Excerpt from Richard Miniter
By the way, aren't you tired of the whole "you're-a-fascist" line? The Fascists and the Nazis are only on the right if you yourself are communist-and therefore, they are barely to the right of you on the political spectrum. To the rest of us, Fascists, Nazis and communists are different sub-species of the same murderous monster, a blood-drenched beast that believes in the power of the state and seeks to dismember or murder every individual and every group in society that refuses to bend to its will.
Those of us who believe in free speech and, its economic equivalent, free trade, limited government, tolerance, the equal freedom of the artist and the entrepreneur, the separation of church and state, and so on, are the enemies of fascists and, their ill-clothed counterparts, communists. Indeed, capitalism is the opposite of fascism, which favors government control of the every economic decision. Calling us (liberals and conservatives) "fascists" simply reveals the Left's nostaglia for truly evil enemies (like Nazis) and its current reluctance to engage in a battle of ideas. So Bush is a fascist and so is Heinlein.
I was covering a anti-globalization street demonstration in Prague in 2000 for the Wall Street Journal and noticed that the crowd was chanting loudly in Spanish. I asked a demonstrator why this pan-European crowd was reciting Spanish slogans instead of Czech. "Don't you know it?" he asked. "This is one of the great anti-Fascist chants from the Spanish Civil War." In other words, it was from the 1930s.
Even the young communists think like old men, living in a glorious past that has long since passed. This is why they still want to talk about McCarthy, Nixon, Vietnam, "the 1960s," the minimum wage, the draft, the United Nations.
Their solution for the Iraq war and the Iran A-Bomb? Get France, Britain, Russia and China to agree. In other words, get our World War II allies to join us. Hasn't the world changed in 60 years? The French and British have given away their empires and forfeited a role in global affairs. They have one aircraft carrier each. Russia is failing state that could not rescue the crew on one of their own submarines. China could play only a bit part in the tsunami relief effort and is actively involved with two members of the axis of evil (Iran and North Korea). Surely India, Japan and Turkey are more important to us now?
The Left's one relatively new concern is global warming. Yes, they have been threatening an environmental catastrophe since the late 1950s and climate change since the early 1970s, but it, nonetheless, is among their fresher concerns. Still, it is worth pointing out that worrying about the weather is principally a concern of the aged. The rest of us are too busy hurrying to work.
***********************
ELSEWHERE
The above cartoon refers in part to this story about an actual ban on Santa hats.
Sunnis target shitheads in DETROIT: "As they repaired the broken windows of at least a dozen businesses and mosques along Warren Avenue in Detroit, many Iraqi Shi'ite Muslims wondered Monday if the vandalism was retaliation by local supporters of Saddam Hussein who resented that they celebrated the hanging of the Iraqi dictator. Sometime late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, someone vandalized at least nine businesses and three mosques, all but one Shi'ite, according to Ali Zwen, manager of the Kufa Cultural Forum, a mosque at Warren and Archdale that sustained $4,000 in damage."
New book shows U.S. involvement in the Middle East long preceded 'Israel lobby' : "In 1844, a biblical scholar and professor of Hebrew at New York University published a pamphlet urging the establishment of a Jewish state in the place then known as Palestine. The name of this early Zionist who argued for the recreation of Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel: George Bush. But the astonishing thing about this manifesto is not just that the author was a forebear of two later U.S. presidents of the same name. It was that his advocacy of a theological/political position known as "restorationism" - support for the "restoration" of the Jewish people to their historic homeland - was common in 19th century America."
Moronic "Guardian" writer: "Talking of ignorance, where would we be without Guardian columnists? My old boss, Peter Shore, the late Labour Cabinet minister used to read the Daily Express every morning just to get angry. I prefer The Guardian. Yesterday Zoe Williams informed us that "there is no precedent for a country to be diamond [or petroleum] rich and not spend the rest of its history bogged down in civil and/or external war." I suppose that she has never heard of those two obscure countries, the US and the UK".
Wacky Britain: "`The government's latest wheeze is to raise the legal age for buying cigarettes from 16 to 18. So let me see if I have this straight. You will be able legally to have sex at 16 - or younger, according to senior policemen - but the law won't allow you a postcoital cigarette until two years later. Not even if you are married"
France to cut business taxes? "French president Jacques Chirac has proposed slashing France's corporation tax rate from 33pc to 20pc to relaunch its flagging economy, a move that could leave Britain behind as the high-tax laggard in Europe. ‘We have to take action on corporation tax to save our businesses and help create new ones. The goal should be to reduce it to 20pc in five years,’ he said in his New Year speech, proposing a long-term goal of just 10pc. Mr Chirac also stepped up his attacks on the strong euro policy of the European Central Bank, calling for political intervention to force down the exchange rate. ‘Europe must take its destiny in hand,’ he said. ''It is time that it exercised its economic sovereignty by setting an exchange rate policy and a change in trade policy to take account of globalisation".
Europe wants to tax Britons: "Brussels politicians have drawn up proposals to create a European income tax which would leave Britons shelling out 510 pounds a year to the superstate. The rumbling row over the size of Britain’s rebate from Europe resurfaced as an influential committee of MEPs received recommendations for sweeping reforms to the Union’s current funding system. The Committee On Budgets is facing calls to scale back the current system in favour of a form of direct taxation when Britain’s rebate is re-negotiated in 2008.
Chris Brand has just done a new lot of posts on his usual themes of race, IQ and political correctness -- with particular emphasis on the British scene.
For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).
**************************
"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
****************************
No comments:
Post a Comment