[OFFTOPIC:] The Lesson of Tonight’s Iowa Caucuses
| January 3, 2008 | Posted by William Dembski under Off Topic |
My wife’s family is from Iowa, and we got to listen to a lot of the presidential candidates in person during our visit there this December. Here’s our daughter with two of the more successful candidates:
The lesson of tonight is that people are tired of business as usual. How far does that disaffection extend? To the uncritical teaching of Darwinian evolution?
71 Responses to [OFFTOPIC:] The Lesson of Tonight’s Iowa Caucuses
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Why? That would mean totally fabricating a story.
It’s been done before, and with effectiveness. The New York Times has yet to surrender Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer. And it may not be an out-and-out fabrication. It could just be a flawed study that is being defended and promoted for political reasons.
Of course, the same could be said for the other side, but that would be a government cover up, and, say what you want, the allies have taken great pains to avoid being put in a position as to where they could be accused of this.
OK, divide by 10, and use a number of 60 000 dead (i.e. less than the Iraq study group). Wouldn’t that imply clashes involving thousands of casualties? So, where have they been reported?
Oh, but they were. The battles for Fallujah and the initial invasion, would be examples.
Consider that California (which is about a third bigger than Iraq) has had about 12,000 murders since 2003. That would put the level of violence at about 10 times greater in Iraq. I can believe that. I can’t believe that the level of violence in Iraq during the invasion/occupation, however, exceeds that of the Iran-Iraq war which would be required if I accepted the Johns Hopkins figure.
They could almost be talking about a different war. The media here, and most politicians on the left, seem to have a hatred for the USA.
The media here does too as does the Democratic Party sometimes I think.
Actually, what I think is that the leftists, in whatever country, hate freedom, and leftists, in whatever country, gravitate to media-type jobs.
Probably because they don’t have to think real hard.
Jerry:
Both Hitler and Mussolini were socialists to the end so it is ludicrous to say that fascist were right wing.
I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one who sees it this way.
We love to distort these terms.
It amazes me that we some how end up with a phrases like “freedom hating leftist media”.
It starts with the quite reasonable position that the media in general opposes censorship and favor freedom of the press. Thus the media is liberal (favors freedom). A liberal (progressive) is the opposing view to a conservative. A conservative is on the right, therefore the “liberal” media is “leftist”. Socialism and Communism are on the left. These are associated with oppressive governments like Stalinism, therefor the media is “freedom hating”. So those who want freedom actually hate it. (Hmm, maybe that explains the whole “greeted as liberators” thing.)
BTW, Both Hitler and Mussolini were Nationalists (right) and Militarists (right) in greater degree then they where Socialists (left). If we put Nationalism on the right and Socialism on the left, then I suppose freedom loving people are really dead center.
Tribune, Jerry, PaV, I agree that the labels “left/right” wing, “liberal/conservative”, and other so-called opposites like capitalist/socialist, etc. are misleading. I am surprised that the Oxford dictionary does not clarify this. Their definition of right-wing is:
3. That section of a political party, assembly, or other body most tending to hold conservative or reactionary views.
Their definition of left-wing is non-existent, in fact it is a nonsensical circular reference of “left” pointing to “left-wing” and vice-versa. This is a serious flaw. So what other flaws can one find in less-prestigious dictionaries? Other dictionaries define left-wing as “the liberal, socialist, or radical” with reference to the National Assembly in France (1789–91), where the nobles sat to the president’s right and the commons to the left.
As I hinted previously, these simple dictionary definitions seem to be useless and misleading. One has to look behind the definitions, and at the real meaning of these antagonistic movements that are usually associated with the left/right labels. Not an easy thing in general, (most people are confused about this), or in a blog that is meant to be brief, since one would have address the complex history of the last century of so, or even going to the ancient Rome.
Jerry, if fascism is not compatible with communism, it is because communism is nothing like the idea of the Roman fasces, (the bundle of rods bound up with an axe in the middle, which were carried by lictors before the superior magistrates at Rome as an emblem of their power.) The idea of the Roman “republic” or the “res-publica” (which means “the public thing”) is quite different from the communist dictatorship. One could argue that it is the ideal of the Roman republic that the US ought to be striving for, i.e. making its politics a “public” thing.
Mussolini’s life is quite fascinating and full of interesting moments. His name “Benito” (after a Mexican reformer), his childhood and youth as an atheist and anti-clericalist, his vagrant life in Switzerland, (which was at that time a hot-bed of the future Soviet communists like Lenin), his 1917 war injury which supposedly had something to do with his sudden change towards anti-socialism, to his baptism in 1927.
Also fascinating is Hitler’s life and ideology, his quasi-religiosity and how he twisted it into creating his own new ideology with which he managed to fool and control the whole nation. It would really pay for the ID to study those aspects of German history which lead to that climax, from the Reformation, to Friedrich the Great’s atheism, Goethe’s evolutionism, to Nietzche, Hegel, Marx, etc. Evolutionism was the key ingredient.
It is of secondary importance that both Mussolini and Hitler were socialists. They needed a state with total control, so naturally socialism would do. In fact, communism is just a more radical form of socialism, and that is why the British socialists like G. B. Shaw admired and defended Communism in Russia, even after Stalin intentionally starved millions to death in Ukraine. Socialism is characterized by the total state control of all productive means, so it would be quite inaccurate to call Hitler or Mussolini right-wing and Stalin left-wing.
(Total state control was used whenever there were a serious need for it, such as when repelling an invader, and there are many examples of it in history. Hitler’s hatred of communism and of Russia was of a different kind, but for a while Hitler and Stalin managed to form a short secret pact, until they destroyed both the Catholic Austria and Poland, which were for centuries the key powers in Central Europe.)
Just a historical note about Reichstag seating when the National Socialists first gained admittance.
The National Socialists were to be seated between the Communists and the Socialists (Social Democrats) with the liberals and conservatives both to the right of the Socialists. But to avoid as much violence in the chamber as possible, it not being a good idea to seat two opposing gangs of thugs next to each other, the National Socialists were seated to the right of the conservatives, not where they fit in the political spectrum.
(Please note that the liberals and conservatives here mentioned are not distinct political parties, but, rather agglomerations of smaller parties, whereas the Communists, National Socialists, and Social Democrats were parties in their own right. Oh, the joys of proportional representation!)
This is probably where the notion, fervently peddled by Leftists since the defeat of Germany in 1945, that the National Socialists were a right wing party came from.
There is a new book on the market by Jonah Goldberg titled “Liberal Fascism” which talks about what these movements were/are. Apparently the most fascist of all Americans was Woodrow Wilson and this was before the term was coined.
If one has time and a way to listen to mp3 recordings then go to
http://instapundit.com/archives2/013336.php
and download a discussion of this book by the author.
Mike;
This is the kind of out-of-context, purposely misleading crap which overflows anti-Mormon websites and which Huckabee seems so well versed in.
ID proponents cry “foul” when people get their information on ID from anti-ID, pro-Darwin sites and then dismiss ID out of hand without really looking at it.
The same principle of fairness applies to Mormons: If you want information about them, go to them. If you have real questions there are knowledgeable people who can give real answers, not like Huckabee and his ilk.
You can go to the official church website or there is an excellent Discussion Board where you can air and get good answers to any questions or anti-mormon accusations you’ve heard of.
If we put Nationalism on the right and Socialism on the left, then I suppose freedom loving people are really dead center.
OTOH, if we put totalitarianism on one end of the spectrum (you can pick which as to your preference) and anarchy on the other, you will find communism/fascism/Nazism grouped together with socialism a little bit behind and a constitutional republic close the anarchy end.
jerry,
Thanks for the tip on Goldberg’s new book, Liberal Facism. I just ordered it from amazon.
Jerry, Re: Jonah Goldberg. Listened to the interview, very interesting. Application of Mussolini’s totalitarianism to today’s society, smashing the sanctity of the family, the two party system analogy – mommy & daddy kind of citizen nurturing, etc. I like his definition of the left/right wing socialism — right wing = national socialism, left wing = international socialism, with the evolutionary assumption that the “nation” is doomed to extinction and will one day disappear. Interesting observation about Hitler’s flag symbolism — the red field was meant to attract the communists. I read Francis Fukuyama’s End of History after it was published, and I think I may re-visit it again just to refresh my memory.