dagblog - Comments for "Fighting the vast Right Wing with Pea Shooters, Part One: Books and Bookmakers"

Aristotle attended Plato's

Verified Atheist — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:47:58 +0000

Aristotle attended Plato's Academy. Zinger aside, no one said that good academic work could only come from academia. What was asserted was that this was not good academic work, and that its author knew that.

That really made me

Carlos Eduardo br — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:15:01 +0000

In reply to "I think most of the readers

That really made me laugh

Believing that good academic work could only come from academia is elitist and is quite naive, because, as you know, Aristotle died still owing 300 bucks to some college oh, wait there was no college there, hmmmmm....

Making things scary is all what the left does, global warming, poverty, people dying without healthcare, I can go on and on.

Only a leftist would think that dropping someone's name at an idea give it impression that it is a better idea than it truly is, actually liberals do things the other way around, using slogans like bigot, racist, religious fanatic, etc, to make an idea look stupid; really evaluating the idea? Never!

****The big questions is, if you liberals believe so much on the truth of your ideas, what does it matter wich books are read more, since any reasonable person should see the falsehood of conservative ideas?

The answer, of course, is that you believe you are the ones holding the truth, and those who believe in conservatism are idiots for not seeing the light; its kind of pathetic when you think about it, actually, and for sure the reason you need a big academic world to be able to fool people.

I feel sorry for you!

So Patrick I guess what I'm

erica20 — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:59:17 +0000

In reply to Would you not agree with his

So Patrick I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that these formulaic books require a ton of sitting back, taking a deep breath, and thinking "Wow, this sounds so convincing--is it really true?"

At which point, a responsible person has to grit their teeth, go back and re-read some of the original material, think a lot about context, and try to figure out what might work for actual people living in our time.

One of the things that bugs us progressives about you guys is that you don't seem to do this, you swallow the conclusions whole--and we're going "No, wait, that guy just told you that so you'd spend twenty bucks on his book! There's more to it than that!"

(On the other hand, a criticism often directed against progressives and I know I've fallen prey to it is that we sometimes overcomplicate things. Fair enough. You don't have to spend much time here to see that we'll mercilessly analyze stuff even if we basically agree with it. To us, it's fun and useful, but to some people it looks pretty endless.)

***

I remember reading Laura Ingraham's book "Shut Up and Sing" and being just horrified at how mean it was, and at the way she put her enemies down for saying what made sense to them, while using her own free speech rights to blather away. Her rants had that "convinced, and therefore convincing" sound, until I considered what she was actually saying. I'm pretty sure to this day that if Laura Ingraham had been an author in Jesus' time she would have written a book called "Shut Up and Fish."

***

All that said, I do think that the question of how the Supreme Court Justices ought to do things is a thorny issue. They have to be able to take into account the flow of history and the way we live now, without moving too far away from the basic structure of the founding documents.

No apology needed, APC. The

Oxy Mora — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:03:41 +0000

In reply to "Them's are fightin' words".

No apology needed, APC. The fact is that nothing is as black and white as Levin imagines. I am a small business owner and a property owner (oy, the taxes I pay). Obviously I'm not a Marxist, except I pay my employees overtime by the day when I am not required to do so, which generally means larger paychecks for them than otherwise for the same output. That's o.k. Good employees are my life line.

I have actually voted for Republicans, including Pete Wilson, because he had a lot of common sense when it came to business---for example, reforming a scandalous Workers Comp. system.

If you stick around, you'll find many people here are sympathetic with certain of your views. I for one do not like government intrusion into my bedroom. I don't like the tax privileges given to financiocrats like Romney because real job generators, like myself and many medium sized manufacturing businesses I service create more jobs but have little access to loans or venture capital---banks are geared for larger transactions and will not fiddle with a $50K loan---the administrative costs make the loan unprofitable from the git go. Obama's policies have actually helped my business, especially the equipment tax credit, which I used to buy a $50,000 truck, saving quite a lot in taxes for 2011. For many of my employees, whose employed-world is their own utopia, the tax credit advanced their interest as well as mine.

As is brilliantly posited by Purdy in his book, "A Tolerable Anarchy", each of us has an idea of his or her own perfect world. But it is not a perfect world, there are always constraints and in most Americans, as Tocqueville pointed out, there is an innate practicality, a common sense, which allows us to navigate the constraints while hanging onto the dream.

I wrote a short story called, "Ronnie Whitelaw's Utopia". Ronnie was a utopian. His dream consisted of a pickup truck, sleeping bag, a woman who would tolerate his little fantasies and low worker status and not give him any guff, and his ace in the hole---a consistent theme of American individualism---he could always head out with $300 in his pocket and start a new life elsewhere. But Ronnie had no common sense and when his utopian fantasies were trashed, he deconstructed in angry behavior.

Levin is catering to the sense of frustration we all feel when our idea of a perfect world is constrained. He is no different from any over the top Liberal writer who is playing to the same sentiment but with a different label.

Welcome aboard.

Thank you, APC, and welcome

Ramona — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:03:38 +0000

In reply to "Them's are fightin' words".

Thank you, APC, and welcome to our discussions here. It's good to hear new perspectives, and no, we won't always agree, but we will try and maintain some civility while attempting to rip certain arguments to bloody shreds. ;>)

I'm curious about your insistence that "Conservatism, Constitutionalism, are both prudent, compassionate, and in my perspective, the only way out of the mess of a society that 80 years of progressive policy, crony capitalism, judicial activism, and govt dependency (or as many say, entitlement) has led us to."

That is simply not true. Our best times during the last century came about when "progressive policy" won out against those who wanted this country all to themselves. We had good paying jobs, a strong middle class, strong home ownership, and a sense of ourselves that went beyond whatever square footage we happened to be standing on at the moment.

It's true that we did not solve the problems of the poor, but there's no question we were working hard at alleviating their suffering. Many of them, with our help, rose out of poverty into the working class and beyond. There are greater numbers of working poor now than since the days of the industrial revolution.

We fought a constant battle against runaway greed, and, while we didn't eradicate it altogether, we did manage to hold it at bay so that a good portion of us could move up into that longed-for "quality of life". That is no longer available to us. It's not even a promise.

It wasn't progressives or liberals or Democrats that brought about this mess. It was the private lust for greed, their never-ending attempts to weaken laws and regulations, their successes at bringing down our strong labor force by off-shoring and outsourcing, and their incredible money-flows into the coffers of our so-called "leaders".

Put the blame where it belongs. When you keep repeating that same old mantra about the evil progressives, you're doing nothing more than keeping the Fat Cats happy and giving them the power they just can't get enough of.

Good concise list there,

Ramona — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:25:37 +0000

In reply to "I think most of the readers

Good concise list there, Erica. That about covers it. If they can hobble government (that's us) and its supporters (that's us, too) by making us the hated enemy never to be trusted, they can own everything and run everything.

Their mission is to make the poor schnooks who will never benefit from any of it believe that if they'll just work hard enough and look the other way when bad things happen, they might just gain entry into their exclusive club someday.

I have to say, they're masters at it. What's white is black, what's up is down, what's good is evil, what used to be America will never be again, and they make is sound like that's a good thing.

They're a formidable enemy and it won't be easy, but we really can't afford to indulge them any longer.

Anatomy of a steadily

Oxy Mora — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:22:28 +0000

In reply to "I think most of the readers

Anatomy of a steadily snowballing ninety year old Utopia.

"Them's are fightin' words".

A Proud Constitutionalist — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 06:29:43 +0000

In reply to APC, I really hate it when

"Them's are fightin' words". Let me take this opportunity to apologize to you, Ramona, as well as Oxy, for my rhetoric yesterday. Although I disagree with your political perspectives, you have a refreshingly high level of discourse on this blog, which I will respect and do commend you for. That said, Levin's rhetoric can be harsh, but his substance is grande. The scathing, albeit measured and deliberate, review of "Men in Black" was only meant to dismiss a meticulously detailed account of judicial activism, legal perversion and the inherent dangers that result from allowing 5(simple majority) un-elected, un-accountable public servants to institute policy, or legislate, rather than adhere and protect our Constitution. In great detail, Levin dissects how the Supreme Court upheld Slavery in the 1800s (ended first by the states via 10th amendment), instituted precedent over decades to set up Roe v. Wade. He did, substantively, cite and dissect Court opinions, dissenting views, and applied his perspective, correctly, to them. Conservatism, Constitutionalism, are both prudent, compassionate, and in my perspective, the only way out of the mess of a society that 80 years of progressive policy, crony capitalism, judicial activism, and govt dependency (or as many say, entitlement) has led us to. Levin articulates this, and the media, does their best to ignore it.

While also comical, that

AmericanDreamer — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:00:49 +0000

In reply to "I think most of the readers

While also comical, that sounds pretty accurate to me. Well done.

"I think most of the readers

erica20 — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:11:39 +0000

In reply to I'm thinking the NYT didn't

"I think most of the readers of the readers of the NYT are in the "Utopian" camp. Whether they review it or not is no matter to me."

I'd think about this comment if I were Patrick. It could mean that the author is just that much smarter than anybody who ever read the NYT or worked for them as a reviewer, and therefore isn't interested in what they might have to say. Or, it could mean

--he knows his work won't stand up to academic scrutiny

--he didn't write the book for academic reasons, but simply to come up with enough fake-academic reader hooks to get gullible people to buy it

--he's already made a boatload of cash and presold 600,000 copies to conservative organizations, so why would he need to hear what the NYT thinks about it?

I have seen these books before, and as far as I can tell, this is the formula:

1. Pose a question. Make it scary.

2. Say that your chosen enemy wants the scary outcome.

3. Drop a famous name (like Tocqueville, for example) and cherrypick quotes that appear to support your point. Avoid context like the plague, mix up terminology, play fast and loose with the historical record, use your enemy's name in close proximity to pejoratives like "fascism" or "Marxism."

4. Tell your audience that your chosen enemy would be happy to dig up that famous person's body and pee on it.

5. Repeat for 12 more chapters.