January 24, 2011

"So who’s inciting violence here?"

The Glenn Beck/Frances Fox Piven controversy.

ADDED: Do academics mean to have influence or not? Are we supposed to think of them as oversmart flakes who are tucked away in institutions where they won't screw up real life for the rest of us? Because that's the only way in which it makes sense to portray Glenn Beck as the villain. He took an academic seriously, as if she meant what she said and expected real people to hear and act.

83 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, just to state the obvious, it's no contest.

Never have watched Beck, because I'm always at work or busy when he's on. Have seen him a couple of times on O'Reilly.

Piven calls directly for violence.

But, her intentions are good.. She isn't angry. She's inflamed with righteous rage at injustice.

So, of course, anything goes.

Fen said...

Mr. Beck is putting Professor Piven in actual physical danger of a violent reponse.”

By quoting her accurately.

Here's a clue for all you Brownshirt Leftists out there: if you advocate violence against me and mine, you should be put down like the rabid dog you are.

Issob Morocco said...

The left of course.

Greetings from the Friendly Island!

Anonymous said...

Oh how Piven and her friends must pine for the days whey they controlled the media in America and could make a wolf seem like a lamb.

Leland said...

No "civility bullshit" tag?

Ignorance is Bliss said...

So who’s inciting violence here?

Piven, and some of Beck's commenters.

TWM said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Saint Croix said...

What is interesting about the rise of Sarah Palin is that it coincides with the fall of New York Times.

Consider this article, a couple of days after the Arizona shootings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/politics/11palin.html?_r=1&src=twt&twt=nytimes

Under "Arizona Shooting, the Times writes, "Under criticism that her political rhetoric had helped create a climate for political violence, Sarah Palin addressed the issue in trademark fashion: via e-mail to the conservative commentator Glenn Beck."

Unpack that sentence. Several things are going on. One, the New York Times is reporting as a serious allegation that Sarah Palin "helped create a climate for political violence."

Two, she is refusing to respond to them. She has cut them off completely. No quote, no spin, no argument. "I am not talking to you."

And she goes to Glenn Beck, and gives her response there. So now the Times, if it wants her response, has to cite the Glenn Beck radio show.

We are so desperate for Sarah, we so have Sarah-on-the-brain, we not only are listening to the Glen Beck radio program now, but we are sending our readers there as well.

Of course the assumption that the New York Times makes is that they are “mainstream” and Glen Beck is “fringe,” and its readers are not going to start listening to the Glen Beck radio program for news and information.

By doing so, the New York Times marginalizes itself as much as Sarah Palin.

We know, of course, that a President Palin will not be talking with the Huffington Post. But it is entirely possible that she will not be talking with the New York Times, either. It is entirely possible that in a Sarah Palin administration, Glen Beck is “mainstream” and the New York Times is “fringe.”

This, of course, is unfortunate. The New Yorks Times is a newspaper that has many reporters who are out on the street, gathering information and reporting on it. We need newspapers, as a society. But of course we don’t need any specific newspaper. We certainly don’t need a newspaper that seeks to blame Sarah Palin for the Arizona massacre. How is that journalism at all?

We all know the New York Times is liberal. But if they are just running scurrilous allegations of the Daily Kos or Huffington Post variety, who needs them? Any simpleton in his pajamas can write that Sarah Palin is causing a climate of hate and causing insane people to go on shooting rampages. You don’t need a staff of reporters for that.

Republicans have known, for as long as I have been alive, that the New York Times is a liberal newspaper. But as it seeks to destroy Sarah Palin’s candidacy, and Sarah Palin herself, the New York Times destroys its own reputation for honesty and fairness.

Saint Croix said...

By managing her image almost exclusively through Twitter, Facebook, a reality television show and appearances on Fox News, Ms. Palin has managed to become both ubiquitous and insulated, and to emerge as one of the most formidable Republicans considering a presidential run next year.

I think that’s right. But think about it. The New York Times has been insisting that Sarah Palin is indirectly responsible for mass murder. And yet at the same time the New York Times says that she is “one of the most formidable Republicans considering a presidential run next year.”

What exactly about inspiring mass murder makes her a formidable candidate? What happened to using “fringe” or “kooky” or “crazy” or “unstable” as one of framing devices? This paragraph suggests that New York Times is grappling with the very real possibility that Sarah Palin might be the Republican nominee for President. And yet you just accused her of causing mass murder.

So either the New York Times believes that Republicans like their candidates to incite mass murder of innocent people, or the New York Times is acknowledging that not every human being is ready to demonize Sarah Palin on the say-so of the New York Times.

In other words, Sarah Palin is a “formidable” Republican candidate precisely because so many people see the New York Times as a source that has no credibility.

ricpic said...

As Mary McCarthy said about Lillian Hellman: every word Franny writes is a lie, including and and the.

TWM said...

Does anyone else find it interesting that the left as a whole incites more violence than the right (by a factor of infinity) not only in the United States but throughout the world, yet individually they almost always turn out to be big pussies.

The Drill SGT said...

Pivens supports anarchists as long as they seek "Justice"

Fen said...

and some of Beck's commenters.

According to The Nation...

michaele said...

I feel like I'm outing myself...big breath...I'm a fairly regular viewer of Beck's tv shows. His technique is to play clips of those on the left and let his viewers hear it for themselves. The whole expose' of Van Jones as a communist and revolutionary was done in this manner.
Why shouldn't those on the left be judged fair and square on their actual public rhetoric.

Fen said...

Because if Americans learn the truth of what the Left really is, they'll want to shoot them.

At least, thats the Libtard logic.

Anonymous said...

And let's not forget "Jessica Grose, writing on the popular website Jezebel just after the Republican convention, was—well, we’ll let her describe it:"

"'When Palin spoke on Wednesday night, my head almost exploded from the incandescent anger boiling in my skull. . . . What I feel for her privately could be described as violent, nay, murderous, rage.'

Kay S. Hymowitz, Sarah Palin and the Battle for Feminism, City Journal, cited by Instapundit.

Anonymous said...

Kay S. Hymowitz quoting Jessica Grose, that is.

Anonymous said...

And, Althouse, I'm going to ask you the same question again.

What would have been the fate of feminism if that leftist movement had had to face criticism and fact checking on the internet and cable TV? That movement took place entirely in the one party (left) climate of the late 60s and 70s.

For instance:

Would you have been able to sell the "women are the same as blacks in the Jim Crow south" bit in the face of real opposition?

Would the rape hysteria have been exposed as the nonsense that is was?

Would the commie roots (Friedan) of NYC feminism have been exposed, thus decimating the movement?

It's moot, for sure. But, you really got away with a ton of crap. We're stuck with the rather dubious results.

Original Mike said...

"[Beck's] technique is to play clips of those on the left and let his viewers hear it for themselves. The whole expose' of Van Jones as a communist and revolutionary was done in this manner.
Why shouldn't those on the left be judged fair and square on their actual public rhetoric."


I'm starting to respect the guy.

Irene said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Irene said...

"Do academics mean to have influence or not?"

Yes. Especially the social-science sorts. Sometimes they are just mean because they realize, as they age, that they have no influence.

(Typo fixed.)

The Crack Emcee said...

These guys get everything backwards. Why, according to them, I'm a White Christian Male.

virgil xenophon said...

Lefties hate Beck because he has the secret decoder ring--he actually reads their writings and broadcasts them to the world at large near and far. The untrammeled conceit of most lefties--ESPECIALLY ACADEMICS--is they think those on the right actually don't read or are constitutionally un-inquisitive dullards. I used to think that when they publicly cop'd such an attitude that it was a cynical debating/"battlefield prep" tactic used to discredit their political opponents on the right. (And of course it *does* have that effect) But I've come to believe that most lefties ACTUALLY BELIEVE such things. And thus have no qualms whatsoever about making the most outrageous public utterances either in print or writing, fully believing nobody but their own "kind" will ever bother to pay attention--or is even capable of understanding what they are urging--sorting like talking out loud and saying disparaging things about deaf people or small babies in front of them safe in the belief they'll never understand. It's a classic example of the supreme intellectual contempt the left feels for the right--and why they are always shocked/outraged when the right throws their words back in their faces during public debate or publicizes their words outside of their own arcane, Journolist-like, in-house academic debates. WHAT??? You can read!!??

Anonymous said...

The untrammeled conceit of most lefties--ESPECIALLY ACADEMICS--is they think those on the right actually don't read or are constitutionally un-inquisitive dullards.

Well, I think you're sorta wrong, as I've indicated above.

The left hasn't adjusted yet to the end of the era of a one-party (leftist) press.

The left is screaming hysterically over facing opposition from Fox News and internet sources. The left has been accustomed to operating with the backing of a one-party (leftist) press.

The left is trying now to force a return to a one-party press.

William said...

I've seen Beck a few times. He has a kind of Mr. Rogers delivery that is more apt to inspire boredom than violence. His theories about the left seem overly elaborate. I'm not sure that leftists are all that smart and Machiavellan. I think he has exposed the stupidity of the left, not its duplicity....The world is full of nut cases. Some of them will find sustenance with Ms. Piven and some with Glen Beck. Nonetheless, Ms. Piven is patently an advocate for violence and Beck is not.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Fen said...

According to The Nation...

I took a quick look at the comments section on a Piven related post at The Blaze. While I did not search for the specific comments quoted by The Nation, I did see several that expressed the same ideas, so I will take them at their word unless someone does an exaustive search and proves them wrong.

I did note that there was pushback from some of the other commenters there, if not from some 'editor'.

Saint Croix said...

Do academics mean to have influence or not?

It's the ivory tower problem. One might also call it a Supreme Court problem. For instance the Carhart opinion is no less brutal or obscene than what Kermit did in real life.

And yet because the Supreme Court is high status, Ivy League and intellectual, they can get away with it.

The irony is that academics, and Supreme Court Justices, can be so brutal precisely because they are not the ones who have to do the dirty work.

For instance, Peter Singer has argued that parents should have a right to kill their children for the first two years of a child's life. Singer is an Ivy League scholar at Princeton. He will not be in charge of shooting anybody. He just suggests it.

And the guys who do the dirty work, shift responsibility to the people who came up with the idea.

"I didn't do it," says the people in charge. "It wasn't my idea," said the people who did it. And that's how mass murder happens.

The Supreme Court writes about killing a baby, but it's an academic exercise.

When you are an idea man, reality is for other people.

Anonymous said...

The left absolutely cannot stand for the public to see just what it is beneath their do-good mask.

When exposed the American public at large repels them.

Every time.

The Drill SGT said...

The Crack Emcee said...
Why, according to them, I'm a White Christian Male.


You aren't, OMG, what are you doing posting on this blig then?

Unknown said...

This is no different than Katha Politt saying people who criticized her post-9/11 remarks were trampling on her right of Free Speech.

Virgil is right about the secret decoder ring. Anybody who takes what the Lefties say and broadcasts it to everybody else gets the same treatment. Witness Ann Coulter.

Martha said...

Never liked Beck's Fox show. But his expose of Frances Piven's call to riot like the Greeks is a public service. And real reporting of news--fact based news.

I have new found respect for Glenn Beck.

Big Mike said...

And for a very well-informed take on Frances Fox Piven, go here.

traditionalguy said...

The need to remake the world by murdering the nuisance people and stealing their stuff is not a new idea. It is just illegal.

Anonymous said...

"Do academics mean to have influence or not?"

Like many other people the answer is: Yes, when it's convenient and they pay no price. No, when it's not.

"What I feel for her privately could be described as violent, nay, murderous, rage."

Note this comment was made shortly after Palin's acceptance speech. Like a few days later. It makes one wonder what, at that point, had Sarah Palin ever done to make someone feel murderous rage against her? All she did was get nominated, accept, and give a speech. Before that she was a very popular governor of Alaska with support among both Republican and Democratic voters. This insane reaction to her is just mind-boggling. Especially since it was more or less immediate. If Lefties can get that enraged with that little bit of material to work with no wonder the lefty movement has left tens of millions of bodies in its wake over the last 100 years.

Scott M said...

Would the commie roots (Friedan) of NYC feminism have been exposed, thus decimating the movement?

You mean to say the Romans would have killed one in ten feminists?

Anonymous said...

"You mean to say the Romans would have killed one in ten feminists?"

I see we're having problems distinguishing between metaphor and literalism again. :)

Weapon said...

Thomas Sowell has had Francis Piven's number for years: http://bit.ly/fEedJ3, starting at minute 3:00.

Anonymous said...

None of the accusations from the far left will stick if Americans think clearly. That's partly why clear thought is being discouraged in our schools.

Anonymous said...

"Does anyone else find it interesting that the left as a whole incites more violence ..."

Most of the intellectual left (the Pivens') never does the actual violence.

They only incite others to do it.

Yes, because they are pussies.

There are only two on the left who are not pussies ... Beradette Dorne and Bill Ayers.

They're actual terrorists who killed people and blew shit up.

They didn't "incite" others to do it.

They manned up and did it themselves.

And are now walking the streets free as birds - best friends of the President of the United States.

David said...

The left is all about suppressing the expression of opinion they don't like. They want to 'Hush Rush', and control the internet. It would be very wise of them to refrain from these efforts.

To paraphrase an old remark (JFK??) about reform and revolution: 'Those who make the exercise of First Amendment rights impossible make the exercise of Second Amendment rights inevitable.'

You left wing-nuts REALLY want to cross that line?

Simon Owens said...

Ann, it's an academic who wrote an article in the Nation several decades ago that nobody had heard of before. There's a difference between taking academics seriously and accusing one senior citizen academic of manipulating US policy and Obama with an article the President has never read.

Firehand said...

Know some lefties who insist that lefties- including anarchists- don't target people, only property, so the evil horrible hating right is infinitely worse, etc.

Even if it were true, the idea that destroying a business, or what someone worked hard to earn or build, is no big deal is amazing.

And disgusting.

Chennaul said...

Saint Croix

It's simpler than all that.

It's diversion.

The New York Times and all the liberal media simply love to place blame-and particularly in these cases.

Because the real culprit might just be them.

Nothing motivates the average psycho like the chance to be-

infamous.-[and nobody does that better than our own dear American media.]

Now they can publish all the grime and nitty gritty details rendering the name of the nefarious indelible on all of our brains under the pretext of finding out wether or not their new "media star" was motivated by the politics of the right.

Once again the Liberal media sets the agenda and the Right can't stop responding.

Guess who loses ?

Anonymous said...

Like many cloistered academics Piven pines for some sort of unspecified romantic bloody revolution outside the campus gates, but is too ineffectual / scared /lazy to actually participate in it. Instead she pens fantasy appeals to all those noble oppressed lumpenproles who subscribe to The Northeast Journal of Marxist Sociology. To Arms, comrades! To Arms!

The sad thing is, Piven certainly knows this is nothing but empty academic shtick. A real revolution would mean giving up her Volvo and private office and university pension.

Anonymous said...

"Even if it were true, the idea that destroying a business..."

Don't forget the part about burning to death the people inside it (including a pregnant woman).

wv: unitch - what you might get after those UN peacekeeping troops spend a little too much time in your village

Scott M said...

Know some lefties who insist that lefties- including anarchists

Leftists tend toward more consolidation of power with the extreme being totalitarianism. The right tends to decentralized power with the extreme being anarchy. I fail to see how anarchists can be leftists.

KCFleming said...

Professor Piven thinks Mark Twain's War Prayer is a blueprint.

O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; ...help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief... Amen."

Larry J said...

Simon Owens said...
Ann, it's an academic who wrote an article in the Nation several decades ago that nobody had heard of before.


Simon, if you bothered to look, she wrote this in last month's issue of The Nation (emphasis added):

Third, protesters need targets, preferably local and accessible ones capable of making some kind of response to angry demands. This is, I think, the most difficult of the strategy problems that have to be resolved if a movement of the unemployed is to arise. Protests among the unemployed will inevitably be local, just because that's where people are and where they construct solidarities. But local and state governments are strapped for funds and are laying off workers. The initiatives that would be responsive to the needs of the unemployed will require federal action. Local protests have to accumulate and spread—and become more disruptive—to create serious pressures on national politicians. An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees.

A loose and spontaneous movement of this sort could emerge. It is made more likely because unemployment rates are especially high among younger workers. Protests by the unemployed led by young workers and by students, who face a future of joblessness, just might become large enough and disruptive enough to have an impact in Washington. There is no science that predicts eruption of protest movements. Who expected the angry street mobs in Athens or the protests by British students? Who indeed predicted the strike movement that began in the United States in 1934, or the civil rights demonstrations that spread across the South in the early 1960s? We should hope for another American social movement from the bottom—and then join it.


If you bothered to read the news at the time, those European riots were anything but peaceful protests. There was a lot of destruction and some deaths in those riots.

jerryofva said...

For people like Pivens it is always 1917 Petrograd with the seething masses awaiting Lenin to arrive and overthrow the Czar with them in Vanguard of the revolution. They are delusional.

Chennaul said...

iowahawk

So what you are basically saying is she's looking to get laid-but it's getting misinterpreted.

Don M said...

How can Anarchists be of the left? Anarchists claim to be able to steal people's private property at will, in the name of a collective, and use the government to enable that theft by forbidding resistance. Of course after they steal it, they then forbid recovery, using the full power of the government.

That is how they worked in pre-Franco Spain, and currently in Argentina

virgil xenophon said...

Iowahawk is wrong on one account, tho. Surveys show that while your avg. run-of-the mill campus faculty lefties do indeed tend to drive Volvos, the REALLY extreme faculty lefties like Piven on Univ. campii drive SAABs.

BJM said...

We should hope for another American social movement from the bottom—and then join it.

Unfortunately for Piven, it's known as the TEA Party.

Anonymous said...

Iowahawk said "The sad thing is, Piven certainly knows this is nothing but empty academic shtick. A real revolution would mean giving up her Volvo and private office and university pension."

Absolutely. It's ever so comfortable to be a radical Marxist "revolutionary" in America and then go out and have a nice dinner out and catch some MSNBC at home afterwards. But the recipients of the benefits of "revolution" are eating cardboard in North Korea or hunting for car parts in Cuba. I wish Piven and the rest of the iPhone Marxists would go visit utopia. Stay there permanently if it meets with their approval.

caplight said...

Pogo said:
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; ...help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief... Amen."

So your saying Twain was a Jihadist?

TOTWTYTR said...

Are we supposed to think of them as oversmart flakes who are tucked away in institutions where they won't screw up real life for the rest of us?

Oversmart? No. Over educated? Yes. Intellectuals never understand that when real revolution comes, they are the first ones the real revolutionaries get rid of because they are far too likely to turn on their new masters when they disappoint.

You could ask the dead intellectuals of Germany, Russia, Cambodia, or any number of other countries, if only they weren't all dead.

Just more (temporarily) useful idiots.

Alex said...

I'm sure Ms. Piven has a much larger vocabulary then I do. But I also bet I can reason my way out of a paper bag and she can't.

Eric said...

Ann, it's an academic who wrote an article in the Nation several decades ago that nobody had heard of before. There's a difference between taking academics seriously and accusing one senior citizen academic of manipulating US policy and Obama with an article the President has never read.

I think most people interested in politics have heard of the "Cloward-Piven strategy" even if they haven't read the article.

Eric said...

Do academics mean to have influence or not?

More specifically, does anybody take academic sociologists seriously? That particular field seems to have no mechanism to filter out the nuts.

M. Simon said...

As a father with daughter who is working towards a degree in chemical engineering, I'm rather happy with what feminism has accomplished.

Of course engineering and the hard sciences are a man's world - still. That is OK. She grew up with three brothers.

Of course like everything taken to excess feminism has a bad touch of teh crazy. No matter. I do believe women are here to stay. So much so that I married one. A really nice girl too. She knows how to pack heat. Which is just how I like my women: "a ton of fun who packs a gun with all her other freight"

test said...

"Simon Owens said...

Ann, it's an academic who wrote an article in the Nation several decades ago that nobody had heard of before. There's a difference between taking academics seriously and accusing one senior citizen academic of manipulating US policy and Obama with an article the President has never read."

Sad but revealing analysis. Liberals believe Palin's metaphors create a climate for loons to kill. But when lefties actually advocate violence (which has to be considered worse than using military metaphors) they're miraculously subjected to a new standard. I wonder if Simon even realizes his analysis is not relevant, or if he subconsciously substituted an argument he could pretend to refute.

test said...

P.S.

Simon also tries to minimize Piven's advocacy of violence. She desires her allies to emulate the recent Greek rioters who killed three people, one of which was pregnant. Obviously this was not "several decades ago".

Recognize the teamwork. The radical, cocooned in academia and protected by tenure, motivates the activists. The liberal protects the radical and the cause by waging a PR campaign.

I'd like to think radicals and liberals have different beliefs. But in truth the only difference is the tone required for their role.

jr565 said...

The left seems to be going by the concept "Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes" when it comes to judging them based on their actions and/or their views.

The Crack Emcee said...

The Drill SGT,

You aren't [a White Christian Male], OMG, what are you doing posting on this blig then?

Throwing 'em off the trail, what else? Ann, Meade, and The Crack Emcee:

Just three happy white folks, shopping at Whole Foods and worshiping a picture of Nixon.

They'll never catch on.

Weapon said...

Scott M: "Leftists tend toward more consolidation of power with the extreme being totalitarianism. The right tends to decentralized power with the extreme being anarchy. I fail to see how anarchists can be leftists."

Nice try.

Totalitarianism is definitely the goal of Leftists.

Anarchy is not remotely any part of what the Right wants. Small government never means no government, except according to Leftists' rhetoric.

Leftists need the threat of anarchy or actual anarchy to scare regular people to accept big government solutions. Anarchy or the threat of it is a tool of Leftists exclusively.

jimspice said...

It's nice to see that we lefties are violent anarchists. And all this while I thought we were big government peaceniks.

Methadras said...

The new civility, same as the old civility except leftards get to redefine it for our betterment.

M. Simon said...

Surveys show that while your avg. run-of-the mill campus faculty lefties do indeed tend to drive Volvos,

I like to ride Volvos.

What? Uh. Oh wait. Never Mind!

pst314 said...

"The sad thing is, Piven certainly knows this is nothing but empty academic shtick. A real revolution would mean giving up her Volvo and private office and university pension."

Well, no. Piven expects that Come the Revolution she will be one of the nomenklatura, entitled to a Volvo, a dacha in the country, and all-expenses-paid foreign travel.

pst314 said...

"For instance, Peter Singer has argued that parents should have a right to kill their children for the first two years of a child's life."

If I had a time machine, I'd be sure to visit his parents with full documentation of what he became. :-D

pst314 said...

"Do academics mean to have influence or not?"

Yes. Influence without responsibility. And so far these charlatans have gotten away with it.

pst314 said...

"Ann, it's an academic who wrote an article in the Nation several decades ago that nobody had heard of before."

Nobody heard of before? Are you serious? Please google "Cloward Piven Strategy".

Revenant said...

Leftists tend toward more consolidation of power with the extreme being totalitarianism. The right tends to decentralized power with the extreme being anarchy.

The key difference being that left-wing politicians who fit the above definition actually exist, whereas right-wing politicians in favor of decentralized power exist only in theory.

pst314 said...

I don't think we're going to get any useful or even honest comments from Simon Owens.

I just glanced at his website, and he condemns as racist blogger Ace of Spades for daring to compare Obama to race-hustler Jesse Jackson. He goes on to vow that he will make sure that his defamation stays with Ace for a long time. Charming.

virgil xenophon said...

"I don't think we're going to get any useful or even honest comments from Simon Owens."

And you were expecting exactly what?
His brand of lefty is as predictable as the sun's rising in the East.

pst314 said...

"His brand of lefty is as predictable as the sun's rising in the East."

I would have said "as predictable as a dog licking itself". :-)

Synova said...

I suppose that someone already said this but...

We aren't supposed to view academics.

We're supposed to just leave them alone to influence the minds of young people without ever holding them up to the critical scrutiny of full adults.

roesch-voltaire said...

Oh my gosh calling for “fiscal crisis in the public sector”is what I thought the financial system had already done to us and its wasn't by the Pivens. And calling for strikes that is so labor union and retro--no way that could happen anymore. And since when did the Nation become an influence for anything but a small minority of folks? This is inciting violence? Give me a break.

Automatic_Wing said...

Ann, it's an academic who wrote an article in the Nation several decades ago that nobody had heard of before. There's a difference between taking academics seriously and accusing one senior citizen academic of manipulating US policy and Obama with an article the President has never read.

How fucking disingenuous can you get? You just insulted everyone's intelligence with this comment.

Piven's hardly some obscure sociology teacher, she's one of primary thinkers behind the whole "community organizing" movement/racket, something our prez is intimately familiar with.

Her recent riot-inciting comments aside, she's a substantial figure on the radical left in this country and eminently worthy of public criticism.

pst314 said...

Roesch-voltaire is the reincarnation of Lillian Hellman: Everything he says is a lie, including the words 'and' and 'the'.

Synova said...

RV, she called for riots "like Greece" right after people were killed in riots in Greece.

Lets have riots like that, hm?

Or are you suggesting that instead of liking the idea of violence in the service of her cause, she's just really unaware of world events and rather stupid?

Fen said...

*snoopy happy dance*

Scott M said...

"Leftists tend toward more consolidation of power with the extreme being totalitarianism. The right tends to decentralized power with the extreme being anarchy."

Revenant said...The key difference being that left-wing politicians who fit the above definition actually exist, whereas right-wing politicians in favor of decentralized power exist only in theory.


I agree. My point was to dispute the "political spectrum is a circle" meme. The commentor Weapon hasn't been around long enough to know where I stand, apparently, and thinks I was trying to paint conservatives as anarchists.