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Here’s the thing about Pottersville that struck me when I was 15: It looks like much more fun than stultifying Bedford Falls — the women are hot, the music swings, and the fun times go on all night. ... the only entertainment in the real town, glimpsed on the marquee of the movie theater after George emerges from the alternate universe, is “The Bells of St. Mary’s.” Now that’s scary. ... Not only is Pottersville cooler and more fun than Bedford Falls, it also would have had a much, much stronger future. ... Pottersville, with its nightclubs and gambling halls, would almost certainly be in much better financial shape today. It might well be thriving.
THE NYTIMES IS ACTUALLY ENDORSING POTTERSVILLE. SICK.HERE'S ANOTHER THING - SOMETHING WHICH EXPOSES THE COLUMNISTS UTTER IGNORANCE AND POOR RESEARCH:
I checked my theory [THAT GEORGE COMMITTED A CRIME] with Frank J. Clark, the district attorney for Erie County upstate, where, as far as I can tell, the fictional Bedford Falls is set...WRONG. HERE'S PROOF:
- AND ALL THREE OF THESE TOWNS ARE IN WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NOT ERIE.
A COLUMN MEANT TO BERATE A MOVIE WHICH IS NOT ONLY ONE OF THE GREATEST MOVIES EVER MADE - BUT A CHRISTMAS CLASSIC, AND THEY DO THIS THE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS.
THE NYTIMES HAS NO SHAME.
This is the conclusion of the article:
ReplyDelete"That last scene, when Harry comes back from the war and says, “To my big brother, George, the richest man in town”? Well, as I sat in that classroom, despite the dreary view of the parking lot; despite the moronic Uncle Billy; despite the too-perfect wife, Mary; and all of George’s lost opportunities, I felt a tingling chill around my neck and behind my ears. Fifteen years old and imagining myself an angry young man, I got all choked up.
And I still do."
How is this
1) Gramscian
2) anti-American
3) anti-Judeo-Christian
the fact that a few pangs of guilt and true emotion leak out at the end of the article - ( a feeble attempt of the columnist to seem HUMAN ) - doesn't alter ONE IOTA of what i excerpted: that he lauds the lurid pottersville and berates the traditonal Christian theme of redemption and Bedford Falls.
ReplyDeletethe enitire thrust of the column is one of disadin for all that is traditional: it's Judeo-Christian elements and it's Patriotic elements.
the columnist loves pottersville. he is bored wioth bedford falls. it';s beneath him the way middle amerioca is beneath the nytimes.
LAITW: people who HATE palin hate It's Wonderful Life.
the columnist chokes up at the literal brotherly love of the ending, not at the deeper values of the entire morality tale.
is that clear enough for you radamisto?
Radamisto was an Iberian prince who reigned in Armenia from 51 to 53 and 54 to 55 CE. Considered to be an usurper and tyrant, he was overthrown in a rebellion supported by Parthia.
Considered to be an usurper and tyrant
Considered to be an usurper and tyrant
the enitire thrust of the column is one of disadin for all that is traditional: it's Judeo-Christian elements and it's Patriotic elements.
ReplyDeleteUm, isn't the free market supposed to be VERY American and isn't Pottersville an outgrowth of that?
BTW,
ReplyDeleteRecently I've come across a few references to "Gramscian" and I've began to look up what that means.
Here, what exactly does it mean?
steve j,
ReplyDeletePotter reminds of the Democrats version of business, a swindeler like Franklin Raines or Mozillio, or CDR and David Rubin for that matter.
people who HATE palin hate It's Wonderful Life.
ReplyDeleteI don't know of anyone who HATES her. I do know of may who think
Caribou Barbie is superficial and a bit of a clown.
the Democrats version of business
ReplyDeleteLet's not be partisan. A LOT of different people think that Wall Street is pervaded by a culture of corruption.
1 - DODD, BARNEY FRANK, RAINES GORELICK ET AL (ALL DEMS!) THEY ARE SO CORRUPT THEY MAKE WALL STREET SEEM LIKE SESAME STREET.
ReplyDeleteWALL STREET BOUGHT THE FANNIE MAE PAPER IN GOOD FAITH.
BUSH AND NCCAIN AND OTHERS TOLD CONGRESS TO FIX FANNIE MAE AND THE DEMS - ALL ON THE TAKE - PROTECTED FANNIE MAE.
THAT'S HOW WE GOT HERE.
2 - WANNA KNOW MORE ABOUT GRAMSCI?
GOOGLE IT AT THE BLOG.
WE'VE BEEN POSTING ON THIS ANGLE FOR THREE YEARS.
GRAMSCI WAS A SOCIALIST WHO FELT YOU SHOULD/COULD ATTACK CAPITALIST SOCIETY CULTURALLY, AND BRING IT DOWN FASTER THIS WAY - AND THEN REPLACE IT WITH A SOCIALIST SOCIETY.
NO FAMILY. NO RELIGION. NOTHING BUT THE SOCIALIST STATE.
3 - CARIBOU BARBIE IS THE ERIN BROCKOVICH OF ALASKA - ONLY ERIN CASHED OUT AND NEVER BECAME GOV OF CALIFORNIA. IOW: PALIN IS BETTER.
PALIN'S VALUES ARE CAPRA'S AND GEORGE BAILEYS.
POTTER'S ARE THE NYTIMES AND THE COLUMNISTS.
WALL STREET BOUGHT THE FANNIE MAE PAPER IN GOOD FAITH.
ReplyDeleteBS - Wall Street knew it was crap but as along at the ratings agencies gave it "AAA," Wall Street didn't care.
BTW, in 2005, about 80% of sub-prime mortgages originated from non-bank institutions. The means 80% wasn't due to the CRA.
http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/search/label/Gramsci
ReplyDeletehttp://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/search?q=GRAMSCIAN
http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2006/12/gramsci-boss-tweed-and-question-about.html
http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2006/11/why-left-wants-to-destroy-family.html#links
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
ReplyDeleteWHY THE LEFT WANTS TO DESTROY THE FAMILY
In Reliapundit's well-documented post, below, you can read the sad consequences that befall children who grow up without fathers and without the structures of traditional family life that have been the bedrock of human culture since time immemorial.
In two recent articles posted at National Review Online, "The Confession" and "The Confession II," Stanley Kurtz shows how many advocates of same-sex marriage are actually committed to a radical program of undermining and ultimately destroying the traditional family. Writes Kurtz:
The Beyond Same-Sex Marriage statement is nothing if not radical. It calls for extending government recognition beyond traditional married couples to groups of senior citizens living together, extended immigrant households, single parent households, “queer couples who decide to jointly create and raise a child with another queer person or couple in two households,” unmarried domestic partners, polygamous/polyamorous households, and many other diverse family forms.
Advocacy of same-sex marriage is being used to create the conditions in which marriage itself will be superseded. This is not a new goal for the statist left. Plato, in his Republic, describes a society in which males and females of the appropriate social stratum reproduce like breeding animals, their children being raised communally, and without any family structure at all. Parents and children would not be permitted to know each other as such. Similar projects were conceived during the "War Communism" phase of the Soviet State, and the SS "Lebensborn" breeding program is also well known.
Remember the sad truth that Mark Alexander documented, (hat tip Reliapundit):
To wit, the truth -- and it is a hard truth for men who have abandoned their families, but a harder truth for their children: According to the CDC, DoJ, DHHS and the Bureau of the Census, the 30 percent of children who live apart from their fathers will account for
63 percent of teen suicides,
70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions,
71 percent of high-school dropouts,
75 percent of children in chemical-abuse centers,
80 percent of rapists,
85 percent of youths in prison,
and 85 percent of children who exhibit behavioral disorders.
In addition, 90 percent of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes. In fact, children born to unwed mothers are 10 times more likely to live in poverty as children with fathers in the home.
So why do the socialists advocate creating such dysfunctional social conditions? I think that the answer is because they feel that it will be possible for them to seize and maintain power only in such a dysfunctional society.
Remember, as I suggested last week in a discussion of why the theme of "global warming" is so important to the statist left, that Antonio Gramsci asserted that the survival of a free market society was based on "cultural hegemony," and that the communist vanguard had first of all to subvert that cultural hegemony in order to seize power. As the Wikipedia article puts it:
Gramsci therefore argued for a strategic distinction between a "war of position" and a "war of movement". The war of position is a culture war in which anti-capitalist elements seek to gain a dominant voice in mass media, mass organizations, and educational institutions to heighten class consciousness, teach revolutionary analysis and theory, and inspire revolutionary organization. Following the success of the war of position, communist leaders would be empowered to begin the war of movement, the actual insurrection against capitalism, with mass support.
The hard left understands that it must undermine, subvert, and liquidate traditional culture in order to replace all of the multitudinous relationships which form the dense network of family and community life with a univocal culture in which every nexus of human contact is mediated by the state. As the Gramsci biography puts it:
Gramsci stated that, in the West, bourgeois cultural values were tied to Christianity, and therefore much of his polemic against hegemonic culture is aimed at religious norms and values [umph added - Relipaundit]. He was impressed by the power Roman Catholicism had over men's minds and the care the Church had taken to prevent an excessive gap developing between the religion of the learned and that of the less educated. Gramsci believed that it was Marxism's task to marry the purely intellectual critique of religion found in Renaissance humanism to the elements of the Reformation that had appealed to the masses. For Gramsci, Marxism could supersede religion only if it met people's spiritual needs, and to do so people would have to recognise it as an expression of their own experience.
The destruction of the family will condemn millions of children to dysfunctional outcomes. The left would sacrifice those children - future drop-outs, wards of the State, prisoners, runaways, and suicides - in order to create a society in which everyone is essentially institutionalized from birth to the grave, and in which every decision affecting everyone's daily life is made by a bureaucratic elite and enforced by violence.
For further details, see The Road to Serfdom, the must-read and re-read book by the economist F. A. Hayek.
Permalink - Posted by Punditarian @ 10:46 PM - REDDIT!
Comments on this post
your wrote, brilliantly:
"The left would sacrifice those children - who will grow up as drop-outs, institutionalized prisoners, runaways, and suicides - in order to create a society in which everyone is essentially institutionalized from birth to the grave, and in which every decision affecting everyone's daily life is made by a bureaucratic elite and enforced by violence."
The Left would also sacrifice any/all of our allies - as long as Israel is among them.
BUT WE ALL GET PENSIONS AND FREE HEALTHCARE! WHOOPEE!
They got pensions and healthcare - of a sort - for free in the gulags, too. Cradle to grave state care.
# posted by Blogger reliapundit : 11:29 PM
Just a brilliant post, Punditarian. Top notch!
# posted by Blogger The Popinjay : 4:46 PM
GRAMSCI WAS A SOCIALIST WHO FELT YOU SHOULD/COULD ATTACK CAPITALIST SOCIETY CULTURALLY,
ReplyDeleteYes, that's something that came through the brief descriptions I've read. I think he wanted the workers (i.e. Caribou Barbie) to create their own culture as a rival to the dominant bourgeois culture.
the structures of traditional family life that have been the bedrock of human culture since time immemorial.
ReplyDeleteBS - "traditional family" is a modern (>1000 A.D.) notion. Anyway, the Left doesn't want to destroy it.
RELIA -
ReplyDeletethanx the posts about Gramsci
Radamisto was an Iberian prince who reigned in Armenia from 51 to 53 and 54 to 55 CE.
ReplyDeleteMore trivia:
Radamisto is also an obscure opera by Handel.
http://www.operatoday.com/content/2006/02/handel_radamist.php
THE CULTURE WAR IS GRAMSCIAN.
ReplyDeleteIN THE 1960'S THE "PROGRESSIVES" SAID BURN YOUR BRA, TAKE BIRTH CONTROL, MIND-ALTERING DRUGS, HAVE SEX WITH ANYONE/ANYWHERE AND LIVE IN COMMUNES - AND DON'T GET MARRIED.
NOW THE "PROGRESSIVES" SAY GAYS SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET MARRIED.
WHAT'S THE COMMON THREAD HERE?
ATTACKING TRADITIONAL CULTURE.
WHAT'S THE COMMON THREAD HERE?
ReplyDeleteATTACKING TRADITIONAL CULTURE.
I can understand why you think that but I believe that this is a misconception.
As far as I know, drugs and abortifacients go back 1000s of years, at least in the West, so to describe them as "non-traditional" is a bit of a stretch. (The same applies to communes and as far as free sex goes, I think that dream's been with us forever)
The revolt of the 60s, as misguided as much of it was (and I know because I lived through some of it), was about creating more freedom for persons, especially female or black persons.
SJ; YER LAST COMMENT IS NONSENSE.
ReplyDeleteI LIVED THRU IT.
THE FACT THAT THERE WERE ABORTIONS AND DRUG USE GOING WAY BACK DOESN'T MAKE IT TRADITIONAL.
ABORTIONISTS AND DRUG USERS WERE NEVER ACCEPTED BY TRADITIONALISTS; THEY ARE BY "PROGRESSIVES".
END OF STORY.
CONFLATION IS A LOGICAL FALLACY.
YOU CONFLATE ALL THE TIME.
IT'S COMMON ON THE LEFT.
WHAT'S HISTORICAL IS NOT ALWAYS WHAT'S TRADITIONAL.
BTW:
WHO KILLED MORE PEOPLE,
SOCIALISTS, MUSLIMS, OR CHRISTIANS?
WHO KILLED MORE PEOPLE,
RELIGOUS PEOPLE (EXCLUDING ISLAM) OR SOCIALISM?
THE FACT THAT THERE WERE ABORTIONS AND DRUG USE GOING WAY BACK DOESN'T MAKE IT TRADITIONAL.
ReplyDeleteThen what is the definition of "traditional"?
WHO KILLED MORE PEOPLE,
ReplyDeleteSOCIALISTS, MUSLIMS, OR CHRISTIANS?
Communists
COMMIES COME IN SECOND.
ReplyDeleteISLAM KILLED MORE. THO' NOT IN THE 20TH C. IN THE 20TH C, SOCIALISTS RULE.
(BTW: COMMIES ARE A SUBSET OF SOCIALSTS - AS ARE NAZIS.)
CHRISTIANS IN EUROPE LAG WAY WAY BEHIND.
YET MUCH OF THE LEFT - ALL THE POSTMODERN LEFT - STILL REGARD THE WEST AS ENEMY NUMBER ONE, AND WANT TO BRING IT DOWN.
THEY BLAME IT FOR AGW, THIRD WROLD POVERTY, MOST OF HISTORY'S GENOCIDE, ETC.
ALL BS.
BECASUE THEY SEE THE WEST AS SO EVIL, THEY WANT TO BRING IT SOWN ANYWAY THEY CAN:
THE GRAMSCIAN AGENDA IS JUST ONE FRONT.
TAXING THE CRAP OUT OF ENERGY AND INDUSTRY IS ANOTHER.
TURNING OUR SECUALR NATION INTO AN ATHEISTIC/PRO-MUSLIM STATE IS ANOTHER.
_______
SOCIALISTS KILLED MORE PEOPLE IN THE 20TH C THAN CHRISIANS AND JEWS IN THE PRECEEDING 20 CENTURIES COMBINED.
SOCIALISM IS ENEMY NUMBER TWO.
AND THEY ARE ALLED WITH THE ISLAMISTS - ENEMY #1, BECAUSE THEY BOTH HATE THE WEST.
SOME ARE LIKE GALLOWAY, OTHERS LIKE SCOWCROFTIAN SAMANTHA POWERS.
IT'S A BROAD RANGE: FROM ARAB COC*SUC*ERS TO "REALIST" APPEASERS.
PEACE ANMD PROPSERITY WON'T BE PERMANENT UNTIL WE DEFEAT THE POSTMODERN LEFT AND THE ISLAMISTS.
YET MUCH OF THE LEFT - ALL THE POSTMODERN LEFT - STILL REGARD THE WEST AS ENEMY NUMBER ONE, AND WANT TO BRING IT DOWN.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's true.
TURNING OUR SECUALR NATION INTO AN ATHEISTIC/PRO-MUSLIM STATE IS ANOTHER.
I'm SURE this isn't true.
ISLAM KILLED MORE.
ReplyDeleteYou could be correct, I'm not sure. I think Communism killed upwards of 50 million people in the 20th century, perhaps more.
Communism was more lethal than Islam, as RP points out, in the 20th Century.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Islam's body count is
270 million dead Infidels:
http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2007/11/islam-270-million-dead-bodies-cant-be.html