Yale Professor Criticizes The Tea Party

Prominent literary critic Harold Bloom lambasts the Tea Party true believers as a bunch of modern day Nazis. He also castigates Ayn Rand whose "moral" philosophy is that of a 5-year old child. In any case the Tea Party's best days are behind them.


Quotes & Highlights:

One must read, try to possess by memory, and be possessed by the very best that has been imagined, cognitively apprehended and expressed powerfully. Thinking clearly and well is based upon memory. Unless you have read and absorbed the best that can be read and absorbed, you will not think clearly or well, and democracy will not survive.

We have this horrible contemporary phenomenon in the Tea Party – a real menace not only to America but to the world. Because if it goes on like this, they will destroy our economy and they will destroy America. They have no democratic vision, and I don't mean with a capital “D”, I mean with a small “d”. They frighten me. They're like the early followers of Adolf Hitler, and I'm willing to be quoted on that. They are a sickening phenomenon. That is because they have not read deeply and widely enough. But then maybe they’re not to blame, because American education – even in elite universities – has become a scandal in my opinion. It has committed suicide.

http://fivebooks.com/interview/harold-bloom-on-literary-criticism/

We live, too, in the age of the Tea Party, a movement that cherishes stupidity and zealotry and hates thinking, reading, and teaching. If these people had their way, we’d be done with teaching. It shows the weak-mindedness that has descended upon America, the proclivity for nonsense and political hatred, the disrespect for literature, history, and serious thinking. There is only one remedy to the current predicament, and that is to encourage people to think independently. And that, in turn, begins with reading. People need to remember the best that has been said and thought in the past. That is the starting point, and that is the path, out of our current appalling situation.


http://harpers.org/blog/2011/08/the-anatomy-of-influence-six-questions-for-harold-bloom/

“It all started with that absolute dreadful creature Ronald Reagan,” he continues. “It was Reagan who came along and persuaded the whole nation that it was all right to be selfish, that it was an American virtue to be selfish. And all of these Tea Party-ites wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been for Reagan as their trailblazer. Incredible, the cigar-store Indian George W. Bush…the worst president in American history. The more-than-outrageous, the insufferable Donald Trump in today’s newspaper describes Obama as the worst president in American history. I’ll tell you what’s scary. Just one step beyond, and it will be early Nazi Germany. If the Tea Party, which already has a huge majority in the House, should also capture the Senate, you might start seeing sanctioned violence.” He also decries that group’s “racism, endless racism,” noting members of it have depicted the President of the United States as a chimpanzee.


http://wwd.com/eye/people/the-full-bloom-3592315/

Here is Bloom's quote as it appears on freedomfest.com:

“It is scary to reread the final volume of Gibbon these days because the fate of the Roman Empire seems to continue even now. We have approached bankruptcy, foreign wars we cannot pay for, and defrauded our urban and rural poor. We have no Emerson or Whitman among us.”

The full quotation includes sentiments at odds with libertarian and Tea Party views. Bloom is particularly angered by the exclusion of a mention of George W. Bush and his views on "plutocracy, oligarchy, and mounting theocracy" -- which is what he says libertarians are all about (italics ours to show excised text):

"It is scary to reread the final volume of Gibbon these days because the fate of the Roman Empire seems an outline that the imperial presidency of George W. Bush retraced and that continues even now. We have approached bankruptcy, fought wars we cannot pay for, and defrauded our urban and rural poor. Our troops include felons, and mercenaries of many nations are among our ‘contractors,’ fighting on their own rules or none at all. Dark influences from the American past congregate among us still. If we are a democracy, what are we to make of the palpable elements of plutocracy, oligarchy, and mounting theocracy that rule our state? How do we address the self-inflicted catastrophes that devastate our natural environment? So large is our malaise that no single writer can encompass it. We have no Emerson or Whitman among us.”

Those are not the words of a man who believes free markets, no taxes and deregulation can save us. Bloom says he is "absolutely outraged by what they've done with that quotation. I'm a lifelong liberal. These people in my view are liars, cultural illiterates and in fact fascists. The Tea Party is simply the American fascist party. I can't think of two people I despise more than Rand Paul and Grover Norquist."

 

Blah blah blah Tea party are Nazis Boooosh Raygun blah blah blah.

Nothing to see here... move along...

 

Who cares what an essentially worthless person thinks? Has been entrenched in academia for his whole life, never holding a real job. Literary critic😆 and humanities professor😁


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I thought everyone made fun of the Christian bigot party otherwise know as the Tea Party. Which makes one wonder why do they have a party name they are Republicans

 

All I had to read was "Prominent literary critic" to know this guy had nothing of interest to say.

 

Yale professors don't like Ayn Rand? Color me shocked.

 

Wow! No way! A Liberal professor disparaging the Tea Party? What is the world coming to? Why is the Tea Party Fascist? Did you know that people think that Libs are liars, cultural illiterates and Fascists?

 

So you're mad, because the OWS clowns accomplished nothing, except letting everyone know that we're just clowns, huh
And, nobody take you serious when you lable people bigot. Absolutely nobody.
You're pretty much just flapping your gums for the sake of flapping your gums.

Really sad.

 

Did i say anything about ows. Why are you making (*)(*)(*)(*) up. There is plenty enough things to make fun of the Tea Party about. They have really accomplished nothing of note.

 

Someone please give the professor a tshirt that says, "Please give me attention that my parents never gave me" That should fix him.

 

Nothing of note, huh?
You seem to forget that only after 2 years of democratic control of congress, the Tea Party helped sweep them out of power. Thanks to the Tea Party , President Obama has lost more democratic controlled seats in congress, govornerships, and state assembles.

Thanks for proving how uneducated you are on this subject.]

 

Yale professors don't like anybody except, perhaps other Yale professors.

Yale professors don't like banal OPs

 

No point in dissing Bloom. I'm pretty sure he's a conservative. A real conservative, not a RWNJ.

 

He's a life long Liberal, and he has the education of one. The Tea Party is a fiscally conservative, socially conservative group. As a whole, they would not necessarily agree with my platform. And where has the Tea Party sanctioned violence? Where has ANYONE but members of his own pitiful party sanctioned violence by being silent on the protesters? He calls himself a professor, I now call upon him to testify to what he professes to! It certainly isn't political history, past or current.

 

Ayn Rand is pretty shallow but not as shallow as literary critics who use their pulpit to lecture kids on things that have nothing to do with their field.

 

What he professes is Gnosticism, bona fide Gnosticism, and has written a number of rather interesting books from that viewpoint. At least I found them interesting, but they are for a rather specialized taste.

The political views he expresses here are rather pedestrian liberal college professor stuff. He is just trying to bolster his bona fides among his peers and is of no especial interest outside of that mileau. There is no reason to think he has any special insight into the Tea Party in particular or American politics in general.

This guff is regularly regurgitated here on PF and there is no reason to pay any more attention to it from Prof. Bloom than you pay attention to it here.

 

Answer this question in your own mind, all you haters, "Did you support invading Iraq?" Most of you Tea party hacks did. You were wrong with that and so many other things. But now you're going to tell us what is going to happen next, and no I'm not a Clinton supporter. I don't like the Democrats or Republicans. But you guys and gals believed invading Iraq was going to be easy because your Messiah George W. Bush told you so. Congratulations!!!!

 

Libertarians are all about theocracy? When I read that I knew Bloom was full of crap.

 

Wrong Bloom the others been dead for a while.

 

Winning the war was easy winning the ensuing peace was more difficult made more so by a series of really bad decisions on the part of various Bush apparatchiks. It was then made impossible by really stupid decisions by Obama cronies and Obama Himself.

My messiah was crucified not quite 2000 years ago for the crime of asking that we treat each other with decency and kindness. Yours is busily crucifying the economy, the constituion, and common sense while wielding a pen and a phone.

 

right wing anti education is what will ultimately bring it down.

 

Don't forget to mention that in that 2 years, both houses of congress have accomplished nothing even though they promised America that they were going to do great and wonderful things. All America got from them was an empty bag.

 

We are not anti education, we are anti indoctrination. By the way no serious historian accepts most of the tenets posited by Gibbon in the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.

 

I rest my case

 

You haven't made one yet...