John Kerry’s “finest moment”, according to Bill Ayers, (YouTube link) was the day he threw his medals away. Should we listen to him? Is it possible to even discuss the video without somehow being accused of bigotry? Some have implied that society’s “finest moment” should be the ability to throw the information about what is implied about Ayers, as exemplified by the anecdote he himself tells, away. Yet Ayers himself doesn’t cast aside the information, but shouts it from the housetops as in the recent interview. How does one listen, yet not listen to Bill Ayers? The implied answer is to wear a filter where the Ayers story about Kerry becomes a noble anecdote — a kind of modern Horatius Not At the Bridge story.
The AP writes that “Barack Obama is striking back fiercely and swiftly to stamp out an ad that links him to a 1960s radical, eager to demonstrate a far more aggressive response to attacks than John Kerry did when faced with the 2004 “Swift Boat” campaign.” But why can’t we argue it is Bill Ayers himself, who is purposely making these remarks about John Kerry, that is “Swift Boating” Barack Obama? When Jeremiah Wright was caught on tape saying “God Damn America! Hillary ain’t never been a ******!” and air humping before the congregation, Obama solemnly intoned that this was not the Pastor Wright that he knew. Its curious that he can’t say ‘this is not the Bill Ayers that I didn’t know, never having known him, and simply being his neighbor’.
Information in the political world has the curious property of being there and not there. That is only possible with a filter and George Orwell described it first. Doublethink, he wrote is:
“the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them . . . . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”
Watch this interesting video featuring the confrontation between Alex Jones and Michelle Malkin in Denver. How do you think Alex Jones might characterize his behavior? Indignation? Righteous anger? Jones’ signature message is that America is becoming a country of coercion; if so, it’s amusing to see how he proceeds to demonstrate it.
Tip Jar.
PJM Home
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
101 Comments
1. jeyi:“Swift-boating means exactly what I want it mean. Nothing more and nothing less.”
Ayers’s chunky gold earrings were quite cute though. Makes me want to grab them with a pair of Vise-Grips and pull down hard.
Aug 26, 2008 - 2:36 pm 2. Zim:Those comments were made in Jan. 2006, before Obama even won his senate seat, but so recent. This is not the comments from a man in the 1960’s or even comments from 2001, but just 2 years ago.
Man I wish we knew what he and Obama were up to together in that Chicago “charity”.
Aug 26, 2008 - 2:40 pm 3. wretchard:Ayers’s chunky gold earrings …
Maybe these are Ayers’ medals. Vestments never go out of style, they simply change form. Whether its a Keffiyeh or a Tin-tin haircut they still convey signals, like a cap badge or a company ID, or the key to the executive washroom. And that’s ok. The problem is to see the earrings yet not see the earrings; to listen to Ayers but not to hear him, except on his terms, like a Jedi mindtrick, where you tell a security patrol that ‘you really don’t want to notice me’ and patrol replies ‘I really don’t want to notice you’. Everybody’s happy.
But not everybody. Orwell was one of those who jumped outside the text, which didn’t make any sense at all and focused on the metatext, which made perfect sense in a malevolent sort of way. Chris Matthews was interviewing an anti-Obama protester who claimed Obama had registered as Muslim at an Indonesian school. And Matthews was saying, “do you realize you are on national TV?” If you were a visitor from the planet Mongo watching that scene it would make no sense unless you understood the import of the framework in which the words were being spoken.
I think it was Turing who claimed that you could get no more information out of a processing machine than was implied in the inputs and the information content of the machine itself. Orwell’s great insight was to understand that it was not enough to examine the inputs, it was also necessary to examine the machine. “Do you realize you are on national TV?” Thanks, Chris Matthews. One might almost have forgotten.
Aug 26, 2008 - 2:56 pm 4. Nomenklatura:According to the evolutionary biologist Tom Ray, it appears to be “a universal property of life that all successful systems attract parasites.”
Ayers’ and Obama’s careers consist entirely of being parasites. Terrorist, trust fund kid, educational bureaucrat, affirmative action beneficiary, ‘activist’,'community organizer’, they all share this one central characteristic.
Aug 26, 2008 - 2:58 pm 5. Charles:Amir Taheri says in the NY Post that the choice of Biden acknowledges that Obama agreement with hillary that he needs foreign policy creds and simple (white) folk creds. As well, the choice of Biden says Obama means Obama’s meaning of “change” is a reversion to the policies –not of Camelot –but of Jimmy Carter.
Sounds about right to me
Aug 26, 2008 - 2:59 pm 6. Mark:Nomenklatura writes:
“‘Ayers’ and Obama’s careers consist entirely of being parasites.’”
Michel Serres, in “The Parasite” (1982),considers parasitism as a model of politics, and of all of culture. The guest, the feast, the noise, the interruption, over and over.
“Every parasite that is a bit gifted, at the table of a somewhat sumptuous host, soon transforms the table into a theater.”
“The parasite is a microbe, an insidious infection that takes without giving and weakens without killing. The parasite is also a guest, who exchanges his talk, praise, and flattery for food. The parasite is noise as well, the static in a system or the interference in a channel.”
There is some interruption, some upsetting of the feast, going on in Denver, and in the Ayers videos.
Stay tuned.
Aug 26, 2008 - 3:32 pm 7. Lifeofthemind:Asking someone if they realize they are on national TV is to me an appeal to a restraint that even the putatively deranged may respond to. It is another way of saying, “This is not just about you. Do you know that your Mother can see you?” Fantasy is a private activity, even if revealed before a crowd. It is not the same as real acting, which is an interactive art.
Aug 26, 2008 - 3:36 pm 8. Lifeofthemind:Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs. – P.J. O’Rourke
Aug 26, 2008 - 3:41 pm 9. Charles:Heard on the radio that Michelle Obama’s line that begins “the world as it is and the world …. the world as it should be” that she attributed to her husband–actually comes from Saul Olinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals” chapter 2. A blog was cited was Gateway Pundit
Interesting discussion there. imho the original lines may have come from Olinsky but by the time they came out of Michelle’s mouth — on their face — they meant something different. Fellow travelers may have interpreted them differently.
Aug 26, 2008 - 4:08 pm 10. Bob Murphy:Lovely Orwell quote, Wretchard.
As for Kerry throwing away his medals…Easy come, easy go.
Aug 26, 2008 - 4:38 pm 11. Nomenklatura:Am I wrong, or has Michelle Obama suddenly started talking and dressing as if she just stepped totally unmodified out of the 1950’s? Apparently somebody told a story last night at the convention about her memorizing as a girl all the ‘Leave it to Beaver’ scripts.
How can this be the same person who voluntarily sat nodding affirmatively through the Rev. Wright’s rants for more than a decade, along with her children? It doesn’t fit at all. Like Obama himself she’s presenting a personality dummied up almost on the spot, for purely electoral purposes.
Aug 26, 2008 - 4:40 pm 12. John Moore:The MSM of course didn’t cover it, but a similar campaign of denunciation and intimidation was launched against an effort by POW’s and journalist (and Vietnam vet) Carlton Sherwood to air ads in 2004 telling how Kerry’s activities had caused them harm while imprisoned. This was not a Swift-Boat group effort.
The documentary was to air on Sinclair stations, which all backed down after the kinds of threats we are seeing today. It was to show in a theater which refused after threat of suit.
Lawsuits were not only threatened. A number of baseless lawsuits against those opposing Kerry were filed, many after the election – sending a clear message of intimidation.
The Swifties were also quickly attacked by Kerry, once their samizdat campaign made it through the iron curtain of MSM censorship. Before that, he let the media themselves do the attacking, which started the day the Swifties held their first news conference.
The left is willing to use any means to suppress their opposition, including censorship.
Wait until the fairness doctrine returns, as threatened by Pelosi and accomplices.
Aug 26, 2008 - 4:41 pm 13. Doug:Kill Michelle Malkin! Attack
PJM reporter was hilarious before the ugliness commenced.
—
Charles:
This was my comment @ Gateway Pundit:
Nikolay said…
“We can’t be sure what was her exact source, but it’s entirely possible that she got those WORDS from the BOOKS! It’s like she probably can READ!! OMG, this looks so DANGEROUS!”
—
Doug said,
Uh, no:
Michelle got the words from her husband Barack – she was QUOTING HIM, back in the day.
…back in the day when he was a “community organizer” studying the Communist Alinsky’s methods for “organizing,” just as Hillary had done before him.
Barack studied Alinsky, Michelle quoted Barack.
Aug 26, 2008 - 4:56 pm 14. Mike Sylwester:John Kerry wasn’t alone. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War had about 20,000 members. In April 1971, the organization conducted a demonstration in which about 800 of those members threw their medals and ribbons over a fence at the front steps of the United States Capitol building. This process lasted more than two hours. Each veteran declared his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement.
As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: “I’m not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerry
It was quite a shocking event for the entire country to observe. I remember it. It was discussed a lot, and I think there was a quite common opinion that these veterans certainly had earned the right to conduct a demonstration of this kind. They earned their ribbons and medals serving in the war, and so they could throw their ribbons and medals away at an anti-war demonstration if they wanted to do so.
This was about the same time that the newspapers were also publishing stories about the trials of the US soldiers who had carried out and then covered up the My Lai massacre.
The public’s opinion about the Vietnam War at that time was morally very complicated. By that time about 58,000 US soldiers had been killed and about 300,000 had been wounded.
Now many people, perhaps especially young conservatives, imagine that Kerry’s role in the Vietnam Veterans in the War was considered to be absolutely disgraceful, but a huge portion of the population considered him to be very impressive, even heroic.
Ayers says this was Kerry’s finest moment. In fact, Ayers probably is right about that.
Ayers too was part of the moral complexity of that time. He believed he was doing something effective to stop the Vietnam War. It seems that one of his organization’s bombs killed a policeman, but keep in mind that 58,000 US soldiers had been killed.
We here now in 2008 should look back on those people and on those events with a perspective that appreciates the moral considerations, passions and anger that people struggled with in 1971.
Aug 26, 2008 - 5:03 pm 15. Doug:Exactly Mike,
Lots of honorable deeds were performed.
When I got out of the Army, I went to UC Santa Barbara, where folks like Ayers placed a bomb in a trashcan in the faculty lounge, and a custodian was blown up for attempting to do his job.
I’m sure his family hold such demostrations and their actors in the highest regard.
Other inspired demonstrators burned a Brand New Bank of America Building to the ground.
Very impressive.
A student purportedly there early on trying to put out the fire was shot to death.
Lots of positive vibes from Ayers and Company.
—
Mob-loan figure speaks at convention for agent of Hope and Change
Charlie Rangel should really be ticked off after the DNC gave a speaking slot to Illinois state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias. Barack Obama told the Ways and Means chair that he had no room for a few words from Rangel, but instead allowed his friend and fundraiser speak on Obama’s behalf. Unfortunately, this highlights another embarrassing connection to crime and corruption in Obama’s past, as Giannoulias figured in a series of loans he personally approved to an organized crime figure in Chicago:
Aug 26, 2008 - 5:13 pm 16. steveaz:Wretchard,
I fear that, inadvertently, Orwell’s profligate penning though the thirties and forties may have provided a convenient play-book to the West’s enemies for getting their ‘armies’ over the gates to the Anglo-Saxon, epistemological world.
I can’t help but notice how many of the Left’s modern memes perfectly mirror memes that Orwell wrote would threaten the Englanders’, and our, world. The Left only needed to absorb Orwell’s verse, and then reverse-engineer the proper, counter-codes.
In this the Left’s propaganda resembles the Preon, the unprocessable DNA analog that, because it is the perfect “trans” mirror of functional DNA, clogs-up animal cells’ processes for replicating and decoding the proper “cis”-configured DNA. The result in humans is “Mad Cow Disease.” In a Western republic, the result is pacifism, political correctness and the breakdown of individualism: all steps in the path to the rise of the centralized welfare state.
I am a fervent admirer of Orwell’s prescience, but, just like the very smart kid who talked too much, Orwell may have provided the best template for understanding the Liberal Westerner’s world, and for countering it.
I’ve been rereading his essays this last month, and this thought struck me like a lead weight. Had to share…
Aug 26, 2008 - 5:16 pm 17. 2x4:-Steve
Mike: Ayers too was part of the moral complexity of that time. He believed he was doing something effective to stop the Vietnam War. It seems that one of his organization’s bombs killed a policeman, but keep in mind that 58,000 US soldiers had been killed.
But? BS! Moral complexity has nothing to do with moral equivalency based on a extremely offensive strawman.
You often sound reasonable, but then you pull off something like above and erase any impression of fairness that you may have built.
Aug 26, 2008 - 5:19 pm 18. Teresita:Nomenklatura: Am I wrong, or has Michelle Obama suddenly started talking and dressing as if she just stepped totally unmodified out of the 1950’s?
It means Family Values are winning in the marketplace of ideas. Monday was Leave It To Beaver Nite. Tonight is Clinton Narcissism Nite. Wednesday is when the Dems try to convince America that Obama, not John McCain, will be better at keeping America safe. Good luck to them. That leaves Thursday nite when the Messiah actually shows up to deliver his stem winder, and they release all the balloons, and he gets absolutely no bounce to the increasing panic of the Left as they realize they’re stuck with this guy.
Aug 26, 2008 - 5:49 pm 19. DanM:Alleged “real people” to appear at Dem Convention.
HT – NoPasaran
Aug 26, 2008 - 6:00 pm 20. Doug:The Potemkin Candidacy
Aug 26, 2008 - 6:00 pm 21. DanM:Ok Wretchard, I give up… I’ve been “moderated” 2 times now…
Aug 26, 2008 - 6:35 pm 22. trangbang68:Sylwester, That is some of the most unmitigated crap I’ve ever read. Let’s look back in retrospect at the noble John Kerry…blah blah blah. A couple facts, Einstein:
Aug 26, 2008 - 6:38 pm 23. wretchard:a) Winter Soldier hearings led by Kerry featured liars who never served in the military or Viet Nam claiming to have committed atrocities. Their lying testimony defamed those who honorably and courageously served.
b) Ayers was a self serving phony little rich boy elitist playing revolutionary games knowing daddy would bail him out if he got caught.
c) there was no huge support for Kerry’s stand. If there was why did Nixon win in a landslide in 1972?
d) Read Gloria Emerson’s “Winners and Losers” Emerson, a leftist antiwar reporter, makes the case that the antiwar protests ended when the draft lottery began. In other words once the average hippie,yippie or other flotsom and jetsom was free from having to serve they could care less about the war. They were guided largely by cowardice and self serving, not noble purpose.
e) Kerry in my humble opinion is a blowhard who was a phony martinet when serving and a traitor after. Ayers is a contemptible treasonous rat.
Ok Wretchard, I give up… I’ve been “moderated” 2 times now…
If it’s any consolation I’ve been moderated on several occasions by the Wordpress spam filter. Trent Telenko and Doug, especially Doug, gets hung up in the spam filter until I can spring them. And they’re hard to find, mixed up with a lot of spam posts touting viagra and what have you. What can I tell you?
Aug 26, 2008 - 6:50 pm 24. DanM:If it’s any consolation I’ve been moderated on several occasions by the Wordpress spam filter.
Now that’s funny..
I understand.. Having been a part of a few software development projects, I’m pleasantly surprised that Web content is served more than a bit at a time… But then, I’m a cynic (realist).
Aug 26, 2008 - 6:56 pm 25. Doug:The filter has templates from prior behaviors?
Aug 26, 2008 - 7:00 pm 26. M. Simon:Now many people, perhaps especially young conservatives, imagine that Kerry’s role in the Vietnam Veterans in the War was considered to be absolutely disgraceful, but a huge portion of the population considered him to be very impressive, even heroic.
After the communists continued the slaughter post war some of us woke up.
Ayers is still asleep.
In any case Kerry lied in the ‘71 Senate hearings and I based my understanding of the war on that at the time. I will never ever forgive him for that.
Aug 26, 2008 - 7:06 pm 27. wretchard:My guess is that the spam filter is either driven by some updateable profile, like those virus definition tables, or it has some learning algorithm. I’ve tried to make a guess, but can find no obvious clue to the way it works.
Aug 26, 2008 - 7:14 pm 28. Lifeofthemind:Just about every time I post a link it gets flagged by the filter.
Aug 26, 2008 - 7:27 pm 29. fred:“Ayers too was part of the moral complexity of that time.”
Moral complexity only applies to moral people. However, the story linked below reveals a side of Ayers that seems rather uncomplicated and knavish.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=9E8CD8A7-E90B-4311-8AA9-AEFD014A14B2
But he apparently did finally meet his soul mate in Bernadine Dohrn. Both seem to be ideal students of the Marquis de Sade.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGNlYTkzNWJhNzQ4ZGM0ODFjY2QxMTQzYjAzN2Y1YzE
Aug 26, 2008 - 7:30 pm 30. DanM:Doug,
Probably. If you’ve been moderated before, you will have stricter scrutiny applied. It may be html code insertion based. You use html coding, it checks more thoroughly, if a link or piece of html code meets any rule-set (or part of one)in a security profile (template), it sends you to a “moderate” queue. Quicker posting and mediation that way.
Or it doesn’t like us..
Aug 26, 2008 - 7:30 pm 31. Jay Tea:John Kerry now says those weren’t his medals he threw. When a reporter in the 80’s noticed Kerry’s medals on display in his office, Kerry explained that the medals he had thrown belonged to two other soldiers — one a World War II vet, one from Viet Nam — who had asked him to return their medals. He threw his own ribbons, but not his medals.
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061703.shtml
Key paragraphs:
So the moment that Bill Ayers described as “John Kerry’s finest moment” never happened.
J.
Aug 26, 2008 - 7:31 pm 32. NahnCee:“How can this be the same person who voluntarily sat nodding affirmatively through the Rev. Wright’s rants for more than a decade, along with her children?”
It’s not the same person any more than Hillary was prepared to go into the kitchen and bake cookies when Bill was running. The game, both with Michelle and with Hillary, is to see if onlookers (including the media) can push enough buttons to cause a reaction that will enable the viewer to tell where the real Michelle starts and the blow-up doll they’ve assembled to help her husband get elected ends. Like, what would happen if a white person ostentatiously scrubbed their hand with a handi-wipe after shaking hands with her.
Aug 26, 2008 - 7:33 pm 33. wretchard:According to Reuters, the “Obama speech stage resembles ancient Greek temple”. Rick Moran thinks Denver is the homecoming of the generation of ‘68 as adults.
The juxtaposition of those two images — the Greek Temple and a group coming to make an end of the Old Republic — naturally conjured Julius Caesar. Rome tottered on the foundations of its old myths. In Mark Antony’s famous speech he speaks of the cave of Romulus and Remus:
But the old symbols were being invoked to create a new world; useful only to dupe the crowds. The Lupercalia “had been literally degraded since the first century, when in 44 BC the consul Mark Antony did not scruple to run with the Luperci; now the upper classes left the festivities to the rabble.” Even though the conspirators had slain the tyrant the old world could not be restored. Mike Moran recalls George McGovern’s rueful remark after Chicago, the exact moment when something had perished. “I opened the door to the Democratic party and 20 million people walked out.” Maybe the significance of Denver is that what begun in 1968 has finally been achieved in 2008. Ayers is now inside the tent. But where will all the 20 million go? I realize that John McCain may know in his bones that he can’t be the candidate of the Republican Party as conservatives would like it because the Democratic party as we know it has already died, and he must hasten to pick up the pieces.
Aug 26, 2008 - 7:34 pm 34. cedarford:I once was blocked at another website by the spam filter. Unfortunately my solution was highly annoying to other commentors. I divided up my long post by halves in smaller and smaller sections that either got blocked by the offending word or phrase or went though as posted fragments because they were free of it.
Finally, on a discussion about poverty on Indian Reservations, I tracked down the offending word – “casino”. Apparantly on the list of “banned words” that no poster is aware of.
Doug and Wretchard appear to have encountered a more sophisticated censor software, that goes on profile….
In any case, what is really needed is for the blogging industry to upgrade their software – and say WHY a post or comment is blocked in an error message.
Aug 26, 2008 - 7:38 pm 35. DanM:Interesting.. Lost PajamasMedia for a while. Got to the IP:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss)
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 127ms, Maximum = 143ms, Average = 133ms
No return from higher layer though.
Aug 26, 2008 - 7:46 pm 36. DanM:Hillary talking.. Michelle has daggers coming out of her eyes…
Aug 26, 2008 - 7:48 pm 37. Peterike:cford: what is really needed is for the blogging industry to upgrade their software -and say WHY a post or comment is blocked in an error message.
Can’t do that. It’s an immediate feedback loop to the spammers who then know a little bit more about how to avoid the filter. Give them an hour with that feedback and your blog will be nothing BUT spam.
Myself, I’ve only been moderated a few times, and always when I had a link in the post, which is not surprising, as links are typical of spam. I would suspect that links with more complex HTML addresses have a higher tendency to get blocked.
Anyway, I shant watch Hillary! tonight, as I hope to go the rest of my life without ever hearing her buzzsaw voice again. But all reports seem to indicate she’ll go along to get along, and we won’t get any drama or conflict out of her. Too bad. In the end, she proved a coward. She never hit BHO very hard, and she MUST have known all there is to know about him. She didn’t even bring up all his caucus scaming. Was she really that convinced of her inevitability that she let the little snake sneak unnoticed into her Garden of Eden?
Aug 26, 2008 - 7:55 pm 38. fred:Thank you, wretchard, for posting that link to the Moran article. A good read, and right on target about what is happening today. It took me a few more years than it did Rick Moran to finally figure the Left (and all statists) out, but the Left most fears those who used to be with them and have since left. The ones who used to absorb the culture of socialist thought and even try to repair it, expand it, and improve upon it – who finally realized the futility of it all – are the Left’s most determined opponents.
Like Mr. Moran, Buckley’s and Novak’s thoughts were like the grains of sand in the entrails of oysters.
In the few years before I left the Left in 1987 I voraciously read hundreds of articles and dozens of books to see if anyone else on the Left was taking the arguments of the conservatives seriously and making strong counter arguments. Hardly any. I found that perplexing, and I still do. Today, I cannot find any really groundbreaking thought coming from the broad camp of socialist intellectuals (or what passes for “intellectual” these days over there).
The irony of all of it is that right at the moment when the Left is maybe lapping at its high water mark in American politics concurrently there exists a dreadful poverty of incisive, groundbreaking, searching writing and thought coming from that side. Intellectual poverty juxtaposed with political success. Very strange indeed.
Aug 26, 2008 - 8:07 pm 39. Mike Sylwester:trangbang68:
“Ayers was a self serving phony little rich boy elitist … there was no huge support for Kerry’s stand. If there was why did Nixon win in a landslide in 1972? …. the antiwar protests ended when the draft lottery began.”
———
In 1971 when John Kerry led the 800 veterans who threw away their ribbons and medals, I was a 19-year-old university student, so I have personal knowledge of the opinions and attitudes that were common on campuses at that time. I was also acquainted with some veterans who were classmates.
By the way, I remember that a lot of the members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War could not travel to Washington DC, so there were similar demonstrations at state capitals across the country. So the total number of veterans who threw away their ribbons and medals on that day was significantly higher than the 800 in Washington DC.
People who opposed the war felt passionately about their opinions. Many became quite radical.
A few, like Ayers, became extreme and destructive. Every large campus had a group of such extremists. At my campus, there were a couple of bombings and the ROTC building was frequently attacked. I remember attending a meeting where people proposed to destroy the campus’s computer center. The campus newspaper published discussions about whether and when violence was justified in opposing the war.
Throughout the entire USA, there probably were a few thousand people who basically became as extreme as Ayers. He was just much more effective than most of them in organizing a secret group that actually managed to explode a lot of bombs.
A much larger number, perhaps in the tens of thousands, returned or burned their draft cards or actively evaded military conscription or decided that they would evade if conscripted. Females were not conscripted, but similar numbers agreed and encouraged males to resist or evade conscription.
Morale in the US military was relatively low, especially in Vietnam. Most of the soldiers there had been conscripted or had volunteered only because they expected to be conscripted. US soldiers did commit a lot of atrocities. There was a lot of talk that there were incidents when US soldiers fragged their own officers. There was quite a lot of drug abuse, including heroin. There were free-fire zones. There was napalm. There was Agent Orange. We shouldn’t exaggerate the problems in our military at that time, but we shouldn’t whitewash them either.
Racial conflicts were a crucial part of this entire situation. The Jim Crow laws were overturned only in 1965, just six years before that day when hundreds of veterans threw away their medals. There were race riots, which included major arson, during the entire 1960s. Blacks were not as able to evade military conscription by attending college. There were radical Black groups like The Black Panthers.
This was the environment where John Kerry and Bill Ayers did what they did. They were in their mid-twenties. In 1971 both of them were about 28 years old. They were old enough to become the leaders of radical organizations in which most of the members were in their early or mid 20s. They got carried away and made a lot of mistakes.
After the Vietnam War ended, most of this radicalism dissipated. Practically all the radicals drifted away from their radical activities and organizations and joined more conventional activities and organizations.
This is true even in the case of an extreme case like Ayers. He quit the Weather Underground in 1980 and has led a law-abiding life for the following 28 years until now and probably will continue to do so for the rest of his life.
Aug 26, 2008 - 8:19 pm 40. Tcobb:–steveaz
I think that Orwell was merely describing, in a sense, a type of personality. Although I would IMHO classify it as a form of mental illness, such folk tend to do well in strictly hierarchical organizations, whether they be countries, corporations, religions, or whatever. They are the People of the Pecking Order, merciless toward those who are “under” them and fawning toward those who are above, unless of course they detect an opportunity to usurp their superior’s position, in which case they will turn upon their “superior” in an instant. They are the cholesterol of large corporations. Over time they tend to accumulate and make the organization unworkable as the goals of the business take a back seat to the internal politics. It does not matter if the ideas of Mr. X are good or not, the only consideration is whether the implementation of such an idea might have an impact of the hierarchies opinions of Y, Z, and A, who might be called to account for why they didn’t think of that idea to begin with. In corporations, if left unchecked, it leads to bankruptcy. In governmental organizations, by contrast, no such hope of auto-extinction exists.
And this dynamic has nothing to do with a left/right dichotomy. Functionally speaking, the Nazi’s and the Soviets were the same. If an alien race from another planet that had no understanding of any human language had observed and compared them, I doubt that they would have noticed any significant differences between the two systems. Their slogans and reasons for existing were very far apart, but functionally there was little or no difference between them.
In essence, to use the Hegelian nomenclature which Karl Marx was so fond of, an all powerful centralized government contains the seeds of its own destruction. “Doublethink” is nothing more than a symptom of a sick, cancerous world view that is in denial. It is not the cause.
Aug 26, 2008 - 8:20 pm 41. programmer:To Yawn(?): May God extend his blessings to you in your sadness and emptiness. Even in your darkest hour, He is there with you. You only have to ask.
Aug 26, 2008 - 8:22 pm 42. Charles:whoops scratch warner for 2112. add hillary.
the size of McCain victory imho will embolden him to abandon conservatives. forget conservative judges. forget the borders. remember cap in trade. remember georgia.
Aug 26, 2008 - 8:28 pm 43. Thrasymachus:Hmmm ok here’s ray charles
Off topic, but since St. George of Orwell has been brought up…
George Orwell was an orthodox communist. Not a “socialist” as I have read someplaces, he was actually a Communist party member in England and only because he was writing for a socialist paper did he end up with POUM. He did not object in any way, in fact he was all for, communists killing non-communists. What he objected to, and only pretty weakly at that, was communists killing other communists.
How Orwell somehow became a conservative hero shows how twisted and how rigidly enforced the Communist/Popular Front ideology is even to this day.
Aug 26, 2008 - 8:30 pm 44. Doug:Peterike said,
“Myself, I’ve only been moderated a few times, and always when I had a link in the post, which is not surprising, as links are typical of spam. I would suspect that links with more complex HTML addresses have a higher tendency to get blocked.”
—
Right, on blogger I was put up a test page that included half the links from the front page of the NY Times.
Blog was almost immediately locked as spam.
Rather than have to beg them, I just deleted it.
Aug 26, 2008 - 8:44 pm 45. Peterike:Worse for some would be a Karmic Filter with data from previous sites.
I’d be the first to know.
To the increasingly tedious MikeS: practically all the radicals drifted away from their radical activities and organizations and joined more conventional activities and organizations.
Indeed. They entered the Academy and ruined it, turning it into an indoctrination center. They entered the Democratic party and turned it into the Socialist party. They entered the media and turned it into a fifth column. They entered Hollywood and turned it into a center for anti-American propaganda. And on and on.
These activities are, indeed, all “legal” (at least if the opposition party is too cowardly to charge anyone with sedition), but they are corrosive and destructive, far worse, in the end, then setting off bombs.
Your attempt to excuse the acidic activities of Ayers and Kerry and their ilk by blandly noting “They got carried away and made a lot of mistakes” results from precisely the kind of moral lassitude they’ve programmed into you.
I might also note that while Ayers hasn’t been setting off any physical bombs, of late, he has not changed a lick in his political views, and given half a chance would have most of the posters on this forum tossed into the Gulag. Kerry is simply an imbecile who nevertheless knew which way the wind was blowing and rode it into a career as a do-nothing politician. And no doubt he got plenty of girls after his “heroic” protest.
Yeah, heroic. It is indeed “heroic” to take up a position that you know full well will get you fetted and praised by all the “beautiful people” of your era. It’s like a “brave” Hollywood actress revealing she’s a Lesbian. How heroic! After all, it takes an intrepid soul to suffer through all the unctuous media praise that results.
Aug 26, 2008 - 8:46 pm 46. M. Simon:Mike S.,
some of us repented our sins. Some of us are ashamed of having blood on our hands for supporting the Communists. Ayers is still a Communist. “Guilty as sin, free as a bird” as he puts it.
Aug 26, 2008 - 8:49 pm 47. whiskey:Mike S –
Obama, Kerry, and Ayers lack the courage of their convictions. All, at critical times, sided with the enemies of the US in time of war, with Ayers blowing stuff up, and trying to kill Americans, Kerry slandering the troops, and Obama pandering to Jihad, Farrakhan, and the usual hard left stuff meets “Hate Whitey.”
For that they should be condemned as spineless Leninists.
Aug 26, 2008 - 9:00 pm 48. mark_b:Those weren’t Kerry’s Medals that he threw over the fence.
It was his ribbons attached to a tightly wadded up copy 4 of his dd214.
Aug 26, 2008 - 9:02 pm 49. whiskey:Also, yes Wretchard you are quite correct.
The old, FDR-LBJ party is dead. McCain does know, that he can only win with Democrats, including Clinton-ites. Not even Bill Clinton is persona grata in the Hard Left Democratic Party.
Eventually, the Republican Party will fissure, but the rump of the Democratic Party, the Hard Left Rich (same thing) will still dominate the wealthy metropoli with the hard left angry minorities: San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, Philly, etc.
Aug 26, 2008 - 9:09 pm 50. Doug:Often protest groups functioned as useful idiots for other agents, sometimes unbeknownst to them.
Been so long since I’ve read “Radical Son” that I don’t recall any examples from Dave’s experience.
I once attended a Nuclear protest rally on the Central Coast of California.
There were more professional protesters bused in from the Bay Area than there were locals.
One thing is certain:
Aug 26, 2008 - 9:12 pm 51. vnjagvet:Every idealistic event included one or more malevolent characters there to work out their personal or other unstated agendas.
Now many people, perhaps especially young conservatives, imagine that Kerry’s role in the Vietnam Veterans in the War was considered to be absolutely disgraceful, but a huge portion of the population considered him to be very impressive, even heroic.
Mike, I don’t want to re-fight this but what Kerry did cost him the votes of not only “young conservatives” but also old liberal democrats like me. I returned from RVN in May 1968. I got my DD214 from AD in February 1970. I witnessed the effect of “Winter Soldiers” on good soldiers, sailors and marines. I know a lot of those good troops to this day.
Kerry’s actions in 1971 cost him the votes of a significant number of VN vets and their families in 2004, which, in turn, I believe cost him the election.
Refighting that battle will do Democrats no good in November.
Aug 26, 2008 - 9:14 pm 52. mark_b:cedarford:
I divided up my long post by halves in smaller and smaller sections that either got blocked by the offending word or phrase or went though as posted fragments because they were free of it.
Aug 26, 2008 – 7:38 pm
———————————
I would not find this annoying, especially as you tend to write in post:response groupings.
Try and keep the paragraphs short, too. My wee brain can only hold so many ideas at one time.
Your 7:38 post was perfect. Good paragraph size, you could have added more paragraphs and not lost me.
Also try and make your most important point(s) before you use the word ‘jew’ or ‘neocon’ as I stop reading at that point.
Aug 26, 2008 - 9:17 pm 53. Elroy Jetson:Teresita @ 5:49 PM
Aug 26, 2008 - 9:38 pm 54. trangbang68:You knocked one out of the park there. Great one paragraph analysis of the “Mother of all farces”.
Mike, When you were 19 you were on campus,when I was 19 I was carrying an m79 grenade launcher in Hau Ngiah province. In one of those free fire zones you bemoan, a nasty little NVA staging area called the Oriental River, we flew into a hot lz and were pinned down assaulting a bunker complex. My platoon sergeant( a draftee)named Robbie Brown was killed trying to pull wounded back from the kill zone. Brown could have stayed back as he was shortly going to meet his wife in Hawaii for R and R. I’m sure in the mind of the movement heavies and the major dudes on campus Brown was a dupe, a pawn of the military industrial complex or whatever buzzword they got from Herbert Marcuse.
Aug 26, 2008 - 9:43 pm 55. Mike Sylwester:But he wasn’t . He was a brave leader of men and one of the best of his generation. Like I said Ayers is garbage, a lame clown who hates the land that allowed him to be a child of privilege. His name is worthy of nothing more than shame and disgrace. Screw him, Bernadine Dorhn, Mark Rudd and the rest of the little comic strip Marxists of that era.
Peterike:
“They entered the Academy and ruined it, turning it into an indoctrination center. They entered the Democratic party and turned it into the Socialist party. They entered the media and turned it into a fifth column. They entered Hollywood and turned it into a center for anti-American propaganda. And on and on.”
———–
Some went in those directions. Ayers is an example.
As I wrote, I was a university student during that period. My father was a university professor, and I actually began taking some university courses when I was 17, so I was personally familiar with student attitudes, especially from about 1969 through 1975. It was during that period, especially the first half, that the war was a big issue on campuses.
I saw how many students would attend various meetings and participate in demonstrations and how they would act and speak at such events. I have personal experiences and impressions about the extents of radicalization among the students. And then I can extrapolate from my own university (the University of Oregon) to the totality of university campuses across the USA.
And based on my perception of the number of students who became radicalized and the various extents of their radicalization, I can say that you are demonizing a huge number of people.
Many people who were in their early 20s during that period were strongly affected by all those events. It was a time when there was a lot of civil disobedience, when there were a lot of demonstrations and riots, when there was a war that killed tens of thousands of Americans, when people that age were being drafted and were evading the draft.
People who themselves were personally were carried along in those strong political currents of that period are naturally able to feel more sympathy and understanding for people like Kerry and Ayers. I certainly can criticize them, but I also can understand that they got carried away and made some mistakes.
Those people of the same age in that same period who served in the military in Vietnam likewise can sympathize and understand how someone like Lieutenant William Calley led a military unit that committed the My Lai massacre. That doesn’t mean that they approve or excuse the My Lai massacre. It means only that they have some more sympathy and understanding for Calley than the average person does.
That’s how I myself feel about Kerry and Ayers.
Aug 26, 2008 - 9:50 pm 56. Mike Sylwester:trangbang68:
“Mike, When you were 19 you were on campus,when I was 19 I was carrying an m79 grenade launcher in Hau Ngiah province. ”
——
I did not read your comment until after I already had written and posted the comment that immediately follows yours.
Each of us was affected differently but strongly by that period.
I imagine that you have more sympathy and understanding for William Calley than I do. And I apparently have more sympathy and understanding for William Ayers than you do.
Aug 26, 2008 - 9:55 pm 57. Doug:So innocent victims like the student and custodian I refered to that were murdered by the likes of Mr Ayers do not diminish your respect for him, Mike?
Aug 26, 2008 - 10:03 pm 58. rcm:Mike Sylwester: Now many people, perhaps especially young conservatives, imagine that Kerry’s role in the Vietnam Veterans in the War was considered to be absolutely disgraceful, but a huge portion of the population considered him to be very impressive, even heroic.
Mike reminds me of that old Robert Duvall movie, THX 1138, now 36 years ago, when Orwellian totalitarian chrome robots (police of a kind) enforced the drugging of the population to ensure that outlawed sex was under control. This one occasion had Duvall as THX 1138 running to escape the Hell that all were required to accept…all the while the robot called to him in the most soothingly frightening voice:
“Can you hear me? Stay calm. Everything will be all right. The door seems to be jammed. Please check the lock on your side. Everything will be all right; we are here to help you. Stay calm. We are not going to harm you. Everything will be all right.”
Yeah, that’s the ticket. That’s the same voice I hear when I read Mike’s posts.
Aug 26, 2008 - 10:03 pm 59. trangbang68:Mike, You don’t give it up do you, fool? What do you mean I have sympathy for William Calley? He was a war criminal. His unit, the Americal Division was by far the worst American army unit of that war or probably most other ones. But contrary to the lies of the left, My Lai was a horrible aberration. It was not Standard Operating procedure then or now for the American military to murder non combatants.
Aug 26, 2008 - 10:10 pm 60. Tamquam Leo Rugiens:I bet you have more sympathy and understanding than I do for the NVA units in Hue City in the Tet offensive who murdered 2000 South Vietnamese civilians and buried them in a mass grave. I bet you have more sympathy and understanding for the Khmer Rouge who killed people in Cambodia for wearing glasses which proved they were intellectuals.
I remember reading Todd Gitlin’s book “The Sixties” In one chapter he has this poignant comment about some failed romance at a demonstration in DC.It was laughable. Yeah we were all affected differently and strongly by that period.
Mike Sylwester: “They earned their ribbons and medals serving in the war, and so they could throw their ribbons and medals away at an anti-war demonstration if they wanted to do so.”
I remember it too, and it made no sense to me. Later that year I graduated from High School (late, went to Summer School) and promptly joined the Navy hoping to get to the war. I did get there and earned medals of my own (well, two counts!). I had always been pro-war because I knew of the terrible results of a Communist take-over from having read the accounts of those who had escaped from behind the Iron Curtain. I specifically went to oppose this outcome and was bitterly disappointed when Congress threw the whole thing away in ‘75.
I subsequently went to college on the GI Bill and drifted Leftward until I woke up to the fact that Leftist dogma was even more closely defended than the doctrine of the Catholic Church in which I had been raised. I also noticed that the defense of Leftist principles was entirely polemical rather than rational. A polemic is an argument that sheds more heat than light, and I chose the light.
I was not impressed by Kerry in 1971, and still less in 2004. If there was ever any honor in him it has vanished.
Aug 26, 2008 - 10:11 pm 61. fred:If one clicks on the links to the two op-ed pieces I provided, one would grasp a few clues into the monstrously evil natures of both William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Both revel in cruelty, murder, rape, and the humiliation of the human being.
How can anyone excuse these people?????
A moral person would and should eschew their company.
Aug 26, 2008 - 10:12 pm 62. fred:Tamquam Leo Rugiens, I can identify with parts of what you had written above. I too had to traverse Leftist thought for awhile, before I eventually saw the truth of it. I graduated from high school in 1973 and went in the Army right after graduation. I served with men who were veterans of the war. Many years later, after becoming disillusioned with the Left, I began to read articles and books about what really happened over there – with the result that my anger towards the Left turned white hot. I resented and still resent having been lied to by those agents of dizinformatzia. Shooting them is too humane a death, for the harm they have done the nation and the slander they heaped upon our men and women in uniform then and now.
Aug 26, 2008 - 10:17 pm 63. whiskey:Mike is part and parcel of what Democrats became — hard left radicals repulsive to most Americans, who made their radical bed and now prefer not to lie in it.
Kerry made his radical bed, but did not want to lie in it. Just as Gore picked a fight with the NRA, and it cost him his home state of TN and thus the Presidency.
Just as, with all the currents running towards a Democratic Victory, with an unpopular President who is lazy in communicating, with a staff of mostly incompetent cronies (in the political areas), high gas prices and a failing economy …
Democrats pick an Angry Black Nationalist, with ties to Muslims in his youth, his adolescence, his current campaign (with Hamas donating money). Not to mention a hard Angry Left TERRORIST buddy, a “hate Whitey” wife, a racist Black Nationalist preacher, and church, and sleaze galore leaking out all over the place (Rezko, Auichi, Saddam, etc.)
Clinton would have won in a walk. No one would have loved her. She would not have immantized the Eschaton, as Ed Driscoll likes to say. She would have won in a walk. Instead Dems picked the unvetted, inartful, hard left Angry Radical, the only guy who can LOSE.
What does that tell you about who and what makes up the Democratic Party?
Aug 26, 2008 - 10:18 pm 64. Doug:Fred,
Aug 26, 2008 - 10:19 pm 65. whiskey:You remind me of Horowitz relating torture rituals that were practiced by the Black Panthers on other members.
That and murders, as in the case of his lady friend whose accounting practices offended them.
Look at Obama’s “temple” that he’s building at Invesco Field, built to Nigel Tufnel scale.
At best, he looks Spinal Tap foolish. At worst, this provides direct and complete evidence he’s a total celebrity idiot ala Britney and Paris. A raging Ego Maniac.
Dear God, if Dems had been serious:
It would have been Hillary.
The NRA would have been invited (Obama + Biden = Mother of all NRA turnouts) and Dems would have made speech after speech touting personal gun rights with heavy prison sentences for armed robbers, gang bangers, the like.
Celebs would have been BANNED.
Pump priming LBJ/Ike/FDR style stuff would have been the message of the day.
Instead, this is rule by the Pelosi crowd. San Francisco Dems.
Aug 26, 2008 - 10:26 pm 66. fred:Doug,
I consider Horowitz a true hero of our times. Those of us who left the Left really admire and look up to him. And our own stories resonate with aspects of his. Even people like me who, quietly, went about a bookish existence in grad school preparing for ministry or social work. I was never heavily into the activist scene, but I did make a few protests put on by CISPES back in the eighties. Now, I’ve completely seen how it was a Communist front group – and with ties to the Nicaraguan regime.
The news lately of how Obama will not lift a finger to help his half-brother over there in a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi fits completely with how Leftists deal with helping their fellow human beings: be cheapskates with charity and expect the government and other people’s money to do the job. It’s infuriating. If that were a relative of mine and I had Obama’s means that guy would not be living in a shack ever again. I’d find a way to get him to this country and help him find a job or set himself up in a business he’s interested in and can run.
Aug 26, 2008 - 10:36 pm 67. bobal:The news lately of how Obama will not lift a finger to help his half-brother over there in a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi
To me, that’s the most telling thing that has come out about Obama.
Aug 26, 2008 - 10:47 pm 68. Doug:Fred,
Aug 26, 2008 - 10:48 pm 69. Doug:Charity begins with a run for the Whitehouse.
Prior to that the Obama’s giving was almost non-existent.
Even after the Easy Money started pouring in from the books, Michelle’s “Job,” and friends like Rezko, and they were beginning to plan his ascent, they only managed to up their giving to 6 percent.
But Barry wants taxpayers to foot the bill for non-citizen’s healthcare and other services, so perhaps his relatives will be included in a similar plan.
The most telling thing to me, Bob, was them repeatedly exposing their young girls to Wright’s “Church.”
Aug 26, 2008 - 10:51 pm 70. bobal:It’s a close call, to be sure, Doug.
Aug 26, 2008 - 11:14 pm 71. 2x4:Heh, looks like I ended up with a bunch of “neocons”!
Your stories about disillusionment with leftism just highlight the fact that it was already entrenched during your formative years and how corrosive it is. Sometimes I wish the current crop of lefties gets their wish and have to live in their kind of paradise for a decade so they can get a dose of it, what it is really like. Of course, somewhere like Baffin Island, so it does not affect normal people. Imagine how they’d be thrilled–they would be able to do peace angels naked in the snow for most of the year!
Aug 26, 2008 - 11:33 pm 72. buddy larsen:Lite summer reading, reflections on the People of the Denver:
(if you can take THIS guy, you can take anything)
Aug 26, 2008 - 11:52 pm 73. 2x4:Buddy, several years ago, I thought THIS guy is a mild version of a conspiracy theorist, regarding Russia. He was 100% right on the mark all the time.
Aug 27, 2008 - 12:47 am 74. Panday:I’m sorry, but after watching this video, I really have the overwhelming desire to punch Bill Ayers in the face and knock him out.
Aug 27, 2008 - 3:32 am 75. Michael Hoskins:trangbang
Aug 27, 2008 - 5:34 am 76. Mike Sylwester:Re: MSyl
Save your breath. Ooh rah.
Whiskey:
“Mike is part and parcel of what Democrats became — hard left radicals repulsive to most Americans, who made their radical bed and now prefer not to lie in it.”
———-
In 1971 I was a pacifist. I was a Russian-language major, and I became an adherent of the pacifist teachings of Leo Tolstoy. Those teachings are basically the same as the teachings of Mahatma Ghandi.
During the days when the Vietnam Veterans Against the War were in Washington DC throwing away their medals, I discussed the events with other members of my third-year Russian class, which had about eight students. The teacher had grown up in Russia, served in the Red Army during World War Two, spent time in German captivity, and then emigrated to the USA. Two of the students were Vietnam veterans. We all were impressed positively by John Kerry and by the demonstration. That was a reaction that was common on campus.
When I registered for the Selective Service, I declared that I was a conscientious objector. I attended a hearing to determine by status, and the board rejected my claim. I sent my draft card back to the draft board with a letter declaring that I would refuse to serve if called up.
I was a completely sincere pacifist, but during the following year I re-examined that philosophy very critically. Eventually I decided that the philosophy was foolish, and I rejected it. I wrote another letter to the draft board withdrawing my claim and asking it to return my draft card.
In the summer of 1972 I attended summer school in the Soviet Union for two months and traveled around Czechoslovakia for one month. In the summer of 1973 I attended school in Czechoslovakia for two months and traveled around Poland for one month. Throughout all my student years I always was very anti-Communist.
In 1978 I joined the US Air Force. Although a college graduate, I served my first two years as an enlisted troop. I became an officer in 1980 and served in USAF Intelligence until 1992, reaching the rank of major.
For the following 11 years I was employed translating documents for the US Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations, for the prosecution of former Nazi collaborators who had immigrated to the USA.
I began voting for Ronald Reagan in 1976. I always voted for him, and I always voted for the Bushes. I also voted for Clinton both times. In this election I voted for Fred Thompson in the primaries and intend to vote for McCain in the general election.
I don’t “respect” Bill Ayers. I always opposed his Marxism and his violence. From what I know about his education philosophy, I oppose that too. However, I have some personal understanding of the political environment and factors that took many young people to angry, extreme positions for a while during that period.
With regard to William Calley, lots of people expressed sympathy and understanding for him and for the other soldiers in his unit. Nobody now should kid himself by denying that a huge portion of the US population, including military personnel, spoke out in his defense. They didn’t approve of the My Lai massacre, but they basically took a position that Calley was a young many in a morally complicated situation who got carried away and made a lot of mistakes. Just like I am saying now about Ayers.
Aug 27, 2008 - 5:49 am 77. programmer:In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don’t wobble. – Yun-Men
Aug 27, 2008 - 6:18 am 78. steveaz:Whisky:
“…but the rump of the Democratic Party, the Hard Left Rich (same thing) will still dominate the wealthy metropoli with the hard left angry minorities: San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, Philly, etc.”
Notice how important cities are to the movement? Wasn’t it Obama that recently called for moving more Americans to cities, to save energy or some such?
I am skeptical of urban movements. City dwellers are more likely to be renters, less likely to own cars or guns, and much easier to frame in artificial media theaters.
In a way, folks who move to big cities are self-ordering. By choosing to migrate to artificial constructs where the sky is framed always by man-made structures, and only managed parks afford a kodachrome image of Nature, the migrants have advertised an innate need to derive succor from groups as well as their own susceptibility to artifice: they make themselves sitting ducks to a Chris Wallace or an Al Gore.
To recap, “Global Warming” and Black Liberation Theology (to name just two) n-e-e-d the city to endure, and signs are America’s cultural enemies are well aware of this fact (see Wrethard’s post RE Monsour above).
Aug 27, 2008 - 6:37 am 79. Mike Sylwester:These days now, people can say that John Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War presented just a lot of lies about US atrocities in Vietnam.
However, back in those days back then, people knew better. On March 29, 1971, William Calley was convicted for the My Lai massacre, and it was the major news story at that time. About three weeks later, on April 22, John Kerry gave his testimony to Congress — the testimony people now say was just a bunch of lies. And on the following day more than 800 Vietnam veterans threw away their ribbons and medals in protest against the war.
When I say that Kerry made a lot of mistakes, I mean primarily that he was not careful enough about his facts in his statements. But he was working with the information that he received from other members of his organization about what they themselves claimed they had seen, heard and done.
Whether or not this or that fact in the testimony might be contradicted, the facts that were established by the US military itself in the My Lai trial did make it clear to the entire public that atrocities had been committed and had been covered up.
Aug 27, 2008 - 6:52 am 80. fred:Mike,
I did a three-year enlistment (1973-76)and did not know very many people who approved of what Calley and his company in the Americal Division did over there. It was an example of very poor discipline. The unfortunate thing about the whole incident, besides the massacre, was the fact that a couple of officers above him in the chain of the command got away with it.
However, My Lai was not a normal or even widespread practice by the U.S. military during that war, as best I can determine. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong regularly engaged in brutality, murder, and intimidation. Yet, I do not recall that this was given a lot of press in those days – and I was an attentive kid and teenager during that period. Our media and academia, on the other hand, appears to have spun a web of mythology out of some very rare occurrences. The net result of this malfeasance seems to have been a demoralization of our people and our military. I think it’s not a good practice to trash our military and its men because they were not perfect. There were enough folks at home who easily latched on to fabricated or real stories in order to justify their political views.
Aug 27, 2008 - 7:57 am 81. Lifeofthemind:This is important, from Bloomberg. Iran Concedes Building Submarines.
Aug 27, 2008 - 8:26 am 82. trangbang68:Mike, You can believe to the grave the lying narrative that atrocities were the standard in Viet Nam, but it is and was a lie; just as the Left so desperately clings to stories like Haditha to hope to prove the culpability of American soldiers in Iraq. Western armies (particularly the US and Israel) often suffer casualties trying to prevent collateral damage. Meanwhile our adversaries whether North Vietnamese or jihadists are excused or cheerleaded for by the Left when they commit real atrocities. This is the divide in our country between those who believe America is still the best hope for freedom and self determination in the world and those who think America is the root of all evil and that toxic murderous ideologies somehow will portend a bright future.
Aug 27, 2008 - 8:43 am 83. Lifeofthemind:Most officers were of the opinion that Calley and Medina should never have been commissioned. Friend of mine was a flag officer who investigated fraggings and concluded most of the bastards who got it deserved it. People do not understand how practical the armed forces are. Find a problem, fix a problem.
Aug 27, 2008 - 9:26 am 84. George:John Kerry did not throw away his own medals. He threw away medals of another serive man and kept his own.
Aug 27, 2008 - 9:58 am 85. wm:Fred wrote:
“Today, I cannot find any really groundbreaking thought coming from the broad camp of socialist intellectuals…”
Eric Hoffer wrote that heresy is something that religions typically spawn when they are young and vigorous. He then went on to identify Communism as a kind of Capitalist heresy.
If so, no wonder no Western socialist has had any new idea for a century; Capitalism is no longer exuberant.
Mr. Hoffer went on to note that heresies are how religions spread. If Communism was a Western heresy, then it perhaps filled a need for societies who needed a way to erase their traditional character, as they modernized.
The ultimate implementation of hard-leftism, Communism, gave them a way to throw their cultural babies out with the bathwater; a kind of national ego-death.
In other words, it was a way to cope with the radical change that contact with the West brings. Look at Communism in China. The Red harrow murdered at least 50 million Chinese before the survivors decided that that wasn’t a good way to preserve the pre-eminent legacy of the Chinese nation… which, apparently, they’ve decided is worth keeping after all.
IMHO, we in the West are facing a similar choice now. But some of us, I think, have identified with Western civilization’s entropy.
Aug 27, 2008 - 10:36 am 86. buddy larsen:On the Silk Road, near the 25 century old city of Samarkand, capital of Tamerlane, home of Omar Kayaam, meet Medvedev and Hu Jintao.
And if that ain’t enough, Gustav the Hurricane is starting to look like Katrina looked at the same time & location. And Hannah is forming right behind. Get yer fight face on.
Re comment on cities, and Denver, Fannie & Freddie, Democrat lending and patronage citadels since FDR, now have about a one in ten chance, depending on September & October and several threads coming together in those two months, of delivering what the unions want, that is, the end of the dollar-denominated global trade system that by rewarding low-cost producers thru opening them to the globe, has built so much better life for so many people. The Dollar goes with it, too, as does the appeal of western liberal democratic government –or at least its universal suffrage ideal.
Military implications, unknown.
Of the bad loans in F&F, a small HUD program, the ‘Down-Payment Assistance Program’, is a tiny fraction of F&F’s book but count for nearly half of all their bad paper.
Back to Samarkand and the hurricane, could Man & Nature be trying to discipline the Thing in Denver?
Aug 27, 2008 - 10:51 am 87. WSL:Doug @ 10:48 p.m.: “Barry wants taxpayers to foot the bill for non-citizen’s healthcare and other services, so perhaps his relatives will be included in a similar plan.”
More and more that seems to be the liberal way. Take money from one person (or group), give it to another person (or group), and take the credit for being compassionate.
Aug 27, 2008 - 11:02 am 88. Wolf Pangloss:Mike Sylvester says:
“I imagine that you have more sympathy and understanding for William Calley than I do. And I apparently have more sympathy and understanding for William Ayers than you do.”
Since you are saying the two are equivalent, are you saying that Ayers should face the same level of political and media frenzy as was Calley followed by conviction for 22 counts of premeditated murder?
Aug 27, 2008 - 11:50 am 89. Doug:Mike S said…
Aug 27, 2008 - 12:47 pm 90. buddy larsen:“I began voting for Ronald Reagan in 1976.
I always voted for him, and I always voted for the Bushes.
I also voted for Clinton both times.”
—
I wonder how he pulled that off in ‘92?
Calley was a weak character who found himself in a real war; Ayers was a strong character trying to start himself a false war. situations morally complex yes, but still morally identifiable –without effort.
Aug 27, 2008 - 12:48 pm 91. gumshoe:buddy (@12:48 pm)-
i’d rephrase that as “ayers was a weak character trying to start himself a false war”…
Aug 27, 2008 - 1:32 pm 92. buddy larsen:Simple, doug –he’s a Democrat, he votes more than once. Somebody oughtta ’splain tho, that the object is to vote for one guy twice, not for both guys once –as, well, you cancel yourself out, and if they find out you might have to give back the bottle of Ripple.
Aug 27, 2008 - 1:35 pm 93. buddy larsen:gumshoe –that’s a conundrum –’strong’ in the entrepreneurial sense, ‘weak’ in allowing the penetration of malignant grandiosity.
Aug 27, 2008 - 1:40 pm 94. raymondshaw:Mike said at 5:49 AM:
‘I began voting for Ronald Reagan in 1976. I always voted for him, and I always voted for the Bushes. I also voted for Clinton both times.’
Did you vote for Ross Perot & Ralph Nader too?
Sorry, but I’m not buying any of it. Frankly, you write like a non-native english speaker. My .02 Ruble worth.
Aug 27, 2008 - 1:53 pm 95. mark_b:Major Mike Sylwester:
I began voting for Ronald Reagan in 1976. I always voted for him, and I always voted for the Bushes. I also voted for Clinton both times. In this election I voted for Fred Thompson in the primaries and intend to vote for McCain in the general election.
________________________________________________
Please select only one candidate per election cycle.
48th 1976 Jimmy Carter (Democrat) Gerald Ford (Republican)
49th 1980 Ronald Reagan (Republican) Jimmy Carter (Democrat)
John B. Anderson (none)
50th 1984 Ronald Reagan (Republican) Walter Mondale (Democrat)
51st 1988 George H. W. Bush (Republican) Michael Dukakis (Democrat)
52nd 1992* Bill Clinton* (Democrat) George H. W. Bush (Republican)
Ross Perot (none)
53rd 1996* Bill Clinton* (Democrat) Bob Dole (Republican)
Ross Perot (Reform)
54th 2000*† George W. Bush* (Republican) Al Gore† (Democrat)
Ralph Nader (Green)
55th 2004 George W. Bush (Republican) John Kerry (Democrat)
56th 2008 yet to be determined John McCain (Republican) (presumptive nominee)
Barack Obama (Democrat) (presumptive nominee)
Vote early, vote often.
Aug 27, 2008 - 4:35 pm 96. Vengeance:–Ayers. He quit the Weather Underground in 1980 and has led a law-abiding life for the following 28 years until now and probably will continue to do so for the rest of his life.
If there is a just God, it will be a short one.
Aug 27, 2008 - 6:57 pm 97. Vengeance:–But he wasn’t . He was a brave leader of men and one of the best of his generation. Like I said Ayers is garbage, a lame clown who hates the land that allowed him to be a child of privilege. His name is worthy of nothing more than shame and disgrace. Screw him, Bernadine Dorhn, Mark Rudd and the rest of the little comic strip Marxists of that era.
Hand salute to you and your brave platoon sargeant. How sad that big money allows a sub-human, narcissist, domestic terrorist to continue to tear down what we hold dear.
Aug 27, 2008 - 7:03 pm 98. Bob Murphy:Funny thing about Ayers, Dohrn, Patty Hearst et al is that they spent so much time thinking themselves into an ideological frenzy that they were ineffective at “terrorism”.
Aug 27, 2008 - 8:19 pm 99. Bob Murphy:Those of us that have been trained for and are good at breaking things and killing people are amazed at how ineffective these middle class wankers were at breaking things. It’s not that hard. Just requires a little discipline, focus, and real world, honed instincts. And it can be fun in the right cause with the right team mates.
They were pikers. All show and no go.
And I am glad of that, of course.
Aug 27, 2008 - 8:20 pm 100. jeyi:Hey Trangbang, how would you ever know that the Americal Division was “not only only the worst unit in VN but maybe the worst in US military history”? That’s quite an indictment.
First off, in 1968-69 the Americal’s area of operations was exactly where the Ho Chi Minh trail (actually a braided system of trails) first re-entered VN from Laos and where the mountainous back country –exceedingly rich in booby traps and ambushes– began only twenty km (or less) west of the S. China Sea coast. Not a fun place for a 19 y/o conscript.
Before the My Lai massacre became publicly known, but some months after it had actually happened, I personally encountered an entire Americal infantry battalion which had been recalled to Division HQ at Chu Lai: specifically, I was told by some GI, because there had been allegations of a rape and murder of several VC/NVA nurses (probably not related to My Lai, but maybe so). Somebody in the Americal’s chain of command was sufficiently outraged to pull 600+ combat soldiers out of the field at the very height of the ground war subjected to a full-scale investigation of the incident. I don’t know what came of all that and never saw any further reference to the case.
Reconnecting recently with some Americal vets (not from the My Lai company) in the lead-up to a reunion planned next month in Fairbanks, Alaska, I was stunned by how many more than I would have imagined, were genuinely whacked out by PTSD.
Mike Sylwester’s comments (and personal background) are certainly not run of the mill blogging junk.
Too bad that neither Calley nor Ayers are here to tell us what they think of each other. Now that would interesting!
Ayers reminds me of a posturing, rat-faced little shmuck I knew when I returned to my hippie college on the GI bill. He always wore a red beret and a lapel pin with a picture of an AK-47. The only person I ever really wanted to strangle.
Aug 27, 2008 - 9:06 pm 101. trangbang68:Jeyi,
Aug 27, 2008 - 10:30 pmMy indictment of the Americal is strictly anecdotal from sources I’ve read( Keith William Nolan for one, a very astute Viet Nam battle historian)
My impression of the Division is based on the fact that they were largely pieced together in country. Other units sent troops, many of whom were problem children. Among incidents I’ve read of were one or two refusals to engage the enemy under direct orders; horrible tactical blunders (one unit set up in a vacant VC base camp for the night without putting out lps- they suffered 14 kias,) In 1971 Fire Base Mary Ann was overrun by NVA sappers because guys were smoking weed on the bunker line. They suffered over 80 casualties with 23 killed.
Calley’s unit patrolled the Batangan peninsula and suffered lots of boobie trap casualties. Unable to find the enemy they slaughtered non-combatants; a total breakdown in military discipline.
I admit their A.O. was alot more dangerous than mine(25th Division northwest of Saigon),but all in all our units kept their discipline even though much of our area was full of VC sympathizers. I never saw any atrocities in the field among our guys.
I went through basic training at Fort Dix with a guy named Rodney Bayliss who became the XO in Calley’s unit. He was a good guy and I always felt sorry for him that he ended up in that mess.
Sorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.