It was once said that getting conservatives together was like herding cats. We know that's not an easy task! It appears that many conservative pundits and talk show hosts aren't in agreement, either. Not a day goes by where some conservative blogger attacks the views of one or more conservative radio or T.V. pundits.
For example, Lame Cherry really has a huge gripe against Glenn Beck! He even calls him "the Obama 5th Column."
Of course, Mr. Lame Cherry has established his opinion after reading Kathy Shaidle's Talk Radio Watch: Beck under fire from fellow hosts for fueling 3rd party.
Excerpts:
RUSH LIMBAUGH
Limbaugh wasted no time criticizing Beck's keynote address, particularly Beck's contention that there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties, thereby fueling calls for the creation of a "third party."
Without mentioning Beck by name, Limbaugh said on Monday:"But to each his own. There are motivations for people who do what they do – and I, as a highly trained broadcast specialist, I think I know what's going on and why various people are doing what they're doing and taking positions that they're taking. But the best way to insure that Obama succeeds is to think that we need a third party. All the momentum that we've got going right now is just going to hit a brick wall if a third party starts, particularly on the basis that there's 'no difference between the two parties.' I guarantee you there's
not a Republican I know, elected or unelected, that would propose anything Obama has."
Speaking of Republican politicians, on Tuesday, Rush declared that Mitt Romney's endorsement of John McCain for reelection was "suicidal."
Interestingly enough, Bill O'Reilly had John McCain's Senate seat competitor, J.D. Hayworth, on his T.V. show tonight. He showed video clips of famous "birthers" such as Orly Taitz and Philip Berg. He played an audio tape of Hayworth discussing the birthers on his radio show program.
Of course, when Hayworth was asked if he is a "birther," he subtly denied it. He mentioned that he allowed callers to his radio show to discuss the controversy over Obama's citizenship status. But when asked by O'Reilly directly, he himself stated that he believes that Obama is a citizen who was born in Hawaii. Hayworth also mentioned the Chester Arthur controversy where it was discovered after the fact that Arthur, having been a vice president, was actually a British citizen. O'Reilly didn't ask Hayworth anything more about that.
It appears that being outed as a "birther" is the kiss of death in politics these days.
Occasionally, I listen to Michael Savage's radio show. He had a greatly informative show the other day where he was discussing a man by the name of Marcuse. [So far, I haven't been able to find the list of Marxist acts that Marcuse championed that Savage was talking about on his radio show. For more information about Marcuse go here, here, and here - (best link IMO).]
Apparently, the man was an instrumental influence in the Frankfurt School of Socialism. [Note: that link is a 56 page pdf *Noted portions below]. Savage cited a list of acts (which are also currently being used by the Obama Administration) that are meant to take over the U.S.A. for Socialism - without violence.
[Update 2/27/10: FYI to all - I neglected to state in the blog post just why Michael Savage discussed Marcuse during his radio show. He shared the fact that besides the Obama crowd's use of "Alinsky's Rules for Radicals" and the "Cloward-Piven Strategy of Manufactured Crisis;" Obama and his cohorts have also been following the views of Marcuse - who could be considered a precursor of Alinsky and Cloward-Piven.]
Such tactics used by groups like these are the same thing that Glenn Beck has discussed on his radio and T.V. shows.
But Savage hates Beck.
He also hates Limbaugh - labeling him as "the golfer."
Savage doesn't seem to trust any of the other conservative radio hosts and seems to think that he is the only one who speaks the truth to the American people.
Maybe that's true.
Savage was the only one who told conservatives to beware of Scott Brown. He was right about that. In Brown's first vote, he sided with the Democrats (on the so-called "jobs bill") which is just another stimulus bill without the unpopular baggage of the title, "stimulus."
The following is what Shaidle had to say about Savage:
Michael Savage
Rep. Michele Bachmann spoke to Michael Savage on Monday, to talk about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's attacks on her.
Savage asked Bachmann, "Why does Nancy Pelosi hate about you?" and added, "I would endorse a Bachmann-[Mitt] Romney ticket" (FREE audio).
Of course, Savage has been a long time critic of Pelosi, especially her use of military aircraft to ferry her family around the country.
Savage also joined the chorus of talk radio hosts critical of Glenn Beck's speech at CPAC, and he had choice words for Republicans he says are trying "to steal the Tea Party movement" (FREE audio).
If you look at the sidebar at the Youtube site, it appears that Savage is more impressed with Michele Bachmann than he is with Sarah Palin. There is a video there where he "rips into" Palin. I haven't listened to it yet, but will after finishing this post.
Just listened to it. He thinks that Palin is unelectable. He thinks that Obama will get a second term if she gets the GOP nod. He thinks that we need a businessman in the presidency.
Glenn Beck likes Sarah Palin, but I think that he wants her (Palin) to run on a third party ticket. Beck doesn't like the Republicans; although it appears that he hates the Democrats even more! Does anyone reading here know if Beck is a die hard Ron Paul fan? I know that they (Beck and Paul) are both libertarians. But I'm not sure if they are on the same page - so to speak. Apparently, there are liberal libertarians and conservative libertarians.
Savage has harsh words for Glenn Beck. He calls him a phony.
Well, Savage attacks almost EVERYONE at one time or another! I will say this for him. He is good at spotting the "fakers."
Going back to the Lame Cherry blog post. The author wrote:
Glenn Beck is such a persona of the global elite. He gives an interview about being a kindred soul of George Clooney, finds Mormonism a warm and fuzzy religion for little girls, is convinced of global warming, trashed Ronald Reagan and then states he can't remember saying all of that.
He is caught on mic at CPAC in saying the Republicans are as bad as the Democrats.
I can't say that I have ever heard Beck trash Ronald Reagan. If he did, then he was crazy to do so.
Mr. Cherry goes on:
All of this caused a justified outcry, but as Kathy Shaidle only noted in her blog, Rush Limbaugh was the one who had his finger on this in hinting exactly what Beck was up to.
Glenn Beck is part of an effort to create a 3rd party to ruin the Republicans, so a grinning David Brooks Obamite can have Obama elected to a landslide 3rd [probably meant 2nd] term.
Really?
Who can we trust anymore?
Hat Tips to all links.
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The Influence of the Frankfurt School
Although it is difficult to assess the effect of works like The Authoritarian personality on gentile culture, there can be little question that the thrust of the radical critique of gentile culture in this work, as well as other works inspired by psychoanalysis and its derivatives, was to pathologize high-investment parenting and upward social mobility, as well as pride in family, religion, and country, among gentiles. Certainly many of the central attitudes of the largely successful 1960s countercultural revolution find expression in The Authoritarian Personality, including idealizing rebellion against parents, low-investment sexual relationships, and scorn for upward social mobility, social status, family pride, the Christian religion, and patriotism.
We have seen that despite this antagonistic perspective on gentile culture, Jewish 1960s radicals continued to identify with their parents and with Judaism. The countercultural revolution was in a very deep sense a mission to the gentiles in which adaptive behavior and group-identifications of gentiles were pathologized while Jewish group identification, ingroup pride, family pride, upward social mobility, and group continuity retained their psychological importance and positive moral evaluation. In this regard, the behavior of these radicals was exactly analogous to that of the authors of The Authoritarian Personality and Jewish involvement in psychoanalysis and radical politics generally: Gentile culture and gentile group strategies are fundamentally pathological and are to be anathemized in the interests of making the world safe for Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy.
As with political radicalism, only a rarified cultural elite could attain the extremely high level of mental health epitomized by the true liberal:
The replacement of moral and political argument by reckless psychologizing not only enabled Adorno and his collaborators to dismiss unacceptable political opinions on medical grounds; it led them to set up an impossible standard of political health—one that only members of a self-constituted cultural vanguard could consistently meet. In order to establish their emotional “autonomy,” the subjects of their research had to hold the right opinions and also to hold them deeply and spontaneously. (Lasch 1991, 453–455)
In the post–World War II era The Authoritarian Personality became an
ideological weapon against historical American populist movements, especially McCarthyism (Gottfried 1998; Lasch 1991, 455ff).
[R]eflecting the congruence between the Frankfurt School and contemporary postmodernism, the enormously influential postmodernist Michel Foucault stated, “If I had known about the Frankfurt School in time, I would have been saved a great deal of work. I would not have said a certain amount of nonsense and would not have taken so many false trails trying not to get lost, when the Frankfurt School had already cleared the way” (in Wiggershaus 1994, 4).
Whereas the strategy of the Frankfurt School was to deconstruct universalist, scientific thinking by the use of “critical reason,” postmodernism has opted for complete relativism and the lack of objective standards of any kind in the interests of preventing any general theories of society or universally valid philosophical or moral systems (Norris 1993, 287ff).34
NOTES
1. Part of this balancing act was a conscious practice of self-censorship in an effort to remove Marxist language from their publications, so that, for example, “Marxism” was replaced with “socialism,” and “means of production” was replaced by “industrial apparatus” (Wiggershaus 1994, 366). The Marxist substance remained, but by means of this deception the Institute could attempt to defuse accusations of political dogmatism.
2. Marcuse remained an ardent Communist after Adorno and Horkheimer abandoned communism. In an internal document of the Institute from 1947, Marcuse wrote, “The Communist Parties are, and will remain, the sole anti-fascist power. Denunciation of them must be purely theoretical. Such denunciation is conscious of the fact that the realization of the theory is only possible through the Communist Parties” (in Wiggershaus 1994, 391). In the same document Marcuse advocated anarchy as a mechanism for achieving the revolution. Yet, Marcuse and Horkheimer never ceased contact, and Horkheimer was an admirer of Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization (Wiggershaus 1994, 470) as reflecting the Institute’s view that sexual repression resulted in domination over nature and that ending sexual repression would weaken destructive tendencies.
[8.] The Frankfurt theorists inherited a strong opposition to capitalism from their previously-held radical beliefs. Irving Louis Horowitz (1987, 118) notes that the Critical Theorists were “caught between the Charybdis of capitalism—which they despised as a system of exploitation (whose fruits they nonetheless enjoyed), and the Scylla of communism—which they despised as a system of worse exploitation (whose bitter fruits they often escaped, unlike their Russian-Jewish counterparts).”
[11.] Political conservatism and ethnocentrism are said to be difficult to separate, as indicated by the following item from the Political and Economic Conservatism Scale (PEC): “America may not be perfect, but the American Way has brought us about as close as human beings can get to a perfect society.” Levinson comments, “To support this idea is, it would seem, to express politico-economic conservatism and the ingroup idealization so characteristic of ethnocentrism” (p. 181). Here, as in the case of the discussion of the Ethnocentrism Scale itself, individuals who identify strongly with a dominant majority group and its interests are viewed as pathological. In fact the PEC scale was not as highly correlated with the F-Scale as was the Ethnocentrism Scale (EScale), a finding that Adorno tendentiously interpreted not as indicating that these concepts were not highly related but as indicating that “we are living in potentially fascist times” (p. 656)! As indicated in the conclusion of this chapter, the high correlation between the F-Scale and the E-Scale was a matter of design rather than an empirical finding.
12. The authors of The Authoritarian Personality take a strong moral position against ethnocentrism and political conservatism. Levinson notes, for example, that “The National Maritime Union . . . can take pride in having the lowest [means on the Ethnocentrism Scale]” (p. 196).
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