Home Forums FineTunedMac Community Lounge All is not well ...

... in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

For your deliberative entertainment check out Brian T. Kennedy's "It's Never Just the Economy, Stupid" in the January 2011 issue (Vol 40, No 1) of Hillsdale College's Imprimis at hillsdale.edu/imprimis .

I leave it to you to decide whether the country is in danger or the author's theses are.

Interesting reading and, provided one takes Kennedy's many assumptions at face value, sufficiently plausible to find a following. That said, the article's tenor is not a little bit reminiscent of cold war fear mongering. And if one needed any more hints, Kennedy's political outlook becomes all too clear with his final assessment: "the economic and constitutional crisis represented by Obamacare".

So let's pull up our sleeves and turn those plowshares back into guns. And don't complain of your aches and pains, but bear it like men, you saps!

RE ... his final assessment: "the economic and constitutional crisis represented by Obamacare".

Oh, there's no secret as to where his sentiments lie (as is the case with most Imprimis contributors, and Hillsdale College has a long-standing distaste for governmental interference in education). It's just too bad that such commentators can't seem to resist throwing in a gratuitous slight (and sometimes sleight) even though it's completely off point.
Meh.

Unfortunately, the views expressed are exactly in line with many other diverse resources that I've studied on this topic....the points made are stunningly clear and logically concise.

We are living today in a society which has forgotten for nearly two generations the lessons that were hard-learned in the 1930's and 1940's.....

I've travelled extensively in the third world, and I can personally report that it's not like Kansas, Toto.

US freedoms and the way of life which we assume to be the norm throughout the rest of the world (and if it's different, then THEY are doing it wrong) IS truly the exception.

We make the assumption that, just because there are other Western civilizations and cultures which embrace similar philosophies to ours, our philosophy is predominant throughout the world......it is NOT.

So then, the "solution" is to scrap socialized healthcare (etc.), and build more nukes?

Hmm...

We just need to start stoning our own infidels.

As a card-carrying infidel, I'm not sure that I can agree with that.

I'm an infidel too, but I'm not stoned.

The day is still young.

*yawn* I actually found the essay poorly written, full of emotionally-laden and fearmongering language. The "logic" in the piece isn't supported by evidence; it's designed to SOUND compelling to people who already agree with the premises, without actually BEING compelling to anyone else.

Pseudoscience uses many of the same bits of language trickery and the same rhetorical tactics. Read an essay on anti-vaccination, for instance, and it has some of the same feel, even though the intents of both pieces are entirely different and their arguments unrelated to one another.

To say that I found it less than compelling is an overwhelming understatement. It's little more than "Be scared! Be scared! Be scared! Be scared! Be scared! Be scared! Be scared! Be scared! Be scared! Now give us your money to build bombs."

Actually, the portion concerning the way that the Shuras override earlier portions of the Koran is exactly on topic and has been validated by numerous other sources......the treatment of the Soviet/Cold War and the Chinese is think-tank material that has been run up and down the flagpole many times. Whether you choose to treat it as gospel or merely take it for consideration as a potential is totally up to you.

The issue I have with Kennedy's article is not whether the various fact(oid)s listed are correct, but what their importance and consequences are likely to be. That's where the assumptions I was referring to above come down fast and furious, invariably skewed toward the same antagonistic position. That's the fearmongering part. This is followed by the then logical and inevitable seeming conclusions.

I disagree with Tacit about the quality of writing; I don't consider it poor, but rather carefully crafted to appear well-reasoned in order to engender a particular reaction from those who're not familiar with all pertinent details. And who does, these days? For me, the real poverty of the story lies in this manipulativeness, but that's of course the whole purpose of the exercise.

Yep, being manipulative is the down-side.....

Exactly. It's the sort of pseudo-intellectualism that Newt uses so often: throw enough big words at the audience, and you're bound to sound knowledgeable. Parse the sentences and expose the irrationality. As in accusing Obama of being "anti-colonialist" without considering that the revered Founding Fathers would have similarly been anti-colonialists.

Ah, shades of Spiro Agnew.
Remember his "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals"? His use of the word "effete" sent many a person scrambling for the dictionary.
I'm not sure he could be characterized as an intellectual (he had great speech writers), but his moral and ethical atoll certainly submerged rapidly.
C'est la vie et c'est la guerre.

There are many "facts" about the Koran which, when carefully constructed, can be used to manipulate Westerners into being scared. There are "facts" about most anything, from nuclear power to medicine, which when carefully constructed can be used to manipulate people into being scared.

And on the other side, some Muslims use similar "facts" about the Bible to try to make a case that Christians want to kill all non-Christians and spread Christianity by the sword. For example, look at Deuteronomy 13:12-17 (I'll use the NIV here):

If you hear it said about one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you to live in that troublemakers have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods," then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. And if it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done among you, you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must destroy it completely, both its people and its livestock. You are to gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town is to remain a ruin forever, never to be rebuilt, and none of the condemned things are to be found in your hands.

Now, with the exception of a very tiny lunatic fringe, Christians do not habitually go about burning towns and killing people if someone worships a strange god in them. And with the exception of a very tiny lunatic fringe, Muslims do not run around putting the unbeliever to death. But fearmongers on both sides can easily manipulate the gullible by carefully quoting the Bible and the Koran, both of which contain many commands to kill.

Essentially, the purpose of the piece is to frighten and manipulate, nothing more.



When I say the essay is poorly written, I don't mean that it uses poor grammar or misspells words. I mean that it is built on a shoddy foundation of poor logic and faulty arguments, which are (to my eye, anyway) transparent in their attempts to frighten the uneducated or partly-educated reader. The same exact pattern of logic can easily be used to make a case that the rest of the world should be afraid of Christianity and the United States--a conclusion which, it must be said, is pretty compelling in some corners of the world given our recent expensive misadventures abroad.

It's a rehash of the same tired arguments that have been with us since the 1940s, merely substituting new enemies as cultural fashion dictates. "Give us your money for bombs. We don't have a big enough military. Be scared! Be scared! Look, there are monsters under your bed! Be scared! Spend more on the military!"