Life in liberal-land *UPDATED*
Bookworm on Nov 13 2008 at 2:53 pm | Filed under: Education, Leftist morality
Thanks to Deanna for bringing my attention to a story about a young girl’s experiment with the diversity and tolerance that is so touted in America’s liberal elite communities. In Oak Park, Illinois, a wealth “liberal” community much like my own, a 14 year old public school child, noting how her peers were vocal in their support for Obama, decided to conduct a little experiment: she wore a McCain shirt to school. The response she got had absolutely nothing to do with diversity of opinion, and a marketplace of ideas, and everything to do with sheer hatred:
Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain’s name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid.
“People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn’t be wearing it,” Catherine said.
Then it got worse.
“One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed,” Catherine said, of the tolerance in Oak Park.
But students weren’t the only ones surprised that she wore a shirt supporting McCain.
“In one class, I had one teacher say she will not judge me for my choice, but that she was surprised that I supported McCain,” Catherine said.
[snip]
One student suggested that she be put up on a cross for her political beliefs.
“He said, ‘You should be crucifixed.’ It was kind of funny because, I was like, don’t you mean ‘crucified?’ ” Catherine said.
Other entries in her notebook involved suggestions by classmates that she be “burned with her shirt on” for “being a filthy-rich Republican.”
Some said that because she supported McCain, by extension she supported a plan by deranged skinheads to kill Obama before the election. And I thought such politicized logic was confined to American newsrooms. Yet Catherine refused to argue with her peers. She didn’t want to jeopardize her experiment.
“I couldn’t show people really what it was for. I really kind of wanted to laugh because they had no idea what I was doing,” she said.
Only a few times did anyone say anything remotely positive about her McCain shirt. One girl pulled her aside in a corner, out of earshot of other students, and whispered, “I really like your shirt.”
Please read the rest here.
There is nothing “liberal” about liberals. The old British concept (from which the word sprang) of a loosening of the tight hold a monarchy and aristocracy had on the kingdom, allowing for a freer expression of ideas, is gone. “Liberal” is now an oxymoronic phrase stuck onto a totalitarian mindset that is filled with hatred of the other.
And it’s no excuse that Catherine received these responses from children. First, as noted, she got a similar, although less heated, response from a teacher as well. And second, children learn these responses from the adults in their lives: from the dinner table conversations in their homes, from the TV they watch, and from the interviews their favorite stars give.
The above is a very frightening story, because it so perfectly illustrates that gaping chasm between the PC, inclusive, tolerant mantra daily chanted on the Left, and the reality of the Left’s approach to American politics. Those on the Left have armored themselves against, not criticism, but self-reflection, by attaching laudatory words to themselves, and allowing the most foul conduct to exist underneath that loving carapace.
UPDATE: And here’s an example of a similar kind of “tolerance” at an institution of “higher” education. Gary Larson has more details, as well as a look at what Annie Grossman’s beating means.
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Book:
One of my best friend’s older sister is a committed Marxist who works at the college level teaching ignorant recent high school grads how to deepen their ignorance.
Her son, a manipulative 20-something ne’er-do-well who can’t even throw a baseball correctly (Mom didn’t believe in having any men around), was the topic of discussion last Thaksgiving as we all sat schmoozing around the dinner table.
“He’s some kid,” she bragged. “I mean, how many people his age have the courage to read Howard Zinn?” She asked/said it as though it took some sort of daring to read stuff by that hatemongering commie creep.
I couldn’t help myself. I said, “Uh, Becky, how much courage does it take to read a communist ‘historian’ in a Marxist household? Especially one that hundreds of high school districts nationwide routinely put on their required reading lists? I’d be more impressed if he were to read histories by Paul Johnson, or Winston Churchill or Gertrude Himmelfarb inside your house.”
Well, that brought that conversation to a thud.
I knew it would, but I guess the illogic finally got to me. I have small scars on my lips from where I’ve restrained myself the past few years, especially when the cheap-shots have splashed over from Bush hatred into Catholic baiting, or trashing pro-lifers or, lately, dissing Sarah Palin.
I guess in the wake of The One’s election, I’m going to have to stop biting myself.
The above is a very frightening story, because it so perfectly illustrates that gaping chasm between the PC, inclusive, tolerant mantra daily chanted on the Left, and the reality of the Left’s approach to American politics.
If you teach your kids the principles behind violence, why people use aggression in society (canine pack behavior), and how to deal with such things, it won’t be very frightening at all, Book.
How could we ever fight against injustice if it didn’t exist? We cannot call ourselves just if we had no injustice to destroy, now could we.
Wow. Way to read whatever you want to read into a situation. The teacher in question expressed surprise at the girl’s choice which does not in any way indicate that she agrees or disagrees with her. She might have been happy to have found that a student supported McCain and would not “judge her” because she was afraid of grading her too indulgently. But hey, keep spreading that hate and divisive crap! it’s only going to make our country weaker. That’s what you want, right?
This story out of Oak Park got to me today.
I had spent the morning at the Virginia Holocaust Museum (which is quite good for a small museum) for a school assignment. One of the founders of that museum is a Holocaust survivor, who talked to us briefly about his experience. And the one thing he said that really made an impression on me was his reminder that we cannot simply blame the Nazis for persecuting and murdering the Jews, the homosexuals, the Catholics, the Christian ministers who protested, the Roma, and so on.
It was everyone’s next-door neighbor.
This is not a new thought. It has been talked about quite a bit. (In fact, Daniel Mendelsohn focuses on how this happened in the Ukraine in his book, “The Lost: A Search for Six of the Six Million.”) But it sort of makes an impression on you when a survivor tells you that.
Then I came home, logged on, read that story, and felt like 1940 was suddenly right there with me.
I would dearly love to be able to share this story with some of my friends and family who voted for Obama, NOT to blame them for this or even suggest that it is only liberals who ever engage in this sort of behavior. But God in heaven!! The language that is coming out of these teenagers’ mouths is something I would only have expected to hear coming out of the mouth of ignorant, uneducated racists or skinheads who idolize Hitler. I just did not think that the children of educated, upper-middle class people in the heart of a major American city would express ideas that are this chilling, this extreme.
But at this time, I do not feel I can share this story with almost anyone I know who voted for Obama. The moment Obama supporters see something like this, their mental shutters slam shut and they immediately start claiming that this exact thing “happens all the time” to people who live in conservative areas and support Obama.
Perhaps. But I have not yet seen a comparable story that proves their claim. And does it really matter? This type of thing just isn’t ok, no matter who is doing it.
That’s what you want, right?
Did you guys meet together and agree to lie your way out of that “dissent is patriotic” propaganda line you pounded us with before?
Liberty:
Did you read the rest of the article, which was primarily about the uncivil children around the girl?
Are you new to this blog? I am. I’ve learned quickly from experience that it’s best to dunk a toe here before jumping in with six shooters blazing.
The folks here are incredibly intelligent and thoughtful (but just between you and me, if you start a fight with them that depends on what reasoning power and logic you’ve shown so far, they will wipe the floor with you).
Anyway, welcome.
I just did not think that the children of educated, upper-middle class people in the heart of a major American city would express ideas that are this chilling, this extreme.
I wasn’t surprised in the least.
The moment Obama supporters see something like this, their mental shutters slam shut and they immediately start claiming that this exact thing “happens all the time” to people who live in conservative areas and support Obama.
They don’t even know anybody in heavily conservative areas like rural Georgia. Come on.
This is the same excuse people always spouted off when they wanted to conduct war atrocities. This is quite obvious to people like me who have studied humanity’s real history.
This type of thing just isn’t ok, no matter who is doing it.
Raiding and slaughter your clan’s enemies are always okay, Deana. After all, they do it to you too. That’s how the Left thinks and all you need is LL up there as proof.
I wasn’t surprised in the least.
To elaborate, children are cruel. Cassandra of Villainous Company knows it and I know it.
Depending on your childhood, you may or may not be expecting it.
BillWhittle and others that are in Hollywood, Book, know what it means to be known as a conservative there.
The aristocrats will always be the same, across all generations, all cultures, and all geographic locales.
It was America’s rejection of the aristocracy and their rights in favor of a citizen’s duty and responsibilities for ourselves that finally started breaking the cycle of tyranny that has existed for the great majority of human history.
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism until the dissenting left attains power.
i think the intolerance of the left is due to two factors. firstly is the idea that what they think is what reality is rather than matching reality to thought. secondly it is that leftists tend to respond emotionally. Surprising that they can imbue abstract thoughts with emotional values
odd
I do not find this story frightening, I find it encouraging. Sunlight is, after all, the best disinfectant. The one teacher cited later apologised. The story made the Trib. Bloggers are picking up on it.
This is the sort of dynamic the Founders envisioned with that Freedom of Speech idea.
Ellie -
When I sat down and thought about it later this evening, I felt better for precisely the reason you just said.
And as time goes on, I think people are slowly going to get their eyes opened.
I, for one, have been absolutely shocked at the behavior of hundreds and hundreds of gay activists following the passing of Prop. 8. No longer do they look like the oppressed and the silenced. They look like a bunch of belligerent, violent thugs intent on squashing anyone or anything that gets in their way.
It’s just not good PR. And I think it makes people who might not think much about these types of things think a little more . . .
Deana
MARTEL PROPOSES A STRATEGY THAT WILL GUARANTEE OBAMA A SECOND TERM
The discussion about liberal intolerance got to me thinking about just who’s considered a liberal these days, since the Democrats are a highly coalition-dependent party.
When the Demos are good, they’re very, very good. Anybody who can get sometimes mutually antagonistic ethnic groups like Latinos and blacks to vote together, as well as wealthy people, poor people, college grads and high-school drop-outs, has some electoral savvy.
However, millions of people suspect that Obama lacks the intellectual or moral firepower to keep the coalition together once he begins to make hard decisions.
So, how to keep appealing to the broadest possible swath of the coalition?
August 22, 2009: President Barack Obama announced to a stunned nation that “for years I have struggled with a secret part of myself that now demands honest expression. I have always thought that I am a woman, therefore I will be entering Walter Reed Hospital this weekend to begin the transition to complete womanhood.”
April 6, 2010: President Maria Obama announced to a somewhat stunned nation that “for years I have struggled with a secret part of myself that now demands honest expression. I have always thought that I am a Jew, therefore I will be entering Beth Israel Synagogue this weekend to begin a course of study that will complete my transition to full Jewhood.”
July 17, 2011: President Maria Esther Obama announced to a bemused nation that “for years I have struggled with a secret part of myself that now demands honest expression. I have always thought that I am a lesbian, therefore I will be entering the Good Vibrations store on Dupont Circle this weekend to begin affirming my transition to full lesbianhood.”
November 7, 2012: President Maria Esther Xena Obama was elected to a second term Tuesday, garnering an overwhelming percentage of votes from African Americans, Latinos, gays and lesbians, women and Jews.
Deana,
Yes, the American people have proven themselves over time to be very sensible given the pertinent information. That qualifier, and thus the role granted to the press by the Founders, is why the behavior of “the press” in the last election cycle was so foul.
The hope I now see is that they are ashamed. Mayhap the worm if not turned is at least stirring.
Ellie
PS: the other group that should be ashamed are the so-called teachers. My teachers, the same generation as my parents, were veterans of WWII. Some went away to fight, some stayed home and fought. They were proud to be Americans, they understood the obligations of citizenship, and they understood that America was blessedly different from all others.
And they passed that on to their students.
I received an outstanding education, as did all children from every generation in America before me. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/quizzes/8thgrade_test.cfm
When my generation became the teachers, we got the NEA, new math and unstuck from phonics. And propagandists in every classroom.
Dear Sweet Lord, we Boomers have much to answer for (for the purists: … much for which we must answer)!
Ellie2 (#16)
>> Dear Sweet Lord, we Boomers have much to answer for (for the purists: … much for which we must answer)! >>
Maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on the boomers, because perhaps these things are cyclical.
The WWII generation raised their kids in a determined fashion, giving them affluence and relatively easy lives… everything their generation *did not* have growing up. They thought it would be for the better.
So most of the boomers grew up with affluence and easy lives. That doesn’t lead to a great deal of personal responsibility, does it? Perhaps the WWII generation, on the whole, made mistakes in raising their kids, by making life too easy?
I’m reminded of the old sci-fi classic novel Dune. The old Emperor drew his crack troops from a harsh planet in his personal fiefdom that bred the harshest of warriors. At the end the new Emperor Paul declares that that planet would be terraformed into a paradise. The old Emperor understood: Within a generation or two, the planet would no longer be delivering him crack troops, but instead, would deliver only the softest of humans.
(For Dune fans, that planet wasn’t Arrakis, I think it was called Salucas Secundus?)
To be honest, Ellie, there was propaganda in earlier classrooms too: America is a great nation. America is a land of opportunity. Anybody who works hard can make it here. Politics is an honorable profession. Freedom is worth fighting for. You know. Old-fashioned capitalist-pig, white man, discriminatory stuff like that.
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
Hey, I am Boomer through and through. I was as idealist as anyone. I still proudly display my “McGovern for McGovernment” signed & numbered original Calder poster. I never met MLK, but I did meet Dick Gregory and Ralph Albernathy.
(And I know secrets that would give Helen L a stroke.)Never mind.Then I went to work for the biggest capitalist pig in the universe — Ma Bell!!! (I was broke and Ma paid well. Pls forgive me, I’m still there).
And I discovered that making a profit is hard. And I learned that making a profit creates jobs and that jobs create wealth. And I noticed that my life-long (and still lib) friends are — teachers, pastors, govt employees, working for non-profits, etc. I suppose this is what comes from majoring in Philosophy. Note what they all have in common: they all are on “welfare.” They do not create wealth, they consume it.
I further discovered that the only time my lib friends were interested in filthy lucre was when their contracts were being re-negotiated.
Tolerant and diverse Obamanoids……..
This John Kass column doesn’t surprise me a bit. Living in SF, I get to see plenty of this kind of thing, and San Francisco isn’t really bad compared with–ugh! Barf!– “affluent suburbs.” You have to be somewhat tolerant to……
After taunting 18-year old freshman Annie Grossmann for wearing her McCain-Palin campaign button at an election night get-together, and “getting in her face,” four women beat her for political views which, obviously, they did not share.
I wish I was there. Most men and even more women do not know how to fight. That’s kind of unfair. Then again, I don’t use TFT would treat those four any more fair. Violence doesn’t work like that, you see.
I’m not like Chris Buhr; I have what one might call an abnormal interest and focus on the theory and use of violence. This is on top of the social libertarian layer on top of the classical liberal identity.
I’ve learned that this isn’t normal for most of people in society, even third world societies.
“Why do you call me a racist when you don’t even know me?” she screamed. Made no difference. Grossmann was felled by the largest of the four. She hit her head on the brick wall, and staggered back to her dorm. The other three black women at the beating chucked at this dark manifestation of partisan evil. They walked away laughing, offering no help to their victim. The banality of evil had asserted itself. And at four-to-one, it was also a cowardly act of mindless violence which, presumably, the four thought “normal.”
I don’t think you want to know what would have happened if real violence was used. But I know. And a lot more would have known if I was there, if anyone trained in the use of violence was there, or anyone trained in TFT was there, including if it was Grossmann.
The only merciful thing in such a scenario would be that most people like me would not use 100% of what we know against the four. We would tone down the lethality from 100% to less than 10% (there’s always a chance of somebody dying in fights, regardless of what one’s intentions are).
And that’s the good thing about hand to hand over firearms or sticks and knives. With “weapons”, the target starts being cautious and may run away, leaving you the choice of shooting them in the back, running after them (and probably only being able to catch one), or walking away. But with hand to hand your options, both legal and physical, are much much broader.
It is a harsh world out there, even in ostensibly what is known as “safe” America. You are either the one doing violence or you are the one receiving. This is non-negotiable. And if you are tired of being terrorized by violence and constant threats to your safety, then you have plenty of options here in America. Take your pick. And most of them, guess what, costs less than the tuition for one of your classes.
We would tone down the lethality from 100% to less than 10% (there’s always a chance of somebody dying in fights, regardless of what one’s intentions are).
This would not be possible if they grossly outnumbered us, had firearms, or various other implements. But in a hand to hand fight with 4 college aged punks? Even in Britain I could off them in less than 10 minutes. Assuming I don’t have to waste breath catching any of em.
We can afford to tone down the lethality because half of what we know is sufficient to put them six feet under (especially on concrete). It’s also convenient that after you learn how to dismantle the human body, you also know how to keep people alive so they won’t die on you and get you in legal trouble.
And of course, if things get out of hand and people bring in more resources than is apparent (grenades, firearms, 25 gang member reinforcements, you know things like that) then it’s time to break out the goodies, including that lovely berserk reaction.
You are a scary man, Y — and I say that with all due respect. Having taken martial arts for some time now (and having studied it in a pre-children life as well), I have a deep respect for people who are sufficiently trained to use their strength, speed and reflexes to defend themselves as need be. One of the reasons for all that training is so that, in a dangerous situation, you don’t go all soft and liberal and worry about hurting people. If you’re being attacked, you attack back, only harder and faster.
Still, Y, four to one isn’t very good odds for most people unless, perhaps, your Bas Rutten or something. For ordinary people trained in some combat, 4-1 is one of those worrisome situations where you suspect you might be able to take out 1 or 2 attackers, but you’d be vulnerable to the heightened rage/adrenalin of the remaining attackers.
The only thing rage and adrenaline does for someone is 1. reduce their societal conditioning to resist aggression (alcohol does that too and many people were drinking on election night from what I saw, especially the ones that didn’t vote but wanted to celebrate Obama anyway) and 2. disconnect their higher thinking abilities from their actions, resulting in blurry targeting and tunnel vision.
Endorphines, however, will increase your pain threshold but that’s of negligent importance. That only matters in bar room brawls: meaning social displays of aggression, canine pack behavior, and monkey politics where aggression helps create dominance and dominance provides you the means to accomplish the goal of a higher social rank. In asocial violence, regardless of who initiates it, the goal is one thing and one thing only: to hurt the other person, same as in war. Ulterior motives or secondary considerations like going back to your family life unharmed, or political goals in warfare such as grabbing this land or resource or securing this national security priority, are meaningless: in fact, worse than meaningless, they can get you killed if you start thinking about them while fighting.
Still, Y, four to one isn’t very good odds for most people unless, perhaps, your Bas Rutten or something.
I assure you, if Bas Rutten had gotten jacked in the back with a knife, it won’t matter how many is attacking him or not. If he doesn’t react and act the right way, using certain principles which are always true (whether you are attacking as a 100 pound woman or a 300 pound juggernaut), it won’t matter what Bas “can” do for he’ll be in the state of having violence done on him. ANd people are as helpless as babes when they are in that state, the state where they are injured and can’t fight back at all, no matter how big or seemingly tough they are.
The reason why I consider Target Focus Training to be a great program for women, far more so than for the men, is that it doesn’t matter what you weigh or what your maximum muscle strength is. Just like it doesn’t matter that Iraqi insurgents and AQ terrorists weigh around 50% of what an American soldier or Marine weighs (and that’s not even including body armor btw). Violence is violence regardless of who you are or what you are. It works the same for everyone because it affects everybody the same way, physically at least. But violence is not just a word or random chaotic action. It has an underlying pattern, a set of principles, a set of physical laws it must obey in conjunction with human nature (in this case it means the nature of humanity’s thinking or the OODA loop).
I have a deep respect for people who are sufficiently trained to use their strength, speed and reflexes to defend themselves as need be.
TFT, what I use and learn, is not about strength, speed, or reflexes. You can dismantle me, maim me for life, and end my life as easily as anyone else. The only thing stopping you from doing so is the fact that you have a conscience, that you are social and not asocial or even anti-social. (and the fact that you haven’t learned how this can be done, but that’s a different topic)
Martial arts teaches you that strength, speed, and reflexes are important because they compete in a sport environment. ANd in sport environments there are consistent rules you have to follow and that means, when all things are equal, the guy with more strength, speed, or faster reflexes is going to get the advantage. In real life, in criminal situations, in asocial situations (asocial means serial killer meets mom of 5 children in her house, alone with her children), the only thing that matters is who is inflicting violence and who is getting violence inflicted on them. That is the only thing that will matter, Book. Not strength, not speed, and not reflexes.
Do you know why in MMA fights kicks to the groin and closed fisted strikes to the head aren’t allowed, and when a man goes down, the referee steps in immediately to separate the attacker from the guy on the ground? It is because the guy that got hit that way and just landed on the ground can’t defend himself. He has no strength, speed, or reflexes. He is getting hurt (not injured) and needs time to even recover from some non-specific trauma like that. Now imagine if the guy on the ground had a busted knee, a ruptured eye, a broken finger, or a liver that has gotten almost ruptured by the force that broke his right ribs. You can do whatever you want to him. It won’t matter how strong or fast he is. He’s just going to sit there doing whatever a guy with such injuries will be doing. Curled into a fetal position, maybe. Unconscious perhaps.
It’s not very fair or competitive to just wallop on a guy that can’t defend himself. That’s why groin shots aren’t allowed and various other things aren’t allowed either.
If you’re being attacked, you attack back, only harder and faster.
When you have a choice of in 3 strikes and killing the person, in 3 strikes and destroying their leg and crippling them for life, or in 3 strikes and caving their skull into the concrete hoping that he will just go unconscious rather than crack his skull and die, which goal are you then attacking him to get, Book?
If you don’t have those choices, because those targets are not accessible to you, then you have to attack back in whatever way you can because you don’t control the situation. So long as you don’t control the situation because the other guy isn’t helpless, you don’t have the luxury of stepping down the power.
In this specific situation at question, the use of 100% lethality targets from TFT would be too much. This doesn’t mean you lower the power of your strikes or you do something else that you normally wouldn’t do. It just means that you de-select the targets that will maim or kill the person you are attacking. All targets are equal since all targets on the human body can be injured and all injuries are equal in terms of making the other guy’s body defenseless.
For ordinary people trained in some combat, 4-1 is one of those worrisome situations where you suspect you might be able to take out 1 or 2 attackers, but you’d be vulnerable to the heightened rage/adrenalin of the remaining attackers.
Taking on multiple attackers is only slightly different from taking on one attacker. The process is the same. One method when you are caught between two groups in an alley is to choose a target, run up to him, and injure him. When he is injured, use his body to jump over him and place him between you and his buddy. This short circuits the second attacker’s mind and starts him back at the beginning of the OODA loop. If you tried to take on both attackers at once, in a closed off alleyway like that, not only would you be outnumbered physically but you would also be outnumbered in terms of thinking speed. They will a simple objective of reaching you while you have the complex objective of trying to defend yourself from two sources of threats.
If you are efficient in your strikes, you’ll get at least 1 out of every 2 on target. Any one strike on a human body target sufficient to injure that target is able to take out that person from the entire fight. 3 strikes is a good number since it sets the person up and it covers up any of your misses.
If you were using martial arts and only applying pain suppression, non-specific trauma, or various other things safe for competition but not suitable for the street, then you will need far far more than 3 strikes to take out a person. Even if you were a 250 pound man, it would still take you far longer simply because either grappling occurs or great opportunities are not taken because the idea of striking is just kicking and punching to most people.
In that situation, yes, most people would be lucky enough to take out 1-2 of a 4 person group. Because their methods of attack are inefficient and not final. Because the absolute power in their strikes is not enough to get the job done. And because they can’t get it done with efficiency and speed, with the most bang for their buck, they do tend to get ambushed from the buddies of those they are fighting.
I say this stuff but none of it matters as much as hitting your target. Target Focus Training is focused on targeting because that is all that matters in the end. Not the power, even though it helps, not the speed or efficiency, but simply the fact that once a target is hit with accuracy, it doesn’t matter how much power you put in the strike because that target will be damaged and a damaged target on a human body won’t work as well as it did before. This, even if you miss more than half the time, is enough to systematically eliminate everybody in a 4 man or woman group: assuming they don’t run, which is what they mostly will do in almost all situations.
As far as I’ve seen in martial arts and as far as I’ve talked to people with red belts and what not in martial arts or other self-defense courses, they don’t do any real targeting. The only two targets most women know about in self-defense classes are 1. the eyes and 2. the groin. There are hundreds of targets on the human body and more than thousands of ways to get at them. Just teaching somebody 2, and not even teaching them the most efficient and convenient way to get at them, is not going to seal the deal. And putting men into those big armored suits and having women go at them full contact and full speed does nothing to help a woman target with accuracy in an adrenaline filled actual situation. This means inefficiency (cause of people missing the targets) and inefficiency means that the time you could have spent eliminating 4 people, you had to spend it all on just taking one or two.
Some of the MMA guys Tim Larkin was talking about were buying up TFT’s Joint Breaking DVD instruction set series. Why? Because while there are literally tens of thousands of ways to break every joint in the human body, there is only one way a joint breaks and six ways to accomplish it. The MMA guys and martial artists are only taught the techniques, not how those techniques were created. And once the MMA guys understood the principles, the amount of injuries they were putting on each other because they didn’t know what they were doing, except repeating a joint breaking technique, went down. See, they didn’t get the Joint Breaking series because they were worried about being attacked, since they mostly are confident in their size and strength. They got the series simply to not hurt each other when they were doing the joint locks and breaks. And of course they wanted to know more joint breaks and how to do them ,but that is to be expected from sports competitors.
This is good illustration of why we should never call leftists “liberals.” There is nothing liberal about them. There never was. Ronald Reagan was a liberal in the proper sense of the word. Obama, Reid and Polosi are socialists.
I call them leftists or socialists, never liberals.
I try to never call them progressives, except in quotes. There is nothing progressive about repeated the same old experiments that have always failed so horribly in the past.
George Bruce -
Good point. I will try not to refer to leftists as “liberals” ever again.
Deana
I try to never call them progressives, except in quotes. There is nothing progressive about repeated the same old experiments that have always failed so horribly in the past.
I disagree. I believe they are progressive since they are progressing societies towards Final Entropy, where no work will ever be done and everything will be the same in terms of thermodynamic equilibrium (temperature). That is what they are progressing towards and that is progress, after all. Time is progress just like decay is progress. Decadence is the progress of a civilization as it decays as time goes on.
Deana,
use my term. Fake liberals. They are liberals, except only fakes. What better term to communicate what you mean by using the vernacular meaning of “liberal” as Democrat and “fake” to mean socialist and totalitarian?
Btw, Charles, that was a pretty funny comment about Obama.
So most of the boomers grew up with affluence and easy lives. That doesn’t lead to a great deal of personal responsibility, does it? Perhaps the WWII generation, on the whole, made mistakes in raising their kids, by making life too easy?
A lot of the WWII generation seemed to want their children to have better lives, free from the war and instability and horrors that they had seen.
This means that their children were protected from reality. And when people are protected from reality, that’s not a good thing.
Only adversity and facing and overcoming challenges does one acquire virtue. And without virtue, there is no such thing as “civic duties and rights” in America. At least, it won’t be maintained. Just as we see now.
There was an absolutely first-rate book written on “Generations” [http://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas-Future-1584/dp/0688119123] that posits an alternating recurrence of four very-well-defined generational types over our history. The generations occur as “strong-weak-strong-weak” repetitions.
The two strong generations are an “institution-building” generation (the WWII generation and the current coming-of-age generation), defined by strong, resilient nose-to-the-grindstone types, the children of which tend to be spoiled and idealistic generation (the Boomers), who change the world in great but not necessarily for-the-good ways.
According to this template, the Boomer children (i.e., the current children of the Boomers, who tend to be excessively pampered by over-zealous parents…just as were the WWII generation, believe it or not) rebel against the excesses of their parents (i.e., instead of high divorces, they form stable families…instead of being highly risky and entrepreneurial, they join larger companies).
The “in-between” generations (e.g., Generation-X, ‘tweeners) tend to live in the shadows of these two dominant generations - one is characterized by lack of ambition, direction or accomplishments (the 1940s-1950s Eisenhower age) and the other (i.e., the children of the other weak generation) is characterized by high levels of rebellion, resistance and lawlessness (recall the rising tides of youth violence and drugs during the 1980s-1990s).
My wife and I have read the book, as have a number of our relatives and friends. We all felt that it goes a long way toward explaining historical and current events (all the way back to the Puritans, in fact, who also were an idealistic generation that had much in common with the Boomers).
On a cautionary note, the current coming-of-age generation is predicted to be a solid, family-oriented institution-building generation, in the image of the WWII generation. We note with pride and honor the accomplishments of our WWII parents generation, coming from the depression, the war, and rebuilding the economy thereafter. Note, however, that fascism also flourished during that era (the 1930s) in Europe, Japan and America. Institution-building, in other words, can be taken to the extreme.
I highly recommend the book.
Did you read the rest of the article, which was primarily about the uncivil children around the girl?
Yes, I did. Since I was referring to a specific comment about a specific person, the comments by the children had no relevance to the comment by the teacher. Weren’t you saying something about logic?
I don’t know how to say it otherwise, Libertyloving (perhaps we should experiment with truth in advertising, what do you think?):
Your point was noted and we moved on.
So what is the solution? We have had three generations indoctrinated on college campuses to the Left, as most of us were. Almost all our media is interpreted through this filter. There are a few sources of other information and views- books, the internet, Talk Radio (which some want silenced) but you have to seek these out to discover them.
How do we get balance in the universities? How do we get balance in the media? How do we get less afraid to speak up and say what we believe when the “tolerant” portray us as ignorant intolerant evil-doers? Do any of you see solutions? Do we have to get so angry that we finally wake up and let our voices be heard too? can’t we demand that public universities hire faculty with conservative interpretations? Can’t we, in large numbers, begin calling the media to have balanced panels of commentators so that more than one view is offered? We know the problem. I’d really like to explore the solution. There are so many extremely intelligent people who write here. I’d love to hear your ideas.
>>Do any of you see solutions?>>
Mmmmm….Community organizing??
You know what the problem is…conservatives for the most part are simply not “in your face” people. We’re way too reasonable. If you want to wake people up, you have to be noisy and make a stink. Chances are, you’d end up in a confrontation with the “others”, and life would get very unpleasant. Naturally, being the reasonable souls we are, we aren’t going to do that. At least not yet.
Liberty, hon:
I was trying to politely point out that going ballistic over the thin reed of an excuse you provided for going ballistic earns you no cred in a roomful of people who write, think and reason better than you do.
Rather than point out exactly what was hateful or divisive about the commentary here, you simply asserted that it was so, and in a needlessly hostile manner: “But hey, keep spreading that hate and divisive crap! it’s only going to make our country weaker. That’s what you want, right?”
Wow, if you were a white Southerner in the 50s, I have no doubt you’d be referring to blacks as “you people.”
I guess we’re your “you people.”
Danny, I will read the book. But I fear that the current education system will wipe out the learnings that would have otherwise occured.
My single-mom niece wishes Russ Feingold would run for President. Upon hearing that in a generation or two, all races would be co-mingled she thinks that would be “wonderful.” (I’m thinking so you are OK with your son being the last blue-eyed baby?)
We must take back the schools!! They are turning out dolts.
To those who are worried about our school systems indoctrinating our children, let me give you a bit of hope: It’s not as effective as you think. My teenager attends probably the most liberal high school in downstate Illinois (where we live, with a high concentration of university professors, you can’t go a block without dozens of “no war, no imperialism” signs) Progressivism dominates her English and social studies courses. Every book read, every historical period studied, is designed to advance the concepts of class warfare, with progress only measured by what can be taken from the dominant class.
True quote, from a parent-teacher conference: “Next quarter, we’ll be dealing with imperialism.” And this was the English teacher. Talking about Shakespeare.
So where’s the hope? The teenager, whom it goes without saying is highly intelligent, is rebelling against this. Her form of rebellion is to become openly conservative. She’s questioning authority like mad, coming to me (and blogs like this :)) for ammunition. And I suspect she’s not the only one–her social studies teacher has complained that only she and a few others seem “engaged.” The others are apathetic. From my perspective, they’re not apathetic. they’re turned off, another form of rebellion.
Thanks to human nature, and the sledgehammer approach of most progressives, all is not lost.
A year or so ago, in my daughter’s history class they had an assignment to do a dialogue between two people, one of them famous. A pair of classmates did a routine attacking Bush with the usual shallow, disrespectful, soundbytes having no point to their dialogue except to elicit laughs from the class. The teacher, too, was laughing.
The school also makes a big deal about a set of “Core Ethical Values” they have developed, one being “Respect.” I told the teacher and principal that if they include respect on that list and insist that the students follow them (which they do and is a good thing), how can they expect the students to respect each other and their teachers if they allow the students to be disrespectful to our President (to be distinguished from any academic pursuit of intellectual debate or discussion on policies, history, etc.). It’s still true on this side of the political divide.
Without that set of values, I am not sure I would have gotten very far, but the school did address it openly and with all the teachers. I wrote a letter to the editor of our town paper which got attention and some agreement in the letters the following week.
>>Her form of rebellion is to become openly conservative.>>
You’re right - there may be hope. As long as the leftists don’t make it impossible to _have_ conservative opinions.
Teenagers…they keep that pendulum swinging, don’t they!
Don’t worry about LLo here.
First, consider the source, the Huff Post? These are hardcore, vicious leftists and here is where they hang out. I didn’t even bother reading most of the comments as they would do little but infuriate me, but to respond to them is like talking to the wall. They are right and you are not. The so-called “liberals” are the most closed minded individuals in this country. If you don’t agree with their “enlightened” world view, you clearly must be stupid, uninformed, a redneck, or a victim because of socio-economic status, or all of the above. If you actually had independent thought you would of course agree with them and therefore would never be in the military in the first place. By logical extension you are presumed to be an idiot and therefore it is only natural that once you leave the military or your tour as a victimized, brain washed zombie, you will redirect your havoc onto society as a rapist, a murderer or simply a victim in need of being saved by a government that will of course let you down.
http://cannoneerno4.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/huffpos-commentariat-damage-troop-morale/
Suek (#39)
>> You’re right - there may be hope. As long as the leftists don’t make it impossible to _have_ conservative opinions. >>
So very right! Canada let their “hate crimes” and their “human rights commission” run amok, and now they are beginning to see the problem, but they can’t get the genie back in the bottle.
(And what the immature activist gays are doing in California right now… why isn’t that considered hate speech?)
So we’re at risk from our government, and its laws concerning free speech, especially the Fairness Doctrine. But when it comes to your regular ol’ liberal citizenry shutting down your free speech… well, if it’s a social get-together, keep your eyes clear and bright, your spine straight, and keep on standing up for yourself! And when they follow you home to attack you from a cowardly group, Ymar has been stressing to us repeatedly that TFT (Target Focus Training) will be of inestimable value there! Ymar’s managed to sink the term into my consciousness, so I’ll be investigating its worth for myself sometime soon…
Kali -
I read your post with interest.
I am a graduate of the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. The description of your down-state Illinois town fits the description of C-U but there definitely are other towns in IL that would fit that bill.
I hold the Univ. of Illinois responsible for my conservative beliefs. While I did not start off there, it is where I ultimately finished my undergraduate degree. And during the entire time I spent in college, I was force-fed leftist/socialist ideas. And, being the good student that I was, I believed everything the professors said and regurgitated it back to them in class, tests, and papers.
By chance, I wound up working in an amazing, independent bookstore during my last year in college. And I started coming across books that expressed ideas I had never heard advocated before. Radical stuff like the defense of capitalism, the importance of protecting individual liberties, and the ORIGINAL intent of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And these books also discussed in depth the horrid consequences of government intervention in people’s lives and the death and destruction that resulted from the adoption of socialist/communist ideas and practices.
I NEVER would have been drawn to those ideas if they hadn’t seemed so radical, so new.
So I agree. All is not lost. Some of the things that seem to be a problem for us right now may actually, ultimately, work in our favor.
Deana
>>I NEVER would have been drawn to those ideas if they hadn’t seemed so radical, so new.>>
There’s nothing so appealing as strictly forbidding something.
The Catholic Church has always flourished under persecution.
There was a Pearl Buck story I read years and years ago. I don’t really remember it except for a short discussion that took place between two people, one of whom was Jewish. The other person commented on the pork containing food being served at a celebratory meal of some sort. The Jew replied that in the presence of complete tolerance, in fact the presence of total indifference to Jewishness, the practice and observance of Judaism seemed to diminish. In the presence of isolation of the Jews and persecution, Judaism flourished. It was one of those things that stuck in my mind, especially in relation to Judaism in the USA.
My husband has been urging me to read a book he picked up on the importance of Identity. I waited too long though - he gave it to my son to read, so it’ll be a while before I get to it.
Hi, Deana,
Yes, the teenager and I currently live in that defiantly blue outpost of civilization known as Champaign-Urbana. And I completely agree about the university.
I don’t know if the faculty here is worse than any other school, but I get a whiff of “circle the wagons” desperation for those liberals who are trapped in the midst of all these soybeans–that they have to defend themselves against all that midwestern niceness and moderation and solidity lest they suddenly find themselves eating wedge lettuce, drinking budweiser, and voting republican
Ymar’s managed to sink the term into my consciousness, so I’ll be investigating its worth for myself sometime soon…
You don’t have to buy anything or make any commitments so long as you just want to check it out.
If you do, simply read Chris Buhr’s TFT blog over at the TFT website and sign up for their newsletter, again, at http://www.targetfocustraining.com
Try not to read the advertisements because they are just teasers and they won’t give you a real sense of what is going on or how it applies to you. Advertisements are there to get your attention, but the real knowledge is far too important to put in words. (It will get you killed if you go into a fight thinking you know things but haven’t been trained correctly, and TFT instructors do not want that to happen).
When I talk about TFT here, I am mostly doing their equivalent of word of mouth advertisement. Since I can communicate to people here directly, I can answer their questions or concerns in a way that blank slate advertisements couldn’t do in a productive manner.
Of course, I am not rated a Master Instructor nor am I a student in the TFT mastery program. What I know and can speak of are what I have learned on my own or what I have applied from the knowledge TFt has given me. The value of my impressions will rest solely on the amount of credibility my views have here until you learn it for yourself.
I have it on my RSS feeder
http://www.targetfocustraining.com/blog/atom.xml
That’s their RSS link if you use a feeder. I recomend using it for TFT because you can easily browse through their blog titles and check out the things that interest you. I have no idea what would interest any particular individual in the field of violence unless and until they specifically ask or talk about it. You’ll get the most benefit, thus, since you’ll be able to isolate the articles you find of most importance to you.
There was a Pearl Buck story I read years and years ago. I don’t really remember it except for a short discussion that took place between two people, one of whom was Jewish. The other person commented on the pork containing food being served at a celebratory meal of some sort. The Jew replied that in the presence of complete tolerance, in fact the presence of total indifference to Jewishness, the practice and observance of Judaism seemed to diminish. In the presence of isolation of the Jews and persecution, Judaism flourished. It was one of those things that stuck in my mind, especially in relation to Judaism in the USA.
Human beings respond better under adversity than they do under luxury and prosperity. Sad, but true. It is our heritage. It is the human condition. We could no more change this about humanity than we could make human beings into drones that followed orders perfectly.
For example, what I wanted out of Target Focus Training was to learn how to disarm people and attack people armed with firearms, sticks, or knives with my barehands. This was a priority for me since I worried about it constantly.
TFT delivered but they also delivered far more than that to me: far more than I expected, actually.
As I have mentioned before, I don’t believe my interest in violence and gaming it out in the ways I have are common amongst folks. I went into TFT with a list of questions that still remained unanswered to me. Some of what TFT gave out or instructed I already know, such as the base principles in violence or the OODA loop in people’s brains. Some of what TFT taught me was nowhere on my question list because I hadn’t gotten that far.
But it doesn’t matter if you go into TFT with some experience in violence, no experience in violence, some idea of what violence truly is, or no idea of what violence truly is. TFT will get you on track and teach you the entirety of violence so that you can apply it to personal defense against crime or to wars if you wish to.
I’ll take a sample of what TFT will teach you, in case anybody else here is interested.
One of the most important things I learned from TFT is that you don’t need a stick, a knife, or a firearm to kill somebody. I can now do so with my hands just as easily or even more easily depending on the range. (the advantage to firearms is that it can kill at a distance and at a high rate of fire, which translates to efficiency and time saving). This is more valuable than one might think. Airports won’t allow you to bring firearms: only Air Marshalls have firearms. Your perspective starts to change once you realize that you can cause more carnage and mayhem than half the people in any room you are in combined. It truly makes you face your civic duties and responsibilities as well as whatever internal doubts you have. Being armed does similar things, but what happens when you are disarmed or unarmed? Do you suddenly becomes helpless? Of course not, but you will feel like it if you see the gun as your only weapon.
The second thing that I believe may be far more important to folks here is that TFT teaches you how to avoid killing people you are angry with. If you recall the number of incidents of manslaughter, voluntary or involuntary, that gets into the news, you will come to realize that you really do not want to be put into jail for 20 years simply because you got angry at somebody and started a fight or hit back or something.
You will never feel intimidated in a social setting again. You will never feel intimidated by anyone pulling out their stick, knife, or gun to threaten you with because you will know what that means and the weakness it shows. Physical intimidation, physical fear, and people getting in your face will never make you back down because of your uncertainty or fears ever again. It will also never make you as angry as you may have become. Why?
You can’t get angry at somebody you know is playing around with a match and threatening to burn you when you know you can take out a nuclear weapon and vaporize him. You also aren’t afraid of them.
And if you aren’t afraid or angry or angry because you are afraid, the danger of being in a bar room brawl and killing somebody decreases to Zero.
Most of the time dogs bite you is because they are afraid of something and thus fear translates to aggression because it can be nothing else in the animal kingdom. Fear means weakness and weakness you are going to exterminated eventually. So aggression is our natural response to fear.
That’s why people who want to end war by disarming folks and making them more afraid are a locust upon the human species.
There seems to be quite a Chicago /Illinois nexus in the Bookworm Room. Can anyone explain why that might be?
Is it because we reside at Ground Zero for the Obamatopia Event?
Danny:
You may not be that far off.
The voices in my head. . . . .shut UP already!!!. . . . .are telling me that the Obamatopia Event is a gnostic reference to the New Madrid earthquake fault, which is going to pop off a big one on January 20.
I would not pick that day to go visit Big John’s observation deck, Deana.
Kali, get as far inland as you can. All of the rivers are going to back up and create the Sea of Obama.
Uhhh, b-b-b-b-but…Charles….Obama said that he would make the seas recede.
LOL!
All but one sea, Danny, all but one!
Rise, fall, it don’t really matter, Danny. Both can get you followers and money.
Well, the New Madrid fault is centered in Memphis. Cham-Urb should be safe.
However, I did hear on the (formerly) Art Bell show that everyone should move –NOW — to be more than 100 miles from any coast. Mrs. Book, start packing!
>>True quote, from a parent-teacher conference: “Next quarter, we’ll be dealing with imperialism.” And this was the English teacher. Talking about Shakespeare.
I don’t quite recall that bit, but I trust your memory more than mine.
>>Her form of rebellion is to become openly conservative. She’s questioning authority like mad, coming to me (and blogs like this :)) for ammunition.
What can I say? You taught me well.
I went to give blood yesterday and the very nice receptionist at the blood bank and I were chatting about what appeared to be a great volunteer turn-out.
We were theorizing about the reasons — great weather (although rainy days are good for them, too) or charitableness for the oncoming holidays. I said. “Perhaps people are just in a good mood.”
She said, “Well, I can see why considering what just happened a few days ago.”
For most of the people where I live, Obama’s election has, indeed, put them in a good mood. I have no problem with that.
But it was amusing that the woman just assumed that I was one of that group. It never occurred to her that I might think otherwise.
I suppose I had passed her test — Here was a decently dressed, bantering middle-aged man. How could he possibly have not voted for Obama?
Sometimes I feel like the closet liberal in the 1950s South: Everybody loves segregation; how could any decent person not?
>>I don’t quite recall that bit, but I trust your memory more than mine.
You weren’t at that one, Grimmie, or you would have remembered the look on the teacher’s face as I debated whether they should use The Tempest, as both Caliban and Ariel were European, and thus it wasn’t imperialism for Prospero to invade and take over–
Speaking of Bas Rutten, here’s a funny video of him.
Link
Now see if you can understand the base principles he was using just by watching, without the base principles being explained first ; )
Ack! Pretty scary being the one on whom Rutten demonstrates his skills!
The guy’s an entertainer and it shows.
But why do you say it is pretty scary being the one, Book?