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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
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- In The Mailbox: 07.18.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
Just as patriotism is frequently claimed to be the last refuge of a scoundrel, “intellectualism” is often the last refuge of a useless highbrow whose program consists of a continuous historical reenactment of monumental statist stupidities.
Pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt.
The commenter, Greg Ransom, had a very good point. I’m betting they haven’t read Levin’s book. Yes, he sounds like a screaming banshie on the radio, but by not listening to the man’s message and instead focusing on his delivery, well, that seems to me rather anti-intellectual. Imagine that.
Excuse me, but when so-called “Smart guys” elitism is determined, not by intelligence or competence, but having a number of sheepskins from the politically correct institutions hanging on the wall, we aren’t in “Smart Guy” territory but in Star-bellied Sneetches land.
McConnell’s Team R senator pansies seem to think earmarks are our only hope.
I haven’t read the original post linked by Professor Bainbridge. Partly because I don’t have a clue who Nils August Andresen is, (he sounds Scandi, and Scandis are notoriously proggish) And partly because I know who David Frum is.
Bainbridge’s use of Kirk, the traditionalist’s traditionalist, indicates either a failure to appreciate the breadth of American conservatism, or a willful misrepresentation of the same. Either way, coming as it does from an academic, it hardly represents a ringing endorsement of an academic elite.
In the backtrack we find
Taken aside, doesn’t the assumption itself [ “I didn’t go to Yale” = “celebration of stupidity” ] seem just a tad stupid? After all, we know that hard study and mere academic excellence can yield all sorts of educated stupidities like absolute time, phlogiston, geocentrism or hard mind-body dichotomies. Or for that matter, Marxist political philosophy.
damn sockpuppet. We it. We hates it forever. gollum.
You know. The Power Elite was intended as a critique, not an instruction manual. Funny how some people are always conflating the two.
Be a good chap Professor Bainbridge, and do let all us rubes know exactly who we should be taking or instruction from. There’s a good man…
Anyone else having their comments being eaten?
Yes ThomasD.
I had one disappear from a different thread this morning, after I had seen it in the comments section. It’s like a horror movie; “The Thing! that ate my comment…”
Andresen writes: However, Republicans pretend that there is one group that really is stupid, one group that just “doesn’t get it”: Ivy League students.
Nils, baby — the problem isn’t that Ivy Leaguers are stupid. It’s that they have grown up in a bubble completely removed from the experiences and problems and values shared by the vast majority of their fellow countrymen who haven’t enjoyed such a level of privilege. That’s not stupidity; that’s ignorance. The failure by these “elites” to recognize their ignorance or work to relieve it? That’s stupidity.
And as to Kirk’s lamentations about conservatism leading to stagnation and mediocrity, I can’t help but laugh that such a great mind could go so far off track. Conservatism in government means freedom for the individual, and there is no greater engine for creativity on Earth than the inventor or entrepreneur who is free to profit from his innovations.
Conservatives are not the ones who keep the schools locked in endless failure. Conservatives are not the ones who’ve consigned the urban poor to generation after generation of fatherlessness, illiteracy, and crime. Conservatives are not the ones who seek to grow the bureaucracy to such a size that it seizes up from its own Byzantine work rules. No, these are all the awesome brainchildren of our Ivy League elite and their fellow travelers. I see little reason why we should seek to emulate such “successes” on our own side.
When it comes right down to it, I’d much rather have half a dozen loudmouths proclaiming the virtues of Hayek, than a half a dozen intellectuals trying to build on Hayek’s work. The intellectual heavy lifting has already been done. What’s important right now is marketing.
FEED ME!
It appears that, in Bainbridge’s mind, the world would be so much simpler if the GOP was comprised solely of hidebound traditionalists. Fortunately for the rest of us that is just not the case.
Bainbridge’s post indicates either a lack of appreciation for the breadth of American conservatism – much less the GOP, or a willful misrepresentation of such. Either way, coming as it does from an academic, it is hardly a ringing endorsement of the need for an academic elite.
She fell for Obama, flacked for Polanski, courtesy of her husband, the Polish Foreign Minister and disdained Palin, that’s three strikes of bad judgement right there
I’m gonna keep hammering this till it gets through.
Kirk is very much a conservative, and very much a particular type of conservative.
It appears that, in Bainbridge’s mind, the world would be so much simpler if the GOP was comprised solely of hidebound traditionalists. Fortunately for the rest of us that is just not the case.
Bainbridge’s post indicates either a lack of appreciation for the breadth of American conservatism – much less the GOP, or a willful misrepresentation of such. Either way, coming as it does from an academic, it is hardly a ringing endorsement of the need for an academic elite.
Apparently I can post empty non-sense, while anything on-point is hopeless.
I feel like a hominid being confronted with a large black obelisk.
Yay!
I’m done now.
I left PB a polite comment last night pointing out that perhaps the career and intellectual accomplishments of Mark Levin equalled or exceeded those of a certain corporate law professor at a public university in California. When I checked this morning it was still not out of moderation.
And while Rush might be a hick in PB’s eyes, it is interesting that WFB Jr. (I assume the last intellectual of the conservative movement) took Rush under his wing. Rush has commented after Buckley’s passing that Buckley was like a father to him (and given how far Christopher fell from the conservative tree I suspect the feeling was reciprocal).
And while I am not some huge Glenn Beck fan, I do note the guy promotes Hayek all the time on his radio and TV show. So for some ignorant son of Baker from Mount Vernon, WA, he is promoting the same “intellectuals” that PB says should be influencing us.
And while I agreed with PB over Miers being a bad pick for SCOTUS, it was those conservative “populists” who managed to scare GWB into backing off and picking Alito. Funny that GWB thinks the reason for her rejection is because Miers did not go to an Ivy League school. Well, may be for some that was the reason, but for the most of us it was because we sure as hell did not want to see another David Souter get put on the bench.
Taken aside, doesn’t the assumption itself [ “I didn’t go to Yale” = “celebration of stupidity” ] seem just a tad stupid?
I don’t know, sdferr. As a non-Yalie, I’m glad to wear that stupidity as a badge of honour.
Hey, I am sure PB is a hell of a dinner host. He is a conservative corporate law professor, but he seems to find people who are declared to be conservative to be slightly unclean. He does not care for Palin because she is not his intellectual equal, nor for Mitt Romeny because he abused his Irish Setter on a family trip once and because his is a flip flopper (he has a point there), and seems mildly upset that more people do not pay more attention to him.
That, and the fact that GWB wasn’t the best judge of character.
The sockpuppets are out of control today.
Continuing on in the tradition of Noam Chomsky, Juan Cole, Ward Churchill, William Ayers, et al, Professor Hajnal demonstrates why
the political right needs the academic elite:
I left a long comment there. The essential point being that these conservative know-nothings have internalized the wisdom of intellectual giants even if they can’t faithfully regurtitate them like limp dicked Ivy League debating society types. Elites on the left can disseminate their ideas by virtue of cultural and academic saturation. But on the right, it requires clarity of thought and forcefulness of vision.
Some asshat like Frum may resent that these people don’t yield to his guild mentality. But it amounts to little more than hollow posturing, as he has nothing of value to say. They aren’t inheritors of a grand intellectual tradition so much as they’re the idiot grandsons of industrial titans who have successfully melded an incompetence for the task at hand with a dizzying sense of entitlement.
This is the difference between the left and the right. We don’t see leftist elites ever crapping on their more populist or flat out moronic foot soldiers because, really, there’s so little difference between them rhetorically. That’s the benefit of a big hammer. But the reason right of center ideas are stronger is because they have to fight so much harder to reach the ground. The lesson to self-proclaimed intellectuals on the right being: If nobody is listening to you, it’s because you aren’t worth listening to.
Besides credentialism, the other part of the problem here is that the academy has become so bloated with the intellectual equivalent of empty calorie junk “studies” programs (fat studies being the latest example) that it’s tainted its own brand. Thus it seems to me that the academy needs conservatives/classical liberals as much as (if not more so) the GOP needs the academy. And that means the elites Bainbridge and/or Andresen speak of are the problem, not its solution.
I’d pay fifty bucks to see a cage match between Hajnal and Goldstein, but I wouldn’t want to take wagers on the outcome.
I for one, am glad that there are people out there smarter than me who are willing to do the heavy lifting of deciding for me what is and what isn’t anti-intellectual.
William F. Buckley Jr., although he did graduate from an elite unversity, was not an “accademic elite” (a college professor). He went out, put his own money on the line, and started National Review. He loved Rush because he recognized what Rush was doing in the media of radio.
Sarah Palin was certain politically green in 2008, but I have not seen her reject conservative theory (or for that matter Darwin despite lies from the left about that). And Reagan was denounced as a cowboy and populist too.
But hey, wonder why there are so few conservative accademics? Could it be that all the elite unversitities are controlled by people hostile to that very postition? Could that be a factor?
That and most conservatives want to actually accomplish somethng.
I screwed up my spelling in my haste to post, but that is because I am not elite enough and part of the unwashed masses. My bad. I better get some coffee and a shower.
The problem with “intellectuals” is that they have failed to do their duty. Their job is to map out the mental terrain that connects concrete observations of reality to higher-level abstractions that make sense out of existence. They are supposed to identify flaws in thinking that produce untrue conclusions from true premises, that sever the unbroken chain of evidence that anchors the abstract concepts to observable reality.
The resulting floating abstractions have become the new connotation of “intellectual”. For people who live in the real world, where you have to actually get milk out of the cow, or get the concrete mix in the foundation right so the building doesn’t collapse years later,… these floating abstractions are worse than useless, because they are used by the “intellectuals” to justify laws, regulations, and policies that are harmful.
LMC, I’m with you, brother! Some dumb-ass like me who might have stumbled through a couple or three degrees (Big Ten school? ewwww!!!) need someone with heft to tell me how and what to think…
Buckley most certainly was an academic elite – your definition for it notwithstanding, Joe. He taught Spanish at Yale if that technically satisfies you, and worked outside the academy afterward principally because he was at war with it.
Cross-posted at Bainbridge’s:
The problem isn’t with Being Smart, it’s with Being Arrogant.
The self-anointed intellectual elites are defined less by actual rigor of thought than by a sneering posture that they adopt toward their imagined inferiors, those who are not sufficiently credentialed to be taken seriously.
Sarah Palin never darkened the door of an Ivy, doesn’t utter the right shibboleths, and doesn’t worship at the same altars as the Credentialed Class: ergo, she must be ridiculed and, if possible, destroyed.
Go talk to our alleged intellectual superiors and see how many of them can mount a cogent defense of that sneering, and all you’ll get is more dismissiveness and snark, more posturing, more shallow preening.
They’re no different from the European nobility whose right to rule over the masses was self-evident: look how refined and cultured WE are and how crude the unwashed and uneducated.
To which our Republic said: give us that alleged human filth and we’ll show you who’s superior; we’ve been cranking out silk purses ever since.
Unfortunately, that the same aristocratic snobbery inevitably crops up in all human societies, and their ARROGANCE needs to be torn down, not the public valuation of intellectual rigor.
Sarah Palin never darkened a full term as governor neither before blowing it off to become a reality tv bunny by day vapid cable news hoochie by night.
It’s so hard to tell if that was happyfeet or someone parodying his simpleton verbal tics.
And while I am not some huge Glenn Beck fan, I do note the guy promotes Hayek all the time on his radio and TV show
Part of the key to Glenn’s popularity is that he never assumes that any ideas are too complex for his audience to grasp. He figures that if he can grok it, so can anyone, as long as it’s laid out for them. Hence the chalkboard lessons on sophisticated economic theory and other ideas, even though every rule about what makes good TV says that those lessons ought to be ratings death.
Maybe you could find a different thread to crap in happyfeet.
griefer is self-parody
I have tried, since this site began, to take abstruse and specialized linguistic ideas and make them accessible, all while mapping them onto real-world political questions and concerns. When I began, intentionalism was hardly ever mentioned, either in the academy or most certainly in discussing political rhetoric. But I’ve watched with some small sense of accomplishment as more and more people began taking an interest in how the language they were using — and was being used on them — actually works, and how the foundational structural assertions and assumptions we accept about language, whether those kernel assumptions be deployed consciously, tacitly, or through rote acceptance of institutionalized ideas, have dramatic (and, I’ve argued, inexorable) effects on the very trajectory of our epistemology, and so our society as a whole, from its politics to its social compacts.
To me, that’s what public intellectualism is, and I’ve tried my best to bring whatever small expertise I have to bear on the national conversation.
Watching butthurt barristers on “our side” try to undermine it so they can save face is depressing as hell, frankly.
You know, the hardest and most intellectually rigorous class that I took in college was a History class I took over the summer at a community college to fulfill my core requirements on the cheap. That professor put us through hell for nine weeks and I learned more about research and critical thinking from that guy than I ever did from the classes I took at my alma mater.
Buckley most certainly was an academic elite
Because the man was effing brilliant by any measure. The proper definition of “elite” is “the best in a given field,” who are inevitably few in number because of the Bell curve.
“Elitism” has nothing to do with actually being good at something and everything to do with a particular posture. It’s an attitude towards people you perceive as being inferior to yourself, an attitude that lacks utterly any trace of humility or any recognition that intellectual or artistic gifts are only one kind of gift among many, and that you’d do well to learn to appreciate what others have but you don’t, even if those gifts won’t make you rich or famous.
Over at The Corner, Jonah posts a link to an amazing essay by an intellectual elite whose disabled son helps him see that Being Clever isn’t the only valuable gift.
This problem — distinguishing genuine lovers of wisdom from unwise intellectuals (pretenders, to be blunt about them) — is old, very old.
Might not the ongoing problem itself suggest it will be with us always? Might it not be due to an inherent conflict between the two ways of living — political and philosophical — and the objects of those lives? Could be, seems to me.
Of course, if it was really any good I would have paid more for it.
Beck is Rush for a more sober time, they both come out of the disk jockey field, self educated for the most part. He has been pointing out this week the many tentacles of the Soros org, promoting policy and suppressing alternative points of view, he used the example of ’48 Czechoslovakia as an example, might be a touch on the Goodwin line, but not much. Those that jeered O’Donnell from their corner of the peanut gallery, really I have no time for, as everything from the repeal of Obama to the confirmation of the new START treaty, will be shown
to have been fools at best
Hmmmmmmm. Time to get schooled by the accademics!
Jeff: a couple of comments of mine just got gobbled by the spam filter, though I don’t know why.
Please release only one: the other is an attempt to fool the filter into not seeing the URL.
To add to di’s comment on Arrogance — part of the arrogance is the stance of “We’ve arrived!” and subsequent efforts are Not Required.
When Smart Guy “thinking” amounts to little more than column inches of how stoooopid everyone else is outside of the clique and how ungrateful and unappreciative the hoi polloi of their obvious betters, there is no indication that Smart Guys grasp that “learning” and “thinking” are ongoing processes.
Humble circumstances doesn’t a hoochie/cumslut/mouthbreather/whitetrashXtianist make.
My grandfather stopped going to school after the 8th grade. But he never stopped reading, studying and learning. History was his passion and I would have put him up next to any Ivy League prof on the subject.
the two ways of living — political and philosophical — and the objects of those lives
Those objects being Power and Truth, it would seem. You can’t pursue both, and when you pursue one, you must necessarily sacrifice the other.
Abe, I did not know Buckley taught Spanish at Yale, but my point was his accomplishments as a conservative intellecutal were not associated with Yale (or any college or unversity) but primarily from his work at National Review (and Firing Line).
LTC – I feel you,man. Hell, everyone in the Big East had to wear bicycle helmets to class.
Watching butthurt barristers on “our side” try to undermine it so they can save face is depressing as hell, frankly.
That’s because we’re pitchers, not catchers, see? We only catch when we’re being jumped in to the fraternity, or when we’re initiated into ever higher levels of the sacred mysteries of our profession, or when the judge/priest singles us out for “special” attention at trial/ritual.
But the point is, you don’t have the right to ream us. You’re here to get reamed or to pay us to ream someone for you.
So either step up to the bar or sit down and shut up. Either way, Goldstein, you’re bending over for us.
hmmmmm…. maybe that’s why Louisville joined…
Abe, you can only be an accademic elite if you get tenure at a good school. Because that means your peers love you and think you are a smartee.
If a Jefferson or Tocqueville or Hayek came along tomorrow, does anyone really believe that the Tea Party would ignore them or shove them aside? Sure, I’ll grant that they’d have an easier time with us if their degrees came from a land-grant institution rather than the Ivy League, but I’d still listen to a Harvard man if his arguments made sense, and amounted to something more than “You’d better listen to me, because I’m from Harvard.”
Ivy-League credentials have been severely debased. Sure, they still serve as markers to others of that caste, but most of our society now recognizes that these clowns don’t actually have the chops to back up their preening condescension.
You’d think Bainbridge would be clever enough to know the difference between the embrace of ignorance and the rejection of hollow credentialism. Maybe he just had a bad day, and he’ll come around. One can hope.
I’m not a big fan of the anti-intellectual either. That’s why when someone asserts something without feeling the need to produce evidence, I’m annoyed with them. It’s one of the established standards of good faith argumentation.
So Palin, DeMint, Reihl, and Levin are anti-intellectual? Prove it. Failure to do so after tossing off such a serious charge? At direct odds with the purported thrust of the post.
(Remember when “muster available evidence” and “anticipate counter arguments” were in vogue?)
Jefferson would get into trouble because of the slave thing.
Insightful reference above, sdferr.
One can always tell a Harvard man; but not much…
A Bob Hope joke from the 1930’s.
We humans fall into easy habits of speech. Remember when someone would say “such and such is the Cadillac of thus and such” long after Cadillacs had ceased to be carefully crafted examples of excellence? So it is with the Ivies, I think, even though they may still have the capacity to convey people to where they desire to go.
Abe, you can only be an accademic elite if you get tenure at a good school. Because that means your peers love you and think you are a smartee.
That’s not really the dividing line, though. Whatever comfort people took from his comment that he’d rather be governed by the phone book, not even Gore Vidal was confused as to whether or not he was a public intellectual.
As I noted yesterday, Levin ran for (and won) a spot on the school board at 19, graduated law school at 22, and was working for Reagan (against Ford) in 76′ at 19 before later joining the administration in a number of capacities.
He’s also President of Landmark Legal Foundation.
From what I gather, Bainbridge seems to define anti-intellectual as something akin to “people outside the academy who presume to have ideas and opinions.” By nature of their being outside the academy, they are of necessity “populists” — loosely defined both as “anti-intellectual” and demagogues, concentrating on larger ideas (such as they are, sniff) instead of wonkish policy specifics discussed among peers hewn from good, solid stock.
Of course, I’m just kinda paraphrasing.
Abe, I know. Even when Vidal called him a crypto nazi and almost got flattened.
As a little kid I remember watching Firing Line and thinking, “this guy seems to know what he was talking about.” At least when I wasn’t checking out Barbara Feldman, Tina Louise, and Dawn Wells on other matters.
Palin and DeMint think creationism should be taught in schools. That’s fairly definitively anti-intellectual I think Mr. bh, inasmuch as they want to teach the childrens something for which they have no proof at all at all.
It’s the ultimate argument by assertion.
Nice observation at #62 sdferr.
Abe,
I think Joe is trying to make a distinction between a public intellectual who, by virtue intellect and accomplishment merited his elite status, and an academic who, by completing a decades long apprentice- and journeymanship, and benefit of patronage and favor currying, arrived at or near the pinnacle of his or her guild.
In the latter case, intellect and accomplishment (a.k.a. “publish or perish”) play a role, but not one as determinative as in the former example.
humbly submitted for consideration
Palin and DeMint think creationism should be taught in schools
[facepalm]
give it up, griefer, and get some help.
I agree with you Abe about WFB’s accomplishments. Obviously he was an intellectual giant. But he did not get there by getting tenure as some professor. Getting tenure does not mean anything, other than you managed to get fellow accdemics to decide you are worth having around. PB seems to have the blinders when he is defining elites.
I take back my earlier statement. If a Jefferson or Tocqueville or Hayek came along tomorrow, we could count on happyfeet to cut them off at the knees for insufficient staunchiness.
One can only imagine what our side would be capable of if we didn’t have haps “helping” us…
Palin said they should “teach both,” Darleen, meaning creationism and evolution… even if she didn’t advocate doing so in her short stint as governor, she’s obviously open to doing so. She talks about her fealty to creationism in her book about the going rogue.
I’m just offering it as some evidence of an anti-intellectual streak for Mr. bh at 59.
and I think it’s fairly indisputable that DeMint wants to teach the creationisms in school
[…] course we need the elites. Can’t do without ‘em, in fact. […]
happyfeet, science pretty much accepts the universe started with “The Big Bang.”
Would you put “The Big Bang” theory under evolution or creationism?
Before you answer Blake’s question, hf, it might help you to know that the astronomer who hypothesized the Big Bang was a Catholic priest.
Don’t engage him, Blake. He just wants to pollute another thread with his obsessive hatred of women. Unless they advocate for the extermination of “undesirables,” in which case he’ll do whatever he can to get in their pants.
Let’s focus on helping Bainbridge see the light, and leave Cupcake Boy to wallow alone in his sad obsessions.
If one views evolution as a secular creation myth rather than science, I can easily posit their desire to offer creationism or ID as something other than anti-intellectualism. It’s more like evangelism or something.
On the other hand, if someone said, “Darwin was a pointy headed thinker person and those folks do more harm then good”, then I could draw that conclusion.
Mr. Blake I just know that saying you’re cool with teaching creationism in schools is pretty generally recognized as a badge of anti-intellectualism, else “anti-intellectualism” isn’t really a very useful concept.
Hey, that silly bitch sounds a lot like that Jeff Goldstein fella, doesn’t she?
[…] One for them, and one for everybody else.UPDATE: Commenter Joe in the previous post links to Jeff Goldstein’s mocking link to a post by Professor Bainbridge telling us that the problem with the conservative movement is . . […]
Catholic schools teach both sides of the creationism/evolution debate. I’ve heard that those kids do pretty well, even the ones that become one-note stand up comics.
Mr. Squid I don’t hate women I just think empty-suited celebrity whores like Obama and Palin should be kept far away from the presidency.
One is an accident. Two is a trend.
I’m one of those Academic Elite. Call up Michael Steele and tell him I’m available.
Oh, and just to be argumentative, the difference between the GOP elite and the Leftist Elite is that the Leftist Elite spend their times living off the State in Government and Academe, whereas the GOP Elite have taken their knowledge and applied it to business.
I’m in the sciences, and I see many of my colleagues with interesting ideas, but most are not applicable to industry. And then there are those with good ideas but don’t have a way to really apply them to industry. Then there are the opportunists who see a good idea and transform it into something industry can use. Most of those guys work in Industry.
I get a kick out of the “evolution or nothing” crowd.
They don’t understand the hubris behind thinking evolution starts and ends with planet Earth.
Sorta flat earthy and geocentric from where I sit.
Palin said they should “teach both,” Darleen, meaning creationism and evolution
reading is fundamental griefer, and Palin’s FULL comment on the subject shows her position on students debating in class isn’t much different than JeffG’s.
You want to call Jeff an anti-intellectual hoochie now?
Seek.help. you’re way too close to a 5150.
“You want to call Jeff an anti-intellectual hoochie now?”
Yes! Any time I can call Jeff a hoochie, I’ll take it! :D
I’m just offering it as possible evidence Darleen personally I think the “what they teach the public school kiddies” argument is a lot quixotic at this point to where sprinkling some Adam and Eve in the mix can’t possibly make a damn bit of difference one way or the other.
On the whole, I think, I’d advocate taking control over education away from any and all political powers, narrowly drawn. They — the two — learnings and governings, just don’t go together.
In the alternative though, perhaps it would be sufficient to allow — indeed encourage — separated organizations of education, stamped political and private, including particularly outlawing double taxations on people whose choices are not to send their children to the public-political schools; then see whether discernment of excellence in a competitive light doesn’t drive the respective growth and decay of the two organizations of learning.
If the left – and not so bright cultural ether sniffers like Jollyfoot – had a shred of intellectual security, they’d make more effort to decouple the loopy Young Earth Creationists from those who simply seek to reconcile faith and science instead of lumping the two camps together. It really isn’t all that complicated to believe in science and in a higher power, but a faith-based hostility toward the latter will most certainly evoke a reaction among the religious. One wonders why someone like Jollyfoot lacks the balls to simply assert that God doesn’t exist and that people who think otherwise are stupid. Why play around the margins like a little bitch?
And I don’t think Jeff advocates teaching the creationism myths in science class Darleen. Which is what Sarah Palin suggests when she says teach both and let the children decide.
I like God Mr. Froman. God is ineffable. Like shining from shook foil like the ooze of oil crushed. He’s not please turn to page 187 of your textbooks I don’t think.
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things I think.
Gaghdad Bob with an excerpt-worthy post on the inherent paradox of progressive thought and assumptions here.
Creationism should not be taught in High School science courses to the exclusivity of anything else. However, it can be offered as an alternative to Evolution, as evolutionary science certainly has gaps (and it’s not exactly reproducible in lab due to incredibly long experimental timescales). Evolution also doesn’t cover molecular self-assembly into single-cell life, something that it anti-entropic on a mammoth scale. (And then it just gets more complicated when you get multi-cellular organisms, then more complex organisms with completely different cells acting in concert in a larger being. That idea seems almost contrary to that of evolution.)
I do think it’s something that can be brought up in a philosophy class.
SS–word.
Well, I’m agnostic and a card carrying member of Darwin’s posse. Yet, I still have no problem at all with other people’s notion of a prime mover and the resulting ramifications.
They’re different things. Those of my tribe who think science speaks of God are simply tripping over a category error. And vice versa.
So, teaching the difference using these different paradigms as examples could lead to an insight (A is not B) that applies all over the place. So, good.
Nice punt, jollyfoot. Doing it on first down is not a lot manly though.
He almost had it there, but it got away from him.
another example of the kind of Christophobic arrogance of those of superior self-regard — this exchange between Richard Dawkins and Hugh Hewitt
“I just know that saying you’re cool with teaching creationism in schools is pretty generally recognized as a badge of anti-intellectualism.”
Where happyfeet, in L.A. ? Recognized by who? Is it a consensus, or just conventional wisdom?
I’m not advocating either position, I tend to agree with bh’s point on the posture of the advocate. I personally think that creationism, as a cosmology, should be reserved for philisophical discussion. That said, there are a lot of folks much smarter than I.
You do realize that “evolution”, term here being used to characterize the theory with respect to the iterative development of humans from more simian-like antecedants, has no hard proof but only inference from fossil records.
I mean, folks are still looking for the “missing link”.
Do I believe that evolution, that is the theory of natural selection, is valid? Yes, I do. Do I have any trouble integrating it into my eeeeevolll Catholic, xtian-taliban, cosmology? No. And neither does the Catholic church, you might be surprised to hear.
I don’t think Palin or Demint’s positions are markers of anti-intellectualism at all, no more than I believe proponent’s of global warming are.
I also think it’s incorrect to draw an equivalence between Obama and Palin. FWIW, YMMV.
“people outside the academy who presume to have ideas and opinions.”
I’m mindful of Evan Sayet’s pithy observation that one meaning of “academic” is “irrelevant”. (As in “whether the color of the deck chairs on the Titanic was aesthetically pleasing is academic”.)
Life is so much better with TrollHammer™.
Have you read Bob Godwin, feets? Because you should.
My kids go to parochial school and they teach evolution there. They also teach the bible, in religious class. They teach God created the universe. And yeah, they teach Jesus turned water into wine.
And I would think Professor Bainbridge would be all over that later point! Not only did he change water into wine, but the Gospel even quotes the Stewart who declares it to be good wine! John 2:1-11. I love details like that. I also love that when Jesus fills Peter’s net they count all the fish in it. John 21:8-11. But that is me. I like fishing.
I tease. PB is a Catholic and not a Dawkins guy. And you know what, I am perfectly okay with guys like Dawkins and Hitchens too (although they protest too much it seems). But the point is, becareful about relying too much on intellectual elites, especially accademic ones. It is funny how they start definining things down to what turns them on.
Be skeptical and question authority.
The Jesuits at my high school actually followed Jeff’s approach and I ended up in the same place, Bob. Discussing theological cosmology as well as reductionist materialism didn’t end up confusing me in the least. Loved science and gained an appreciation for early Church thinkers as well as Aristotle.
Our betters. The smart people.
The Jesuits at my high school employed followed Jeff’s approach and I ended up in the same place, Bob. Discussing theological cosmology as well as reductionist materialism didn’t end up confusing me in the least. Loved science and gained an appreciation for early Church thinkers as well as Aristotle. Win win.
The Jesuits at my high school actually followed Jeff’s approach and I ended up in the same place, Bob. Discussing theological cosmology as well as reductionist materialism didn’t end up confusing me in the least. Loved science and gained an appreciation for early Church thinkers as well as Aristotle. Win win.
[Testing to see if a short comment can make it past the mysterious comment eating monster.]
Don’t count on it bh, I’m pretty cagey. I’d make sure I copied my text just in case. Incase I wan’t seconds, that is.
Bwahahahahahahah
If another dozen versions of that comment appear, Jeff, feel free to delete them.
Sorry. (Kept changing the wording because it was saying I was duplicating comments.)
A little OT.. but from a religious angle, particle physics is certainly interesting. Hadrons (neutrons and protons) are effectively everything that makes up the matter which is important for construction of stars & planets. Hadrons are made up of three quarks.
God, according to Christian teaching, states that we are “made in his image”. General thought is that we all look like God (yes, even you, Larry King). But if you take it further, since dogma has crystallized around the idea of the Trinity, three being one, and that it takes three quarks to make up the matter in the universe, I think that talks about us in the image of God in a more wondrous manner.
what’s getting obscured is that Mr. Bainbridge said that these particular Team Rs “are essentially anti-intellectual populists.” Emphasis mine cause of I want to emphasize the word “populists.”
Which, that seems fair enough I think. Our friend Mr. Wikipedia thinks so anyway.
That’s a fitting-enough description of Miss Commonsense Conservatism and her “real America” and et cetera. I don’t think it’s necessarily a pejorative even, just Bainbridge’s attempt to put Palin in historical context.
I think it’s more interesting really that Bainbridge refers to Palin and De Mint as “the current GOP leadership.”
I wonder if her really meant that.
Hey look at the graphic Google is using today.
With a U.S. flag and everything, though maybe folks in the U.K. are seeing red poppies?
Just checked. Nope.
You actually think that Jesus got water, and made all those molecules turn into wine?
Seems that would be a no-brainer for a God.
I wonder if *he* really meant that I mean
More TOM on Beck.
Yes that is true. But Professor Bainbridge went to Western Maryland College before he went to the University of Virgina. So that makes him part of the elite, since he went to a Public Ivy.
“General thought is that we all look like God (yes, even you, Larry King). But if you take it further, since dogma has crystallized around the idea of the Trinity, three being one, and that it takes three quarks to make up the matter in the universe, I think that talks about us in the image of God in a more wondrous manner.”
That’s an excellent and intriguing point SS; one that I’m going to bring up in an RCIA meeting where the subject will be the image of God.
I dig Gagdad Bob, it drives me crazy that he is using the term “evolve” to mean “develop” or “progress,” when it really means “adapt.”
Adaptation may or may not result in progress when you’re talking about one’s spiritual development. When adapting to an unbearably difficult situation, you might grow from it or you might self-destruct.
I tried to link this article before, which is a case in point:http://chronicle.com/article/A-Life-Beyond-Reason/125242/
An intellectual learns that you don’t need to be clever to be fully human.
“Bainbridge went to Western Maryland College before he went to the University of Virgina.”
I’m not understanding which one of these is an Ivy League school Joe.
“That’s an excellent and intriguing point SS; one that I’m going to bring up in an RCIA meeting where the subject will be the image of God.”
I’m working on a whole seminar series about science & theology. So far I’ve got 9 seminar ideas– now I just need the time to sit down and write them.
Well get on it SS!
I see a book deal in it :)
Hmmmmm, things are changing at law schools:
Hardons are pretty important outside particle physics, too, SS.
Oh, wait…
Maybe we just end up with trinities in various things because three is a cool number.
what’s getting obscured is that Mr. Bainbridge said that these particular Team Rs “are essentially anti-intellectual populists.” Emphasis mine cause of I want to emphasize the word “populists.”
Is there such a thing as an intellectual populist? I wonder.
I think that phrase serves more to designate a varietal of anti-intellectual than a varietal of populist. But yeah I think there are intellectual populists. A lot of them are swedish.
Bob, the University of Virginia is a Public Ivy. A step down from Olbermann going to Cornell’s ag school, but a way to say you went “Ivy” and are an elite.
That is how PB shows he is more elite than Levin (who merely went to Temple).
The term “populist” is rather silly when the aim is less government and a return to founding principles. At least, in the loaded historical sense of inflaming peoples’ passions so as to create a tyranny of the majority a la the French Revolution.
I mean Bob, Wikipedia even defines it, how much more intellectual can I get! Sheesh! It even has footnotes now!
A step down from Olbermann going to Cornell’s ag school, but a way to say you went “Ivy” and are an elite.
That list you linked is absurd and meaningless. UVA is in a different stratosphere (along with a couple of others) as far as being able to get all the right job interviews.
If the populism is along the lines of “government of the people, by the people, for the people” it’s a different animal than the pejorative connotation.
As Abe mentions, when the mob isn’t setting up a guillotine or agitating for more bread and circuses, the term itself becomes rather silly in our political context.
Abe’s right. PB makes it out like Palin, Beck, Levin and Riehl are anti right wing theorists and intellectuals. Nothing could be further from the truth.Promoting populist American national values is not some Maoist cultural revolution. Beck makes it a point of promoting those prior conservative thinkers on his show. I can’t recall Palin, Levin or Riehl ever slamming Hayek, Friedman or any conservative accademic intellectual, but if PB has a link to that I would welcome him sharing it with us.
Well thanks for the link Joe, although not knowing much about the administrator that coined that term, and despite my own Alma Mater appearing on the list, I personally still think one’s education is more about what one makes of it than where one attended classes.
And I mean, c’mon, I went to a Public Ivy, so my words are automatically infused with metaphysical ceritiude…
Hey look at the graphic Google is using today.
With a U.S. flag and everything, though maybe folks in the U.K. are seeing red poppies
Google UK has a single red poppy. Very nice.
Abe, I am being sarcastic about the schools. The list is on Wikipedia (I never heard of a “Public Ivy” before seeing it today). Obviously UOV, while not an Ivy League school, is a very good school (I think its law school is ranked 10th in the county). But Temple is a very good school too. The point is I am mocking PB for being a prig about Levin.
And I agree with Bob, it is not where you went to school but what you do with it afterwards.
Maybe we just end up with trinities in various things because three is a cool number.
JEFF BAIT!
George Duby
I missed what you were doing, Joe, and was taking you literally.
Well Joe,
What you do with it in life is very important, but, in my poorly expressed comment I was trying to speak of actually paying attntion while at school. A slacker who graduated from Yale will still be a slacker, etc.
My guess is the only populist on the right, in the sense that Abe and bh are using “populist,” is Huckabee.
Which is why Huckabee isn’t on the right in my book.
And by anti-intellectual, I’m taking Bainbridge to mean “doesn’t demonstrate the deference to my credentials that I deem proper;” which, more or less is the same way Applebaum was using it.
Probably a fairly good assumption Ernst.
A slacker who graduated from Yale will still be a slacker, etc.
And yet the point so many of us have been making is that the slacker from Yale will still get preference in job interviews, and invites to the “best” dinner parties, just on account of who his classmates are. Worse yet, he’ll never realize that his preferential treatment has nothing to do with his skills and abilities, and he’ll get all snippy when any of us proles fail to accord him the respect he thinks he deserves.
“Ivy Leaguer” has become a hollow credential, because it’s all about who’s in the club, and not about what the members of that club can actually accomplish. It’s probably too late for them to salvage their reputation, but I dearly wish they’d try.
I think the way to look at it is that Ivy Leaguers may be smarter in a generic sense, but it in no way means they’ll be competent, let alone exceptional, in their chosen profession. I see this reinforced in work situations on an almost daily basis. Part of it is aptitude. Part of it is arrogance. Part of it is, maybe, they don’t fear the repercussions for fucking up as intensely because they fancy themselves to be easily employable.
Classroom performance is no guarantee of real world results.
Bainbridge closed comments after responding to SporkLiftDriver thusly:
Presumably, Bainbridge has some reason to call a woman elected governor and then made a candidate for Vice President a “lightweight” — and I’m guessing it has something to do with her folksy delivery and her appeal to people who really shouldn’t be worrying their little prole heads over something so intellectual as day-to-day politics; too, I’m guessing he has grounds for calling Levin a mere “ranter,” despite the fact that Levin graduated law school at 22, worked in the Reagan administration under Ed Meese, is President of Landmark Legal, and according to Jeffrey Lord and others (although, yes, mostly those wretched Tea Party types who just returned the GOP to power) is responsible for the conservative manifesto, Liberty and Tyranny, that became the clarion call among classical liberals and conservatives to return government to its Constitutional roots.
As to the charge of “warmongering,” well, that’s the kind of garbage one would expect from a wannabe-country club Republican who would prefer to go back to those heady, “old sport” times where “his party” was the party of the rich northern elites, hobnobbing Rockefellers engaging in wonkish discussions with the boys over single malt or brandy on lazy afternoons at the lodge. That is to say, it is to be expected, how those scimitared Arabs behaved in their unseemly attacks on us, especially given their desert dwelling stock — but it is most decidedly not something to make such an enormous fuss over. Very Heinz-Kerry, this idea — and the reason I suspect that Bainbridge is closer in ideology to, say, John Kerry, all things considered, than he is to someone like Sarah Palin: Kerry, at least, is an educated Brahman. And while Bainbridge may disagree with the erstwhile Donk presidential candidate on gentlemanly topics like policy, at least at the end of the day they could put their disagreements behind them and enjoy a nice sail.
Bainbridge calls Tancredo a bigot, but his post illuminates the kind of bigotry people like Bainbridge use to define themselves. That he doesn’t recognize it only reinforces for me the fact that the modern academy, as you’ve heard me say on several occasions, is in many respects the objective correlative for real anti-intellectualism these days.
In an era where a socialist cabal is threatening to finish off the project begun by Wilson and Roosevelt and then extended by Johnson and Carter, if what you find yourself railing about is the unhelpful and insufficiently polished tone of those who are doing the heavy ideological lifting, you might be best served by taking a brief sabbatical and engaging in some serious self reflection.
And I can offer that advice. I went to Hopkins, and summered at Cornell. Sniff.
I think the way to look at it is that Ivy Leaguers may be smarter in a generic sense…
I’m not even willing to grant them that much. If I’m interviewing, and somebody with those credentials comes in, I’m going to look even more carefully at the quality of their work, if only to reassure myself that they’re not just a politically connected slacker. It’s to the point where a candidate would be better off emphasizing his attendance at a “real” school: “Oh, sure, I got my MBA from Harvard, but my undergrad work was all at Penn State!”
“Ivy Leaguer” has become a hollow credential, because it’s all about who’s in the club, and not about what the members of that club can actually accomplish.
To some extent it’s always been about who’s in the club. It’s just that the membership committees have relaxed the rules for admission, which has had the unintended consequence of hollowing out the credential.
I suspose you could call it the “Lake Wobegon Effect” What does it really mean to be “above average” in an educational system in which everyone is above average?
Bob, I paid attention at school when there was something worthy of paying attention to. Beyond thinking about co-eds (which I have to admit was the primary focus of my attention), most of my professors were forgetable. A few. however, were exceptional. I learned a lot from them.
And I think Jeff nailed it with #146.
Bainbridge pre-emptively closed the comments on his followup “Apology to Bruce Bartlett” post, after mischaracterizing the previous comments as “hate-filled” and mischaracterizing Riehl’s attack on Christie’s short-term electoral thinking as an attack on Christie himself.
Disappointing.
Ronald Reagan a “smart guy”? The “amiable dunce”? The guy who made us comfortable with our prejudices? The life-guard turned B-Movie actor turned corporate shill? The guy whose plan for winning (winning! not managing) the Cold War was “we win, they lose” and thus inspired “Land of Confusion” and “The Final Countdown” (the song, not the movie)? That Ronald Reagan?!?
Boy, time and distance sure makes some people forget.
I think Mr. Bainbridge is discounting a lot of people who aren’t lightweights at all like the Mr. Daniels and the Mr. Ryan.
ok so he’s discounting two people
Funny, I think I’ve seen Steve Forbes and even useless ol’ Newt promoting the Tea Parties to a fare thee well on commercial tv. Must be they too have gone native, huh? The rest of Bainbridge’s list is either dead or in the case of Jimmie Baker, self-imposed public retirement.
Maybe Bainbridge is just indulging himself in a ritual Get-off-my-intellectual-lawning exercise.
Bainbridge closing huff is revealing in that he never addresses the comments, just regurgitates his opening assertions and will brook no further discussion.
How does that Left meme go? The one about the non-Left being nothing but an echo chamber unwilling to engage??
Oh..and I’ve found some delicious stuff in the Vagina Warrior blogsphere I’ll be wanting to share later.
When you start seeing people like Chris Christie being attacked for not being conservative enough, you know that the right is in danger of going off the rails. Or at least some parts of it. – Professor Bainbridge
Look, happyfeet, he’s calling you stupid!
Boy PB is really mad. We have left him.
He closed comments to that too. I have a reason if someone posted Jeff’s comment above it might not make it through moderation.
I am pretty sure PB is at home (it is a school holiday) probably engaging in some comfort food about now. Perhaps some warm duck with wild rice in lettuce cups. Along with a nice wine.
Bainbridge pre-emptively closed the comments on his followup “Apology to Bruce Bartlett” post, after mischaracterizing the previous comments as “hate-filled” and mischaracterizing Riehl’s attack on Christie’s short-term electoral thinking as an attack on Christie himself
Oh good lord I just read the post.
Some send the good Professor a fruit basket.
Chris Christie isn’t conservative enough to be president right now… not with his hard-on for climate change pansies like Mike Castle and Meg Whitman and his indifference to victory mosques. But he’s definitely conservative enough to be governor of New Jersey. He’s one of my favorite governors.
Bainbridge’s “ranter” shot confirms something I’ve been thinking, to which Jeff has already alluded.
It’s a kind of professional courtesy –bad form to have the officers shooting at each other like rankers. Who will provide the leadership and instill the necessary esprit d’corps if the aristocratic element isn’t there to take charge of the engagement?
I think I may need to develop a list of all the “superior intellects” at which I laugh. Call it the Khan List.
I have a reason to suspect… I left a couple of words out.
But since PB closed his comments, here is my follow response:
As for Chris Christie, I disagreed with him about Castle and O’Donnell and about the Ground Zero Mosque. I was not a big O’Donnell fan, she was simply better than Castle. Christie is entitled to go argue whatever he wants. That does not mean I hate Chris Christie. Hell lots of people argued for Castle. I still like Cristie. I like him a lot. It just means I disagree with his reasoning on those two issues.
Grow a thinker skin.
And PB, you were one of many who opposed Miers. Almost the entire conservative movement rose up and attacked Bush over that. I was mocking Hugh Hewitt about it every day when he started to back her, but I was one of many doing so. Hewitt and Powerline and other Republican establishment types were in the minority.
And guess what, PB, you were part of that populist conservative mob!
Come on PB, that walk on the wild side opposing Miers was fun, wasn’t it? Admit it.
You’re so-called Khan list is just you revelling in your closed-mindedness Squid.
Why won’t you open your mind and listen to your betters?
From PB’s “we have left him” post:
Hate-filled? They seemed like reasonable disagreements to me. Apparently, tenure causes thin skin.
#154 – ding ding ding!
Apparently, tenure causes thin skin.
Engaging in some debate and give and take tends to toughen one up.
Hate-filled? They seemed like reasonable disagreements to me.
Well, it only took him two years to get around to apologizing to Bartlett. I suppose we just need to be patient.
Your comment on the “hate-filled” characterization appears to be full of hate itself to me, Mike. Seething with subtextual violence, in fact.
Joking aside, it’s fairly strong proof that Bainbridge has no interest in good faith discussion. Oh well. Can’t say that I ever read him much anyway.
Well, the adantage of being in the minority is that you’re surrounded with like minded people who will share in your relief at no longer having to court the smelly masses and indulge with you in giving full vent to your disdain for the benighted rubes.
The really stupid thing about this is that most of the disagreement is directed towards Andresen, not Bainbridge himself, who largely seems to have worked himself into a tizzy because a few commenters declined to affirm his disdain for his particular bêtes noires. He closed comments because too many commenters were closed-minded. Hmm…
Yep, us crazy hillbillies are raisin’ hell with our epistemic closure and subtextual violence!
Indeed, PB’s departure (if it happens) will be largely unnoticed. I’d never even heard of him until just a couple of moths ago when someone here mentioned his “embarrassed to be a conservative” post.
He means Jack Kemp, no? Jack Kemp was a vp candidate what used lots of football metaphors and bragged about how he’d showered with like a million black guys.
He was the future.
I’m not sure exactly how long that is. How many ladybugs per moth? If I knew that, I could make the conversion.
Kemp was more than that. A lot more. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that had Reagan dumped Bush for Kemp in ’84, more than your feet would be happy.
Oops. 24 aphids per ladybug, 30 ladybugs per moth.
Mark Levin responds to PB:
I’m just going to put this out there because I can’t help myself. Apologies in advance.
The mark of the true intellectual is allowing the term evolution to act as a stand in for abiogenesis and then mockingly comparing that ruse against creationism. To show how super fucking smart you are.
On topic, I recall reading some Bainbridge before that I strongly agreed with so I’m wondering if there isn’t something else going on here of which we are missing. His recent posts would seem to indicate his willingness to lump all conservatives/Republicans into categories that the left would smile about.
In any case, Frum remains a pet. Fuck him.
Or, 144 fleas per spider. The spider-moth exchange rate fluctuates according to the market, currently 1.201 arachnids/insect.
The use of attendance at the Ivy’s as a sort of bench mark towards or against the intelligence, or contribution of a particular individual seems sort of lazy if you ask me.
Speaking of rates of exchange, this might come in handy.
The use of attendance at the Ivy’s as a sort of bench mark towards or against the intelligence, or contribution of a particular individual seems sort of lazy if you ask me.
It really isn’t Ivies so much as it’s Harvard, Yale and Princeton. To some extent even graduates of the others are crushed under the weight of their self-satisfaction. I was at a party once and the subject of partying at Harvard came up. And this tool was saying how in spite of the school’s size he’d always see the exact same people out. Fine as it goes, but then he said that you can’t really fault everyone else for being reclusive when they’re curing Cancer or something. In a very rare instance of my being as obnoxious in real life as I am here, I just started mocking him. Yes, all these future investment bankers, lawyers, art history professors and non-profit social agitators are cloistered to solve the problems afflicting humanity – they’re not in hiding because they’re socially retarded.
Different places use different spiders. The ones we used to have here at my house would be worth about 95 of your 144-fleas spiders. But then, we’re on the cockroach standard.
Are not the academic institutions about to die a quick death caused by their overly-bubbled financial wreck hitting the first storm of the new year?
Particularily the laws schools where they charge ungodly amounts of tuition just to produce an indoctrinated stupid degree which will only garner a job paying $30,000 per year.
AT least Professor Bainbridge will retain his tenured position affording him the luxury of endlessly stoking his little-flaccid viagra-ego.
William F. Buckley Jr.: “I’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard.”
Just to be informative. Twice there has been a “Congressional Populist Caucus”. the first was founded in 1983, all Democrats. It disbanded in the 90s. The second was formed in Feb. 2009 and is again all Democrats.
Populism is the mask used in community organizing to hide the socialist agenda of the organizer leaders behind. Both of the Populist caucuses have members with very close ties to the community organizing left. That is the main force of populism in America today. It is astroturfed and funded by both government and large foundations. True useful idiots.
Google cache versions used due to WordPress woes.
Just to be informative. Twice there has been a “Congressional Populist Caucus”. the first was founded in 1983, all Democrats. It disbanded in the 90s. The second was formed in Feb. 2009 and is again all Democrats.
Populism is the mask used in community organizing to hide the socialist agenda of the organizer leaders behind. Both of the Populist caucuses have members with very close ties to the community organizing left. That is the main force of populism in America today. It is astroturfed and funded by both government and large foundations. True useful idiots.
Google cache and tiny url versions used due to WordPress woes.
Prof. Bainbridge is actually an excellent professor of financial law. His texts and analysis are in demand, if I recall correctly from my days in contact with the securities bar.
I’m not seeing why conservatives rally round O’Donnell, or terribly much defend her. She wasn’t a strong candidate and acted generally silly. Obviously, the Left or liberal republicans seek to make her a battering ram, but then they would.
I think, for the record, that PB overstates his point. I could just as readily argue that the Dems once had men like Mike Mansfield, Sam Nunn and Daniel Moynihan, who seem rather different to a lot of the current set.
Think that comment largely misses the point, Roddy. I could say many nice things about Bainbridge and against O’Donnell without conflicting with anything I stated previously in the thread.
(Hey, fucking fantastic piece on Harbin Electric, btw.)
I bet the backroom Twitter conversations are to die for tonight.
Come and get me, boys. I don’t give a fuck anymore.
It’s a conservative thing. But seriously though:
What’s not to get?
Thanks BH.
Your points are better made than mine. I yield my commenting priviledges to you since you are likely smarter and more pithy than me.
Quite so, sir. I’m also extremely good looking and an ace polo player.
He who doesn’t give a fuck anymore is less encumbered and more daring that those who do.
FREEDOM!!! Oh and Outlaw!
Feeling squirey tonight, I’ll hold your pony. Now gi’ us a pull on that flask.
Oh no, the peasants are revolting!
I read Legal Insurrection fairly regularly, and do remember a recent post mentioning the addition of another blogger. I haven’t read much of late, so don’t really know what the shit storm is about, and honestly don’t care to take the time to find out (does that make me anti-intellectual? I think not.)
I’ll continue to read him because I like his track record, but that is always subject to change.
And ultimately, as Jacobson notes, it is his blog and he can run it as he sees fit.
But more broadly, WTF is it with all the high drama? Who is it that really has a problem with a marketplace of ideas? Give and take people, give and take. Or is this more about who gets to keep shilling for Amazon without losing any of those oh so precious page hits?
Yeah, I read Bainbridge’s duck recipe. Christ what a twit. He’s all for the Amazon linked olive oil – because it’s Californian ‘for the sustainability’ but he’s ok with onions that aren’t grown within a thousand miles of his home (Vidalia or Maui.)
I think the Bainbridge post Mike linked was as shrill and overwrought as his previous posts.
I sometimes parachute or bungee-jump or cliff-dive into the Legal Insurrection blog if the link from that Reynolds guy in Knoxville looks interesting. As far as I know none of the links I’ve followed has led to this new blogger Jacobson’s brought on.
Well I’m not happy with how that turned out. I’ll admit that my last paragraph was uncalled for but I was stunned by the snobbery, apparent dishonesty and anti intellectualism of his post. Used to read him fairly often and never noticed any sign of any of that so it came as a shock reading it in such concentrated form. Still think he’s dead wrong, just wish I hadn’t implied he was arguing in bad faith.
It’s a form of bad faith to presume your opponents are arguing in bad faith, which is what that petty “circular firing squad” bullshit is all about, as far as I’m concerned.
Yeah, I was wrong. I didn’t start reading his post thinking he was arguing in bad faith and I didn’t come to that conclusion either. I did wonder though and rather pointedly raised the question. Stupid thing for me to do and a bad outcome was the result.
I’m giving up trying to post a comment on populism as it relates to politics. This has been a study in frustration as I have tried various ways with and without links since last evening without success. There must be a “trigger” word of some sort that WordPress doesn’t like.
So of course my “giving up” comment goes through just fine.
WordPress, blocking comments and allowing plenty of comment spam is what they do best.
Trying one link.
And another one, pdf.
Not WordPress. Eric Odom.
https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=22672#comment-1032867
You were right from the start serr8d.
All this trouble to have an image to use for the link to a site that gives this message on it’s linked page.
serr8d, geoffb,
What is the deal with the whole ericodom thing? How is it messing with PW’s comment sections?
@210, yeah, I was wondering that too.
sporklife driver, you did not argue in bad faith. You just PB riled because he realized he got called on a rather priggish post.
Bob Reed, do this: in your Firefox browser, be sure the Status Bar is visible (at the very bottom of your page; I’m assuming you’re using Winders and have Firefox – if not, use your current pathetic browser to download Firefox, install it, and turn on your Status Bar).
Whilst a page loads, the Status Bar will run through the list of page elements ‘fetched’ from other sites. You’ll note a long, long lapse when pw loads a page; I see the PayPal, which loads quickly and nicely, but whatever function ericodom.blogivists.com does is stalling everything.
If you’re Bill Gates and have a plug in your backside to a T1 line, this might not affect; but everyone else is slowed down. And comments are somehow caught up in the delay. I can’t tell if that’s because of the ericommode dot com site or just because of, well, the delay.
I have DSL at work and cable at home and it came right up.
Apparently PB is still feeling picked upon, but he had GR stand up for him (a bit).
Thanks serr8d.
I have firefox, but only use it for internet commerce generally, because of the higher level of script security that it provides (I got a virus two Christmases ago while shopping). For ordinary surfing I still use IE7. I know, I know…
I don’t notice any speed issues because here in New Yawk city my service provides 100Mbs bandwidth.
But I am curious about the ericodom thing and why it’s foolin’ with the comments. Maybe it has to do with advertisements.
I missed this charming missive sooner. Seems like he is speaking as much to guys like PB as he is to the “populists”. Really no distinction in his attack.
Joe,
Jeff posted that link here
https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=22485
a week or so ago.
Actually, I’ve found that it’s often the element after what stays showing on the statusbar that clogs up the intartubez. In the past I’ve tried blocking the element that loitered in the statusbar, and when I hit refresh the element that loiters is the one before the one I just blocked.
Of course, that was using an older version of Firefox, it’s possible the statusbar listing gets it right now. Anyway, if you have something that will block the loading of individual elements, try blocking the ericodom URL and see if it behaves the way I’ve described.
It may not be Eric’s fault after all.
Oooookay. I just had the ericodom thing loiter in my taskbar so I blocked it and reloaded the page. Loaded in a heartbeat.
To block individual elements in Firefox 3.6.12 (and probably most fairly recent versions) right click on the page and choose “View Page Info”
Click the tab marked “Media” and scroll down until you find the ericodom element. Highlight it and check the box marked “Block Images from ericodom.blogtivists.com” and that should be the end of it, if indeed that element is the problem.
Bob, I remember Jeff’s post. I skimmed part of the article and then I could not access it (I think it was over loaded with traffic at the time). So I missed the nuance of the piece [of shit].
I am talking about Wise’s article that was over loaded and being a POS, not Jeff’s commentary!
Bainbridge sounds an awful lot like the Iowahawk classic parody known as:
T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII
Conservative Intellectual At-Large
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2010/09/fight.html
This is a test of some of what I couldn’t get to post.
Just to be informative. Twice there has been a “Congressional Populist Caucus”. the first was founded in 1983, all Democrats. It disbanded in the 90s. The second was formed in Feb. 2009 and is again all Democrats.
Populism is the mask used in community organizing to hide the socialist agenda of the organizer leaders behind. Both of the Populist caucuses have members with very close ties to the community organizing left. That is the main force of populism in America today. It is astroturfed and funded by both government and large foundations. True useful idiots.
eat me