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by Nicholas Stix |
October 14th, 2006
Invoking the Declaration of Independence, in order to rationalize as patriotic the call for a revolution, is a pathetic old communist trick. The Declaration was written to call into being a new nation, not to destroy that nation.
On October 5, Intellectual Conservative published “A Daughter of the American Revolution Speaks Out Against Bush,” by Andrea Clemons, who identified herself as a science teacher.
At first I thought: Oh, a patriot. And that was your intention. But when you started complaining of patriots that they were “racist,” “homophobic,” and “nationalist and militaristic,” and holding up illegal immigrants as greater patriots than those who support and defend America, it became clear that you are an anti-American. Do you really think anyone is going to read your screed through, and think you are a patriot who cares about America, rather than a communist and/or traitor?
You aren’t even a trenchant critic of President Bush and his “program.” (What that “program” consists of, you never tell us.) Your criticisms are variously contradictory, vague, exaggerated and dishonest.
[My] ancestors worked their entire lives – in factories, in offices, in fields, in homes, and even in the military – to create. They created the wealth of this country and upheld the early ideals of this country and served this country in whatever ways they knew how . . .
I understand that this country's wealth has been created first on the backs of slaves from Africa and forever on the backs of those with the least monetary wealth and more recently on the backs of people in developing countries . . .
Well, which is it? Are you saying your ancestors were slaves? I don’t think so. Are you saying that your ancestors were slave owners? That too, seems doubtful. You don’t follow up the logical implications of your bold statements. Apparently, you think that you can make any statement in any context, as long as it makes you sound morally superior, logic be damned.
In any event, the claim about “slaves” is a gross exaggeration, and the one about “people in developing countries” is a lie.
But I also recognize that many Americans today and many Americans in the past didn't realize these scaled power structures, repeated from international dynamics to class dynamics and race dynamics, etc.
“Scaled power structures?” “International dynamics to class dynamics and race dynamics?”
Let me guess. You picked up the preceding dogmatic catch phrases in college. In the immortal words of the philosopher Sonny Corleone, “What do you go to college to learn to be stupid?”
You are only able to throw around dogmatic catch phrases, because your professors never provided any facts in support of them. They “addressed” skeptical students by variously flunking them, expelling them, and seeing to it that they were whitelisted from ever becoming teachers, thus leaving the field increasingly to totalitarians like yourself.
You also falsely claim that America was founded as a democracy. Aside from the falsity of your claim, I’m at a loss to see how that would be something praiseworthy to you, seeing that as a Marxist, you are yourself violently opposed to democracy, and in favor of a dictatorship. (As the Founding Fathers were well aware, democracy is an undesirable form of government, which is why they founded the U.S.A. as a republic – “If you can keep it,” in Ben Franklin’s immortal warning – but Marxists like yourself have this thing about presenting themselves as democrats.)
And yet, before my very eyes, the Bush regime is bucking all of those protective devices against intolerance and despotism – the right to one's own religion, the separation of powers, the right to privacy and fair trial . . . the list doesn't end. It is time to throw off this government.
Evidence, please.
If anything, via an overly liberal application of freedom of religion, Bush is permitting Moslems to seek to slowly impose Sharia. If I were president, your beef might have some substance. But then, had the Founding Fathers been confronted with the Religion of Terror, they would have expressly outlawed Islam, and Moslem immigrants.
As for the separation of powers, I’d like to see some proof that President Bush has usurped either the legislative or the judicial branch; you provide not so much as a single example. In fact, it is the judicial branch that continues to usurp power from the other branches, as in for example, the recent case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in which the Supreme Court usurped the prerogative of the Commander-in-Chief in running a war, while inventing new, unjustifiable rights for unlawful combatants in the bargain.
Your invocation of the Declaration of Independence, in order to rationalize as patriotic your call for a revolution, is a pathetic old communist trick. The Declaration was written to call into being a new nation, not to destroy that nation.
When you do get specific, it is to deride as a “violent homophobe” someone who mocked Frenchmen’s manhood for refusing to fight in the War in Iraq. But even then, you expect the reader to take your word that a joke that you can’t even remember was so offensive that we should hold an entire patriotic organization, and indeed, the very notion of American patriotism, in contempt.
Sophistry is not your strength, Ms. Clemons. Don’t give up your day job.
On the other hand, if your letter is any indication, you are doubtless propagandizing your students to death, and expecting the taxpayers whom you hate, to subsidize your revolution. So, I wish you would give up your day job . . . but I know you won’t.
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Responses to "A Letter to a Daughter of the American Revolution"
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Bravo. A well thought out rebuke that more fully addresses Ms. Clemons' illogical, irrational and inane trash than the many such comments following her letter did.
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | October 14, 2006
Thank you for your kind words. By the way, I just googled under "Andrea Clemons," and came up with a USC teacher ed commissar who sounds suspiciously similar to the Andrea Clemons I responded to.
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:NTM04eskT1sJ:www.usc.edu/dept/education/faculty/index.htm+%22Andrea+Clemons%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4&client=firefox-a
Comment by Nicholas Stix | October 14, 2006
Bush won. Clemons, get use to it.
Comment by sedonaman | October 14, 2006
I, too, googled Ms. Clemons and found the following beneath a photo of a blond-haired, blue-eyed late 40ish woman. If her bio doesn't conjure up John Lennon's "Imagine," I don't know what does. Her Navy vet father must be very proud indeed.
Andrea Clemons is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Education and the Program Lead for the Master's programs in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and Teaching English as a Foreign Language. She received her Ph.D. in International/Intercultural education and M.S.in TESOL from USC and an M.A. in English from the University of Toronto. Her research aims to explore how language in education policies and practices impact equitable socio-political relations and social change. She has experience in formal and non-formal education in West Africa. Her most recent publications include a chapter in Globalized Governance and Grassroots Participation in School Decentralization, forthcoming from Kluwer Press (2005); Appropriating Diversity: Current Trends in the Accreditation of Teacher Education Programs in The International Journal of Diversity in Nations, Organizations and Communities, vol. 4, with Marta Baltodano (2005); and Post 9-11 Language Policies in The Multilingual Educator (2003). She is the inaugural President of the Language Issues Special Interest Group of the Comparative and International Education Society and is the co-Chair of the Committee for the Study of Culture and Schooling in the American Anthropological Association.
Comment by RSB | October 16, 2006
I think all of Mr. Stix's arguments are excellent, and his use of logic is impeccable. He points out the many weaknesses of Ms. Clemon's statements with surgical precision.
However, I think this all misses the point. Mr. Stix is assuming that Ms. Clemons used logic in the formation of her article. He also assumes that she will evaluate his response using logic. His premise is faulty, for clearly she is not employing logic or reason.
If a man rushed into the room and began raving hysterically that there were purple hippos riding pink bicycles outside, would we rush out to look? Would we take the time to explain logically that his claims are impossible? Would we bring out charts and graphs that demonstrate that such a thing could not occur? Of course not.
It is the very same thing regarding Ms. Clemons. Her article is prima facia evidence that was not thinking logically. The statements she makes are the simple parroting of nonsensical phrases. If she wrote about purple hippos, it would be no different.
We must understand that to Ms. Clemons, her statements are self-evident. They need no proof. They are the very foundation of her entire world view, and to question them would be akin to questioning that the sun sets in the west.
It may well be impossible to reason with Ms. Clemons, but one can hold out hope. However, at present, challenging her on the basis of logic, reason, and evidence is a fruitless pursuit.
Comment by Mountain Man | October 16, 2006
I found it more interesting Clemons answers bigotry with bigotry. Her intolerance of Bush is founded upon the rabid distaste of her political association. It is an intolerance she accepts without question, without bothering to corroborate objections made by her fellow liberals, or comparing his policies against those of liberal icons such as JFK and FDR. Liberals like Clemons love equating conservatives with fascism, segregation, and slavery with a revisionist myopia that ignores their own culpability in those evils. This is, in itself, a sublime bigotry – one that inverts reality in order for those guiltiest to fix blame on those less or no more guilty.
My grandmother was a member of the DAR in Washington, D.C. at the time of the Marion Anderson controversy. The DAR of that time was an exclusionary club, and she dropped her membership (as did many decent women) over that flap. The DAR refused to let Anderson perform in the DAR’s Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The DAR was not an especially bigoted group, as a whole, but it was a highly visible example of the kind of discrimination common in America of the time, even to highly liberal organizations (like the DAR) and in places as unlikely as the nation’s capital. A simple visit to the national website is sufficient to dispel the notion the DAR is still a discriminatory organization; and the crude joke Ms. Clemons was exposed to cannot be something the DAR would tolerate. The national site openly acknowledges its’ culpability for past offense and is committed to ending bigotry in its ranks. Rather than reporting the offensive email to her chapter or the national organization, and on the basis a rumor against the organization, Clemons chose instead to drop out of the group without giving it the benefit of doubt liberals always say is due. She didn’t stop there, however. She has now (with her IC article) pilloried an entire organization on the basis of one bad apple and hearsay evidence she cannot have bothered to check.
Ms. Clemons' father is a Navy veteran and the U.S. Navy was segregated at the same time as the Anderson offense, and for many years after. Does she also regard the Navy as discriminatory and bigoted? She belongs to a prestigious school (if your link identifies her aright). Does she recognize the segregated nature of the California school system prior to the Civil Rights movement? If so, why is she still there? I have never taken much interest in the DAR, possibly tainted by my Grandmother’s vocal distain of the organization as Clemons distains it on pure hearsay. The DAR did participate in discrimination of a black woman, and for that the organization has suffered lost membership, prestige, and respect. They are not alone in that; with every organization in American having undergone profound soul-searching and revamping. However, you cannot remain forever rooted in the past and unwilling to acknowledge amends without being, yourself, as bigoted as the bigotry you pretend to revile.
I have nothing against being judgmental of persons or organization guilty of actual wrong-doing. Yet, that kind of judgment comes with a burden of proof. Ms. Clemons' rant against both Bush and the DAR are equally unfounded and she ought to apologize.
Comment by Robert W. Stapler | October 16, 2006
Dear RSB:
The bio of Clemons that you quoted, is a case of euphemisms wrapped in jargon, shrouded in doubletalk. Some translations follow.
“[H]ow language in education policies and practices impact equitable socio-political relations and social change” means, ‘We will force-feed black and Hispanic students a cognitive diet of dialect (so-called Ebonics) and pidgin (bowdlerized bilingualism) and an emotive dialect of illiterate, inchoate, anti-white racism.’
“Grassroots Participation in School Decentralization,” translates as ‘Avant garde cadrists will indoctrinate alienated blacks and Hispanics whom we have already relegated to isolated cultural islands in the stream, in the value of racist violence, so that they may of use to the revolution.’
“Language Issues” is a euphemism for “language rights,” which is double-talk for the notion that racial minorities in America are not only under no obligation to learn English, but that it is the revolutionary educator’s job to segregate those groups from the English language, and thus the American mainstream, via ruses such as so-called bilingual education and ebonics.
Comment by Nicholas Stix | October 16, 2006
Nicholas,
Looks like a basic inability to communicate to me. And they say women have better language skills than men. If this is an example, woe unto the human race if we ever have to encounter aliens come to blast us because of our endless chatter into the ether.
It is, as you suggest, typical of liberals generally to think the measure of good writing style is to confuse the reader as much as possible. It is as if to say, "You're just to ignorant to follow what I'm saying." Since no one can possibly follow what they are saying (at least not without hours of equally pointless conversation with them - or possession of the secret liberal codespeak book), they applaud themselves for having dumbfounded the moronic masses (aka, everyone else) and node their heads at each other as though they got it. Just don't ask one for an interpretation of what the other just said. Lib-2 will give you an answer equally incomprehensible and totally disconnected from that of Lib-1, leaving you even more lost and unable to find your way back. ;-)
Comment by Robert W. Stapler | October 17, 2006