I haven't brought out Evil Jaybird for a while. Might be time to bring him back...
Evil Jaybird:
Let's say that I have a handful of kids. My three kids are, sadly, average. Soul-crushingly, heart-breakingly average. Right down the middle of the road. Average smarts, average athletes, average ambition, average everything.
These kids won't particularly have any special advantages given them by the genetic lottery *APART* from having been born to me, Evil Jaybird. The Number One thing that I care about is making sure that my kids have a leg up against the competition. That's it.
My income puts me above the national average but nowhere near the top quadrile. I'm in the middle of the 2nd one... and I'll be darned if my kids go down a single percentage point.
What is my gameplan?
Well, the first thing I'd do is make sure that not only do my kids go to a pretty good school, I'd make sure that it was difficult for people who are below me on the economic ladder to get into this same school. I'd probably push for something like districts and say that you have to live in the district to send your kids there *AND* say that the district gets its funding based on property taxes rather than from the capitol. I would oppose, absolutely, any attempt to change this as "stealing from our children".
When it came to teachers, I would make *CERTAIN* that we had a very strong union... because while I would want the best and brightest teachers for *MY* kids, I'd want to make sure that the bad teachers from my school district were reassigned to the bad districts rather than fired outright. The teachers from the bad districts that are pretty good will be promoted up to my school once they've got some experience teaching under their belts, the ones from my school that are bad will trickle down to those cruddy schools. I would paint this as solidarity with Unions, the importance of a Strong Middle Class, and I'd do this where the teachers of *MY* kids could see.
There's a handful of things that I could also do to tweak the standing of my kids in the classroom... the kids of engaged parents will always have a leg up on the kids of unengaged parents (all other things being equal) but those don't really fit my goal of making sure that my kids live as if they were part of a class while the bright kids from the crappy part of town who might exceed, all other things being equal, live as if they were part of a caste.
So now I ask you:
What is wrong with Evil Jaybird's plan? Will it fail?
Certainly I think you’d agree that the nature of the conversation would be much different if we were talking about Muslims, Communists or the Yellow Peril as opposed to Republicans.
And my question is over the use of "Nihilistic Tolerance" without mention of the last 500 times the term has been debated in the context of Muslims, or Communists, or the Yellow Peril, or Catholics, or what have you.
What it *DOES* do is address the underlying point which seems to be "are the Democrats too tolerant of an ideology that wants to harm the country???"
Now, I do think that the Republicans, whatever their faults, do *NOT*, in fact, want to harm the country.
The odd thing is that there *ARE* ideologies out there that *DO* want to harm the country and these ideologies (some of them have even been in the newspapers!) were not mentioned at all.
Indeed, there is a particularly interesting debate over whether we ought to tolerate these ideologies or whether we ought to actively fight against them (convert them to Christianity, etc)... and discussions of what "tolerance" entails, exactly.
Do "political cartoons" count as intolerance?
Does "rioting when you hear about political cartoons" count as intolerance?
Interesting questions!
But this essay was talking about whether Democrats were "Nihilistically Tolerant" of Republicans.
Republicans! As if the Republicans weren't the biggest *ENABLERS* of the Democratic Party!
I was interested in the debate over "Nihilistic Tolerance" rather than whether Republicans were the last, best hope for fiscal sanity.
What disturbs me is when I am engaged in two different conversations with two different people on two different topics and someone asks me what in the sam hill these two things have to do with a third thing that I wasn't even talking about.
That tells me that they're not particularly interested in discussing anything at all but hoping for an opportunity to write an essay of their own.
Frankly, I was worried that my wondering about free speech issues would turn into an argument about how if I really cared about the government not sniffing sheets, I'd vote Republican and I've seen that movie before.
So is it fair on my part to see your silence on the Piss Christ issue as confirmation for liberal cowardice when it comes to defending plurality in the face of religious violence?
If it's not, why isn't it?
Can we come to conclusions about other people based on their not having said anything yet?
When insulting someone else's intelligence, please use contractions correctly. With that behind us, But really, maybe your having difficulty understanding (believe me I sympathize) that Cole is doing the extraordinary by keeping two thoughts in his head at the same time.
It's probably up there with why you haven't complained about the destruction of Serrano's "Piss Christ" yet. (Something about which John Cole's silence also speaks volumes.)
I think you want to avoid an unpleasant discussion that you suspect you'll lose but maybe it's just because you sympathize with the people who enjoy destroying art.
Instead of complaining about X, he's wondering why Libertarians aren't complaining about X.
I note that you haven't complained about it yet but have complained about my complaining about John Cole complaining about Libertarians not complaining.
Why is that, Stillwater? What are your motives here?
Would you agree that part of the metaphorical problem is that the Republicans, metaphorically, built a metaphorical temple in the metaphorical shadow of 9/11? Instead of being allowed to metaphorically do this, the democrats ought to have metaphorically fought against this metaphorical temple metaphorically dedicated to their intolerance despite that they've metaphorically dressed it up as being metaphorically open to everybody so long as they metaphorically walk in metaphorical lockstep with their spectacularly intolerant religious ideas that have a very real history of committing violence against people who don't agree with the various really ugly things their holy book says?
Isn't there a metaphorical elephant in the room that we're metaphorically ignoring?
On “School reform, Benton Harbor, and the Tea Party”
I haven't brought out Evil Jaybird for a while. Might be time to bring him back...
Evil Jaybird:
Let's say that I have a handful of kids. My three kids are, sadly, average. Soul-crushingly, heart-breakingly average. Right down the middle of the road. Average smarts, average athletes, average ambition, average everything.
These kids won't particularly have any special advantages given them by the genetic lottery *APART* from having been born to me, Evil Jaybird. The Number One thing that I care about is making sure that my kids have a leg up against the competition. That's it.
My income puts me above the national average but nowhere near the top quadrile. I'm in the middle of the 2nd one... and I'll be darned if my kids go down a single percentage point.
What is my gameplan?
Well, the first thing I'd do is make sure that not only do my kids go to a pretty good school, I'd make sure that it was difficult for people who are below me on the economic ladder to get into this same school. I'd probably push for something like districts and say that you have to live in the district to send your kids there *AND* say that the district gets its funding based on property taxes rather than from the capitol. I would oppose, absolutely, any attempt to change this as "stealing from our children".
When it came to teachers, I would make *CERTAIN* that we had a very strong union... because while I would want the best and brightest teachers for *MY* kids, I'd want to make sure that the bad teachers from my school district were reassigned to the bad districts rather than fired outright. The teachers from the bad districts that are pretty good will be promoted up to my school once they've got some experience teaching under their belts, the ones from my school that are bad will trickle down to those cruddy schools. I would paint this as solidarity with Unions, the importance of a Strong Middle Class, and I'd do this where the teachers of *MY* kids could see.
There's a handful of things that I could also do to tweak the standing of my kids in the classroom... the kids of engaged parents will always have a leg up on the kids of unengaged parents (all other things being equal) but those don't really fit my goal of making sure that my kids live as if they were part of a class while the bright kids from the crappy part of town who might exceed, all other things being equal, live as if they were part of a caste.
So now I ask you:
What is wrong with Evil Jaybird's plan? Will it fail?
On “Are Liberals Nihilistically Tolerant?”
Matthew 23:24.
"
Elia, I am not saying "only".
This is your post! Talk about what you want!
If, however, you strain at a gnat whilst swallowing a camel, you should not be surprised to hear people discussing camels rather than gnats.
"
Certainly I think you’d agree that the nature of the conversation would be much different if we were talking about Muslims, Communists or the Yellow Peril as opposed to Republicans.
And my question is over the use of "Nihilistic Tolerance" without mention of the last 500 times the term has been debated in the context of Muslims, or Communists, or the Yellow Peril, or Catholics, or what have you.
"
What it *DOES* do is address the underlying point which seems to be "are the Democrats too tolerant of an ideology that wants to harm the country???"
Now, I do think that the Republicans, whatever their faults, do *NOT*, in fact, want to harm the country.
The odd thing is that there *ARE* ideologies out there that *DO* want to harm the country and these ideologies (some of them have even been in the newspapers!) were not mentioned at all.
Indeed, there is a particularly interesting debate over whether we ought to tolerate these ideologies or whether we ought to actively fight against them (convert them to Christianity, etc)... and discussions of what "tolerance" entails, exactly.
Do "political cartoons" count as intolerance?
Does "rioting when you hear about political cartoons" count as intolerance?
Interesting questions!
But this essay was talking about whether Democrats were "Nihilistically Tolerant" of Republicans.
Republicans! As if the Republicans weren't the biggest *ENABLERS* of the Democratic Party!
I was interested in the debate over "Nihilistic Tolerance" rather than whether Republicans were the last, best hope for fiscal sanity.
"
Oh, it doesn't.
On “School reform, Benton Harbor, and the Tea Party”
This is why libertarians (perhaps to their detriment) focus so much on "negative rights" to the exclusion of "positive rights".
On “Are Liberals Nihilistically Tolerant?”
What if they do something bipartisan?
On “School reform, Benton Harbor, and the Tea Party”
In my experience, the more "bipartisan" something is, the more likely it is that libertarians are to be against it.
NCLB was a Bush/Kennedy Production.
On “Are Liberals Nihilistically Tolerant?”
I love it when people ask me about it.
What disturbs me is when I am engaged in two different conversations with two different people on two different topics and someone asks me what in the sam hill these two things have to do with a third thing that I wasn't even talking about.
That tells me that they're not particularly interested in discussing anything at all but hoping for an opportunity to write an essay of their own.
Frankly, I was worried that my wondering about free speech issues would turn into an argument about how if I really cared about the government not sniffing sheets, I'd vote Republican and I've seen that movie before.
On “The Libertarian Response? Happy You Asked!”
So is it fair on my part to see your silence on the Piss Christ issue as confirmation for liberal cowardice when it comes to defending plurality in the face of religious violence?
If it's not, why isn't it?
Can we come to conclusions about other people based on their not having said anything yet?
Is "suspicious silence" grounds for an argument?
"
So you're just upset that it's a Republican doing it?
"
And now Cole is, seriously, asking why Libertarians haven't denounced the authoritarian takeover of Benton Harbor.
Again: If you object to being treated the way you’re defending the way that others are being treated then THAT SHOULD TELL YOU SOMETHING.
"
You make a joke about denouncing the Broccoli Mandate in a post in which John Cole questions why we haven't denounced the Broccoli Mandate.
Do you not see this?
"
I mean, seriously. If you object to being treated the way you're defending the way that others are being treated then THAT SHOULD TELL YOU SOMETHING.
"
When insulting someone else's intelligence, please use contractions correctly. With that behind us, But really, maybe your having difficulty understanding (believe me I sympathize) that Cole is doing the extraordinary by keeping two thoughts in his head at the same time.
Unlike "Libertarians", of course.
"
Perhaps that's the common ground.
"
It's probably up there with why you haven't complained about the destruction of Serrano's "Piss Christ" yet. (Something about which John Cole's silence also speaks volumes.)
I think you want to avoid an unpleasant discussion that you suspect you'll lose but maybe it's just because you sympathize with the people who enjoy destroying art.
Maybe we'll never know.
"
Instead of complaining about X, he's wondering why Libertarians aren't complaining about X.
I note that you haven't complained about it yet but have complained about my complaining about John Cole complaining about Libertarians not complaining.
Why is that, Stillwater? What are your motives here?
"
Why is Reason his bete noire? I would think that Redstate would be...
"
Should I have said instead that he was "concern trolling"?
On “Are Liberals Nihilistically Tolerant?”
To heighten the irony, it looks like one of Serrano's pictures has been destroyed. Check it out.
We've reached the point where these people are actively rioting in response to art. How did we get here?
"
Would you agree that part of the metaphorical problem is that the Republicans, metaphorically, built a metaphorical temple in the metaphorical shadow of 9/11? Instead of being allowed to metaphorically do this, the democrats ought to have metaphorically fought against this metaphorical temple metaphorically dedicated to their intolerance despite that they've metaphorically dressed it up as being metaphorically open to everybody so long as they metaphorically walk in metaphorical lockstep with their spectacularly intolerant religious ideas that have a very real history of committing violence against people who don't agree with the various really ugly things their holy book says?
Isn't there a metaphorical elephant in the room that we're metaphorically ignoring?
On “Weekend Jukebox and Open Thread”
I got banned from Redstate.
On “Societal Constructs Often Result In Sub-Optimal Leisure Options”
Dude, that's really awesome.