take a government job. The labor movement once understood this concept, as evidenced by a 1959 statement from the AFL-CIO Executive Council:
“In terms of accepted collective bargaining procedures, government workers have no right beyond the authority to petition Congress—a right available to every citizen.”
What the public sector unions and their allies now refer to as “collective bargaining rights” are actually nothing more than government policies (“policies”, not “rights”). If the policies in question are beneficial to the public, then the government should retain them. If the policies are not conducive to the public good, then government should alter them. Government workers are amply protected by civil service laws even in cases where there is very limited collective bargaining. (Wisconsin has especially strong civil service protections for government employees.) There is virtually no collective bargaining for Federal workers, but they are well protected by civil service and no one could seriously claim that Federal workers as a group are poorly treated.
2. Unions, by their very nature, are adversarial to the people they negotiate with. Private sector unions are adversaries of the companies that employ them; essentially bargaining over how much of the revenue will be paid out in wages and how much will be retained by the company. But public sector unions are not employed by “evil corporations” or “greedy capitalists”. They are employed by the public – the citizenry – the taxpayer. Why on earth would “We the People” grant special powers to certain organizations in order that they may more effectively oppose the public interest? And to make matters worse, public sector unions expend vast sums of money and energy to elect the very government officials who will then sit across from them at the bargaining table. In such a “negotiation”, who exactly is representing the taxpayer?
3. Most government services are monopolies or near monopolies. Therefore, a policy of strong collective bargaining in the public sector essentially grants these unions a monopoly power that would never be condoned elsewhere in society. If Ford employees go on strike, the public can still purchase cars from other union shops like GM or non-union shops like Toyota. But if teachers go on strike, the parents and children in most communities are completely at their mercy. Because of government’s near monopoly in K-12 education, there are not enough private schools to handle all the children from the closed schools. This is a monopoly power that we dare not grant to any group within the society.
As to the topic of “framing”, I recently met some folks for lunch and one of them was wearing a Communist “Party” t-shirt that some of you may be familiar with.
(see image here)
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://tshirtgroove.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/communist-party-tees.jpg&imgrefurl=http://tshirtgroove.com/red-flair-tee-mccarthy-rolls/&usg=__X8ALjCqSOVuZm4CyGkN98iDSIIk=&h=428&w=640&sz=52&hl=en&start=0&sig2=rs0r5Pqd7hPk0YXSZvwvyA&zoom=1&tbnid=zlO52smpJeWaxM:&tbnh=124&tbnw=165&ei=a9hzTaO8Boi6twfmnNyFDw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcommunist%2Bparty%2Bt-shirt%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26rlz%3D1G1GGLQ_ENUS343%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D567%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=921&vpy=93&dur=3191&hovh=183&hovw=275&tx=103&ty=87&oei=a9hzTaO8Boi6twfmnNyFDw&page=1&ndsp=22&ved=1t:429,r:5,s:0
I didn’t examine the shirt closely and the talk never turned to politics. But, upon returning home, I was curious enough to check it out on the computer. I suppose nothing from the Left should surprise any of us but, even setting aside Marx, Lenin and Fidel, how can it possibly be acceptable to wear the images of the 2 biggest murderers in history? Oh well.
Radag….
It is entirely false that the unions sit on the opposite side of the bargaining table with the politicians.
Instead they sit on the exact same side and scratch each others backs.
That image is the correct one.
A perfect example being the co-conspiracy of Democrat politicians to sign contracts with the public employee unions even now that blow through local budgets — right under the nose of the media.
So while Walker is left standing — the Democrats advance their economic agenda via the back porch.
As is “Do you want the man to come back?” Put that way- as it always is- no, people don’t want the man to come back.
I DO want the “man” to come back. The American majority is “the man.” He needs to reassert himself. I’m also talking about “man” the gender, which goes beyond race and ethnicity.
One of the distortions of the modern narrative is that the “people” are anybody but the vast and mostly white middle class, and that men and their ways of thinking are part of the “problem.”
The more that members of minorities start “acting white” as the expression goes, and do so without embarassment, the better off America will be. Japan and China made the decision to “act white,” so to speak, and it has done wonders for them.
Incidentally, on Guevara:
I make it a point in any thread anywhere that talks about him to mention that he once ordered a man to strangle a puppy.
I know it sounds ridiculous on one level to harp on that, but in today’s odd moral climate, the love of animals trumps compassion for humans. I want as many people as possible to know that Che Guevara ordered a man named Felix to strangle a puppy with his bootlace. I want that meme and the image of the puppy’s little tail switching from a friendly wag to a convulsive twitching in his death throes (Guevara’s own psychotic, sadistic words in his diary) to be stuck in the feeble minds of would-be Guevara admirers like an earworm. These morons may not care about all the boys and men he executed and/or ordered slughtered, but they will bleed for the puppy.
33. Cowboy
‘Awakenings.’ Wasn’t Robert De Niro one of the patients?
President for life (pro tempore) Obama will forgo the messy details related to moving an amendment to the constitution to legitimize his office (since it was so much work for Hugo) …
Truth is the frame. And as we own more of the media, the repetition, the broken record message of goodness and reality will penetrate. Wretchard does that here every day.
I would love to see a film, staring the Hero Mr. Gross, who bravely tries to bring information to the shuttered while risking jail.
And i think it helps, whenever you’re at dinner with a Canadian say, and they rave about the charm of their Cuban vacation, to give ‘em the what for.
44. hdgreene
Polls depend on how the questions are framed. I’m curious just where in the Constitution the “Right” to strike is? Can anybody point me to it? I’m not interested in the ruling of some black robed tyrant. I want to see it written down. In the Constitution.
They ain’t biting. Rasmussen’s got Fleebags 52%, Walker 43%.
Most Poll reports are – also – part of the Lefts Framing efforts. They want us to think they are stronger than they are and they lie in the media every chance they get.
Uh huh
http://www.google.ca/search?q=americans+vacationing+in+cuba&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a
I know.
There are so many.
Here, let me click one for you.
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/7-12-2006-101992.asp
Who knew?
Lucy. You got some ‘splainin’ to do!
#65. stoicheion
I’m curious just where in the Constitution the “Right” to strike is?
The right to strike exists because there is nothing in the Constitution which forbids it. You’re asking the wrong question. The right question is: What forbids an employer (government or otherwise) from firing employees who go on strike with extreme prejudice? (Hint) Federal law.
If you have a masochistic streak pick up a law school text book on Labor Law. You won’t like what you read but it will explain a lot.
Sure, its not The Mikado but who’s not up for a rousing Broadway show tune.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAYMJnO9LBQ
JEFFREY GOLDBERG bent over for Castro
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/09/castro-no-one-has-been-slandered-more-than-the-jews/62566/
He must have brought his own lubricant
Yes, Robert DeNiro was the lead patient in “Awakenings.” Robin Williams, in a non-comedic role, played the lead doctor.
cowboy@34 — “Makes you wonder if, like in Awakenings, we’re not headed back to Catatonia for now. Before the next big Awakening. If it comes.”
Toynbee, in his book, “A Study of History”, speaks of the ‘interregnum’ (the interstice) that exists between the decline of the existing civilization and the rise of the next. As the acceptance of the reigning philosophical paradigm fades from favor, the world enters into the interregnum where it wanders randomly in search of a basis upon which a new civilization may be built.
Nietzsche’s Mad Man, in “The Gay Science”, also spoke of this in his ‘G-d’ is dead, you’ve killed him, now what are you going to do?” lecture as he searched through the market place with his lantern one bright morning. In “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, Nietzsche went on to examine how mankind might systematically direct the (as opposed to Toynbee’s random) discovery of a new basis for the next civilization.
Where Toynbee saw centuries of interregnum, Nietzsche sought the ‘single step’ (but, Nietzsche said, man would ‘Have to have long legs’) method to traverse the valley dividing the peaks. Nietzsche was unable to complete his examination and his notes were misappropriated by his sister and rendered into the Superman of Nazi fame.
wretchard@20 recognizes the disintegration of civilization in the left’s attempt to “…re-establish religion…” while the conservatives blithely carry on. Wretchard remarks upon the chaos he sees ahead: “But we cannot play their game. We do not know — and perhaps should not learn — how”.
We live in interesting times…
Heyyoukids @ 69
On further reflection, I blame Mark Steyn.
I can sense his insidious influence permeating the windmills of our minds.
There.
It happened again.
truepeers @ 25 – “…argues that the conservative position …emerged as the embrace of a specifically Hebrew theocracy/republic, one that, in the 17thC reading of the Bible, was understood to be the basis not of oppression but rather toleration. To follow God’s law was to empower civil authorities with the duty of upholding the divine law that required only the minimum of interference with religious pluralism, in order to serve God’s plan for civil peace and order.”
What would you ascribe to the position of Elizabeth Tudor, who, realizing that ‘we do not have windows into man’s soul’ asserted the she would not persecute her people for their believes. This viewpoint in her well disguised policies that permitted the Protestant Reformation to flourish in England?
Seems that she may have been the first ruler sponsor freedom of religious belief.
QE certainly had a minimalist executive style. That may be why she was so able.
74 epignosis
-I can’t give you a decent answer to your question as I just don’t know enough of the Elizabethan history. I would just assume that once she decided to be a Protestant monarch and the (civil – non priestly) head of the Church of England, certain things followed logically, such as the intuition that the duty of the leader of this new theocracy was to uphold a theology that promised civil order, not ritual purity (the ability to see the two as not necessarily the same thing is key and pretty much all of Judeo-Christian history raises this possibility), i.e. a certain tolerance of that which did not disturb the peace. Though that toleration was limited in her times and both Catholics and certain Protestant sects were persecuted as a threat to the civil order.
One might try to explain this all in terms of her relative weakness, politically, both domestically and internationally, keeping in mind that strong new ideas are the fruit of the need to come up with new forms of covenant. But weakness in and of itself doesn’t explain the genesis of any new idea – there we have to look back on a history of revelations heard, or not as the case might be.
W: “But making such an observation will not matter in the least to a committed Marxist because come right down to it, nearly everyone, and Communist atheists in particular, needs to believe in something… “revolutionary commitment” is a synonym and is identical in all but spelling to the words “blind faith”.”
First of all Marxist atheists (forgive the redundancy) possess blind faith in an eternal un-created universe – a belief undiscoverable by science – which is to say a belief based on that which cannot be observed or tested. Secondly they possess a blind faith that all men are not created equal in rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness – that the Marxist leadership class is “more equal than others” – because they are Plato’s mystic “Philosopher Kings” – George Orwell’s “Priests of Power.”
In Plato’s “Republic and Laws” one can read the details, which are the first blueprint of the totalitarian ideal… The blueprint includes the view that the state should be ruled by a special elite: the philosophers. Their title to absolute power, Plato explains, is their special wisdom, a wisdom which derives from their insight into true reality… the so-called “Form of the Good”… The Form of the Good cannot be known by the use of reason… It can only be grasped, after years of ascetic preparation, only by an ineffable mystic experience… which is reserved to the philosophical elite… The mass of men, by contrast, are entangled in the personal concerns of this life. They are enslaved to the lower world revealed to them by their senses. They are incapable of achieving mystic contact with a supernatural principle. They are fit only to obey orders.” Leonard Peikoff – The Ominous Parallels
http://www.peikoff.com/lr/chapter1.htm
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others… We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we’re doing… Power is not a means, it is an end… The object of power is power… Always there will be the intoxication of power… We are the Priests of Power.” George Orwell – 1984
More on the religion of Marxist Socialism from Igor Shafarevich;
a Russian dissident who witnessed the faith of the true believers.
“We can see that all elements of the socialist ideal–the abolition of private property, family, hierarchies; the hostility toward religion–could be regarded as a manifestation of one basic principle: the suppression of individuality…Finally, human individuality finds its greatest support and its highest appreciation in religion. Only as a personality can man turn to God and only through this dialogue does he realize himself as a person commensurate with the person of God. It is for this very reason that socialist ideology and religion are mutually exclusive… The religious aspects of socialism may explain the extraordinary attraction of socialist doctrines and their capacity to inflame individuals and to inspire popular movements. It is precisely these aspects of socialism which cannot be explained when socialism is regarded as a political or economic category. Socialism’s pretensions to be a universal world view comprising and explaining everything also make it akin to religion. A characteristic of religion is socialism’s view of history not as a chaotic phenomenon but as an entity that has a goal, a meaning and a justification. In other words, both socialism and religion view history teleologically… Socialism’s hostility toward traditional religion hardly contradicts this judgment–it may simply be a matter of animosity between rival religions… It is certainly true that socialism is hostile to religion. But is it possible to understand it as a consequence of atheism? Hardly, at least if we understand atheism as it is usually defined: as the loss of religious feeling… Furthermore, socialism’s attitude toward religion does not at all resemble the indifferent and skeptical position of someone who has lost interest in religion. The term “atheism” is inappropriate for the description of people in the grip of socialist doctrines. It would be more correct to speak here not of “atheists” but of “God-haters,” not of “atheism” but of “theophobia.” Such, certainly, is the passionately hostile attitude of socialism toward religion. Thus, while socialism is certainly connected with the loss of religious feeling, it can hardly be reduced to it. The place formerly occupied by religion does not remain vacant; a new lodger appeared.” Igor Shafarevich
http://www.robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
Cowboy 14: “You can’t have a level of deception, or of denial, to any kind of degree like this, _unless_ society wants it. Unless the society on the whole simply wants to keep up appearances, i.e., they demand the tatemae [government-controlled mass media lies]… On the Leftist side, they have their utopias, but why the larger society permits the leftists’ lies, I haven’t a clue.”
I believe George Orwell can explain. Orwell understood that, in order to control millions of people, totalitarian government had to somehow make them accept lies. Intelligent people will naturally see the truth and comprehend when government lies to them – and so that’s the rub – how does totalitarian government deal with intelligent people when they must be lied to? Orwell provides the answer – intelligent people must be conditioned to reject the sanity of common sense – reject self-evident truth – accept the lie and the truth in their minds simultaneously – with the lie “always one leap ahead of the truth.” Orwell’s 1984 character, Julia; an enemy of Big Brother’s Totalitarian government, “did not feel the abyss opening beneath her feet at the thought of lies becoming truth;” where “the heresy of heresies was common sense.” How do Dictatorships lie to intelligent people and get away with it? In the early stages of totalitarianism the use of Orwellian Newspeak is preferred to blatant in your face lies because Newspeak is the clever use of words used in such a way as to mean one thing to the speaker and it’s opposite to the listener. Newspeak government lies are cleverly disguised in rhetoric – the lies can received and accepted by otherwise intelligent people via the insanity of Doublethink – simultaneous mental acceptance of both the lie and the truth. Taken together – the Newspeak lies of totalitarian government – and Doublethink insanity within the minds of millions – government renders rejection of truth within human minds on a colossal scale – what Orwell referred to as “Controlled Insanity.” Insanity is the mental state where reality (the truth) cannot be separated from falsehood (the lie). Since totalitarian government lies to their people using Newspeak, and since such government requires their intelligent subjects to accept the lie and the truth simultaneously via Doublethink (with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth); totalitarian government is in the business of “Controlled Insanity.”
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously [the lie and the truth], and accepting both of them [Insanity]… with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth… Those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is; in general the greater the understanding the greater the delusion; the more intelligent the less sane… If human equality is to be forever averted; if the “high,” as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently; then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.” George Orwell – 1984
Andrew_M_ Garland 18: “Guevara wrote “Youth should learn to think and act as a mass. Those who chose their own path” … were denounced as worthless “lumpen” and “delinquents.” In his famous speech he vowed “to make individualism disappear from Cuba! It is criminal to think of individuals!”
The Marxist sin of individuality can be traced back to their first and chief prophet – Plato – the Moses of collectivism – creator of the Collectivist Borg. Marxists themselves are the only ones who will be allowed individuality – because they are made in the image of their materialist god – not the “little people.” Marxists are the true individuals – not the rest of us – Marxists are therefore “more equal than others.”
“Plato’s metaphysics holds that the universe consists of two opposed dimensions: true reality – a perfect, immutable, supernatural realm, nonmaterial… non-perceivable – and the material world in which we live. The material world, Plato holds, is only an imperfect appearance of true reality… Momentous conclusions about man are implicit in this metaphysics: since individual men are merely particular instances of the universal “man,” they are not ultimately real. What is real about men is only the Form which they share in common… all men ultimately comprise one unity, and no earthly man is an autonomous entity… Each man therefore must strive, as far as he can, to wipe out his individuality (his personal desires, ambitions, etc.) and merge himself into the community, becoming one with it and living only to serve its welfare. On this view, the collective is not an aggregate, but an entity. Society (the state) is regarded as a living organism (this the so-called “organic theory of the state”), and the individual becomes merely a cell of this organism’s body… Collectivism is the theory that the group (the collective) has primacy over the individual. Collectivism holds that, in human affairs, the collective – society, the community, the nation, the proletariat, the race, etc. – is the unit of reality and the standard of value. On this view, the individual has reality only as part of the group, and value only insofar as he serves it; on his own he has no political rights; he is to be sacrificed for the group whenever it – or its representative, the State – deems it desirable.” Leonard Peikoff – The Ominous Parallels
http://www.peikoff.com/lr/chapter1.htm
Individuality is a cardinal sin in the Marxist religion, and the penalty for Marxist sin is suffering and death in this world.
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others… We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we’re doing… Power is not a means, it is an end… The object of power is power… Always there will be the intoxication of power… We are the priests of power… Power is power over human beings, over the body; but above all over the mind… The real power; the power we have to fight for night and day is not power over things but over men. How does one man assert his power over another… by making him suffer… Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing… We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back… Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling; everything will be dead inside you… You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves… Do you begin to see then what kind of world we are creating… a world of fear and treachery and torment… ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement; everything else we shall destroy…it will be a world of terror… The more the party is powerful the less it will be tolerant; the weaker the opposition the tighter the despotism… Always we shall have the heretic at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible; and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord… You will be lifted clean out from the stream of history. We shall turn you into gas and pour you into the stratosphere… You will be annihilated in the past as well as in the future. You will never have existed.” George Orwell – 1984
W 20: “Rather it may be better for the Left to simply run their course, during which they will cast themselves into the voracious mouths of their New World. That is the way it has been through history. They destroy themselves. Ultimately. My only regret is that so many have to follow them into maw of their infernal paradise.”
“For he is marking time and giving signs.
Bolder and bolder I play the dance of death.
And they too: Oulanem, Oulanem.
This name sounds like death,
Sounds until won’t stop in miserable shapes.
Halt! Now I have it. It rises from my soul,
Clear as air, hard as my bones.
And still, you personified mankind,
I may take you by the power of my mighty hands and crush with fierce force
In the meantime, as the abyss gapes before me and you in the darkness,
You will fall in it and I’ll follow you,
Laughing and whispering into your ear: ‘Come down with me, friend!’”
Karl Marx
http://www.forerunner.com/predvestnik/X0013_Karl_Marx.html
Take heart, people. This
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U02DM4NM6GM
is a desire they can never kill. Like Sam’s star, it’s out of their reach, forever.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-07/u-s-forms-criminal-task-force-on-deepwater-horizon-disaster.html
b/82; good one –the stage-trained crooners were really good deliverers –wonder what happened to the genre –
–try the link in 83 –volume and phones –it’s the opening to A Serious Man –seriously bad –