Re: Rush Limbaugh

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

I wrote:
> >In this case, the _ad hominem_ is quite relevant. If you want to
> >understand the Bush team, the fact that it's centered on 
> > someone whose
> >had "every advantage in life handed to him - Andover, Yale, Harvard,
> >inherited money and position - and he's still a provincial ignoramus"
> >says something about their policies. The Bushwackers do absolutely
> >everything for those with every advantage handed to them (tax cuts,
> >etc.) while expecting the great unwashed masses to do their 
> dirty work
> >for them (including fighting and dying in Iraq). Bush's arrogance --
> >and that of his team -- reminds me of the preppies I encountered at
> >Yale, who thought that the world was their oyster.

Bill writes: 
> I disagree.  Very nearly the same is true of Bill Clinton, Rhodes
> scholar and the opposite in every intellectual sense of George Bush.
> The fact that Bush is "stupid", or ignorant on any number of fronts,
> or privileged, tells us nothing about his priorities and policies.
> There are plenty of people that I know who are arrogant, but they also
> happen to be honest and generous.  However, these attacks --- with
> which I don't have a substantive disagreement --- may play well with
> the chorus, but I don't think they help convince anyone else.

I wasn't trying to convince anyone. My point is that some attention to the personnel involved 
helps us _understand_ what's going on. 

My feeling is that Clinton's arrogance is different. He started out pretty poor and his rise to the
top didn't come because his friends and relatives handed him advantages. Instead, it was his
personal charm and the like that allowed him to succeed, by pleasing such interests as Tyson 
Chicken in Arkansas. He has some understanding of what it's like to be poor, while the top-down 
benevolence of the similarly-gifted as being the main way to help the poor. 
Jim