November 30, 2017

"I am a liberal, and liberalism is the politics of kindness. Liberals stand for tolerance, magnanimity, community spirit..."

"... the defense of the weak against the powerful, love of learning, freedom of belief, art and poetry, city life, the very things that make America worth dying for."

Those words of Garrison Keillor, from the book "Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America." I'm reading that today — the day after Keillor's downfall — just by chance. I'm listening to the audiobook "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion," and the author, Jonathan Haidt, offers that Keillor quote as "captur[ing] the spirit and self-image of the modern American left." Haidt adds: "I’m not sure how many Americans have sacrificed their lives for kindness and poetry...."

I could talk about what a phony Garrison Keillor is — "plain thoughts," indeed — or go on at length about the excellence of Haidt's book, but what I did was Google "Who died for poetry?," and that got me to an article titled "The Man Who Died for Poetry":
When Osip Mandelstam died at age 47 in a Siberian work camp under the Stalin regime, he became one of twentieth-century poetry's most famous martyrs. Vastly talented and fearlessly subversive, he is perhaps best remembered for his scathing "Stalin Epigram," the poem that sealed his fate....

[Christian Wiman, the translator]: We think of Mandelstam as the quintessential twentieth-century European poet, hounded to death by an out-of-control state and writing poems of fierce, poignant protest. He was that, of course, but he was also, right up to the end, funny and friendly and crazed in the best sense. Poetry was fun for him.... Honestly, I think it's this pure and irrepressible lyric spirit that drove Stalin mad, even more than the famous poem that Mandelstam wrote in mockery of Stalin. Mandelstam—his gift and the untamable nature of it—was like a thorn in Stalin's brain....
Here's "The Stalin Epigram" (by different translators, W.S. Merlin and Clarence Brown):

Our lives no longer feel ground under them.
At ten paces you can’t hear our words.

But whenever there’s a snatch of talk
it turns to the Kremlin mountaineer,

the ten thick worms his fingers,
his words like measures of weight,

the huge laughing cockroaches on his top lip,
the glitter of his boot-rims.

Ringed with a scum of chicken-necked bosses
he toys with the tributes of half-men.

One whistles, another meows, a third snivels.
He pokes out his finger and he alone goes boom.

He forges decrees in a line like horseshoes,
One for the groin, one the forehead, temple, eye.

76 comments:

robother said...

And now Keillor, who has died, albeit metaphorically (what more appropriate kind of death for a poetaster?) for wandering hands that couldn't help but appreciate the poetry in motion of women around him.

Rob said...

If Mandelstam were writing about the current #MeToo moment, he’d have to change “whenever there’s a snatch of talk” to “whenever there’s a talk of snatch.”

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Drago said...

"When Osip Mandelstam died at age 47 in a Siberian work camp under the Stalin regime, he became one of twentieth-century poetry's most famous martyrs. "

Leftist beliefs always lead to Gulags and mass graves....

...but always, ALWAYS, for the "best" of reasons...

n.n said...

Liberalism is a divergent ideology that creates a perception of "tolerance, magnanimity, etc.". It is also a generational or progressive ideology, that when checked will periodically traverse its classical (i.e. libertarian) roots.

rhhardin said...

Keillor had a lot of good lines. It wasn't a waste of time to listen to his Prairie Home Companion.

It was a day like any other as Knute loaded up his car with dynamite for a day of bass fishing.

rhhardin said...

Artists tend to be leftist, probably because the right get real jobs and so select themselves away.

rhhardin said...

What will be the consequences of the relations between men and women being run by HR instead of inclinations.

Do women think that far ahead.

Nonapod said...

I don't see how people who proclaim themselves to be "kind" or who declare their political philosophy to the "politics of kindness" can be so willfully blind to the results of the very policies they're proponents of. When it's obvious that every city and municipality run by liberals is a financial disaster and a hotbed of corruption, when you see all the misery in socialist paradises around the world and yet you refuse to question the very policies that lead to these nightmares, how can still proclaim that you're "kind"?

Richard Dolan said...

AA: I could "go on at length about the excellence of Haidt's book ...."

Greg Mankiw also highly recommended it on his blog -- one of his summer favorites, I think he said. Picked up a copy based on his comments, but haven't started it yet.

Sydney said...

I am a liberal, and liberalism is the politics of kindness. Liberals stand for tolerance, magnanimity, community spirit..."
"... the defense of the weak against the powerful, love of learning, freedom of belief, art and poetry, city life, the very things that make America worth dying for


Is that what liberalism stands for? And if conservativism is the opposite of liberalism, does it mean that conservatives are against all of those things? I don't think either of those assumptions are true. I don't see modern liberalism as a "politics of kindness." Today's liberals are vicious and violent. They are not magnanimous at all, but quick to slander and to hate. They have no community spirit. They would rather sue bakers and florists out of existence for refusing to participate in something that goes against their religion. And they try to shame pizza shops out of business for answering a hypothetical question in a way they perceive as wrong. They do not defend the weak, but are all about corporate cronyism and whatever activist group can give them the most campaign money to hold onto power. Perhaps they love art and poetry and city life, but so do a lot of conservatives, believe it or not.

Bob Boyd said...

“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”– Daniel Webster

Mike said...

Excuse me if I missed this, but do we know what the actual accusations are against him? It can't just be the touching a woman's back thing. There has to be more to it, right?

If there's not, did MPR just really want to get rid of him for some reason, and they used this as the opportunity?

Qwinn said...

Liberalism is the politics of delusional virtue signaling, staggering hypocrisy, endless historical revisionism, and a daily two minute hate against their opponents.

FIFY.

sparrow said...

The alleged kindness is all pretense: socialism is an effective vehicle to power that appeals to envy.

Bay Area Guy said...

"I am a liberal, and liberalism is the politics of kindness. Liberals stand for tolerance, magnanimity, community spirit, the defense of the weak against the powerful, love of learning, freedom of belief, art and poetry, city life, the very things that make America worth dying for."

This is a nice sentiment. Truly it is. But it's also a superficial fallacy that can (and often does) lead to bad things. Here's why:

It is stated in a vacuum. Who isn't, in theory, for "tolerance" or "magnanimity" or "freedom of belief?" The hard part comes when such lofty ideals ram into each other IN THE REAL WORLD.

With respect to gays, Liberals shout, "We must be inclusive!"

Ok, fine. Can we include people who aren't fans of gays? "NO, YOU HOMOPHOBE!"

The number one problem for liberals (in my opinion) is that they proclaim lofty principles, but they have a real hard time applying them to real life scenarios.

An even more simple example is economics. They want more jobs. Great, so do I. They like employees, and they like employment, but they don't like employers -- the guys who create the jobs.

There are numerous other examples.

So, to my liberal friends, stop being utopian theoreticians, and join us in the real world.

Michael K said...

"AA: I could "go on at length about the excellence of Haidt's book ...."

That will be my next audio book as I have just about finished "Hue 1968" by Bowden which is excellent.

I would use Althouse portal but I have an Audible membership and use points.

Darrell said...

There has to be more to it, right?

Sure. And NPR is not going to increase their liability by going into details.

John henry said...

Bullshit!

"Liberal" means "A free man" the root, liber, also gives us liberty and liberate.

A liberal is a person who believes in limited government. I agree 100% with Hayek:

“In the United States “liberal” means today a set of ideas and political postulates that in every regard are the opposite of all that liberalism meant to the preceding generations. The American self-styled liberal aims at government omnipotence, is a resolute foe of free enterprise, and advocates all-round planning by the authorities, i.e., socialism."

From The Road to Serfdom

We should not let sexual predators like Keillor and others misappropriate a perfectly fine word. Call him what he is "Progressive"

John Henry

Chris Arabia said...

I agree in the sense that Stalin sometimes tolerated people who expressed dissident or contrary thoughts (his arbitrary decisions on life and death amplified his mystique and power) and irrepressibility of spirit, while not always fatal, could be more dangerous than mere critical statements.

It's unfortunate that Soviet/Russian history draws so little attention, especially considering the instruction it could provide on where far left politics so often leads.

We don't have 15-minute death penalty trials and we don't have guilty/not guilty determinations based not on conduct but on group. But we have advocates of both.


Chuck said...

So Garrison Keillor is a "phony"? I never agreed with his politics; he was a real, live non-phony member of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party. I knew how he voted in presidential elections; it was never the same way that I voted, but it was not phony.

I must say that I really don't know what it is that has been alleged against Keillor. I won't defend him; but I am in no position to call him a "phony" and I wonder what Althouse's evidence is in that regard.

Is it simply the news of an unstated allegation?

Is there an Althouse subject tag for "Trump and sexual assault"? Or "Trump as phony"?

Ignorance is Bliss said...

The Stalin Epigram

I sure hope that lost a lot in translation. I mean, obviously very brave for writing it, knowing the obvious consequences, but as far as poetry goes, absolute crap, at least in the English translation.

Mike said...

Sure. And NPR is not going to increase their liability by going into details.

Yeah, and now that he's lost his job, there's less chance that it gets looked into. If there are serious charges here, I wonder how long they've known. I think it's curious that it happened right after the NBC revelations, but that's only speculation.

John henry said...

Blogger Drago said...

Leftist beliefs always lead to Gulags and mass graves....

One only has to read to about page 4 of Marx' Capital to see why:

Let us take two commodities, e.g., corn and iron. The proportions in which they are exchangeable, whatever those proportions may be, can always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron: e.g., 1 quarter corn = x cwt. iron. What does this equation tell us? It tells us that in two different things – in 1 quarter of corn and x cwt. of iron, there exists in equal quantities something common to both. The two things must therefore be equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange value, must therefore be reducible to this third.

This is the basis on which Marx builds objective value, determined by the amount of labor "crystalized" into a commodity. If you don't agree with the objectively determined value, there is no other choice but to send you to a camp or kill you.

(That is probably oversimplified. I'll be happy to discuss it further with anyone who has actually read Marx Capital)

John Henry

Fabi said...

Chuck makes a quick and accidental defense of Keillor. Unexpectedly.

Drago said...

LLR Chuck: "I must say that I really don't know what it is that has been alleged against Keillor. I won't defend him; but I am in no position to call him a "phony" and I wonder what Althouse's evidence is in that regard."

LOL

Perfect.

John henry said...

Delete the word "Probably" above.

John Henry

Mike Sylwester said...

Jonathan Haidt does superb work. He deserves a MacArthur Genius Grant.

Drago said...

Blogger Drago said...

Leftist beliefs always lead to Gulags and mass graves....


However, and not to accuse LLR Chuck of "defending" leftist political mass murder, but really, he hasn't really read or become too familiar with any of that stuff, except for complaints about leftist mass murder from that horrible, horrible, inhumanly horrible (insert conservative commentators name here) and he knows he can't simply accept what that idiot has to say, and all Chuck is really saying is what evidence does anyone really have that leftist mass murderers really murdered anyone?

I mean, besides, didn't Trump give a phone interview in the 80's? And that was bad too.

But, again, LLR Chuck would never defend leftist mass murderers...on purpose. He will just need to see a bit more evidence.

Thats all.

buwaya said...

"love of learning,"

This has been entirely false for decades. The opposite in fact.
All it takes to show this is the state of K-12 and university curricula.

Darrell said...

Just keep in mind that Chuck saw the Michelle Field's tape. His opinion is worth less than a Jeb! POTUS hat.

James K said...

"I am a liberal, and liberalism is the politics of kindness."

Keillor's "kindness" comes mainly from other people's money. And how kind is it to create dependency?

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Chuck said...
So Garrison Keillor is a "phony"?"

Gee, I wonder why he's being called that? Could it be because he spewed venom against Republicans and conservatives while saying that Democrats were nicer and kinder? Please note, Chuck, he not only called Trump and Trump voters names (which would be perfectly fine with you, although you *ahem* say you voted for Trump) he also attacked Bush 44, McCain and Romney every bit as viciously. You know, all those GOP Establishment figures you claim to admire.

I thought you were just another GOPe wuss like Bill Kristol. But your defense of a man who hated everyone with an R after their names - Trump, Ryan, McConnell, Rubio, it made no difference to Kellior- makes me think that you are not and have never been a "life long Republican" at all. You're just another leftist.

Of course, you'll deny it, but I no longer believe your denials.

Bill Peschel said...

Stalin is also responsible for killing a short story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest in literature: Issac Babel.

Best I can tell, his only crime was to boink the wife of NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov.

Keillor should be grateful.

dreams said...

Garrison Keillor, just another average sexual harasser, not even above average.

Chuck said...

Drago; Hahaha! You think that Trump just gave "a phone interview in the 80's"? Is that what you think? Is that what you expect people to believe?

I really don't think that you are that stupid (Trump may be, however; or at least that sociopathic), but I do think that you are as malicious and as malignant as they come.

Here's the tape of Donald Trump as "John Miller." This shit is as weird as ever, even after several listenings. Trump, talking about himself in the third person, for purposes of what is essentially gossip/celebrity news reporting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1b1o5DtnbY

Honestly, you could take away all of the weird and offensive shit that Donald Trump has done for a lifetime and it all we had was this one tape, I'd still say that the guy needs his head examined. (All that Trump ever had examined, as I understand it, was his heel spurs.)

Big Mike said...

@exiledonmainstreet, I’ve been saying ever since Chuck showed up that he’s a moby.

Chuck said...

exiledonmainstreet:

Please tell me what sort of remarkable stupidity possesses you, to presume that I am defending Garrison Keillor and that I share his politics, right after I wrote that I am not defending him and that I do not share his politics?

Darrell said...

There is nothing in the world like first-rate p**sy.

Another prog golf writer heard Trump say that 17 years ago. Like that other one that heard Trump say the White House is a dump--before he renovated it. Chuck likes prog golf writers and Garrison Keillor.

Chuck said...


Big Mike said...
@exiledonmainstreet, I’ve been saying ever since Chuck showed up that he’s a moby.

You dumb asshole. I was commenting on this blog, and far less noticed than I am now, long before Trump became a candidate for anything. Althouse had/has a tag for "Chuck (the commenter)". It long predates any of my fights with any of you.

None of you could find anything remotely "leftwing" in any of my writing, before or after Trump.

My infamy on this blog is the direct and proximate cause of one thing; my criticism of Donald Trump. In an era in which Althouse has seen fit to muse about what an interesting communicator Trump is (if not to defend Trump outright), instead of holding Trump to the same sorts of standards she applies to others in the media. Althouse has attracted a big pro-Trump following, and the blog has changed. I haven't changed.

When exactly do you think I "showed up" here?

Drago said...

"Bowe Bergdahl Republican" Chuck: "Please tell me what sort of remarkable stupidity possesses you, to presume that I am defending Garrison Keillor and that I share his politics, right after I wrote that I am not defending him and that I do not share his politics?"

LOL

Chuck: I'm shocked, SHOCKED, to find that defending of democrat sexual-assaulters is going on at Althouse!

Others: Uh, your "winnings", sir

Chuck: oh, thank you very much.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

sparrow said...
The alleged kindness is all pretense: socialism is an effective vehicle to power that appeals to envy."

Exactly. And that mask of kindness means Communism and socialism will always hold an attraction for people who are trying to rationalize and ennoble envy. It's fun to smash a Starbucks window or shoot a kulak or beat up a dissident, especially if you've convinced yourself that you are doing it in the name of equality and fairness.

The same is not true of that subset of collectivism known as "National Socialism" because Nazis did not base their world view on kindness or fairness or inequality but the right of a superior race to rule over, enslave and kill untermenschen. The notion of the superiority of the Aryan race died in 1945, although isolated losers like to evoke it. I thought it was entirely dead until leftist academics revived it in a different form, with white Christian males playing the role the Nazis had reserved for the Jews - the villainous group responsible for the world's ills and evils. (The really odd twist was that there are plenty of pale-faced males who endorse today's version of racial politics, whereas I don't think there were any Jews praising Hitler's race theories in 1933). National socialism is every bit as collectivist and violent as plain old communism is, but more honest about its' aims and is therefore less popular.


Drago said...

LLR Chuck: "When exactly do you think I "showed up" here?"

Irrelevant.

In other interesting and completely unrelated news, the fantastic TV series "The Americans" will return in 2018!

For those unfamiliar with the premise of the show, a young Russian couple is planted in the US as Deep Moles and actually live a "typical" american, even "republican" life, raising children and having all the outward appearance of a typical American family.

But all the while they are active soviet agents.

Great premise, great writing, great acting. The husband and wife on the series are married in real life and I think it makes a real positive difference in the final product.

You should check it out.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Chuck said...
exiledonmainstreet:

Please tell me what sort of remarkable stupidity possesses you, to presume that I am defending Garrison Keillor and that I share his politics, right after I wrote that I am not defending him and that I do not share his politics?"

Ha, ha. That's not even worthy of an answer.

You carry the left's water every day, chuckie.

MayBee said...

The politics I have prove I am a wonderful person, and all those who agree with me are wonderful too.

Achilles said...

Chuck says the leftist Keillor is not a phony and we should be focusing on Trump.

Unexpectedly.

You are beyond parody.

Just like the leftists you don't believe a word you say and your only goal is... what exactly? The only reason I don't think you are a moby is because your posts only take on a vicious personal style after your predictable stupidity is made apparent, while Leftists are vicious assholes right out of the gate.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Well, it's official, anyway: The Writer's Almanac was replaced this morning by more BBC.

Don't get me wrong, I'm much heartened by the sudden turning of all this sexual-harassment hysteria on all these liberal figures, but it does seem a little ... abrupt, doesn't it? On my desk right now is a book titled The Commissar Vanishes, about the doctoring of photographs (and the odd painting) to remove inconvenient figures in Stalin's USSR. This feels a mite like that.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

MayBee said...
The politics I have prove I am a wonderful person, and all those who agree with me are wonderful too.

11/30/17, 1:47 PM

And so therefore I am entitled to treat individual people like crap. Liberalism absolves me of all sins!

Drago said...

John: "This is the basis on which Marx builds objective value, determined by the amount of labor "crystalized" into a commodity. If you don't agree with the objectively determined value, there is no other choice but to send you to a camp or kill you."

This is why the Lefts and their LLR allies attempts to muddy the language between "Equal Pay for Equal Work" (which has its own problems) and "Comparable Worth" is so insidious.

"Comparable Worth" was the US lefts attempt to create the bureaucracy needed to "objectively" (LOL) determine the worth of every individuals work.

What could go possibly wrong with a system where leftists with political power determine the worth of your work....and then whether or not you get health care....and then whether or not you get food (hello Venezuela!), and then.....

Well, you get the idea.

And oh, on top of it all, lets just pretent that sexuality and biological identify is socially determined!

mandrewa said...

John quoted from Marx:

Let us take two commodities, e.g., corn and iron. The proportions in which they are exchangeable, whatever those proportions may be, can always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron: e.g., 1 quarter corn = x cwt. iron. What does this equation tell us? It tells us that in two different things – in 1 quarter of corn and x cwt. of iron, there exists in equal quantities something common to both. The two things must therefore be equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange value, must therefore be reducible to this third.

The irony of that quote is that for a communist state it is difficult to determine what the relative values of different things are. In fact it's a huge issue.

In a communist state the government asserts what different things are worth by decree. Fine, but there is a underlying reality, and if you put the wrong value on things, then to the degree that your relatives values asserted do not match the underlying reality, then human effort is misspent and you are not doing the things that produce wealth. Every degree of discrepancy is a measure of human labor that is thrown away.

Although we know there is a real map of relative underlying values of different things, it is quite difficult to determine what it is. Capitalist economies discover these relative values through the marketplace. This is not the only thing a marketplace accomplishes, but it's part of what is going on. Communist economies have nothing comparable. In fact, it's politics that determine relative values in a true communist economy. And politics has no connection to the underlying economic realities. The problem got so bad that in the later stages of the Soviet Union, they used the prices of things in the West to determine the relative value of things in the Soviet Union. Implicit in that is a considerable loss because prices are always on the move in the West and are optimized for local circumstances and were not really appropriate for the situation in the Soviet Union. But still those prices from different circumstances were a huge improvement over the political prices that Communism would naturally generate.

It's an interesting question of just how much poorer people would have been under Communism if there hadn't been market economies at the same time that they could watch and therefore get some idea of what their prices should be.

Drago said...

mandrewa, your entire post is likely to put Robert Cook in a coma, send Inga to her pristine and never before opened Funk and Wagnalls 1975 Dictionary, and possibly result in LLR Chuck and ARM calling for your arrest.

ARM because whatever, and LLR Chuck because he has an odd quirk where his "republican-ness" often looks just like "Whatever-Democrat-ness".

FullMoon said...

Chuck cries:

My infamy on this blog is the direct and proximate cause of one thing; my criticism of Donald Trump.


Nope. Your criticism of everybody who, like you, voted for Trump is what labeled you an asshole. Not to mention fantasies of violence against women.
Your emotional meltdowns is the icing on the cake.SAD!

Jim at said...

Is there an Althouse subject tag for "Trump and sexual assault"? Or "Trump as phony"?

You know, you really couldn't be more tedious if you tried.

Bilwick said...

Of course, no mention of statism--the sine qua non of modern American "liberalism"--Keillor's list of alleged "liberal" virtues. "Tolerance, magnaminity and community spirit"--all coming at you with a gun in one hand and a bludgeon in the other. Bastiat called such people "humanitarians with a guillotine."

In a spirit of know-thy-enemy, I read parts of "Homegrown Democrat," and as I recall one of the groups listed in his dishonor roll of Bag Guys were "limosine libertarians." (An obvious take-off of "limousine liberal," made famous in NYC politics during the era of John V. Lindsay, the ultimate LL.) Not sure what that means. I'm a libertarian, and rarely have any contact with limousines. Maybe Inga, Cookie or the Toothless State-fellator could translate. The only thing I can figure is that it's an implication that all libertarians are wealthy. (I wish.) It is, I suppose, a product of the Neo-Marxist "Liberal" idea that liberty is so dismal a concept that no one would actually prefer it to statism, so if anyone says they value liberty, they are acting only out of economic self-interest or "fale consciousness." (See Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter With Kansas?" for an example of this kind of cocooned mental set.)

Rusty said...

Mandrewa @ 1:55
What I find interesting about the former Soviet Union was that even though the state dictated wages and prices markets emerged to fill desires not met by the state. Why it's almost as if free enterprise was organic.

tcrosse said...

Kiellor is not really a phony in that he has let all his nasty assholery hang out in front of God and everybody. If he's a phony at all it's to himself.

mandrewa said...

Rusty, the most dramatic example of markets that were allowed to emerge in the Soviet Union was this story about the gardens which you've probably heard of.

At some point the government decided to allow people to sell food they had grown in their gardens in local markets. I don't know when that was. But the astonishing thing is that these gardens, in the late stage Soviet Union, were producing almost half the food consumed. I've seen 2% cited as the amount of land in the 'gardens' as opposed to the 98% that the state controlled. Although I don't know how someone would calculate that number because different pieces of land can vary so dramatically in their productivity.

Also I've read that China under Mao never totally abandoned markets. There was an informal, illegal market economy alongside the state economy. So people employed by the communist state might for instance eat lunch at restaurants that were not planned by the government. Under Mao it may have been something like 10% of the workforce that was actually in a market economy. But they didn't have any legal rights. They could be shut down at any moment. They could be sent to prison at any moment for what they did.

Another aspect of the story in China was that if your parents or grandparents had been designated as 'right-wing' or whatever the word was, by the government, then you were officially unemployable and really at risk for starvation because how do you get the money to pay for food and shelter? And so these people were by necessity driven into an illegal market economy.

MrCharlie2 said...

John said:

"Liberal" means "A free man" the root, liber, also gives us liberty and liberate.

A liberal is a person who believes in limited government.


I would say a liberal is one who wants a society in which people are free to do as the choose with their lives. The American revolution seems distinctly liberal. Though many of it's heroes were slave owners, even they tended to be for more freedom (and not just freedom to line their pockets).

I don't see it as limited vs unlimited government, more let's have the government we want, not what's forced on us or always has been. Let's, for our common good, provide education to the children of the poor and/or congenitally stupid.

William said...

Mandelstam was not such a great guy. His protest against Stalin was done in a Stalinesque way. He knew that he was going to be arrested. He knew that the police were going to ask which friend he had hidden his poems with. He went to one of his girl friends and stashed some of his poems with her. This was a dummy stash. There was another friend with whom he really stashed his output. Mandelstam got arrested. He was questioned and gave up his girlfriend. She too was questioned and, under duress, gave up the poems he had stashed with her. Many years later she discovered the duplicitous game Mandelstam had played with her and the secret police.. She felt betrayed and used......Stalin corrupted even the people who hated him.

Jason said...

"It was the "Chuck (the commenter) tag. That's where I had them. I proved it with geometric logic."

Needs a "Chuck (the Captain Queeg) tag.

President-Mom-Jeans said...

Wow, lifelong Cuck doesn't want people to be called phonys.

Like being a phony republican?

Doug said...

Women think they're winning.
They are so wrong.
Their tears will taste like champagne.
Sexbots.

Clyde said...

If Keillor's characterization of liberalism is correct, then many of the current batch of liberals are doing it wrong.

Mark said...

He is a "liberal," and modern liberalism is the politics of hubris. It is the politics of thinking you are a god and can create your own truth and morality, you can decree your own good and evil, holier than all others before who are to be held in contempt, and beyond the right and wrong of the ages.

chuck said...

In my experience, people who feel the need to tell me how wonderful they are, how honest, or how tolerant, are invariably the opposite. I call it the law of opposites.

bgates said...

Garrison Keillor, as quoted on this blog today:
I am a liberal, and liberalism is the politics of kindness. Liberals stand for tolerance, magnanimity, community spirit...

Garrison Keillor in 2005:
To the cheater, there is no such thing as honesty, and to Republicans the idea of serving the public good is counterfeit on the face of it — they never felt such an urge, and therefore it must not exist.

Garrison Keillor in 2009:
Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off health care to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.

Garrison Keillor, as quoted on this blog yesterday:
Having been called names, one looks back at one's own angry outbursts over the years, and I recall having once referred to Republicans as "hairy-backed swamp developers, fundamentalist bullies, freelance racists, hobby cops, sweatshop tycoons, line jumpers, marsupial moms and aluminum-siding salesmen, misanthropic frat boys, ninja dittoheads, shrieking midgets, tax cheats, cheese merchants, cat stranglers, pill pushers, nihilists in golf pants, backed-up Baptists, the grand pooh-bahs of Percodan, mouth breathers, testosterone junkies and brownshirts in pinstripes." I look at those words now, and "cat stranglers" seems excessive to me. The number of cat stranglers in the ranks of the Republican Party is surely low, and that reference was hurtful to Republicans and to cat owners. I feel sheepish about it.


Chuck:
I am in no position to call him a "phony" and I wonder what Althouse's evidence is in that regard.

That's all the pre-Trump Republican Party he's talking about, Chuck. "Your" party. What part of all that strikes you as tolerant magnanimity?

walter said...

"shrieking midgets,"?
Ruh roh....

Drago said...

Yeah, LLR Chuck really let the mask slip a bit too far today, didn't he?

Not to worry. He'll reset and be back on the job here tomorrow.

walter said...

I'd like to hear more about his alleged "sexual misconduct" before rendering judgement on it.
But I'm more than willing to watch a gang of "shrieking midgets" tackle him.

Ken B said...

Ignore all the group selection stuff in the book. It's all wrong, and it’s not relevant. The rest of the book is great.

Google Pinker group selection if you doubt me.

Ken B said...

Ignore all the group selection stuff in the book. It's all wrong, and it’s not relevant. The rest of the book is great.

Google Pinker group selection if you doubt me.

Lucien said...

Thanks bgates for that quote, I hadn't seen that. I'd originally felt a mild sense of satisfaction that the pretentious, faux-folksie blowhard Keillor had been fired for sexual harassment. After seeing that quote, I have a full-on schadenboner.

Interesting that he described the frat boys in his rant as "misanthropic" rather than "misogynistic". Not a single word in his vile rant specifically about abusing women. Guess even in his screeds Keillor wanted to preserve the notion that what he personally was doing wasn't so bad.

The great thing is that the old cunt got to live to see his reputation destroyed and his legacy tarnished. He can't have too many years left to change perceptions, unlike e.g. Nixon who had enough time to morph from Constitution-shredding weasel to elder statesman. Keillor is just going to have to live out his golden years as a failed and fallen sexual harasser, and NPR will have to spend the next few years awkwardly pretending they never heard of him. Sometimes there is justice in the world.

LakeLevel said...

"If there's not, did MPR just really want to get rid of him for some reason, and they used this as the opportunity?"

It's probably about money and power. Another very strange thing about Minnesota is that Public radio is a big business here. There is not just one but there are two major public radio operations in the Twin Cities. MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) and APM (American Public Media, formerly Public Radio International) MPR operates more than 80 radio stations and produces and distributes original programming like A Prairie Home Companion and an extensive local news service. APM produces shows like Market Place and The Splendid Table and does a lot of the work of distributing syndicated public radio programs around the US.
Several large fortunes have been made growing and exploiting these operations. There are also a lot of high salary, cushy non-profit jobs to go around. Keillor was a large part of growing these radio empires. Someone probably got tired of Keillor throwing his weight around and took the opportunity of the current hysteria to get rid of him.

Birkel said...

Chuck, so called fopdoodle, is a big government teat sucking namby-pamby Republican.

His Republican ID is entirely based on his ********** ************ and fear of *****. Ask him about Obergefell or Lawrence and watch your ***dar. Pegged! (punintended)

That's why LLR Chuck, fopdoodle extraordinaire, hates Trump. Because Trump is not anti-*** as repressed ****** Chuck demands.

ken in tx said...

Keillor said he was trying to comfort the woman when he ran his hand up her back. Maybe he was trying to unhook her bra because it was tight and uncomfortable. She should have been grateful.

Scott said...

I actually bought a copy of Homegrown Democrat in Atlanta years ago. I don't have it anymore, though. I always felt like I had to wash my hands after handling it.