Tuesday, July 20, 2010

America's Ruling Class vs. The "Country Class"

Angelo M. Codevilla from the July 2010 - August 2010 issue of the American Spectator.

"While our ruling class teaches that relationships among men, women, and children are contingent [e.g., fidelity, marriage], it also insists that the relationship between each of them and the state is fundamental."


"The ruling class wears on its sleeve the view that the rest of Americans are racist, greedy, and above all stupid."

"Parents are not allowed to object to what their children are taught. But the government may and often does object to how parents raise children."


"... whereas within living memory school nurses could not administer an aspirin to a child without the parents' consent, the people who run America's schools nowadays administer pregnancy tests and ship girls off to abortion clinics without the parents' knowledge."

"... the country class's characteristic cultural venture -- the homeschool movement -- stresses the classics across the board in science, literature, music, and history even as the ruling class abandons them."



17 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Parents are not allowed to object to what their children are taught. But the government may and often does object to how parents raise children."

So private schools and home-schooling have suddenly ceased to exist in the US?

More empty-headed reality-free inflammatory rhetoric from the delusional right.

I wouldn't be surprised if the rest of her inflammatory claims likewise turn out to be the products of exaggeration, misrepresentation and/or urban myths. She appears to belong right beside Beck and Palin in the 'truthiness as news' department.

BallBounces said...

You would need to read the quote in context, which was the government control of the public school system -- which taxpayers must support.

Delusional right? It's the left that's delusional. The facts of life are conservative.

And the right to home-schooling is not a safe, secure right. It is being contested.

Anonymous said...

Really, then why does the Right reflexively and delusionally accept the pseudoscience and pseudohistory of such cranks as McIntosh, Tyler, Monckton, David Barton, etc, as well as the often demonstrably and ludicrously false claims of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck?

You're doing it yourself. You don't seem to care how credibility-free a source is, if it confirms your preconceptions.

For further examples read up on "cognitive closure ... the concept that the Republican political establishment and major conservative pundits review information from within a very limited circle of sources."

Anonymous said...

Oh, and I'm amused that your sole pieces of evidence that the left is delusional is (i) that Eric Holder dodged a loaded question rather than give the obvious answer (its not like politicians don't do that all the time) & that they had the temerity to suggest that Meryl Streep play Thatcher. Politics and Hollywood as usual is hardly "delusional".

BallBounces said...

Hollywood is the very definition of leftist delusional.

Anonymous said...

But given that Obama is not part of Holywood, doesn't that mean that he fails to meet this definition, and therefore isn't a leftist?

Less facetiously, Hollywood "is the very definition of" of corporate and personal greed -- the very antithesis of "leftist" economic policy. Did it fail to make your notice that the right-wing saint Ronald Reagan is a product of Hollywood?

BallBounces said...

Reagon was merely a beneficial mutation. Bwaahahahaha!

Anonymous said...

Incidentally, what is "leftist" or "delusional" about making large amounts of money by selling entertainment of low artistic merit?

It would seem to be both the epitome of the market economy, and entirely rational.

I would suspect that most genuine "leftists" (i.e. those who actually merit the label "socialist") would despise Hollywood as a cesspool of bourgeoisie excess.

If America wants Hollywood to stop making this tripe, all they have to do is stop buying it. This happened once (back around the late 60s), and Hollywood was forced to reinvent itself (as the "American New Wave").

BallBounces said...

The delusional of Hollywood is embedded in the films it makes. Coupled with the delusion that they are doing something noble and uplifting.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and add Roy Davis to the list of "credibility-free" cranks that you've swallowed whole (see rebuttal from a genuine historian on thread below).

Anonymous said...

You're conflating escapist candyfloss with delusion. The former is entertainment, the latter is "a fixed false opinion or belief with regard to objective things". Something as ephemeral as a Hollywood movie cannot be "fixed" and is unrelated to "objective things" (both to the creator and the viewer).

Hollywood produces fiction.

Get a clue.

BallBounces said...

Films are filled with POVs, interpretations of reality, etc.

Anonymous said...

The fact that this "candyfloss escapism" arguably contains "POVs, interpretations of reality, etc" does not make it any less fictional, or its contents a "delusion" under any meaningful definition of the word.

Further you still have not provided any evidence that Hollywood, with its crass commercialism, is in any legitimate way "leftist"!

The Richard K. Ball definition of "leftist" appears to be 'anything that I don't like', including multinational media companies (i.e. 'Holywood' -- has it escaped your notice that Fox Entertainment is part of the same corporate behemoth as the right-wingnut Fox News?), a multinational oil company and a UK Conservative Party politician.

Your definition of "leftist" is patently "delusional".

BallBounces said...

You're the one that equated my definition of leftist with Hollywood. Stop arguing with yourself.

Go here:

leftistsaredelusional.blogspot.com

for more.

Anonymous said...

A better title for that blog is ballisdelusionalaboutleftists.com :)

BallBounces said...

OK. You got me. But, I was not using definition in the sense of definitive example. And by Hollywood, I meant not just the product they produce, but the people themselves.

Anonymous said...

Ahhh -- sweeping assertions made in a complete absence of either consensus definitions or supporting facts.

Not exactly convincing Ricky -- by any stretch of the imagination.

Really all that you've demonstrated is that there are some, unspecified, people and movies, associated with Hollywood, that you don't like.

And the rest of the world is meant to care, why?

"... nothing intellectually compelling or challenging.. bald assertions coupled to superstition... woefully pathetic"