Good one, Peregrin. The Founders, or, at least, some of them, anticipated to some degree corporations and religion uniting to form a government detrimental to both the people’s liberty and good sense, but they didn’t count on the massive amounts of money right-wingnuts and corporatists have pumped into spreading their message and the modern tools of marketing and PR — especially the sort of over-the-air propaganda pioneered by Joseph Goebbels for Hitler’s benefit and the slick image restylings and rebrandings of Edward Bernays and his descendants.
In late 18th century America, the idea that you would hand over your government to a for-profit corporation was laughable (as it should be today) and the Founders never thought we would reach a state where we’d allow pious nuts to make our public schools into academies of ignorance.
They were children of the New Enlightenment of the Renaissance and can be forgiven for not forseeing a time when some Americans want to crawl back to the Dark Ages.
To think that a half-wit ‘rodeo clown’ like Glenn Beck misuses quotes by Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson on his show and some people buy it without question, shows how abysmally low much of the country has descended. As I’ve said before, such stupidity never goes unpunished, and I think our tab hasn’t quite been paid off yet.
Comment by RS Janes — September 25, 2009 @ 3:28 am
Good one, Peregrin. The Founders, or, at least, some of them, anticipated to some degree corporations and religion uniting to form a government detrimental to both the people’s liberty and good sense, but they didn’t count on the massive amounts of money right-wingnuts and corporatists have pumped into spreading their message and the modern tools of marketing and PR — especially the sort of over-the-air propaganda pioneered by Joseph Goebbels for Hitler’s benefit and the slick image restylings and rebrandings of Edward Bernays and his descendants.
In late 18th century America, the idea that you would hand over your government to a for-profit corporation was laughable (as it should be today) and the Founders never thought we would reach a state where we’d allow pious nuts to make our public schools into academies of ignorance.
They were children of the New Enlightenment of the Renaissance and can be forgiven for not forseeing a time when some Americans want to crawl back to the Dark Ages.
To think that a half-wit ‘rodeo clown’ like Glenn Beck misuses quotes by Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson on his show and some people buy it without question, shows how abysmally low much of the country has descended. As I’ve said before, such stupidity never goes unpunished, and I think our tab hasn’t quite been paid off yet.
Comment by RS Janes — September 25, 2009 @ 3:28 am