Papantonio: Republicans Crippled By Fear

[GoLeft TV]

When you drill down to the center of what most motivates a traditional conservative, you will find that they are terrified by the idea of changing the way they view the world. It is a mentality that prevented 13th century Europeans from sailing ships too far in any one direction. They were fearful of sailing off the edge of a flat earth. The idea of a flat earth was the only way they could see it. Once they overcame their fear and made it to North America, the conservative American Tories were too terrified to declare independence from Great Britain because that change was too dramatic. A king was all they knew – All they could accept. Lord knows how frightening ideas like evolution, the United Nations, Lady Gaga, and Obama has to be for the die-hard conservative. Understand it was that same kind of inflexible fanatic bunch of social, political conservatives who wanted to murder Galileo and Copernicus because they had new ideas about how the world worked. Change has always caused suffering for neocons.

[Blue Owl]

1. I do love the smell of a freshly-hobbled GOP in the morning...

[starroute]

2. I think his argument here is offbase

Medieval Europeans didn't think the Earth was flat. They knew it was round, had a pretty good idea of the size, and believed there was no reasonable way of sailing west to get from Europe to China. That wasn't an irrational fear.

Columbus was the weird one. He deliberately used the smallest available estimate of the size of the Earth and the largest available estimate of the size of Asia to argue that the trip wasn't all that far. (He may also have had access to secret Portuguese documents on the existence of the Americas that he didn't want to reveal.)

Similarly, nobody ever wanted to murder Copernicus -- and the people who forced Galileo to recant were highly educated leaders of the Catholic Church, not 17th century Italian rednecks.

In much the same way, the Tories during the Revolution weren't terrified of living without a king. They were the plutocrats of their day and knew that a popular revolution would be bad for business. The people who supported the Revolution most fervently were poor farmers, plus a certain number of wealthy intellectuals.

These days, the real source of opposition to progressive change isn't fear. Just as during the Revolution, it's our own plutocrats, who know that belief in global warming threatens their profits and that belief in evolution threatens their credo that capitalism is a permanent fact of life and will never, ever go away.

There certainly is conservative fear of change to deal with, but that kind of irrational fear mostly involves people whose traditional way of life has already been turned topsy-turvy by modernization, urbanization, and globalization. The plutocrats have been really effective at getting those people to support their chosen candidates -- but the same fear of change can just as easily turn against them when they start promising to do away with Medicaid and Medicare, which seems to be happening now in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

So altogether, I thing Papantonio has not only got his history wrong but is unwittingly playing into a blame-the-victim mentality.

[DhhD]

4. Wealthy people could read and go to college. They were very few in number.

Most all the people were poor and lived very short lives due to the conditions surrounding them due to their lack of knowledge of microorganism/disease, lack of nutrition and lodging. Life expectancy was about 40 years of age. With little medical knowledge, infant mortality rate was very high.

I am guessing that you were home schooled and do not know what it is really like out there. Perhaps you might go to a community college library and go on line to find a real history of the conditions in France before the French Revolution, where only the poor and middle class were taxed. The noble men Noblemen paid no taxes. While you are at the library you might find the reasons for the other four great revolutions of the world and eyeopening read.

Must earlier in time, there was only one established Library in the entire world. It and its collection moved around the world depending on who was the ruling world empire at the time. Please feel free to study this movement.

[DhhD]

3. Removal of Thomas Jefferson in the founding of America by the forefathers

has also been removed in Texas new textbooks. The forefathers discussed that the documents of early America were based on democracy and not religion. The Islamic Republic of Iran is an example of a nation set up through religion. We the people came to America to practice from the King James Version of the Bible that teaches the separation of church/faith and state/law as taught by Moses and Paul.

Texas Conservatives removed Thomas Jefferson from its new history textbooks. Latest test results show that around 65% of 9th grade students can not pass a reading and writing English test. Phonetics was removed from the curriculum several years ago.

The thought that states across America buy textbooks from Texas, is scary to me.

Thanks for reminding us to WATCH this!

[drynberg]

5. HOW DO YOU SPELL O-R-W-E-L-L-I-A-N ?

Don't get lost in disputes about history details, that isn't the important part folks. S/he who controls the writing of the history books shapes minds and future attitudes. This is the important part. Pap is right on. Bless us all.