Newt Gingrich talks faith — And a lot of Bullshit

Now compared to the likes of Sarah Palin and G.W. Bush, Newt Gingrich is not a stupid man.  I think he knows that a lot of what he says is total bullshit.  And even more, he knows just what to say to appeal to the know nothing righty idiots who now dominate the Republican party.  Consier this gem of steaming bullshit:

Newt Gingrich talks faith — (And a lot of bullshit) POLITICO.com:

"'I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9,' Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. 'I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.'"

As for myself, I sure would like to see how this would play out, a secular atheist country dominated by a radical Islamist theocracy.  At least some righty idiots are somewhat coherent in their rants against the threat of Islamist Jihadis in warning that they will persecute the liberals and atheists. But not Newt, he just throws contradictory bullshit and hopes it will stick.  Unfortunately I fear much of it does.

Hat tip from the Atheist Ethicist for this.

Quote of Note and a Talk Back on NPR

From an article by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, What the right means when it calls NPR "liberal" - War Room - Salon.com: 

"So what do conservatives really mean when they accuse NPR of being 'liberal'? They mean it's not accountable to their worldview as conservatives and partisans. They mean it reflects too great a regard for evidence and is too open to reporting different points of views of the same event or idea or issue. Reporting that by its very fact-driven nature often fails to confirm their ideological underpinnings, their way of seeing things (which is why some liberals and Democrats also become irate with NPR)."

There is much to agree with here and I think Moyers and Winship point concisely to what the Right means when it calls NPR liberal.  Now I am not so sure what they mean by the last clause in parenthesis, not being a Democrat, and not being "some liberals".  However, as a "Leftist" to the left of the mainstream of the Democratic party, and critical listener to NPR, I find many examples of what I call an "establishment bias".  I find NPR reporters and programs often don't question deeply what can be considered the mainstream establishment consensus of American society.  Furthermore, NPR often does its best to appease and accommodate the Right.

Quote of Note on Understanding Marx

Much of the rhetoric dismissing the relevancy of Marx and the school of thought he fathered is a focus on his alleged predictions or so-called prophecies about the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism.  The reasoning is: it hasn't happened yet, therefore it never will, therefore Marx and Marxism is wrong about everything.  To be sure, the overthrow of capitalism and the establishement of a socialist society actually directed by its working class is a real problem.

Regardless, the real value in Marx can be found in the theoretical tool kit he developed to critique capitalism.  This theory and critique I think is still valid irrelevant of the possibility of a socialist future.  And the critique can be used to either reform capitalism in to its most favorable condition, or as an argument to end it. 

The following I think is a concise statement of Marx's project from Daniel Little , professor of the philosophy of social science at his blog UnderstandingSociety: 

"The most basic goal of Marx's economic programme was to demystify the workings of the political economy of capitalism. He wanted to sweep aside the appearances that capitalism presents and to lay bare the underlying social relations of inequality and exploitation that really constituted the causal core of the system. (This is the point of his theory of the fetishism of commodities; link.) And he believed that active systems of ideology and false consciousness conspired to conceal these workings from ordinary participants. In particular, he wanted to demonstrate the process through which wealth is created within capitalism, and the relations of inequality through which its benefits are distributed. It is a class-based analysis, and Marx proposes to the proletariat (and the rest of us) that we look for the class mechanisms of our ordinary economic experiences."

Daniel Little goes on to state that the problem is that this is a schematic theory, and there still needs to be empirical data and analysis of the problems of capitalism as it is lived today.  I cannot agree more.

Cartoon, Ampersand: Trapped, but 'Free' | Dollars & Sense

Ampersand: Trapped, but 'Free' Dollars & Sense

Slander is Always Sufficient for Marx and his Defenders

From a blog post by the British Spectator by Alex Massie on Terry Eagleton's new book Why Marx Was Right:

"I should note that Tyler says Eagleton does a fine job in debunking or correcting some mistaken interpretations of Marx and his work but, really, when you wish away the deaths of millions - to say nothing of the apparatus of the totalitarian state - as a mere detail that, however unfortunate it may have been, is, implicitly anyway, a price worth paying for the socialist system's 'achievements' and when you do this in 2011 then your moral compass is, um, malfunctioning.
I suppose one will have to read the book to discover quite how deliciously paradoxical* it is that Stalinism 'bears witness' to the validity of Marx's work.
Revolting, really."

I suppose that slander and straw man arguments are always sufficient for Marx and his defenders. The book is available in the U.S. and I have just read the chapter in question with the quote provided here.

The argument is that the process of industrialization is a nasty one, and that Marx's concept of socialism can only emerge from a revolution lead by a mature working class in a developed capitalist society.

Thus, 20th century Russia was underdeveloped, socialism was not possible, and Stalin seized the opportunity to build a totalitarian dictatorship that was NOT socialist.

I have actually been waiting for a book such as Eagleton's that has an answer for the boilerplate slander of Marx and Marxism(s), and hopefully will be blogging on the book more in the future. (But I am pretty damn busy with a move to a new job and location). 

The Other Tsunami - Dennis Prager - National Review Online

Very short and to the point blog post.

The Other Tsunami - Dennis Prager - National Review Online: "Yet, among the injustices of the world, what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians would not even register on a moral Richter scale."

Oh really Mr. Prager? Seriously?

Viva Egypt!

What if they had a revolution and I had no time to comment on my blog about it? Well obviously they would just carry on as if I don't exist, as they should. This is all I have to contribute.