Everything old is new again: Raymond Aron and other intellectuals of the anti-Left
Perhaps many of you have heard of writer Raymond Aron before, but I hadn’t until I picked up a collection of essays by Roger Kimball published in 2002 and entitled Lives of the Mind.
Aron was the author of a book published in 1955 in France with the fascinating (to me, at least) title The Opium of the Intellectuals. According to Kimball, it was “a sensation” when it first came out in this country in translation in 1957. Although Kimball seems to assume his readership is at least familiar with Aron and his work, I think he’s giving most of us too much credit. But now I’ve put it on my lengthy “must read” list, because of Kimball’s description:
Aron’s subject is the bewitchment—the moral and intellectual disordering—that comes with adherence to certain ideologies. Why is it, he wondered, that certain intellectuals are “merciless towards the failings of the democracies but ready to tolerate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines? Aron’s title is an inversion of Marx’s contemptuous remark that religion is “the opium of the people.” He quotes Simone Weil’s sly reversal of the epigraph, “Marxism is undoubtedly a religion. in the lowest sense of the word…[I]t has been continually used…as an opiate for the people.” In fact—and fortunately—Weil got it only partly right. Marxism and kindred forms of thought never really became the people’s narcotic. But they certainly became—and in essentials they still are—the drug of choice for the group that Aron anatomized: the intellectuals.
Aron was another “changer.” According to Kimball, he went from being a declared socialist to an important critic of the Left, although he never identified himself as a man of the Right. An intellectual, he was not an elitist, but “above all a spokesman for that rarest form of idealism, the idealism of common sense.” Aron also believed in the Enlightenment value of the power of reason, but recognized “that reason’s power is always limited.”
Here’s the part of Kimballs’ essay that spoke to me the most:
Aron’s generosity of spirit was a coefficient of his recognition that reality was complex, knowledge limited, and action essential. Aron, Shils wrote, “very early came to know the sterile vanity of moral denunciations and lofty proclamations, of demands for perfection and of the assessment of existing situations according to the standards of perfection.” As Aron himself wrote in Opium, “every known regime is blameworthy if one relates it to an abstract ideal of equality or liberty.”…Aron understood that political wisdom rests in the ability to choose the better course of action even when the best course is unavailable—which is always.
There’s more, much more. But that will have to do for now. It struck me as I read those words, based on a work written over a half-century ago, that certain truths are spoken over and over but are rarely heard, because the falsehoods they critique are so continually seductive. Apparently, these things must be discovered over and over again by generation after generation, and are always in danger of being lost.
An idea similar to this one of Aron’s has come up on this blog many times, particularly when discussing the “torture” allegations connected with the Iraq war or the US’s decision during WWII to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima. For example, I titled this post about the latter issue “Choices among crazinesses,” a phrase based on a quote from Lord Mountbatten, who said about Hiroshima that war requires choices among crazinesses:
“It would seem even more crazy,” he went on, “if we were to have more casualties on our side to save the Japanese”¦”
So the more things change the more they remain the same. Why do we keep having to relearn these things? Why does a truth so obvious remain difficult to take in and to understand? Part of the answer lies in the growing intellectualism of Western society. If the intellectuals have their own opium (Leftism itself), then the spread of higher education—although laudable in many other ways—causes the wider dissemination of idealistic and at the same time naive and selectively perfectionist thinking.
Books such as Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, which detailed the pervasiveness of this sort of thinking in American universities back in the 80s, are companion pieces to Aron’s work. It should come as no surprise to learn that Bloom was an admirer of Aron; according to Kimball he described Aron as “the man who for fifty years…had been right about the political alternatives actually available to us.” Both Bloom and Aron’s books are further augmented by Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed, which explores some of the same themes.
Sowell has also heard of Aron, of that you can be certain. Sowell says as much, in an article about Left/Right attitudes towards the poor, written in 2000 but every bit as relevant (if not more so) today:
Most of the leading opponents of the left, in the United States and around the world, began on the left. These include Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman and the whole neo-conservative movement, as well as Raymond Aron in France and Friedrich Hayek in Austria. There is no comparable exodus from the right to the left.
Sowell goes on to say—and remember, this was written nine years ago:
For those of us whose main concern is the well-being of ordinary people, it is a no-brainer to abandon the left as soon as we acquire enough knowledge about what actually happens, as distinguished from what leftist theories say will happen.
It is a very different story for those on the left whose goal is either a self-righteous sense of superiority or the political power with which to express their self-infatuation by imposing their vision on others. Here the poor are a means to an end. These kinds of leftists show remarkably little interest in the creation of wealth, which has raised living standards for the poor, as compared to their obsession with redistribution, which has not.
‘Nuff said. Except, it turns out it’s not enough said, since these points have been made over and over and over, and yet look at where we are today. If the words of that last paragraph don’t apply almost perfectly (I added the “almost” in deference to Aron’s observations about the perils of perfection) to the current administration and its Democratic allies in Congress, I don’t know what does.
A positive result is that in the absence of institutional and genetic knowledge, mankind is free to innovate and do things over again, with gradual and incremental improvements.
Of course, it can also devolve and ‘progress’ the other way.
Perhaps the Left, in recognizing the problems with human free will, will eliminate free will with a systemic order and template. They will get rid of chaos and instill the order of peace, their order.
A friend gave me Aron’s The Dawn of Universal History while I was in the middle of my “change” and I read it through twice. It is shocking to remember that Aron was writing fifty years ago.
A big thumb’s up for Aron.
As to why we have to keep learning these lessons, a major piece of that puzzle is that most Americans don’t learn these lessons in the first place. Maybe they did once, but they don’t anymore. One must seek these lessons out.
See Robert Nozick on the anti-capitalism of the Left.
The elite think, because they get better grades, they should have more money.
By right.
They’re wrong.
Apparently, these things must be discovered over and over again by generation after generation, and are always in danger of being lost.
until recently we had a good knowlege going back to the greeks. but once that was replaced by the socialists, we are now rediscovering the truth of our old culture (even though it couldnt explain why), and the stuff our grand fathers took for granted.
only in the past 40 years has nihilism replaced the last great novels all written before 1950… rather than be excursions into more modern thought and growth, the detour took us down a bad acid trip where progress was measured by what wasnt done before that couldnt be done before, and not how high something lifted or how good something taught.
the old knowlege has to go!!! its too full of principals and first order premises and reduces the current pack of saviors to brigands and thieves.
Neo you should add to your reading list Hayek’s work, particularly The Road to Serfdom and The Fatal Conceit. Any successful attempt to construct a polity that does not comport with human nature and experience can only lead to tyranny.
Samuel Coleridge, whose literary criticism is at least as impressive as his poetry, said the critic’s role in every generation is to rediscover truth. The problem isn’t confined to politics, or to the last several decades.
Oswald Spengler – “There is no proletarian, not even a Communist, movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, in the direction indicated by money, and for the time being permitted by money — and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact.”
[for those who dont know him, he wrote “the decline of the west”. he also wrote man and technics]
Spenglers most famous quote was:
“Optimism is cowardice.”
“The pessimists believe that the cosmos is a clock that is running down; the progressives believe it is a clock that they themselves are winding up. But I happen to believe that the world is what we choose to make it, and that we are what we choose to make ourselves; and that our renascence or our ruin will alike, ultimately and equally, testify with a trumpet to our liberty.” Chesterton
look to where the money goes, cui buono, and you will see who is pulling strings to play all sides against each other.
“The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. But, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and the war aims and operating plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play. There is no more appalling caricature of freedom of thought. Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to want to think, and this they consider freedom.” Spengler
I should point out that Spengler influenced many people including Aron
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Oswald_Spengler
Others influenced by Spengler include George F. Kennan, Raymond Aron, and Henry Kissinger.
and now maybe others may read Kennan’s
“The Sources of Soviet Conduct” (1947)
http://www.historyguide.org/europe/kennan.html
an incredible article (as is his long telegram) and that explains a lot as to the left.
a biography for aron can be read here
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Raymond_Aron
Aron, the son to a Jewish lawyer, who studied at the é‰cole Normale Supérieure where he met Jean-Paul Sartre (who became his friend and lifelong intellectual opponent). He took 1st place in the Agrégation of philosophy in 1928, the year Sartre failed in the same exam. In 1930, he received a doctorate on the philosophy of history from the é‰cole Normale Supérieure. In 1939, when World War II began, he had been teaching social philosophy at the University of Toulouse for a few weeks; he left the University and joined the air force. When France was defeated, he left for London to join the Free French forces, and between 1940 and 1944 edited their newspaper, France Libre (Free France).
he is one of those connected people in history.
Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes”
If few can stand a long war without deterioration of soul, none can stand a long peace.”
Thanks Neo and all, several additions to the reading list.
The Perfect. McCain wasn’t – by a long shot. So, many on the right opted out. Perfect illustration of choosing the better even if the better is lousy.
Jim,
I agree that McCain was the choice at the time. I think this b/c existence and events are infinitely complex, and predicting them is difficult, and therefore we ought have made the best choice at the time: McCain.
HOWEVER, I have thought, many times, lately, of what Limbaugh and Coulter said early on: McCain would have been disaster, as he was insufficiently conservative to pull us out of the difficulty we were in, and Repubs would have been hurt in the long run. Early on, Limbaugh and Coulter said it would be better if Barack or Hillary were President and messed things up severely, as this would result in a regeneration of conservatism in government, and in the hearts of American voters.
Therefore, am I correct about complexity? Was I right to support McCain? I’ve also been thinking of blogger Robert Stacy McCain’s words:
Been awhile since I’ve read Aron…have to see if I can pull him out of my large but dise organized library.
Old-line leftism–especially Marxism–was a bastard child of the Enlightenment. People like Aron & Koestler, in their Marxist days, let themselves be seduced by flawed but convincing-sounding reasoning. Present-day “progressivism,” OTOH, is counter-Enlightenment and doesn’t really involve much reasoning in any form, valid or not. I don’t think it’s likely that there are many intellectuals of the caliber of an Aron or a Koestler in today’s “progressive” left.
Bravo, Neo! Right outta the park!
gcotharn said: “Early on, Limbaugh and Coulter said it would be better if Barack or Hillary were President and messed things up severely, as this would result in a regeneration of conservatism in government, and in the hearts of American voters. Therefore, am I correct about complexity? Was I right to support McCain?”
I think it depends on just how badly things are messed up and just how much harm is done to the United States and its future as a result. If all that conservatives want is the regeneration of conservatism, that’s one thing — they will presumably be willing to accept a good deal of harm to the country in exchange for their eventual return to political supremacy, and in that case, to hell with them. If what they want, on the other hand, is the ultimate health and success of our country, without regard to partisan advantage, then it is much harder to hope that Obama et al will mess up so severely that even those Americans still living in a dream must wake up to the nightmare. We have to hope for a delicate balance, in which the mistakes are egregious enough that most people can’t fail to notice, but the harm done by those mistakes is minimal enough to be corrected.
So, were you wrong to support McCain? I doubt it. I don’t think he was an ideal candidate, or anything close to it — but could he have done as much as Obama has done already to harm my country and the prospects of freedom for my children? I don’t think so, and thus I think you were right to support him — even if he would not have done as much to revitalize conservatism.
Of course McCain was the right choice. We live in a very dangerous world. Always have. Always will.
As to Mr. Aron’s writings and the writings of many other perceptive thinkers – the best short explication of these ideas I have encountered is Russell Kirk’s brief summation –
http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html
The film “O Lucky Man” features a shot of a wall with a large piece of graffiti: “Revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals.” Apparently that wasn’t an original thought.
An insightful and moving meditation. As to why we must repeat and repeat, I think that’s bred in the bone. There’s simply no end to it.
I think mostly of these lines from the Four Quartets:
And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate–but there is no competition–
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Lacking experience and history, mistakes are simply the fate of the humble and imperfect. Beyond that is the domain of the moron….
I agree that McCain was the choice at the time. I think this b/c existence and events are infinitely complex, and predicting them is difficult, and therefore we ought have made the best choice at the time: McCain.
There was a lot of complexity in the situation, true. But after the nominations were won by the two candidates and all the complexities were evaluated the choice was simple: a vote for McCain or a vote for Obama – or slightly more complex — to enthusiastically campaign for McCain or to enthusiastically campaign for Obama. Many conservatives made the wrong choice — in effect — to sit the battle out.
HOWEVER, I have thought, many times, lately, of what Limbaugh and Coulter said early on: McCain would have been disaster, as he was insufficiently conservative to pull us out of the difficulty we were in, and Repubs would have been hurt in the long run.
Early on, Limbaugh and Coulter said it would be better if Barack or Hillary were President and messed things up severely, as this would result in a regeneration of conservatism in government, and in the hearts of American voters.
Rationalization: a psychological term. The human subject can rationalize any behavior.
Limbaugh and Coulter had long been critical of McCain.
Then McCain WON the nomination. Uh-oh!
To have endorsed McCain for President would not have looked good for Coulter and Limbaugh. That cognitive dissonance Neo writes about from time to time. There were reputations to be protected, self image to be preserved, status to be defended, hardened positions to be maintained.
Part of Limbaugh’s mojo is how he can make any Republican apologize to him. Woe unto those who incur the wrath of the mighty El Rushbo! I did not intend offense to thee O Mighty One!
Would a McCain-led, moderate-dominated GOP be as willing to submit to that sort of humiliation — that almost ritualistic abasement?
I think we all know the answer. McCain’s scars from North Vietnamese torture prove that he is not a man that easily submits.
So Limbaugh and Coulter constructed their tortured rationalization on why a victory by McCain would be worse for the nation, the GOP and conservatism than a victory by Obama. How Obama in the Whitehouse would actually somehow be a GOOD thing.
At the time I was outraged and was thinking that both Coulter and Limbaugh had badly damaged themselves but I was naé¯ve. Life is full of lessons — some of them sad.
You make many excellent points Artfldgr–and Neo, too, of course.
In thinking about these matters, what stuns me the most is just how many of my Ivy League classmates have fallen under the sway of kneejerk leftism. I went to school during the mid-to-late 1980s at a campus known as being one of the more conservative in the Ivy League. Reagan was in office, and more students supported him than it was cool to admit. But 20 years later, it seems the vast majority of my classmates–including a guy who studied Russian and who used to talk in those days of wanting to go work for the CIA–have all turned into reactionary, left-wing partisan drones who favor all things Obama. I would have expected a more normal distribution of political views from my college classmates, and yet that is not what happened.
grackle: I voted for McCain and I don’t regret it. Then again, I remain a registered Democrat, so what do I know?
Nonetheless, I can see the calculation whereby McCain would have been a disaster, not so much because he was insufficiently conservative — I don’t lie awake nights waiting for the Second Coming of Ron — but because the left would have gone absolutely nuts had Obama lost.
Bush Derangement Syndrome was bad enough, but McCain Derangement Syndrome after eight years of Bush, the Iraq War, and Obama’s failure would have been nearly impossible, and at the end of that the Republican Party would have been entirely exhausted.
I am of the opinion that McCain is secretly relieved that he didn’t win. I believe that he quietly gave up in that last month or two.
So we deal with this Obama menace. I think we’re winning. Maybe I’m wrong. In 2010 and 2012 we get new shots. We’ll see.
grackle: Thanks for your service as a Marine.
Over and over again?
Yep. But it’s like pulling weeds out of your garden, Neo. If you adopt that sort of philosophical attitude about it, it will be easier to keep on truckin’. Just like Mr Natural. 😉
Oh, and Huxley: there’s a reason the Washington press corps call the Dems “the Vicious Party.” Usually, you have to pry their dead jaws off their victim’s haunch with a crowbar, after beating them senseless.
“”Nonetheless, I can see the calculation whereby McCain would have been a disaster””
Exactly so.
Since 2000 liberals have practically begged for relief from the prosperity they could only view through an emotional guilt complex prism because of its unequal distribution. And conservatives knew on some level that we had half our population in need of life lessons approaching the primordial in their increasing immunity to logic and reason.
Its quite possible a McCain win would have been worse in the long run.
Beverly, you are so right about the Democratic Party being vicious. No pack of starving jackals was ever more focused on tearing the last tendon from the bones of the hunted. Obama will destroy many lives as he goes down, and will in turn be reduced to pulp by his betrayal-fueled fellow leftists.
My inside-the-beltway friends saw the dangers of electing McCain; the increased outbreaks of derangemnet syndrome and affliated madness. They considered all that a small price to pay for keeping nukes away from the Norks, Mr. Ahmadinejad, and all their tyrannical ilk.
Their judgment and fears are now vindicated. Failing the removal of Obama, it cannot be long until Israel is blistered out of existence; and we have a radiated world and nuclear cooling to deal with for many, many administrations.
A book or two or several from the list built here by Neo and the commenters would be great presents, yes? Every one of us knows people who need these far more than another disc or sweater.
I supported McCain too, somewhat reluctantly, as the lesser evil. I’ve seen no reason to back off from that assumption. And those who say we “needed” some kind of national disaster in order to wake us up – well folks, here it is; I surely hope we’ll be able to recover from it. I’m with Mrs. Whatsis: if the calculus is “What will bring us back to/keep us in power?” rather than “What hews most closely to the principles that have made the US what it is? Which candidate is likely to do the least harm by governing least?” then I don’t want my name on that party’s rolls.
(BTW, though Limbaugh didn’t support McCain in primary season, once he got the nomination, Limbaugh spent his time vigorously attacking Obama – not exactly “enthusiastically campaigning” for McCain, but not disowning him either. I don’t lay McCain’s defeat at Limbaugh’s feet. I wasn’t following Coulter, so I can’t comment about her commentary during the election.)
AskMom Says:
“Their judgment and fears are now vindicated. Failing the removal of Obama, it cannot be long until Israel is blistered out of existence; and we have a radiated world and nuclear cooling to deal with for many, many administrations.”
While reading your post I couldn’t help but think of the Lord of The Rings. The scene of the Orc running in with the bomb to blow up the wall at the battle for Helms Deep.
The scary thing is this is not fiction, it is not a movie and it seems as if Obama doesn’t have the nads or the will to stop it.
I throught it was a clear choice: On the one side was an imperfect (but arent they always?) moderately conservative candidate, who also had a heroic past, and who I could count on to support America’s interests in the war on terror
On the other: a candidate who was, at best, completely inexperienced with “pie in the sky” aspirations, or, at worst, a leftist ideologue who was committed to socializing this country. (As it turned out, it appears he’s the worst of both: leftist and inexperienced.)
The better choice was clear: McCain-Palin, with all its faults, and its strengths.
However, now that the electorate made their choice, and he’s ion office, we have to go to “Plan B.” What is the best scenario that we can get out of the Obama administration?
Although I’m not a New Yorker, and do not live in NYC, I’ve thought maybe we can get through the Obama administration like NYC got through the Dinkins administration. At the time David Dinkins was elected, he was lauded as the first black mayor of NYC. But, he later became so unpopular that he failed to get re-elected. (Unlike his twice re-elected predecesssor Ed Koch, and his once re-elected successor Rudy Giuliani.) He was unpopular for appearing weak and indecisive, for liberal policies that were too beholden to unions and other lobbying groups, for divisive racial tensions, and for letting street crime run rampant. His indecisiveness and liberalism prepared the way for Republican Rudy Giuliani to come in and clean things up.
I think Obama could do the same for the entire country. He can serve as a lesson on what can happen when the left get put in charge, and serve as a foil against which a conservative Republican can run.
SteveH said:
“And conservatives knew on some level that we had half our population in need of life lessons approaching the primordial in their increasing immunity to logic and reason.”
I agree that is so. I would have preferred 4 years of McCain, but maybe that would have left those yearning for liberalism (foolishly yearning, but yearning nonetheless) that much more adamant. Obama in office gives them their catharsis, and can serve as a “teachable moment” (to quote their hero) on what leftist government really is like. After 4 years of this lesson, the class will be quite ready for recess.
Likewise, Obama’s supposedly breakthough of being the “first black president” may serve to get certain portions of the U.S. population off of their guilt trip over “racism” and all that. It may actually be a watershed moment to get people over this repeated pandering to minorities. Its hard to claim a group is oppressed, when one of their own is president.
Rethinking the Political Spectrum
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/rethinking_the_political_spect.html
and suddenly the moderates have no special position and are nto the fighters of freedom. the conservatives they are pretending they are being reasonable between, then become the freedom lovers (as is reflected in the history too).
Placing the political world into this more accurate framework yields a number of important corollary benefits and insights:
Gone is the muddled notion that if one moves too far from tyranny, one only encounters more tyranny. Liberty is the opposite of tyranny, and the more accurate spectrum makes that clear.
Leftist critics become less persuasive when depicting conservatives as incipient fascists. They can no longer warn that if one becomes too conservative, one becomes a fascist tyrant. To the contrary, the conservative is identified with liberty, while the liberal has more affinity with tyranny, whether soft or hard.
Moderates lose their hallowed position and aura of wisdom and restraint. They are simply a bit more conservative than liberals and more liberal than conservatives, i.e. they are less jealous of their liberty than are those to their right.
Libertarianism has a home. It resides at the right end of the spectrum, reflecting the maximization of liberty.
Moderates lose their hallowed position and aura of wisdom and restraint.
and this is why moderates defend the side they say they are against… in that spectrum they can be seen as special people who are holding the crowds back due to reason.. (except they never notice that there is no crowd of conservatives to hold back).
in this way, everyone has a nice place in the fight where from their mental position they can sit and feel they are doing right. but by supporting that status quo over empiricism, they are supporting what they claim to be against.
they would have to give up their coveted mantal of reasonablness as being the facilitators of compromise between freedom and tyranny, where freedom ALWAYS loses for its a purity concept, and cant exist otherwise. like pregnancy, your either in or your in some form of tyranny…
the moderates are facilitators of the creation and maintenance of the new spectrum which forces us to consider two tyranies rather than tyranny vs freedom.
they pretend to oppose things, but their desire to be reasonable forces compromise between thsoe who wish to destroy something and those who wish to preserve it!!!
preservation is a purity concept too. one cant chip off little bits of something and preserve it. so one cant be moderate in the face of tyranny, for then one is just a gentle persuader and salesman of tyranny wearing a freidnly smile.
the pied piper that takes the children by stealth and not by force that woudl be opposed.
stalin and those even said they were going to do this. but you didnt realize they were talking about you. the quotes about a little taste, and the one where allowing evoltuion allows directed evoltuoin in small steps which converts one thing to another and preserves nothing.
you cant be a little bit preganant, and you cant be a little bit free… unless you make freedom a relative concept, which it isnt.
If democracy, in essence, means the abolition of class domination, then why should not a socialist minister charm the whole bourgeois world by orations on class collaboration?
Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, “Dogmatism And ‘Freedom of Criticism’” (1901)
To belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology. There is much talk of spontaneity. But the spontaneous development of the working-class movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois ideology; for the spontaneous working-class movement is trade-unionism, and trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie. Hence, our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class movement from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social Democracy.
Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, “The Spontaneity of the Masses and the Consciousness of the Social-Democrats” (1901)
all or nothing….
Social-Democracy, however, wants, on the contrary, to develop the class struggle of the proletariat to the point where the latter will take the leading part in the popular Russian revolution, i.e., will lead this revolution to a the democratic-dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.
Lenin, Two Tactics of Social Democracy (1905)
so where does social democracy lead? and socialism?
When feudalism was overthrown and “free” capitalist society appeared in the world, it at once became apparent that this freedom meant a new system of oppression and exploitation of the working people.
Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913)
so they are going to bring back feudalism.. rule by elite who have absolute power and no responsibility, and the prols who have no power and are completey responsible, even for the impossible.
[edited for length by neo-neocon]
I was one of those who very reluctantly pulled the lever for McCain. Because Palin was on the ticket.
Yet again, voting for the “least worst” choice.
But I am finished doing that. And I think the Tea Party anger directed at REPUBLICANS as well as Dems, combined with things like the growing grass roots opposition to yet another RINO big government guy like Charlie Crist in my home state (even tho he will probably still win thanks to backing from the big govt GOP machine), may be a reflection that I am not alone.
The totally inept mishandling of Palin; the idiotic and inept “suspension” of campaining in order to rush back to DC to be just like Mr. 30% approval Bush; the refusal to hit back hard at the Dems and get dirty with them the way they did with Hillary; but perhaps most of all, the shameful way the McCain camp after the election threw Palin under the bus and had the GALL to blame McCain’s loss on HER.
That did it for me. Straw. Camel’s back.
I’m sorry Dear Leader won. But I’m also now glad McCain lost. I am done pulling the lever for the least worst choice, and I will not send another dime to the national GOP until it either reforms itself or ceases to exist altogether and is replaced by a party that stands for individual liberty, and smaller government – INCLUDING when it is in power and not just when it is out of power.
Arlon Spector leaves the party? GOOD RIDDANCE.
One good thing which has come about by Mr. DC insider “moderate” “maverick’ going down in flames, combined with the grass roots resurgence of conservatism caused by Dear Leader and Nancy, is that all the elite Rockefeller republicans who populate Manhattan and DC — the Frums, Brooks, Noonan’s et all of the world – are being proven wrong in their snooty lecturing to us rubes that the GOP needs to become even MORE “centrist” in order to win.
Notice how that load of bullcrap has quieted down lately?
southernjames Says:
the idiotic and inept “suspension” of campaining in order to rush back to DC to be just like Mr. 30% approval Bush;
Although Im not so down on McCain, and still wish he had won instead of “that one,” you are absolutely right about the “suspension of campaigning.” I thought that was the most ill-advised idea of the whole campaign. And, even if he did do it, he should have then followed up with something more substantive than going along with the government plan… he would have gotten a jump in support if he had stood steadfast against big government.
the shameful way the McCain camp after the election threw Palin under the bus and had the GALL to blame McCain’s loss on HER.
That too.
From todays news:
Obama’s False Witness
In accusing the Right of lying about health care, the Left shows its disregard for the truth.
by RAMESH PONNURU
nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=NGU1YjYxODU3NTgyYTNkN2E5OGY0M2QwN2ZiYTIyYzk=
Count on it: If liberals lose on health care – either because no major legislation passes or because they consider whatever legislation does pass inadequate – they are going to blame the loss on a campaign of deception by their critics. While liberals have more political power now than at any point in at least three decades, they also have a generation of experience at being sore losers.
so they are sore losers…
That was written (oddly), for sept 21 2009…
(i guess online early for print publish)
he picks up on the fact of left creates a moriarty as the perfect antithesis, and its always some right conspiracy. however, the author, and others, dontk now history well… lets take a quick peak. again, first now, and then 1947..
NOW:
So the town-hall protesters are going to be 2009’s version of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Bush v. Gore, or the people who ran the Willie Horton ads: a way for liberals to blame political disappointment on the perfidy of their opponents and thus make it a token of their own moral superiority. That way, they will not have to contemplate the possibility that the public has a rational basis for opposing their health-care proposals.
~-~-~-~
Liberals have a double standard on this question. They act as though any conservative who calls the Democrats’ health-care legislation a government takeover is uninformed, nuts, or cynically trying to take advantage of people who are uninformed or nuts.
and 1947 (sorry its long, we were smarter then and this long was considered short)
their own aggressive intransigence with respect to the outside world began to find its own reaction; and they were soon forced, to use another Gibbonesque phrase, “to chastise the contumacy” which they themselves had provoked. It is an undeniable privilege of every man to prove himself right in the thesis that the world is his enemy; for if he reiterates it frequently enough and makes it the background of his conduct he is bound eventually to be right.
Now it lies in the nature of the mental world of the Soviet leaders, as well as in the character of their ideology, that no opposition to them can be officially recognized as having any merit or justification whatsoever. Such opposition can flow, in theory, only from the hostile and incorrigible forces of dying capitalism. As long as remnants of capitalism were officially recognized as existing in Russia, it was possible to place on them, as an internal element, part of the blame for the maintenance of a dictatorial form of society. But as these remnants were liquidated, little by little, this justification fell away, and when it was indicated officially that they had been finally destroyed, it disappeared altogether. And this fact created one of the most basic of the compulsions which came to act upon the Soviet regime: since capitalism no longer existed in Russia and since it could not be admitted that there could be serious or widespread opposition to the Kremlin springing spontaneously from the liberated masses under its authority, it became necessary to justify the retention of the dictatorship by stressing the menace of capitalism abroad.
so the behaviors that you find so inexplicable, and we try to understand, is the OLD paranoia on other power that makes them become totalitarians, even if today that end is not theirs.
as we decide we want something else, we protest, and we become the right to them. we become the EVIDENCE that the right is infinitely smarter, more subtle, etc…
(huxely and others have this internalized to the point where he thinks that what the left will do will be countered by this mythological beast, and doesnt understand that its a crafted myth. americans are a hodge podge of all over the world, they CANT be different than everyone else, they are a sample of everyone else)
the drug of power is like cocaine… a drug that makes the users think they are powerful… and such power makes one paranoid. power gotten through nasty methods and lies is a power that is always threatened by the truth. despotic power is taken by trickery not by merit and worth, and so they HAVE to convert whatever win they have to such a rule, or they will never sit in power again in their lifetimes.
so once they are in a position where their statements are no longer lies said for convenience to gain power, but they have achieved it, their paranoia of us and our desires makes them lock things down till there is only one power.
This began at an early date. In 1924 Stalin specifically defended the retention of the “organs of suppression,” meaning, among others, the army and the secret police, on the ground that “as long as there is a capitalistic encirclement there will be danger of intervention with all the consequences that flow from that danger.” In accordance with that theory, and from that time on, all internal opposition forces in Russia have consistently been portrayed as the agents of foreign forces of reaction antagonistic to Soviet power.
By the same token, tremendous emphasis has been placed on the original Communist thesis of a basic antagonism between the capitalist and Socialist worlds. It is clear, from many indications, that this emphasis is not founded in reality. The real facts concerning it have been confused by the existence abroad of genuine resentment provoked by Soviet philosophy and tactics and occasionally by the existence of great centers of military power, notably the Nazi regime in Germany and the Japanese Government of the late 1930s, which indeed have aggressive designs against the Soviet Union. But there is ample evidence that the stress laid in Moscow on the menace confronting Soviet society from the world outside its borders is founded not in the realities of foreign antagonism but in the necessity of explaining away the maintenance of dictatorial authority at home.
Now the maintenance of this pattern of Soviet power, namely, the pursuit of unlimited authority domestically, accompanied by the cultivation of the semi-myth of implacable foreign hostility, has gone far to shape the actual machinery of Soviet power as we know it today. Internal organs of administration which did not serve this purpose withered on the vine. Organs which did serve this purpose became vastly swollen. The security of Soviet power came to rest on the iron discipline of the Party, on the severity and ubiquity of the secret police, and on the uncompromising economic monopolism of the state. The “organs of suppression,” in which the Soviet leaders had sought security from rival forces, became in large measures the masters of those whom they were designed to serve.
Today the major part of the structure of Soviet power is committed to the perfection of the dictatorship and to the maintenance of the concept of Russia as in a state of siege, with the enemy lowering beyond the walls. And the millions of human beings who form that part of the structure of power must defend at all costs this concept of Russia’s position, for without it they are themselves superfluous.
since our leaders are following the sovit blue print, they are doing EXACTLY the same things.
how would one know they were exact? well one could read that piece above from 1947, and realize that this is 60 years later, and the left liberals (communists) in the US have the exact same paranoia.
they have the same exact desease…
and if you take the time to see, they have no means of governing… their idea of good governance is reactionary while their will to power is collusive and well planned.
if you hear the fbi agent talking about the weather underground… he points out that they had no idea what to do once they acheived power.
this is the majkor point… its how a despot gets everyone to work for them. since no one knows what one will do when power is acheived, then that creates a space for the orchestrator or deal closer to step in… all the followers are so intent on winning, and their enemy is so perfect a moriarty, that they have no idea what to do when they are in power.
dont think that the ones in state are in power… they are still using their position to hurt things. they dont know how do do good governance, and so when the power is traded, they just continue to destroy the system, as they have no other methods!
[edited for length by neo-neocon]
McCain was like the perfect example of what goes wrong with politicians following polls and conventional wisdom in decision making. They come off as pandering followers instead of leaders with confidence in their ideas.
we are going to continue for long time to find the Russians difficult to deal with. It does not mean that they should be considered as embarked upon a do-or-die program to overthrow our society by a given date. The theory of the inevitability of the eventual fall of capitalism has the fortunate connotation that there is no hurry about it. The forces of progress can take their time in preparing the final coup de gré¢ce. meanwhile, what is vital is that the “Socialist fatherland” — that oasis of power which has already been won for Socialism in the person of the Soviet Union — should be cherished and defended by all good Communists at home and abroad, its fortunes promoted, its enemies badgered and confounded. The promotion of premature, “adventuristic” revolutionary projects abroad which might embarrass Soviet power in any way would be an inexcusable, even a counter-revolutionary act. The cause of Socialism is the support and promotion of Soviet power, as defined in Moscow.
sound familiar too?
anyone want to hear the left here talk about stalin, or the soviets?
heck… its not new history… its old history hidden from those who love their shopping malls and their own stupidity more than they love freedom
Thus the Kremlin has no compunction about retreating in the face of superior forces. And being under the compulsion of no timetable, it does not get panicky under the necessity for such retreat. Its political action is a fluid stream which moves constantly, wherever it is permitted to move, toward a given goal. Its main concern is to make sure that it has filled every nook and cranny available to it in the basin of world power. But if it finds unassailable barriers in its path, it accepts these philosophically and accommodates itself to them. The main thing is that there should always be pressure, unceasing constant pressure, toward the desired goal. There is no trace of any feeling in Soviet psychology that that goal must be reached at any given time.
These considerations make Soviet diplomacy at once easier and more difficult to deal with than the diplomacy of individual aggressive leaders like Napoleon and Hitler. On the one hand it is more sensitive to contrary force, more ready to yield on individual sectors of the diplomatic front when that force is felt to be too strong, and thus more rational in the logic and rhetoric of power. On the other hand it cannot be easily defeated or discouraged by a single victory on the part of its opponents. And the patient persistence by which it is animated means that it can be effectively countered not by sporadic acts which represent the momentary whims of democratic opinion but only be intelligent long-range policies on the part of Russia’s adversaries — policies no less steady in their purpose, and no less variegated and resourceful in their application, than those of the Soviet Union itself.
Maybe this piece is to abstract and philosophical for this site, but for those that are interested in these matters, her it is.
Aron like many others dealt with the question why the Enlightenment turned against itself and resulted in unspeakable forms of barbarity as the French Terror, the Gulag and Auschwitz.
In my view the answers is simple: it is in the tendency of many authors of the Enlightenment to absolutize rationality against faith. The American founding Fathers in general did not make this mistake, and that is why the American Revolution was far less violent and brutal than the French one.
The Fathers saw correctly that rationality is in the end no more than an instrument, a means, which can be used for good and bad goals. It should be defended and developed, but always be regarded as a means to protect something more holy and important than itself. Which is goodness, truthfulness, respect for others, the simple holy things where Christianity and Judaism talk about.
The problem is, that once you absolutize rationality, rationality becomes a monster that delegitimizes the very noble things it is supposed to serve. For the simple reason that the deep moral values of humanity CANNOT be proven by rationality alone. Therefore, when you absolutize the value of rationality, these values become arbitrary prejudices.
Uninformed people see the Nazi’s and Soviets as irrational and unscientific, but nothing is further from the truth. Both the Nazi’s and the Soviets believed strongly in rational thought and science.
And they laughed about morality and faith. And so you got the fatal combination of an enormously powerful development of science, rational thinking and technology as an instrument for amoral, evil ends.
When people stop believing in the Transcendent and in a moral order that precedes and transcends
the ever-changing realities of human affairs, a free republic will become unsustainable. There is nothing higher the people can agree up on and so there will remain nothing but power struggle and no way to contain it but ever more powerful and totalitarian government.
In the seventies Solzhenitsyn gave a speech at a New York university. He was asked how Stalinism had been possible. He answered that the Russians had forgotten ‘the things of God’. And for that, he was booed by the young students.
Americans, and especially those with university degrees, have also since the sixties forgotten ‘the things of God’ and so their benign form of the Enlightenment increasingly gives way for the malign and totalitarian European one.
Many conservative intellectuals do not see this. They simply say that the Left is utopian and they are realistic. And this is true. However, why is there utopianism and why is it so bad, so unrealistic?
There is utopianism, because when you lose the faith in a transcendent, heavenly redemption of all earthly wrongs and injustices, you will look for this redemption in an earthly, utopian way. The alternatives are cold stoicism and soulless nihilism, which for most people have no attraction.
And why is utopianism so bad? The reason is that utopianism must deny the given moral order to create a new one. Therefore, utopianism necessarily becomes immoral and even anti-moral. Being anti-moral becomes here a moral duty. This creates the weirdness of all forms of Leftism.
And from this weird anti-moral morality, the Left will become cruel and Machiavellian against the ‘old moral’ Right, and the Right will have to become more and more cruel and Machiavellian against the Left to protect itself. This descent into all out Machiavellian politics is what in the end will create cruelty, tyranny and totalitarian government.
The tragedy as can be seen in the Soviet Union is, that once totalitarian rule has been instituted, soulless nihilism will be the dominant mindset, both of the ruling apparatchiks and of the miserable masses over which they lord.
Of course, religion itself can, as all things human, also become corrupt as can be seen in parts of the Islamic world and the history of the West. However, I talk here about the West with its Judeo-Christian heritage. And I talk about that part of Western history that has to deal with the consequences of the Enlightenment. To me it is quite clear that thus far the US has been immune to ‘the totalitarian temptation’ specific to the post enlightenment era, because of its unique character: the combination of strong religious, (mostly) Christian faith on the one hand and strong optimistic belief in human reason on the other. With Christianity fading away the Americans will increasingly experience ‘the Dialectic of the Enlightenment’ as the Europeans before them.
Then they will look back at their ancestors and wonder how astonishingly ‘simple’ they were and they will realise that the former American greatness was build on this unique, happy marriage between simple faith and simple reason.
The Europeans think that after the Cold War and their experience with totalitarianism they can live forever happy, ‘immune’ to the totalitarian virus. But the EU is sliding ever more in a totalitarian direction and there seems to be no force that can stop it. They have already lost their faith in God and become ever more sheepish in their acceptance of the EU government-media complex as their new God, who will tell them what to think, feel and do from the cradle to the grave. Unlike their ancestors they no longer yearn for greater things; they have accepted ‘bread and television’ as the meaning of their government-led lives.
And they hate conservative Americans who still try to be faithful to the old European dream of freedom and transcendence, the great marriage of Athens and Jerusalem. Because deep in their hearts they know they sold the birthright of their soul for the surrogate of material comfort.
According to Kennan, Russia’s policy was:
to undermine the general and strategic potential of major western powers by a host of subversive measures to destroy individual governments that might stand in the Soviet path, to do everything possible to set the major Western powers against each other.
and how is the US doing with isreal and the UK?
how is our families now? how is our education? how is our moral fiber? and more?
We live in the midst of a historical crisis in which our choices are between utopia and the end of civilization, in which we are presented with the existential paradox of a necessary utopia. (Michael Young, “A History of the Future,” 1984)
We are living in a world in which nobody is free, in which hardly anybody is secure, in which it is almost impossible to be honest and to remain free. (George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937)
Every utopia, rooted as it is in time and place, is bound to reproduce the stage scenery of its particular world as well as its preoccupations with contemporary social problems. Here analogies to the dream and the psychotic fantasy may be telling. Observers of paranoid behavior report that though the disease remains relatively constant, the mysterious, all-seeing forces that watch and persecute their patients change with time and technology. They may be spirits, telephones, radios or television sets in successive periods. Utopias are not an illness; but to a larger degree they avail themselves of the existing equipment of a society, perhaps its most advanced models, prettified and rearranged. Often a utopian foresees the later evolution and consequences of technological development already present in an embryonic state; he may have antenna sensitive to the future. His gadgets, however, rarely go beyond the mechanical potentialities of his age. Try as he may to invent something wholly new, he cannot make a world out of nothing.
1979, Frank and Fritzie Manuel published Utopian Thought in the Western World / [and you guys dont like long! 912 pages]
our very progressive forward thinking leaders are feudal luddites.. M
which is why they are intelligentsia and elite, and not just smart….
and thomass moore points out taht communism and fascism, are plays by the very wealthy to take EVERYTHING… rathe than exist in a system where they can only get a lot.
think about that… ni the capitalist system their wealth and power are transitory and they really cant own everything and have dominion on much.
but in this changes system, they will own the workers, and they will deal amongst themselves and not have to worry aobut the commoners. they CAN own vastly more (since owners can use their property as they will, they will use us), and can have dominion.
Is not this an unjust and an unkind public weal, which giveth great fees and rewards to gentlemen, as they call them, and to goldsmiths, and to such other, which be either idle persons, or else only flatterers, and devisers of vain pleasures; and of the poor ploughmen, colliers, laborers, carters, ironsmiths, and carpenters: without whom no commonwealth can continue? But after it hath abused the labours of their lusty and flowering age, at the last when they be oppressed with old age and sickness, being needy, poor, and indigent of all things, then forgetting their so many painful watchings, not remembering their so many and so great benefits, recompenseth and acquitteth them most unkindly with miserable death. And yet besides this the rich men not only be private fraud, but also by common laws, do every day pluck and snatch away from the poor some part of their daily living. So whereas it seemed before unjust to recompense with unkindness their pains that have been beneficial to the public weal, now they have to this their wrong and unjust dealing given the name of justice, yea, and that by force of law. Therefore when I consider and weigh in my mind all these commonwealths, which nowadays anywhere do flourish, so God help me, I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth.
does anyone realize that Aldous huxleys book brave new world was written in 1937…
Huxley warned his readers of moral anarchy in a scientific age, an age identified by the letters, “A.F,” After Ford. This is, of course, deliberate on Huxley’s part — the machine technology of Henry Ford’s (1863-1947) perfected assembly line had not only produced the marvels of mechanized production but the mechanized man and woman of the twentieth century. He depicts a gray, repulsive utopia — a dystopia — in which Platonic harmony is forcibly introduced by the scientific breeding and conditioning of a society of human robots, for whom happiness is synonymous with subordination. The fate of us moderns is painfully apparent in Huxley’s hands — we are nameless and fearless numbers (176-45-9925). The bureaucratic impulses of the twentieth century have solved the problems of individualized anomie. We are all in this together. But who are we but a number on the tally sheet?
enjoy!!!
One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words socialism and communism draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, Nature-cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England. . . .
We have reached a stage when the very word socialism calls up, on the one hand, a picture of airplanes, tractors and huge glittering factories of glass and concrete; on the other, a picture of vegetarians with wilting beards, of Bolshevik commissars (half gangster, half gramophone), or earnest ladies in sandals, shock-headed Marxists chewing polysyllables, escaped Quakers, birth control fanatics, and Labour Party backstairs-crawlers.
If only the sandals and pistachio-colored shirts could be put in a pile and burnt, and every vegetarian, teetotaler and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly.
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
Steve said of McCain and leaders who make decisions via polls, “They come off as pandering followers instead of leaders with confidence in their ideas.” I agree, but what amazes me recently is watching Obama do exactly the same thing with regard to health care. Here he is, months after the debate began, months after he handed off leadership on the substance of the issue to Congress and contented himself instead with endless speeches urging support for vaguely-defined “health care reform” or later “health insurance reform,” without ever talking about what’s actually in the multiple bills now before Congress, explaining the differences, telling us which differences matter to him, which don’t, which bill he likes best, which he thinks we should like best, any of that — FINALLY, tonight, belatedly he is going to give us some specifics as to what he thinks the reform he’s been hectoring us so long to support should include. And even now, apparently, he’s not going to be all that specific. The morning’s news reports indicate that his aides say he’ll talk about a public option but that he’ll be “noncommittal” about it and won’t insist on it. I wonder if he’s going to be able to bring himself to be “committal”, if that’s a word, about anything? Talk about lacking confidence in his ideas — he doesn’t even seem to want to admit that he has any.
Now I ask you. Isn’t this a bass-ackwards kind of leadership? And shouldn’t even a leader as inexperienced and awkward as Obama has proven himself to be so far realize this? I think I understand why he’s taken this approach. As long as he doesn’t hang his hat too firmly on any particular aspect of health care reform, as long as he keeps his exhortations sufficiently vague and hopey-changey, he can take credit for whatever does ultimately pass without having to take the blame for whatever ends up on the cutting room floor. And after all, the empty-aspirational-hopey-changey approach worked really well when he was campaigning. But can he really have failed so completely to notice that the campaign is over, that he got the job, and that the job he got requires actually leading, rather than merely talking about it?
His supporters who thought they were electing a charismatic leader with unprecedented potential for identifying high aspirations and moving others along to achieve them must be bitterly disappointed. One would almost think that he does not care what is in the health care bill, as long as something, anything, passes that he can sign his name to. (What’s that you say? You do think that? Huh!)
Waandrian – nice.
In addition to Eliot’s lines above, Tolkien had a similar sentiment. “Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule”
The Christian intellectual climate in Britain in the middle decades seems to have produced this common thought.
I don’t think this destructive hubris we see in modern western intellectuals is a new phenomenon. I’m betting its the same dynamic being referred to in ancient scriptures when speaking about the downfall of prideful knowledge.
Belief in a transcended sacredness, a bigger picture than what we see, seems an insulator to such things.
The fallacies of modernism have been discredited for a long, long time. While Aron was writing these words of wisdom 50 years ago, the Popes were condemning modern liberalism, moral relativism and socialism going back to mid-19th century and Adam Smith was condemning the obvious futility of centrally-planned economies and fallacious beliefs of zero-sum economics in the 1770s.
How many centuries will it take for this undead mental virus to die? Unfortunately, probably no less than one more, and perhaps it will never die so long as self-proclaimed intellectuals remain cloistered away in their philosophical prisons, bereft of experience, true accomplishment, and often, common sense itself.
Great post neo. Your blog is smokin’, as usual. Some great comments, as always.
I had a great conversation with a couple of retired fellas at the 7-eleven this morning. They come up there for coffee about every morning at 5:00 A.M. when the weather permits, stand out front and have great conversations. There sre usually more early birds out front holding coffee talking than are inside the store. It’s quite fun, and often lively. I may become a regular. If this group has anything to say about, the MSM is dwad wrong, talk radio and the bloga are right, and Obama’s days are numbered. And oh yes, there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth come the mid terms. Both parties, I’m afraid. Complicity, you see.
Note to self: Don’t talk on the phone to a customer and type into a blog with one hand at the same time.
Waandrian:
Excellent. Inspiring.
In my life: I tried to thrive on reason, and could not. I was unhappy, and sort of desperately frantic. I knew something was off. I could not solve the problem at a strictly intellectual level; and took a long, long time to become open to both the problem and the solution.
Totalitarian regimes — thanks to technology and mass communications — take over control of every facet of the individual’s life. Everything is subject to control — the economy, politics, religion, culture, philosophy, science, history and sport. Thought itself becomes both a form of social control as well as a method of social control.
The totalitarian state was based on boundless dynamism. Totalitarian society was a fully mobilized society, a society constantly moving toward some goal. Which begs the question: Is democracy the means to an end or the end itself? Paradoxically, the totalitarian state never reached its ultimate goal. However, it gave the illusion of doing so. As soon as one goal was reached, it was replaced by another. Such was the case in Stalin’s Russia. Stalin implemented a series of Five Year Plans in an effort to build up the industrial might of the Soviet Union. Production quotas were constantly announced well before they had been reached in order to supply the illusion that the Five Year Plan was working. But before the Five Year Plan had run its course, another Five Year Plan was announced. Hopefully, you can intuit the psychological necessity of such an act on Stalin’s part.
In the end, totalitarianism meant a “permanent revolution,” an unfinished revolution in which rapid and profound change imposed from above simply went on forever. Of course, a permanent revolution also means that the revolution is never over. The individual is constantly striving for a goal which has been placed just a hair out of reach. In this way, society always remains mobilized for continual effort. The first example of such a permanent revolution the “revolution from above,” instituted by Joseph Stalin in 1927 and 1928.
“revolution from above”
…a “permanent revolution,” an unfinished revolution in which rapid and profound change imposed from above simply went on forever.
Anyone else now want to draw the parallels of obama’s speeches to these ideas and their parallels? why do you think the left got frothed up, they have finally heard their populous leader who is bigger than everything speak the magic words of change from above.
Lenin said “we are the CHANGE from above”.
Obama said “I am the change”
like Lenin, hitler, stalin… his campaign was populous. like the populus left that started things in the late 1800s… his idea of socialism is russian not chines, or else why would a black man name his child sasha (alexander).
his politics of HOPE, is the description of the soviet system where the carrot is always just out of reach and all you really have is hope that is never realized.
The trick in all revolutionary movements is to trigger revolution from above, and to attribute it to ‘the oppressed masses.’ But the masses of people are never even consulted. That is why the Communist Party must always be the ‘Vanguard of the Proletariat.’ Lenin routinely had peasants and workers executed by the Cheka (the terror police he created) if they were against him.
– – – – –
Scapegoating the rich and all ‘enemies’ of the regime
‘This is basic to all of Marxism, of course. But the demagogic version, the one that literally proclaims, “Kill the rich!’ came from Lenin — because Lenin was the first dictator of a state coming out of the Marxist revolutionary movements. He was the model of actual revolutionary governance. Everybody else followed the successful elements of Lenin’s model. That includes European social democracies, which routinely engage in the same political tactics, mostly exercised through the media.
anyone know of “Doctor’s Plot.”?
It was Lenin who centralized the Russian newspapers and radio into a single propaganda apparatus, led by Pravda and Izstvestiya. Modern mass media propaganda was invented by the Left, notably in Lenin’s early Soviet Union. The Nazis used it, but they came later.
According to Wikipedia’s article on Lenin,
“In the early 1930s, it became accepted dogma under Stalin to assume that neither Lenin nor the Central Committee could ever be wrong. Therefore, it was necessary to remove evidence of situations where Lenin and Stalin had actually disagreed, since in those situations it was impossible for both to have been right at the same time. … Later, even the fifth “complete” Soviet edition of Lenin’s works (published in 55 thick volumes between 1958 and 1965) left out parts that either contradicted dogma or showed their author in an unfavorable light.”
55 volumes… and i cant get the thinkers here to even read a few paragraphs.. (no i have not read all of them… just a hell of a lot of them along with mao, and others).
to quote american thinker
Obama is no original thinker. Once you figure out his core beliefs, that’s all you need. The rest is just tactics and ego-tripping, plus a million-dollar smile. Charismatic Leninoidism with a million dollar smile is still what it is.
It was Lenin who convinced the Left to see the world in terms of a global war between capitalist countries and their colonies. It was Lenin who defined the word “imperialism” for the Left: Imperialism is the exploitation of poor countries by capitalist countries. Only capitalists can be imperialists.M
this word changing game is VERY common.
it allows them to talk to each other the way houdini talked ot his wife in the mentalist tricks.
if you didnt read their stuff, you would completely be thinking about the COMMON definitios in a socialist conversation, where socialist definitions take precedent! like janis they talk out of both sides of their mouth at once.
you hear them say imperialist… and you get huxleys adn smart people going… they must be idiots. america never kept any lands, we didnt take over countries then keep them…
Karl Marx was always raging at his personal enemies, and of course Marx’s Good-vs-Evil division between the bourgeoisie and the workers turned everything into White Hats vs. Black Hats. The whole world divided up very neatly into the people you can hate (because they are objective Evil, of course) and the ones you idealize in the most absurd ways (because they are objectively Good). I have Leftist friends who do exactly the same thing.
Lenin was the same. In his writings he constantly fell into foaming-at-the-mouth abuse of her personal enemies, even in his “theoretical” writing about “world-historical” events:
So were Hitler and Mussolini. They all mixed the egomania and grandiosity of narcissism with the global demonizing characteristic of Borderline Personality Disorder. It’s the narcissism that keeps them from falling apart, and it’s the love-hate relationships that keep them oriented to other people.
we delude ourselves and fulfill spenglers famous quote.
but also we forget the famous quote of the man who started INTEL…
“only the paranoid survive”.
during wwii, the first war to include civilians as a direct target during the battles, who survived?
my family is alive now, because we were happy to be called paranoid by those who are dead now.
was it then paranoia?
the definition is: baseless or excessive suspicion of the motives of others
however, the odd thing about that definition is that the situation cant be known from the position of someone. (bartring the psych def for those with thought process disorders).
that is… until hitler becomes hitler, was the suspicion and belief in motives paranoia?
and thats the RUB…
that to attempt to define paranoia from the statements of someone without first checking the facts, is to assign them the medical definition because their belifs and conclusions dont match yours AT THAT TIME BEFORE THE ISSUE WAS RESOLVED.
my family didnt trust stalin, beacuse of our experience in putting lenin in place. they didnt trust hitler, because he was cut from the same cloth as all socialists are.
Many a movie has been made in which the paranoid was made sane by the realization of circumstances.
its these tiny little things that tell me where things are going. and those little things are cemented in the bigger things.
lenin hated the monied people
hitler hated the jews as the monied class
obama… you tell me…
its going to happen because the wealthy have grown up in the Socialist message, and so they are willing to drop their money and such to make american socialist… to own our productive capacity as individuals.
[edited for length by neo-neocon]
Although life was hard, the Soviet people were by no means hopeless. The average Russian saw himself heroically building the world’s first socialist society while capitalism was crumbling in the west. On the positive side, the Soviet worker received social benefits such as old age pensions, free medical services, free education and even day care facilities. Unemployment was technically non-existent and there was the possibility of personal advancement.
social security
medicaid, medicare, one payer
education should be free
day care should be provided
anyone care to tell me what the lefts stand on those SOVIET inventions?
oh… add these to the list:
Free love
No fault divorce
progressive tax system (unconstitutional)
class hatred/jealously
huge state that employs a majority
so how close are we to all that?
but rememver, we will never become that way…
right?
we are so much that way that our live expectancy should be dropping as of this administration.
you will know its here when people get really stoned or drunk… dont care.. have lots of abortions… meaningless sex… and just want to escape in their heads in entertainment, or diversions rather than working towards their own goals.
heck, the state has even changed things so that two women who watch each others kids have to pay taxes!!!! and women are smarter… yeah right…
the privileged gender decided to give away its priveledges and work for what it believes is less pay at the same tax rate.
so a woman with moderate skills, abandons her children to a stranger… whome she pays.
she works and pays more than 30% taxes, to which poor women get to live like she used to on family money… so she pays for these stay at home welfare moms and their daycare.
she then pays the people watching her kid, after taxes and such… again… they pay someone to wach their kid
so all it is is a revenue stream for the state, which is described as better to be worked by the communist state, than to be worked by your husband for your families and childrens lives!!!
now look what they get… (surveys in daily news yesterday show that the vast majority want what they HAD).
By 1928, the Nazi Party now had 100,000 members and Hitler had absolute control. The Nazis were still a marginal political group but world events in 1929 and 1930 produced a new mania for the Hitler program. Unemployment stood at 1.3 million in 1929. The following year, it had risen to 5 million while industrial production in 1932 fell by more than 50%. In that same year, 43% of all Germans were unemployed.
we have a higher unemployment rate now… its being hidden by not counting those who are not getting benifits… and not counting those on welfare.
45% of the population is welfare…
20% of the remaining are now unemployed…
the youth are the orst hit, and like in germany, there is a youth corps being built in anticipation of their not being able to work given the new economy.
“now began to promise Germany economic salvation…”
He focused on the middle and lower middle classes—the office workers, civil servants and teachers. These were the people who had barely survived through the period of wild inflation following World War One. These were the people who were begging for salvation.
any one see any parallels?
[edited for length by neo-neocon]
I have pondered for many years why people are attracted to socialism/communism. I finally hit on a theory that may or may not be valid. Probably too simple, but here goes.
For most of humankind’s history we lived in small hunter-gatherer tribes. The tribe worked well for such a system because it engaged all the members in the collective struggle to survive. The survival of the tribe was more important than the individual. Thus, all were asked to sublimate their individual interests to the interests of the survival of the tribe.
Most tribes were small communes. Food, shelter, mates, tools, and other possessions were shared as decreed by the tribe’s leaders. Everything was done in the interests of the continuing survival of the group. Competing tribes were considered to be a threat to the tribe’s existence. If they ate differently, dressed differently, worshipped different Gods, and so on they were “the other” and often considered less than fully human.
That sort of tribalism lasted for a million years or more. With the advent of agriculture, 7000 years ago, the drift away from tribalism began. It was replaced by several forms of government – mostly authoritarian type governments where an elite group (tribal leaders) ruled over the masses (tribal members). The elite protected the masses in return for the masses doing the work to provide wealth for the group as a whole. It was a new form of tribalism still based on the survival of the group as opposed to individual rights. Tribes became sovereign cities or states delineated by geographic boundaries. Tribal warfare was replaced by warfare between the sovereign units.
In the British Isles some men began to believe that men had individual rights. That led to the Magna Carta, which recognized certain rights of individuals. This began an evolution toward the idea of representative government where the citizens controlled the government. Along with that came the idea of property rights backed by courtts of law, free trade among individuals, and a person’s right to keep honestly earned wealth. But always, in the back ground, the instinct toward tribal sharing or communalism remained strong. Which was one reason why the evolution of the ideas of property rights, free trade, individual rights, and all the ideas that make free market democracy possible were only achieved through rancorous debate and often, bloodshed.
If we look at socialism and communism we see that they both proclaim the need of the individual (tribe member) to sublimate their interest to the interests of the state (the tribe). In return they promise equal sharing of resources. (As in the old communal tribes.) I can’t prove it, but I believe that tribal instinct is still very strong in our genes. It certainly is in President Obama’s genes. Notice how he asked students what they were going to contribute to this country (the tribe). And how, if they quit school they were letting the country (tribe) down. He wants to share the nations wealth and resources more equally while he (the tribal chief) will decide how that’s done.
Those who have rejected tribalism/communism/socialism have done so by looking at the facts as presented by recent history. Communism in China, North Korea, the USSR, Cuba, Myanamar, etc have achieved equality of misery while countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, West Germany, and the USA have provided high standards of living to their citizens.
It takes open minded reasoning to go against the deep seated instincts that urge us to go back to the old tribal ways. Because free market democracy is such a new feature on the world stage, it has to be defended again and again against those with the deep seated instinct that the tribal way is better.
All the machinations that artfldgr describes in detail are, IMO, the attempts by those who want the old tribalism back and also want to be the tribal leaders once it’s reinstituted.
Well, that’s my theory fwiw.
It wouldn’t surprise if the latest Tom Friedman column is the next subject for neo — it is such an emblematic expression of all that is wrong with liberals, pundits, Washington insiders, and the Obama administration.
Friedman actually looks longingly to Communist China as the nation that’s got it knocked. No pesky democratic process to deal with, just set the intellectual mandarins loose without opposition and it all works out:
There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.
See Jonah Goldberg’s demolition .
Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is a must read, up there with Aron IMO.
One might also include Julian Belenda’s 1928 La Trahison des Clercs (The Treason of the Intellectuals) in that reading list, if for no other reason then to understand that this problem is not of post WWII vintage. A article about this book by Mr. Kimball is available here.
A totalitarian regime is one in which the state has absolute power over its people. It does not mean one man rules all. It does mean, however, the absolute and total rule by one group of men or party. Total control in this case is based upon propaganda, the creation of myth and the CULT OF PERSONALITY. What made total control possible was technology, specifically communications and transportation. You cannot maintain total control unless that control reaches out to every individual, whether subject or citizen.
and friedman has never lived under such a world. he fantasizes that he would be a leader, not worm food.
anyone other than me know china from the bottom?
oh i forgot… to huxley my family who served as waffen ss conscripts dont count, and those that helped create the soviet revoltuion dont count. i guess my han chinese wifes families lives also dont count…
and as far as jonah goldbergs liberal fascism… its a GREAT read… but he toned it down on facts and correlations to ALWAYS COME ACROSS AS REASONABLE…. that way, those who are facilitating the change to communism would read it.
the reasonable people are the facilitators, as they will stand against those who are absolute in certain things as being unreasonable.
in this way, those wishing to preserve their freedom and autonomy are made to look unreasonable, and are pressured to not act, or to act by some agreement.
and as lenin said, such agreements are a form of warfare…
Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is a must read, up there with Aron IMO.
and what about spengler who aron was inspired by? or von campe, the jugend who you didnt consider a nazi worth listenting to (unlike grass).
Jonahs greatest point in the whole book was to realize that if he told the truth directly witout a hell of a lot of qualifications, no one would read him.
but where did jonah get hsi information? why does he say the same things i say, but with a lot of sugar while i say it bare bones?
because jonah cares how many like him (like glass) because he earns a living through this discourse… and i dont give a damn what smoe stranger who doesnt pay me thinks about a me whom they never met.
i read both articles…
and jonah says much of the same things i say…
draws from the same history….
but he whitewashes it so that he is published.
I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s. It is exactly the argument that was made in defense of Stalin and Lenin before him (it’s the argument that idiotic, dictator-envying leftists make in defense of Castro and Chavez today). It was the argument made by George Bernard Shaw who yearned for a strong progressive autocracy under a Mussolini, a Hitler or a Stalin (he wasn’t picky in this regard). This is the argument for an “economic dictatorship” pushed by Stuart Chase and the New Dealers. It’s the dream of Herbert Croly and a great many of the Progressives.
i bet you dont know all those people mentioned… they are a part of the history you wont read from me… and there is a hell of a lot that goldberg doesnt tell you… in hopes that you will pick up a book and read the more detailed works.
but you dont… neither do the others.
he is reciting from the same history i know…
he mentions all the people i quote and refer to since i refer back to a time when liberals were progressives who were communists….
above i explain why even goldberg gets the crap and friedman doesnt… for the same reason that america is imperioalist but russia isnt, and how a white can be racist but never a black…
Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx.
Hannah Arendt
when goldberg mentions shaw, i wonder if you know shaw was the guy with the death panels of the left? (every 5 years a man should stand before a panel and justify his existence to the state).
unti you understand how htye redefined terms, you will not understand that an obama dictatorship is a social good and would be seen not as a despotic horrible thing, but a revolutionary social positive!!!
just as stalin is now a hero…
Sometimes the run-down of a social system expresses itself in crisis and the
incapacity for reform. Other times entropy-death, manifest in the commission
of unnatural crimes, becomes its very rationale for existence. The bleakness
of traditional social suffering is exceeded by a new, infernal kind of suffering
that beggars the imagination. We see the latter exemplified by the fratricide
of Europe in the First World War, the Nazi death camps, the Soviet
Gulag (20 million dead), Idi Amin’s Ugandan dictatorship (1971—9, 300,000
dead), Pol Pot’s rule in Cambodia (1975—9, 1.7 million murdered), Radovan
Karadzic’s and Slobodan Milosevic’s genocide in ex-Yugoslavia (1991—5,
330,000 killed, 3 million displaced), the fratricidal Iraq-Iran War (1980—8, 1
million killed) and the 35 years of Iraq’s Baathist necropolis (another quarterto-
a-half million dead and 4 million exiled), or Africa’s civil wars at the
millennium’s end: the Democratic Republic of Congo four decades on from
1960 and 2 million dead,42 a grisly book-ending of King Léopold II of
Belgium’s late 19th-century heart of darkness where at least 5 million
Congolese were killed.43
later if asked nice i will tell you why obama went to chicago, and not another place. (the.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/85/1/64.pdf?ck=nck)
its the history man… its the history…
and that these regimes come out of the nasty situations they create to facilitate such.
In the course of 1917 all of old Russia’s structures — the state, the army, the Empire, the local administration, the economy and both the urban and rural societies — came apart simultaneously. Such a situation explains why, amidst a state of generalized collapse, that there was no chance of establishing a durable constitutional democracy. History militated against it. Any government that would have tried to intervene against this revolutionary process before its full unwinding would have been discredited. Even if the Provisional Government had found the resolve to immediately convene a Constituent Assembly, to unilaterally take Russia out of the war, and to give the land to the peasants, this would have hardly had the desired result. These were measures that critics later felt the Provisional Government should have adopted in order to stop Bolshevism. These measures were also, in fact, similar to Bolshevik policy. They would have been revolutionary and disruptive in their effect, and they would have only deepened the anarchy without giving the Provisional Government the new coercive means to master it — means that came quite naturally to the Bolsheviks.
The fact of the matter is that in 1917 the impetus for disintegration was such that, once it had played itself out, only an authoritarian, coercive solution was possible for creating some new type or order. As the historian and leader of the Kadet Party Paul Miliukov put the matter, by the end of the summer the alternatives for Russia were either Kornilov or Lenin. But since Kornilov and the forces of the traditional order that he symbolized had no real power, only Lenin and the Bolsheviks were in a position to pick up the pieces and to fashion a new type of order once the storm had spent its force.
and since the right represents the traditional government we beleive did all this… when things collapse, the people will support the only ones who still seem to have power…
so there is a process to this, and it requires us.
What all these value judgments have done, and there are more besides those I have mentioned, is distort the historical record. These judgments have taught us, since childhood, that anything called a Renaissance or an Enlightenment must be good. Even the Scientific Revolution falls into similar assumptions. Thinking in terms of boxes and labels is easy in reality, thinking in such a manner is a short-cut to thinking. Why? Because boxes and labels are clean and neat. There is only one problem — not everything can be easily placed in boxes.
There have only been two periods in human history in which thinkers have decided to “box things up.” The first occurred in the 12th century. Medieval Christianity tried to define and describe the world as a matrix, as a grid in which everything you knew, thought, felt, made love to, worked for or died for was placed in a little box on the grid. The grid was held together by the logic of Aristotle and Christianity as interpreted by the likes of popes, bearded philosophers and those roguish monks. Well, to make a long story short, due to the pressures of urbanization, the influx of gold and silver into Europe, heresy, foreign travel, the birth of the middle classes and their handmaiden, capitalism, and a hundred other things, the medieval matrix fell apart. The walls of the boxes became windows, then doors and finally, about three hundred years ago, 1687 to be exact, a man by the name of Isaac Newton destroyed the whole thing only to replace it with a more reasonable and rational model he called natural philosophy which today we call science or technology.
The other period of human history which has made successive attempts to place everything in neat little boxes has been the twentieth century. The general practitioner has been replaced by the specialist. The general, widely-educated historian has been replaced by the historian of late-19th century Flemish female wool-combers. We strive for excellence based on our expertise in a specific field of endeavor. We trust those who share their expertise. Child psychologists from Benjamin Spock to Penelope Leach are trusted. So too was ALBERT EINSTEIN. He MUST have been brilliant, so trust him! Just look him — image him in your head. He MUST know. This is 20th century stuff. Go to the resources of any university library. Go check out the Internet. How many journals related to history exist? How many journals related to English history exist? How many journals related to 18th century English history exist? How many journals related to the history of agriculture in 18th century England exist? See what I mean? We like the boxes, they make life easier to understand. And even if we do not want to understand it, well, at least we know that there is somebody out there who does. Talk about smug self-assurance! Perhaps we and Ficino are not that far apart.
————
if Newton could use Human Reason to explain the natural world, then it seemed clear to Pope, Voltaire and Smith and other powdered wigs that the same methods used to determine Newton’s laws of the universe could be used to explain Man and Society. So, it’s no accident that the majority of what are now modern social sciences were founded in the 18th century: geography, anthropology, political science, political economy, sociology, psychology and, of course, history. The 18th century must have been an Age of Light.
Newton’s legacy is quite clear: Reason is good, Reason will solve problems, Reason will make your life one of improvement and society is tending toward perfection. Reason, that glorious word, so used and abused by the 18th century powdered wig, became the general palliative, the antidote to all that was superstitious (the Church), all that was full of enthusiasm and fanaticism (the Church) and all that smacked of oppression and tyranny (the Church and the State). Enter 1789. Enter the FRENCH REVOLUTION. The French people, at least some of them, guided by Reason and hunger, decided to form a new government, thanks to the example of 1776, and in a way, to Isaac Newton. So, Rousseau was invoked, so too was the liberalism of John Locke, and Thomas Paine became the champion of the working man in England and France. What did the French end up with? Twenty years of war and an emperor who seemed to be both rational and irrational at one and the same time. In 1796 at the age of 26, and while leading the French revolutionary army in Italy, Napoleon would confide to his diary:
In Italy I realized that I was a superior being and conceived the ambition of performing great things, which hitherto had filled my thought only as fantastic dreams.
————–
While all this was going on, the British were having their own brand of revolution: peaceful, bloodless and destined to make Britain the “Workshop of the World” by 1859. The Industrial Revolution was the tangible symbol of Newton’s achievement in astronomy. Machines and engines, pulleys and wheels, and the idea that power could be harnessed by man-made devices made the toilsome labor of the past nearly obsolete. Well, almost. The Revolution was built on the principles of natural philosophy, now recognized as science. Science made dreams reality. And suddenly, the captains of industry — in the case of England, the middle classes — began to make a lot of money and dreamed up new ways to spend it. Spend it rationally, however. And what of the drones who operated the machinery? Make them work eleven hours a day, six on Saturday. Get their kids into the act as well and force them to live in tenements twelve to a room. Who cared? Nothing ought to stand in the way of profits.
By 1848, a revolutionary year throughout Europe, two exiled Germans by the name of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, discovered scientific laws, based again on the Newtonian paradigm along with a dash of Hegelian philosophy, that determined that industrial capitalism would, by historical necessity, cease to exist. An age of socialism in which workers would own and control the means of production would appear and, incidentally, the middle classes would disappear. Following this would come communism, each according to his ability, each according to his need. How did Marx and Engels arrive at these conclusions? Simple. They were heirs of the Enlightenment. They studied history, especially history. But they also studied political economy, law, religion, in a word, society. They were social scientists. Follow the laws and this WILL happen. How, of course, is something they never really specified and socialists, communists and Marxists ever since, have been trying to figure out the answer to this riddle. Of course, politicians on either side of the Atlantic would have you believe that communism is dead. How wrong they are. What’s perhaps dead is Soviet communism.
————–
After all that has been said so far we can make the general conclusion that up to about 1880, or let’s say, between 1700 and 1880, the European mind could be characterized by the word REASON. Man is rational, the world is rational, Nature is rational, rational man can understand rational Nature by using REASON. But, between 1880 and 1920, a new world view took shape. It was during this period that philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, physicists and biologists made revolutionary insights into human nature and behavior and the physical world of nature. At the same time, artists–and by artists I mean poets, dramatists, novelists, painters, sculptors, dancers, composers, photographers and film makers–opened up new possibilities of artistic expression. In general, the developments in philosophy, science, the social sciences, literature and art produced a profound shift in European consciousness. MODERNISM was born.
The period 1880-1920 is noted for its extraordinary imagination and creativity in the arts and in human thought. Yet this period, a period now 100 years past, also helped to create the notion that Europe was experiencing a distorted, fragmented and troubled period in its history. Freud called it “neuroses,” Durkheim called it “anomie,” James announced it as that “oceanic feeling,” and Nietzsche, the German philologist turned prophet simply remarked that “God is dead.” Western civilization, built upon the twin pillars of faith and reason, of Christianity and Science, now faced its greatest challenge. The key point is this: late 19th century intellectuals, thinkers and artists challenged the 18th century powdered wig and his over-reliance on Human Reason. Instead of rationality, the late 19th century thinker stressed irrationality and unreason. Whereas the 18th century philosopher saw Reason as the mainspring of human endeavor and behavior, the late 19th century saw instincts, impulses, drives and the will to power as the motive forces of the individual. It’s no wonder that most Europeans welcomed the outbreak of the GREAT WAR in 1914. Here was irrationality and Unreason for all to see. Here was a chance to either (1) re-affirm the life-giving force of Human Reason and Progress or (2) embrace the will to power, after all, to create, you must first destroy.
Many readers here are amature philosophers. Philosophy is one of the tools used to defeat evil, after all. It is a necessary thing to learn for those that have escaped the Left and for those who don’t ever want to be part of the Left to begin with.
The reason why we have to keep on re-arguing about the morality of atom bombs dropped on population centers is not “intellectualism”.
It’s that it is the Western tradition of morality that some kinds of actions are simply evil and nothing excuses them. We believe in absolutes where morality is concerned. And when absolutes are involved, ‘you must not do evil that good may come of it’.
To be unacquainted with this anti-consequentialist way of thinking about morality in Western tradition is to be gravely lacking in one’s education. But some people simply can’t grasp it.
Most of of think, for example, that torturing an infant to death is wrong. You don’t do it. If someone holds a gun to your head and say do it, you don’t. If someone says they’ll kill all your family unless you do it, you don’t. If someone will murder your entire town unless you do it, you don’t. You don’t torture infants to death.
Now you can disagree. You can be a consequentialist if you like. And we can have a discussion about it.
But to act as if consequentialism is the only moral philosophy and anyone who disagrees with it is an intellectual ivory tower type is very silly.
Massacre is wrong. Massacre is wrong in peacetime. Massacre is wrong in wartime. Massacre is ALWAYS wrong. The fact that you BELIEVE that you know the future and that thing WILL turn out a certain way if you take a certain course is no excuse.
Once you start thinking without recourse to massacre you may well discover that other paths are open to you. And perhaps things will simply turn out differently than you expect.
But if not, not. “Better to suffer evil than to do it.”
Jeff: You are demonstrating exactly the sort of perfectionism and absolutism that Aron was arguing against.
Take, for example, your statement “Massacre is always wrong.” In World War II, large-scale civilian bombings were commonplace on both sides, for a number of complex reasons (some of them connected with the technology available at the time) too lengthy to go into here. In modern wartime terrible things—amoral, immoral things—always occur, and modern wars cannot be fought, and unfortunately cannot be won, without them.
We try to minimize these things, but to have refused to bomb Hiroshima would have led to many more deaths on both sides, including those of civilians. I have written a series of posts which deal with these facts in connection with Hiroshima, here. You act as though it is clear that your position is morally superior, and as though in war one side can keep its hands perfectly clean and still win against an opponent with dirty hands. It is not, and it cannot.
Does anyone have an explanation for why the left gets so worked up about Hiroshima and Nagasaki but not the firebombing that proceeded it? At least three times the number of Japanese died as a result of the firebombing than did from the two atomic bombs.
… I can see the calculation whereby McCain would have been a disaster, not so much because he was insufficiently conservative … but because the left would have gone absolutely nuts had Obama lost … McCain Derangement Syndrome after eight years of Bush, the Iraq War, and Obama’s failure … the Republican Party would have been entirely exhausted.
I am of the opinion that McCain is secretly relieved that he didn’t win. I believe that he quietly gave up in that last month or two.
I would not venture to read McCain’s mind and did not see any evidence of McCain giving up at any time during the campaign.
I DID see a lot of giving up by some conservatives, evidenced by their whining and squalling because their favored candidate(whoever THAT may have been) was not the nominee and manifested by tortured rationales on why conservatives, the GOP and the nation would be better off with Obama in the Whitehouse. The depth of the ability of the human being to rationalize any behavior is a constant source of wonderment …
Myself, I enjoy seeing the Left go “absolutely nuts.” I think it’s great fun when they do. I buy popcorn and try to get a seat near the front.
Winning is ALWAYS better than losing.
So we deal with this Obama menace. I think we’re winning. Maybe I’m wrong. In 2010 and 2012 we get new shots. We’ll see.
Yes, let’s deal with the menace. I think we could win if the Right doesn’t continue to purge the ranks and alienate the voters. And let’s hope that Limbaugh approves of the GOP nominee in 2012 or it may all be for naught.
I have hope that messing with healthcare may turn out to be another political “third rail” and Obama has not only touched this third rail, he has laid down and tied himself to it.
grackle: Thanks for your service as a Marine.
I’m a proud veteran of the US Navy but Leathernecks occupy a special place in my heart.
“”Does anyone have an explanation for why the left gets so worked up about Hiroshima and Nagasaki””
I’d say its the lopsided technological prowess of the judeo/christian male issue.
Jamie: (BTW, though Limbaugh didn’t support McCain in primary season, once he got the nomination, Limbaugh spent his time vigorously attacking Obama …
Go to Limbaugh’s site. Type McCain into the search engine. You’ll get 856 hits, which is kind of puzzling. I did this in June of this year and got very close to a 1,000 hits! But we can see from the 856 number that Limbaugh loves the McCain topic.
I paged through the first 40 of those 856 and counted 19 McCain hits(almost half) in the period between the time that McCain clinched the nomination(March 2008) and the election(November 2008). The other hits fell either before or after the March 2008 — November 2008 time period.
not exactly “enthusiastically campaigning” for McCain, but not disowning him either.
Tepid support for some of your party’s candidates during the primaries — that’s just rough and tumble internecine politics and both parties engage in it; it’s part of the system – but after the 2 candidates are nominated by their parties faint praise is equivalent to condemnation.
To anyone: Provide 2 or 3 links in the time period of July 2008 through November 2008 for us where Limbaugh puts McCain in a positive light. They may be there but I’m not going to wade through Limbaugh’s verbiage to get to them. I’ve done my part in suggesting a method of how the truth of the above statement can be demonstrated. Think of it not as a punishment but as a penance.
I don’t lay McCain’s defeat at Limbaugh’s feet.
Who knows? My guess is that Limbaugh’s lack of support was a significant factor if not a deciding factor.
I wasn’t following Coulter, so I can’t comment about her commentary during the election.
I wasn’t following Coulter either but if you viewed any TV during the 2008 campaign after McCain clinched the nomination you had to see her on the news punditry circuit. The MSM loved to parade her in front of the cameras telling conservatives to vote Democrat.
I saw her a month or so ago and she still says it’s better that Obama is in the Whitehouse. I guess she’s one that’s not afraid of Obama ushering in a dictatorship.
Unless of course she thinks that an Obama dictatorship would be a good thing also — maybe even BETTER than a mere Obama Presidency. Teach all those pesky moderate voters once and for all just how bad things can get if Liberals run a dictatorship …
Just maybe John McCain lost because of John McCain? Nahhhhh…Can’t be!
Maybe so, no one can say for sure. Limbaugh has a huge and loyal following and Coulter is perennially on the best-seller list. I think if Limbaugh doesn’t endorse a Republican candidate it’s a major handicap for that candidate.
another important left intellectual, who became a changer was the austrian writer Manes Sperber
My blogs name: “Aron Sperber” – dedicated to my teachers “Raymond Aron” and “Manes Sperber”
Grackle, it sounds like you’re suggesting its ok and even admirable for moderates like McCain to vote their conscious even if it conflicts with the party.
Yet if Limbaugh does it its an unpardonable sin.
I don’t see the consistency in your comments.
Grackle, it sounds like you’re suggesting its ok and even admirable for moderates like McCain to vote their conscious even if it conflicts with the party.
The commentor misses the point. Firstly, McCain was not my first choice either. And IMO McCain has been wrongheaded at some points in his Senate career — McCain-Feingold, which I consider to be an infraction of the First Amendment and a bad idea, is a case in point.
What the factionalists don’t realize is that no candidate is going to be the perfect candidate for many, or even most, in ether party. But once the primaries are over it is time to suck it up and look to the big picture. It should have been evident to all conservatives that Obama in the Whitehouse would be a worse thing than McCain in the Whitehouse.
Yet if Limbaugh does it its an unpardonable sin.
We’re mixing apples and oranges here. McCain is a Senator — Limbaugh is not. Nevertheless I’ll attempt a response.
It’s not like I don’t basically agree with Limbaugh’s viewpoint on many things. And I have to admit that Limbaugh has played a valuable role in calling attention to the idiocies and hypocrisies of the Progressives in the years leading up to last year’s election.
And Ann Coulter is funny and good at puncturing Progressive balloons. It’s when she slips into moralizing, which she seems to be doing more of lately, that she loses my attention. Comedy stops tickling my funnybone when it starts overtly preaching.
But when McCain won the nomination they should have swallowed their disappointment and enthusiastically campaigned for the Republican Party‘s chosen candidate, using the basic theme that McCain would be better than Obama as our President.
Neither would have had to invalidate their past objections to McCain, some of which I even agree with. It would have been enough to have simply buried the hatchet until after the election was over and then if McCain emerged as the winner to resume their criticisms – which could have had a positive effect on the new administration … or not — but at least Obama would not be in the Whitehouse.
And Sarah Palin would have been the VP and presumably ready to run when McCain left the Whitehouse. I think a Sarah Palin with 4 to 8 years on the inside track to bone up on issues would be an unbeatable opponent — our version of Margaret Thatcher.
I don’t see the consistency in your comments.
Speaking of consistency — how consistent is it to badmouth McCain throughout his campaign and then be outraged at Obama after the election?
I’m a proud veteran of the US Navy but Leathernecks occupy a special place in my heart.
grackle: I’m not a military guy. You said you were currently at Quantico Marine Base. From that I inferred that you were a Marine.
I’m not a military guy. You said you were currently at Quantico Marine Base. From that I inferred that you were a Marine.
Hux — you must be referring to this:
I’m in the Marine Corps. I’m on guard at Quantico. Some American civilian nuts who have let their fantasies get the better of their mental processes are shooting at me. I don’t wait for “orders;” I blow the idiots away with a few well-placed bursts. We were warned to be on the lookout for these Birthers. Like shooting fish in a barrel …
Which was in response to this:
This is why, as I mentioned on another thread here, my husband wondered some months ago whether the American military would obey orders to fire on citizens. People on our side of the question may differ as to its answer; but it is not an idle question. I’m simply saying, and have been saying for some time, that we may have to fight—and I don’t mean only in voting booths and courts of law.
It was my fiction of what could happen if civilians begin to take up arms against the military.
> Samuel Coleridge, whose literary criticism is at least as impressive as his poetry, said the critic’s role in every generation is to rediscover truth.
“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”
– Niels Bohr –
I think the really ironic thing is that Coleridge’s observation even applies to the Boomers. There was a Truth which had been lost before they went looking for it, in that materialism, while a laudable goal, should not be the be-all-end-all of life. And there were other viewepoints besides the classical Greek one which had value (see Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I cannot recommend highly enough)
Unfortunately, that Truth the Boomers found got enshrined and made holy, rather than being recognized as a mere part of the jigsaw puzzle which life assembles into (we all have our own arrangement, which is why individual freedom is important).
To most of us, that piece is of some import. To the libtards, that piece is of central import (well, as far as your OWN materialism — THEY have a reason for needing all of THEIR stuff — It’s YOU who need to give up things for them to do Their Good Works with…).
That piece has become one of the centerpieces to every life’s tapestry, and, if you don’t understand that, if you don’t go along with it completely, then you’re a redneck racist sub-neanderthal, and need external direction to Get Your Life Straight.
The more you grasp all this, the easier it is to deal with libtards, to undercut their “so-called” thinking processes, and to work against them where they stray from common sense (which is increasingly everywhere, I grant)
> Speaking of consistency — how consistent is it to badmouth McCain throughout his campaign and then be outraged at Obama after the election?
LOL. No, it would be inconsistent to praise mccain (or obama, for that matter) during the campaign for his ideas, THEN to badmouth him for those ideas when he put them into effect.
Badmouthing Obama for not doing pretty much anything he said he would is a good reason for badmouthing Obama (and, if you were against what Obama said before the election, then badmouthing him for doing that is also sensible).
P.S.: Don’t blame me — I voted for Bill & Opus
> Yes, let’s deal with the menace. I think we could win if the Right doesn’t continue to purge the ranks and alienate the voters.
I’d argue that the Right NEEDS to purge the ranks of ersatz RINOs. Sorry — ANY so-called “republican” who voted for that health-care abortion, the tax-and-scam bill, or any of the recent Dem agenda should be purged from the party — and preferably by taking them back out and shot.
(OK, OK, not shot, literally…. but the party should sue them for “fraud and misrepresentation leading to clear and obvious damages” — Anyone who voted for those bills — they aren’t Republicans by any meaning of the word, except, perhaps, for the libtard “Humpty Dumpty” version: “A word means exactly what I want it to mean at the moment, no more, no less”)
… it would be inconsistent to praise McCain (or Obama, for that matter) during the campaign for his ideas, THEN to badmouth him for those ideas when he put them into effect.
Praise McCain during the campaign then badmouth him after he won … that would be inconsistent IF it had happened, I suppose. But that’s not what happened was it? McCain lost.
I think there are even more inconsistencies that did not occur. We can even have some fun imagining inconsistencies that did not happen.
For instance praise Palin during the campaign and then badmouth her if she had won. Or … badmouth her during the campaign and then praise her if she had won. Or … badmouth Biden during the campaign and then be outraged at Palin if she had won. And so on …
I agree, all kinds of inconsistencies COULD have happen. Life itself is full of real inconsistencies and theoretically an infinite number of hypothetical inconsistencies.
However, the inconsistency that DID happen, that is part of reality, is that some conservative folks badmouthed McCain during his campaign but are now bewildered and confounded by Obama’s Marxist antics, even to the point, it seems, that they fear Obama will usher in an Obama dictatorship.
What did they expect would happen after Obama moved into the Whitehouse? Lower taxes? A stronger national defense? A more limited government?
I’d argue that the Right NEEDS to purge the ranks of ersatz RINOs.
Apparently one of the RINOs, Susan Collins of Maine, may keep the public option trigger from becoming law. Sometimes those pesky RINOs come in handy …