And here I thought we silly liberals were the ones pushing political correctness and cancelling perfectly useful words.
South Dakota’s Department of Education is touting the conservative National Association of Scholars’ endorsement of the draft K-12 social studies standards that Hillsdale College wrote to help Governor Kristi Noem’s Presidential campaign. (NAS issued its endorsement January 12, so they were endorsing the old draft, #3, which was apparently superseded January 13 by Draft #4, which restores geography standards and adds some Indian names.) The NAS is the only professional academic organization I know of that has endorsed the Hillsdale standards, because only conservatives pushing an ideological crusade against public education could promote standards that would do so much harm to public education.
But even the conservative NAS identifies several shortcomings in the Hillsdale standards: too little writing, too little American culture, too little Indian history, too many euphemisms…
…and, in unexpected hilarity, the conservatives try to woke us up to the fact that we can’t say capitalism any more. No, really—cut it out, or you’re a Commie:
Tendentious Language: The Draft Standards occasionally use tendentious language. “Capitalism” and “capitalist” are inventions of socialist polemic, predicated on Marx’s mistaken economics, and overwhelmingly used as invective against the free market rather than as historical description.
We urge the Department of Education to remove such words from the Standards [National Association of Scholars, letter to South Dakota Department of Education, 2023.01.12].
If there’s any justification in telling South Dakotans they shouldn’t say capitalism, it lies only in the fact that South Dakota’s most passionate advocates for capitalism don’t really practice capitalism.
But good grief. Our LGBT neighbors Q’ed their expansive abbreviation by appropriating the word queer that their oppressors used to hurl at them as an insult; can’t conservatives be content to continue the long-standing appropriation of an academic term that may have gained currency with Karl Marx’s use of the label but which now is used by almost everyone without any inkling of corrupting our souls with socialist polemics?
Well, I think South Dakotans could stop saying peer and start saying Pierre. It’s a Hilldale thing, right Pierre?
Mercantilism
Conservative scholars? They may be conservative, but they ain’t scholars. Don’t they know any history? They need to grow up.
The 19th century was awash in “-isms,” and by that I mean various “movements” that would organize their thoughts and put out “manifestos” to state their purposes. Consider these manifestos a mission statement. The “movements” could be about anything of importance to a small group of people, but they were especially big in the fine arts and literature, since these areas of life then were controlled by tightly organized elites, often self-professed conservative scholars, who defined the limits of what was going to be hung in galleries or published. The out-group, understandably, resented the in-group’s control over the creative process and how art or literature were defined. They sought to redefine art and literature, and they did that by defining themselves by naming their movement. Thus we get such movements as impressionism. Once you have “-ismed” yourself, then you can start “-isming” everything, and you have an outbreak of “-isms.”
Marx didn’t invent the term “capitalism.” He used the term sparingly in his writing. The word “capital” and “capitalist” had been around decades before Marx, and, in the spirit of the age, and since the suffix was in the air, someone, probably in some dark hall where young disaffected men gathered to drink, they just added “-ism” to “capital.” It could have been a socialist or an anarchist, which had their own “-isms.” Oh, let’s ban those, too.
Think Adam Smith.
https://www.npr.org/2010/01/04/122125016/capitalism-overload-and-the-value-of-nothing
Everyone despises wokeness except grudznick who was voted the most tolerant CWCS fellow in Rapid City last month.
“Conservative wokeness” is like a dog that walks on its back legs.
It is a neato trick, Mr. Blundt
Capitalphilia? Pump and Dumpism? Ponzischemia? Prosperity gospiel? Avarice R Us?
Tendentious Libbieism will be the end of us all
I’m often called a liberal by Trumpettes like Pat Powers but liberals want to convert GOPers or convince them to be kinder and gentler. Me? As a progressive I’m actually working to destroy the Republican Party and erase it from the collective cultural memory.
You’re no libbie, Lar. Remember that time back in Belle where I wanted to punch that fellow in the chops who called you Libbie Lar? I think that’s where you first started really sinking your lessons in to ol’ grudznick about love and tolerance. You and I, as progressive Libertarians, need to stick together. The Democrat Party in South Dakota does not need our help to finish its implosion.
Today’s oxymoron: progressive libertarian.
Just shut up Grudz. You’re wasting space and using up too much space. You should thank us liberals who fight for liberty. Your kind fight against it.
Libbies will continue to move to Georgia. That’s all it takes.
Most tolerant Hun is not much of an honor.
Feudalism?
That one Stanford black list of no-no words includes addiction. They prefer people say “deeply devoted” or “committed” instead. Haha. So, Charlie Sheen is dedicated to cocaine. Now what shall we call Washington’s hockey team?
Goat sausage, freshly gotten, is served this morning at the Conservatives with Common Sense breafasting
“Goat sausage”, gathered by grudz, is all full of worms and parasites. Frothing, like the words he puts on line.
Goat sausage? GOAT SAUSAGE?? Jeez, la-WEEZ, Corey, can’t you make Grudz just stop it already? We could be writing about more pleasant topics, such as, oh, I dunno, anal fissures or Brussels sprouts or bot flies or Paul Gosar or venereal diseases or Republicans. We get freshly gotten goat sausage for “breafasting.” Oy.
It’s important to remember that far fewer people are moving to South Dakota to accumulate wealth than there are coming to hoard it.