What sort of freedom do you support?
What is indisputably valuable and indisputably mine is my life and time. Why is it okay for someone to steal that for a few bucks an hour? How did property get to be more important than the only thing that is indisputably mine? How did money (a fabrication) get to be more important than the only thing that is indisputably mine? The only thing of real and enduring human value.…
Article comments
126 - Irvin F. Cohen
Dear Mr. Slater,
Well, I'd like to thank you for your very generous and kind comment (# 125) as to my # 123.
Look here, I too had a rather difficult time in high school, and I am rather bitter that I lost all those years and was set back at least ten years in my own, personal and individual, intellectual, academic and scholastic development - mostly to the fault of a very dreadful public school system in America, but which ironically was far more superior in every respect, was far superior intellectually, academically and scholastically, as well as morally and ethically; than today's abomination which I maintain is thoroughly a result, one of many, of the failure of liberalism qua liberal progressivism et al.
Of course I also share some of the blame and responsibility for my own personal failure; and to a lesser extent I also lay some of the blame for this failure at the doorstep of that of my parents who abandoned me for their own pursuits of the so-called good life, or to belabor the point even more so; for their elusive quest of the supposed, proverbial "la dolce vita." But in the final analysis it was and still is my responsibility, in spite of my parents ignorance and lack of concern, and more importantly, in spite of the utter ignorance and pure, categorical professional quackery of our public schools, public school teachers and our worthless schools of education which ought, should and must be abolished brick by brick, or better yet, through napalm air strikes and or tactical nuclear destruction.
But the point I wish to make here is that first, it can be done, one can overcome these miserable, worthless damnable, liberal statist and collectivist public schools of ours; and secondly, that it seems more than abundantly clear to me, by the very thoughtful and I maintain rather well-written # 125 of yours; that you have clearly overcome what you may have rightfully or incorrectly been branded with, and I truly believe wrongfully so, as learning disabilities.
Yes, I consider myself to be a fairly good writer in spite of my many critics and detractors here at Blogcritics; but I have spent a lifetime honing these rather meager skills and abilities of mine. I'd like to present a picture of honest and sincere humility, but to be brutally honest, i don't possess a single scintilla of humility, nor do I have a single, humble bone in my entire goddamn body. But if I can turn a decent or appealing phrase here and there; well, in this day and age, that's all that I could possibly ask for or desire.
So again, thanks for your kind and generous comment, and please, you need not apologize for your writing or supposed lack of thinking skills; they seem to be more than adequate to me
But if you're playing me, or fishing for compliments and false praise here, as you can clearly see in my comment # 124, my goddamn wrath is a true, badass motherfucker. So thou hast been amply forewarned, MOFO!
127 - Dr Dreadful
Irv,
First off, as regards my response, you're welcome, although your #123 reinforces my suspicion that I shouldn't have done so.
Prolixity does not equal intellectual accomplishment, although I'm sure you devoutly believe you're fighting the good fight against all those heathens who kvetch about your ten-page "There, I Said It... Eventually" rants.
Economy with words is de rigeur in modern writing, not to take anything away from folks like Homer, Ovid, Shakespeare, Dickens, Emerson, Whitman and the rest of the gang who could routinely employ 532 words to describe a spade. The difference is that they possessed something you don't: clarity.
(Well, maybe not Emerson...)
If you had bothered to read past the first few paragraphs of the article in question, you would have got to the point of it, which was my skepticism about IQ tests and GPAs as a measure of smartness.
As to the rest of your charges, I stand by what I said before, which is that they say a lot more about you than they do about me. We're all just pixels on a screen here (to borrow one of Clavos's favorite expressions), and the personas we elect to put out there are in most cases carefully chosen. You might want to ask yourself why it is that of the BC regulars, it's only you and your Siamese twin, Alan, who seem to have this low opinion of me.
Perhaps it's you two who are the geniuses.
Or perhaps it's just that you've already decided (years ago, most likely) that anyone who dissents in any way from your own personal political philosophy is automatically a moron, in which case one has to wonder what you think you're accomplishing by being here.
128 - Les Slater
re- #126
I wasn't trying to elicit praise or complement. I suggest you re-read my #125, maybe more carefully this time.
129 - Irvin F. Cohen
dear dr. dreadful,
Some points well taken...well no, I won't even grant you that. You still haven't addressed too many of my points of criticism.
Let's back track a tad and begin with your "first off" you're right, "(you) shouldn't have."
Prolixity, wordiness, verbosity, bluster, rant, fulmination, bombastic pomposity - yeah, I'll grant you all those and more, no, make that many, many more; and yeah I can be maddeningly periphrastic, but even you must admit that I eventually do get to, or more formally said, arrive at a point.
But I got to ask you, what d'yah got against Homer and Dickens and Shakespeare and the like, and I suppose Ayn Rand's 1200 pages of "Atlas Shrugged" or Dostoyevsky's novels which average roughly 700 plus pages each, and of course Tolstoy's "War and Pizza" (that's Giuseppe Tolstoy and that pizza of his 's got to weigh half a ton); by your argumentation herein, would preclude your reading of any of these masterpieces - and I still find that extremely anti-intellectual.
You know it is rather ironic but I made the exact same sort of sophomoric arguments against reading; of trudging, laboring and toiling through all those great, albeit, dead white guys or dudes who happened to be some of the very greatest writers and thinkers of all time; when I was a teenage kid fifty years ago. And BTW, it was just as anti-intellectual and lame and dumb then, just as it is today.
As for your skepticism of IQ tests and GPAs, all well and good, but unfortunately not very germane or relevant to the topic at hand; namely whether you are a conceited and arrogant, egotistical and narcissistic ass at heart and in true character, and revealed as much in that dreadfully unfunny article of yours.
But you just simply don't get it and just continue in your veiled condescension, snide insults and not so veiled threats and intimidation. Let's face facts here, you're just an intellectual bully, or to be more precise and accurate, a fucking, intellectual bully.
Sorry, but got to go now - take me meds and rest a while, but I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible - that is to say, if I'm still breathing and have a pulse.
130 - Irvin F. Cohen
Dear Mr. Slater,
Did I fucking offend you? Did you find me patronizing and either unsympathetic or rather, too sympathetic to your professed learning disabilities? What the fuck did i do, again, to offend you?
Perhaps you're either to fucking sensitive to your professed disability, or I'm a flaming, insensitive asshole. Well, which is it, goddamnit?
And yeah, I read your goddamn comment, so where the fuck did I go wrong? Tell me so I'll know whether I should apologize to you or tell you to drop dead.
Sorry, really got to go now, cause my meds really do beckon me - right this fucking instant.
131 - Les Slater
re -130,
"Perhaps you're either to fucking sensitive...or I'm a flaming, insensitive asshole."
I have no reason to think you an asshole. But on the question of sensitivity? You're the one who's blown up. You even misuse 'to' as in 'to fucking sensitive'.
132 - Les Slater
And... I haven't been offended at all. Why would you think I might be?
133 - Boeke
I see that Irv is off the charts. Here's one of his milder hate binges: "...pure, categorical professional quackery of our public schools, public school teachers and our worthless schools of education which ought, should and must be abolished brick by brick, or better yet, through napalm air strikes and or tactical nuclear destruction."
Irv has said nothing to diminish my original opinion that he is a madman, a psychotic with no bounds.
134 - Dr Dreadful
...but even you must admit that I eventually do get to, or more formally said, arrive at a point.
Which is what?
what d'yah got against Homer and Dickens and Shakespeare and the like
Nothing at all. As I said, you seem to admire them for their verbosity, as if the mere act of cramming as many words as possible onto a page (or into a blog post) qualified as great writing.
I, on the other hand, admire them because they are great writers.
I greatly enjoy reading all of the authors I mentioned (except for Emerson, who's a tedious windbag). What their writing has, which yours doesn't, is clarity (except for Emerson, who's a - well, you get the picture).
Dickens at least had an excuse for being prolix, as he got paid by the word. What's yours?
As for your skepticism of IQ tests and GPAs, all well and good, but unfortunately not very germane or relevant to the topic at hand
No, it's directly relevant, since you're accusing me of various rather nasty things based on my article, the thrust of which, as I pointed out to you, was the complete opposite of your interpretation.
I confess that there was a mild bit of social experimentation built into the piece, which judging by your reaction and that of a few people in the comments, seems to have yielded some rather interesting results.
Let's face facts here, you're just an intellectual bully, or to be more precise and accurate, a fucking, intellectual bully.
I'm not the one hurling insults, intimidation and threats (overt, moreover, not the spurious "veiled" ones which are entirely a figment of your imagination) at anyone who has the temerity to fail to defer to him in all particulars.
I'm not the one claiming the absolute moral high ground and deciding that means he can call anyone who thinks otherwise evil, or stupid, or both.
I did nothing to you. I had a brief and civil exchange of views with Dave, which for whatever reason seems to have tripped a breaker in your brain, whereupon your usual response kicked in, i.e. the verbal equivalent of using a Sherman tank to crush a Coke can.
135 - Ruvy
Irv, knock it the fuck off! You could make a damned fortune blogging on Google with all the diarrhea you spill here. You've seen the ad for the cute piece of ass making a fortune after being broke, haven't you? Even in your decrepitude, YOU could be that cute piece of ass!
136 - Anarcissie
I recommend the nonviolent replacement of coercive institutions with non-coercive ones, for example cooperatives and communes. I think this development would be a big improvement over traditional liberalism-capitalism.
137 - Cannonshop
#136 both are things you can do presently, and if you can get enough people to follow suit, then they might well replace the existing system for a time. The record on Communes hasn't been real good, but farmer's co-ops seem to do okay-even in "Red State" areas (thus demonstrating some viability.)
138 - troll
here's an article about the cooperative movement in Mexico - link courtesy of rebelcapitalist on twitter