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Sunday, October 27, 2013

Symbol, Information Channel, and Meaning



My wife and I visited Indonesia in the early 1990s and did a lot of hiking to visit quite a number of old temples and ruins.  We were quite shocked to encounter a huge number of swastikas adorning these temples in various forms.

We later learned that the swastika symbol has been in existence for 5,000 years and that the Sanskrit meaning of the word "swastika" is "it is good."  The information channel from the creators of the temples thousands of years ago to my wife and me was so intensely corrupted by the Nazi's adoption of that symbol, that our first reactions assumed some sort of virulent antisemitism, hatred, violence, and murder.


I've had the humorous opportunity to watch two daughters and their friends evolve in their choice of clothes between the ages of 13 and 16.  At 13, an overwhelming percentage choose to dress totally inappropriately every possible chance they get.  The 13 year old boys take very little notice as they're not yet ready to "appreciate" that sort of thing.  16 to 19 year old boys take a lot of notice, and that makes this period rather dangerous for everyone involved.

The 13 year old girls believe that the message they're sending is something like, "hey, I can dress like the popular stars of the world." The message is intended only for other girls with which they associate.  They have no idea what message they are sending to the slightly older boys.

The humorous part is that these same girls at 15 or 16 are often appalled and ashamed of how they had dressed when they were 13.  At that point they understand how the message of their dress was received by many others (especially the boys) and they dress much, much more conservatively.  And little sisters who are now 13 get quite a talking to by their older sisters when the younger ones start dressing like sluts - the older sisters often make mom look quite permissive! This is definitely an example of how the channel transmitting the information badly distorts the intended meaning on the receiving end.

WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 13: Michael Ashmore, of Hooks, Texas, leans against the White House fence with his confederate flag.  He and other demonstrators have walked here after attending a rally at the WWII Memorial to protest its' closing on October, 13, 2013 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Embarrassingly, I either never knew or had forgotten what a confederate flag looked like.  Like the swastika above, it has extreme negative connotations, the topmost being extreme racism towards blacks, including being pro-slavery.  Unlike those who adorned their temples with swastikas thousands of years ago and couldn't possibly guess that their sacred symbol would have horribly negative connotations in the distant future, someone who waves a symbol at a political rally doesn't have that excuse.  The best defense is a fairly lame one, and is that like the naive 13-year old girls discussed above, he didn't understand how poorly the message of waving a confederate flag in front of the White House would be received by a substantial majority of the citizens of the United States, including both liberals and conservatives.

That does, indeed, seem to be the excuse.  Here is an excerpt of something he's written about the event in response to the negative press coverage:
"You sit behind your laptop and type articles about people you don’t know. You sit there and think you know the true meaning of the confederate flag, but in truth you only know what people have told you.Did you know that the confederate flag was flown on the USS Columbia ( CL-56) during WWII. 
"You would be surprised that the confederate flag is often used as a symbol for culture and to display love for one’s country. So to sit there and say you know me is a lie. I fought for my country, My family and my friends."
And according to Wikipedia, that is all true.  Nonetheless, by being oblivious to how the information channel would color and deliver his message, he managed to single-handedly paint the tea party, conservatives, marines specifically, and the military in general, as racist - at least in the minds of many liberals and conservatives.

200 comments:

Anonymous said...

No, those people were already convinced, he was just an excuse. If not him, then something else. As we've seen, simply nothing at all if no real world events are available.

erp said...

Bret, the nazi swastica is different from the Sanskrit one. I think some pre-Columbian South Americans also used a similar symbol.

Re: teenage girls. Our daughter was in high school when skirts were very short too and my husband once made her go back and put on the bloomers that went under her usher outfit or change into pants. He also advised that she go up the stairs backwards :-)... and we only had one daughter. Three would have put him in the hospital.

Keep the faith. It only lasts for a short while and then they become so wonderful and sensible it will make you swell with pride.

erp said...

The subject of the alleged racism of conservatives makes me furious. How's this for an explanation of the guy waving a confederate flag. He was showing solidarity with Obama whose African ancestors were, after all, slavers, not slaves.

Anonymous said...

erp;

There's also the sauvstika, distinguished from the swastika by the direction of curve (sunwise or anti-sunwise (widdershins)). To see the difference, take your right hand and curl you fingers the same way as the lines in the symbol. For one your thumb points at you, and the other away.

erp said...

aog, I've forgotten how the swastica came to be a symbol for nazism, but I don't think it had to do with Hindu mysticism although Hitler was a devotee of astrology. Perhaps it figures in there somehow? Funny how a couple of bent lines can conjure up so much horror.

Anonymous said...

The Nazis thought it was an Aryan symbol and looked cool, basically. The swastika and sauvstika were used in a variety of cultures, not just Hinduism.

Bret said...

Other than being at a 45 degree angle, the Nazi symbol and the hindu symbol are indentical. Tilt your head and they look the same. Definitely the same enough that I was quite surprised in Indonesia.

Bret said...

One bit of consternation I had with the confederate flag thing was that nobody bothered to ask the young, and apparently naive and/or ignorant, man what meaning he felt the confederate flag in front of the White House had. In my opinion, that information, while not primary, is of some importance. As is often the case, it seems that it was in the Media's interest to NOT do a full investigation and just report what they wanted.

Harry Eagar said...

'Many conservatives' apparently is defined as 'not any conservatives who were there.'

I do not believe the flag carrier. Nobody who has spent enough time looking it up to have found such an obscure factoid as that it was flown on one (out of 18,000) Navy ships could have also failed to have run across its usual meaning.



Bret said...

Harry wrote: "'Many conservatives' apparently is defined as 'not any conservatives who were there.'"

How do you know that? Just as the press didn't bother talking to the flag waver, they didn't bother talking to anybody else either.

Harry wrote: "Nobody who has spent enough time looking it up..."

I suspect someone told him that. Nonetheless, it's in the Wikipedia entry, plain as day, and the Wikipedia entry is remarkably non-anti-confederate flag. In fact, when I read the Wikipedia entry, I would hardly understand the uproar, given the neutral tone of the article.

Bret said...

The wikipedia entry for the confederate flag:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_flag#Confederate_flag

erp said...

Bret, I couldn't agree more that somebody should have spoken to the guy and let him know that whatever reason he had to bring it to WH unless it was to make the lefties even more convinced they are right, it wasn't a smart move.

Harry Eagar said...

'The Nazis thought it was an Aryan symbol and looked cool, basically.'

You mean non-Nazi volkisch rightwing racists. They introduced the hakenkreuz for the reason you state, but the Nazis were a wholly Catholic organization when they adopted the hakenkreuz, a little behind the rest of the German rightwing.

As Catholics, they had to create a Catholic reason to do so. So they claimed it was Christian.

The theorist was Franz Schrongkamer-Heimdal, now forgotten but at the time the leading Nazi publicist/editor.

It's all in Derek Hastings' 'Catholicism & the Roots of Nazism.'

I recommend this highly to erp.

erp said...

Harry since rightwing is synomous with fascist, your comment makes no sense and you'll get no argument from me that the Catholic church leans left, so I don't get your snide remarks in that department either.

For a lot of years now, I've asked you to define your terms and I'm still waiting.

Harry Eagar said...

You are the only person in the world who thinks the Catholic church leans left.

Peter said...

The theorist was Franz Schrongkamer-Heimdal, now forgotten...

I'll say he's been forgotten. Not even Google appears to have ever heard of him.

Harry, that is the most fantatstic theory of the swastika I've ever heard. Man, that Scarlet Woman has some deep covers.

Clovis said...

So, is the guy with the flag what you would call a typical redneck? (I mean, by his looks)

erp said...

You are the only person in the world who thinks the Catholic church leans left.

Harry, I don't doubt that for a minute in your world, but in the real world, the Catholic church goes far beyond leaning left to wit the Jesuits.

Clovis said...

In the real world, the Catholic Church is quite big. They say 1.2 billion big.

How can anyone think a single aspect (right or left leaning) will classify that many?

Still, historically, in numbers and in power, it is fair to say the old Church is quite part of the Right establishment. I wonder which Catholic school is this one Erp studied in, to think the contrary.

erp said...

Clovis, Define the Right establishment and get back to me. You might want to consult with Harry on this. He's been working on it for probably five or six years now and so far has only resorted to the usual lefty ad hominems with nary a definition in sight.

BTW, my studying at a Catholic school ended at age 13 -- 66 years ago. It was a far different world then.

erp said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
erp said...

Duplicate comment again. Sorry.

Clovis said...

Erp,

What about this one, copie frmo the Wikipedia?

"The right is always the party sector associated with the interests of the upper or dominant classes, the left the sector expressive of the lower economic or social classes, and the centre that of the middle classes. Historically this criterion seems acceptable. The conservative right has defended entrenched prerogatives, privileges and powers; the left has attacked them. The right has been more favorable to the aristocratic position, to the hierarchy of birth or of wealth; the left has fought for the equalization of advantage or of opportunity, for the claims of the less advantaged. Defense and attack have met, under democratic conditions, not in the name of class but in the name of principle; but the opposing principles have broadly corresponded to the interests of the different classes."

I've already made it clear I do not enjoy definitional discussions - or better saying, not the sloppy ones without help from mathematical rigor. So I know the very many flaws in the above definition. But if you want one where the Catholic Church is easily seen as Right leaning, there you have it.

Peter said...

It's pretty hard to characterize the Catholic Church as left, but it has a history of criticizng liberal capitalism from an ethical and theological perspective. erp, the left is a big tent, but it's not THAT big.

Re: the flag-waver. Bret should have added a fourth factor to the title of this post---place. That flag may be just an honouring of history and ancestors in a park in a small town in Mississippi, but I don't think that's the meaning in a march on Washington.

Bret said...

The right-left dichotomy is always a little nebulous, but I think we generally consider Democrats to be "Left" of Republicans. If so, Catholics are more Left than Right:

"A 2008 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found a significant Democratic advantage among Catholics. Fifty-three percent identified as Democratic or leaning Democratic voters, compared to 37 percent identifying with the Republican camp."

Bret said...

"Is the guy with the flag what you would call a typical redneck?"

Yes, in my opinion.

Peter said...

Bret, Harry and erp were talking about the Catholic church, not Catholics as individual voters. I hope we Prots are past the stage where we assume priests direct who they vote for. But in any event, there are a lot of cultural factors at play on this one, notably a suspicion of fundamentalist Protestantism. Plus I think you will find things can be quite different in countries where Catholics form the majority. It is true, though, that right or left, many of them do have a problem with radical individualism.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

At least in the West, we've inverted that and it is the Left that is defending the privileged and powerful, with the Right being the insurgents. For example, it is the Tea Parties who are opposed to the current political system in the USA, and the Modern American Left who defend and expand it.

erp said...

Wow! Clovis, so Obama and his cronies are rightwing just as I said because he and his cronies are poster children for this definition as are most of the religious leaders of all faiths.

Glad you cleared that up.

I hope your "scientific" thinking is a bit more stringent.

erp said...

I'd like to put in a word for the redneck (refers to a man who works outside and is sunburned around where his shirt collar ends) who's found mostly in rural areas.

I've lived in rural Vermont and live in rural Florida now. The so-called rednecks are the people with whom we have daily dealings. They are our friends, neighbors, acquaintances, tradesmen, auto mechanic, mainly hardworking, polite, helpful and law abiding. Many of them, at least here in Florida, are what the media now refers to as African-Americans although I have never met anyone who refers to themselves that way. Right now there's a man who works for himself who's taking down trees on our property. He refers to himself as the Tree Man. He's a credit to his race and mine, the human race, although his skin is a little darker than mine, we don't let it bother us although people like him sure do bother lefty politicians and BTW he's more conservative than I am. Harry would probably call him an Uncle Tom, but not to his face.

Too bad Harry has never run into him and the millions of others like him.

The media has done a very good job depicting rednecks as rabid racists at the schools steps with rabid dogs, both foaming at the mouth. Mazel tov to them all for the disgraceful mess they've made of the country.

erp said...

Peter, actually it's pretty easy to characterize the Catholic church hierarchy as left.
I just did it. Of course Catholics are directed by their parish priests, not only how to vote, but how to live every aspect of their lives. They are even discouraged from reading the bible parts of which were transmogrified for ease of indoctrination into the Catechism. Individualism was discouraged and conformity to church doctrine demanded. Render unto Caesar ... was the rule for their flock while the princes of the church dined with him.

Unless you believe as does Harry that the left are for blue birds, unicorns and running barefoot on the beach and the right are top-hatted robber barons whipping the child coal miners as they are depicted in the media, you can't fail to see how much Catholic dogma resembles that of the lefty panoply of fascism/socialism/collectivism/statism/maoism/marxism ...

Clovis said...

Bret,

I second Peter here: to talk about Catholics is not the same as to talk about the Church. Too many people are labeled Catholics when they barely entered in a Church their whole lives, nor care the least for the Church dogmas. The Church itself is quite Right-leaning in many ways.

Thanks for answering my redneck question, I was not sure (I only see rednecks in movies and series). I guess it may answer your question, on why people did not directly ask him what he meant. It is the stereotype: the guy looks like a redneck, and carries a Confederate flag, you kind of assume what he thinks.

It is interesting though that - unless you quoted only partially - he did not bother to actually explain what he thought. He keeps saying no one knows him, but gave no hint on what he meant. Or maybe he did imply he was showing love for his country, it is hard to say.


AOG,

Is is interesting to witness your self-image. Do you think your fellow countrymen who are not tea-partiers agree with it? I can see Harry, at least, does not. By all I read from you, AOG, I do not think you look much of an "insurgent" against the "privileged and powerful".

Clovis said...

Erp,


Well, if it makes you happy, I can see some twists in those definitions that would put Obama in the Right indeed. And much of the Democratic party too. Basically there would be no representative Left in the US.

In those classifications you would be an extremist Right winger. Are you pleased?

erp said...

Clovis, what would make me happy is if the U.S. would follow the Constitution and other laws of the land and leave improving things to the rest of the world.

How I would be an extremist rightwinger following the definition you provided escapes me. Please be specific.

erp would be a rightwinger as she defines it because:

Clovis said...

Erp,

No, no, I did not say you would be a rightwinger in *your* definition.

I could not possibly say so, you never provided much of a definition, although you always asks Harry for one.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

I'm not sure who else agrees with that. Clearly Mr. Eagar does, when he calls such people "teahadists". That's not a term that makes any sense applied to those who want to preserve the current power structure.

Or political leaders when use the term "hostage takers". I can dig up many more examples if you like, it's fairly wide spread.

I do not think you look much of an "insurgent" against the "privileged and powerful".

You mean, when I fight against those powerful enough to control the health care system in the USA, I'm the priviledged and powerful and they are the insurgents? Really? What would it take, in your view, to think of President Obama and his cronies (such as Reid and Pelosi) as not privileged and powerful, especially compared to me?

erp said...

I provided one numerous times in many different ways.

Your definition doesn't compute. Just because it suits the left's narrative to stigmatize those who disagree with their follies by accusing them of being racists, nazis, etc., doesn't make it so.

Peter said...

Peter, actually it's pretty easy to characterize the Catholic church hierarchy as left.
I just did it.


Yes, you did. Dagnamit, I love scientific inquiry. :-)

erp said...

Peter ... you mean like Wikipedia?

Peter said...

Just because it suits the left's narrative to stigmatize those who disagree with their follies by accusing them of being racists, nazis, etc., doesn't make it so.

Agreed. But it doesn't make it not so just because it suits the left's narrative either.

erp said...

I've always thought you can only stigmatize with a falsehood, but perhaps you are right and one can stigmatize with a truism as in grandma's cupcakes are the world's best!

Harry Eagar said...

You didn't find it because I misspelled Schronghamer. Sorry about that.

He's got a Wikipedia entry, but it is based entirely on Hastings' dissertation.

As for the Roman church, it is monarchical, hierarchical, antiliberal etc. so rightist, even if it has some left elements.

Also, the American church is different in many ways from the church as a whole, having been badly infected by American ideas of liberty.

I wonder if it would surprise erp to learn that Catholic priests used to have to swear an oath to oppose modernism to keep their jobs. I don't think they still have to swear the oath, but Pius X's encyclical against modernism is still in effect. I was taught it at -- get ready for it -- St.Pius X High School.

'Modernism' to the church, is pretty much what's in the Declaration of Independence.

Clovis said...

Erp,

I did not imply a stigmatization on you. I believe you are mostly a right-leaning person, while Obama is a center-left one. If I shift him to the right, you go to the far right, simple as that.

Your definition of Right is: whatever you think and believe, being them all the Truth. Your definition of left: whatever anyone else believes differently. That's all I can get from your worldview.

Clovis said...

AOG,

I can hardly answer that, I do not know you in person to know how "privileged and powerful" you are.

But it looks like many of your fellow countrymen think the tea party is a higher-middle class group who was co-opted by m/billionaires with their own economical interests in play.

Harry Eagar said...

I would not call the TP 'higher middle class.'

If by that you mean somewhere in the upper comfortable income zone, certainly not.

It's basically the John Birch Society of the '50s and '60s ideologically. The JBS gathered in the status-anxious, small-town, poorly educated, antiblack racists and Jew-haters.

The TP recruited from an economic rather than a religio-patriotic direction,so it probably is more diverse than the JBS, but since it offered the same internal enemy and the same nostrums, it gathered in all the nutcakes left bereft by the erosion of the JBS.

Confederate flag-guy is the poster-boy for that.

The biggest difference I can see is that McCarthyism-Birchism was driven by antisemitism in ways I don't think the TP is. The bogeyman of the TP is an African-American, not a Jew.

erp said...

So Clovis, you think we should define ourselves by what others think to be true? BTW - exactly what is that I've said that leads you to believe that I am a far rightest as you define it?

Harry, you again make my point for me. My philosophy is the classic liberalism of the Founding Fathers, now best described by conservatism/libertarianism, which the Catholic church denounces and makes their priests take an oath to oppose (I am not confirming that this is a fact because I never heard of it before, but it is plausible, so I'll allow it).

Therefore the church hierarchy leans left and worse in most cases.

I rest my case.

erp said...

Clovis, making a statement like it looks like many of your fellow countrymen think the tea party is a higher-middle class group who was co-opted by m/billionaires with their own economical interests in play. shows that you learn your lessons well. That's the narrative the left would like people to learn. It is, however, not true... and FYI the great preponderance of billionaires and millionaires looking to shape the policies of the this country as well to add to their bottom lines with direct injections of public funds are lefties and very far lefties like Soros and his merry band of really rich guys.

Clovis said...

Erp,

That's, again, not what I've meant.

But I give up.

Your cupcakes must be the world's best!

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
That's the narrative the left would like people to learn. It is, however, not true...
---

Can you tell me which part, exactly, is not true?

Harry thinks I miss the target group, he argues not only higher-middle class is part of it.

Where else did I get it wrong? Do you deny, for example, that tea party groups received help from m/billionaires?

erp said...

I don't know and I don't care. It's a free country (for the time being) and millionaires are just as free as the rest of us to contribute to whomsoever they wish.

Note my clarification above of where the preponderance of the really rich put their money. It's called crony capitalism and it's been perfected by the current administration. It's a great system. The government confiscates our money and gives it to their pals who then funnel a lot of it back to the pols and and the rest of their pals.

This doesn't seem to bother you. Perhaps because it's not the part of the narrative that's touted in the media.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

I asked about your statement

I do not think you look much of an "insurgent" against the "privileged and powerful"

That is about what you think, not what "many of your fellow countrymen" think. If you do not know you in person to know how "privileged and powerful" you are then how can you have written your prior statement, or have that belief?

And you think that there it's possible I am as powerful and privileged as Obama, Reid, and Pelosi. That's plausible to you. OK...

P.S. As to your view of that "many of my fellow countrymen" think, I notice you didn't even get Eagar's view on the subject correct. You might want to recheck your analysis.

Mr. Eagar;

The Tea Parties pre-date the election of Obama, which makes your claim rather dubious at best. They are the direct descendants of the Pork Busters, which started during President Bush's Administration, which also puts paid to Clovis' claim that about Bush being treated differently. It was the TARP fiasco that was the catalyst.

Clovis said...

AOG,

---
If 'you do not know you in person to know how "privileged and powerful" you are' then how can you have written your prior statement, or have that belief?
---
You deleted, in your quote, my prior "By all I read from you,", which already answers your point.

You look to defend that other people (or their representation, the State) has no business in choosing how they tax the rich and spend that money. It can be a self-serving point of view if you are part of the "privileged" they are taxing a bit more. For example: I understand, again from what you write, that the ACA has generated extra taxes to you (in form of extra costs in your Health Care plan).

As you see, I am not assuming anything about yourself, whose not even the real name I know of, but only about things you wrote.


---
And you think that there it's possible I am as powerful and privileged as Obama, Reid, and Pelosi. That's plausible to you. OK...
---
Well, yes, in principle it is possible. Obama is powerful because of the present position he has, which is a gift of the American people. He will no longer be in that position in a few years, and who is to say he will be then more powerful than you, whose position I have no idea about?

For all I know, you may well be some big hacker inside the NSA and have more power than Hoover ever dreamed of, in which case you are already more powerful than Obama :-)

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
This doesn't seem to bother you. Perhaps because it's not the part of the narrative that's touted in the media.
---

It is not true, it does bother me greatly, for I probably lose much more than you with this problem in my own country.

What I do not believe is that "your billionaries" are better than "other people billionaires".

You have been milked with trillionaire fake wars, and that indeed does not seem to bother you.

It is great all those billionaires have the right to buy every politicain they want, it is a free country, right? As long as they right sort of corruption and corruptor is acting, you are just as happy. Your Pinochet passion tells it all.

Anonymous said...

No, that doesn't answer my point, which is, do you have that opinion, or not? Based on your replies, I can't tell.

You look to defend that other people (or their representation, the State) has no business in choosing how they tax the rich and spend that money.

No.

tea party groups received help from m/billionaires?

Is that the standard? If a group gets help from rich people,, it's a party that favors the privileged and powerful?

Clovis said...

AOG,

Which opinion are you talking about right now?

Bret said...

Clovis wrote: "... he did not bother to actually explain what he thought..."

The flag wielder wrote: "...the confederate flag is often used as a symbol for culture and to display love for one’s country."

Seems clear enough to me. It's a "southern pride" sort of thing.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

I do not think you look much of an "insurgent" against the "privileged and powerful"

P.S. What about the millionaire/billionaire donation issue? Does the support of such a person make the recipient group a tool of the rich and privileged?

Clovis said...

Bret,

Well, I guess most Germans used the Nazi flag as a national pride sort of thing. Usually we do not see in good light the Germans who still use it under this same meaning.

But if your point is to give him the benefit of doubt, to interpret his action as a misguided form of communication, fine. I can believe he was giving no racial message.

Clovis said...

AOG,

I do not understand your doubt here, that phrase was the only one I stated as my own thinking, instead of the opinion of others.

So, yes, you do not look like (to me) an insurgent against privileges. To the extent I can understand your positions, you strongly favor the present status quo (i.e. before ACA). Although you state other reasons for that (e.g "govt. only makes things worse"), your opinion happen to be self-interested too, since the present changes mean you'll subsidize health care for poorer classes.

Following that wikipedia definition above, you end up being in the Right.

On the donation issue: I believe people give money to political causes that are in their best interests. If this support makes the recipient a tool of a subset of donors depends on a few things, among them if that support is a substantial component of the total obtained.

Clovis said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bret said...

Clovis wrote: "I guess most Germans used the Nazi flag as a national pride sort of thing."

I agree. And it's nearly an exact parallel.

If a young, oblivious/naive German guy waved the Nazi flag around, there'd be an uproar as well.

The Information Channel imposes the meaning regardless of the intention of the sender. In a related vein, as I'm fond of writing, "the curse of authorship is that the information conveyed is not necessarily what the writer intended, but rather what the reader chooses to infer." In these cases, imposed by the Information Channel.

Harry Eagar said...

Nobody waves that flag just to celebrate frosty mornings and barbecue.

I am having s very hard time figuring out Guy's po'-mouthin' about privilege and power.

The people he names did run for office and so whatever privilege and power they have derives from the people. Isn't that the way it is supposed to be?

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

you strongly favor the present status quo [ante]

No. I think the previous status quo was poor, and I think the AHCA has made and will make everything much worse. It's like we had pneuomonia before, and now we have cancer too.

How you can have read my writings and think I was fine with the status quo ante escapes me.

I would note that it is the Modern American Left that wants to preserve and refine the status quo, and the Tea Parties who want to massive roll back our government. Apparently that makes the MAL the "Right" and the Tea Parties the "Left". That's why refer to myself as a minarchist.

Mr. Eagar;

I am having s very hard time figuring out Guy's po'-mouthin' about privilege and power.

How unexpected I'm not sure you have ever understood anything I have written. You might also check on the names I mentioned, who were very privileged before they were elected and have become far more so (beyond their elected positions) since. But even without that, your point is silly, as it presumes once unprivileged, always unprivileged. And finally, the privilege from being elected should be restricted to the actual enumerated powers of the office, not (say) the ability to punish political opponents with illegal IRS harassment. Or arbitrarily change legislation as President, deciding which parts of the law are to be enforced and which are to be delayed or ignored.

Clovis said...

Bret,

We can also ask why it so happens that you won't find a German misinformed about the reasons of WWII. You may find a NPD member with whole conspiracy theories on why the Nazis where not to blame, but you won't find one who does not understand the meaning he conveys by waiving the Nazi flag.

Now that Texan young man, on the other hand, looks to have some warped view of the Civil war reasons. His flag may have had no racial message, but it had something like "This govt. makes the same kind of abuses on our states rights as the one who led us to civil war". I guess his answers imply so too. So I would still be uncomfortable at being in the same rally as him.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

The main reason for that is that the political party that supported the rebellion, the Democratic Party, wasn't banned or even that seriously suppressed after the war. You see the rise of this strong disapprobation of the Confederate flag when that party decided, for agit-prop purposes, to rewrite history to conceal its role in the war and its aftermath (e.g., Jim Crow, the KKK, etc.). That flag was flown at a state capitol building (South Carolina) until 2000.

You might also review the actual causes and conduct of the Civil War, which was not simply a war on slavery. That, again, is rewritten history.

erp said...

The people he names did run for office and so whatever privilege and power they have derives from the people. Isn't that the way it is supposed to be?

Absolutely, but that was when the fourth estate was on the side of the people, not the fascists as they are now.

Clovis said...

AOG,

Any book or link you would suggest on that?

erp said...

Clovis, I think I already suggested you read all of Paul Johnson's books perhaps starting with The Intellectuals because you need a shock treatment before you can delve into his other works to find out how almost everything you think you know about history is, to put it succinctly, wrong.

erp said...

Clovis: Here's a list:

FTA One of the co-hosts was Partnership for a New American Economy. Among the group’s co-chairmen: Michael Bloomberg (#10 on the Forbes 400), Steve Ballmer (#21), Rupert Murdoch (#30), Douglas M. Baker Jr. (#161), and Bill Marriott (#296).

Another co-host was Fwd.us, founded by Mark Zuckerberg (#20) and including among its supporters Bill Gates (#1), Eric Schmidt (#49), Reid Hoffman (#103), John Doerr (#184), Stanley Druckenmiller (#184), John Fisher (#193), Barry Diller (#260), Sean Parker (#273), Jim Bryer (#352), Mark Pincus (was #212 in 2011, but fallen off since), Matt Cohler (worth a measly $400 million, but on the Forbes Future 400 list), Fred Wilson (#16 on Forbes Midas List of top tech investors), Ron Conway (#41 on the Midas List), and Richard Kramlich (#73 on the Midas List). That’s not to mention a whole list of mere multi-millionaires and even billionaires who didn’t make the cut.
of Soros and his billionaire buddies who are spending staggering amounts of money to more the narrative forward.

Please provide a similar list of billionaires or even millionaires funding the tea party.

Clovis said...

Erp,

Your link did not work, and your quote above does not imply much, it is a list of names with little more information.

I believe I am aware the Civil War was not *only* about slavery - but it was *a lot* about slavery.

I am also aware that both parties changed roles on who was behind racism, this is no secret and I do not get why AOG calls it rewritten history. It is well known and very public history.

Still, I will gladly look at any references that may enrich me on the topic. If you have anything to complement, other than remark again and again on my poor ignorance and delusion on wordly things, I will thank you too.

Bret said...

Clovis wrote: "So I would still be uncomfortable at being in the same rally as him."

Me too.

Clovis wrote: "We can also ask why it so happens that you won't find a German misinformed about the reasons of WWII."

I'm not enough of a historian in either the Civil War period or WWII to make any statements that I have a high degree of confidence in, but that's never stopped me before, so here goes. :-) I'm sure Harry will set me straight where I get it wrong, and no doubt AOG will set him straight. :-)

The time frame is probably important. 70 years ago is pretty recent history. 150 years ago, not so much. Also, 70 years ago, communication was much more advanced with radio and TV just on the horizon, enabling effective and rapid communication with the masses.

The Germans surrendered not only militarily, but also psychologically, in that they came to realize that Hitler was basically evil. The south, for the most part, never accepted that they were wrong in any sort of moral sense.

While slavery was a major issue behind the civil war, racism was not, in that most northerners were also racist, at least to some degree, at that time. Here's a somewhat famous quote from Lincoln:

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything."

In other words, blacks are basically another species and should in no way be considered equal, but slavery is going too far.

On the other hand, I think that most Germans were ashamed of the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities.

Also, Germany is a much more homogeneous society (especially after the Holocaust), with education being more standardized with anti-Nazi teaching being part of the curriculum, whereas the U.S. is more diverse, especially in the ideological spectrum, allowing for the flag waiver to have a significantly different background, education, and ideology from the rest of the country.

I wonder in another 50 or 100 years, if the swastika will still bring outrage in Germany:

"The spread of neo-Nazi influence in Germany came to light fully last year with the shocking discovery of a neo-Nazi terrorist cell responsible for the worst right-wing violence since World War II.

At least nine people of migrant origin were murdered, and there were bomb attacks and bank robberies.

In response, Germany last month established the first centralized neo-Nazi database, similar to those that existed for decades for Islamic and leftist extremists.

Germans have been stunned that despite six decades of required anti-Nazi teaching in schools, right-wing extremism is still attracting recruits. Human rights groups say right-wing attacks have killed more than 180 people in the past two decades.
"

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

By the end, the Civil War was primarily about slavery, but that's not really how it started. Note that the Emancipation Proclamation wasn't until a couple of years in, and didn't free slaves in non-rebel states.

But my point about rewritten history was that this complex history is all tied up in how the Confederate battle flag is perceived, which is what you asked about. It is a relatively recent to make the flag, and hence the war, entirely about slavery and/or racism.

I am also aware that both parties changed roles on who was behind racism

Then you're actually not. The GOP hasn't changed roles at all. That you think it has is all part of the same rewriting.

erp said...

Clovis, don't know why the link failed. I don't have time to find it again now.

Parties didn't change roles. Historians rewriting history changed them.

The Civil War was "a lot about slavery" because the real reason, states rights, wasn't popular or emotional enough to get the masses het up. So slavery was abolished using the force of the federal government setting the stage for almost a century of conditions for negroes arguably as bad as slavery, not withstanding Harry's whippings and "Uncle Tom's Cabin" until now a scion of the slavers is in the White House busy enslaving more people, this time not only those brought over in chains from Africa.

States rights being discarded way back then are in a steady decline until the debacle we are now seeing with the federal government interfering in every aspect of our lives from sea to shinning sea.

... and Harry spare me accusation of racism. Refresh my mind, which party defeated the all the bills before congress before the Civil War and continued to fight every effort in congress to stop the expanding of slave states and passed local segregation laws after the emancipation and which party is the party of the current day slavers aka poverty pimps like the Reverends Jackson, Sharpton, Wright ad nauseum.

... and which party was in power most of the 20th C. and which party didn't desegregate the military and public buildings, parks, etc. until the Republicans in congress voted to pass the Civil Rights Act and which party voted against it.

Oh, I just remembered. That party was the Democrats.

erp said...

Bret, I'm not comfortable at any political rally because I'm sure there would be people there with whom I vehemently disagreed no matter what the ostensible platform might be, so I understand that, but I wouldn't be uncomfortable because of a flag even a swastica because flags aren't the problem, people are.

I see Obama standing in front of the Stars and Stripes. So what? It neither elevates him nor denigrates the flag.

Harry Eagar said...

Clovis, my great great uncle was given the privilege of firing the third shot at Ft. Sumter. It was all about slavery.

Lincoln was primarily concerned to preserve the union, but the South (the ones who seceded) was motivated entirely by concern to preserve its human property. (My family was among the largest slaveholders in South Carolina and prominent electorally; my great great grandfather left Congress and the Whigs because the Whigs were too soft on slavery.)

erp is wrong about parties not changing. The Progressive-Greenbacks took over the very conservative Democratic party and liberalized it (especially on economic terms), which was a coup from without; and the Republicans, from within, deliberately abandoned their historical alliance with black voters because they thought they would pick up more white racists from the Democrats than they lost blacks. Which turned out to be correct, and is becoming more and more correct with each quadrennial ballot.




Anonymous said...

Clovis;

And note, Eagar's personal experience and anecdotes (and apparently that of any of his ancestors) trump any amount of other historical data. His life defines American history, and all else is but unreliable secondary sources.

Clovis said...

AOG:

I actually enjoy a lot Harry's family histories. It adds color to these discussions. I can understand that personal history may lead one to focus on our version of the things, but he also presented a more general approach in his third paragraph above.

I would invite you to dispute that and show us why you feel history was rewritten here.

Clovis said...

Bret,

I did not know this Lincoln quote. Thank you, it is quite a history lesson.

I know how the times were others and so on, but I confess that I can not read that today wihout some sense of awe.

erp said...

aog, I leave the field to you. Republicans all became Democrats or is the other way round and then back again, so as to advance the narrative of 20th C socialism...

Complete babble and they're still at it. Obamacare isn't taking away people's health insurance, it's the wicked insurance companies who are dropping people because they can't comply with Obamacare strictures.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

I dispute this

Republicans, from within, deliberately abandoned their historical alliance with black voters because they thought they would pick up more white racists from the Democrats than they lost blacks

I think Eagar's basically correct about the coup in the Democratic Party (which occurred in the 1970s) but that he doesn't see how that breaks the part I dispute (where else was the former Democratic Party base to go?). He sees the movement and blames it on racism, rather than the coup he himself acknowledges.

The coup didn't get rid of the racism in the Democratic Party, it simply transmuted it to the soft bigotry of low expectations, effectively that it was now OK that blacks were inferior, the Progressives would just design society around that fact. Hence things like affirmative action, racial quotas, etc.

The GOP, by and large, kept the vision of the Founders, that people are people and all are to be expected to follow the same laws. Mr. Eagar, as with other progressives views that attitude as ipso facto racism. They didn't change themselves so much as redefine words to achieve their agit-prop goals.

Clovis said...

AOG,

---
He sees the movement and blames it on racism, rather than the coup he himself acknowledges.
---
OK, so what you dispute is interpretation, not facts.

You think the GOP did not change his position, but the former racists went to it anyway for lack of option.

Harry thinks their presence in the GOP makes the party itself more racist.

One way or another, I still do not see why you said history was rewritten, if the "historical facts" are not in dispute in your last argument above.

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
The Civil War was "a lot about slavery" because the real reason, states rights, wasn't popular or emotional enough to get the masses het up.
---

Please, what are the other important aspects of states rights in dispute during the Civil War, other than the ones related to slavery?

erp said...

Clovis, this isn't the place for a course on American History. If you want to learn the facts, find some history books or encyclopedias published before the 60's and look up states rights. It's a complicated issue that goes right to the heart of our United States of America.

If you want the politically correct version, ask Harry to give a thumb nail sketch ala this ludicrous statement:
The Progressive-Greenbacks took over the very conservative Democratic party and liberalized it (especially on economic terms), which was a coup from without; and the Republicans, from within, deliberately abandoned their historical alliance with black voters because they thought they would pick up more white racists from the Democrats than they lost blacks. Which turned out to be correct, and is becoming more and more correct with each quadrennial ballot.

Note: the particularly nefarious Republican coup was from "within" while the Democrat, transparent even back when, coup was from without.

Perhaps Harry can expand on that. Within what/where/how/who led it, etc.? and Without what/where/how?

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

Harry thinks their presence in the GOP makes the party itself more racist.

No. Eagar thinks the GOP, which was already racist, deliberately recruited additional racists. Go read his comment again. He states this as a fact and I dispute that fact.

I dispute the "fact" that it made the GOP more racist.

I would also dispute that it was about the movement of racists, rather than a movement of conservatives, some of whom also happened to be racists. I see no evidence that the relative percentages of racists in either party changed significantly due to this shift. What happened (and this is the rewrite) is the reporting of it. Moreover this was extended backwards in time so you'll find plenty of people who think it was the GOP that ran the South during Jim Crow, just like you believe the GOP became more racist during that period.

As for other things that caused the Civil War, as has already been mentioned, states rights against the federal government was a major issue, taxation and tariffs being two big parts of that. It is, IMHO, quite significant that before the war it was "these United States" and after "the United States".

It must also be kept in mind that the causes were not a bag of discrete items but strong related so that the South saw its itself being ground under by legislative and structural changes imposed by the more populuous and industrial north. In many ways it was a classic city / rural conflict.

I don't want to claim that slavery was not right at the top of the mix in importance - certainly there had been major crises of governance due to that previously. But, as far as I know, there was no serious suggestion of eliminating slavery in the southern states before the war. Even after the war started, it was a couple of years before this was actually done. You should also note that slave owning was not as prevelant as commonly portrayed, only about 20-25% of families owned any slaves at all. What, then, do you think those people thought worth rebellion?

Clovis said...

Erp,

I asked you in search for your particular version of Civil war events, since you often have some quite non standard views.


AOG,

---
No. Eagar thinks the GOP, which was already racist, deliberately recruited additional racists. Go read his comment again. He states this as a fact and I dispute that fact.
---
I reproduce Harry: "and the Republicans, from within, deliberately abandoned their historical alliance with black voters because they thought they would pick up more white racists from the Democrats than they lost blacks."

He clearly recognizes the Republicans had a historical alliance, hence he is not necessarily saying they were "already racists".

As the Lincoln quote Bret posted above shows, it is quite clear that most of the White society of old times, Republican or Democrat, Abolitionist or not, were pretty racists for our present standards. What happened is that both parties evolved on their positions about the coloured man, and they did so in different ways.

So it is fair to say Democrats were more racists than Republicans then, or at least more inclined to abuse of their "superior position".

At some point much later on, this position was inverted, in the sense only that Democrats started to be more tolerant to color relations than Republicans, not necessarily due to Party practices and policies, but due to the people who made up their electorate.

This is what I meant when I said the parties changed roles, and you told me I was mistaken. I still do not see that I was mistaken. I am not American, only visited your country twice briefly and I know the Dems were the Jim Crow party and opressor for much time - so I do not think you are right about "plenty of people who think it was the GOP that ran the South" back then. If a foreigner knows better, what to say of your fellow countrymen?

---
You should also note that slave owning was not as prevelant as commonly portrayed, only about 20-25% of families owned any slaves at all. What, then, do you think those people thought worth rebellion?
---
The point is not how many owned slaves, but how much of their economy was dependent on them, and the number is certainly much higher than 25%. If you had no slave but you could have your business going broke with their liberation, wouldn't you feel as affected?

Looking on the angry brought by things so smaller in importance (like Health Care) today, it is truly easy to imagine those people going to war for the slavery business.

erp said...

I don't have views.

Clovis said...

Erp,

I understand, age does that with our eyes.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

Democrats started to be more tolerant to color relations than Republicans

And your evidence for that is, what? Eagar's personal history?

We still have the "deliberately recruited racists" claim, which I continue to dispute.

As for changing roles, the role we discussed for the Democratic Party was legal oppression of the Jim Crow sort. "Changed roles" in that context means the GOP became the party of legal oppression. You've now changed that to some sort of "tolerance" thing, which is quite different.

Whatever, it's pointless to discuss this if you're just going to redefine the context whenever it's convenient.

Clovis said...

AOG,

I am not redefining the context, it was just badly defined from the begin. We are only witnessing the writer's curse as defined by Bret above.

I did not want, at any moment, to imply the modern GOP is in any way comparable to the Dems of old South days.

As for evidence, well, let us take a simple one: to which party the Black population votes more today? At the very least it should tell you which party is seen as more tolerant to color relations.

Bret said...

Clovis wrote: "At the very least it should tell you which party is seen as more tolerant to color relations."

I'm not sure what you mean by "tolerant to color relations." The black vote tells me which party is perceived by blacks as providing more for blacks.

I don't doubt that Democrats are significantly more supportive than Republicans of the following:

1. Affirmative Action

2. Hiring quotas (so-called Equal Opportunity)

3. Various welfare programs

In (at least) the short-term, those programs benefit blacks, so it would easily be possible that blacks would vote Democrat even if Democrats were at least as racist as Republicans. The first two are sometimes referred to as responses to "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

On the one hand, you could say the above programs are because Democrats care more about blacks, but it could as easily be that Democrats are just buying votes.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

Eagar, as far as I can tell, thinks the modern GOP is effectively the same as the Democratic Party of that era, which is the claim I am arguing against.

I won't dispute that the GOP is portrayed by Old Media and other agit-prop in that way, but I consider that pure propaganda for political purposes.

Harry Eagar said...

Clovis, Guy is ignoring Nixon's 'Southern Strategy,' which was an explicit (and successful) attempt to get Southern white racists to leave the Democratic party (which was beginning to have success in leaving them, anyway) and join the Republicans.

The light went on in he '64 elections when Goldwater carried 5 states -- his own and the 4 most intransigent Old South bastions of racism.

(Guy also seems to have made a wilful misreading of my comment, where he reads 'more racists' as 'additional racists' rather than 'more racists gained than blacks lost,' which was the open strategy of the Southern Straegy (and he knows it)).

We also know that state rights was not worth a war to the South since it avoided war in 1832.

Guy again misleads by attributing the cause of the war to the North. It was the South that succeeded. It does not matter that the North had not, in 1861, proposed to end slavery. The South believed the Republicans would impose freedom (just as today, the rightwingers are certain Obama is out to impose socialism, without any evidence).

The South was not at all shy about its assessment of the future and had been worrying about the end of slavery for two generations, which is why it wanted to annex Cuba.

Among the evidences that the Secession was about slavery and not state rights is that the non-slave parts of the South formally or in practice seceded from the Confederacy.

These factions of Southern whites fought in extremely violent civil war within the Civil War, and it continued for years after the CSA collapsed.

My grandfather, at age 16, was still fighting nightriders. That was in 1876.

I saw the racists on my own family abandon the Democrats for the Republican party in the early '70s. Some of my uncles were Birchers.

erp said...

Among the evidences that the Secession was about slavery and not state rights is that the non-slave parts of the South formally or in practice seceded from the Confederacy.

Again, Harry makes our case for us. That statement makes the case for exact opposite conclusion. The rest of it well, it's vintage Harry.

I find it amusing that Harry, unconsciously, I'm sure, sees the likeness between Obama and Nixon who as the first socialist president, is the one Obama most closely resembles. He also tried to socialize health care, but he failed. I only wish I could hope Obama will fail as well, but I fear the worst.

Clovis said...

Bret,

---
On the one hand, you could say the above programs are because Democrats care more about blacks, but it could as easily be that Democrats are just buying votes.
---
I am generally against affirmative action too, Bret, but I do not share your cynicism towards people who support it. The ones I know of mostly do so out of ideology, not electoral calculus.

In fact, there is some degree of injustice here: both AOG and Harry agree, up above, the Dems lost votes when changed their position on race in the 60/70's. They paid a political price back then. Now, decades later, when it rewards then in elections, they are accused of buying up votes.


I can agree part of the black electorate may be voting due to self-interest in govt. benefits. But I also have the impression, from my far away location, that many of them also think the Reps. are not much "black-friendly".

I believe most people here in the blog genuinely believe their Libertarian positions against welfare. But I also think there are many out there not really so much against govt. spending, but in fact are not fond of helping out different people, people with whom they feel no sympathy because they are of Black or Latino origin.

And this is not the case only of America. One of the reasons many people, in Europe, are OK with their large welfare system is that they still see it as mostly benefiting "equals". It is easier to convince people to help out in more homogeneous societies.

Please, notice I am not saying this is all racism. It is only human, with our tribal tendencies.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

I'm not sure the Democratic Party really changed its views on race - it simply changed the polarity while continuing to view society through a racialist lens. It was the Democratic Party that fueled the rise of the race hustlers such as Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson who made their careers and brought in votes through deliberately stoking racial animosity. The modern Democratic Party depends, far more than the GOP, on racial strife. I don't see that as "change" from the first half of the last century.

As for buying votes, there is a large difference between abandoning racially discriminatory law and welfare spending. That makes your "changed position" term extremely vague and so I don't see the injustice you do.

As for the "Southern Strategy", that's rather debatable. Even from Eagar's own writing, one wonders what exactly was racist in Goldwater's appeal to the Deep South. That's the template used as one can see later in the rise of former President Reagan. One might also ask what rewards Nixon gave to the racists he recruited - what legislation, what executive orders? If none, then perhaps he wasn't recruiting racists from the South.

P.S. As for "more racists", I was just taking Eagar's claim of the GOP being under the control of racists as something he actually believed, rather than simply rhetoric. My mistake.

Harry Eagar said...

Bit I don't believe and never said the GOP was under he control of racists. It was always h paty of country club racists, but the party platform did not cater to them

The Democrats were largely under control of the racists, even though it was always the home of Americans who wanted expanded civil liberties for all. By the early '60s, they were beginning to chip away at the racist stranglehold on the South, ousting Judge Smith in a primary and electing Billy Spong to the Senate from Virginia, for example.

Nixon did not have to offer the racists new programs, only the hope of maintaining the old racist lines.

It was easy. They had nowhere else to go.

Clovis's remark about welfare 'for us' is exactly on point. Reagan (by all accounts In have seen not personally a racist the way Nixon was) ran a conscious racist campaign.

I don't know what Guy thinks he's proven by finding a race hustler like Jackson in the Democratic party.

Was Jackson ever appointed to a Cabinet position? Of course not.
Clovis, ask Guy about Earl Butz.

Then there's this (again):

http://www.startribune.com/politics/statelocal/229918171.html

Anonymous said...

Try here, although it's "right wing" instead of the GOP specifically.

"The old racist lines" ... such as?

As for Jackson, that's just demonstrating that the Democratic Party was recruiting racists as well, which makes one wonder what your point in all of this is. That political parties recruit unsavory people for votes? Wow, I'm shocked, shocked, that such things go on.

Harry Eagar said...

Old racist lines such as 'neighborhood schools'.

That, of course, was sold as minarchy, but everybody knew it was a lie, since before busing for integration none of the people bleating about neighborhood schools in 1972 had ever objected to busing black kids for 30 miles past white schools to get them into black schools.

Anonymous said...

Yes, clearly, the only motivation for such a thing is racism. I'll rest my case at this point.

Clovis said...

Harry,

I went to Wikipedia to read about this Earl Butz.

I guess, in the end, he was the Buttz of that joke :-)


Clovis said...

BTW, in a totally unrelated topic: I would like to ask Hey Skipper, after he comes back, what he has to say about this last shooting event in the LA airport. Given he works at airports, much better, since he can answer me:

For sure the guy targeted the airport because there would be no one with guns there, right? ;-)

Harry Eagar said...

Yes, clearly, but enlighten me. What other reason caused this 180-degree turn of political opinion?

Clovis, I have a name for what Butz did and the Tea Party keeps doing -- the Ace Parker Syndrome.

Parker was perhaps he most talented athlete ever to come out of the state of Virginia. In retirement, as a local celebrity he was in demand as an emcee at civic events.

One time he was invited to do he introductions and introduce the prayer for a luncheon of a big sports booster club. The club gave an annual award to a high school coach and that year (it was 1971) the winner was a black man.

Ace did not know or did not care, and he warmed up he crowd with a few of his famous coon jokes. A friend of mine (a news reporter) was in the room, and he saw what was coming. It was skin-crawlingly embarrassing, he said.

At the time, and still, I thought the incident was a good sign, though I cannot justify the anguish it caused the coach; because it showed, for some in the crowd, that they could be embarrassed by open racism. A few years before, they could not have been. A few years before, the club would never have picked a black for its award, either.

Guy wants me to find an openly racist plank in the TP program and thinks he's proved something if it isn't there. We are socialized differently now, and that's not how we signal our bigotry today.

We do it through jokes at gatherings of like-minded people, speeches at Bitburg and email blasts.

Clovis said...

Harry & AOG,


Usually I do not pay much attention to jokes and email blasts as evidence of racism - even if it counts, it is in a level where it needs to hide behind tricks, so it is relatively under control at least.

But I find it puzzling that not long ago a few of our friends here, AOG included, were indicting the Left as anti-Semitic, and when I asked for evidence, reference to jokes was the only thing presented.

Quoting AOG, I wonder if he could use the same standards when talking about color related racism and Jew related racism:

"One might also ask what rewards", the Left, "gave to the anti-Semitic", "what legislation, what executive orders?"

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

No, I posted a couple links with much more than that.

If you want rewards, for one I would go with international policies toward Israel. It is treated in many ways as a pariah nation for no reason other than to pander to judenhaas. Or, for instance, the public attention to hate crimes against Muslims vs. those again Jews, despite the latter being the more numerous targets. This is even worse in Europe.

erp said...

Actually, I was relating personal experiences with people I personally know and since I was, and still am, to a large degree surrounded by lefties and the preponderance of both racism and anti-Semitism and other irrational hatreds come from them and not my conservative friends and the lefties I've run into are apparently not unique as others have confirmed in comments here that they have had the same experiences, there is every reason to believe that my assessment is correct.

I am not reporting jokes nor email blasts (whatever that is), but what I have heard with my own two ears which are in perfect working order or read in their own words. Lefties arrogantly believe that everyone shares their hypocrisy and are quite open in their bloviating.

That is the truth whether it fits your preconceived picture of the non-left world or not.

erp said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
erp said...

Sorry, another duplicate comment.

Hey Skipper said...

[Harry:] Guy wants me to find an openly racist plank in the TP program and thinks he's proved something if it isn't there. We are socialized differently now, and that's not how we signal our bigotry today.

(It is worth mentioning that you routinely, if, perhaps, not always, either don't understand how to use the word "racism", or you do and go ahead and get it wrong anyway.)

Despite different socialization, that is exactly how you signal your bigotry, and your deep attraction to groupism. My word, BTW. It is the attitude, of which racism is one specific example, of attributing to individuals the putative characteristics of the group to which they putatively belong. For groupists, groupism works both ways. Not only does groupism tar the individual, it also uses any objectionable anecdotal individual action (regardless of its truthiness) to tar the group.

As a progressive, you are a collectivist, which is why you have a strong tendency to groupism. It kind of comes with the territory, because, for collectivists such as yourself, the individual is essentially meaningless. Well, unless some individual is required to slang a group, that is. Groupism substitutes for thinking, analysis, and reasoned argument.

But back to your comment. It makes sense, then in the space of a conjunction, falls to pieces. Yes, we are socialized differently now — for reasons too numerous to go into here, today most people cringe at jokes about certain ethnic groups. Blacks are completely off limits. Women mostly, unless they are blondes. Gays, too. Oh, and the Polacks, and Wops. I can probably get away with an Irish joke: "Do you know how to tell an Irish queer? He is the one who likes women more than drink."

But that is only because it is a joke about men and not about gays.

Where your statement falls flat on its face is stepping from observation to conclusion. It appears not to have occurred to you, groupist that you are, that one obvious reason people don't warm up the crowd with denigrating jokes about certain groups is what is embedded in your passive voice construction: for many, if not most people, familiarity has rendered groupist thinking nonsensical.

You presume, in the face of reality, that there is some property of the universe called "conservation of bigotry". It can't possibly be that there is less of it. Not only would that mean lectures from progressives on this subject are largely useless, it would also mean that collectivists would actually have to address an argument, rather than screaming "rascist" from the rooftops, as you emphatically did in the link above.

Worse, your assumption that conservation of bigotry exists allows groupists to force non-groupists to prove a negative every time individualists suggest, for example, that collectivist policies just might be doing more harm than good, or that less central and more local government might just be a good idea.

Against which, being the good collectivist that you are, your groupism leaps to the fore: Teahadist.

Know thyself by thine own actions, bigot.


[Clovis:] I would like to ask Hey Skipper, after he comes back, what he has to say about this last shooting event in the LA airport. Given he works at airports, much better, since he can answer me:

For sure the guy targeted the airport because there would be no one with guns there, right? ;-)


Well, for sure he targeted the airport because he was unhinged enough to want to kill some TSA employees, and that pretty much entails going to the airport.

It is worth noting how low the casualty count was — police officers were on the scene within a minute.

Of course, one way to deal with this is to allow TSA employees the same option pilots have: special training and currency requirements that would provide the opportunity for some of them to carry on the job.

Clovis said...

Hey Skipper,

Good to see you back. I hope you've got a tan good enough to make you stand out in your frozen Alaska.


But, on LAX, apparently the guy could have done a far worse carnage in the meantime, if he was not targeting only TSA people.

Anyway, my point was another one. I did say, some time ago, those crazies do not act by calculating where are the gunless people. To shoot TSA people in the airport is very close to enter a police station doing the same, which was your tentative counter-example. So now you have it.

I ought to have a beer for my win on this one, do you have any good micro-breweries in Alaska? :-)


Clovis said...

Erp,

Please, let me know one thing: do you actually know Leftwing people in person? (Taking aside your beloved Librarians)

I mean it, do you hang out and really talk to people who do not share your creed? You have such a stereotype of "socialists" that I ask myself how many do you actually know.

Harry Eagar said...

That was incoherent, Skipper. I don't consider 'collectivist' to be as slur (whether it in fact applies to me or not). Nor, I suppose, would hardly anybody. 'Commie,' yes, except when applied to an acual, you know, communist (if you can find one).

Nor have I said anything about whether net racism is up or down (hard to measure but legally enforced racism is way down).

But the TP does recognize that coon jokes are slurs -- at least according to mainstream social norms -- which is why the party keeps walking back its endless exposures that it uses coon jokes in the kitchen even if it doesn't in the parlor.

I'd be happy to argue that overall Americans are rather less racist than they used to be, but that the residue is concentrated in a few spots, like, very obviously, the Tea Party.

I don't think the original idea behind the TP was racist (just classist), but the fact is that, for traditional reasons, the suite of ideas that the TP pushed has been associated with antiblack racism. The TP drew racists like cowpies draw flies, and it made no effort (perhaps through naivete) to head them off.

You also need to reread your post and clean out the category errors, since collectivism and blondism are not comprehended in 'racism.'

Clovis said...

AOG,

Sorry but I do not think you answered my question at all.

For sake of objectiveness, let us talk about the Left you know better (the one in the USA) - now can you point to "rewards", "legislation" or "executive orders"?

erp said...

Clovis as I've said repeatedly and emphasized in my last comment, I have been surrounded by leftists all my life. I grew up in a working class area of NYC, went to Catholic grammar school, most of my friends were Jewish who came from very left wing families and then I spent the rest of my life in the halls of ivy where there were nothing but lefties as far as the eye can see.

I'll say it again. Everything you think you know, it wrong.

Anonymous said...

I think the European Left is much worse in this regard than the MAL. Our local leftists seem much more motivated by oikophobia than judenhaas (e.g., they like the Palestinians because they're anti-American, not because they're anti-Jewish).

The statistics on hate crimes were USA based, so that's one for the local variety. Or affirmative action, which hurts various ethnic groups but hits Jews the hardest (followed by Asians), although that's more about blacks than other groups. If you want some not quite policy things, here's one famous example by a pair of very influential MALists.

However, while I think the MAL has significantly more judenhaas than the general population, I don't see it as a defining characteristic for them. I'm not the one claiming the MAL has some recruitment strategy based on attracting such people, or ever has. I don't even think the Euro-Left does. I certainly do not claim the judenhaas "is concentrated in a few spots" such as the MAL.

Clovis said...

Erp,

You just did not answer my question, after all. Do you actually talk to Left-leaning people nowadays?

Clovis said...

AOG,

I will call from now on the Modern European Left as MEL - it happens to mean "honey" in Portuguese, im compliance with your MAL to also have a Portuguese meaning.

So, can you justify why the MEL is "s much worse in this regard than the MAL"?

I will remark that you keep failing, in my opinion, to show any demonstration owhatsoever of racism by the MAL. And I am only using your own standards, as yourself applied to Harry.

erp said...

Clovis, asked and answered, but I'll turn it around on you. Have you ever lived in a society with small government?

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

I've already posted much material which, as far as I can tell, you've just ignored. If you want a running account, try reading Harry's Place which is moderate to far left website based in the UK which discusses that point frequently. This might be a place to start. Or you could read The New York Times. But since you didn't address of my previous links, I can't imagine what kind of evidence you would actually want. I based my impression of the MEL on reading literally hundreds of articles like those over the last decade or so, articles written by those on the Left bemoaning this and providing specific examples.

But if you think I'm simply wrong on that, fine. Whatever. It's just my opinion and you can consider mistaken, I don't care enough about the point to make any further effort.

Harry Eagar said...

While I have little doubt that erp is well-supplied with racists in central Florida, since she considers Nixon to be a leftist, I am skeptical that all, or many, or perhaps even any are leftists.

I spend a couple of weeks each year in a retirement community inhabited largely by retirees from the University of Florida, and leftists are not common there.

Clovis said...

Erp,

I did not. Did you?


AOG,

My point is simply that none of your links point to rewards, legislation or executive orders.

erp said...

Yes Clovis, that's why I know it's much better than big brother government that followed it.

Harry, no leftists at your retirement community? Again, to quote the title of Richard Feynman's book, "Surely, your joking Mr. Eager," but in your world, there are no leftists, can't find a communist anywhere (except among Obama's advisers and it would be racist to mention them), etc. BTW - any conservatives among your fellow retirees?

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

Not true, international relations with Israel being the biggest one. The PR efforts to emphasize anti-Islamic hate crimes vs. anti-Jewish hate crimes. The slack enforcement against the latter. But whatever.

It did occur to me that if you want a USA example of the racism in the Democratic Party, go back and review the George Zimmerman / Trayvon Martin case. Zimmerman was persecuted for no reason other than than racism or pandering to it. You might note which one of the commentors here jumped right in on that to help...

Harry Eagar said...

No other reason? Racist stalking doesn't count?

PR efforts to downplay anti-Jewish hate crimes? Let's see some evidence for that.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] I did say, some time ago, those crazies do not act by calculating where are the gunless people. To shoot TSA people in the airport is very close to enter a police station doing the same, which was your tentative counter-example. So now you have it.

That homicidal maniacs do not always choose places where people are unarmed does not mean they always must.

Besides, there are two problems with your assertion. The first is that TSA security checkpoints are devoid of armed people. At the outset, there is no difference between and LAX security checkpoint and Sandy Hook elementary. As it happens, over the years since 9/11, the presence of armed officers has been greatly reduced. Until a couple days ago, the police contract with LAX was response within 5 minutes, which is just about par for a major police department.

Unfortunately for the shooter, police officers were much closer. But shooting up a TSA checkpoint is a far cry from doing the same in a police station.

So I don't think you win a beer on this one, but should you make it up to AK, I'll buy you all the beer you want in any event.

Hey Skipper said...

Harry:

I re-read my comment, and I'm pretty happy with it as it stands.

In that link, you accused Jason Richwine of being a racist, but in so doing proved you have no idea how to properly use the concept, nor any inclination to apologize for libeling the man.

I didn't use collectivist as a slur, but rather as a far more useful descriptor than either "Left" or "Right".

You said "… that's not how we signal our bigotry today." The clear implication is that we remain bigoted, but have gotten far better at hiding it. In other words, invisible racism. Therefore, you get to continue tarring those who fail to agree with Progressives' views of themselves with the racist brush, while having the enviable position of forcing your opposition with proving a negative.

Which you quite clearly did when you said "Guy wants me to find an openly racist plank in the TP program and thinks he's proved something if it isn't there." One way to interpret absence of evidence is that it is indeed evidence of absence. But since one sine qua non of collectivism is to demonize disagreement, that will never occur to you.

That's bad enough, but it is amazing how fast the shoe disappears into the memory hole when it shows up on the other foot. Remember the Gang of 88? As good an example of Progressive groupism as you are likely to find, their animus was every bit as bigoted as Ace Parker, with the added fun of a group of like-minded people using email blasts in the attempt to actually destroy people's lives. (here is what happens to Progressive bigots).

And this is nearly content free: "I'd be happy to argue that overall Americans are rather less racist than they used to be, but that the residue is concentrated in a few spots, like, very obviously, the Tea Party." Not only is it an extension from anecdote to rule, it completely ignores the rampant groupism on the left. How are racist comments by those defining themselves as members of the Tea Party worse than those who call them Teabaggers? Or the comments beyond number on collectivist web sites that attribute all manner of sub-human characteristics to that group of people who watch Fox News?

You also need to reread your post and clean out the category errors, since collectivism and blondism are not comprehended in 'racism.'

You need to re-read my post, and focus on this in particular: My invocation of the term "groupism" is as a description for a type of thinking, of which racism, religionism, sexism, blondism, nationalism, et al are specific instances. I said, and I think it is easily clear enough "[Groupism is the attribution] to individuals the putative characteristics of the group to which they putatively belong."

Collectivism is not an instance of groupism — I can't be blamed for your inability to take on board what I wrote. Racism, sexism, blondism, religionism are: (properly understood) they are instances of groupist thinking.

Every time you use terms like Teahadist, Teaconomics, etc, you are replacing argument with groupist insults — that makes you a bigot.

No other reason? Racist stalking doesn't count?

A charge for which there is precisely zero evidence. Just because collectivists needed it to be true doesn't make it true.

erp said...

Skipper, This may be the reason non-conservatives like groupism.:-)

Anonymous said...

Hey, can we bring up Al Sharpton, who used racist and judenhaas incitement to get people killed and as a result was a Democratic Party President candidate who was invited to address the convention? And, it turns out, was picked by Obama for outreach to Obama's black supporters?

Clovis said...

AOG,


I keep not agreeing you complied with your own standards of proof - and see that I am not discarding your links as irrelevant to anti-Semitic discussions, it is only that they do not constitute executive and legislative actions. But let us move on.

With regard to your Al Sharpton links, what does explain, in your view, this apparent tendency of some part of the Black population to have anti-semitic views? I believe this is something that only happens in the US.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

International relations are not executive or legislative actions? What are they, then? Government sponsored advertising isn't either? I have no idea what you think would count, if actual government action doesn't.

As for Al Sharpton, I have no idea of the basis for strong judenhaas attitudes in that part of the population. That is exists and is at least tolerated by the Democratic Party is hard to argue against.

P.S. I suppose the President embracing Sharpton and using him as a spokeman in an official capacity does nt count as an "executive action" either.

Peter said...

this apparent tendency of some part of the Black population to have anti-semitic views? I believe this is something that only happens in the US.

There is no shortage of other groups to carry that torch elsewhere. Are you just plucking the Eagle's feathers, Clovis? I don't think there is anything distinctly American about this, it's just that this sort of thing gets put under a global microscope when it happens in the States. After all, you are talking about a world power that invented a global television network for the express purpose of bringing its warts to every living room in the world.

This is the end result of the politics of victimhood. An absolutely fascinating illustration is going on as we speak in my little Canada. Next year, a museum of human rights will open in Winnipeg. Years in the making, it's the darling pet project of the beautiful people and their favourite oppressed minorities and will feature all the genocides and atrocities in modern history. A fun place to take the kids on a Saturday afternoon.

Anyway, instead of being a solemn place that unites us all in memory of history's victims, it's becoming more like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. You see, the groups are all squabbling and jockeying for position. The Ukrainians are mad because the Holocaust is overshadowing the Holodomor, which will apparently be featured near an out-of-the-way washroom. The Aremnians are at the end of this upbeat experience and are worried folks will be suffering from something called "genocide overload" when they get to their story. The aboriginals are mad the word "genocide" isn't being used to describe their history and the Palestinians are angry they are excluded and plan to build an exhibit on the grounds outside. Even some Jewish groups are protesting that the highlighting of their suffering everyone else is jealous of doesn't include the story of Israel's founding.

All of which resulted in the most brilliant description of postmodern identity politics I have ever heard from a local history professor “In a Darwinist zero-sum game, the highlighting of one group’s genocide is experienced as obscuring another’s,”

erp said...

Clovis:

A. The U.S. is not like any other country. We are a country of citizens from every other country in the world who came here to become Americans and enjoy the freedom and opportunity they would find here, so how the rest of the world behaves doesn't usually apply to us.


B. Many of the small shop keepers in the cities, possibly the only whites with whom ghetto dwellers had contact, were Jews. They perhaps felt resentment towards them because they represented white oppression or perhaps it's another case of biting the hand that feeds you.

It's doubtful that the southern negroes of Harry's experience shared the poverty pimps' disdain towards Jews who were in the forefront of the civil rights movement and still give unflinchingly, both of their time and treasure, and if you remember, the U.S. is the only country that had a civil war in which brother fought brother to end slavery*.

However, instead of trumpeting that amazing fact, non-conservatives** can't give up their trump card and continue to keep blacks who will stand still for it, in custodial care (the same reason countries in the M.E. kept "Palestinians" in camps) and bludgeon us and hold us up as racists when say enough already***.

*not the main reason, but I already covered that.
** aka lefties or h/t to, Skipper, groupists.
*** an expression which sounds best when said with a New York/Yiddish accent.

Harry Eagar said...

The social organizations of American blacks are largel Christian, Clovis. That explains the Jew-hatred.

They are no different from American white Christians in this respect, except that black churches are almost all conservative, while there are, proportionally, more liberal churches among whites (plus churches that reach out to mixed congregations, almost all liberal).

erp said...

Harry, that is utter rubbish. The Christian churches both black and white are among the strongest supporters of Israel and BTW, conservatives aren't anti-Semites as we already know, so your comment is uber utter rubbish.

Hey Skipper said...

The social organizations of American blacks are largely Christian, Clovis. That explains the Jew-hatred.

Check your tense, at least. As with similar issues, for a host of reasons, what once explained a particular instance of groupism no longer does.

I am old enough to remember white Christians thoughtlessly attributing to each Jew the putative characteristics of Jews.

They don't anymore. In the US, generally speaking, anti-Judaism has essentially vanished.

But speaking specifically, it remains prevalent among African-Americans. Why?

Stephen Pinker's latest book, "The Better Angels of our Nature" has one hypothesis (which is perhaps the primary reason collectivists reflexively hate Pinker): There is a strong correlation between the trend toward market relations increasingly dominating more societies, and the decrease in violence within those societies. Well, of course collectivists are going to hate this, because as we all know, the market commodifies humans and allows bosses to exploit workers. Double plus ungood.

Pinker's hypothesis for that correlation is that free-markets dramatically increase the worth of individuals to other individuals. Mass violence depends upon groupism: pitting one group against another. But groupism and markets are inherently contradictory. I can't get rich selling to those I have killed, and or even merely pissed off.

That bears upon the issue of residual anti-Judaism within the black community because they retain, and are encouraged to do so by collectivists, groupist thinking. (It extends beyond Jews, BTW. During the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, blacks targeted Korean shop keepers. As a side note, the Koreans armed themselves in self defense. Oppression comes in many guises.) Black urban communities are so cutoff from the surrounding society that they have yet to be fully involved in the wider free market economy.

So what once explained societal anti-Judaism — Christian animus — no longer serves; instead what remains is another symptom of the pathologies afflicting black communities.

Therefore, contrary to Harry's assertion, black Christians are a great deal different than white Christians in this respect. It is also noteworthy that the vast majority of anti-Judaism among whites remains within the realm of collectivists: academics.

Hey Skipper said...

[Peter:] There is no shortage of other groups to carry that [anti-Judaism] torch elsewhere.

Completely true, and totally baffling.

erp said...

Skipper that certainly confirms my experiences in academe.

Clovis said...

Peter,

---
There is no shortage of other groups to carry that torch elsewhere. Are you just plucking the Eagle's feathers, Clovis?
---
Not at all, it was a genuine question. Interestingly, I've got all sort of different answers, which means nobody knows.

I know, for example, that Blacks and Hispanics have a little problem between themselves too, mainly motivated by the former seeing the later as taking their jobs.

I did not imply there are no other groups with anti-Semitic views in other places. For example, down here it is not hard to see people with Arab background with some mild grudge against Jews, or vice versa. But this case hardly needs much explanation.


H. Skipper,

---
Therefore, contrary to Harry's assertion, black Christians are a great deal different than white Christians in this respect. It is also noteworthy that the vast majority of anti-Judaism among whites remains within the realm of collectivists: academics.
---

Oh yes, all those anti-Semitic academics. And who is being the groupist right now, H. Skipper?




AOG,

---
International relations are not executive or legislative actions? What are they, then? Government sponsored advertising isn't either? I have no idea what you think would count, if actual government action doesn't.
---
I have the idea of executive actions as orders signed by the President or its direct representatives.

You blame Obama for shaking hands with someone you see as anti-Semitic. But up above you were defying Harry to show any GOP racism for its association - e.g. shaking hands - with former South racists. It is you who demanded executive and legislative actions, I just followed your own demand - and concluded yet again that you have double standards, AOG. It is OK, most of
us do, but you were the one claiming superior control over your brain.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

I was using "executive action" in the broader sense of any action by the executive. You're thinking of an "executive order". It was about any government provided reward. Eagar's claim was precisely that such things were part of the "Southern strategy" and so I asked what those rewards were.

As for Obama and Sharpton, did you actually read what I wrote? It wasn't just a handshake, it was explicitly recruiting Sharpton to be a political representative of Obama. In contrast, Eagar's claim wasn't about even a handshake, but simply waving a flag at a rally, without any proof the person was a "former South racist".

The double standard here is yours, changing what was written to make Eagar's case better and mine worse to create a false equivalence.

Clovis said...

AOG,

---
The double standard here is yours, changing what was written to make Eagar's case better and mine worse to create a false equivalence.
---
That can hardly be double standard.

Maybe bad text interpretation (as you see it), or more impartiality by my side in giving weights to the arguments (as I see it).

Hey Skipper said...

Oh yes, all those anti-Semitic academics. And who is being the groupist right now, H. Skipper?

Like Harry, you don't understand the concept.

I made an an assertion, based upon my interpretation of the evidence: academics, by their myopic focus upon Israel's conduct and consequent drive to boycott Israeli academics, is a thin cloak over anti-Judaism.

I identified a group, and attributed to that group a type of behavior not found in other groups. (Now, you could certainly argue my assertion, but whether it is correct is, for this discussion, beside the point).

That, in and of itself is not groupist thinking. What would be groupism is if I then concluded that because this kind of behavior is more typical of the group identifiable as academics, that every member of that group practiced that behavior.

How about I try a different example.

Adult women have higher pitched voices than adult men.

Is that groupism?

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

Why can't it be a double standard? Beyond changing the evidence, you also have the false equivalence of our claims. That's different standards, not impartiality.

Clovis said...

H. Skipper,

The link you presented has the endorsement of exactly 937 US academics (assuming their list is true), and we do not even know how many of them are actually professors (I bet they are listing the students in the same list, to make numbers). That's negligible compared to the size of US Academia.

So your comparison with the prevalence of higher pitched voices among women - which must be 80% to 90% of them - is really misguided.

I do work in the academic world, and as far as I can tell you, it makes no sense to say it is anti-Semitic. By the contrary, there is a marked Jewish presence in so many fields and areas.

There is, of course, among the Humanities, a tradition of criticism towards Israel's human rights record, but to call it anti-Semitism is really to play very low. Please notice, for example, that even in this area (criticism towards Israel) there are many Jewish scholars among the most prominent academics. Do I need to mention Chomsky?


AOG,

I did not change evidence, only interpreted it under different definitons (e.g. what constitutes executive action). You may disagree with me, fine, but I am not being malicious.

Anonymous said...

what constitutes executive action

Um, I think you mean, "what constitutes a handshake" (either explicit recruitment for political activity, or waving a flag at a rally).

The executive action is a criteria, not evidence.

Clovis said...

AOG,

The comparison by Harry with the GOP was on its attraction, in the 70s, of former South racist Dems. It was at this point that you asked for executive or legislative action to prove his point.

If you think that Obama using Sharpton in political activities constitutes apology to racism, you can not deny Harry's argument.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] The link you presented has the endorsement of exactly 937 US academics (assuming their list is true), and we do not even know how many of them are actually professors (I bet they are listing the students in the same list, to make numbers). That's negligible compared to the size of US Academia.

The academics world's boycotts are not limited to a link I tossed into a comment. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycotts_of_Israel>This</a> is far more comprehensive. And damning. Worth noting is how much more pervasive the campaign is in Europe.

<i>So your comparison with the prevalence of higher pitched voices among women - which must be 80% to 90% of them - is really misguided. </i>

No, it isn't. As far as I know, academia is the main source, outside the Islamic world, of anti-Judaism actions. I am quite certain that most academics do not partake, but that is irrelevant. It is a fact that individual academics, as well as academic organizations, encourage boycotts of Israeli institutions and professors.

How else is one to discuss the phenomena without noting that academia constitutes a group that is particularly vociferous in this regard?

<i>There is, of course, among the Humanities, a tradition of criticism towards Israel's human rights record, but to call it anti-Semitism is really to play very low. </i>

The boycotts to which I refer, and the link describes in great length, profess to be against Israel's actions, not Judaism.

Perhaps.

That they are much less than evenhanded in applying their outrage to other far more deserving parties leaves a whiff of something rotten.

Anonymous said...

Um, no. Eagar specifically said "recruit". Scroll back and look. That's active, meaning a specific effort to attract racists. I asked what was used to create this attraction.

In contrast, I made no claims about any effort at recruitment, nor even a claim that the Democratic Party was more attractive to racists. Therefore I have no need to show how such recruitment or attraction was created. I claimed that such elements existed in the Democratic Party and provided evidence to demonstrate that.

If you think that Obama using Sharpton in political activities constitutes apology to racism, you can not deny Harry's argument.

Why? What solid, specific evidence of that kind did Eagar provide, in support of a far stronger claim?

If Eagar's claim was "there are racists in the GOP", then there would be an equivalence (although I wouldn't dispute such a claim). But his claims go far beyond that, and therefore (for an impartial observer) require far stronger proof. That treat these claims as equivalent is the double standard to which I refer.

Clovis said...

Skipper,


---
The boycotts to which I refer, and the link describes in great length, profess to be against Israel's actions, not Judaism. Perhaps. That they are much less than evenhanded in applying their outrage to other far more deserving parties leaves a whiff of something rotten.
---
Can you elaborate on this one?

If they are anti-Semitic, and their targeting of Israel is because it has lots of Jews, can you explain why their "persecution" does not apply to Jews outside Israel?

Look, I do not take part or agree with such academic embargo, and barely heard about it up to today, but I have no reasons to think their adherents have a hidden racist cause instead of the one they alledge.

I said it before here: this is the same unjustified playing of race card that a few here complain about with regard to Obama's supporters.

Hey Skipper said...

If they are anti-Semitic, and their targeting of Israel is because it has lots of Jews, can you explain why their "persecution" does not apply to Jews outside Israel?

I resist using the term anti-Semitic, because Semites include a lot more than just Jews and Israelis.

So let's call such boycotts anti-Israeli. But doing do begs a question: why Israel; or, more precisely, why just Israel?

Why not boycott those entities that have vowed to wipe Israel off the map? Why not boycott Iranian academics?

Sure, it is possible that the only animus motivating these academics is a pure and righteous moral stance against Israel's actions with respect to the Palestinians. But to my moral eye, their ire is far too limited for that to be the only explanation.

As for why their anti-Judaism isn't displayed against Jews outside Israel, one very plausible answer is that there isn't some overarching excuse to hang it on.

The most plausible counterargument here is that all these academics pushing these boycotts are too stupid, or analytically challenged, to follow where their own arguments must invariably lead.

Harry Eagar said...

Guy, I told you what the bait was: going slow on busing was a big one.

erp is fantaizing again. Skipper too. Christian Jew-hatred is alive. I quote from an announcement on the religion page of today's Maui News. (Note: I occasionally attend services and community fund-raisers at Jewish Congregation of Maui.)

"The Jewish Congregation of Maui will present a free film "'Unmasked Judeophobia -- the Threat to Civilization' 6 pm Sunday . . .

"The film is a 'meticulous examination of rising antiJewish ideology' and 'a call to action and urgent reminder that anti-Semitism is a menace not only to Jews but to the human condition itself . . . "

If anyone thinks antiSemitism is receding among American Christians, try working for a Jewish-owned small business, like I do.

Most of us were brought into contact through Orin, and you may recall that until a few years ago, he was crowing about how socially-conservative black believers would be reinforced by socially-conservative Latin immigrants to flood the Republican party with votes.

He wasn't wrong about their social attitudes, which included a big slug of Jew-disdain or worse, but funny thing is, they aren't voting Republican.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Eagar;

Ah yes, objecting to your child being moved from a good school (for which you paid quite a bit extra on your house to achieve) to a much worse school can only motivated by racism. That's the standard MAList technique, if you object to any of their social policies, you're a racist. Been there, heard that, not impressed.

I also notice, in your cite from the Maui News, no mention of Christians or ever Americans at all. As far as I can tell, it could be about Jews fleeing France.

Hey Skipper said...

Skipper too. Christian Jew-hatred is alive.

I never said it was dead. Rather, I quite specifically stated it has *generally* vanished.

That doesn't mean there exceptions, even recent ones.

But, as usual, you spread the tar around far too liberally.

Anti-Judaism is a phenomena as appalling as it is perplexing. Thankfully, far fewer people succumb to it.

Regardless of their religion.

Plus, what AOG said.

Hey Skipper said...

... there aren't exceptions ...

Clovis said...

H. Skipper,


---
Why not boycott those entities that have vowed to wipe Israel off the map? Why not boycott Iranian academics?
---
Well, maybe because they already are in a pretty harsh boycott, there is little more to be done on that one.

One can notice there is no analogue of Palestinians situation in Iran, also. Even the minorities who are persecuted in Iran have an easy life compared to them.


---
The most plausible counterargument here is that all these academics pushing these boycotts are too stupid, or analytically challenged, to follow where their own arguments must invariably lead.
---
Please count me among the stupid then, for I have no idea what you are talking about here.

Harry Eagar said...

They didn't object when black kids were bused past good schools to fet to bad schools; plus they organized it so that black parents who (in a few cases) could have afforded to uy near the white schools could not do so.

So, yes, it was racism.

You don't like it when I bring in personal experience, but it happens that I worked in an organization that was sharply divided between open racists and what qualified in those days as racial liberals (uni-race drinking fountains, for examples) when he busing panic broke.

Th racists make the argument you make.

It's worth mentioning another fact, too: those same neighborhood distributions were also maintained by legal disabilities imposed on Jews.

And a third fact. The people in the swell neighborhoods controlled the quality of the schools. If there were bad ones, they were responsible.

erp said...

Harry,

Please explain how the kids in those awful, bad, no-good schools learned -- even though they had second hand books, etc.! Motivated people learned to read by scratching in the dirt with a stick.

However, your world view is really dated. Move ahead 60+ years and answer my often asked, but never answered question: why are kids today better off than the kids going to those segregated schools and living in a supportive community with an intact family.

The kids living in ghettoes today are just as segregated, but now they are at risk from their neighbors (not rich white people in top hats) and their schools are among the most costly to operate in the world and yet they aren't learning and are virtually unemployable, not because of discrimination in the workplace or college admission offices. On the contrary, they are given preferential treatment everywhere.

This is a real poser? How about helping out an old lady and answer my question.

Anonymous said...

They didn't object when black kids were bused past good schools to fet to bad schools

I don't dispute that, but you keep claiming something "changed" and was "novel", but what I see is there was little concern about busing black kids and large concern about busing their own kids. What changed?

I would also note that because a racist likes policy A does not mean that the promoters of A are doing so to attract racists. That is the root of your error. This is no different than all the POR-care supporters who are now upset when it turns out they will have to pay for it. All I would not be surprised to read you arguing they're racists too.

It's also hard to reconcile this with a "Southern strategy" as the biggest protests were in Boston.

One also wonders whether the objectors were correct, as busing did little to nothing except make some kids worse off (just like POR-care...).

Of course, now that those cities are strongly Democratic Party aligned and not associated with the racist GOP and Tea Partiers, the plight of blacks in those school is much improved, as erp points out ... right?

P.S. It's not that I dislike your bringing in personal experience, it's that (1) you treat it as if it were more significant than any other evidence, including my person experience, and (2) your definitions are so different than mine that I simply don't believe word one of your claims of you detecting racism in others. So feel free to do so, I will simply consider them to have no evidential value.

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
This is a real poser? How about helping out an old lady and answer my question.
[question:] why are kids today better off than the kids going to those segregated schools [...]
---
I may help you on that one. These kids are better today because they are real citizens, with real same rights as other citizens. How about that?


erp said...

Clovis:

... but that's my point. They're not.

Clovis said...

Erp,

You talk about times when they could not enter some schools because of their skin color, and instead needed to go to far away schools, if even that option was available.

Now they do have schools nearby, and they hardly will be barred from entenring any place because of their skin color.

Do you really see no evolution here?

Harry Eagar said...

erp keeps saying black education was superior in the past, when few blacks made it out of high school, whereas today millions graduate from college. And are employed in responsible job throughout the country.

erp lives in a cocoon of fantasy but that is no excuse for you, Guy.

You makes the same error regarding busing. Several in fact. There were riots in Southie but that was hardly the largest opposition to busing.

How I know they were racists:

In Norfolk, where I worked, there were 3 high schools, all built about the same time.

Two, white schools (one named for the famous racist Maury), were well-maintained. Booker T. Washington High School was falling down.

A new school -- intended by the white power establishment to be all-black though that is not how it worked out -- was being planned but was about 3 years from completion when the water system in the gyms at BTWHS failed.

The white power establishment decided not to throw good money on a school to be abandoned and declared the students would just go without showers till the new school was built.

As for the reality of the 'Southern Strategy':

"(Faubus) won a third term by a record-breaking margin. Political leaders throughout the South got the message.

"The Republican Party eventually caught on as well. It launched Operation Dixie, designed to break the Democratic grip on the South. Philip Klinker and Rogers Smith summarize the spirit of the plan in a newspaper column written by Robert Novak. "A good many, perhaps a majority of the party's leaders envisioned substantial political gold to be mined in the racial crisis by becoming, in fact, though not in name, 'the White Man's Party.' 'Remember,' one astute party worker said quietly . . . 'this isn't South Africa. The white man outnumbers the Negro 9 to 1 in this country.' "

from James Morone, 'Hellfire Nation,' p. 421, quoting Klinker and Smith "The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America."

I was too young to be aware of Project Dixie when it began, but 'quietly' would not be accurate as to the Southern Strategy when Nixon intensified it 15 years later.

My Bircher uncles (who only turned noisy racists after making business trips to South Africa, where they were greatly taken by the fascist regime) used exactly that argument, and you could hear it everywhere.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Eagar;

I think you live in a cocoon of fantasy as well, one where apparently systems like the Chicago Public Schools systems are not massive failures. Explain to me how that, today, is any different from your anecdote (if not far worse - at least kids weren't being shot at BTWHS).

Harry Eagar said...

There was quite a lot of violence around BTWHS, some internal, some created by nightriding white racists. True, they weren't as well armed as today but that's merely a function of increasing wealth.

Watching 'west Side Story' -- over 50 years in the past now, so gang violence in city schools is not novel or the result of the Great Society -- is so quaint. I imagine youngsters are baffled by zip guns.

Going much further back, read London's "Cruise of The Dazzler" for a sample of school violence (and dropouts) back in what erp imagines was a golden age of frugal and effective education.

And for conditions several generations before that, Eggleston's "The Hoosier Schoolmaster."

erp said...

Harry I never said black education was superior or perfect because, of course, it wasn't. What I have asked repeatedly is why are kids better off now.

Clovis, there was no segregation anywhere but the deep south of Harry's, I believe, grossly exaggerated, memory. This issue, like the reasons for the southern secession, is a very complicated one made even more complicated by rewriting history and other media obscenities.

Harry Eagar said...

Clovis, there was segregation all over. erp is delusional. It was by law in the South, custom elsewhere.

erp, you have said many times that education among blacks was superior in the past to now, which is crazy talk.

erp said...

Harry, get someone to read my comments to you. I said kids learned in the formerly de jure segregated schools and now, multiple trillions of dollars later, their schools are still de facto segregated, but they're not learning anything, the schools are falling apart even though many of them have a startlingly high per student cost, ...

I won't repeat everything else I said because you can't comprehend anything that goes against your tunnel vision.

Short and sweet: things were bad in former times. Your solutions were enacted and tax payers tapped and now things are worse.

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
Clovis, there was no segregation anywhere but the deep south of Harry's [...]
---
Interesting.

Can you consult your memories, Erp, and tell me if Blacks were allowed to enter every place yourself were allowed in those times?

Don't you remember if in the end of 40's and begin of 50's - when I believe you were aware enough to keep many memories - there were places they were not allowed in NYC? Can you remember if your close relatives gave or not negative comments on Blacks once in a while? Can you remember how were they represented, if represented at all, in the girls magazines you were reading in those times?

I think you are hiding much, Erp. Maybe even from yourself.

erp said...

Clovis:

Negroes (the polite appellation of the time) were permitted everywhere open to the public. Please list the places in NYC where blacks were not allowed.

FYI, my eyesight, hearing, memory, etc. are still in fine working order.

This is a very big diverse country. Harry only "remembers" how it was in his very small part of it. You may believe as you wish.

Prior to the Second World War, neighborhoods in the large cities, but especially NYC, were made up almost entirely of ethnics. Queens, a borough of NYC, where I grew up had the Irish section, the Italian, Polish, Jewish, Negro, German, Chinese, assorted Slavs, Russians, Spanish, etc., but our small, by NY standards, but probably bigger than most southern towns, neighborhood being newly built after the war was already more diverse. We had a mixture of various people who were perhaps a bit more independent and adventurous so they didn't feel the need to be surrounded by people just like themselves. For instance our next door neighbors were on one side Orthodox Jews and on the other side Puerto Ricans. Mr. Mercer worked at a desk job in the city and Mr. Silva was a professor at Queens College, the local branch of CCNY.

There were no Negro families in blocks surrounding us, but there were Negro children at school and in the parks, Negroes at the movie theaters, shopping at local stores...

You wouldn't ask a question so offensive if you knew my father. He was one of the smartest most level-headed people I ever knew. No one would dare make a slur about another within his hearing and certainly not within that of my husband or me.

In the early part of the century, there were signs "No Irish Need Apply" and others similar kinds of things. As the children of the immigrants grew up and moved from working class to middle class and upper classes, they moved out of the old neighborhoods and the rest is history.

It was more difficult for Negroes to move from the lower working class into the middle class mainly because the unions and this included municipal jobs barred Negroes, so they were stuck in the lower paying servile kind of work that most new immigrants moved up and away from by the second generation.

Note: Democrats* were in control with very few exceptions of every aspect of city life for the past 100 years.

Children went to the local schools which were large enough to draw from many neighborhoods, hence there were kids from all kinds of backgrounds there. For instance, my high school had 7,000 students and offered diplomas in General Studies, Commercial, Academic, Technical and even, if you can believe it, Agriculture. There was a model farm not too far away from the area of the New York World's Fair where students studied modern farming methods. I'll bet it's still there.

I don't even know what you can possibly mean by girls magazines? Sometimes your comments are so bizarre I think you must really be Woody Allen funning with us.

Hiding from myself because ?????????

*Perhaps in Harry's world these were really Republicans who transmogrified themselves in Democrats reversing the process in the south.

Harry Eagar said...

More about how antisemitism is all over now and the MSM doesn't report it anyway:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/nyregion/swastikas-slurs-and-torment-in-towns-schools.html?hpw&rref=nyregion&pagewanted=all

Harry Eagar said...

Just speculatin', but my guess is that the WASPy denizens of Pinesap, New York, would quickly pass anti-Jew residency laws if only that nasty ol', big ol' national gummint would get out of their cotton-pickin' way.

Clovis said...

Erp,

First, I apologize if you understood I was talking about any particular member of your family. Please notice I did not imply, at any moment, you'd have any problem of memory, hearing or eyesight. What I've meant, with my comment about the end of 40's and begin of 50's, was that you were no longer too little to not remember or understand your society.

I fail to find specific mentions to forbidden public places for blacks in NYC of that period. They had restrictions on where to live, and on available jobs as you've noticed, and riots were commonly motivated by mistreatments:

http://www.uncoveringyonkers.com/harlem-race-riot-1943.html

Still, it looks like NYC was a front runner in passing anti-discrimination laws for public spots.

As far as I can see, by Googling around, NYC was much more the exception than the rule. Harry's experience is more true to the times than yours, for you grew up in a time when to be in a big city, and NYC being the mothership of them all, was truly a different experience.


erp said...

Clovis:

NY was the entry point for most immigrants, so naturally many stayed put at least on the short run. In those days, immigrants needed sponsors who took care of them while they adjusted to the changes. Different ethnicities had societies for this purpose.

As I've said before, we had friends and relatives all over NY, NJ, CT, MA, etc. and what I observed in those neighborhoods was very little different from what I saw at home.

There were no restrictions on where anyone could live. Job restrictions were inflicted by the New Deal types that Harry so esteems. I didn't bother with your link, but that was in the middle of the war and few people had the time or energy to engage in mistreating darkies, but there was a lot of agitation by Communist (note: the uppercase 'C') rabble rousers during the period between the wars, so perhaps that had something to do with it.

The military was a great eye-opener for many who had never been in close contact with others not from their own small town or ethnic neighborhood. They all soon found out that surface differences were of small import when you're fighting a war. The same thing started happening when Truman finally desegregated the military. IMO, that's when the left began to get very worried because without a base of downtrodden, they can't stay in power. Since they controlled the cities, they created a welfare culture and since then have made sure there will always be those who are dependent on handouts.

Against overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Harry et al. continue to sing the same old song and apparently you are a member of his club. You find no evidence of public places other than in the deep south where blacks were denied entrance and yet you continue to contend they existed if not in NY then elsewhere.

Suit yourself, but to repeat, everything you think you know about the U.S. is wrong.

Clovis said...

Erp,

If you bother to look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jim_Crow_law_examples_by_State

You'll see it was way more common than only a deep south thing.

Harry Eagar said...

The South was not a small part of the United States. It had one-quarter of the population.

The absence of sntidiscrimination laws in places like NYC did not mean blacks (or Jews, for that matter) could go anywhere. It was not so bad as the Jim Crow South but not so rosy as erp imagines.

erp said...

Pls. provide a list of public places that were closed to blacks and Jews.

Clovis said...

Erp,

I was thinking, and it does not look like you gave that description above (of negroes situation in your youth) from your real memories, Erp.

You were near 15 years old in 1950, right? So for example, how could you possibly know by that age that blacks had no jobs "because the unions and this included municipal jobs barred Negroes"?

It does not make sense, even more when we take in account you had met few blacks by then, since they lived far away from your neighborhood.

I think you are describing the times by your later years memory (and ideology), not with the eyes of then.

If you were describing it with the original memories, you would at least tell me how often you found any negroes in the same public spaces you frequented. Maybe you do not answer that in order to deny any possible discrimination of the times.

erp said...

Clovis:
You are so intent on proving the version of U.S. history you learned from the leftwing media and your leftwing professors, you are accusing me, who lived at the time, of misremembering -- at best or prevaricating -- at worst.

Believe what you will. You may continue to provide "proof" in the form of studies found on the internet and articles in the NYT, a source in which I have zero confidence. The facts remain as I stated them.

You cannot imagine what life was like before the left took over this country. It certainly wasn't what you imagine and to repeat, everything you think you know about the U.S. is wrong and I don't care to continue being called a liar by someone who knows nothing about a subject with which I am intimately acquainted, to wit, my life.

I was 16 in 1950 and was extremely well read and interested in politics even then. I also went about the city and surrounding areas and observed Negroes among other people going about their business on the streets, in stores, theaters, parks, museums, etc. There were no Negroes or Jews at services in our small Albanian Orthodox church, but they would have been welcomed at social events as were the many Albanian Moslem immigrants who were friends of my family.

Harry is going to provide us with a list of public places which barred Negroes and Jews other than those in the deep south.

I anxiously await that list.

Oh, and BTW, why are you so bent on proving me wrong? What is your interest in furthering the fantasies of leftwing ideologues like Harry?

Harry Eagar said...

OK, the piers on the west side of Manhattan. I wrote about that at RtO not long ago.

And here is the first, of thousands, of hits for a search for "antiJewish real estate covenants"

http://www.jhsgw.org/exhibitions/online/jewishwashington/exhibition/restrictions

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
Oh, and BTW, why are you so bent on proving me wrong? What is your interest in furthering the fantasies of leftwing ideologues like Harry?
---

You misinterpret me. I am not bent on proving you have a bad memory - your memory looks wonderful - I am just being provocative enough to get the best of it.

It was uncommon, you may agree, for a 16 years old girl in those times to have much knowledge of local politics and that kind of social matters. I am just stating the standard portray I get about girls of those times in books and movies, but maybe I am wrong about that too. Of course, there were exceptions and you may well be one.

Do you remember how came you to learn about unions barring blacks, back then?

And where were you learning about politics and so on by then? Was this a common topic within your friends of same age, or was it more like talk with adults?



Harry Eagar said...

Let's see. Was there a very famous place in Manhattan, a place where black people would have liked to go, that black people were banned from?

Why, yes, yes there was. The Cotton Club in Harlem.

Harry Eagar said...

Let's see. Was there an example of a famous, talented black man who was prevented by his color from living in a nice apartment on the Upper West Side? Was this in the papers repeatedly for months? Why doesn't erp know about this?

Why, yes, yes, there was.

Bobby Short

Then there's this:

http://www.news4jax.com/news/georgia-news/camden-co-sheriff-suspends-deputy-over-blackface-costume/-/475792/22950784/-/ian3ue/-/index.html

With classic comment:

"I don't see any racism," said Shawnessy Roberts.

Roberts said she's not a racist person so she wouldn't even think of the picture as being racist.

erp said...

Again, you make my point for me.

I asked for a list of public places where blacks and Jews were denied entrance. The building Short wanted to buy into was privately owned and IIRC it was because of his occupation, not his color that he was denied. The Cotton Club was a very tony private club during the prohibition era and I very much doubt that a person like myself whose skin is flawlessly white could have gained entrance either, but I'd bet Jewish celebrity types were welcomed.

If this is the best you can do, maybe you should just give it up.

Harry Eagar said...

The Cotton Club was not private, it was just a saloon.

And nobody believes Short's job -- piano player -- had anything to do with his exclusion.

I can provide more examples. My uncle -- not one of the Birchers, this was was an Irish-American racist from the North -- made his millions in Palos Park on the south fringe of Chicago. He could have made many more millions by expanding into Chicago itself, but that would have meant hiring black people, and that he refused to do.

Even Guy remembers the extremely violent and long-lasting riots against black schoolchildren in Boston.

We have endless testimonies of antisemitism among Catholics, starting at the highest levels of the clergy and running right down to the daily Mass-attenders in the parishes.

Anonymous said...

Even Guy remembers the extremely violent and long-lasting riots against black schoolchildren in Boston.

Wrong again. I noted the riots about busing but, as far as I can tell, there were black school children in Boston for years without any riots about them.

Clovis said...

Erp,

It is interesting that, facing Harry's examples, suddenly you need to tweak the definition of "open to the public". Your original phrase was "Negroes (the polite appellation of the time) were permitted everywhere open to the public", which very much should include Harry's examples.

Either your memory is not that good or, as I suspected, you were hiding some.

Clovis said...

Sloppy of my part: the club example is a usually "open to the public" facility, the apartment example is not.

erp said...

I tweaked nothing.

Open to the public, click on my link above defining what public means, to find out that apartments, other than public housing, are not public. Some entity owns them.

BTW - After I commented on Bobby Short above, I remembered that a similar thing happened to Judy Garland who, if you don't know her, is very white bread. The patricians who own the building didn't want entertainment types who might have loud parties and loud music in their midst ... and who could blame them.

BTW 2 - I also remembered that the Cotton Club was rumored to be owned by those same Negro entertainers who played at the club. They staged it that way so the rich and beautiful could pretend to be slumming while not actually rubbing elbows with the denizens of the slums.

BTW 3 - I explained that prior to Bertram Powers destroying the newspaper industry, there were five or six dailies in NYC. Some of them didn't follow the party line, so people who wanted to find out what the left was doing, could "read all about." I took them up on it.

Harry Eagar said...

Jew-hatred is dead today for sure:

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/hagee-jews-will-make-end-times-deal-antichrist-911-was-gods-judgment

The Republicans lick this guy's shoes.

Harry Eagar said...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/14/rainbow-flag-offensive-confederate_n_4273886.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

Harry Eagar said...

Who waves that flag? One answer:

https://socialreader.com/me/content/lVoQ1?chid=5707&_p=trending&utm_source=wp&utm_medium=Widgets&utm_campaign=wpsrTrendingExternal-1-opt

Compare with Sean Wilentz' 'Chants Democratic' looking at the 19th c.:

https://www.mauinews.com/page/blogs.detail/display/2639/American-Opinion.html

This is about the creative half of the creative destruction meme.

Harry Eagar said...

BTW, your 'explanation' doesn't explain why the premiums went up. Believe it or not, insurors base their charges on experience, so adding maternity benefits for people who are not going to use them costs nobody anything.

Now, I agree that, say, adding mental health benefits probably will (and should) result in more use and higher costs and higher premiums; and I can imagine that some people will say, they don't like having that coverage; but unlike maternity coverage, it's unlikely they can be confident they don't need it.

I do find it surprising that someone as smart as you are would jump on maternity benefits, just like all the Fox-clones do. It's as if you are reading from talking points rather than thinking about it.

Anonymous said...

As part of the ACA, insurance companies are not permitted for new policies to do that kind of pricing discrimination.

I do not find it surprising that someone as impervious to facts as you picked out the tiniest point I made and treated it as my entire argument, or that you were unaware the point in my previous paragraph. I think we can see who's really just reading talking points.

Harry Eagar said...

What racism?

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/21/v-fullstory/3769823/in-miami-gardens-store-video-catches.html

Anonymous said...

"My talking point failed, so let's switch to racism! Squirrel!"

Anyway, you should show that to someone who claims racism doesn't exist, which isn't anyone here.

Harry Eagar said...

Claims it doesn't exist (in important degree) in Tea Party nation. Some would disagree:

'You almost might get the impression that there are a lot of people in Republican politics who aren’t entirely on board with the whole outreach thing. Surely, though, these are just isolated examples, and this is the last we’ll hear of this sort of thing.'

Read more at http://wonkette.com/535661/scott-walker-would-be-racially-transcendent-except-for-those-meddling-racist-aides#CogeU8TOT0K7XyZ2.99

Anonymous said...

I actually read your cite, despite the source, and it as usual has zero support for your claim. Do you actually read this stuff you cite, or is it just links you copy off your talking points list?

Harry Eagar said...

Zero support? I guess you don't buy my ideas about the significance of blasts.

Just a few jocular remarks among us boys, eh? Noting serious. All in fun.

I've heard that before.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Eagar;

Let me quote myself,

you should show that to someone who claims racism doesn't exist

So, where in that cite is there someone who claims racism doesn't exist?

Harry Eagar said...

A strange target. The question is whether the policy of the Republican party generally and especially of its TP wing is racist. I think it's been shown conclusively that it is, contra claims that it isn't.

The issue, in that link, is that the racism existed and was tolerated until exposed. That's certainly a different sort of racism from the pride of the Bilbos, but times change. People don't like to admit -- to outsiders anyway -- that their country clubs etc. have racist rules, but they have them all the same.

It used to be point of pride to proclaim it.

Anonymous said...

You believe what you have to believe, we know the liberal project really has nothing else left but demonization. But that's OK because it's not racist. Mostly. Until you have to talk about "white people". Or excuse juden-haas.

erp said...

You know, I never used to believe in time-travel, but Harry's obviously living in a time when all the white people lived in 'swell' neighborhoods, whipped the darkies who worked for them if not as actual slaves, for slave wages ...

Of course, very little of it was as he mis-remembers it, but as our next presidentrix says, what difference does that make now?