Scenes from the Cultural Revolution. A compilation of quotes about American Universities as compared to Maoist propaganda.
"'If the system were fair,' says Larry Mumper, sponsor of the Ohio bill, 'Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity would be tenured professors somewhere.'"
"We will strike down the reactionary, bourgeois academic savants! . . . We will vigorously establish proletarian intellectual authorities, our own academic savants."
posted by borkingchikapa
on Mar 20, 2005 -
60 comments
Turning Pickets Into Pledges Planned Parenthood has launched a new program that "creates a no-win situation for anti-choice protesters — the more picketers who demonstrate outside a
Planned Parenthood clinic, the more donations that clinic receives." This campaign allows supporters to pledge between 25 cents and one dollar per protester -- not a lot of money, but it adds up to thousands over time.
posted by zarq
on Dec 23, 2004 -
29 comments
Southern Conservativism explained from the inside. "I get very antsy when I see this entire election outcome being blamed on radical conservatism or on ignorance or stupidity. Because really when people talk about "radical" conservativism, what they really mean is Southern conservativism, specifically the kind that originated in the Southern Baptist church in the late 70's/early 80's. And that makes me unhappy. I am an ex-Southern conservative." An interesting read coming out of the election fallout.
posted by FunkyHelix
on Nov 6, 2004 -
131 comments
George Lakoff writes in his book
Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think that the book began with a conversation about a single question that might be used to tell liberals from conservatives. His friend offered the question: "If your baby cries at night, do you pick him up?"
Is there a basic belief that underlies all conservative and liberal positions? Lakoff's answer, that our politics are connected to how we view family, is summarized in
this interview. Is he right? What about you, what makes you a conservative or a liberal?
posted by yoz420
on Mar 29, 2004 -
67 comments
There is no room for a left-wing Rush Limbaugh on the radio. "Do you think Karl Rove might have made a phone call to little General Powell, little Michael and said, 'Let's get this over with. Let's give him the fine and get this done with before Stern gets us all voted out of office,'" the National Enquirer’s Mike Walker asked Stern.
"First of all, I know that for a fact," Stern answered. "I can't even tell you how, just like you can't reveal your sources. I have two sources inside the FCC. They know exactly what is going on. They had a meeting two weeks ago, freaking out. I seem to be making enough noise that people are realizing we could hurt George W. Bush in the elections. So they are trying to figure out at what point do they fine me. So, you are absolutely right."
posted by skallas
on Mar 25, 2004 -
42 comments
George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics "Why do conservatives appear to be so much better at framing? -
Because they've put billions of dollars into it. Over the last 30 years their think tanks have made a heavy investment in ideas and in language. In 1970, [Supreme Court Justice]
Lewis Powell wrote a fateful memo to the National Chamber of Commerce....He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973"
"So if you go on Fox News....and the question is, 'Are you in favor of the President’s tax relief program or are you against it?' -- it doesn't matter what you say. If you say, 'I’m against tax relief,' you're still evoking that framing. you're still in their frame..." "George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics and cognitive science at the University of California Berkeley, is a specialist in the technique of "framing," a communication tool that creates a "frame" for a message that defines the terms of the debate." (
Interview with Lakoff )
posted by troutfishing
on Jan 14, 2004 -
75 comments
Many members of the Bush administration have
strong ties to philosopher Leo Strauss. Can
this representation of his views be accurate?
... Strauss believed that he alone had recovered the true, hidden message contained in the "Great Tradition" of philosophy ... that there are no gods, that morality is ungrounded prejudice, and that society is not grounded in nature. (This
Times profile doesn't make him sound as creepy, but is vague about his actual ideas.)
posted by lbergstr
on May 7, 2003 -
18 comments
"You rats! You stinking rats who hide in the sewers! You think you can go after my income? You think you can kill my advertisers? You think I'm Dr. Laura? You think I'm gonna roll over like a pussy?..."
Thus did MSNBC's newest hire,
Michael Savage, react to the information that GLAAD is meeting with the head of programming to protest his hiring. What's more, he feels the Bush administration owes him an investigation of GLAAD and any other group that protests his hiring, because "I have millions of people who vote. Mr. Bush wants to get re-elected, and just consider me a politician at that point. I'm going to ask for a trade in favor. If they keep it up, my favor is going to be I want these groups investigated."
Some of Michael Savage's comments regarding America, homosexuals, and the state of the country can be read or listened to
here or at his Paul Revere Society site linked above.
posted by amberglow
on Mar 3, 2003 -
61 comments
Conservatives dispute Bush on Islam Bush critics, we are told, though they support him believe his statements about Islam are basically political and that Islam is not a peace-loving religion. Though I am not sure on this issue, I do not think citing a passage or two in this or that holy scripture is sufficient to apply to any religion, since what it does (or has done) differs often from what it's stated position is. In this article I find myself torn between disliking in general anything that right-wing conservatives utter and also disliking anything that Bush has to say! My shortcoming, no doubt.
posted by Postroad
on Nov 30, 2002 -
43 comments
Return of the vast right-wing conspiracy? Al Gore is quoted in the New York Observer: "Fox News Network, The Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh—there’s a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media …. Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks—that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a whole."
Has Al Gore lost his mind?
posted by Durwood
on Nov 27, 2002 -
114 comments
White House Wages Stealth War on Condoms The government is waging a covert war on condoms. Fact sheets on the effectiveness of condoms in preventing the transmission of the AIDS virus have disappeared from government sites. Right wing activists have been appointed to the the presidential AIDS panel. Government audits of AIDS activist groups who protest these policies have begun. So, apparently only evil-doers have sex outside of marriage, and they deserve to die horrible deaths.
posted by dejah420
on Nov 20, 2002 -
166 comments
Conservatives rare species on campus "A poll by the Enterprise Institute showed that professors registered as Democrats outnumbered Republicans at Stanford, 151 to 17. At Berkeley, the lopsided score was 59-7. At Cornell, 166-6. And so on." When I was in college, I guess I was too busy trying to earn my degree to notice if conservatives were allowed to exist or not. I don't remember much political indoctrination in my physics or differential equations classes. Are the campuses really like what this columnist suggests?
posted by munger
on Oct 21, 2002 -
148 comments
Sweden bucks the trend. In a
heated election yesterday, Swedish voters ended the European left's losing streak. Despite having the highest taxes in the industrialized world, Swedish voters rebuffed the tax-cutting, center-right parties that proved so successful in Denmark, Austria, Italy, Portugal, France and Holland. With Germany's Socialists suddenly
ahead in the polls, and the
implosion of Austria's far-right Freedom Party, is the center-right revolution in Europe out of gas?
posted by Ljubljana
on Sep 16, 2002 -
23 comments
Americans against World Empire. This Conservative/Libertarian coalition presents analysis, articles, links, opinions and rants from every corner of the political spectrum. ""Perpetual war serves a number of purposes.....It is under wartime conditions that the U.S. state will, at least initially, face the least resistance as it finishes the......process of gutting the Bill of Rights and voiding inconvenient parts of the U.S. Constitution......It is under wartime conditons that all opponents of U.S. policies anywhere in the world, including within the U.S. itself, can be most easily labled 'terrorist.'" This statement would have come from a conservative in 1940. Today it is from the Left. (Alternative Press Review, spring 2002).
posted by Mack Twain
on Jul 14, 2002 -
6 comments
How talk radio went right-wing. Or further proof that the airwaves are owned by corporations and not by the American people. Regardless, its an interesting look at how politics changed the radio landscape.
posted by skallas
on Jul 7, 2002 -
34 comments
Is It Racism If You Admit You're A Racist But Decry Racist Behaviour? Geoffrey Sampson, Professor of Natural Language Computing at the University of Sussex in the UK is likely to be sacked from the Conservative Party for his defense of "racialism" as a legitimate human emotion. In an interview on this morninn's BBC Radio 4's "Today" programme, he said recognising people's racial prejudices is a scientific fact has nothing to do with espousing discriminatory behaviour. The Observer coyly shrank from linking Sampson's offending article but it wasn't difficult to find:
here it is. Judge for yourselves.[
My two cents and a question for UK Mefis: as a conservative, I'm quite impressed with Ian Duncan-Smith's(the new Tory leader's)efforts to dissociate himself from the Tory Party's reactionary bastions(e.g.The Monday Club) and attitudes. Is it just a pose, electioneering or is there something to it?]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on May 13, 2002 -
33 comments
The Conservative Intellectual's Matchmaker Quiz: Just answer the questions - whichever ones you like - and you'll know the name of your potential
real-life conservative sweethearts. Not to mention a great collection of like-minded, mostly highbrow and academic
links. Ideal for lying, trouble-making lefties too![
more inside]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Jan 14, 2002 -
9 comments
Total War: Article in UVa Conservative Magazine Some choice quotes: "You have probably seen many of them around Grounds. They are the “doves:” The bleeding-heart liberal peacenik-types who have been whining and begging that the U.S. response be “measured” so that no more innocent people die, because enough have been killed already."
And the grossly innacurate:
"For the Koran quite emphatically states that whoever is not a Muslim—that is, whoever rejects the instruction of Allah (God) as revealed to Mohammed—is therefore a professed enemy of both God and the Muslim faithful. "
posted by samishah
on Oct 11, 2001 -
6 comments
Rush Limbaugh has gone deaf. While he can recognize sound, he cannot understand it, including callers to his radio show. He's working around it now (somehow), but may have to change his format in the near future. Rush's site is being hit hard, but you can find a transcript
of his monologue here.
posted by ewagoner
on Oct 8, 2001 -
85 comments
Anti-bullying vote blocked by Christian Conservatives The Washington State bill would have required school districts to set up policies against harassment, bullying and intimidation. Christian conservatives that blocked the vote claim "it amounted to censorship of their right to condemn homosexuality." There is no mention of homosexuality in the bill at all. So this leads me to the conclusion that these Christians condone "harassment, bullying and intimidation." How far from the Golden Rule can you stray and keep a straight face?
posted by kokogiak
on May 1, 2001 -
26 comments
