Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute

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dcnovice -> Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute (5/5/2012 11:35:19 AM)
[image]http://climateconference.heartland.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Billboard2-620x229.png[/image] The Heartland Institute, whose stated mission is "to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems," recently posted an interesting billboard (above) near Chicago. According to the Institute's website, the billboard was "deliberately provocative, an attempt to turn the tables on the climate alarmists by using their own tactics but with the opposite message. We found it interesting that the ad seemed to evoke reactions more passionate than when leading alarmists compare climate realists to Nazis or declare they are imposing on our children a mass death sentence. We leave it to others to determine why that is so." Interesting way to advance the conversation, no?

JeffBC -> RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute (5/5/2012 11:44:54 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: dcnovice Interesting way to advance the conversation, no? Advance? How is this an advance? Basically, one side is still insisting that we can treat matters of science the same as we do matters of faith... as if "belief" mattered. It's really just the same old tactic, no advance at all.

TheHeretic -> RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute (5/5/2012 11:47:36 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: dcnovice Interesting way to advance the conversation, no? Advance the conversation? No. Deliberately toss some Alinsky back at the warmists? Oh HELL yes.

Kirata -> RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute (5/5/2012 11:47:38 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: JeffBC quote: ORIGINAL: dcnovice Interesting way to advance the conversation, no? Advance? How is this an advance? Basically, one side is still insisting that we can treat matters of science the same as we do matters of faith... as if "belief" mattered. It's really just the same old tactic, no advance at all. Case in point. K.

dcnovice -> RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute (5/5/2012 12:06:40 PM)
quote: Deliberately toss some Alinsky back at the warmists? Oh HELL yes. Dear old Alinsky. I'm starting to think no thread is complete without him. [:)] But seriously, have there been comparable billboards or media stunts from the "warmists"?

TheHeretic -> RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute (5/5/2012 12:19:20 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: dcnovice Dear old Alinsky. I'm starting to think no thread is complete without him. [:)] That's because the rules he wrote, are the rules in play.

dcnovice -> RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute (5/5/2012 1:44:48 PM)
quote: That's because the rules he wrote, are the rules in play. That point surfaces regularly here in P&R, but I don't buy it. Even a modest glance at American history reveals our breathtaking gift for polarization and demonization--often vicious, sometimes violent--long before Alinsky came along. Preston Brooks and Charles Sumner were positively savage in their attacks on one another, which culminated in Brooks's beating Sumner with a cane on the Senate floor in 1854. Admirers sent congratulatory canes to Brooks, including one inscribed "Good job," while Sumner spent the next three years recovering from his injuries. The idea that American politics was all sweetness, light, and principled discussion of substantive issues prior to Alinsky cannot, to borrow from Justice Scalia, "be taken seriously." I'm also skeptical of the way Alinsky tends to get invoked as a "Get out of jail free" card. A billboard compares environmentalists to mass murderers or a prominent radio presence brands a young woman a "slut," to take two recent examples, and out comes Alinsky to show that "they" did it first. I can't help thinking of my brothers, racing to the car as Mom pulled into the driveway after work so that each could first the first to yell, "He started it." Finally, Alinsky's been dead for 40 years now. Is anyone still reading him? How widespread is his influence among folks today, particularly given that most Americans alive may never even have heard of him? Might it be time to let the old boy rest in peace and take adult responsibility, on both sides of the aisle, for our own actions?

Lucylastic -> RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute (5/5/2012 2:05:29 PM)
Well said DC...unfortunately It wont make a lick of difference to the hypocrites who bring it up regularly

Karmastic -> RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute (5/5/2012 3:00:53 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: dcnovice Interesting way to advance the conversation, no? Yes, I suppose that's a good adjective - interesting. It's good if it spurs discussion and debate; seems to have here. But I think it falls flat, as a childish attack on those who believe that global warming is real. And they admit it's a tit for tat thing. Lame and Stoop-id in my book. (stupid and stooping)

TheHeretic -> RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute (5/5/2012 3:08:18 PM)
DC, Machiavelli never ruled an empire or commanded an army, yet when we speak of the brutal machinations of power, he tends to come up. Alinksky didn't invent all the things he wrote a rulebook for, but he did put his name on the book that demanded, "all the angels be on one side, all the demons on the other," and that the way to win was to personalize, and demonize.

Dom4subssub4doms -> RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute (5/5/2012 6:55:36 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: TheHeretic quote: ORIGINAL: dcnovice Dear old Alinsky. I'm starting to think no thread is complete without him. [:)] That's because the rules he wrote, are the rules in play. the irony of course being the group that actually uses them •Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have. •Never go outside the experience of your people. •Wherever possible, go outside the experience of your enemy. •Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. •Ridicule is man's most important weapon. •A good tactic is one your people enjoy. •A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. •Keep the pressure on. •The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. •The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. •If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside. •The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. •Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. It amzes me the tea party and hard right evengelicals say they hate the man when it's his playbook they use. Case in point Global warming it's not real now just ignore plant and animal the species migrating northward

tweakabelle -> RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute (5/6/2012 5:08:24 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: TheHeretic quote: ORIGINAL: dcnovice Dear old Alinsky. I'm starting to think no thread is complete without him. [:)] That's because the rules he wrote, are the rules in play. No. They're the rules many on the Right play by as the normal course of events. In their arrogance, they can't get their heads around the fact that not everyone is as power-fixated, ruthless and selfish as they are and that we don't all play the same way they do. Speaking of rules, I do hope the Heartland Institute got the mad bomber's permission to use his image (if convicted felons retain such rights). If not, they might just get their asses sued off and end up bankrupt! There would be some justice (and more than a tad of irony) if such a crude, unprincipled tactic turned out to be their undoing.

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