The Crusade of Innocents
Just as Mao’s Red Guards were never about themselves, always about Mao, anarchists are about a larger political question: what is the correct political line? Once the Red Guards of China had resolved that in Mao’s favor they were allowed to rampage for a time to bring hatred down upon themselves and subsequently suppressed, hapless tools to the very end.
The leadership in Beijing also simultaneously tried to restrain and encourage the Red Guards, adding confusion to an already chaotic situation. On the one hand, the Cultural Revolution Group reiterated calls for non-violence, but on the other hand the People’s Liberation Army was told to assist the Red Guards with transport and lodging, and there were eight rallies in Tiananmen Square between the 18th August and the 26th November 1966 (in total, twelve million Red Guards traveled to see Mao in these rallies). However, by the end of 1966, most of the Cultural Revolution Group were of the opinion that the Red Guards had become too much of a political liability. The campaign against ‘capitalist-roaders’ had led to anarchy, the Red Guards’ actions had led to conservatism amongst China’s workers, and the lack of discipline and the factionalism in the movement had made the Red Guards politically dangerous. 1967 would see the decision to dispel the student movement….
In the year that followed, the PLA violently put down the national Red Guard movement, with the suppressions often brutal. For example, a radical alliance of Red Guard groups in Hunan province called the Sheng Wu Lien was involved in clashes with local PLA units, and in the first half of 1968 was forcibly suppressed. At the same time, in Guangxi province, the PLA carried out mass executions of Red Guards that were unprecedented in their nature in the Cultural Revolution.
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A Permanent Majority
“Reportedly, in an audience of the Red Guard leaders with Mao, the Chairman informed them gently of the end of the movement with a tear in his eye.” That would be par for the course. In them Mao would have seen some aspect of his youthful self — the loser aspect. The coming decade will see the Welfare State fight to save itself, whether by accommodating to the “sordid” reality of capitalism or by idealistically “doubling down” remains to be seen. What will be chosen depends on cold calculation. But in the meantime they have need of straws in the wind. Anarchists will eventually discover, as George Orwell found in Catalonia, that they principally exist in order to prove spontaneity within the Left, to be those wisps of volatile material that flare for a brief moment and fall to the ground as forgotten ash. Their historical role is to signally sacrifice themselves for an impossible dream and be martyred with very much regret. That and nothing more. But we’ve heard it all before. It’s always about the children, but never quite in the way we think, as sacrificial rite.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”“A loaf of bread,” the Walrus said,
“Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed–
Now if you’re ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed.”“I weep for you,” the Walrus said:
“I deeply sympathize.”
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.“O Oysters,” said the Carpenter,
“You’ve had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?’
But answer came there none–
And this was scarcely odd, because
They’d eaten every one.
Link to Wretchard’s novel “No Way In” print edition
Link to Wretchard’s novel “No Way In” Kindle Edition”
How so very odd. “Anarchists” who are upset because benefits provided by the government have been cut? Assuming there is a future history I think our time will be classified as the Age of Equivocation and Oxymorons.
Or perhaps, just the Age of Morons.
Indeed, tcobb! Quite right. But anarchist doesn’t mean what it used to mean. It’s more or less just shorthand for Left wing stone thrower and bomb setter. Street muscle. Thugs.
And of course their thuggishness belies their so-called support of the “common man.” When someone is killed by these punks, it is invariably the “little guy.” Look at Marco Camenisch, killing a border patrol officer, just a guy out doing his job. Not some big, bad industrialist. No matter, all (others) must be sacrified into the maw of Moloch, so that these people can feel really good about themselves while enjoying a lovely frisson with their Cabernet as they regale their counterparts with their tales of derring do.
Anarchy comes before assassin in the dictionary, but they tend to go together out in the world. I gather “anarchist” was a popular label in the late nineteenth century. politically it’s like being a monopole – says what you are against, but surely it doesn’t say a thing about what you are for?
In Islam they seeth and call for Allah, in the west we seeth and call for Anarchy, is that so different?
I don’t see that it comprises a position at all, not a call to double-down, just a cry, of pain, of fear, that you have disturbed a beast and it lashes out.
About as much political content as, “The beatings will continue until morale improves”.
“It is impossible to understand the politics of the Left without grasping that it is all about deniable intimidation.”
Agree to the nth power with that statement. Remove “politics of the left” and replace it with ‘bureaucrats’, ‘unions’ or nowadays ‘police’ and the sentence remains accurate.
#2 peterike is, I think, correct about the difference between modern anarchists and those described (along with the revolutionaries) by Joseph Conrad in “Under Western Eyes” and “The Secret Agent”.
Anarchists need the welfare state to survive in order to protest the welfare state and other states as well. Back around the beginning of the 20th Century anarchists could count on other “students” and or their rich family to support them. As times changed the support system for these people has become the welfare state.
Without a socialist/ welfare state anarchists are just target practice for honest business people.
More than a few “anarchists” are professional students. That is they are “enrolled” in a universtity and enjoy the European perks associated with student status. Depending upon the country they can milk that status for year through long trips through the undergratduate and graduate school. Some have started families are pushing past 30. They are source for the oxymoronic “student activist” often drift into the left’s rentamobs also. At one time in Mexico City there was a “tragic” suppression of the “students” by the Mexican Army. They’d over reached and pissed off the power that be by their activities. One of the mobs they had formed up was intorduced to .50 caliber machine guns. The Europeans haven’t reached the “tired of it state” that the Chinese and other have but they may be closer to a powers that be purge than they realize, given the current pressures on the general populace.
Drudge reports today that the slow snow clean-up in NYC was a union protest. And so it begins….
The problem with anarchy is rooted in its inability to escape from the traditions of the Left. People calling themselves “anarchists” opposed the Jacobins and were suspicious of the revolutionary state. Throughout political history they’ve found a resonance among those who have felt the revolution betrayed. And it is always, always betrayed.
But their mode of organization, which emphasized communalism and mutualism, continually undermined them. The resort to committees, meetings, agitation — in other words the clanking apparatus of the Left — made any kind of action cumbersome and opened them to takeovers by the Bolsheviks. In a fight between the ‘noble’ individual — Camenisch for example, who seems a genuine tough guy — and conspiracy, conspiracy usually wins.
The Bolshies normally eat the anarchists up alive.
The anarchists had a good idea, which was suspicion of the state. They were hampered by two notable deficiencies: the lack of appreciation of the role the market could play in off-loading price signaling to the individual and the use of limited government as a defense against despotic government.
You can make the argument that the Founding Fathers were the ultimate practical anarchists. Their goal was to minimize the necessary government in order to prevent a collapse into either chaos or despotism. And they largely succeeded because they enshrined property — which is the bulwark of individualism — and limited government, in part through the “trick” if you want to call it that, of deriving legitimacy direct from an external non-human source. Whether the Founding Father types can survive the Jacobins and their Bolshie heirs is an open question, but they have been the most successful so far.
Modern European anarchists are descendants of a far weaker model and are no longer serious competitors to the traditional left.
They are tolerated for color on its fringes for their ‘purity’. From time to time it is useful for the Left to trot them out for theater before the apparatchiks reel them in again.
Somehow these revival moments keep cropping up in human history. It is interesting to compare anarchism to the “anti-sacerdotal” Cathars or Albigensians, who were interested in practicing a purer form of Christianity than was possible with a clergy. In their view, the doctrine of Christ had been corrupted by the bureaucracy, and their message struck a chord. The Cathars were eventually suppressed, but like the anarchists, the memory of the dream lives on, in the Church as the Dominicans. In the Leftist traditions in these strange fools for the communal dream are given their little corner in the political playroom under the supervision of far more ruthless men then the “right wingers” they suppose to be their enemies.
Back in the day I remember how Eco’s “In the Name of the Rose”, in which the Cathars play cameo, resonated with members of the underground who were fighting against both the Marcos regime and the party. Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.. We hold only empty names.
Political labels are becoming meaningless. “Left” is now more or less a synonym for “rich”. “Right” does not mean a thing — hence the Tea Parties.
As for “Anarchist”! Is the person who refuses to wear a seat-belt an anarchist? How about the guy who insists on smoking? When bombs start popping, what’s the distinction between anarchist & terrorist?
Maybe one of the reasons the Grauniad complains about politics being on the verge of collapse is that we no longer have suitable language to discuss it. This was best illustrated by National Public Radio at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, when they described the neo-Stalinist hard-liners who opposed glasnost as “Right-Wing Communists”. The only assurance we have left is that it is all non-sustainable — and it really isn’t!
Loved the reference to Orwell and Catalonia–right on target: in front of the lines, all this trouble and combat; behind the lines, one’s “friends” stabbing you in the back. Who, then, is the enemy?
Why, it’s those trying to clean things up; they can’t be allowed to preserve the society–never get no destruction that way.
#7. tjdelpup
Yes it does begin. As far as class warfare is concerned we have entered a new age where there are really only two classes: those who derive their living from the government and those who do so by providing goods and services that people actually want. More and more I am convinced that the main purpose of government is to provide jobs and benefits for government employees. The official purpose for their existence is secondary at best. It is not just mission creep, but often mission sabotage. After all, if you actually do solve the problem you were organized to solve, what will happen to you once it has been conclusively solved?
But perhaps there is a bright side to such things as the sabotaged snow cleanup in New York. Fire the culprits, sue them, and subject their accrued benefits to garnishment and/or forfeiture. Cast them down, and forbid them to ever hold a government job again or to get any benefits from government programs.
And thank you Wretchard: Rectification is not an electrical term. On the Left it means “power struggle” or purge.
I learn more and more from you. I used to think that term meant a gymnastic contortion in which a Leftist’s head was inserted into their own lower body cavity.
“…European anarchists are growing more organized …”
Where is Bakunin when you finally need him?
IIRC he was the fellow that threw a bomb into a Anarchists’ meeting crying that “Anarchists don’t hold meetings!”
For those entrapped, there is a nice Maslovian ‘pat-on-the-back’ vibe for such activism.
While emotions may blast off like rockets and fall back like sticks…
During the manic phase the players feel VERY self-important. ( Rather like a chaotic, blonde geek lately in the news. )
Operating from the radical position that “this time, everything is different, because…” their grandiosity really gets rolling.
In the end all modalities fall back to coercion and manipulation.
Solutions not being their forte, these players move the topic directly to infantile desires.
In all my days, I’ve NEVER encountered an ‘activist’ who had clue one as to constructively improve anything.
—–
It is disturbing to me that what IS known about economic structures does not play well.
For example, that centralized control of economic events imposes a terrific haircut on economic performance.
Congress Centrally Planned our real estate bubble — yet gets pure soft balls on ‘Sixty Minutes.’
We have a nation of logical cripples voting logically challenged gas-bags to the Senate. ( Boxer )
——
The entropy of the central government is now so great that it is flat-lining the economy.
Back in the day, various ranking Romans managed to secure broad tax exemptions. The Hoi Polloi ended up picking up the tab for them.
We’ve recreated that scheme with the Money Trust and the bust-out banksters.
Our ‘cops’ have been captured by the Street. Just think on the Madoff fiasco: Clouseau had a better track record.
Tcobb…
You must mean the Kleinass syndrome, upon completion the contortionist is almost able to see daylight.
Thus Moloch spake, with tear-dimmed eyes
My children, sing your fond goodbyes
For come to you this last surprise
Your work is truly done
I cannot speak without a tear
For much too long I’ve held you near
But now it is goodbye, I fear
We thank you, every one
Your deaths will show your pride and grace
And knowing that in history’s place
The walls of time will hold your face
And now, here is the gun
Goodbye dear friends, I love you so
It pains me that it’s time to go
A greater good has laid you low
Farewell, and it’s been fun
http://www.breitbart.tv/liberal-star-blogger-ezra-klein-constitution-has-no-binding-power-on-anything-confusing-because-its-over-100-years-old/
Another exacting case of Kleinass syndrome.
The anarchists had a good idea, which was suspicion of the state. They were hampered by two notable deficiencies: the lack of appreciation of the role the market could play in off-loading price signaling to the individual and the use of limited government as a defense against despotic government.
The market is not the state.
The mistake is that there may be some constructions, some systems, that are more worthwhile than they are troublesome.
I am reading Matt Ridley’s, “The Rational Optimist”, a bit of a screed if you ask me, the point of which is that it is only human, going back 40,000 years or maybe several times that, to trade, to try new ideas, to create technology, structures, to let the memes evolve (he avoids using the term “meme”). Anarchists just don’t seem to be in the game.
Islam – is dogmatic anarchy. They hate “the pharoah”, they are the ultimate in populism, every man a mullah, any secular structure is suspect or just evil.
You can make the argument that the Founding Fathers were the ultimate practical anarchists. Their goal was to minimize the necessary government in order to prevent a collapse into either chaos or despotism. And they largely succeeded because they enshrined property — which is the bulwark of individualism — and limited government, in part through the “trick” if you want to call it that, of deriving legitimacy direct from an external non-human source.
Ay, must I quibble all day? Minimalism is not anarchy, neither is good design.
And I’d say the US government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, if you want to call that an external non-human source, at least it is not The King or The One.
The Nazis at Nuremberg had an interesting defense. They committed no crime because they broke no law. Where did the rights of the Jews come from if the German state did not grant them any? Hitler was arguably elected into office.
Can men consent to strip themselves of rights or are they, like fleas on an infested dog, something you can’t get rid of?
Engels on the Anarchists, dripping with contempt;
the Caine defense, hmm?
didn’t work then either, as I recall.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master that’s all.”
A description of ‘left logic’
Can men consent to strip themselves of rights or are they, like fleas on an infested dog, something you can’t get rid of?
It all depends upon your point of view. Are rights merely privileges which the government grants you, or are rights intrinsic to the very fact of being a human being? To the modern leftist/progressive they are merely privileges which can be revoked whenever they become inconvenient to the powers that be. What a lot of people don’t seem to understand about the US Constitution is that it assumes that the rights of the individual come first, and that anything that infringes upon those rights is inherently illegitimate.
I have always considered it weird beyond belief that those who advocate a “living, breathing Constitution” find it necessary to first drive a stake through its heart.
Maybe tangential, but this piece stirred something that gripes me to no end-stoked recently by an interview of some local college seniors. When separately asked their career plans, both said they wanted to work in the community as “activists.” Where does one apply for the position of activist? Is there a college major in community activism? (I’m afraid to find out). These kids have spent $80,000 for a degree and they intend to march into the world and “be active.” How about being active with that student loan? Correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I have seen, a community activist’s job is simple: to incite, provoke and rabble-rouse and shakedown. That’s it. Hasn’t anyone in these kids lives explained to them that there is nothing noble about transforming some community into a bunch of perpetual, world-class whiners.
Any guess where these cockamamie ideas were implanted in these kids heads? God help us.
There is an eerie sameness in the debates that used to animate and probably still animate “revolutionary” circles. It was written 130 years ago, but listen to this paragraph from Pro and Contra in Brothers Karamazov as the three siblings meet in a tavern:
“The eternal questions”. How do you give common humanity space to live in a world chronically obsessed with the “eternal questions”. I think the solution of the Founders was in some respects, pure genius. They left the “eternal questions” to the individual instead of trying to settle the issues collectively. Disestablishing religion above all means keeping a single established church or politically correct government from answering all these these vexing questions.
The biggest problem with the Left is that despite their showy atheism, they are obsessed with these exact things. What is worse, they are intent on answering their own unfathomable questions with themselves. They will fill every void with a collective answer. Isn’t that the definition of the bureaucratic welfare state? It’s hard work being God on earth. And so their burden is the Grand Inquisitor’s. Pity the poor hardworking commissars.
That is why the fate of every socialist collectivism is that of telescreen in every room; with a weighing scale in every trash can, with speed cameras everywhere and speech codes to fit every situation. Socialism turns the world into a vast atheistic religious monastery. And the word “atheistic” must be used advisedly.
As the years pass I’m increasingly convinced the media has got it all wrong. The god party is on the Left, with the little “g”.
Wretchard,
I’m fascinated by your insight into the left’s psyche.
Thanks for an excellent post.
I’m preparing the mental depth charges to cast into the minds of the politicians who come canvassing when the election date is announced here, and the stuff here is great.
For a long time, I thought that the left operated on spite and envy. The Trots in the town back home never stopped arguing over who was to be put against the wall first. There was never a hint of the great haram; speculation about what the worker’s paradise might look like.
They were completely tied to process, what the end goal might be, never seemed to enter their minds.
Looking back now. I really think that the analysis I’ve seen here fits.
They’re needy, emotionally insecure little individuals seeking the approval of their peer group, and desperately dreaming of getting the pants off the girlies in the propaganda film. They’re Monty Python’s “Brian”.
Ahh, well:
Not only are our women better looking,
our anarchists also have brains.
http://mises.org/journals/jls/3_1/3_1_2.pdf
(private property anarchism during the American Frontier period).
An interesting explanation of how the left signal, and use, each other. George Orwell’s great strength, and great weakness, was his disingeniousness- he just couldn’t understand how a Stalinist who would murder a priest could murder an anarchist just as easily.
But what signals are the leftists sending to the ordinary man? What is he intended to make of this?
So it looks like everyone’s getting bombed over the holidays.
24. wretchard-
Hillel is the author of two quotes: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If only for myself, what am ‘I’? And if not now, when?” and the expression of the ethic of reciprocity: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is explanation; go and learn.”
The key – “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” – is what the FF advocated, what is necessary for a just and equitable society.
Post modern anarchists a little boys who mistreated animals and when they grew up simply moved on to the human race.
They are a sick, twisted lot.
And they are an impatient sort. Stealth socialists drive them even further into the depths of insanity. They cannot stand that stealth socialists seem to always emphasize the “evolution” in revolution…anarchists forever wish to put the pedal down and up the “rev” in revolution.
It’s the difference between a Cooper Union “community organizing” breakout session and a mosh pit at an FSU bar.
Obama vs. Ted Rall.
CNN vs. MSNBC.
Barbara Walters vs Janeane Garofolo.
Rahm Emmanuel vs. Van Jones
??? vs. Michael Moore
F47
“The key – “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” – is what the FF advocated, what is necessary for a just and equitable society.”
Fell down a bit on the slavery issue, did they not? But generally I agree. Although the Judaic Christian tradition does not have monopoly on this sentiment (the Confucian ethic of reciprocity?) And Kant had something to say about its absolute applicability.
Well in the Old Testament times if you were going to be a war captive slave or a purchased slave then you were better off with the Jews than just about anybody else. They had a time limit on how long a slave could be kept as a slave and during the Jubilee year all the slaves got freed. This is why the phrase “Bring the Jubilee” had a deep meaning for American slaves.
Perhaps it is because the “rite of passage” rituals become token events in cultures as they grow wealthy enough to support the enternal children that we see them show up periodically in the cycles of history. I kind of wonder what our culture would be like if all the males had to let somewhat take a knife to the end of their member at the age of 13 before they were considered human and given the rights and responsibilites of a man?
Their historical role is to signally sacrifice themselves for an impossible dream and martyred with very much regret. That and nothing more.
Or as they put it in Beyond the Fringe, “I want you to lay down your life, Perkins. We need a futile gesture at this stage; it’ll raise the whole tone of the war. Get up in a crate, Perkins, pop over to Bremen. Take a shufti. Don’t come back.”
@Defenestration—”the Confucian ethic of reciprocity”—Not what Jesus taught at all. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is a far more difficult command to follow than “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” Perhaps much of Christendom does, in fact, interpret Jesus’ statement to mean only what Confucius taught, but that only suggests that those hard words really were spoken by Jesus, not made up later by a Church who thought this would be a good thing to teach: It would seem that Jesus does, in fact, have a monopoly on the ethic he demanded. There may even be some who think that actually seeking to obey that command—might have salutary effects.
And speaking of anarchists, here’s a ditty about some in a song I learned as a lad:
In an anarchist’s garret so lowly and so mean
Oh smell the pungent odor of nitroglycerin
They’re busy making fuses
And filling cans with nails
While the little Slovic children
Set up this mournful wail….
(Chorus)
It’s sister Jenny’s turn to throw the bomb
The last one it was thrown by brother Thom
Poor Mama’s aim is bad
And the kopskies all know Dad
So it’s sister Jenny’s turn to throw the bomb
Sister Jenny took the bomb and started off
“Oh, mind you now,” said Mama “to blow up Templehoff”
And so the party waited
While morn turned into day
And the little Slovic children
Set up this mournful lay….
(Chorus)
It’s brother Ivan’s turn to throw the bomb
Sister Jenny’s gone the way of brother Thom
Poor Mama’s aim is bad
And the kopsikies all know Dad
So it’s brother Ivan’s turn to throw the bomb
The Founding Fathers’ principle had to do with freedom and not requiring state enforced do-gooderism on others. As individuals doing good is laudable, as state enforced it’s slavery.
F47 @35
“Do gooderism?” Does that include government health care? Like the 1798 payroll tax for merchant seamen health care?
I too am fascinated by this insight into the Left’s psyche. Now, how to use it against them?
The anarchist are the Lefts
“Russian Roulette, loaded with 6 bullet”
The demand to cut consumption to please the Green-AGW lobbies contradict to the anarchist, which is try to maintain the subsidised (higher) lifestyle.
Of course the anarchist has an ideological ally, the middle-class
public servants.
Aliens Cause Global Warming: A Caltech Lecture
by Michael Crichton
Tamquam
I too am fascinated by this insight into the Left’s psyche. Now, how to use it against them?
@ Tamquam
This is serious. Do you think the dispute is winnable by using words?
The crashing inconsistency, the towering blind dumb cannibal giant stoopid thing, is that these anarchists ripping down industrial society in favor of the alternative, are dooming their (claimed) beloved third world little-people patrons to stall in place, with only a fraction of the industrial world’s wealth, resources, healthcare, education, clean water, entertainment, opportunity, quality of life, longevity, and so forth, including security from the wolf, often enough the human wolf, at the door.
Some ‘help’. Some ‘progress’.
36. Defenestration
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29099806/Act-for-the-Relief-of-Sick-DisabledSeamen-July-1798
1798 payroll tax was a revenue act for a specific group – ie. an ‘earmark’ as such not in the original document -
politics at work.
Where is the “mandated health care” and tax provision for the general population?
With penalties?
This was indeed welfare for sailors, but for sailors only, who one can argue as part of the merchant marine were entitled to government protection as in time of war they were expected to defend the USA.
BTW – when you issue a challenge, it is appropriate to give a citation.
Perhaps the anarchists can form a political party called “The Organization of Non-Organized Organizers”.
Tcobb @ 22
“I have always considered it weird beyond belief that those who advocate a “living, breathing Constitution” find it necessary to first drive a stake through its heart.”
No doubt. It gets weirder. Confront those very same advocates with something like a “collective bargaining agreement” and they will defend all of its antiquated work rules, “positive rights” and grievance traps to the letter.
“They will fill every void with a collective answer. Isn’t that the definition of the bureaucratic welfare state? It’s hard work being God on earth.”
Not much doubt where the representatives of the American bureaucratic welfare state answer this. “We are the ones we have been waiting for”
Anarchism has long been the revered underlying vocation taught in our schools and academia. It’s a consistent theme, indoctrinated in our children, that there is always a “Big Man” out there somewhere who is responsible for the plight of the downtrodden, and against whom, one must always agitate and monkeywrench. It’s no wonder that among millions of our populace there is no higher calling than to in 60′s parlance “Stick to the Man” and take him down.
But what happens when “the Man” is the same overgrown Welfare State that provides you food, shelter and iphones? Ooops.
The Left has pushed both the twin goals of collectivization and anarchy for years. But now, The Left has also succeeded in making the government the dominant actor in Western society and in the markets. The urge to embolden the socialist police state runs smack into the urge to monkeywrench. How do you agitate against yourself? Who do you intimate and beat down? For a while, we will still have some good right wing villains like Sarah Palin and Rush to still beat on. But after a while, the Left will to get to reap what they have sown.
Tell me, what did Lenin, Stalin and Vlady Putin do with the anarchists in their midst?
Great observation about the USA Today headline. What does “organized anarchy” look like anyway? When anarchists get together do they use “Roberts Rules of Order” or is it more like what Dennis the Peasant described in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail?” (“Now we see the violence inherent in the system – Help, help, I’m being repressed.”)
Anarchists are the bare root of leftism. They want to destroy all existing institutions, society, religion, culture. Leftists are the same, except they’ve come up with a theory (Leftism) that purports to explain why the mass destruction is justified because the alteration of external circumstances will result in a new, superior type of human being. Of course, human beings are the way they because of their inherited physical characteristics, including brain and hormones. So, because no amount of alteration of environment changes Human Nature, Leftists characteristically blame the victims and step up the oppression, indoctrination, and killing indefinitely. Like the horizon, they can always observe hope-for changes, but they never actually show up.
40. biruta “This is serious. Do you think the dispute is winnable by using words?”
Yes it is serious. The Left has used words, mostly words, very successfully against Western Civ for the last 70+ years. It did not much employ force until it had already succeeded in undermining its targets with words, mere words. Implied in your remark is the suggestion that winning means immediately taking up arms against a sea of Lefties and physically laying them low. This, by itself, would in my view be a mistake, for it would only excite the sympathy of the masses against the awful brutes who resorted to violence against the poor, defenseless Lefties who had only words as their sword and shield. Such a victory would be Pyrrhic at best, but more likely short lived, sowing the seeds of it’s own defeat in the very moment of triumph.
Words are key. Words that pull the cover off the lies and seductions of the Left. Words that discredit the false ‘facts’ and fallacious arguments, words that lay out a workable alternative and wrap it in all that is most attractive to men. “Without a vision the people perish,” the Good Book says; its true. The American Vision triumphed, and triumphs still, because visionaries conveyed the burning desire for the vision’s promise through words, mere words.
So I pray: LORD, give us men and women of vision that will speak words to set men’s hearts alight again. Give us true prophets that Your design for this greatest land the world has ever known be accomplished. Send Your Spirit that as Your prophet’s words enter men’s ears your Spirit will enter their minds and kindle their hearts. Confound Your enemies arrayed against us, enlighten the apathetic and confused among us, encourage Your faithful servants, guide us, sustain us and hold us aloft until we see the Glory of Your Truth revealed in our land.
Anarchists today are just the vanguard of Bolshevism; they lay the public relations groundwork, creating a “middle ground” into which the more apparently politically conventionally Bolsheviks – whatever they call themselves – can step to create a sort of compromise party, thereby establishing legitimacy, and a gaza strip from which to launch attacks in the very heart of the political structure. I don’t think these philosophical questions are the genuine motivation, but – as others and history have shown – the lust for and pleasure of destruction.
44. Vanguard:
Great point. If a leftist has a mortgage or other private contract, every beneficial provision must be scrupulously observed and where there must be interpretation then “original intent” rises to the level of Holy Writ. The howls of rage over casual foreclosure methods are in stark contrast to the casual abandonment of inconvenient interpretations of the Commerce Clause.
I don’t know why contrasts always have to be stark, but there you are. I suppose for the same reason that proximity is always close.
Stalin decides to go out one day and see what it’s really like for the workers, so he puts on a disguise and sneaks out of the Kremlin. After a while he wanders into a cinema. When the film has finished, the Soviet Anthem plays and a huge picture of Stalin appears on the screen. Everyone stands up and begins singing, except Stalin, who smugly remains seated. A minute later a man behind him leans forwards and whispers in his ear: “Listen Comrade, we all feel exactly the same way you do, but trust me, it’s a lot safer if you just stand up.”
“Why do “Communists” operate in groups of three?” A. “One can read, one can write and one to keep an eye on the two intellectuals.”
Many “anarchists”, aren’t.
First, we have the rebel gangs affiliated with totalitarian groups, mainly communists. They don’t want to admit that they are followers.
Second, we have the independent, wanna-bee dictators. They want everyone to do as they say. Closely related to the first.
Third, people like the Tea Party. Remember, one of the big points made regarding the US Colonies as we gained independence, NO ONE HAD ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY. We were the anarchists of the era.
Phillep, sure. And now America is a plutocracy. What happened? If you doubt the truth of this – how many American presidents in the last century have neither been a multi-millionaire nor had significant help from one?
Just another example of a truism – anarchy is completely unstable.
F47 at 42.
What a strange argument.
Still a tax, forced upon seamen whether they wanted it or not, enacted by the same persons who wrote the constitution and therefore believed to be constitutional surely?
“This was indeed welfare for sailors, but for sailors only, who one can argue as part of the merchant marine were entitled to government protection as in time of war they were expected to defend the USA.”
I think that argument might trend in a direction that you do not want it to go.
Defenestration,
I’m not sure what you are trying to say.
any chance of a bit more explanation please?
Thanks in advance.
Ultimately, the power underlying the Left has always been: Do what we want or we will hurt your family. Everything else is rhetoric.
The left-wing anarchists make no sense, it seems they are a front supporting state redistributionary schemes. ..they attack the state when the state attempts to downsize… but not when it grows bigger, yet they claim to be anti-state. It makes no sense at all.
@Sunsword:
I agree! Btw do you ever play the game nethack?
“Anarchists” who are upset because benefits provided by the government have been cut? Assuming there is a future history I think our time will be classified as the Age of Equivocation and Oxymorons.
Oh I know a “leftist libertarian anarchist” who was defending Obamacare to me. Had no idea what his proud labels mean.
To westerncanadian, wretchard:
Google finds “deniable intimidation” as a 2005 PointLookout newsletter essay by Rick Brenner a organizational consultant. See https://www.chacocanyon.com/pointlookout/050629.shtml
He gives four workplace examples of DI, (1) use of speakerphone just to intimidate, (2) invasion of personal space, (3) Leaning over and reading your notepad, and (4) Mispronouncing or forgetting your name repeatedly.
He concludes “Intimidators aim for an out-of-control emotional response.”
It reminds me of sophisticated passive aggressive attacks in bureaucracies and institutions and relationships like sand-bagging and gas-lighting, or a false lights slander. Also less sophisticated methods like deliberate chronic lateness, blind copies when used to harass, ‘accidentally’ leaving off the targeted person from distribution lists and invites … many others.
These things can look like non-deliberate, innocuous behavior. Like me, I’m always late to a meeting but never to harass, just because I hate meetings.
As Rick Brenner suggests the crime here is mens re. What does the person or group pulling this stunts intend? Over time do we perceive a pattern of behavior indicating malice?
Even then it may not be actual conscious malice, but a learned behavior from a bad mentor long since gone, or a bad habit that developed over time incrementally for lack of objections.
The Guardian is a Baha’i construct..
get to know your modern, superseding, religions…
What is the opposite of an Atheist? Well, who believes in everything?
Anarchists are just the shock troops of hysteria.. only useful to those who know how to use hysteria as a jumping off point..
someone who has had practice turning societies upside down for fun..
someone who has been taught an auxiliary language to keep insiders aware without outside understanding..
hmmm.. Who could have been prepared since birth to be a chameleon in all possible religio-social situations?
http://bahai-education.org/ocean/
Where did you think TIDES originate?
It is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and ‘they’ believe it..
Just look at ‘their’ prediction of ‘AGW floods’..
Hmmm.. now wrap your minds around this..
Glacial growth is also a form of flood..
if someone who had once listened to Glenn Beck even hinted at bombing something, the “news media” would jump to call them right wing tea party extremists. when someone from the left actually commits acts of heinous violence they are simply called “anarchists”.
I always took the Guardian as an agitprop platform whose strings ran back to Central. ( The First Directorate )
The Bahai are more into the Kumbaya schtick… ‘Can’t we all get along?’
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/015115.html
Tamquam wrote:
”Yes it is serious. The Left has used words, mostly words, very successfully against Western Civ for the last 70+ years. It did not much employ force until it had already succeeded in undermining its targets with words, mere words. Implied in your remark is the suggestion that winning means immediately taking up arms against a sea of Lefties and physically laying them low. This, by itself, would in my view be a mistake, for it would only excite the sympathy of the masses against the awful brutes who resorted to violence against the poor, defenseless Lefties who had only words as their sword and shield. Such a victory would be Pyrrhic at best, but more likely short lived, sowing the seeds of it’s own defeat in the very moment of triumph.”
__________________________________________________
well, I don’t know if that was my implication, that words more often than not are like a sound in the wind, and instead- a certain action should be required ? Perhaps, it is more like an expression of a desperation. Surely, it seems like the battle already has been lost. It is a known fact now, that the lefties are not the poor, defenseless masses anymore, more likely that those are the people who have been holding the power and the money, as some of the writers here have pointed out. The lefties are having the blast of the victory, as they’ve had it for long time of the last century.
Your prayer is beautiful, but why oh why am I feeling so hopeless and sad?
blert,
you see Kumbaya, I see an ideology that builds on islam, thus perpetuating it, thus absolutely wrong..
That’s just me.. Accepting islam is not an option..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_revelation_%28Bah%C3%A1%27%C3%AD%29
certain key words have popped up that fit the mold…
“New World Order”
http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/se/WOB/wob-14.html
“one thousand years”
http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/se/WOB/wob-37.html.utf8?query=one%20thousand&action=highlight#pg102
“The interpretation of this prophecy is this: the first Dispensation to which it refers is the Muḥammadan Dispensation during which the Sun of Truth stood still for ten days. Each day is reckoned as one century. The Muḥammadan Dispensation must have, therefore, lasted no less than one thousand years, which is precisely the period that has elapsed from the setting of the Star of the Imamate to the advent of the Dispensation proclaimed by the Báb. The second Dispensation referred to in this prophecy is the one inaugurated by the Báb Himself, which began in the year 1260 A.H. and was brought to a close in the year 1280 A.H. As to the third Dispensation—the Revelation proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh—inasmuch as the Sun of Truth when attaining that station shineth in the plenitude of its meridian splendor its duration hath been fixed for a period of one whole month, which is the maximum time taken by the sun to pass through a sign of the Zodiac. From this thou canst imagine the magnitude of the Bahá’í cycle—a cycle that must extend over a period of at least five hundred thousand years.”
From the text of this explicit and authoritative interpretation of so ancient a prophecy it is evident how necessary it is for every faithful follower of the Faith to accept the divine origin and uphold the independent status of the Muḥammadan Dispensation. The validity of the Imamate is, moreover, implicitly recognized in these same passages—that divinely-appointed institution of whose most distinguished member the Báb Himself was a lineal descendant, and which continued for a period of no less than two hundred and sixty years to be the chosen recipient of the guidance of the Almighty and the repository of one of the two most precious legacies of Islám. ”
====
makes me wonder if the occult Hitler read about the progressive Baha’i belief.. A thousand year Reich with the respect of the precious legacy of Islam…
Kumbyah my butt..
Keith @57
OK. My basic issue is this. I am generally opposed to government provided health care, government provided anything really. BUT, I do think it is dangerous and somewhat lazy to rely on historical arguments regarding original intent, founding principles etc. As an historian, there is simply too much contradictary evidence and complexity to say with any certainty what the founders intended. For every argument made on one side I can find you another on the other side. (Hence the reference to the mariners health care system–it was a clumsy argument, I admit)
I am also somewhat concerned that some people have deified the founders. That smacks of everything we accuse Leftists off vis a vis creating a secular religion and making man god.
I am still working this all out. But ultimately, I believe the strength of opposition to Obama etc lies in making practical, sensible arguments.
I do not think that was any clearer. But I tried.
Cheers.
Van Grungy wrote:
”makes me wonder if the occult Hitler read about the progressive Baha’i belief.. A thousand year Reich with the respect of the precious legacy of Islam…
Kumbyah my butt..”
______________________________________________________________
Nay, Hitler was right about the III Reich, just that he wasn’t able to establish it. Others did, after Herr Hitler lost in his adventure. It’s called now the European Union. Look at the number of years from the first, second and the third Europe, or the Roman Empire, if you will.
Imagine if two equally powerful Communist factions anathematized each other and tried to purge each other. What happens then?
biruta,
I see Agenda 21 and I see EuroMed and I see ‘thriving’ islamic colonies…
The EU is forming their Reich as Hitler intended… with the ‘boost’ of the ideology that he wished had defeated Christianity in Europe… for example of this bent..
The Charles Martel Mosque was funded by Local Government support contrary to French Federal ‘Church’ State Separation Law…
http://durotrigan.blogspot.com/2010/08/charles-martel-turns-in-his-grave-as.html
Agenda 21 is the UN directive to municipalities to disregard the ‘less than Global’ rule of law to manifest a ‘sustainable future’..
Agenda 21 is a Baha’i construct directed by uber-Baha’i Maurice Strong..
muslims are simply a means to a better “New World Order”.. A “Greener” world order..
Christians stand in the way of the Progressive need to Supersede..
For the really apocalyptic, the world must be rid of Christians if the “Universal House of Justice” is to reign Supreme in the New World Order..
When I read about Prince Charles praising islam as the religion of the ‘environment’, I knew that those who feel they are above the ‘fray’ had decided to Progress Christians out of existence..
It’s not reasonable Atheists who are trying to bring about the end times.. It’s the undercurrent of a Universalism that is driving the injection of islam into every corner of the planet possible..
“Interfaith dialogue” is a Baha’i concept…
Ever wonder how it became such a prominent part of the Progressivist creed? So did I…
I used to love the Royals –but lately they have been giving me a definite set of the creeps.Prince Charles said just before Copenhagen that vthe world had two months to make a blah blah something or other major change of direction on climate, after which it would be too late, irreversible, past tipping point, eco-disaster would be certain and unavoidable.
Then Copenhagen failed, and he simply shrugged and went back into his palaces. Not a word about his coarse, rabble-rousing attempt to terrorize the children and the already hysterical into stampeding Copenhagen to adopt his shallow, ignorant but frightfully consequential nostrums for the proper sacrifical obedience to his magical mystery dogma.
Meanwhile, in ye olde City of London, the square mile heart of the anglosphere, on Ludgate Hill, highest point in London, nestled up close to St Paul’s Cathedral, the symbol of Britain’s finest hour, soul of the Anglican Church, and seat of the Bishop of London, sits the ornate, historical D’Arcy building, formerly home of deep scholarship study of the Bible, then later the corporate HQ of BP, which has recently with great fanfare sold, for half price, the prestige-radiant building and address to –the Church of Scientology –which happens also to have provided, in the form of Talon Security, run by a Blackwater ex, the beach isolation exclusion against the natives during BP’s oil spill. Blackwater in turn is heavily involved with protection of Monsanto (from PETA, sez Monsanto), the Soros –and Gates Foundation –heavy investment vehicle which owns the patents on 90% of the world’s seed genetic modification formulas, and which provided the lobbying push to pass the “Food Safety Bill” a few weeks ago –which contains the tools to pretty much create a nation of those ”little herbs” spoken of nearby. Watch your Cheerios, boys!
Pravda however is angry and fearful of the sinister concentration, which could possibly mean there’s nothing to fear from it after all, hmmm.
–the sheer fact of the increasingly tight and bunkered power concentrations, added to their being the permanent targets of infiltration by continually renewed waves of the top echelons of subversives aiming for corner offices in picked companies, is perhaps our major structural weakness –as we do not have the means to even define the threat, let alone figure out how to defend ourselves from them –heck we are their customers and workforce!
Alexis wrote:
”Imagine if two equally powerful Communist factions anathematized each other and tried to purge each other. What happens then?”
_______________________________________________________
Alexis, what a scary thought! But it looks like your question is not far from the very heretical idea, which some time ago would be an unimaginable scenario, but- really, was it?
How did this happen, Alexis?
OTOH- perhaps it already happened, didn’t it?
Dear Leader Mustache Joe and Serious Papa Adolf were sort of close friends at times, just that the language was different. Could it happen again? I think so, why wouln’t it?
Van Grungy wrote:
”I see Agenda 21 and I see EuroMed and I see ‘thriving’ islamic colonies…
The EU is forming their Reich as Hitler intended… with the ‘boost’ of the ideology that he wished had defeated Christianity in Europe… for example of this bent..”
_______________________________________________________
True, it is happening, now more obvious than ever.
And Prince Charles, as you and buddy larsen have pointed out, is a most painful example to observer, what and how really defeat and surrender looks like.
See the trouble you get with folks only marrying their (sometimes mad)cousins for several hundred years at a stretch:
A second wife that needs a burqa,
no chin,
a need to express strongly held views that no one else wants to hear (about modern architecture and organic food…)
Defenestration @ #69
Thanks for that.
quick question. Is compulsion of one occupation (when there is freedom to leave that occupation and seek another) qualitatively the same as compulsion accross all occupations?
I’m guessing that even by the short life expectancies of the day, a merchant seaman was more likely than most to meet an early end, leaving widow and orphans.
I’m not sure of the exact dates (I don’t have a copy of Arthur Raistrick’s “two centuries of industrial welfare”), but the quaker owned and run “London Lead Company” and its competitors in the English Pennine lead mining areas were early pioneers in superannuation for their worker’s and widow’s pensions.
- they also did other charming things like lock the gate to their company housing compounds at sunset to prevent their workers from visiting public houses.
That said, they were experts at tying workers too them, not only the golden handcuffs of pension, but “free” schooling, company housing and encouraging them to establish small farms.
The late Arthur Raistrick was a Quaker himself, so I’m not expecting to see either a balanced or a libertarian slanted analysis from him.
happy new year richarrd!
no one who desires MORE government support/welfare can correctly be called an anarchist.
the rioters in london and greece may call themselves that, but they are not anarchists.
they are leftists.
“Imagine if two equally powerful Communist factions anathematized each other and tried to purge each other. What happens then?”
as has been pointed out, Brother Stalin and Papa Adolf were excellent real life examples of this. I also remember a book about this topic, I think the factions involved were called Oceania and Eurasia.
an aside about the Bahai – I certainly am not one, but claiming that their beliefs are Islamic is quite unfair. No one has persecuted that religion more viciously than the Iranians, and I tend to think that anyone who upsets the Iranian Govm’t as much as they do has got to be doing something right.
69. Defenestration
No, I think your basic point was to call the Founding Fathers hypocrites, and you’re trying really hard.
So help me understand – do you consider each and every member of that Congress a founding father? And each and every one of them supported and voted for this act? and that therefore they are all hypocrites?
Because it wasn’t just the writers of the consittution who voted on that act.
Methinks you obscure to make a point.
FAIL.
Defenstration @ 69,
The commerce clause clearly allowed Congress to make laws governing trade between states. Sailors moving from port to port are either coming from foreign nations (clause 1 of the law) or from other states (the coasting reference in clause 2). No one disputes that Congress could, for example, compel everyone to pay a toll when moving from one state to the next since that is the essence of interstate commerce. What people do question is whether someone, sitting in their own state, can be compelled to buy a product that they do not want. Had the Supreme Court not issued that horrible decision in the Ohio wheat farmer case (a farmer growing wheat in Ohio to feed to his cows in Ohio affected interstate commerce because the price of wheat may be affected) we wouldn’t be having this debate.
“It is impossible to understand the politics of the Left without grasping that it is all about deniable intimidation.”
Indeed…
Add the fact that virtually everything the Left wants to deniably intimidate society into doing is contrary to human nature and/or demonstrably has failed before and will fail again, and you approach some sort of Grand Unified Theory of Western politics and maybe even the Western social order, ca. 2011. Half or more of the “involved, politically active” class fervently believes things that are wildly wrong, and is happy to resort to intimidation and force, themselves or by proxy, rather than learn from their failures. This seems to apply at many levels, from the individual idiot school administrator suspending a kid for a squirt gun all the way to the UN in almost all its works.
Not unlike Stalin in the Ukraine 1930-33, except as a matter of degree. Degree is importnat, but still, the pattern fits, eh?
“an aside about the Bahai – I certainly am not one, but claiming that their beliefs are Islamic is quite unfair. No one has persecuted that religion more viciously than the Iranians, and I tend to think that anyone who upsets the Iranian Govm’t as much as they do has got to be doing something right.”
=====
It’s not that they are doing something right, it’s that islam and bahai are competitors in the ‘global domination’ game..
As for the bahai and islam connection.. The connection is made by bahai themselves as the faith would not exist without islam to grow out of..
It can’t really get more direct than their own words and history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi
The Báb (Arabic: الباب / English: the Gate) claimed to be the Mahdi in 1844, thereby founding the religion of Bábism. He was later executed by firing squad in the town of Tabriz. His remains are currently kept in a tomb at the Bahá’í World Centre in Haifa, Israel. The Báb is considered the forerunner of Bahá’u'lláh (pronounced ba-haa-ol-laa / Arabic: بهاء الله / English: Glory of God), and both are considered prophets of the Bahá’í Faith. The declaration by the Báb to be the Mahdi is considered by Baha’is to be the beginning of the Bahá’í calendar.
The left ruin so many good words.
This is an anarchist. They are not anarchists.
“What exactly does a Worker’s Paradise look like?”
If people truly believed in communism the question wouldn’t have gone unasked since 1918. Intimidation is a clumsy substitute for vision.
The answer to the question is the Garden of Eden. Michael Crichton observed that the belief in AGW had everything in common with a religion, having a need to get back in grace with God … or Gaia in their case. I could take that idea and apply to all fanatical leftism.
Must be more of those big-government anarchists I’ve heard about.
“No one disputes that Congress could, for example, compel everyone to pay a toll when moving from one state to the next since that is the essence of interstate commerce.”
I do. The purpose of the commerce clause was to resolve the issues that had arisen under the Articles of Confederation which had led to the virtual suspension of the free movement of trade and goods between many states.
The overriding purpose of the commerce clause was therefore to facilitate that free movement and to give the Federal Government the power to ensure it stayed free not to give the Feds the very power to hinder the free trade amongst the states and citizens that the states had failed to protect.
Anarcho-Syndicalism
Proof that some people will get educated to the point where they can believe in anything, as long as it is made sufficiently complicated.
“What makes wage-slaves? Wages!”
- (Groucho) Marx
“We’ll make it up in volume.”
- Every idiot out there
And I meant to say, also, that this is a masterful essay, Richard. Of all the PJM’s contributors, you have the most penetrating eye when it comes to the Left. Keep up the good work.
Wretchard wrote:
“In fine anarchists are Red Guards of the European Left, a collection of dupes formed inside the vast and creaky infrastructure of Marxism to advance the interests of one faction against another faction. It is impossible to understand the politics of the Left without grasping that it is all about deniable intimidation.”
John Lennon wrote:
“You may say that I’m a dreamer
BUT I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE”
Deniable intimidation, indeed.
Happy New Year Belmont Club. Thanks for what you do Mr. Fernandez.
Speaking of intellectuals;
*
Katie Couric: ‘Maybe We Need a Muslim Version of The Cosby Show’
31. Point of order- Jewish males are and always have been circumcised when they are 8 days old.
V for Vendetta (2006) dramatized Wretchard’s argument http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434409/synopsis
The movie itself was a kind of “signal” to the Lefties. The “near future” the movie posits is to be understood as now, of course. We’re living in a totalitarian state and terrorism (anarchism) is justified. Lefty fanboy movie critics like Jeffrey Wells ate it up.
70. Please, Third Europe is no thousand-year empire; it will fall seven years after securing its status as the dominant superpower, making way for the real Thousand-Year Empire, ruled by Jesus Himself.
Let me recommend Conrad’s Under Western Eyes, perhaps the first modern novel squarely focused on the issue, and drama, of radical, anti-establishment political violence. Here it is the radical and the political police of the Tsar. There is much here to savor and meditate on. It is rather different than most of his work.
There is little new in this phenomena. So far as organized, politically radical violence in its current form goes, it was well established by the French Revolution.
What is new here is that it surges in the most liberal and prosperous societies the world has ever seen. This points to possibility that the ultimate motivator is nihilism and not merely a matter of collectivism. that it is perforce a spiritual crisis that finds its expression in political violence. That being said, the Establishment Political Left knows well how to use this sort of violence to its advantage.
It might be putting the cart before the horse to say that anarchists provoke in order to rebuke the Establishment Left.
Anarchists could well be their tool.
#23
This is more akin to apprenticeships. The training takes place all over. Mostly learning by doing with others who have more experience. As far as formal education a degree in sociology or law would be helpful along with many credits in the various “studies” that the left has set up everywhere.
How soon and where does the “right” counter the leftist activists and anarchists?
Will the new anarchist activity in Europe usher in a swing to the right and create a need by the commoner for safety and order, regardless of who/what provides the safety?
That phrasing, “a swing to the right and create a need by the commoner for safety and order” packs in a lot of hidden assumptions about what the meaning is of the term “Right”. Those assumptions may hold in Europe where the “Black” and the “Red” socialists still fight, but are only smears if used for the Right on this side of the pond. The Right here is not the Right of Europe though the Left is similar both places.
j/98; that’s what Glenn beck says –accounting thus for the fact it rises now under a proper radical president, rather than what one would expect: an effort to keep him popular in office, saving the riots for a conservative admin’s consternatilon and ruination.
Quite funny, its obvious that the author doesnt know the european anarchist scene. Most of them hate the communist left just as much as they hate the right.
The real reason for the upturn in bombings these days is that the use of torture against political prisoners in Italy and Greece has become much more intense the last couple of years. But hey, lets not mention cause and effect, eh? Much better to paint a picture of crazy red-guards…
Brian @ 88,
The problem with the Articles was that the various states could prevent commerce between the states. It was unclear whose rules would control, the Congess’s or the states’. The Constitution’s solution was to take the power of regulating commerce and to give Congress supremecy in this area.
67. Biruta “… but why oh why am I feeling so hopeless and sad?”
Thou art in need of a Capulina?
Because much that was good and noble and once part of who we, as a people are and were has been lost and is not likely to be regained.