Sunday, September 20, 2009

Remember Hillary Clinton's 1969 Wellesley College thesis on Saul Alinsky?

Wow! Matthew Vadum caught this -- which was actually first reported last weeked while I was covering the 9/12 March On D.C. -- and he has the whole thing in PDF. Brief excerpts:
Democracy is still a radical idea in a world where we often confuse images with realities, words with actions. . . .
In spite of his being featured in the Sunday New York Times, and living a comfortable, expenses-paid life, he considers himself a revolutionary. In a very important way he is. If the ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized, the result would be social revolution. Ironically, this is not a disjunctive projection if considered in the tradition of Western democratic theory. In the first chapter it was pointed out that Alinsky is regarded by many as the proponent of a dangerous socio/political philosophy. As such, he has been feared -- just as Eugene Debs or Walt Whitman or Martin Luther King has been feared, because each embraced the most radical of political faiths -- democracy.
And democracy is a good thing! Maybe if I could have afforded to go to law school like Hillary and Bill Clinton did, I wouldn't have such an "infantile mind," like Professor Walter Williams and Professor Thomas DiLorenzo.

Go to law school kids, or else!

UPDATE: On reading through this loopy thesis, am I the only one who gets the feeling that if Bill didn't inhale, Hillary certainly did? Not that heavy drug use in college permanently impairs the ability to compose cogent prose, but . . .

UPDATE II: Wow! Talk about your weird coincidences, but as soon as I finished adding that first update, I went to comment moderation and found an anonymous comment on a previous post:
Anonymous said...
Doug Mataconis of "Below the Beltway" is a walking, talking mini-me to Charles Johnson. Nevertheless, his blog is listed under "Our Favorite Blogs" on your website. Have you ever bothered to read the crap he posts on his blogsite? He's no conservative, he's anti-homeschooling and violently anti-creationism, anti-Palin, in short, he's almost the antithesis of what this blog site stands for. "Below the Beltway" sucks. You heard it here first.
Sun Sep 20, 10:09:00 AM
So it appears that, even while I was busy traffic-baiting Professor Glenn Reynolds, this anonymous commenter was reading my post about gutless God-hater Charles Johnson and flaming Doug Mataconis. But whereas Charles Johnson is clearly evil, perhaps Mr. Mataconis is merely wrong. As I said last night, there is a difference between wrong and evil:
To fart in a crowded elevator is wrong, but does not necessarily make the perpetrator evil.
Generally speaking, it has been my experience that courtesy and a healthy sense of humor can prevent unnecessary arguments. So let us consider the biography of Doug Mataconis:
All I know is that the evidence is clear that Western Civilization is in a fight for its own survival right now.
On this, we are very much in agreement, and only a fool would desire to insult a man who wishes to fight for the survival of Western Civilization. Let us therefore read further:
Being from New Jersey . . . I am a huge science fiction fan . . .
Which is to say, his mama wouldn't let him play football.
In addition to writing, I enjoy listening to music, specifically jazz. . . . I’m a big Frank Sinatra fan . . .
As am I, having performed Sinatra's tunes many times in karaoke and even, occasionally, leading the audience in a Rockettes-style kick-line dance. NTTAWWT.
In college, I was a subscriber to National Review . . .
In college, I subscribed to Creem magazine. ("Boy Howdy!")
I’m a 37 year old attorney . . . practicing law . . .
(King Henry VI, Part II, Act 4, Scene ii, Dick the Butcher; cf., Luke 11:46.)
When I’m not enjoying time with my wife and dog . . .
Well, just because she's from Ohio, that's no reason to insult your own wife, sir. Of course, I married the only good-looking woman from Ohio, so if you insist that your wife is a dog, well, I have no desire to argue with you. Courtesy and humor . . .

At any rate, you see what can happen. If a blogger starts paying too much attention to his commenters, he might lose his sense of humor. So despite the insulting tone of this anonymous commenter, let me emphasize that I have never meant any insult to you, Mr. Mataconis, but as to what you said about Mrs. Mataconis, that's between you and her.

3 comments:

  1. A better quality OCRed version can be found here:

    Hillary Clinton’s Thesis, Wellesley College (1969)

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  2. Hilarious! It made me break my rule about not reading blogs aloud to other people who mostly just want to be left alone to watch the TV in peace. Got a chuckle, too.

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  3. All I'm saying is READ Doug Mataconis' writings. His views, whether due to being "wrong" or "evil", are almost the exact opposite of yours. He's playing you for a fool, accepting all your traffic that you direct his way, while laughing at you behind your back as a racist backwards Bible thumping boob. There is not a dime's difference in the content of LGF and "Below the Beltway." And I'm John Doe of Smash Mouth Football; I was only listed as anonymous as your blog didn't accept my name/url for some reason.

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