big dumb jackass

god, how i love ted rall. he reminds me fondly of the hours and dollars i wasted in an "elite" ivy grad school. i do miss my colleagues the most. watching them wax hither and thither on all sorts of subjuects, viewing some thing in reality and wondering if it would work in theory. what most amuses me though, and rall is the greatest exponent of this technique, is the liberal's insistence on categorizing a certain type of behavior as rotten and then blithely acting in the same way. for example, "there is no such thing as a conservative intellectual". he proclaims from on high a magnificent commandment, ostensibly noting that conservatives are of closed mind, not thoughtful, and incapable of discerning truth through theory. however, it is exactly this type of dogmatic thinking that he condemsn with such a statement. certainly, the hypocrisy should be easy for the effete to see, and i suspect it is. however, liberals give themselves a pass, because they fight for the righteous commandments of the liberal way - - inclusiveness, equality, redistribution . . . yadda yadda. yet, when rall speaks of the traditions of small l liberalism, he neglects to accurately describe what that actually means. it is in now way inherently progressive, as he claims, but rest on the merits of plurality. that all ideas compete openly. might it be that conservative ideas fall into that pantheon. of course they do, but rall wants them eliminated from academic debate. because, like so many other bottom feeders, he wants to prey on the young and impressionable, knowing full well that most of his ideas are without merit and will poorly penetrate the keen minds of those with experience. the pussy's not bad either.