Robert J. Birgeneau is the latest casualty of our embryonic Red Guards
Another would-be commencement speaker bows out in response to pressure from students who deem him insufficiently pure for their tender sensibilities.
Birgeneau refused to say sufficient mea culpas, the price he would have had to pay for the privilege of addressing the august students and faculty of Haverford:
Some students and faculty members at Haverford, a liberal arts college near Philadelphia, objected to the invitation to Mr. Birgeneau to speak and receive an honorary degree because, under him, the University of California police used batons to break up an Occupy protest in 2011. He first stated his support for the police, and then a few days later, saying that he was disturbed by videos of the confrontation, ordered an investigation.
Those at Haverford who objected to his being honored asked Mr. Birgeneau to apologize and to meet a list of demands, including leading an effort to train campus security forces in handling protests better; he refused.
And this despite the fact that Birgeneau is of the liberal persuasion:
Campus activists on the left have long objected to appearances by more conservative figures like Ms. Rice, though usually the events proceeded despite the protests. What is far more unusual is to see them block appearances by figures like Ms. Lagarde, a trailblazing woman usually seen as a centrist, who faced criticism over I.M.F. policies toward poor nations that predated her tenure; or Mr. Birgeneau, who was known for liberal policies toward students who were gay or not authorized to be in the country.
My “Red Guards” reference in the title of this post is, of course, to this [emphasis mine]:
The Cultural Revolution was orchestrated by the Chinese leader, an effort to build a utopian society through class struggle. It drove the country to the brink of civil war and, by some estimates, cost more than 1 million lives.
The early phases of the Cultural Revolution were centered on China’s schools. In the summer of 1966, the Communist Party leadership proclaimed that some of China’s educators were members of the exploiting classes, who were poisoning students with their capitalist ideology. Indeed, the educated classes in general were marked as targets of the revolution.
The leadership gave Communist youth known as Red Guards the green light to remove educators from their jobs and punish them.
My comparison is hyperbole. The current crop of American students isn’t killing or beating anyone—yet. Nor is their target their professors, but that’s probably because their professors have for the most part already been purged and are pure. In fact, at Haverford and at other colleges where commencement speakers have been recently driven out, the protesting students are joined by professors. Or perhaps it’s the other way around, with professors leading the way.
Some of you who were appalled at the campaign against speakers Hirsi Ali, Condoleezza Rice, and Christine Lagarde, all of whom are women, two of whom are black, and none of whom are liberals, may not be as upset about this action against the liberal Birgeneau. Hoist by his own petard, as it were. But I see this as the most ominous of the four events, precisely because it represents evidence of an ever-increasing fanaticism and power on the part of this group. The Red Guards started small, too.
[NOTE: I hadn’t read this article by Scott Johnson before I wrote this piece, but he seems to agree about Birgeneau, likening his treatment to the “Reign of Terror” stage of revolutions where the rebels start devouring their own.]
During Mao’s Cultural Revolution, especially in the early stages, there was a contest to see who could be most “ideologically pure”. One method of proving your faith to the party was to denounce someone, anyone, and accuse them of being counter-revolutionary. And it was primarily the young who were the movers and shakers in the movement.
Are we seeing a similar happening here? While I probably share nothing with Mr. Birgeneau I think it tragic that we have come to this. And I fear it will get much worse before it ever improves.
My view from inside the academy is that these purges are being instigated by faculty who then recruit leftist students to take up the main protest.
Then: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Now: “I disapprove of what you say, and I will defend to the death my right to make you shut up.”
OR, Mrs. Whatsit, “I disapprove of whom you kiss while on camera, and I will defend to the death my right to say bigoted things without consequence because I hide my fear of societal change behind a fig leaf of religion.”
OR
“I feel completely unnerved that the United States will be majority-minority within a few decades and defend to the death my right to express my fears in completely unacceptable language because it’s my darn basketball plantation, not yours.”
Comparing to Red Guards is not hyperbole: “The current crop of American students isn’t killing or beating anyone–yet.” I think many of the commencement activists and their Democrat apologists were also activists and apologists for the Occupy Movement, which certainly was violently intimidating and destructive of property like the Red Guards.
College students learned long ago that college presidents have the spine of a jellyfish.
Neo: “But I see this as the most ominous of the four events, precisely because it represents evidence of an ever-increasing fanaticism and power on the part of this group.”
Granted, my college days are approaching sepia-toned, but the composition of campus radical-left activists and their narrative themes – as distinct from the details – don’t seem different from what I experienced in college.
I don’t think they are more fanatic nor (it appears from afar) more numerous.
What has changed is the amplification and reach – the power, as you say – of their activism.
Colleges are key, social trend-setting intellectual and cultural nodes. Controlling them in order to re-educate the educators is an essential piece of the activist game.
It doesn’t appear that campus leftists have changed intrinsically. The change is the growing effect of the activist method.
Which is to say, rather than an evolution in the nature of the user, you’re looking at a technological advance, which is an evolution in the effective capability of the same user.
And that is a golden opportunity for the Right because, as I often say, Marxist-method activism is not an ideology. Activist capability is not exclusive to the Left. It’s a mercenary method, a workshop of social tools for different settings and goals that anyone can use to reify any cause. Leftists are doing the heavy-lifting to improve the activist method so the people of the Right don’t have to discover electricity and invent the wheel.
Other users can utilize the social programming cues, techniques, tactics, and procedures pioneered by left activists, which are especially effective on campus.
The Right ought to focus on campus. Of the main social-cuing nodes of media, pop culture, government, education, and academia, right activists starting out with modest means can generate outsized effect in the micro-scale of campus by following the convenient paths that have been efficiently constructed and continually improved by the Left.
physicsguy: “My view from inside the academy is that these purges are being instigated by faculty who then recruit leftist students to take up the main protest.”
That formula can be adjusted. Activism is adaptable. The civil-military movement in the Ivy League was started – instigated – by students. Pro-military Ivy League professors had an instrumental role among the faculty and administrators, but they were recruited into a student-generated movement.
The dissidents are there on campus. physicsguy is one self-identified example. They just need to be organized as activists.
You know who would be a good person for Neo to talk to on the issue of campus politics? Matt Continetti, whom she cited earlier. As well as being a smart, keen journalist, he’s a Columbia grad just old enough to have a wider-lens perspective of campus society, yet still young enough for a current perspective of it. Continetti also happened to have a front-row seat for the Ivy civil-military movement while he was at Columbia that should serve as a model for campus right activism.
Ray: “College students learned long ago that college presidents have the spine of a jellyfish.”
If that’s true and it is also true that campus norms skew left nowadays, then that means student-right activists have a realistic opportunity to change an academic culture that is as malleable as “the spine of a jellyfish”. That it’s been made malleable by student-left activists doesn’t mean it’s only malleable for student-left activists.
I think Brandeis’ treatment of Hirsi Ali is worse than the disgusting Haverford treatment of Birgenau. It was Brandeis’ administration, its president, who disinvited Hirsi Ali, while a subset of faculty/students pressured Birgenau, who withdrew. The Haverford president rather feebly says he tried to keep Birgenau on the program. See Haverford.edu (link won’t set, getting new computer!).
But these cases rather starkly delineate the sorry state into which the “most competitive” baccalaureate institutions have descended. The appalling fact is they have been as loathesome for decades. Just not as visible.
It was 1991 when Katherine MacKinnon, the eminent (!) feminist law professor, shouted repeatedly at the top of her lungs, “All men are fuckers” as the culmination of her brief Haverford commencement address for which she received an “Honorary Doctor of Laws” degree. It is understood that likely half of her audience was male. The College admin. and professoriat were silent. And it didn’t make the WSJ.
Bottom line: this has been going on a long, long time, and the expensive (these schools cost >$60/yr full pay) brain-washing continues quite unabated. Haverford is deemed one of the 10 “best” liberal arts colleges in the country, and they are doctrinally all the same.
>$60K/yr
daChipster, you’ve missed the point.
“The current crop of American students isn’t killing or beating anyone–yet”
I wouldn’t sweat it. The current crop of college students aren’t the violent type. They’ve been raised to settle their differences by trading insults on Facebook and Twitter, and de-friending each other. They not fighters, they’re tweeters.
Pajama boy and his generation don’t exactly send a shiver up your spine.
The current crop of American students isn’t killing or beating anyone–yet.
So why are campus rapes so high and the special way they are dealt with feels more like the Duke Lacrosse frame up?
And how are we to know that the targets of these crimes aren’t political in nature rather than random?
OT but somewhat related:
Mrs Whatsit (as usual) is logical and objective and daChipster is a name-caller, nothing more. The political agenda of the Left is name-calling, nothing sophisticated, just warm and fuzzy hatred.
One of the most fascinating and interesting periods of all mankind is the red Chinese cultural revolution, sort of like the flagellants or the tulip bubble.
Yet on cable tv every day, all day long, all one sees is the national socialists of Germany. It is fascinating and interesting, but no more than the fascination and interest of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, and other Leftist sadists.
For anyone in doubt that we are swamped with soviet propaganda, the exclusive focus on the national socialists of Germany socialists is an inarguable fact of Leftist re-writing of history.
It is a deliberate brain-washing, the daily reiteration that the hatred and sadism, the cruelty of the 20th century, had only one source. And not even the “main” source, as horrific and cruel as it was.
Why is not the Hitler-Stalin pact a daily topic, let alone their agreement on how to govern?
They will come, and there will be violence and slavery, and repressions and horrible fear and distrust and economic misery, and everything. This is like predicting the weather. When you see a cold front coming in from Canada; it’s gong to get cold. It might be mild now and part of you does not believe it will cold, when the front comes through. But it will, and you’d be fooling yourself if you acted otherwise.
The only question…the only question is whether we cower in fear like the brave people of Boston did when they hid in their basements for a week from two teenagers…
Or if we fight the bi&^%es and bastards now.
There is not another issue here. That’s it. The rest is blah blah hiding in the basement and pretending.
The matter of how to fight is another thing; but there is simply no other decision to be made. It’s surrender or fight, Period.
I say we fight the bastards.
DaChipster does us a service by reminding us of the quality of thought and discourse that opposes our values I presume that he is now enrolled, or recently departed from, a campus. Clearly, his parents have wasted whatever they invested.
Mike, you may be right. Actually, I rather doubt it, however. These little mobs, and it is striking how small their numbers, get their way because those who oppose them cower at their own shadows. The scary aspect is that Secretary Rice, among others, withdrew with no resistance. Then, there are the Administrators.
On the other hand there are indications that people have just about reached the flash point. The rally behind the rancher in Nevada, and other events may foretell a more robust response to the pissants–whether they are in government issued body armor, or the ragged costume of the campus. Although they do not get much notice in the MSM, there are a lot of people who will still fight to preserve the essence of this country. In fact, there are a lot of people who have done so.
“daChipster, you’ve missed the point.”
“… I hide my fear of societal change behind a fig leaf of religion…. and defend to the death my right to express my fears in completely unacceptable language because it’s my darn basketball plantation, not yours.”
What we have here is not someone missing the point. Its just a footy pj wearing twerp sipping hot chocolate while lusting to sign up at the Red Guard recruitment office where he imagines all of us fig leaf wearing plantation owners will wilt before the wisdom of his self-righteous snarkiness.
daChipster’s summa exit from UIC with an MS was, alas, over two decades ago. In the intervening time he was a Republican committeeman and elected official in Henry Hyde’s district, where he learned how to discern motive and how to push its button from the most successful local GOP in Illinois.
The only way to win elections is honesty with yourself. The rest is optional. The GOP is in its final throes. Join the melting pot.
Look at Page 11 of this PDF:
http://uspakistan.uschamber.info/files/2012/09/WhyPakistan.pdf
See anyone you recognize?
Now look at the “student protesters” at Rutgers: notice anything about them? (Note: this website is rather heated, but it’s the ONLY one I could find after 20 minutes of googling that had ANY photos of these mysterious “protesters”: the dearth of photos is, in my opinion, quite telling.)
http://tinyurl.com/oc8xj8r
In other words, it wasn’t “generic leftist” students who fomented the protest, it was radical Muslim students. And, given the size of the Rutgers student body, not too many of them, at that.
This made me wonder whether, as Rice is involved with the US – Pakistan Business Council (USPBC), she ducked out quickly in order to avoid roiling those waters.
The USPBC, fyi, is a US Chamber of Commerce-sponsored organization to facilitate the moving overseas of American businesses, along the lines of the India model. If you look at the PDF of their brochure, linked above, note how they dance around the issue of what they coyly call “sectarian violence.”
“Join the melting pot.”
The melting pot is old school about 3 decades ago and racist-sexist-homo-islamo-phobic to boot. Today what is in vogue are recipes for a diversity of multicultural salads where people like me are deemed spoiled leaves of arugula to be turned into compost to enrich the soil for the transformation to utopia. No thank you.
Oldflyer: the techoweenies may be weenies but enough of them are tech-talented enough to cause us brontosauruses real hardship while we engage in search and seize.I don’t mean just keyboard-savvy, but with chemicals and biologicals too.
Call of the Wild\
Hot! Hey! I just got\\\
my pedigree\’
It isn’t a degree\\
of something I’M NOT.\\
Dam u! I’m proud.
!
cALL me authentic\
pas6 the dial\
listen my toney tone\
I’ve got awhile.
Who is that on the phone\
Calling, calling me home!;
I guess I’ll go now
join the crowd.
daChipster,
Most politicians that come out of Illinois are corrupt, and every politician that comes out of Chicago. Hyde’s personal history hints at that, and Obama’s screams it.
If that’s where you learned your chops, no wonder your worldview is so warped.
And as I think about it, this statement seems increasingly ominous, “The only way to win elections is honesty with yourself.”
I notice that you didn’t say “honesty with the voters.” Since there are many elected officials that are demonstrable liars, it’s factually correct. But I also notice there’s no attempt to say that they ought to be honest with them.
Since you only need by honest with yourself, the implication is that not only is it permissible to lie to voters, but probably also wise.
So I’m left with the crawling feeling that what you’re doing is justifying your own sociopathy.
neo-neocon,
“Some of you who were appalled at the campaign against speakers Hirsi Ali, Condoleezza Rice, and Christine Lagarde…”
Note: in descending order.
Robert J. Birgeneau’s defenestration was the least surprising or appalling of all. As the leftists succeed, their pool of victims becomes rarified. But the Struggle must continue, so where to find the next oppressor?
Per your analogy to the Red Guard, they must be manufactured.
The truly pathetic thing is that, when they come for the leftist faculty, the faculty will probably think that they deserve it…and they will be partially right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp8V2O80tv0
Don’t forget the IRS wants you.
Golly, I’m feeling rather like a commencement speaker.
Most politicians to come out of Illinois are crooked? Followed by throwing the author of the Hyde Amendment and the floor manager of the Clinton impeachment trial under the bus? Your derangement syndrome has reached new heights if that is the level of collateral damage you’re eager to inflict, Lt. Calley.
By your argument, most politicians to come out of the Old South are racist, most politicians to come out of California are, indeed, a crook, and most politicians to come out of Idaho are one manifesto short of unabombing.
There are good and bad people on both sides. But the game is rigged. The reason I stopped running for things is that, the higher you climb, the more you have to compromise yourself, assuming you weren’t compromised or a complete idiot to begin with.
Money has rigged the game. If you want honesty in elections, publicly fund them. Level the playing field. As to honesty in the candidates, I refer you to the words Shakespeare put – ironically – in Polonius’ advice to his son: to thine own self be true and it follows, as the day follows the night, that thou canst not be false to any man.
I may have paraphrased that, a bit. Been a while since I stuck my nose in Hamlet. And now I’ve got Gilligan’s musical version in my head!
Parker, that’s not compost you’ve got there, that’s fertilizer. Being white is not a privelege nor an honor nor a crime nor a burden. It’s an accident of genetics in the production of melanin. At some point it in pre-history it conferred a localized evolutionary advantage on a group of proto-Europeans and the rest is history.
That history includes, thanks in large part to the US, an increasing acceptance of an individual on their merits. Unfortunately there are several types of -phobes for whom identity politics trumps all. These folks hail from the shallow end of the gene pool, but their vote counts just the same. Getting them to vote in a block is a powerful force, and relatively simple.
And here we are.
To be a Democrat in Illinois, requires corruption, whether direct or indirect.
Robert KKK Byrd, senator for life, is an example of what it takes to be a Democrat in the Old South.
Ymarsakar, your refinements of my refutative arguments to Matt’s implicit a-a-a form of syllogism say more about you than they do about Democrats.
What do we make, then, of people who switch parties? What do we make of the Dixiecrats who fled to the GOP, like Strom Thurmond, because of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts? Is a mere title change the equivalent of washing in the blood of the Lamb?
Or are they absolved simply because IOKIYAR?
It has been argued that absolutism is the father of intolerance. I thinks it’s the other way ’round.
Oldflyer: how you likin’ my quality of thought and discourse NOW?
You wanna play?
Tonawanda: Mrs whatsit wasn’t being logical, she was projecting. And I wasn’t calling her names, I was calling her out.
Let’s play.
Some of you are fooling yourselves about numbers, saying it’s really only a very small number.
First, it’s not. 65m people voted for our lawless President. Anyone who starts talking “small” based on that fact nearly qualifies themselves as psycho-delusional.
Second, police forces are “small”. Don’t mess with them. Hitler’s boys and Mussolini’s and Lenin’s and everyone’s were “small”. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, etc. were “small”.
Some of you are whistling past the graveyard. What is required is getting some stakes, going into the graveyard, and slaying freaking Dracula.
We are not getting out of this one without slaying Dracula. No way; no how. You might think you are; but you aren’t.
Bottom line: No one else, NO ONE ELSE, can really win your freedom for you. You have to do it yourself.
As Berretta would say: “And that’s the name of that tune”.
“Beretta” is a gun, Mike. “Baretta,” is the character you reference, played by a guy who got the OJ verdict package for killing his wife: criminally acquitted but civilly liable. “Berretta” is nothing I recognize. But you made your point.
Which is…. what, again?
Slaying Dracula to win your freedom? What do you mean by “slaying,” whom do you mean by “Dracula,” and what freedom did the fictional blood-sucking serial killer take from you?
So a couple of campuses threw some hissy fits over their commencement speakers. Been happening for generations. My freshman year at ND, Reagan was the commencement speaker. Think some of my fellow Domers / Boomers didn’t protest that? And yet, the biggest protest of the year was to get Cap’n Crunch back in the dining hall.
The only people who read “brown shirts” into student protests are not psycho-delusional, they are PARANOID psycho-delusional.
Ignore the obvious at your peril, freedom lovers !
daChipster:
So once upon a time you were a Republican committeeman? That would make you one of those rarae aves (or rara avies, take your pick), a changer of the right-to-left rather than the more usual left-to-right persuasion – because for quite some time now you’ve declared yourself to be an active, avid, and dedicated Obama supporter and certainly are no friend to Republican causes.
I’m relatively sure you also know the answer to your question:
The answer is: the same thing we make of the far greater number who stayed in the Democratic Party till the day they died, which is that they were public defenders of bigotry when that was both common and necessary to win office in the South (not that it wasn’t in many cases sincere, as well). And then when it was no longer either necessary or even desirable, they often changed their tune (and sometimes their party, although sometimes not their party) to move with the times. Some moved sooner, some moved later, some never really moved, some pretended to move, some were sincere in their move, some not.
And if you count up the prominent Dixiecrats who stayed Democrats vs. the prominent Dixiecrats who became Republicans, the former outnumber the latter.
Oh, and as a politically savvy guy, you’re probably familiar with all of this. But “Republicans are racists” is a winning strategy for the Democrats, as you also know.
We’re not ignoring the obvious, just the oblivious. Lighten up, Francis.
Actually, neo neo, you all seem to be mistaking the labelling for the product. The political science spectrum of willingness to change – reactionary, conservative, liberal, radical – does not always correspond to a party. It shifts over time as do the magnetic poles of the earth.
daChipster:
How philosophical and Zenlike of you.
However, political change appears to overwhelmingly go in the direction of left to right, at least change that happens post-college age. One can name many prominent left-to-right changers (in fact, that’s one of the original meanings of the term “neocon”) and very few who went in the opposite direction.
Most people never go back once the change occurs, especially if the change is rooted in study and contemplation, which it usually is. There are exceptions, of course: Churchill and his famous “re-rat” from Conservative to Liberal and then back to Conservative again, for one. But Churchill also is quoted as having described the usual left-to-right process quite succinctly: “If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty, you have no brain.”
chuck , how impressive you are the arbiter of definitions !
Standard Leftist ploy, give words *your* own definitions !
I’ve known a lot of people named after guns. It was hilarious.
The only people who read “brown shirts” into student protests are not psycho-delusional, they are PARANOID psycho-delusional.
No wonder the Old Republican Guard of self proclaimed elite rulers over at DC, think they can manage the people and the coming chaos. If that’s what they think like, obviously they think it’ll easy peasy.
Ymarsakar, your … Democrats.
Look at that, how cute. He wants to box. Kangaroo, pong*
Ymarsakar:
The Old Republican Guard in DC may indeed think like that. But daChipster isn’t one of them.
Although daChipster may or may not have been an Old Guard Republican at some point in the past, he certainly hasn’t been one for quite some time.
Please take a little stroll down daChipster’s memory lane, to a time when “bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.”
aha neo, word must be getting out about you !!!
Neo Neo, thx for the intel profile dump. I was wondering why people seemed to “know” this character.
They must be on you to, Neo. They’ve sent an…. operative.
daChipster said,
“The political science spectrum of willingness to change — reactionary, conservative, liberal, radical — does not always correspond to a party. It shifts over time as do the magnetic poles of the earth.”
And on the same timeframe: once every 22,000 years.
Hussein and his Obamacan acolytes, believe in the Faith that their One Messiah will be able to change the magnetic poles by Will alone.
Will Alone.
Pingback:Skepticlawyer » The vicious logic of equality
As a Haverfordian, I have thanked President Weiss for upholding Dr. Birgeneau’s invitation, while urging that future “illiberal” demands of the New Cadre be dismissed out of hand. Will be interesting to see how Quaker tolerance and consensus holds up against fascism within the student body.
“[daChipster] was a Republican committeeman and elected official in Henry Hyde’s district”
OK, daChipster is a “concerned conservative”, forced to vote for Obama by ra-a-a-a-cist homophobic teabaggers. Got it.
“It shifts over time as do the magnetic poles of the earth.”
Cue Twilight Zone theme music, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do (or maybe just do-do). Think you could be just a *little* more pretentious, Chimpster?
Methinks it was DaChipster who was doing the projecting. You could try reading what I posted again, Chip. Maybe if this time around, you set aside your preconceptions about what you imagine to be my biases, you might be able to understand what I meant and be able to respond a bit more coherently. On your first try, all you did was prove my point for me.
Zombies can’t read. It would be white privilege to expect that of them.
Chipper:
The idea to publicly fund elections is the equivalent of saying end elections, democracy, the Republic full stop.
Since you suggested that, you obviously don’t have the capacity to work out what’s wrong with it.
Anyone who listens to you doesn’t either.
Grow up and grow a pair. Platitudes like “They all do it!”, and “We are run by bad rich people” are worthless. Start thinking for yourself, and thinking things out for yourself.
“they all do it” = last refuge of a scoundrel ! LOL
Chimpster (I like that one) has the depth of thinking of a
puddle on my driveway! Stunning, simply stunning !
A reflective memoir from someone who changed from right to left would be interesting to read. I sometimes worry that, having taken the Red Pill in the early 1980’s, I am missing arguments and intelligent observations that would cause me to reconsider. I hope I am not filtering them out, but I can’t be certain.
I have known a few nominal Republicans and fiscally conservative independents who rejected the GOP, especially between 2006 and 2008. The ones I know are upper middle class and above, coastal and urban (or living in affluent suburbs). They seemed anxious to avoid guilt by association with the Iraq War and the social positions of Bible Belt Republicans. I think “social anxiety” or even “salvation anxiety” would be a reasonable way to describe their state of mind. When you ask them to explain their changing views, they get defensive and respond with slogans and talking points they probably got from the NYT.
daChipster, on the other hand, seemed to get his start in the People’s Party in the 1990’s, a name that has generally been associated with left wing kookery. How he ended up in the Republican Party is something of a mystery. How he could go from losing in the Republican primary for a county board seat in 2006 to organizing for Obama in 2008 might be easier to explain.
Oblio,
I was going to ask daChipster for precisely that: his “change” story. But he seems to have abandonded the discussion.
The only public example I can recall for a right-to-left story was recently submitted by Charlie Crist. Executive summary: racism.
Of course, Crist changed twice. Once from Republican to Independent, then again from Independent to Democrat. Both times the change came in the wake of an electoral defeat…purely coincidental, I’m sure.
At any rate, daChipster’s story would have doubtless required similar parsing to get a hint of the truth. But what fun it would’ve been to pick it apart.
And although the respondents here have been treating his arguments seriously, I think I may have been on to something when I called him a sociopath.
One thing I know from experience about sociopaths: there’s no way to debate them honestly, or to any lasting effect.
Better to simply shun them.
I don’t know where Oblio got the tidbit about daChipster starting politics in The People’s Party, c. 1990, but assuming that’s true, here’s some info about the party from Wikipedia for the readers’ edification:
“The party’s goal was to present a united anti-war platform for the coming election…After the [presidential] election [of 1972], the party moved to become a loose coalition, but was soon defunct, with most of its founding parties also dissolved.”
“The Peoples party ran Dr. Benjamin Spock for president and Julius Hobson for vice-president in the U.S. presidential election, 1972. His platform included free medical care, legalized abortion, legalized marijuana, guaranteed minimum wage, the withdrawal of American troops in all foreign countries, guaranteed maximum wage, and to promote toleration of homosexuality.”
So it seems The People’s Party was essentially an anti-war socialist movement with a couple of libertarian elements thrown in.
In fact, given their stance against internationalism, one might call them National Socialists. (heh)
I’m still puzzled at how daChipster could be a member if the organization was disbanded after 1972. Maybe he was part of a splinter group.
Follow neo’s link to discover daChipster’s identity as a HuffPo blogger boosting Mr. Obama and bashing Ms. Clinton in 2008-9. Then Google is your friend to find things such as the political races he has run and worked on back to 1992 (as I recall) as the People’s Party candidate for alderman in suburban Chicago. I don’t know whether that group had any connection with other parties of that name. It seems pretty obscure…but all the other connections with that name looked pretty kooky. Hence my comment.
I think there’s likely a connection. Since the previous incarnation was kooky, the only people who would want to associate themselves with it are kooks.
Matt_SE:
There are two prominent right-to-left stories of which I’m aware.
One is Arianna Huffington. But she’s a case of re-ratting. She started on the left, went to the right when she married Huffington (who was a Republican politician), and after he died went back to the left. Make of that what you will.
The second case is that of David Brock. He actually wrote a book about his change experience, Blinded by the Right. I read it years before my own change experience, because the topic interested me, even though I had no inkling of what I was going to experience myself. I read the book so many years ago that I don’t remember the details, but I do remember his story struck me as very odd (and I was a liberal Democrat back then and predisposed to be sympathetic). He seemed amazingly shallow in his thinking about all his political beliefs (right or left) and mostly concerned with his own fame and fortune, really not a person of ideas at all. He seemed less to have changed politically as to have gone where he perceived the action was.
All the other right to left stories I know are either people who were brought up in households where their parents supported the GOP but the people changed while in high school or college (I don’t consider those true change stories because of the young age), or cases where a RINO or borderline Republican switched parties but really didn’t change much else at all. In other words, merely a pragmatic change—for example, Arlen Specter. And when I looked him up just now, I discovered he started out a Democrat and then became a Republican and then went back to being a Democrat. So like Huffington, he was a re-ratter.
From what I could see, the “People’s Party” he was part of was all about local politics in his home town and not necessarily connected to any larger national entity or ideology. I doubt his politics have ever had anything to do with any ideas greater than what he sees as likely to lead to his own advantage; and from his internet writings nowadays, politics for him is mostly a vehicle for building an adoring audience by adolescent namecalling. I think he decamped because you, Matt_SE, got very close to the bone indeed when you were asking him questions about being honest with voters. He – or someone from the same town with the same full name — was sued for libel in the early ’90s for falsely (or allegedly falsely) telling the papers that his political opponents committed election fraud. Search Joseph v Collis in the Illinois Appellate Court. It’s the Chicago Way — he derailed a local referendum he didn’t like by telling the media that his opposition had falsified the signatures when, according to the opposition, they hadn’t. The intertubes don’t say how the lawsuit came out or whether it was determined that he was liable — but what’s interesting is what the online legal decision DOESN’T say — that is, none of the other defendants even try to argue that DaChipster’s statements were true. They just fall over themselves to get as far away from him as they can. Could explain why he stopped using his full name for his political adventures — and also, why OFA thought he seemed like a good bet to understand their approach to politics!
BChitiea (above) apparently graduated from Haverford College, about which I happen to know a bit.
Quaker “consensus” as operationally defined there means unanimity. Quaker tolerance as practised there is intolerant of anything except Leftism.
Quaker pacifism is workable only when conscientious objectorship is allowed, as in the US military. I remember the two male heads of the American Friends Service Committee being interviewed shortly after 9/11, and, asked what should be done in response, they stuttered and finally said the matter should be referred to the UN. Pacifism doesn’t work against jihad, duh!
Quakerism is very much a hothouse flower. It sprouts and survives only under rare and favorable conditions.
Don Carlos:
My two-part series on Quaker pacifism: here and here.
Mrs Whatsit Said:
“I think he decamped because you, Matt_SE, got very close to the bone indeed…”
Thank you. One does one’s humble best.
@neo-neocon:
Yeah, I forgot about Huffington (HuffPo: onetime home of daChipster!). Didn’t know about Brock.
The common thread among all those mentioned is the seeming insincerity of their change.
I’ve heard that Goebbels was the same way: an opportunist looking for power; he didn’t even really believe in Hitler’s cause.
Incidentally, from everything I’ve heard about Brock, he’s right up Goebbel’s alley: drugs, conspiracies, probable criminal racketeering, mental/emotional instability.
None of these people must be sociopaths to do these things, but I bet it would help a lot. At best, they are mercenaries.
“All the other right to left stories I know are either people who were brought up in households where their parents supported the GOP…”
I’d forgotten; one of my best friends fit this description. He grew up in conservative Idaho, then moved to the conservative part of Washington state where I met him in high school. After graduation, he moved to Seattle. I visited him once or twice. He was dating actresses and such…every time I’d visit, he had moved further left. I heard he became a high school teacher. Lost track of him after that.
But like you said, neo, he didn’t really count because of youth. He was always talking about Young Republican stuff…I figured he just folded under the social pressure, since that’s how he was inclined.
You might say, he “went Nazi.”
Pingback:independent.academia.edu
Re: Don Carlos’ response:
Yeah. From the Sgt. York branch of the family. Old Testament based, no illusions about evil, or the co-option of the Peace Movement ( Friends Service Committee) by the Comintern. The ones who became environmentalists when the wall fell. You and I know the same place.
Leftist college students have shouted down campus speakers for nearly fifty years now. Battle’s over. The transvaluation of all values has taken place. The Left won.
In time, the future will be a high-tech (for a while) marvel filled with dreary, medieval-fascist “thought.” Then it won’t.