[Larry Lucido]

Reposting my reply to your message on the earlier thread:

Althought I agree with very little of what you wrote, I commend you for having the courage to come onto this forum and express your thoughts.

That said, let me challenge you. You indicate a desire for expanded freedoms. You identify with the common person. That said, do you trust the common person with gun ownership? Do you trust the common person to bear concealed weapons in public places?

[Texas_Longhorn]

Sure, your "freedoms to dissent" are important, but don't equate "freedoms to dissent" with "dissenting". There is a myth that "dissenting" is somehow inherently good. (Dissenting with people who try an avoid jumping off a cliff is one example of dissenting being bad).

Why don't you check out "dissent" in Afghanistan here: http://www.rawa.org

[BrooklynGOP]

...took care in my pledge not to identify with terrorists, suicide bombers, or Islamic regimes, but with the ordinary people around the world, including those here in the United States.

From your post. And from your article: I’ve come out as a lesbian,

Interesting. So you are a lesbian. And how do you think your fellow "ordinary people" from around the world (ie, afghanistan, syria, egypt, iran, etc) would feel about you being a lesbian? I wonder how many stones it would take for them to throw at you before you realize what's going on.

[Jay W]

"If you cherish the freedoms of the United States, it would be hypocritical of you to be intolerant of the expression of opinions that differ from yours. I am a well-educated, thoughtful human being. I am well qualified to teach at the University ("universe"-ity), which should be a place for thoughtful and respectful sharing of diverse views. My students get trained in critical thinking: the capacity to take in a number of perspectives and weigh evidence and reasoning on their own, which they would not be able to do if there were not at least a few dissenters among us here. I mean, the business school gets the big bucks and military- and corporate-funded research dominate the campus. It's a rare class where a student would find points of view that challenge the corporate and geopolitical hegemony of the United States. So I feel sorry for the students whose parents would keep them from attending my classes or the University of Texas because of what I wrote. Don't you have faith that your children can think for themselves? Don't you trust them with a range of positions and approaches to knowledge? Haven't you prepared them to defend your family's values? Any viewpoint is welcome in my classes so long as the arguer can provide evidence and reasoning in support of claims. Contrary to popular mythology, I do not routinely fail conservative students; I do welcome their voices in class so long as respect for others and standards of argumentation are sustained."

Uh-huh. You are rationalizing there, Ms. Professor. You and your kind are always telling us that there is no equality wherever there is a power relationship, correct? That is, if one person holds power over another, then the person over whom power is being exercised isn't exactly free to speak her, or his, mind. Even if they are told to "feel free" to speak up, they will still keep in the back of their mind, if they're intelligent and savvy, the unequal power relationship.

Well, guess what? In your tiny fiefdom of your classroom, exactly such a power relationship exists. You are the professor. They are the students. Your power resides in the grade that you give out. You can wax all flowerly and eloquently all you want about how you are open to opposing views provided they are supported with evidence and sound and are respectful of the rights of others, but that does not gainsay the unequal power distribution in that tiny fiefdom. All of your students, including the ones who agree with you, will always keep in mind -- unless they're stupid -- this power relationship.

I'm therefore sure that you flatter yourself regarding your views on how tolerant you believe you may be, but since evidence and sound reasoning are ostensibly important to you, I'd like to hear from your students whether or not what you say is actually true. See, I've been there. Done that. Seen first hand "feminist" professors at work (the term is semantically equal to the common definitions of "fascist"), and it ain't a pretty sight, in both senses of the word typically. So, unless you provide evidence to the contrary, I would have to assume that you delude yourself into believing that you are welcoming of contrary opinions. But even then, I'd wait until hearing from your students before agreeing with your opinions of yourself.

[Lazamataz]

Reading your missive has made my pants tumble, effortlessly and like a feather, to the ground.

Now I am not wearing any pants.

[Texas_Longhorn]

"I feel a certain obligation, an obligation that comes with freedom, to speak out alongside of those with less freedom to speak."

Al-Queda doesn't have much freedom right now. FARC doesn't have too much freedom right now. Would you speak out alongside FARC? The logic here is very wrong.

[M Kehoe]

I take my freedoms to dissent in this country very seriously. I do not want to live anywhere else in the world,

Well, ya got balls, newby. Although, your hypocracy kinda jumps out at the reader, and an impartial observer would think you didn't grow up in the U.S. But hey, if you think you can change minds here, well have at it.

LOL!

5.56mm

[dennisw]

 

You deconstruction fakers are the bottom feeders of academia. The lowest of the low. You are just a bunch of unemployables leeching off the taxpayers. In your case the taxpayers of Iowa. Communists had balls and made revolutions. Killed millions in their pursuit of raw power. While you parasites in the academy only engage in word games and posturing and seeing who can best impress the 19 year olds in your classrooms.

You aren't even a commie. Just a wannabe who thinks feminism and critical theory is a big deal

 

 

Dana L. Cloud (PhD, University of Iowa, 1992) specializes in the analysis of contemporary and popular and political culture from feminist, Marxist, and critical anti-racist perspectives. She teaches undergraduate classes in persuasion, social movements, speechwriting, and rhetorical criticism, as well as graduate courses in rhetoric and the public sphere, rhetoric and ideology, rhetoric and feminist theory, and rhetoric and popular culture. Dr. Cloud's areas of current research include the critique of therapeutic discourse, feminist and Marxist theories and politics, rhetoric of "family values," and the rhetoric of the U.S. labor movement.

Source: University of Texas - F A C U L T Y : research & teaching

[VetoBill]

Suffice it to say that if you have read any history you know that the U.S. either put in place or supported with money and guns the very dictators you decry today, including the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.

Does this demonstrate failed US policies or does it show allies can and do change with the times?

England was prime factor in the foundation of the US, we rebelled and England became our enemy. Fast forward to WWI and WWII, England was our ally. So can it be said that the US was inconsistent with its foreign policy?

How about the alliance with the USSR during WWII? We shipped supplies to aid in the war against Germany, only to once again become enemies at the conclusion of the war. Did the US build up Soviet Russia in order to have someone to decry at a later date?

Foreign policy is an inexact science. Perhaps one has ally with a demon to fight the devil. If I am being mugged on a street by a gang, and the only help available is from someone I suspect will rob me at a later date, I would except the help. Foolish? Perhaps but I would deal with the possibility of being robbed at a later date... I know I am going to be robbed now if the situation does not change.

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

Dear Desperate Professor,

Struggling to make sense from the socialist view is a daunting task. This is especially so when arguing with people who are successful making their way as Capitalists in a society where individual freedom is still by and large cherished.

For therapy to ward off a deep depression caused by a feeling of indifference and rejection, I suggest the following two treatments.

(1) Round up scores of like minded sisters and brothers and start a co-op enterprise to show how socialism beats Capitalism in the socio-economic marketplace. It will be demonstrable proof that until now no Socialist visionary has attempted. You do have to prove to the Capitalists that you are really not bloodsuckers looking to re-distribute the savings others have worked hard to accumulate.

(2) Work on the two socialist Senators from Massachusetts who between the two have more than a billion dollars in assets. See to it that they redistribute their wealth to the needy. By the way, I would like to learn that tax evasion trick Kennedy pulled by taking his mother to Florida for several days while she was dying so he could claim his mother was from Florida and avoid Massachusetts inheritance taxes.

[supercat]

I should add that people in developing countries are not being liberated by the opportunites provided by U.S.-dominated world capitalism.

It is a fact that captalism cannot yield improvements for anyone without certain unfortunate problems. Many factory workers were poorly paid and worked in lousy conditions, but the wealth they generated for the factory owners was re-invested to provide factories with better working conditions which operated more efficiently, and whose owners could thus offer workers more money [and had to, to stop those workers from going to work at other factories that could offer more money]. Likewise, early steam engines were horrendously innefficient and horribly polluting, and yet it was the savings they generated which provided the capital to research improvements to provide engines which provide ten times as much useful energy from each ton of coal while producing a fraction of the 'real' pollution (carbon dioxide excepted, which per ton is going to be essentially constant).

If early steam engines had to comply with anything even remotely resembling the pollution laws that exist today, the industrial revolution never would have happened. Likewise if today's regulations regarding working conditions were applicable in the nineteenth century. It is the wealth generated when conditions are bad which allows them to get better. Prevent the generation of such wealth, and the standard of living cannot improve.

One thing which has really been lost in the world today is the notion of people toiling in the interest that their children would have a better life than their own. Unfortunately, for many classes of people today such a notion is almost unfathomable.

[DainBramage]

You don't look lesbian

[Texas_Longhorn]

"you have read any history you know that the U.S. either put in place or supported with money and guns the very dictators you decry today, including the Taliban"

WRONG! The U.S. didn't put the Taliban into place. The CIA was backing the "Mujahideen" in Afghanistan when the Russians were there. You need to read your history.

[Fzob]

ping

[Texas_Longhorn]

"When four percent of the world's population controls more than 60% of the world's wealth, when the nation states that harbor the strongest enterprises defend those interests with force, when U.S. foreign policy and economic policy are designed to drive countries into unsalvageable debt or rubble,"

You need to learn the concept of "comparative advantage". You can learn this in any Freshman economics book.

[fnord]

long-winded ball of snot, eh

[copycat]

Socialism and Communism are utopian ideals that can never be realized in the actual world.

As we have seen recently with Enron et al, human nature leads to greed and criminality when power is bestowed, and therefore, in every case, the entity in charge of "equalizing outcomes" becomes corrupt. This corruption leads the ruling class to hoard and steal from the masses, as we saw in Soviet Russia, Cuba, and elsewhere.

Better that people should be free to do for themselves whatever they can and we leave the acquisition of material possessions to "survival of the fittest" or the natural order.

In this light, I believe those who wish to "save the world" are actually the destroyers.

FReegards...

[general_re]

A sample of the good doctor's published work. Perhaps your ping list might find Dr. Cloud's work worthy of discussion...

Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Dec 1992 v9 n4 p311(14)
The limits of interpretation: ambivalence and the stereotype in 'Spenser: For Hire.' (Critical Demography) Dana L. Cloud.

Author's Abstract: COPYRIGHT 1992 Speech Communication Association

A structural analysis of the racial oppositions in the television program Spenser: For Hire challenges the interpretivist media studies claim that popular culture texts are necessarily polysemic. The article argues that representations of racial difference, in particular, are not polysemic but are rather ambivalent within the structure of the racist stereotype. The character Hawk's oppositional stance and persona, though subject to contradictory critical evaluations, serve the needs of the dominant culture to depict blacks in stereotypical ways.

-----

Western Journal of Communication, Fall 1998 v62 i4 p387(3)
The rhetoric of : scapegoating, utopia, and the privatization of social responsibility. Dana L. Cloud.

Author's Abstract: COPYRIGHT 1998 Western States Communications Association

This article performs an ideographic analysis of the bipartisan political deployment of the slogan during the 1992 Presidential election campaign. The analysis shows that talk functioned during that campaign to scapegoat Black men and poor Americans for social problems. However, the ideograph also is invested with a gendered utopian narrative that makes its scapegoating less apparent and more persuasive. Ultimately, in constructing the family as the site of all responsibility and change, the rhetoric of privatizes social responsibility for ending poverty and racism.

------

Critical Studies in Mass Communication, June 1996 v13 n2 p115(23)
Hegemony or concordance? The rhetoric of tokenism in "Oprah" Winfrey's rags-to-riches biography. Dana L. Cloud.

Author's Abstract: COPYRIGHT 1996 Speech Communication Association

This article examines television and print biographies of television talk show host and producer Oprah Winfrey. Conventional biographical narratives construct a token "Oprah" persona whose life story resonates with and reinforces the ideology of the American Dream, implying the accessibility of this dream to black Americans despite the structural economic and political barriers posed in a racist society to achievement and survival. The article develops theories of tokenism, biography, autobiography, and hegemony to analyze both racial and gendered dimensions of tokenist biography. It describes tokenism as a rhetorical mechanism of liberal hegemony with regard to race and class. The essay challenges recent redefinitions of hegemony as happy "concordance" and suggests that critics cannot assume that black stars and texts automatically represent difference and resistance in popular culture.

[Abundy]

You've got all the freedom that our Constitution guarantess. What you do not have is the freedom to eradicate the Government that document created and the Rights enshrined therein. Advocating our country change to Socialism or recognize a superior world government based on a Socialist model is not guaranteed by that Document and will eventually get you shot as an enemy to that document. I join in the peaceful suggestion that you emmigrate to a country more in line with your ideals if you cannot recognize that any attempt to bring about Socialism or Socialist policies is treasonous.

Or do you dispute that every Socialist nation recognizes less rights (or none at all) of it's subjects than our Republic guarantees? Don't even try to weasel out of that question - you state empthatically that you do not wish to live anywhere else. Perhaps because you realize that only in the United States you have an expectation of privacy and the right to postulate your ridiculous drivel without fear of being imprisoned by a government censor? I suggest you truly think about that which you advocate - because if your wish came true neither of us would have the freedoms you say you cherish.

[VRWC_minion]

Of course, I hoped to provoke a response and I welcome deba†e and dialogue.

If you really had guts, you would debate David Horowitz at your school.