Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute

Collarspace Discussion Forums

Home Login Search

Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute

View related threads: (in this forum | in all forums)

Logged in as: Guest

All Forums >> [Community Discussions] >> Dungeon of Political and Religious Discussion >> Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute

Page: [1]

Message

<< Older Topic Newer Topic >>

Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute - 5/5/2012 11:35:19 AM

dcnovice

Posts: 37282
Joined: 8/2/2006
Status: offline

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?

_____________________________

No matter how cynical you become,
it's never enough to keep up.

JANE WAGNER, THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF
INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

Profile

Post #: 1

RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute - 5/5/2012 11:44:54 AM

JeffBC

Posts: 5799
Joined: 2/12/2012
From: Canada
Status: offline

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.

_____________________________

I'm a lover of "what is", not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. -- Bryon Katie
"You're humbly arrogant" -- sunshinemiss
officially a member of the K Crowd

(in reply to dcnovice)

Profile

Post #: 2

RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute - 5/5/2012 11:47:36 AM

TheHeretic

Posts: 19100
Joined: 3/25/2007
From: California, USA
Status: offline

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.

(in reply to dcnovice)

Profile

Post #: 3

RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute - 5/5/2012 11:47:38 AM

Kirata

Posts: 15477
Joined: 2/11/2006
From: USA
Status: offline

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.

(in reply to JeffBC)

Profile

Post #: 4

RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute - 5/5/2012 12:06:40 PM

dcnovice

Posts: 37282
Joined: 8/2/2006
Status: offline

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"?

_____________________________

No matter how cynical you become,
it's never enough to keep up.

JANE WAGNER, THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF
INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

(in reply to TheHeretic)

Profile

Post #: 5

RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute - 5/5/2012 12:19:20 PM

TheHeretic

Posts: 19100
Joined: 3/25/2007
From: California, USA
Status: offline

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.

(in reply to dcnovice)

Profile

Post #: 6

RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute - 5/5/2012 1:44:48 PM

dcnovice

Posts: 37282
Joined: 8/2/2006
Status: offline

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?

_____________________________

No matter how cynical you become,
it's never enough to keep up.

JANE WAGNER, THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF
INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

(in reply to TheHeretic)

Profile

Post #: 7

RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute - 5/5/2012 2:05:29 PM

Lucylastic

Posts: 40310
Status: offline

Well said DC...unfortunately It wont make a lick of difference to the hypocrites who bring it up regularly

_____________________________

(•_•)
<) )╯SUCH
/ \

\(•_•)
( (> A NASTY
/ \

(•_•)
<) )> WOMAN
/ \

Duchess Of Dissent
Dont Hate Love

(in reply to dcnovice)

Profile

Post #: 8

RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute - 5/5/2012 3:00:53 PM

Karmastic

Posts: 1650
Joined: 4/5/2012
From: Los Angeles
Status: offline

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)

_____________________________

[Awaiting Approval]

If my experience level makes you feel superior, that is your problem, not mine.

(in reply to dcnovice)

Profile

Post #: 9

RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute - 5/5/2012 3:08:18 PM

TheHeretic

Posts: 19100
Joined: 3/25/2007
From: California, USA
Status: offline

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.

(in reply to dcnovice)

Profile

Post #: 10

RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute - 5/5/2012 6:55:36 PM

Dom4subssub4doms

Posts: 95
Joined: 5/3/2012
Status: offline

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

(in reply to TheHeretic)

Profile

Post #: 11

RE: Interesting Billboard From the Heartland Institute - 5/6/2012 5:08:24 AM

tweakabelle

Posts: 7522
Joined: 10/16/2007
From: Sydney Australia
Status: offline

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.

< Message edited by tweakabelle -- 5/6/2012 5:11:11 AM >

_____________________________

(in reply to TheHeretic)

Profile

Post #: 12