Excellent article. What is so maddening is the total lack of mystery as to where this is headed. All one has to do is look at southern Europe, Great Britain or the blue states in the U.S. Do liberals not see what a mess California, New York, and the Great Lakes states are in?
I wonder if Noemie Emery is targeting liberals with this article. She talks plainly but her tone is kind. It is a smart approach. We need to change minds not preach to the choir.
I’ve become allergice to the “F” word – “fair.” In Liberal La-La Land, “fair” means everyone (barring those who do not belong to any recognized “oppressed” group, of course, including taxpayers) should have whatever their little hearts desire, and at no expense. That’s “fair” in their view.
It’s of a piece with advertisements designed to entice the profligate to even greater profligacy that invariably tell them to do something to get “that you deserve.”
Those people had better hope to God they never actually get what they deserve.
Negative rights, ie freedom from government interference, can be encoded in a relatively simple document such as the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. So-called positive rights, ie things that society *must* do for an individual, cannot be simply encoded but require long and complex documents (such as the EU consitution) coupled with high levels of administrative discretion.
There is an interesting analogy with railway signaling systems. For over a hundred years, interlocking signaling systems have acted to *prevent* the human setting of signal/switch combinations which could lead to an accident. But these interlocking systems, as complex and cunning as they are, are far simpler than a system which would make all the decisions to actually *run* the railroad without human intervention, even if such a system were actually possible.
Interesting comment, David. It encapsulates the fundamental problem with socialism: the need to compel the desired behavior (viz., putting the interest of the collective above that of the individual), rather than prohibiting undesired behavior (murder, theft, etc.).
Of course, socialists would define self-seeking behavior as an undesired one that they were trying to prohibit, but that’s pure sophistry, because it is so vague. For that reason, as you point out, what constitutes undesired behavior necessitates either an exhaustive compilation or wide-ranging administrative discretion (the latter inevitably ending up being ex post facto).
In this context, my family watched the Modern Marvels segment on the Berlin Wall the other day. At each stage when the authorities tried to prohibit egress from the DDR, refugees would come up with another strategem, necessitating another round of prohibitions and construction. My favorite: when someone floated over the wall in a balloon, in response the Reds enacted tight controls on nylon and rope to prevent a recurrence!
Mr. Frank,
“Do the liberals not see what a mess . . .?”
No, they don’t becaue the live in a constant state of denial of results. Their defense oftentime boils down to the fact that the execution was flawed, not the theory. Most recently with the stimulus, the excuse offered was that it simply wasn’t large enbough. The could have been tripled is size, it still would not have stimulated the economy and the excuse would still have been that it wasn’t large enought op be effective.
If liberals were engineers (God forbid!) the excuse for a collapsed deck would be that the Americans on it were too obese, not that the construction of the decvk was faulty!
David, positive rights have an even bigger problem, who pays? If I’m owed something by right, and I can’t provide it for myself, it has to come out of some one else’s pocket. If it’s a “right” they can’t refuse even if they don’t want to. Positive rights inevitably give rise to coercion. In our society it comes in the form of ever higher taxes. This can be sustained for a while, but when the taxes run short whose “right” has first priority on the money? Who gets to make the decision on how to pass out the dollars? That’s when life gets very nasty very quickly.
You’re absoluetly correct, the only true rights are negative rights.
Excellent article. It sets the proper goal for what we are trying to save: “America the bountiful” or “America the projects.”
Without fundamental Christianity, few will recognize the counter-intuitive wisdom that the economic freedom of the market place is the basis of our freedoms. Christianity does this in at least two ways I can think of: by establishing priorities which sets family above the state; by “thou shalt not steal.”
Neoconservatives understand the folly of modernity’s obsession with autonomy. The problem with the welfare-state is that it contains what Marxists would call “contradictions.”
Central to the idea of a welfare-state is the old liberal idea of maximizing individual autonomy. This involves creating a space where the individual has the maximum range of choice while being protected from factors outside of individual control.
The contradiction is this: the entitlements that make an individual secure against circumstance require growing populations. But maximizing autonomy implies many of us will grow old before we grow up. Don’t judge anybody, it’s my choice, right? Thus bills are racked up to be passed to our children. The problem is that there are no more children.
This is why societies evolve the prejudices of morality — the pressure to form husband-wife pairs, individual responsibility, pride in the arbitrary distinction between citizen and non-citizen, etc. etc. These are myths, but animating myths, life-giving noble lies that must be upheld. For civilizations without them are displaced by those with such myths.
JHB, you should just use the initials “BS.”
“pride in the arbitrary distinction between citizen and non-citizen.”
What the hell is that?
Mumbo jumbo. Intellectualeze. BS.
You know who is a myth. You.
“.. coupled with high levels of administrative discretion.”
The image that pops into my head is a vast horde of bureaucrats exchanging high fives around a bonfire.
The problem with the welfare-state is that it contains what Marxists would call “contradictions.”
And who knows more about “contradictions” than Marxists? Their premise — that an iron bureaucracy — having successfully imposed Marxism on the groaning masses — will then “wither away.” Sure. Pack up the secret police, close down the gulag, and go home, comrades. We’ve now successfully implemented Marxism. No need for you now.
Central to the idea of a welfare-state is the old liberal idea of maximizing individual autonomy.
No. Central to the idea of a welfare-state is the old liberal idea of buying votes with other people’s money.
the entitlements that make an individual secure against circumstance require growing populations
Quite like Ponzi schemes, yes?
This is why societies evolve the prejudices of morality – the pressure to form husband-wife pairs, individual responsibility, pride in the arbitrary distinction between citizen and non-citizen, etc. etc. These are myths, but animating myths, life-giving noble lies that must be upheld. For civilizations without them are displaced by those with such myths.
They’re not “prejudices” — they’re the distillate of millennia of human existence. The distinction between citizen and non-citizen is hardly arbitrary, any more than the distinction between family member and non-family member, or between non-criminal and criminal.
And replace “myths” with “values,” and “lies” with principles, and you’ll be closer to the mark.
Shorter version: Curtis is right.
Curtis–
You might not know about the facts of life, but it is never too late to begin.
Citizenship is for most is based upon being plopped out of the right pussy at the right place and time. Not only does the baby have no say in this. There is nothing in the physical universe that distinguishes human beings by citizens. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Your DNA does not have a birth certificate.
My point is that liberals — both classical and modern — have an idea of rights that presupposes complete self-authorship. Even “negative rights” entail that we should not encroach upon another human being’s autonomy if it is not directly harming anyone. This is absurd, as there are even families out there now letting their infants “choose” their own gender.
My Straussian point is that we’re deliberately undermining the social conventions that make our society possible. Just because something is historically conditioned, or has an unjust origin, or only has a social existence, is no reason to sweep the social convention away. But liberals don’t think about the *cultural* conditions that make a progressive society possible in the first place. And this starts with the truism that we can’t have a progressive society without progressives in it, something we’ve all forgotten under the current regime of license and regulation.
The right pussy? Whooooooa!
You are a funny combination of intellectual and vulgarian.
presupposes complete self-authorship? What the hell is that? It’s only getting worse.
Here’s why I think you are a troll, or even worse, inane. You agree with the conclusion but not the suppositions, and how you get from your suppositions to my conclusions, I don’t know. I do know that the suppositions are even more important than the conclusions because it is a truism (to me at least) that the greater cannot form from the lesser.
And what Occam said, that the distinction between citizen and non-citizen is not arbitrary, is correct. It might be arbitrary as to whether you are a citizen of Rome or Greece, given, as you say, where you are born is arbitrary.
I’ll stick with Occam’s view. He, and others who are sincere, use the least complicated language to explain concepts; and their logic is, at least, understandable.
Thanks for playing the game. If anyone can make sense of your nonsense, then we have plenty of good minds on this site who will justify you.
Good luck.
They’re not “prejudices” — they’re the distillate of millennia of human existence.
Occam, we generally agree about this. Perhaps prejudices *are* the distillate of millennia of human experience — but that’s merely a difference of emphasis.
And replace “myths” with “values,” and “lies” with principles, and you’ll be closer to the mark.
Unlike a “myth,” which has a real hold on the human imagination, a “value” suggests a subjective, arbitrary commitment, like a great value at a supermarket. Value also suggests something embedded in preferences, completely independent from fact.
The word we’re looking for is “virtues,” not values. A virtue has an objective existence in the sense that a virtue exists in its performance.
Central to the idea of a welfare-state is the old liberal idea of buying votes with other people’s money.
We should appreciate how modern liberalism grew out of classical liberalism. Thinking in utilitarian terms — trying to maximize value — leads to relativizing value. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, that kind of thing. It conceives of man as a disembodied ego, a robotic, culture-less pleasure-calculator. We end up with retail sanity and wholesale madness, as if we can be rational about our means, but never our ends, since ends become arbitrary preferences, each right in their own way that can’t be rationally judged. Consider the case of J.S. Mill, who started as a free marketer, and ended his career as a quasi-socialist without changing his core principles.
Here’s why I think you are a troll, or even worse, inane.
No, you are.
Retail sanity and wholesale madness.
Great phrase. Keep working. If you can juggle the Jesse Jackson out of your thinking, you might have something. And more attention to facts. Modern liberalism did not grow out of classical liberalism. Conservatism did. Modern liberalism is just another name for communism or cultural marxism or whatever you want to call it. They have to change the name every time people realize what it is.
I am making an effort for you, JHB: I am wondering if you are kin to deconstructionists who thought themselves intelligent by the parroting of their master’s purposefully inane, illogical and even hateful statements. They were elitists (and only in their own minds) who espoused an egalitarian line, but they were really even less than the drunken bums of the Politburo. Stumble, stumble.
But I did read the following about Leo Strauss and maybe see more where you are coming from.
The ancient philosophers did believe that the philosophic life is the highest and best, but only a few are suited to it. The Straussians concur, and go on to imply that the major evil of modern egalitarianism is that it makes philosophy impossible, by devaluing anything that is not accessible to the common man. But philosophy is not the only thing that suffers: so do creativity, heroism, authority, and all other “elitist” qualities.
I sense a huge egoism, an ego that would rather be annihilated rather than defer to a higher authority.
But you need those “virtues” so where do you get them? Or, how did you get them? You were just born with them, eh?
Khan, I’m laughing at the superior intellect.
Curtis and JHB:
Can it, guys. Anyone who doesn’t like a comment is free to skip it. Meanwhile, your argument is taking bandwidth that should be spent agreeing on how to fight the cancer in Washington. And appreciating Walt’s verse. F
All socialists are capitalists in their personal lives.
Every one of them tries to make money, to save money, to find a good deal, make a good bargain, to live comfortably, to send their kids to good schools.
It is only when the Other is invoked (the poor, the sick and lame, the melanotics, the non-melanotics if a person of color, the sexually deviant, blah blah) that their thinking turns on itself.
“Christianity does this in at least two ways I can think of: by establishing priorities which sets family above the state; by “thou shalt not steal.” ”
Just pointing out that “thou shall not steal” predates Christianity. Not to mention “Honor thy mother and father”.
What aristocracy really needs to survive in egalitarian society are personal liberties, free speach and iron-clad property rights. This allows virtuous men to form self-selected elite, establish its own principles of conduct (“code of honour”), which distingishes this group from everybody else. This is not compatible with radical democracy, but fully compatible with constitutional republic. The only thing this elite needs is to resist temptation to grab political power and abuse it to detriment of civil rights of the members of larger society. That is why such philosopher as Socrates accepted his death sentence as law-abiding citizen.
Rights come from nature, and cost no one money
A baby’s right to life actually does cost money. Unless she means, right to life ends at birth, actual life supporting means cost real money. Babies can’t take care of themselves. If you believe babies still have the right to life even if given up for adoption, then it still costs money.
One exception disproves the rule? Does it not? Is my logic failing me?
Modern liberalism seems to get defined by the premise..”The world is unfair. Let’s reverse the polarity of the unfairness and call it fixed”.
It really all comes from a basic flaw in the thinking of liberals that SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. Like an overblown mothering instinct that can’t fathom concern and caring can be destructive in their own right.
Show me a person who’s been adequately protected from all the savage injustice by a liberal’s standards and i’ll show you someone who was denied vital lessons needed to achieve adulthood.
The Left has been trying to redefine the definition of what Americans historically considered to be their “rights” since FDR.
Until FDR, “rights” was shorthand for constitutional rights – especially the Bill of Rights.
Someone once said that those “rights” are better understood as “freedoms” from government interference.
For example, the First Amendment gives us the right to free speech. That means the government cannot restrict or censor our freedom to speak openly.
Likewise, the Second Amendment explicitly gives us the right to bear arms. What that means is that the government can not eliminate our freedom to own a gun.
And so on.
We all learned this in 9th grade civics, but liberals constantly try to blur the line between constitutional rights — which as pointed out are freedoms from government overreach guaranteed by the Constitution — and what the Left calls “human rights”. And as Noemie Emery points out, “human rights” are tradeable goods such as food, water, shelter, healthcare, education, etc. Stuff everybody needs, but they are not “rights” protected by the Constitution.
Let’s say hypothetically medical science invented a single pill that gave people on average an extra 20 years of life but took 500 man hours on average per pill to bring to market.
Who doubts liberals would enslave the workers for the 500 man hours if need be to produce a fair and just society? This is the utopia of modern liberals, where the mothering instinct can’t be resisted even if any advancement has to cease and slavery flourishes.
IMO ‘positive rights’ are an unnatural construct designed to control the citizenry. The elite of the progressive movement (communists) are all about raw, unfettered power and power, only. And what they can not control must be either subverted or abolished. They don’t care about hungry babies, granny’s hip replacement, transgender eskimos, snail darters, and so forth. They wear altruism on their sleeves as a promise of utopia to lure their willing acolytes into a life of submission to the state.
Parker is right. It’s all about power and control.
One exception disproves the rule? Does it not? Is my logic failing me?
No, No, and Yes…
An exception in the real world PROVES the rule.
if not, then what is it an exception to?
so many on the left think 180 degrees opposite in logical things, and so they think if they can find one exception, the have crushed your argument. but only THEY think so.
“The exception [that] proves the rule” is a frequently confused English idiom. The original meaning of this idiom is that the presence of an exception applying to a specific case establishes that a general rule existed.
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The phrase is derived from the medieval Latin legal principle exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis (“the exception confirms the rule in cases not excepted”), a concept first proposed by Cicero in his defense of Lucius Cornelius Balbus.[1] This means a stated exception implies the existence of a rule to which it is the exception. The second part of Cicero’s phrase, “in casibus non exceptis” or “in cases not excepted,” is almost always missing from modern uses of the statement that “the exception proves the rule,” which may contribute to frequent confusion and misuse of the phrase.
of course, we dont read dead white guys, and get our education or parroting from other parrots… too lazy to look it up, even to get it right in comments!!!!
your argument is taking bandwidth that should be spent agreeing on how to fight the cancer in Washington.
really? been saying that for quite a few YEARS now, and am still waiting for people to read the other sides playbook and comment from that, and actual hisory, and so forth… rather than osmotic information, msm misues, parroting, and my favorite… making up stuff to fill in the gaps and ignore history completely pretending that everything that happens is natural and never a result of effort paid for and applied over and over, over time..
The Rand Corporation has released a massive 213-page study entitled A Stability Police Force for the United States: Justification and Options for Creating U.S. Capabilities
its like its 1933, and no one wants to read mein kamp for a clue, but would rather make crap up and then inject the made up stuff into the conversation, and then hope to get a pat on the back for it..
to which a large number dislike the history buffs pointing out that its made up stuff are disliked! its a social game for points, not a real critical thing to which you need to have a good answer to prevent whats happening, and still happening, and not evne slowing down.. (its speeding up)
remember? We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded. Obama
this was way back… before hux left in that his REASONABLE points made no one willing to oppose things while it was easy to do so… we are years in now..
and Gleichschaltung is proceeding…
and most dont know what that is.. or even what they are building as their education failed to teach them full history
and they certainly dont want to know that from others of experience, even second hand…
they want their erudition like armchair philosophers and social engineers, or even marx, to be the critical narcisist point people will rally to them for.
personally i just dont want to end up a slave and tortured for someone elses amusement and caught in some archaic damned machine made by genius idiots.
even the race war crap is coming mroe andmore, all over gangs attacking people… and the msm not reporting, or not willing to call it what it is. (making Charles mansion and “the family” precient and ahead of their time)
and dont forget taht at the core of socialism is anti semitism… how? easy.. where did capitalism come from? according to marx and others from the jewish money lenders at the temple… ie… the jews are credited with the invention of capitalism.. and so to end capitalism, you have to also remove those who created it or else they can do what? create it again.
everyone with experience, not education, knows this… and gave up trying to teach the educated that they are wrong…
i have been a fool for trying too…
Conquerors never, never conquer a nation to bring freedom. They brought control.
Ernst Zundel
I am, as a European, absolutely shocked by European people. I am also shocked by European nationalist people. They have allowed themselves to be so emasculated so silently.
Ernst Zundel
What we have to do now is to make the public at large aware that what we’re looking at is not a historical event but – and I have to be brutal and I am going to say it – a racket.
Ernst Zundel
“Orthodoxy means not thinking, not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” – Syme, Winston Smith’s co-worker at the Ministry of Truth, Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nonetheless, we believe the downsides are outweighed by the upsides discussed below.
An SPF would provide needed capabilities and might pay for itself, as it is cheaper than using military forces for policing tasks. If the decision is made to put the SPF in the Department of Defense, then the department should consider creating a new civilian policing agency within the Department of the Army to accommodate it.
This study examines the need for and options for creating a U.S. Stability Police Force (SPF) to help establish security during stability operations. An SPF is a high-end, rapidly deployable police force that engages in a range of tasks such as crowd and riot control, special weapons and tactics, and the investigation of organized criminal groups (see Chapter Two for more detail). In its ability to operate in stability operations, it is similar to such organizations as the Italian Carabinieri, the French Gendarmerie, and the Spanish Guardia Civil.
The Corps of Carabineers is the national gendarmerie of Italy, policing both military and civilian populations. The Carabinieri is now a branch of the armed forces (alongside the Army, Navy and Air Force), thus ending their long-standing role as the first corps of the Italian army.
from the dragoni… to: During the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini (1922—1943), the Carabinieri were one of the police forces entrusted with suppressing opposition in Italy. During the same period, while part of the Italian Africa Police (mainly in the late 1930s), they were involved in atrocities.
they split into two groups… basically turning on mussolini…
A gendarmerie or gendarmery is a military force charged with police duties among civilian populations. Members of such a force are typically called “gendarmes”. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary describes a gendarme as “a soldier who is employed on police duties” and a “gendarmery, -erie” as “gendarmes as a body”. The term maréchaussée (or marshalcy) may also be used (e.g., Royal Marechaussee) but is now uncommon.
so they are discussing the making of an internal military police force… that sounds so peaceful in an open and free society, eh?
they dont mention the Vichy…
The exact strength of the Vichy French Metropolitan Army was set at 3,768 officers, 15,072 non-commissioned officers, and 75,360 men. All Vichy French forces had to be volunteers. In addition to the army, the size of the Gendarmerie was fixed at 60,000 men plus an anti-aircraft force of 10,000 men.
As soon as it had been established, Pétain’s government took measures against the so-called “undesirables”: Jews, mété¨ques (immigrants from North Africa), Freemasons, Communists — this was inspired by Charles Maurras’ conception of the “Anti-France”, or “internal foreigners”, which Maurras defined as the “four confederate states of Protestants, Jews, Freemasons and foreigners”–but also Gypsies, homosexuals, and also, any left-wing activist. Vichy imitated the racial policies of the Third Reich and also engaged in natalist policies aimed at reviving the “French race”, although these policies never went as far as the eugenics program implemented by the Nazis.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
As soon as July 1940, Vichy set up a special Commission charged of reviewing the naturalizations granted since the 1927 reform of the nationality law. Between June 1940 and August 1944, 15,000 persons, mostly Jews, were denaturalized.[14] This bureaucratic decision was instrumental in their subsequent internment.
The internment camps already opened by the Third Republic were immediately put to a new use, before ultimately inserting themselves as necessary transit camps for the implementation of the Holocaust and the extermination of all “undesirables”, including the Roma people who refer to the extermination of Gypsies as Porrajmos. An October 1940 decree authorized internments of Jews on the sole basis of a prefectoral order, and the first raids took place in May 1941
and who would carry out such work, and such suppression of rioters, and all that?
inally, after Pétain’s proclamation of the “French state” and the beginning of the implementation of the “Révolution nationale” (“National Revolution”), the French administration opened up many concentration camps, to the point that historian Maurice Rajsfus wrote: “The quick opening of new camps created employment, and the Gendarmerie never ceased to hire during this period.”
The Guardia Civil is the Spanish gendarmerie. It has foreign peace-keeping missions and maintains military status and is the equivalent of a federal military-status police force. As a police force, the Guardia Civil is comparable today to the French Gendarmerie, the Italian Carabinieri and the Dutch Royal Marechaussee as it is part of the European Gendarmerie. The Guardia Civil uses as its leading emblem the motto “El honor es mi divisa” (Honour is my emblem) stressing its esprit de corps and pointing out the importance of honour. Their precincts are called “casa cuartel” (barrack-house) and, like other military garrisons in Spain, they appear under the motto “Todo por la patria” (Everything for the Fatherland).
so its a more socialist social engineering state controled move, no?
i thought that couldnt happen here, and that a police state was not possible.. but thats what these guys are… officers of a police state… and their being nice now, doesnt say anything about tomorrow!!!
they started with queen isabella of spain..
and yet.. there is no mention of their WWII existence.. or that spain is what kind of country now?
you would ahve to go to the romantic communist war of spain… and learn that… but most dont know that eitehr. read this sentence in the area on Franco
“Most country towns, and rural areas, were patrolled by pairs of Guardia Civil, a military police for civilians, which functioned as his chief means of social control.”
so basically we are to have a military police force more military than the current force..
i bet i am the only freak who remembers: Blue Division – “Guardia Civil of the Divisié³n Azul”
General Agustén Mué±oz Grandes was assigned to lead the volunteers. Because the soldiers could not use official Spanish army uniforms, they adopted a symbolic uniform comprising the red berets of the Carlists, khaki trousers used in the Spanish Legion, and the blue shirts of the Falangists — hence the nickname “Blue Division.” This uniform was used only while on leave in Spain; in the field, soldiers wore the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) field gray uniform with a shield on the upper right sleeve bearing the word “Espaé±a” and the Spanish national colors. Although the Portuguese volunteers were few (Portugal tried to maintain a more neutral position, and only let a limited number of volunteers leave for Germany) they did the same their neighbors did, wearing a field gray uniform with a shield on the very same position with the word “Portugal” and the Portuguese red and green banner. you can read about them here: http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=3849
basically what they want is a Schutzstaffel, but if you change the name, the americans wont look it up, and they wont read, and they will make up an excuse for you, rather than be curious, and so on..
Schutzstaffel and Ordnungspolizei
maybe occam knows… but i doubt others do
what happened is as Gleichschaltung proceeded, and people realized that some would be Volk (gays, women, minorities, etc)… and others would be neutral (common volk and regular people nor targeted) and the targeted oppressors… who were not volk… (jews, christians, gypsies, infirm, etc) would of course eventually fight back..
we are now at the stage where the Volk, get to beleive they were oppressed, and get to beat up on the jews, christians, and other non volk, white males, etc… and with little effort of the state to stop it.
as in russia and germany, they released the brutal classes… and then started promoting such in official ways to forces.
Ordnungspolizei were kind of like regular police… or what the regular police became after CHANGE and HOPE of the new leader.
were the uniformed regular police force in Nazi Germany between 1936 and 1945. It was increasingly absorbed into the Nazi police system. Owing to their green uniforms, they were also referred to as Gré¼ne Polizei (green police). The Orpo was established as a centralized organisation uniting the municipal, city, and rural uniformed forces that had been organised on a state-by-state basis. Eventually the Orpo embraced virtually all of the Third Reich’s law-enforcement and emergency response organizations, including fire brigades, coast guard, civil defence, and even night watchmen.
the Green Police… however as Gleichschaltung, they needed a new and stronger police, a police force trained for riots, and special actions against civilians.. (like the one RAnd is recommending the new socialist/communist/fascist hybrid US should take up)
Traditionally, law enforcement in Germany had been a state and local matter. In this role, Himmler was nominally subordinate to Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick. However, the decree effectively subordinated the police to the SS, making it virtually independent of Frick’s control. Himmler gained authority as all of Germany’s uniformed law enforcement agencies were amalgamated into the new Ordnungspolizei, whose main office became populated by officers of the SS.
and two forces were created.. the Ordnungspolizei (Orpo or regular police) and the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo or security police).
The Orpo assumed duties of regular uniformed law enforcement while the SiPo consisted of the secret state police (Geheime Staatspolizei or Gestapo) and criminal investigation police (Kriminalpolizei or Kripo). The Kriminalpolizei was a corps of professional detectives involved in fighting crime and the task of the Gestapo was combating espionage and political dissent. On 27 September 1939, the SS security service, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and the SiPo were folded into the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA).[4] The RSHA symbolized the close connection between the SS (a party organization) and the police (a state organization).
As the Nazi party monopolized political power in Germany, key government functions such as law enforcement were absorbed by the SS, while many SS organizations became de facto government agencies. To maintain the political power and security of the Nazi party (and later the nation), the SS established and ran the SD (Security service) and took over the administration of Gestapo (Secret state police), Kripo (criminal investigative police), and the Orpo (regular uniformed police).[10] Moreover, legal jurisdiction over the SS and its members was taken away from the civilian courts and given to courts run by the SS itself. These actions effectively put the SS above the law.
do we have something similar moving into place?
A baby’s right to life actually does cost money. Unless she means, right to life ends at birth, actual life supporting means cost real money. Babies can’t take care of themselves. If you believe babies still have the right to life even if given up for adoption, then it still costs money
To the extent any of us have a right to life, the right simply prevents others from taking our life, it does not imply others have to act to preserve our life.
In the case of a baby, the parents have a moral obligation to provide for that baby. One could say the baby has a right to their parent’s care.
Curtis–
If excellence is not relative, then virtue is not relative. Neoconservative writers have always made a point of this — Bill Bennett, Allan Bloom, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lynne Cheney, etc. etc. Though the idea of rethinking morality in classical terms does go back to Strauss.
Conservatism, paleoconservatism or neoconservatism, is NOT old liberalism relabeled. Classical and modern liberals use social contract arguments to legitimize the state, because they believe in values, not virtues, because values are relative.
When you get back from your Trekkie convention, hit the books, and then get back to me.
F–
If you don’t like my comments, take your own advice and do not reply to them.
JHB, I apologize for the name calling.
As to conservatism not being classical liberalism, I disagree. I agree with this assessment: “According to William J. Novak, however, liberalism in the United States shifted, “between 1877 and 1937…from laissez-faire constitutionalism to New Deal statism, from classical liberalism to democratic social-welfarism” The quote is from Wikipedia. I suppose we could just be arguing about who gets the right to label things.
And as far as the Trekkie convention, it’s way worse than that: Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Vanilla Sky (What did you think about Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise? Best work he ever did, don’t you thinK?)
Again, I apologize for an inordinate attack upon your character.
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Excellent article. What is so maddening is the total lack of mystery as to where this is headed. All one has to do is look at southern Europe, Great Britain or the blue states in the U.S. Do liberals not see what a mess California, New York, and the Great Lakes states are in?
I wonder if Noemie Emery is targeting liberals with this article. She talks plainly but her tone is kind. It is a smart approach. We need to change minds not preach to the choir.
I’ve become allergice to the “F” word – “fair.” In Liberal La-La Land, “fair” means everyone (barring those who do not belong to any recognized “oppressed” group, of course, including taxpayers) should have whatever their little hearts desire, and at no expense. That’s “fair” in their view.
It’s of a piece with advertisements designed to entice the profligate to even greater profligacy that invariably tell them to do something to get “that you deserve.”
Those people had better hope to God they never actually get what they deserve.
Negative rights, ie freedom from government interference, can be encoded in a relatively simple document such as the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. So-called positive rights, ie things that society *must* do for an individual, cannot be simply encoded but require long and complex documents (such as the EU consitution) coupled with high levels of administrative discretion.
There is an interesting analogy with railway signaling systems. For over a hundred years, interlocking signaling systems have acted to *prevent* the human setting of signal/switch combinations which could lead to an accident. But these interlocking systems, as complex and cunning as they are, are far simpler than a system which would make all the decisions to actually *run* the railroad without human intervention, even if such a system were actually possible.
Interesting comment, David. It encapsulates the fundamental problem with socialism: the need to compel the desired behavior (viz., putting the interest of the collective above that of the individual), rather than prohibiting undesired behavior (murder, theft, etc.).
Of course, socialists would define self-seeking behavior as an undesired one that they were trying to prohibit, but that’s pure sophistry, because it is so vague. For that reason, as you point out, what constitutes undesired behavior necessitates either an exhaustive compilation or wide-ranging administrative discretion (the latter inevitably ending up being ex post facto).
In this context, my family watched the Modern Marvels segment on the Berlin Wall the other day. At each stage when the authorities tried to prohibit egress from the DDR, refugees would come up with another strategem, necessitating another round of prohibitions and construction. My favorite: when someone floated over the wall in a balloon, in response the Reds enacted tight controls on nylon and rope to prevent a recurrence!
Mr. Frank,
“Do the liberals not see what a mess . . .?”
No, they don’t becaue the live in a constant state of denial of results. Their defense oftentime boils down to the fact that the execution was flawed, not the theory. Most recently with the stimulus, the excuse offered was that it simply wasn’t large enbough. The could have been tripled is size, it still would not have stimulated the economy and the excuse would still have been that it wasn’t large enought op be effective.
If liberals were engineers (God forbid!) the excuse for a collapsed deck would be that the Americans on it were too obese, not that the construction of the decvk was faulty!
David, positive rights have an even bigger problem, who pays? If I’m owed something by right, and I can’t provide it for myself, it has to come out of some one else’s pocket. If it’s a “right” they can’t refuse even if they don’t want to. Positive rights inevitably give rise to coercion. In our society it comes in the form of ever higher taxes. This can be sustained for a while, but when the taxes run short whose “right” has first priority on the money? Who gets to make the decision on how to pass out the dollars? That’s when life gets very nasty very quickly.
You’re absoluetly correct, the only true rights are negative rights.
Excellent article. It sets the proper goal for what we are trying to save: “America the bountiful” or “America the projects.”
Without fundamental Christianity, few will recognize the counter-intuitive wisdom that the economic freedom of the market place is the basis of our freedoms. Christianity does this in at least two ways I can think of: by establishing priorities which sets family above the state; by “thou shalt not steal.”
Neoconservatives understand the folly of modernity’s obsession with autonomy. The problem with the welfare-state is that it contains what Marxists would call “contradictions.”
Central to the idea of a welfare-state is the old liberal idea of maximizing individual autonomy. This involves creating a space where the individual has the maximum range of choice while being protected from factors outside of individual control.
The contradiction is this: the entitlements that make an individual secure against circumstance require growing populations. But maximizing autonomy implies many of us will grow old before we grow up. Don’t judge anybody, it’s my choice, right? Thus bills are racked up to be passed to our children. The problem is that there are no more children.
This is why societies evolve the prejudices of morality — the pressure to form husband-wife pairs, individual responsibility, pride in the arbitrary distinction between citizen and non-citizen, etc. etc. These are myths, but animating myths, life-giving noble lies that must be upheld. For civilizations without them are displaced by those with such myths.
JHB, you should just use the initials “BS.”
“pride in the arbitrary distinction between citizen and non-citizen.”
What the hell is that?
Mumbo jumbo. Intellectualeze. BS.
You know who is a myth. You.
“.. coupled with high levels of administrative discretion.”
The image that pops into my head is a vast horde of bureaucrats exchanging high fives around a bonfire.
And who knows more about “contradictions” than Marxists? Their premise — that an iron bureaucracy — having successfully imposed Marxism on the groaning masses — will then “wither away.” Sure. Pack up the secret police, close down the gulag, and go home, comrades. We’ve now successfully implemented Marxism. No need for you now.
No. Central to the idea of a welfare-state is the old liberal idea of buying votes with other people’s money.
Quite like Ponzi schemes, yes?
They’re not “prejudices” — they’re the distillate of millennia of human existence. The distinction between citizen and non-citizen is hardly arbitrary, any more than the distinction between family member and non-family member, or between non-criminal and criminal.
And replace “myths” with “values,” and “lies” with principles, and you’ll be closer to the mark.
Shorter version: Curtis is right.
Curtis–
You might not know about the facts of life, but it is never too late to begin.
Citizenship is for most is based upon being plopped out of the right pussy at the right place and time. Not only does the baby have no say in this. There is nothing in the physical universe that distinguishes human beings by citizens. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Your DNA does not have a birth certificate.
My point is that liberals — both classical and modern — have an idea of rights that presupposes complete self-authorship. Even “negative rights” entail that we should not encroach upon another human being’s autonomy if it is not directly harming anyone. This is absurd, as there are even families out there now letting their infants “choose” their own gender.
My Straussian point is that we’re deliberately undermining the social conventions that make our society possible. Just because something is historically conditioned, or has an unjust origin, or only has a social existence, is no reason to sweep the social convention away. But liberals don’t think about the *cultural* conditions that make a progressive society possible in the first place. And this starts with the truism that we can’t have a progressive society without progressives in it, something we’ve all forgotten under the current regime of license and regulation.
The right pussy? Whooooooa!
You are a funny combination of intellectual and vulgarian.
presupposes complete self-authorship? What the hell is that? It’s only getting worse.
Here’s why I think you are a troll, or even worse, inane. You agree with the conclusion but not the suppositions, and how you get from your suppositions to my conclusions, I don’t know. I do know that the suppositions are even more important than the conclusions because it is a truism (to me at least) that the greater cannot form from the lesser.
And what Occam said, that the distinction between citizen and non-citizen is not arbitrary, is correct. It might be arbitrary as to whether you are a citizen of Rome or Greece, given, as you say, where you are born is arbitrary.
I’ll stick with Occam’s view. He, and others who are sincere, use the least complicated language to explain concepts; and their logic is, at least, understandable.
Thanks for playing the game. If anyone can make sense of your nonsense, then we have plenty of good minds on this site who will justify you.
Good luck.
They’re not “prejudices” — they’re the distillate of millennia of human existence.
Occam, we generally agree about this. Perhaps prejudices *are* the distillate of millennia of human experience — but that’s merely a difference of emphasis.
And replace “myths” with “values,” and “lies” with principles, and you’ll be closer to the mark.
Unlike a “myth,” which has a real hold on the human imagination, a “value” suggests a subjective, arbitrary commitment, like a great value at a supermarket. Value also suggests something embedded in preferences, completely independent from fact.
The word we’re looking for is “virtues,” not values. A virtue has an objective existence in the sense that a virtue exists in its performance.
Central to the idea of a welfare-state is the old liberal idea of buying votes with other people’s money.
We should appreciate how modern liberalism grew out of classical liberalism. Thinking in utilitarian terms — trying to maximize value — leads to relativizing value. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, that kind of thing. It conceives of man as a disembodied ego, a robotic, culture-less pleasure-calculator. We end up with retail sanity and wholesale madness, as if we can be rational about our means, but never our ends, since ends become arbitrary preferences, each right in their own way that can’t be rationally judged. Consider the case of J.S. Mill, who started as a free marketer, and ended his career as a quasi-socialist without changing his core principles.
Here’s why I think you are a troll, or even worse, inane.
No, you are.
Retail sanity and wholesale madness.
Great phrase. Keep working. If you can juggle the Jesse Jackson out of your thinking, you might have something. And more attention to facts. Modern liberalism did not grow out of classical liberalism. Conservatism did. Modern liberalism is just another name for communism or cultural marxism or whatever you want to call it. They have to change the name every time people realize what it is.
I am making an effort for you, JHB: I am wondering if you are kin to deconstructionists who thought themselves intelligent by the parroting of their master’s purposefully inane, illogical and even hateful statements. They were elitists (and only in their own minds) who espoused an egalitarian line, but they were really even less than the drunken bums of the Politburo. Stumble, stumble.
But I did read the following about Leo Strauss and maybe see more where you are coming from.
http://tinyurl.com/3lk54jy
Excerpt:
The ancient philosophers did believe that the philosophic life is the highest and best, but only a few are suited to it. The Straussians concur, and go on to imply that the major evil of modern egalitarianism is that it makes philosophy impossible, by devaluing anything that is not accessible to the common man. But philosophy is not the only thing that suffers: so do creativity, heroism, authority, and all other “elitist” qualities.
I sense a huge egoism, an ego that would rather be annihilated rather than defer to a higher authority.
But you need those “virtues” so where do you get them? Or, how did you get them? You were just born with them, eh?
Khan, I’m laughing at the superior intellect.
Curtis and JHB:
Can it, guys. Anyone who doesn’t like a comment is free to skip it. Meanwhile, your argument is taking bandwidth that should be spent agreeing on how to fight the cancer in Washington. And appreciating Walt’s verse. F
All socialists are capitalists in their personal lives.
Every one of them tries to make money, to save money, to find a good deal, make a good bargain, to live comfortably, to send their kids to good schools.
It is only when the Other is invoked (the poor, the sick and lame, the melanotics, the non-melanotics if a person of color, the sexually deviant, blah blah) that their thinking turns on itself.
“Christianity does this in at least two ways I can think of: by establishing priorities which sets family above the state; by “thou shalt not steal.” ”
Just pointing out that “thou shall not steal” predates Christianity. Not to mention “Honor thy mother and father”.
What aristocracy really needs to survive in egalitarian society are personal liberties, free speach and iron-clad property rights. This allows virtuous men to form self-selected elite, establish its own principles of conduct (“code of honour”), which distingishes this group from everybody else. This is not compatible with radical democracy, but fully compatible with constitutional republic. The only thing this elite needs is to resist temptation to grab political power and abuse it to detriment of civil rights of the members of larger society. That is why such philosopher as Socrates accepted his death sentence as law-abiding citizen.
Rights come from nature, and cost no one money
A baby’s right to life actually does cost money. Unless she means, right to life ends at birth, actual life supporting means cost real money. Babies can’t take care of themselves. If you believe babies still have the right to life even if given up for adoption, then it still costs money.
One exception disproves the rule? Does it not? Is my logic failing me?
Modern liberalism seems to get defined by the premise..”The world is unfair. Let’s reverse the polarity of the unfairness and call it fixed”.
It really all comes from a basic flaw in the thinking of liberals that SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. Like an overblown mothering instinct that can’t fathom concern and caring can be destructive in their own right.
Show me a person who’s been adequately protected from all the savage injustice by a liberal’s standards and i’ll show you someone who was denied vital lessons needed to achieve adulthood.
The Left has been trying to redefine the definition of what Americans historically considered to be their “rights” since FDR.
Until FDR, “rights” was shorthand for constitutional rights – especially the Bill of Rights.
Someone once said that those “rights” are better understood as “freedoms” from government interference.
For example, the First Amendment gives us the right to free speech. That means the government cannot restrict or censor our freedom to speak openly.
Likewise, the Second Amendment explicitly gives us the right to bear arms. What that means is that the government can not eliminate our freedom to own a gun.
And so on.
We all learned this in 9th grade civics, but liberals constantly try to blur the line between constitutional rights — which as pointed out are freedoms from government overreach guaranteed by the Constitution — and what the Left calls “human rights”. And as Noemie Emery points out, “human rights” are tradeable goods such as food, water, shelter, healthcare, education, etc. Stuff everybody needs, but they are not “rights” protected by the Constitution.
Let’s say hypothetically medical science invented a single pill that gave people on average an extra 20 years of life but took 500 man hours on average per pill to bring to market.
Who doubts liberals would enslave the workers for the 500 man hours if need be to produce a fair and just society? This is the utopia of modern liberals, where the mothering instinct can’t be resisted even if any advancement has to cease and slavery flourishes.
IMO ‘positive rights’ are an unnatural construct designed to control the citizenry. The elite of the progressive movement (communists) are all about raw, unfettered power and power, only. And what they can not control must be either subverted or abolished. They don’t care about hungry babies, granny’s hip replacement, transgender eskimos, snail darters, and so forth. They wear altruism on their sleeves as a promise of utopia to lure their willing acolytes into a life of submission to the state.
Parker is right. It’s all about power and control.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5374242425247995227&q=Milton+Friedman+Free+to+choose+duration%3Along&total=15&start=10&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
Milton Friedman has the goods here on Welfare.
No, No, and Yes…
An exception in the real world PROVES the rule.
if not, then what is it an exception to?
so many on the left think 180 degrees opposite in logical things, and so they think if they can find one exception, the have crushed your argument. but only THEY think so.
of course, we dont read dead white guys, and get our education or parroting from other parrots… too lazy to look it up, even to get it right in comments!!!!
really? been saying that for quite a few YEARS now, and am still waiting for people to read the other sides playbook and comment from that, and actual hisory, and so forth… rather than osmotic information, msm misues, parroting, and my favorite… making up stuff to fill in the gaps and ignore history completely pretending that everything that happens is natural and never a result of effort paid for and applied over and over, over time..
The Rand Corporation has released a massive 213-page study entitled A Stability Police Force for the United States: Justification and Options for Creating U.S. Capabilities
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG819.pdf
its like its 1933, and no one wants to read mein kamp for a clue, but would rather make crap up and then inject the made up stuff into the conversation, and then hope to get a pat on the back for it..
to which a large number dislike the history buffs pointing out that its made up stuff are disliked! its a social game for points, not a real critical thing to which you need to have a good answer to prevent whats happening, and still happening, and not evne slowing down.. (its speeding up)
remember?
We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded. Obama
this was way back… before hux left in that his REASONABLE points made no one willing to oppose things while it was easy to do so… we are years in now..
and Gleichschaltung is proceeding…
and most dont know what that is.. or even what they are building as their education failed to teach them full history
and they certainly dont want to know that from others of experience, even second hand…
they want their erudition like armchair philosophers and social engineers, or even marx, to be the critical narcisist point people will rally to them for.
personally i just dont want to end up a slave and tortured for someone elses amusement and caught in some archaic damned machine made by genius idiots.
even the race war crap is coming mroe andmore, all over gangs attacking people… and the msm not reporting, or not willing to call it what it is. (making Charles mansion and “the family” precient and ahead of their time)
I was beaten, taunted for being white, Bronx man says after subway attack
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2011/07/18/2011-07-18_subway_gang_attack_victim_says_he_was_pummeled_because_hes_white__cops_not_sure_.html
and dont forget taht at the core of socialism is anti semitism… how? easy.. where did capitalism come from? according to marx and others from the jewish money lenders at the temple… ie… the jews are credited with the invention of capitalism.. and so to end capitalism, you have to also remove those who created it or else they can do what? create it again.
everyone with experience, not education, knows this… and gave up trying to teach the educated that they are wrong…
i have been a fool for trying too…
Conquerors never, never conquer a nation to bring freedom. They brought control.
Ernst Zundel
I am, as a European, absolutely shocked by European people. I am also shocked by European nationalist people. They have allowed themselves to be so emasculated so silently.
Ernst Zundel
What we have to do now is to make the public at large aware that what we’re looking at is not a historical event but – and I have to be brutal and I am going to say it – a racket.
Ernst Zundel
“Orthodoxy means not thinking, not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” – Syme, Winston Smith’s co-worker at the Ministry of Truth, Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nonetheless, we believe the downsides are outweighed by the upsides discussed below.
An SPF would provide needed capabilities and might pay for itself, as it is cheaper than using military forces for policing tasks. If the decision is made to put the SPF in the Department of Defense, then the department should consider creating a new civilian policing agency within the Department of the Army to accommodate it.
The Corps of Carabineers is the national gendarmerie of Italy, policing both military and civilian populations. The Carabinieri is now a branch of the armed forces (alongside the Army, Navy and Air Force), thus ending their long-standing role as the first corps of the Italian army.
from the dragoni… to:
During the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini (1922—1943), the Carabinieri were one of the police forces entrusted with suppressing opposition in Italy. During the same period, while part of the Italian Africa Police (mainly in the late 1930s), they were involved in atrocities.
they split into two groups… basically turning on mussolini…
A gendarmerie or gendarmery is a military force charged with police duties among civilian populations. Members of such a force are typically called “gendarmes”. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary describes a gendarme as “a soldier who is employed on police duties” and a “gendarmery, -erie” as “gendarmes as a body”. The term maréchaussée (or marshalcy) may also be used (e.g., Royal Marechaussee) but is now uncommon.
so they are discussing the making of an internal military police force… that sounds so peaceful in an open and free society, eh?
they dont mention the Vichy…
The exact strength of the Vichy French Metropolitan Army was set at 3,768 officers, 15,072 non-commissioned officers, and 75,360 men. All Vichy French forces had to be volunteers. In addition to the army, the size of the Gendarmerie was fixed at 60,000 men plus an anti-aircraft force of 10,000 men.
As soon as it had been established, Pétain’s government took measures against the so-called “undesirables”: Jews, mété¨ques (immigrants from North Africa), Freemasons, Communists — this was inspired by Charles Maurras’ conception of the “Anti-France”, or “internal foreigners”, which Maurras defined as the “four confederate states of Protestants, Jews, Freemasons and foreigners”–but also Gypsies, homosexuals, and also, any left-wing activist. Vichy imitated the racial policies of the Third Reich and also engaged in natalist policies aimed at reviving the “French race”, although these policies never went as far as the eugenics program implemented by the Nazis.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
As soon as July 1940, Vichy set up a special Commission charged of reviewing the naturalizations granted since the 1927 reform of the nationality law. Between June 1940 and August 1944, 15,000 persons, mostly Jews, were denaturalized.[14] This bureaucratic decision was instrumental in their subsequent internment.
The internment camps already opened by the Third Republic were immediately put to a new use, before ultimately inserting themselves as necessary transit camps for the implementation of the Holocaust and the extermination of all “undesirables”, including the Roma people who refer to the extermination of Gypsies as Porrajmos. An October 1940 decree authorized internments of Jews on the sole basis of a prefectoral order, and the first raids took place in May 1941
and who would carry out such work, and such suppression of rioters, and all that?
inally, after Pétain’s proclamation of the “French state” and the beginning of the implementation of the “Révolution nationale” (“National Revolution”), the French administration opened up many concentration camps, to the point that historian Maurice Rajsfus wrote: “The quick opening of new camps created employment, and the Gendarmerie never ceased to hire during this period.”
The Guardia Civil is the Spanish gendarmerie. It has foreign peace-keeping missions and maintains military status and is the equivalent of a federal military-status police force. As a police force, the Guardia Civil is comparable today to the French Gendarmerie, the Italian Carabinieri and the Dutch Royal Marechaussee as it is part of the European Gendarmerie. The Guardia Civil uses as its leading emblem the motto “El honor es mi divisa” (Honour is my emblem) stressing its esprit de corps and pointing out the importance of honour. Their precincts are called “casa cuartel” (barrack-house) and, like other military garrisons in Spain, they appear under the motto “Todo por la patria” (Everything for the Fatherland).
so its a more socialist social engineering state controled move, no?
i thought that couldnt happen here, and that a police state was not possible.. but thats what these guys are… officers of a police state… and their being nice now, doesnt say anything about tomorrow!!!
they started with queen isabella of spain..
and yet.. there is no mention of their WWII existence.. or that spain is what kind of country now?
you would ahve to go to the romantic communist war of spain… and learn that… but most dont know that eitehr. read this sentence in the area on Franco
“Most country towns, and rural areas, were patrolled by pairs of Guardia Civil, a military police for civilians, which functioned as his chief means of social control.”
so basically we are to have a military police force more military than the current force..
i bet i am the only freak who remembers: Blue Division – “Guardia Civil of the Divisié³n Azul”
General Agustén Mué±oz Grandes was assigned to lead the volunteers. Because the soldiers could not use official Spanish army uniforms, they adopted a symbolic uniform comprising the red berets of the Carlists, khaki trousers used in the Spanish Legion, and the blue shirts of the Falangists — hence the nickname “Blue Division.” This uniform was used only while on leave in Spain; in the field, soldiers wore the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) field gray uniform with a shield on the upper right sleeve bearing the word “Espaé±a” and the Spanish national colors. Although the Portuguese volunteers were few (Portugal tried to maintain a more neutral position, and only let a limited number of volunteers leave for Germany) they did the same their neighbors did, wearing a field gray uniform with a shield on the very same position with the word “Portugal” and the Portuguese red and green banner. you can read about them here: http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=3849
basically what they want is a Schutzstaffel, but if you change the name, the americans wont look it up, and they wont read, and they will make up an excuse for you, rather than be curious, and so on..
Schutzstaffel and Ordnungspolizei
maybe occam knows… but i doubt others do
what happened is as Gleichschaltung proceeded, and people realized that some would be Volk (gays, women, minorities, etc)… and others would be neutral (common volk and regular people nor targeted) and the targeted oppressors… who were not volk… (jews, christians, gypsies, infirm, etc) would of course eventually fight back..
we are now at the stage where the Volk, get to beleive they were oppressed, and get to beat up on the jews, christians, and other non volk, white males, etc… and with little effort of the state to stop it.
as in russia and germany, they released the brutal classes… and then started promoting such in official ways to forces.
Ordnungspolizei were kind of like regular police… or what the regular police became after CHANGE and HOPE of the new leader.
were the uniformed regular police force in Nazi Germany between 1936 and 1945. It was increasingly absorbed into the Nazi police system. Owing to their green uniforms, they were also referred to as Gré¼ne Polizei (green police). The Orpo was established as a centralized organisation uniting the municipal, city, and rural uniformed forces that had been organised on a state-by-state basis. Eventually the Orpo embraced virtually all of the Third Reich’s law-enforcement and emergency response organizations, including fire brigades, coast guard, civil defence, and even night watchmen.
the Green Police… however as Gleichschaltung, they needed a new and stronger police, a police force trained for riots, and special actions against civilians.. (like the one RAnd is recommending the new socialist/communist/fascist hybrid US should take up)
Traditionally, law enforcement in Germany had been a state and local matter. In this role, Himmler was nominally subordinate to Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick. However, the decree effectively subordinated the police to the SS, making it virtually independent of Frick’s control. Himmler gained authority as all of Germany’s uniformed law enforcement agencies were amalgamated into the new Ordnungspolizei, whose main office became populated by officers of the SS.
and two forces were created.. the Ordnungspolizei (Orpo or regular police) and the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo or security police).
The Orpo assumed duties of regular uniformed law enforcement while the SiPo consisted of the secret state police (Geheime Staatspolizei or Gestapo) and criminal investigation police (Kriminalpolizei or Kripo). The Kriminalpolizei was a corps of professional detectives involved in fighting crime and the task of the Gestapo was combating espionage and political dissent. On 27 September 1939, the SS security service, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and the SiPo were folded into the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA).[4] The RSHA symbolized the close connection between the SS (a party organization) and the police (a state organization).
As the Nazi party monopolized political power in Germany, key government functions such as law enforcement were absorbed by the SS, while many SS organizations became de facto government agencies. To maintain the political power and security of the Nazi party (and later the nation), the SS established and ran the SD (Security service) and took over the administration of Gestapo (Secret state police), Kripo (criminal investigative police), and the Orpo (regular uniformed police).[10] Moreover, legal jurisdiction over the SS and its members was taken away from the civilian courts and given to courts run by the SS itself. These actions effectively put the SS above the law.
do we have something similar moving into place?
To the extent any of us have a right to life, the right simply prevents others from taking our life, it does not imply others have to act to preserve our life.
In the case of a baby, the parents have a moral obligation to provide for that baby. One could say the baby has a right to their parent’s care.
Curtis–
If excellence is not relative, then virtue is not relative. Neoconservative writers have always made a point of this — Bill Bennett, Allan Bloom, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lynne Cheney, etc. etc. Though the idea of rethinking morality in classical terms does go back to Strauss.
Conservatism, paleoconservatism or neoconservatism, is NOT old liberalism relabeled. Classical and modern liberals use social contract arguments to legitimize the state, because they believe in values, not virtues, because values are relative.
When you get back from your Trekkie convention, hit the books, and then get back to me.
F–
If you don’t like my comments, take your own advice and do not reply to them.
JHB, I apologize for the name calling.
As to conservatism not being classical liberalism, I disagree. I agree with this assessment: “According to William J. Novak, however, liberalism in the United States shifted, “between 1877 and 1937…from laissez-faire constitutionalism to New Deal statism, from classical liberalism to democratic social-welfarism” The quote is from Wikipedia. I suppose we could just be arguing about who gets the right to label things.
And as far as the Trekkie convention, it’s way worse than that: Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Vanilla Sky (What did you think about Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise? Best work he ever did, don’t you thinK?)
Again, I apologize for an inordinate attack upon your character.