Obama Regresses to Cold War Mythology … and Switches Sides
Reporting on President Obama’s response to the Honduran government’s deportation of the would-be dictator Manuel Zelaya, the Guardian writes:
The Obama administration, conscious of the U.S.’s long history of supporting coups against Latin American leftists condemned the overthrow. The secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said Washington’s top priority was to restore full democratic and constitutional order in Honduras. Zelaya’s removal had “evolved into a coup,” she said.
Leave it to the left-leaning Guardian writers to recognize their own ideology when they see it. At least they are honest enough to attribute Obama’s position on Honduras to his outright acceptance of Cold War-era axioms and the presumption of America’s guilt. Apparently for this very reason, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — who in her primary debates had promised never to give dictators a propagandistic platform by meeting with them — invited Zelaya to Washington and issued him a propagandistic platform.
But abandoning pro-American forces and propping up anti-American dictators can’t really be what the word “change” meant to most voters during the elections. What is happening now looks more like restoring Cold War front lines and defecting to the other side, presumably in the name of correcting historical injustice. It’s similar to the psychiatric method of regressing to an earlier stage of the patient’s life in order to relive old traumatic experience with a more positive outcome.
The problem with that is, the ideas of Cold War-related injustice and guilt are the products of false conscience planted by elaborate propaganda. The picture that Obama is trying to reverse is an airbrushed, made-in-the-USSR fabrication. Flipping the wrong picture upside down doesn’t make it right — it still is the wrong picture, only upside down.
Generated in the depths of KGB think tanks, the Cold War-era propaganda template is comprised of the following linked axioms:
1. Socialism is “progress.”
2. Aversion to “progress” is a sign of outmoded backward thinking.
3. All forward-thinking people are leftists.
4. Leftists always speak for all people.
5. People always unanimously support leftist leaders.
6. Leftists are always under assault from the well-organized capitalist enemy.
7. All workers and peasants hate capitalist exploiters.
8. Armed resistance to a leftist government can only conceivably be staged by CIA agents in the service of American imperialism.
9. Capitalists engage in relentless anti-socialist propaganda, subversion, and sabotage; they will commit any crime in order to kill hope and prevent the masses from liberation.
10. The dying non-socialist sector of the world is run by a criminal conspiracy of capitalist oligarchs operating from the United States (and sometimes from Israel when appropriate).
Evidently, if President Obama didn’t share these received views, he wouldn’t have felt the need to apologize before the world for America’s alleged wrongdoings — a gesture that could only reinforce such stereotypes. If his policies weren’t driven by these tenets, he wouldn’t be using the powers of the U.S. president to prop up the forces that oppose America’s founding principles of liberty while denying support to those who want to live by such principles.
The reason many Americans haven’t realized it yet is that most media coverage is also born of the same old yellowed clichés.
And yet no media bias can obfuscate the fact, clearly demonstrated by events in Iran and Honduras, that even in the absence of U.S.-led conspiracies, anti-American tyrants are still not welcome, popular resistance still happens, and even when the U.S. president switches sides and pulls for the other team, people of the world still desire economic freedoms and individual rights — the only constant force that drives real progress.
The same people who chanted the mantra of “change” are having a hard time noticing the real change happening in the world today. Apparently, in their view, any change that contradicts the above template is either not happening, in which case it’s a fabrication of imperialist propaganda, or being forced on the world against its wishes, in which case the perpetrator can only be the criminal, capitalist cabal at the heart of American imperialism with its long and ruthless arm of the CIA. Any mention of oil or gas in this context becomes undeniable proof of this theory.
In this sense, Obama’s notion of “change” is not change at all, but rather a regression to a mythological past, which impedes the real change the world so desperately needs.
The back end of 2009 will be the last battle for America. If we stop this madman from destroying healthcare and passing cap and trade the damage can be fixed within a generation. If we don’t, well…. we are in a world of hurt. The time is now.
Greg Atbashian couldn’t be more right. This is a wonderful article. It goes into the root causes of Barack Obama’s actions and policies and the reasons they and he are terribly wrongheaded. Everything Atbashian says is true,absolutely true.
I would like to add that someone needs to bring up the USSR’s massive terrorist training program. The Middle East terrorist organizations go back to the USSR’s program and they learned much of their antiAmericanism from the KGB.
It is rare to find such an insightful article.
Obama was raised as a “red diaper” baby by hard leftists stuck in Cold War categories. With victimhoo
With victimhood to shield him from competing ideas, Obama just reads from his internal teleprompter to spew tyranny, racism, and narcistic self-worship.
Instead of writing a real article, you spout cliches…
It is quite alarming that Obama so consistently acts against democratic ideals and liberty in both domestic and foreign policy. Our founding fathers tried to protect us against this as best they could. They did a phenomenal job in creating the system they did, but we cannot rest upon the laurels of their wisdom. Defeating such control freaks still requires our active involvement. After what we’ve seen in the past eight months, there can no longr be any excuse for complacency.
Obama, the people around him, and the people who support him are very bad for America and the world. The only apologizing America should be doing is in apologizing in electing such a small, petty, and misguided man to such a high position. What a tremendous mistake!
Yuri Bezmenov would concur. If someone can provide the links, you will hear Mr. Atbashian’s thesis confirmed directly from the lips of a former KGB operative.
Excellent article. The only thing that I think is wrong is that the big “O” hasn’t changed sides. He has always been a communist. If you stop listening to what he says and watch his behavior, that becomes evident.
If (Obama’s) policies weren’t driven by these tenets (Cold War-era propaganda), he wouldn’t be using the powers of the U.S. president to prop up the forces that oppose America’s founding principles of liberty while denying support to those who want to live by such principles.
Clear enough. The recent set-to in the the Gates affair demonstrates that those aren’t the only antiquated tenets to which Obama clings.
The POTUS was eager to show his expansiveness & nosh with the cretins running Iran. A little fly in that ointment arose when the people took to the streets against that lying, demonic leadership, after which the American President was eventually forced into muttering something in support of those people.
And then A’jad demanded an apology from Obama and, only then, after it had become personal, did Barack Obama make a firm and believable statement of “no”.
…Obama’s notion of “change” is not change at all, but rather a regression to a mythological past, which impedes the real change the world so desperately needs.
Supporting Zeyala is just plain incomprehensible, unless everything you say is true.
Yuri Bezmenov would concur. If someone can provide the links, you will hear Mr. Atbashian’s thesis confirmed directly from the lips of a former KGB operative.
Ex-KGB Uri Bezmenov On Ideological Indoctrination – Part 2
Devestating!
Devastating, too.
Thank you, tanstaafl.
“…to critical acclaim from anal-retentive leftists trained to feel guilty for every joyful moment of living in a capitalist society.”
“The reason many Americans haven’t realized it yet is that most media coverage is also born of the same old yellowed clichés.”
I picked these two passages as being the most salient to me among many in this commentary. It serves to reinforce the prophetic writing of Orwell who in effect said if you control what is thought (colleges, PC) and said (MSM) you can control and manipulate the people-even to their own destruction.
Just review the defenders of Obama on this site and you can see that both passages are germane to them. The white American defenders hate being white and American; and all of the left loathe the US and its traditions and heritage.
They hate our culture which helped bring about multiculturalism; they hate our form of government which helped establish and now legitimize ACORN style of voting.
They hate our form of national economy-capitalism which allowed this totalitarian takeover of our present economy without so much as a wimper of dissent from the public.
Soviet propaganda was devastating to Europe. Now it’s getting to America. The incubation period was longer, but the virulence has not diminished.
In a sense, we are lucky that this re-heated poisoned food is served by a man who is disfunctional in several other ways, which are increasingly evident. The supposedly inspiring candidate was only a condescending bigot of the left, which was not so hard to recognize, if you were willing to look.
This man has motivated the grass roots revolt occasionally seen at the underestimated tea parties. Perhaps no president had ever done this before. Hopefully, America will recognize itself as the land of the free and the brave, not the cocoon of the brats.
Mr. Atbashian, thank you for putting this together. Most of us don’t have the resources or skill to do it, but there’s an immediate recognition of what you are describing.
Those of us who lived through the Cold War years when Communism and socialism stood against democratic entities all over the world know the deadly stench for what it is.
But sometimes it’s hard to explain why we are so sure that that IS the smell emanating from our White House these days.
Thank you for putting history and the present death stench into focus for us.
Thank you all for commenting. This is only the first installment in a series – a foreword, so to speak. Further installments cover in more detail some of the issues you have mentioned in the comments.
To: Comrade Andrew
From: Vladimir Putin
Re: Post #5
Message: Thank you for being a loyal communist, but you will never win over the hearts and minds of the capitalist swine with comments like “Instead of writing a real article, you spout cliches…”. Please rework your efforts by pointing out their lies and deceptions and help them see the truth as we have told it to you.
How long can Obama destroy the tax base, i.e. job losses, companies leaving the country, before it all crashes? There is only so much “money” that can be taken from the producers before the taxes are greater than the assets.
Which makes Obama a reactionary.
The difference between far left and far right ideologies can be summed up with: leftists pine for an Utopia in the future that never will be, rightists pine for an Utopia in the past that never was. In an odd sort of way, romanticizing the USSR is sort of an ultraconservative pining for the mythical ultraleft paradise of Potempkin. Just as the Nazis wanted to “return” to Valhalla, Obama and his ilk want to “return” to Potemkin.
Only problem is, Potemkin never existed, and never will.
7. ~Paules:
This is what you’re looking for, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlkPkJInUmU
Rocketeer:
You have slandered Mr. Putin by linking him to Obama’s communist past. Putin may be thug but he doesn’t want to be Party Chairman. He wants to be the Tsar. Just because he was in the KGB at the end of the Soviet Union doesn’t make him a communist. It probably made him a sceptic. Putin hates the communists and communism and as he said a Davos earlier this year he wouldn’t wish communism on his worst enemy. He knows how dangerous a communist state can be to international security.
Thanks, Calvin.
You will find Part 2 already posted by tanstaafl off comment number 10. I hope everyone takes time to view them both.
Norman Thomas:
“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened. ”
We alone have allowed the present American situation with Obabam and ACORN and the others to happen, we alone. complacency and acceptance of almost anything, not wanting “hurt” anyone’s feelings…b.s.
Obama is running amuck and we’re not paying attention to ACORN, a true communist organization. They will influence the 2010 vote, again ..complacency.
Ball: Do not characterize us on the right in order to make a moral equivalency with the left. We want only what the Constitution and Bill of Rights give us. We want every American to know freedom, liberty and the pursuit of their own happiness.
We want a smaller government that only does what it is prescribed to do and be accountable to the American citizens and work for the American citizens.
Other than that, I cannot understand what you are saying in your closing sentence.
Blotto, I said “far right”, as in Nazi. There’s a world of difference between the pragmatism of the American Revolution, which American conservatives wish to use as guiding principles and the wacky hyper-romantic Nazi wish for a return to some primordial paradise. The closest thing in American mainstream politics to the drunken romanticism of the Nazis is the greens. Yes, the environmental movement is also ultraconservative.
This article grabs one short excerpt from one article and uses it to extrapolate a grand theory that is completely baseless and unsupported by the cited text.
“Evidently, if President Obama didn’t share these received views, he wouldn’t have felt the need to apologize before the world for America’s alleged wrongdoings — a gesture that could only reinforce such stereotypes. If his policies weren’t driven by these tenets, he wouldn’t be using the powers of the U.S. president to prop up the forces that oppose America’s founding principles of liberty while denying support to those who want to live by such principles.”
Additionally, the main thrust of the argument, italicized above, concludes that the President’s use of conciliatory language when addressing other nation states, especially those whose national interests and national security we have historically violated, is proof somehow that the President harbors socialist views.
Apparently, to the author, continuing the Reagan/Bush administration’s practice of lying to our allies, torturing foreign civilians, funneling taxpayer money to foreign terror regimes, overthrowing sovereign nations and failing to honor international treaties that we previously swore to uphold is the only way the president can definitively prove that he is not a socialist.
Herr Comrade Chairman Red Square:
“1. Socialism is “progress.”
2. Aversion to “progress” is a sign of outmoded backward thinking.
3. All forward-thinking people are leftists.
4. Leftists always speak for all people.
5. People always unanimously support leftist leaders.
6. Leftists are always under assault from the well-organized capitalist enemy.
7. All workers and peasants hate capitalist exploiters.
8. Armed resistance to a leftist government can only conceivably be staged by CIA agents in the service of American imperialism.
9. Capitalists engage in relentless anti-socialist propaganda, subversion, and sabotage; they will commit any crime in order to kill hope and prevent the masses from liberation.
10. The dying non-socialist sector of the world is run by a criminal conspiracy of capitalist oligarchs operating from the United States (and sometimes from Israel when appropriate).”
This is wonderful stuff, would you be so kind as to lead this nest of reactionary Right Wing troglodyte hooligans in a daily 3 hours of vigorous public sloganeering of this 10-point critique of Gangster-corporatist exploitative neo-colonialism and eco-criminal syndicalism?
Your faithful Admiral, in accordance with UberFrauFuhrerPrinzip, will vigorously enforce scrupulous attendance and zealous enthusiastic participation until this mindless reactionary dump becomes indistinguishable from The Daily Kos.
I also pledge that any recalcitrant wreckers or recidivist Kulaks will be taken out to sea and dumped overboard in order to “Build Socialism Under Water”.
I remain;
GrossAdmiral von Bilgeman.
How is it possible to reconcile this Justice Dept.:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=8202511&page=1
with this one?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203609204574317090690242698.html
The Ob administration is not only changing to the wrong sides in foreign affairs, it is working at cross-purposes to itself. Get tough with domestic terrorism, ease up on convicted terrorists from abroad. I don’t get it.
Oleg, excellent analysis of Obama’s being frozen in pro-Soviet Union, 1980-s American lefty views – I’ll take the liberty to add a couple of other observation here:
1) One is the funny fact that his views appear even in his lies – nobody knows whatever he did at Columbia in the 80-s, but the title/topic of one of his imaginary thesis there is… “US-Soviet Union Nuclear Disarmament Issues”, the American dominance in the domain at that time haunting the left-wingers across the world.
2) Secondly, albeit Obama opportunistically sells himself as an MLK/ Selma March activist (man, for someone who spent all his formative years in Indonesia and in Hawaii where rarely a lily white oppressor, the connection with the Watts riots or Alabama tobacco plantations is a very tenuous one), he is actually a Patrick Lumumba, post-colonial type, 3rd. world Spartacus.
And here comes the funny side of this too – again, the title/topic of his second imaginary Columbia thesis is… North-South Relationships In The Post Colonial World” …
Talking about Matrix and virtual reality – still, while Obama is clearly a majestic fraud, the fact that so far has managed to capture the good will of many people of integrity is very alarming.
Calvin Ball – you offer us a leftist classification of “far right” as Nazis. The Nazis (and fascists in general) may be standing on the right-hand side of the socialist collectivist movement, but they are well within the same leftist ideological sphere. The view of fascists as right-wingers excludes the existence of anything outside that sphere. But the classical libertarian thinkers are clearly outside of that sphere and by any count are the true representatives of the right today. In other words, RIGHT = individual freedom; LEFT = collective entitlements. In this sense, all sorts of leftists, communists, socialists, fascists, racists, nationalists, and other heresies of collectivism are on the left-hand side of the political spectrum.
good article,except this:” Evidently, if President Obama didn’t share these received views, he wouldn’t have felt the need to apologize before the world for America’s alleged wrongdoings”
reaching a little there.
calvin ball:” I said “far right”, as in Nazi.”
have you ever read nazi ideology…or seen any of their propaganda films?
hint:sterilizing the infeebled or simply killing them at birth isn’t part of the ‘rightwing’ philosophy.the ‘right wing’ also doesn’t believe in collectivism or use the words”nationalist,socialist” in their names.
Weird coincidence:
Interviewer of the ex-KGB spy about the subversion of the US from within by controlling media, education, and government…here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlkPkJInUmU
Is the author of this booklet about how the Fed is a private organization that is ruining the economy and is an instrument of totalitarianism.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6479760/The-Creature-from-Jekyll-Island-by-Edward-Griffin
Calvin Ball:
Hate to go through this education process again but Nazi as in National Socialist Workers Party was a far left movement not a far right movement. The designation of Fascist movements as “far right” was a Stalinist innovation of the early 1930s. Prior to that Fascist movements were considered as Progressive/left wing. Mussolini was the darling of the left all the way up to the Ethiopia war. If anything Communism is nothing more then a specific kind of Fascism. Just look at the transformation of “Communist” China from Mao to Hu. Socialism with “Chinese characteristics” is nothing more then a restatement of Mussolini’s theory of Fascist political organization.
Everybody – let’s be clear – “left” and “right” only have literal meaning in the context of the French Revolution. They’re semi-useful constructs outside of this context. But they’re both collectivists and statists. Just with different romantic fantasies.
Calvin Ball (26):
We’ve been over this all already. Please see The Pournelle Axes at Baen.com as well as previous postings:
A ‘Right-Wing,’ ‘Christian’ Hate Crime
Nazi means “National Socialist Party”, thus the Nazis, as well as the Italian fascists, are on the statist/socialist “left”. Conservatives are properly centrist, balancing the requirements of the individual and the society.
Note that Pournelle reverses the horizontal axis as we’re used to seeing it: Statists are on the right hand side, the libertarians are on the left. Traditional usage (based on English and French parlementary seating) reverses this.
See also “Modern Fascism: The Threat to the Judeo-Christian Worldview” by Gene Veith and
“Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change” by Jonah Goldberg.
Red Square (31)
Well said, thanks.
Calvin:
I understand what you are trying to say but by using the Stalinist dichotomy you mask the equivalence among all totalitarian systems. Progressives use the term right wing or Fascist to designate anybody who disagrees with socialism. Let’s recapture the language so people can understand that the only difference between Socialism, Nazism, Fascism and now what I like to call Eco-ism is the narrative they choose to write.
I was very surprised by Putin’s comments at Davos: he said some true things, but I think his main thrust was disinformational.
Yuri Bezmenov explained the strategy of disinformation as a kind of ideological judo, where an opponent’s own tendencies are amplified to put them off balance.
Russia’s state-controlled English language TV channel has been featuring high-profile opponents of big government such as Ron Paul and Peter Schiff. I believe that Russia’s aim is to pose as a champion of the free market in order to fan the flames of the real disgust that people have for our government, thus causing more internal conflict. Longer term, the aim is always to deny us a coordinated, situational awareness so that we can’t fight intelligently, and also to alter our moral references, to demoralize us by undermining our response to values.
I believe Putin’s Davos performance falls into the category of spectacular contradictory behavior, that which is designed to undermine our basic premise that the world can be understood logically, leading people to surrender their use of reason. This appears more likely to me than the possibility that power lusting Putin has now become a champion of the rule of law and capitalism.
Kim:
I never said that Putin wanted a limited representative government. Of course he is an authoritarian and wants to rule as a dictator. I am sure he would love being crowned Tsar but the one thing he is not is a communist.
#26 Calvin Ball:
A Nazi is on the far-LEFT. Far-left means total government control of everything. Far-right means no government control over anything…in other words, anarchy. The Nazis were NOT anarchists.
Environmentalism is all about total population control. It is ultra-leftist.
Calvin: I’ve been beaten to the point by many before me. So I will not heap on.
MikeW: Don’t you ever get tired of defending the indefensible? I mean, really, you look foolish. To wit: “…he wouldn’t be using the powers of the U.S. president to prop up the forces that oppose America’s founding principles of liberty while denying support to those who want to live by such principles.”
You make our and the author’s point: Obama does believe we are criminal and have purposely hurt other nations for which Obama thinks we should apologize. He is now actively or tacitly supporting socialist or terrorist dictators around the world: Zelaya, Chavez, Amadinejad, bowing to Saudi princes, giving the finger to Iran’s freedom wanting citizens, etc.
But mostly Obama is destroying our nation, and if you cannot get your head around that because of your delusional fantasies about him being the Messiah, then…..
Your last para is really weird. Please rewrite.
Mike W
…is here merely to jerk you around. If you respond so much it invigorates him to be even more negative. He’s on almost every site with negative outrageous stuff
Tovarich, comrades !
Why all these negative words about the Great Leader of the American Bolshevik revolution ?
The Great Leader has understood that the past is the future and that the future is the past !
He is working with his pastor to the Second Coming (of Lenin), you must have faith !
Yes we can ! And he’s going to can us !
Thank you for the opportunity to comment !
PS Due to past equivocations, I will have to add a tag:
/sarc
Jerry (38) got it. This is all haggling over semantics. The reason why we’re all so easily confused by this is that the “left” owns the narrative, and increasingly, the language.
I do believe that there is a distinction between the international socialists and the national socialists, and it has to do with the nature of the wet dream. But they’re both organized around their respective wet dreams. If you want to say they’re both “on the left”, whatever. But the point remains; those who wax nostalgic about a past that never was are more akin to the Nazis than the Bolsheviks.
What’s ironic about this is that there’s a nostalgia about a pseudo-futuristic doctrine from that past that crashed and burned. There’s double dishonesty on display; first that the doctrine could ever have produced a functional and humanitarian society, and second, that it didn’t crash and burn 20 years ago, and is still viable.
These same people think Jerry Garcia is still alive.
That’s ridiculous. Left and right are rather fluid, fungible terms, but I’ve never heard anything like that before. You’re sideways. You don’t seem to know the difference between left, right, up and down. Is this what you were thinking?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart
Actually, this one is a little better for the purposes of this discussion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart
Note that this one draws a significant distinction between Communists and Nazis. I agree that the Nazis are at the irrational end of the spectrum. I disagree that Communism is rooted in rationalism. It’s every bit as romantic as Nazism. It just pretends to be rational.
47.calvin ball.thanks for the links,but to use the word “romantic”when discussing ideologies that end up enslaving and killing millions,WTF?
“That’s ridiculous. Left and right are rather fluid, fungible terms,”
yes,the statists have been successful in pushing the narrative further and further leftward.
I called some blue dog democrat House offices this morning to oppose Obamacare. I actually received a lecture about how if I support free market capitalism, I should welcome the “public option” to compete with the private insurers.
I guess they are on their way to learning the wisdom of the Austrian school of economics the hard way, and unfortunately, at our expense.
Speaking of fascism, what is the deal with all these “czars”, with seemingly dictatorial powers over different segments of the economy? We never had “czars” under Reagan, Bush, Clinton…is this some new part of Obanga’s grand plan to control…everything?
With all due respect people, the left/right dichotomy doesn’t mean a whole lot. Functionally matters.
The justifications used for doing reprehensible things don’t really matter. The great illusion is that they can or do. What really matters is what they actually do. How do they function?
The Nazis exterminated people based on their ethnicity. The Soviets attempted to exterminate ethnic groups based on imputations to their culture–one which was not as amenable to communism. The functional difference? Nothing. Both targeted minority groups for lethal force.
If you judge people by their purported justifications you are making a huge mistake. You have to judge them by what they do. If you come home one night and find that someone is standing over the body of your three year old child with a knife in one hand and the severed head of your child in the other, does any explanation that the murderer gives matter? Will it be better if he says he did it in the name of social justice? Will it be any worse if claims he did it as a sacrifice to Satan? No—the loss is the same. The action is the same.
Judge others by their actions–not by their excuses.
The confusion actually stems from attempting to treat abstract political concepts as perceptual models or pictures — there’s an inherent dropping of context involved.
If I may, I’d like to go off topic a bit to make an observation on “the narrative”. By “the narrative” we mean the generally known historical context, but I want to shift the focus to the nature of narrative or story telling, since this will provide a way to get some deeper perspective as to where we are in the epistemological conflict that underlies our culture war.
At it’s most primitive level, a narrative is a sequential presentation of information, and the logic of a narrative is just one thing following another, with no necessary connection between one thing and the next. It’s analogous to a perceptual level stream, or a song or movie. As such, a narrative or story is a very simple and flexible way to present information.
By contrast, presenting reality in conceptual terms depends on the ability to reason abstractly, to form definitions, to comprehend things as such, to follow natural connections in necessary, but possibly alternative ways. With concepts you can vastly extend your ability to comprehend the universe.
Now this is important: the Left is completely unable to think conceptually because of their anti-logical dialectical materialism. They are limited to using second-hand concepts and model building, a method of cognition with very limited range and scope.
So, to out think and out maneuver the Left, we not only need the ability to retell our history with a true narrative, we also have to fight our way back to recover the ability to think conceptually as the Founding Fathers thought. The light in America’s Age of Enlightenment was the light of reason, and this is what we need to restore our republic.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment.
Tcobb -
I see your point but the thing is, excuses often precede actions. They make actions predictable. That is why we must examine the excuses in order to know what actions will follow and to avoid the bad ones if possible. That is why we’re writing these articles.
Unfortunately, what we predict can’t always be avoided. Case in point: Obama’s destruction of America’s foundation. Most people commenting here surely saw it coming long before he was elected. The problem was that too few people outside of their circle recognized Obama’ excuses for what they were. They foolishly waited for the time when they could judge him by his actions.
Using your own example, if someone sounded like a thug or a lunatic you wouldn’t let him near your children in the first place. You wouldn’t wait for him to kill and then judge him by that action. Why use a different standard in politics?
“The human race divides politically
into two classes: Those who wish
to control other people’s behavior,
and those who have no such inclination.”
R. A. Heinlein
Don’t believe everything you read in Wikipedia. The left-right dichotomy predates the French Revolution. The distinction goes back at least to the formation of what we would recognize as political parties in the English Parliament nearly a century earlier. The two parties then were the Tories, the party of the traditional holders of wealth, the royalty and other landowners, and the Whigs, made up of the new moneyed class (manufacturing, banking, trade). The rise of the Whigs was contingent on something resembling a modern economy. Note that the English Whigs have little in common with the later American party of the same name.
After WW1, that old socialist newspaper editor Mussolini realized that a new political power or voting block had been created, one made up of men with a shared experience of army life and trench warfare, and that this “brotherhood of the trenches” could be a much more cohesive force than the “international” sort of socialism preached by, say, Trotsky, which was of interest mainly to people like Lenin, who sat around in Swiss coffee houses all day, berating each other. Hence the birth of “national” socialism. Mussolini stopped at a real “national” socialism, without going to the extremes of Hitler’s version, which was a strange mythical “racial” socialism. One of Hitler’s basic problems was that he wasn’t actually German in a national sense, so to get into the game at all he had to emphasize German as a “race” rather than a nationality.
This left wing-right wing stuff is not mere semantic gamesmanship. The great 20th century experiments in government and society, communism and national socialism or fascism, both ended in disaster. If we locate them properly on the political spectrum, we see immediately that ALL of the left-wing experiments were catastrophes. It is sheer hubris to assume that Obama’s socialist experiments will turn out better.
Very much so. But there’s a separate problem with people sticking with definitions that don’t make sense. Recognizing that Bolsheviks and Nazis are similar in some ways doesn’t negate that they’re different in other significant ways. To your model, instead of trying to use geometry to describe the political landscape, a relational database would be more accurate. These things – authoritarianism, libertarianism, a sense of being on the side of history, a sense of return to former greatness, are all independent attributes.
hell, i’m tired of BOTH political parties
all they care about is reelection and themselves. both sides are at fault, none more than the other
However, I feel obama is going to destroy our country if someone doesn’t step and stop him in an election. It is not party it is him. If a person feels they should not vote for something, they should not have the president call them in and twist their arm..wrong thing to do!!
Maybe we should define this left-right spectrum in terms of elitism vs egalitarianism.
It seems easier to me to classify social systems if we look at their founding premise.
Obama’s socialism can easily be seen for what it is if we look at it in terms of Animal Farms “Some animals are more equal than others” vs. “We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal.”
It functions out of an elitist ideal there for it can be fairly designated “leftist” amongst the other forms of authoritarianism.
the debate is and always has been between common sense & ideology. common sense is educated by accumulated habits: culture, reality. as aristotle said, habits have a decisive effect on political complexion. habit is the extent of government. obama doesn’t understand this – so he prostitutes us, but with the best intentions.
Recognizing that Bolsheviks and Nazis are similar in some ways doesn’t negate that they’re different in other significant ways.
And what are these “significant ways?” In my ignorance I fail to perceive them. Enlighten me. As I see it they just had different excuses for doing identical acts of evil.
60. Tcobb:
they differ in a sense that nazis killed sufficiently less people
Tcobb:
The Nazis where more successful economically and were actually a much more egalitarian then the communists.
I think what Ball is doing is what NBC did with the red-blue state thing. He is trying to dilute, misrepresent, participate in some Orwellian double speak, and again change the vocabulary and meanings of words to suit his and the left’s agenda. He knows very well that there is such a thing as a political spectrum and that the left is where we find the totalitarian regimes and the near right we find America.
This has been one of the better discussions and I learned a lot. thanks
In the following video of the Glen Beck show, Dr. Harry Binswanger explains how National Socialism came to be regarded as the opposite of communism, even though both systems are essentially the same in opposing individual rights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOs6F1FpVlo
People like blotto cling to their bogus models like socialists cling to their fantasies.
To the extent that “far left” means anything, it means an internationalist vision of socialist utopia. To the extent that “far right” means anything, it means a nationalist (i.e. fascist) vision of socialist utopia. Are they both socialist? Yes. Are they both “left”? Only if you define left that way.
I think that Jonah Goldberg screwed the pooch when he used that language. Conceptually, he was right to point out that the far left and far right have much in common. David Duke and Cindy Sheehan (or Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, if you will) agree on much more than they disagree. But they’re not identical.
Blotto, you need to ditch the label “right”, and decide if you’re a conservative (which still is a useful term), or a libertarian (which is also a useful term), or a combination. Like many Americans, you’re clear on what you aren’t, but by using a term like “right”, you’re not being very clear about what you are.
And btw blotto, WTF did I say that “suit[s] his and the left’s agenda”? Please find anything positive that I said about either flavor of socialism. And if you think that “romantic” was a compliment, you need to pick up a dictionary and understand all of the connotations of the word.
I’m waiting.
Calvin:
Actually, it’s you that screwed the pooch on this. The origins of Fascist theory are found in the writings of the French Radical Syndicalist Georges Sorel. He was Marxist who observed that Marxist economic theory was not working and that “capitalist” economies were both dynamic and stable. He combined that thought with the sociological writings of the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who theorized that all societies are held together by a central organizing myth or what we now call a narrative.
Sorel merged the Marxian idea of a vanguard revolutionary class that would lead a collectivist society with the Paretian theory of the central organizing myth. He correctly identified Marxism as once such narrative but by no means a unique one. There are many narratives that work for collectivism. The Italian socialist leader Benito Mussolini put practical flesh on this structure and renamed it totalitarianism or in the Italian case Fascism. His title of “Il Duce” does not come from his leadership of the Italian Fascist party but from his days as the leader of Italy’s socialists. Mussolini was the darling of Progressives throughout the world until 1936. Anyone who properly understands Fascist theory would quickly identify international versus national socialism as merely two different narratives on which to build a collectivist totalitarian state.
Fascist theory is now almost 100 years old. It has proven to be a better predictor of collectivist political organization and behavior then Marxism-Leninism. All Marxist-Leninist states mimic Fascist behavior while few Fascist states behave like communists. Clearly Marxism-Leninism is a sub-set of Fascism and not something different from it. Lenin and Mussolini actually argued this in Zurich in person and in correspondence.
It is my experience that when I here someone going through great trouble to differentiate Socialism from the rest of Fascism he is claiming that Socialism is a superior form of governance to both Fascism and republican government. I don’ see why anyone would want to take this position since Socialism has murdered an order of magnitude more of its citizens and delivered less economically then Fascism. Truth be told if you exclude Hitler then the rest of Fascism governments murdered fewer people in total then a couple of slow months in the Soviet or Chinese Gulags.
Jerry, that was pretty much what I was driving at. We’re in 100% agreement. But while Goldberg was substantially correct, I think his use of the phrase “liberal fascism” was semantically wrong. The modern use of the word “liberal” does violence to true liberalism (which we now have to call “libertarianism”), and the word “fascism” has become a catch-all for any dictatorship. He’s not using the language correctly, causing a lot of confusion.
But to be clear, his broader thesis is essentially correct. And so is yours. And to tie this back to the initial point, both socialisms needed a central organizing myth; in one case it was the national identity, in the other case it was the equally intoxicating notion of “progress” toward the historically inevitable international people’s revolution. As I said, romanticism about an Utopia in the past that never was, v.s. an Utopia in the future that never will be. That’s the difference in a nutshell.
Jerry, maybe I need to elaborate on the Utopia in the past. All forms of Fascism had this “return to greatness” theme. For the Nazis it was particularly phony, with the dream being about Valhalla; about a mythical German Utopia from pre-Christian times. For the Italians, it was much more tangible. Mussolini saw himself as the new Caesar, and his movement as the new Roman Empire. It’s hard (thought not impossible) to construct a myth about national greatness that isn’t based on a view of the past through rosy glasses. This is distinct from “progressivism”, that sees itself on the cutting edge of human social evolution.
And yes, in general, the Fascist model sometimes was able to sputter along, while the Bolshevik model always crashed and burned (or morphed into a Fascist system like the Chinese did).
Read into the Congressional record in 1963. Check them off and see how many have been completed or are at the least in process.
Some are still in process. Some are campaign platforms of The 0bamanation.
Folks, keeping up the argument over the meaning of Left vs Right, Statist vs Fascist is just what the Transnational Progressives want you to do. Keep wasting time arguing what the meaning of is is. They fashion your chains as I write.
calvin ball:”And if you think that “romantic” was a compliment, you need to pick up a dictionary and understand all of the connotations of the word.”
dictonary.com:
.”2. fanciful; impractical; unrealistic: romantic ideas.
there were twelve,number two seemed to fit your definition best,still ‘demented’ sounds like a little more appropriate adjective when describing marxism (as far as common useage):
1.crazy; insane; mad
thanks to all,lots of food for thought.
71.dumped history,cookies……71 was me.
Wow, you people have surpassed bush-hatred by millions of miles. WTF! try therapy and meds.
I wish to thank everyone here (well not the trolls), this has been extremely informative.
Liberalism is at it’s core unbridled arrogance and an unshakable faith in ones own infallibility. Every true Lib believes that they alone have the unique ability to will into being their personal vision of the perfect world. Part of this arrogant faith manifests itself into “proving” that yes, they alone can turn night into day, blue sky to green, and evil into good. This is why they instinctively seek to control all forms of media, because without that control their cooked-up fantasies (Human caused glo-bull warming, all illegal aliens are heroic saints, ad nauseum) fall to pieces in the light of reality. They must control the public debate in order to have any chance of taking and holding power.
Another part of the Lib faith lies in being the enlightened contrarian. This is why Obama does the opposite of what common sense would dictate, because he (the Lib saviour-hero, at least in his own mind) is above common sense and only he is wise enough to understand the *bigger picture* and know that doing the opposite of what common sense dictates will work this time, if only because HE is the one willing it into reality. As long as his fellow travelers in the MSM play along and protect him from any realistic examination of the results of his crazy actions, he is free to continue pretending that his actions and policies really do work just like he said they would.
Reality however always intrudes into this idylic mythological world and eventually the incoherrent fantasies fall under their own weight. The best you can hope for is that you too will not be crushed by the collapse when it happens.
Makes you think…if Obama isn’t anti-American, what would he be doing differently if he WERE anti-American?