The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

They will be back! Made my night. Seriously.

Ron Paul is not really running for president
 

Rather he is running with some very important ideas, the most compelling of which is his critique of US foreign policy. He is the ONLY figure on the national stage at present who questions US liberal and neo-con interventionism, militarism and brutal global hegemony.

He is THE antiwar/pro-peace candidate for 2012, in the tradition of Dennis Kucinich in 2008 and 2004 and Ralph Nader in 2000. That's why our inclusive non-partisan peace culture respects Paul, even with all his warts.

He will never be the Republican candidate for president much less win a national election, but his ideas will influence generations of Republican, Democrat and independent voters to come.

President Obama managed to get one war right; Paul has basically gotten all US wars right. That's a major intellectual and spiritual accomplishment that overshadows whatever murky homophobic or racist baggage Paul may have or whatever kooky ideas he may hold about the gold standard and the Fed.

Don't let the mainstream War Party media make this about Ron Paul, the person. Paul the person matters very little. What matters a great deal is the eye-on-the-prize foreign policy vision for the future. The ideas, not the person, are becoming part of the national conversation. That's a good thing.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

Good news for bhtv. Maybe it will last a bit longer. Because John and Glenn have mastered the medium---and concision, I agree, is very important--they are always worth listening to, even when, especially when, they disagree. Of course, their "bromance" is essential as well to their performance.

Interesting neologism, btw.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

Good stuff guys, looking forward to more in 2012.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

Agreed. That news just helped rescue the end of 2011 for me. Anything these two can give is very much appreciated.

But, I hope John still does Up with Chris Hayes. There's an art to that format, too.

How to Murder blacks and get away with it - advice from Ron Paul
 

John McWhorter seriously thinks that a neoconfederate defense of slavery and defense of the legal framework of Jim Crow make Ron Paul an interesting intellectual? I think they make him a monster, but also extremely popular in the Republican Party.

It was the "peace candidate" himself who published and possibly wrote the following.


And this gem:

Ron Paul is also the monster who said that healthy 30 year olds who require emergency medical care should be left to die if they don't have insurance.

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/6...partycheer.png
(Video)

If these are your values, by all means, support Ron Paul.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

So, do you think it's possible to be an intellectual and clearly crazy?

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

Ron Paul being impervious to the racist statements made in his newsletter reminds me of President Obama never having heard his former long time spiritual advisor and minister Jeremiah Wright's incendiary remarks concerning America, Israel, and Jews. To both: give me a break.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

I don;t recall obama publishing and/or signing Wright's statements.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

I will use one bhtv commenter's handle: "ohcomeon."

Re: How to Murder blacks and get away with it - advice from Ron Paul
 

Pay no attention to THE man behind the curtain. The great and powerful peace candidate Paul has spoken. Disregard his ideas in toto. Just click your heels together and say: there's no peace like Paul's ... there's no peace like Paul's ...

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

Correct.

People try to defend Paul by finding false equivalencies. The degree of responsibility for the content of a political figure's newsletter isn't the same as responsibility for what his/her grandmother said, or his minister dislikes or word-fires at. Paul had 100% control over what gets published under his name in his newsletters.

Re: How to Murder blacks and get away with it - advice from Ron Paul
 

The more I find out about this fellow Paul, the more I dislike him. I'm glad he won't make it anywhere near a true candidacy. Whatever he says about the military will be ignored and forgotten in no time. However, he's recruiting and giving voice to white supremacist groups and he is validating the sinister self serving philosophy behind the so called libertarian cause. Disgusting.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

OMG, you're sooo cynical!

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

And Mr. Obama had 100% control over his body sitting in Wright's pews.

And BTW, how many angels dance on the head of a pin?

Either you like these guys and forgive them for things you don't agree with or you don't. For Godssake...it's not complicated.

Re: How to Murder blacks and get away with it - advice from Ron Paul
 

I would think you'd love having this fellow near the true candidacy, as would TS and graz.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

Well, yes, if the only level of analysis is "things you like about candidate x or y and things you don't."

But we are comparing Obama attending a church where (when he was not at said church) negative things were said from the pulplit by someone other than Obama vs. Paul's newlsetter, promoted and sponsored by him and bearing his signature.

If you can't see a difference there in what is fair to hold someone responsible for, then I have a beef with the second cousin of your former boss's girlfriend that I want you to fix.

Re: How to Murder blacks and get away with it - advice from Ron Paul
 

Indeed. He may not become the Republican candidate. Yet he is giving voice and gaining legitimacy for a whole host of vile and pernicious ideas that are festering in the core of his chosen party. The push back against him is not surprising. It's not personal. The politics demand it!

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

I don't care enough about any of this to muster up an opinion about what is fair.

But this does put me in mind of the twisted logic employed while trying to make Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin responsible for the Arizona shootings. Clucking hens.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

Glenn Loury: (exasperated) Purity of heart? Is that the criterion? What is this sanctimony? ... It seems infantile to me ... that to me is just stupidity politics ... if this is the evidence, I'm prepared to move on.

Heh. I would say several people on here got owned, but these people would need the ability to self-reflect for that to even be possible. In any case, thank you, Glenn.

McWhorter and Loury both understand a reasonable, non-racist argument for opposing the Civil Rights Act.

How many brains were exploded here?

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

Crazy? I don't know. That seems a problem of definition. I think what we're usually dealing with is being an intellectual and being really disastrously wrong on policy. That latter part seems to be confused with crazy.

Re: How to Murder blacks and get away with it - advice from Ron Paul
 

Nothing is personal I would say. We wish him a long and healthy life, away from politics and any position of power. He's a human being after all, it just so happens that his ideas stink!

advice from Ron Paul
 

Whats that supposed to mean? Maybe I agree that anyone who speaks out against a murderous war machine will be forgotten in the pathetic mainstream culture and media that dominates US politics. Imagine if the US actually talked to her so called enemies.

Can you elaborate on him recruiting white supremacist groups? Surely its about what he says himself and what he advocates regarding policies etc. As far as I'm aware he's the only one in the rebublican race who has stated the inherent discrimination in the courts system towards blacks and hispanics which he's criticized for from his own party.

I'm not a fan of the libertarian philosophy he espouses but Paul has been one of the main critics of the oligarchic control the corporate and financial system has had over US politics for decades now, and thus why he receives little financial support from these oligarchs.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

This seems to me a false equivalence. In comparison to the Ron Paul passages quoted above by twinswords, what Jeremiah Wright said in his "infamous" sermon about Iraq and US foreign policy in the ME--- the "chickens coming home to roost," "God damn America "etc----seems pretty tame; indeed one might well argue that Wright was merely stating the obvious. Susan Sontag said the same thing a few days after 9/11, admittedly in more cerebral, measured tones.

Anti-semitism? Do you mean this (from Wikipedia)?

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

I remember the first time I broached this subject on the forum. It was almost as if I had questioned the cause of climate change.

Some things must never be said.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

This was Loury's main point. If you stand for something, it's up to you to make clear justification for it. That's the whole purpose of the marketplace of ideas. But some people get their feelings hurt and then call BHTV police to have posts removed. Gotta love freedom of speech! It wouldn't exist if these people had political power.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

Right. There used to be a priest at the church I attend who said stuff in homilies that I really didn't agree with (and which would irritate me) all the time. Sometimes I'd want to go argue with him afterwards (I never did), usually I just tried to avoid him. I suspect this is common enough in some form or another.

On the other hand, I never invited said priest to blog under my name, which is a closer comparison to the Paul situation.

Speaking of Paul, the Edge of the West blog linked to a 2007 piece that I missed at the time going into both Paul's Civil Rights Act views (which have been discussed some) and some statements about the Civil War and Lincoln. I just don't see how, given everything, Paul's anti war statements could possibility seen as support for a progressive POV or at all separated out from the background to them and his paleolibertarism and associations with the far right. It's all tainted, basically in the same way as opposing the CW because "it's wrong for the pushy feds to interfere with the rights of states to have slaves" would be.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

I can understand people listening to their radio brain-washers or internet bots and parroting their false equivalencies here. But once you lay out the differences, that are extremely obvious, insisting that it's all the same, and angels and pins and the like, well, there's nothing else to discuss. It's pure political blindness. And there's no reasoning that can get through that one.

People who like Paul, like him for whatever reasons, or because he's Republican, or because they don't like Obama, and they will look the other way when the uglier aspects come to light, because those aspects aren't ugly enough, or because they fool themselves thinking that it wasn't really him who wrote them and therefore they exonerate him from responsibility. Basically, the goal is to have him come out of this discussion "clean", no matter how much grime is on him.

The tendency to do this isn't particular to Republicans, or conservatives, or pro-Paul commenters. But regardless, the rest of us who haven't contracted the pro-Paul blindness, have the responsibility to bring it up. And also we have the responsibility to point out the fallacy of "you do it with these other things about Obama" or "you did it with all these other [unrelated] things", which are all ridiculous and don't hold up to scrutiny.

And that's the way it goes.

Boy, I'll miss Science Saturday!

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

The marketplace is strewn with platitudes and pandering...the most recent is making a huge deal out of giving pizza money to dads to boost the economy whilst raising the cost of mortages and simultaneously trying to encourage lending by printing money.

We should all be ashamed at the state of our collective ignorance and what we allow to pass.

Re: How to Murder blacks and get away with it - advice from Ron Paul
 

Classic TwinSwords. Incorrectly interpreting what other people say and then create a mini novella of blah blah blah? 60% of the time it happens every time.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

Well, I think it's difficult to say whether a public figure is crazy, especially given how they are trying to present images to people.

However, one can say that particular statements or ideas are crazy, and I think the distance between your "disastrously wrong on policy" and my "crazy" is probably not that far, at least as regards Paul.

I also think that intellectuals often come up with crazy ideas (and are much more rarely crazy themselves, but it does happen). Not sure if I'd call Paul an intellectual, either way.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

Yeah, you and me both. were it not the case that my professional life doesn't allow it and that my wife would probably kill me, I'd have loved to have a diavlog with you about some aspect of human behavior where our interests overlapped but our opinions didn't.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

The popular term being 'thinking outside the box'

Re: How to Murder blacks and get away with it - advice from Ron Paul
 

Actually, if you read the New Republic article, from which twinswords drew his quotations, you will see that his interpretation of Ron Paul's remarks is the same as the interpretation of the writer of that article.

Are they both incorrectly interpreting Ron Paul? Maybe, but the circumstantial evidence suggests otherwise.

Re: advice from Ron Paul
 

Yes, that's what I mean. That whatever he says that goes against the aggressive interventionistic pro-military proclivity that has taken deep root in both parties but even more so in the Republican party, will be ignored and forgotten quickly. Media and mainstream culture are equal partners in this phenomenon.


I'm referring to this.


Whether he likes the endorsement or not, the racist message endorsed in his newsletter legitimizes the kind of supremacist talk that has been shunned (for good reasons) from higher level political figures.


I can only tell you what I hear from him these days. This is the message he wants to give as a candidate.

Would any candidate ever be able to hold on to the principles you cite? I don't think so. That's why some candidates are just that. If they go heavy against the establishment (corporate and financial oligarchies, military industrial complex, for example) they are not viable. If they go heavy against certain groups (minorities for example) they are also less viable.

Paul is walking a thin line trying to give voice to some raw ideas which mobilize underrepresented groups, for both good and bad causes (from my perspective), such as white supremacists, and racists, anti-government, anti- social safety net, anti- universal health care, on one hand. And then he also expresses anti-interventionism sentiments, and may have expressed anti corporate power ideas in the past.

As you can see each political base can pick and choose which message to listen to and which one to ignore. The bottom line, he's not a viable candidate, and he lacks enough leadership to be a game changer. So, he's just a "fill-in" figure that keeps people busy talking about him while he has no significant base that can embrace all of his ideas. If he wants to be more viable, he will have to sell out to the base of his party. Which of his ideas do you think he will give up and which ones will he emphasize if it came to that?

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

I understand time constraints and professional life neutrality/ anonymity considerations, but why would your wife kill you?

Goldbugs worse than closeted racists
 

Hats off to Glenn for saying that so very well put. People don't understand how much of Paul's economic ideas are dangerous and insane. Forget abolishing Fed and a return togold standard the casual $1 trillion spending cut in the Federal budget that Paul advocates will certainly land the US in a severe recession.

Not all fundamentalists are religious and Paul is a non-religious fundamentalist. He does not care about the reality outside of his simple ideology. If he gets into office he will blindly pursue his disastrous policies with the kind of zeal you only see in the feverishly religious (most likely he will be forced out of the office in his first term). And that is why he is the scariest candidate out there.

Re: The Bromance (John McWhorter & Glenn Loury)
 

She's very private, and I am an extension of her, so....

The fact that I even have a facebook page is a constant source of annoyance for her.

Re: How to Murder blacks and get away with it - advice from Ron Paul
 

Actually, if you read my reply to TS, you'll see that I was commenting on his mischaracterization of McWhorter's position. As to TS' other assertion about Ron Paul supporting Jim Crow, it just happens to be precisely the opposite here and here.

You guys all love to trust hearsay and refuse to go to the source. Why is that, exactly? Didn't you complain about DSK not getting a fair shake? What do you think you're doing?