A little fun reading here from my friends at the leading wingnut web site, FreeRepublic.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2140344/posts (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2140344/posts)
God, reading the article was bad enough. I refuse to look at the comments - I already know what they'll say. I can't believe that vile, wretched, hypocritical troll still has an audience. Every conservative with a shred of decency ought to see him for what he is.
Yeah right. That pill popping junkie has never cross these ears and I could really care less about his uninformed opinion.
Janet
I'd change this sentence with just one word. "Why Rush Limbaugh is a leading American ignoramus/idiot/imbecile...." (sorry, I couldn't decide, let's make it multiple choice) >:-)
Z
If Rush Limbaugh is a leading American intellectual, it's no wonder this country is in such sad shape.
How on Earth were Plato and Socrates conservative?! Socrates got put to death for being waaaaay ahead of his society!
~Simone.
I'm going to write an article using this very same title:
"Why Rush Limbaugh is a leading American intellectual"
The thing is I'm going to publish mine on April 1.
-Sandy(Oh! You mean they're serious!?!?)
Quote from: lady amarant on December 01, 2008, 08:26:18 AM
How on Earth were Plato and Socrates conservative?! Socrates got put to death for being waaaaay ahead of his society!
~Simone.
Socrates "got put to death" for being a stubborn person who openly and persistently seemed to want to be put to death. He was actually prettyy conservative for the time: he supported the prior regime in Athens of the tyrants and pressed for an end to the "democracy."
That to the side: I've read Socrates, or at least Plato's version, and Rush Limbaugh is no Socrates. :)
Nichole
Conservative, and its dread twin, liberal - are both political constructions of the Enlightenment. They bear little or no validity to discussions of the Classical World. Socrates was in fact, neither. However, he was pretty much a gadfly, and that can rub people, many in fact, the wrong way. Though all of that stuff comes to us from Plato, so no one knows what Socrates really thought. Though in their own way, the Gorgias, Meno, Apology, Crito, and Phædo still have a lot to offer the modern reader regardless of who wrote them, or why. Gorgias in particular is stunning in an era where the skill of Gorgias - inculcating belief rather than knowledge in the minds of his audience; he requires no knowledge to win such a debate, and as a result he tells the people what he knows they want to hear rather than what is truly best for them - has been raised to an art form in and of itself. It perhaps also has the clearest vision of Socrates notion of happiness coming from being virtuous and self-disciplined, which is not all that bad an idea.
But back Herr Limbaugh and his fan club. Far from not being an intellectual, what Limbaugh is, in fact, the most dread of the modern academic intellectual types, practiced and skilled at the art of deconstruction, with little to no skill to put anything back together once he gets it all apart. It was fine for old Rush to deconstruct liberal America, perhaps even past time to do it, but what he, and people like Newt, and later BushII lacked was any sort of cohesive vision of what a new society would be like. They were like the kid with a screwdriver who discovers he can take apart the alarm clock, but once its in pieces on the floor, can't put it back together, much less make it function again.
It's groovy to say "Wow, governement is way to big, we ought to cut back" but unless you know, and can see the vision for exactly how big government ought to be, you're going to go too far, and we see the result of that.
And, that's were this line of thinking (both Rush and a lot of academic feminism) have left us, a bunch of parts on the floor, but no function.
The conservatives all say they want smaller government, but they all forget about that once they're in office - and limited-government types still support them. Dear God, why?!?
Indeed a sad day for "American Intellectuals". Since when pulpit-thumping is considered intellectual?
Since John Winthrop, about 1630 or so.
Josef Göbbels was considered one of Germany's leading intellectuals in the 1920's and thirties, at least among his political allies.
Kinda makes ya wonder.
Quote from: Lisbeth on December 01, 2008, 07:06:21 AM
If Rush Limbaugh is a leading American intellectual, it's no wonder this country is in such sad shape.
QFT
Quote from: Lisbeth on December 01, 2008, 04:07:17 PM
Quote from: Kaitlyn on December 01, 2008, 03:57:36 PM
Dear God, why?!?
Because power corrupts.
It's not even that... look at all the people who (claim to) want smaller government, but vote for the Republicans, the party of godawful, swollen, all-devouring government. I don't like thinking ill of whole classes of people, but I don't see how it's anything other that foolish for limited-government people to support establishment conservatism in 2008.