May 20, 2008
Czechoslovakia and Governor Ronald Reagan.
It is 40 years ago today on The Time That Blog Forgot and Pravda warns Czechoslovakia about backsliding into bourgeois democracy and Governor Reagan tells us that the New Left is really an "unwashed" version of "the old right, practicing storm trooper tactics."
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15 comments:
Ah, not 1958. That was Hungary. And 1956.
Poets were a little different then.
Let's see - May 1968 - MLK Jr. has been murdered, the Viet Nam war is still going on, and draftees, rather than volunteers, are being killed in a war Johnson has finally decided that we lack the will and ability to win.
So students are protesting - and Ronnie talks to Southern Republican politicians about how reprehensible are these protests.
In the words of Bob Dylan, the students are ceasing to be "Only A Pawn In Their Game"
Bobby Kennedy, who is running for the Democratic Presidential Nomination, has some plans to reconcile the competing groups in the United States.
We can't look ahead, because we would see the Russian tanks in Prague, the murder of Bobby, the Chicago cops beating the kids outside the Democratic Convention, more troops killed in 'Nam - and the nation left with the choice of Johnson's V.P., or Nixon, or George C. Wallace - and we might seriously entertain a permanent vacation in Australia.
ANN - at least you picked an article on someone destined to live a long time.
Forty years ago last Saturday, I got my second Purple Heart.
I think Jonah Goldberg has recently proven decisively that the "old right," i.e. Hitler and Fascist Italy are really just another version of the Left. They were only called "right" because the soviets saw them as opponents.
The real right are the the Burkean conservatives.
But, why quibble with labels (as fellow fascist Obama has instructed us).
You are truly Orwellian Sloan. If you really are an attorney, why don't you do some pro bono work, help someone in need. and contribute something of value to society, instead of just being an ungrateful, selfish taker. You might feel better about yourself and your wasted life. Your thinking is so twisted and scrunched up that the only solution is to put you into a ballet class with Sgt. Ted. That's it - a gross and ungraceful pas de deux for the insensitive, tasteless, baseless, uncoordinated boorish oaf that you are.
the Viet Nam war is still going on, and draftees, rather than volunteers, are being killed in a war Johnson has finally decided that we lack the will and ability to win.
Actually about 25% of those who served in Vietnam were draftees. Almost 70% of those who served in WW2 were draftees.
Go figure
You are truly Orwellian Sloan.
Wow, I have never been referred to as an Orwellian-selfish- individual. Does that compute?
LutherM--
I went to Viet Nam in 1967. I have a company roster with 182 names on it. Out of that many people, 11 (myself included) were draftees.
In the US radicals were fighting to impose what radicals in Czechoslovakia were trying to free themselves of.
Something nostalgic lefty Boomers conveniently ignore.
In the US radicals were fighting to impose what radicals in Czechoslovakia were trying to free themselves of.
Something nostalgic lefty Boomers conveniently ignore.
I think they simply viewed those folks in Prague as misguided and in need of 'enlightenment'. So what if it took a Soviet division or two to make it happen.
"truly Orwellian"
Actually, Sloanasaurus is quite right, as even a quick reading of Goldberg's book on Liberal Fascism will indicate.
LutherM gives the standard liberal view of the year 1968. Others recall the same events quite differently.
As in World War II, draftees and volunteers are fighting in a war, this one initiated by JFK and advanced by LBJ, both Democrats.
The MSM came out against the war, and Johnson conceded that their efforts were contributing to a crucial loss of will to win. For example, the press described the Tet offensive as a US loss, rather than the major victory it actually was.
Students were protesting as the last gasp of the worldwide socialist movement that had begun at the turn of the century, never realizing they were mere pawns in a game they did not understand at all.
Bobby Kennedy, who is running for the Democratic Presidential Nomination, was killed by a young Jerusalem-born Muslim named Sirhan Sirhan. In 1973, Arafat and the PLO assassinated US Ambassador Cleo Noel and Charge d'Affaires George Curtis Moore when Nixon refused to release Sirhan, among others. Unrelated? Unlikely.
At the the Democratic Convention, leftist "student" organizations intentionally provoked rioting to start "the revolution". Cooler heads prevailed, and the terrorist factions of the SDS remained active, while everyone else went to work and had kids, making yuppies in the 1980s. SDS, Weathermen Ayers and Dohrn, unashamed of their their terrorism, introduced Barack Obama to the rest of the US.
AllenS, thank you for your service. Really.
Cheers,
Victoria
Thank you, Victoria.
Anyone who wants to understand the essential overlap between the Old Right and the New Left could start with Karl Hess' book "Dear America." The Old Right was a loose coalition of thinkers that was anti-imperialist and hated FDR. The New Left shared the Old Right's aversion to concentrated political power, and carried it to its logical conclusion by emphasizing as well the essential similarities and affiliation between concentrated political power on the one hand and concentrated economic power on the other.
Hess started as a speechwriter for Barry Goldwater, and remained friends with and appreciative of Goldwater despite their growing philosophical differences in later years. Hess was responsible for the line, "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue" (not sure I got the quote exactly right). After Hess moved from the right to the left, he made a special point of emphasizing that one thing he never was was a damn "liberal" -- liberals being people who are very keen on concentrating political power in their own elite hands.
Another interesting point of overlap for me is in Albert Jay Nock, who was a quintessential representative of the "Old Right" but who was also a very appreciative admirer of Henry George. George, of course, espoused an economic philosophy in which the equal right of all the land and other natural resources was recognized -- a philosophy which obviously has egalitarian overtones and which has been mischaracterized by critics as socialistic.
i.e. "equal right of all to the land"
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