Thursday, January 08, 2015

DON'T THINK OF IT AS A COLONY, THINK OF IT AS A PIED-À-TERRE.

Normally when we talk here about conservative urbanists, we're talking about Joel Kotkin, who likes to argue that the blue-state cities are over (despite much evidence to the contrary) and that America will rebloom in Minot, North Dakota. But we have a new contender: William S. Lind at The American Conservative posits "Conservatism for the City." So, is this about conservatives ginning up police mutiny against a Democratic New York City Mayor? No, this is a softer side: Lind tells us that "Paul Weyrich was also a strong supporter of New Urbanism, as well as the high-quality rail transit successful cities require"-- what a pity he never had the ear of the Republican Party! -- and "It is easy enough to identify good things New Urbanism offers conservatives," to wit:
At the top of the list is stronger communities. Community is a highly important conservative value because it is through community expectations and pressures that traditional morals are best upheld. People in communities care what their neighbors think of them. If they don’t, they feel the community begin to exclude them...
Conservative urbanists sound like a bunch of hipsters to me. "I was into the nuclear family before it was popular."
If community is too weak to enforce the rules and their enforcement must be left to the state, the battle for the traditional culture is already largely lost. More, the state soon becomes overly powerful...
So see, if we were doing New Urbanism right, we wouldn't need cops so much -- crooks would just get shamed off the street. Though making people ashamed for wearing bright primary colors and synthetics is a good start.
We have seen that in a number of cities that have adopted aspects of New Urbanism. Successful, thriving cities have reduced crime rates, always a conservative goal...
As opposed to the liberal goal of making crime go up. "But looking at what New Urbanism offers conservatives raises another question," segues Lind: "what might conservatism offer New Urbanism?"
Some answers are obvious. We offer the understanding that traditional middle-class values work. Without them, no city, neighborhood, or town, however well designed, is likely to function.
It's a good thing we have these guys around to promote middle-class values to city folk. Wait'll they hear about this in San Francisco!
Beyond these, my observation over the years of New Urbanism’s strengths and weaknesses leads me to identify three important things conservatives can bring to New Urbanism. Those three things are beautiful architecture, dual codes, and streetcars.
[Blink.] [Blink.]
Although many of New Urbanism’s founders recognize the need for beautiful buildings and know there is an objective, traditional canon going back to the Greeks that tells us what is beautiful and what is not, New Urbanism officially is neutral about architectural style. The reason is ideological. Like the rest of academe, academic architecture is dominated by cultural Marxism...
That explains the giant hammer and sickle on Philip Johnson's Lipstick Building.
Conservatism rejects cultural Marxism and all its works, which frees us from the spurious need to be “neutral” about architecture. We demand beautiful buildings.
For rich people anyway. The poor can continue to live in giant cinder blocks. Preferably somewhere we don't have to look at them.
That demand leaves architects with wide choice, ranging from the neoclassical—usually the best for monumental buildings—and Georgian to the Romanesque and the Gothic.
Mr. Developer, put some flying buttresses on that hideous but profitable condo! We'll pay for it by making everyone turn middle-class and get married, which generates wealth.

To flip over all the cards, Lind considers the stuff you see liberal cities doing all the time -- walkability, mixed use, etc. -- to be conservative; Democratic administrations apparently picked them up by osmosis while strolling past a CPAC convention. Oh, and streetcars, conservatives love streetcars! That's probably why Washington D.C., which is the bluest place in the country, is presently rolling them out -- the power of conservative suggestion.

Well, it's nice to see them grabbing liberal stuff and claiming it instead of the other way around for a change.

UPDATE. "I don't even know what expressions like 'cultural Marxism' mean," says John Myroro in comments. "Seriously, I am not being snarky when I say that contemporary use of terms which I thought I understood, words like 'fascism' or 'socialist,' now seem to be used simply as interjections or placeholders. Like saying 'man' or 'you know' in between words that actually signify." I hear you, comrade, but remember that our subjects here are professional propagandists, and they have been trained to believe terms like these have explosive power (at least among the elect, if not among normal people), so to these guys such expressions are more like what "Can I get an Amen" or "I don't think ya heard me" are to gospel tents.

If you want to read more about where Lind's coming from, mortimer2000 directs you his 2007 essay "Who Stole Our Culture?":
Sometime during the last half-century, someone stole our culture. Just 50 years ago, in the 1950s, America was a great place. It was safe. It was decent. Children got good educations in the public schools. Even blue-collar fathers brought home middle-class incomes, so moms could stay home with the kids. Television shows reflected sound, traditional values.
All ruined, now, and you will be unsurprised to learn Lind does not see a role for rapacious capitalism in its demise, laying it instead to "a deliberate agenda" of "Marxism" and "the 'Frankfurt School'" and all that shit, effected by cartoon characters with big beards and big black cherry bombs upon the unsuspecting sheeple. Thus was Gomer Pyle pre-empted by godless videoporn! Further down in this same essay:
We can choose between two strategies. The first is to try to retake the existing institutions – the public schools, the universities, the media, the entertainment industry and most of the mainline churches – from the cultural Marxists.
Wait, what about the cities, Mr. Lind? What about the streetcars?
...There is another, more promising strategy. We can separate ourselves and our families from the institutions the cultural Marxists control and build new institutions for ourselves, institutions that reflect and will help us recover our traditional Western culture.
Aha! Conservatives will build their own damn streetcars -- in Minot, North Dakota! Or perhaps at The Citadel in Idaho, where all the shooting ranges will be Gothick and walkable.

299 comments:

  1. JohnMyroro10:53 PM

    I wish I understood the new vocabulary rules of political discourse. I don't even know what expressions like "cultural Maxism" mean. Seriously, I am not being snarky when I say that contemporary use of terms which I thought I understood, words like "fascism" or "socialist," now seem to be used simply as interjections or placeholders. Like saying "man" or "you know" in between words that actually signify.

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  2. bekabot10:54 PM

    "Conservative urbanists sound like a bunch of hipsters to me. 'I was into the nuclear family before it was popular.'"

    And afterwards, too.

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  3. Gromet10:58 PM

    I'm very excited -- I just got approved to move into Rand Towers. I'll be on the 666th floor -- in the gothic one of course; the Romanesque tower has always struck me as a bit fey; I feel an arch should look like it is working hard and would hurt to fall on, you know? No pain no gain has always been my motto! I've got magnificent views -- I can see a small town from my massage chamber! Off across the river, near the horizon. It keeps me mindful of their values; after all those are the good folks whose mortgages I bundle and speculate on, it's crucial to stay in touch with -- DAMMIT, LUISA, FOCUS ON THE UPPER BACK, UPPER UPPER UPPER OR I WILL CALL INS RIGHT NOW -- and of course full access to the gym, gun range, propaganda library -- underground parking for both my Yukon and my Armada, a charter school on the 50th floor so Ashley and Galahad won't have to risk associating with gangs or people, free wifi -- yes, sigh, I know by your face what you're thinking. I can see The Sharpton. It is only four miles from my guest bathroom window. I can see the roof, partly; it's an affront. But I assure you it will be condemned and dynamited within the year. This is what we pay our electeds for. I love city living.

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  4. I think "cultural Marxism" means they don't have anything to beat the dummies over the head w/ now that the Soviet Union is history so they're pretending Marxists won the cultural war.


    Or it's just anything that doesn't reflect the traditional middle-class values of the moment.

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  5. Community is a highly important conservative value because it is through community expectations and pressures that traditional morals are best upheld.

    So I guess now it does take a village to raise children.

    I swear: Trying to keep up with these guys has almost completely burned out my inner ear due to the constant spinning and near-instant 180-degree turns.

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  6. I feel an arch should look like it is working hard and would hurt to fall on, you know?

    I hear good orthotic inserts can help with fallen arches.

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  7. Shorter: Conform or we run you out of town on a rail!

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  8. Tell me more about these dual codes, pls. I see plenty, already.

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  9. bekabot11:21 PM

    "So I guess now it does take a village to raise children."

    No, it takes a highly covenanted residential skyscraper to raise children, along with a few rafts of nannies and doormen and cooks. The positive side is that the precocious little tykes will know about the five orders of architecture before they can walk, what with all the neoclassical monumentality daubed around everywhere. (It is to be hoped, though, that their parents will prove too wise to let them ride on the streetcars, which would infect them with all manner of unpleasant habits.)

    "—and Georgian to the Romanesque and the Gothic."



    FWIW, this part sounds like Vegas to me.

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  10. AlanInSF11:27 PM

    San Francisco, the gay-iest gay city of all, has lots of streetcars, cohesive neighborhoods, locally based social services, and successful small businesses. Mitt Romney got 13% of the vote in 2012.

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  11. AlanInSF11:29 PM

    I think it means any style not found in pre-1900 England or America.

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  12. whetstone11:30 PM

    He sounds like [GODWIN'S LAW VIOLATION] talking about architecture.

    That demand leaves architects with wide choice, ranging from the
    neoclassical—usually the best for monumental buildings—and Georgian to
    the Romanesque and the Gothic.


    For a conservative this is awfully... un-American. Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright not good enough for you, Prince Lind of Versailles?

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  13. Almost typed "The 20th Century," but you're right about the geography too.

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  14. Mr. Wonderful12:30 AM

    "That explains the giant hammer and sickle on Philip Johnson's Lipstick Building."


    Not to mention the obvious whoring after the working class in Frank Gehry's works, and the Duchamp-like splinterizations of Zaha Hadid...Jeez, you'd think that at least in the realm of architorture and urban planning, the status of conservatism-as-fantasy-cult would acquire SOME aspects of real-world rigor. Instead--go follow the link--you get lists of criteria and benefits worthy of (speaking of Marxist) any undergrad visionary, and isn't-it-pretty-to-think-so rhapsodies from Andres Duany. These people, I tell ya...

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  15. Gromet12:33 AM

    His "wide choice" reminds me of The Jerk: "Uh, anything in this general area right in here. Anything below the stereo and on this side of the bicentennial glasses. Anything between the ashtrays and the thimble. Anything in this three inches right in here in this area. That includes the Chiclets, but not the erasers."

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  16. It means that you're not allowed to like anything more than anything else because that would be unfair. That's why those filthy libs don't have any preferences - not in films, television shows, novels, music, art, clothing, food, furnishings, breed of dog, make of car, intoxicants, etc. Only good conservatives have favorite things, because only good conservatives appreciate individual quality.

    P.S. I spent this week reading some particularly rank partisan conservative fiction and I think it's still influencing my writing style. Which I don't have, because cultural Marxists refuse to take a stand on writing styles.

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  17. Megalon1:16 AM

    Uhh, yeah, what with all this ranting about "degenerate" art and "objectively" perfect beauty, it's really hard not to think of the architectural preferences of the world's most infamous Charlie Chaplin fan. Or Stalin's "Socialist Classicism" architecture for that matter. Or all the overblown buildings in China. Why are authoritarian creeps so obsessed with this stuff?

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  18. Megalon1:18 AM

    "That demand leaves architects with wide choice, ranging from the
    neoclassical—usually the best for monumental buildings—and Georgian to
    the Romanesque and the Gothic."

    Just so long as it's not from one of those horrible countries full of non-white people!

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  19. Tehanu2:49 AM

    there is an objective, traditional canon going back to the Greeks that tells us what is beautiful and what is not,...


    "Objective." I do not think this word means what he thinks it means.

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  20. Tessie3:12 AM

    If community is too weak to enforce the rules and their enforcement must
    be left to the state, the battle for the traditional culture is already
    largely lost.


    "It isn't fair, it isn't fair!"

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  21. smut clyde3:16 AM

    If community is too weak to enforce the rules and their enforcement must
    be left to the state, the battle for the traditional culture is already largely lost.

    Am I alone in wishing that conservatives could keep their nostalgia for lynch-mob murder slightly better concealed?

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  22. ken_lov3:23 AM

    After reading Lind's touching efforts to write like the editor of a third rate college conservative newspaper, I begin to understand why conservatives regard Jonah Goldberg as an intellectual.

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  23. smut clyde3:39 AM

    The acme of ugly socialist-realist-brutalist architecture is in Hanoi. Trust me on this. The Vietnamese managed to combine the worst of Russian and Chinese influences.

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  24. smut clyde3:44 AM

    When people in the UK talk of "Georgian" they usually mean "Palladian school of Vitruvian-revival Neoclassicism". But Gothick and Chinoiserie are also Georgian. Is confusing.

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  25. Hasn't that already been done in Vegas?

    With the result looking like cheap, oversized theme park pavilions?

    Oh, wait, I just expressed an opinion. I hope the Commissar of Liberal Obeisance isn't reading this.

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  26. smut clyde5:16 AM

    an objective, traditional canon going back to the Greeks that tells us what is beautiful and what is not

    The last time I encountered the term "objective beauty" it was that racist fuck Kanazawa mansplaining why white-skinned ladies are objectively sexier than dark-skinned ones.

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  27. Pope Zebbidie XIII6:18 AM

    Objectionable.

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  28. FMguru7:22 AM

    Oh, good, I was hoping someone would build on Rod "CrunchyCon" Dreher's contention that organic kale smoothies were in fact a touchstone of modern conservatism. I guess the Kotkin/Perfesser claims that the Big Blue cities are dying is in the process of being replaced the claim that the Big Blue cities are actually Big Red cities (if you squint your eyes and look at them juuuuust right). Things must be even worse than I expected out in the suburbs and the sticks if conservatives are trying to recolonize our urban centers.

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  29. Bizarro Mike7:30 AM

    The arch really is the most Objectivist piece of architecture. If those other stones don't fall in line right now, the keystone is totally going to go Galt. Where will you be without this super-stone? Broken on the goddamned ground, that's where. Moochers.

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  30. BadExampleMan7:34 AM

    As far as streetcars go, don't forget their presence in that bastion of rock-ribbed, middle-class conservative family values: New Orleans.

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  31. I would like to give this comment my full support.

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  32. Mad Monk8:05 AM

    "At the top of the list is stronger communities. Community is a highly
    important conservative value because it is through community
    expectations and pressures that traditional morals are best upheld."

    Huh. Dude's a community organizer.

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  33. cultural Marxists refuse to take a stand on writing styles.

    That must make Sarah Palin a cultural Marxist. Perhaps the ultimate cultural Marxist as her writing manages to do away with or ignore syntax, structure, punctuation, and even agreed-upon meanings for common words and phrases.

    Proletarian rise when dictatorship Palin march Sarah . step ; enough might strong be to then watch equal.

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  34. Maybe we can get them to work together with the xtian fundies for a literal Biblical take on it all. Just think of the possibilities when building design and construction is governed by strict Biblical principles including Pi = 3.0!

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  35. I wonder if he has read The Fountainhead?

    Hank Rearden would have HATED his idea of "objective" architectural beauty.

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  36. randomworker8:16 AM

    I was just going to say he's looking for his "Albert Speer" but I thought better of it...er...sorry...

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  37. . . . a hunchback in a three-piece suit might leap out onto one of the parapets and snarl at the crowds below.

    I think Dick Cheney had "other priorities" that weekend.

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  38. Unable to get the voters of the big blue cities to actually, you know, VOTE for conservative candidates and policies, they'll just CLAIM those cities as conservative bastions and move on.

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  39. mortimer20008:32 AM

    You had it right. It's the lowest form of conservative "who stole our culture?" bullshit. Here's Lind:
    Sometime during the last half-century, someone stole our culture. Just 50 years ago, in the 1950s, America was a great place. It was safe. It was decent. Children got good educations in the public schools. Even blue-collar fathers brought home middle-class incomes, so moms could stay home with the kids. Television shows reflected sound, traditional values.

    Where did it all go? How did that America become the sleazy, decadent place we live in today – so different that those who grew up prior to the ’60s feel like it’s a foreign country? Did it just “happen”?

    It didn’t just “happen.” In fact, a deliberate agenda was followed to steal our culture and leave a new and very different one in its place.
    Later, he tells you who stole it:
    ...a coalition of students, blacks, feminist women and homosexuals
    It gets royally skewered by a commie here.

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  40. mortimer20008:37 AM

    I remember when Thatcher had her epiphany: "There is such a thing as society, Toto!" Then she said "there's no place like home" and clicked her boot heels together.

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  41. mortimer20008:39 AM

    Or maybe more like this?

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  42. Pointing to liberal things and claiming them to be conservative seems like one of the less harmful things a conservative can do. This Lind fellow can claim that walkable spaces and a sense of community are conservative ideals if he likes.


    If this becomes a trend, it wouldn't be so bad. As long as progressive policies are supported, I don't care so much what they're called.

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  43. I won't tell if you won't.

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  44. tigrismus8:49 AM

    This is why all art looks like archaic period Greek until you get to Fauvism.

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  45. tigrismus8:52 AM

    Quasiuomo

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  46. mortimer20008:52 AM

    Great title, Roy. Given the 90-story vertical bank vaults for billionaires they're building in Manhattan these days, they're going to have to start calling it this style of living a tête à ciel or something.

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  47. tigrismus8:57 AM

    See, the conservatives make it successful, then the liberals move in and take over the place and ruin in by voting instead of knowing their place, but there's a lag time before it inevitably fails. Just you wait. Aaaany century now.

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  48. Helmut Monotreme9:11 AM

    Degenerate art sounds so much more dangerous when you call it Entartete Kunst don't you think?

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  49. FlipYrWhig9:28 AM

    Ah, but Georgian means "red bricks with columns and symmetry" and neoclassical means "white stone with columns and symmetry."

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  50. Halloween_Jack9:33 AM

    Eine Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Jeb Bush!

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  51. coozledad9:33 AM

    ...a coalition of students, blacks, feminist women and homosexuals
    Up With People?

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  52. Marcia Kazmierczak9:36 AM

    Matt Yglesias on conservative nostalgia:


    "This puts me in a mind of House Speaker John Boehner’s explicitly expressed view that the problem with President Obama is was that he and the 111th Congress were “snuffing out the America that I grew up in”.


    As I said at the time, on its face it’s difficult to make sense of that. John Boehner was born in 1949. Does he feel nostalgic for the higher marginal tax rates of the America he grew up in? For the much larger labor union share of the workforce? The threat of global nuclear war? It’s difficult for me to evade the conclusion that on an emotional level, conservative nostalgics like Boehner are primarily driven by regret at the loss of social privilege by white men. In Boehner’s defense, I often hear white male progressives express nostalgia for the lost America of the 1950s and 1960s and think to myself “a black person or a woman wouldn’t put it like that.” But progressive nostalgics do at least have the high-tax, union-dominated economy and egalitarian income distribution as the things they like. But from a non-bigoted conservative point of view, what is there really to miss about the America John Boehner grew up it? The tax rates were high, but at least they didn’t let Jews into the country club?"

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  53. coozledad9:44 AM

    The Golden Corral is too far from the Mayberry's Ice Cream.

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  54. Halloween_Jack9:46 AM

    I just don't see these fuckers wanting to give up their gas hogs. One of my farmer cousins (who reposts a bunch of wingnut shit on Facebook) seems to be presently enamored of the whole "rolling coal" bullshit, and at some point I'll probably get defriended after I point out to him the insanity of rejoicing in the destruction of the ecology that he makes his living off of. But then again, part of the whole mindset is that it won't affect them; I'm pretty sure that their version of "new urbanism" involves living in the upper stories of these high-rises and taking their bass boat to work when Manhattan turns into Venice.

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  55. coozledad9:48 AM

    I think the fucker is just recycling an old term paper he had to write about The Life and Death of Great American Cities.


    And he's failed again.

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  56. coozledad9:51 AM

    Mumumumah my Sharia!

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  57. coozledad9:53 AM

    It's like the young lady at the Tractor Supply told me: The more you recycle, the longer it will take for Jesus to show up again.
    You need Thorazine just to blend in down here.

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  58. Searching for "marxist architecture, I found this:

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/bb/f5/a0/bbf5a000a793d23d416dfcf156893232.jpg

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  59. The first is to try to retake the existing institutions – the public schools, the universities, the media, the entertainment industry and most of the mainline churches – from the cultural Marxists.

    Lemme see, here. Public schools as bastions of leftwing thinking and indoctrination. Check
    The entertainment industry as communist propaganda outpost (albeit, communists in search of massive profits). Check.
    Most of the mainline churches---ZZZZZZZIIIIIIIPPPPPP!!!![record-scratch sounds]---Whut? Huh?

    Well, sure, I guess. Maybe if I squint hard while taking mass quantities of drugs and hitting myself repeatedly with a mallet, it might be possible to make out how Pat Robertson, Joel Osteen, Pope Ratzinger, and the other mainline churches are actually bastions of cultural Marxism.

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  60. I want to model my five-year plan around this comment.

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  61. Socialist Cubone10:03 AM

    What the fuck would a Gothic 80-story skyscraper even look like?

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  62. It would have dark eye shadow and wear a long black coat. It probably wouldn't talk much and might even just stay home and cut itself in an effort to feel something other than massive ennui.

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  63. Gotta keep the homos out. When Conservatives say "Up the People," that isn't what they mean.

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  64. Google images tells me that "cultural Marxism" = racial equality. For example;

    http://images.lmgtfy.com/?q=cultural+marxism

    Also, http://images.lmgtfy.com/?q=cultural+marxism

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  65. coozledad10:07 AM

    He ought to really like these.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khajuraho_Group_of_Monuments

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  66. Helmut Monotreme10:10 AM

    Yes you will.

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  67. Google images tells me that "cultural Marxism" = racial equality. For example;

    http://images.lmgtfy.com/?q=cultural+marxism#seen

    http://independentfilmnewsandmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/71838_10151422500950359_1584991888_n.png

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  68. Helmut Monotreme10:13 AM

    He misses his youth and his innocence, or to put it another way his obliviousness to the suffering of others.

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  69. coozledad10:14 AM

    Correction: At the end of the day you knock back the last of that gram of coke and chase it with a liter of Zinfandel and your mitral valve blows apart on the sidewalk while you stagger home. And it's done, motherfucker.

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  70. Helmut Monotreme10:17 AM

    I assume it would look like every single skyscraper in Gotham as portrayed in the Tim Burton "Batman" movies.

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  71. Shorter: "My side lost. Gr-r-r!"

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  72. http://americandigest.org/sidelines/a_smash_cultural_marxism.jpg

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  73. One of these assholes is enough. Please delete one Roy.

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  74. coozledad10:21 AM

    The Metropolitan Death building.

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  75. http://images.lmgtfy.com/?q=cultural+marxism#

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  76. Whiner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Knows_Best

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  77. BigHank5310:32 AM

    What wasn't great about being a middle-class white boy in the Midwest in the 50s and 60s? Your mom was always around to fetch pie and lemonade, there were endless packs of cigarettes to swipe, your Dad brought home a new car every two or three years ('cause the old one was falling apart, but never mind that) and judging by the thousands of quietly hushed-up teenage births, the girls were putting out just as much as they are now, except that having a dick meant you got to be a dick about the consequences. Black people knew their place, and everyone on that shiny new TV set looked exactly like you did.

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  78. You call it "lynch-mob murder," I call it "vigilante justice." Big difference.

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  79. tigrismus10:35 AM

    He misses ... his obliviousness to the suffering of others

    Wait, he lost this?

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  80. tigrismus10:41 AM

    Mainline means something different in church-speak.

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  81. chuckling10:43 AM

    Ayn Rand wrote a whole book against that guy's idea of beautiful architecture. Someone should whack him on the head with The Fountainhead.

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  82. Is it an objectively beautiful rail, at least?

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  83. FMguru10:45 AM

    It does seem to be a part of the greater continuity of conservative articles about how Popular Thing X is actually conservative, so as you can clearly see, it is conservatives (not liberals) who are winning the hearts and minds of Americans. This blog has indexed many, many examples of dipshits writing about how Rock & Roll and Punk and The Wire and Breaking Bad are all examples of the triumph of conservatism and proof that liberalism is in full retreat etc etc.

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  84. FMguru10:46 AM

    I see the trench the X-wings fly down, but where is the thermal exhaust port?

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  85. it is through community expectations and pressures that traditional morals are best upheld

    So you could call it a "dictatorship of the proletariat", then.

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  86. Just 50 years ago, in the 1950s, America was a great place. It was safe.
    It was decent. Children got good educations in the public schools. Even
    blue-collar fathers brought home middle-class incomes, so moms could
    stay home with the kids. Television shows reflected sound, traditional
    values.


    Irving Klaw and his wife Paula were taking pictures of Bettie Page and freinds in strict bondage...

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  87. The Golden Calf Corral here in New Boston (OH) just shut down without warning.

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  88. He's talking about churches that don't push enough right-wing politics to suit him, i.e. anyone to the left of the Franklin Graham/John Hagee axis.

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  89. tigrismus11:01 AM

    Children got good educations in the public schools.

    All the schools, because even though they were separate, they were equal.

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  90. When people in the UK talk of "Georgian" they usually mean "Palladian school of Vitruvian-revival Neoclassicism".Thereby confusing the heck out of new arrivals from Tbilisi.

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  91. Iron heels, of course.

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  92. Now I'm conflicted.

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  93. I see the trench the X-wings fly down, but where is the thermal exhaust port?At his desk working on his next piece for The American Conservative.

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  94. Pi = 3.0

    Non-Euclidian geometry! IA! IA! CTHULHU IA!

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  95. The wheels on the bus go CLUNK! CLUNK! CLUNK!

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  96. NOW we know what started the Reichstag fire!

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  97. THIS^^^is just too perfect. It encapsulates 1.) that conservatives do not understand the meaning of "cultural," 2.) conservatives do not understand what "Marxism" is or how it works [it's become a totem for them], 3.) having people treat them with distaste for using racial epithets in public is a form of intense oppression [the "political correctness" reference], and 4.) the very presence of people who are not White and have different traditions is also a form of intense oppression.

    "Until I am confined in a place with people who look like me, act like me, think like me, and always agree with me, I shall be a martyr to freedom!!!"

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  98. "Until I am confined in a place with people who look like me, act like
    me, think like me, and always agree with me, I shall be a martyr to
    freedom!!!"


    He must be REALLY unhappy with the afterlife.

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  99. LookWhosInTheFreezer11:39 AM

    I'd like to sing a continuous loop of the chorus from Pink Houses with this comment.

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  100. Ah. I see. Another host of holy reasons to stay away from Conservatives.

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  101. Helmut Monotreme11:53 AM

    "Until people who don't look like me, act like me, think like me and always agree with me are confined, I shall be a martyr to freedom!!!" FTFY

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  102. bogan backlash11:56 AM

    "Cultural Marxism" means "Jewish, but we know people will look at us like nuts if we say it."

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  103. montag211:58 AM

    And, it seems, that "who stole our culture?" nonsense is whipped up with a nice, frothy conservative nostalgia for a time that didn't exactly exist as they imagine it, and for those aspects of it that did exist, didn't exist for everyone, and certainly did not exist solely due to the values espoused by conservatives today. A lot of it was just accident--the U.S. was the only country after WWII with manufacturing capacity that hadn't been bombed into oblivion--and there were union participation rates and New Deal work rules that kept overall wages high for workers... not exactly what Lind had in mind, I'm sure.

    What appeals most to Lind about the `50s, I think, is its horrible, deadening, mass-marketed conformity and its stultifying conventional thinking. "Television shows reflected sound, traditional values." In this, Lind shows himself to be a devotee of Leo Strauss, in thinking that mass-marketed culture is a tool for mass compliance. Molly Ivins still applies--she thought June Cleaver an idiot for vacuuming in cocktail dress and high heels, and that's the sort of world Lind imagines us inhabiting once again. A world of happy idiots controlled behind the scenes by fascists.

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  104. MUCH better! Thanks!

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  105. montag212:00 PM

    Oh, I think he's with friends....

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  106. Helmut Monotreme12:02 PM

    He lost the obliviousness, and replaced it with indifference.

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  107. montag212:19 PM

    Along with a rendition of "Little Boxes" at the break.

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  108. https://elderthe1st.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/20131106v.jpg

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  109. Jay B.12:21 PM

    Always good to see your handle in the comments MM!

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  110. montag212:22 PM

    This could have been the reason why Hunter S. Thompson blew his brains out.

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  111. Jay B.12:26 PM

    Can you translate that back into sensical?

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  112. Jay B.12:30 PM

    Television shows reflected sound, traditional values.


    Values like cross-dressing and smoking as if we were rootless cosmopolitans. Uncle Miltie come back!

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  113. M. Krebs12:34 PM

    Huh. I could have sworn it was the Neoclassical school of Vitruvian-revival Palladianism.

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  114. tigrismus12:36 PM

    How many brain cells have to commit suicide before that makes any sense? All of them?

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  115. basenjibrian12:38 PM

    Buildings are ugly because an architectural ideology was bastardized, copied, and cheapened by big corporations and the government to save money.

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  116. basenjibrian12:40 PM

    Because nothing exemplifies correct conservative values more than VEGAS! LOL
    Actually....it does. gated communities, boring conservative music and culture. Wealthy, corrupt corporations controlling everything. And consumption. Endless consumption.

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  117. PersonaAuGratin12:42 PM

    Wow. Also some that managed to be worse than Nazi viewpoints.

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  118. basenjibrian12:45 PM

    Which is another thing that really confuses me. Modern "conservatism" is really a radical thing. Worship of the market. Everyone scrambling to serve Great Mammon. "Creative Destruction". How is this "conservative"? Nothing destroys communities quicker than a BANE CAPITAL swooping in and buying up the local factory and shutting it down after extracting all the management fees and interest they can.

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  119. Brother Yam12:46 PM

    Holy shit, what a vigilante anthem he's got there. Bernie Goetz gives it a 8/10 and thinks the kids will be dancin' to it for years...

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  120. Giant Monster Gamera12:46 PM

    I had no idea that Cultural Marxism was actually a real thing on the Right. I guess that's about all you can expect from the people that brought us Liberal Fascism.

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  121. I am confused, I thought all the giant ugly glass box buildings were commissioned by rich people and the rich people who run large corporations. Does this mean all those people were secret Marxists?

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  122. Giant Monster Gamera12:54 PM

    Someone really ought to take Speer's plans for Berlin, dust them off, and make a serious proposal that American Exceptionalism deserves that kind of architecture.

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  123. Gromet12:59 PM

    When he says "students" stole our culture... isn't he saying "our children stole it"? I mean that is kind of fascinating.

    Anyway, will it ever occur to these assholes that the 1950s they idolize were 1) Not the last moment of a cultural norm that started in 1620 but a startling outlier made possible by new mass media and the unwinding of history's biggest war, and 2) Imperfect even if you love their conformity, as they were full of paranoia and jazz.

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  124. PersonaAuGratin1:02 PM

    And don't forget those great radio and T.V. ads featuring Ronald Reagan. But thanks to Cultural Marxism, Boraxo is now owned by the Germans and G.E.'s Appliance business is now owned by the Swedes.

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  125. Steve-O1:04 PM

    The home-schooled children can ride their own streetcars around their own neighborhoods full of their own architecture. Somethingsomething dual codes.
    Anything to keep a safe distance from all that Cultural Marxism.


    Comrades, I don't think we will be welcome in these tradition Western cultural locales. Such a pity.

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  126. Gromet1:05 PM

    It's hard to see. It's only about two meters wide.

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  127. PersonaAuGratin1:09 PM

    It needs a taxpayer subsidized NFL stadium with skyboxes for Chris Christie to bounce around in.

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  128. montag21:10 PM

    I'm also really confused by this sudden conservative interest in "community," as if they've just discovered it. More likely, they've just discovered that it's the glue that holds non-conservative society together and now wish to co-opt it, too.

    But, how does that square with Thatcher's (alluded to above) "there's no such thing as society?" How does the fuck-you-buddy rugged individualism of predatory capitalism jive with building community (especially when projects like The Citadel and South American Randian paradises and god-know-whose-bright-idea-of-stateless-floating-islands look more and more like real-estate scams and Ponzi schemes than honest efforts at creating community)?

    And, make no mistake about it--what Lind envisions as "new" community is actually an old idea, and a very pale-complected, blue-eyed, blond-haired, 1930s one at that.

    Hmm. What Lind calls "cultural Marxism," I would call "anti-fascism."

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  129. basenjibrian1:10 PM

    They are certainly (shudder) cosmoplitans. Unlike Thaddeus Winston Smythers IV and his plantation manor in Natchez, Miss.!

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  130. Most women in the 50s & early 60s wore "House coats" or Muu-muu's. Plus fuzzy slippers. And usually had a cigarette in her mouth. And the dog would go crazy biting at the vacuum.

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  131. If they want the 50s back they should elect another FDR! Hahahahahaha!

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  132. It was weird. One day, parking lot is full (it was apparently a popular place for locals). Next day, the sign says "CLOSED FOR BUSINESS."

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  133. i suppose the ugly utilitarian concrete buildings in the Soviet Union and other communist countries could be blamed on "Marxism", but seems more likely to me the people in charge were trying to but up living spaces for a LOT of people quickly and inexpensively. They couldn't afford to take 30 years to build a palace.

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  134. Lotta phallic symbols and right in the center a huge boob.

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  135. Gromet1:21 PM

    Yes. This. It's not that these assholes are racists per se. It's that they do not grasp that the world as they experienced it in 1959 at age 10 was not the actual world. They want the narrow childhood experience back, where the whole cosmos was your suburb and who would win in a fight, Superman or a Tyrannosaur, in place of the complicated adult world you're stuck in now, where you realize there is a lot of weird and ugly shit going on. "Hey, that didn't use to exist! It's new to me!"

    I don't get how you confuse the world with your subjective perception of it, but I suspect that's it. And conversations with GOP folks in my personal life has born this out, e.g., "We had a black family in our neighborhood and no one treated them differently, so it was not a racist time like today" -- well, Haha, how did it come to pass that out of 150 homes, ONE had a black family? Because the answer there might be "Maybe the world was a bit more seriously fucked up then it let on to me when I was being nice to the one black lady I met before I turned 18." Nope, can't have that. The world was just your solipsistic juvenile experience of it, end of story.

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  136. Happened to a nearby non-Starbucks coffee shop in my home-town. It often means their rent was raised astronomically -thanks to Starbucks or some other chain that sells McCoffee or Mc-Ice-Cream. Sad, and of course they destroy the small entrepreneur ... all in the name of community and conformity!

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  137. They know (remember) that things were good then, but they don't know why. Meanwhile they spend every moment destroying the New Deal. Some give the 50s boom credit to WWII and so get us into even more wars. Strange that it doesn't work!

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  138. If you saw how dilapidated anything that sits empty here becomes almost overnight, and how economically-depressed the entire is, you'd probably correctly surmise that the tenant has the upper hand, here.

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  139. Gromet1:26 PM

    I see. You'd rather have American communities die a slow and painful death, struggling in vain to meet the socialistic demands of unions and Al Sharpton, spending the last of their creative energy to salvage what liberalism has doomed when they could instead get out there and bootstrap up a solid new Hardworking American Small Business, like maybe on etsy.

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  140. montag21:28 PM

    Well, it's not as if those aren't, umm, perennial themes....

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  141. I think it means "gay-negro-Jew-Feminist-liberal" or some combination.

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  142. I saw a documentary on the wonderfulness of the "silver standard". I found it interesting and rather persuasive until one example they used of the destructiveness of the Gold Standard was the Roman empire. "The Romans went from a silver-standard to a gold-standard in coinage.... and three hundred years later their empire collapsed! How much more proof do you need?

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  143. basenjibrian1:30 PM

    Ooh. You've nailed me. SLOW DEATH is my goal. Evil socialist unions when everyone in a country of 300 million can make a living selling crocheted cozeys and other crafts on Etsy!
    Heck, fast death is a better goal. Hence, why I voted for the Marxist Homosexual Kenyan Muslim in 20o8!
    Skreeeee. I just heard the dog whistle (Al Sharpton references). Bravo, Good Sir! I bet this post would also go over well on Stormfront!

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  144. Don't forget the GI Bill. All those "takers" on the "government teat" were a driving force behind the subsequent relative prosperity of the US middle class in the 50s/60s.


    Lind and his ilk are charlatans of the worst order - they retrofit their ideology up the ass of history and convince the credulous that the suppository made everything better.

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  145. What about the communities who protest the murder of children by police? Oh wait, they're mobs of animals. Right, I get it.

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  146. Till a McStarbucks ruins them.

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  147. basenjibrian1:34 PM

    Sorry, Gromet. I actually thought you were being serious here. The horrors of internet communications! POE applies to conservative "thought" as well as fundamentalist religion.
    I plan to be your neighbor in Rand Towers once I have made my millions selling ceramic traditional family pottery figurines on eBay. I got an amazing deal on the production costs from the camp...errr...factory in Myanmar. It's amazing how cheap those (former?) socialists can be!

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  148. And all-you-can-eat buffets. And pissing away your money for no return.

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  149. Children got good educations in the public schools
    So lets privatize schools!

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  150. Gromet1:40 PM

    I'll take it as a compliment that you thought I was for reals.

    Not that it matters. Our comments here today will be forgotten and indeed the whole internet will collapse the minute you Communist Elites finally get this "Net Neutrality" you keep ramming down our throats.

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  151. There you go! It IS very pretty, I admit. My (cough) townhouse is imitation-neo-classical-Regency.

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  152. Flying buttresses? Stained glass windows? Crumbling stone blocks?

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  153. It appears cultural Marxism and Naziism are mortal enemies.

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  154. basenjibrian1:44 PM

    Bwahaahaha. You can only wish. These treasonous comments are being...archived. The People will REMEMBER very well who needs to be corrected and reeducated.
    Heck, right this moment we are completing the mechanisms and chemical elixirs needed to RE-ANIMATE Saul Alinski (PBHN)himself. I will be sure to reserve time for you in his Special Interrogations Chamber!

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  155. Needs more buttresses. Cow bell wouldn't hurt!

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  156. willf1:46 PM

    That demand leaves architects with wide choice, ranging from the neoclassical—usually the best for monumental buildings—and Georgian to the Romanesque and the Gothic.

    Since you brought it up, I'll just mention that Lind is showing his ignorance of Randian aesthetics here. The Fountainhead starts with grad student Howard Roark angrily dismissing all contemporary architecture as an academic rehash of the greeks, with most of the buildings he sees being a copy of the Parthenon, covered with various flavors of frippery.


    The "ugly" buildings Lind is so set against would be the kind of thing Roark would design.

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  157. Keynsian economics only works if it is used to blow shit up.

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  158. smut clyde1:49 PM

    Splitters!

    ReplyDelete
  159. but but but Liberal Fascism?

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  160. billcinsd2:08 PM

    no that's how they get their sedan chair a'movin'

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  161. Because it's just the caring kind of guy I am, I mentally sew this badge on the sweater vest of every knob big brain champion in the troop who uses the phrase "Culture Warrior:

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  162. Kinda gives a new meaning to "Carry me home to ol' Virginny."

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  163. As a child of the '60s growing up in deepest suburbia on Long Island (or Lawn Guy Land), I had friends whose mothers were pretty much like this. Imagine the trauma inflicted on developing youngsters (male and female alike) when going over to Jimmy's house after school only to find his mother clad in a sheer Muu-muu while smoking a Chesterfield and getting a start on her second or third cocktail in preparation for Jimmy's dad coming home from Manhattan. (Note: Jimmy's mom was 5-foot-three and tipped the scales at 185. Orange hair straight out of a bottle and rhinestone pointy-tip eyeglasses completed the look.)

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  164. hint = use "s" instead of "strikethrough".

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  165. I'm imagining the above combined with an LI accent, and the combo ain't a winning one.

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  166. billcinsd2:24 PM

    he ought to be finding at least two of those extremely prevalent among his dude-bros in Hell. Unless Lucifer torments him with simulacra of successful, non-white, non-asshole liberals

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  167. J Neo Marvin2:30 PM

    It is nothing like the Marxism of the Soviet Union. Indeed, this is central to my point.

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  168. tigrismus2:33 PM

    Wait wait, maybe the 'N' word is Nazi? Because certainly there's nothing Nazi about merely wanting to protect one's race from the backstabbers and decrying Kulturbolschewismus! Hmm, maybe I need to concentrate my hammer work on my frontal lobe...

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  169. billcinsd2:42 PM

    nah. I dated Entarte Kunst back in the '80s and she was every bit of all right. But I and the world were young then

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  170. Well, when educated women's career choices were "teacher" or "nurse" (literally the only two majors at my mother's Catholic women's college in the late 50s), you wound up with a pool of talented teachers who had no choice but to work cheap.

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  171. I see/not-see what you do there.

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  172. Don't forget the prostitution.

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  173. I don't think you can blame Starbucks for raising the rent. The landlord can only fill the space with actual other renters and unless Starbucks is coming in raising the rent and forcing out the existing business doesn't make business sense. Landlords do it, of course, because they are stupid fucks. But its not "because" of Starbucks.

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  174. Skyboxes for Chris Christie to bounce around in."?? The guy is huge but not inflated. He won't bounce unless you heave him off the empire state building.

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  175. billcinsd3:36 PM

    I'm surprised she couldn't major in Motherhood. Sure it would be a non-accredited program but I'm sure was considered a very useful career choice.

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  176. oh, for...

    They Saved Alinsky's Brain was just a movie!

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  177. Bitter Scribe4:45 PM

    This guy sounds like he just got through "From Bauhaus to Our House," or whatever that silly man called that silly book.

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  178. BigHank535:11 PM

    At last their physical movement can match their mental movement.

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  179. smut clyde5:15 PM

    One of these days I'll get around to photoshopping the Volkshalle dome onto the top of Andrew Klavan's head.

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  180. smut clyde5:36 PM

    That accounts for the ugly housing, but not for the uglification of the monumental architecture.
    Totalitarian architecture is about creating a physical symbol of the power of the state; everything is heavy and overbearing and oppressive, as if they were engineered for a heavier planet with stronger gravity.

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Latvian_academy_of_sciences.jpg

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  181. smut clyde5:37 PM

    could be blamed on "Marxism"

    Tsarist architecture is often just as bad.

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  182. satch5:39 PM

    It can be easy to over think Boehner's little speech. Think of the science project with the D battery hooked up to the amputated frog leg. Whenever these guys start blatting on about The America I Grew Up In(tm), it's just the current that makes the nerve endings of the citizens of Greater Wingnuttia thoughtlessly twitch.

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  183. satch5:42 PM

    http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100906212009/mst3k/images/3/31/Brainwouldntdie.jpg

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  184. That is the model for Red State Trike Force, no?

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  185. redoubtagain6:41 PM

    Attributed to Harry S Truman: "If you want to live like a Republican, vote Democrat."

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  186. coozledad6:48 PM

    That's going to leave a big hole. Take one, too.

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  187. DocAmazing6:54 PM

    https://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view;_ylt=AwrTcdPuabBUBqQAfm8PxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTBsOXB2YTRjBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2dxMQR2dGlkAw--?p=prisoner+rover&back=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.yahoo.com%2Fyhs%2Fsearch%3Fp%3Dimage%2Bprisoner%2Brover%26ei%3DUTF-8%26hsimp%3Dyhs-001%26hspart%3Dmozilla&w=750&h=600&imgurl=i171.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fu314%2Fcommasutra66%2Fprisoner-rover.jpg&size=36KB&name=prisoner-rover.jpg&rcurl=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.televisionwithoutpity.com%2Ftopic%2F3142036-my-motivation-is-this%2Fpage-1018&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.televisionwithoutpity.com%2Ftopic%2F3142036-my-motivation-is-this%2Fpage-1018&type=&no=6&tt=119&oid=2721e037b564daf10c7b1dfeb372be5d&tit=My+Motivation+Is+This...&sigr=12lru0tgd&sigi=120oc3h60&sign=10i3anosj&sigt=103d1h5lg&sigb=130e8eonm&fr=yhs-mozilla-001&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001

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  188. coozledad6:54 PM

    Probably the least difficult role to get in character for, ever.

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  189. redoubtagain6:57 PM

    Duly noted.

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  190. redoubtagain7:07 PM

    God, I HATED Vegas the one and only time I was forced to be there (industry conference). You just encapsulated why.

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  191. Gromet7:15 PM

    Fair point. Boehner never seems to put any thought into what he says, so why should we put any thought into what he says?

    Seriously -- can you name a single politician of the past 20 years who speaks as fully in boilerplate? The man just knows he's going to say "hardworking American families" and "job-killing Democratic bill" before he gets to the period -- that's his whole plan for every sentence.

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  192. Bauhaus
    In the middle of our street

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  193. That's where I first saw it! Thanks!

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  194. "Welcome to Death Valley Days! The driver's either missing or he's dead!" -Crow

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  195. "So, what's my motivation here?"
    "You're a head. In a pan. QUIET ON THE SET!"

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  196. M. Krebs7:32 PM

    That so many people's lives are centered on burning gasoline and making as much noise and fumes as possible in the process makes me want that asteroid to hurry up and smash us all to smithereens.

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  197. redoubtagain7:33 PM

    "Copyright 2003, Invisible Empire Productions, all right wings reserved."

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  198. M. Krebs7:36 PM

    You could still get a degree in Home-Ec at my alma mater when I was there.

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