Not the best way to start off your week:
Economic prospects continue to grow gloomier as the Commerce Department on Friday revised the second-quarter growth rate substantially downward from the initial estimate of 2.4 percent to a mere 1.6 percent. Just to stay on an even keel in terms of job creation, the growth rate needs to be at least 3 percent. It has averaged only 2.9 percent for the past four quarters. Virtually every key economic indicator is pointing in either the wrong direction or is barely leaning to the positive side. Unemployment remains officially at 9.5 percent and is likely to head upward in the near future. If you are counting people who are either underemployed or have given up looking, the unemployment number nears a Great Depression level of 20 percent.
The really bad news, however, is that things are going to get worse before they get better unless President Obama and the Democratic Congress reverse course and abandon their plan to impose a huge tax increase on Jan. 1, 2011. That’s the day the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire. Tax rates on all five income brackets, not just those paid by “the rich,” will increase by 2 to 4 percentage points, thereby blowing a $921 billion hole in the nation’s ailing economy. […] The coming tax increase will drive the cost of government even further into the stratosphere, which will deprive the private sector of nearly a trillion dollars that could have gone to job creation.
Obama and the Democrats argue that extending the Bush tax rates would “cost” the government revenue needed to cut the federal deficit. But the deficit is primarily their doing and is projected to average in excess of $1 trillion annually for the next decade.
[…] Obama and congressional Democrats are also moving to enact onerous new tax increases on the energy industry. Those increases will come on top of the job-killing Gulf of Mexico drilling moratorium they’ve already imposed on the industry, which is projected to cost another 23,000 energy jobs.
So, hold on to your hats, folks, because it looks like Great Recession, Round Two is headed this way.
No worries, though.
Rumor has it we can simply rent a big public space and pray our way out of it.
What, too soon?
;-)
we got to pray just to make it today
Oh behave, Jeff!
“Pray as if everything depended on God, and act as if everything depended on you.”
OK with that? Beck says it a lot.
In other news, it’s possible to make little lamps out of tunafish cans. You cut open the lid except for the last inch, eat the tuna, then fold the lid back into the can, on a slope. Then you braid a wick out of string and fill the can with vegetable oil.
Buy lots of matches, I’m told, but you can’t get the “strike anywhere” kinds anymore. Don’t know why. I suspect OIKOPHOBES.
Just to stay on an even keel in terms of job creation, the growth rate needs to be at least 3 percent.
Do we know that for sure?
That reminds me of the old Associated Press hack line they used a ton while Bush was president about how the economy has to generate 150,000 or whatever number they pull out of their ass every month “just to keep the unemployment rate from rising.”
Except our failshit economy hasn’t generated that many jobs in a month in many many many moons unless you count the census losers and the unemployment rate has been relatively stable really.
So I don’t know what the deal is there.
nice Red on Red snark at the end …
Did you expect Beck to lay out a RoadMap to Recovery ? really ???
The deal is it’s 20 people in a lifeboat and 2 guys know how to fish. The black guy at the other end of the lifeboat doesn’t know how to fish, but he knows a couple big words and the whole lifeboat thing has that slave ship feel so nobody wants to say anything. Big Word Bro get elected leader of the boat and he immediately looks at the two guys who know how to fish and says “You two white guys were in first class weren’t you? Must.be.nice. Well guess what – none of us know how to fish, and we don’t feel much like learning how and you rich guys have had it too good for too long. So here’s the deal: you’re going to catch all the fish. And we’ll let you keep 1 fish for the two of you each month. That will be my policeyahhhh…”
4 days later their all dead.
You can still get “strike anywhere” matches online, though some states have banned them. You cannot buy Ohio Blue Tip matches any more, the company stopped making them.
This has been brought to you by the internet.
And again I think it’s well worth wondering why Team R is so quiet about the job-killing oil drilling moratorium.
They’re not going to bat for those people at all.
No. I didn’t expect a roadmap. But I also didn’t expect the 700 club
Team R thinks they can win big simply by NOT being team D.
Which sucks, because Americans really want something to vote FOR, rather than just vote AGAINST.
Paul Ryan’s road map (reforming Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) is, by far, the mosr sensible approach I’ve seen, but the Boehner/McConnell crowd would rather be seen at a Pelosi rally than embrace anything that’s even partially controversial.
Such is the state of Team R today.
What’s needed is for a Tea Party-like small government wing to stage a coup of Team R, not unlike the way the Progs took over the party of JFK, Truman and Scoop Jackson.
Maybe they should have tried to levitate the Treasury Dept.
I think pvrwc a lot nails it.
If that little voice answers back TANSTAAFL, as it pertains to tax cuts and entitlement cuts (you will get less on social security and medicare), I could care less if it is Jesus, Mohammed, Elijah, or the ghost of Robert Heinlien.
pvrwc, well stated.
I watched about 2 minutes of Fox news today – Megyn Kelly talking with some tax cheating democrat brain trust that – hey! maybe what we need is another $800 billion
stimulusunion payoff package!I then projectile-vomited at the television and went back to studying for my CCNA exam.
My heart broke when I realized that Megyn is just another under-educated lawyer who has paid no attention to the rape of America by the elites.
As for Beck’s proselytizing, it’s not surprising,
He was a talented DJ who sunk into a morass of drugs, booze and self-indulgence, then found salvation and a new life thru his embracing the Mormom religion.
There are no greater proselytizers than the recently converted.
It’s always easy to make the “one-size-fits-all” assumption of what worked for me should work for everyone else.
At least his message is one of faith, hope and charity.
Not ridicule, collectivism and class envy.
But I also didn’t expect the 700 club.
Given that you haven’t ever listened to/watched Beck, how could you possibly know what was coming?
Besides, the MFM is, as we speak, marvelling at the fact that the rally was, as Beck had repeatedly promised, not political.
They don’t understand how that could be. Not political? Everything is political. They know how to combat political. They know the game inside and out. And frankly, they’re better at it than we are.
So when Beck stages this… thing that attracts a half-million people, they don’t know what to make of it. It’s one of those strange, flyover country deals, right?
They prayed, fer Chrissakes???? WTF is up with that????
Thus is the key to the rally’s effectiveness. They don’t think anything really happened except a bunch of white people stood around and listened to country music and said hallelujah and amen or something.
So, no threat, right? Nothing to worry about. Those bible-thumpin, cousin-humpin rednecks will just go back to their sky god with the boomstick, and we can safely dismiss them as we set about ordering the country to our specifications.
It’s always easy to make the “one-size-fits-all” assumption of what worked for me should work for everyone else.
He’s just reaching out to those for whom his message makes sense, and given human tendency toward addictive behaviors, that’s a pretty hefty chunck of humanity.
I don’t have an addictive personality, so his story of overcoming his personal demons doesn’t help me much in my struggle with mine.
But what the hey: I learned long a go that just because something doesn’t inspire ME or reach ME that it doesn’t reach someone else who truly needed it.
What do you mean by “not political”, di? Do you mean that in the narrow “partisan” sense?
This is explicitly political. You can be George Washington. You can be Abraham Lincoln. You can be Thomas Jefferson. They aren’t revered religious leaders, they’re revered politicians.
But I did listen to him. And when he started pimping this thing, I stopped.
It so happens that when Darleen posted the link to the live event, I went over and gave him another shot. And I reacted like I reacted.
So yes, I wasn’t expecting a popular conservative radio personality to put on a revival. Sorry, just wasn’t. Happy that you liked it so and feel the need to tell everyone who doesn’t how wrong they are for feeling like they feel about; that means it must have really resonated with you.
With me, not so much. And I worry that it didn’t accomplish what it set out to accomplish. Time will tell.
“Thus is the key to the rally’s effectiveness. They don’t think anything really happened except a bunch of white people stood around and listened to country music and said hallelujah and amen or something.”
What, beyond that, did happen? The MFM and its client, the progressives, haven’t gone whole-hog in attacking the rally precisely because it wasn’t all that effective beyond confirming that those who participate in organized religion are more likely to pull the (R) lever.
Beck handed out “Badges of Merit” to people like first-baseman Albert Pujols, who accepted the award noting that his mission in life was to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The MFM may not like that message, but they aren’t particularly threatened by it either. Shit, the guy personally thanks God every time he hits a home run, which is not infrequent. Had he said a few words about how his values are consistent with limited government, or had the rally focused more on basic ideological principles, the MFM would be singing a different tune.
I shouldn’t think I’d have to defend myself against suggestions that I think this way about religious folk.
Maybe happy is right. Maybe you have become just another victim identity group. I’ll try to withhold my criticisms of anything religious from now on, because clearly, to criticize religious overtones in an event that is of necessity political is to hate believers.
Clearly.
I should be ashamed.
Naaah Jeff G,
Keep shooting from the hip, calling it as you see it. As a religious person, I agree with Beck, but thought fashioning his rally as a prayer service, or perhaps vice versa, delivered a mixed message. For while he counseled faith in God’s deliverance, and individual outreach to others in need, he never came right out and said that folks rely to much on government for their “salvation” nor directly called Obama a charlatan for accepting the messianic mantle he was dubbed by the MFM.
After all, thge founders of our nation felt that, among all one’s private property, that religious beliefs, personal outlooks, ideas, and considered opinions were perhaps the most precious and sacrosanct. And last I checked, the first amendment had not been repealed.
Message to Glenn Beck.
That would be
1. Preaching to the choir
2. Used as ammo to distort what was said
3. Not in keeping with the tenor of the event.
Shame is the flip side of honor. He went with honor, not shame, which is kind of refreshing, if you ask me. None of us are perfect, but it’s not hard to figure out who’s acting on principle and who’s acting out of avarice.
Do you want to save the ship, or fight over the lifeboats, for what little they’re worth. Time to pick a side, folks.
Rumor is wrong.
Jeez, Jeff, passive-aggressive much?
So, you can criticize, but suddenly criticism in return is wrongly motivated? Am I nuts or did you argue against that principle once or twice in the past?
INTENT, it appears to be off the menu. Please make another dinner choice.
Not to step on Dicentra’s toes here, Jeff, but I thought this paragraph was addressed to the vast mass of leftist media organs who were left scratching their heads at the rally’s attendance. This reading based on her change of subject away from your reaction to, “Besides, the MFM is, as we speak, marvelling at the fact that the rally was, as Beck had repeatedly promised, not political.”
“Rumor has it we can simply rent a big public space and pray our way out of it.”
You’re a *bitter* young man.
I’m not seeing it, Jeff. The truly religious will take all kids of shit, because what other people think and do doesn’t matter to them, personally. I say that as not one of them. I’m not without faith, but I am wholly without religion. I know plenty of people with the fire in them, and their ultimate concerns aren’t worldly, their worldly concerns are thing in an eternal path.
What I find most hilarious is that Glenn Beck turns out to be 100 times the preacher Reverend Sharpton is. I’ve been looking through the record of his event and I cannot find him mentioning God ever. Al’s dream doesn’t look a goddamn thing like this:
I shouldn’t think I’d have to defend myself against suggestions that I think this way about religious folk.
I meant to attribute those sentiments to the MFM and other eastern libtards, not to you. I apologize for the misunderstanding.
“Do you want to save the ship, or fight over the lifeboats…”
Good point. Beck’s religious revival is not my cup of “tea” (I have better things to do on a Saturday than spend a afternoon in hot humid DC) but let’s face facts that the key to Reagan’s electorial victories was the triparte alliance of religious conservatives, national defense proponents, and fiscal conservatives.
Another term of Obama at the helm will be devestating to this country, if only due to major shifts on the Supreme Court. And as we have seen, he has done an enormous amount of damage beyond that already.
Shit just occasionally spins out of control around here.
Hey, guys, did you know that David Letterman raped all of Sarah Palin’s children on the pitcher’s mound at Yankee Stadium? Pretty sure I read that somewhere.
By the way:
This is called a satirical cue or a flag.
Back to the really serious questions of the day: When you hear “Ride of the Valkyries,” what do you think of?
1) Wagner’s Ring Cycle
2) Apocalypse Now
3) “Kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit”
4) Huh?
What does each answer say about you?
Discuss.
Dicentra can speak to this better than I, having been to one, but Beck’s “American Revival” series hews a lot closer to what you would have preferred this event to be. Which, the format wouldn’t have worked here at all.
dicentra, off topic, but you might like this picture.
I thought of you when I first saw it because I know you love the natural beauty of Utah.
Can I combine 2 and 3?
bh, post #23 kind of stripped the joke off it for me, don’t know about anyone else.
And at 4:05 Central, Beck goes a long way to proving my point. He proclaims that at the beginning of the rally, God summoned a flock of geese to do a natural “fly-over” of the crowd. It was a miracle, you see. For the guy whose head got shit on, I guess it was a “God works in mysterious ways” thing.
I just don’t get why a guy who has so much to offer ideologically has to insist upon making his personal view of spirituality the only path to the country’s turnaround.
stash to the rescue?
Just the possibility of it could perhaps even crack a smile out of Jeff.
Dicentra can speak to this better than I, having been to one, but Beck’s “American Revival” series hews a lot closer to what you would have preferred this event to be. Which, the format wouldn’t have worked here at all.
Yes, the American Revival show that he toured with this summer was much, much more about political and economic principles than the 8/28 event was.
Although he DID organize the program around faith, hope, and charity. For the Faith segment, David Barton illustrated the forgotten and denied religiosity of the Founders, including the many preachers who signed the DoI and stuff. The non-religious might have found that bothersome.
But then for Hope he trotted out David Buckner (whom I know from school, K-12), who talked about how screwed were are, economically. Yes, they also noted the irony.
And for Charity he had Judge Napolitano, who uttered phrases such as “taxation is theft” and that Natural Law means that we keep the fruits of our own labor, and pointed out that the best way for an individual to be charitable is to get effing rich so that you can give to causes you find worthy.
“Which, the format wouldn’t have worked here at all.”
Why not?
You obviously haven’t been around a lot of 12 steppers have you?
Although in a weird way Beck may be right, because the addiction of government largeness is a hard habit to break.
You’re not answering my Wagner question.
I DEMAND ANSWERS!
But I did listen to him
Once. He’s got a huge repertoire but you heard him once.
I’ve been listening for years.
Lots of people see the hand of God everywhere. It’s been that way for an awfully long time. I just don’t get why a guy who has so much to offer should make your personal view of spirituality the only path to the country’s turnaround.
People have been taking shots at Jeff since Darleen’s first thread, Merovign. If you’re looking for greater context, there’s over a day of it, including numerous suggestions from di that Jeff just doesn’t get it. Further, the section of the comment that Jeff quoted was also about people just not getting it.
2 and 3. I am weird that way.
Why not?
Wasn’t his goal. Everything in the American Revival program I had heard before at some time or another on his shows. It was fun to go, and for people living in blue states, it’s nice to be among fellow conservatives.
But he’s been teaching that stuff forever. His spidey sense told him that this needed to be religious revival, so he followed his gut.
As soon as your radio program eclipses his, please feel free to hold any rally at all for any reason your gut tells YOU.
Because it’s a ton of information that builds upon itself. It’s an 8 hour program as he’s been doing it. You’re just not going to deliver 8 hours (and I’m assuming that’s just the tip of the iceberg) of lecture to half a million people on an DC August Saturday afternoon. Although what you’d have left at the end of it would be a more manageable class size.
Joe: that is indeed a nice photo. Thanks!
If not a smile, then a subtle Spockian raised eyebrow.
“I DEMAND ANSWERS!”
I’ve demanded nothing – I’ve simply invited you to respond. Why you feel you can’t, or won’t, is your business.
No. Way.
*eyes bug wide open*
“I just don’t get why a guy who has so much to offer should make your personal view of spirituality the only path to the country’s turnaround.”
He shouldn’t, and I’ve said so, for the same reason that he should not make his own personal view of salvation the only path towards the country’s turnaround.
“As soon as your radio program eclipses his, please feel free to hold any rally at all for any reason your gut tells YOU.”
Interesting standard – I must host the third most popular radio show in order to question whether Beck’s rally might have been more effective had he done it differently.
Much as I fear to tread into what I discover was a “lively give-and-take” over the weekend, I find myself a bit frustrated and disappointed by the amount of talking past one another that I’ve read in these threads. Beck’s thing was Beck’s thing, and Beck’s people seemed to take away a lot from it, and to that extent, it was a huge success. I get that.
On the flip side, Jeff felt a bit put off by the revivalist flavor of the whole thing, and felt that Beck missed an opportunity to appeal to a wider base. (In the interest of full disclosure, this is the side I more closely identify with.) That doesn’t mean that Beck wasn’t successful, or that the rally was a flop; it just means that a lot of potential allies were left standing on the sidelines because the religious aspects of the rally were too pronounced for their comfort.
At the risk of adding fuel to a fire, I don’t think it’s wrong that Beck and his followers had a revival. I’m sure that those in attendance came away with the proverbial fire in the belly, and I’ll be interested to see where the movement goes from here. At the same time, I personally feel left out, if only because I’m no longer one of the faithful, and I can’t help but wish that more effort went into making people like me welcome.
This ties in to a concern that’s been voiced any number of time around here in the context of the Tea Party, including Joe’s comment above, which is the idea of joining the various flavors of classical liberals, libertarians, fiscal conservatives, and religious conservatives into one unified political movement focused on smaller government and greater personal liberty. I think the frustration, defensiveness, and ill will expressed in the past few threads shows that this particular alliance is still very fragile. I mean, when our host says “eh, all the God stuff kinda turns me off,” and gets shit for it from several long-time readers, it causes me to worry that we’re not gonna be able to pull off the rescue of our country, because the faithful and the heathens can’t be arsed to put aside those differences in the pursuit of a shared political goal.
Beck wasn’t trying to appeal to heathens like me. I wish he’d tried to; it seems like a missed opportunity. Both these statements may be true; I don’t see why they need cause so much fuss.
Joe – That is a caricature of “12-steppers” that you suggested.
1 and 3, lest I be accused of ducking the important questions.
Regarding #35.
5) Whether or not the political beliefs of the artist should be considered when evaluating the art.
What’s this say about me? That I’m totally awesome.
Totally awesome and well-endowed. And a generous tipper.
Oh yeah, Squid, that sort of level-headed thinking is the mortal enemy of 1,000 comment threads.
As was mentioned earlier, the trinity that came together to elect Ronald Reagan included social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and nat’l defense conservatives. Beck is cleary in Camp #1, and bleeds over into Camp #2 with his televised economic analysis nightly, and his constant support for the armed forces buys him a seat at in Camp #3.
Conservatives need to adopt a true “big tent” approach to accomplishing our goals, or we’ll never unseat the liberal/progressive coalition that has wrested control of the country by deceit, false-promises and cloaking their messages in language that is designed to appeal to moderates and disaffected conservatives.
Arguing about who is more authentically “conservative” misses the point.
We need to remember that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
Not so. It’s bitter and passive-aggressive. I brook no dissent.
— Which makes it rather stupid that I give Darleen free rein here to post the social conservative perspective.
What I’ve come to believe from blogging is that if you stick to your own principles over a long enough time, you will eventually alienate everyone.
Now I’m just gathering proof. Consider this my science fair project.
Reverting briefly to the economic theme: Report of the Commission on deep-water drilling (translated from Proggspeak by yr.obt.svt. — originals at the links)
No, I can’t compete with Iowahawk, but it was fun anyway.
Regards,
Ric
Merovign and WM Sherman, I know a great site you guys will probably really love. Here!
You’ll thank me later.
“Because it’s a ton of information that builds upon itself. It’s an 8 hour program as he’s been doing it. You’re just not going to deliver 8 hours (and I’m assuming that’s just the tip of the iceberg) of lecture to half a million people on an DC August Saturday afternoon. Although what you’d have left at the end of it would be a more manageable class size.”
I contend that a man of Beck’s talents could have presented a lot of effective and entertaining information in 3 hours.
I guess, better then to give out medals to professional athletes/missionaries, Texas preachers and fast-food packaging inventors, and throw in some bagpipes and unison clapping – it’ll better hold their attention.
Should have went with the baking soda and vinegar volcano. People would give you way less shit.
People will turn on you at the drop of a hat. Makes me see the wisdom of running your blog like a cheerleader site for a particular political “team”: not a whole lot of controversy when you stick to the talking points, or cater to your audience.
I thought mine was different. Hubris on my part. Which is a sin, I think.
Maybe Beck can pray for me.
…
Still too soon?
Which is why the Contract with America did so well 16 years ago. Too bad Team R’s old boys’ club decided to just play ball instead…
I, and mine, tend to be a bit jesus-y, and not only the tent revival but the threads about the tent revival have been off-putting, and not in the spirit of this place. Just my 2 cents …
Here’s JeffS, from over at Alan Kellogg’s place:
Disagree with the way Beck put on his show, and 10-years worth of defending the religious from secular attacks here is bracketed in favor of this “circumstantial evidence” that I’m a “bigot.”
Complaining about that, though, just makes me bitter and passive-aggressive.
Seems perfectly fair.
REPENT!
RETIRE!
Fuck your own opinions, Jeff.
DANCE FOR US!
Mr. S can be a little overwrought in my experience
Man, I didn’t see that from JeffS over there.
For fuck’s sake.
If you don’t agree with Beck you are a bigot. That seems to follow a similar metric that we certainly oppose when the leftists use it.
Hey. I disagreed with Beck’s presentation. And even though I allowed that it might resonate with others, and that I’m not the target audience, clearly I’m anti-religious for failing to like what Beck did. Or I just don’t get it.
Clearly.
Bitter me.
…Probably because I haven’t found the right congregation.
Yet another example of the echo-chamber that this place has become.
The easiest way to mock something is to inflate the so-called purpose of the thing — then point out how it doesn’t meet the purpose. So, no. Just renting a public place doesn’t solve the whole mess. Beck never said things will be alright if we all hold hands and pray. Religious folk do believe that prayer has value, and are a part of every great movement.
So, no. Not too soon, just not your best snark.
That’s the problem, JD.
People like to pretend they don’t like echo chambers. But the numbers say otherwise.
Sing for your supper!
o_O
Or am I making things worse?
I think that anyone who believes you are a bigot, or even thinks less of you at all, just because you disagreed with Beck’s presentation, has issues. I have no problem with what you said at all, and I think it was a good point. As a Christian I have no problem with Beck’s approach, but it isn’t hard to imagine it turning someone off.
Or just too late for the joke…
I think you’re missing a bunch of important context, ukuleledave. Like maybe close to 1000 comments worth…
Do I get to complain about the saltier posts and comment threads? Do I? Because I’m, like, totally left out of THOSE.
And when you guys opine about distilled spirits, what’s in it for me?
I mean, if you’re talking about the best cures for hangovers, I can authoritatively tell you what is most effective and what is not, because I’ve been stone-cold sober my entire life. I must know ALL ABOUT sobriety, right?
And if you tell me that I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about when it comes to hangovers, the cures therefrom, or which brand of scotch whisky is the smoothest, I’ll get my back up and be all prickly and act like I’m being gravely insulted, because NOBODY tells Dicentra that her knowledge on ANY subject is limited.
NOBODY!
Geez, louise, people. If religion isn’t what floats your boat, fine. Just don’t act like you know what it does and does not do for people whose boats are set rising with that tide.
As for complaints and suggestions about what Beck could have done for the 8/28 rally, please direct all comments to becktips@foxnews.com.
Because this ain’t his last rodeo, and it ain’t over until the proggs are knocked off their lofty perches and humbled into the dust.
I am teasing about Beck. Yes of course it is a caricature. Many people have been saved by getting sober and turning their lives around. Beck hit rock bottom somewhere around the time he was snorting coke off some stripper’s butt. That Beck found a good wife, got sober, had a few kids is a good thing. I am glad he is doing well.
At the same time, I think we need to get out of the way and allow others to hit rock bottom if they choose to do so. Which is why I despise nannystaters like Bloomberg.
I’m glad Beck had his prayer meeting and that it was successful. I’m happy for all the people who went and had fun. I don’t begrudge his “Restoring Honor” theme.
I just don’t think it’ll do any good.
And much like the Rugrats Movie and the Simpsons Movie, I’m afraid that the tea party for Christ will mark the high water mark for Beck’s show and influence. And that’s a shame, but let’s face it, Fletch 2 had some funny moments and it was great to see it on TV again.
if you had listen to his radio show for that last month you would have known this rally would have a religious tone.
Lost My Cookies, I never watched Fletch 2. I tried the Caddyshack sequel, but walked out.
JD, if this were an echo chamber, I wouldn’t be disagreeing with half the people on this site, including Jeff.
I’ve never argued with Jeff before. It’s a new experience.
And nobody’s a bigot just for not digging Beck’s revival, but I will reserve the right to tell people that they don’t understand religion and religious messages.
Ah shit. Has to be done.
I didn’t. I said that it didn’t float my boat.
Which was, like, heresy.
Then I discussed it as part of a larger political strategy. Which earned me more vitriol.
Now, I’m a bigot. Bitter. Passive-aggressive. Brook no dissent. And an enemy to true believers and the religious. Enabler of Muslim fundamentalists.
I’m heading to Charles Johnson land.
But hey, by all means look at the way I responded to Beck, not the way some of you have responded to my analysis of the event. I mean, once you’re done rebuilding the country by taking a good look inside yourselves, that is.
And JD, although my comment about 12 step political revivials is not too far off. Citizens do have an addiction to entitlements. Taxing the rich is not going to do it, the entitlements need to be cut. People are going to have to learn to do with less and not freak out and punish politicians who try to tell them the truth about it.
if you had listen to his radio show for that last month you would have known this rally would have a religious tone.
This is not the first time I’ve heard this, and it gets to the heart of my frustration over the matter. The criticism is that Beck had an opportunity to appeal to a wider base, and chose instead to have a revival meeting for his regular audience. The idea that regular listeners knew what to expect isn’t really a good counter to an argument about expanding one’s appeal beyond one’s regular listeners.
JeffG.:I think you’re missing a bunch of important context, ukuleledave. Like maybe close to 1000 comments worth…
Ok, sorry then. If the price of admission to this thread is thorough knowlege of the previous thousand comment thread, then count me out.
“Geez, louise, people. If religion isn’t what floats your boat, fine. Just don’t act like you know what it does and does not do for people whose boats are set rising with that tide.”
As for complaints and suggestions about what Beck could have done for the 8/28 rally, please direct all comments to becktips@foxnews.com.”
I take it, then, that any praise for the rally, which aligns with your view, is still welcome in the comments, and should not be exclusively directed off-site. Sorry, but as long as Jeff permits me to comment, I’ll go ahead and complain- and suggest-away right here, not subject to your approval.
Further, I’m not pretending to know how deeply Beck’s rally resonated with people whose boats are floated by religion. In fact, I presume that they were quite buoyed by the rally. Instead, I’m asserting that those whose boats aren’t similarly floated might have gotten more out of a different rally, and that those whose boats are religiously-bouyed wouldn’t have gotten any less.
Not the price of admission to this thread. Just the necessary context for the joke in post.
But if you’re aren’t into it, go here. You’ll thank me later!
di – I did not suggest anything about you and an echo chamber. I was mocking the trolls and the leftists that love to claim all reichwingers love their echochambers.
Joe – You made a caricature of people that participate in 12-step programs. I pointed out that you did so, that is all.
Man, this economy sure sucks, don’t it?
On the plus side, di hasn’t complained about any of my salty posts.
So I’ve got that going for me.
sdferr – it sucks like a Paris Hilton blow-up doll, and is only going to get worse.
What little I saw of the Beck revivial meeting seemed rather tame not terribly controversial (although I could see how people could read a little Elmer Gantry or Face In The Crowd into Beck’s religious political schtick). The religious overturns did not offend me, but I agree it tends to exclude those who do not share those beliefs. Personally I thought Nick Gillespi’s take on it was pretty good.
So, back on topic, how did Mr Beck handle himself on his radio show and tv show today? Anybody give a report yet?
Okay. Fair enough. Thanks for pointing that out JD (seriously without any implied or express snark).
expanding to appeal to folks who aren’t interested in this subject sounds like watering down one’s principles.
I didn’t listen, sdferr. I wouldn’t have gotten him anyway. Evidently his universal message is only really understood by people with a very particularized set of learnings.
But that’s different from, say, “it’s a Black thing, you wouldn’t understand.” Different because a leftist isn’t saying it, so far as I can tell.
Don’t go there!
One thing seems for sure about reports on Beck: when they come from the legacy media they are near certain to be hooey.
Has the question whether it matters that Beck insists that the rally was not political been settled to the general satisfaction of the people? Or is the question still an open one, with implications bearing on the future of the country, or on what we might have for dinner tonight if only.
“What little I saw of the Beck revivial meeting seemed rather tame not terribly controversial…”
Nothing about the rally was “offensive” at all to me. I saw a bunch of personable, committed, moral, up-standing people expressing their faith. Which is what I would expect to see at a revival, or a confirmation, or a bar-mitzvah. But not at a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by a figure who has made great strides in educating a large swath of the population on the value of the founders and their principles. Was the theologically-dominated theme appealing to some? Yes. Necessary to the degree it was presented? No. Probably counter-productive to a significant degree? Yes.
he showed a nice aerial view of the 87 people who showed up and showed how the media didn’t report on what transpired.
free at last free at last thank god almighty free at last-mlk
Yep. I read it.
He said the kneel and pray thing wasn’t his deal, and…
…she slammed the door
In a petulant frenzy!
(A petulant frenzy, this is a petulant frenzy.
I’m petulant, and I’m having a frenzy)
On the sofa she weeps
BOO HOO HOO HOO
She weeps and she weeps
BOO HOO HOO HOO HOO HOO
She weeps and she peeks
Through the curtain
He just got in his car
But the battery’s dead
So he asks to use the phone
And she gives him some rosary beads
or maybe a nice clean set of that mormon underwear
And that’s the end of the story
Keep being an equal opportunity offender, Jeff.
Carry on.
went to a Beck Palin Jesus rally last Saturday night I didn’t get laid and these people what I knew there got in a fight uh huh
it ain’t no big thang
but I should have liked to hear more about the spendings
I reserve the right to tell people they’re being overly presumptuous about people they only kinda, sorta know from a blog.
Oh, to belatedly answer the Wagner question, I draw outside the lines. Less grim, on the whole.
What’s needed is for a Tea Party-like small government wing to stage a coup of Team R
good lord how many times have I stated that???!!!
Lita Ford!
The duet with Ozzy might also fit, ‘feets.
I just blew a ham sandwich out my nose.
China Collapses Financially Soon:
When morons in the US (can you read this Tom?) start to tell us to be more like X you know that X will soon keel over. See: Japan 1989.
Now:
China’s Central Bank Chief Rumored To Have Defected.
Soon.
Go immediately to a hospital, B Moe.
Cause I think it does. Matter, that is. A lot. Because of the firebush thing, to be particular about it. And because of the evident peril to which the nation may be prone when it has lost an understanding of itself.
That’s a weird way to talk I just noticed, isn’t it? The nation can’t understand itself really, because it doesn’t have a mind with which to do so. But anyhow, metaphorically understand might work.
You can indict that you know.
Unlike Newsweek, I Still Believe Obama is the President
where’s patrick fitzgerald?
Yeah, but can you indict a cupcake?
He’s preparing a 42-count indictment against a box of Scooter Libby’s chicken mcnuggets.
oh crap, I’m sorry I even posted about Beck
This reminds me of rather heated disagreements (thank god one can’t throw rocks through cyber space) on whether any white person is capable of being “authentic” in blues or jazz. Everyone has what they believe is a sincere and logical stance and the disagreers just don’t get it… And music, like religion, [partisan politics] and sports really touch nerves.
I, me personnally, didn’t see the same thing JeffG did…it doesn’t make Jeff a bigot or wrong. For him the God notes of the song trumped everything else and if it turned him off when he shares most of the principles with the those in the audience, what is it doing for people who are just starting to explore and embrace those principles?
An aside…sheesh, I don’t think I’m that socially conservative!
yeah you get a bum rap
You bring a different perspective than I do sometimes, Darleen.
That’s a good thing. At least, I used to think it was. Back when I thought the market wanted less echo chambers and more meaningful discussions.
No, I don’t think you are that socially conservative. Just more so than I tend to be.
link
“67. Comment by Jeff G. on 8/30 @ 3:47 pm #
Merovign and WM Sherman, I know a great site you guys will probably really love. Here!”
I already saw that crank’s site.
Did the lack of seriousness in my comment not come through, or something?
Just more so than I tend to be.
:-) I get that.
Funny thing is, those things I’m “socially conservative” on are based solely on what I believe produces the most benefits to the individual.
I’m all about planting a sign that says “caution, bridge out ahead.”
There are bridges out behind too.
I always thought I got along fine with the religious types.
Until I dared offer an opinion on Beck’s revival that wasn’t glowing.
At which point I became a bitter, hateful, bigoted, passive-aggressive lefty or something.
I thought you were serious myself, Gen. Sherman.
We might need to start an enforced emoticon policy.
Did the lack of seriousness in my comment not come through, or something?
IMHO the lack of voice in the written word (like “tsking” and “tut-tutting” while doing parody) easily leads to mistaken interpretation.
Oh my kingdom for an explicit tag!
(and considering my house is really underwater, ain’t much of a kingdom here)
Off to flag football for 6-7-year-olds.
Where I’ll really bring the hate.
that goes on the back burner
oh lady you have no idea the trouble you can get in like that
:^=)
I gave him a broken nose and a Hitler mustache.
Sorry if I misunderstood you, Mr Sherman. I’ve been getting called lots of things recently. Just assumed, I guess.
Would that be because you’re so much bigger than them that it isn’t a fair contest?
So, back on topic, how did Mr Beck handle himself on his radio show and tv show today? Anybody give a report yet?
Man, he was a-gloatin’ and a-hootin’ and a-hollerin’ and sayin’, “Day-um we sho did show all dem A-theists what fo, eh? I’m sho glad we made DEM feel lef’ out. We betta off witout dem folks what don’ loves them some Jesus.”
Even I was embarrassed for him.
On the plus side, di hasn’t complained about any of my salty posts.
How long have I been commenting here? How many times have I brought it up? If there’s a salty post or the comments stray into an area I’d prefer not to go, I click over somewhere else and refrain from nagging y’all about it on account of it’s not my blog and I don’t get to steer every conversation.
I DON’T HAVE TO FEEL WELCOME IN EVERY THREAD.
Which is why it bugs me when people carp about “I don’t come over here to hear about X.” So what? If you don’t dig the conversation in any particular thread, please feel free to get over yourself and participate in a different conversation.
The larger point that is getting missed in people losing their collective minds by complaining about Jeff’s critique of the rally is that Beck and the organizers missed an opportunity to really connect with the Tea Party. The TP has been pretty non-religious for the most part since its inception, and that’s because there is a common ground to rally around: THE GOVERNMENT IS TOO BIG. This transcends just about every cultural difference easily.
Instead the rally came off as- the government isn’t too big, it just doesn’t have enough people of faith running it.
This is a missed opportunity.
I also should inform everyone here that it is my Christian duty to hate you all.
BECAUSE OF THE RAPTURE!
gave him a broken nose and a Hitler mustache
would that emoticon evoke Godwin’s Law?
No, sdferr. It’s because I like to stand on the side lines and heckle them by telling them their grampa isn’t really in Heaven.
Teach those kids to hate, too.
“Man, he was a-gloatin’ and a-hootin’ and a-hollerin’ ”
He did have a look of the cat what swallowed the canary in the first shot of him as he was accepting Chris Wallace’s welcome to the interview.
Oh, crap, I’d thought they let you get in a little o’ the action and hence had cause to hate.
Grampa Bunny Bunny isn’t painting sunsets after all?
HATER!!
I’ll use the little backslash thing at the end from now on.
Regarding the Beck/religion thing, well, I’m not into religion, Beck is, Beck is Beck.
I don’t watch his show – part of a general lack of affinity for cable news shows. The reports of his weepiness are off-putting.
If he put 300,000 people on the Mall I’d say we’re ahead of the game.
Heh, Darleen.
#135 – Jeff, I still think there are some quality discussions AND disagreements here. I would hope the little bit of sharpness and too quick to take offense type reactions would cool a bit.
I thought you made a good point about the message not necessarily being one that may be needed by those that already believe, and I tried to briefly make that known to mythusmage.
So I would hope the discussion here could continue on a less… heated (?) level. Some good points have been brought out.
Afterall, my life has depended on how well a message gets out to folks (ie. leaving Qarabaghi Robat in the Fall of 2004, with a firm stride…in retreat …because the word really didn’t make it there, or the other side’s word sure did!)
Over at the lefty sites, they are convinced Beck and his religious cohorts want to bring fascism wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.
I just don’t see that myself.
Going way back.
Not too hard to put up some names for the new Chicago 7 but Beck as Jerry and Limbaugh as Abbie are just the hand the magician is waving to catch your attention. Without a replacement for the “Clean for Gene” contingent on the inside along with a few already in place “Trojan horse” old wise men, all that hand waving and teargas is just a typical weekend at the G-8 summit except no sex or drugs.
Oh, and what if I answer all 3 for the Wagner question AND MC Frontalot’s nerdcore rap “Rhyme of the Niebilung” as well?
#162 – and I would be stuck lobbinng the tear gas. Harumph!
It doesn’t seem as though we’re going to be worse off because 3-500,000 showed up, at least there aren’t clear signs of any such thing yet. It equally isn’t possible to tell whether because of the rally we’re anything like better off, though again, time will tell. So on the whole, we could say we’re about where we were before, with a new thing having happened and awaiting events.
Too bland? What, it’s bland. So?
@157, that is about how I feel. I do think matters of faith are best kept private.
I do not fear prayer revivials, just sometimes they seem like carnival midways.
I think Mr. Tman has it a lot right.
I mostly fear those who put their faith in government. Now that religion is scary.
“It’s all her fault. Burn the witch!”
I’m listening to the taped version of GB’s first hour.
A caller identified herself as Ethyl, an elderly black woman, partially sighted, and having rented an electric scooter to get to the rally.
She and her daughter were confounded while trying to find an elevator onto the subway, and a white family stopped and helped her find the elevator, helped them onto the subway car, steadied the scooter in the car, and spent the entire day with them. She said that they treated her like family, even though they were complete strangers.
So there’s that.
When I see a telephone book advertisement with one of those little fishes on it, I go to the next ad.
If someone brings up Jesus in a contract negotiation, you should check to see if you still have your wallet.
Pags channels Caddyshack: “Well don’t worry son, the world needs ditch diggers, too.”
The reports of his weepiness are off-putting.
ALWAYS RELY ON REPORTS!
reports of let me eat waffles/shrimp are inspiring.
Look: I was in a pissy mood on Saturday. I was on the U-Stream feed on Beck’s Facebook page and right as the rally started the feed disappeared.
I couldn’t think of where to go. (It didn’t occur to me to go to C-SPAN until after midnight, which pissed me off even more.) I was pissed at Beck’s staff for underestimating the bandwidth requirement. I had planned to lie on the couch and listen to the rally all day, maybe catch some stage-one sleep (my favorite drug), so then I go to PW and people are pissing on the parade. I had utterly lost my sense of humor.
So I bit off a few heads and then remembered that when I’m in a head-biting mood, it’s best if I give the keyboard a rest. Which is why I wasn’t in the rest of the thread.
And so today I have my sense of humor back and am gleefully biting off heads instead of pissily.
Don’t you notice the difference?
someone brings up Jesus in a contract negotiation, you should check to see if you still have your wallet.
True dat.
#166 and #171 – that is awfully open minded of you!
Let’s take a look at the leftists wailing THEOCRACY today, and compare that to when Barcky Obambi said that his religion informed his politics making him against same sex marriage. Had a conservative been so blatant the leftists heads would have assploded. As is, because they lurv them a little soft euro socialism, they shrug their collective shoulders and move on. Just look at how many of them go back to their districts and run ads about how they are god-fearing family people. Sorry for the tangent.
jeez do we have to do trig on this thread
Re: #35,
I think Dennis Hopper and Bugs were separated at birth as were Martin Sheen and Elmer.
They don’t actually believe Obama is a Christian, JD. They accept that sort of rhetorical touch in him because they see his church attendance as having been a savvy, politically opportunistic maneuver. Not unlike his opposition to gay marriage which they quite obviously never took seriously. The interesting thing to me isn’t the left’s hypocrisy in tolerating his “religion,” but the fact that they no more believe what Obama says in this regard than does anyone else.
geoffb – That picture of the Shelby Cobra was awesome.
Abe – I have often felt the same thing. You did a good job putting it in words.
I read that article earlier, and I was struck by this point:
My brother, who passed away three years ago today, followed that particular career track and had a wife, two kids, and owned his own house by the time he was in his mid-to-late twenties. He had a good life – more satisfying in many ways than my own academic career.
Struck by a strange idea here.
Say your name is Mitt. Say you’re an adherent of a certain religion that about 1/3 of the voters you need to attract believe is apostasy and severely wrongheaded. Pretty much anything you do to convince them that your beliefs are sincere, and help make you a better person, or, at worst, are completely benign, but because you are a politician, anything you do to that effect will come off as self-serving. You’re boned, right?
Now, say a prominent coreligionist managed to become a major figurehead of a reform movement in your political party. Folks are okay with his religion because a) he’s not going to have a finger on the nuclear trigger any time soon, and b) he doesn’t wear it on his sleeve.
Then, because you play eleven-dimensional chess, you manage to pull strings and maneuver so that the coreligionist figurehead plans a big, nominally apolitical, spiritual revival where a bunch of that 1/3 voting bloc goes to get their spirituality on. A big happy prayer meeting where it’s okay to pray with mormons and catholics and baptists and the odd calvinist.
That’s right. Who does Glenn Beck’s MLK themed tent revival benefit? Mitt frekin’ Romney.
Well said Abe. Obama is not a Muslim. Obama believes in a savior. He worships him when he looks in the mirror in the morning.
This sums things up lately.
good luck with that
if you’re a muslim O!’s a muslim
Sorry, that is how I feel. I know it is prejudicial. I do not mean to be insulting to sincere believers. I am around lots of really religious sincere people. I respect them a lot. They live it. They don’t wear it.
I have a lot of respect for Darleen, dicentra, you, and (although it galls me to say it) even JD occasionally (although I never thought of him of being overtly religious).
I may be poorly articulating this. Let’s just say not everyone who talks the talk, walks the walk.
Tax rates on all five income brackets, not just those paid by “the rich,” will increase by 2 to 4 percentage points
Pants on fire
newrouter, if you are a muslim, O’s an appostate.
You would be describing a deception of a very high order Hadlowe, which wouldn’t be worth the risk it would involve would it? I don’t think so.
I DEMAND ANSWERS!
5) My life’s greatest hits.
Yeah, my maternal grandfather, although technically Polish, was of Prussian extraction, and Dad’s side is almost pure Scandi so I got that whole Teutonic thing going in spades.
it’s not my blog and I don’t get to steer every conversation
Exactly.
Yappy the slewfoot helmsman handles those chores around here.
A Königsberger TD?
The interesting thing to me isn’t the left’s hypocrisy in tolerating his “religion,”
ACCORDING TO GLENN BECK, Obama’s religion is Black Liberation Theology, which is Marxism pretending to take the Bible seriously.
That explains alot.
Who does Glenn Beck’s MLK themed tent revival benefit? Mitt frekin’ Romney.
Well, yes. Especially since Glenn is down on Mitt for his support of MassCare and has begun to suspect that ol’ Mitt’s got some progg in his DNA.
Otherwise, right on. :-)
JeffG – Ezra BoyWonder is quite the sophist, no?
Mr. Karl had the liberation theology thing comprehensively covered back before Beck even worked for Fox.
He had links.
nah muslims are allowed to lie to infidels
ACCORDING TO GLENN BECK …
Any time a Cornellian goes to that well, God kills a duckling.
Somewhere, a cat is going unserenaded.
does karl have 2000000 viewers
Karl is a treasure
little debbies to kkkarl
I dunno that it’s dishonest Sdferr. I posed the hypothetical tongue in cheek, playing up the Hugh Hewitt stars aligning for Mitt Romney angle.
That said, Beck does serve to mainstream Mormons a bit, at least in conservative circles. In 2008, the consensus was that Mitt lost because Huckabee supporters were scared of Mitt’s underwear. If southern religious conservatives were less disposed to toss him aside because of his religion, he may have been the nominee in 2008. I don’t know that he would have beat Obama, but it sure would have been nice to see someone who wasn’t economically illiterate on the mound during the credit meltdown and the debates.
For 2012 Mitt’s unelectable for a wholly different reason. (Hint: It rhymes with “omnicare” and undercuts the main complaint against the Obama/Pelosi/Reid traveling fiscal bloodbath.)
*
So Beck has built a news site, hired reporters and will report news now.
Sdferr, yes, at least to the best of our knowledge. The family was some sort of minor landed nobility (family name Chludzinski.) Grandfather was a bit of a free spirit, and at one point was sent away to live in the Black Forest before finally giving his family the finger and boarding a ship for America. The family stories about the guy are a wonder to hear, he was fluent in a fistful of languages and wrote articles and poetry for a few of the foreign language papers in Buffalo.
Here’s his family coat of arms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholewa_coat_of_arms
open range there on the algore info superhighway.
Well, it appears that one result of the rally is that the Left is willing to discuss issues with Beck like adults.
So willing that even the HuffPo had to delete the offer for parlay and replace it with an apology.
Glenn’s initial reaction was to contemplate making a tape himself for the cash.
Check out this gem:
I guess they are onto us: that $100,000 offer to find videotapes of Van Jones admitting to be a commie sure makes us look bad. How crass can we be?
Levin: “You can not separate the philosophy from politics.” “Don’t leave politics to those who would use them against us.”
That seems to be aimed at Beck.
Of course, Levin thinks we need God. I don’t. I think we need something approaching the powers we normally associate with God, inasmuch as we have to agree that, because we are all born of nature, there are certain laws that nature endows us with that man can’t take away or abridge.
To believe that, all you have to do is sign on to the social contract that is the United States, its Declaration, and its Constitution. You can be an atheist and still believe that we are all born with certain unalienable rights simply by virtue of all being born into the same basic condition.
Natural Law is essential to our founding principles. Religion per se is not.
You’re not answering my Wagner question.
5) XB-70
Any time a Cornellian goes to that well, God kills a duckling.
D’OH!
Mr. Karl had the liberation theology thing comprehensively covered back before Beck even worked for Fox.
Of that I have absolutely no doubt.
If anyone wants a good belly-laugh, sheer unadulterated comedy, go find Krugman’s idiocy from the NY Times today. Midgets suck, especially the lying socialist lying ones.
inasmuch as we have to agree that, because we are all born of nature, there are certain laws that nature endows us with that man can’t take away or abridge.
Add in a belief that nature was the creation of a providential God and you’ve got the very same Deism that guided Jefferson to write the things he wrote.
Natural Law is essential to our founding principles. Religion per se is not.
And yet for the people whom Beck reaches they’re inseparable, to the point that “Natural Law” is not one preferred idea among many but rather the very Will of God.
They’reWe’re less suceptible to certain strains of progg sophism because of it, as evidenced by how many religious are proggs and how many are not.You are the exception to the rule, but you knew that. Glad to have you in our camp. Glad to be in yours.
Don’t leave politics to those who would use them against us.
That’s assuming that politics is the only playing field, and also that by invoking God we aren’t playing on the political field.
Watch it unfold for a bit and then we’ll see what the real effect is.
I wonder if David Byrne heard this before composing this?
I have yet to see anyone construct the theoretical politico-philosophical principles of the United States out of scripture alone. I don’t believe it can be done, but I’d be more than happy to entertain any attempt.
ask iman rauf he agrees with the infidels
Jeff @ 7:33 drools on himself.
999 are an English rock band who formed in London in 1977
Live, 1975.
yo go girlll let’s talk about moe openly and his pedophile stuff. put your name out there.
Yes, Mormon bashing, that’s the ticket, “Jeff”.
Actually, maybe it is, outside idiots tend to bring us together.
Ahhh, thank you, guins.
Guess 999 just seemed older somehow.
ain’t no mormon kiddy bombers dude nor live from the aerab “refugees” 60 years of some fine jew/dhimmi hate
By the way, and completely on topic, am I the only one who thinks he could become an early punk bassist in about a month?
mormons don’t slaughter people and then build victory temples where they died while a cocksucker president smirks approvingly
well maybe just the once
You don’t need the Will of God to accept the Natural Law premise. You can go with “just is, and always has been.”
I don’t know what that means.
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
Good starting point, I’d guess.
Windsprints
You can go with “just is, and always has been.”
Sure, you can. But is it a requirement that everyone does?
I’ve seen sdferr bring this up a number of times but don’t recall any answers.
Can anyone find Natural Rights theory in religious texts?
Is that to ask whether natural right is necessary ThomasD?
bh, when you say religious texts do you mean things like the Torah, Bible, etc. or would you include polemics and apologetics?
Sdferr, no it is not.
Sticking to scripture as such is the best presentation of the problem I think ThomasD, since who knows what a commentator might drag in from who knows where.
I suppose, in this context, I’d prefer the Old and New Testament. But, for my own edification, I’d appreciate anything you’d direct me towards, Thomas.
natural law stipulates that if you spend like a diseased retarded whore the world will treat you like one… I think it’s in Matthew
That is certainly Old Testament, happyfeet.
If you restrict the subject matter so narrowly then you already know the answer. There had to be the concept of natural philosophy before there could ever be a theory of natural law. You just could not conceive the latter without making the leap to the former.
my bad
“Of course, Levin thinks we need God.”
Are you sure you do not have that backwards. I thought Levin thinks we need a dog.
If I were to undertake the research into the thing I think I’d go hunting in the letters to the faithful of the Greek states and see what they had developed. But yeah, I take your meaning about the lack of nature in the Old Testament for sure.
is one “abrahamic” faiths ideas about “natural law” differ from the other 2? if so why?
With that being the case, Thomas, then I really don’t understand the notion of religious underpinnings for our polity.
Beyond that, sometimes I consider the very notion of religious underpinnings for political principles disagreeable because religious people disagree amongst themselves on so many different things.
If we just speak of the political in itself then aren’t we helping to dispel any inevitable confusion?
funny that the mfm sold O! as a “g-d” nice styro there champ
The Constitution is silent on God, except for the end when it is dated “In the year of our Lord…”
And given that at least a few of the founders were agnostics, I do not believe faith is a prerequisite to being a good American or patriot. I do not believe Beck is saying that. But if he is, I disagree.
global warming
joe that foxhole over there is yours
Even as an agnostic, I sometimes think God sent you to test my patience, newrouter.
The Old testament has kingships aplenty, so we’d probably be on firm ground sketching a theory of monarchy from there, and its corruption, tyranny or despotism wouldn’t be far behind. I don’t recall an oligarchical situation right off hand in the OT, but wouldn’t be surprised to run into one either. An aristocracy doesn’t come to mind at all, at least as a function of ordinary human doings.
So Beck has built a news site, hired reporters and will report news now.
…!!!… Immediately after the rally, he was interviewed by Chris Wallace and said he, Beck, wasn’t a journalist.
If he’s aiming to make this yet another pundit farm, I don’t know what kind of success he can expect. The liberal True/Slant powered down this past month, with most of the employable scribblers decamping to Forbes.
I was accused of being a Democrat and a shill for Democrats today.
Where, JD?
well they weren’t openly contemptuous of we the people
Jeff, I have to agree. Glenn Beck wasted an opportunity to gain political traction. Then again, he resonated with the drifting religious masses who can’t tie their boat to the right pier.
It is under the ideals the formed our Declaration and Constitution. And it is about as necessary a requirement in “just is, always has been” form as it is in “He said so” form.
Besides, I’m pretty sure the major religions were around before what our founders and framers did with it. Funny how God wasn’t giving out those same Natural Rights then.
Or maybe He was, and we just ignored him. Either way, all that is required is an acceptance of the premise, either by leap of faith or by social contract.
Religion is not necessary per se.
Well bh, the answer is rather looong, and involved to say the least. One key thing to recognize is that much or what we ‘are’ stems from the enlightenment(s) of western Europe, but that prior to the enlightenment effectively all fromal thought in western Europe was expressly religious, and only ceased to contain any religion at all well after our Nation was founded.
Slightly more specifically the historical record is quite clear, the theory of natural law developed entirely within the context of Judeo-Christian thought. It was only with the rise of Deism, specifically the negative aspects of Deism when natural law ever began to be considered as anything apart from a providential God and more specifically as apart from the God of the Testaments (with emphasis on the word began.)
But, that is not my point.
My question to Jeff still stands, is it a requirement that everyone need accept his formulation that the explanation for natural rights is that they “just [are], and always has been”?
Because that would seem to be a rather onerous imposition on many people, particularly in a nations whose foundational principles included freedom of thought and freedom of religion.
Don’t look here! Instead, look at these rude signs from the Beck rally! Quick, somebody pass a law criminalizing these people.
Oops. I see sdferr already touched on the pre-democratic republic religion question.
Why not? People can hop from Hot Air to Pajamas to Hewitt’s Town Hall to Beck’s stable.
It’s like Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, and Sears built solely for the right. Why go anywhere else?
Plus, because so much of the same stuff is produced, prices will remain really really low!
At another website, bh. By an imbecile, who seems obsessed with the idea that I am really a liberal Dem. These are weird times.
“the theory of natural law developed entirely within the context of Judeo-Christian thought.”
Where we are establishing a distinction between natural right and natural law?
Not really all that difficult to get people to accept that no man is permitted take away certain rights because they are yours by dint of birth.
Only those who wish to take away those rights will put up an argument. And they won’t be able to hide their argument behind a pretense that they are “separating church and state.” It’s pure “might makes right,” and it shows up as such.
which g-d what rights whose’s nature? discuss
Demonic midget dwarfs dressed like clowns think like this …
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/opinion/30krugman.html
This is one song that was on that jukebox.
Exactly.
Not surprisingly, unless you are a fundamentalist who believes scriptures were penned by God (or directly through his will and words), people are always involved as intermediaries.
What we have here in the US is a political philosophy based around a certain idea of “God” that, it turns out, doesn’t require any kind of organized religion to sustain it. All it needs is an agreement to accept the foundational premises, and it turns out that those are a fairly easy sell.
Thomas, I definitely take your point on thought within Christendom (Europe) and the unavoidable context of the evolving ideas.
However, then I’d be interested in the citations from thinkers like Hobbes and the like quoting scripture to explain what it was they thought they were doing. I need to see religion as truly fundamental rather than assumed or merely contemporary. I don’t.
(Enormous disclaimer: I might not see because I don’t know what I don’t know.)
mormons don’t slaughter people
Actually, they did. There is a monument there as well.
Important to point out that Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration made no mention of a “Creator”. It was inserted in later drafts, presumably to make a more persuasive argument for independence because the King believed that his authority was God given.
Saw C.C. in D.C. in around ’72-’73 I think. Fun show.
Every morning when I stand out in front of the house waiting for my daughter’s school bus, I always tell her to watch out for the teeming hordes of Mormons who are looking to do some slaughtering.
God is not necessarily the difference between left and right. This Sharpton sign is telling.
yea well reaching way back. how about our muslim “citizens” – Two Men Arrested on Terror Suspicion on Flight From Chicago to Amsterdam
Published August 30, 2010
| FoxNews.com
#262 no, for the purposes of those statements they are one and the same.
Jeff, I agree with you to the extent that it does not matter how we get ‘there’ so long as we get there. But I do think that our foundational principles include a healthy respect for the opinions of others.
So, when faced with a person who insists that ‘man can’t take away certain rights because they are yours by virtue of God why should I insist he reconsider or alter his belief? He thinks the rights unalienable and he lives in a society founded on the principle of freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, and on all this we agree.
JD you should see a Mormon family work over a pot luck. I tell you it is frightening how they can slaughter deviled eggs and various cold salads.
Catholics are no slouches either.
Then we’d have a problem explaining classical natural right, which was assuredly not a function of Judeo-Christian theology, Christianity not even existing yet and Judaism playing no role that I’m aware of in the development of the theory.
bh, Hobbes really isn’t your man. Look to later stuff, starting with (or near) Locke, but more importantly the stuff from the Scottish enlightenment, Thomas Reid being my favorite.
Locke however learned an awful lot from Hobbes. I’m not at all sure that Locke could have moved forward without him.
Sdferr I’m not clear on what you are referring to when you say classical natural rights. Is this a concept actually from the classical period?
I’m fairly conversant on Locke but with the mention of Thomas Reid you’ll need to excuse me from the discussion because then I’m not wholly but still essentially ignorant, Thomas.
#278 of course, and Hobbes couldn’t have done what he did without having Descartes to kick around, I’m just trying to get him to where the meat and potatoes is.
Plato and Aristotle are the most frequently cited sources of the theory, along with Socrates who’s credited with much of the discovery.
Agreed.
as a roman catholic the problem is the entrenchment of bureaucracy on all levels. me free minds, free people, free markets. freedom that’s beck’s message. oh with a little g-d thing too.
bh in this case Wikipedia is your friend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Reid
Reid’s notion of common sense was the direct inspiration for the title of Tom Paine’s work (suggested by Adams IIRC.)
Sdferr
Eh, different political idea from what we have now. Reign of the judges in ancient Judea was quasi-oligarchal. Not really hereditary or family influenced, although I don’t think you can remove that idea from any human society.
Arguably pharisaical rule in Christ’s time lends itself to an oligarchal status. There you have a small group of powerful men basically running the show while the roman governor does his best to collect tribute for the emperor with the minimum amount of unrest.
Speaking of autocracy, Caesar Augustus makes an appearance by reference early in Luke. Does that count?
Meat and potatoes? How would we know where to look if we don’t trace the development of the thing? Seems to me we are in the position of sourcing what has come down to us, and therefore in no position to arbitrarily cut ourselves off from any part of our scheme, if we would understand the grounds on which our scheme is in fact built, and what the alternatives to it might be.
That is very interesting Sdferr, and something I’m going to have to look into, as it would appear to be a gaping whole in my understanding of those individuals.
The only thing I can think of is – help me out here – the Greek classic that contains the story of the sister who disobeys the king to go out and bury her brother who is lying dead on a battlefield, and is then called to account and basically tells the king that she disobeyed his law because the law that says sisters must bury their brothers is older than the law of kings – sort of the Greek version of the Roman Mos Maiorum.
My daughter really wants to see Legend of the Guardians.
cut your head off with a rusty scimitar. allen ackbar.
they are convinced Beck and his religious cohorts want to bring fascism wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.
It’s the only thing they can argue with … the caricatures in their head about Godbothers …
while it is the Left that gives us speech codes on campus, sues pharmacists, wants the government to control our thermostats/lightbulbs/showerhead/salt intake/BMI, how we raise our kids,
who was that now who wants to use the government to control our lives?
ok I’m skipping about but this:
Comment by Jeff on 8/30 @ 6:43 pm #
funny how there has been nothing passed…indeed, there is nothing on paper at ALL … that limits the expiration of the Bush tax cuts to use the “FILTHY RIIIICH” of $250,000 and above.
How about that bottom tax rate jumping from 10 to 15% and the halfing of the child care credit. Yeppers, it’s only going to hurt the Richie Riches, aint it, fuckwit.
link
Thomas, I was just struck by the wiki piece with this line, “He often quotes Cicero, from whom he adopted the term “sensus communis”.
So, perhaps common sense also goes back to the ancients.
I joked the other day that I can’t really study the Enlightenment because sdferr keeps sending me back to the Greeks and Romans. If the Enlightenment thinkers had the very same issue, we should probably keep this in mind.
The import of this seems apparent to me in the context of this discussion.
To put a point on the tip of the pencil, I’ve frequently linked to Hobbes’ de Cive I, where Hobbes tells us at para. 2 that man is not by nature a social animal. He here severs any link with the classical thought on this subject. This is a judgment on his part, of which I believe we should be acutely aware, for we may, who knows, disagree with him. If we were to disagree, the entire structure of Hobbes’ development of natural right may crumble, leading directly to problems down the line to our founding.
That is the story of Antigone. Pitting ancestral custom against the ruler of the city. I can’t recall, to say the truth, whether Sophocles had a natural right teaching in mind. I’m leaning toward not.
Classical natural (phusis) right stands over against custom (nomos) in the discovery of nature itself as a distinct type of rule or law of the natural beings, as say dogs barking by nature, where one city will by nomos bury their dead, another by a different nomos burn theirs on a funeral pyre, and another still conduct cannibalistic ritual on theirs.
Watch out for that Sdferr character, listen to him too much and he’ll have plowing through Plato in the original Greek. ;-)
And if anyone is interested the story I mentioned is Sophocles’ Antigone.
thanks for your clarification yawn
You’re welcome newrouter. Getting sleepy? I suggest you off to bed then.
Who do you think sounds stupid with comments like this, newrouter? Yourself or the target? Do you think you’re scoring points? You wallow in the mud like an animal and then taunt without thought.
Too harsh?
Why would you have to do that?
I’m simply saying that you can reach the same point of departure from a perspective wherein religion plays no necessary role. And that Beck’s presentation, by seizing on God and religion as necessary for the revival because necessary for traditional American values, was wrong in an important sense. Or if not wrong, say unnecessarily constrained.
And my point was, because he is ostensibly hoping to bring back the ideals upon which this country was founded — and knowing that he must that religion and politics don’t always work when the right mixes them so specifically — he chose a frame for the message that risks backfiring, and he did so needlessly, inasmuch as he could have extolled the virtues of what Natural Rights imply, a Creator, without turning his event into a ostentatious display of piety.
Some don’t agree with that assessment, and that’ fine. But how that provides circumstantial evidence that I’m a “bigot” who doesn’t understand religion and wants to drum it out of the public square, is beyond me.
In fact, it strikes me as a rather lazy dismissal of what I was arguing, all because the people who make some of those claims were inspired by what Beck did.
They have every right to be inspired. But the fact is, the event was mentioned on my site with a feed to said event, so I went to the feed, watched, then came back and offered my opinion about what I saw.
I assumed that’s what the post was for. Not a drum circle for the true believers, with me as Mr Mellow Harsher.
Thanks Newrouter, phusis and nomos I know, not well, but I do remember covering them many many moons ago.
I guess I would have to understand what Hobbes meant by “social animal” before rendering a judgement, but off the top of my head, I have to disagree that man isn’t a social animal by nature. Huge portions of our brains are set aside for speech and for face recognition, which I suggest is enough to discredit any idea that we are not social by nature. A non-social human would not need to recognize different humans, or certainly not the thousands we can distinguish between.
However, I have not read more than a smattering of any of the philosophers, and no Hobbes that I remember, and I probably never will, so perhaps my opinion is to be taken lightly.
There’s a link to it right there cranky-d and really, it’s only a couple of sentences. Really important sentences, but just a couple anyhow.
You don’t know how true that is, Thomas. Heh. The jerk made me read Hiero just to understand a quick email about Strauss.
Not a joke.
where are your Team R friends now little governor boy? NOwheres. They’re silent. Not even that incessantly yappy Palin woman will yap on your behalf.
You are alone. So very very alone.
Sucks to be you.
And all those jobs just gone gone gone.
Darleen don’t forget the rest of it:
…they are convinced Beck and his religious cohorts want to bring fascism wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.
sitting in a lawn chair and eating a KFC Double Down
and watching NASCAR!
Because that is how they swing!
So what did Jindal do to piss off his pals?
So…uh…how do the monkeys fit in all this again?
I haven’t the foggiest. He has capricious pals I guess. Fell in with a flighty bunch of staunchless creampuff pansies.
heh. Old world or new world?
Not even the Gov’s of similarly effected states? Like Mississippi, ‘Bama and Texas?
Rick Perry had a hair appointment.
I dunno. Just to be safe, I’m with the monkeys.
You could even say I’m a believer.
sdferr– you’re no match for feets’ intellect.
Surrender now.
That’s just crazy. Those four ought to be shoulder to shoulder in a heartbeat yelling their lungs out. Makes no sense otherwise. What the hell would they have to lose — or for that matter have to gain by being silent?
Jeff, I don’t think I’ve called you a bigot. I don’t think I’ve implied you are a bigot. I have asked you some pointed questions, and you’ve been quite forthcoming with answers.
unnecessarily constrained.
Totally agree. But as you noted earlier, it was very much a self selected bunch and I’m perhaps slightly less bothered by his obvious preaching to the choir. And against something you said last night, so long as this does not become an exercise in exclusion I don’t see a problem. When shown evidence of such a predilection I’ll be first to condemn.
(Given that he was never going to get a fair viewing out of the MSM I’m not sure a ‘better’ performance would have been that much more productive either.)
and knowing that he must that religion and politics don’t always work when the right mixes them so specifically
Because the left has been so successful, or at least doesn’t get willfully misconstrued when they do? Maybe I’m over-reading but this strikes me as dangerously close to what you have spoken so strongly against on so many occasions.
he could have extolled the virtues of what Natural Rights imply, a Creator, without turning his event into a ostentatious display of piety.
Sure he could have, but likewise he didn’t have to do it any other way than the way he wanted. It was his choice, and he played to his crowd.
all because the people who make some of those claims were inspired by what Beck did.
Not sure if I’ve made this clear, but I am not one of those people. But if those people who are inspired go on to do things that relate more to what you wanted to hear, and I want done (hell, just showing up at the polls to clean out the progglodytes) then dang if it wasn’t a good thing after all.
sdferr– you’re no match for feets’ intellect.
Surrender now.
I had a similar thought going through my head. But I was also contemplating the making of a tasty sandwich for to eat it, so you beat me to the thoughts what went through my head.
What can one do, the Judge, Feldman, has given the moratoriums two good thwacks of the bat, yet it lives like a T-4 infected zombie. Mad little pikachu, is the vert definition of irony.
victory is yours this time Mr. sdferr but you haven’t seen the last of me
“. . . it was very much a self selected bunch and I’m perhaps slightly less bothered by his obvious preaching to the choir. And against something you said last night, so long as this does not become an exercise in exclusion I don’t see a problem. When shown evidence of such a predilection I’ll be first to condemn.”
I have quibbled, and I do think it merely quibbling since I can’t know how wide or deep a phenomenon what I’ll propose is, but yesterday I think, Darleen characterized the attendees as in part made up of Americans who do not have the habit of paying close attention to politics, to following the issues daily, and indeed, are in large measure “turned off” to the narrow definition of politics that Beck has been used to using for the last few weeks at least. I don’t doubt that Darleen has a good sense of these folks. Let me take them as a given, though in what proportion to the whole, we cannot say.
My quibble is this, that these people are in want of an introduction to the broader, deeper meaning of not simply the term politics, but to the arm grabbing reality of the thing, the sense in which what is done by our Government, ostensibly on our behalf, has now reached out to injure or alarm these self-same people, who could heretofore be content to avert their gaze or attention.
So my quibble: this was both a bit of misguidance, to the extent that Beck has persuaded them that the rally was not about politics, for it surely was (and this mistake, I think though I do not wish, may come back to bite Mr Beck himself, though perhaps not too hard), and to the extent that the opportunity to both educate and ally these people with the rest of the polity now up in arms was foregone. Perhaps another opportunity will appear. I do not know.
“THat word, you’re using doesn’t mean what you think it does” , RCT
#320 – you need a hairless cat to use lines like that.
Or ask JD if you can borrow his underground lair.
Well bEck doesn’t see it as politics, just returning to first principles, which are strictly ‘old and busted’ in the New Order
Lady Gaga has a hairless cat
I’d settle for the twin Ma-Duces, screw the lair.
A valid concern Sdferr.
I hate to speak for Beck, but perhaps he ‘knows’ that his audience doesn’t really like the notion of being political, particularly in relation to the two parties who are often seen as something lower than used car salesmen.
So to avoid scaring people away by making them feel strident he chooses to avoid the connotation, knowing that once they find themselves in the swing of things most will merely keep on keeping on.
It is a decidedly vernacular approach to the use of the word.
Four is way better than two.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m225CyqeEAs
The lesson I believe they have to learn, must learn, cannot fail to learn, is not a lesson I would want to have to teach them, for it will be an indictment of them at rock bottom. They have made a hash of their own polity by standing to the side, or claiming boredom with the processes, or by merely being lazy when they could easily have done otherwise, so have now come to this pass, that they or others telling them, realize that the whole damn thing is in grave danger of collapse, possibly not to be recovered in their lifetimes, if at all. This is not a teaching that will go down like a chocolate milkshake, hamburger and fries.
“My milkshake brings all the boys in the yard”
Not mine, you understand. Hers. I’m more of a “Hey, you kids, get off of my lawn!”
These voices, they’re loud and insistent. Does anyone have something that I can take?
First person who mentions “a hike” gets it right in the trachea.
Now this is offensive:
Like this is a mystery
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2014332,00.html
Because being on a bar stool brings you closer to God, duh.
(Nobody tell Beck)
I like the Kelis she has … verve
There are milkshakes afoot?
By the way, from way up there, cranky mentions some neurological underpinnings for social behavior. In the Hobbesian sense, it probably doesn’t change too much because that’s more in group and out group and flies out the window when mates are involved.
Yet, there’s something there, I think. Like a little bit. Like a bit of it needs to be there to put it’s foot on the scale and allow later more refined behavior.
Makes me think of game theory and tit for tat. “Forgiving” tit for tat can be more advantageous. Occasionally trying to get out of negative loops with next round opening cooperative moves.
Maybe the slightest bit of that is related to the religious underpinnings.
(Very unrefined thought. Don’t beat me up.)
Rather than always correcting my errors can everyone just agree to pretend I have a brain lesion?
In summary: not dumb, brain lesion.
Alan Kellogg has responded to some of your comments thus: “You’ll note, good reader, that politics is not Goldstein’s strong point.”
Not sure how he’s using that word, but some here would call me fucking Cassandra when it comes to reading the political tea leaves.
Diplomacy isn’t my strong point. Politics? Well, on that I’d beg to differ. Unless he means I’m not a good player for Team R.
Plus, bigot.
Or brain lesion. (It’s all the rage!)
Aristotle’s take:
Hobbes read his Aristotle. The question for us to filter through is, how much of Aristotle did he keep and how much discard?
So in that quote I sent you from Carl Schmitt,
“all right is the right of a particular Volk”
he is calling what is “nomos” by the name of “right” when it is simply custom. By this then our “natural rights” should stand as the higher against all the “customs” that are honored as rights in multiculturalism. Obama’s vaunted positive rights also are of the same vintage and are naught but customs and ones which are in direct conflict with natural rights.
[Crosses fingers hopefully while looking at the floor]
I haven’t any experience of Schmitt, though I’ve heard tell of him here and there, so I’m on breaking ice walking out into an analysis of his position. Still, holding my breath with the next step, “all right is the right of a particular Volk” sounds mightily historicist to me, so I’d point first at Hegel to see where that would get us. Recall “a man is the son of his times”? That’s where I’d look. I’m consequently not at all sure that Schmitt would even recognize the possibility of natural right, in fact, I’d say not.
Left a comment over there. I’m not expecting much.
By the way, did you guys know that if you speak with Geoff by email he also assigns a shit load of homework?
Take everything together and it’s almost like you can get a liberal education (yeah, I’m considering dropping the classic, OUTLAW!) just from this blog. Which, hey, I think that’s pretty cool.
I’ll agree that you have a brain lesion if you’ll agree that I have a brain lesion, Jeff.
Not that this is relevant to any part of this thread.
coughsocialcontractcough
Y’all go ahead and cut your side-deals, I’m gonna sit over here and feed my amoeba.
That’s one of them salty comments dicentra was on about, isn’t it?
Mr S and I had a quiet tussle a few days ago, though I can’t say what it was about, having forgotten it by now due to the damned amoeba eating away at my brain. In any event, his comment over at Kellogg’s joint doesn’t veer far from about what I’d have expected of him.
Damned things are eating away at my taste perception centers as well, so I can hardly tell salt from sour.
Next thing we know though, Merrick will be hollering “I am not a ????????? ????!”
In birth and death we are singular. In the tween time the mind calls out for others, without which madness in which we make our own internal others. Discourse being as necessary in waking as dreaming is in sleep.
I’m less perceptive. That comment from JeffS was a bit of an awakening for me.
Some dudes just want to shiv that guy next to them in the shower apparently.
That seems to me about the way of it geoffb. From the ancient’s point of view, men incapable of political life would be monstrous, incapable of rising to their completion as men, of rising to any pretense to virtue of any sort, so utterly empty in consequence.
bh
coughmathcoughfinancecoughmusiccoughphilosophycoughwritingcough
‘nough said?
I’ve never assigned any math homework, Geoff. I can tell because you don’t hate me.
Good times.
I have to keep Google translate on a tab to cope with sdferr’s Greek but that last one confuzzled it. only got Policy then an untranslatable. Did find out that Google doesn’t do Latin yesterday though.
Angie Harmon is so so so sexy. And she just seems cool.
Other than my wife, who is herself way sexy (no small feat for an unemployable manbaby bigot to land such a catch, incidentally), Angie is my first crush since Elle McPherson in, like, the late 80s.
Sorry. Had Rizzoli and Isles on the DVR.
Was that all out loud?
geoffb, use this, click on the blue show button on the far right and the Greek will drop down, then click on any word you’ve an interest in, a new page will generate with that word and definition, then click on LSJ at the top and the LiddleScott will generate with the entire definition.
Not assignments, terms I have to wrestle to understand. If you assign longhand long division or dividing one fraction by another and show your work it’s over. We won’t even mention of the dread three letters from hell.
Is she, Angie, still married to that corner from the Giants.
?
Didn’t he retire?
MVA isn’t really a subject, Geoff. It’s more our proper fear of a cold and uncaring universe.
It was awhile ago and he was never very good so I assume so, sdferr.
Guy is/was a damn legend though.
Not in coverage, in snagging hot actresses. Legend-wise.
Angie is another Dallas kid. Seems like there’s a lot of beautiful women born in Dallas making it into film and tv.
Seahorn. He was actually a total stud ’til he got hurt.
Probably still together, if she’s who I think she is.
Loved her on Law and Order. She’s great on R and I, even if the show isn’t written well. Great cast is keeping it watchable.
Yeah, that’s it, Jason Seahorn.
Also geoffb, a Latin dictionary is available at Perseus too. As well as a grammar.
See, that’s just funny.
/ Dennis Green off.
Took me awhile but I found it again.
You play. To win. The game.
God bless you Jason Seahorn.
Oh. And —*
A million years ago, it seems.
They’ve a nice collection at IMDB too. She’s 5’10”, which is taller than I’d thought.
Good times.
Even better with football finally back again.
I have to tread water around here to keep from drowning while watching all you guys swimming by but I’m not quite this dumb.
“When the officer asked Hilton whose cocaine it was “she said she had not seen it but now thought it was gum.””
Suzana Drobnjakovic
Serbian y’reckon?
Lady Gaga has a hairless cat
All the kids are shaving now.
Jeff, a couple of skeeters nibbling at your ass does not a pack of wolves dismboweling you make. Perspective, my friend.
Thing is, you’ll find much, much more argument with that than Beck will with his view. While it often matters how you got there, I’m not convinced it does here. Regardless of one’s view of the provenance of rights, respect for and protection of them should be the common aim. Me, I don’t care how somebody gets there, but they’d damn well better get there, otherwise, we’re gonna scrap.
Keeping in mind that Beck kept his cards pretty close to the vest in the lead up to this, I wonder how many people who attended thought “Shit. I came here for a fucking sermon? What a waste of time.” I talked to lots and lots of people who were there and didn’t here a word of any such complaint. Nor did I hear any “Praise Jesus! Amen!” What I did hear a lot of talk about is what sort of trouble we’re in.
I see 3 groups of people here: Those who believe in God-free natural rights, those who believe that rights come from God, and those who don’t really give a shit about your stupid rights when they’ve got a world to perfect.
Is there another option I’m missing here? And if not, isn’t the obvious alliance here, well, obvious?
John Fund, WSJ: Obama Builds a Big Tent . . . for Conservatives
Me likey.
James Freeman:
Isn’t this the religious “Right” we want? Not one that is forcing abortion and gay marriage to the front of the agenda as some sort of litmus test? A religious right that puts the Founder’s principals first? Dude, I’ll march with ’em.
[…] “Think the economy is bad? Worse is coming” […]
Failing that, they need to be sent packing by it.
Douthat, who says he ‘underestimated Glenn Beck’…
But after all is said and done, this event signals the return of Ronald Regan’s ‘Big Tent’ coalition.
Unless, of course, there’s been too much ‘change’ in right-leaning Americans to recognize a good thing when they see it.
Oh, that linky above doesn’t go directly to the New Yawk Times, but to “The Blaze”, a new website launched by Glenn Beck. Sorry about the confusionalism.
Yes, many, many peeps who’ve long recognized a duty to take care of our little country did just that with that particular corner of it on that particular day. I suppose I don’t really need to link this for contrast. Beck quipped yesterday that had they been allowed to, they would have cleaned the filthy reflecting pool too.
The eternal picker-of-nits is on to something here, but misses the fact that what these heretofore uninterested, or uninvolved, voters don’t want or need is a lecture regarding the classical greek roots of polity. And here’s a news flash for you, there are many people whp won’t spend the time reading Hobbes, Locke, and many others who’s ideas influenced the founders of our nation. Does tghat make you superior to them somehow? No. Your opinion carries more heft, to be sure, and your knowledge is as broad as it is deep, but lecturing folks on the roots of the republic is a fast track tobeing viewed as being arrogantly elitist as the Obama posse.
Beck is possibly trying to motivate them by alluding to them squandering a God given grace-called a natural right by the philisophes of the enlightenment. So do you want these voters in the big tent? Or do you want them on the sidelines, or even worse, voting for a snake oil salesman like Huckabee? My choice is the big tent.
Maybe it just needs better marketing. ‘feets, you’re up!
When people don’t understand the basic principles of our political history, they are vulnerable to hucksters who sum-it-up for them. I would say that most of the progressive support is made up of folks who often skimmed to the summary of the articles. How the hell else do you get kids advocating for “Student Loan forgiveness” (here in Detroit on Saturday, with Jesse Jackson and Maxine Waters in attendance)?
That just blows my mind. As did the snippets from the Al Sharpton I-Have-A-Scheme Rally. These folks skipped the heavy lifting. Went right to swallowing whatever assumptions their leaders told them.
So. I have a problem with the assumptions that folks don’t need to hear lectures regarding the roots of polity. They haven’t heard fucking enough.
(I’m cranky – one of my chickens ran away, and is in the woods hiding)
If we could just get across that America isn’t, nor was it intended to be the Land of Free Shit, but rather a land of liberty and government by, of and for the people, we’d be miles ahead of where we are now. The classical origins are all well and good to know, but, how many fish can you realistically expect to catch with that bait? When the ship is sinking, the vast majority of people don’t give a damn about how the ship was built and they’re not interested in a lecture on the subject, despite the fact that there may be an answer to the problem in there. Or, shorter, most people aren’t that smart or curious and I don’t expect that natural fact to change anytime soon.
Then again, if you had told me a couple of years ago that Beck would be ranting at a chalkboard at 5 PM on Fox News and doing paradigm smashing ratings, I’d have scoffed at that too. I could be wrong, and I’d like to be. I’d be happy to congratulate anyone who can prove me so.
Those run a way chickens tend to come back Carin. The key is not chasing it and letting it think it was its own idea.
Well, at this current moment you may be right Pablo. But, lack of fucking knowledge is what got us HERE.
Joe, normally, I’d be tracking with you here. But, this is an unusual situation. My chickens don’t run anywhere- I let ’em out and they just kinda hang around. This chicken was a new one (of four) that I just got yesterday. It was getting pecked, so I was trying to separate it and it just ran STRAIGHT for the woods.
She keeps kinda sneaking back hanging by the woods near the coop. but I don’t think she’s just gonna walk back by herself.
You know … maybe if I let the other chickens out? Of course, I don’t know what the other new ones will do.
CRAP.
Are you speaking to the Left or to the Right ? Because if a person self-identifies as Conservative (entering by whatever door to the body of Conservatism as is still left ajar: fiscal conservatism, religious conservatism, or, like me, the NRA’s portal) then this knowledge you would see instilled is recognized as essential, and does make up the skeletal structure of the Conservative movement. It’s not necessary to become expert on every facet of skeletal structure, or become a bony piece of it, as along as you are part of the whole body, serving as, say, the liver. (Or in ‘feets’ case, the anus? ).
Just leave the damned doors cracked open a bit, please.
I’d submit that it wasn’t so much a lack of knowledge, but the introduction of a different school of thought left essentially unchallenged that got us here. Progressivism didn’t appear out of thin air, though it has been responsible for erasing the Founders principles, let alone Locke’s.
Come out from behind your sockpuppet and we’ll have a discussion. So far, you’ve only taken a free shot at a strawman, which is fine if it makes you feel better. If, on the other hand, you’d care to know further what seems to be missing, don’t hide, stand up.
Worse is coming? Better believe it:
Barack Obama has bowed before the UN over Arizona immigration law*
WTF happened there? Let’s try again:
Plus, he looks like a dork. Somebody butch him up, quick.
I don’t see it.
You can keep telling me how great it is and I can keep responding that I want these people awakened to classical liberal principles, not religious revivalism. Pace dicentra, I know exactly what Beck was trying to do here. I just don’t think it was the best use of his soap box. And that’s that.
SW, for the first time in my adult life, I’m thoroughly embarrassed to be an American.
Understood, Jeff, and frankly some of the reactions here, are uncalled for, Beck is kind of flying blind,here, making it up as he goes along. He still makes more sense on balance, than many of our credentialed betters. When he gets somethings wrong, it’s a beaut though.
It’s the soapbox what brung him. As Sarah Palin had to endorse John McCain, so does Glenn Beck have to acknowledge the engine that’s running his very being.
To climb on a different soap box would make him a pretender, and pretenders don’t so well persuade 300-550K people. At least not for very long.
Beck is telling his audience right now, haranguing them almost, that they must stand in the fire of the truth. Who would disagree? I don’t. So fine, let’s by all means, get to the truth. But guess what, the truth is a whole about the whole, one doesn’t get to shop while finding it like the diner in a cafeteria line, picking and choosing among appetizers, main courses, vegetables, starches and dessert. So it turns out not to be so easy. Big deal, it’s hard, but it’s well worth the trouble, or otherwise why would Beck be bothering? Laziness is no excuse.
Carin, did you see this on the news.
MSU Avoids Bedbugs On Campus
Michigan claims another top ten rating.
Beck is just one of many paths to conservative thinking. See my #394 above. All roads lead to November, right?
All roads led to November in 2008 and 2006 too. Yet the results of those roads play a major role in putting the country where it is today. Too short term a vision is just good enough to get us right back to the roads we were on as a nation in ’06 or ’08. Let’s do something different for a change.
What is that truth? Some would say natural rights. Others would say God-given rights. Both would stake their claims with the utmost sincerity. That battle has been waging for an awfully long time and it cannot and will not be resolved in any of our lifetimes. Would you you rather spend the evening trying to settle it anyway, or maybe we should grab some dinner instead.
Beck, being a person of faith, is not going out and preaching about how God’s got nothing to do with it. He doesn’t believe it. Not going to happen, no matter how much you wish he would. So, now what? Me, I think there’s plenty of truth we can all agree wholeheartedly on, and that’s probably a better place to expend our energies than squabbling over the unresolvable.
While true, pedantic lecturing and haughty accusations of laziness will turn off as many people as the religiosity may. Perhaps even more, considering the endless tut-tutting of the elitist left for the last 18 months. Its a strategy that may not lend itself to usher voters into the tent. But I’ll leave that determination up to others more erudite and well grounded than myself.
sdferr, we do ride a political pendulum. People live and die between Novembers, and learn, and forget, and become complacent, and become reborn.
The only Novembers that really exist for us are the ones that are coming. Or not, as fate dictates.
(Notice I chose ‘fate’ and not ‘God’, so as to not alienate those who are leery of the predestination question. )
That assumes capacity. I suspect you overestimate the supply.
So you’re going to continue hiding while attacking me? That’s odd. What’s the point of that? Am I somehow a threat? Or have you found me to be dishonest, honesty seeker who hides? Come on out and talk. Stand up big fella.
“What is that truth?”
A whole about the whole is an empty expression, you’re telling me?
“That assumes capacity. I suspect you overestimate the supply.”
Could be I do. So far as I know, there is only one way to find out. Or put another way buy bh, wow, would you look at those Hayek sales?
Not me. I wouldn’t have failed on Apostrophe.
I’m seeing your argument under attack, not your person. Meanwhile, you’re focusing on the person and not his argument. Tmctl… is talking strategy and his argument stands on it’s own merit. As does mine.
buy – by Ha! No, buy bh, he’s cheap! Quick, before someone else gets him.
Yes, and the guy selling them? A major Godbotherer who isn’t now or ever going to start telling people God’s got nothing to do with it. So, who’s going to push this up the charts? I’d be happy to meet him, but I’m fairly certain it isn’t going to be Glenn Beck, ever.
Whatever strategy closes the tent doors needs to be taken out and shot.
Dishonestly dealing with my argument, while terming me the eternal picker of nits is honesty at work, huh Pablo? Terming me pedantic and haughty is about the argument, not about me as a person. Right, I got it, honesty is the new policy. With you too though? I wouldn’t have thought it all that big a deal to you.
[…] the debate continues on Saturday’s Beck rally, whether it necessarily had to be framed in such explicit religious […]
I’ve never had a face to face discussion with someone wearing a hood. You?
I also wonder how one might ever put “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” to rest in America.
Have you ever been on the internet? Lots and lots of pseudonyms out there. Lots of them in here, for that matter.
Um…
Yeah, that’s a comment about the argument and its strategic value. But you’re welcome to take it personally, I suppose.
Pedantic lecturing is using pedantic as a manner of the arguer, not the argument. Haughty accusations come from a person, not out of thin air.
Carin: chickens
I think we lost a chicken
I think we lost a chicken
I think we lost a chicken ’cause I just heard a cry
I think we lost a chicken
I think we lost a chicken
But you can get another one for a dollar seventy-nine
Regards,
Ric
I see. So, you, Jeff and others are personally attacking Beck, and not suggesting how his argument won’t work or how it might be better framed? Apparently, I missed that in the first 1400 comments.
I still don’t understand what the threat is, such that this intensity of defense of the incomplete portrayal of our politics becomes necessary. It’s almost as if Beck can have done no wrong, lest the whole edifice crumbles. Or what? I thought Beck wants the truth, or as they say in the courts, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. What’s the problem?
What, I haven’t praised Beck enough yet? Is there more I can say about what a good thing I think it is he does everyday, exposing his own ignorance to the public, owning it like an honest man, like no one else in media today? He’s great! The greatest! Long live the honest man Glenn Beck! Really, honest, that’s what I think of him.
In case it wasn’t clear enough, and apparently it wasn’t, my #427 was 100% pure sarcasm.
I’d submit that it wasn’t so much a lack of knowledge, but the introduction of a different school of thought left essentially unchallenged that got us here. Progressivism didn’t appear out of thin air, though it has been responsible for erasing the Founders principles, let alone Locke’s.
The different school of thought thinking was only happening at the upper levels. The lack of our actual history – like reading the constitution – allowed the leftist to easily sway the uninformed masses.
If you don’t understand they whys and whats – it’s easy to be convinced that – say a popular vote for president is a wonderful thing.
On the God/not-God source of rights question, what is the truth? If you can prove it, you’ll be the first.
Ric- it’s just the idea. the poor thing. All alone.
/pedant
CHICKEN SIGHTING. GOTTA GO.
That chicken won’t be all alone for long. It will soon be in the stomach of some other critter.
I don’t know who the sockpuppeter is, though I think that if the sockpuppeter were to use the name they are used to usually using here at pw a new light might be thrown on the comments the sockpuppeter makes. I could be wrong of course and nothing would come to light at all once the seeker-of-honesty-who-hides emerges. I suspect otherwise though.
On the question of sockpuppets in general, I see them all the time of course, who can’t? People inadvertently forget to change their puppet name back to their regular name and end up revealing themselves with an oops, my bad, damned puppets, etc. Mostly puppets are used for humorous effects, which effects can often be funny as all get out, sometimes merely clever, other times pretty pointless.
But it is a rarer thing when a regular will hide behind a sockpuppet to make a critical argument in a serious discussion — leave aside distorting others arguments — let alone doing this while bearing a name pointing back at Mr Itchy.
I’m cranky – one of my chickens ran away, and is in the woods hiding
That is unfortunate. And what’s worst is that there is really no way to explain to the chicken that, while it’s move to the forest may have made it safer from you and the other chickens, it has ultimately left the chicken exposed to the substantially greater dangers of the forest.
There’s something else in there, but damn if I can suss it out. Maybe after more coffee.
JESUS, MARY and JOSEPH!!!
God-given or natural rights or WHATEVER, how you get to the principals or how you acquired your values is arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin …
the important thing is what those principles and values ARE.
“The principle’s the thing!”
it goes to durability I think… our principles in America are not very durable inasmuch as we’re prone to electing cocksucking dirty socialist Soros whores to build victory mosques and destroy jobs
Yes, but the different school didn’t remain at the highest levels. They’re teaching it all the way to the youngest kids. I can find (in plenty of Jeff’s post’s) plenty of highly educated academics who’ve gained all sorts of knowledge, most of which is bullshit that most high school dropout farmers can see right through. Thus, I conclude that it’s isn’t the lack of education that’s the root of the problem, it’s that we started teaching so much bullshit.
In light of Beck’s call to a return to Honor though, and as you noted just yesterday wasn’t it Pablo, the reverse of the coin is Shame; is there any chance our puppeteer is ashamed? Wouldn’t that be interesting.
Turning the responsibility for educating our children over to the state was probably a bad idea.
Foxes and hen houses (sorry Carin.)
Perhaps we should have a lengthy discussion about that. Or, maybe you could email Jeff and see what the IP turns up and be done with it, and we could return to our regularly scheduled gabbing.
ThomasD for the win.
“God-given or natural rights or WHATEVER, how you get to the principals or how you acquired your values is arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. . .”
No Darleen, I don’t think it works quite that way at all. How we get, or got, to where we were or are, matters a great deal, because the very things we term principles may in fact at root be in conflict with one another, which conflict may be hidden for a very long time only to show up at a moment when the conflict can least be managed. There are very good reasons for continuing to look into the sources of our accepted truths, like what is good for us, for instance. Plus, as a kind of bonus unbidden, there is no harm from looking, it’s a characteristic act of a free man.
How do you know it’s a sockpuppet and not a new commenter? A lurker could have decided to start joining in the conversation. The only basis you have for your accusation is fear and/or shame for the person you claim is using a sockpuppet. Why would anyone fear you? Why would anyone here feel ashamed about their opinons?
Your accusation doesn’t make a lot of sense.
“. . . maybe you could email Jeff . . .”
So taking my cue from Mr Beck, urging our sockey to be an honest person, is a dumb idea?
Ok. I’ll leave it then.
Looking upthread: No, I don’t think you can squeeze “natural rights” or much of anything else regarding proper governance out of the Bible. The most you can manage there is acknowledgement that some rules (=’actions of rulers’) are better than others, and that seeming rationalism combined with self-interest and fad can cause a transition from bad to worse (judges -> kings). What you can do is derive the notion that the interaction of primary importance is man vis-a-vis God, and anything that interferes with that is bound to become corrupt and thus corrupt the relationship. That’s easily evolved into an argument for limited Government, I reckon.
The trouble with depending on philosophy is that once you have defined the community, polis or nomos, as an organism with qualities that are anything other than a vector sum (or, perhaps, a convex hull) of the individuals that make it up, it is well-nigh inevitable that the “rights” of that emergent organism become the topic of debate and those of the individual that make it up get regarded as of lesser importance.
I prefer to start from zero. “Natural rights” are those that can be deterred but not prevented — there is nothing that stops a person from saying any particular thing other than the fear of punishment for doing so, for instance.
At that point, I find it has become necessary for me to go distribute a good chunk of my remaining funds to discharge my obligations. What do you mean, there’s no money? I’ve got plenty of checks left…
Regards,
Ric
You know what isn’t durable? A chicken living in the woods by itself.
I got pretty close. Then it disappeared.
“How do you know it’s a sockpuppet and not a new commenter?”
With my initial identification of Mr Itchy as a sock, cranky-d, I think you’ve got a good point. After Mr Itchy responds without gainsaying my accusation, it becomes another matter. So far, Mr Itchy hasn’t said a peep about it. And look, it even proves me a dunderhead if I’m accusing baselessly, which, yay! Go for it Mr Itchy (of course, we know that Mr Itchy knows that Jeff holds the keys to Mr Itchy’s identity, so the charade can readily be broken, hence it wouldn’t be too good to pretend to be a new commenter where it isn’t true).
Using a pseudonym is not dishonety. If you know it’s a regular using a sock, then you’ve got something of an argument. But you don’t know that. You could, however, find out. And then you’d have THE TRVTH of the matter.
ohnoes Carin it’s a metaphor
I haven’t ever argued that God has nothing to do with it, or that Beck shouldn’t have mentioned God, or a Creator, etc.
What I’ve said is that the reason for mentioning God, or a Creator should have been aimed specifically at the basis for Natural Law; after which, he could have given a “sermon” on our founding principles and the hows and whys of them.
My critique has always been that he was too heavy on the religion and too light on the principles that come from the idea of a Creator. He’s a conservative political talk show host. By giving a revival meeting, he tied conservative politics to religious revivalism. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
That’s been my argument.
Hardly bigoted, in my estimation. Nor does it show a fundamental misunderstanding of religion.
Yes, but the different school didn’t remain at the highest levels. They’re teaching it all the way to the youngest kids. I can find (in plenty of Jeff’s post’s) plenty of highly educated academics who’ve gained all sorts of knowledge, most of which is bullshit that most high school dropout farmers can see right through. Thus, I conclude that it’s isn’t the lack of education that’s the root of the problem, it’s that we started teaching so much bullshit.
Well, yes. But, you have to avoid teaching all sorts of important stuff. THAT is my point. It’s not as if they learned/read the words of our Founding Fathers, and have rejected it. They’ve learned that Washington was a slaveholder, and stuff like that.
But, even your casual man-on-the-street doesn’t get it. Even folks who haven’t been completely indoctrinated by leftist academics. These types of people are easily swayed because they’re terribly, terribly uninformed. I spoke with a truck driver who didn’t understand how a business owner could lay people off when things went south, yet he still lived in his big house. He’s supposed to see the house, first, you see.
Such a complete disconnect.
Public schools are to blame. They don’t teach the kids anything real, so they can be filled up with any bullshit.
“You could, however, find out.”
I could Pablo, if Mr Itchy cares to reveal him or herself. I’m not going to go running off to Jeff complaining “Mr Itchy hit me! Do something!” Fuck that. Instead I’ll either ask Mr Itchy to play the part of an honest man or I’ll shut up about it. Which, the latter, is now my choice, the former having been fulfilled already.
He’s a conservative political talk show host. By giving a revival meeting, he tied conservative politics to religious revivalism. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
He’s a conservative, but he’s no Republican. He is conservative and religious and has got an opinion. If we bow in order to worry how the left is going to perceive the right, or couch any message with the “what will they say about THIS” concerns … well, shit. We’re done for. They’re going to find SOMETHING. Fuck it.
People behaving badly. Beck’s a different sort of outlaw. And Obama’s not a good man.
ohnoes Carin it’s a metaphor
Could be. An OUTLAW chicken? I can’t believe it survived the night. Lots of predator out here.
OHNOES. Another metaphor.
Public schools are not to blame, out entrusting them to teach what really matters is what is to blame.
They do alright (not good, just alright) with the readin’, writin’, ‘rithmatic, stuff (but anything beyond that is a total waste of taxpayer money.)
what happens to this chicken is of huge symbolic importance I believe
“Public schools are not to blame, out entrusting them to teach what really matters is what is to blame. ”
This is one of the sorts of contradictions — leaving education in the hands of the government — that can lay hidden for a long time only to be revealed at a time when it’s too damn late to do anything about it so far as the generations directly affected are concerned. What’s the contradiction? The interests of the two parties, parents with children in need of education and the children themselves on the one hand, and the interests of the government, its organizations, agencies, employees, politicians and ideologues on the other. These interests don’t always lay congruently. And here we are.
Someone should tell the chicken that the dolphin in a peacoat is trustworthy, at least compared to the beets.
I don’t much care how the left views this. I’m more worried about my own reaction — which I extrapolate out to people like me.
Beck can have his opinions. I can have mine.
It’s only as contradictory as any form of agency. It all depends on how you define the limits of the agency, teach my children this and only this. Then monitor the process.
The problem occurs when parents hand over their children (and a fat check) and then walk away. The proggs have depended upon this approach for decades, and note how they howl and whine when parents ever attempt to re-assert their authority over what their children are taught.
Well, I’m torn. Sdferr. Public education is a good thing, in theory. A citizenry that knows how to read and add and what-not is a benefit to all. It is the manner in which the liberals have taken OVER education. The hierarchy, the unions. they’ve all created a tangled web of suck.
Textbooks, standardized curriculum … self-serving “public” university diploma mills.
You don’t want to get me started.
I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth, but what I see is not Jeff arguing about the left’s interpretation of what Beck was doing (because we know what that will be), but about what fledgling classical liberals think Beck was doing, and how they will respond to it.
Maybe that’s already frelling obvious to everyone, but I see some arguments that make me think that might not be so.
That’s not what he was on Saturday, and it certainly isn’t all he is. Time will tell whether what he was and what he did was a good thing, but in the short term aftermath, he’s just shaken the shit out of the establishment and they seem at a loss for any sort of response to what happened there. This focused more on American character, a point that seems overlooked to me.
I find the thing a worthwhile exercise based on the subsequent Al Sharpton interviews alone. I especially liked him telling Geraldo “I don’t know if he can survive this.” Comedy gold, and the schadenfreude is worth every penny.
I don’t much care how the left views this. I’m more worried about my own reaction — which I extrapolate out to people like me.
Beck can have his opinions. I can have mine.
Well, then I guess I simply don’t understand the beef. Becks rally wasn’t my thing, but I don’t have any sort of “reaction.” I mean, Sean Hannity’s schticky rah rah Republicanism isn’t my thing either, but I see him appealing to a certain segment of conservatives that doesn’t necessarily include me. Perhaps there’s a bit of overlap.
Does Beck appeal to some moderates? Heck yea. I see a lot of people at the gym who were squishy before watching him. Talking about his show.
That’s because they’ve been taught a bunch of shit that isn’t worth knowing. Or, pace Reagan, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.
On the bright side, it isn’t lost. I just met half a million people that get it and I’m deeply enjoying those who stare at them in horror. They’re about to learn a few things they did not know.
It may not be all he is, but I stopped listening to his show when he started pushing this thing, so I know for sure that he was using his conservative talk show to sell this event.
Beck can be who he is. I can criticize him. Sharpton would’ve beclowned himself regardless.
Oops, late to the party with my last comment. Refresh before commenting, cranky-d.
As do I. But that doesn’t mean I don’t criticize him.
Hell, I did a whole series of “Random Sean Hannity Thoughts.” It’s almost surreal to me that somehow my criticism of Beck is so surprising to some people.
That YOU didn’t have a reaction explains why YOU didn’t post your criticisms. Me, on the other hand…
My critique has always been that he was too heavy on the religion and too light on the principles that come from the idea of a Creator.
And, Beck’s book “Common Sense” – well, it’s pretty heavy on principals.
ThomasD and cranky-d, what is taught is only one source of conflict. We have all sorts of conflicts with all manner of relations with the Education industry embodied in government though, don’t we? I mean, there are conflicts between the taxpayers who fund the education of all the children in government schools (the indirect payer problem lurks, much as it does in health care) and the educator public unions which have interests in maximizing members income or retirement plans athwart those taxpayers. In any event, the primary interest, high quality education of children, is too easily subsumed to an avalanche of conflicts of all sorts, institutional (union, PTA, bureaucracy, managerial) and individual (union boss seeing to himself, PTA chairperson seeing to theirs, bureaucrat protecting her budgetary turf, manager looking to advance his station).
Anyhow, I’m all for wrenching public education away from government to build something better, something effective at the primary mission and something competitively responsive to need. Let’s develop a sound rationale to underwrite our desire here, since the fight to do just that is going to be long and hard.
Sometimes it helps to cede points to keep things friendly and on track. Even when they don’t appear necessary to cede.
I’ll start: I have no doubt that I have natural and strong allies in both those that attended the rally and those who just really dug it from a distance.
Towards the worth of discussing the foundations of Natural Rights, I can only say that I learn things when we do so. Thomas recommended Thomas Reid to me and pointed out a gap in my education. At other times, Ric has proposed very interesting ideas I’d never have thought of myself. Sdferr has continually pointed out the much older source of these notions that I considered to be fresh from the Enlightenment.
I’m a curious person. Perhaps God made me that way because He figured that’d lend a hand in finding Him. Who knows. But there is value there. No need to discount it with casual insults.
Towards the sockpuppet/lurker, one reason we stick with one name is so that we can’t gratuitously flame other people without taking a hit in our own reputation.
Oh, my mistake there where I addressed cranky-d when I intended Carin above. My apologies to you both.
What has that to do with his event?
I’m not sure how I ended up in the education comment, but I agree that the government is doing a piss-poor job of it, and we should get them out of it completely.
I don’t criticize, because I’m awfully busy aiming my target elsewhere. And, chasing chickens.
t’s almost surreal to me that somehow my criticism of Beck is so surprising to some people.
I’m not surprise, or shocked, or appalled. I’m just discussing.
I don’t think it would be possible to have such a popular movement ( large rally) headlined by a figure that I would find the “perfect representation” of my political ideals. Krauthammer couldn’t get 500,000 people in Washington.
Sorry again cranky-d, it was only my error of haste trying to write and keep up with the conversation at the same time, and that you had a comment right next to Carin’s I was aiming at.
At the risk of being pedantic, he used The Glenn Beck Program to sell it. While yes, it’s conservative, he’s managed to piss plenty of conservatives off with it over the course of the years and been wildly successful anyway. (See any of the many “Republicans aren’t the answer either!” comments)
Indeed.
Not like he did on this one, and people wouldn’t have noticed like they did this time because the media tends to have his back. But not this time. Just scan the last 4 days of this.
What has that to do with his event?
My mistake. But I was assuming you meant a broader criticism of Beck.
So, you don’t have a problem with Beck, or his show. Just the subject of the rally itself?
See what happens when I try to hang here and chase a chicken at the same time.
There is a metaphor there somewhere.
If he did, and then he gave a sermon, I’d criticize him, too.
If I had refreshed sooner, I wouldn’t have mentioned it, sdferr.
I have no problem with Beck. Why would I? My problem was with the rally — and not even with the rally, but rather with the revivalist tenor of the event.
Missed opportunity. Getting 500,000 people out there is a great accomplishment. I suppose I wish that having gotten all those people there, he’d have then given up the stage to Mark Levin.
“Krauthammer couldn’t get 500,000 people in Washington.”
I’ve seen this said in various forms, that is, not just about Dr K. I’m not so sure how to think about it. If Dr K devoted a year or two of his life to designing, planning, and hawking an event in the way Beck has done, I think it possible he could pull it off. Or someone else might do. But others make other choices, so we won’t know.
Sdferr. Yes. Perhaps we were better off when the small community supported the one-room-schoolhouse. The teacher could be fired by the parents.
There is nothing inherently “expensive” about education. Books. Pens. Paper. You’d be surprised how little all that costs for me and my homeschooled kids.
I don’t do any textbooks – except math.
Maybe in the now quiescent great American tradition of the Battle of the Bands, we’ll see a rally-off?
Competition! It’s what’s for
dinnercivic excellence!“It’s only as contradictory as any form of agency.”
I’m uncertain whether I ought to intrude further into the general discussion of Beck’s rally and its aftermath, effects, promises or dangers, or not. But with the risk that I’m merely being pedantic or haughty noted, I’m going to plunge on in anyhow.
One thing I’ve omitted to say about the conflicts between parents-students and the educator, is the conflict parents-students have with the educator as to the matter that the educator will teach the student about themselves, the educator. We aim to have the educator teach the student something about themselves, the student, but may easily overlook what the educator teaches the student about the educator, and this interest is compounded when the educator educates as a representative of the government, an agent of the government, a lackey of the government, a dependent subject of the government, a hireling of the government and so on down the ladder of vulgarity.
So the educator will be charged with teaching about the government as an agent of the government. Here, in this, perhaps above all other contradictions of interest, lays the problem of the free man vs. the un-free man, the liberal vs. the illiberal.
I don’t watch Beck – I’ve seen his act a couple of times, got bored. But I was glad to see the (OVERWHELMINGLY! WHITE!!) rally. Glad to see it was (as expected) peaceful. Not to mention neat.
And followed by Uncle Al’s racist anti-Beck circus. A piss-poor second.
Al has better luck organizing race-riots where people get killed.
Anyhow, I’m all for wrenching public education away from government to build something better
Well, you can wrench it away from the current public/governmental system but any attempts to keep it public/universal means merely constructing another public/governmental education system. (It is all politics – right?)
So you are right back where you started. Granted you lose a lot of barnacles when you build a new ship, but you are still headed out onto the same seas. In that sense I do think it more in keeping with the principles of our Nation to devolve as much power to the local level as possible – to better enable parents to have a real say in what happens within those schools.
Alternately you can eliminate public education and leave it entirely to private associations. I could support, and accept this, but do not think it politically viable.
Or you can have a mix of both, which is what I would like to see. Public schools focused upon, and limited to a very well defined curriculum, controlled locally and to be augmented by private and/or religious schooling from the parents or selected by the parents.
the incompetent coast guard piece of shit is using every excuse possible to delay putting the well to bed to justify the cocksucker president’s job-destroying moratorium, and someone of Team R besides Mr. Jindal should be calling the dishonest pussy on it
“Alternately you can eliminate public education and leave it entirely to private associations. I could support, and accept this, but do not think it politically viable.”
This does not look like we are back to government where we started. And once again, we have you putting it thus: don’t bother. It won’t work. Give up. Don’t start.
Damn ThomasD, how is anything new ever gotten going with such an attitude?
So the educator will be charged with teaching about the government as an agent of the government.
Nicely summed up. That is a subject I would either have left out of the public school curriculum, or at least delayed until rather late in the curriculum (to give parents a reasonable time to have established an educational foundation on which the student them may reasonably assess the validity of the information provided by the governmental agent.
When I walk though my son’s grade school and see posters on global warming you can imagine how this might be detrimental to my blood pressure – he simply does not have the tools sufficient to be at all skeptical of the information and so that smacks of indoctrination.
I think that sums it up. That said, Mark Levin couldn’t get all those people there, and had Beck done just that, I don’t think it would have gone over terribly well. While Levin is brilliant, he’s just not that marketable. I could recommend a number of things he might do to change that, but if he did them, he wouldn’t be Mark Levin.
Someone has failed to tell their story, it appears, and it’s not the USCG.
Try again, happy, and use small words this time. Because nothing doesn’t say fail like 6-8 foot seas.
No Sdferr, we do start to change what can be changed. I choose to focus on the fight to devolve power to the local level, starting with getting the Feds out of the game entirely. Which some already argue is but a slippery slope to full privatization (and maybe it is.) But politics is the art of the possible so I choose a focus. Merely pragmatism, that is all.
There isn’t anything wrong with pragmatism in good measure. On the other hand, if we read into the analysis of the teacher – student relationship carefully, if we discover there a truth, which is to say some aspect of the relationship which is necessary and permanent, built-in by the very being of teacher and the being of student, inescapable that is to say, then we have need to mitigate our problem as best we can if we are to do justice to both the student and the teacher.
So we may develop an aim, some difficult but worthy goal. Attending to pragmatic immediate difficulties getting to our goal can readily be accommodated in a plan to reach that goal. But quitting off short of it will assure us it won’t be reached, and that the justice we seek to do to both participants in the relationship won’t be done to the best of our abilities, nor perhaps, to the rest of the community, insofar as our pragmatic efforts fall short in efficiencies or in waste. Planning to reach our goal without dwelling on the goal itself seems inadequate. So we will have a variety of plans, some regarding the pragmatic interim steps, others, the final aim of the best structure we can build to fit the purposes for which we set out in the first instance. Here, making for free men.
please. the little pussy coast guard man has been slow-walking this from day one. This process was to have been finished by mid-August at the latest, but his interfering and sucking up has just added “drilling a relief well” this to the long long list of American failshittery.
There’s precious little that failshit America can do on time and under budget anymores, but it would be nice if they’d make a show of trying I think.
oh. strike the word this I mean
Q: What do the well-capping and moratorium have to do with each other?
A: Why, nothing. Nothing at all!
That’s simply not true Mr. slart…. the failshit government has been quite readily putting forth that their competence does not extend to handling two oil leakage situations simultaneously… and people have called them on that… but it’s inarguable that once this well is put to bed the pressure to lift the moratorium will become vastly more pressurey.
While this lackadaisical Coast Guard fuck dicks around real people what don’t have fat fat Coast Guard pensions are really really hurting.
After thought, I can now define what it was that put me off about Jeff’s critique of the Beck-led rally.
It is, or can be used as, a component of incremental dismissal. It goes like this: “I kind of like the message, but [component X] is icky; it puts me off, and might others. Re-do it to omit [X] and it’ll be stronger.” Then, when the target does that, repeat by dissing [component Y] and get it removed; then [Z], then start over at the beginning of the alphabet. The tactic is used by people who cannot refute an argument and don’t try, preferring to chip its components away bit by bit until there is nothing left, and as such overlaps with the ad hominem tactic.
JEFF ISN’T DOING THAT and has said so repeatedly. Trouble is, people who are doing that can grab Jeff’s objection and use it as another tap on the chisel, chipping one more flake off the message.
That is sometimes unavoidable in any concatenation of people large enough to have differing opinions, i.e. containing two or more, and such objections are often useful within the allied group to strengthen its internal dynamic. In the specific case of religion, though, building a coalition is going to require us to be very, very careful. The Reagan Coalition of religious, fiscal, and (for want of a better single word) patriotic conservatives was a juggernaut, and leftoids immediately began attempting to neutralize it, as they had to to regain the upper hand, and one of the major components in that attack was chipping away the religious bits and using them as wedges to separate the three components. That tactic has been, and in some ways continues to be, highly successful, and when I see something that contributes to it or enables it, it sets me off.
Regards,
Ric
Yes, it is. Unless you consider more bullshit from the people that brought you the moratorium bullshit in the first place to be a substantial connection.
So, you’re completely convinced that the failshit fellow in question is deliberately dithering around so as to delay the well-capping? That’s some claim, there, grieferfeets.
Yes I am completely convinced that he’s been dicking around.
Re: drilling — http://warlocketx.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/report-of-the-commission/
Regards,
Ric
Likewise, declining to say something that you know damned well is honest, true and forthright just because it may lend political cover to one’s opponents, especially at the behest of one’s compatriots…that kind of sets me off, too.
Not saying you’re advocating that kind of behavior, Ric, but it sounded a bit like that.
Me, I just say what I think, and damn the consequences.
I read that the other day Mr. Locke. It’s all kinds of not right what is happening
It’s completely true. It might be inconsistent with the government line, but it is, unless you know and can show me otherwise, in fact the case as far as I’m concerned.
Your level of conviction has somehow failed to manifest any counterpart over on this side of the screen, hf. Maybe it’s got something to do with you not presenting anything that remotely resembles an argument. You know: evidence, logic, that kind of thing.
here Mr. Slart for you I googled for so you can understand more better in your head
putting this well to bed obviates #3 completely, and that is what the coast guard tool is impeding
Spill response resources aren’t drilling the relief well. Them’s drilling resources. Booms, skimmers, seperators, etc… aren’t plugging the damn hole.
Salazar, of the “Sea of Mexico” fame, the one who falsified the report of the experts,works for Obama, you expect competence and/or integrity. Allen has to go along until he goes under the bus, with Admiral
Blair
oh. Yes. I see now. The failshit dirty socialist government government and their pet pansy Coast Guard thug are doing everything they can to get drilling back up and running in the gulf as soon as possible.
just the one government
I’m multitasking for shit today.
hf’s entire point is that 1) not finishing the well-plugging will delay drilling on new wells (which is untrue) and that because he thinks 1) is true, that means 2) the USCG is foot-dragging so as to continue the moratorium.
Without having made any logical connection between the USCG and any interest in continuing a drilling moratorium. And without, of course, point 1) being true in the first place. Again: it being actually true, and the Obama administration purporting it to be true are (I know this might surprise you) two different things.
So, being completely devoid of anything resembling a point, feets continues to assert that he has one. Which he may in fact has, just not so that it shows.
Did someone say that? No. What is being said is that the relief well and the moratorium have nothing to do with each other. In fact, the moratorium doesn’t have anything to do with anything except Obama fucking America over because he hates us.
You know, just because you’re completely failing to substantiate your point doesn’t make its polar opposite true.
Just…read up on some logic, for God’s sake. You’d be shocked at how useful the ability to use logic in conversation will turn out to be, once you know how.
the point is that the cocksucking Coast Guard faggot needs to get off his ass and get the fucking job done, something he has a lot conspicuously failed to do
Another take on Beck’s rally to throw onto the heap. Jeffery Lord: The Success of the Beck Rally, at American Spectator.
That logic thing? Really, give it a whirl. You’ll be astonished at how much more regard your arguments will receive, once you start using logic properly.
The leaking well and the moratorium, work to the advantage of Soros’s investments in Petrobras, which you’ll be surprised to know, are guaranteed by the Export/Import Bank, in part. So there is simple imcompetence, but there is something more
Logic says that the faggot Coast Guard piece of shit, given unlimited resources and a relief well bored 50 feet away from target for over a month should have gotten the job done by now.
Logic says he hasn’t been feeling any urgency.
I don’t even think logic could rescue his failshit writing.
I am sorry you do not think I write good Mr. Abe I will try to write more better
No you won’t.
you’re a very cynical person
Oh. Sorry, I forgot the obvious: logic alone will not save you; you need some facts to assemble into a logical argument.
An argument composed of neither facts nor logic is utterly failshit. Arguments that actually ignore information are failshit squared.
Logic says no such thing. But even if he hasn’t been feeling any urgency, so what? What’s the hurry?
Oh. The hurry is you still think there’s some relationship between the moratorium and the finalization of well-plugging. More hf failage.
nope Mr. Slart the fact is that this shit should have been handled already according to any timeline ever produced by either BP or the failshit government of the United States of America and inasmuch as the not handling of this shit is to the benefit of our cocksucker president it is entirely fair to speculate as to the complicity of one Thad Allen
They blocked the skimmers, the building of the sand berms, they really didn’t burn off the oil, it was the best attempt at ‘not letting a crisis go to waste’. It’s not a perception thing, this what you get
with a community organizer in office,
you still think there’s some relationship between the moratorium and the finalization of well-plugging
Please to be let me explain.
the failshit government has said there are 3 things what the moratorium is conditional upon (see #512)… two of these are entirely within the failshit government’s purview… the third one is entirely obviated by the capping of the well… requiring operators to prove they have the resources to respond to another spill with resources still dedicated to containing the current leak.
Once the well is finally done and done, the continuation of the job-killing moratorium is entirely the responsibility of the failshit U.S. government, and any further continuation will necessitate that the failshit U.S. government admit that it has thus far failed to successfully achieve its self-assigned responsibilities.
That’s the relationship between the well-plugging and the moratorium.
Mark Levin, on principles, which I listened to last night after Jeff mentioned he’d heard it. One thing about listening to Levin which I find different from listening to others (besides, that is, that Levin is from Philly and can’t help himself in that regard): it is not possible to both listen to Levin, read comments at pw and respond to comments at pw at the same time without blowing a tire. that is all.
I’m not really sure what “should have been handled” means in the context of our friend the former USCG Admiral.
And: not that it matters, because there’s still no connection between the well-plugging and the moratorium.
I blame Slart.
hf was probably pissed when NASA failed to get its shuttle launches off on schedule, too.
stupid faggot failshit commie cumslut NASA beaurocrat chairwarmers.
I mean, who’s afraid of a little weather?
Slart you disagree with me and that is fine but I guarantee you that the moratorium will not be lifted until failshit Thad lets them plug the well. We will see. Maybe they’ll lift the moratorium before. But either way, failshit Thad needs to get cracking.
chop chop
and I don’t agree with you at all about NASA by the way astronauts were very America I thought
you need a cupcake
Sorry for the extended quote, but this pisses me off enough I just had to share. :
he needs a frontal lobe I think, which are very America too.
frontal lobe is my favorite
he is an execrable commander in chief Mr. sdferr, if I may say so
Yes, yes he is. And his flunkylackeys are even worse men.
I think one of hf’s basic assumption, here, is that our friend the former USCG admiral has got anything at all to do with BP meeting schedule.
What makes hf think that, I wonders?
Here‘s some information for mr happyfeets, which should help him make his case logically, once he discovers how. Interesting:
So, there you have it. Feel free to continue arguing your feelings, though, young Jedi!
So, either a) we believe the guy, that there are actual, technical issues at work, here, or b) we believe that this guy has made up this whole story out of thin air; there’s nothing to it other than a desire (for what reason he’d do this, we still don’t know) to impede further drilling.
time that pendulum hf it might hit a frontal lobe
Mr. Slart – failshit Thaf could easily remove the cap and rest it on the bottom, then plug the goddamn hole. Later, when failshit Thad feels the waves are a nice height that he’s comfortable with he can bring up the stupid BOP.
That’s if plugging the damn hole is his priority. It’s clearly not.
failshit *Thad* I mean I am eating my tasty pitas now
Oh. I’m sorry, I had no idea that I was dealing with a subject-matter expert. I defer, sir, to your superior knowledge of the issues. Clearly, President Obama ought to have chosen you, rather than failshit Thad.
You’re background is what? Marketing?
and the only reason they are taking this failshit circuitous route is cause failshit Thad is worried less than 1000 barrels of oil *might* be forced out of the well during the final relief well work.
He’s such an unbelievable pansy.
link
And Mr. Slart I would set my petrochemical engineering trainings against failshit Thad’s petrochemical engineering trainings any day.
that is cheering Mr. newrouter
Witness the power of FAITH in mr happyfeets! He believes his own believings more than actual fact! To the point where he’s willing to heap all kinds of filthy labels on a guy who served honorably in the USCG for his entire adult life. A guy who spearheaded the USCG response to Hurricane Katrina; one of the few government responses that was not only unfucked, it was fairly exemplary.
All because of FAITH! Is there nothing that FAITH cannot do?
Really, happyfeets, you are a remarkably nasty, stupid piece of work. I think your true calling is in taking out the knees of figure skaters, or the like.
he’s just another piece of shit government toady I think but fine lets make him out to be a hero
meanwhile people don’t have jobs what should
while failshit Thad dicks around
sarah/thad 2012
*let’s*
Regretfully, I return, once again to risk cementing my now burnished reputation as an obtuse nit-picking haughty pedantic lecturer, but what the heck, what is a nit-picky obtuse haughty lecturing pedant to do? Change?
outlaw with it, I say. So, I find that I have failed to address an important question above, important enough to have been put twice and, poor student that I am, I still failed to catch it.
As a poor student of my teacher Glenn Beck I’ve clearly failed to put these serious questions together with his teaching. So I seek now to make amends while repairing the damage I’ve done to his message. For he has told me he found, by way of Thomas Jefferson, a most important thing, a saying which has turned his life around, I believe he has said, and it is this:
That seems good advice, even the sort of advice a philosopher might offer, so, taking it and paying proper honor to reason, I think there is nothing to be of concern at opening the questions “What is the truth of the source of our rights? Are they natural, things of nature? Or are they given to us in scripture, are they divine things? From whence does that come and to what place does it lead?”
Or to ask the shorter version of the same, “What is the best life?”
As a matter of fact, asking such questions may possibly even prove to answer them. In any case, it certainly is better than forcing an arbitrary answer on anyone.
sdferr – Don’t let them get you down. Your pedantic picking of nits makes me think and re-think many positions.
Charles Johnson land? Please no. One of him is insufferable enough, thanks.
Why are some folks in the conservative/classical liberal side of things so hatey on religion? Sounds like the Progressives. Also somewhat like the progressives, any religious language, allusions, stories, are instant targets for ridicule.
If you don’t want to follow my religion (or anyone else’s) that’s fine. Just don’t go down the road of little president man and get all condescending with the “bitter clinger” language. Or wind up sounding just like you-know-who. (Hint: BHO)
If Beck telegraphed the rally on his show as quasi-religious, but you don’t listen to his radio show, then yeah, that was a bit of blindsiding I imagine. You are not wrong for not liking it. Other people are not wrong for liking it.
This has come to pass from the Progresive side of the spectrum. When they criticise religious overtones, they really DO hate believers.
And Ric hits it square on:
Just as there art those to whom a Natural Law appeal would be great, there are others who would prefer to have a law-giver called God in the mix. Now why must the mention of the one necessitate the negative feelings of the other? And that cuts both ways.
Embrace what is you, especially the stuff you don’t necessarily like about yourself. Own it.
If you like a part of yourself, keep it. If not, get rid of it if you feel like making the effort.
That’s not directed at anyone, it’s something I’ve come to know in dealing with myself. I’m not making judgments in this comment.
Otherwise, I’m Judgey McJudgerson, baybee, and I’m cool with that.
I’m still trying to find anything from this Goldsmith fellow. He’s stirred up quite a discussion, or so I’ve heard.
I got lost where was the part about the carnivorous sheep?
Carnivorous sheep? The only reference I could find to small farm animals was where bh talked of the trolls buggering sheep and goats, and OI punched a horse.
Mr. sdferr had a neoneo quote from Mr. Churchill about carnivorous sheep but I… lost it
There was much consternation earlier today regarding a wayward chicken. I never heard the resolution.
Carin hasn’t said but so much depends, Mr. D
I think Barcky got his little willie stuck in a chicken.
probably a kobe chicken
Or a Waygu chicken, or at the very least, a free range chicken.
Let us all join together to hope that Carin’s chicken endeavors to persevere.
that can be our central mission
I am pretty sure that my central mission and that which Barcky claims to be our central mission are not even kind of close to being the same.
let a thousand central missions bloom
I’ll just stay focused on my special purpose.
My central mission was to quit smoking, which I have tentatively done. Now my central mission is to not offer a modicum of support to politicians that have not earned it, by action.
I prefer to think of the chicken as a brave adventurer now forging his own path.
He’s a hero.
Small farm animals are not adventurers. All they wind up being is a cum receptacle for the leftists.
Too far?
congratulations Mr. JD I feel like I’m still quitting and it’s been 17 months
That Chicken is an outlaw.
not that is not too far… they like to make it cluck I think
I am only at 4 months. Today.
I finally was able to visit Alan Kellogg’s place. Chock full of himself, that guy. Not that that is unforgiveable, or anything, just seems to overrate his own importance in the grand scheme of things, as well as the importance of being his friend or not.
So, what were we talking about?
Indians lay it on kinda thick sometimes don’t they?
chicken kabobs any recipes?
Especially the one’s with scriptwriters.
If the journey wasn’t dangerous and full of perverted leftists, it wouldn’t be a true test of my mettle, our brave chicken thinks to himself.
you ex smokers hate the schip!! meanies
I’m not so much an ex-smoker as a lapsed smoker.
Hi Slart I apologize for being too vituperative with respect to your friend Mr. Allen I’m very frustrated with Team R that they haven’t put any pressure on wrapping up this little episode and moving past it. They don’t seem to care at all about how the people, they have no jobs.
Their silence is very very loud to me and me I will not forget that Team R did not go to bat for the stalwart oil drillers of the Gulf of Mexico.
I put it in TSI’s epiphany post hf.
I’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a pre-frontal lobotomy.
Unless everything’ll taste like chicken afterwards, that is.
Mr. newrouter I quit a week before the s-chipper tax started – though marlboro raised prices like 3 weeks before that and pocketed the monies cause they wanted to avoid people stocking up… bastards
I read not long ago though that tobacco tax revenue had increased quite a bit. I was disappointed to hear that. But the article didn’t say where it was with respect to projections.
He’s not my friend. I just don’t know enough about him for him to be my enemy, and I don’t think you do either.
Chicken update: She’s still “out there.” My son is, right now, attempting to set up some sort of ambush trap. If I could post a picture of how “wild” it is where she’s running/ hiding … it’s really rather hopeless. We’ll see her; she’s be almost w/in reach. Then she’s gone.
Another metaphor.
ok found it again thank you
ok you’re right I will try and modulate my disgust with Mr. Allen more better
smoked chicken with marlboro
chicken kabobs any recipes?
That’s just cruel, newrouter. Besides, she’s rather small still. Basically, the size of a pigeon.
someone was saying how they were catching raccoons with a trap they got from the home depot and they accidentally caught the neighbor’s cat
cats are a lot more smarter than chickens
I think it was at Mr. P’s
brb
nope maybe it was here does anybody remember?
D’ya think if we actually became them carnivorous sheep we’d end up fighting pussy-style like them? Bet we would. That would be both horrifying and hilarious all balled up in a nasty.
Well,l raccoons are a bit more predictable. You could put food in it, and in they’ll go. Chicken food is everywhere. If it’s green, they eat it, plus all the bugs. So you can’t tempt ’em as well with food.
Carin, this is not a joke, you might want to suggest that your son, and pretty much anyone available take a leak out in that area. Human scent tends to make most predators skittish and might improve outlaw chicken’s chances.
ok I can’t find it anyway I hate when that happens it had a cutesy name like havaheart or something
I suspect she’s already built a sturdy shelter and crafted a tiny spear. Tomorrow she becomes the hunter.
here you go they are called havahart
Havahearts work great for racoons and oppossums and such. But a chicken, even full size, is either too light to trigger the release or too fragile to survive getting whacked by the door.
Mother Nature is always plotting …
Well, I suspect she’s survived this long because she is protected by the two-German shepherd smell all over the property.
Tomorrow she becomes the hunter.
I’ll warn my son.
Found her Carin. Ginger Hero.
the guy with the bike helmet is always plotting
But will German Shepherd smell save her from German Shepherd teeth?
Both dogs have gotten awfully close to catching her. The one dog doesn’t like to hang out much (by herself) over where the chicken is. The other one I’m just keeping close to me.
She’s in the raspberry bushes, which are pretty thick.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
This is what the little chickie has to look forward to.
But this chicken fried is good good good …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4ujS1er1r0&ob=av2e
Uh-oh.
Thick bushes are teh suck.
Oh great, your chicken has gone all Kurtz…
Call for an air strike before it’s too late.
charlie bit me
Attack of the killer sheep *
Didn’t pdbuttons warn us that Bjork had the ability to take chicken form?
It might be time to panic, Carin.
If she’s looking here for advice or moral support I’d say it’s waaay passed time to panic.
Bjork is a shape shifter that can materialize as the ghost of Bobby Orr, a floret of broccoli, a Pro-V1, or a shrimp cocktail. Or a chicken. It is tricky that way.
Heh, heh, heh.
NEVER!! I might as well quit being argumentative. I’VE GOTTA BE ME! It shall not come to pass.
If one were to ask Beck the question directly, I imagine you’d get one of those sincere, staunch answers I mentioned. It would be the “Yep, totally God.” one. Therefore, I wouldn’t look to him as an objective authority, but rather a partisan on the question. If you’d like to take his teaching as gospel, you’re certainly free to do that, but I’m gonna look at you funny. I’m just sayin’.
Yes, he is rather fond of that one, isn’t he? It’s a great bit, legendary really. He also likes that bit from Jefferson’s seminal work, about it being self evident than man is endowed by his Creator with inalienable rights.
I’m not sure I see the shorter question being a condensed version of the longer ones. Again, the longer one has a few possible answers as I noted in my #379. And I must admit that I was derelict in that, as there’s a fourth I’m very well aware of as it’s the opinion I hold. My rights exist because I insist that they do.
As for the shorter question, I see a couple of possibilities. One could certainly make an argument that Mother’s Teresa’a is the best sort of life, but I’ll bet we would find a large majority in agreement with this, were we to ask.
I’m not sure I see how the former would work but there’s no arguing with the latter, unless you’re into arguing unresolvable questions. I could frame a lovely argument defending my opinion on the matter, but who really cares? I wouldn’t expect to change anyone’s mind, and I have no desire to as I don’t see much upside to it. Again, I don’t much care how you get there, as long as you get there.
I prefer reason to misology is another way to put it, I suppose. But to each his own, right?
I still fail to see how this is seriously put forward as Jefferson’s deal “. . . it being self evident than man is endowed by his Creator with inalienable rights.” I mean, seriously, his rhetoric, but his birthed idea? Horsepucky. It’s as derivative as derivative can be. Oh, but from what?
nah just go choke a chicken
I prefer reason to misology is another way to put it
Statements like that would tend call into question the very side you are on.
Why ThomasD? I don’t get the gist.
I don’t get that either …
I was just thinking that America is stronger than Barcky is sucky …
Pablo expressed a recognition of a limit to the power of reason, not an absolute denial of such.
Yet that is how you chose to characterize him.
At the very least a cheap shot, worse it is decidedly unreasonable.
I wasn’t characterizing Pablo, but the place people tend to go when confronted by apparently insoluble problems. Rather than returning to the problems over and again without fail, even if only to make tediously slow incremental ever incomplete progress on the problems, too often the path into misology is the path of choice.
Just look at newrouter here. He carps from the peanut gallery without any apparent desire to contribute substantively. For my part, I can’t see the point of his — shall we call them efforts?
newrouter makes funnies sometimes he said little debbies to kkkarl and I smiled out loud
Well then we differ on a point of semantics. To my mind choosing to walk away from any given problem, or even the tendency to do so, and particularly after engaging in efforts to solve the problem, is not misology. Misology is the frank rejection of method or argumentation in the first place, it defines the perpetually closed mind.
I don’t disagree with that at all. And the closed mind is one closed to baffling discussion of difficult issues. We see this all the time.
The rest of all this aside, I thought this was notable:
That’s a damn pithy way of summing up my basic position.
Be that as it may, he put it where he put it for a reason and I think we can agree that he did so with no small amount of consideration. See what he did there? It might be worth doing it again. It worked pretty well last time.
I may have been hasty though ThomasD. Just because we haven’t an assurance we either have grasped or will grasp an answer to a difficult question, particularly one like the question “What is the best life?” wouldn’t be a sufficient cause to walk away from it. Quite the contrary, I think. Some questions like that question will only arise again and again, demanding an answer of us. That we might make an answer tacitly, doesn’t mean that we know we’ve answered finally, so the problem remains both open and pressing.
It doesn’t work any other way, you ask me. Use ’em or lose ’em, etc…
Sdferr, ok I see where you are coming from. To me nihilism is a step above misology (because it at least involves the willingness to state a position.)
My rights exist because I insist that they do.
Isn’t that equivalent to self-evident?
I prefer the ‘your ability to interfere with my rights is inversely proportional to your right to continue breathing’ approach.
It isn’t the usual deal to question ideas on the rank of the ideas of our political principles, I know. Neither do I expect everyone to undertake the work this entails. I may expect it of myself occasionally. Most people are quite content to accept the principles as given with any further thought on the matter. Whether the founders themselves proceeded in this way I rather doubt, but then that remains to be seen for my part, as I have much work on their thinking yet to do. Still, men can think anew, I’ve seen it done. And believe that it is still worth doing even if it only rarely happens.
pontificating yawn. sdferr has a rally scheduled? a talk show listened to more folks than ed shultz? oh obtuse comments on (sorry host) 8th rated blog? cutting edge my friend. changing minds all over cupcakeland i’m sure.
A near perfect performance newrouter, bravo.
My problem with that specific ‘best life’ question is that it always reminds me of Pangloss from Candide and the whole ‘best of all possible worlds’ schtick. Beyond that, while there may be one perfect God, there are no perfect humans so there are as many answers to that question as there are people and none of them will ever be complete (rationally or philosophically.)
its really nihilist to navel gaze and not say what must be done.
oh noes let’s reach back to robin hood and decipher their intent.
yo cut the fed gov’t by 50% and let the screaming begin.
What, no perfect humans? Aren’t we leaving one out?
Mr. Padalecki will be in his trailer
i see a terribly over grown bush. i have chain saw. you debate with progg idiots who haven’t a clue.
Ray Nitschke?
Aren’t we leaving one out?
I thought Meghan was another thread…
Or are you referring to our pezzydent?
ThomasD, is it even possible to judge one life as better lived than a comparative other life? Would we celebrate the life of an ax-murderer equally alongside the life of a quiet decent family man? This seems a strange position to put ourselves into if you ask me. So if one is better than another, how is it we are barred from asking what would be the characteristics of a best life? Well, nothing, it turns out. And the various answers to this question form some part of the basis of much of political ordering, as it happens.
Wait, I have it. Don Hutson.
yea voltaire big christer loser
We seem to be talking past each other. On an intellectual level, I’m fine with such discussions and I enjoy having them, particularly over drinks. But it’s the old dorm room trope, and it ultimately is angels on the head of a pin. Great fun, great mental exercise, I’m good. But I’m talking about America. And I’m looking at a guy who’s talking to America, and they’re listening. He’s teaching history on cable news at 5 PM and doing ridiculous ratings. Who does that? He just pulled a half million people from around the country for something that, well, defies categorization. And he’s the lead story pretty much everywhere. Who does that? Nobody, it’s never been done. 5 consecutive NYT bestsellers, in about a year and a half. Who does that? And you think he ought to do what now?
I’ve been listening to the radio show for about 7 years now. I was hooked immediately, because the show was piss-your-pants funny, and I was behind the wheel a lot. I had some fairly ugly shit going on in the early part of that and he might have some unrealized arson to his credit for making me laugh when I really needed to do that. I never really bothered with his CNN show, with the exception of a few specials. One on Islam comes to mind, and I recall that he broke the Headline News ratings meter with it. Still, I was kinda meh.
Then came Fox News, and it’s like someone stuck a rocket up his ass and lit the fuse. The White House is fucking petrified of him. This is absolutely fascinating, and I see no reason to do anything about it other than stand back and watch it roll out. I couldn’t imagine that I ought to tell him what he ought to be doing any more than I can imagine telling Jeff what he ought to blog about. YMMV.
yea the 10 commandments are judeo-christian idiot. no the moebots are a cult and they suck like commies.
Angels on the head of a pin. St Thomas, I think. But what was he about? Oh, that’s right, living a best life. Funny.
This comment number brought to you by Satan.
What is Beck asking of people today? Oh, yeah, that they be their best selves. Funny. There it is again. How odd that it keeps turning up that way. But really, it’s just dorm room chatter. Pointless.
yea its nice how beck showed up these fools today on the tv.
so your are a collectivist?
And you think he ought to do what now?
the proggs are doing that all the time you have a problem?
I think DarthRove just won the thread. YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD!!
well that’s… gay. You’re not supposed to cross the streams.
oh the outlaw obtuse beclowned
On and on and here we go.
We can dissect the thoughts of our founding fathers from now until the chickens come home to roost, but none of that dissection-thinking will help persuade the uneducated masses to vote our way short-term. We face a united looter – moocher front; Democrats are promising nonexistent monies to secure votes, and stupid fucks are voting whoever fills their needs and greeds and assuages their victimhoods. How do we overcome that, I ask? Why, with several large rallies attracting less-greedy, good people to vote against this social tide.
Sure, we need think-tanks to polish the message, but we need Glenn Beck &c. to communicate some of that message to average people, even religious people. If we didn’t need them too, then one could pointedly sniff, loft nose and ignore, but there’s more of them than you realize. A hell of a lot more of them than think-tank drivers.
All I see about Saturday’s Beck rally is win – win – win for the good side. There’s no downside, unless we manage to think-tank create one.
“And you think he ought to do what now?”
I haven’t made myself clear on that question? After all this, no one can say what I believe would be the best course to take? Really?
those chickens aren’t coming home anytime soon it doesn’t appear
let’s let the gov’t decide
One thing that bothers me a little? Beck said he’d hired someone with the appropriate expertise to do a solid crowd count. That was Saturday and this is Tuesday. Let’s have it, Dude.
Sdferr, that’s why I specifically mentioned Voltaire’s works. He was a big critic of unconditional election (by which notion an ax-murderer could be granted eternal salvation over a decent family man merely by God’s mercy alone) and positively hated John Calvin over this issue.
So yes the answer is not nothing, well at least it is not nothing so long as you are not an anti-realist (see Charles Berkeley.) Voltaire’s own ultimate answer was that the best life was to be found in service to your fellow man. How we were supposed to know what was good for our fellow man was rather open ended (and was and obviously always will be limited by our imperfect knowledge.)
Personally I suppose much of the answer will always lie in such circumstance, and that is why many of the pillars of the enlightenment came to recognize that the best judge of a man is most often to be found within that very man.
This is all circling back around to the pursuit of happiness…
obtuse and crass
8th rated blog.
Glad to hear it.
Voltaire’s answer sounds an awful lot like another I’ve heard tell of.
No, not really. I suppose a clearer way of putting it would be to ask on what basis you’d presume to replace his judgment as to what he ought to be doing with your own. It simply wouldn’t occur to me to do that, any more than it would to tell Jeff what to blog about. If I’ve sent him more than a dozen things I think he ought to look at in the time I’ve been here, I’d be surprised. (Payments not included in estimate.) Given Beck’s trajectory, and what you know he’s doing, I can’t imagine why you think some tinkering would help. Sorry for my lack of clarity.
I thought you knew me. *snif*
I doubt you’ll find another blog anywhere with this one’s scope, breadth and depth. And think-tank drivers.
Oh, that other business with the looney lawyer person would have to come out of the count too.
Oh, I like that.
It’s really great having such sincere and honest interlocutors.
the seventh rated blogs hog all the choice interlocutors
Who among you would tell Jimi Hendrix that he wasn’t playing that guitar right? If he wasn’t long dead, natch.
Really. Great.
well it is better than 9. there’s forward progress
Voltaire’s answer sounds an awful lot like another I’ve heard tell of.
Yeah, strangely enough Voltaire had to walk away from Catholicism, and become a Deist in order to find Jesus.
Go figure.
Wasn’t thinking of Jesus.
Ah, crap. Who, what, where on that last?
Yeah, fabulous. Thanks for your feedback.
Why you’re welcome. And thanks for the consideration.
Oh, and Beck just obliterated Al Sharpton, while a nice little memento was left to remember it by.
Nice riff, due.
Wasn’t thinking of Jesus.
Ok.
You gonna share?
Ladies and gentlemen, Prince.
In case this has not already been noted.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/31/murkowski-concedes-alaska-primary-race-tea-party-candidate/
Sure ThomasD, here you go.
Is that the correct quote? Because I’m not seeing the connection.
I’m sorry to say that I loved that entire album. My girlfriend loved it first, and you can imagine how the rest played out.
Shit. I’m old now.
“My rights exist because I insist that they do.”
That sounds kinda sketchy to me. Might makes right? I mean, wasn’t that Ol’ King George’s attitude, necessitating the Declaration from the colony’s?
Hot damn. She got some other bad news yesterday. She’s all done. Adios, Lisa!
nobody’s really talking about cocksucker’s speech
Not really much to talk about. He’s a pompous ass in perpetual campaign mode, nothing new there.
Have you noticed how your rights have been changing lately? (See healthcare mandate) Do you accept it as proper and valid? Or do you have a more fundamental instinct as to what your rights are?
T-Pawl comes out swinging.
http://www.startribune.com/politics/blogs/101900343.html
Obama is going to loathe his job before this is all over.
“Or do you have a more fundamental instinct as to what your rights are?”
I don’t know about instinct, but they are pretty much spelled out in the Declaration of Independence.
I think I see what you mean, I’m just saying I wouldn’t try that line out on a Turkish cop if I was you.
Well. I wish I had more time, but morning has been coming distressingly early these days. Later days…
I’d thought to have put the whole thing in answer ThomasD, not a quote as such, since it was a life we were after. Within the whole, we have a defense of a life described as aiming at the best he could do, which resembles in detail the thing you wrote: “. . . [his] ultimate answer was that the best life was to be found in service to your fellow man. How we were supposed to know what was good for our fellow man was rather open ended (and was and obviously always will be limited by our imperfect knowledge.)”
If, however, a quote is needful, perhaps this one will do, though there are others:
Curbstomp. Wow.
It’s official, Lisa Murkowski has conceded to Joe Miller.
Palin Power!
Oops, never mind. ThomasD beat me to it.
she couldn’t handle her own office but she’s some kind of expert at picking people who can handle theirs?
Palin handled her own office just fine.
she bailed cause people were mean and these ones over here flashed some shiny monies at her
and fancy was her name
H8ers gonna hate! ;)
tru dat Mr. Texian
Look for a moment at Christ’s approach to his impending death. Was he interested in saving his life at all costs? Would he beg the Roman authorities to let him live? Would he grovel; rebuke his own position, desert his belief?
Now look at Socrates’ approach to his death:
Now looks at the means by which Thomas Hobbes establishes the first modern natural right:
Hasn’t something changed?
I kinda wish it had changed as much for our Islamical friends
Course it has for our actual friendly Muslims like Zudhi Jasser. For our enemy-friend ones, not so much. Still, the mission of Christ entails love for his fellows. So also in a more round-about way with Socrates, albeit with a bit more self-interest at work chasing after knowledge. Their style of conquering just doesn’t involve coercion, where Mohammad’s style is plainly about the swordplay.
and forgiveness…
what a concept
What matters in the “best” life is who chooses the “best” and is the choice made freely, without compulsion. Even your (individual) one true “best life”, if the choice is forced from outside, ceases to be the “best” as it has been corrupted by the means used to gain it.
Soc. wasn’t about forgiveness with the wicked. That’s the cutting difference between the Divine and the human, maybe.
oh. So redemption is sorta out the window then. You know… good for Jesus.
The forgiveness comes only after true repentance, acknowledgment of the error and the promise to not error again. Parts that are often glossed over.
Hasn’t something changed?
Life expectancy
The “Discovery of the Individual”
Hobbes is talking about Man in a State of Nature (n.b., I’m just guessing here), whereas Plato’s Socrates is a man for whom life outside the Athenian polis isn’t any kind of life at all, and Jesus is performing on an altogether different theological plane.
Those things come to mind.
Now, what is it that I’ve just jumped into without looking?
I wouldn’t say out the window, no. More not in the window from a merely human stance though. If God has the capacity to bring it in from an infinite mercy this is his to do. People can only chase to keep up as best they can, I guess, reflecting back to God’s gift they say.
I’m kinda counting on a robust capacity for redemption being sort of built-into the system.
I don’t know whether to think the Socrates in Plato’s Apology is Plato’s Socrates or just Socrates simply, since of all the dialogs, this is the only one I recollect Plato telling us he was himself present, even playing a role putting up a bond surety with others. So it’s possible to think that this is the man himself speaking to us directly, or as directly as faithful transcription of a spoken word can ever be. It’s also possible of course, to think that Plato has embellished the events, but I wonder on this, since there were others present who would have seen the work as well as the trial.
What gets to count as the system though? I mean, people tend to keep a healthy skepticism of known thieves and are slow to relax their wariness, often enough for good reason.
Since only God can see into your mind and heart to know that the repentance is real only God can be infinitely merciful and forgiving. Man has to do as best he can.
It’s one of those unknowables sdferr. Although Socrates has this going for him: Plato was a contemporary.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, not so much.
Heh, I’d have thought the benefit would have been the other way round Ernst, that Plato had it going for him that Socrates was a contemporary.
Better than the alternative, Pablo. That’s what I tell myself, and I actually believe it.
At the time.
General note: never attempt to reason someone out of a position they haven’t reasoned themselves into in the first place. I think that applies and is relevant to a substantial portion of this thread.
Also, who put some of these up newrouter’s ass?
In the clip Pablo posted, nothing Beck said or did irritated me. Maybe I just picked a bad time to listen, who knows?
But for the record, it isn’t just me, the bigoted passive-aggressive leftist who doesn’t get it.
(h/t RWTBD, via email)
Memorial and Remonstrance *
Well, the answer to the question in the Examiner‘s headline there is “Yes.”
Those who’ve not yet discovered it should peruse Zombie’s essay on education, which focuses on the contest between the educrats and the Texas State Board of Education. It’s another view of the matters discussed here that doesn’t involve Beck’s personality. PJM’s structure makes it hard to follow matters that cross post boundaries, so I don’t know if the third part is up yet.
Regards,
Ric
Jeff G, a bigoted passive-aggresive leftists? Since when?
I haven’t had time to catch up on 6 weeks worth of happenings whilst I was inncommunicado. Can anyone do a brother a solid and lay out the Cliff notes version?
Much obliged.
What if Beck had said pre-political instead of not political? Would that have been incomprehensible to his audience?
What if he’d said “apolitical”? Would that work for you?
Even less than not political would it work, for it would be an outright lie, no?
I think you don’t get it significantly less than Gene Healy doesn’t get it, as he really, really, really doesn’t get it. It wasn’t a Republican event, it wasn’t a Tea Party event and it wasn’t necessarily a Christian event. As I noted after reading Steve Krakauer on the subject, I don’t believe the words “Jesus Christ” or any part thereof crossed his lips.
I suspect you’re paying closer attention even when you’re not paying attention, if you know what I mean.
Have you seen the analysis at Chicago Boyz?
It would? Is that because virtually everyone doesn’t understand the word as completely as you do? I tell you, there’s a damned lot of people out there, paid to write even, who using both terms wrong. Someone must stop them.
Beck’s rally had a religious revival tenor. Some people had reservations about various aspects of such. Other people didn’t share those reservations and thought the criticism counterproductive. Yet others decided this would be a good time to flame folks.
Something we’d all agree on though was that through it all my comments were both witty and insightful. Many thought that they represented the high point of American political theory or possibly a second Enlightenment… even if they didn’t say so out loud for fear of embarrassing me with such lofty praise.
Hope this helps, Bob.
(Very nice to have you back.)
Pablo, can you quit treating me as you would an enemy? Even for a couple of minutes? Really, I think it would do the tenor of our discussion some good.
sdferr, if I were treating you as an enemy, I wouldn’t be nearly so polite. (Did we just meet, or have we been chewing the rag around here for years? I would expect a stylistic familiarity that seems to be lacking.) What might be nice is if you would stop assuming bad faith in everything I write and huffing your way out of the dialogue when it isn’t going the way you’d like it to.
If this were still the case then there would not be a “soc-con” movement as such out there. The return to live and let live is desired but it is not believed that the secular or religious left will behave that way ever.
That may be the most astute description of the thing I’ve seen yet. Thanks for the link.
I don’t assume bad faith in everything you write, but then I don’t see you actually seeking to understand my own position as I understand it either, just so you know. I’m not out of the dialogue, at least I don’t think I’ve been. As to how it’s going, I’d say not so well as it might. Huffing? That characterization is a measure of respect, I take it.
If I have the sense that you’re treating me as a political enemy rather than as an ally, would that be entirely my problem? If that must be so, that is, if you think it so, then it’s no damned wonder you wouldn’t want me an ally.
If the Lexington Green analysis is on or near the mark (near I say only because he imports the Boyd shtick) then how is it possible to say that Beck’s strategic aim is apolitical?
Fourth line: “Analogously for political change: Elections, Institutions, Culture.
Tenth paragraph: “Beck is creating positive themes of unity and patriotism and freedom and independence which are above mere political or policy choices, but not irrelevant to them. Political and policy choices rest on a foundation of philosophy, culture, self-image, ideals, religion. Change the foundation, and the rest will flow from that. Defeat the enemy on that plane, and any merely tactical defeat will always be reversible.”
From the eleventh paragraph: “The idea that these people are an American Taliban is laughable, but showing that fact to the world — and to potential political allies who are not religious — is critical.”
A ham sandwich is apolitical. So is a hedgehog. People, other than the comatose or yet-born, aren’t.
From Madison’s Remonstrance:
Which is partially what suggested pre-political.
Does my intent matter, or is it your perception that rules the day? If it’s the latter, that’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax, though one that’s been thoroughly vetted by our host and others.
Have I said or inferred that, ever? I don’t see where that comes from.
Strategic aims are not the same as tactics. And of course, the term “political” is being used in the manner that 98% of the people hearing it understand it, which is to say that it regards governmental politics. Does that intent on the part of those using the term register, or is it lost in its failure to adhere to the broader, technically correct meaning? And if it is so lost, do we not have a serious societal communication problem?
A hurricane is apolitical. A blown oil well is apolitical. The repercussions are anything but.
So is your suggestion that we should think of the rally as we would a hurricane or a blown oil well?
From ” A Shorte Treatise of Politike Power” by Dr. John Ponet, Bishop of Rochester and Worchester in 1556
“. . . but not irrelevant to them.”
“. . .that it regards governmental politics.”
I am on record that I do not think the use Beck has made of it when he says “not political” goes so far as government politics (which, so far as I can see would include Clarence Thomas in his capacity as a Supreme Court Justice, or Ruth Ginsberg in hers) but only so far as “partisan”, taken mostly in the sense of the talking heads type partisans shouting back and forth on tv to no purpose, but also as to partisan politicians doing the same wherever they may be doing it, on tv or on the floor of the House.
It’s an odd position too to be reduced to have to claim that one’s tactics are not about one’s strategy.
Can’t get on board with that politically. I would like someone to give me a million dollars. But, no, I’m going to give someone a million dollars.
Reverse it. Whatever you wouldn’t want done unto yourself, don’t do that unto others. I don’t want anyone to stab me, so I won’t stab anyone else. This is how the broadest natural rights (“I shall do what what I want, all against all!”) were agreeably surrendered to the social contract.
On this point though, this is a very good example of why I don’t necessarily trust that people will come to political principles that I’d agree with through their religious beliefs.
That’s why I prefer just talking about the political.
(This isn’t to say that I don’t appreciate your presenting this, Geoff. I do.)
In the examples that Ponet uses he does show the reversed you are saying by giving examples of rulers treating their subjects as they would never wish themselves to be treated.
Sorry, that should have been, “But, no, I’m not going to give someone a million dollars.”
#759 contains 4 direct questions. All of them remain unaddressed. This is not how understanding is achieved. I have to go now. Later, gators.
Of course your intent matters. And no, my perception cannot rule the day exclusive of your intent.
Seems to me this is answered by “If it’s the latter, that’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax, though one that’s been thoroughly vetted by our host and others.” Which also explains entirely the answer to the question “…where that comes from…?”
This has been addressed, I believe over and again. Nevertheless, it seems to me not a question of a “mere” technically correct meaning, but a function of the very real world, which as I have said before, is rising up to bite these very same people in a way they do not like at all.
If there is a serious societal communication problem then, I’d submit it is the problem people who cannot think of politics as other than a narrow purely partisan thing have in communicating with themselves (individually, not as a group), internally to themselves individually in dialog with themselves, about the ideas the hold of the world they live in. The problem being that they are in contradiction with themselves, whether they realize it or not.
Meanwhile, round two or three, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882304575465634035917078.htmlthe Obama machine;
George’s link.
“Beck’s rally had a religious revival tenor. Some people had reservations about various aspects of such. Other people didn’t share those reservations and thought the criticism counterproductive. Yet others decided this would be a good time to flame folks.”
Thanks for the synopsis bh. I’m sorry, but not too surprised, to see that issues surrounding religion divide more than unite us all. And I’m paticularly surprised that it would turn folks against each other at a place like pw. It makes me somewhat apprehensive about reading the entire thread…
But, what I’m not surprised at is the witty and insightful nature of your commentary. I know that I can always rely on the pw’s usual suspects, including yourself of course, to stimulate the little gray cells, uncover most sides of any debate, and just plain provide some badly needed yuks most times.
All the best
You can read it without fear, Bob. You won’t really see any bigotry from me, I don’t think. That’s just what I was accused of — the evidence was all very circumstantial and coded, you see, but there if you really squint — after having been quite a friend here to believers for so many years.
On my 8th-rate blog.
I was pretty sure of that Jeff G., which is why my request for the Cliff notes version had such an aiur of incredulity. For some time I’ve appreciated the way you’ve defended the right of the religious to act on, and reason based on, their worldview, all while not a zealous or demonstrative “God-botherer” yourself.
I know that you’re no bigot.
What I’m apprehensive about is seeing folks I respect-all-flaming each other, apparently in earnest; motivated by beliefs meant to unite us instead.
And, what idiot pronounced pw an 8th rated blog anyway? It certainly can’t be anyone we should be paying any attention to.
Who is flaming Bob, or maybe better, what counts as flaming? I’ve never been sure about the term exactly.
It’s always darkest before the tornado.
“Who is flaming…”
Well, you know, I wouldn’t want to out anyone sdferr :)
But seriously, bh alluded to members of the commentariat “flaming” each other, and I take that to mean being wantonly insulting, and not in a good natured, jocular, fashion; based upon my own limited understanding of the term-an extrapolation based on the “flame war” turn of the phrase.
I mean, in a debating, rhetorical, sense I believe taht one can argue without being argumentative, and disagree without being disagreeable. But maybe I’ve become a pansy, or, you know, a flamer perhaps…
JUST DON”T SAY IT TO MY FACE!
just kidding :) Call me anything, but late for dinner!
bye bye jobses bye bye
stimulus!
Certainly. I sometimes fail on this account though.
coughnewroutercough
“coughnewroutercough”
Why am I not surprised…
At least newrouter is as incoherent as he is angry.