Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Another free PJTV report with Joe the Plumber from Israel.
I can't understand why any blogger (or blog enthusiast), particularly, would complain about this guy and his lack of "credentials." Duh. That pretty much goes with the territory for all of us, doesn't it?
Should these mini-reports be your sole source of news on the conflict? Of course not. But we all like to hear the take of someone who we identify with -- who we feel views things in a way similar to the way we would if we were there, and Joe fits the bill to a T for millions of regular Americans. Do all those prissy media elites we usually get our news filtered by do us any service? Do they identify with us and we with them? Do they have our eyes? Say no. For example, here's the tweeded Beacon Hill Brahman dipshit of the Boston Globe, H.D.S. Greenway, using his column space in a Western newspaper disgustingly comparing Hamas in Gaza to Masada and Warsaw. No doubt Greenway and his colleagues consider themselves oh so much more educated and nuanced than poor, benighted Joe, yet Joe seems to have a far better grasp on reality than the entire Globe editorial staff put together.
I look forward to the next report.
I trust ordinary people much more than an intellectual or journalist; and so did our founding fathers. Our Constitution opens with "We the people," not We the intellectuals or We the experts.
"Intellectuals...prefer ideas, which give them jobs and income and which enhance their power and prestige. They, therefore, look for ideas with specific characteristics. They look for ideas, which enhance the role of the state because the state is usually their main employer, sponsor or donator... Intellectuals are mostly interested in abstract, not directly implementable ideas. This is also the way of thinking, in which they have comparative advantage. They are not good at details. They do not have ambitions to solve a problem. They are not interested in dealing with the everyday’s affairs of common citizens. Hayek put it clearly: “the intellectual, by his whole disposition, is uninterested in technical details or practical difficulties.” He is interested in visions and utopias and because “socialist thought owes its appeal largely to its visionary character” (and I would add lack of realism and utopian nature), the intellectual tends to become a socialist...The communist politicians needed their intellectual fellow-travelers. They needed their “dealings in ideas”, their “shaping of public opinion”, their apology of the inhuman, irrational and inefficient regime. They needed their ability to supply them with general, abstract and utopian ideas. They especially needed their willingness to deal with the hypothetical future instead of criticising the very much less rosy reality….We know that the free market system does not typically reward those who are – in their own eyes – the most meritorious. Because the intellectuals value themselves very highly, they disdain the marketplace. Markets value them differently than their own eyes and, in addition to it, markets function nicely without their supervision. As a result, the intellectuals are suspicious of free markets and prefer being publicly funded. That is another reason, why they are in favour of socialism…." President of the Czeck Republic, Václav Klaus
http://www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=wFYl3mgsTzI6