Michael Knox Beran, NR
The two philosophies that animated liberalism in its prime were widely different in both origin and aspiration. Classical liberty is founded on the belief that all men are created equal; that they should be treated equally under the law; and that they should be permitted the widest liberty of action consistent with public tranquility and the safety of the state. The classical vision traces its pedigree to Protestant dissenters who in the 17th century struggled to obtain freedom of conscience. Their critique of religious favoritism was later expanded into a critique of state-sponsored privilege in general.
[…]
Unlike classical liberty, social liberty is formed on the conviction that if a truly equitable society is to emerge, the state must treat certain groups of people differently from other groups. Only through a more or less comprehensive adjustment of the interests of various classes will a really democratic polity emerge. The social vision traces its origins to thinkers who in the 19th century argued that the close study of social facts would reveal the laws that govern human behavior, much as physics and biology reveal the laws that govern nature. Auguste Comte, for example, believed it possible to elaborate a “social physics” (physique sociale); Karl Marx purported to discover the dialectical laws of human history.
Rulers skilled in the social sciences would translate the new knowledge into codes of behavior that would organize man’s activities in a more efficient and coordinated way than had hitherto been possible. (The classical liberal believes that however much the lawgiver knows of the innumerable factors that create desirable patterns of social order, he never knows enough to undertake an extensive renovation of society with any hope of success.) The new social technic, it was thought, would produce more equitable forms of social order than those created by the “invisible hand” of voluntary, spontaneous cooperation. A new communal life would overcome what Comte called the “perennial Western malady, the revolt of the individual against the species.” Man would be liberated from the biological or class-inspired rapacity that too often made him an “asocial” being. […]
The American liberals who in the last century embraced the social imagination looked, not to its most extreme forms, but to the more modest permutations associated with the Fabian socialists of England and the adherents of Otto von Bismarck in Germany. Yet mild as the social idealism of the liberal reformers was, it was, like the more rigorous theories of Comte and Marx, premised on the efficacy of discrimination between groups and classes of men, and on the need for extensive codes of commands that would realize the reformers’ vision of fairness — what in Europe is called dirigisme or droit administratif.
Theodore Roosevelt, who in his 1910 “New Nationalism” manifesto lamented the “absence of effective State and, especially, national restraint upon unfair money-getting” in America, called for a paternal form of government that would “control the mighty commercial forces” of the Republic. […]
The privileged class of experts favored by liberals like Kennan was itself grounded in discrimination. It had something of the complexion, Milton and Rose Friedman observed, of an aristocratic caste:
Believers in aristocracy and socialism share a faith in centralized rule, in rule by command rather than by voluntary cooperation. They differ in who should rule: whether an elite determined by birth or experts supposedly chosen on merit. Both proclaim, no doubt sincerely, that they wish to promote the well-being of the “general public,” that they know what is in the “public interest” and how to obtain it better than the ordinary person. Both, therefore, profess a paternalistic philosophy.
If the object of American liberals who embraced the social imagination was to promote the well-being of the commonwealth, they could do this, they believed, only if they first promoted the well-being of particular groups within it. The result was a preference state. Although the reformers justified the new regime with various technical arguments, it was in many ways a rationalization of the informal preference politics and group sensibility of the old Democratic machine.[…]
Social liberals, both Republicans and Democrats, sought to make the machine more accountable by transferring its operations from the party to the government. Favored groups were given special deals fitted to their needs. […]
In establishing new systems of privileges and immunities for particular groups, the social reformers believed that they were mitigating the unjust privileges and immunities of market capitalism. […]
Others in the social-preference school went farther and asserted that the free market was itself an unfair bulwark of class privilege and corruption. […]
Whatever one thinks of these arguments, they were a departure from the classical theory of liberty. Andrew Jackson condemned the second Bank of the United States not because he believed that private property or money made in the market was objectionable, but because he believed that money made with special help from the government was objectionable. He portrayed his attack on the bank (a private corporation with proprietary access to public funds) not as an attempt to regulate a corrupt private sector but as an attempt to abolish the “exclusive privileges” the bank had been granted by the state. […]
In spite of the challenge posed by the social imagination, the classical element survived in mid-20th-century American liberalism. A political movement, unlike a political theory, does not necessarily suffer from its internal contradictions; the lack of doctrinal purity that degrades a paper philosophy often strengthens a program that aims at practical results. Even as liberals in the last century promoted social policies, the classical countercurrent within liberalism mitigated the hubris that the new social ideal might otherwise have bred in its disciples.[…]
[my emphases] A quick interjection: the idea that a “political movement does not necessarily suffer from its internal contradictions” strikes me as a curious way to phrase what is essentially a vote of confidence for political pragmatism. Because the truth is, though a political movement may not an any given moment appear to be suffering from its internal contradictions, that doesn’t mean that the strain of those contradictions within the movement isn’t guiding it toward an inevitable collapse under the burden of its adopted ideologies — depending upon which strain gets foregrounded: social liberalism becomes progressivism, because the idea that government knows best is ascendant; compassionate conservatism becomes Democrat-lite, because conservatives believe to compete with progressives, they, too, must play nanny (though to a lesser degree); and so on. Which is why I have called for a “pragmatism” in which the ideals of classical liberalism are foregrounded — precisely because this is the strain within the “conservative” movement that most closely tracks with the founding principles of this country, and so is the strain that best serves liberty. Such a formulation doesn’t demand “purity,” as some have sniffed. Instead, it calls for the foregrounding of ideological principles that set conservatism / classical liberalism apart from those of the social democrat, rather than appealing to commonalities between the movements, and foregrounding those.
Knox Beren:
[…]
If the social element in liberalism spoke to the electorate’s hopes and its generous idealism, the classical-liberal element spoke to its desire for continuity and its attachment to America’s founding inspirations. Maintaining a balance between the two contending philosophies required considerable statesmanship on the part of liberal leaders. The social doctrines held the promise of a brave new world, yet the classical-liberal element, though it had less intrinsic appeal for visionaries, survived the New Deal and contributed to liberalism’s post–World War II appeal. The old antipathy to state-sanctioned privilege led Harry Truman to desegregate the military and Lyndon Johnson to sponsor civil-rights legislation. […]
John F. Kennedy not only filled a number of posts in his administration with Republicans — among them C. Douglas Dillon, Robert McNamara, and McGeorge Bundy — he was willing to be guided by the advice of classical liberals. In 1962 he overruled economist Paul Samuelson and proposed tax cuts. Rejecting Keynesian spending models that are closely tied to the preference regime and enable politicians to distribute money to favored groups, Kennedy resolved instead to promote growth through private investment in the marketplace. He brushed aside those in his administration, such as Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who wanted to enlarge the preference architecture of the social state. […]
Kennedy was the last liberal president to make classical liberalism an important part of both his policy and his rhetoric. In the half-century since he entered the White House, the social imagination has become, if not the sole element in liberalism, certainly the dominant one. Lincoln argued that the state should eschew the group politics of “classification” and “caste,” yet liberalism’s signature initiatives over the last 40 years require us constantly to classify people according to the particular social and even racial and sexual groups to which they belong: Both affirmative action and hate-crime legislation grow out of a faith in the discriminating power of classification.
“Today it is the Right that speaks a language of commonalities,” the sociologist Todd Gitlin has written. “To be on the Left, meanwhile, is to doubt that one can speak of humanity at all.” […]
The liberal who is committed to social classification counters that his preference criteria are a reaction against an unofficial culture of preference, the bigotry that has led to discrimination against blacks and gays and women. Yet if this really were the crux of the matter, surely the solution would be to insist even more passionately on the principle that all people are created equal and that the laws of the state ought to apply equally to all. Instead the liberal’s vivisectionist politics exalt, not the common humanity of the species, but the various social and genetic barriers that separate its specimens.
It is true that some of the groups the modern liberal seeks to protect constitute fluid classes rather than fixed ones, and therefore do not in a strict sense violate the equal-protection principles of classical liberalism. The 20th-century welfare state, for example, was designed to help the poor, and any citizen might fall into poverty. But even here the liberal’s social policy tends to exacerbate divisions within the body politic, or so the classical liberal argues. By subsidizing poverty, welfare-state policies perpetuated it. The public-assistance measures of the Social Security Act made barriers that are permeable in a healthy society harder to penetrate for those bred up in the culture of the dole. The policies widened the chasms they were intended to bridge and checked the upward mobility that Lincoln thought characteristic of a free society.
The classical liberal argues, too, that social-welfare codes — which give current beliefs about social problems the force of law — tend to forestall innovation. The pressing problems of earlier generations have often been simply outgrown, and the obstacles they confronted have been surmounted (with little or no government intervention), through the spontaneous progress of society, and through the emergence of new and unanticipated ways of doing things. The social reformer, far from embracing this voluntary, unplanned species of social regeneration, too often compels people to stand still: He institutionalizes problems that might otherwise be transcended. This is seen most clearly in societies where the social imagination has been carried the farthest. There one finds, not growth and change, but morbidity and stasis, the petrification of the social organism.
Again, a quick observation: what Knox Beren here describes as “the petrification of the social organism,” Nishi and the progressives call “cultural evolution” — the idea being that the inexorable state of mankind is to be enslaved by the powerful who presume to rule over them, be they “benevolent” or entirely self-interested. Her latest argument ties cultural evolution to demographic trends — and she seems to relish in what she hopes to be the final tally: a kind of tyranny of the majority, with that majority no longer fettered by the Constitution (which she casts as a moribund document that institutionalizes white protestant patriarchal values), and so “free” to take from others, and to do so “legally.”
This is the essence of progressivism, and it is diametrically opposed to the classical liberal ideals so ostentatiously adopted, in many cases, by Democrats like JFK.
[…] the preference politics of social liberalism transforms what ought to be a matter of embarrassment into an instance of virtue; there is no longer even an aspiration to purity. The damage has by no means been limited to Democrats; Republicans, too, trade in the pander-politics of group favoritism. The tax code is swollen with giveaways to favored groups. One instinctively applauds when a group that one happens to like, or to which one happens to belong, obtains grace and favor. But each extension of privilege erodes a little more the idea that all men are created equal and should be treated equally under the law.
The preference state is now so closely associated with the politics of group favoritism that the classical ideal of equal treatment has become untenable for liberals. […] The classical motifs have ceased to form even a merely verbal element in liberal discourse; the note of freedom that President Kennedy sounded so often in his oratory is scarcely heard at all in President Obama’s.
Americans are alive to the change; their suspicion of state-sponsored privilege and their apprehension of the corruption it fosters have led to the revival of the “tea party” language of the Revolutionary patriots. A CNN poll conducted in February found that 56 percent of those questioned think the federal government has “become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.” The social reformer inspires in many Americans today the same dread he once inspired in John Stuart Mill, who in 1855 wrote that almost “all the projects of the social reformers in these days are really liberticide — Comte particularly so.” Such projects, Mill predicted, would lead to “a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers,” and stood “as a monumental warning to thinkers on society and politics, of what happens when once men lose sight in their speculations, of the value of Liberty and Individuality.”
Liberals dismiss such fears as mere right-wing hysteria. They have left the work of maintaining the integrity of the “Lockian” safeguards of freedom in America to Republicans and conservatives; it is no longer their responsibility or their shtick. Rather than try to revive the classical-liberal strain in their politics, they have devised new justifications of the managerial authority of the social expert, the master planner of public privilege. […]
[…] The average salary of federal workers rose in 2009 to $71,206, a figure that does not include bonuses, overtime, fringe benefits, pension accruals, and the priceless gift of all-but-absolute job security. Some 19 percent of the civil service received salaries of more than $100,000. (The average private-sector wage in the same year was $40,331.) The federal government, Cato Institute scholar Chris Edwards observes, has become an “elite island of highly paid workers.” Liberalism is being devoured by the monster it created.
There is something else to be feared now that the dreams of the social imagination alone seem to inspire enthusiasm in those who identify themselves as liberals. The social philosophy that has become the essence of one of the great political movements of our age is, even in its mildest forms, tainted by a subtle tincture of compulsion, one that mocks the idea of freedom. The deepest thinkers in the social line suppose that man’s actions are determined by matter, or nature, or history; they claim that their own proposed commands are merely expressions of an overpowering necessity. The social realm is preeminently the realm of physis, of nature: it has no place for meta-physis, or that which is beyond nature. “Necessity is the kingdom of nature,” Schopenhauer says, “freedom is the kingdom of grace.” By “grace” he means the state of having got over nature. In The Human Condition (1958) Hannah Arendt contended that the idolatry of nature and necessity that is characteristic of the social dispensation might yet, if unchecked, “reduce man as a whole, in all his activities, to the level of a conditioned and behaving animal.” In sacrificing the classical imagination of liberty on the altar of social necessity, liberals have brought us a little closer to the realization of that dark prophecy.
I hope that you’ll recognize in this piece the echoes of a number of conversations protein wisdom has sponsored over the years.
A visiting “liberal” commenter the other day pretended he couldn’t understand what was meant by “illiberal.” Too, he designated “classical liberal” as an appellation that was too cryptic and anachronistic to hold any kind of public value. Like most contemporary self-styled “liberals,” he was content to dismiss the term, and privilege his own progressivism as “liberalism,” the tacit justification being that progressives had proven successful in coopting the term, and so it now belonged (like much else) to them, and so was under their control.
Nishi will tell you, day in and day out, if you let her, that we can’t “take back” culture — that we can’t, for instance, “take back” the term “liberal” now that it has been culturally appropriated.
Fine. Then let’s not think of it that way. Instead, the idea going forward is to culturally appropriate the term so that it once again tracks with its (still extant) denotative meanings. There is nothing “liberal” to progressivism; and the conflation of classical liberalism with conservatism has tethered classical liberals to “the far right” in such a way that their message is often ignored by those who’ve been conditioned to view the “far right” as racists, xenophobes, homophobes, nativists, misogynists, and anti-semites.
This corruption of language has helped demonize our founding principles by turning those left who espouse them into a priori haters.
It’s time for the haters to fight back — not on the terms progressives prefer, but by refusing to accept their premises. There is nothing unpragmatic about recognizing that the climate is right to speak plainly and forcefully about classical liberal ideals — even at the risk of being branded (yet again) as racists, etc. Trying to blend has proven disastrous, post-Bush. And it is my belief that the best way forward is to speak to the voters as adults — with the promise that they’ll be treated that way moving forward.
Discuss.
This is for feets:
I only came in during the middle of it, but Glenn Beck was interviewing Paul Ryan just now, asking him WTF with that speech that was featured in the Green Room, which Stu showed to Glenn and Glenn just about swallowed his teeth because Ryan had looked so promising and what if he was secretly progressive?
So he interviewed Ryan and Glenn is in love. CK MacLeod got Ryan wrong (no surprise there), and Glenn says that Ryan is so good at articulating both the problem and the solution that Glenn gets to go home now.
I’ll read Jeff’s essay later; gotta work now. Looks interesting though…
Oh bullshytt.
My argument is that the Constitution is WAI (Working As Intended).
When women and blacks became full citizens they became entitled to full citizen rights UNDER THE CONSTITUTION.
And there is the dichotomy.
All men are created equal UNDER THE LAW……no men are created equal under the genes.
Civil rights legislation and woman’s rights legislation are attempts to level the law.
No one but the Real Most High can level the genes…….yet. :)
Jefferson understood this.
How come you don’t?
Ryan and the Indianapolis dude who I can never remember his name are the cats I am watching closely now. I like what Ryan says and how he says it, but Indianapolis dude has actually done it.
Mitch Daniels?
Agreed, he has a great track record, B Moe.
“All men are created equal…”
In being equally capable of killing one another. Even the weak can murder the sleeping. Fear of abrupt death, people. Focus.
Or Mike Pence?
Btw, Jeff, I can’t get http://www.countingcats.com/?p=6469 (the last link in the post) to load. Don’t know if anyone else is having that problem though.
The Constitution is intended specifically to prevent a tyranny of the majority. Which is what you favor. Meaning you don’t understand either the Constitution or the meaning of the word “intend.” You also don’t seem to understand the trajectory of your own arguments.
Who said they were? The desire to have them treated as if they were — that is, the desire to engineer social outcomes based around “fairness” that is demonstrably opposed to any kind of merit (insofar as it constantly thwarts real competition) — is the purview of the progressives.
You, Nishi.
WHY DO YOU HATE EVOLUTION?
Mike Pence gave a great speech the other day.
The server may be overloaded. It’s Levin going off on Coburn and the, well, let’s just say a certain kind of “good man”-type “conservative”.
It seems pretty simple to me: we can either keep going in the direction we have taken since Reagan in which a very few individuals have become incredibly wealthy and thus have an incredibly disporportionate amount of power in our society, or we can return to a more equitable distribution of income. Just why this seems to drive middle class conservatives crazy is beyond me. We have already been to the place conservatives seem to want to take us and we didn’t like it much. This was a society with few government regulations and no income taxes. I don’t understand what “freedoms” you think we will relinquish if we return to higher taxes for the richest citizens. Someone has to control a society. It can either be the government (democratically elected in our case) or we can cede all power to corporations. Good luck trying to get that power back once we have handed it over to corporations.
You often use the social democracies of Europe as some sort of cautionary tale of the horrors of liberalism. I don’t get it. I have traveled and lived in a few of these countries. I found them to be no less free than the US. Granted, some of these countries aren’t as receptive to small businesses as they should be but that isn’t true everywhere. We should be examining them to see what works and what doesn’t instead of rejecting everything about them. We can’t afford this narrow-minded view of politics.
(please take note of my civil tongue and either respect another opinion or just say that you don’t welcome them and I won’t be back.)
“…we can return to a more equitable distribution of income.”
Wha? Who decides? Who owns?
Mitch Daniels, that’s the dude. Pretty impressive record as Governor, and right now that is what we need more than talk.
I am tired of hearing all the fucking talk.
“I am tired of hearing all the fucking talk.”
This wouldn’t be a theoretical post on pragmatics then, eh B Moe?
“Equitable” as decided by whom and based on what? Serious question, Kyle.
But hey, I call dibs on some of Pelosi’s shit, so long as we’re in a redistributin’ mood…
“Which is what you favor.”
lies.
We live in a Republic, not a democracy.
membah? …there are three forms….of government and their perversions…..and the perversion of a Republic is a democracy.
The Constitution prevents a tyranny of the majority.
My irony meter just went up in a mushroom cloud.
I lived in Bologna. Everything but the discos and restaurants closed by 7 o’clock.
I didn’t feel very free much of the time, to be honest.
We just suffered an assault of a tyranny of a minority, something Madison doesn’t address in Federalist 51, oddly enough.
I do, yes. Remember your demographics argument, and the way you luxuriate over the idea that one day a new majority will exist to beat back all the bad old stuff that you don’t like?
Daniels and Pence are good folks from my state. We have produced plenty of crackpots though ;-(
Kyle wants to debate in good faith after doing so in bad faith every other time he/she/it has commented here? It is to laugh. Who gets to decide what is equitable, Kyle, and why is anyone else entitled to my success?
Kyle,
The problem is that what you promise and what you can deliver are nowhere near congruent. In every iteration of statism, the wealthy continue to hold the reins of power. You cannot set up a system with the sort of centralized control that you envision, without setting up a system rife for abuse by those with the means to influence policy makers.
Further, the path you advocate lies in diametric opposition to the machinery of government envisioned by the Founders. They understood the weaknesses of human nature, and they feared a repeat of the abuse they’d suffered through, and so they set limits on the power of the federal government.
If you and your social justice advocates were content to limit your experiments to the state and local level, you’d encounter much less resistance from me. Largely, this is because it’s easier for me to cross a state border to live with people who share political preferences closer to my own. Why, then, do you insist on taking your political machinations to the federal level, where they were never intended to be allowed in the first place, and where their effects will be inescapable to anyone without the means to make a home in another country?
Just why this seems to drive middle class conservatives crazy is beyond me.
The fact that you cannot discern the arguments of tens of millions of your fellow countrymen leads me to doubt your judgment on matters of how they are to be governed. No one should be ruled by those who disrespect and misunderstand them at so fundamental a level.
Well, not based on the number of elected representatives. A majority voted for them.
It’s just that the elected officials didn’t take the second thoughts of the voters seriously. Which, I’m gobsmacked!
Someone has to control a society.
And there it is. The essential problem. And it’s followed by a false dichotomy: power to the government (democratically elected, which is odd, as our Constitution describes a republic), or power to corporations.
BTW, there’s a bunch of people looking for you over on verydemotivational.com, Kyle.
Nishit never stops to examine her own positions, and will simply just move on to the next meme. This has been empirically proven. It is science.
“It’s just that the elected officials didn’t take the second thoughts of the voters seriously. Which, I’m gobsmacked!”
Those dynamic systems sure are a mystery!
Mitch is very America
That would be refreshing.
Two tools of description from F. A. Hayek, “cosmoi” and “taxoi“: the first a name for spontaneous systems uncreated by any individual as an organized whole, but emerging naturally from a myriad of independent interactions (examples: evolutionary speciation, free economies pricing goods) and the latter, unspontaneous systems created by someone as an organization made (examples: totalitarian government, complex assemblages like space shuttles).
I don’t understand what “freedoms” you think we will relinquish if we return to higher taxes for the richest citizens.
Well, you’re missing a few things. First, what are those taxes for? Social programs, right? Transferring wealth from the “richest citizens” to the “needy”, which a hefty chunk of it sticking to the high-paid, under-worked, unaccountable government bureaucrats in the middle, right?
There’s the problem. Those “rich citizens” are, well, citizens. People. They have rights. The right to be secure in their persons and effects is one of them. The right to chose what ends they labor for. You’re saying, well, we’ll just compromise on those rights a little, right?
So where does that compromise end?
When taxes are taken for reasons that do not benefit all citizens, those taxes are unjust. Tak
I have traveled and lived in a few of these countries. I found them to be no less free than the US.
Apart from right to protect yourself. The right to free speech. The right to property. Those kinds of "free".
The social vision traces its origins to thinkers who in the 19th century argued that the close study of social facts would reveal the laws that govern human behavior, much as physics and biology reveal the laws that govern nature. Auguste Comte, for example, believed it possible to elaborate a “social physics” (physique sociale); Karl Marx purported to discover the dialectical laws of human history.
And where’s the math underlying this “social physics” stuff, anyway? How is it working as a predictive model? Remember, kids: it took fifteen hundred years to kill the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, and it happened only because we finally found irrefutable evidence that the system was broken.
Defeating statism may be even harder to do. They don’t have any theorems we can disprove mathematically. Nor do they accept our empirical (hey, there’s that word again!) observations of the effects of their models. No, these assholes will just keep adding epicycles and equants, insisting that this time, everything will work perfectly. We’re not trying to disprove a bad theorem; we’re trying to convert true believers away from their secular cult.
But hey, I call dibs on some of Pelosi’s shit, so long as we’re in a redistributin’ mood…
I’d be satisfied if Pelosi stopped using my taxes to pay for her travel.
I fear a powerful government, with the exclusive franchise on force, far more than I fear the influence or control of corporations, which I can control or limit by simply not purchasing their products.
Apart from right to protect yourself. The right to free speech. The right to property. Those kinds of “free”.
Right. Those are not the sorts of freedom you are likely to miss when traveling as a tourist in the EU. But I’ll wager you might find yourself a bit out of sorts, were you the type of American that values those rights, were you to live there for a substantial period of time, as an ex-pat.
Apart from right to protect yourself. The right to free speech. The right to property. Those kinds of “free”.
Yeah, but those are the archaic rights. Some might call them the Rights of the Copybook Headings.
wow, that is one pointy headed article at NR talking about the pointy heads on the liberal side … at times it does seem like the social engineers on the right “think” they can control people just as well as the social engineers on the left … more data points = better understanding = more effective politics … when all you have ever done is study theories and write for a living then the chaotic rough and tumble of the real world obviously must be able to be quantified and modeled, it just must be …
To paraphrase a quote from the Dirty Dozen, “Nice theories you got there, but can they fight ?”
I fear a powerful government, with the exclusive franchise on force, far more than I fear the influence or control of corporations, which I can control or limit by simply not purchasing their products.
I’ve yet to find a corporation with the legal authority to execute people or confiscate their property to distribute it to others.
(Well, excepting the units of government which still include “corporation” in their names.)
Wait, did Kyle just show concern over corporate interests? Under an ultra-progressive president who has acclerated corporatism in this country like few before him? Sorry, Kyle. I just can’t take you seriously when you leave that little nugget in there for inspection.
at times it does seem like the social engineers on the right “think” they can control people just as well as the social engineers on the left
Where did you get that from the cited article? I got no sense of an impulse to control from it.
Sarah Palin says part of the answer is six more years of Meghan’s daddy.
This.
“All men are created equal UNDER THE LAW……no men are created equal under the genes.
Civil rights legislation and woman’s rights legislation are attempts to level the law.
No one but the Real Most High can level the genes…….yet. :)”
Actually, all men are created equal period. The Law ain’t got nothing to do with it. Any minority and any woman is exactly equal to me, in everything except ability. The LAW is there to ensure that I don’t use my abilities, should they be greater than the aforementioned minority or woman, to enslave, molest, steal from, harm, etc… those with lesser abilities. It should not prevent me from making a better living, owning a nicer house, driving a nicer car, and leaving my children a better inheritance because someone lacks abilities that I don’t.
OMG! Conferadate Histry Month!!11!!!
But I’ll wager you might find yourself a bit out of sorts, were you the type of American that values those rights, were you to live there for a substantial period of time, as an ex-pat.
Fred, can we have you for our next prime minister?
Confederate History Month is gay.
Because, I’m not envious or lecherous? Just saying.
This corruption of language has helped demonize our founding principles by turning those left who espouse them into a priori haters.
You could as easily (or impossibly) reclaim ‘conservatism’ as ‘liberalism’. It does not mean what it classically meant either, and was expropriated by, near as I can tell, Goldwater and Reagan to mean what liberal use to mean before it was twisted by Roosevelt. Few people who call themselves ‘conservative’ are classically conservative.
To get them to call themselves liberal however seems an uphill battle.
For that matter, what is ‘right wing’ about conservatism, and what is ‘racist’ about ‘right wing’? Nothing. Being tied to racism has less to do with being tied to the ‘right wing’ then just simply being tied to racism.
That’s half the problem. It’s not just liberal. None of the words actually mean anything anymore (except maybe what they mean right now today, mostly on account of the popular (mis)understanding as such).
FWIW, Kyle, that was a nice pre-emptive be nice to me because I am not a douchenozzle request.
It’s pointless to worry about defining classical liberalism if there are no political parties that embrace it.
I don’t understand what “freedoms” you think we will relinquish if we return to higher taxes for the richest citizens.
That’s not where the money is, sillyhead. It’s just a rhetorical ploy to hit earners in the $200K and up range. Entrepreneurs. Successful professionals. Generally productive members of society, aside from the alarming number of government employees who pull this kind of scratch when one accounts for benefits. Spare us the trite emotionalism.
Not poinless, snooki, but frustrating.
I will just stick it in a little bit. I promise.
Does that sum it up correctly, Kyle?
Ain’t nothing worth nothing unless you can cement an R or a D to it, amirite?
we can either keep going in the direction we have taken
this benighted little country needs a lot less we and a shitload more I
The “we” ones need to leave the “I” ones the fuck alone is the long and short of it.
Why yes, yes ObarkyCratism is indeed statist behavioralism. Because smart as humanity has been, there’s nothing that can’t be Carefully Managed™.
Close? Because if that’s close, can you first unpack managed system’s proud history a little before resorting to constructing your shared collective on the most failed ideology in human history, especially since all you can do is verbally assure your fellow victims that it’ll finally work?
Kindly talk points and principles. Then accord your fellows their prior, fundamental, constitutional rights while you compose your collectivist power base – those rights elevate social civility, no, and aren’t you on about civility? Next, compare your plans to the cause American originalism was based upon, which is to say liberty and the personal sovereignty granted by private ownership. Lastly, having completed those steps, only with their consent may you so much as propose to divide and redistribute said property.
Narrow minded? By and rational, civil, and honest path you have your work cut out for you on the way to progressive redistribution. You’ll have a few steps to take before you’d deem to divide my stuff. Or are the notion of respect, accord, tolerance, and ownership unknown to you? Conversely, why exactly would you propose theft as the central plank of any enlightened political platform?
We really can’t afford that narrow-minded view of politics.
That’s not where the money is, sillyhead. It’s just a rhetorical ploy to hit earners in the $200K and up range. Entrepreneurs. Successful professionals.
Oh, they definitely have everyone not on the government dime in their sites.
Look up “pension reform” or “pension centralization” for a real blood-boiler.
^ and = any
Rob C – Good to see you! And, are you referring to the conversion of 401K’s to annuities in 58?
But going back to a time when rule of law under the Constitution is reversion to the White Patriarchy. Or so you said.
I think you’d do well to review what rhetorical ground you’ve covered, here, over the last couple of days. It’s the trajectory of someone who’s been doing jello shooters for a solid week of Spring Break.
Rob C – Good to see you! And, are you referring to the conversion of 401K’s to annuities in 58?
Thanks! And, yes, that’s what I’m referring to. Although my impression was the “plan” extends to all designated retirement accounts.
“under the Constitution holds sway“
Ain’t nothing worth nothing unless you can cement an R or a D to it, amirite?
More: How much can you dilute something before it ceases to be what it was?
More: How much can you dilute something before it ceases to be what it was?
So, since an insufficient number of people publicly espouse it, we should abandon it as a lost cause?
Rob C – Your description of that proposal just changes the degree to which said proposal is noxious.
When women and blacks became full citizens they became entitled to full citizen rights UNDER THE CONSTITUTION.
Which now means, they have whatever rights the Supreme Court decides they have, or the legislature can’t convince them to do without.
How’re those 4th Amendment rights in the inner city?
Rob C – Your description of that proposal just changes the degree to which said proposal is noxious.
Certainly. In either case, it’s just the continued assertion that the Masses have first claim on the wealth of the Individual. Just another phase in the reductio ad pecudem of free people.
This is ahistorical.
It was the social conservatives what wanted a culture war.
They got it.
They got their ass handed to them.
Team R needs to repudiate their foolishness and make clear that it has no interest in spreading a shmear of Jesus on the American bagel.
Team R doesn’t just get to walk away from all the gay-assed defense of marriage shit and the fetus worship and the Confederate History Month follies and the gratuitous nativisms and the immigrant bashings and et cetera.
More and more I think our little country was doomed doomed doomed when the Soviet Union falled down.
Soviet communism had a way focusing the American mind.
Our little country doesn’t know who she is anymore.
I would be content for be anti-dirty little socialisms right now.
for should have been to …
Okay then, I retract. Change that to, “It’s time for the haters to surrender.”
Glad to see your private correspondences with Nishi have paid off so well for you, happy. Not that I didn’t see it coming.
But you might benefit from a bit of a “what’s the difference between ‘Team R’ and the people on Jeff’s website” dialogue.
We’ll be here when you figure it out.
Ahem.
Reminds me of them lethal pro-lifers.
bosh
I am the staunchest one.
And collectivist homeschoolers.
This is ahistorical.
It was the social conservatives what wanted a culture war.
Pull your head out of Nishi’s ass already. I’m the furthest thing from a culture warrior, but I cannot abide stupid, least of all from a gimp who doesn’t even have the balls to cop to his politics in real life because he’s afraid of how people will treat him. What have you learned from that? Obviously nothing.
homeschoolers are America I think, Pablo
I went to public schools so I know.
Sorry Mr. Froman but your Team R is embarrassing with its Palin deifications.
You think you can just hold that trollop up as worthy of emulation and expect America to respect you in the morning?
It is to laugh.
I bet you six powdered donuts that trollop speaks at the Team R convention in 2012.
#67: About the same as they are anywhere. When you can’t live a normal life without committing three felonies a day (whether you are aware of it or not), then the government has all the probable cause it needs. The only reason anyone hasn’t been arrested is that some civil servant can’t be bothered to try.
No. Actually, what you are is condescending, having several times in the past few days intentionally misrepresented the views of the people on this site. Coming out against illegal immigration as a function of fiscal responsibility has nothing to do with “whitey fearing they’ll take our jobs.” That’s classic leftist boilerplate meant to keep people from even broaching the subject — something you characterize as “not keeping our eye on the ball.”
And now, this ridiculous suggestion that I am calling for another “culture war.” What I am calling for is the ability to speak like adults. I’m calling for a return to intellectualism — something that the kinds of attacks progressives (and hey, YOU!) level at people like me when I try to have these discussions about ideology demonstrably intends to forestall.
When I say “It’s time for the haters to fight back — not on the terms progressives prefer, but by refusing to accept their premises,” I am calling for open dialogue and a rejection of the rhetorical ploys meant to shame us into silence: discussing illegal immigration is racist; discussing abortion is Jesushumping or Biblethumping. And etc.
And the whole culture war meme could be solved by not having the government taking money from my pocket to fund unnecessary (and not in the Constitution) things like Robert Mapplethorpe art. If he can’t find a private patron like Michaelangelo, then he can find out why “starving” and “artist” tend to be used in the same sentence.
After all, I don’t have an unlimited amount of money; the fact that this site gets a certain quantity of it each month reflects that I find it to provide me with value at least equal to the effort I expend making that money. Jeff’s in a fairly select group there.
I’d think you of all people would find Palin’s inarticulateness endearing, hf.
happyfeet, can you be more condescending?
I never said you were calling for another culture war.
I’m saying that the Team R brand is indelibly stained with culture war.
I can appreciate that you want to think out of the Team R box but when Dr. Palin writes America a prescription for six more year’s of Meghan’s daddy style establishmentarianism… you can’t just disassociate yourself from the box and make like it’s not even there. You can’t make like honing an anti-dirty socialist opposition doesn’t have to contend with social conservative yahoos and McCainly cowards what are profoundly illiberal.
You have to get a bazooka and blow up the box I think.
You think you can just hold that trollop up as worthy of emulation and expect America to respect you in the morning?
Happyfeet, WTF? You just called Sarah Palin a whore.
What is your damn deal with her?
*years* I mean
I told you guys way this morning that this was a good article. But did anyone listen to me? no.
Sarah Palin does it for the money, Entropy.
Do you have a more better word for that?
I’m saying that the Team R brand is indelibly stained with culture war.
Why? Because Nishi and the MSM say it is?
Happyfeet:
http://tinyurl.com/ya5d3ey
This is not about Palin, or culture wars, or McCain, happyfeet.
No it is stained with culture war because it is stained with culture war.
Team R is become the gay marriage, tigers and bears oh my! party.
Team R wanted the bone the little doggie in the water had.
And now it has nothing.
No convictions.
This is not about Palin, or culture wars, or McCain, happyfeet.
It is if’n the MSM says it is! Eleventy!1!!1!
JD in 2012 we will see what it is about I guess. I suspect it will be in no small part about Palin and culture wars and McCain. And probably Bush somehow.
But a Team R what can’t denounce illiberalisms in its own ranks has precious little hope of taking the battle to a cunning dirty socialist enemy.
Does what?
Say, aren’t you supposed to be at work?
You know what this article made me think of? That really stupid movie about a future of the the US where we all become stupid and gluttonous. The left imagines this to be the future if middle America takes over.
I imagine this is our future under a paternalistic government.
And, to bring in another tangent – an article in WSJ last week about alcohol abuse (I’m not judging) in England. They’re all about the social engineering to get people to stop drinking themselves silly over there.
I wonder what the affect of the loss of freedom and liberty do to an individual. May as well simply abdicate all responsibility. Every night’s a party, and if I pass out on the street someone will take care of me.
Oh, is that what I do?
Patrick Frey could not be reached for comment.
1. I have difficulty taking Nishi seriously until such time as he/she attempts to communicate like a grownup. Nonetheless, Nishi seems to be advocating some seriously scary stuff about gene leveling.
2. I believe it to be a mistake to view so much in terms of income inequality. Has not the quality of life improved dramatically for almost everyone in the last thirty years, even while the income inequalities have grown? Still having trouble seeing as great a lifting of all boats from those “more equitable” societies.
3. Every attempt to madate equality of outcome always results in a farce where some are more equal than others.
4. Seems like I’ve heard, “… to each according to his need,” somewhere before.
5. “Someone has to control a society.” Hobbes says, “Hi.”
Patrick Frey is busy fashioning speech codes for diseased homos I believe.
— says the guy who finds talking about how best to negotiate contentious issues “taking your eye of the ball.”
hmm
pretend like that sounded more tongue in cheek
Yeah, Carin, I suspect that the Brits are just proving what the Russians did before them, that the only thing left to do under socialism is to get and stay intoxicated.
In some ways European countries enjoy more freedoms than we do in America. Try walking drinking a beer anywhere but in a bar in the US and you are likely to be fined or arrested. As far as businesses closing early, I guess you haven’t been to Madrid where people don’t leave the house until 23:00 and football games start at 22:00 on week nights.
You haven’t addressed the issue of the hyper-rich in America. Don’t you feel that this is regressing back to the days of monarchies? I grew up in an America that was relatively free of stratified economic classes and I have also live in Latin America which is completely stratified. I see America moving in that direction. I would rather be like Holland and Denmark than Brazil or Mexico any day.
If angryfeet was smart he’d look at that sea of trailer parks which embarrasses him so and be rather thankful that a natural constituency for dirty socialisms cares more about wedding cakes with two dudes on them than they do about sucking at the government tit. He’d maybe also understand that the dirty socialists care less about the two dudes on the wedding cake than about breaking the resistance to socialisms among the little trailer park peoples.
How about taking the cornpone out for one post, and state simply what your solution is? If Team R is indelibly stained, then how can that be fixed? Or are you proposing a new party entirely? Bitch bitch bitching can be fun sometimes for the stress relief, but it seems that is all you have. Give us the solutions you have dreamed up, all in one place, in clear english. Not the complaints, the solutions.
Otherwise you’re just another griefer, like the nishibot. If that is what you want to be, fine, but I’d like that clear for the record.
cranky it can’t be fixed we are doomed
America left, America right, it does not revere freedom.
What’s to address? Their wealth hasn’t prevented my standard of living from rising since Carter. The only drag on that has been the nannystatists, who have given themselves the position of parent over me.
I don’t abide, and I don’t plan on abiding.
Look. We all said what would happen if the dirty socialists passed their health cares.
Go back and read Mr. Steyn if you don’t remember.
Well, it happened.
Okay, do you want a new party then? Or are we just supposed to give up?
If we’re supposed to give up, you have identified yourself as a griefer. Is that how you want to be known?
Then that war came to it. Whether pragmatically or principally, I don’t think you’re going to have much luck distancing rurally-flavored constitutional populism in 2010 from original classical liberalism in the late 18th century, ‘feets. Even Christian fundamentalism, which when confronted with liberal intolerance is still politically divided, decidedly reactionary and fragmented, and politically insular, doesn’t fall too far from 1776’s tree of liberty.
Conversely, you’ll probably never distance the urban dependents, enclaved media, and institutional elites from progressivism. I propose that this later overall demographic distanced itself from originalism and partly because of that it initiated a war of culture against traditionalists.
Farmers and small business owners and a nation of workers don’t change that much as it regards liberty and stuff, ‘feets, except when they get on the entitlement/subsidy bandwagon.
Yes. Freedom is sticking to the a single talking point and making sure not to get off message lest someone hear you and point out your ickiness.
Consensus is freedom! Individualism is anarchy!
Where did Kyle go?
we can either keep going in the direction we have taken since Reagan in which a very few individuals have become incredibly wealthy and thus have an incredibly disporportionate amount of power in our society, or we can return to a more equitable distribution of income.
You know, he’s right. Like George Soros and Bill Gates and those athletes making 30 million a year.
there outta be a law.
I
wanna be
anarchy
I’m down with the sticking it to the rich, Kyle. You and I are EYE TO EYE. First I say we target the entertainment and sport fields first. Did you know those liberal Black Eyed Peas folks are the most corporate band EVA!
Fair enough.
“2. I believe it to be a mistake to view so much in terms of income inequality. Has not the quality of life improved dramatically for almost everyone in the last thirty years, even while the income inequalities have grown? Still having trouble seeing as great a lifting of all boats from those “more equitable” societies.”
Touchdown Charles Austin!
The average “poor” American today owns a 40 inch T.V., a Blue-Ray DVD player, a cell phone less than two years old and is overweight bordering on obese.
Tough to be “poor” in America.
I mean, honestly, that is the worst type of wealth. I mean, at least a greedy capitalist expands his business, give people jobs, or loans his wealth to others. But what does George Clooney do with all his money? Except fly around the globe, poisoning our atmosphere? No, I think we need to focus.
Farmers and small business owners and a nation of workers don’t change that much as it regards liberty and stuff, ‘feets, except when they get on the entitlement/subsidy bandwagon.
but that is what happened to all of us in America in the year of our lord 2010, JHo
that is the year the inflations were giddily inscribed in the stars
But, Danger, as pointed out in one of the articles linked today – the “poor” has a formica kitchen counter instead of granite.
You know formica SCRATCHES. Or, worse yet, melts if a hot pot is set directly. No no no. this cannot do. GRANITE FOR EVERYONE OR GRANITE FOR NO ONE.
I think it’s catchy.
I think you can bet Georgie has his money invested all over the place in greedy capitalist enterprises. He just has accountants to do that for him so he doesn’t soil his own hands with that filth.
if you pour grape juice on formica, you have to buy purple curtains
Soros said the most remarkable think yesterday it was I think
brb
In some ways European countries enjoy more freedoms than we do in America. Try walking drinking a beer anywhere but in a bar in the US and you are likely to be fined or arrested.
so … freedom can be evaluated by where I can walk around with an “open container”? weird. I guess we should all move to the freest place of all. New Orleans.
Granite for everyone -> cast concrete for everyone, if you’re real good and kiss the correct government ass.
Sarah Palin does it for the money, Entropy.
Do you have a more better word for that?
Yes, CAPITALIST
Put some of these “” on #128 please.
You haven’t addressed any questions put to you in this thread about what to do about that and why to do anything about it. Start with #57 or did you think that exercise was optional? I mean, you are proposing coming into my home and rearranging what furniture you think I should be allowed to continue to own.
You exhibit a profound ignorance of the effects of progressive legislation on a hundred years of American middle class. Remedy that before you propose more of what killed us.
Refusing to implement the tools of civility and indulging in shameless public covetousness doesn’t argue much of a principle or a plan, Kyle.
Oh shit. A bunch of Socialist rewriting the world’s economy. No that’s not going to end badly.
fuck.
You can do that in Key West too, if so inclined. The only problem is that the next bar’s owners get all freedomy and tell you to drink it before entering so they can make some money too.
I can kill a whiskey and move on, so it doesn’t really matter to me.
You exhibit a profound ignorance of the effects of progressive legislation on a hundred years of American middle class. Remedy that before you propose more of what killed us.
America hasn’t had a middle class for 100 years. We had to build it during the beginning years of the 20th century. The beginning of income taxes in America was another milestone in the development of the middle class.
Jeff you were one of the pioneers of Known Blogspace, and helped shape this place, and I can’t believe how ridikkulous your arguments are now.
The Founders and Framers were elites, intellectuals and polymaths….if they had intended for white anglo-saxon protestant landholders to be the only citizens, they would have spelled it out. I thought you were the go-to guy for intentionalism.
My bad.
If you read the federalist papers, the intelligentsia that created the Grand Experiment were very cognizant of the vagaries of human nature.
That is also why we are a democratic meritocracy where one of Jefferson’s natural aristoi is usually elected in a free election.
Once white anglo-saxon protestant landholders were the majority of the electorate was that the tyranny of the majority???? but……those bad old days are gone and are not coming back.
You need to deal with empirical reality instead of retreating to some fantasy alternative reality.
btw, this is pure awesomesauce.
the nomination hearings will be even more splendid than Sotomayor’s, where the refuglicans attempted to just say no while avoiding alienating the entire hispanic demographic in one sentence.
AMG! a black woman! double indemnity, huh feets?
The thing is that monarchies had the power of the sword. Rich people in the United States really don’t – and making then less wealthy won’t make you more wealthy, so you’re pretty much like the fat ugly bitch hating on the prom Queen right now.
In New Orleans, it’s practically mandatory.
Ha. They had a summit and this is one of there 7 “conversations”
An understanding that economics have broken free from the planet and no longer reflects the real world
ba haa haa ahhhhh aaaa.
Jesus Kyle. Do innovation and productivity fit anywhere in your store bought narrative?
Comment by Kyle on 4/12 @ 12:28 pm #
You’re really going to have to crap-sift that one, Kyle. See if there’s any logic in there.
Then justify theft. Waiting.
Shut up, nuggie.
Lost interest right about there. If you gave nishi a blatherectomy, would there be any nishi left?
the black woman is a stalking horse I think to bait Team R into saying things what can be cast as racist
Who really gives a shit anymore, ‘feets? I mean, we are doomed.
Mr Soros said that he was no longer engaged in making active currency bets himself…
My ass he isn’t.
Another prominent hedge fund manager, George Soros, reportedly recently increased his fund’s holdings of an exchange-traded fund that owns gold, to $663 million worth, while, somewhat confusingly, Mr. Soros was also saying publicly that “the ultimate asset bubble is gold.”
I have four nieces, each of whom already owes the Chinese an amount that would cover a college education. Mr. Soros and his type don’t care, since they’ll drop forty grand just transporting their yachts from Tortola to Mallorca for the season.
We need more people standing up and forcefully stating that free shit ain’t free, and that soaking “the rich” is only going to reduce our children’s debt by a small fraction while ensuring that they can never find a job, unless they know somebody in the government who can get them a cushy spot in the Department of Keeping Everyone Equal(ly dependent).
No middleclass? shit, my whole life has been a lie.
Nishi is blather, Slart. Don’t take away her only toy!
Except for the fact that your Golden Urkel’s favorable/unfavorable numbers have flipped in the time between.
Now, we’ll brand him, like it should have been done during the run up to the 2008 election.
JHo I don’t know what is to be done. Our little country is gone away.
If we liked it I guess we should have put a ring on it.
What Squid said. Which is to say that the progg’s narrative-addled grasp on reality is wishful and fantastic.
Try walking drinking a beer anywhere but in a bar in the US and you are likely to be fined or arrested.
Wow. That’s one of those “essential liberties”, right?
You haven’t addressed the issue of the hyper-rich in America. Don’t you feel that this is regressing back to the days of monarchies?
I don’t see the connection. So long as we adhere to Constitutional rights, then no matter how much wealth someone else has, they can’t be a monarch.
I grew up in an America that was relatively free of stratified economic classes
?!
When was that?!
I grew up in a teeny, tiny little rural town. The town was so cash-poor the bulk of the police force was on probation from other departments (they’re cheaper that way). The local grocery store was owned by a guy who was likely very well-off, but no one thought he was setting himself up as a duke or something. He was certainly better off than my family — as were the local doctor, the local vet, the local pony keg owner, and a lot of the other families. And we were better off than the folks the government crammed into trailers under Section 8.
And we weren’t trying to be feudal lords over them. We just wanted them to stop trampling our corn.
and I have also live in Latin America which is completely stratified. I see America moving in that direction. I would rather be like Holland and Denmark than Brazil or Mexico any day.
Where are you seeing this stratification in the US?
I’ll admit I’ve seen it, to some extent, with the way illegals are treated. Which is why I’m all for cracking down on illegal immigration. The development of a permanent servant class is BAD. I can understand why corporatists are for it; I can’t understand why supposed humanitarians are for it.
And seriously — how does someone having more money harm you? How does it give them any power over you?
“Try walking drinking a beer anywhere but in a bar in the US and you are likely to be fined or arrested”
Kyle,
Have you been to Vegas? New Orleans? Key West? (anywhere besides sucksville, U.S.A.?)
“I would rather be like Holland and Denmark than Brazil or Mexico any day.”
Theo van Gogh could not be reached for comment.
If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past few years, it’s that you don’t have to say anything racist to be accused of racism.
You have concluded that “Team R is indelibly stained” so why do you give a fuck what they do?
It certainly has. So let Team R be typecast by 4th Estate bullshit artists and sundry lying thieves in the Capitol’s 5th Column.
Merely opposing a black nominee makes you racist.
Supporting a black man (like Thomas) means … something else. I’m not sure what. Prolly involves evoking Uncle Tom.
If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past few years, it’s that you don’t have to say anything racist to be accused of racism.
Spoken like a true racist.
Whereas nishi continues her long streak of irrelevancy. Empirical fact. Emoticon.
*** waves at griefer ***
I wouldn’t be surprised if Soros wasn’t behind the scenes, egging people on to buy gold.
Him and Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Which is a weird mix, I’ll admit.
cranky we’re never gonna survive all this unless we get a little crazy I think
ok I’ll go first
Kyle proved what we knew from his/her/its very first post.
Hey, did you guys see this?
Racism alert. The comedian is obviously a horrible, horrible racist.
I think you went crazy a while ago.
First I say we target the entertainment and sport fields first. Did you know those liberal Black Eyed Peas folks are the most corporate band EVA!
Cincinnati played that card a few years ago. Touted all the money they were losing in income taxes to the highly-paid performers and athletes.
Once they passed the tax, well, the REAL targets were consultants (like I was at the time) working downtown while drawing paychecks from firms in the ‘burbs. Brought in orders of magnitude more money from middle-class Joes like me than they ever did from the super stars.
HTML fail.
Detroit has a tax – 3 % if you live in the city, 1.5 if you work in the city. That’s why so many firms moved out of town.
a stalking horse?
i dont thinks so ‘feets…… she is only 55 years old.
Obama is playing a long game of 11D chess.
Your side can’t even get the checker pieces out of the box.
but when we do get them out you just watch
so … freedom can be evaluated by where I can walk around with an “open container”? weird. I guess we should all move to the freest place of all. New Orleans.
Nope. Epcot.
Seriously — you can walk around Epcot with your beer in your hand. Or your margarita. They sell schnapps in one of the stores. And you can drink it as you walk around.
Safer than NOLA, too.
Rob, RIGHT YOU ARE. I drank my way around Epcot last time I was there. It was a grand time.
That’s a difference in culture, not freedoms. So you want to stay up late and drink late! Awesome! Welcome to adulthood! Be prepared for the consequences of such actions, you know, staying up late and drinking, and when your personal bottom line begins to resemble that of Spain, perhaps you might be persuaded to wonder if you’re really clear about what we’re worried about.
Which you aren’t. We don’t think the rich are a problem. We think that jealousy of the rich is a problem. We don’t think being poor is a problem, because we know it’s not that difficult to get out of poverty, unless certain people want to reward people for being poor, by keeping them poor. It’s called creating a cycle of dependency and it’s the cruelest and most un-noble thing one human being can do to another human being. It’s what drug dealers do. No, really.
Remember the “Teach a Man to Fish” parable? We like people that fish and feed themselves, not those who don’t fish then complain about who has more fish then them. We especially don’t like those who then tell those without fish “You don’t need to fish, we’ll just take it from those who actually fish, and give it to you. Because we think those dirty, dirty people who actually know how to fish are keeping you down!” If you reward a man who never fishes, for never fishing, he’ll never learn to fish. He’ll never be self-sufficient and you’ve crippled him. Good job Kyle!
@Happyfeet; Yes, we know you wish Palin would vanish back into the Alaskan tundra. Trust us, WE GET IT. Glad to see you’re being consistent, you’ve got quite the leg up on the America left. Way to go. Now I wish you’d stop with the “MURRICA IS DOOOOMED” crap. Either be part of the solution, or go away.
I’d rather you stayed. I like reading your comments, when you’re not being fatalistic and anti-Palin. Nobody wants you to change your morals, or first principals, and become pro-Palin, just be constructive.
/end line
America hasn’t had a middle class for 100 years. We had to build it during the beginning years of the 20th century. The beginning of income taxes in America was another milestone in the development of the middle class.
?!
What a bizarre world you live in.
Best alcoholic beverage in Epcot? The beer in Germany. Yum.
Darn! Carin AND Alec,
Where’s MY social justice?
Afterall, internet connections were not created equal;)
I get stuck sometimes with just what’s in my heart, Kresh.
Answer the questions put to you, Kyle. SO far you’re coming across as arrogant, dishonest, incivil, and covetous.
What move usually comes after making your entire party wholly unpopular with the electorate when one plays 11D chess?
I want to know what he’s going to do next is all.
Anyone who complains about open container laws instead of just pouring their drink in a Dunkin Donuts cup is too fucking stupid to breed.
umm….”brand” him as what?
a black man?
Hey, Jeff….how bout chu talk to Alec LIKE AN ADULT and point out how very racist that sounds?
not good for PR.
<3
My arguments for classical liberalism haven’t changed. So that means the ridiculousness comes from the new vantage point you’ve assumed.
And yes, I’m aware that you are working in tandem — which made the little nudge nudge to happy not only overwrought, but bespeaks an overconfidence about how well you believe you’re winding up the rubes.
Sometimes we answer for those who might be reading without a requisite knowledge of grieferism.
Why is it always about race with you, Nishi? It’s enough to make one suspect you’re trying to compensate for some unpleasant truths about yourself…
Do put a pawn in it, nuggie.
That whole difference between dishonest perception and reality never sinks in for the genocidal twat that lurvs some Margaret Sanger.
I question nuggie’s motive.
Kyle, aristocracy is the natural result of over government. When rent-seeking via government is a reliable way of advancement, then those who are best at it will accumulate both money and power. And the income tax had an inverse relationship to having a middle class: it let the government decide whether hard work would be penalized.
Kyle, I don’t know if you’re of this type, but I see a lot of lefties who basically subscribe to the proposition that if the government doesn’t tell you what you can read and who you can fuck, you don’t care what else it does to you or anyone else. Some of us need a little more than that.
I think one not only needs a real high opinion of his own intelligence, but also an actual lack thereof, to believe one can pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. Sure, there are plenty of rubes who can easily be misled, but they don’t tend to hang out here very often.
Apparently Kyle hasn’t heard, or did not understand, Ric’s Rule No. 1: Ants find the sugar.
I think the secret of his half-blackness is out. I was thinking more along the lines of branding him on account of his red-ness.
… and I would also add that the role of corporations in trying to influence policy decisions is directly — and economically rationally — related to the ability of policy decisions to alter their economic outcomes.
In some ways European countries enjoy more freedoms than we do in America. Try walking drinking a beer anywhere but in a bar in the US and you are likely to be fined or arrested.
Try that in Britain, and your ass will end up in the clink. What a strange notion you have of liberty, Kyle.
You know Kresh, ‘feets is right…..Palin is important….but not to me and fellow liberals.
Palin is the death knell for the GOP….or I guess Brooks’ “cancer on the republican party”.
Do you understand vampire theory, Kresh?
The vampires can’t come in unless they are invited.
McCain and the GOP “intelligentsia” invited Palin into the House that Reagan and WFB built.
The problem with having vampires in the house is pretty soon they think they own the House.
And people get bit….eventually everyone in the house is a vampire.
The only way to get the vampires out of the house is stake the head-vampire (that would be Palin) through the heart, or burn the house down.
No one in the GOP seems to have the nads to stake Palin….like admitting she is an unqualified, unelectable proud ignoramus that is executing a head-fake run on the presidency for $……or that she is sukkin’ all the blood out of legitimate candidats that could win…..
So staking is out I guess.
But the House is already on fire…..its just a matter of time and demographics as to when it burns to the ground.
By what ethic will you equalize wealth, Kyle? Using which proved system. In this country, of all things. Against it’s founding principles. And against the justified concerns of a majority of your peers.
These questions need answers, coveter.
I am not working in tandem with nobody I am going to lunch.
Well, Silver Whistle, he did say European countries, and not the U.K.
Not the he would understand the difference, of course.
So on top of pig ignorant, the griefer is also pretentious. Is this well without a bottom?
You know Kresh, ‘feets is right…..Palin is important….but not to me and fellow liberals.
Palin is the death knell for the GOP….or I guess Brooks’ “cancer on the republican party”.
Concern troll alert.
Problem is, no one but Feets (and now you) ever talks about Palin.
Last time I checked, cranky, we were strapped to the beast.
Try to make sense, nuggie.
It seems to me “vampire theory” is just a way to demonize any individual (and attendant supporters) you happen not to like by showing how his/her presence will infect the entirety of the group.
Germany abided vampire theory once, as I recall. But they found that gas and ovens were more efficient than stakes.
Anyone know what the hell Nishi uses <3 for? Is she claiming to be less than 3 years old?
Cause she sure acts like it.
Oh, great. Now Nishi’s going to lecture us on the fecklessness of the GOP leadership. ‘Cuz we’d never noticed, ourselves. Oh, no. We haven’t spent hours on the topic at all.
I’m guessing Nishi’s complaint is based on Mr. Steele’s race. Nishi really can’t stand black people. Doubly so when they don’t conform to the cartoons in her head.
Carin, I’m not a concern troll….im a revenge troll.
Or a “wild justice” troll if you prefer.
This closure for all the years I was lied to growing up.
Palin is an evil joke (see, SNL) and you deeply, profoundly deserve her and the damage she is wreaking on your party….just like you deserve Beck and Rush milking your most sacred and misguided principles for cash.
There’s one born every minute.
But its unfair to bash ‘feets for simply pointing out the truth.
But there’s no tandem work here.
<3 = heart, Danger.
I’m guessing Nishi’s complaint is based on Mr. Steele’s race. Nishi really can’t stand black people.
Dude, she’s an admitted eugenicist. Why anyone bothers to try to decipher her sub-literate scrawl is a mystery to me. I know Jeff considers her somewhat bright, but I’ve never seen it.
And if Nishit and bizarro-feets are the primary source of conversation, I think I’ll bow out, again.
That’s priceless. SNL as arbiter of good and evil. NBC late night comedy as a replacement godhead.
No, seriously. I giggled.
Ah, the freedoms of Europe. The freedom to write yourself a blank cheque; the freedom to go down the crapper.
haha, YES!
please defend Palin some more, Jeff.
its hilarious.
Where would we be without the two resident geniuses to tell us how we’re being played for suckers?
Not the staunchest, that’s where.
I “defend” Palin in the same way I “defend” Darleen. She is Palin, and Darleen is Darleen, and they have their opinions and their right to express those opinions. And they are entitled to do so without being called cumsluts or dried up hags or what have you simply because you happen to disagree with those opinions.
I’m thrilled you find that stance hilarious; but really? Your laughter is just the incidental cherry on top of the sundae!
That’s always effective. Converts!
Ah, anarchy justice. Like Mad Max and all the other justice-centric classical liberals.
You go vote that closure, nuggie. For the justice.
I always see SNL to tell me what I think.
Because Palin is failing badly in the polls and talk radio should really be, you know, NPR.
That Palin is wildly too unpopular to support your madness? There’s one born every minute.
hahaha!
Oh Jeff, can’t take crits?
Your defense of Palin the Indefensible is even funnier than your constitutional pretzel logic.
its always about loyalty isnt it?
Stupid and Wrong don’t deserve loyalty.
This closure for all the years I was lied to growing up.
What, daddy told you you were special?
Sometimes reading comments here is like bizarro world.
I read Nishi’s comments and pity is all I can muster. Which is weird, because I don’t want to feel sorry for it, and yet I nevertheless do. Mad world, this is, a mad world.
Jeff i have never called Palin a whore, i always call her a proud ignoramus or a mean, shrill carny barker.
I called Darleen a pedobear hag….and she is….that is a 4chan term for adults that support pederasty and pedophilia.
She supports child-rape.
It seems nishi accidentally told the truth. But why not go the more traditional route and just become a stripper? The world needs strippers more than griefers, griefer. Empirical fact. Emoticon.
Given that Darleen is a public figure, nuggie, you just defamed her.
Don’t know what this means.
Want to point to my constitutional pretzel logic in a way that the pretzel logic is evident?
Loyalty? No. It’s about the pretzel logic that says just because I mention someone, or allow them to exist, doesn’t mean I am them and they are me.
Why anyone bothers to try to decipher her sub-literate scrawl is a mystery to me. I know Jeff considers her somewhat bright, but I’ve never seen it.
I don’t see it either. Part of being smart is having the self-awareness to tread lightly on subjects you know fuck-all about. Nishi is pedal to the metal no matter how stupid it makes her look.
Conversing as adults isn’t going to be easy, is it? Not so long as juveniles consume eighty percent of the conversation it won’t.
Is there any way to make it so nishi can only comment in a daily, “Let’s all laugh at the silly griefer” thread?
You know, Rob, there’s plenty in the post you can talk about.
But hey, I can only do so much to get conversations rolling. I guess if it’s that easy to drive people away, Nishi and happy (like thor before them) have done their jobs, and I can enjoy more of the sweet sweet marginalization. For not keeping the site pure enough.
And here I was thinking things were starting to turn around.
Fuck it.
Tangentially on topic, but not completely:
for happyfeet, sdferr, Pablo, bh and others who were involved discussing Glenn Beck’s mis-interpretation of Paul Ryan, based on a Hot Air greenroom piece written by CK McLeod; all I can say is I guess I can tear up the letter I was writing becuase Ryan himself answered all the necessary questions-like Dicentra pointed out in comment #1 of this thread.
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/196/39068/
There’s a transcript as well as the audio here.
Sorry for the interruption
Ah Trust What The Lord Tina Hath Revea-ulled to Mah.
That Palin, she’s one of them thar vampires, and we don’t take kindly to her kind ’round heah. Time to go out on a good ol’fashioned vamp-stakin’. Get the truck.
Nishi argues like a fifteen-year-old pothead.
To be honest, I’ve been frankly amazed that you’ve been able to implement nishi as a rhetorical foil for some serious posts lately. That’s like getting lemonade from a rock.
Jeff, if they are on your front page, they are co-bloggers….they are covered with the burdha of Protein Wisdom.
Demote Darleen to the Pub if you don’t agree with her.
Personally i despise Pedobears, but its your call.
:)
And your constitutional logic seems to involve stipulating that the founders intentionalism somehow implies women and blacks should not have gotten civil rights….
i have to admit im unable to follow that.
<3
Thanks, Bob. I’m going to check that out.
Nishi is a fifteen-year-old pothead, whatever her age or drug of choice might be.
It’s fake but accurate.
FWIW, I have to admit I’m unable to find that.
And your constitutional logic seems to involve stipulating that the founders intentionalism somehow implies women and blacks should not have gotten civil rights….
i have to admit im unable to follow that.
That’s because it isn’t there. You’re shoving it in there with the Jaws of Life because arguing about Jeff’s real point would require you to be intellectually honest for five minutes.
You may now say several more things that don’t make any sense.
From Bob’s link, on progressivism Ryan says:
Get technical, brother!
She’s just trying to get you to ban her, Jeff, so she can brag elsewhere that she was banned here.
“umm….”brand” him as what?
a black man?”
Interesting that race is the first and dominate thought popping out from the question.
It’s a tactic as exposed as the proverbial naked emperor.
Nishi is going to have to evolve her cultural short comings and make people quit wondering why race is all she thinks of when characterizing the current POTUS.
I think of branding him a radical leftist with bad foreign policy instincts and decidedly big government aspirations, while nishi sees… “black”.
It’s unseemly.
The Descent of Grieferism.
W. T. F?
“And if Nishit and bizarro-feets are the primary source of conversation, I think I’ll bow out, again.”
Hang in there Rob,
As Jeff pointed out responding to the ignorant and indignant is important for the readers out there.
At least one of those readers is storing up the ordnance produced here for the battle ahead.
Keep firing!
The kid’s going for a world-record low score in reading comprehension.
I revere the political philosophers and the political philosophy that begot our Declaration and Constitution, and in the practical implementation of those ideas, the magnificent nation I was lucky to be born into. Perhaps I’m at fault in that reverence, insofar as according an emotional weight to such things isn’t a properly philosophical behavior itself, but then so much the worse philosopher I.
Still, they are marvels of human endeavor, these ideas. And hold great truths to be discovered as we dig the further into their establishment in the minds of men.
What I wonder about them though, and what is the hardest of all things to do, is this, (something that Jeff’s post touches on in the analysis of progressive thought, it’s own internal contradictions and the gloss put on those contradictions by the movements nominally held in their sway), that one day we lovers of distinctly American political philosophy can do our utmost together to look into the grounds of our own beliefs, seeking to see if there we may find anything internally inconsistent, and as such, threatening our own well being. I know, however, just how very hard this is to do. And an impossible thing to do, where a will it not be done is at work.
Nishit is a lying cunt. A self-loathing lying cunt. Anything she type that bears a passing acquaintance to reality is an accident. Genocidal eugenecists are Teh Suck.
I found the entire discussion of the merging of the social imagination and classical liberalism, as practiced by the “liberals” of the mid-20th century to be very interesting. And I especially found the observation of the fact that the liberals-turned-progressives now had migrated so far to the extreme of the social imagination component as to have actually become the despots, benevolent or otherwise, that their antecedants would have recognized as the antithesis of the American way.
The self-styled “elites” truly believe they have become the “new, righteous, aristocracy”, and are somehow better than the rest of us instead (demonstrated clearly in the recent Obamacare vote which ran clearly against the will of their constituents) of simply either the first among equals or those among us willing to sacrifice their time and opportunity to pursue personal enrichment in the name of being involved in the administration of government by the consent of the governed. And no matter how often their water-carriers try to cast them as “aristoi”, they are as much aristoi as a parvenu is to the upper strata of society.
This piece bears the hallmarks of the subjects that have been discussed here at PW over the years; the reason that I became interested in this site in the first place!
I have to wonder whether this fellow has been a PW reader, or if like Liebnitz to Newton, Jeff and he simply developed the same arguments in parallell :)
I agree wholeheartedly that the setting is here, and the time to take back the meaning of what a liberal truly is, is at hand. Like you note Jeff, we need to call out the progressive left on their conflation of conservative/classical liberal/racist homophobic hater, and point out that we are not the ones purporting to act based on what we believe is good for the people of this nation in spite of themselves !
Great Post Jeff
In light of nuggie’s performance* in this thread alone, that’s prescient.
*indicating desperation as the memetic wheels come off.
You are. Lots of great posts. Many large and active comment threads.
“And here I was thinking things were starting to turn around.
Fuck it.”
Request denied Goldstein. There’s no crying in baseball and THERE’S NO QUITING IN THE OUTLAW BRIGADE!
That is all!
Years of writing about the dangers of ceding the rhetorical battlespace to the enemy. Countless thousands of words illustrating the means by which the Left has co-opted not only words, but whole industries that deal with words, in order to make their policies palatable to a misguided electorate that foolishly relies upon these industries for education and information. Example after example of how a well-meaning unwillingness to confront and engage these corruptions of language and meaning leads inexorably to letting those of bad faith define our ideas on their own terms, which in turn leads to losing the arguments because our counterparts have redefined the terms.
And after all that, we’re told (by the staunchest and smartest minds that Teh Intarwebs have yet produced!) that we must disassociate from certain public figures because of the way they’re portrayed in the popular media.
It’s little wonder that Jeff would be tempted to walk away in despair. There’s none so blind as those who will not see.
Oh,
And what Bob said!
But not much I can add to it. My limitation.
Again, my failing, not yours.
I’m sick of being called “racist” and “anti-intellectual” by a sub-literate, self-declared eugenicist. In general, I’m sick of being called “racist” because I believe people should be equal before the law. I’m sick of being called “racist” because I think the fact that someone chose to start their life in America by breaking the law, committing fraud, etc. makes them less than desirable as fellow citizens. I’m sick of the pseudo-intellectuals who slime and slander people as ignorant because they lack the proper class indicators.
I was taught to approach disagreements with a sense of good faith, with the idea that there is actually an interest in understanding on the other side. I’m exhausted by two decades of learning that, well, more often than not there isn’t, and the “other side” can never be budged from their life-long bigotry.
What you’re doing is important, and you’re doing a good job. I just don’t have the patience or heart for it anymore.
Try walking drinking a beer anywhere but in a bar in the US and you are likely to be fined or arrested.
America stands for freedom
But if you think you’re free
Try walking into a deli
And urinating on the cheese
Anarchy Burger, the Vandals
“And here I was thinking things were starting to turn around.
Fuck it.”
No. Things are definitely starting to turn around. One guy allowing a (two? is happyfeet actually a part of this Nishi business?) griefer/troll to drive him off does not a turn around stop.
Rest assured, Jeff, there are people reading and watching, even some of those you think aren’t or are trying to marginalize you. We care and they care, even if you think they don’t. Chin up, old boy.
For what it’s worth, Rob, this site has taught me to recognize the tactics used by the Progressives to worm their way into polite society. Seeing these tactics employed by our trolls, and engaging the trolls on their willful ignorance and deceptions, keeps my rhetorical sword sharp for those occasions in real life when it’s necessary to counter such tactics.
It’s like a fitness regimen that you do every day even though the novelty long since wore off. Except that this one doesn’t keep me lean and well-toned.
I had to cut my workout short because my elbow started to hurt, and I have no idea how I injured it.
I’m officially old.
no Will nishi is nishi and I am me
totally separate except maybe for we both think Sarah Palin is a dire omen
I am not a dirty socialist. I just think Team R is a passle of Fail, and that taking back language needs to start with taking back the word “presidential” cause of there’s precious little indication that Team R knows the meaning of the word.
Someone help me out here — this Nishi thing is worthy of attention why?
“I’m officially old.”
Cranky,
I went to the Doc today with a case of elbow tendonitis hoping to get a Cortisone shot and directions to the new gym.
Instead I got some oral prednisone and orders not to lift for two weeks! An Army Doc of course! (no offense LTC John;) Whatever happened to rub some dirt on it and get back in the game?
Sigh, I guess we are both getting old ;(
Nishi has some history around here, going back years, where at one point she was a bit more rational.. I think that’s why she gets the attention.
prednisone can make you gain weight so be careful Mr. Danger it can be very depressing
Dr. Steve,
She’s batting practice; nothing more.
She is as vile and disgusting of a “human” as I have encountered.
DrSteve, an alternative and perhaps better question is, and this Classical Liberalism thing worthy of attention why? (please pardon the liberties)
Danger, as my father (83 years, 6 months, and 5 days old) says, “Getting old is not for sissies.”
“prednisone can make you gain weight so be careful Mr. Danger it can be very depressing”
Yeah Feets,
The Doc warned me about that but it is only a 5 day prescription and I have about 35 days left over here to get back into fighting shape.
happy, I think the entire subject of Sarah Palin is peripheral and tangential. By now, we all have a firm grasp on your issues with the woman and the attachment some on ‘Team R’ have to her. However, she’s hardly as important as your elevation of her, negative though it may be, makes her out to be, and it’s that very elevation that arouses so much of her support and her supporters. To be perfectly frank, if I may, you seem to be bordering on an unhealthy, paranoid obsession with the woman. Let it and her go.
Um, hey Nishi? Um, yeah, Vampires aren’t real. Also, um, vampires aren’t real.
Hows about, instead of defending Happyfeets against someone who wasn’t attacking him about his particular choice of whipping horse, but more about the fact that he has trouble putting down the whip for very long, you discuss the main text of my post. You know, like adults.
Unless you want to talk about vampires some more. I mean, that’s cool and all, but this is an adult conversation and Twilight isn’t on the agenda. I’m just saying, ’cause the phrase “Vampire Theory” really doesn’t make people take you seriously. And by “people’ I mean “rational adults interested in staying on topic.”
Just sayin’.
start with taking back the word “presidential”
It’s like you don’t take Mitt Romney seriously, feets.
That’s a guy who filled out his census form!
The Constitution, ultimately, was a compromise, a gentleman’s agreement where no one got everything they wanted.
The genius of the Constitution is that there is indeed a mechanism by which the document can be changed — the amendment process.
The problem is that the proggies don’t have the stomach to stand up for what they believe. Rather than go through the process of amending the constitution, which more than likely would fail, they want another “deem scheme” where they can pretend the Constitution means something other than what it says / means, whereupon they can merrily skip down the road paved in good intentions, dragging the rest of us along in tow.
Will, I think Sarah Palin is meaningful. I think she means something.
I really do.
how can she not?
“Getting old is not for sissies.”
Good cus THERE’S NO SISSIES IN THE OUTLAW BRIGADE EITHER!
Comment by sdferr on 4/12 @ 2:26 pm
You’re correct, of course; not the thread subject. Apologies, all.
If Romney ever got to be president his life’s work would be fulfilled on day one I think.
We all go OT sometimes DrSteve, like me, right now: a little hilarity for the German speakings (looking at you SW)
So the transcript Bob linked above has this little nugget:
Faber, you’re asking? Who’s Faber?
Ryan, though his name be Irish, evidently can pronounce Weber.
More’s the pity, eh anti-intellectualists? He’ll just confuse the rubes, the bastard.
hf: “If Romney ever got to be president his life’s work would be fulfilled on day one I think.”
I think your thinking of Algor… or was that his father’s life’s work?
sdferr: “Faber, you’re asking? Who’s Faber?”
Didn’t he found that college, “Knowledge is good,” Y’know, him?
http://www.acmewebpages.com/animal/locales.htm
“Will, I think Sarah Palin is meaningful. I think she means something.
I really do.
how can she not?”
Oh, feets, you’re confounding things. I think she’s meaningful too, I too think she means something. Of course, that she means something doesn’t at all mean that she means everything. Know what I mean?
oh. I agree with that.
It’s Faber? I pronounce it more like Vaber.
HA! Dread Cthulhu is the best of all possible ___[?]___ in this best of all possible worlds.
So don’t, y’know, do that thing you Cthulhu’s do on me?
If Romney ever got to be president his life’s work would be fulfilled on day one I think.
But you must agree he’s the most Presidential Republican around these days?
Can someone tell me the correct pronunciation? I really thought it was Vay (rhymes with gay) ber (brrr, like it’s cold).
Dumb honkies stir the blood somehow.
you gots bh
Thanks, sdferr.
Spelled Weber, pronounced Faber.
Reminds me of a joke I use to have that if I ever had a son, I’d name him John but spell it Susan.
S-u-s-a-n – pronounced Jon.
“…pronounced Faber…”
Weeeel, maybe if one can’t hear the difference between an f and a v, sure.
First of all, Jeff, I quit coming to the site for probably over a year because it just wasn’t the same without regular posts and interaction with you in the comments. No offense to the guest posters and now, co-blog hosts, but Protein Wisdom IS Jeff Goldstein, period. Now that you appear to be back on a routine basis, well, so am I.
Second, I thought happyfeet was some sort of resident crank, what with the very affected and schtick laden comments he drops all over the place. Kind of like a resident eccentric that everyone just tolerated like an alcoholic uncle, or something. But lately, he’s been, to me anyway, a real impediment to anything approaching a serious discussion. One man’s opinion. Your mileage may vary, etc.
Finally, and perhaps to Kyle’s comments earlier in the thread, income and wealth disparity analysis always seems static and a snapshot view that fails to address class mobility – Americans move up (and down) in income and wealth over time, making snapshots very misleading as an indicator of inequality in a society. I’m a good example, having spent probably the first 30 years of my life in the lower middle class (and some years, probably qualifying as “poor” or “lower class”), only to see, because of hard work and education, my income rise to the level where I’m sure I’m classified as “upper class”, and taxed accordingly. Does your “income inequality” analysis take into account intra-class mobility in American society versus mobility in, say, the EU?
’cause the phrase “Vampire Theory” really doesn’t make people take you seriously.
I still haven’t gotten over that part.
Maybe with time…
Workin on it. So far still no go.
This has a little icon by the proper name that you can click and hear it spoken.
The German pronunciation of Weber is Vayber.
W is pronounced V, V is pronounced F.
It’s in that Falco song, how you say it.
If I remember right.
cause of that was Mr. Mozart’s last name.
sorry that was opposed to be Mrs.
and I got the wrong Falco song
here
Weeeel, maybe if one can’t hear the difference between an f and a v, sure.
Nah, I have no idea. I’m just mentioning the inescapable WIERDNESS of thinking “(f/v)aber” and writing “weber”. It’s causing me cognitive dissonance.
Let us rather discuss the difference between R and L in Nihongo ?. Andletusdosowithoutspaces.
classical liberalism at work again, n’est pas DrSteve? Now I’m owing an apology to you. heh
*
The German pronunciation of Weber is Vayber.
V seems less unreasonable then F.
But why not Vehber? Why does the e change sounds?
I shall call him Veber and he shall like it, or else I’ll just call him dickvace.
This is the name I mispronounced most my life. Frickin’ Goethe.
From the short piece on Ryan at the Heritage Foundry:
Dude, Spalding? Meet our friend Goldstein over here. You’re welcome.
Dude, Spalding? Meet our friend Goldstein over here. You’re welcome.
Jeff’s in congress?
What’s his nom-de-legislatification?
the beckster was all mushy about paul ryan today
And the rest of Ryan’s statement excerpted above:
I agree about the singular voice in Congress part.
Well, those are the only people other congresscritters listen too. It’s a bloody echo chamber sometimes.
“Constituents? What on earth are those?” /Eddie Izzard voice
There has been some misunderstanding of Ryan’s analysis of Progressivism, particularly in his Oklahoma City address.
even that’s overstating it I think…
Huh, does Goldstein have to be in Congress for it to make sense to introduce him to Spaulding? I shouldn’t want Spaulding to get to know another such a one who happens not to be in Congress, in other words? Weird circumscription that would be.
hf and glennbeck hearts paulryan
Spaulding?
Wrote the piece at Heritage I think, Bob.
thanks sdferr. I wasn’t sure whether you meant of baseball manufacture fame, the character from caddyshack, or the captain portrayed by Groucho Marx :)
Oh, my. That’s kicking it Classic Old School.
I’ve been watching all the old Marx Bros. stuff on DVD the last few evenings. What gets me is that Chico (pronounced “Chick-o”) was supposedly the world’s premier stud hound.
Me, I don’t see it. But then, I’m not a chick living in the 20s and 30s.
#12: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
#13: And – as you said – the person who gets to make that determination is what angel of justice?
Turning government from referee into a player is going to really going to screw (has screwed) things up.
He just missed starring alongside Hanks in the island film.
he had money in the ’30’s
#99 Carin: That movie (Idiocracy, I think) is eugenics in a nutshell.
Also see ‘The Marching Morons’. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons
#106 Kyle:
“I grew up in an America that was relatively free of stratified economic classes and I have also live in Latin America which is completely stratified. I see America moving in that direction. I would rather be like Holland and Denmark than Brazil or Mexico any day.”
When was that magical time of no economic stratification (such as wealthy and not anywhere as wealthy)?
I can get kind of oppressivey about the assumings where it comes to those orangey thingers, to be sure. It’s a fault, I’ll admit. Ain’t quittin’ though.
#224 JeffG.:
You are correct, sir. Like LTC John advised before, I will ignore the TTPs.
My fault that I did not do so.
Stupid talks.
Stupid walks.
The wise man balks.
Burma Shave.
Way OT: The Lansing Lugnuts, a minor league team play in Olsmobile Park.
However there is no Oldsmobile anymore.
So they now play in Cooley Law School Stadium.
Law School. Sports sponsorship.
Still trying to work THAT one out.
#224: Jeff, see my comment at #84. If whore couldn’t run me off the site, our current crop brings snowballs (goes with the ice dong) and Hell to mind.
“What gets me is that Chico (pronounced “Chick-o”) was supposedly the world’s premier stud hound. ”
He could play the juice harp like nobodies business…
Treating voters as adults is the antithesis of paternalism (or maternalism – which ever). Perhaps parentalism?
I do not need a governess – especially a governess that cannot be fired.
No Nanny Bruce, thanks for asking.
Though an Uncle Fred, (or an Uncle Gally,) would be interesting to have around.
Cocktail Time!
I recorded A Night At The Opera and Duck Soup. My wife thinks they suck.
We’ll just have to work through this difficult time. Maybe a marriage counselor, I think.
Treat voters as adults? You don’t say…
But that’s why Kate is besides her poseur little self … she reveals she is acting out of some childhood hurt she has nurtured and fed and clung to in her black little heart all these years.
She’s a metastasized Peter Pan, with happy as her loyal Tinkerbell.
Oh be nice.
He’s Tinkerfella.
Darleen I am not in any kind of consonance with nishi except for she’s right about how distasteful some people are and also I think she tends to put her finger on very real problems what Team R has.
Just cause I don’t get all hatey on her cause she has a different p.o.v.
I think she’s a neat person. She makes the internet a more interesting place.
That does not mean I want to do her.
It means I respect her as a neat person.
I used to respect you that way until you got all Focus on the Family and scary and I still try to but you make it super hard cause of you have hard edges.
so you are a fucking idiot yes? and suck the proggs’ cock
hf sucks the DICK morris toes
hf an idiot troll
I am curious as to what is neat about her. Because all I have ever seen her do is rant and rave about how all of us are being left behind by its version of cultural evolution, how we are racists, bigots, godbothers who hate women, children, minorities and anyone who is not a white evangelical Christian. She links to weird videos. But she is vile.
And newrouter is kind of a dick. Actually not kind of.
hf : “super hard”? fucking catholic pedophile
line it up loser?
neat for me is not neat for other people
I’m fascinated how she can communicate so well… that she storms in and grabs a thread’s attention and like it or not she leaves ideas in her wake. That’s neat. thor was fascinating the same way.
I’m not trying to say everyone has to think she’s neat.
I’m saying I think she’s neat.
You just seem to be unnecessarily mean to hf, above and beyond the abuse he takes from others.
yeah right HF, I’m FoF 24/7 and never stop posting about it and only pause for enough breath to post endless posts on Sarah Palin’s uterus.
And I want LEGISLATION to be all Christianist and everything!
good.lord.
see Darleen that was hyperbole what you just said
sweetie it’s part of the hard edges thing
I don’t see how she communicates particularly well, but then I do not speak 14 year old text-ese ;-) To each his/her own. I have no need for my friends to like each other, so I should expect the same in them.
“…also I think she tends to put her finger on very real problems what Team R has.”
hf, I’m not going to criticize you for being fond of Nishi, but I would point out that generally she seems to be only repeating the standard talking points about team R that team DS puts into the zeitgeist.
That and has a prediliction to try and use a lot of science terms where they aren’t applicable nor even analogous. To someone who’s professionally spent a lot of years researching and applying science it seems kind of pretentious.
fuck you loser. and sarah will fuck you with a strapon. you like that no?
pervert
I am not in any kind of consonance with nishi
Except for the happyzonospunkslut part.
hf
Don’t go all sexist on me that somehow my “hard edges” (translated: I defend myself) are “off putting.”
Kate Mengele fascinates you, or the lower part of you, so her lies and her viciousness and racist bigotry and her grieferisms are just little aphrodisiac spurts for you.
Just don’t pretend you don’t know what she is saying is anything other than poseur shit.
yea all you trannies, dikes, faggots, cross dresser, lesbians, circle jerkers, et al are DARWINIAN LOSERS
Kind of like what you do to newrouter.
lmao.
Sexist? Are you fucking kidding me?
professionally spent a lot of years researching and applying science
I highly doubt Kate has stepped in any lab more demanding than freshman biology.
JD
Why am I “hard edged” to happyfeet and no one else is?
Oh hush yourself sweetie.
I think you are also hard edged, too. Does that make me a sexist? Good Allah. Some people have spent years pointing out the inherent BS behind the hollow cries of racism/sexism/nameyour-ist-ism.
If nobody minds, can I drop in some news what to me is good?
Got papers signed today to start the adoption process for our little girl that we’ve been actual parents to but technically just guardians of. We hope we’ll be in court before Memorial Day and the family will be legally increased by one.
Which ones are your favorite? That I’m racist? Ridiculous? That my arguments use “pretzel logic”? That I don’t understand entropy? Cultural evolution? Biology? Religion?
Or the part about how I used to be kinda cool, but now I’m just mostly unhip and pathetic. A silly, rightwing Christianist on the wrong side of history.
Perhaps she “grabs a thread’s attention” because she’s constantly demonizing everyone here.
And yet, who do you take up for when push comes to shove? Nishi. Thor. Patterico.
The best part is, you do it here.
Congrats Darth!
you know same sex = no reproduction. darwin stops for darwin fanatics. dealing with fanatics is dealing with losers biologically.
What I’m seeing is a bunch of continuous nonsense followed by more and more people recognizing it as such and rightfully dismissing her as a griefing griefer giving the grief.
(Branding!)
*** waves to griefer ***
Congrats, Darth. That is great news.
Great news, Darth!
JD
I don’t think hf meant that as a compliment. And I haven’t seen him use that as a particular smear against anyone else…plus the fact he is pretty free with the hoochie/whore/cumslut stuff against women he has issues with.
If you think I went to “sexism” as a mere card with nothing to back up my charge, I respect your view as I may disagree. IMHO (and yes YMMV) hf’s “hard edge” comes from the same well as the other ad hominems where it concerns women he disagrees with.
God bless y’all DRove. You and Mrs. DR have a good heart for adopting young-unz. May He smile upon your family, speed along the process, protect and keep you, and grace you with His encouragement and guidance in the present and future.
Apologies if you’re not God-bothery like me, I’m just happy for y’all.
Good on ya, Darth. Is she still young enough to brain wash? We need more hatey wingnuts, doncha know!
Congrats Darth!
Cheers cheering Darth, and give yer Missus huzzahs from me!
I said nobody else had to like her.
I said it a lot.
Some people even heard.
JD
Additionally … I admit I punch back. I’m the first born and my dad taught me how to throw a punch, block a punch and the responsibility of defending myself and others. I grew up on a block filled with boys and I didn’t gain their respect by whining and being helpless.
Darleen you have hard edges. Own it. It’s not sexism. Jeff has hard edges sometimes too. Who else has hard edges include Vladimir Putin and Cybil Shepherd.
Comment by DarthRove on 4/12 @ 9:10 pm
CONGRATS, Darth! What happy news!
*Cybill* I mean
it looks weird for her to have “bill” in her name I think
Darleen … now you’re overcompensating.
Just be yourself.
I do not think he meant it as a compliment either, but I did not think we had reached a point where disagreeing with someone, or noting that someone comes across as having hard edges, is tatamount to being sexist. I agree that he is over the top in his criticism of Palin, even though I agree with the underlying sentiment. Again, I do not see what is sexist about his criticism other than the targets that you selected to note were women. His vitriol is every bit as bad towards McCain, poofter Graham, the President, and countless other men.
‘feets, nuggie lost me at the intellectual narcissism, the rampant dishonesty, or the defamation but I can’t remember which.
#51
Top-down is not reality in this. It is the model embraced by the opposition as if a lover.
geoffb – You rock. Got that and watched it today. Will deliver the rest this weekend.
fuckin nice loser
I think JD is right that I’m a lot ecumenical.
Hush now sweetie. Own your hard edges.
There. That a girl!
yea these losers, when this OBAMA shit goes down, will not be able to start a civilization
Brainwashing of the younguns has commenced. At present it’s mostly instilling a proper amount of Ohio State pride and M*chigan hatred (older one has been successfully trained to NEVER!!! place the yellow and blue crayons next to each other). If the team sports indoctrination holds, then the hate-hate-hatey wingnutz training can begin, starting with raping the planet and hoarding of wealth.
Thanks to all for the well wishes, and I hope to report good things in a few weeks.
It’s been a while since a newrouter rage bender hit these shores.
Darth – It is inappropriate and insensitive to use the word rape to refer to anything other than actual rape, and unless you yourself have been raped, you should never use that word. Just sayin’
Spewnami Abe?
I like that sdferr.
we need to see some trigger alerts people
Spewnami ? Epic fucking word.
Agreed, spewnami it is.
How nice a touch is Mr. Beran’s “social imagination” though?
Sweet, is how.
Glad it got there ok JD. Good show.
Have fun this coming weekend.
And your constitutional logic seems to involve stipulating that the founders intentionalism somehow implies women and blacks should not have gotten civil rights….
Oooh! Oooh! I know this one!
Nishi is conflating “intentionalism” with “originalism” and then interpreting “originalism” to mean that we should hew to the original 1887 version of the Constitution, which didn’t forbid slavery or give women the vote.
OK.
I’m only going to say this once, so pay attention:
ORIGINALIM AND INTENTIONALISM DO NOT ENTAIL TURNING BACK THE CLOCK!
Geez, Nishi! Nobody is suggesting we strip off all of the amendments after #10. When we talk about intentionalism and originalism, we’re not talking about reverting to Constitution v 1.0, and the rest can go to hell. We’re talking about how we ought to interpret the language of the existing Constitution, the 2010 version, to prevent power-hungry freaks from playing with the language to do an end-run around the democratic process.
A demonstration:
I hire Nishi to do a gig for me and we write up a contract wherein I agree to pay her $50,000.00 in exchange for her performing some act for me.
She performs the act, and when she comes to collect, I say, “you know, in Europe, that comma is actually a decimal, so it’s $50, and that $ can mean Colombian pesos. So here’s 50 Colombian pesos.
Which are not worth the paper they’re printed on.
What just happened, Nishi? Is there something wrong with how I interpreted the language of the contract? Or am I just so damned clever that I deserve to come out ahead by fify-thou?
Is that so hard to understand, Nishi?
Because either you’re too stupid to understand what we’re talking about, or you’re not and you simply prefer to lie about it.
Which one?
Hey, I know the answer to that question!
Woohoo!
“We hope we’ll be in court before Memorial Day and the family will be legally increased by one.”
Awesomely Awesome Darth!
Congrats Darth!
Now … about this Michigan hatred ….
Excellent example Dicentra.
dicentra that makes absolutely no sense.
give me some logic please. …Jeff’s argument SEEMS to be that majority rule was okfine when the majority was white anglosaxon protestants because……the Founders and Framers were white anglosaxon protestants?
But majority rule by a grouped coalition of minorities is somehow…..anti-constitutional?
I think the constitution is WAI…..citizens are citizens.
You are all rageraver on Obama for “raping liberty” and “shredding the constitution”…..where?
show meh.
@393
Shut up, honky.
And just in case that sounds brusque to you, the only reason Jeff’s argument SEEMS like a paean to white majority rule is because you’re determined that it should SEEM like nothing else, because like many honkies, you can’t bear the thought of not rendering any conversation racial.
So go clean your white hoodie. There’s vampires to be slain, or something.
Gee nishi, you start griefer-ing early, don’t you…
That’s not what Jeff said and you know it; but I’ll let Jeff speak for himself. And as far as raping liberty? Obamacare for a start, the other items on his legislative agenda, like cap-n-trade for another. Oh, and then there’s his use of czars to avoid the constitutional oversight of congress-more than any other President in history. Hmm, let’s see, there’s the nationalization of two of the big 3 car companies, as well as acting like the remains and monies paid back to TARP are his own personal slush fund. Raising taxes in the interest of “fairness” instead of simply to raise revenues. Using executive order to countermand policies in the best interest of the nation as a whole. Participating in a land grab in several states.
Then there’s some of my personal favorites, the politically correct approach to terror threat classification and description, the scrapping of viable and tested missile defense systems and the ABL, the giveaway to the Russians that the START treaty actually is and his new nuclear pussification policy; acts that will certainly rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” should our nation suffer attack as a result of these changes.
I could go on and on, speaking for myself. And I’m sure Jeff will clarify his statements later; or maybe not, you should be able to understand what he wrote. After all, you;re a sooooooooppppper jeeeeeenyus.
shalom
I was going to compose an ode to nishi’s ongoing epic fail in the reading-comprehension area, but I think this is suitably dismissive:
You are not sentient, nishi. Or at least, not so it shows.
“you should be able to understand what he wrote.”
well I don’t…..apparently you do, and Slart does, so you guys explain it, kk?
Bush had more czars, the repubs have used reconciliation 16 out of 22 times since its inception…again….you seem unable to accept empirical data.
I agree with Obama’s policies….i worked on his campaign.
Basically America can’t afford to be the SuperAwesome World Police anymore…..because the unregulated invisible hand of the market punched America in the face.
And we spent a trillion dollars on the Grand Misadventure of the Manifest Destiny of “judeo-xian democracy” in Iraq….what have we got to show for it?
5000 dead American soljahs and 200,000 dead Iraqi civilans and a new Islamic State that declared a national holiday when American troops moved out of its cities.
I’d rather spend a trillion on healthcare ……at least we will have something to show for it besides an infinite supply of spare parts for the MENA Reaver Facories.
Factories.
I decline. You’ve managed to misinterpret Jeff’s plain-English point of view to the point where it couldn’t be more wrong. I’m not sure how that gives us any hope of setting you aright.
Counter-offer:
A) Go back and re-read
B) If you find you’re still interpreting Jeff’s statements in the same way, goto A.
Only because of replacement; Bush had fewer czar positions than Obama, but more czars total. Bush also had more CJCSes. Doesn’t mean they all served concurrently.
Not that it much matters, but it’s this inattention to, well, reality that makes me doubt that there’s actually a staggering intellect on the other side of that phonetext interface.
You make assertions real pretty, honky.
You don’t have a good understanding of the difference between assertions and argument. Like numerous honkies, you think sprinkling data points in a string of unconnected hysteria makes you the queen of knowledge.
All it really does it indicate the deficiencies in your education. Hope you kept the tag on you Master’s Degree robe.
Bush has Czars, but not “more”. The word you meant was “less”. In addition, the Republicans didn’t use reconciliation for anything the size of Obamacare.
Finally, the Reavers don’t really exist.
Or fewer.
But I’m not thinking grammar is a realy sticking point with nishi.
And, of course, Nishi has the idea that we approved of everything Bush did tattooed on her brain cell.
What part of “least awful option” is not clear? I haven’t voted FOR a candidate in the general since Perot in 1992. Yeah, I know. I was younger then.
Liberalism and “Liberalism”…
Jeff Goldstein posted a serious essay, “The Descent of Liberalism”. One quote: A CNN poll conducted in February found that 56 percent of those questioned think the federal government has “become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat t…
“Bush had more czars…”
No he didn’t nishi; that’s a factually challenged statement by anyone’s measure. Here’s two citations, from sources that are generally trumpeted by lefties:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jun/12/john-mccain/McCain-says-Obama-has-more-czars-than-Romanovs/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._executive_branch_czars
“the repubs have used reconciliation 16 out of 22 times since its inception”
They’ve used a measure designed for debt reduction to, you know, reduce the debt-go figure. But regardless of it’s past use, it has never been used for social legislation that effects every American on such a substantial level as Obamacare. That fact is indisputable.
“you seem unable to accept empirical data.”
Once again you try to inject a scientific term in the improper context. It’s both pretentious and poseur like…
“Basically America can’t afford to be the SuperAwesome World Police anymore…”
But we can at least look out for our own self-interest, and that of our allies. Somethig your boy Obama doesn’t seem to care about nor understand.
“…because the unregulated invisible hand of the market punched America in the face.”
No nishi, more like the meddling federal government ordered banks to make loans to people that couldn’t afford them, and then incentivized that pursuit in a corrot and stick type fashion; the carrot was Fannie/Freddie buying and bundling essentially all the subprime loans that the banks could make, and the stick was the provision in CRA by which commumity agitators like Obama could have his people mau-mau a bank to increase such loans by lodging complaints about discriminatory behavior with the FDIC that could prohibit expansion or merger by that same bank for years. If it were left to the free market sub-prime loans would have been virtually non-existent. Once again, you are factually challenged…
“And we spent a trillion dollars on the Grand Misadventure of the Manifest Destiny of “judeo-xian democracy” in Iraqany democracy is, by default, “judeo-xtian”? Then what is legitimate, a typical mohammedan de facto dictatorship? The politburo model? What China has now?
I suggest you re-read Jeff’s comments to understand what he was saying nishi. It was clear to everyone else. And I also suggest that you stick to facts when slinging about assertions. Oh, and try typing coherent sentances, instead of using some modified 1337-speak…
JD,
Aside from Sarah Palin, see his comments regarding Pam Tebow and Lila Rose, private citizens whose crimes against the Republic are….wait…it’ll come to me….
It seems he mostly thinks women should shut their stupid whore mouths unless they’re insane trolls. In which case, LOOK!! IDEAS!!!
In nishi’s world empirical data is generated by hallucinogens.
At least he does it in a nice way.
There you have it.
And if you need more proof.
Thick as a fucking brick.
Pablo – I agree he has a large amount of vitriol for those that you noted, as I acknowledged in my prior comment. I do not think that makes him a sexist, nor do I think noting that a lady has hard edges is sexist. YMMV
Nishit woke up from her stupor, typed a spewnami of idiocy, and then immediately passed out again.
Nishi≡∅
makes him a sexist
JD, it may be a nit, but an important one. HF may not BE a sexist, but IMHO (and yes, it is only my opinion and perception), his statements were sexist because he holds women he doesn’t politcally agree with to a different standard then the men. In social situations he may be perfectly equitable.
It’s a trend thing, JD. An ongoing trend thing.
Thing is, it isn’t just that. There wasn’t a damned thing political about Pam Tebow, whom he shat all over as though she’d killed his puppy.
not a damn thing political about Pam Tebow
yes. That has the ring of Truth I think.
I will keep repeating it to myself.
here are factoids about Wal-Mart
I do not have one in my zone.
Congratulations Darth! That is wonderful news, indeed.
When has nishi typed anything resembling “smart” is what I want to know. She typically comes in here telling us shit we already know, all the while disparaging anyone NOT like her. Happyfeet is a marketer, so he can appreciate that for whatever reason. The irony is that now happyfeet is castigating people for being unpleasant to the griefing loser? That’s some funny shit. No, happy isn’t a socialist loser. I don’t really think nishi is either. She’s got a big old hardon for her pets…minorities. Nothing more. She treats them as noble savages as Jeff has mentioned in the past. She’s sad.
I don’t remember castigating anyone Mr. Jake I said I liked her I don’t mean everyone has to like her.
I mildly castigated Darleen constructively about the edges. But that wasn’t about nishi.
She’s got a big old hardon for her pets…minorities. Nothing more. She treats them as noble savages
Honkies are nothing if not paternal.
Compare and contrast happy’s words about McCain, Graham, and Barcky with those about Palin, Tebow, and Lila, Darleen. Except for word choice, there is little, if any, difference.
But, reasonable people can disagree.
Huckabee too and Jon Stewart.
I went after Huckabee’s children and not a peep of protest but you cast one aspersiony aspersion on our less than chaste Bristol and bam if you ain’t out of the garden.
Except those guys all have their hands on the wheel of our little country. Where the women? They like babies.
Hey, it could just be deranged, hateful egdes though.
OK, now that’s funny. Math with nishi.
This going for the victim of sexism thingie seems to fly in the face of much of what I had taken from many of the commenters here. YMMV
Sweetie got a bit sensitive. Just a little smack on the ass was all it was.
And it’s like, bam! — hysterics!
I don’t see anyone looking to accept the victim mantle. But noticing shit doesn’t mean you’d like to be a toilet.