Just Authority

In David Brooks recent comment on the need for more authoritarianism and less democracy, he deploys the phrase "just authority" on more than one occasion and it seems to be an attempt to deflect claims that he is, in fact, arguing that Americans need to be more docile. The word just in this context can have a variety of meanings one, of course, would be just in the sense of "just war," which would mean something like morally sound because it adheres to a set of principals engraved by God or nature on the hearts of men.  Another meaning might be something like formally just, sort of legal positivism's notion that a law that follows the proper legislative procedures is a just law even if it stinks in the nostrils of decent folks.

Either way it is clear that Brooks wants great obeisance to authority. One wonders when his sharply worded attack on the reporter interrupted Obama during a press conference today., not exactly the first time this has happened.

So David Brooks the time has come to let the louts have it.

Feh, Meh, And Bite Me

The NR has "fired" John Derbyshire. Fine but read the post and remember that Derbyshire has made a career out of being a racist, homophobe, and misogynist asshole with the NR's blessing for low these many years. Rich Lowry claims that

Derb is also maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative. 

No he isn't; he is a racist, homophobe, misogynist asshole who has benefited from the Rights embrace of racists, homophobes, and misogynists. This firing changes nothing and the Right and the NR in particular need to atone for using their rights to free speech to behave like neanderthals and thugs.

Every "culture warrior" is engaged in the same despicable speech act as is Derbyshire and their supporters ought either embrace Derbyshire or reject a "cultural war" built on lies, vituperation, and vile rhetoric or get out of the "cultural warrior" game. And that includes the vicious scum bags Santorum and Romney.

UPDATE:
Derbyshire defended by Jeff Goldstein.

Lies and Those Who Believe Them

I mentioned more than once that a culture war is impossible without tell endless lies and using vile smears and language. Rush Limbaugh's take on Fluke is a nearly perfect example. Today Rick Santorum insisted the University of California system no longer taught American history. It's not the lie that is so surprising its that he thinks, and he is probably right, that some small number, maybe 27%, will believe it. And what, I ask, does this tell us about a "culture war."

That in addition to vile, lying cretins a "culture war" need credulous, hate-filled louts who are willing to accept the silliest, mean-spirited lies directed at people they have never met.  This is no way to run a country and Santorum ought to be ashamed of himself and, ideally, someone on his side of the "culture war" will make the point that he should not lie with such gay abandon.

Controversial But True

Earlier I mentioned that Bill Maher erroneously conflated calling out, condemning, and boycotting liars with misplaced outrage arising from lying about one's outrage at anodyne remarks. Here is an example of a fine human being using potentially inflammatory language properly because every word she says is true. If Mitt Romney et alia want to be all outraged at this and seek to remove or boycott Rachel Maddow that would be wrong and should be resisted. What she did and Limbaugh did are not the same. Civility is one thing, lying is another.

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One of These Things is Not Like the Others

On the NYT opinion page today there is an essay from Bill Maher in which he conflates serial liar, blowhard, and purveyor of vile smears Rush Limbaugh with the ginned up controversies. He is right about the various tempests in tea pots over Robert De Niro's joke and the like. He is just flat wrong about Limbaugh or, for that matter, Anne Coulter.

It's one thing to wax wroth over something that if you squint hard enough might be offensive; it's quite another to object to careers built on lies and vilification of nonexistent enemies in the service of ruining the country.

Again With The Idiocy

First a video as a reminder:



It's not a series of political opinions or policy suggestions, Limbaugh's rantings over at least three day is just one of many examples of his use of lies to create a false image of an "enemy" in order to use vile language and vitriol to whip his ill-informed and willfully ignorant listeners and fellow "cultural warriors" into a frenzy.

So when Andrew Sullivan decries the boycott or quotes child-scribe Ezra Klein centrist Kevin Drum worrying about the knock on effect of the boycott on legitimate political discourse, it might help lay their fears to rest to remember that legitimate political discourse doesn't require lies, abuse, and horrid little men and women.

If the boycott tends convince pundits to stop lying or even just stop using vile language society will be a net gainer.

When Is A Quote a Lie

George Washington in his 1st inaugural:

A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.

Pretty clearly an argument for either a standing army or for a well trained militia not individual ownership. However, according to AWR Hawkins PhD the meaning of the quote is:

 When George Washington wrote that “free people ought … to be armed,” he gave us a clue as to the kind of America the Founders envisioned. It was one where the government stayed within its bounds, carrying out its limited duties while leaving the people free to exercise their rights and liberties.

If you ignore the full quote and misrepresent it; sure, it can mean whatever you want it to.

Not content with misrepresenting Washington, our PhD insists that

during the 1930s Mahatma Gandhi bemoaned the fact that Great Britain had forcibly disarmed his people. He saw it as not simply a denial of the right to possess a weapon but as something that cut much deeper: “Spiritually, compulsory disarmament has made us unmanly … has made us think we cannot look after ourselves or put up a defense against foreign aggression, or even defend our homes and families.”

The full quote:

Spiritually, compulsory disarmament has made us unmanly, and the presence of an alien army of occupation, employed with deadly effect to crush in us the spirit of resistance, has made us think that we cannot look after ourselves or put up a defense against foreign aggression, or even defend our homes and families from the attacks of thieves, robbers and miscreants.

"We hold it to be a crime against man and God to submit any longer to a rule that has caused this fourfold disaster to our country. We recognize, however, that the most effective way of gaining our freedom is not through violence. We will therefore prepare ourselves by withdrawing, so far as we can, all voluntary association from the British Government, and will prepare for civil disobedience, including nonpayment of taxes. We are convinced that if we can but withdraw our voluntary help and stop payment of taxes without doing violence, even under provocation, the end of this inhuman rule is assured. We therefore hereby solemnly resolve to carry out the Congress instructions issued from time to time for the purpose of establishing Purna Swaraj.

Ghandi is,  on the one hand, condemning colonialism as a means of infantilizing Indians and, on the other, denying that arms mean or make freedom.

My point is this, Limbaugh et alia cannot wage "cultural war" without resorting to lies, vile rhetoric, and vitriol and, as result, the Right's preferred method of argumentation is lies and more lies.

Thinking Ahead

Today one of the NRO buffla-heads discovers the horrible situation in Uganda. Way back when Obama sent troops to Uganda to help stop the horrific situation in Uganda caused by Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, horrid little man and vile lying lunatic Rush Limbaugh accused the President of waging war on Christianity.

It's not just his lies and vile rhetoric about Fluke and contraception, the man, if that's the word I want, is a walking talking example of all that is wrong, vile, and destructive in America's public discourse. And, whatismore, it is not a mistake that he is a conservative culture warrior. All that is vile, wrong and destructive in America's public discourse grows out of the need of the "cultural war" for lies, vile rhetoric, and wrong-headedness.

Rights, Responsibility, And Boycotts

This  vile, lying, cretin, both Maher and Sullivan, "think" ought not be punished because speech is a right. Liberty, the 18th century liberals and radicals, used to say is not  license. Here is a taste of his vile lies and bullshit:



Not one word he utters here about the pill or Fluke is true or has any basis in reality. He is a horrid little man.

see also.

Andrew Sullivan

is just plain silly. Watching how a democratic polity polices unhealthy and undemocratic speech he finds that although

[i]t's a free country. . . [he] get queasy with boycotts to target disgusting but free speech.

So if vile, lying, vindictive, morons spread malicious lies and vitriolic bile on their fellow citizens, Sullivan suggest, the solution is to live and let live; after free speech. This is the kind empty-headed  silliness that insists that the existence of a natural or man-made right means that there can be no consequences for its exercise. Clearly this is wrong. Worse yet just today Limbaugh, show that his infinite capacity for growth is all about girth, (allegedly) read a book and didn't like its conclusion and so he complained of about

all of these young, single, white women, overeducated — doesn’t mean intelligent.

If the man isn't show the error of his ways day after day he will continue to poison the well.

These Are People Who Died

In the past couple of days several people died. One a deranged dictator, one a hack, and one a decent human being and humanist. From the last link we find this lovely and totally true argument:

But history is not something that takes place elsewhere; it takes place here. We all contribute to making it. If bringing back some human dimension to the world depends on anything, it depends on how we acquit ourselves in the here and now.

As to the hack, Elvis' point about Thatcher seems apposite:



He begins by arguing for her death but soon realizes that the outpouring of faux grief and disingenuous praise is more appalling. See also. The same is true about Greenwald's point about Hitchens and Reagan.

We all recognize that ridiculing the enforced public grief about Kim Jong-il is correct but for those men and women that ruined the world? Let us now praise famous men.

Missing the Point: Policing Rhetorical Acts

So, in the wake of the Tucson tragedy, there have been all manner of calls for civility and toning down the rhetoric of war and violence against political opponents and their policies.  James Fallow, for example, is hold some kind of a webinar on the issue. Mixmaster over to Balloon Juice makes the much more important point that what we need isn't more civility it's less lying because the lying is what causes all the violent reactions.

Relatedly, Clear Channel is removing an ad for Rush Limbaugh because it uses the phrase "straight shooter."  If they're doing this because they think it is uncivil, they're over reaction;  if, on the other hand, they recognize that the claim is false, then good for them.