VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, [9], 10 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 12:32:42 10/24/08 Fri
Author: Prairie Dawg
Author Host/IP: 12.202.229.158
Subject: Re: Dawg - "It is not in the nature...
In reply to: Ned 's message, "Dawg - "It is not in the nature..." on 10:32:50 10/24/08 Fri

You're right about Marx. He was smarter by half than people seem to think these days, and he was an acute observer of the social conditions of the time he lived in.

One of the best examples of disingenuous Republican wordsmithing was characterizing the estate tax as "the Death Tax". Even the media has picked that terminology up. It isn't a death tax at all.

When you think of word meanings in a heuristic sense, what they succeeded in doing is triggering a whole mess of subroutines in people's heads-what my friend Raul used to call "batch processing". It was a stunning victory that ranks with Pat Nixon's cloth coat and the Checkers speech.

It's no different than if you talk to a blooded Populist about "eastern financial interests" or to a Maoist about "enemies of the people". Same thing.

It's verbal legerdemain that the Republicans have developed to a high art.

Perhaps you could give me a hook or a name to what I've been thinking about.

One of the the things we do not hear too much about these days is but it springs from the same poisoned wellhead of thought is the effort to repeal the rule against perpetuities.

The Rule against perpetuities is a legal doctrine that has a sound basis in policy and that is to prevent the formation of dynasty estates like those in old England. It abolishes the fee taile and states that no interest is good unless it must vest, if at all, not later than twenty-one years after a life in being at the creation of the interest.
This effectively limited inheritance of landed estates if they could not be inherited until about 80 years had passed.
The social policy thereby subserved was to preserve the alienability of land and prevent the establishment of landless serfdom in the US.

Yet, there are a lot of people out there who think that this is a good idea, presumably because they think that they too will win the lottery and because conservative thinktanks and the Julius Streichers of talk radio have told them so.

One thing about being a merchant of words like I am is that you look at things people say very carefully with a view of getting the real agenda out in the open. It's imperative that we all do this and call out the people who parrot such trash.

You can do this pretty easily and we're seeing a lot of it this silly season, Ned.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Forum timezone: GMT-5
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.