And the person of the year is: - Page 2 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

ARTelevision · 12-20-2004, 05:14 AM

stevo... you are quite correct, IMHO.

Fourtyrulz · 12-20-2004, 05:54 AM

Quote:

Most historians are self-proclaimed liberals and anti-war to begin with.

Perhaps the study of history has made them liberal and anti-war? And being scholars of history, democrat or not, their opinion of Bush is a valuable one.

Quote:

In 3 generations Bush will be viewed as one of the most (positively) influential presidents this nation ever had.

3 generations, when Bush and all of those who were actually alive during his joke administration are all dead...yes...only then will we view Bush as the "most (positively) influential presidents this nation ever had."

roachboy · 12-20-2004, 06:33 AM

stevo:

Quote:

A polling of historians is hardly a random sample. Its perhaps as biased a sample as one could get. Most historians are self-proclaimed liberals and anti-war to begin with

first off, your statement about historians comes from the history news network article itself, and so hardly constitutes an insight. in my experience amongst this peculiar group of people, americanists who would likely be polled for this kind of project would not be among the more left-leaning of the profession. that said, the results are kind of surprising on the surface: but i cannot see how you can possibly argue otherwise. have a look at this list of "achievements" noted by the writer of this same article:

Quote:

Presided over the loss of approximately three million American jobs in his first two-and-a-half years in office, the worst record since Herbert Hoover.
Overseen an economy in which the stock market suffered its worst decline in the first two years of any administration since Hoover?s.

Taken, in the wake of the terrorist attacks two years ago, the greatest worldwide outpouring of goodwill the United States has enjoyed at least since World War II and squandered it by insisting on pursuing a foolish go-it-almost-alone invasion of Iraq, thereby transforming almost universal support for the United States into worldwide condemnation. (One historian made this point particularly well: ?After inadvertently gaining the sympathies of the world 's citizens when terrorists attacked New York and Washington, Bush has deliberately turned the country into the most hated in the world by a policy of breaking all major international agreements, declaring it our right to invade any country that we wish, proving that he?ll manipulate facts to justify anything he wishes to do, and bull-headedly charging into a quagmire.?)

Misled (to use the most charitable word and interpretation) the American public about weapons of mass destruction and supposed ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq and so into a war that has plainly (and entirely predictably) made us less secure, caused a boom in the recruitment of terrorists, is killing American military personnel needlessly, and is threatening to suck up all our available military forces and be a bottomless pit for the money of American taxpayers for years to come.

Failed to follow through in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and Al Qaeda are regrouping, once more increasing the threat to our people.

Insulted and ridiculed other nations and international organizations and now has to go, hat in hand, to those nations and organizations begging for their assistance.

Completely miscalculated or failed to plan for the personnel and monetary needs in Iraq after the war, so that he sought and obtained an $87 billion appropriation for Iraq, a sizable chunk of which is going, without competitive bidding to Haliburton, the company formerly headed by his vice president.

Inherited an annual federal budget surplus of $230 billion and transformed it into a $500+ billion deficit in less than three years. This negative turnaround of three-quarters of a trillion dollars is totally without precedent in our history. The ballooning deficit for fiscal 2004 is rapidly approaching twice the dollar size of the previous record deficit, $290 billion, set in 1992, the last year of the administration of President Bush?s father and, at almost 5 percent of GDP, is closing in on the percentage record set by Ronald Reagan in 1986.

Cut taxes three times, sharply reducing the burden on the rich, reclassified money obtained through stock ownership as more deserving than money earned through work. The idea that dividend income should not be taxed?what might accurately be termed the unearned income tax credit?can be stated succinctly: ?If you had to work for your money, we?ll tax it; if you didn?t have to work for it, you can keep it all.?
Severely curtailed the very American freedoms that our military people are supposed to be fighting to defend. (?The Patriot Act,? one of the historians noted, ?is the worst since the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams.?)

Called upon American armed service people, including Reserve forces, to sacrifice for ever-lengthening tours of duty in a hostile and dangerous environment while he rewards the rich at home with lower taxes and legislative giveaways and gives lucrative no-bid contracts to American corporations linked with the administration.
Given an opportunity to begin to change the consumption-oriented values of the nation after September 11, 2001, when people were prepared to make a sacrifice for the common good, called instead of Americans to ?sacrifice? by going out and buying things.

Proclaimed himself to be a conservative while maintaining that big government should be able to run roughshod over the Bill of Rights, and that the government must have all sorts of secrets from the people, but the people can be allowed no privacy from the government. (As one of the historians said, ?this is not a conservative administration; it is a reckless and arrogant one, beholden to a mix of right-wing ideologues, neo-con fanatics, and social Darwinian elitists.?)

now you might object to some of the drift in rhetoric in the above, but as a basic list of problems, it is not bad.
you might not like these problems, you might prefer to pretend they are not problems, but it is apparent that this is not understood universally as a compelling position.
and given that the above is little more than an outline, it seems to me that you need to be a virtuoso of denial to not see significant problems with the bush regime.

one thing i can say in defense of historians insofar as you can say anything about them as a porfessional group based on this one article, is that they do tend to look at questions like bushworld in broader terms than is generally allowed if your main infromation source is television. in this space, the ideological frame conservatives put around themselves to limit their intake of information simply does not obtain. you might wonder about this in terms that are not simply self-confirming--maybe the problem is that this framework is simply not compelling in itself to folk who traffic in information. maybe it is simply not compelling in space where there is a degree of autonomous thinking. maybe it is simply not compelling.

i do not see in time magazine's goofy "person of the year" competition anything like an evaluation of the administration in terms of actual "achievments"---i do not see anything beyond a curious understanding of "importance" measured most probably in terms of mentions/citations....it would be like trying to determine whether an audi was more or less important than a humvee in world-historical terms by counting the number of times each has appeared in advertisments.

Fourtyrulz · 12-20-2004, 07:00 AM

Quote:

have a look at this list of "achievements" noted by the writer of this same article:

Brilliant post roachboy. I'd enjoy reading someone's argument against this list...anyone up for it?

OFKU0 · 12-20-2004, 07:36 AM

This is Times 'Canadian Edition' Man of the Year, Maher Arar.

Interesting since he as a Canadian was deported by the U.S to Syria apparently because of ties to al queda.

Funny how one man of the year speaks of the injustices in some countries in the world,..ie human rights etc and another man of the year speaks that of the country (U.S) who unjustly treated him, and continue to uncooperate as to why Arar was deported and tortured in the first place.

http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Ottawa...90421-sun.html

Rights crusader Arar Time's top newsmaker

By MEGAN GILLIS, Ottawa Sun

Local man's ordeal
... and Bush Person of the Year

AN OTTAWA man fighting to uncover the events that led to his deportation and torture in Syria is Time's Canadian Newsmaker of the Year. But Maher Arar never wanted to make the news.

"At the beginning, when I came back, I felt my nightmare would end there," he said yesterday. "Then I learned that would not be the case.

"It has been so hard on me and my family. I just wanted my life back. Now I have accepted I will never have my life and my career back. I just want my children to have theirs."

Arar never expected to be transformed from a workaholic engineer to a passionate rights crusader.

"This whole struggle has changed me completely as a person," he said. "I learned a big lesson: How important it is to speak out about injustice. People can get their rights back if they fight for them."

Time tells Arar's story in an article by Canadian bureau chief Steven Frank. The issue hits newsstands today.

The magazine's choice shows that Canadians have begun to see that everyone is hurt when rights are trampled in the name of security, Arar said.

He vows to keep fighting for the truth about what happened to him to come out but the outcome is now in the hands of Prime Minister Paul Martin and Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan.

The Canadian citizen was arrested at a New York airport as he returned from a family holiday in Tunisia. He was deported to his native Syria, where he was held for months and tortured until he confessed -- falsely -- to training with al-Qaida.

When his wife Monia Mazigh's tireless campaign secured his release, Arar didn't disappear. He pushed for an inquiry and took on the powerful, including U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and former PM Jean Chretien.

'COURAGE'

"For taking on the national security agencies in two countries; for standing up to anonymous allegations with courage, forcefulness and common sense; for stepping into the public realm despite the cost, Maher Arar is Time's Canadian Newsmaker of the Year," Frank wrote.

Arar has become a spokesman against the injustice and fear that have shadowed life in the West since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and raised questions about how Canadian law enforcement shares information with foreign governments, Frank wrote.

It was a tough choice, editor Adi Ignatius said. Editors pondered Auditor General Sheila Fraser, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein and Canada's few Olympic medallists, among others.

"Ultimately, though, there was one person who we felt symbolized the issues that are likely to be of lasting importance to Canada," Ignatius said. "That person is Maher Arar."

host · 12-20-2004, 08:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevo22

A polling of historians is hardly a random sample. Its perhaps as biased a sample as one could get. Most historians are self-proclaimed liberals and anti-war to begin with. Nice find.

A lot of the members in this thread are pretty harsh. You can't base your opinions on someone because of a SNL skit or propaganda passed off as a documentary. Cynicisim can blind. Got PRK?

In 3 generations Bush will be viewed as one of the most (positively) influential presidents this nation ever had.

I take your comments to mean that American history is unreliable because
you have determined the bias of most historians, and that because of this,
the point of view of most historians is incorrect, but your unbiased view is
accurate. Your opinion and attitude seem alarmingly similar to what I observe
of Bush. You limit only yourself, but you and others of like mind enable
Bush to limit our country, and to an extent, the world.

archer2371 · 12-20-2004, 09:33 AM

It's an award from a magazine people, it really shouldn't be spurring this much vitriol.

roachboy · 12-20-2004, 09:47 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_the_Year

time magazine is indeed a joke.

but the thread seems to have moved quickly away from time magazine and the question of the "person of the year"---see the above link for infotainment on the award and the sorry history of pretending that the history of the united states overrides that of the rest of the world embedded therein---what it is (obviously) more about now is the evaluation of bushworld--which is more complex, and--not surprisingly--more heated.

stevo · 12-21-2004, 02:23 AM

roach, first off, my statement about historians came from my own HISTORY with them, from teachers, professors, grandparents, not from someone else.

I want to know if you have any stats/data to back up these statements you believe so blindly. Do you have any formal education in economics? Just because someone writes an article bashing bush and his administration's policies doesn't mean it is right. I'd like you to take the time and look through this presentation (don't worry, its only slides) and maybe you will see how you are being lied to by the left.

http://www.aei.org/docLib/20041220_Moore.pdf

I would like to point out a few interesting pieces of information in this presentation first, though. Did you know that under the current Bush tax plan we actually have a more progressive tax system than in 2000? Its true.

With bush's new tax cuts the top 1% pay 32.3% of all income taxes, without it they would only pay 30.5%. The top 10% pay 64.8%, without it they would be paying 62.6%. The top 80% of all wage earners pay 83% of all income taxes, without bush's tax cuts they would be paying 81.8% of them. And do you know what? The bottom 50% of all wage earners pay only 3.6% of all income taxes. Without bush's tax cuts they would be paying 4.1% of them. (when I mean all income taxes it is only individual income taxes, not corprate taxes.) These numbers come from the U.S. Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis. you can see the chart on p.8 of the presentation.

If you want to look at the budget deficits (cumulative from 2001-2004) only 22% was due to increased spending and 29% was due to tax relief. The remaining 49% of the deficits was due to the recession, one that was inherited from clinton. (If you remember the market tanked well before the nov.2000 election.)

You should try to catch the whole presentation. I caught it on CSPAN2 "the deuce" last night. Its called "Bullish on Bush" by Stephen Moore. Very informative.

I hope this shows you that you can't just take what other people say as the honest truth when they have nothing but rhetoric to back it up. Do some research for yourself. Look at some facts. look at some numbers. Talk to an economist. Don't just read some partisan dribble that is only steps removed from propaganda.

edit- How Cspan listed the presentation:

Forum
U.S. Economic Agenda
American Enterprise Institute
Washington, District of Columbia (United States)
ID: 184892 - 12/20/2004 - 1:02 - $29.95

Moore, Stephen, President, Club for Growth
Selb, Gerald, Correspondent, [Wall Street Journal]
Hayward, Steven F., Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute

Mr. Moore is the author of Bullish On Bush: How George Bush's Ownership Society Will Make America Stronger, published by National Book Network.

Go ahead and order either the presentation the book, or both. If you watch/read it and you aren't enlightened, shit, I'll refund your money. (assuming you can proove to me you bought it and watched/read it.)

roachboy · 12-22-2004, 09:33 AM

the american enterprise institute is presented in your post, stevo, as being non-partisan.

that is absurd: it is among the most powerful and well-funded of the network of rightwing thinktanks that are at the center of the conservative media machine. looking to them for accurate analysis of bushworld would be like reading trotsky for a neutral portrait of stalin. seriously, you have to be critical of sources.

as for your experience with historians: fine. my day job is as a historian. my view of them is different than yours. make of it what you will.
what i will say is that the "discovery" that history is political is better a first step than an excuse to dismiss: it can lead to a kind of facile nihilism (it is all just bullshit because objectivity is an illusion) or it can just as easily lead to a different, more critical type of reading. you seem to be stuck at the former: i would encourage you to explore the latter.

stevo · 12-23-2004, 02:03 AM

Well buddy, my day job is an economist and I can take the same numbers from the US Treasury, Office of Tax analysis, do my own impartial, un-biased (that is how we are trained) analysis and come up with roughly the same figures. Numbers don't lie, people do.

Maybe you can't see the facts because you are too blinded by your partisanship to notice the truth when it is presented to you.

And your statement about AEI being at the center of the "conservative media machine" is flippin' hilarious. What machine would you be talking about? Not CNN, CNBC, Time Magazine, The New Yorker, Boston Globe, or the NY Times of course. mmm, perhaps Fox News? Well then, why hasn't Fox News broke a story about this if AEI is at the center of the "conservative media machine"? And being critical of your sources doesn't mean dismissing them strait-off because of who they are....yes I'm talking to you, roach.

And another thing. Based on your posts, revealing that you are an historian only serves to strengthen my arguement that the average historian is liberal and anti-war. I said most historians are self-proclaimed as such, just as you are.

I never said I dismiss history because it has a political bias, I only keep that in mind when studying it and try to know something about the historian presenting it. You assume I'm "stuck in the former" based on one statement about historians. And why are we polling historians now about bush and his policies? Wouldn't it make more sense to let history unfold before we ask historians what they think about it?

Well peeps, I'd love to get back to this post (and forum) later today or tomorrow, but I'll be on the road a lot and pretty busy until the holidays are over, but I'll get back on here as soon as I can, probably once the holidays are over. I might be able to fit in a post or two, but I'm not sure. So have a merry christmas, roach (and everyone else), and a happy new year.

roachboy · 12-23-2004, 05:54 AM

aei, heritage, cato, brookings, hoover....

you're an economist? well, live and learn, eh?

for what it is worth (writing as i go through a mix of music for the road, on which i shall be soon) i am not an americanist.
in my professional functions, i am fairly explicit about my politics--only part of which surface in these forums (this is sometimes like one of those rock em sock em robot games, you know? its hard to be terribly complex when you are everyone else are like plastic guys whacking each other...no-one wants their head to suddenly shoot skyward--got to stay focussed on the moving hand before your face)--and their conceptual underpinnings. in general i work out from the conceptual frameworks and try to pose questions about how history is staged/narrated and leave them open enough for students to think for themselves. i try to provide a range of materials as well,

maybe sometime we could have a conversation about what, from my viewpoint, are the boundaries that shape classical economics ideologically, about the politics of stats and their organization (like a switch in category makes the working class go away), about the impossibility of making "objective" statements, about the problems of pretending otherwise.

for the moment, all is shaped by jamming this post in between the flurry of last minute activities...i'll be for the most part out of here until the new year, so i hope all enjoy a lovely holidaze.....

The Prophet · 12-23-2004, 06:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevo22

In 3 generations Bush will be viewed as one of the most (positively) influential presidents this nation ever had.

It is certainly safe to say, the opinion of historians is, today, no better then anyone elses. Right now it is a current event, with no time to lend it the perspective of history.

The ultimate assessment of a president depends as much on what occurs after, as what happens during. It is not what Bush does today, so much as how his actions effect tomorrow. And until tomorrow, do not know.

I would suggest that history's best measure occurs after all those that lived during an event are dead.

Drayab · 12-23-2004, 07:41 PM

Quote:

It is certainly safe to say, the opinion of historians is, today, no better then anyone elses. Right now it is a current event, with no time to lend it the perspective of history.

I wouldn't go that far. Wouldn't you agree that having a good working knowledge of history would give you a perspective on current events that somebody that knows nothing of history would lack? You know, some arguments in favor of the policy of preemption use what we learned from WW2 as evidence that we can't sit idly by. You know, it's the danger of becoming isolationalist. So you say historians are biased, but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. History is useful and so we need historians.

cataklysm · 12-29-2004, 12:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by soma

The person of the year is chosen for his or her influence on the events of the year (positive or negative). This being the case, I can't dispute Time's decision. But I'm sure Time chose someone as loved and hated as Bush to stir up some controversy and more importantly, increase magazine sales.

Well said. Love him or hate him, you can't deny his impact; especially since the campaign season was so long this year, he was constantly in the news

12-20-2004, 05:14 AM	#41 (permalink)
ARTelevision I change Location: USA	stevo... you are quite correct, IMHO. __________________ create evolution

12-20-2004, 07:36 AM	#45 (permalink)
OFKU0 Junk	This is Times 'Canadian Edition' Man of the Year, Maher Arar. Interesting since he as a Canadian was deported by the U.S to Syria apparently because of ties to al queda. Funny how one man of the year speaks of the injustices in some countries in the world,..ie human rights etc and another man of the year speaks that of the country (U.S) who unjustly treated him, and continue to uncooperate as to why Arar was deported and tortured in the first place. http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Ottawa...90421-sun.html Rights crusader Arar Time's top newsmaker By MEGAN GILLIS, Ottawa Sun Local man's ordeal ... and Bush Person of the Year AN OTTAWA man fighting to uncover the events that led to his deportation and torture in Syria is Time's Canadian Newsmaker of the Year. But Maher Arar never wanted to make the news. "At the beginning, when I came back, I felt my nightmare would end there," he said yesterday. "Then I learned that would not be the case. "It has been so hard on me and my family. I just wanted my life back. Now I have accepted I will never have my life and my career back. I just want my children to have theirs." Arar never expected to be transformed from a workaholic engineer to a passionate rights crusader. "This whole struggle has changed me completely as a person," he said. "I learned a big lesson: How important it is to speak out about injustice. People can get their rights back if they fight for them." Time tells Arar's story in an article by Canadian bureau chief Steven Frank. The issue hits newsstands today. The magazine's choice shows that Canadians have begun to see that everyone is hurt when rights are trampled in the name of security, Arar said. He vows to keep fighting for the truth about what happened to him to come out but the outcome is now in the hands of Prime Minister Paul Martin and Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan. The Canadian citizen was arrested at a New York airport as he returned from a family holiday in Tunisia. He was deported to his native Syria, where he was held for months and tortured until he confessed -- falsely -- to training with al-Qaida. When his wife Monia Mazigh's tireless campaign secured his release, Arar didn't disappear. He pushed for an inquiry and took on the powerful, including U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and former PM Jean Chretien. 'COURAGE' "For taking on the national security agencies in two countries; for standing up to anonymous allegations with courage, forcefulness and common sense; for stepping into the public realm despite the cost, Maher Arar is Time's Canadian Newsmaker of the Year," Frank wrote. Arar has become a spokesman against the injustice and fear that have shadowed life in the West since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and raised questions about how Canadian law enforcement shares information with foreign governments, Frank wrote. It was a tough choice, editor Adi Ignatius said. Editors pondered Auditor General Sheila Fraser, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein and Canada's few Olympic medallists, among others. "Ultimately, though, there was one person who we felt symbolized the issues that are likely to be of lasting importance to Canada," Ignatius said. "That person is Maher Arar." __________________ " In Canada, you can tell the most blatant lie in a calm voice, and people will believe you over someone who's a little passionate about the truth." David Warren, Western Standard. Last edited by OFKU0; 12-20-2004 at 07:46 AM..

12-20-2004, 09:33 AM	#47 (permalink)
archer2371 Sarge of Blood Gulch Red Outpost Number One Location: On the front lines against our very enemy	It's an award from a magazine people, it really shouldn't be spurring this much vitriol. __________________ "This ain't no Ice Cream Social!" "Hey Grif, Chupathingy...how bout that? I like it...got a ring to it." "I have no earthly idea what it is I just saw, or what this place is, or where in the hell O'Malley is! My only choice is to blame Grif for coming up with such a flawed plan. Stupid, stupid Grif."

12-20-2004, 09:47 AM	#48 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_the_Year time magazine is indeed a joke. but the thread seems to have moved quickly away from time magazine and the question of the "person of the year"---see the above link for infotainment on the award and the sorry history of pretending that the history of the united states overrides that of the rest of the world embedded therein---what it is (obviously) more about now is the evaluation of bushworld--which is more complex, and--not surprisingly--more heated. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

12-21-2004, 02:23 AM	#49 (permalink)
stevo Rail Baron Location: Tallyfla	roach, first off, my statement about historians came from my own HISTORY with them, from teachers, professors, grandparents, not from someone else. I want to know if you have any stats/data to back up these statements you believe so blindly. Do you have any formal education in economics? Just because someone writes an article bashing bush and his administration's policies doesn't mean it is right. I'd like you to take the time and look through this presentation (don't worry, its only slides) and maybe you will see how you are being lied to by the left. http://www.aei.org/docLib/20041220_Moore.pdf I would like to point out a few interesting pieces of information in this presentation first, though. Did you know that under the current Bush tax plan we actually have a more progressive tax system than in 2000? Its true. With bush's new tax cuts the top 1% pay 32.3% of all income taxes, without it they would only pay 30.5%. The top 10% pay 64.8%, without it they would be paying 62.6%. The top 80% of all wage earners pay 83% of all income taxes, without bush's tax cuts they would be paying 81.8% of them. And do you know what? The bottom 50% of all wage earners pay only 3.6% of all income taxes. Without bush's tax cuts they would be paying 4.1% of them. (when I mean all income taxes it is only individual income taxes, not corprate taxes.) These numbers come from the U.S. Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis. you can see the chart on p.8 of the presentation. If you want to look at the budget deficits (cumulative from 2001-2004) only 22% was due to increased spending and 29% was due to tax relief. The remaining 49% of the deficits was due to the recession, one that was inherited from clinton. (If you remember the market tanked well before the nov.2000 election.) You should try to catch the whole presentation. I caught it on CSPAN2 "the deuce" last night. Its called "Bullish on Bush" by Stephen Moore. Very informative. I hope this shows you that you can't just take what other people say as the honest truth when they have nothing but rhetoric to back it up. Do some research for yourself. Look at some facts. look at some numbers. Talk to an economist. Don't just read some partisan dribble that is only steps removed from propaganda. edit- How Cspan listed the presentation: Forum U.S. Economic Agenda American Enterprise Institute Washington, District of Columbia (United States) ID: 184892 - 12/20/2004 - 1:02 - $29.95 Moore, Stephen, President, Club for Growth Selb, Gerald, Correspondent, [Wall Street Journal] Hayward, Steven F., Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute Mr. Moore is the author of Bullish On Bush: How George Bush's Ownership Society Will Make America Stronger, published by National Book Network. Go ahead and order either the presentation the book, or both. If you watch/read it and you aren't enlightened, shit, I'll refund your money. (assuming you can proove to me you bought it and watched/read it.) Last edited by stevo22; 12-21-2004 at 02:36 AM..

12-22-2004, 09:33 AM	#50 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	the american enterprise institute is presented in your post, stevo, as being non-partisan. that is absurd: it is among the most powerful and well-funded of the network of rightwing thinktanks that are at the center of the conservative media machine. looking to them for accurate analysis of bushworld would be like reading trotsky for a neutral portrait of stalin. seriously, you have to be critical of sources. as for your experience with historians: fine. my day job is as a historian. my view of them is different than yours. make of it what you will. what i will say is that the "discovery" that history is political is better a first step than an excuse to dismiss: it can lead to a kind of facile nihilism (it is all just bullshit because objectivity is an illusion) or it can just as easily lead to a different, more critical type of reading. you seem to be stuck at the former: i would encourage you to explore the latter. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

12-23-2004, 02:03 AM	#51 (permalink)
stevo Rail Baron Location: Tallyfla	Well buddy, my day job is an economist and I can take the same numbers from the US Treasury, Office of Tax analysis, do my own impartial, un-biased (that is how we are trained) analysis and come up with roughly the same figures. Numbers don't lie, people do. Maybe you can't see the facts because you are too blinded by *your* partisanship to notice the truth when it is presented to you. And your statement about AEI being at the center of the "conservative media machine" is flippin' hilarious. What machine would you be talking about? Not CNN, CNBC, Time Magazine, The New Yorker, Boston Globe, or the NY Times of course. mmm, perhaps Fox News? Well then, why hasn't Fox News broke a story about this if AEI is at the center of the "conservative media machine"? And being critical of your sources doesn't mean dismissing them strait-off because of who they are....yes I'm talking to you, roach. And another thing. Based on your posts, revealing that you are an historian only serves to strengthen my arguement that the average historian is liberal and anti-war. I said most historians are self-proclaimed as such, just as you are. I never said I dismiss history because it has a political bias, I only keep that in mind when studying it and try to know something about the historian presenting it. You assume I'm "stuck in the former" based on one statement about historians. And why are we polling historians now about bush and his policies? Wouldn't it make more sense to let history unfold before we ask historians what they think about it? Well peeps, I'd love to get back to this post (and forum) later today or tomorrow, but I'll be on the road a lot and pretty busy until the holidays are over, but I'll get back on here as soon as I can, probably once the holidays are over. I might be able to fit in a post or two, but I'm not sure. So have a merry christmas, roach (and everyone else), and a happy new year. Last edited by stevo22; 12-23-2004 at 02:13 AM..

12-23-2004, 05:54 AM	#52 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	aei, heritage, cato, brookings, hoover.... you're an economist? well, live and learn, eh? for what it is worth (writing as i go through a mix of music for the road, on which i shall be soon) i am not an americanist. in my professional functions, i am fairly explicit about my politics--only part of which surface in these forums (this is sometimes like one of those rock em sock em robot games, you know? its hard to be terribly complex when you are everyone else are like plastic guys whacking each other...no-one wants their head to suddenly shoot skyward--got to stay focussed on the moving hand before your face)--and their conceptual underpinnings. in general i work out from the conceptual frameworks and try to pose questions about how history is staged/narrated and leave them open enough for students to think for themselves. i try to provide a range of materials as well, maybe sometime we could have a conversation about what, from my viewpoint, are the boundaries that shape classical economics ideologically, about the politics of stats and their organization (like a switch in category makes the working class go away), about the impossibility of making "objective" statements, about the problems of pretending otherwise. for the moment, all is shaped by jamming this post in between the flurry of last minute activities...i'll be for the most part out of here until the new year, so i hope all enjoy a lovely holidaze..... __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 12-23-2004 at 06:17 AM..