Guest speakers: Timothy Leary and G. Gordon Liddy
This program is another selection from the Timothy Leary archive. It features an October 23, 1990 debate at Penn State University between Dr. Leary and his arch-enemy, the scandalous G. Gordon Liddy. One of my favorite segments in this debate, which wasn’t all that polite at times, is when Leary pointed out the fact that he had spent more time in the U.S. Military service than Liddy had, but that Liddy had spent more time in prison than Leary had.
PROGRAM NOTES:
[NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.]
“My advice to you is: 1) don’t rely on politicians to solve you problems; 2) work to the fullest of your power to decentralize and to take power away from the central government in Washington, bring it back to the villages, to the cities, to the neighborhoods.”
“It politics, scum rises to the top. Let me say it again, in politics mediocrity rises to the top.”
“As far as this election is concerned, I urge you, don’t vote for either a Democrat or a Republican. It just encourages the bastards.”
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MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST
The Maze Game by Diana Reed Slattery
Thanks Lorenzo, another wonderfull mind expanding episolde. Really enjoyed it! Thanks G. Ordo Leary for the link, downloading it now =0)
http://www.archive.org/details/learydvd_1
Documentary on the 1983 touring debate between Liddy and Leary. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086188/)
wow, that was aggressive… i’m trying to come to terms with something my partner always says, and i do think she is spot on, when she says that being right or thinking that something is true excludes all that is not so, and thus eliminates all contradiction, which is not a good thing… what she means is: let there not be a competition with one winner and a bunch of losers, when all who participate make each their own effort in different ways that may hold incomparable values, and i think that is pure wisdom; there is “truth” in an excluding way, which is just an illusion made from language and culture, and then there is truth, superhuman, unobtainable real truth that embraces and almost seem to feed on mind boggling contradictions and paradoxes, that mere fact perhaps being the first of them, hehe!
but having said all that… Liddy simply belongs among a big bunch of losers when it comes to being right, and i just can’t shake that fact, no matter how i try hahaha, and so i guess i feel a need to contradict what i am saying that contradiction must be allowed for, i mean Liddy’s own contradictions are just ridiculous, and i would love to hear/see/read Chomsky dissect them, the way he (Liddy) lays as a foundation for his argument so many shallow assumptions about human nature, what socialism means, what individual freedom is in relation to the common good (the “common good” obviously referring the good of the corporate world, the way Chomsky says “national interest” does), and so on and on. it’s a tiresome work to clean up his discourse but it’s easy if one would bother to, and i think Leary, in his blissful lethargy, is simply content retorting with some real solid slogan truths, instead of tidying up Liddy’s rhetorical mess. How does even Liddy dare to defend individuality, as if that would argue against Thimothy Leary?
Lorenzo, being a huge TM fan, and having learned sooo much more about our tribe here in the salon (literally being introduced to it for the first time), i await your podcasts each week in high anticipation, and i am deeply grateful, you are the mellowest, you are the best, thank you!
Absolutely right about Obama (unfortunately…Ron Paul and Gary Johnson seem to be the only candidates who take a strong, POSITIVE position on this issue.
/Soapboxing