printA magnificent, crisply argued piece by the peerless Thomas Fleming, who happens to be a nimble stylist as well. Here are some highlights:
• “The appearance of John McCain and Barack Obama at Saddleback, California’s ‘purpose-driven’ church marks the ultimate ascent of Rick Warren to the Gantry-in-Chief of the P.T. Barnum Church of America.”
• “A liberal, as I never tire of quoting (from Robert Frost), is someone who would not take his own side in an argument. Rich liberals naturally support high taxes and extravagant government expenditures on the poor, preferably the undeserving poor. A male liberal—we can hardly call such creatures men—favors women’s rights; heterosexual liberals favor “Gay” “marriage,” and European-American liberals prefer all cultures to that of Europe. And, if these idiots condescend to note their skin color, they hate it or at least they think they do.”
• “The DNC and the media can tell any lies they like, but they cannot change the fact that the Democratic presidential candidate hates Whites, including the members of his mother’s family who showed him every kindness. Compared with the average self-proclaimed white bigot who says he loves his ancestors, Obama is one sick and sorry excuse for a human being.”
• “[Obama’s] claim to be a Christian is his best evidence that he was never a Muslim.”
• [S]etting aside race-loyalty, greed, and the libido dominandi, how could anyone else hold his nose long enough to vote for anyone who talks in that smarmy adenoidal voice? When Obama gets on his pulpit, it sounds almost like he is swallowing his words in a sea of phlegm. He does not so much speak as (to quote what Alexander Wolcott once said of a theater audience) strum his catarrh. His self-righteous public persona should grate on the sensibilities of normal people–like nails on a chalkboard or the voice of Mariah Carey. And yet, some otherwise normal people voted for him in the primaries and will vote for him again in the general election. Why or rather how?”
• [A]nyone will be better than Bush–is not an easy argument to refute—except in the case of Obama and McCain.
• “However you describe Affirmative Action and minority set-asides, they represent a deliberate and systematic policy of discrimination against people like me in favor of people not like me simply because they are not like me. Such disgusting and immoral policies are worse than any form of racism I have encountered because they teach us to hate precisely those whom we are most supposed to love.”
• “Bigotry these days has nothing to do with the way you treat people or even with what you actually say. Bigotry is what they say you are thinking when they play your speech backward at half speed.”
• “[W]e should not make the mistake of blaming black people for the suicide we continue to inflict on ourselves. We white males are the problem, not blacks, women, homosexuals, or Mexicans. We–at least the liberal part of “we”– turned away from our religion and our civilization; we made war on property and marriage; we rejected Haydn and Sophocles in favor of John Cage and Kate Chopin. We have emasculated ourselves, pithed our brains, destroyed our vision and hearing, and now, all that is left, is to vote for a candidate whose rhetoric at least is telling us to fling our worthless carcasses off the cliff. I blush even to hint at this but John McCain is now the only alternative to suicide.”
“Rich liberals naturally support high taxes and extravagant government expenditures on the poor,…”
The rich can afford tax shelters and lawyers so they can often avoid the high taxes they are in favor of. Their policies seem designed to impede the upward mobility of the middle class.
Great title, Ilana. It is a little bit too close to the truth for comfort.
Damn! again. I wish I’d said that.
I thought that piece was amazing. How truly perceptive Dr. Fleming is.
A brilliant essay. The founding people of this country are really into self-immolation. Having to offer respect to every backwards culture in the world (except for European Anglo culture of course) is wearing thin. Obama doesn’t need to be President. What he really needs is a good shrink to help deal with all of his personal anguish and abandonment issues.
I can really connect with this piece by Fleming. In college now, I am being exposed to enormous bias towards feminism, the State, and hatred against males (especially white ones.) Before I had gone to school, I made the comment on Barely A Blog that I didn’t believe college to be overrun with feminism and liberal “economics” (I reasoned that it couldn’t be all that bad). Having been in college for several semesters, I am finding how true this is.
If I am going to a college in Texas, the Bible Belt, and I see this much economic ignorance and bias towards feminism, I cannot even imagine what it is like further north.
A point (hopefully I wont make this post too long for you Ilana): first day in my poly science class, my professor decided to start talking about the dreaded ‘women in combat’ debate. I felt like banging my head against my book – I knew what silly arguments he would use to support his cause. I emailed my previous political science professor, a man that I had thought would listen to what I had to say about this, but he never emailed me back. Perhaps my email was too hot to handle – maybe I offended, which wasn’t my intention.
My argument is basically this: imagine for one minute, politics aside, that we have a certain type of man that come from, oh, say, Arkansas. (Yeah, I know, I know…). Now imagine that these men are physically inferior to men from other states. Imagine that 80% to 90% of them cannot complete basic training without heavy physical training, after which only 50 to 40 percent can pass, some with injuries that affect deployment and readiness. Because of this, they demand that standards be lowered to accommodate them, so that they have a ‘fair chance’ of passing these tests as the other, superior males in other parts of the States. They are harassed by other males, due in part because they talk and act differently than their counterparts. They demand protection from this as well. During certain deployments, odd things happen to them where they need to be evac’ed to hospitals were they are bed ridden or unable to carry on work in a timely manner. On top of this, they receive pay equal to their male counterparts and take positions over them, and claim that they are being treated the same, ‘equal’, to their other male counterparts. They ask for other positions that are previously closed to them, and standards are asked to be lowered so these Arkansas males can join them. If this were the case, would we tolerate these inferior males? The operative rational answer is ‘no’.
I keep hearing about talk of equality in college, but the programs that they champion – such as women in the military – are not equal in most respects. Is it bad for me to point this out? I don’t understand…
I don’t have that much sympathy for you Alex or anyone taking “liberal arts” courses in college. I treated them like the farce they were and used an electronic warfare technique of repetitive jamming (just repeated the BS I was taught back to the professors) to get my A’s. Funny thing is that, according to my academic friends, very few white Americans want to work their butts off in the sciences these days. Fine by me. So the future will belong mostly to Asians who save money and study hard. {Sadly, I have not been able to convince my Disney-addicted daughter of this – but she is pretty with a good personality and there is a shortage of Asian women – so who knows!} Meanwhile – wailing over dumping/”elevating” a few blacks into situations where they don’t fit in – is focusing on a minor symptom, not the disease of a decline in values….. As for Obama – I agree with Joseph Farah – I might not vote for Obama but it is best that the McCain neocons lose.
[Affirmative action is a major problem; not a minor one. It is only ignorance of the degree to which American institutions have been corrupted by the quota culture that would cause anyone to undermine the matter. Disenfranchisement of white males, and what Alex describes, is not to be minimized. You don’t have a son; neither do I.–IM]
Do not under any circumstances choose a liberal arts degree. Don’t believe the hype. These are not sought-after majors; you will not learn to think critically; you will not be “better-rounded” as a result (unless it’s because you grow physically soft in addition to mentally soft).
If you really love something like history or comparative literature, double major in that field and something for which someone else might pay you. In other words, something with some element of usefulness to it.
I took one English course as a freshman and really enjoyed it. Turns out that the professor was about the only one on the faculty who wasn’t a misanthropic leftist. I majored in English but also took a good amount of college math and stats. Darn glad I did. Presently work in a quantitative field and make good $. I earn every penny.
In the 19th century, Booker T Washington encouraged blacks to advance through the learning of skilled trades. Today he is widely derided as a house N-word by angry academics, and to the extent his name is mentioned at all, it’s in unfavorable comparison to more radical, romantic figures. The thing is, people will always need the services of a plumber or electrician and pay accordingly. No one would pay an African American Studies professor for his so-called labor. It’s a “profession” that exists only through state subsidy and state enforcement. The ironic consequence of this fact is that the contemporary student of African American Studies is closer to a slave than Washington himself ever was.
Bottom line: better an auto mechanic than an arts history major. Be ye warned, all you younguns.
Thanks for the comments Myron – I repeat what my professors tell me these days as well – and I have been making A’s (for the past two semesters I have been making the President’s List).
But I haven’t felt terribly accomplished when doing this. College has become a place where you absorb information, not learn. You learn a lot in the hard sciences, but political economy is pretty bad. My definition of learning is understanding truth and it’s concepts; if you don’t learn truth or it’s concepts, then you really haven’t learned anything.
Repeating things as they are given to you over and over again is also a form of brainwash.
In our political science class, all of the males save two (one of which who seems homosexual) ‘debate’ silly issues with bad economics (our professor stated that there is no direct proof that tax cuts for the rich grown the economy, because rich people ‘hoard’ their money, or invest it overseas). I keep hearing this horrible economic thought, but I can’t bring myself to comment on it more.
Debating in a class of political economy with a professor is generally not a good idea, even if he encourages it. Having someone who has a different view as being the judge of a debate more or less means that he has the final say, the ‘last argument’.
In other words, college isn’t all that fun, for reasons other than what is usually claimed. It’s more or less a brainwashing institution that fosters feminism, the State, and it’s political ideas.
College professors tend to be rootless people. When you lack the particular ties that preserve your sanity and dignity, you supplant it with haughty ideology. When you realize that your haughty ideology is lacking a basis in practical reality and therefore is unvalued in a market, you become nihilistic. And when you are nihilistic, you believe that everyone might as well be forced to be equal. And that, friends, is how you fall to the Dark Side.
I’m a Political Science major, so I’m in the thick of it. When you’re in a college classroom for any of the so-called “social sciences”, trust me, just stay quiet and have a mellow time. The majority of the students in the class will be left-leaning and vaguely Obamessianic, but unassuming. These are just there to earn their Bachelor’s and wear their flip-flops. Then there will be a few students who are obnoxious, loud-mouthed, and solidly left-wing; they are Marxists by any other name, and they despise all things Christian, Jewish, or western. These individuals will be perfectly tolerated by the bulk of the students and also the teacher, if not beloved and applauded. You’ll also have roughly two members of your class that are the token ostensible “conservatives”, and these will be the most logical-fallacy-dropping, war-mongering fools you’ve ever heard open a mouth. Let them be the absurdists they are.
The key is to concentrate, take the notes, pass the tests, and, time permitting, browse the classroom to see if your future soul mate is sitting anywhere among the ranks, and you’ll have to look instead of listen, because I guarantee you that if both you and he/she are people of good character, it’s not going to be one of the haughty loudmouths. Ain’t love a grand thing?
[I would not have the resilience for this ordeal.–IM]
Great write by Fleming indeed.
Alex, you won’t get respect being quiet. F them and tell them so. Who cares if you get Cs instead of As. Make them earn their self righteous enlightenment over you.