Or course there will be those who think this is perfectly acceptable :shock:

Deep on page 546 of his 1,839-page budget, Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker tucked in a crucial idea. He proposed to strip a principle from the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin, a school that attracts students from all over the nation and from 131 foreign countries. From the core philosophy that has driven the university since the turn of the last century Walker wanted to hack out the words: “Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for t***h.” Rather than serving the people of the state by developing intellectual, cultural and humane sensitivities, expertise, and “a sense of purpose,” Walker prefers that the state university simply “meet the state’s workforce needs.” In the face of scathing criticism, the governor backtracked and, despite a trail of emails that led to his office, tried to claim the new language was a “drafting error.”
But Walker’s attempt to replace the search for t***h with workforce training was no error. Since the earliest days of Movement Conservatism in the 1950s, its leaders have understood that the movement’s success depends on destroying Americans’ faith in the academic search for t***h. For two generations, Movement Conservatives have subverted American politics, with increasing success, by explicitly rejecting the principle of open debate based in reasoned argument. They have refused to engage with facts and instead simply demonized anyone who disagrees with their ideology. This is an astonishing position. It is an attack on the Enlightenment principles that gave rise to Western civilization.
Make no mistake: the attack is deliberate.
The Enlightenment blossomed in the wake of the religiously-inspired Thirty Years War of the seventeenth century, when thinkers horrified by the war’s carnage set out to break the fetters of superstition and tradition that had prompted the strife. Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Jefferson and other thinkers advanced the idea that if people could listen to reasoned arguments, weigh them against evidence and choose the soundest ones, progress would follow. The Enlightenment revolutionized science, culture and politics, and gave rise to the modern world.
Enlightenment ideals prompted America’s founding and reigned for generations as Americans searched for the best ways to manage the economy, changing demographics and international conflict. But in the 1950s, the idea of progress through reason presented a problem for wealthy businessmen. They h**ed New Deal legislation because it regulated business and protected workers. The boom years of the 1920s had been good ones for them, and they believed that the continued success of their enterprises depended on their complete control over their businesses and the workers they employed. They believed that government meddling in their affairs would disrupt natural economic laws. And with their downfall would come the downfall of the entire American economy, and with it, the nation.
But the problem was that the New Deal was extraordinarily popular. After an economic free-for-all of the 1920s that had pitched the nation into the Great Depression, Americans embraced the government regulation that reined in shady business dealings and protected workers. How could businessmen make inroads against such a popular program?
In 1951, a young William F. Buckley, Jr. articulated a strategy for opposing the consensus that supported New Deal policies. Buckley’s “God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of ‘Academic Freedom’” was a sophomoric diatribe by the Catholic son of a wealthy oil magnate, published by the small right-wing Henry Regnery Press. In it, Buckley rejected the principles that had enabled social progress for centuries and laid out a mind-boggling premise: The Enlightenment, the intellectual basis of Western Civilization, was wrong.
Rational argument supported by facts did not lead to sound societal decisions, Buckley claimed; it led people astray. Christianity and an economy based on untrammeled individualism were t***hs that should not be questioned. Impartial debate based in empirical facts was dangerous because it led people toward secularism and collectivism—both bad by definition, according to Buckley. Instead of engaging in rational argument, Buckley insisted, thinkers must stand firm on what he called a new “value orthodoxy” that indoctrinated people to understand that Christianity and economic individualism were absolute t***hs. Maintaining that faith in reasoned debate was a worse “superstition” than the Enlightenment had set out to replace, Buckley launched an intellectual war to replace the principle of academic inquiry with a Christian and individualist ideology.
Buckley’s radical idea didn’t go far at first, but Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy provided a new rhetorical tool to advance the Yalie’s intellectual premise. In the early 1950s, McCarthy revealed the power of the outrageous lie. He sought to gain power by claiming to defend Christianity and individualism from the secret plots of the godless C*******ts in the American government. Since he had no evidence to support his crusade, he replaced substantiated arguments with outrageous accusations designed to grab headlines and rile v**ers. There were 205 C*******ts in the State Department, he trumpeted, or maybe there were 57 “card carrying C*******ts” there: after newspapers reported his attacks, McCarthy quickly moved on to new accusations. By the time fact-checkers condemned his statements, new headlines made the corrections old news. McCarthy’s hit-and-run smears suggested that a compelling lie could convince v**ers so long as it fit a larger narrative of good and evil.
In the same year that McCarthy self-destructed in front of a national TV audience during the Army-McCarthy hearings, Buckley and his brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell turned Buckley’s ideological stand against academic inquiry into just such a narrative. In their telling, a few brave men were standing against an evil majority trying to destroy America. Their “McCarthy and His Enemies” (1954) conflated Soviet-style c*******m with the popular New Deal consensus. They claimed that Liberals—a name they capitalized to suggest an organized political group—were forcing c*******m on America. Opposing this cabal were “Conservatives,” who stood for God and individualism. Until they converted it into a capitalized label, conservatism was understood to be a political philosophy that embraced popular programs that had been proven to work–like the New Deal— and rejected radical political experiments based on ideology. Movement Conservatives coopted the word “conservative” to do exactly what traditional conservatives opposed: advance a radical program. “Movement” Conservatives rejected the American consensus. They wanted to purge the country of the Liberals who made up the majority and create a new “orthodoxy” based on the ideology of strict Christianity and individualism.
To press this radical political program, Buckley launched the National Review in 1955, announcing that government activism “must be fought relentlessly.” He railed against President Dwight Eisenhower, who had modified the New Deal consensus into his own “Middle Way.” Eisenhower’s policies just proved that a dangerous cabal controlled both parties under “such fatuous slogans as ‘national unity,’ ‘middle-of-the-road,’ ‘progressivism,’ and ‘bipartisanship.’” Such moderation was socialism, he insisted, and, although the American economy was booming, he insisted that the American consensus was destroying both economic growth and liberty. With the e******n of JFK, the National Review harped so furiously on the c*******m snaking into American society at his direction that, after Kennedy’s assassination, even the Republican Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren begged Movement Conservatives to stop their h**eful rhetoric. Once again, Buckley spun language around, insisting that the troublemakers were the Liberals who were engaged in an “orgy of lynch excitement against the American Right.”
In 1960, a new voice added anti-intellectual populism to Buckley’s rhetoric. Political operative Phyllis Schlafly wrote “A Choice Not an Echo” to support Barry Goldwater’s quest for the p**********l nomination. In her world, correct political decisions were simple: The nation was engaged in a great struggle between good and evil, and educated Eastern Elites who insisted on weighing the realities of a complicated world had enlisted on the wrong side. Elites complained that Goldwater “had one-sentence solutions” for complicated problems, she wrote, but simple solutions were the answer. C*******m was bad, so anyone advocating government activism was evil. Elites arguing for government action were parasites. All they really wanted was money from government contracts, paid for by hardworking regular Americans.
This Manichean worldview led Barry Goldwater’s candidacy to grief in 1964 as v**ers recoiled from its aggressive irresponsibility, but with Ronald Reagan the Movement Conservative program gained the one new piece it needed to sell its ideology: a warm narrative. Reagan pushed Christianity and individualism with both lies and anti-intellectualism, but he did so with folksy stories and charm. He described a world of hardworking individuals threatened by “a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol,” and pushed policies that dramatically rolled back New Deal reforms. When opponents noted that his stories had little basis in fact and that his policies didn’t work as he claimed, he accused them of being h**ers and rallied supporters against the “Liberal media.” Journalists and opposing politicians first laughed but then looked on aghast as v**ers backed his warm fantasies over fact-based policy.
By the time of the George W. Bush administration, Movement Conservatives had constructed a post-modern political world where reality mattered far less than the popular story of Conservatives standing firm against the “Liberal agenda” of godlessness and c*******m. As a member of the Bush administration famously noted to journalist Ron Suskind, “the reality-based” view of the world was obsolete. It was no longer viable to believe that people could find solutions to societal problems by studying reality. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” this senior advisor to the president told Suskind. “We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Buckley’s intellectual stand had won. Facts and argument had given way to an ideology premised on Christianity and the idea of economic individualism. As Movement Conservatives took over the Republican Party, that ideology worked its way deep into our political system. It has given us, for example, a senator claiming words he spoke on the Senate floor were “not intended to be a factual statement.” It has given us “dynamic scoring,” a rule changing the way the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the economic impact of tax cuts, to reinforce the idea that cuts fuel economic growth despite the visibly disastrous effects of recent tax cuts on states such as Kansas. And it has given us attempts in Oklahoma, Texas, North Carolina and Colorado to discard the A.P. U.S. History framework and dictate that students learn instead the Movement Conservatives’ skewed version of the nation’s history. Politicians have always spun information to advance their own policies. The practice infuriates partisans but it reflects the Enlightenment idea of progress through reasoned argument. Movement Conservatives’ insistence on their own version of reality, in defiance of facts, is something different altogether.
When Governor Walker replaced “the search for t***h” with “meet the state’s workforce needs” in the charge to the University of Wisconsin, he did not make an error. He was articulating the principle that has driven Movement Conservatives since their earliest days: Facts and arguments can only lead Americans toward a government that regulates business and supports working Americans, and they must be squelched. The search for t***h must be replaced by an ideology that preserves Christianity and big-business individualism. Religion and freedom for mega-business, Movement Conservatives insist, is what America is all about.
Heather Cox Richardson teaches nineteenth-century American history at Boston College.

Last month, I spent my final vacation night in Honduras in San Pedro Sula, considered the most dangerous city outside of the war-torn Middle East. I would not have been scared, except that I traveled with my wife and our four children, aged 5, 7, 14 and 18. On our last taxi ride, we could not find a van to fit us all, so we rode in two taxis. Mine carried me and my two daughters, aged 5 and 14, while the driver blasted Willie Nelson singing “City of New Orleans” (a city that is also considered very dangerous).

It was a surreal moment, traveling in one of the most dangerous cities in the world with my babies in tow. I gave a nod to the radio. “Willie,” I said, and he gave me a grin and vigorous “sí.” There’s a lot of American cowboy culture in Honduras, but along with silly hats, Honduras has also taken one of our other worst ideas—libertarian politics. By the time I’d made it to San Pedro Sula, I’d seen much of the countryside and culture. It’s a wonderful place, filled with music, great coffee, fabulous cigars and generous people, but it’s also a libertarian experiment coming apart.

People better than I have analyzed the specific political moves that have created this modern day libertarian dystopia. Mike LaSusa recently wrote a detailed analysis of such, laying out how the bad ideas of libertarian politics have been pursued as government policy.

In America, libertarian ideas are attractive to mostly young, white men with high ideals and no life experience that live off of the previous generation’s investments and sacrifice. I know this because as a young, white i***t, I subscribed to this system of discredited ideas: Selfishness is good, government is bad. Take what you want, when you want and however you can. Poor people deserve what they get, and the smartest, hardworking people always win. So get yours before someone else does. I read the books by Charles Murray and have an autographed copy of Ron Paul’s “The Revolution.” The thread that links all the disparate books and ideas is that they fail in practice. Eliminate all taxes, privatize everything, load a country up with guns and oppose all public expenditures, you end up with Honduras.

In Honduras, the police ride around in pickup trucks with machine guns, but they aren’t there to protect most people. They are scary to locals and travelers alike. For individual protection there’s an army of private, armed security guards who are found in front of not only banks, but also restaurants, ATM machines, grocery stores and at any building that holds anything of value whatsoever. Some guards have uniforms and long guns but just as many are dressed in street clothes with cheap pistols thrust into waistbands. The country has a handful of really rich people, a small group of middle-class, some security guards who seem to be getting by and a massive group of people who are starving to death and living in slums. You can see the evidence of previous decades of infrastructure investment in roads and bridges, but it’s all in slow-motion decay.

I took a van trip across the country, starting in Copan (where there are must-see Mayan ruins), across to the Caribbean Sea to a ferry that took my family to Roatan Island. The trip from Copan to the coast took a full six hours, and we had two flat tires. The word “treacherous” is inadequate—a better description is “post-apocalyptic.” We did not see one speed limit sign in hundreds of kilometers. Not one. People drive around each other on the right and left and in every manner possible. The road was clogged with horses, scooters and bicycles. People traveled in every conceivable manner along the crumbling arterial. Few cars have license plates, and one taxi driver told me that the private company responsible for making them went bankrupt. Instead of traffic stops, there are military check points every so often. The roads seemed more dangerous to me than the gang violence.

The greatest examples of libertarianism in action are the hundreds of men, women and children standing alongside the roads all over Honduras. The government won’t fix the roads, so these desperate entrepreneurs fill in potholes with shovels of dirt or debris. They then stand next to the filled-in pothole soliciting tips from grateful motorists. That is the wet dream of libertarian private sector innovation.

On the mainland there are two kinds of neighborhoods, slums that seem to go on forever and middle-class neighborhoods where every house is its own citadel. In San Pedro Sula, most houses are surrounded by high stone walls topped with either concertina wire or electric fence at the top. As I strolled past these castle-like fortifications, all I could think about was how great this city would be during a zombie apocalypse.

On a previous vacation abroad, I’d met a resident of San Pedro Sula by the name of Alberto. Through Facebook, we connected up to have drinks and share a short tour of his home city. A member of the small, dwindling middle class, Alberto objects to his city being labeled the most dangerous in the Western Hemisphere. He showed me a few places in the city that could have been almost anywhere, a hipster bar, a great seafood place (all guarded by armed men, of course). Alberto took me on a small hike to a spot overlooking the city and pointed out new construction and nice buildings. There are new buildings and construction but it is funded exclusively by private industry. He pointed out a place for a new airport that could be the biggest in Central America, he said, if only it could get built, but there is no private sector upside. Alberto made me see the potential, the hope and even the hidden beauty of the place.

For our last meal in San Pedro Sula, my family walked a couple blocks from our fortress-like bed and breakfast to a pizza restaurant. It was the middle of the day and we were the only customers. We walked through the gated walls and past a man in casual slacks with a pistol belt slung haphazardly around his waist. Welcome to an Ayn Rand’s libertarian paradise, where your extra-large pepperoni pizza must also have an armed guard.

Part of the reason this discredited, libertarian bulls**t still carries any weight for Americans is because so few of us travel. Only 30 percent of Americans have passports, and if Americans do go places, it’s not often to Honduras. On the mainland of Honduras, we saw no more than a handful of Americans. I did see many more on the tourist-centric island of Roatan, but of course this slice of beach paradise is not at all representative of the larger country or its problems. It has nonstop flights from the U.S. directly to the island so you can skip all the needless reality.

One can dismiss the core of near-sociopathic libertarian ideas with one simple question: What kind of society maximizes freedom while providing the best outcomes for the greatest number of human beings? You cannot start with the assumption that a Russian novel writer from the ’50s is a genius, so therefore all ideas about government and society must fit between the pages of “Atlas Shrugged.” That concept is stupid, and sends you on the opposite course of “good outcomes for human beings.” The closer you get to totally untamed, uncontrolled privatization, the nearer you approach “Lord of the Flies.”

These questions about how best to provide a good society are not being asked in Honduras, but they are also ignored in the United States as a matter of routine. We have growing income ine******y and government is being ever more controlled by a few extremely wealthy political donors. Our own infrastructure is far from admired worldwide, and the trend doesn’t look good from where I’m sitting. We have yet to stop our own political rhetoric to address the basic question about what kind of place and in what type of society we want to live.

Society should not exist to make a few people fabulously wealthy while others starve. Almost all humanity used to live this way, and we called it feudalism. Many people want to go back to that sort of system, this time under the label of libertarian or “the untrammeled free market.” The name is irrelevant because the results are the same. In Honduras, I did not meet one person who had nice things to say about the government or how the country is run. My takeaway from the trip is that living in a libertarian paradise satisfies only a few of the wealthiest citizens, while everyone else thinks it sucks.

Honduras has problems but people should go visit anyway and soon. The dangers are fleeting, and there are coffee plantations to tour, ruins to see, cigars to smoke and fish to catch. The people need your tourism dollars. As a bonus, it’s important for Americans to see the outcome when the bad ideas of teenage boys and a bad Russian writer are put into practice. Everyone believes in freedom, but it’s an idea both fetishized and unrecognizable when spouted by libertarians. There can be no such thing as freedom, safety or progress of any kind, when an entire society is run for the benefit of a handful of rich assholes and global conglomerates. If you think I’m overstating it, just go to Honduras and see it for yourself.

You can follow Edwin Lyngar on twitter @Edwin_Lyngar

MORE EDWIN LYNGAR.

Keep coming back Rufus :thumbup:

Btw, there must be some mistake. If you go back and read what I wrote I clearly stated that I do not advocate public nudity. I know dear, it is difficult to comprehend the written language when reading through blind anger. I did not directly call you a prick. Indirectly yes, just as you have indirectly called me many many derogatory things in your rants. That where you came up with the "black" in your moniker? Pot calling the kettle black? :hunf: Oh, speaking of monikers, you and some others were in my face with your offensive posts and blatant lies even before I came up with my moniker. I've become fond of it as I can piss you and yours (yes the new and unimproved gringo, huggy etc) off without even typing a word :P I could go on with my "arguments" as you like to call them, but I do not argue. If I felt there was a rational discussion to be had I would bring things up for discussion. But no, I'd much rather read a good book by the fire than waste time here. Arguments bore me. :thumbdown:

Sorry dear but I fail to see where my argument was refuted? Perhaps in your mind, but you haven't convinced me of a thing :)

Thank you for your lovely, non-judgmental and non-offensive reply. Shall I assume then that my attempt at amends is not accepted and that, shall we say to coin a phrase, you can't see anyone else's view but your own and get verbally vile? Very well, I shall once again remove the gloves for future encounters. You are just such a prince of a person...p r i c k...prince.

Short as I can keep it to keep peace. I was attempting to get to a point in what I thought was a civil discussion with you before we were cut off and told we were off point. No, I do not advocate public nudity nor do I do public nudity. Pardner and I have not even walked in a P***e Parade for several years. When I did, I was not one of the highly decorated or naked individuals, so I didn't get on TV...shucks. I have been a nudist for many years but limit that to appropriate places. I have met the nicest and mentally healthiest people from all over the world of all political persuasions. That being said, do I think that our society would be better off with a healthier attitude toward the human body and nudity? Yes, I believe said healthier attitude would eliminate many current issues and help rather than hinder society as a whole. A healthy society is composed of healthy individuals. The healthier the individual the healthier the society. Just my opinion, with personal experience to back it up for what it is worth. All can feel free to take it or leave it. Our society is not there nor will it be in my life time. As a nudist, while I can understand your equating public nudity with graffiti or other offensive actions, it makes no sense to me.

One further comment as to public nudity then I will shut up for fear of getting off point of the thread (was that original point verbal f*g bashing perhaps? no matter). It is likely unknown to most, but every year for the past several, there is held a "World Nude Bike Day". In cities everywhere a nude bike ride (or parade if you will) is held. The concept originated in Seattle by straight nudists (who do accept gays with no problem be it noted). Participants wear fun costumes or body paint and in general have a good time and in general are well accepted by the public. Where, I query (no pun intended, or maybe so), is all the press and outrage for these events? Perhaps because the participants are straight? Hmmm

Your story of the sodomization of the dog is one of the sickest and perverted things I have heard...ever. I know I can safely say my sentiments mirror the vast vast majority of the gay population. I mean no offense, but you seem to be a magnet for knowledge of or proximity to sick sexual perversions. Is it the part of the country you live or something? I just can't figure it. It is no wonder that you have had a difficult time with a positive attitude toward gays. I do say that as a friend because I believe we have been able to work through some issues through continued generally uninterrupted communication. :thumbup:

Obviously I was wrong in using such harsh language with you. I will attempt to be of better manors in the future and starting right now. :thumbup: Seriously, I could very well be wrong, but you have always appeared to have some issues that you might consider getting professional help with. I am concerned for your well being. I can only speak for myself, but I don't believe any of us have the desire to be taking the long dirt nap any sooner than necessary.

I don't care for the establishment either! They no longer work in the best interest of the citizens.

And you are as full of s**t as a Christmas turkey. You must have enough baggage to fill a boxcar. Why don't you deal with it and put the rest of us out of your misery. Respectfully, of course :)

Respectfully, I disagree and I think it is a really long stretch going from public nudity to beating up old people. I have said my peice and I did not expect you to consider anything I said. As I said at the onset I should not even entered this conversation and I shall now depart. You live in your world and I will live in mine. You stay out of my face and I will stay out of yours. :thumbup: :thumbup:

That being said, it has nothing to do with what I said. Quite contrary in fact. I was speaking in terms of what I feel does build good moral character, behavior, and self respect. Where you got the idea I would think what you described from what I wrote as acceptable, I haven't a clue. I described a totally moral way of life, that you are not familiar with, that in fact does preclude such behavior and the need or desire for so called "selfies" or group sex to begin with. For the obviously minority of people that have raised children in the manor I was discussing, the success rate is better that average. You had equated nude with lewd but it is not so. There are very strict moral codes in a true nudist family oriented lifestyle. As for "siring" children, I have a grown step daughter that I was a part of rearing through teen years who is indeed of good moral character. And don't tell me, the majority of research you have read is from the Family Research Council?

By golly that IS a good thing!! Mixed bag here. Hang tight it might be a rough ride yet...

I really don't think it makes too much of a hoot how we pee-ons v**e. Once the politicians get into office seem like they are beholden to the big $$ that put them there.

Guess that is why I ain't modest if ya get the drift :shock: