The neofication of Juan Williams
I see it in Williams eyes when I happen to catch him on Fox these days: he’s spitting mad. Personally outraged, and most of all surprised.
I don’t know whether the NPR firing will lead to any political change for him, and it almost doesn’t matter. But it is interesting to watch—and to recognize—the emotional process he’s undergoing. He appears to be struggling with a sense of betrayal and of shock, because he seemed to have previously been a believer in the essential fairness of the liberal world of which he was a part. His unjust treatment by NPR—“after all I’ve done for you”—came as a surprise.
It shouldn’t have, if he’d been paying attention. But people (not just Juan Williams) tend to filter their perceptions of reality through their belief systems, and ignore that which doesn’t fit in. But there is nothing quite like a personal experience to focus the attention. Williams’s attention is pretty focused these days.
It’s not for nothing that I have a category on the right sidebar entitled, “Leaving the circle: political apostasy” (a category to which I will assign this post when it’s done). I remember quite vividly when I first experienced the phenomenon. At the time, I was far from being a Juan Williams, having lived a relatively apolitical life. The reaction I got when I first politely voiced my relatively moderate disagreements wth the liberals who surrounded me sent me reeling, in the emotional sense.
I’ve adjusted in the many years since it first happened (neo’s not so neo any more). I’ve gotten used to it and come to expect it. But in some ways I’m still reeling, and probably always will be. It’s that profound an experience.
You are right Neo, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The left is notorious for this sort of response and treatment of anyone not following a strict party line.
I’ve been wondering if that whole thing was somewhat planned and orchestrated. Coming on the heels of Joy Behar & Whoopie Goldberg’s walk out and their moral outrage with Bill O’Reilly. Many on the left were vocal with their support of the two and Juan has been a frequent visitor on O’Reilly’s show.
What I find interesting is that Juan Williams was a good soldier for Obama and the Dems in recent months on Fox News. While a generally astute and intelligent speaker he would regurgitate stale talking points to uphold the current government disasters.
Despite his stalwart efforts, he was purged anyway. It shows that the left cannot allow interaction with others. Why would the east germans need to build the berlin wall or the North Koreans forbid unescorted contacts between westerners and their citizens. Free and genial contact erodes the anger base of the left and reduces class struggle to mere disagreements.
Ol’ neighbor Juan had much the same look on his face (I observed him as he mowed his lawn across the street) back in the early nineties when he was under attack for allegations of sexual harassment at the WaPo. I don’t doubt he’s reflecting back on those times now.
Well, I got de-friended today on Face Book by a liberal over a political/religious debate-lol.
I think i have friends that are liberals like Juan Williams. They been libs forever and were blind to its hideous transformation over the past 20 years right under their nose. Perhaps because it was right under their nose. They couldn’t see it!
My moment was when the USS Cole was attacked and all that happened in response was an aspirin factory (alleged chemical weapons factory) and an empty pre warned Taliban/AlQ base was hit by missiles.
The concern shown by the administration over a certain blue dress superseded the concern shown for the dead and their families.
I do not vote democrat since then.
Not totally believing the liberal faith is apostasy. Questioning the liberal faith is blasphemy. Juan is obviously a heretic. It’s time for the auto-de-fe.
Amen, Neo. Perhaps NPR’s curse may yet become Juan Williams blessing. I have always been confused by Williams. At times he has come acroos quite reasonable and at other times he has made statements that boggled my mind from an otherwise seemingly rational man. Perhaps this was all inevitable. Maybe there has been an internal conflict in Juan Williams that just needed a little kick in the pants from reality to begin to see the hypocrisy of the left.
Neo,
“. . . people . . . tend to filter their perceptions of reality through their belief systems, and ignore that which doesn’t fit in. But there is nothing quite like a personal experience to focus the attention.”
This give credence both to the contra-cliche that “believing is seeing” and the classic “a liberal is a conservative who hasn’t been mugged yet.”
I, and perhaps others, would be interested in someday hearing some of the issue-based details of your “mugging” (I expect it wasn’t a single incident, but an accumulation). What was is that caused you to question liberal otthodoxy and led to a recognition that reality and available facts did not support such an outlook?
I ask because conservative v liberal arguments generally involve people arguing PAST each other (just listen to Alan Colmes argue with any conservative). What was it that, for you, caused the crack in the dam?
I saw something somewhat different. I saw someone badly hunt because he was fired, in spite of the blessings that came about because of it. Did you notice the red around the eyes? A TV personality, rich by most standards, no need to work at all, and he gets hurt by being fired. He must have had a pretty easy life.
The responses for most are predictable in such situations. There are multiple responses and excuses, often valid, however they usually boil down to just two “I never should have gotten into that position in the first place” and “I should have left a long time ago”. I have not been paying close enough attention to see if he used either one.
Second paragraph.
It shouldn’t have, it he’d been paying attention.
Might need to be “if” instead of “it”
…i’ve done it a thousand times :\
He appears to be struggling with a sense of betrayal and of shock, because he seemed to have previously been a believer in the essential fairness of the liberal world of which he was a part.
This is the position of a Useful idiot who finds out they have been used and that they were never a real part of anything, but instead, a tool to be used for as long as the sham could hold out.
I linked to MANY texts of the experiences of the same people… unlike Neo conversion, theirs is worse as they were specifically used for who they were, and then are discarded.
this is the sad story behind frank marshall davies, except that he blamed whites, not communism.
but i also said to read Bella Dodd, who ALSO went through the machine and figured things out, then desperately tried to write a warning. (i linked to it, no one mentions it)
i also said read about Freda Utley…
i linked to her story as well..
i linked to a fictional story where such hints of another world were embedded… white nights.
the woman that fired him became a tour guide for the soviets…where ted turner then tagged her to work with him… and ted was rewarded for siding with who early on… and married whom?
the man who gives the scary interview about how russia did this, Bezmenov, he was a tour guide as well!!! before he defected.
in case no one is watching… the cold war that came after the cold war is warmed up to hot, and there are ghosts around lots of corners.
the unions, Obama, SDS, Soros, spies caught in brooklin trying to get columbia students, sleeper sies now made into celebrities to turn other americans.
here is a interview with a man talking about Obamas friends youthful indiscretions and plans for the future
Larry Grathwohl 1982
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_hPDpOVTE&feature=player_embedded
NO AMOUNT of proof and evidence is enough when the person listening doesnt want to conclude the fact.
we are now finding out that Howard Zinn was a card carrying communist (which makes the cool character in good will hunting a communist too as he recomends that as he best history)..
as i said PEOPLES is code. as LEAGUE is code
so Zinn was telling everyone who was interested in the cause, which history to read in the title. and the rest would take care of itself.
you CAN read Zinns file…
the files are all linked to the players of today
Weatherman, Zinn, SDS, Panthers, progressive labor party, socialists workers party, and many many more.
maybe now its time to revisit the history of those who were duped, and who in their anger REVEALED waht they knew…
is it time yet to read:
Bella Dodd? (head of cpusa, and nea)
how about Ron Rosenbaum’s “Goodbye, All That: How Left Idiocies Drove Me to Flee” ?
Freda Utley The Dream we lost Then and NOW
Lost Illusion… and The china story..
her Son wrote a book too..
Return to the Gulag: Jon Utley’s search for his father
Return to the Gulag: Jon Basil Utley in the USSR
blog.mises.org/9512/return-to-the-gulag-jon-basil-utley-in-the-ussr/
In 1936 Moscow, Jon Utley was two years old when his father, Arcadi Berdichevsky, was sent to a labor camp by the Soviet secret police. His mother, Freda Utley, escaped with Jon to England and then to America. In 2004 and 2006, Utley, embarked upon a search to learn of his father’s fate. Return to the Gulag traces Utley’s journey through former labor camps and cities in northern Russia and his final uncovering of the horrible truth at the dreaded camp city of Vorkuta within the Arctic Circle.
then there is Stalins Children: Three Generatinos of love war and survival.
its starts with the history like my family.. and shows how GENERATIONS are still living things. and know its not over…
then Dear God i wanted to live.. which was retitled to I want to live: The diary of a young girl in stalins russia (a latvian anne franke who wasnt jewish)
The diary of a sensitive, intelligent and moody young girl against the backdrop of the purges and and politicide of Stalinist Russia.
This book like The Diary of Anne Frank and the Diary of Eva Heyman (both child victims of the Nazi Holocaust) tells of the life through the eyes innocent young girl at a time of totalitarian terror and mass murder.
Nina mainly talks of boys, her friends, her moods, her family and her own angst.
But given the fact that her father had been a Social Revolutionary ( a party opposed to the Bolsheviks) and is now imprisoned for being a ‘counterrevolutionary’, anything Nina wrote when the diary was seized by the NKVD and Nina and her family arrested and deported to a labour camp can be charged with being counterrevolutionary, under the sick system of communist dictatorship.
What we get a picture of is a magnificent young writer, a deeply intelligent girl with an eye for detail and analysis of her friends and family and a time and place where humanity is under the jackboot of a cruel ideology and the degenerates who inevitably rise to positions of power under such a system.
She reveals the peculiarities and personalities of the people who live with her and wher firends at school, her budding sexuality and her intellectual development
Inevitably she would write of her hatred for such a system as any intelligent person of substance would think like her.
and most have not even heard about Eva Heyman…
how about Helga Deen? David Koker? Etty Hillesum?
how about VÄ›ra Kohnové¡ a czech girl who wrote a diary too? Hélé¨ne Berr?
of course, she and all the others are drowned out by anne… and the cult of anne… [they refer to it as that now] there are now books out on how the socialists used anne franke and played a game on those that revere that history!!! (another betrayal) she actually wrote two versions of her diary, and the things were edited, censored, and all to create an image that could then be used in schools, and so forth. Meyer Levin has been fighting to make her human again.
and there are some rare books you cant find. like ridhard wrights “too smart to be a communist”, in where he describes their and he getting together, and then not wanting him because he was a SMART black man…
the story of communism is the story of betrayal, and the using up of people, lying, dissimulation and the unleashing of the worst in man… as if the worst in man would and could make a utopia.
in a short time i could list more than 100 such books.
and almost ALL of them are unknown commonly
and MANY of them have direct bearing on todays history, as the boosk are about setting the foundations for today.
a child knows that a wild bear is dangerous and cant be trusted and will not listen to pleas and reasoning.
an adult has to have a special kind of active ignoring to NOT understand that which they interact with.
the easiest way to describe it is
They meet with the devil and then dont belive he is as evil as everyone makes him out to be.
when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you
T, check out her first category, A mind is a difficult thing to change. It is a long story, you’ll need a good block of time to read it, but worth it. Also of interest, Radical Son, where the DH describes years of doubt and facts coming down to the Dark Night of the Soul, that moment and the long night that follows when you realize that so much of what you have built your life upon was wrong.
Here’s where Glenn Reynold’s notion of a “preference cascade” comes in — discussed in a little more length in “How do people change their politics“
T – answer on the sidebar.
I have often mentioned that liberalism is largely social rather than intellectual, with social warnings and disciplines delivered frequently. Sometimes overtly, sometimes subtly, but always the implied threat: we will ruin you if you disagree, you will be cast into the outer darkness. No one will think you are smart or good anymore. If this seems overwrought on my part, remember that I lived through it until my 30’s and still work in a field dominated by liberals.
So the excision of Williams has the effect of keeping the faithful in line: we can do it. Even if you mostly agree with us. Even if you’re black – espcially if you’re black – you are not exempt. It is extremely effective. But sometimes, as here, they overstep, are revealed for what they are, and it backfires.
here williams mentions he is hurt
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4387542/the-factor-confronts-npr-ceo
A TV personality, rich by most standards, no need to work at all, and he gets hurt by being fired. He must have had a pretty easy life.
Gee, I think getting fired is extremely traumatic, particularly done in the callous way that NPR fired Williams. Whether or not you “need” the job doesn’t enter into it. It’s rejection. And when an employer chooses to reject you in a way that is clearly intended to be hurtful… well, it HURTS.
Thanks all for the reference to the sidebar.
One further note on the Juan Williams affair. There was also a (short-lived?) attempt by Media Matters to target Mara Liasson as the next to go from NPR, and several commenters have suggested that this was an attempt to put “fear into the hearts” of those who cooperated with Fox News.
Extrapolated, if all journalists and analyists can be bullied into not cooperating with Fox, then Fox loses its “Fair and Balanced” tagline. It must gall the left to no end that Fox can always point to a diversity of opinion to defend itself against charges that it is the voice of the Republican party. Without that diverse opinion, the charge becomes more potent.
neo!
Hey, I ought to get a HT for pointing out the likelihood that we might see a neo-neoJuan out of all this back on the 23rd.
Not that I’m complaining….
“”I have often mentioned that liberalism is largely social rather than intellectual,””
AVI
I see it more as fashion based. The ultimate peer pressure dynamic invented by humans based solely on subjective whims of the day put forth by those said to be the prophets at it. Which is why liberalism and bellbottom pants can never be relegated to the graveyard.
Maybe we can think of conservatism as the button down white shirt that reflects so much common sense it can’t fall under the influence of fashion.
The reaction I got when I first politely voiced my relatively moderate disagreements wth the liberals who surrounded me sent me reeling, in the emotional sense.
Look what happened to Mike Dukakis: teaching at Northeastern University and part-timing at UCLA. No cushy, phony-balony, high-paying gigs in the Leftist ecosystem for him.
Dukakis is a former governor and Presidential candidate. He carried water for the Harvard/Ivy League liberal crowd for decades. Look what happened once they had no further use for him.
(The foregoing is meant as commentary on the establishment Left. It is not meant to disparage Northeastern University, which afaik competently fulfills its mission as a large urban school. It is most definitely not intended to indicate support for Dukakis as a candidate for public office.)
jimmynyo-etc.: Thanks for the typo correction.
If Juan Williams does change to a more conservative and less liberal point of view, the left will simply dismiss him as “Fox lackey”, “not one of us” , rightwingnut, what have you.
I am reminded of the reaction of many far leftists to Solzhenytsin in the 70’s and 80s. When one cited works of Solzhenytsin, such as the Gulag Archipelago, to justify one’s opinion of the Soviet Union and/or Communism, far leftists would dismiss Solzhenytsin as being anti-Soviet, which was shorthand for being “biased” and therefore not credible. [As if being put in the Gulag for putting one’s opinion of Uncle Joe in a letter to a friend would NOT make one anti-Soviet!]
They will give a similar treatment to Juan Williams to discredit him.
What surprises me is how analogies of libs to the Soviet Union become more and more plausible.
I’m betting the typical liberal opinion of Juan Williams went down after his firing. Not because of his controversial statement. But because his insider status got revoked from on high.
What I hope will not happen to Juan:
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-bitterness25-2009may25,0,4544029.story
I hope he sees it like Adrian Day: “Perhaps NPR’s curse may yet become Juan Williams blessing.”
And I hope Juan personally replies to the Congressman from Minnesota, Keith Ellison, who called Juan a bigot and un-American.
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/10/22/keith-ellison-lets-face-it-what-juan-williams-said-was-un-american/
Juan Williams left that liberal plantation one too many times. They just had to tie him up to that liberal whipping post. It is for his own good of course. And might teach anyone else with independent thought to “get themselves right”.
Williams has been on fire on Fox since this happened. I imagine that his hurt was compounded by the manner in which he was fired (over the phone, without a chance to defend himself), as well as Schiller’s slander about his mental health. I can’t imagine working at a place for 10 years and then being to casually, and so callously, discarded.
Let’s hope the open support he’s received from FOX and conservatives shows him and others who is really the “tolerant” ones.
Williams thought WHAT?
Where has he been all his life?
If he’s that dumb, who needs him?
I still listened to All Things Considered for a very long time, even after my politics started shifting center-right.
Silly me, I actually thought it spoke WELL of NPR that they “shared” Juan with Fox News. I imagined that (in spite of the obvious slant of their coverage) that they actually took journalism seriously there and were willing to air all sides of various debates.
This incident has been very illuminating. It really put the spotlight on NPR’s true colors.
The Libs save the worst for those of their own who venture “off the reservation”. Juan Williams dared to take money from The Evil Empire (FOX). He had to pay, they were just looking for an excuse.
Juan, if you are reading this come to Milwaukee for a couple beers and we will continue your journey to The Dark Side. We have cookies over here.
I’d love to hear more about what prompted your own political transition…was it a sudden thing, or a gradual process. What were the “triggering factors”? Have you previously posted on this?
(I’ve learned to just skip over the endless ramblings of “art-the-f”)
We all must arrive at a respect for TRUTH sooner or later. Like “neo”, I was past 30 when it hit me, like the proverbial “ton of bricks”. I always thought Juan wanted to search for the truth–he finally found it.
Juan, look up Cindy Sheehan. You two have a lot to discuss.
Justin, look over on the right of the screen under “Categories”. Neo’s story is the one titled “A mind is a difficult thing to change…” It has multiple parts.
Justin, see the comments above from Assistant Village Idiot and AHLondon above, responding to a question like yours from another commenter. And then see the link on the right sidebar to Neo’s remarkable “A Mind is a Difficult Thing To Change” series.
Lines are being drawn. The same lines that were drawn during the Enlightenment – between freedom of thought and dogma. Juan Williams is a good one to have on our side.
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”
I was a liberal for maybe 20 minutes in 1970, then maybe 4 months in 1982. The first was a tall and lovely hippie chick, The second was the tag end of acing like a damn loser. 4 months of feeling sorry myself. Then, as suddenly as it hit, it left , never to return.
I cannot imagine a life of liberlism, what would be the point?
It’s been 22 yrs since I stunned myself by not being able to vote for Dukakis. Two yrs later when we moved house, I had moved sufficiently right that I re-registered Republican. My husband was speechless–and, I think, not a little embarrassed. Eventually, I learned not to talk politics if I wanted to keep my old friends, but, for the most part, we drifted apart. My husband has never changed his registration, but he’s voted a straight Republican ticket since 1996. The liberal friends I still have never ask me shy I changed. They just look at me through squinted eyes sometimes.
Ooops! That’s “why I changed.”
liberalism . there , i really can sepll
geran:
Too bad. You ignored a good one.
Thanks, Artfldgr, veteran that you are, bent but never broken.
Most people still believe the “left” believes in freedom – of speech, of assembly, of religion – and do not see that they are no longer tolerant at all. they are at war with us, really, and it comes out in their rhetoric. “Us” is anyone who asks a question, stands on their own, registers for the wrong party, or otherwise isn’t “pretty’ the way they like them.
Lifelong dems here have discovered, when they have chosen to run for office, that the Democratic Central Committee attacks them, calls them Republican stalking horses – they find themselves vilified and ostracized, attacked and undermined, and they are baffled, for they have done nothing wrong. They just aren’t part of the club and they don’t know the secret handshake.
The betrayal is indeed life-changing. I’ve watched it and it is sad.
Off-topic:
Democrats at DEFCON 1: Is Christine O’Donnell now leading in internals?
Be still my beating heart.
I already have a bottle of champagne waiting for next Tuesday. I may have to get a second one just in case O’Donnell wins.
Pingback:Juan Williams – Neo-neocon can relate! (and so can I) | Liberty Wolf
Every attempt of modernisation or liberalisation of Communism so far led to its collapse or slow demise. Such regimes are most stable in their most doctrinare Stalinist form, like N.Korea or Cuba. Even small doses of freedom are lethal poison to such ideology, it began unravel. So knee-jerk reaction of leftist for even mild heresies in their ranks – perception of them as apostasy – is quite understandable.
“Even if you’re black – espcially if you’re black – you are not exempt.
That’s a key point right there. The “enlightened”, multi-cultural left resorts to the basest forms of racism in attacking those like Juan Williams who they feel have strayed from the liberal plantation. I’m thinking, of course, of various commentators calling Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell vile names (house slave, etc.) that should be absolutely intolerable in any civil forum.
The rule seems to be: If you’re white, you can pick your political opinions, but if you’re black, we’ll pick your political opinions for you. And woe betide you if you think you’re allowed to pick your own.
Despite their claims and faux-honoring of him, the Left really isn’t interested in MLK’s idea of the “content of [one’s] character”. They’re much more interested in the color of one’s skin. If you have a certain skin color you’re restricted to a certain set of ideas, and that’s final.
It still rankles me greatly that Condoleeza Rice has been treated the way she has been over the years. She’s gotten way, way, way less than her due from the general press because she’s a Republican. I remember seeing her on C-SPAN in an academic discussion talking about developments in Soviet Central Asia (her academic specialty) years before I ever heard her name mentioned in respect to politics. But she made enough of an impression on me that when her name later did come up in politics I knew exactly who she was. She had as many political “firsts” as you want to name. A black woman as National Security Adviser – when does that ever happen? A black woman as Secretary of State (there had only been one woman Secretary of State of any race before). Sure she got a few polite mentions here and there, and a smattering of house slave slurs. But mostly, she was ignored. Do you think she would have been ignored with equal accomplishments if she had been a Democrat? I think the question answers itself to anyone who hasn’t been asleep the past 20 years.
Thanks Tom…
and for Geran… I will ask you one question and maybe you can answer or not… the post is short, so it shouldnt be difficult to understand…
Did the US invade Russia, and if so how many Americans died when they invaded Russia?
Bonus… what president?
Artfldgr: an interesting question! Thanks, I never knew that.
I assume that you want Geran to reply, so I’ll shut up now.
OK, so we feel sorry for Juan when his mental health was questioned. But has Juan ever shown any sympathy for all those called homophobic? Has he ever shown any sympathy for the endless accusations of racism against conservatives? Have the intimidation/indoctrination sessions marketed as sensitivity training ever troubled him? So is Juan’s outrage about the process or the fact that the process targeted him?
jvermeer51: often outrage at the process in general begins when a person gets a taste of it him/herself. One can lead to the other.
neo
jvermeer’s point seems to be that Williams was handing the stuff out so lavishly that he couldn’t have been surprised to find out that…he was doing it. Or what it was. Is he so dumb as to have believed himself?
He’s suprised that it happened to HIM. He figured he was immune, in part, I suppose, because he was so good at smearing others.
To exaggerate, I figure it’s like one of Stalin’s executioners wondering why, since he’s been exceeding his quota all along, they’re going get him anyway. No big surprise about what is happening, only about to whom.
Daniel in Brookline,
Geran and others i run into believe that if they paid for it or it cost them, then it means something. and if its free, not only does it not have value, but you should add value by crafting it just for them. That by some odd self focus where they are worth more than others, and so their very gaze, reading, and other such acts, convey a return on value.
where i am usually pressed for time, already know this and more, and am offering them something of value that their gaze doesn’t quite pay for the years of effort to get it.
some people sit around waiting for someone to put a diamond on their fingers, others are willing to root in the mud and put up with a bit of uncomfortable to have that same diamond. the latter actually gets them and the former tends to be pissed that they didnt get their share.
its funny and very sad (for me).
Artfldgr to geran:
Did the US invade Russia, and if so how many Americans died when they invaded Russia?
Bonus… what president?
Since 6 hours have passed, I will answer off the top of my head. President: Woodrow Wilson. Small contingent sent during first year or two after the 1917 October Revo. guess 1-3 thousand. Czechs and Brits also sent some.
I will treat this like a quiz show and use only what is in my head, not in the Net.
Gringo,
I wouldn’t call the US effort in Russia “an invasion”. It was troops sent to support the White Russians. They were sent to Russia and served there, but didn’t really invade, any more than Americans sent to the UK in WW2 invaded. They were sent to an area where White Russians were in control.
The Czechs were not really sent there. They were fighting the Germans when the Revolution occured, and had to retreat through Russia eastward to escape. They used a railroad, and attempted to avoid fighting the Reds, but eventually had to fight their way through. When they reached the eastern coast, they fought the Reds for the Brits for a time but tried to get home ASAP (their goal was the liberation of their homeland, not defeat of the Reds).
The Germans faced both the Red Russians and the Czechs. They plowed through the Reds with ease, but learned to respect the Czechs as excellent soldiers.
Jvermeer51, I’m willing to take my friends where I can find them. If Williams uses this experience to reach a fuller understanding of both his own convictions and the profound disconnect between his previous employer’s stated self and revealed self, well, he may end up a friend.
F’rinstance, I’m happy to have Tammy Bruce on “my” side, even though she and I don’t see eye to eye on every issue. She is at least committed to the individual rights to which I’m also committed, and she at least recognizes the dangers of collectivist thought, groupthink, “sensitivity training,” call it what you will. Beyond that, if we disagree about the particulars of what people “should” do, well, she and I agree that that question is a topic for debate rather than a sin or a crime.
I should’ve said “a thoughtcrime” at the end there.
Ref Russia and the US troops, see the book, “Ignorant Armies”
from somebody’s poem…”as on a darkling field, where ignorant armies clash by night”.
I find it to be the height of irony that Juan Williams fell into liberal heresy while discussing his “feelings.” The exaltation of feelings to the most important factor in any situation is one of the central tenets of liberal theology. Hurt feelings is the greatest liberal pain. “I feel…” is the only way to begin an expression of thought or opinion. He thought he was remaining on the plantation but failed to notice that his masters at PBS have moved the fence line. Perhaps now he can begin to “think.”
Re: US Army in Russia (no web-fu)
The US did ‘invade’ Russia with a very deliberate policy of overthrowing the Bolsheviks by aiding the White Russians. The two places the US landed troops was in Archangel (along with British support) and Vladivostok; this was done during Wilson’s administration, with the US withdrawing in 1920. The Japanese also went into Siberia (they defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War, with the naval battle of the Tsushima Straight in 1905 ending the military power of the tsarist navy; it would take decades for the Russians/Soviets to rebuild anything near a capable blue water navy, which just happened to be one of Peter The Great’s goals way back when).
This interventionist policy into Russia failed for one main reason: The lack of political will. The Red Army, under Trotsky, was weak and could have been beaten with a concerted effort on the part of Britain and the US in aiding the Whites. But that political will was sapped by the 4 year long face-off (18 months in the US’ case) on the Western Front. The death toll and deprivations of that titanic struggle created a war weariness which simply would not allow for a continuation of the war in any manner, not even such a noble cause as defeating Bolshevism. It’s akin to the situation after WWII where Patton wanted to take the US Army into Russia and defeat Stalin, but there was a war weariness then, too. The difference was the size and capability of the Red Army in 1920 versus 1945.
But in an alternative history, one must wonder what would have happened had Bolshevism under Lenin been stopped dead in its tracks as the Bolshevik hold on power was still very tenuous; a serious push was all that was needed to topple the Red Government. In that alternative history, there most likely would have been no Stalin and the gulags, no Mao, no Ho Chi Minh, no Castro. The world would have been a quite different place, not necessarily better, just a much different place. (Tsar Nicholas was already dead, so the Russian monarchy may have come back, maybe not. Kerenesky might have been able to push Russia onto a more democratic path, with all the ripple changes to history that would entail.)
RickZ
WONDERFUL…
You left only one key part out. Wilson being incapacitated in the middle of it and his wife taking over the presidency
its from this, that Russia always says America is imperialist… and where the paranoia is from, and where all the machinations are sourced…
n that alternative history, there most likely would have been no Stalin and the gulags, no Mao, no Ho Chi Minh, no Castro. The world would have been a quite different place, not necessarily better, just a much different place.
excellent… i concur… those people were all direct consequences of how those few years around 1917 played out.
and like a flower unfolding, if you don’t start at the first flower depending on the subject, you wont have a cogent understanding of the flow and whats going on.
next question for geran
who was Moses harman and what did he (and his daughter) have to do with all that has come about since his newsletter was published. Bonus points if you can tell me if there is any relations to UK Harriet Harman…. 🙂
Regarding taxpayer funding of NPR….someone in this morning’s WSJ – a letter – pointed out the real money isn’t direct funding from the government, but the tax deductibility of the donations of listeners like you and me, which could be removed/should be removed given its leftist tilt.
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