Tag: QotD

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

Found at The Emigré with a Digital Cluebat:

It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of ‘Freedom or dictatorship?’ into ‘Which kind of dictatorship?’ — thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice — according to the proponents of that fraud — is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism). That fraud collapsed in the 1940’s, in the aftermath of World War II. It is too obvious, too easily demonstrable that fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory — that both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state — that both are socialistic, in theory, in practice, and in the explicit statements of their leaders — that under both systems, the poor are enslaved and the rich are expropriated in favor of a ruling clique — that fascism is not the product of the political ‘right,’ but of the ‘left’ — that the basic issue is not ‘rich versus poor,’ but man versus the state, or: individual rights versus totalitarian government — which means: capitalism versus socialism.

— Ayn Rand

I may not be an Objectivist, but the old lady was right far more often than she was wrong. Interesting that she says here what it took Jonah Goldberg an entire book to say.

But she was wrong. The rival gangs are at it again, by all appearances, else Jonah’s book would have been unnecessary.

Quote of the Day – Hammertime Edition

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Perennial Leftist commenter Markadelphia has been stirring the natives up again. Here’s the rant-of-the-day from James, the TexanGunNut in reply to one of his more outrageous howlers:

I don’t normally comment here, generally I just read and absorb information and look at both sides of most every argument

BUT…..

I felt compelled to say something here.

“This is one example. Been to New Orleans lately? Parts of it look an awful lot like Kabul to me. This is what a failed ideology does to a nation.”

I couldn’t agree more, however I don’t think that exactly works in favor of the point that is attempted within. New Orleans is most certainly a product of a failed ideology, that of which has has led to massive numbers of people demanding and/or expecting handouts and giving little to no thought on actually attempting to lift themselves out of poverty. Which side of the political argument demands such policies these days?

And to further the argument, it is insinuated that it is the Rich Capitalists’ fault that these impoverished people of New Orleans remain in squalor?
Hippie, please.

I seem to recall a few years ago, in the aftermath of Katrina, that busload upon busload of New Orleans natives were heaped upon my fair Texas. Scores of these ‘victims’ were given debit cards(at taxpayers’ expense) to use to purchase basic needs and goods, and many used them for “needs:” ranging from strip clubs to designer clothes. I and many of my fellow Texans volunteered to assist in any way we could to aid those in need. What was given us in return? An exponential increase in crime. Countless complaints. Not a finger lifted by an overwhelming mass to aid in the cleanup effort or to do anything about the issue at hand.

(This was not, mind you, how everyone affected responded or acted. It was, however, the overwhelming majority.)

I have seen firsthand what mindset is pervasive amongst these people, and I can say for sure right here, right now, it was not placed there by those among us who promote individual freedom, individual responsibility, and individual liberty.
Somehow, someway, I am supposed to infer that this behavior is somehow the fault of a conservative/republican/libertarian/capitalist/fill-in-the-blank-as-long-as they are not associated with the left?

The people who gave the most to charity, who donated the most time, money, and thought to the needy, and the people who are overall paying the majority of the taxes collected in this country are somehow evil and responsible for the fall of a nation, yet somehow the people pushing the failed policies of failed nations are our new saviors, and are free to dictate “logic” and “facts” calculated only by their “feelings”?

There is a point (likely reached by the recent Nobel Peace Prize award) wherein even the Onion is rivaled in trying to emulate life. It just gets that surreal.
This beats that in spades. The National Enquirer couldn’t be counted on to blow this much smoke.

On a separate note….

I’ve lived in every class available. I grew up rich, graduated high school and wound up in a job that put me in middle class. Upon losing that job, I was penniless and had to start from ground zero poverty and work my way back to lower middle class wherein I now reside. I do not recall, even when things were there worst and I made 10k a year (less, actually), being without basic needs like food, clothes, shelter, power, etc.

At no point did my life reflect ANYTHING remotely close to a third world country lifestyle. I had access to healthcare, even if it was just the emergency room or public clinic and the bills had to sit and wait eons until I had the funds to pay them. Never was I in danger of famine, disease, or in fear for my life.

To suggest that somehow there is some existence in the middle class wherein money is no concern is abject lunacy. Money is always a concern, you’re either concerned with making it, spending it, or saving it. It never simply ceases to exist.

Apologies for the rant, but sometimes I feel compelled to add something, even if that something adds up to nothing.

I’m with the Geek on this one – that was definitely a lot more than nothing.

Not that Tinkerballs will notice.

Remember Professor Brian Anse Patrick?

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He’s a professor of communications at the University of Toledo. I wrote an Überpost largely about his book The National Rifle Association and the Media: The Motivating Force of Negative Coverage back in January of last year, The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation. Professor Patrick’s investigation into the inner workings of “Professional Journalism” (and yes, those are “scorn quotes”) was fascinating, especially in conjunction with the exposé works of outcast journalists Bernie Goldberg and John Stossel.

Well, he’s got a new book out, Rise of the Anti-Media: In-forming America’s Concealed Weapon Carry Movement. He dropped me an email today to let me know it was out. I emailed him back congratulating him on his new book, and informing him that I’d be waiting for the paperback. You can get it now for 20% off, but that’s still $56.00.

I see that college textbooks have still not come down in price.

I asked him about the title, too: why “In-Formed”? He responded:

I wanted to emphasize the old meaning of the term “inform” which at one time meant (and still does) to imbue with shape and spirit, while the modern “informed” person is the saddest and most tiresome creature on earth, who after watching a newscast and reading a newspaper imagines the few facts and allegations he has encountered bear some resemblance to social-political reality.

A main reason the concealed carry movement worked (and gun culture generally) is because it created its own anti-media, alternative media, often computer mediated, that in-formed it, and therefore its people were capable of directed action in concert over time, as opposed to people with vague anti-gun attitudes who had been informed in the only most superficial and ephemeral sense by mass news media. –people who then move on like a browsing goat to the next morsel of news, the last forgotten, with no behavioral correlates to whatever fleeting attitudes the last piece of news may have briefly stimulated . On the other hand, gun people have an attention span because they are in-formed and their beliefs have strong correlations in behavior such as voting and voluntary political association.

“(T)he modern “informed” person is the saddest and most tiresome creature on earth, who after watching a newscast and reading a newspaper imagines the few facts and allegations he has encountered bear some resemblance to social-political reality.”

There’s Quote of the Day material!

Honestly, it does look like an interesting book, and I’d love to read it – I’m just not going to pop $56 on a copy right now.

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

“Reality TV” is an absurd concept to people that live in the real world of work and worry. They get reality every day, they don’t need a faux one to amuse themselves. Cubicle-bound endomorphs think a contest that looks like figuring out a subway map, a bus schedule, and an airport tote board is an “Amazing Race.” Catching a trolley is not a bloodsport, no matter how heavy your backpack full of energy bars is. Adults going camping while participating in activities too silly and sedentary for an overweight child’s summer camp, with office politics thrown in, hardly makes them a “Survivor.” I’m told that when you’re all done watching all this on TV, you’re going to weave your own clothes and barter with your next-door neighbor, the grizzly bear, with Kruggerands. Sure you are.

— Sippican Cottage, Going Norm Galt

Via Phelps

Quote of the Day

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A week ago I was on a Southwest flight from Dallas sitting next to a very pleasant middle-aged woman who was busily grading papers. As I finished watching one of America’s greatest cinematic masterpieces on my (brand-new) MacBook Pro, I glanced over at some of the work. It looked identical to the work I see from my ten-year-old daughter and her classmates: Mostly simple sentences, a few dreadful spelling mistakes, and virtually no complex analysis. Unlike my daughter’s classmates, however, this teacher’s students skipped entire sections of their tests — failing to answer half the questions.
I was just about to open my mouth and say, “Fifth grade?” when I caught myself. Instead, I said “What grade?”
“Junior English.”
“High school?
“Yes. In suburban Chicago.”
I almost choked on my peanuts.

— David French, National Review Online – Low Graduation Rates and the Total Lack of Student Effort

Read the entire piece.

Memetic Warfare

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Bill Quick at Daily Pundit linked to a couple of posts here, one of which was I Say We Take Off and Nuke the Site from Orbit . . . A commenter there linked to an Eric S. Raymond post, Gramscian Damage, from which I take today’s Quote of the Day:

  • There is no truth, only competing agendas.
  • All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.
  • There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.
  • The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.
  • Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.
  • The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)
  • For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.
  • When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

As I previously observed, if you trace any of these back far enough, you’ll find a Stalinist intellectual at the bottom. (The last two items on the list, for example, came to us courtesy of Frantz Fanon. The fourth item is the Baran-Wallerstein “world system” thesis.) Most were staples of Soviet propaganda at the same time they were being promoted by “progressives” (read: Marxists and the dupes of Marxists) within the Western intelligentsia.

Yup.

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For that matter, future classroom teachers must search far in ed-school syllabi to find a single reference to any of (E.D.) Hirsch’s work—yet required readings by radical education thinkers such as Paulo Freire, Jonathan Kozol, and ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers are common. From these texts, prospective teachers will learn that the purpose of schooling in America isn’t to create knowledgeable, civic-minded citizens, loyal to the nation’s democratic institutions, as Jefferson dreamed, but rather to undermine those institutions and turn children into champions of “social justice” as defined by today’s America-hating far Left.

— E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy, by Sol Stern, City Journal Autumn 2009