Sorry mon frer. But the Constitution that you held your hand up and swore to protect covers everybody. It covers the speech of the deluded and the ignorant just as much as it covers the novel and the brilliant. And saying that we should run leftists out of town -- sounds frighteningly like what Pol Pot and his ilk did. First get rid of the ideologically impure, then the teachers, then the police... anyone who would oppose them or contradict them about little matters like fact.
I personally hold that stupid does not stand the test of time, no matter how heavily it is propped up. Communism failed. The Ottomans failed. etc etc. We are embarked in a historically significant new direction in the US, one that can either rise to free humanity for all time. Or sink into its own stupid when we forsake the very ideals our forefathers embodied as law in the effort to rid ourselves of pesky fleas...
The terrorists are merely fleas. They can do a little harm at best. But only by OUR abandoning what we have already created in the name of "Fighting Evil" does the evil actually win. If we have to wipe our asses with the constitution to wage the war, then the war is already over and we lost.
Sorry mon frer. But the Constitution that you held your hand up and swore to protect covers everybody. It covers the speech of the deluded and the ignorant just as much as it covers the novel and the brilliant. And saying that we should run leftists out of town -- sounds frighteningly like what Pol Pot and his ilk did. First get rid of the ideologically impure, then the teachers, then the police... anyone who would oppose them or contradict them about little matters like fact.
I did not recommend violating anybody's Constitutional rights. One does not have a Constitutional right to a job with a major university or media outlet. Still less does one have a Constitutional right to keep on winning elections or gaining appointments to office. If firing people "sounds frighteningly like what Pol Pot and his ilk did," then you have read a very sanitized version of his atrocities, indeed!
Also note that this is precisely how the American Left took control of the institutions to begin with. They made "political correctness" (i.e., agreeing with them) a litmus test for being hired or for being retained. It is absurd to claim that they had the right to do this, and that the people they got in there have the right to stay in their positions till death or retirement, but that we don't have the right to get them out of their positions the same way.
They didn't violate the Constitution. Nor, hopefully, shall we.
And I suggest that you actually read the Constitution -- and just exactly whom it restricts from doing what. Because it doesn't say what you think it does.
Sure, what you say is true - nobody has a right to any sort of employment whatsoever. Hey, we can take this a step further too and tell every company that does business with the govt that if they wish to keep doing govt business, they'll fire everyone of their employees who are in the Republican party. Ooops, I meant fire everyone whose in the Democratic party. Actually, both will be right depending on who is in charge that particular date I suppose. But hey, if it's okay for you to do it to X then it's okay when X does it to you. Fair is fair is fair.
Telling people that they have to say only what the Govt says they can say or else, violates the very principles on which we established this nation. Not even King George went so far. And again, when the ideals of individual liberty are sacrificed for your illusion of safety, then we deserve neither liberty nor safety. Franklin said it best imho.
And I am not so sure about this liberal commie-bastion you seem to think exists in schools around the country. I attended UT Austin, which is supposed to be pretty liberal, and not once did I encounter any communists or socialist people, student or faculty. And if my kid's schools are any gauge, with their anal concern over even the tiniest rules, the public schools are more draconian than when I was a teen. You of course may feel free to see commie sympathizers behind every bush if you so choose. But my own experiences make me think they can be found as frequently as the North American Verigated Snipe.
Sure, what you say is true - nobody has a right to any sort of employment whatsoever. Hey, we can take this a step further too and tell every company that does business with the govt that if they wish to keep doing govt business, they'll fire everyone of their employees who are in the Republican party. Ooops, I meant fire everyone whose in the Democratic party. Actually, both will be right depending on who is in charge that particular date I suppose. But hey, if it's okay for you to do it to X then it's okay when X does it to you. Fair is fair is fair.
Yes, we can do these things- we, that is, you and I as individuals. We can tell these companies whatever we want, and spend our money in ways to incentivize them to listen.
It looks like you're reading Jordan as encouraging the government to do these things via force of law, which is not at all what I understand him to be saying. Is that true, or am I misreading you?
Okay. That's why you aren't understanding him: he's advocating that we, as private citizens, take the actions legally permitted us to discourage behaviors we don't like. He's advocating this, among other things, as a means of avoiding a government that would pass these kinds of laws.
Which is to say, you two actually agree with each other that the government telling people what to think or say would be a terrible idea and blatantly unconstitutional. Yes. Clearly it would.
When did you go to UT? I was there 1986-1991. The Young Communist League regularly had a table set up on the West Mall. So did the Trots, friends of the Maoist Shining Path guerillas, and several other hard-Left groups. I still have a collection of the posters they affixed to the trees. As for the Daily Texan, that was just legendary. The majority of the economics faculty and the English faculty were Marxists. I don't know about the rest of the departments, though.
Sorry mon frer. But the Constitution that you held your hand up and swore to protect covers everybody. "The process won’t be pretty. But I fear that if the rest of us don’t hound the po-mo Left and its useful idiots out of public life with attack and ridicule and shunning, the hard Right will sooner or later get the power to do it by means that include a lot of killing."
How on earth did you somehow entirely invert the meaning of this?
Attack and ridicule and shunning are speech. The same thing they get and readily employ.
"The process won’t be pretty. But I fear that if the rest of us don’t hound the po-mo Left and its useful idiots out of public life with attack and ridicule and shunning, the hard Right will sooner or later get the power to do it by means that include a lot of killing."
I keep hearing more and more rumblings about how the best thing that could happen to America now is a military coup. And a Leader who will Do What Has To Be Done.
One or two generations of "HEIL, FUEHRER!" or ten thousand generations of "AL'LAH'U AKBAR!" Do you want it to come down to those being the only two choices?
The Locust Yearsjordan179September 23 2010, 16:39:54 UTC
"The process won’t be pretty. But I fear that if the rest of us don’t hound the po-mo Left and its useful idiots out of public life with attack and ridicule and shunning, the hard Right will sooner or later get the power to do it by means that include a lot of killing."
I keep hearing more and more rumblings about how the best thing that could happen to America now is a military coup. And a Leader who will Do What Has To Be Done.
One or two generations of "HEIL, FUEHRER!" or ten thousand generations of "AL'LAH'U AKBAR!" Do you want it to come down to those being the only two choices?
That was precisely Armed and Dangerous' point. That, if we don't defeat the Islamist threat by liberal, democratic and constitutional means, we (the people of this and other Western liberal democracies) will choose some form of Euro- (or Americano-) Fascism in preference to having our societies go under to Islamofascism.
Thankfully, these are not our only two choices -- YET. But, if our liberal democratic regimes keep bending the kneee to Islam, and even violating their own constitutions in order to suppress those who urge resistance to Islam, they may become our only two choices, at some point in the future.
And if that happened, yes. I would then prefer Eurofascism to Islamofascism, because I would prefer a mild native to a harsh foreign tyranny.
Though I would still prefer liberal democracy to either. It's just that this option would no longer be available, any more than "peace" was available to the Western democracies in 1939-45.
I personally hold that stupid does not stand the test of time, no matter how heavily it is propped up. Communism failed. The Ottomans failed. etc etc. We are embarked in a historically significant new direction in the US, one that can either rise to free humanity for all time. Or sink into its own stupid when we forsake the very ideals our forefathers embodied as law in the effort to rid ourselves of pesky fleas...
The terrorists are merely fleas. They can do a little harm at best. But only by OUR abandoning what we have already created in the name of "Fighting Evil" does the evil actually win. If we have to wipe our asses with the constitution to wage the war, then the war is already over and we lost.
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I did not recommend violating anybody's Constitutional rights. One does not have a Constitutional right to a job with a major university or media outlet. Still less does one have a Constitutional right to keep on winning elections or gaining appointments to office. If firing people "sounds frighteningly like what Pol Pot and his ilk did," then you have read a very sanitized version of his atrocities, indeed!
Also note that this is precisely how the American Left took control of the institutions to begin with. They made "political correctness" (i.e., agreeing with them) a litmus test for being hired or for being retained. It is absurd to claim that they had the right to do this, and that the people they got in there have the right to stay in their positions till death or retirement, but that we don't have the right to get them out of their positions the same way.
They didn't violate the Constitution. Nor, hopefully, shall we.
And I suggest that you actually read the Constitution -- and just exactly whom it restricts from doing what. Because it doesn't say what you think it does.
Reply
Telling people that they have to say only what the Govt says they can say or else, violates the very principles on which we established this nation. Not even King George went so far. And again, when the ideals of individual liberty are sacrificed for your illusion of safety, then we deserve neither liberty nor safety. Franklin said it best imho.
And I am not so sure about this liberal commie-bastion you seem to think exists in schools around the country. I attended UT Austin, which is supposed to be pretty liberal, and not once did I encounter any communists or socialist people, student or faculty. And if my kid's schools are any gauge, with their anal concern over even the tiniest rules, the public schools are more draconian than when I was a teen. You of course may feel free to see commie sympathizers behind every bush if you so choose. But my own experiences make me think they can be found as frequently as the North American Verigated Snipe.
Reply
Yes, we can do these things- we, that is, you and I as individuals. We can tell these companies whatever we want, and spend our money in ways to incentivize them to listen.
It looks like you're reading Jordan as encouraging the government to do these things via force of law, which is not at all what I understand him to be saying. Is that true, or am I misreading you?
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As a general rule, if it isn't foreign policy, it's safe to assume Jordan is not urging the government to take action.
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"The process won’t be pretty. But I fear that if the rest of us don’t hound the po-mo Left and its useful idiots out of public life with attack and ridicule and shunning, the hard Right will sooner or later get the power to do it by means that include a lot of killing."
How on earth did you somehow entirely invert the meaning of this?
Attack and ridicule and shunning are speech. The same thing they get and readily employ.
Reply
I keep hearing more and more rumblings about how the best thing that could happen to America now is a military coup. And a Leader who will Do What Has To Be Done.
One or two generations of "HEIL, FUEHRER!" or ten thousand generations of "AL'LAH'U AKBAR!" Do you want it to come down to those being the only two choices?
Reply
I keep hearing more and more rumblings about how the best thing that could happen to America now is a military coup. And a Leader who will Do What Has To Be Done.
One or two generations of "HEIL, FUEHRER!" or ten thousand generations of "AL'LAH'U AKBAR!" Do you want it to come down to those being the only two choices?
That was precisely Armed and Dangerous' point. That, if we don't defeat the Islamist threat by liberal, democratic and constitutional means, we (the people of this and other Western liberal democracies) will choose some form of Euro- (or Americano-) Fascism in preference to having our societies go under to Islamofascism.
Thankfully, these are not our only two choices -- YET. But, if our liberal democratic regimes keep bending the kneee to Islam, and even violating their own constitutions in order to suppress those who urge resistance to Islam, they may become our only two choices, at some point in the future.
And if that happened, yes. I would then prefer Eurofascism to Islamofascism, because I would prefer a mild native to a harsh foreign tyranny.
Though I would still prefer liberal democracy to either. It's just that this option would no longer be available, any more than "peace" was available to the Western democracies in 1939-45.
It would have been consumed by the locust years.
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