LBJ Shows How We Could Overcome — Lessons for Obama?

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Ruth O'Brien

data-ob=”lightbox[4374]“>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWn89vGJys

Obama’s second first 100 days have lapsed, and since Congress is only getting more, not less, obstreperous while we all wait for the June Supreme Court decisions, it seems fitting to take a moment and reflect on another time in post-World War II history when we were divided or polarized.  I’m speaking of LBJ’s March 1965 speech amplifying Rev. Martin Luther King’s words “We shall overcome,” as he appealed to Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act.

Long considered a master legislator based on his record as Senate Majority Leader from 1955 to 1960, after succeeding JFK, he ultimately decided not to run for reelection (and probably lose the presidency) in March 1968.  Today we live in a different era, to be sure, which is to say the Republicans are gaining the offensive and the Democrats are on the defensive, as opposed to one month ago, when the Republicans were on the run, as I saw it.

Two sides times four did not help the nation.

At home, LBJ split the South and North — setting up Ronald Reagan’s realignment of the South, lining them up into the GOP.  And abroad, LBJ picked up the Vietnam War, escalating it in 1965.

Of course, history never truly repeats itself.  New time, new era, different decisions, different outcomes, lots of unintended consequences.  So too does polarization have different perils. No longer having a Soviet bloc is great, but polarization is good and bad. it depends on how it is cut and what happens externally — or beyond our executive’s control, no matter how unilateral Obama’s decisions are and no matter how much he exercises his presidential prerogative powers.

Posted in All things Obama, Cosmpolitanism, Democrats on the Defensive, Democrats Progressive-Liberal Divide, Firebaggers vs. Teabaggers, Obama & Congress, Obama & Foreign Policy, Obama's Election, 2012, Obama's World View | Comments Off

Muscat Daily Exclusive Ruth O’Brien speaks out about “Out of Many, One” by Joseph Richard Preville

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Ruth O'Brien

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URL to Op-Ed MD12MAY-09

Posted in All things Obama, Democrats Progressive-Liberal Divide, Firebaggers vs. Teabaggers, Neotribalism, Obama & Foreign Policy, Obama & Inclusivity, Obama Haters, Obama's World View | Comments Off

News & More News

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Ruth O'Brien

obamacakeMy book Out of Many, One is dedicated to my husband, Frederic O’Brien, a deputy managing editor at National Review. We figured out that we are mirror opposites, and the biggest gift that never stops giving is that he took my family name to unite with me and my boys. I wrote about it a while ago.

But for those who know Fred well (and to know is to cherish), I also got a cake on the day I received my advance copy of the book.  And as is Fred’s tradition, the decoration is the cover of the book, on chocolate.  That’s the good news.

Today’s good news is my Google Analytics got solved yesterday!  This is thanks to the hard work and dedication of one of our graduate students at the Graduate Center in English,  Jesse Merandy, one of our WordPress experts or gurus.

Out of Many One will be published I’m told on schedule.

Posted in All things Obama, Cosmpolitanism, Democrats Progressive-Liberal Divide, Federalism for "d" Progressive Purpose, Firebaggers vs. Teabaggers, Neotribalism, Neotribalism; War on Women, Obama & Foreign Policy, Obama & Inclusivity, Obama Haters, Obama vs. Court(s), Obama's Election, 2012, Obama's World View | Comments Off

Shop Globally, Tax Locally

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Ruth O'Brien

First it was self-deportation, and now it’s self-taxation.  Can this be true? Are the Republicans turning Foucauldian on us?  (BTW, that’s Michel Foucault, and the reference is to Discipline and Punish.)  Who could have known after Mitt Romney that the Republicans would be so into self-study — and I don’t mean themselves, but rather ourselves?  Please.  First Romney talks about self-deportation, and now the party is complaining about the lack of self-taxation?

Is the GOP scolding us — all consumers, that is — who rely on the Internet to buy anything?  Are the Republicans reprimanding the citizenry for not having the self-discipline to practice self-taxation? How could the GOP be shaking up our vision of the nation-state in terms of taxes?  What happened to the Democrats?  Why would Obama let the Republicans get away with pitting the physical against the virtual (that’s brick-and-mortar retailers, for those who are tired of the virtual/physical dichotomy).

I realize that enough Democrats are voting for the Marketplace Fairness Act that it will pass today or tomorrow, but where are all those men in the Cabinet when you need them? Does that one woman missing from Obama’s Cabinet make that much of a difference?  Where is the consumer-protection czarina, Elizabeth (Warren), a so-called “bold” progressive (as opposed to Hillary Clinton, I suppose), when you need her?  In the Senate, presumably.

And now, since the Democrats are all on the defensive (with each one wrangling already for the presidency), it’s the GOP that enhances our image of the big, fat federal state?  What a turnaround, undermining The Case for Big Government, as Jeff Madrick wrote back in 2008 for the Public Square Princeton book series.  How can the Democrats stand back and allow the GOP to claim credit for using federal authority, no less, to make the state and local governments be Robin Hood and collect taxes for our depleted coffers, in lieu of the federal government doing it alone? Was it only the GOP that heard Justice John Roberts’ position on taxation?

This is a clever patch, a great workaround that not only puts E-supporting California Democrats like House minority leader Nancy Pelosi on the defensive for kow-towing and catering to her state’s E-barons, but could harm all the Democrats lining up for 2016, as they compete with the Republicans to take measures in favor of small business, or so-called brick-and-mortar retailers.

This tax legislation that is federalist has legs, as it gives states local purchasing power as a way to secure fairness for small business.  It finally sets the real Republicans and the real Democrats up against each other, as the issue is not the public or the private sphere.  The issue is not regulation or deregulation in the all-encompassing social sphere. The Marketplace Fairness Act pits E-commerce, E-tycoons or E-barons, such as Jeff Bezos of Amazon, up against Joe the Plumber?  Too much déjà vu.

Indeed, the Marketplace Fairness Act is a return, of sorts, to the Louis D. Brandeis conception of New Freedom and an attack on monopolies or monopoly capitalism. One thing that is for sure in the new social Era (capital E intended) is that if Grover Norquist can’t keep Tea Partiers such as Senator Ron Johnson in line about online taxation, who can?

I suppose the E-sky is finally falling in, as the GOP found a clever way to come up with revenue, and it’s a regressive, not a progressive, one at that. And while I don’t have the time to track it down, it sounds strangely like the Republicans are about to run off with all the credit for a redesigned, highly controversial, supposedly Robin Hood–radical Tobin tax.  Wow.  What a way to collect $24 billion.

But the last question though, is why didn’t the Democrats get out front and center of this one?  Heck, it’s right up Obama’s alley (even if there are too many men in that Cabinet).  Surely those men could have tinkered a bit more and come up with their own algorithm.  While Romney was demanding self-deportation, the Obamacrats should have come up with self-taxation long ago.  Surely they could come up with the self-discipline (irreverence intended) for that, given the workability of this win-win for all sides.

Posted in All things Obama, Bold, Democrats on the Defensive, Democrats Progressive-Liberal Divide, Election 2016, Federalism for "d" Progressive Purpose, Firebaggers vs. Teabaggers, Obama & Congress, Obama & Inclusivity, Obama vs. Court(s), Running Republicans, Sassy, Uppity People | Comments Off

My Far-Flung Fan Club

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Ruth O'Brien

The most prominent right-wing talk-radio host does not believe in freedom of speech, freedom of assembly . . . and shouldn’t that also include the freedom to bear arms?

Well it is no news that they don’t believe in the news — and that someone they can’t peg, and whom they certainly revile, is “corrupting the youth.”  Enlightenment is NOT information; we already knew that.

They fear me, the “professorette.” The right-wing talk-radio host has likened me to a kitchenette, or the long-gone Wonkette (the only woman of the original three political bloggers when it became a fad), giving me this diminutive because he and his kind fear me: a little professor?  They fear me so much so they have to resort to hacking. Wow.  My relatives in Weed Patch, Lamont, and Tehachapi, California, must all be watching.

My relatives, the Frick family — all to the right of Ronald Reagan, and proud of having high-level political appointees in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations — never tried to shut me up before.

They didn’t know what to do with me: never the kind to get in trouble, married young, two sons, having a solid academic career, finishing four books and all the various academic trappings before I landed my dream job, and then continuing on with a couple more books, including the forthcoming Out of Many, One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition.

Now, the federal government did know what to do with me.  They put me in the freedom-of-speech blogging pile, I am sure.

A Google Analytics report contains an interesting domain search of who has been looking at my blog.  This tool is so thorough that one can practically see which colleague checks your web site incessantly (like one at Baruch). But more important, it shows how the federal-government machines that Dana Priest and William M. Arkin wrote about in Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State do word searches and then check sites.

Here’s my list, in order, of what government bodies have checked my blog out the most: Navy, Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, the NYPD, Department of Justice, Social Security Administration, Department of State, FBI, NASA, L.A. Sheriff, FAA, State of Maryland, City of Houston, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the United States House of Representatives and the Senate.

A couple of surprises were that my own state — Governor Chris Christie’s New Jersey Department of Transportation — checked on me less than the Broward County Public Schools.  But Christie’s Department of Transportation did look at the website one more time than either the Oklahoma Office of State Finance or the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.

Naturally, I was visited by financial services such as Dean Witter and the Bank of America.  Also a couple of commercial enterprises that made sense, like Boeing or Fedex, and a couple that were head scratchers, such as Monsanto.

On one hand, Google Analytics helps one surmise: “Wow!” The federal government is relying on the information described by Priest and Arkin.

On the other hand, Google Analytics ensures that, other than the category domain “not set,” I know what branch of the executive branch is watching.  Like all tools, Google Analytics is a double-edged sword that sooner rather than later, as Paul Bremer from Bush’s Defense Department explains, we need to wrap our heads around — for our own security, not just national security.

 

Posted in All things Obama, Bold, Obama & Foreign Policy, Obama Haters, Right Wing Intolerance, Sassy, Uppity People, Uppity People, Women Who Are Vocal (Refuse Silence), Writing Politics | Comments Off

Up with Uppity People – Circles or Intersecting Sects

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Ruth O'Brien

Maybe we should put the “ess” back in waitress, or actress, or you fill in the “-ess.”  I myself get to claim “ette,” now that Rush Limbaugh has done me the honor of calling me a “professorette.”

Is this a tribute to Wonkette (Ana Marie Cox), or the kitchenette and bassinette, or both?  Still wanting to lose what Alanis Morrissette calls the proverbial ten pounds, I don’t mind being called something small, at least not at my age.  Ana Marie Cox moved on to The Guardian in London, while Joshua Marshall found a way to make Talking Points Memo profitable, or at least sustainable.

Both, to my mind, were not left enough, not liberal enough, and do not have the right notion of progress.  They are certainly not rooting “Up with Uppity People,” my new phrase.   Put differently, they didn’t reclaim righteous and red.  Red, after all, is the new New York black.  How on earth did the repubs claim this 60 years since the “Red Scare,” anyway?

Who are Uppity People? Well, they are not Uppity Peoples.  Martha Fineman, at one of our last talks on Comparative Cultures in the John E. Sawyer Seminar, funded by the Mellon Foundation, persuaded me not to add a sectarian plural so its Uppity Peoples.  She differentiates between vulnerable populations and vulnerabilities in her quest to change or replace the liberal subject.

For me, Uppity People are those who could be published in my about-to-be-launched series on HERETIC-al Thought (we are not just publishing the thinker or heretic, like Fineman, but also those in her train of thought – and the schtick or mission too — is if you don’t have a fatwa against you, your thought is not significant enough.  Put differently, if you don’t incite enough controversy to be burned at the stake, or better yet have your books burned, like they still burned The Catcher in the Rye in my hometown, then you ideas are not significant enough to be categorized as heretical).  Notice that there is no right nor left – it is simply reclaiming all that is righteous or red, or what I call “transuniversal threats.”

We are, however, trying to find a way to be controversial without being polarizing.  What does this mean, I asked my very clever in-house editor of the elite university press?  Well we discussed and unpacked this to the point I can now say it means Up with Uppity People.  Yes, people who say Up with Uppity People are a lot of people, but they are in groups of peoples with intersecting and con-secting identities, with the “con” meaning concentric.

As a friend said last night, for books and ideas to have universal appeal, especially those that are universally threatening, think intersection — think union of two sects, though of course two could easily be three or, as Google puts it, +2.

I’m still waiting for the liberals, especially WLHM (unpacked on Monday), to stop finding leaf-eating lesbians or righteous red reclaimers, like me, so threatening.  Obama held open the pioneer wagon train – I have a whole chapter about it called The Third Political Tradition—Reclaiming the Frontier: Wagon Trains, Pioneers, and Deputies, but No Cowboys or Nannies.

Posted in All things Obama, Bold, Cosmpolitanism, Obama's Election, 2012, Sassy, The New Normal Family, Uppity People, Womenest, Writing Politics | Comments Off

And the Band Played On

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Ruth O'Brien

In the wake of the brouhaha about one of my recent blogs, I received considerable contorted media attention.  It is unfortunate that my words went through some kind of washing machine that exaggerated and distorted what I wrote.

The message was lost when the media sideshow began.  The primary point of my blog was what Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, said on April 19th about the American spirit is his words stays true that — “the unity and diversity that makes us strong — like no other nation in the world.”

This unique perspective on the American spirit is also the title of my forthcoming book — Out of Many, One (in Latin it is E pluribus unum and it appears on all our coins).  The United States is strong, mighty, and secure when the many unite into one.  Diversity is our strength.

This is Obama’s worldview.  To me, a worldview is more inclusive than an ideology.  And to me, a worldview not deterministic than who, where, and when you were raised.  It is fluid.  It is elastic.  It changes — but it flows in a predictable direction, like a modus operandi (M.O.).

A worldview is a combination of factors that are fluid and compounding, not rigid and static.  After five years of study, I have concluded that Obama’s worldview showcases the way he thinks in threes, not twos.  He creates a triangle of thought (not to be confused with Bill Clinton’s triangulation).  He does not say either/or.  Like the Three Musketeers, he says “All for one, and one for all.”

Put differently, Obama thinks in terms of correlations, not categories, and certainly not just two categories.  In Google lingua it is Plus 2, so by three I mean “more than two,” thus no either/or.  It’s complicated! (Film reference intended.)

Obama believes not in the public VERSUS the private sphere, but rather the all-encompassing (and perpetually colliding) social sphere, which includes BOTH the public and the private spheres.  The idea of regulation or deregulation is dead, over, done, given globalism.

Yet this is nothing to fear.  Obama’s worldview goes further than any other president’s in terms of advancing cosmopolitanism.  Obama’s notion of cosmopolitanism is premised upon his lived and learned belief in difference and tolerance — a belief system that fosters individuality.

If I were to dignify the distortions and exaggerations about what I wrote (and even about where I work, despite Obama’s heralding CUNY in his State of the Union Address in January), I believe, it would perpetuate this sideshow.  So it is better to disengage than engage, because the United States and all our allies should be concentrating on our underlying cosmopolitan values, which are patriotic.  These patriotic values help protect us as a nation; they are part of Obama’s vision of national security.

 

Posted in All things Obama, Cosmpolitanism, Obama & Inclusivity, Obama's World View, The New Normal Family | Comments Off

My New Respect for Facebook & Google, & the New Normal Family Values

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Ruth O'Brien

How to write comedy or a dissertation in a day (or at least collect the data for it!):

I woke up this morning feeling like it was Christmas. I knew it was like Christmas Eve as the evening progressed, as I watched these right-wingers’ snowflakes landing all over my WordPress pages. And this morning the snow coverage over the map was complete — a circle wipeout, if you can visualize Google’s map of the world from 279 different locations (there are only 188 nations, so . . .).

They swarmed from fully across the span of the United States, their eyeballs landing on a few pages, and of course misstating and exaggerating my content for their corrupt purpose — to denigrate or blacken me, and my reputation. This is all they do to Obama (chapter 6 of my forthcoming book), so I get it.

And besides, I know the denigration drill since then-Rep. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, called my mom in 1978 to say how proud she should be about my whistleblowing. I exposed corruption at the Capitol Page School that year, and the tactics were so surprising when I was 17 — including students like Mark Robertson, who helped make me “un”liked, shall we say, and the principal, who tried to threaten me with F’s since he knew I couldn’t go to college with an F. (They failed to fail me.) To be fair, Mark called me an “idiot” on Facebook right away, so he’s stayed in character. Apparently this is as PG as it gets on Facebook, and I have new respect for them today!

Now I would have less moxie if I were not “sleeping with the enemy” – and this enemy bespeaks well of my tolerance for conservatives whom I disagree with radically. We don’t go so far as to call each other “honorable,” as one is want to do in a representative democracy. Rather, we help each other express ourselves fearlessly.

And I love my husband’s integrity. Not only is he tolerant of my work when it is progressive, radical, liberal, feminist, womanist, LGBT or any other ist I do, but he works for one of the most respected conservative magazines in the United States, with a good Irish lineage, and took my maiden name to unite me and my boys, knitting us into a modern nuclear family — the new normal — one stepfather, two sons, and even an ex-husband who is a history professor from the Middle East of white, blond, blue-eyed Dutch descent, and his wife, an expatriate who escaped Iran after the Shah left and Khomeini gained power.

We have a very diverse family. As I caution my sons, they cannot afford to take a position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without thinking it through very carefully. And they do. Their mom is a homegrown radical, coming from Santa Barbara and Bakersfield, going to school in Pumpkin Center, and the Capitol Page School, and Claremont (then) Men’s College (when it had just become co-ed) and teaching at the best public university in New York City – the Graduate Center, CUNY. Their stepfather works down the block, and his conservative magazine is pro-Zionist and pro-Israel. They visit their father, who works for another public university and does not visit Israel, and their stepmother blogs on human rights, defending the rights of people ostensibly harmed by Israel and/or the United States. It’s complicated!

We are a diverse family. We are a tolerant family, and I am very proud to be the mother of this patriotic family that in Obama’s words stays true to the “American spirit” that “includes staying true to the unity and diversity that makes us strong — like no other nation in the world.”

So exaggerate away, and maybe a few of my students will profit from the data that I collect about what irks the intolerant right wing, who are not only trolling and hacking my site but swarming it, hoping to silence me, knowing that CUNY does not have the network or resources that they have, so I can look like a chicken with my head cut off, or a dog that barks at parked cars. Who cares?

 

Posted in All things Obama, Bold, Cosmpolitanism, Firebaggers vs. Teabaggers, Obama & Inclusivity, Obama Haters, Right Wing Intolerance, Sassy, The New Normal Family, Uppity People, Women Who Are Vocal (Refuse Silence), Womenest, Writing Politics | Comments Off

The Right’s Attempt to Silence Me

Posted on April 21, 2013 by Ruth O'Brien

A site called Weaselzippers did not like my post about treating the accused with dignity, echoing Obama’s own words in today’s blog about his cosmopolitan view of diversity as strength during the Boston manhunt.

This is the thesis of my University of Chicago press book Out of Many, One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition, and they administer a Facebook page too.

It is also present in my Public Square books for Princeton University Press particularly by Anne Norton, Jill Lepore, Joan Wallach Scott, Andrei Markovits, among others.  Collectively the books won 12 awards and mentions.

And it will be very front and center of my new book series entitled Heretical Thought for Oxford University Press.

MISSION STATEMENT: Thought is heretical when it threatens our idea of universality, or our notion of the self or selves, whether it is in the face of advances in science, human science, governance, or media that, regardless of purpose or intent, shape and determine our bodies and our consciousness and/or the ways we communicate about them.  It embodies seismic or significant breaks in sclerotic contemporary political thought.

Some people who read this post hacked into my site and deleted material.  I’m curious to see if they can affect publishing on all 3 fronts – the most elite university presses in the United States, and arguably the world.

Posted in Leading Women, Neotribalism; War on Women, Obama & Inclusivity, Obama Haters, Obama's World View, Right Wing Intolerance, Running Republicans, Uppity People, Women Who Are Vocal (Refuse Silence), Womenest | Comments Off

Obama’s Cosmopolitan View of Diversity as Strength during Boston Manhunt

Posted on April 21, 2013 by Ruth O'Brien

What I found unusual about Obama’s speech on Friday before the manhunt ended in the success was the following excerpt  — the “American spirit includes staying true to the unity and diversity that makes us strong — like no other nation in the world. In this age of instant reporting and tweets and blogs, there’s a temptation to latch on to any bit of information, sometimes to jump to conclusions.  But when a tragedy like this happens, with public safety at risk and the stakes so high, it’s important that we do this right.  That’s why we have investigations.  That’s why we relentlessly gather the facts.  That’s why we have courts.  And that’s why we take care not to rush to judgment — not about the motivations of these individuals; certainly not about entire groups of people.

After all, one of the things that makes America the greatest nation on Earth, but also, one of the things that makes Boston such a great city, is that we welcome people from all around the world — people of every faith, every ethnicity, from every corner of the globe.  So as we continue to learn more about why and how this tragedy happened, let’s make sure that we sustain that spirit.”

This is cosmopolitan patriotism at its best.

Posted in All things Obama, Cosmpolitanism, Obama & Foreign Policy, Obama & Inclusivity, Obama's World View | Comments Off

A Day of Terror

Posted on April 20, 2013 by Ruth O'Brien

I always know it’s my birthday when things start blowing up.  A close friend from Germany would telephone, and for the life of me, I was flattered and impressed: How did she remember?  That was until I recalled that the New York Times covered the Jewish cemetery in Iselin, N.J., being vandalized by neo-Nazis on my birthday one year.

I asked her about it.  Oh yes, she knew, and she confessed that this was what triggered her memory every year (on top of being a considerate friend).  As it happens, Hitler’s birthday (April 20) is also a bit of a to-do over in Germany.  Like clockwork, something bad happens, or a multitude of events — pre-1989, post-Berlin Wall, it doesn’t matter.

Then I triangled* this with the fact that five days before Hitler’s birthday is the day we all have to send in our taxes, with Uncle Sam (and why not Aunt Samantha?) holding open their bags or coffers.  Throw in a few more anniversaries, and now you get the picture.

Now we have captured the two terrorists from Chechnya who come from the troubled region that is Muslim, but we cannot understand their motives, not yet.  And Obama encourages us to refrain.

This said, the mortuary pictures of the older brother of the two are extremely disturbing, raising questions as to whether the Boston Police Department captured him with too much force. I understand the explanation offered by Katharine Q. Seelye, William H. Rashbaum, and Michael Cooper.  Yet, it does not ring true.  A picture is worth a thousand words that will keep our ears ringing as we recoil from this photo.  Images have a way of searing themselves into our memory in a way that can’t be undone.  We have an emotional memory, not just a rational one that is exemplified by words.

While terrorism is about causing fear — again an emotion — we do have to account for our conduct in these extreme times when adrenaline is running high.

At my home, to at least offset this, we turn off all media.  I couldn’t believe my sons’ explanation when they got home about one brother running over the other one.  So I found a place to read about this, and I recoiled after seeing the picture.  Still, we all know that terrorism, like crime, “leads if it bleeds” with the established media.  The established media fixates on the domestic-violence or crime-of-passion aspect of terrorism, and it, too, inculcates more fear in all of us.

Boston has great resonance for terrorists.  Selecting the Boston Marathon has great impact and it is going to be felt among the upper middle class: healthy, white, high-income earners who are non-smokers and non-drinkers (though maybe pancake-and-syrup eaters) — those who attend the Boston Marathon or watch it.

I do hope we all watch the cleanup or the damage control and hear the words Obama uttered – we should be careful not just to bracket the motives of these terrorists – but also make sure to remember that we are an immigrant nation.  I hope we are not an Uncouth Nation, as Andrei S. Markovits said so well in 2004 for the Public Square Book series.  And I hope we understand questions pertaining to The Veil, as Joan Wallach Scott explained in 2007.  And finally, I hope we understand why Karl Marx wrote On the Jewish Question, as Anne Norton writes in On the Muslim Question.

Indeed, this week at the CUNY Graduate Center, we are having our last event for a fellowship I co-direct, funded by the former Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, whose foundation started the John E. Sawyer Seminars on the Comparative Study of Cultures.

The United States that I love hunts down terrorists AND follows human rights during capture. Giving the worst criminal or terrorist the most dignity during captivity shows why we should not be feared as a nation and is the best antidote to terrorism.

We accept difference, as a nation, and we should champion our greatest strength – inclusivity – at these extreme moments if we want the character of the United States not to be judged harshly by the global community.  Once all the adrenaline subsides, I hope we will all be witnesses at the Internal Affairs investigation about undue force.

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Hacked — Obama Haters trashed my content

Posted on April 20, 2013 by Ruth O'Brien

Obama-haters, BEWARE.  I won’t be silenced.  Indeed, I’m launching a new series with

 

 

 

 

Oxford University Press on Heretical Thought:

Heresy: Thought is heretical when it threatens our idea of universality, or our notion of the self or selves, whether it is in the face of advances in science, human science, governance, or media that, regardless of purpose or intent, shape and determine our bodies and our consciousness and/or the ways we communicate about them.  It embodies seismic or significant breaks in sclerotic contemporary political thought.

Mission: The series is shaped by the notion that contemporary political thought that advances significant or seismic ideas, independent of purpose or intent, and also threatens our ideas of universality, is heretical.  To discover what are the heretical thoughts of our day, authors will juxtapose two or three seemingly unrelated issues side by side.  By reconciling these issues, this book series exposes contemporary ruptures in thought, or a break in a school of thought.  The books will be analytically organized along four platforms with issues pertaining to (first) science and (second) human sciences, as well as our ability to (third) communicate about them and (fourth) govern them globally by law, treaty, or international agreement.  The hope is that these juxtapositions will make visible or apparent threats that are observable, empirical, biological, chemical, or physical in the universe — if we had the time to weigh all the options, come up with hypotheses, and reject convenience or short-term profit and gain.  Heretical ideas constitute a universal threat to universality, or what makes a person or a people(s) in a habitat or even the cosmos unique.  Heretical thought has an imprint on the identity of the self or our selves.

Yet, instead of featuring the heretics themselves, this book series showcases heretical ideas, and how such ideas cause seismic breaks in sclerotic thought and affect political action.

Posted in All things Obama, Firebaggers vs. Teabaggers, Obama & Inclusivity, Obama Haters, Right Wing Intolerance, Running Republicans, Women Who Are Vocal (Refuse Silence) | Tagged | Comments Off