Dr. Sanity, I just can't keep up with you! I thought "academic discourse" took place in books, journals, conferences, and classrooms, where people have names, titles, and addresses, and not in posters plastered on street corners by who knows who.

Besides, political change begins at home. I'm sure if you looked carefully enough you could find someone who wishes to obliterate Israel in Ann Arbor.

Are there not enough like minded folks in your town to form a Vigilance Committee to search every hole and corner for the enablers, apologizers and the collaborators, drag them into the light of day, and brand them for the recreants and traitors they are?

This IS America, after all! Does not tar still flow freely, and are there no longer pillows full of feathers? Or even puffy winter jackets?!
Joseph Marshall | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 9:10 pm | #

I notice that you are the one suggesting the actions (e.g., tar and feathers etc.) Mr. M. As she usually does, the doc is shining a spotlight on people's actions. You are projecting what you would like to do--perhaps to people who you disagree with? Or, is that just a strawman issue that you can set up and mow down? Either way, you are way off target. How about addressing what it means that on a major US University this crap verbalized by the terrorist president of Iran gets reinforced? That's the real issue. You don't say where you stand on it. Do you think Israel should be "wiped from the map"? You are, of course, entitled to free speech--but I retain the right to refer to you as an asshole and an enabler if I choose.
Jan | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 9:29 pm | #

I find stuff like this so profoundly disturbing. I don't really understand where it comes from and how it can be defended as reasonable and acceptable. Sigh...
michaela | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 9:44 pm | #

Mr Marshall has a unique talent. He can spout volumes and say nothing.

His dismissive attitude is interssting. No doubt he'd find Goebbel's 'interesting.'
sigmund, carl and alfred | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 9:46 pm | #

My dear SC&A, what would you have me say? For over 35 years I have encountered little knots of coffeehouse revolutionaries on college campuses who plaster posters on telephone polls and think they are doing something important. The country has survived them quite handily, thank you.

I have also encountered genuine hostility to the United States in REAL academic dialog (I'm an ex-professor and I know the difference). And, in that process, I have also occasionally been compared to Goebbels, or worse.

Responding to it with unruffled academic courtesy for all those years has given me ice water in my veins, and a taste for irony in my writing.

But, even then, the country has survived such anti-American dialog with no serious trouble that I can see.

America has never been a place where "intellectuals" have much influence on what happens. And, generally speaking, I think that a good thing.

And, no, I don't really expect or encourage Dr. Sanity to form the Ann Arbor Vigilance Committee. That's some more of that irony again.

When people actually figure out that I am pulling their leg, I can get my point across without exaggerated bluntness.

But, if you would have me abandon irony and be plain and blunt, I can say this.

There are any number of important and thoughtful things to say about the latest dangerous rhetoric from Iran.

We could, for example, ask how and why we have given the Iranians the licence to pursue nuclear weapons in relative safety.

But mere hyperventilation at the echos of the Iranian leader on street corner posters in Cambridge Mass. is not one of them.

There. Plain. Blunt. No irony. Does that satisfy you?
Joseph Marshall | Email | Homepage | 10.30.05 - 11:29 pm | #

"When people actually figure out that I am pulling their leg, I can get my point across without exaggerated bluntness."

no arrogance there.


"But, if you would have me abandon irony and be plain and blunt, I can say this."

irony and arrogance.
sarcasm can't be far behind.

"There are any number of important and thoughtful things to say about the latest dangerous rhetoric from Iran."

you just don't happen to know
what any of them are.

"We could, for example, ask how and why we have given the Iranians the licence to pursue nuclear weapons in relative safety."


*we* would have to include the EU trio
that are holding Ahmadinejad's hand
while the mechanics finish off
the bombs.

and *we* would also have to include the Nobel Prize twiddlers
who just gave el Baredei
his award for nudguing along the (newest)"Islamic Bomb".

but somehow i don't imagine that was the royal *we* you were refering to,
was it.

(out come the claws,
and the withering irony...)
gumshoe | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 2:02 am | #

> America has never been a place where "intellectuals" have much influence on what happens.

Really? Then why have the campuses become bastions of untrammelled PC behavior (all other forms are trammelled. Most severely)?

Why was Keynes an economic God for 50 years until the 70s demonstrated how ridiculously wrong he was? Why, more importantly, are his ideas still given heavy shrift in most socio-political circles? The man was almost as wrong as Marx.

For that matter, why has Marx not been so thoroughly discredited as to be a non-entity in socioeconomic thought? Why is anyone who brings up Marx seriously not laughed out of the dialogue as an obvious idiot?

Why does everyone believe the relentless doom and gloom predictions of the "intellectual" fools like Paul Ehrlich, while any expression contrary to those doom-and-gloom predictions (such as, say, the late Julian Simon) gets categorically ignored?

Naw. No influence at all.

What planet did you say you taught on?

> There. Plain. Blunt. No irony. Does that satisfy you?

You don't come into a place where no one knows you, esp. a place with its own minor share of idjit trolls and get surprised when no one presumes you are being facetious. People are just going to presume you are a troll. Duh.
Inferno Sanguinante Dell 'OH | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 2:11 am | #

P.S., here's a wonderful example of Simon vs. Ehrlich:

The wager between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich

... but everyone still buys this doom-and-gloom BS. The papers print nothing else. Kids get raised on this crap, and it's like pulling teeth to get them straight, that humans are, on the whole, better off than they have ever been -- and that goes even for the poorest nations, all of whose AVERAGE life expectancy and infant mortality rates are both better than that of the richest nations of 1901

Life expectancy and infant mortality are the truest signs of improving living conditions.
Inferno Sanguinante Dell 'OH | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 2:26 am | #

I'm just curious how long that sticker will stay up. The latest from Iran's President is he thinks a few stock speculators should be strung up, that this might help the Iran's 'bumpy' stock market. Apparently the imams agree, saying that speculation is a form of gambling which is forbidden in islam. It hasn't been that long since there was a posting on some blog about the execution of two homosexual teens in Iran, executed soley for their sexual orientation. Too bad Iran has huge energy contracts with China, otherwise the civlized world would simply blow up their reactors and other nuclear assets. Yup, it's just what we need - a nation with nukes that hangs gay people for being gay and thinks hanging would solve stock market problems and announces that Israel needs to be wiped off the map.
goesh | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 9:45 am | #

Joseph Marshall wrote

"For over 35 years I have encountered little knots of coffeehouse revolutionaries on college campuses" and "I'm an ex-professor and I know the difference" and "Responding to it with unruffled academic courtesy for all those years"

Sounds like he's now retired, but regardless he describes himself as a person with decades of experience in academia.

But on his blog profile he writes: "I have the education I always wanted...and I have the student oan debt and the bedsheet of parchment to prove it."

http://www.blogger.com/profile/4140467

Student loan debt? That doesn't fit the "For over 35 years" and "academic courtesy for all those years."

Methinks Joseph Marshall is engaging in a little convenient exaggeration of his academic credentials. Or would he call that 'irony'?
pst314 | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 10:47 am | #

Thanks for the complement of reading my old and creaky blog. I presume you believe in Joe Claus, too.
Joseph Marshall | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 9:31 pm | #

Joseph Marshall: You're welcome. So which was a lie? Your blog profile or your posting on Dr. Sanity?
pst314 | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 10:06 pm | #

Joe if you just needed attention,
and didn't intend to contribute
to the topic of the post,
why didn't you just say so?

"Mr Marshall has a unique talent. He can spout volumes and say nothing."

i'd like to believe it's an inborn thing,and not the result of his study
(or practice) of buddhism.

dharma,it ain't.
gumshoe | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 10:08 pm | #

Well, over the course of life I have occasionally told that I was a liar. I didn't die from it. I didn't even get sick from it. And, these days, I must tolerate having my religion insulted now and again.

I can assure you, gumshoe, that I would never insult yours, if you have one.

If you read what I actually said about the topic of the post, it was this: the people who make these posters and post these posters are of no consequence to the problem of fighting terror or dealing with Iran.

If that is "saying nothing", you are saying much less.

If you really want to disagree with this, maybe you should write to what I assert about it, rather than nosing into my autobiography or my religious views.
Joseph Marshall | Email | Homepage | 10.31.05 - 11:38 pm | #

Joe-

you posted with such grand
circularity about the original topic of the post that,while i got what i think you were trying to say,in spite of your writing style and clear need to condescend,i doubt that many other people reading the thread were patient enough to try to extract your point.

not that you asked,
but next time,
why not just get to it?

and if you feel i was intending to insult buddhism,you're mistaken.
gumshoe | Email | Homepage | 11.01.05 - 4:00 am | #

"If you read what I actually said about the topic of the post, it was this: the people who make these posters and post these posters are of no consequence to the problem of fighting terror or dealing with Iran."

"no consequence"

Right Speech
Right Thought
Right Word
Right Deed

exactly where does "Israel off the map NOW" fit into those ideas for you philosophically?

exactly where,in your estimation,
does buddhism advocate genocide?

i wouldn't bring your religious preference and practice into the discussion if i weren't baffled by your understanding of it.
gumshoe | Email | Homepage | 11.01.05 - 4:07 am | #

Dear Inferno Sanguinante Dell 'OH

Marshall made a good point though. How long did it take for the economic teachings of Hayek, Mises, Friedman to filter to the world of politics. Even Republicans were singing the praises of Keynes. Nixon went so far as to claim that he was a Keyenesian. He was even quoted as saying, "I hate Mises to pieces." (O.k. he never said that. but i wanted to use that line.)
But you know what it is good about moving slowly towards academic "brilliance"? We don't go the socialist route like the U.K., France, and Europe did right after WWII. And yes, I know Norway is the ideal Scandanavian socialist paradise, but that money for the "people" will be go when their oil supply dries up.

Tony
Svenghouli | Email | Homepage | 11.01.05 - 12:29 pm | #

Joseph Marshall:

You wrote "rather than nosing into my autobiography"

Well, you tried to boost your authority to speak on matters academic by claiming "over 35 years" of experience in academia, but as I showed, your statements elsewhere indicate otherwise.

Seems like the world can use a little more "nosing into."

As for your original sarcastic comment to Dr. Sanity, well, you're wrong: It isn't just street-corner propaganda posted by kookie students and eccentrics. The "conferences" these posters advertise are often run by academics and usually have professors speaking at them, lending their scholarly credentials to those vile causes. The same people who support this propaganda also devote their scholarly energies to well-footnoted efforts to deny or excuse the crimes of leftist thugs, and to demonize America and its allies.
pst314 | Email | Homepage | 11.01.05 - 1:23 pm | #

sarcasm,especially
with strangers,
is a dialogue killer.

my apologies,Joseph,
if i made you feel slighted
or didn't give your thoughts
a fair hearing.

shalom
gumshoe | Email | Homepage | 11.02.05 - 1:37 am | #