Hi, Starving! I would have sworn that you would have gone along with the “From each according to his ability” part. I know you don’t like anyone not doing his share of work.
You say that he supports preserving the U.S. culture and that he is also a big believer in the melting pot, meaning people becoming part of the culture.
I think you’ve missed an important element. You can’t preserve the culture as it was originally as other cultures melt into it. Each individual and each culture changes the mix.
Is pizza part of the American culture? We didn’t have it growing up and I’m as American as the Brooklyn Dodgers and Studebakers. Didn’t have a taco until I was in my twenties. Have you ever had cracklin’ bread? Bitten the head off a crawdaddy?
Some things are not preserved and our country is better for it. Do you really need examples? Some things that haven’t been preserved should have been – although this was not the fault of an entire culture, but a sub-culture. (I speak of the shift of power toward the Administration within the Three Branches.)
Your idea of what American culture is may be quite different from Pat Buchanan’s. And I would think that both of you have wanted to preserve some things that I consider very unAmerican. Do you care to give examples from Pat Buchanan’s words of things in the American culture he wants to preserve that those on the left wouldn’t want to?
"To each, according to his ability" would be closer. (Though I am aware that there are people who simply cannot provide for themselves due to certain physical or psychologic maladies, and I would have no problem with some sort of system to take care of them.)
Seriously though, I have no particular problem with anyone not doing his share of the work (though IMO, idea that there is a “share” to begin with is, in the final analysis, communistic in itself - i.e., that there is a certain amount of work to go around and everyone should pitch in and do his share). I just have a problem with a system of government that takes money from those who do their share of work and gives it to those who don’t (or that takes money from its acheivers and gives it to its non-acheivers).
And then again, with communism you get central planning; assigned education and jobs; government-mandated birth limits; etc., and in virtually every major case so far, a repressive, totalitarian government in which people are afraid to speak their minds even to their own families and neighbors.
There are few governments on the face of this earth that are more repressive of basic human rights and behavior and desires than communistic governments. Look at how the left in this country behaves, whining and bitching and moaning over every perceived injustice or inequity or threat to the environment. How far do you think they would get with that kind of behavior? If the entire would was under communist control and not held in check by western influence and power, I could just about assure you that there would be no free press; no government criticism; no civil rights legislation; no unauthorized immigration; no demonstrations of any kind, peaceful or not; no homosexual rights; no freedom of travel; no unapproved music; no environmental concerns; a brutal police force, answerable to no one and with no concern for human rights; etc., etc., etc.
It’s always seemed inconceivable to me that lefties, who are so big on no limits and everyone behaving just any old way they feel like, manners and convention be damned, are so quick to champion a system of goverment that is so repressive and intolerant and directorial as communist regimes invariably are. I guess their desire to ensure that everyone shares equally (even if in misery and deprivation) and that no one has anymore than anyone else trumps their desire for personal freedom.
I’ve always wanted to have no environmental concerns and to travel to Havana.
Seriously, Starving, you mischaracterize liberals and turn us all into Communist-sympathizers. Why do you do that?
I think that Communism was good only in theory at it’s very best and simpliest. Did LBJ seem like a Communist to you? How about Jack Kennedy?
In the past, who has been supporting tougher gun control laws? Tougher pollution control? More strident oversight of banking regulations? Your friends, the liberals.
Who has wanted tougher oversight of the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo? Who thinks the President ought to be required to tell Congress the real reason for going to war in Iraq before Congress authorizes him to go to war?
And when our government is doing the wrong thing, Thomas Jefferson said that we are not supposed to be polite about it.
Sending 4,000 kids to their deaths wasn’t polite.
I sure am glad you weren’t one of them, fella! Keep on creating those beautiful paintings. Keep on being passionate about your country.
Well, it gets difficult because there are invariably liberals who say “That isn’t me! You’re talking about other liberals!”, and they are right. But still, every time I hear someone playing the ‘Communism is the most perfect form of government’ tune, it’s invariably a liberal who’s saying it.
Liberalism is an umbrella under which a great deal that I disagree with finds a home. Whether it’s this liberal in favor of unfettered drug use or that liberal in favor of socialism or another in favor of passing out condoms at school and passing kids because failing them would hurt their self-esteem, the end result is that all of these things emanate from liberalism.
So how does one decry the things that liberal ideology espouses while at the same time excusing this or that liberal who may not embrace that particular aspect of it?
Exactly! And this is precisely what I was speaking of above. Under a communist government (a form of government that only seems able to exist as a dictatorship), none of these things would have happened. It isn’t even likely that anyone could have gotten away with complaining about them in the first place. So again, why is it that so many liberals champion this most repressive and intolerant form of goverment?
The only thing I can think of, and it seems to be characteristic of most of the liberals I know, is an overriding desire to see to it that no one has more of anything than anyone else does. Inequity seems to be the number one bugaboo of liberalism, and the fact is that about the only thing communism seems able to accomplish is to provide equal repressiveness and deprivation for all, so it seems to me that liberals must favor communism because it enforces ‘fairness’ – even though it’s a fairness that’s frought with misery for everyone and includes a repressiveness that runs counter to everything else liberals agitate for.
Thank you. I shall, and I know you will continue being passionate about it as well. It pleases me no end that we can have these kinds of discussions and still remain friends.
Well I am not saying I am particularly worried about it. I am fairly sufficiently deracinated, but I don’t think that people who are interested in the preservation of anglo culture should be viewed in purely negative terms. As it is the existential threats to that culture are not quite as minor as you seem to think, though I would say the greatest threat to all cultures in America is pop culture.
I think it’s a bit deeper than simply funding. There is this idea in our society that the Jews are the ‘good guys’ and the ‘City on the Hill or New Jerusalem’ idea factors into our consciousness a great deal more than many people realize. People on the right are more comfortable seeing it in those terms but people on the left, progressives still have a fair amount of utopianism in their politics.
Well I have experienced this on message boards where being able to sympathize with Palestinians at all gets accusations of anti-semitism. If you don’t embrace the idea that Israelis are totally good and Palestinians are totally bad you’re an anti-semite. Maybe it’s unfair, but well, people have cried wolf enough times that I tend to tune out the word. The thing about exceptionalism goes further than just Israel. If you believe they are the chosen people of God maintaining his word to bring to the gentile, that’s exceptionalism. Or, some people will extrapolate corrolaries that point out how societies of the past were successful while they were happy with their Jews and suddenly collapsed when the Jews were expelled. To me there is a strong case to be made for Jewish exceptionalism, just pointing at the disproportionate number of brilliant Jewish scientists, but the fact remains if you challenge the notion and dare to say that Jews are the same as everyone else, you’ll be accused of anti-semitism by some.
Agreed, they both lent themselves to it, but as has been said, many of us would rather live in Franco’s Spain than Mao’s China. I think at this point anyone who thinks Communism is a good idea is morally incompetent. The same would go for fascism but it has fewer defenders.
I don’t see how National Socialism is any worse. Would this be a case of Jewish exceptionalism? Stalin and Mao were just as great of murderers as Hitler. Is Hitler worse because he murdered Jews? I disagree that it can happen in the US regardless of how many puerile Bushitler jokes we like to make.
Ther is a presumption of innocence by the law. There is no such principle that individual people who have no authority to use government power to punish him are obligated to presume innocence. Individuals, including the press, are free to express their own opinions about innocence or guilt, particularly in a forum specifically created for the expression of opinion, such as Nancy Grace’s show.
This is a nonsensical demand.
Do you assert that actual news reports somehow fail to presume innocence? I’m not even sure how you would go about enforcing such a rule, short of preventing any reporting regarding an alleged crime until a verdict had been issued.
Asserting Demjanjuk’s innocence as an opinion was no different than asserting his guilt as an opinion. The difference is whether it was reasonable, given the evidence, to hold such an opinion and whether the opinion was held for suspect reasons (i.e., antisemitism).
In that case, there has never, ever been a fair trial, because this is a principle that has never been asserted or enforced (at least in American law)
Actually, it’s not. I don’t equate Buchanan with Hitler. I equate the argument that Buchanan should be admired for his principle with the argument that Hitler should be admired for his principle. Adherence to principle means nothing if the principle itself is suspect.
But again, what do you mean by “U.S. Culture”? Not only do Americans have diverse cultural backgrounds, but in our modernistic society there are countless newfangled subcultures to participate in, fom NASCAR to Goth. And culture is always evolving. So what does the common U.S. culture consist of?
Eh? Why, it has happened in the U.S., many times, to various Indian nations. Never anything as systematic and industrialized as the Holocaust, of course – more a case of extermination/displacement/starvation by fits and starts, in a piecemeal process drawn out over centuries, and with contagious diseases doing some of the work – but the results are similar, and it all went on with very little objection from white Americans.
I hit the “cleanse post” button, but nothing happens.
Except I don’t remember myself or others mentioning Israel - we quoted a variety of anti-Semitic statements Buchanan has made that don’t involve Israel. I think you have a bee in your bonnet (or a bug up a nether region) on this subject.
I wouldn’t want to live in any of those places, pretty much equally. I do think the Holocaust worse than other genocides because of the numbers, percentages, motives, efficiency and other things attached to it. Tyranny can happen in the US and has, and it can happen anywhere. Extremism is part of human nature. Admittedly, I have a soft spot for Jews, as critical as I am of Israel. Partly because of ancestry, partly because I like a far higher percentage of Jews than non-Jews, and partly out of sympathy for the Holocaust and other reasons. The extent that I support Israel really is because they aren’t going to come move near me, despite my invitations and are going to remain where they are, being the focus of problems in the immediate area. Civilians shouldn’t be bombed by rockets or suicide bombers or armies, be they on either side of the “border”. The parties pretty clearly don’t want peace, even though the rest of the world does. We can’t force it on them.
I don’t propose that there be any law requiring news outlets give sufficient time to presumption of innocence. I think it should be voluntary as a fundamental American principle. I don’t think that the lack of such a law taints a trial. But it has a toxic effect on public discourse. A bunch of people sitting around half drunk concluding that Blagojevich or Delay are guilty as sin isn’t something I can or should concern myself with. But when all the media have the same consensus, they aren’t serving the public or educating the public, they are having the same drunken conversation while selling advertising space on commercial breaks. Richard Jewel and Wen Ho Lee had this happen to them. And it has happened countless other times. It is to the shame of our nation that this happens when there is no need for it to happen with a bit of balance. Journalism is about informing the public. How hard would it be to find a pundit, other than the accused’s own lawyer, who can take this position while the others are spouting off?
As for my demand of showing when the media has been fair to an accused person, of course I know that cannot be met. That’s why I made the demand. They don’t have a legal obligation to do that, nor should they, but if they truly want balance and to inform, they can certainly raise the point of presumption of innocence.
Yes, CNN has a right to have a Nancy Grace show. But it is beyond disgusting and shows CNN for what they truly are: whores for audience share. Nancy Grace is not a public service, but rather a disservice. It is the lowest thing ever to be put on major American television. The Nancy Grace Hour is nothing more than a regular propaganda attack on the presumption of innocence. It’s protected constitutional speech, but it is not good corporate citizenship.
Well sure America is capable of mass murder. I don’t think it is capable of the mass murder of its own citizens. I also don’t think we are quite so capable of backsliding. The Native Americans were not American citizens for better or worse. Still genocide, still awful, but not qualitatively the same thing. The America of that day and the America of today are two different places. American guilt over such atrocities has led to much of the moral advancement in geopolitics today that tells us that ethnic cleansing is not ok. We’ve got a ways to go, but I feel like the trope, “It could happen here too.” is simply a pat assertion with no real nuance. America today is incapable of ethnic nationalism because we are a fairly deracinated populace.
I disagree. It wasn’t greater in number than the great leap forward, wasn’t greater in percentage than Stalinism, the motives are irrelevant and it wasn’t more efficient because it ultimately subverted a war machine that had already been dependent upon transport of war materiel using pack animals from the beginning. The Holocaust is actually an excercise in gross inefficiency, not efficiency.
Tyranny as you are using it is just a buzzword. Tyranny comes in many forms and many degrees. We’re talking about a particular kind of tyranny. I do not think that the type we are speaking of could happen here in the future. Arguments about the Native Americans are reasonable in viewing the past, but not in viewing the future.
Actually, most Jews in Germany were not citizens either, even before Hitler came to power (German citizenship being based on jus sanguinis, as it still is to some extent, and not being conferred on the large number of Jews in the eastern territories that the German Empire had acquired since unification). And, of course, most victims of the Holocaust had never been Germans in any sense.
Can you clarify whether you are proposing something entirely new here? Because the way I read your earlier posts, it seems that you are castigating the press for living up to a principle that is generally agreed they should adhere to, which is patently not the case.
What happened to them was entirely the fault of government officials, not the press. I think it would be unreasonable to expect the press to append every description of a criminal accusation by a prosecutor with, “of course, the accusation might not be true.”
I think the result of what you propose – appending every discussion with a talking head who says “it might not be true” – would have no positive effect whatsoever.
The presumption of innocence is a legal presumption that everyone knows about. “Raising the point” in every case would be pointless and as silly as reporting “the sun rose today.” It would in no way divert the public from reaching conclusions. Most people instinctively tend to assume the worst when accusations are lain. The solution is to put the burden on those making the accusations (government officials, that is), not to make them unless it’s justified (as in the Jewel and Lee cases).
(Though I am aware that there are people who simply cannot provide for themselves due to certain physical or psychologic maladies, and I would have no problem with some sort of system to take care of them.)
