By whom?
By Woodrow Wilson and the progressives, that’s who.
— Which, that of course probably makes them retroactive conservatives. Q.E.D.
(thanks to dicentra)
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Recent Comments
- In The Mailbox: 02.28.23 (Afternoon Edition) : The Other McCain on Hey, longtime pw readers…
- In The Mailbox: 12.23.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll truly IS a sad, embittered psychopath
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The only blacks at Princeton were the servers and cooks in the dinning halls.
And the food they prepared was quite good.
I have long enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Republicans because I am by instinct a teacher, and I would like to teach them something.
I stand for the national policy of exclusion. The whole question is one of assimilation of diverse races. We cannot make a homogeneous population of a people who do not blend with the Caucasian race…Oriental coolieism will give us another race problem to solve, and surely we have had our lesson.
They Negroes had the easy faith, the simplicity, the idle hopes, the inexperience of children. Their masterless, homeless freedom made them the more pitiable, the more dependent, because under slavery they had been shielded, the weak and incompetent with the strong and capable…It was a menace to society itself that the negroes should thus of a sudden be set free and left without tutelage or restraint…The country filled with vagrants, looking for pleasure and gratuitous fortune. Idleness bred want, as always, and the vagrants turned thieves or inopportune beggars. The tasks of ordinary labor stood untouched; the idlers grew insolent, dangerous; nights went anxiously by, for fear of riot and incendiary fire. It was imperatively necessary that something should be done…The southern legislatures, therefore, promptly undertook remedies of their own – such remedies as English legislators had been familiar with time out of mind.
But the biscuits the Negroes made were really quite remarkable. I never cared for Chinese food, however. It gave me gas.
I didn’t watch the video, but, because I read other biased sources, I know the video isn’t the truth and it’s just talk by a crazy man who needs to be prosecuted for hate speech. I just know Glenn Beck is wrong because I was told he was wrong.
I don’t have time to watch this for myself. I’m going to get my crack legal staff right on this and make sure Glenn Beck is properly licensed to be a journalist. I may even have to look into having him committed.
/Eric Holder sock puppet.
That was certainly eye opening! And why did Wilson have to be the only President to own slaves? He would have been a terrible “Founder!” He had to go and ruin hundreds of years of happy times and good history of black people in the United States of America. Why didn’t the silly Black People write history books all along!?
Sinkfinger Jr., are you talking about the brown eye of enlightenment opening? Wink Wink.
This is progressivism, folks. First they erase them to promote eugenics, then they erase them to promote victimization.
OK, I didn’t watch the video only because I consider myself to be a remotely educated person and remotely educated people don’t watch television news because it is crap, and especially not television news hosted by Glen Beck on Fox.
Here’s the thing. In your About bit you mention that you are some sort of writer. Please tell me that you are doing some other kind of writing besides right-wing punditry followed by retards like happyfeet, darleen, and bmoe. And you don’t really watch Fox News, right?
I agree with you WR. You are a remotely educated person. Pay a bit more attention and you can still cobble a useful education together.
I forgot to add Pablo to the list of your idiot followers. You must be so proud of them.
I dunno Pablo, looks to me as though WR has been swallowed whole by that closure thingy.
You bunch of uneducated hicktard rubes need to listen to WR and his remote education. I’m assuming Phoenix University or some such correspondent school found in the back pages of Popular Mechanics. Those remotely educated are allowed to dismiss an argument without listening to it and judge any and all who respond as ignorant.
Sort of strikes me as remotely elitist.
I wonder if WR is oiling up his entry in “Robot Wars?”
Pass me the remote, Pablo!
Honestly, I thought I was posting a parody about leftist thought through an Eric Holder sock puppet and by God, some leftist posting as WR has to come along and destroy the parody.
Hey WR! You’re so educated, tell me the name of the first black Speaker of the House.
Also, WR, are there any black men in the painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware? If so, what are their names?
And please tell me why you don’t know this off the top of your head?
does anyone know where the clip is of 20 minute done with the audience after this show was over?
Second vid on this page.
A Tar-baby for the chase.
mucho gracias
That was a cool show. Usually I don’t watch Beck because he can be so over the top at times, but I thoroughly enjoyed what I saw, and it would be nice if he did some more on that topic.
beck says his show will be more about the rewriting of history this summer
That remotely hurt my feelings.
If you can’t spend the time to watch the whole show, here’s the information presented, in summary:
Paintings from revolutionary war:
Battle of Bunker Hill. Look behind the guy on the right. That’s Peter Salem. Peter Salem got a military commendation that day. He is standing next to Thomas Grosner. Painted in 1817 by Trumbull, who was there, but in the 1980s the history professors decided that it wasn’t Salem, it was a slave of Grosner’s. Because that couldn’t be a free black man fighting in the revolution.
Battle of Lexington. All members of Jonas Clark’s church were roused by Paul Revere, so they went to defend their town. After The Shot Heard Around The World, 18 Americans lay dead, equal numbers of whites and blacks, who were attending the same mixed-race church. Prince Estabrook was one of the wounded.
Wentworth Cheswell also made a midnight ride with Paul Revere. He rode north, Revere rode west. Chesewell later became the first black judge in 1768 in NH, elected to office.
Washington Crossing the Delaware. One rower is black. Prince Whipple. Fought alongside Washington during the revolution. The other man is Oliver Cromwell. The painting was done in Germany in 1850 to show how America works, with all the races together.
Marquis de Lafayette, with a black man in fancy clothes. That’s James Armisted, who served as a double-agent between Washington and the Brits.After seige of Richmond, he enlists. He greatly admired Lafayette. Armistead went to Benedict Arnold’s camp, claimed mistreatment and asked if he could serve them. He was admitted to Arnold’s staff, where he overheard all the stuff with Cornwallis. Then Cornwallis asked James to spy on the Americans. Armistead told Washington and Lafayette that the Brits were going to Yorktown, then tells the Brits that the Americans are nowhere to near Yorktown. His actions probably cut years off the war.
Lots about Fredrick Douglass, but he’s not as obscured as the rest.
Joseph Hayne Rainey, SC. First black man elected to the House of Representatives.
Benjamin Banneker. Autodidact. Wrote an accurate almanac that predicted eclipses in the future. Carved a wooden clock with all gears, accurate to one minute a year, struck on the hour. He was also the surveyer for Washington D.C. Jefferson used him to refute the French believe that Africans were inferior.
Also mentioned: Hiram Rhodes Revels, Benjamin Turner, Josiah Wall, Robert Brown Elliot, Richard Allen, Lemuel Haines, Phillis Wheatley.
When Woodrow Wilson took office, he kicked every black person out of DC except one. He resegregated the armed forces. Showed the first movie in the White House: Birth of a Nation, “History written with lightning,” he said.
Wrote the 7-volume History of the American People, which became the basis for teaching history in 20th-century America. (He is quoted in Birth of a Nation.
Texas is fighting to put these people back in the textbooks. One of the men in the Beck clip, Davd Barton, was on the committee to rewrite the textbooks to put all this lost knowledge back in.
Read the press on the Texas textbooks, though. This Christian Science Monitor article is typical, obliviating utterly the fact that they’re trying to put these people back in. As per usual, they portray the Texans as a bunch of hicktards who just want to spin things to their nefarious ends.
So, WR, how many of those names are familiar to you? Did you know about Benjamin Banneker? Joseph Hayne Raniey, Phyllis Wheatley? Did you know that Woodrow Wilson was the most racist sunnuvabitch ever to sit in the Oval office?
Why not?
Here’s the link to the whole show (I could only get one segment to play from PW) and also the after-show QandA.
http://watchglennbeck.com/video/2010/May/Glenn-Beck-Show-May-28-2010-Black-American-Founding-Fathers/
Racist? I was pro the white race. I supported Negros in the right professions, cooks, cleaners and train porters. I was also a Democrat.
And I managed to get a pretty school song written about me by Warren Zevon. I have that going for me.
And WR thinks we are the retards.
goya sells negro beans. is that racist?
I’m pretty sure I was present when I was educated. I bet a remote education is expensive though. It sounds expensive.
#29
My wifes’ ex MIL was Cuban. Black beans and rice are called ,”moros Y christos”, moors and christians. She laughed when I mixed them together. I think it was something only the lower classes did in Cuba.
[…] How the black founders and patriots were erased from history […]
#30 Mix the rice and beans together with finely chopped chile (sweet) and onion and you have gallo pinto. Pronounced kiyo peento. A staple dish for most of Central America.
I forgot to mention to add several ounces of salsa Lizano or more commonly known as salsa de englaise. The people that live near the Caribbean cook it with coconut oil and use red beans instead of the frijoles negro. Rico!
I wish I’d gotten here earlier.
Now WR won’t indict me, either. Shucks.
All that book learnin’ gone to waste. Double shucks and heck.
I always dreamed of being an historian; the pivot came when I was in my early thirties and a college instructor (Palomar College, San Diego County) explained to me that ALL of history was a record of popular movements, and that “great men” were no more than the manifestations of lazy chroniclers. I paraphrase, of course.
Nobody speaks like me unless they are lightly built and just had three shots of something stiff, or they are trying to write a story…but I digress. No shit. ALL history is spontaneous acts of communities of people.
Sure wish I could remember his name. I dropped out of the classes I was taking there in time to get my money back – before the Marines sent me to the desert for two months – and thus saved some cash and did some valuable training.
History pivots on individuals. Always. Climate may make populations move, or racial/tribal friction… but it’s a few people with a new idea (or an old one – hark 2010 and the new Leninists) and some leaders that kill the trees and spill the ink.
Oops. First of the month. Have to go shave between my eyes.
Have a fine week.
*sigh*
…early TWENTIES.
Time flies when you approach fifty. It does.
That’s gold.
I’m wishing Mr Beck all the best, however, it looks to me as though he’s embarking on a path into intellectual history which he (as he himself sometimes hints at) is unprepared by education to undertake. It’s going to be a bumpy ride, I fear.
A remote education probably uses some sort of Skinnerian conditioning, like those shock collars for dogs — but in reverse. George Soros pushes the button, WR yelps.
It’s going to be a bumpy ride, I fear.
In what way? Threats from the White House? check FBI makes him wear a flak jacket in public? check Two unauthorized biographies out later this year? check
But given the kind of nonsense that is produced by those who are prepared by education to undertake the work of history, I figure he can’t do any worse.
Besides, what’s better for Team R than showing blacks for themselves how the proggs “whitewashed” history to further their agenda, but not that of the children of Africa.
To be honest, I was remotely educated by #25. The intertubes, they are mysterious.
The energy sector was out of control today, btw. Crazy, just crazy. Even companies with major partnerships with Brazil and China (psst, they don’t care about what hippies think) bled and bled and bled.
O!
No dicentra, not in that way at all. More in the way that Mr Beck took Paul Ryan for a progressive sort of way. Mr Beck is learning a great deal in real time, which means in a sense, that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know just yet. Today, for instance, he was quite clear that there were two America’s, one which identified with the Apollo moon walk, and another which identified with Woodstock. My sense is that these are both America, and if there seems to be a contradiction in terms, that contradiction was written into America’s principles a very long time ago by men Mr Beck has little idea of.
sdferr,
The guys who did the Appollo project raised the Woodstock generation.
There’s a documentary out, Generation Zero, that looks to explain why the Woodstock generation came about.
I ran across the documentary as it was being discussed on Hannity. So, take it for what it’s worth. I’ve yet to see it and cannot vouch for the thesis of the film.
My dad was one of the guys who did the Apollo project, and while I wasn’t aware of Woodstock as it was happening, by the beginning of the next school term I was apprised that the father of a chic in my class was the “security” consultant to the event, and that besides her four others of my schoolmates — at least four that is (there may have been others I was unaware of) — were there and of those five, three ended up on screen. So, yeah.
I can see the separation between those involved with Apollo or Woodstock, but speaking for myself and a lot of my peers, we didn’t have any trouble identifying with both.
Mr Beck seemed to be as much concerned with Americans watching (and celebrating) these two events as with Americans directly participating in them. The nub for Beck, as I recall it, was that Woodstock represented for him an unbridled hedonism, where Apollo represented a determined and lucid order (if not a grimly so) and that these, to his way of thinking, just don’t go together. Or something like that.
I think he is maybe missing the imagination that bound them both fairly tightly for an 11 year old.
Perhaps so. There is a great deal of matter present in the two notions though which will warrant a thorough exploration. On the one hand we have the open-ended skepticism of science, which for all that is yet inspiring and forward looking but utterly incapable of moral judgment, and on the other hand we have an example of exuberant social life, with its political as well as its emotional components, yet closed as to the question of the good (here identified with pleasure, though it could just as easily be identified with peace). We’ll have to wait to see what he makes of these phenomena.
These are interesting thoughts.
Not to be a fag about it, but this is part of the overall pw appeal to me.
I have no sense of that time period. None.
“I have no sense of that time period. None.”
Me either. Too much weed.
Ehhh, at least that’s interesting. I lost a couple weeks after Cobain died but only because we scored a ton of shrooms.
It was scarily good fun but it didn’t really signify anything.
Not sure how hip Glenn is to the concept of yin and yang.
bh, I take it your comment on the vagaries of the energy sector (mostly oils and allieds?) were due to Holder’s holding forth on potential criminal charges against BP and the rest (which potential charges I read and blanched at the thought of being in their shoes – or in the shoes of any of the producers, who all must have felt like they were looking down the barrel of a very nasty gun today). It (the reaction of the market, that is) almost seems upside down, at least to the extent that foreign producers should get a fairly large boost from reduced or reducing US production, no?
Get Smart: KAOS and CONTROL.
It was a pretty common theme about then.
[…] How the black founders and patriots were erased from history […]
I remember lying in the grass in an empty field, tripping, staring at the moon, my mind on one thought. Men are walking there, NOW! Humans made what I read as fiction, only a few years before, happen.
The “hippies” were simply cannon fodder for the New Left Progressives. Those are the ones who are the opposition. Not Woodstock but “The Port Huron Statement” people.
“Would you believe…”
Sorta, sdferr.
Look at Anadarko.* You’ll hear that they have Gulf exposure, that they’re a quarter of the rig disaster. But, they’re partnered with the Chinese for off-shore along with Devon. Future earnings. Just like DO is partnered with Petrobras. Future earnings.
The world still needs energy. Even in a downturn, we’re under-supplied. So, is this the warning of a global double dip, of the depression variety? Or can random retards from our federal government actually freak out the markets this much?
I don’t know. At this point, I feel like a bear. I want to eat picnic baskets and campers.
That’s very cool.
My memory of the moonwalk night is clear enough, such as it is. I headed out on foot to a girlfriend’s house to watch it with her, but miscalculated the trip somewhat so as to miss the moment of footfall. What I do recall very distinctly though, was the blue glow from just about every house I passed on the way there, and there were about a hundred of them, as it was about a 4 mile trip.
Also, oddly cool.
dicentra, sdferr –
Yoram Hazony’s “On the National State – Part 1: Empire and Anarchy” (Azure, Winter 2002, relevant excerpt), while penned as part of a justification for national states in general and Israel in particular, sheds some light on the duality of America, showing quite effectively in my opinion the tension between the individualist and collectivist tendencies and how they are both components of the idea of the national state in general (of which it seems to me America strives to be a prime exemplar), and how extremism on either end (individualist or collectivist) is, in the end, detrimental to society.
In any case, I think it’s a must-read.
Yeah, I guess if you are looking at Woodstock as a political statement I can see his point, but to most folks it was just a huge ass cool as shit concert.
I suggest the thought patterns of Woodstock versus Apollo can be defined like this: The Apollo Project people believed in what they were doing and through that, believed in America.
The Woodstock generation rejected belief in anything. Through rejecting belief in anything, the Woodstock generation stopped believing in America.
I was 10. I knew fishing, baseball, and the apollo deal. Didn’t have any concept of the whole hippy thing. Though apparently my dad linked them to Jane Fonda. Dad sure did and does despise him some Jane Fonda.
Compare: one group achieves freedom from Earth’s pull; the other achieves freedom from stultifying customs, manners and mores.
Contrast: one group’s achievement comes from endless hours of hard work in cutting-edge engineering; the other’s comes from stealing some money from their parents and blowing some guy for a ride to a muddy farm.
I’d say that both groups are quintessentially American, and that it just goes to show how very, very inclusive the American circle is on the Venn diagram.
That’s certainly a provocative generalization about Woodstock Blake: would you fill it out somewhat, trace the genesis of that stance as you see it, etc? It’s not hard to see Beck’s claim of a hedonic principle at work which provokes the question, why would nihilism engender pleasure seeking, not to say that it wouldn’t, but just wondering how and so on? And too, how far do you see that stance as a mere pose, i.e. not something taken up on principle and maintained as such, but as something “knowing”, as sophisticated, as cool, or hip or what-have-you, and just as easily tossed aside as circumstances change.
Beck’s just cribbing from Rand’s essay, “Apollo and Dionysus”.
“Beck’s just cribbing from Rand’s essay, “Apollo and Dionysus”.”
Don’t see any evidence of that, which too, would be a bad sign if true.
Loren,
Rand is proving to be depressingly prescient. Why not look at Rand’s writings for some guidance?
“Why not look at Rand’s writings for some guidance?”
Because she’s a weak philosopher, for starters?
sdferr, let’s table the Rand argument for another day.
First, let me admit that I’m writing off the top of my head and I have no real educational basis to back up what I’m about to say.
I would support the idea hedonism and nihilism go hand in hand. If one thinks they’ve got nothing to live for, why not a little carpe diem when it comes to money, drugs and sex?
From there I would say the Woodstock generation returned to belief, that belief being “ME” and the me generation. What’s more nihilistic and hedonistic than life being all about “ME” and what I want?
Once it becomes all about “ME” you’ve got a generation that cares nothing for society as it is currently constructed.
Broad brushes are what they are. There are going to be those who were into the Woodstock life, grew up, got a job, raised a family, became solid citizens. There are also going to be those who inspired and were inspired by the Woodstock phenomena and continued down that path.
sdferr, I’ll have to think on this some more. It’s looking to be an interesting discussion.
Drat, I didn’t get my “table the argument” up in time.
sdferr, when it comes to Rand and her philosophy, yeah, weak is a good way to term it.
“Atlas Shrugged” though, is a pretty good cautionary tale when it comes to government getting in bed with business. AS is also pretty accurate when it describes an overbearing and out of control government.
Blake:
I didn’t mean to sound critical of Rand. I just seem to remember that essay specifically contrasting the Apollo engineers and the hippies.
Consider it tabled.
Loren,
Feel free to be critical of Rand. She’s a very flawed individual and wrote some novels that contain a lot of flaws.
However, though, I think there are a lot of places where Rand knew exactly what she was talking about.
Blake, first let me say I’ve no problem with your speculative thoughts on the matter, so don’t worry about broad brushing stuff, at least insofar as it’ll get our various motors running to spur us to think about the questions and work our way through the problem. Second, as to Rand, I’d be more than happy to drop the question, first because I know little about her and second, because that condition is for the time being an irremediable bias of mine. So. Yes, let’s do (or don’t, as it were.)
As to hedonism and nihilism going hand in hand, I wonder. Hedonism has been around as a thoughtful answer to the question of the best life for a very long time, well over 2,400 years at least. Nihilism, on the other hand, wasn’t coined as a term of reference until sometime roughly in the latter half of the 18th century, and that in reaction to the circumscription of reason arising from the extreme application of reason to a critique of itself.
So evidently we could have the one without the other, at least for a time. Further, it isn’t clear to me anyhow, that the recognition of a limit to the power of reason to discover ultimate truths in themselves is a cause to abandon life altogether (“nothing to live for”), indeed, it isn’t at all as it happens. People turn to their religion and the greater glorification of God; to tending their own gardens; to intensive study of nature (“Rockets! To the Moon, Alice!”); to art and creativities of all sorts; and to dissipation in liquor and drugs (but these addictive activities, of course, were present long before reasonings on reason prompted calls of “Nihilist”).
That negative association, however, isn’t enough to demonstrate that there was no positive assorting of the two in the minds of the “youts” who populated the Woodstockery. Which is what remains to be shown.
Rand knew exactly how socialism worked and why it was a very bad thing. The story (in Atlas) of the company that decided to go socialist and how it self-destructed is dead-on as far as understanding the interplay between socialism and human nature.
She also got the “looter” mentality dead to rights, and her “bad guy” characters are far too familiar in real life.
The Positivism didn’t impress me, though. She was too repelled by socialism to understand the proper role of charity and helping the less fortunate. Though she IS correct in saying that nobody has a moral claim on someone else’s property. If you’re in need, you may ask for my help, but I have the right to say no (and then go to hell for it).
Hey Loren Ibsen! Any relation to Lorem Ipsum?
sdferr: It’s true that Glenn is discovering the workings of Progressivism in real-time and that he often does not know the deeper philosophical underpinnings of this or that. But then, neither does his intended audience.
He’s doing a good job pointing people to original sources: if you look at Amazon’s best-sellers in the history category on any given day, about 40-60% of them will have been mentioned by Glenn at some time.
Also, the point of this particular episode was to restore lost knowledge that was excised from the record (or at least taken out of the mainstream of public awareness) by the progressives so that they could maintain the victimization narrative and thus keep a lot of people in their thrall. The subtleties of philosophy aren’t really important to much of his project: sometimes the broad brush helps when you’re setting up contraries and showing how what you thought you knew just ain’t so.
I’d hadn’t this particular episode in mind however, so no complaints there to the extent that he’s filling in corrections to an historical record.
But to give you a sense of my foreboding, think of the situation this way: Beck (justly) reveres the founding fathers, yet so far as I can see, has not attempted to emulate their educational backgrounds.
Beck’s strength of belief and knowledge in the realm of religious and spiritual affairs is evident, I think, honestly come by and honestly promulgated. But the founders had another aspect to their education, which was not religious but was secular and political (and even in some instances, scientific in the modern way), both in the practical sense and in the philosophical/theoretical sense. They revered such ones as Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke and on and on. So far as I can see, Mr Beck has not yet come to grips with these thinkers as the founders had done, and until he does, a great deal is going to be left out of a proper account of the founding.
dicentra:
Correct! (BTW, you’re the first to ever ask. I was starting to think it just wasn’t that funny.)
sdferr: You would be surprised to know what Beck has read. He went through a phase right after drying out when he was buying up (or checking out of SOCIALIST LIBRARIES) every book on philosophy he could get his hands on. He is conversant in Kant and others; when one of his callers mentioned gnosticism a few weeks ago, he jarred us all by rattling off a few salient facts about it off the top of his head.
He is not a clown; he just plays one on TV/radio. I don’t know the extent to which Beck has read those philosophers that you have mentioned, but I bet he’s read some of them.
As for a proper account of the founding, he tends to take a perspective that is common to the LDS population: that the founding of the U.S. was divinely appointed, that the principles of governance inscribed in the Constitution were divinely inspired, and that the founders themselves were sent to the earth at that time to perform the work of the founding.
LDS doctrine holds that Lucifer was cast out of heaven with a third of our spiritual siblings because he proposed to save us all by forcing us to be good during our sojourn, whereas God’s plan was to give us free agency, which contained the risk of failure, because otherwise we could not learn a damned thing (so to speak). Ergo, any movement or philosophy that proposes to use the levers of government (or any other power structure) to coerce people to be good (or be anything, for that matter) is fundamentally evil.
I realize that Beck doesn’t expound on Plato and Locke, but he’s concerned right now with identifying the enemy, which is progressivism and its fellow-travellers, and he assumes that his viewers/listeners already “get” the founding principles.
Loren: I am a tech writer, so I’m very familiar with this site and use it often.
Why so defensive a stance dicentra? Did I say Beck is a clown? Did I not rather say I wish him all the best? So, why the attitude? It’s as though you’ve decided to be the mother cat protecting her kittens. Or are you just intent on provoking a reaction from me by attributing to me an opposition to Beck I do not take, and if so, to what end?
Don’t you think you might benefit Mr Beck the more by gaining a tad of emotional distanced from him in order to see him warts and all, as he evidently aims to do himself? I don’t think it would hurt, anyway.
There should be no “d” tagged to the tail of distance, sorry.
Why so defensive a stance dicentra?
Sorry. Not trying (INTENDING!) to be defensive vis-à-vis your comments. More like trying to put the information out there, and the part about “not a clown” is directed at his critics in general instead of at you.
This is the trouble with the Internet: you can’t see me sitting here calmly, being didactic, and not wigging out.
Which, I am fully capable of doing that, but I tend to hit the CAPSLOCK a lot when I’m in that type of mood. In which case it’s time to adjust my dosage again.
sdferr,
You know, I used to be really good at stirring things up then running away.
But no, I had to let you draw me into a thoughtful discussion.
Seriously, though, I think it is beyond dispute the Woodstock generation is now in charge of some huge and very influential institutions, both private and public.
Why that generation is doing what they are to this country is probably worthy of a doctoral thesis.
I only know this because I’ve heard Beck state it, but without the specific “LDS” identifier, perhaps as if it were mainstream Christian theology (which it isn’t). When he does things like that, it’s jarring, at least to my ear.
Maybe he means how the Apollo moon shot was a massive government spending program where billions of tax dollars were spent for some patriotic photo ops and to divert attention from the Democrats illegal war of choice, while Woodstock was the private sector at work showing the economic viability and entrepreneurial spirit of the counter culture?
heh, nice one B Moe.
Today, right this minute, I finally feel like an American.
nah another Cloward–Piven gambit.
He’s also just coming to realize that you can actually keep an audience while doing an hour of Sam Adams or George Whitfield. Where he goes next, who knows?
I like the fact Beck is unafraid to go where the facts lead him.
B Moe, I second sdferr.
Tornado warnings in Franklin County Ohio. Hopefully, Mayor Coleman’s house will be flattened. Not because he’s black, mind you, but because he’s an idiot. Like someone else I know of, who is also an idiot, but not because he’s black. Sort of.
Assuming for the sake of argument that this is true, aren’t you making the perfect the enemy of the good?
I’m more interested in making the true the enemy of the false on the whole. I’m not asking that Beck be perfect though, I don’t think anyhow. But in large measure, the question here is one of education, both the education of Mr Beck and that of his audience (if not of the whole of the country).
If I were said to have an obsessive advocacy, I think it could fairly be said to be focused on Liberal education, or Liberal Arts education, as once understood by such men as the founders of this nation. Beck has an opportunity at this moment that is very rare, I think, in part created by his own inventive efforts and in part brought about by the peculiar political circumstances of the time. People understand they are in need of education in matters political (in the widest sense) and especially as regards their own political founding and the intentions of that founding, with, as Beck has put it, a view to recovery of those intentions. And as you noted Pablo, as Beck has often said himself, partly in jest and partly in dead earnest, his expectation has been that though he feels he must take this path he also believes it quite possible his audience will find the subject too dry, too dead a letter, too abstruse a set of issues to watch a tv show at length or in numbers.
To his delight, I assume, he has thus far been proven to be too pessimistic on that score. Which is fantastic, as he might say. And to which I might say, “hurrah”, and “more and better”.
sdferr: I’m going to Beck’s revival in July. It’s about 8 hours and you leave with a 3-ring binder full of stuff. It’s supposed to be a seminar on how to lead and how to educate peeps on a local level.
I reckon it might be a half-level or so below my own education level, but it sure can’t hurt to give it a go.
I think the average person could give a shit who John Locke is. OTOH, if you told them that he was one of the most influential guys to contribute the idea that you had a right to live freely and pursue your own ends they might, might, care just a little bit more. They probably still won’t read him, and can you blame them? The words don’t exactly roll off the pages.
Do we need the average person? Or do we just need enough people who are willing to run for office who agree that the founders were right to enshrine ideas put forth by guys like Locke?
That almost sounds reminiscent of the stories of inner city black kids giving a hard time to their fellows who apply themselves to their studies: “Hey, don’t act like whitey Levon! What’sa matter with you?”
ot a little
Flotilla Choir presents: We Con the World
It also puts me in mind of the occasion when an English-basement renter of a friend of mine, which renter happened to be a phd candidate student in philosophy at CUA was dropping off his rent check while I visited with my pal. I happened to have a copy of E. Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France in my hand as this punk passed me in the living-room, whereon he sneered, “What the hell are you reading that for? Don’t bother! What a boring piece of trash that is.” “Have you read it?” I asked. “Of course,” says he.
I’m not so sure. If you take as a given that people will act in their own interest always, then what is it that motivates them that reading a difficult book which describes facets of a system they already are familiar with is worth their time? If they believe that there is a danger to that system, one which they depend on for their interest, then they will be more inclined to read it. The rise of the tea party indicates that some do see the danger and are thus taking those sort of steps.
In any case, weren’t you the one the other day making the arguments that democracy is a mob and that we don’t need the mob, just an educated few who agree in the underlying principles which the founders drew upon?
Don’t get me wrong. I suspect we are better off as a society if people choose to read books like The Wealth of Nations. I just don’t see it happening. I don’t think the founders saw it happening either.
Which is not to say that the people won’t read. They will, and lots. Just likely not anything directly written by Hobbes or Hume or Priestly.
I think I argued that the founders looked at democracy as a contemptible thing, yes. Or that the US isn’t a democracy but a federated republic. Is that not so? I don’t recall arguing that “just an educated few who agree in the underlying principles” were what is in need.
Indeed, I’ve no idea how you’ve come to that conclusion. The more people troubling themselves to be educated, I believe, the better. The question however, is, what is that education to look like?
Perhaps I added that part. Why will the people educate themselves over something they think they already know and thus take for granted? I don’t suspect they will. With the exception, as I stated, of those who see a danger to the system, and by extension, to their interest.
Foolish people will do and think of themselves foolish things, it is true and it can’t be helped.
Occasionally however, with exposure to careful questioning, such as may be prompted by a skilled teacher, otherwise foolish people will draw themselves up short and think “Hey, I might not know about this thing what I think I know” and in consequence of such a self-examination, pursue the truth of the matter further. And to their own improvement (i.e., in their own interests in ridding themselves of false beliefs).
edjamacation-i find that news/ ?/ herstory is all subjective
templates
donny don’t put metal in the micro-wave
donny don’t mixed bleach with ammonia
i like cartoons but have trouble trusting anyone with four fingers
How goes it with the three fingered guys buttons?
I wouldn’t necessarily classify those who act primarily in their own interest as fools. It seems like a very human thing to do, at least to me.
As to the rest, I agree. With the caveat that much more often people will draw inward in a defense posture so as to protect their ego and sense of self worth. In fact, until a person has made the step to get over him/herself the ability to draw themselves up short is probably damn near impossible. I’d be curious to find a way to help people along to that point, but am fairly concerned there is no shortcut. Patience and truth and hope is the only way.
I have found the three fingered guys don’t shoot back as much.
What do we think of people who believing themselves to act in their own (better) interests actually act in their own worse interests? These it seems to me are reasonably classed as fools, no?
three fingered guys(or gals) are fine
provided they
A-give Texas Longhorn salute
B-pick their nose in a science fiction movie or
C-order drinks
Sure. If you can show that not reading Locke somehow causes harm to their interest.
daddy- did u plug the hole in gilligans boat
or
read locke
yet?
i’d ask the members of the industrial workers unions about their interests
locke the bathroom door
plug the damn leak
Well, to say first what ought to be first, it takes a long, long, long time to get to Locke.
;-)
Gotta start with Homer first. Hesiod. Then along to Herodotus, then Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Plato, Thucydides, Euripides, Aristotle, the Bible, Lucretius, Euclid, Ptolemy, Virgil, Plutarch and on and on it goes. Endless drudgery god knows.
i belong to a union and i keep bringing up the point
but the elected union honchos always shout me down
they act like it’s 1930 and they have this give an inch he’ll take a mile attitude
but they’re all guaranteed 50 weeks at steel rate {highest pay!)
but even in the three fingered world-i admit
i likes my union paycheck-
as dewey cox warbled “i’m guilty- guilty as charged”
plug the hole…
take the cannolis
Which union buttons? USW? IUPAT? I’m still in the IBB, I think, though I haven’t paid dues since ’79 so I’d have a boatload of catching up to do before they’d let me work a job again.
increased energy production aids employment of steel and coal workers. the union leaders are watermelons.
Admit is sdferr, you work for some sort of caffeine and aspirin consortium.
iuapat-haven’t worked in 18 months
construction is feast or famine
been thru a couple of rough patches but nuttin’ like
this/
story- federal law- or should i say “guidelines” says i gota take these courses every year/ cpr and a blow in tube lung thingy- which i do…for the “safety”
so recently we’ve had alot of spanish speaking brothers join the union
and i bring up the point that
“why do i have to take these courses every year when i go on
a job and 60-70 or even 30 percent of my brothers don’t speak english?
[dramatic pause)
isn’t that a safety..
hey..union boss- don’t run away- i’m talking to u!
follow the money- every man hour the union gets cut
fine-
but safety?
when i’m on a big construction job and i get hurt cuz
the warning to me was not in english i pray as they wheel me out
on the ambulance that they play a bob dylan song-something spanish-y
Got you beat sdferr. My first Summer out of High School ’66, worked a factory job to earn money for school. Just before my job ended I had to join the UAW and pay the initiation fee. Then my job ended, right after I paid. Figured it was a typical scam to collect money.
Did you ever read the Roger Angel story of the spring-training Mets and the cry, *yo lo tengo!* buttons? Pretty funny story.
Of course being in the union of “a shot back and a beer chaser” is cool.
yo lo tengo to me was always an art rock band that every art rock chick
with three fingers tried to make me listen to…so i tried
really tried-i think they’re from joisey
whatever…
i’ve tried to learn spanish cuz a guy who knows spanish and english i figure in
my blue collar world would be boss- foreman- head muchacho
so i started to watch the spanish soap operas to learn spanish but the femmes big luscious boobs got in my way-
i know little spanish in restaurantes but i’d rather be as hesitant
in a french bistro
my dad was in the roofers union and had 5 kids and we lived in a house and mom didn’t
work and we had two cars- /a nice one and a shitbox)
so-ya- we had hot dog nite and shit but today?
could some undereducated[street smart) person do that today?
40 hours and have that life
just my experience/ i’m conflicted about unions
onions- not so much-red!
geoffb, I think I stopped my dues paying shortly after an offer to go to Three Mile Island during the accident, with a day and a half pay or something like that in exchange for 15 mins clean-up work inside the work area (though the cessation wasn’t associated with the offer, but on account of other work intervening). I declined that one.
God Bless America
cuz i remember the chernobly videos where the guys were running over the roof and trying to “plug that hole”
i think the russian guvmint told them that they’d take care of their family but man…
imagine theres no heaven…
it’s easy if u try
What’s for tea, darling?
Wowser.
Christie is the greatest fat man since Gilbert Brown or John Popper.
Little known fact: Chris Christie is named after Kris Kristofferson.
G. Will on the choice, which the other side of the argument says is no choice at all.
From the Will link:
My bold. Frankly, I don’t think that’s what progressives are selling. Else, how could class warfare or soak the rich rhetoric exist? Every household?
I’d say the pitch to the poor is that we’ll take from the rich and give it to you. The pitch to the rich is we’ll help the poor with your money, because of the fairnesses and structural inequalities, so you can feel good about yourself again. And, the pitch to everyone is the implicit argument that this should be done and that the government is capable of doing this sort of thing effectively and without all sorts of negative consequences.
They’re not actually saying that everyone will actually get more than they put in.
To nitpick, just a bit.
Does the vast mushy middle expect to get more out of ObamaCare than they’ve put in bh (setting aside for the moment the handful of cynics populating the middle class earners)? I don’t know this to be the case, but it wouldn’t surprise to find it’s so.
Well, I’m not sure, sdferr. I’m really not. Seems like it’d poll better if the middle thought they were getting a free lunch out of it though.
That’s right it would, and for sure the opponents (not a handful after all) don’t expect any such thing.
I’d say only two classes would even be sympathetic to this argument.
The first would be almost heroic hyper-Keynesians who would realize that the government was taking much more than they were offering but believed in some sort of crazy ass multiplier. Perhaps they could actually believe such a thing. Maybe.
The second wouldn’t believe it but would play along: those best in the position to squash their competition with economic fascism. They’d figure they’d pay a great deal in taxes but would become the heads of large monopolies and thereby see a great increase in earnings.
Overall though, those two possible groups aside, I’d say progressivism sells itself as a super smart and impossibly effective Robin Hood. Good for the material outlook of the poor and good for the moral outlook of the rich.
“…good for the moral outlook of the rich.”
And to the extent that “it’s only doing what Jesus would do” (Hi Nancy!), it has claims upon the moral acquiescence of the mid-muddlers as well.
Loaves and fishes baby, loaves and fishes.
Politician: Every man a comfortable bed!
Cynical citizen: Every politician a bullet.
And to the extent that “it’s only doing what Jesus would do” (Hi Nancy!), it has claims upon the moral acquiescence of the mid-muddlers as well.
This argument is where I’m vastly under-educated. Which, hey, is odd and not given my background.
What would Jesus do? I don’t know. He’s got the mind of God. I forget where I parked my car.
Should have blockquoted that first sentence.
That might be a pitch to “the rich” defined as those with “high” incomes but there is another group of “rich”. The wealthy. Those with large fortunes, multi-multi-millionaires, billionaires. They need a different pitch, one that appeals to their needs, calms their fears.
They fear losing it all, the money, power, the being better, the exclusivity. Losing it either to some upstart nouveau riche or worse to the howling mob crying for their head. For them the pitch is “support us, get us elected and we will take the income from those upstarts and use it to assuage the mob and keep them all in their places, forever.” “We will keep you safe.”
That is a powerful sales pitch.
please find me in an
un-ass-ume ing way..
kisses!
“This argument is…”
… I think in here somewhere. Maybe this somewhat?:
blech
Good point, Geoff.
F’n Marx. The dim porchlight that other incompetents now buzz around.
I think we’re all supposed to spit on the ground now. But, I’m in a carpeted room and am not an old Sicilian lady.
Okay, later guys. Time to have bad dreams about the Lakers.
Good night.