On being called a bigot and/or racist
I’ve been writing about the recent Harvard Law School flap, in which third-year student Stephanie Grace was excoriated for daring to suggest in a private email that there might even be a possibility that some of the gap in intelligence scores between whites and blacks could have some sort of genetic basis.
Which got me to thinking—it seems to me that cries of “racist” and “bigot” are coming faster and more furiously these days, despite (or perhaps because of?) the election of a black man to the presidency. But I can’t really blame this on Obama, although I think he’s done plenty to fan the flames and nothing to douse them—because he can hardly be held responsible for Gordon Brown’s big mouth.
Here’s the full transcript of the now-famous exchange between Brown and 65-year-old grandma (and previous lifelong Labour voter) Gillian Duffy. It was meant to be a run-of-the-mill photo-op. Brown was wired for sound, and had a seemingly cordial exchange with Duffy which included the following:
Duffy: But what I can’t understand is why I am still being taxed at 66 years old because my husband’s died and I have some of his pension tagged onto my pension?
Brown: Well we’re raising the threshold at which people start paying tax as pensioners, but yes if you’ve got an occupational pension you may have to pay some tax but you may be eligible for the pension credit as well, you should check ”“
Duffy: No, no, I’m not, I’ve checked and checked and they said I’m not
Brown: Well you should check it again just to be sure, to be absolutely sure…
Duffy: But how are you going to get us out of all this debt, Gordon?
Brown: We’ve got a deficit reduction plan, cut the debt by half over the next four years, we’ve got the plans that have been set out to do it – look, I was the person who came in and said –
Duffy: Look, the three main things that I had drummed in when I was a child was education, health service and looking after people who are vulnerable. There are too many people now who aren’t vulnerable but they can claim and people who are vulnerable can’t get claim.
Brown: But they shouldn’t be doing that, there is no life for people on the dole anymore, if you’re unemployed you’ve got to go back to work. At six months ”“
Duffy: You can’t say anything about the immigrants because you’re saying you’re ”“ but all these eastern Europeans coming in, where are they flocking from?
Brown: A million people come in from Europe, but a million British people have gone into Europe, you do know there’s a lot of British people staying in Europe as well. So education, health and helping people, that’s what I’m about.
Duffy: I hope you keep to it.
So we have a woman who’s been a liberal all her life but is concerned because (a) she isn’t getting the money she feels she’s entitled to, while at the same time (b) others she feels aren’t entitled (such as, for example, recent immigrants from Eastern Europe who are now allowed into Britain with few or no restrictions because of the EU) are getting benefits ahead of her, and (c) the deficit is out of control. The entire discussion is about money and how to distribute it.
Brown still had a live mic on when he got into his car, where he was heard to say the following about Ms. Duffy, to whom he’d been so pleasant just a moment earlier:
[In car] That was a disaster. Should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that?
Aide: I don’t know, I didn’t see.
Brown: Sue’s, I think. Just ridiculous.
Aide: Not sure if they’ll go with that one.
Brown: Oh they will.
Aide: What did she say?
Brown: Everything. She’s just this sort of bigoted woman who said she used to be a Labour voter. Ridiculous.
One can almost feel a certain sympathy for the hapless Mr. Brown. Who among us can say that he/she has never been polite to someone and then complained about them behind their back? But few of us are caught in the act, and then broadcast for all to see.
Anyone who thinks all politicians don’t do some version of this is hopelessly naive. But Brown was especially vulnerable because he was not the most likable guy to begin with, and this made it harder for people to ignore the evidence of his blatant two-faced hypocrisy recorded on tape. But I think it’s also interesting that Brown’s charge was that Duffy was a bigot.
I didn’t even know that Eastern Europeans immigrants now qualify as a race; when last I checked they were as white as Duffy herself. To me, her remarks read as a combination of Tea Party-like concerns about fiscal restraint, and an echo of the same sentiment that’s behind our own recent Arizona immigration law—only in her case the immigrants are legal, whom she sees as getting in line ahead of her in order to get benefits from a welfare system that she feels is unresponsive to her own needs.
All of these recent “racist/bigot” brouhahas (Harvard Law and Minow, the Arizona illegal immigrants bill, and Brown v. Duffy) demonstrate the new liberal definition of bigot: anyone who says anything non-PC about any ethnic group or national group that liberals consider disadvantaged.
Note that it’s not bigotry of racism if someone says something negative about an advantaged ethnic or national group. And truth is not a defense when you’re expressing concern about the actions of a disadvantaged group. One must be utterly racial-, national-, and color-blind, willing to give over every advantage to others, and not remark on it but be happy for it. The only people who can even take note of racial and/or national differences are those who do so in order to confer benefits on underprivileged racial and/or ethnic and/or national groups.
The readiness of Gordon Brown to call Ms. Duffy a bigot when he thought he was off-mic made me wonder whether it dovetailed with the Minow flap in still another way: does Brown have a background in academia, where this sort of kneejerk name-calling is not only prevalent but meets with approval? When I looked Brown up I discovered—somewhat to my surprise, I must say—that indeed he does, and a history as a journalist as well (another group where using the racist/bigot accusation is favored):
Brown graduated from Edinburgh with First Class Honours MA in 1972, and stayed on to complete his PhD (which he gained ten years later in 1982), titled The Labour Party and Political Change in Scotland 1918”“29. In 1972, while still a student, Brown was elected Rector of the University of Edinburgh, the convener of the University Court…
From 1976 to 1980 Brown was employed as a lecturer in Politics at Glasgow College of Technology. In the 1979 general election, he stood for the Edinburgh South constituency, losing to the Conservative candidate, Michael Ancram. From 1980 he worked as a journalist at Scottish Television, later serving as current affairs editor until his election to parliament in 1983. He also worked as a tutor for the Open University.
Decades of relentless PC hammering on the evils of bigotry and racism have not only corrected many of the actual racist offenses that used to occur more frequently, but have sometimes over-corrected to the point of absurdity. It used to be that, in order to be a racist, you had to actually advocate discriminating against racial and/or ethnic groups. Now bigotry and racism are thought-crimes that are defined by the eye of the offended beholder: simply put, you’re a racist if a liberal says you are.
I once heard racism defined as ‘prejudice with power’, so if a landlord, an employer opublic official allow premature judgments (prejudices) to affect their decisions, then they are racists.
That seems practical. It means that people can control their actions as they affect others. It doesn’t intrude on their thoughts, especially long-held reflexive thoughts that are now felt to be in error.
I heard a professor from the University of Minnesota (I believe) say that this construct is incomplete: that indeed prejudicial thought are racist in themselves. That’s why so many progressives are eager to display their non-racist bonafides by calling others racist.
“. . .the new liberal definition of bigot: anyone who says anything non-PC about any ethnic group. . .”
Neo,
I don’t think this is new, but is a liberal definition that has been in play for quite some time. What I see as different is the increasing frequency with which it is now used.
You’re quite right that only those looking to confer benefits on minorities are permitted to note race, but sometimes even THAT is politically incorrect; remember, e.g., how Joe Biden’s description of Obama as”clean and articulate” was seen as veiled racism.
IMHO what is changing is that fewer people are cowering when indiscriminant racism is charged, and more and more people are dismissing the charge. Like the boy who cried wolf, it doesn’t have the same sting that it used to.
I think you’ve missed the point.
The liberal definition of racism is more treacherous than that.
In the liberal ethos, white middle class people have no right to assert their economic and political self-interest. Every other group that can is encouraged to assert its economic and political self-interest with a vengeance.
The assertion of the economic and political self-interest of white middle class people is now racism.
White middle class people are supposed to shut up, confess to their sins, and take whatever their betters decide is appropriate. Refuse to do that, and you’re a racist.
This whole thing gobsmacked me.
We expect somebody like Brown to make the accusation publicly, in order to discredit an argument not manageable by facts, logic, and ethics.
The accuser, we presume, knows he lies. The accuser, however, presumes the putative audience will believe, and the accused will believe that the audience (live, on television or radio, in print, etc.) will believe and therefore switches from his argument to fruitless defenses and apologies. Or he self-censors in advance.
But Brown made his remark to his staff in what he thought was privacy. No audience to impress, no accused to discredit and dismiss, no use in making the argument at all. Which means he REALLY BELIEVES.
Hell, I thought nobody did.
That’s scary.
A few thoughts on that exchange;
Duffy, like most Liberals, was all about compassion for the masses, until their own nickel is on the table. She was the life long member of a party who advocated higher taxes, increased debt, and open borders for other countries’ citizens. Now that she is feeling the personal sting of that policy, she has a problem with it.
I never cared for Brown. I thought the karma he got by repeatedly getting chumped off by Obama, was deliciously deserved for the disdain he held for Bush; who always seemed to hold our allies with great respect.
His credentials (or lack there of) for runnng a country, are similar to those on the Left in this country: Academc, Liberal journalist, career politician. He has never ran business, never served in the military, and has appearantly never took a an economics class (Unlimited wanted/Limited resources; therefore, learn to prioritize).
I think most liberals have a default mentality that because they have “compassion” for others (on someone else’s dime of course), that this creates moral and social superiority. That changes when the unseen hand of the government goes into their pockets.
For some, they think any opposition to that mentality has to be rooted in the most banal and evil of motivations. For others, charges of rcism and bgotry is just a convenient political tool to deflect criticisms from a flawed idelology they can’t defend.
Final thought. If I did not know any better, I would have thought those conversations were about what’s going on in our country today.
Let us simplify: The Left attacks who it is stealing from.
Cries of Racism are just conveniences. Should this not work another form of slander will be found.
It is a mistake to imagine that there is any other “logic” to the Left’s assaults.
It will not end until enough of the electorates of the West see the game for what it is.
Sorry for the typos. Kids spilled juice on the keyboard.
it seems to me that cries of “racist” and “bigot” are coming faster and more furiously these days, despite (or perhaps because of?) the election of a black man to the presidency.
Indeed, because he’s increasingly perceived a failing badly. Even liberals occasionally compare him with Carter – not a good sign. Accusations of racism are the only available sword and buckler with which to protect him.
Just so you know more sources of PC..
Political consciousness
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_consciousness
Following the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx outlined the workings of a political consciousness.
t a line of political and philosophical inquiry opened up which explores consciousness in terms of one’s political state of mind. For Marx, consciousness describes a person’s political sense of self. That is, consciousness describes a person’s awareness of politics.
So one can have Politically correct consciousness, or False consciousness…
you see, Marxism is totalitarian (which is what a cult is). you either think the same or your an enemy full of false consciousness.
in this way, you get thousands of people to act out for your ends, precisely because they dont understand it! (so baffle them with crapola, that is not empirical, keeps them your slave – through deference to superiors).
this is all you really need to know waht PC means, why the feminists trained us and gave us the mental thought process… (like loding a computer wiht a virus)… and now we are pretty much complaining that the virus has grown up (like people warned and others denied), and its EXACTLY waht they said, but not at all what we wanted.
Decades of relentless PC hammering on the evils of bigotry and racism have not only corrected many of the actual racist offenses that used to occur more frequently, but have sometimes over-corrected to the point of absurdity.
AGAIN.. FALSE CREDIT, FALSE ATTRIBUTION.
communist style PC kept what your claiming it fixed, going for more years than it could have!!!!!!!!!
do you realize that Woodrow Wilson segregation of military CREATED things? how about jim crow? the hunting of blacks? the bombng of the JDL?
how can you say it helped race when thats ALL we think through.
am i judged by the content of my character or by being a white male?
well go count scholarships… and note gate restricts towhite males… and note the spanish and such wanting to hunt the whites to get them off the contenent (when blacks vote agianst them more)..
was it the black socialists, the black islamics, and all that that have attmpted to foment race war?
so again. like feminsits they too credit for what was not their work, and shifted credit for their work to others.
from wiki
Many social movements have loosely followed Marx’s thinking on consciousness. Attaining consciousness, many believe, means finding one’s true historical path, as opposed to the propaganda dispensed by the ruling elites. Thus, the feminist movement spoke of consciousness raising and many South African activists have subscribe to a Black Consciousness Movement, which calls upon Blacks to pursue their “true” political trajectory (as opposed to the ideas set out by, for example, the apartheid regime). In the latter example, for many South African Blacks, consciousness meant rejecting racist ideas about Blacks, rejecting White rule of the nation, and restoring Black identity, history, and power.
In a politically charged sense, becoming “politically conscious” is often meant to connote that people have awakened to their true political role, their actual identity. For Marx, this meant that the working classes would become conscious of themselves as the agents of history–they would unite and share in the wealth of labor. This, for Marx, was their historical role and their right (as opposed to working for wages, fighting wars on behalf of capitalists, and so forth). For many African Americans, “consciousness” has meant identifying and discrediting forms of White supremacy, including those internalized by Blacks. In these uses of the term “consciousness” is truth or destiny. These uses of political consciousness are often politically charged. Does, for example, a Black woman person lack consciousness because she generally supports a system run mostly by White male capitalists? If she became politically conscious would she think differently? What is her “true” consciousness supposed to look like?
Many marxists, feminists, African Americans (and other groups), have ceased to argue that there is one true form of consciousness. Instead, while preserving a sense that the ruling class perpetuates a dominant ideology and often behaves in ways which harm people, many dissenters now hold a more liberal position which tolerates a variety of political positions. The complexities of political consciousness are described by the theories of cultural hegemony.
they did NO SUCH THING you asserted IF YOU KNOW THE HISTORY.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation
After the disbanding of the Freedmens Bureau and other Reconstruction institutions after southern states were readmitted to the union, in 1877, white Democrats regained power in southern states and passed laws making voter registration more complicated. Although the laws applied to all, the result was that blacks and poor whites were effectively disfranchised. White Democrats then passed Jim Crow laws that established segregation as a principle in all public facilities and aspects of life in the South, for instance, the infamous separate water fountains for whites and blacks.
so like feminists, they created the crisis… revisioned history, then saved us from waht they created.
and you give them credit for undoing what they started?
well then the feminsts get credit for starting heart desease and such with women… and now with the red dress, they are earning lots after they sold them out to establish the cult.
at the same wiki link you will find that they created the problems.
Starting with King Phillip’s war in the 17th century, blacks fought and died alongside whites in an integrated environment in the North American colonies. They continued to fight in every American war integrated with whites up until the War of 1812. They would not fight in integrated units again until the Korean War.[1]
so their fight to remove the laws they created is not a good thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
c’mon… learn the history and stop giving communists credit for what AMERICANS and their founders did..
america STOPPED slavery all over the world, she didnt start it.
[edited for length by n-n]
Richard Aubrey,
ergo the terms true believer, and how thats not on the top of the heirarchy…
You’re also a racist if you say you’re not. That’s the most damning proof of all. It reminds me of nothing so much as “dunking” during the Salem witch trials — if the witch, underwater with hands and feet tied, drowned, she was innocent; if she floated and survived, she was plainly guilty of witchcraft.
Bill West, that “prejudice with power” is a redefinition of racism intended, basically, in order to be able to force people to do things the definers don’t want to be held to themselves. Thus there can be no “racism” among black Americans, etc., and expressions of racial bigotry and bigoted actions can be dismissed.
Of course, here in Detroit the people with the power have been black for over thirty years, but the redefiners try not to cover that.
Racism either means something like treating people differently or making assumptions about them because of their race, or it winds up meaning what it more or less does today, that the speaker doesn’t like what someone has said who is of a different skin color.
Charges of racism still have an effect in academia and among intellectuals for reasons everyone who reads this weblog well knows. Among the general populace, however, the word is ceasing to mean anything in particular.
Since genuine racism has not been extirpated from our society this is a loss.
At least a comment I read at the UK newspaper Telegraph is now clear.
A US reader had commented that “if you Brits like Obama so much you can have him, we’ll give him to you”.
A Brit answered back “OK, but you have to take Gordon Brown”.
Who is the most pathetic and hapless person in the world these days?
The white dad on TV: He funds the whole family enterprise but its the neighbors and children who teach him about life.
Let’s hope the progressives and their reliance on the evils of racism are gobsmacked this November!
I’m reading Radical Chic now, and I found a delicious example of liberal elite racism. When hosting the Black Panthers, the RC found it inconvenient to continue to employ their regular servants, so they sought replacements of a lighter hue. Among one another, they called the preferred employment agency the Spic and Span Agency. Aren’t you awed by their wonderful mastery of double entendre?
Thought crime, indeed. Over the past fifty years or so, the left has managed to fundamentally change the definition of morality. For centuries, in the west morality dealt with how individuals treated individuals. It dealt with behavior. Things like lying, cheating, assault, rape, murder, theft, and fornication were proscribed. Charity to others was laudable.
Under the new morality we require right thinking about groups and nature. If you have the right attitude to minorities, women, homosexuals, the poor and animals, you are a good person. How you deal with others in your day to day personal life is of no concern.
a clear view…
as i said, if you knew what they were reading and believed.
Radical Immigration Reform Rally, ATL Ga
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LHRzxgAxRo
at about 2:30 in you get to read the opening of the papers they are handing out…
basically the US is responsible for EVERY bad ill that ever happened in the world. wars, famines, rapes, assassinations, plane crashes, poverty, etc.
even the wholesale domination and degradation of women everywhere…
[i wish i could show you similar from europe past century, and now too]
The Manchurian President by Aaron Klein and Brenda Elliott
http://radiopatriot.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/the-movement-that-created-barack-obama/
if you’re reading The Manchurian President, you’ll need a pen and notepad beside you to keep track of this intricate maze that consistently leads back to that most corrupt of “toddlin’ towns” – the political cesspool known as Chicago. Klein and Elliott lay out a web that is labyrinthian to the max. Just keeping track of all the acronyms for what seem to be dozens of socialist organizations are enough to make your head spin. We’re wishing the authors had included a “cheat sheet” of acronyms and their meanings.
TMH at The Noisy Room has reprinted Louden’s latest exposition of the regime and those who are in it – including the man Beck refers to as “The Wizard”: Joel Rogers, a Madison Wisconsin law professor and sociologist.
noisyroom.net/blog/2010/05/03/obama-file-102-america%E2%80%99s-little-lenin-joel-rogers-and-the-obama-movement/
Liberals are the people who can’t handle the peer pressure ridicule if they express unfashionable thoughts and opinions. I see their cries of racism as really more of a rage at those who’ve escaped the social construct called political correctness that is a killer of spontaneous human life.
Think Sarah Palin. The most non politically correct person and the one called the most vile names.
T: I didn’t mean a “new” definition of racism as in “really new.” I meant “new” as compared to “old”—“old” being the definition I grew up with. I’m not sure when this new one came into being, but it’s probably been building for decades, and has especially come into its own in the last ten years or so.
Let me simplify my previous comments:
White middle class people are the Kulaks. Enemies of the revolution.
What you have to remember is that in Britain, the welfare state was originally sold in the 1040’s/50’sas a kind of insurance scheme – you paid in this sum of “national insurance” in addition to your normal taxes during your productive years and could draw on it in your retirement years when your income was reduced. What Mrs Duffy is complaining about is that she’s not getting something that she feels she’s actually paid for rather than just the usual sense of ‘entitlement’ some people have. Explaining to the older generation in Britain that their “National Insurance” was actually spend on current expenditure (i.e. pensions and benefits paid out when they were working) almost as soon as they paid it in, rather than kept in a big sock in Downing Street never works in my experience.
Plus note how evasive Brown is on the debt question – when he says he’s going to cut the debt by half, he means he’s going to cut the rate the debt is increasing by half, not the debt itself.
I have mentioned this before on this site, but I want to point it out again. Twice I have seen in our local paper articles promoting “hispanic buisiness loans”. In others words, non-hispanics need not apply. Can you imagine the outcry if the articles had been “loans for white, non- hispanics”?
I think the racism charge is rapidly becoming devoid of content. It is screamed to divert attention from many types of bad behavior by politically favored groups.
When someone accuses me of racism, I quietly agree and say, “And your point is?”
hattip says: The Left attacks who it is stealing from.
The attack against the taxpayer (of which the charge of “racist” is so useful because it is so diverting) is spread out by a network that the”Stimulus” just funded.
Its time to figure out how to defund these bast…s(sons without a country and trying to take ours).
billm99uk: Yes, we understand—it is the same principle as Social Security here. You were supposed to pay into it to get money out of it, but the money was spent on other things (starting, I believe, in the 60s, during the Johnson administration).
I’m actually rather heartened by the crescendo of specious “racism” charges because it means the Reds are desperate, and the incessant accusation is losing its impact. That’s it, Reds, wear it out. Wear it out. Then you’ll have to fall back on defending your ideas and policies.
And we all know that you can’t do that, because if you could, you’d be doing it now instead of going back to the racism well.
Neo,
You are correct about the Johnson administration merging the Social Security budget with the federal budget. This was a PR attempt to make the defense budget a smaller part of the increased total budget during an anti military era. It was just for show because the lending of the SS surplus preceded the merger and continued after it. We are now collecting the SS IOU’s from the general fund because expenditures are exceeding collections because of the recession.
I’m with Occam: wear it out; it will lose it’s power.
In (vain) effort to see all sides: during my blog grazing, I make sure to move through some left side blogs and their comment sections.
I see, more and more, a logic which is inspired by the “critical studies” movement in academia (critical race studies, et al) and which works like this:
I added that last part, though it is always implied.
This tenet of critical race studies: “we are all racist”, gives it’s purveyors power during this moment of American history. It keeps them earning money in academia. It helps blog commenters feel oh-so-self-virtuous and superior.
However, the moment is passing. The Critical Studies people are profiting from their accusations now, but in the very act of profiting they are also teaching us to take their accusations lightly, which inevitably creates less profit for them from future accusations, and then less profit still, and then less profit still. I compare their accusations to eating a delicious pie: each successive bite confers slightly less pleasure than the bite before. In the end, Critical Studies people will become sick and will vomit all over themselves. It is inevitable.
Therefore: let their accusations go on! And on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on! Wear it out! I am happy to see it.
I agree with Shouting Thomas’s comments.
I also kind of like this guy.
So can we assume an Obama has been a long time in the planning to finally reap the rewards of a populace primed by PC to just shut up when deadbeats are given unearned handouts? I think so.
jon baker,
how about a whole government agency who is for small businesses who favors women and minorities but excludes white males only and has done so for years?
its called the Small Business Administration 8a program
http://www.sba.gov/aboutsba/sbaprograms/8abd/
I went to the classes, and the programs and open houses and banks wont talk to you. all kinds of things go to the other groups (including 5×5 in ny state bids for contracts), and that you are put aside is clear.
8(a) Business Development Mentor-Protégé Program
http://www.sba.gov/aboutsba/sbaprograms/8abd/mentorprogram/index.html
SBA & Agencies Executed Partnership Agreements (2012)
http://www.sba.gov/aboutsba/sbaprograms/8abd/8ABD_SBA_PARTNER_AGREEMNT_2012.html
and
http://www.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/sba_program_office/8abd_surplus_property_faq.pdf
What is Surplus Property?
If a federal agency no longer has a need for personal property, it declares the property excess property, and the property is then made available to all other federal agencies. If no federal agency claims the excess property within a certain amount of time, it is declared surplus property.
The Small Business Act provides that eligible 8(a) Program participants are qualified to receive federal surplus property on a priority basis. 15 U.S.C. §
636(j)(13)(F).
It’s like the old adage, when your only tool is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail. Having exhausted the ideas in their toolbox, the left only has the hammer of bigotry/racism accusations (used interchangeably) remaining with which to construct its edifice.
The dam will break when common sense and equity break out, and some judicial decision will overturn the legality of race-/gender-based preferences ason their face wholly unconscionable.
It can be a small thing; Artfldg’rs SBA preferences will do. But at some point Americans as a whole will realize that treating people differently based solely upon their race and/or sex is not only unsound policy, but just wrong.
neo-noecon says:
Cubs_Fan Says:
Observe that Brown’s reported public apology was a standard, conditional non-apology:
E. M. Crotchet: Did you read the transcript? She sounds pretty liberal to me, although I have to say I’m not up on what’s liberal in Great Britain. But note that she is quoted as saying:
That, combined with a lifelong Labour vote, seems fairly liberal. Not leftist, but liberal.
As for conservative Marxists—I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that one.
“I don’t think this is new, but is a liberal definition that has been in play for quite some time. What I see as different is the increasing frequency with which it is now used.”
Yes, they were using that evil tactic back in the sixties and seventies.
“Bill West, that ‘prejudice with power’ is a redefinition of racism intended, basically, in order to be able to force people to do things the definers don’t want to be held to themselves.”
Exactly. It is a weapon used by evil people to do evil things. Its only value is that if somebody uses it you know you are dealing with a monster.
Marxists supposedly believe that history is fundamentally that of the struggle between social classes, and that productive capacity constitutes the foundation of society. They believe that capitalism is inherently exploitative, by extracting unpaid labor from the working class, and that the means of production must therefore be socialised. They also advocate that the working class must seize political power internationally through a social revolution–by violence if necessary.
Now, say you’re raised in the former USSR believing your Marxist-Leninist indoctrination. You uncritically accept that what you’re told is undeniably true; you never question your beliefs; though, at the back of your mind, you’re aware that questioning beliefs is dangerous. You live in a country that has had its revolution, has had the means of production socialised, and wherein the working classes have supposedly gained political power. You join the oligarchic, gerontocratic elite and what do you do next? You do your utmost to conserve what you have, to hold on to power and privilege, to mouth the pious platitudes of Marxist dialectic, and yet you try to keep things exactly as they are. That, I say, is just one form of conservative Marxism.
Look also at the social and sexual values of a supposed Marxist state: does China, for instance, value personal freedoms and alternative ideas relating to sex and marriage and the fine arts? Does it oppose bourgeois values? Is homosexuality, particularly since there are so many more men than women tolerated? Will the Chinese authorities allow some modern artist to exhibit a “Piss Mao”?
The idea that redistributing wealth–taking from rich (apart from oneself and one’s friends) and giving to the poor–is no more inherently progressive, by which we mean supporting new, ameliorative ideas or reforms, than Reagan’s four-fold aim (of reducing government spending, reducing tax rates, reducing government regulation of the economy, and reducing inflation) was new and radical in terms of what preceded him. I say that Reagan was more progressive than Brezhnev whom I call quite conservative.
The Greens here in Australia call themselves progressive yet they wish to force people to comply with prescribed measures of pious environmentalism, returning us to paleolithic lifestyles in order to “save the earth”; they claim that they support science whereas they actually oppose real science and religiously accept the pseudo-science of AGW. They are not liberals; they are conservative, quasi-religious fanatics who claim to be democratic only for as long the demos accepts all their dogmatic, dictatorial declarations. Your Al Gore is another example of the hypocritical green who has one rule for the commons and another for the ruling élite. He’s not a liberal, he’s an unprincipled, kleptocratic fraud.
What is called liberalism in Australia (where we also have a mainly conservative party called the Liberal Party which confuses thing further) differs from liberalism in the US which is different again from liberalism in the UK. I say that we need to stop allowing people who are illiberal–illiberal in their thinking, illiberal in their elitist contempt and condemnation of ordinary people, and illiberal in their contradictory opposition to personal freedoms–from appropriating the noble term “liberal.” I believe that we should stop using the term “liberal” as a condemnation. What’s wrong with calling illiberal people illiberal?
Liber in Latin can mean, ‘free’, ‘book’ and ‘child’. I am a liberal in that I support as much personal freedom as is compatible with civil society; I value children, and I value books, the liberal arts, and the canon of great literature. I also want to conserve freedoms and worthwhile traditions and Western Civilisation, and I don”t want any person or government telling me what to do, and that makes me a conservative. I also, however, support much of the State welfare system which provides me a disability pension and free medical care, and I advocate an increase of governmental spending on all sorts of infrastructure, which makes me a self-interested socialist of sorts. I am a slightly socialist, conservative liberal.
You may fairly say, “but this has nought to do with what we mean by conservative, liberal and progressive.” I say that these and other terms are already becomingly increasingly meaningless, particularly since educators throughout the English-speaking world, are failing to teach children how to use words properly, and with nuance, and the overused terms such as bigot, Nazi and racist are now so devalued that they have almost become merely opprobrious contumely.
The assertion of the economic and political self-interest of white middle class people is now racism.
White middle class people are supposed to shut up, confess to their sins, and take whatever their betters decide is appropriate. Refuse to do that, and you’re a racist.
Word. We’re the only culture that is Ordered to hate itself, the only race that’s indoctrinated to loathe ourselves. This is a course of masochism, recommended to us by sadists.
that “prejudice with power” is a redefinition of racism intended, basically, in order to be able to force people to do things the definers don’t want to be held to themselves. Thus there can be no “racism” among black Americans, etc., and expressions of racial bigotry and bigoted actions can be dismissed.
Er, “celebrated,” actually. Encouraged, coddled, and cooed over.
Its worth noting that calling people racist in whole swaths (like people at a tea party) that you have zero knowledge of as individual persons, is by definition the actions of a prejudiced bigot. Pretty much the louder a leftist shouts racist or bigot, the bigger bigoted racist you can count on him being.
Neo, I have to agree with E. M. Crochet on his opinion of Duffy’s liberalism.
In the UK the working class traditionally support the Labour party but are more likely to be right wing on many issues. This explains why the BNP (the UK facist party) do better in Labour areas than they do in Conservative ones and have picked up all of their local government seats from Labour members.
I have seen comments either here or on PJ that the Conservative party is not really what is considered conservative in the US, the same applies to the Labour party which is not liberal in the same way that you understand it (although it has similarities).
Just to confuse matters further there is also a Liberal party, but no one really understands what they stand for.
You say:
“Note that it’s not bigotry or racism if someone says something negative about an advantaged ethnic or national group.”
Can you EVER imagine a liberal calling someone who criticized Israelis or Jews a “bigot” or a “racist”? It’s NOT going to happen!
Pingback:thought-​​crimes defined by the eye of the offended beholder
We are in a stage of mental warfare when those inferior in power and morality seek to convince us to voluntarily give up. This will not happen because we say it will not.
Great one liners from this post:
you’re a racist if a liberal says you are.
The assertion of the economic and political self-interest of white middle class people is now racism.
The Left attacks who it is stealing from.
You’re also a racist if you say you’re not.
If you have the right attitude to minorities, women, homosexuals, the poor and animals, you are a good person.
noisyroom.net/blog/2010/05/03/obama-file-102-america%E2%80%99s-little-lenin-joel-rogers-and-the-obama-movement/
cries of racism as really more of a rage at those who’ve escaped the social construct called political correctness
This is a course of masochism, recommended to us by sadists.
This whole thing gobsmacked me.
educators throughout the English-speaking world, are failing to teach children how to use words properly, and with nuance
and my favorites because we need to assert who is going to win this war:
In the end, Critical Studies people will become sick and will vomit all over themselves.
The dam will break when common sense and equity break out, and some judicial decision will overturn the legality of race-/gender-based preferences as on their face wholly unconscionable . . .
It can be a small thing. . .
Yeah but the right wing has the same PC attitude toward the military or toward Israel. If someone dares say something negative about the military then it is seen by the right as being anti-military and anti-American or criticize Israel they are considered anti-Semitic.
So you have to admit this debate applies to both what we call the right and the left in this country.
There is always a place for good debate and the claims of racism and anti-Americanism [or anti-Semitism] should not get in the way but they all too often do.
“”The dam will break when common sense and equity break out, and some judicial decision will overturn the legality of race-/gender-based preferences as on their face wholly unconscionable . .””
Justice John Roberts said it best…”The way to end discrimination, is to end discrimination”.
I just read that Stephanie Grace email and the only real conclusion I can come to is that anyone who writes the kind of b.s. she wrote deserves criticism.
This isn’t about free speech. This is about a totally unfounded opinion that someone is Academia has the audacity to pursue. She has the right to say or write it but we have the right to tell her she is nuts. Same with the guys who wrote the book “The Bell Curve”.
I’ll agree that maybe someone should have just deleted the email and told her to keep her opinions on the down low. But once it hit the airwaves there is no way it could [or should] be ignored. It certainly can’t be debated because it is hogwash and yeah, just a bit racist.
“There is, and always has been, an unusually high and consistent correlation between the stupidity of a given person and that person’s propensity to be impressed by the measurement of IQ.” – Christoper Hitchens
“There is always a place for good debate . . .”
The debate is over. Never was one for me.
I’m not rethinking or engaging in dialogue. I’m asserting. Telling. Voting. Spending. Educating. Running for office. Taking over the local school board. Reclaiming the pentagon. Declaring islam and marxism the cause of all suffering.
I plan to kick some “Yeah but” butt!
Screaming Eagles!
“”Yeah but the right wing has the same PC attitude toward the military or toward Israel.””
MDL
Giving benefit of the doubt to an ally whose reputation you know and trust is not PC. It’s normal human nature. Giving the benefit to groups who unashamedly despise you is only accomplished by acquiescing to masochistic indoctrination parading as fashionable thought.
Priceless example of “begging the question.”
“Does Grace’s view have merit?”
“No, because it is hogwash.”
Oh.
Shouting Thomas Says:
“In the liberal ethos, white middle class people have no right to assert their economic and political self-interest”
Yeah, it’s three degrees of separation to racism.
I.e., against [federal] government spending is code for states rights is code for racism. I.e., if your against crazy taxes your a racist.
That meme was around for awhile and then was applied to the tea party.
It’s also a good example of how we still don’t have any great communicators on our side or they could have explained it to the American people and made the left look wacky (which they are). A lot of Reagan’s old tapes on heathcare were replayed during the healthcare ‘debate’ and the guy just had the guts to call the left out on their BS. We don’t do that in public. Calling them socialists was a first step, but we have to explain what socialists are… in public… (otherwise, it is just name calling).
neo-neocon Says:
“billm99uk: Yes, we understand–it is the same principle as Social Security here. You were supposed to pay into it to get money out of it, but the money was spent on other things (starting, I believe, in the 60s, during the Johnson administration).”
And it was meant to be just for the poor…. What we have now can not work…
And it was meant to be just for the poor….
that is COMPLETELY WRONG..
it was meant for those who planned to die and who ended up ‘living too long’. especially since the date didnt track medical advances.
http://www.ssa.gov/history/lifeexpect.html
It was SOLD to us that way.. (same way woodrow wilson sold us income tax!. which wasnt supposed to go more than 1% ever)
it was never MEANT to be that as it violated the constitution and was a progressive thing
they knew that capitalism cant supply every want or imagined need, especially when we all demand at once.
nothing can…
but they get you to abandon things for lack of perfection… like leaving a bruised tomato at the store
the realized imperfection is always at a disadvantage to the unrealized promise
the biggest thing to make it fall apart was feminism and its ratcheting down (demographically) the more productive in favor of the less productive. for every woman that goes to college, less intelligent women out breed them because they do. (any argument you give will not change the demographic outcome, which is empiricism based)
the denument of the most productive and able, while ‘hiding the decline’ using illegal immigration…
meant that the work force could not maintain the amounts it was paying.
the AMA in the 30s said medicare and caide would result in communism..
but it takes 70 plus years to prove them right?
same with the other progressive fishing nets of ideological cults.
they knew that they could NOT get enough to believe one cult. so through FUSION.. like they tried with votes, they fused together many cults to achieve plurality and power as they were the top of a pyramid where all these different and mutually exclusive people summed their support
you see. hitler had fascists and socialists, and communists, and anarchists..
our system has socialists, democratic socialists, feminists, racialists, sexualists…
but same thing..
and what drives them are the circumstacnes set up by things like social security.
the end result is known… its easy to work out
whats hard is to get people to accept the conclusion, and then deny the hope that the false conclusion gives.
so instead they deny the conclusion
and in so doing, the affix the end result to certainty
“It’s also a good example of how we still don’t have any great communicators on our side . . . ”
There is an inherent disadvantage the good has in their fight against evil. The focus necessary for “great communications” is not available (or allowed, listened to . . .) until a late stage of the game. Evil remains hid and camouflaged until it thinks it has enough power for overt control. Then, it strikes and swallows whole.
Curtis, I think a fundamental problem is that decent people go about their lives until catastrophe looms, whereas – based on my experience at Berkeley – leftists live, eat, and breathe subversion and revolutionary fervor every waking hour. They’re obsessed by it; it utterly consumes them, and seems to color their every thought and deed. They’ll argue endlessly over the implications of laughably mundane matters, and consider it time well-spent. Trivial issues such as dog licensing in Berkeley became clarion calls to man the barricades to fight the oppression of The Man.
Their single-mindedness, their peculiar sense of morality and decency (reprehensible actions in the name of humanity strikes no discordant note), their general lack of shame, and their common lack of other temporal commitments (jobs, families, houses, mortgages, non-political hobbies and friends), makes leftists difficult to counter in a public forum.
Yep. That about sums it up.
SteveH Says:
Giving benefit of the doubt to an ally whose reputation you know and trust is not PC. It’s normal human nature. Giving the benefit to groups who unashamedly despise you is only… parading as fashionable thought.
Yes, but hopefully one can tell the difference. I’m not talking about Al Queda or even Hamas. I’m talking about politicians [or media persons] who are sometimes critical of Israel in the same way the right wing might be critical of America now that Obama is in charge.
No one would claim if you were critical of Obama that you hate America. [Or no one should]. And no one should claim you are a racist either. [Although some would]. And so in the same way if someone criticizes the current Israeli government they are charged with anti-Semitism. It’s the same misguided knee-jerk principle that affects both the left and the right.
“It’s also a good example of how we still don’t have any great communicators on our side . . . ”
yeah..
cicero, stuart mill, and the others didnt do sound bites.
great communicators need able listeners
Artfldgr Says:
“And it was meant to be just for the poor….
that is COMPLETELY WRONG..”
Nope, it is right. Social Security started as a lump payment to men (only) and targeted only to people with certain jobs (who were seen as in need of it… i.e., jobs for people that tended to be poor). Since then, eligibility has been expanded to where we are now. Universal and non means tested… on top of not adjusting the age for retirement up as people live longer…
Thomass,
Go to planned parenthood and you will read scrubbed history of Sanger too. I even linked to the page. This is why i have to keep putting up long tracts. as i cant prove against “what everyone knows” and can flip out a revisioned answer. and the refutations and things on snopes and other places is often wrong…
http://www.ssa.gov/history/fdrstmts.html
just like with sanger, you cant trust exactly whats up..
sad really… remember its half truths, so waht is up is truthful, but often omits the details that are critical to a independent understanding. (and they often repeat and copy the wrong thing over and over. cracking a newspaper, and reading today, you can see that no reporter is fired for continuing to get the AK law wrong!)
remember, the general welfare clause is not about making a welfare state (as indicated in the federalist papers). so the WHOLE of the idea of such a thing is unconstitutional, and has become more and more what they wanted, not what we allowed in.
Social progressivism is the view that the basic concepts of social mores, human nature, and morality are not fixed throughout history and should be revised as new scientific knowledge becomes available. (the part left out: unless it contradicts the prophets ideological pronouncements or the direction they want to go in)
The “First New Deal” (March 8, 1933) dealt with groups; from banking and railroads to industry and farming. A “Second New Deal” in 1934-35 included the Wagner Act to promote labor unions, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief program, the Social Security Act, and new programs to aid tenant farmers and migrant workers. The Supreme Court ruled several programs unconstitutional; however, most were soon replaced, with the exception of the National Recovery Administration (NRA). After 1936, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was the only major legislation; it set maximum hours and minimum wages for most categories of workers.[2]
remember, the progressives wanted to eradicate the constitution, and knew that each thing they could get us to accept that was unconstititional made the original document irrelevant. at any point they could argue, why suddenly become purist after so much dirt…
from wiki… (not that great)
It was predominantly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that an organized system of state welfare provision was introduced in many countries. Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany, introduced one of the first welfare systems for the working classes. In Great Britain the Liberal government of Henry Campbell-Bannerman and David Lloyd George introduced the National Insurance system in 1911,[7] a system later expanded by Clement Attlee. The United States did not have an organized welfare system until the Great Depression, when emergency relief measures were introduced under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Even then, Roosevelt’s New Deal focused predominantly on a program of providing work and stimulating the economy through public spending on projects, rather than on cash payments.
So again.. WE are copying the germans from riht before the presence of hitler.
i have tied this through MANY threads from different areas, and connected each threads lineage. from GSLEN, womens rights, welfare, and all kinds of stuff. ALL OF IT PRECEDED THE TOTALITARIAN STATE AND FACILITATED THAT CONVERSION. we didnt run into the open arms as fast, but we are taking the same steps, just taking a lot longer to make them
Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck He designed the German Empire in 1871, becoming its first Chancellor and dominating its affairs until his dismissal in 1890. His diplomacy of Realpolitik and powerful rule gained him the nickname “The Iron Chancellor”.
so if you want to understand social security, its best to start at the beginning, NOT the middle in the US after they copied others. to the left liberals who know this history, it was bismark and his programs that created the conditions that were right to move forward to the progressive ideal. they refuse to consider that Hitler and such things are the natural end, but a aberration (that is 100% over time).
and so they use history, so as to get the POWER to DESIGN society… which is the POWER of Wiemar and its progressive ideas of women voting, gay sex, rights without responsibilities, and a lot of this was from the frankfurt school before they came here. after their ideas resulted in the opportunity for someone like hitler to seize the reigns.
Bismarck, working closely with big industry and aiming to head off the Socialists, implemented the world’s first welfare state in the 1880s. Bismarck especially listened to Hermann Wagener and Theodor Lohmann, advisers who persuaded Bismarck to give workers a corporate status in the legal and political structures of the new German state.
again… the FIRST WELFARE STATE… so who are we copying again, but denying it?
if social security type welfare was a SOCIALIST thing, during the era that everyone knew that socialism and communism and fascism are the same things in variation.
So FDR, the guy who didnt care that he had communsits in his administration. whose wife was a member of the communist left branch of suffrage (who sought to crush the constitition, by using womens rights to batter a new way to make law, rather than debate and use the constitutional process!!! since then, we stopped using the process and went to social anarchy as the way to establish a law!!!!!!!!!!!!! we went from rule of law, to rule by fear of those who would protest, as did the feminists, who also planted bombs, and smashed businesses. by picking things that would eventually come about by process, they claimed they were rusing progress. but what they were doing was taking a sure thing and using it to destroy process rather than wait for process and time to work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! we dont see that part of it at all (anymore))
On 20 March 1884, Bismarck declared:
[…]the actual complaint of the worker is the insecurity of his existence; he is unsure if he will always have work, he is unsure if he will always be healthy and he can predict that he will reach old age and be unable to work. If he falls into poverty, and be that only through prolonged illness, he will find himself totally helpless being on his own, and society currently does not accept any responsibility towards him beyond the usual provisions for the poor, even if he has been working all the time ever so diligently and faithfully. The ordinary provisions for the poor, however, leave a lot to be desired […].[
so the idea for social welfare was from the socialists/communists who were competing for the public and power. it was no different here, except today we dont know that the people in this fight were along these lines, adn that the debated reasons against, were not what we say they were today!!!
The 1880s were a period when Germany started on its long road towards the welfare state it is today. The Social Democratic, National Liberal and Center parties were all involved in the beginnings of social legislation, but it was Bismarck who established the first practical aspects of this program. Bismarck’s idea was to implement welfare programs that were acceptable to the conservatives without any of the overtly socialistic aspects.
He was dubious about laws protecting workers at the workplace, such as safe working conditions, limitation of work hours, and the regulation of women’s and child labor, because he believed that such regulation would force workers and employers to reduce work and production, and thus harm the economy.
Bismarck opened debate on the subject on 17 November 1881 in the Imperial Message to the Reichstag, using the term practical Christianity[43] to describe his program. On 4 May 1881 Bismarck had also referred to this program as Staatssozialismus, when he made the following accurate prediction to Moritz Busch:
It is possible that our policy may be reversed at some future time when I am dead; but State Socialism will make its way
basically he was working towards state socialism as a way to cement his aristocracy as the benefactors of the people, who would ow them everythign, and so serve them.
we have no inkling of this argument today. we have no idea that the truth was it was a stealth means to establish a communist/socialist state. we also do not realize how all these programs and things set the people up for Hitler and tyranny and war… as we cant imagine that the same steps would set the stage for a similar populous grab for power
so if you want to understand social security, look to weimar germany, and its connections to the progressives in america.. if you do that with the progressives history, you will see that by giving into the progressive ideas, weimar set up the way for hitler, who was a favorite of progressives as stalin was.
note how they all made time man of the year. in fact, progressive leaders have all been time man of the years!!! hitler, stalin, mao, putin, obama..
once you get the arguments that were made in germany, and how they use it to sneak in state socialism… (ie communism)… then you will understand that the arguments we have here, are the false ones that were only one side of the argument back then!!!!!!!!!!
take some time, and look at the photo at wiki at the signing of SS… then take those names, and read about them… pay attention to Robert L. Doughton and the committee hearings..
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,755958,00.html
Two days later Chairman Doughton came to the name of the last witness on the day’s schedule, Max Bedacht, representing the Communist Party.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Max Bedacht was not the kind of frowsy, self-assertive Communist most Congressmen were accustomed to encountering. Born in Munich 52 years ago, he was a factory worker, a Socialist, a Communist, an editor of various defunct radical periodicals, and is now a member of the Central Committee of the U.S. Communist Party. He still retains the good manners which he learned during his youth as a barber in Switzerland.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
“I am here,” began Mr. Bedacht, “to present the position of the Communist Party on the proposals adopted by your committee for new Federal taxes. We Communists have always fought for the principle of taxing corporate surpluses and undivided corporate income. This would be at least a step in the direction of shifting the present heavy burden of taxation from the shoulders of workers, farmers and small consumers to the big corporations and the rich.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
By the time his statement was finished, the Democrats were sickly aware of what had happened: The Communists had in principle joined the New Deal on the tax bill.
now remember, when this communist testified, they had not started taxing working people. they basically paid a huge amount through corporate taxes like a VAT… which kept the high amounts kind of hidden.
the New Deal was fulfilling the Socialist Party platform of 1932
here is the platform.
http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/eam/slp/platform/plat1932.pdf
when you read it, you will realize that all the left is doing is copying these things.
“the capitalist system is now creaking and breaking at every joint and cranny. it is no more “on trial” than a horse drawn vehicle is on triel besides a motor van. CApitalism is outworn, obsolete, ready for the museum of social history. A mear glance at the worl situaion should suffice to convince even the dullest of this forceful fact”
wagner is in the pictures too…read about the wagner act and how it established the UNIONS..
After the Supreme Court had ruled the National Industrial Recovery Act and the National Recovery Administration unconstitutional and it was destroyed Wagner helped pass a similar law known as the National Labor Relations Act. The National Labor Relations Act, perhaps Wagner’s greatest achievement, was a leading event that led to the fair treatment of workers.
Wagner introduced the Social Security Act bill into the United States Senate.
-=-=-=-=-=-
The Wagner-Hatfield amendment to the Communications Act of 1934 aimed at turning over twenty-five percent of all radio channels to non-profit radio broadcasters did not pass. This action led to a cover for Time magazine.
sound familiar? any one want to refer to the curent idea they want to pass?
wagner also shows what a RACIST group the dems and roosvelt were.
Wagner and Edward P. Costigan sponsored a federal anti-Lynching law. In 1935 attempts were made to persuade President Franklin D. Roosevelt to support the Costigan-Wagner Bill. However, Roosevelt refused to support a bill that would punish sheriffs who failed to protect their prisoners from lynch mobs. He believed that he would lose the support of Southern Democrats in Congress and lose his entire New Deal program. There were 18 lynchings of blacks in the South in 1935, but after the threat of federal legislation the number fell to eight in 1936, and to two in 1939.
also in the picture is John David Dingell, Sr.
he is such a peach…
Reflecting the prevailing prejudices of the period, a memorable letter from Dingell to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 18, 1941 suggested that ten thousand Japanese-Hawaiian Americans be incarcerated in order to ensure “good behavior” from Japan
Frances Perkins (hey! i thought women werent allowed to participate?)…
in 1939, she became the first female Cabinet officer that Congress sought to impeach
Perkins’ offense? She had refused to give orders to deport Harry Bridges, the Australian longshoreman who had led a successful general strike in San Francisco in 1934. Bridges was suspected of being a Communist. Personally, we’re told, the upright Perkins “detested” Bridges, who was a womanizer; but she found the evidence against him vague. Perkins paid for her principles: Though early anti-Communist witch hunters failed to impeach her, she was portrayed in the press as a dupe; a foolish, “soft-minded” woman.
take some time to look into bridges… he will remind you a bit of andy stern of seiu.. he is mentioned in Alger Hiss’s looking-glass wars: the covert life of a Soviet spy // By G. Edward White
so again… everyone connects to everyone in this era.
kind of like the appollo alliance, seiu, afl-cio, obama, the joyce foundation, etc
Bridges ran the LONGSHORMANS union..
May 9, The San Francisco waterfront strike began. The Int’l. Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), headed by Australian immigrant Harry Bridges, shut down seaports in Washington, Oregon and California for 3 months. Union workers went on strike for a 6 hour day and a hiring hall to replace the company operated Blue Book Union on the waterfront.
[then again there was also harry hopkins who was a communist spy too]
Perkins attended Worcester’s Classical High School and was graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a BA degree in 1902, and from Columbia University with a master’s degree in sociology in 1910. (again, at a time when women supposedly were not allowed. yet ALL the leading women thinkers from the early 1800s on had college)
Byron Patton “Pat” Harrison is next.. (which there isnt much to write about.. though look to his tiff with BILBO)
nothing to say clearly as to lewis, whose bill was the original and who doughton attemptd to use his chairmanship to take.
The Treachery Of Harry Hopkins is a article that will give you dish on one of the big spies with FDR.
http://www.aim.org/media-monitor/the-treachery-of-harry-hopkins/
Harry Hopkins, the closest and most influential adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, was a Soviet agent.
Andrew had reported this in a book he had written in 1990 based on information provided by Oleg Gordievsky, a high-level KGB officer who had also been smuggled out of the Soviet Union by British intelligence. Gordievsky reported that Iskhak Ahkmerov, the KGB officer who controlled the illegal Soviet agents in the U.S. during the war, had said that Hopkins was “the most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States.” Hopkins secret meetings with Ahkmerov were not known to anyone until Gordievsky revealed them. They began before Hopkins made a trip to Moscow in July 1941, a month after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. His insistence that aid be extended to Stalin with no strings attached justifies Ahkmerov’s evaluation of his performance. There is evidence that Hopkins even went so far as to arrange for the shipment of uranium to the Soviet Union to help them develop the atomic bomb. Despite this, Andrew argued that Harry Hopkins was “an unconscious rather than a conscious agent.” Mitrokhin’s documents showed that Hopkins had warned the Soviet ambassador that the FBI had learned through a bug it had placed in the home of Steve Nelson, a Soviet illegal agent, that Nelson was getting money from the embassy. He met Ahkmerov from time to time, giving him information to send to Moscow and receiving secret messages from Stalin. Andrew tries to put an innocent face on this, saying Hopkins was using Ahkmerov as a “back channel” to communicate with Moscow. Ray Wannall, former FBI assistant director for counter-intelligence, says he always suspected that Hopkins was a Soviet agent and that this is proof of his treachery.
[mitrokhins second book covering india and such is amazing]
I think some significant number of Leftists actually do believe that opposition to Obama is racist. There are some race hucksters who keep the “Western Civilization is racist” meme alive just to make money, but in my experience some significant number of Leftists (mostly the white, college graduate type) actually do see everything through the prism of race. The tragedy of this is that there really is no basis for discussion with them. Our central premises are so diametrically opposed that there is no hope of ever reaching a compromise on anything of importance.
Pingback:housekeeping