RSS Feed MenuOn my last day in Poland, I stopped by the National Gallery in Warsaw. The Gallery is a story in itself: built in the 1930s, destroyed by the Germans, badly rebuilt by the communists, now under restoration with European Union funds. The collection was looted and what remains is heavy with socialist realist works now too embarrassing to show. About two dozen of these depressing canvases were mounted in the gallery’s modern wing with an apologetic little introduction, inviting visitors to regard them as representatives of their times.
A couple of the paintings revealed saving graces of irony. One, “The Stakhanovite,” (a reference to a Soviet miner celebrated as a hero for over-producing his coal targets) shows a grim-faced woman cheerlessly selling a fish. Another portrays a charwoman squarely facing the viewer, clutching a little pamphlet titled “Matisse.”
The day before visiting the gallery, I’d finished a re-read of Czeslaw Milosz’s The Captive Mind. Published in 1953, the book by the future Nobelist painstakingly analyzed the process by which artists – writers in this case – were led to cooperate with communism. More than half a century later, the book still strikes fire, a tribute to Milosz’s fearful gift for compressing vast horror into a single unforgettable image.
Often, as I am sitting on the terrace of a Paris cafe or walking through the streets of a large city, I succumb to a certain obsession. I look at the women who pass, at their luxuriant hair, their proudly lifted chins, their slender throats whose lines awaken delight and desire — and then I see before my eyes always the same young Jewish girl. She was probably about twenty years old. Her body was full, splendid, exultant. She was running down the street, her hands raised, her chest thrust forward. She cried piercingly, “No! No! No!” The necessity to die was beyond her comprehension — a necessity that came from outside, having nothing in common with her unprepared body. The bullets of the SS guards’ automatic pistols reached her in cry.
The moment when bullets pierce the flesh is a moment of amazement for the body. Life and death mingle for a second, before a bloody rag falls to the pavement and is kicked aside by an SS boot.
I want to focus here on just one of those sparks.
As brilliant as Milosz’s observations are, they are not infallibly prophetic. Writing in the 1950s about the generation that came of age in the 1930s, Milosz describes communism as a vicious but nevertheless hypnotically attractive intellectual system. The communists did not win artists by terror alone. They also seduced them. It was this seduction that fascinated Milosz, and his book set out to analyze the process by which it occurred. One important element of the seduction process: the removal of hope for anything better. Communism was the future, like it or not – so you’d better like it.
Here’s the arresting thing: Milosz in 1953 is not sure that communism isn’t the future. OK, maybe it’s not the future for the United States. But for the rest of Europe? What else is there? The old 19th century bourgeois way of life had been swept away. Religion is dead or dying. American consumerism with its promises of refrigerators and automobiles seemed tawdry and anyway beyond the reach of impoverished Europe. What would human beings live for?
Except it turned out that communism was not the future. Its ability to appeal to the mind was fading even as Milosz wrote. As a system of power, communism collapsed within Milosz’s own lifetime, a lifetime already halfway spent as of 1953. As a system of belief, it had died long before. And consumerism? Consumerism proved not only unexpectedly successful, but unexpectedly inspiring. Maybe consumerism not a cause to live for. But draw a line through the middle of Europe. On one side of the line pile comfortable apartments, well-made clothes, attractive public spaces, functioning cars, fresh food, tropic vacations, and the newest electronics. On the other side, deprive people of everything except the knowledge of what their neighbors now possess. In that case, consumerism becomes an overpowering revolutionary force on the impoverished side of the line, and the bulwark of the status quo on the abundant side. Communism in Europe was wrecked by many things of course, and indeed some of them anticipated by Milosz. But for all his vision, Milosz did not anticipate the subversive power of the East’s inability to provide its population with bananas in winter.
Reading Milosz, the mind inevitably turns to radical Islam, our own century’s version of the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. Milosz’s example should teach us to be humble about our predictive power. Surely this story too will end in ways very difficult to foresee. But Milosz at least can offer some confidence: the story will end. Lies fail. The human spirit does assert itself, even against overwhelming odds, in the most unexpected places and ways. As Milosz powerfully observes in The Captive Mind: “A man may persuade himself, by the most logical reasoning, that he will greatly benefit his health by swallowing live frogs; and, thus rationally convinced, he may swallow a first frog, then the second; but at the third his stomach will revolt.”
sinz54 // Sep 5, 2010 at 11:40 am
Want to know why Communism was so successful in swaying intellectuals and artists?
One of my favorite precepts:
Nothing succeeds like success.
In the 20th century, the vast majority of intellectuals were sympathetic to socialism.
But they had trouble convincing their fellow citizens. So why shouldn’t intellectuals have a grudging admiration for the Soviet system, which had rammed socialism down the throats of the people by secret police and army tanks, whether the people approved or not?
The BBC World Service just had an investigative documentary on how intellectuals were seduced into Communism.
Sidney and Beatrice Webb are tragic examples of this.
When [Malcolm] Muggeridge complained that people were being arrested and killed willy-nilly in Moscow, this vice was swiftly transmuted into a virtue by his relative, Beatrice Webb, co-author with her husband Sidney of “Soviet Communism: A new civilisation?”, whose subsequent editions dropped that tremulous question mark. According to Ingrams, “Malcolm thought that actually she was quite keen about that because she would like to have the same power…. The idea that if people disagreed with you or made a lot of trouble, they could disappear – from her point of view, that was quite nice.”
http://tinyurl.com/22s6hbk
And this is true of frustrated ideological activists all across the political spectrum. Trying to convince your fellow citizens of the rightness of your ideology is hard work and it’s frustrating. Wouldn’t it be easier to just get the Government to mandate your ideology and force everyone to accept it?
We must all be on guard against such tendencies. Not just socialists.
bamboozer // Sep 5, 2010 at 12:03 pm
David, as a NEOCON I might suggest “Look whos talking!”.
cotton // Sep 5, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Great writing David. I am absolutely convinced that the power of the human spirit to hope and believe in freedom will overcome tyranny in the end. Even if fundamentalist Islam were to prevail against the entire world it would collapse eventually because people cannot be forced to live under oppression forevor. All people yearn for freedom and a better life. Just like Communism, radical Islam will self destruct because of it’s own tendencies to limit critical thinking skills, to quash even legitimate dissent, and to adapt.
MSheridan // Sep 5, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Of course radical Islam will not last. How could this even be in question? Over time, humans have tried many different sorts of societies and political systems. The one thing they all have in common is that eventually, they all fail. Some, more flawed than others, fail early. I believe that it was necessary and right that communism failed. I believe that the fundamental misunderstanding of human nature that lay at its core doomed it to a relatively early end from the outset. However, discussions like this always make of G.K. Chesterton’s oft-quoted line from The Napoleon of Notting Hill:
Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?
I am glad to live in a democratic republic. I am glad to live in a country with a mixed economy that nonetheless values individual property rights. However, I am quite sure that, Fukuyama notwithstanding, we have not arrived at the End of History.
abk1985 // Sep 5, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Well, I don’t think Milosz was writing about the promise of consumerism, that’s for sure. Murti-Bing is similar to Huxley’s soma and the upshot of both are people whose lives are ordered by the state.
It’s more about intellectuals, who are, by nature, somewhat freakish: who do you identify with in difficult times?
Mannheim, Ortega y Gasset, and Benda had already written about these things: should the intellectual classes (writers, above all, but also creative artists) identify with the status quo, with some future state, with “the people”, with the elite classes, or themselves, or simply create art for art’s sake?
I think a lot of intellectuals identified with Stalinism, as others had identified with Fascism and even Nazism because they felt it was a way of being “with the people” in a meaningul way. Certainly, all of these isms had enemies, defined by race by the Nazis and defined by class by everyone else, but the undercurrent of building a future with the common people was the overarching thrust for most intellectuals in the first half of the 20th Century, even in the USA. I mean just look at American culture in the ’30’s, Steinbeck, Copland, Capra, etc.
At any rate, even if I am incorrect in the above para, I am not incorrect in arguing that people supported communism because they ultimately thought that it would and could be more just and fair than capitalism (which had yet to absorb its labor class) and certainly more so than the frightening excesses of Nazi Germany and all of the old kingdoms and dictatorships that had gone before.
Of course, eventually disillusionment sets in and then you realize that all top down state controlled just and fair states are monstrosities that will crush little people in the name of an abstraction.
But now let’s look to the future.
The first thing is that Islam, whatever its defects, promises something. Like most religions it offers an entire framework for living one’s life. But what future do we have in the West?
Things I hear about: not overusing our natural resources, reducing our carbon footprints, saving social security, reducing our national debt, making it possible for people to have the maximum amount of choice in terms of their personal, social, and sexual lives. OK, all good. But — what for? What is the end state we are aiming at? As far as I can see, we have none. This is the dilemma of a purely materialist lifestyle.
Of course, the main problem with a purely materialistic lifestyle is that materialism only provides temporary satiety. And I don’t think it’s any coincidence that societies that become devoted to materialism have declining populations, as in Europe, and spectacularly in Russia, and even in the US, were it not for the illegals.
Are Americans happier for not having a manifest destiny anymore? Will the non-Western masses, which at least have self-contained idea sets that among other things encourage large families, come to dominate our culture in ways we cannot foresee? I wonder.
parsifal // Sep 6, 2010 at 12:37 am
Following up on abk1985, I think that it is too early to dismiss the advantages of some rigidity in faith as a bad thing. Most Islamic children do not grow up wondering at which parent’s home they are staying this weekend. Most Islamic women are not spending their “crazy” years of 35 to 45 ish seeking a divorce because hubby doesn’t talk to them enough, followed by a decade or two of raising children on their own while shacking up with a series of losers. No, most Islamic couples seem pretty much stuck with each other and make the best of it. I m not sure that Brittany Spears trumps a hausfrau in a burka. The Islamic nations that hit a happier mix between 700AD and 2010 AD do have some advantages over us. I think it was Mark Steyn who noted conservatives would have it a lot easier under Islam than the loonies in Berkeley. Happily, the Muslims have not learned to accentuate the positive aspects of their culture. I think it will be interesting when (if) the Religious Right begins to look at the similarities in thought.
SkepticalIdealist // Sep 6, 2010 at 10:19 am
Sure, all that’s required for the security of a two parent home is a sacrifice in freedom. But as we all know, those who would trade security for freedom deserve neither.
JonF // Sep 6, 2010 at 10:22 am
Parisfal,
You are aware that divorce is quite legal and rather easy to obtain under Islamic Law?
For that matter Islamic leglism yields some rather nasty practices, like the hour-long marriage– Muslim brothels employ a cleric to pronounce a marriage over a prostitute and her customer, then hand out a divorce when the customer leaves.
Don’t exagerrate the extent to which Islam is favorable to family values.
Bebe99 // Sep 6, 2010 at 10:31 am
Parsifal, The freedoms available in democratic societies are available to all people no matter the intellect or emotional balance of the individual. If I want the freedom to divorce my dangerous alcoholic husband then my neighbor has the same freedom to divorce, evenif their reasons are not sound. It is not easy to watch people make bad choices in life, for themselves or their children. Perhaps life is easier when one has fewer choices for self destruction, but who would honestly choose that for themselves. You may want to take away your neighbors freedoms, but in doing so you will also lose your own.
Claude // Sep 6, 2010 at 11:03 am
One reason communism appealed to many intellectuals is that it seemed to provide them with new opportunities to exert influence over the lesser gifted. Stalin regularly introduced 5-year plans with extraordinary goals, a far different system than allowing individual businesses and consumers to make their own choices. Of course, a planned economy would need planners. And who do you think the planners would be?
easton // Sep 6, 2010 at 12:55 pm
MSheridan, good stuff.
As someone who lived in China for many years, I saw the success of Consumerism as well as its emptiness, which is why the Chinese leadership keeps trying to stoke up Nationalism as a way to fill in the void. I am not saying the situation is dire there, family life and community life is vibrant, much moreso than in the states, especially community life. I chose to live in oldline apartment complexes where everyone knew everyone else, and people associated with each other freely. Now it is being replaced by much more spacious flats and that community spirit is starting to be lost.
The wealthier China gets the more family and community life will be frayed (divorces are becoming much more common) and I suspect peoples happiness will go down.
It used to be when I went home for vacations I was always surprised that Americans were not happier in life in spite of our tremendous wealth and freedom, yet even this is empty if it serves no purpose other than as a passive state. It is one thing to say I am wealthy and free, it is quite another to confront the essential question of life; what do I do with my wealth and freedom? And the sad thing is the large amount of people who don’t know the simple answer to this.
busboy33 // Sep 6, 2010 at 1:37 pm
@D. Frum:
I’m not following the purpose of these anti-Communist peices.
Are you attempting to illustrate that Communism (or Socialism) is a bad system for a Government? Well . . . yes. But we all already knew that.
What was the point of quoting the passage about the woman being gunned down and then her lifeless body kicked by the SS? Doesn’t seem to have a damn thing to do with Communism. Or with seducing writers. Or with writers jumping on something that sounds nice on paper, but falls apart in reality (as so many ideas do).
If I didn’t have so much respect for you and your ability, I’d be suspicious this is nothing more than a Far Right psych warfare piece. An election is coming up, and you’ve managed to talk about out-of-touch intellectual elites, Communism, Socialism, and Nazis brutally murdering a screaming girl in front of witnesses (a scene that is suspiciously dramatic). Oh, and by the way . . . don’t forget to vote!
Given that all of these iconic Far Right boogeymen are already flying about the InterTubes, all one has to do is keep repeating the names to stoke the crazed fires. This is something that you, as a professional political actor and speechwriter, know. As I said before, I have enough respect for you and your integrity to hope that there is some other explanation for a piece like this.
Please tell me what it is.
MSheridan // Sep 6, 2010 at 2:52 pm
Easton, there is a popular fantasy writer who addressed this in one of his books. The speaker below using all caps is Death:
“All right,’ said Susan. ‘I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE
Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little-
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES
So we can believe the big ones?
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING
They’re not the same at all!
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET–
Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME… SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED
Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—
MY POINT EXACTLY”
— Terry Pratchett (Hogfather)
Pratchett has authored a couple of misses, but by and large he is one of my favorites.
Kendall // Sep 6, 2010 at 4:49 pm
The justification for this piece is perfectly obvious. It addresses the perennial attraction of ideology among the so-called intellectual class. The attractions are numerous, but they are centered on the hubris which often attends those who have achieved some degree of educational achievement, i.e. the notion that they, with their superior intellect, know best how others should lead their lives and how societies should be structured. In many cases, the ideology takes on an uncompromising religious fervor, but the heaven they seek is an earthly one. These ideologies of the left–fascism, socialism, communism, progressivism, and statist liberalism–all presume to centralize personal decision-making in the state. Yet, they all have within them the seeds of their own downfall as that decision-making intrudes into areas into which they have no business intruding, and employing the force of government to enforce it. The more decision-making is socialized, the more disgruntled the populace becomes, as the recent health care debate has demonstrated. Obama’s promise to “fundamentally transform the United States of America,” was a bold assertion of that hubris by a man who never accepted the fundamental nature of our Constitutional Republic and what it has done to make America the greatest nation in the history of the world. The speed with which he attempted to bring about that transformation brings us to where we are today–on the verge of a fundamental repudiation of his administration in less than two short years. Even after the disastrous events of the 20th century, we still face the threats of the elitist ideology seeking to impose its will on the whole of society. Keeping these elitists in their intellectual playpens is the role of an informed citizenry guided by Constitutional principles.
MSheridan // Sep 6, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Kendall,
Fascism is an ideology of the left? Jonah Goldberg can say this and others can repeat it until they’re blue in the face, but sayin’ don’t make it so.
Moreover, the idea that only those on the left feel they “know best how others should lead their lives and how societies should be structured” is ridiculous. That is the defining characteristic of social conservatives. In this country, the left has traditionally been far more concerned with the preservation of the personal freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights than has been the right, with the notable exception of the 2nd Amendment.
Even after the disastrous events of the 20th century, we still face the threats of the elitist ideology seeking to impose its will on the whole of society.I actually agree with that sentiment. Where I disagree with you is in the identity of those elitists, whose elitism I believe has little to do with intellectualism of any stripe.
Oldskool // Sep 6, 2010 at 7:31 pm
No system of any flavor lasts forever. If the founding fathers were around today they’d probably want to rethink certain things. They’d probably be dumbstruck at how much control business has over the kind of government they had in mind.
JonF // Sep 6, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Oldskool,
The Founders would disapprove of our political incest between business and govermment but I doubt they would find it new and shocking. They were familiar with political corporations in their day too: the Hudson Bay Company or the East India Tea Company come to mind.
Oldskool // Sep 7, 2010 at 7:34 am
” I doubt they would find it new and shocking.”
I wonder if they had lobbyists back then and if they were allowed to write their own laws. They would probably put publicly financed campaigns in the constitution if they saw how corrupt the system is today.
parsifal // Sep 7, 2010 at 12:19 pm
To several:
After reading your comments, I googled Islamic divorce rates and you were correct. They are skyrocketing. Apparently there is some sort of lack of satisfaction on the women’s part, carnally speaking. Actually being the owner of a set of Richard Burton’s Thousand Nights and a Night (all 17 volumes), I had suspicions that there was more going on than simple procreation. Now, those suspicions have been confirmed. A lass and a lack, I fear I must now go and catch a mandrake root, or get a child with falling star, whatever, to obtain nuptial bliss. Oh well, mandrake roots are notoriously slow. . .
Kendall // Sep 7, 2010 at 9:14 pm
Sheridan, I don’t know from whence your confusion arises, but fascism is most definitely an ideology of the left, whether viewed from a theoretical or experiential perspective. Like communism, is it socialistic (Nazism was, after all, National Socialism), and exerted near total control over the lives and fortunes of its citizens. While Hitler, for example, was critical of socialism (“Bolshevism”) in the Soviet Union largely because of what he saw as its Jewish roots, his form of National Socialism soon embodied many of the same tenets, including income redistribution, “social justice,” an anti-capitalist mentality, control over industry, hostility to religion and to parliamentary democracy.
Communists and fascists also shared an affinity for one-party rule, secret police, control over the media, and absolute obedience to a supreme leader. Where they differed was that National Socialism was, well, national in its orientation, with a preoccupation with race, and communism was international, with an emphasis on class distinctions. In both systems, the individual was relegated to that of a cog in the state apparatus. Viewed on a continuum in which individual liberty is the primary consideration, fascism and communism both belong on the totalitarian left and anarchy on the far right. Fascism and communism are branches of the same collectivist tree. To conclude otherwise shows an inability to think logically and recognize the unmistakable lessons of history.
Attacking Jonah Goldberg’s estimable book, which has many precursors, reminds of those who pan books on amazon.com that they have never read. The similarities between communism, or socialism, on the one hand and fascism on the other are unmistakable. You can attempt to make the opposite claim, bereft of evidence, but it won’t be taken seriously.
Moreover, communism and fascism have drawn from the same pool of potential followers. European observers like Hayek (The Road to Serfdom) and Balint Vazonyi (America’s 30 Years War), to name just two, have elaborated on the ease with which communists and fascists moved seamlessly between the two camps. Vazsonyi observed little difference between the fascists who controlled his native Hungary during the war and the communists who took control after the war, down to same black leather jackets.
Leftists in Europe and the United States have long attempted to disassociate themselves from fascism by characterizing it as a right-wing phenomenon, even while they supported or defended the Soviet Union with all its brutality and repression. I doing so, they attempted to suggest that the right has bad apples in its closet, too. But it won’t wash. No less than Leon Trotsky recognized that Stalinism and fascism are “symmetrical phenomena” that show a deadly similarity in many of their features. Arthur Koestler also drew attention to the similarities between Stalinism and Nazism in Darkness at Noon and other novels. Moreover, Mussolini was clearly indebted to Marx, Lenin and Sorel for his fascist doctrines, and he, in turn, influenced Hitler and Franco.
What distinguished Nazi Germany from the Soviet Union was its doctrine of Aryan superiority and the doctrine of Lebensraum by which they hoped to expand its living space and exert control over its “inferior peoples.” Yet, while they shared many ideological traits and engaged in pre-war cooperation, Hitler and Stalin were nevertheless driven by different historical, cultural and political motivations. And being good extremists, they could not compromise. It’s sort of like the situation described—I believe—by David Horowitz, who has exposed the nature of left-wing political movements. If you gather a dozen communists in an apartment on the New York’s Upper West Side, they will soon be organized into 13 factions. Even ideological soul mates (on some level) will soon be at each other’s throats, seeking ideological purity.
Naturally, leftists, in pursuit of “heaven on earth,” and the “workers’ paradise,” were eager to jettison the baggage of the Nazi experience, and the pre-war front which temporarily had them linked arm in arm. To the extent that some have been persuaded that Nazism, or fascism, were right-wing phenomenon, they were deluded by Stalin’s carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign to convince those in the West that Nazism was bad, and communism was anti-fascist, and therefore its opposite and good. The fact the Soviet Union fought and defeated Nazi Germany was sufficient, in the eyes of many, to cast them as opposites, even though they were similar in so many respects. It was a means of covering up years of Nazi war exercises on Soviet soil as well as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact to divide up Eastern Europe. Focusing attention on a common enemy, allowed Stalin to cover up the systematic slaughter of millions of his own citizens. After the war, American communists kept up the drumbeat in this country—railing against fascism while they were continuing to build and maintain an elaborate spy network to steal atomic, military and industrial secrets.
In the end, both Nazi Germany (and its allies) and Soviet Russia caused the death of millions of innocent peoples across Europe and Asia. What distinguished the two was that, whereas the Nazi directed their genocidal efforts against targeted groups (Jews, gypsies, Slavs and other “inferior peoples”), Soviet efforts were often indiscriminate, designed to perpetuate a reign of terror as a means of maintaining the regime.
In the post-war era, Western Europe, still heavily influenced by Marxist thought, adopted the socialist welfare model. Gunnar Myrdal described its Swedish manifestation, for example, as the “Middle Way,” between communism and capitalism. In reality, it’s a form of soft tyranny in which an electoral majority imposes its ideology on the minority. While it lacked the genocidal and harsher characteristics of its precursors, it was nevertheless an effort to impose a particular social and economic model on the whole of society. This is a left-wing phenomenon. It has its counterpart in the forces that control the modern Democratic Party. Conservatives, on the other hand, champion the United States as a Constitutional Republic of limited and circumscribed powers, with roadblocks in the path of majoritarian rule to preserve individual liberty.
It’s a typical ploy on the part of the left to create a straw man to assert that religious conservatives are trying to control the lives of others. This is hardly credible. The use of the term “theocracy” is particularly ludicrous. Conservatism is a philosophy, not an ideology, that is rooted in individual rights and responsibilities. It rejects coercion in favor of voluntary action. It respects tradition, moral values, and adheres to the notion articulated by John Adams that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is inadequate to any other.” Conservatives’ views are also tempered by a strong libertarian streak, but they recognize as did Adams, that a society is only held together by its voluntary adherence to certain social values. Without those values, there is only the force of law to maintain public order.
Unlike leftist movements rooted in Marxist ideology, conservatives have no “idea” they want to impose on society. Rather, they respect the actions of free individuals in their private capacities to shape and control their own lives, whether individually or collectively. While we, as a society, may take some collective actions for the good of society, those must be rooted in the Constitution and the rule of law.
After the past 18 months, it is not possibly to make the argument that the left is interested in individual rights under the Constitution. The Obama administration is positively hostile to the core foundations of the United States as a Constitutional Republic of limited powers. It is clear that when Obama was speaking about “fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” he was talking about overturning the Constitution as a document of negative liberties and turning it into a government that could provide positive benefits to some people at the expense of others, in other words, the theoretical justification for radical income redistribution (legalized theft). Whether Obama was born in Hawaii is not the issue. He governs like an alien who never accepted the fundamental proposition of America. His healthcare bill, his regulatory end-run on the issue of cap and trade, his takeover of the auto industry and student loan business, his politicization of the Justice Department, his use of taxpayer dollars as pay-offs to favored special interest groups, his attacks on states’ rights and the concept of federalism, are all unconstitutional or corrupt assaults on our liberties and way of life. We are on the verge of a massive repudiation of his bankrupt political ideology.
MSheridan // Sep 8, 2010 at 3:02 am
Well, I can hardly complain that you didn’t respond. I’m not at all sure I’ve got the stamina to respond to every point, but I’ll go for a few.
Lets’s see, regarding Goldberg’s book, no, I haven’t read it through. I’ve flipped through it in the bookstore and read multiple reviews of it online. However, I have been a regular reader at National Review Online for years and I believe I have seen Jonah’s complete repertoire of arguments on the subject (although nowadays it’s just taken as a given over there). Darkness at Noon, on the other hand, has a valued place on my bookshelves and I’ve read it through several times.
“Communists and fascists also shared an affinity for one-party rule, secret police, control over the media, and absolute obedience to a supreme leader.” To say communist countries ended up with the same type of government employed by fascists because they started with the same ideology is to make the classic error post hoc, ergo prompter hoc (after this, therefore because of this). Marx was a great theoretician, but a lousy judge of human behavior. The communist ideal, propounded by Marx and Engels, was a false ideal that truly was of the left. It was false in that it assumed that people were other than they are and would act as people do not act. Aside from impractical idealists, the only people to whom the communist ideal is attractive are people who have nothing and the expectation of nothing living under another political system. But the communists you are speaking of weren’t communist in any meaningful way. Marx believed that the state would and should “wither away” in his perfect society. Lenin believed, or claimed to believe, that this perfect communist society could be jumpstarted in semifeudal Russia, ignoring the fact that even in Marx’s theories communism would start in the most industrialized societies. The forced labor camps, impossible 5 year plans, purges, thought control, etc. of the Communist nations had almost nothing to do with the charmingly naive theory of communism itself, except insofar that as people and economies stubbornly refused to act as communist theory said they should, the leaders attempted to force that change. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the rest of the ugly crew, were totalitarian dictators. The fact that they rose to the top in a system that paid lip service to the ideal of equality doesn’t change that.
Fascism, on the other hand, does not celebrate equality even theoretically. It starts with the strong man giving orders to those below, who are still considered naturally superior to the citizens of other nations. That is why Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Japan were classic fascist states.
Given that both you and I are at least in agreement in one thing, that communist Europe and fascist Europe were totalitarian societies, I am not sure what the basis for surprise would be that cynical and brutal thugs fit in well in both. What would surprise me would be to learn that they did not.
Stalin had quite a few leftists over here fooled, it’s true. A pretty major mistake on their part. Amazing what censorship, a few thousand miles, and a good dose of willful blindness can do in that regard. However, they did learn better. Then again, before the war, there were quite a few American Nazi sympathizers on the right, and they were on the right. Even now the crackpot bigot fringe that flirts with Neo-Nazism is more comfortable at Republican functions than at Democratic ones, even if the majority of Republicans would prefer they weren’t.
“It’s a typical ploy on the part of the left to create a straw man to assert that religious conservatives are trying to control the lives of others.” Wow. I am in awe of the level of denial in that statement. Have you even heard of Christian Reconstructionism? Dominion Theology? What about sodomy laws, gay marriage bans, blocking legislation that has anything to do with condoms, or with sex in general? There are rich and powerful people in this country who would like to see Biblical law (we’re talking Old Testament law) become the law of the land, our own private Shariah, and who donate accordingly. Howard Ahmanson comes to mind.
“Unlike leftist movements rooted in Marxist ideology, conservatives have no “idea” they want to impose on society. Rather, they respect the actions of free individuals in their private capacities to shape and control their own lives, whether individually or collectively.” This may be true of some conservatives, but it certainly isn’t true of all of them. Have you looked at the Contract from America that the Tea Party has put forth and is pushing all Republican politicians to accept? The whole thing is amazing, but two of the ten points on it, #3 and #9, both would require a two-third majority in Congress, one to enact tax hikes and the other to pass earmarks. Two thirds! Tell me that is respecting the actions of free individuals to collectively shape and control their lives! They might as well just come out and say they would prefer not to live in a democracy.
I just can’t do justice to your last paragraph. We come from entirely different viewpoints. I can only guess that you would have preferred to let the auto industry go under than face a controlled bankruptcy. The student-loan business should never have been a business. The government transferring money to private industry to then transfer to students was a crappy and inefficient waste of resources. If you’re against the current system, you should have also been against the previous system. And if you think it was this President who politicized the Justice Department, you must have been really, really sleepy for most of the last decade. Do the names Alberto Gonzales and Monica Gooding even ring a tiny bell? Finally, no, this President isn’t my ideal. I’ve got plenty of criticism for him, as I have had for every other President in my adult life, but he’s not going to wreck the country.
busboy33 // Sep 8, 2010 at 4:57 pm
@Msheridan:
Agreed, agreed, a thousand times agreed.
And bravo.
I’m always amazed that people confuse “Communist” countries with theoretical Communism. This idea of “how could people think Communism is a good idea?” just baffles me. On paper, its beautiful. Much the same as pure Anarchy. Neither will ever work if they involve more than 2 people, but their utter failure as viable solutions doesn’t detract from their inherent artisticness.
MSheridan // Sep 8, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Thanks, busboy, but looking at it now I wish I hadn’t written it so late at night. It’s a bit disjointed and although I stand behind my points, I’m not sure they came through as well as I would have liked. It probably doesn’t much matter. I knew I wasn’t going to convince Kendall and we’ve just about fallen off the front page anyway.
jakester // Sep 9, 2010 at 6:40 am
The Reds at their height had a numerically vastly superior conventional & nuclear armed forces of all descriptions save air craft carriers, They also had huge heavy industriesand a large technical class to produce them Add their huge land areas and impressive military victories to an incomparable fifth column and as described a huge artistic, intellectual and working class attraction. Yet they failed. But we are supposed to hide under our beds about a bunch of guerrilla fighters, mobs & suicide bombers with an appeal to the elites of next to nil, save as a potential set of oppressed. What NYC artist, ivy league professor or movie star would convert to such a miserable self flagellating faith? Sans oil, the combined industrial might of most of the Muslim world is less than Hungary too, but we are supposed to be in awe over these mindless devishes?
jakester // Sep 9, 2010 at 6:48 am
Kendall rave on.
But I hate to break you the news, but originally Right meant the Church and Monarchy, so central control & anti-democratic features are not alien there.
Also, those devout cons who were so fond of all those God given inalienable rights were might stingy when it came to women, blacks, Indians, etc. The federalism argument sounds really ducky but what it usually boils down to is having the states do the dirty work, nothing very moral there. Just like Dr. Glenn Beck who said that separation of church & state is only a federal thing. We need the freedom to create one religion states and towns.
This powerful country and the world wide influence we have are a product of a strong central government and favored industries that could build the armies & material we need for control & influence