Longtime readers of this site have frequently encountered arguments in which I fasten identity politics to a form of soft, progressivist totalitarianism “PC” speech (which, we are often told with a wave of the hand and a gourmands’ sniff, is, like, so ’90s — and thus, supposedly antiquated as a legitimate point of ideological friction, current fashion circumscribing the only authentic topics for political complaint, with that fashion decided upon, in a serendipity of coincidence!, by the very same hand wavers who, as is their mission, strive to define the parameters of “relevant” discourse).
The enforcement of PC speech — be it by social pressure, or, when it is relabeled “hate speech,” either legally or through disciplinary functionaries of various stripes, from HR officers to campus thought police — is, as I’ve long insisted, an attempt by those who use it (be they left or right) to shut off entire arenas of expression, with the end game being to close off debate on a number of important policy questions. By making it difficult to discuss, for instance, both the viability and rectitude of a government-sanctioned race-based affirmative action policy, the effect of conflating “anti-affirmative action” with “anti-black” — which is subsequently identified as a form of hate speech — is a calculated ploy to frustrate attempts to discuss policy by forcibly eliminating competing viewpoints, and, in many cases, to eliminate attempts to revive that same political debate by all but criminalizing particular policy positions, with heretics of the left-liberal social orthodoxy shuttled off to sensitivity training seminars, or sequestered into “free speech zones” outside of which their policy ideas are verboten and subject to university review and censure.
This procedure is a form of intellectual fascism: there is an accepted orthodoxy, and those who refuse to align themselves under its aegis are enemies of the established rule and should be either punished or marginalized. They are, not to put too fine a point on it, controlled by a form of social (and in some cases, legal) bullying that creates a climate of fear and, to a degree, intellectual terrorism.
In Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg, having traversed the “diversity” canard as it is currently deployed, sums this up in a way protein wisdom regulars will find quite familiar:
Because liberals have what Thomas Sowell calls an “unconstrained vision,” they assume that everyone sees things through the same categorical prism. So once again, as with the left’s invention of social Darwinism, liberals assume their ideological opposites take the “bad” view to their good. If liberals assume blacks — or women, or gays — are inherently good, conservatives must think these same groups are inherently bad.
This is not to say there are no racist conservatives. But at the philosophical level, liberalism is battling a straw man. This is why liberals [and do note that by “liberals,” Goldberg refers to those who have adopted that nomenclature, even though they are born of a set of political ideals that just decades ago excoriated “liberalism” as the bailiwick of the impotent bourgeois still enslaved by the chains of Enlightenment thinking] must constantly assert that conservatives use code words — because there’s nothing obviously racist about conservatism per se. Indeed, the constant manipulation of the language to keep conservatives — and other non-liberals — on the defensive is a necessary tactic for liberal politics. The Washington, D.C., bureucrat who was fired for using the word “niggardly” correctly in a sentence is a case in point. The ground must be constantly shifted to maintain a climate of grievance [see, for instance, my discussion of this as it pertains to establishment feminism here – ed]. Fascists famously tried to rule by terror. Political correctness isn’t literally terroristic, but it does govern through fear. No serious person can deny that the grievance politics of the American left keeps decent people in a constant state of fright — they are afraid to say the wrong word, utter the wrong thought, offend the wrong constituency.
If we maintain our understanding of political conservatism as the heir of classical liberal individualism, it is almost impossible for a fair-minded person to call it racist. And yet, according to liberals, race neutrality is itself racist [see, for instance, my “debate” with Dr Caric here – ed]. It harkens back to the “social Darwinism” of the past, we are told, because it relegates minorities to a savage struggle for the survival of the fittest.
There are only three basic positions. There is the racism of the left, which seeks to use the state to help favored minorities that it regards as morally superior. There is racial neutrality, which is, or has become, the conservative position. And then there is some form of “classical racism” — that is, seeing blacks as inferior in some way. According to the left, only one of these positions isn’t racist. Race neutrality is racist. Racism is racist. So what’s left? Nothing except liberalism. In other words, agree with liberals and you are not racist. Of course, if you adopt color blindness as a policy, many fair-minded liberals will tell you that while you’re not personally racist, your views “perpetuate” racism. And some liberals will stand by the fascist motto: if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Either way, there are no safe harbors from liberal ideology. Hence, when it comes to race, liberalism has become a kind of soft totalitarianism and multiculturalism the mechanism for a liberal Gleichschaltung. If you fall outside the liberal consensus, you are either evil or an abettor of evil. This is the logic of the Volksgemeinschaft in poltically correct jargon.
Now, of course you’re not going to get a visit from the Gestapo if you see the world differently; if you don’t think the good kind of diversity is skin deep or that the only legitimate community is the one where “we’re all in it together,” you won’t be dragged off to reeducation camp. But you may very well be sent off to counseling or sensitivity training
— which, to my way of thinking, is really the left-liberal iteration of the more gauche and fraught education camps of yesteryear.
Two additional thoughts: first, the liberal idea of blacks — and of many of their chosen minorities — is, it should be obvious, quite Romanticized, and draws on the idea of Rousseau’s “noble savage.” Which is why we are typically treated to spirited defenses of those in protected groups who break the law, with the argument generally boiling down to their being somehow entitled to a cultural forgiveness: so it is when white liberal commentators forgive dog fighting rings as simply part of the “black culture” — the upshot being that a particular cultural identity, when hewed to rigorously, provides some inoculation against the rule of law as set down by an Establishment that is, by its very nature, anathema to Otherness.
This is, of course, nothing more than the very kinds of boutique multiculturalism so famously explored by Stanley Fish — a phenomenon that, at base, merely creates a kind of social hierarchy wherein self-styled post-Enlightenment liberals, suffused with Enlightenment thinking, take on the role of protectors and defenders of the noble savage that they claim to champion. In short, it is a form of intellectual colonialism masquerading as selfless activism.
Second, the reason many conservatives are so attuned to the biases of mainstream media culture, is that without those biases constantly finessing the left-liberal narrative of social righteousness, much of what passes for de facto and settled social “justice” would be open to wider debate. And so it becomes crucial for “liberals” to control the means of memetic production as a way to define away as hateful or politically incorrect the very kinds of speech that, from a classical liberal perspective, illustrate the idea of freedom of speech as it was intended to function publicly.
Instead, the soft-fascism of “progressivism” has turned free speech on its head, creating a climate wherein in order to make the grade as “free” speech, that speech must first be vetted by those who decide what is and what is not appropriate for social consumption.
And insofar as a media culture acting predominantly from a liberal worldview reinforces this surreal inversion of the intent of the First Amendment, it is — whether consciously or unconsciously — complicit in the very kind of intellectual fascism it pretends so often to rail against.
Discuss.
What’s that, do I detect a faint whiff of Alan Sokal blended in with the pit bull musk?
Well, it SAYS “Posted by Jeff G.” I bite on the nugget and it dents. It appears to be genuine. Jeff G. has returned?
Things fell apart; the center could not hold. “Mere” Jeff has been re-loosed upon the world. Like lopping two inches off every ‘tard cock…and those two inches were already dear.
Racist!
I just wanted to get that in there early. Head ’em off at the pass and all that.
Working for a very large county government, I see this behavior in spades (Ha! see what I did there). Jeff mentions both social and legal bullying in regards to keep the herd in line. One way this is done is through quazi-mandatory diversity trainings. I say “quazi” because they aren’t mandatory, but they kind of are…As a matter of fact we are having a diversity training today. Those are ubiquitous in a government setting. I won’t be going, so I’ll reinforce my “reich wing” bona fides. Anybody to the right of O! is a nazi. I bring up the whole national socialism point and how that doesn’t really pertain to me, but my best guess is they are hearing, “blah, blah, blah, murder brown babies, blah, blah, blah”. Anyhow, a great post, Jeff. Welcome back!
An interesting aspect of this phenomenon is how it seems to free up it’s adherents to act in ways that are actually racist, as in photo-shopping black face on Lieberman or Steele or calling Powell an uncle Tom. They give themselves pass for this sort of behavior apparently on the idea that “everyone who knows” (everyone in on the scam) knows that they couldn’t possibly mean it in the way that it is usually meant.
They are better than we are, really. We need to learn to accept that.
I think you may have blown Barrett’s mind by pointing him here, Jeff.
I don’t think he knew what he was asking for.
This is all very reasonable, except for the Jonah Goldberg excerpt, which consists of him just making assertions blanket assertions about what motivates half the planet.
“Because liberals have what Thomas Sowell calls an ‘unconstrained vision,’ they assume that everyone sees things through the same categorical prism.”
That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve read in, like, five minutes.
See, that right there will get you crucified for all your trouble, Jeff. Layout a position, give a supporting link, analyze the details and work your way with unapologetic logic toward an inevitable conclusion that rings truth like a bell. There’s not much patience for that sort of tediousness.
And I think that is part of the problem of the blogosphere in general and modern-day learning in particular: No one has the attention span of more than two paragraphs. Otherwise, there was no reason for Wolcott to lump Gagdad Bob, Porretto, and you in the same breath, except that he checks in on these blogs, sees the preponderance of words and careful building of one’s case and it simply short-circuits his affected intellectualism.
Too.many.fucking.words, Jeff. It’s gonna be the death of your traffic and the ultimate freedom you deserve. Damn, it’s good to have you back.
What if you simply crossed off the word liberal to suit your purpose Barrett? Would you then admit that there are a goodly number of our fellow humans who are doing exactly what is described?
Also, it isn’t half the planet. It’s more like a fifth.
Hmmm. Taken with a vey superficial understanding of Dawkins’ meme, one might conclude that the herd, the liberal herd, requires (dictates) purchase of its PC concepts because its adherents suffer from a more selfish selfish gene than others who prefer to regard individuals with greater respect and assumed personal sovereignty. Who will support a memetic that deprives individuals of truly liberated thought, unless those who assert the necessity of enslavement to “correct” speech themselves lack the ability to originate sturdy ideas? The dependency of contemporary liberalism that entraps recipients of government largesse has its origins, perhaps, in the minds of the larger body of liberals who support such government: they are afraid to think for themselves?
BB, are you asserting that liberals number half the planet? Talk about blanket assertions…
Oh yeah, he’s back. I didn’t understand a single bit of that whole 1,389 words.
W00t! Back in the saddle!
Trouble is, that none of this is really about racism or ensuring that those who were formerly downtrodden and oppressed get a fair shake. It’s about raw power, the ability to circumscribe who’s kewl and who ain’t, and to get rid of all of those meddlesome
kidsopponents who would thwart attempts to institute The Ideal Society.Today they use racism as a means to beat their opponents into submission, but it could just as easily be any convenient piety that all societies present. Shewt, it could be patriotism or family values if it suited them to do so.
As for the “coded language,” that’s got to be the most insidious aspect of all this. It’s a blatant case of what Jeff has pointed out before: the appropriation of someone’s signs and their attendant signifieds, then swapping out the original signifieds for their own. (“Signified” = “Meaning” for you Pittsburgh Steelers fans.)
Here’s an example of how wrong it is: Imagine that I contract you to perform a particular job, and we agree, in writing, that upon completion of the job, I’ll pay you $50,000.
Then when you’re finished, and it’s time for me to pay up, I say, “well, in many European countries, that comma is actually a decimal point, so I’ll pay you $50. And that dollar sign means “pesos” in Colombia, so here’s a nice fifty-peso bill for ya.
Fifty Colombia pesos isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, BTW, though in 1985, it could getcha a soda plus bus fare.
That’s basically what the Left is doing when they mutter about “code words”: they’re reneging on the social contract that is created through the ordinary meaning of language.
Education Guy-
It’s not that the word “liberal” needs to be replaced; what Goldberg needs here is some qualifiers, like “some.” Many of the assertion he tries to make in general, and particularly in the excerpts of his magnum opus I’ve seen elsewhere on the internets, come off like the Springfield kids denouncing the Shelbyville kids for always eating candy and loving the sweet taste. Notice how I wrote “many” there. That’s because I have a conscience, unlike Golberg, who doesn’t give a damn how many millions of people he libels on a daily basis with his nonsense.
Given that this opinion makes sense, I vote that verbal abuse should be the only way to counter it.
And counter it we must! Racist!
murder brown babies
And yet, oddly, it appears to be the left that is actually responsible for the disposal of inconvenient brown babies. Note that the rate is three times higher than for brown babies. We just call it “Planned Parenthood” nowadays rather than “eugenics”.
As I’ve observed here before, Goldberg isn’t really saying anything new. What is new is assembling up this much damning evidence and issuing it in mass-market form. Goldberg’s book has sold cubic fucktons of copies (it’s still sitting at an Amazon sales rank of 465, more than 6 months after it came out).
I’ve yet to see a substantive criticism of his facts, arguments, or conclusions.
particularly in the excerpts of his magnum opus I’ve seen elsewhere on the internets
Maybe you should try reading the actual book.
Just a thought.
Sorry to be redundant, cranky, but I understand they value the mob.
Poll-mistrusting racists!
This is all very reasonable, except for the Jonah Goldberg excerpt, which consists of him just making assertions blanket assertions about what motivates half the planet.
Please note that the operative word here is “excerpt.” Prior to this passage, Goldberg was very clear about his use of the term “liberal.” Jeff even POINTED OUT that his use of the word “liberal” was specific to a type of thinking, and that it doesn’t signify all those who self-identify as liberal.
Apparently our friend BB hasn’t read the book. He would be well advised not to critique it until he has.
No. For real, Barrett. Liberals think squiggly bulbs control the weather. This is unconstrained vision. If you do not agree that squiggly bulbs control the weather you are teh evil devourer of baby polar bears. They’re really judgey and narrowminded people is why. Sometimes I smile at them and they ask me if I have a question. I say no, I was just smiling.
Obstreperous Infidel: “Working for a very large county government, I see this behavior in spades (Ha! see what I did there).”
What do a couple of shovels have to do with anything??
Obstreperous Infidel: “Jeff mentions both social and legal bullying in regards to keep the herd in line. One way this is done is through quazi-mandatory diversity trainings. I say “quazi†because they aren’t mandatory, but they kind of are…”
Nearly bolo-ed my first one of those… they trotted out a scenario where the opressed female invoke the prospective employers relationship with her father to get the job, then whinged when that relationship proved to be a two-edged sword, for whichI had *zero* sympathy.
Note that the rate is three times higher than for brown babies
“White”, that should say. Durrr.
BB
It’s true but just don’t say it in those words! Shall we call you Jim Taggert from here on out?
You’re nothing but a bunch of [insert group here]ISTS!!! And [insert group here]PHOBES!!!
(Just to cover all the bases.)
“Please note that the operative word here is “excerpt.†Prior to this passage, Goldberg was very clear about his use of the term “liberal.—
Nothing I said contradicts what you are saying. I said that Golberg, in general, and in the other excerpts I’ve seen elsewhere, pulls this trick. I subscribe to National Review and know exactly what Goldberg thinks he thinks. Also, see below regarding what Goldberg means by “liberals” in this passage, as described by Jeff himself.
“Prior to this passage, Goldberg was very clear about his use of the term “liberal.†Jeff even POINTED OUT that his use of the word “liberal†was specific to a type of thinking, and that it doesn’t signify all those who self-identify as liberal.”
That’s not what Jeff said. Look:
“[and do note that by “liberals,” Goldberg refers to those who have adopted that nomenclature, even though they are born of a set of political ideals that just decades ago excoriated “liberalism” as the bailiwick of the impotent bourgeois still enslaved by the chains of Enlightenment thinking]”
Jeff was pointing out that Goldberg is not referring to classical liberals.
“Refers to those who have adopted that nomenclature” itself refers to all those who self-identify as liberals.
“Shall we call you Jim Taggert from here on out?”
It wasn’t my fault! I need wider powers!
“What do a couple of shovels have to do with anything??”
DC, something about the shit being so deep up in my workplace! Oh and the whole whack-jobs turning phrases and words into racist insults when they aren’t INTENDED as such.
Just finished LF last weekend. Impressively done.
Spies – BB can’t deign to read the actual book, he’s above such things.
And if they can’t attack you according to their semantic proscriptions, they can always attack your syntactical choices — long sentences and such.
BB, if you’re interested in the proper use of language, perhaps we could discuss the verbal slight of hand by which communists were relabeled as liberals, fascists were called conservatives, and actual liberals were branded as fascists… ?
Well yeah it’s conscious. NPR knows damn well they woefully underindex among African-Americans… black people don’t listen to them. All this civil rightsy super serious racial folderol they indulge in way excessively is entirely for helping white people think correctly. Black people aren’t really involved, except for Juan Williams, when they can get him to play along. The ground must be constantly shifted to maintain a climate of grievance, but it’s aggrieved white people that’s the goal of the exercise. I just think that’s important to be explicit about. Hello? Katrina… only the most blatant exemplar of racism ever. I saw it on HBO. Harrowing, it was.
“fascists were called conservatives”
Tee hee.
Barrett, what you are trying to do is whinge that not all liberals, particularly yourself, think that way. You would be more convincing if:
1) The ones who do think that way were not in control, with the bit in their teeth and running as hard as they can go;
2) There were any hint of reciprocity, of acknowledgement that “conservatives” are not an undifferentiated brown-baby-hating lump of wingnuts;
3) Your own post were not an example of that lack of reciprocity and the specific behavior we find objectionable, i.e. insisting on your own interpretation of Goldberg (without having read the book) despite the clear denotative meanings of the words he uses.
Regards,
Ric
the verbal slight of hand by which communists were relabeled as liberals, fascists were called conservatives, and actual liberals were branded as fascists… ?
I was there Ards. I was forced to read Animal Farm, which was okay, but I was also forced to reach the wrong conclusions from it. Which, in my youth and innocence of 10th grade, I could not countermand in class. The story apparently meant the exact opposite of what I had read, imagine my dismay! I muddled though the AP English classes and college courses that demanded that words mean exactly what the Greater Narrative means, no more, no less.
I could not understand, in my naive idealismm, why English Class and Sociology and Government all seemed like the same course, over and over.
“That’s because I have a conscience, unlike Golberg, who doesn’t give a damn how many millions of people he libels on a daily basis with his nonsense.”
I can’t tell if that sweet, sweet taste is hypocrisy or irony.
Not so. Progressives and leftists who used to disdain the term liberal began to realize that, after say, 1972, they weren’t going to win by establishing themselves as out-of-the-mainstream radicals. So leftists who used to hate the bourgeois liberalism of the Dems decided it was a smart move to tether themselves to that particular nomenclature, if only to hide themselves within a more widely respected and accepted portion of the political mainstream.
The “progressive” movement has, ever since, been an attempt to recreate “liberalism” in the image of the progressivism that at one time despised it. It has been a coup from within, much like fascism itself was a nationalist coup from within the movement of worldwide socialism, taking the tenets of socialism and attempting to apply them to a more workable logistical set of conditions.
Ric Locke-
I have already made the mistake of trying to explain that Goldstein himself has said what it is that Goldberg means by liberals in this context.
Baracky is way ahead of you. You will join a union and you will join a corps. He’s not counting so much on the media to keep you in line. You’ll look back on that as a golden age, you will.
“Not so. Progressives and leftists who used to disdain the term liberal began to realize that, after say, 1972, they weren’t going to win by establishing themselves as out-of-the-mainstream radicals. So leftists who used to hate the bourgeois liberalism of the Dems decided it was a smart move to tether themselves to that particular nomenclature, if only to hide themselves within a more widely respected and accepted portion of the political mainstream.
The “progressive†movement has, ever since, been an attempt to recreate “liberalism†in the image of the progressivism that at one time despised it. It has been a coup from within, much like fascism itself was a nationalist coup from within the movement of worldwide socialism, taking the tenets of socialism and attempting to apply them to a more workable logistical set of conditions.”
I do not disagree with any of this and it does not contradict the portion of my post that you are quoting, which dealt with the unfortunate and perhaps frightening fact that if you say that “those who have adopted that nomenclature,” with the point of nomenclature in question being the term “liberal,” you are referring to those who self-identify as liberals. Nothing will change this fact.
You used the word nomenclature too many times in one comment I think. Fascist.
“If we maintain our understanding of political conservatism as the heir of classical liberal individualism, it is almost impossible for a fair-minded person to call it racist.”
Ok. Tell me what you would call this:
“The central question that emerges … is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes  the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.†National Review 1957
It’s good to see the ‘A’ material back at PW.
1957!
I should further add, lots of those who self-identify as liberal continue to do so by rote and habit, and, when pressed, find themselves uncomfortable with many of the policy prescriptions coming from “their” party’s leadership.
Too, many who are now labeled conservative used to self-identify as liberal. But they have recognized that “liberalism,” particularly as it is currently being stewarded, doesn’t track with the kind of liberalism that this country was founded around.
It has been a great trick of the last eight years to turn classical liberals into conservatives into fanatical right wingers. For someone like me, who is, in most respects, a social libertarian, to be lumped in with the James Dobsons of the world, has been a clinic in watching the bold broad strokes of linguistic manipulation from the left at play.
And now, to be taken to task by people like Wolcott for my potty mouth — by those whose claim to cultural evolutions is tied in general to things like supporting a crucifix dipped in urine or penis puppet shows (George Carlin and Lenny Bruce being patron saints of such a movement) — is just further proof that the ground is never stable, and that moving the goalposts is part of the strategy.
In short, I think Barrett is wrong when he tries to suggest that what is, in fact, a communicative necessity (using particular labels as short hand, rather than stopping each time you use such short hand to qualify it — the qualifying having already been done and the ground rules for usage set), is instead an attempt to label everyone who self-identifies as “liberal” a willing perpetrator of fascistic governing strategies.
For instance, I self-identify as liberal, and yet I know that Goldberg isn’t speaking of me.
My dad still had hair in 1957.
SRSLY Penny, you had to go back 51 years for a damning quote? Do you think that no attitudes have changed in that time? I would venture to say that most people commenting here weren’t even born then.
Jeff,
I think you are forgetting that the conservative movement is a cancer on American society.
You were told, remember?
I’ve been looking for a while now but finally found what it was I was looking for. So here they are. I think this makes a useful concrete example of the sort of interpretive behavior under discussion, if I may say so without presuming too much.
Kevin T. Keith responding to Darleen’s post “Things that chap my ass – an ongoing series” July 30, 2008 and then to challenges by malaclypse the tertiary, twice.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Here’s a small taste of Mr. Keith’s remarks: “…More to the point, what does it mean that there’s an entire political party filled with assholes like him who publicly speak to each other in a universally-recognized racial code that they won’t acknowledge? [“like him”, referring to Trent Lott’s praise for Strom Thurmond on the occasion of his birthday.]…”
“a phenomenon that, at base, merely creates a kind of social hierarchy wherein self-styled post-Enlightenment liberals, suffused with Enlightenment thinking, take on the role of protectors and defenders of the noble savage that they claim to champion. In short, it is a form of intellectual colonialism masquerading as selfless activism.”
And they kill with their “kindness” by treating minority kids in school as if they can’t learn as fast and as well. Lower expectations lead to worse results. So then of course there *have* to be different standards and expectations.
Rinse and repeat.
An indication that you subscribed to National Review before I was born.
Will someone inform Penny that the National Review writes stuff TODAY that “conservatives” disagree with. I don’t take ownership of conservativism from the last 200 years. Both sides of the political spectrum have changed. Classical liberals have turned into “Conservative” and Liberals have turned into progressives.
Barrett:
Are you deliberately misunderstanding? Jeff clarified the term in the original post through way of an editorial insertion that Goldberg had defined “liberals” as the progressivists who had co-opted the term and supplanted the traditional liberal viewpoint with transnational progressivism. Therefore, liberal within the Goldberg citation can be understood to mean progressive in this instance, a much narrower definition than “self-identified liberal.”
Speaking as a self-identified liberal, albeit an ex-Democrat, I find little to no common ground with the ideological group in question, and am comfortable with the usage. I believe Jeff self-identifies as a liberal himself, so he’d be painting himself as well. It’s kind of an ongoing theme at this site, the misuse of that word. There are archives if you’re feeling brave.
SRSLY Penny, you had to go back 51 years for a damning quote?
If Jonah can go back 100 years to H.G. Wells, why can’t I go back 51 to William F. Buckley?
“For someone like me, who is, in most respects, a social libertarian, to be lumped in with the James Dobsons of the world, has been a clinic in watching the bold broad strokes of linguistic manipulation from the left at play.”
I’m sure that many self-described conservatives don’t like to be lumped in with James Dobson types, but you might want to consider the possibility that this was not orchestrated by the machinations of the left so much as it was a natural result of James Dobson getting personal phone calls from George W. Bush regarding his Supreme Court nominees and people like Tom DeLay and Mitt Romney speaking at his little telecasts. Now, if you’re not a Republican, per se, and feel that you ought not to be lumped in with Republicans in general, then I sympathize with you. Anyway, I’ve gotta run, but thanks for the discussion.
And Jeff, you used the word “broad” in comment #46, so it must be said:
Sexist!
I’ll be crying in a corner for a while.
Mark, I think it’s more a sign that Penny’s been saving that little nugget for a while. It’s one of those liberal talking points whenever National Review (or, in this case, historical conservative thought) comes up.
Thanks, Silver Whistle. There are other examples of such — I have been analogized with all sort of malignancies — but I linked that piece in the main post rather than go looking for all the other instances of same.
See that bolded part, Barrett? That’s what’s known as a “qualifier.” If included properly in the reading of what Jeff wrote, it clearly narrows further the group being described. Ergo, when Jeff says Goldberg wasn’t so labeling all who self-identify as liberals, he means Goldberg wasn’t so labeling all who self-identify as liberals.
The enforcement of PC speech  be it by social pressure…or through disciplinary functionaries of various stripes, from HR officers to campus thought police  is… an attempt by those who use it (be they left or right) to shut off entire arenas of expression…
Anybody challenging that statement? Because otherwise, we’re in agreement that somebody is doing that. And, at least on campuses, the only party strong enough to do it consists of people self-calling themselves liberals or progressives.
Penny Banner, can you supply us with the full article you cite in comment 43? Ellipses and missing context tend to make for slightly quesy interlocutors in argument, sorry.
It’s just not a good sign when you read a post about the control of language and immediately begin quibbling about the nomenclature I don’t think. Kind of costive, really.
Penny Banner- I’d call it “old”.
Buckley revised his opinions quite publicly, unlike Wells, who became ever moreso the crank.
I suspect Penny is a drive-by, but just in case she’s still reading:
What would you call this:
Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.
Hint: he’s neither a conservative nor a Republican.
Hint #2: he’s still in Congress.
Proof of the pejuration of the Conservative. I couldn’t go as far back as Penny, but 1968 should suffice. Nice to know that Buckley knew how to ad hominem when debating a vacuum.
If Jonah can go back 100 years to H.G. Wells
Goldberg has 400 pages of evidence, ranging from (as you say) over a century ago to modern times.
I’ll be anxiously awaiting you providing the same in regard to Buckley.
Somewhat related:
There is a planned boycott of Tropic Thunder (which my wife and I are dying to go see, assuming we have come off the babysitting blacklist) due to the use of the word “retard” in the film. Since the film is of a kind with Stiller’s previous work, I’m guessing that the character Simple Jack is a lampooning of the Hollywood tendency to cast “serious” roles as those of the handicapped variety. To quote Eddie Murphy in Bowfinger, “White boys always get the Oscar. It’s a known fact. Did I ever get a nomination? No! You know why? Cause I hadn’t played any of them slave roles, and get my ass whipped. That’s how you get the nomination. A black dude who plays a slave that gets his ass whipped gets the nomination, a white guy who plays an idiot gets the Oscar. That’s what I need, I need to play a retarded slave, then I’ll get the Oscar.”
So even though the term retard is being used satirically to lambast the very attitude that the Special Olympics umbrage committee is trying to correct, the usage of the term itself is so verboten that context is essentially unimportant. The studio is already going into damage control mode, assuring the outraged that they meant no offense, and pulling ads which referenced Simple Jack.
What they should have done is release a statement calling the argument what it was, differently abled.
Yea, those that hang with those who call Republicans “Nazis” and the “american taliban” now want qualifiers to exclude them from a broad brush.
To which I reply, “well, fuck you anyways. You ain’t foolin no one”.
Hey Jeff,
I ran headlong into this in my small rural property owners association.
Code 19 of our CCnR’s forbids hospitals, nursing homes, churches and traffic-generating businesses. But one of our board officers, in search of an off-grid income, is operating a nursing home way out her for terminally ill, physically abused children from one of Arizona’s influential “Indian” tribes.
The result is, whenever anyone dares to mention the violation, they risk taking on entrenched neo-tribal accusations of racism, compounded with the stigma of being “heartless.”
It should not surprise anybody to learn that the perpetrators of this are die-hard Democrats from C-H-I-C-A-G-0.
So, in the end, no one dares to force the issue – and the violator is enjoying a 3rd year in power on our POA board!
OT, but, evidence of the Dem’s dirty-tricks, replete with PC-tactics and all, in our rural POA suggests that the failed city’s Daley machine is engaged in a gerrymandering effort here in rural Arizona.
You know, FOR THE CHILDREN, and all.
A quick note: I’ve added some additional links to the main post, from Stanley Fish’s “How the Right Hijacked the Magic Words” (where Caric, though he never read it, gets, filtered down over the years, his entire “code word” argument — though fish is far more capable of trying to pull off such a piece of intellectual sleight of hand) to a Reason review that looks at his “Boutique Multiculturalism” argument (with which I agree, for the most part), to the Claremont Institute’s examination of the making of the Southern Strategy myth.
Worth going back and clicking on those to further hypertext your way to a more complete rhetorical understanding.
Mr. Brown has been to college. We can tell because of the way he picks at what he sees as a missing qualifier (though had he read the entire book, he would have instead been annoyed by Goldberg’s constant insertion of “of course not everyone left-of-center is an evil progressive/fascist”) thus to give the impression that the Entire Argument is a steaming pile, given that Goldberg is Slandering Half The World.
He then concedes the Goldberg/Goldstein argument and scampers away, having stirred things up to his taste even though he didn’t actually contribute anything of substance.
All in very fine language, mind you. Which is why we know he went to college.
The language police are winning the debate it seems. Retarded->special->differently abled. Once “retarded” gets removed from the language, using “special” in this context will be next. The target keeps moving and the perpetually aggrieved keep following it.
Context? You want context?
“So long as it is merely asserting the right to impose superior mores for whatever period it takes to effect a genuine cultural equality between the races, and so long as it does so by humane and charitable means, the South is in step with civilization, as is the Congress that permits it to function.â€Â
Now, lets return to the original point:
“If we maintain our understanding of political conservatism as the heir of classical liberal individualism, it is almost impossible for a fair-minded person to call it racist.â€Â
Yes, I agree. Mr. Brown went to a fine college in a wonderful state I am sure.
SGT Ted:
WooHoo! Direct hit. Target eliminated!
It’s kinda clever that Penny Banner (pics included) was a famous Girl Wrestler. “Snatch-wrestling?”
Penny Banner, on the other hand, has reading comprehension issues I think.
It’s also noteworthy that liberals perfer to discuss the workings of racism and the theories of social change rather than actually going out into society and doing something to correct those problems. That, they feel, is the job the should be handed down to the riff raff, to be funded with taxpayer dollars and executed under the power of the courts and unelected officals.
Yes, Penny, and then, historicalcontext. Next, we’ll want balance, then logic, then analysis.
And pith. Lots of pith.
The machinations of the left of which I speak were to turn actual liberals — in the classical sense — into “conservatives,” who they then lump together with social conservatives.
You haven’t been reading here long, but — though I have many social conservative readers (the vast majority of whom I’ve found to be very open minded) — had you been around these parts long enough you’d recognize that I deplore many policy ideas of the social cons, and have liberally (ha!) attacked them. To me, it matters not what you call yourself: it matters how your thinking gets you where you are. This is my problem with McCain, and it is one of the reasons I’ve been quite forthright in calling him a progressive who happens to agree with a number of conservative policies.
It is the reason I stood against Harriet Miers.
It is the reason I stood against the Schiavo legislation.
The point being, that not all of those who are now identified as conservative are anywhere near social conservatives on many fronts. But they have been tethered to them. Whereas I have been careful to disarticulate progressives from even liberal Dems, when such a distinction is both valid and called for.
There is some truth to what Penny says. Remember The Old Negro Space Program? 1957-58, it was a different time.
When did liberals forgive dog-fighting? As far as I know, it has been roundly condemned. Forgive me for sounding rude but you are full of shit on that one, Perfesser.
“Protected” minorities? Protected from what, other than this?
Noble savage, eh? As opposed to dirty, unwashed, stupid, drug-addled, raping, sex-crazed, violent, ugly, subhuman savages? So you are trying to convince me that conservatives really really liked black people all along and NEVER have tried to bar any doors to them? Is that what you are selling me? So what is it that Ken Mehlman was apologizing for a couple of years ago?
Second, the reason many conservatives are so attuned to the biases of mainstream media culture, is that without those biases constantly finessing the left-liberal narrative of social righteousness, much of what passes for de facto and settled social “justice†would be open to wider debate. And so it becomes crucial for “liberals†to control the means of memetic production as a way to define away as hateful or politically incorrect the very kinds of speech that, from a classical liberal perspective, illustrate the idea of freedom of speech as it was intended to function publicly.
That does not sound like a classical liberal talking. A classical liberal would understand that free speech means that groups of idiots can at anytime can decide to exert social pressure to advance their agenda. That is the essence of free speech. You can influence the media to be biased in your favor by exerting social pressure. But you will not be able to convince anyone that your dried turd is a peice of fudge. You guys want to do your own bullying and influencing and social pressure but you want to gussy it up as some sort of “fight for fairness”. No one is going to buy that shit. Carry on doing your duty for your guys, but don’t sell this shit as some sort of moral crusade for fairness.
The very thing that you are eschewing – the liberals trying to make things “fair” by hook and crook is what I see your side doing. Trying to work the ref in the media, trying to convince everyone that any black person who has any success is really there because they got some kind of freebee or because someone felt sorry for them.
Luckily, the real world is not as race and ideology obsessed. Most people see that someone is either smart and talented or they are not. There is a whole new generation that doesnt even think about affirmative action or any bullshit grievance. They are used to working and doing business with people who don’t look like them and they dont assume that their coworkers are there because they got preferential treatment.
This is why I fucking hate the internets. I hope none of you let your kids read this goddamned bile. I swear we just can’t help perpetuating this garbage can we?
David Thompson has a post up entitled “Let’s play Bamboozled!“ which touches on the theoretical underpinnings of this problem.
Everyone keep your matches away from Lisa’s comment. It could easily catch fire.
Retardists!
I really, really want to touch Lisa’s comment.I’m drawn to it, fascinated by its numbing hypnotism… No! Musn’t touch Preciousssss…..
Consider most gangsta rap. Often, their videos glorify the thuggish lifestyle of violent, misogynistic, scofflaws. Although in direct opposition to one of the main themes of modern feminism, an objectification of women that reduces them to a subsidiary role at best, you won’t hear much overt criticism from the mainstream. These “great artists†are hailed as street poets- “keepin’ it realâ€Â- as they deal out dollar bills to gyrating young-uns; all the while sporting a well practiced sneer.
“It’s an integral part of their cultureâ€Â, we’re told………
Now, just last week Mav was in Sturgis at the annual Buffalo-chip rally; I’m sure that everyone heard about him laughingly proposing that his wife take part in the Miss Buffalo-Chip contest. While the gaffe was amusing (and, who knows whether he fully understood the nature of the contest) how it was covered in the media was interesting. In addition to highlighting the gaffe, many outlets portrayed the contest, and the rally as a whole, as a sort of cave man fest of female exploitation. Predictably, the far left Huffington post went out of their way to describe it as an abusive and downright dangerous environment for any women attending.
I guess they didn’t understand the “nuances†of biker culture………….
Predominantly white bikers objectifying women = SHOCK AND DISMAY!!!!
Rappers acting like Mac Daddies and Pimps = GLORIOUS DIVERSITY!!!!
White politician speaks to “Baby Momma†issues = RACIST!!!!
O! talking about Jackabo Daddies = POST-RACIAL HEALER!!!!
Lisa, this works with all sorts of things, not just race. Personally I think the global warming propaganda is a lot more damaging. Besides, for real I don’t think black people really are what conversations about race in America is about. Not really.
It’s also noteworthy that liberals perfer to discuss the workings of racism and the theories of social change rather than actually going out into society and doing something to correct those problems.
Right.
As far as I know, it has been roundly condemned.
What about this, Lisa?
Lisa, “they” did not excuse dog fighting. They excused a black person for liking and supporting and engaging in dogfighting, because he just couldn’t help it, as a black man. The arugment went something like “it’s part of black culture to engage in animal blood sports, for as a people they were brutalized and that stuff gets passed down and paid forward, and black men like feeling really powerful and gangsta and this is a bad way, but an understandable way they do that”. The most racist thing I ever heard, but I heard it indeed, from left leaning types. Not again, was the subtext….when will they stop trying to lay the successful black man low….
Ehrn the truth is, dog fighting is depraved, debased and corrupt, and Vick really is a bad person, and being black is no excuse for being mean to dogs.
Penny Banner
You say that Goldberg went back 100 years to H.G. Wells, which should give you license to go back 51 years to the NR, but what you fail to notice is that Goldberg didn’t skip the intervening years, instead he traced their progression to the present. Can you do the same?
sorry – “When”, not “Ehrn”
Here’s Whoopie!, Lisa. I linked a bunch more at the time — the vast majority of them white. You might do a site search, but this post points to ESPN’s Skip Bayless. And I believe our pal thor was among those making the argument. I also recall editorials, like one in the Oregonian (the editorial has been removed from its online home).
So you may call bullshit if you wish, but those of us who were dealing with the story daily here have our memories, too. GOOGLE IT!
As for the term “protected minorities,” I refer to those who receive from the government special dispensation — even as other minority groups do not.
Lots of black people are scared of dogs. It can be awkward.
“Trying to work the ref in the media, trying to convince everyone that any black person who has any success is really there because they got some kind of freebee or because someone felt sorry for them.”
Ok, which one of you crackers is doing this? Is this kind of like implying anyone that doesn’t vote for Obama is stupid? voteyourintellect.com indeed.
Oh, and also “viewed in the context of cultural legacy, dogfighting must be excused – as blood sport ‘management’, you see, was a top way, one of the very few ways, a black man could eke out extra income and gain status back in the day.” So today it must be forgiven.
Yup, Happyfeet,
GW came to my mind, too.
The manufactured academics’ consensus becomes an ad hoc judge and jury – and the verdict is: America is GUILTY!
It’s a tired, formulaic gimmick, and it retards (can I say that) political discourse ’round the world.
I did once get asked if my spotty collie dogs were leopards.
“Can you do the same?”
Penny is feverishly searching “teh narrative” archives.
Lisa writes:
Uh, and I say they can’t where, exactly?
I’ve discussed this at length before, but quickly, the problem is that the press presents itself (and we are taught from an early age that this is the case) as aspiring toward “objectivity” (which I differentiate from neutrality). When the “objective” gets to wear that label and use that label as an influence to push the bias it adopts and supports, then we have problems.
I only expect fairness out of those whose very existence and reputation is predicated on a pretension of maintaining that fairness. Personally, I think we should do away with the “objective” press — that is, unless we are prepared as a culture to hold them to account for their failure to carry through on their mission as defined by how they continue to present themselves.
The lamestream media are “objective” all right, if you remember that “objective” also means “a step toward a predetermined, desired outcome.”
Goldberg didn’t skip the intervening years, instead he traced their progression to the present. Can you do the same?
It’s not such a difficult thing to trace from counting a human being as 3/5 of a man to Buckley’s editorial. Sounds pretty consistent in a Goldberg sort of way, and I am certain 400 pages of claptrap could be written in a very engaging style, with footnotes and all! But it would be claptrap, just as Jonah’s book is claptrap. There is no point to Jonah’s book other than finger pointing.
Carry on doing your duty for your guys, but don’t sell this shit as some sort of moral crusade for fairness.
It is about fairness, Lisa. My introduction to campus PC and affirmative action came around 1987, when I first started working as staff at a large university. That year, the university began requiring that at least 3 minority candidates be interviewed for every open faculty position. One of the Deans, a chemist by profession, objected to this, seeing it as undercutting the principle of merit and also implying his college was racist. I was new to all this stuff and attended a campus “discussion” on it. The old Dean, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, one of whose son-in-laws was black, was never allowed to fully present his side of the issue. I sat open-mouthed, watching our black EOAA officer call the man a racist. A group of feminists likewise stood up and started shouting epithets. The old fellow, a true classic liberal who was accustomed to polite argument, could only sit there and take it. The situation has not improved, Lisa. It’s a common thing on campuses. That’s not “the essence of free speech.”
The political left always looks for what they refer to as “code-words†that are supposed to signal all of us knuckle dragging conservatives. And, having determined their “true†meaning and intent, are banished for the evil hate speech they must be. Conveniently, they also are also immediately useful in assigning an inherently “bad†morality to the person using them.
But PC speak simply serves the opposite function. Not only do they reflect the speakers “compassionate†out look for the “dignity†of the subject; use of this set of “code-words†immediately establishes the absolute moral authority an individual.
This makes it easy for folks indoctrinated in PC phraseology to immediately affirm or reject any conversant-regardless of the validity of their arguments.
So, the left also has some “dog whistles†of their own, and are not shy about using them………
And, sadly, our public education system is training our young people’s ears to listen for their call………..
But then, just about anyone who reads the posts and comments on this site are probably racist anyway……………
“Protected” is what some congresscritters are seeking to make “professional” journalists that they may nevermore be burdened with the threat of jail for not revealing their sources to prosecutors, as for instance, happened to Judith Miller.
PennBanner: “If Jonah can go back 100 years to H.G. Wells, why can’t I go back 51 to William F. Buckley?”
Mr. Goldberg did so to present the historical context and continuity of a collection of beliefs. You’re going back to the past in a ham-handed effort to slur the present National Review.
Likewise, I would point out that there are no shortage of quotes uttered by Democrats, such as Wallace, Fullbright, Byrd, etc. By your standard, it would be appropriate to saddle present Democrats, such as Obama, with these quotes.
Can you get from Buckley’s editorial to the part where he reverses his opinion?
We still don’t have Buckley’s editorial as far as I can see. All we have is an edited excerpt.
Hmmmm … not to go all Wolcott here, but I found Provocateurism, 6 highly derivative of Provocateurism, 5. To be fair, my personal favorite is Provocateurism, 2, which has a piquant quality about it.
–
Straw?
This guy is so blinkered that he doesn’t realize he’s proven the point of the very post he’s hoping to upset.
Brilliant!
It’s not such a difficult thing to trace from counting a human being as 3/5 of a man to Buckley’s editorial.
Translation: “I am utterly and completely ignorant of the historical underpinnings of the government of the United States”.
Hint: it wasn’t the southern, slave-holding states that wanted to not count the slaves.
After you read Goldberg’s book, your next assignment is to read The Federalist Papers.
It’s a much easier read than Foucault and Marx, I promise.
Yeah, Bumperstickerist. Ever notice how it’s never these kinds of posts used to define me? — except to point out on occasion that I write in long sentences.
Curious, that.
Maybe I should start sticking COCKSLAP into the middle of these for no reason whatever, just because I can.
Hey, Penny… try these on for size…
Blacks and Hispanics are “too busy eating watermelons and tacos” to learn how to read and write.” — Mike Wallace, CBS News.
“I am a former kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan in Raleigh County and the adjoining counties of the state …. The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia …. It is necessary that the order be promoted immediately and in every state of the Union. Will you please inform me as to the possibilities of rebuilding the Klan in the Realm of W. Va …. I hope that you will find it convenient to answer my letter in regards to future possibilities.”
— Former Klansman and current US Senator Robert Byrd
“I’ll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”
— Lyndon B. Johnson to two governors on Air Force One according Ronald Kessler’s Book, “Inside The White House”
“I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s not a n*gger or a Chinaman. Uncle Will says that the Lord made a White man from dust, a nigger from mud, then He threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman. He does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice, I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ought to be in Africa, Yellow men in Asia and White men in Europe and America.”
-Harry Truman
“I hold that the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding states between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good–a positive good.”
–Sen. John C. Calhoun (D., S.C.),
If blacks were given the right to vote, that would “place every splay-footed, bandy-shanked, hump-backed, thick-lipped, flat-nosed, woolly-headed, ebon-colored Negro in the country upon an equality with the poor white man.”
–Rep. Andrew Johnson, (D., Tenn.)
“Resolved, That claiming fellowship with, and desiring the co-operation of all who regard the preservation of the Union under the Constitution as the paramount issue–and repudiating all sectional parties and platforms concerning domestic slavery, which seek to embroil the States and incite to treason and armed resistance to law in the Territories; and whose avowed purposes, if consummated, must end in civil war and disunion, the American Democracy recognize and adopt the principles contained in the organic laws establishing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska as embodying the only sound and safe solution of the ‘slavery question’ upon which the great national idea of the people of this whole country can repose in its determined conservatism of the Union–NON-INTERFERENCE BY CONGRESS WITH SLAVERY IN STATE AND TERRITORY, OR IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA” (emphasis in original).
–Platform of the Democratic Party, 1856
“We, the delegates of the Democratic party of the United States . . . demand such modification of the treaty with the Chinese Empire, or such legislation within constitutional limitations, as shall prevent further importation or immigration of the Mongolian race.”
–Platform of the Democratic Party, 1876
“No more Chinese immigration, except for travel, education, and foreign commerce, and that even carefully guarded.”
–Platform of the Democratic Party, 1880
“American civilization demands that against the immigration or importation of Mongolians to these shores our gates be closed.”
–Platform of the Democratic Party, 1884
“We favor the continuance and strict enforcement of the Chinese exclusion law, and its application to the same classes of all Asiatic races.”
–Platform of the Democratic Party, 1900
“Republicanism means Negro equality, while the Democratic Party means that the white man is supreme. That is why we Southerners are all Democrats.”
–Sen. Ben Tillman (D., S.C.), 1906
“Slavery among the whites was an improvement over independence in Africa. The very progress that the blacks have made, when–and only when–brought into contact with the whites, ought to be a sufficient argument in support of white supremacy–it ought to be sufficient to convince even the blacks themselves.”
–William Jennings Bryan, 1923
“This passport which you have given me is a symbol to me of the passport which you have given me before. I do not feel that it would be out of place to state to you here on this occasion that I know that without the support of the members of this organization I would not have been called, even by my enemies, the ‘Junior Senator from Alabama.’ ”
–Hugo Black, accepting a life membership in the Ku Klux Klan upon his election to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat from Alabama, 1926
“I did not lie awake at night worrying about the problems of Negroes.”
–Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, 1961
“I’m not going to use the federal government’s authority deliberately to circumvent the natural inclination of people to live in ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods. . . . I have nothing against a community that’s made up of people who are Polish or Czechoslovakian or French-Canadian or blacks who are trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods.”
–Jimmy Carter, 1976
“I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia [Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a former Ku Klux Klan recruiter] that he would have been a great senator at any moment. . . . He would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this nation.”
–Sen. Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.), 2004
Luckily, the real world is not as race and ideology obsessed.
How esle tho can one explain the rank use of race and ideology by one major political party to successful conclusions? What Jeff is talking about isn’t happening in a theoretical vacuum. There are plenty of real world examples off campus of the entrenched left politics. EO, sensitivity training, sexual harrasment training all happen in todays corporate culture and it isn’t being pushed by consravatives or individualists; it is the end result of lots of PC blather on college campus’s being passed on and incorporated into businesses everyday practices and the targets are white and often male. It doesn’t matter what the proles actually do or think, which is the point. We are all assumed to be racist/sexist/homophobes until we have had our re-training so we can be taught to say the “correct” things so we won’t be fired or shunned on the job. But Jeffs all out in the weeds? C’mon Lisa. Open your eyes.
One of the most famous Richmond City Council meetings ever involved people jumping over seats to pound a guy who came up to the podium just after a “community activist” preacher( Rev. August Moon) had given a rousing and impassioned bit of speechifying. The man who spoke after the preacher had the misfortune of being a well meaning, soft spoken white guy, who, starting off a little chagrined about the hard act to follow, and how likely his speech was to be found wanting, made reference to the old saw about how it is a bad idea to follow “preachers, dogs or children.” UPROAR!
With shouts of INSULT! INSULT!, “youfs” jumping over seats, security escorting away the most bewildered man you ever saw, pandemonium reigned. Council started in preening and rebuking and rebuking and preening, because he had used “dog” and “preacher” in the same sentence. And lord it was a learning experience.
That’s when I learned many black people do not thing of dogs the same way I do, as faithful companions or loyal heros and objects of foolish human adoration. Instead they are thought of as something low, and dirty and vermin infested, to be kicked about and chained in the yard. And apparently kids are too, because everyone said the man called the preacher a dog. He did use the two words in the same sentence, that’s for sure.
Any way the next person down to the podium tried to stick up for hapless guy #1, and said, “I really don’t think he meant it like that…” and he got escorted away by security as well, and more speeches about how racism would not be tolerated and OUTRAGE &etc continued for some time after that, and tbefore they settled down to vote on the proposition.
A better example (IMHO) are race riots. The ’92 LA riot (and the sympathetic riots around the country) and the ’01 Cincinnati riot were excused by the left because the perpetrators were black. Never mind that the targets were chosen based on race, never mind that it was a sense of racial solidarity and injustice fed by demagogues — it was “justified”, it was “resistance”.
There are innumerable examples, and I tried to include in the post gender/sex-based grievances as well as race-based grievances.
As hf points out, you can make the same points on other issues, as well, but when it comes to hate speech, we are not yet at the point where AGW denial is punishable by re-education programs. Though we’re getting there, given that it’s been compared to Holocaust denial.
It’s not such a difficult thing to trace from counting a human being as 3/5 of a man to Buckley’s editorial. Sounds pretty consistent in a Goldberg sort of way, and I am certain 400 pages of claptrap could be written in a very engaging style, with footnotes and all! But it would be claptrap, just as Jonah’s book is claptrap. There is no point to Jonah’s book other than finger pointing.
So then the answer is no, you can’t. Nor will you try. The good news is that you don’t understand that the 3/5 clause was a victory for the abolitionists, not the slaveholders. You also seem to fail to realize, per your previous posts, that prior to the Civil Rights act, the South, the horrible racist south was in firm control by Democrats.
No need to thank me for the truth, you deserve to hear it.
“Holocaust denial” –
and worse, denial of that Sesame Street educational vignette where the kid leaves the water running while brushing his teeth and inadvertantly through his thoughtless consumption uses up all the water in the world.
Sarah, (re the Richmond incident), do you think the outrage was genuine, or just a convenient method of attack?
This is, of course, nothing more than the very kinds of boutique multiculturalism so famously explored by Stanley Fish  a phenomenon that, at base, merely creates a kind of social hierarchy wherein self-styled post-Enlightenment liberals, suffused with Enlightenment thinking, take on the role of protectors and defenders of the noble savage that they claim to champion. In short, it is a form of intellectual colonialism masquerading as selfless activism.
So the post-enlightenment liberals are the rangers and the other is in the nature preserve?
The good news is that you don’t understand that the 3/5 clause was a victory for the abolitionists, not the slaveholders.
Well, technically, a compromise.
The free states didn’t want to count any of the slaves, the slave states wanted to count all of them.
Of course, Penny is brutally ignorant of the actual context, which was counting citizens for the purpose of assigning members to the House of Representatives, not whether or not someone was a “man”.
In any case, I think it’s safe to say that giving the slave states 40% more Congressmen wouldn’t have made slavery end any sooner.
I think it’s also safe to say that Penny hasn’t actually read Goldberg’s book, any more than she’s read the Constitution of the United States.
Lisa, the only people I hear invoking affirmative action as an explanation for Obama’s meteoric rise are the Hillary fans.
Over here on the right, we criticize Obama for being vacuous, elitist, and much farther left than anyone in the MSM cares to admit. You can call that “code” for AA, but if you go back to the 2004 election, we said all the same stuff about John “François” Kerry. I’d say it about Gore, too, given half the chance, and also about Hillary.
And about most of MSM, for that matter.
I only expect fairness out of those whose very existence and reputation is predicated on a pretension of maintaining that fairness. Personally, I think we should do away with the “objective†press  that is, unless we are prepared as a culture to hold them to account for their failure to carry through on their mission as defined by how they continue to present themselves.
Ah the old “You people are supposed to be tolerant! Why aren’t you letting me punch you in the face repeatedly then, you hate-filled librull!!!”
Seriously though: When are you going to get tired of that raggedy canard and get real. People who bully others into compliance are not interested in fairness. You can whine all you want about how unfair they are, or you can jump in the ring and start doing your own swinging. It is how it is. I am(obviously) no genius, but from what I can tell people have been at this for as long as there have been mobs to manipulate.
Your point that the PC crowd is full of shit and seeks to bully the shit out of people who don’t fall in line by shaming them and politically tarring and feathering them is right. However, when the pendulum turns and it is the conservatives who rule the day in academia and in the clever intellectual circles, they will do the same thing. They will seek to secure their hegemony by insisting any thought that does not concur with theirs ridiculous, laughable, and just plain icky (the way liberals who write for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, or most liberal arts colleges do now).
But I like your “Provocateurism” series. It is très dramatic.
Projection.
Noble savage, eh? As opposed to dirty, unwashed, stupid, drug-addled, raping, sex-crazed, violent, ugly, subhuman savages?
I think we’ve touched a nerve, because Lisa is reverting to tilting at straw men instead of talking to US.
Lisa, seriously, “So you are trying to convince me that conservatives really really liked black people all along and NEVER have tried to bar any doors to them?”
Where in Sam Hill is THAT argument? Part of the problem is that the term “conservative” changes meaning, depending on what you’re trying to conserve. In 1775, “conservatives” wanted to stick to the old monarchy. In 1860, “conservatives” in the south wanted to preserve slavery. In 1950, “conservatives” wanted to keep Jim Crow. In 2008, “conservatives” are about keeping what are now old-fashioned values such as the rule of law, the democratic republic, and the plain meaning of words.
The “noble savage” argument is the way that the far Left tends to pat black people on the head and tell them what cute victims they are, and don’t worry! We’ll defend you against those evil honky crackers. But don’t you change a thing about your cute victim ways or we’ll be out of a job.
I can’t speak for those who have called themselves conservatives in times past, but I believe that “race” is purely cosmetic, and it’s unfair to insist that if your skin is a particular color that you have to think and act a certain way. It’s patronizing and insulting, wouldn’t you say?
Moral relativism is unbecoming on you, Lisa.
Bullying people into compliance in the interest of a particular bias is different than bullying them into compliance by agitating for their being held to account for the job they signed on for.
Interesting how you don’t recognize that the new media — particularly on the right — is us jumping in the ring and doing our own swinging.
Right, Lisa. Which is why Universities opened their arms to the Communists, etc back when those waskiwy conservatives held sway over the culture. Because they were oppressing them.
It’s worth pointing out that Rousseau’s “noble savage” notions were based on nothing at all. What we think we know about prehistoric man is that he was tribal, not some nomadic, solitary wild-oats-sowing guys. We’ve got loads more evidence for that than Rousseau had for his notions.
It was all a strawman argument, it turned out.
If they do, I’ll be there to call them on it.
And if they happen to call me a “liberal” for doing so, you’ll likely get a rehash of this very post.
Rob, I agree that the people excusing rioting are jackasses. People buring down shit – particularly their own neighborhood – over ANYTHING is inexcusable (unless they are trying to starve out Napoleon’s invading army or something). I was embarassed to see politicians marching down the streets encouraging the riots chanting “no justice no peace”. I was not alone. I think the black middle class cringed in shame collectively at that moment.
However, I was distressed to see people at the time acting like this was some new thing to America. White people have been rioting and killing minorities wholesale since 1863 and as recently as 1941. People deciding they don’t really like their neighbors and burning them out of house and home (and killing and raping them to boot) is not exactly a “black” thing. It pisses me off to hear white people say “Heh I bet those blacks will riot of Obama doesn’t win.” That is just fucking stupid.
Well, technically, a compromise.
The free states didn’t want to count any of the slaves, the slave states wanted to count all of them.
Indeed, thanks for the clarification.
However, when the pendulum turns and it is the conservatives who rule the day in academia and in the clever intellectual circles, they will do the same thing.
No duh. The operative term here is “rule,” which speaks to the real thing that we’re discussing here: raw power. But for us, it’s not about fighting back thus to wrest the power away from them so that we can have our turn at the whip. It’s about calling out the tyrants, regardless of what form they take, and trying to corral them so that the damage they do is minimal.
Hating tyranny in all its forms is what our country was founded on. There are those who would topple one tyrant only to take his place (which is what George Washington was encouraged to do by some, and much to his everlasting credit, he refused utterly).
And there are those who would topple a tyrant and institute a system wherein no one faction has enough power to become tyrannical, which is what free speech is all about.
It’s NOT about fairness: it’s about resisting modern fascism.
Some of it, Slart, was based on accounts from the new world — though they were, as it turns out, often romanticized caricatures themselves, and had a particular kind of sociological bent to them.
Hey, what else are we supposed to do on a Friday night?
Your point that the PC crowd is full of shit and seeks to bully the shit out of people who don’t fall in line by shaming them and politically tarring and feathering them is right. However, when the pendulum turns and it is the conservatives who rule the day in academia and in the clever intellectual circles, they will do the same thing. They will seek to secure their hegemony by insisting any thought that does not concur with theirs ridiculous, laughable, and just plain icky (the way liberals who write for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, or most liberal arts colleges do now).
Funny, care to point to one instance of this in say the last 40 years or today at the “handful†of colleges considered conservative. Don’t worry we already know the answer…
I find it so funny that just because the liberal/progressives do something, they immediately assume the other side does it as well!
No, Lisa, that isn’t the point. That is an example of the effect.
The point, which you (like Penny) appear to have missed entirely, is that there used to be people called “liberals” who hated racism and a whole host of other “conservative” attitudes. I heard from a lot of them, back in the day. What has happened is that Progressives have arrogated the term “liberal” to themselves and defined the original liberals as “conservatives”. Jeff is “conservative” only by comparison to the race-baiting eugenicists of the Progressive Movement, who now call themselves “liberal” without sharing any of the ideals of liberalism and demand that all others be lumped together and called “conservative”.
Regards,
Ric
Why assume I am not set out to prove precisely what you claim I do prove? (Especially if it happens to be true!)
Though I don’t see how one proves anything by asking what the rest of an article is, let alone ascribing to agreement with it’s contents. I don’t think I’m committed to anything of the sort when I ask what hides inside one of these “[…]” and in the rest of what I can safely assume is a much longer opinion piece. I may, having read the piece, either agree with or disagree with it, but I won’t know the answer to that question until I’ve read it, will I?
But hey, that William F. Buckley sure was a racist motherfucker, what with all those sloppy coded uses of “median cultural superiority” and “for the time being[s]”. Yep, the very definition of a racist.
Really, Lisa, I have neither rioted nor killed any minorities.
Right now I feel I should add something about inappropriate generalization, but I think it’s not likely to be heeded.
White people have been rioting and killing minorities wholesale since 1863
Actually, it was much earlier than that, and the minorities they were killing were white New Englanders. Who thrice were driven off their duly-purchased lands, often in the dead of winter and at the point of the assassin’s rifle and the arson’s torch. And the rapist’s, er, member.
Those people finally had to flee the United States; they ended up in a God-forsaken wilderness where the hard desert soil broke their plows. But they made that desert blossom as a rose, and despite the very official persecution from the gubmint (extermination act, anyone?) they — we — have gotten our “revenge” and our “reparations” by being successful.
Which is why I utterly reject the victimology of the Left: my ancestors had it rough, too, and they didn’t let it get them down.
“Heh I bet those blacks will riot of Obama doesn’t win.†That is just fucking stupid.
Geez, Lisa, who are these morons you keep hearing from? You didn’t read that stupid attitude here, so please don’t throw it in our faces.
It was all a strawman argument, it turned out.
What’s more, his concept of what man in nature was seemed to shift from paragraph to paragraph in order to suit the purposes of his argument. In one moment he is totally unable or unwilling to rise above his current situation, and in the next he must by the natural progression of things, advance.
That said, we are fortunate that our founders took the good bits out of what he wrote and left the rest. It’s just a shame that our current leaders seem to have forgotten, if they ever knew.
It has been a great trick of the last eight years to turn classical liberals into conservatives into fanatical right wingers. For someone like me, who is, in most respects, a social libertarian, to be lumped in with the James Dobsons of the world, has been a clinic in watching the bold broad strokes of linguistic manipulation from the left at play.
Are you sure it’s the liberals who’ve driven you into this corner? Love him or hate him, this stroke of genius political coalescence was the brainchild of Karl Rove. Guns, God and Capitalism, right? The effort to align movement conservatism with evangelical Christianity is Bush’s Big Tent.
Rob, I agree that the people excusing rioting are jackasses.
They also proudly identified as leftwing and liberal and they had plenty of support from elected politicians, especially ones like Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Jesse Jackson was there too in full throated stupid.
Your attempts to sever the anti-social and illiberal behavior of prominent self-identified leftists and liberals and the elected politicans who have benefited from their racial ideology and ideological history is a big fail. The Congressional Black Caucus is case in point.
If they do, I’ll be there to call them on it.
And if they happen to call me a “liberal†for doing so, you’ll likely get a rehash of this very post.
You kinda rule, Perfesser. You are indeed provocative (and somewhat annoying) but always thought provoking. It is always a pleasure to read (and sometimes become incandescent with rage at) your posts.
Speaking of excessively stupid liberal navel-gazing: I have to go show my face at a “Womyn in Art” forum this evening – yes, “Womyn”. A girl I took an art class with way back is doing a lecture and I promised I would show up. Please fucking shoot me. I know one of you has a gun on you.
See you later PWers (if I don’t run shrieking into the path of the nearest bus).
I never said it was anything new; I chose the term “race riot” to draw the parallel with the earlier white-on-black riots.
And, honestly, 2001 is a hell of a lot more recent than 1941.
Lisa has a fair point about manipulation of language to persuade – the left has made a school of it, a crusade of it, to change language to change thought.
The cure is exactly as she proposes, to call it out, and to push for literacy and reason and right, without caving to bullies.
Top tip about language…words come to mean what they are used to describe. When you take a euphemism or coopt a term, for a time the old flavor of the old meaning sticks around. But the old meaning fades away. Any neutrality conferred vanishes. You can’t steal language forever, it’s a cheat that has some effect but it doesn’t last.
That’s sorry even coming from you, SEK. You do realize that the redefinition pre-dates the appearance of Rove on the political scene, don’t you?
Top tip about language…words come to mean what they are used to describe. When you take a euphemism or coopt a term, for a time the old flavor of the old meaning sticks around. But the old meaning fades away. Any neutrality conferred vanishes. You can’t steal language forever, it’s a cheat that has some effect but it doesn’t last.
Very well said. Okay I am really leaving for this boring symposium now. Really.
I have to go show my face at a “Womyn in Art†forum this evening
You have my sympathies.
For example, Womyn for Women is meant to get you to stop thinking of women as a subset of men. It’s meant to separate sound from etymology.
Womyn may do that, but “Womyn” now means what it is used to describe – down to the ugly shoes.
Are you sure it’s the liberals who’ve driven you into this corner? Love him or hate him, this stroke of genius political coalescence was the brainchild of Karl Rove.
Oh, for the sake of Pete, Scott, you could at least add sarcasm tags. Rove is a recent phenomenon: the religious right began to coalesce around the GOP when the Dems embraced the counterculture movement. I know: I was there and saw it happen.
“You also seem to fail to realize, per your previous posts, that prior to the Civil Rights act, the South, the horrible racist south was in firm control by Democrats.”
I certainly do realize that the horrible racist south was in firm control of Dems before 1964. Gosh, who did all those racist Dems vote for in 1964?
You seem to forget that my original post referred to this: “If we maintain our understanding of political conservatism as the heir of classical liberal individualism, it is almost impossible for a fair-minded person to call it racist.â€Â
So, given that William F. Buckley and J.J. Kilpatrick were political conservatives of the highest order, how was it they stood with all those horrible racist Dems?
“Womyn in Art†actually makes for a pretty groovy Google Images results page.
Asked and answered upthread, SEK.
she’s my fave I think
except I think womyn mostly means lesbian. Darn code words.
Meh. I get to choke out a bunch of men. Tomato, Tom-ah-to.
Penny, are you ever planning to address the “3/5” thing?
You need to admit that you’re wrong about that.
Here eyes are wrong, HF.
I rest my case.
SPB — Penny won’t address that. It has its talking point, and it won’t be distracted.
That Buckley changed his mind is immaterial to it; all that matters is the Pravda.
Penny,
So by your own reasoning then, Al Gore & everyone who voted for him should be considered a racist, since his father, Democratic Senator, didn’t support & actively upheld the Civil Rights Amendment of 1957, until it was passed in 1964. BTW, which party had the greater percentage of support for the Bill again? Which Party filibustered the Bill’s passing from its inception? Which Party had control over both houses of Congress then & until about 1994?
Gosh, who did all those racist Dems vote for in 1964?
‘Cause, you know, race issues were the only ones that were on the table in 1964.
Here’s a better breakdown of the state of race relations by party in 1964.
I’m sure Penny will ignore it, though. Just as she’s ignoring her embarrassing error about the history of the 3/5 compromise.
“See that bolded part, Barrett? That’s what’s known as a “qualifier.†If included properly in the reading of what Jeff wrote, it clearly narrows further the group being described.”
I don’t know who told you that a clause beginning with the word “even” narrows anything at all, but you need to find that person and shoot him.
So, Barrette, what’s your point? I mean, beyond calling us all poopyheads and making it clear you don’t feel the need to study an intellectual argument to declare it crap?
Serious question, Barrett, and no disrespect intended: do you know of any conservatives who wrote for the Onion? And how does one go about getting a gig like that?
And by “conservatives” I mean actual liberals.
Smiley face.
“Serious question, Barrett, and no disrespect intended: do you know of any conservatives who wrote for the Onion? And how does one go about getting a gig like that?”
Getting a gig writing for the news satire portion of The Onion is very, very difficult. All of my stuff for The Onion was freelance so I don’t know anything about the political views of the other writers. I think that if you read The Onion fairly regularly, you will notice that a significant number of the pieces they run could have easily be written by a libertarian or an economic conservative or some such. Obviously, you will not find many successful social conservatives in the humor business (lol, “humor business”); Fox made that mistake with The Half Hour News Hour and not even other social conservatives would watch it.
Also, I only wrote features and A.V. Club stuff for The Onion, never satire. I do for National Lampoon and some other pubs plus had a brief and very ironic stint in TV. Actually, e-mail me when you get a moment; I’ve got an interesting idea for you.
Asked and answered upthread, SEK.
Do you mean #81? If so, isn’t the cart before the horse? The Republican party courted this association. I’m well aware of the ideological differences between the various parties in the coalition, but it seems a little much to blame Democrats for jiggering the weak points in the conservative alliance (as currently constituted).
::Wishing BB would crack more jokes::
I didn’t know that HHNH was socialcon, BB. Looked more South Park to me.
But then, I don’t have cable, so I don’t really know.
you will not find many successful social conservatives in the humor business
Glenn Beck, Evan Sayet, Red State Update…
Yeah, you’re right, there ain’t many. But they’s good, what is.
Penny, are you ever planning to address the “3/5″ thing?
Ok, let’s tell all the descendants of slaves that their ancestors were counted as 3/5 merely as a means to apportion the House of Representatives. It had nothing to do with color. They’ll feel a whole lot better about it. As for the vote breakdown on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, I do understand that it would not have passed without Everett Dirksen and his fellow Repubs. So, if it is “almost impossible” for political conservatism to be racist, as our host posted, why didn’t political conservatives stand with Sen. Dirksen instead of Gov. Faubus?
“Glenn Beck”
He is indeed successful insomuch as that his show has not yet been canceled despite its consistently poor ratings and in spite of the fact that Glenn Beck is among the biggest tools in all of Tooldom.
Courting a coalition and “having the Democratic party leave you,” as a rather famous pre-Rove figure put it, are different. And of course, attributing to all members of that coalition the beliefs of all other members is, too, rather disingenuous.
Hence my care to differentiate between liberals, “liberals,” and mainstream Democrats. Generally, those who have been DEFINED INTO “MY SIDE” OF THE AISLE aren’t given that courtesy.
@ #169: The portion beginning “even” adds descriptive content to the prior description, thus narrowing the description. Unless one is determined to misread it.
#176:
No, hon, try 153 and 157. Or are Rob and I not good enough for you?
3/5’s thing:
Why should they feel anything about it at all, Penny, except gratified those days are gone?
Looks like we’ve managed to drag Penny all of 13 years closer to the present. I d0on’t think the remaining 44 are beyond her capability, but she’ll have to abandon her premise to make the leap.
LET GO OF THE STONE, PENNY!
Black people are not chattels, nor am I feme covert. Yay America.
Ok, let’s tell all the descendants of slaves that their ancestors were counted as 3/5 merely as a means to apportion the House of Representatives.
Why not, since that’s exactly what it was?
Are you arguing otherwise, Barrett?
Please find some other context in which slaves were “counted as 3/5”.
Plus Penny, you do sort of miss the point that the 3/5’s was a compromise with free states, who wanted slaves not included in the population count at all, as concerned representation in congress.
Obviously, you will not find many successful social conservatives in the humor business
Seems that I’ve heard that that Rush Limbaugh fellow has had a wee bit of success.
But he doesn’t count, I guess.
Are you arguing otherwise, Barrett?
Penny, I mean.
Barrett, I apologize. You’re not nearly as mendoucheous as Penny, on your worst day.
Ok, let’s tell all the descendants of slaves that their ancestors were counted as 3/5 merely as a means to apportion the House of Representatives. It had nothing to do with color.
Were free blacks who lived north of the Mason-Dixon line counted as 3/5ths?
I didn’t think so.
Many of the Founders wanted to abolish slavery right then and there, in the original Constitution, but if they’d done that, the south wouldn’t have joined in, and then the chances of abolishing slavery would be reduced to almost nil.
Then the southern states wanted to count the slaves as 1 person, thus to stack the House in favor of the slaving southern states, but the northerners didn’t want to cede that much power to the south, which again would have thwarted efforts to abolish slavery everywhere.
By compromising on 3/5s, that gave states an incentive to abolish slavery, because then they’d immediately increase their representation by 2/5ths.
The 3/5ths wasn’t a statement on the worth of the black man (though you can find plenty of folks back then who would have seen things that way), it was a necessary compromise to preserve the union so that slavery could eventually be abolished.
And guess what? The founders were well aware of the irony of their declaring independence and liberty and such while slaves were sold in their midst. It’s not as if they were to blinkered by racism to not see that. They weren’t the fools that today’s academics are.
Why should they feel anything about it at all, Penny, except gratified those days are gone?
Sure, why not? I mean, that’s certainly how everyone feels after visiting Yad Vashem, right? Let the past be the past.
I know I have said this before, but I think the major point is how does a person – no matter if that person self-identifies as a liberal or conservatie – intend to enact their particular program? If they use debate and persuasion, respect the methods of a representative democracy, respect the rights of individuals to disagree and question, then that person is not fascistic, or authoritarian.
As I see it the main problem is the authoritarian tendencies of some people, no matter how they lable themselves on the sliding scale of American political identification. What Jeff G. has described, as has Jonah Goldberg, is the authoritarian tendencies and methods of some people who have co-opted the term ‘liberal’ in order to put in place programs and policies that are not ‘liberal’ by any means, but are actually authoritatian, fascistic.
The label ‘liberal’ alone means nothing – what does that person actually advocate and do? What Jeff G. described in his post are the actions of the authoritarian left, who attempt to hide under the label ‘liberal’ when they and their actions are as high-handed, arbitrary, and nasty as any stormtrooper’s.
Neoneocon’s post should demonstrate what is being described. Hopefully the link sticks.
http://neoneocon.com/2008/08/04/a-plea-to-the-closet-republicans-of-marin-come-out-come-out-wherever-you-are/#comments
Ok, let’s tell all the descendants of slaves that their ancestors were counted as 3/5 merely as a means to apportion the House of Representatives. It had nothing to do with color.
Penny:
I’m not going to let you spin this. The context of the 3/5 Compromise was determining how many representatives each state would have in the House.
The slave states wanted all the slaves to count.
The free states didn’t want any of them to count.
That’s a fact.
Let me reiterate, since you persist in missing the point:
The people who were opposed to slavery wanted the slaves to count as LESS than 3/5, while the slave drivers wanted them to count as 100%.
You would know this if you’d gotten an actual education rather than wasting your prime learning years being force-fed identity politics.
You are brutally ignorant, Penny. That’s not a crime, in and of itself. However, continuing to hold an ignorant position after the facts have been presented makes you a) stupid, b) evil or c) both. There are no other options.
At this point, you can:
1) Admit that you were wrong.
2) Present some other context in which slaves were “counted as 3/5 of a man”.
3) Continue to parrot a talking point which is no longer operative.
Your call.
You will notice that Penny doesn’t actually make arguments, she just alludes to things and they are all the same thing. Liberal = good and Conservative = bad.
Good luck with that Penny. Hope that ever increasing narrow narrowmindedness doesn’t crush any possibility of you every actually thinking.
dicentra: though you can find plenty of folks back then who would have seen things that way
I suspect that the real breakdown would’ve been between those who saw the slaves as 100% human beings and those who saw them as 0%. I doubt if anyone actually viewed them as 3/5 human.
Jeff G. at #81:
To me, it matters not what you call yourself: it matters how your thinking gets you where you are.
I know I should read all of these threads to the end before commenting, but the temptation…
I notice Penny is making no effort whatsoever to advance any closer to the present than 1964 (and a factually incorrect view of 1964, at that). Indeed, she’s receding even farther into the past because the 3/5ths thing has proven attractive as a point of rebuttal.
I think we should be pushing her on the fact that she still hasn’t linked 1951 to 2008.
She does know it’s 2008, right?
Who cares, McGeehee? White people did it, and white people are not only unchanging, but also all exactly like one another.
Which is why white people have never warred on or otherwise oppressed each other.
It’s be kinda like me oppressing my leg, you see? NB: I’m not even a little bit into self-abuse.
Bravo Jeff. This is the PW I knew.
Yeah, I’ve noticed it is 2008.
Penny: you can say it. “I was wrong.”
The trouble with the arguments about who supported what in 1964 is that most P-dubbers are less concerned with the donkey and the elephant as we are about the ideas that are trumpeted or brayed.
But it is a good idea to remind people that the Republicans = Evil Racists is a fairly recent smear, and not all that consistent with the facts.
Penny:
how about this?
Oh, but you agree with that, I’ll bet.
Penny:
Popped over to the results of your Google Search. That’s some ugly stuff you found, and you need to know that no one over hear is making the argument that there ain’t no racists around nowhere nohow.
But who are those people who are using the “N” word in earnest (many of those turned up by the search were quoting other people who used the word, not using it themselves)? Are they Republicans? Are they Republican pundits? Conservative pundits? Who knows? The first site I recognized was HuffPo.
Penny
“Ok, let’s tell all the descendants of slaves that their ancestors were counted as 3/5 merely as a means to apportion the House of Representatives.”
And to get the South to join in establishing the US. Yes the Great Dead White Men kicked the can down the road with the all men are created thing but sometimes the choices just suck. I’m sure in O!land no difficult position will ever be encountered. Because Change you masturbate to is so perfect.
Oh Penny…that was just…pitiful.
Good lord, now Penny is reduced to quoting white pride websites to try to hold on to some semblance of a point. I’ll say this with love Penny, you just aren’t smart enough to know when you’re licked.
I mean the 3/5 provision in the Constitution is an easy thing to grasp, and yet you still don’t.
Perhaps you should start over.
And in 1861-1865, that can came back and couldn’t be kicked any further. And in the mid Twentieth Century the can couldn’t be kicked any further.
But that really isn’t the point of the post, is it? Isn’t it more that some people are abusing their positions, and the word ‘liberal’, to advocate and perform acts that are anything but liberal and instead are as authoritarian (fascistic) as the bad old days of the post WWI- pre WWII years, including intimidation, speech codes, and show trials?
It is so hard to get people to be politically reliable otherwise; eggs and omelets; and the future will be so bright once you get rid of your false thoughts and get in line.
Penny Banner: “Ok, let’s tell all the descendants of slaves that their ancestors were counted as 3/5 merely as a means to apportion the House of Representatives. ”
It would, perhaps, be the most honest thing you’dhave saidthis whole thread… and not in a “John Edwards” sort of way.
Panny Banner: “As for the vote breakdown on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, I do understand that it would not have passed without Everett Dirksen and his fellow Repubs. So, if it is “almost impossible†for political conservatism to be racist, as our host posted, why didn’t political conservatives stand with Sen. Dirksen instead of Gov. Faubus?”
Some, such as Goldwater, believed it was foolish and even dangerous to try and regulate morality. Likewise, Title II of the 1964 act open the door to Federal intrusion in businesses beyond the Federal government’s Constitutionally legitimate role in interstate commerce. But, then, this is just another talking point, so you won’t be letting facts get in your way.
She didn’t let go of the stone, did she?
Better call in the scuba team.
Jeff, my gmail’s fried for some reason, but I’ll get back to you later this evening.
Oh, good. The Gmail thing isn’t just me.
No, hon, try 153 and 157. Or are Rob and I not good enough for you?
Neither 153 nor 157 speak to the fact that Jeff said “for last eight years.” If you’d like to claim it happened earlier, well, it’s fairly obvious that this began with Nixonian appeals to “law and order,” but if we’re talking about the coalitions formed in the last eight years, then we’re talking about the Rovian move to unite the disparate interests of the Republican Party under a single tent. That being the case, it seems strange to blame Democrats for Rove’s political genius.
In other words, to reply to Jeff’s statement that:
[A]ttributing to all members of that coalition the beliefs of all other members is, too, rather disingenuous.
I said, well, of course it is. If you don’t understand the concept of strange bedfellows, you’re not qualified to discuss politics anywhere but the kid’s table. However, you can — and should — question the particular affiliations of pragmatic coalitions. There may not be any ideological reason, i.e. it may be purely pragmatic, but as often as not, there are connections. (For example, I’d say there’s a reason those who believe strongly in the intentional stance affiliate more readily with Biblical literalists, inasmuch as both parties believe in a transparency of motive and meaning.)
#43
Jeff’s point was that there is nothing inherently racist about conservatism as a political philosophy. The fact that you are able to dig up a racist quote made by a conservative back in 1957 does not logically challenge Jeff’s argument.
Furthermore, even If an anecdotal racist quote from 1957 could somehow logically impugn an entire political philoso[phy then you would have to contend with the problem that such quotes would have been much more common among Democrats in 1957, when the segregated South was solidly Democratic.
You guys are wasting your time with Penny, I’m afraid. Racism is solely the province white people. Period. Full stop. Blacks can’t be racist. Nor can Hispanics or Asians. Just Whitey. And Witey can’t expunge his/her racism. Unless you’re a Progressive.
MikeyNTH: “And in 1861-1865, that can came back and couldn’t be kicked any further. And in the mid Twentieth Century the can couldn’t be kicked any further.”
The ironic part of *that* scenario is that slavery, as an economic institution, was already dying. It had, short of some great adventure to add Cuba or other viable areas to the Union, reached it geographically limits and, with each additional invention that permitted the mechanization of Southern agriculture, the need for slaves was being incrementally diminished. In an economic sense, the whole of the Civil War is the economic equivalent of Pickett’s charge,
*if* one assumes that the Civil War was fought solely on the basis of slavery.
Penny the parrot is just that — typing the talking points, flailing when confronted with inconvenient facts.
I only readily affiliate with the sorta hot Biblical literalists. Unless one of them made cake.
Racism is solely the province of white
peopleRepublicans.There, fixed that for you.
Dread C.:
If only rational things like economics ruled, Marx would be a curious volume in the library that was only checked out to verify a foornote. Humans are ruled by emotion as well as reason, and the Civil War was fought to establish whether certain points were going to predominate no matter how irrational they actually were.
Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address lays them out the best, I think. Now there was a man who could make himself understood, make things understood, in very few words.
” I’d say there’s a reason those who believe strongly in the intentional stance affiliate more readily with Biblical literalists, inasmuch as both parties believe in a transparency of motive and meaning”
I think you have mischaracterized what an “intentional stance” is, if that’s what you are going to call it.
#215 SEK:
For example, I’d say there’s a reason those who believe strongly in the intentional stance affiliate more readily with Biblical literalists, inasmuch as both parties believe in a transparency of motive and meaning.
You don’t hang with many lawyers, do you? If you do, ask them the rules of statutory construction some time. I am certain you will find that they say that the intent of the legislature is found in the plain meaning of that statute, no matter how unwise or distasteful the result may be. And the definitions the legislature provides control for that statute, then legal dictionaries for legal terms, and then common dictionaries for common terms. It isn’t just ‘make it up as go along’; some rigor is actually adhered to when it comes to language.
For the law is a profession built entirely on words.
Racism is solely the province of white people Republicans.
There, fixed that for you.
No, you’re wrong Ted. Those PUMAs are racist too.
#74 Penny:
Your anecdotal quotation provides a mildly interesting example of American culture circa 1957, but (despite having come from National Review) it is not an example of conservative political philosophy. The point, which you are willfully or intellectually not comprehending, is that conservative principles are not founded upon racist assumptions, nor do they necessarily lead to racist policies. There is nothing inherently racist about conservatism as a political philosophy. Neither you nor the National Review writer who you quoted attempted to make the case that the racist assumptions in the quoted passage somehow derive from conservative political principles. You have done nothing more than find a historical example of a person who was apparently both a racist and a conservative, which has no more logical/philosophical significance than finding a historical example of a conservative who also preferred to wear green trousers.
Why are you talking about the Republican party, SEK? I was talking about labeling classical liberals as “conservatives,” which I began to see almost immediately upon commencing this site. As I wrote at the time, I was rather shocked to be labeled such — and that labeling was happening from the left.
As for the connection between intentionalism and Biblical literalism, well, I think that’s rather silly — given that to make that kind of connection I’d have to think that the author of the Bible was singular and metaphysical, which I do not; I also don’t believe literary tropes were invented only after literary criticism was invented. Thersites made that kind of argument, but I never have.
I knew a Denny’s waitress in Temecula once who was singular and metaphysical. Was she ever!
I think my original “3/5 to Buckley” post stands up well, especially in light of the description on your part that the 3/5 clause was a way of kicking the can down the road. Fine. The classical liberal forefathers of Buckley kicked the slavery can down the road and 170 years later Buckley did them proud by trying to kick the can of segregation down the road. That still holds up well as an alternative universe to Goldberg. If you want to call Everett Dirksen a liberal fascist, be my guest. The original challenge was to trace a line to Buckley and I still think 3/5 does it. Now, if you want to see 3/5 as only a political maneuver, that’s fine. I’ll describe Buckley’s position as political, too. He still ain’t gonna look good.
Actually, Penny, the original challenge was to take Buckley to 2008. And, more importantly connect it to conservative political thought, defined in this post as classical liberalism. See Aldo if you are having trouble understanding what I mean.
[…] PROTEIN WISDOM: “The enforcement of PC speech  be it by social pressure, or, when it is relabeled “hate […]
You’re a hoot Penny. Tracing a path from 3/5 (which you still don’t seem to get) in 1786 to one part of a comment made by Buckley in 1956 isn’t really much of a path. In fact, it isn’t a path at all.
The original challenge was to trace a line to Buckley and I still think 3/5 does it. Now, if you want to see 3/5 as only a political maneuver, that’s fine.
Absent context and historical accuracy … I guess you’re right. CONGRATS!
Obviously, Penny, you still take the political labels people give to themselves at face value, and don’t take into acount what they have actually done or advocated to have done.
So how is a self-labled liberal judging an applicant for a professorship on his political leanings rather than his scholarship anything but an enforcement of an irrelevant category? How is that not authoritarianism clothed in a label it does not deserve? How is that judgment defended as liberal when it is as fascistic as any example you can find, such as using family, religion, race, ethnicity, sex, or any other irrelevant category to make the decision which should be based on scholastic merit?
BTW, Penny: How is doing that today any different than McCarthyism? Or does it matter only who is it doing what to whom?
Me, I think the doing is what is reprehensible – and not excused by the labels given to the actors. And I say that as a WASP cradle Episcopalian.
i did take buckley to 2008. Feb. 27, 2008, to be exact. but i think buckley really died the day rush limbaugh received the “william f. buckley jr. award for media excellence”. that had to hurt.
I think my original “3/5 to Buckley†post stands up well
I think you’re high.
Or, possibly, being deliberately obtuse.
In either case, the correct response to you at this point is a hearty belly-laugh.
“#Comment by Penny Banner on 8/11 @ 3:35 pm #
Why should they feel anything about it at all, Penny, except gratified those days are gone?
Sure, why not? I mean, that’s certainly how everyone feels after visiting Yad Vashem, right? Let the past be the past.”
Why would you want to forget another high point in reactionary leftist achievement, the Holocaust?
“Comment by SEK on 8/11 @ 4:11 pm #
No, hon, try 153 and 157. Or are Rob and I not good enough for you?
Neither 153 nor 157 speak to the fact that Jeff said “for last eight years.†If you’d like to claim it happened earlier, well, it’s fairly obvious that this began with Nixonian appeals to “law and order,”
Ah, yes, tarring the Republicans with using the “Southern Strategy” in one Election.
As opposed to 200 years of racist oppression of African-Americans from the Democrats.
Good try.
Not.
I think my original “3/5 to Buckley†post stands up well, especially in light of the description on your part that the 3/5 clause was a way of kicking the can down the road.
Holy sumthin’, you sure think like a purely political animal. We’re trying to show that the 3/5ths thing wasn’t a statement on the value of Africans (though the southern devaluation of same DID force the compromise), and you’re reducing it to purely political ploy, an equines vs pachyderms narrative, which is really useless, given that the parties have shifted all over the place during the past.
Penny, we’re talking about ideas and their consequences, not Whose Team Is Winning.
i did take buckley to 2008. Feb. 27, 2008, to be exact.
Maybe you should restate your case, because I’ve actually followed this whole thread and I don’t remember any actual philosophical connection made between what Buckley said in 1957 and what he said later.
You dance on his grave, by any chance? Because that would be truly tasteless, yo.
#235 is utterly irrelevant, penny.
Try to connect, try to explain how using McCarthyistic tactics, authoritarian tactics, fascistic tactics, to quell the speech of others, is liberal?
By their deeds you will know them. No matter how liberal they claim they are, in act they are authoritarians. Or fascists. Take your pick of the available pejoratives.
There are only three basic positions. There is the racism of the left, which seeks to use the state to help favored minorities that it regards as morally superior…
Huge question-begging by Goldberg. Whether one is for or against affirmative action, there are reasons to support it that have nothing to do with a belief in the attachment of moral superiority to minority groups.
It does when the victim has the highest moral authority.
Whether one is for or against affirmative action, there are reasons to support it that have nothing to do with a belief in the attachment of moral superiority to minority groups.
Among the ordinary, normal members of the population, this is true, but among the folks that Goldberg is targeting, it’s a whole different ball of wax.
Marxism posits two types of people: oppressors and the oppressed. Any time you compare two people or groups of people, one is likely stronger than the other and hence the oppressor, regardless of how the stronger party behaves. Likewise, the weaker party is the oppressed.
And in the Marxist worldview, the oppressed are morally superior, regardless of how they behave.
So the support for AA among the modern proggressive is predicated on the Marxist moral hierarchy, which is why they can say with a straight face that only whites can be racist. Whites, being in the majority and having been privileged in the past, are de facto oppressors relative to blacks, and will continue to be until the hierarchy is inverted and three generations of proggs pass (because they just LOVE to see these power structures reverse on themselves, and they REALLY love seeing a former oppressor get theirs, even if the actual oppressors are long dead).
And yet the assignment of a moral advantage is the most resorted-to reason given by just about anyone.
Now, granted “moral advantage” does not mean exactly the same thing as “moral superiority,” but I think on this issue “moral advantage” is the more apt phrase.
You don’t hang with many lawyers, do you? If you do, ask them the rules of statutory construction some time. I am certain you will find that they say that the intent of the legislature is found in the plain meaning of that statute, no matter how unwise or distasteful the result may be.
Because there’s never been any debate between “plain meaning” and “purposive intent”? What little I know about legal hermeneutics — this is the wife’s field, not mine — is that arguments about the “plain meaning” aren’t merely possible, they’re the very items cited by other lawyers when disagreements as to the “plain meaning” of a text arise. In other words, you’re trying to dismiss my point by saying that it has been, currently is, and will forever be arguable.
Why are you talking about the Republican party, SEK? I was talking about labeling classical liberals as “conservatives,†which I began to see almost immediately upon commencing this site. As I wrote at the time, I was rather shocked to be labeled such  and that labeling was happening from the left.
I’m talking about Republicans because the “great trick” of “the last eight years” you attribute to liberals is, to a great degree, the product of a Republican campaign strategy. It was possible to be a fiscal conservative in the ’80s and not be considered to be in league with the evangelical extreme. But beginning with Gingrich in ’94 and apexing with Rovian strategy in the ’00 and ’04 elections, the two groups collapsed such that fiscal conservatives were alienated from their own party. Consider, for example, how GHWB understood the difference between political and career jobs, and kept Democrats in key positions because he knew ideology wasn’t as important as competence. Now consider how GWB handled those decisions. Point being, for the past eight years conservatism has been hijacked by the fertilized-eggs-are-people crowd, such that an old school, fiscal-oriented but socially liberal Republican has no place in the movement. It’s not liberals who redefined conservatism, it’s Republicans.
As for the connection between intentionalism and Biblical literalism, well, I think that’s rather silly  given that to make that kind of connection I’d have to think that the author of the Bible was singular and metaphysical, which I do not; I also don’t believe literary tropes were invented only after literary criticism was invented.
I don’t understand what that last clause has to do with the rest of the sentence, but I’ll grant your point about the provenance of Biblical authority. That said, I didn’t need to impute it to you; i.e. I can talk about the connection between, say, legal originalism and Biblical literalism without saying you partake of the latter. I do think there’s an implicit theory of knowability behind both interpretations, be the text from the hand of a Constitutional scribe or a divine instrument of translation. But as I’m more on your side of the fence in this, I’m not inclined to take it too far.
Scott, have you ever figured out the difference between disgusted and disgusting?
Perhaps I move in the wrong circles (likely), but the most oft-cited reason I hear is to redress the historical “setting back of the starting line” for the subject groups, rather than the satisfaction of a claim to moral advantage/superiority. I’m agnostic on the subject; I see the merits of that argument, but on the other hand, feel that the pain of an unfair (historical) start with ongoing rules neutrality might be a necessary step to finally getting beyond this at some point. When? I dunno, there is going to have to be an (inherently arbitrary) end point at some time.
Comment by Slartibartfast on 8/11 @ 2:14 pm #
Hey, what else are we supposed to do on a Friday night?
LOL!! This is why I fucking love this place.
And, yet, Hubris, those three basic positions are the essence of it. There is discrimination for minorities, discrimination against minorities, and there is a colorblind society. Which is the most just ordering of society?
Because, of course, two wrongs make a right.
Hubris:
Yes, you do move in the “wrong” circles. The stupid argument that Goldberg/Goldstein fight against is dominant in academia and its offshoots and hence is the target of LibFas.
Ordinary Democrats and others left of center don’t have the little red laser dot on their chests.
SEK – intent is to be taken from the plain meaning of the words used. No codes allowed, just the definition given, then technical defintions for technical words, then common meaning for common words. You are not permitted to make up your own meanings. I just gave you an off-the-cuff drill-down of legal statutory construction, and you will find (my guess) that most people will agree with that. Intent is determined by the language used, and here is a rule to make that determination – no matter what you want to do.
That is what a profession based entirely on words does every day in every letter, memo, motion, brief, and opinion that is drafted. And it is as obvious as a sunrise when those rules are not being followed. With out those rules then there is no Rule of Law and you are left with Rule of Whim.
Because I said so is a pretty poor way of running anything, I would think. And falling back on ‘code-words’ with little more is just whim or ‘Because I said so’ writ large. Nice for an authoritarian; very bad for a democratically elected republic whose citizens must be able to debate freely withour McCarthyistic accusations flying about.
You jerk.
Consider, for example, how GHWB understood the difference between political and career jobs, and kept Democrats in key positions because he knew ideology wasn’t as important as competence. Now consider how GWB handled those decisions. Point being, for the past eight years conservatism has been hijacked by the fertilized-eggs-are-people crowd, such that an old school, fiscal-oriented but socially liberal Republican has no place in the movement. It’s not liberals who redefined conservatism, it’s Republicans.
Consider how Bill Clinton handled those decisions. Not so unique. Not so “the past eight years” method. More par for the course, if you ask me.
Regardless, the whole “fertilized-eggs-are-peopl- types-have-taken-over-the-Republican-party” argument thrown around so carelessly (usually by nishi) is disingenuous. It’s cute, and all. Prolly looks good on bumper stickers. But, I assumed SEK was a bit above that level of sophistry.
“Which is the most just ordering of society?”
“Vateffer ve zay it is!!!!!”
-You typical reactionary leftist
Penny
“Now, if you want to see 3/5 as only a political maneuver, that’s fine. ”
Or free the slaves sold to the crackers in the South by MUSLIM SLAVE TRADERS in AFRICA. Your choice : Muslim slavery(STILL HAPPENING) or Christian slavery(died 1865)! A Penny for your Prog reply.
“Consider how Bill Clinton handled those decisions.”
It was, what, 95, 96 US attorneys fired.
With no repercussions.
Really? Why?
I know, I know Rob. What happens when you assume. You make an ASS of You and ME.
I’m embarrassed. But, I really thought Scott liked to think of himself as a more sophisticated political type.
Scott,
Let me guess, after 30+ years of party member ship Zell Miller’s rejection of the his own Party’s platform or Leiberman’s dropping of his Democratic Party membership & adopting an Independent status – after being the 2000 vice-Presidential candidate & co-party standard bearer – were also part of the Rovian run, re-elect Bush campaign that has solely response for the political division in the US.
My God why is it everyone left of center needs to qualify, invent or blame a Republican boogeyman?
“My God why is it everyone left of center needs to qualify, invent or blame a Republican boogeyman?”
Because they refuse to look in the mirror.
Because, Pmain, the alternative to adopting ‘Rovian tricks’ or ‘false consciousness’ is to re-examine your own beliefs.
What is the matter with Kansas? Why don’t they vote their interests as I determine them to be?
Must be they’re just stupid hicks.
And SEK – ‘you jerk’ is my reaction to the fact that you don’t understand that keeping words into their intent is the best protection you, too, can have. You toss all of that over the side to accomodate someone with his own ‘code-word’ meaning for a temporary political advantage – that same thing can be turned on you some day.
From A Man For All Seasons:
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
For your own safety’s sake, SEK – do not discard intentionalism gleaned from the definitions, the meanings, of the words used. Do not give those who claim they see ‘code-words’ anymore than scorn. You couldn’t stand – no one can stand – against the winds that would blow then.
When? I dunno, there is going to have to be an (inherently arbitrary) end point at some time.
Doesn’t have to be arbitrary, how about when it starts doing more harm than good? That would be a debatable point, except if you try you are a branded a racist by a large chunk of the left.
I like Penny. More Penny for your thought Jeff G.!
SEK,
You’re delusional, but I think this is well-established .
George Tenet. Norman Meneta. Most of the State Department. All incompetent. Mostly Bush-haters.
Do you argue with your breakfast cereal, hoping it changes flavor?
Getting sidetracked is fun.
The “eight years” can be justified as a rough reference to the time since which a specific kind of social power-play that formerly only flourished in the academy and other similar institutional hive-minds trickled down and took control of everyday political discourse.
A few more than eight years ago, it was shocking to me to exit the real world, where I was considered an out-of-bounds Nietzscho-Marxo-Freudo-&c. radical (because that’s what I am), and enter the Scholarly Life, where any and every slight failure to line up with the current realpolitikal strategies of the actually existing Democratic Party, no matter the historical or philosophical or even political provenance of any such failure, is denounced as “conservative.”
“Oh, he’s a Republican.”
“You’re right. He quoted Foucault to argue against the given transparency of politicial representation. Just like Jesse Helms.”
“I’ll tell Sarah to stop fucking him if she wants to keep her job.”
“Well, don’t put it just like that. But yes.”
The idea — it’s not one; figure of speech — that everyone who isn’t properly doctrinaire, or who merely fails to join in a certain ever-shifting test-set of ritual denouncements, is a “Bush lover,” or at least a Republican, all of whom are Bush lovers, Q.E.D. (ROVE!, etc.), has only leaked out to become a vulgar-lefty commonplace — a pure social signal (which is where Goldberg doesn’t get it) — in the last eight years, give or take.
It’s familiar, certainly. We know it from Orwell, McCarthy, Lenin, “Jewish science,” etc. But the mask it currently wears in everyday life is about eight years old.
So.
OK, what did I miss?
Ha, was at work when this all blew up [insert bombastic request for Jeff to only write small posts during the day here]. STILL not through the thread, but its a good ‘un.
Thanks, all. Even the fuzzy penny.
You go psycho… Testify!
No codes allowed, just the definition given, then technical definitions for technical words, then common meaning for common words. […] Intent is determined by the language used, and here is a rule to make that determination – no matter what you want to do.
First, who said anything about codes? Second, as a lawyer, I shouldn’t have to tell you that there’re competing schools of legal theory here. Formalists/originalists vs. purposivists, right? You’re saying, from what I gather, that you belong to the former. All I’m saying is that the latter exists, and that, as a consequence, the issue of interpretation isn’t a settle matter in legal circles.
You jerk.
Way to raise the level of discourse!
Consider how Bill Clinton handled those decisions. Not so unique. Not so “the past eight years†method. More par for the course, if you ask me.
Did hiring suddenly become firing?
Regardless, the whole “fertilized-eggs-are-people-types-have-taken-over-the-Republican-party†argument thrown around so carelessly (usually by nishi) is disingenuous
And so the deliberate, meticulous courting of evangelical voters — bringing them solidly back into the Republican fold — didn’t happen? Rove didn’t orchestrate a winning campaign strategy? I’m not bashing Rove here, I’m just a little shocked people here aren’t willing to face the rather obvious fact that Bush’s successes in ’00 and ’04 are tied to the strategic decision to court and win evangelical voters. I can understand why some people might be ashamed of what some of the other people under their tent believe, but that’s a feature of coalition politics. I don’t like some of the people under my tent either, but I’m not going to deny they’re there.
Let me guess, after 30+ years of party member ship Zell Miller’s rejection of the his own Party’s platform or Leiberman’s dropping of his Democratic Party membership & adopting an Independent status — after being the 2000 vice-Presidential candidate & co-party standard bearer — were also part of the Rovian run, re-elect Bush campaign that has solely response for the political division in the US.
What? Seriously, what do Zell Miller and Joe Leiberman have to do with anything? They’re, um, apostates in the eyes of elders of the Church of False Liberalism?
The “setting back of the starting line†for the subject groups is what is said to give them the moral advantage.
Philosophy 101.
BECAUSE OF TEH VICTIMMY-NESS!!eleventy!!!!
BB
Ok, let’s tell all the descendants of slaves
You called?
Scott —
Let me make this very easy for you. I was being called a conservative by leftists right after 911 — without having ever once voted for a Republican.
Karl Rove had nothing whatever to do with that. It was merely a way for the left to circle its authenticity wagon and excommunicate the apostates who were making the wrong noises with respect to the war. That Rove was able to use some of that is incidental. See psycho at #266 above.
Incidentally, that last clause of mine that confused you so from a previous post was added because I was once told by Dr Andrew Haggerty, PhD, Learning Annex, Bumfuck CC, that without convention, there could be nothing called literature. I agreed that without giving it the label of “literature,” what we’ve come to call literature wouldn’t have been called literature, but that doesn’t mean that the thing we eventually decided to call literature wasn’t being produced. And I didn’t want there to be any other misinformation passed along about what intentionalists must necessarily believe.
MickeyNTH: “If only rational things like economics ruled, Marx would be a curious volume in the library that was only checked out to verify a foornote. Humans are ruled by emotion as well as reason, and the Civil War was fought to establish whether certain points were going to predominate no matter how irrational they actually were.”
Granted, but slavery was the least of those issues and the most certain to die off — perhaps not gracefully or easily, but it was going to die just as certainly as disco and Ike Clanton. Tradition is a grandthing, but money is money. Slaves need to be fed, get sick, etc., combines just need a shed and a little maintenance.
BB, SEK (but not ‘Penny’…that bad faith troll can go eat waffles with O!)
A table is not a cat. You can pass a law, threaten a person’s job if they don’t agree, make films about the furry purry goodness of tables..
But a table will never be a cat.
You get people on one side of the room who want to micromange everyone else’s life by law or judicial fiat and on the other side, people who figure rules of any kind are a sucker’s game. Most of us find a spot somewhere in the middle.
Most contemporary conservatives, and I would also include those nasty Xtians you all sneer and make fun of .. are NOT looking for more laws. They believe in being LEFT ALONE to do their own thing. And they believe they have just as much right to participate in the public square and have their voice heard on SOCIAL and CULTURAL matters as any secularist.
So go ahead and fight about labels..those shift but it doesn’t change the basics of the argument
authoritarians vs [classical] liberals
This is one of my “chaps my ass” issues… the deliberate substitution of legality for morality … then turning around to bludgeon anyone that talks of morality (with no intention to ask for more law) as “YOU FASCIST YOU!”
f*ck that sh*t.
What does that have to do with the price of tea in China, Scott? Are you equating electoral outreach for the purpose of soliciting votes with the knee jerk broadbrushing of one’s political/rhetorical opposition? I don’t see that one adding up.
…that everyone who isn’t properly doctrinaire, or who merely fails to join in a certain ever-shifting test-set of ritual denouncements, is a “Bush lover,†…
Me I usually just say I love President Bush. I think they forgive me, being Texan and all and not knowing any better. What made my boss really uncomfortable though was when I said I hate the Olympics. I don’t think that concept had ever really occurred to him. He said oh because of China? I said not really. They’re just so gay is all. He didn’t like that one bit.
Slaves need to be fed, get sick, etc., combines just need a shed and a little maintenance.
If the left/green axis gets its way, it won’t be long before slavery becomes economic again.
That idea suits them fine, since they imagine themselves as the “benign despots”/philosopher kings in charge of it all.
The fact that every Marx has been followed by a Stalin and every Rousseau has been followed by a Robespierre never enters their heads. A totalitarian system inevitably winds up under the control of the most ruthless thug, and said thug generally isn’t an associate professor at some random community college (an instructive lesson could be gained from the fate of such people under the Pol Pot and Mao regimes).
But things will be different this time, I’m sure.
Really!
SBP: “If the left/green axis gets its way, it won’t be long before slavery becomes economic again.”
Yeah, but you shouldn’t judge them on that — “progessives” never judge themselves based upon, y’know, actual outcomes, just their intentions. Look at SSI — an “investment” into which you “contribute” money that gives you a negative return, leaves no residual asset upon your death and amounts to a Ponzi scheme. Look at “The Great Society,” which nuked the African American nuclear family out of existence. The fact that there were unintended consequences or that the programs are abject failures has not been a reason to end them — their motives were pure and their intentions were good, so we must keep these things running, regardless of how badly they failed.
SBP: “The fact that every Marx has been followed by a Stalin and every Rousseau has been followed by a Robespierre never enters their heads…”
…which are so far up their fourth point of contact that they have to fax in sunlight.
SBP: “But things will be different this time, I’m sure.”
As one of the locally syndicated talk hosts like to phrase their thought, “you can trust me, I’m not like the others…”
Cliff Notes Version:
Those that yell “fascist” the loudest are the true totalitarians. And are too demented to see it…
And are too demented to see it…
Unfortunately, no. They know exactly what they are, they just yell loud in effort for YOU not to notice their agenda to enslave you until it’s too late.
What? Seriously, what do Zell Miller and Joe Leiberman have to do with anything? They’re, um, apostates in the eyes of elders of the Church of False Liberalism?
Once again looking for a boogeyman, Scott. In the comment I responded to, you blamed Karl Rove, while during the same time period 2 long standing, as in multiple decades & one being the 2000 Democrat vice-Presidential nominee, were shown the door & have both issued statements about how their party has taken a wrong turn. Both have left the Democratic Party, one retired & the other changed to an independent. Not sure how Rove caused this, but your pathetic, unjustified statement about the Republicans causing all the political split over the last 8 years is complete shit. Unless the Democrats have polled or garnered a dramatically higher or lower shift in popular vote, which they haven’t… unless tabulating useless exit polls counts, which they don’t.
Bill Clinton won 1992 by 43.3%, where is Obama polling at? Well within the norm for Democratic Presidential candidates. What percentage did Kerry win by? Where is this mythical split you are whining about? If anything its the changing dynamics within the Democratic Party that is causing the “split” amongst the American voters. How else do explain Obama’s utter failure to pull away from McCain or the Pelosi/Reid favorability numbers being where they are? Let me guess, Karl Rove, Halliburton, Die Bold, Fox News, Christian fundamentalists or the fabled Right-Wing conspiracy… Boogeymen all.
Kinda says it all…
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2008/08/12/#004775
Furthermore, this relates to Jeff’s argument by showing that the dynamics of hi-jacking the term of “Liberal†by what Goldberg refers to as Progressives, those that are actually more politically aligned to “classical liberals†are branded either traders or conservatives & driven away. Sounds a little familiar since this is precisely what happened to Lieberman & Miller.
The real problem for modern Progressives, much like their 19 & 20th counterparts are that they aren’t dynamic enough to change their initial positions; they merely rebrand them as new & improved. This is why there is little difference between FDR’s New Deal & the language used by Johnson in his War on Poverty. This is why the treatment of the Korean War, in a lesser part vs. Vietnam, the Cold War or Iraq/GWOT – though much louder in volume – is little different. In fact, their arguments against are the same that were used to invalidate both initial involvement in both World Wars – until public settlement went the other way – & every other conflict, despot, authoritarian regime or group of thugs to gain, steal or take power from Fidel Castro to Pol Pot, to Mao, to Stalin, to Mussolini, to Hitler, to the Mullahs in Iran, to Hugo Chavez, to Saddam Huessin.
This historically has been the real cause of any politically diversion within the US, always following the same patterns, always vocalizing the same talk points until public sentiment silences them, lest they lose all political power.
Of all which is essentially one the points Goldberg’s book makes.
Lisa,
I think you should have your gyroscope tuned up. It is seriously out of whack, and seems to be affecting your cognitive abilities.
How can you spend any time at all at PW, and then spew such a fountain of bullshit to the people here?
Maybe you should go to HuffPost where logical brains are few and far between.
I know you don’t care, but I resent being lumped in with any of the left’s stereotypes. And that’s exactly what you are trying to sell here.
Not interested, honey.
After careful consideration I have decided that doctrinaire liberals thrive – like yeast in beer thrive – in free societies because in a real dictatorship, there’s not going to be nearly as many slots on the organizational chart for bosses to actually control other peoples’ lives.
Rangers in the park? Absolutely. And even though they usually just write lots of bullshit tickets, just look at their eyes and you can see the dream of the big bad gun hovering there.
You usually have to get them in a large group for physical violence; it’s a good thing the Dems and the WTO don’t meet yearly, isn’t it? There’s a reason that collectivism is a dead bang identifying trait. Collectivism, and demanding control while abhorring any hint of responsibility.
No, most of the time, they are content to use the compassion and good manners that still survive among the individualist members of our semi-free society as levers into petty, poisoned, pointless exercises of self absorption manifested via telling others’ what is best for them.
Lisa-
White people have been rioting and killing minorities wholesale since 1863 and as recently as 1941..
And it’s now 2008!
Meanwhile, during each and every year since 1979- the 13% of the American population that self-identifies as “black” have committed over 50% of all murders in the U.S. during that time.
Here in Columbus, OH it’s even a larger disparity. If a white person is murdered, is it about 66% likely that the killer was also white. When a black person is killed, it is 97% that a black was the assailant. (Please ask me about “inter-racial” rape statistics and why blacks are much more racist than whites…)
I personally blame “institutional racism” and the insidious message of ‘black privilege’ that is subtly encouraged by the “Negro-Con powerbase” leaders like Mayor Mike Coleman, Police Chief James Jackson, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Gene Elder, and the 4 of 7 black majority on the current City council…
BTW, Reginald Denny says “Hello.”
Jeff, you should read some Eric Voegelin. One of the central thrusts of his tracing of the Gnostic tradition throughout history is the manner in which this tradition of those possessing exclusive “knowledge,” or “The Word” has metastasized via the “progressive” movement into totalitarianism. “The end result of progressive politics is totalitarianism,” Voegelin has written. I was fortunate enough to hear him speak in the early sixties (I’m 64) and I must say he was just as impressive in person as he shows himself to be through his writings.
The Vickian embed, my favorite fleet-footed pigskin tosser of lore, how did I miss this caramel nugget stuck in the nylon fuzz of the floor mat.
Two additional thoughts: first, the liberal idea of blacks  and of many of their chosen minorities  is, it should be obvious, quite Romanticized, and draws on the idea of Rousseau’s “noble savage.†Which is why we are typically treated to spirited defenses of those in protected groups who break the law, with the argument generally boiling down to their being somehow entitled to a cultural forgiveness: so it is when white liberal commentators forgive dog fighting rings as simply part of the “black culture† the upshot being that a particular cultural identity, when hewed to rigorously, provides some inoculation against the rule of law as set down by an Establishment that is, by its very nature, anathema to Otherness.
Firstly, it’s not liberal or conservative to add a degree of compassion for the plight of those who still suffer from the days when compassion failed them. Don’t insist that it isn’t or that it didn’t, it is and did, “as it were,” if I may borrow from cynn’s zen. We, this country, gave ’em a hot spur, and backed it up with the power and force of law. If society wants the message out that we want/need/care/love for the definable past-aggrieved then whats the less cheesy remedy of the past-historic. What do you suggest we do for those who we didn’t educate, who we made shit in the woods and pull a plow? If we violated the American way, then name the remedy. The judiciary already rendered its decision.
Many of ’em have goddamned good reasons to throw glass, to hate the land of the free and the land of opportunity after America limited their freedom and tied their fate to their skin color. Don’t fault God, Bible humpers, this was a human slap.
Craft it, crafty ones. But simply stomping out that burning bag of shit ain’t the majority’s view of a appropriate remedial passage, and in America the majority of calls the shots.
Noble savages fuckin’ indeed! Struggle is noble, or so we’re taught. When Jackie stole home you applauded. They applauded too, albeit through their tears. Scored a run or debunked a myth, which did you see, feel, think. I suspect it’d depend on where you sat.
And when is pitbull fighting, a sport with roots in backwater America and England, a nigger-only sport? Show me the whites who rot in jail for the same. Michael Vick makes a strong case for art! Oh wait, the powerful don’t like his violent art, they prefer dogs trained to bury their teeth into a thief’s throat, yes, that’s fuckin’ different! Shepherds trained to catch a suspect on the run, an escapee, to use their teeth on those who don’t play by the rules is a very sporting righteousness versus letting dogs fight who’d otherwise simply fight out of instinct.
Free Michael Vick! Let him split the defensive secondaries like a scythe through a watermelon! Maybe send him to charm school in the off-season because the conservatives conjoined with PETA and have recently gone full and completely PC with other peoples pets. Unshackle his black soul! Give Vick the oblong leather ball! Fastest motherfuckin’ QB evah!
Lisa’s ok. It’s just that the blind rages take her sometime, to the point where she finds herself (temporarily, one hopes) indulging in skin-color broadbrushing, herself.
Hopefully, the irony of it all then sets in, and she calms down. I don’t know about cause/effect relationship, but she at least appears to have the calmed-down part taken care of.
Not that I have any issues about angry brown-skinned people, mind you.
See what I did, there?
Your facts suck, in fact, Mr. Shockley.
And when is pitbull fighting, a sport with roots in backwater America and England, a nigger-only sport? Show me the whites who rot in jail for the same.
A couple dozen of them got locked away in Winder, Georgia two or three years before Vick. It didn’t exactly make the national news.
What do you suggest we do for those who we didn’t educate, who we made shit in the woods and pull a plow?
Put flowers on their grave if it keeps you awake at night.
And when I place the delicate flowers on their graves, what if the wind doesn’t cry Mary?
What if the wind cries “I got tied to the fuckin’ whipping post all my hellish life and all I ever prayed for is that one day my painful legacy will be understood and that my children, and their children and their children, will be given some attention, because, you assholes, I couldn’t even cradle my children at night and read ’em a bedtime story… I couldn’t read or write, you whipped me for shit like that. Think of it, and remember me!”
Firstly, it’s not liberal or conservative to add a degree of compassion for the plight of those who still suffer from the days when compassion failed them. Don’t insist that it isn’t or that it didn’t, it is and did, “as it were,†if I may borrow from cynn’s zen. We, this country, gave ‘em a hot spur, and backed it up with the power and force of law. If society wants the message out that we want/need/care/love for the definable past-aggrieved then whats the less cheesy remedy of the past-historic. What do you suggest we do for those who we didn’t educate, who we made shit in the woods and pull a plow? If we violated the American way, then name the remedy. The judiciary already rendered its decision.
It isn’t compassion to perpetuate a system that forgives shameful behavior because of skin color. It isn’t justice to put in place a system that requires asking less and less of those it seeks to help so that the end result is that they are unable to do so. It isn’t mercy to always point the finger at someone else when the goal is supposed to be equality. You use words of great feeling, but your result is to cover for the problems that the system you are supporting is creating instead of fixing and you probably think of yourself as noble for doing so.
What if the wind cries “I got tied to the fuckin’ whipping post all my hellish life and all I ever prayed for is that one day my painful legacy will be understood and that my children, and their children and their children, will be given some attention, because, you assholes, I couldn’t even cradle my children at night and read ‘em a bedtime story… I couldn’t read or write, you whipped me for shit like that. Think of it, and remember me!â€Â
Then the wind is lying, because all the slaveholders and all the slaves are dead. What’s more, you know it.
Where are the 150+ year old black folks?
Scholarships and NFL contracts!
Name one.
Your facts suck, in fact, Mr. Shockley.
Nice “rebuttal”, thor.
Grow the fuck up, m’kay?
Then why was it, Education Guy, not the same asking-less-and-less type’a system that was perpetuated when whites asked not to have to compete on equal terms with blacks.
Blacks don’t need a lecture in semantics of the perversings within supposedly equal systems. I think they get it.
The wind should see a shrink and get to work on its delusions.
Well, yes, in fact, Dr. Lamarck. Unfortunately there’s a reason they’re called “facts”.
Regards,
Ric
What you call “facts” others mock hysterically as fiction, Ric.
Then why was it, Education Guy, not the same asking-less-and-less type’a system that was perpetuated when whites asked not to have to compete on equal terms with blacks.
That system was wrong, that you seek to replace it with one that is the same but cued for a different color shows that you don’t understand that the first system was wrong. I am not talking about AA.
Blacks don’t need a lecture in semantics of the perversings within supposedly equal systems. I think they get it.
You are bold to think you can speak for ‘Blacks’, and you are immoral because you do and are helping to destroy them.
What you call “facts†others mock hysterically as fiction, Ric.
Well, you’ve got the “hysterical” part down, anyway.
Nice “rebuttalâ€Â, thor.
Grow the fuck up, m’kay?
I think when the time comes to vote on ending affirmative action all non-blacks should be granted three-fifths-a-vote.
I know. I hear a lot of mocking. What I don’t hear is counterexamples. Got one?
I didn’t think so.
Regards,
Ric
Why? No one has ever had 3/5 of a vote before? Or are you just playing the blazing willful ignorance card?
I’m just SOOOO glad you’re “back” Jeff. Another great essay.
If you can find them, I’ll give ’em $1,000. And I guarantee they and you will become world-famous overnight.
What the fuck are you talking about, thor?
BTW — ever asked your Russian friends what they think of blacks?
Let’s be at least somewhat clear. What thor and the rest of the progs are beginning to hint at is that reparations aren’t desirable because they aren’t enough — what’s needed is restitution. The theory behind it is that blacks who are currently alive have been irreparably scarred by the experiences of their ancestors, and are thereby rendered incapable of competing. The only possible “solution” is to restore the status quo ante American slavery, eliminate slavery from the equation, and let the situation develop. It’s not clear just how far back they want to go — I don’t think they know, themselves; perhaps what we need to do is restore the North America of the year 1500 or so, then send a boatload of black Quakers to Massachusetts.
Let’s call things by their proper names. They’re calling for a Year Zero Campaign.
But is that going back far enough? The Romans had a preferred ethnic group for their servant class as well, and kept it up so long and so diligently that the very name of that ethnic group came from it. How far back do we need to go to free the Slav(e)s?
Regards,
Ric
What if the wind cries “I got tied to the fuckin’ whipping post all my hellish life and all I ever prayed for is that one day my painful legacy will be understood and that my children, and their children and their children, will be given some attention, because, you assholes, I couldn’t even cradle my children at night and read ‘em a bedtime story… I couldn’t read or write, you whipped me for shit like that. Think of it, and remember me!â€Â
I think all commenters on this blog find that story moving, excluding the part where a person dead for over 100 years calls them “assholes” and blames them for something they didn’t do.
I am talking about AA. I understand the first system was wrong. I understand the second system isn’t based on total exclusion. Add to your theoretic some proportionality.
I stand by affirmative action as a flawed but useful remedy of compromise. Rebalancing your logic, I think you too will get over your pain, someday, even if it’s the day flowers are placed on your grave; it will pass.
You’re a racist thor. I guess all that talk about Karl being one was pure projection.
Education Guy – Leftists cannot be racist. They care more.
It isn’t my pain. I am not the one with the destroyed families, the out of proportion population going to prison rather than college, or the endless finger pointing at a group of people who had nothing to do with the reasons for the current problems. Your system isn’t working, and the best you can come up with to ‘solve it’ is to lump the current population of whites in with those who kept slaves and those who created Jim Crowe.
It was done by Americans in the name of America, and let’s not hold out exceptions, let’s be honest and admit whites and blacks and mulattoes were the players in this tragic spectacle.
We can’t make it right. We can answer the call of our conscious, and to the requests of those who didn’t stop paying a price for slavery in 1870.
Where there’s a maddening narcissistic sense of reverse victimization there should be pride in fairness and honesty. 1000-points of light, compassionate conservationism, the spirit of the principals of our Judaic/Christian society’s foundations, where’s that core, amigos?
I see dead people. And a lunatic asshole.
Yes. That’s right.
thor: “It was done by Americans in the name of America”
Bupkis. It was done by *SOME* Americans in the name of agriculture.
It was a practice that pre-dated the existence of the United States. It existed when the United States operated as a loose confederation of states, each with its own agenda and priorities and a weak central government.
thor: “Where there’s a maddening narcissistic sense of reverse victimization there should be pride in fairness and honesty. 1000-points of light, compassionate conservationism, the spirit of the principals of our Judaic/Christian society’s foundations, where’s that core, amigos?”
thor, do you know what “affirmative action” was supposed to be, before “progressives” turned it into quotas, set-asides and similar patently racialist foolishness?
The rest of your post is claptrap, a paean calling on conservatives to help “progressives” continue policies that have failed and, in some cases, even been detrimental / antithetical to their stated purpose.
Where there’s a maddening narcissistic sense of reverse victimization there should be pride in fairness and honesty.
I can agree the “reverse victimization” card gets old. But that doesn’t make it any less true. People — of all races — get angry when blamed for stuff they didn’t do. And it’s wrong AND counterproductive to make them “pay” for it.
AA has turned into a racial spoils system, thor. E.g. one of the departments at my university sought to fulfill its “black” faculty quota with an immigrant from Nigeria. They negotiated and negotiated with the guy, finally agreeing to pay him an unusually high salary, only to find he’d taken their offer, showed it to another university, and got more money and a better job there. I never did figure out how that one served to balance injustice or promote racial healing.
I must have blacked out, because I totally don’t remember that.
>Where there’s a maddening narcissistic sense of reverse victimization there should be pride in fairness and honesty.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
It’s a shame people like thor don’t want the same.
Martin Luther King only when convenient, Good Lt.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.â€Â
Slartibartfast: “Martin Luther King only when convenient, Good Lt.”
Actually, it is a case of addition by subtraction. Whatthe Good Lt. presents is the original quote is all its glory.
By the mid-seventies, all that was remembered was ““I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin” which was still good, but definitely weaker.
Nowadays, it seem to be down to “they will not be judged.”
Where there’s a maddening narcissistic sense of reverse victimization there should be pride in fairness and honesty.
Maddening narcissistic – based on your assumption of what is driving the arguments. Strike one.
Reverse victimization – a completely invented term designed to hide the truth that victimization is victimization. Putting the reverse in front of it just makes you a liar. Strike two.
Pride in fairness and honesty – A system designed to privilege one group over another for any reason is not fair and to pretend it is, and worse to pretend that it’s working, isn’t honest. Strike three.
It’s just the substitution of one original sin for another. White people are evil because look what some white folks did to us! I’m not evil because I did something wrong, I’m evil because of the color of my skin.
Which, right now, is a kind of golden brown. Hard to tell, exactly, because of the hirsuteness.
White people also oppressed my ancestors, but that’s probably not important.
Fucking Protestants.
Let’s be clearer still. Thor is sole owner of his hints. Quote thor in context and you’ll better re-speak for him.
Comment by Salt Lick on 8/12 @ 7:17 am #
I can agree the “reverse victimization†card gets old. But that doesn’t make it any less true. People  of all races  get angry when blamed for stuff they didn’t do. And it’s wrong AND counterproductive to make them “pay†for it.
AA has turned into a racial spoils system, thor. E.g. one of the departments at my university sought to fulfill its “black†faculty quota with an immigrant from Nigeria. They negotiated and negotiated with the guy, finally agreeing to pay him an unusually high salary, only to find he’d taken their offer, showed it to another university, and got more money and a better job there. I never did figure out how that one served to balance injustice or promote racial healing.
We all know AA isn’t perfect in remedy or perfect to whites and other minorities, but it’s an attempt at addressing the imperfections past. No other way to describe it. It is what it is and I’m proud America did something. Maybe it’s all window dressing and stroking of white guilt, if you were to ask certain blacks. Maybe it’s all perverting the principles the were, admittedly, perverted and perpetuates perversions and appeasements. Who can say for sure.
We’re Americans and they’ll be a place and time when AA won’t be desirous, but until then I say “we’re One, we get to carry each other! And Bono ain’t that heavy.”
Where there’s a maddening narcissistic sense of reverse victimization there should be pride in fairness and honesty. 1000-points of light, compassionate conservationism, the spirit of the principals of our Judaic/Christian society’s foundations, where’s that core, amigos?
Meaning what, exactly? I am compassionate toward others. I am charitable. I don’t want my government to engage in charity or compassion. I don’t want my gov’t in charge of education or reeducation. I want my gov’t to build roads and provide for the common defense.
I don’t want my gov’t to apologize on my behalf for something I did not do. I don’t want my gov’t to take money from me to give to someone else as “reparations” for something I did not do.
If we want the gov’t to apologize for something, it would do far better to apologize for the current liberal created entitlement regime (welfare, et al) which has done far more to harm the black community than Jim Crowe ever did. I would support drastically changing/reforming those programs and apologizing for the harm those programs have caused.
thor: “We all know AA isn’t perfect in remedy or perfect to whites and other minorities, but it’s an attempt at addressing the imperfections past. ”
A failed effort, thor. But then, intent and motive — feelings, if you will — are far more important than actual outcomes.
thor: “We’re Americans and they’ll be a place and time when AA won’t be desirous, but until then I say “we’re One, we get to carry each other! And Bono ain’t that heavy.—
Fine, then get your lazy but back here and help the rest of us lug the dead-weight. Oh, and for the record, Bono isn’t an American, so drop him off at the curb and get to work.
And I say it is a flawed remedy that has caused a continuation of racial animus and separatism. Fuck, we dropped a couple big ass bombs on the Japs, put them in camps (my wife’s grandmother and mother spent some time there) — but it seems they were able to get our big white boot off their neck long enough to breathe in a cultural ethic that has them thriving scholastically, to the point where they aren’t eligible for AA.
Jews, who were kept on quotas to keep them from overrunning the Ivy League, well, they aren’t a “race,” so their oppression was something different. No special dispensation for them — in fact, just the opposite. We don’t want that group to be “overdetermined” in academia.
No matter how you slice it, thor, AA is wrong when it is based on race. I’ve written before that were there to be devised a metric where AA is based on a prior lack of opportunity, then I might consider supporting such a program. But of course, I wouldn’t be looking to start such a thing on the college level; fact is, AA has led to blacks dropping out of college at alarming rates, which, in this day of grade inflation and passing people along who just happen to pay the bills efficiently, is disturbing.
If you haven’t done so, read America in Black and White. In fact, I think I’ll find my copy and begin using it in this provocateurism series.
I don’t believe in cultural memory being dispositive, nor do I believe in a “genetic memory” that works in humans as a cultural one. I am not a monarch butterfly. Beloved’s conceit was brilliant as a literary device to drive a particular kind of world view, but I don’t buy into rememory, and neither should you.
In fact, there is no reason many of those who are now considered white — but who at one point were considered Wops of Mics or Hebes, etc., should be punished for the sins of a system that many of those very same-colored folks worked to end in the first place.
You seem to think this impassioned oratory on behalf of Blacks paints you as properly contrite and sufficiently moral. It doesn’t. It paints you as a parasite, glomming onto the past sufferings of a group you don’t belong to in order to buy yourself some cheap social grace. You have tied your yoke to them, thor. Don’t make them pull you along with them, or they’ll always lag behind.
Comment by Darleen on 8/11 @ 9:57 pm #
And are too demented to see it…
Unfortunately, no. They know exactly what they are, they just yell loud in effort for YOU not to notice their agenda to enslave you until it’s too late.
Darleen,
This thingie is twisting of my screen (I’ve got OE), so I hope it’s intelligible.
I agree that the leaders know exactly what they are doing, but most of the lefties in my life are just befuddled by getting smacked in the head day after day after day with this leftist crap. I think they are somewhat like zombies, and have been rendered incapable of hearing anything that contains facts or logic. Somehow, they have been convinced that there is a certain amount of money and that rich people have stolen it if they have more. They also actually belive that the USA is an evil place.
I have one friend (who is like my brother) who is far left, and goes insane if I confront him with a fact. He is convinced that the “surplus” when Bush took office was actual cash in the bank, and not a projection from the previous years economy.
I think most on the left are truly just dupes of the elitists who wish to crush people like us PWer’s like bugs, because we can see through their bullshit like we can see through a clean window.
I think one of the biggest problems we have is the media. Instead of wanting to report the facts, the media is now full of narcisistic children who’s stated purpose for being a journalist is to “change the world”.
Well, unfortunately, that’s what seems to be happening. I (and I think you also) am lucky enough to remember what freedom actually means, having basically grown up before these left fascists took over our schools, government, and increasingly, our private lives.
I sometimes forget that a huge percentage of leftists were born later than I was, and have no idea what the word “freedom” actually means. It blows me away that they think what is happening in this country has nothing at all to do with freedom.
Yeesh! Didn’t mean to rant, but…I guess it’s a case of “don’t get me going”…
I might be glomming, but I like to think I see a new gloaming from my glommering. There’s no simple explanation for tragedy, and there’s no necessity to befit all darkened consequences, and it’s all endless compromise for sake of itself, either that or we’re a Nation struggling onward.
I have a real bum’s eye for grace, compromised solutions, and fashion, and didn’t I ask that you fashion something better?
I’m not asking for approval, just voicing, rightly or wrongly, but my throat’s clear now. Hey, we saved the buffalo, black and white, righted that wrong. Precedent. We try where we can.
Oh. Trader Joe’s has been out of buffalo burgers for awhile now. That sucks cause I bought the good sourdough bread for that and it’s the kind that doesn’t go in the toaster.
I guess I could cut it in half. Good idea.
I spent my academic career, and much of my “public” career on the intertubes pushing something better, namely, a cultural push to declare race a false category, at least as it is currently understood.
Ironically, in my experience in the university culture, students were most accepting of such a solution — to many of them, race has never been much of a consideration — whereas the university spent much of its time tut-tutting their willingness to “forget” and their refusal to Balkanize. I suspect that’s because so many careers are on the line.
When I debated Steve Sailer on this, he, too, (to be fair) dismissed my points — opting instead for his own polemic, and kind of in-your-face racialism that, as I tried to explain to him, was not about race as we understood so much as it was about population genetics, a different animal altogether, and one that need not be grafted on to racial politics.
The solution you ask for is simple in theory, but difficult in practice: marginalize the idea of race, because it as it has been used in this country and elsewhere, it is and always will be bad science. Holding onto it out of some sort of habit is a brand of “conservatism” being practiced by guilty whites, Marxists, race hustlers, a permanent victim class, and opportunistic politicos looking to take advantage of coalition politics.
I’ll see if I can’t find my exchanges with Sailer and Aaron Hawkins (Uppity Negro, since passed on). From back when the blogosphere was more about ideas and debate, and less about people like tbogg taking pot shots at whomever simply because he’s got nothing else going on.
Here you go.
We have. It’s called “everyone gets treated equally”. Better than any other alternatives. You’re the one rejecting that out-of-hand, apparently based on your hallucinations of the wind speaking.
I think most agree the goal is to move beyond race, skin color, interpretations of the past, etc…
But we can’t keep everything tucked up under the ballcap like we can a rat tail. We’re rats, we humans, and so much more, but race is/has been a challenging divider, fer sure.
The pain and the wake of the transgression of slavery followed by Jim Crow was a prolonged injustice that flew in the face of our own laws and the principles our country was founded on, and that’s not meant to diminish any other past rotteness.
I see AA as a heartfelt reckoning of a parabolic something that can’t be disguised as anything less than an affront to what America is meant to be.
Barack Obama, give it to him, he’s a gamer, and allow Americans (blacks especially) a moment of pride if he wins it. They have indeed come a long way, baby.
I think Blacks should begin to feel pride when they find themselves voting against Barack Obama because they disagree with his policies, rather than for him because he looks like them from a distance.
He is not them. Nor is Michelle.
When that sinks in, they can be proud of America for the first time EVER!
Shouldn’t Americans be more properly proud to have made the considered judgment to reject Barack Obama on the grounds that he is not fit for the job? Wouldn’t that be a better sort of political maturity than some romantic wish to be able to finally elect some nice self identified black man on account of his self identification?
So what? I’m not young, and Jim Crow ended before I was born; slavery ended before my grandparents were born. The silliness of redressing one form of discrimination with another has run for 40 years; let’s put government discrimination in its grave.
They can and do vote against him. Barack Obama ran opposite of, was defeated by, and won against other black candidates.
He’s talented. He’s something, but “a loser” isn’t apt heretofore.
There was actual pain and suffering involved in the ending of slavery and of Jim Crowe. Somehow that fact gets passed right on by in the discussion of America’s past sins. To my mind, this is intentional and designed to ensure we don’t have to understand that it was a struggle between good and evil and that good won. That way we can pretend that good was never involved.
Was anyone else whiplashed by thor’s sudden dropping of attack mode, or is it just me?
I see AA as a heartfelt reckoning of a parabolic something that can’t be disguised as anything less than an affront to what America is meant to be.
I don’t know what this means. Affirmative action is tedious and not the future. America is not meant to be tedious and not the future.
thor: “He’s talented. He’s something, but “a loser†isn’t apt heretofore.”
He’s an ACORN street hustler / community organizer who has spent less time in the Senate than you did in third grade. He’s a empty suit who sounds a lot like Bush when taken off his telepromter.
Affirmative Action is something that emasculates those it purports to aid, setting them up for failure. Those who cannot compete on their own merits are pushed beyond their abilities, while those who can compete find themselves undercut by the presence of those who can’t.
AA harms those whom it purports to help. And you want it continued.
He hasn’t dropped it, merely transferred it to the Pub.
Jeff, do individual posters in the Pub have that “you can’t comment in my thread” power you offered Karl?
You can delete comments in your own threads at the pub already.
Thanks, happy — though if I don’t get there in time to delete a comment before other commenters have engaged the troll…
Well for reals, if thor brought his exuberance and talent to being super nice, I think that wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing at all. He’s thor is all. I always read what he has to say. He’s just sort of a lightning rod right now cause of how he brutalized Karl.
hf: “Well for reals, if thor brought his exuberance and talent to being super nice, I think that wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing at all. ”
Nice doesn’t enter into the equation. Accurate and rational do.
Thing is Dread Cthulhu, poetry (literal translation: “the made-up thing”) isn’t about accurate and rational. It’s about bringing other people along with the poet to laugh and love, or rage and cry, emotion in a word. Accuracy and rationality aren’t thereby forbidden to poetry (they get too be lesser includeds), they are just not the point of the thing.
[…] and I won’t deny that, on some level, I probably knew the issue would be broached — but yesterday’s post in the provocateurism series wended its way, in exchanges between author and commenters / commenters and commenters, to the […]
He’s thor is all. I always read what he has to say.
I don’t really want to know what makes him thor. I skip over his comments without fail.
Sdferr: “Thing is Dread Cthulhu, poetry (literal translation: “the made-up thingâ€Â) isn’t about accurate and rational. It’s about bringing other people along with the poet to laugh and love, or rage and cry, emotion in a word.”
So, were I to “poetically” refer to you as a drug-addled paedophilic sodomite, that would be kosher, rhetorically speaking?
Slurring someone is not poetry, Sdferr. thor is nor a poet and calling someone a racist is not poetry.
My point was to indicate what I believe thor thinks himself. I won’t speak to what thor is to you, Dread, but whatever. (Slurring someone not poetry? What was Aristophanes’ Clouds then, a paean to Philosophy?)
You may refer to me however you wish. But I do like “rebbe approved”, given a choice.
Sdferr: “My point was to indicate what I believe thor thinks himself.”
So, we’re humoring the crazy man, like referring to the insane man living in the park who thinks he’s pope as pontiff?
Sdferr: “Slurring someone not poetry?”
If we needs be overly precise, then we must — thor is most certainly not Aristophanes and his simple-minded prattling slurs are most certainly not Aristophanes’ Clouds. You’re comparing apples to airplanes and pretending it’s reasonable.
Thor may indeed be a poet — but de gustibus and all that. He is not to my taste.
You seem to be of the impression that I’m defending thor?
Let me put my belief more plainly then. All poets are liars. Get it? They make it up as they go along. Slurring is right there at the heart of the thing. Can’t be helped.
If precision is what you are after, you’ll see I was not comparing thor to Aristophanes but pointing out that your claim that “slurring someone isn’t poetry” is precisely what Aristophanes was up to, though I’d bet he thought the act harmless enough at the time. Just a big joke, which everyone who counted understood. Ooops. Sorry about that Socrates, no harm intended.
Forget it, crackers. We will all be forever guilty for the sins of our fathers. My great-great-etc. grandfathers on my mother’s side, Pennsylvania Dutch Honkies to a man, deserve no credit for ending slavery by force of arms under the Union banner because WHAT TOOK THEM OFAY BASTARDS SO LONG?
sdferr: “Let me put my belief more plainly then. All poets are liars.”
Just as all crows are black, neh?
sdferr: “They make it up as they go along. Slurring is right there at the heart of the thing. Can’t be helped”
Bollocks. “Poetry” covers a world of sins and formats, from the oral histories of the Norse to the nonsense of the beatniks. There is truth and lie in poetry, depending upon the writer and the purpose. I think you will find the enduring poets and their works are the one’s that contain fundamental truths.
sdferr: “If precision is what you are after, you’ll see I was not comparing thor to Aristophanes but pointing out that your claim that “slurring someone isn’t poetry†is precisely what Aristophanes was up to, ”
One could argue that you’re confusing slander with satire, sdferr. Oh, and playwrights with poets — you’re confusing media and content.
But, back to the subject at hand — thor is no more a poet that than homeless man who screams obscenities about the aliens in his head.
Very well Dread. My thanks for your attempts to help me through my confusion.
You will not have thor a poet. (But then, again, I never made that claim as I pointed out before.) Good enough.
Nor may Aristophanes be a poet (though I believe A. was every bit a slanderer as regarded his friend Socrates when he lumped the latter in with Gorgias, Protagoras, Prodicus and their like, but really, that’s 2,400 year old water over the dam anyway): he must be a “playwright” (what?, and not a “comedian”?), no matter how much he may protest to the contrary.
And as to content and fundamental truths? I await what learning is to be had on those subjects.
she’s my fave I think
‘zono?
Brodsky answering the judge’s question pertaining to his necessity of a union card:
“Then just who told you you could call yourself a poet?”
“I guess God did, sir.”
Yabba Dabba Doo!
– Fredick Flintstone
Thor is a sin-eater. Like in that Twilite Zone episide. But I am too in many respects.
thor is nothing but a tourist and a wannabee. Poet? Not at all.
# 15 Dicentra
“Trouble is, that none of this is really about racism”
That’s exactly my take on the post. It’s all about the power of (sorry if I sound all conspirially) a certain group of people that simply want to rule in their name.
On the other hand? I’m a moron too stupid to post at Aces place, so YMMV…
I had so much more to say, but this place? at the same time fascinates and scares me.
# 36 Joan of AARGH
I was thrown out of 2 AP classes for just this type of thinking. Fought the teachers tooth and nail and when there was a dispute over the grade I received?
I fought the law and the law won.
Sometimes? I thank GOD I never went to college.
In the book “Red Star Over Hollywood”, the great Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood 10, is severely criticized by his fellow Communists for “white chauvinism” (i.e. racism). Among other things, in one of his scripts he described a Negro boy as “in his best clothes” and “polished and dressed in his very best”. You see, this implied he was clean only on special occasions.
Joseph Starobin, former foreign editor of the Daily Worker, described the accusations of “white chauvinism” as an “internal witchhunt”.
Read it for yourself. Go to Amazon and “search inside” the book.