I have read Tom Payne and you sir are no Tom Payne

By happenstance I happen to be reading Tom Payne's Common Sense and The Rights of Man. I also, quite unfortunately for me, stumbled on a video of the right wing American commentator Glenn Beck comparing himself to the 18th century British radical.

I find it appalling that this narcissist has managed to get away with this extraordinary comparison. I can only imagine that it is that Americans are no longer taught about Payne because he thinking is far too dangerous to the corporatocracy that rules the states today and that he so well serves.

The two of them have one area of agreement; a contempt for government. Outside of that there is no common ground. Payne believed religion to be a force of oppression. He believed the concept of real property to be theft by force. He was a class warrior who opposed the power of the few wealthy to increase the suffering of the masses. He demanded revolution to rectify the imbalance.

Beck by contrast wishes simply to enrich himself; to placate his corporate masters.
He is without shame.

You may live in your own world, you own mind, Mr. Beck but you are not worthy of mention in the same sentence.

I shall leave you with a quote:

"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."

Ken Starr is (a) President

Perenial tormentor of the Clintons, extravegent waster of taxpayer money and all around good guy, Ken Starr, is now President of Baylor University.

Expect Baylor to launch a series of investigations into the whereabouts of that goddamn cigar in the morning.