Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Getting to know Jeb Bush (and not in a good way)

By Richard Barry

I wonder how many people look somewhat favourably on Jeb Bush because he seems so much more intelligent than brother George. Not that the bar is very high, but Jeb is mostly able to string together  a few coherent sentences and doesn't typically want to make you scramble for the remote to avoid having to endure cringe-making television.

While I may have previously counted myself in this group, it's all over now. Jeb Bush, like his brother, is a moron. And I can prove it.
Public shaming would be an effective way to regulate the “irresponsible behavior” of unwed mothers, misbehaving teenagers and welfare recipients, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) argued in his 1995 book Profiles in Character.

In a chapter called "The Restoration of Shame,” the likely 2016 presidential candidate made the case that restoring the art of public humiliation could help prevent pregnancies “out of wedlock.”

One of the reasons more young women are giving birth out of wedlock and more young men are walking away from their paternal obligations is that there is no longer a stigma attached to this behavior, no reason to feel shame. Many of these young women and young men look around and see their friends engaged in the same irresponsible conduct. Their parents and neighbors have become ineffective at attaching some sense of ridicule to this behavior. There was a time when neighbors and communities would frown on out of wedlock births and when public condemnation was enough of a stimulus for one to be careful.

He even points to the effectiveness of pinning a big ol' letter "A" onto transgressors. Or, as Jeb put it,  "Infamous shotgun weddings and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter are reminders that public condemnation of irresponsible sexual behavior has strong historical roots."

But this takes the cake:

As governor of Florida in 2001, Bush had the opportunity to test his theory on public shaming. He declined to veto a very controversial bill that required single mothers who did not know the identity of the father to publish their sexual histories in a newspaper before they could legally put their babies up for adoption.

What a great idea.

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1 Comments:

  • Over my lifetime, there certainly has been a great decline in the power of shame. But it has nothing to do with sexual mores. It has to do business ethics. There really is no shame in firing a thousand people and giving yourself a raise. Behavior like this is now considered heroic among the people who interact with the CEOs who do it. And this -- the elimination of middle class jobs -- is what has played the biggest role in the destruction of the American family. But the likes of Bush would never admit to this because when it comes to economics, it is all the "law of the jungle": whatever they think is "natural." These are the worst kind of people.

    As for Jeb's intelligence versus George's: I think we get too hung up on verbal ability. Yes, Jeb is better spoken. But in terms of intelligence, I tend to think that George is Jeb's better. Jeb's always seemed kind of dull to me.

    By Blogger Unknown, at 6:08 PM  

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