[MD] Cartman Lives?

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>:


> dmb says:
> Exactly. The use of these tatics by Hitler is a fact of history and we see 
> the same thing happening right now in the USA. It is less overt and it is 
> being conducted in english instead of german, but otherwise it is the same 
> anti-intellectual, patriotism-as-conformity, racist, red-baiting, xenophobic 
> bullshit.

Guess DMB didn't read the study that shows the media is biased towards the left.


> Not to mention the incoherent nonsense these reactionaries spew 
> about "freedom", such as the recent talk-radio complaints about the 
> "fairness doctrine".

Nothing more reactionary than the leftist wish to return to an earlier
time when there weren't so many people on the earth to pollute everything.

> This "doctrine" doesn't limit anyone's speech. It only 
> asks that broadcast time be given to an opposed point of view or, in other 
> words, it only asks that nobody's view be immune to a challenge or a reply. 
> Its about protecting intellectual freedom and fostering intellectual 
> quality. I think that opposition to the "fairness doctrine" is an 
> anti-intellectual position. Platt's opposition to it does not surprise me. 

When government imposes the "fairness doctrine" on government supported universities,
then let's talk about "protecting intellectual freedom."

> Nor am I surprised by his defense of American liberty by way of the 
> so-called free market. It's soo,oh,oh typical of today's American fascists. 

Yes, the left would love to do away with capitalism and the free market.

> Here are two Pirsig quotes, one from Lila and one recently posted by Ant 
> from his textbook....
> 
> "Communism and socialism, programs for intellectual control over society, 
> were confronted by the reactionary forces of fascism, a program for the 
> social control of intellect. ...The gigantic power of socialism and fascism 
> ...is explained by a conflict of levels of evolution. This onflict explains 
> the drivin force behind Hitler not  as an insane search for power but as an 
> all consuming glorification of social authority and hatred of 
> intellectualism. His anti-Semitism was fueled by anti-intellectualism. His 
> hatred of communists was fueled by anti-intellectualism. His exaltation of 
> the German volk was fueled by it."

The left's non-support of Israel, blaming it for the problems in the mid-East,
is right out of Hitler's playbook.  

> "In the MOQ making money is a social activity that should not dominate the 
> higher intellectual goal of truth, or interfere with perception and pursuit 
> of Dynamic Quality."

In fact, Pirsig praises the free market system as best suited to pursue Dynamic
Quality. 

> Dr. McCommielover replied to the puppy killer:
> This is one of the things that especially concerns me with Platt, his nearly 
> complete uncritical acceptance of the status quo’s dominating viewpoint.  If 
> he lived in a similar social position in Nazi Germany, Communist Russia or 
> Taliban Afghanistan, he would no doubt be taking the party lines found there 
> without question and especially the anti-academic line found in all these 
> socially dominated societies.  ...keeping in mind Platt’s recommendation 
> that you should visit the Holocaust Memorial, I suggest that it would be 
> more constructive if, instead, he (as a neo-con supporter) visited the 
> similar memorials in Chile or Vietnam.

Ignoring completely Platt's often repeated support of individual freedom.

> Mr. Commiekiller McPuppylover (Just to balance things out) adds:
> Exactly. Its strange how he parrots talk-radio and loves the law and order 
> stuff, especially considering the way outcasts and contrarians play the hero 
> in Pirsig's books. Pirsig is anything but an advocate of conformity. As 
> Emerson said in THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR in 1837, "Imitation is suicide". (Guess 
> what we're reading in my Pragmatism class.) He says, "the self-directed" 
> must "defer never to the popular cry" and live in a "state of virtual 
> hostility" to society. This struck me as very similar to the MOQ's portrait 
> of the clash of social and intellectual values but he also seems to express 
> the idea the Dynamic Quality is better than either of those. And that's what 
> I wanted to add.
> 
> Emerson's piece does far more than make a case for good, independent 
> American scholarship. He looks more like a mystic to me and in the portrait 
> he paints of the scholar he asks the intellectual to be a saint, an 
> enlightened person, a genuine and authentic person, an artist and an 
> original thinker. I was quite humbled and astonished by it. He says, "The 
> one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul." The sort of creative 
> genius, he says, "is the sound estate of every man, In its essence it is 
> progressive. ...springing spontaneous from the mind's own sense of good and 
> fair." (Need we ask anyone, Phaedrus?) "In the right state he is Man 
> Thinking. In the degenerate state ...a mere thinker, or still worse, the 
> parrot of other men's thinking." (Yes, i see the irony in quoting that.) 
> Books, he says, "are for nothing but to inspire". "Undoubtedly there is a 
> right way of reading, so it be sternly subordinated. Man Thinking must not 
> be subdued by his instruments." This is the sort of stuff that made him 
> sound like a mystic and he touts Swedenborg (Named in Lila as a mystic) at 
> the end of he piece, which would support the notion too.
> 
> Following up on this hunch, I discovered this piece was written just before 
> he started reading the Vedas and other Eastern texts. Maybe his later stuff 
> reflects that and is even closer to the MOQ. We're reading Emerson as a sort 
> of proto-Pragmatist. He looks like a pragmatist and he influenced William 
> James especially. Henry James, the father of William, was also a 
> Swedenborgian. I guess that had some influence on him too.
> 
> On Feb 29th, 1860 they all met at a secret meeting and agreed that slavery 
> had to be abolished. They all agreed with the popular motto of the day, "we 
> should fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here", even 
> though it didn't make much sense on the eve of the civil war. They also 
> agreed that we should support our troops by shopping as often as possible. 
> Each of them named Jesus as their favorite philosopher. Why? Their belief in 
> healing miracles allowed them to oppose socialized medicine. In fact, they 
> often intentionally misquoted him as saying "let the children suffer" 
> instead of "suffer the children". "No cash value", William would sometimes 
> add. Then they'd laugh their pragmatic heads off. That's what Platt said he 
> got from Wikipedia, anyway.

What is he talking about? Or, what is he smoking? Anyone?

 




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