David : And you send e-mail newsletters calling Christopher Columbus "the first Zionist:"
WTH ? Maybe I send material by others which say all kinds of things, although this one escapes me entirely, regardless, so what ? I do not ( as in "do not" ) agree with the viewpoints in everything I send. Mostly the stuff sent around is "evidence." Like in a trial, intended to establish facts. The facts may be stuff I like, dislike, or simply think is worth knowing for no special reason. I am FAR more interested in Charlie Cook's ( or Rasmussen's, or Gallup's, et ) approach to politics than anyone else's. Want a good forecast of election 2012 ? The partisan stuff I almost always ignore, tells me nothing but, well, boilerplate. Heard it all before, can recite it in my sleep. Anyway, if somehow this is unclear --which would boggle my mind if it is, I am totally opposed to anti-Zionism as usually understood. As an historian there are some kinds of anti-Zionism that I need to know about, and, since Einstein was an anti-Zionist for a while, as was Israel Zangwill ( who came up with the melting pot idea ), I allow for that sort of thing. But today's anti-Zionists at a 90% level are anti-Semitic and I am pro-Zionist in favor or the state of Israel, etc etc Have said so, many times. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Howard Stern ? ? ? Complete sonovabitch, a$$hole, nihilist, you name it, someone who has ZERO credibility for me. I saw some of his TV shows back when he was on the tube here. Every show I saw made me sick, which is to say, those parts of shows that I watched, could never see them all the way through. He is a friggin' nihilist with no morality that can be identified except "me-me-me." Completely anti-Christian in every meaningful sense of the term. ------------------------------------------------------ So far, the sources you cite about the make-up of OWS all have rather major axes to grind, This may or may not be bad, but the point is that they find what they set out to find. I go to the circus and look for acrobats. Yep, they are there, Therefore the circus is 100% all about acrobats. I go to the circus and look for bareback horse riders. Yep, they are there. Therefore the circus is all about bareback riders and nothing else. You get the idea. How many times do I need to say "there are Marxists among the OWS movement" ? Yep, there are Marxists in the movement. I will make a wild guess, in NY they may comprise 20 %, would not surprise me in the least. Here, I'd guess it is more like 10 %. Would be more , but in this town a lot of the 'radical' element is Anarchist. Each Anarchist and subtract one Marxist from the pool of far-out-in-Left-field types. Go to a GOP rally and look for people with really FAR Right ideas. You'll find them. But do they typify all Republicans ? You and I both know this is false. This is America in 2011. Not Russia in 1917. Millions of people out of work, and many are really pixxed at the system. What do you want them to do ? Cain says they should go out and get jobs. Hell, most of them are looking. But there are no jobs for most of them. Latest stats, 5 people for each job opening. I was never able to make a career out of only teaching history despite rather impressive credentials and experience. In history there are more like 50 or 100 people for each job opening. The facts are what they are, not what free trade ( or any other ) ideology says they should be. The point is that when you get many thousands of people, by now perhaps in the millions added up, no way in hell, in America, are they all Marxists. Simply no way this is possible. Yet the sources you cite insist they all are Commies in drag. BS That kind of reporting, to call it that, is propaganda. To say it once more, there ARE Marxists, etc, in OWS. The point is that this is : ( 1 ) not the whole story, and ( 2 ) not typical of the whole movement. My best guess, but it depends on where you are on the map, is 15 % give or take, less in some places, more like 20 % in others, in still others single digits... I am not minimizing the danger. When Marxists gain leverage they use it and if they can commandeer a movement , they will. OTOH, there is no guarantee they will. Commies took over some unions in the 30s and 40s, and had a lot of people in the CIO, the one big union where they might have achieved success. But that never happened. Odds against, in the USA, are very high. What sank Joe McCarthy was that, while he identified a real threat, he also identified a lot of stuff that wasn't there . For him, so what if his characterizations were over the top ? They were part true and that was good enough. Not a path I want to find myself on. No way in hell do I want to find myself on that path. It is delusional. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- DRB: And this comes across as the equally absurd notion that Capitalism is EVIL. \ In total. Completely through and through. Utter nonsense. Never said any such thing. The point is that Capitalism is far from perfect, it is incredibly flawed. But so are all other systems, only they are all worse. Alas, the Right says, over and over, that Capitalism is only a little bit short of angelic. I'm using hyperbole, exaggeration to make a point. I don't buy that for one minute. Best system in the world ? You bet. But on a scale of 1 - 100 on the perfecto-meter, somewhere in the 30 or 40 % range. That leaves 60 % or 70 % imperfect. Other systems, like Chinese state capitalism, come in at worse numbers, by far. Therefore, there are huge opportunities to reform the American system. Anyone who thinks it always produces results that are fair doesn't live in the real world. How do you possibly get from this to "Capitalism is EVIL. In total. Completely through and through" ? ? ? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- You start with "sometimes is untrue" in the first paragraph and manage to reach the crescendo where any fairness at all that was there is, by my reading, DENIED, or IGNORED. And I'm in denial? OK. OK ? Actually not OK at all. Billy -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
