Geoffrey Nunberg Quotes
There was a time when liberals were linguistically dominant in America.
Geoffrey Nunberg, Linguist, Lecture, Politics & Prose Bookstore, July 26, 2006
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Referring to the 1988 acceptance speech of Democratic Presidential nominee, Michael Dukakis:
So far as he was concerned, Republican moderates—his own party members—were liberals. Anyone who did not support the extreme Conservative agenda, was an enemy and a liberal. He and the Tea Party drove almost all the moderate Republicans out of the party.
From the earliest European universities, the conservative elements of the society has always felt that the universities were hotbeds of liberalism. Generally, the more education anyone obtains, the less he/she is susceptible to doctrine and control by others. However, far from liberal indoctrination, the leading conservative—including those like Santorum who castigate the universities, are themselves the products of the so called “indoctrination”. Generally, conservatives have tended to use the instruments of government and the access to wealth to control and shape the range of the political dialogue. In most societies, the University is a place where there is a much broader range of points of view available. In many nations today, the universities are censored, suspected, controlled by the establishment of the society to avoid rapid change which by definition, conservatives oppose.
In the 1920s through the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1963, Southern politicians labled all efforts for desegregation as “socialist” or “communist”. What is less known it that this canard goes back to the slavery argument BEFORE the Civil War. This document was relatively widely distributed in the South to the literate part of the public (Even the white population had high illiteracy rates in the South—even in modern times it is higher than the rest of the nation.) In this case the author actually claimed that many Northern State legislatures were socialist controlled as was the House of Represented; and many Southerners actually believed him. Even into the 21st century Southern conservatives were claiming that pro affirmative action politicians like President Obama were socialists and some people actually believed that also.
This another DeLay quote that deviates from the truth. After 9-11, almost ALL Americans supported the effort to go into Afghanistan and attack the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. However, after President Bush invaded Iraq and tried to justify it as a part of the War on Terror, many liberals and Democrats opposed and protested that part of the war. However so did most of the conservative Libertarians, and many main line Republicans also opposed that part of the war effort. Many in the media opposed the Iraq war efforts, but almost as many supported it—especially most radio talk show hosts. Fox News where he did this interview was a major supporter of the war along with many other media outlets. At the end of President George W. Bush’s second term, a majority of Americans opposed continued fighting in Iraq and most of the media so reported that. Reporting anti war public opinion was interpreted by DeLay as “undermining” the war effort. Later, DeLay was convicted and sentenced to jail for money laundering and illegally spending and raising campaign funds. He was also reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee for unethical methods of fund raising for other earlier actions.
Geoffrey Nunberg was an American lexical semantician and author. In 2001 he received the Linguistics, Language, and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistic Society of America for his contributions to National Public Radio's Fresh Air, and he has published a number of popular press books including Going Nucular: Language, Politics and Culture in Controversial Times (2004). Nunberg is primarily known for his public-facing work interpreting linguistic science for lay audiences, though his contributions to linguistic theory are also well regarded.
