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My Day at the Right-Wing Think Tank
Taking in Andrew Cohen at the Fraser Institute.
Gordon Campbell an Andrew Cohen fan.
- The Unfinished Canadian: The People We Are
- McClelland and Stewart (2007)
If I were the author of fiction, and wanted to use all my creativity to describe an early-afternoon visit to a right-wing think tank, I would avoid certain flourishes that might make me seem like an agitprop-writing leftist hack.
My characters, for instance, wouldn't have to walk through a Lexus dealership to get to their offices. There would also be no wholesomely pretty interns in tight, perky sweaters saying things like "In class, I always sit at the front, but at these kinds of things I always sit in the back"; nor any acne-scarred post-adolescents with hair gelled into hard, un-ironic side parts. And of course, there'd be no framed editorial cartoons making light of the travails of Rwandan babies.
Yup, in my great Canadian novel, I would create right-wingers who were more than two-dimensional straw men. But this piece isn't fiction, so I don't have that luxury. I really had to go to the Fraser Institute, to hear author and columnist Andrew "Not Coyne" Cohen speak on his new book The Unfinished Canadian, and so I have a duty to report all of these hackneyed, bewilderingly clichéd things as true.
I also have to say (as I never would if I had any choice in the matter) that when I asked after the bathroom, I was directed to "keep to the right." For real. So while my beef with the Fraser Institute has historically been that the policies that they promote are, for most Canadians, a kick in the ass, my problem this time was that their whole scene was far too on-the-nose.
From predictable to abjectly disgraced
While the rest of those attending the event grazed at the lunch table, I milled around the small hall in which Cohen would speak. Alongside the framed editorial cartoons was a bizarre Gradgrindian wooden engraving on the virtues of neo-Utilitarianisn.
"IF IT MATTERS - MEASURE IT[.]," it read. "MEASURE[.] DISCIPLINED RESPONSE[.] REMEASURE[.]"
On the opposite wall (as well as on the walls of the office corridors) were framed photos of various notable right-wingers, from the predictable (Margaret Thatcher, Milton Friedman) to the mildly amusing (Gerald Ford) to the abjectly disgraced (Mike Harris, Conrad Black).
Behind the speaker's podium was what looked to be a homemade white-and-navy Fraser Institute banner. The set-up actually resembled the weekly Trotskyist forums I used to attend as a teenager -- meetings I was reminded of later when Cohen told me not to "read anything important into" the fact that he made an appearance at this particular think tank: "They were kind enough to offer me a venue. I would speak for the Communist League."
Cohen was introduced by Martin Collacott, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, whom I'll call "The Rambler" -- different from Kenny Rogers' Gambler in that he clearly doesn't "know when to walk away," at least from a microphone.
Collacott went to great lengths to explain how immigration and diversity make us "more interesting" before he gets to his "however" -- we "don't want to wake up like Europe and find that it hasn't worked." For these guys, the French suburb rebellions might as well have happened in Coquitlam.
Conservative of a different stripe
When Cohen arrived at the podium, I worried the day's parade of caricatures was to continue. In his light tan suit, Cohen looked like a salesman from a world where the South won the Civil War. But it was soon clear that while he is a conservative, his is conservatism of a much more thoughtful, considered and intelligent stripe than that of his hosts.
That's not to say that Cohen's remarks, or his book, are free of offense. His blithe disinterest in the aboriginal impact on Canadian culture -- "It wasn't part of my conception," -- is dispiriting (particularly given the subject of his book, which is subtitled The People We Are). And when he questions the value of Canada's rescue mission during last summer's Israeli war in Lebanon on the basis of the evacuees' "most thin and shallow of ties to Canada," I personally think that he enters the realm of the obscene.
Linda McQuaig has also preemptively refuted many of his arguments about anti-Americanism amongst Canadians and our relation to US military power in her recent book, Holding the Bully's Coat, which mentions Cohen by name.
Nevertheless, Cohen is concerned with reinvigorating and nurturing the national commons and the very civic institutions that the Fraser Institute, with its Thatcherite ethos ("[T]here is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families."), is out to dismantle. So whatever my political disagreements with his book-- and they are innumerable -- I cannot dismiss his essay on grounds of insincerity, illogic or lack of intelligence.
Canadians, hyphen free
After his speech, Cohen was handed the Fraser Institute's signature gift, an Adam Smith necktie (there're those caricatures again!). He held a quick book-signing session before slipping out to a waffle shop around the corner, where I joined him and his publicist for tea.
Cohen is affable, quick with anecdotes (a friend interviewed John Kenneth Galbraith, realized afterwards that he caught none of it on tape, and the Affluent Society author gave him a do-over -- now how's that for Keynesian generosity, Michael Walker?), and excited that we both use a Moleskine for note-taking. But at no point does he light up more than when I explain that my fiancée, from a Cantonese-speaking family in English-speaking Toronto, also speaks perfect French. He's ecstatic; it seems my future wife might just be Cohen's "Future Canadian."
His enthusiasm tempers my impatience with his statements. Specifically, his nation-building "hope that we would get beyond the hyphen" in our identity-making (sorry for hyphenating that) I find troublesome. Too often, "losing the hyphen" means we all become Anglos; and in that scheme, those of us with parents and grandparents who came as strangers to English, or those who stay tanned in the winter, will always be second rung.
At no point, though, did I doubt that Cohen speaks, and writes, with anything but good faith and consideration. And those are qualities in short supply, and not only at the Fraser Institute. Cohen is a nuanced conservative worthy of the great Canadian novel, whoever ends up writing it, and in whatever language.
Related Tyee stories:
- Sidekicks to American Empire
- Are You a 'Global Citizen'?
Really? What does that mean? - The Fraser Institute's Plan to Undercut Public Schools
Its 'report cards' in The Province are divisive propaganda -- and more about helping privatizers than the poor.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
- The Gem of Canadian Science that Harper Killed
- Canada's Economy, Deconstructed (by a 12 year-old)
- Who Mowed Down the Premier?
- Bill C-38: the Environmental Destruction Act
- The Disconnect of Killing 'Connect with Mark Kelley'
- Death in Remand: a Tyee Inquiry
- Now Is the Time to Talk up Big Ideas
- Harper gov't funded study arguing Canada suffers from 'Dutch Disease'
- 'A Gut Feeling'
- What's Behind BC's Doors?
- The Gem of Canadian Science that Harper Killed
- Sexism Tinges Criticism of Teachers' Job Action
- It's no yolk: Breakfast crew share $21.4M Lotto 6-49 jackpot in Ontario
- Now Is the Time to Talk up Big Ideas
- North Island College Cutting Down on Face Time
- Gov't Moving to Keep Farm Disease Outbreaks Secret
- Bill C-38: the Environmental Destruction Act
- The Ethics of Addiction Studies
- Alberta Fills Pipes with Corrosive Denial
- Does BC Stand for Ban Clotheslines?
- Does Simon Fraser University Need a Men's Centre?
- The Ethics of Addiction Studies
- What's Behind BC's Doors?
- The Gem of Canadian Science that Harper Killed
- Sexism Tinges Criticism of Teachers' Job Action
- The Big Download Whacks Cities
- Should You Run from that Medical Test?
- Should We Subsidize Work?
- 'The Dictator'
- The Future of Education Is Here...
66
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Frank
4 years ago
Speak of the devil
Thanks for walking into the belly of the beast Charles and reporting back. I'm surprised to hear that the FI boys don't speak in tongues and use secret decoder rings when around media types.
C.B.
4 years ago
Very interesting article,
Very interesting article, Chuck. I can't help but feel that a punch or two was pulled where Cohen is concerned, though. Understand the dilemma. How do you interview someone who is personable, you like them, etc. without being hypocritical in your review afterwards?
Don't know Cohen's writing myself, but if Campbell and the FI find it favorable, then . . .
Question is, were you subtly 'handled' (i.e., spun, yea even deflected & deflated) in the interview?
In any case, nicely balanced while still making your point.
G West
4 years ago
Cohen
Thanks Charles!
I heard Cohen interviewed some time ago...and got the impression that he much preferred Americans to Canadians.
I'd have appreciated, as C.B. says above, a little more of and about his 'thought' if you'd had the time and space. The F.I. didn't pick him for his 'personality'.
Did they?
James Burns
4 years ago
What about the book?
Well written (except for the over use of bracketed asides), and an interesting look at the Fraser Institute, but there isn't a lot here on Cohen's book. Charles, it reads more like a narrative chronology of your experience going to the book reading and doing the interview. I'm left with no real feel for the content of Cohen's work.
Bobby Peru
4 years ago
The Truth is Out There
Why do you find it an 'offense' to Cohen's reference to the aboriginal impact on Canadian culture? Why does the Canadian soft left say they are offended every time we enter a controversial topic and try to deconstruct the First Nations' arguements? Why can't we argue without preconceptions?
The fact is that few Canadians except guilt ridden, white intellectuals feel any culpability for the First Nations' situation. Certainly many of Canada's recent immigrants can't understand what the whining is all about and how the govt could possibly do anything to redress their demands short of turning over most of the country. And most Asian immigrants have experienced a turbulent history where they have been opppressed and lost land and family and fortune. Yet, they have recovered, moved on and built better lives for their family.
Yet, we can't question why aborginal culture is important to Canada where almost all of our popular culture is imported from the US? Why can't we question the abuses within the First Nations' perpetual welfare state? Why must we accept their claims without question? Aboriginal culture is no more dominant in our lives than any other culture and it's about time we stopped fooling ourselves.
I don't except the application of heresy and blasphemy as a way out of arguements. You should take off your gloves and let it rip. And really, that is why the Fraser Institute is a valuable voice in our community.
G West
4 years ago
Bobby Peru
I've just copied your remarks. I'll come back to them later, if they aren't edited first for being offensive to an identifiable group - which, in my view, they ought to be.
freebear
4 years ago
Boring Article!
Oh I learned so much from this piece! LOL!
bob the cat
4 years ago
It wasn`t that long ago
was it?...The Fraser Institute, Michael Walker
et al, were a standing joke.. generally considered as totally wacko buffoons..and now they are actually taken seriously?
But then..Preston Manning has a C.B.C radio show now..."I Believe" or "What I Believe"..or something.
Good piece Charles..will you be fasting now?
Purification rituals? Self flagellation with willow branches?
organiccanadian...
4 years ago
And what of this quote..?
I thought that was very well done Charles, thank you.
And what of this quote? "("[T]here is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.")"
I didn't see that at their web site - although admittedly I had a difficult time surfing there and holding down my breakfast both. I chose breakfast and left.
Is that insane quote an official piece of their propaganda?
BC Dude
4 years ago
Bobby Peru, is this what you
Bobby Peru, is this what you call good for the community, if so please explain?
The FI is a registered charity organization in Canada for the elite and in favor of privatization of all levels of government!
Sounds like TILMA?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_Institute
BC Dude
4 years ago
Boy what a batch of C Black
Boy what a batch of C Black buddies, those who snub their noses at the workers of the world, and are trying to own our Freedoms and run our every day lives!
Former members of the FI board of trustees include: Barbara Amiel(Conrad Black's wife), David Asper, whose family owns CanWest, Canada's largest media corporation; and Conrad Black accomplice David Radler.
TILMA, ATLANTICA, NAFTA NWO, NAU etc.
G West
4 years ago
Good point bob the cat
The only one of Preston's little encomiums I heard that was worth the title - I think they call it 'THIS I BELIEVE' which is a trifle pretentious - was one by William Deverell.
http://newyorkbrandsacademy.com/deverell/2006/06/author-william-deverells-april-fool_10.html
The other ones I've heard - including a stunningly bad one by David Asper and another by some banker pining for his far-flung kids to be able to bring their management and finance skills (now employed in diverse locations for outfits like Salomon Brothers - I actually can't remember what firms they work for but you get the point) back home to Canada.
Pathetic.
What these people believe is already a real problem for this country and its future.
I think Preston now has his own think-tank at U of T doesn't he?
BC Dude
4 years ago
Classic reading about a
Classic reading about a class action suit on behalf of the People of Canada vs the banks http://www.cancrc.org/english/relDec1406en.html
http://www.theclassactionsuit.com/index.html
BC Dude
4 years ago
www.canadanewswire.com/en/rel
http://www.canadanewswire.com/en/releases/archive/August2005/24/c2716.html
bob the cat
4 years ago
true believers
I thought Preston was with the Fraser Institute think tankers. This think tank thing might be the way to go...tax breaks?
Hi I`m a think tank. The story of bob the little think tanker (for the kids)
I could never really warm to Preston somehow..he`d start off with a kind of shy awww shucks Alberta folksy manner and then out would come this maniacal Woody Woodpecker like laughter...
scary
Bill Deverell is a really good guy. I remember him as a lawyer...trying so really hard to keep a friend of mine out of jail for grass possession back in the early `60s..a really sincere guy.
Yes the true believers...its the vision thing isn`t it? Somes got it and somes ain`t got it..the Alberta vision.. visions from the gut...or something..
bob the cat
4 years ago
Trotsky has left the building
A few years back my son was going through a particularly fervent Marxist period and visited the Fraser Institute with the intentions of possibly enlightening them on a few issues.
He was promptly tossed from the premises.
Needless to say I was most proud. "Thats my Boy!"
Stephen Rees
4 years ago
organiccanadian... Quote:And
organiccanadian...
That's Mrs T - The Iron Lady herself - the FI's patron saint
G West
4 years ago
Funny innit?
How folks like the Fraser Institue denizens don't actually believe in things like freedom of speech and give and take.
I can remember being hustled out of a few meetings too for asking the odd question - very politely - that the speaker really didn't want to answer. What they are really looking for is cheerleaders - and not much more.
That's the problem with an uppity and well-educated populace. Such folks aren't as likely to just shrug and blush and defer to their 'betters'. Especially when so many of those betters - particularly in the business and political field - have such lovely feet of clay.
nightbloom
4 years ago
The mendacious usefulness of quotes
The sentence “There is not such thing as society” stems from an interview Margaret Thatcher conducted for the October 31, 1987 edition of Women’s Own magazine ("Aids, education and the year 2000", pp. 8-10), and is periodically trotted out for precisely the purpose to which Demers puts it. The actual transcript shows that the phrase was uttered at a different point in the interview (much later) than the published text portrayed. If you look at the whole unedited statement in context (below), her point is fairly clear, and actually carries none of the hermeneutics which liberal ideologues have impugned to it:
But it went too far. If children have a problem, it is society that is at fault. There is no such thing as society. There is a living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate. And the worst things we have in life, in my view, are where children who are a great privilege and a trust …we have these little innocents and the worst crime in life is when those children, who would naturally have the right to look to their parents for help, for comfort, not only just for the food and shelter but for the time, for the understanding, turn round and not only is that help not forthcoming, but they get either neglect or worse than that, cruelty.
Truman Green
4 years ago
I don't agree with Bobby Peru's take on
the relevance of First Nation peoples' experience to our Canadian culture and identity.
But give your self-proclaimed racist watch a rest G.West. If Bobby can't say these rather benign comments on this forum without fear of being edited and ostracized for racism, then this forum's gone to hell in a handbasket--which I don't think it has.
G West
4 years ago
Truman
You haven't been reading very closely.
Have a look at some of the edits in this comment thread and you'll perhaps understand where I'm coming from:
http://thetyee.ca/News/2007/06/05/Disclosure/
I could care less what Bobby P thinks - his remarks just tend to reflect badly on him after all - the fact of the matter is that there is a 'new' edit chill here at Tyee - and if some of the innocuous things that I've seen redacted lately are worthy of editing, then that piece of Bobby Peru's was too.
Simple.
G West
4 years ago
welcome back nightbloom
I think you're wrong in your interpretation of Thatcher's meaning - despite your attempt to suggest that it's her interlocutors who are misusing her; besides, the FI knew exactly what it was doing - as it always does - when it quotes the Iron Lady and others of her 'ilk'. I’ll take Hugo Chavez any time in comparison.
That's the context in which Demers used the quote – describing a place that frames and highlights the pithy 'sayings' of avatars of their own selfish and entirely self-interested point of view - in my opinion.
Anyway, despite the fact that I haven't really missed your jaundiced opinions of the 'doctrinaire' left - who would (?) - I'm glad you're back.
Cheers.
organiccanadian...
4 years ago
that was helpful nightbloom
and it was an interesting peek into the thinking of Ms. Thatcher.
The shameless distortions and disinformation of the Fraser Institute and the rest of the North American extreme right in recent decades has been monstrously nauseating - and I wouldn't have wanted to fall to their level and use that quote in any way without seeing it's context.
Bailey
4 years ago
There is no society
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S.Eliot
snert
4 years ago
I don't effin' believe it.
G West
[quote]I've just copied your remarks. I'll come back to them later, if they aren't edited first for being offensive to an identifiable group - which, in my view, they ought to be.[/quote]
So in your world the right to disagree with policy has been vanquished by political correctness. [POTENTIALLY OFFENSIVE COMMENT DIRECTED AT ANOTHER COMMENTER REMOVED.]
charlesdemers
4 years ago
The quote is from Maggie herself
Thanks for the kind words, organic -- the quote on the non-existence of societies comes from none other than Margaret Thatcher herself. Proving once and for all that conservatism is -- quite literally -- anti-social.
For those who thought I let Cohen off the hook too easily: I'd hoped that my thoughts on his views were pretty clear (I mean c'mon, I used the word "obscene"!).
But there's no question to me that compared to the F.I.'s cruel, thoughtless and inane 'policymaking' ("Privatize the mail!"), Cohen's morality- and intelligence-based conservatism was refreshing, even if I disagree fundamentally with his particular moral code, which I most certainly, unequivocably do. I mean, the guy thinks the Clarity Act was Jean Chrétien's finest hour! You think with a name like 'Demers' I'm going to give him that?
G West
4 years ago
Not at all snert
Perhaps you need to read a little more carefully - particularly what I said in response to Truman on the same subject. Why don't you do that now?
My remark relative to the words in question was that an identifiable group was singled out and dumped on as a group. And that there has been a lot of editing going on around here for things that were considerably less offensive.
I think that's a fact but you are free to disagree.
If you took a little more time to understand the implications of what I wrote you might see that the comment had more than one target.
realisticman
4 years ago
Move on Charlie
Get over it Charles. People intermarry and consequently hyphens disappear. What do you want, to go back to the caste system? What if you have children, do they become multi hyphenated? It's obviously ridiculous. Would your child be Franco-Canadian-Chinese-Canadian-Canadian? Or, am I assuming too much. Perhaps it's more like Acadian-Canadian-Cantonese-Chinese-Canadian-Canadian. Maybe you're Metis, throw in a few more hyphenated monikers. It clearly becomes silly.
As for Demers' other slip, "...or those who stay tanned in the winter..." Wow, is that allowed? Leave out the stigma for heaven's sake. The children can't see it and we shouldn't burden them with it. Eventually and the sooner the better we'll drop it all.
Truman Green
4 years ago
Good job, Charles Demers. You made me
laugh (appropriately), which I appreciate--even at your almost, but not quite, overcute 'gambler' joke.
Also, good comment, Snert. G.West's over-fascination with the 'identifiable group'-comment prohibition is the sort of thing that has unfortunately brought a chill over forum discussion of the Israel-Palestine issue, as can be seen in the fact that Charles Demer's last excellent piece, "Luminous Calamity" didn't receive a single comment except mine, in which I wondered what happened to the usual interest in this subject.
Let's not go nuts over the 'identifiable group' prohibition, West. Identifiable groups have quite often committed evil deeds and will continue to do so, and they need to be identified when they do so.
The spirit of our various levels of hate legislation is not that criticism of identifiable groups should be censored, but that hatred and violence should not be inspired or recommended by commentary which identifies groups of people, who, in the opinion of the writer, have committed evil deeds.
I believe that advocating censorship of comments such as Bobby Peru's is in itself a sinister developement.
G West
4 years ago
Not me Truman
Look at the thread I pointed out. I don't edit anyone and only called on the editors to do so when it was needed - as in the case of Yehuda Abraham.
I didn't set up the new categories or this 'best comment' nonsense either and I've been vocal about how much I think the changes have dampened the enthusiasm and vitality of debate here.
You need to read a lot more carefully my friend. My so called 'advocating' of censorship was meant - quite clearly - as a message about the direction in which this place seems headed. Look again - and read the comments section in the link I posted - to your attention.
You’ll get it. It’s not that complex.
RickW
4 years ago
G West
You mean, like Peter McKay saying that he welcomes a free vote -- as long as the Conservative MPs (Bill Casey) don't actually vote freely........?
G West
4 years ago
Yeah!
Something like that.
Among other things!
Bobby Peru
4 years ago
Curiouser and curiouser
You see, once I start to even question First Nations policies, the race baiters and race card players come out in droves; it racism is your knee jerk response then you must have a very weak arguement. The Liberal, political correctness that has been foisted upon Canada's political discourse is suffocating and insulting. Is it really an offense to challenge and question?
The Fraser Institute is the target of so much smearing and sensationalism when all it is trying to advocate and study is the use of free market alternatives in serving the public good. It doesn't advocate the end of welfare, the abolishment of public health services or genocide of puppy dogs. It advocates free choices for individuals. Canada is part of the world of free trade and flow of capital so we might as well learn how to succeed within that system rather than get bogged down on vilifying evil corporations and revolutionize society. BC'ers are tired of revolutions.
nightbloom
4 years ago
Don’t worry Gwest. I
Don’t worry Gwest. I won’t stay long. It’s a good article, if a little skimpy on the meat.
That quote lends itself to oversimplification. Demers is still misreading her actual statement, and the article does indeed misquote what Thatcher actually said (not Demers' fault - blame the surfeit of misleading secondary sources out there). But there's sense repeating an untruth…is there? The entire statement (which I copied above) was clearly ad libbed, but her actual meaning is fairly clear. “Society” is not a Platonic abstraction - it is comprised of real human relationships. The costs of “society” are borne by real people, with whom all of us live in a state of interrelationship, even if we don’t know them personally. That’s hardly “anti-social” as Demers simplistically claims. It’s a whole other ‘social’.
This clarification is relevant for for this reason: Thatcher is articulating the Aristotelian view of society and politics which has traditionally underpinned British conservativism. “Society” does not exist as a Platonic Form independent of the people and interrelationships which comprise it. It is an integral part of the physical order. This outlook places her (and her brand of conservatism) in fundamental opposition to the ‘Natural Law’ conservatism of John Finnis (U.K.) and the politicized christianists now ascendant in the U.S. Get it?
But as always, why let factual distinctions get in the way when you’re on a role…
Yeah, cheers.
p.s. ...and before you go there, NO, I'm not a fan of the Fraser Institute. I've criticized their lack of rigour and political/commercial opportunism several times here before.
G West
4 years ago
No, I don't agree
Thatcher is a chemist - the daughter of a shopkeeper who later read for the Bar.
I don't think she would know Aristotle if she met him in her soup. I think Demers has her and Cohen dead to rights.
The distinctions, and the quibbling, are all yours, in my view.
There's no doubt about where Maggie stands - nor about why what she did was such a disaster for Britain and for the little people who are the majority of the folks in that ‘society’ (whether they are followers of Arthur Scargill or not). Like the acolytes of Ronald Reagan and Stephen Harper at the Fraser Institute and the University of Calgary, she and they are blind ideologues - not philosophers.
Follow the money it never did have anything to do with people – all that was just window dressing to try to make the whole swindle seem more humane.
Moreover, don't stay away. You’re sadly missed here.
zalm
4 years ago
The Fraser Institute...
...doesn't advocate the end of welfare, Bobby Peru?
Well Walter Block did, several times, while he was with them. Here's just one of his direct quotes from the 1980s.
http://www.walterblock.com/
Leopards don't change their spots. Just ask me about Block's defense of the tobacco companies. Or sexual harassment in the workplace.
nightbloom
4 years ago
Nope. I concluded it wasn't
Nope. I concluded it wasn't possible to have a real discussion on these threads, and that I had already provided this website with enough free content. It's good to see that Beers is making more of an effort to protect both his writers and participating commenters from gratuitous trashing, but from my perspective the intervention was way too slow in coming. Also, a lot of the writing here is just not that great, often predictable, and no one here is really interested in facts or in hearing all sides of a given issue.
Case in point: I've reproduced the Thatcher transcipt verbatim, and Demers followed up with a post that simply re-iterated the fallacies surrounding that quote. There's no acknowledgement that both the quote and the context are (1) wrong and (2) routinely misrepresented by everyone who makes use of it. It's usually used by critics to denote some sort of "social nihilism" on Thatcher's part. What liberal-left hogwash.
And I didn't say she was a philosopher. What politician is? You refer dismissively to her formal qualifications - sorry to have to correct you, but she was trained as both a chemist and a lawyer, was an autodidact with multiple careers, and was prolifically active in politics since her student days. But back to my point: what she's trying to articulate is a distinctly Humean outlook (as in David Hume), and is rooted in the Aristotelean conception of society and politics and the interrelationship of people. That's evident to anyone who gives her entire statement a fair reading.
But don't let any of these facts intrude upon the little echo-chamber you've managed to build for yourself here, Gwest.
Bobby Peru
4 years ago
With flowers in my hair
G West, why are you suddenly so upset at an "identifiable group being singled out and dumped on"? Isn't this site full of attacks on conservatives, Liberals, Americans...whatever? If that's a problem for you then what can we talk about on this site, knitting?
Look if the First Nations are just another interest group seeking tax dollars they should be subject to criticism and scrutiny like every other group. And even an argument that holds them above reproach should be subject to examination. Why not?
What do you seek to accomplish with the the politics of political correctness?
G West
4 years ago
Nice to see you haven't changed n/bloom
She 'read' law - or was doing so when first elected to the Parliament. I don't believe she ever practiced as either a barrister or a solicitor - and that's why I didn't mention it.
She 'was' a chemist and a shopkeeper's daughter - and, as you noted, her remarks were extemporaneous. Tha fact that subsequent members of the clerisy have grafted onto her largely rambling, repetitive and discursive content some philosophical subtext says more about the interpreters than the speaker. Certainly that's the case relative to what Demers' point was as regards the FI.
As you no doubt understand but prefer to ignore.
Like Reagan, Thatcher is a figurehead for a neocon revolutionary clique that has, thankfully, proven its incompetence moral and philosophical bankruptcy and inability to deal with the problems of operating in the real world and is, again thankfully, being widely recognized for exactly what it was from the beginning.
The only sad part is the 30 years of potential progress and all the squandered lives that have been wasted in the interim. Not to mention the cock-up they’ve made of the economy.
I suggest you check out Sy Hersh in the New Yorker for the latest description of what’s happened in the US and what it's done to the US military: A point which I was emphasizing in these pages in discussions with you more than 12 months ago.
zalm
4 years ago
And further....
I've yet to find a right-wing think-tank that is willing to examine assumptions about current markets beyond what is needed for economic disparities to grow, not shrink, regardless of the means.
By that I mean that the CD Howe, the FI and others persist in examining the taxation system with a view to making it easier to "pluck as many feathers as possible from a goose with the minimum amount of hissing" in the words of Fouquet.
In other words, the rich and corporations can kick up more of a stink, legal and political, than the middle class, and the poor already have nothing worth taxing, so guess who gets it in the ear?
Why can't we get anybody but left-leaning economic think-tanks like CCPA to review our taxation system with a view to taxing the the evils in life like pollution, smoking and waste, and removing taxes on good things in life like health and income?
Why can't we get the FI to look at triple-net accounting which accounts for all the costs in the operation of a capitalist enterprise - financial, policy, economic, social, environmental, health etc.? Never forget Michael Walker's famous interview quote from the movie The Corporation:
"Everything.... even the air we breathe should be owned by somebody. Because then they would take care of it."
But they don't take care of it. Never have, and probably never will, whether corporate or individual. Somebody always wants to smoke, to dump their waste in the river, or make a buck off someone else who does.
Why won't the FI look at these honest-to-goodness proposals for efficiency and accountability in the greater market at large? Yet they never have. Not that I'm an avid reader of their stuff, but my family has unfortunate links to Michael Walker that go back more than two decades, so I think I'd know if they suddenly got a conscience....[POTENTIALLY OFFENSIVE COMMENT DIRECTED AT A SPECIFIC PERSON REMOVED.]
G West
4 years ago
Suddenly upset? Mais non!
Not at all Bobby P. I've been upset about the way First Nations peoples are and have been treated in this country for ages.
My concern about the way European colonial structures and our own Canadian society have treated the Aboriginals in this country are well known to anyone who has taken the time to read them over the period I have been posting to this site: A period which now covers approximately 18 months.
[POTENTIALLY OFFENSIVE COMMENT DIRECTED AT ANOTHER COMMENTER REMOVED. -TYEE EDITOR] Political correctness has very little to do with it since there is ample empirical evidence of what white dominant culture has done to the people who 'owned' this land until it was stolen from them. We are now, belatedly, trying to determine the terms of payment – and it is going to be steep, as well it should be.
The conditions that First Nations find themselves in are OUR fault and responsibility. That is a fact. And it is politically and morally incorrect and repugnant, in my opinion, to suggest anything else.
While it may be possible, with education, assistance, land, money and a lot of patience to help the people from whom we have stolen this country to have decent lives (on their terms, not ours) again - the suggestion that the solution of a situation that took between 2 and 5 centuries of criminal neglect to create - will be solved by people who possess your dismissive attitude is absurd in my view. That is to say, the Native tribes of this land are not, in my view, required in any way to accept what ‘we’ determine should be the solution to their problems, any more than that we have any right to tell them what forms of social organization and economic activity they ‘ought’ to adopt. That kind of ethnocentric Social Darwinism should have died out long ago, in my opinion.
I think your remark was offensive. And, since the new regime here at Tyee, far less offensive things have been redacted. Hence my remark.
Personally, I think only the very worst examples of irresponsible speech should ever be edited (for anything other than legal reasons - which are another matter) and I've made my view on that widely known as well.
You need to do your homework.
dorothy
4 years ago
dropping it all
"hope that we would get beyond the hyphen.."
Yep, that one was easy. I am not and have never been a Danish-canadian. I am a Dane, who has taken out Canadian citizenship, sworn allegiance, stacked my chips, enetered into a contract, etc.,etc., but I actually consider, that if there are any Candians present in this neck of the woods, they are the kind that now put 'nation' behind their people name. First nations is good, there are many other nations represented, OK, but of course they are not working as nations, but as a loose alliance of individuals and aggregates of people adding up to some kind of trade alliance.
Not having first nations as 'part of the concept' is where all the rest of the mess comes from. How can we be good guests, if we refuse to recognize even the existence of our host? No wonder we experience 'identity crisis' after 'identity crisis'. I strongly believe the key to happy nationhood for canada is to restore the first nations to their rightful place, and that it should be first on the priority list of everything we do. To that end, I believe it is about bloody time we got a first nations rep into the job of governor general next time. I propose Shania Twain, if we are into showy candidates. I believe she would do a fabulous job of it.
nightbloom
4 years ago
Case in point: I make a
Case in point: I make a fairly straight-forward point about the misuse of an historical quote, provide factual back-up, and then get an evasive and unnecessary Gwestian retort with diversionary remarks on Iraq and self-righteous liberal-left pronouncements against "neo-cons" and a mediochre think tank like the Fraser Institute.
I'll leave it there [POTENTIALLY OFFENSIVE COMMENT DIRECTED AT ANOTHER COMMENTER REMOVED. -TYEE EDITOR].
My clarification on the Thatcher quote can be taken at face value. Liberal ideologues are just preaching to their own choir when they misrepresent the statements of political figures for whom they happen to bear antipathy. You don't have to agree with what she's saying, but don't lie about it either. It's about time someone finally put that misnomer to bed.
G West
4 years ago
Evasive?
Hardly.
You made a typical nightbloomian extrapolation of Aristotelian proportions from a throw-away citation taken from some of the Iron Lady's casual remarks.
Let's take Maggie at face value. She thinks the family is the well-spring of all that's good and holy in her world and yet she's one of the main promulgators of a system that supposes it's entirely ok to screw families and working people by giving capitalists the special deals they so richly 'don't' deserve as a result of happening to have a bunch of accumulated gold largely because of what their ancestors stole from the colonies. In the hopes of eventual ‘trickle-down’ benefits to the ‘family’ she so profoundly cares for – see the connection?
The Fraser Institute happily ignores 'that' reality. An economic reality that every single measure (including the crippling cost of students who’ve tried the other route and, like you, have the bills to show for it) over the last 30 years has proven is economically bankrupt and actually making things worse. As others have noted, that’s why the FI is so reluctant to engage in anything but a one-way dialogue.
Evasive? Yep. Pretending there's more to Maggie T because some Oxbridge don or member of a neocon think-tank has written a treatise on her 'thought' says more about the quality of academic discourse than it does about Maggie. I can pull several books off my shelves that do the self-same thing with Franklin Roosevelt - it goes with the territory but it doesn't tell us much about reality.
Evasive? Maybe. However, I prefer not to get personal so I won't take this any further, okay?
Could we start this again? I know where the FI fits into this and I have read Cohen and his homogenizing attitudes.
I think Charles should have gone into what Cohen actually professes to believe although I have no problem with the conclusions he's come to. I just think a little more chapter and verse would have been helpful. Which is, after all, what I wrote initially.
Still, I’m glad you’re back – the exercise is enervating. And it's nice to see some sparks here at Tyee again.
Adamwest
4 years ago
The left loses too much
The left loses too much credibility by branding anyone on the right as a member of the evil empire who could care less about anyone but themselves. That attitude is narrow, immature, self-serving (witness Jim Sinclair's rhetoric) and naive. As long as this trend continues MOST will never take the left seriously, as witnessed by the NDP's grim record of underachievement in Canadian politics.
charlesdemers
4 years ago
Maggie's context
Nightbloom:
Didn't want to leave you with the impression that I practise my hermeneutics with impugnity.
At the time I responded, for some reason, your post of the longer quote was either unavailable on my computer or I missed it (I've been having some problems with the Tyee comments section on my computer).
The quotes you provided weren't, for what it's worth, the longer context from which I took the quote -- I, too, found the quote online. Maybe mine was wrong, maybe Maggie thought she really had something and wanted to keep using the line eveeryplace she went.
Regardless, her belief that the individual is not only the basic but the overriding unit of human behaviour is borne out in her policies, and so I have no problem characterizing her view as anti-social. What other term for those who want to dismantle our every civic space?
nightbloom
4 years ago
The comments will continue
The comments will continue to flatline unless they can introduce a new ‘value added’ dimension to them. I simply assumed they didn’t do so because the comments weren’t that important to their overall project...but they seem to be taking the comments section more seriously recently, and are finally filtering out some of the crap that used to get a pass. But maybe there’s other issues involved. The technology for a value added approach is certainly there. Otherwise it’s just not worth contributing if you’re just going to get punched in the face each time (virtually speaking, of course).
Without a value added dimension, the Tyee’s comments section is in competition with every blogger network out there. Why waste your content on something that doesn’t give back in terms of recognition or publicity, doesn't generate a virtual community, and which only exposes you to flak? Blogging allows you to link your own material and create links & informational relationships, which are incentives to remain active and engaged (and responsible). That’s the power of the medium. The Tyee still seems to be operating on a centralized print-media paradigm.
The value added dimension would, of course, oblige them to compromise on their determination to keep all activity focused on the article pages and their writers’ content, and this caveat could be what’s holding them back. But giving commenters the option of (for example) creating simplified facebook-style profiles would help in generating a core peanut gallery of regular (and more responsible) commenters. Allowing space for tangential threads, linked to an individual's posts & profile (allowing movement to & from the main threads), could be another aspect.
Changes like this would require some investment and risk on their part, over and above the writing, and they already seem pretty taxed by the comments section as it is. But they have to capitalize on the strengths of the medium, whatever those strengths happen to be. Otherwise the nature of the threads seems to alternate between "stultified echo-chamber" and and near-total silence.
realisticman
4 years ago
Echo Chamber it is
Doubtful that it could be opened up. It's more like a closed-door shop. Anyone that doesn't buy the party line has to have a very thick skin. Ideology rules and guilt by association is pronounced if the merest suggestion that something American or non-pure-socialist is raised. Hounding of contrarians is sport and extends to multiple diversions, [UNFOUNDED ACCUSATION REMOVED. FOLKS, BACK AND FORTH SNIPING AT EACH OTHER DOES NOTHING TO FURTHER THE DEBATE. PLEASE STAY FOCUSED ON EACH OTHER'S ARGUMENTS. THANKS. -TYEE EDITOR] Either one becomes inured to it or one spends time only reading for amusement.
nightbloom
4 years ago
To clarify...
My post above was in reponse to Gwest (re. "And it's nice to see some sparks here at Tyee again."). Otherwise it seems kinda out-of-the-blue.
Chris - Thanks for the acknowledgment. I think you're conflating "civic space" with social welfare dependency, which was the target of her critique. Note that her comments, in their entirety, explicitly endorse moderate social welfare policies ( i.e. "topping up" the working poor, public health, subsidized housing, etc.) She was speaking in an off-the-cuff fashion about dependency and (on a more philosophic level) about a dehumanized abstraction of the human community in the context of an interview with a women's magazine. It was hardly a state address or a White Paper. But what aspect of the interview is remembered? A cropped, respliced, and decontextualized selection of phrases that were never even actually uttered in the same paragraph together.
Again, you don't have to agree with her ethos to get her point. There are all sorts of things about her philosophy that people disagree with without using false quote.
Truman Green
4 years ago
Nightbloom, I'm kinda shocked at your
whimpering. ("It's just not worth contributing if you're just going to get punched in the face..." blah blah blah.
I've been call several varieties of idiot and flake on the Tyee forum and I'v learned from every unimpressed flatterer.
Jeez, nightbloom grab some strength of character. I remember many of your comments. Many of us were appropriately impressed by your knowledge and intellect.
Whatdya want? Money?
charlesdemers
4 years ago
Thanks Truman...
I hadn't realized that anyone had responded to the Luminous Calamity piece -- let alone so kindly and with such generosity...
G West
4 years ago
Contrarian?
Well, for anyone who's not already convinced - since we've been told that …it's only socialists and America haters who don't need a thick skin around here - of the fact that attitudes of Fraser Institute fellows, among others, are leading us to wrack and ruin in this province and this country just now I might suggest a very interesting history book that has a lot of parallels, if not lessons, for our present age.
It's called:
Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900, by Jack Beatty
I'll just give you some small indication about why I think it is a book worth reading, and not just to learn about the 'gilded age'.
We haven’t quite reached Gilded Age wealth concentrations yet, but it’s not far off. During the era the book treats, the average citizen couldn’t even imagine a ‘fair’ society – we at least can recall a ‘better’ and more equitable past. The period from the 1940s to 1970 saw real family incomes double, there were high marginal tax rates on the rich, and unions (in the US) represented in excess of 33% of the private workforce.
Beatty shows that from 1950 to 1970 for every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent of the income distribution, the top .01 percent earned $162. Today, the top .01 percent earns $18,000 for each dollar earned by the bottom 90%.
We live after equality and the Fraser Institute and its hired guns try to tell us that things are getting better when in fact they are rapidly getting worse.
It’s time, just as the Gilded Age gave way to the Progressive Era, to tune out the Cohens and the Michael Walkers and the Stephen Harpers and move forward to a new ‘Progressive Era’ – in fact it’s way past time. Moreover, if that means some people need a thicker skin because they don’t like the groundswell of discontent that’s beginning to grow, well, so be it.
nightbloom
4 years ago
Quote:Whatdya want?
Nope. Just a little value for the time, effort & consideration.
Truman Green
4 years ago
Sorry to belabour this point, people, and
Nightbloom, but I'm sincerely interested in what you mean by "Just a little value for the time, effort and consideration."
I'm wondering: What form should the 'value' take?
If I may be introspective for a bit here, the value I perceive in having done more than 2000 comments here is that I've been able to shoot my mouth off ad nauseum (I'm sure to some) on everything from the role of genetic drift and mutations in speciation to the perversity of believing that the planes that crashed into the wtc buildings caused the buildings to collapse; to the pharmascorpian-inspired hoax that human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer, in spite of the fact that it is well known that for 99% of the people 'infected' with the virus, the infection does no harm.
Being able to write these things where others might read them has been reward enough.
What were you expecting in return for your participation in the forum, Nightbloom?
nightbloom
4 years ago
Truman - see my above
Truman - see my above comments (in response to Gwest) regarding the decline of the discussion forum, competitive factors in the bloggosphere, and the possible value added innovations which the medium itself allows.
The goal is to attract greater readership for the Tyee's overall content, and hopefully cultivate a large, responsible and (presumably) diverse traffic of commenters.
G West
4 years ago
Then add a little value
And not just the same old stuff. When you do that nightbloom, you get lots of credit.
When you trot out the same old formulaic personal stuff - well, try sticking to ideas and debate - you'd be surprised what can happen.
Since virtually everyone but Truman and couple of others who do write for 'money' don't use their own names the personal stuff ought to be redundant anyway.
This shouldn't be a place for 'identity' anything, in my view. The point is, NOBODY cares 'who' you are. They might be interested in what you think, believe and stand for.
G West
4 years ago
Why? Fix needed
WHy does this comment thread constantly revert to the default (Best comment/compact) and necessitate another sign in?
No wonder people think their comments have disappeared and resort to posting them multiple times.
Sheesh!
dorothy
4 years ago
just a little tailing here
"It is not from the dole. It is your neighbour who is supplying it..."
Methinks there is a semantics block here in most people, where old Maggie does have a point. Do you notice, how often we hear in matters of economy, that 'the government will pay for...', or 'the government will step in'(spend money). The government has no money. It gets it from us. We 'pay for' and collectively 'step in'.
I the same vein, working in a public service agency, I often hear my colleagues voice surmises on what 'the public' thinks and expects from us. I always say 'what do you think - you're am member of 'the public', aren't you?
I think many of us are quietly being influenced, if not brainwashed, by such newspeak, to compartmentalize our thinking into 'process' channels and so we forget or fail to understand the big picture. It was fair enough to point that out. How one uses the insight is quite another matter, and one may disagree with the political philosophy in other ways, but if we think there is a kind of different money out there which somehow grew out of the ground and became 'public', we are just plain wrong.
Frank
4 years ago
Gov't
Actually there is money in gov't coffers that doesn't come from real citizens.
Besides the people in gov't really do seem to feel the money is theirs.
G West
4 years ago
I'd have thought that was a truism
But maybe not.
Thanks Dorothy - You see I think that's the essential difficulty at the heart of the way we 'do democracy' in this country and why - given the more open and involved models available - other countries have been much more successful at addressing the 'idea' of the social contract.
Accounting professionals and business analysts have various ways of looking at the financial records of a company; these include a number of arcane tests applied to earnings/share; return on shareholders capital and the like. Some analysts say the Balance Sheet (Assets vs. Liabilities) is all important and others swear by the healthy Income Statement (positive cash flow).
I've always advised my clients that you have to look at both statements and understand them fully.
Therefore, while it's important to remember where those tax dollars come from, it's equally critical to know where and on what they are being spent. The Fraser Institute tends not to care all that much as long as the level of expenditure is:
a) low and diminishing; and
b) not left to the discretion of public institutions.
In the end, understanding the 'idea' and the ideal of 'family' isn't the least bit important if the assets of all the collective ‘families’ of every stripe in the country aren't being re-invested in the growth, health and education of the next generation.
When we understand public expenditures in that vital context we won't be so inclined to use shop-keepers' terms like only 'topping up when necessary'.
As you yourself wrote on another thread - we have to find ways for all of us to SHINE.
Hope you'll have a better day tomorrow.
BC Dude
4 years ago
www.theclassactionsuit.com/in
http://www.theclassactionsuit.com/index.html
http://mindprod.com/money/moneycreation.html
S Harper 6 months ago right wingnuts or Idealist; http://www.cancrc.org/english/relDec1406en.html
TonyGuitar
4 years ago
Nuts and Bolts.
General impressions are one thing but for nuts and bolts gems it becomes obvious that we must buy his book. = TG
nightbloom
4 years ago
Gwest
Not so. You weren’t exactly quick to acknowledge the fallacy of the Thatcher quote and to recognize the actual meaning of her words, even in the face of solid proof. That would require a departure from the established liberal-left songbook.
Not sure what you mean by personal. I’ll take the prosaic interpretation. My critique and personal observations have always been intended to demonstrate where (I believe) liberal-left ideology fails the test of praxis. I’ve typically referenced my critique with personal observations touching on a range of issues: my experience in universities, in the military, in government, in the gay subculture, with drug abuse, what have you. Nothing the Left sells on any of the big issues is actually “as advertised.” And none of its core assumptions are ever questioned here. The Tyee strictly (or predominantly) an exercise in 'constituency consolidation'.
That’s why (for example) falsehoods like the non-existent Thatcher quote continue to circulate within the liberal-left, whether they’re re-iterated by a celebrity liberal like John Ralston Saul, or simply regurgitated into the blogosphere for mass consumption and sycophantic applause.
But no biggie.
G West
4 years ago
Because I profoundly disagreed
Because I disagreed with both your interpretation and the allusive “pseudo philosophical” weight you accorded to repetitious and extemporaneous comments by the Iron Lady.
Furthermore, you completely ignored the context (the Fraser Institute and its use of iconic images and quotes from right-wing avatars) in which the statement was quoted.
Your remark, on the other hand, attempted to obfuscate and introduce a point which was - as my original reply indicated – irrelevant, and was, in fact, a simple effort on your part to deflect the discourse along your 'usual' lines.
That is, that the left practices some kind of unique intellectual dishonesty and that the continuation of a war against liberal-left or progressive values and actions is about the only thing you ever mention.
As a comment on an article that was clearly NOT about the liberal-left, it was neither relevant nor did it much other than emphasize your own 'personality and peccadilloes' – in my view.
The point was that this article, and the right-wing avatar(s) it treated, was about the lies, misstatements and culpability of the 'right' and not the left.
When Terry Glavin gets his occasional kick at the left, there will be plenty of opportunities for you to weigh in with one of your usual sermonettes then.
In the current context your remarks said little about the practice of using quotations out of context (an argument which, if you've read the rest of Demers’ contributions to the comments is far from decisive and with which I essentially agree) and even less 'valuable' relative to the main point the journalism was trying to make. This is a point that I noted in my initial comment, which was somewhat diffuse because the author really didn’t present much information (or opinion) about Cohen himself.
But anyway, as I said earlier, it is good to have you posting here again. Just don't expect any laurel wreaths.
Cheers.
nightbloom
4 years ago
Quote:Your remark, on the
No - my contribution here was to point out that the quote is fallacious. Period.
It's still a good article.
But the quote has assumed mythic proportions within the liberal-left echo-chamber, yet the quote itself was never even uttered. And the actual words, taken in context, had a whole different meaning. I blame John Ralston Saul's exploitation of the quote in Voltaire's Bastards (one of many historical inaccuracies which litter an otherwise stimulating and original work). Actually, Saul's whole take on Thatcher positively seethes with misogyny and unexamined psycho-sexual animosities. Read it. The man is full of neurotic aversions.
Again: I don't blame the author of this article, and it's already taken up disproportionate space, so just come clean and admit that I've made a good point, Gwest. You're such a "Threshold Guardian" here. Incidentally, the author isn't repeating a caption accompanying the FI's portrait of Thatcher (as you seem to suggest). He got it online and used it to characterize the FI's ethos - which it may well do. But Thatcher never said it.
Again, the liberal-left should be able to advance its arguments without continually resorting to a veritable arsenal of crowd-pleasing falsehoods.
In other news, you'll be pleased to learn that I've absolutely had it with Andrew Sullivan. Forget Rachel Marsden - that boy is ripe for a 'conserva-babe' parody of epic proportions. Now he's self-consciously arrogating the Buckley mantle for himself while practicing the most selective variety of cafeteria-conservatism. Having once been the most approval-hungry talking head batting for the neo-cons, he now wants to capitalize on the implosion of the movement to carve out a second career for himself. But what really gets me is that he's using his blog to actively promote sero-sorting (which really means Party-&-Play for the Poz-only crowd, while everyone who values their health steers clear). No hard data to back it up. Just a headful of irresponsible self-justification. Rotello is absolutely right about him (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gabriel-rotello/andrew-sullivan-declares-_b_53624.html).
But that's totally tangential, of course...
G West
4 years ago
I disagree
That was the whole point of what I wrote. However, I can see you appear not to have read it and have moved, as you are wont to do, into self-congratulatory and wounded heroic mode again. Laced of course with the usual ad hominem slag at moi for being a ‘gate keeper’: Really, credit where credit’s due, that’s Nana’s label for me, and, recently both mopled’s and Truman’s. Invent your own insults please!
Unfortunately, you still seem not to have mastered the art of operating in a context in which there is give and take – all too sadly typical of certain academic and cultural mileaux these days.
I recall when you accused Frank of not living in the 'real' world. Do you remember that? I couldn't help, at the time, thinking that the reciprocal of that conclusion might well be the case.
I never said that the author was repeating Thatcher's words as though they were something he'd found inscribed in brass at the FI. Read again what I wrote, please.
As for hunger for approval, I'll simply post back to you this little gem of yours and then let you look to Truman's very apt response and leave it at that.
Furthermore, it is NOT a falsehood to suggest that the neocon right, of which Thatcher and Reagan are notable avatars, have a distinct aversion to recognizing the needs, desires and dreams of 'families' such as those among the ranks of the working and the working poor whose outcomes have been becoming progressively worse since the beginning of the now thankfully nearly worn-out neo-con era.
I hope you'll take the time to look at the new US poll of 17 - 29 year olds to which I provided a pdf link on the Chalmers Johnson thread by the way.
The point, in conclusion, is that if you can't make your case without the personal stuff it probably isn't strong enough to sustain its own weight anyway.
My humble view.