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Saturday, August 22, 2009 - 6:04pmSanction this postReply
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Glenn Lee Beck
(born February 10, 1964) is an American radio and television host, conservative political commentator, author, and entrepreneur. He hosts The Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks. Beck also hosts a self-titled television show on Fox News Channel.
In addition to broadcasting, he has written three New York Times-bestselling books, and is the publisher of Fusion Magazine. Beck also stars in a one-man stage show that tours the US twice a year.[1]

We should have an archive of this guy, so I am starting this for his excerpts.



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Saturday, August 22, 2009 - 6:06pmSanction this postReply
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Get Off the Fence

Will Americans Choose Liberty or More Government Control?



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Saturday, August 22, 2009 - 6:53pmSanction this postReply
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No One Took Barack Obama at his Word



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Monday, August 24, 2009 - 4:46pmSanction this postReply
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This is some of the best televison I have seen.

Glenn Beck - The First Of A Five Day Series - The New Republic , Americas Future



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Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - 11:30amSanction this postReply
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Here is the U.S. Debt clock that was on Beck's last show.

If you want to send a link to friends, it is http://www.usdebtclock.org/

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Friday, October 2, 2009 - 12:23pmSanction this postReply
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Here is a bright conservative/libertarian columnist and this is the video for this column which is on Glenn Beck and the NeoCons and the shift in Conservative camp:



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Friday, October 2, 2009 - 2:19pmSanction this postReply
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Okay, but, so Mark Levin is the real enemy?

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Friday, October 2, 2009 - 5:06pmSanction this postReply
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No, I don't see him as an enemy at all. I see him as a disgruntled leader in the same general struggle we are all in. He is unhappy that some of his followers have chosen to recognize other leaders - leaders in that same struggle, ones that he had been happy ignoring.

We are all in the same larger camp - opponents of statism. Ron Paul and Ayn Rand and Harry Browne and Levin and Limbaugh, Ralph Peters, etc. Activists, intellectuals, talking heads, philosophers... all disagreeing about significant principles and having different focuses and different areas of interest. There has been a shift in the fracture lines inside the camp. There is a much greater recognition of the small government, libertarian, Capitalism approach to viewing statism. It is a shift in priorities and a different lense for viewing our events - while still being in the same general camp.

Current economic events are NeoCon's big spending chickens coming home to roost.

Ron Paul's long standing opposition to crazy monetary policy is seeing more of the spotlight than it did before because of current economic events.

Glenn Beck's break from old alliances lets him show the common progressive threads running through both political parties.

Yaron Brook has had more time on the tube since the Tea Parties started than any Objectivist since... Well, since forever.

I don't know where the old-school conservatives went. I'm not happy that the religious right is still with us and strong. But I'm happy to see the NeoCon's influence being picked up by Libertarians or new small government conservatives.

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Friday, October 2, 2009 - 5:11pmSanction this postReply
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Remember, Ayn Rand was against the proto-NeoCons (and I have the quote to back it up).

Ed


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Friday, October 2, 2009 - 5:33pmSanction this postReply
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Ed,

I am against almost everyone... if you define the context narrowly enough. But in the battle against homegrown statism NeoCons are often either our opponents or non-players, but in the battle against Islamic Terrorists they are not. When we are talking about the ethical basis for Capitalism almost all conservatives are our opponents. Rand, quite correctly, was speaking from the more basic philosophical context - she saw the danger of faith-based view of rights, and of any mixture of altruistic principles with politics. It is all about context.

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Saturday, October 3, 2009 - 10:19pmSanction this postReply
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Steve,

Good points. When I said Rand was against them, I meant that she was against them in the right context and for the right reasons, etc. etc. It was supposed to stand for chains of paragraphs of justification. You mention some good that has come from NeoCons. It's important to acknowledge common ground with folks. I can mention some good that came from Hitler, though -- so perspective rules the day, and overall moral judgments can and should be made.

NeoCons, like Hitler, aren't good for man on earth. I'm not saying that Hitler or the NeoCons are the reason for all of the bad in the world -- just that they are, on balance, bad.

Ed


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Saturday, October 3, 2009 - 11:59pmSanction this postReply
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Ed, you said, "NeoCons, like Hitler, aren't good for man on earth. I'm not saying that Hitler or the NeoCons are the reason for all of the bad in the world -- just that they are, on balance, bad."

I'm opposed to NeoCons for their ignorance of economics, their willingness to see increases in government spending, and being far more interventionist than self-defense or national interest can justify. But to lump them with Hitler - that's just silly!

The context here is politics overall, so the measurement should be the degree of rights violation. We could draw a line and put Rand at one end, and Hitler near the other end. Where would you put Charles Krauthammer? Do you see him as advocating the violation of so many rights that he should be down near Hitler? Come on, Ed... doesn't something inside of you warn that you might be saying something out of whack?

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Sunday, October 4, 2009 - 8:44amSanction this postReply
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Chicago torpedoed by anti-U.S. sentiment?


October 3, 2009
BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Political Reporter apallasch@suntimes.com

Some Chicago officials say anti-American resentment likely played a role in Chicago's Olympic bid dying in the first round Friday.

President Obama could not undo in one year the resentment against America that President Bush and others built up for years, they said.

"There must be" resentment against America, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said, near the stage where he had hoped to give a victory speech in Daley Center Plaza. "The way we [refused to sign] the Kyoto Treaty, we misled the world into Iraq. The world had a very bad taste in its mouth about us. But there was such a turnaround after last November. The world now feels better about America and about Americans. That's why I thought the president's going was the deal-maker."

State Rep. Susana Mendoza (D-Chicago) said she saw firsthand the resentment against America five years ago when she was in Rio de Janeiro. "I feel in my gut that this vote today was political and mean-spirited," she said.

"I travel a lot. ... I thought we had really turned a corner with the election of President Obama. People are so much more welcoming of Americans now. But this isn't the people of those countries. This is the leaders still living with outdated impressions of Americans."

U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said she was approached by a consul general at the plaza as they waited for word Friday. "He said ... he was hearing that there wasn't enough time for Barack Obama to dispel the old image. ... But I don't know if that's it."

Presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs rejected the notion that the vote was influenced by the United States' standing: "No, I think you saw both at the U.N. General Assembly, you saw at the G20 last week ... I think virtually every measure of our standing in the world is different than it was just this time last year. So I don't read too much of that into this."

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Sunday, October 4, 2009 - 12:25pmSanction this postReply
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The time to have said this credibly was before the bid failed, not just afterward.  This practice of saying, too late to be taken seriously, that you didn't really want what you just failed to get, may be emerging a a characteristic of the Obama era.  After Van Jones quit in disgrace, Arianna Huffington said that she'd believed all along that he was more valuable as an advocate than as a bureaucrat.  She just didn't get around to mentioning it.  Watch for it.

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Sunday, October 4, 2009 - 10:17pmSanction this postReply
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Steve,

I can understand how folks rhetorically take it when you (actually, when I) verbally lump together an extreme evil with only a moderate evil.

By speaking of them both in the same breath, folks make a mental connection that they are equivalent (or that I mean for them to be equivalent). In reality, I should probably be given more credit than that.

There's a great reason to use extreme examples. They show things easily. When Rand talked about epistemology, she started with extremely basic things like "length." It's because length is so basic in the extreme, that it makes for a good example (and almost everyone "gets it"). This doesn't mean that epistemology is limited to what can be found with a simple measuring stick, but length and its measurement illustrate the larger or deeper process of epistemology.

Now, if someone were to say to Rand:

But to lump epistemology up with measuring "length" - that's just silly!

Come on, Rand ... doesn't something inside of you warn that you might be saying something out of whack?

Then she would say no, that she is not saying something out of whack -- because she didn't mean to equivocate epistemology with a child's plastic ruler (even though she may have used that as an example of epistemology). She'd say that if you think that what she said was out of whack, then perhaps you were mis-integrating the things that she said.

So no, I didn't mean to equate NeoCons with Hitler (even if your mind did, when you read my words).

Where would you put Charles Krauthammer? Do you see him as advocating the violation of so many rights that he should be down near Hitler?


Eventually, yes. It's a slippery slope. Let's look inside the mind of a NeoCon:

First, you say that folks who aren't citizens of your country don't have rights -- because rights come from civilized government, not from nature. Then you reach out to bring the world under your wing, but this takes time, money, and lives -- so you start to forcefully take the time, money, and lives of your countrymen away (because of your Utopian ideals and your belief in the merit of the "Noble Lie"). Eventually, you get to a point where morality itself should be legislated good and hard, and you think that this wouldn't be a violation of individual rights.

In short I would say, as Peikoff indirectly has (Ominous Parallels), that Hitler best illustrates the eventual evil of NeoCons such as Krauthammer.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 10/04, 10:21pm)


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Sunday, October 4, 2009 - 10:24pmSanction this postReply
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Godwin's law

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies)[1] is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990 which has become an Internet adage. It states: "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."[2][3] The term Godwin's law can also refer to the tradition that whoever makes such a comparison is said to "lose" the debate.

Godwin's Law is often cited in online discussions as a deterrent against the use of arguments in the widespread reductio ad Hitlerum form. The rule does not make any statement about whether any particular reference or comparison to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, but only asserts that the likelihood of such a reference or comparison arising increases as the discussion progresses. It is precisely because such a comparison or reference may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued,[4] that overuse of Nazi and Hitler comparisons should be avoided, because it robs the valid comparisons of their impact.

Although in one of its early forms Godwin's Law referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions,[5] the law is now applied to any threaded online discussion: electronic mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms, and more recently blog comment threads, wiki talk pages, and Twitter.

Corollaries and usage

There are many corollaries to Godwin's law, some considered more canonical (by being adopted by Godwin himself)[2] than others.[1] For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress. This principle itself is frequently referred to as Godwin's Law. It is considered poor form to raise such a comparison arbitrarily with the motive of ending the thread. There is a widely recognized codicil that any such ulterior-motive invocation of Godwin's law will be unsuccessful (this is sometimes referred to as "Quirk's Exception").[6]

Godwin's Law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Hitler or Nazis or their actions. The corollaries of the law would presumably not apply to discussions covering genocide, propaganda, or other mainstays of the Nazi Germany, or, more debatably, to discussion of other totalitarian regimes, since a Nazi comparison in those circumstances is understandable. Whether it applies to humorous use or references to oneself is open to interpretation, since this would not be a fallacious attack against a debate opponent.

However, Godwin's Law itself can be abused, as a distraction, diversion or even censorship, that fallaciously miscasts an opponent's argument as hyperbole, especially if the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate. A 2005 Reason magazine article argued that Godwin's Law is often misused to ridicule even valid comparisons.[7]
[edit] History

Godwin has stated that he introduced Godwin's Law in 1990 as an experiment in memetics.[3]

Linking by implication the fallacy of reductio ad Hitlerum to online discussion length had been done before 1990 by a poster named Richard Sexton in 1989: "You can tell when a USENET discussion is getting old when one of the participants drags out Hitler and the Nazis."[8] Godwin's Law does not, however, claim to articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic comparisons. "Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler or to Nazis to think a bit harder about the Holocaust," Godwin has written.[9] It has not been established whether Sexton's quip had any influence on Godwin's law, though Sexton continues, citing an apparent joke by Godwin, to claim Godwin borrowed the idea from Sexton and named it.[10]

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Sunday, October 4, 2009 - 11:50pmSanction this postReply
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Ed, I'm sorry, but you are being sloppy in your words. I KNOW that you know better - I know that you don't believe that Hitler and Krauthamer are any where near moral equivalents but look at your words. You said, "NeoCons, like Hitler, aren't good for man on earth." It was NOT my mind that connected those words!

There are many ways in which you could have worded your posts differently to show that they shared a small subset of principles, but to very different degrees and for different motives while acknowledging that the principles that separated them are by far the more important. Then you could have discussed that Krauthammer himself is not on a slippery slope - since you have no evidence of where his personal ideological evolution is going, and you could have said that a society that doesn't understand these principles is at risk of stumbling onto that slope. But you didn't.

You went on to say, "...Hitler best illustrates the eventual evil of NeoCons such as Krauthammer." Are you predicting that this specific man, Krauthammer, will eventually be evil or that he is evil now because he is a NeoCon, and you are using the word evil in the same sentence as Hitler - that is the context that you set.

Objectivists look like idiots and unneccessarily turn people away by giving the impression that they believe that someone like Krauthammer is evil in the same way or to the same degree as Hitler. Or, do you believe that Yaron Brook's interventionist policies make him on a slippery slope to being an eventual evil - an evil like Hitler?

Where is our vaunted intellectual powers of discrimination that let us point out what is evil - the principle, the actions have arisen from that principle - and stop just sloppily painting anyone we don't agree with as Hitler.

When I look out over the broken field of American politics I see more advantage in nudging the intelligent conservatives towards Capitalism based upon rational egoism - there are those who WILL take that lead - if we don't lump them with Hitler. There is no compromise in that kind of nudging. And it will yield successes (look at Beck). The alternative is a kind of intellectual masturbation that makes no forward movement in the real world.

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Monday, October 5, 2009 - 2:34pmSanction this postReply
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Although I voted for him the general election, I did so with no hope that McCain would be elected. I did so, simply because he had earned the role of CIC, period.

But, I was relieved as Hell that he didn't win. Four years of McCain -- especially, these four years -- would have been the equivalent of taking only half of your anti-biotic prescription. False hope for freedom is no hope for freedom.

Better, I think, for the full dose of Obama, the complete fever in the body politic. Let the absurdity of the fever run it's course.

Obama has the potential of doing more to bury FDR than not only 4 years of Democrat-lite John McCain, but a thousand ultimately ineffective Reagans, as well.

He just needs his unimpeded chance to totally and irrefutably screw the pooch. The only thing propping this guy up now is the ever shriller panicked state cheerleading.

For an indication of just how deeply the left knows that the little Nov 2008 moment is over, take a good hard look at the sour look on Rachel Maddow's face.

Better put some ice on that, it's all downhill from here, sweetheart.

But, we're not out of the woods, yet. If the result is, a swing to the GOP in 2010, then we're pretty much screwed all over again.

We should be thinking instead, "One down, one to go."

A freshly crippled, chastised, and cowed federal government is what we need for a shot at restored balanced federalism, and a return to national sanity.

Making Barney Frank et. al. 100% totally irrelevant should be our pressing national need.

regards,
Fred


(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 10/05, 2:36pm)


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Monday, October 5, 2009 - 3:12pmSanction this postReply
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Is Rachel Maddow the pooch?

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Monday, October 5, 2009 - 3:15pmSanction this postReply
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Only if Michelle is doin' the screwin.'



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