Plausibly Undeniable
Both the left and the right are guilty of manipulating standards, textbooks and curricula to favor their own narrow view of American history, world history, social studies and all the other malleable subjects not math and hard science.
Zombie turns an angry eye towards both the Tweedledees and Tweedledums.
Great read. First in a series.
The good news is there’s one less thug in Dallas. (And you know it wasn’t his bike, either.)
The bad news is too many people at the Dallas Morning News still don’t understand the basics of guns and gun laws in Texas.
Hall then pulled out his licensed pistol and shot Lewis multiple times, according to police.
One more time: Guns are not licensed in Texas, nor are they registered. People can get a license to carry a concealed handgun.
I never understood why anyone thought Robin Hood was some kind of socialist. He robbed from the tax collectors and gave the money back to the people who earned it. But Cathy Young goes even further, saying the Ridley Scott libertarian Robin Hood is the closest thing to the original legend we’ve seen.
The Ridley Scott film Robin Hood has drawn some critics’ political ire. In The Village Voice, Karina Longworth laments that “instead of robbing from the rich to give to the poor, this Robin Hood preaches about ‘liberty’ and the rights of the individual” and battles against “government greed.” New York Times critic A.O. Scott strikes a similar note, mocking the movie as a “medieval tea party” and declaring: “You may have heard that Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but that was just liberal media propaganda. This Robin is…a manly libertarian rebel striking out against high taxes and a big government scheme to trample the ancient liberties of property owners and provincial nobles.”
Whatever you may think of Scott’s newest incarnation of the Robin Hood legend, it is more than a little troubling to see alleged liberals speaking of liberty and individual rights in a tone of sarcastic dismissal. This is especially ironic since the Robin Hood of myth and folklore probably has much more in common with the “libertarian rebel” played by Russell Crowe than the medieval socialist of the “rob from the rich, give to the poor” cliché. At heart, the noble-outlaw legend that has captured the human imagination for centuries is about freedom, not redistribution, a fact that is reflected in many previous screen versions of the Robin Hood story.
The earliest Robin Hood ballads, which date back to the 13th or 14th century, contain no mention of robbing the rich to give to the poor. The one person Robin assists financially is a knight who is about to lose his lands to the machinations of greedy and unscrupulous monks at an abbey. (Corrupt clerics using the political power of the Church are among Robin Hood’s frequent targets in the ballads.) The Sheriff of Nottingham is Robin’s chief opponent; at the time, it was the sheriffs’ role as tax collectors in particular that made them objects of popular loathing. Robin Hood is also frequently shown helping men who face barbaric punishments for hunting in the royal forests, a pursuit that was permitted to English nobles but strictly forbidden to the lower classes. In other words, he opposes privilege bestowed by political power rather than earned wealth.
Yep. Surprising, isn’t it? Rand is the physician son of Ron Paul — the old Texas OB libertarian/Republican with some great ideas, uncompromising principles, and two failed presidential runs under his belt. Ron, sadly, is neither the kind who can carry national elections nor is free from the baggage of his past.
Rand, however, is on the rise and he has none of the ancient history problems his father did, but all of his father’s commitment to principle, and a uniting personality to boot.
How Rand Paul became the Tea Party’s Obama
His father’s libertarian army and Rush Limbaugh’s “Dittoheads” aren’t natural allies. But Rand Paul has united them
Rand Paul’s success can be understood in the genealogy of the Tea Party movement. Its viral and decentralized traits, the intellectual foundations of its libertarianism, and its fundraising tactics all come from Ron Paul’s presidential campaign.
The first Tea Party event of the Obama era was arguably a Ron Paul “money bomb” fundraiser; and the story of that event is the primal example of how the medium of the Internet and the power of American mythology have combined to unify a movement of militant individualists.
….
The political genius of Paul is his ability to cultivate a narrative that speaks to all strains of the Tea Party movement at once. After all, the libertarian purists who loved Ron Paul’s dissident truth-telling are not natural allies of the Limbaugh Dittoheads who dismissed him as an eccentric. He sings his libertarianism in the key of Glenn Beck – and he is writing a Republican playbook for the tea party era, turning grassroots energy into electoral power. Now, less than a week before the primary, polls show Paul’s lead over Grayson approaching 20 points. He also leads both of his potential Democratic challengers in the general election polling.
h/t Hit n Run
Hurrah!
I am tired of apologising. I apologised for being Muslim, post-9/11 and more recently for my Pakistani origins. Now, I apologise for being a southerner too. When an environmental catastrophe erupted in my backyard, I looked to the media to
tell our stories and instead, found quotes from experts ruminating on energy policy. Where are the restaurant owners in the French Quarter who still haven’t caught their breath after Katrina swallowed their lives? What about the fishermen? While recently rubbing elbows with fellow liberals from the east and west coasts, I felt that their disdain for the lives of the south was palpable. This led to my quest: to understand why mouths drip with condescension for the south, and particularly its people.
Read the full column here.
(Naturally she had to seek publication in a British newspaper.)
Also, is it just me, or does Michael Moore increasingly look like a middle-aged lesbian? IJS.
Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins, let’s never forget, should be praised for his work in exonerating the wrongly convicted. No one can take that away from him.
But that’s not a “Get Out of Jail Free” card on all the apparently dirty stuff he’s up to — cover ups, misappropriation of campaign funds, vendettas against the Dallas County Republican chair, and so on.
Worst of all, he’s engaging in one of the great crimes on teh Internets: sock puppetry.
Use your eyes to read my Internet crush Bethany Anderson’s take on the whole thing plus some election commentary here.
