Agorism
11-12-2010, 01:43 AM
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/11/11/malicious-mendacity-in-the-tea-party-movement
Malicious Mendacity in the Tea Party Movement
by Erick Erickson
Here’s a rule of thumb — if engaging the tea party movement, focus on the local groups, not the big groups. Tea Party Express has one heck of an impressive track record this year at the national level and they need to be commended for that, but all things being equal it is the local groups that have the volunteers, get out the vote efforts, phone bankers, etc. And I think a number of the national group leaders would tend to agree.
But here is another case in point for bypassing a lot of the national tea party groups. The Claremont Institute, a well respected organization that has one heck of a constitutional history course, is hosting an event for new members of Congress.
The organization is being attacked by a tea party group as being filled with and held by “Washington Insiders.”
For the record, the Claremont Institute is on the opposite coast of the United States from Washington and composed of some of the wingiest wingers in the entire wing-o-sphere.
This handwringing about “Washington Insiders” is verging on paranoid.
One tea party group is giving out the private cell phone numbers of freshmen congressmen to pressure them to avoid competing orientation programs, etc.
Certainly there are legitimate concerns and there must be caution, but Good Lord people, by the time all the cards are on the table we’re going to have all the tea party groups labeling their competitors as Washington Insiders.
This is nuts.
What is Claremont Institute?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claremont_Institute
Philosophy
The institute's guiding text is the Declaration of Independence, and especially its central proposition that "all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."
Many of the Institute's scholars are students of the teachings of Leo Strauss including Jaffa, who studied with Strauss.
The institute has great admiration for the statesmanship of America's founding fathers as well as that of Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill.
Uncommonly for a conservative organization, the Claremont Institute tends to reject the constitutional philosophy of strict constructionism and often publishes material that is critical of conservative strict constructionists such as Robert Bork, William Rehnquist, and Antonin Scalia. According to some Institute writers, their legal philosophy is closer to that of Clarence Thomas.[1]
Who is Leo Strauss?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss
Critics of Strauss accuse him of being elitist, illiberalist and anti-democratic. Shadia Drury, in Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999), argues that Strauss inculcated an elitist strain in American political leaders linked to imperialist militarism, neoconservatism and Christian fundamentalism. Drury argues that Strauss teaches that "perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them." Nicholas Xenos similarly argues that Strauss was "an anti-democrat in a fundamental sense, a true reactionary. According to Xenos, "Strauss was somebody who wanted to go back to a previous, pre-liberal, pre-bourgeois era of blood and guts, of imperial domination, of authoritarian rule, of pure fascism."[25]
Strauss has also been criticized by some conservatives. According to Claes Ryn, the "new Jacobinism" of the neoconservative philosophy, a philosophy that Ryn attributes to Strauss, is not "new, it is the rhetoric of Saint-Just and Trotsky that the philosophically impoverished American Right has taken over with mindless alacrity. Republican operators and think tanks apparently believe they can carry the electorate by appealing to yesterday’s leftist clichés.[26][27]
Noam Chomsky has argued that Strauss's theory is a form of Leninism, in which society should be led by a group of elite vanguards, whose job is to protect liberal society against the dangers of excessive individualism, and creating inspiring myths to make the masses believe that they are fighting against anti-democratic and anti-liberal forces. Daniel Bell, in his Marxian socialism in the United States wrote: "the consequence of the theory of the vanguard party and its relation to the masses is a system of "two truths," the consilia evangelica, or special ethics endowed for those whose lives are so dedicated to the revolutionary ends, and another truth for the masses. Out of this belief grew Lenin's famous admonition—one can lie, steal, or cheat, for the cause itself has a higher truth."
Glenn Greenwald on the need to deceive the masses.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/07/27/kristol
Based on that understanding, Irving Kristol explicitly advocated that ordinary citizens be lied to for their own good and the good of society:
There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work.
Hopefully the Tea Party can not be controlled.
Malicious Mendacity in the Tea Party Movement
by Erick Erickson
Here’s a rule of thumb — if engaging the tea party movement, focus on the local groups, not the big groups. Tea Party Express has one heck of an impressive track record this year at the national level and they need to be commended for that, but all things being equal it is the local groups that have the volunteers, get out the vote efforts, phone bankers, etc. And I think a number of the national group leaders would tend to agree.
But here is another case in point for bypassing a lot of the national tea party groups. The Claremont Institute, a well respected organization that has one heck of a constitutional history course, is hosting an event for new members of Congress.
The organization is being attacked by a tea party group as being filled with and held by “Washington Insiders.”
For the record, the Claremont Institute is on the opposite coast of the United States from Washington and composed of some of the wingiest wingers in the entire wing-o-sphere.
This handwringing about “Washington Insiders” is verging on paranoid.
One tea party group is giving out the private cell phone numbers of freshmen congressmen to pressure them to avoid competing orientation programs, etc.
Certainly there are legitimate concerns and there must be caution, but Good Lord people, by the time all the cards are on the table we’re going to have all the tea party groups labeling their competitors as Washington Insiders.
This is nuts.
What is Claremont Institute?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claremont_Institute
Philosophy
The institute's guiding text is the Declaration of Independence, and especially its central proposition that "all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."
Many of the Institute's scholars are students of the teachings of Leo Strauss including Jaffa, who studied with Strauss.
The institute has great admiration for the statesmanship of America's founding fathers as well as that of Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill.
Uncommonly for a conservative organization, the Claremont Institute tends to reject the constitutional philosophy of strict constructionism and often publishes material that is critical of conservative strict constructionists such as Robert Bork, William Rehnquist, and Antonin Scalia. According to some Institute writers, their legal philosophy is closer to that of Clarence Thomas.[1]
Who is Leo Strauss?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss
Critics of Strauss accuse him of being elitist, illiberalist and anti-democratic. Shadia Drury, in Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999), argues that Strauss inculcated an elitist strain in American political leaders linked to imperialist militarism, neoconservatism and Christian fundamentalism. Drury argues that Strauss teaches that "perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them." Nicholas Xenos similarly argues that Strauss was "an anti-democrat in a fundamental sense, a true reactionary. According to Xenos, "Strauss was somebody who wanted to go back to a previous, pre-liberal, pre-bourgeois era of blood and guts, of imperial domination, of authoritarian rule, of pure fascism."[25]
Strauss has also been criticized by some conservatives. According to Claes Ryn, the "new Jacobinism" of the neoconservative philosophy, a philosophy that Ryn attributes to Strauss, is not "new, it is the rhetoric of Saint-Just and Trotsky that the philosophically impoverished American Right has taken over with mindless alacrity. Republican operators and think tanks apparently believe they can carry the electorate by appealing to yesterday’s leftist clichés.[26][27]
Noam Chomsky has argued that Strauss's theory is a form of Leninism, in which society should be led by a group of elite vanguards, whose job is to protect liberal society against the dangers of excessive individualism, and creating inspiring myths to make the masses believe that they are fighting against anti-democratic and anti-liberal forces. Daniel Bell, in his Marxian socialism in the United States wrote: "the consequence of the theory of the vanguard party and its relation to the masses is a system of "two truths," the consilia evangelica, or special ethics endowed for those whose lives are so dedicated to the revolutionary ends, and another truth for the masses. Out of this belief grew Lenin's famous admonition—one can lie, steal, or cheat, for the cause itself has a higher truth."
Glenn Greenwald on the need to deceive the masses.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/07/27/kristol
Based on that understanding, Irving Kristol explicitly advocated that ordinary citizens be lied to for their own good and the good of society:
There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work.
Hopefully the Tea Party can not be controlled.