"Capitalism, A Love Story"

[bjorn_skurj]

Apparently contains some thought-lost footage of my homie, Franklin D., saying this:

Excerpt from President Roosevelt's January 11, 1944 message to the Congress of the United States on the State of the Union^[1]:

 

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

 

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength,under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury,freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

 

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

 

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.“Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

 

In our day these economic truths have become accepted asself-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

 

Among these are:

 

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

 

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

 

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

 

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

 

The right of every family to a decent home;

 

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

 

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

 

The right to a good education.

 

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

 

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.

 

 

 

 

Go, Franklin! Go, Franklin!

 

 

[Duck-Billed Catechist]

"This is a fly love song..."

[ikol]

I'm wondering when I will get my share of the profits from this movie.

[bleedorange]

That FDR speech is scary stuff indeed.

[Guest Speed Racer]

That FDR speech is scary stuff indeed.

 

Is this sarcasm, or am I experiencing a sar-chasm?

[Good Old Neon]

I'm wondering when I will get my share of the profits from this movie.

 

 

Is this sarcasm, or am I experiencing a sar-chasm?

 

[bleedorange]

Is this sarcasm, or am I experiencing a sar-chasm?

 

No. None of those things are rights. Believing that they are is what gets the government in trouble.

[uncool2pillow]

Michael Moore = Glenn Beck

 

Both will speak the truth when in serves their cause and manipulate it when it does not.

[mountain bed]

Michael Moore = Glenn Beck

 

OUCH!

[Moss]

Michael Moore = Glenn Beck

 

 

C'mon!

[Good Old Neon]

Equating Moore with Beck, is like equating Coulter with Donahue.

[uncool2pillow]

There have been 2 docs made about Moore recently, I'm too lazy to look up the titles. One was a hatchet job from conservative haters. Another was more balanced. That one has a segment about the scene in Bowling in Columbine where Moore walks out of a bank w/ a shotgun. That entire scene was completely scripted and fabricated. Moore has a very tenuous relationship with the truth and an ego bigger than his waist. Reminds me a lot of Beck. I happen to disagree with both of their extremist viewpoints. If you agree with one of them, you're likely to find this comparison false. I stand by it.

[uncool2pillow]

Sorry, one difference. Moore is definitely funnier.

[Sir Stewart]

The Moore/Beck comparison is valid to a point. My own leanings are at the heart of that 'point', I think.

[LouieB]

Sorry, one difference. Moore is definitely funnier.

Funny is good!!!

 

There are parts of Moore's movies that have always made me unconfortable, parts of Roger and me and particularly hassling an obviously disabled Charlton Heston at the end of Bowling for Columbine.

 

LouieB

[bjorn_skurj]

That FDR speech is scary stuff indeed.

I know! Especially this part: "We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. 'Necessitous men are not free men.' People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."

[LouieB]

FDR knew what he was talking about since this actually happened in many countries.

 

LouieB

[Tweedling]

The right to a decent home? Seriously? Didn't that "right" give us quite a shit storm recently?

I like the other Roosevelt better.

[bjorn_skurj]

Yeah! Eleanor kicked ass too!

[Sir Stewart]

Little known fact: Teddy Roosevelt's Secretary of State was a mountain lion.

[Good Old Neon]

There have been 2 docs made about Moore recently, I'm too lazy to look up the titles. One was a hatchet job from conservative haters. Another was more balanced. That one has a segment about the scene in Bowling in Columbine where Moore walks out of a bank w/ a shotgun. That entire scene was completely scripted and fabricated. Moore has a very tenuous relationship with the truth and an ego bigger than his waist. Reminds me a lot of Beck. I happen to disagree with both of their extremist viewpoints. If you agree with one of them, you're likely to find this comparison false. I stand by it.

 

Moore takes license with the truth for dramatic effect and entertainment value. I’m not going to defend his decision to cook that scene, among others, it was just plain dumb, and only provides ammunition to his detractors. However, the bank policy that provided new customers with a firearm is true. Say what you will about him, his movies are fact checked. Beck, on the other hand, really and truly just makes shit up out of thin air.

 

Much of what Moore does pisses me off, but comparing him to Beck is misguided. The truth is, is that there really are no comparison to be made between left wing talking heads and right wing talking heads - at least not within the realm of syndicated prime time talk show hosts. Attempts to equate, say, Coulter or Limbaugh or Savage or Hannity with someone on the left will always fail, as they simply do not exist. They‘re out there I’m sure, it’s just that none of them appear on television and radio for hours a day. Nor are they held up as exemplary members of their respective party and/or movement.

[Sir Stewart]

Attempts to equate, say, Coulter or Limbaugh or Savage or Hannity with someone on the left will always fail, as they simply do not exist.

 

Sean Hannity's head makes me feel like throwing up.

Keith Olbermann's head makes me feel like throwing up.

Checkmate.

[mountain bed]

Sean Hannity's head makes me feel like throwing up.

Keith Olbermann's head makes me feel like throwing up.

Checkmate.

What about Lawrence O'Donnell?

[Sir Stewart]

What about Lawrence O'Donnell?

 

Is that ction's real name? If so, yes.

[bjorn_skurj]

Some good history in this, and some good points on how the teabag people are using the methodologies of the hippies:

 

Intellectual conservatism, RIP

I was once a young neoconservative. The word meant something different then, before it was hijacked by extremistsBy Michael Lind

 

Sep. 22, 2009 |

 

OnSept. 18, Irving Kristol died. On Feb. 27, 2008, William F. Buckley Jr.passed away. Kristol was known as "the godfather of neoconservatism," while Buckley was the founder of the "movement conservatism" of Goldwater and Reagan. The intellectual conservatism that they, indifferent ways, sought to foster had passed from the scene before theydid.

 

 

 

I was a friend of Bill Buckley and an employee of Irving Kristol for several years in the early 1990s, as executive editor of the National Interest, the foreign policy journal published by Kristol and brilliantly edited by Owen Harries. A neoconservative of the older, Democratic school, I broke with the right in the early 1990s and warned about where right-wing radicals were taking the country in my book "Up From Conservatism."The train wreck I predicted occurred during the Bush years, and the postmortems have begun. One is Sam Tanenhaus' indispensable and just-published study "The Death of Conservatism." Another is found in a May 10 blog post by Richard Posner:"My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising... By the fall of 2008, the face of the Republican Party had become Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber. Conservative intellectuals had no party."

 

 

 

Historians of intellectual conservatism often claim that it consisted of three intellectual movements: the movement conservatism centered on Buckley's National Review, libertarianism and neoconservatism. I am not so sure that the first two qualify as intellectual movements. In the 1950s and 1960s National Review featured some brilliant mavericks like James Burnham, Willmoore Kendall and Russell Kirk, but for most of its subsequent history it was simply a partisan opinion journal. As for the libertarian intellectual movement, isn't that a contradiction in terms? How intellectual can a movement be, if it reflexively answers "the market!" to every question of domestic and foreign policy, before the question is even asked?

 

 

 

That leaves neoconservatism. But in its origins neoconservatism was a movement of the center-left, not of the right.Here is Nathan Glazer, co-editor with Irving Kristol of the Public Interest, in that magazine's final issue in spring 2005, recalling the origins of the journal in the 1960s: "All of us had voted for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, for Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and I would wager (?) that most of the original stalwarts of The Public Interest, editors and regular contributors, continued to vote for Democratic presidential candidates all the way to the present. Recall that the original definition of the neoconservatives was that they fully embraced the reforms of the New Deal and indeed the major programs of Johnson's Great Society ... Had we not defended the major social programs, from Social Security to Medicare, there would have been no need for the 'neo' before 'conservative.'"

 

 

 

The "neoconservatism" of the 1990s, defined by support for the invasion of Iraq and centered on Rupert Murdoch's magazine the Weekly Standard, edited by Irving's son William Kristol, had little to do with the original impulse, as Glazer points out: "There is very little overlap between those who promoted the neoconservatism of the 1970s and those committed to its latter day manifestation." While Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz set aside any differences with the Republican right by the 1990s, other first-generation neocons like Glazer and the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan remained true to their NewDeal/Great Society principles. Several of them told me over the yearsthat they thought of themselves as "paleoliberals," not "neoconservatives," a term that was coined as an insult by the socialist Michael Harrington and embraced as a badge of honor by Irving Kristol.

 

 

 

In its origins, neoconservatism was a defense of NewDeal/Great Society liberalism at home and abroad, both from the radical, countercultural left of the era and from its own design defects. The early neocons were Kennedy-Johnson liberals who believed that liberal reform should avoid naive utopianism and should be guided by pragmatism and empirical social science. The '70s neoconservatives were so focused on the utopianism of the '60s campus left, however,that most paid too little attention to a far greater threat to their beloved New Deal tradition, the utopianism of the libertarian right. Ultimately Milton Friedman and other free-market ideologues did far more damage to America than the carnival freaks of the counterculture.

 

 

 

But the early neoconservatives were right to defend mainstream liberalism against countercultural radicalism. Like today's right, the '60s and '70s left was emotional, expressivist and anti-intellectual. (One of its bibles was Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book!") Like today's right, the '70s left favored theatrical protest over discussion and debate. The prophets of the Age of Aquarius and the"population explosion" were every bit as apocalyptic as Glenn Beck. And just as today's right-wing radicals play at Boston Tea Parties, so Abbie Hoffman dressed up as Uncle Sam. The teabaggers are the Yippies of the right.

 

 

 

Boomer nostalgia to the contrary, in the case of practically every domestic issue disputed by the counterculture and the original neoconservatives the mainstream progressive position today is that of the neoconservatives of the '70s. While the neoconservatives of the Committee on the Present Danger in the 1970s exaggerated Soviet power, the kind of muscular liberal internationalism that Pat Moynihan defended against the left in the 1970s and against Reaganite unilateralism in the 1980s is today's progressive grand strategy. Neoconservatives like Moynihan were denounced as racists in the 1970s for saying the same things about the importance of law and order and functioning families that Clinton and Obama have been able to say without controversy. The original neoconservatives like Moynihan and Glazer sought to help the black and Latino poor by means of universal, race-neutral programs instead of race-based affirmative action, which,they warned, would spark a white backlash to the benefit of conservatives. They were right about the political potency and longevity of that backlash, too, even though today's progressives still refuse to admit it.

 

 

 

The enduring legacy of the original neoconservatives is less a matter of policy positions than a particular intellectual style. David Hume defined the essayist as a messenger from the realm of learning to the realm of conversation. Between the late '60s and the mid-'80s, the public intellectuals of the neoconservative movement shuttled between the two realms, writing essays with academic rigor and journalistic clarity for the general educated public in Commentary, edited by Norman Podhoretz, and the two quarterlies that Irving Kristol founded, the Public Interest and the National Interest. Here are a few of the essays in the inaugural issue of the Public Interest in fall 1965: Daniel Patrick Moynihan on "The Professionalization of Reform"; Robert M. Solow, "Technology and Unemployment"; Jacques Barzun, "Art -- by act-of-Congress"; Nathan Glazer, "Paradoxes of American Poverty"; Daniel Bell, "The Study of the Future." The journal in its ecumenical first issue included Robert L. Heilbroner from the left and Robert A. Nisbet from the right. If you were interested in the scintillant collision of philosophy, politics and policy, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. In an era as inhospitable as our own to the essay as a form, it is encouraging to see an attempt by conservatives to revive the Public Interest under the name of National Affairs. The influence of the neoconservative style of informed debate is evident as well in the flourishing new liberal quarterly Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.

 

 

 

In the 1950s, Irving Kristol, with the British poet Stephen Spender, had co-edited Encounter. In my view Encounter was the best magazine in the English language ever(sorry, Addison and Steele). Here is an anthology of the best of Encounter, including essays and poems by W.H.. Auden and Daniel Belland Isaiah Berlin and short stories by Nadine Gordimer and Edmund Wilson. There was a scandal in 1965 when it was revealed that this transatlantic journal of ideas was secretly funded as part of the cold war of ideas by the CIA (both Spender and Kristol claimed to have been deceived). Never was CIA money better spent.

 

 

 

Irving Kristol; his wife, the distinguished historian Gertrude Himmelfarb; and many of their friends and allies had begun on the anti-communist left, battling Stalinists in the U.S. and Europe on the intellectual front of the Cold War. Because Soviet-controlled communists in Western democracies set up cultural and intellectual front groups to battle for public opinion, the anti-Stalinist leftdecided to fight fire with fire by setting up its own network of front groups and publications, often funded, as in the case of Encounter, by the CIA. This kind of Leninist popular-front strategy, using little magazines, committees and manifestos like the Committee on the Present Danger and the Project for a New American Century, was the organizational contribution of the neoconservatives in the 1990s to their creationist and libertarian allies in the Republican right. Butby the time Kristol fils had succeeded Kristol pere as the new godfather of neoconservatism, most of the public intellectuals of the first generation like Moynihan, Bell and Glazer had distanced themselves from Neoconservatism 2.0.

 

 

 

The sins of the sons should not be visited upon the fathers. I hope that, in the judgment of history, the "paleoliberal" neoconservatism of the 1970s will overshadow the crude, militaristic neoconservatism of the 1990s and 2000s. For two decades, between the Johnson years and the Reagan years, neoconservatism really was the vital center that Arthur Schlesinger had called for in the late 1940s. A robust new liberalism, if there is to be one in the aftermath of the opportunistic triangulations of Clinton and Obama, cannot leapfrog back to the Progressives or New Dealers, but must begin closer to home, with the early neoconservatives, who had learned from the failures and mistakes as well as the successes of the Progressive Era, the New Deal and the Great Society.