Just two simple questions for the day

By Lee Russ

Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 05:35 PM

I read a lot stuff that simply makes no sense, and a lot more that calls into question whether some authors realize that the natural implications of what they say contradict other opinions and beliefs they seem to have.

So today's two questions on this subject are:

1. Does Paul Weyrich realize that this opinion means all reports from the right wing think tanks, especially AEI, Hoover, and Heritage, should be given absolutely no weight at all?

In railing against allowing employees to choose union representation by means of check cards, Weyrich comes up with this in discussing a study that unions tend to cite in favor of the proposed law:

Several union websites quote the same Cornell University study which suggests pressure is put on the employees not to join the union rather than to join but ignores any pressure the union may put on individual workers.....I also asked for information about this so-called Cornell University study. What a lulu it turned out to be. The research study the unions are talking about was published in a 1994 journal and written by a prominent labor- union spokesperson. This is someone who has testified about unfair labor practices for years and is definitely pro-union.

Yes, Paul, the unions, not surprisingly, cited something by an author who tends to be pro-union. Do you ever see (and actually talk about) a similar problem when Hoover and Heritage (and Cato, and on and on) endlessly cite studies by their own members, who are very pro-unregulated markets, finding that unregulated markets are like the horn of plenty, and regulations (and taxation, and social programs...) are like vampires that suck the lifeblood from the commercially creative? Ever see a similar bias problem there, Paul??

2. How can someone this irrational, and this inarticulate, get published anywhere, even on an Alan Keyes site like RenewAmerica?

Someone named Curtis Dahlgren wrote this truly amazing (bad amazing) piece for the fringe-rational site RenewAmerica, apparently railing against liberals, or language, or....something. Here's a brief excerpt for those who don't want to waste the time to follow the link:

The Lefty Lexicon, A to C (you can stop questioning "authority" now) ... DURING THE "SIXTIES," a movement was launched that would destroy a nation. The nation was Russia and the time was the 1860s, the "heyday" of the intellectual nihilists, who were the forerunners of the Bolsheviks of 1917. Since they attacked anyone who disagreed with their suicidal agenda as an "anti-intellectual," the first word in the Loony Leftist Lexicon is "anti-intellectualism."

"There is a North-west passage to the intellectual World," said Laurence Sterne (1713-1768). How very apt. The "intellectuals" on the Left seem to feel that they too have found a "secret passageway" to a world that more traditional people are ignorant of, but their "North-west passage" (like Columbus') took them Someplace Else -- to a Utopian No Place that is becoming a nightmare.

Resistant to illumination, however, they insist on the "viability" of their belief in Nihilism (which is essentially a belief in Nothing). They want us to just shut up and trust them -- and their catchphrases -- as opposed to the words of people who lived in the 1700s.

"This is the nonsense of the old women (of both sexes)," in the words of Sterne. The "old hippies," in other words.

Liberal talk radio fails time after time, because there's nothing "intellectual" about it. There is no need to learn how to defend your belief system when all one has to do is memorize a few catchphrases. They say that traditionalists are stupid, and when we say ARE NOT, all they can say is ARE TOO, ARE TOO, ARE TOO! And they think that's all they need to say because all of the Liberal orthodoxies from evolution to "climate change" are "SETTLED"!

The dictionary says that a catchword is a word or phrase to catch the popular fancy or attention, as in "whose patriotism was not a clamorous catchword, but a breathing inspiration, a silent heart-fire" (E.H. Chapin, Humanity in the City, 1854). And these days those phrases are "scientifically tested" by polling hocus-pocus focus groups.