Marco Rubio's Warped Worldview [Lib angry because he doesn't buy Global Warming]

The Atlantic ^ | 3/10/14 | PETER BEINART

[SoFloFreeper]

...After a laudable, but politically disastrous, bid last year to convince his fellow Republicans to support citizenship for illegal immigrants, he’s now trying a new route to 2016: Foreign policy....

Rubio simply has no idea what “totalitarian” means. “Totalitarian” is not a synonym for “dictatorship.” Dictatorial regimes seek to stamp out behavior that actively challenges the state. Totalitarian regimes seek to stamp out behavior that does not actively support the state. A totalitarian regime, explained Irving Howe, “tries to give the state total power over all areas of human life, to destroy civil society entirely, and to extend state ownership over all things and all people.” As Hannah Arendt put it, “If totalitarianism takes its own claim seriously, it must come to the point where it has ‘to finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess,’ that is, with the autonomous existence of any activity whatsoever.”

At their worst, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s U.S.S.R., and Mao’s China approached this nightmarish vision. Even the Soviet Union, Arendt argued, ceased being totalitarian in the mid-1950s when Nikita Khrushchev relaxed government control over artistic expression. A good test for whether a regime is totalitarian today is the music it permits. To be truly totalitarian, a regime must not only ban music that challenges its ideology. It must also ban music that ignores its ideology. On Rubio’s list, only North Korea comes close.

So why, in his speech, did Rubio repeatedly describe the regimes he dislikes as “totalitarian” rather than merely “dictatorial,” “tyrannical,” or “authoritarian”? My guess: because “totalitarian” sounds more menacing and because it evokes the Cold War, which allows Rubio to pose as Ronald Reagan’s heir.

But that wasn’t Rubio’s only gobsmacker. Less than a minute later, he declared that “the United Nations … cannot do anything.” Anything?

[SoFloFreeper]

So little Pete spends the bulk of his time whining about the valid points Marco makes in his CPAC speech.

Marco, he says, didn't know the true definition of "totalitarianism". Little Pete doesn't have family, I guess, who LIVED in Cuba.

Then Pete gets mad because Rubio doesn't praise the pathetic United Nations.

Frankly, my opinion is that Rubio is not ready to be a chief executive...he is better as a legislator. But this kind of sniping by liberal punks shows how the minds of so-called journalists today are warped in pettiness.

[Gene Eric]

The writer chides Rubio for not understanding something he finds necessary to explain in detail to his audience.

[Right Wing Assault]

Atlantic and Peter Beinart are anti-Hispanic racists. That’s the real reason they and the other “progressives” are against Rubio.

I just love to use their methods against them!

[Pollster1]

A totalitarian regime, explained Irving Howe, “tries to give the state total power over all areas of human life, to destroy civil society entirely, and to extend state ownership over all things and all people.”

So a totalitarian regime would, for example, tell people exactly what health insurance they had to have, what kind of oil to use and how much to use when cooking popcorn, and even how big a soft drink they could have. Got it.

[nathanbedford]

The writer chides Rubio for not understanding something he finds necessary to explain in detail to his audience.

Peter Beinart has ink and time enough to explain in detail the definitions of totalitarian as opposed to dictatorial and other statist regimes but little time or ink to spare to tell us what Senator Rubio's speech was actually about. Why?

Why does the author assume this shopworn snarkiness of the left in which the intellectual acumen of the conservative victim is disparaged? Are we really supposed to believe that had Rubio conformed to the author's definitional preferences he would have lauded the speech? Put another way, how to the left react to the words of John F. Kennedy (or rather the words of his speech writer) when he resorted to an inversion, "ask not what you can do for your country…"? Ask yourself how the left would have pilloried the artificiality and grandiosity of the formulation had it been uttered by a conservative.

Because the article is not designed to explore the virtues or the deficiencies of Marco Rubio's point of view in foreign affairs, it is first designed to destroy Marco Rubio as a viable presidential candidate. While I feel that Marco Rubio has disqualified himself from my support because of his position on immigration-not surprisingly the only favorable mention of Rubio the author can muster-I am prepared to support his foreign policy views as he articulated them in the speech and I would welcome a debate on the point of the speech.

The point of the speech was not to disparage the UN, although that is more than justified, nor did the speech even attempt to relitigate the Iraq war, as the author seems to imply, the point of the speech was to point out the fecklessness of Barack Obama's foreign policy.

Peter Beinart does not want to defend Obama's indefensible record abroad, he wants to kill the messenger. He wants to avoid that debate.

He accuses Marco Rubio of attempting to mislead his listeners by choosing the word "totalitarian" as opposed to "dictatorial" as though a mortal sin has just been committed during a political speech to a gathering of political activists but it is Peter Beinart himself who deceives and, worse, attempts to choke off reasoned debate with these tactics. He tells his base that they can be secure in their intellectual arrogance, they need not explore the analysis of Senator Marco Rubio speech on its merits, because he misspelled the word "potato."

[Adder]

Dictatorial regimes seek to stamp out behavior that actively challenges the state. Totalitarian regimes seek to stamp out behavior that does not actively support the state.

Oh ok...I see the vast difference....So the US is merely dictatorial under this meathead Kenyan and his insane clown posse....

[GOPJ]

A good test for whether a regime is totalitarian today is the music it permits. To be truly totalitarian, a regime must not only ban music that challenges its ideology. It must also ban music that ignores its ideology.

Peter Beinart's an elite democrat true believer idiot.

Totalitarian control freaks want to control the food we eat, the air we breath, the education our children receive, when people die, news they read, beliefs they hold... in short - very much like democrat nanny staters on speed.

And no, it's NOT choosing voluntarily NOT to buy Dixie Chicks CD's. BEINART's a fool.

[HiTech RedNeck]

There would be no need for dictating “music” if they can wheedle the media/entertainment world into pretty well doing what they want.

There’s a conspiracy here but it is not human. It’s demonic.

The only way to cut through it is to call upon the divine. And that’s probably only going to happen when the evil can’t be ignored anymore.

[alloysteel]

“Dictatorial regimes seek to stamp out behavior that actively challenges the state. Totalitarian regimes seek to stamp out behavior that does not actively support the state.”

Perhaps the most circular of statements. What difference, at this point, does it make?

A contrast drawn without any distinguishing characteristic. Who is not with me is against me.

Or do I miss some nuance here?

[MNnice]

It should be obvious to everyone that this writer’s opinion of Rubio is racist.

[outpostinmass2]

It is only a difference in academic circles. The type of point a liberal educator makes to appear smarter than the opposition until you actually read what he says.

All dictators have totalitarian tendencies. I'm sure this same “writer” has corrected liberals when they use overreaching definitions of conservative policies.