This is all sort of beside the point. It's all part of the culture war. Adopting warlike language is therefore inevitable and happens on both sides (war on religion vs war on contraception.) At a certainly point, arguing about it is a waste of time since nobody is going to agree. We should just call it all by the same name, which is all it is: the culture war, and its many fronts.
I question whether Paul even wants to win. He wants to get his message out there, and I don't think he wants to spend a ton of time deflecting Romney attack ads. Better to shoot spitballs at the other kids for now.
Well we'll see. But this is sort of an unfair question, don't you think? Will you still support Obama when he starts eating babies for breakfast? Eh, eh, will you? I mean, who knows what the strategy is for Paul? I just suspect we don't need to leap through a bunch of hoops to find out.
I didn't read past "stupidity." One more like this and I'm banning you. We have a comment policy and you'll abide by it or you'll go elsewhere. Full stop.
An enormously uninformed piece of writing in almost every way.
Yawn. When you start out like that my eyes glaze over. But I'll give it my best. I'm sure your opinion of me throughout this comment is "informed" after all.
The Paul newsletters for instance, number over 240. When a midwestern TV reporter, Ben Swann, looked into it, he found that only 9 had racially insensitive language and only one extensively so. It turns out that this one newsletter did contain a clear byline by someone other than Paul. But in the original New Republic reporting on that by Jamie Kirchick, TNR suppressed that fact, even going so far as to cut off the page with that author’s byline in the PDF to which they provided their readers with a link.
This is nonsense. I looked into Swann's reporting because, as someone who has spoken very positively about Ron Paul for his views on drugs and the wars, I would love to have seen his name cleared. Alas, it was not. The one piece with a byline was hardly a revelation. It was included in the original files published by TNR. I watched the Twitter back-and-forth between Kirchick and Swann and it was sort of painful. Swann thought he had this big breaking story, but it was all years-old-news.
There may have only been a handful of very bad newsletters, but there was plenty of not-as-bad-but-still-absurd-crap in lots of the other newsletters. The point isn't really about the worst of the newsletters anyways. The point is that Paul and his intellectual comrades at the time used paranoia to spread a libertarian message. I'm glad Paul doesn't do that anymore, but it's problematic that he did in the past.
Since you are a liberal you believe that your state helps the broad mass of people, and hence you are unable to understand the Koch’s strategy, which flows more from libertarian class analysis than from Ayn Rand’s ideas about philosophy as the queen of culture. They are funding a broad based popular anti-statist movement, regardless of whether it is libertarian on issues that don’t affect the average person’s life. The result may be very libertarian, as a tea party Congress finds that to balance the budget the American empire and the war on drugs may need to be refunded.
Dude, first of all, you obviously have no idea what my politics are. So please kindly refrain from telling me what you think I believe about the state. And I'm well aware of the Koch strategy. It's exactly what I'm criticizing here, because I think it is failing to address liberty in a meaningful way, and is instead funding anyone who says they want to lower taxes or deregulate environmental laws. As I mentioned in the piece, they have done plenty of good things, too, but their support of the GOP is anti-liberty as far as I'm concerned, and that does matter.
European history, even before the American revolution, is a series of revolts by the tax serfs against the tax predator ruling class, beginning with the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. The tax predator ruling class and their court jesters and priests (today’s entertainers and media and academics) are attacked and cede some self-ownership back to the slaves, gradually sucking their blood more and more until the cycle happens again. The Kochs are just supplying contemporary peasants with axes, so we can take off your head. Don’t walk down any dark alleys.
I'm very glad that you can take seriously such a simplistic view of history. It makes me less bothered by the veiled threats of violence in that last line. Alas, history is far more complex than anti-tax revolts. Whatever helps you sleep at night, of course. Comfortable narratives help us avoid critical thinking.
On “Rise of the right-wing double-speak machine and the Sandra Fluke affair”
This is all sort of beside the point. It's all part of the culture war. Adopting warlike language is therefore inevitable and happens on both sides (war on religion vs war on contraception.) At a certainly point, arguing about it is a waste of time since nobody is going to agree. We should just call it all by the same name, which is all it is: the culture war, and its many fronts.
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Jaybird - this is a dodge given the actual context of healthcare in this country.
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Russell isn't calling women sluts, Scott.
On “Sailing Away to Irrelevance: Rush Limbaugh & The Right’s Self-Destructive Dependency on The Media Machine”
Keep knocking them out of the park, Tod. Fantastic piece.
On “Self-Publishing is Over”
To your last point, David, I think that this is not representative of where we are headed, only of the pain of transition.
On “Is Ron Paul secretly working for the Mitt Romney campaign?”
Indeed, right up to the point where he sounds like a conspiracy theorist. Gold, the Fed, etc.
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The third video I just added shows him attacking Mitt directly through an ad.
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You are assuming things are going a specific way. I question whether that is a reasonable perception to begin with.
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I question whether Paul even wants to win. He wants to get his message out there, and I don't think he wants to spend a ton of time deflecting Romney attack ads. Better to shoot spitballs at the other kids for now.
"
Well we'll see. But this is sort of an unfair question, don't you think? Will you still support Obama when he starts eating babies for breakfast? Eh, eh, will you? I mean, who knows what the strategy is for Paul? I just suspect we don't need to leap through a bunch of hoops to find out.
On “Sock Puppets: Not Just for Kids Anymore”
This should be fixed now.
On “What Exactly is Overrated Here?”
Yglesias drives me crazy because he'll write one thing that I really like and agree with and the next minute he'll go off the rails.
On “The Koch brothers and rightwing fusionism”
Bob, I know.
If you stop using phrases like commie-dem I'll ask kimmi not to swear.
And I have no clue what you mean by "goes to France" so you'll have to elaborate.
On “Sock Puppets: Not Just for Kids Anymore”
Doubtful. Unless it was Jon McLeod instead of John.
On “The Koch brothers and rightwing fusionism”
Oh Bob, you just say that because I'm always threatening to ban you and I never do. I'm a big softy.
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Sorry. But the timing is sort of poetic.
On “Sock Puppets: Not Just for Kids Anymore”
Make that four again. I lost my temper.
On “The Koch brothers and rightwing fusionism”
Indeed, and how manly that would be. Either way, your sneering contemptuous, self-congratulatory drivel is unwelcome here. So long.
On “Sock Puppets: Not Just for Kids Anymore”
Thanks for this. But James has no identiy. Who is this mysterious James?
On “The Koch brothers and rightwing fusionism”
I didn't read past "stupidity." One more like this and I'm banning you. We have a comment policy and you'll abide by it or you'll go elsewhere. Full stop.
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Bruce:
Yawn. When you start out like that my eyes glaze over. But I'll give it my best. I'm sure your opinion of me throughout this comment is "informed" after all.
This is nonsense. I looked into Swann's reporting because, as someone who has spoken very positively about Ron Paul for his views on drugs and the wars, I would love to have seen his name cleared. Alas, it was not. The one piece with a byline was hardly a revelation. It was included in the original files published by TNR. I watched the Twitter back-and-forth between Kirchick and Swann and it was sort of painful. Swann thought he had this big breaking story, but it was all years-old-news.
There may have only been a handful of very bad newsletters, but there was plenty of not-as-bad-but-still-absurd-crap in lots of the other newsletters. The point isn't really about the worst of the newsletters anyways. The point is that Paul and his intellectual comrades at the time used paranoia to spread a libertarian message. I'm glad Paul doesn't do that anymore, but it's problematic that he did in the past.
Dude, first of all, you obviously have no idea what my politics are. So please kindly refrain from telling me what you think I believe about the state. And I'm well aware of the Koch strategy. It's exactly what I'm criticizing here, because I think it is failing to address liberty in a meaningful way, and is instead funding anyone who says they want to lower taxes or deregulate environmental laws. As I mentioned in the piece, they have done plenty of good things, too, but their support of the GOP is anti-liberty as far as I'm concerned, and that does matter.
I'm very glad that you can take seriously such a simplistic view of history. It makes me less bothered by the veiled threats of violence in that last line. Alas, history is far more complex than anti-tax revolts. Whatever helps you sleep at night, of course. Comfortable narratives help us avoid critical thinking.
On “Mindless Diversions Extra!”
Yay Steam, and yay Valve. Those guys are amazing.
On “A matter of taste”
They really do.
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And so we're back to this and it's funky extra white space.
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Well that's not going to work then.