Posted on 08/05/2005 12:06:43 AM PDT by F14 Pilot
The SS was not a collection of street toughs, or brawlers like the SA. It was an elite group dedicated to Hitler while the SA were socialistic ex-soldiers devoted to Ernst Rohm. When it came time to deal with Rohm and the SA the SS were the ones who pulled the triggers.
The SS was modeled on the Jesuits in terms of organization and indoctrination. It is interesting that Hitler never wore the black shirt but always the brown uniform of the SA even after the Night of the Long Knives.
Wow, what a great experience that was! Some guys have all the luck.
Hitchens has the islamofascist terrorists down pat ~ Bump!
Hitchens is probably used to thinking of leftists as hard-thinking, soft-talking democratic socialists in cuddly sweaters with leather elbow-patches, thick wire-rimmed glasses and Birkenstocks.
He's right that the hard left came out against the war in Afghanistan. In my home town, a university professor who's a superannuated Mobe/SDS type and some of his little Leninist playmates had a street demonstration all ready to go with "stop-the-war" chants and signs that looked like they'd been in a closet since 1969. They started their demonstrations as soon as the bombs began to fall in Afghanistan.
Second point: Hitchens needs to recognize that his little socialist friends in Vietnam didn't go anywhere beyond Phnom Penh (to overthrow the Chinese-backed sweethearts of the Khmer Rouge, the rabid bats of the Leftist world) because our Vietnam veterans had eviscerated them. We killed a million of their cadres on the battlefield and in their trenches before Khe Sanh. We slaughtered their tank columns when the NVA divisions finally came out to fight classic Soviet blitzkrieg warfare in 1972. We gutted the Viet Cong's best units in 1968, during Tet, turning them into a shadow-puppet sideshow. We flat-ass ruined them, north and south. And Bangkok, Singapore, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur are all non-Communist because of what our veterans did in Vietnam. We lost three countries, but we guaranteed that six more would never be f____ with. It's why Malaysia's flag looks like ours -- it ain't red, Fred.
Hitchens makes an interesting point that I've seen elsewhere, that the neo-cons are ex-Trotskyites and to a large extent neo-Marxist. In the Middle East, their agenda happens to run parallel to that of National Greatness Republicanism, which is the Bush-McCain brand, and opposed to the paleocons' adhesion to George Washington's advice on foreign policy. Washington was a Federalist, and McKinley and Roosevelt (Teddy) were heirs to the Federalist legacy as Republicans; but they'd also realized that coal-burning warships could put strong forces on our coasts in a week's sailing from European ports, and had changed from Washington's policy of non-involvement to the Mahan Doctrine of forward engagement.
Or as Hitchens puts it, you can fight them now, or you can fight them later -- when they come to see you. Forward engagement, which is a non-Marxist, non-Leftist doctrine, says the same thing: if there are going to be unpleasantries, engage the enemy far out to sea, with the Navy as your long arm and the Marine Corps as your power-projection arm, your mailed fist. Engage the enemy as Grenville did at Seville, before the Armada was ready for sea. Engage the enemy before he is ready to engage. That doctrine has been fundamental U.S. military and foreign policy since World War II.
Hitchens is certainly smart enough to realize that the American left's greed-induced hatred of capitalism and its self-loathing guilt at being American are the factors that trump everything else. In any event, Hitchens certainly does not fit that mold, not at all. One thing Hitchens is NOT is a humorless malcontent.
By the way: Engage the enemy before he is ready to engage. That doctrine has been fundamental U.S. military and foreign policy since World War II.
So then I take it that you disagree with Bill Mahr who said, "When the terrorists actually nuke New York City, then we should go after them militarily."
What you say about the SA and SS is true -- I didn't know about the Jesuit influence -- but the doctrine was nothing the Jesuits would sign off on. Himmler was an odd duck, and although he insisted that all SS men be "gottglaeubig", vis, "believers in God," it was actually up in the air what god he was talking about. The spooky midnight solemnities at the tomb of Friedrich Barbarossa, the SS-Ahnenerben mumbo-jumbo about Bronze Age Aryans mixed in with medieval chivalry -- men in 13th-century armor decorated with Indo-Aryan swastikas -- made it more than a little doubtful whether he was talking about the God of Abraham.
In practice, Nazism was hostile to real Christianity, even as it battened on Christian virtues and civilization, and if you ever visited europa.com, a neo-Nazi site, you'd see that expressions of waspish hostility toward Christian symbols are common.
save
As Hitchens makes clear whenever anyone does it on air, he hates -- really hates -- being addressed as "Chris".
A very informative post. Thanks...
Well, Phil Hendrie put it very much like Christopher Hitchens. The left claims they are against fascists, dicatators, religious zealots, bigots, and sexists. So here you have Islamo-fascists meeting every criteria and the left is sitting in a cafe, hating America.
Honest people will disagree, but the mot that William F. Buckley likes to quote (wish I could remember who said it) is worth remembering, that "the problem with capitalism is capitalists, but the problem with socialism is socialism." Hitchens seems to understand that, without giving up the point that (as recent trials have shown) the problem with capitalism is capitalists -- a point made about 250 years ago by Adam Smith.
With capitalism, you always need plenty of honest policemen. Of course, the capitalists you are trying to police (like Leona Helmsley with her famous saying: "Paying taxes is for little people!") will try to buy off the police, so you have to be really cool, really tough, and really alert to the sound of bribes hitting a desk somewhere. About eight years ago, Bo Pilgrim, the chicken tycoon, was videotaped from the gallery strolling around the floor of the Texas senate while it was in session, handing out envelopes with serious money in them, as a "thank-you" to helpful senators who'd just voted him a piece of custom-fit legislation. When the video hit the 10 O'Clock News, the embarrassed senators gave the envelopes back -- but Pilgrim never went to prison or even, so far as I know, had to answer any awkward questions.
Business isn't inherently moral; the values of the marketplace are pre-Judaeo-Christian and are often in conflict with society's ideas about civic conduct. Corporate governance, monopoly, oligopoly and oligopsony, tax evasion, and the drive to dominate competitors, suppliers, employees, and customers will always be a problem with private businesses -- a problem that grows exponentially with the size of the enterprises being policed and their ability to evade, forestall, compromise, and defeat the watchdog agencies charged with their oversight.
Bono may be honest, however he is an idiot imo.
If someone declares you his sworn blood-enemy, it isn't necessarily incumbent on you to pay him a visit until he starts messing with you, which I think has been our rule. But when he does, the gloves should come off right away. The idea that declaring you to be anyone's sworn blood enemy should become an unpopular idea.
Thanks.
Pretty telling, isn't it?
And, of course, the brazen shakedown of private businesses by politicians becomes a problem that grows exponentially with the size of government.
By the way, re: your story about Bo Pilgrim. Years ago I remember listening to a radio interview with Gore Vidal who said that his father was a bagman for LBJ - - said he routinely delivered brown paper bags full of cash right to the the man's desk.
bump!
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