Letters to the Editor
Holly McLachlan
Published Letters: 559 Editor's Choice: 3
-
Comment from the Philistiness: I'll take silly over slaughter
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...My Russian friends [a]re also intellectuals who thrived for years in deprivation and repression, and are now, like Solzhenitsyn, forced to cope with a culture which is deracinated, smug, and rich to the point of bewilderment. One of them described finding herself one evening, shortly after finally getting her exit visa, on the sidewalk outside a BMW showroom in Berlin. Suddenly, she said, she realized that there were tears running down her cheeks. Now that she has a BMW of her own, she's no longer sad, but she is nostalgic, and she thinks that Americans are ultimately silly.
America in the mid-19th century undoubtedly was a better informed, more vibrant democracy -- that ripped itself apart in an incredibly deadly Civil War.
20th century Russians are better informed, more mature and worldly on average than Americans of similar class -- but they're heirs to one of the most viciously oppressive political cultures of modern times.
I'm pro-silliness if that's what it takes to keep people from slaughtering one another over ideas.I don't like a 'bread & circus' culture per se, but it beats the Dark Ages.
-
Dignity, redefined as "Leftism"
[Read the article: David Halberstam on today's American press]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A wise man once said....It's a bad idea to fight anyone, that buys printing ink by the barrel.
That's what has them so rattled by the Glenn Greenwalds & Josh Marshalls & Digbys--- suddenly the "ink" is soooo cheap and plentiful.
But hey, common sense never impedes the left's sense of superiority. Keep on, keepin' on. Heh. -- shooter242
Once, leftists were people who believed in public ownership of the "means of production" and damned near everything else. (Remember those days, you whiskey soured old coot?) Now the term is flung as an insult at people who merely believe the public should have voice in governance. And the verbal bomb-tossers are draft-dodger ex-hippies like Boortz or Wiener. What a change in 35 years!
Shooter242 is of Halberstam's generation. He's old enough to know better than to spend the day listening to these battery-operated dishonorbots. -
Loyalty Oaths
[Read the article: The Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch frauds]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...We spend a lot of time here discussing government inroads on the prerogatives of free men and women, but we speak rather less about wage slavery... We've learned, over the decades, to look the other way when our employers demand of us things which no free person can give them without being compromised. When the government demands the same things, we find it difficult to do more than sigh. (Well, perhaps some of us would go so far as to whine.) -- William Timberman
I had to sign a loyalty oath in 1986 as part of the paperwork for employment at LSU Medical Center. The plump HR woman just slipped it into the paper pile as though it were merely a release form for contacting former employers. She expected no flack, and I didn't give her any since I needed a job at the time. This practice seemed to have gone by the wayside by 2005, but I never forgot it.
I didn't have to piss in a cup until the mid-90s in the mining business. The company I'd worked for had started a testing program restricted to heavy equipment operators at the minesites, but HQ expanded it to all employees with 1-2 years. When I went contract I was required to sign that I would submit to random tests, but I was never subjected to them.The vast majority of large organizations subject hirees to even more invasive demands today; you don't get a foot in the door without giving them written permission to pull your credit records, driving records, etc.
A person's awareness of his inalienable rights is diminished by this sort of wide-scale intrusion into the private realm. The contemporary rightie argument that "private" companies may do what they want -- because you don't have to work for them -- is bunk. Practices like these damage our nation because they diminish adults' sovereignty over themselves. It damages their ability to exercise their rights, and attend to their responsibilities as citizens.
This legitimate fear of training the citizenry to be subservient, it used to be the gist of most rightwing arguments against the welfare state. In last few years though they've grown fond of making us in to herd animals, now in the name of security.