/lit/ - Literature

I think Hello Reddit

>Prager University

Literally a meme "university" that works as nothing but a right-wing hugbox.

>>7285885
>using the word hugbox
bonjour reddit!

>>7285871
Hey, do you think speaking for this Prager University thing pays good money?

Because apparently they'll hire anyone, and I'm definetely not above making s few grand misrepresenting issues for the "scared for the future" crowd

>Prager University

>>7285889
But he's not wrong.

>>7285871
Bit of a stupid video, but shes right.

fucking Prager

sort of agree tho

>>7285889
>>7285878
Calling something "Reddit" has lost all meaning and substance.

>>7285914
Hello Reddit!

Since you dragged this shit from reddit to here, might as well post the reddit rebuttal:


No, Shakespeare specifically is not required, however there are Historical Period requirements for English Majors at UCLA:
4 Historical (one course in each period)
Courses offered in Winter 2016:
Literatures in English before 1500
Literatures in English 1500-1700
Literatures in English 1700-1850
Literatures in English 1850-Present
Courses on Shakespeare are in the 1500-1700 section. That section has 6 possible courses, of which 3 have something to do with Shakespeare. You're not required to dedicate an entire course to Shakespeare, but I don't see an issue with that as a student may want to study the period more broadly or focus on Milton instead [which the other courses are geared towards].
Additionally, there are breadth requirements which she has edited down in her video [she leaves out Genre/Interdisciplinary Studies and Creative Writing]:
3 Breadth (one course is required in three of the four areas below)
Courses offered in Winter 2016:
Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability and Sexuality Studies
Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies
Genre Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies, Critical Theory
Creative Writing (enrollment in any creative writing course is by application only)
These are NOT specific classes, they are ways they have segmented the courses offered in the English Department as to force students in to taking a wide variety of course work. Here is where the breadth course listings start and you will see that there are courses such as Literature of the Harlem Renaissance and survey's of American Literature included. They're not cramming it down your throat and they are making sure to have the topics she lists apply to English - it's not like they're taking a straight Gender Studies course - they're taking an English course about women writers, which makes total sense as a course you'd want to make available to students. When you actually look at the course offerings you see that it is not the Progressive Indoctrination Bootcamp she makes it out to be in her video. It's not like UCLA has atom bombed historical literature from their course catalog - they've just added in courses that cover more modern topics in relation to literature. I was an Art History major and my departmental requirements were pretty similar to this.

>>7285871
There is nothing wrong with what she said.

>>7285871
>Wobblespike
>Best writer in the English language
Top pleb. She probably hasn't read a book that wasn't authored by Bill O'Reilly since high school.

>>7285871
>oy dose librul goys ahr destwoyin conserfatif hugbox cultchah ids anathah shoah

>>7285919
>telling the truth
>analyzing the situation and discovering the nuances
>not being an alarmist

Absolute madman!

>>7285871
i watch every of their videos, only to wonder how one can develope such an ignorance against every aspect of life.
-global warming is a lie.
-the conversatives are less racist than the liberals
-conversatives only create welath, liberals only destroy wealth
-america deserves to be the worlds policemen because otherwise the world would fall apart in terror by islamists and communists.

i can't even laugh about them anymore, it just hurts a little bit more every time

>>7285949
The first three are right tho

First Prager vid I've seen that I've mostly agreed with.

I would say that Prager University mostly killed liberal arts

>>7285955
Capitalists create wealth. The conservative tradition is opposed to capitalism.

>>7285931
Hating Shakespeare is pleb. Mark Twain and Bernard Shaw didn't like Shakespeare, but one of them was a bitter old fedora who wrote banal folksy horseshit and the other was a permavirgin with kooky political beliefs who was incapable of writing realistic characters because he was an autist.

are we sure this isn't a Molly Shannon character

>>7285942
>telling you what you want to hear

>>7285949
>-the conversatives are less racist than the liberals

but anon, those ni- i mean, african-'merican folk should be glad i create those minimun wage jobs for them! if i didnt, theyd be on the street begging for money, or dancing, or shooting each other!

I mostly agree with this, but Dennis Prager is a kike, so I'm conflicted as to how I should react to it.

>>7285960
In america conservativism is capitalism.

>>7285962
Where did I say I hated Shakespeare? That's right, I didn't. From me saying that Shakespeare isn't the greatest author in the English language you can't deduce whether I think he's the second best author or whether I wipe my ass with his entire collected works every time I take a shit.

I prefer this kind of criticism coming from Harold Bloom as he's not a conservatard corporate shill

>>7285885
As opposed to every other university that is a left-wing hugbox?

>>7285942
I wasn't trying to criticize the reddit post, rather OP posting this /pol/bait here.

>>7285979
What a backwards country. You also reversed the meanings of liberal and libertarian over there. In other parts of the word conservatism and libertarianism are respectable. The free market idiots in America have stolen these words for their own cause, perverting their meanings and attracting people who don't realize conservatism and libertarianism oppose free markets and fundamentalism.

Liberal Arts provided tons of stupid/evil ass communists to stampede the great western world. All these academic thugs should live an animal-like life under the regime of Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao. Also French philosophers were all walking asshole-chasing herpes and AIDS petri dishes. Feel sad to see American universities are blindly following such suicidal trend.

Modern American Liberals.

Political and ideological zealots who seek to destroy the cannon.

>>7285999
Maybe your university was a hugbox, but mine actually had a pretty active conservative debate club. And a contingent of neoclassical econ professors.

>>7286003
What did you expect? It's a country founded by the British, but with none of their self-awareness or rich history.

>>7286121
Tons of schools have conservative clubs. My school has one, and I know Yale and Harvard have them from friends who go there. Anyone who thinks that not being liberal at college is a death sentence either never went to college or thinks all colleges are tiny liberal arts schools since those are what make the news.

>>7285885
>>7285999
>>7286121
>>7286141

PragerU is not a school. The website/YT channel is all there is to it.

>Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability and Sexuality Studies
literally who would even think of taking this bullshit?

>>7286121
>>7286141
I went to Columbia, probably the left-est of the Ivies (except Brown, maybe?) and I would say the average student was not much farther left than the Democratic Party; that is to say, not very left. Plenty of people had conservative or libertarian views, where else do you think all the rich prick conservative kids come from.

>>7286293
Probably people with a gender, race, ethnicity, disability or sexuality.

>>7285914
nice try reddit

Oversaturation killed the Liberal Arts

Really wish we weren't required to learn about niggers, faggots, retards, trannies and whores in college.

>>7285871
This is pure Americawank.

>>7286318
this tbh

poor people shouldnt go to college, at least not for the non-trade degrees

>all the leftism in this thread

>>7285871
This just made me rage so hard, like a fucking slap in the face.

The very core of western education and civilization, destroyed...

fucking hell, someone's going to pay for this.

>>7286309
this is a mistake though. they could actually work on becoming good, instead of focusing on political theories external to their practice.

like I have a black artist friend who once complained that whatever he does, white progressives always start reading his work in terms of him being a BLACK MAN, and then (some of his work is performance), if there is anyone else in the performance, this black man's relationship to white girls, "who is oppressing who?" etc. he understandably gets really tired of and insulted by it.

there really needs to be a new model of some kind of synthesis of aestheticism.

>not posting proper bait
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW3Vo-XvFoI
Pseudo-Science and False Dichotomies: The Video.

>>7286367
OK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LsrkWDCvxg

>>7286359
the model of ignoring and discriminating against black people has given birth to its antithesis

it's only a matter of time now for the synthesis

>>7286367
>Greg Gutfeld
Lmao

>>7285932
literally the opposite

>>7286390
I don't think I've ever seen a synthesis happen in real life.

Does it hurt?

>>7285871
Eventhough I'm leftist I totally agree with this video. It's just common sense.

I think the sentiment is correct.

My uni experience is that most students learned a pile of useless theory supposed to be applied to a body of knowledge without having the actual body of knowledge.

The result is a goopy mess of ideology applied to a historical strawman

>>7286413
Hegel called history "the slaughter bench" but I have faith things can synthesize in an orderly fashion.

>>7285914
It never had any substance


btw is all internet just reddit and 4chan, where is the cool internet hiding?

>>7285885
they convinced me that actually the US won the vietnam war

>>7286390
>synthesis
Is that the nice word for racewar?

>>7286522
I know where the cool internet is.

>>7286367
All dat ideology, but i agree with one point that liberalism survives off conservatism.

>>7286413
i'm seeing one happen right now in economics

it's called "new structural economics"

>>7286535
can be

>>7286367
>we cannot fix global warming
>but we can fix radical islam

christ, someone please explain to me how can someone be this delusional

>>7286575
By being paid by the oil industry to tell lies

>>7286367
I want Greg Gutfeld to sleep on a floor so I can shoot him in the dick while he sleeps

>>7285871
I think you're a faggot.
Stop postin youtube links, this isn't /pol/.

>>7285919
>post the reddit rebuttal

>>7286595
He's one of the few people I would be genuinely happy to see die.

>>7286600
>muh sekret club no reddit allowed XD
>>>/b/

>>7285919
So Republicunts yet again chimping out about nothing, what a shocker.

>>7286600
>I have no arguments, better say he's from [website] to obfuscate this!

>>7285919
You will get shakespear or someone else important, but its true you cant avoid that race/gender/ bullshit even if you try.

That is an actual issue. Its like a cancer on your degree.

>>7285871

Holy shit this dude (pic related)

>>7286630
>>7286630

>>7286621
It's totally gay that people who just want to get an education are forced to learn about niggers, faggots, retards, trannies and whores who have contributed practically nothing to human culture thoguh

>>7286636
Yeah I posted that guy's comment earlier ITT >>7286047

I studied history and I will admit that there wasn't much room given to thinkers like Spengler, Eliade, de Maistre or any other greats on the other side of the spectrum.
Either Marxists or (classical) liberals, mostly. Everyone else was treated in a stepmotherly fashion.
Inb4 pic related.

But I can't really say we were genderqueer PC cis priv checking study groups, which seems to be what Prager is implying.
Next to all the usual marxist suspects, there wasn't any real 'indoctrination' where they were presented as accurate in their claims, but maybe not as much contrasted with something of a whole other ideology.
I do think that is changing with today's youth turning increasingly conservative.

I still think we got a very decent background to leave from ( because in all honesty I feel like this is only the beginning instead of being 'there' in terms of mastery ).

>>7286640

You weren't funny the first time, so stop spamming your lazy parody.

>>7286330

>>7286384
>>7286367
I listen to both at the same time.

>>7286664
Actually I'm mostly serious

>>7286640
I feel like this is intended to be ironic ("totally gay"), but I ... I just don't know, anymore.

STEM's really need to chill the fuck out over the liberal arts existing...

Seriously, what is it with you people being so buttravaged over a field of study

Is it purely the atheist maymay and "le money shud be spent on sexbots"? Or what else seems to bother you?
It seems to be political mostly. If stuff that came out of the faculty of humanities was calling for crusades I think they might be ok with it.

>>7286675
That's not what this thread is about, but nice try/

>>7286673
Honestly, if you are serious, then step it up; that type of posting is well below even /pol/ standards.

>>7286575
>>7286585
That was fast

>>7286679

Anyone calling for the abolishment of the humanities is obviously not a humanities student/graduate.

>>7286653
>Spengler, Eliade, de Maistre
>greats
whew lad

>>7286695
That's still not what this thread is about, but nice try

>>7286674
I just like expressing my genuine racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic and transphobic opinions in a wacky way. Sorry

>>7286698

I don't know where you are coming from, but either you're disagreeing over the fact that I dropped their names and not others, or you're just a Marxist yourself and anyone I can name is "lel" by default for you.

Chesterton? Better? Because I had not heard of him either.

>>7285919
>they've just added in courses that cover more modern topics in relation to literature.

Does the teaching of those topics accomplish any other goal than political indoctrination?

>>7286706
Nietzschee is good

>>7286709
No, and the indoctrination process still occurs in the historical surveys neway.

>>7286698

Those seem to be quite relevant for the field of historiography. We're not talking about the literary or philosophical 'greats', genius English major snob.

>>7286711

Except Nietzsche doesn't have much to do with the study of history as this anon eluded to >>7286719

>>7286706

If the modern world fails, at least we invented fake tits.

>>7286723
>Except Nietzsche doesn't have much to do with the study of history
lmao look at how uneducated you are

>>7286653
I studied history as well, and I think the most insidious aspect of it was the the generally leftist perspective was presented as the default, normative view, where as a conservative perspective was often totally absent. I will say though that marxist interpretation was viewed as being antiquated and, frankly, laughably myopic. Anyone claiming marxism, at least in history, is still a threat needs a refresher. I distinctly remember by Old Testament professor mocking the 60s theory that the Israelites didn't actually enter Israel under Joshua's standard, but rather rose up against the oppressive canaanites; apparently it was thought to be an early instance of class war, or something.

One thing of note, I took a modern thought class in which the prof was adamant in exculpating Nietzsche of all charges of misogyny, aristocracy, elitism, etc; that was pretty amusing seeing Nietzsche softened for us delicate millennials.

>>7286723
http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/On_the_Advantage_and_Disadvantage_of_History_for_Life

It's one of the cornerstones of modern pomo critique of historical truth like Hayden White

It's one of the things White bases a chapter on in the section on philosophy of history in Metahistory, alongside Croce and.. Marx? I can't remember

>>7286743
There are still Marxists and more vague Marxians in mainstream academic history. I think Christopher Dyer is one, and historical materialism runs through a lot of postwar social scientific history. There are a few fairly hardcore materialists who are probably just outright Marxists if you asked, but most are eclectic.

Was just looking at another guy on Oxford (IIRC) as a potential adviser, whose bio openly says he's for rehabilitating Marxism. Neat dude.

But yeah, Marxism in the sense of writing party-approved pamphlets or Soviet-era shit is pretty dead.

>>7286729

I don't have any patience for this.

Nietzsche wasn't a historian. He has nothing to do with historiography. He wasn't a great in the field of history. Spengler and Eliade were involved with the field ( de Maistre was a poor example, I should have mentioned Toynbee or something, who was covered, albeit too little imo ).

That's it.

>>7286745

Philosophers influence historians or might engage in what sometimes is called "historiosophy". Yes. We all know that.
Doesn't make philosophers actual historians though.

>>7286753
You are probably right there being plenty of clandestine type marxists in academic history, but, especially compared to other humanities, it is fairly rare. I'd say history maybe the most conservative of the humanities; in a broader view, probably econ is the only field more conservative amongst the non-stem subjects.

>>7286743
>Nietzsche softened for us delicate millennials
I had philosophy for two years in high school, before I graduated in '11. And my teacher had a stated mission to avoid ever softening up any claims or theories claimed by past philosophers. She was adamant that in a academic context we were all to see them as products of their time, though we in a personal and contemporary sense were encouraged to see them as reactionary dickbags.
She also hated Aristotle, and was constantly going on about everything he said was wrong, and usually used it to talk about how much better Plato was, save for the whole political aspect.
She was a feminist, and would go out of her way to talk about women in history where appropriate, and it clearly affected her views of philosophical matters. Though she was pretty open to having discussions that went contrary to her beliefs, and never punished anyone for talking against her, she was pretty immobile in her beliefs.

Made for fun classes, if nothing else.

>>7286760
Nietzsche isn't an historian, and wouldn't want to be an historian, but he is clearly important in the development of historical epistemology, and precocious as fuck in his scepticism about historical truth on top of that. He was writing right during the heyday of the Rankean university regime, basically right as it was telling Lamprecht to go fuck himself. He didn't have any real connection to historiography but he's clearly an important thinker.

History has to clarify its epistemology before it can say or observe anything. I can't remember who it was that said any history without a philosophy of history built into it is just fact-collecting.

No "practical" historian takes White (basically Nietzsche writ large) seriously, but they're good questions to have in mind. I remember reading White and Nietzsche and reacting pretty strongly against it, since it was basically saying what I do is a ritualised form of esoteric shitty fiction writing, but at the same time I happened to be taking a class in Italian Renaissance history, which is a really, really insular field, and it made me question the behaviour of some of the scholars I interacted with. They just make all these fucking epistemological assumptions, and those assumptions get sedimented into shit as banal as delineating fields of specialisation (THE RENAISSANCE BEGINS / ENDS HERE), which is harmful.

tldr Nietzsche may not have cared much about practicing actual history but considering his thought is an important part of the practice of actual history.

>>7285999

Nice trips.

Oh and obligatory "this tbh fam."

Univeristies allow conservative clubs to exist as long as they argue for vanilla enough "conservativsm" that doesn't actually threaten to win anything, and this is what is seen. But then left-wing stuff is actually in curricula, the networking for people who train to actually get power in the professoriate, media, and political classes takes place via a "more left than thou" mechanism far more than the opposite.

Prager University is definitely biased, but universities would never give proper and fair treatment to the arguments of PU based on rationalizing it away as some fundy fucktard thinktank (which it is tbh), so why be a chump and consider the pros of these diversity cult classes? It's counter-bias to a huge bias which also happens to actually be winning, so the complaints that PU is biased should go in one ear and out the other.

>>7286719
> Pre-WW2 Epoch writers
> Greats of historiography
mate it aint 1932

study of history has abandoned the search for grand narrative

>>7286838

So what? It should be covered. Just like Thucydides should be covered. Just like Ibn Khaldun.
What is it with /lit/ continuously not getting the fucking point?

>yeah but i think das dumb 'n so not the Current Year hhaha so y bother

If you wanna study history decently, you got to fucking know there was an era where people sought grand narratives and what those narratives constituted.

>>7286830

I agree. But I also am sceptic about this extreme cross/interdisciplinary position whereby everyone seems to think all the disciplines in the humanities are basically one huge melting pot and it doesn't really matter where we put each figure, just because it overlaps.
There's value to having specializations. Especially for history.

>>7286838


That's because they are either fuccbois who couldn't grasp the teleologies of a gopher let alone ones they themselves are embedded in, or the ones that could noticed that the narrative of history conflicted with the narrative of whig history (ie, the modern notion of 'Progress', a most unfortunate naming scheme), and so to sweep it under the rug proscribe the whole business all together.

>>7286634
>Ugh it is so problematic that people have to take classes that I don't approve of. It's like literal cancer. If those shitlords don't change the curriculum I'm going to write the ANGRIEST tumblr post. omg I can't right now where's a safe space I literally can't even

>>7286838

>historians shouldn't know what historians thought pre-WW2

English majors in charge of deciding what a program should teach its students.
Seems like Prager has a point.

>>7286837
>I can't argue for myself or survive in an environment where my ideas aren't taken as a given
>So I'll call it a hugbox

Are universities biased towards the international left? Definitely.
Are they hugboxes? No, not even close.

Not trying to /pol/ or anything, but in the master year of my university, the English literature dept. offers three courses on twentieth century literature.

Two of them are literally 'holocaust literature' and 'the Jewish trauma'.

>>7286920

This post doesn't endorse Marxism.
Back to /pol/

>>7286920
Considering how much Jews are important to American contemporary literature, that seems pretty justified.

>>7286935

Yeah, but the thing is that it's not about Jewish literature - it's only holocaust literature. It's not Portnoy's Complaint, it's Maus (!) and The Pianist.

>>7286917
>Are they hugboxes? No, not even close.
Where are views to the contrary of the international left expressed in their curriculum?

>>7286960
Ugh, okay, that's pretty strange and different. But I'm sure your lit department will come up with an acceptable excuse.

>>7286920
Jews and Holocaust studies are MASSIVELY overrepresented no matter where you go.

Remember, it's about what gets funded. A department will add another Holocaust studies (yes, that's a thing) or Jewish studies chair if they either get funding specific to it or there are funding opportunities available via having academics who publish in that field and it's a hot field.

Jews have fuckloads of money (inb4 /pol/), are overrepresented though not quite uniquely in terms of this kind of patronage, and are incredibly chauvinistic and utterly fucking obsessed, even in a Freudian sexual way, with their goddamn Shoah, so 99.99% of what they promote is Jewish or Holocaust studies. This means more conferences, more demand, more grants, more funding, more grad students, etc., all studying how many Jew shoelaces the Nazis had in Treblinka or whatever the fuck.

Go read the acknowledgments at the beginning of any monograph for this shit and it'll say "my thanks to Rita Goldstein and Marty Goldberg, and to the Israel Foundation for Hope, for the grants necessary to pursue this project." Dude just went where the money was.

>>7286971

I have a copy of The Holocaust Industry in my room. Haven't read it, though. Dare I bring it with me to class tomorrow?

>>7286965
When are views that support the international left expressed in their curriculum?

The answer is "never" if you're not in a shitty major. The closest thing I've come to having politics discussed in a class is a professor mentioning that Trump would win an election in passing.

On top of that, the first thing that happens in any decent moral philosophy class is the professor dismissing moral and cultural relativism as utter bullshit.

Try going to college before you criticize it.

>>7286965
1 out of 5 professors. In my department (Economics), 3 out of 5, just look for the guy who studies game theory, or the guy who lectures on capital allocation, and stay away from the "development economics" types.

>>7287000
It's a fucking amazing book. Finkelstein is hilarous, acerbic, sometimes even a bit of a dick. Definitely recommend it as well as Beyond Chutzpah. I really admire Finkelstein a lot.

I would be careful with it though. It's perfectly acceptable to read but it may make people secretly look at you funny. I recently chimed in that I loved it, in passing in conversation with a TA I know, and he replied uncomfortably that he thinks Finkelstein has some kind of agenda, and now he gives me funny looks like "r u a nazi?"

Some people think Finkelstein and immediately think the only possible reason you could be reading it is some kind of crypto-antisemitism.

>>7286971
>go to state-funded uni in yurop
>education is basically free
>no such things as jewish studies

>>7287019
>Some people think Finkelstein and immediately think the only possible reason you could be reading it is some kind of crypto-antisemitism.

That in itself is sad and a proof of the so-called progressive nature of colleges and universities: perhaps I agree with the obsession of victimhood and the diminishing of history as a clash between races or oppressor/oppressed, like they say in OP's video.

>>7287036

I'm >>7286920 and I go to a state-funded university in Europe that has a pretty high ranking.

>>7285871
Did the Enlightenment and the Classical period care a bit about Shakespeare? No, they wanted to create a new culture. It's only our decadent, industrialized, middle class that has decided to regress and look backwards instead of moving forward.

Critical Theory is the philosophy of the future and provides us with the best tools we have to locate ourselves in history.

>>7287059
Weirdly, Shakespeare's universal celebration as the peak of English lit was surprisingly recent. I think the 17th century basically didn't care about him, and it was only in the mid-late 18th that people started considering him one of the absolute masters? Not 100% sure though.

>>7285871
shakespeare. no doubt

>>7287067
He was very highly regarded in his lifetime, but his popularity waned a bit until Samuel Johnson revived it in the 18th century

>>7287048
I also go to one of those though it's kind of poorly rated, and we have no such things as Jewish studies or Holocaust studies.
Are you German or Austrian? Or something else?

>>7287087

Flemish (Belgian, but there's a difference in education level between Wallonia and Flanders - with Flanders being quite higher ranked)

>>7287059
but anon, didnt you hear? new ideas are bad, because the framers of the constitution said so! i mean, i cant find "where" or "when" they said so, but im sure its here somewhere!

>Prager University
Fuck off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfN2IvnIA4M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYxEpS5M8Tk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytdMUddGe-U

>American Christians watch this and what they take away from it is that Christians are persecuted in America
Oy fucking vey

>>7287099
Prager is actually really neat in how it aggressively gobbles up these nu-conservative and "counter-cultural" pundit-y types, like Christina Hoff Sommers and Ben Shapiro. The Sommers videos in particular are interesting because they aggressively and VERY effectively (way more than usual with this kind of thing) understand their demographics, and adopt the necessary lingo. Sommers has clearly been briefed, or possibly briefed herself, on the lingo she needs to use, she slips in memes and shit, Factual Feminist itself is a 4chan appellation I think. All of this is then put under the umbrella of a neocon think tank.

Sometimes I wonder how conscious this shit is. I mean, they know what demos they are mining, but why? Are they just a thinktank looking to spread certain sentiments? Or are specific groups funding them with specific reasons, more and more as they show how competent they are at getting the "/pol/ audience" to upvote and retweet their shit? While people like Sommers are just happy to finally be raking in huge numbers after 25 years of doing dinky talk radio shows about their books.

It's just interesting to watch it grow and adapt. The other one I can't remember, which is really similar and has all these surprisingly funny and "hip" vids slamming SJWs, right alongside pro-Israel and traditional neocon rah rah Reagan shit, is savvy as fuck too. They actually have done good research of how to make memefags upvote, and they're a bunch of fucking old dudes.

There has got to be some weird marketing company out there that specialises in knowing how to market to /pol/ and Reddit niggerhaters. Please hire me.

>>7287099
>Bret Stephens

jesus, I thought he knew better than to generalize Iran as "that country that Khomeini led"

>>7287142
>There has got to be some weird marketing company out there that specialises in knowing how to market to /pol/ and Reddit niggerhaters. Please hire me.

I'm sure there is, but for every think tank that does this there are eight or nine that are just content with the usual Facebook article spam (generally garnering one or two likes at best). I say this from experience from interning in one.

There's probably a nascent industry there anon, connecting the rich white people with the racists who will gladly vote against their self-interest if it means harming the other darker guy.

>>7287099
>it's not nuclear weapons that are the problem
>out of context khomeini quote
>americans blaming anyone for questionable acts of indirect war
>implying somalia is going to get nuclear arms
>implying iran doesn't dislike britain
>the jews
I don't even want Iran to get nuclear weapons, and I know this video is full of shit.

>>7287193
What bothers me the most is who is saying all that. I wouldn't care too much if this was just some Israeli-funded think tank shill, but this is somebody who I've seen speak very lucidly about Middle Eastern geopolitics (not all of which I agree with), as well as on Iran and its divided political climate. And then he does a video like that.

They must pay really well, those Prager folks.

>>7287201
Not being American, I have no idea who most of these people are.
That said, looking at Bret Stephens' twitter account, I don't find anything surprising about him being in that video.

>>7287067
>>7287082
He wasn't considered one of the "greats" (only one of the "bigs", if that makes sense) of his era, but slowly gained traction over the 17th century before exploding in the 18th("bardolatry" took off in the 1730s-40s).

That's for England though, abroad he had some early fandom among German scholars, then became fashionable in the 18th century thanks in no small part to Voltaire and Goethe, then exploded at continent scale with the Romantics.

>>7285962
Or maybe they had, you know, different opinions. Whenever an author is accepted as canonical you can bet some other proeminent author will dislike him, often with actual reasons. Literature is not a tier ladder, sometimes a smart guy can not like another smart guy.

>>7287193
Nuclear weapons are only part of the problem. The main problem is Islam and its cult of suicidal maniacs who are willing to blow themselves up to get their 72 virgins in heaven.

Wait. So /pol/ is right?

>>7287232
He spoke on foreign affairs at the CNN show GPS most every weekend, hosted by another lucid but briefly neocon person, Fareed Zakaria. He's generally there to provide the traditional, defanged post-Bush neocon view, but generally nuanced and well-presented enough that you can't just dismiss his points as stemming solely from ideology.

I haven't watched it since I got rid of my tv around a year ago though, so all those Israeli dollars may have gotten to him.

>>7287246
9/11 was 14 years ago, get a grip already

>>7287246
You're confusing Islam for Islamism.

>>7285949
It's not complicated. They need this worldview or their place in the world loses some kind of meaning, but the worldview is founded on either shaky or non-existent pillars. The absolute easiest way to secure their foundation is to simply take the arguments that expose their weaknesses and flip them into counter-accusations. In short: the American "Conservative" seriously, honestly, actually relies on "no u" for its legitimacy.

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYqrFBm7qdA
This channel is religiously American, and Rockefeller is one of its saints.
I'm not trying to say anything about Rockefeller himself, but they way in which they portray him as some heroic figure of America, Capitalism and Christianity is honestly somewhat disturbing.

>>7287246
Daily reminder that the Middle-East was pretty thoroughly secular until the US waged cold-war in the region, propping up sociopathic liberal dictators and funding uneducated (in formal and religious education) bumpkins to fight proxy wars, establishing contemporary Islamist extremism.
Daily reminder that there is a whole generation of Middle-easterners between the ages of 14-20 that have never not experienced life in a war-zone and the closest thing to the apocalypse imaginable, and with no sign of this ending fatass Americans are still comfortable blaming these people for this cluseterfuck they [the Americans] alone created.

>>7287366
>implying it was only the americans
At least mention the Brits, Anon. The Soviets didn't do the Middle East any good either.

>>7287366
It was the Saudis that founded and funded Wahhabist mosques throughout the region you ignorant shit. Go back to tumblr

>>7287353
>Rockefeller never had labor problems
>Rockefeller never wanted to profit
>Rockefeller was an environmentalist
>Rockefeller was the most scrupulous human being alive
>All praise St. Rockefeller for giving his money away!
>half of it at least

And there are people who believe these hagiographies when all this nonsense can be disproven with a Wikipedia search. Not even an academic database.

There's something fucked about the new age of video based teaching.

>>7287366

If the US had picked better allies in the region, it wouldn't be so bad.
Instead it considered Baathism a little too socialist for its liking, while Gulf state aren't hindering anything about that delicious dorito producing market.

The West, by propping up the Saud family in Riyad as their main partner in the region ( and islamic countries ), has allowed the Saudi's to fund mosques from Marrakesh all up to Jakarta and from Berlin to Mogadishu.
Every radical imam in the West has some connection with Saudi money, if not he got his Alex Jones tier info from Saudi funded websites.

And of course, every jihadi group out there, the money trail goes right back to the royal family.

Plato, in his critiques of the arts.

>>7287405
I still find it funny how such a venal, corrupt, and embarrassing family such as House al Saud can still remain in power when they rule their state like that

>>7287353

I like Americans up until the point they start glorifying work.

The biggest wagecucks out there ( and I'm saying this as a wageslave myself ) and above that worshipping rich fucks like demigods.

I think Trumpy can win just by saying: "I'm fucking rich."

>>7287315
I think it's the only means they have of dealing with a political environment in which our moral ideals have been concede to the left.

>>7287422

Oil money means they don't have to invest in building a real society.

>>7286595
>>7286615
I'm no conservative but holy shit guys calm the fuck down.

>>7287499

Best argument for alternative fuel sources tbh.

I teach programming to small children for 40 dollars an hour at an elementary school. There are after-school programs for chess, programming, robotics and math. There are none for reading.

Today the power went out and I tried to have the kids sit down and read instead. They hate reading. They despise books. They don't even like to look at the cover or flip through the pictures. They would rather look at a Best Buy catalog than read a book.

I blame illiterate parents. Reading is subversive. Should we be surprised it's kept on the DL?

>>7286522
tumblr tbh

>>7287673
I don't hate conservatives on principle, but that guy is such a vile piece of filth and has such an annoying voice that removing him specifically from public discourse and the gene pool would benefit humanity at least a little bit

>>7286636
based azn tbh. this is why China is gonna own the 21st century

>>7287745
That's not the cool internet. I know where the cool internet is though

>>7286675
I'm pursuing a STEM degree and no one but me rags on liberal arts degrees and I only do it ironically.