Stephen Miller — at CPAC yesterday — called America's left wing "communists" and even "commies."
I think this is the only serious current use of the word "commie" that I've recorded in this blog. I've quoted a couple comic deployments of the word — here and here.
And I quoted Rush Limbaugh describing the "Dr. Strangelove" character Buck Turgidson: He just loves war and hates the Russians, hates the commies."
And I've got John Wayne in a Playboy interview — back in 1971:
Well, the liberals seem to be quite willing to have Communists teach their kids in school. The Communists realized that they couldn't start a workers' revolution in the United States, since the workers were too affluent and too progressive. So the Commies decided on the next-best thing, and that's to start on the schools, start on the kids. And they've managed to do it. They're already in colleges; now they're getting into high schools. I wouldn't mind if they taught my children the basic philosophy of communism, in theory and how it works in actuality. But I don't want somebody like Angela Davis inculcating an enemy doctrine in my kids' minds.
Hmm.
Are we really taunting lefties with the epithet "commie" these days?
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112 comments:
I was going to let this pass, but I just can't. And I'm a fan who doesn't think it's fair to criticize him for what he said in interviews decades ago. Still...
John Wayne said "inculcating"?
What's funny is how many lefties have embraced MAGA to some extent, like Russel Brand, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi. Well, maybe they haven't embraced MAGA, but they have definitely warmed to Trump. And a lot of people who support Trump have warmed to these same lefties.
The people who supported Joe Biden are not "COMMIES!", —They are fascists. Of course they hide it by accusing us of fascism, which is there go to move, but the rule "he who smelt it dealt it" applies, they are the actual authoritarians, the ones who want to clamp down on free speech, for example, "Free speech caused the holocaust!" is one thing we heard last week, well, the ones who want to clamp down on free speech are the fascists. But CPAC is kind of a grift, and grifters don't think very deeply.
It troubles me when Republicans throw around the all-purpose insult "communist" the way Democrats throw around the all-purpose insult "Fascist".
Did you know that John Wayne was an actor, not a cowboy?
@Strick: Chef's kiss!
I've always thought of 'commie' as less of an epithet than an abbreviation. (But maybe all abbreviations are epithets? An interesting question, perhaps someone should ask Grok.)
Accusing others of being 'commies' does have an old-fashioned feel, like something from the 50s or 60s. But to my ear, so would accusing them of being 'communists.' Back in the old days, communists were closeted, and had to be smoked out. Today, they openly identify as such in their LinkedIn and BlueSky profiles.
I think technically his primary opponents are more akin the fascist form of socialism as shown by the unholy alliance of big business and government under Obama and Biden. As Mussolini explained, “State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management.” Of course, nobody pays attention to the details of communism or fascism anymore and just uses them as pejoratives.
I think technically his primary opponents are more akin the fascist form of socialism as shown by the unholy alliance of big business and government under Obama and Biden.
@Bob B, I strongly agree. When Marc Andreessen was told by the Deep State that they would pick the winners and losers in the marketplace, that is the very textbook definition of fascism.
The commies and pinkos don’t seem to be the problem that is presented today by the Marxists. Isn’t that the very descriptor of the modern Dems?
- Krumhorn
"Commie" is essentially used as shorthand for authoritarianism exercised by committee or group. There's a need for a new catchy term. Trump's a genius at branding his opponents but he's probably too busy for this.
Sean Gleeson said..."I've always thought of 'commie' as less of an epithet than an abbreviation. "
I'd call it a diminutive (not in the good way).
From MW online: "...indicating small size and sometimes the state or quality of being familiarly known, lovable, pitiable, or contemptible"
…after a month I’m quite pleased with the direction of things and find this kind of parsing of Republicans old-fashioned in a blind-Biden-era sense. Not relevant…
Note that each time he uses the term he precedes it with the
descriptor "radical left." Perhaps some of our radical left commentors (Cookie?) can tell us what word best describes their political philosophy. If it is not Marxism or Communism, what is it?
…not to say I have a problem with anyone doing this at CPAC. It’s your thing. Have at it. I just find the catchphrases and epithets have become the irrelevant weapons of the losers on the other side….
Both the far right and the far left in America have long had a relationship of convenience with the truth, but the large scale refusal of the American right to accept objectively verifiable facts as truth (e.g. some participants in the events of January 6th did in fact carry weapons, no evidence was presented in a court of law that showed election fraud to the scale that would overturn the results of the 2020 election, there is no evidence of immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Missouri) makes any discussion of politics with them moot. There can be no reasonable expectation of understanding, agreement, or compromise when two sides can’t agree on a shared version of reality, and indulging misguided beliefs in alternative realities is a disservice to the truth.
Or to put it more succinctly, when accepting objective reality becomes a political statement, then yes, everything is politicized.
Drago: if you come by would you mind explaining what type of government exists in mainland China as you see it? Everyone is welcome to play, but I am interested to hear what Drago thinks on the problem.
This is simply the GOP adopting the Democrat's Alinsky playbook, and it's the reverse of the constant "define Woke" campaign. It doesn't matter than the Woke Democrats don't meet somebody's technical definition of "Communist". No Republican candidate has merited the accusation of Fascist or Nazi sympathies since Henry Wallace (FDR's VP in 1940 and open Communist sympathizer) first accused Wendell Wilkie of having them but that hasn't stopped the Democrats from calling almost every Republican Presidental candidate Hitler at some point.
Seeing the rise of Neo-Stalinism that first gained it's major traction under Obama, and knowing the danger, and mass murder than occurred under Stalin and other leftist rules, why shouldn't we hate "commies?"
Stephen Miller sounds like Howard W. Campbell Jr. in Slaughterhouse-Five trying to persuade the American POWs to join the Nazis to fight the Soviets.
Ah yes, let’s ignore the objective truth that Communism, Marxism, Fascism, National Socialism, etc ideologies all lead to the murder of millions of people, systematic and relentless. Let’s ignore the unassailable successful venture of a Constitutional Republic by comparison and therefore not attach our wheels to that great enterprise. Let’s focus on cats and dogs in Ohio. Good idea.
"Commie" is an icky term for academics, even when it's accurate. Long after the old blackboards with the long, dusty erasers are gone, they still hear the fingernails sounding "McCarthy" behind them every time they hear that word.
But no, it's not accurate in describing all the leftists. What is common to every single one of them, however, is their authoritarianism on every conceivable topic and their mistaken air of superiority.
I hate the way lots of people on the right call people who disagree with them communists. It's as stupid and inaccurate as people on the left calling people who disagree with them fascists.
but the large scale refusal of the American right to accept objectively verifiable facts as truth
This is bug-eyed leftie claptrap. Lefties are a manufacturing process of phony “objectively verifiable facts”. They routinely pervert science. You can instantly spot it when the words “evidence based” spout from their foul pie holes or when they create wholesale nonsense out of cherry picked tree rings in the Yamal.
No evidence of the election fraud was presented in court because no court would accept jurisdiction. And let’s not forget about the “mostly peaceful” BLM riots in cities across the country. The modern left is The Borg.
- Krumhorn
I think the left is dominated by corporate financial socialists who think they can control everything if they do the bidding for the money changers of the Federal reserve and the major hedge fund and investment bankers
some participants in the events of January 6th did in fact carry weapons, no evidence was presented in a court of law that showed election fraud to the scale that would overturn the results of the 2020 election, there is no evidence of immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Missouri
Oooh, carefully parsed! Let me try: parts of the American left do in fact defend the continued presence in elementary school libraries of some (decidedly non-science) books containing graphic depictions and descriptions of sexual acts, there are in fact female athletes who have lost scholarships and awards because they've had to compete for them against trans-"female" athletes, to say nothing of the female athletes who have been seriously injured by trans-"female" athletes, FEMA employees really were instructed to skip the houses of disaster victims who displayed any sign of support for Trump...
So the question is, what's important to you? Your side can say that the fact that a few J6 protestors/rioters carried non-firearm weapons tars all J6 participants as violent insurrectionists, but do you really believe it? Your side can say that the blatant gaming of the 2020 election on social media, in the news media, and via fall 2020 election regulation and law changes in critical areas played no role in Trump's defeat, but do you really believe it? Your side can say that no Haitian immigrants in Springfield have been found to have eaten dogs or cats, but in the end is that, specifically, the big issue with runaway immigration and the abuse of the asylum system?
I'll agree with you that our sides' different sets of facts make it damn hard to have a conversation about what's actually happening. But I think you have more heavy lifting than I do with regard to what the facts actually are and what they mean.
I agree with Krumhorn here, the term evidence-based is even more corrupt and corruptible than the sustainability bullshit.
There are both designed for clogging up the public processes overseen by the administrative state and slut shaming people into modifying their behavior
The use of "commie" as a modifier is most effective when combined with the word "bastards." Just a point of aesthetic order. It's logically incomprehensible, but amazingly effective.
Reading The Venona Secrets. Today's leftists are much more shrill and clever than those dead reds of the past.
It's the right's way of refusing to try talking to the left. The right has grown from National Review's bemused-with-the-left attitude, and Limbaugh's fond prankster engagement of leftist idiocies, to moronic, in the clickbait wars that commercial survival requires. Flag waving is everything.
"Listen, you pinko queer, ..." as i remember Buckley's TV fight with Truman Capote, losing it. Bad memory as it happens, but that's what I remember, and a better summary.
“…and you’ll stay plastered.” is a great suffix to just about any rant.
Harry Truman made a speech at the Washington Garden Club. He praised the ladies for the good “manure” that used to fertilize the flowers. One of them asked Harry’s wife, Bess if she could make him stop using such a vulgar word as “manure”, especially since he was the President of the United States. She replied, “Heavens no. It took me 25 years to get him to say ‘manure.'”
Jamie @ 7:28: outstanding comment, thanks.
I’d say the left follows the modern CCP model. And, whatever flavor of authoritarianism the latter actually follow, they call themselves communist.
Come to think of it, when have you heard a member of the modern left shun the “commie” label, and do so by actually criticizing communism rather than just denying it?
When will these people learn? The Global Left are not Communists they are Aristocratists. (If that's even a word.)
If you don’t have a problem with America’s intelligence agencies lying to the American people and the President they serve about the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop, then you don’t understand the complaints about the 2020 election, and probably don’t understand the changes going on now in government. Whether it swayed the election or not, it allowed a criminally corrupt family to enter the White House and avoided justice by giving themselves pardons. At the same time, the head of that family prosecuted his political foes and supporters for petty crimes argues as grave felonies. The both sides arguments is pretty hollow when you look at the degrees of deceit and punishment coming from the Democrats.
Progressives/Marxists/Communists!
Democrats! Pick your place on the spectrum.
Just like there are varying degrees of autism there are varying degrees of Democrats.
IMO wherever they are on the spectrum I despise them.
Gore Vidal not Capote on the WFB confrontation?
Thought it was Gore Vidal that Buckley trashed. (not Googling)
Gore Vidal sounds right.
Anonymous Coward said...
"Both the far right and the far left in America have long had a relationship of convenience with the truth..."
Ah, yes. The tactic of saying something so bland and vague that one would have a hard time objecting to it before you start slinging your blarney.
"...but the large scale refusal of the American right to accept objectively verifiable facts as truth (e.g. ...there is no evidence of immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Missouri)..."
Thanks for that one, I laughed out loud.
Mussolini said...
"Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."
(Trump does some initial chipping away at the State...)
The Left: "Fascist!!!!"
"Listen, you pinko queer, ..." as i remember Buckley's TV fight with Truman Capote, losing it. Bad memory as it happens, but that's what I remember, and a better summary.
Gore Vidal, actually, but yeah. I always preferred the less-used "parlor pink," to pinko, because it hints at how precious their ilk is. And "ilk" is a great term for group slandering as well.
That John Wayne quote has particular resonance for me. The superintendent of schools in the district where I live actually quoted Angela Davis as an educational authority. I pointed out unrepentant violent revolutionaries like Davis, Bill Ayer’s and Bernadine Dorn went into education because it was more insidiously effective than bombs.
“Commies” are Communists, who are Marxists. Much of the radical left are Marxists. AntiFA is avowedly Marxist, often utilizing their Hammer and Sickle emblems on their helmets and ballistic shields.
The primary difference between Communism and Fascism is who owns the means of production. In both cases, the government controls it, but communist systems control it more tightly, because they also own it. Short run, coming out of feudalism, top down, communist systems can work well, better than fascism or capitalism, until the economy gets too complex to manage centrally. Then it stagnates and falls behind.
There is a time, with an emerging society when economic growth is eaten up by population growth. As long as that is happening, the economy cannot take off, because Capital cannot be accumulated, allowing for the construction of factories, etc. Communism addresses this problem with brute force. Enough GDP is appropriated, at the barrel of a gun, to build those factories, allowed enough capital to be accumulated for the economy to take off.
Starting roughly a hundred years ago, communism and fascism clashed violently in Europe to determine the future of socialism. AntiFA was, at the time, controlled and funded by the USSR. They were the Black Shirts fighting Hitler’s Brown Shirts, for control of Germany. And that is where the enemies of Communism began the calling their enemies “Fascists” or “Nazis”. And that is how it stands today, those calling their enemies “Fascists” are Marxists, Communists, or “Commies”. Trump is doing no more than what the Marxist left has been doing for quite sometime.
Commie!
Mockutainment.
Progressive ideology is communist ideology, though. Probably half a million people in Warsaw Pact countries were employed for decades to spread Soviet disinformation. It took root, and grows here today for free. What else are we going to call it?
"Listen, you pinko queer, ..." as i remember Buckley's TV fight with Truman Capote, losing it. Bad memory as it happens, but that's what I remember, and a better summary.
If only this happened. Capote v. WFB would have been comic gold.
Absolutely hilarious how my comment about not politicizing things, and Jamie and Rocco barrels right in to go : ‘I don't, but the people I disagree politically with do’.
Isn’t that the ultimate sign of the times🙈
I sense though that the normative aspect of the message (that we should not politicize everything) may succumb to the descriptive aspect, which reflects a reality increasingly dominated by social media.
Politicization of everything doesn’t help us at all but seems inevitable when most of the discourse is brought online and people no longer take time to reflect on things and experiences but fall for memes, soundbites and catchy slogans and then spend most of the time reinforcing their own beliefs through eco chambers.
The shrewd politicians (Trump being the most effective around, sadly to say) are riding this trend, so far seemingly to the detriment of us all.
Democrazi? Perhaps. Let's ask Guac. Salsa... j/k 42.
Throw another baby on the barbie, it's over.
People don't understand that the Left is no longer old school Communist/marxist. The "Class struggle" has been dropped and replaced by "The race struggle". Marx looked at the world of 1848 and understood the path to power was through an alliance with the workers of the cities. Today's far-left sees POC's and immigrants as the way to power.
That's why we have DEI, its why we have a hysterial desire to import 3rd world immigrants. Its why we have "hate crimes" and laws discriiminating against white. The average white American is no longer the far-left ally, but the enemy.
I thought it was short for the current iteration of the Washington Football team...
Notice how the billionaires and the far-left are in an alliance. that's because the far-left has no real desire to hurt big business or rich people. Its all fake. They want power to change society and rake off the graft. The billionaires just want to keep making their money - and they love the social liberalism. Disney execs are all zillionaires, and they all hate America 1.0. They would vote for Bernie over Trump.
For the past century, communist (Bolshevik) propaganda has posited that anyone politically to their right is a fascist.
When American lefties call moderates, conservatives and libertarians "fascist", they are simply repeating communist propaganda.
When some of the most vocal and prominent members of your Party openly and proudly identify as Socialists, even presidential candidates in recent years, then it’s a fair use of the word Communist. Especially when their ideas like “Medicare for all” and the “Green New Deal” are immediately adopted by the Party even though those grand schemes have the inescapable effect of destroying our economy if implemented as written.
Brezhnev is telling his mother how well he has done. He shows her his suite in the Kremlin, tells her of his country house with a fully stocked kitchen, his Black Sea villa, his limousine. She says: ‘This is all really nice...but what will you do if the Communists come back?’
Brezhnev and Joe Biden became wealthy the same way.
It was Gore Vidal, not Truman Capote, who had the run-in with Bill Buckley. They were supposed to be having a genteel debate staged by one of the networks during the 1968 Democratic convention.
Also, only half the story is being told here. These two had a longstanding mutual antipathy. The reason Buckley got so angry is because Vidal called him a "crypto-Nazi" on air, and had been saying similar things about him in print for years before. We are quite inured to that these days, but in 1968 that was a pretty serious slander, especially for someone like Buckley who was a WWII veteran.
This post reminds me of on of my favorite songs to sing along to, Charlie Daniels "Uneasy Rider", when he wanted to get some bar toughs distracted so he could make his get away, he kicked one of their companions in the knee and then accused him of various transgressions:
He was still bent over holdin' on to his knee
But everyone else was lookin' and listenin' to me
And I layed it on thicker and heavier as I went
I said would you believe this man has gone as far
As tearin' Wallace stickers off the bumpers of cars
And he voted for George McGovern for president
Well he's a friend of them long-haired hippie type pinko fags
I betcha he's even got a Commie flag
Tacked up on the wall inside of his garage
He's a snake in the grass I tell ya guys
He may look dumb but that's jus a disguise
He's a mastermind in the ways of espionage.
Which I guess is another way of me saying that I can't take anyone calling other people Commies too seriously. Not that there aren't any, just not as many as some would have us believe.
Nancy!
Thank you! Until today, I didn’t know what the term “chef’s kiss” meant.
"The use of "commie" as a modifier is most effective when combined with the word "bastards." Just a point of aesthetic order. It's logically incomprehensible, but amazingly effective."
I think it's most effective with "rotten doctor":
"As his fist hit the icebox/He said he’s going to kill me/If I don’t get out the door/In two seconds flat/'You unpatriotic/Rotten doctor Commie rat.'"
Jesse Kelly … who is fabulous… and correct… calls the left dirty communists all the time.
Mobster left also works.
Shorter anonymous coward:
You will think and express correct thoughts (with narratives provided) on Jan 6th and joe Biden insertion… or else.
General Ripper was a bad parody of Lemay, of course Kubrick couldnt really consider that the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces thought the same way,
The modern democrat party are mostly on the take grifters, lying liars who lie, and authoritarians.. fully on board with censorship and CBS Margaret Brennan lies about how the use of free speech is so intolerable.. she linked “free speech” to nazism itself. That’s how horrible the democrat hack media have become.
“Evidence Based” used by media who dutifully hide actual evidence. Remember, democrats in power are protected by the communist press at all times .
But they are communists, and many very proud of it, though Maoism is the popular iteration since the Left got mad at Russia. It's absurd to close your eyes to this.
Communism, socialism, Marxism, progressivism, fascism, wokeism -- they all have as their goal the remaking of society by giving more and more control over it to a cabal of elites who have the power (and desire) to punish individuals and groups who fail to get in line with their values and dictates. All of these leftist philosophies are, by definition, anti-freedom.
Anyone today calling the Dems "communists" and "commies" is either purposely lying for propaganda purposes, to smear the opposition and terrify the public, OR a complete idiot. Today's Dems, a few handful excepted, are basically moderate to slightly progressive Republicans.
The modern democrat party are mostly on the take grifters, lying liars who lie, and authoritarians …
@Peachypeachy, that’s almost right. I’d add in people who just plain like to screw with ordinary folks — low flow toilets in places where water is abundant, washing machines that don’t get your clothes clean, the plastic straw ban, and the Biden administration’s war on gas stoves and gas furnaces.
Supposed, an uncle of mine was in a poker group with John Wayne. Supposedly.
Sometimes an abbreviation is just an abbreviation.
But if the taunt was intended, perhaps it was done to spare them the hard work of looking for hidden meanings of hand wave gesture or OK finger sign.
Micro Soft (msnbc, MSN) are the least credible in the sea of Soviet sources.
"some participants in the events of January 6th did in fact carry weapons," My Democrat friends assure me that they carried guns, that in fact that woman who was shot and killed, they claim was carrying a gun. These people are not "far left" yet they make these verifiably untrue claims.
How many court cases were rejected based on standing, where the evidence was never heard? It's stupid to believe that if one side is using all of their institutional power to prevent elections from being looked into, that that side is doing so solely because they know for a fact that the elections were clean as a whistle. If that were the case, the best course would be to prove it, not to suppress investigation.
Today's Dems, a few handful excepted, are basically moderate to slightly progressive Republicans.
As usual, Cookie has it backwards. Today's Republicans include people who formerly thought of themselves as moderate Democrats.
"Today's Dems, a few handful excepted, are basically moderate to slightly progressive Republicans."
In a way this is true. Today's Republicans, at least those outside of the core MAGA movement, are basically moderate Democrats, which is to say people who want to use state power to control our lives in as much detail as they can manage. And using AI, that's a lot of fine detail they can potentially manage.
The left is more adept at picking pejoratives than the right is, and more adept at selecting tactics. At times, it is useful to deploy the tactics of fascism - for instance, to leverage social media companies into complying with policy choices against a free-speech environment. The leverage was the threat of government power being applied. At other times, the tactics of the socialist/communist collective are useful, for instance with the rationing of healthcare and the extraction of money from one class, to be transferred to another, by regulation. Or, the clandestine use of government resources to import illegal aliens, confer a protected status, and then set them up by the thousands in small towns, to disrupt society on a local basis. The accurate work for all of this is 'tyranny'. But 'tyrant' is not as useful or as powerful a pejorative as 'commie'. But the tyrant always seeks to make his organization bigger and more powerful, and less accountable, on every front.
Given that most people don’t really understand the nuanced and not so nuanced differences between these ideologies, I think anyone who uses them publicly should be asked to define them right then and there. That tactic may reduce their use, or maybe educate us, one way or the other…;).
Nancy, you seem to have a high tolerance for actual Stalinists, which is either failed irony or appalling ignorance. There is no equivalence.
Every K-12 public school curricula depicts murdering, capital-C Communists Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and Che Guevara as heroes, which is not surprising, as capital-C Communist and wealthy terrorist Bill Ayers served as the National VP in charge of curriculum for the largest association of teacher-trainer professors, AERA, for a decade. Davis has made millions as a Communist lecturer here, in the former Soviet Bloc, and then as a Santa Cruz professor. Communists are always the wealthiest pigs in the room. My state representative for 20 years in Atlanta was a CPUSA member. I know dozens of Communists and Marxists in academia and government. I've had three Communist organizations try to recruit me: WILPF, the NLG, and AFSC.
Obama was raised by Communists and groomed by Maoists and Communists in Chicago. Open Maoist Anita Dunn was brought to DC by Obama, who then installed her in the Oval Office to be one of Biden's handlers.
This stuff isn't exactly subtle. And it is one-sided. Dumb-bunny, upper-class, Westchester commies have taken over the DNC, even if they're too stupid to articulate the theory.
“Gramscian Marxists” is the more accurate term.
Senator Joe McCarthy was wrong. The infiltration he was targeting was far far far worse than he imagined. But he was less wrong than anyone else.
If only Stephen Miller would use accurate terminology like proto-communists, communist-adjacent, useful idiots, and communist sympathizer, the world would be a better place. Here in Los Angeles, our Mayor is a former member of the Venceremos Brigade. She's not currently a communist. She is merely an amoral and incompetent aggregator of power and a redistributor of power.
What percentage of the population understands the number of people killed by communism? But of course, we haven't yet tried true communism.
IMO the only pertinent observation made in this thread so far that actually distinguishes the current Left from old school Communists was made by RCOCEAN II. They replaced class warfare with race and gender warfare. But that's more a distinction about methods than goals.
Marx's Ten Planks in the Communist Manifesto seem to overlap quite a bit with the Democrats policies. I'd say they've got at least seven of ten, some partially (for example, inheritance is only taxed, not (yet) confiscated).
Does it make a difference, how would Karen Bass's actions be any different, Angela Davis should have been dispatched years ago, for her part in the George Jackson affair, before she started her Gramscian trek,
Any remaining distinctions can be pretty easily attributed to the fact that old school communists were on the outside trying to take over the dominant culture, and current leftists control the dominant culture (due to the efforts of the old school communists). Very little is funnier than their attempts to maintain the veneer of brave rebels fighting against the system that they themselves have infiltrated, perverted and fully control.
Marxist, Communist, Nazi, Fascist, Slightly Progressive Republican, are all broad terms for people we don't like. What matters is one and only one term.
Authoritarian.
It is very common to mankind for someone to want to remake the world in his own image. Some want to do it to gain personal power, and some want to do it in the belief they are doing it to help others. Ultimately those who gain the power to remake society succumb to the first motivation while believing they still stand for the second.
Political party does not matter. Ideology does not matter. Good intentions do not matter. People in power abuse it. That is why freedom matters most. It does not matter who is in power, you should not cheer them on as they dismantle your rights. You are effectively choosing to harm others because the (expressed) intentions are good.
If Trump started dismantling freedom instead of the freedom-choking bureaucracy, I would turn on him in an instant.
Recent Bernie Sanders:
“The workers! … I got the money from The Workers! .. From the Workers!”
That doesn’t sound communist at all. lol.
But of course, we haven't yet tried true communism.
38 countries tried to get Marxism right over the past century. 36 abandoned it, amidst much suffering, while 2 basket-case shitholes still cling to it, also amidst much suffering.
One way or another, I will be dead before they get another crack at it in my country. If they dare try, I'll be with the armed counter-revolutionary death squads, of course. It would be glorious to kill or die in the fight to exterminate collectivism from the planet, especially at my age.
>Strick said...
Still...John Wayne said "inculcating"?<
Yeah, probably. He was a member of his HS debating team and was president of its Latin Society. Also, pre-law at USC.
Chef’s kiss to Hombre.
Strick: "John Wayne said "inculcating"?"
I remember in the 70s there was a trend in journalism to buff up the speech of interviewees. It was especially prevalent in urban newspapers, when interviewing urban residents (of all colors) with non-standard grammar. I guess it was seen as disrespectful to quote neighborhood dwellers exactly ("I seen 'em in da alley"). But everyone knew what was being done when Stash was quoted saying "I viewed the offenders in the rear of my residence."
But also, John Wayne was a high school grad at a time (1925) when hardly anyone bothered to finish high school, and he attended USC until he lost his football scholarship due to injury, at a time when hardly anyone went to college. So he probably was more articulate than most people gave him credit for.
Sort of like Reagan.
JSM
Damned straight narciso @10:46AM. “Sweet black angel” my ass!
“Fucking degenerate Marxists” works for me.
Marx on Napoleon, and exactly what the leftists see as Trump today, from which take their talking points:
Harassed by the contradictory demands of his situation, and compelled, like a sleight-of-hands performer, to keep, by means of constant surprises, the eyes of the public riveted upon himself as the substitute of Napoleon, compelled, consequently, everyday to accomplish a sort of “coup” on a small scale, Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois social system into disorder; he broaches everything that seemed unbroachable by the revolution of 1848; he makes one set people patient under the revolution and another anxious for it; he produces anarchy itself in the name of order by rubbing off from the whole machinery of Government the veneer of sanctity, by profaning it, by rendering it at once nauseating and laughable. He rehearses in Paris the cult of the sacred coat of Trier with the cult of the Napoleonic Imperial mantle. But when the Imperial Mantle shall have finally fallen upon the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, then will also the iron statue of Napoleon drop down from the top of the Vendome column. [#16 A prophecy that a few years later, after Bonaparte’s coronation as Emperor, was literally fulfilled. By order of Emperor Louis Napoleon, the military statue of the Napoleon that originally surmounted the Vendome was taken down and replaced by one of first Napoleon in imperial robes.]
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, its end paragraph.
Nuttin’ from nuttin’, but a school chum of mine used to hang with one of Wayne’s daughters (Aissa) and I remember him saying “the lady sure likes to party”. She was funny and a lot of fun to be around according to friend Tim.
@Peachypeachy (10:50), I imagine that Bernie is still trying to wrap his head around the realization that last November the workers of the world (well the workers of the USA, anyway) had an opportunity to vote to continue down the path towards Marxism laid out by Obama, Biden, and Harris, but instead chose Donald Trump. American workers are a cantankerous lot.
If Trump started dismantling freedom instead of the freedom-choking bureaucracy, I would turn on him in an instant.
Same.
I didn’t remember Buckley using pinko in that rant. It’s online, including PBS of all places. The beginning of Buckley’s retort is garbled but sounds like ‘you queer’ without the pinko. Which perhaps sounds way worse for Buckley without the modifier. As I recall didn’t Buckley apologize years later?
Big Mike… yep. Real workers can get along just fine without union and Democratic Party pick pockets.
People who say they are Anti-Fascists are Communists.
"So long, mommie. I'm off to kill a commie," was a familiar song line. Actually, it was from Tom Lehrer's "So Long, Mom! I'm Off to Drop the Bomb."
Talk of "commies" and calling one's opponents communists is infantile, but it goes along with all the talk of impending fascism. Both parties are still more or less in the center (however that's understood) and neither communism nor fascism (in their classic forms) are on the horizon.
Lehrer was quite scathing. Was he accurately describing his times or indulging in some infantile caricaturing of his own? Was he harshly satirizing an era that needed castigation or just trying to get a laugh?
So long, mom,
I'm off to drop the bomb,
So don't wait up for me.
But though I may roam,
I'll come back to my home
Although it may be
A pile of debris.
Remember, mommy,
I'm off to get a commie,
So send me a salami
And try to smile somehow.
I'll look for you when the war is over,
An hour and a half from now!
seems to me that most of the Left in this country are basically communists when it comes to other people's money and freedoms because they believe they are going to be the ones in charge of it all.
@john mosby
Oh, I get it and I knew Michael Morrison, along with his good buddy Wardell Bond, played football at Southern Cal and that how they met John Ford. Neither were dumb nor fools.
It just seem unusual that John Wayne in his public persona would use a word like that, not unless he was mocking some pompous professor who had used it to describe what they were doing.
Ann Althouse said...
"The use of "commie" as a modifier is most effective when combined with the word "bastards."
I thought Ratt missed a golden marketing opportunity to call one of their albums Ratt: Commie Bastard.
"I imagine that Bernie is still trying to wrap his head around the realization that last November the workers of the world (well the workers of the USA, anyway) had an opportunity to vote to continue down the path towards Marxism laid out by Obama, Biden, and Harris, but instead chose Donald Trump."
To reiterate my previous comment, anyone who sincerely (as opposed to mere name calling) connects Obama, Biden, and Harris with even markedly "progressive liberalism," much less "communism," is astonishingly ignorant.
I throw around the epithet "communist" all the time, especially when my daughter describes the right as fascists. While the left are certainly Gramscians I think their goal is much more fascist than communist.
I don't think the cultural marxists want to seize the means of production but rather to envelop them in a web of regulation like Mussolini, who was popular with FDR's early Brain Trust. The Democrats program is much the same as the Nazis, once stripped of German nationalism.
But, you have to go to war with the insults you have.
re: Milwaukee guy:
It ("...program is much the same as the Nazi...") seems much more to be what Trump is getting at now than the Dems. I don't see any indication the Dems are faintly comparable.
rhardin said:
"Marx on Napoleon, and exactly what the leftists see as Trump today, from which take their talking points:...etc."
Yep, sounds pretty much like Der Drumpf. It has to be a mere freak coincidence of personalities, as I'm sure Trump has never read a book, (even the one "he wrote"), much less a history book about Napoleon's manner of ruling.
I don't know where you got the Miller quote but the dashes around "the Communists" should be commas as I heard it.
The Iron Law of Communism: Communists are only world class at 3 things:
--Killing People
--Stealing their Stuff
--Lying
Everything that Communists do will always trend towards these three characteristics.
And if you look at what was done during the Biden administration, well, if the shoe fits . . .
Killing people? Check: through bad treatment protocols (intubation!?!), forcing nursing homes to take in infected people, rejecting potential meds, remdisivir. (To say nothing of inadequately safety-tested prophylaxis).
Stealing their stuff: semi-check. Massively inflating the currency stole a lot of value from people, though it's not as obvious as what was done in, say, Venezuela.
Lying: Check. Obvious. All the time. Couldn't stop doing it even when lying wasn't necessary.
Prof. M. Drout: You forgot 4) Infiltrating institutions and purging them of non-communists in ways that make Joe McCarthy look like a DEI consultant.
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