Louise,
"Rush Limbaugh, wow, that settles everything, doesn't it? Who do you like better, Rush or John Taylor Gatto?"
Tell me what is wrong with Rush Limbaugh? Mr. Gatto told us two things basicall:
1. Who the little man behind the curtain was in re our public schools. That turned out to be a very extensive project. As I assimilated what he told me I found it all hung together.
2. Mr. Gatto also go me started on understanding the take over of our political scene by the same folks that took over our public schools.
Rush Limbaugh is totally different. He keeps us up on the events of the day from a political perspective. Before Mr. Limbaugh we were constantly attacked with collectivist liberal thought. The collective liberal message was so pervasive that we were all what Andrew Breitbart calls "default liberals.' We had never heard the classical liberal message at all. Further we had never heard any competent criticism of the collectivist liberal position.
For example, you bring up the collectivist liberal criticism of Joe McCarthy. Anyone that knows anything about Joe McCarthy knows his main target was not the communists. Joe McDarthy was a politician and his target was a political target. He thought the Democrat Party had been criminally derelict in performing their duty to protect this country against subversion. Naturally, the Dems wanted to switch the subject given that they had been seriously derelict. With the assistance of their friends in the Main Stream Media, Academia and Hollywood they have largely managed to do so. I understand Ann Coulter has done a masterful job of exposing what truly happened.
Actually it is not necessary to read Miss Coulter. Many others came to the same conclusion.
AS an example, the writer Robert A. Heinlein was a dedicated Socialist until late in his career. The communist used such strong arm and un-ethical tactics in taking over American socialist organizations that he hated them with a passion for the rest of his life. They, the communists, did the same with a young member of the Democrat party named Ronald Reagan.
But, keep talking. As you talk you reveal both who your sources are and who they are not. In both cases you mark yourself as a collectivist liberal.

"Capitalism is fine. But that's not what we have . . . What we have is corporate capitalism"
No, Capitalism is Capitalism. There is no other kind. What we have is an increasingly collectivist country operated by the same oligarchy that took over our public schools.
As to capitalism being fine. At every opportunity you mark yourself as a collectivist. That urge to make a profit that you find in yourself is not capitalism it is personal greed. In that you are peat out of the same bog with the oligarchs, ACORN, the communist country masters and all other aparatchiks.
You also seem to pooh-pooh the part of the communist party that Joe McCarthy was supposedly persecuting. That is natural. No one has more interest in minimizing the threat of both the International Communist Party and the American Communist Party than those two parties themselves. Yet if we consult the Venona Papers, the records of the Soviets themselves that we opened when the Soviet collapsed and the many books written by ex-members of the Communist Party of the USA we find that McCarthy if anything was too modest in his claims.
Folks, please note that it was Louise that introduced this line of discussion.
Ron

Ron,

I agree with your statement that McCarthy was, if anything, understating the extent of the Communist infiltration of our government through their willing dupes, the Hollywood elite and the Democrats.

I'd always felt that McCarthy was getting a bum deal by the media, since I tend to believe the opposite of whatever the media is hyping at any given time. If the media was vilifying McCarthy, then I figured he had to be a true American hero.

Then, I read Witness by Whittaker Chambers. What an eyeopener!!!

Anyone who has the opinion that there was no Communist infiltration needing to be ferreted out by men like McCarthy, and who hasn't read Witness, is merely just ignorant.

But anyone who has read Witness and still believes that the United States didn't have a "communist" problem is just plain stupid, and is likely an Obama voter -- but then I'm being redundant.

The thing I remember thinking as I was reading Witness was how disappointing it was that America didn't learn its lesson back then, and now we have basically the same problem of Communist infiltration in our government today.

The only difference between then and now is that Communist infiltration back then was aberrant and illegal. And today it is mainstream, and part of our government culture.

Where is a McCarthy when we desperately need him now?

Dave

Dave,
"The only difference between then and now is that Communist infiltration back then was aberrant and illegal. And today it is mainstream, and part of our government culture."
Yes, in today's Drudge Report you will find the following headline: "Docs Show FCC Coordinated 'Net Neutrality' Effort with Left-Wing Group..."
If you read the article you will learn that the groups referred to are a Marxist group and an alleged George Soros funded group.
In fact let me refer you to a 3 step process:
First, read Mr. Gatto's book UHAE. If you do so you will read a blow by blow account of how the oligarchy took over the public school system. Please notice that the oligarchy's mechanism of choice was to get hired guns out of academia to do the actual work. Today the Academicians are lionized but I think you will find they were glorified hired hands. They were never part of the oligarchy.
Listen to Dr. Stephen Davies, Ph.d., History, in his two videos Decline & Triumph of Classical Liberalism. Dr. Davies makes the point that until about 1870 the Classical Liberalism of our founders was the dominant American political philosophy. Then during La Belle Epoch (LBE here-after) there was a radical sea change and by the end of LBE the collectivist liberal philosophy was dominant and still growing in influence. He leaves open the question of how the collectivist liberals gained the upper hand. You will have to table that question but note and hang on to as much as you can of how and where the collectivist liberal strength came from -- mostly from academia.
Now for the coup de grace. It turns out that Andrew Carnegie was a very good writer and liked to write essays on subjects that he considered important. He wrote an essay called Gospel of Wealth. That essay and others were bound and published as Gospel of Wealth. If you read the Introduction to the book version you will find enough explanation to put the rest of the story together.
The LBE coming after the Civil War led to almost a euphoria among what we now call the oligarchy and others. They were millionaires, the world was brand new, eugenics was the rage and their thoughts turned to utopia. Just as Mr. Gatto writes they saw themselves as the most successful people in the US and not only entitled to lead but as having a duty to do so. Again (see Davies) they turned to academia and communications.
You notice I use the phrase "collectivist liberals." They infected both major parties. In the Republican party you can see the RINOs.
Dave, I have beat this horse to death. But, I wanted to lay out the full story for you to the best of my ability.
I had criticized Mr. Gatto for not going far enough. It seemed apparent to me that the oligarchy would not have stopped with the public schools. They didn't stop there. You will learn from Davies that after Grover Cleveland there was a sea change in the Democrat Party. Collectivist liberalism took over the Democrat and Republican Parites. There was for a long time a remnant of the classical Democrat Party left alive. After WW2 a conservative movement got underway in the Republican Party although progress has been very slow.
I will be very interested in your reaction. Please let me know what you think. GRIN
Ron

Hi Ron,

Thanks for the interesting summary of how we got to where we are now.

I might add that I have the answer to your question:

"Then during La Belle Epoch (LBE here-after) there was a radical sea change and by the end of LBE the collectivist liberal philosophy was dominant and still growing in influence."

In my considered opinion the radical sea change was brought about by a change in the role that the news media thought they should play -- or not play anymore -- in protecting our country from government tyranny.

This change was also a cultural-social change as well. Did you know, for example, that in the early days of the New York Times they were adamantly pro life?

Early journalism, going all the way back to Ben Franklin's day, believed that an unchecked government was the enemy. It was an enemy that lived in the dark, but one that could be beaten by being exposed to the light.

So the media took on the important job of being the "watchdog" against the government, and thus also the protector of the Constitution.

What happened to change that ties in with your summary history. Newspapers got big. Very big. And very powerful. Their owners could change the future merely by a shift in editorial policy.

Power and money corrupts. Absolutely, without fail.

These powerful newspaper owners had collectivist leanings. Like begets like, and before you know it, you've got newsrooms that are 90+ percent leftist. Showing bias toward unions, abortion, feminism, public education -- basically all the ills of our society.

It's gotten so bad in the past 50+ years that they have not only thrown objectivity out the window, but they are actually operating on an agenda to advocate and promote a socialist "utopia."

That's why if you get your news exclusively from mainstream media newspapers, radio and television news, you are getting nothing even remotely resembling the truth.

Think of the major "gates" that have been trumpeted by the media as big investigative journalism successes. Virtually all of them were hyped up against Republican administrations.

Whereas, your Clinton and Obama administration abominations are largely given a "bye" by the media. Can you imagine even the least little thing that Obama has done in the past two years not being major, major news if it had been done by a Republican president? It's all in the media's agenda.

So, then you have millions of people watching their MSNBC, their CBS and ABC news, for example, who have no clue how ignorant they are that they are being led by a complicit media down the road to socialism.

In my opinion, that explains how a total fraud like Obama, who hates this country, hates the freedoms it represents, and who is sworn to destroy this country, can get so many ignorant people voting to help him do it.

I believe that the media's role in the tragic failing of our country is so important I'd say that it couldn't have happened without their actual, complicit advocacy and cooperation.

Dave

Dave,
I didn't ignore your reply. Instead you gave me enough to thank about that I had to think for awhile to get my thoughts straight.
Actually Mr. Gatto gave us the answer when he explained that our oligarchy was no a conspiracy. The Oligarchy was simply a group of people who were either associates or at a similar level in society. They found themselves in agreement with one another and with the times they were living in. You might like to see the Introduction to the hardback version of Andrew Carnegy's Gospel of Wealth.
William Randolph Hearst and Joesph Pulitzer were just two more members of that loosely associated group of individuals we call the oligarchy.
Ron

Louise, to clarify, I don't know for a fact that the increase in "natural" disasters all around the world these days is the result of God's judgment. All I know is what God says in his word about signs of the coming end times. There are just too many signs to ignore, too many prophecies being fulfilled, too many nations being positioned exactly as God said they would be in His word.

If you don't like it, or if it offends you to hear that then I can't help you. But, your disbelief doesn't change how things are going to be by even a single molecule.



Hey, I'm game. Give it a whack!

Dave

I have no idea how you believe what you do, but at least you're a good sport.