The Last Defender of the American Republic?

LA Weekly ^ | July 5, 2002 | julMarc Cooper

[bloggerjohn]

Like Vidal, I'm a small-government Jeffersonian Republican. I don't agree with the current expansion of our government nor our many overseas adventures either.

And for G-d's sake, why are we contemplating invading Iraq when it was Saudi money, men and religion that bombed the WTC? Start there.

[ECM]

Now THAT'S hyperbole.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

And for G-d's sake, why are we contemplating invading Iraq when it was Saudi money, men and religion that bombed the WTC?

Because Islam is a religion of peace. Even though 90%+ of Islamists approve of the September 11th atrocity against America. And even though Islam was founded by a demon-possessed, mass-murdering pedophile. And even though the goal of most Islamists is to kill anyone who is not.

But if that were not the case, we could start with the center of the universe, the Ka 'ba in the heart of downtown Medina.

[Restorer]

Truly bizarre.

First he says that the Afghans had nothing to do with the attacks.

Then that the attacks were a warning to us not to invade Afghanistan.

Big companies had a deal with the Taliban, so they decided to invade their business partners. Wouldn't it have been a lot cheaper to just follow thru on the deal?

I especially liked the part about us installing the Taliban at the time of the Russian occupation. The Taliban didn't exist till years after the Russkies pulled out.

[Restorer]

The Ka'aba is in Mecca, not Medina.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Gore Vidal, "The Last Defender of the American Republic"?

lolololololololololololololololololololololololololololol

[ohioman]

I though Gore Vidal was food for worms?

[Shermy]

"And for G-d's sake, why are we contemplating invading Iraq when it was Saudi money, men and religion that bombed the WTC? Start there."

OK. Why do the two have to be connected?

Interesting article on govt., domestically. Otherwise lety drivel looking ever more incompetent, missing facts, wrong in many places, e.g., "Caspian" "Oil" "aid". Despite 9/11, this article shows that Vidal is maintaining an anti-American narrative. The interviewer invites him with the question about "other evils" to acknowledge that other people have interests and motives that are not merely responsive to alleged American evils. He deflects in standard lefty ways, avoiding religion, avoiding motives, centering on "Osama" and not the beliefs of the organization. "Guatamala" didn't bomb us, but this is a standard liberal-left deflection - reciting lefty hangups in order to seem "intelligent" while avoiding analysis of teh present crisis.

In fact, I'm surprised Vidal is actively deflecting these issues - it's like active disinfo. He's agendized despite his protests otherwise. I guess the America as the center of all evil is too ingrained into the lefty identity to give up. European papers? He's just reading narrow lefty garbage that makes him feel good. Seems the invocation of the word "Unocal" is cathartic for them. One can learn more facts about Qaida in USA Today.

BTW, this interviewer got Robert Fisk to say in this small California newspaper that Arafat was a "very immoral man." Not something Fisk tells his audience in those esteemed Western European papers.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

thanks

[First_Salute]

Jefferson was a "meddler" and promoted U.S. land grabs of North American Indians' territories. It was his bright idea to establish outposts and associated forts on the frontier, to loan goods to Indians, who, when the hunting season was not good, had to give up "title" to their lands which had been used as collateral for the loan of goods (which were usually tools and such requirements for the hunting season).

Earlier on, during George Washington's second term in office, Jefferson's followers were ardently in support of the French Revolution --- cheered the massacres of French culture --- participated in covert aid to the French Navy at sea, and generally violated the neutrality Proclamation prohibiting such acts.

[Shermy]

Bump!

[First_Salute]

Hate America First, by Gore Vidal:

I was in Guatemala when the CIA was preparing its attack on the Arbenz government [in 1954]. Arbenz, who was a democratically elected president, mildly socialist. His state had no revenues; its biggest income maker was United Fruit Company. So Arbenz put the tiniest of taxes on bananas, and Henry Cabot Lodge got up in the Senate and said the Communists have taken over Guatemala and we must act. He got to Eisenhower, who sent in the CIA, and they overthrew the government. We installed a military dictator, and there's been nothing but bloodshed ever since.

This event was the watershed for nearly every subsequent protest by the leftist liberals in the Americas (including the U.S.) and was pointed to over and over as the great evil of American patriotism; it has been thrown around every program of socialist interest on college campuses ever since; it is popular among the left-winger-weenies as the calling card or ID card of the politically correct's assertion that the United States of America is the enemy to be hated.

I may strongly disagree with even more such "businesses practices" than has Mr. Vidal, but his ill will toward Americans trying to defend themselves against the ultra-coercions of the nationalizing socialism(s) which he and his followers have favored, has constantly overlooked that very horror, such as this, which we still struggle against --- what the leftists have manifested; see: The U.S. case against the court (ICC) is bogus on its face., Minneapolis Star-Tribune, July 2, 2002, by editorial staff (posted by wallcrawlr). My reply there:

Why is there no mention of the truly large atrocities committed by the extreme left-wing in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune?

Will Castro and the communists of Cuba be arrested?

Will the communists of Southeast Asia be arrested?

Will the communists of Asia be arrested?

Heart of darkness: Cambodia's Killing Fields

 August 8, 2001 [CNN online]

By CNN's Joe Havely

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The fields of Choeung Ek on the outskirts of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, carry a dark secret.

Across the baked earth scraps of cloth and human bone poke through the soil and are slowly bleached white by the harsh tropical sun.

In the center stands a glass-walled shrine containing more than 8,000 skulls -- the remains of just a few of those who died here.

These are the Killing Fields of Cambodia.

Here, just a few kilometers from the center of Phnom Penh, tens of thousands of people met their deaths -- entire families wiped out.

Many of those killed were intellectuals or trained professionals -- people considered counter-revolutionaries by the Khmer Rouge leadership bent on turning Cambodia into a [communist, socialist, leftist, fascist] peasant's paradise. (In " [ ] " --- mine, F_S)

Towards the end of its rule, as the regime became increasingly paranoid and turned on itself, many once senior Khmer Rouge cadres also met their end at Choeung Ek.

Men, women and children -- some just a few months old -- were killed here, often in the most violent and brutal ways.

With bullets in short supply, the condemned were forced to kneel before an open grave then stabbed through the head with a sharpened bamboo stake ...

Reign of terror

The fields of Choeung Ek contain more than 100 mass graves

In the corner of the field stands a tree ...

Against its trunk the heads of babies were smashed by young men brainwashed into believing their actions would free Cambodia from colonial imperialism ...

Reuters contributed to this report.

[dighton]

Gore Vidal, "The Last Defender of the American Republic"?

lolololololololololololololololololololololololololololol

Worth repeating.

[First_Salute]

Bump - R'14.

[afraidfortherepublic]

What tripe!

[joanie-f]

Thank you, as always, for your insight and eloquence here.

The hallmark of the true communist/socialist: the atrocities they perpetrate are invariably perpetrated in the name of purifying society.

The hallmark of the communist/socialist apologist (of the Vidal ilk): they justify the atrocities, while crucifying America for her much less egregious ‘faults’.

In order for said purification to occur, one set of men must determine the definition of pure, and impose its definition on others. And, invariably, the other (less deserving of a voice) set of men (women/children) generally wind up sacrificing their individual lives and liberties (and usually many of both) in order for the men bent on purification to achieve their self-made definition of a pure society. It all boils down to the imposition of one’s set of beliefs on others. And it is the others who do all the sacrificing, while the self-proclaimed leftist gods merely dictate the terms, and then summon their apologists to provide the justification. Is there anything more arrogant?

In the name of radical Maoism, and voicing the desire to turn Cambodia into an agrarian utopia, all Pol Pot ever claimed he was doing was creating a ‘pure’ communist society. His altruism simply appeared to be atrocious to those who didn’t comprehend his noble aims.

....who can ever fathom the evil that men do? We stand disbelieving before genocide, when women's throats are slit with sharp palm leaves, when children's heads are smashed against tree trunks, when men are slaughtered with the crack of a hoe. These things happened every day in Cambodia for 3 1/2 terrible years, and when the world learned of it, people could only respond with dumb horror....[Pol Pot] never admitting his appalling conduct, never regretting the countless executions, the million more dead of starvation and overwork, the living population maimed in body or mind, the entire country reduced to Stone Age survival....Terry McCarthy, in 'The Butcher of Cambodia'

Vidal, while not necessarily cut from the same cloth as the Pol Pots of this world, is cut from the socialist apologist cloth….and the former could not continue to propagate without the support of the latter. America is a breeding ground for socialist apologists…. those who choose to ignore the genuine man-on-man atrocities that occur in this world, and who, instead, choose to denigrate every potentially questionable action that America has ever taken (her treatment of the American Indian, her acceptance of the institution of slavery….) and paint it as evidence that America is, and always has been, the source of evil in the world.

It is interesting that perhaps the most imperialist, tyrannical, sovereignty-destroying actions ever perpetrated by America occurred during the reign of a socialist/socialist apologist President. And those useful idiots, like Vidal, who are ever ready to point the critical imperialist finger at America, somehow turned a blind eye.

There were those (in Haiti, Bosnia, Somalia…) who were deafened by the apologists’ uncharacteristic silence.

[First_Salute]

The "purification" which you ably identify, explains some of the phenomenon of New England's, but particularly the State of Massachusetts' peoples who are seemingly inexplicable, conservative in personal tastes but leftist-hell-bent ... they suffer the residue of puritanism, where purification runs amok and corrupt.

[BlackElk]

Until you pointed out the part about Vidal being a fine stylist, I had been contemplating that he was Justin Raimondo in disguise, by virtue of social habits and ideology but no one would ever praise Raimondo's style.