Pajamas Media

277 Comments

1. Delia:

AMEN.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:01 am 2. joe buzz:

Rand, you obviously did not get the MSM memo that explains:

Anger + white + gun = Right wing Christian

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:02 am 3. Middleman:

So Don Black, you know the neo-nazi jailbird who started the white power site Stormfront, and his son are not right-wing despite his son being elected to position in the Florida Republican Party?

I know most Republicans and neo-nazis are very different birds, but you do a piss poor job in explaining yourselves.

Opposed to racial discrimination because you’re against job quotas? Yea, that wins them over, pal.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:14 am 4. Sherab Zangpo:

And now this piece of trash is even a cop-killer (a security guard killer if you want to be precise), hence the left will love him, as they like all the other cop-killers.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:19 am 5. Jim Ryan:

Shorter Middleman:

Please explain to my satisfaction why you’re not a racist, otherwise I’ll say words like “piss-poor”. The left say you guys are racists, and I’m buying it.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:27 am 6. Eric Florack:

The funny thing is, the security guard hadn’t even died before the usual suspects on the left were already making noise about that damned DHS “Report”, and Heller trying to score political points.

Look, gang, let’s face it… the guy was a nutbag at the off.

How is it that prior to that report, this guy not already labeled a threat… and treated as such? The fact is, this guy was a well-known nutbag, and was obviously quite able to act, despite all laws to the contrary. The evidence of this guy’s being a nutter has been there for decades, now, much of it on the web for all to see. So this validates the DHS report how, again?

Secondly, how’d this moron manage to get a long gun into a building supposedly protected by metal detectors, which itself is smack dab in the middle of a “victim disarming zone”? So much for the law, and so much for the anti-Heller argument we’re seeing brewing on the left just now over this from (again) the left.

What we are witness to, here, is the left trying to fit this guy into their long-established talking points.

Let me draw a parallel: Tim McVeigh.

Now, I pointed out in a column published at the time, that there was much in the way of evidence already on this guy. Yet we never saw it coming? Why not?

Of course, as with Von Brun, Clinton found with McVeigh, that it’s much easier to blame the whole thing on talk radio, and a vast right wing conspiracy, to blame the whole thing on your political enemies.

Tar them all with the ‘extremist’ label.
Damn them by association.

As Rand points up, we’ve already seen some of this, and it’s not too much a stretch to predict that we’ll see more from the left over the next few days… and years. That’s right, I said years.

Think, now; This thing woud even under normal conditions, take a year at least to go through the court system. With an election coming up, it’ll likely go longer for ‘unreleated’ reasons, and we’ll see huge coverage the whole way… I won’t be amazed to see CNN and MSNBC going wall to wall on it at least once if not more.

Each new ‘report’ will give new opportunity for the usual suspects there in the dinosaur media, and on the ‘Sphere, to further cast aspersions on the right, as Rand suggests.

Just the thing going into an election cycle, if you’re a leftist seeking something to focus attention on, other than the massive failure your party has been with things like the economy, etc.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:30 am 7. Agoraphobic Plumber:

“So Don Black, you know the neo-nazi jailbird who started the white power site Stormfront, and his son are not right-wing despite his son being elected to position in the Florida Republican Party?”

I must have missed where Simberg wrote that part.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:34 am 8. Peregrine John:

He’s not interested in winning them over, he’s interested in telling the truth. Which rarely wins anyone over, really.

Speaking of which, and speaking of piss poor explanations, the bit about Don Black comes across as explaining that apples = oranges because lemons are also a citrus.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:34 am 9. Free Hat:

“Anyway, I’d be willing to bet that he doesn’t hate government in general — based on his writings (more on that in a minute) he wouldn’t have hated Hitler’s government, but there’s nothing “right-wing” about liking Nazis, who were leftists (and pagans).”

Jesus, Simberg, you are about the stupidest idiot who has yet been published on this ridiculous joke of a “news” site.

How can you possibly argue with a straight face that Nazism is a political ideal of the Left when the absolute first thing the Nazis did when they got into power was get rid of minorities, intellectuals, Jews, Liberals, atheists socialists, gays, and everyone else that the Right wing hates? Why would a committed Leftist group kill all its supporters? You haven’t any credible evidence that the Left is any more or less “fascist” than the Right; you’re just parroting a dopey, mindless little theory that goes something like this:

“The modern American Conservative movement believes that small government is the only way to run effective government. Conservative and Liberals are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Therefore, if American Conservatives are for small government, the American Liberals must be for large government. Only large government can be oppressive and totalitarian. Only Liberals support a large government. Therefore, only Liberals can be oppressive and totalitarian.”

Now let me break down for you why you are a moron and why your “argument” is completely absurd.

According to your rationale, all right wing movements are “limited government” movements. Which is crap. Just because the modern American variety of Conservative thought happens to advocate limited government, that does not mean that all right wing movements throughout history have advocated limited government. You’ve basically taken one specific and arbitrary set of ideals, that of American Conservative limited government, which has never actually existed in the first place except as an ideal, and are using it as a litmus test to judge whether any political theories/movements throughout time are Leftist or Rightist.

And why is this stupid? Let me show you:

In 200 years, my great grandson, Free Hat III will start a radical Left wing socio/political movement that is both socially and fiscally liberal and based on the ideal that government ought never to willfully undertake any action that could end a human life. This means no abortions, no executions, and no human soldiers will enter into battle – we will use a completely mechanized military fighting force. As part of the platform, a large and well-funded federal government will be called for in order to provide the social and financial net of support for the nurturing and development of thousands of unwanted infants who are abandoned after birth now that abortion is illegal. Free Hat III will call this movement the Life Party, and within 20 years, it will be a major political party in the United States. During his first campaign speech for the Presidency, Free Hat III will make the following argument to justify the virtue of his party: “The Life Party believes in protecting all life at all cost. My opponents on the Right are not part of the Life Party, and therefore must naturally be opposed to the protection of all life at all costs. Only those who are part of the Life Party are for the protection of life at all costs, therefore logically, since only my party is for the protection of life, the Right Wing must therefore be opposed to life.”

He will continue: “Since the Life Party is Liberal, and since the Right Wing has historically strongly advocated the right to own assault rifles and has strongly advocated the death penalty, it must follow that if a party/movement advocates death in any circumstance, it cannot by definition be pro-life, and therefore cannot by definition be Liberal. If only the Life Party, and by extension the Left wing, is pro-life, then this means that all previous socio/political movements that don’t share the Life Party’s exact set of ideals, must oppose life. This logically concludes that all anti-life governments throughout history, such as the Nazis, Socialists, Fascists, Communists, as well as Totalitarian Theocracies, must have been Conservative/Right Wing, because if they had protected life at all costs, then by definition they would be Liberal, as we are.

Do you understand what’s so horribly stupid here? I’m using a future definition of a political movement as a litmus test to illegitimately categorize present-day political movements, just like you’re using a present-day definition of the right-wing movement to illegitimately categorize all previous political movements throughout history.

A real student of history understands that the ideals of political parties and movements are fickle and change constantly, and therefore cannot be used as litmus tests to categorize all movements that have come before. In 100 years, the Conservative movement may no longer have “limited government” as one of its central tenets, and at that point, you’re entire argument will be rubbish. Which makes it rubbish today.

So please do us all a favor and learn how to formulate a rational, coherent thought before you decide to write this crap. Thanks.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:37 am 10. Sherab Zangpo:

‘Them Jews aren’t going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he’ll talk to me in five years when he’s a lame duck, or in eight years when he’s out of office. … They will not let him to talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is. …’

Same day of the shooting, words by Obama’s “pastor”, “reverend” Wright.

Maybe the shooter had heard about this last “Jewish conspiracy”…

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:40 am 11. Houdini:

Call it like it is and be done with it, but leave it to our dinosaur media to make this anything but what it is. This is why I do not watch television even though I have two large HDTVs that use my also HD receivers if I do choose to watch them, usually SCI FI or Fox News, but hardly ever turn it on due to the headaches I get watching the krap they present.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:41 am 12. PunditJoe:

Middleman, be fair – please reread the follow quote from the article:

“For example, most of the “right-wing” people I know are opposed to racial discrimination, such as job quotas, or voting for a president just because he’s black. Unlike “left wingers,” they believe, as Martin Luther King did, that people should be judged “for the content of their character, not the color of their skin.””

That’s a bit more than just “Opposed to racial discrimination because you’re against job quotas”. It is hard to pull of a jab like yours when we (most) all commenters had just finished reading the article.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:42 am 13. David Thomson:

“Capitalist System Judges Admit Taking Kickbacks
Two US judges charged with taking more than $2m (£1.4m) in kickbacks from a privately-run detention centre have pleaded guilty to fraud. (A prime example of why the extreme capitalist system of private for profit enterprise in government affairs should be outlawed.)”

—National Socialist Movement website

http://www.nsm88.org/

The above quote is something I found earlier today on an American Nazi website. Please note that these extremists are unapologetically anti-capitalist. They literally want to outlaw the free market system. James W. Von Brunn is not a Christian—-and he also most likely a hard core socialist! There is no such thing as someone holding his views believing in the American Constitution and the economic doctrines of Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. These same people invariably reject the Jewish Jesus Christ and turn Him into an Aryan anti-Semite. At the end of the day, Von Brunn would feel quite comfortable with the economic goals of Barack Obama. He merely wants to find a white guy to carry out this agenda.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:42 am 14. Squid:

Shorter shorter Middleman: You don’t pander to favored identity groups, therefore you must be bigoted against them.

Such nuance!

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:46 am 15. Jack Okie:

Middleman:

Here are a couple of links for ya, pal –

http://www.adl.org/PresRele/Extremism_72/5410_72.htm

http://tinyurl.com/mmjl77

Note that the Republican County Chairman is Sid Dinerstein, a jew. Note also that had Black signed the Republican loyalty oath, he would have been purged anyway.

There is a lot of current scholarship and discussion on the web, including conversations Hitler had with associates in the 1920s, that make clear Nazism was socialist, left-wing from the start. Hitler’s innovation was to reject the international aspect of conventional socialism, choosing rather to weld German national sentiment to socialism – hence “National Socialism”. Get it? Fasism and nazism were not right-wing, but it was convenient for Stalin to assert that they were.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:46 am 16. Middleman:

Oh, I have my prejudices. No doubt about it. At least I admit to them. I’m not going to be smug and backhanded about things.

The undenible fact is that most white racial separatists have more in common or have dabbled with the Republican party before moving into extremism and it’s most likely due to the Republicans belief in ‘Social Darwinism’.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:47 am 17. Andre Kenji:

He was neither a lefist nor a rightwing. He was just a stupid jackass. In fact, people of both sides likes to demonize Nazis because their only intellectual heirs are losers like this guy.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:47 am 18. Bilgeman:

#6 Eric Florack:
“What we are witness to, here, is the left trying to fit this guy into their long-established talking points.”

And this they would have accomplished anyway, regardless of the facts.
Von Brunn had a lot to say about George W Bush and “neocons”…none of it flattering.

This Annapolitan froot-loop apparently hated just about everyone but himself, and frankly, bringing an antique .22 into the Federal City to apparently shoot up a museum full of people would tend to suggest to me that he was likely as intent on committing “suicide by cop” as he was in re-enacting some kind of half-@ssed racist “Gran Torino” fantasy.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:51 am 19. Ken Silber:

It’s ahistorical to sanitize “right wing” as simply “adheres to individualism, the values of the enlightenment, and limited government.” Historically, the “right” began with people who wanted to preserve the old regime following the French Revolution. The advocates of laissez faire and enlightenment values were then found on the left. Over time, the left became associated with socialism, and the right with individualism, but those have hardly been the only meanings. Roughly speaking, people who try to preserve some earlier order (or idealized version of one) are on the right; and a nutcase who wants to restore racial purity would be on the extreme right.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:55 am 20. RunningDogLackey:

Sorry, guys. Von Brunn is one of yours. Kudos to Simberg for one of the most gymnastic attempts I’ve ever seen to deny the obvious, but Von Brunn is yours. The whole Christianity-spouting, Liberal-Jew-Hating, Orly-Taitz-following, Obama-is-a-puppet nine yards of him.

Jun 11, 2009 - 11:57 am 21. Macko:

He was a veteran so the DHS was right ? I heard that all day on FOX. Shepard smith blaming the internet and the birth certificate “rumor”. Glenn Beck talking about the pot boiling over.

They pulled up a wealth of information on this guy within a half hour of the shooting so tell me it was a surprise that he did this. The DHS should have been on this guy but I guess they were too busy with the tea party threats.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:00 pm 22. Eric Florack:

How can you possibly argue with a straight face that Nazism is a political ideal of the Left when the absolute first thing the Nazis did when they got into power was get rid of minorities, intellectuals, Jews, gays,

You’re a fine one to be complaining about someone else’s rational thought. Tell me… what did Stalin do in those areas upon gaining power?

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:00 pm 23. Jay Manifold:

“Why would a committed Leftist group kill all its supporters?”

I dunno, you pseudonymous coward. Ask Joe Stalin.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:00 pm 24. Baby M:

Free Hat: National Socialism in Germany, and Fascism in Italy, were outgrowths of plain old Marxian socialism. Mussolini proudly called himself a “man of the Left.” In Mein Kampf, there are passages where Hitler acknowledges his intellectual debt to Marx. The whole idea that fascism and Communism were enemies on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum only arose after Hitler invaded the USSR–in violation of the terms of their alliance under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. (Stalin was planning to backstab Hitler eventually, the Krauts just beat him to the punch.)

Closer to home, Woodrow Wilson, the first true modern Leftist to hold the presidency, was also the most overt racialist ever to hold the office. He is the one who segregated the federal Civil Service, and he was down with eugenics and the KKK.

Margaret Sanger–there’s a right-winger for ya!–in her “Birth Control Journal,” published writings by the leading German eugenicists in the years before WW2. Also, look up her “Negro Project,” which was a deliberate campaign to introduce contraceptives into African-American communities to cut down on the number of “undesirable” babies being born. (Hint: “undesirable” in this context is a synonym for “African-American.”)

There’s a very good book on the subject–documenting all this and more in exacting detail–called “Liberal Fascism.” It’s just out in paperback. Go read it with an open mind.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:03 pm 25. Eric Florack:

This Annapolitan froot-loop apparently hated just about everyone but himself, and frankly, bringing an antique .22 into the Federal City to apparently shoot up a museum full of people would tend to suggest to me that he was likely as intent on committing “suicide by cop” as he was in re-enacting some kind of half-@ssed racist “Gran Torino” fantasy.

Mmmfffphhh.

Funny you should say that. Look at the last para at the link.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:04 pm 26. Rand Simberg:

Ken, I think that this all shows how meaningless “left” and “right” are for carrying on a sensible political discouse than anything else.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:05 pm 27. buzz:

RunningDogLackey:
doesn’t appear you have done your homework. You left out the part where he considers Christianity to be a Jewish plot, he hates ALL Jews, not just liberal ones, and absolutely hates both Bushes, the neocons, and McCain. So how exactly do you get to “Sorry, guys. Von Brunn is one of yours.”?

Only if you ignore all evidence do you arrive at that conclusion.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:06 pm 28. Jim T:

Five will get ten that this nut was a hard core Alex Jones fan.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:07 pm 29. Rand Simberg:

a nutcase who wants to restore racial purity would be on the extreme right.

So, Ken, would the so-called “progressives” (and racist) Woodrow Wilson and eugenicist Margaret Sanger be merely on “the right” or on “the extreme right”? Does the fact that Mussolini (himself no racist) modeled much of the Fascist program on the Wilson (and later Roosevelt) administrations, make him only slightly, or extremely “right wing”?

There really isn’t much correlation between “racism” and left-right, but to the degree there is, I’d say that the left has a much worse history to live down.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:11 pm 30. pst314:

“people who try to preserve some earlier order (or idealized version of one) are on the right”

So by that perversion of logic, somebody who sought to preserve the Soviet Union would be right-wing.

…oh wait–we already heard that lie from innumerable journalists back when the Soviet Union broke up.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:11 pm 31. whataloadacrap08:

I’m astonished that the talking heads haven’t tagged the stupid old ba$tard as Sarah Palin’s grandpaw yet!

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:12 pm 32. pst314:

“Ken, I think that this all shows how meaningless ‘left’ and ‘right’ are for carrying on a sensible political discourse….”

I disagree: the labels seem to become meaningless only when we try to debate with the dishonest and the ignorant. There is lots of room for legitimate and principled debate on what ‘left’ and ‘right’ really mean, but some arguments are simply exercises in obfuscation.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:15 pm 33. Patrick:

Mr. Silber…

Those would be the advocates of “laissez faire and enlightenment values” who created the Terror?

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:16 pm 34. Ben:

He hates Bush and Christians and Neocons. He’s not right or eft, he’s just nuts! Why do you all have to look at everything through group identity? People don’t get psychological disorders because they read a political tract, they have psychological disorders because of chemical imbalances. To say a hater of Bush, neocons and Christians is a right wing extremist tells me that you have a blindfold on and fingers in your ears.

And BTW, the Nazi party was decidedly left. Hitlet rose to power promising power to the worker. They were even called the National SOCIALIST WORKERS Party and allied with Mousilini, a fascist. And fascism, if you ever look up the actual definition, could be right or left, but Benito considered himself decidedly to the left.

This guy was nuts. he wasn’t part of any particular group from which you can draw wider conclusions. He was an individual acting alone, and he was crazy. That’s it.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:17 pm 35. John Conner:

Why didn’t the Museum let the guard have a bullet-proof vest? It is there among the Smithsonian Museums.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:17 pm 36. Toronto Girl:

This act was a culmination of years of anger and hate. If he were black or a moslem or both, the media would have been saying it was Israel’s/white man’s fault, etc, etc. We all are responsible for our own actions and should not blame what we do on anything or anyone other than ourselves.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:17 pm 37. Ken Silber:

Ken, I think that this all shows how meaningless “left” and “right” are for carrying on a sensible political discouse than anything else.

That I agree with, Rand.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:18 pm 38. Dishman:

I believe a better label for him would be “socialist”.

Surprise, surprise, other socialists like “RunningDogLackey” are stepping up to try to shout down anyone who disagrees. Other socialists are trying to use this to permanently silence those who disagree.

The problems with “right” and “left” are a feature, not a bug.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:21 pm 39. jon galt:

Simberg is ignorant.

Von Braun, the killer was a Neo-Nazi.

Nazi mean National Socialist Party. Nazi’s are left wing.

In the 1930s Germany under Hitler met with Russia under Stalin and made a secret pact in which Russia agreed to be portrayed as left wing and the Nazi’s as right wing even though the Nazi’s were also left wing; i.e. National Socialist Party.

This was done so that the two governments would have the full political spectrum covered in the media.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:34 pm 40. Keep Hat in jail, he's a baby killer:

It’s the socialism, stupid.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:36 pm 41. Middleman:

Conservatives adhering to individualism is probably the biggest joke there is.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:44 pm 42. David Thomson:

“I believe a better label for him would be “socialist”.

And that’s exactly what he is! There are two branches of socialism dominating the intellectual landscape: international socialism and national socialism. The latter restricts the benefits of socialism to those of a particular racial or ethnic group. Socialists of the “left”, at least, give lip service to adhering to transracial values. That’s the only real difference.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:46 pm 43. Ken Silber:

Rand: Left-wingers can be racist too. I never doubted it. Since the overall thrust of Wilson’s administration was to impose a future vision, rather than revert to a past state, Wilson was a left-wing racist.

Patrick: “Enlightenment,” like “left” and “right” comes in a variety of meanings. Yes, the Terror was perpetrated by (some) exponents of the French Enlightenment, who thought that progress required violence. The Scottish Enlightenment tended to produce more moderate and free-market thinkers.

Jun 11, 2009 - 12:53 pm 44. Matt Groom:

When you’re as far left as the Democrats and their propaganda wing, the MSM, I suppose everything is to your immediate right, including Nazis.

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:03 pm 45. Ms. Attitude:

9. Free Hat: OMG….get off your flipping great grandson…how many times are you going to paste that? Get your own blog. You are boring me and many others.

You can take your little story and paste it to the liberals and yourself…it fits better. Now go away!!! ;(

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:05 pm 46. Dishman:

… continuing my previous line of thought…

We’re now at three recent high profile killings…

Two of them could be used effectively to smear the right, and got played up. One could not, and got played down.

The narrative around them formed very quickly. The reaction was too fast for our OODA. It seems to me it was already set.

The narrative is that “the right is dangerous and crazy, and it’s Rush’s fault”.

This is getting very scary.

We’re operating in “prepared battle space”, and we’re the target.

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:12 pm 47. blotto:

Freehat: You have to copy and paste your own post here (Tale of two murders) as a response just to be heard. Wow. That is really using your synapses. Don’t strain. I was particularly interested in this new albeit it deceitful tidbid:

“How can you possibly argue with a straight face that Nazism is a political ideal of the Left when the absolute first thing the Nazis did when they got into power was get rid of minorities, intellectuals, Jews, Liberals, atheists socialists, gays, and everyone else that the Right wing hates? Why would a committed Leftist group kill all its supporters? You haven’t any credible evidence that the Left is any more or less “fascist” than the Right; you’re just parroting a dopey, mindless little theory that goes something like this:”
So now it is okay for you to abrogate your timeline of how politics and political parties change or don’t change (I’m confused) in order to make a point, but against me, it was my mistake. Just another example of your Orwellian logic of me(you) good, you(me) bad…

So let me break it down for you: On the continuum of political ideology on the right is anarchy and on the left is fascism, nazism, socialism under the rubric of totalitarianism. They want to control the people by government and the means of production of goods and everything else for the advantage of the state. You can tweak the differences by who runs the overall government say, dictator-Mao, or meglomaniac-Hitler, or General Secretary-Stalin. But they all, like today’s left, want the government to control the lives of its citizens.

As to why Hitler cleansed his nation of unwanted had to do with his insane desire for eugenics.

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:13 pm 48. Rand Simberg:

Patrick: “Enlightenment,” like “left” and “right” comes in a variety of meanings. Yes, the Terror was perpetrated by (some) exponents of the French Enlightenment, who thought that progress required violence. The Scottish Enlightenment tended to produce more moderate and free-market thinkers.

I would say that in the modern formulation, the individualist and freedom-loving “right” are the children of Locke, and the collectivist and tyrannical “left” (from Robespierre down to Stalin and Hitler, and Mao et al) of Rousseau. If I had a time machine and could use it go back and assassinate any one person for the betterment of humanity, it would be him.

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:14 pm 49. Free Hat:

Baby M: “There’s a very good book on the subject–documenting all this and more in exacting detail–called “Liberal Fascism.” It’s just out in paperback. Go read it with an open mind.”

Sorry, but “Liberal Fascism” is lame for the same reason that this author’s essay is lame: it uses a present-day definition of the right-wing movement to illegitimately categorize all previous political movements throughout history as either Leftist or Rightist.

The argument is that because modern day Conservatism advocates limited government, and because only large government can be oppressive, therefore only Leftist movements can be oppressive.

But it’s a stupid argument to begin with, and it quickly falls apart when you realize that:

1. You can’t judge past movements as being “Rightist” or “Leftist” based upon modern and arbitrary standards that you have made up and are subject to change. And that’s what you’ve done. You basically stated that all right-wing movements are pro-limited government, which simply isn’t true – there is such a thing as Right Wing Nationalism. While American conservatism is pro-limited government today, it has not always been, and will not always be so, so it is frankly ludicrous to cast historical movements in stone as “Leftist” or “Rightist” according to modern interpretations of what “Rightist” and “Leftist” mean.

2. All governments according to your definition inherently are Leftist big government, and therefore, according to your definition, there is no such this as a Rightist government, except for third world governments that are limited, but not because of choice, but because they have no order or resources. So basically all you’re doing is arguing that Rightist government is a myth, and therefore a myth cannot be responsible for any of history’s atrocities.

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:17 pm 50. Amos:

Free Hat: pretty much everything you charged of the Nazis you could also charge of the Communists. Try again.

However, without going too far into it let’s just go with a few things:

1. Nazi is an abbreviation (not really an acronym) for National Socialist German Workers Party. That’s what they called themselves. That’s what they sold themselves as. That’s what they were.

2. Fundamentally, the only major differences between themselves and other Socialist groups was that they had the insight that a worker has more in common with his boss than he does with a worker six countries away speaking a different language. The Nazis combined the ideological bent that came to Europe after the French Revolution and Napoleon and combined it with the nationalistic/racist fervor that had been growing throughout Europe since the mid-1800s.

3. Contrary to the simplistic notions given by Progressive school teachers and everyone in Barack Obama’s youth, Europeans very much saw themselves as different races of people right up until present times. They did not all join hands and call themselves “whitey.”

4. The worker part of #1 above is a tip-off. You might not be aware of this (actually, I’m fairly certain you aren’t) but the “right wing” parallel to Socialism isn’t the Free Market. If you think it is, you need a better education. A free market is… free. If collectivists like yourself or Barack Obama want – and have the integrity – to create your own kibbutzes, collectives and colonies, you are… drum roll… free to. You lack only the integrity or humility. None of us will stop you from doing it or from starving from it.

If Obama’s little minions want more Progressive health care, they are absolutely free to start their own pharma companies, hospitals and HMOs. I suspect that they’ll run into reality the same way Obama’s foreign policy does, but hey: knock yourself out. Again, all you lack is the will and integrity to do so.

The right wing parallel to Socialism is Mercantilism. Here’s an exercise: write down all the evil things you think are true about right-wing economics (corporatism, fascism, oppression of brown people), then go look up Mercantilism and its history. Then, when you’re all done, ask yourself this: if you and your ilk “Are the Change that you’ve been waiting for” what – other than our resources, our time and our wealth – were you waiting for, and why? Weren’t you free to?

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:18 pm 51. tom swift:

“Since the overall thrust of Wilson’s administration was to impose a future vision, rather than revert to a past state, Wilson was a left-wing racist”

By this definition of Right and Left, admirers of those centuries-old pieces of parchment, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, qualify as Right-wing fanatics. It this correct?

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:19 pm 52. Dark Eden:

So he hates Christians, he hates Bill O’Reilly, he hates “Neoconservatives” (meaning Jewish Republicans), he hates Bush, he hates McCain…

Yeah gee I can’t imagine why anyone would doubt he’s right wing!

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:22 pm 53. G Alston:

…but there’s nothing “right-wing” about liking Nazis, who were leftists (and pagans).

Jerry Pournelle says otherwise. He has a PhD in this stuff. Who to believe? Hmmm.

http://www.baen.com/chapters/axes.htm

The rest of your piece goes south from there.

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:32 pm 54. AThinkingPerson:

If this argument holds water then I’d like to lay all of the 9/11 deaths and the ensuing soldiers deaths at the feet of the liberals. They hate the military, the CIA and the FBI. All organizations that if they had been properly supported instead of maligned by all of the loonie-lefties, would have gotten more info beforehand to thwart the attack.

Where was Clinton when it was all being planned anyway?

Makes just about as much sense (well, to everyone but Free Lunch that is).

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:37 pm 55. fred:

I used to be on the Left many years ago (1977-1987). There were most definitely stereotypes of conservatives in those days, and to the best of my knowledge none of us in those days were a bit interested in knowing the truth – of separating fact from fiction, because the fiction served a political purpose.

We have to move beyond the Right/Left continuum now. The more accurate typologies should be “collectivist”/”statist” vs. individual rights and liberty. The truth is that it is getting hard to slot people generally, since it was the Communists/socialists who, in the early years of the last century in this country, set about to muddy the waters and change the names/labels they would publicly use for themselves. Almost no one would use Marxist/Communist/socialist anymore. They knew it would not ingratiate them to most of the public, so they started calling themselves “liberals” and “progressives.”

As for the nut job who went on a rampage yesterday, in no way do I recognize him as an example of 99.9% of my fellow conservatives, no matter how much the State Run Media wants you to think he does. It is merely politically convenient slander, and I think most see it that way.

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:41 pm 56. Paul of Alexandria:

Free Hat (9)

How can you possibly argue with a straight face that Nazism is a political ideal of the Left ….

The Nazi’s (National Socialist Party) were a fascist organization comparable to Mussolini’s Fascist movement. Fascism is a branch of socialism which is only right-wing when compared to pure Marxism. For a more complete description see “Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change” by Jonah Goldberg and “Modern Fascism: The Threat to the Judeo-Christian Worldview” by Gene Edward Veith. One of the aspects of fascism (which does not necessarily require a dictator) is corporatism, where the government directly controls major corporations, helping them to suppress competition in return for their support.

The “left” in the U.S. are statists; Obama is certainly showing himself to be a corporatist. He is almost exactly following the footsteps of Juan Peron of Argentina.

Definition: “Left-wing”, in the American definition, is socialist, where the government exercises all economic power. “Right-wing” is properly the Libertarians, where there is no government at all. Properly, conservatives believe in a balance between the two where the government is set to the minimum size necessary to keep order and perform those functions that can only be done by a central authority such as treat with other nations, maintain a military, and set country-wide standards. Gee, all of those things defined in the U.S. Constitution. Conservatives also believe that government functions should be exercised at the lowest level possible: family first, then community, then state, and finally federal.

According to your rationale, all right wing movements are “limited government” movements.

“Right-wing” are “limited government” by definition.

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:43 pm 57. Thomass:

Free Hat:

“How can you possibly argue with a straight face that Nazism is a political ideal of the Left when the absolute first thing the Nazis did when they got into power was get rid of minorities, intellectuals, Jews, Liberals, atheists socialists, gays, and everyone else that the Right wing hates?”

Because over in Europe, the liberals you mention above are what you idiots call ‘right wingers’ here in the US….. Because the ‘right wing’ in Europe are socialists and collectivists (ummm, like the left)… and since the 80s that the left has taken on more and more Euro right wing themes… such as anti material progress (a former core lefty trait) / greenie-ism, value of blood and culture over universal values / internationalism (see Sotomayor, Rev. Wright, et cetera), embrace of Heidegger-istic anti-rationalism / romanticism (whereas the left claimed to be radically pro rationalism)…

Thats how…

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:45 pm 58. J:

“He was a veteran so the DHS was right ?”

Was he a veteran?

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:48 pm 59. Paul of Alexandria:

Free Hat (9)

How can you possibly argue with a straight face that Nazism is a political ideal of the Left when the absolute first thing the Nazis did when they got into power was get rid of minorities, intellectuals, Jews, Liberals, atheists socialists, gays,

So you’re saying that only right-wingers hate Jews, Athiests, etc, etc? Seems to me rather judgemental. The Nazi’s got rid of these people because they were not “Aryan”. Fascists tend to use ethnic bonding as a means to hold people to their causes. It’s a good excuse to get rid of anybody that might disagree with them. I might note that after the Jews, the Nazi’s persecuted a whole lot of Christians too.

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:49 pm 60. acj:

All you have to do is read the posts for Pajamas Media and you will find people that hate, and Christians that deny peace and love.
It’s bomb this and bomb that, shoot this and shoot that.

The world will come to an end if we don’t have a war, don’t have guns, and don’t have someone better than someone else.
Neo Nazis are right wing conservatives=they hate blacks, jewish people, hipanics, and gays.

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:50 pm 61. Thomass:

Free Hat:

“How can you possibly argue with a straight face that Nazism is a political ideal of the Left when the absolute first thing the Nazis did when they got into power was get rid of minorities, intellectuals, Jews, Liberals, atheists socialists, gays, and everyone else that the Right wing hates?”

Because over in Europe, liberals are what you people call ‘right wingers’ here in the US….. Because the ‘right wing’ in Europe are socialists and collectivists (ummm, like the left)… and since the 80s that the left has taken on more and more Euro right wing themes… such as anti material progress (a former core lefty trait) / greenie-ism, value of blood and culture over universal values / internationalism (see Sotomayor, Rev. Wright, et cetera), embrace of Heidegger-istic anti-rationalism / romanticism (whereas the left claimed to be radically pro rationalism)…

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:52 pm 62. Hot Lunch:

For example, most of the “right-wing” people I know are opposed to racial discrimination, such as job quotas, or voting for a president just because he’s black. Unlike “left-wingers,” they believe, as Martin Luther King did, that people should be judged “for the content of their character, not the color of their skin.”

Well, that settles that then; THEN THEY ALL MUST BE. My god, what an embarrassment to real conservatives.

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:53 pm 63. Roderick Reilly:

Free hat:

Maybe pictures are worth a thousand words, I dunno, but go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bolshevik_Party

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:54 pm 64. AThinkingPerson:

Looks like all of the lefties will soon be eating their words….

Early indications are that our loonie shooter was a REGISTERED DEMOCRAT who also had plans on targeting Bill Kristol (Conservative) and FOX NEWS.

We were right all along. It’s a democrat disguised as a Conservative. Typical crap from the left. Will the MSM offer any apologies? Any guesses?

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/06/11/right-wing-holocaust-museum-shooter-may-have-targeted-the-weekly-standard/

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:57 pm 65. Hot Lunch:

Did someone say he was Christian? This is a classic straw man.

Jun 11, 2009 - 1:57 pm 66. acj:

I think that it is very important that the Republican right wing conservatives want to seperate themselves from this tragedy, Or at least want to seperate themselves from this idealology. This is an extreme case but the wood on the fire is always buring, some more than others.
Like the “farmer red neck” who hates blacks and is a Republican, may not share the same ideology as the businessman or women Republican in an urban area. But the fact is they are both Republican…I don’t find this same icky stuff with fellow democrats.

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:00 pm 67. Delia:

60. acj,

I guess you missed Rev. Wrights recent anti-semite rant that has already been posted on PJM today a few times.

Oh, I know, I know. Blacks and Hispanics are allowed to be racists because of big, bad whitey. O.J. and the DC sniper only did what they did because of ‘whitey’ too.

Who commits the majority of violent crimes in the USA?

Hmm? Or is that ‘racist’ to ask?

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:11 pm 68. The Shadow:

This is typical logic from DopeyPerson

“If this argument holds water then I’d like to lay all of the 9/11 deaths and the ensuing soldiers deaths at the feet of the liberals. They hate the military, the CIA and the FBI.”

Problem is that liberals do not hate the military, he CIA and the FBI. They do want them to obey the laws of the United States. Hate is what I find here especially when discussing Obama or anyone they disagree with. But what you want to do is project yyour own hatred onto your opponents. That way you can justify your own hatred.

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:12 pm 69. GCPSteve:

44. Matt Groom:
When you’re as far left as the Democrats and their propaganda wing, the MSM, I suppose everything is to your immediate right, including Nazis.

Well said.

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:13 pm 70. Roderick Reilly:

Here’s what I know about the extreme or radical “right:”

1) They hate jews, as do those darlings of the left, the Jihadists

2) They are Holocaust-deniers, again like many in the leftist-supported Muslim 3rd world.

3) They were against the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. Sound familiar?

4) They believe in protectionism, a favorite notion of union-dominated Democrats

5) The call themselves Anti-Zionists to diguise their jew-hatred. Michael Moore, Bill Ayers, International ANSWER, George Soros, etc. blah, blah, blah, are all “Anti-Zionists.” Evangelical Christians, on the other hand, are usually avid Zionists these days.

6) They hate Rush Limbaugh, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill O’Reilly, and so on down the list of “enemies of the left.” They LOVE Muamar Qaddaffi and Yaser Arrafat. Whoe ELSE often champions those two cretins?

7) They have cooperated and interacted with: The Nation of Islam and various Jihadii groups, I suppose under the theory that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” and that does include the Holocaust Museum killer.

The most prominent “right wing” radical, David Duke, was as frequent a visitor to avowed American enemies as Sean Penn.

9) The despicable Westboro Baptist Church, a nominally “conservative Christian” “church,” is despised by ALL of the conservative movement, as much as it is by liberals and leftists.

For the record, I know all this to be completely and totally, 100% true from first-hand, up-close observation of these “right-wingers.” I know them intimately. Thye are NOTHING like the conservatives that some people are trying to lump them with, any more than Bill Ayers can be lumped with a majority of Democrats.

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:16 pm 71. Mwalimu Daudi:

This logically concludes that all anti-life governments throughout history, such as the Nazis, Socialists, Fascists, Communists, as well as Totalitarian Theocracies, must have been Conservative/Right Wing, because if they had protected life at all costs, then by definition they would be Liberal, as we are.

Stalin was a radical right-winger. Free Hat’s descendent says so. So there.

Does this mean that the Left is (finally!) tossing Joe under the bus? I live in a university town, and there are a frightening number of professors that swear up and down that Stalin was a capitalist conservative slave to Big Business. But no one (so far) has advanced a theory quite as loopy as Free Hat’s.

On the other hand…the Left still worships mass murderers like George Tiller, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, etc. Maybe under the bus has become too crowded.

BTW: Free Hat – I’m still waiting for you to denounce the climate of hate the Left has created that celebrates a mass murderer like Tiller, that falsely claims that anti-Bush and 911 Truther von Brunn is some kind of Christianist right-winger, and that ignores Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad and other Islamofascist killers. If we are going to denounce the “climate of hate” should we not denounce all of it?

Or maybe we could dump the whole “climate of hate” shtick so beloved by the Left and hold individuals responsible for the acts of murder they commit.

Naw – too Christianist. Probably is loaded with trans-fats and has a large carbon footprint, too.

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:20 pm 72. Chuck Pelto:

TO: G Alston, et al.
RE: Hmmmmmmm…..

Jerry Pournelle says otherwise. He has a PhD in this stuff. Who to believe? Hmmm. — G Alston

Good question that.

Should be believe Jerry Pournelle, PhD and writer of some the very BEST science fiction of modern times?

Or Mr. Baen, whom you point us towards with your link.

Seems to me that Mr. Baen is taking some ‘liberties’ with Mr. Pournelle’s comments. And that IS Mr. Baen you’re linking to. Not Mr. Pournelle.

What does Jerry have to say about Baen, after Baem posted that item?

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out.....]

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:22 pm 73. "progressive"watch:

Empty hat & the others of the same ilk,Leftist hate–conservatives honestly disagree. You prove it every time you post.

Have you seen what Congress got caught doing today? Our Muslim president has converted Congress. We now have a radical Muslim Congress,also.

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:22 pm 74. pst314:

“a nutcase who wants to restore racial purity would be on the extreme right.”

So we’re supposed to conveniently forget all those progressives of the 1920’s and 30’s who advocated for eugenics, racial purity and white supremacy? Yeah, sure.

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:23 pm 75. Self-hating Boomer:

He has a PhD in this stuff

So does David Duke. So everything Duke says is beyond reproach?

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:24 pm 76. pst314:

“How can you possibly argue with a straight face that Nazism is a political ideal of the Left when the absolute first thing the Nazis did when they got into power was get rid of minorities, intellectuals, Jews, Liberals, atheists socialists, gays, and everyone else that the Right wing hates? Why would a committed Leftist group kill all its supporters?”

For the same reason that Communists in the Soviet Union ruthlessly crushed every competing socialist movement. (Not to mention in China, Vietnam, Cuba, etc.) From their point of view everyone else was a heretic. Or is that too difficult a concept for you to understand?

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:25 pm 77. Steve:

Middleman (41).

There are no absolutes but libertarians have more in common with the right than the left. Leftists calling themselves liberals is the biggest joke.

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:29 pm 78. Chuck Pelto:

TO: All
RE: acj vs. Christians

It’s rather interesting how acj considers Christians to be the same as the Taliban, and by indirection al Qaeda.

You know…..

…the people who blow up scores of their own people with suicidal bombers. Or like the Taliban, would use the breaks between periods in a soccer game to troop out the un-believers onto the playing field and behead them as part of the ‘half-time show’.

And I have to wonder….

….if we really ARE the equivalent of the Taliban, as acj says, I wonder why we haven’t seen all the beheadings of the non-believers, such as acj, as part of the half-time show at the football games? Or during the 7th Inning Stretch during baseball season?

I can understand them not being held between periods at basketball and hockey games. Too messy to clean up in short order to get on with the game for b-ball. And the all that red would cover the lines and logos in the ice at a hockey game.

Or have I been missing such little diversions, as I don’t watch television anymore?

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out.....and acj is going to look REALLY 'stupid'. But I expect it will be something much, much worse.....]

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:29 pm 79. Delia:

67. The Shadow:

“Problem is that liberals do not hate the military, he CIA and the FBI”

Oh reheheheheheheheheaaaaaaally now?

Embrace your young, up-n-coming Anti-Military libbies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVROC-gsnXA

More Anti-Military protestards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=van92GmlXS0

-And, don’t give me that ‘anti-war’ crappola when we have men and women fighting for us. Save that crap sammie for when they are back in the USA and given a heroic and grand homecoming. BTW, your libtarded Prezzie is still promotin’ war. Fancy that.

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:34 pm 80. Self-hating Boomer:

And the “No Shit, Sherlock” award goes to Politico:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0609/Weekly_Standard_may_have_been_shooter_target.html?showall

The suggestion that the Standard may have been a target complicates any view of the racist shooter in contemporary left-right terms. Von Brunn’s white supremacist roots put him under the rubric of a “right-wing extremist,” but the substance of his views — which included everything from believing that President Bush may have been in on the September 11 attacks to denying that President Obama is an American citizen — are too far on the fringe to fit into conventional political classification.

Close, but no cigar. The real answer is much simpler: your left/right model of the political universe is bogus. It’s a leftover from the French Revolution that hasn’t had any relevance for over a century.

BTW, isn’t it odd that those who identify as leftists insist that that there’s only a left and a right, and those who are identified by others as “right” are trying to argue for a more sophisticated model of the political universe? They’re the political equivalent of flat earthers. I guess the truth is too big for their iddy biddy minds.

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:44 pm 81. Chuck Pelto:

TO: All
RE: The Shallow

Problem is that liberals do not hate the military, he CIA and the FBI. — The Shallow

How VERY ‘odd’. It must have been all those ‘christians’ that spat on me or called me a “baby killer” all those years or cursing me in church.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[It's another pile-up of idiotarians on the cross-clueville expressway.]

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:45 pm 82. Brian:

The assumption that neo-nazis are right wing stems from a fact that many supported Bushs campaign with donations.No fault of Bush mind you.Pat Buchanon apparently doesnt like jews either.He wrote a piece in canada about PNAC(otherwise known as project for the new american century).But hes a paleo-conservative?SO many different tags its easy to confuse them all.But the GOP must smash the mindset of being associated with racists.Here in canada theres a misconception that conservatives are racist.Its possible some are behind closed doors.But ive experienced more racism and anti-semetism from the left the last 10 years.IN the meantime,the current govt of canada has more diversity than any other political party at the moment.Something i like pointing out to people.
I do know this.Ayers was a terrorist and communist=double fail.Wright is an anti-semite and black liberation theologist=double fail.
At least Mccain didnt associate with these types.The smear campaign against Palin worked,because of the dumbass Left was too partisan to see the facts.
Going on and on about the economy.Well in a free market system it goes up and down.The Dems knew obama would lose if they didnt focus the attention on the economy.Maybe some of you can clarify anything ive said here more clearly.

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:48 pm 83. AThinkingPerson:

Re #68 The Shadow: You might try reading my entire post before you post inane things. I’ll repost it here for reference…

“54. AThinkingPerson:

If this argument holds water then I’d like to lay all of the 9/11 deaths and the ensuing soldiers deaths at the feet of the liberals. They hate the military, the CIA and the FBI. All organizations that if they had been properly supported instead of maligned by all of the loonie-lefties, would have gotten more info beforehand to thwart the attack.

Where was Clinton when it was all being planned anyway?

Makes just about as much sense (well, to everyone but Free Lunch that is).”

IF you had read the entire thing you would have noted the last sentence “Makes just about as much sense…”.

I guess in your hurry to prove your one brain cell was firing on all cylinders, you jumped the gun a bit there “Shadow”. I’m wondering if that premature firing off business happens in all areas of your life or just where an IQ matters?

Jun 11, 2009 - 2:53 pm 84. G Alston:

#71 — Should be believe Jerry Pournelle, PhD and writer of some the very BEST science fiction of modern times?

The axes are Pournelle’s work.

What does Jerry have to say about Baen, after Baem posted that item?

I got the link from JEP’s site.

#74 — So everything Duke says is beyond reproach?

Among other things Pournelle is much admired and has worked for Reagan and Gingrich and widely regarded as both sane and fairly expert in this stuff. Did you have an actual point to make?

Jun 11, 2009 - 3:03 pm 85. pst314:

“The assumption that neo-nazis are right wing stems from a fact that many supported Bushs campaign with donations.”

Uh, no. This smear has been around for many decades.

Jun 11, 2009 - 3:04 pm 86. Dishman:

BTW, isn’t it odd that those who identify as leftists insist that that there’s only a left and a right, and those who are identified by others as “right” are trying to argue for a more sophisticated model of the political universe? They’re the political equivalent of flat earthers. I guess the truth is too big for their iddy biddy minds.

It’s deliberate. The object of that exercise is to force a choice between “national” and “international” socialism.

The idea that there might be other alternatives is something to be expunged.

Jun 11, 2009 - 3:05 pm 87. Mikey NTH:

Both right winf and left wing are inadequate to describe this guy. Dick Cheney is right wing, and Joe Biden is left wing, but both Mr. Cheney and Mr. Biden have far, far more in common with each other than they have with Mr. von Brunn. Von Brunn was off in his own political universe, he constituted a party of one.

To be blunt – I do not know what the color of the sky in his world is, but I bet it is some type of plaid. Or paisley. Mr. von Brunn, like the Unabomber, is not part of the American politcal process or its designations. To try to fit him in is an exercise in futility, and says to me that the person trying to fit him in needs to stop focussing on the trees and take a good look at the forest.

Jun 11, 2009 - 3:11 pm 88. Delia:

80. Chuck Pelto,

-And, not to veer too far off-topic but, isn’t it rather ‘interesting’ that the anti-war/military lefty nut-jobs of 2006 are now *poof* non-existent in 2009 even though Zero is following in Bush’s foot-steps?
Even ‘Osama’ says so!

Osama to 0bama, come innnnnnnn ZERO!

Jun 11, 2009 - 3:26 pm 89. Roderick Reilly:

Oh, I forgot to mention one more thing regarding these “radical right wingers” of the Von Brunn variety: many of them — including Von Brunn — are ANTI-Christian. I have observed this first-hand. Who are most prominently Anti-Christian these days? Exactly, thank you: rabid leftists.

The source and reasons for anti-Christianity are different for “right-wing” radicals and leftist radicals and so-called secular humanists (of which I am one by default), but the end result is the same: unreasoning hate and contempt for the Judeo-Christian overlay that was added onto Western civilization to make it the most inclusive and succesful of ALL civilazations.

Jun 11, 2009 - 3:26 pm 90. Chuck Pelto:

TO: G Alston
RE: Well….

#74 — So everything Duke says is beyond reproach?

Among other things Pournelle is much admired and has worked for Reagan and Gingrich and widely regarded as both sane and fairly expert in this stuff. Did you have an actual point to make? — G Alston

…you’re the one who put so much emphasis on someone holding a PhD, babe.

And as for the charts, I wonder if Jerry would reconsider those in light of what’s going on now. Or how he might couch them.

How long ago were those published? The 80s?

Thinks have ‘changed’ since then.

Regards,

Chuck(le)

Jun 11, 2009 - 3:27 pm 91. Paul M Hupf:

Why is it that any time someone resorts to violence (ala the shooting at the Holocaust museum, or the killing of the man who routinely performmed late term abortions) that the immediate reaction, given extraordinary publicity by the media, is that he is a “right wing” racist, or a “Christian extremist”, or a “conservative” of some stripe? Is it because the media in general is itself using the occasion for an agenda of its own, i.e to condemn those whose political and social views which differ from those of the media owners? The background of the individual is almost never given detailed examination by the media before it condemns, not the individual, but some political view unfavored by the condemnor. This is nothing more than an attack on the First Amendment of the U S Constitution.

Jun 11, 2009 - 3:28 pm 92. Ryan C:

“For example, most of the “right-wing” people I know are opposed to racial discrimination, such as job quotas, or voting for a president just because he’s black.”

Right wingers rejecting affirmative action and hiding their racism by way of strawman are examples of the right wing rejecting racism?

“Unlike “left-wingers,” they believe, as Martin Luther King did, that people should be judged “for the content of their character, not the color of their skin.””

Probably the most galling of right wing notions that by removing legal barriers to discrimination that they are fulfilling MLK’s dream of a color blind society.

so how long till some lunatic right winger takes a shot at David Letterman.

The rhetoric is certainly leading there.

Jun 11, 2009 - 3:30 pm 93. Self-hating Boomer:

And we have a goalpost mover here, folks. Can’t defend his “has a PhD” argument, and so changes the question.

Moving goalposts is generally a sign of a disingenuous troll in over its head.

Jun 11, 2009 - 3:32 pm 94. Brad:

I thought middleman had the most shallow intellect here until I read ajc.

Jun 11, 2009 - 3:32 pm 95. Ryan C:

The Council of Conservative Citizens, a white suprmicist group, are they left or right wing?

David Duke, former GOP LA State Rep, left wing or right wing?

British National Party, left wing or right wing?

Bob Jone University which until very recently did not allow interracial dating, right wing or left wing?

Jun 11, 2009 - 3:34 pm 96. umbrelladoc:

66: Delia
“Who commits the majority of violent crimes in the USA?

Hmm? Or is that ‘racist’ to ask?”

Since you asked, according to the 2007 FBI Crime statistics, out of 449,986 arrests for violent crimes (in brief, murder, rape, robbery, and assault) 265,108 or 56.8% were white.

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_43.html

Jun 11, 2009 - 4:08 pm 97. Rashputin:

I’m surprised he wasn’t sought after by all the leftie folks to give talks on what was wrong with America. He sounds just like various and sundry professors, academics researchers, and book authors who are sought after.

Maybe we need to take a step back, calm down, breathe deeply a few times, and quit stirring the pot by saying that all socialists are evil. They are very often, lying, murderous, fascist scum, but does that really make them evil, or are they just damaged by their life experiences? Poor man, I’m sure that if an honest reporter from the Times would look into it he would find that the suffering, desperate, soul was still wracked by guilt over his role in the military and unable to afford the mental health services he so badly wanted and needed.

Another innocent victim of our profit driven healthcare system acts out his despair and we, yes WE, dare to say his reasonable political views were the problem rather than admitting that our own selfishness has done this. Let’s all light candles and mentally broadcast waves of love and friendship to drive out the greed that has corrupted our society and wounded our spirts so deeply that victims out of desperation create ever more victims.

Regards

Jun 11, 2009 - 4:14 pm 98. Self-hating Boomer:

Dishman’s pretty much got the answer. The only thing that I would add is that while the international socialists try to maintain this false dichotomy in order to make their brand of totalitarianism more palatable, they also try to masquerade as something that they deny the existence of – libertarians.

The Nazis are honest enough to come out and state in front of the world that they’re totalitarians, and they believe in a government for the people, but not by or of the people. The communists aren’t so honest. They pretend to be for freedom, democracy, and transparency, and then proceed to dismantle all of them, and mow anyone in their way down.

But they need their strawman to keep battling. So we hear incessantly about the “far right”, which is simply an invention. The right wing were the royal loyalists in France. The term doesn’t mean anything in any other context.

The left wing, btw, were the French revolutionaries. This was before Marx’s time. So that term doesn’t mean what most people think it means, either.

Jun 11, 2009 - 4:17 pm 99. Doug:

The Facts Remain:
-
They want to claim this guy didn’t have the ability to act on his own. He only could act if he was inspired by somebody.

Well, who did he hate?
He hated both Bushes.
He hated neocons. He hated John McCain.
He hated Republicans.
He hated Jews as well.

He believes in an inside job conspiracy of 9/11. This guy is a leftist, if anything. This guy’s beliefs, this guy’s hate stems from influence that you find on the left, not on the right. But let’s listen to some of the audio sound bites from the Drive-By and the State-Run Media from yesterday afternoon through last night. Here’s the first. This is a montage of cable stations talking about the incident last night.

LAUTER: Clearly Obama’s election has fueled the right-wing extremist movement.

MATTHEWS: This is a political action by a far right extremist

COOPER: The rise of hate groups in the United States of right-wing extremists.

OLBERMANN: Right-wing religious based domestic terrorism.

BROWN: Right-wing extremism.

WALSH: There is a rising climate of right-wing hate, a lot of it directed at Obama.

RUSH: See how this is being set up and it’s all very predictable, but the truth is just the opposite of this, which I’ll get to in just a moment. Here now is Hillary Clinton this morning at the State Department.

Jun 11, 2009 - 4:25 pm 100. Doug:

“Now, let’s look at this responsibly. Let’s look at this rationally. Wasn’t it President Obama who just recently compared the Holocaust to what the Israelis are doing, supposedly, in Gaza? President Obama has a lot of friends that are Jew haters. Jeremiah Wright made news just yesterday by saying “them Jews” will not let me speak to Barack. I won’t be able to speak to Barack until five years into his presidency or eight years into it, ’cause “them Jews” won’t let me speak to him and won’t let him speak to me.

Obama runs in a very sick circle.

He listened to Jeremiah Wright’s anti-Jew, anti-American sermons for 20 years.

This friend of his, this Khalidi guy, another one, radical Palestinian, very anti-Semitic, now a professor at Columbia. He is an Obama buddy. You see, President Obama is using race as he did in his selection of his first Supreme Court nominee. He is dividing this nation in every way possible. That is the tactic of an authoritarian.
It is the tactic of the statist.
He is opening dialogue with Iran. Iran is run by Jew-hating nut jobs who deny the Holocaust, yet they insist on unleashing another one.

While denying the Holocaust, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to whom Barack Obama wants to speak without preconditions, is promising another Holocaust. ”
—
So, we’re dealing with a Nutjob,
thus assigning responsibility is a excercise in futility,
but the reaction to the tragedy, and the history of The Marxist,
his supporters on the left,
and the MSM lack of criticism says volumes.

Jun 11, 2009 - 4:34 pm 101. Doug:

Thought for the Day:
-
Election of a Marxist has Consequences.

Jun 11, 2009 - 4:35 pm 102. Doug:

#73. pst314:
“So we’re supposed to conveniently forget all those progressives of the 1920’s and 30’s who advocated for eugenics, racial purity and white supremacy?
Yeah, sure.”
—
And the percentage of Black Babies of the 40 Million Innocents Eliminated in the USA since Roe V Wade.

Jun 11, 2009 - 4:51 pm 103. Michael:

‘Now class, we’re going to do this (argument) one more time with feeling. Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable?’ the teacher said. That’s kind of like what this argument sounds like. The fact of the matter is that this ‘von Brunn’ bears only a superficial, if that, relationship to either side of the ‘left’ or ‘right’ groups in this country; ‘relationship’ is probably something he kind of lacks. He belongs in the, ta-da, demented or delusional group and, yes it’s true, the left has strained, first, to find him to have some superficial similarity with the right. I don’t know; maybe the right should ‘come out of the closet’ and ‘bridge the partisan divide’ and say, “Yes we are delusional (and ’somebody’).” In the interest of comity and ending the “tomato” argument.

Jun 11, 2009 - 4:56 pm 104. MochaLite:

My deep sympathies to the Johns family. Sadly though, immediately after the shooting I could just hear liberals thinking, “Whew, thank BO that it was a white guy and not a Muslim!!”

Jun 11, 2009 - 4:59 pm 105. Pastor of Muppets:

Finally a headline that tells it like it is.

It is obvious the man is a right wing Christian conservative whackjob.

Nothing unusual about that.

Jun 11, 2009 - 5:00 pm 106. Rashputin:

umbrelladoc (96) -

While you’re helping us with statistics, what percentage of the population is white, and what percentage of that total is your 265,108 number? Is 56.8% of the population Caucasian? Do all individuated groups have the same relationship between their representation in the general population and in the category of crimes selected to be considered as violent crime? Are any groups overrepresented among those who commit such crimes?

You avoided the issue, but not very well.

Have a very healthy day

Jun 11, 2009 - 5:18 pm 107. Blackwater:

He was a right wing conspiracy nut. Let’s just be honest. He seems to be a Ron Paul libertarian type with his hatred for the federal reserve and whatnot. Some Christians do indeed hate Jews and blame them for killing Christ. Mel Gibson comes to mind. He was a white supremicist. He watched lots of conservative news programs and followed their blogs. And he was a hardcore conspiracy theorist. But he also seems to be disturbingly normal and almost admirable in a lot of ways. He looks like your friendly nextdoor neighbor. He was a WWII war hero. And he was also very old for someone who went on a shooting rampage. He was 89 for God sakes. I guess he just senile with old age or something and held onto racism from a past era and read lots of conpiracy theories to the point where he just went completely nuts. Probably the most bizarre bio I’ve ever seen. To me it just seems pathetic trying to distance ourselves from this guy. A Bush rating lefty senior citizen did something similar a few months ago. He went around planting bombs all over his town if I remember right and threatened to shoot up a police station or a mail office or something. In a country of 300+ million people crap like this just happens from time to time regardless of background.

Jun 11, 2009 - 5:22 pm 108. Pat J:

Funny. I’ve heard and read several news stories about this wacko. None of them have inferred he was a Christian. And if it makes a difference, I don’t consider him “right wing” or “conservative.” Only a mentally ill old man. Sad.

Jun 11, 2009 - 5:30 pm 109. Marie Claude:

Because over in Europe, the liberals you mention above are what you idiots call ‘right wingers’ here in the US….. Because the ‘right wing’ in Europe are socialists and collectivists (ummm, like the left)… and since the 80s that the left has taken on more and more Euro right wing themes… such as anti material progress (a former core lefty trait) / greenie-ism, value of blood and culture over universal values / internationalism (see Sotomayor, Rev. Wright, et cetera), embrace of Heidegger-istic anti-rationalism / romanticism (whereas the left claimed to be radically pro rationalism)…

nah, what we call “right wing” in Europe is your center right, the so called “socialists” looks more alike

the true equivalent of “conservatives” would be the extreme “far-rightists” style Le Pen, but I understood that he is a denyer of Holocaust !
Also the supporters of Hitler were our Christian Conservatives, not the center-right that we understand today

But you’re parly right, our far-lefties have become what you described, ” / greenie-ism, value of blood and culture over universal values / internationalism”

Jun 11, 2009 - 5:40 pm 110. Middleman:

Brad:
“I thought middleman had the most shallow intellect here until I read ajc.”

Shallow? Why because I’m not accepting this new revisionist history that the American right-wing has not been bedfellows with racial nationalists and neo-nazis?

The history speaks for itself not matter what shell game you guys can pull out.

Jun 11, 2009 - 5:41 pm 111. John:

Oh, for God’s sake, really? Supporting affirmative action and being a white supremacist are both elements of the same phenomenon, on the same side of the political spectrum? This is your argument? Seriously?

Look, reasonable people can differ about affirmative action, but giving preferences to formerly discriminated-against groups in order to make up for past discrimination just isn’t anything like being a lunatic racist who kills people. And, of course, the kind of people who are racist in the way that von Brunn is racist – hating racial minorities, and such – have tended, in the United States, to come from what is generally considered the right. It wasn’t socialists or liberals who defended Jim Crow in the 50s and 60s.

That sounds nutty, but not particularly “right-wing” — if by that you mean someone who adheres to individualism, the values of the enlightenment, and limited government.

Well, no, I don’t mean that. Certainly in modern America, there are people who are right wing who hold to those beliefs. But they certainly aren’t the definition of “right wing,” and never have been. The term originated during the French Revolution to describe supporters of the king. The “right wing” has always been about defending economic and social elites. Someitmes this has tended to be done through support of free market ideology, but that’s not the basic issue. Perhaps my formulation there is too marxist, but your definition excludes 95% of everybody who’s ever described themselves as being on the political right for the past 220 years.

He’s not, any more than the British National Party (basically a spiffed-up albionized version of the German National Socialist Workers Party also known as “Nazis”) is.

Oh, good lord. Have we really gotten to the point where you people don’t just argue that the Nazis were actually left wing, but actually take it for granted that they were and just assert it?

The Nazis were a right wing but populist party. The use of “National Socialist” was widely viewed at the time as a way to try to get votes, and had little actual content in terms of the policies the Nazis supported. The Nazis actually came to power because they were put in power by a bunch of right wing, monarchist reactionaries who thought Hitler would be a good way to channel popular support for their agenda – look up Paul von Hindenburg and Franz von Papen some time, and then get back to me with the argument about how they were really left wingers. The actual left wing in Germany – Communists and Social Democrats – all hated the Nazis.

In conclusion, this is an idiotic post, and you should bother to actually learn about history at some point before mouthing off.

Jun 11, 2009 - 5:44 pm 112. Ryan C:

“This is nothing more than an attack on the First Amendment of the U S Constitution.{”

That’s true. Right wingers have the right to remain racist a**holes.

Jun 11, 2009 - 5:45 pm 113. Rashputin:

Doug (102) -

You hit the nail on the head. The KKK were amateurs when it comes to reducing the number of black folks. It wasn’t until the Progressives came along that someone found a way to industrialize the slaugter of black folk while being rewarded by ‘Da Man’ for doing so. What a feat of illusion and comensurate delusion on the part of the audiance.

Regards

Jun 11, 2009 - 5:45 pm 114. John:

On the Nazis, you might also look up Otto Strasser, who actually thought the “Socialist” party of the Nazi Party name meant something, and got drummed out of the party for it.

Jun 11, 2009 - 5:50 pm 115. John:

Rashputin (113) – Percentage of the US population that was African-American in 1970 – 11.1%; percentage in 2000 – 12.3%. If legalized abortion is supposed to be a means of reducing the number of black people, it’s not working very well.

Jun 11, 2009 - 5:55 pm 116. Middleman:

Oh, well look. Just in time for Christmas.

Racists Threaten to Abandon Republican Party
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=1042

I can’t wait for the misunderstood white pride types write off the link because the SPLC are ‘commies’.

Jun 11, 2009 - 5:56 pm 117. Chuck Pelto:

TO: Pat J, et al.
RE: Even Sadder….

Funny. I’ve heard and read several news stories about this wacko. None of them have inferred he was a Christian. And if it makes a difference, I don’t consider him “right wing” or “conservative.” Only a mentally ill old man. Sad. — Pat J

….if Doug’s report at item #99, is correct.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[Don't you think?]

Jun 11, 2009 - 6:01 pm 118. sheesh:

Face it, you own this guy. He’s all yours. It’s part of your reputation . . . gun-toting, intolerant, conservative malcontents stoked into homicidal revenge by hateful right wing media propagandists. Your biggest problem is that none of those propagandists can speak convincingly in your defense because they’re the ones causing the problem. Liberals and independents see this quite clearly. You can’t convince anyone who doesn’t already agree with you. And so you will languish in political exile for years to come. And I’m really glad about that.

Jun 11, 2009 - 6:13 pm 119. G Alston:

#90 — …you’re the one who put so much emphasis on someone holding a PhD, babe.

One can name creationist nutbars with oxymoronic degrees in geology but having same is meaningless in context. I don’t think there are many sentient beings either here or the Coal Sack sector who would equate Pournelle and cretins like David Duke.

Jun 11, 2009 - 6:14 pm 120. Hot Lunch:

Athinkingperson

The irony embodied in your screen name causes me no end of good humor.

This is from the link you posted.
MacRanger claims Von Brunn’s a registered Democrat from Maryland but offers no evidence to substantiate that.

I’ve noticed that’s your favorite sort of claim; unsubstantiated.

Jun 11, 2009 - 6:43 pm 121. Hot Lunch:

In any case, one could certainly make the argument that as the real conservatives of the Republican party and its Libertarians have been bled away by this last decade of incompetence and stupidity, all that’s really left art the von Brunn’s, the ones who were previously back-doored and kept in the shadows but that formed the more vocal. They have been useful, since their worship of power and their adoration of bigotry is very easy to manipulate. One need only look to the large number of the withered Republican party members who believe the fantasies about Obama being a secret Muslim; and the frantic screaming that Sotomayor was an affirmative action pick, when her professional resume is the most developed of any Supreme pick in recent history.

Those like William F. Buckley and Pat Buchanan held their noses while they used the type of people who post here to win majorities, though the real economic policies were always exactly what have traditionally hurt such people. But those big brains have jumped ship, leaving the wreck to be steered into the rocks by you brainless, racist troglodytes.

Jun 11, 2009 - 6:49 pm 122. Dave:

Brad, if you are new here you will quickly learn we have a few leftist trolls whose intellectual depth is only slightly deeper than their intellectual honesty – and you would require a micrometer to measure either.

You see, in left wing nutter world, if you are a left-wing murdering terrorist and you manage to avoid justice via technicality, its not a problem. You get to be a professor of education in Chicago and other leftists will love you. You may even get to launch the political career of our current crypto-Marxist President in your living room.

Also in leftist nutter world, you are only a terrible person if you believe it is NOT a good thing to separate Americans into identity groups and then pit them against each other for political gain (like Obama and the leftist idiot trolls who post here). Then malevolent leftists like Ryan C. will demagogue you and dishonestly tie you to an antisemitic murderer (while they sip their ZIMA and spew hate for Israel).

Jun 11, 2009 - 6:52 pm 123. Butterfly Mornings and Wildflower Afternoons:

68. The Shadow:

How can I hate a man when I have prayed for him?
I have prayed for Obama to lead our country in the right direction, because I feel he is not, and so I pray. You are so wrong, and you do not want to be right.

The man who commits murder is no Christian. He did not follow the Ten Commandments and he committed murder. He is not Christian when he has hate in his heart.

Jun 11, 2009 - 7:42 pm 124. acj:

Hey, you republicans have the religious right on your side…God and country- so you are already right. You already want to implement right wing white society-conservative values- which borderline religious and moral principles-nazi regime type values-most of you do=wacked.

Jun 11, 2009 - 8:19 pm 125. bob:

How can you possibly argue with a straight face that Nazism is a political ideal of the Left–
-/

Because it was National Socialism and didn’t give a fig about the forms of civilized life built up by those that know better, over the years.

And the left today, in the USA, is almost there.

Jun 11, 2009 - 8:20 pm 126. acj:

I see that the GoP has the sticker of hate plastered on their nice Christian white sheets…..man you have a long way to go to correct this stuff with your party. Glad the democrats are far beyond this crap!

Jun 11, 2009 - 8:24 pm 127. tom swift:

“It wasn’t socialists or liberals who defended Jim Crow in the 50s and 60s.”

Jim Crow was a Democratic malaise. You know, THOSE Democrats – the slavery party. The Republicans were formed to defeat them in the 1860s. And so they did, but the Dems persisted. It was Democrats who filibustered the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

“and the frantic screaming that Sotomayor was an affirmative action pick,”

Hardly a right-wing fantasy; she herself has said that she’s a product of Affirmative Action.

Jun 11, 2009 - 8:31 pm 128. Dave Surls:

“Right wingers have the right to remain racist a**holes.”

Because of things like the Democrats and their little Jim Crow sysetm or the incarceration (and even killing) of totally innocent Japanese-American citizens by the Roosevelt administration in WWII, that it was the left wingers who were the racists.

I guess I’ve been in error thinking that Roosevelt and the rest of the Democrats were the left wing. Obviously, they’re the right wing, and people like me are the left wing.

Well, that’s o.k., I can live with being a left winger…as long as I’m on the opposite wing of the Democrats, slavery, Jim Crow and concentration camps for innocent people.

Jun 11, 2009 - 8:33 pm 129. G. Clarke:

My political spectrum, that I learned, was libertarian and responsible freedom and anarchy (no or little government) on the far right and fascism (national socialism) and monopolistic capitalism (aka communism or socialism) on the left, where government was all powerful. Racism, as an excessive derangement of a normal biological preference for those who share your looks and social background, could fall anywhere along the spectrum, and usually does. But my spectrum really was anti-authoritarian was right, statist was left, but obviously the worst anti-Semites were of the leftist Nazi stripe we fought in WWII.

If this guy who attacked a Holocaust museum (obviously a leftist Nazi) is on the right, because he is anti-government, or if he is left because he is a neo-Nazi who hates Jews, let me be the first libertarian to throw him under the bus. We libertarian’s don’t like people who promote statist power via their promotion of anti-statist violence. But he’s a nut and all confused, so you leftists should throw him under th bus too.

Jun 11, 2009 - 8:35 pm 130. Torqued Marine (USMC):

3. Middleman:

So Don Black, you know the neo-nazi jailbird who started the white power site Stormfront, and his son are not right-wing despite his son being elected to position in the Florida Republican Party?

Middleman, your logic is a little off. One could say the same thing about the Communist we just elected. The Democrats of the WWII gen. are turning over in there graves today, as they watch what is going on in our country today.

Semper Fi.

Jun 11, 2009 - 8:37 pm 131. Torqued Marine (USMC):

9. Free Hat:
How can you possibly argue with a straight face that Nazism is a political ideal of the Left when the absolute first thing the Nazis did when they got into power was get rid of minorities, intellectuals, Jews, Liberals, atheists socialists, gays, and everyone else that the Right wing hates? Why would a committed Leftist group kill all its supporters? You haven’t any credible evidence that the Left is any more or less “fascist” than the Right; you’re just parroting a dopey, mindless little theory that goes something like this:

Free Hat, please allow me to take issue with this first paragraph of yours.

The first thing the Nazis did among other things was to take over the news papers, gun control, book burning, forced civil service, and so on. Sounds an a full lot like leftist to me.

Please get your history strait.

Semper Fi.

Jun 11, 2009 - 8:49 pm 132. Torqued Marine (USMC):

36. Toronto Girl:

This act was a culmination of years of anger and hate. If he were black or a moslem or both, the media would have been saying it was Israel’s/white man’s fault, etc, etc. We all are responsible for our own actions and should not blame what we do on anything or anyone other than ourselves.

You are absolutely right, we are responsible for our actions and our words. It’s nice to see that there are still people out there that still believe that.

The problem is that our society has become over whelmed with victims blaming every one else for their problems.

Good comment, Thanks for the common sense.

Semper Fi.

Jun 11, 2009 - 9:10 pm 133. Ms. Attitude:

Pat J…I agree with you!

Why does a crime have to be changed into a political debate? Why not mourn the loss of life together as Americans? The lives of Pvt. William Long, George Tiller and Steven Tyrone Johns, three Americans, are dead. Killed here in our country and all we can do is argue who is left and who is right. We are glorifying their killers. We may view Tiller as murderer himself but that is something we change with science and law not murder. We may view the killer of Pvt. Long as terrorist but lets let the law of our land take it’s course. The killer of Steven Tyrone Johns is a crazy old man.

Let’s try to understand each other a little bit better.

There’s a lot I don’t get about people who view the world differently than me and many of you already know what those are from my previous posts on different blogs. I don’t get Islam no matter how much I read about it. It’s a religion not a race, why do they need protection when other religions don’t. I don’t know where the money is supposed to come from if the government is going to pay for everything. I don’t get why someone who has sacraficed and worked hard to make it in our country should give a large percentage to give people who have done nothing the same things without a choice. Why do we want the government to run our healthcare when it has been proven that every social issue the government has taken over has been ruined; ie. education.

I have a hard time understanding people saying they want a smaller government yet they want laws regarding things they oppose; ie. censorship, marriage choices, race issues, etc.

One thing I enjoyed as a kid was the diversity of the people in our country yet we were all Americans. I guess growing up on military installations skewed my views.

So, where on the spectrum of left and right would you put me?

Jun 11, 2009 - 9:16 pm 134. Pennypacker:

“Neo-nazis are left-wing.” “Nazism is a left-wing phenomena.” The one thing I wish right-tards would do is read some damn history. The fact that “socialism” appeared in the party name of the National Socialists does not make it a left-wing movement. Socialism for them meant destroying labor unions and crushing dissent by putting actual socialists, communists, and Jews into concentration camps, while creating jobs by increasing war spending.

Jun 11, 2009 - 10:06 pm 135. Someone75:

Actually, his actions go hand-in-hand with a lot of the bigoted, hate speech I find in the comments of this site. He IS right-wing extremism. Own it. Its yours.

I can picture someone like Chuck Pelto showing up at a mosque, guns blazing. Sorry little “men” often resort to violence when their supposed masculinity runs into the wall of “logic” and “critical thinking.” Hi Chuck

Regards,

Someone(75)

[Funny how you never hear about a centrist going on a shooting spree or committing acts of domestic terrorism . . . ]

Jun 11, 2009 - 10:07 pm 136. Realist:

Free Hat is quite clearly as well read in History just like his Messiah Obambi. The NAZI’s were the ‘National SOCIALIST German WORKERS Party’. I know that this is an “Inconvenient Truth’ for all the Moonbat ‘neolibs’ out there but Hitler just like Obambi was a foreign born charismatic speaker who rose to power aided and abetted by a compliant fully supportive, non intrusive MSM and a gullible, hysterical , emotional RACIST and reverse racist (96% of Blacks voted Obambi)populace. Like Obambi Hitler gained power on the back of a far left SOCIALIST agenda and his anti semitism too was there but muted. Ring any bells ‘neolibs’??? So you have two choices ‘neolib’ Obambi lovers either accept that Hitler was truly one of you or that a charismatic LIAR can join and usurp a party on to HIS own agenda . Its either one or the other but whichever way the USA is screwed.

Jun 11, 2009 - 10:34 pm 137. newton:

“118. sheesh:

Face it, you own this guy. He’s all yours. It’s part of your reputation . . . gun-toting, intolerant, conservative malcontents stoked into homicidal revenge by hateful right wing media propagandists. Your biggest problem is that none of those propagandists can speak convincingly in your defense because they’re the ones causing the problem. Liberals and independents see this quite clearly. You can’t convince anyone who doesn’t already agree with you. And so you will languish in political exile for years to come. And I’m really glad about that.”

Look in the mirror. Just do it for once.

That S.O.B. is not mine. Not for a minute. If anything, he’s YOURS. Because he exhibits hate – which YOU express here just as well, and you’ve done so for a long time. Birds of a feather flock together, jerk.

I have been watching you for a long time. You are just as full of HATE as that sorry excuse of a man. And I’m not afraid of facing you and call you for what you are: an irrepressible jerk. I’m sure I’m not the only one who wants to say that to your face, and relish the moment. Because people like YOU are the reason we’re falling into this state of Marxism. And when the weight of its evil finally falls upon YOU, we’re just going to say “We told you so.”

And we’re not going quietly. We are going to be the bane of your existence until the end of history. We are not going anywhere just because YOU say so!

Oh, BTW. I’m not white. (Hispanic, actually.) And many of my Republican friends aren’t, either.

Jun 11, 2009 - 10:43 pm 138. Barry Zuckercorn:

“he should be punished for the act, not his state of mind at the time.”

I agree completely! Hot ding dong?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea

Jun 11, 2009 - 10:46 pm 139. The Infidel Alliance:

Robert Byrd.

KKK.

Racist.

Democrat.

Case closed.

Jun 12, 2009 - 12:08 am 140. Doug:

133. Ms. Attitude said…
“Why does a crime have to be changed into a political debate?
Why not mourn the loss of life together as Americans? ”
—
Because the President, Democrats, and their allies in the MSM reflexively use it as a weapon to be used against evil right wingers/conservatives/Republicans, to divide us against one another to their advantage as they always do when these “opportunities” arise.
…one of Mr. Simbergs main points.

Jun 12, 2009 - 2:14 am 141. Bad Karma:

I understand he also disliked Fox News and a few of their personalities, hmmm, does that make him a left winger? Strange how many of the worlds dictators and greatest abusers of mankind were not of the right leaning, let’s not get into which party led the way for blocking rights for African Americans for so very long.

Jun 12, 2009 - 2:22 am 142. Cindy Sue Causey:

The “hate crime” that is now being perpetrated in the aftermath of this case is the unabashed onslaught of mental health euphemisms being derogatorily used in reference to the (reprehensibly acting) gunman and ultimately being directly and/or indirectly applied to, well, anyway..

This activity is called “Disabilism” (aka disablism).. It is a hate crime, exactly, exactly the same as racism and needs to be treated precisely as such should it continue to gather steam as it is a deliberate affront to, a conscious attack on all persons with mental illness..

When outing this behavior, use the term “disabilist” in exactly the same way you would use “racist” to describe hateful rhetoric that uses racial epithets (slurs) in place of the unconscionable mental health-related ones being screamed from one end of the Internet to the other this moment..

Respectfully from Talking Rock..

Jun 12, 2009 - 3:37 am 143. G Alston:

#137 — If anything, he’s YOURS. Because he exhibits hate – which YOU express here just as well, and you’ve done so for a long time. Birds of a feather flock together, jerk.

Irony: FAIL.

Jun 12, 2009 - 3:37 am 144. J Milam:

Free Hat, do you read what you write afterward to look for inconsistencies and contradictions? Or do you just bang stuff out on the keyboard and walk away patting yourself on the back?

After reading this:

“How can you possibly argue with a straight face that Nazism is a political ideal of the Left when the absolute first thing the Nazis did when they got into power was get rid of minorities, intellectuals, Jews, Liberals, atheists socialists, gays, and everyone else that the Right wing hates?”

The rest was just painful exercise.

Jun 12, 2009 - 3:44 am 145. Rashputin:

John (115) -

You are so wrong you must be trying to be attempting sarcasm. On the off chance that you’re not, however, the following explains the situation in minimum but sufficient detail.

The disparity in Caucasian/African American birthrates shows that both before 1970 and even more so since 1970, African American representation in a population pool the size of the current US population should have grown the African American population to a bit beyond 16% by the year 2010 if African American birthrates had followed the same pattern as Caucasian birthrates since that time. After adjusting for higher death rates among the African American population, African Americans are under-represented by a bare minimum of 2% in the current US population based on expectations derived from the 1970 of data.

In other words, is the difference between 11.1% in 1970 vs. 12.3% today, compared to 12.3% vs. the 15.1% calculated using the same birthrate patterns as the overall US population in general, and the Caucasian population in particular during that period, attributable to any single factor.

Now that we’ve asked the right question, we can consider the issue based on actual information rather than simply tossing out raw data in an attempt at buttressing a flawed assertion encompassing almost four decades.

While the US Caucasian fertility rate had fallen below replacement level by 1972 (2.2 adjusted for infant mortality rates) it has risen to marginally above replacement level since then. The African American fertility rate which was well above replacement rate at 3% 1972 (3.4 adjusted for higher infant mortality rates), has consistently declined to just more than 10% below replacement rate at present (10.3). This is due almost exclusively to African American abortion rates outpacing Caucasian abortions rates, African Americans making up 34.9% of all abortions as opposed to Caucasians who make up 54.8% (CDC reports this as 35% and 55% respectively). All other relevant differing factors are well below the level of statistical significance, African Americans have about triple the number of abortions that would be expected based on their representation in the general population. Even after attempting to explain away the disparity by creating highly questionable socio-economic circumstance factor subsets of the Caucasian population, African Americans still have more than 2.8 times the number of abortions of even carefully crafted comparable Caucasians subsets. I find that fairly interesting whether others do or not.

It can factually stated that the primary reason for there being a lower representation of African Americans in the current population compared to their expected representation based on 1970 data is due almost exclusively to a massive increase in African American abortions.

These facts fully support my contention that compared to the abortion industry, the KKK was absolutely ineffective in reducing the African American population while the abortion industry has been surprisingly successful in achieving the same end.

CDC and other data supporting the above are readily available. Thank you for playing, but I’m afraid you didn’t make it to the next round.

Have a fun delusional day

Jun 12, 2009 - 3:47 am 146. pst314:

“The fact that ’socialism’ appeared in the party name of the National Socialists does not make it a left-wing movement. Socialism for them meant destroying labor unions and crushing dissent by putting actual socialists, communists, and Jews into concentration camps”

What made it a left-wing movement was its leftist ideology and its leftist policies.

As for crushing dissent, I guess fudgepacker wants us to forget about how the leftists who ran the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and so on all made a practice of putting their opponents into concentration camps–including followers of every other competing form of socialism. Nice try, fudgepacker. Please stop telling lies.

Jun 12, 2009 - 4:16 am 147. pst314:

Middleman, you might want to be a little less quick to cite the Southern Poverty Law Center as a reliable source of information. They have a longstanding and well-deserved reputation for dishonest partisanship.

Jun 12, 2009 - 4:18 am 148. physics geek:

Solid update. I waded into the fever swamps at Balloon Juice and left the comment about their “right wing Christian nutjob validating the DHS report” like this: “The stupid: it burns.” Oh sure, it was a bit intemperate of me, but frankly the disingenuous reaction of many-not all- on the left makes me think that my response was appropriate.

In any event, thanks for doing the research that some Americans just won’t do.

Jun 12, 2009 - 4:31 am 149. seansarto:

All’s fair in Hate an’ Love…As long as it’s fair….An’ there ought ta be some laws against some of the stripes of “love” out masqueradin’ through the United States…That’s a fact too….But, in the mean time, which is always jest on the rise, don’t confuse either of them instigators with vengeance…Vengeance works in ways that the law does not.. One more thing…
Say, where’s all that precious commodity of “empathy” now…fer this “nut job”? Now I don’t know much about the facts of this man…an’ I don’t trust I’d find them here…but lets jest imagine him as one of the last few WWII vets, one of those soldiers who back came home, like most of ‘em did, to sink back into the modest ranks of anonymity an’ not some gloried magnanimity or office of the electorate…Say he didn’t even get so great a job outside of drudgery an’ factory work, an’ gnawed his bones in tolerance of his kids brandin’ him a killer in the 1960’s. ..an’ then, in the here an’ now, he lives to see the day when the very ones who benefited most from his selfless act of strip-yer-mind- an- a*s- bare courage…He sees them are the very ones goin’ about the murderin’ business of revisin’ his very history into somethin’ no would one even know it in the near future as bein’ part of his self…that it came out of him….his life…his work…his heart’s blood…His American skin……He’ sees an African there on D-Day, basically takin’ all the credit for it…Equating him with Nazis an’ thus all “White” Americans with the murders of Emmett Till. So, finally he gets up the “nuts” ta send ‘em back that very same clear message….Yeah…there’s all kinds of “empathy” in this world.
It’s No Country for Puppy Chow…..

Jun 12, 2009 - 4:45 am 150. John:

Jim Crow was a Democratic malaise. You know, THOSE Democrats – the slavery party. The Republicans were formed to defeat them in the 1860s. And so they did, but the Dems persisted. It was Democrats who filibustered the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

Notice how I didn’t say that Jim Crow was established by Republicans, you dickhead. I said that it was liberals (of both parties, but with Democrats in a larger role) who pushed civil rights, and it was conservatives (largely Democrats, but some Republicans as well) who opposed them. Democrat /= Left, and Republican /= right. By all reasonable measures, someone like Jacob Javits was way to the left of James Eastland. The kind of Republicans who supported civil rights are the kind who you all would now denounce as RINOs and try to drive from the party.

And southern Democrats were not the only ones to oppose civil rights. Here’s the National Review in 1957:

The central question that emerges–and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by meerely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal–is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which 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 ace. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists. The question, as far as the White community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage. The British believe they do, and acted accordingly, in Kenya, where the choice was dramatically one between civilization and barbarism, and elsewhere; the South, where the conflict is byno means dramatic, as in Kenya, nevertheless perceives important qualitative differences between its culture and the Negroes’, and intends to assert its own.

National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way, and the society will regress; sometimes the numberical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence.

Once again, it was not the left who opposed the civil rights movement. And the Democrats who led the opposition are for the most part the same people who now form the base of the Republican Party (with a few exceptions). Did you know that something like 90% of the white people in Mississippi vote for Republicans for president? Which group do the remaining racists belong to, the 10% who vote along with the vast majority of their black neighbors for the Democrats, or the 90% who vote for the almost entirely white party?

Which party did Strom Thurmond switch to because he hated civil rights so much? Which Democrats helped give Taft-Hartley a veto-proof majority? Which ones allied with Republicans to prevent any liberal legislation from passing under FDR after 1938? Which ones joined Republicans in filibustering Abe Fortas’s nomination as Chief Justice? Which ones helped give Reagan his working majority in the House during his first two years? Answers: conservative southern Democrats, conservative southern Democrats, Conservative southern Democrats, and conservative southern Democrats.

And for God’s sakes do you people have any argument for why the Nazis were on the left besides “Look at their name! Their name!” Is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea democratic? Is Portugal’s main conservative party actually socialist? Is Vladimir Zhirinovsky liberal?

Jun 12, 2009 - 4:54 am 151. Chuck Pelto:

TO: All
RE: The Stupidity of the ‘Progressives’

Actually, his actions go hand-in-hand with a lot of the bigoted, hate speech I find in the comments of this site. He IS right-wing extremism. Own it. Its yours. — Someone75

Isn’t it interesting that this murderer hated:

• Christians
• The Bible
• Jews
• Both Bushs
• McCain
• Republicans

And yet these people like Someone75 are desperately trying to peddle that this guy was a ‘conservative’?

We’re talking a great example of application of The Big Lie.

If Brunn were a self-hating christian, one would think that he would have killed himself, instead.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out.....and Someone75 is going to be seen as a graduate of the Goebbels School of Journalism......]

Jun 12, 2009 - 5:37 am 152. Chuck Pelto:

P.S. What other group—represented by people like acj, vivo, and Someone75—hates all those items I bulleted in my previous comment?

Three guesses….first two don’t count…..

P.P.S. No wonder they’re desperate…..

Jun 12, 2009 - 5:40 am 153. Ms. Attitude:

145. Rashputin:

Thank you for citing facts. If this was taught in schools, I’m sure the abortion rate would be lower. No matter how people want to paint it as a woman’s right, it’s nothing but population control.

On average, women give at least 3 reasons for choosing abortion: 3/4 say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or other responsibilities; about 3/4 say they cannot afford a child; and 1/2 say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner (AGI).

Jun 12, 2009 - 6:31 am 154. Paul of Alexandria:

G Alston (53):

…but there’s nothing “right-wing” about liking Nazis, who were leftists (and pagans).

Jerry Pournelle says otherwise. He has a PhD in this stuff. Who to believe? Hmmm.

http://www.baen.com/chapters/axes.htm

The rest of your piece goes south from there.

In Pournelle’s Figure 1, the horizontal axis corresponds to the “Left-Right” axis in this discussion, except that it’s flipped over. Note that both fascists and socialists are on the right-hand side, in the “Big Government” half of the space. the anarchists/libertarians are on the left-hand side.

Jun 12, 2009 - 6:34 am 155. tom:

I wont call him a christian but he’s a rightie all right. Anyone with the mentality of “the gov’t is going to take my guns”, definitely qualifies as a rightie. After all, it’s a selling point for the NRA.

So now we have the second terrorist attack by right wingers in a couple of weeks. And how many around here mocked and ridiculed the Obama’s administration on the threat of rightwing hate extremists??

Jun 12, 2009 - 6:34 am 156. tom swift:

There seems to be some serious confusion here about the dynamics of the National Socialist state.

In the full-blown Fascist state, the State itself is all (as per Mussolini, and his famous “Everything inside the state; nothing outside the state…”). In particular, the State is the only permissible authority. Professional organizations, secret societies, Masons, churches, cohesive or insular ethnicities (Jews or gypsies), Communist cells and other non-State parties, etc. – any possible source of parallel, or contrary, authority – are at best suspect, at worst anathema.

Ideally, everyone works for the State, and is constantly reminded that he does so. See, for example, the astonishing panoply of Nazi uniforms, little pistols, and ceremonial daggers for everyone from Customs or Post Office employees to the Nazi Red Cross – every time he looks in a mirror, the citizen is reminded of the lines of authority and of who his boss is, and everyone who sees him knows where he fits in the apparatus of the State, and knows that in his small way he represents the authority of the State..

The Nazis believed in government control of the economy. Where they differed from the Communists was that the Nazis tried to control the economy by controlling the money, whereas the Communists tried to do it more directly, by executive fiat of a central planning committee. If the Soviets wanted, say, a hundred refrigerators, they would issue commands to a factory to produce a hundred refrigerators, and also send the factory a trainload of steel. The Nazis would do it much like we do it today – send the factory a purchase order for a hundred refrigerators and a bunch of money, and let the factory buy the steel from wherever it chose. The Soviet way, if competently done, might be more efficient, but the Nazi way worked much better in practice. In economics, the Nazis were more interested in results than strict control.

The major differences between the Fascists (German or Italian) and the Communists were slight economic details (as per above), and scope. Communism, as outlined by Marx and Engels and implemented by Lenin and Trotsky, was meant to be an international phenomenon (”Workers of the World…” etc. Stalin was not as interested in the Workers of the World as were Lenin and Trotsky). Fascism was intended to have more local appeal. Mussolini had Italy in mind, Hitler had that “Aryan” racial fixation. The Fascists intended to conquer conventionally, by force of arms, the Communists mainly by internal revolution in other countries. But so far as the citizenry subjected to either system were concerned, both were entirely socialist. The fact that the Communists were a little bit more socialist than the Fascists is only important if some exact placement on the Left-Right axis is required. The Communists were way over on the left. The Fascists were a bit to their right, but still to the left of (that is, more socialist than) nearly everyone else. The peculiar notion that Fascism is an outgrowth of any party of the Right appears to be due to Trotsky, who had a tendency to lump all “counterrevolutionaries” together.

Jun 12, 2009 - 6:40 am 157. BettyBlue:

Paul, Jerry Pournelle is a science fiction writer.

His job is spinning fantasies, not studying society.

Jun 12, 2009 - 6:41 am 158. Paul of Alexandria:

Self-hating Boomer (80):

…
Close, but no cigar. The real answer is much simpler: your left/right model of the political universe is bogus. It’s a leftover from the French Revolution that hasn’t had any relevance for over a century.

BTW, isn’t it odd that those who identify as leftists insist that that there’s only a left and a right, and those who are identified by others as “right” are trying to argue for a more sophisticated model of the political universe? They’re the political equivalent of flat earthers. I guess the truth is too big for their iddy biddy minds.

No, the “left”-”right” spectrum is still valid, it’s just somewhat over simplified. The leftists identify certain people as “right” for two reasons: First of all, they want to muddy the water. They associate any hateful person, such as Mr. Von Brunn, with the right because they want to associate all hateful persons with their enemies and the other end of the political spectrum.

Secondly, being the far-left socialists that they are, they think that they are the middle-of-the-road and that anybody who believes in smaller government than they do are far-right. Hitler and Mussolini were right-wing, compared to Joseph Stalin. Of course to a reasonable person who prefers a minimal government, they were both pretty far to the statist side.

Jun 12, 2009 - 6:41 am 159. Paul of Alexandria:

Ryan C (92):

“For example, most of the “right-wing” people I know are opposed to racial discrimination, such as job quotas, or voting for a president just because he’s black.”

Right wingers rejecting affirmative action and hiding their racism by way of strawman are examples of the right wing rejecting racism?

Yes, actually. We on the right reject affirmative action because we believe that every person should be judged by his/her abilities and actions. To give any one race favorite status, even because of perceived historical occurances, is wrong; if for no other reason than because it only perpetuates the antagonism. The best one can ever do is to assure that the playing field is level.

Jun 12, 2009 - 6:45 am 160. Paul of Alexandria:

umbrelladoc (96):

“Who commits the majority of violent crimes in the USA?

Hmm? Or is that ‘racist’ to ask?”

Since you asked, according to the 2007 FBI Crime statistics, out of 449,986 arrests for violent crimes (in brief, murder, rape, robbery, and assault) 265,108 or 56.8% were white.

Now normalize that against the percentage of the population that is “white”. All else being equal, blacks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States“>make up 14% of the U.S. population, yet account for 27 percent of the overall arrests and 57% of the arrests for “Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter”

Jun 12, 2009 - 6:53 am 161. Paul of Alexandria:

MochaLite (104):

My deep sympathies to the Johns family. Sadly though, immediately after the shooting I could just hear liberals thinking, “Whew, thank BO that it was a white guy and not a Muslim!!”

Of course the murder of Army recruiter William Long by a Muslim was totally ignored by the MSM.

Jun 12, 2009 - 6:57 am 162. Chuck Pelto:

TO: Tom Swift, et al.
RE: The Problem Is….

In the full-blown Fascist state, the State itself is all (as per Mussolini, and his famous “Everything inside the state; nothing outside the state…”). — Tom Swift

….that these ‘jackasses’, like tom, acj, et al., won’t see the parallels between fascist statism and socialist statism. When in truth, they are not opposites of a linear comparison. In actuality, they are, as I like to put it….

Opposite faces of the same coin, made of the base metal of ‘totalitarianism’.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[Opinions are not a disease; except to a dictator. -- Dr. Jeffery Satinover]

Jun 12, 2009 - 7:02 am 163. Paul of Alexandria:

133. Ms. Attitude:

Pat J…I agree with you!

Why does a crime have to be changed into a political debate?

If the MSM had simply reported it as a crime, perhaps involving mental illness, you would be right. However, practically every news story out there calls the guy “right-wing”, equating him with Bush, Chaney, and Christians. That’s the issue. Again, note how the murder of William Long has been totally ignored, even though his murderer could not possibly argue insanity.

Jun 12, 2009 - 7:04 am 164. Paul of Alexandria:

Pennypacker (134):

“Neo-nazis are left-wing.” “Nazism is a left-wing phenomena.” The one thing I wish right-tards would do is read some damn history. The fact that “socialism” appeared in the party name of the National Socialists does not make it a left-wing movement. Socialism for them meant destroying labor unions and crushing dissent by putting actual socialists, communists, and Jews into concentration camps, while creating jobs by increasing war spending.

Like you yourself said, go read history. In particular go and read the cited books by Gene Veith and Jonah Goldberg. Fascism is a branch of socialism in that it incorporates state control of the whole economy and social life (to vastly simplify it). Fascists also tend to be corporatists, where large corporations are closely associated with the government and economic policy. Marxists, on the other hand, simply nationalize everything and run them as branches of the government.

Jun 12, 2009 - 7:09 am 165. Joe Bison:

Someone said anyone against government is a
right winger-I guess all anarchists are
therefore right wingers. Funny it seems to
me it was the other way around. In revolutions
they always seem to be on the same side as
the Communists, Bolsheviks etc. until they
end up purged.

The most discriminatory talk I’ve ever heard
always seems to come when groups of similar
liberals are safely alone. Gay White guys
talking about Blacks, Asians talking about
Blacks, Blacks talking about Asians and the
list goes on. I try to appear as the non-
judgmental neutralist in order to allow
people to open up. It takes time but it
works.

In closing where would the liberal MSM
put Czolgosz in the political spectrum.
He killed McKinley(R), was born RC but
disliked the religion, had voted Republican
at times but felt society cheated the workers,
used a gun, was heavily influenced by
Goldman an anti-capitalist anarchist and
probably imitated Bresci another anarchist.

Let’s guess-Right Wing Christian Gun Nut?
Also never forget the Socialist in National
Socialism.

Jun 12, 2009 - 7:12 am 166. pst314:

“Paul, Jerry Pournelle is a science fiction writer. His job is spinning fantasies, not studying society.”

Bzzzzz! Wrong! He had another career in the aerospace industry before he started writing science fiction. Furthermore, he has MS degrees in experimental statistics and in systems engineering, and PhD’s in psychology and political science, and he wrote a textbook that was used at both West Point and the Air Force Academy.

I don’t always agree with Pournelle, but he’s neither a fool nor an ignoramus. On the other hand, it is a mark of both foolishness and ignorance to dismiss somebody simply because he is a fiction writer. Do you think that all such writers are mere storytellers with no deep knowledge of any field? Perhaps you are unaware that Gregory Benford is a well-respected working physicist, Isaac Asimov had a PhD in chemistry and taught at a university in Boston before switching to writing full-time, Cordwainer Smith was an expert in psychological warfare and East Asia, and Gene Wolfe had a career as an engineer before retiring to write full-time.

Jun 12, 2009 - 7:13 am 167. Paul of Alexandria:

Rashputin (145)

These facts fully support my contention that compared to the abortion industry, the KKK was absolutely ineffective in reducing the African American population while the abortion industry has been surprisingly successful in achieving the same end.

The KKK wasn’t trying to particularly reduce the black population, they just wanted to keep them from exercising any political control. “Put them in their place” so to speak. Margaret Sanger, on the other hand, did specifically want to get rid of blacks.

BlackGenocide.org

At a March 1925 international birth control gathering in New York City, a speaker warned of the menace posed by the “black” and “yellow” peril. The man was not a Nazi or Klansman; he was Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, a member of Margaret Sanger’s American Birth Control League (ABCL), which along with other groups eventually became known as Planned Parenthood.

Jun 12, 2009 - 7:14 am 168. Paul of Alexandria:

tom swift(156):

There seems to be some serious confusion here about the dynamics of the National Socialist state….

Well said.

Jun 12, 2009 - 7:18 am 169. James:

RunningDogLackey: I just finished reading this “right-wing, Christian’s” material. I am thoroughly convinced that 1) he is not a Christian, 2) he is a socialist, 3) he is demented. That being said, the whole point of the article is to point out how the “right-wing” Christian label thrown on this guy by a liberal media who adores the present leftward president was wrong and premeditated. The logic of this article, backed up by the killers own writing, should have convinced you of that. But it did not, because 1) you are being lazy in discerning the facts, and 2) you are politically biased. You’re purposely being what Lenin called “a useful idiot”. You’re better than that. Go read the killer’s material. God Bless.

Jun 12, 2009 - 7:18 am 170. tom swift:

“…won’t see the parallels between fascist statism and socialist statism.”

The American Communist Party made considerable inroads (as considerable as it was ever to achieve, at least) in the 1930s by claiming that the Communists were the only organized opponent of Fascism. And, for a while, that was more-or-less true. However, the obvious inference – that Communism and Fascism were some kind of opposites – was, at best, a gross oversimplification. Actually, they were more like feuding cousins – the Hatfields vs. the McCoys, on a continental scale. But the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 blew that little myth out of the water.

The inability to see that one form of totalitarian statism is much like another parallels the inability to see racism for what it is. In order to tolerate the concept of an overtly racist (and sexist) program like Affirmative Action, one must postulate that some racism and sexism is “good” and some is “bad”. Affirmative Action is, of course, the “good” racism and sexism, and everything else is the bad version. Some, like me, reject the notion that any racism or sexism can be good. If that makes them “conservatives”, well, I can live with that.

Jun 12, 2009 - 7:25 am 171. Paul of Alexandria:

BettyBlue (157):

Paul, Jerry Pournelle is a science fiction writer.

His job is spinning fantasies, not studying society.

Er, what part of “ Ph.D. degrees in both psychology and political science, all from the University of Washington” doesn’t qualify as “studying society”?

Actually, you’ll find that most science fiction writers have advanced credentials and have quite a few things to say about society and science in the tales that they spin.

In the particular article from Baen cited previously, Jim Baen was commenting on Mr. Pournelle’s analysis as real-world, not as SF. The context, of course, is how Mr. Pournelle fits this real-world context into his writing in an effort to make it more realistic, as well as having valid things to say about the real world.

Jun 12, 2009 - 7:30 am 172. sheesh:

137. newton:

Gollywonkers Mister or Mizz Newton, why so angry? Why so defensive? Why so hopelessly punkish? Why so race oriented? I don’t care if you’re Hispanic or Mexican or Latino or Spanish or Andalusian or Neptunian or even Republican. All have the equal opportunity to be fair, hardworking contributors to society or selfish, narrow-minded bigoted gas bags. It’s your choice, not mine. You got one choice left. Use it wisely.

Don’t choose to act out like your James “If you want my guns this is how you’ll get them” von Brunn. Why, i do believe I’ve read dozens of similar comments posted right here at PJM by good, patriotic patrioty patriots. Perhaps even you. Yeah, you own him. He’s yours. In fact, I suggest you take advantage of his ability to rally the base. Here, let me give you a little peak into heaven . . . the Republican ticket for 2012 . .. Joe Horn and James von Brunn.

Horn von Brunn 2012. Has that wonderful Nazi feel that I’m sure would bring out the Aryan tendencies of the conservative right. You’re gonna need something to work with once your boy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad goes down in flames.

No, no, don’t bother sending a check. I offer that one up fro free.

Jun 12, 2009 - 7:34 am 173. Jack Okie:

Rashputin (145):

Thanks for the cogent analysis. Are you, by any chance, one of our guerilla fighters in academia?

tom swift (156):

Terrific summary.

Optimist that I am, I keep hoping that one of our lefty (statist) commenters will follow up great posts like the above and challenge their own appalling historical ignorance. Hey, “Hope and Change”, right?

Jun 12, 2009 - 7:40 am 174. Bohemond:

” It’s part of your reputation . . . gun-toting, intolerant, conservative malcontents stoked into homicidal revenge by hateful right wing media propagandists……”

Yep- *reputation.” A stereotype Lefties like you have conjured up.

———

Yes, Hitler’s economic policies were thoroughly socialist- everything from a comprehensive welfare state to mandatory union membership.

The left/right meme is useless- except to those of course who find it politically convenient to link conservatives, absurdly, with fascism. The meaningful dichotomy is between statism/collectivism, and liberty.

We all know where the ‘progressives’ stand.

Jun 12, 2009 - 7:44 am 175. Chuck Pelto:

TO: James
RE: Heh

The logic of this article, backed up by the killers own writing, should have convinced you of that. But it did not, because 1) you are being lazy in discerning the facts, and 2) you are politically biased. You’re purposely being what Lenin called “a useful idiot”. — James

These people are JUST LIKE the mob whipped up by the Sandhedrin described in Matthew 27, calling for Christ to be crucified.

They ARE the ‘useful fools’. And they don’t mind it. As it is written, that mob of old cried out, “Let the blood be on us and on our children”. [Note: And interestingly enough, 35 years later it WAS on them, courtesy of the Romans.]

We’re seeing, here and now, what we were warned about happening back then.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[There is nothing new under the Sun. -- Ecclesiastes]

P.S. TO: G Alston….

….are we learning yet?

Jun 12, 2009 - 7:52 am 176. AThinkingPerson:

It all boils down the the fact that the liberals are desperately trying to “pin” this on the Conservatives for very obvious reasons. When Obama is floundering around and now is following Bush’s policies, the overseas media is now asking for results after all of the bravado speeches and the moderate Dems are now digging their heels against Obama, it’s all VERY CLEAR.

Point all you want “progressive” group-thinkers. WE ALL know the truth and it all boils down to this administration not being able to contain things that are now unfortunately boiling over in this country. Where’s that new day we were all promised? Still waiting Obama. We were all supposed to be coming together now right? All joining hands thanking God for showing us the way right?

I think now would be a perfect time for Obama to wheel out his HOPE and CHANGE dog and pony show again wouldn’t you? Maybe for once he’ll come through on a campaign promise.

I’m waiting.

Jun 12, 2009 - 8:04 am 177. Rashputin:

Paul of Alexandria – (145)

I personally think that a very large percentage of “Progressives”, regardless of race, share the same creed and that their creed encompasses essentially eugenics on the same scale as Hitler. The fact that they have come up with or embraced several different ways of getting there short of Hitler’s’ methods just means that to date they are sure enough of themselves to be patient. If it all starts unraveling on The One and the Democrap Congress, it could get very interesting very quickly. I admit, though, I’m an optimist. So maybe that’s a more cheerful outlook than is warranted in current circumstances.

I read enough to know what her intentions were, but my wife was just agreeing with you saying she thinks Sanger was the main one responsible for obtaining funding, getting support from big names, etc., etc., and that without her, things would have never gone downhill so fast. I should read up on her, I pretty much dismissed her as a well tanned Goering in drag and on meth, but maybe I shouldn’t have ignored reading up on her.

The KKK, IMHO would have gotten around to it but was so focused on having lost control that they were mainly trying foster fear and dependency in hopes of establishing, in effect, the plantation system all over again. That and all those survivors who could never afford slaves of their own but wanted to be sure they were never challenged by the Republicans running things. If post Civil War Klansmen had only known how well their heirs would do in establishing a federally funded plantation system with branches nationwide, I think most of them wouldn’t have bothered with the intimidation. Instead, they’d have been content to sip Juleps and laugh themselves to death at the irony. Especially when the most historically racist vote in the history of this nation was the African American vote for The One, and The One even believes in outright murder by neglect. I mean, black folks overwhelmingly voting exactly opposite their faith that they swear to pollsters is their primary focus, and overwhelmingly in favor of continuing massive annual reductions in the number of black folks. Who’d have believed it?

Regards

Jun 12, 2009 - 8:42 am 178. G Alston:

#154 –Note that both fascists and socialists are on the right-hand side, in the “Big Government” half of the space.

Yes they share statism, and in the same rationalism (lack of) sector as conservatives. (Lower.) The report is that von Brunn was a neo-nazi and the conservatives try to claim that therefore he’s a leftist. According to Pournelle’s political axes (which I’m thinking is accurate enough) von Brunn has a great deal more in common with conservatives than with socialists.

As near as I can tell from reading commentary on this site conservatives are graphed correctly and are very much against reason, instead relying upon belief and tradition. Left and right may not cover it correctly, but the charge that von Brunn is a right wing type is more accurate than the claim he’s a left winger.

Jun 12, 2009 - 8:42 am 179. pst314:

“This guy was no Christian. Oh yeah, he uses the word quite a bit in the book, but only to repeat the various blood libels”

Yes indeed. And it is clear that the reason the left works so hard to pin every crime on the right is that the left is engaged in a decades-long effort at its own blood libel.

Jun 12, 2009 - 8:42 am 180. Ratatosk:

The guy shouldn’t be classified as Left or Right, either is a lie and a disservice. It should be painfully obvious to anyone with a brain that ANY extreme, to the left or right, will make a lovely home for crazy, violent individuals. To turn the actions of a crazy person into an anti-Obama screed is as asinine as writing an anti-christian or anti-rightwing load of shit using this fool as an excuse. The latter panders to the Leftish audience of the MSM and this panders to the Rightish audience… congratulations you’re as much of a rabble rouser as Ralphie in your initial quote. Way to take the potential for New Media into the toilet with the MSM.

Jun 12, 2009 - 8:46 am 181. G Alston:

#176 — It all boils down the the fact that the liberals are desperately trying to “pin” this on the Conservatives for very obvious reasons.

I find it fascinating to read things here. Some guy kills an abortion doctor and the rank and file posters here are going “so what’s the big deal?” yet when the media (correctly) identifies a shooter as right wing, why, it’s “they’re trying to pin stuff on us.”

There are no stereotypical left wing gun nuts I’m aware of, so it’s somewhat natural that the assumption is that the shooter is a right winger. Given that this followed a chorus of “good riddance” from the conservatives less than a week previously regarding the shooting of the abortion doctor by a right winger, you can’t exactly make the “they’re out to get us” claim.

If anyone is pinning anything, conservatives are doing it to themselves.

Jun 12, 2009 - 8:53 am 182. Chuck Pelto:

TO: G Alston
RE: Liar

Some guy kills an abortion doctor and the rank and file posters here are going “so what’s the big deal?” — G Alston

And again, liar….

yet when the media (correctly) identifies a shooter as right wing, why, it’s “they’re trying to pin stuff on us.” — G Alston

’nuff said.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson]

Jun 12, 2009 - 9:12 am 183. pst314:

“There are no stereotypical left wing gun nuts I’m aware of”

Aside from Black Muslims, Communists and other leftists, radical Muslims, animal rights fanatics, Earth Firsters, anarchists and so on, why, yes, all political murderers and terrorists are right-wing.

Jun 12, 2009 - 9:31 am 184. G Alston:

#182 — Liar

Sorry, but a different viewpoint and a lie aren’t the same things. A number of threads here re Tiller had posters opining that it was no great loss. Some put lipstick on it by claiming for the record that murdering Tiller was a bad thing, but it was just that — lipstick. Many of the posters here were otherwise cheering. It was sickening.

You can feel free to believe that anything short of breaking out the bubbly and baking a cake is evidence to the contrary, and you undoubtedly will. The sentiment as I viewed it though was as I have described.

Jun 12, 2009 - 9:34 am 185. pst314:

Rand Simberg posts an item debunking the claim that the Holocaust Museum shooter was ‘right-wing’, and is quickly visited by furious leftists. Why? Because it threatens their power. The lie that fascism is a right-wing phenomenon is core to the blood libel that the left uses to silence its critics, and the left is merciless in using it to destroy anyone who gets in its way. By painting their opponents as fascists and Nazis, the left seeks to make them un-persons whose arguments need not be answered and whose rights and dignity need not be respected. Remember Pym Fortuyn? He was murdered by a Green Party wacko who was inspired by the left’s incessant campaign to portray the libertarian Fortuyn as a fascist and neo-Nazi.

Jun 12, 2009 - 9:44 am 186. pst314:

“I don’t think there are many sentient beings either here or the Coal Sack sector who would equate Pournelle and cretins like David Duke.”

How do you know? There might be a Glorious People’s Republic of the Coal Sack.

Jun 12, 2009 - 9:47 am 187. G Alston:

#183 — Aside from Black Muslims etc.

I said stereotypical, i.e. prevalent enough to be a common and well understood image. Most animal rights types don’t shoot researchers, or if they do, I can’t remember hearing much about it. On the other hand abortion clinic attacks and bomb threats by far right wingers etc are common enough to be cliche.

If I were to ask kids at a local HS to associate the term gun nut with various groups, they would associate these with right wing extremists.

I just got another email this AM from a right winger who is forwarding scaremail to the effect that Obama doesn’t believe in the 2nd amendment; he’s after your guns. Although I know some Obama voters who are concerned about this, it’s far more prevalent among the anti-Obama voters. Right wingers and gun nuts are hand in hand. That is stereotype.

Jun 12, 2009 - 9:47 am 188. Chuck Pelto:

TO: G Alston
RE: Again….

Sorry, but a different viewpoint and a lie aren’t the same things. — G Alston

…your statement was not a simple difference of “viewpoint”. It was an outright statement of a lie, that we christians celebrated the murder of Tiller.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.]

Jun 12, 2009 - 9:51 am 189. pst314:

“A number of threads here re Tiller had posters opining that it was no great loss.”

But you wrote “…and the rank and file posters here are going ’so what’s the big deal?’…” which clearly makes a generalization about the posters. (Just what does ‘rank and file’ mean?) If you want to be fair you should note what percentage of the posters took a “no great loss” attitude, and you should also note how many condemned as evil both the murder and the abortions.

Jun 12, 2009 - 9:51 am 190. Rashputin:

Jack Okie (173)

“Are you, by any chance, one of our guerilla fighters in academia?”

I once wore a gorilla suit to a frat party, but I can’t recall whether anyone had a fight or not. There were games of chance, the stakes typically being clothing and such.

Regards

Jun 12, 2009 - 10:16 am 191. Free Hat:

188. Chuck Pelto: …your statement was not a simple difference of “viewpoint”. It was an outright statement of a lie, that we christians celebrated the murder of Tiller.

Don’t lie, Chuck.

This cesspool of a site was brimming with praise and adulation for Tiller’s murderer. And those who did not outright cheer the murderer simply wrote different variations on the same theme of “Well, I don’t advocate murder, but Tiller got what was coming to him and I’m glad he’s dead.”

Jun 12, 2009 - 10:24 am 192. pst314:

Speaking of left-wing violence, remember the Unabomber? There was a very (darkly) amusing quiz which listed various quotes and asked which were by him and which by Al Gore.

Jun 12, 2009 - 10:31 am 193. G Alston:

#189 — If you want to be fair you should note what percentage of the posters took a “no great loss” attitude, and you should also note how many condemned as evil both the murder and the abortions.

I hadn’t considered taking stats; my comment is akin to noting that many people think the pope is catholic. It was certainly enough of the posters that it was noticeable. There is no need to add a “but it was murdering a murderer” if the goal is to stand against a murder. Adding a caveat doesn’t do much other than say “not really.”

#188 — …that we christians celebrated the murder of Tiller.

That’s what you read, Chuck, but not what I wrote. I wrote that many (and too many in my view) posters seem to condone it. Celebration is cheering; condoning is ‘it’s no big loss.’

Jun 12, 2009 - 10:37 am 194. Chuck Pelto:

TO: All
RE: Another Liar….

This cesspool of a site was brimming with praise and adulation for Tiller’s murderer. — Free Hat

….heard from.

Maybe if these people could show us the number of posts of the sort they claim against the posts that deplored the murder—showing a majority in favor as opposed—they MIGHT have a case. But without such an analysis—with accompanying urls to support their claims—they are, in my readings here, as I call them….

….liars.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. -- Mark Twain]

Jun 12, 2009 - 10:40 am 195. Chuck Pelto:

TO: pst314
RE: Furthermore….

Speaking of left-wing violence, remember the Unabomber? — pst314

…let’s not forget the eco-terrorists.

Indeed. I do believe that there have been more acts of terrorism by the left than by christians.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[Useless Invention: Lie detectors for 'progressives'.]

Jun 12, 2009 - 10:44 am 196. G Alston:

#195 — Indeed. I do believe that there have been more acts of terrorism by the left than by christians.

“But without such an analysis—with accompanying urls to support their claims—they are, in my readings here, as I call them….

….liars.”

Jun 12, 2009 - 10:51 am 197. Chuck Pelto:

TO: G Alston
RE: True….

That’s what you read, Chuck, but not what I wrote. — G Alston

…but that’s the way I interpret your words. “No Big Deal” is downplaying it when it should be condemned. And vigerously so. As I condemn it. I and every other christian.

Your polite, political ‘euphemism’ is well recognized by me for what it is. Your failure to recognize that christians condemn murder only provides more substance to my understanding.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. -- Mark Twain]

Jun 12, 2009 - 10:52 am 198. pst314:

“This cesspool of a site was brimming with praise and adulation for Tiller’s murderer. And those who did not outright cheer the murderer simply wrote different variations on the same theme of ‘Well, I don’t advocate murder, but Tiller got what was coming to him and I’m glad he’s dead’”

I googled Tiller on this website, and the 3rd comment on the first hit contained this:

“The fact that this doctor was killed, plain and simply wrong, regardless of which side of the fence you are on.”

Free Hat is a liar who uses lies to legitimize those he disagrees with by falsely associating them with people they condemn.

Jun 12, 2009 - 11:07 am 199. Joe Bison:

To Paul of A-You say that since the Nazis
murdered Communists that makes them “right
wing”. Nobody murdered Communists, Anarchists,
Intellectuals, Nationalists and so on more than
the Communists did. For example look at Stalin
and the Trotsky. Stalin is only an example,
every hard left winger is the same. Ever hear the venom between various
branded groups and internally(ML, Maoist,
Stalinist, CP, Trotskyites etc.)

Fascism arose out of disillusioned Socialists,
see Robert Michels for example, who saw
Socialist democracy as a fraud. Add racism
grow from Social Darwinism and anti-Christianity
and you get an idea of the Nazis. Hitler
suppressed unions so he is right wing-where
in your defined Communist world are religion
and unions allowed to operate freely.

Under Socialism you have class struggle and
under Nazism you have race struggle. They
are the same only defining who is the victim
and oppressor differently. The spoils are
given to the victims, supposedly. Hitler
acknowledged a need to destroy Christianity
when the time was ripe.

Conservatives seem to value tradition,
precedent, institutions and things that
work. Nazis/Socialists have a burning
desire to tear things down and build in
their image. Sort of like change and ah
um ah um ah.

Jun 12, 2009 - 11:12 am 200. Andrew Ian Dodge:

Rand this works as perfectly rebuke to the frothing left’s slander against the right using this guy as a cudgel. The confluence of this guy with the BNP would be amusing, but for the death of the security guard.

Thanks for your re-iterating my points on the BNP, thought I doubt some of these commenters will agree with you.

The killing of Tiller, the soldier in Ark. and this attack are all acts of terrorism.

Jun 12, 2009 - 11:18 am 201. Steven:

The Nazis were *not* pagans.

“God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable
faith, that he [Hitler] was sent to us by God to save Germany.”
“How shall I give expression, O my Führer, to what is in our hearts? How shall I find
words to express your deeds? Has there ever been a mortal as beloved as you, my
Führer? Was there ever belief as strong as the belief in your mission. You were sent
us by God for Germany!” Hermann Goering.

“We believe on this earth in Adolf Hitler alone! We believe in National Socialism as
the creed which is the sole source of grace! We believe that Almighty God has sent
us Adolf Hitler so that he may rid Germany of the hypocrites and Pharisees.” Robert
Ley, Head of the German Labour Front (DAF).

“He who serves our Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, serves Germany and he who serves
Germany, serves God.” Baldur von Schirach, Head of the Hitler’s Youth

“We have a feeling that Germany has been transformed into a great house of God,
including all classes, professions and creeds, where the Führer as our mediator
stood before the throne of the Almighty.” -Joseph Goebbels, in a broadcast, 19 April
1936.

“God had brought [the German] Volk into being and he had done so through Hitler,
Volk was race and God wants race.” Joachim Hossenfelder, Protestant country
pastor in Sillies, head of the German Christians Movement

“At the very height of German battlefield victories Hellriegel declared not Hitler but Christ as the true Commander.”

Sign me a genuine “right wing nut”–a classical Jeffersonian liberal.

Jun 12, 2009 - 11:19 am 202. Rand Simberg:

The Nazis were *not* pagans.

They sure as hell weren’t Christians, even if some deluded Christians supported them.

Jun 12, 2009 - 11:37 am 203. Steven:

But the Nazis were *not* right wingers, either. What does this mean? That Christianity & socialism (national or otherwise)/communism (Marxist, Leninist or otherwise) are two sides of the same altruist/collectivist coin.

In short, Christianity is as leftists as it gets.

Jun 12, 2009 - 11:45 am 204. gclarke:

The only reason the lie began to spread that Hitler was to the right of Stalin (politically not geographically) was because Stalin promulgated that lie before the Truth could put its boots on. Hitler did not oppose this lie because by that time what did he care and who on our side was listening to him. But why believe anything Stalin said because he celebrated lying as a benefit of strenght accorded to him as “Steel Man” to be weilded over ordinary mortals who were fodder for his manipulation. In other words, if Stalin said it, believe the opposite.

Jun 12, 2009 - 11:54 am 205. Paul of Alexandria:

Joe Bison (165):

Someone said anyone against government is a right winger-I guess all anarchists are therefore right wingers.

That’s actually correct.

Funny it seems to me it was the other way around. In revolutions
they always seem to be on the same side as the Communists, Bolsheviks etc. until they end up purged.

Yep. That’s because the Bolshevik, etc, revolutionaries are against the existing government and seek to overthrow it. It never seems to occur to the anarchists that the socialists want to also replace the existing government, not simply get rid of it.

IMHO anarchists don’t think things through very thoroughly in any case.

Jun 12, 2009 - 12:01 pm 206. Chuck Pelto:

TO: G Alston
RE: Heh

#195 — Indeed. I do believe that there have been more acts of terrorism by the left than by christians.

“But without such an analysis—with accompanying urls to support their claims—they are, in my readings here, as I call them….

….liars.” — G Alston

Let me get with my associates in law enforcement. They’ve got contacts in the FBI.

I’ll get back to you on this in due time.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. -- George Orwell]

Jun 12, 2009 - 12:09 pm 207. G Alston:

#202 — They sure as hell weren’t Christians, even if some deluded Christians supported them.

At last one *real* scholar doesn’t agree with you. Surely you must have a book you wrote laying out your point?

http://www.theturning.org/folder/nazis.html

I don’t have time to find others. You get the idea.

Jun 12, 2009 - 12:16 pm 208. Paul of Alexandria:

G Alston (178):

…As near as I can tell from reading commentary on this site conservatives are graphed correctly and are very much against reason, instead relying upon belief and tradition. Left and right may not cover it correctly, but the charge that von Brunn is a right wing type is more accurate than the claim he’s a left winger.

Be careful here. Conservatives aren’t against “reason” per se. Also, the vertical axis is “Rationalism”. The emphasis here is on what attitude the particular group shows towards “planned social progress“. Socialists believe that every aspect of a society can be planned and controlled by the state, fascists don’t bother with that kind of long-term planning.

Conservatives believe that social progress cannot be planned that well in advance, both because the system is too complex and because the planners may be corrupt themselves. (Socialists also tend to try and implement theoretically attractive solutions without checking history to see what has happened in the past.) Rather, conservatives acknowledge that we should stick to tried-and-true values and techniques implement changes to them only after long and careful consideration.

Jun 12, 2009 - 12:16 pm 209. myth buster:

I call those statements worshiping Hitler. Wouldn’t that make them pagans?

Jun 12, 2009 - 12:19 pm 210. Free Hat:

201. Steven – Of course the Nazis weren’t pagans.

But the bogus idea that they were just helps to feed into the Jonah Goldberg-inspired bogus wingnut theory that the Nazis embodied everything that the Left wing embodies.

The purpose of the theory is to try to deflect the justified Left wing attacks on the Right wing that it has become a hate club that seeks many of the same goals that the Nazis sought: to curb immigration, to marginalize and exclude non-white and non-Christian minorities, oppress gays, destroy unions, burn books, and destroy intellectualism. The presence, and stature, of white supremacists like Pat Buchanan and Rush “I got fired from commentating on NFL games because I claimed that the only reason Donovan McNabb got to be quarterback was because he’s black” Limbaugh in the Republican Party also didn’t help them.

So, tired of being constantly compared to the worst offenders in history, tired of being constantly called on the huge amount of similarities between the Nazis’ ideas and those of the Southern white racists who make up the Republican party, and tired of never having a good comeback, the Right wing commissioned Jonah Goldberg and others to write Liberal Fascism and various variations of the same theme, which is basically, “I know you are, but what am I?!”

So by cherrypicking ridiculous details about Nazi culture, such as the fact that they were into eugenics, that they subscribed to mystic religious views, and that they had the word “socialists” in their party name, as did most popular European political parties at the time, clearly, they began leveling charges of Nazism on everyone and anyone in order to muddy the waters of history and provide some cover fire for the racist right wing.

And the cheers went up around the right wing blogosphere as they finally had an argument to counter the left wingers who called them Nazis. That the argument is without merit doesn’t matter. These are the same people who believe that Jesus rode around on dinosaurs, that Satan makes us all do bad things, that gays are going to convert their children, and that Reagan toppled Communism all by his lil’ ole’ self. So convincing them to believe that the Nazis, who made it a party platform to kill Liberals, were actually Liberals themselves, is really no feat at all.

Jun 12, 2009 - 12:30 pm 211. Paul of Alexandria:

Steven (201.):

The Nazis were *not* pagans.

Yes they were, for the most part.

…“God had brought [the German] Volk into being and he had done so through Hitler,
Volk was race and God wants race.” Joachim Hossenfelder, Protestant country pastor in Sillies, head of the German Christians Movement

See “Modern Fascism: The Threat to the Judeo-Christian Worldview” by Gene Edward Veith for a very thorough analysis of this and the relationships between the Nazi party, the “German Christians”, and the Lutheran’s.

Hitler was a pagan, as were the vast majority of the Nazi Party leadership. However, the majority of Germans were either Lutheran or Catholic. Since Christianity was deeply engrained into the German society, Hitler couldn’t attack them as directly as he did the Jews. The “German Christian” movement was an effort to subvert the Christian Church in Germany and come up with a church that was pliable and submissive to the state. It basically went along with the Nazi actions and was nothing but a puppet organization. (On the other hand, there were a rather large number of Catholic and Lutheran pastors either sent to concentration camps or martyred outright like Deitrick Bonhoffer.)

Jun 12, 2009 - 12:31 pm 212. Paul of Alexandria:

Steven (203):

But the Nazis were *not* right wingers, either. What does this mean? That Christianity & socialism (national or otherwise)/communism (Marxist, Leninist or otherwise) are two sides of the same altruist/collectivist coin.

In short, Christianity is as leftists as it gets.

Huh? You obviously have no idea what Christianity teaches, do you.
A true Christian society – unattainable on this Earth – is what the Socialists say that they are striving for. A true Christian will state that this is unattainable because of man’s fallen nature: “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Given our fallen nature, a Christian will also admit the necessity for a government to keep order; any thinking Christian will also pray for that government to be as limited as possible in order to reduce the temptation to the leaders and the possibilities for evil doing.

Jun 12, 2009 - 12:38 pm 213. Chuck Pelto:

TO: G Alston
RE: Compare & Contrast: Eco-Terrorism vs. Murders of Abortionists

To tide you over while I contact my law enforcement associates, here’s something for your consideration.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
P.S. Let’s see you fulfill the challenge I gave YOU…..

Jun 12, 2009 - 12:39 pm 214. Chuck Pelto:

P.P.S. And just to keep you in the proper frame-work….remember THIS….

…REAL christians do not countenance murder. Like you do, G Alston, et al. We do not support the murder of babies, as you do…..

Jun 12, 2009 - 12:43 pm 215. tom swift:

There seems to be a lot of confusion about “Left” and “Right” here, too.

Despite anything Wikipedia may say to the contrary, the terms predate the French Revolution. They were certainly in use from the early days of the English Parliament. Tories sat on the right, Whigs to the left. The Tories were basically the party representing the interests of the landed aristocracy – so-called “old money”, even if it tended to be chronically short of cash. The Whigs represented the new monied interests – bankers, manufacturers, military officers (who, as mainly “second sons”, wouldn’t inherit the family castle, but had to amass their fortunes in the colonies). Neither was very liberal in the sense that we would use the word today, though the Whigs had the edge because they were interested in “changing something” – in their case, substituting the power of Big Money in place of Big Real Estate.

The modern “liberal” world arose from entirely separate roots – philosophical rather than economic. The most tangible fruit of Enlightenment-era liberalism (represented by the standard pantheon – Locke, Burke, etc.) was, of course, the new United States. The English concept of Tory and Whig didn’t fit the new country very well, but it was a factor because the Whigs were bitter enemies of the Tory administration of Lord North and did a great deal to encourage the revolution of the American colonists and sabotage the government’s efforts to enforce the King’s edicts. Considering that the vast majority of British Army and Navy officers were Whigs, this encouragement was quite useful, perhaps even decisive. It certainly helps to explain many of General Howe’s actions during the Revolution, actions which have baffled historians for two centuries.

The attempt to make something similar to the American Revolution back in Europe, the French Revolution, failed drastically, giving Europe little more than a generation of near-perpetual warfare. But it did allow the Left to develop in a new way, which is remembered now as The Terror.

Meanwhile, back in the US, new parties arose. The Federalists – the party of Washington, Adams, Hamilton, John Marshall – grew out of those who had argued for a relatively strong central government. It developed into the party of the Pennsylvania Quakers, the Massachusetts Puritans, and the Dutch burghers of New York – merchants, manufacturers, farmers and other small landholders. A second party, the Democratic-Republicans, split off almost immediately. This was the party of Jefferson, Madison, Gallatin, Monroe, and developed into the party of the Virginia squirocracy – the plantation and slave-owners. These parties were still not what we would think of as Liberal or Conservative. They seemed to be occupied mainly with setting tariffs, paying off the national and state debts left over from the Revolution, and finding funds for interstate roads and canals.

The Federalists eventually evaporated, replaced in the Jackson era by the Whigs. The American Whigs had little connection with the English Whigs – they adopted the name because the English Whigs had traditionally been opposed to the King and the Tories, and so could be imagined to represent anti-autocratic forces in general. President Jackson was, of course, the “autocrat” to whom they were opposed. The Whig party was the party of Daniel Webster, Zach Taylor, Winfield Scott, Henry Clay, and Abraham Lincoln. The Whigs split and disappeared when the primary political question in the US became that of the extension of slavery to the territories of the new states. The anti-slave voters went to the new Republican Party, the others to regional parties or the Democrats (the new name of the old Democratic-Republicans). Now, something resembling modern ideas of liberalism and conservatism become recognizable, though not clearly. The most liberal would have to be the Abolitionist wing of the Republican Party, although the Abolitionist movement was of strongly religious origin, and so hardly “liberal” in any modern sense.

Meanwhile, back in Europe, the Communist Manifesto, the revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune were basically manifestations of class warfare and had no real relevance to politics in the United States, which was dominated by concerns of state’s rights vs. federal primacy, and the civil rights of the ex-slaves or freedmen. However this European class warfare led to modern concepts of Left and Right. The Communists, with their worker’s unions and strikes, were the new Left. “Communes” in the US, while generally following the European ideal of “communism”, were more often than not of religious origin. It would be several decades before they, too, became preoccupied with unions and strikes. By then, the Left in America would be more closely identified with the Progressives of the pre-WW1 era. European-style communism never became popular in the US, doubtless at least partly because of the extreme intolerance of divergent opinion characteristic of Karl Mark himself, a trait with little appeal to the 19th century American character.

The Progressives were fascinated by speed, machines, organization and “progress”, and favored two odd ideas – the eugenics movement, a spinoff of the concept of Social Darwinism (certainly no invention of Darwin himself), and the related notion that societies and populations as well as governments could be “designed”. Hence the rise of the concept of the Social Engineer. The closest America came to that was Herbert Hoover, a spectacular engineer and one of the most brilliant men ever to sit in the Oval Office, but not a great President. Our most prominent Progressive was Wilson, no engineer but plenty smart, and unfortunately haunted by the notion that he was on a Mission from God to move the US into the world of hyper-regulation, where the federal government would determine even the price of pressing a suit (a serious matter – a tailor was jailed for blowing off the government and setting his own price). Wilson’s successes were short-lived, however, and died after WW1. Only the permanent income tax was left of his rash of “reforms”.

European leftism went two slightly divergent ways after the war. The most obvious was Bolshevism, or Marxism as implemented in Russia. The Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party in the early 1920s. The Spartacists, basically German Bolsheviks, seized some substantial areas in Germany, but they were all put down by troops loyal (though sometimes in convoluted ways) to the Weimar Republic. That marked the extent of the spread of serious Communism, for the time being. The other development of European leftism was most clearly embodied in Mussolini. Before the war he was the editor of a Socialist newspaper. During the war he fought in the Italian army. His postwar career was devoted to a variation of socialism, based on the “brotherhood of the trenches” – the bond of shared experience between veterans who had suffered and sacrificed supposedly for the good of Italy. This bond would, by necessity, be national in scope, rather than international, and so automatically in conflict with prewar socialist “class warfare” doctrine, which was intended to surpass and supplant national borders. Mussolini’s appearance on the political scene seemed to bring the promise of order arising from the postwar chaos (both political and financial), the “strongman” who could get things done, who could make the trains run on time – just the thing to make him a Progressive hero. Progressives worldwide hailed this new Man of Action – he seemed to be the embodiment of their ideals, despite his disdain for democratic processes – a minor quibble. Meanwhile, American Progressive politics went off onto another of its dead ends, Prohibition, a thirteen-year experiment in disaster. The only enduring legacy of Prohibition is organized crime, which unfortunately didn’t go away again after repeal.

The unexpected development of all this is that even in the US, the idea of Leftism is derived mainly from European experience. American leftist political activity was concerned mainly with matters long dead and buried – slavery and alcohol prohibition, with some dabbling in isolationism. There is no noteworthy American political party which has the slightest interest in reviving either slavery or Prohibition (although both major parties are certainly interested in prohibition laws, just not prohibition of alcohol). But European leftist activity was devoted to class warfare (from the mid-1800s on) and government control of society (from about WW1). And those are what American leftism basically stands for today.

Jun 12, 2009 - 12:48 pm 216. Rand Simberg:

the Right wing commissioned Jonah Goldberg and others to write Liberal Fascism

Got tinfoil hat much? Is there some kind of decoder ring I get when I become part of this “Right wing”?

Jun 12, 2009 - 12:49 pm 217. Chuck Pelto:

P.P.P.S. How much ya wanna ‘bet’ that the vast majority of the perps of eco-terrorism call themselves ‘liberal’ and/or ‘progressive’?

Jun 12, 2009 - 12:50 pm 218. Chuck Pelto:

TO: Paul of Alexandria
RE: Heh

A true Christian will state that this is unattainable because of man’s fallen nature: “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” — Paul of Alexandria

Yeah….But….as one aide to President Clinton put it while he held orifice….

Stroke of the pen [i.e., Executive Order], Law of the land. Power corrupts, but absolute power is kinda cool. — unknown aide to President Clinton

There’s a definite “differing viewpoint” between ‘progressives’ and ‘christians’.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out......]

Jun 12, 2009 - 12:55 pm 219. Pee Wee Herman, Community Organizer:

The Nazis were *not* pagans.

Uh-oh. Did some pagan get his tozies stepped on?

Nuke the gay baby whales for Gaia.

Feel better now?

Jun 12, 2009 - 1:16 pm 220. pst314:

“Progressives worldwide hailed this new Man of Action – he seemed to be the embodiment of their ideals, despite his disdain for democratic processes – a minor quibble.”

Heh.

It’s worth noting that those same progressives looked with some longing on the fascistic policies and tactics used by the Wilson administration.

Jun 12, 2009 - 1:22 pm 221. Rashputin:

G Alston (187)

Per the FBI, there have been ten incidents of attacks attempting to kill abortion doctors and/or clinic workers. A total of six (6) people have been killed and nine people wounded in these incidents. Tiller alone counts as two of the attacks, one wounding, and one death, in these cases since both an earlier attack on him and his recent murder are included, while one of his staff counts as one of the wounded. There have been several incidents of shots fired and/or people wounded initially thought to be abortion related but that have been under investigation for years without confirming or denying that these incidents were abortion related. Protecting what NARAL calls, “… brave and courageous providers …” by deploying Federal Marshals seems disproportionate to say the least.

For Right Wing Gun loving loonies, the people attacking abortion workers obviously don’t practice much. It’s almost as if they were crazy and thought things worked like in the movies where the hero they see themselves as never misses and is never hit.

Brigate Rosse, Baader Meinhoff, Germany’s Red Army Faction (from which of which Baader Mienhoff sprang), the Japanese Red Army, and these are just off the top of my head. All right wing Christian nut bags, right? Each and every one has murdered and wounded more people than there have been murders related to since records were first compiled and updated by the FBI.

Your trolling is so poorly done it’s fun to watch.

Please have a wonderful journey down broad way to the wide gate.

Jun 12, 2009 - 1:33 pm 222. Free Hat:

216. Rand Simberg: “Is there some kind of decoder ring I get when I become part of this “Right wing”?”

No, unfortunately, you don’t get a decoder ring, but you do get plenty of flyers and e-mails featuring the President’s head photoshopped on a food stamp and a White House lawn covered with watermelon.

Jun 12, 2009 - 1:35 pm 223. Paul of Alexandria:

BTW, Gene Veith blogs at Cranach

Jun 12, 2009 - 1:43 pm 224. Chuck Pelto:

TO: Pee Wee Herman, Community Organizer
RE: Huh??!?!??!

Nuke the gay baby whales for Gaia — Pee Wee Herman, Community Organizer

I thought it was….

Nuke the gay, baby pinko, tree-hugging-green, progressive whales with more bumper-stickers than bumper metal showing on the automotive hybrids for Christ

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[The last thing they want is a revitalized economy now. I'm not saying the Democrats don't want a strong economy. Don't misunderstand. They just don't want it now. -- Rush Limbaugh]

P.S. But that was some time ago. When will they really want it?

Jun 12, 2009 - 1:43 pm 225. Paul of Alexandria:

tom swift (215):

There seems to be a lot of confusion about “Left” and “Right” here, too.
…

Unfortunately obfuscating the terminology is part of the enemy’s strategy.

As per common US usage, I’m lining things up as follows (using the Pournelle Axes and renumbering from -2 to 2 as per convention):

Left (far) ~= Socialist ~= Liberal ~= statist: X >= 1
Right (far) ~= Libertarian: X <= -1
Conservative X and Y approx 0 to 1: reasonable balance between state and individual, minimalist government, respect for solutions proven to historically work.

Jun 12, 2009 - 1:56 pm 226. Chuck Pelto:

TO: pst314
RE: [OT] A ‘Man’ of Action

“Progressives worldwide hailed this new Man of Action – he seemed to be the embodiment of their ideals, despite his disdain for democratic processes – a minor quibble.” — pst314, citing someone else

But he IS a ‘man of action’.

He throws EVERYBODY ‘under the bus’. Most especially his ‘friends’.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out.....he's more like Hitler, in his use of 'useful fools' than anyone since that time.....]

P.S. How is it the Blogfather is putting it?

Who are the ‘rubes’?

Jun 12, 2009 - 2:06 pm 227. Chuck Pelto:

TO: Rashputin
RE: Hey!!!!!

Please have a wonderful journey down broad way to the wide gate. — Rashputin

But she had ‘good intentions’. Right?

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[The road to Hell is paved with 'good intentions'.]

Jun 12, 2009 - 2:26 pm 228. Delia:

This is the strangest game of ‘hot potato’ I’ve ever witnessed.

Who does Osama belong to then? I’ll give him to the Islamic apologist in Chief and his followers. I’m feeling generous.

Jun 12, 2009 - 2:29 pm 229. G Alston:

#221 — Brigate Rosse, Baader Meinhoff, Germany’s Red Army Faction (from which of which Baader Mienhoff sprang), the Japanese Red Army, and these are just off the top of my head.

And these have what, precisely, to do with the US? Politics in other countries weren’t the subject.

#225 — Conservative X and Y approx 0 to 1: reasonable balance between state and individual, minimalist government, respect for solutions proven to historically work.

I don’t see that. Conservatives are the true blood brothers of the leftists; both advocate use of the government to control their agenda. Any quibbling is about who gets to pull the levers. Pournelle’s positioning seems accurate, at least from my viewpoint.

Who is this enemy, by the way? I’m about 2.75 / 3.25′ by my reckoning on the original scale: can’t stand the left, and apparently not much in common with conservatives either.

Jun 12, 2009 - 2:39 pm 230. Self-hating Boomer:

RE: [OT] A ‘Man’ of Action

Of course, the lefties like Wilson, FDR, and 0bama. They don’t like Reagan, but they ridicule Coolidge. Silent Cal was a man of inaction.

They care about ideology, but they want daddy even more. Cal’s sin was that he wasn’t in everyone’s faces.

This is why there’s so much semen in the undies of liberals over 0bama. Finally, for the first time since LBJ, a donkey as interested in a political agenda as his own ego.

Jun 12, 2009 - 2:39 pm 231. Chuck Pelto:

TO: All
RE: Another G Alston Lie

Conservatives are the true blood brothers of the leftists; both advocate use of the government to control their agenda. — G Alston

This person has SERIOUS issues with ‘reality’.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
P.S. As if that were a REAL ’surprise’. Most progressives are liars at heart.

Jun 12, 2009 - 3:31 pm 232. pst314:

“And these have what, precisely, to do with the US? Politics in other countries weren’t the subject.”

Well, I used to know lots of progressives who made excuses and justifications for left-wing terrorists (not to mention the oppressive regimes of Cuba, the Soviet bloc, China, etc.)

And then we have Bill Ayers and his pals, the racist-fascist Black Panthers & Nation of Islam….

Jun 12, 2009 - 4:18 pm 233. G Alston:

#231 — This person has SERIOUS issues with ‘reality’.

Indeed you do. Please look at the Pournelle link I supplied, then get back to me.

Jun 12, 2009 - 5:15 pm 234. Chuck Pelto:

TO: G Alston
RE: Clever Attempt….

Indeed you do. Please look at the Pournelle link I supplied, then get back to me. — G Alston

….but futile.

A christian is not a fascist. Nor one of your “blood brothers”.

If you think that, you’re more ignorant than I had heretofore thought.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[Stupid, adj., Ignorant and proud of it.]

Jun 12, 2009 - 6:32 pm 235. Rashputin:

G. Alston (207)

While a “*real* scholar”, as you put it asserts that the German Nation as a whole was a Christian nation he gives short shrift to the history of Christianity of Germany. The German states were some of the bloodiest war zones between Roman Catholicism and Luther Protestants. As the title states, it begins at 1919, far too late to determine anything about the real, deeply held, beliefs of the German population because starvation, economic collapse, and military defeat, had turned all but the strongest or most faithful of Germans into agnostics at best. True, the generation coming of age after about 1925 could be strongly Christian, but why would an older generation still struggling to convince themselves that life could be nearly normal again put any effort into ensuring that their children were actually Christian rather than followers of Christian traditions just like they were followers of a beer drinking tradition?

He begins his analysis after WWI with little if any thought to the fact that Germany was very young as a nation rather than a collection of royal houses. He then aggregates all variations of Christianity into a single group he calls Christian as if calling a gothic railway station a gothic cathedral makes it one. Being Luther’s home, Germany had been fairly well blooded both within German states and by participation in battles elsewhere. In spite of all the blood shed by Germans, there remained sufficient Roman Catholic Christians and sympathizers to predominate in large areas of what was to become Germany. Neither Catholic nor Lutheran really accepted the other as a true Christians right up to the time that nationalism swept Germany along early in WWI. Those two missing, little details, alone suffice to make the authors conclusions tenuous, based as it is on the view through an extremely small window.

Hitler, whatever he was, was not a Pagan, nor was he a Christian. He was extremely proud to be neither, considering himself to have faith in realism alone rather than Christ alone. He had a deep faith in his mystical destiny rather than God. If he worshipped anything, it was Wagner for his mystic interpretation of Parsifal and the Holy Grail. He absolutely considered the Holy Grail to be a hidden message about his personal obsession, the purity of national blood. He had no sympathy with the ideas of people like Himmler who wanted to create a new “Religion of the Blood”, complaining that Himmler wanted the state subservient to the new religion rather than the other way around as it should be. He even banished Rosenberg who’s “Mythus of the Twentieth Century” was considered to be such an influence on and statement of Nazism that he was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremburg trials and hanged. Whether doing so constituted both national and international legal precedent to hang someone for his beliefs and writings, I don’t know.

I’m sure Hitler liked the idea of Germany being characterized a Christian nation just as the other European nations were characterized as Christian nations. Leaving alone Lutherans when Luther himself expected anti-Semitism of true believers made a lot of sense since he knew he could control Lutheran pulpits one way or another. While Roman Catholics swung between supporting pogroms periodically, and just discriminating against Jews, by the 1900s lethal anti-Semitism was openly considered a sin despite the inherent guilt still attributed to all Jews . Neither group was anything like Christians from the Anabaptist, Dutch, and English, Doctrinal traditions. Anti-Semitism in other than Roman Catholic and Lutheran traditions petered out into widely separated, intermittent, local affairs, the damage caused by the anti-Semitic outbursts during waves of plague having been fully digested and considered not worth suffering just to rid oneself of a few Jews.

After considering the major differences between just the Lutheran and Roman Catholic Christians, one has to ask what sort of true Christian would replace the Cross or Angel atop a Christmas Tree and even Cross on a grave with the Swastika? The kind of Christian who respects structure and discipline, respects their elders and superiors, and put duty above personal fulfillment. The sort of Christian who considers the doctrines of the Church well below his social obligations and social status, and never considering Christian duties until after having fulfilled his social duties.

Being an incredible student of human nature, Hitler recognized that combining Roman Catholic respect for hierarchy with spectacle, with the Lutheran nearly Hindu belief in election and predestination, that he would only need the proper state oversight structure and an impressive face on his ambitions in order to finally meld both groups of German Christians into a single Germanic citizen shed of almost all more than superficial beliefs as long as traditional, inherited, norms were not eroded too rapidly. The youth could be taught en masse to adopt new, Nazi values, rather than traditional ones. Any questions from the older generations could be brushed aside by dwelling on the single universally held bedrock belief of all Germans at that time. That bedrock was the belief that in spite of being more literate, better organized, and smarter, than other nations, other nations would always band together to deny Germany the opportunity for the expansion and wealth it’s superior industriousness so richly deserved. Belief in Germany itself remained nearly universal in spite of the effects of WWI having made beliefs in Christ superficial. Hitler knew how to harness both the belief in the state than the superficiality of the average German Christian’s belief in Christ.

Far from having a true, simple statement of faith like, “by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone”, the Germans shuffled into a single pile in his work were far more likely to try and share the good news about their new Nazi society than to share their faith in Christ. Indeed, the belief in predestination had become so widespread among Lutherans that they saw no point any effort to halt the unfolding events even if they did think they were e wrong. There were a few exceptions among Lutherans, and slightly more among Roman Catholics, but there most certainly weren’t masses of people calling themselves Christian who believed that what Christ expected should interfere with what their superiors expected. Any group that doesn’t put Christ’s expectations first isn’t a group of Christians no matter what they call themselves or what others like to call them.

Steigman-Gall is by definition a “*real*” scholar given that he has obtained the paperwork to prove he is one. Nonetheless, he draws vast conclusions from half-vast data.

Jun 12, 2009 - 9:06 pm 236. Joe Bison:

#205 P of A-In reality neither the Anarchists
or Bolsheviks really think/thought things out.
The Anarchists were just more self deluded.

Secondly Marxists claimed the state would
eventually wither away-The Anarchists wanted
to go there right away. So no difference
here on ideals, just timing.

In reality Fascism is a branch on the tree
of Communism. Just remember that no two
branches look exactly alike. Christianity
is a branch on the tree of Judaism. To
be anti-Jewish is to be anti-Christian.

Nazi symbols and ideology are certainly
not Christian. To invoke God doesn’t
make one a Christian. During WW2 when
things were bad Stalin used the Orthodox
Church so don’t read too much into some
Nazi saying something about Jesus or
whatever to propagandize or rally the
troops. Just like when danger is near
you hear a lot of God and Jesus murmurring
from self-proclaimed atheists and agnostics.
Doesn’t make them Christians.

Nazis/Communists and their ilk have always
thought of Christianity as promoting
weakness and stupidity.

Jun 12, 2009 - 10:33 pm 237. Rashputin:

G. Alston (229)

“And these have what, precisely, to do with the US? Politics in other countries weren’t the subject.”

Aside from their universal high praise for Alynski, they are groups internationally defined as being left wing. Now you’d like to limit the discussion to only the US?

Your post (53), entering a link to Dr Pournelle as an authority, was made in an effort to defend your earlier remarks regarding the GERMAN Nazi party. Although you may not be aware of it, Germany is now an integral part of the EU. Your post, therefore, clearly permits the introduction for comparison any member, past, present, or future, of the EU.
Therefore in response to your remark, “There are no stereotypical left wing gun nuts I’m aware of”, the introduction of groups internationally recognized by law enforcement agencies and their respective governments as both left wing and gun nuts in an attempt to rectify your lack of awareness, is more than acceptable in this forum since your post (53) would make such references admissible in a court of law in the identical circumstance.

THAT is precisely what the aforementioned groups have to do with the US and the discussion you are continually attempting to join.

Forgive me for ever replying to you in the first place and rest assured I won’t do it again. I wasn’t aware that you couldn’t even understand sentences you, yourself, wrote and posted. Everyone who posts makes mistakes and typos, I understand that, but by and large posters know what they are trying to say and know what they are themselves introducing into a discussion. That is, as a rule they know what words mean even if something makes it difficult for them to type correctly, spell well, or even ifif their lack of education opportunities causes construct poor sentences. None of those things is significant, your trying to appear as if you know what you are talking about when you don’t even know what you said, IS significant.

If you’re not impaired by some form of retardation or dementia you’d rather not share, it must be your damp, dark, head storage point that has reduced you to this level.

Consider letteing the breeze of other people’s opinions help clear cure your pruned up face by attempting to understand a different point of view without pretending that you’ve got it all figured out. Even at this point in this post, if you can read this far, you still haven’t figured out what you said in several of your own earlier posts.

Have a scented, really squishy, body temperature, day

Jun 12, 2009 - 10:40 pm 238. Butterfly Mornings and Wildflower Afternoons:

The forehead on the murders picture proves that he was a Neanderthal. I conclude he could not read, or could not understand what he reads. Jesus was a Jew and he walked around in the desert, so he was not white, or he would have got terrible sunburn. I truly believe that Jesus looked like the people looked in Israel, because he was born in Bethlehem. Any Neanderthals that conclude he was white or cares only for one given race are completely wrong. He died for all sins, and that means all colors and races, because he certainly does not discriminate.
The great master painters may have painted him to look European, but they were just putting their interpretation on a masterpiece. I personally do not think God would have put his son in that region looking so white. He probably had very long, very dark hair and very dark skin, because he did not set around with Kings, he walked in the desert teaching and saving the poor and healing the sick. He was the King of Kings. I love Jesus and I do not think he cares what color people are on the outside, and I think he only cared of how they feel on the inside. Looks do not matter, and race does not matter to Jesus.

Jun 13, 2009 - 8:15 am 239. sheesh:

214. Chuck Pelto:…”REAL christians don’t countenance murder.”

Sure you do. It’s called the death penalty.

“According to new polling analysis from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, support for the death penalty among the general public has dropped to 62% (August 2007), down from a high of 80% support in the mid-1990s. Among black respondents, 51% opposed the death penalty and only 40% were in favor. Hispanics were about evenly split with 48% in favor of the death penalty and 47% opposed. Eighty-two (82%) percent of conservative Republicans support the death penalty, but only 41% of liberal Democrats. Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants had the highest support.” – Death Penalty Information Center

“Round em up and kill em all in the name of the Lord.” -Jerry Falwell

Jun 13, 2009 - 8:34 am 240. Big Red:

235 Rashputin. excellent post. One exception, though. The Lutheran church I was raised in did not believe in predestination. We were taught Luther believed in Grace (salvation) by Faith, not works or predetermined destiny. The acceptance or rejection of Grace was an individual’s decision and not pre-ordained. Also, Luther was not originally anti-Semitic. He believed Jews would accept Christ once the Catholic Church of his time was reformed, and felt betrayed when they didn’t.

Jun 13, 2009 - 9:10 am 241. Chuck Pelto:

TO: All
RE: Sheesh vs. English

Sure you do. It’s called the death penalty. — Sheesh

In the first place, sheesh, once again demonstrates his lack of comprehension of (1) English and (2) Christianity.

’nuff said.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[Stupid, adj., Ignorant and proud of it.]

Jun 13, 2009 - 9:47 am 242. Pee Wee Herman, Community Organizer:

Chucky, time to update your dictionary:

Murder – Meat or capital punishment.
Choice – Abortion.
Terrorism – doing something that kills someone that the left is sympathetic to*.

Got that?

*The list of people on this list is subject to the rules of Calvinball, and may change at any time to support any argument that any Kos Kiddie wants to make.

Jun 13, 2009 - 1:47 pm 243. Chuck Pelto:

TO: Pee Wee Herman, Community Organizer, et al.
RE: Hey!!!! Calvin Ball??!?!?!?

Pee Wee Herman, Community Organizer — Pee Wee Herman, Community Organizer

I declare this a ‘politeness free zone’!

Regards,

Chuck(le)
P.S. I’d declare it a ‘moderation free zone’, but I suspect the moderators wouldn’t allow THAT much “freedom of expression”…..

Jun 13, 2009 - 2:09 pm 244. Chuck Pelto:

TO: All
RE: ERRATA!!!

That citation SHOULD READ….

The list of people on this list is subject to the rules of Calvinball, and may change at any time to support any argument that any Kos Kiddie wants to make. — Pee Wee Herman, Community Organizer

Gads!

How I hate it when the computers dont’ capture, copy and paste as one would expect…..

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[We're becoming a computer society and I don't like it one byte!]

Jun 13, 2009 - 2:14 pm 245. Rashputin:

Big Red (240)

First, thank you, sir. You state very well the essence of Lutheran Christian doctrine as it now (for the most part) accurately proclaims the gospel, “by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone”. I realize that quite a few people would be surprised to a post proclaiming Luther a Calvinist.

Over time, the Lutheran Church as a whole, settled on Melanchton and the “Augsburg Confessions” as its base Theological work (as recall, Luther gave Melanchton an endpoint of his thinking, Biblical texts he based it on, then freed Melanchton to actually develop, refine, and write the arguments*). Starting around 1860s,however, The German Lutheran Church argued that while Melanchton was the author, where there existed written differences between the “Augsburg Confessions” and Luther’s own writings, particularly “The Bondage of the Will”, Luther should prevail. This view being taught within German Lutheran seminaries, it became accepted into local church sermons and discussion as time progressed.

The primary overt disagreement between Melanchton and Luther is derived from their respective works, “The Augsburg Confessions” and “The Bondage of the Will”; despite there being no record of their having ever publicly disagreed while Luther was alive. The first and most important disagreement is that over what I called Calvinism (though Monergism predates Calvin and Calvinism seemed to me to be a more widely recognized label than Monergism). Melanchton openly abandoned “Bondage of the Will” in arguments after Luther’s death, asserting it was early, unrefined view, not the definitive understanding of the Word. In this matter, though, German theological returned to Luther’s argument that, under divine persuasion man was fallen to such a degree that only the will of the Lord was at work, mankind being so corrupt that his cooperation with regeneration was impossible.

It is precisely the fact the Melanchton himself explicitly abandoned “Bondage of the Will”, and laid out exactly why he was doing so, that you and the vast majority of Lutherans would be surprised or even take umbrage with my original statement naming Luther as a Calvinist. Within Germany, however, Luther’s Monergism prevailed in a large percentage of the Church, although battles on that topic were carefully kept in private. It is the fatalism of the Monergism that permeated much of German theological and moral teaching, Lutherans elsewhere (and especially in the US) following Melanchton on this issue and being very clearly Armenian in their thinking. Although not strict Arminian, they are of that branch. This frees them to succinctly state the numb of the Faith as you did in the post to which I reply.

The only other issue of note that differing between the pre-WWII (and to this day?) German Lutheran Church and Lutherans elsewhere, would be the matter of the Eucharist. Here, Luther agreed it was an act of transubstantiation as do the Roman Catholics, so on at least that issue he remained Catholic in his thinking. For whatever reason, the German Lutheran Church rejected Melanchton who was a strong believer in Consubstantiation, and adhered to Luther’s own position. On neither issue was there ever any great degree of enforcement beyond teaching as Cannon in seminaries, probably the least abrasive and most reasonable approach for the Church to take.

Monergism had become a tenant the faith for the majority, if not the vast majority, of German Lutherans by the 1920s, yet almost unheard of outside of Lutheran seminaries in the rest of the world. A situation you and I both benefit from today by seldom having to argue with Calvinism among ourselves (I say, ‘ourselves’, since I stand as close to Lutherans as possible, while officially remaining non-denominational). While no doubt open critique by those who focus primarily on the study of Theology, that’s a reasonable summary of what I understand were the major differences between German Lutheran thought and Lutherans elsewhere at the time the Nazi Party was rising within Germany prior to WWII.

Perhaps the fact that that Calvinism has become exceedingly common among US Christian denominations and independents, just when they face heretofore unheard pressure to accept pantheistic beliefs for the good of the nation, will serve to show whether my premise that a significant degree of fatalism is found in Christian communities where Calvinism prevails.

I hope that clears up my point in the earlier post and that you might understand my use of the label Calvinism rather than the less commonly heard term.

Regards

PS – I could be wrong on the details of Luther/Melanchton cooperation; I yield to your more accurate and recently reviewed history Lutheran theology and await correction should it be required.

Jun 13, 2009 - 2:37 pm 246. javelin:

He was identified in most of the stories as a Neo Nazi bigot but he did have to ties to such right wing movements as the Birthers. People like Simberg who go on about what the MSM said about the killer obviously are less upset over the horror the killer caused than any possible slight that may be brought on him. it was a terrible crime.
On the other hand, we hear the opposite when some Muslim jihaders are arrested that the media ISN’T linking them to Islam. So gneralites are good when it suits you but bad when it hurts you.

Jun 13, 2009 - 3:30 pm 247. javelin:

nazis love country, military, racism, violence and war and are bigots, but they have absolutely nothing in common with any of todays conservatives, who are the most loving, tolerant peaceful people alive.
When some pig goes on how Nazis are leftisr, my Jewish background makes me want to open the mind with a blunt tool. Even the Kaiser’s empire had a welfare state and Czarist Russia had huge state industries, so they are leftists too according to some of the dreck heads here? They might have been to the left on economics, but their intense bigotry, cult of war love of military has more in common with the common trash here than on the left. After all there were free nobles and rich people in Nazi Germany while even the poorest Jew was marked for death, doesn’t sound like Pol Pot or Mao to me

Jun 13, 2009 - 3:40 pm 248. javelin:

Rand Simberg, you are spouting some dishonest revisionist history.
Actually most of the non Catholic churches in Germany supported the Nazis at first, like Martin Neimoller. The Nazus created the Aryan Christian Church. Even Grober, some theocon’s idea of a Xtian resistance, only was concerned about saving baptized Jews and agreed in principle with Nazi Jew hatred that Jews were a malignant race.
Though the Catholic Church, I mean Vatican, was never pro Nazi, there were elements in the Church who helped 60K Nazi war criminals escape. Even Pope Pius wanted to negotiate a peace between the US, UK vs the Axis so they could band together to fight the godless Reds. Or in other words, Pius saw the Communists as a bigger threat than the Nazis, doesn’t sound to Jew friendly to me.

Jun 13, 2009 - 3:50 pm 249. Morris Minor:

Rashputin
We didn’t come here to read your theologcal treatise about lutheranism. All I need to know about Lutheranism is that in Germany they mostly supported the Nazis and after the war were completely discredited

Jun 13, 2009 - 3:58 pm 250. Rashputin:

Steven (201)

While I realize how it tickles some very, very, dark pink to proclaim that the Nazis were “Christians”, there were immense differences between what those who embraced the Nazis and the German general public thought of the Nazis. Hitler himself found German Christianity useful, and it’s equally true that the predominating Lutheran Church in Germany took no small measure of comfort from the order Hitler instated after decades of near anarchy rolling across their nation. Just as comforting was his resistance to the Communists who he crushed by stealing a bit of their agenda, and murdering anyone who found that bit to be insufficient.

The thinking at the top of the German Lutheran Church seems to have been that he would put Germans on the right path, time the smoothing away the ‘rough edges’, and eventually completely removing the disagreeable aspects of the Nazis. The widely publicized Himmler and Hess ideal of ancient pagan gods and rites driving Christ from German thought, while held in check by Hitler himself, was a sufficiently promoted to let the Church know that it could get a lot worse than having some unacceptable beliefs common in the population. Remember, the German Christianity grew out of successful, armed resistance, to the Roman Catholic Church when it was near its peak of wealth and control. Thinking that they could best a few pagans prominent in a new political ideology seemed like a small, if not trivial, task to the Church leaders. Where their experience led them astray is that Hitler and the Nazis had a determined well before they came to power that there were going to be no lost sheep returned to the fold (with a few exceptions), much less open heretics wondering loose once confronted.

In spite of what agreements they had with the Nazis, even mainstream Lutheran ministers spoke out loudly and often against the pagan aspects of the Nazis, normally ascribing them to Himmler, rather than the Nazi party itself or Hitler himself. Not long after making Austria a part of Germany, Hitler clearly let it be known to the Lutheran clergy a clear message that continuing to criticize the Nazi Party would be considered treason. Even then, he presented his decision has having been made due to the multitude of differing political stances the Lutheran Church allowed to be preached from late in WWI well into the mid-twenties before reigning in its clergy. At that point, save for a very few, the Lutheran clergy tried to avoid anything other than well disguised sermons against the regime and the occasional, seldom public, declaration of discontent to Hitler himself.

Given the above, saying that the Nazis were Christian is just plain wrong, particularly when you learn that there were immense differences at the time, between German Christian thought (Lutheran and Roman Catholic being the vast majority within Germany at the time) and that of Christians even in all other European countries, and in the US Lutheran Church, most of all. While I do understand why the German Lutheran Church felt isolated post-WWI, I don’t understand why they chose to further isolate themselves. In theory, the German character tends towards fatalism and struggle back to the pre-Christian era. This magnified the fatalism present in German Lutheran theology, which made it difficult for the average person to even consider resisting the state once it had garnered the trappings of power. I don’t know that it’s a reasonable and sufficient explanation, but it’s the only one I’ve heard from the few German Lutherans I’ve known. No matter how it is explained, the population you and others like to define or have been taught define as Christians would better be described as Deist in the vein of Hume and others rather than either Pagan or Christian.

Continue to frame your comments as if Nazis were Christian if you like, that doesn’t make it any more honest that to say that people of Cambodians were Buddhist when you argue that Pol Pot was evil.

Have a peachy keen day

Jun 13, 2009 - 4:32 pm 251. Ranstaffel:

Chuck and Peewee imagine themselves as some sort of hip little quipsters, but they are more like knee jerk, totally unintellectual right wing tools who use their redneck version of Christianity as some sort of whore’s perfume or the stuff they spray around the sewage treatment plant for the same reasons.
You actually believe your crap, that is regretful.

Jun 13, 2009 - 4:33 pm 252. Ranstaffel:

Mr Sandberg
“vile leftist monster like James von Brunn”
he is more like right wing trash like you or Pelto than Obama. Please spare me your rank blogtarded hypocrisy. Only a right wing pig would have the nerve to complain about media labels about this Brunn then lie and call Brunn a leftist. But this is PJ Media, home of theocn know nothings and trailer trash who admire fools like joe the Skinhead Aryan Plumber!

Jun 13, 2009 - 4:39 pm 253. Self-hating Boomer:

Looks like we have a new self-appointed blog nanny.

Jun 13, 2009 - 4:43 pm 254. Rashputin:

Morris Minor (249)

Thank you for calling it what it was, Lutheranism, rather than implying Christianity as a whole is responsible the Nazis in Germany at that time.

How fortunate for you that having come here for other reasons, you find yourself badly needed to set me straight with a simple sentence. I am sorry that an earlier poster seemed upset with my point in an earlier post. I answered that post which I felt required an admittedly lengthy answer. I do tend to try and give complete answers, it’s a bad habit but I’m used to taking that approach. Again I apologize for upsetting you by trying answering a poster other than you. I’ll try and do better in the future after I find a copy of the rules and limitations on posters you must have posted prior to reading and posting here.

Have you tried ignoring those posts you didn’t come here for?

Have a nice day

Jun 13, 2009 - 4:43 pm 255. Ranstaffel:

Rashputin
I agree with you, the Nazis weren’t Christians but they were certainly amenable to using them as well as many Christians were amenable to accomodating Nazis. Maybe if the Churches showed more spine from day 1 they could have averted the horrors but they were all too willing in Germany to look for someone to restore order, no matter how many died, the same way Luther himself was thankful when the rulers of his time exterminated peasant uprisings with mass murder in his time. It is a German character flaw to put order ahead of humanity.

Jun 13, 2009 - 4:44 pm 256. Rashputin:

Myth buster (209)
“I call those statements worshiping Hitler. Wouldn’t that make them pagans?”
As pagan is often used, yes, but in reality, no.

Many people have heard the name “Pagan” used as a slur for so long that they use it as one, making it difficult to really limit what it means to the true definition. The same is true for “Christian”. Even when not used that way, it has something of the Queen in “Alice in Wonderland” about it these days. It means exactly what the poster wanted it to mean whether you understand it or not. That’s a large part of the problem with many things in this country these days; people tend to put things they like in one huge non-descriptive category, and things they don’t like into the other huge descriptive category. That makes it very common to toss pejoratives around in order to waste any time on the details. Discussions, after all, shouldn’t take too much time away from more passive pursuits.

As for accurately categorizing the spiritual aspects of the German pre-WWII Nazi party, Pagan, is as inaccurate as is saying they were Christian. From what I’ve read, Himmler and Hess planned on moving to essentially the type of Imperial Cult that existed in ancient Egypt once they could sway Hitler or after Hitler died. Himmler and Hess as well as many other high ranking Nazis liked elements of various pagan faiths and rituals, but seemed intent on making something of their own design.

Regards

Jun 13, 2009 - 5:14 pm 257. Rashputin:

Ranstaffel (255)

Good points (in many posts in fact)

It’s hard for me to accept that it’s a German character flaw is why such educated folks held hands and skipped down the garden path to hell, but it’s even tougher to argue against than to accept. Luther; Luther is the bane of Lutherism just as much as he is one of its brightest lights. I’ve read his works and had to check and be sure the book wasn’t bound wrong, somehow inserting a section from another title as rarely happens but has happened even in textbooks (all the time in textbooks if you judge purely based on consistency, now that I think about it).

Regards

Jun 13, 2009 - 5:42 pm 258. Big Red:

Rashputin, thank you (and Steve) for your interesting posts. Lutheranism, as with Christianity as a whole, is certainly not monolithic,as you so ably discuss. I suspect the situation in Germany was due more to the chaos of the times and nationalism more than religion. The nazis, regardless of any personal beliefs, would have recognized the history of religious contention from the time of the Reformation to their era and decide it best to exploit nationalism and not religion. The main impetus of the migration from Germany to America in the 1840’s was the attempt by Frederick Wilhelm III of Prussia to force all protestant faiths to be one State church, which brought my ancestors here.
Again, thank you, and ignore Morris. He’s the guy who goes to races not for the skill and strategy involved, but just for the crashes.

Jun 13, 2009 - 7:02 pm 259. Javelin:

Self HAting
what does that mean? Someone who calls out dishonest crap for what it is, or people like you who only think in PJ approved manner

Jun 13, 2009 - 7:02 pm 260. Javelin:

Mr. Florak
I don’t understand your rant. The DHS report warned of anti-Semitic fringe people, who also happen to be white, committing acts of violence against Jwish targets, which is what happened. But you little teabaggers are still in a snit cause you have to feel persecuted to be validated.
It seems this whole blog is all about minimizing the crime and attacking liberal media as if they were responsible.

Jun 13, 2009 - 7:06 pm 261. Ranstaffel:

Rashputin
I am neither Xtian or German, but I always had a lot of respect for Luther. He was a true intellectual, as well as a brave man of action and principle. In a way, he helped found America because it was the Protestants who progressed politically and socially far faster than Catholics or the even more backwards Orthodox, as well as they formed the basis for the Enlightenment. What would we have been if a Catholic power colonized No. America, another South America or Haiti? I dread to imagine.

Trouble with Christianity is that you really can’t run a country on true Christian terms and succeed. What would be the defnese posture, accept slavery or worse cause it’s God’s will? You need greed, violence, coercion, fear etc to work. Capitalism works based on greed and ego but we accept it casue it is better than some collective set up which will stagnate or worse. That is why the New Testament is so nicey nice vis a vis the Old One, cause the New was all about one guy who had no political power outside his little troupe of idealist while the Old was about Kings and rulers who founded or ran a whole country.

Jun 13, 2009 - 7:42 pm 262. Rashputin:

javelin (248)

Thanks for those points and post(s) on the subject. I have heard of Grober, but not in great detail. Could you recommand a book, or should I stick to what’s available on the web?

Regards

Jun 13, 2009 - 7:56 pm 263. sheesh:

241. Chuck Pelto: . . . “In the first place, sheesh, once again demonstrates his lack of comprehension of (1) English and (2) Christianity.”

And that was supposed to refute what? As to English and Christianity, i understand both better than you ever will. Stick to databases. They don’t talk back.

Jun 13, 2009 - 10:58 pm 264. Brian Richard Allen:

Well put!

Hear! Hear!

Cordially – Brian

Jun 14, 2009 - 6:24 am 265. Dave Surls:

“But you little teabaggers are still in a snit cause you have to feel persecuted to be validated.”

More like we’re laughing because the leftoid Democrats have the audacity to attribute racism and ethnic hatred to the right wing. That’s pretty rich coming from the Democrats.

Jun 14, 2009 - 1:12 pm 266. Someone75:

Chuck Pelto,

Actually, if you weren’t such a feeble old man with diminished mental faculties, you’d remember that I’ve said many times that I’m a Christian.

At least I don’t masquerade as ex air force. When you do that, it insults our troops. Pretending to have served in the military is no joke.

Lets see him prove it folks. I’ll wager dollars against donuts that he can’t.

–

For the record, the so-called “nut job” had a very long history of anti-government sentiments. You, Chuck Pelto, are as anti-government as anyone I’ve ever known. Therefore, you are comparable. The only difference is, he wasn’t a coward lobbing silly insults from his computer. He actually did something. Pathetic.

Jun 14, 2009 - 10:29 pm 267. Rashputin:

Ranstaffel (261)

“That is why the New Testament is so nicey nice vis a vis the Old One, cause the New was all about one guy who had no political power outside his little troupe of idealist while the Old was about Kings and rulers who founded or ran a whole country.”

Luther is very interesting, both bold and burned out from stress most of the time, confident and constantly fearful. Where he may have failed is dwarfed by where he succeeded IMHO. Your take on Protestant control here is very true. We’d have been another South America at best.

But then, Christian dogma asserts that the NT describes someone who will return to rule the whole planet, at which time he won’t be so nicey nice. I can certainly understand your characterization of it; however, it makes perfect sense to see it as a difference in power relationships. In fact, yours is one of the few times I’ve seen power relationship analysis used both correctly and well. I can’t argue with your first premise, either, we would have been another South America, at a minimum.

No, I don’t think Christianity can run the country on true Christian principals, and it seems to me trying to do so is difficult to support. Living ones own life by those principals should suffice except in rare circumstances. Unlike some, I don’t try to create a list superior to the Bill of Rights. Even the Commandments are defined differently among Christians themselves. The most vocal never seem to propose “love they neighbor as thyself”. I’d think that would be most representative, but I’d be well armed, own a bullet proof vest, have no family, and have nothing I couldn’t ignore being stolen, before I announced I intended base all of our laws on that alone. Since I have family and possessions I like, the original documents by deists (not Christians) are just fine thank you.

I don’t see why one faith should expect to dictate how this society is run, either. Until the elites decided that equality under the law was unreasonable for the groups they found useful rather than just themselves, what we have was working just fine. Yes, it worked slowly, but it worked well. Since then all sides have mostly fought self-defeating battles, various groups taking turns playing the role of either the Sioux or the Cavalry, depending on who “wins” at the Little Bighorn our courts have become. In addition, ever since the clueless children of the spoiled Boomers (not all Boomers, just the spoiled 2/3) first encountered reality, we’ve lost the right to argue these things out to a compromise. Many people now feel they are entitled to never be offended. Breaking the historically calm, passive, meditative, character of American society by saying, “bullshit, you’re wrong”, has become just as bad as saying, “stick em up” while pointing a loaded gun at someone. Now, arguments can’t proceed without first having the vacuous debate over acceptable terms, which means argumentation ceases to exist leaving only anger and frustration.

People complain about others not respecting their rights, but for the most part, they don’t seem to the understand the concept of rights. The “negative rights” the current incumbent feels need companion “positive rights” are written without them due to the fact that the founders had SEEN “positive rights” in action as titles of nobility. I am amazed at the idea of the Constitution being elastic beyond what the framers enumerated. “Discovered” rights? What it doesn’t mention, it didn’t hide for those with a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring to discover. Most of what we now see as judicial issues should be settled by the Congress in a representative democracy. (It doesn’t help that both sides in this country seem to elect more than a few sniveling cowards). Christian or not, some people can’t accept that or await their turn to ride the pendulum. Look at the stupid issues in the courts. Evolution vs. Intelligent Design, for example. Crap, teach both along with three or four other creation theories that have held sway over time, ending up with a richer course showing that people have been asking the same question for all of recorded history. But no, a few dig in their heels against all compromise. Christians have been told so many times they’re under attack, that they’re breathing into paper bags held over trivia. Once they’ve finished hyperventilating, they react with approaches guaranteed to send everyone who isn’t Christian rushing for their own paper bag. All the while the important stuff gets ground to dust behind everyone’s backs. It makes no sense to me. I’d say it’s out of hand from any point of view, and it remains to be seen whether or not the pendulum starts the other way or if we’ve finally broken the clock started in 1776.

Christians should wise up, IMHO. For example, how’s that Christian values victory over record lyrics in music sold by Wal-Mart working out? Help Al and Tipper to regulate foul language out of the music if you like, but don’t be shocked when you have Christ removed from taxpayer funded decorations at Christmas time. (The “goose and gander gambit” is tough to resist, numbskulls). Al and Tipper don’t look quite like the Southern Baptists they did back then, do they? Christians make sitting duck of themselves by demanding society at large change rather just going fishing. It happens so often you’d think someone planned it that way. Personally, I think Christians need to stick to the big issues like abortion, and even then Christian Love and Charity are the best weapons. They attract fewer people who may be prone to violence as well as probably being more successful. Christians should also continue to proclaim that murder is murder and crime is crime whether your God or your Dog told you to do it every time they have the opportunity.

Regards

Jun 14, 2009 - 11:14 pm 268. Chuck Pelto:

TO: Someone75
RE: Really?

….I’ve said many times that I’m a Christian. — Someone75

If you are, then you’ve got a LOOOOOOONG ways to go to start acting like one.

Allow me to point out that Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart both claimed to be such. But didn’t behave that way.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[A tree is known by its fruit. -- Some Wag, around 2000 years ago]

P.S. Has the Christ come in the flesh?

Jun 15, 2009 - 5:40 am 269. Chuck Pelto:

TO: Someone75
RE: In the First Place…..

At least I don’t masquerade as ex air force. — Someone75

…..where’d you get this Air Force business?

We’re talking serious diminished mental capacity with you if you can’t remember how many times I mentioned leading paratroopers.

RE: Okay….

Lets see him prove it folks. I’ll wager dollars against donuts that he can’t. — Someone75

Your dollars against my donuts.

Say 1000?

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out....]

Jun 15, 2009 - 5:45 am 270. Chuck Pelto:

P.S. How much had you had to drink or ‘do’ before you posted that unfortunate wager at 2249 hours?

Jun 15, 2009 - 5:48 am 271. Chuck Pelto:

Oooppssss….

…that’s 2229 hrs.

More coffee, please…..

Jun 15, 2009 - 5:49 am 272. Butterfly Mornings and Wildflower Afternoons:

236. Joe Bison:
I agree with you.

Jun 15, 2009 - 6:11 am 273. Chris:

So if everyone is too the left, what are examples of the right ?

Jun 15, 2009 - 9:31 pm 274. Rashputin:

The following are some I’ve heard of although smaller groups come and go with great regularity; these seem to have been around a while. Their party would run the state, approving candidates, regulate voting, etc. Their stance on socialism varies, from the owning anything with an interstate presence, to the state appointing ‘nobility’ that determined who owned what in their domains. All are near monarchial, and all seem intent on creating national heads for most important areas of the economy with those heads answering only to the fuhrer, not an elected body. Several of these are primarily racist; their economic outlook may have been surmised by the writers I drew from rather than from any publications of their own. All are racist with varying degrees of how severe their ‘solutions’ would be.

Creativity Movement
(size? who knows, but several members have committed robberies in various states; states’ rights?)
Aryan Nations
(may be best known; huge presence in prisons; extremely violent in & out of prison; atheist?)
American National Socialist Workers Party
(seems to be among the largest; many state branches; very secretive; prison connections; pantheist)
White Revolution
(listed twice due to their regular, bloody, fights over which faction really is the White Revolution)
White Revolution
(purely racist as far as I can tell; quasi-anarchist to quasi-monarchial depending; occult & imperial cult)
National Socialist Aryan Workers Party
(socialist to about the same degree as the original Nazis; Fuhrer a must as is racial purity; Pantheist)
Christian National Socialist Party
(says they resist the pantheist new age teachings corrupting good Aryans; apparently awaiting a Fuhrer – I don’t know if they take applicants or what)

There are a lot more around, these are only those that have been in the news in the Southeast and definitely espouse totalitarian or quasi-monarchist views, all naturally foresee a Fuhrer figure as being the primary decision maker, with most picturing his personal picks running various sectors with only the Fuhrer overseeing them and only state security or one another being able lodge complaints against them, not the people under them or some sort of elected body.

Jun 16, 2009 - 2:18 pm 275. Chuck Pelto:

TO: All
RE: Where’s Someone75?

I need a new high-end, digital camera!

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out.....and I've got my retirement certificate ready to be copied, notarized as a 'true copy', scanned and displayed on-line.....just so I can buy that new device.....]

Jun 17, 2009 - 3:20 pm 276. Darrell:

DAVID LETTERMAN’S HATE, ETC. !

David Letterman’s hate is as old as some ancient Hebrew prophets.
Speaking of anti-Semitism, it’s Jerry Falwell and other fundy leaders who’ve gleefully predicted that in the future EVERY nation will be against Israel (an international first?) and that TWO-THIRDS of all Jews will be killed, right?
Wrong! It’s the ancient Hebrew prophet Zechariah who predicted all this in the 13th and 14th chapters of his book! The last prophet, Malachi, explains the reason for this future Holocaust that’ll outdo even Hitler’s by stating that “Judah hath dealt treacherously” and “the Lord will cut off the man that doeth this” and asks “Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother?”
Haven’t evangelicals generally been the best friends of Israel and persons perceived to be Jewish? Then please explain the recent filthy, hate-filled, back-stabbing tirades by David Letterman (and Sandra Bernhard and Kathy Griffin) against a leading evangelical named Sarah Palin, and explain why most Jewish leaders have seemingly condoned Palin’s continuing “crucifixion”!
While David, Sandra, and Kathy are tragically turning comedy into tragedy, they are also helping to speed up and fulfill the Final Holocaust a la Zechariah and Malachi, thus helping to make the Bible even more believable!
(For even more stunning information, visit MSN and type in “Separation of Raunch and State” and “Bible Verses Obama Avoids.”)

Jun 17, 2009 - 10:37 pm 277. Yustinkipu:

Very Good Article!

Free Hat you are the idiot. Yes Hitler was a socialist and if you study even a little about him you would know that. He also killed many Christians as he considered them an offshoot of Judaism and they didn’t go along with his program.

Daryl, I think Jews that really support hate against Sarah Palin are the liberal traitors of Israel, not regular Jews. Maybe some Jews have opinions about her competence, but the mean stuff is left wing slanderous crap.

Aug 15, 2009 - 2:19 pm

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