Sunday, March 28, 2010

Authoritarian

Digby refers to a Red State post criticizing one of hers (if you suspect that I find her original post and the Red State response equally misguided and irrelevant, you get a prize!). The topic is the constitutionality of the HCR bill. At the end of her response post, Digby says this:
This constitutional question is whether the government can mandate that individuals buy a product from a private party simply because they are a citizen. If this person is a member of the Supreme Court (God help us) then perhaps he is in a position to render such a smug, tendentious final ruling that it doesn't. Otherwise, he's just as full of shit as that guy on TV the other day.
Uh, in other words, all of a sudden Digby thinks that unless you're in a position of power you have no business stating your opinion? What is she talking about?

7 comments:

Salty said...

I noticed you left a similar comment on Digs' blog, but everyone else in the comments ignored you. I really want an answer as to what the hell that statement is supposed to mean.

I think it comes to mean that only a Supreme Court Justice can issue a ruling on that question one way or the other, and that everyone else is to be ignored in the meantime.

Am I wrong here?

Unknown said...

No, she's merely placing on them a standard she must know at some level is impossible: that people (not her) should be expected to somehow know when their opinion is poorly or wrongly informed and have the good sense not to render one, thus relieving her of the tedious chore of correcting them. Naturally, this would never be expected to apply to her followers, who are naturally superior to conservatives and would never, ever fall for any media person's lies. At least that's what I got out of it.

Ethan said...

Salty, that could be it...I'm not sure. In the meantime someone named Kovie responded to me by saying "I think the point was that if this idiot was on SCOTUS, then they could potentially have the power to impose their idiocy on the rest of us. Either way, though, they're still an idiot. Her point had nothing to do with who can state what opinion." Which sounds to me like saying "if he was on the Supreme Court, he'd have the power that Supreme Court Justices have." Uh, ok then... I left a response saying basically the same thing over there, I'm sure I'm boring the shit out of her commenters but I'm really interested to know what the heck was in her mind when she wrote that.

Rachel, I guess that's it. I suppose she could also just be pissed that someone was criticizing her.

I mostly find it interesting because the whole phenomenon of liberal authoritarianism was until relatively recently (as recent as maybe 2006 or 2007) completely invisible to me, and looking at it now it's hard to understand how that could have been.

Ethan said...

Regardless of how you interpret the statement, it's awfully reverent of power.

Jack Crow said...

Ethan,

Ain't that what "liberal" means ("reverent of power")?

These people, as with conservatives and party libertarians, organize their lives around capturing the offices and machinery of state.

Since "the state" really just boils downs to "people with armed staffers telling other people what to do and getting substantial payment and reward for it," couldn't we just agree that organizing to capture government offices = reverence for power?

Or somesuch?

JRB said...

Ha!

Ethan said...

You have good points.