Talk:Jeane Kirkpatrick

"The lower orders feel no pain"

The following quote was listed on this page:

"Because the miseries of traditional life are familiar, they are bearable to ordinary people who, growing up in the society, learn to cope and therefore accept the fact that wealth, power, status and other resources favor an affluent few while traditional autocrats maintain the masses in misery. So therefore our lack of concern is quite proper; indeed, quite decent and moral because the lower orders feel no pain." - 1979

This quote doesn't sound remotely like Kirkpatrick--I can't imagine her saying anything like "the lower orders feel no pain", except perhaps if she were characterizing how totalitarians saw the situation. To attribute this statement to her strikes me as slanderous. The page gave no source for the quote. When I ran a web search for the phrase "the lower orders feel no pain" [1], I found several sources that drew on Wikipedia, and only one source that didn't--a 1986 article by wikipedia:Noam Chomsky (The Empire and Ourselves, [2]). That article attributes the quote to "the article that propelled her to fame and into the Administration in 1979". Presumably he means the article wikipedia:Dictatorships and Double Standards; however, that article does not contain the damning phrase. (You can see the whole article at [].)

Accordingly, I've nuked the quote. I think we can hold ourselves to a higher standard than Chomsky does... -- Narsil 23:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I checked the article and did find this quote:

"Traditional autocrats leave in place existing allocations of wealth, power, status, and other re- sources which in most traditional societies favor an affluent few and maintain masses in poverty. But they worship traditional gods and observe traditional taboos. They do not disturb the habitual rhythms of work and leisure, habitual places of residence, habitual patterns of family and personal relations. Because the miseries of traditional life are familiar, they are bearable to ordinary people who, growing up in the society, learn to cope, as children born to untouchables in India acquire the skills and attitudes necessary for survival in the miserable roles they are destined to fill. Such societies create no refugees."

It would appear that Chomsky either mistook a summary of her remarks for a quote or an unpublished draft. Either way, I think the quote from the article is significant enough to warrant inclusion. —This unsigned comment is by 71.75.113.215 (talk • contribs) 19:13, 8 August 2009.

Ah, that makes sense! Yes, I think someone somewhere saw the paragraph you quote, and critically summed it up as "the lower orders feel no pain"; and Chomsky thought that line was part of the actual quote (and, perhaps, found it too good to check). It makes sense to put in the actual paragraph in question (since it is widely repeated, albeit in a garbled form), and also to put in a link to Chomsky's essay (as someone did at the bottom of the quotes page). -- Narsil 02:52, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Unsourced

• What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving.

• What we call each other ultimately becomes what we think of each other, and it matters.

 * Legitimacy and Force: National and International Dimensions, page 22.