Beck's Best Damn Moment Yet - I Will Not Comply

[Brant Gaede]

Do it through CATO. Or, what are they there for?

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

Do it through CATO. Or, what are they there for?

--Brant

I already thought of that a couple months ago, but no action was taken that I know of. I figured I would have a better chance with OLers.

A while back I was given the following stats by the webmaster. The Libertarianism.org site averages 1000-2000 hits per day. On Tuesdays, when a new essay by me appears, the hits rise from 3000-5000. This is the gross total for the entire site; stats are apparently not kept for individual pages. Nevertheless, since my Excursion Essays are the only regular feature that appears on Tuesdays, it is reasonable to assume that the essays are attracting quite a few readers. Even so, I would like to crank up the interest, and a mention by Beck would certainly do that.

Ghs

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

George,

I am only a fan and subscriber of Glenn Beck. I know nobody in his organization. And the few emails I sent to them have gone into the black hole. Sometimes I post a comment on a news story on The Blaze and that normally gets published.

There is one sticky point with you, though. You are an atheist who made a case against God and he is on a religion thing. So your fame is not exactly formatted to his target public.

But there is one atheist Beck likes a lot: Penn Jillette (Glenn even wrote a blurb on his latest book). Do you have access to him? With your name, I imagine he knows who you are. If Penn would plug you and then send word to Glenn that, "There are other moral atheists like me, like my friends George, who has these works, etc., etc., etc." I'm almost sure he would consider it.

Michael

[Peter]

I am no more humble than my talents require. - Oscar Levant

About the picture of protesters with signs reading, “I am a man.”

A bayonet cannot be placed on a rifle unless a non com or officer orders, “Fix bayonet.”

A rifle is NEVER pointed at a person unless you intend to shoot that person. The rifles are NOT pointed at someone in the picture but over the protester’s heads.

You point bayonets in the direction of a possible attack. Combat will be in close quarters, which means the attackers have survived all rifle fire.

The bearded white man is having a conversation or asking a question of the officer in the white helmet. He is exasperated and is saying to the Officer in charge, something like, “Is this really necessary?”

Bayonets are NOT used as crowd control weapons, but they could be used to intimidate attackers from coming closer. The marchers are close so they were not meant to be intimidated however there still would be that affect if you did not know the ways of the military.

There are armored vehicles behind the soldiers and in front of the soldiers with the marchers in between. The attack if it came would be from the photo viewer’s right, past the marchers and past the armored vehicles.

My conclusion is that the marchers are being protected.

From Headquarters and Headquarters Battery Seventh Infantry Division Artillery, Peter Taylor reporting.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Peter,

Your conclusion is in direct opposition to the accounts of just about everybody involved at the time as reported above--black and white--in the 1968 event right before Martin Luther King was shot.

Michael

[Peter]

Michael wrote:

Your opinion is in direct opposition to the accounts of just about everybody involved at the time--black and white--in the 1968 event right before Martin Luther King was shot.

end quote

Bayonets are meant to kill not intimidate. In training we were asked loudly by the Sergeant, “What is the spirit of the bayonet?” In one voice we yelled back, “To kill!” I probably heard that about 500 to 1000 times. The situation was as I stated. The officer in charge set the formation up to keep a crowd to the right of the marchers from attacking. If an attack came from their right the soldiers would shoot first after ordering the marchers to get down, or they would have stepped past the marchers to fire.

In a situation like that it is possible the rifles were not loaded or each soldier would have been given three bullets. That sounds like my cousin, Sheriff Andy Taylor giving Deputy Barney Fife his one bullet, but it is true. Many times I had three bullets, but a non com with us was carrying a supply of full clips.

How the situation was perceived could be entirely different. Or for that matter, even though the officer used proper tactics he could still have been meaning to intimidate the marchers and their possible attackers to the right at the same time. If that was the officer’s intent, then you would have to ask him or find an interview he gave. If the marchers felt intimidated that is only natural considering the place and time. The bearded white guy marching with the black men with signs was angry and not afraid.

Glad to set the record straight.

Peter Taylor

[Reidy]

What reports did you have in mind in #30? They'd have be persuasive indeed if they're going to overcome the clear photographic evidence that the solders weren't stopping the demonstrators.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Try the videos in Adam's post above for a start.

I find it hard to grok that people think that a soldier pointing a rifle with a bayonet bared at a person is really the soldier protecting him.

Granted, common sense is not the same thing as a philosophical principle, but there comes a point where kicking common sense out the door makes for odd claims.

Let's do it this way. If you--the reader--see a soldier pointing a rifle at you with bayonet bared, would you feel he is trying to protect you or threaten you?

Is it a stretch to think you might wonder why he needs to point a gun at you and feel real uneasy about it?

Michael

[Peter]

Michael wrote to Peter Reidy:

Try the videos in Adam's post above for a start.

end quote

It is amazing what I remember from being in the military a long, long time ago, and I never went to Advanced Infantry Training.

I watched a minute of the video and then the whole video after I wrote my two letters and I am convinced I am right. The picture and video are meant to advance a particular opinion and point of view. That civil rights video was a work of propaganda, like the Koby video. I see the Koby director was just hospitalized for exhaustion or some such made up malady.

Michael and the world: You have been “had.”

It just reached 59 outside so I am going outside to train for the coming conflict.

Peter Taylor

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Peter,

The civil rights movement grew out of a protest movement, not a government-sponsored program.

That's how I understand it.

btw - I disagree with you about the video being a propaganda film like the Kony thing. It looks to me more like an attempt to get interviews with live witnesses on tape before they pass on. And I don't see the persuasion techniques I have studied being used in the manner they teach.

Michael

[caroljane]

What reports did you have in mind in #30? They'd have be persuasive indeed if they're going to overcome the clear photographic evidence that the solders weren't stopping the demonstrators.

Peter (and Peter above), the force of the photo is that they appear to be threatening the demonstrators, aiming their bayonets , with the implicit undercurrent that if they (the demonstrators) make one little wrong move.....the power of the State.

Again, the angle. The photo is shot from below the soldiers, making it look as if the rifles are pointed higher than if it were shot level or from above.

And the bayonets - whyever they were ordered, the symbolism is stark.

[Mikee]

Here is a reference to a 1968 Civil rights march with a similar picture.

Here is a description of the violence and looting that took place during the 1968 march.

[Reidy]

I looked at the videos in #18, and they didn't convince me that the National Guard was brought out to silence the protestors. The first is a collection of assertions by partisans, years after the fact. The second is a speech that doesn't even pretend to be a documentary. The first makes no mention of the fact (see #15) that riots had broken out and somebody had been killed. Thus it fails to consider, as a reputable piece of reportage would, the possibility that this, not the lurid motivation that Beck suggests, is what brought the Guard out. The document Mikee passed along in #37 suggests the former.

Whatever claims the video makes, accurately or not, they are about the police, not the Guard. I distinguished clearly (but apparently not clearly enough) in #4 between local police and the National Guard.

[anthony]

What reports did you have in mind in #30? They'd have be persuasive indeed if they're going to overcome the clear photographic evidence that the solders weren't stopping the demonstrators.

Peter (and Peter above), the force of the photo is that they appear to be threatening the demonstrators, aiming their bayonets , with the implicit undercurrent that if they (the demonstrators) make one little wrong move.....the power of the State. Again, the angle. The photo is shot from below the soldiers, making it look as if the rifles are pointed higher than if it were shot level or from above. And the bayonets - whyever they were ordered, the symbolism is stark.

Minor correction, Carol.

The picture was taken from above - assuming a 'standard' lens (50 mm, on a 35mm camera, or 80mm on

a Rolleiflex which was popular with photojournalists in those pre-zoom, interchangable-lens, days, I estimate 2-3 feet above the soldiers - maybe from a small step-ladder. I can't say one way or the other on the protection/intimidation debate, except that

news photographers then and now are well--versed at getting a front page picture.

A small point.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I looked at the videos in #18, and they didn't convince me that the National Guard was brought out to silence the protestors.

Pete,

Nobody claimed they were brought in to silence the protestors. Nor has anyone claimed that they had a single mission to join one side or the other. If they had a single mission at all, it was to keep the peace--irrespective of the source of trouble.

They obviously were intimidating the protestors to stay in line. Carol has it right. So obviously their orientation was that the protestors needed reminding to keep things peaceful. And that leads to Beck's questioning: bayonets and tanks against these guys? Really?

But if the hostile whites has started a riot, the National Guard would have stopped it. Is that really at issue?

There's nothing contradictory about any of this.

Michael

[caroljane]

What reports did you have in mind in #30? They'd have be persuasive indeed if they're going to overcome the clear photographic evidence that the solders weren't stopping the demonstrators.

Peter (and Peter above), the force of the photo is that they appear to be threatening the demonstrators, aiming their bayonets , with the implicit undercurrent that if they (the demonstrators) make one little wrong move.....the power of the State. Again, the angle. The photo is shot from below the soldiers, making it look as if the rifles are pointed higher than if it were shot level or from above. And the bayonets - whyever they were ordered, the symbolism is stark.

Minor correction, Carol.

The picture was taken from above - assuming a 'standard' lens (50 mm, on a 35mm camera, or 80mm on

a Rolleiflex which was popular with photojournalists in those pre-zoom, interchangable-lens, days, I estimate 2-3 feet above the soldiers - maybe from a small step-ladder. I can't say one way or the other on the protection/intimidation debate, except that

news photographers then and now are well--versed at getting a front page picture.

A small point.

Not small at all! Shows how non-visual I am, I got it completely backwards. I still think it's a great photo though.

[Selene]

How the situation was perceived could be entirely different. Or for that matter, even though the officer used proper tactics he could still have been meaning to intimidate the marchers and their possible attackers to the right at the same time. If that was the officer’s intent, then you would have to ask him or find an interview he gave. If the marchers felt intimidated that is only natural considering the place and time. The bearded white guy marching with the black men with signs was angry and not afraid.

Mr. Taylor:

Oops.

There goes that option. No crowds to the right. Angry or otherwise.

Adam

correcting the record in the interests of truth, justice and Ta Dah! The American Way!

[syrakusos]

MSK is proud to be an American because Glenn Beck claimed that his father worked himself to death...

" Because I saw people work themselves to death I happen to have good work ethic..." -- Glenn Beck cited above...

I am proud to be an American because Six Flags over Texas went bankrupt catering to enjoyment.

Apparently, we have different values.

MSK

MEM

a lesson in economics ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cboASI3Bzfo

(Lest the average viewer be confused, "different" is not "better." Different is different; better is better.)

[caroljane]

MSK is proud to be an American because Glenn Beck claimed that his father worked himself to death...

" Because I saw people work themselves to death I happen to have good work ethic..." -- Glenn Beck cited above...

I am proud to be an American because Six Flags over Texas went bankrupt catering to enjoyment.

Apparently, we have different values.

MSK

MEM

a lesson in economics ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cboASI3Bzfo

(Lest the average viewer be confused, "different" is not "better." Different is different; better is better.)

love the juxtaposition. That anthem is a real compensation for having to live in Russia.

Just when X and I have nearly given up all hope of ferreting out the OL Secret Billionaire, you have to bring back McDuck. Torturer!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael,

We do have different values, but not the ones you insinuate.

I work from the premise that you cannot accurately judge what you do not know. So I try to identify correctly first, then relate it to my values.

Context always forms part of what I identify (at least to the best of my ability to see it).

So, for example, if I come across hyperbole used for dramatic emphasis, say a person exaggerating the effort his (still living) father made at working and using this to emphasize the importance of a good work ethic as opposed to the handout mentality, I don't take it literally.

(btw - This is one of the reasons watching news on TV, especially left-oriented hosts, but some right ones, too, irritates the living daylights out of me. They constantly obsess over gotcha and then present grossly inappropriate overreactions.)

If I hated Glenn Beck, though, without being familiar with his work, I would be tempted to abandon my know first then evaluate epistemology and take his hyperbole literally. The hyperbole--if I take it literally--beautifully justifies my pre-established hate and proves to me that I don't really need to know anything further. I am right and I can judge by feeling alone (or, maybe, by some unrelated prejudice).

But I don't think that way. This is one important area where our values actually do differ.

Michael

[caroljane]

Michael,

We do have different values, but not the ones you insinuate.

I work from the premise that you cannot accurately judge what you do not know. So I try to identify correctly first, then relate it to my values.

Context always forms part of what I identify (at least to the best of my ability to see it).

So, for example, if I come across hyperbole used for dramatic emphasis, say a person exaggerating the effort his (still living) father made at working and using this to emphasize the importance of a good work ethic as opposed to the handout mentality, I don't take it literally.

Michael

I am confused - is this the case here? Is Beck's father alive, and if he is, how would a viewer know it was hyperbole, unless he knew that detail?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Carol,

I'm looking it up just to make sure, but I have heard him talk about his father several times as if he were alive, mentioning his current ailments from working in the bakery for so many years.

His mother had a tragic death and there is some speculation as to whether it was suicide or not. Glenn says it was suicide.

Michael

[syrakusos]

Michael, I am going to start a thread on the wider topic of "Objectivism, Absolutism, and Universalism." For now, I agree with you that you like Glenn Beck and you find interesting and informative presentation from him to validate that. I find him boring and boorish.

I know nothing about his father or his mother. I only objected to the idea that it is good and fine and important and heroic to work yourself to death. Believe me, my mother worked until she died. I intend to do the same. (My father retired before he died.) But there is a difference between being productive until the end of your days and working yourself to death.

[Brant Gaede]

Michael, I am going to start a thread on the wider topic of "Objectivism, Absolutism, and Universalism." For now, I agree with you that you like Glenn Beck and you find interesting and informative presentation from him to validate that. I find him boring and boorish.

I know nothing about his father or his mother. I only objected to the idea that it is good and fine and important and heroic to work yourself to death. Believe me, my mother worked until she died. I intend to do the same. (My father retired before he died.) But there is a difference between being productive until the end of your days and working yourself to death.

My grandfather was working on two books when he died at the age of 90 in 1976. His daughters found one complete enough to be editable for publication, which they did. The last time I saw him was in 1973 in Eugene, Oregon. He and his wife had an apartment. Near the front door on a small desk or stand was his portable typewriter bathed in sunlight. It was so beautiful to me. Pure simplicity.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

But there is a difference between being productive until the end of your days and working yourself to death.

Michael,

It's OK to not like Glenn Beck.

But do you really think he was preaching for people to engage in unproductive busywork until they drop? That was his message? That he was proud of the fact that his father was unproductive, but worked anyway at it?

Really?

Sorry, but you sound like those who say Ayn Rand preached selfishness was a virtue, so she was in favor of cruelty to the helpless.

Both conclusions use the same epistemological method.

And I reject that method for my own use--that is when I catch myself doing it.

Michael