The Final Solution
Dean
A couple of readers recently mentioned the following piece in The Village Voice that appeared in January of this year. It's a fascinating look into the hate that's come to define so much of the left in this country. According to Village Voice contributor Michael Feingold:
Republicans don't believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don't give a hoot about human beings, either can't or won't. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.
You can read the rest right here.
Supply your own commentary.
(Thanks to AlexH for the link.)
* Update * Sam in Estonia notes a similarly creepy rant.
Of course, since the VV loons are opposed to gus, too, it raises the question of how they would attempt to carry out this extermination. Ask nicely and tell us France agrees with them?
ka-click
To further illustrate my point:
The Jews don't believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Jews, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don't give a hoot about human beings, either can't or won't. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.
Babelfish that into German, write it in ink on a piece of paper, crumple it and keep it in a hot oven till it looks aged.
Then sell it on eBay as an authentic page from Goebbels' personal diary. No one will know the difference.
I believe that a reasonably clear sign of an idiot is that he can't see the implications of what he himself has said. If republicans' chosen work is the destruction of the human race and the planet, is not the looming disaster rather a sign of their greater imaginations than a sign of their lack of imagination?
Be that part as it may, I think that he would have made a very good inquisitor, had he lived in a different era (for some sense of the word 'good').
Sam above has it about right, leftists have no tolerance for dissenting views, just like the Nazis, Soviets and the Islamofascists. Most conservatives just want to be left alone.
The Nazis, Soviets, and Islamofascists ARE leftists. The successful lie is that some folks have come to believe that this was not always not the case. They managed to repeat the lie often enough and twisted the truth to paint the mentioned bay guys as conservatives. They always were leftists. The bad guys always will be.
Dean, I am truly stunned that you would highlight this comment as a "Best". I got through writing an extremely heated comment, and realized that you probably thought this guy was referring to the fringe left, but even so... is this really an example of high quality blog commenting? Is "Liberals=Nazis" any different from "Bush=Hitler"? I really don't get it.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I'm afraid this is not a "fringe" view on the Left any longer, or else a paper like "The Village Voice" would never have published it. Nor is this entirely new on the Left, though it was atypical in America until recently. That writer could all too easily have been found on the Committee of Public Safety during the French Revolution, or staffing Stalin's concentration camps in Siberia in the 1930s, or administering Pol Pot's killing fields.
I will defend this creep's right (First Amendment) to advocate my extermination, but I will also defend my own right (First and Second Amendments) to oppose what he advocates.
Re-read the excerpt from Sam Muldia's quote. He's equating "lefties" with Nazis. In right-wing circles, this generally means anyone to the left of John McCain. The Village Voice is a fringe paper, or at least it prints articles by an awful lot of fringe authors. They are not representative of "the Left" in any way. As you put it, anyone who advocates extermination of an entire group is, by definition, not a liberal... which is exactly my point. Sam's attempt to equate "the Left" with Nazis is nothing but disgusting hyperbole of the type employed by people like Michael Moore and Kos, which, when coming from them, you on the right so roundly condemn. They at least have the marginal excuse of not being aligned with the party in power; the right wing has no such excuse, and to compare the same people who have fought for the 40-hour work week, the end of child labor, Social Security, and numerous other perks you now take for granted (not to mention those you might not consider so beneficial, such as racial and sexual equality, and the alleviation of poverty) to the Nazis is despicable, transparently disingenuous, and so detached from reality as to boggle the mind.
It was good to see you all safely back from across the pond.
Walter,
Hey, I just got back from Ara's, where an average, modern lefty commenter known as Mark Adams just got through fantasizing about Administration heads on pikes. I see similar behavior from conservatives I respect, which is probably OK as long as it is only hyperbole.
Marxism is worse than Nazism, though. Islamofascism is at least as bad as Nazism. Many modern, average, Weatherman underground worshipping leftists sound just about as bad these days. Is it safe, rhetorical hyperbole, or do they mean it?
Yours,
Wince
So basically the response is, if you're feeling froggy, step up. Otherwise, STFU and go back to your regularly scheduled whine.
You are, of course, quite correct. Comparing liberals who supported "the 40-hour work week, the end of child labor, Social Security, ... racial and sexual equality, and the alleviation of poverty to the Nazis is despicable, transparently disingenuous, and so detached from reality as to boggle the mind."
Indeed, I'd say I'm that kind of liberal and I think you are exactly right.
Only, the Democrats don't consider me a liberal any more. I'm for fairness in the marketplace, justice in society, human rights around the world. But the lefties that used to write to me when I wrote my blog (http://Wildmonk.net) screamed and ranted about my "Nazi" sympathies.
I would proudly declare that freedom of speech, religion and conscience are the cornerstones of a healthy body politic and yet my support of extending the same to the Iraqi people drew vitriolic hate mail.
You are entirely correct that Liberals like me (and you, I assume) cannot be fairly compared with Nazis. So why did I get so much email that accused me of exactly that? And why was all of it from folks who declared themselves on the left?
I understand the temptation for those of us who now find ourselves on the "Right" (wow...) to want to punch back. But the one thing that has really kept me aligned with the Republicans over this election season is that, by and large, the better right-leaning writers have steadily stayed on the real topics and have avoided the kinds of vitriolic excesses that we find in the Village Voice. The better writers on the left (e.g. Chris Hitchens) have joined me in supporting Bush.
"They at least have the marginal excuse of not being aligned with the party in power; the right wing has no such excuse, and to compare the same people who have fought for the 40-hour work week, the end of child labor, Social Security, and numerous other perks you now take for granted (not to mention those you might not consider so beneficial, such as racial and sexual equality, and the alleviation of poverty) to the Nazis is despicable, transparently disingenuous, and so detached from reality as to boggle the mind."
We of the Right do not consider racial or sexual equality to be beneficial at all. Arnold Harris, Mark Noonan, Wince and Nod, and I have been conspiring to bring back segregation and to keep women barefoot and pregnant. We do not allow Rosemary the Queen of All Evil, Michelle Malkin, Michelle Catalano, Sondra K., or any other women to have their own blogs where they can sass men. We oppose the alleviation of poverty. We want the poor to stay poor. That's why we hate capitalism. And everybody who has read Dean's World knows that I'm a supporter of "sodomy" laws.
Satire off:
If the goals you listed were the goals of today's Left, I'd still be a Leftist, at least to that extent. As to the other goals you listed: The people who fought for the 40-hour work week, the end of child labor, Social Security, and the right of labor to organize, those people not only have nothing in common with the Nazis against whom they fought in World War II, they also have nothing in common with today's bankrupt, nihilistic, Israel-hating, America-hating, West-hating, gun-hating, sex-hating, life-hating, Politically Correct, Leftover Left of Michael Moore, Michael Parenti, Ramsey Clark, and the rest of that crowd. The remnants of the Old Left have another name today: "Neo-Conservatives"
You're basically describing a few couch-potato college student "liberals" who wouldn't know John Locke from a door lock. I don't care what you see on the Internet, they aren't the majority, and they sure as fuck don't represent my views. They aren't Nazis either, though... they're mostly misguided pacifists who can't stomach the thought of causing harm to people halfway around the world. Comparing even the worst of them to the people who set up concentration camps is still ridiculous. It really is like saying that because of the "godhatesfags" people, "the right" is composed entirely of homophobic bible-thumpers. Homophobic bible-thumpers who ran the fucking concentration camps. Do you see at all how insane that is? Any inkling? Is the tiniest glimmer of perspective creeping into that Coulter-addled brain of yours?
I don't know why people called you a Nazi, but if you are what you say you are, then they are as much assholes as this Sam Muldia character. I'm certainly not trying to say that there are no jerks on the left; but there's a big difference between having an Internet-fueled temper and being a Nazi. I see no legitimacy whatsoever in making the comparison, and I'm frankly just sick and tired of all the bullshit right-wing rhetoric about liberals. Try listening to Michael Savage. No one on the left even comes close to his "savagery", and he's hardly alone on the airwaves. I actually heard him say the other day that liberals should be gathered together and "re-educated". And with him, it's not just one stupid emotional outburst like this crackpot theater critic; he does it all the time, and lots of people like him. In fact, they like him because he does it. It validates their entirely irrational hatred of liberals. So no, sob stories about Republicans being persecuted by the Village Voice don't impress me at all.
I know Sam and I thought he was talking about the fringe left, but I see in reexamining it his phrasing was loose. We'll have to ask him to clarify.
I would agree that the fringe left really is no different in the end from the fringe right, and that whether it's national socialism (Nazism) or international socialism (Communism) you really don't have much real difference when you get right down to it. Which is what I thought Sam was saying.
Sam is also from Estonia, a country only recently freed from totalitarian oppression, and tends to be passionate about such things.
Also, Fred Phelps is a lifelong Democrat, and was attending fundraisers for Al Gore and Bill Clinton as late as the late 1990s. There's even pictures of Al and Tipper smiling for the camera with Rev. and Mrs. Phelps on the Log Cabin Republican web site. ;-)
Phelps also currently runs the "God Hates America" and "God Hates George Bush" web sites. ;-)
The point stands of course that the lunatic fringe always exists, which is worth discussing. My own issue with the left (I'm no longer a man of the left, but I'm only "right wing" on a narrow set of issues) is that many of them, in the past at least, have seemed to stick to an old "I have no enemies on the left" mindset. And those who do decide that often seem to be kicked out of the better circles and reviled. I've seen it many times. It's rarely, "Where did we go wrong that we lost you?" but instead, usually, "Don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out, traitor." Which leaves a lot of us rather cynical about a lot of the left these days.
I would hardly call myself a right-winger, as I'm a pro-choice, pro-gay marriage atheist who used to be center-left economically. Now I'm a very-small-l, small government libertarian who has issues with the spread of left-wing politics partly because the left-leaning elite in Europe consists of former communist apologists who think the Soviet experiment might have worked under 'different circumstances'.
I don't know how you can interpret 'the National Socialist movement was nearly ideologically indistinguishable from the average modern lefty.' as 'all liberals are Nazis'. Maybe due to your head being so far up your rear end that you're incapable of having a civil debate without calling a perfect stranger an asshole because of one sentence you misrepresent in your reactionary head, you reactionary twit.
I. Did. No. Such. Thing.
Sorry, but I really don't have enough of an idea where the big red line marked POLITICAL CENTER is, so I don't call anyone to the right of Chomsky and Moore a leftie, simply because when it gets close to that line, I have no way of knowing where a person stands - the average human being is a politically complex animal who I would not wish to paint with the broad brush of ideology - that's reserved for the lunatic fringes who live, breath and worship the ideology.
I used the word 'average' because the hard left comes in all sorts of flavors, from downright commies to Che Guevara shirt-wearing pierced-nipple Greenpeace activists to erudite college professors with a secret love for Marx. All of them, however, are screaming the mantra of REPUBLICANS ARE EEEVIL, and for them it's not hyperbole.
"Steven:
You're basically describing a few couch-potato college student "liberals" who wouldn't know John Locke from a door lock."
All too true about so many of them.
"I don't care what you see on the Internet, they aren't the majority, and they sure as fuck don't represent my views."
I'm truly sorry if I implied that they did.
Unfortunately, it's not only what I see on the Internet, but what I have been hearing from my own family, who are mainstream Democrats, ever since 9/11/2001 that has turned me away from the Left. Not that I love my family any less, but I've stopped arguing about politics with them.
"They aren't Nazis either, though... they're mostly misguided pacifists who can't stomach the thought of causing harm to people halfway around the world.
Too bad our enemies don't feel the same way.
"Comparing even the worst of them to the people who set up concentration camps is still ridiculous."
I have to disagree there. The Marcuseans would certainly put me in a "re-education" camp. Marcuse stated the doctrine of Political Correctness explicitly when he said the movements of the Left were to be tolerated, but movements of the Right were to be suppressed. That's Leninism, Stalinism, or Maoism from the outset.
"It really is like saying that because of the "godhatesfags" people, "the right" is composed entirely of homophobic bible-thumpers. Homophobic bible-thumpers who ran the fucking concentration camps ."
A certain significant quadrant of the so-called "Religious" or "Christian" [actually, utterly unholy] Right is exactly as you describe, and worse than even you probably imagined. I'm all too familiar with that crowd. Family Research Council, Paul Cameron, Robert Knight, Lou Sheldon, all the rest of that ilk are my sworn enemies, and I am theirs. I will defend their right to free speech, but I will also defend my right to speak out against them.
"Do you see at all how insane that is? Any inkling? Is the tiniest glimmer of perspective creeping into that Coulter-addled brain of yours?"
While I do agree with Ann Coulter on certain things, e.g., "McCarthyism", I find her entirely too narrowly partisan in her thinking, and she is also a supporter of Senator Rick Santorum (or Satanorum, as some of us call him) and Robert Bork, who are also very much my enemies. I am in an opposite quadrant of a spectrum or several.
So um, it's fine for left-wing lunatics to call for the extermination of their political opponents, because right-wing lunatics do the same?
The point I was actually trying to hint at with my first comment was the meme 'Hitler was right-wing'. Since I've practically given up hope of anyone ever recognizing Stalin and Mao as the most prolific mass murderers in human history, I'll remain content with pointing out that the universally (and rightfully) vilified Adolf Hitler was a left-winger, and if you equate Bush with Hitler, then you'll surely have to equate a RINO like the Governator with Mao Tse Tung, because the respective distances on most political axes are about the same.
I thought it a masterstroke of irony that a leftwing 'hippie' newspaper like the Village Voice could so blatantly invalidate the idea that 'left' automatically means caring, egalitarian, open-minded pluralism, by publishing something pretty much indistinguishable from Nazi rhetoric.
I hate the implications of the 'caring left' meme. Killers are killers no matter their idealistic reasoning - if you contrast the amount of people killed, maimed and tortured for 'the commmon good' or 'the protection of society's morals' with those killed for the selfish greed this twerp accuses Republicans of, you'll find there is NO comparison at all.
Every idiot who supports Fidel Castro, every degenerate who thinks t-shirts with Mao or Che on them are a cool way to show your dissident status is either completely and utterly ignorant of history and therefore worthy of being called morons who should shut up, or they're amoral apologists for mass murderers who happened to spout the rhetoric they agreed with.
I don't care if you advocate killing millions of people based on their beliefs for the good of the working man, or the good of the German working man - you're a Nazi or the moral equivalent thereof.
I'm sorry I wasn't clear enough in my original comment, as I have no desire to lump every democratic socialist in with these people as I don't think one has anything much to do with the other. I certainly don't enjoy being mentioned in the same sentence as Michael Savage or his ilk, much less compared to him.
I guess now I've been as clear (and long-winded) as I can possibly get.
Again, sorry for the name-calling before, not only was it uncalled for, but it was weak and bereft of any wit. In the future, I'll apply both the count-to-ten method and the decency to at least be bitingly sarcastic when insulting someone.
Make no mistake about it - the linked article might seem like the rant of a crazy person, but it's really no different from the sort of writing Lenin was doing circa 1910...if people like Michael Feingold ever got into a position of authority over anyone who disagreed with them, it would be up against the wall for us and a hail of bullets to finish us off.
There is evil in this world - and it isn't just Islamo-fascist fanatics strapping bombs on to children...we have domestic evil, as well; and this VV piece just shows us where its located.
Sorry I haven't been to the V,RWC meetings lately - I've been too busy trying to work out which minority I'm supposed to screw over when I wake up in the morning...
...and just because I like you're style here at Dean's world, I pledge that if a Federal DOMA ever comes up for popular ratification in Nevada, I'll vote against it...
I'd have to go back and look at the comment in context. Offhand, it's pretty clear to me that there is such a thing as a "Junior League Leninist," and that guys like Ted Rall and this twit from the Village Voice could fairly be called that. The question is where and how such epithets should be used, and how casual you are with them.
I have noted that I strongly object to people being called "Nazis" if they aren't people who advocate world conquest and mass extermination in the name of the master race. If you're going to call someone a "Leninist," make sure you've got similar backing.
That said, some people obviously do qualify for such labels. I cringe every time I see some young twit in a Che Guevara t-shirt. Do they just not know? I've got to think most of the time, they just don't know. Or, I hope, sometimes it's in irony...? God I hope so.
No way Walter! None of us ever loses our temper! It's all YOU man!
;-)
1) When I read the words "average modern lefty", I heard Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter saying "typical liberal", "liberal traitor", etc. I'm not comparing you to them; I'm simply explaining the basis for my reaction. Now that I can analyze the article in a calm, rational way, I can see why you might react the way you did to a guy who clearly took a quote straight from Goebbels and replaced the word "Jews" with the word "Republicans". I still would say that he probably did not intend this statement as a genuine call for extermination, but it was asinine, over-the-top, and in horrible taste either way.
2) I would hardly call myself a right-winger, as I'm a pro-choice, pro-gay marriage atheist who used to be center-left economically
Well, that basically describes me, except for the "used to be" part. I am still center-left economically, in the sense of social justice, fair wages, health care, etc. I certainly don't believe there's some conspiracy of capitalists to keep the working man down, and I agree that most hardcore socialist or communist "revolutions" have ended up causing far more harm than good. However, could you please explain to me how it is, and I mean this with total sincerity, you believe that equates them to the people who invented a classification system to determine whether someone was "Jewish enough" to be packed on a train and shipped off to Dachau?
3) I just woke up and was compared to Michael Savage.
Well, I guess I can quote you: "I. Did. No. Such. Thing.". I was pointing to Savage as an example of someone who actually uses Naziesque rhetoric against liberals on a regular basis. I am sorry you interpreted that as a comparison to you, but it was meant as an appeal to some sense of perspective. One Village Voice article doth not a Savage make, and I don't know of anyone on the left who even approaches being in the same league as him, much less the same ballpark.
4) Adolf Hitler was a left-winger
In the most shallow, meaningless, utterly devoid of context way, this statement is true. And I don't mean that as the start of another round of flames. What I mean is, nothing Hitler did that made him look economically liberal had anything to do with genuine altruism. It was a means of stimulating the economy after the depression, a way of keeping the masses content while he murdered or enslaved their fellow citizens and sent their sons off to die in the war, and, in combination with the Party's extreme nationalist rhetoric, a tool with which to get maximum productivity out of what was, even at the time, a fairly small percentage of the world's population. In other words, not liberalism at all, but, like just about everything else he did in his political career, cold calculation. It's simply not reasonable, in my opinion, to assign guilt by association to those who advocate some similar social policies.
5) Every idiot who supports Fidel Castro, every degenerate who thinks t-shirts with Mao or Che on them are a cool way to show your dissident status is either completely and utterly ignorant of history and therefore worthy of being called morons who should shut up
Which still doesn't make them Nazis...
or they're amoral apologists for mass murderers who happened to spout the rhetoric they agreed with.
Agreeing with the rhetoric, or, more often, some specific elements of it, does not make one an "apologist". I do get your point, though. One big problem I have with those on the far left is that they have a tendency to focus too specifically on particular rhetorical elements that support their case, while ignoring the historical effects of attempting to carry out certain policies, such as redistribution of wealth. I have a friend who's pretty far out there -- he doesn't wear Che Guevara T-Shirts, but he's in that general region of the political spectrum/compass -- and I argue with him all the time about revolution vs. gradual change, with his argument being that gradual change never works, whereas with revolution there's at least a chance. I really try to get through to him that once the tiger is out of the cage, it's hard to control even for those with the best of intentions, but he has what is, to my mind, a totally irrational belief that human beings will behave rationally given the appropriate environment and set of personal circumstances. Again, none of his beliefs comes from any desire to cause harm to others; quite the absolute polar 180-degree opposite, in fact. He believes the current system is harmful to individual freedom, and that both Republicans and Democrats (as proxies for the corporate elite, etc) contribute fairly equally to the restrictions placed on our liberties by society. The point of this is simply to say that in no way is my friend an "apologist for mass murderers", and yet nothing I say can convince him, at least in the context of our arguments, that the legislative process is preferable to direct action. He has also, however, to my knowledge never done anything illegal, and does not in any way advocate violence against specific groups or individuals.
Again, thank you for your reasonable responses, and I apologize once more for giving the impression that I was comparing you to Michael Savage.
Just as a technical aside, I wanted to let you know that I keep getting a Javascript error when I go to post comments. I'm using IE 6, and was able to debug the error in Visual Studio .NET. The error comes in the following line, in function "setCommentInfoCookies":
WM_setCookie("commentemail", form.email.value, 8760, "/");
The error is "form.email is null or not an object".
Now, on to the political stuff.
1) Oh, er, by the way, the Nazis were never "Bible thumpers."
No no, I wasn't saying that at all. I was saying that if liberals attempted to compare religious right to Nazis, there would be the inconvenient fact that even Jerry Falwell doesn't advocate setting up concentration camps for homosexuals, which in my mind more or less invalidates the case. Again, the closest I can come up with in a modern political movement is Savage, but I think even he is just a blowhard who knows his audience but would probably never be capable of actually putting himself at risk to run a movement that reached such an extreme. That's the thing with most of these people: they are perfectly well aware of the total lack of personal consequences for anything they say. In fact, for the right-wing radio pundits, there are direct personal financial benefits. They have absolutely no motivation to restrain themselves rhetorically in the context of their own programs. What can happen - they get sued? Then they turn into martyrs and gain an even bigger audience. It's a real catch-22. The Internet is even worse in terms of restraint, because for those who choose not to exercise it, anonymity is a simple matter.
2) Fred Phelps is a lifelong Democrat
Even if true, what difference does that make? Zell Miller is also a Democrat. That in no way makes Phelps any less of a right-wing nutjob.
3) My own issue with the left ... is that many of them, in the past at least, have seemed to stick to an old "I have no enemies on the left" mindset
Yes, unfortunately, I myself have fallen into that trap on occasion. It's not just a matter of "I have no enemies on the left" as it is, "if those guys agree with me on the most critical issues, they can't be all bad" or something along those lines. There's also the issue of "tolerance" being misunderstood by some to mean "no boundaries". I still say that that's not representative of the core of the left side of the political spectrum, but as you and others make some of these individual points, I suppose I can understand your perspective. I'll just close with what I always tell the radical friend I was talking about in my last comment: there's a big difference between dealing with someone who is actively malevolent and someone who is misguided or simply unaware of the negative consequences of his actions... and I think the words "misguided" or "unaware" describe far more people than "malevolent" does.
1) We of the Right do not consider racial or sexual equality to be beneficial at all... etc.
Since this seems to be a direct response to my snarky, uncalled-for aside, I'll just apologize directly for making that implication. Not at all constructive on my part.
2) Too bad our enemies don't feel the same way.
This has nothing to do with evaluating the inherent validity of their beliefs. I do recognize the point you're trying to make, but it's not a convincing argument in any philosophical sense. Along those lines, do you ever consider the possibility (and I mean that only as a query, with no sarcasm or condescension) that the peace movement acts as a check on the more destructive impulses that tend to go along with both power and the desire for revenge? In other words, that maybe without the presence of people advocating no war at all, the option of war might seem far more attractive to those with power? War, at least victorious war, has tended, in the past, to bring both political and economic benefits.
Again, I'm not saying the hardline anti-war crowd has expressed itself in a particularly coherent manner in this specific case, but only that maybe their presence is preferable to their absence. The same might be said of the religious right, which I think acts as a check on some of the more, ahhh, "licentious" aspects of left-wing politics. Again, I think it could be far more effective politically were it "less extreme", but then, maybe that would upset the balance. Who knows? Just a thought.
We might be close to a "Union Party" for 2008....ie, a coalition of everyone who loves America while perhaps disagreeing on a lot of particular issues...
Today Brian Golden, a Democrat who represents the Boston area in the Massachusetts legislature announced his support for the re-election of President Bush...this is the attitude I'm hoping will emerge triumphant on November 2nd. Of course, it's not about President Bush - he is, as you point out, just a center/right politician who mostly leans center and only occasionally stakes out a genuine rightwing position; but what he represents is our desire to fight for our civilization against Islamo-fascist barbarism...everyone but the ignorant should be able to get behind that in 2004...by 2008, the war might be largely won, and then we can return to petty, partisan politics...
"Steven,
...and just because I like you're style here at Dean's world, I pledge that if a Federal DOMA ever comes up for popular ratification in Nevada, I'll vote against it..."
Thank you! And I like your style, too!
For my part, I pledge that if anybody in Congress proposes an amendment to leave marriage to the states, and not to federal courts, I will support it. Senator Orrin Hatch suggested such an amendment, and Senator Barney Frank said he would support it. I've been for that for quite a while now, partly because it looks like the only way we're going to avoid civil war over this issue.
That 9th Circuit court, in particular, lurks as a ticking time-bomb ready to make stupid decisions that will tear this country apart, as in that one striking down the Pledge of Allegiance because it has the word "God" in it. All or just about all of the "separation of church and state" rulings since the early 1960s have been unfortunate, in my opinion, both in the acrimony they generated and in their infringements on the free exercise of religion. Roe vs. Wade was also a huge mistake, and I would favor an amendment either extending Fourteenth Amendment protections to the unborn or else leaving abortion to the states.
Also, I'm basically conservative, more so as I get older, and I believe that any change (and same-sex marriage is perceived by most people to be a change, though I see it as a conservation of existing relationships): 1) has to be shown to be a change for the better, 2) once so shown, usually has to come slowly in order for it to be rooted, deep, and lasting, 3) must, whenever possible, be made in the private, cultural, and religious spheres rather than the public, legal, and political spheres, 4) if it must be legal or political, must whenever possible, be made on the local or state level rather than federal.
About a year or so ago here in Dean's World, you made some suggestions as to how same-sex marriage would have to be implemented to have your support, including in conjunction with stringent restrictions on divorce and some other things. Wince and Nod also suggested restoring laws against adultery or "alienation of affection" as it has historically been known. I have thought about your and his ideas, and I strongly support both of those ideas, because if we are to have same-sex marriage, I want it to be marriage in the complete sense both of permanence and of exclusivity, monogamy, fidelity, total commitment. That is where I stand.
By the way, recently President Bush has made some statements on "civil unions", explicitly disagreeing with a plank in the platform of his own party and angering certain people who deserved to be angered. That takes guts, more so in fact than Kerry has shown to date, and has significantly elevated my opinion of him. Also, after re-reading his and Kerry's answers to the question on homosexuality, I have concluded that President Bush's reply was superior in certain respects.
All that, plus, above all, and on which everything else depends, the War against Islam's terrorists, has decided me. If we lose that War, we will lose our country, our Western civilization, and our freedoms, and the whole question of homosexual marriage will be, quite literally, a dead issue.
And so....
I'm going to try to help you win your bet. I'm mailing in my ballot today, and, amomg other things, I'm voting for four more years of Bush as Commander in Chief of our armed forces.
Seriously, can anyone doubt that if Bush wins re-election, someone unstable on the left will attempt his assassination. It would only seem rational to someone unhinged that if Bush really is as evil as those on the left make him out to be, then his assasination would be a gift to humanity.
I fear for our republic.
Thank you! You make good points, particularly that last on the need for a plurality and balance of views and values, ideas and ideologies. While I oppose pacifism philosophically, I know that we do need a few genuine pacifists, people who can't bring themselves to kill at all, to balance out fire-breathing war hawks like me and Arnold Harris. The ascetics balance out the libertines, the skeptics the religious, and vice versa, etc..
My description of the contemporary Left did sound quite Coulteresque, or beyond. That is my style. I am extreme, and I tend to paint everything in extreme terms.
I do not consider you to be one of the "barking moonbats" of the Left, nor a Marcusean, a Leninist, nor anything remotely resembling that "Village Voice" writer. I'm sorry if I ever did think such a thing or ever left the impression that I thought that of you. You are a truly liberal, in Dean's sense, man of the Left, thoughtful, humane, a good man. You and Tim Snyder (Tim the Soldier) are my two favorite men of the Left here in Dean's World and the Queen's realm.
You remind me of my father, Dr. Samuel Kingdon Anderson, who supported the New Deal, fought the Nazis, voted for Adlai Stevenson, taught history at the Oregon College of Education (now Western Oregon State College) in Monmouth. (Excellent bed and breakfast there, by the way!) He was a great man. Also, my brother, David Matthew Anderson, programmer, is pretty much a down-the-line Democrat, Center-Left, a lot smarter than me and a damn good man. And he and I disagree on a lot of things. Most of my family are Democrats and have been since the New Deal. My Grandpa (Cato the Mighty, as we called him) was a Henry Wallace Democrat. A great aunt and uncle were Communists!
And, so, I think, if these people, who I like, have such views, then what about those people, on the campuses, on the Internet, etc., who I dislike? That's why I think of them as I do.
I still like the liberal, "libertine" or "licentious", libertarian, quadrant of the Left, as exemplified by my friend Jeanine Ring and her Salon Total Freedom.
As to this debate about whether Hitler was Rightist or Leftist, that shows the need for a 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional spectrum. "Left" and "Right" (the modern ideological symbolism of which comes from the French Revolution) denote or connote one (or more) possible dimension or dimensions of a spectrum, relating to equality vs. hierarchy, or change vs. tradition, or possibly secularism vs. religion, but there is at least one other dimension, that of freedom vs. totalitarianism or individualism vs. collectivism. On that, more salient, dimension, Hitler and Stalin are on the same side.
Here is one such 2-dimensional spectrum, one of my favorites, the Pournelle Axes. On this spectrum, the two axes are: Statism vs. Anarchism and Rationalism vs. Irrationalism.
It is that time of year, and all.
I appreciate your kind words. If you would like to check out another two-dimensional model of the political universe, try The Political Compass, which uses economic Left-Right vs. Authoritarian-Libertarian dimensions. On this one, Hitler falls all the way at the top end of the Authoritarian scale, as does Stalin. However, Stalin, of course, falls far to the left economically as well, with Hitler being slightly to the right.
I'm looking at the Pournelle Axes right now, and I definitely agree with the idea that the Left-Right model is probably worse than useless in most cases, and even harmful. It really does tend to force a binary tone onto a lot of political debates, even among people who are aware of its shortcomings and should know better... like me, for example. I reacted to a generalization about "the left" even knowing that it is not at all monolithic.
The problem, for me, is really a matter of distinguishing between opponents who argue based on the merits of a given principle or policy, and those who argue based on whether that policy or principle is the official property of the "left wing" or "right wing". I think there's a lot more philosophical overlap than one might think based on 30-second sound bytes from the mainstream media. Definitely a case of "lowest common denominator" gone too far.
Anyway, I'll read more about the Pournelle model... I've definitely heard of it before, and I'm not sure why I never followed up. I guess that's something I shall have to remedy...
I think it's a purely semantic argument whether you're packed on a train to Dachau for being 'too Jewish' or you're packed on a train to Siberian forced labor camps for being 'too bourgeoisie'. My maternal great-grandparents were shot by Russian communists for the 'crime' of being landowners. They owned a small farm, and my great-grandfather was the local miller.
I also think that you'll agree with me that being a Nazi isn't morally justifiable even if you're a softcore one who would only deport Jews instead of killing them.
Could you please explain to me how, and I also mean it with total sincerity, can you believe that a softcore communist is not morally equivalent to a softcore Nazi?
Communism isn't 'a good idea that sadly didn't work'. It really is not. Communists intend good, but seriously, so did Nazis. We can all agree that the Nazi idea of 'good' is actually evil and inhuman - my claim is that the communist idea of 'good' is equally evil and inhuman. 'Social justice', at least in regards to communism, is a grossly distorted word. 'Social equalization' is much more apt. Now, taking a third of the fruits of my labor at the point of a gun I can accept. I consider it theft but I am glad if it helps someone who needs it. Taking it all and distributing it evenly forces me to live not for myself but for everyone else. This isn't an argument for selfishness - it's an argument against forbidding free will. Wax poetic about all the other freedoms, but they most important one we have is to decide what we do with the product of one third of our lives.
Oh, I'm sure he was quite altruistic towards those he considered human beings.
But that aside, you can substitute 'Hitler' with Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel, Guevara, Saddam, Kim Jong-Il, or pretty much any leader of a Marxist state.
Your argument seems to assert that Hitler did evil things because he was a cackling Eeeevil Bond villain, but commonly accepted left-wing dictators at least had good intentions, even if they were megalomaniacs. You couldn't be more wrong. 'Good', ultimately, is a subjective thing. Hitler and his cronies loved the fantasy of the Noble Aryan people - and I use the word 'love' in all its agape glory. Communists likewise love the fantasy of the Noble Working Man, and of a nonexistent mankind who will cheerily live for the good of each and every one of his neighbors.
Personally, I love the concept of liberty - of no man having the right to tell another what to do or say, of a man's altruism and generosity in helping the less fortunate being the result of his free choice and not the result of a gun to his head. Funnily enough, the object of my love does not require killing or encarcerating those who disagree with me - unless they decide to use physical force against me.
The very idea of a head of state governing 'altruistically' is absurd - it's not altruism when you're dictating others to be good. If by 'genuinely altruistic' you mean policies that are for the 'common good', then both Hitler and Stalin were exactly that. Just that to achieve it, Hitler had to gas Jews, and Stalin had to shoot my grandma's parents.
Nor did I call them Nazis.
Regarding your friend, if he truly advocates revolution, then he must be aware of the fact that revolutions result in a lot of dead people, especially since a very large amount of Americans would oppose that revolution to their last breath.
And honestly, I think your friend is detached from reality. Both you and he live in the United States of America. Relative to a large part of the world, and certainly relative to the past all-but-two-centuries of human history, even the poorest American lives like a king. The number one health problem of low-income Americans is obesity and a sedentary lifestyle, for crying out loud. And, a mere 13 years after the end of communism and an enthusiastic implementation of capitalism and liberal democracy, Estonia is, to all intents and purposes no different. Sure, you're still much richer than we are (I make about $10 000 a year after taxes), but to the average Bangladeshi, both the average American and the average Estonian are fabulously rich. The system works, and anyone who thinks there are better alternatives is kidding themselves.
Whoa, that was long. I need an editor, I think.
I hardly think the Germany of 2004 can in any way be compared to the Germany of, say, 1938 - economically or otherwise.
Also, George Bush is placed just a smidgeon to the left of Ayn Rand, economically - a place where he most decidedly doesn't belong.
Personally, I'm exactly where Bush (erroneously) is on the left-right axis, and somewhere between Mandela and the Dalai Lama on the libertarian side.
I'd again blame the meme of Communism and Nazism being somehow diametrically opposed extremes of authoritarianism. There is no basis for this claim, save for the fact that yes, Nazis were a bit less 'left'.
It's a simple scale with anarchism at the bottom (point 0) and totalitarianism at the top (100 point). The question then of all issues is "does this person, issue, or idea strip a man of some of his liberty or does it reinforce it?"
It really does not matter to the individual if the property is seized by the state or the collective. In the end, a man's property was seized. It doesn't matter who seized it. Either the People's Republic of Judea or the Judea People's Front. It's just silliness at this point. It's a kind of smoke and mirror game.
Hitler centralized all the industries and put them in the hands of the State. The communists put them in the control of the party. What, really, is the difference on the impact on the individual property owner? Absolutely none. I find discussions that attempt to villify Hitler but condone Stalin when the net results were identical. Except, of course, on the murder scale. The communists are the hands down winners on that one.
On any spectrum, I am close to an anarchist, i.e., for as much individual freedom and responsibility, and as little government, as possible. On this spectrum, I am a Conservative (religious, polytheistic) Anarchist. Interesting that my hero Nietzsche was once called a "conservative anarchist", and also an "aristocratic radical". Spectrums, spectrums, spectrums, spectrums....
Will you acknowledge that the belief in racial superiority was a fundamental part of the Nazi ideology? Let's take that as an assumption for the sake of argument, and break down this aspect of Nazism into its logical components:
1) The German Race is superior to all others;
2) The superior German Race is threatened by inferior subhumans;
3) The primary group of inferior subhumans is the Jews, a group defined by genetics rather than merely by religion;
4) In order to remove the destructive influence of the Jews, they must be removed from German society by any means necessary.
And now let's do the same with Marxism:
1) The working class is oppressed by those who control the means of production;
2) The primary controllers of the means of production are wealthy landowners and industrialists;
3) In order to remove the oppressive influence of the wealthy landowners and industrialists, control of the means of production must be redistributed to the working class.
Do you agree with this breakdown? I'll await your response, because there's no point in continuing until we can at least come to an agreement on some kind of simplified ideological model along these lines. If you're interested in continuing the discussion, please either let me know that you agree, or offer a model of your own, and we'll try to reconcile the two.
In the same way that an argument can use a logical fallacy and still be correct, a system of belief may be quite rational and quite incorrect.
Some would also say that the very idea that you can create an entirely rational worldview is a bit irrational. But now I'm really running off the rails. Carry on.
(I'm dying to jump into this argument but just can't right now.)
Friends are friends and they do things for each other...so, friend, it's a deal.
Now, if only the Democrats would latch on to the idea that if they'd just support exterminating Islamo-fascism I'd even swallow socialised medicine in return for such support...some things are absolutely important, others less so...how, precisely, we get overcharged for medical services is less important than how, precisely, wet get terrorist head's attached to pikes.
True, mere left/right dichotomy is not really a good way to go about things - though it is handy for shorthand understanding of essential differences of opinion.
But there are shadings which have to be taken into consideration - as a for instance, back when welfare reform was being debated, I was advocating a guaranteed income model - the government to ensure that everyone made enough to afford the basics of life with the requirement that everyone phyuically capable worked - no work, no support at all; reasoning that if a Mexican can wade across the Rio Grande and get a job in five minutes an American could also do so if properly motivated, I hit upon the extremely liberal/left idea of guaranteeing a certain wage...take whatever job you can get regardless of how low paid and if this only worked out to, say, 40% of what you needed to live on, Uncle Sam would make up the difference...the conservative part of the concept was that by working and contributing to society the welfare recipient gained self-respect (being able, as it were, to look his/her children in the eye and say "I did the best I could, took nothing for free and only got help from my fellow Americans because I needed it") and by working at whatever job would eventually raise themselves out of the need for assistence. Stark liberalism combined with stark conservatism...so, what is it? Conservatism or liberalism? Who would hate it? Conservatives or liberals? I thought it had merit...
Unfortuantely, since the hard-left took over the Democratic Party (those that I've called junior-league Leninists) such possible compromises are impossible and thus conservatism, alone, has been forced to try and do what conservatism and liberalism should be doing together. The left does not admit to compromise - it cannot accept that anyone non-left can have any beneficial ideas; thus even something which would clearly ameliorate the lot of the poor is automatically rejected and demonized by the left if it stems from anything like conservative views. The left would rather a poor man starve to death than have him helped, say, by a conservative Catholic who abhors leftist thinking.
Until this hard-left is purged from the Democratic Party we're going to continue to see what we've seen all this year - increasingly violent disagreement between right and left in general. It seems to me, actually, that we are headed down the long path to Civil War - hopefully two things will happen in succession - President Bush to win as big as I think he will, and the Democrat's subsequently conducting a long-needed purge of their ranks.
versus
So the Jews must be 'removed by any means necessary', but the landowners (where'd the 'wealthy' qualifier come from?) land must be 'redistributed'.
I'm sorry, but 'redistribution' involves killing, robbing, and deportation. Sure, you could say that the landowners could give up their property and peacefully evict themselves, but then again Jews could do the same.
And are you saying there's some sort of moral distinction between hatred of 'genetically inferior' people and hatred of those guilty of thoughtcrime and possessions? What's the reasoning? That a Jew cannot be Jewish, but a dissident can repent and see O'Brien's five fingers as long as his spirit is broken? Never fear, commies killed the children of dissidents, lest the 'bourgeoisie parasite' gene be passed on.
Basically, you're advocating a sort of 'hate-crime' philosophy, and a dubious one at that. It matters not one whit whether the Nazis murdered a group of people due to religious, racial, or ideological reasons. They killed innocents because they got in the way of the good of the majority. Killed innocents for the good of their own. I refuse to give a shit how they defined 'us'.
Also, I don't see how this relates to Hitler being left-wing or not. The economic policies of Nazi Germany were centrally planned, collectivist, authoritarian policies. The economic policies of Stalin were centrally planned, collectivist, and authoritarian. The only difference is one of degree - Hitler did not nationalize all industries, but for all intents and purposes, the entire German industrial complex was under the direct control of the National Socialist party.
Hitler was WAY left-of-center economically, and that's all the left/right axis measures anyway. As to his authoritarianism, he shares the record with Stalin and Kim Jong-Il. No, he wasn't a communist, but he was a socialist if there ever was one.
Still, it seems to me that in your response, you did implicitly agree to at least the most important part of my model, even if you didn't agree with what you assumed to be the "dichotomy" I was trying to establish. In fact, you missed the point entirely. In my view, this debate is not about Stalin vs. Hitler, it's about leftist or socialist philosophy vs. German fascist extreme nationalism as manifested by the Nazi party. Stalin was a vicious, bloody, murdering dictator who deserves all of the worst condemnations of him that you or anyone else can come up with.
But Stalin wasn't a socialist; he was a paranoid, power-hungry megalomaniac who used Marxist rhetoric to justify policies that were objectively indistinguishable from any of the worst mass murderers in history. His behavior had -- and this is the important part -- absolutely nothing to do with the philosophy underlying socialism. This actually goes straight to the point Dean made about how a basically irrational philosophy can be constructed on rationalist principles.
To a socialist, it seems utterly self-evident that when a surplus of necessities exists, there is no rational reason for any one person in a group to lack any given necessary item. What makes socialism irrational is that it doesn't take into account the fact that human nature itself is simply not rational when it comes to personal needs and desires. The impression I have is that most people who believe in a collectivist ideology regard human behavior as essentially predictable within a certain range, given a defined set of inputs. This makes the philosophy itself "rationalist" in content, but irrational in implementation or application.
To me, this worldview has nothing whatsoever to do with Nazism. It couldn't be further removed from Nazism, in fact, since Nazism is based on the idea that a particular "race" of human beings defined by certain largely superficial genetic characteristics are "superior" to all others, and that another "race" defined by similarly superficial characteristics, are inferior and yet capable of exercising near-total control over all other "races" as a group, by subterfuge, deception, and manipulation. This is a fundamentally irrationalist philosophy; it's based on accepting certain highly subjective interpretations of the world as objective "Truths" equivalent to "If I don't eat, I will die.". I hope any religious people will not take offense at this, or interpret it as my equating Nazism with religion as a whole, but in this way at least, National Socialism is comparable to religion. To be a Christian, you must accept certain highly irrational tenets, with the primary one being the existence of God. This also does not meant that God doesn't exist, only that a belief in God is not a rational interpretation of sensory input.
I know you'll argue that Socialism or Communism have many of the same properties I've been talking about, and I would agree. In order to believe that Socialism can and should be implemented, irrational beliefs are required, but the philosophy itself is not based on any of these. On the other hand, without the key component of Aryan Nationalism and "racial superiority", what would Nazism be in terms of political philosophy? As I said before, I believe that, viewed in context, most "left-leaning" policies and rhetoric employed by the Nazis were mere populist measures designed to channel nationalist feelings into a short-term increase in war-oriented productivity and industrial capacity, rather than any philosophically internalized altruism.
In English, I'm not trying to argue that the Nazis were just "eeeeeeeeevil" and that explains everything; I'm saying that I believe the evidence points to cold calculation rather than "compassionate fascism", and that this fact alone differentiates them in every important way from any true socialist in any place or time... it's not the only differentiation, but the most important one in my view. Again, it's really not a matter of Hitler vs. Stalin, because no socialist believes he would become Stalin if given power; he believes that the working class would recognize that his policies were in their best interests, and blah blah blah. This is why I and, I think, most mainstream liberals, don't believe in pure socialism at all; I believe it just won't work, for reasons of which I'm sure you're quite well aware and that you and I would agree on. It's also why I don't believe for a minute the assertion that Hitler was a "leftist" in any meaningful sense of the word.
In any case, my question to you would be, what purpose does it serve to compare modern "lefties" to Hitler anyway? Even if you disagree with everything I've said, is it your contention, when you say "indistinguishable from the average modern lefty", that the fringe left would, if given the chance, set up concentration camps and attempt to exterminate certain groups of people? Or that they would embark on a war of conquest to establish a thousand-year kingdom of white purity? I honestly don't get it. Of course they shouldn't be in power, but neither should the religious right, and yet somehow, as bad as I might think Jerry Falwell is, I see no objectively coherent way of comparing him to Adolf Hitler. The same goes for Noam Chomsky.
Your move.
The Rightist, National Socialist, style of totalitarian argument goes like this:
"We, the moral majority [Germans, white Gentiles, heterosexual Christians], constitute the normal, natural, healthy, law-abiding, productive, Godly element in society. We are society. We and our traditions must be preserved at all cost.
"There is an immoral, deviant minority in our midst [Jews, homosexuals], who constitute only 1% of the population, yet control and use to their perverted ends the arts, sciences, professions, education, the media, vast wealth. They are morally depraved, degenerate, criminal, cursed by God, aligned with Godless Communism, out to corrupt our children. They promote an abnormal, unnatural, unhealthy lifestyle. They must be eliminated.
"There is also a larger group [Slavs, Negroes], who are inferior but useful as slaves."
Result: Last time this type of ideology took over a country, 6,000,000 Jews and about that many other "undesirables", about 12,000,000 to 20,000,000 in total, were enslaved, tortured, and murdered "to preserve the purity of the race".
The Leftist, International Socialist, style of totalitarian argument goes like this:
"Society as it has hitherto existed is outmoded and oppressive and must be overthrown, abolished. All inequality, all difference between any one individual and any other, is exploitation, oppression, and breeds war, and so must be eliminated. All religion is superstition, standing in the way of progress, and must be eliminated, replaced by science and pure reason. The past, all tradition, must be wiped out."
Result: Some 100,000,000 "obsolescent elements" were enslaved, tortured, and murdered "to pave the way for the new society".
Which is better? Which is worse? Six of one, half dozen of the other. I'm against both! I will live and die as a free individual, "deviant" and/or "obsolete" that I am.