Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it

[Douglas Carpenter]

thanks to: the Being Liberal fan page on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/beingliberal.org?directed_target_id=0

[deutsey]

1. And we don't even get to stand by

Those of us who do study history suffer right along with all the idiots who forget the past.

[cali]

2. cute, but at its foundation

it's bullshit that allows some to feel morally superior. Knowledge of history doesn't mean anything really when it comes to human behavior or the the human psyche. It's not like such knowledge inoculates those possessing it from emotion or greed or anything else really.

[Fumesucker]

4. Yep, we should just forget about the Holocaust, nothing like that will ever happen again

And the Holocaust certainly doesn't have anything to tell us about human nature and the human psyche.

Do you realize how banal that sounds?

[cali]

10. oh fer fuck's sake. because that's just what I said NOT.

History has much to say about the human condition. That it doesn't change much is hardly earth shattering news/ Did the Holocaust end genocide? Just because we haven't learned from history as a species, doesn't mean it doesn't have value.

Do you realize how ridiculous YOU sound when you put words in others' mouths that they didn't come close to uttering? No, probably not. And isn't that interesting? you have a history.

[Fumesucker]

14. Here's what you said verbatim

Knowledge of history doesn't mean anything really when it comes to human behavior or the the human psyche.

You're fond of calling bullshit, that's bullshit pure and simple. Holocaust deniers are not on the same moral level as the rest of us and you know it.

[SCVDem]

15. Sorry Cali

It reads rather harshly against a knowlege of history being useful.

Life is all about human behavior and the human psyche.

[graham4anything]

13. Yup. The racist hatred to Barack Obama, the tea party, the guns show NEVER FORGET

The John Birch Society lives in the hearts of the pure constitutionalists who believe it when THomas Jefferson said ONLY MEN(that look, act, and own slaves) are Equal and not the 80% of the rest of the general public.
The ones who want to march from VA to DC show that we must NEVER FORGET and say NEVER AGAIN

[Douglas Carpenter]

12. I have to agree with you Cali that knowing the right does not by any means mean that someone will

do the right or even support the right. Knowledge of history and liberal enlightenment can help direct policy - bit it will not on its own.

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. History repeats itself

History repeats itself, and that's one of the things that's wrong with history
Clarence Darrow


History repeats itself, has to, nobody listens

[Junkdrawer]

16. Hey: Let's spend all our taxes creating a Financial/Military Empire....

We can leave our manufacturing/agricultural base to rot because the Empire will last forever!

Novel idea, huh?

[graham4anything]

5. NEVER AGAIN to fracture and NEVER AGAIN to Ralph Nader and the 3rd party types

1952 1956 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 2000 2004

NEVER AGAIN TO FRACTURE
protests votes led to failure each and every time

Democratic party could have should have would have won for 80 plus years in the presidential without the damn protesters and fracture and the liars like Ralph Nader
who should have run for senate or governor or house and not been so lazy and actually worked a day in his life.

VOTE straight democratic 99% of the time, except in the 1% of the time when the person will promise to caucus with the democratic party

NEVER AGAIN Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Ralph Nader, David Duke,

and Rand Paul and Jorg Haider and David Duke are as close to idealogically clones as humanly possible

[Fumesucker]

8. Bless your heart n/t

[cali]

11. YOU make me want to go and vote for every third party candidate I can find, honeypie.

your posts, your philosophy, everything, disgusts me.

[hootinholler]

17. Mission Accomplished

Just sayin.

[graham4anything]

20. Then why are you on a Democratic website that promotes Democratic candidates?

There are plenty of third party websites, though I guess, dividing the democratic party is what worked
1952,1956,1968,1972,1980,1984,1988,1992,2000,2004
so why not.

Ralph Nader elected George Bush. It worked in 2000 and 2004.

[JHB]

18. 1952? 1956? What "protest votes" lost those election?

Last edited Wed May 8, 2013, 12:48 PM - Edit history (1)

And I take it you count Carter 1976 as a loss?

Franky I'd call bullshit on your whole slate, but at least on some these is some rationale that makes sense. Overly simplistic sense, but at least identifiable. For others -- like those I note above -- your POV is, shall we say, opaque.

[graham4anything]

21. 1980 fracture gave Reagan the election(and Liz Warren voted for Reagan).

1980 party sold Jimmy down the river
and John Anderson won 7% of the vote third party
As he was a liberal, who's votes do you think Anderson took from? The arch conservative Reagan or Jimmy Carter?

and in 1968, the party sold LBJ down the river. LBJ of course is the single most liberal(to the point of almost being a socialist) President of all time.

but then Wallace the DixieRacistcRat ran third party too.

I know, if only the democratic party didn't include anyone not in the 80%, Wallace would have supported the democratic candidate.

[JHB]

22. I notice you didn't mention the ones i specifically asked about...

...and why is it that people who make this argument about the 1980 election never seem to mention "hostage crisis" and "Desert One"?

Let's also forget people like Ed Koch, a prominent Democrat who didn't support Carter even after the Kennedy challenge was over because he regarded Carter as anti-Israel. And the fact that before Kennedy, the party power brokers had floated Patrick Moynihan's name as a potential challenge to Carter.

If every single Anderson vote had gone to Carter Reagan still would have won, with 331 electoral votes


Four states would have been within a 1% difference in that scenario, and Carter would have needed to pick up three of them to win. That's what your "petulant liberals sitting on their hands" scenario comes down to: the real numbers. Were there even enough hands-sitters in the correct states to have made a difference? That's a hell of a lot fuzzier than the "blame liberal tantrums" line.

The only thing that could have produced a big enough shift would be an ending of the hostage crisis. Reagan didn't pull out ahead until the very end, once it became clear that there would be no "October Surprise" deal on the embassy hostages. (At least not on Carter's part, but that's a whole 'nother story.)

[graham4anything]

23. Fracture. You are proving my point. It's fracture.

And Koch helped take down Jerry Brown/Jesse Jackson in 1992.
Fracture.

Jerry was close to winning in 1992.

Reagan sabatoged the hostages, however NOT ONE hostage died on Jimmy Carter's watch, which was the important thing.

1980-unfortunately the one and only time Teddy ran was the one and only WRONG time for him to run, being that Jimmy was in the race (perhaps if Jimmy didn't run, but Jimmy ran and that was never an option.)

Teddy should have combined with Jimmy.Perhaps Teddy as VP with Jimmy and ditch Mondale
or give him some other cabinet post.

How many people stayed home because Jimmy wasn't pure enough?


California.. home of Jerry Brown went to Reagan(yes, Reagan was from California, but come on...the most liberal state in the nation).

I don't hold it against any CURRENT democratic person what they did in the past, as long as they mended their ways and now will vote democratic (ala Elizabeth Warren/Bloomberg/Crist/
etc.

That means, even if one hates Hillary, hold your nose and vote for her against the republican.
Don't sit home, don't protest, don't vote 3rd party.
Just do it.

Because coattails will win the governorships/house/senate races
Fractures won't.

and note- the electoral board above. (California,NJ, PA went for Reagan.)
In 2016, with Hillary, all the Carter states, all the now Blue states, plus Texas and others, many others.

As for the Jewish issue(again I am Jewish), the media helped that along.
And of course, yeah, Reagan was really good for the Jews, sure.
They spite themselves and in 2016, Jews like in 2008 and 2012 will vote democratic as will every other minority group.
The Jewish issue was like the alt-media. A wedge against. Not for.

Shame that Jesse Jackson wasn't elected VP with Jerry Brown. I voted for Jerry in the primary.

[marmar]

25. "You are proving my point"

And by what tortured logic did you arrive at that conclusion?

[graham4anything]

26. 1980-Ed Koch, Teddy,Anderson was fracture. Without Fracture, Carter won and won big.

Are you better off that Carter lost for whatever "purity" test it accomplished?

Again, I forgive Elizabeth Warren as she is now a solid, reliable 60th vote when needed,
and she will congratulate and stand on stage in unison with Hillary in 2016.
She won't fracture the party (much as her super fans want her to, there is ZERO to indicate she would do that.)

Paul Wellstone himself said he would NOT run third party and would support Gore in 2000 after Bradley lost.

Shame is, Paul Wellstone could have been VP instead of Joe, had Bradley not been so bitter
in 2000. (Or Bradley could have).

[JHB]

30. It's not logic, it's assertion.

A Carter win would have been possible if there was a vast army of hands-sitting Kennedy purists to get out and vote. Therefore, there was a vast army of hands-sitting Kennedy purist. Q.E.D.

[JHB]

29. in California Reagan won a million and a half more votes than Carter...

Last edited Wed May 8, 2013, 12:42 PM - Edit history (1)

And even in the hypothetical scenario that every single Anderson vote went to Carter he lead by 700,000.

If you believe that there were that many petulant lefties sitting on their hands and holding their breath until they turned blue rather than vote, then I can offer you a great deal on prime waterfront property in Manhattan and Brooklyn, complete with a scenic span between them.

As for the Koch thing, it's not a "jewish" issue, it's the portion of jewish voters who are single-issue about what they consider pro- and anti-Israel (and have very particular definitions of what counts as either). For that subset (substantial in some areas), Carter was "anti-Israel". Koch in particular relished the electoral pain he caused Carter.

And as long as we're talking about purity and factionalism, how about the defense Hawk Democrats (i.e., the incubator of the neocons) and the national party establishment that spent four years undercutting Carter because he was an outsider? The Hawks wanted Reagan's defense build-up, and the establishment had already started the "pro-business" shift that is the main source of division in the party today.

How many people stayed home because Jimmy wasn't pure enough?

And why don't you try to answer that? When I confronted the same question, I looked at actual numbers to see what would have been needed. One of the results is the graphic in my post above.

If you look at real numbers -- vote totals and margins of victory -- you can figure out how many more votes would have been needed for a Carter victory, and they are just not there. You'd need tens of thousands of these theoretical petulant purists in the right places to swing the election even with the most generous assumptions.

Or you can just hand-waive all that and pretend it was Teddy and the Breath-Holder Brigade that let Reagan win.

You still haven't said why you included 1952, 1956, and 1976 in your first post. They don't fit your scenario. Or have I just answered my own question?

[Bluenorthwest]

24. John Anderson was NOT a liberal. He was a Republican elected as such for 20 years from

Illinois 16th. Not only was he a Republican, he was one of the most hyper conservative Republicans on the Hill, dude. 3 times he introduced a Constitutional Amendment to 'recognize the authority of Jesus Christ over US law'.
10 terms as a right wing Republican from Illinois. And you call him a liberal because you can not even get the facts straight, not even the basic facts.
John Anderson, Republican from Illinois. 10 terms elected as Republican.

[tclambert]

6. Does anyone else feel like they've heard this before?

[Fumesucker]

7. Deja Moo

The feeling you've heard this bull before.

[JHB]

19. I think it's a new cover of that song by Cassandra and the Exasperates

[Bosonic]

9. Are there any recurring themes in the following...

https://twitter.com/History_Pics/media/grid

?

[Newest Reality]

27. History can also be used

as a playbook for those who want important information and methods as a means to repeat it.

I can just see a dictator or junta consulting history and deciding not to repeat it. Oh, let's not do that, it was bad before, must be bad now.

We also have the problem of history itself. It is most often written, (or rewritten) by the victors and the conquered or vanquished may have had a different take on the event. Also, we get the linearity and slant of the historians themselves and issues of politically and socially motivated revisionist doctrines.

In a sense, in order to truely follow that truism, we would have to create a list of historical dogma to repeat over and over which might have the reverse effect since it could become obsessive.

Otherwise, it is a nice guideline and a useful piece of rhetoric to pull-out in a discussion though it is becoming rather trite, which is one of the problems of repetition itself.

[Bluenorthwest]

28. I think it is worth while to look at the actual quote from George Santayana that this

comic paraphrases.
"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
From The Life of Reason, Vol 1

The quote is not about study, but about retention and memory.