News & Analysis
Clinton, Bush Encourage Civil Discourse
National Institute for Civil Discourse to open at University of Arizona ... Former presidents Bill Clinton (left) and George H.W. Bush will serve as honorary chairmen of a new center at the University of Arizona that will focus on civility in political debate, university officials will announce Monday. Former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor and former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) will serve as honorary co-chairmen. Board members will include former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright; Kenneth M. Duberstein, chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan; Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren; Trey Grayson, director of Harvard University's Institute of Politics; and former representative Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.). – Washington Post
Dominant Social Theme: A civil society is important.
Free-Market Analysis: Can national civility calm political rancor? This question is asked in a Christian Science Monitor article, based on news reports (see above) about the new National Civility Institute. The Institute has received a good deal of coverage and in the rest of this article we'll focus on the Monitor article, which provided a number of details. The Institute is the brainchild of Fred DuVal, a friend of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords who was shot in the head last month. The Tuscon shootings killed six and injured 13 including Rep. Giffords. DuVal said the idea came to him while listening to President Barak Obama deliver a eulogy in Tucson after the attack.
DuVal believes the Institute may answer the question. And he elaborates: "How do we nurture robustness on one hand and not in any way chill speech, and keep it in bounds that are not destructive to democracy? Will it change the nature of dialogue? That will be a tall order." The Monitor notes that politics descended into "threats or violence" in 2010 some seven times.
While it's not clear how the paper reached this determination, the article points to the "Internet's ... media machine," as providing a polarized environment. This and the Supreme Court's "allowance of money as speech in political campaigns," are responsible for a "nastier" political scene, presumably one that is more conducive to violence. Having made this suggestion, the Monitor adds, "To be sure, there's still debate about whether the nation's polarized political debate played any role at all in the mind of alleged shooter Jared Loughner."
The Monitor has other doubts as well about the project, pointing out that America's unique social contract itself poses a civility hurdle, given that the country's history has bestowed upon it a core "individualistic and hence basically anti-government and anti-authority," perspective.
This sort of anti-government approach can be traced all the way back to Revolutionary Era pamphleteers who virtually reveled in the "politics of personal destruction." Thomas Jefferson's Republican Richmond Examiner employed the vitriolic James Callender, the Monitor notes, who attacked President John Adams as a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."
We did some checking to find out about the funding of the Institute and discovered, according to the Washington Post, that it was being privately funded by DuVal and others and had already raised close to US$1 million. DuVal has quite a background; he has served in the highest corridors of power as a Democratic activist. He was a top aide to Governor Bruce Babbitt in the 1980s and then held very high positions in the Clinton Administration in the 1990s. It's not clear what he does for a living today, but the Regent's position is a paid one. He serves as vice chairman.
It's not clear if new Institute's location at the University of Arizona, which Duval supervises, will be rent free. But the Institute certainly benefits from its location at the University, given that its environs are seen as academic and even prestigious. How is the University funded? According to azstarnet.com, the University receives extensive Federal grants. An article on the website asserts that, "Last year, buoyed by stimulus spending and a federal budget earmark or two, research grants, gifts and contracts brought in nearly the combined revenue from tuition and direct tax dollars. A big chunk of that money comes from the federal government."
The money totals nearly US$600 million and pays for much more than research. "It pays interest and maintenance on buildings, supports faculty and graduate students, and involves undergraduates in significant pursuits." Other funding for the University comes from registration fees, taxes and, presumably, tuition. The total package is well over US$1 billion but one when one dissects the number it shows clearly that the University's support is overwhelmingly derived from taxable income. Even its Federal grants are ultimately paid for by tax dollars.
There is nothing wrong with civil discourse but as it turns out the Institute is located on a public campus for which taxpayers pay some US$1 billion a year. DuVal himself has held the highest posts in a Democratic administration and former presidents Clinton and Bush are mainstream politicians that have derived vast benefits from the system-as-it-is. Accordingly, there is nothing very civil about this new Institute. It is built on what must be seen as an increasingly dysfunctional system.
It is a system that has involved the US in serial warfare for over 50 years, and has seen the empire to expand to more than 1,000 bases around the world. At home, there are so many spies and spy agencies that the government itself has lost count of them. The Patriot Act allows the federal government to shed the last inhibitions of privacy and wiretap its own citizens at will.
The nation's central bank, like other central banks around the world, has so inflated and ruined the currency (in partnership with Congress) that it is very likely the dollar itself will soon cease to be the world's reserve currency. A high percentage of Americans are on food stamps now and home-ownership has plummeted with more than 10 percent of the nation's housing stock in default. The federal government's budget is perhaps the only thing in the US that is growing, and the current administration has literally added trillions to America's long-term debt. The overall debt obligations of the country are somewhere in the area of US$200 TRILLION, an insupportable amount. The US is bankrupt.
Conclusion: This US is still involved in a major war in the Middle East and thanks to Ben Bernanke's QE2, is still printing a torrent of money-from-nothing. There is nothing civil about America's society or structure at this point. The middle classes are being eviscerated at home and millions of Iraqis and Afghans have been irradiated with depleted uranium abroad. American financial and political elites are basically out of control and the longer the system perpetuates itself the worse it seems to get. No wonder Duval, Clinton, Bush, et al. want to encourage civility. Perhaps they are taking the potential ramifications personally.
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Posted by Tu Wog on 02/25/11 02:42 AM
Can you kindly STOP MAKING IT SOUND LIKE THE THE HAVES (POWER ELITE) ARE INNOCENT. THEY CREATED AND CULTIVATED THE DESTRUCTION OF THIS COUNTRY AND THE WORLD.
The REAL TERRORISTS, enemies of the US and the rest of the world's sovereign nations were, are, and will continue to be...
the murdering clintons (Rest In Peace Vince Foster)(NAFTA and GAT killed the economy, CODEX ALIMENTARIUS will kill the people) Thank you Slick Willie and accomplice. The Clinton Global Initiative---that says it all. While she's playing secretary of state, he's behind the scene for the NWO. daddy and sonny bush exposed the US as the image of the beast. dick THE US Cheney belongs in US and Nigerian prisons. kissinger pushing for the NWO, pulling the strings since the 60s. gates and the rockerfellers using BILLIONS for power and control.
These, among the hierarchy CFR, TLC, Illuminati, Bildeberg, et al pull the strings of BO (the Kenyan Puppet) and BOZO ben bernanke to destroy this and soverign nations of the world to usher in the ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT. Why?
For their personal status quo...the HAVES (the POWER ELITE) want to remain HAVES (the POWER ELITE), while we, the HAVE NOTS of the world, become as feudal serfs – SLAVES...or DEAD. There is no place for WORTHLESS EATERS in the NWO. The goal for a MANAGEABLE world population is 500 MILLION. See GEORGIA GUIDESTONES.
Once accomplished, the ULTIMATE power of the ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT will be unveiled and will SHOCK THE WORLD; They have attempted, succeeded, and lost WORLD DOMINATION throughout man's history...THIS TIME, they feel, they CANNOT FAIL.
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Posted by AmanfromMars on 02/23/11 10:49 AM
Here is a not-very-novel-dumb strategy, which when true, would sort of confirm that the dollar is worthless, and dangerous to accept from Americans because it finances global terrorism on a particularly nasty scale ..... Click to view link ..... and their system is collapsed, as sure as every Ponzi will always fail.
Can you believe what has been written there? If you think that it can be a possibility, and who would have thought three years ago that things would be as they are today, then are such things more a probability than an impossibility.
And even that jolly old broadsheet, the Telegraph ..... Click to view link ...... is taking a bite at the apple.
Haven't the dumb hicks got the civil discourse message, yet ...... Jaw, Jaw, not War, War. Times have Changed.
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Posted by WorkingClass on 02/23/11 07:41 AM
Excellent report DB.
A who's who of class warriors convenes on the taxpayer's dime to promote civility. It will be considered uncivil to complain about being impoverished and enslaved by the Fascist Police State.
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Posted by Pimpernel on 02/23/11 06:22 AM
Agree with Johnny Canuck @ 2/22/2011 12:06:44 PM; If one is strolling through the illimitable jungle and is attacked by a mother tigress, will civility help?
The people behind this initiative are people to whom `civility' means floating a resolution at the UN before invading another country.
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Posted by Lukester on 02/23/11 04:59 AM
I don't think the Taliban will have any trouble breeding. And their women ... Well, best not to dwell on that.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Racist son-of-a-gun aren't you. The neo-con always bleeds through ...
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Posted by Lukester on 02/23/11 04:38 AM
"experts" = authoritarian solutions. Ironclad logic there DB. Irrefutable. A Tour de Force in the realm of rational inferences.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Extrapolating again, Lukester? Jabs you right in the core ... Perhaps some therapy?
Here's what we REALLY wrote:
Ha, that one really bothers you. Well, you keep taking classes at major US state universities as you maintain you are. Maybe one day you'll learn to curb your affection for authoritarian solutions. Oh, wait. You're taking US classes at at US university, aren't you? No doubt you'll matriculate into a perfect neo-con. You have but inches to go ...
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Posted by Lukester on 02/23/11 04:33 AM
No you misunderstood my joking for seriousness.
Each and every one of these "it was all a hoax" theories on it's own would *already* describe the musings of a fraught and feverish mind. =:-)
When one reads them ALL, stated by you as "plausible possibilities" within a single blog, and all notionally existing in our world simultaneously, it begins to describe a group of minds, all captivated by the same recurrent predisposition to clothe the entire world with hazy, gothic and increasingly feverish speculations.
My point, dear editors is that the accumulating load of these feverish speculations probably says more about YOUR collective psyche than it does about the serial gargantuan cover ups you seemingly unearth at every turn.
Then for the illogic-cherry on top of this cake of feverish dreams, you suggest (inference makes positively pretzel-like leaps here) that anyone doubting these "hoaxes" could ALL be true concurrently must be revealing "neo-con" tendencies.
Ehm ... Your associative logic and conclusion seems ... unassailable ... (like the bubble gum " throw a freshly masticated wad, and it will stick limpet like, to any surface).
Reply from The Daily Bell
Mixing your metaphors again, eh. Letting you near words is like letting Colonel Gadhafi near oil wells. An incendiary combination. At the end is only ash.
Anyway, let us try to unpack the grammatical inaccuracy, above, that apparently passes for your "prose."
Since we have merely speculated on the existence of these hoaxes and have no idea of their reality, your determined effort to tar us with "feverishness" reveals far more about your agenda than our reality.
In any event ... you are, apparently, content to believe in the fullness of state propaganda and the promotional elements of American intel intended to lull the American people - for whom you have such contempt - to sleep.
But of course you are attending a state university are you not (?) - for "another" degree. Perhaps, just perhaps, it is possible you believe the in the foolishness you defend.
So, just to remind you of your core belief system:
1. Central banks, then ... no problem, paper trumps gold every time.
2. War in Afghanistan, then ... no problem, bomb Pashtun mothers and their children and the Taliban will have trouble breeding.
3. Global warming, then ... no problem, falsify records, destroy conflicting evidence and plow ahead with UN taxing plans.
You are surely welcome to believe in all of it, as you apparently do. It is, in fact, a testimony to the education you already have imbibed and the degrees you aspire to obtain. Repeat after us, "The Anglosphere always tells the truth ... The Anglosphere always tells the truth."
Now shut your eyes and go back to sleep.
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Posted by LSterling@mindspring.com on 02/23/11 02:56 AM
Daily Bell editors wrote:
Reply from the Daily Bell:
It was the same guy that wrote the moon hoax expose."
I must have missed this DB expose. Have you guys surmised that the moon landings were all a hoax??
I am stunned if so.
Moon landings were a hoax. Paleohistory is a hoax. World trade center was a planned demolition by the PE. what next? Experts of all stripes are a hoax. My world is turned upside down. I am falling out of my chair. Reeling at the enormity of all these intertwined massive hoaxes.
Reply from The Daily Bell
What, Lukester? Not using your "name" anymore. Why not?
----
"Moon landings were a hoax."
Do you believe this? We've never suggested it for a certainty, merely alluded to its possibility. Do you know for certain it was a hoax? Where's your evidence? Don't jump to conclusions. That would be precipitious.
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"Paleohistory is a hoax."
What's paleohistory? Do you mean pre-history? Archeology? Ps confused?
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"World trade center was a planned demolition by the PE. what next?"
Really? What evidence do you have that it was a planned demolition? We've never suggested it, though we do know US intel is a bit, hm-mm ... "confused" over the phone calls from the planes. Apparently, they couldn't have been made. Have you "investigated" that yet?
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"Experts of all stripes are a hoax."
Ha, that one really bothers you. Well, you keep taking classes at state universities as you maintain you are. Maybe one day you'll learn to curb your affection for authoritarian solutions. Oh, wait. You're taking US classes at at a US university, aren't you? No doubt you'll matriculate into a perfect neo-con. You have but inches to go ...
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Posted by Bill Ross on 02/22/11 07:08 PM
... and because they are our employees, to be fired on a whim, at any hint of not doing their job, to OUR benefit. But, we are so collectively STUPID that we behave as if we work for them, so we "obey" and don't entertain the possibility of "or else".
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Posted by Bill Ross on 02/22/11 06:44 PM
@Acudoc
"Why can't you just go out and get a real job, like the rest of us?"
...sigh. Because productivity and building civilization is hard work, requiring much time and energy (life). Force / fraud is far more efficient in terms of resources required to achieve goals in the short term (currently, destroying civilization).
In the long term, well, here we are. What next?
take heart, the grim reaper of "Mathematics of Rule" (reality) is rapidly sorting matters out:
Click to view link
This cannot go on, so, it will end.
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Posted by Acudoc on 02/22/11 06:26 PM
I come back with what DB readers will recognize as my oft-repeated plea to all politically-connected, politically-minded functionaries:
Why can't you just go out and get a real job, like the rest of us?
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Posted by Agent Weebley on 02/22/11 06:25 PM
@ Chas Todd
I don't know what the Whashington Phost was thinking; it is indeed, Dubya.
Click to view link
I think they asked Dubya to join the board for a little comic relief, or was it a little comic, and some relief? I am not sure where I read that, so I cannot confirm which one is correct, as I stumbled on these facts while hot on the trail of Obama, or is it hot, and on the trail of Obama?
Oh, I forgot to mention earlier: I took a few civil engineering discourses while attending the Howard Roark School of Architecture (an obscure school with only 1 student and no teachers.) Apparently, these people live for the moment. Also, Dubya's strength is under compression, complimenting Clinton's strength, which is under tension. Or maybe it's the other way around? It has been a long time.
Good Metaforian candidates. I like them already.
For more incredibly useful information, visit:
Click to view link
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Posted by Bill Ross on 02/22/11 04:41 PM
DB: "was spontaneous."
The only thing I suspect is spontaneous about the combustion of our civilization to forceful incivility is the unintended consequences and, I am not even sure of that.
They do after all, have internment camps, body bags, underground bunkers and command centers to run to, when the going gets hot, plus only gawd knows how many private hoarded supplies acquired under the pretext of "public preparedness".
Until we accept the FACT that THEY are not "reasonable" and plan B is called for, matters will continue to deteriorate in the area of collective survival and "civil" (meaning civilized) society.
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Posted by Jacob on 02/22/11 03:14 PM
Egads, I can remember when I once LIKED Bill Clinton. Of course I was as brainwashed as the next illusorily educated left wing idiot at the time. Civil discourse? Like violins "civilly" playing to untermenschen marching into gas chambers? There is nothing remotely civil about these two murderers.
On another note, please refer me to one or more of your sources, DB, that have argued that the 1960's sex, drug and rock and roll scene was politically engineered agitprop. After the NASA moon shot hoax previously discussed here, I'm ready for anything.
Reply from The Daily Bell
It was the same guy that wrote the moon hoax expose.
Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation
Don't read it if you like to think the hippie movement was spontaneous.
Click to view link
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Posted by George Willis on 02/22/11 02:49 PM
Bionic Mosquito
That Charles is misguided when it comes to his support for the Carbon Tax is evident to most of us in the UK. He is blinkered and accepts totally the views of MS Science on the issue. What we here (in Britain) accept as his dilentante uninformed views and inability to delve into opposing science is just the measure of the man and the position he represents as a mouthpiece for the establishment. What others,especially in the US fail to realise is that, although he has influence, he is no more than a verbal BBC.
I have read and heard here and elsewhere that Charles is one of those unidentified elite who are conspiring to enslave the world- thus giving credance to intelligence and infamy not possessed by the accused.
Reply from The Daily Bell
He is neither his father nor his mother, nor his son for that matter.
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Posted by MetaCynic on 02/22/11 02:43 PM
Would the discourse remain civil if a taxpayer refused to pay the tax which funds the civil discourse championed by the National Institute for Civil Discourse?
Reply from The Daily Bell
No.
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Posted by Bryan Rowder on 02/22/11 01:43 PM
If Duval put 5 people on the commission who were opponents of the policies enacted by the people he did appoint, I would consider his idea futher. We need Joe and Joanie plumber, electrician, welder, private school teacher, appointed also; not people who live in the phony reality of politics.
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Posted by Bionic Mosquito on 02/22/11 12:50 PM
@DB
Off topic. Prince Charles and climate change:
Click to view link
Several good quotes, paraphrasing one of the best:
accuse "many of us" including myself are somehow secretly conspiring....
Reply from The Daily Bell
Ah, the elves laughed! A child is born, lustily, reaching for the teat ...
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Posted by Agent Weebley on 02/22/11 12:47 PM
You're right! The information we need is on the event horizon. I can see it clearly, now the rain has gone.
First, an implosion, then supernova. A typical black hole. Right here on Earth! Luckily, the information will not be lost. It will appear somewhere else! Phew, we're dodging an Oriental Express bullet train right now, I can feel it.
Obama is the man for the job. He will help through this "change" he keeps talking about . . . well, used to, before he got all serious about his new job.
If you see Obama smile in the next 9 days then he is one of us Metaforians too. I'll be watching him verrry closely.
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Posted by Bill Ross on 02/22/11 12:45 PM
@4bees
"civil discourse." according to leftists is about "how to slice the pie" so the unproductive get their "fair" share, to rightests, it is about "a slightly larger cut, for the productive", but requires a hefty "cut" for MIC because "they hate our freedom" (to prey) and, they must be kept at bay, for "defense".
Of course, coming up the middle is marginalized "we, the people" (the REAL master, at least in our own affairs) stating, with escalating forcefulness: Its MY pie, and, if you want some, bake your own, or provide something of value, other than terror of dissent in MUTUALLY agreed trade. Or, as so recently stated to TSA: "keep your hands off MY stuff"
It's that simple...
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