BECOME SICK ALERT,
Posted on 05/31/2004 5:35:58 AM PDT by jslade
By Edward Feser
He had been something of a bohemian in his youth, and always regarded young people and their idealism as the key to progress and the overcoming of outmoded prejudices. And he was widely admired by the young people of his country, many of whom belonged to organizations devoted to practicing and propagating his teachings. He had a lifelong passion for music, art, and architecture, and was even something of a painter.
He rejected what he regarded as petty bourgeois moral hang-ups, and he and his girlfriend "lived together" for years. He counted a number of homosexuals as friends and collaborators, and took the view that a man's personal morals were none of his business; some scholars of his life believe that he himself may have been homosexual or bisexual.
He was ahead of his time where a number of contemporary progressive causes are concerned: he disliked smoking, regarding it as a serious danger to public health, and took steps to combat it; he was a vegetarian and animal lover; he enacted tough gun control laws; and he advocated euthanasia for the incurably ill.
He championed the rights of workers, regarded capitalist society as brutal and unjust, and sought a third way between communism and the free market. In this regard, he and his associates greatly admired the strong steps taken by President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to take large-scale economic decision-making out of private hands and put it into those of government planning agencies.
His aim was to institute a brand of socialism that avoided the inefficiencies that plagued the Soviet variety, and many former communists found his program highly congenial. He deplored the selfish individualism he took to be endemic to modern Western society, and wanted to replace it with an ethic of self-sacrifice: "As Christ proclaimed 'love one another'," he said, "so our call -- 'people's community,' 'public need before private greed,' 'communally-minded social consciousness' -- rings out! This call will echo throughout the world!"
The reference to Christ notwithstanding, he was not personally a Christian, regarding the Catholicism he was baptized into as an irrational superstition. In fact he admired Islam more than Christianity, and he and his policies were highly respected by many of the Muslims of his day. He and his associates had a special distaste for the Catholic Church and, given a choice, preferred modern liberalized Protestantism, taking the view that the best form of Christianity would be one that forsook the traditional other-worldly focus on personal salvation and accommodated itself to the requirements of a program for social justice to be implemented by the state.
They also considered the possibility that Christianity might eventually have to be abandoned altogether in favor of a return to paganism, a worldview many of them saw as more humane and truer to the heritage of their people. For he and his associates believed strongly that a people's ethnic and racial heritage was what mattered most. Some endorsed a kind of cultural relativism according to which what is true or false and right or wrong in some sense depends on one's ethnic worldview, and especially on what best promotes the well-being of one's ethnic group. Who was he? He certainly sounds like the ideal presidential candidate of a Pacifica Radio Network listener or Mother Jones subscriber -- or, to make a more timely reference, a contributor to MoveOn.org.
It can only add to his appeal for such people that he was a target of American and British bombing raids and had to flee to the safety of an underground hide-out.
Can you name this "progressive" politician?
Bump for Michael Kelly - I miss his voice.
Thanks for a great article.
Here's my take on the Dean and Gore screams. The conventional wisdom is that Dean and Gore are nut cases and ready for the straight jacket. I'm ok to some extent with that interpretation.
But consider the audiences in both cases. Dean's explanation ex post facto was that he was giving the audience "what it wanted". That the college kids working for him needed a little "red meat" after losing to Kerry in Iowa.
Little needs to be said about MoveOn.org. This outfit is essentially CPUSA.
Both Dean and Gore are experienced politicians.
So my take is draw the appropriate conclusions about the speakers and as I said, I can't argue the point. But my main point is what does this tell one about the *audiences*. The fact that two dem politicians have gone off the deep end in front of live audiences may have, in the end, more to say about the *audiences* then about the speakers. Politicians become successful by knowing their audiences and saying what the audiences want to hear. Perhaps Dean and Gore are merely holding up a mirror to the absolute nuttiness of huge wings of the democratic party.
When it was just Dean, it was easy to say that the guy lost it. Now you've got Gore doing the same thing. Is there a pattern here? I guess if it happens a third time we'll have to say that there is. But I think one really has to stop and think about just how crazed the dem in the street has become!
Not really -- those are just steps toward their real aim: their own personal power.
Roger that!
Did you ever see the Gore-Kazinski quiz? Side by side quotes from each of their books. The goal was to assign the correct authorship to each quote. Average score? 50%...
ECT is still used and often works well on those with uncontrollable rage not relieved by medications. Gore could be a candidate for this "therapeutic intervention".
bttt
The remnant communists (the media, academia, Move-On, etc.) are still extremely vicious and dangerous. It is amazing how they set the tone for the rats these days. It is also amazing how the communists are down to North Korea, Cuba, and the Democrat Party as power bases. Febble minded and/or psychotic losers like Gore make up a big cohort of the Move-On enemy.
Bump to MiaT
Bump
CLASSIC.
Love it!
That was Hitler, the role model for the elite left wing fascists in charge of the Rat Party.
Yes. Exactly the point I was trying to make. I feel it gets lost sometimes when the attention is focused on the psychosis of the messenger and tuned away from the audience.
It is also amazing how the communists are down to North Korea, Cuba, and the Democrat Party as power bases.
On paper, I guess this is true, but islamofascism is one threat which while, not exactly communism, might as well be for the danger it poses. Not to mention China, which is still communist despite loosening economic controls.
But more to the point, I think the Robin Hood idea that communism champions is an idea, that sadly, is never going to go away. Someone once mentioned that the Robin Hood myth, story, legend, is the most dangerous in the English tradition.
Academically and historically, it has been proven that free markets provide the greatest good for the greatest number.
However, it will always be the case that the have-nots will envy the haves. It is basic human nature going all the way back through history. When you couple this with the ability in a democracy for the have-nots to vote themselves a share of the treasury plus the geopolitical trend for the have-not societies to black mail the haves with nuclear weapons, immigration, political unrest, I would not (sadly) pronounce communism dead just yet.
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