The Great Experiment

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Speaking of the death of intellectualism, watch old Firing Line videos on Youtube. How the fuck the face of conservatism went from an erudite person like Buckley to fucking dingbats with little grip on logical reasoning like Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin is beyond me. But it’s happened. And who is the great liberal intellectual these days? Not Chomsky, no. Who is it? Oprah? Barack Obama? Hillary Clinton?

It’s sad.[/quote]

Fuck, Buckley was a damn pleasure to watch. Agree, disagree but you couldn’t ever help but admire the man’s mind and his ability to express himself as well as articulate ideas.

[quote]H factor wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Speaking of the death of intellectualism, watch old Firing Line videos on Youtube. How the fuck the face of conservatism went from an erudite person like Buckley to fucking dingbats with little grip on logical reasoning like Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin is beyond me. But it’s happened. And who is the great liberal intellectual these days? Not Chomsky, no. Who is it? Oprah? Barack Obama? Hillary Clinton?

It’s sad.[/quote]

Smart people don’t play well politically. People want the feeling. They want the Chris Matthew’s tingle down my leg. They don’t want nuanced arguments. They want to be told everything will be better as long as you don’t let THEM win. Them being Democrats or Republicans.

Obama, Palin, Cruz, they all give different types of people that tickle. Whether or not they know anything of substance is irrelevant. Both sides want soul stirrers because that appeals to the masses who are too busy looking at cat videos and killing people on Call of Duty to look around them. This is now a vine and soundbite world. Our populace doesn’t have the attention to look at anything that requires deep thought.

We just want to hear shit will be good if you vote for me and shit will be bad if you vote for them. The team that does that better tends to win. [/quote]

It wasn’t always this way, though. You’re right, people TODAY don’t want the erudition and the potential cognitive dissonance that comes with it.

James Madison would never gain any sort of traction today, yet is there a more brilliant American in our history? Probably not.

So I wouldn’t blame the “system” or anything that vague on the current situation. We have only ourselves to look at. Not liberals and not conservatives and not libertarians or socialists. Those things are only reflections of different aspects of human nature.

So what is it about human nature that has led us down this path, and why were things not always this way? I suppose it’s stupid to have the doom-and-gloom outlook on the one hand and then think things used to be better on the other. If you read a lot of primary source materials from about 1790-1820, you’ll see that this same attitude was somewhat prevalent then, that the ideals of the Founding Fathers were being cast aside in favor of the advancement of private interests, rather than public interests. Madison never felt that “interested” men should hold public office, only gentlemen in the traditional sense.

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Speaking of the death of intellectualism, watch old Firing Line videos on Youtube. How the fuck the face of conservatism went from an erudite person like Buckley to fucking dingbats with little grip on logical reasoning like Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin is beyond me. But it’s happened. And who is the great liberal intellectual these days? Not Chomsky, no. Who is it? Oprah? Barack Obama? Hillary Clinton?

It’s sad.[/quote]

Fuck, Buckley was a damn pleasure to watch. Agree, disagree but you couldn’t ever help but admire the man’s mind and his ability to express himself as well as articulate ideas.[/quote]

I would love to have heard Buckley call a ballgame. I think Jon Miller is the closest we’ll ever have.

[quote]H factor wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]H factor wrote:
The VAST majority of my facebook is populated by good old boy small town redneck types which is where I’m from and where I’ve been around more of my life. Some fantastic people, but stupid as shit when it comes to political arguments. If I take a look at the politics on my actual feed 95% of it is “can you believe Obama is doing THIS” stuff that is literally debunked with one google search. No one on either side even attempts to determine if something is true. They just say it because the headline says it.

The few friends I have from the left side of the aisle I went to college with will do the exact same thing with the other side. I don’t even touch facebook politics because I would lose my mind. [/quote]

Yeah, I agree. I’ve lost my mind more times than I can count on there, every time swearing by all that is holy and just that I won’t go back. But just like an alcoholic, something happens after a long layoff to drag me back in. Sad. Don’t fall in the trap!

And you are really hitting the bullseye eith your comment about educated people doing the same shit on the opposite side of the other people. Before we used to really try as a group to support our positions from a stance of rational, logical argument and intuition. Now it seems I’m one of the only people that cares to do that anymore. On either side of the aisle. And if you don’t parrot the popular line, you’re now a bigoted racist traitor capitalist. Why? Just because, thats why.

Social media really hustled the train down the hill in a hurry.[/quote]

Spot on my friend. When people won’t even BOTHER to dig around to see if something is true it boggles my mind. If something sounds crazy my first instinct is to see if it’s true. Check up on it. People don’t have time for that shit anymore. I’ve got people on my facebook who if an article said Barack Obama ate a baby at the White House today for breakfast they would post that, say he’s disgusting and we need to impeach him.

It wouldn’t even cross their mind to see if someone was fucking around.[/quote]

Holy shit yeah. That is my EXACT first instinct as well. People can’t even hold conversations over dinner without bending over their fucking “smartphone” but somehow don’t have the time to perform a basic 3 minute fact check on the newest blurb they heard.

It’s sickening. That used to be the exclusive purview of the uneducated, but now the educated are every bit as awful at it. Sometimes worse, because they know they can get away with it.

Btw, I always love debating with you. And DB as well, because you guys are always sharp as a tack and still civil. We actually agree on quite a few things but of course, disagreement is more colorful haha.

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

The old concept that to be " educated" meant that you had to understand philosophy, language, and logic would go a hell of a long way towards fixing a lot of these issues.

[/quote]

This would remove quite a few people who really, really enjoy calling themselves educated, cultured and intelligent from those roles.

See bloggers for “social justice” crying for attention making up words as they go along, and use vocabulary they barely understand which makes it impossible to read.

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Speaking of the death of intellectualism, watch old Firing Line videos on Youtube. How the fuck the face of conservatism went from an erudite person like Buckley to fucking dingbats with little grip on logical reasoning like Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin is beyond me. But it’s happened. And who is the great liberal intellectual these days? Not Chomsky, no. Who is it? Oprah? Barack Obama? Hillary Clinton?

It’s sad.[/quote]

Sowell is sad panda…

Cooke is a sharp cookie too. Just off the top of my head.

The Romans, in the days of the Republic, used to look unfavorably upon excessive displays and accumulation of wealth. They didn’t look unfavorably upon the accumulation of wealth in and of itself, and certainly not when it came to war conquests. But they certainly did look down upon those who flaunted their wealth and who used it purely for personal displays of material possessions and so forth.

Today, we practically worship people with massive wealth. Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with accumulating wealth, but there is something wrong with accumulating it in excess. Things like diamond-encrusted iPhones, chrome-plated Lamborghinis, owning ten homes on ten different continents, and things like that is overboard. There’s no fine line that can be drawn, no magic threshold to cross, so it depends solely on one of two things: either forcibly create some sort of arbitrary barrier that the wealthy cannot cross, or depend on the public to change their attitude to the point where those with any interest whatsoever in how they are perceived by the public would not willingly go overboard with the accumulative process. I vote for the latter option.

The most famous Roman in the days of the Republic was Cicero. The most famous American today is probably Kim Kardashian. That speaks volumes.

DB - Well said. There are a lot of us distracted with pursuing crap we don’t need. Or just distracted with stuff that has no value. We could make a long list.

You guys are probably familiar with Imprimis? It’s a free monthly Digest from Hillsdale College. They feature speeches by conservative intellectuals. We keep a copy in the bathroom. :slight_smile:

Here’s a recent one on immigration. Some of DB’s comments made me think of it.

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

The old concept that to be " educated" meant that you had to understand philosophy, language, and logic would go a hell of a long way towards fixing a lot of these issues.

[/quote]

This would remove quite a few people who really, really enjoy calling themselves educated, cultured and intelligent from those roles.

See bloggers for “social justice” crying for attention making up words as they go along, and use vocabulary they barely understand which makes it impossible to read. [/quote]

It’s supposed to. Wishing something was so and desiring to use a label for oneself does not in fact make one so. Being educated is supposed to be hard work.

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Speaking of the death of intellectualism, watch old Firing Line videos on Youtube. How the fuck the face of conservatism went from an erudite person like Buckley to fucking dingbats with little grip on logical reasoning like Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin is beyond me. But it’s happened. And who is the great liberal intellectual these days? Not Chomsky, no. Who is it? Oprah? Barack Obama? Hillary Clinton?

It’s sad.[/quote]

Sowell is sad panda…

Cooke is a sharp cookie too. Just off the top of my head. [/quote]

I’m getting a whiff of something nasty from Sowell. Ohh, that smell. Can’t you smell that smell? The smell of racism surrounds him.

[quote]Powerpuff wrote:
DB - Well said. There are a lot of us distracted with pursuing crap we don’t need. Or just distracted with stuff that has no value. We could make a long list.

You guys are probably familiar with Imprimis? It’s a free monthly Digest from Hillsdale College. They feature speeches by conservative intellectuals. We keep a copy in the bathroom. :slight_smile:

Here’s a recent one on immigration. Some of DB’s comments made me think of it.

[/quote]

Great link. It’s pretty hard to produce educated citizens capable of making rational decisions about the direction of this country, with a long-term view that would necessitate knowledge in a wide field of subjects, when you go home and the language spoken there is entirely different than the one your teachers speak.

It’s even harder when your parents are wholly uneducated and incapable of helping you with any of your schoolwork beyond the 5th grade.

[quote]Powerpuff wrote:
DB - Well said. There are a lot of us distracted with pursuing crap we don’t need. Or just distracted with stuff that has no value. We could make a long list.

You guys are probably familiar with Imprimis? It’s a free monthly Digest from Hillsdale College. They feature speeches by conservative intellectuals. We keep a copy in the bathroom. :slight_smile:

Here’s a recent one on immigration. Some of DB’s comments made me think of it.

[/quote]

My mom works as a social worker in Santa Cruz County. The Pajaro Valley School District is a fucking joke. Teachers get reprimanded for giving out bad grades in grammar and writing to students who don’t know English.

In what fucking world would I, who can barely speak any Spanish, be entitled to a passing grade in a Spanish class in which the standards were in place with the assumption that I actually spoke the language fluently?

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
I suppose it’s stupid to have the doom-and-gloom outlook on the one hand and then think things used to be better on the other. If you read a lot of primary source materials from about 1790-1820, you’ll see that this same attitude was somewhat prevalent then, that the ideals of the Founding Fathers were being cast aside in favor of the advancement of private interests, rather than public interests. Madison never felt that “interested” men should hold public office, only gentlemen in the traditional sense.[/quote]

Lol, also true. I’m not the first, by a long shot to call the end of the Republic near.

Similar to Obama and folks like Warren and Sanders sounding an awful lot like FDR and speeches in his time…

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
I suppose it’s stupid to have the doom-and-gloom outlook on the one hand and then think things used to be better on the other. If you read a lot of primary source materials from about 1790-1820, you’ll see that this same attitude was somewhat prevalent then, that the ideals of the Founding Fathers were being cast aside in favor of the advancement of private interests, rather than public interests. Madison never felt that “interested” men should hold public office, only gentlemen in the traditional sense.[/quote]

Lol, also true. I’m not the first, by a long shot to call the end of the Republic near.

Similar to Obama and folks like Warren and Sanders sounding an awful lot like FDR and speeches in his time…

[/quote]

And the Republic ended after FDR? :slight_smile:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
I suppose it’s stupid to have the doom-and-gloom outlook on the one hand and then think things used to be better on the other. If you read a lot of primary source materials from about 1790-1820, you’ll see that this same attitude was somewhat prevalent then, that the ideals of the Founding Fathers were being cast aside in favor of the advancement of private interests, rather than public interests. Madison never felt that “interested” men should hold public office, only gentlemen in the traditional sense.[/quote]

Lol, also true. I’m not the first, by a long shot to call the end of the Republic near.

Similar to Obama and folks like Warren and Sanders sounding an awful lot like FDR and speeches in his time…

[/quote]

And the Republic ended after FDR? :slight_smile:
[/quote]

Depends on who you ask, lol.

Also, coming up with that list of what government should be doing started this whole ball in motion btw… So I blame you for this thread.

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

The old concept that to be " educated" meant that you had to understand philosophy, language, and logic would go a hell of a long way towards fixing a lot of these issues.

[/quote]

This would remove quite a few people who really, really enjoy calling themselves educated, cultured and intelligent from those roles.

See bloggers for “social justice” crying for attention making up words as they go along, and use vocabulary they barely understand which makes it impossible to read. [/quote]

It’s supposed to. Wishing something was so and desiring to use a label for oneself does not in fact make one so. Being educated is supposed to be hard work. [/quote]

Aragorn, Aragon, Aragon… This is America, hard work is for us chumps.

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
I suppose it’s stupid to have the doom-and-gloom outlook on the one hand and then think things used to be better on the other. If you read a lot of primary source materials from about 1790-1820, you’ll see that this same attitude was somewhat prevalent then, that the ideals of the Founding Fathers were being cast aside in favor of the advancement of private interests, rather than public interests. Madison never felt that “interested” men should hold public office, only gentlemen in the traditional sense.[/quote]

Lol, also true. I’m not the first, by a long shot to call the end of the Republic near.

Similar to Obama and folks like Warren and Sanders sounding an awful lot like FDR and speeches in his time…

[/quote]

And the Republic ended after FDR? :slight_smile:
[/quote]

Depends on who you ask, lol.

Also, coming up with that list of what government should be doing started this whole ball in motion btw… So I blame you for this thread. [/quote]

Fair. :slight_smile: