Hillsdale’s Dr. Gary must be high on chalk dust. Wolfram's eulogy for Andrew Breitbart was a cold rehash of his idol Ludwig pulled-reflexively from the prof's dusty achieves and yellowing scrapbooks. What exactly connected political hit-man and truth twister Andy Breitbart in Wolfram’s thinking with Dr. Gary's hero Ludwig von Mises?
It must have been a severe allergic reaction to accumulated chalk dust in Wolfram's stuffy cubical at the Rad Right's faint mockup of a “Harvard”, Hillsdale College, a member of the Poison Ivy League.
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| Hillsdale College: Leaning right since right-wing Free Marketeers forced the exit of the founding Free Baptists (Hillsdale Historical Society Archive) |
Locked away from everyday reality, Professor Wolfram dwells at this quaint institutional anachronism, hidden away in a small bucolic southeastern Michigan town.
Hillsdale College is more an archetype of civic collapse and failure, retro-progression in quest of a giant need to be noticed in its attempts to pander to the greed of national and international corporatocracy, rather than be a crystalline beacon of higher culture.
Hillsdale exists, in large part, to supply the Too Far Right with pliant foot soldiers such as the murderous mercenary, billionaire scion- Eric Prince of Blackwater infamy.
A liberal arts education seeks to instill a higher sense of history and philosophy into a continuum and expansion of understanding about eternal truth and to build upon the vast achievements and ideals of the progressive human race propelled by the Enlightenment and an ongoing rediscovery of the classic cultures of yore as woven into the march of religion, philosophy, science and human understanding.
Why perseverate? Why ramble on about "liberalism" defined in the enlightenment era as 'the importance of individual liberty and limited government' when what is being espoused at Hillsdale is regression and suppression of modernity and the 'maturing understanding' of the needs and abilities of science and human inventiveness via strangling government?
For chalk dusty Prof. Gary, Breitbart "was an inspiration to those who agree with Mises that 'the ultimate and most profound of the fundamental insights of liberal thought is that it is ideas that constitute the foundation on which the whole edifice of human social cooperation is constructed and sustained and that a lasting social structure cannot be built on the basis of false and mistaken ideas.' “ From this we may try to follow Dr. Gary into believing that Andrew Breitbart was the paragon of TRUTH and ACCURACY.
Here is where Breitbart's notoriety as a crusader in Wolfram’s mind and von Mises' liberalism is seen as versus or against "anti-liberalism," (by which Prof. Gary derides the 21st Century "Liberals"-meaning Democrats and Progressives) and thus becomes lost in that stale cloud of professorial chalk dust.
While Wolfram is perfectly at home seeing himself as a "Classic" Liberal, and not a 21st Century Democrat/Progressive [Boo Hiss] Liberal; the man-on-the-street cannot make the jump Prof. Gary demands. Liberal must always, only mean Democrats.
Prof. Gary Elevates Fellow Traveler, Andrew Breitbart - Dean of Defamation - to Wolfarm’s Constellation of All-Time Ideological ‘Saints’- How Quixotic!
Not to be defeated, Prof. Gary bravely soldiers on. Gary, obviously at grievous personal loss over the death of his grenade-throwing Too Far Right Radical brother, Breitbart) describes his ideological troublemaker and soul-mate as a man labeled by many as "an enemy of the people." Breitbart earned that exact description by virtue of his relentless partisanship and determination to spin, distort, twist, and invent Breitbart "truth" to fit radical ideology-in the service of the moneyed masters of a growing fascist Corporatocracy.
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| Andy Breitbart: Lived Large in a Conservative Tub of Small Minds (TIME posted Bryce Duffy Photo on Brietbart's 'BagNews' 2010) |
Breitbart, A Hero to Classic Liberalism? Hardly.
"Governments must be forced into adopting liberalism by the power of the unanimous opinion of the people, claimed von Mises,” proclaims Prof. Gary, emitting a temporary democratic high tone. Then Wolfram goes on to list the areas where Breitbart bent the truth and altered facts to defend a true and genuine anti-classic liberalism-TeaPartisanship given to bottom feeding, dissimulation, and ideological subterfuge he leaves the path of credibility and public trust.
Perez Zagorin, a noted American historian in "The historical significance of lying and dissimilation - Truth-Telling, Lying and Self-Deception" (1996):
"...Since the appearance in 1978 of Sissela Bok's important and widely noticed book, Lying. Moral Choice in Private and Public Life, the concern with lying and deception has continually increased. Bok's work was actuated by worry over declining standards of truth-telling and for this reason apparently touched a nerve. It coincided with the growing skepticism and mistrust felt among Americans and in other western nations about the veracity of governments, officials, and politicians, as well as lawyers, the medical profession, and business corporations."
Just prior to Breitbart's demise, in Troy, Michigan Michigan Tea Party Republicans (under the spell of and paid & played by the Koch Bros' Americans for Prosperity) hosted one of Breitbart's very last public appearances, shared by Wolfram. This event was at a Koch Brothers pay-to-play sponsored event for Goldman Sach's operative, Mitt Romney, who regaled the Troy/Koch-ish Tea Party elements with his pledges to be one of them.
On the dais was a co-conspirator with Brietbart, Michelle Malkin - a virtual vestal virgin of poisonous venom - in the pursuit of penultimate Rovian truth, skewed to serve FOX's Too Far Right Wingers and corporatist fat cats.
What did the late Breitbart and Malkin bring to the Troy Tea Party Gathering according to Detroit News' Hank Payne? From his article "Payne in Troy: Tea Party Mitt" February 26, 2012:
"...perhaps most striking was Mitt Romney's extraordinarily detailed, right-wing message perhaps most striking was Romney's extraordinarily detailed, right-wing message specifically tailored for the grassroots conservatives assembled by Americans for Prosperity and warmed up by red meat pundits Michelle Malkin and Andrew Breitbart.”
This lusty interpretation of the work of Breitbart is shared by non-other-than Sarah Palin:
"With the death of Breitbart, the conservative movement didn't just lose a General " we lost an entire Special Forces Division....But he didn't leave us without the tools and the knowledge we need to fight."GOT THAT: Brietbart is lauded by Palin as a 'special forces' political/ideological, a high powered hit-man. A deceitful/unprincipled wonk-cum-celebrity in the hunt to bring down America's first Black president.
Is this the “classic liberalism” package that Dr.Gary presents to his nascent ideological apprentice warrior-types in laid back Hillsdale's Rad Right bootcamp?
Bottomline: The Wolfram veneration of Breitbart fails the high ethics and moral high ground test so vaunted by Hillsdale's über-moralizers. The following quote excerpted out of a synopsis in "Andrew Breitbart Dead: Conservative Blogger Dies Suddenly At 43", posted by Huffington Post:
- "Republican gay rights group GOProud, of which Breitbart was a board member until recently, released a statement saying it was 'stunned and saddened,' and calling him an 'amazing friend and ally.'"
- "Breitbart seldom showed restraint in his vitriol to his critics and seemed to relish in the negative attention his antics earned him. After Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts died in 2009, Breitbart tweeted, 'Rest in Chappaquiddick' and called him 'a special pile of human excrement.' When critics questioned (Breitbart's) tone, he tweeted they 'missed my best ones!'"
- "Breitbart sponsored hidden camera, gottcha attacks on ACORN. Racial in nature, this tactic resulted in a firestorm of criticism. [The embarrassment it engendered stoked up such fierce partisan rants as were heard here in Michigan shrilly mouthed by former State Senator Michelle McManus while running for Michigan Secretary of State.] The edited Breitbart video featured 'some ACORN employees appearing willing to support illegal schemes involving tax advice, misuse of public funds and illegal trafficking in children.' Ultimately the Government Accountability Office cleared ACORN of criminal activities. None-the-less "public pressure led Congress to block previously approved funds from going to ACORN and to stop future payments. Roughly 10 percent of ACORN's funds came from federal grants and the group eventually disbanded."
Carry on Prof. Gary, elevate Brietbart and thereby lower the national bar for truth and civility. How "ill-liberal" in an anti-von Mises pro-Breitbart declination can Wolfram be?
On the Reader:
Read the Detroit / Mackinac News / Michigan View's "All Star" review of Brietbart's 'legacy' including the canonization by Rep. Thaddeus McCotter:
"There was no stopping Andrew Breitbart from fighting the good fight with every fiber of his soul. Good bye and God bless, Brother Andrew. You are loved and mourned and ever remembered."
Related Slates:
"Michigan View's Gary Wolfram Resurrects 18th Cent. Racial Bigotry in His Vision of Economic “Freedom” (ala Adam Smith)" - "Prof. Gary Wolfram of the Michigan View Let’s His Little Light Shine On Greed" - "Our Guides to the Bottomless Pit: Wolfram, Von Hayek, Lewis F. Powell, & A.L.E.C."
More responses to Gary Wolfram and other on the Michigan View on the Gazette.
Original.
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