Do Emotions Trump Facts?

Town hall.com ^ | Thomas Sowell

[Oklahoma]

Bipartisan deals -- so beloved by media pundits -- have produced some of the great disasters in American history.

Contrary to the widespread view that the Great Depression of the 1930s was caused by the stock market crash of 1929, unemployment never reached double digits in any of the 12 months that followed the stock market crash in October, 1929.

Unemployment was 6.3 percent in June 1930 when a Democratic Congress and a Republican president made a bipartisan deal that produced the Smoot-Hawley tariffs. Within 6 months, unemployment hit double digits -- and stayed in double digits throughout the entire decade of the 1930s.

You want deals? There was never a more politically successful deal than that which Neville Chamberlain made in Munich in 1938. He was hailed as a hero, not only by his own party but even by opposition parties, when he returned with a deal that Chamberlain said meant "peace for our time." But, just one year later, the biggest, bloodiest and most ghastly war in history began.

[Oklahoma]

Time for the cult to disown Thomas Sowell.

[Cboldt]

Given equal strength, emotions ALWAYS trump reason, perception always trumps reality. Until the train hits you.

[Smokin' Joe]

Don’t have to look far for that answer.

[jmaroneps37]

Sowell is George Will in Black face; to has beens trying to understand what happened to their comfortable world.

[Pan_Yan]

Cue the feces hurling howler monkeys.

[Smokin' Joe]

To the Egress!!

[Jim Robinson]

I still think it has nothing whatsoever to do with logic, facts or liberal vs conservative politics. The people are fed up with establishment politics and want rebellion. Trump is rebellion.

[usafa92]

All the academics sit behind their nice little desks and tell us what their definition of conservatism is and how we are supposed to see things. Trump just put billions of his own money on the line to endure heaps of scorn and derision from people who haven’t achieved a fraction of what he has or risked much beyond the ink in their pens and the air in their lungs and have done so with other people’s money.

[Yosemitest]

Uh, Sowell is a REAL conservative, UNLIKE the pretender George WILL !

George Will is a DemocRAT who got SO OFFENDED by the DemocRATS, that he couldn't tolerate being associated with all those "CRAZIES" .
Now for a deeper understanding of just WHO George Will IS:

The word "neocons" is ONLY used by LIBERALS, trying to insult Conservatives.
The is no such thing as a "NEW" Conservative.
Conservatives ARE Conservative, plain and simple.

But read this"
Liberals, Conservatives, and Neocons - - - Learn the Difference!
March 12, 2014

Almost everybody is confused about the word "neoconservative" and its shortened form, "neocon."
I find that liberals/Democrats seem to use it as a sort of disrespectful form of "conservative,"
and probably have no idea the the words have distinct meanings.
On the other hand, I know of some conservatives who define it as "new conservatives,"
meaning people who were formerly something else, but have converted to conservatism.
Both are wrong.
As near as I can tell, "neo-" doesn't apply to any other word that way -
formerly not X, but having become X.
No, "neo-" almost always refers to an ideology that is different from the root word in a significant way.
Neoconfederates are not people who want to secede and become a separate country.
They want the ideals of the Confederacy to be applied to modern politics, more or less, but not all of them.
Neoliberal is a more vague term,
but it specifically applies to people who may have SOME of the attributes of liberals,
but who contradict liberalism in their advocacy of free trade and privatization
and other ideas usually thought of as conservative.
And, finally, neoconservatives are mostly those moderate cold war LIBERALS who defected to the Republican party when the Democrats got totally flaky with McGovern and his ilk.
Their ultimate origin, however, is not the Democratic party but the Trotskyite movement.



Jack Kerwick elaborates.

Read this:
Most "Conservatives" Are Secretly Neoconservatives
12 March, 2014, by Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.

A colleague of mine has drawn my attention to a Washington Post blog post - "Why Most Conservatives Are Secretly Liberals" - by a Professor John Sides, a political scientist at Georgetown University.

Sides agrees with fellow political scientists Christopher Ellis and James Stimson, co-authors of Ideology in America.
Ellis and Stimson CONTEND that
America is, at bottom, a "center-left nation,"
for while "30 percent" of self-described "liberals" are consistent in endorsing "liberal" policy prescriptions,
the same sort of consistency can be ascribed to only "15 percent" of "conservatives."
And another "30 percent" of "conservatives" actually advance "liberal" positions.

In short, Americans may TALK the talk of "conservatism," but they WALK the walk of "liberalism."
That is, they favor Big Government.

Sides, Ellis, and Stimson, it seems clear to me, are "liberals."
It doesn't require much reading between the lines to discern this.
That they associate "liberals," and "liberals" ALONE, with such virtues as "consistency" and such lofty ideals as "a cleaner environment" and "a stronger safety net" is enough to bear this out.
Yet in peddling the ridiculous, patently absurd notion that
"conservatives" see the media as PROMOTING "conservatism,"
the verdict regarding their "liberalism" is seen for the NO-BRAINER that it is.

There is, though, another CLUE that unveils Sides', Ellis', and Stimson's ideological PREJUDICES:
They equate the term "liberalism" with a robust affirmation of Big Government.
They treat "liberalism" synonymously with its modern, "Welfare-Statist" incarnation.
There is no mention here of the fact that, originally, "liberalism" referred to
a vision that attached supreme value to individual liberty,
a vision in which government played, and had to play, a minimal role in the lives of its citizens.
And there is no mention of the fact that, if "liberalism" is now "an ugly word,"
it is because the very same socialists who made "socialism" an ugly word hijacked "liberalism" when it enjoyed a favorable reception
and visited upon it the same fate that they secured for "socialism."

In other words, if Sides himself wanted to be bluntly honest, he’d have to admit that "liberals" are secretly socialists.

Still, though their premises are bogus, Sides and his colleagues draw the correct conclusion that
most "conservatives" are NOTHING OF THE KIND.
The truth of the matter is that
the vast majority of contemporary "conservatives"; are neoconservatives.

Now, "neoconservatism" is a term that hasn't the best reputation.
It has ALWAYS BEEN CONTROVERSIAL,
and most of its proponents have DISAVOWED IT to the point of, preposterously, condemning it as an "anti-Semitic" SLUR.
But George W. Bush and his party inflicted potentially irrevocable damage upon the label.
"Conservatism" is a more marketable label.

Nevertheless, the reality is that neoconservatism is indeed a distinct school of political thought.
Beyond this, it is fundamentally different in kind from classical conservatism.
Irving Kristol, the so-called "Godfather" of neoconservatism, an appellation that he readily endorsed, ADMITS this in noting both
that neoconservatism exists
and that "conservative" "can be misleading" when used to describe it.

Neoconservatism, you see, is THE INVENTION OF LEFTISTS like Kristol himself.
When the Democratic Party began veering too far to the Left in the 1960s, Kristol and more moderate leftists began turning toward the Republican Party.
So as TO DISTINGUISH THEMSELVES FROM traditional conservatives, they coined the term "neoconservatism."

Neoconservatives, Kristol asserts, are "not at all hostile to the idea of a welfare state" -
even if they reject the "vast and energetic bureaucracies" created by the Great Society.
Neoconservatives ENDORSE "social security, unemployment insurance," and "some kind of family assistance plan," among other measures.
But what's most interesting, particularly at a time when ObamaCare has DIVIDED the country, is that Kristol reminds us that
neoconservatives SUPPORT "some form of national health insurance."

In all truthfulness, however, neither a degree in political science nor an IQ above four is required to know that
neoconservatism has always championed Big Government
for it is its foreign policy vision more than anything else that distinguishes it from its competitors.
For neoconservatives, America is "exceptional" in being, as Kristol puts it, "a creedal nation,"
the only nation in all of human history to have been founded upon an "ideology" of equality, of "natural rights."
The U.S.A., then, has a responsibility to promote this ideology throughout the world.

And it is by way of a potentially boundless military - i.e. Big Government - that this "ideological patriotism" is to be executed.

Had the foregoing political scientists been looking in the right places, they would BE FORCED TO CONCLUDE that most "conservatives" are secretly neoconservatives.

So, you see that those WHO THEY CALL "neoconservatives", are really nothing more than the old moderate side of the DemocRATS.
It's just THAT SIMPLE .

[DB]

Well they are on cue...

Amazing and sad. Burn everyone and everything that doesn’t sing Trump’s praises.

[DB]

Rebellion rarely goes as planned. Burning everything down including the good guys is not progress. Sowell and Cruz are a good guys.

[don-o]

Scoot over Levin...here comes Sowell. Hope It’s a big bus there. More to come.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

Sowell will have to do a lot more to make me mad at him or to make me turn against Trump ...

H. L. Mencken [back in 1922] and Trump

[reposting for poconopundit]

H. L. Mencken arrived at in his Vox Populi analysis of 1922!

Mencken believed that the 55% of Americans out there the group that includes the Kardashian fans and Obama-phone dimwits can never be educated to make good political choices. They will always be drawn to demagogues like Obama, FDR, and Woodrow Wilson.

Mencken figured the only hope for a free society’s survival is that wise men and women of the intelligent minority adopt the tricks of the demagogue.

As Mencken so beautifully put it:

The man of education and self-respect may not run with the mob and he may not yield to it supinely, but what is to prevent him deliberately pulling its nose?

And if Mencken were alive today, he would notice that’s exactly what Trump is about: a man of competence and intelligence who has become an expert in Kardashian psychology. And it’s all about winning to make America great again.

When I have some time, I’m going to explore Mencken’s theme a bit more and contribute an analysis of Vox Populi on FR.

[— poconopundit]

[Unquote]

[The_Victor]

Time for the cult to disown Thomas Sowell.

I have never seen the levels to which a group of people will go, at FR or anywhere else for that matter, to not only disown people with whom they disagree, but to publicly trash those people. Impugning character, motives, beliefs, and sanity of the very people that less than a year ago they would have whole heartedly embraced as blood brothers in the fight.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

There are three levels of Trump support ...

1. Low information rebels [anti-establishment]

2. Newcomers to conservatism [some who would otherwise vote third party or stay home]

3. Informed conservatives who see a revolutionary opportunity — this rowdy coalition.

[My summary of ‘evil Trump’ coming up ...]

[Jim Robinson]

They are good guys, but they’re missing the point. This is not about defending “conservatism.” It’s about defending our nation and our way of life. They’re looking for a kickass leader who will secure the borders, secure the nation, enforce the law, deport the illegals, jail the bad guys, bomb the shit out of the terrorists and kick them the hell out of our country and also kick the hell out of the propaganda spewing media and the corrupt, lying political class.

The rebellion is on.

Join or die.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

Is Trump a monster? That would mean the following:

1. Hannity is in on it.
2. Rush is in on it.
3. Herman Cain is in on it.
4. Senator Jeff Sessions is being duped.
5. Phyllis Schlafly is being duped.
6. Jerry Falwell, Jr talking to Hannity re Trump ...
http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/01/19/must-watch-liberty-university-president-jerry-falwell-jr-overwhelmingly-advocates-for-candidate-donald-trump/#more-111207

7. Michael Savage, probably the most paranoid anti-establishment talk radio host around, is also being duped.

8. And last but not least — Sarah Palin is ‘in on it’.

I’m sure the list is even longer than that.

In the meantime, this super-villain was attacked during the response to the State of the Union Address by the ‘G’ OP. How ‘Wellstone Memorial’ of’em. About as strong an endorsement in Trump’s favor as you can get.

If there is any clue on earth that Trump is evil, Jeb Bush would have already exposed it by now. Easy these days to leak via proxy. Trump has destroyed the Bush Dynasty’s aura of power by hostile takeover.

Then there’s the ‘stream of consciousness’ open-book events. A super-villain doesn’t roll that way — too much to hide.

[central_va]

Smoot-Hawley tariff (MYTHOLOGY)

Smoot Hawley is the ultimate red herring as far as the Great Depression is concerned. Exports were less that 4% of the economy(GDP) when Smoot Hawley was passed. You could have eliminated all exports and the effects would not have been catastrophic as described by so called "historians". Smoot Hawley had a minimal effect on deepening the depression because it couldn't.

Do your own research it is not hard to do.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

What I like about Cruz ...

Cruz: ‘We Need Quite A Few Constitutional Amendments’
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3381654/posts

[That’s the main reason why I want Cruz to remain one of the Top Two — he needs as much of a mandate as possible if he loses the nomination.]

“Ted Cruz: Trump Will Let Deported Immigrants Back In, I Won’t”
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3379878/posts

Cruz Against Big Ethanol
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3381754/posts

I respect him all that more for calling Majority-Traitor McConman a liar. That is a sign of courage.

Top of the food chain in the legal community and legislative experience.

But ...

1. How strident will public dissent be about his ineligibility?

2. Is he as courageous as Trump against powerful tyrants?

3. There are few Presidents in US history with Trump’s practical executive experience ... have to go back to Ike to find one.

4. Does Cruz have a glass jaw politically? When will he put Professor Tribe in his place?

[central_va]

Sowell is throwing around the Smoot Hawley lie, I thought he was better than that.