quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Before all of his affairs? In fact, he's had children from different marriages if I'm not mistaken.
It feels like you're dodging the question, Destineer. Neither I nor I think anyone else has been asking questions such as 'did Gingrich/Kennedy/Clinton/Nixon do worthwhile things', or 'does marital infidelity mean a person is written off as untrustworthy', but rather 'does marital infidelity coupled with a public attitude of respect for marital fidelity and family values, as well as criticizing those who aren't, do anything to ding up a person's trustworthiness?'
It's late, so perhaps you've responded to that and I'm forgetting it or I missed it. I apologize if I have. The criticism isn't that there's no reason to align with the sleazy partisan one agrees with, the criticism is that the sleazy partisan one agrees with is, at least a little, less trustworthy.
Example: you've been friends with two twin brothers for decades. You've been friends with both their wives for years, and know all four of them as well as close friends know each other. Both are preachers who thumps the Bible pretty hard from the pulpit, talking among other things about the whore of Babylon and sodomites. In all aspects of their lives, they're known for being honest, fair dealing people.
One brother walks his talk so far as you can tell-he's monogamous, didn't have sex before marriage, and has been faithful and happily married for years. The other brother, while also being known all around for being honest and fair dealing, you happen to know he's been having affairs with men and women for years, before and during his marriage. You have no reason to think he's got an open marriage.
If you had to buy a car or a house from one of these brothers, and the conditions of the property relied on their word, are you really telling me you'd scrutinize both to the same extent?
It's an extreme example, but I think it illustrates what I'm getting at: you don't trust someone quite as much when you know they have lied.
I agree with you, Rakeesh, but I also see Destineer's point that at the end of the day, when you're picking a politician to support, it makes sense to support someone who you think is reasonably likely to enact policies and changes you like, regardless of whether or not they are a bit of a sleazeball.
All else being equal, of course you should pick the principled guy! And you shouldn't pretend your sleazeball's sleaziness isn't really important (as so many Democrats did with Clinton, and so many primary voters seem willing to do for Newt).
But I don't think someone being a sleazeball in their personal life automatically means they will be a wholly corrupt politician. Especially not so corrupt that they won't really enact any of the stuff they say they will (the stuff that you presumably care about).
(I mean, they probably won't enact that stuff sleazy or not, because they're a politician and getting things done in the federal government is hard and frequently hurts their reelection chances.)
Edit: I noticed Sam posted at the bottom of the previous page, and what he said was worth noticing so here it is again:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:But sleazy politicians like Clinton (and, if we're being honest, Kennedy and Nixon) have done a lot for this country, and I would rather vote for a sleazy guy who's on my side rather than a virtuous moderate.
A faustian bargain. One that a party's political base can quite easily get lured and habituated into accepting. Pay no mind, of course, to what this tends to metamorphose it into, or what the 'sleazy guy on your side' turns 'your side' into over time.
posted
The polling data shows that Ron Paul has one of the best chances of beating Obama since all other candidates polled at or below what Ron Paul did. As of Dec 16-18 among registered voters we have:
Paul 45% Obama 52% Gingrich 40% Obama 56% Romney 45% Obama 52% (No data on Santorum, all others have dropped out)
The differences here aren't hardly a landslide, and Obama's lead isn't "well above" Paul's either. A 7% lead can be closed. Media pundits were calling Mitt Romney a front-runner, etc. just a month ago, and now it is much less certain. Paul could win the whole thing.
In the general election, people can vote for anyone they want, and people can switch parties to vote in the primaries etc. Advantage: Ron Paul. Independents, disgruntled democrats, unhappy fiscal conservatives all together could give Paul a victory. It's still a long ways off to the general election, and this thing is far from over. Paul's ideas don't necessarily need broad national support; they need enough support from people that are motivated to vote.
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Apparently, the point of mentioning the poll you yourself indirectly cited didn't stick. Okay.
Well, hmm. Let's try a different angle. I know that Ron Paul is never going to win the republican primary. But you think he's got a good shot at it, and there's no way I will dissuade you. Looking at Intrade, "Ron Paul to be Republican Presidential Nominee in 2012" is currently (according to your assertion of the situation) massively undervalued at 2.9%. If I gave you a thousand dollars specifically to invest in Intrade, would you invest any of it in the apparently still likely bonanza of a Ron Paul buy-in at twenty nine cents a share?
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The point is, it is still anyone's race to win, and Ron Paul still has a good chance. Despite some controversy around him, he has at least limited support from several segments of society.
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Ron Paul supporters tend to think that Paul is suffering because the mainstream media and candidates ignore him. I think the opposite is more likely.
Ron Paul is at his best when he talks about the problems and at his worst when he talks about solutions. About 50% of what he has to say is clever and insightful, the other 50% is shear lunacy. Almost nothing is in between. Because no one is taking Ron Paul seriously but his supporters, a lot of people are seeing only the clever insightful bits. The minute any one else starts taking him seriously, he'll be torn to bits.
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quote:But sleazy politicians like Clinton (and, if we're being honest, Kennedy and Nixon) have done a lot for this country, and I would rather vote for a sleazy guy who's on my side rather than a virtuous moderate.
A faustian bargain. One that a party's political base can quite easily get lured and habituated into accepting. Pay no mind, of course, to what this tends to metamorphose it into, or what the 'sleazy guy on your side' turns 'your side' into over time.
Except that, as far as I can tell, the non-sleazy guys are just as likely to stab their supporters in the back. For example, I think it's fair to say that Obama has turned his back on his campaign platform more than Clinton ever did. He's turned "our side" into the side that assassinates Americans for exercising their free speech rights and cuts deals with Republican extortionists.
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I'm not sure if I'd characterize him as turning his back on campaign platform issues more than Clinton, or any other politician. He's disappointed on several things, but we often forget that he's delivered on a great many of his promises as well. We also forget, sometimes, that presidents are kings, and that foremost, this one is a pragmatist first, and an idealist second.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Looks like Florida stands ready to walk with South Carolinians off the cliff.
I have to imagine Santorum drops out after Florida. He'll come in third place, at best, and that will be that. He keeps saying that he has the strength to compete down the long stretch, but after a narrow win in Iowa, and then getting crushed at no better than third place (in a four man race), especially in conservative South Carolina, he has to know that he's done. The only reason to stay in at that point is to try to siphon votes away from someone else, but I'm not even sure where his 10-15% goes in the event that he drops out.
Also, I find it amazing that political talking heads are now referring to FLORIDA as the "tie-breaker" and the final state to have its say. Most of them are saying what seems obvious, that this is actually going to be a long two-man race now between Gingrich and Romney, but more than a few think whoever wins Florida wins the whole thing. The media are just friggin ridiculous when it comes to pretty much everything, but I have a special place of hate in my heart for them during campaign seasons. It wouldn't be so bad if they were benignly stupid, but their reporting influences events as much as, if not more than, events influence their reporting.
I almost feel like Gingrich for railing against the media, but he's doing it with a wink and a nod, because he LOVES the media. And he loves the media for the exact same reason I hate it.
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Lyr, I believe you dropped a "not" in your short 1:35 post. (Or I really haven't been paying NEARLY enough attention to US politics. )
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Ron Paul: he has limited support from several segments of society.
I think that's as good a final word on the subject as any, really.
Best last word on Ron Paul ever.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I'm not sure if I'd characterize him as turning his back on campaign platform issues more than Clinton, or any other politician. He's disappointed on several things, but we often forget that he's delivered on a great many of his promises as well. We also forget, sometimes, that presidents are kings, and that foremost, this one is a pragmatist first, and an idealist second.
I think this post is missing a "n't."
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Looks like Florida stands ready to walk with South Carolinians off the cliff.
I have to imagine Santorum drops out after Florida. He'll come in third place, at best, and that will be that. He keeps saying that he has the strength to compete down the long stretch, but after a narrow win in Iowa, and then getting crushed at no better than third place (in a four man race), especially in conservative South Carolina, he has to know that he's done. The only reason to stay in at that point is to try to siphon votes away from someone else, but I'm not even sure where his 10-15% goes in the event that he drops out.
Also, I find it amazing that political talking heads are now referring to FLORIDA as the "tie-breaker" and the final state to have its say. Most of them are saying what seems obvious, that this is actually going to be a long two-man race now between Gingrich and Romney, but more than a few think whoever wins Florida wins the whole thing. The media are just friggin ridiculous when it comes to pretty much everything, but I have a special place of hate in my heart for them during campaign seasons. It wouldn't be so bad if they were benignly stupid, but their reporting influences events as much as, if not more than, events influence their reporting.
I almost feel like Gingrich for railing against the media, but he's doing it with a wink and a nod, because he LOVES the media. And he loves the media for the exact same reason I hate it.
It's almost like a grasp of history is not a requirement when working in the journalism field. Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:According to reports, Hal Rounds, the Fayette County attorney and spokesman for the group, said during a recent news conference that there has been "an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another."
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I'm not sure if I'd characterize him as turning his back on campaign platform issues more than Clinton, or any other politician. He's disappointed on several things, but we often forget that he's delivered on a great many of his promises as well. We also forget, sometimes, that presidents are kings, and that foremost, this one is a pragmatist first, and an idealist second.
Well, since he spent a lot of the campaign talking about civil liberties, and he's been worse than Bush on those issues...
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quote: The group wants to change textbook selection criteria to say that “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”
I am trying to think about this less painful outrage than the outrage I am feeling about the poor cat, belonging to the child of a democratic campaign manager in AK, that was brutally killed and left as a message. I am not linking to the story because there is a picture.
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The thing about these kinds of attempts that really gets me is that I understand what they are fighting against, and I agree that it needs to be fought against. And yet their method of fighting is laughably awful. They're trying to fight bias and distortion with outright fabrication. How can they see that as an improvement?
In fact, it sort of worries me, because it seems that if they honestly think the only way to fight the current narrative is to pretend it doesn't exist, then they're obviously incapable of actually arguing from principles why the narrative is wrong.
It reminds me of Romney and his tax return BS. He seems so embarrassed. A semi-competent, principled advocate of free markets wouldn't be ashamed that he made lots of money through capital gains and wasn't taxed as much. He would explain why making money through capital gains is good and shouldn't be taxed as much.
These guys want to rewrite history to take out the stuff that is used to bias and distort history, when they should simply be arguing against the biases and the distortions.
Idiots.
Whew. It felt good to get that off my chest, even though I know nobody here really agrees with me.
Well, except for the idiots part. Most of you probably agree about that.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: Lyr, I believe you dropped a "not" in your short 1:35 post. (Or I really haven't been paying NEARLY enough attention to US politics. )
lol thanks, nice catch.
quote:From Dan_Frank: It reminds me of Romney and his tax return BS. He seems so embarrassed. A semi-competent, principled advocate of free markets wouldn't be ashamed that he made lots of money through capital gains and wasn't taxed as much. He would explain why making money through capital gains is good and shouldn't be taxed as much.
The thing is, I don't think he's embarrassed. I think he thinks other people want him to act embarrassed about it. When candidly talking about money, he's referred to hundreds of thousands of dollars as basically not very much money, he made that 10,000 dollar bet with Perry, he refers to himself as being in the middle class despite being a gazillionaire...he's just plain tone deaf on money issues, and these things leak out of him in moments of unguarded honesty. So when he's on his game, he's a lot more reserved about it, because being the unapologetic capitalist is political fodder right now.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I'm not sure if I'd characterize him as turning his back on campaign platform issues more than Clinton, or any other politician. He's disappointed on several things, but we often forget that he's delivered on a great many of his promises as well. We also forget, sometimes, that presidents are kings, and that foremost, this one is a pragmatist first, and an idealist second.
Well, since he spent a lot of the campaign talking about civil liberties, and he's been worse than Bush on those issues...
Has he been? Remember he pushed for and got DADT overturned. His War on Terror stuff is highly objectionable, and I haven't been a fan of a lot of that. But I honestly don't think you can say it's really worse than Bush if you really stop and think about the things Bush did.
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I imagine when Romney was working for Bain or when discussing his investments with brokers, he routinely considers sums that would be awesome (in the sense of provoking awe) to any of us. But to him, while important, are routine numbers he works with.
It's not surprising this carries over into speech patterns and mannerisms when speaking. I don't say that to his detriment either.
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quote:From Dan_Frank: It reminds me of Romney and his tax return BS. He seems so embarrassed. A semi-competent, principled advocate of free markets wouldn't be ashamed that he made lots of money through capital gains and wasn't taxed as much. He would explain why making money through capital gains is good and shouldn't be taxed as much.
The thing is, I don't think he's embarrassed. I think he thinks other people want him to act embarrassed about it. When candidly talking about money, he's referred to hundreds of thousands of dollars as basically not very much money, he made that 10,000 dollar bet with Perry, he refers to himself as being in the middle class despite being a gazillionaire...he's just plain tone deaf on money issues, and these things leak out of him in moments of unguarded honesty. So when he's on his game, he's a lot more reserved about it, because being the unapologetic capitalist is political fodder right now.
Well, being tone-deaf, or even just "unapologetic" is not quite the same thing as what I'm wishing for.
It's not enough to be unapologetic. As you said, that's actually pretty detrimental politically. What I wish I saw was an actual rational coherent defense of, say, his capital gains. As opposed to embarrassment, which I agree is probably feigned, or a sort of blank shrug, which is what I suspect his natural reaction would be.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I imagine when Romney was working for Bain or when discussing his investments with brokers, he routinely considers sums that would be awesome (in the sense of provoking awe) to any of us. But to him, while important, are routine numbers he works with.
It's not surprising this carries over into speech patterns and mannerisms when speaking. I don't say that to his detriment either.
That's a really interesting point.
I spent several years in the financial industry, and worked with numbers that were nowhere near what Romney did but still much, much higher than my personal finances. And it definitely affected the way I discussed various sums of money.
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posted
I don't need wealthy people to be embarrassed; I just want them to be aware of the fact that they are priveleged.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I imagine when Romney was working for Bain or when discussing his investments with brokers, he routinely considers sums that would be awesome (in the sense of provoking awe) to any of us. But to him, while important, are routine numbers he works with.
It's not surprising this carries over into speech patterns and mannerisms when speaking. I don't say that to his detriment either.
That's a really interesting point.
I spent several years in the financial industry, and worked with numbers that were nowhere near what Romney did but still much, much higher than my personal finances. And it definitely affected the way I discussed various sums of money.
I'm not willing to give him a bye on that. Even when you're working with big sums, most people can still separate that reality from when they go home and balance their check book (God, that's a phrase that kids today probably don't get, isn't it?). In my last two years at the structured settlement company I used to work for, I spent most of my hours at work figuring out various scenarios for taking lump sum settlements and structuring them into annuities, so I was constantly breaking up tens of thousands of dollars and moving it around, and figuring out compound interest and all that. But when I went home, I still only made eleven dollars an hour, and I still have to pay my bills and see if I might have enough left over to put a little extra gas in my tank to go out that night or something.
The difference is between people who play with a lot of money and actually HAVE that much money, and people who dabble in big money but still go home to an actual middle class life. None of us here are millionaires, I'm sure you can see the difference. Even after all that time spent doing quotes with thousands of dollars, I still see a hundred bucks as a relatively large sum of money. I'll bet most people do. And Romney see hundreds of thousands in income as not very much, and thinks multimillionaires are middle class. He just doesn't get it, and it has nothing to do with Bain.
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Lyrhawn: You are also not nearly as old as Romney, and he doesn't just work with large sums, he has large sums of money. He probably knows what it's like to drop $20,000 to attend a fundraising dinner, or what it costs to have an huge accounting firm handle all his taxes, or remodel a mansion, charter a jet, buy an investment, sell that investment a week later for a quick profit of $50,000, talk to millionaires, talk to billionaires, buy a car every year, buy two cars for graduating grandkids, setup trust funds, it all goes on and on.
I have friends who in order to attend a Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert chartered a jet at the last second for somewhere around $50,000. I remember them posting on Facebook that the nice thing about chartering a jet is that when you leave your I-Pad on it, there's no risk of theft. I was pretty mad about it all, but when I vented to somebody about the hypocrisy of spending that much money frivolously to attend a concert celebrating Jesus, his response was "As a soda is to your salary, so is a jet to theirs."
I mean they conceded that when people are wealthy they have obligations to society that the poor do not. But if somebody is donating routinely to charity, and spends much of their time serving others, the fact they also charter a jet is no sin.
I'm not agreeing with them, but I still have to mull that over in my head.
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The following quote from Mitt Romney seems to be all over the internet.
quote:I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that's the America millions of Americans believe in. That's the America I love.
Can anyone tell me if Romney actually said this and what in what context?
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The thing about these kinds of attempts that really gets me is that I understand what they are fighting against, and I agree that it needs to be fought against. And yet their method of fighting is laughably awful. They're trying to fight bias and distortion with outright fabrication. How can they see that as an improvement?
In fact, it sort of worries me, because it seems that if they honestly think the only way to fight the current narrative is to pretend it doesn't exist, then they're obviously incapable of actually arguing from principles why the narrative is wrong.
It reminds me of Romney and his tax return BS. He seems so embarrassed. A semi-competent, principled advocate of free markets wouldn't be ashamed that he made lots of money through capital gains and wasn't taxed as much. He would explain why making money through capital gains is good and shouldn't be taxed as much.
These guys want to rewrite history to take out the stuff that is used to bias and distort history, when they should simply be arguing against the biases and the distortions.
Idiots.
Whew. It felt good to get that off my chest, even though I know nobody here really agrees with me.
Well, except for the idiots part. Most of you probably agree about that.
What is the narrative that you think they are correct in fighting?
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quote:But sleazy politicians like Clinton (and, if we're being honest, Kennedy and Nixon) have done a lot for this country, and I would rather vote for a sleazy guy who's on my side rather than a virtuous moderate.
A faustian bargain. One that a party's political base can quite easily get lured and habituated into accepting. Pay no mind, of course, to what this tends to metamorphose it into, or what the 'sleazy guy on your side' turns 'your side' into over time.
Except that, as far as I can tell, the non-sleazy guys are just as likely to stab their supporters in the back.
This is a way of admitting not being able to tell the sleazy guys from the non-sleazy guys. Your juxtaposition over to Obama is not yet convincing or conclusive and kind of supports the idea that your differentiation between backstabbers is hazy, mainly just because it has Obama as an adoptee (mostly through inaction) rather than what the Bush administration actively pushed for and drove our country (and the executive) to for Obama to inherit.
"Cutting deals with republican extortionists" sounds especially suspect. You really think he's selling out to the republican base? Which deals where? Why is he cutting them?
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The thing about these kinds of attempts that really gets me is that I understand what they are fighting against, and I agree that it needs to be fought against. And yet their method of fighting is laughably awful. They're trying to fight bias and distortion with outright fabrication. How can they see that as an improvement?
In fact, it sort of worries me, because it seems that if they honestly think the only way to fight the current narrative is to pretend it doesn't exist, then they're obviously incapable of actually arguing from principles why the narrative is wrong.
It reminds me of Romney and his tax return BS. He seems so embarrassed. A semi-competent, principled advocate of free markets wouldn't be ashamed that he made lots of money through capital gains and wasn't taxed as much. He would explain why making money through capital gains is good and shouldn't be taxed as much.
These guys want to rewrite history to take out the stuff that is used to bias and distort history, when they should simply be arguing against the biases and the distortions.
Idiots.
Whew. It felt good to get that off my chest, even though I know nobody here really agrees with me.
Well, except for the idiots part. Most of you probably agree about that.
What is the narrative that you think they are correct in fighting?
Specifically in this case: The focus on the founders as hypocritical deeply flawed men whom aren't worth most of the respect and adulation we used to heap on them. This in turn breeds a general disregard and disrespect for the Constitution they created, and the valuable traditions it lays out.
More broadly: The intense leftist narrative that permeates most schools and does its damnedest to make sure every kid leaves school thinking a certain way.
I know, I know, whining about leftist bias in schools is so passe. Don't I know that schools are supposed to be about teaching the truth, and reality has a liberal bias?
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Yeah, stories like that one, and the one about TX schools, really make me question the attentiveness or the honesty of people who suggest that racism isn't still a problem in this country. Aside from a black dude getting shot dozens or hundreds of times for picking up a wallet, I don't think you'll find many more striking examples than this: we need to not mention, or not mention as much, that while our Founding Fathers were crafting the Declaration and the Constitution, many of them were engaged in atrocities.
Our culture cannot withstand even reading about how our heroes were not just unblemished moral superman, but were in fact humans as well.
The idea that there is 'something to be fought' that this sort of wicked deceit is in alignment with is as much bullshit peddled by the same people who decry the 'war on Christmas' or that claim Christians are persecuted in this country.
This awful culture war business? If it is in fact a war, an assumption I don't grant, it's been a string of nearly unbroken crushing victories for white Christian men in this nation for nearly a dozen generation, and that was acceptable and even laudable by the same people now who cry shame on us for pointing out flaws of the Founders.
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quote:Specifically in this case: The focus on the founders as hypocritical deeply flawed men whom aren't worth most of the respect and adulation we used to heap on them. This in turn breeds a general disregard and disrespect for the Constitution they created, and the valuable traditions it lays out.
For the sake of argument, let's say that is what's happening-the taught contempt for the Founders, I mean. I personally think that idea is nonsense, but for the sake of argument...
The Founders were, by and large, deeply hypocritical flawed human beings with respect to human rights concerning almost everyone except white Christian landowning men. It is unfortunate that we have to admit to that, but it is simply true. It's reality, as you said-with a liberal bias. We learn more as we grow, meaning our earlier ideas are often wrong. No shame in that.
Should this not be taugh in our schools? That our Founders had some brave, brilliant, virtuous ideas that nonetheless didn't shield them from some of the evils of their time? Can you point to me a school that fosters active contempt for them, without me being able to point out the hundreds of local schools near that one about which there aren't such stories?
It's garbage, Dan. You've been tricked into this belief that these folks have an ounce of right on their side, that their motives are in any way unobjectionable with more flawed methods than anything.
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Specifically in this case: The focus on the founders as hypocritical deeply flawed men whom aren't worth most of the respect and adulation we used to heap on them. This in turn breeds a general disregard and disrespect for the Constitution they created, and the valuable traditions it lays out.
More broadly: The intense leftist narrative that permeates most schools and does its damnedest to make sure every kid leaves school thinking a certain way.
This just doesn't scan.
The idea that you *need* a cult of adulation for the individuals who wrote the constitution, and a concomitant devotion to their supposed "vision" of a nation (something entirely fanciful and divorced from the current reality, because they lived centuries ago), in order to garner a respect for and understanding of the constitution and its principles is a silly one.
Now, if you *do* attempt to push the narrative of the constitution as some sort of avatar for the will of magical people who lived centuries ago for a nation to be a certain way (ie: the way you want it to be, whomever you may be) and people quite naturally discover that the framers were not in fact gods incarnate among statesmen, but flawed human beings, then yes, people lose respect for the leads in that particular narrative, and for the narrative in general.
But the basis of the constitution is respect for the rule of law. Not respect for any cultural, religious, linguistic, or other tradition. The constitution is not anchored in the sanctification of its authors. In order for it to function, it is vital that it *not* be thus anchored. I have a very deep respect for the constitutional tradition in my country, and I learned that respect through a liberal education. And when I learned that Jackson owned slaves, and was a philanderer, and Franklin had syphilis, and Washington never cut down any cherry trees, my understanding of the principles upon which they, as part of a congress, framed a system of law was not changed. And my respect for those laws was not diminished. It was in fact enhanced; so impressed was I that such flawed and complex human beings could nevertheless forge a system of government that stood apart from their own personal fealties, wants and desires.
What is your answer to that, from a child of a liberal public education? Do tell.
quote: Don't I know that schools are supposed to be about teaching the truth, and reality has a liberal bias?
You understand, don't you, that the source of this witticism is in the observation that speaking truthfully, and comprehensively on the subjects of civics and ethics and history is often seen, by conservatives, as being "liberally biased?" That is to say, speaking in plain facts is often all that is needed to supply the "liberal position," on many perennial political topics.
And this is not because Republicans are liars, as a rule. It *is* because the conservative movement bases a great degree of its appeal on magical thinking.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Lyrhawn: You are also not nearly as old as Romney, and he doesn't just work with large sums, he has large sums of money. He probably knows what it's like to drop $20,000 to attend a fundraising dinner, or what it costs to have an huge accounting firm handle all his taxes, or remodel a mansion, charter a jet, buy an investment, sell that investment a week later for a quick profit of $50,000, talk to millionaires, talk to billionaires, buy a car every year, buy two cars for graduating grandkids, setup trust funds, it all goes on and on.
I have friends who in order to attend a Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert chartered a jet at the last second for somewhere around $50,000. I remember them posting on Facebook that the nice thing about chartering a jet is that when you leave your I-Pad on it, there's no risk of theft. I was pretty mad about it all, but when I vented to somebody about the hypocrisy of spending that much money frivolously to attend a concert celebrating Jesus, his response was "As a soda is to your salary, so is a jet to theirs."
I mean they conceded that when people are wealthy they have obligations to society that the poor do not. But if somebody is donating routinely to charity, and spends much of their time serving others, the fact they also charter a jet is no sin.
I'm not agreeing with them, but I still have to mull that over in my head.
Precisely.
He has no idea what it's like to live a life where money is a concern, let alone a serious concern. That was my point. It has nothing to do with some sort of language issue, he simply doesn't think about money the way the vast majority of Americans do. And he's constantly reminding us all of that EVERY TIME he opens his mouth to talk about money.
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You're simultaneously railing against me and the guys I was quasi-but-not-really defending, Rakeesh, so it's making it hard for me to separate the invective directed at me versus the invective directed at them.
For example, I categorically did NOT say that I don't think these things should be taught in our schools. It's worth looking at the time the founders lived in, and how horrible those times were, and how horrible things were for everyone, and how they were especially horrible for black people and certain other groups.
That shouldn't be whitewashed, (hell, to do so takes away from their accomplishment!) and the fact that this group wants to do that is despicable. I'm pretty sure I said this already, so either I screwed up and I'm responding to vitriol you didn't intend for me, or you ignored what I said for what you thought I might be saying.
That the framers by and large rose above the sewer they lived in to create something so timeless is awesome and breathtaking. I don't think you need to worship them to respect their document, but I do think that characterizing them as a bunch of flawed old dead white men from a bygone era (while 100% factual!) totally misses the point.
Orincoro has posted since I started this, so to that I will add that I agree with what you're saying for the first half of your post, and I clearly missed the mark with my first short response.
In particular, I realized one way I'm being misread, because I wasn't clear: I didn't intend to say that we should heap adulation on them, and that by not doing so we are failing. Rather, the common narrative I think I see in schools lays out that entire statement: "The founders are hypocritical deeply flawed men who aren't worth most of the respect and adulation we used to heap on them. Consequently, the stuff they did isn't all that impressive."
This is absolutely the narrative I see in schools here, but in fairness I'm in the SF Bay Area and Berkeley in particular, so I suppose if there's gonna be a leftist bias it's almost guaranteed to be worst here.
As for your remark about how simply reporting facts leads to being accused of a leftist bias... come on, spare me. There are facts and facts. It's not reporting on factual occurrences that is biased, it's selective reporting of only the facts that paint a very particular picture.
Again, I'm not in favor of whitewashing history. But I'm also really tired of the current narrative in education, which tends to focus on very particular historical facts.
(Example from the article: These idiot Tennesseeans wanted to suppress historical teaching of KKK violence, and wanted to add a requirement of teaching about Black Panther violence. One of these efforts is racist and deplorable, the other I agree with. Maybe you can guess which is which.)
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quote: Rather, the common narrative I think I see in schools lays out that entire statement: "The founders are hypocritical deeply flawed men who aren't worth most of the respect and adulation we used to heap on them. Consequently, the stuff they did isn't all that impressive."
Man I was in high school in hippie liberalville and it wasn't even remotely like this. From what are you getting the idea that this is a school narrative in america? Or where? Or how common? I don't want this to be a dig but christ it sounds like something you got from paranoid, Breitbartian media.
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Whelp... it's not. (Though I suppose I see corroborating examples from places like that on occasion.)
It's what I encountered in school in Berkeley. It's what friends of mine encountered (and, sadly, in many cases bought into) in... elsewhere in the East Bay and in southern CA. It's what my partner encountered in in the east bay (and to an admittedly slightly lesser extend in northern AZ).
Hmm, I just took a step back from this post, and realized that as I added to this list I was really adding to the "leftist bias in education" argument and not specifically to that characterization of the framers. So, if I assume you're granting that education in general has a strong leftist bent, and are just disputing this particular example, I should amend my statement.
As far as that particular example goes, I think it's probably on the more extreme end of the phenomenon, and the only explicit example I have (without searching for some cherry picked examples through the paranoid Breitbartian media) is my own personal experience in Berkeley.
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I don't remember getting into almost any of this in high school. I mean we talked about the Framers and stuff, but we didn't get the determined reverence angle or the "flawed useless old white men" argument.
By the time I got to college, I had my own ideas.
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I feel that education having a "strong leftist bent" is purely a matter of where one subjectively puts the midpoint in order to compare. When you look at the criteria that most people use to determine a "bent" in schools, it comes down to the issue of the extremely wild variability they have in determining where the threshold of 'non-leftistiness' exists. Unsurprisingly, the vast vast majority of people who complain about the "strong leftist bent" of schools are doing so under the framework that it is a "leftist bent" to teach even the acceptability of homosexuality, or even not scrub the ouchy little details of our country's history — little unimportant things like hundreds of years of genocide, for instance — or to even not allow teachers to organize prayer in schools. The case made by the people who argue a strong leftist bent makes my case about this being a pure reception of underlying bias. So too would the fact that you would find yourself arguing with this crowd constantly on what constitutes evidence of a leftist bias.
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Lyr: I've been mostly lumping High School and College together here, but I will freely admit that I think the problem I'm bitching about is orders of magnitude worse in college than it is in high school. However, I definitely think that it exists in high school and even elementary school.
Sam: So, because different people have different ideas of what a leftist bias is, it's an irrelevant distinction? I'm confused. Again, I don't have a problem with teaching facts, it is the selective teaching of facts to support an agenda that I object to.
Lots of people think there is a leftist bias in schools for issues totally unrelated to homosexuality/evolution etc. The evangelical Christian right is not the only game in town, or even the biggest. They might be the loudest, but I think even that's been changing over the last few years.
I keep writing and erasing various attempts to understand your point, here. How does the existence of multiple perspectives somehow translate to you as "It's all subjective and can't be argued?" Or is that even what you're saying? I must be missing something.
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No. It's that the case for a "strong leftist bias" in schools is without fail the product of people interpreting their right-wing bias as the point of nonbias. When you force a person to outline a detailed evidentiary case supporting more than just 'a feeling' or a general personal assumption that there is, quote, strong leftist bias in schools, you are not given an effective case that schools are teaching a strongly left-wing agenda. You are given a series of whatever juicy examples they can find and try to apply as systemic — never an overall analyses, no methodology — and it is nearly always coupled with proof that what they desire and support as a point of nonbias is easily right wing (in a myriad of ways, not just evangelical or free-market). The conceptualization of schools as overall right wing by left wingers has been equally strongly argued, and equally as transparent, or fails to look beyond the regional bias of their area. I could take any of your number of schools-being-left-wing from cali and pour fourth a myriad of counterstories from Texas and the american south where social pressures and even concerted efforts by right-wing revisioneers that are certainly much more systemic examples than some teachers not being nice enough to the founding fathers. Nightmare stories of whole states having right-wing religious pressures and teachers pushing agendas much more overt than that (usually in the fields of Biology, Science, and History) without challenge. Were I to take these and manifest them on their own as a case that schools have a "rightist bias" or even a "strong rightist bias" I would be, well, making the same mistake as you.
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Ah, okay. That makes much more sense! And yeah, in many respects you're right. My impression is totally an aggregate of juicy examples coupled with overall trends in the political views of teachers and the political views of students.
The first of which, being anecdotal, is pretty invalid. And the second of which, being correlational, is also pretty invalid.
So what type of analyses have actually been done on this topic, and what methodologies did they use? What kind of analysis would you find persuasive?
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Addendum: I was thinking about this on the drive home, and the more I think about it the more eager I am to hear your response, Sam. Because I'm having a hard time thinking of a study on this topic that wouldn't, in essence, boil down to an aggregate of anecdotes or a summary of trends and correlations. So I'm curious to see what I'm missing.
Or is it just that, yes, that is the only way to do it, and studies show that the anecdotes and correlations are pretty much what you'd expect geographically? (Leftist on the coasts, right wing in the south, etc.)
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quote: "Cutting deals with republican extortionists" sounds especially suspect. You really think he's selling out to the republican base? Which deals where? Why is he cutting them?
Which deals: The "compromise" budget cuts following the default showdown are one example. A better one was ditching the public option.
quote: there was already ample evidence that the White House had, in fact, secretly negotiated away the public option early on in the process, including confirmation from a New York Times reporter of the existence of such a deal, as well the fact that Russ Feingold said as clearly as he could that the reason there was no public option in the final bill was because the White House never pushed for it, because the final bill — without the public option — was the “legislation that the president wanted in the first place.”
But now, definitive evidence has emerged that this is exactly what happened: a new book by Tom Daschle. As Igor Volsky of ThinkProgress expertly documents — both by citing to Daschle’s book and by interviewing him — the White House had negotiated away the public option very early in the process (July, 2009), even though Obama and the administration spent months after that assuring their supporters that they were doing everything they could do have a public option in the bill
Why he cut the deals: To keep the corporate contributions flowing, obviously.
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quote:Your juxtaposition over to Obama is not yet convincing or conclusive and kind of supports the idea that your differentiation between backstabbers is hazy, mainly just because it has Obama as an adoptee (mostly through inaction) rather than what the Bush administration actively pushed for and drove our country (and the executive) to for Obama to inherit.
You wouldn't call the Awlaki assassination, and NDAA, "active pushing" on the administration's part?
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I don't remember getting into almost any of this in high school. I mean we talked about the Framers and stuff, but we didn't get the determined reverence angle or the "flawed useless old white men" argument.
By the time I got to college, I had my own ideas.
I always laugh when I read John Adams by McCullough and how in his own time Adams bemoans how American history is already screwed up beyond repair with bad scholarship, in HIS day. That nobody really gets how it all happened. The more I read about the revolution the more I realize there's just SO much there that makes it all happen. Small tiny mundane quirks, and also majestic miraculous developments. The problem is it's so easy to keep it all very neat and tidy with God sent the founding fathers who were men of faith to found the country, and their genius, and charisma, and Christian moral certitude combined with God's power were what created this nation much in the way God simply willed the earth into existence.
Any deviation from that tidy narrative is leftist revisionist history. I remember how blown away I was when we discussed 1920s America and just how strong socialism was then, and when we contrasted the then current 2000 election, and the right's rhetoric about leftist Socialism in the debates, having that 1920s context made it just so funny.
I don't get my shits and giggles out of finding out the founders were men with vices, but I do think it's important that students of American history learn things like Jefferson was terrible at managing money, in part because he insisted on buying the latest scientific tools and art, and Alexander Hamilton was a bastard child and because of that felt he had something to prove through merit so he could shed that stigma. Both of those things are useful in helping us see why Jefferson was such a renaissance man, or why Hamilton had almost an inexhaustible source of ambition, not to mention Hamilton finding that one could get prestige and rank in the military comparable to a lordship or knighthood, and favored making the military the replacement for that system.
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