“The toxic response to the book, as some reviewers are noting, kind of proves his thesis . . . .”
47 Replies to “Liberal Fascists Strike Back”
Right on…”a proof is a proof, if it’s a good proof it’s been proven” or someting like dat.
The truth hurts.
The left can’t handle the truth.
The Amazon site seems to be having trouble with the link. No doubt the left is playing games with that. The left loves censorship.
I just made a similar point in Reader Tips about two “liberals,” a Mr. Kinsella who described you and another female blogger as witches in his own blog while coincidentally you’d linked to Michelle Malkin’s hate mail from Good Ol’ Wisconsin-Joe Roppe fantasizing about force-feeding her hamburger and dreaming of her death from anorexia or bulemia.
This is apparently the same highminded Wisconsin-Joe who argues in another venue for more civilized discourse on the Internet.
Two fine examples of Do As I Say liberalism and I suggest the two good ol’ liberal-boys get together for a manly barbecue to flip burgers and talk about skinny witches…
Comparing the Liberal/NDP/Democratic agenda with fascism is completely valid. Like communism, these are political/social ideologies that insert the State as dominant over the individual.
Rather than the State being the Servant of the people, the structure is reversed; the State becomes Supreme and the people become enslaved.
The State becomes a Supreme Being, engaged in constant ‘social engineering’ or authoritarian organization of the faceless, nameless and submissive population. As such, it removes power from the individual and reduces the individual to, frankly, nothing. A number, replacable with another number.
I don’t think that the definition of this system rests within any particular policies, such as universal health care, education, abortion, etc. I think the definition rests within the structure of authority. In a socialist system, whether it is fascist, communist or Liberal/NDP, authority is removed from the individual and vested in a State.
The State is defined as ‘All-Knowing’; the individual as a human capable of reason is rejected; the individual is reduced to someone operating only within emotions. And therefore, readily manipulated and vulnerable to fear of these authorities, and utopian promises of future goodwill for ‘correct behaviour’.
It is also a tribal system, for it sets up one group as essentially a hereditary set of The State. This set of people Rule the Peasants. They rule by fear and propaganda.
(Our CBC is the propaganda mouthpiece of the Liberal Party.)
Aristotle describes this type of government as an Oligarchy. In the most depraved type of oligarchy, the ‘magistrates’ or leaders are supreme and above the law (check out the various Liberal money laundering tactics of Chretien and Martin’s era).
The thing is, some of the policies have benefits, such as universal health care, education. The problem is, the infrastructure of authority, which denies the Individual all authority over the Self and the Family ..and instead, inserts the State.
When I first heard about that book I thought it was a bio of the Klintons that he’d written.
I think I get it now:
Liberals are Fascists,
Socialists are Nazis,
Science is propaganda,
Evolution is religion,
And we have always been at war with Eastasia.
ET, the leftists are the Platonists. In Plato’s republic, the wise philosphers run society for the good of society. The opposite to the Platonic state is the Liberatarian one.
I just went and bought my copy off of Chapters/Indigo’s website. Anything to help out the cause. 8^>
And Kevin, if you want the Amazon Canada link, just replace the “.com” of the original link with “.ca”. They use the same database and server farm, only the 2nd-level domains are different.
b_nichol:
And you forgot…
Conservatives are now liberals.
Ronald Reagan can be considered one of the great liberal politicians of all time. That remark is likely offensive to both Democrats and Republicans, but much of RR’s politics were taken directly from classic liberalism. Conservative parties today represent an uneasy truce between true conservatives and classic liberals.
Those who refer to themselves as liberals today are generally progressive liberals, and many have abandoned classic-liberal values. In the extreme left, for example, unfettered democracy itself is thought passe. The thinking is that if democracy allows George Bush to become president, then it’s overrated.
From the Daniel Pipes link….different iterations differ in specifics but they share “emotional or instinctual impulses.”…..just like every emotional and sputtering angry liberal that rolls threw here, it’s all about feelings which is why the young are so easily duped by these totalitarian utopian schemes, it feels right. Compound that with their time spent on lefty re-education campuses. The middle aged that haven’t figured it and are still adherents are just too vanity driven or lazy to examine the core political ideas of their youth which are outdated or need the socialist system for their survival.
Allan Bloom saw these liberal fascists on our campuses for what they were 20 years ago when he wrote Closing of the American Mind. The little hacker, exercising his fascist impulses, is a product of our education system where that which we disapprove of must be silenced rather than debated.
We are about 10 years behind the Brits in the collapse of our culture and freedom. The sorry state of Europe is that there is no real ideological distinction between parties anymore, the elite liberal fascists in Brussels own it all.
b_nichol I prefer to say we’ve always been at war with EUrasia.
100% valid premise compare the libs who want the government to be in charge of bringing up children. do they like home schooling etc etc.
Like in Germany they said families got together every year in Nuremburg for the rallies.
There’s family values lefty style.
b_nichol:
But to address the point you were really trying to make…
One problem some (not all) liberals have is that because they place themselves on the left side of the spectrum, they refuse to consider whether the policies they push are indeed fascist. Can’t be, they reason, cause we’re not fascists.
But fascism is as fascism does. If one’s policies mean that free speech must be highly restricted, and students must be indoctrinated with correct political values, and hiring policies must be dictated by gender and race, and citizen’s actions must be increasingly regulated and controlled, it doesn’t matter where you claim to be on the political spectrum.
This does not mean to say that conservatives – social conservatives in particular – do not attempt to impose similar policies. But at least the press is quick to call them fascist.
They control all the key intstitutions in our so-called democracy: the media, the civil service and the education system. Our military is too small and emasculated to be of concern to them. Voters like us are of no concern because we can never get past 36% and our generation is passing; the younger ones are better indoctrinated by them. The naturally conservative elements in the population; farmers, resource companies and workers, are too few in numbers and can’t organize their economic clout. The legions dependent on the state are too afraid to make change. And our American partners are, sadly, becoming more like us.
In a cemetery in Highgate, London, a very evil corpse is beginning to have the last laugh. Will we be able to stop him before it’s too late? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highgate_Cemetery
“I think I get it now:
Liberals are Fascists,
Socialists are Nazis,
Science is propaganda,
Evolution is religion,
And we have always been at war with Eastasia.”
Posted by: b_nichol
——————————-
NO! Clearly you didn’t get it at all.
Nazis were socialists but not all socialists are Nazis. There are two competing forms of socialism: Fascism and Communism (the two groups have a mutual animosity towards each other despite their similarities.) Now that both are discredited (150 million murdered souls will do that,) the followers of their purely secular form of evil have flocked to Liberalism/radical environmentalism as a way to institute socialism’s shadow through the back door. The modern, North American definition of Liberalism is itself a lie like the idea that Fascism is Right and Communism is Left. Liberals are not liberal. Liberals are socialists. Real liberals are now referred to as libertarians.
Science is not Propaganda but Propaganda is ruining and masquerading as Science. Propagandist watermelon “environmentalists” are bastardizing science by using it in a dishonest attempt to drive their socialist agenda. They are lying and manipulating science and using it in a political manner. All of which violates the ideals of science.
Evolution is not religion. It is a scientific theory – imperfect and incomplete. But those who cling to it as absolute truth above question or revision act with all the fervent intolerance of Spanish conquistadores. Those who over-weight the value of evolution seem to think the choices are binary: Evolution or Genesis. This fallacy drives them to defend evolution in a way that is very unscientific. ALL science is subject to revision based on future discovery. Otherwise there would be no use for scientists – just science’s priests.
And it’s distasteful for leftards to bring up Orwell whose message in 1984, Animal Farm and his brilliant essays you clearly cannot comprehend – he tried to warn the world against YOU!
I nominate Warwick for comment of the week!
rabbit: I take your point regarding the progressive-liberal vs. the classical-(or neo-classical) liberal – 50 years ago, the ‘liberal’ label meant an entirely different thing than it does today. But if that is the case, then certainly the ‘liberal’ values must have changed or evolved – you mention Ronald Reagan as a great liberal (obviously in the classical sense) – and I have also heard both Nixon and Eisenhower referred as such.
So here’s the crux of the matter: are the
pundits (and I use that term in the most derogatory sense) trying to distance themselves from the ‘liberal’ label by associating it with some the worst elements of 20th-century barbarism, or are they attempting to redefine the word because of an inability to recognise and compare basic political systems.
For those who say ‘Liberals are Fascists’, that has as much meaning to any reasonably intelligent person as the Evolution-Religion argument. Is the current CPC government fascist for their social-engineering policies of rewarding parents who place their kids in sports programs? Of course not, any such argument would be ludicrous.
What this current crop of historical (and histrionic) revisionists need to do is sit down and actually talk to those who survived the fascist regimes of Franco and Mussolini to truly appreciate what terrible injustices they do by misappropriating the term. And that especially goes for all the nutbars of every stripe who attach -nazi or -fascist to anything they disagree with.
To suggest public education is equivalent to the Nuremburg rallies (Dinosaur) is a 0% premise.
Warwick:
Further to your points.
Religion is not the enemy the theory of evolution.
Science itself is the enemy of the theory of evolution.
The politicized premise of evolution led to Marxism, National Socialism and Fabian Socialism … all with the premise that human beings could be evolved into a higher state through the passage of laws.
As history proved in the test of time, those systems actually contradicted human nature’s inherent knowledge that they have individual freedoms and through that inherent freedom are capable of making choices.
Of course, not all choices work out for the good, but most individual human beings would at least like to act in a way which is best for them.
Human’s innate curiosity led to concepts of religion and science, which are not mutually exclusive, but different disciplines in the discovery of our world and give explanation to our existence.
The godless sponsors of the evil 20th century constructs which evolved from a thoroughly discredited scientific theory have never been able to satisfactorily answer the question of how it all began.
‘It’s not important,’ they say.
Their own life is the alpha and omega. To accomplish this twisted thinking means a necessary denial of how they themselves came from a long line of human beings who struggled with the same questions.
By narrowing their own life to their short time on earth, they therefore become willing slaves to earthly powers, who do not necessarily have the enslaved individual’s best interest in mind.
By promoting this manner of power, they delude themselves into thinking only they and their group have the answer for peace … but as we have seen in the 20th century, the final solution to the challenge is death to those who do not subscribe to their twisted attempts to subdue the human spirit.
Enough for now.
C’mon, Warwick. If you’re going to paraphrase John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), at least give him credit and get it right:
“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.”
Interesting… Warwik is bang on and by the way uncap b underscore uncap n ichol …. in the time of John Stuart Mill “Conservatives” of which he spoke were supporters of state controlled society under the crown without the democratic representation of parliament. The rule of the barons and lords through birthright.
Not people who espoused individual freedoms or human rights but rather the ilk that would have seen the magna carta burned….
As for your ilk ….he’d not have paid you any notice at all!
Try learning something rather that searching wikipedia for smartass retorts!
“The State is defined as ‘All-Knowing’; the individual as a human capable of reason is rejected; the individual is reduced to someone operating only within emotions.”
ET,
The Liberal mouthpiece, Scott Reid, while referring to the competing Conservative child care tax break, said it like only a fascist can, “they’ll spend it on beer and popcorn.”
Case in point.
b_nichol:
The blanket statement that all modern liberals are fascists is obviously idiotic. I would say, however, that many modern liberals have abandoned classic liberalism, and that’s a shame.
Part of the reason is that it is difficult to be both a classic and progressive liberal at once. If one wants to combat racism, say, one is tempted to regulate it out of business by prohibiting people from saying anything offensive about racial minorities or by imposing racial quotas or preferences. These are in direct conflict with individual freedom.
Okay, let’s admit that the label of “fascist” is extreme. But I believe – radical that I am – that restrictions to individual freedom must be vigorously opposed no matter where in the political spectrum they come from. Some (not all) progressive liberals have shown a disquieting tendency to dismiss personal freedoms as just another tool of oppression, something that can be discarded in the search for social justice, and to those people I might indeed have some choice phrases.
b_nichol
Of course Mill’s definition of conservative was different than the present one.
Conservatives then were feudalists attempting to retain the rights and privileges of the class system. Now the new elites trying to maintain their privilege are the statists.
And it wasn’t meant a quote, it was the progression of logic and the correction of illogical fallacy.
b_nichol – Isn’t it pretty blatant to you that the lack of permissions, the muzzling of debate, the self-censorship and outright censorship via the liberal’s pc dogma, the anti-science of GW where empirical evidence is denied exposure or discussion by the liberals, the punishment of thought crimes with hate crime tribunals, I could go on…..but, just what part of today’s Liberal fascism are you not getting? Hung up on semantics and nomenclature, what’s relevant is that this rot is fully owned by the liberals, not the conservatives, at this time in history. End of story.
wimpy canadian – right, the leftists are the Philosopher-Kings of Plato’s Republic. Read Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies for a scathing attack against Plato’s arrogant utopianism. And read his book for a discussion on the nature of the Open Society…
Warwick – nice posts. Thanks.
“Is the current CPC government fascist for their social-engineering policies of rewarding parents who place their kids in sports programs?”
This is BS, not taxing $ used to enroll kids in activities is not social engineering, it is the total opposite. It takes the power from the state and gives it to the parents, empowering them with choice. The initial tax hike is the true “social engineering” because it limits those very choices these parents should have in the first place; then it’s reinvested in what the government decides are appropriate activities for its citizens.
Perhaps b_nicole should worry less about my kids and “Iron her husbands pants!”
Jon, it’s “Iron My Shirt” according to the Clinton “plants” who were placed there to drum up a faux-frenzy over that tired old “Male Chauvinism” shtick.
Just imagine plants at, say, a Mike Huckabbe event of people yelling “Behead those who insult Islam!” do you think that would be taken at face value?
“Somebody even hacked the page — an Amazon first, I think — and replaced the cover photo with one of Jonah with a Hitler mustache,”
A puerile act and a infantile way to debate….yes this prove’s jonah’s point…IF his point is that modern liberalism is not liberalism but statist socialism and accepting such political dogma means you have accepted an ideal which keeps its adherents in perpetual child hood…cradle to grave the state is your mommy and daddy and you get coddled and talked down to as a child…you don’t have to make your own decisions, you are told everything you are to believe and you don’t have to apologize for, or accept, responsibility for your own bratty petulance and tantrums…yes mommy-state socialism will keep brother and sis in perpetual under development and away from the realities and responsibilities of independent sensate adulthood.
Liberalism (nanny-state socialism) is a philosophy for spoiled brats.
Rabbit: “But I believe – radical that I am – that restrictions to individual freedom must be vigorously opposed no matter where in the political spectrum they come from. Some (not all) progressive liberals have shown a disquieting tendency to dismiss personal freedoms as just another tool of oppression, something that can be discarded in the search for social justice, and to those people I might indeed have some choice phrases.”
I have little quarrel with that.
Warwick: “Conservatives then were feudalists attempting to retain the rights and privileges of the class system. Now the new elites trying to maintain their privilege are the statists.”
But are the new ‘elites’ represented by statists (are these liberals?) or by the corporatists attempting to retain the rights and privileges of the class system?
Folks, I would love to continue but I have GOT to get some work finished today.
Just a quick question for Jon before I go: is that $500 tax incentive (negative social-engineering?) available to just kids in organised sports, or does it include model-airplane and rocket enthusiasts, and kids in ballet or music or ski lessons, etc. If it is all-inclusive, then certainly you have a point; otherwise, the point can be made that the gov’t deliberately favours one type of activity over others, however good the intention.
The classic sign of a real fascist is the fact that they always divide a nation up on the basis of race, religion, language, or ethnic group.
You know, like Warren Kinsella saying that it’s time for a black president, as he clearly divides the USA up on the basius of race.
As for the politicians who want so badly to tax people out of their economic independence, and spend the tax dollars on what the fascist politicans think that the people should be spending their money (ie not beer and popcorn), they should study the following.
“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and inependence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.” – Abraham Lincoln.
This summary should be hung in the office of every politician in both the Canada and the USA.
The greatness of every country is determined by the worth of every individual in the country, not the power of the various collectives that are in it.
And it is only in the free and democratic, capitalist nations where the individual truly flourishes.
“available to just kids in organised sports, or does it include model-airplane and rocket enthusiasts, and kids in ballet or music or ski lessons, etc.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I belive this is the case with this rebate.
I’m glad you agree, now you just have to come out of the closet and admit that you are a “c” conservative.
You omission is in direct contradiction Liberal and NDP dogma. You party and people of a like mind attempt to raise taxes to pay for programs like “national daycare” under the guise of “choice for women”, yet all of these types of policies take the choice away from women. My wife for example may be forced to go to work to pay for other peoples children whose mothers(or fathers) have been forced to go to work to pay for other people children and so on…
p.s. I couldn’t make out what it actually said on the bottom of the sign at the Clinton bash, too bad O’Reily wasn’t there to push the people out of the way infront of the sign.
This was in a related overview of JONAH GOLDBERG’s book. Nice to see Columbia is carrying on with its tradition of supporting fascists like Iran’s Imanutjob.
Perhaps no elite institution in America was more accommodating to Fascism than Columbia University. In 1926 it established Casa Italiana, a center for the study of Italian culture and a lecture venue for prominent Italian scholars. It was Fascism’s “veritable home in America” and a “schoolhouse for budding Fascist ideologues,” according to John Patrick Diggins. Mussolini himself had contributed some ornate Baroque furniture to Casa Italiana and had sent Columbia’s president, Nicholas Murray Butler, a signed photo thanking him for his “most valuable contribution”.
The term, “fascists of the left” was coined by the late, great Dr. Petr Beckmann ‘way back in 1976. Credit where credit is due, please.
Hey, b_nichol, as you like quotes, here’s one for you: “Most conservatives have an honest but improbable hope that one day liberals grow up and rely upon themselves to survive, and not through the alms of the nanny state”
mhb23re
at gmail d0t calm
The word socialist in the self-described National Socialist Party kinda defines what part of the political spectrum it lay.
Like Marxism, it seeks to order creation and ‘evolve’ humanity to a higher plane through the passage of laws which would control human behaviours. But since National Socialism did not control means of production, it was considered to the ‘right’ of socialism.
Therefore, National Socialism was deemed a ‘right-wing’ because it was to the right of Marxism.
The belief was that once capitalism was deemed irrelevant anyway, the only two competing philosophies for the good of all mankind were Marxism and National Socialism, which failed to control economic production through a command economy.
‘It does so by exalting the state over the individual, expert knowledge over democracy, enforced consensus over debate, and socialism over capitalism.’
Fascism’s Legacy: Liberalism by Daniel Pipes
This essentially explains the debilitating designs of the fascist, socialist and communists.
As for the use of conservative, liberal, socialist etc. if we take the terminology as being constant, then it is the politicians, what else is new, that corrupt these. It is as though the communists took over NDP is neither new nor democratic. The socialists took over the liberal mantle to be more palatable to the plebeians and conservatives today are the liberals, or rather of liberal thought, though given enough time they will eventually march directly toward socialism. Then a new party will emerge that will take on the mandate of sorts of conservatism. That though will not be a conservative that will reduce the size of government, reduce taxes and let the free enterprise, enterprise. They will just put a break on the train and will only manage to slow it down, much like today’s CPC. CPC government is only an interlude in the march of socialists. This is very sad for the coming generation or two.
As it goes in the affairs of people, in another 60 to 90 years things will improve significantly because of just passed cataclysm created by the fascists, socialists and communists. Hopefully the ‘ists will be thrown in the forgotten thrash of history.
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” –Adolf Hitler –( Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, 1976, p. 306)
Lib or Con??? As a 17 year old in 1950 I joined the RCAF. From then to 1957 the liberal Government gave us a raise in the fall of each year. We didn’t rush for the Cadillac Dealer, but it was a few bucks and we backed our Libs. Then Dief took over, and from then until I was discharged in 1960 we never got another cent. I continued to back the Liberals until the Epiphany: P E Trudeau. It took half a year after he was Elected to wait for the axe of good sense to fall, but it never has. He, and only he has made Canada the second rate Country it now is. And I can only hope that the rest of the country realizes what he has left us and left is the right word, and gives the heave-ho to whatever is left of the Natural Governing Party.
liberal fascist is an oxymoron. Since fascism is defined by its illiberalism and opposition to socialism, among other things. But hey if a pundit wants to call a polemic that to sell copies whatever. Don’t kid yourself that anybody takes it seriously outside wingnut sites like this one.
john at 11:25
You are aware that Hitler co-opted socialist rhetoric when he was trying to win votes? Right ? And he had the more radical left members of his party executed on the Night of the Long Knives to make his party more acceptable to industrial capitalists right? And he threw Social Democrats in concentration camps ? ? Because we wouldn’t want to cherry pick our facts to distort the truth right ?
Gray,
Are you selectively choosing to ignore that the man who first declared Hitler a threat and a maniac was that right-wing Conservative Winston Churchill? If WWII was started by “right-wingers” why then did Churchill not support his fellow Conservatives rather than oppose them? Any thoughts?
Arguing that one man’s position about a movement can characterize that movement is really just another example of cherry picking. Fascism contains elements of positions found on the right and left. Statism is one that is typically associated with the left, strong nationalism is typically associated with the right. I would argue that is when you sum up the parts fascism belongs on the right of the political spectrum. Does’t mean every right winger is a fascist though. Just as every leftist is not a Stalinist The whole issue is more complex , I suspect, than a hack like Goldberg can cope with.
Right on…”a proof is a proof, if it’s a good proof it’s been proven” or someting like dat.
The truth hurts.
The left can’t handle the truth.
The Amazon site seems to be having trouble with the link. No doubt the left is playing games with that. The left loves censorship.
I just made a similar point in Reader Tips about two “liberals,” a Mr. Kinsella who described you and another female blogger as witches in his own blog while coincidentally you’d linked to Michelle Malkin’s hate mail from Good Ol’ Wisconsin-Joe Roppe fantasizing about force-feeding her hamburger and dreaming of her death from anorexia or bulemia.
This is apparently the same highminded Wisconsin-Joe who argues in another venue for more civilized discourse on the Internet.
Two fine examples of Do As I Say liberalism and I suggest the two good ol’ liberal-boys get together for a manly barbecue to flip burgers and talk about skinny witches…
Comparing the Liberal/NDP/Democratic agenda with fascism is completely valid. Like communism, these are political/social ideologies that insert the State as dominant over the individual.
Rather than the State being the Servant of the people, the structure is reversed; the State becomes Supreme and the people become enslaved.
The State becomes a Supreme Being, engaged in constant ‘social engineering’ or authoritarian organization of the faceless, nameless and submissive population. As such, it removes power from the individual and reduces the individual to, frankly, nothing. A number, replacable with another number.
I don’t think that the definition of this system rests within any particular policies, such as universal health care, education, abortion, etc. I think the definition rests within the structure of authority. In a socialist system, whether it is fascist, communist or Liberal/NDP, authority is removed from the individual and vested in a State.
The State is defined as ‘All-Knowing’; the individual as a human capable of reason is rejected; the individual is reduced to someone operating only within emotions. And therefore, readily manipulated and vulnerable to fear of these authorities, and utopian promises of future goodwill for ‘correct behaviour’.
It is also a tribal system, for it sets up one group as essentially a hereditary set of The State. This set of people Rule the Peasants. They rule by fear and propaganda.
(Our CBC is the propaganda mouthpiece of the Liberal Party.)
Aristotle describes this type of government as an Oligarchy. In the most depraved type of oligarchy, the ‘magistrates’ or leaders are supreme and above the law (check out the various Liberal money laundering tactics of Chretien and Martin’s era).
The thing is, some of the policies have benefits, such as universal health care, education. The problem is, the infrastructure of authority, which denies the Individual all authority over the Self and the Family ..and instead, inserts the State.
Why don’t you provide links to Amazon Canada?
For a distinctly non-toxic response:
Daniel Pipes, Fascism’s Legacy: Liberalism
When I first heard about that book I thought it was a bio of the Klintons that he’d written.
I think I get it now:
Liberals are Fascists,
Socialists are Nazis,
Science is propaganda,
Evolution is religion,
And we have always been at war with Eastasia.
ET, the leftists are the Platonists. In Plato’s republic, the wise philosphers run society for the good of society. The opposite to the Platonic state is the Liberatarian one.
Jonah is on Dennis Prager right now discussing the book.
http://krla870.townhall.com/
click “Listen Live”
I just went and bought my copy off of Chapters/Indigo’s website. Anything to help out the cause. 8^>
And Kevin, if you want the Amazon Canada link, just replace the “.com” of the original link with “.ca”. They use the same database and server farm, only the 2nd-level domains are different.
b_nichol:
And you forgot…
Conservatives are now liberals.
Ronald Reagan can be considered one of the great liberal politicians of all time. That remark is likely offensive to both Democrats and Republicans, but much of RR’s politics were taken directly from classic liberalism. Conservative parties today represent an uneasy truce between true conservatives and classic liberals.
Those who refer to themselves as liberals today are generally progressive liberals, and many have abandoned classic-liberal values. In the extreme left, for example, unfettered democracy itself is thought passe. The thinking is that if democracy allows George Bush to become president, then it’s overrated.
From the Daniel Pipes link….different iterations differ in specifics but they share “emotional or instinctual impulses.”…..just like every emotional and sputtering angry liberal that rolls threw here, it’s all about feelings which is why the young are so easily duped by these totalitarian utopian schemes, it feels right. Compound that with their time spent on lefty re-education campuses. The middle aged that haven’t figured it and are still adherents are just too vanity driven or lazy to examine the core political ideas of their youth which are outdated or need the socialist system for their survival.
Allan Bloom saw these liberal fascists on our campuses for what they were 20 years ago when he wrote Closing of the American Mind. The little hacker, exercising his fascist impulses, is a product of our education system where that which we disapprove of must be silenced rather than debated.
We are about 10 years behind the Brits in the collapse of our culture and freedom. The sorry state of Europe is that there is no real ideological distinction between parties anymore, the elite liberal fascists in Brussels own it all.
b_nichol I prefer to say we’ve always been at war with EUrasia.
100% valid premise compare the libs who want the government to be in charge of bringing up children. do they like home schooling etc etc.
Like in Germany they said families got together every year in Nuremburg for the rallies.
There’s family values lefty style.
b_nichol:
But to address the point you were really trying to make…
One problem some (not all) liberals have is that because they place themselves on the left side of the spectrum, they refuse to consider whether the policies they push are indeed fascist. Can’t be, they reason, cause we’re not fascists.
But fascism is as fascism does. If one’s policies mean that free speech must be highly restricted, and students must be indoctrinated with correct political values, and hiring policies must be dictated by gender and race, and citizen’s actions must be increasingly regulated and controlled, it doesn’t matter where you claim to be on the political spectrum.
This does not mean to say that conservatives – social conservatives in particular – do not attempt to impose similar policies. But at least the press is quick to call them fascist.
They control all the key intstitutions in our so-called democracy: the media, the civil service and the education system. Our military is too small and emasculated to be of concern to them. Voters like us are of no concern because we can never get past 36% and our generation is passing; the younger ones are better indoctrinated by them. The naturally conservative elements in the population; farmers, resource companies and workers, are too few in numbers and can’t organize their economic clout. The legions dependent on the state are too afraid to make change. And our American partners are, sadly, becoming more like us.
In a cemetery in Highgate, London, a very evil corpse is beginning to have the last laugh. Will we be able to stop him before it’s too late?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highgate_Cemetery
“I think I get it now:
Liberals are Fascists,
Socialists are Nazis,
Science is propaganda,
Evolution is religion,
And we have always been at war with Eastasia.”
Posted by: b_nichol
——————————-
NO! Clearly you didn’t get it at all.
Nazis were socialists but not all socialists are Nazis. There are two competing forms of socialism: Fascism and Communism (the two groups have a mutual animosity towards each other despite their similarities.) Now that both are discredited (150 million murdered souls will do that,) the followers of their purely secular form of evil have flocked to Liberalism/radical environmentalism as a way to institute socialism’s shadow through the back door. The modern, North American definition of Liberalism is itself a lie like the idea that Fascism is Right and Communism is Left. Liberals are not liberal. Liberals are socialists. Real liberals are now referred to as libertarians.
Science is not Propaganda but Propaganda is ruining and masquerading as Science. Propagandist watermelon “environmentalists” are bastardizing science by using it in a dishonest attempt to drive their socialist agenda. They are lying and manipulating science and using it in a political manner. All of which violates the ideals of science.
Evolution is not religion. It is a scientific theory – imperfect and incomplete. But those who cling to it as absolute truth above question or revision act with all the fervent intolerance of Spanish conquistadores. Those who over-weight the value of evolution seem to think the choices are binary: Evolution or Genesis. This fallacy drives them to defend evolution in a way that is very unscientific. ALL science is subject to revision based on future discovery. Otherwise there would be no use for scientists – just science’s priests.
And it’s distasteful for leftards to bring up Orwell whose message in 1984, Animal Farm and his brilliant essays you clearly cannot comprehend – he tried to warn the world against YOU!
I nominate Warwick for comment of the week!
rabbit: I take your point regarding the progressive-liberal vs. the classical-(or neo-classical) liberal – 50 years ago, the ‘liberal’ label meant an entirely different thing than it does today. But if that is the case, then certainly the ‘liberal’ values must have changed or evolved – you mention Ronald Reagan as a great liberal (obviously in the classical sense) – and I have also heard both Nixon and Eisenhower referred as such.
So here’s the crux of the matter: are the
pundits (and I use that term in the most derogatory sense) trying to distance themselves from the ‘liberal’ label by associating it with some the worst elements of 20th-century barbarism, or are they attempting to redefine the word because of an inability to recognise and compare basic political systems.
For those who say ‘Liberals are Fascists’, that has as much meaning to any reasonably intelligent person as the Evolution-Religion argument. Is the current CPC government fascist for their social-engineering policies of rewarding parents who place their kids in sports programs? Of course not, any such argument would be ludicrous.
What this current crop of historical (and histrionic) revisionists need to do is sit down and actually talk to those who survived the fascist regimes of Franco and Mussolini to truly appreciate what terrible injustices they do by misappropriating the term. And that especially goes for all the nutbars of every stripe who attach -nazi or -fascist to anything they disagree with.
To suggest public education is equivalent to the Nuremburg rallies (Dinosaur) is a 0% premise.
Warwick:
Further to your points.
Religion is not the enemy the theory of evolution.
Science itself is the enemy of the theory of evolution.
The politicized premise of evolution led to Marxism, National Socialism and Fabian Socialism … all with the premise that human beings could be evolved into a higher state through the passage of laws.
As history proved in the test of time, those systems actually contradicted human nature’s inherent knowledge that they have individual freedoms and through that inherent freedom are capable of making choices.
Of course, not all choices work out for the good, but most individual human beings would at least like to act in a way which is best for them.
Human’s innate curiosity led to concepts of religion and science, which are not mutually exclusive, but different disciplines in the discovery of our world and give explanation to our existence.
The godless sponsors of the evil 20th century constructs which evolved from a thoroughly discredited scientific theory have never been able to satisfactorily answer the question of how it all began.
‘It’s not important,’ they say.
Their own life is the alpha and omega. To accomplish this twisted thinking means a necessary denial of how they themselves came from a long line of human beings who struggled with the same questions.
By narrowing their own life to their short time on earth, they therefore become willing slaves to earthly powers, who do not necessarily have the enslaved individual’s best interest in mind.
By promoting this manner of power, they delude themselves into thinking only they and their group have the answer for peace … but as we have seen in the 20th century, the final solution to the challenge is death to those who do not subscribe to their twisted attempts to subdue the human spirit.
Enough for now.
C’mon, Warwick. If you’re going to paraphrase John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), at least give him credit and get it right:
“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.”
Interesting… Warwik is bang on and by the way uncap b underscore uncap n ichol …. in the time of John Stuart Mill “Conservatives” of which he spoke were supporters of state controlled society under the crown without the democratic representation of parliament. The rule of the barons and lords through birthright.
Not people who espoused individual freedoms or human rights but rather the ilk that would have seen the magna carta burned….
As for your ilk ….he’d not have paid you any notice at all!
Try learning something rather that searching wikipedia for smartass retorts!
“The State is defined as ‘All-Knowing’; the individual as a human capable of reason is rejected; the individual is reduced to someone operating only within emotions.”
ET,
The Liberal mouthpiece, Scott Reid, while referring to the competing Conservative child care tax break, said it like only a fascist can, “they’ll spend it on beer and popcorn.”
Case in point.
b_nichol:
The blanket statement that all modern liberals are fascists is obviously idiotic. I would say, however, that many modern liberals have abandoned classic liberalism, and that’s a shame.
Part of the reason is that it is difficult to be both a classic and progressive liberal at once. If one wants to combat racism, say, one is tempted to regulate it out of business by prohibiting people from saying anything offensive about racial minorities or by imposing racial quotas or preferences. These are in direct conflict with individual freedom.
Okay, let’s admit that the label of “fascist” is extreme. But I believe – radical that I am – that restrictions to individual freedom must be vigorously opposed no matter where in the political spectrum they come from. Some (not all) progressive liberals have shown a disquieting tendency to dismiss personal freedoms as just another tool of oppression, something that can be discarded in the search for social justice, and to those people I might indeed have some choice phrases.
b_nichol
Of course Mill’s definition of conservative was different than the present one.
Conservatives then were feudalists attempting to retain the rights and privileges of the class system. Now the new elites trying to maintain their privilege are the statists.
And it wasn’t meant a quote, it was the progression of logic and the correction of illogical fallacy.
b_nichol – Isn’t it pretty blatant to you that the lack of permissions, the muzzling of debate, the self-censorship and outright censorship via the liberal’s pc dogma, the anti-science of GW where empirical evidence is denied exposure or discussion by the liberals, the punishment of thought crimes with hate crime tribunals, I could go on…..but, just what part of today’s Liberal fascism are you not getting? Hung up on semantics and nomenclature, what’s relevant is that this rot is fully owned by the liberals, not the conservatives, at this time in history. End of story.
wimpy canadian – right, the leftists are the Philosopher-Kings of Plato’s Republic. Read Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies for a scathing attack against Plato’s arrogant utopianism. And read his book for a discussion on the nature of the Open Society…
Warwick – nice posts. Thanks.
“Is the current CPC government fascist for their social-engineering policies of rewarding parents who place their kids in sports programs?”
This is BS, not taxing $ used to enroll kids in activities is not social engineering, it is the total opposite. It takes the power from the state and gives it to the parents, empowering them with choice. The initial tax hike is the true “social engineering” because it limits those very choices these parents should have in the first place; then it’s reinvested in what the government decides are appropriate activities for its citizens.
Perhaps b_nicole should worry less about my kids and “Iron her husbands pants!”
Jon, it’s “Iron My Shirt” according to the Clinton “plants” who were placed there to drum up a faux-frenzy over that tired old “Male Chauvinism” shtick.
Just imagine plants at, say, a Mike Huckabbe event of people yelling “Behead those who insult Islam!” do you think that would be taken at face value?
“Somebody even hacked the page — an Amazon first, I think — and replaced the cover photo with one of Jonah with a Hitler mustache,”
A puerile act and a infantile way to debate….yes this prove’s jonah’s point…IF his point is that modern liberalism is not liberalism but statist socialism and accepting such political dogma means you have accepted an ideal which keeps its adherents in perpetual child hood…cradle to grave the state is your mommy and daddy and you get coddled and talked down to as a child…you don’t have to make your own decisions, you are told everything you are to believe and you don’t have to apologize for, or accept, responsibility for your own bratty petulance and tantrums…yes mommy-state socialism will keep brother and sis in perpetual under development and away from the realities and responsibilities of independent sensate adulthood.
Liberalism (nanny-state socialism) is a philosophy for spoiled brats.
Rabbit: “But I believe – radical that I am – that restrictions to individual freedom must be vigorously opposed no matter where in the political spectrum they come from. Some (not all) progressive liberals have shown a disquieting tendency to dismiss personal freedoms as just another tool of oppression, something that can be discarded in the search for social justice, and to those people I might indeed have some choice phrases.”
I have little quarrel with that.
Warwick: “Conservatives then were feudalists attempting to retain the rights and privileges of the class system. Now the new elites trying to maintain their privilege are the statists.”
But are the new ‘elites’ represented by statists (are these liberals?) or by the corporatists attempting to retain the rights and privileges of the class system?
Folks, I would love to continue but I have GOT to get some work finished today.
Just a quick question for Jon before I go: is that $500 tax incentive (negative social-engineering?) available to just kids in organised sports, or does it include model-airplane and rocket enthusiasts, and kids in ballet or music or ski lessons, etc. If it is all-inclusive, then certainly you have a point; otherwise, the point can be made that the gov’t deliberately favours one type of activity over others, however good the intention.
The classic sign of a real fascist is the fact that they always divide a nation up on the basis of race, religion, language, or ethnic group.
You know, like Warren Kinsella saying that it’s time for a black president, as he clearly divides the USA up on the basius of race.
As for the politicians who want so badly to tax people out of their economic independence, and spend the tax dollars on what the fascist politicans think that the people should be spending their money (ie not beer and popcorn), they should study the following.
“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and inependence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.” – Abraham Lincoln.
This summary should be hung in the office of every politician in both the Canada and the USA.
The greatness of every country is determined by the worth of every individual in the country, not the power of the various collectives that are in it.
And it is only in the free and democratic, capitalist nations where the individual truly flourishes.
“available to just kids in organised sports, or does it include model-airplane and rocket enthusiasts, and kids in ballet or music or ski lessons, etc.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I belive this is the case with this rebate.
I’m glad you agree, now you just have to come out of the closet and admit that you are a “c” conservative.
You omission is in direct contradiction Liberal and NDP dogma. You party and people of a like mind attempt to raise taxes to pay for programs like “national daycare” under the guise of “choice for women”, yet all of these types of policies take the choice away from women. My wife for example may be forced to go to work to pay for other peoples children whose mothers(or fathers) have been forced to go to work to pay for other people children and so on…
p.s. I couldn’t make out what it actually said on the bottom of the sign at the Clinton bash, too bad O’Reily wasn’t there to push the people out of the way infront of the sign.
This was in a related overview of JONAH GOLDBERG’s book. Nice to see Columbia is carrying on with its tradition of supporting fascists like Iran’s Imanutjob.
Perhaps no elite institution in America was more accommodating to Fascism than Columbia University. In 1926 it established Casa Italiana, a center for the study of Italian culture and a lecture venue for prominent Italian scholars. It was Fascism’s “veritable home in America” and a “schoolhouse for budding Fascist ideologues,” according to John Patrick Diggins. Mussolini himself had contributed some ornate Baroque furniture to Casa Italiana and had sent Columbia’s president, Nicholas Murray Butler, a signed photo thanking him for his “most valuable contribution”.
The term, “fascists of the left” was coined by the late, great Dr. Petr Beckmann ‘way back in 1976. Credit where credit is due, please.
Hey, b_nichol, as you like quotes, here’s one for you:
“Most conservatives have an honest but improbable hope that one day liberals grow up and rely upon themselves to survive, and not through the alms of the nanny state”
mhb23re
at gmail d0t calm
The word socialist in the self-described National Socialist Party kinda defines what part of the political spectrum it lay.
Like Marxism, it seeks to order creation and ‘evolve’ humanity to a higher plane through the passage of laws which would control human behaviours. But since National Socialism did not control means of production, it was considered to the ‘right’ of socialism.
Therefore, National Socialism was deemed a ‘right-wing’ because it was to the right of Marxism.
The belief was that once capitalism was deemed irrelevant anyway, the only two competing philosophies for the good of all mankind were Marxism and National Socialism, which failed to control economic production through a command economy.
‘It does so by exalting the state over the individual, expert knowledge over democracy, enforced consensus over debate, and socialism over capitalism.’
Fascism’s Legacy: Liberalism by Daniel Pipes
This essentially explains the debilitating designs of the fascist, socialist and communists.
As for the use of conservative, liberal, socialist etc. if we take the terminology as being constant, then it is the politicians, what else is new, that corrupt these. It is as though the communists took over NDP is neither new nor democratic. The socialists took over the liberal mantle to be more palatable to the plebeians and conservatives today are the liberals, or rather of liberal thought, though given enough time they will eventually march directly toward socialism. Then a new party will emerge that will take on the mandate of sorts of conservatism. That though will not be a conservative that will reduce the size of government, reduce taxes and let the free enterprise, enterprise. They will just put a break on the train and will only manage to slow it down, much like today’s CPC. CPC government is only an interlude in the march of socialists. This is very sad for the coming generation or two.
As it goes in the affairs of people, in another 60 to 90 years things will improve significantly because of just passed cataclysm created by the fascists, socialists and communists. Hopefully the ‘ists will be thrown in the forgotten thrash of history.
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” –Adolf Hitler –( Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, 1976, p. 306)
Lib or Con??? As a 17 year old in 1950 I joined the RCAF. From then to 1957 the liberal Government gave us a raise in the fall of each year. We didn’t rush for the Cadillac Dealer, but it was a few bucks and we backed our Libs. Then Dief took over, and from then until I was discharged in 1960 we never got another cent. I continued to back the Liberals until the Epiphany: P E Trudeau. It took half a year after he was Elected to wait for the axe of good sense to fall, but it never has. He, and only he has made Canada the second rate Country it now is. And I can only hope that the rest of the country realizes what he has left us and left is the right word, and gives the heave-ho to whatever is left of the Natural Governing Party.
liberal fascist is an oxymoron. Since fascism is defined by its illiberalism and opposition to socialism, among other things. But hey if a pundit wants to call a polemic that to sell copies whatever. Don’t kid yourself that anybody takes it seriously outside wingnut sites like this one.
john at 11:25
You are aware that Hitler co-opted socialist rhetoric when he was trying to win votes? Right ? And he had the more radical left members of his party executed on the Night of the Long Knives to make his party more acceptable to industrial capitalists right? And he threw Social Democrats in concentration camps ? ? Because we wouldn’t want to cherry pick our facts to distort the truth right ?
Gray,
Are you selectively choosing to ignore that the man who first declared Hitler a threat and a maniac was that right-wing Conservative Winston Churchill? If WWII was started by “right-wingers” why then did Churchill not support his fellow Conservatives rather than oppose them? Any thoughts?
Arguing that one man’s position about a movement can characterize that movement is really just another example of cherry picking. Fascism contains elements of positions found on the right and left. Statism is one that is typically associated with the left, strong nationalism is typically associated with the right. I would argue that is when you sum up the parts fascism belongs on the right of the political spectrum. Does’t mean every right winger is a fascist though. Just as every leftist is not a Stalinist The whole issue is more complex , I suspect, than a hack like Goldberg can cope with.