My own objection is to the use of “gender” instead of “sex.” As an old editor of mine often said, “People have sex. French nouns have gender.” But the grammatical is now the political, I suppose.
Thanks to tip-jar hitters Steve in Grand Rapids, Jack in Oklahoma City, and John in Virginia who includes this note: “All right! I give up. If you write about feminism, I’ll respect you in the morning!”
Clearly, then, some readers appreciate my tremendous sacrifice in re-reading Susan Brownmiller (so you don’t have to). Now I’m re-reading Dear Sisters: Dispatches from the Women’s Liberation Movement.
Hit the tip jar, brothers. And be ready for the next barrage.
This blog and a lot of others are huge fans of Herman Cain because he’s the genuine article. As a result of surgeries, he might technically have less guts than Allen West, but they’re both men cut from classic American cloth, and I’m privileged to have met them.
While Da Tech Guy captures the current Cain news well in his Examiner column, he skips (likely for lack of space) some crucial back story:
I was raised in Atlanta, Georgia by loving and hardworking parents. We grew up poor, but we grew up happy. Things weren’t always easy, but my mom and dad knew that if they kept their faith in God, faith in themselves and their faith in the greatest country in the world, they, too, could achieve their American Dream.
That dream, we discovered, was for my parents to own their own home and watch their two sons graduate from college. Those dreams required that my father work three jobs to support our family.
The first dream was realized in a brick home on Albert Street. I can still recall the excitement of the day, as he surprised us—even my mother—when he drove us to our new home.
As the ship of state threatens to stack up on Socialist Shoal, and the people prefer Johnny Lang to Francis Scott Key, the POTUS who can avert disaster will be the one who can both articulate the danger and inspire the people to endure the higher sea state of open ocean liberty.
I think Cain is one of the stronger voices for that. As with Ross Perot, he is a political outsider. Unlike Ross Perot, Cain has more personality than a dented wastebasket. The chief concern with Cain will be his health, which will make the VP choice even more crucial, should things progress so far.
Glad you enjoyed the spectacle. Joy is one of my favorite people in the blogosphere, but as a self-described “recovering lefty,” she needs to complete the full 12-step program, which includes rejecting the rhetoric and ideology of the Left.
Conservative women trying to co-opt the “feminist” brand is counter-productive from a strategic standpoint. Women who think of themselves as “feminists” are overwhelmingly liberal Democrats. Most women don’t like the “feminist” label and, therefore, the proper conservative strategy is to make liberals own that term and its pejorative radical connotations. Conservative rhetoric ought to be crafted to appeal to the mainstream (i.e., non-”feminist”) woman — for she constitutes the “swing” vote — rather than pandering to whatever sentimental attachment a relative handful of ex-lefties may have to that term.
This is nothing new, nor is it specific to feminism or conservatism. Successful political movements very often require that intellectual activists bite their tongues about the movement’s public rhetoric — intended to sway the undecided — when that rhetoric conflicts with particularistic ideals that the intellectuals (as they typically do) cherish as totems. In the pre-Internet age, such inevitable tensions were generally resolved behind the scenes. Nowadays, blog wars bring these tensions out into the open, at least for those who pay attention to such squabbles.
That goes a bit deeper into Political Theory than is my habit. The gap between the exoteric language of politics (arguments made to rally public support to one’s cause) and the esoteric rationale of politics (the logic of the movement as understood by insiders) is a subject of study that, among conservative intellectuals in recent times, has been most associated with the so-called Straussians. I’m an anti-Straussian.
There is no need for a full-blown discussion of the esoteric/exoteric distinction here, except so far as it bears on the public nature of intra-conservative dialogue on the blogosphere. What offended me very deeply in Little Miss Attila’s initial post — published before I’d commented on the Barbara Kay column — was that it constituted a direct attack upon my prestige within the movement.
Here’s what these idiot Madison “protesters” — along with their intellectually bankrupt fellow travelers playing Solidarnosc on f***ing facebook as if this is just another cause celebre the world has ginned up to keep hipsters feeling “political” — are actively, vocally agitating FOR: no school choice for kids; no merit pay for teachers; seniority raises, and a first hired / last fired policy that promotes mediocrity, disinterest, and underperformance, while providing no incentive for effective teaching; forced union dues; forced political contributions to the Democrat party, made possible by a tawdry money laundering scheme that in many ways works to disenfranchise Republican voters in the union; the inability of taxpayers to have any say over local schools; and on and on and on. . . .
Go read the whole epic thing, unless you find f-bombs offensive, but the Left’s wacko reaction to the Wisconsin situation could probably make Billy Graham cuss a blue streak.
Somehow I’ve spent the past few days bogged down and sidetracked by stuff that’s kept me from staying on the Wisconsin story the way I should, and now I’ll play catch-up. Here’s video of the thug mob blitzing the Capitol after the Senate vote:
Did you notice what I noticed about that mob? Kinda young-ish, eh? Like maybe they’re not really the struggling proletariat, but actually a bunch of overprivileged University of Wisconsin students acting out their radical fantasies of what it must of been like back in The Sixties, man. As if repealing the protected status of government employees was the moral equivalent of napalming bamboo huts or something.
Whenever I see such puerile upper-middle-class punks doing their pseudo-radical protest thing, there’s this voice in my head saying, “Where’s the Ohio National Guard when we really need ’em?”
So if you lose a vote you get to riot and take over the capitol building? … It’s good that Democrats are showing themselves for what they are…thugs who resort to physical attacks when they don’t get their way.
What’s interesting is to watch lefties doing their Charlie Sheen imitation — “winning!” — in an effort to convice themselves that this crushing defeat they just suffered is actually bad for Republicans. They’ve got polls, you see, just like back in March 2010 they had polls telling them what a brilliant idea it was to shove ObamaCare through Congress, despite clear signals to the contrary like Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts. (See: “Democrats in the Deathmobile,” The American Spectator, March 19, 2010.)
Once again, we are confronted by the yawning gap between what Democrats say during election campaigns — trying to convince middle-class suburban voters how responsible and civil and moderate they are, unlike those dangerous Republican extremists — and what Democrats actually do when their special-interest agenda at stake. Please read Peter Ingemi’s Examiner column, “Two groups, two narratives.”
Da Tech Guy notes yet another regurgitation of slanders against the marquee talent of this blog. Search the archives; Google the topic. He’s fully refuted those tired old slurs numerous times. It is the height of intellectual dishonesty to peddle such scurrilous piffle.
glamourdammerung, let us forgive you this foolishness. May God grace you with some maturity.
As a further suggestion, perhaps Wonkette could step up to the plate and admit that these anti-Stacy McCain statements are as true as the one about how he saved Bulungi from an invasion by the Semi-Conscious Liberation Army pouring over the border from Zambiniland, back in his soldier of fortune days. See? At least that bit of nonsense has a scrap of humor to it.
“I’m proud to be here with people who understand that it’s more than just sending an email to get you going. Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary,” Rep. Mike Capuano (D-Ma.) told a crowd in Boston on Tuesday rallying in solidarity for Wisconsin union members.
Head-busting union goons — like the SEIU thugs who recently roughed up a Tea Party supporter in Denver — are surely grateful to know they have Capuano’s enthusiastic support. Because of the decline of union membership, most young people today know little of the coercion, intimidation and outright terrorism by which Big Labor has always operated, and it still goes on to this day. As Karen Kerrigan noted in a 2002 article, “According to the National Institute of Labor Relations Research, there have been over 9,000 reported acts of union violence since 1975. These incidents have included intimidation, sexual and racial harassment, physical violence, vandalism and even death.”
Unions, most of whose members are public employees, gave Democrats some $400 million in the 2008 election cycle. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the biggest public employee union, gave Democrats $90 million in the 2010 cycle.
As Mike Hendrix at Cold Fury points out, this creates a “nice, tight, and very vicious little circle”: Taxpayers are forced to pay more to government employees, who are in turn forced to pay dues to the unions, which then give money to elect Democrats, who then give generous concessions to unions — and round and round we go!
“You want to go make seven, eight dollars an hour, go make seven, eight dollars an hour. You know, we fight for what we believe in here so we can make prevailing wage and have benefits.”
Implicit in this assertion is the belief that the only way anyone can ever receive higher wages is through the “collective bargaining” (or to say it more honestly, the organized intimidation) power of unions. That this belief system amounts to a license to commit extortion against employers, and an authorization of violence against uncooperative workers, is self-evident.
The labor-union mentality involves a vast galaxy of false and pernicious beliefs that require more time to explain and unravel than I’m willing to devote to the topic here. However, the net effect is to convince workers of their own lack of individual agency, so that they think their working lives have no value except what they can extort through “collective bargaining.” Where that mentality can eventually lead may be surmised from Da Tech Guy’s Examiner column:
The basic union argument was that Wisconsin was trying to bust unions. A former nonunion ironworker who now was in the union talked about how he found himself protected by the solidarity and the contracts of the union and made a strong case for his side.
On the other side a gentleman from the former Soviet Union equated the union side to the old communist apparatchiks of his youth where the benefits were actually shared by a few.
Once you decide that the ends justify the means, it’s only a matter of time before you find yourself pondering what Hayek meant to explain in “Why the Worst Get on Top.” This is why the pervasive corruption of labor unions (e.g., the Missouri local president who embezzled nearly $70,000 from an SEIU-affiliated union) should never surprise us. Do we really expect to find honest men in charge of an extortion racket?
UPDATE: Someone has finally re-uploaded the video to YouTube:
PREVIOUSLY: It was taken down by YouTube, but those greedy bastards at the Los Angeles Times got it through an open-records request and “embed disabled” it so you have to go to their Web site to see it.
However, unlike Jared Lee Loughner, I’m cool with the whole capitalist greed thing, so I guess I’ll just “tone down the rhetoric” before they take out a restraining order and get me locked up in a loony bin. Anyway, the takeaway from this creepy video is:
Jared Lee Loughner didn’t like “illegal wars,” which are “unconstitutional,” an opinion you might have heard a lot circa 2002-2006 if you were hanging out with smelly peaceniks at International A.N.S.W.E.R. marches or Ned Lamont rallies.
Jared Lee Loughner habitually used the term “genocide” to describe anything he was against — “Mom, this broccoli-and-cheese casserole tastes like genocide!” — just like every Chomsky-spouting punk who ever protested an Ann Coulter speech on a college campus.
Jared Lee Loughner’s interpretation of the Constitution is nearly as crazy as the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas.
Jared Lee Loughner hates cops, considers grammar a form of “mind control,” and felt that getting a “B” in class was a violation of his First Amendment rights. If he hadn’t become a mass murderer, he might have had a promising future as an ACLU lawyer.
Jared Lee Loughner is bonkers, wacko, schizoid, daft, zany, deranged, demented and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Not to put too fine a point on it, but he’s batshit crazy and also quite likely nucking futz.
The Media has completely ignored the impact that conspiracy movie “Zeitgeist” had on Jared Loughner’s psyche. . . . Most likely, it is because Loughner’s Zeitgeist conspiracies do not fit the media’s narrative. . . . They have decided to just write him off as a lone wolf lunatic. And have moved on; awaiting the next Palin “scandal.”
What’s annoying as all hell is that it was ABC News that broke the “Zeitgeist” exclusive on Wednesday and yet they haven’t followed up on their own scoop.
Either they’re too stupid to understand the connection or else . . . Look, I hate to use the word “conspiracy” in this context, but if Loughner’s friend had told ABC News that Mark Levin or Michael Savage or Glenn Beck had a “profound impact” on the gunman’s worldview, don’t you think we would have seen some follow-up reporting by now?
On this day a year ago, I arrived in Boston to cover the Scott Brown campaign. I’d taken a train from D.C. — leaving at 3 a.m. — and arrived at 11 a.m. in downtown Boston where I was picked up by Pete Da Tech Guy, whom I’d never met before. The tales of what ensued over the next six days — yea, verily! — they are the stuff of legend.
Because I couldn’t afford a hotel (hell, I could barely afford the train fare) Pete let me crash on his sofa in Fitchburg. He drove me wherever I wanted to go. He took me to restaurants and rallies and churches. He introduced me to people who became sources for some of my stories. And he turned out to be quite a resourceful reporter himself. He has that rare and essential journalistic skill, the ability to strike up conversations with complete strangers.
Pete is, as his nom de blog suggests, a computer technician by trade. He’d been laid off from his job and was doing whatever PC repair jobs he could hustle up while trying to find another job. He wasn’t blogging with the idea of making a living at it. But over the course of the past year, he applied himself to the task with tremendous ardour.
And he prayed diligently.
Lo and behold, he is not only an increasingly successful blogger, but also a columnist for the Examiner — his latest column just got the ‘Lanche — and he has now started his own Saturday night radio show on Worcester’s WCRN 830 AM, a 50,000-watt powerhouse. (All presidential candidates need to know that Pete’s show reaches all over New Hampshire, and his advertising rates are surprisingly affordable.)
