Victor Davis Hanson over at NRO’s The Corner:
Most Americans simply cannot imagine their president as the topic of a two-hour encomium by Farrakhan, or why an unrepentant terrorist like Ayers would have once been associated with him. Those are legitimate issues, and the Obama campaign needs to come up with a comprehensive defense against them before they arise: e.g., “All sorts of diverse people are attracted to various causes under the umbrella of social change; what distinguishes Obama is his singular devotion to working within the system and avoiding the extremism that plagues the movement.”
Until there is some systematic preemptive exegesis, I think more and more of these disturbing hard-Left embarrassments will turn up — none of them alone a problem; all of them in sum finally devastating.
Our leftwingers have convinced themselves that America has turned decisively leftwards and will embrace a leftwing President. If this is true, then so be it – but I don’t think it is. What this means for Obama is that he’s going to be running in a center/right America as a liberal/left politician. As long as Obama can keep it to high sounding rhetoric, all is well – but just as soon as Obama is forced down into the nitty gritty of politics, his liberalism will prove an obstacle to winning.
Americans are tired of Iraq – but do Americans want to lose in Iraq?
Americans are tired of the mess in health care – but do Americans want socialised medicine?
Americans are tired of endless government debt – but do Americans want tax increases, or would they prefer spending cuts?
These are the sorts of questions we are going to answer between now and November and while Obama can, perhaps, answer them in a way which leads to his being sworn in on January 20th, 2009, the plain fact of the matter is that it won’t be easy – especially not easy against a seasoned campaigner like John McCain, who is popular, highly respected and has a vastly more substantial resume’ than Obama.
Blogs For Victory 
I don’t think a moderate should be making declarative statements; 46% of self-described “liberals” voted for Rudy Giuliani for NY governor. 26% of self described “liberals” voted for Arnold Swartzenegger for governor. 41% of self described “liberals” voted for Romney for governor; and last but not least; 34% of self described “liberals” voted for Reagan for President.
Timmy,
I agree. Moderates shouldn’t even be allowed to speak unless spoken to. Bunch of whiners…. can’t even pick a side.
pffft.
Timmy,
I have to ask. Where did you get those percentages? I am from Boston. In 2002, Romney won 49-44. I would find it VERY hard to believe that 41% of liberals voted for him.
I’m not calling you a liar or anything, but those numbers seem a bit much.
Joe,
Timmy gets his numbers via The Pat Robertson God Phone.
SteaM,
I also would like an answer to your question in post #24. Call me crazy but I remember there was this big deal on an aircraft carrier with Bush in a Flight suit and a banner that read ‘Mission Accomplish’. So I too am confused, I thought mission accomplished meant victory… Thats in the past though, so it’s not relivent is it?!?!
You obviously are a product of public schools; the “graphics” graded as “Do the graphics and sidebars in the text contribute to the readers’ interest and understanding of history”
a. The graphics reinforce the text (10)
b. The graphics are occasionally valuable (5)
c. The graphics are irrelevant and a waste of paper (0)
“no where did I read …”
That’s because you didn’t “read” the findings;
SAR,
Indeed. I have to say though that one good thing Don Rumsfeld did as SecDef was to take that stuff out of the speech. He was unable to get the banner taken down though.
According to Bob Woodward Rumsfeld felt strongly that “mission accomplished” was not appropriate to say yet.
Das,
Along with Shortcomings were also Merits. You have copied and pasted various shortcomings from 5 of the books here and have in fact yourself ‘misrepresented’ the findings of the report.
From my previous post:
…as a teacher you should know when handing out assignments and research projects which are fairly common in a history course, the text books do not provide sufficient information. So the student it forced to use other means to gather that information. Furthermore, text books are designed as a guideline, used to set direction, but not to be taken as the be all end all knowledge of history.
One of the benefits of public school I guess, everything is not spoon feed to you.
SteaM,
So Rumsfeld disagreed with Bush that the mission wasn’t accomplished yet… what a kooky lefty liberal. (sarcasim)
I am a Liberal and I say so both in public and on my blog. I also use the term Progressive to describe the difference between my politics and the politics of conservatives which I consider regressive in many ways.
As far as the use of the word Liberal to describe Obama as my research head posted so well today I feel too that the word “liberal” is conservative code for a word they’d like to call Obama.
Anyone seen the national polls that put Obama and McCain together one on one? Pretty big spread but yes there’s still a long way to go.
Diane,
I saw that McCain vs. Obama poll.
Anyone else excited to see these two debate?!
“Americans are tired of Iraq – but do Americans want to lose in Iraq?”
Our agenda there is illegitimate. We are the aggressors and the Iraqi’s want us to leave. At this point it is not about what Americans want. It is about what Iraqis want.
This false concern for democracy is simply a means to get a foothold in the Middle East.
As ye sow…
As I said, the determination that facism is a right-wing construct is a cherished lefty fallacy.
Yeah, you keep saying it, but you never, you know prove it. Because you can’t. You never even cite any evidence for your claim. Again, because you can’t. Meanwhile, pretty much everybody who has studied fascism agrees that it is a right-wing construct. This bothers you deeply for some reason, and you have personally decided–absent any facts–that it simply cannot be true.
So, tract, you can sputter all you like but you can’t change history or facts.
I’m not the one trying to; I’m the one mocking you for trying to. If you can’t parse the difference there, that’s your problem.
When I pointed out that the word “Nazi” comes from the name of the fascist party in Germany, tne National Socialists, the response was “so the word Socialist HAPPENED to be in their name”.
This is my favorite because it’s something you’d think was being said as hyperbole, as parody…but no. You are not at all joking.
Tell me then, ‘Ranty, you do call North Korea a democracy, right? After all, the full name of the country is the People’s Democratic Republic of North Korea–it’s right there in the name, and that is evidently enough proof for you.
I have no “personal animus” toward you, by the way. How could I hold animus toward somebody I find so amusing? I mock you–over the course of addressing your claims, something you say I don’t do–because you hold yourself up to be mocked by repeatedly accusing everybody else of committing your sins. You ramble on about the “emotional, hysterical left” that can only call names, then you make emotional, hysterical posts calling, for example, Diana Powe “Diana the Red” not because of any professed communism on her part, but because it makes you feel better or as though you have played some sort of trump card. You are what you say everybody else is.
I see you’ve noticed that I often use your own words against you; you fail to realize why. I do it to highlight the feebleness of your arguments and also your hypocrisy as described above. I use your words in order to show their foolishness.
Wow, you do realize Spook made this same claim just a few days ago and was not able to back it up with any actual evidence. Maybe you could provide some real evidence of this.
Hey FYT dipshit, in the thread you’re referring to I offered to gather a half dozen 5th through 12 grade history texts from around my area of northeastern Indiana and write a guest post for B4V based on my analysis, and I asked if that would be acceptable to you. All I got was crickets. Now it appears that Bane has done my homework for me, and we still get nothing but crickets from you.
I didn’t realize you were so easily angered Spook. My bad. You can do whatever analysis you want, you don’t need my approval. I was merely trying to point out that you didn’t have any evidence to back up your claim, and you admitted to that. I was done with you.
Almiranta has failed to provide any evidence as well. Almiranta will never admit to that, but it is the case.
The problem is that both Spook and Almiranta don’t just claim that history books and classes are not doing a good enough job and should be better, they believe there is an actual conspiracy behind all of this to indoctrinate children at all levels of education. They have convinced themselves that this is the only way anyone could ever choose to vote for a liberal (and of course the evil media has something to do with this in their minds).
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If a simpler claim was made then simple evidence like Bane has provided could be sufficient. But Spook believes this happens at all levels of education and for the purpose of not allowing children to know of failed liberal policies so they will be willing to vote for someone that subscribes to that same policy. Almiranta also believes this is done to trick voters into choosing a liberal, because they won’t be educated enough to know where a politician lies on the political spectrum.
This is the conspiracy they claim is true. Zero evidence has been provided to show any such conspiracy actually exists.
Can hardly wait until things in Senator Obama’s liberal belief system (and current platform) get called to the carpet like his attempt at revocation of the 2nd Amendment. He believed it in the 1998 election cycle and it is well disguised but present in his current platform. If Senator Obama is the Democrats pick for the big dance—once this stance is known–not only will moderates flee to vote for anyone else but democrats outside of LA & NYC will as well.
I’m just a researcher but I think I have a better grasp on the whole who is more like the Nazis thing that played out way up the comment thread. In Germany in the post WWI era there were several political parties of note before the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei [NSDAP] came into prominence. In 1933 the Deutsche Demokratische Partei [German Democratic Party] the left most wing of the Fortschrittliche Volkspartei [Progressive Party] was banned by the Nazis. In the same year the Deutschnationale Volkspartei [German National People’s Party], rising from the remains of the Freikonservative Partei [Free Conservative Party] and the right most elements of the Nationalliberale Partei [National Liberal] formed a coalition government with the NSDAP
“The National Liberals came to be closely associated with the interests of big business. Increasingly threatened by the growing strength of the Socialists, the party gradually became more conservative, although it was generally split between a more liberal wing that sought to strengthen ties with the dissident liberals to their left, and a right wing that came to support more protectionist policies and close relations with the Conservatives and the imperial government.”—Wikipedia
All other conservative parties were banned as well after the 1933 formation of a NDSAP dominate Reichstag. I would posit then that since even reactionary conservatives like the young Froschperspektive writers of the German Conservative revolution which was gaining popularity around the time of the Munich Beerhall Putsch were rabidly persecuted by the Gestapo throughout the war years, that the Nazi political entity was something new that existed not within liberal modalities of center left, left or far left nor those of center right, right or far right. The NDSAP was for the most part a full on corruption of all the worst elements of a totalitarian state and is not a proper basis to try to compare the state of politics in Germany from 1933 through 1945 CE to the polarization of political parties within the United States that has taken place since 1979. What Jonah Goldberg has done is to try to impart a taint to the American center left and left that historically cannot apply. This does not merely fail to qualify as historical scholarship what Goldberg has written is at best the opinion of one man being paid to demean a widely held political and social ideology. In this he fails miserably just as the American right and far right [which unlike the NDSAP is composed of those with large capital fortunes, middle class workers and the great bulk of the protestant clergy] failed in its attempt at pursuing a “permanent majority” in Congress. This too would have been something new in American politics.
As easy as it is to try to paint the most heinous anti-democratic government ever on the face of Terra as being cast in the same mold of your current political enemy the comparison is shoddy and truly rings hollow.
Qu’ul cuda praedex nihil!
availability heuristic – a rule of thumb, heuristic, or cognitive bias, where people base their prediction of the frequency of an event or the proportion within a population based on how easily an example can be brought to mind. In these instances the ease of imagining an example or the vividness and emotional impact of that example becomes more credible than actual statistical probability. Because an example is easily brought to mind or mentally “available”, the single example is considered as representative of the whole rather than as just a single example in a range of data.
You all have to forgive people like Alma, Das, and Spook. They operate out of this type of mindset and are apt to believe things because that is what they are told and it fits their twisted view of things. You can find facts that disprove gravity if you like but that doesn’t mean gravity doesn’t exist. If you want to make lame duck absurd comments like “taught that Bush is a war criminal” you need something called consensus not twisted generalities.
Oh, Tract, you simply ignored the references I gave which do very clearly point out that there has never been a true consensus of opinion among academics regarding the assignment of either left-wing or right-wing orientation of fascism.
You just say there was, and that it proves that fascism is right-wing, and that is that. The Tract has spoken! And then he was amused. And then he rested. And he called it good.
Even Fredrick Schwartz, who goes on to show a certain leftist orientation when he claims that Goldberg’s book was “an effort to try to impart a TAINT on the American center left…” is very clear that there is absolutely no solid basis to identify German Nazi fascism as a right-wing political policy. He says: “I would posit then that since even reactionary conservatives like the young Froschperspektive writers of the German Conservative revolution which was gaining popularity around the time of the Munich Beerhall Putsch were rabidly persecuted by the Gestapo throughout the war years, that the Nazi political entity was something new that existed not within liberal modalities of center left, left or far left nor those of center right, right or far right. The NDSAP was for the most part a full on corruption of all the worst elements of a totalitarian state and is not a proper basis to try to compare the state of politics in Germany from 1933 through 1945 CE to the polarization of political parties within the United States that has taken place since 1979. ”
Let’s look at that key phrase again: “….the Nazi political entity was something new that existed not within liberal modalities of center left, left or far left nor those of center right, right or far right. ”
Which is pretty much what Goldberg says in his book. It’s just that once Goldberg tackles the thorny issue of German Nazism and its impact on the perception of the term “fascism” he then goes on to a scholarly and well-researched discussion of the true origins of fascism, aside from the distortions of that philosophy as represented by Hitler.
And the origins are soundly and solidy leftist.
If one could set aside knee-jerk emotional reactions to certain words, one could accept the assertions of both Schwartz and Goldberg —-that Nazism was not an accurate example of fascism nor is it possible to define it or the terms “left” and “right” by the ways those terms are used today. And then it would be possible to examine the true origins and philosphies of fascsim outside of Nazi Germany.
Goldberg’s point is not to try to “taint” anyone with the term but to remove the taint imposed upon it by those who have tried to use the term to generate that emotional knee-jerk reaction I mentioned above. It is simply an attempt to rationally examine fascism and to see where it fits on the poltiical spectrum.
It is those who have arbitrarily assigned such a negative (and false) meaning to the term who are now so rabidly trying to defend their error.
It is fascinating to be reading both Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions” and Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” because both offer scholarly and objective analyses of the most basic dynamics of liberalism and conservatism, without taking sides, without making value judgments, and so far at least without getting into modern politics and political identities. I’ve been striving for years to dig through the muck of popular definitions, of “conventional wisdom” and of partisan politics to get down to the basics, and these two books are of great help.
What is most interesting is that the more I learn about the origins of what now form our political orientations, the more firmly grounded I feel in my innate conservatism, because it is increasingly clear to me that it is not based on identity politics, or the negativity of the “anti” attitude I see so much here (against a lot but unclear on what they are FOR) but on true perceptions of how I see the world.
I’ve thought for quite some time that many of our political identities would shift if we could just step back from our affiliations and the assumptions that come with them and just look at the real issues, and these two books are valuable in their ability to do just that.
Uncommon, while I am sure you impress the heck out of naive and ignorant fan, (Mommy?) your pseudo-intellectualism falls far short of being convincing to anyone who actually can read, can accurately process what is read, and can draw independent conclusions. Nice cut-and-paste skills, though.
I live in Colorado and spent several hours last spring listening to actual tape recordings of a Boulder high school geography teacher instructing his class that George Bush is a war criminal, as the topic was discussed at great length over a period of several days. Actual recordings of actual classroom lectures, accompanied by actual interviews with the actual student who did the recordings. Of a man hired to teach GEOGRAPHY who, instead, used much of his classroom time to rant and rave and instruct his students in his wrong-headed, inaccurate, and wierdly twisted world view, under the guise of education.
I do not invent, nor do I give a flip about whether or not you find my points of discussion convincing. I come here to discuss actual issues and actual points of view, not to worry about how dedicated ideologues react to what I have to say. While I am open to genuine points of view, and respect seriously thought-out positions, I don’t find that you and your ilk offer anything but hyper-emotional spasms of venom directed at anything that does not fall into your very narrow, very biased, and very limited scope. It is an honor to fall so far outside that rather unpleasant fever swamp of bias and loathing.
I am sometimes intrigued by what, exactly, sets you radicals off, but mostly by the determination on the part of your political orientation to do whatever is necesary to deny facts.
Everyone who follows the sad tale of the decline of American education, who is seriously searching for practical ways to start educating our children instead of merely indoctrinating them into political belief systems, who is dismayed by the sheer ignorance of the average American student, has been made aware of examples of horrible, inaccurate, and even misleading teaching all around the country. You may have heard of charter schools, and/or pilot schools—-efforts of frantic parents to force public school systems into offering at least a few schools which actually TEACH. You may have heard of school vouchers—-another desperate attempt to bring actual education into the reach of those other than the affluent.
Over the years we have read excerpts from biased or simply inaccurate textbooks, been exposed to interviews of students who have been penalized for not falling into lockstep with radical Liberal professors, read and seen television coverage of Leftist efforts to block conservative speakers from speaking on college campuses—in general, this is not a secret. It’s just that you agree with the positions we find offensive, but rather than admit that, you try the foolish and transparent effort at misdirection by pretending that not being able to cite those examples when challenged is somehow proof they do not exist.
It would be a step toward intellectual honesty to just admit the truth—that you know I am right, but that you think the things that bother me are really steps in the right direction.
I think it is interesting that those of you who defend the teaching that is done also defend the positions those teachings advance—in other word, you are fine with indoctrination as long as it is indoctrination into your own world view.
Tell you what—you find a current text book which teaches that this is a great country, founded on principles of freedom and the inherent dignity of man, a nation responsible for the freeing of millions upon millions of people from oppressive regimes…you find a textbook which is open and honest about the strengths and successes of the United States of America, and you come back here and tell us where to find it. We may not be able to use that one book—if it exists at all—to support a claim of good education in this country, but it will be a hopeful sign that the entire nation is not going to hell in a Liberal handbasket.
The GOP sees campaigning against a possible nominee Obama in different terms:
Well, there’s two ways to look at this. One, “top Republican strategists” are so befuddled on how to not be racist or sexist that they need focus groups to give them some lessons. Alternatively, they want to be as absolutely close to being racist or sexist as they can without being perceived as such. Very nice.
Twice fooled,
Both you and your alter-ego Assembly have tried, quite unsuccessfully to move the goalposts while demanding a strict adherence to the original concept.
Spook and Almiranta have stated that History as taught is inaccurate and incomplete. There is a bias to the methodology and that bias is in favor of liberalism and other failed socialist policies. Those are facts supported by the independent committee of scholars of all political stripes that reviewed the teaching materials used in US public school classrooms.
That you both claim that the material is simply weak and not purposefully deceptive is incredible; but, I’ve learned that liberals refuse inconvenient facts; like the fact that the best of the books presented are deliberately biased by all objective analysis. The “score” of the books give an aggregate of a C- grade on all objective levels.
You have further compounded your obstinate tome by asserting that the materials provided are merely guidelines displays your complete lack of objectivity. From the foreword of the report;
I’d have a modicum of respect if you just admit you’ve been bested; apologize to Spook and Almiranta, and move on to condemning Diana for her obvious slap at Bill Clinton and his inability to criticize Obama-rama without coming across as racist. Damn those Republicans for trying to be sensitive to the issue that may have cost Hilary the nomination.