Pat’s Polemics

Here is a response to a comment dealing with a comparison of FDR's time with Obama's.

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Often liberals remark that while conservatives make really stupid remarks, the left can be just as dense. But it is hard to recall specifics sometimes, so I thought I would record one I just heard. A caller to npr referred to it as National Pentagon Radio and stated it doesn't cover the misbehavior of our military.

How to account for such a stupid comment? Anyone listening to npr knows the right, the conservatives, the Republicans, hate npr in part b/c its reporters and commentators constantly cover the misbehavior of our military. So what is this guy talking about?

Clearly, what he is looking for is exactly what those idiots on the right are looking for: complete and total acceptance of their views, recognition that they are geniuses, and, most importantly, the exclusion of any view that goes counter to theirs.

By that reason, npr is anti-Israel, anti-American, anti-military, anti-whatever and on the left it is regarded as anti-poor people (i.e. provide large cash grants to all poor people), anti-justice (i.e. release immediately the prisoner I believe is innocent), anti-immigrant (i.e. open the borders to anyone without question), and so on. I'm vaguely recalling comments I've heard over the years. That's why I wanted to record this comment from the left since liberals like me tend to remember idiocies on the right.

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Michael Gerson wrote in the Washington Post:

"Significant portions of the Republican coalition believe that it is a desirable strategy to talk of armed revolution, embrace libertarian purity and alienate Hispanic voters. With a major Republican victory in November, those who hold these views may well be elevated in profile and influence. And this could create durable, destructive perceptions of the Republican Party that would take decades to change. A party that is intimidated and silent in the face of its extremes is eventually defined by them.
This is the challenge of a political wave. It requires leaders who will turn its energy into a responsible, governing agenda. So far -- in Congress, among conservative leaders, among prospective presidential candidates -- that leadership has been lacking.

And so the Republican Party rides a massive wave toward a rocky shore."

In the same column, he wrote:

"Libertarianism has a rigorous ideological coldness at its core"

I'm sure glad someone has called Libertarians what they are. Several decades ago, my wife and I investigated several political and religious institutions, attracted by their apparent tolerance of racial diversity, not a by-word at that time. One of the groups was the Libertarians. After a few initial "Yeah, cool..." type statements, the shallowness and self-centeredness came through loud and strong.

But to the comments on the Republican party: I've been feeling for over a year now that some forces in the GOP are gathering not to take back their country but to take back their party

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In a fit of rage, I wrote this to Diane Rheme but changed my mind. I'll write it here where no one will read it.

I usually do not scream at the radio in part b/c I can count on you to hold your guests' feet to the fire. But today, a pre-recorded show, I went crazy as those pompous, well-fed pundits talked and talked about the markets and the banks and investors and so on. But not once did they say a word about the thieves who were given carte blanche by the Republicans and not a few Democrats to do what they would with our finances. A lot of those financeers broke the law and were at least guilty of unconscionable greed.

Now, when a Black guy who can't find a job robs a convenience market, these conservatives (Heritage?? Are you serious? The Journal?? thank god for Baker) call for the death penalty. But for the high-fliers, their friends, they ask that we give them an open hand.

I've been a Liberal Democrat from the beginning, when JFK ran against Nixon. But do you think you can find some way to call these conservatives to account for what they've done? One caller asked for patriotism from the corporations. The answer: "they're in business to make money, that's the way our system works." I'll quit before I start including expletives.I am moving toward cutting my ties with anything but credit unions, no credit cards, etc. I have lost confidence in the morality of our financial operators and commentators. All the conservatives know of morality is a teenage girl in the back seat of a Chevy.

Completely fed up with your guests,
Pat Barrett - a very long-time listener

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George Will, writing about a tea party candidate, wrote the following:

"Noting that Massachusetts "is requiring insurance companies to write polices at a loss," he says, "We're living it," referring to the novel's dystopian world in which society's producers are weighed down by parasitic non-producers.

From 2000 through 2008, sales of "Atlas Shrugged," which was published in 1957, averaged a remarkable 166,000 a year. Since Barack Obama took office, more than 600,000 copies have been sold. The novel's famous opening words -- "Who is John Galt?" -- refer to a creative capitalist, Rand's symbol of society's self-sufficient people who, weary of carrying on their shoulders the burden of dependent people, shrug. Ron Johnson would rather run."

Noting that responses could not contain personal attacks, I didn't send my response to him or to the blog of the newspaper (NYT). Here's what I wrote:

"parasictic non-producers" and "dependent people"
That's how conservatives see people not like themselves. Atlas Shrugged is a childish book with cardboard straw men, created by a mind like yours. Who will turn this country into a Latin-American cess pool? Not Charles Murray's low-IQ types or your parasites, but people like you who see no value in people unless they are fetuses.

Yes, it is personal. Very.

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I picked this up off an Urdu website. Very interesting in the context of the Tea Party and other Populist movements in this country. What a deadend it is to nurture a culture of grievance and resentment. It is esp ironic in that the two "languages", Hindi and Urdu, are virtually the same language written in different scripts, but the religious identification ("communal" in the jargon of India) has proved insurmountable. Here it is:

Author of numerous books and articles on contemporary Muslim politics and Urdu, New Delhi-based Ather Farouqui speaks to Yoginder Sikand about his work and about the status of Urdu and Muslim intellectual thought in contemporary India.

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I like Charles' comment here. This is not about illegals, as one poster
said, it's about constitutional rights. I am trying to pull back from my
shock at the willingness of so many List members to docilely give up their
right to privacy and to freedom from persecution until they've been
convicted of a crime in a court of law. We already know the police can
question you ONLY if you are willing, as in an accident or crime situation,
OR if they have reasonable cause to suspect you. You can tell them to drop
dead, at which point they can arrest you. If they cannot prove to a judge
that they had reasonable cause, you can sue them. I would love to know if
that can happen in other countries. My guess it is only in countries sharing
in the Anglo-American legal system.

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If you want to see a fascinating example of strange bedfellows, read flteach, thread title Arizona teachers with accents.
The discussion went to the AZ illegal immigration law just signed. From there, it has uncovered a "yawning chasm" of ignorance on the part of many American teachers as to what rights Americans have.
But the most fascinating part is that people on the List who normally find themselves on the same side on grammar/communication, tprs/traditional, etc. arguments are now on opposite sides. Opposite sides is a misnomer; it's more like some people site experiences in Europe where "show your papers, please" seemed an innocuous custom and some people, like me, are going apoplectic that any American, esp a teacher, would think it's even slightly ok to ask someone to identify themselves.
Please go to flteach just to read this one thread. Very, very interesting and somewhat frightening.

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Just now I read how Ravitch interviewed the former director of curriculum in San Diego under the reform administration. She told Ravitch how amazed she was that fourth graders did not know the difference between point of view and perspective.
Ravitch writes that she wrote the two words down b/c, she admitted, she herself did not know the difference. It was an example of how much this particular reform effort (Bersin/Alvarado) stressed jargon.

BTW, I got a little upset b/c Ravitch appeared, in a footnote, to link The Manufactured Crisis to efforts to paint the A Nation At Risk report as a precursor to privatization efforts and an attack from the right. I wrote her an e-mail and reminded her that while her work was being used to beat people like me about the head, Berliner and Biddle, the authors of Manufactured Crisis, gave me evidence to fight the attacks on American education. She wrote back and told me Berliner had written her a very nice letter on this issue and she ended by saying that current means of improvement will only demoralize teachers and destroy Am education.

So far, from reading her book, she appears to agree with the many studies which say that if you don't get teacher buy-in and give respect to teachers, your reforms will not work. She herself went to San Diego after reading all the conflicting reports and studies and actually talked to everyone involved - parents, teachers, administrators, school board members, those in favor of the reforms and those resisting them...... quite an amazing effort for a famous scholar who could have just read reports. In anthropology, we call that field work.

I will continue to comment as I get further in the book.

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I worked in a bookstore that catered to the John Birch Society, my employers were members. The author Glen Beck is touting now, Skousen, was very, very popular at the time (the very early 60s). All the Bircher and other conservative books were in one section and my employers, being European, had no problem with me arguing with their customers. So I had a grand old time arguing with these Arizona extreme right folks. One was an Episcopalian priest who came into the store and said, on the day J.F.K. was buried, "Too bad they didn't bury the bitch along with him." That's the sort of venom these people felt, not so different from what we are hearing from the anti-Obama people now.

Right along with the books on how America is Christian (Skousen might have looked at that more closely since most of these Christians think Mormonism is a cult, just as Jews who have thrown in their lot with the Evangelicals might want to take a look at what they think about Jews) were books on the threat posed by Black rights.

Now it's all dressed up in prettified language; we don't talk about nigger patrol and control but about declaring Confederate History Month. We don't display outrage that a Black is in the White House but say instead he is not American born, against all reason and evidence. The LDS folks preached openly that Blacks were inferior (until 1978 when the Feds threatened them for discriminating) and Skousen was part of building up the notion that the 'real Americans', as Palin has it, are of European heritage and of what they assume the White race to be. Pat Robertson is a current exemplar of the Protestant version of this distortion of American history.

Are we two nations? Not one White, one Black, as Andrew Hacker put it, but one stupid and one smart? That's not possible. So what is it? And, more importantly, do conservatives of conscience distinguish themselves from the reactionary, Tea Party types? Will they step up to say that, contrary to Palin's pronouncements, I am an American, even if I don't share Palin's beliefs on religion and politics and society?

I am having doubts. Help me out here.

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