Posted on 08/25/2007 9:37:52 AM PDT by Renfield
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There is surely no doubt that the man Feser describes sounds very much like a mainstream Leftist by current standards. But who is the man concerned? It is a historically accurate description of Adolf Hitler. Hitler was not only a socialist in his own day but he would even be a mainstream socialist in MOST ways today. Feser does not mention Hitler's antisemitism above, of course, but that too seems once again to have become mainstream among the Western-world Left in the early years of the 21st century. See here for more on that.
One way in which Hitler was unlike modern American Leftist political leaders, however, is that he was to a considerable extent a genuine man of culture. The photo below shows him in white tie and tails attending the Wagner opera festival at Bayreuth in 1939. There is no doubt of his real devotion to opera -- and indeed to classical music generally. Any claim that a devotion to high culture is especially virtuous does therefore tend to be undermined by Hitler's example -- if that is not too ad hominem.
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(Excerpt) Read more at jonjayray.tripod.com ...
Seems not long ago she stated her designs on oil company profits in a manner very close to it.
To All I want to say thanks for all the compelling posts. This is the most enjoyable thread I've read on FR in a while.
Like shooting fish in a barrel....
So much for revisionism.
Nice quote.
Here’s another, but I have not found the source:
“Communists are just liberals in a hurry.”
This was used by liberals who excused communism. What does it imply about liberals? Perhaps liberals are just communists with more patience?
But he got the trains to run on time.
That was Mussolini.
As the writer points out fractious disputes among the left are legion. The bolsheviks weren’t exactly all hearts and flowers to their rivals on the left either and further down the line Trotsky didn’t get a we miss you card from Stalin.
And built superhighways (like Algore), too!
That was Eisenhower.
Never mind that Joe Kennedy praised Nazi Germany...
What superhighways did Algore build?
Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism. -V.I. Lenin
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.-Karl Marx
The information super highway - the internet.
Hayek answers this best and definitively. The Road to Serfdom. Check it out.
Touche
Touche
You are mistaken in characterizing The South as the closest thing we have had to The Right had they won. The South were more akin to libertarians, they believed in states’ rights. The North created The Right. They forced the states to capitulate before a central government, with Lincoln playing the role of Bismarck.
You are apparently forgetting that little detail about 1/3 of the population held as chattel slaves. Not a form of libertarianism I’m familiar with, or care to support.
Had the South won, they would still be faced for the foreseeable future with a resentful North, preponderant in population and industry. Their only security would be to militarize to protect themselves.
I content that this would result in the the development of a more authoritarian society. Wars and military standoffs generally do, especially when they last for extended periods.
In addition, if one group of humans can be designated as not deserving of human rights, the denyng of which was the “Cornerstone” of the Confederacy, as announced in a famous and widely lauded speech by the VP of the Confederacy, why should the same principle not be extended to include other groups?
Excellent post.
Prediction: You won’t get much response to it. You make too much sense. No fun at all.
The chattel slaves were held in bondage by North and South for benefit of both. Northern bankers and industrialists held them in bondage as much as Southern plantation owners. Lincoln, himself would have left them in bondage if he could have held the nation together by doing so. There were few righteous people of either sector. The clothing mills of New England and Great Britain were sustained on the backs of slaves. If you are trying to attribute righteous or noble motives to the Northern war effort you are just plain wrong.
Not really. They seemed to plug along just fine after the war.
My point is that just cannot claim any society that holds 1/3 of its population in chattel bondage as some kind of proto-libertarian utopia.
The South started the War in response to what it saw, rightly or wrongly, as threats to its institution of slavery. This was universally recognized at the time, most notably in each state's Declaration of Secession. Claims that secession was motivted by states' rights, tariffs or other non-issues popped up only after the War, when defense of slavery was no longer a popular cause.
Were Lincoln and most northerners non-racists in today's terms? Of course not. But they opposed the expansion of slavery, without which southerners insisted they would leave the Union, as both sides thought that if slavery could not expand it was doomed.
Can't be according to Dictionary.com
fas·cist–noun 1. a person who believes in or sympathizes with fascism.
2. (often initial capital letter) a member of a fascist movement or party.
3. a person who is dictatorial or has extreme right-wing views.
Paging Ron Paul to the Fuhrer Fone! Ron Paul to the Fuhrer Fone! /sarc
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