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| Joan's Concerns About "The Left"; from the locked topic | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Sep 8 2008, 05:31 PM (1,121 Views) | |
| duke09parent | Sep 8 2008, 11:10 PM Post #16 |
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The postmodernists and their ilk are a dangerous crowd and I agree that there is not, at least not in this century, elements of the right willing or able to engage in distortion to that level. It was no secret that cadres of such people existed on college campuses. Those are just about the only places where such people can get paid for writing such stuff. I was surprised how powerful they have become thereand how they have intimidated the rest of the faculty. I blame hte latter at Duke on Brodhead. Peter Lange appeared to be the only administration official with any sense. BTW KC Johnson reports on Barbara Barnett of the University of Kansas in his most recent essay. She wrote that Duke did not sufficiently emphasize discussion of rape culture and spent too much time discussing due process. Part of her argument is that rationality is a patriarchal construct. Implicitly then, rationality is something to be avoided, according to her. Is Obama a pomo in disguise? I don't think so but I don't blame anyone for trying to prove he is. Columbia undergrad and Harvard Law doesn't prove it to me. After all GWB was Yale and Harvard educated. Fareed Zacharia went to Yale. So did Christopher Buckley, humorist (Thank You for Smoking) and Bill Buckley's son. On Cash, you are more charitable towards him than I am. I think he exploited the scandal to promote himself. Sort of a cultural war profiteer, if you will. I didn't mean to launch a defense of the level of AIDS research funding, I was just rebutting Greg's list of litmus tests for Democrats. |
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| J. Elliott | Sep 8 2008, 11:24 PM Post #17 |
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I had a pizza delivery to a regular customer once. She was AA, but stood out from the delivery norm in many ways - polite, prepared, and she tipped. Don't waste my time telling me the stereotypes about black customers are bogus. I've got 75,000 deliveries under my belt. Anywho, on one occasion she told me something so stupid I didn't know how to respond. At all. She let me know that she knew about a prior delivery to her house where one of our drivers had peed on her pizza, then left a note in her mailbox about how he had AIDS and was trying to give it to her. And she was a nurse! I was totally flummoxed. What can be said in response to something like this? She was staring at me intently, waiting for me to acknowledge the truth of the event. I didn't and it made her angry. As far as I was concerned, she was making it up. She didn't like it that I balked at the telling. The dumbest part of it was that her story was the hundredth telling of this rumor during that time period. It was far from the first time I'd heard it, and I couldn't quite believe I was hearing it from this above-average AA customer, who stood apart for politeness and decorum in so many ways. |
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| Deleted User | Sep 9 2008, 12:56 AM Post #18 |
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. I had to laugh. When it's 90% of black people doing something, so many of us focus and report on the exceptions to the 90% - we are trained to say something positive. However, if 90% of white people were doing something, we'd be focusing on the 90% - their motives, their biases, their inherent 'need' to take these actions or positions. What was stated and acted out on National Public Radio (NPR) 20 years ago is now mainstream. |
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| Jezebelle | Sep 9 2008, 02:12 AM Post #19 |
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Tony gets it. |
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| 60slib | Sep 9 2008, 02:56 AM Post #20 |
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I don't think I'd do well in this discussion of "The Left" but I will offer today's Thomas Sowell article "The Vision of the Left" http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/09/09/the_vision_of_the_left?page=full |
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| Jezebelle | Sep 9 2008, 03:45 AM Post #21 |
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Thanks, 60's. I think Sowell gives the left more credit than it deserves in terms of their objectives. I don't think they're all about peace, prosperity and goodness toward all. |
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| Deleted User | Sep 9 2008, 06:23 AM Post #22 |
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Of course, where Obama obtained his degrees is proof of nothing in and of itself. It is just one piece of circumstantial evidence in building a case. If you put the fact that he spent eight years of his life on campuses where Post modernist thought hold ascendancy and then, twenty years of his life in a pulpit listening to Rev. Wright...I think I can get a somewhat accurate picture of what the man's "philosophy" might be. Add to that the non-scripted statements of his wife, the community "relationship" and/ or friendship with far left Ayers. Add a touch of the blockage of the "born-alive" baby protection. And to top it all , we add the most liberal voting record in the Senate. The Duke Frame has taught me that the far Left will do, say, claim anything to achieve their ends. So, of course, Obama does not want to sound like Houston Baker in a general election. He has the great oratory skills and keen mind that allow him to sound quite "reasonable" and I believe he will tack to the middle as necessary in the campaign to gain the votes he needs. But what in his record can any of you show me that points to Obama as a bi-partisan fence mender or a post-racial leader? In his years in Illinois and in his brief Senate tenure what are his bi-partisan achievements, where did he cross his party or THEIR POWERFUL backers at risk to himself? Where did he cross Dem party interests??? McCain has crossed his party enough that many initally could not support him (the coalition to pass judges, McCain Feingold, supporting Kerry over the Swift Boat Vets...just the first that come to mind) Palin fought crooked Republicans on the Gas and Oil Commission and bucked her party leadership. Where has Obama done anything like this? I am not arguing here. If it exists...show me please. On the post-racial front...for twenty years he was a very visible and influential member of a Black Church that has very bitter and angry views toward America and Whites. What "healing" was he able to bring..what "change I can believe in..to the attitudes of that church? Where was his "post-racial" leadership IN HIS OWN PARISH? Where is his record of leadership anywhere on race issues? Please do not point to one comment in one letter to one Hooligan..that may have been typed up by a staffer. I can tell you I'm an advocate to prevent child abuse, but if I go to some far out right wing church for twenty years where the minister exhorts us from the pulpit to whip our children...and I STAY, and give my money, and call him my "mentor",,,,what does that mean? So why should I not believe that the philosophiocal infection that gripped Durham and Duke from the ideological nurse...to the hungry Dem prosecutor...to the politically aligned judges...to the Left leaning MSM, to the the Leftist city government.... to the Leftist campus idelogues...might not spread and take hold under a similarly minded Obama? We have seen the faux noose incidents cause a political furor, the justice Dept riding into Jenna, Book covers threatening peoples jobs....break-outs of ideological hysteria. We have seen all this under a Republican administration. Imagine a President, a congress, appointed judicary who have the same "Best for Us" goals, and the same "certain people are expendable" tactics. In the Duke Frame we saw the perfect model of how... with power in enough different places... the Left can choreograph a Hoax, nuture it, grow it, and be comfortable with throwing three innocent kids under the bus to reinforce the metanarrative. Anyone is expendable, any lie forgivable, anything permissable to move us toward the societal goals they achieve. I believe Obama in the White House will not just be the culmination of post-modernist dreams ...it will be the beginning of the conquest of anything and anybody that stand in their way. Like Collin , Reade, and Dave. |
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| Deleted User | Sep 9 2008, 06:32 AM Post #23 |
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By the way..I'm enjoying this exchange. Thank you, Duke Parent ,for your time and effort to present another side of the issues. And to those who support Obama, I would actually LIKE to lose this particular debate. I'd like you to take my arguments ...one by one...and destroy them. I have never feared the election of a candidate as I do this year. I believed in checks and balances. I believed good people stood in the way of the craziest ideologues on either end of the spectrum. I COULD NEVER HAVE BELIEVED WHAT WE SAW IN THIS FRAME..IF I HAD NOT EXPERIENCED IT, DAY BY DAY, WITH ALL OF YOU. So please prove me wrong...I'd rather have egg on my face ....and find peace in my heart about what lies ahead. |
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| Bill Anderson | Sep 9 2008, 06:49 AM Post #24 |
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There is something else regarding Wright's church that I think I should say. Wright subscribes to a line of "Liberation Theology" that came from Marxists in South America during the 1960s and 70s and spread in mainline Protestant and liberal Roman Catholic churches, and especially the seminaries in the 1970s and 1980s. The line of "Liberation Theology" that Wright preaches is called "Black Theology," and it was "developed" by James Cone in the early 1970s. I read his book in religion class at Tennessee in 1974, and it definitely was not what one would call "orthodox" Christian theology. In reading the book, I got the sense that Cone saw Jesus basically as a political activist. In fact, toward the end of the book, Cone addresses the question: What would Jesus do? His reply was that it did not matter, and that Jesus basically was irrelevant today past any leftist activism one could do in his name. Cone also basically denied any other aspect of the Christian religion, seeing it exclusively as a political tool by which to bring in an all-powerful state that would serve in the place of God. This all-powerful state would impose a socialistic order that would confiscate the wealth of "the rich" and give it to "the poor." The idea of a real God or a Christ who fit the characteristics that are spelled out in something like the Nicene Creed or even the Apostles Creed is pretty much regarded as passe or even wrong. This particular "theology" is extremely present-oriented, and has no place at all for future actions. (And, Cone basically denies there is anything like Heaven or Hell or even anything that spells of an afterlife. The present world is all there is.) I am not saying that Obama -- or even Wright -- subscribes to this set of beliefs in their totality. I'm just saying that Wright has held Cone as a guiding light and I briefly have outlined Cone's theology. Furthermore, I am NOT saying that Obama subscribes to Cone's theology. Obviously, he is more "liberal" in his Christian beliefs than many or most evangelicals, but it would not be right or proper for me to make any judgment of where he stands exactly in his beliefs. At the time of Jim Crow politics, black churches tended to be the one main place of refuge. Because of that, black churches tend to be more political in orientation, and the members heavily vote Democratic. Wright's church is a Democratic stronghold in Chicago, so it is not surprising to me that the "theology" of that church would be a mix of politics, social activism, resentment -- yes, resentment -- and a view of Jesus as a social activist. Don't forget that the black churches of Durham were the stronghold that permitted the hoax/frame to thrive. After Reade and Collin were indicted, one black pastor stood up in his pulpit and declared relief that these "rapists" had been arrested. Now, after speaking before God and his congregation that he was sure there had been a rape, and that Reade and Collin were the perpetrators, and after churches had conducted rallies and outdoor services at 610 N. Buchanan, does anyone think that the ministers then would have admitted the whole thing was a lie? So, you can see a real problem with this kind of activism. As a Christian, I do not believe one should use the Gospels and Christ as the means by which to perpetrate a lie, and especially a lie in which the government authorities have knowingly brought a false case. (Sorry for the rambling here.)
Edited by Bill Anderson, Sep 9 2008, 06:51 AM.
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| Deleted User | Sep 9 2008, 08:51 AM Post #25 |
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Debunking one claim: http://www.powerlineblog.com/ A highly knowledgeable source writes to comment on "Not just the most liberal senator." He writes: It would be nice if the press would bring just one reporter back from Alaska to look into Senator Obama's legislative claims. If you'll bear with me, I think a few details on "signature" Lugar-Obama legislation bear fleshing out because The One is being an out-and-out fabulist. In one of Obama's television ads, and in countless press interviews, Obama claims that he "reach[ed] out to Senator Lugar...to help lock down loose nuclear weapons." Not true. A little background:: The Soviet-Nuclear Threat Reduction Act passed in 1991(!) and was signed by George H.W. Bush. It was renamed the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction ACT in 1993. It was meant to secure Russia's nuclear stockpile and to help pay for eliminating Russia's excess strategic weapons. By the time that Obama entered the Senate the legislation had mostly accomplished its main goals (securing Soviet nuclear warheads and destroying delivery systems). In fact, Russia had long since begun building new nuclear weapons and delivery systems. What Obama's legislation did was extend and amend this already wildly successful legislation. But the real substance of amendment had nothing to do with nuclear weapons. Just the opposite. The new authorities in Obama's amendment dealt only with conventional weapons. Here are his amendments to section 11 of the State Department Authorization Act of 2006: (a) In General- The Secretary of State is authorized to secure, remove, or eliminate stocks of man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), small arms and light weapons, stockpiled munitions, abandoned ordnance, and other conventional weapons, including tactical missile systems (hereafter in this section referred to as 'MANPADS and other conventional weapons'), as well as related equipment and facilities, located outside the United States that are determined by the Secretary to pose a proliferation threat. And Section 12: a) Statement of Policy - Congress declares that it should be the policy of the United States to hold foreign governments accountable for knowingly transferring MANPADS to state-sponsors of terrorism or terrorist organizations. This amendment didn't start any work on securing nukes, nor did it finish it. It doesn't even mention nuclear weapons. In fact, you could argue that it diverted us from securing "loose nukes." And look at that Section 12 statement of policy, again. It's vintage Obamian bunny rabbits and rainbows. Keep in mind that the largest manufacturer of MANPADS is Russia. And the country that most often transfers them to terrorists is Iran. Just how did Obama want to "hold them accountable"? Tickle them to death? Write them a very nasty letter? He doesn't say. This legislation that Obama claims as his own was couched in the annual State Department Authorization...he wasn't even a cosponsor of that larger bill. His amendment had been folded into the larger authorization much earlier (yes, by unanimous consent). But we can actually take this one step further. After the bill's passage, the US went on a worldwide hunt to buy up MANPADs. Unable to get the MANPADs out of the hands of real enemies, we twisted the arms of allies to give up air defense stockpiles we deemed superfluous. One of the easiest targets? Georgia. We browbeat Georgia into giving us its MANPAD stockpile, which was their only air defense. We all know the rest of the story. Georgia was smart enough to go buy a few new MANPADs from places like Poland (against our loud protestations), but when Russia invaded last month they didn't have nearly enough to protect themselves against Russia's onslaught. Obama shouldn't be allowed to get away with this. It's too bad the big boys at the Washington Post can't be bothered to look seriously into Obama's tall tales of bipartisan accomplishment. You'd think this story might be up their alley. Unfortuntately, they're busy at the moment checking up on Governor Palin's per diem as governor of Alaskka. |
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| Deleted User | Sep 9 2008, 08:54 AM Post #26 |
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More from Powerline. Last night Paul Mirengoff wrote here about Barack Obama's work as a "community organizer." As Paul notes, David Fredosso explores Obama's three years working for the Developing Communities Project in The Case Against Barack Obama. National Review has also now made Byron York's article "What did Obama do as a community organizer?" accessible online. Also of interest are Steven Malanga's "Organizer in chief" and Richard Fernandez's "And the word was made flesh." One of Obama's two accomplishments in this line of work was agitating for the removal of asbestos from the Altgeld Gardens public housing project on the (far) South Side of Chicago. York refers to it as Obama's "greatest hit." In the US News article "On the streets of Chicago, a candidae comes of age," reporter Kenneth Walsh attirbutes only "partial success" to Obama's asbestos removal agitation. When the on-site manager of the apartments didn't take action to remove asbestos from the residents' apartments, Obama nudged the residents into confronting city housing officials in two angry public meetings downtown. These generated "a victory of sorts," Obama said later, as workers soon began sealing the asbestos in the buildings. However, according to Walsh, the project gradually ran out of steam and money. Walsh reports that some tenants still have asbestos in their homes. On this point Walsh cites current Altgeld resident Linda Randle, who worked with Obama on the '86 anti-asbestos campaign. See also Michael Kranish's "A defining time of advocacy." What about the jobless steel workers Obama went to help on the South Side? They figure prominently in every telling offered by Senator and Mrs. Obama of Obama's work as a community organizer. Founding a business that might actually furnish gainful employment to the workers laid off at the shuttered Wisconsin Steel plant may not have been above Obama's pay grade, but it's not what "community organizing" is all about. Malanga quotes Obama deriding “the old individualistic bootstrap myth” of American achievement touted by conservatives. Malanga finds Obama explaining that self-help strategies “have become thinly veiled excuses for cutting back on social programs, which are anathema to a conservative agenda,” in his chapter of the 1990 book After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois. Malanga notes that Obama also depicted leftist community organizing as a harder task than similar efforts by the Christian Right, telling a reporter in 1995 that “it’s always easier to organize around intolerance, narrow-mindedness and false nostalgia.” http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070826/3obama_2.htm http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/22/a_defining_time_of_advocacy/ http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWMxNGUxZWJjYzg1NjA0MTlmZDZmMjUwZGU3ZjAwNmU= http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_3_snd-community_activist_president.html |
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| Deleted User | Sep 9 2008, 11:42 AM Post #27 |
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/ Barack Obama is perhaps also the least effective Senator. This exchange between Chris Wallace and David Axelrod on yesterday's Fox News Sunday is hilarious: Fox News' Chris Wallace: Now, David, McCain and Palin do have records of going up against their own parties. When has Barack Obama ever gone up against the Democratic Party in the U.S. Senate? Obama Senior Strategist David Axelrod: ... One of the first things that Senator Obama did when he came to the U.S. Senate was push for the most far-reaching ethics reforms that we've seen since Watergate. That didn't please people on either side of the aisle, and he has done that consistently in his career. He's reached across party lines to find consensus and he's taken on his own party on issues like, like ethics reform. You know, what was interesting about these attacks about bipartisanship and so on is that people like Dick Lugar, the very respected Republican senator from Indiana, spoke out and said, These are just partisan attacks. I've worked with Barack Obama.' They worked together on arms control. Senator Coburn in Oklahoma worked together with him on budget issues, like putting the budget on Google so we can see how our money is being spent, putting caps on the contracts around Katrina rebuilding. Senator Obama has a strong recor d of working across party lines to produce progress for people. Wallace: But David, because you guys always talk about ethics legislation and the nuclear non-proliferation deal with Dick Lugar, I went back and looked -- both of those measures passed by unanimous consent. They were so accepted by the Senate that there was not even a vote. In fact, ethics legislation was one of the campaign promises. These were not -- if I may, if I may. These were not areas where Barack Obama went up against the leadership of his own party nearly in the way that John McCain did on campaign finance reform, on limiting interrogation of terror detainees, on immigration reform. He did not go up against his own party on either of those issues. It takes a lot of nerve--more specifically a lot of confidence that the mainstream media have your back--to cite as your number one example of something that "didn't please people on either side of the aisle" a measure that passed unanimously on a voice vote! Once again, that's typical Obama. Granted, he's been in the Senate only a short time, but even so it is remarkable that he doesn't have more legislative accomplishments to his name. |
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7:23 PM Jul 10