The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Memory Hole
One of the leitmotifs of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is the shell game that “progressives” (more on the scare quotes in a few moments) use to transfer bad decisions of progressives and liberals of the past to American history as a whole. FDR’s decision to intern Japanese-Americans during World War II? America’s shame. Eugenics? It was embraced wholeheartedly (and then some) by such early progressives as Margaret Sanger, Woodrow Wilson, H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and John Maynard Keynes. And was rejected wholesale by the Catholic Church and religious conservatives such as G.K. Chesterton. Despite that, as Jonah notes in Liberal Fascism, quoting Yale historian and professor of surgery Sherwin Nuland, Nuland and other writers at the New Republic and similar left-wing publications are convinced that “Eugenics was a creed that appealed to social conservatives, who were pleased to blame poverty and crime on heredity.”
JFK’s death in 1963, by a lone Capital-C Communist? America’s collective racist shame. In 2004, John Kerry tried to pass the buck on the Vietnam War from LBJ to Nixon. And on and on.
In an essay today at Red State titled “Forgetting History,” Erick Erickson writes that this shell game even works on even more recent history. Erickson spots an attempt by the left to salvage the reputation of Jimmy Carter’s infamous “malaise speech”:
Ezra Klein, who once said no one pays attention to the constitution because it is so old, has decided Jimmy Carter’s “malaise speech” was popular. You will no doubt be not exactly surprised to learn that Hendrik Hertzberg totally believes the malaise speech was awesome too. Hertzberg was the speechwriter.
But that gets history wrong. Twenty and thirty-something pundits should know better.
As Ben Domenech, himself a former speech writer, notes in the context of Presidential speeches, the Carter speech was popular at first, but historically it is wrong to say it was popular as it came to be viewed very negatively. A pundit claiming it was popular should really note the popularly was fleeting instead of simply claiming it was popular. To this day, when seasoned politicos reference “malaise speeches” they do not mean popular speeches.
From Ben Domenech, relevant to the larger question of Presidential speeches:
These two pages from Steve Hayward’s book share some reaction. Hayward notes that at the time, The New Republic editorialized that the speech was a “pop sociology stew” filled with “servile flatteries”: “Carter seems to think that teaching us to sing ‘Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella’ can be a substitute for leading us in out of the rain. Fortunately, he utterly lacks the rhetorical skill for such a con job.” The Economist labeled it “amateurism.” One labor leader who had supported Carter in 76 was quoted as saying: “The fault is his, not ours, and asking us to say something nice about America is like Gerald Ford telling us to pin on little lapel buttons and Whip Inflation Now.” The point is that the people responded positively in the immediate, but a critical eye quickly tore the speech apart. It became the starting point for mockery of Carter’s essential failing: that, as Hayward has written elsewhere, that “Carter ran for president promising us ‘a government as good as the people,’ only to discover the people were no good.”
This should serve as a reminder that speeches aren’t just assessed in the immediate – it’s whether they have lasting value that matters and determines their relevancy over time. [Emphasis added]
Too many pundits say stuff like “the malaise speech was popular” and it seems most of the ones who do are the twenty and thirty somethings who really have no sense of history. I was four years old when Carter gave that speech and I am aware enough of history to know that the reception to the speech hurt Carter.
As Erikson writes:
This may sound like a Matt Lewis inspired “get off my lawn” screed, but put very simply, a lot of pundits of the twenty and thirty-something variety have absolutely no sense of history. For them, partisan politics began at Bush vs. Gore and history did not exist before November of 2000.
There are multiple reasons for that. The first is the shell game that Jonah describes above. The second is that for many people, the online world didn’t arrive in full until broadband reached their home, which started to happen around 1999 to the early naughts. (If I’m recalling the year correctly, my Northern California neighborhood didn’t get cable modem access until the spring of 1999, and we were pretty early adopters.) The political Blogosphere didn’t fully arrive until the arrival of Instapundit in August of 2001, and the rapid growth of blogs on both sides of the aisle in the wake of 9/11. (If you’ll recall back then in those pre-MSNBC days, neither side liked the “objective” establishment-liberal tone of the MSM — for the right, that tone was too left-leaning and too reflexively anti-Republican; for the fightin’ left, that tone was too wimpy and bland.)
Additionally, for most of America, the most important — horrific, soul-searching, angry, depressing — day of their recent lives was September 11th; for America’s hard left, that day was almost a year prior. “For activist and professional Democrats, the most ignominious day in their collective political lives” wasn’t 9/11, but an event that occurred in the previous year, Daniel Henninger wrote in the Wall Street Journal last September: the Florida presidential recount. “The 2000 election ended only when the Supreme Court resolved it in favor of George Bush. Republican and independent voters moved on, but many Democrats never did; they were now being governed by an illegitimate president.”
My favorite, from the wayback machine, is the presidential election of 1876. The election was very close, one of the closest in history, the popular vote being close enough that the election in the electoral college wound up hinging on 3 states in the South that were still run by carpetbaggers (Republicans who had come south to run these states during Reconstruction; they were mostly viewed as corrupt by locals). Those states wound up having 2 vote totals apiece, one collected by Republicans and the other by Democrats. The typical history book will tell you that the Republicans rigged the election, and wound up installing their guy in the White House as a result. That’s true, more or less, but it’s also not the complete story.
You see, by 1876, the Democrats in the South were regaining control of their states and the political infrastructure. Remember, the southern Democrats splitting from their northern party brethren is what precipitated the Civil War. When they recovered control of these southern states in the 1870s, one of the first things they did was enact Jim Crow laws, and the first thing they wanted to do was keep Blacks from voting. Remember, again, Lincoln was a Republican. When Blacks voted back then, practically none of them voted for the party that had tried to secede just a decade before in order to preserve the institution of slavery…instead, they mostly voted for the party of the guy who freed the slaves. By 1876, Jim Crow (and night riders, surrogates for the recently temporarily disbanded Klan) were preventing most Blacks in the South from voting.
So yes, the Republicans stole the 1876 presidential election. What most history books don’t tell you is that really, they were stealing it *BACK* from the Democrats, who were keeping a large segment of voters from the polls. Somehow that part gets left out of the history books.
For every effect there is a cause. The newly freed black slaves were using their votes to elect flagrantly corrupt politicians paid off by the carpetbaggers. Corruption was so widespread that it made the present day Chicago machine look like a high-society fete. Imagine whole states run the way Detroit is now! Since the new voters couldn’t read — having been forbidden to learn while slaves — there was no real way for the more honest politicians to publicize the graft and corruption that was going on — assuming that these new voters even cared enough about graft and corruption to do anything other than keep voting opposite to the way the white southerners did. Remember, no TV or radio back then, just horses, wagons, trains running on steam, telegraphs, newspapers and pamphlets (I can’t believe I’ve had to make that point, but historical ignorance is everywhere today.)
So? How’s that any different from today?
Both of you are incorrect.
Neither party “stole” the 1876 election.
Rather, the election was decided by a crass political deal between the two parties: The Democrats would accept Hayes–the Republican–as President; and the GOP in return promised the Dems to end Reconstruction and withdraw Union troops from the South.
Under Reconstruction and protected by Union occupation troops, Southern blacks had been making significant gains, even electing some black Congressmen. Once the GOP ended all that, blacks were left to the tender mercies of white Southerners still bitter over their loss in the Civil War.
That deal–made to resolve an election that was too close to call–set back the cause of black civil rights in America by decades. If Hayes had been the clear winner, there would have been no need for this deal. And who knows, we might have elected a black President decades earlier than 2008.
Imagine whole states run the way Detroit is now?
I give you California.
The Klan in its 1865 – 1876 incarnation was permanently and irrevocably disbanded. There is no questioning the fact that a guerilla was waged by former Confederates against US occupation of The South, disenfranchisement of Southern White males who had served the Confederacy, and establishment of largely Black, wholly corrupt Carpetbagger governments. With a little help from Chief Sitting Bull, the Southerners were able to secure removal of US troops from the former Confederate States and the Confederate officers who had formed the leadership cohort of the Klan abolished it. History graphically demonstrates that Confederates followed orders; Lee told his officers to take their men home and become good citizens, the Klan leaders told their men it was over when the US troops left the South, and it was over. All the later versions were imitators who “borrowed” the name and methods. Democrats don’t like to admit that as late as FDR’s administration, the Klan could put many thousands in hoods and robes on the streets of DC, and the state with the largest membership was Indiana.
Prior to World War II, most of the Second KKK’s violence against Jews, Catholics and blacks was taking place in the South. The then governor of Louisiana personally petitioned the Justice Department to help quell the violence. DoJ sent in the FBI, beginning a war between the FBI and KKK that continued for decades.
The withdrawal of Union occupation of the South was part of the deal struck between the Dems and Repubs to resolve the extremely close Hayes-Tilden Presidential election of 1876.
Rather than complain about the corruption of the reconstruction government using perjorative “Carpetbaggers” (and Scalawags, a perjorative for southerners involved in Reconstruction government) why not tell the truth: Reconstruction government was fair, by comparison to antebellum government or post Reconstruction. Blacks actually had a chance to work for the post office, for construction companies. Landowners had to pay their taxes. Former Confederates were livid.
After Reconstruction, corruption returned, and blacks were forced out of state jobs. Courts conviced blacks without evidence, and freed lynchers. Horrific crimes went unsolved because they were committed against freedmen.
Yes, a lot goes down the memory hole. One reason is that history is rarely taught well these days & most liberals live in a fantasy would when you use a historical fact to rebut them. Just ask any liberal who started the income tax? Or which President got us involved in Vietnam. Ask ‘em who started the liberal welfare state & they glower. I was once at a Civil War reinactment in CA. Confederate & Federal flags were flying & the participants in the “battle” were all dressed in Civil War duds. A father of a family answered his kid asking who was fighting by saying, “Son, it is the Revolutionary War w/ us fighting against the Redcoats.” I damn near wet my pants! Most liberals are terrified of studying history unless it is homosexual-black-chicano-womens-bisexual-marxist claptrap. So, when you go back & ask them how socialism worked in the old Soviet Union, North Korea, etc., you get blank stares. They also forget that Nazism was National SOCIALISM! As one having a degree in history NOT from a state school or some crummy ivy league school, I can tell ya just how ignorant the average joe is about history. And it costs us. Socialism does not work, Obama! Reality is reality. As George San. said, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” This, in large part, is why our nation is in the mess it is in today. Liberals twist & lie about history. They ignore the fact that no nation that has not defended it’s borders has survived. Printing endless amounts of money will eventually cause economic collapse. All of these things can be learned w/ a decent high school history class. But, we are talking about current America w/ the propaganda dept.of the democrat party telling everyone what to believe on MSNBC, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC et al. We are in deep trouble & the water is rising…
Sssh. Don’t correct them let Obama make one, two, many popular malaise speeches.
It is vital that the 1948 battle between Harry Truman and Henry Wallace be re-introduced into the American memory. The modern Democratic Party is NOT the successor of Truman and Kennedy. Democrats must see that their legacy party has been hijacked by the side which HST and JFK fought against. Truman certainly wasn’t perfect but he loved his country, warts and all, and recognized when it was endangered. We must appeal to and welcome those Democrats who want to take their country back to a better place. The Progressives were and are a threat to us all.
But that gets history wrong. Twenty and thirty-something pundits should know better.
As Reagan said “Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.” A serious disconnect arises when “what you believe” becomes “what you know”. It’s even more serious with the MSM since enslavement to the State underlies the Liberal belief system. I can’t fathom how anybody can look at the corruption and incompetence in Washington and say “we need more of that” or “I want those folks running every aspect of my life”.
Most people, including all Liberals and even some conservatives, arrive at their “conclusions” emotionally. Not smart enough to objectively analyze their “conclusions”, but smart enough to realize that a purely emotional explanation won’t cut it, they proceed to reverse engineer “objective” reasons for their “conclusions”, such as selective and out of context events in history. When those “objective” reasons are exposed for what they are, irrelevant and in fact subjective, the only possible response is annoyance that they have been exposed as the purely emotional beings that they are.
The fundamental problem is that they’re incapable of critical reasoning. It is, literally, a mental deficiency which makes it no more possible to “reason” with them than with a dog or a cat. They can’t do it and you’re wasting your time.
Perhaps a blizzard of 30-second spots “The Democratic Party – Then and Now” should be made and run. They could show JFK’s policy on Communism and followed by Ted Kennedy’s memo to the USSR seeking support to derail the Strategic Defense Initiative. Or a “Today in History, Democrat President Woodrow Wilson segregates the Civil Service”. Let’s discuss the election of 1876. Let’s discuss the civil rights legislation introduced during the 1920s. Let’s discuss the anti-lynching legislation the Democratic Party killed. Let’s discuss Bull Conner. All in 30-second spots. These would have to be scrupulously accurate to history because the howls of protest that they will immediately generate.
yes yes yes
quick, barbed arrows
right’s droning on and on, nattering like accountants
lose the audience and the ‘debate’
you can’t pierce the noise onslaught
first you gotta hook em
like Art Chance says in his book, “Red and Blue”,
IGNORE THEM AND SCREW THEM
they don’t care about ‘facts’, only about accomplishing the mission
their coin is power, not honesty
go around their ‘argument’ and attack their motive and pay (igore them)
don’t let them lead the narrative
(Ex. “Senator, who do you think you are? You’re just another citizen.
Why is this Fluke social justice hatchetwoman on camera?”
Don’t even answer the Senator’s question, whatever it was)
screw them, hard, all they understand is posture
it really is like trying to reason with dogs and cats
Hey, Art has at least one groupie!
an example of what you’re talking about:
a lady in Arizona didn’t like the governor ‘because she seemed mean. She said she didn’t care about the poor’
the answer to that is “Why do you think they kept playing that spot?”
Are you kidding DWN the revisionist? Have you read anything contemporary, including Congressional Records, about Reconstruction? Your history book seems to have been revised. The 1876 election was settled by Francis T. Nicholls who cast the deciding ballot for the Republican Hayes after a deal was struck to end the vile, “mostly viewed as corrupt by locals”-no, it was CORRUPT, and racist, oppressive martial law rule, and the removal of Federal troops in the three states, LA, FL, & SC, the last still under “Reconstruction.” How was this? Louisiana had duel governors: the popular vote elected Nicholls’ non-corrupt government and the carpet bag, corrupt, radical, non-constitutional “republican” appointed, governor. Nicholls agreed to vote for the Civil War Union veteran Republican for U. S. President over the New York Democrat in exchange for ending “Reconstruction” in the three Southern States. The deal was struck and history was made. If you think about it, Nicholls, who after two terms of running a scandal free government (he was able to end the corrupt LA Lottery) in Louisiana though he was one-sided (he would joke; he lost his left arm at First Manassas and left leg at Chancellorsville leading troops as a CSA Brigadier General) and served as Head Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court until 1911, is, in a sense, the only person who’s lone single vote elected a U. S. President. Interestingly Hayes led Union troops through Southwest Louisiana pillaging, plundering, and destroying property of all, men, women, and children in his path.
Look, there is so damn much history out there, that most people choose to “learn” some small fraction which supports their own political viewpoint.
One of my personal favorite nuggets has become, how the tea partiers of their day, the anti Federalists OPPOSED the ratification of the Constitution because they feared that the formation of any strong, central government would have inevitable negative consequences. The big-government Federalists favored the Constitution because it gave them the green light to create said big government. My view is that the Federalist papers were written by Federalists to convince the anti-Federalist types that they had nothing to fear. It was NOT that the Federalists, themselves did not want to expand government about as much as they could. They wanted to make us a world-class country, eventually the most powerful in the world. That would not have happened with a small, limited, Articles of Confederation type government.
I have come to believe that any time you expand your military or security apparatus, especially from the Civil War on you will expand the size of government. After that, you may make cuts in your military, but the government itself will NEVER shrink. Anyone have any contrary examples?
The best one can hope for is to slow the growth of government. I don’t think that you can actually shrink it, as long as the population continues to grow. People want/need the jobs, so it takes on a life of its own.
I do not mean to imply that the military is the only reason government expands, but it definitely facilitates the growth.
I listened to the ‘malaise’ speech. It made me sick to my stomach as I listened. Socialist redistribution to the entire world — was my thought.
Some of us are old enough to remember that “progressive” was just a term to be used in polite company for communist or fellow traveller, and at the leadership level, it still means just that. At the rank and file level, progressive just means useful idiot.
I think Beck and others do a grave injustice by conflating the very American “progressivism” of the late 19th Century reformers with the very German and Communist inspired progressivism of the 20th Century. Many of the Americans came to be unabashed admirers and would-be imitators of Germany under the Kaiser and during Wiemar, and it was a liberal statist’s dream come true while remaining staunchly anti-communist. Even under the Kaiser, Germany was heavily unionized and had an arbitration scheme that even today American unions would give their all for, in fact some versions of Card Check had a similar scheme for establishing initial “agreements.” Germany had an extensive social welfare and unemployment “safety net.” Arguably what propelled the NSDAP to power was the economic downturn of the late-20s, early 30s caused so much of a downturn in revenue that the German labor scheme could not support the inflation brought on by the Wiemar Republic to inflate itself out of war debt. Out of work labor began to fall back on the states who were likewise too revenue strapped to continue the social welfare scheme, hence the rise of the freikorps and the Brownshirts and ultimately Hitler’s rise to power. We should all be careful students of Wiemar these days.
union demands and the social safety net couldn’t afford the reparations bill
similar to todays Demmunist demands in the face of selling debt overseas
nicely done, I didn’t realize the domestic side of the wiemar coin
“We should all be careful students of Wiemar these days.”
I would recommend the book, “Germany Tried Democracy.. 1918-1933″ by Halperin.
It touches on the points you brought up in detail.
I regret the ongoing puffing of Jonah Goldberg’s book, which I read twice. This search for an ideal type for fascism, then applied to American progressives is ahistoric and in a way, trivializes Italian Fascism. I blogged about the limitations of Liberal Fascism here:http://clarespark.com/2010/03/10/jonah-goldbergs-liberal-fascism-part-one/. Also, I identified German Idealism as the force behind progressivism here: http://clarespark.com/2009/10/10/ralph-bunche-and-the-jewish-problem/.
I can understand the desire to take the left’s all-purpose epithet, fascist, away from them, but as you say, it is ahistoric, but then the Soviet characterization of the NSDAP as some sort of monarchist, revanchist, right-wing regime is even more ahistoric, when in fact Wiemar Germany and Hitler’s Germany were in many ways equally socialistic, in some ways moreso, than the USSR. The USSR was so vast that there were large areas essentially beyond the reach of the central government. Modern, compact Germany had no such limitations and the government could and did reach into almost everything. The Soviets won the propaganda war, with not a little help from fellow travellers in the US, and for the forseeable future, the Left owns fascist as an epithet hurled at the right despite the best efforts of some on the right.
Let us say you own two cows.
If the government takes a cow and gives it to your neighbor, that is Socialism.
If the government takes both cows, and promises to give you milk, that is Communism.
If the government takes both cows and promises to sell you milk, that is Facism.
If the government shoots you, and gives your cows to another, that is Nazism.
If you shoot the government agent and steal another cow that is Anarchism.
If you sell one cow, and buy a bull, that is Capitalism
You want just enough anarchism so that capitalism can do its good work.
Yes, and as a matter of fact, you will find very few U.S. history books who report on “Jim Crow” at all. You most certainly will not discover that Woodrow Wilson instituted “separate but equal – not” in the District of Columbia shortly after he took office. He heartily agreed with the boys at Harvard, Wisconsin, and so forth, on the issue of the qualifications of Blacks to do much of anything. Blacks were not eligible for the U.S. Military Academies from that time until Harry Truman. LBJ, as a Senator, never voted for a civil rights act or voting rights act which involved Federal enforcement provisions because he knew the Southern States would not enforce one. The 1965 Civil Rights Act was signed by LBJ, but it was supported in the Senate by Republicans and Democrats from the North.
You knocked it out of the park with this one, Ed. And I love the headline. Perfect.
“One of the leitmotifs of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is the shell game that “progressives” (more on the scare quotes in a few moments)…”
Why “scare quotes” (notice the “scare quotes used there)? AFAIK, that’s a legitimate use of quotation marks, to indicate an ironic use of a word. If we want to use written English properly, “liberal” and “progressive”, used in the modern political sense, should always be in quotes.
Most career criminals are characterized by low IQ, poor impulse-control, and failure of socialization. Socialization is partly a training process, but the first two are strictly genetic. Eugenics is simply a scare-word for genetics. This is a real science, with atom microscopes, genomes, and charts and everything. Except for the fantasy of the Enlightenment (easily refuted by the most superficial observation of human behavior and history), genetics and its included demonstration of Human Nature (innate and immutable) would be no surprise to anyone, except as an explanation. The delusion that humans are born tabula rasa, without instincts or hard-wired social behavior (or any inherited mental characteristics) has never been demonstrated anywhere. Like the rest of Leftism, this matters not, because the theory is so beguiling that reality must not be allowed to impinge. If eugenics is so discredited, where did Chihuahuas and Angus cattle come from? New strains of plants are bred every day. How is this possible? Or do Conservatives believe that man’s physical body, like his soul, is apart from the rest of Nature? The more I read this crud, the more I hear that old line: “You can’t handle the truth.”
Genetics and eugenics are equivalent? Don’t think so. Eugenicists tried to control human breeding, through sterilization and later genocide. And “…where did Chihuahuas and Angus cattle come from”? From market demand for certain kinds of animals and plants. Breeding of animals and plants were around thousands of years before the word “genetics” was invented. The problem with eugenics, Einstein, is who gets to decide what the unfavorable attributes are in humans that “must” be bred out? By committee, no doubt. Death panels, anyone? Many early eugenicists attributed poverty to poor human breeding and unfavorable ancestry. “Oh, my, you are poor. Into the ovens with you” or “Let’s sterilize you and all your family and relatives for being poor”. Typical “progressive” arrogant, elitist attitudes.
Ever hang out with actual poor people? They do drugs; they do alcohol; they gamble; they mate like bugs; they abandon their children; they spend all their money on stupid crap, all to total destruction.
Being stupid is part of it, and that’s inherited.
Now, because I’m not a liberal, I think poor people have their place. I wouldn’t want to live in a world made only of Einsteins, and someone needs to pick up the garbage. The problem is that squishy morons think they can all be made smart, which ain’t happnin’. By spending the world into bankruptcy in order to prove they can do what can’t be done, and making you support it, liberals cross the line to grand theft.
If Barack isn’t the greatest example of this, I can’t imagine a better. He’s been to prep school and Columbia and Harvard, and he’s still an idiot. But you can never prove that he’s an idiot to a liberal. They are idiots, too.
Hmmm. Eugenics is looking better and better! But let’s just apply it to liberals who can’t mind their own frikkin’ business.
Nice try, but no cigar. One of the drivers of eugenics during the early 1900s was the large influx of immigrants to the U.S. The immigrants were “poor” by all standards. They were poor when they arrived and remained so, until their children were able to realize a better life. The majority “pulled themselves up by the bootstraps” and became “middle class” or even rich. Ever hear of Carnegie? The question remains, who decides who is poor, what is poor? People like you? That’s right, sterilize all poor people. I’m not defending today’s welfare programs. But to say that all “poor” should be sterilized or euthanized is ludicrous.
“Ever hang out with actual poor people? They do drugs; they do alcohol; they gamble; they mate like bugs; they abandon their children; they spend all their money on stupid crap, all to total destruction.
Being stupid is part of it, and that’s inherited.”
That’s idiotic. All poor people? Pretty broad brush. Did I ever hang around with poor people? I grew up in North Philly. Don’t talk to me about poor.
Try growing up in an apartment complex that takes Section 8 tenants.
Or at your age now, try your hand at a job managing one.
The mainstream studies on intelligence by Audrey Shuey, Cyril Burt, Arthur Jensen, HJ Eysenck, JP Rushton, Richard Lynn have a hidden nexus – they were funded by the Pioneer Fund under a program started in the late Forties by Frederic Osborn, who was simultaneously President of Pioneer Fund and of the American Eugenics Society and co-founder of the Population Council. In 2006 the African-American birthrate fell below replacement level – a direct consequence of the widespread use of contraceptives and more especially the heavy promotion of contraception among the poor by Planned Parenthood. These policies were promoted by the Population Council from the start due to Osborn’s initiatives.
In my opinion it is a crime for any government to heavily promote and subsidize birth control among members of a group whose birth rate is below replacement level, as Obama and the Democrats are doing among the African-Americans. That group is doomed unless policies change. But they would rather die than criticize the Democrats even though critical racial theory would indicate that Planned Parenthood and the Democrats are not their friends. And that [group collapse] is what will happen unless the Republicans win – ironic isn’t it?
So, what, exactly, are you trying to say today, Mr. Driscoll? First you claim (with several cited and referenced sources, thank you) that liberals, despite their finger-pointing rhetoric at the Right (along with the constantly and unquestioningly-regurgitated spin cylclists in the MLM), are actually the real fascists, both historically and currently.
Then you claim that liberals aren’t even liberals, but progressives (again, with a good reference).
Then you claim that liberal (or progressive, or whatever) Gen X & Y bloggers (i.e. pajamafied talking keyboards who have supplanted their own MLM allies) cannot see past their own high schoolhood (once again, citing actual sources rather than simply saying so).
Then you claim that liberegressives, despite their willful historical ignorance, are perpetuating the same fascism of their philosophical predecessors, but doing so completely unaware of it being recycled, rather than fresh, fascism.
So you came full circle in that essay but what are we supposed to understand was your main point?
Hmm?
???
Wait. Just a second.
You know, it just dawned on me that all of those points were main points and that you managed to tie them all together under the rubrik of WILLFUL leftwing ignorance.
My bad.
I tell you what, Mr. Driscoll. I’ll try to offer something myself for having so eggregiously missed your missed your main point today. Over at Another Slow News Day is a recently-added blog page with several (i.e. over a dozen) additional references (in the embedded hyperlinks) confirming and explicating liberal fascism.
http://anotherslownewsday.wordpress.com/liberal-fascism/
There is also a page devoted to liberalism en masse, accessible from ASND’s Update Topics / Philosophy menu tree (there are also several Liberalism sub-topical branches below that page on the menu tree, though the Liberal Fascism page is currently inaccessible from that menu, so you’re getting a URL today that to a Web page that most people cannot yet see.).
I hope that helps. Sorry for my (willful?) confusion.
There’s no confusion. “Progressive” is a polite-company way of saying “fascist”.
Mayhap I’m misreading his post to you, but the first thing that came to my mind from his grandiloquent post was a “Re-imagining” of the truth by yet another with “[Nothing] Important [To Say Here]” apologista.
I don’t think history, math or anything else matters to these people, whatever the hell they call themselves this week. It’s all about power which, in their minds, they’re entitled to. Tell a few thousand lies, distort history? Sure. Create a bogus budgetary mathematics to make it look like your “free” heatlhcare bill somehow makes sense? No problem. Who cares about the long term or anyone else’s life? I WANNA GET ELECTED (or re-elected.) “It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.” (David Brin) Anything as long as it advances their personal insanity.
Brin is so right-
the calculation must be made in planning:
all that is good or well-intentioned, ALL that is good, will be targeted by opportunist predators. Crooks go where the money is.
For some reason, I am also reminded of Donald Rumsfeld, I believe it was, who said, “Reality? We create our own reality.”
Was that Rumsfeld, or an unidentified aide to Bush?
Time-consuming,but interesting read, seven years later. Thank you.
Also reminds me of Obama’s statements that Columbus made his voyage to the new world to prove that the earth was round (mocking the Republicans as “flat earthers”). By the time of Columbus’ voyage it was well accepted that the world was round. Knowing that the earth was round, Columbus made his voyage to find a quicker route to the Far East and China but instead ran into the Americas. The college crowd he was speaking to gave Obama a big O for his historical idiocy.
Alas, Obama isn’t the only college professor who’s ever spouted that particular nonsense. There’s probably at least a couple of dozen on almost every campus.
By the way, that Columbus versus The Flat Earthers stuff was invented out of whole cloth by storyteller Washington Irving back in the early 19th century – see how backward the “progressives” are!
lying works! flip, point, steal credit and blame
since they were lying in the first place, the real reasons are forgotten
the next gen will never know that they are righteously attacking the innocent
to prevent them from doing ‘what everyone knows they did before’
why the left sounds like a dark mirror version of the right
they simply use the simple technique of taking any subject and flipping it -
Berkeley professor G. Lakov teaches ‘turn up into down, black into white’
simple, repetitious technique in speech to rally a crowd;
they are like RNA fishhooks, easy to repeat and spread (bumper stickers)
flip the subject
point the finger
steal the credit
blame the other
Barking Monkey Theory:
monkey in a tree starts barking
other monkeys in the same tree start barking back:
“Our tree is the best tree! We are the best monkeys!”
problem arises when monkey in another tree hears it
“No no! OURS is the best tree, and WE are the very finest of monkeys!!”
it’s not about ‘facts’
it’s about sound- cadence, tone, posture
the left, like illiterate street hustlers, watch body language
it’s all posturing
they love Obama cuz he takes NO sh*t from nobody
sound signals are how human primates signal their ever shifting position in the branches
alphas are only focused on other alphas trying to knock them out of the top of the tree- they are not really talking to us lower down, though we think they are
other animals use the lift of their tail or the spread of their feathers
human primate display is the intricate arboreal politics of benobo breeding groups
LMAO!!!!! And I quote: “human primate display is the intricate arboreal politics of benobo breeding groups”. If you’ve watched any of the PBS presentations of the National Geographic’s videos on Benobo’s, you’d know that you never turn your back on them. (Unless, of course, you either like that sort of thing, or are from a Biblical land starting with “S”. (Which means you are culturally predisposed to that sort of thing in the first place.))
I’d like to add one of my favorites to the shell game list: “Climate Change” replacing “Global Warming”. Thereafter, anyone not adhering to the party line is described as being so obtuse as to deny climate change.
good one
I never caught that flip, the sleight-of-hand before, thanks
predrawn conclusions; any rhetorical trick just to ‘prove’ you ain’t smart like they is
There are two aspects to the willful historical ignorance of progressives (let’s just go ahead and call them socialists). First, history is important to conservatives,who feel that fundamental truths about humanity can be found there. But for socialists, history is irrelevant and even detrimental because we must shed our beliefs, attitude, and values to move towards their idea of a better world. Second, as Hayek said, socialists believe information serves the state – that includes history and science. Thus, rewriting history is not only okay, it is necessary to support the socialist agenda.
This has been going on for quite some time. What is changed IMHO, is that social media, the Internet, and alternate news sources make it harder for socialists to get away with these tactics. They still dominate the news media, indoctrinate children in public school, set the agenda in college, and propagandize entertainment, but they find it harder to get away with it.
“One of the leitmotifs of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is the shell game that “progressives” (more on the scare quotes in a few moments) use to transfer bad decisions of progressives and liberals of the past to American history as a whole. FDR’s decision to inter Japanese-Americans during World War II?”
When you or Goldberg make a statement like that, you are guilty of historical inaccuracy yourself.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had sparked widespread panic on America’s West Coast. Millions of Americans were sure that the Japanese were about to invade the West Coast. People freaked out–and said and did things that weren’t admirable.
In the days after Pearl Harbor, the CA legislature passed a resolution declaring all persons of Japanese ancestry–including American citizens–to be subversives. Lt. General DeWitt, head of the Western Command, also feared sabotage from Japanese-Americans. He recommended to FDR that all persons of Japanese ancestry–including American citizens–be relocated away from the West Coast. It was in response to General DeWitt’s request that FDR initiated his Executive Order 9066.
Note also that after FDR issued his Executive Order interning Japanese Americans living on the West Coast, there was no significant opposition to it. There was no call by either liberal or conservative newspapers for an investigation, no attempts by the GOP to make an issue out of it. A case challenging the constitutionality of FDR’s Executive Order came before the U.S. Supreme Court–which upheld it.
Self interest was also involved, as Ann Coulter once pointed out. White farmers and businessmen living in CA saw the forced relocation of the Japanese-Americans as an opportunity to rid themselves of unwanted Japanese-American competitors, and to snap up Japanese-American property at bargain prices.
What FDR did was awful. But FDR didn’t ram it down the American people’s throats. General DeWitt asked for it, and those Americans who were not of Japanese ancestry had no problem with it.
The supreme court case Korematsu vs. US 1943 was one that dealt with the authority for the US government to issue individual mandates. This reader hopes that the current court will use the Obama care case to overturn Korematsu vs. US. If not, we can all look forward to the concentration camps, and eventually the blue pill.
The shell game that came to my mind was the segregation of the military during World War II, which is invariably treated in documentaries and Hollywood movies as a product of “American racism” when of course it was ordered by the beloved progressive Woodrow Wilson.
According to Greek mythology those who drank from Lethe, one of the seven rivers in Hades, lost all memory. There is a lot of evidence that liberals get daily deliveries of bottled Lethe Water. Cut off the supply and liberalism would suffer an intellectual dehydration which could prove fatal.
Perhaps FDR didn’t ram it down people’s throats but he was the president and as Harry Truman famously said, ‘The buck stops here”. It’s easy to sit back and armchair quarterback what went on during those days. I was a tot when the war started and there was palpable fear of the Japanese, especially when Americans saw newsreels of the ravaged and burning, sinking ships at Pearl Harbor. They saw our sailors, half dressed after rolling out of bed on a Sunday morning, firing at Japanese planes with rifles.
Just as there was the German Bund in this country giving support to Germany, people were afraid of the same thing as applied to the Japanese. Another thing historians seem to forget is that American lives were turned upside down on that day. Men, and many women, were rushing out to enlist, women with children were trying to figure out how to survive and still help out with the “war effort”. The military could fall back on past war experiences but there was nothing in place to help the families. They rallied and, for the most part did a splendid job of it.
I don’t remember ever hearing anything about the internment camps until long after the war was over. I was too young to go to the movies so never saw the sinking of our Navy but as I said at the beginning, the fear was there. I lived with Grandma and Grandpa and my uncle was a Seabee; my grandmother could hardly stand it from day to day, wondering if he were going to be killed on that day.
Yeah, the buck stopped there!!
Truman came after FDR, so it may be that FDR would say that the “buck stops here” doctrine wasn’t in effect during his administration
I believe that is how Obama would handle this.
Ed, I don’t think FDR actually interred anyone — if so let’s dig them up. He did intern a bunch of people of Japanese ancestry, tho….
Hi Joe,
Great catch–fixed.
Thanks,
Ed
I also find this today with the Paul-bots, neo-con-haters, and people saying Bush = Obama.
It’s as if Munich, the America First Committee, and the postwar draft never existed. As if it wasn’t Ronald Reagan who invented the term “safety net” in self-defense. As if the Republicans were not doomed to (literally) 40-years in the wilderness for trying to fix Medicare at the Carter mid-term.
As if Arlen Specter had not almost lost his seat for opposing socialised medicine, and the Republicans would not have been slaughtered if they had not passed Medicare Part D (which is the only major program I know of to come in below projection).
As if “Gay marriage” was not so unthinkable only three years ago that even Obama had to pretend not to support it. As if the Founders were not extreme social conservatives by today’s standards.
The Tea Party has changed the debate in this country for the better, and I agree with it. But could any Republican (Reagan and W included) have got anywhere pre-tea-party with the sort of ideological purity now demanded? And are we forever doomed to forget the lessons of Munich? (If you don’t know what Munich was, please stop talking about “neo-cons” and “warmongers”.)
Libs/Progressives are masters of projection. All ill behaviour they accuse Conservitives of is behaviour they’ve done in the past, are doing in the present, and/or would like to do if they had the balls for it.