Wednesday, October 22, 2014

I SAY! BUT SURELY YOU DON'T HAVE TO HIRE THEM AS WELL?

Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review rags on Wendy Davis and sees in her ordinary political maneuvering, as he sees in everything, the thin end of the Liberal Fascist wedge, resulting in this:
In this manner, too, have we come to discuss the ever-diminishing scope of private property rights, our debates centering nowadays not on whether individuals should have a general right to decide whom they will serve, but on why anybody would be asking these questions in the first instance. Think you should be able to decide who comes into your bar? Drop the act, Bubba, you must be in the Klan.
Cooke, relatively new to this country, seems not to have fully accepted that here in the states you can't just tell certain types to stay out of your bar ("the law says I have to serve him," like this man says), and that the sheeple have lived with this injustice for so long that they no longer question it. Well, that just gives Cooke another freedom to fight for!

Like Chris Christie expressing his impatience with the minimum wage, this is a useful reminder of what these guys are really about.

UPDATE. It's always nice to have someone who knows what he's talking about in comments, so take it away, Scott Lemieux:
Hmm, let's see what one radical Trotskyite had to say about the "general right" of "individuals" to "decide who they will serve":

"[I]f an inn-keeper, or other victualler, hangs out a sign and opens his house for travelers, it is an implied engagement to entertain all persons who travel that way; and upon this universal assumpsit an action on the case will lie against him for damages, if he without good reason refuses to admit a traveler." -Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England

You'd think someone with an Oxford education might be aware of this, but...
UPDATE 2. Cooke's reactions to Scott -- basically "sputter, sputter, asshole!" -- are worth noting and indeed @squarelyrooted has noted them.

143 comments:

  1. gocart mozart10:17 AM

    "Think you should be able to decide who comes into your bar? Drop the act, Bubba, you must be in the Klan."

    Right, how dare you compare segregationists to the Klan.

    ReplyDelete
  2. See what you did there, I do.

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  3. Damn liberals have been attacking private property rights ever since the early 19th Century!

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  4. dstatton10:49 AM

    The Klan were all Democrats! Just like Wendy Davis! QED

    ReplyDelete
  5. Went off the boat, enjoy the mangoes:

    How
    exactly do we imagine the First Amendment would have fared if it had
    been presented as a measure to privilege the communication rights of
    neo-Nazis over the feeling of Jews, or as an attempt to elevate into the
    national charter the right to burn the beloved American flag?


    Oh fuck me Agnes, the point is nobody (except maybe a wingnut) would have framed the INITIAL argument for the Amendment that way. OF COURSE if you tried to do that, it'd never pass.

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  6. susanoftexas11:15 AM

    I waded into the comments to ask for proof that the Democrats were the party of the Klan and was told that the southern realignment theory had been thoroughly debunked. My comments currently are being erased.

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  7. The wingnuts do love their memory holes.

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  8. susanoftexas11:18 AM

    The problem with that is your brain ends up looking like Swiss cheese.

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  9. gocart mozart11:20 AM

    That seems to be the party line. The southern strategy is a liberal myth, like global warming, the "War on Women" and white racism. It's like a religious belief, impervious to logic or facts. It's like arguing evolution with a creationist.

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  10. the southern realignment theory had been thoroughly debunked


    [Consults Oxford English Dictionary]


    Well, whatta ya know. It turns out that "debunked" has an extremely archaic definition that means "completed successfully."

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  11. FlipYrWhig11:27 AM

    How much would "the American flag" have been beloved in 1791?

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  12. In this manner, too, have we come to discuss the ever-diminishing scope of private property rights...

    For example, the diminishing right of a woman to control her own body. No wait, why waste time on that completely hypothetical situation? At this very moment hundreds of bar owners are being called Klan members because they refused to serve drinks to two men!

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  13. susanoftexas11:28 AM

    They are making up their own language to go with their own reality.

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  14. or as an attempt to elevate into the national charter the right to burn the beloved American flag?Yeah, God damn that Scalia for voting with the majority in Texas v. Johnson.

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  15. Ted the slacker11:29 AM

    Shock, NRO writer unaware that teh Americans have a general right not to be discriminated against. You'd think one these writers might be a little conscious of this publication's history before broaching this subject, but absolutely not in the least. It's almost like they have no shame.

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  16. Cooke does not seem to be the ablest of writers.

    He'll fit in just fine with Jonah.

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  17. Derelict11:31 AM

    In this manner, too, have we come to discuss the ever-diminishing scope of private property rights, . . .

    And to think it all started when those damn Yankees decided I couldn't own another human being. It's infringements like these that have led us to a place where I can't refuse to serve blacks at my lunch counter. Such fascism!

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  18. Also - I am relieved to see that 3C1W hasn't subjected himself to the horrors of original thought:




    One day, no one thought of gay marriage (or few did). The
    next day, “civil unions” were the far-out, progressive position. The day after
    that, if you favored civil unions but not gay marriage, you were a Klansman. A
    Nazi. That’s where we are now. Try refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding,
    or refusing to rent your hall for such a wedding. Just try it.

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  19. Ted the slacker11:34 AM

    This is very very good.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Derelict11:36 AM

    You'd think one these writers might be a little conscious of this publication's history before broaching this subject . . .

    Oh, they're very conscious of it. And they do their best to write their dogwhistle racism without coming right out and calling for a return to 1904 racial standards. (Although some of them do come perilously close--see Derbyshire, John for further details.)

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  21. Some of them were even letting their collectivist freak flag fly at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention itself, if you can believe it. And noted Leninist Benjaman Franklin dared present the very first Congress with a petition attacking a vast swathe of private property rights. A blackity-black-black blot on our nation's history, that's for sure.

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  22. Derelict11:38 AM

    There's a Ms. Betsy Ross who'd like a word or two.

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  23. see Derbyshire, John

    I'd rather not, if you don't mind.

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  24. Surely you mean a "3/4 person blot", no?

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  25. Ted the slacker11:45 AM

    "The ever diminishing scope of private property rights" = the erosion of wingnut axiom number 1, "I got mine fuck you"

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  26. Yup. And that's why white voters should ignore the fact that the Republicans are behind every attempt to roll back the civil rights movement. Those crazy blahs don't know what they're talking about or they'd vote Republican. If we let them!

    And I predict that before the century ends, a not inconsequential number of yo-yos slavery was never practiced in the American colonies or the U.S. People from Africa hid in ships bound for the western hemisphere and the and then took jobs from honest, hard-working white folk. Any stories about slavery are just a bunch of liberal lies that were started by that atheist lesbian feminazi, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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  27. susanoftexas11:53 AM

    Because their homeschool textbooks and Sunday School lessons tell them so.

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  28. Axiom #2: "You won't be needing that, so I'll just be taking it."

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  29. I serve reds and yellows, but my customers all keep falling asleep.

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  30. Axiom #3: Any nice thing that you have should have been mine in the first place, hand it over!

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  31. Hey, you can't make an omelet without selling your slaves' children to someone else first.

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  32. Ted the slacker12:00 PM

    #3 - I can't remember the third one. Oops

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  33. randomworker12:02 PM

    First they erase you then they ban you. The final step is banning your IP. I got banned for posting facts about the ACA roll out. It's just a cesspool of the same-old same-old over there anyway.

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  34. DN Nation12:03 PM

    A while back I was arguing with the monkeyhouse over at Eric Allie's blog (D-list wingnut cartoonist; no longer allows comments because he kept getting his ass handed to him in them) about southern realignment. Some Cletus Q. Hazzard comes in and copy&pastes a screed from RedState or ClownHall or wherever else documenting the horrible, horrible racist things that Democrats had done in American history.


    So you've got lynchings and Jim Crow and Dixiecrats and then amazingly!, the list stops around the mid-60s. And then there's a quote by Reagan saying something nice about a civil rights leader. And then there's a quote by Bush saying something nice about a civil rights leader. And then the dumbass "doesn't talk black" thing that Harry Reid said. And that's *it*.


    That this list, which I'm sure the wingnut hive mind has saved on their hard drives ready to rock and roll on discussion forums at a moment's notice, basically stopped in the 1960s didn't seem like a big deal to this yokel.

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  35. randomworker12:03 PM

    Maybe some new glasses will help you remember?

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  36. That's right, honey. You make sure you silence any opposition. It's the
    only way to make sure nobody ever tells you anything you don't like to
    hear.


    Good on ya!

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  37. dstatton12:10 PM

    Reagan kicked off his first presidential campaign in Philadelphia, MS, practically on the spot where the three civil rights workers were killed by "Democrats". I will aways hate him for that.

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  38. susanoftexas12:12 PM

    "Dagny" wouldn't even link to something like that. I guess banning me a dozen times is easier.

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  39. DN Nation12:14 PM

    And Reagan opposed MLK Day. I pointed out both, and Allie deleted the comment. These people are equal parts moronic *and* delusional in their evil.

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  40. dstatton12:15 PM

    Franklin owned a slave in in his younger years and brought him along on one of his trips to Europe. The great man obviously changed his mind at some point.

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  41. susanoftexas12:20 PM

    Endlessly. Then they said that liberals refuse to have a fair discussion and can't face facts.

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  42. So they "have a fair discussion" by eliminating any comment they disagree with. Brilliant.

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  43. I waded into the comments once or twice and was banned from the NRO long ago.
    ~

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  44. HEY YOU GODLESS, TERRORIST-LOVING, AMERICA-HATING QUEERMONAUT, WHY DON'T YOU STOP KILLING BABIES, SITTING AROUND ON WELFARE AND TEACHING 1ST GRADERS HOW TO SPIT ON THE FLAG AND PUT ON CONDOMS AND SIT DOWN AND HAVE A REASONED CONVERSATION WITH MEAAAARGHGHGLE????

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  45. gocart mozart12:42 PM

    At NRO once, I pointed out that Goldwater ran against the '64 CRA. I was informed that Goldwater was opposed for legitimate constitutional reasons and he really was a champion of civil rights unlike that racist Robert Byrd. So there you go.

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  46. susanoftexas12:51 PM

    I have to wonder how they talk to their kids.
    Kid: Mom, you gave me a shoe instead of my lunch.
    "Dagny": It's not a wingtip leather shoe with tassles, it's a bologna sandwich.
    Kid: But Mom, it's a shoe.
    "Dagny" Shut up and eat your sandwich.
    Kid: But I can prove it. (Bangs table with shoe. Puts shoe on foot and walks around.) See, it's a shoe!
    "Dagny": It's a sandwich and I can prove it.
    Kid: How?
    "Dagny": You are banned. Go to your room.
    Kid: But....
    "Dagny": Kids are always wrong but never want to admit it. Fortunately I'm really good at sending them to their rooms.

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  47. Ms. Betsy Ross

    Probably some ultra-liberal America-hating feminazi.

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  48. M. Krebs1:04 PM

    I've seen this movie before. It's from the '60s and it starred Lester Maddox.

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  49. Cato the Censor1:05 PM

    Mr. Cooke's prose style might improve if he takes the stick out of his butt. I know this is just an excerpt, but I had a really hard time following his syntax. I wonder if he's using the same stick Bill Buckley had. Let's hope he washed it beforehand.

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  50. mgmonklewis1:16 PM

    My comments are now being erased.

    Proof once again that Liberals are the real fascists.

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  51. The syntax is impossible even in the original.

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  52. Cerulean Spork1:42 PM

    but the UK passed their first Race Relations Act that prohibited discrimination in public places & services in1965 which was updated several times since

    plus sex & disability discrimination laws that include employment & housing

    & a sweeping Equality Act since 2010 that specifically prohibits refusing to serve gay people OR straights just as much


    http://www.acas.org.uk/equalityact

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_Relations_Act_1965

    has he been stuck in a time warp for the past 50 years at some alternate Oxford U?

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  53. Ellis_Weiner1:45 PM

    Makes sense, now that you and OED mention it. If "bunk" is nonsense, then to de-bunk something is to free it of the charge of being nonsense. Huh.

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  54. Cerulean Spork1:46 PM

    the official UK page on the 2010 Equality Act

    https://www.gov.uk/equality-act-2010-guidance

    the 1976 Race Relations Act w amendments

    http://www.legislationline.org/topics/country/53/topic/10/subtopic/37

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  55. Ellis_Weiner1:47 PM

    "Ends up"? How about "starts out"?

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  56. Cerulean Spork1:49 PM

    also as an (apparent) british citizen he has been in a coma or a time warp between 1965 and 2010 & missed 4.5 decades of UK antidiscrimination Acts

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  57. StringOnAStick1:53 PM

    Hey, if they get their way here in CO, the AP high school history classes will agree.

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  58. satch1:54 PM

    Axiom #3.1419203:


    If you have something nice, you must have stolen it, since Libtards don't believe in hard work and sacrifice.

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  59. BG, watery tart1:55 PM

    Presidential recordings of LBJ on civil rights:

    http://presidentialrecordings.rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/essays?series=CivilRights---


    His elation did not last. Later that evening, in a mood described by White House aide Bill Moyers as “melancholy,” Johnson predicted that “we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.”4 That remark is one of the most telling (and frequently repeated) statements about race and politics from Johnson’s presidency. Unfortunately, those words were not recorded by any of the electronic equipment at the White House. Several hundred other conversations from that summer and fall, however, were captured by audio recorders, and the material on those once-secret recordings constitute one of the richest and most dramatic sources for exploring the politics of race in the Johnson era.

    This digital volume documents almost two hundred presidential conversations involving significant discussions of race, politics, and the civil rights movement during the summer and fall of 1964.5With a few notable exceptions, all of those conversations took place over the telephone, with President Johnson usually speaking either at the White House or the LBJ Ranch in Texas. These calls occurred generally in three chronological periods. For July and early August, the tapes tended to archive Johnson’s responses to white anti–civil rights violence in Mississippi and Georgia and to civil disorders in New York City and several other northeastern cities. From early August to early September, they focused on the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) challenge and the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The final section of recordings, the smallest in size, covered aspects of the presidential campaign from the end of August to the election in early November.

    6 July–5 November 1964

    The volume begins in the midafternoon of 6 July, with President Johnson and Attorney General Robert Kennedy discussing the FBI’s “Mississippi Burning” case and the limits of federal authority in investigating the 21 June disappearance and presumed murder of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Michael “Mickey” Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman. It ends just before midnight on 5 November, two days after Johnson’s presidential victory, with the president chatting with National Urban League Director Whitney Young in the final conversation in a series of brief congratulatory calls with prominent black leaders. In between those moments, the White House Dictabelt audio recorders documented one of the United States’ most talkative presidents as he tried to implement the Civil Rights Act, negotiate his delicate relationship with Martin Luther King Jr., investigate high-profile civil rights murders by white supremacists, limit violence in ongoing school desegregation cases, and respond to racial unrest and civil disorders in northern cities.

    The major topic of those tapes, though, was Johnson’s handling of the challenge posed by Mississippi’s Freedom Democrats.6 A primarily black-led group of civil rights activists from Mississippi, the MFDP intended to replace the white segregationists of the state’s regular Democratic Party at the Democratic National Convention. Their struggle became one of the central national news stories of the summer. The telephone calls about the MFDP and almost every other recording in this volume show that Johnson’s early July concern about losing the South was not merely a lament about the long-term consequences of the Civil Rights Act, but about his immediate fears for his political future—and these conversations affirm that Johnson’s overriding concern in these months was to claim victory on 3 November.

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  60. Gromet1:55 PM

    It is like a theological question, but even more of a waste of time than Could God make a rock so heavy not even He could lift it. Could crusaders for expanded freedom (like MLK) make an America so free that some "states' rights" crusaders are no longer free? This is the pinhead they are all vexed on. Fifty years after lunch counters were integrated, these idiots can't notice reality didn't fall off its axis and spin the Earth straight into the sun; they're still struggling with "Yeah, but the principle that was violated, you see..."

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  61. Ellis_Weiner1:56 PM

    Wonkette jokes that it "doesn't allow comments," and who can blame them? The commenters at the NYT can be just as dense as any. Read this perfectly intelligent op-ed about the word "terrorist" and then watch in awe as more than one indignant humanist accuses the writer of saying exactly what he didn't say:

    http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/the-reign-of-terror/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

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  62. StringOnAStick1:56 PM

    Seems rather North Korean-esque to me.

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  63. Chris Anderson1:58 PM

    IIRC, this isn't the first time Christie has declared himself tired of this or that. Get out of politics, dude; nobody cares what you're tired of hearing. It's still complaining when you're yelling, BTW. In transcripts, it's petulant and whiny.


    This has all been said before, and I think alotta Americans are tired of him, or could never fathom what was so "refreshing" about him.

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  64. An old college pal who has turned into a virulent wingnut assured me recently that Barry Goldwater was the principal hero of the Civil Rights movement of the 60s.

    Words fail me.

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  65. Spaghetti Lee2:09 PM

    Thing is, Cookie, these arguments about hypothetical situations always come back to the same non-hypothetical fact that you're really, really desperate to find a loophole to re-introduce segregation. "Drop the act?" We've seen enough of your crap to know that it's not an "act". The rest of us figured this out in 1964: if your establishment serves the public and is directly or indirectly supported by public funding of transportation, commerce, or legal protection, it needs to be open to the entire public: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000a

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  66. Gromet2:13 PM

    It is such a Soviet mentality. The facts don't support what we want? Erase the facts.


    I don't understand the mentality. Fight the facts with your own dumb version of facts if you must -- that I get -- but to erase actual facts from a political discussion, that I don't get. It seems like an admission their case can't stand, and then I wonder, why do they insist on their case, if they know it can't stand? I find no satisfying answer to that.

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  67. Lyin' Paul Ryan: Hey kid, you should be grateful mom loves you enough to give you a shoe for lunch. Some mean moms let their kids eat government moocher lunches instead of shoes! And further more - Oops, gotta run to my next photo op. I'll be talking to orphans in an orphanage only I'll really be talking to little mannequins instead of actual kids.

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  68. Axiom #3.1419203:


    Heretic!

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  69. Gromet2:34 PM

    That battle is being fought by the right so disingenuously. "The new standards don't even mention George Washington, except once! It's all about conflict between interest groups, instead of the true story of how our democracy works, which is a story of harmony!" So I read the standards and they only mention Washington once because it is only a document that sketches the broadest outline of how students should approach history in an investigative manner. OF COURSE they will learn quite a lot about Washington -- but the point will be, How did he negotiate the competing interests of his day, rather than How brave and perfect was he.


    I suppose as a conservative you might be disturbed by the standards' call to see events as a messy struggle between different ideas about what America should be since the start. You might prefer a static view, in which America was perfected the minute the Constitution was ratified and our whole existence since then has just been a matter of wisely calling balls and strikes according to it.


    But here's the thing: this is AP history. By definition, it is college-style history -- it's about asking questions without clear answers. It damn well can't be the hagiography that history is in gradeschool. "First the Pilgrims came seeking freedom, and were friends with the Indians! Then we bravely beat back tyranny and became the USA! Then we fought nobly to end slavery, and then in WWII and the Cold War we beat tyranny EVERYWHERE! Here's a list of heroes to admire." Great when you're 11. Not so useful when you want college credit for knowing something about what actually happened in the world leading up to now.


    But the rightwing opposition is just a blank space, filled with nothing but faux pearl clutching. "This six-page outline of investigative methodologies only mentions Washington once!" Can't they ever get tired of having nothing to say but being angry anyway? Can't they ever run against what is actually going on instead of some imaginary menace?

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  70. Gromet2:39 PM

    "We didn't come here to discuss facts. We came here to be angry about what we imagine."

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  71. Actually, it's more like arguing 2+2=4 to someone who is utterly convinced that it really doesn't, despite all evidence to the contrary.

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  72. Gromet2:41 PM

    Banging a shoe on the table? Obviously that kid's a Commie.

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  73. Axiom #3.1419213: If you have something nice (or merely not totally shitty), I really paid for it because mah hard earned tax dollarts welfare food stamps Obamaphones why can't poor people live on what they dig out of trashcans oogabooga [fart]!

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  74. Will you promise to write my obituary? You'll probably still be alive. Not all-caps, though.

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  75. Jay B.3:00 PM

    the ever-diminishing scope of private property rights


    The stakes are low and the principle abhorrent, but it's vital that we can treat people like shit in our public establishments.

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  76. They want all history, grade school through college, taught at that 11-year-old level of hero worship.

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  77. Juchedeo-Christian?

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  78. Oh, no no no because the free market will prevail once people learn of the rudeness and cease going to that restaurant but of course you'll have to hear about first-hand because the GOP will have passed laws banning criticism of companies from social media because freedom.

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  79. tigrismus3:11 PM

    But here's the thing: this is AP history. By definition, it is college-style history

    And also means there's a lot of stuff people are already expected to know. If my school system were such that I really felt a 12th grader needed to be taught about Geo Washington, I wouldn't be proud of my patriotic stance, I'd be fucking embarrassed of my shitacular school district.

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  80. StringOnAStick3:31 PM

    Exactly. One of the new school board idiots went into an on-camera rant about "lack of patriotism" in the new AP standards. Oh, and the email they sent to their supporters before the last BOE meeting mentioned the evil "secular progressives"; who started that meme way back when, BillO or Glenn Beck?

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  81. Christopher Hazell3:32 PM

    How exactly do we imagine the First Amendment would have fared if it had been presented as a measure to privilege the communication rights of neo-Nazis over the feeling of Jews, or as an attempt to elevate into the national charter the right to burn the beloved American flag?

    And how would miscegenation laws have fared if they'd been presented as being racist and backwards, huh? Where would our society have been if that had happened?

    Look, I myself kind of think that asking somebody what their politics would've been if they had been born 50 years earlier is kind of a dumb gotcha question. What, I'm supposed to buy it when you tell me that you would've been the lone, brave voice in Texas government fighting against racial injustice, even at the cost of your job? If you were the kind of guy who would do that, You wouldn't be the attorney general in Texas in the 1950s.

    But it's also deeply, deeply dishonest to discuss the civil rights movement without actually discussing American racism. It's not hard to find out why the Civil Rights Act was written the way it was, and it's not because Wendy Davis traveled back in time to argue against abstractions.

    Also, what the heck is this:

    Suppose that Abbott had said explicitly that he would have been duty bound to defend Texas’s miscegenation laws. Would that have made him Bull Connor? Or would that have made him a representative of the will of the people — a paid channel and nothing less?



    Um... does Cook think Bull Connor was some kind of vigilante? Because the way I remember it Connor was also a government official. Why doesn't Connor get to play the "I'm nothing but a slave to the will of the people" card?

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  82. redoubtagain3:34 PM

    Barbarepublican

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  83. Why doesn't Connor get to play the "I'm nothing but a slave to the will of the people" card?

    Because there's photographic evidence of him physically "curtailing the rights" of others. Can't bury the dogs and firehoses under a heap of abstractions...

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  84. He's only refreshing to a journamalistic (sic) corps that worships bullies, as long as they're of the right (and the Right) political stripe.

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  85. He can just take them from S.E. Cupp.

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  86. He could give Loyal to the Group of Seventeen some lessons on Correct Thought.

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  87. Are your customers fall foliage?

    Oh, right, you're a pill-slinger... forgot about that.

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  88. He just hasn't figured out the old "have the readers finish the column" trick.

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  89. It's no secret why Buckley wanted to stand athwart history yelling "STOP!" at the precise moment he launched NR.

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  90. susanoftexas3:44 PM

    Their prime motivation for everything seems to be spite.

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  91. It's not a hive mind, it's a hive ass that they continually pull bullshit out of.

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  92. OF COURSE they will learn quite a lot about Washington -- but the point
    will be, How did he negotiate the competing interests of his day, rather
    than How brave and perfect was he.


    Thankfully, we have historian Brad Neely to set the record straight.

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  93. That's precisely why he's a great man.

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  94. DocAmazing3:57 PM

    Why do you think Cooke left the UK?

    ReplyDelete
  95. dstatton4:00 PM

    From a slave owner to abolitionist in one lifetime is a good measure.

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  96. DocAmazing4:04 PM

    Reagan followed that up by putting a wreath on the graves of SS troopers in Bitburg, Germany. His use of the symbolic did not require a hell of a lot of translating.

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  97. gocart mozart4:04 PM

    Although this early version of an American flag is now commonly termed "the Betsy Ross Flag," the claim by her descendents in the 1870's and some so-called historians of that time, that she designed and sewed the first American flag is almost certainly historically false and not accepted by modern American scholars and vexiologists (science/artistry of flags and banners).

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

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  98. redoubtagain4:05 PM

    Another Alabama government employee:

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  99. gocart mozart4:05 PM

    vexiologists, your word of the day.

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  100. gocart mozart4:10 PM

    I think it was Pope Leo X

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  101. gocart mozart4:14 PM

    2 girls,1 S.E. Cupp.

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  102. gocart mozart4:18 PM

    42 U.S. Code § 2000(a) is for Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

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  103. Scott Lemieux4:19 PM

    Hmm, let's see what one radical Trotskyite had to say about the "general right" of "individuals" to "decide who they will serve":

    "[I]f an inn-keeper, or other victualler, hangs out a sign and opens
    his house for travelers, it is an implied engagement to entertain all persons
    who travel that way; and upon this universal assumpsit an action on the
    case will lie against him for damages, if he without good reason refuses to
    admit a traveler." -Blackstone, commentaries on the Laws of England


    You'd think someone with an Oxford education might be aware of this, but...

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  104. As usual, The People whose Will must be carried out are never the one's who want to end discrimination.

    That's why a couple of years ago, it was suddenly a gross unjustice and trampling of the Will of the People when duly elected members of Maryland's legislature did the job they were duly elected to do and passed a law allowing equal marriage. So it went on the ballot and to this day I'm kind of surprised that Maggie Gargler and her pet rock Brian Brown didn't yell Shenanigans! and sue the state of Maryland, but they probably realized that there was no more money to be had out here and fucked off.

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  105. Radical Trotskyite is right: Once you somehow shoehorn Blackstone and his postmodernist "common law" into the American legal tradition, it's a slippery slope to the Second and Tenth Amendments not being treated as the entire content of the Constitution. And then where would we be?

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  106. And then where would we be?

    UP SHIT CREEK WITHOUT AN ASSAULT RIFLE.

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  107. smut clyde4:40 PM

    the beloved American flag
    Worst sexual fetish EVAH.

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  108. Spite and offense.

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  109. Derelict4:41 PM

    . . . not accepted by modern American scholars and vexiologists

    How, uh, vexing.

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  110. DN Nation4:44 PM

    "We must win the argument because libs suck. Even if it means deleting comments."

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  111. Derelict4:47 PM

    Goldwater and all the segregationists were the real heroes. If they hadn't been turning fire hoses and dogs loose on those marchers, other White people would never have developed any sympathy for those Blacks!

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  112. Scott Lemieux4:50 PM

    In fairness, the true Anglo-American legal tradition must preserve Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment for striking down affirmative action laws and emergencies where a Democrat might win a presidential election.

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  113. LookWhosInTheFreezer4:59 PM

    I hope their next battle is with US map-makers for only mentioning Washington twice.

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  114. Actually, it's more like arguing 2+2=4 to someone who is convinced that it really doesn't, despite all evidence to the contrary people who say 2+2=4 are part of some left wing vast conspiracy to take their guns and make them have buttsex with radical Muslims.

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  115. I assume when the wingnuts secede and form their own nation the capital will be called Reagan.

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  116. I guess the issue is so much clearer if one is willing to consider some groups "the people" and other groups ... less so.

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  117. Fuck me Agnes, speaking of Wallace and oppression of blahs Digby has a doozy this evening, from Larry Klayman:
    Does anyone doubt that former Alabama Gov. George Wallace was a racist,
    after he banned blacks from attending the state’s university in the
    1960s? So too can anyone refute that Obama’s not even temporarily
    banning West Africans from entering the United States is also as least
    de facto racism, as this high risk caper puts whites and others at risk
    at the expense of not even temporarily “inconveniencing” his fellow
    Africans. Wallace and Obama are both despicable and both to be condemned
    to the trash heap of history for their actions.
    *headdesk**headdesk**headdesk*

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  118. tigrismus7:25 PM

    We've had as many infected Texans travel by plane as we've had Liberians.

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  119. susanoftexas7:26 PM

    See: Andrew Sullivan.

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  120. susanoftexas7:29 PM

    And it's not like you can point out the hypocrisy because they pride themselves on the strength of their ability to avoid reality and the virulence of their petulance.

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  121. smut clyde7:35 PM

    Refusal to perform racial profiling is the new racism!

    "Whites and others" are the victims of selective persecution!


    "Obama... his fellow Africans"; nope, nothing racist about accusing someone of acting like all those other black people.

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  122. gocart mozart8:15 PM

    Crazy people
    http://www.wnd.com/2014/10/time-to-act-on-obamas-ebola-gate/

    Crazy person sues
    http://www.freedomwatchusa.org/pdf/141014-EbolaComplaint13.pdf

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  123. M. Krebs8:23 PM

    I've only seen a handful of exceptions to this general rule: Most internet comment sections are inhabited by assholes and idiots -- especially those at news sites.

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  124. Hive talkin'.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVjITlgqlHo

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  125. Jonah Goldberg says in the 1950s big government used to prevent lunch counter owners from integrating the premises. http://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-do-you-plead-special-your-honor.html Then freedom rang, when conservatives took over the south from liberal Lester Maddox.

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  126. Derelict8:50 PM

    Would you sign my pick handle, Mr.?

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  127. Derelict8:54 PM

    For example, the diminishing right of a woman to control her own body

    As far as conservatives are concerned, a woman does not own her body. It belongs to, first, her father until she comes of marriageable age. Then it belongs to her husband. At least until she gets pregnant, at which point ownership devolves to the fetus for the duration of the pregnancy. It then reverts to the husband.

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  128. It just goes on forever.

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  129. Derelict9:05 PM

    True, but it stands out straight even with no wind.

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  130. Derelict9:11 PM

    It's worth noting that, since Duncan died of Ebola back on October 8, some 425 Americans have been shot to death.

    It's worth noting, but nobody notices.

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  131. Down here in Loosiana, we have two Rhodes Scholars govermentin' (if you can call it that), Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and Sen. David Vitter (R). I'm still looking for what these two flim-flam artists might have learned at Oxford, other than hard right flim-flammery.

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  132. DocAmazing9:16 PM

    I represent that remark!

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  133. Cerulean Spork10:13 PM

    trashing restaurants & pub function rooms? that seems to be a thing for politically connected rich kids at OU - see "Bullingdon Club"

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1478131/Oxford-hellraisers-politely-trash-a-pub.html

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  134. Tehanu10:17 PM

    Are they Pico or Alvarado?

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  135. I thought the GOP were the vexiologists of our national life. They sure complain enough.

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  136. WATCH OUT FOR THAT ENTRENCHING TOOL!

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  137. timb11712:51 PM

    Yeah, the NRO no longer allows dissenting comments. Other cons complained, so they got citizen moderators to purge the comments of heterodoxy.

    I swear, the Right's public sphere is more and more like Stalinist Russia

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  138. timb1171:18 PM

    even when Republicans apologize for it

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071302342.html

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  139. timb1171:28 PM

    Yesterday, he also wrote a piece announcing to his readers that the evidence in the Ferguson case is so thin, Darren Wilson can't even be charged with a crime

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  140. No Comment9:29 AM

    'bout as comprehensive an explanation as I've heard.

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