The Marxist Roots of Democrat Obstructionist Tactics

THE RANT.US ^ | FEBRUARY 18, 2005 | GREG LEWIS

[jamaksin]

Now, only if Hillary's senior paper at Wellsley were to get posted in a blog somewhere ...

[ken21]

good post.

a lot of feminism is also based on jacques lacan, michel foucault, jacques derrida, terry eagleton, etc.

critical theory is NOT very critical, imo.

[sheik yerbouty]

hers would appropriately be posted in a bog..

[ken21]

where is that, btw?

barbara olson had a copy, but she died in the 9.11 pentagon crash.

didn't rush have a copy? or access?

we need to get that and publish it before 2008!

[Borges]

What's wrong with those people? Eagleton's 'Intro to Literary Theory' is the outstanding text of its kind.

[ken21]

intro to lit theory is a good book. i read it decades ago.

but eagleton evolved a long way since then.

there was an interesting nyt article on him of about january, 2004. get it. mine's packed away.

in this interview he admits that critical theory's at an end; there's no new territory.

he's a marxist, and ironically probably made a million off of his books! he owns several estates in ireland, i think. they pictured one in the nyt article.

phony like all rich leftists.

[ModelBreaker]

Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy are too stupid to understand 'critical theory.' They are just whiners who have no constructive ideas.

The article is silly. According to the author, anyone who complains without a constructive alternative is an 'implicit' Marxist. That would make the Republicans during the New Deal Marxists.

[Borges]

It's clear he's a Marxist from that Intro book. His thesis was that all literaty theory is indeological and there is no such thing as dis-interedted criticsm. Whether or not you accept that, his discussion of various schools of thought is forthright and informed. P.S. His fueds with Stanley Fish are the stuff of legend. Anytime he writes about Fish he's a very funny man.

[twigs]

It's at Wellesley. IIRC, anyone can read it, but not take it out or photocopy it. A Freeper went to read it years ago and said the scandal was that it said very little, or not as well as would be expected, for the world's most intelligent woman.

[cricket]

". . .it is nonetheless incumbent on us to recognize that, where they would obstruct policies and practices that shore up the freedom and security of America’s citizens, liberal Democrats are no less dangerous to the freedom that we continue to enjoy than are Islamist terrorists. "

The hard, cold reality.

Have often wondered if President Bush sees this warning, as clearly.

[dmz]

Or during the Clinton administration for that matter.

[AmericanArchConservative]

Ping! on excellent comparative analysis article. Dem obstructionists employing time-dishonoured Marxist techique. It's not all about "Bush hate"...

[Beckwith]

Saul Alinsky is generally considered the father of community organizing. A criminologist by training, Alinsky in the 1930s organized the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago (made famous by Upton Sinclair's The Jungle). He went on to found the Industrial Areas Foundation while organizing the Woodlawn neighborhood, which trained organizers and assisted in the founding of community organizations around the country. In Rules for Radicals (his final work, published one year before his death), he addressed the 1960s generation of radicals, outlining his views on organizing for mass power.

Author of Reveille for Radicals, Alinsky encouraged controversy and conflict, often to the dismay of middle-class activists who otherwise would sponsor his activism. Alinsky is often credited with laying the foundation for confrontational political tactics that dominated the 1960s.

Alinsky was a ferocious critic of mainstream liberalism. A champion of radical propaganda tactics and propaganda techniques, Alinsky encouraged deception in organizational strategy.

While attending Wellesley College, a young Hillary Clinton was a major admirer of Alinsky. She wrote her undergraduate thesis on his work and ideas.

[ken21]

!!! dumb, huh?

[monocle]

Insofar as the leftists opposition to the Iraq war it is worthy to note that the Baathists, formerly known as the Baath Arab Socialist party, controlled Iraq.

[MikeHu]

Let's not give these people more credit than they deserve.

The simpler explanation as to why these people are mired in the liberalism of the '60s is that most of these people stopped growing, evolving, recreating themselves then. For most of human history, change has not been as rapid as we have known it recently. So people were largely shaped by their thoughts in their 20s and they stayed essentially the same as they aged, and because they remained rigidly tied to the past, that was a major aging factor.

With this generation, we see a fairly clear divergence in those 50 and above. Some are living 21st lives as much as teenagers are while the rest are aging in the old pattern, of insisting the world has to come around to recognizing that the '60s was the eternal golden age of achievement for humanity and that's what we have to get back to. This is what the generation of the '60s was rebelling against in their day -- the previous older generation's hold on the cultural values and control.

However, with that generation and momentum, a new pattern was established in which change became the norm rather than adjusting to the status quo. It heavily favored those who could adapt to change and even thrived under these conditions. History has passed them by and they don't realize it, may never, but the vast majority will come around to realizing that the thrust of humanity is moving and creating the 21st century life(style) rather than hoping that we revert to the 19th or even 20th century ideals.

So what we are seeing now is the challenge to all the institutions of the past -- and rooted in the past. Most will not survive. Those that do will have reinvented themselves in the 21st century with all its supporting infrastructures, which is our present realities. Those still tied to the past are rooted only in memories and old ideas -- as though they were being discovered for the first time. Many Marxists in fact, think that because they have just learned of it, the world is yet to discover it also, rather than that it was a faddish notion that had its time, was tried and proven failures many times over. These people have the arrogance of those who think they are the first to know -- rather than in fact, realizing they are among the last, and cannot understand why others fail to validate their superiority.

[ModelBreaker]

Or during the Clinton administration for that matter.

I don't think that's entirely fair. The Contract with America was constructive alternative politics at its best. Not only did we propose it. We passed it and made the Zipper-In-Chief sign most of it.

After the 1998 elections, however, I think that's a fair statement.

[Robert DeLong]

Good article.

[Former Dodger]

First step in combatting these techniques is to enforce the filibuster rules to the letter. No going home for dinner, etc, no "gentleman's filibuster", REAL filibuster, like in Mr. Smith goes to Washington, keep talking or give up the floor.