From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Apr 08 2004 - 12:35:31 BST
DMB and all MOQers:
> Platt said:
> As for examples of 'war' as a fitting metaphor, in America there's
> acknowledgment and much debate about 'Culture Wars.' For example, the
> intellectual level, represented in some cases by 'liberals' and burdened by
> the defect of having 'no provision for morals,' supports rap culture which
> glorifies profanity, pornography and bestiality. The recent half- time show
> at our football Super Bowl represented this culture. The social level,
> represented in some cases by 'conservatives' and generally supportive of
> Christian social morality, supports so-called 'family values' which
> glorifies patriotism, honesty and decency (not to mention sexual abstinence
> before marriage). The vast numbers of Americans attending Sunday school and
> church services each week represent this culture.
>
> dmb says:
> Liberals support rap culture? The superbowl exposure of Janet Jackson's
> right boob represents liberal culture? Wow. I feel like a misquito at a
> nudist colony - I just don't know where to begin. For starters, you've
> confused the term "liberal" as a euphemism for one with loose morals with
> the term "liberal" as a political ideology. I know the Republican
> propaganda machine has been trying to confuse the public by morphing one
> into the other, but logicall, factually and philosophically the idea can't
> hold a drop of water. Liberal feminists like myself, for example, despise
> the misogyny found in so much of rap music.
.
The entertainment industry, which funds and produces rap music, is run by
liberals in Hollywood and New York.
> Platt said:
> Take, for example, the welfare state. Here is huge social static pattern
> that was created, expanded and today vigorously defended by liberals.
> Conservatives would dynamically dissolve this static social pattern and
> substitute in its place a pattern much more open to DQ by allowing for
> greater individual freedom.
>
> dmb says:
> Again, I think your case is both factually and logically flawed. For
> starters, Pirsig explicitly describes America's most ambitious welfare
> program as intellectual, not social.
The planning may be intellectual, but the resulting welfare state is a
social pattern. A state cannot read 'Lila.'
> Platt said:
> Another example would be the static social pattern of the media,
> monopolized until recently by liberals but increasingly challenged by new
> dynamic conservative media outlets like Fox News, the Drudge Report, and a
> host of Internet bloggers.
Typical liberal argument--ignore the message, bash the messenger.
> dmb says:
> New dynamic conservative media? Aren't you the one who pointed out that we
> shouldn't confuse novelty with progress? In any case, its pretty outlandish
> to characterize these new outlets as an improvement of any kind. I know
> Matt Drudge. He's a an uneduated gossip monger. Got his start hunting for
> celebrity gossip in the dumpsters of Hollywood. Literally. I'm not kidding.
> And Fox news is a joke to anyone but a partisan conservative. For example,
> Al Franken's latest book is basically a fact-checking project conducted by
> a class room full of Ivy Leage grad students. Franken set them to the task
> of investigating the veracity of what is reported on Fox's "fair and
> balanced" news programs. The book is called, "LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO
> TELL THEM: A Fair and Balanced look at the right". (Fox tried to sue
> Franken for using the phrase "fair and balanced" in his book title. They
> were literally laughed out of court. The law suit, said the presiding
> judge, "was wholly without merit, both factually and legally". Reminds me
> of the case Platt is making here.
Some joke. Fox has 51 percent of the prime-time cable news audience--more
than the liberal CNN and MSNBC combined. Also 1.1 million fewer people
watch the three liberal network news programs today than 12 months ago.
> Platt said:
> Another example would be our public schools which are totally controlled by
> government bureaucracies and monopolized by a liberal teachers union who
> block any attempt by conservatives to allow dynamic choice through school
> vouchers.
>
> dmb says:
> Again, novelty and progress are two different things. As liberals see it,
> the voucher systems proposed by conservative are efforts to A) commodify
> yet another aspect of life. B) break the back of yet another labor union.
> C) Replace secular education, where one is taught HOW to think, with
> private religious education, where our children are merely taught WHAT to
> think. In other words, its a way to get around the seperation of church and
> state in our educational system. Again, this is not an innovation, it is a
> regression, an undoing of social progress. Its reactionary rather than
> genuinely conservative.
Everyone knows the U.S. public school system is a colossal failure. In
science and math, American students rank near the bottom among
industrialized nations.
> Platt said:
> Of course, liberals argue that conservatives would like to 'turn back the
> clock,' because they believe that anything labelled 'new' is better than
> 'old' (except things that challenge their power like Fox News)
> Conservatives argue there's 'nothing new under the sun' and believe the old
> ways were often better than the new. Both positions can be intellectually
> defended, which means you cannot automatically assign one or the other to
> the social level.
>
> dmb says:
> Like I said to Wim, it hardly matter if one is defending tradition in
> intellecual terms or not, one is still defending tradition. And there isn't
> anything inherently wrong with that. I have a tremendous respect for
> tradition. But when social level moral codes and values try to trump
> intellectual values, that is immoral and degenerate. For journalists to be
> so wildly inaccurate so as to fill entire volumes, such as is the case with
> Fox, there has to be something else going on. Nobody THAT incompetent
> should be able to keep a real job as a journalist. The reason the most
> inaccurate staff in the history of journalism remains on staff is becasue
> FOX is not really interested in journalism or accuracy. They have a
> different agenda, not least of which is to provide intellectually dishonest
> people with a reason and an excuse to dismiss the more disconcerting facts
> of the day.
Sounds like National Public Radio to me.
> Platt said:
> So let us not be too hasty in assigning 'conservative' to the social level
> and 'liberal' to the intellectual level. I know liberals would love to
> think of themselves as the avant-garde of Pirsig's evolutionary
> metaphysics. But their staunch defense of outmoded static social patterns
> belies their belief.
>
> dmb says:
> There is a certain kind of genuine conservative position that can rightly
> be characterized as intellectual. (I'd suggest George Nash's book; THE
> CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT IN AMERICA SINCE 1945.) The Oxford
> Encyclopedia devotes many thousands of words to describing it. But what we
> see happening in actual politics bares very little resemblance to that
> legitimate ideology. Most of the main players in the current administration
> are more accurately called neo-conservatives. The Republican party itself
> is dominated by the more reactionary religious right, but also includes
> free market libertarians, old-fashioned bigots, nationalists and other
> factions that have various reasons to hate and fear the "radical foreign
> commie eggheads".
Knowing of the millions killed under communist dictatorships, one would be
incredibly naive not to hate and fear a revival.
> The liberal eggheads aren't at the cutting edge. Nobody is suggesting
> anything terribly big or new or radical. Today liberals find themselves in
> a defensive postion. All three branches of government are controlled by
> conservative majorities and 80% of the men is this county have a hair cut
> that makes them look like a member of the SS. .
The logic is impeccable. If your hair is short you're a Nazi.
> The conservative
> complaints about the tyrannical, oppressive and coercive nature of
> government fail to recognize that our government was concieved from the
> very start as a means of protecting indvidual rights.
Complete agreement. Our government was conceived to protect individuals
from the tyrannical, oppressive and coercive nature of government.
> As Jefferson puts it
> in the Declaration, "governments are instituted among men in order to
> secure these rights". Yea, conservatives want a small government. They want
> it to be just small enough to get in your bedroom door with a gun and a
> pair of handcuffs.
Thanks to DMB we have a colorful and accurate description of the nature of
government. How intellectual level is a gun and a pair of handcuffs?
Platt
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