It is so very late in the day.A recent poll conducted by the University of Pennsylvania finds that residents of the United States are poorly informed about basic constitutional provisions.The newly released survey suggests Americans cannot name a single right protected by the First Amendment.According to Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center released Tuesday, 37 percent could not name any of the five rights protected by First Amendment, and just about half (48 percent) could name freedom of speech.
Thursday, September 14, 2017
The cattle-masses of post-America are ready for enslavement
This is some chilling stuff:
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Why memorize the 5 rights when more than likely your employer ignores them at will and with no repurcussions and that's where their daily bread is buttered?
ReplyDeleteHere's why your comment is stupid to the point of infantile:
ReplyDelete1.) When you agree to be employed somewhere, there may be conditions regarding what you say or where. That doesn't mean thatbeyoid such conditions, you can't say whatever you like. Ditto the freedom to assemble. Ditto the freedom of religion - that is, you have the right to pray at your place of work, display Bible-verse plaques at your work station, but probably not to proselytize to your co-workers in work situations, without invitation.
2.) Everybody ought to hold those rights as sacred and defend them ferociously. You should have to "memorize" them like some schoolbook lesson.
3.) Some people aren't employed, such as homemakers, students and the independently wealthy. To make this about employment situations is to narrow the discussion beyond what it is about. It indicates an obsession with something other than what is being discussed - in other words, an inability to recognize what a given topic of discussion is, and focus on that.
In other words, this premise of yours - that the First Amendment is worthless and that it's irrelevant for anyone to be acquainted with it since some employers occasionally violate it and have to be challenged in court - is idiotic.
ReplyDeleteThink what you want, Einstein.
ReplyDeleteBut here is where I (El Stupido) am coming from, why memorize a few fantasy rights that few have:
ReplyDeleteWe seem to have forgotten that private government exists; we believe, incorrectly, that “the state is the only form of government.” Because corporate tyranny takes place in the so-called private sphere, it seems to us like a niche problem for the labor movement, not a civic problem with broad implications for our society, on par with gerrymandering or the rise of the surveillance state. At the same time, we see the corporate world through an eighteenth-century lens. To large corporations, we lend the liberatory aura that, in Smith’s day, surrounded small businesses. This allows
This allows C.E.O.s to “think of themselves as libertarian individualists,” even though they are more like “dictators of little communist governments.”
Even worse, we think of workers the way Smith did—as empowered free agents who, if they don’t like a job, can simply walk away from it. In surveying the economics literature, Anderson finds that economists often cite workers’ ability to quit as proof that companies have no real power over their employees. “This is like saying that Mussolini was not a dictator, because Italians could emigrate,” she writes. It’s absurd, she argues, to imagine that “wherever individuals are free to exit a relationship, authority cannot exist within it.” https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/are-bosses-dictators?mbid=social_facebook
In essence, the cattle masses of America who have to have roofs over their heads and food to put in their bellies are already enslaved and have been since the rise of the corporate tyranny, which really ramped up in the Reagan era.
ReplyDeleteThe author you quote embraces the essence of leftism. Thinks of people as poor helpless souls with no options and no sovereignty over their own lives.
ReplyDeleteBut even so, this is a digression from the point of this post, which is that people have lost sight of that sovereignty that they have over their lives - as enshrined in those First Amendment rights. Most post-American cattle-masses just want to be assured of three squares a day, health insurance, and access to various forms of amusement.
ReplyDeleteConsider two types of people - and I know you know people of both types. One is the entrepreneur, or skilled tradesperson, or artist of some type, generally in charge of how he or she plans his or her day, someone who finds his or her work fulfilling and doing well financially. The other is someone caught up in the pressure cooker of corporate bureaucracy, reporting to a tyrannical boss, mindful of how his or her every action will affect the next performance review. He or she brings the work world home with them, creating family tension. That person's only positive way to view the situation is to keep retirement at the forefront of their thoughts.
ReplyDeleteNow, what is the difference between these two types? Is it not the choices each has made?