Bill O’Reilly is upset that little kids are using profanity, and he has a ludicrously sentimental vision of small town America.
OK. That happens every day, all day in the public schools here in New York City. And I know it happens in Chicago and Los Angeles and Boston and Washington, D.C. In any major urban center. It doesn’t happen in the small towns; it happens in the cities. I live in New York. I’m not gonna have my 6-, 7-, 8-, 9-year-old go to a school where they’re saying that stuff in the hallway and the teacher doesn’t do anything about it. You know, private school, that does not happen.
Oh, brother. I grew up in a small town in the 60s and 70s—Kent, WA, population 14,152 (we lived on the edge of town, right near the city limits sign, and I caught the school bus every day right under that message)—and my fellow children were obscenely profane all the time. I now live in an even smaller place, population just a hair over 5,000, and if you want to hear some hair-raising language, walk by the elementary school playground. Heck, I’ve been startled a few times while walking past the Catholic school yard in town. I don’t have much experience with private schools, but I would be very surprised if human nature was much changed by the imposition of tuition (and, come to think of it, some of the most casually explicit chatterers I remember from the old school days were the most well-off kids).
Here’s what real small town America is like: petty, irrational hatreds, intolerance, and vicious smears of anyone who is the slightest bit different, leavened with far too few more charitable individuals. My daughter and several of her friends have been joining in the “Gay? Fine by me.” campaign—basically, they just express support for people with different sexual preferences in a very low key way. How do you think other fine, upstanding Middle American school kids react?
Today was the second Gay-Day. A bunch of us wore our “gay? fine by me.” T-shirts to school. Funny that the first time people didn’t react, but then they went boom this time. It was the standard moronic bashing. Flicking us off in the hall, calling us fags, asking if we were gay, asking why we liked gay people, saying that gay people should be shot, that they aren’t real people.
Bill O’Reilly, bigoted blowhard that he is, probably thinks that kind of thing is just fine, as long as they don’t use the “f”-word*. Personally, I’d rather see kids cussing like sailors as long as they were tolerant of each other’s differences. I’m afraid, though, that small towns aren’t exactly shining beacons of idealistic American values…those progressive values, no less, that are the antithesis of what O’Reilly promotes.
*Falafel!
Dude, the typekey thing is frakking annoying.
Fwiw, I went to private school for highschool and there was plenty of swearing to go around.
The only thing I can think of that would make a difference is that the lower student/teacher ratio would make it easier for teachers who were so inclined to monitor swearing. But it really didn’t make much difference, IME.
What bugs me is that O’Reilly doesn’t seem to be making a comment about the environment so much as about the kids themselves. Like there’s just something inherently better about kids who go do private schools, and those kids don’t swear. All I can say to that is YUCK!
(Oh, and kudos to your daughter.)
why is my comment being held for approval? Is this an all-comments thing or am I just special?
I remember being amused reading Catcher in the Rye, because of the profoundly, self-indulgently ignorant viewpoint of the author and the main character (assuming that the “fuck you” message on the school wall must have been written by a bum that wandered in). I’m relieved, though; I was starting to think I was the only adult who remembered being a child, or had learned anything from it.
Maybe it’s a scientist-viewpoint thing. I’ve noticed that most of the people who tend to piss me off with their prattle about “innocence” tend to either freeze up or sputter a lot when asked to explain what it is, how it differs from garden-variety ignorance, and why it’s valuable…
My experience was similar — I grew up in the wee little town of Round Lake, NY, and the kids there used language that would make a sailor cringe. Myself included. If anything, I think peer pressure for bad behavior is stronger in small towns, because there aren’t enough people to form alternative social groups.
I’m not really in a position to gauge this very well, but the kids in my present home of urban Seattle seem good compared to what I grew up with — both in your sense and in O’Reilly’s sense.
O’Reilly is nothing more than a bully who makes his point by ad hominem attacks, various appeals to fear, emotion, belief and straw men all the while over talking his opponents. I love that his ratings have plummeted while Olbermann’s keep going up.
And I know someone who’s going to be getting a visit from Faux News security….
It’s another example of the lunatic right waging a war on words (see the war on ‘terror’). They go after the superficial rather than the substance. You can say a lot of really cruel things without using words like fuck and shit. You can also say something really nice using naughty words (ie, that motherfucker is the shit). I’m preaching to the choir here, but the real enemies are ignorance and hatred, not words.
I grew up on a farm outside a town of 400 if pure Lake Woebegone country. I tell anyone under the age of 20 not to believe anything they hear about kids being worse today because I clearly remember what evil shits their parents were.
A side note, I have noticed that four years in the Marines cleaned up my nephew’s (who grew up in the same town) language considerably.
Let’s try to be fair to Bill O’Reilly. His brain cells can’t be in very good shape after the way he’s abused them. Perhaps he doesn’t even remember his childhood. Now I do remember mine, out there on a farm in the open country of central California. My classmates in a rural (obviously) elementary school were a mixed lot. Some of them swore. Some of them smoked. (Big, big overlap in these two groups, by the way.) Some were noisy and some were quiet as mice. Some of us were voracious readers and some were practically illiterate (esp. the ones who thought the only use for paper was to roll it up with tobacco inside).
Anyway, that’s what I remember. It was during the Eisenhower administration, too. And now I hear about some idyllic time not so long ago when cherubic children sat quietly at their desks, feet planted symmetrically flat on the floor, and used phonics to read the Great Books and calculator-swift rote learning to tot up tall columns of multi-digit numbers. Huh. Must have missed all that somehow.
When I moved from the city to a small town at age 17, one of the first things I noticed was how widely available marijuana was in high school compared to in the city.
In the city, I knew a handful of kids at school who had smoked pot – 5 or 6. In my rural high school, at least 60 percent of the students had tried it, and weekend drinking, pot use, and even LSD use were seemingly the most popular extracurricular activities. The kids were having sex a lot more too.
Those were good times.
But seriously, it used to make me laugh seeing all of these parents secure in feeling that they were far from the “unsafe” city, while their 15 year old sons were dealing dope right under their noses and their daughters were heavily into cocaine use.
Nice big houses in the country make it easy for their sons to deal out of their bedrooms, lowering a basket on a rope from their window to the customers.
Plenty of woods around, there were “woods parties” with bonfires every weekend and night in the summer, just head for the flicker in the woods and soon you were in the midst of teens scattered all over, selling blotter acid, chugging beer, running around naked, whatever.
I was an innocent, comparatively, until I moved out there.
“It was during the Eisenhower administration, too. And now I hear about some idyllic time not so long ago when cherubic children sat quietly at their desks, feet planted symmetrically flat on the floor, and used phonics to read the Great Books and calculator-swift rote learning to tot up tall columns of multi-digit numbers. Huh. Must have missed all that somehow.”
Yup. Add me to the list of rural public-elementary and highschool-private educated kids who saw and heard plenty of foul language, and much worse.
I don’t know what the heck O’Reilly is thinking, though I have my doubts he really believes his childhood was like this. Either way, the tendency to mindlessly reinforce often-false idealistic pictures about the “good old days”, as Zeno points out, is one of my greatest pet peeves.
Wonder what he would think of the stories of george Washington, who was one of the most famous cussers in American hisotry. “I cannot tell a lie, it was i who cut down that fucking cherry tree.”)
O’Reilly has children? Poor things.
“Wonder what he would think of the stories of george Washington, who was one of the most famous cussers in American hisotry. “I cannot tell a lie, it was i who cut down that fucking cherry tree.”)”
As I recall, one was something to the tune of, “Knox, get your fat ass out of the way!”
In my blue-collar New England hometown, the vocabulary of the average 8-year-old would have put Eric Cartman to shame. Our teachers and most of our parents strongly — er, frowned on kids swearing, but since most parents cussed at least occasionally (some of them in multiple languages!), we picked it all up just like any other vocabulary. In short, we used all the words we understood, and some that we didn’t, when adults weren’t listening. I’m around PZ’s age; though I don’t have kids, I can’t imagine kids’ language being cleaner now. In fact, I can’t imagine kids’ language being much cleaner in 1920.
The other thing I remember were the stories, in the early 1970s, about how the best place for kids to score weed and the occasional booze was in the parking lot after CYO meetings. Since I was from a family of religious skeptics, my church-related education ended before I was of CYO age, and I didn’t get into that stuff. There’s a testimony of faith for you: Being more or less unchurched kept me away from dope-smoking and underage drinking. :-)
The colourful language of the rural United States is a constant theme in your literature– often cleaned up a little, according to the standards of the day, but plain as day to anyone who’s paying attention. How could you miss it? Oh. Of course. Mr. O’Reilly definitely has some difficulties on that point. He’s not that much into paying attention, and I doubt that he reads much either. Tant pis.
I went to a Catholic School for my senior year in High School, in a relatively small town in Northwestern Minnesota. I stayed with a religious family who smoked dope to prep for playing music for Mass. I learned a lot about getting in the spirit from them.
In Field Biology class, my cohort often had free reign of the nature campus to gather data. Some of the data were more apparent after imbibing weeds. The parties were cool, with sex and drugs and some great rock and roll.
I think that all my classmates are now in the Knights of Columbus, but they were a great deal of fun in that small town.
“Like there’s just something inherently better about kids who go do private schools,”
I think that is what he is trying to imply. If private school students are supposedly better, then parents will put more of their children into private schools, thus furthering the decline of public education. That, I think, is the goal.
This is the same f*ckwit that was pushing the “War on Christmas” meme. It’s a ratings ploy, pure and simple, a pander to the Fox News crowd.
Here’s what real small town America is like: petty, irrational hatreds, intolerance, and vicious smears of anyone who is the slightest bit different, leavened with far too few more charitable individuals.
As someone who was in a rural area until halfway through HS…. Oh. Hell. Yes.
Smaller populations are far less tolerant of anything “different”.
Plus the idea of children as “innocent”. Most of them are nasty, violent, ignorant little herd barbarians.
The idea of the good old days, or the idylic rural farms (which is just a reification of the ‘good old days’ for them) are all projection of the most ingrained of the conservative tropes. That is the idea of the great past. Conservatives’ reason for being is to recapture a past that never existed and impose that ‘past’ upon the whole of the politic. Conservatives always look backwards for inspirition, for the are looking for that garden of eden. Another way toput it is that the “good old days” is the central conservative mythos. This mythos is as old as time. There are cuniform tablets that decry the children of those days, and yearn for the “good old days”.
As a liberal, our enduring mythos is the brighter future, we always look forward and try to reach for that bright city on the horizon. things like “more perfect union”, utopia, Good society, is what we traffic in. We learn the lesson of the past so as not to repeat them in the future.
I wonder if O’Reilly will teach his kids the proper use of a loofa.
BTW, did O’Reilly put that tornado on your website? It’s just as annoying.
It strikes me that those kids who learn how to swear not only effectively but also confidently in inappropriate places at an early age are showing a precocious ability to one day grow up to be vice president of the United States. Why does this upset Bill?
Kudos to your daughter, but, having grown up in Los Angeles, I doubt that her experience would have been different here. My high school (1997-2001) had plenty of kids who used “gay” as a synonym for “stupid”. I think tolerance has more to do with individual maturity than with the size of a town.
PZ – Your daughter is awesome!
Growing up in a midsized Western town, my friends and I certainly swore constantly. What was actually offensive, though, was the constant stream of “Don’t be gay!” or “Don’t be a Jew!”. Ugh.
pots and kettles, PZ…
i don’t know where Bill O’Reilly got the idea that kids in small town middle america aren’t profane. Because we sure as hell were. But your typical vilification of things you don’t like also typically applies to whatever it is you’re supporting:
i’ve seen more petty irrational hatred and intolerance in those big liberal cities I’ve lived in than I have in all the hick towns I’ve lived in. They’ve got their problems too, but yall aren’t perfect.
Furthermore, I don’t understand where all liberals get the polyanna-ish idea that increasing government power is good for anybody. As supposed evolution enthusiasts you should understand the basic tenets of game theory, the self-interested nature of all individuals, and ‘invadable systems’.
If there was ever a system more prone to invasion and cheaters than leftist governments, I haven’t seen it.
Plus the idea of children as “innocent”. Most of them are nasty, violent, ignorant little herd barbarians.
Damn straight. Where do people gt the idea that kiddies have some sort of innate, uncorrupted wisdom? Also, they are short, which makes them difficult to see and easy to step on. Until they grow up, and then they have hormones. Seriously, what’s the point?
Anyway. Yes. Tolerance is good.
“Here’s what real small town America is like: petty, irrational hatreds, intolerance, and vicious smears of anyone who is the slightest bit different,”
Sounds like “the idiocy of rural life”.
Foul language 101 is more eseential than English 101 for communicating with large segments of society. Without foul language one is an outcast in many environments (e.g military, fraternities, etc). Conformity is inherent to teen age sociology. Living in a major city sadly doesn’t protect one from this fact. I shudder to contemplate passing through adolescence without learning how to navigate reality.
IndianCowboy:
Right, because it’s the liberals who have spent the last six years relentlessly pushing for secret government wiretapping, imperialist wars, and oaths of loyalty. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
You need to pay better attention, then. Unless, of course, you’re subtly claiming that the Bush Administration is a “leftist government”.
All forms of government are equally vulnerable to cheating and dishonesty, because they are all run by human beings who have been given far more power than they rightfully deserve. Take off your ideological blinders, dude.
I thought I remembered reading that he grew up in Levvittown, and I was right.
good job in assuming i’m a conservative there, Dan. google ‘classical liberal’. Also, I don’t know if you’ve seen Bush’s approval ratings recently but the fully dissected numbers show that 45% of conservatives are not happy with him. I didn’t vote for him in 2004 (first election), will not vote for any republican in 2006, and at this rate not in 2008 either.
If you’re familiar with the term ‘classical liberal’ you’d know they believed in a very limited government. And statist expansion of our own government occurred doing two major historical periods; civil war/reconstruction and then again under FDR.
FDR was particularly damaging because he introduced the idea of positive liberty into our mindset; the idea that ‘freeom from want and fear’ is on par with ‘freedom from interference’. And worse, he made us think that his revisionist positive liberty and the founding fathers’ ‘negative liberty’ were the same thing. And then in the name of ‘increasing freedom’ he put into place some of the most overbearing governmental regulations and bureaucracies the world has ever seen.
FDR’s situation wasn’t an easy one, and I dont’ envy him the job of taking care of depression-era US, but by using the language he did, and the methods he did, he helped destroy the underpinnings of our country.
Leftists believe government has an enabling role in freedom, that somehow by regulations and taxation and government programs, such restrictions can actually make you ‘more free’.
You and I on social matters probably agree close to 100% It just ain’t government’s business. But apparently money, what you actually express your choices with, in many ways, is.
I’m told FA Hayek said what I say. Haven’t had a chance to read his works yet, but he’s a nobel laureate, and I’m not. So if you think there might be a kernel of anything reesembling a truth to what I say, do us both a favor and read Road to Serfdom by him.
The founding fathers were darned close to a system that wasn’t invadable. It was ruined when we made judges just another member of a political party and allowed them to become revisionist agents of a given party (both major parties). It was further ruined when we decided that we could change the meanings of words and treat the constitution like a contract to be lawyered over full of loopholes to be found and exploited. And the nail in the coffin was making congressmen popularly elected national politicians instead of representatives of the states.
To stick with the game theory analogy, the only reason that the constitutional government was invaded was because someone wadded up the rules and burned them partway through, a bit later someone knocked the game pieces around and they all just put them back where ‘they thought they went’, and then someone else changed the ending point.
i’ve seen more petty irrational hatred and intolerance in those big liberal cities I’ve lived in than I have in all the hick towns I’ve lived in.
I never had my dog shot, my windows smashed, my mailbox blown up, etc, etc, in my (not so big) “liberal” city, like happened in my rural childhood. I never had to put down animals that my fellow “innocents” had broken and left writhing in pain, or had anyone try to punch my face in “just ’cause”. There’s a whole lot more, and a lot I learned about after I got old enough to be told.
The rural social dynamic is vicious when you aren’t “one of them”, and doubly so for “the playground”.
In a larger population there are more outliers, and tolerance is mandated by the fact that there are enough “outsiders” to form their own posse.
I’m told FA Hayek said what I say. Haven’t had a chance to read his works yet, but he’s a nobel laureate, and I’m not. So if you think there might be a kernel of anything reesembling a truth to what I say, do us both a favor and read Road to Serfdom by him.
Here’s the cartoon version for starters.
http://www.mises.org/TRTS.htm
The founding fathers were darned close to a system that wasn’t invadable.
Oh, come on, there is no such thing as a “non-invadable” system. And wasn’t that system “invaded” by slave-owners from the start?
If Mr O’Reilly is upset with hearing foul language from youngsters, which seems reasonable, surely it would be plain good manners for parents in his neighbourhood to instruct their children to substitute a harmless word, such as ‘falafel’, whenever he is around?
Ah, life in small-town Minnesota. My family moved to Sherburn (at the time, pop 1100-1200; my graduating class was 39) when I was in the 7th Grade. I was a permanent semi-outsider. I kind of fit in by the end of high school, but I was never of the town, and that mattered.
I love the lionization of “Middle America” as wholesome folks just trying to do right, as the moral paragons to which the Nation should aspire. Puh-lease! It’s so much fun to watch all the good, wholesome families going to church every Sunday, and to note which of them were sleeping with people not their spouses, all of ’em sitting in the pews as though nothing is happening, but gossiping like mad at the cafe or hardware store or….Everybody knows each other’s business; there’s such a heavy weight of hypocritical conformity. I will never set foot in that town again, and wouldn’t be disappointed if it ceased to exist.
And you’ve never heard swearing until you’ve been around a farmer trying to fix some “goddamned fucking” piece of equipment.
Isn’t pining for the (usually nonexistent) “good old days” a great example of an essential property of conservatives?
Personally, I’d rather see kids cussing like sailors as long as they were tolerant of each other’s differences.
Hey, no kidding. And I’ll tell ya what, if I heard, oh, say an 8 year old (any younger, and it would probably be just parrotting) pop out with “Aw, fuck all this bigotry bullshit”, I have to admit, my language-based scolding would be less than wholehearted.
O’Reilly never kept up with Will Rogers: “Things ain’t like they used to be. And they never was.”
I was a preacher’s kid, already, and as foul-mouthed as anyone in Bentonville, Arkansas back in ’62. That was the 3000-population pre-Walmart Bentonville, by the way.
“I want it all back the way that it was!”
–Londo Mollari
Kudos to PZ for pointing out not only that small-town America is just as crude as the big cities, but also that children aren’t as pure as most people think.
When I was in elementary school, many of the kids I knew were jerks and some were truly despicable people. I’m sure the current generation is no different.
Things pretty much are the way they were. People are people. Intollerant people are intollerant of mostly the same mixture of viewpoints and skin colors as before.
O’Reilly and his “No Shit Zone” just make me laugh. Profanity doesn’t exist in rural towns? He must think that “nigger”, “faggot”, and “bitch” aren’t cuss words there. Now there’s some spin.
Worse, he believes that profanity is found only in vocabulary.
Ab. So. Lutely.
Boy IndianCowboy, you sure swallowed a lot of crap whole. BTW IC, what era of American history would represent best, or which came closest to what you think America should be?
“I wish we lived in the America of yesteryear that only exists in the brains of us Republicans!” – Ned Flanders
‘a lot of crap whole’? I came to my conclusions on my own. I’ve intentionally not read Hayek or any of the modern classical liberals (oxymoron?) because I want to develop my political philosophy on my own.
Swallowing a lot of crap whole would be believing that big government (of either type, Republican or Democrat) is good for anyone. I hate to use such a trite example, but Animal Farm’s ending really did say it all. SOmetime’s government can be necessary, but it’s not something you should venerate.
and notice I said ‘darned close’ to a non-invadable system?
I’m not naive enough to think that the founding fathers were perfect, and certainly their support of slavery meant that it wasn’t a ‘true’ classical liberal government from the beginning, which doesn’t change the importance of their words and idea. And it doesnt’ change the inherent superiority of their worldview hwen compared to either Republican or Democrat.
People are self-interested, whether we’re talking money, comfort, power, or babies. By giving government an enabling role in ‘freedom’, you are begging power mongers to come in and exploit the large and sweeping federal powers you have established. Not to mention the problems of a ‘social economic model’ when it comes to motivation. ANd then we can get into voting patterns…
Trust me, it’s a well reasoned stance. But you guys are so stuck in your statist mentality, whether left or right, that you can’t even acknowledge the possibility that I might be right.
I am gobsmacked by O’Reilly’s assertion “private school, that does not happen”, unless he is only referring to the likelihood of a teacher reacting to hearing profanity in the hallway.
I went to private school for grades 6-12, and we were as foul-mouthed as anybody else. We did have the brains to avoid swearing in front of teachers, which I assume our public school colleagues had as well. The idea of a public school teacher being any more likely to allow swearing in a class or hallway is laughable.
Of course, so is Bill O’R.
I’m not naive enough to think that the founding fathers were perfect, and certainly their support of slavery meant that it wasn’t a ‘true’ classical liberal government from the beginning, which doesn’t change the importance of their words and idea.
I know those lofty ideas were not “extended” to slaves at the time, so your position is defensible. I’m just saying, very simply, if the system can very well incorporate such a horrid breach of liberty as slavery, why would it be immune to some less serious misuse in modern times? (or ‘darned close to immune’?)
And it doesnt’ change the inherent superiority of their worldview hwen compared to either Republican or Democrat.
A worldview that permits slavery is not “inherently superior” in my book!
Sure, there may have been superior aspects, but you’ll have to elaborate on them.
straw man and you know it, windy. WE’ve argued before and you’re better than that. Every political system has had atrocities associated with it. Humans are bastards. The classical liberal system was ‘invaded’ at the start because of slavery. That slavery represents an artefact, a bastardization, a failure, rather than an actual part of the classical liberal framework. Stalin doesn’t represent what leftism is supposed to be about, he represents an invasion.
My point is that Stalins/slavers/despots are more likely to arise under a leftist system than a classically liberal system.
I’m going to link the first parts of my argument because I’ve already written about them extensively (sorry PZ, did not intend this as advertising my blog).
The definitions of liberty: On Freedom discusses the differences between positive freedom and negative freedom and how they’re incompatible.
A Tale of Two Liberals discusses how those societies that ascribe to positive freedom will inevitably descend into a spiral of increasing limitations on behavior. Europe being a perfect example. In recent years and months, one’s ability to work, to say as he pleases, and his ability to defend himself against criminals (to name a few) have been greatly abrogated due to their clinging to positive liberty. I’ve lived in England, and not in the pretty insulated areas, but in a not so nice area. Have friends in France, and they’ll vouch for what I say.
On human rights and the cage of human rights discuss the implications of the leftist use of the term ‘rights’ to describe what are better termed privileges.
These are all ways in which leftist philosophy is prone to ‘invasion’ and the limitation of human behavior in the name of a perverted view of ‘freedom’.
I’ve already mentioned the fact that the larger the government, the easier it is for a despot to exert power over others. I think that’s an easy enough point to understand without further elaboration.
Another aspect is the problem of a progressive tax system and ‘one man one vote’. ‘the taxpayer’ (those who pay as much or more taxes as government per capita expenditure) represents only about 20% to 40% of the voting population (depends on how you model per capita expenditure). This means that a minority of people are financing the decisions of a majority of people. ‘Tyranny of the majority’. Those who don’t actually bear the costs of policy are the ones with the loudest voice.
Gotta test monday. I’m not expecting yall to change your minds or change your philosophies. I’d just be happy if yall thought just for a minute, or admitted some of the flaws in leftist philosophy. From where my linking ended, i’m actually going to get into the problems of classical liberalism with a post entitled ‘the limits of liberty’, which’ll include some behavioral ecology concepts.
straw man and you know it, windy. WE’ve argued before and you’re better than that. Every political system has had atrocities associated with it. Humans are bastards. The classical liberal system was ‘invaded’ at the start because of slavery. That slavery represents an artefact, a bastardization, a failure, rather than an actual part of the classical liberal framework. Stalin doesn’t represent what leftism is supposed to be about, he represents an invasion.
My point is that Stalins/slavers/despots are more likely to arise under a leftist system than a classically liberal system.
I’m going to link the first parts of my argument because I’ve already written about them extensively (sorry PZ, did not intend this as advertising my blog).
The definitions of liberty: On Freedom discusses the differences between positive freedom and negative freedom and how they’re incompatible.
A Tale of Two Liberals discusses how those societies that ascribe to positive freedom will inevitably descend into a spiral of increasing limitations on behavior. Europe being a perfect example. In recent years and months, one’s ability to work, to say as he pleases, and his ability to defend himself against criminals (to name a few) have been greatly abrogated due to their clinging to positive liberty. I’ve lived in England, and not in the pretty insulated areas, but in a not so nice area. Have friends in France, and they’ll vouch for what I say.
On human rights and the cage of human rights discuss the implications of the leftist use of the term ‘rights’ to describe what are better termed privileges.
These are all ways in which leftist philosophy is prone to ‘invasion’ and the limitation of human behavior in the name of a perverted view of ‘freedom’.
I’ve already mentioned the fact that the larger the government, the easier it is for a despot to exert power over others. I think that’s an easy enough point to understand without further elaboration.
Another aspect is the problem of a progressive tax system and ‘one man one vote’. ‘the taxpayer’ (those who pay as much or more taxes as government per capita expenditure) represents only about 20% to 40% of the voting population (depends on how you model per capita expenditure). This means that a minority of people are financing the decisions of a majority of people. ‘Tyranny of the majority’. Those who don’t actually bear the costs of policy are the ones with the loudest voice.
Gotta test monday. I’m not expecting yall to change your minds or change your philosophies. I’d just be happy if yall thought just for a minute, or admitted some of the flaws in leftist philosophy. From where my linking ended, i’m actually going to get into the problems of classical liberalism with a post entitled ‘the limits of liberty’, which’ll include some behavioral ecology concepts.
Trust me, it’s a well reasoned stance. But you guys are so stuck in your statist mentality, whether left or right, that you can’t even acknowledge the possibility that I might be right.
Oh bollocks. The smaller the group the more oppressive the tyranny of the majority, and libertarianism is all about breaking society down into the smallest groups possible.
because I want to develop my political philosophy on my own.
Yep, because having no foundations in the centuries of work that has gone before is so much better than learning from the great thinkers of the past. Or only reading the ones you agree with.
Right, because Stalinist Russia was such a fun and fancy free place. Or hell, England for that matter.
No, I read the founding fathers and others. I’ve even read some Marx. What I don’t want to read are modern-day interpreters of the original writings. After I’ve come to my own conclusions, based on the original writings, i’ll see what other interpreters think about those writings.
Basically I’m trying to ensure i’m not a parrot.
Oh, I dunno if I said it in this thread or not, but a lot of Marx’s conclusions about past history were well-reasoned and believe it or not I actually agree with them. The difference lies in our proposed solutions. i’m well aware that he never specifically articulated how socialism should be put into practice, but I don’t think his starting point was a very good one. ‘the people’ aren’t a collective and never will be; we’re simply not wired that way. The best we can do is pit self-interest against self-interest, and set them up in such a way that everyone gains while keeping each other in check.
Huh, kinda like group living animals come to think of it. leftism suffers all the flaws of ‘group selection’ theory.
straw man and you know it, windy.
Which argument?
My point is that Stalins/slavers/despots are more likely to arise under a leftist system than a classically liberal system.
I think your definition of “leftist” is much wider than “classically liberal”, and that you would not include societies with liberal features but lots of injustice under the latter. So it is sort of true by definition. But in which societies has classical liberalism been truly tested?
Europe being a perfect example. In recent years and months, one’s ability to work, to say as he pleases, and his ability to defend himself against criminals (to name a few) have been greatly abrogated due to their clinging to positive liberty.
What the hell?
Right, because Stalinist Russia was such a fun and fancy free place. Or hell, England for that matter.
Now this is something – mentioning Stalinist Russia and England in the same breath as bad leftist societies??? England is one of the least socialist countries in the EU.
I <3 small towns. In my small town people called up my parents and stopped them in the grocery store to tell them what a big whore their daughter is after I wrote a letter to the editor in support of Planned Parenthood. Once my friends and I were asked if we knew all the colored people in town.
And anybody who thinks children are innocent and sweet has never experienced bullying.
Well, O’Reilly apparently believes kids are innocent and sweet (that is if he actually believes ANYTHING, which is questionable)… and HE has obviously experienced a lot of bullying.
He just experienced it from the bully’s point of view.
One more thing, IC: It’s been over 50 years since Hayek’s prediction. Shouldn’t Europe have spiraled a lot further down the drain during that time with our laughable social democracy and ‘positive liberty’, and not just in the last few years?
I’m sorry, IndianCowboy, but if your strongest critique of Marx is that he viewed humans as social animals you’re on some pretty weak ground.
no MAJeff, my strongest argument against Marxism is that he viewed humans as social animals but believed in group selection. And then made arguments for how to implement change based on that. He ignored the destructive and manipulative abilities of self-interest when government is assumed to operate on collectivist principles.
Which is a pretty strong argument, if you ask me. Unless you support group selection.
England: London has 6 times the crime rate of New York City. It’s a greater crime to defend yourself than it is to assault someone. I personally was involved in 3 attempted muggings and one bonafide hate crime. And i’m 210lbs of swarthy, muscular, and scary Indian. All of my assaulters were 2/3’s my size or less. Criminals have no fear.
Piggy calendars, signs advertising ham and cheese sandwiches, non-halal food in school cafeterias are all things that were restricted during the year I was in England.
And don’t get me started on their healthcare.
France: The revolts for one thing, both the immigrant and the student ones. Are you aware that income difference compression is so extreme there now that very strong students are regularly choosing to become things like plumbers and electricians because the years of schooling to become a doctor or lawyer just aren’t worth it?
Windy, have you actually seen the economic indicators for europe relative to the US? Not the bloviating of reporters or Paul Krugman, but the reality? They aren’t doing so well. Germany and France are in dire straits. England’s getting there, although they admittedly are one of the strongest economies in Europe at the moment. On a personal level, I can speak to the entry-level job situation as well as the college graduate situation, and I can tell you that that don’t seem to be very good, based on the experience of my coursemates.
After graduating from the elite, private Chaminade High School in 1967, O’Reilly …
Who knew? Chaminade (a Catholic school, BTW) was one of our HS’s rivals in sports. They always seemed a lot preppier and more stuck up than the kids from the local Catholic school, St. Paddy’s. If Bill had trouble fitting in there, it would explain a lot of his vitriol now.
Regarding language, Bill is living in Pleasantville (as in the movie) if he imagines that private school kids have cleaner vocabularies than anyone else. I teach at a private school. I can attest to the fact that the future leaders of tomorrow still salt their language with mono-syllabic Anglo-Saxon verbs and nouns. For that matter, so do Catholic school kids. Why else would Catholic and private schools have rules against swearing? That younger kids know the same words (but perhaps not their exact meaning) is no surprise. The social acceptability of four-letter words has been on the rise for decades now. Eventually, I suspect, they will lose their shock value, just as “pregnant” did. (Actors on TV could not even speak the word until well into the 1960s. “Pissed off” is now a common phrase on network TV. That, to, was verboten not too long ago.)
Bill should visit Chaminade now, and hang out with the football team. I bet he’d be shocked at the “moral decline” of today’s Catholic youth.
I have been teaching at a private school (urban) for ten years. The children I teach are no better (and no worse) than anyone else. They curse in pretty much the way I remember when I went to school, and problems related to drugs, alcohol, sex, violence, family problems, etc. are all there too.
It absolutely infuriates me when people suggest/imply/state that the children who attend private schools are somehow superior beings. I do believe that smaller class sizes and better equipped classrooms (which do exist at the school at which I teach, but not all private schools) make it easier to deliver/get a quality education, but there is definitely no magical mojo that purifies students.
And you can bet your sweet bippy that O’Reilly knows this–it’s all just a comforting (and manipulative) lie–and it pleases his viewers to no end.
Also, I wonder what Bill O’Reilly thinks about some of the language used by our President and Vice President.
Like our President once calling a reporter “a major-league asshole”
And our Vice-President one telling some Senator to “go fuck yourself”
I also wonder where IndianCowboy gets his figures from, and I wonder what he counts as measures of economic performance — stock prices? Could it be from one of those pro-capitalist ideology institutes? A.k.a. “think tanks”.
I also don’t understand this demonizing of Franklin Delano Roosevelt; was he really as horrible as Joseph Stalin? He ran for election four times, rather than claim “emergency powers” and make himself President for Life. And when some business leaders tried to organize a coup against him, he let them off the hook rather than doing what Stalin would have done — order a big purge with large numbers of people being induced to meekly “confess” that they had been enemies of the American people and then being sent off to prison camps in Alaska and elsewhere.
This distinction between “negative rights” and “positive rights” is IMO hairsplitting. Because “negative rights” becomes “I want the government to protect my life, liberty, and property by hiring soldiers and cops and judges and jailers.” All the anti-welfare-state arguments work there also. Like how soldiers and cops are paid with money stolen from poor innocent taxpayers, how people always want them to be paid with Other People’s Money, how the government hiring them destroys people’s ability to protect themselves, etc. etc. etc.
PZ: basically, they just express support for people with different sexual preferences in a very low key way
Uh, a “Gay? Fine by me.” campaign with t-shirts isn’t my definition of low key. Why sugarcoat it? If you want your daughter to stand up for herself or her beliefs, then be proud of it. IMO calling it low key is a disservice.
Personally, I’d rather see kids cussing like sailors as long as they were tolerant of each other’s differences
Except if it involves creationism. :)
What I don’t want to read are modern-day interpreters of the original writings.
Now that’s an odd thing to do in any field of study, let alone political analysis. Surely it’s possible to read some critical theory without letting it all go to your head? Why stop in the last century? There’s plenty of theory being generated still, and most of it is very interesting. Try some Zizek, or Butler, or at least Kant fer chrissakes.
London has 6 times the crime rate of New York City.
London has more petty crime and less serious crime than NY. New York still has a much higher crime rate, despite a reduction of 75% over the last 15 years.
Germany and France are in dire straits. England’s getting there, although they admittedly are one of the strongest economies in Europe at the moment.
And Scandinavia’s doing a lot better than the US, even though it has an outrageous taxation system. All it means is that welfare states can work only when they’re adequately funded.
Loren, it’s really not hard to understand. FDR increased governmental power, regulation and influence by leaps and bounds and told us it was a good thing. Furthermore he said that such restrictions somehow liberated us and made us more free. Which is an…ahem…interesting proposition.
He took advantage of a beaten and downtrodden populace to push through governmental powers that none of the Framers would possibly have been alright with. He trampled and urinated on the constitution. And he did it while claiming to further its values.
Also, since FDR, we’ve actually been in a continued State of National Emergency which has ensured sweeping presidential powers. Ever wonder why Bush (and Clinton for that matter) have been able to get away with a lot of their idiocy with the Executive Branch? Thank FDR for his origination of the ‘perpetual State of Emergency’.
So much for that.
I don’t even begin to know how someone can’t see the difference between negative rights and positive rights. You are confusing all sorts of issues and ideas when you talk about police and military. That has to do with the protection of rights which is a whole other issue.
I believe that by their nature rights are universal. Lefitsts claim they do too. I believe A man has a right to life, liberty and property. It doesn’t actually take a military or a police force for that right. It doesn’t take a single other person in the world for those rights to exist and be fulfilled.
A ‘right to maternity leave’ or a ‘right to education’ or a ‘right to a standard of living’ requires other people. The fulfillment of said rights thus cannot be said to be universal; as I put it in my posts I linked to for this very reason, if a hermit in the middle of a desert doesn’t have it, than it can’t be universal.
Furthermore, whereas my conception of rights merely requires non-interference and the maintenance of spheres of autonomy, your conception of rights not only requires interference, it restricts individuals. And as we know interference and restriction are primary ingredients in freedom.
Try again.
Alon what are you talking about? The only category that the US is higher than Europe is in is murder. And since most of our murder is gang-on-gang and ‘revenge’ killing, I’m not all that worried. After several years of rebuilding bridges, I’m finally on good terms with all my ex girlfriends.
BEsides, home office has admitted to under-reporting crime, have attempted to downgrade rape and in-home robbery from serious crimes to lesser crimes, and are now allowing first-timers caught in the act to go free without even being booked or reported!
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=21902
Yeah it’s worldnetdaily, but it’s a study out of HOLLAND.
excerpt:
Kim, I’ll read guys who disagree with me (Karl Popper’s 2-volume bastard is on my list for this summer’s work). And I’ll get around to Hayek, Mises et al eventually. I only got really interested in political philosophy (as opposed to politics) a couple years ago. But there was nothing I hated more back in college than the debaters who’d basically yank an argument almost verbatim from whoever was the big dog in their field. Not only was it annoying, it made it really easy to show them for really superficial thinkers. Debate them was like debating ID-morons. Target Rich Environment.
I don’t intend to be one of them.
and may I say lololololol. Stock prices are some of the worst amongst the available economic indicators…I do know enough econ to know that. I’d never trust anything anyone said based on stock valuation.
I think I’ve done a fair job of showing that I’m a free thinker, even if I do disagree with yall politically. Yet as soon as I bring up an interpretation you disagree with, e.g. Europe, I must’ve snagged it from a ‘pro-capitalist think tank’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_indicator
The only category that the US is higher than Europe is in is murder. And since most of our murder is gang-on-gang and ‘revenge’ killing, I’m not all that worried. After several years of rebuilding bridges, I’m finally on good terms with all my ex girlfriends.
Crap. The BJS’s studies show that the US has more violent crime than Canada and Europe in every category. Britain’s rape rate, 14 in 100,000 people, is the highest in Europe; the USA’s is about 35.
is the BJS one the one from 1981-1996? I think that’s the one. Because it’s been 10 years, with the US on a declining trend and the UK on an increasing trend.
Also, you should look into the abysmal reporting/collecting/analysis methods of the Home Office.
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=9641
discussing some of the UK’s new tactics in controlling their actual crime statistics in the first couple of paragraphs
here’s a link from one of yalls hated ‘think tanks’
so overall violent crime increased 118% according to home office figures from a time period you decided to omit. Violent crime rate twice that of US. If you want, feel free to go to the FBI’s UCR and the Home Office’s most recent report.
Like I said, try again.
Windy, have you actually seen the economic indicators for europe relative to the US? Not the bloviating of reporters or Paul Krugman, but the reality? They aren’t doing so well.
I just live here, so what do I know.
You didn’t answer how UK’s problems show leftism is at fault, seeing as it is one of the least socialist countries in EU?
And what country at present implements classical liberalism best?
so overall violent crime increased 118% according to home office figures from a time period you decided to omit.
How about linking to the actual data, so we can see what you are misrepresenting for yourself.
Here is some actual data BCS: Violent crime still low and stable.
actual Home Office figures
Bah, I recognize this crap, it’s more of John Lott’s bullshit.
Speaking as a UK resident
(Note to illiterates- thats the UK, as in United Kingdom- which is the entity within which England is merely a part)
there have been no limitations placed on your ability to defeind yourself, at least on the street. If you are attacked, you can safely defend yourself, as long as you do not obviously try and kill your attacker. You could even kill the mugger, as long as you can plausibly say it was an accident. However pulling out a gun and shooting them dead will mean you spend time in jail. As far as I am aware, there have been no successful prosecution of someone who killed someone who was attacking them.
(Tony Martin doesnt count, he shot someone in the back who was running away. If he had shot the bloke when he was being approached, he would have had a better defence in court.)
As for limitations on your ability to defend yourself from the corporate state that we are currently living in, they keep adding to said limitations, but then they dont really need to, since the British state has been happily doing painful things to dissidents for several centuries. Thats what you USA’ians need to get into your heads- the UK has never stopped being an undemocratic centralised state. The fact that some facets of it can be called “lefty” is entirely beside the point. The State carries on, no matter who is nominally in charge.
IndianCowboy:
That doesn’t make any sense. A right, whether +ve or -ve is a claim, which if it is a just claim, implies an obligation to recognise it. For a right to ‘exist and be fulfilled’ implies the existence of at least one other person who has the capacity to either respect or challenge that claim. Even the entitlement to have rights is a matter of agreement: doesn’t the US constitution say ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident…’?
Fulfill one’s “right to life” with the help of nobody else? That would be a neat trick. I’ve never heard of a completely autonomous human.
The idea of the good old days, or the idylic rural farms (which is just a reification of the ‘good old days’ for them) are all projection of the most ingrained of the conservative tropes. That is the idea of the great past.
Which had a tax rate of 91% for the top bracket.
Hm….there might be a connection there….
doesn’t the US constitution say ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident…’?
No, actually, it doesn’t say that.
IC, I said what I said because I’ve run into your ilk before and I know the signs. Now, as I see your other answers, I realized that you will read anything into anything so it will fit your ideology and you will cherry-pick studies for the same reason. In this, you’ve confirmed my thoughts. Your’re nothing but theory and you don’t live in the real world. You’re just another neo-Randian nutcase and like all the rest so full of words that signify nothing and without a speck of compassion for your fellow man. Take your cheap ad hominems and just go away.
-Rochenko
That’s the Declaration of Independence. Please try to avoid these sorts of errors, since someone is liable to nit-pick them, to the detriment of any
The U.S. Constitution’s preamble does, however, say that its purpose is “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…” The aims of establishing Justice, promoting the general Welfare, and securing the Blessings of Liberty would seem to conflict with IndianCowboy’s view of the government as serving solely to establish “negative liberty,” since he apparently objects to affirmative action and antidiscrimination laws (I’m pretty sure that was you in another thread; if I’m mistake I apologize) and similar means intended to establish Justice and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ALL Americans, and to government support of social welfare programs. I’m not sure how he reads the ultra-laissez-faire policy he’s apparently advocating into that.
Also, as I recall, the Constitution in its modern form was written several years after the end of the Revolutionary War, when it became apparent that the extremely weak central government established by the Articles of Confederation was completely ineffective. It was an effort to make government LESS hands-off than it had previously been because it had been demonstrated that such a state was non-functional. The expansion of government power in response to the Civil War which tore the nation in half and resulted in a higher American casualty count than any other war in history (I believe that’s still true), and to the Great Depression which crippled the nation and caused enormous amounts of suffering to people who in most cases had no control over the circumstances leading to it, would seem to be similarly motivated, as would the expansion of government control of business through anti-trust laws in response to the gross abuses of the Gilded Age robber barons, around the turn of the century.
Having a central state which is strong enough to act but still accountable for its actions is to the benefit of everyone, even the would-be robber barons who would gladly gut the provisions of government that make it more difficult for them to rob their fellow Americans in more socially acceptable ways than pointing guns at them, as these short-sighted predator-parasites would likely be killed by mobs before long if they had their way. The fact that effective central governments can cause problems when their programs and bureaucratic structure are not designed in an intelligent, rational, and efficient fashion is not a point against them any more than the fact that steering with your feet while eating a cheeseburger and talking on a cell phone tends to cause accidents is a point against cars. Pointing to the worst examples of extreme state centralization and attempting to generalize the problems there to all progressivism is like looking at countries with NO effective central government and attempting to generalize that to your arguments.
-mndean
I don’t know if I’d say all that, but IndianCowboy certainly seems to have a very selective filter for the facts and conclusions he absorbs, as well as a fair amount of confusion as to what the goals of a rational, functional government and society really are, and a moderately smarmy demeanor which, while not quite at the “insufferable” level, is certainly irritating.
mndean, that is one of the biggest liberal fallacies, that compassion can only be shown through governmental regulation. What do you know about me? What do you know about what I’ve done for my fellow man? What do you know about the fact that I gave up a promising career doing something I love for one that frustrates me constantly because that way I’d be able to give back more? What do you know of the hours I’ve spent consoling others, breaking my back volunteering, and getting off my ass to actually help those in need instead of vote for government programs to do it for me? Nothing. Personal is not the same as political.
Both the government established under the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution were classically liberal in nature. The fundamental difference between classical liberals and libertarians being that we acknowledge that sometimes rights must be abrogated. THe difference between us and you is that we don’t claim that that’s a good thing, merely a necessary thing. Federalists versus Anti-Federalists, these were discussions of practicality.
I haven’t yet discussed at length the limits of negative liberty although in an earlier comment I mentioned that they’re there, and that it’s important to consider them. SO neo-Randian I am not. Raving ‘capitalist’ I am not. Selfish, childish idiot, I am not. I have a more dim a view of Rand than I do of Marx, believe it or not. Both made some valid observations, both failed to translate them into something meaningful, effective, and practical. But at least Marx was a bit more detailed and intelligent in his observations.
It’s about how you view the nature of government. is a strong central government an inherently good thing or is it an inherently corruptible, but necessary thing? That is the crux of the debate here. By the aspersions you’ve cast on my character it’s clear that you see government as a fundamentally good thing, because it’s only through my political ideology that I can show how much I care.
I on the other hand feel government is a necessary thing in some areas of life. It’s why unlike libertarians, I support a national school system (with vouchers). It’s why unlike libertarians, I acknowledge the need for some kind of ‘safety net’, especially for those with children. It’s why unlike libertarians I support extensive conservation measures. Government is a tool. It’s a dangerous tool, but a useful one. Like a chainsaw.
Azkyroth, you do know whose blog you’re on right? I respect PZ a good deal, which is why i come here several times a day, but if you’re going to pretend my demeanor is any less irritating than PZ’s, you should probably rethink that. It just so happens you agree with him so you ignore it.
On affirmative action, if it were socioeconomic in nature I wouldn’t give a damn. There are rich privileged black kids and there are poor downtrodden white kids; I went to high school with a lot of the latter and to college with a lot of the former. If our aim is really justice we’d pay attention to the privileged/downtrodden dichotomy rather than black/white.
I’ve actually read the US Constitution, and I note the powers granted in Article I, Section 8. Not exactly “limited government” or “minimal government”, whatever those are supposed to mean.
And protection of life, liberty, and property — that depends, among other things, on what counts as “property”. Like is “intellectual property” legitimate? Is slavery legitimate?
All forms of government are equally vulnerable to cheating and dishonesty, because they are all run by human beings who have been given far more power than they rightfully deserve. Take off your ideological blinders, dude.
Posted by: Dan | May 7, 2006 01:35 AM
***********************************************************
A Conservative Government “CAN” be Oppressive and Totalitarian, a Socialist Government “MUST” be.
Say IndianCowboy you wouldn’t be
Ani yun wiya
by any chance?
And protection of life, liberty, and property — that depends, among other things, on what counts as “property”. Like is “intellectual property” legitimate? Is slavery legitimate?
Posted by: Loren Petrich | May 8, 2006 07:56 PM
***********************************************************
Property is property, intellectual property is as valid as owning the airspace above your lot.
Of COURSE slavery is legitimate. Did you think the 13 Amendnent ABOLISHED it?
Go back and read the Constitution again you missed a few things maybe.
Thanks for the correction Azkyroth. The point I was trying to make is that in announcing the existence of a people, the Declaration makes explicit the key assumption of any system of rights, namely that a community of rights-holders exists, and that no-one in isolation possesses any rights at all. That latter kind of meaningless assertion is what IndianCowboy needs to avoid making if s/he’s keen on not being mistaken for a Randroid.
B.O. couldn’t write a caption for a Norman Rockwell painting without having to bowdlerize it.
I count three responses that actually dealt with my central contention, the rest preferring to nitpick. Nice.
oh, azkyroth, thanks for an inciteful comment. I hope I addressed it in mine.
Rochenko, the crux of my ‘meaningless assertion’ from earlier is actually:
wait a sec? Did JOhn Lott work for University of Leiden in Holland? Wasn’t aware of that.
IC:
Given that it seems to be a foundational statement of belief, I took the crux of your earlier post to be
And that your definition of a universal right implies a possessor of a particular kind:
This possessor is therefore an individual considered apart from any political relationship s/he may stand in to anyone else. My implication was simply that such individuals don’t exist, given that individuals as possessors of rights are always defined as such within a political community, and that therefore the universalist concept of natural rights you say you believe in doesn’t make any sense.
I’m not clear from your last couple of posts whether you considered this to be one of the nitpicking objections you cited, but to me it seems a pretty fundamental objection to the classical liberal point of view you’re defending, just as it’s a fundamental objection to any form of libertarianism.
I’m not an O’reilly fan, I think the guy is in love with himself, he gives his guests about ten seconds to speak if they are lucky before he interrupts them. But, I just had to say, what makes YOU more qualified than him to tell us what small town American life is like? Small towns are not cookie cutter creations, they all evolved with some similar and some very different factors and circumstances.
Rochenko, it was a good criticism; I made a mistake when I illustrated it using the hermit analogy. I usually have these talks with other classical liberals so sometimes they miss those mistakes simply because they’re not looking for them. My thanks to you, azkyroth, windy, and a couple of others who helped in that regard.
The crux of my argument is better stated later on when I talk about restriction and spheres of autonomy. Negative rights require merely non-interference; so long as spheres of autonomy are respected , you are free. Positive rights require intervention and restriction; positive rights cannot exist without trampling all over the principle of non-interference.