[lbo-talk] "four walls are three too many"

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Oct 13 18:56:21 PDT 2005


Hmm. Google the phrase in quotes, follow some links, and the following turn up (I think I know where JL and BdL got it from):

<http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/001710.html>

"Indeed, war with Austria-Hungary made no sense for the Czar and his dynasty (which lost its throne and their lives) or for Russia's ruling class (which was, after the war, one of the groups about which the new government thought that the four walls of a prison were three walls too many)."

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<http://www.johnlacny.com/archives/000168.html>

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Elliott Abrams will now be deputy national security advisor, and the Washington Post headline says without apparent irony that he will be heading "democracy efforts." I would like to say that Abrams more properly belongs in prison, but the sad fact is that there are some people for whom four walls are three too many.

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<http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37662&goto=nextnewest>

07-28-2005, 08:34 PM

TenTigers Registered User

Join Date: Jan 1970 Location: Huntington, NY, USA website: TenTigers.com Posts: 1,100

Four walls are three too many.

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<http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2003/07/26/reason-truth-and-history>

Curtiss Leung Says: July 28th, 2003 at 8:43 pm Zing! You've caught a potent irony in the historical triumphalism of some on the right.

I'd like to suggest a moniker for these born-again historical determinists who persist in calling themselves conservatives: Right-wing vulgar Marxists. On the other hand, such a label might encourage people like the "liberatarian" blogger who thought anti-war protesters should be beaten with 2?4s to adapt other attitudes of repressive communism. Could the time be far off when we see a one line post at the most linked-to weblogger of them all that reads, "Four walls are three too many for some people? Indeed," with a link on "Indeed" to a scene of protest.

I need some sleep.

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<http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.7.18.64812.1284.html>

what balls (none / 0) (#22)

by jsm on Fri Jul 20th, 2001 at 10:22:42 AM PST

On the other hand, the fallacy of "taking the views of fucking Nazis at face value and trying to argue with them seriously, as if they weren't Nazis" doesn't have a posh Latin name, but it's been a source of more error than "ad hominem" over the last fifty years. The following quote sums up how I feel about your pusillanimous insistence on regarding prissy "rules of debate" as more important than our duty to fight Fascism wherever we meet it.

"For some people, four walls are three too many" -- Josef Vissarionavich Dhugashvili ("Stalin")

... the worst tempered and least consistent of the adequacy.org editors ... now also Legal department and general counsel, adequacy.org



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