I am reading a short but promising book by Stephen Schwartz. Schwartz has two features that
caused him to be an ex-Communist. Schwartz has a razor sharp mind and thinks for himself. This would render him distinctly out of place in a room full of Communist hacks reapeating stupid slogans and marching like lemmings off realities cliff. Shwartz also posses a good soul, with a vastly under rated sense of humor. This also makes him ill suited to sit in a room with souless Communist hacks plotting the next act of class genocide and insicerely feigning noble motives as people die for a failed utopian pipe dream.
When we think of Stephen Schwartz the writer he is a unique talent. One should read his excellent book on the artistic and political culture from East to West.
This book focuses on Stalinist assassins, Trostskyites merely lacked the power and numbers to have their own assassinations. The correct annalogy for Trotskyites is the mafia. Troskyites aspire to be Stalinists and have their own bloodshed when given the chance. They are just less competant mafia goons depite their protestations.
Make America a better place send the Duck to Gitmo...Beamish in 08
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Pity that the present On Faith forum ("Muslims Speak Out") hasn't included Stephen Schwartz.
I wonder if he knows about the forum, which runs through July 27. My comments and questions are, so far, getting posted.
Perhaps you could notify him. Link
Actually Trotskyites advocated perpetual revolution much like our neocon brethren.
Neocon and likud filth are a lot closer to Trotsky than today's left.
Schwartz is just another neocon court jester, who after the fall of the Soviet Union decided to get all gilded age on us -- yeah back to the time before unions and the FDA, no consumerism, everything caveat emptor! Market rooolz alles! The only reason they ever went along with the 20th century reforms was because they were sore afraid of communism -- they had to get immunized against it.
Interesting, though, that they still haven't absorbed the basic ideas of the enlightenment (not unlike, say Hegel and the Marxists like Lenin, though not Marx himself), i.e. that the engine of cultural change is in the dispersed atomistic relationships of individuals, from the bottom up, not from the top down. Thus, communism for them had to be fought between states (not on the cultural/individual level, which was actually more effective and smarter). Thus also militant islamic terrorism, could not be a movement (Al-Qaeda == "the movement") from the folk, but had to be top-down engineered by states (ahem ... but not Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, oh NO!), and required a state response, instead of, you know, a strategy that might actually work.
So instead of planning for freedom, allowing state structure to be developed which maximize the individual's mobility and freedom of action, they believe as conservatives have always believed, that the people are a herd that has to be controlled. For its own good, you understand.
So instead of planning for freedom, allowing state structure to be developed which maximize the individual's mobility and freedom of action, they believe as conservatives have always believed, that the people are a herd that has to be controlled. For its own good, you understand.
Now I understand Ducky's perspective on the right and it's similarity to my perspective on the left. And why I feel like I'm talking to a shoe when I debate Ducky.
Ducky's been standing on his head the whole time, insisting the sky is green and full of grass.
Conservatives believe people are a herd?
That's simply upside down. Ass-backwards.
Debated me? When have you ever managed to move beyond the "Hitler was a leftist" juvenalia worthy of Freerupublic and your denial that the resistance in Iraq slapped our face?
Stop wasting my time with fallacies of presumption, Ducky. You don't have to provide an example of incoherent, irrational thought processes every time you post. We believed you were a leftist the first time you said so, even without the prerequisite anti-Semitism. Let's move on.
Leftist rhetoric always speaks of "collectives" and "the people's this" and "the people's that" and always manages to herd into "gulags" and "mental hospitals" and "labor camps" those contrarian elements that don't respond approvingly to the "volksgaskammer."
So instead of planning for freedom, allowing state structure to be developed which maximize the individual's mobility and freedom of action, they believe as conservatives have always believed, that the people are a herd that has to be controlled. For its own good, you understand.
This is offensively backwards. It is leftists, from Robespierre's Committees of Public Safety to Hitler's Waffen-Schutzstaffel and beyond, that have "always believed that the people are a herd that has to be controlled." And you know it, Nazi.
Ah, Beamish ... an unfortunate demonstration of the fate of the conservative movement. The idea of conservatism is a simple set of principles, and not a very long or complex set of them, either. Goldwater and Buckley started elaborating them back in the 50's, and this grew into the conservative "movement". And that movement welcomed in all kinds of fellow travelers.
The problem with that arose because conservatism actually has a rather limited and long term payoff for the bulk of the people. IOW, while many people will say "smaller govt is better" and "lower taxes will benefit all of us in the long run", in fact, they also realize that payoff is going to be pretty long term. The liberal principle of "tax the wealthy to benefit everyone" has a much more immediate payoff, and most of the "damage" done by higher taxes is actually confined to a few of the uber wealthy, the rest of us get back a reasonable worth for our dollar, so we don't have many complaints. Now, arguments about savings and capital formation can be made but not by Beamish.
Therefore, true conservatives couldn't win elections very often. Goldwater never held much real power, and few people ever thought he would.
So the conservative movement began to sacrifice it's guiding principles in the interest of winning elections. But a political movement without principles shortly becomes a political movement that welcomes anyone and anything.
The natural result of that was to soon concentrate in the "new" conservatives EVERY SINGLE NEUROSIS OF THE BODY POLITIC IN THE USA.
All of them. Whether you have the "I must control what my neighbor is doing" neurosis, or the "I fear people who aren't like me" neurosis or the "others are getting more than me" neurosis, you could find all your fellow travelers in the "new conservatives".
And neurotic people tend to believe in black and white as the only moral shades, they have strange fears and beliefs, and they are often very charismatic as they try to persuade you that they have only your best interests at heart.
And that's why so many of the new conservatives hate the founders of the conservative movement, because they've moved past all those principles and simply want to do things their way. Because, in the end, neurotics want control over everyone and everything and that's what this jolly crew almost obtained.
This ship was full of neurotics feeding off each others neuroses, and that's the long and short of it.
OF COURSE they have violent solutions to everything, they are all neurotic
OF COURSE they all have harsh parents and so on. WTF did you think breeds neurotics in the first place?
OF COURSE they are mostly fanatics, that's a pretty good sign of neurosis in itself!
And that's the story. When the cons threw over their principles, they invited every nut in the country to come on in and help steer the boat. And they did and now we see the result.
Yes, the result is that the most conservative news network in America is also the most watched. The most popular talk radio shows are conservative. The political bloggers with the greatest following tend conservative / libertarian right.
The result is that those people who are the most informed in political matters in America are conservative in outlook.
Neurotic? Ever seen what the 13 year olds are doing to your side of the blogosphere? Multiply John Brown's sock puppet show by a thousand and you've got "Democratic Underground" or Daily Kos on Hug a Hezbollah Fridays.
So the conservative movement began to sacrifice it's guiding principles in the interest of winning elections.
Yeah, Jimmy Carter was a sure hard act to follow.
:rolls eyes::
Whether you have the "I must control what my neighbor is doing" neurosis,
It's Democrats and progressive health activists following leftist Nazi Germany's passivrauchen propaganda to stamp out smoking in public places around here.
or the "I fear people who aren't like me" neurosis
Which is why when push came to shove in getting in each other's faces to brainstorm and intellectualize an opposition line to counter George Bush, the left instead drew chimpanzee and Hitler caricatures and wonder why he's re-elected President?
or the "others are getting more than me" neurosis,
Money? Or sex? I'm afraid the "getting laid" entitlement will come after the "gay marriage" entitlement.
Which, by the way, ain't conservative.
you could find all your fellow travelers in the "new conservatives".
Let's see if I can follow this shell game.
Trotskyites = Conservatives?
Ass-backwards.
I'm almost tempted to smell Ducky's breath to see if he brushed with Preparation H.
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