Rush Limbaugh: Certified Cretin

[Winchester]

Whatever one feels/thinks about RL, can I make an appeal that we watch our language as regards Mental Health?

 

There is no such thing as a certified cretin (Praise God) any more, and use of such terminology is offensive to many people. 

 

TBH I am surprised and disheartened to see this in a thread title.

 

Look up "colloquial".

[MIKolbe]

it's just a fig newton of speech.

 

stop calling me fat

[r2Dtoo]

it's just a fig newton of speech.

stop calling me fat

You're fat MIkolbe, and that's the skinny.

[ardillacid]

Im hoping for an invitation to a vigorous, sweaty wrestling match.  

[URL=http://s1068.photobucket.com/user/hilpthop/media/wherafg_zps8acd4c85.gif.html][/URL]

[Pliny]

I've been a Rush Limbaugh fan since he started his national program.  Maybe he went a little overboard in the way he criticized this woman and her pushing of an immoral lifestyle, but politically, he's a friend of the Catholic Church, and his politics 99.99% of the time align with how Catholics "should" vote.

[Nihil Obstat]

I've been a Rush Limbaugh fan since he started his national program. Maybe he went a little overboard in the way he criticized this woman and her pushing of an immoral lifestyle, but politically, he's a friend of the Catholic Church, and his politics 99.99% of the time align with how Catholics "should" vote.

Oh really? How Catholics 'should' vote?

[Pliny]

Oh really? How Catholics 'should' vote?

I think they ought to put justice first and vote for those who would protect life in the womb.

 

Rush Limbaugh never supports pro-abortion candidates, but according to many polls, a shameful amount of Catholics do.

[Nihil Obstat]

I think they ought to put justice first and vote for those who would protect life in the womb.

 

Rush Limbaugh never supports pro-abortion candidates, but according to many polls, a shameful amount of Catholics do.

Not murdering is obvious, and a pretty low standard. How 'should' a Catholic vote though, besides "no voting to murder people"?

[Pliny]

There are policies that can be debated, but I don't see how we have a choice when one candidate is pro-life and the other is pro-choice.

 

I think Catholics need to support the pro-life candidate every time.  Usually it happens to be a Republican, which is why I am a Republican, besides the fact that I prefer more economic freedom and less manipulation and control of the marketplace.

 

The Catholic who votes for a Democrat because he thinks he'll get better health care or some government benefit has misplaced his priorities and is only thinking about number 1, besides the very misguided ones who want free birth control or who actually favor abortion rights.

 

Anyway, the point I meant to make is that if someone had voted according to Rush Limbaugh's political preferences, he would have 99.99% of the time voted on the side of the innocent person in the womb.  The Democrats accuse the Republicans of waging a war against women, but the Democrats have been waging a war against the unborn for many years, and they seem to be winning big, with more than 1,000,000 victims to their credit every year.

[Nihil Obstat]

What about when all candidates support moral evil?

[4588686]

What about when all candidates support moral evil?

 

 

Do we have to get on this ride again.  Anarchism isn't a serious proposal.  Why not?  

 

James Woodburn ("Egalitarian Societies", Man 17,3 (1982):431-451) offers the following general description of a large number of extant hunter-gatherer societies: `"Social groupings are flexible and constantly changing in composition...People are not dependent on specific other people for access to basic requirements'' and "relationships between people, whether relationships of kinship or other relationships, stress sharing and mutuality but do not involve long-term binding commitments and dependencies.'' (p. 434These societies, he suggests, are "profoundly egalitarian... [they] systematically eliminate distinctions--other than those between the sexes--of wealth, of power and of status... relationships between men and women are quite variable in these societies, although in all of them women have far more independence than is usual in [modern societies].''

Christopher Boehm concurs with Woodburn in his famous book Hierarchy in the Forest (2000). He observes that we humans share with other primates the striving for hierarchical power, but hunter-gatherers successfully countered the dominance aspirations of "bullies" by what he calls "reverse dominance hierarchy." By this he means that hunter-gatherers do not accept being controlled by an alpha-male, and are extremely sensitive to attempts of group members to accumulate power. When an individual appears to be stepping out of line by threatening or killing group members, he will be warned and punished. If this behavior continues and he cannot be ostracized, the group will delegate one or more members (usually including at least one close relative of the offender) to kill him. Boehm's message in Hierarchy in the Forest is that "egalitarianism...involves a very special type of hierarchy, a curious type that is based on antihierarchical feelings" and that we are genetically predisposed to exhibit these antihierarchical feels, because individuals with excessively pro-hierarchical feelings have tended to be underrepresented in the gene pool through the process of reverse dominance hierarchy.

These societies are anthropologist David Graeber's inspiration for this short and engaging book on the possibilities for an anarchist society. "The basic principles of anarchism---self-organization, voluntary association, mutual aid," he correctly asserts, are "forms of human behavior [that have] been around as about as long as humanity." (p. 3) Moreover, he suggests that we can go back to older and simpler forms of social organization: "The West may have introduced some new possibilities, but it hasn't canceled any of the old ones out." (p. 51)

What Graeber does not tell us is that the highly egalitarian societies of which he approves are virtually universally "immediate-return" societies. In immediate return societies group members obtain direct return from their labor in hunting and gathering, with food lasting at most a few days. The tools and weapons they use are highly portable. The alternative to immediate-return societies are "delayed return" societies in which the group recognizes that individuals hold rights over some sorts of valuable assets. The main types of such assets are valuable means of production, such as boats, nets, and beehives, processed and stored food or materials, and herds of animals. In delayed-return societies this egalitarianism gives way to highly inegalitarian forms of social stratification akin to those in modern societies: lineages, clans, chiefdoms and the like.

As commentator mtraven pointed out to me, Graeber does touch on this issue, as follows;

"There have been all sorts of successful experiments: experiments with worker's self-management, like Mondragon; economic projects based on the idea of the gift economy, like Linux; all sorts of political organizations based on consensus and direct democracy..."

However, these experiments have being going on for more than a century and have never amounted to more than a blip on the economic charts. Linux, Mozilla Foxfire and other voluntary contribution software initiatives have become megolith profit-maximizing firms. Except for a few outliers, like the Apache server and Aptana Studio, professional software developers use commercial software. Worker self-management, which I championed for many years, only works in firms with very low capital per head (such as law firms) or where the capital is extremely marketable (such as airlines) and where the degree of differentiation of the work force is very low. Moreover, successful worker-owned firms hire labor in the second generation and become capitalist owners themselves. All this is well described in the literature.

I am not sure exactly why delayed-return societies have been able to overcome the innate egalitarian morality of which Graeber is so wistfully fond. Most likely the basis for egalitarianism in hunter-gatherer groups with lethal weapons (knives, spears, poisoned arrows, and the like) is the ability of any man to kill any other, if only by taking him by surprise or in his sleep. This capacity, by the way, is completely lacking in other primate species, which therefore rather prefer either solitary life or a social dominancy hierarchy with an alpha-male who rules by virtue of force alone. In delayed-return societies, there are forms of wealth that an aspiring despot can use to forge durable alliances protecting him from the masses whom he exploits.

My conclusion is that only delayed-return societies can support a high level of material well-being, and such societies have the military power to control or marginalize any immediate-return society that might arise. Even if all societies magically became egalitarian and stateless, a mutant with an eye towards exploiting the weak could use delayed-return techniques to grow and eventually control and supplant egalitarian immediate-return societies.

Anarchism is thus anachronistic, except for a small group of people who want to opt out of the world system and live in its social interstices. This does not mean that one cannot be an egalitarian. Indeed, the rise of liberal democratic capitalism and representative government have shifted the balance of power, even in delayed-return societies, to the masses---at least by contrast with the despotic and corrupt systems in the poor countries of the world today, and by equally strong contrast with the despotic and totalitarian systems of the past.

The anarchists are disillusioned with liberal democratic capitalism because it is so unequal, and it leave so much poverty to itself while the rich and privileged wallow in obscene luxury. In fact, the only corrective for this situation is more democracy and more control over the aspirations of despots.

The history of freedom is indeed U-shaped.. Our immediate-return hunter-gatherer ancestors were dignified and free, but life still was nasty, brutish and short. With the rise of delayed-return societies (agriculture, settled trade, bureaucratic state institutions), social dominance hierarchy was reestablished, but the democratic collective action of the masses of subjects since the mid-eighteenth century has turned the tide in favor of democracy and welfare-state capitalism.

 

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2UPYF502IMU62

 

So, now that we can be clear that extreme right libertarian is not a serious proposal we can accept that politics is morally complex and ambiguous.  Politics should be driven to moral ends and, to the greatest extent possible, moral means, but not by moral purity, which is just worthless.  

Edited December 1, 2013 by Hasan

[Semper Catholic]

Rush is one of the most immoral persons of prominence in America. I'm not sure how you could call yourself a Christian if you wilfully support him.

[southern california guy]

Rush is one of the most immoral persons of prominence in America. I'm not sure how you could call yourself a Christian if you wilfully support him.

 

He's only been married something like 4 times.  And really the New York Times shouldn't reported that he was caught at the airport, with viagra, made out in his doctors name -- upon his (single at the time) return from a "Men's Weekend" in the Dominican Republic.

 

It's not like he's some sort of shameless weathly East coast upper class Republican.

Edited December 1, 2013 by southern california guy

[Nihil Obstat]

I said nothing about anarchism duder. Just the proper response when all candidates support moral evil.

[NotreDame]

wow, an entire thread devoted to ad hominem attacks... classy.