I know, I'm going at this guy like Marvin Hagler on a speed bag, but there's just so much nonsense to refute and so many contradictions to point out. Gribbit's latest demonstration of ignorance and cognitive dissonance is this post about education, wherein he actually claims that only the left lies - and this after getting caught lying just a few days ago. He begins with this tired old cliche, which he elevates to the status of "undisputed truth":
There is an old saying, Those who can - do, those who can't - teach. And this is a undisputed truth. Think of it. If an economics professor was any good at being an economist, don't you think that he'd be making more money as a consultant to governments and private business? These people make a decision when they are in college, to go into education because they don't have the guts to face the harsh competitive world of business. They make decisions about their own political and economic philosophies that cannot compete in the business world. These people are liberal. These people have studied economics and gotten seduced by the dark side. Marxism.
Someone's been watching far too much Star Wars, eh? Of course, this "undisputed truth" quickly evaporates upon examination. It's disproven merely by the fact that so many fields of teaching don't have obvious "real world" equivalents. Is this tritle little cliche true of those who teach philosophy, for example? Those that can "do" philosophy will "do" philosophy while those who can't will teach it? Absurd. There is, for all practical purposes, no way to "do" philosophy. It is a field in which one can only write, think or teach.
Is it true that only bad engineers teach engineering or only bad lawyers teach law? Of course not. Someone may choose to teach in their field rather than practice in it for many reasons that have nothing at all to do with their ability to practice it. I know many brilliant lawyers who teach rather than practice because they find it more fulfilling for a variety of reasons. They value the stimulation of scholarship over the rough and tumble and often ugly world of criminal defense, or they find the structure of the job more conducive to a happy life. Or maybe they just value the interaction with students, the opportunity to help others achieve their dreams, over the thrill of winning a big case. Either way, Gribbit's "undisputed truth" is nothing more than a tired old cliche that may well be true for some teachers but is clearly false for others.
I am heavily involved in the Stop The ACLU movement that has gotten started. And I am proud to be associated with the other bloggers who are spear-heading this movement. We are the ammunition that will hopefully get some of the damage caused by the liberal movement reversed. We are the majority in America. We are the majority in the Congress. And our President is a Conservative. And it's time we build and expand our political power. And how do we do that? By telling the truth. We don't need to whitewash anything. We tell the truth.
Uh, yeah. Except when you don't. How many examples do we need of the STACLU crowd distorting reality before we laugh outloud at silly pronouncements like this? Nixon was more credible when he declared, "I am not a crook", than Gribbit is in claiming to be a brave teller of truth. Gribbit himself was just caught peddling utter falsehoods about the ACLU and even after having it shown to him in plain black and white that even a child could understand, he refuses to change his position. Likewise, his pal Kender, another STACLU contributor, was just caught spreading falsehoods about the ACLU's position - and again, true to form, even after being shown to be wrong, he continues to repeat the same lie without making any substantive response to the evidence against him at all. For people who claim to tell the truth, they sure do lie a lot.
Deception is a tool of the left.
Uh, yeah. Because no conservative ever lied, right? Wait, a few incidents come to mind: Watergate, filled with so many lies and such a terrible attempt at cover up that it brought down a lying president and sent many men to prison. The Iran-Contra scandal, in which Ollie North admitted to having lied to Congress. Now, you could attempt to argue that he was justified in lying to Congress, but that's still an admission that deceit is a tool of the right as well. Deceit is the lifeblood of politics, regardless of which side you're on. Anyone who thinks that only the other party or the other ideology lies to get their way is either a fool or a liar himself.
Think of governments in history. Think of all the biggies. Which ones have had a track record of deception? I can think of Nazi Germany, The Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Fascist Italy, Baathist Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and several Socialist Asian and African countries.
Oh, of course. Because our government has no track record of deception whatsoever. I mean, unless you count all those lies we told to the Indians, breaking treaties before the ink was dry on them. And all those presidents who manipulated public opinion with trumped up accusations to get us into wars. Remember the Gulf of Tonkin incident? It didn't happen. And let's not forget the Pentagon Papers, where the government was concealing its own internal studies that concluded that we had no achievable goals in Vietnam, yet we still continued and escalated the war long after those studies were completed. And Watergate, again, along with Iran-Contra. Anyone who thinks our government doesn't engage in deception to protect its own interests - defined broadly or narrowly - is someone who would need a promotion to get to be an idiot. All governments lie to their people; it is the nature of government.
Who in the United States has a track record of deception? The ACLU doesn't share it's funding sources.
Nonsense. The ACLU shares the same information that every other non-profit organization shares. It has to by law. It has to file a form 990 with the IRS every year and reveal all of the grants it receives that it is required to report and the primary sources of all of its funding. You can even view their 990 online at guidestar.org if you register for it. Here's their 990 for 2005 (this is the national foundation. There are 52 others listed on guidestar that you can view as well). Does Gribbit have evidence that the ACLU conceals something from the government that other non-profits are required to report? I doubt it. He's just talking out his posterior, as usual. And remember - these are the people who just tell the truth! Then there's this strange statement:
The Democratic Party has been deceptive. Just think about the recent debates happening on party lines. House ethics questions, Social Security reform, ANWR, and the list goes on and on.
Uh, what do debates along party lines have to do with deception? Disagreement with your is not evidence of deception. And a Republican is, at this point, the last person who should be pointing to House ethics questions as evidence of deception by the other party, especially in light of Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham and Jack Abramoff. Pot, kettle; kettle, pot. I believe you two will get along famously.
All of this is the result of fevered partisan thinking. The entire world, for Gribbit, is divided up into Us and Them. Conservatives are perfect and holy, while liberals (i.e. communists) are pure evil. And if the facts don't back that up, then by all means distort the facts - but make sure you do while claiming only to tell the truth. The fact that you yourself have been caught lying is only likely to be brought up by commie pinkos anyway.
- Log in to post comments
Hmm. I never knew that Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Baathist Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan under the Taliban, are/were left-wing governments. Fancy that!
And what was all that strange stuff at the end about how the conservative right are not Nazis because the Nazis were national socialists, and even though he's a nationalist, he's not a socialist. Perhaps someone should tell him the Nazis weren't socialists either...it was just a label they used to help win support. There was nothing socialist about their platform, and they indeed dispised the the true socialists and communists on the political left. It's like those African countries that call themselves "Democratic" republics.
If you're going to continue to write these posts about Gribbit (and by all means, please do), I would advise to steer clear of Cleveland.
Gribbit, Kender, et. al. are the ammunition? They're firing blanks.
Man, I'd love to live my life based around cliches.
Try this on for size, Grib:
"Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, feed him for life"
Looks like all those people doing would be more effective if they were teaching. Game. Set. Match. :rolleyes:
Something tells me Gribbit never went to college, or at least he has no understanding of how college works. Many professors only teach on the side, and they're at their respective universities only for the research dollars, which certainly are plentiful if they can land a job at a major university. It's interesting that he brings up economists, because they're a great example of what I'm talking about. Economics professors do an incredible amount of research that has real-world value for businesses and governments, so in actuality Gribbit is the opposite of right on this point.
I don't know about you guys, but my elementary school teachers were almost all sweet old ladies, and I have trouble believing they were Nazis or Soviets.
And again with the Clinton lie! So the man didn't want his wife to find out he got his dick sucked by some nasty intern. At least his lie didn't lead to thousands of deaths.
But Gribbit does make one - and only one - point with which I agree:
God I wish we could post comments on his blog.
Boy, Gribbit is going to be really screwed when someone comes up with the "Really Nice God-fearing Anti-leftist Party". He'll join up even its founders are atheists.
retard said:
Professors are more likely than the average american to start a business. This is a fact.
1. In the higher levels of education administration, they extend the old saw a bit farther, like this: Those who do, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach, teach teachers.
To which I would append: Those who can't teach teachers call themselves Gribbit and hurl spittle from the hallway.
2. My professor of economic history pointed out, way back in the late 1970s, that there was not a single Marxist economist employed to teach an any U.S. university, or college, or community college. I have tracked since then, and it's even more true now. In an era when one certain path to a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics is to be a professor at the University of Chicago, where Marxism was in the trashheap that went to the dump 50 years ago, to claim that any economist in America is a Marxist is to demonstrate with certainty that one does not know economics and one is woefully ill-informed about Marxism.
One would probably win a wager that Gribbit cannot name a single Marxist economist, let alone one in America.
Ed, you missed the best line, as Gribbit was beating the Clinton - Lewinsky horse yet again (WARNING: turn your irony meters OFF -- no device on the market today can withstand the punishment about to come):
I eagerly await the post wherein Gribbit calls for the impeachment of our current President.
Nice. Ever thing about fighting your enemies anywhere other than Cleveland?
I've about decided that Gribbit is an intentional parody. I have trouble believing anybody could actually believe what he claims to.
You know...in the past couple weeks, I've come across several right-wingers who insisted, to me and other commenters on various blogs, and I mean insisted, that the Nazis were leftist because they were national socialists -- that they were just barely to the right of communists. Insisted that obviously we were completely ignorant and uneducated because every reasonable person knows this. Just how on earth does a meme like that get started? It's the kind of thing that leaves me absolutely speechless.
I no longer argue points like this on conservative blogs (my boyfriend thought it was bad for my health), but this one thing really made me feel like I was going to burst. But then I realized...how do you argue something like that? It's just too insane.
THAT squirrely little dupe is the guy yammering about beating people up?
LOL! Some neo-cons have clearly lost any hint at a tenuous grasp on reality...
As for the 'those that can't do, teach...' line, it has apparently been missed by such folk that in order to teach, one has to have already done.
Like has been pointed out - can't let reality get in the way of a good right-wing cliche...
As bad as he is, he is an excellent representation of that third of the population which continues to support Mr. Bush unconditionally, and will continue to do so. His blog is not based on reasoned argument, but on passionate feeling. A reasoned argument against his passionately held core beliefs will be taken as an insult to him personally; this will make him mad. I would say his ilk are best ignored, but they constitute the hardcore base of the ruling party. They run the country - we should keep that in mind.
By the way, his argument about professors is pure asininity. To "do" economics is to accumulate data, construct models, make predictions from those models, and report findings to peers. To consult private corporations on economic matters is not to do economics - it is to consult on a field in which you are an expert. The best place to do economics is at a university. Scientists at universities "do" science as much as any scientist in private industry, or government. His whole argument betrays massive ignorance of most fields of inquiry.
I truly loathe that "those who can't, teach" bullshyte statement.
It is generally spouted as "truth" by morons who couldn't complete an education program let alone survive their first year as a teacher. In addition NCLB establishes requirements for teachers that place them firmly in the top 28% of the country in educational attainment. IE they have at least a Bachelor's degree. Most teachers I know, who have been in the profession more than a few years have far more than that. I personally have 72 post bach' credits.
I COULD have become an attorney, in fact I've argued three EEO cases, won two, lost one (under appeal). But I decided ... honestly, do we need another *&$#@(*&$&# attorney?
The more I read about this moron, the more I want to take a trip to Cleveland. I've NEVER wanted to go to Ohio, truly never wanted to go to Cleveland, and haven't fought since I was a teenager ... but this guy is lining up exceptions...
As for his BS about the National Socialists, I've run into claims like this from neo na... ummm neo-cons for about two years now. I believe someone must have written (in crayon) an evaluation of Nazis as liberals about that time. Had one literally claim that they worked with the unions and the communists to eliminate the conservative parties in the Republic. Apparently to these con's, "working with" involves nationalization and concentration camps. Apparently they "worked with" the Jews to solve that whole religious issue as well.