Good old Feb. 29th – the day when The Man steals labor from salaried employees.
Random items:
William F. Buckley died. His was the sort of conservatism my family was steeped in. I drifted from the GOP when it looked less and less like a party championing that sort of conservatism. Neocons and social conservatives were never really his thing. I suspect that, were I to review Buckley’s positions again today, I would find that I’ve spent too much time associating with dirty hippies to really agree with him anymore. Be that as it may, his influence on American political discourse was significant. No doubt to his chagrin, he will forever be associated with a counterpart on the Left, Gore Vidal. Apparently Vidal was not feeling overly sentimental at Buckley’s passing:
“I was never on his show,†Gore Vidal, with whom Mr. Buckley had a famous feud, said on Thursday. “I don’t like fascism much.â€
For all of Buckley’s eloquence, possibly his most memorable quote is with respect to Vidal and is not urbane:
Now listen, you queer, you stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.
Update Someone clued me into another winning quote from Buckley:
“The central question that emerges…is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.”
–William F. Buckley, National Review, August 24, 1957
The more I learn, the less I like him.
——-
Ruth Holladay has an interesting view from the grassroots of the Obama campaign where she is volunteering in Ohio. She contrasts the bottom-up Obama campaign from the top-down Clinton campaign. That’ll be one of the big stories if Obama pulls this thing off – Obama’s ability to effectively organize on the ground and the ability of a strong ground game to knock out the Clinton’s air campaign.
IMO,Here is the summary quote from the above article by Ruth Holloday :Think of that. 8,000 people, ready to burn off a week’s vacation so a Chicago Democrat can secure the nomination….
Anyone raised in the Midwest knows that a ‘Chicago Democrat’ usually is muttered while holding one’s nose,and is a code for everything corrupt and immoral that any politican can be accused of. So yes, the Obama experience is a brand new chapter in politics:Here comes a ‘White Knight’ from Chicago who happens to be Black.
Buckley had repudiated the sentiment seen in that quote from ’57. He said that he was wrong to take that position.
As for the Vidal thing, I’d beat the crap out of that punk too if he called me a Nazi to my face. There is such a thing in the legal code as “fighting words”. That would be one. Of course, queer might be another one.
Of course, what kind of a fight would you get between Vidal and Buckley? A lot of slapping and crying, I’d bet.
Buckley did “evolve” past that 1957 quote, as did a lot of people. As for the quip to Vidal, that is priceless, absolutely priceless. It reminds me of the famous quote attributed to Winston Churchill where a woman seated next to him at a dinner notes “Mr Churchill, You ARE DRUNK!” in a shocked and condescending tone. To which Churchill supposedly replied something to the effect of “Yes Madam, but you are UGLY and tomorrow I shall be sober”.
It’s always amusing to hear someone on the Left complain about another’s “fascism”.
Not that I’m a big fan of Rush, but I remember hearing a caller label him a fascist. Rush’s rejoinder: “Caller, define fascist.” The reply was mumbling and stumbling…
Eric –
Why did he stumble?
fascist, n. A conservative doing or saying something that a liberal doesn’t like. See also ‘Nazi’.
Whaaaahh!
See e.g., Islamofascist.
Fascism, n.: A doctrine of right-wing authoritarianism; that is, a theory of strong, centralized government power populated by the existing power elites
…as contrasted with left-wing authoritarianism, which seeks to establish a strong, centralized government power populated by a new set of power elites sometimes referred to as a “vanguard party”.
Seems pretty easy to me.
Oh, come on – this is the interweb!
Isn’t anyone going to link to dictionary.com?
Branden…from Merriam-Webster
fascism
One entry found.
fascism
Main Entry: fas·cism
Pronunciation: \ˈfa-ˌshi-zəm also ˈfa-ˌsi-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian fascismo, from fascio bundle, fasces, group, from Latin fascis bundle & fasces fasces
Date: 1921
1often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition…
OR:
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) – Cite This Source – Share This
fas·cism /ˈfæʃɪzÉ™m/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[fash-iz-uhm] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun 1. (sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
2. (sometimes initial capital letter) the philosophy, principles, or methods of fascism.
3. (initial capital letter) a fascist movement, esp. the one established by Mussolini in Italy 1922–43.
——————————————————————————–
[Origin: 1915–20; < It fascismo, equiv. to fasc(io) bundle, political group (see fasces) + -ismo -ism]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
OR:
WordNet – Cite This Source – Share This fascism
noun
a political theory advocating an authoritarian hierarchical government (as opposed to democracy or liberalism)
WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.
There are about 10 more I could cite, and NONE say “right-wing”.
So I assume that’s just YOUR definition of fascism?
Well, what does “right wing” mean, for that matter?
I always viewed the governments of Stalin and Hitler as being fairly similar for all practical purposes.
These new dictionary definitions presented above really bother me because they are too tidy and what I remmber learning in high school political science class years ago. Am I a victim of ‘liberal education’? Fascism is RW and is nationalism gone extreme and LW is socialism and economic-based and regime is accomplished by redistribution of wealth by confiscation of private property..That was my basic high school definitions as I remember back in the 50’s …
Both regimes,because they become totalitarian , have to be kept secure by strong internal policing and both scapegoat certain groups of people who are considered threats to the power structure,and both regimes fearany intelligentsia ( I learned by first hand conversation from former East Germans that to be among the intelligentsia and under suspicion was just a matter of being educated and in a place of influence such as any teacher.)Say one suspicious overheard comment and you’d be assigned an informer who would document your moves for life..Both LF and RW government tend toward paranoia and have enemies’ lists.
The classic battle in 20ieth century was international socialism,called communism, because it was totalitarian, vs nationalism become fascism, i.e Stalin vs Hilter/Mussolini.Who was more nationalistic than Hitler and who was more for wealth distribution than Stalin? With classic fascism the powerful of the private sector form an equal wing of government,and everything is done ‘in the name of the homeland’ and with socialism/communism the private sector has been taken over by the government elite ruling class and everything is done ‘for the good of the working man’ but both are just political mottos,and indiviudal rights are squelched. So, in reality LF and RW are both totalitarian, non-representative government, held in place by military force.
For what it’s worth, the new book “Liberal Fascism” answers all these questions and, believe it or not, is a good read.
There was nothing “right wing” about Hitler or Mussolini. They were socialists. Thus the term “National Socialism”, as opposed to the “International Socialism” of Communism.
It is very dangerous to take current political terms and try to fit turn of the last century politics into them. Things like the progressive movement just can’t be fit into our current political “boxes” of liberal and conservative.
And Bill Buckley, more than almost anyone else, can be thanked for that. Little remembered is how he single handedly kicked the Birchers and isolationists out of the conservative movement.
“Liberal fascism”?
That’s a good one.
Hitler’s approach to the gays was kind of right wing, no? Of course, while they were obsessing about how best to persecute the gays, some of those doing the persecuting were also gay. Thankfully such hypocrisy has been relegated to the dustbin of history.
dave neiwert has done a good job debunking all that liberal fascism nonsense.
Jonah Goldberg is an idiot.
Terms like ‘liberal fascism’ make communication impossible on a mutually understandable level.Since the 90s political science terminolgy has been re-oriented by a new breed of activist conservative thinkers. And isn’t it suspicious that everything extreme is now left of center on the official conservative political spectrum? Both fascism and socialism are now left of center. There is no political philosophy right of center that is not good and holy and even the dubious center itself belongs to the left.
In a political analysis of the presidential nomination campaign in today’s NYT a reason conservatives give why they will not support McCain is that they’re afraid he will compromise with liberals and give away conservative gains. That’s a great insight into what this country has been faced with politically for so long..
I knew it was coming and I’m not disappointed. Any time there is a discussion of Fascism, wingnuts show up to proclaim that the Nazi Party was really a leftist movement because “socialist” was printed on the label.
By that logic, the “People’s Democratic Repubic of Korea” is a republic, is democratic, and exists for the benefit of its people rather than its resident autocrat.
Funny how the conservatives’ self-advertised suspicion of government ascribes the utmost sincerity to political actors…when it suits conservatives’ own rhetorical purposes.
Next the nutters will be telling us the Holy Roman empire was really a holy Roman empire. (For the non-historians out there, it was none of the three.)
As far as “right-wing” goes, “desirous of a fascist state” works well for me as a rule of thumb, given that the fasces typically bundled are corporate welfare on a massive scale, a highly regimented social order, and lionization of individual politicans over actual policy. Witness the hard-core 30% of the Republican Party that continue to support their party–and particularly George W. Bush–despite the, uh, creative application of economically conservative principles the GOP applied while it controlled all three branches of government. Another telling example is Bush’s preference for letting the PROTECT act expire if it lacks retroactive, transactional immunity for telecom companies complicit in violations of Americans’ constitutional rights.
Doug,
As the authoritarianism quotient grows, ideology falls by the wayside in favor of totalitarianism, and right-wing and left-wing dictators come to resemble each other closely. Hannah Arendt’s book The Origins of Totalitarianism is supposed to speak at length on this–I’ve always been meaning to read it.
I can say that anarchists like Mikhail Bakhunin were expelled from the socialist movement in the 1870s because he accurately predicted the course that state communism would take, over forty years before the world’s first avowedly communist state. This was not the sort of dissent that Karl Marx was going to tolerate in “his” International movement.
And, yeah, Jonah Goldberg is a dork. The world owes Doghouse Riley a debt of thanks for his regular demolitions of Goldberg’s excrescent screeds. But for the breadth of his audience, Goldberg wouldn’t merit the attention.
You guys are real open minded. None of you read the book, I take it.
Nice.
Michelle Obama is a fascist.
and i take it you didn’t read my link, either. nice.
jonah goldberg. jewish conservative oxymoron? or just moron?
williamfbuckley once advocated decriminalizing marijuana. thats good enough for me.
there are lots of GOP hers who are stoners, thwt if outed, would be giggleworthy.
I wholeheartedly advocate for the smoking of as much marijuana as each of us is able to without falling out of our chairs.
it is the most positive intixicant that the lord placed on earth for mankinds enjoymnet. if everybody got stones, there would be nowars, and the pharmaceutical industry would be out of work,unless they cultivated hoosier homegrown themselves. eli lilly- get stoned!
smoke dope daily, hourly, often!
export to our “enemies”. grow hemp for cellulosic ethanol,, to fuel america. hemp-o-diesel. hemp for victory!
decriminalize MJ ASAp!
david c roach wrote:
Dude. You’ve had way too much already.