“How the Southern Poverty Law Center Drew the Ire of Conservatives”
That was the Gray Lady’s headline yesterday regarding the Southern Poverty Law Center’s scheme that had it supporting violent hate groups “under the table” so the SPLC could raise money from dupes and saps to defeat them.
What do you think, the most flagrant “Republicans pounce!” example ever?
I am moving ever closer to a policy that will require a ban from the EA comment section for anyone who dares to insist that the mainstream news media isn’t consistently and despicably biased in its reporting. That position has shifted from the realm of spin, stupidity and partisan gaslighting into straight-up lying and signature significance.
Ethics Alarms 
The Gray Lady’s…um…diminished capacity suggests confinement to a proper care facility.
PWS
I am moving ever closer to a policy that will require a ban from the EA comment section for anyone who dares to insist that the mainstream news media isn’t consistently and despicably biased in its reporting. That position has shifted from the realm of spin, stupidity and partisan gaslighting into straight-up lying and signature significance.
What fascinates and distresses me is not that I do not under that the NYTs is a sort of ‘propaganda organ’ the design of which is to fulfill a sort of Maoist-like ‘cultural transformation’ and in its way to ideologically battle “the 4 olds” of the national constitution, but that it is very hard to find a source — a news publication — that fully defines what the ‘right path’ is. I do not so much mean a journal that provides a proper outlook, but one that expresses the best orientation.
It is a difficult topic to raise but ‘standard Conservatism’ is generally quite Liberal. And that is because (if I understand things right) America and Americanism are really radically liberal. America is a revolutionary Republic and the effect of that revolution means that radically liberalizing impulses were set in motion. They do not ever abate. Innovation, change, re-structuring, re-positioning, constantly considering social conventions and always tending toward revision of them.
How can you possibly define or even propose a Conservative outlook in the context of a nation whose destiny is upheaval?
The only way that an entire nation could remain ‘conservatively oriented’ is if the people, the greater number, were themselves holding to conservative principles inside of themselves. And the principle foundation for such a life lived that way is a religiously-defined life. And that means adherence to “the 4 olds”.
The problem? Every background or previous orientation as against modern liberalism always touches social ideology and political ideology that is (to varying degrees) non-liberal and anti-liberal. Take The Camp of the Saints. The context of the book (the author’s orientation) cones out of French anti-liberalism and semi-fascistic social philosophy. This is a fact. The radical Right in France was radically Catholic and radically conservative — as against a cultural tendency toward radical liberalism. And radical liberalism wins all the time. Who wants to hold to social conventions defined by a catechism?
This is why I keep saying (frustrated) that the radical tendencies in American culture simply cannot be stopped by a conservatism that is only slightly conservative to the prevailing radicalism.
Other than the reality that America and Americanism are really extremely conservative, spot on! True, the original Founders and their conception was radical indeed, but today such conventions as freedom of speech and Separation of Powers are well to the right of progressive craziness.
The Left makes more noise than the Right here, and the Right foolishly let the mold and rot of leftism get a foothold before to woke up. That doesn’t change the reality, though.
You are the one with a great deal of background in the essentials of America, so certainly I will defer to you in most cases. However, two things: One is that yes, in certain ways the Founders were conservative men. And they did also set things up to defend their class and leadership. So the ‘revolution’ they led was sensibly organized and not as ultra-radical as the Frenchies. I understand. And they did establish sensible institutions and yes on a conservative basis.
But there was still, or also, a natural social, ideational, intellectual and even spiritual (not to mention technological) inclination toward radical innovation and overturning of old orders of ideas. The liberation of the woman, the liberation of the underclass and slso the incorporation of the former servant and slave-class into the social and political fabric: these are radicalisms and though it must be said “this was all good” snd necessary, in fact it is not now turning out so well. And you (especially) cannot acknowledge this, it seems to me. You are in certain senses a radical Liberal. You are not a social conservative. I do not say this in any provoking way! I am simply trying to understand what is going on.
All these “liberations” are more than merely latent, they are mandates. And therefore any class, any group, any demographic, that defines itself as aggrieved, can clamor and advocate for more freedom, more liberation. Logically then, the radicalism proceeds to liberation on any and all levels. And this explains radical DEI and, as well, the present clamor for socialized government.
These impulses were also built into the system.
The SPLC drawing the ire of conservatives isn’t even anything new. I first heard of them before I started law school. I had no use for them then and I have no use for them now. When I first read the name I thought they might have been a privately established entity like a legal services corporation, providing affordable or free legal services to those in need, but it took me less than an hour to know they were just another liberal lawyers’ club, trying to remake this country in their image off the contributions of gullible donors. WTF has poverty law got to do with anti-death-penalty advocacy, unless it’s providing representation to some poor schlub who maintains his innocence (despite evidence to the contrary), but whose family has either run out of money or walked away?
When they first came to be and were suing the Ku Klux Klan and other violent racist organizations that had gotten away with far too much abuse for far too long, that was one thing. However, instead of changing over to winning hearts and minds after the era of institutionalized racism was (mostly) over, they decided to try to remake the nation in some unworkable idea of social justice…and turn a hefty profit while doing it. It’s bad enough that they became essentially social justice pimps, essentially saying the more you donate the more just we’ll make society.
However, they became essentially fake heroes, no different than soldiers who steal valor by displaying medals they didn’t earn or firemen who set fires so they can later show up and play hero. Never mind the fact that by doing this they are smearing rank and file conservatives by lumping them in with fake haters that they themselves gin up. Never mind also the fact that they are exploiting organizations like Antifa and the John Brown Gun Club who for all their rhetoric just want to knock a few heads while feeling justified, and putting not just conservatives, but innocent people, in danger by so doing. It would be ironic if an organization that started by suing wrongdoers was put out of business by those suing it for wrongdoing.
Not to go into another historical missive, but how much of history is made up of those who tried to stop wrongdoing becoming the very thing they claimed to oppose? Julius Caesar and his successors claimed they were opposing corruption in the Roman Republic…and all too soon fell into corruption themselves. The early Church claimed they were trying to lead away from moral depravity, only to become the biggest haven for perversion in history. The communists claimed that the state would wither away, only to maintain it by force. Black Lives Matter claimed they were all about social justice…only to be revealed as a giant grift.
It’s unfortunately human nature for these kind of enterprises to become corrupt, and also human nature for those who think they are heroes to look the other way, lest yet another Nebuchadnezzarian colossus be shown to have feet of clay and fall.
Julius Caesar and his successors claimed they were opposing corruption in the Roman Republic…and all too soon fell into corruption themselves.
Ah, I guess it was inevitable that Donald Trump be referenced again.
When they first came to be and were suing the Ku Klux Klan and other violent racist organizations that had gotten away with far too much abuse for far too long, that was one thing. However, instead of changing over to winning hearts and minds after the era of institutionalized racism was (mostly) over, they decided to try to remake the nation in some unworkable idea of social justice…and turn a hefty profit while doing it. It’s bad enough that they became essentially social justice pimps, essentially saying the more you donate the more just we’ll make society.
The second (or is it the third?) historical phase of the KKK in the 1920s was something like a very wide-spread social club. Like the Kiwanis or the Templars (I forgot the other main clubs). They saw themselves as “upholders of Americanism” defined in the sense that was common before Americanism was transvalues into now-typical nationalized cultural Americanism!
America as a nation, as a national enterprise, is ‘the pimp’ you describe. But you guys just don’t seem to understand the depth of the transformations. It is a different country now, and it has different principles.
Jack wrote…
Might I offer an opposing opinion to that.
Although I completely agree that…
…other than baldfaced trolling with no arguments is very different, I think that allowing arguments that the mainstream media isn’t despicably biased does a couple of important things.
As many of you know I have been on the receiving end of some very intentional “silencing” by progressives that want their blog comment threads and social media threads to be as ideologically pure as possible. Sure there might be some of you that agree on one level or another that I should have been “silenced” for daring to challenge and stick up for my opinions; however, the pattern from progressives is very, very clear, opposition to their hive minded narratives is considered to be heresy, so they do everything they can to literally prevent opposition from being read or heard, aka silenced. This is not what Ethics Alarms is all about and I don’t think that’s what Ethics Alarms want’s to project.
So in conclusion; I’d be more in favor of allowing comments from those who “dare to insist that the mainstream news media isn’t consistently and despicably biased in its reporting” as long as they seem to be arguing in good faith but continue to ban the obvious trolls. Simply put; if they’re actually presenting arguments to support their opinion and not just plastering unsupportable talking points, like a hit-and-run troll, then allow it. In many ways, this is exactly what you’ve been doing for years.
I suggest not changing what you’ve been doing.
When I first read the name I thought they might have been a privately established entity like a legal services corporation, providing affordable or free legal services to those in need, but it took me less than an hour to know they were just another liberal lawyers’ club, trying to remake this country in their image off the contributions of gullible donors.
Yes exactly: A club of legal advocates to push forward the ultra-liberalizing ideology inherent in America and Americanism. What would “conservatism’ do? It would apply brakes to this radicalism. It would oppose it with ideological tools. But that is exactly what is impossible within America and in Americanism! You cannot oppose such radicalism. And at the same time — horrir if horrors! — the SPLC is a ultra-liberal and even radically-liberal outpost of Jewish American radicalism with ties to 1) intelligence operatives (Federal police) and 2) other projects such as AIPAC.
In the very timid “pseudo-Conservatism” of the present (and in Steve’s case) whatever opposition you have is always and alone a sort of weak lamentation. It’s gums with no teeth. It amounts to unending complaining since, in fact, no real opposition is possible.
True, the SPLC goes over the top in its corruption, but essentially it is the instituted policy of both America (defined by the Federal authority) and Americanism: an ideology sold and distributed the world over. This was one major result of the Federal North’s conquest of the South. The. ‘Carpetbagger’ tuns the ideological show.