Posted on 08/22/2008 7:43:13 AM PDT by Dr.Syn
Coulterism — It Doesn’t Take a PhD
August 20, 2008
Two PhD’s from Swansea University in Wales (UK) are sharpening their executioner’s axe in a jumbled stratagem to behead the greatest threat to their secular world of “radical multi-dimensional pluralism”, aka Ann Coulter.
It’s been rumored that professors Samuel A. Chambers and Alan Finlayson are planning a course (counter-insurgency?) in “Coulterism” at Johns Hopkins University. The course announcements are linked to a paper, “Ann Coulter and the Problem of Pluralism: From Values to Politics” that Chambers and Finlayson presented at the 2007 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (and who says they aren’t Marxists).
Of course, they never really define “Coulterism” with the clarity of the other liberal “isms” but they seem just as certain of its universal evil.
Although they respond to Coulter as all “movement liberals” do (name calling, gender mongering, and accusations of just being ‘not nice’...they simultaneously state that all previous “...responses to her prove utterly inadequate to deal with the political importance of this phenomenon... With respect to Coulterism, we have consistently avoided the easy or instinctual reactions.”
Instead they torture the reader with a muddled “academic” diatribe laced with personal attacks, philosophical and historical inaccuracies, distortions, lies and the same old liberal inability to look in the mirror and tell the truth.
They do, however, hit the bulls-eye is their belief that, “Ann Coulter is a living rebuke to almost all of contemporary liberal philosophy.”
Bingo!
Ann Coulter is an American whose dialectic addresses American issues (chiefly the problem of bastardized 20th century liberalism) through an American lens.
Chambers and Finlayson are movement liberals and thus, Universalists. They aren’t advocating for a country...they advocate for movement Universalism. And, in the process, demonstrate a total lack of knowledge and insight concerning...America.
More importantly, they aren’t concerned about preserving American Constitutional government in the least...their goal is quite the opposite.
After reading the “Coulterism” paper three times, I am still at as loss as to why it takes some academics 18 pages to say what a normal person could sum-up in a paragraph or two. In fact, Chambers and Finlayson impart less insight in over ten thousand words than the three letters it took Coulter to accurately define John Edwards...before she went into remission.
These two PhD’s lament that, “Coulter and her ilk...succeed in a political critique of mainstream political liberalism in America and that the failure of liberalism to recognise this fact lies at the heart of many of its problems ...Precisely because it cannot comprehend what has been achieved by its opponents, liberalism is unable properly to respond to them. Thus, we undertake a critical consideration of the way in which contemporary liberal political theory regards values as the only meaningful level of pluralism....” So now they are blaming “values”, in addition to Coulter, for the foundering of liberalism.
Their true intent is to beat, “...Coulterism by joining it...one should not respond by defending the universals that Coulterism attacks but by joining in that attack and by seeking to proliferate the number of forms they take. Thus, the challenge is to prevent Coulter from re-occupying the universal, and this means to do to her what she has sought to do to liberalism. Coulter wants a dirty fight; perhaps we should respect her wishes.”
Well now you’ve said it...haven’t you.
They quietly whisper, “...of what elements are Coulterist constituencies composed? By what appeals, tropes and interests are they bound together? In what way does Coulterism seek to reconfigure the dimensions of political space? Where might these dimensions be expanded? How might these appeals be turned against it? How might the constituencies be broken up and reordered?”
Aren’t they the masters of the fifth column.
In plain, and properly spelled, American english these two far-left wanna-be revolutionaries are pissed because Coulter consistently depants the lies, hypocrisy and self-serving nature of liberalism...and they can’t shut her up.
Coulter consistently illustrates the house of jokers that comprises the liberal deck and their response is to urge the exponential increase in the size of that deck to splinter “movement conservativism” into impotence.
Chambers and Finlayson want to dump liberalism and replace it with “radical multi-dimensional pluralism”...new phrase, same old bankrupt end goal of universal utopianism. Oh yeah...Annie will be duped by that.
They find contemporary liberalism ineffective because, “When liberal theory surveys the plurality of actions, institutions, practices and procedures before it, it too often sees a clash only at the level of pre-given values and beliefs.”
Their solution is to, “...go all the way down and across forms of social organisation: from families to governments, economic organisation to ownership, strategies of communication to structures of feeling.... Instead, political theory should be part of the process of identifying and encouraging all sorts of political and social ‘experiments in living’, taking part in a kind of ‘high-energy’ democracy capable of sustaining ongoing transformative experimentalism in production, political organisation, learning and living.”
These guys have read too much Karl Marx while tripping on acid.
Don’t these two wizards understand that “pre-given values and beliefs” are the products of over a thousand years of incremental human development and the nature of all “forms of social organisation” is a compilation of these values?
First they indict Coulter because, “Coulter not only advocates ‘intelligent design’ (an outright rejection of the theory of evolution) but goes further to define Darwinism as liberalism’s ‘creation myth’,” and then they advocate for re-education instead of evolutionary political development. Who’s playing God(less) here?
What’s even more hysterical is their belief that political theory shouldn’t, “...subordinate itself to whatever is happening at the moment and is deemed to be of ‘relevance’, as if relevance were a criterion objectively disclosed by nature.”
Hey idiots...first you indict Coulter for not toeing the Darwinian line and then you forget that “relevance” is a “criterion objectively disclosed by nature” because the absence of relevance equals extinction. Sort of like putting liberals on an endangered species list.
In the tradition of all self-loathing and messianic malcontents, Chambers and Finlayson are advocating anarchy, “Politics becomes then, not an effort to quell conflict, to search for consensus, or to overcome the problem of reasonable pluralism, but rather an arena in which the politics of pluralism is played out – a space in which agonistic conflict and an ‘ethos of pluralization’ are fostered and allowed to thrive and flourish.”
Their pants really come down when they state that, “Politics can only be judged by the rules that it creates.”
This is a conceptual misunderstanding of freedom as we know it...God created the rules and gave them to each individual...politics is only the referee...not the game.
These misanthropes should re-educate themselves starting with a walk through the: Renaissance; Enlightenment, Federalist Papers; Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Better known as, “...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....”
Or, as Ronald Reagan summed it up, “This idea -- that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power -- is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man...Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”
As is painfully obvious by now, the Chambers and Finlayson paper is absurd liberal whining and petty scheming.
The entire diatribe can be reduced to the nature of factions and their role in society. What have these “authors” brought to the table that wasn’t already supplied by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Papers No. 9, 10 & 51? Nothing.
In Federalist No. 10, Madison is clear when he warns, “AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice.”
So what do these two PhD’s propose...anarchy through the growth of factions.
Madison adds that the danger of factions can be mitigated by one of two methods, “Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression.”
This is the exact opposite of Universalism.
If you think I’m kidding, look at what Chambers and Finlayson had to say... “Coulterism is undoubtedly an instance of illegitimate coercive communication shaped by the instrumental concerns of faction or personal profit rather than the universal interest in mutual understanding.”
A serious case of “pots and kettles”.
Even more absurd is the authors’ keen insight that “Coulterism itself resides fully within liberalism to the extent that liberal principles provide the conditions of possibility for Coulterism’s emergence,” and their lament that, “Coulterism, and movement conservatism in general, does not want to be included (in liberalism)”.
Just imagine the brain power it took to divine that cancer has made the practice of oncology possible and not understand why oncologists don’t want to develop cancer themselves.
This is just a brief taste of the idiocy frothing from these two professors. I have outlined the Chambers-Finlayson paper with many more comments illustrating their absurdity, lack of knowledge and hypocrisy, but I will spare the reader any further monotony.
They are correct in the fact that Coulter has energized Conservatism but they are wrong in blaming her for the failings of liberalism.
Liberalism’s failings have nothing to blame except liberalism’s own methods and lies.
The Chambers-Finlayson mindset would blame the consumer for not gushing over the Edsel.
Taking this any further would require a debate between Coulter and the Chambers-Finlayson duet.
I am certain that Coulter would relish the opportunity, but, as Chambers-Finlayson said, “She signals sexuality but not availability; she dominates without threatening (at least not straight men).” So I guess they might be too threatened to debate her.
They can't and that is the fundamental flaw with liberalism.
PhD: "Piled Higher and Deeper"
L
“So what do these two PhD’s propose...anarchy through the growth of factions.”
Exactly, they need a thug like Stalin ruthless enough to “silence” Coulterism.
The right to bear arms is no idle right with these jokers around.
Sorry...forgot the rules...thanks for filling in the blanks!
“the challenge is to prevent Coulter from re-occupying the universal, and this means to do to her what she has sought to do to liberalism. Coulter wants a dirty fight; perhaps we should respect her wishes.”
Time and place, please. I’ll bring the popcorn.
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Without rules, anarchy prevails. Just don’t let it happen again.
Ha! If they’re talking about Ann Coulter, then this just shows how inept the left is when it comes to debate: they cannot defeat the reasoning, so they attack the person or the method.
typical libs.
Leave her alone!
With soldiers like this...how can we lose!
Sufferers of ‘academentia’ typically live far up in the head waters of denial.
The last time I encountered such clauses in what was put forth as an erudite sentence was when I was at WoodStock I, listening to the stoned.
What combination of recreational pharmaceutical and what variety of collectivist “philosophy” could produce this jewel:
“..high-energy’ democracy capable of sustaining ongoing transformative experimentalism in production, political organisation, learning and living.””?
The real question should be, “Why does America allow Euro-socialist TrashThought a place on campus?”
Oh, OK, this isn't from The Onion?
She has achieved her objective. Like Rush Limbaugh, she pushes liberals over the edge. Apparently, they have fallen for it.
It would be better for them to focus on the Constitution, conservative political theory, and the conservative movement as a whole. But maybe 10 or 12 Guinnesses would do the trick. Extra Stout. Come to think of it, they better add a few shots of Jägermeister at P.J.'s, the James Joyce, or CVP. Particularly when the students start asking how to interpret Coulter through Derrida and Lacanian categories.
We can only hope Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis figures in here somewhere. Just to be "fair and balanced."
Don't they know Coulter is a mind control device borrowed from KAOS to drive liberals insane?
I remember that paper - it was basically an argument as to why it’s okay to censor conservatives.
Can we call it,”Wails from the Whales from Wales”?
Or maybe ,”Swill from the Swells of Swansea”?
In case anyone is wondering about the specialties of these two academics: 
No surprises there, and none of my kids are going to a school that considers their work to be a form of education.
These “academics” are obviously closet heterosexuals who probably wrote their paper one-handed while researching on Ann’s web site.
...political theory should be part of the process of identifying and encouraging all sorts of political and social ‘experiments in living’, taking part in a kind of ‘high-energy’ democracy capable of sustaining ongoing transformative experimentalism in production, political organisation, learning and living.
A feller could starve trying to survive on the semantic content in that torrent of intellectual styrofoam. A textbook full of that stuff printed on the shiny paper will cost some poor undergrad's parents a hunnert buckadingdongs and end up on the floor holding up a wobbly table. That would be its finest moment.
After reading the “Coulterism” paper three times, I am still at as loss as to why it takes some academics 18 pages to say what a normal person could sum-up in a paragraph or two.
Pot meet the kettle.
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