Maybe he can swear in on a copy of Maxim.
What is wrong with people like Prager? What part of 'no religious test' does he not understand? I am so confused and worried by people who blather about patriotism without the most elementary vestiges of knowledge about our principles of government.
Oh, that's all obvious. It's scary seeing them crawl out from under their rocks, though.
What is wrong with people like Prager?
They are Judeo-Christian fascists.
Perhaps the finest line in Prager's article: "Imagine a racist elected to Congress." Yeah, just imagine! Kind of a stretch I know.
That said, yay Eugene Volokh! His article is all stuff I was wanting to say but did not have the chops for.
Yglesias has an update noting that the house doesn't swear-in on a religious book. I guess American civilization is dead.
(Did anyone else grow up singing that Quaker hymn about George Fox? It includes the lines, "Will you swear on the Bible? I will not, said he,/ For the truth is as holy as the book to me.")
Walk in the Light. Another hymn I like: The Lord of the Dance.
They swear on a book in a private ceremony afterwards, for photo op purposes. But yes, they whole thing is a big wankfest. I sometimes wonder if there's collusion between pundits, where Prager, Beck, etc. writes/says something stupid, thus providing 20 people easy material for a post/column, and they get a kickback from the responders for providing such a simple target.
They are Judeo-Christian fascists.
I think this is right in this case: there really are people who want this to be an explicitly and de jure Christian country.
Volokh says most of what needs to be said about this from a Constitutional point of view, and politely
This makes no sense. The only things that need to be said about this are impolite.
There are also a whole shitload of pundits who have locked themselves into ridiculously theocratic positions out of outrage brinksmanship.
there really are people who want this to be an explicitly and de jure Christian country.
This is why we wage the war on Christmas! We finally got Rudolph the other day.
All my binding oaths are taken with my hand on Mrs. Dalloway.
Prager is a seriously nasty piece of work who, in a just world, would get kicked in the nuts every time he opened his mouth.
Who gives a fuck what Dennis Prager thinks? I've read a lot of articles on Townhall.com, and have never encountered even the slightest shred of intelligent thought. So I stopped reading.
If someone isn't even willing to put forward an intelligent argument that makes a good faith effort to meet the merits of their opposition's ideas, they're really not worth engaging. Skewering his argument all day long does no good, because he's not actually arguing with you -- he's just making noises that sound good to his fringe fans (who are also not interested in arguing with you).
Who gives a fuck what Dennis Prager thinks?
A lot more people than you realize, amigo. That's the problem.
18: You, sir, are a liberal and that's why we never get anywhere. Flip it around and ask why anyone should care about what Ward Churchill thinks. Then think about the ratio of people who have ever read anything Churchill ever wrote approvingly to people who read Prager, and remember how much political mileage the right has gotten over fainting with horror at Churchill.
This is scary, messed up stuff. Prager writes it, lots of people read it. Everyone who's anywhere right of center should be placed in a position where they feel it incumbent on themselves to say either that they absolutely disagree, or that they're insane.
Volokh says most of what needs to be said about this from a Constitutional point of view, and politely
Yes, I couldn't quite put my finger on what was wrong with Volokh's article but there it is. Polite discussion of Prager's article from a Constitutional viewpoint is like polite discussion with a skinhead about empirical evidence on the greediness of Jews.
17: Seems feasible. Since his head is firmly up his ass, and he can't open his mouth without sticking his foot in it, it seems that the problem is that his testicles ascend every time he sees a swarthy-looking person.
23 is what I was trying to get at with 18.
People like Prager simply don't deserve a national voice.
25-- So what would you do, censor his column? Free speech opponent!
26: No, no, you have to let them publish the columns. Otherwise you won't know who needs to get the shit kicked out of them.
In defense of Volokh, I think it's important to note that there are two very different things wrong with Prager's nonsense: first, the anti-Islamic, anti-not-us craziness, for which the right response is ridicule or a headkick. Second, though, is the obvious Constitutional and historical ignorance, and there's something to be said for the polite but thorough takedown.
Ok, now I've got 8's lyrics in my head to the tune of "The First Lord's Song" from HMS Pinafore. ("I polished up that handle so careful-ly/ That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Na-vy," etc.) Crap.
No, but you shoudln't take him seriously. It's legitimates him. And makes his vioce part of our national political debate.
And, to be clear, it's not his substantive position that's I'm opposed to (or rather I'm opposed to that, but that's beside the point): it's the fact that he's not even engaging in reasoned discourse. He's just pretending, and not even doing that convincingly.
And to clarify 18, I've read (and found no intelligence in) a lot of townhall columns generally, not necessarily Prager.
28 -- Yeah, I'm having trouble because I am hearing the lyrics of "Walk in the Light" with the melody of "The Lord of the Dance", which does not quite fit.
29 to 26.
This is a tired debate, though, and feels very pre-November. Don't we control the levers of power now? We should just waterboard him.
Yes, I couldn't quite put my finger on what was wrong with Volokh's article but there it is. Polite discussion of Prager's article from a Constitutional viewpoint is like polite discussion with a skinhead about empirical evidence on the greediness of Jews.
That's pretty much what's wrong with Volokh's entire site. Just before the midterms, one of the Conspiracy, a Virginia voter, asked, almost in so many words, "so leaving aside the charges of racism, because I don't want to get into any heated debate, is there any reason I shouldn't vote for Allen?"
32: Great hymn, though. Quakers'd be ok if they just got better haircuts.
The link in 31 still treats this whole thing far too seriously.
34 -- Note that this article was not on Volokh's site but on National Review, of which many criticisms can be made but "too polite" is not one of them.
I agree that he oughtn't have a national voice, but he has a huge audience for his radio program, at least one #1 bestselling book, and is CONSTANTLY on this or that news channel. It's easy for you in your east coast big city or me in my Southern liberal enclave to say, "Oh, just don't pay attention to him." But way more people are paying attention to him than the threshhold number for him to be a threat.
35 -- Yeah. I like "With your old leather breeches and your shaggy, shaggy locks." I would like to see George Fox on the Sartorialist.
And my point is that he will continue to CONSTANTLY be on this or that news channel as long as there are people willing to argue with him as if his views were worth engaging.
What I am trying to say, I think, is that most or perhaps all registered republicans will have to be killed. We have no other choice.
Speaking of ritual denunciations, I was thinking a couple of days ago that our country would be better off if, during Presidential debates, candidates were asked to explain in detail what their view of the mistakes and fatal decisions of Vietnam were. And for the next half-century, they should be asked about the mistakes and fatal decisions in re: Iraq. The press has a positive responsibility to skewer vague answers.
This is becoming a pet peeve. From the Americablog post:
But there's another issue here as well. If it were required to have our members of Congress swear an oath to God (and it's not), why would we want to let some members of Congress off the hook by letting them swear to someone who isn't their God - i.e., letting them do the religious equivalent of crossing their fingers behind their back? The Christian members of Congress who swear to the Bible are bound to their God to do what they swore to do, but the Muslim members would have sworn allegiance to a book and a God who isn't their Supreme Giver of Justice, so, in addition to bearing false witness, such Muslim members would owe our God no allegiance and would be bound to no supreme being, pretty much letting them off the hook.
According to Islam it's the same God. Allah is not some cross-town rival of Yaweh/Jehovah/whover; He is the same entity, who the Jews and Christians have misunderstood. That's why the Jews and Christians are "people of the book" or "people of the earlier revelations." (This is another reason why "Judeo-Christian" grates.)
the threshhold number for him to be a threat
That is to say, go read David Neiwert on how fascist ideology is transmitted and absorbed in this country, and understand exactly what it is that Prager is doing here, and how effectively he is doing it.
I've a tendency to shun and look away from this stuff, so that the fact you can hear opinions like this, not from some guy waiting to have his truck loaded but from a national media personality always takes me by surprise.
Some Perlstein of the future will, in forty years, exhibit the things widely broadcast now, and such as I am will not be able to bend his mind around it despite having lived through it.
I'm being humorless again, but we can't kill them. Polite is bad (that is, yay for Volokh in this limited context, but he misses the basic unacceptablity of it all -- reading Volokh you'd come out of it thinking Prager had made an error, rather than stark craziness). But dismissive hostility is also bad, because it feeds into their narrative about the irrationally angry Left. I don't think there's a better solution than rational hostility -- Volokh's article with the conclusion "And this is why Prager is a manaical swine that no one should ever listen to."
39: "I love the way George Fox gets the details right. Look at the way the scuffed leather breeches bring out the highlights in those shaggy, shaggy locks. It's so inspiring."
46 gets it exactly right.
I'm being humorless again, but we can't kill them.
Not with that attitude, we can't. With that attitude, we can't even convince them that they might be happier elsewhere. Rational hostility strikes me as the worst of all possible worlds--it implies that there is some possibility of reasoning with the Other, and that's just not true. A lot of the time, they're really, really not being disingenuous. They're saying what they truly believe.
Right. And so you make it about why what they believe is wrong, and they're loathsome for it. "No, this isn't tribalism. It's not about your accent, or your chosen pastimes or historical interests. It's because you said X, and X is wrong for rational reasons A, B, and C, and is a filthy horrible thing to say besides."
45- LB, I wasn't really serious about killing them.
I wasn't trying to imply that one should't use rational hostility to thump the idioy of anyone you know you agrees with this, or expresses similar opinions. I think I was actually just reacting to this as a post, here, on unfogged (and at Sausagely's, and at Americablog, etc.). I know there's a thorough vetting process in place to ensure that only the most pressing issues of our day make it to the front page here at unfogged, and that somelike like this was thought worthy of unprovoked denunciation gives it too much credit IMO. One should have the working assumption that no one in his or her right mind would buy into such drivel, and only bother to mention it or point out that it is, in fact, senseless drivel, when faced with someone who actually does buy into it. Giving it more attention that that legitimates it in ways that serve to perpetuate it.
There's no reason we have to settle on one approach; there are many audiences, levels and timeframes. Volokh's response is valuable, as is Americablog's.
51 may be the most typoed paragraph in history.
51: I know you weren't serious, I just think you were wrong. Should we ignore Rush Limbaugh because he's contemptible? Or should we make him embarrassing to listen to by publicizing what a shithead he is?
If this stuff isn't answered, it festers, and people believe that it's not disgusting to believe stuff like this.
One should have the working assumption that no one in his or her right mind would buy into such drivel
One could have that working assumption, but it would either be incorrect, or require the corollary assumption that something like 1/3 of the country is not in its right mind. Try here.
I think Clownae and I are just going to sit here silently until the spirit moves us to speak.
From Apo's link in 57 (just one example, not particularly crazy but pretty much par):
I'd like to see this go to the Supreme Court. Jefferson and Adams, if alive today, would declare Islam unconstitutional.
I'm willing to accept that something like 1/3 of the country is not in its right mind. I don't mean that in the sense of psychological mental illness, but their political perspectives are so divorced from reality as to be nonsensical.
I don't think treating Prager as an insightful political thinker worthy of debate helps remedy this.
"No, this isn't tribalism. It's not about your accent, or your chosen pastimes or historical interests. It's because you said X, and X is wrong for rational reasons A, B, and C, and is a filthy horrible thing to say besides."
I think I strongly disagree with this. It should be tribal; people use tribal because it works. My great fear is that we'll get fucked because we're unwilling to pick up the bat and swing because we don't want others to think we're bad people. I'm not saying normally illegitimate attacks are the only way to go, or shouldn't be proscribed in most times or in most cases. I'm not even saying that there might not be times where we take a loss rather than commit certain sins. But, Jeebus, when are we going to learn to fight?
What's really numbingly silly about this whole debate is that when I was a genuine religious nutter and was willing to argue (in Berkeley!) that theocracy was the most rational political system, I would have refused to take an oath on the Bible out of Christian principle. Like John Adams did.
All my worldly possessions to Keith Ellison if he takes the oath and then says, "By the power of Greyskull...I have the power!"
Then a time traveller appeared, and he said, "you guys had a chance to win the Long War until the very end of '06. That's when Unfogged commenters refused to hit Dennis Prager with a baseball bat, and it all went downhill from there."
It should be tribal; people use tribal because it works.
The thing is, we get creamed on 'tribal', and I don't think it's because we aren't fighting on those grounds. On 'tribal', we're pointy-headed latte-sipping East Coast smartypants intellectuals who think they're better than regular folks, and that's not a winning position. The best we can do on 'tribal' is to sell ourselves as members of the same tribe as the rest of the country -- to take tribalism out of the equation.
No one's ever going to love you or me for being an overeducated coastal atheist professional, and any argument I make based on my identity as such is a loser.
No one's ever going to love you or me for being an overeducated coastal atheist professional
Aw LB, I love you on exactly those grounds.
(well, and also the earnestness.)
The problem seems to be that Dennis Prager is invited on TV to talk about his lunatic ideas. I would never get invited on TV if I claimed something obviously false about the Constitution, like that it forbids taxation or something. It's not the strength of Prager's Constitutional argument that gets him on TV, it's the popularity of his bigoted premise. Rebutting his ludicrous Constitutional 'argument' (or lack thereof) seems to be a way to bolster the premise as something worth arguing about by a Serious Constitutional Scholar, when it plainly is not.
I only know four things about Keith Ellison: he's black, Muslim, a Democrat, and from Minnesota. But the fact that he has gotten the freepers in such a frothing fury makes him just about my favorite person in the House. This will maintain even if I find out he subsists exclusively on puppy blood and baby entrails.
No one's ever going to love you or me for being an overeducated coastal atheist professional, and any argument I make based on my identity as such is a loser.
True, but your proposed argument in 50 sounds like the sort of thing only a person like that would say, so it's not like you can hide that identity. I don't see an easy solution here.
I would never get invited on TV if I claimed something obviously false about the Constitution, like that it forbids taxation or something.
Don't be so sure. Now, if you were to say it required taxation...
This is also why I disagree with Labs in 28. The Constitutional ignorance is nothing worth discussing; it's just a Trojan horse for the first issue, the bigotry against non-Christians. If we're going to talk about it, let's talk about it as bigotry or bias or fear, because that's all it is. Eugene Volokh should not have any reason to talk about this issue on TV. The fact that he does only dignifies the issue.
even if I find out he subsists exclusively on puppy blood and baby entrails.
See, Apo, I think this is what the Republicans are pissed about -- that he's a Muslim.
69- oh, come on, Apo. We all know "even" s/b "especially".
70: It's not that it's easy -- I'm not proposing pretending not to be a latte-sipping whatever (although actually I'm too cheap to buy coffee. I drink office coffee) -- but that if we make the argument about whose tribe is better, we lose. If we make it about who is right, we can win.
No one's ever going to love you or me for being an overeducated coastal atheist professional, and any argument I make based on my identity as such is a loser.
Except that many of the people making tribal arguments for the other side are also overeducated coastal professionals. One of the things I really, really like about Edwards is that in the closing weeks of the '04 campaign he made some off-hand comment regarding toughness in which he noted that he'd played football and Bush had been a cheerleader. Not so hard. We cannot win if our response to Swift Boating is, "That's not accurate, and therefore it's vile." We have to say, "How seriously are we supposed to take criticism from a drunk draft-dodger and "Magic Baby Cheney"?"
66 gets it right. But everyone doesn't have to go about things the same way, you know. But us pointy-heads have our place, just as those more gifted in the arts of demagoguery have theirs. There's been a noticeable decline in support for Republicans among the pointy-headed class, which while not enough, is still worthwhile, and I think at least partially due to people like Volokh saying things like "Nixon swore on two Bibles. It didn't seem to help."
I think it would really help matters if people would specify who exactly they're targetting with these proposed arguments.
76.--You mean like when NYC-born-and-bred K-Lo speaks on behalf of the heartland's oppression at the hands of the coastal elite?
75: It's America. Tribal definitions are fluid. Better to define your tribe as broadly as possible, than to fall back on being right.
73: Yes, obviously.
76: Yes, exactly. "That's a stupid fucking thing to say and only a goddamned idiot would say it in public" is a perfectly good response to Prager.
Okay, but that's not tribalism, that's debunking phony tribalism. There's a difference between 'Give me a break with the tough-guy bullshit, Mr. Prep-School' and 'Listen to me because I'm a sophisticated New Yorker whose better educated and generally better than you.' The latter is the only tribal appeal I can make, and I recognize that it's not an appealing one.
I am crippled with shame by the 'whose better educated than you'. I'm going to go drink some free coffee now.
84: Maybe "tribalism" is the wrong word. When people are nervous about force, they trust people who are forceful. This often means that they trust bullies. The way in which we communicate the content--in a fairly bullying style--is at least as important as the content. In a country as rich and powerful as the US, as inured to any real risk as ours, being right is of secondary importance, especially since "right" is often contingent and difficult to demonstrate.
86: Oh, that's what I've been calling hostility. Yeah, I'm all about the hostility (or have been trying to learn it from Sensei Emerson). I just think it's tactically important to keep the rational arguments in there so as to keep the argument about who's right, rather than who's a Real Ammurican. (Dsquared and Emerson both do this well: "You're wrong because of these four well reasoned arguments, and you're also an ugly stupid bastard with no friends.")
Minneapolitan apparently isn't here today, but I'm just reminding you crackers that it's not effete bicoastal elitists who have the guts to elect black Muslims to Congress.
88 -- In my mind, I'm gone to Minnesota.
Almost heaven, Minnesota...
No mountains, lots of lilttle rivers.
Something something, painted on the sky,
Misty taste of sugar beets, teardrop in my eye.
John Denver wins. (As always.)
Hell, I think I agree with LB on something. I think that the right to say STFU to Prager et al has to be earned, and that it's earned by making judicious use of, say, the facts Volokh cites.
I think that the right to say STFU to Prager et al has to be earned
Why? Or maybe, earned by whose judgment? And why must the justification be included in the response?
93: You mean you've been disagreeing with me on other things? I'm saddened, and hurt. A real man who watched NASCAR would never be mean to a lady like that.
95: Maybe you should try holding your end up more often.
My big problem with 93 is that I don't think Prager's argument deserves to be treated as a point of legal debate. It's certainly not an argument that's intended to be intellectually persuasive; it's an appeal to the lizard brain: "Yeah, I hate those Muslims too!" To deploy facts against the argument is simply to give it an audience. What's worse, the lizard-brean appeal is not affected by the arguments Volokh deploys: "OK, well, I still feel like we shouldn't let Muslims in Congress." Do you think Volokh convinced Prager he was wrong? I sure don't.
But he's got an audience. We don't give him more of one by refuting and abusing him.
Eugene Volokh is doing exactly that by going on the Paula Zahn show to 'debate' Prager. Although Volokh doesn't believe Prager shouldn't have an audience; Volokh "often much like[s]" Prager's work.
There's two answers to that. One, Volokh doesn't play on our team, so it's not surprising that he's treating Prager respectfully rather than abusing him as he deserves. (Still, the respectful refutation is something.) Second, do you think that's happening because Volokh has a readymade audience, or because people saying what Prager says have a readymade audience? I think the latter.
It also takes an unusual degree of dedication to say "No, I won't go on TV in front of millions of people and argue against this guy, thereby showing how smart I am, because he's crazy and doesn't deserve a response."
I think that if some Dem responded to Prager personally by saying publicly, "I fucked your wife last night, so she's been sexually satisfied at least once," and then produced pictures to document it, then (a) that would shut Prager up for a long time, (b) Republicans would be less willing to try bullying Dems, (c) that Dem would get on TV a lot, and (d) Prager's wife might finally have a fulfilling sexual experience. The argument is not the thing that Prager's audience finds compelling and convincing; it's the emotional experience of channeled anger that's convincing them. We can either offer a substitute or we can try to win without those votes.
I nominate Jim Webb for the Congressional Emerson role.
103: He announced his divorce on his radio show about this time last year. I'm pretty sure it was Mr. Morality's third.
99 Liberals like to refute and abuse people like Prager since it allows them to feel superior which they seem to have a weakness for.
As for giving him an audience, you want to give the worst representatives of the opposition as much publicity as possible the better to pretend they are typical. Is the right afraid of giving Ward Churchill an audience?
It's true. I am a liberal, and my only weakness is my o'erweening superiority.
it allows them to feel superior
No, it's simply a matter of the proper response to an influential right-wing figure spouting bigoted nonsense. How would you recommend responding, James?
Liberals like to refute and abuse many, many inane and obnoxious conservatives, but it's a bittersweet pleasure because those guys still control the executive branch. I understand that many believe that there's a silent majority of sane, rational conservatives out there, but the vicious loonies we see on TV and hear on the radio are really the ones who control the Republican Party. Gingrich, Delay and Frist et all are no better than Limbaugh and Prager.
94, 98: There may be cases where neutral standards of assessing the arguments are impossible, but we're not exactly arguing about some subtle difference in our conceptions of eudaimonia. Prager is obviously talking out of his ass, and while it's not like he has to be treated respectfully, it doesn't hurt to say, look, you doofus, Teddy frickin' Roosevelt didn't use a Bible for his swearing-in, lots of other religious groups don't, and the ceremony is a symbolic thing anyway, so stop whining already. These are relevant facts, after all.
Unfogged: the first blog to advocate cuckolding as a political strategy.
Although not the first time it's been suggested on Unfogged. Didn't someone talk about how great it would be if Clinton had sex with Laura Bush as a means of humiliating George? Or was it just Bush's daughters Clinton was supposed to do?
Wow. Generally I find Clintonian displays of raw sexual charisma to be hilarious, but that's a little much.
112: If that's what you want, wouldn't both at once send a stronger message?
I'd so watch a sex tape of a Clinton threesome with the Bush daughters. That would be awsome.
112: If so, probably me; I think we've ceded humiliation as a political tool to the right for far too long. But the only Bush related humiliation that I can specifically remember recommending involved Kerry knocking him down and peeing on him.
Hey, the googleyahoohole is closing -- the exchange I was thinking of pops right up. First link if you google "Ick". But it was Bush's daughters, not Laura, so the cuckolding thing may be an Unfogged first.
109 First unlike some of the commenters I think you should respond. But just point out he is completely wrong and perhaps not too bright. Leave out the evil part which just reminds people that liberals think they are better than everyone else.
166
I thought we had a rule against time travel in the comments.
118: Ah, blessed hatred. I keep waiting for it to recede now that we have Congress. Why can't you search for commenter names in archives using Ctrl+F in FF?
119: It's generally conservatives that use the "evil" descriptions. Does that remind people how conservatives think they're better than everybody else?
apo is being demure. google "Laura Bush."
The Ick thread was the one with imposter text. How I miss Judy.
What's the English Courtesan up to, I wonder?
She's away on assignment, apparently.
Wait, sorry. Richard Nixon was a QUAKER?
Is there a word for Jackquaker? If not someone needs to invent it, fast.
You didn't know that? It's one of those delicious ironies of American history.
The Quakers are a diverse bunch, and families that are Quaker by heritage can be quite conservative. My wife's father's family fits that description. There are actually three large national Quaker organizations, and only one of them fits the popular image of silent meetings and liberal pacifist politics. There is even a movement of evangelical Quakers, which I don't quite get, but they actually run a university.
The problem with choosing not to refute idiocies such as this is that the idiots then can crow that they must be right. ['The network couldn't find a Constitutional scholar who would come on the air and say that I'm wrong.']
But refutations need to be done by someone who not only understands the issues and can speak to them, but by someone who can do so with unerring courtesy, who can endlessly repeat 'I'm sorry, but you really don't seem to have studied the history of our wonderful country's dedication to protecting the religious freedom of all its citizens' in a calm, but not condescending, tone of voice. [This is where some acting chops would come in handy...] And, of course, someone who can engage the audience a bit, who can project a certain conspiratorial 'of course we understand what the Founding Fathers thought...'
And someone who isn't afraid to boldly interrupt the interrupters, something the pointy-headed-latte-swillers seem not to have got the hang of. [Does anyone know Miss Manners' political affiliation? It seems to me that she could help with this bit.]
Or, of course, Ogged could just email all those pictures of cocks to Prager, at which point he would be so intimidated by the sheer enormity of his opposition that he would cave immediately.
Has anyone tracked down any of his ex-wives? 'I'm not only a Constitutional scholar, but all of your wives are belong to my magnificent sexual technique' would probably rattle him.
I would comment like Emerson & SCMT above if I ever regularly took my meds. As it is, all I can do is stare at Brock Lander's 40 and try to talk myself down.
"Not really; don't mean it; not all of them;but it would be wrong."
Re:quaker pacifism. I can remember learning about it while watching Deep Six, with Alan Ladd, on TV with my parents. The plot turned on it, as he was a Naval Officer in WWII, who found he couldn't fight, until, as always happens in the movies, he changed his mind. Before that, the guy on the oatmeal box was my only image.
101: Second, do you think that's happening because Volokh has a readymade audience, or because people saying what Prager says have a readymade audience? I think the latter.
Definitely the latter. Too bad that Volokh chooses to participate in that, and to some extent, facilitate it.
131:Yeah sure, Like what's his name to McCarthy:"Have you no decency? Lets be polite.
But thousands of Americans had their lives destroyed by the crazy anti-communism;and millions of little brown people.
And now Islamophobia? Well, after Iran gets nuked and the camps are established in the Nevada desert, then liberals will get really mad. But then it will be too late. Again.
And the worse thing is that te crazed anti-communists and the crazed Islamophobes are from the same places and are much the same people that tore the country to shreds in the 1860s. When do we finally get tired of these fuckers?
Seriously, the problem is that these people get on TV and are treated with respect by the TV people. Whether we ourselves ignore them or respond to them makes no real difference, because we're not on TV. The range of acceptable discourse in this country is defined primarily by TV, and somewhat less so by radio and print media. The actual range of what is regarded as acceptable is a disgrace, and is skewed far to the right.
The plot turned on it, as he was a Naval Officer in WWII, who found he couldn't fight, until, as always happens in the movies, he changed his mind.
See also High Noon.
Wait, now I'm part of the Crazy Old Man brigade? Great. We better have a secret handshake.
To return to my Perlstein reference's implication: a lot of crazy stuff, endemic to any given time, just goes away and is forgotten.
It's my impression that the US has always seethed with extreme opinions, most leaving no issue and little memory. eb is our resident expert, and would have a better sense of this. There's always the doubt that dragons don't need to be slain, and that those taking it too seriously are tilting at windmills.
138:"and that those taking it too seriously are tilting at windmills."
Tell that to ogged;or Meteorblades whose Libyan stepson emigrated to England for safety's sake;or the thousands in Iraq.
No these attitudes and the predisposition to them hurt and maim and kill and are doing so this very day.
88: minneapolitan yet lives!
(It's just that my fascist employers enjoin me from commenting on blogs, listservs or other internet discussion type thingies.)
I'm glad we elected Keith Ellison, precisely because for at least the next two years, he's going to be a persistent thorn in the side of these lousy klan-assed racist jerks. Also, he's going to deflect a lot of wacko attention from serious liberal and progressive initiatives. Kind of like an anti-Santorum. Except nicer. Or maybe the second coming of Fighting Bob LaFollette.
Certainly, Ellison could not have been elected in SoDak, NoDak, Iowa or Wisconsin (Land of Gein, Dahmer and Tommy Thompson.) But make no mistake, the Bachmann contingent gets stronger the further away from the central cities you get. There's not too many of those good old Finnish communists left, and more's the pity. Still, we'll fight on, on the beaches and in the cul-de-sacs. We can win. We must win. WE WILL WIN!
I think it is a mistake to not engage the LK-RAJ contingent at all. But to offer a friendly amendment to ogged's position, I think that embracing a diversity of tactics also implies that we be very strategic in our deployment of various tactics. Like banner-hangs. Maybe Earth First! is even now planning a banner-hang on this Pellagra dork's crappy McMansion. But I certainly would have no idea.
Anyway, what about the situation in Oaxaca? Have you all been following it? It's messed up. You should put pressure on your local Mexican consul.
No pasaran!
Minneapolitan, is your email (ch*na*dv*ce) good? I'm on for the 2nd, anyway.
I'm going to swear on a copy of What is to be done? if it ever comes to that.
Sadly, when the "ignore Volokh" response I've employed ever since he politely considered the merits of torture doesn't seem to have made him go away.
Ignoring people is good for your mental hygiene but it's not an effective weapon.
Unless they're bleeding to death on your doorstep or something.
Emerson: Try it and see.
My doctor chimed in this week on over-internet use and its deleterious effect on my lower back.
Tuesday, January 2nd, 4:30-on at the Local?
142:Lawdy. Was it Buck or Stephen who claimed the ultimate sex object was a clean old man? No way I'm goin back to Chicago, tho.
145: That'll be my first day back at work, so I won't be down until 7 or so. All lurkers welcome--if we have any. Where are you, you bastards?
146 is possibly the nonnest sequitur I have ever seen at this site.
Or so the mullahs would have you believe.
