Replies to post #248474 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[easymoney101]

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.
—Albert Camus

More Hardings Hatching —or How the Right Wing Screwed up Our Language

The American right wing has waged war on American democracy on many fronts —the schools, the independent judiciary, the way we draw up congressional districts. Their most stunning victory is the most insidious: they've screwed up our language.

Were he alive today, H.L. Mencken would have blown the whistle on the GOP. Mencken is properly a conservative but because he was not a disingenuous liar or advocated a hidden agenda, he would be vilified today as a liberal.

The media would excoriate him for daring to use the word ignoramus to denote ignoramuses. One wonders: what else should an ignoramus be called? Mencken has not only come to symbolize how present-day conservatives have succeeded in turning liberal into a bad word, Mencken, himself, would have wittily, scathingly denounced the process by which they pulled it all off.

If anyone had a right to write as he did about American life, politics, and language it was Mencken. He was unique in that he could write about it all objectively from the inside. He was, himself, as American as apple pie:
Henry Louis Mencken came into this world in the age of horses, before Buffalo Bill organized his Wild West Show and when settlers were still staking out territory in the West. He left it when military jets were crossing the breadth of the United States in three hours. When he was a child, typewriters were a novelty. He lived to see the beginnings of television, though he thought its future uncertain, and he would not have imagined (but would not have been surprised) that "video verbiage" would replace reading. When he was a boy, Civil War veterans still marched in parades; by the time Mencken departed this earth, men had returned from the Korean War.
—Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, Mencken: The American Iconoclast

Dr. John Lienhard, whose Engines of Our Ingenuity is a nationally syndicated radio program, called Mencken a brilliant iconoclast "...who knew language and who wielded it like a surgical laser." To be honest, I wish I had that gift. I would turn it upon what appears to be a deliberate attempt to water down the language, rob it of its power, and reframe debates to right wing advantage.

Terms like "pro-life" and "death tax" are conservative inventions designed to tilt the debate. Progressives lose by merely using those terms. Doing so legitimizes them; liberals lose. Pro-life is deliberately intended to disguise conservative hypocrisy with respect to partial-birth abortions —itself a misnomer designed to reframe the debate. [See: About "partial birth abortion" (a total misnomer)]. The term pro-life tends also to restrict the debate; those opposed to conservatives must, therefore, be opposed to life. It is easier to get away with non-sequitur logic if the very terminology seems to compel it. The modern right wing uses language like Edward I used the archer's fussilade into melees in which his own soldiers were embattled. He was willing to sustain the loss of life for the ultimate victory on the field.

In fairness, anyone claiming to be "pro-life" must also be anti-aggressive war especially when that war causes the violent deaths of thousands of civilians —many just kids and infants. But, perhaps for the pro-life crowd, life is only sacred when it's still inside the womb but fair game once birthed.

In his day, Mencken towered above his peers. But because Mencken would not countenance or buy into the sloppy use of language today, he would be hard pressed to get published in the corporate media which would subject it to focus groups, tedious research, and the gospel of PC. It is our loss.

Sadly, Mencken seems all but forgotten among the general populace, and, among those who know his name, he is often thought to be liberal. Mencken was, in fact, a libertarian and an individualist.

Mencken's audience was not one of poltroonish ignoramuses; rather, he wrote for the intelligent few. Clearly, his intention was to make a difference by making a point among those who could make a difference with the mere public expression of an informed decision. Surely, he hoped to help shape that opinion. There is no way of knowing whether or not he succeeded.


It is for that reason, obviously, that Mencken wrote more about the American Language than anyone. He would be angered by the meaningless platitudes that often parade as literate speech or political debate; he would snort at puffed up slogans like family values and compassionate conservatism; he would slice and dice pure bunkum like supply side economics.


The best example is still the word liberal —the successful debasement of which spelled doom for the liberal movement. Now liberals feel obliged to change the name of their movement to progressive.


Liberal once meant "free" but that predates Joseph McCarthy, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove and the current occupant of the Oval Office. In each case and many more, language itself is attacked, exploited, degraded and debased by those motivated to cloak a disingenuous agenda.


The word liberal derives from the latin "liberalis", meaning "pertaining to a free man". Other words from that root are "liberty," "liberation," and libertarian, and, of course Liberal. It is the "liberte" in the French rallying cry: "Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite." To be "Liberal," therefore, is to be free, to believe in freedom. Those opposed to liberal are therefore opposed to "freedom". That describes the American right wing, it's recent bent toward totalitarianism, its successful attempts to link liberal with waste, communism, Keynesian economics, and big government. It is ironic that both big government (under Reagan) and Keynesian economics (under Bush) have ostensibly been embraced by the Republican rank and file even as they denounce the "liberals" who presumably espouse it. I think the word for that is hypocrisy —a word not found in the modern conservative lexicon.


The epithet "big government liberal" in the mouth of a Republican is ludicrous. Nixon said "...we all Keynesians now" and it was Nixon, of course, who is known for the very un-conservative imposition of wage and price controls, a draconian measure of big government if there ever was one. The biggest U.S. governments since World War II have all been of GOP creation. It was the Democrats who were tarred with the label "tax and spend", but, in reality, it is the GOP that presided over the largest military build up in the world and it has done so upon the backs of those who can least afford it.


Proportionally, the biggest tax burdens have fallen upon lower and middle income earners —the very groups who lost ground over a period of some 30 years. It was over that period of time that the incomes of the upper one percent of the U.S. population increased exponentially. Only the upper quintile prospered; everyone else lost ground.


Bush doesn't do nuance. And that is a shame; someone, somewhere feels pain everytime Bush fails to do a nuance. Can you imagine explaining Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, or Keynes to G. W. Bush —a man who claims to be conservative but would be hard pressed to tell you why?


What is to be said of someone who refuses to be informed? Is this the root of Bush antipathy to the Constitution —or is his ignorance a disingenuous act to conceal the real reasons that he would subvert the underpinnings of American democracy? I am, admittedly, overly fond of quoting Bertolt Brecht on this point but no one makes that point more succinctly:

A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook!
—Bertolt Brecht

Iconoclasts are always misunderstood; truth telling has become un-patriotic. Were he alive and writing today, Mencken would be assailed for telling the truth. But Mencken had the verbal ammunition to take them on. As Mencken himself said, "One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms." Mencken would dispatch Bill Frist with a single phrase: "Puritanism —The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy."

But what did Mencken himself believe? He left us a list from which I have chosen my favorites:
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious . I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty...I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech...I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie . I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.
In other words, Mencken believed in everything Bush and the present day GOP hates. Mencken is timeless if not prescient:

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

—H.L. Mencken
Mencken could well have written that in November, 2000 rather than some 50 years earlier.
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.
A summation of modern politics?
Democracy is the theory that holds that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
—H.L. Mencken

As a ruthless social critic, Mencken summed up the American justice system in three sentences:
Courtroom --A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas.
Lawyer--One who protects us from robbers by taking away the temptation.
Jury--A group of 12 people who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
Mencken was a most prolific writer about the American language. His six volumes of essays and critiques he called Prejudices and, in them, he sneered at 19th-century nationalism and characterized Americans as "...the most sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag."
Life may not be exactly pleasant, but it is at least not dull. Heave yourself into Hell today, and you may miss, tomorrow or next day, another Scopes trial, or another War to End War, or perchance a rich and buxom widow with all her first husband's clothes. There are always more Hardings hatching. I advocate hanging on as long as possible.
To bring him up to date, one need only substitute the name "Bush" for "Harding".

Mencken lives!


http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2006/03/more-hardings-hatching-or-how-right.html

[easymoney101]

John F Kennedy Speech

Acceptance of the New York Liberal Party Nomination
September 14, 1960

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

But first, I would like to say what I understand the word "Liberal" to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a "Liberal," and what it means in the presidential election of 1960.

In short, having set forth my view -- I hope for all time -- two nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take the opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political credo:

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.

I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.

Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons that liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 campaign is whether our government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility.

Our liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the earth to find new opportunity and new freedom, generations of men and women who fled from the despotism of the czars, the horrors of the Nazis, the tyranny of hunger, who came here to the new frontier in the State of New York. These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city not only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well.

Tonight we salute Governor and Senator Herbert Lehman as a symbol of that spirit, and as a reminder that the fight for full constitutional rights for all Americans is a fight that must be carried on in 1961.

Many of these same immigrant families produced the pioneers and builders of the American labor movement. They are the men who sweated in our shops, who struggled to create a union, and who were driven by longing for education for their children and for the children's development. They went to night schools; they built their own future, their union's future, and their country's future, brick by brick, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, and now in their children's time, suburb by suburb.

Tonight we salute George Meany as a symbol of that struggle and as a reminder that the fight to eliminate poverty and human exploitation is a fight that goes on in our day. But in 1960 the cause of liberalism cannot content itself with carrying on the fight for human justice and economic liberalism here at home. For here and around the world the fear of war hangs over us every morning and every night. It lies, expressed or silent, in the minds of every American. We cannot banish it by repeating that we are economically first or that we are militarily first, for saying so doesn't make it so. More will be needed than goodwill missions or talking back to Soviet politicians or increasing the tempo of the arms race. More will be needed than good intentions, for we know where that paving leads.

In Winston Churchill's words, "We cannot escape our dangers by recoiling from them. We dare not pretend such dangers do not exist."

And tonight we salute Adlai Stevenson as an eloquent spokesman for the effort to achieve an intelligent foreign policy. Our opponents would like the people to believe that in a time of danger it would be hazardous to change the administration that has brought us to this time of danger. I think it would be hazardous not to change. I think it would be hazardous to continue four more years of stagnation and indifference here at home and abroad, of starving the underpinnings of our national power, including not only our defense but our image abroad as a friend.

This is an important election -- in many ways as important as any this century -- and I think that the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party here in New York, and those who believe in progress all over the United States, should be associated with us in this great effort. The reason that Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson had influence abroad, and the United States in their time had it, was because they moved this country here at home, because they stood for something here in the United States, for expanding the benefits of our society to our own people, and the people around the world looked to us as a symbol of hope.

I think it is our task to re-create the same atmosphere in our own time. Our national elections have often proved to be the turning point in the course of our country. I am proposing that 1960 be another turning point in the history of the great Republic.

Some pundits are saying it's 1928 all over again. I say it's 1932 all over again. I say this is the great opportunity that we will have in our time to move our people and this country and the people of the free world beyond the new frontiers of the 1960s.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/35_kennedy/psources/ps_nyliberal.html