Shocking Development at Corporation for Public Broadcasting
There has been a shocking development at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) that has progressive minded people aghast. It is now believed that the Republican appointed by President Bush to try and bring balance to CPB was actually a conservative who was pushing for the occasional conservative program. His nefarious plan included possibly hiring other conservatives.
This is possibly the closest that CPB has ever come to having their liberal bias balanced with other points of view. Such irresponsible actions would make it very difficult for pseudo intellectual progressive liberal demoracists to air their propaganda without restraint. It was a very close call for progressive minded audiences everywhere.
There can now be no doubt that CPB can and will do whatever it wants other than being accountable to all Americans. CPB is accountable to pseudo intellectual progressive liberal demoracists who know what is best for all Americans. That should be conservative enough, right?
Exec's political bias cited in PBS probe
WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - In his zeal to force conservative views onto the public airwaves, the former head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting interfered with PBS programming decisions and may have required the corporation's new president to pass "political tests," an internal investigation revealed.
Kenneth Tomlinson, a Republican, also sought to withhold funding from PBS unless the taxpayer-supported network "balanced their programming" with more conservative voices, according to the report released Tuesday by CPB inspector general Kenneth Konz.
Tomlinson was chairman of the corporation until September and resigned as a board member this month after Konz privately shared his findings with the board. CPB said it was taking action to prevent a recurrence, setting up a corporate governance committee and an executive compensation committee.
"These are bold and decisive actions to respond to important issues," CPB chairman Cheryl Halpern said. "The board is unified in its views and in its determination to take meaningful steps to maintain and strengthen public confidence in public broadcasting."
The major government underwriter for programming aired on PBS and public radio, the CPB was established in 1967 to shield public broadcasting from political influence.
This is possibly the closest that CPB has ever come to having their liberal bias balanced with other points of view. Such irresponsible actions would make it very difficult for pseudo intellectual progressive liberal demoracists to air their propaganda without restraint. It was a very close call for progressive minded audiences everywhere.
There can now be no doubt that CPB can and will do whatever it wants other than being accountable to all Americans. CPB is accountable to pseudo intellectual progressive liberal demoracists who know what is best for all Americans. That should be conservative enough, right?
Exec's political bias cited in PBS probe
WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - In his zeal to force conservative views onto the public airwaves, the former head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting interfered with PBS programming decisions and may have required the corporation's new president to pass "political tests," an internal investigation revealed.
Kenneth Tomlinson, a Republican, also sought to withhold funding from PBS unless the taxpayer-supported network "balanced their programming" with more conservative voices, according to the report released Tuesday by CPB inspector general Kenneth Konz.
Tomlinson was chairman of the corporation until September and resigned as a board member this month after Konz privately shared his findings with the board. CPB said it was taking action to prevent a recurrence, setting up a corporate governance committee and an executive compensation committee.
"These are bold and decisive actions to respond to important issues," CPB chairman Cheryl Halpern said. "The board is unified in its views and in its determination to take meaningful steps to maintain and strengthen public confidence in public broadcasting."
The major government underwriter for programming aired on PBS and public radio, the CPB was established in 1967 to shield public broadcasting from political influence.
posted by BigBubba at 11:27 AM
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22 Comments:
Did you ever answer my question if you talk like that in front of the women in your family?
Mr. Ducky, you have my sympathy that the paint fumes got you in your Snooper's Union art class making an intelligent argument emanating from your pickled brain impossible.
Now that you have made your ludicrous vaction [sic] bible school claim what's next. Na nee Na nee boo boo? Liar, liar pants on fire?
Hey dudes, I made it back from the Philippines safe. Beautiful country for the most part (I was only in Luzon), and the people friendly as heck; "Hello sir!" and "Welcome to the Philippines!" wherever we went. I'm catching up now--or should I say, avoiding the stack of work on my desk.
My brother's new father in law was a one-time Catholic priest who was a rebel against Marcos and actually jailed during martial law. The people there love him--but even when he wasn't around, we were treated very well. At no time did I sense any resentment or hostility.
It is third world, though, no question. I'm not sure how they'll ever get an economy going. No real industry to speak of. The people are very proud of their country but politically disillusioned. Regarding the recent allegations of election fraud, their attitude is "Who cares? Why would the other candidate be any different from Arroyo?" A political career seems to be the surest way to get rich. Yet the mall in Manila was jam-packed, but the goods they're buying are mostly foreign. A lot of knock-off and copycat stuff too...all in all a strange experience.
Other than that I certainly enjoyed the food, the people, the sights and the San Miguel beer. Feels like I've been gone a month! What's been happening here?
Welcome back norm,
You haven't missed much... politics and the usual MSM ballet.
Yes, there's no denying that the Phillipino people are amongst the friendliest on earth. Last time I was there was under the Marco's regime. Even then, they loved Americans, and every girl seemed to be going to the university and studying English in the hope of one day emmigrating. I never did much shopping in the Phillipines though. The real bargains to be found were in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Glad to have you back.
-FJ
mr ducky,
I guess the new management at PBS haven't exorcised all the old demons from their programming yet. This week's NOVA documentary on Newton was a real eye opener. Seems Newton was this "intelligent design" nut that dabbled in alchemy and the occult, and who refused to become a preacher at Cambridge. As a result of his obsessions, he invented Calculus, gravity, the reflector telescope, and explained the nature of light.
Funny how these crazy "intelligent design" folks like Newton and Einstein pushed the envelope in advancing science. Seems none of them were big "thumpers". No wonder they have to keep it out of schools. Best leave the fortunes of science to serendipity and the empiricists.
-FJ
I thought about watching last night's Nova but passed. I only feel safe watching the English comedies, dramas and mysteries on public broadcasting. I have had a life long love affair with English mysteries, especially anything written by Agatha Christy.
Sometimes political commentary creeps into the English productions, but it is usually pretty mild compared to what CPB is capable of doing.
I have several new pieces bouncing around in my head. Alas I have to get up and go to the store. When I return home I have some actual work to do around the ol' homestead.
Mr. Ducky, I long ago stopped eating French brie. I could care less about the cheese eating surrender monkeys and their lackluster movies.
I think that is what happened to your local political genius, Hanoi John. Real Americans heard once too often about his love of France and how he and his wife were both fluent in French. Here in Texas we considered that oh so special for about a nanosecond prior to pulling the dumper lever on Hanoi John's Presidential hopes.
mr ducky,
Why do I get this feeling that you probably would have felt quite at home running a cabaret in Weimar Germany during the twenties and thirties?
I don't suppose you ever saw the 1948 film "The Red Shoes"?
Red Shoes from Wikipedia
I like watching it whenever I start feelin' a little "manic".
Perhaps we could both go to Blockbusters and share critiques. I promise not to launch into my usual diatribe against "modernisms" in art and film. ;-)
-FJ
As fast as entreprenuerial America tries to preach the "think outside the box gospel" dimbulbs in our institutes of higher ignorance preach the "think inside the box gospel." We will talk about intelligent design in philosophy classes, but, when a science class turns to Sir Isaac Newton we absolutely will not discuss intelligent design. The pseudo intellectual progressive liberal design for American intellectual thought is a blue print for our own demise.
mr. ducky,
Since the central interest of philosophy is to define "a good life" for one's self, how can I afford to wait until a child reaches college age to begin his instruction and then have to inform him that everything he had been taught in school "up" until that point was only a half-truth? Just think of all the bad habits he'll have acquired up to that point in his life.
Is it better that a child start his life believing that there actually is an order and intelligibility to the universe, that through discipline and hard work, can be discovered and understood and rewarded, and that "evolution" may be a part of that design?
Or is the alternative, that I ONLY teach him that the universe is total chaos governed by random chance and constant change, that can never be completely predicted and unravelled and understood be the "wiser" course?
For I believe one course gives the child a sense of hope for "mastery" over his own destiny and choices, whereas the other must instill in him a sense of "submission" to an indeterminable fate and a belief that he has relatively little hope of controlling his own future or "mapping" his own fate.
And so, perhaps it is chaos theory, probability and statistics, atheism, and multi-dimensional quantum physics that should be "post-poned" until one reaches the university level.
For our experience with implementing the latter approach has not been a very favorable one to our collective sense of self thus far. A "middle-aged crisis" is the typical result. The day the non-believer no longer looks towards the seemingly "indeterminable" future, see's the likely end, and finally realizes that much precious time has been wasted in arriving at the point where one currently is, and so decides one must make a "life style" course correction to end up where one actually "desires" and becomes "determined" to go.
And so far too late in life, one "trades" in his old life for a new one. A sports car. A young wife. The profligate "lifestyle" far too prevalent in America today.
Whereas the believer in "intelligent design" can zero in upon a "fixed"-end at the "beginning" of his life, point his rudder in the proper direction, and navigate his entire journey through life with compass and stars to steer by. The chart to his ultimate destination is limited only by his own ability and ambition.
And intelligent design has NOTHING to do with a coporeal and continually interceding G_d. In fact, the "Platonic" philosophical precepts underlying intelligent design imply quite the opposite.
...that theology is a realm far beyond the ken of most men. For the true "nature" of the Creator is not of this "mixed" universe. Omniscience and constancy and the absolute "One" of Plato's Parmenides become rather unfathonable concepts for humans severly limited by sense and experience for actual knowledge.
-FJ
What is "intelligent design" but an article of faith? The notion that certain patterns seem to imply revelations of a larger plan, a plan which may have been put into place by a certain "intelligence" whose parameters we can only glimpse because what appears to be true appears to suggest its existence?
Tell me why in the world that belongs in a science class (much less a grade-school level science class!) and not a philosophy/theology class?
norm,
Because a "design" necessarily implies "intelligibility" and an ability to "reverse-engineer".
Chaos coupled with continual "change" implies "un-intelligibility" and the impossibility of "reverse-engineering".
One instills a desire to "learn" and "understand" because it is actually "possible" to do so.
The other instills an attitude of "why bother". It's ultimately incomprehensible anyways.
Sometimes "faith" makes all the difference. It permits the existance of "hope". Or do you disagree?
-FJ
Looks like I posted simultaneously with fj. FJ, you make a good case but again, you're talking broadly about something I don't think is in the bailywick of the average grade school science class.
You are talking about an element that may be missing from people's lives that is probably more the responsibility of parents than of the schools, much less the science class in that school. As far as I know, grade schools do not teach chaos theory. Now a thoughtful student may in some rare case draw a conclusion about the seemingly random nature of the universe. But I rather think today's student would be hard-pressed to spell and define "chaos" were it not the name of some video game.
From Nietzsche's “Gay Science”
110
Origins of Knowledge. Throughout immense stretches of time the intellect produced nothing but errors; some of them proved to be useful and preservative of the species: he who fell in with them, or inherited them, waged the battle for himself and his offspring with better success. Those erroneous articles of faith which were successively transmitted by inheritance, and have finally become almost the property and stock of the human species, are, for example, the following: that there are enduring things, that there are equal things, that there are things, substances, and bodies, that a thing is what it appears, that our will is free that what is good for me is also good absolutely. It was only very late that the deniers, doubters of such propositions came forward - it was only very late that truth made its appearance as the most impotent form of knowledge. It seemed as if it were impossible to get along with truth, our organism was adapted for the very opposite; all its higher functions, the perceptions of the senses, and in general every kind of sensation, cooperated with those primevally embodied, fundamental errors.
Moreover, those propositions became the very standards of knowledge according to which the "true "and the "false" were determined - throughout the whole domain of pure logic. The strength of conceptions does not, therefore, depend on their degree of truth, but on their antiquity, their embodiment, their character as conditions of life. Where life and knowledge seemed to conflict, there has never been serious contention; denial and doubt have there been regarded as madness.
The exceptional thinkers like the Eleatics, who, in spite of this, advanced and maintained the antitheses of the natural errors, believed that it was possible also to live these counterparts: it was they who devised the sage as the man of immutability, impersonality and universality of intuition, as one and all at the same time, with a special faculty for that reverse kind of knowledge; they were of the belief that their knowledge was at the same time the principle of life. To be able to affirm all this, however, they had to deceive themselves concerning their own condition: they had to attribute to themselves impersonality and unchanging permanence, they had to mistake the nature of the philosophic individual, deny the force of the impulses in cognition, and conceive of reason generally as an entirely free and self-originating activity; they kept their eyes shut to the fact that they also had reached their doctrines in contradiction to valid methods, or through their longing for repose or for exclusive possession or for domination.
The subtler development of sincerity and of skepticism finally made these men impossible; their life also, and their judgments, turned out to be dependent on the primeval impulses and fundamental errors of all sentient beings. The subtler sincerity and skepticism arose wherever two antithetical maxims appeared to be applicable to life, because both of them were compatible with the fundamental errors; where, therefore, there could be contention concerning a higher or lower degree of utility for life; and likewise where new maxims proved to be, not necessarily useful, but at least not injurious, as expressions of an intellectual impulse to play a game that was like all games innocent and happy
The human brain was gradually filled with such judgments and convictions; and in this tangled skein there arose ferment, strife and lust for power. Not only utility and delight, but every kind of impulse took part in the struggle for "truths"; the intellectual struggle became a business, an attraction, a calling, a duty, an honor; cognizing and striving for the true finally arranged themselves as needs among other needs. From that moment not only belief and conviction, but also examination, denial, distrust and contradiction became forces; all "evil "instincts were subordinated to knowledge, were placed in its service, and acquired the prestige of the permitted, the honored, the useful, and finally the appearance and innocence of the good.
Knowledge thus became a portion of life itself, and as life it became a continually growing power; until finally the cognitions and those primeval, fundamental errors clashed with each other, both as life, both as power, both in the same man. The thinker is now the being in whom the impulse to truth and those life-preserving errors wage their first conflict, now that the impulse to truth has also proved itself to be a life-preserving power. In comparison with the importance of this conflict everything else is indifferent; the final question concerning the conditions of life is here raised, and the first attempt is here made to answer it by experiment. How far is truth susceptible of embodiment - that is the question, that is the experiment.
-FJ
norm,
I agree, chaos theory, etc. are FAR beyond the ken of most grade-school aged kids.
But what is NOT beyond their ken is the utter and complete "DENIAL" of even the possibility of "higher powers" or "goods" that the teaching of "evolution alone" in the schools sends.
It is a message that "science alone" HAS or can "divine" ALL the answers (which it does not and can not) and that scientific truth is the only path to knowledge, and understanding.
It also confirms the message that "everything is relative", and that there are no "constants" or "absolutes".
It is a message that "spirtuality" HAS no role, that "religion is bunk", and that only "materialism" is true.
And yet "falsification" forms the underlying basis for EVERY science experiment including the formation of every "hypothesis".
Nietzsche, "Gay Science"...
111
Origin of the Logical. Where has logic originated in men's heads? Undoubtedly out of the illogical, the domain of which must originally have been immense. But numberless beings who reasoned otherwise than we do at present, perished; albeit that they may have come nearer to truth than we!
Whoever, for example, could not discern the "like" often enough with regard to food, and with regard to animals dangerous to him, whoever, therefore, deduced too slowly, or was too circumspect in his deductions, had smaller probability of survival than he who in all similar cases immediately divined the equality.
The preponderating inclination, however, to deal with the similar as the equal - an illogical inclination, for there is no thing equal in itself - first created the whole basis of logic.
It was just so (in order that the conception of substance should originate, this being indispensable to logic, although in the strictest sense nothing actual corresponds to it) that for a long period the changing process in things had to be overlooked, and remain unperceived; the beings not seeing correctly had an advantage over those who saw everything "in flux." In itself every high degree of circumspection in conclusions, every skeptical inclination, is a great danger to life. No living being might have been preserved unless the contrary inclination - to affirm rather than suspend judgment, to mistake and fabricate rather than wait, to assent rather than deny, to decide rather than be in the right - had been cultivated with extra ordinary assiduity.
The course of logical thought and reasoning in our modern brain corresponds to a process and struggle of impulses, which singly and in themselves are all very illogical and unjust; we experience usually only the result of the struggle so rapidly and secretly does this primitive mechanism now operate in us.
112 (...and the basis of the scientific method)
Cause and Effect. We say it is "explanation "; but it is only in "description" that we are in advance of the older stages of knowledge and science. We describe better, we explain just as little as our predecessors. We have discovered a manifold succession where the naive man and investigator of older cultures saw only two things, "cause" and "effect,"as it was said; we have perfected the conception of becoming, but have not got a knowledge of what is above and behind the conception.
The series of "causes" stands before us much more complete in every case; we conclude that this and that must first precede in order that that other may follow - but we have not grasped anything thereby. The peculiarity, for example, in every chemical process seems a "miracle," the same as before, just like all locomotion; nobody has "explained" impulse.
How could we ever explain? We operate only with things which do not exist, with lines, surfaces, bodies, atoms, divisible times, divisible spaces - how can explanation ever be possible when we first make everything a conception, our conception?
It is sufficient to regard science as the exactest humanizing of things that is possible; we always learn to describe ourselves more accurately by describing things and their successions.
Cause and effect: there is probably never any such duality; in fact there is a continuum before us, from which we isolate a few portions - just as we always observe a motion as isolated points, and therefore do not properly see it, but infer it. The abruptness with which many effects take place leads us into error; it is however only an abruptness for us.
There is an infinite multitude of processes in that abrupt moment which escape us. An intellect which could see cause and effect as a continuum, which could see the flux of events not according to our mode of perception, as things arbitrarily separated and broken - would throw aside the conception of cause and effect, and would deny all conditionality.
115
The Four Errors. Man has been reared by his errors: firstly, he saw himself always imperfect; secondly, he attributed to himself imaginary qualities; thirdly, he felt himself in a false position in relation to the animals and nature; fourthly, he always devised new tables of values, and accepted them for a time as eternal and unconditioned, so that at one time this, and at another time that human impulse or state stood first, and was ennobled in consequence. When one has deducted the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted humanity, humaneness, and "human dignity."
Last Nietzsche quotes for this thread, this time from "Will to Power"...
83 (Spring-Fall 1887)
"Without the Christian faith," Pascal thought, "you, no less than nature and history, will become for yourselves un monstre et un chaos."
This prophecy we have furfilled, after the feeble-optimistic eighteenth century had prettified and rationalized man.
Schopenhauer and Pascal.--In an important sense, Schopenhauer is the first to take up again the movement of Pascal: un rnonstre et un chaos, consequently something to be negated.-- History, nature, man himself.
"Our inability to know the truth is the consequence of our corruption, our moral decay"; thus Pascal.
And thus, at bottom, Schopenhauer.
"The deeper the corruption of reason, the more necessary the doctrine of salvation"--or, in Schopenhauer's terms, negation.
493 (1885)
Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.
512 (1885)
Logic is bound to the condition: assume there are identical cases. In fact, to make possible logical thinking and inferences, this condition must first be treated fictitously as fulfilled. That is: the will to logical truth can be carried through only after a fundamental falsification of all events is assumed. From which it follows that a drive rules here that is capable of employing both means, firstly falsification, then the implementation of its own point of view: logic does not spring from will to truth
534 (1887-1888)
The criterion of truth resides in the enhancement of the feeling of power.
-FJ
Apologies for the long posts. Being insufficiently articulate, I took a shortcut to try and make my point.
-FJ
Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee (Tom Cruise): I think I'm entitled to them.
Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Jessep: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.
We use words like honor, code, loyalty...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use 'em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to!
Kaffee: Did you order the code red?
Jessep: (quietly) I did the job you sent me to do.
Kaffee: Did you order the code red?
Jessep: You're goddamn right I did!!
-FJ
Many so-called truths are over-rated. Scientific truth being the "most" over-rated.
and for a slightly different perspective on the matter from Plato's "Meno"...
SOCRATES: I will explain. If a man knew the way to Larisa, or anywhere else, and went to the place and led others thither, would he not be a right and good guide?
MENO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And a person who had a right opinion about the way, but had never been and did not know, might be a good guide also, might he not?
MENO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And while he has true opinion about that which the other knows, he will be just as good a guide if he thinks the truth, as he who knows the truth?
MENO: Exactly.
SOCRATES: Then true opinion is as good a guide to correct action as knowledge; and that was the point which we omitted in our speculation about the nature of virtue, when we said that knowledge only is the guide of right action; whereas there is also right opinion.
MENO: True.
SOCRATES: Then right opinion is not less useful than knowledge?
MENO: The difference, Socrates, is only that he who has knowledge will always be right; but he who has right opinion will sometimes be right, and sometimes not.
SOCRATES: What do you mean? Can he be wrong who has right opinion, so long as he has right opinion?
MENO: I admit the cogency of your argument, and therefore, Socrates, I wonder that knowledge should be preferred to right opinion--or why they should ever differ.
SOCRATES: And shall I explain this wonder to you?
MENO: Do tell me.
SOCRATES: You would not wonder if you had ever observed the images of Daedalus (Compare Euthyphro); but perhaps you have not got them in your country?
MENO: What have they to do with the question?
SOCRATES: Because they require to be fastened in order to keep them, and if they are not fastened they will play truant and run away.
MENO: Well, what of that?
SOCRATES: I mean to say that they are not very valuable possessions if they are at liberty, for they will walk off like runaway slaves; but when fastened, they are of great value, for they are really beautiful works of art. Now this is an illustration of the nature of true opinions: while they abide with us they are beautiful and fruitful, but they run away out of the human soul, and do not remain long, and therefore they are not of much value until they are fastened by the tie of the cause; and this fastening of them, friend Meno, is recollection, as you and I have agreed to call it. But when they are bound, in the first place, they have the nature of knowledge; and, in the second place, they are abiding. And this is why knowledge is more honourable and excellent than true opinion, because fastened by a chain.
MENO: What you are saying, Socrates, seems to be very like the truth.
SOCRATES: I too speak rather in ignorance; I only conjecture. And yet that knowledge differs from true opinion is no matter of conjecture with me. There are not many things which I profess to know, but this is most certainly one of them.
MENO: Yes, Socrates; and you are quite right in saying so.
SOCRATES: And am I not also right in saying that true opinion leading the way perfects action quite as well as knowledge?
MENO: There again, Socrates, I think you are right.
SOCRATES: Then right opinion is not a whit inferior to knowledge, or less useful in action; nor is the man who has right opinion inferior to him who has knowledge?
MENO: True.
-FJ
I keep trying to explain to you mr. ducky, that Nietzsche and Plato are like Xeno and Parmenides, different sides of the same coin.
And Marx's "Labor Theory" is a corruption of Adam Smith's, for Marx ignored the differences between what the capitalist and laborer each "brought to the table" in the production of a product. One brings his mind/ spirit (know-how bought by a very expensive education), his fortune($), and a willingness to risk it all in the production of a product. The other brings his time and muscles and an ability to do what he's told (over and over, cheaply acquired at the expense of his employer) for a "sure thing".
And so, one must ask, which brings "more" value to the table? Marx thought that capitalist brought "nothing".
And so sorry, but I'm NOT that kind of materialist. I prefer to think in terms of material and spiritual dualities [Plato's divided line epistemology and the ontology of an intersection in time between existance/ non-existance ("Sophist")], but recognize that "ultimately" in this physical universe, they are "mixed"/"conjoined" in body/ soul.
And perhaps you might care to eleborate upon your statement... that "I will say that without art, the "intelligent design" is unknowable.", for I tend to agree with you (but I take you to mean it in the "Promethean" form... Aeschylus "Prometheus Bound")
PROMETHEUS - O glorious firmament; O swift-winged winds, Ye rivers and ye gleaming ocean waves Innumerable, and thou great Mother Earth, Thou, too, O sun, with thy all-seeing eye, Look how a god is treated by the gods! See the pains that I must bear, Even to the thousandth year! Such the chains that heaven's new king Forges for my torturing. Ah me! Ah me! my present woe Does but the pangs to come foreshow, Pangs that an end will never know.
Yet hold! The darkness of futurity
Is to my eye not dark, nor can aught come That I do not foresee. Our destiny We all must bear as lightly as we may, Since none may wrestle with necessity. And yet to speak or not to speak alike Is miserable. High service done to man-- For this I bear the adamantine chain. I to its elemental fountain tracked, In fern-pith stored and bore by stealth away, Fire, source and teacher of all arts to men. Such mine offence, whereof the penalty
I pay, thus chained in face of earth and heaven."
Are you familiar with a functions and processes of the mind generally referred to in psychological terms as confabulation?
-FJ
I tend to think of "confabulation" THESE days as the "Liberals" disease. ;-)
-FJ
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news mr. ducky, but when Smith wrote "Wealth of Nations" in 1776, the "typical" capitalist WAS the self-same entrepeneur.
Perhaps by the time Marx wrote "Das Kapital" in 1867, the nature of the "typical" capitalist had changed substantially, but IMO those changes were largely brought about through a corruption of the free market models by colonialism (coercion), state protection and expansion of the mercantile trade (European & American navies), general improvements in the means of transportation (larger and better hulls), and the ability to purchase marine insurance at Lloyds Coffee House.
It was the "internationalization" of trade and state sponsored monopolies that tore down natural trade barriers that gave rise to the "Marxist era" exploitative capitalist notion that universalized and destroyed once local and regional markets that necessitated a new and continuous scaling up of business enterprises and centralization of both authority and sources of capital.
"Civilized" laissez-faire capitalism was thrown out the window during this historical period. The post-Elizabethan state sponsored pirates had guns and were more than willing to use them.
But the "corporatism" associated with the growth of these state sponsored enterprises is still with us today and still needs to be weeded out somewhat to allow the "small guy", some small local or regional market entrepeneur, to be able to get started and not have to compete w/$0.25 an hour Congolese (LOL!) laborers products shipped in overnight and financed by some corporate conglomorate with deep, almost unlimited, pockets.
And I believe that the only way to really do that is to decentralize federal and state authority in general and re-establish some modicum of local economic control. And if that means erecting trade barriers prohibiting corporate sponsored partipation in certain local or regional market areas, so be it.
Just MHO
-FJ
And fyi - I'm sure those fourth generation Harvard educated investment bankers are probably MUCH more "savy" about what they do than you or I could ever wish to be. That's why they get paid 100x what the local machinist earns. It's not their fault they there dumber than hammers when it comes to art or culture or things not involving accelerating cash flows.
Everybodies a "specialist" these days and serves as cog for the corporate machine. And it's the human spirit robbing yet productivity enhancing "Division of Labor" that makes this a necessity, not capitalism.
I don't have an answer, I'm not even sure there is one, but perhaps something like a ban or tax on "corporate" retailing is a possible answer.
Or do we just apply your approach and revert to "honest" piracy?
pps - And I don't care what the vatican says on this one. Atheism and denials of the "Divine" don't belong in the science classrooms either... but there they are. So either teach both, or stop teaching science in the public schools altogether. Besides, kids should only be trained in music and gymnastic anyway. (Plato, "Republic")
Mr. Ducky, you said, "dumb as a f***ing bag of hammers"
Were they able to express theirselves in the King's English without using the language of the gutter?
I really let this discussion get away from me. Welcome back, Norm.
Intelligent design, creationism, evolution. A teacher should be able to discuss intellectually any subject relative to his instruction without fear of political police, pc police, religious police or any other intellectually defective police attempting to control the instruction. If a topic comes up, discuss it intellectually if time is available.
What is totally inappropriate is when a teacher, or anyone else, uses the classroom for proselytizing their specific religion (including the secular humanism religion), atheism, political party, agenda, et al.
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