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Thread: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

  1. #1
    Stegodon
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    Default Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    "As for the Republicans—how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead."

    No cheating! And don't spoil it if you already know.

    Extra points for guessing the author.

    All discussion of the points raised in this quote is welcome, too.
    Every dialect is a language, but not every language is a dialect. - Einar Haugen

  2. #2

    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    Well the only thing that prevents the answer from being "yesterday" is the prose.

    So I'm going to say 1935. FDR.

    and now I'm off to google to see if this was an absurd answer.

  3. #3
    Oliphaunt Baldwin's avatar
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    I'm also guessing FDR, some time during his first term.

  4. #4
    Stegodon
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    Default

    I'll go a little further back in time than bookbuster, but I'm staying with the same family. My guess is FDR's cousin, Teddy Roosevelt, in around 1900. He was a trust-busting, Square Deal, convservationist kind of guy.
    WTF did I just say?

  5. #5
    Stegodon
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    I don't think it was either Roosevelt. Too many long words for FDR, and too bitter about the GOP for TR (who was a Republican himself, until he split because of disagreements with Taft). I'm picking around 1920, and someone further to the left, like Eugene Debs.

  6. #6
    Stegodon
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    Quote Originally posted by Giles
    I don't think it was either Roosevelt. Too many long words for FDR, and too bitter about the GOP for TR (who was a Republican himself, until he split because of disagreements with Taft). I'm picking around 1920, and someone further to the left, like Eugene Debs.
    I was thinking the same time period, but Woodrow Wilson.

  7. #7
    Oliphaunt Baldwin's avatar
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    This thread makes me realize what gaps I have in my knowledge of US politics between the Civil War and the 1930s.

  8. #8

    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    I've googled and I know the answer. I think its time for a clue. Not a politician.

  9. #9
    Stegodon
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    Quote Originally posted by bookbuster
    I've googled and I know the answer. I think its time for a clue. Not a politician.
    Yes, I've Googled too. It's not someone I would have even thought of as particularly interested in politics.

  10. #10
    Oliphaunt jali's avatar
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    I googled - I would have never guessed this answer.
    They weren't singing....they were just honking.
    Glee 2009

  11. #11
    Stegodon
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    Whoa.

  12. #12
    Stegodon
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    I'll go ahead and add another clue: it's a novelist. That should narrow it down quite a bit without giving it away.
    Every dialect is a language, but not every language is a dialect. - Einar Haugen

  13. #13
    Stegodon
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    Awesome. The vocabulary should have been a clue. I've always loved that guy.

  14. #14
    Stegodon
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    I'll go ahead and declare a winner for the date. It was 1936, so close enough.

    Still curious if anyone can guess the author without looking it up, though.
    Every dialect is a language, but not every language is a dialect. - Einar Haugen

  15. #15
    Curmudgeon OtakuLoki's avatar
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    If we're going with a novelist of that time period, my first guess would be Sinclair Lewis - but that seems like it would be the obvious choice.

  16. #16
    Stegodon
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    Nope....
    Every dialect is a language, but not every language is a dialect. - Einar Haugen

  17. #17
    Oliphaunt Baldwin's avatar
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    Wow; that's a surprise. Given some of the author's other attributes, I wouldn't have expected it. People can be surprising, even when they're long dead.

    Now that I think about the wording, it should have been obvious it wasn't FDR -- or any politican, really.

  18. #18

    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    I can't believe I got the date almost right. I wanted to go later, like during or right after WW2, but the " bygone agricultural-handicraft world" tipped me that it had to be earlier. I think by the 1950's the authors points are so obvious they wouldn't need to be said.

  19. #19
    Banned
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    Heh heh, awesome. I would not have guessed.

  20. #20
    Stegodon
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    Since nobody's going for it, here's the big reveal:

    H.P. Lovecraft.

    Have I blown your collective mind or what?
    Every dialect is a language, but not every language is a dialect. - Einar Haugen

  21. #21
    Stegodon EddyTeddyFreddy's avatar
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    Yes. yes, you have. Never would've guessed.

    Hey, you don't think he modeled Cthulhu on.............
    "Dude, your statistical average, which was already in the toilet, just took a plunge into the Earth's mantle." ~ iampunha

  22. #22
    Member
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    Wow. That's more support for my belief that Lovecraft is seriously underrated as a prose stylist.

  23. #23
    Clueless but well-meaning Hatshepsut's avatar
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    I'm gonna guess Theodore Veblen circa 1900 but that's doubtless showing my ignorance.

    ::skips off to Google it and find the right answer::

  24. #24
    Clueless but well-meaning Hatshepsut's avatar
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    Default Re: Can you guess when this was written? (USA)

    Hah. Well, obviously I didn't cheat and look at the answer in the thread. Wow.

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