Wednesday, May 21, 2008
As if it were almost a gaffe....
Fighting Words - WSJ.com
In traditional sellout theory there is always some grand cause or principle that is being exchanged for immediate gain – artistic independence, for example, or the fate of the panda, trembling piteously before the onrushing bulldozers of modernity.
...Fortunately, there were a few plainspoken men of the market present at the gathering to set things straight. Capitalists were the world's real heroes, they reminded us, delivering value to the public and seeing that value quantified precisely by the numbers on the balance sheet. That was reality. the idea that "there's something special about nonprofits," scoffed one forthright fellow – "well, that's crap. Nonprofits are an artifice of the law, and what's special about them is not that they do different things or that they are organized in a special way, it's that they don't pay taxes."
Personally, I would take this hard line one step further: Selling out is not a threat to the market order; selling out is how the market gets its way. Just look at the city in which all these remarks were made. Private-sector Washington is one of the wealthiest places in America. Public-service Washington lags considerably behind. The chance of ditching the one for the other is what accounts for everything from the power of K Street to the infamous "revolving door," by which a public servant takes a cushy corporate job after engineering some extravagant government favor for the corporation in question – or its clients.
The libertarian nonprofits that line the city's streets often serve merely to rationalize this operation after the fact, giving a pious shine to the policies that are made in this unholy manner.
5 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed May 21, 04:25:00 PM:
Conservative twaddle, as usual...
Children and conservatives are very susceptible to ‘bogey man’ yarns of all manners and if they reckon that adults believe as well, such narratives take on a certainty an infant or republican cannot discharge as daydream or boner-producing fantasies. The shock and strain twisted by this progression is life-long, with the hopeless dupe doing all within their influence not to distress a god, understanding with exact certainty, the penalty of doing so. The babyhood distress of accepting as true-life, demonic imagery and unholy places normally becomes lighter with maturity. The recently formed neurotic based conduits containing the information about hell, evildoers out to get you, and other diverse malevolent entities linger, at the very smallest amount, as an fundamental part of their limited but unconscious ideas.
This stimulated dread of a hellfire is so enormous and so unsettling of common sense and normal thinking, that any scheme to elude it becomes suitable. Blind horror perverts, bends and transforms time-honored balanced ethical deliberations. A self-centered mind-set is produced resulting from hysterical longing for private escape from perdition. Defective assessments by conservative or backward individuals can and often are prejudiced by a saving-from-hell doctrine as a replacement for levelheaded analysis. The penalty of politicians making edicts or granting funding whilst beneath the hex of GOP hell-phobic-delusion are obvious.
By , at
Wed May 21, 06:01:00 PM:
After that, I'm kind of missing Chambers and Screwy.
By 
John Thacker, at
Wed May 21, 07:30:00 PM:
Conservative twaddle, as usual...
From Thomas Frank, carl gordon? You reveal your ignorance.
By Escort81, at
Wed May 21, 09:22:00 PM:
John Thacker is dead on about Thomas Frank. Talk about missing the whole point of the article; Carl needs to click through the link and read the entire piece. It might be twaddle or not, but Frank would be upset with the use of the "c" word.
By Andrew Hofer, at
Wed May 21, 09:25:00 PM:
An interesting example of the "freudian pseudo-diagnosis" school of lifemanship (a la Stephen Potter).
Points for 'demonizing the other' and deadening use of passive voice throughout ("a self-centered mind-set is produced"), deduction for "stimulated dread".
A beginner's level attempt - too transparent and not enough misuse of 25-cent psychology terms.
C-.
