Aaron, nice quote from Irving K. Ever seen the 1990s PBS documentary, Arguing the World? Given the usual production constraints of time and budget, it’s just phenomenally well done, following a decades-long discussion of four influential men, Irving Howe, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer and Irving Kristol, as they separately and/or together process 20th century events. All began on the Left, most as Trostyists, but adjust their thinking (or don’t) as time goes on. Superb. I think some obscure platform will stream it for you, but you can get the DVD and companion book cheaply enough.
The Director, Joseph Dorman, put this Statement on the disc:
"Arguing the World is about a continuing dispute among four brilliant men that took place across sixty tumultuous years of American history. The film grew, in part, out of my admiration for each of them, but perhaps the real inspiration for the film came out of my encounter with American conservatism in the 1980s.
"I had grown up in a liberal household and always considered myself a Democrat. I prided myself on a certain political awareness and yet I had never read a book by a conservative until I decided to pick up Irving Kristol's Reflections of a Neoconservative. The effect of Kristol's thoughtful essays, which contained views so different from my own, was both exhilarating and disorienting and it forced me to think through and clarify my own liberal beliefs.It was with that experience in mind that I made this film.
In an era when so much of what goes by the name of political argument on television is really nothing more than crude sloganeering which precludes any kind of serious thought, when most political documentaries are one-sided arguments for a single point of view, I wanted to make a film that championed the importance of intellectual dispute itself.
By following the strands of an ongoing argument among four engaging thinkers, men who talk as well as write brilliantly, it's my hope that viewers will be goaded--at least once or twice--into reexamining their own beliefs, something that I found myself doing again and again as I made this film."
"According to Bancroft, "The Revolution of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian measure." One ardent colonial supporter wrote to King George III the following words: "I fix all of the blame for these extraordinary proceedings upon the Presbyterians. They have been the chief and principal instruments in all these flaming measures."
Aaron, nice quote from Irving K. Ever seen the 1990s PBS documentary, Arguing the World? Given the usual production constraints of time and budget, it’s just phenomenally well done, following a decades-long discussion of four influential men, Irving Howe, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer and Irving Kristol, as they separately and/or together process 20th century events. All began on the Left, most as Trostyists, but adjust their thinking (or don’t) as time goes on. Superb. I think some obscure platform will stream it for you, but you can get the DVD and companion book cheaply enough.
https://www.pbs.org/arguing/
The Director, Joseph Dorman, put this Statement on the disc:
"Arguing the World is about a continuing dispute among four brilliant men that took place across sixty tumultuous years of American history. The film grew, in part, out of my admiration for each of them, but perhaps the real inspiration for the film came out of my encounter with American conservatism in the 1980s.
"I had grown up in a liberal household and always considered myself a Democrat. I prided myself on a certain political awareness and yet I had never read a book by a conservative until I decided to pick up Irving Kristol's Reflections of a Neoconservative. The effect of Kristol's thoughtful essays, which contained views so different from my own, was both exhilarating and disorienting and it forced me to think through and clarify my own liberal beliefs.It was with that experience in mind that I made this film.
In an era when so much of what goes by the name of political argument on television is really nothing more than crude sloganeering which precludes any kind of serious thought, when most political documentaries are one-sided arguments for a single point of view, I wanted to make a film that championed the importance of intellectual dispute itself.
By following the strands of an ongoing argument among four engaging thinkers, men who talk as well as write brilliantly, it's my hope that viewers will be goaded--at least once or twice--into reexamining their own beliefs, something that I found myself doing again and again as I made this film."
"Somebody needs to compare and contrast “deconstruction” narratives with the “red pill” narrative."
Why does the former seem instinctively left wing and the latter not?
"“There is no good crying about the matter,” Horace Walpole told the House of Commons when news of the American Revolution arrived in England. “Cousin America has run off with the Presbyterian parson, and that is the end of it.”" https://stream.org/this-independence-day-its-more-crucial-than-ever-that-we-remember-our-history/
"According to Bancroft, "The Revolution of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian measure." One ardent colonial supporter wrote to King George III the following words: "I fix all of the blame for these extraordinary proceedings upon the Presbyterians. They have been the chief and principal instruments in all these flaming measures."
https://www.christianpost.com/news/the-man-who-founded-america.html