spmat on September 26, 2008 at 6:24 PM

But the founders didn’t have to consider term limits, because Congress didn’t meet year-round–rather, they met to do the business sanctioned by the Constitution, which meant they met briefly then went home, to their real livelihoods–term limits were not necessary. If we would return to our Constitutional form of government, they still wouldn’t be.

No term limits. The fathers knew best. Term limit create more problems then they fix.

Spirit of 1776 on September 26, 2008 at 12:09 AM

Funny, Washington would disagree, as would every President ever elected until FDR. The Fathers assumed that elected representatives would see public office as a duty (not a career), and thus would limit themselves. The current swamp which is Washington, D.C., and all of its political careerism, would have been anathema to the Fathers.

Kindly do not attribute to the Founding Fathers opinions they never had.

Heather…such a classic display of ignorance and arrogance in such a small mind, combined with such a big mouth.

DVPTexFla on September 26, 2008 at 7:30 AM

I understand the instinct to lash out, better than most. But Heather MacDonald is no fool, she is not ignorant or arrogant, and does not suffer from a “small mind”.

Stay focused, here.

I agree that she has this wrong. Someone used the word contempt, and that I think is the right word. Many here are simply expressing contempt for what goes on in these institutions, and the arrogant belief that people from the Ivy League schools are somehow just “better” than others.

Some of us know better from personal experience.

DrMagnolias on September 26, 2008 at 1:47 PM

Aaah! You are getting warm Madam Doctor…..

Actually, I never saw the movie series, not interested. I heard about them, found the name interesting for a moniker only and changed it slightly for obvious reasons.

I do chew gum, but only on rare occasions and never have enough paper clips around. Rather I use my Homosapian grey matter and digits to do my job.

Gotta go….

Mcguyver on September 26, 2008 at 1:41 PM

Actually, I am assuming you are Richard Dean Anderson, that you have forgotten how to spell your alias, and that you are posting to HA using nothing more than a stick of chewing gum and two paper clips.

For the record, I am not a tree surgeon.

DrMagnolias on September 26, 2008 at 1:17 PM

Aaaaah! That explains.

I don’t analyze monikers for a living. I simply read what the writer has written. Monikers could mean anything.

Are you assuming that I’m a man?

Mcguyver on September 26, 2008 at 1:10 PM

I thought the “Magnolias” in my moniker was clear enough, but I suppose there was room for misunderstanding in there, somewhere. For the record, I am not a tree surgeon.

DrMagnolias on September 26, 2008 at 12:55 PM

Well, knock me over with a feather!! You sounded so much more like a man talking with your snobbery.

I guess that’s kinda like the feminists saying that Palin is more like a man than a woman….

I rest my case.

Mcguyver on September 26, 2008 at 12:45 PM

It is not terribly difficult to identify to whom you addressed a follow-up post, when your first post was addressed to me.

I don’t use vulgarities in my private life because I am a lady. That may bother you, but there you have it.

You elitist posts are more than tiresome, they are bovine scatology.

I’m sure that you never use vulgarities in your private life to described things as they really are, because you are better and polished to a spit shine.

Consider this a private conversation, in where we really say what we feel, because it really clears things up and doesn’t beat-around-the-bush, (I hope you understand that phrase).

Mcguyver on September 26, 2008 at 12:21 PM

I ask your pardon for my lack of knowledge about the phrase “step in it”–I am not accustomed to speaking in vulgarities. As for the rest of your self-satisfied screed, it entirely missed my points. Whatever you believe yourself to be, a critical thinker you are not. That, of course, does not make you morally inferior–it simply makes your posts tiresome.

I wasn’t assuming in my earlier post that you are acting superior, rather, I was simply warning you to not step into the manure pile in front of you, vis a vi offending a common person’s intelligence to know the difference between true wisdom and elite snobbery.

You happily did step into my trap, which I regularly do for anyone who is a pretender or hypocrite here.

If you have anything to contribute further here, then please do so.
But since you have demonstrated a lack of comprehension regarding my earlier description, that, the revolt of the educated elites is not about their Ivy league stamped degrees, but about their stupid ideas that any common person can see doesn’t work.

You didn’t catch that or comment on it.

Instead you bemoan being derided as an academic, thereby furthering confirming the common persons’ suspicion that you cannot take criticism, therefore selfish and lacking humility.

And humility behooves us all.

You elites have set the rules of snide comments and I gave you a chance to see the real issue here (as highlighted in bold above).

Instead you have further eroded the common person’s respect of your profession. Whether that matters to you, is up to you.

If you think that I have been snide, well then…. touche!

I raise my nose and *humph* in their general direction.

Mcguyver on September 26, 2008 at 11:06 AM

I’m afraid I don’t understand your “step in it” comment, so I can’t address it, but I will certainly call “nonsense” on your remark about arrogance. Anyone is free to criticize arrogance. Arrogance should be criticized–and MacDonald does so in her argument, after a fashion, by acknowledging that the contemporary academy deserves derision. As someone who endures the academy, I second her belief; however, it is equally tiresome to encounter conservatives who assume that past a certain point of education, one automatically adopts an attitude of superiority (hence, lest you think it was lost on me, you give yourself permission to make snide and baseless comments like your closing remark to me).

What I am disturbed by in this thread, however, is the hostility some seem to have toward higher education and/or intellectual pursuits. Many of our founders lacked formal education, but many of them were highly educated–to dismiss any of them based on one or the other would be obscene. To disagree with MacDonald, to argue against the points she makes, requires more than name-calling or mocking the left (both of which are leftist tactics). Conservatives should value and encourage conservative intellectuals–and there are many, in a wide variety of fields–every bit as much as they value conservatives who have other strengths and interests.

DrMagnolias on September 26, 2008 at 7:51 AM

Point well made. But conservatives already do value real educated and smart decisions that work for the common good.

Don’t step in it here.

What they are mocking is not true education. What they are mocking is arrogance and idiocy.
And the Ivy league stamped degree recipients in general, have no one else to blame except themselves.

You should be the one to criticize such arrogance, since of course, the uneducated don’t have the authority to do so…

Obviously Heather hasn’t had any experience with smart people like Palin.

Go figure.

Mcguyver on September 26, 2008 at 1:20 AM

That would be because there are no smart people like Palin. That’s the problem with adjectives, they narrow the scope of your noun.

I plead guilty to being “educated” with an Engineering degree. But in Engineering school, numbers need to add up and balance, theories need to be backed up by facts (otherwise people poke holes in them), new devices need to work, and technology is good, not evil. Back in the 1970s, we had a “Humanities” professor that kept trying to teach us that technology was evil, but for students planning to make careers out of technology, such views made him the laughing stock of the entire class! But then, there are “educated” people whose entire education consists of Humanities, and they can’t figure out why the “stupid”, non-transcendent people with their “evil” technology are laughing at them.

Such is the stuff from which Obama dreams are made.

Sarah Palin is a different kind of success story that the “elites” can never understand. She didn’t grow up with wild ambitions and an inflated ego, but simply wanting to make a difference through her service, even if it was only to her husband’s fishing business. She saw the effects of corruption on her town and her state, and decided that the strongest way to fight it is through political power. She didn’t seek the Vice Presidency, but when McCain recognized her talent and asked her to serve, she bravely stepped forward and “didn’t blink”. She said that she wanted to go to Washington “with a servant’s heart”. If she can keep her “servant’s heart” through the maelstrom of national politics, she could be a great Vice President.

Some tend to make – as alluded to earlier – their education their shield, their built-in appeal to authority and their primary qualification. I have a very good friend who is a college professor. I was at an English department faculty party – surrounded by PhDs in lit, etc. In a political discussion in which I was disagreeing with one of her colleagues he invoked his PhD. In English Lit. My JD of course was meaningless, his has more letters.

Back to obscurity tomorrow.