Sincere Ignorance, Meet Conscientious Stupidity
Is there a civil rights-themed corollary to Godwin’s Law? Because if there’s one thing people on the internet like to do even more than comparing people who disagree with them to the Nazis, it’s comparing themselves to oppressed minorities. Conservatives in particular are especially fond of this; you can’t hit refresh on your browser without running into some lily-white six-figure gomer who is convinced that, due to his inability to smoke cigarettes on a 45-minute flight or call his secretary a Japaheeno, he has known injustice unprecedented since the days of the Holocaust.
Is this all leading up to Cal Thomas? You bet it is!
Above: “I, too, have a dream…that someday, I will not have to watch two chicks make out”
Any conservative who has ever tried, or actually succeeded, in speaking on the campus of predominately liberal academic institutions knows it can resemble to some extent the struggle experienced by African Americans when they attempted to desegregate lunch counters in the South during the Civil Rights Movement.
Boy, it sure can, can’t it? I mean, when a leading conservative speaks on campus, they’re pretty unlikely to be physically beaten or lynched, but sometimes they have to wait upwards of two weeks to collect their five-digit honorarium! And the horror doesn’t stop there, oh no:
In the 1980s, I spoke at universities from Smith College in the East to the University of California, Davis, in the West. At Smith, lesbians sat in the front row kissing each other while the rest of the crowd shouted so loud no one could hear me.
Had Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., J.E. Chaney, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Harry T. Moore, William L. Moore, Lin Newborn, and Lamar Smith not all been brutally murdered, I’m sure they would be appalled at the treatment of this brave white man, and protest in the strongest possible terms his audiences exercising their free speech by booing him and making him watch girls kiss.
Let’s all give it up for this modern-day pioneer for liberty and civil rights. Truly, we have not seen the like since Paul Craig Roberts dared to reveal the truth that the modern-day millionaire and/or billionaire is, in fact, much worse off than a black slave in the antebellum South.
Above: Two victims of terrible injustice and oversized neckties
Slaves in that situation were as free as today’s American taxpayer to choose their housing from the available stock, purchase their food and clothing, and entertain themselves. In fact, they were freer than today’s American taxpayer.
America’s white millionaires, my friends. How long will their suffering last? When will they be free at last?
If two (or more) women started making out while I was giving a speech, I’d simply stop speaking and just start watching.
I mean, what’s the problem here?
Oh, please. He said “to some extent.”
It’s all just “grist for your humorist mill,” isn’t it?
MrWonderful, that important qualifier is there to make it clear to Cal’s readers that Medgar Evers never ONCE was forced to watch two lesbians kissing.
Shorter Cal Thomas: “Help! Help! I’m bein’ repressed! No, really! I’m serious, stop laughing, lesbians are repressing me!”
Man. Just makes you wanna beat ’em senseless with copies of The People’s History Of The United States, don’t it?
Seems to me they just don’t know how to package their message. Maybe, oh, I dunno, maybe they need some kind of, what the hell would you call it, oh, a consultant! That’s it!
Yeah. I can help those millionaires get that which they have coming. They can hire me to help them package their message and speak to their natural constituency. And they can write me checks. Many, large checks.
I’m on it. Just dial one eight hundred you don’t suck as much as you think dot com….
mikey
The real action was in the mens room.
From P. C. Roberts’ pile of crap:
However, the index ignores the simple truth that people who do not own the product of their labor are not free. People subject to an income tax do not own the product of their labor.
How about people subject to wages & salaries whose “labor product” is taken from them by their employer, you fucking asshole? At least w/ the income tax we used to get some kind of national defense.
And:
[C]hoose their housing from the available stock, purchase their food and clothing…
What the fucking hell is he talking about now? Besides the qualifier “available stock” for housing, what were they purchasing their food & clothing w/, their trust funds? I suppose “slaves in that situation” may be something important that you lying leftists may have left out, but I’m not sure I want to go there again to find out.
I loved this post… laughing all the way through it.
Okay. Since Cal seems to have a major issue with seeing lesbians make out, I wonder if there is any way to find out how much time he spends in airport restrooms? Or whether he too has a “wide stance” as it were.
We already know that Cal has admitted the inevitability of gay marriages and that the ‘Gays Have Won’. And now he’s whining about having to watch lesbians make out. It makes you wonder.
Think we can sic the guys over at http://www.blogactive.com/ on him?
Cal’s astute observations clearly corroborate Bill O’Reilly: As we know from Bill’s brave reportage, Bill understands the import of Lesbian gangs in society, and he recently experienced an after-dark meal in Harlem with (gasp) black people. The black people, however, realizing that they were in the presence of white conservatism, used utensils, and refrained from the MoFu word.
Cal’s display of racial acumen is just as sharp. Just as sharp!! It makes me so proud.
How about people subject to wages & salaries whose “labor product” is taken from them by their employer, you fucking asshole? At least w/ the income tax we used to get some kind of national defense.
Come now, that’s Marxism and obviously subjective ideology. As opposed to Libertarian dissent against the theft of taxation, which is entirely Objective.
M. Bouffant —
I left out PCR’s claim that some slaves were paid for their labor. However, I’m comfortable with my omission, because Roberts himself left out the slightly more important point that whether or not their received a salary, slaves were, well, slaves, and thus were not allowed to quit or stop working, and could be beaten or killed if they did.
It’s just like when black people were allowed to sit at lunch counters, but the food was terrible and some jerk started smoking a cigarette!
i’ve made a ton of money but i can’t afford to buy a private jet (i can barely afford a fucking netjet card!!!)
it’s just so hard. i’m living day to fucking day trying to survive, get by, anything.
but still no private jet.
oh, lordy, pick a bail of fucking hay!!
Oh, I see:
Some [slaves] with marketable skills were leased to businesses or released to labor markets, where they worked for money wages. Just like the wages of today’s taxpayer, a portion of the slave’s money wages was withheld. In those days the private owner, not the government, received the withheld portion of the slave’s wages.
So it’s OK if a private individual kidnaps people, holds them & their descendants in perpetuity, & may give them a chance to “earn” their “freedom?” But heaven forbid a gov’t. should take a few bucks from millionaires to perpetuate the system that allows said millionaires to hold millions of people in wage-slavery. Capitalism in a wingnutshell.
And the link to how said slaves could “purchase their freedom” is no longer good. Leads to a National Park Service site, the very first place I go for historical information. I’m sure it was very easy to purchase your freedom though.
The new privileges belong to “preferred minorities” rather than noble families.
Oh, I’m just so sure he wants everyone to have rights. As long as they’re descendants of Viginia Dare, that is. This is disgusting filth.
Come on guys. We all know slavery wasn’t that bad. After all, Fogel and Engerman proved that slaves were only moderately exploited with this equation.
In the 1980s, I spoke at universities from Smith College in the East to the University of California, Davis, in the West. At Smith, lesbians sat in the front row kissing each other while the rest of the crowd shouted so loud no one could hear me.
This bolsters my hypothesis that perhaps wingnuts should not be permitted to breed. If Cal gets this unhinged when two females “yank his chain” by sucking face in front of him, what the hell will he do if he’s confronted by rudeness at his dinner table? Hopefully, the man does not own a gun!
Mister Len, that’s quite alright, I summoned the nerve to look further, and, as I suspected, whatever the alleged “situation” was, I doubt it was anywhere as swell as that rancid dick claimed it to be. Literal wage-slavery, actually.
Cal Thomas is just a silly old fool whose hair & mustache dye may have made him sillier than would have been (“the rest of the crowd shouted so loud [sic] no one could hear me” might indicate that the rest of the crowd didn’t want to hear his self-righteous moralizing) but people who want to revoke the Magna Carta because the gov’t. needs a few bucks to help &/or defend people are beneath my contempt. I mean, if a private individual, or more likely a corporation, can charge you for entry into a nightclub, why can’t the gov’t. charge you to use this country?
Conservatives are always complaining about the whiny liberal “cult of victimhood” but at the same time they never tire of innapropriately claiming victim status themselves.
You’re on to something there, RandomObserver:
“Those falsely claiming oppressed victim status are opressing and victimizing me!”
with the unspoken addendum “…by preventing my oppressing and victimizing others”, though that last bit requires more insight than your average Cal Thomas listener might manage…
Slaves could also run away. Today, Americans who run away are pursued to the far ends of the earth.
Yes, runaway slaves in the 19th century didn’t have to suffer the miseries of the modern minimum security prison and levied fines, no they got off lucky by only being whipped till the skin came off their backs.
Hey, those girls at Smith were probably just holding hands and making eye contact with each other, and Cal got all hot and bothered. Pussy.
Lucky ducky
Paulk Craig has a point, though. Why do all us white folks have to pay these taxes while BLACKS just sit around and watch us work?
Of course, this is just begging for a rendition of:
In America you’ll get food to eat
Won’t have to run through the jungle
And scuff up your feet
You’ll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day
It’s great to be an American
Ain’t no lions or tigers ain’t no mamba snake
Just the sweet watermelon and the buckwheat cake
Ev’rybody is as happy as a man can be
Climb aboard little wog sail away with me
CHORUS
Sail away sail away
We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay
Sail away-sail away
We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay
In America every man is free
To take care of his home and his family
You’ll be as happy as a monkey in a monkey tree
You’re all gonna be an American
CHORUS
Um, I’m sorry.
Slaves could also run away. Today, Americans who run away are pursued to the far ends of the earth.
Has Mr. Thomas never heard of the Fugitive Slave Act? Yeah, slaves could “run away,” so long as they could run from Mississippi to Canada without getting caught. Auuuuggh. Cal Thomas is so historically illiterate it makes my eyes bleed. And I hate that.
Don’t get me started on the b.s. that is Fogel and Engerman’s Time on the Cross. I got a master’s degree in Southern US history and spent a lot of time at conferences and in class and in the resource center, jawing with other Southern historians, and I always dreaded it when Fogel and Engerman came up. Because then I would find out which of the honest, intelligent-seeming southern history students and professors around me were buying into that load of libertarian crap and which ones would prefer to remain silent because they were tired of hearing phrases like, “Oh, you liberals just don’t want to hear anything that challenges the liberal heterodoxy.”
Of course! I mean, look at all the (white AND black! see? they’re the SAME) indentured servants who got out of bondage with no difficulty at all. They all served their contracts and immediately became fabulously wealthy by striking gold AND oil AND diamonds in their backyards, which their owners new adopted parents let them keep since it was their wedding day with their gorgeous daughters.
America really IS the land of opportunity.
Oh, please. He said “to some extent.”
Wait, let me try!
Ann Coulter has had to dodge pies thrown at her at her college speaking engagements. To some extent, that’s what Martin Luther King had to deal with at the Lorraine Motel.
Andy Card was “lustily booed” when he received his fake degree at Amherst. To some extent, that’s the same sort of treatment that Emmett Till received.
WOW! This is FUN! And so easy!
Yes, slaves could run away, and if they were lucky enough to make contact with the Underground Railroad, they just might make it to relative safety. If not, well we’ve got some historical documents to describe how they were punished/tortured/killed. Not so bad really.
Why today you might -gasp!- have the IRS send you an audit inquiry or a payment demand letter. The horror! Oh, my lordy, I feel a white millionaire spiritual acomin’ on where I have to sing about the various IRS forms and how much I have to pay that worthless accountant to bail out my oppressed ass yet agin. The shame I wil experience at the country club might throw me off my golf game. Oh the oppression, will it never end!
white AND black! see? they’re the SAME
Their restaurants are EXACTLY ALIKE!!!!!
I feel a white millionaire spiritual acomin’ on
I looked over Jordan and what did I see? a bunch of CPAs for to carry me.
Wow.
The “to some extent” construction makes sense in the same way as “to some extent this fresh apple pie is as hot as the sun.” Which is to say, to a very very small extent.
But look, these guys are grizzled vets of the culture wars…why must you hate the troops so?
Wingnut Welfare:
It doesn’t matter what you swear, just as long as you are there.
There’ll be Scaife dollars, and Murdoch hollers, and dancing in Wall Street…
(You see where I’m going with this, but I gotta sign out…the borg awaits.)
Is “to some extent” going to become the new “The fact of the matter is” or whatever it is that insipid loon Gary Ruppert always uses?
Like TBogg said the other day, for this crowd it’s always “Bury My Heart at Wounded Feelings.”
Cal was bothered “to some extent” by the young ladies kissing in front of him. HOT and bothered was the EXACT extent, but he’s too much of a prude to admit it.
Lemme try: It took me an hour and a half for our team to win in World of Warcraft today. To some extent, this makes me a decorated combat veteran.
To some extent, these Cheeto stains are blood stains.
So what’s with PCR, anyway? He writes a lot of terrible bullshit, but he occasionally writes articles at CounterPunch which seem to be wholly opposed to his other writing. Is this one of those multiple personality situations? Is there perhaps a tunnel behind a filing cabinet somewhere that allows you to Be Paul Craig Roberts?
When I was little, the WaPo used to publish like this.
*Sniff*…
Is it just me or are these guys getting more and more loathsome with each passing day? I mean just look at the stuff Jules Crittenden, Mark Steyn, Kevin McCullough and now Cal Thomas have been writing lately. They weren’t always this bad were they? Ah, who am I kidding. Fucking die already. Or at least chop off their hands or something.
At Smith, lesbians sat in the front row kissing each other
It’s cute that Cal Thomas thinks that public displays of lesbian affection at Smith College are a statement directed at him. At Smith, that’s, like, Tuesday.
And while we’re at it, how about for every liberal who gets to speak on campus, the school must also invite a conservative.
Poor Cal. He was so upset by the lesbians that he’s completely forgotten that the Fairness Doctrine was an evil Liebral plot.
Cloooose blockquote!
“And while we’re at it, how about for every liberal who gets to speak on campus, the school must also invite a conservative.”
How about blow me?
One thing I find very amusing about the college conservative movement is how strongly they oppose traditional affirmative action and how strongly they support conservative AA. They’ll write one article blasting traditional AA then in the very next one rant about how departments should hire unqualified conservatives who will “teach the controversy” about the shape of the earth.
Of course the way they phrase it is that those poor flat-earthers are being discriminated against. Which they are – on the basis of competence and intelligence.
They even have their own goofy “Academic Bill of RIghts” c/o David Horowitz:
Substantive disagreements such as whether smoking is related to lung cancer, whether the earth is flat, whether evolution happens, whether the earth is 5000 years old, whether or not the Holocaust happened, etc.
I have to go with Cal here. Like islmfaoscist said, the Fairness Doctrine was an evil liberal plot, but I will fully support counterbalancing conservative speakers after every liberal, if we can put a rebuttal show on Fox news every half hour. And on Limbaugh, ORly, Michael Savage Weiner, impotent yappy dog Mark Levin and every other dickweed on the right wing gravy train. It’s the only way to be fair and balanced.
To elaborate a bit:
If a study shows that minorities are under-represented at a university it is because they are lazy and dumb. If a study shows that Republicans are under-represented that is evidence of bias. See how it works?
I would note that nobody chooses to be a minority, but you can freely choose to be a Republican and that being a Republican means voluntarily embracing a set of beliefs that are quite possibly stupid.
There’s also the whole factor that Dems are much more likely to BECOME teachers simply because Repubs tend to view teaching (and teachers) as a disgusting waste of time that yields no riches or respect.
Oops. Right. Facts have a well-known liberal bias.
Maybe we should petition for a grant to do a study on the ratio of Liberal to Conservative gun shop owners there are, then demand a equal ratio of employment.
RandomObserver and Some Guy, you’ve got it right: these guys wouldn’t even realise the fact that they’re using principles they (claim to) abhor to justify their whining.
On the tax front, this book has a few interesting points to make. To illustrate, instead of choosing an excerpt from the book (which I haven’t read), I’ll choose an excerpt from a book I have read: Jingo, by Terry Pratchett. Far more edifying, and with a bit of a larf.
“How can this be?” said Lord Downey. “Don’t we pay our taxes?
“Ah, I thought we might come to that,” said Lord Vetinari. He raised his hand and, on cue again, his clerk placed a piece of paper in it.
“Let me see now…ah yes. Guild of Assassins…Gross earnings in the last year: AM$13,207,048. Taxes paid in the last year: forty-seven dollars, twenty-two pence and what on examination turned out to be a Hershebian half-dong, worth one-eighth of a penny.”
“That’s all perfectly legal! The Guild of Accountants – ”
“Ah yes. Guild of Accountants: gross earnings AM$7,999,011. Taxes paid: nil. But, ah yes, I see they applied for a rebate of AM$200,000.”
“And what we received, I may say, included a Hershebian half-dong,” said Mr Frostrip of the Guild of Accountants.
“What goes around comes around,” said Vetinari calmly.
…a little later…
“Commander Vimes, would you be so good as to assemble a squad of your most experienced men, liaise with the tax gatherers and obtain the accumulated back taxes, please? My clerk here will give you a list of the prime defaulters.”
Lord Selachii coughed hurriedly. “Far too late for that sort of nonsense now,” he said.
“Water under the bridge,” said Lord Downey.
“Dead and buried,” said Mr Slant of the Lawyers’ Guild.
“I paid mine,” said Vimes.
People who own the product of their labor have no money. For the labor analogy to work, it must be recalled that the way you get money is to sell your labor or to sell the product of your labor. The tax is on the selling, not the labor or the product.
Feel free to putter about the yard laboring on anything you want and producing anything you want. You will own every bit of that labor and every product of that labor.
But when you sell that labor or its product, there may be a tax on that transaction.
And, by the way, my notion of freedom depends very little on paranoia about income taxes.
Shorter wingnut M.O.:
1) Behave intolerably.
2) Cry intolerance.
Poor PCR and all those suffering millionaires. Maybe America should just “put them to sleep”, like we do to any other dumb animal which is suffering.
Anybody remember new mayor Guiliani on MTV wishing everybody a happy new year (1994) while VJ Kennedy mimed a blowjob in the background? The man was being oppressed and didn’t even know it!
Here’s a fun game: every time you see “oppressed conservatives,” replace it with “REpressed conservatives.” You might find that statements that once appeared to be whiny and stupid, now appear very thoughtful – or pathetic. Which ever.
Conservatives are regularly repressed and victimized by the liberal Marxists who claim to speak for sane Americans, but only speak for an ivory tower elite. You whould read the new book by Laura Ingriham which is clear in its theses that elites of liberals are making it hard for regular Americans to get by, and are trampling on there freedom.
My tax shelter is deep and wide
Hallelujah
My tax shelter is deep and wide
Hallelujah
Lawyer, steer the yacht ashore
Hallelujah
Lawyer, steer the yacht ashore
Hallelujah
I call Fake Gary!
Yes, Faux Gary’s message is stupid enough, but Real Gary is smart enough to spell “their” right.
I, for one, welcome our new, colored overlords.
He should think himself lucky that he just had to watch lesbians making out in the front row. when I was at university, Hans Eysenck came to give a talk in support of his views on genetics and intelligence. After being told that any verbal protest would result in immediate expulsion of the culprit, the local anarchist group organized an olfactory protest with the protestors going on a diet of beans, brassicas and Bass (a British beer renowned for inducing farting). I think the protestors were as glad as the protestees when the talk finished.
Gary – Who is this Laura Ingriham? By using the plural of thesis, you are implying that conservatives can deal with more than one proposition at a time, you should have realized by now that this is impossible as they can just about cope with their victim hood proposition. Anything more would require them to shut their mouths, something they cannot do for genetic reasons.
Worst. President. Ever. – you can tell it is a faux Gary, he doesn’t begin his comment with “The fact is”.
I tend to think the astounding wrongness on display here is more a result of intentional revisionism than any honest misreading of events. “Taxes as bad as slavery” is is just that patently ridiculous.
I has creepy Overton implications, too, as the statement implies that the corollary is also “true”: “Slavery is only as bad as taxes.” And hell, we already pay taxes, right? Who needs all that freedom, anyway?
Fake Gary – the stupidity of the message is spot on, but the spelling is an obvious attempt to take that stupidity over the top.
Regarding manumission (the purchase of freedom by slaves). Manumission was forbidden in South Carolina in 1820, Mississippi in 1822, Arkansas in 1858, and Maryland and Alabama in 1860. Everywhere else in the South it was strongly discouraged. Want some examples? Howzabout in VA which didn’t forbid manumission but said this “If any slave hereafter emancipated shall remain within this commonwealth more than twelve months after his or her right to freedom shall have accrued, he or she shall forfeit all such right, and may be apprehended and sold by the overseers of the poor of any county or corporation in which he or she shall be found, for the benefit of the poor of such county or corporation.” [Shepherd, Statutes at Large, III, 252; passed January 25, 1806; in effect May 1, 1806.]
Of course these laws fluctuated between more liberal and more hardline versions over the years but the only law that makes any real difference is the 13th, and my favorite the 14th amendments. So how about a nice cup of STFU for neo-confederates and southern apologists.
Real Gary has the strength of 10 men – big, beefy conservative archetypes, not you effete, panty-waist, limp-wrist liberals – and can shoot laser beams from his eyes. Right now he is over in Iraq using his ultrasonic hearing and superspeed to detect and disarm IUDs before our troops come to harm.
Fake Gary has problems with punctuation and a serious back hair issue.
Do not confuse the two, because they get confused easily.
I set all my white millionaires free yesterday. I just couldn’t handle the guilt. So far they haven’t mustered up the courage to go past the end of my driveway but soon they’ll be out there showing the ignorants, like Al Sharpton, that rich white people are as capable as anyone else.
I think Cal Thomas has seen his bookings for speeches go down and is just trying to get more invites to speak on campuses. I can see his agent selling it now: “I’m tellin’ ya, ya book Cal and the chicks totally make out with each other! Book Cal for hot, girl-on-girl action! Call today!”
I admit I let a couple of months go by without reading S,N!, but it seems like the current crop of Gary Rupperts just aren’t up to the old standard.
El Cid–
The tax wingnuts always miss this part, too: the government taxes the transaction so that they can continue to provide the physical and monetary security that makes the transaction possible, both directly (police to keep the buyer from taking your stuff without payment) and indirectly (entitlement programs to help keep you sheltered and fed when no one wants to buy the crap you made in your backyard).
Soon, though, Iran will begin smuggling condoms and diaphragms across the border, spelling a doom for our boys that is beyond even Real Gary’s power to defeat.
the current crop of Gary Rupperts just aren’t up to the old standard.
They’re out of season, so we’re having to make do with bland hot-house Rupperts in the meantime.
Real Gary has been misunderestimated before. The desert sands are littered with the bones of those who thought they had defeated RG, only to be shocked and awed by his testicular fortitude.
The desert sands are littered with the bones of those who thought they had defeated RG
That’s not sand, it’s Cheeto dust.
His totally heterosexual testicular fortitude – just to be clear.
Cal should go back to selling cars.
I thought it was testiticular fortititude….
In the 1980s, I spoke at universities from Smith College in the East to the University of California, Davis, in the West. At Smith, lesbians sat in the front row kissing each other while the rest of the crowd shouted so loud no one could hear me.
Did Cal get through higher education? His description pretty much sums up my college class experience.
If anyone can stand to explain it, who/what are Fogel and Engerman?
It’s almost funny–almost–to hear conservatives whine about the liberal atmosphere on college campuses while they control all three branches of government, business, the military, etc.
[…] (HT: Sadly No! ) […]
the government taxes the transaction so that they can continue to provide the physical and monetary security that makes the transaction possible, both directly (police to keep the buyer from taking your stuff without payment) and indirectly (entitlement programs to help keep you sheltered and fed when no one wants to buy the crap you made in your backyard).
Could you break that into words of one syllable and nail it to the door of the Cato Institute? With two copie, one to go to AEI and one pinned to Grover Norquist’s shirt?
Thank you, that is all.
What a putz. Cal Thomas is the first human of any orientation to complain about being forced to watch Smith students make out.
Djur asked: So what’s with PCR, anyway? He writes a lot of terrible bullshit, but he occasionally writes articles at CounterPunch which seem to be wholly opposed to his other writing. Is this one of those multiple personality situations? Is there perhaps a tunnel behind a filing cabinet somewhere that allows you to Be Paul Craig Roberts?
As I’ve been wondering about that myself, I did a little googling, and came up with this:
Which explains why when I started reading his columns on Creator’s I thought he’d undergone a conversion, but Sadly,No! He is still the Reagan fellator he always was. Well, at least he can see Bush for what he is. He’s one up on Cal in that regard. He’s not a religious loony either. He’s just got that greedy selfish streak. I wonder if he’s a Ron Paul supporter? Probably not, Paul isn’t enough of an aristocrat for PCR.
Interestingly, he seems to be a 9/11 conspiracy theory supporter.
Ah, a little further research indicates that Paul Craig is quite the little anti-semite, and a lover of the wealthy white overlord concept. I guess that explains why the writings of this Oxford-educated economist appear on VDARE. Sheesh.
He doesn’t actually have much in common with Cal Thomas, other than being a major prick. They’re just pricks in very different ways.
Here’s the Wikipedia entry for Fogel and Engerman’s book, “Time on the Cross”:
Time on the Cross
and here’s the enry on Herbert Gutman, who wrote “Slavery and the Numbers Game” which showed “Time on the Cross” to be a stunningly blatant exercise in sophistry.
Herbert Gutman
Both entries are woefuly inadequate, but they are a place to start.
“Time on the Cross” worships at the altar of Cliometrics and uses economic data to show that slavery wasn’t so bad. The real value in “Time on the Cross” is this: It is a textbook study of the limits of Cliometrics.
Fogel frequently attacks his critics by saying they are being politically correct. Which is kind of lame.
If Thomas Sowell was a historian, he would have written “Time on the Cross.” (That’s just mean. Maybe I shouldn’t have written that.)
Notorious: Fogel & Engerman were on the tail-end of the cliometrician phase of American historians–people who wrote history based on a buttload of statistics in the punchcard era of computers. The formula linked was their “proof” that slavery wasn’t so bad for U.S. slaves, after all. Because, as you know, numbers and formulas with Greek letters always find the truth.
I know I’ve made this point before, but thanks to Frank Thornton’s memorable performances on TeeVee, I cannot see any picture of Cal Thomas without imagining him asking “are you free?”
How come colleges don’t award Conservative Arts degrees? Since the ever popular Liberal Arts degree tries to impart wisdom by teaching a little about a lot of different subjects, the logical opposite for the conservative artist would be a curricula designed to teach the student an awful lot about nothing. Hmmm, that would explain a lot.
Correlation and causation are pussy liberal terms that any red-blooded American recognizes are completely synonymous (they even start with C and end in -tion, people! This is too much to be a coincidence!).
Why am I thinking these schmucks would get along with George FitzHugh?
Why am I thinking these schmucks would get along with George FitzHugh? – Jillian
Nope … they’d hate him. FitzHugh was very anti-capitalist.
However, they’d much love to claim that our opposition to FitzHugh means that we Jews, er, liberals are not only behind the Commie, er Islamo-fascist conspiracy to enslave Christendom, but we also are behind the Capitalist, er Hollywood Elitist conspiracy to oppress the working class.
Actually, the right claims as much today with all their talk about our “cultural elitism”. Of course, it doesn’t help when so-called liberals take positions that are effectively anti-working class thus giving truth to conservative lies about who’s on whose side. Remember there is not much of a difference between the sort of “centrist” who says “well both the Dems. and GOP are equally rotten, but dang if I’m gonna trust those effete liberals in the Dem. party on issues of national security” and the Nadar voter who says “well both the Dems. and the GOP are equally rotten, so I’m gonna vote for Nadar even if it means the election goes for the GOP, since the Dems. are just as bad”. Nu? Perhaps if the Dems. move to the left (rather than to the center), that’s how they’ll get the so-called centrist block … offer an alternative to compete with the GOP “brand” rather than offering a knock off? Remember, people only buy knock-offs if they are cheaper and people don’t perceive “tax-and-spend Democrats” to be cheaper.
In fact, the GOP (with its lurch to the right) realized this a long time ago. When will we Dems. realize this? Perhaps when key Dems. realize that the so-called liberal media is not actually on our side and hence we should maybe not take their “advice” so readily?
I mean maybe, if these were gross trucker lesbians, he’d have something here, but these were college lesbians, right?