"Just the facts M'am, Just the facts." -- Sgt. Joe Friday
(to name a few)
“The system encourages pressure groups to do what they do.”
“Epithets…deaden the debate.”
“The rhetoric of diversity, rights, tolerance, and democracy [is] a cultural struggle over history.”
“Careful wording hides more than it explains.”
“Euphemisms and artful phrases abound.”
“Bias persists.”
“Silences are profound and intentional.”
But we ran smack dab into what I call the Ayers-Dohrn Paradox, which is:
Ayers and Dohrn gained fame as violent revolutionaries willing to commit murder and other terrorist acts in order to overthrow the United States. For that, they were greatly worshipped by the far left. Now, in their sunset years, they’re trying to re-cast themselves as “respectable” left-wing professors with “reasonable” opinions, who have long ago sworn off violence. And so, at these events, neither of them ever mentions their violent heyday, except rarely in passing. Instead, they focus exclusively on their current obsessions: Introducing Marxist thought into schools, and closing down the prison system. However, almost no one who goes to see Ayers and Dohrn gives a damn about hearing monotonous lectures on these particular topics: instead, their fans idolize them because of their violent revolutionary past. So at these events, the audience (as in this case) is full of far-far-far-left radicals who came in order to hear overheated revolutionary rhetoric. But instead, what they get is a boring professorial monologue. If Ayers and Dohrn were nothing more than your run-of-the-mill leftist professors, no one would go to their appearances. They’re coasting on their violent reputation, while at the same time trying to distance themselves from it. And that is the Ayers-Dohrn Paradox.
Thanks to Zomblog
Republican Women’s Essay Contest Winner for Middle School
The Gettysburg Address and the Birth of a New Nation wmv file, 8 megs
Barack Obama Washington Post Editorial
re: “…the same old partisan gridlock that stands in the way of action…”
It’s not enough that the Democrats have control of the House, control of the Senate, control of the Presidency, and a liberal majority on the Supreme Court?
When did a limp-wristed majority afraid to act on its’ own beliefs become “partisan gridlock?” You can’t blame Republicans for the Democrats’ lack of courage to support their own convictions.
And elevating Republicans’ reasonable disagreement with socialist programs to the virtual level of a thought crime is frankly Orwellian. If socialist programs had ever accomplished what they set out to do, anywhere, anytime in history that they have been tried, Republicans would probably sign on. But we’ve been down this road of failed big government responses to economic crisis, and many people who lived through the Great Depression are still alive to attest to those socialist failures. The way to stimulate our economy is to get government off our backs and allow people to keep the fruits of their labors.
The stimulus plan the President brought out of the House is built on False Dilemmas, ineffective solutions, poor returns on the dollar, and arbitrary market dislocations. It benefits one class – the government bureaucrat class. Everyone else loses.
Great. The American people get the government they deserve. And the government they got is Democrats who don’t need Republicans to pass their stimulus plan. What they need is to grow a pair, men and women alike, and pass their plans in the light of day as THEIR plans, and be judged by THEIR plans’ results as Democrats. And if they can’t muster the testosterone to be held accountable for their own plans, they have no one to blame but themselves.
And Republicans need to grow some pairs too. Conservative philosophy is worth standing on. They must hold the line and not agree to another dollar of spending or taxation. It would be a big mistake for them to try to blend in with Democrats at this juncture. Look what happened the last time a Republican tried to pass himself off as a Democrat – the McCain campaign lost definitively. Tax and spend is a guaranteed loser for a Republican.
Democrats don’t need bi-partisan support to enact their plans, and each time they ask for it, Republicans should lock their mouths shut and throw away the key. The change Republicans need in Washington is to quit the spending spree that went on under President Bush, learn when to keep their mouths shut, and start acting conservatively.
Also See: Alyssa Lappen on Stimulus Plan
Also See: The Fierce Urgency of Pork
Ian Stodghill won 1st in the high school division and Henry Imperial won 1st in the middle school division of the Elbert County Republican Women’s Essay Contest. The winners earned cash prizes and got to read their essays to an assembly of about 100 parents, teachers and community leaders.
(click to enlarge)
Ian Stodghill’s Essay mp3 file
Henry Imperial’s Essay mp3 file
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High School Winners (from right to left)
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Middle School Winners (from left to right)
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People talk about tipping points. I think Americans have reached a tipping point — one where the pretense of knowledge is piling up faster than factual and reasonable knowledge. To be sure, the accretion of factual and reasonable knowledge has greatly accelerated with improvements in technology, but it just looks like the poseurs are winning the day in America. If you read the Victor Davis Hanson piece in the previous entry, as Americans lose their understanding of the liberal arts, they lose their capacity to advance Western civilization. The barbarians in Mumbai last week and the imams who filled their heads with jihadi mush, acted on this weakness as Americans celebrated Thanksgiving with one eye on the TV. The slippery slope of cultural coarsening accelerated (again) as terrorists (again) reduced Western civilization to bloody chunks of body parts and (again) shifted our concept of normalcy toward a state of random violence. The causal thread running through and linking all of this — terrorism, the abrogation of history, the politicizing of all human endeavors — is enabled by disconnection and the interruption of reality feedback. These conditions are necessary precedents if you want people to stop thinking and acting in the interest of their own survival, and they work especially well for the growing segment of the population unburdened by a conscience. All that’s required of us is tolerance, and acceptance that the bounds of what must be tolerated continually expand toward the unthinkable, the horrible, the terrible, and whatever new fad the polity wants to try on for size. Ideals, outcomes, objective measures, standards, fixed points for evaluation, better and worse, good and evil, laws, constitutions, all of these concepts must give way to tolerance. God forbid we become narrow minded.
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.” H.L. Mencken [Read more…]
As the classical university unravels, students seek knowledge and know-how elsewhere.