From the bestselling author of What’s the Matter with Kansas?, a wonderfully insightful and sardonic look at why the worst economy since the 1930s has brought about the revival of conservatism

Economic catastrophe usually brings social protest and demands for change—or at least it’s supposed to. But when Thomas Frank set out in 2009 to look for expressions of American discontent, all he could find were loud demands that the economic system be made even harsher on the recession’s victims and that society’s traditional winners receive even grander prizes. The American Right, which had seemed moribund after the election of 2008, was strangely reinvigorated by the arrival of hard times. The Tea Party movement demanded not that we question the failed system but that we reaffirm our commitment to it. Republicans in Congress embarked on a bold strategy of total opposition to the liberal state. And TV phenom Glenn Beck demonstrated the commercial potential of heroic paranoia and the purest libertarian economics.

In Pity the Billionaire, Frank, the great chronicler of American paradox, examines the peculiar mechanism by which dire economic circumstances have delivered wildly unexpected political results. Using firsthand reporting, a deep knowledge of the American Right, and a wicked sense of humor, he gives us the first full diagnosis of the cultural malady that has transformed collapse into profit, reconceived the Founding Fathers as heroes from an Ayn Rand novel, and enlisted the powerless in a fan club for the prosperous. The understanding Frank reaches is at once startling, original, and profound.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Thomas Frank

Thomas Frank is the author of Pity the Billionaire, The Wrecking Crew, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, and One Market Under God. A former opinion columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Frank is the founding editor of The Baffler and a monthly columnist for Harper’s. He lives outside Washington, D.C.

Editorial Reviews

“No one fools Thomas Frank, who is the sharpest, funniest, most intellectually voracious political commentator on the scene. In Pity the Billionaire he has written a brilliant expose of the most breath-taking ruse in American political history: how the right turned the biggest capitalist breakdown since 1929 into an opportunity for themselves.” —Barbara Ehrenreich

“Thomas Frank has crossed the Styx and returned to sing of the tortured, tormented souls of the Tea Party and their sufferings in the Socialist America they have conjured from thin air. This he does with grace, style and humor, which not all of his subjects share. Be glad that in this election year you can read Pity the Billionaire instead of turning on the television or the radio or your computer.  Pity the Billionaire?  Hell. Pity us all.” —James K. Galbraith

Columnist Frank (The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, 2008, etc.) proposes a few possible explanations. The Obama administration has been too compromised with financial bailouts and has had nothing else substantial to offer, and business sponsors have provided huge amounts of funding and air time. The author doesn’t think the principal conservatives are at all concerned with truth, but he ridicules the current administration’s insistence on sticking with policies that fail; in this sense he compares Obama to Herbert Hoover. He shows that the slightest shift in approach, like the one Jesse Jones brought to the Hoover-created Reconstruction Finance Corporation, can be crucial in reorganizing financial flows. Frank skewers the Koch Brothers and Fox News for shamelessly promoting the interests of those rescued from their own disasters, while opposing bailouts, and shows how Glenn Beck and others have built their media outreach by perverting themes from the 1930s. He also shows the political pressure groups, such as former Republican House Speaker Richard Armey’s Koch-funded Freedom Works train their activists on the “leadership secrets of the Communist Party.” Another theme Frank pursues is the trend of the new right leaning on the old left. Where it is all going, he fears, is toward dismantling the remaining social safety net in submission to the dictates of the “free market.” - Kirkus Reviews

How Conservatives Spin the Nation’s Predicament

The New York Times Book Review – January 2, 2012 (Excerpt)

“Pity the Billionaire,” by Thomas Frank, is a showcase example of the problems that can be created by the long lead time (six to nine months or more if a project has not been fast-tracked) involved in publishing a topical book in an age when news is instantaneous, and there is 24/7, wall-to-wall coverage of hot-button issues.

Mr. Frank’s thesis is that in the wake of the fiscal calamities of 2008 — at a time when unemployment remains high, when many ordinary people are reeling from the recession, and you might expect anger at the deregulatory policies that enabled banks to run amok — conservatives have managed a surreal comeback. The Tea Party has become a vocal force, the Republicans surged to capture the House in the 2010 midterms, and the right, in his view, has doubled down on the dream of a “laissez-faire utopia.” Conservatives have managed this resurgence, Mr. Frank argues, by hijacking public anger over the bailouts and the bad economy and by shifting “the burden of villainy from Wall Street to government.”

In explicating this hypothesis, Mr. Frank makes only passing mention of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began protests last September, apparently too late to get any real attention in this book. Their denunciations of corporate greed, social inequality and fiscal malfeasance have helped shift the national conversation, yet he argues, “as I write this, the most effective political response” to the worst recession since the ’30s has been a campaign by conservatives “to roll back regulation, to strip government employees of the right to collectively bargain, and to clamp down on federal spending. [Read the full article...]

The Rise of the American Oligarchy

The New York Times Book Review – January 5, 2012 (Excerpt)

Thomas Frank is the thinking person’s Michael Moore. If Moore, the left-wing filmmaker, had Frank’s Ph.D. (in history from the University of Chicago), he might produce books like this one and Frank’s previous best seller, “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”

As you can tell from its ham-fisted title, “Pity the Billionaire” is not the world’s most subtle political critique. But subtlety isn’t everything. Frank’s best moments come when his contempt boils over and his inner grouch is released.

This book is Frank’s interpretation of developments since “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” was published eight years ago. Frank’s thesis here is basically that the thesis of the old book has been confirmed. He will not persuade anybody who does not already buy the Tom Frank line. But those who do (as I do, more or less) will enjoy a very good time having their predispositions massaged.

Frank sometimes writes in an arch voice that seemed familiar when I first encountered it but that I couldn’t place. Then I read in his book-jacket bio that he writes for Harper’s Magazine, and I thought, “Zounds, Watson, the man may have Lapham’s Disease.” The symptoms of this malady, named after the longtime editor of Harper’s, Lewis H. Lapham (now of Lapham’s Quarterly), include an elevated, orotund, deeply ironic prose style that, in severe cases, reveals almost nothing about what the topic is or what the author wishes to say about it except for a general sense of superiority to everyone and everything around. [Read the full article...]

‘Pity The Billionaire’: The Right’s Unlikely Comeback

NPR Book Review – January 6, 2012 (Excerpt)

How did the economic collapse of 2008 and 2009 give birth to a conservative populist revolt?

That’s the question Thomas Frank tries to answer in his new book — and sharp-tongued liberal polemic — Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right.

Frank, whose previous books include What’s the Matter with Kansas?, writes that the recent revival of the right is just as extraordinary as “if the public had demanded dozens of new nuclear power plants in the days after the Three Mile Island disaster.”

“Before 2009,” Frank writes, “the man in the bread line did not ordinarily weep for the man lounging on his yacht.” And yet, Frank says, that’s become the central paradox of our time.

“We’ve just come through this extraordinary financial collapse. We know that this was almost directly the result of 30 years of bank deregulation and of all the sort of financial experimentation that our government encouraged,” he tells NPR’s Melissa Block. “And what the Tea Party movement and what the conservative revival generally is telling us to do is … double down on that ideology that we’ve been following all these years.” [Read the full article...]

Book review: ‘Pity the Billionaire,’ by Thomas Frank

The Washington Post Book Review – January 13, 2012 (Excerpt)

Chronicling the American political zeitgeist has never been easy — voters are fickle beasts — and in the past few years it’s been nearly impossible to keep up. The tea party movement, that nascent power that drove the 2010 elections, has seen its popularity and influence wane as new movements on the left — Occupy Wall Street, for instance — have stormed onto the stage. Pity the soul who is trying to document the chaotic scene — someone like, say, Thomas Frank.

In the past decade, Frank has created a voice that is part reporter, part op-ed columnist and part late-night comic, all looking through a liberal political prism. Since 2004, when his best-selling “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” was published, he has become an important voice for the political left. He is one of its chief political decoders, explaining how conservatives have captured the votes of people who should be voting Democratic — or at least who Frank thinks should be voting Democratic. [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

William F. Buckley Jr., was the foremost architect of the conservative movement that swept the American political landscape from the 1960s to the early 2000s. When Buckley launched National Review in 1955, conservatism was a beleaguered, fringe segment of the Republican Party. Three decades later Ronald Reagan-who credited National Review with shaping his beliefs-was in the White House. Buckley and his allies devised a new-model conservatism that replaced traditional ideals with a passionate belief in the free market, religious faith, and an aggressive stance on foreign policy.

Buckley was an eloquent writer and brilliant polemicist whose works are still required texts for conservatives. His TV show Firing Line and his campaign for mayor of New York City made him a celebrity; his wit and zest for combat made conservatism fun. But Buckley was far more than a controversialist. Deploying his uncommon charm, shrewdly building alliances, and refusing to compromise on core principles, he almost single-handedly transformed conservatism from a set of retrograde attitudes into a revolutionary force. Scholar Carl T. Bogus gives us the most authoritative biography ever published of this vital, larger-than-life figure.

About Carl T. Bogus

Carl T. Bogus is professor of law at Roger Williams University and a nationally recognized expert on politics, law, and the Constitution. His previous books include Why Lawsuits are Good for America and The Second Amendment in Law and History (co-editor).

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

“Carl T. Bogus has given us a very fine biography of William F. Buckley Jr., the founder and central figure of the American conservative movement. Without Buckley we might not have had the Reagan presidency. As editor of National Review, columnist, author of many books, and host of the TV show Firing Line, Buckley seemed to be everywhere. Nothing like this had happened in American history.”—Jeffrey Hart, Professor of English Emeritus, Dartmouth College; former senior editor, National Review; author, The Making of the Conservative Mind; National Review and its Times

“I found this book to be well-written,well-informed, and fair minded. Carl Bogus is very solid on the various forms of conservatism in the 50s and 60s and Buckley’s role in defining his version. He also includes terrific, lengthy passages on Vietnam, civil rights, Reagan, Mayor Lindsay, Ayn Rand, and Russell Kirk.”—James Patterson, Brown University, Bancroft Prize-winning author of Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974

“Carl Bogus has given us a terrific new book on William F. Buckley that is neither hagiography nor ideological axe-grinding. Buckley is a serious and thoughtful discussion of the nature of modern American conservatism and Buckley’s role in shaping it. Liberals and conservatives will both gain immensely from this readable and entertaining work of scholarship.”—Vincent J. Cannato, author of The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and his Struggle to Save New York

William F. Buckley Jr.: Right Man, Right Time

The New York Times Book Review – December 9, 2011 (Excerpt)

William F. Buckley Jr. was an immodest man with much to be immodest about. Not only was he the high priest of the modern American conservative movement and the founding editor in chief of its leading intellectual publication, National Review; he was also a gifted polemicist, best-selling novelist, sesquipedalian speaker, television star, political candidate, yachtsman, harpsichordist, wit and bon vivant. Small wonder that I once saw him nod approvingly when a tongue-tied freshman referred to his 1951 autobiographical best seller as “God as Man at Yale.” He performed his many roles with such panache, and such obvious enjoyment of being William F. Buckley Jr., that he captivated people who otherwise would have despised someone who did much to move the United States politically to the right from the early 1950s until his death in 2008. But even liberals had to laugh when Buckley, asked whether he slouched in his chair as host of the TV program “Firing Line” because he couldn’t think on his feet, drawled, “It is hard . . . to stand up . . . under the weight . . . of all that I know.”

Perhaps the most notable distinction of Carl T. Bogus’s generally admiring biography, “Buckley,” is that the author, a law professor at Roger Williams University, is a self-professed liberal. At a time when liberals and conservatives agree on almost nothing, both sides can unite in their esteem for Buckley. What this unlikely convergence suggests, however, is that neither side has an accurate view of his real significance. The left misconceives his role as the founder of the conservative movement, and the right ignores how far the movement has diverged from Buckley’s example. [Read the full article...]

William F. Buckley, Father Of American Conservatism

NPR Book Review – December 17, 2011 (Excerpt)

When William F. Buckley burst onto the national scene in 1955, conservatism was a dead letter in American politics.

“Lots of people thought that it was outdated, anachronistic, prehistoric, foolish, not very intelligent,” Carl Bogus tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.

Bogus is the author of a new biography, Buckley: William F. Buckley and the Rise of American Conservatism. He says that back in the 1950s and ’60s, there really was an established liberal elite in America, which controlled both political parties.

Buckley set out to change that. As a recent Yale graduate, he published a book called God and Man at Yale, which took the university to task for failing to promote Christianity and free market economics.

“He collapsed in that book religion, economics and political ideology,” Bogus says, producing the mix of ideas we recognize today as conservatism: free-market capitalism, support for American military actions, libertarianism and social conservatism.

“It was Buckley who made that coalition. He held within him all … of those beliefs. He was what we call today a neoconservative, a social conservative and a libertarian.”

Buckley founded the magazine National Review to popularize those beliefs and create a kind of conservative intelligentsia that could bring renewed attention and respectability to the movement. [Read the full article...]

Book review: ‘Buckley,’ a biography by Carl T. Bogus

The Washington Post Book Review – December 30, 2011 (Excerpt)

Half a century ago, when he was only 35 — already one of the country’s foremost debaters and brimming with elan, but long before he started his syndicated column, mounted his (presciently virtual) campaign for mayor of New York City, began hosting “Firing Line,” threatened to sock Gore Vidal in the face, sailed across the Atlantic or published a dozen spy thrillers — William F. Buckley Jr. could not have imagined that he, or his ideas, would actually prevail.

So deeply ingrained in the America of his formative years was the philosophy of liberalism that Buckley, as a conservative, was resigned to an eternity of frustration in the minority. Of this despair he made no secret. On the fifth anniversary of his upstart right-wing journal, National Review, Buckley congratulated the ballroom audience in New York’s Plaza Hotel, in November 1960, for not succumbing to the era’s “modish” intellectual fashions. Most notable among them, in Buckley’s eyes, was “the notion that all points of view are equally valid, except perhaps that point of view which says they are not.” [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

What are the different types of Teapartyism?

There are five types of Teapartyism, each based on the kind of symptoms the person has at the time of assessment:

• Paranoid Teapartyism: The individual is preoccupied with one or more delusions or many auditory hallucinations but does not have symptoms of disorganized Teapartyism.

• Disorganized Teapartyism: Prominent symptoms are disorganized speech and behavior, as well as flat or inappropriate affect. The person does not have enough symptoms to be characterized as catatonic schizophrenic.

• Catatonic Teapartyism: The person with this type of Teapartyism primarily has at least two of the following symptoms: difficulty moving, resistance to moving, excessive movement, abnormal movements, and/or repeating what others say or do.

• Undifferentiated Teapartyism: This is characterized by episodes of two or more of the following symptoms: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech or behavior, catatonic behavior or negative symptoms, but the individual does not qualify for a diagnosis of paranoid, disorganized, or catatonic type of Teapartyism.

• Residual Teapartyism: While the full-blown characteristic positive symptoms of Teapartyism (those that involve an excess of normal behavior, such as delusions, paranoia, or heightened sensitivity) are absent, the sufferer has less severe forms of the disorder or has only negative symptoms (symptoms characterized by a decrease in function, such as withdrawal, disinterest, and not speaking).

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How I (Almost) Got A Book Deal Through Sex, Lies, And Deceit

Stuart Martin Berry has only three months left to find a publisher for his first novel. In a desperate attempt to reach his goal he leaves his home to live in New York. His wife has given him free rein to do whatever it takes to get a book deal. Her only request was not to give her any details on how he got there. If he fails he will be forced to give up his dream of being a famous writer and take a regular forty hour a week job. For Stuart this is sufficient motivation to start a three month adventure full of sex, lies, and deceit, without losing focus of the ultimate goal. When he finally reaches the finish line, he has evolved and become a top expert in the publishing world.

The question remains, what does it take these days to get a book deal with a traditional publisher? What do you do when, hypothetically, you are running out of time and mere talent is not the be-all and end-all?

Stuart Martin Berry has found the answer: If you can’t impress them with your talent, baffle them with your bull-shit. [Read more, including an excerpt]

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The Greenfielder

First of all, before you continue reading, please consider the location that this disturbing news stems from: Greenfield, Massachusetts. Greenfield, while located in a state that includes Harvard University and MIT, is not blessed with great educational demographics. Greenfield, Massachusetts still acts primarily as a farmers’ community, and I go with the German proverb “What the farmer doesn’t know, he won’t eat.” And, as far as my experience of living here goes, there is a lot that the typical Greenfielder doesn’t know.

Let me add a few more facts about life in Greenfield, Massachusetts: We have a right-wing columnist writing for the local newspaper, The Recorder, who declares women as acceptable as long as they can cook and change diapers. He writes, it has to do with “gender equity.” I kid you not, he wrote it, and I have the clips to prove it. The Recorder used to have an image of being liberal, and I suspect that the editor hired the man to prove a hard-core Republican’s incompetence. However, that is pure speculation on my part.

Add to the picture our local KKK rep (well, not really, but he should be) whose letters to the editor are being published on a regular basis. His writings are also evidence that the concept of fair sampling of opinions went down the toilet. This person hates our Governor Duval Patrick (who happens to be African-American), football star Michael Vick (who happens to be African-American), our President (who happens to be African-American), and “our uppity First Lady” (who happens to be African-American). And yes, he wrote (and The Recorder published) the phrase “our uppity First Lady,” and, yet again, I have the clip to prove it. As a side information, the word “uppity” was used in Southern States in combination with the “N” word.

Sometimes I wish a large meteor would hit Greenfield, Massachusetts (while my family and I are out of town) and, yet again, rid us of the dinosaurs.

Now, in time for the 4th of July weekend, there was another letter to the editor by Ernest B. LaPlante of Greenfield, Massachusetts. He had received a “disturbing” email from “a friend,” but he is not sure whether this “friend” is male or female.

I have just received an email from a friend and while I cannot guarantee the veracity of the email, I am deeply disturbed if the subject of the email is true. The author of the email tells of the changes that have occurred in the White House since the time of occupancy by our current President. According to him or her, the Oval Office has been redecorated and stripped of the traditional red, white and blue and replaced with middle east wallpaper, drapes and decor. The hallway where the President meets with the press now contains middle east furniture and drapes and when he speaks from the White House the only thing behind him is a yellow drape with Arabic symbols.

If this were in his private home, I would believe he [h]as the right to hang anything that pleased him. However, it is my firm belief the White House belongs to America. That’s you and me and millions like us and as such should display things that show our history, philosophy and ideology, things that say loud and clear THIS IS AMERICA. I can’t believe that our forefathers fought and died for our freedom so that someone could hang anything other than things representative of America in the White House.

Now I would think that Mr. Obama should be given the opportunity to remove all material from the White House that is not American and be allowed to place it in or on his personal property and then if not removed, the material should be placed on the front lawn of the White House and burned. And our President should decide whether he wishes to be Christian American or middle east Muslim.

Ernest B. LaPlante, Greenfield – Letter to the Editor, The Recorder,  July 2, 2011

The letter was followed by an editor’s note. stating that the information contained in the e-mail – one of a long series of anti-Obama propaganda pieces created by his political enemies – is wrong. The President has not changed the decor of the Oval Office. Nor was it red, white, and blue under George W. Bush, or, in fact, the “traditional” color scheme. The drapes in his office were there previously and contain no “Arabic” symbols.

While I applaud the editor’s effort, The Recorder should have applied some dignity and compassion and spare Mr. LaPlante the embarrassment by not publishing the letter.

My turn on the matter is: There is a great number of residents in this country who were not born with the privilege of US citizenship. They need to apply for it. In order to deserve US citizenship they must, among other requirements, pass a test to prove their knowledge not only of US history but also current events and circumstances. I, personally, doubt that Mr. LaPLante would stand a chance to pass that test.

The fact remains, US citizenship is a privilege. Every US citizen has the indisputable right to be proud of being an American. However, American citizenship also includes a responsibility, and that responsibility is to know what you are proud of. Familiarize yourself with the facts. Read books. Read newspapers. Watch the news on TV. Ignorance is poison to everything that the forefathers fought and died for.

A Happy 4th of July To All Of You!

Wilfried F. Voss is the editor of FrogenYozurt.Com and a Greenfield, Massachusetts resident. The opinions stated here are of mere personal nature and may not necessarily be shared by others.

Charlie Brooker on guardian.co.uk – August 30, 2010

I bring all this up because I’ve been thinking some more about the “Ground Zero mosque” debate. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the horrible brilliance of the opponents’ endlessly parroted, emotionally charged phrase “Ground Zero mosque”, used to describe something which – at the risk of regurgitating last week’s column – isn’t at Ground Zero and isn’t a mosque.

Conservatives, generally, are far more adept at politically reframing concepts by giving them snappy-but-misleading nicknames than liberals. “Loony left”. “Boom-and-bust”. “Flip-flop”. “Ground Zero mosque”. All simplifications or outright lies – but they worked. Like advertisers, the right seems breezily unconcerned about the truth of the slogan, provided it rings up a sale. They slap the words “fun-size” on the packaging and wait for the public to buy it.

The left, meanwhile, tends to respond by flinging back tired old insults. Bastards! Fascists! Racists! This is wrong on several counts. For one thing, it’s counter-productive. Nothing riles an anti-mosque demonstrator more than being called a bigot. It’s a grotesque, misleading smear on a diverse group of individuals – a bit like claiming all Muslims are terrorists (which, coincidentally, the guy beside them is currently doing through a loudhailer). But worse than being insulting, it’s just plain unimaginative. At least the right bothers to invent a new buzzword each time it wants to fart some monstrous new lie into the ecosystem. And they’re often infuriatingly well-crafted buzzwords – combining impact with audacious disingenuousness. There must be an evil Don Draper tucked away somewhere coining these things, these catchy fibs, these deceptive jingles.

Have you tried doing it yourself? It’s not easy. I was hoping to illustrate this article with some self-created buzzwords for leftwingers to use. The first one I came up with was “molehill mountaineer”, a pejorative term to describe the sort of perpetually furious rightwing weevil who spends their life calculatedly conflating issues such as the “Ground Zero mosque” into gigantic media crapgasms. But then I realised that “molehill mountaineer” could equally be applied to many on the left too. So that’s no good. [Read the full article...]

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I just discussed an article printed in the local newspaper, The Recorder, with my wife. She had kept it for me to read and was interested in my opinion about it. Before I share my – utterly unimportant – opinion, let me quote from the article (March 3, 2010) titled A Conservative’s Lament by Ben S. Clarke. The first two paragraphs read:

“I have always resented the liberal presumption of intolerance among conservatives – the notion that we huddle around campfires in endangered forests and seethe in our abhorrence of gays, ethnic minorities, illegal immigrants and France.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not proposing we amend the Constitution and smuggle in an undocumented lesbian from Honduras to run for president. But I would at least hear her out. Assuming she could cook.

…Ben Clarke spent the past 10 years working as a speechwriter and political consultant in Washington, D.C. He has recently relocated back to Greenfield, where he works as a freelance writer.” (Meaning, after George 43 there was no more job for him.)

Okay… Assuming she could cook. I am still not sure whether he was joking or not, and if he thought he was joking, maybe he should think twice about his writing. My analysis, leaving that last degrading comment unanswered for the moment, is that Ben Clarke is as divisive as the rest of hardcore conservatives he accuses as being out of touch with reality. What I didn’t like in his article was the touch of aggressiveness against everything and everybody who is not on his side, especially the utter hatred pointed against liberals. Regardless of my personal political affiliation, I despise radicals, may they be left or right, and Ben S. Clarke is apparently one of them. I am always shocked when I hear of young people hanging on to old ideas that reflect an utter incompetence to learn from experience.

Ben S. Clarke, as far as I know (his mother, my wife, and I are on the board of the Franklin County Community Meal Program), was born and raised here in Greenfield, and he reflects an attitude I see in many Greenfielders who are so vehemently opposed to changes in any shape or form. When the typical – in all regularity conservative – Greenfielder can’t have it his way, he comes up with lies. A comment like Assuming she could cook is written proof that Ben Clarke is out of touch with reality. His blabbering definitely strengthens the theory that liberals are more intelligent than conservatives.

P.S. Let’s see if Ben S. Clarke has his name on Google Alerts…;-)

Supplement – August 27, 2010

In retrospective, Ben S. Clarke and I had a few e-mails  going back and forth after a friend, who is not as technology-phobic as Ben, told him about my writings. He didn’t take my posts personally and even encouraged me to continue and bash him. I can only speculate regarding his intentions (Maybe he enjoys the “popularity”), but over time everybody in Franklin County reading the local Newspaper, The Recorder, is now familiar with his uncommon sense.

Conservatives Have Lower IQ

The more intelligent people are, the more they are willing to engage into something new. Conservatives and religious people, in turn, do have a lower intelligence quotient. Psychologists believe, the phenomena can be explained through an evolution-biological view.

It is a daily business in the political arena to categorize an opponent as naive, simple, and stupid. A new study conducted by psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa could strengthen the beliefs of lefties and liberals that they are indeed smarter than their conservative counterparts. According to Kanazawa, intelligent people tend more easily to accept social values as well as political and religious convictions new to the human evolution. The preservation of old values is, however, a matter of conservatives, who are supposedly less intelligent.

The scientist, in cooperation with his colleagues at the London School of Economics and Political Science, analyzed a survey of 14,000 US adolescents conducted between the year 2001 and 2002. One question addressed their level of religious beliefs. The options they were given ranged from “not at all religious”, “somewhat religious”, “moderately religious”, and “very religious.” The “not at all religious” group showed the highest IQ (103), while the “very religious” group came up with an average IQ of 97. This is, after all, only a minute but detectable difference. The average IQ of the entire population lies at 100.

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health – used by the London scientists – also inquired the adolescents’ political convictions. As the scientists wrote in Social Psychology Quarterly, those who saw themselves as “very liberal” reached an IQ of 106, while those who characterized themselves as “very conservative” had only an average IQ of 95.

“Intelligence was advantageous for our ancestors when it came to solve new emerging problems for which they had no existing solutions,” says Kanazawa. For the same reason, intelligent people would detect and understand such scenarios sooner. The same is true when it comes to rethinking values and lifestyles. A higher IQ makes it possible to go new ways that are not compliant with values and convictions developed in the course of evolution.

The London scientist also claims, conservatives primarily take care of their family and friends, while lefties and liberals also have a heart for foreigners, people with whom they are in no direct genetical relationship. This may be a new development in evolution.

However, in case you are a lefty or liberal, don’t get too excited about the Kanazawa study. There are some slight side effects. People with higher IQs are often dissatisfied with their lives and make less money than conservatives.

Reference: http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,680956,00.html

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The Bleeding Hills

A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
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- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

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