Did the Nazis think they were “doing good”?
Commenter “huxley” raises an interesting issue:
Clearly someone like Obama, an intelligent, trained, leftist activist, is aware his actions aren’t pouring oil on troubled waters but quite the opposite. However, I tend to believe, lacking the ability to look into Obama’s soul, that Obama is aiming at a leftist utopia and transforming the US thusly is the paramount priority for that utopia.
Or, at the very least, keeping Democrats in power which allows that possibility which would be prevented by Republicans in power. So almost anything goes.
Of course, one can extend that argument to include Hitler who believed he was acting for a better world — once the millions of Jews, gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, useless eaters etc. were eliminated.
Modern-day tyrants usually give altruistic reasons for doing what they do. Is that to fool the masses, or because they believe what they are saying? Do they actually intend to do evil, or do they fool themselves and think that they really will get that tasty omelet after breaking all those eggs?
I can’t say; I don’t read minds. But I think that one of the basic reasons that socialism and Communism are such difficult ideas to kill is that they appeal to something universally idealistic in regular people (not necessarily the leaders and masterminds), but invariably turn out horrific in execution because such approaches contain a built-in contradiction with human nature. This contradiction virtually guarantees that the idyllic imagined future never comes to pass, and the effort to create it leads (often very quickly) to a dystopia instead. This dystopia is sometimes labeled a temporary transition period. But the longed-for goal never arrives.
In contrast, Nazism does not appeal to anything so universally idealistic. That’s not to say it didn’t appeal to a lot of people in its day (and even a few in this day). But it is mean-spirited and exclusionary on its face. I suppose that someone could say that Nazism was striving for a “better world” as defined by purely German interests, in that the Germans would be the ones wearing the boots stamping forever on the human face. The temporary dystopia envisioned by Communist rhetoric was the endpoint ideal of the Nazis for everyone in the world except the Germans, who would be ruthless and vicious but on top of the heap.
I also don’t think that the Nazi leaders themselves probably thought in terms of “good” and “bad” as we ordinarily mean them. They thought in terms of gain and loss, and strong and weak, and they were determined to be the strong winners. Fortunately, they were not.
[NOTE: Although I’ve read a lot of history, I don’t pretend to be an expert on this. These thoughts are meant to be a springing-off place for thought and discussion.]
I can’t say; I don’t read minds.
Then seek someone that can.
They thought in terms of gain and loss, and strong and weak, and they were determined to be the strong winners. Fortunately, they were not.
Eisenhower’s warning. JFK’s assassination. Operation Paperclip. Trump’s Deep State.
Not winners? Hehe.
But shouldn’t that someone already know that they are being sought?
I think Communists and Socialists intend fully to be the ones giving the orders, and the rest of us doing what we are told. Happily doing so, in the knowledge that they are out betters, and know more than we.
Recent read an interesting but rather unpleasant book…’Account Rendered’, by a woman who became a Nazi official at a fairly high level. As she tells it, she was initially motivated by two factors: first, he empathy for the poor: she saw the Nazi attitude toward these people as a welcome contrast to her mother’s snobbery. And second, a bad breakup with a boyfriend (at age 17), which made her want to throw herself into her work.
Brain as big as a planet and yet all he can come up with is 42.
Obama was just following orders.
“…doing good…”
Not sure it matters. A lot of mass murderers seem to have “altruistic” motivations.
(That’s how you can be sure they’re psychopaths.)
There was a book (can’t remember what it was called or who wrote it—perhaps Barbara Tuchman) that stressed the “aesthetic” motivation of the Thousand-Year Reich.
Interesting as far as it went. But then many (once again) megalomaniacs have “aesthetic” goals—no doubt, it helps them rationalize their other, not-quite-so-aesthetic proclivities. (In Schicklgruber’s case, it was Speer, of course who played the role master of architect; though the latter’s “aesthetic” sense, channeling that of his own master, is open to, let’s call it, debate. BTW, there’s a book on Speer called “The Good Nazi” by a historian with a Dutch surname, I believe, that I would highly recommend…FWIW).
And Hitler was, of course, quite the artist. He maybe even thought he “coulda been a contenda” in the field. Well, he sublimated that particular frustration quite “successfully”, didn’t he….
In the meantime, Stalin, the former seminary student, covered the sacerdotal angle of sheer, murderous, brutal totalitarianism and had it down pat. In fact, so “successful” was his “technique” was so that people were confessing to “sins” they KNEW they never committed.
Time to be very vigilant. And ready. It’s a good idea to always remember Reagan’s “most frightening 13 words” but we’ve gone way, way, way beyond that.
But it’s important to try to understand why certain people want power. Need to be in power. Also important to look at what people do—how they behave/respond—when they get power (this last I thought was a most memorable remark by Kevin Williamson).
Every time I see a photo of Biden smiling, I cringe. That goes pretty much for the rest of ’em. Actually, they don’t even have to smile at this point. While Obama et al. I’d prefer not to even look at.
P.S. Get a load of this (heh):
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/peter-strzok-fired-georgetown-doing-now
That would be Kevin D. Williamson (“National Review”).
I have a suspicion that people assign too much significance in Obama. Steven Sailer’s observation about him – that he would be optimally employed in a job where you transmit other’s viewpoints but offer no original content of your own – seems apt. His administration seemed to me to be the resultant of all the vectors you see in the Democratic Party. The only thing he added was his secretiveness, petty spite, and vanity manifest in logorrhea. As for his objects now, it’s to prevent injuries to his image from his misconduct in office and to enjoy the pelf that’s coming his way.
P.S. Get a load of this (heh):
Another indication, in case you needed one, of the crooked leftoid safety net, operate by the amoral higher ed nomenklatura with other people’s money. BTW, even when you work there, you never can find out who makes these decisions.
There is this:
Are we the Baddies?
https://youtu.be/hn1VxaMEjRU
We don’t have to guess. Hitler shared his World View in Hitler’s Table Talk. I’m sorry to quote from such an evil man, but if you want to understand him as he understood himself you have to read what he wrote. Unlike Mein Kampf which was a propaganda book, Hitler’s Table Talk is based on conversations between Hitler and a few trusted associates. Here’s what he said:
“The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming
of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child.
Both are inventions of the Jew…. In the ancient world, the relations between men and gods were founded on an instinctive respect. It was a world enlightened by the idea of tolerance. Christianity was the first creed in the world to exterminate its adversaries in the name of love. Its key-note is intolerance.” (Hitler’s Table Talk 1941-1944, day 4
“It’s important that we should shape Germany in such a way
that whoever comes to visit us may be cured of his prejudices
concerning us. I don’t want to force National Socialism on
anybody. If I’m told that some countries want to remain
democrats—very well, they must remain democrats at all costs!”
IBID day 16
“I shall no longer be there to see it, but I rejoice on behalf
of the German people at the idea that one day we will see
England and Germany marching together against America.
Germany and England will know what each of them can
expect of her partner, and then we shall have found the ally
whom we need.” IBID day 17
“I’ve ordered Himmler, in the event of there some day being
reason to fear troubles back at home, to liquidate everything he
finds in the concentration camps. Thus at a stroke the revolution would be deprived of its leaders.” IBID day 19
“But there will never be any possibility of National Socialism’s
setting out to ape religion by establishing a form of worship.
Its one ambition must be scientifically to construct a doctrine
that is nothing more than a homage to reason.
Our duty is to teach men to see whatever is lovely and truly
wonderful in life, and not to become prematurely ill-tempered
and spiteful. We wish fully to enjoy what is beautiful, to cling
to it—and to avoid, as far as possible, anything that might do
harm to people like ourselves.
If to-day you do harm to the Russians, it is so as to avoid
giving them the opportunity of doing harm to us.
God does not act differently. He suddenly hurls the masses
of humanity on to the earth, and he leaves it to each one to
work out his own salvation. Men dispossess one another, and
one perceives that, at the end of it all, it is always the stronger
who triumphs. Is that not the most reasonable order of things?
If it were otherwise, nothing good would ever have existed….” IBID day 23
“It was with feelings of pure idealism that I set out for the
front in 1914. Then I saw men falling around me in thousands.
Thus I learnt that life is a cruel struggle, and has no other
object but the preservation of the species. The individual can
disappear, provided there are other men to replace him.
I suppose that some people are clutching their heads with
both hands to find an answer to this question: “How can the
Fuehrer destroy a city like St. Petersburg?” Plainly I belong by
nature to quite another species. I would prefer not to see anyone suffer, not to do harm to anyone. But when I realise that
the species is in danger, then in my case sentiment gives way
to the coldest reason. I become uniquely aware of the sacrifices
that the future will demand, to make up for the sacrifices that
one hesitates to allow to-day.” IBID day 26
“The best thing is to let Christianity die a
natural death. A slow death has something comforting about
it. The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the
advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more
concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that’s left is
to prove that in nature there is no frontier between the organic
and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has
become widespread, when the majority of men know that the
6O THE NEEDS OF THE SOUL
stars are not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited
worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted
of absurdity.” IBID day 39
https://www.nationalists.org/pdf/hitler/hitlers-table-talk-roper.pdf
Just like the modern left, Hitler viewed himself as a champion of love and tolerance but first the evil people must be eliminated. His first task was to kick all of the Jews out of Europe or if that was not possible to exterminate them. Rather than killing all Christians, he wanted to allow the intolerant Christians to kill each other off. Those who survived would succumb to the truth of science.
He was a man of science who thought that science proves that Christianity is nothing but superstition. Hitler believed in a God but based his morality on science and evolution.
Like Nietzsche, Hitler believed that Christian charity is evil because it allows weak individuals to survive at the expense of the strong. He thought that survival of the fittest is god’s will and he thought that providing for the future of Arian Germany at the expense of others he was doing good. The Slavs would be allowed to live as second class citizens in their own lands for awhile while they would be gradually replaced by Germans. Also, he didn’t want to conquer the entire World or to exterminate everyone else, he just wanted lebensraum on the European continent for the Arian people.
Hitler was not a mad man. He was an idealistic man who had rejected Europe’s Judeo-Christian morality. He was not really that much different than people on the left who have killed many more people than the Nazis did.
From C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock:
A tyrannical leader and followers in a commune-like constituency—Nazis and communism—are about what we wanted in our tribes on the serengeti fifty thousand years ago. No wonder our genomes find them seductive! Kindly, loving modernity has outstripped our old genetics.
I recommend reading Ludwig von Mises’ ‘Liberalism’ to get a pre-rise of Hitler perspective on fascism and what became the German version, Nazism. He discusses the movement citing how the Fascists “saved” Europe from the Marxist Social Democrats, ie., communists. He published in 1927.
Post-Hitler, Mises did not gloss over that the foundations of Nazism were inculcated into the German “educated strata” by the professors over 70+ years in his 1947 ‘Planned Chaos’.
@Dennis:
Good Job. It is as well to let people be heard in their own words; triply so when so many words have been written about them by others.
Something went very wrong with Hitler, the Nazis, and Germany in general during that time and terrible things were done. But to reduce him to a ranting clown as most portrayals do (e.g. virtually nobody today grasps what a brilliant public speaker he was — there was a lot more to the man’s oratory style than a few cartoonish looking out-of-context rants we see in video clips) does ourselves a disservice because it saves us from having to make the effort of trying to understand what he really *meant* and the conditions that gave rise to his phenomenon.
As for the conditions that gave rise to his phenomenon, ‘The Jews’ is a lazy shorthand equivalent to the other side of the coin of just seeing Hitler as a ranting Maniac and the Germans as Goose-stepping Savages. It. Was. Complicated. Shortest coherent version of an approximation to the truth might be that the freakishly talented autodidact (with all the pluses and minuses this implies) orator correctly *felt* and intuited a great rent in the fabric of his nation, not to mention Western Thought and set about mending it according to his unschooled and very idiosyncratic lights. And we all know how that worked out.
The mending of Rents is not something we’ve been able to do well, post-Rent (that would be the Enlightenment for you in the Cheap Seats).
And no, I don’t imagine that making him read Sartor Resartus at an impressionable age would have helped 😛
neo,
“I think that one of the basic reasons that socialism and Communism are such difficult ideas to kill is that they appeal to something universally idealistic in regular people (not necessarily the leaders and masterminds),”
Socialism posits that individualism is at the root of societal dysfunction. Communism is involuntary communion. Both posit that people can be made to be good and must be made to be good.
“but invariably turn out horrific in execution because such approaches contain a built-in contradiction with human nature.”
Correct but IMO incomplete. Collectivist approaches reject basic operative principles that govern the external reality within which we all exist. The law of supply and demand is one. Another and even more basic is the necessity for inequality, which overall and in the aggregate is a huge social good. Neither invention, civilizational progress or most ironically, evolution itself could exist without reality’s “unequal sharing of blessings”.
“This contradiction virtually guarantees that the idyllic imagined future never comes to pass, and the effort to create it leads (often very quickly) to a dystopia instead.”
It’s for the above cited reasons that collectivist ‘efforts’ are unsustainable without ever greater coercion that inescapably leads to “a boot, stomping on a human face, forever…”
Adding to what Dennis has shared: Hitler was a narcissistic who fully embraced eugenics. As Dennis pointed out he believed the Jewish and Christians ideology would prevent the creation of a genetic utopia. Fascism was adopted by Hitler simply because it was the easiest way to get the most money out of his empire. This funded the war effort as well as the final solution. Yet, when a choice needed to be made regarding resources he focused on the final solution to the detriment of the war effort.
Here is how I see it…
The first leaders start with the assumption that they are going to do good. When it appears that they will actually gain power, the unscrupulous see opportunities in such power and understand instinctively that the naive idealists can be manipulated. As long as they claim that it is for the good of “the people” nothing is forbidden. And, since you had good intentions, your failure is always forgiven.
Eventually, the unscrupulous worm their way so deep into power that they purge the government of any bumbling fools that actually have good intentions. It is better that all in power be scoundrels since they can be trusted to not turn on their fellow thieves. Later on, after the economy is destroyed and there isn’t enough loot to go around, they will start throwing some out of the plane to lighten the load. The inner circle tightens until only the most ruthless sobs imaginable remain.
But, it all started with “good intentions”.
On the topic of Rents in the Fabric and how polite society and the great and the good and the educated and the sophisticated are ill-equipped to recognise them or handle them and tend to unperson those who are so uncouth as to bring up said Rents in polite company, I give you Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Commencement Address. After he unloaded that one, he went from Hero to Zero and that was it for him in the West.
So long as we educate our best and brightest to be blind and obtuse, we’re going to have these sui generis types pop up from time to time… because the kid might be wrong about everything except that the Emperor is naked, but that being truthful about the One Big Thing will get one noticed by the common folk when times are tough.
As for the conditions that gave rise to his phenomenon, ‘The Jews’ is a lazy shorthand equivalent to the other side of the coin of just seeing Hitler as a ranting Maniac and the Germans as Goose-stepping Savages. It. Was. Complicated
Only in the sense that historical phenomena have lots of moving parts. A precis:
1. Serial acts and omissions by the German establishment which discredited them.
a. Lost the war, got rolled at the peace conference
b. Gross mismanagement of monetary policy in 1922-23.
c. Policy response to the economic shock in 1929 exacerbated the ensuing economic contraction.
d. Institutional defects which inhibited the formation of effective ministries
e. Head of State senile.
2. Hitler was, by and large, a useless human being. He was an idiot-savant in a modest but contextually useful way in those particular circumstances
3. Hitler made a couple of good decisions in 1933-34. One was to retain Hjalmar Schacht in the cabinet.
“I can’t say; I don’t read minds.” neo
“Then seek someone that can.” Ymar
Sorry, Jesus is too busy and God’s doing his ‘vow of silence’ thing.
But I see you’re still doing that “legend in your own mind” thing.
“He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” John 2:4
Note: mocking others for not rendering onto you your ‘just due’ is not in keeping with his commandments.
There are people who want to run your life for your good because they don’t think you are capable of doing it yourself. These people wear lots of labels.
There are also people who want to make people suffer for real or imagined injuries. These people also wear lots of labels.
There are people who want both simultaneously, and don’t see or feel a contradiction. They are going to give the good people what they deserve, and the bad people what THEY deserve, and they will give no one a choice in the matter because they feel no one else is qualified to judge. And these people wear lots of labels too.
JK Brown,
Rhetorical question; how does that first paragraph you cite in Ludwig von Mises’ ‘Liberalism’ differ from today’s leftist ‘activists’?
Specifically, “The parties of the Third International consider any means as permissible if it seems to give promise of helping them in their struggle to achieve their ends. Whoever does not unconditionally acknowledge all their teachings as the only correct ones and stand by them through thick and thin has, in their opinion, incurred the penalty of death; and they do not hesitate to exterminate him”
Von Mises relates that WWII fascists realized that the communist’s fire must be fought with fire. I suggest that it was less fascists fighting fire with fire and far more their championing anti-capitalist collectivism that inherently denies inalienable rights.
One way or another, the right is going to have to fight the left with ‘fire’. But our fight is to preserve liberty not to end it. And, that makes all the difference.
@Art Deco
I see you’re a talented list-maker and enumerator of causes. Have you considered reincarnating as a Chinese and taking the Gaokao? A career in the Mandarinate beckons.
Hitler may have been an idiot in the Athenian sense of not being the smoothest and most clubbable operator in the Agora. But he was not an idiot in the sense you mean.
Rather than waste a lot of endless hot air on Hitler and on pointless comparisons between Hitler and Stalin and their respective creeds and modus operandis, I think this thread would do better to look at why the Germans themselves in the early 30s decided that there was nothing for it but to take a meat cleaver to the Gordian Knot. Germans like Martin Heidegger as well as Doctors, Lawyers, Feinmechaniker, Farmers, Nurses, perhaps not circus clowns and Cabaret Actors.
In other words we should be doing archaeology and forensics on the Knot and not the Knife. Your list is a pimple on the posterior of a flea inhabiting an errant fibre poking out of said knot, but it is a beginning.
@Geoffrey Britain:
Agreed as long as I get to eviscerate and burn the living entrails of those who exported Western Industry to China and imported Fentanyl to drug those they dispossessed by doing the former. And the rope for those who financed and incentivised the management buyouts which precipitated the former.
I’m all for Liberty within time-tested frameworks. There is nothing time-tested, true, or Lindy about strip mining a country’s social capital.
In other words, the Left must be fought for keeps, but they’re not the only game in town and in some ways may even be the Lesser of the Two Weevils.
Hello. Dennis’ exploration of how Hitler himself thought of his ‘work’ was useful. It didn’t occur to me to look at Mein Kampf as a work of propaganda or a false self-portrayal, so that caution is appreciated. I think also, though, that one should hear from other Nazis as well to see what they thought of what they were doing, what the point of it all was in their eyes. For, after all, National Socialism was not just a one-man operation.
The difficulty there is that if one looks at statements from them such as Speer’s books, or the Nuremberg testimony (or related sources like the book by Gilbert, the prison psychologist there, which I very much enjoyed – if it’s not too much to use such a word of a book about a bunch of extremely warped and sociopathic people – man, the bilge that sloshed around in Goering’s head!*), one has to distinguish honest thoughts from the self-justifications, the post hoc rationalizations and so on.
* It just occurred to me that Liam Neeson, who as we know played an anti-Nazi of sorts in Schindler’s List, ironically looked rather similar to Goering with respect to facial appearance. I doubt that Mr. Neeson would appreciate such a comparison, but if you look at the photos of Goering from when he was keeping himself up better, they’re not that far off. The eyes, though… Goering’s eyes ice-cold; Neeson’s not so much, fortunately.
I met a couple of old Nazis and one young one while working in Germany during the summer of 1965. One had been in the Luftwaffe 1936-1945, the other was his brother who was more the philosophical sort and never lost his love for the movement. My impression was that both had joined the Nazis as idealistic young men. To balance the equation, I have also known several old communists, my piano teacher had been in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which kept him out of the army in WWII. Idealism is a fault of the young and often misdirected.
While thinking about Hitler, it occurred to me that the modern left with their emphasis on race are much closer to the Nazis than to the original Bolsheviks who were completely oriented to class and financial status. Like the modern left, the Nazis had a philosophy of history which emphasized the competition between races.
The only difference is that Hitler was a man of science who thought that evolution made the supremacy of one race over another the natural order of nature and thus god’s will. The stronger race is ordained by nature to overcome and destroy the weaker race.
The modern left claim to be men and women of science but they ignore the fact that evolution requires that the strong survive and the weak perish. The Modern Marxists hold that the race which is most successful is the one which must be eliminated. This favoring the weak over the strong is what Hitler meant when he accused the Bolsheviks of a degenerate form of Christianity. Thus, both modern Marxists and National Socialists believe in categorizing other people by race and destroying them. The only difference is which race is chosen to be exterminated.
Dennis, a very interesting take on their positions. On the other hand, I would question: is it really the entire ‘modern Left’ which has taken up this form of racialism? I am not persuaded that it is – only a particular segment of it, I believe. That segment has a lot of pull at this moment, of course, but why shouldn’t we regard it as merely one faction among several? In other words, is it really accurate to define the ‘modern Left’ as being identical with CRT/BLM and that kind of thing?
I suppose you could ask me back what I would propose as an alternative definition, and that would be fair. It’s just that thinking about it, I regard LGBTABCXYZ, for instance, as certainly part of the ‘modern Left’ as well, and I’m not sure that they can be comprehended as part of a racialist movement, for example.
But he was not an idiot in the sense you mean.
He had several years in the army (promoted to corporal). That aside, how did he earn a living between 1907 and 1930?
While we’re at it, why not review Hitler’s regimen of diet, medical care, and dental care?
Rather than waste a lot of endless hot air on Hitler and on pointless comparisons between Hitler and Stalin and their respective creeds and modus operandis, I think this thread would do better to look at why the Germans themselves in the early 30s decided that there was nothing for it but to take a meat cleaver to the Gordian Knot.
Waal, you know, Zaphod, we don’t always see ourselves as others do.
At least one may say that Hitler and the Nazis did not have it in for everybody. They were for the “Volk”, the large mass of the German people (sanitized of course of Jews, gays, gypsies, etc.). Which is why die Deutsche Volk followed him with such zeal.
Germany prospered in the mid-1930s under Hitler, while America struggled under the Great Depression. And Jewish Hollywood agreed not to offend the Nazis–the Germans loved movies and an anti-Nazi Hollywood would have been banned from that market completely in the 1930s. I’m not making this up. Some of this is in the following, though not the more thorough book I read long ago and discarded, but Amazon has 20 pages of “Nazis and Hollywood”, mostly irrelevant:
https://smile.amazon.com/Hollywood-Hitler-1933-1939-Film-Culture/dp/0231163932/ref=sr_1_226
The Communists, on the other hand, oppressed and murdered their own people with unbridled passion. See Mao and his Cultural Revolution, with 60 to 100 million murdered. See Pol Pot, who murdered maybe 25% of Cambodians for “crimes” like the wearing of glasses (which meant they might could read).
I am making a contrast evident here. I do not want any misunderstanding. I am not excusing the Nazis, no way, no how.
But the Left now screams about Fascism as if it were the greatest evil ever, leaving Communism completely unmentioned. The Left screams about Russia, but its silence on China is deafening.
Because we are on the edge of becoming a new socialist (aka eventually communist) country. “Trained” Marxists founded BLM. See Kamala and cringe in fear. Or stand up and resist!
“oft evil shall evil mar”
I suspect anybody whose only goal is the imposition of evil upon others is not sufficiently organized or capable of a broader view and patience for other competencies that would allow him to achieve influential positions.
There’s no reason that a really, really bad guy would quibble at doing his really bad thing to other really bad guys. A tactical decision might be in order, but that only goes so far.
The head of the Dirlewanger brigade, Oskar Dirlewanger, was indescribably evil. He did not do evil on the way to accomplishing something else. He did not do evil and enjoy it while on the way. He did not choose the most evil of techniques from a selection on his way to something else. He actively sought evil.
But he took time out in his life to demonstrate competencies which led the Nazis to think he could run a group of people as awful as himself.
You can’t run an army of psychopaths, but a conventional army can clear the way for the psychopaths.
So, imo, they weren’t evil setting out to do evil. But their goals were, in terms of normal humanity, evil in results. No matter what the perps thought. And evil was to be tolerated as a technique.
Philip, I think the Port Huron Statement June 15, 1962 by Tom Hayden of the SDS is the most definitive statement of the world view held by the New Left at their founding. https://images2.americanprogress.org/campus/email/PortHuronStatement.pdf
All the other isms have been added to attract more aggrieved groups but racial conflict has always been at the core of the movement. Now that the New Left are on the threshold of power their true core is asserting itself in the Black Lives Matter Movement and Antifa.
I should add that Tom Hayden might not recognize the New Left in its present form. In 1962 racism was still prevalent and needed to be combatted. The New Left like so many other movements which have become evil was undoubtedly founded by people who thought that they were doing good. What comes across in the statement is a spiritual ennui in which Hayden is substituting political activism for traditional spiritual values.
Barry Meislin on October 19, 2020 at 5:14 pm said:
But shouldn’t that someone already know that they are being sought?
Free will violations. It is why you are not punished for every thought in your head. You have to act them out first, instead of it being merely a thought crime.
GB, Americans will not understand Hitler or why it affected US post WW2 “politics” that converged into a deep state, without someone with psionic capability or research. It’s like trying to run with one leg. You guys can’t do it otherwise.
LockHeed and Martin, Skunk Works, Rand corporation under Douglas. These all are related.
William S Thompkins.
People here haven’t done the research and work. Procrastination? Lazyness?
Counter: Psionic potential and skills don’t exist, Ymar!
Ymar: Tell that to the Remote Viewing projects of the military, not me. Ya’ll humans have spent X millions or billions on it at this point.
The Russians used to call it psychotronics. And the medical professionals still call it “placebo” effect. Which is a real effect and often more advantageous than most drug side effects.
Cicero, actually, the proper article with Volk is ‘das’. 🙂
Dennis, I’ll take a look at that. Maybe it was just a question of pinpointing the frame of reference or point of origin. Certainly the Port Huron SDS meeting is one such. (I’m embarrassed at the connection to my home state, though.)
Philip, the jargon in the Port Huron Statement tends to camouflage how radical it was. Rather than renouncing communism as their sponsors expected the SDS renounced Stalinism as a perversion of communism. In fact, Hayden was very sympathetic to the communists and eventually married Hanoi Jane Fonda. Because of the verbiage, it is easy to miss how Hayden has mixed race and Marxism as the foundation of the New Left. The difference between Hayden and modern leftists is that Hayden comes across as relatively non-violent whereas Antifa and Black Lives Matter are totally into violence.
“Americans will not understand Hitler or why it affected US post WW2 “politics” that converged into a deep state, without someone with psionic capability or research.”
Really… “There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters” Daniel Webster
PS: The Deep State arose out of the Cold War. Someone had to look out for their naïve fellows… for our own good of course. Do you really think that there are no idealists within the Deep State? Do you really think that from Soros on down, that the majority don’t think that they’re on the side (as they see it) of righteousness?
Philip Sells:
Ja, es ist “das Volk”. Zu schnelI wahr ich!
Dennis, you say “the original Bolsheviks … were completely oriented to class and financial status”. That may have been true originally, after all Marx’ works were about the “class struggle”. His expectation was that the condition of the workers would continue to degenerate until they revolted against the capitalists.
However by the end of the 19th century many people in Western countries began to experience the benefits of industrialization. Lenin then introduced the idea that the revolution would begin in less industrialized countries rebelling against Western dominance. This was the seed of “Third World” ideology and has ultimately led to exploitation of racial divisions becoming a standard leftist tactic. I would say the difference between Nazis and Communists/leftists in this respect is that the Nazis truly believed in their racial ideology whereas for leftists it is a means of fomenting chaos to facilitate their seizure of power.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/10/17/hatred-of-trump-leads-to-liberal-confusion-about-what-to-do-bari-weiss-gets-it-and-she-also-doesnt/#comment-2520414
GB, Cold War is nice, but not far enough back.
Also to Meislin, didn’t you write this comment around October 19, 2020 at 5:30 pm said:?
Because I just read it and replied to it, as I was browsing the old threads. I haven’t been checking regularly here for some weeks or months now.
Add time travel to the list.
It’s part of Trump’s Roswell “interesting” surprises.
Really… “There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters” Daniel Webster
Do you really think the Epsteins are part of this misguided governance philosophy?
I raise you 6:12.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+6%3A12&version=NIV
What do you think he was writing about, cooky conspiracies that weren’t made by flesh and blood?
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
That’s not some kind of poetic language. It is literal. Humans are flesh and blood, thus this is not against humans. So what is a power or ruler, that is not a human?
They Live.
47.6 Questioner: Well, what I was actually asking was if 50% is required for graduation from third to fourth in the positive sense, 95% is required for graduation in the negative sense, does this have to more closely approach 100% in both cases for graduation from fourth to fifth? Does an entity have to be 99% polarized for negative and maybe 80% polarized for positive graduation from fourth to fifth?
Ra: I am Ra. We perceive the query now.
To give this in your terms is misleading for there are, shall we say, visual aids or training aids available in fourth density which automatically aid the entity in polarization while cutting down extremely upon the quick effect of catalyst. Thus the density above yours must take up more space/time.
The percentage of service to others of positively oriented entities will harmoniously approach 98% in intention. The qualifications for fifth density, however, involve understanding. This then, becomes the primary qualification for graduation from fourth to fifth density. To achieve this graduation the entity must be able to understand the actions, the movements, and the dance. There is no percentage describable which measures this understanding. It is a measure of efficiency of perception. It may be measured by light. The ability to love, accept, and use a certain intensity of light thus creates the requirement for both positive and negative fourth to fifth harvesting.
https://www.lawofone.info/results.php?q=graduation
The purpose for human life right now is as a test. This test is Veiled, because if you know about it, that would be cheating. Only the test proctors or observers/Watchers know about it, because they have already graduated and are merely sitting in the class as monitors to keep an eye on the other pris… I mean students.
The person asking that question is Don Elkins.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/elkins-donald-t-1930-1984
He served in the Korean War, after which he completed his education at the University of Louisville. He earned three degrees in engineering, completing his last degree in 1960. He took a job at the University of Alaska and created its mechanical engineering program during his year there. In 1961 he accepted a position at his alma mater and returned to Kentucky.
It’s easy to look down on Ymar, but what about one of your comprades?
As for the group answering the question… well just think of them as a type of Ymar. You all, already do. A friend of mine.
Counter: Ymar is a UFO fracking idiot now.
Ymar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWZWVEkqVS8 Who are you calling an idiot, President Trump and his son, Junior? Ok, Juniors, time for class to begin.
Interview with Amaryllis Fox. She worked as a CIA undercover agent for almost 10 years. In her own words: “If I learned a lesson from my time with the CIA, it’s this: everybody believes they are the good guy“.
CIA Undercover: everyone thinks they’re the good guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxUgei-WKfY
She has become a writer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaryllis_Fox
FOAF
“I would say the difference between Nazis and Communists/leftists in this respect is that the Nazis truly believed in their racial ideology whereas for leftists it is a means of fomenting chaos to facilitate their seizure of power.”
You have made a good point, however anticolonialism is slightly different from the outright racism in the New Left. The Soviet Union was a majority white regime but they were the World leaders of the anticolonialism movement. If the following quote from Wikipedia is accurate, Tom Hayden himself was a self-loathing white man.
“In 2007, Hayden made news for his speech at the wedding of his son Troy, where, as Hilton Als wrote in The New Yorker, he “said that he was especially happy about his son’s union with actress Simone Bent, who is black, because, among other things, it was ‘another step in a long-term goal of mine: the peaceful, non-violent disappearance of the white race.'””
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hayden
Tom Hayden was a racist but a relatively non-violent racist. The present leadership of the New Left are equally committed to the “disappearance of the white race” but they intend to accomplish this violently. Their goal is to convince white people especially college educated white women that they are unworthy to live. Of course the elite whites on the left make an exception for themselves. It is those other white people, the blue collar whites who cling to their god and their guns who must be destroyed.
In reality, many of those whites whom they wish to eliminate are the most kind practical people you will ever meet. They are much deeper morally than the elites who wish to destroy them. They are Hillary’s basket of deplorables.
“Antifa and Black Lives Matter are totally into violence.”
Yes, which could also be phrased:
“Antifa and Black Lives Matter are totally into ‘transforming America’.”
…which might more persuasively rationalize the “enthusiastic” activities perpetrated on a daily basis by what has been so adamantly labeled “an idea” and “a myth”.
Connecting the dots, we can get a better grasp of the meaning of
“…Obama is aiming at a leftist utopia…”
…and precisely why Michelle Obama has been so altruistic of late—so insistent on helping us all out by threatening (sorry, “pointing out”) that America will continue to be “transformed” if Americans decide not to vote for the preferred ticket(so that “they” can continue to “transform” it, no doubt).
It’s a shame, certainly, that she has to point this out so clearly (IOW to be so altruistic—it can’t be easy for her) but I guess someone has to do it.
And Jewish Hollywood agreed not to offend the Nazis–the Germans loved movies and an anti-Nazi Hollywood would have been banned from that market completely in the 1930s. I’m not making this up.
How many films were produced for general distribution in this country prior to 1933, during the period running from 1933 to 1945, and after 1945 which were: (1) set in Germany; or (2) set in a German client state; or (3) allegorical in re German society? Casablanca is an example, as is Cabaret, but these are not common themes in American cinema.
Germany prospered in the mid-1930s under Hitler, while America struggled under the Great Depression.
Per capita product in Germany did not return to 1913 levels until 1927. Per capita product was at its peak in 1928, then declined by 18% over the next four years. Per capita product increased at a rate of 7% per year from 1932 to 1939. In the U.S., the only years wherein per capita product fell below the level of 1913 were 1914 and 1915 and was 20% higher than was Germany’s in 1928. In the U.S., per capita product was at its peak in 1929, then declined by 31% over the next four years. It then increased at a rate of 6.2% per year over the next six years and was about equal to Germany’s in 1939. The differences were that (1) a much higher share of Germany’s productive capacity was devoted to military production and (2) America’s unemployment rate remained persistently high even as real product increased rapidly.
I had a number of conversations a few years back with someone who once worked very closely with the Clintons in Arkansas. We can quibble over the definition of evil, but I believe the evidence is pretty compelling that the Clintons meet a lot of standards for what would qualify as evil. When Bill told George Stephy-boy that he believed in killing people that were hurting him politically, he meant it.
This person explained that Hillary is so convinced of her own superior insight and moral superiority that her having power is always a moral good. Anything required for her to maintain power and influence is moral. (Easy to see a parallel to Lenin’s view of morality and the “ends justify the means”.)
Hillary is convinced that she is a good person because she says she wants to help people. If she favors policy X and you disagree with her, you are evil because you clearly don’t want to help people. It’s easy to see the logical fallacy here, but don’t lose sight of the moral failing.
Jonathon Haidt and his associates have some interesting research into the moral bases of the far left. It ain’t pretty. You can see the same moral failure in their views as you can with Hillary. They are so comfortable slandering people as racist, sexist, fascist, Nazi, white supremacist, etc. because they truly aren’t capable of understanding that other people can be people of good faith and have a different opinion. These are morally retarded people. They haven’t advanced past the moral maturity of small children.
This is the impetus of “othering” and all the rest. They are moral narcissists.
Did the nazis think they were “doing good”? Sure, in the same way that today’s Left in America does. In the same way that Antifa/BLM can loot, riot and burn while believing wholeheartedly that they are the good guys.
Another aspect that could generate lots of books is the religious aspect psychologically. Everyone is religious. Those who have abandoned formal religion often turn to politics for their religion. And attach all the moral underpinnings of religion to their political views.
Germany was not economically recovering per se under Nazism. They were economic nincompoops. This is one reason why they had to take over other countries was to loot their productive overhead and steal their gold. A quick summary is in this Reason article below. When the Nazi’s took over Austria they held Jews hostage and forced them to pay ransoms to leave. To get a sense of that the movie “Woman in Gold” (2015 w/ Ryan Reynolds and Helen Mirren) is a good example. Same deal with Czechoslovakia. The Nazi’s never got their economic act together until February 1943 when they went on a “total war” footing and put Speer in charge. Even then a lot of their productive effort was built off of slave labor. Neo Feudalism at it’s most inefficient.
The economic history of communism is not any better. The Five Year Plan, The Great Leap Forward built a veneer or progress on the bodies of the proletariat but never delivered lasting economic progress. Only when Perestroika and Deng’s To Get Rich is Glorious did the economies start to improve somewhat.
Under Communism there was little innovation happening unless it was stolen and continues to be stolen. That is because the individual aren’t allowed the fruits of their labor. For the glory of the state isn’t a very motivating factor to be creative.
So Socialism, Communism, Fascism are all off shoots from Feudal economic system. Only under Christianity where people and their property are granted autonomy from the state did lives get better. People are allowed to use their imagination and accumulate capital. Look at what Gates and Musk are doing ala Carnegie, Stanford, Rockefeller and Mellon did earlier time. Of course there was wasteful spending but at the end there was more benefit for all because capital was allowed to accumulate.
Amity Shales “The Forgotten Man” shows that the New Deal ended up exacerbating and lengthening the Great Depression. Is this same scenario playing out during our time of COVID? I can see both sides of the coin. I think not because there is no permanent changes to the regulation of business but the precedent of allowing people not to pay rent can have serious downstream effects later on.
Note that it is the intellectual that despises Anglo capitalism so much. The reason as one person once wrote is because it devalued what they are good at. Taking tests successfully. That is why the University system will change. Their product isn’t selling benefits anymore. Unfortunately many of our thought leaders come from this ilk. Their mal effects of their thinking are apparent with our sorry economic performance during the Obama years.
https://reason.com/1999/08/01/nazi-economics/
ps: I am not a Randite. I do believe in a “well-ordered” market. A saying that Jeff Flake had that I have kept is “I am not pro-business. I am pro-free enterprise.”
re Nazi influence on the American cinema: the German consul in LA had such influence as one of his major job responsibilities, and he did have some successes.
In the case of the movie ‘The Road Back’ (based on Remarque’s important but neglected novel), the Germans went so far as to write letters to all cast members, down to the boom operators and hairdressers, threatening that if the script weren’t changed to meet their demands, then no other movie involving that individual would ever be allowed in Germany in the future.
What is that something, that ideal , which socialism offers which universally appeals to regular people?
And does ” regular” mean psychologically normal people, or something along the lines of “yer average Joe around the world”?
Hard to say. But they obviously thought they were doing pretty well for awhile.
[Sorry, it’s been laying there temptingly, and obvious; just waiting for someone to come along shameless enough to pick it up.]
“…in case you needed one…’
Well, yes, these hirings are clearly a need of the most juvenile button-pushing sort.
Actually, I’m waiting for CNN to offer Hunter Biden a Prime Time slot, perhaps as “commentator” on the latest social issues or as an interviewer of people, such as himself, who are “up and coming”. It’s not likely he’ll be reviewing any books but maybe he’ll do some “Consumer Report”-type comparisons on what he knows best, e.g., the strengths and weaknesses of various, cross-cultural fund-raising techniques, best-in-class flashy automobiles, unaffordable palatial homes, cutting-edge drug paraphernalia, unscrupulous alimony lawyers, value-for-your-money hard-drive repair shops, you get the idea.
Or maybe he’ll be snapped up first by a major university either to “teach” pretty much the same as the above or, more likely, to work as a consultant in their fund-raising department.
Can’t imagine that this should take very long.
Amity Shales “The Forgotten Man” shows that the New Deal ended up exacerbating and lengthening the Great Depression.
She didn’t. Amity Shlaes does not have the skill set to offer any evidence for or against such a thesis. Have a gander at her bibliography. She consulted very little in the way of literature on economics and very little in the way of statistics on economic activity.
Not just “Doing Good” but being “virtuous”:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-google-whistleblower-tells-veritas-search-engine-skewing-results-benefit-democrats
Thanks for the Port Huron Statement link.
Reads like the kind of formulaic rhetorical essays we were trained to write in the first year of college.
“Ok students, you have all been shown the format to use. Take a contemporary social issue of interest to you. If you dont have one come to me after class and I’ll assign one. Then, using the presentation template we laid out last week, that of: introduction to the problem, your thesis, the historical or social background of the issue, a series – at least three – of your marshalled illustrations, your suggested resolution to the problems, the presentation and rebuttal of counter arguments, the restatement, wrap, and so forth, have it ready when next we meet on Tuesday the 17th. Please remember that you need not draw boxes around the sections, nor label them in the margins this time. That is all. Have a good weekend. Oh, by the way, be forewarned: I plan on reading a couple in class on Thursday following. Yours may be one of them.
Did the Nazis think they were the good guys ?
For a certain value of “Good”, perhaps.
One feature that is shared by Communists, Fascists, and Nazis is the belief in Darwin’s “Survival of the Fittest”, which Darwin never applied to politics.
All three assume that competition and conflict are inevitable. For Communists it was conflict between classes, for Fascists it was conflict between nations, and for Nazis it was conflict between races. It’s not possible for everyone to win in the inevitable conflict.
If you start with that assumption, then there is no Universal Good or even General Good. There is no policy which will benefit everybody. Somebody’s going to win and everyone else is going to lose.
So in practice, “Good” behavior is anything that insures that the “Right” group wins… which is whichever group you happen to belong to.
Art Deco doesn’t want to consider that Amity Schlaes’ book is not about his favorite subject, economic statistics. It is about people and how the policies implemented by people prolonged the Great Depression. Has Art read past the references? It seems not. There is a vast untapped market of readers thirsting for economic statistics, or maybe not.
Yes, the Nazis thought they were the ‘good guys:’ strong, dedicated, loyal, creative; etc. They thought they were saving Europe from Jewish Bolshevism. And yet, more than once, I believe, (and I paraphrase) “for what we’re doing we’ll either be rewarded on hanged.” They admitted other values would condemn them—but they rejected those values.
@richf
Yes that is a good point with regard to conceptualizing the term “good”, as it relates to human action and intention. Bears stating and restating.
And, as you point out, it rests under an overarching Darwinian paradigm which conditions, informs, and is at least tacitly acknowledged in every life encounter interpretation – even in those anti social Darwinism stances, which nonethess accept the base dynamic as the given.
Only one thing needful is left in order to drink the full measure of the cup. And that is not some mere “othering” of others or some lack of fellow feeling or psychological identification: Since, we do not and are not driven to seek, nor do we feel the need to destroy that which is other, simply as “other”, with any kind of the relentlessness often suggested.
It is instead the concomitant embrace of a kind of materialism coupled to that ” conflictual reality” paradigm, which further reduces all men, including the evaluators, to just another environmental element in a field of the utilizable: to be deployed, restructured, or eliminated, as the dominant, or most persevering and uninhibited will imagines.
A will, which must be per definition and according to the proponent’s own worldview, an accidental, perhaps incidental, ultimately meaningless, largely unconscious and inchoate impulse which is not really understood in its origins, nor mastered by the one doing the “willing”.
It might as well be called a “welling(up)”, as a coherent willing.
But as these supposedly willing things are wont to say, the world and all in it shall be reshaped accordimg to ” the dreams they dream”.
And that’s enough for them. Even if it kills you.
Art Deco doesn’t want to consider that Amity Schlaes’ book is not about his favorite subject, economic statistics. It is about people and how the policies implemented by people prolonged the Great Depression. Has Art read past the references? It seems not. There is a vast untapped market of readers thirsting for economic statistics, or maybe not.
om, she read and synthesized a great deal of secondary historical work and literature on current affairs. What she did not do was map out the evolution of production, employment, prices, public expenditure, and money stock over 12 years, nor did she consult the literature on what factors influenced the evolution of each.
Any policy mix that is not absolutely optimal in its conception and execution will mean a recovery is more prolonged than it otherwise would be. A policy mix which is absolutely optimal is not what a collection of human beings will commonly produce. If her thesis was that Roosevelt could have improved this or that or avoided doing this or that, her book would have been of scant interest to people trying to make polemical points.
As far as I can recall, she did not even attempt a cursory survey of the economic performance of other occidental countries during those six years. She put a great deal of effort into the book, but she did not ask the right questions.
The Nazis tried to convince themselves they were doing right and perhaps they believed it for awhile.
But when the war was being lost they did everything they could to conceal what they had done at Babi Yar and in the camps. They acted like criminals aware of great guilt and determined to conceal great crimes
Art:
She was not asking the question(s) you would have preferred, that does not make it a “wrong” question.
As an aside, no policy can be “absolutely” optimal. Even experts and technocrats don’t have perfection in policy or execution. Some policies from experts are just worse than others.
Re: Art Deco and “The Forgotten Man”
From 1933, when FDR took office, through 1935 the unemployment rate did NOT dip below 20%
From 1936 through 1940 the unemployment rate did NOT dip below 14% (ranging from 14.6% to 19%).
In 1941 – as the USA was just starting to mobilize for war – the unemployment rate was just shy of 10%.
One need not be an economist to realize that an economic program that produced these results was a dismal failure.
One does not need to cite the “appropriate” references to claim that FDRs New Deal was a total disaster.
All one needs to do is look at the results; this is not rocket science.
FDR literally declared war on business; this is no secret.
FDRs New Deal was praised by Benito Mussolini and the German Nazis; both hated capitalism and believed in state control of all areas of production.
FDRs New Deal even controlled the price of chickens sold by butchers; and folks wonder why the economy was in the toilet from 1933 until WWII began.
And let’s not get carried away by the prognostications or policies proposed by economists; they have an absolutely dismal record going back to 1929.
Lastly, a thesis stands on its own merits; citing the “appropriate” references or having a requisite number of references does not promote nor detract from the validity of a thesis.
What matters is the evidence provided; that’s it.
Thomas Sowell, a political economist, probably never gets cited by any mainstream academic economist.
Does that mean that his arguments are wrong? That they should be ignored?
Barry Meislin on October 20, 2020 at 9:58 am said:
Zerohedge is fast becoming another type of Ymar.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-18/cia-releases-13-million-pages-declassified-documents-include-psychic-experiments-ufo
I wouldn’t be surprised if the next thing they release relates to Nazi research via Ahnerbe on ancient alien civilizations and saucer technology.
There’s a reason why German Nazis had better tech than any other nation.
None of this were thought about or encountered by many of those here, in public education or their professional circles. Their automatic reaction is “bullsh”.
The same reaction conditioned by fake news in fact. When your entire life is an indoctrination where you are demoralized and fed disinformation, genuine peaceful protests will look like hateful KKK hangings, and violent rioting will look like peaceful protests.
Conservatives merely think this only happens to the Left. In truth, it has happened to all of you, Barry included. It is merely cognitive dissonance to try to think of that. Failure is eminent and thus the inability to argue for or against the substance.
And yet the Nazi’s lost. Fat lot of good all that “better tech” did and “ancient alien civilizations” did for them. If only they had shared the info with the Japanese.
LOL Yammer.
As Andrew Wilkow says “Socialism is for the people, not the socialists”. He is correct.
“Amity Shlaes does not have the skill set to offer any evidence for or against such a thesis.”
I haven’t read Shlaes book but I have noticed that the the Venn Diagram of conservatives who love it and conservatives who hate Trump’s economic policies almost perfectly overlap.
Haven’t read the book but just making stuff up Mike?
How do the policies of Coolidge and Mellon map versus Hoover, versus the New Deal, versus the Trump policies? I’ll wait for the answer.
From 1933, when FDR took office, through 1935 the unemployment rate did NOT dip below 20%. From 1936 through 1940 the unemployment rate did NOT dip below 14% (ranging from 14.6% to 19%). In 1941 – as the USA was just starting to mobilize for war – the unemployment rate was just shy of 10%. One need not be an economist to realize that an economic program that produced these results was a dismal failure.
1. You are looking at the labor market and only the labor market. Per capita production and real income levels during the recovery cycle (1933-41) grew comparatively rapidly in this country; IIRC, there were only two countries whose recovery cycle had a pace which exceeded ours. The country was more affluent in 1941 than it had been in 1929 and the net growth rate in per capita income over those twelve years was consistent with long-term trends.
2. The labor market was already in ruined condition when he took office. Labor markets commonly recover more slowly than the market for goods and services. Roosevelt and Hoover promoted measures which injured the market to a degree – e.g. hortatory attempts to persuade industrialists to maintain nominal wage rates. This was incorporated into Roosevelt’s ill judged attempt to set up industrial cartels in 1933-35. Also, the Congress instituted in 1938 a contextually absurd minimum wage. Given nominal employee compensation per worker at the time, it was equivalent to our own Congress prescribing a $25 / hr minimum today.
3. Estimates generated for a 1948 report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics put mean unemployment rates at 24.7% for 1933; 16.8% for 1936; 18.9% for 1938; 14.4% for 1940; and 9.7% for 1941.
4. If I’m not mistaken, the category ‘unemployed’ includes people who were enrolled in work-relief programs operated by the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Public Works Administration. People so enrolled accounted for about 6% of the workforce in 1936, 5.5% in 1938, 3.5% in 1940, and 3% in 1941.
You had other factors which made the labor market recovery slower: regime uncertainty in industrial relations and the institution of payroll taxes.
Barry Eichengreen reported some comparative data on unemployment in the industrial sectors during the period. Industrial unemployment was at the time Roosevelt took office higher here than it was in any other country in his sample of 11 occidental countries. The lowest ratio of unemployed persons to employed persons in the industrial sector was that of France at 0.164 and the highest was ours at 0.602. In 1938, the lowest ratio was that of Germany at 0.033 while the highest remained ours at 0.387. The decline in the ratio between those two date was as follows for each:
Germany: -94.2%
Australia: -73.5%
Sweden: -59.5%
Canada: -51%
France: -48.5%
Norway: -43.8%
Britain: -40.4%
US: -35.8%
Denmark: -32.3%
Belgium: -20%
Netherlands: -9.5%
So our performance was under par during those years in the industrial sector at least.
Thomas Sowell, a political economist, probably never gets cited by any mainstream academic economist. Does that mean that his arguments are wrong? That they should be ignored?
Thomas Sowell is an economist, formerly of UCLA and the Urban Institute, later of the Hoover Institution. He’s never actually tackled this subject, though he’s made occasional references to it. Amity Shlaes is a journalist who writes on business and economics. Her viewpoint is going to be derivative except in forming hypotheses. Again, the problem is that she did not frame the problem well and researched it with the wrong literature.
How do the policies of Coolidge and Mellon map versus Hoover, versus the New Deal, versus the Trump policies? I’ll wait for the answer.
They were each facing different circumstances to which to respond. BTW, Hoover employed Mellon and followed his advice. Didn’t work out too well.
Art:
Mike’s thought experiment is specious.
FDR followed Hoover’s lead and it didn’t work out too well either. 🙂
FDR followed Hoover’s lead and it didn’t work out too well either.
1. He didn’t.
2. A menu of Roosevelt Administration policy measures had a tonic effect on the economy, which began to recover rapidly within months of Roosevelt taking office. During the Hoover Administration, the economy careened rapidly down hill for two years and change (fall 1929 to spring 1932) then stagnated.
Sorry Art but FDR initially continued Hoover’s approach. Then FDR and his bold New Dealers improved on Hoover’s engineering approach. Funny tonic, sort of like the tonic that they gave to Socrates. Why do you carry tonic water for FDR?
Sorry Art but FDR initially continued Hoover’s approach.
Again, no. There were a four salient things enacted in 1933 that the Hoover Administration had not done and an elaboration on one other which had begun in March 1932
1. The bank holiday
2. Devaluation of the currency and the end of the classical gold standard
3. Inflationary monetary policy
4. Legislation amending the architecture of the financial sector (including the separation of investment banking and commercial banking and the institution of deposit insurance)
5. The foundation of HOLC and sponsored work-outs of the portfolio of sour loans in the real estate sector.
There were some wretched policies along with the good policies of course.
“Haven’t read the book but just making stuff up Mike?”
Does everyone always have to explain things to you like you’re a truculent toddler?
I can’t comment on Shlaes book because I haven’t read it. However, I have noticed that the conservatives who LOOOOOOVE Shlaes also overwhelmingly LOOOOOOOOVE things like “free trade” and open borders and defending tech oligarchs who are trying to destroy other conservatives/Republicans. You don’t have to know why the rain falls to notice when it gets wet.
Mike
1. FDR ran on a platform that was basically he could do Hoover, but better. What policies were actually put in place were very different.
2. That FDR lengthened and deepened the depression has been established by a number of economists. It’s not an idea peculiar to Shlaes although she does a great job laying out all the evidence to support it. The worst years of the depression were 1936 and 1937. These were the only two years when net private investment turned negative (note — net private investment is the single best determinant of economic growth). The reason that the rich and businesses cashed out was due to fear induced by FDR’s campaign rhetoric. FDR’s attacks on the rich were nasty. And with the developments at that time in the USSR, Italy and Germany, a real fear of having assets seized and nationalized was well-founded. Liquidity made a lot of sense.
Mr Bunge:
Yes you don’t know what is in the book but then you post BS about conservatives and free trade (make it sound profound by using “Venn diagram”).
Hey toddler read the book. Have someone change your nappies. Stop conflating other issues and assuming the mantle of intelligence. An argument from ignorance isn’t strong.
The Nazis certainly thought they were doing good, “For the German People”. And I think life for non-Jews, non-priests, non-gypsies; for the Aryan Germans that didn’t oppose Hitler, their lives thru around 1943 were pretty good. Certainly the avg (or median) German was better off than the avg Russian in the 1933-1943 decade, before Germany started losing more clearly.
And the Communists also thought they were doing good – creating a more equal society.
“The end justifies the means”.
This was, is, and will be the mantra of those misguided idealists who believe their “good intentions” allow them to be “morally superior”, despite occasional small evil acts of property damage and even killing.
I’m sure Dems today still believe their good intentions of being anti-racist allow them to accept riots and looting, and even killing, in order to do the good of ending racism.
Even tho it’s obvious the riots are not going to end racism, and have already hurt many Black businesses.
They are using evil means, not good means, so I call them evil; and it will be a worse country after the riots than it was before the riots. Tho the Antifa alt-fascists think, like the Nazis and Communists, that they’re doing good.
2. That FDR lengthened and deepened the depression has been established by a number of economists.
No, it hasn’t. Some simple descriptive statistics demonstrate that isn’t true. You want to say this policy and that policy was suboptimal, go ahead. Don’t traffick in errant nonsense.
The worst years of the depression were 1936 and 1937.
No, they weren’t. The worst years ran from the fall of 1929 to the spring of 1933. There was a secondary contraction in 1937-38, but its magnitude was 1/10th that of the earlier contraction.
She was not asking the question(s) you would have preferred, that does not make it a “wrong” question.
She’s purporting to understand and explain the severity of the Depression and the FDRs role in that. If that’s her object, she was asking the wrong questions.
Two observations for Neo:
(1) Godwin’s Law has been suspended temporarily, and replaced by the Shlaes Corollary;
(2) If this thread reaches 400 comments, you have only yourself to blame.
“These thoughts are meant to be a springing-off place for thought and discussion.” Neo
“Hey toddler read the book.”
I don’t have to read the book to draw a connection between the people who champion the book and THOSE SAME PEOPLE championing certain economic policies/attitudes.
om is demonstrating the conservative aspect of “This is how we got Trump.” He clearly believes a bunch of stuff that isn’t true or accurate and is actively resistant to correction. But unfixed mistakes are like interest. They tend to compound over time until small problems become massive, world-altering catastrophes.
Mike
AesopFan:
I denounce myself.
Tom Grey on October 20, 2020 at 4:17 pm said:
You just reminded me of something I was meaning to ask you given your present neck of the woods.
If you are inclined to answer …
Are you familiar with/ or have you visited the “highlands” and ski areas which I assume to be just north (relatively speaking) of Slovakia? I think it is called the Orava district??, and seems to serve as a kind of proto-Slav “cultural museum” area. The region is apparently known for an interesting and elaborate kind of peeled and squared log architecture developed in the 19th century from native precursors: designs which might make a neat summer place in the woods for those living in the North of the US; say in USDA zones 5 and colder. Birch trees, lakes, blueberries, and all that. Haha
It appears to be the general historical area in which Tacitus’s Cotini (ostensibly Celtic miners and metal workers) dwelt in in pre-migration times. There is a famous castle of some sort there.
Oh you kid. That’s the spirit!
Mr Bunge:
Since you don’t have any facts to back up your opinion that those who like Shlaes’ book The Forgotten Man also support open borders, giant corporations, big tech monopolies, dogs and cats living together, and killing puppies, carry on in your ignorance and arrogance. Your nappies still need changing.
Consider reading some books.
om:
Bunge is an irrational person. He has delusions.
There is no point in discussing Schlae’s book with him. Facts? Who cares about facts?!
Bunge is like my brother, to whom I gave a copy for Christmas because it was a new take on the history of a tough era. He said he could not read it because it was too ideological.
Could not read it. Ideological.
So how did he know what was in it, or, Bunge, what its readers think about free trade, open borders and other unrelateds which he/you attribute to readers of books you and bro have not read?
Nutty.
There is no point in discussing Schlae’s book with him. Facts? Who cares about facts?!
There are indubitably lots of facts in her book. The problem is her project was misconceived from the beginning, so the facts are maldeployed. If she wanted to compose a granular chronicle of the period, the facts might have been properly deployed. However, she had a thesis about political economy to push, but no architecture for demonstrating it.
Art Deco:
Your opinion, others don’t agree.
https://youtu.be/Z-xI1384Ry4
Is everyone paying attention to the real-time demonstration we’re getting of the decline in American rationality?
om – “X!”
Art – “X is not true.”
om – “Y!”
Art – “Y is not true.”
om – “Z!”
Art – “Z is also not true.”
om – “….”
Or this…
“So how did he know what was in it, or, Bunge, what its readers think about free trade, open borders and other unrelateds which he/you attribute to readers of books you and bro have not read?”
Because there weren’t a billion articles written by conservatives about Shlaes’ book that I could have read and it would be simply impossible to remember what people have said about Shlaes’ book and ALSO remember what they’ve said about other aspects of public policy.
You can’t discuss anything, let along argue about it, with people who live in a fantasy world where nothing is allowed to exist except what supports the fantasy.
Mike
Rachelle:
It could be said the Germans were afraid of what others would think of what they had done, not actually feeling personally guilty. In the latter case, burying the evidence doesn’t help.
I recall Goebbels in a speech said, of his executioners, “For those whose nerves are broken, we say, take your pensions, go.”
Great guy there. Always looking out for the lower ranks.
Point is, one reason for industrializing the Holocaust was to cut each individual’s responsibility into such a small piece that they could rationalize it wasn’t them doing the dirty. The alternative was probably volunteering for the Eastern Front. From which we can infer this wasn’t a terribly popular undertaking for a lot of folks. I guess that’s something.
Mr Bunge:
You didn’t read the book. So you are ignorant about this topic. Is there something useful you wanted to say?
Art did read it but did not agree with the author who chose not to write a book about the Great Depression to his level of detail. I would guess that such a treatment would take a few books. Good luck getting that published, but Art may be up to it. Are you?
Do you know the difference between correlation and causation, opinion, fact, or fantasy? It seems not.
om:
I venture to say Art Deco is not up to it. Art seems to get into the weeds sometimes, to a level of micro-detail that he asserts as factual which requires research to pursue and possibly discuss further. He shoots from the hip, short and sweet.
Bunge takes his opinions from others. Here is his confession: “Because there weren’t a billion articles written by conservatives about Shlaes’ book that I could have read and it would be simply impossible to remember what people have said about Shlaes’ book….”
Hey, Bunge, open your mind. You need not parrot, nor look elsewhere for personal validation. Just read the doggone book! I did, and nothing bad happened! I was even edified on some points.
Art did read it but did not agree with the author who chose not to write a book about the Great Depression to his level of detail.
No, she chose to push a thesis she did not have the tools to demonstrate. She could have written a much shorter book if she did have the tools. Scads of academic articles delineating theoretical models and testing them on this subject.
Art:
Your opinion about the author. Write that book. Or again:
https://youtu.be/Z-xI1384Ry4
https://www.amazon.com/FDRs-Folly-Roosevelt-Prolonged-Depression/dp/140005477X/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=fdr+depression&qid=1603242287&sr=8-2
Note positive comments from Nobel Prize winning economists Milton Friedman and James Buchanan.
There are other similar academic works. And note, the criticisms above of Shlaes are childish and stupid. Take issue with the scholarship if you like, but snotty dismissal of her qualifications is unbecoming and immaterial.
“Just read the doggone book!”
Where did I criticize ANYTHING about Shlaes or her book? Where did I dispute ANYTHING about what she wrote? Where?
I didn’t state or even imply ANYTHING negative about Shlaes or her book. It would be sort of foolish to do so, considering I didn’t read it. What’s far more foolish, however, is the childish, emotionally immature reaction of posters like om and Cicero when they think they maybe might have read something not 1000% in line with their apparently quite fragile opinions and beliefs.
I mean, am I missing something? My observation that conservatives who LOOOOOOVE Shlaes’ book are also mostly conservatives who disdain Donald Trump’s economic policies (except for his passion for deregulation which they basically ignore) is unrefuted. Yet om and Cicero are so incredibly butthurt they want to continue to argue about…what?
I don’t know how old om or Cicero are but I have noticed that a lot of young people don’t actually know how to argue anymore. What makes an argument and argument is that you’re responding to the other person, even if it is as rudimentary as…
Person 1: “X!”
Person 2: “Not X!”
Person 1: “Not not X!”
Person 2: “Not not not X!”
Instead, a lot of arguments with young people kind of go like this…
Young Person: “X!”
Me: “Not X!”
Young Person “X!!”
Me: “Uh…not X + Y!”
Young person: “X!!!”
Me: “Not X + Y +Z?”
Young person: “X!!!!!!!”
Me: “You are an idiot.”
Mike
Mr Bunge:
Don’t cross the line from ignorant to fool. You keep posting the opinion about those who like or agree with Shlaes’ book on the Great Depression and New Deal policies and current economic, social, and immigration policies of President Trump.
That’s a nice opinion (according to you) but where are any facts to back it up?
If you can’t accept the concept that people don’t have to agree with an unsupported opinion, well, you may be an idiot.
Pay attention here. I may be older than you. Cicero may be older than you. People younger than you may be more persuasive, intelligent, and eloquent than you. Shocking, but possible.
I tend to look at both the Bolsheviks and the Nazis as different uniforms on the same process. Both led to a dictatorship of “special” people, just different people. The Bolshevik/Marxist theory involved an international, oppressed class of (initially) workers. They detested other identities, especially national identities which fragmented the working class which should have had universal “brotherhood”. The “Fascists” accepted the national identity and went with it. Instead of an international identity, the Italian Fascisti gloried in the history of Italy (Rome). The Falange was Spanish and the German National Socialists went with the tribal identity of the German Volk. The “Fascists and the Bolsheviks recruited from each others ranks which seemed to be loaded with believers in some glorious unified future of cooperativity and order, i.e. socialism. To the susceptable personality, the details of the ideology are irrelevant. That socialism is unworkable (has never worked) is irrelevant to the organizational process for a glorious future. Identity is not rational.
The Germans were apparently horrified that the Bolsheviks/Soviets murdered their own people in Russia and then in the Ukraine (due to class differences). The German National Socialists wanted everyone (every German, anyway) to be a member. Every sub-group had a uniform, a rank, and a place in the structure of the Volk. The Bolsheviks/Soviets murdered class enemies. The National Socialists expelled or murdered “foreigners” who disrupted the Volkish “unity” and/or stole its productivity. The propensity for murder vs. expelled is not all that clear, since the Bolsheviks were considered to be a Jewish organization. The German forces in the East hunted Bolsheviks and “associates” and thus swept up many Jews. During the early days of the Nazi government, there seem to have been some unsuccessful efforts to “deport” German Jews. Gypsys (Roma) were never treated well.
The two strains of socialism both led to dictatorship and paranoia. The German National Socialists were convinced that the Bolsheviks/Soviets were about to invade and destroy the Volkish state, so they invaded to disrupt the expected attack. Since the German National Socialists had “cooperated” with the industrialists/capitalists and state traditionalists, the Bolsheviks/Soviets “knew” that they had to attack the Fascist (national) enemy to survive. The variations between the two “socialist” ideologies made war all but inevitable. Indeed, the commonalities of the two ideologies made war desirable (to end the competition).
As an aside, the German term “herrenvolk” seems better translated as “our own people” rather than something suggesting a “Master Race”.
Also, Antifa in its original form was a product of the KPD (German Communist Party) used for street fighting and attacks on other parties. There was no official membership that the police might use against those commiting violence. The original Antifa focused its efforts against the Social Democrats who were tritors to the cause since they considered themselves to be German as opposed to international/Bolshevik. Also an aside. The small violent Bolshevik Party (i.e. Big Ones, The Majority) got power by attacking the Russian Democratic Socialists (Mensheviks, i.e. Little Ones. The Minority) who were, in fact the majority party in that government. For Communists, cooperation, until conquest by violent action, has a long history.
Doing “good”. The Bolsheviks/Soviets expended great effort to convince the population that the work of the Chekka/NKVD/etc were necessary even if those “liquidated” looked like normal people. I read that German elite forces in the East that had to eliminate enemies, who looked like normal people, drank a lot of alcohol. Nasty work, but It was all for the “cause”. That very fexible concept of “good” seems to have carried over into the Antifa/BLM actions. Burn/riot/loot/murder “for the cause” are “good”. Curiously, since Ferguson (2014), Whites, presumably Antifa, break the windows/doors while the looters are generally dark skinned. Sounds racist. In Kenosha, those who targeted Kyle Rittenhouse were White ex-cons or those with a “troubled” history. Apparently, “good” violence is not appropriate for the common Antifa member, so hired “specialists” were used in that case. A presumed Antifa member apparently fired a pistol shot into the air to trigger that disturbance. This may involve practical rather than “moral” considerations, since the shooter was arrested and released. Core Antifa members may be kept on the sidelines to preserve these people from arrest or harm. Questionable, to outsiders, actions may be relegated to available “defectives” to preserve Antifa members who only guide/encourage the violent activity. They “din du nuffin”.
I have no idea whether Stalin or Hitler “believed” the ideology that they were selling. I suspect that the lust for power will use any justification that is available. “Nation”, “The People”, The Volk”, the tribe, the clan, the family, the gang, the team, etc will all suffice in the proper circumstances. The trick seems to be the need to suppress individual responsibility in the participant. An appropriate oppressed “identity” is useful. “POC” seems to be popular now. Whatever mystical future justifies the lust for power will serve. Organizing for “change” or “get out the vote” is too much like work. Better to blame “them”.
The Nazis and Bolsheviks both used variations of “socialism” to create a mystical image of a glorious future that justified a trail of atrocities. There were detailed differences. The Germans had better uniforms and visuals, but “oppression” still sells, currently with only the cosmetic change of oppressed class to oppressed race(s). “We” would be happy if it wasn’t for “them”.
The details can require some care lest the POC, for example, notice that the leadership core is all White boys and girls. But then, the revolutionaries were rarely “working class”, although they dressed that way, and Hitler didn’t have blond hair. But oppression by “them” always sells. “Consultants” and “autists” handle the details.
At their core, the national socialists and the international socialists were pretty similar. “Fascist” (nationalist) is just Leftist jargon for “them other guys”. The German National Socialism was somewhat self-limiting since only “Aryans” need apply. Bolshevism could more easily adapt to any who could be considered “oppressed”.
Thanks for all the discussion. I am not sure if FDR was an intentional “Progressive” or just an arrogant politician who felt he had to be seen “doing something”.
Wow – I didn’t think a book reference would cause so much discussion.
Mike-SMO, you did a wonderful job encapsulating the major differences between communism vs. nazism vs. fascism. I did my senior symposium on the topic of the varieties of fascism particularly between Italy and Spain. Long story short Spain had a weak leader in Primo de Rivera while Italy had Mussolini. A socialist turned fascist. Socialist hated him with a passion because he was such a force before WWI. It would like if Bernie Sanders proclaimed he was an acolyte to Ron Paul. So Spain because Authoritarian under Franco while Italy suffered in WWII.
Likewise, kudos to Mike-SMO.
It occurs to me, in reading through the many excellent comments and looking at the kind of horrible things people will do to each other to serve the cause of their “good” — whatever that might be — that the various formulations of The Golden Rule are a religious obligation not just because God commands them, but because they are necessary to avoid holocaust levels of violence.
What the Nazis, Communists, Fascists (the real ones), Antifa, Weather Underground, and assorted other terrorists do to other people are not things they would care to have done to them.
But the possibility of reverse-violence, when their victims finally toss the Rule aside*, must bother them, because their first objective is always to ensure that it can’t happen.
As Geoffrey has mentioned occasionally**, they practice a Leaden Rule (the opposite of Golden), which he calls the Dialectic of the Left***: “When I am the weaker, I ask you for mercy because that is your principle. But when I am the stronger, I show no mercy because that is my principle”
* * *
*A maxim sometimes attributed to JFK, and seen at Neo’s from time to time, states the preconditions for that reverse-violence to happen; a “revolution” need not always be directed toward a formal government — many people are considering rebelling against the wokerati and cancel-culture.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” – John F. Kennedy
Mark Steyn formulated a corollary that indicates how we got an electorate willing to take a chance on President Trump:
“If the political culture forbids respectable politicians from raising certain issues, then the electorate will turn to unrespectable ones.” – Steyn
I have seen the two combined, although I don’t know who did it (might even have been me!): “If you drive all the reasonable people out of the conversation (or polity), then those you have left to deal with are the unreasonable ones.”
** most recently quoted here
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/10/19/2020-some-of-the-things-that-astound-me/#comment-2520493
***Even if they are not religious, neither true liberals nor conservatives use the Dialectic, because they realize the sociological need for something like the Golden Rule to have a harmonious society.
David+Foster on October 20, 2020 at 8:47 am said:
re Nazi influence on the American cinema: the German consul in LA had such influence as one of his major job responsibilities, and he did have some successes.
In the case of the movie ‘The Road Back’ (based on Remarque’s important but neglected novel), the Germans went so far as to write letters to all cast members, down to the boom operators and hairdressers, threatening that if the script weren’t changed to meet their demands, then no other movie involving that individual would ever be allowed in Germany in the future.
* * *
It would appear that “cancel culture” aka terrorist intimidation is not a new thing.
Cicero’s earlier comment showed that the Chinese-style influence is also standard operating procedure for Hollywood — so glad they are our moral superiors. /sarc
Cicero on October 19, 2020 at 10:07 pm said:
“Jewish Hollywood agreed not to offend the Nazis–the Germans loved movies and an anti-Nazi Hollywood would have been banned from that market completely in the 1930s”
To borrow a famous quote from the play “1776” – it’s not a revolution if you aren’t offending someone.
* * *
John Adams: (on the question of deep sea fishing rights) (!!)
This is a revolution, dammit! We’re going to have to offend SOMEbody!
Roy+Nathanson on October 19, 2020 at 8:06 pm said:
Here is how I see it…
* * *
You see it very clearly.
There are other similar academic works. And note, the criticisms above of Shlaes are childish and stupid. Take issue with the scholarship if you like, but snotty dismissal of her qualifications is unbecoming and immaterial.
Your reading comprehension stinks. I’ve pointed out repeatedly how her book is misconceived and how her source material is deficient for her stated purposes. A source of her misconceptions is that she hasn’t had much exposure to literature on economics; that’s not an argument about her status, but about her knowledge and skill set.
Ah, human conflicts, so amusing. This is why the vampiric Cabal and your elites rule you all as slaves. You waste energy fighting amongst yourselves, instead of your true enemies and rivals.
The following is the mean annual rate of growth in per capita product over the period running from 1933 to 1939. The source is the Maddison Project.
7.2%: Germany
6.3%: Austria
6.3%: South Africa
6.2%: United States
5.9%: Singapore
5.9%: Canada
5.9%: New Zealand
5.9%: Chile
4.8%: Japan
4.7%: Cuba
4.5%: Sweden
4.4%: Uruguay
3.9%: Finland
3.9%: Norway
3.2%: Australia
3.0%: Hungary
2.9%: Great Britain
2.5%: Italy
2.3%: Argentina
2.1%: Denmark
2.1%: France
1.9%: Netherlands
1.6%: Greece
1.6%: Belgium
1.4%: Ireland
1.0%: Switzerland
-4.0%: Spain
Well the data “clearly” shows that Nazi and racist regimes were better economic planners than the US and all others. (not)
Or the data “clearly” shows that FDR was a totalitarian. (?)
Also “clearly” shown is that when fascists and communists come to “help” your country you are in for a really bad time.
And that Shlaes is an incompetent poopy head! (not)
Lots of good comments regarding the National Socialists. That is clear, even inarguable. 🙂
Actually, what it shows is that there’s a flaw in her premises and her understanding of the contours of economic activity at the time. She says, on page 7 of the hardcover edition “After 1932, New Zealand, Japan, Greece, Romania, Chile, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden began seeing industrial production levels rise again – but not the United States”.
That is simply factually false. Gross domestic product was increasing rapidly during the period running from 1933 to 1939, and, in fact, increasing more rapidly than in any other affluent country bar the three named. NB, per capita personal consumption of goods (as opposed to services) increased (in real terms) by 5.6% per year during the period running from 1933 to 1939. In 1933 and in 1939, imports of goods amounted to 6.3% of all personal consumption of goods, so the additional consumption was not being satisfied through increases in the propensity to import. How do you consume more without producing more given that imports account for the same share at the beginning and the end? Is it her contention the country was running down inventory stocks for six years?
If you want to defend her statement by claiming the additional output was entirely in services, you cannot because that’s plainly not the case. (If you want to be stupid like Patrick Frey and claim the entire increase in output was a mirage generated by accounting conventions in re public expenditure, please note, the datum is personal consumption)
This false observation she makes is foundational to her thesis.
Just to emphasize again…
om makes factual claims that are shown to be false.
om is presented with facts that refute om’s opinions.
What is the nature of om’s response?
Mike
Art:
You pull quote her from 1932, your data starts at 1933. She clearly must be entirely wrong about everything else. Maybe. Maybe not.
What about the corporal being a better economic planner than FDR and the whiz kids? (Yes this is an intentionally misguided inference from your stats to illustrate how stats can be abused, hint.)
I know, FDR meant well. And a centrally managed and planned economy is a good thing. (not)
Mr Bunge:
Got any data on your base opinion regarding Shlaes’ book, that you didn’t read, and all those other problems with economic policy, immigration, monopolistic big tech companies? It is your opinion after all. Found any youngun’s to argue with today?
Art read the book, cites a sentence that doesn’t match his data. Thus the entire book is trash.
You pull quote her from 1932, your data starts at 1933. She clearly must be entirely wrong about everything else. Maybe. Maybe not.
She contends that industrial production does not increase after 1932, in a book about the Roosevelt years. Roosevelt was inaugurated on 4 March 1933. Her meaning is not that obscure.
I know, FDR meant well. And a centrally managed and planned economy is a good thing. (not)
The closest he came to that was an attempt to set up cartels in every notable industrial sector. The legislation which authorized that was invalidated by a Supreme Court opinion issued in 1935.
What about the corporal being a better economic planner than FDR and the whiz kids? (Yes this is an intentionally misguided inference from your stats to illustrate how stats can be abused, hint.)
It’s not an inference from my statistics at all; it’s another juvenile parry from you.
The supervisor of economic policy in Germany during that run of years was Hjalmar Schacht. Schacht had held positions in several Weimar ministries among them the v. Papen and v. Schleicher cabinets assembled in 1932. He was retained by Hitler and held his position for 11 years, only joining the Nazi Party in 1937. He was eventually dismissed from his post and sent to a concentration camp, where he spent the last years of the war.
Art read the book, cites a sentence that doesn’t match his data. Thus the entire book is trash.
Again, that sentence isn’t a stray observation. It’s architectural to her thesis.
https://research.engineering.ucdavis.edu/gpa/earthquake-hazards/liquefaction-shallow-foundations-adapazari/
Art:
Are “industrial production levels” the same thing as “mean annual rate of growth in per capita product?”
Or just another case of Shlaes’ being an incompetent poopy head because she didn’t write in your preferred style and cite enough stats?
“Come on man,” write your books. There must be a rejoinder for such falsity! Mr Bunge may read them. 🙂
Are “industrial production levels” the same thing as “mean annual rate of growth in per capita product?”
Industrial production is a component of domestic product. Again, your faux-question has already been answered.
Art:
Citing liquefaction and soil mechanics. Well that’s far afield. Must defend the legacy of FDR.
Some things about the WPA, CCC, Rural Electrification, slaughter of chickens, selling of wheat, communists in the Whiz Kids, and a few other things were in the book IIRC. Things that are of no interest to Art.
Art:
That’s an nice opinion you have there, you get to decide what is a false question and what is not?
Your data refers to a different thing than “industrial production levels.”
Too much fun, got work to do. Give my regards to Mr Bunge.
Time to take a step back. Maybe grab a handkerchief. Remember that we’re all human…:
https://twitter.com/JanaHisham/status/1317391879646924800
H/T Margot Cleveland twitter feed
(And maybe that’s what’ll get us through this… Well, that, and keeping Abraham Lincoln firmly in our hearts.)
“Time to take a step back. Maybe grab a handkerchief. Remember that we’re all human…:”
Now, see, YOU are the problem. In the battle of Art vs. om, one is being rational and reasonable and trying to argue like a grownup and the other is a ranting child who just found out the Easter Bunny isn’t real and is lashing out in anger.
ONE of these people is clearly in the wrong. ONE of these people is clearly behaving badly. This has nothing to do with all of us being human. This has to do with ONE of us being obviously maladjusted.
Mike
Mr Bunge:
Art feels the whole book by Shlaes is fundamentally flawed. His opinion. He cites a glaring error, again his opinion, thus the whole edifice collapses. Art reigns supreme. Publishers are clamoring for his books. Or not.
You on the other hand have an opinion that doesn’t have even Art’s level of analysis or data.
You seem to have a problem with younger folks, although I may be older than you. Was the Easter Bunny mean to you lately? Do you have to shout (all caps) to make all your points, such as they are? Would that be ranting? 🙂
Well, these are intensely difficult times, crazy times. Freaking INSANE times.
For ALL KINDS of reasons.
Gotta keep THAT in mind.
As much as one can.
(What’s the rule? Count to ten? Take deep breaths?)
It’s good to have a good argument. Learn new stuff. Even scoff a bit. Chuckle maybe.
We just have to remember we’re on the same side here. For the most part.
For the very MOST part.
I’m getting farther into Heidegger and must keep in mind the question, “How does arguably the most brilliant and influential philosopher of the 20th Century fall for Nazism?”
Because Heidegger did in the 1930s. He joined the Nazi Party. He acted and spoke for it. He eventually distanced himself from the Party, but he never renounced Nazism for the rest of his life. He died in 1976.
My current understanding, subject to future changes, is that Nazism spoke to Heidegger’s vision of one’s personal authenticity rooted in one’s current world. (Authenticity is a huge Heidegger topic, which I’m begging off explaining here.)
Although Heidegger was a top-drawer, fancy-pants philosopher, he never moved to Berlin, but remained in a small town where he could commune unpatronizingly with the peasants, because that was important to him. He found value in what he recognized as the peasants’ authenticity, though they hardly had a worked-out philosophy for their being so.
The main thing I remember from Leni Riefenstahl’s, “Triumph of the Will,” the iconic Nazi propaganda film, were the scenes of Nazi children playing mischievously while the Nazi adults looked on and winked to each other. It was straight out of Norman Rockwell.
None of which justifies Nazism of course, but the notion that all Nazis were absolutely evil and any normal person would realize that immediately lacks, shall I say, nuance.
Heidegger’s problem IMO was that he was just too stubborn or vain to climb down from Nazism and admit he was wrong. I suspect he was clinging to what he felt was right about Nazism but couldn’t defend given the obvious horrors.
huxley:
It’s been a serious thread and mostly serious comments so here is an attempt to derail it again (not really). I know it’s old:
https://youtu.be/l9SqQNgDrgg
“Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
who could think you under the table.”
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
who could think you under the table.”
om: Well, HE COULD!
A terrible writer, however, if clear, accurate communication is the measure of writing. I must use secondary sources to get at him, and even there I find different authorities with serious disagreements.
Hubert Dreyfus, perhaps the top American authority on Heidegger, just lamented in the lecture I was listening to this morning, “Poor Heidegger! Surely that’s not what he meant to say.”
BTW, the “Futurama” mad scientist, Hubert Farnsworth, is based partly on Hubert Dreyfus, who taught one of the “Futurama” writers.
Hey DNW, the Orava Castle is great. We have been there a couple of times.
https://slovakia.travel/en/oravsky-hrad-castle
Here’s a cool 3:44 vid of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vzjD400EY
There’s a reasonable claim that Slovakia has the most castles per capita:
http://blog.timeforslovakia.com/10-interesting-facts-about-slovakia-3/
But that’s not the great ski area, which is the High Tatras a bit more to the East, on the border with Poland. Or, the Low Tatras, which are a closer (S) to the center.
Castles in ruins are probably better than
castles in the sand.
Or endless discussions about disputed facts, rather than a simple “we’ll have to disagree about that…”
I could be wrong. I could be right.
I could be wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb7Li2Vs24Y
Anger is an energy.
Injustice makes people angry.
Anger, and energy, makes people feel more alive.
Heidegger probably felt
“Real Nazism hasn’t been tried”.
Tom Grey: Something like that, I suspect.
Weirdly, some kind of Heideggerianism is alive and well as a commercial enterprise known as Landmark Education.
The Landmark Forum is Werner Erhard’s est Training infused with large helpings of Heidegger, especially Authenticity.
He cites a glaring error, again his opinion, thus the whole edifice collapses.
The term ‘opinion’ does not mean what you fancy it means. She made a statement about industrial production that is not only false, it’s false by miles. That’s not my ‘opinion’. That’s what’s called a ‘fact’. The thing is, the whole thesis of her book turns on that error.
Citing liquefaction and soil mechanics. Well that’s far afield. Must defend the legacy of FDR.
It’s called a ‘metaphor’. They’re discussed in 7th grade English class.
Art Deco:
“Far afield” was mocking you. Houses built on shifting sands and all that, oh, how subtle. Not.
You have already admitted that her “industrial production” is a component (aka only a part of) of domestic product and your stat was for “mean annual rate of growth in per capita product.” Are all those workers industrial? None in agriculture? None in the service sector? Can’t be, you have a stat. Yet your stat is not for industrial production alone. So once again you provide a statistic and misapply it, but her claim it is the same thing intended by the author.
Did you wake up from your nap a bit grumpier than usual? Thanks for sharing your esteemed opinion. Your are a legend in your own mind I fancy.
Art Deco:
There was more to the book than your favorite subject, and some is in the news today. Ever hear of “court packing” and FDR. Something about the Supreme Court objecting to FDR’s attempt to implement his centralized control of the economy; wheat, chickens, wages(?) and so forth. I’m mocking you again.
Tom Grey on October 21, 2020 at 5:20 pm said:
Heidegger probably felt
“Real Nazism hasn’t been tried”.
hahahahahahah !
Welcome to the club.
From “DzNW” my ham-fisted evil twin.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/10/14/minneapolis-commits-suicide/#comment-2520091
“He cites a glaring error, again his opinion”
Again, I don’t know what to do with this. It’s like arguing with a sheep that’s suffered a major head injury.
Mike
DNW: Thanks for the link. I thought the topic was dead and missed your intriguing comment. I’ll suggest others refer back to it from your link and I’ll reply in this topic.
Mr Bunge:
You got a baaad headache today? Thanks for the opinion. Got any data for that other opinion of yours? Not yet? Astounding.
Ok. Yes, I guess I was not really making the kind of distinctions that a current resident of these countries would … but just melding the upper limit of northern central [I take it] Slovakia, with the area you describe as the low Tatra mountains. Apparently that district in extreme southern Poland changed hands several times in recent history and lies within a 6 miles or so, on one vector, from your castle.
I still cannot quite pin down the sites where the Celts (Cotini) lived to “the county or township level” as one might say. Though of course the Boii further west a bit, left their name throughout the nearby regions.
Re log houses. We Americans have many fine log home designs, and some of my own favorites are actually upper south mountain style houses made of squared logs; and, intended not so much as cabins, but as vernacular expressions of the standard colonial or post colonial house forms of the era, such as salt box, or Georgian-with-wing, styles. The “best” : A long story and a half rectangular box on a wooded hillside, chimneys on each end, and a covered porch running the whole length. Of course it has to have a 200 year old hickory tree just out front too.
But when it comes to modern log houses, the new contemporary styles perched in Colorado view spots, seem despite their impressiveness, to lack a certain visual interest themselves, unlike these from S. Poland, a .22 long rifle shot from your castle stomping grounds.
https://forgottengalicia.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Zakopane-Koliba-2006-Ejdzej-Wikipedia-768×483.jpg
https://ownwoodenhouse.com/index.pl?act=PRODUCT&id=128
Hey, if you have read this far: Can you hunt over there? Thinking of log houses in the woods and Fall … has my motor running. hahaha
I think a great many people are convinced they can “do something” with Heidegger (I did) ; as if his shift in perspective on the notion of being, will eventually open a kind of door to an alternate or obscured reality in which we might participate if we can just absorb the insights which will liberate us from the traditional ground/detail, subject-object framework which we have inherited as part of the western philosophical tradition, and cramps our being in the world.
Or, and this was probably more common, that he gave us a pathway to a more “authentic” life.
DNW: I believe Heidegger is making such an offer, beyond philosophical turf. I believe his embrace of Nazism as a means to that end is a solid signal. That he refused to recant is another indication of his sincerity.
***
Frank Herbert, the science-fiction writer who wrote “Dune,” got to Heidegger first, as far as I can tell. In his novel, “The Santaroga Barrier,” he posited a reclusive community in Northern California, in which an investigator named Dasein (a key Heidegger word for the Being of a human being) is trying to crack Santaroga’s mystery.
Which turns out to be (given the book’s 1968 publication) a psychedelic called “Jaspers” (after Karl Jaspers, another existentialist philosopher) which keeps the town’s inhabitants in a Heideggerian high and lifts them far above ordinary Americans.
***
But Werner Erhard, as I’ve said, put Heideggerianism into the real world, with the Landmark Forum. I’ve learned that Hubert Dreyfus, the Heidegger authority, took the est Training, loved it, and consulted with Erhard on Heidegger.
I’ve taken the full dose of Landmark Heideggerianism and come away ambivalent. There is a tantalizing high to be had and the “This is It!” feeling. Then later, a “What was that?” I’m studying Heidegger now in large part to sort that out.
Whatever the case, Landmark has a highly trained professional staff administering their brand of Erhard / Heidegger to thousands of enthusiastic people each year with revenues of $70 mil/year.
After I took the Landmark Forum (then the Advanced Course and the Self-Expression Leadership Program) I got involved with a Yahoo group for Landmark graduates.
There were so many Landmark newbies all starry-eyed and going on, how, if only everyone could take the Forum, there would be no more wars! All I could think was well, Heidegger, in his personal quest for Authenticity, became a Nazi and that didn’t work out so well.
At the end of the Forum you discover at the rock bottom of everything, “Life is empty and meaningless,” which leaves you free to stand in that clearing and create your own meaning. (Existentialism 101.) I didn’t see why one couldn’t create “Dominate the world and kill all the Jews” as that meaning.
I asked some of the senior Landmark people in that group and all they could say was that when you get to Nothing, the first thing that seems to arise is Love and Making a Difference.
Good to know.
You have already admitted that her “industrial production” is a component (aka only a part of) of domestic product and your stat was for “mean annual rate of growth in per capita product.” Are all those workers industrial? None in agriculture? None in the service sector? Can’t be, you have a stat. Yet your stat is not for industrial production alone. So once again you provide a statistic and misapply it, but her claim it is the same thing intended by the author.
Your complaint was already addressed.