February 16, 2005
The Hivemind Falls Short
It has been alledged that if the liberal side of the blogosphere could learn to gather information from outside of their closed community, that they might indeed become a force. Unfortunately, they have a tendency towards groupthink.
This of course leads to the parroting of ideas not throughly vetted, and so the hivemind runs a risk of propogating a story that may or not be true, based upon fervent belief instead of facts.
The Brit Hume quote of FDR is a wonderful case in point.
Brit Hume, of Fox News quoted part of FDR's January 17, 1935 speech to Congress proposing Social Security. Here is the relevant paragraph of the Hume article:
In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," adding that government funding, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."Liberals such as Al Franken and James Roosevelt Jr. are now shrilly crying for Hume's resignation, saying that, "he rearranged those sentences in an outrageous distortion, one that really calls for a retraction, an apology, maybe even a resignation."
Keith Olbermann chimed in, along with your expected deluge of liberal parrot blogs, and it was off to the races for the "me, too" crowd on the left to see who could call for Hume's resignation the fastest.
But what, exactly, did Hume actually "rearrange?"
Here is the exact two-line quote from the January 17, 1935 speech address from FDR that Hume abridged:
"Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."
Compare that to Hume's abridged version:
"Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," adding that government funding, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."Could you easily spot the difference? Here is the FDR quote again, this time with the part Hume left out highlighted in bold:
"Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."So we can see that Hume's "great sin" against FDR was to leave out the clause which states that the government would assume one-half of the cost of what would become known Social Security. If FDR wanted the government to absorb 1/2 the cost, then by default, the remaining 1/2 would then be private, correct?
And isn't the fact that FDR spoke of private investment exactly what Hume was referring to in the first place?
Sometimes a little research is more important than simply shouting, "me too!"
Liberals should try it some time.
Update: Cassandra has more in-depth coverage of the "tempest in a teacup."
Update 2: While both the right and the left have been focusing on the text of FDR's speech A Little Reason compares the speech against the context of the actual bill and discovers that if Al Franken should call anyone a "lying liar," it should be Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
