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Cary
14 years ago
I read a quote on Twitter today that said, “The opposite of hero isn’t a villain, it’s a bystander”
Then I found this. Certainly not a bystander, but a hero:
That POM (Piece of Murtha) SOS, who lives after miraculously dodging sniper fire, now joins the rest of the world on small arms treaty. That POM and the other POM in the WH want to violate our 2nd Amendment rights. This is war. I’M READY TO SIGN UP!
This could put those 2 in serious harms way. They’re messing with passionate patriots who love their firearms. I don’t own a gun, but I’ve been thinking about one ever since The Destroyer of America, The Indonesian, was elected. Really, I will probably get one to protect me from Obots gone wild.
newguy40
14 years ago
You know, sometimes we get skunk living under our patio deck. I put out some mothballs in old sock tied off at one end. They hate that smell and they usually go away.
If that would only work with the libtards, we’d be set.
Art
14 years ago
@newguy, nice to know how to get rid of the critters without hurting them. I luv ’em so. Wish it would work on squirrels. Does it?
newguy40
14 years ago
Art- I dunno about squirrels. We don’t have too many here abouts. Might if they are taking up residence where they ought not to be.
The mothball trick works pretty good with skunks and racoons.
Cary
14 years ago
@newguy40: If it works with them, I’d venture to bet it would work with any rodent. Squirrels are welcome sights to us city folk, unless you have a bird feeder out.
Art
14 years ago
I love squirrels too, and delight when they come up and sit beside me on a park bench. However, I have a friend, not really a friend, who has squirrels invading and nesting in his cabana/patio. He has actually tried to kill them. I don’t go there anymore, but I think I will drop him an anonymous note about the moth balls.
newguy40
14 years ago
Cary — Cute is in the nose of the smeller. I don’t mind the mamma skunks with the 2 or 3 babies in tow, as long as they keep moving thru. NIMBY if’n you know what I mean?
Cary
14 years ago
@newguy40: Yeah, when I’m out of the city, I find the raccoons a bit more frightening, to be honest.
BarbaraS
14 years ago
Anyone who thinks squirrels are cute evidently don’t have any in their yard. Chipmuunks, you know, those tiny, cute little creatures will burrow underground and eat the roots of all your shrubs and other plants. I had both and they just about destroyed my yard. The way I got rid of most, not all and not intentially, was to get two frisky puppies that chased the squirrels and dug up the chipmunks and killed them. I got upset to see the bodies but they are all gone and my yard is looking better all the time.
Cary
14 years ago
@BarbaraS: While out camping, I discovered that spreading cedar chips around the tent warded off the chipmunks. Apparently, that’s the smell they don’t like.
Art: you must know that Obama is Gun Salesman of the Year 2009!! And ammo has been flying off the shelf also. Make sure you get some training when you buy your weapon. The more training the better, in my opinion. My local community college has a great series of courses on Firearms Familiarization covering safety, gun law & marksmanship. I have the coveted Firearms Instructor certification and have shot on our local Pistol League for 10 years, so if you live in Northern California I would be happy to teach you to shoot!! (We call league “bowling” with guns!)
Art
14 years ago
@PG, Thanks for the great post. Ya’ know, I’m terrified of guns, but I will definitely buy one, so your input is timely and appreciated. Sorry, I live in Florida. I would certainly take up your offer otherwise. We have a shooting range here in Vero Beach. I could have used a gun a few months ago when I woke up in the middle of the night to let my cat out and there in the garage was a very sickly, mangy coyote which needed to be put down. As sickly as he/she was, it was impressive with those long legs. It just looked at me and remained motionless. It was eating cat food which I had left out for an unfriendly stray cat. I get lots of strays and it really bums me out when I have to take them to the Humane Society. I bid the coyote adieu, and needless to say my Nigel stayed in for the night. I was surprised to find out the next day that coyotes were, indeed, in Florida. The sheriff said they are on ‘open season’ year round because of the upset in the balance of animal life they are causing here. I say leave the coyotes alone and exterminate the real estate developers.
Thanks again, Art
PS: Obama, gun salesman of the year! That’s a keeper. What a gigantic ‘hole of an Indonesian he is. Hillary would be glad to have a firearm the next time she comes under sniper fire. Another enormous ‘hole, that one.
Patvann
14 years ago
The Legacy of Eric Hoffer
by Thomas Sowell
The twentieth anniversary of the death of Eric Hoffer, in May 1983, passed with very little notice of one of the most incisive thinkers of his time — a man whose writings continue to have great relevance to our times.
How many people today even know of this remarkable man with no formal schooling, who spent his life in manual labor — most of it as a longshoreman — and who wrote some of the most insightful commentary on our society and trends in the world?
You need only read one of his classics like The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements to realize that you are seeing the work of an intellectual giant.
Having spent several years in blindness when most other children were in school, Hoffer could only do manual labor after he recovered his sight, but was determined to educate himself. He began by looking for a big book with small print to take with him as he set out on a job as a migratory farm worker.
The book that turned out to fill this bill — based on size and words — was the essays of Montaigne. Over the years, he read many landmark books, including Hitler’s Mein Kampf, even though Hoffer was Jewish. If ever there was a walking advertisement for the Great Books approach to education, it was Eric Hoffer.
Among Hoffer’s insights about mass movements was that they are an outlet for people whose individual significance is meager in the eyes of the world and — more important — in their own eyes. He pointed out that the leaders of the Nazi movement were men whose artistic and intellectual aspirations were wholly frustrated.
Hoffer said: “The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.”
People who are fulfilled in their own lives and careers are not the ones attracted to mass movements: “A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding,” Hoffer said. “When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.”
What Hoffer was describing was the political busybody, the zealot for a cause — the “true believer,” who filled the ranks of ideological movements that created the totalitarian tyrannies of the 20th century.
In a comment very relevant to the later disintegration of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe and the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union itself, he observed that totalitarian governments’ “moment of greatest danger is when they begin to reform, that is to say, when they begin to show liberal tendencies.”
Mikhail Gorbachev’s place in history was secured by his failure to understand that and his willingness to believe that a decent and humane Communist society was possible. But, once the people in Eastern Europe no longer had to fear tanks or the gulags, the statues of Lenin and Stalin began being toppled from their pedestals, like the governments they represented.
Contrary to the prevailing assumptions of his time, Eric Hoffer did not believe that revolutionary movements were based on the sufferings of the downtrodden. “Where people toil from sunrise to sunset for a bare living, they nurse no grievances and dream no dreams,” he said. He had spent years living among such people and being one of them.
Hoffer’s insights may help explain something that many of us have found very puzzling — the offspring of wealthy families spending their lives and their inherited money backing radical movements. He said: “Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.”
What can people with inherited fortunes do that is at all commensurate with their unlimited opportunities, much less what their parents or grandparents did to create the fortune in the first place, starting from far fewer opportunities?
Like the frustrated artists and failed intellectuals who turn to mass movements for fulfillment, rich heirs cannot win the game of comparison of individual achievements. So they must change the game. As zealots for radical movements, they often attack the very things that made their own good fortune possible, as well as undermining the freedom and well-being of other people.
“There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.”
This is just one of the pungent insights of Eric Hoffer, who died twentyseven years ago. This particular quote is from his book of short sayings called The Passionate State of Mind. In another such book, Before the Sabbath, he saw the “Nixon tragedy” as that of an “opportunist who missed his greatest opportunity.”
Some of Hoffer’s books are collections of short, sharp insights, while others — The True Believer, The Ordeal of Change, and The Temper of Our Times, for example — offer more extended discussions of particular issues.
Although Eric Hoffer was perhaps at his zenith during the 1960s, he was completely at odds with the pious cant and slippery evasions of that rhetoric-ridden decade, whose tragic consequences are still with us today.
When a black man declared his “rage,” Eric Hoffer shot back: “Mister, it is easy to be full of rage. It is not easy to go to work and build something.” For this, he was accused of “racism” for not rolling over and playing dead at the sound of one of the buzzwords of the times — and, unfortunately, of our times as well.
Hoffer was convinced that the black leadership was taking the wrong approach, if they wanted to advance the people in whose name they spoke. Only achievement would win the respect of the larger society and — more important — their own self-respect. And no one else can give you achievement.
Hoffer’s strongest words were for the intellectuals — or rather, against the intellectuals. “Intellectuals,” he said, “cannot operate at room temperature.” Hype, moral melodrama, and sweeping visions were the way that intellectuals approached the problems of the world.
But that was not the way progress was usually achieved in America. “Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.”
Since the American economy and society advanced with little or no role for the intelligentsia, it is hardly surprising that anti-Americanism flourishes among intellectuals. “Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America,” Eric Hoffer said.
Some of the outrageous comments from intellectuals and academics, that the 9-11 terrorist attacks were somehow our own fault, bore out what Hoffer had said many years earlier.
Eric Hoffer never bought the claims of intellectuals to be for the common man. “A ruling intelligentsia,” he said, “whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed and wasted at will.”
One of the many conceits of contemporary intellectuals that Hoffer deflated was their nature cult. “Almost all the books I read spoke worshipfully of nature,” he said, recalling his own personal experience as a migrant farm worker that was full of painful encounters with nature, which urban intellectuals worshipped from afar.
Hoffer saw in this exaltation of nature another aspect of intellectuals’ elitist “distaste for man.” Implicit in much that they say and do is “the assumption that education readies a person for the task of reforming and reshaping humanity — that is equips him to act as an engineer of souls and manufacturer of desirable human attributes.”
Eric Hoffer called it “soul raping” — an apt term for what goes on in too many schools today, where half-educated teachers treat the classroom as a place for them to shape children’s attitudes and beliefs in a politically correct direction.
This is creating the next generation of “true believers,” indoctrinated with ideologies that provide “fact-proof screens from reality” in Hoffer’s words. It is the antithesis of education.
Eric Hoffer was ahead of his time. It is a literary treat to read him in order to catch up with our own times.
Art: Just another tidbit about guns that I find interesting. Did you know that there are only 4 CCWs (concealed carry permits) granted in the City of San Francisco? And guess who has one of those permits? Dianne no-one-else-should-have-a-gun Feinstein. Talk about a ‘hole, more like a vortex in my opinion! We have coyotes here too, and we have cats. So kittys stay in at night, needless to say. I don’t hunt, and love animals, but if push came to shove I would take out a coyote to save my cats. Other than that we leave them alone.
Hard Right
14 years ago
Well hello there kitty. Here kitty, kitty. Don’t run away. Good kit-AUGH!!!
Passed by a squished skunk on a freeway onramp. Had very recently been run over. I had my fresh air vent open and on low. It took turning it up to high and a few miles of driving before them smell went away.
Passed by the same spot 2 weeks later. Still very strong, but not as bad. I NEVER, EVER want to be sprayed by a skunk.
Art
14 years ago
@PG, Ha! That’s a good one. Diane Feinstein has one of the permits!. Just another example of the utter hypocrisy of the libbers. But a gun! That is so funny. I wonder if Hillary knows. I would love for a reporter to ask HRC about that in her next news conference, in view of her UN resolution.
Yeah, I should keep Nigel in at night, but he howls to go out. He was a stray about 8 weeks old when I got him from a woman in a trailer park I met at Publix who was feeding him but couldn’t take him in because she already had 2 in a small trailer. Our 8th anniversary coming up this fall.
Ya’ know, ever since I saw the coyote I haven’s seen any possums, nightly companions to Nigel, in the hood. There are lots of ’em down here.
Thanks for the D Feinstein info. I’m passing your post along to my West Coast friends, from Laguna Nigel to Seattle, and a few in the desert. They should enjoy it. My friend in Laguna is very active in trying to kill the Obama Death Bill. He was my boss.
Missy
14 years ago
Heh, memories. That skunk is much cuter than the one that took up residence under our house, have to remember the moth ball technique.
We have a couple of different hawks, deer, turkey, geese, squirrels, possum, chipmunks and coyote traveling through and/or staying in and around our yard. We have a forest preserve bordering our back yard but, because the critters are being fed by neighbors, they hang around. We see more wildlife here than on the farm, the subdivisions are pushing the animals our way, but no skunks up here, knock on wood.
Two years ago we had eagles nesting in a tall tree in the woods, we were waiting for the leaves to drop to see it again last fall, either the nest fell apart or the tree went down, not going to check it out either because that cougar might decide to stroll through.
In the winter the turkey group up in huge flocks then divide up for the rest of the year into groups of odd numbers, by fall they are up to 9, 11, 13, makes me wonder if they can count. The neighbor and I think we can tell what family by the number in each flock, but who knows.
With the deer, the older they get the more skitterish they are, the younger ones roam the streets, but they skoot and whoosh through the yards when the cars get close. One night I counted up to 45 deer in the edge of the woods before quitting, hard to count them when they bunch up and move around. Now we are down to about a dozen young deer, I didn’t get the notice, but apparently that disease drifted down from Wisconsin and they are being shot and tested, if they don’t have the disease the meat goes to the homeless shelters. Sure wish there would be something else they could do, we hear the shots being fired on the weekends, it’s agonizing.
Davey
14 years ago
How nice of Harry Reid to show us his vacation cottage.
pat
14 years ago
Hoffer said: “The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.”
In other words, the losers are the ones who have to find a face in a mass movement, who have to get a bully behind them to get noticed. I wonder about Jihad Jane and people like that, if they aren’t projecting their own weakness on a sympathy group so that they can act out violently.
Thanks Patvann for the nice reminisce about Hoffer. He did get disparaged for not being a real intellectual and not being sympathetic enough and it clouded his name.
Missy
14 years ago
Sheesh! What filibuster? Those bad Republicans are leaving Harry Reid no alternative, he’s going to have to change the filibuster “tool”……next year. Dan Reihl is a bit wound up about it,
Enjoy:
Harry Reid To Reform Filibuster From Home In Nevada Next Year
Okay, this is a test, right? They had 60 votes for all of last year!! Does Harry Reid just want to see just how stupid the Leftists in Congress and the Nutroots really are? Oh, yeah, yeah, sure … my first order of business right after I get done vacuuming the living-room to keep the old lady off my back, I’m going to reform the filibuster next year! You watch and see!
What’s that, after he gets done cuffing her around because he was fired? We all know what he thinks about unemployment and spousal abuse. They’re spinning so fast, they’re out of control. Obama is single-handedly bringing the Democrats in DC to their knees. I just hope they’re not in the shower with Rahm at the time.
I read the other day that Dennis Miller said Reid sounds like a broken caulk gun.
suek
14 years ago
>>He did get disparaged for not being a real intellectual…>>
He was a self educated man. As such, he lacked the proper credentials to get recognized as someone who was an intellectual.
Not that he wasn’t, mind you – he just lacked the credentials. It tells you something about a person when they need a stamp of approval by a particular authority before they can recognize the quality of the finished product.
NEWGUY40 you gave it away, someone will surely get there where the libtards lives and deliver a 100 pounds bag of mothballs bye
Missy
14 years ago
It was in the 50’s yesterday, there were some neighbors out working on their lawns, bit early, but, Happy spring everyone, it’s coming, it’s finally coming!
like you said CARY ,he is quite a hero ,i was just reading bbc news of an american teacher was jogging in ALASKA and was drag out of the road and kille by wolves as much as 4 of them,they mention that they are getting very aggressive,bye.
Donald Bly
14 years ago
If we could get a dozen skunks to take up residence in congress… would it be enough to get them to quit legislating…. nah, probably not, there’s already 400+ skunks there and they’re immune to their own smell!
Art
14 years ago
This is a must see. Takes only 4 minutes. You can plainly see just how destructinve the Dems are with their plan. This guy from MI is a true winner. Please, please watch
This morning as I was surfing by MSNBC (honest, I wasn ‘t watching it) I caught a few words about Olberman and sad and praying by some maudlin ‘hole, and I thought the big T&RD had passed (this guy was really pouring it on, it was so icky). Turned out to be that the Pillsbury doughboy was on leave because of an ailing father. Quel tragicue!!!! Was I disappointed!
If you think Progressive Socialists aren’t mentally handicapped, think about John Edwards giving up a run for the presidency for this hot little number.
Missy
14 years ago
Good grief!
Guess who:
Patvann
14 years ago
Them hips be hummin in the wind.
I wouldn’t touch that with BRob’s “johnson”, and StageRt pushin.
i look at the picture and y’all mention skunk i did not reconnize that one he must be a southern skunk or from China ,because my skunk up north has the white line from the head to tail,no white spot on the face,
I read a quote on Twitter today that said, “The opposite of hero isn’t a villain, it’s a bystander”
Then I found this. Certainly not a bystander, but a hero:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/at-war-ahmadinejad-to-vis_n_491548.html
oh and cute skunk! This is as close as I’d want to get, though!
I want that skunk minus one certain body part. How long do they live? Wonder how my cat would like him. Naaah, better not.
On another subject,
IMPORTANT: http://www.resistnet.com/group/iresistguncontrol/forum/topics/clinton-working-hand-in-glove-1
That POM (Piece of Murtha) SOS, who lives after miraculously dodging sniper fire, now joins the rest of the world on small arms treaty. That POM and the other POM in the WH want to violate our 2nd Amendment rights. This is war. I’M READY TO SIGN UP!
This could put those 2 in serious harms way. They’re messing with passionate patriots who love their firearms. I don’t own a gun, but I’ve been thinking about one ever since The Destroyer of America, The Indonesian, was elected. Really, I will probably get one to protect me from Obots gone wild.
You know, sometimes we get skunk living under our patio deck. I put out some mothballs in old sock tied off at one end. They hate that smell and they usually go away.
If that would only work with the libtards, we’d be set.
@newguy, nice to know how to get rid of the critters without hurting them. I luv ’em so. Wish it would work on squirrels. Does it?
Art- I dunno about squirrels. We don’t have too many here abouts. Might if they are taking up residence where they ought not to be.
The mothball trick works pretty good with skunks and racoons.
@newguy40: If it works with them, I’d venture to bet it would work with any rodent. Squirrels are welcome sights to us city folk, unless you have a bird feeder out.
I love squirrels too, and delight when they come up and sit beside me on a park bench. However, I have a friend, not really a friend, who has squirrels invading and nesting in his cabana/patio. He has actually tried to kill them. I don’t go there anymore, but I think I will drop him an anonymous note about the moth balls.
Cary — Cute is in the nose of the smeller. I don’t mind the mamma skunks with the 2 or 3 babies in tow, as long as they keep moving thru. NIMBY if’n you know what I mean?
@newguy40: Yeah, when I’m out of the city, I find the raccoons a bit more frightening, to be honest.
Anyone who thinks squirrels are cute evidently don’t have any in their yard. Chipmuunks, you know, those tiny, cute little creatures will burrow underground and eat the roots of all your shrubs and other plants. I had both and they just about destroyed my yard. The way I got rid of most, not all and not intentially, was to get two frisky puppies that chased the squirrels and dug up the chipmunks and killed them. I got upset to see the bodies but they are all gone and my yard is looking better all the time.
@BarbaraS: While out camping, I discovered that spreading cedar chips around the tent warded off the chipmunks. Apparently, that’s the smell they don’t like.
Art: you must know that Obama is Gun Salesman of the Year 2009!! And ammo has been flying off the shelf also. Make sure you get some training when you buy your weapon. The more training the better, in my opinion. My local community college has a great series of courses on Firearms Familiarization covering safety, gun law & marksmanship. I have the coveted Firearms Instructor certification and have shot on our local Pistol League for 10 years, so if you live in Northern California I would be happy to teach you to shoot!! (We call league “bowling” with guns!)
@PG, Thanks for the great post. Ya’ know, I’m terrified of guns, but I will definitely buy one, so your input is timely and appreciated. Sorry, I live in Florida. I would certainly take up your offer otherwise. We have a shooting range here in Vero Beach. I could have used a gun a few months ago when I woke up in the middle of the night to let my cat out and there in the garage was a very sickly, mangy coyote which needed to be put down. As sickly as he/she was, it was impressive with those long legs. It just looked at me and remained motionless. It was eating cat food which I had left out for an unfriendly stray cat. I get lots of strays and it really bums me out when I have to take them to the Humane Society. I bid the coyote adieu, and needless to say my Nigel stayed in for the night. I was surprised to find out the next day that coyotes were, indeed, in Florida. The sheriff said they are on ‘open season’ year round because of the upset in the balance of animal life they are causing here. I say leave the coyotes alone and exterminate the real estate developers.
Thanks again, Art
PS: Obama, gun salesman of the year! That’s a keeper. What a gigantic ‘hole of an Indonesian he is. Hillary would be glad to have a firearm the next time she comes under sniper fire. Another enormous ‘hole, that one.
The Legacy of Eric Hoffer
by Thomas Sowell
The twentieth anniversary of the death of Eric Hoffer, in May 1983, passed with very little notice of one of the most incisive thinkers of his time — a man whose writings continue to have great relevance to our times.
How many people today even know of this remarkable man with no formal schooling, who spent his life in manual labor — most of it as a longshoreman — and who wrote some of the most insightful commentary on our society and trends in the world?
You need only read one of his classics like The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements to realize that you are seeing the work of an intellectual giant.
Having spent several years in blindness when most other children were in school, Hoffer could only do manual labor after he recovered his sight, but was determined to educate himself. He began by looking for a big book with small print to take with him as he set out on a job as a migratory farm worker.
The book that turned out to fill this bill — based on size and words — was the essays of Montaigne. Over the years, he read many landmark books, including Hitler’s Mein Kampf, even though Hoffer was Jewish. If ever there was a walking advertisement for the Great Books approach to education, it was Eric Hoffer.
Among Hoffer’s insights about mass movements was that they are an outlet for people whose individual significance is meager in the eyes of the world and — more important — in their own eyes. He pointed out that the leaders of the Nazi movement were men whose artistic and intellectual aspirations were wholly frustrated.
Hoffer said: “The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.”
People who are fulfilled in their own lives and careers are not the ones attracted to mass movements: “A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding,” Hoffer said. “When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.”
What Hoffer was describing was the political busybody, the zealot for a cause — the “true believer,” who filled the ranks of ideological movements that created the totalitarian tyrannies of the 20th century.
In a comment very relevant to the later disintegration of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe and the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union itself, he observed that totalitarian governments’ “moment of greatest danger is when they begin to reform, that is to say, when they begin to show liberal tendencies.”
Mikhail Gorbachev’s place in history was secured by his failure to understand that and his willingness to believe that a decent and humane Communist society was possible. But, once the people in Eastern Europe no longer had to fear tanks or the gulags, the statues of Lenin and Stalin began being toppled from their pedestals, like the governments they represented.
Contrary to the prevailing assumptions of his time, Eric Hoffer did not believe that revolutionary movements were based on the sufferings of the downtrodden. “Where people toil from sunrise to sunset for a bare living, they nurse no grievances and dream no dreams,” he said. He had spent years living among such people and being one of them.
Hoffer’s insights may help explain something that many of us have found very puzzling — the offspring of wealthy families spending their lives and their inherited money backing radical movements. He said: “Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.”
What can people with inherited fortunes do that is at all commensurate with their unlimited opportunities, much less what their parents or grandparents did to create the fortune in the first place, starting from far fewer opportunities?
Like the frustrated artists and failed intellectuals who turn to mass movements for fulfillment, rich heirs cannot win the game of comparison of individual achievements. So they must change the game. As zealots for radical movements, they often attack the very things that made their own good fortune possible, as well as undermining the freedom and well-being of other people.
“There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.”
This is just one of the pungent insights of Eric Hoffer, who died twentyseven years ago. This particular quote is from his book of short sayings called The Passionate State of Mind. In another such book, Before the Sabbath, he saw the “Nixon tragedy” as that of an “opportunist who missed his greatest opportunity.”
Some of Hoffer’s books are collections of short, sharp insights, while others — The True Believer, The Ordeal of Change, and The Temper of Our Times, for example — offer more extended discussions of particular issues.
Although Eric Hoffer was perhaps at his zenith during the 1960s, he was completely at odds with the pious cant and slippery evasions of that rhetoric-ridden decade, whose tragic consequences are still with us today.
When a black man declared his “rage,” Eric Hoffer shot back: “Mister, it is easy to be full of rage. It is not easy to go to work and build something.” For this, he was accused of “racism” for not rolling over and playing dead at the sound of one of the buzzwords of the times — and, unfortunately, of our times as well.
Hoffer was convinced that the black leadership was taking the wrong approach, if they wanted to advance the people in whose name they spoke. Only achievement would win the respect of the larger society and — more important — their own self-respect. And no one else can give you achievement.
Hoffer’s strongest words were for the intellectuals — or rather, against the intellectuals. “Intellectuals,” he said, “cannot operate at room temperature.” Hype, moral melodrama, and sweeping visions were the way that intellectuals approached the problems of the world.
But that was not the way progress was usually achieved in America. “Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.”
Since the American economy and society advanced with little or no role for the intelligentsia, it is hardly surprising that anti-Americanism flourishes among intellectuals. “Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America,” Eric Hoffer said.
Some of the outrageous comments from intellectuals and academics, that the 9-11 terrorist attacks were somehow our own fault, bore out what Hoffer had said many years earlier.
Eric Hoffer never bought the claims of intellectuals to be for the common man. “A ruling intelligentsia,” he said, “whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed and wasted at will.”
One of the many conceits of contemporary intellectuals that Hoffer deflated was their nature cult. “Almost all the books I read spoke worshipfully of nature,” he said, recalling his own personal experience as a migrant farm worker that was full of painful encounters with nature, which urban intellectuals worshipped from afar.
Hoffer saw in this exaltation of nature another aspect of intellectuals’ elitist “distaste for man.” Implicit in much that they say and do is “the assumption that education readies a person for the task of reforming and reshaping humanity — that is equips him to act as an engineer of souls and manufacturer of desirable human attributes.”
Eric Hoffer called it “soul raping” — an apt term for what goes on in too many schools today, where half-educated teachers treat the classroom as a place for them to shape children’s attitudes and beliefs in a politically correct direction.
This is creating the next generation of “true believers,” indoctrinated with ideologies that provide “fact-proof screens from reality” in Hoffer’s words. It is the antithesis of education.
Eric Hoffer was ahead of his time. It is a literary treat to read him in order to catch up with our own times.
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2868
Thanks Pat, I am ashamed to admit that I didn’t know who this guy was. Got to read more about him.
Art: Just another tidbit about guns that I find interesting. Did you know that there are only 4 CCWs (concealed carry permits) granted in the City of San Francisco? And guess who has one of those permits? Dianne no-one-else-should-have-a-gun Feinstein. Talk about a ‘hole, more like a vortex in my opinion! We have coyotes here too, and we have cats. So kittys stay in at night, needless to say. I don’t hunt, and love animals, but if push came to shove I would take out a coyote to save my cats. Other than that we leave them alone.
Well hello there kitty. Here kitty, kitty. Don’t run away. Good kit-AUGH!!!
Passed by a squished skunk on a freeway onramp. Had very recently been run over. I had my fresh air vent open and on low. It took turning it up to high and a few miles of driving before them smell went away.
Passed by the same spot 2 weeks later. Still very strong, but not as bad. I NEVER, EVER want to be sprayed by a skunk.
@PG, Ha! That’s a good one. Diane Feinstein has one of the permits!. Just another example of the utter hypocrisy of the libbers. But a gun! That is so funny. I wonder if Hillary knows. I would love for a reporter to ask HRC about that in her next news conference, in view of her UN resolution.
Yeah, I should keep Nigel in at night, but he howls to go out. He was a stray about 8 weeks old when I got him from a woman in a trailer park I met at Publix who was feeding him but couldn’t take him in because she already had 2 in a small trailer. Our 8th anniversary coming up this fall.
Ya’ know, ever since I saw the coyote I haven’s seen any possums, nightly companions to Nigel, in the hood. There are lots of ’em down here.
Thanks for the D Feinstein info. I’m passing your post along to my West Coast friends, from Laguna Nigel to Seattle, and a few in the desert. They should enjoy it. My friend in Laguna is very active in trying to kill the Obama Death Bill. He was my boss.
Heh, memories. That skunk is much cuter than the one that took up residence under our house, have to remember the moth ball technique.
We have a couple of different hawks, deer, turkey, geese, squirrels, possum, chipmunks and coyote traveling through and/or staying in and around our yard. We have a forest preserve bordering our back yard but, because the critters are being fed by neighbors, they hang around. We see more wildlife here than on the farm, the subdivisions are pushing the animals our way, but no skunks up here, knock on wood.
Two years ago we had eagles nesting in a tall tree in the woods, we were waiting for the leaves to drop to see it again last fall, either the nest fell apart or the tree went down, not going to check it out either because that cougar might decide to stroll through.
In the winter the turkey group up in huge flocks then divide up for the rest of the year into groups of odd numbers, by fall they are up to 9, 11, 13, makes me wonder if they can count. The neighbor and I think we can tell what family by the number in each flock, but who knows.
With the deer, the older they get the more skitterish they are, the younger ones roam the streets, but they skoot and whoosh through the yards when the cars get close. One night I counted up to 45 deer in the edge of the woods before quitting, hard to count them when they bunch up and move around. Now we are down to about a dozen young deer, I didn’t get the notice, but apparently that disease drifted down from Wisconsin and they are being shot and tested, if they don’t have the disease the meat goes to the homeless shelters. Sure wish there would be something else they could do, we hear the shots being fired on the weekends, it’s agonizing.
How nice of Harry Reid to show us his vacation cottage.
Hoffer said: “The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.”
In other words, the losers are the ones who have to find a face in a mass movement, who have to get a bully behind them to get noticed. I wonder about Jihad Jane and people like that, if they aren’t projecting their own weakness on a sympathy group so that they can act out violently.
Thanks Patvann for the nice reminisce about Hoffer. He did get disparaged for not being a real intellectual and not being sympathetic enough and it clouded his name.
Sheesh! What filibuster? Those bad Republicans are leaving Harry Reid no alternative, he’s going to have to change the filibuster “tool”……next year. Dan Reihl is a bit wound up about it,
Enjoy:
http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2010/03/harry-reid-to-reform-filibuster-from-home-in-nevada-next-year.html
I read the other day that Dennis Miller said Reid sounds like a broken caulk gun.
>>He did get disparaged for not being a real intellectual…>>
He was a self educated man. As such, he lacked the proper credentials to get recognized as someone who was an intellectual.
Not that he wasn’t, mind you – he just lacked the credentials. It tells you something about a person when they need a stamp of approval by a particular authority before they can recognize the quality of the finished product.
NEWGUY40 you gave it away, someone will surely get there where the libtards lives and deliver a 100 pounds bag of mothballs bye
It was in the 50’s yesterday, there were some neighbors out working on their lawns, bit early, but, Happy spring everyone, it’s coming, it’s finally coming!
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=163600&id=1844278482
The farm in springtime with one of the icky old elms that kind of survived the ice storm:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=163616&id=1844278482
Someone messing around in Mata’s front yard:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=163572&id=1844278482
OLD TROOPER2 did you see CARY’link about a soldier in MARJA? now it seems like your guys want to play baseball? bye
@ilovebeeswarzone: LOL! He should come play for the Yankees and give a whole new meaning to “Bronx Bombers”! 🙂
like you said CARY ,he is quite a hero ,i was just reading bbc news of an american teacher was jogging in ALASKA and was drag out of the road and kille by wolves as much as 4 of them,they mention that they are getting very aggressive,bye.
If we could get a dozen skunks to take up residence in congress… would it be enough to get them to quit legislating…. nah, probably not, there’s already 400+ skunks there and they’re immune to their own smell!
This is a must see. Takes only 4 minutes. You can plainly see just how destructinve the Dems are with their plan. This guy from MI is a true winner. Please, please watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=G44NCvNDLfc
Matt Damon’s baby picture, how cute!
This morning as I was surfing by MSNBC (honest, I wasn ‘t watching it) I caught a few words about Olberman and sad and praying by some maudlin ‘hole, and I thought the big T&RD had passed (this guy was really pouring it on, it was so icky). Turned out to be that the Pillsbury doughboy was on leave because of an ailing father. Quel tragicue!!!! Was I disappointed!
http://www.nypost.com/rw/nypost/2010/03/15/news/photos_galleries/rielle_hunter/cropped/SPL42993_002101817–350×600.jpg
If you think Progressive Socialists aren’t mentally handicapped, think about John Edwards giving up a run for the presidency for this hot little number.
Good grief!
Guess who:
Them hips be hummin in the wind.
I wouldn’t touch that with BRob’s “johnson”, and StageRt pushin.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Mr. O’Bamma……NOT!!!!!
i look at the picture and y’all mention skunk i did not reconnize that one he must be a southern skunk or from China ,because my skunk up north has the white line from the head to tail,no white spot on the face,