Von Brunn and the GOP
Jon Chait brings some information I hadn’t seen about the Holocaust Museum shooter:
Third, it’s somewhat apparent from Von Brunn’s writing that he did identify with the Republican Party on some basic partisan questions. He cheered conservatives for getting Dan Rather fired, believed Sarah Palin was unfairly hounded by the media, and so on. Indeed, if there’s anything surprising and disturbing about Von Brunn’s beliefs, it’s that he identifies more closely with the Republican Party than I would have thought a radical white supremacist would. This may be a sign that the GOP has become more appealing to radical right-wingers than it once was, but it could also be an anomaly.
That is interesting. Those two points—and especially the point about Palin—have really nothing to do with “far right” politics and everything to with fairly narrow GOP partisan politics. I suppose this mostly goes to show that crazy people’s political opinions don’t make a ton of sense.
141 Responses to “Von Brunn and the GOP”
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June 12th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Matt,
I’m not sure why your conclusion is “this mostly goes to show that crazy people’s political opinions don’t make a ton of sense.” Chait seems to suggest that Von Brunn quite literally was a right-wing extremist, i.e., the fact that he had some fairly standard conservative beliefs in addition to the batsh*t crazy ones shows those two camps aren’t really *that* far apart.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
A “right winger” who hates Bush, McCain, Christians, Bill O’Reilly, Fox News, the Weekly Standard, and neoconservatives.
Haha.
Von Brunn is exactly the same as every single poster at Daily Kos, and probably 99% of the posters right here.
He is a LEFT-winger.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I really find this storyline to be completely lame. I mean, c’mon, there are only two relevant parties in this country, so which party do you think VonBrunn would be more closely aligned with? Certainly I don’t think the most surprising or disturbing aspect of VonBrunn’s beliefs is that he identifies “more closely with the Republican party than one would think a white supremacist would.”
Really, that’s what Chait finds the most surprising and disturbing? Give me a break.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
And Al steps in to prove my point. Thanks Al!
June 12th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
I’m having a lot of fun watching conservatives cower behind various strawmen. Joe Scarborough says Paul Krugman is the eliminationist on the left (no evidence to support), Glen Beck is claiming that the nazi’s were leftists (because he doesn’t know what “nationalist” does to “socialist”), Brietbart is claiming that since von Brunn hated neocons that he can’t be a conservative (which doesn’t explain Pat Buchanan), and of course lots of references to a “leftist Muslim” who shot up a recruiting station when their only evidence of “leftism” is that he shot up a recruiting station, something that no leftist has called for, in a sad tautology.
Are conservatives too cowardly to own up, or are they stupid enough to actually believe any of these bulwards of straw?
June 12th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
The Alaska Independence Party is part of a loosely aligned dominionist/white supremacist fringe movement.
I don’t find Von Brunn’s support of an AIP’er all that surprising.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Because they weren’t extreme enough? Yeah, I’ve been hearing that from conservatives for years.
Nice way to cough up what they fed you, putz.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
The most disturbing part to me, by far, is the note reportedly found in von Brunn’s car saying (roughly) “You wanted to take my guns, this is how you’re going to get them.” From an NRA fundraising letter to his pen.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Leftist!
June 12th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Rachel Maddow did a great piece on his association with the “birthers,” i.e. people who believe Obama isn’t legally the president because they aren’t satisified with the authenticity of his birth certificate. She pointed out that the “tea parties” were absolutely lousy with birthers, and Limbaugh was bitching about the issue VERY recently. I think it says more about the GOP than it does about the crazy old dude. They ought to start calling it the Cranky Old Party.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
It’d help if someone would just QUOTE this murdering nut’s views on Palin and Rather.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Let’s also remember that he is a 9/11 Truther, which is dominant among the fringe Left Wing.
More evidence that Brunn is a violent Left Winger.
(Which isn’t surprising, seeing as how the extremes of the Left encourage violence – take for example all of the Bush Assassination fantasies that proliferated for years. The Left has continual fantisies of violence against their supposed political enemies – even Matthew himself admits that he has fantasies of violence against the Right Wing, and Matthew has written that Richard Perle, for example, should be physically attacked. So it is no accident that these attitudes among the “decent” Left boil over into actual violence by the fringe elements of the Left like Brunn.)
June 12th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
What hasn’t been getting much play at this point is an interview done with his neighbor where the neighbor notes that von brunn was apparently living on the financial edge and had just been pushed off because his social security payment was reduced. I can’t confirm the veracity of this, but it sure would be an interesting statement about how the straw that broke this camel’s back was the fact that the welfare state he hated was generous *enough*! God, wingers are so screwed up.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Von Brunn’s latching on to the Rather and Palin things actually makes perfect sense. Neither had anything to do with policy and little with genuine politics. They were both simply expressions of right-wing anger, resentment and feelings of victimization. Scum like Von Brunn wallow around the the exact same stuff, just with the knob turned up to 11.
Mike
June 12th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Al,
Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.
I don’t know if you get paid to troll or just do it fun, but you need to take a step back and think about which positions you actually want to advance on this site.
Down-is-upism scores you no points, and makes you look like a fool.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Sorry – last sentence should have been … “…the fact that the welfare state he hated wasn’t generous *enough*!”
Let that be a lesson to me to always Preview my posts!
June 12th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Okay, if you want something done right….
This is evidently from a Von Brunn post on Free Republic, Dec 2, 2008:
“Dan Rather lost his job over fraudulent documents, because common people like you & me reached out and ripped CBS to pieces. They couldn’t stand the loss of sponsors OR viewers!
The same Media went to great lengths to scandalize & destroy Sarah Palin. She maintains a 91% approval rating among voters from all parties, thanks to the Internet and investigative journalists who don’t work for the mainstream media….
Submitted by: James W. von Brunn”
Doesn’t sound like a guy who subscribed to the Nation or volunteers for ACORN.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Nobody on the left or right has been saying, “You know who needs to die? Holocaust Museum guards.”
Whereas there is a vocal contingent who has been saying abortion doctors need to die.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Al – you go, girl! It’s sort of like how I cheer every time I see Rove on TV. You jackasses think you’re spreading disinformation when in fact both Inds and Dems just read/listen to the transparent bullsh*t, scratch their heads, and wonder how many decades it will be before we can even consider voting GOP.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
I personally just do not understand why we get saddled with this shit. Republicans are the most pro-Isreal group out there. Democrats think we are to pro-Isreal. Why the hell are we getting painted with the anti-semetic brush. It really pisses me off.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
More straw-clutching from a congenital loser.
9/11 truthers are lousy on stormfront, another right-wing racist site Von Brunn haunted.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Al: I don’t think 9-11 Truthism is at all exclusively left-wing. Most of the Truthers I’ve had the displeasure to deal with are very much Ron Paul libertarian and/or anarcho-capitalist types.- Obviously the crazy leftists like it too, but it’s pretty popular on all sides of the crazy extremist contingent of politics.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Here’s quote from JVB: “SOCIALISM, represents the future of the West.” And, that’s not taken out of context as can be seen here.
As for those “birthers”, that’s just a smear the BeltwayEstablishment and their useful idiots use in order to cover for, among other things, their complete inability to do real reporting on that issue. Here’s my summary. What I ask from you the reader is that you look at that page and then compare it to the comments that might follow about that page. Note that those commenting don’t appear to have actually read or understood that page. That page is in some ways an IQ/integrity test. And, all the BHO fans I’ve so far come across have been miserable failures.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Hey Al,
You realize that by the same logic that makes Nazis left wingers, it’s not hard to label Republicans as Communists. Blind party loyalty, “Republics” like North Korea must make their leaders Republicans just like the Nazis called themselves Socialists so it must be true. Meanwhile who’s socializing the finance industry? Wall Street.
The Commie Right, just as credible as the Fascist Hippies.
Really all calling an absolutely classic right wing extremist a “Leftist” does is render the term meaningless. The Right stands for little more “I fucking hate everyone but me” these days.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I enthusiastically encourage the burning boat campaign by conservatives to try and suggest that white supremacist anti-Semites who like Hitler are left wingers just like all them hippies.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
You all have it wrong. The issue is not the positions that the guy took, but how he arrived at them. You have to examine the thinking.
True, it’s difficult given the paranoia and obvious mental illness, but the fact is that he embraced (or perhaps didn’t have the mental fortitude to resist) his emotional state. From a philosophical standpoint, that is traditionally viewed as left-winged thinking.
Now, you say…what about all of those emotional Republican nuts like Rush, or Sean. From a cognitive standpoint they’re not right-minded at all. Very little analysis, or objective thinking goes into their determinations. Instead, they embrace their emotions “because it’s the right thing to do.” The same can be said for folks on the left that totally divorce reality from objective truth.
Positions don’t mean shit. What matters is how you see the world and process it. There are self-identified democrats that are right-minded people because facts and analysis guide their views of the world. We need to stop talking about what positions we hold, but how we arrive at them.
So stop trying to ascribe this to a movement. It has nothing to do with politics.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
You guys can keep trying this shit. In fact, I really do enthusiastically encourage you to do so. Please. Please.
Also, vampirism is a traditionally Republican paranormal phenomenon, because it focuses on the survival of the individual. You have to examine the process.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
And if you left-wingers don’t like the term, “right-minded.” Then go with stoic.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Are Matt’s trolls always this incoherent? Some of these guys sound like they’re reading from a discarded draft of “Borat.”
June 12th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
El Sid,
The guy would, from a historical standpoint, be viewed as a revolutionary. Traditionally, revolutionaries tended to be left-wing radicals.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Ed Smithe
Excuse me, emotional appeals are tradionally “left-wing thinking” An appeal to “volk” or to protecting the white race (especially the tender young daughters) is neither emotional nor traditionally right wing? And shooting people for political motivation has “nothing to do with politics?”
Can you explain your thinking here?
June 12th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
With the exception of our founding fathers, could someone tick off some well-known right-wing revolutionaries? Anyone?
June 12th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
The guy would, from a historical standpoint, be viewed as a revolutionary. Traditionally, revolutionaries tended to be left-wing radicals.
So Ed we can all agree that America was founded by left-wing radicals? Just for starters?
June 12th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Love the use of the passive voice, Ed Smithe! Can I try that? Here goes: Likewise, someone who reaches around to his keister to pull out bogus assertions would, from a historical standpoint, be viewed as a conservative.
QED!
June 12th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Ed,
As noted, please explain why the Founding Fathers are right wing but no other revolutionaries are. Lets start with Franco.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Al: I don’t think 9-11 Truthism is at all exclusively left-wing.
Not *exculsively*. Predominantly, though.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
And continue through to the Contras, Timothy McVeigh, the assassins of abortion doctors. Etc. Etc. All left wingers, I take it?
June 12th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Bullsmith,
This is a country of laws. A rational human being understands that and lives within the system. To abandon the system in such a fashion is irrational. Irrationality is normally the result of confusing emotional drive with what is perceived to be logical thinking. Moreover, examine the thinking of “protecting the white race.” Just how analytical do you really think that guy was in coming up with a belief like that.
The guy is an emotional wreck and probably had severe mental illness.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
So, the definition of conservative political philosophy is a stoic attitude? So, by definition, no conservative can ever go radical or extreme by personality or psychology, because at that point he / she would be by definition a ‘leftist’? WTF?
June 12th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
And there were those guys in Germany and Italy in the 20’s and 30’s — what were they called? You know, they rounded up the Jews and stuff, and I think it might have led to a war or something.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Bullsmith,
What did Franco believe? How did he arrive at those beliefs? Again…ignore the positions and focus on the thinking. That’s what defines us.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Do whatever you like, but this is by far the stupidest shit you have ever attempted to pull on this website.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Ed Smith, actually the guy is a typical reactionary, from a historical standpoint.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
El Cid,
Burkean conservatism demands just that. However, I recognize that we’re all emotional beings and that we can’t simply overcome our biases or emotions 100% of the time. The key is that we all play on a level playing field that demands that we examine objective facts and provide objective analysis. For example: The Iraq war was a disaster. How did I arrive at that? By analyzing the objective facts.
Indeed that analysis is what makes me a Burkean conservative and why GWB wasn’t.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
And reactionaries are violent right-wing radicals, of course.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
You’ll play this idiotic game into eternity. Because I will respond that every position I take is that arrived at through the noblest of reason and the most supported of fact, and you are the emotionally driven mythologizer.
And you don’t get to declare any insane arguments correct because you believe them to be Burkean. Good grief.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
El Cid,
I disagree. In fact, if Republicans and/or Democrats thought more along those lines we’d have fewer disagreements. Instead, we have to deal with bullshit politics 24/7. Politics for the most part is devoid of the kind of thinking that we should all be doing on a regular basis.
If that’s what floats your boat…to believe things because they make you feel better, then you’re contributing to the fucking up of this country.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
No, they can’t be, because no matter what they thought before, there is a leftist transubstantiation in which they become leftists the moment their thought processes are identified by self-described Burkeans as ‘radical’.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
This post is an example of an irritating (and dishonest) rhetorical trick MY picked up (possibly from Mankiw and Krugman in their arguments).
1) Present “interesting” data that, to the excessively credulous, imply an obviously fallacious “truth.”
2) Draw conspicuous attention to the “interesting” data.
3) Deliberately fail to connect the dots yourself or [optional] make half-hearted observation that the data doesn’t necessarily “make sense.”
4) Allow your side’s trolls and morons to advance the idiotic argument.
5) Rest secure in the peace of having not made any idiotic arguments yourself.
If MY thinks that the GOP is advancing the cause of white supremacy he should come out and say so. If he thinks the GOP enabled the murderer he should come out and say so.
“Gosh, isn’t it interesting that a white-supremacist murderer supports the GOP- that’s so interesting. But I guess the politics of crazy people don’t make sense.” Is simply transparent mud-slinging.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
No, that’s what you believe, and that’s what you are. See?
June 12th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
It sorta calls for Foxworthy, actually:
If you…
1) applaud how people “like you and me” got Dan Rather fired over fake documents
2) complain about how Sarah Palin was unfairly treated by the media, and yet remained magically popular, and
3) ask questions like this: “WHO SENT YOU???
Obama has lived for 48 years without leaving any footprints — none! There is no Obama documentation — no records — no paper trail — none — this is no accident. It is being done on purpose with Media help – but to serve whom & why???”
Then you just MIGHT be a right wing nut.
Nobody disputes “nut”.
But it’s sorta hard to square any of that with a leftist in any form — sane or crazed, drunk or sober.
The Right doesn’t have to OWN this murderous old bastard, but they can’t pass him off like a cowbird’s egg, either. He came out of their nest.
This sorta thing has a long history on the Right, unmatched on the Left — Goldwater stated bluntly that when he got the support of the crazies on the Right, it was because they bought into HIS views, rather than that he bought into theirs. (The big test was a guy named Brophy, an Arizona Bircher who was a pillar of Goldwater’s home state GOP establishment.)
It’s useful to see the contrast between the way Goldwater and Buckley handled the Birchers 50 years ago (rather deft, actually), and the way the GOP is stuck to the Fox-Limbaugh-Beck-Palin/Alaskan Independence/Freeper/Birther lunacy. Leading conservatives like Goldwater, Buckley, Baroody, and Russel Kirk thought that the Birchers were whack-jobs, and carefully planned a way to SAY so, publicly…. (which of course they did NOT do regarding things like white supremacists in the South).
But when even Republicans who win elections now try to dis Limbaugh, they have to apologize — and when an outright murder (or two, or six) is committed by somebody who is deranged right out of the Fox-Limbaugh-Beck-Palin/Alaskan Independence/Freeper/Birther spectrum, they have to make up nonsense about how somebody who identifies with Rather’s critics and against Palin’s is somehow a leftist?
June 12th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
“You’ll play this idiotic game into eternity. Because I will respond that every position I take is that arrived at through the noblest of reason and the most supported of fact, and you are the emotionally driven mythologizer.”
If you put it that way then I’ll always win. Just where are your facts and where is your analysis? I’m the emotional one? You just equated me with idiocy.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Al truly is a master baiter. I bow to you, sir.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
For those of you keeping score at home, “Burkean conservative” now works in the same way that “Trotskyite” operated in the 1950’s. Just as Marxists tried to distance themselves from Stalin by invoking a (largely imaginary) alternate route, the conservatives now attempt to place themselves in a tradition that is not responsible for trillion dollar deficits, catastrophic wars and a basic contempt for the rule of law.
It’s pretty telling that they need to go back two centuries to find a non-embarrassing conservative.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Ed Smithe,
You aren’t free to redefine terms just because it suits your interests, and the terms in question are about ideology, not thinking processes.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
No. Firstly, you don’t ever ‘win’, you either advance a strong argument or you don’t. There’s no arbiter, no magic, no benevolent Burkean debate coach to lift you up on his shoulders and give you a trophy.
And, no. You gave no facts. You declared your arguments as more factual and less emotional. You think your little burp about Franco was an argument? You think futzing about definitional terms according to your listed preferences is an objective view of reality? Get real.
And, cut the high school debate team shit. You don’t ‘win’ if someone calls you an idiot or uses a bad word.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Ed’s playing Calvin Ball:
1. My statements are unemotional, objective truths.
2. If you disagree with me, you are emotional and unobjective.
3. I and Edmund Burke win again! Huzzah!
Let’s leave him alone while he goes and finds Hobbes.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
DTM,
Who’s redefining? These are the facts. Ideology is the product of cognition. It’s not the other way around. If you don’t understand that, then your principles are based on what you think sounds good (which is an emotionally based decision).
Either you examine facts and objectively analyze them, or you do whatever feels like the right thing to do or believe.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Positions don’t mean shit. What matters is how you see the world and process it. There are self-identified democrats that are right-minded people because facts and analysis guide their views of the world.
The entire GOP must be left-wing then, since Bush-Cheney always ignored science and made up their own reality. And the GOP in Congress continues to do so for anything related to health care, or the environment, or national security…
Is there any disgraced right-wing politician or pundit (or neo-fascist madman) that you won’t be able to re-classify “left-wing” with your dubious philosophical theories?
June 12th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
General Franco is rolling over in his grave and cursing the Judeo-Masonic Conspiracy when he hears himself described as a ‘leftist’.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
It’s just ’cause he didn’t understand. It’s all about the process.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Is there any disgraced right-wing politician or pundit (or neo-fascist madman) that you won’t be able to re-classify “left-wing” with your dubious philosophical theories?
Pinochet, maybe?
June 12th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
The Weathermen had a left wing ideology. The neo Nazis, like the nazis before them, had a right wing ideology. Over time particular policies may be embraced or discarded by either side (free trade might be a good example), but by and large either you accept that Commies were on far left and Fascists on the far right or you are not really having a good faith conversation. Perhaps you’re unable to, perhaps you don’t want to, perhaps you’re, like Ed Smithe here, so far gone down the hole of your own bullshit that you can’t really spot where it leaves the rails of reality and enters pure abstraction. But either way, this attempt to deny that there are, in fact, crazy lunatics out there at the far RIGHT and LEFT ends of the political spectrum is just dishonest. I think it’s also self evident that right now the RIGHT end is getting a lot of encouragement from their leading media proponents. Nothing that comes out of Maddow or Olbermann is equivalent to “Von Brunn went nuts cause Obama’s surronded by Jew haters stirring up shit.” Which is not that rough a paraphrase of Rush yesterday.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
You’re not paying attention.
The very fact that they are disgraced makes them by definition a ‘leftist’, since no conservative process could possibly have led to any result of disgracing.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Folks, I don’t own the facts. The facts are what they are. However, I do find it rather amusing how much of a chord I’ve struck with this one. Rather than debating my hypothesis at face value, I’m subjected to these attacks. I think that, more than anything else, speaks volumes.
I say again, examine your thinking. How did you arrive at your positions. Is it because you too think that they are “the right thing to do?”
June 12th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
I’ll agree with that. In fact, you may not even possess a permit to rent them.
A chord of joy, laughter, ridicule — even if to your ears it means “VICK-TREE! WOLVERINES!!!”
I think you’re not permitting the option that your ‘hypotheses’ are being debated at face value, either that or we appear to have different standards of ‘face value’.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Why oh why,
Now you’re getting it. Neocons…where did they come from? They were former Marxists. Their positions might have changed, but their thinking never did…that’s why they made the same mistakes that previous Presidents like Bill Clinton made with Haiti Somalia (which was also Bush I), Bosnia and Kosovo.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Well, I’ll say this: if there was any left wing in this country, then maybe some of these poor stupid bastards who feel oppressed but don’t know who to blame – maybe they would’ve joined it.
But you see, unfortunately there is no left, no left whatsoever. There is the right-wing, and then there is the other right-wing, and that’s all there is.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Who’s redefining? These are the facts. Ideology is the product of cognition.
Well, that, of course, isn’t a fact–that sounds more like an aspiration. In the real world, it turns out ideology is a product of a lot of complex dynamics, including how you were raised and educated, who you socialize with, your economic interests, and so on. One can make the case that sometimes people use cognition to derive their political positions, and not simply to rationalize political positions formed by other processes, but there is no evidence that people do that in general.
Either you examine facts and objectively analyze them, or you do whatever feels like the right thing to do or believe.
David Hume destroyed this simplistic dichotomy long ago. In any event, even if you believed this was a sustainable distinction, it wouldn’t define the differences between the terms we are discussing.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Right-wing Christian fundamentalists support Israel, but not out of any love or tolerance for Jews. They see certain events occurring in Israel as the necessary precursors to their long-awaited “End Days” – at which time the Christian fundamentalists expect to be levitated to Heaven and the Israeli Jews, along with everybody else who isn’t a Christian fundi will be thrown into the pits of Hell where they will suffer eternal torment – to the immense satisfaction of those Christians who expect to be “saved” come the Rapture.
Neoconservatives, on the other hand, support Israel as long as it is run by the Likudniks, the Israeli cousins of the Neocons. As long as they are in power, the Right sees Israel as a military power aligned with the Neocons against the Islamic world.
But, just as there some who support Israel on the Right doesn’t mean that all Rightists, particularly the lunatic fringe who we are discussing, agree with them. In fact, anti-Semitism has been around Right Wing circles long before this temporary infatuation with Israel appeared and will be a mainstay long after the “pro-Israel” lobby disappears.
Billy Graham, who always publicly put himself forward as a friend of the Jews and of Israel was caught on the secret Nixon tapes talking about what he really felt about Jews:
On the tapes, Graham railed against the Jews and their “stranglehold” on the media. When Nixon agreed, but said you “can’t say that” in public, Graham said that if Nixon got elected to a second term and didn’t have to worry about the public, they could “do something” about the “problem” of the Jews.
Graham went on to say in an amused tone that, even though many Jews consider him a friend, “they don’t know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country.”
June 12th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
“Conservatives” (in quotes because the real ones abandoned the GOP long ago) are heavily invested in the Radical Left Wing narrative because it dilutes the appearance of their own extremism. If a large radical left wing movement exists, or if enough people believe one does, then the right wing nutjob phenomenon is merely a natural and expected counterbalancing force. And the media, always looking for balance where it doesn’t and shouldn’t exist, eats it up.
Hence, even though Republicans are among the farthest right ideologues on the planet, the perception becomes that the left and right have equal numbers of crazies. This may or not be true, but I guarantee you the right has a lock on putting them in positions of power.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
However, I do find it rather amusing how much of a chord I’ve struck with this one. Rather than debating my hypothesis at face value, I’m subjected to these attacks. I think that, more than anything else, speaks volumes.
What is says is that taking a common right wing echo chamber slur of “leftists” as overly emotional people and then wrapping it up in some sophomoric pseudophilosophy is unlikely to generate much more than derision in response once you get outside of the aforementioned right wing echo chamber.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
When Joseph Stalin found himself thrust into the spotlight by the untimely death of his great friend and mentor, Lenin, he faced a massive problem. The Soviet economy was still burdened by tens of millions of illiterate former slaves, creating a massive burden on society. After considering carefully, avoiding any emotional implication whatsoever, Stalin chose a course of action that would benefit the most people with the least disruption. He starved 10 million people to death. As a result the Soviet Union emerged as one of the wold’s only two Superpowers, catching up to the 20th century with little more than a decade of focused work to improve society.
Joseph Stalin, model Burkean conservative, Ed Smithe style.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Smithe, do you have any idea what a complete idiot you are?
It’s a serious question, having to do with the “process” of what you imagine to be “thinking.”
You’re essentially a copycat Chomsky, but sorta like the third copy of the Michael Keaton character in Multiplicity.
Seriously, dude: “Positions don’t mean shit. What matters is how you see the world and process it….”????
You sound like a product of New Math: “It doesn’t matter that you didn’t get the right answer, Eddie, because you put all the integers in Base 12.’
Face it: a guy who identifies WITH Rather’s critics and AGAINST Palin’s, who questions whether Obama is legitimately President of the United States because of his birth certificate, is a right wing nut, not a leftist.
Oh, and 2+2=4, no matter what your “process” is.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
What this shows is that while von Brunn may have had policy preferences that defy a simply party categorization, he associated closely with the tribal identifiers of movement conservatism. It reminds me of that (and I’m paraphrasing) quote from Ben Domenech, “Liberals think that Dan Rather is just another anchorman and that Red Dawn is just another popcorn movie.”
Von Brunn seems to have bound himself pretty closely to movement conservatism cultural markers.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Conservatives should be less defensive: the outbreaks of violence, again during a period of some liberal success, hardly indict conservative ideas in general; what they do seem to point to is the existence of some twisted, ferociously polarizing aspects of movement-conservative culture. One can be a conservative without adopting such a hostile, distorted view of liberals’ motives. One can be conservative and still maintain enough confidence in liberals and oneself to believe that both sides are capable of good-faith discussion and debate.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
All you did was to regurgitate well-known crap. We don’t like that because we’re not full of crap. You’re being abused because we hate people who are full of crap, or who hide behind crap because they don’t have an argument.
Do you understand now?
June 12th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
A question for Ed Smithe,
A friend and I are discussing the Estate and Gift Tax. He knows nothing about it, I’m explaining the purpose behind it, he starts getting upset, starts saying ‘I can’t talk about this I get so mad I start shaking, I don’t want to hear it, take your lefty shit away from me’.
Who’s the lefty here? I never got mad, never said what I like or dislike about the tax but I got yelled at by someone who couldn’t talk about a topic without bursting over with emotion.
Who’s the lefty?
Why in God’s name would you delude yourself into thinking that only lefties got mad? I’ve seen and heard some displays of dismissiveness (my word you like it?) over the years but dude, WTF?
What you need to do is once in a while engage a right winger in an argument while playing the role of a lefty. Try using some of the ‘facts’ you guys routinely dismiss. Watch the reaction you get. Bathe in the respect you’ll receive from the stoic person you’re talking to. Anytime you take a position against a right winger things get ugly. And BTW don’t engage a republican senator, go to a bar, on payday, chat up a day laborer who has spent the day listening to Rush tell him that Obama is coming for the rest of his paycheck. Have fun! and report back to us.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I suggest that those right-wing wackaloons who are trying to redefine any violent and psychotic reactionary as a Leftist read the brilliant monograph, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” written in the mid-60s by Richard Hofstadter.
He points out that the Right in America has ALWAYS been a group of conspiracy nuts who see some apocalyptic enemy out to destroy “their United States” and “their values.” The only thing that changes over time is the identity of the evil, satanic anti-American plotters.
At the time of the Revolution, the wingnuts raved about the Freemasons and the Illuminati. Over the years, the evil enemy has been the Mormons, the Crowned Heads of Europe, International Bankers (read: Jews), the Pope of Rome, the Jesuits, international munitions makers, the “gold gamblers” of Europe and America, the Communists, the Terrorists (and Islam in general), and now, the Liberals and Leftists.
The psycho rants of the right-wing lunatic fringe are always the same – only the target keeps changing over time.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
jg wrote:
There’s an old saying that goes: “When a Liberal is right, he gets angry. Conservatives get angry when they are wrong. This explains why both sides are so angry at each other all of the time.”
There’s more than a grain of truth to it.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
jason,
You are right, of course, but the problem is that there is a large and lucrative media industry built on “adopting such a hostile, distorted view of liberals’ motives,” and for various reasons that media industry has become the dominant power in Republican politics.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
However, I do find it rather amusing how much of a chord I’ve struck with this one.
I wouldn’t expect you to understand, but the truth is that many people take moral offense to being fed the typical menu of right-wing lies and BS that you’re mindlessly repeating, whereas for you, such dishonesty and mindless reptition of BS is considered perfectly normal behavior. Go back to “real America” where you can snivel in your basement about how much the libruls are destroying America.
You wonder what it is with these guys, “Taking a shit on your carpet seems to have really struck a chord with you guys!”
June 12th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
It’s funny how Ed Smithe recapitulates the rhetoric of Von Brunn, as a holocaust denier who also advocated a new holocaust. They don’t want to pay the social costs of their violent ideology, so they have to deny their own past while advocating the same things that led to the violence. Von Brunn denies the holocaust and Ed Smithe, his fellow traveller, denies Von Brunn.
For each, it’s the hope that it will happen all over again.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Folks, I don’t own the facts. The facts are what they are. However, I do find it rather amusing how much of a chord I’ve struck with this one. Rather than debating my hypothesis at face value, I’m subjected to these attacks. I think that, more than anything else, speaks volumes.
Fine: let’s debate your hypothesis at face value: it’s non-sense. Since the Enlightment, political movements have defined themselves against what was called ‘the march of History’, ‘decadence’ or ‘progress’; a shift in political, social and moral values unthinkable before.
The “right-wing” (historically, the aristocracy and the Church) in general wants to keep the old social order. The “left wing” (originally wealthy commoners and the vast majority of the people) wants a new social order reflecting those recent changes.
On the right, those who feel relatively comfortable with the current system and think it only needs a few tweaks are ‘conservatives’. Those who feel enstranged from it, ready to resort to violence, are ‘reactionaries’. Similarly on the left you can distinguish ‘reformists’ and ‘revolutionaries’.
Now Ed, it’s important to realize none of those groups would deny that “facts and analysis guide their views of the world”. Science and objective analysis have nothing to do with politics. Those different groups just happen to disagree on what values should prevail. Saying that the left-wing is characterized by an ignorance of facts is just, well, ignorant.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
jason,
Indeed and well said. There’s also a strong and largely false identification with the parties. On many topics the Democrats aren’t liberal at all in practice, just as the Republicans aren’t conservative in their stance on all kinds of issues. Lots of factors influence what is often described as a Left/Right split when the actual deciding factors (ie money, love of power, corruption, fear.) Are truly bipartisan, in every sense of the word. Class is a huge elephant in the room in American politics, I find.
June 12th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
… in which he argues for NATIONAL SOCIALISM (hint: it’s what protects the Aryan race and the western ethos, according to the right-winger, Von Brunn).
Repeating Goldberg doesn’t vindicate Goldberg, you idiot.
June 12th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Guys, it takes a really egregious troll to totally overshadow Al, and we’ve got ourselves a real, first-rate, I-clearly-failed-elementary-logic-and-have-never-read-a-political-science-book, pseudo-intellectual wanker here.
His “arguments” are moronic, and he rails about “facts” while giving nothing but assertions, but as long as we try to engage with him, he is, technically, winning.
Because he’s not here to participate in informed debate, he’s here to obstruct it.
Don’t feed the Trolls.
June 12th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Blue Sun,
I may be wrong, but I suspect there’s another reason why many hard core Christians, who don’t believe in the whole End-of-Days scenario with Israel that you describe, might support the state of Israel. I think that a lot of Christians have some degree of collective guilt over Christian anti-Semitism. Not the Holocaust, necessarily, since it can be argued that the Nazis weren’t a Christian movement in any meaningful sense. But certainly persecution of Jews during the Spanish inquisition, the Czarist pogroms, the Crusades, and many other shameful episodes of history, was carried out in the name of Christianity, and so it’s reasonable that some Christians might want to, in a sense, ‘make it up’ to the Jews by supporting the state of Israel.
Just my two cents.
June 12th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
I guess Al will denounce Boehner as a LEFTIST, now?
No?
June 12th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
88, The Medium Lobster wrote: I think that a lot of Christians have some degree of collective guilt over Christian anti-Semitism.
But shouldn’t they by now already start switching to feeling a collective guilt over Christian Islamophobia?
June 12th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
abb1 says RE: Christian collective guilt over anti-Semitism:
“But shouldn’t they by now already start switching to feeling a collective guilt over Christian Islamophobia?”
Oh, I don’t know, I think even if there’s any truth to the “Christian guilt” hypothesis, it is still a fairly new phenomenon.
While the rampant Islamophobia in our society is disgraceful, I hardly think it’s got the millenia-long pedigree enjoyed by anti-Jewish violence by Christians.
Short answer: Give ‘em a few more centuries and a few million more dead Muslims–unless it has to do with being naughty in your room at night, Christians seem to have a pretty high guilt-threshold.
June 12th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
91, really? Surely typically they are simply anti-whoever-they-can-get-their-hands-on.
He mentioned the crusades, without a doubt many more Muslims were killed in the crusades than Israelites. Consider this: they had to walk around Jerusalem with blood up to their knees; I don’t think there were nearly enough Israelites there to bleed all that blood. Later the British, of course, gassed them, uncivilized tribes; Kurds specifically, IIRC.
June 12th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
@84 Why oh why:
Having called his bluff and given him a coherent, perfectly reasoned answer to his pure sophistry, said answer straight from PoliSci 101, a course he obviously never took, we confidently await his reply….
Chirrp. chirrrp. chirrrp. chirrrp…..
June 12th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
abb1 @92:
At the time of the crusades, Jerusalem had, IIRC, around 10,0000 inhabitants, so no, it doesn’t start matching the body count, even in those days–the first act of the first crusade was a massacre of Jews in the Rhineland.
More to the point, the “blood up to the knees” line is clearly hyperbolic “slay the infidel” Crusader propaganda–one should not take such accounts literally. After all, I believe that phrase comes from the same chronicler who said that St. George personally led them to victory by bringing them the lance that pierced Christ.
Even more to the point, I was being snarky. In general, I agree, most religious folks are about hating anyone who doesn’t agree with them, from what I have observed.
June 12th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Oops, that first number should read 10,000, not 10,0000.
June 12th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Oh man.
First it has long been understood that what looks like a Left-Right spectrum is really a circle where the extremes become blurred together. That is whether you go far-left are far-right the tendency is for groups to bet more isolated mentally and physically and to identify with an authoritative leader. That is Jim Jones came to his People’s Temple on a much different path than David Koresh came to his compound at Waco, the main difference operationally between extreme Left splinter groups and Aryan Nations folk is that the former come to the use of guns while the latter bring their guns with them.
Nor is it surprising that left-extremists and right-extremists come to a meeting of the minds on anti-Semitism, each has learned to associate Jews with oppression. The Right with its mostly agrarian and religious roots has always feared and hated the Jews not just for what they traditionally see as their role in the crucifixtion but even more so as urban moneylenders out to oppress country people generally. The Left came to this a lot latter as Israel started its move away from its traditional position as a secular socialist country into something more xenophobic and elminationist. This leads to people like Buchanan looking at AIPAC and thinking ‘Jewish banker’ while certain lefties look at it and think ‘Zionist oppressor’ and both ending up expressing their thoughts in explicitly anti-Semitic forms.
And as note above don’t confuse ‘pro-Israel’ with being not ‘anti-Semitic’. The more extreme members of the Fundamentalists may love their Jews and their gathering into Israel just as a cattle rancher might sincerely love the cows he raises, that is both Jews and steers have a place in the ultimate plan. That doesn’t mean the end is projected to be pleasant for either group.
Lets go down the checklist:
Live in isolated groups.
Follow authoritarian leaders.
Have eschatological beliefs.
Demonize selected groups of ‘others’.
Distrust traditional governmental authority.
Rely on armed resistance.
This combination applies to extremists of all types. In the end the only thing that separated the armed wing of the Black Panthers and the Aryan Nation was the typical color of the member.
It is worth knowing that the Goldwater speechwriter that penned the words ‘Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice’ became a prominent far left organizer, he just moved across the blurred line between anti-government Bircher and anti-government commune dweller.
June 12th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
I know, I know, I was joking too.
Still, I find Hector’s selective and seemingly politically motivated guilt kinda amusing.
June 12th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
In the end the only thing that separated the armed wing of the Black Panthers and the Aryan Nation was the typical color of the member.
Sorry Bruce, but that’s bullshit: one group was fighting against oppression, the other to protect their privilege.
Presumably, when the blacks achieve equal status the Black Panthers would dissolve; and for the Aryan Nation that would be a call to arms.
June 12th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
This comment thread makes my brain hurt.
June 12th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Bruce Webb,
Well put, go far enough in either direction you emerge on the edges of either side. This guy seems to have a foot in that territory for sure.
But concoctions like the Pantload’s “Liberal Fascism” only pretend to explore that territory. In fact what trolls like today’s example are doing is simply trying to define “good” as inherently conservative. And engaging in a bunch of up-is-down self-serving idiocy designed to show that no one bad was actually ever on their side, really Bush and Franco just thought they were right wingers. Peh.
June 12th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
the point about Palin—(has) really nothing to do with “far right” politics and everything to with fairly narrow GOP partisan politics.
You lost me there, MY. Maybe I’m being dense (wouldn’t be the first time), but it seems to me that intentions – good or bad – don’t mean much in the end. The modern GOP panders to every emotionally overwrought, meme it can, and has done so for years; they go right up to the line, and over it plenty of times, too. It’s true that your average GOP hack isn’t really evil, but I don’t see what difference that makes. It reminds me of another one of your (rare) mistakes: the idea that a party which uses race-baiting/appeal to racists to get votes, but isn’t necessarily made up of 100% racists itself – is less culpable than a full-blown bile-bag like Brunn. It’s the other way around though: The GOP is *more* culpable than the honestly seething racist, since he at least really believes this shit. It’s like saying that if you invest with a guy who is a sex slave trafficker, but don’t privately believe in sex trafficking yourself (you’re simply doing it for the money!), you are partially off the hook. No. You’re worse.
June 12th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Those two points—and especially the point about Palin—have really nothing to do with “far right” politics and everything to with fairly narrow GOP partisan politics. I suppose this mostly goes to show that crazy people’s political opinions don’t make a ton of sense.
The other lesson to be learned here is that GOP partisan politics make a ton of sense to crazy people.
June 12th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Oh yeah, Matt. It reeeeeally doesn’t make sense that a white surpremacist should support a party that, for 40 years, has existed solely to exploit white people’s resentment of non-whites. It’s shocking that a political campaign, where slurs were frequently hurled at the black opponent with little or no blowback, should have been viewed positively by a white supremacist. All so verrrrry shocking.
Really? We’re doing this? We’re pretending to be amazed that a white supremacist should prefer the Republican party to any other?
June 12th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
“It is worth knowing that the Goldwater speechwriter that penned the words ‘Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice’ became a prominent far left organizer,…”
Except, of course, that it isn’t true.
It IS true that Karl Hess had been a Goldwater nut in the early 60s and became a Black Panther-ish nut in the late 60s.
But he didn’t write the line “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue,” which is the classic version, delivered when Goldwater accepted the Republican nomination in 1964.
Goldwater himself pointed out, when somebody bitched that the line adopted the Bircher take on the world, that it actually came from “Cicero’s best speech.”
The original is: “I must remind you, Lords, Senators, that extreme patriotism in the defense of freedom is no crime, and pusillanimity in the pursuit of justice is no virtue for a Roman.” (Cicero, On Catiline)
The choice between political philosophy or bullshit in it is what “moderation in the pursuit of justice” being unvirtuous could possibly have meant in an election where Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act and wanted to perpetuate Jim Crow.
So it makes perfect sense that Karl Hess — who wanted to perpetuate Jim Crow — would have joined a black separatist movement: but that tends to make them fascist, not him a leftis.
June 12th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Later the British, of course, gassed them, uncivilized tribes; Kurds specifically, IIRC.
The Brits didn’t gas the Kurds. Churchill proposed it, but nothing came of it. They did send the RAF after them if that wasn’t bad enough. But jeez, if you’re going to cite historical events, please get your fact straight.
And of course Republicans playing off of “white male disposition” reinforces hatred and legitimizes it in the general discoure. But I think Matt is right in what he said about how crazy people generally don’t make a lot of sense. This guy was spouting off about how jews control the Federal Reserve clear back to the 1950s according people who knew him, long before Sarah Palin was was born.
I hate saying “good” things about the GOP, but some of you guys are just willing to use anything to bash them. Go back to Daily Kos for that.
June 12th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
The Brits didn’t gas the Kurds. Churchill proposed it, but nothing came of it.
You don’t know that for sure, so “get your fact straight” is uncalled for; you don’t have the facts either. You could say that it hasn’t been proven, but I suppose that’s not macho enough for you.
June 12th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
LOL — it’s famously difficult to prove a negative, but no: the British never gassed the Kurds.
As a rule, if you’re the one making a charge, you’re the one who needs to prove it.
June 12th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
So it makes perfect sense that Karl Hess — who wanted to perpetuate Jim Crow — would have joined a black separatist movement: but that tends to make them fascist, not him a leftis.
Man, that’s what I call ‘crazy’. Karl Hess was, of course, not here nor there; not everything can be pigeonholed. And the Black Panthers – separatist? fascist? Do the words still have any meaning?
June 12th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Um, yeah: that’s why I used those words.
The Black Panther Party was an EXPLICITLY separatist movement, rejecting both the non-violence of MLK’s civil rights organizing AND its goal of an integrated society.
It was fascist, in the old-fashioned sense: violent, organized, ruthlessly suppressing dissent — none of these are necessarily “left” or “right”, but they ARE distinctly fascist in the original sense of binding disparate elements into a unit by force. Free debate and democratic decisionmaking was not the method used by Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown.
And as for Hess — I didn’t bring him up, that was the guy who claimed that it was significant that a Goldwater speechwriter wound up writing for the Panthers: I pointed out that Hess didn’t write Goldwater’s most famous line, but that it IS significant that he wound up working for a black separatist movement — cuz that is perfectly consistent with support for Jim Crow, which is the position he started from.
June 12th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Oh man, this is all so amusing to read. Let me respond to a couple.
DTM…I’ve enjoyed debating you, but ideology comes before cognition? Cognition is thought, it is processing…how can the product come before the processing?
As to the gent (or gal) that asked about having a debate with a “right winger” about the estate tax…if that person tells you “it’s just wrong…” then he’s not properly analyzing it, and that’s not how a conservative should behave. Now, he might call himself a conservative, or a Republican for that matter, but that doesn’t make him one. If, for example, I believe that the poor are dangerous, and that the best means by which to reduce that danger is to advocate free and unfettered abortion, does that make me a liberal because I believe in abortion (although that’s basically what Margaret Sanger believed funny enough)? I think that most of you would say no…why is that? Because the way in which I arrived at a so-called liberal position isn’t consistent with what you would ascribe to be liberal THINKING. This is why, again, I say that positions don’t mean shit. What counts is how you arrived at that position, how you view the world. If you’re a person of facts and analysis, that makes you one thing…if you’re a person that simply trusts your gut you’re something else.
This idea that cognition is some pop psychology term or theory is laughable and says more about their tendency towards armchair philosophy and psychology.
June 12th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
“Now Ed, it’s important to realize none of those groups would deny that “facts and analysis guide their views of the world”. Science and objective analysis have nothing to do with politics. Those different groups just happen to disagree on what values should prevail. Saying that the left-wing is characterized by an ignorance of facts is just, well, ignorant.”
Sorry folks, I’m at work, from time to time I can’t respond right away…I realize that some of you are still in college.
As I said above Why oh Why, I agree that objective facts and analysis have nothing to do with politics. Indeed, I went so far to suggest that perhaps it might not be a bad idea for folks to abandon their political (emotional) leanings in favor of objective analysis.
As to this issue of values, what really is a value…what is a value based on. A true value ought to based upon a real analysis of what happens when one doesn’t hold that value. For example, it’s all well and good that we might counsel boys and girls not to have sex before their married, but it’s not enough to tell them that the reason why we hold that “value” is because it’s “wrong” to have sex before they’re married. How about, don’t have sex before you’re married because it places you in a higher risk category for pregnancy (obviously) or for an STD? Might those be factors behind that particular “value?”
So I agree with you that battles over so-called “values” have been at the heart of disagreements for some time, but my question is, who really has “values” and who doesn’t? Just because someone disagrees with me doesn’t mean, de facto, that their values aren’t based on an objective analysis…that’s something that we need to determine between the both of us. Now, after we hash it out…and let’s say that my analysis is shown to be flawed, if I continue to hold that position, I am doing so out of emotion and not analysis.
Call it what you want. You don’t like left-minded thinking because you’re so wedding to the idea (emotion) that left=good, fine…whatever floats your boat. Historically, you’re totally wrong, but that’s fine.
My only point is that we ought to be focusing on the thinking…not the results. On that, does anyone agree or not?
June 12th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
” we ought to be focusing on the thinking…not the results. ”
Pretty spectacular stupidity, in a thread about a murderer.
“It doesn’t matter that you didn’t get the right answer, Eddie, because you put all the integers in Base 12.’
June 12th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
theAmericanist,
What a moronic statement…and this coming from a guy that spent the better part of this forum trying to ensure that this was pinned on the GOP.
I’m sure you give a shit about the folks that this loon killed.
As to your “Eddie” comment…even dumber. This is not a fucking equation, this is trying to determine why people like you, when presented with the objective facts, still believe in your heart of hearts all of the stupid shit you believe. I suppose if the unemployment rate goes to 10% by the end of the month, you’ll still be explaining to me why this is all Republicans faults, as if there’s a nearly 50% (or more now) portion of this government that has nothing to do with this.
June 12th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Call it what you want. You don’t like left-minded thinking because you’re so wedding to the idea (emotion) that left=good, fine…whatever floats your boat. Historically, you’re totally wrong, but that’s fine.
I’m in awe. Is this Burkean philosophy?
June 12th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Yeah Why oh Why it is.
The world is as it is…not how you’d like it to be.
June 12th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Why Oh Why: Great post, thanks.
Ed “Words mean what I want them to mean” Smithe:
However, I do find it rather amusing how much of a chord I’ve struck with this one.
But wait… that’s emotion… and emotion is leftist… ED SMITHE IS A LEFTIST!
June 12th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Because I work a real job unlike you leftist college hippies, I just wanted to check back in to celebrate my winning the argument because you all amused me and to once again declare that my arguments are rational and are based on purely objectively supported utilitarian motives and all the rest of you are wrong and emotion driven and leftist. Thus, I take my leave.
June 12th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
I’m going home. Some of you can honestly debate. Others, well, I can recall our arguments about how you were so sure that folks like me were wrong on the economy, while you cheered the spending…
Unemployment is going to be 10% perhaps by the end of the month…the American people are getting a bit tired with your shitty policies.
As I’ve said before, it was always my hope that the Republicans could have been punished enough to actually learn something about how to properly run the country. Instead, you guys are taking what was fucked up, and fucking it up even more. Remarkable!
SO this is what decline feels like.
June 12th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Thank you, utilitarian Falstaff.
June 12th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
I hate saying “good” things about the GOP, but some of you guys are just willing to use anything to bash them. Go back to Daily Kos for that.
Now *you* are the one being dense, sir. A key part of the congealing modern GOP coalition of the 60s was people who had a lot in common with Brunn – angry, resentful, goofy people. The John Birch Society was not just a ‘conservative group’, they were really pretty nuts. Today, some probably *would* call them merely a ‘conservative group’ and that’s the point: The GOP is not ultimately responsible for Brunn’s act, or other nutty hate crimes, but it helped open up space for a wave of political resentment and fear and, frankly, craziness, in the only way a major political party can: by trying to co opt some of them and ‘control’ them. Where do you think Goldwater and Reagan came from, politically?
My point is that if you – as a party – decide you want to make a deal with the devil, you own that deal. Democrats made a somewhat similarly stinky deal with Southern racists early in the century, and had to reckon with it and pay a price later. It’s harder for modern Republicans to take the same responsibility because their party is built on little else than resentment and fear at this point; Dems in the 60s had more going for them than just Dixiecrats.
June 12th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
109, never mind. You can, of course, define “fascism” and “separatism” any way you like, so what’s the point. By your definition the Catholic Church too is separatist and fascist.
June 12th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Wow. What a thread. And to think, this is just the beginning. There is more to come. Much more.
June 12th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Ed Smithe (in case you check back in) – the problem with your argument is that you want to define right and left in terms of how one arrives at a position rather than what the position is. No one else uses that definition. I checked all three dictionaries I have at home (Merriam-Webster’s Third International, OED, and American Heritage). They all agree in defining the political right by the policies and positions advocated and not by how those positions are reached. You are trying to change the definition of a word that everyone else agrees on so that you can selectively disown any person or position you want to. The world doesn’t work that way. If you want to communicate with other people you can’t redefine words for your own convenience.
June 12th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
You don’t know that for sure, so “get your fact straight” is uncalled for;
You’re right, I apologize.
you don’t have the facts either. You could say that it hasn’t been proven,, but I suppose that’s not macho enough for you.
So the lack of evidence that something happened is evidence that it indeed did happen unless I “prove” otherwise? I don’t get the logic of that, sounds like Alex Jones reasoning to me.
Macho? I’m about the furthest person from macho you could find. But I am interested in historical accuracy and not hearsay presented to make a political point. I could and get citations for you, but I’m not that interested in a internet pissing contest unless you are. They bore me.
June 12th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
You don’t have to be crazy to be a Republican but it surely helps !
June 12th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
You guys are so enthusiastic about blaming his actions on Republicans. Maybe it’s time to consider what actually motivated the killing.
Von Brunn seems to hate religion. He’s not a typical anti-Semitic Chritian bigot, either. The man saw Christianity as Jewish fairy tale designed to control white people. Perhaps he had a neo-Pagan worldview? One could argue that this made him a “conservative”. But good luck blaming that brand of conservatism on the GOP. Not that it has stopped most of you from trying…
June 12th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
You’ve got it backwards, Steve-O.
No one is saying that Republican political opinions cause one to be a fascist or neo-Nazi. As you say, that is in many, many ways a different variety of right-wing thought than that coming out of the GOP than what a neo-Nazi would believe.
The argument isn’t that Republicans identify with neo-Naziism; but that neo-Nazis identify with the Republicans, or at least their politics.
June 12th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
You guys are so enthusiastic about blaming his actions on Republicans.
I have slogged through most of this thread and find very little crude blaming of Brunn’s actions on the GOP. Most of this thread is taken up with angry, poorly reasoned, defensive arguments from the right against that strawman, and a few withering rebuttals. Also, Al claiming that Brunn is a leftist.
What a waste of time.
June 12th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
DTM…I’ve enjoyed debating you, but ideology comes before cognition? Cognition is thought, it is processing…how can the product come before the processing?
You’re simply assuming that ideology is the product of thought, when again we have every empirical reason to believe otherwise.
And this shouldn’t be surprising: long ago people realized that thought occurs only after some content, both descriptive and indeed normative, has been embedded in the objects of thought during perception and imagination. If you like, you can think of this as a form of “pre-processing” that occurs outside the subjective view of our conscious minds.
Accordingly, one shouldn’t be surprised that ideology can largely emerge from this pre-processing stage, not at the end of the processing stage. Which is not to rule out some possibility of ideological modification as a result of the processing stage, but we have little reason to believe that effect is particularly common or important in terms of determining ideology.
June 12th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Re: Von Brunn seems to hate religion. He’s not a typical anti-Semitic Chritian bigot, either. The man saw Christianity as Jewish fairy tale designed to control white people. Perhaps he had a neo-Pagan worldview? One could argue that this made him a “conservative”. But good luck blaming that brand of conservatism on the GOP. Not that it has stopped most of you from trying…
Steve O,
I’m having trouble parsing the arguments of you and your buddy Ed Smithe here. Just what the hell is your point?
Of course it’s possible to be Of The Right and to hate both Jews and Christians. In fact, there is a distinct strand of Right-wing thought that hates Judaism precisely because Christianity arose historically in a Jewish context. The Nazis believed just that, and so did Nietzsche.
Abb1,
How about this: I’ll apologize for Christian atrocities against Muslims (which were many). The Muslims certainly fought the Crusades more cleanly than the Christians, I’ll give you that, and atrocities were committed against recalcitrant Muslims in Spain. Now just when will you people apologize for the considerabley more numerous Muslim atrocities against everyone else. Start with the bloody and barbaric Muslim conquests of Syria, Palestine, Anatolia, Armenia, Persia, North India, South India, Spain, Greece, Bulgaria, and the list goes on. Accompanied by murder, slavery, economic exloitation, and sexual exploitation, the classic example being Mehmed II’s attempted rape of the fourteen year old son of the Grand Duke Loukas Notaras. Four of the five great Patriarchates of Christianity are under Muslim rule today, does that occur to you? The conquests of Muhammed and his followers launched an orgy of destruction and devastation that the world was not to see again until the twentieth century.
Personally, I think that a fairly good refutation of Islam’s theological claims was provided by St. John Damascene, the great eight-century Church Father. But naturally, I doubt too many of you hipster yahoos read St. John Damascene. You’d rather read Edward Said, Hugh Hefner and Michel Foucault. If Edward Said apologizes for Tamerlane’s atrocities anywhere in his voluminous work, I should like to see it. The basic problem with Islam, of course, is that they deny both the Trinity and the Incarnation.
June 12th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Check that: as of 1967, one of the ancient patriarchates is under Jewish sovereingty. It was under Muslim rule for a good nine centuries or more, though.
June 13th, 2009 at 12:41 am
I used to enjoy this blog, as much for the commentary byplay as for MattY’s syntax-challenged postings.
Not that anyone cares, but I think its time to move the bookmark down to the very bottom of the list. The trolls have taken over.
There are honest conservatives out there, but apparently they all still have day jobs, while the trolls have time to sit in Mom’s basement all day and deluge blogs that were formerly sites for good argument with their nonsense repeated from the vilest alleged political entertainers.
Someday maybe MattY will actually begin reading the comments and :::gasp::: maybe even banning the worst trolls (or maybe TP could do it for him). Until then, bye y’all.
June 13th, 2009 at 2:48 am
YOU see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confess that we are generally men of untaught feelings, that, instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.
June 13th, 2009 at 3:36 am
Kropotkin, So the lack of evidence that something happened is evidence that it indeed did happen unless I “prove” otherwise?
No, but since they specifically justified gassing them, planned to gas them, and possibly did gas them, I’d say this is a grey area. Even if they didn’t gas them in the end, that doesn’t really absolve them – remember, we’re talking about their hypothetical group-guilt here.
Hector, you’re just being silly. If you are an Islamophobe today, that’s just as bad as being Anti-Semite, obviously, regardless of what happened hundreds of years ago.
You have a problem, Hector. You see the world as if it was populated by one 2000 year-old Christian, one 3400 year-old Jew and one 1400 year-old Muslim. Oh, yeah, and a one Hipster.
But that’s not true, Hector. In fact, the world is populated by billions of individuals. It’s customary to assume that each has his or her own agency and is responsible for his or her own actions. You are only responsible for what you do, and you only deserve what you earned. The “collective guilt” thing makes little sense; it’s mostly symbolic. You can’t base your practical politics on the fact that some Christians killed some Jews hundreds of years ago, that’s just totally irrational.
June 13th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Pigf*cker Abb1,
I want to see you justify the conquest of the Byzantium and the atrocities perpetrated therein by the Islamic hordes of Mehmet II, the Michael Jackson of his age. You can’t do it, of course, for it is completely unjustifiable.
I notice that none of you hipsters has yet answered Benedict XVI’s criticisms of Islam at Regensburg two years ago. You can’t, because they are true.
June 13th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Dear Hector,
and why would I want to justify a conquest of anything by any hordes? From, say, the conquest of Canaan by the hordes of Israelites to the conquest of Iraq by the hordes of Americans, and everything in between? What does it have to do with your “collective guilt” or anything else? Could you elaborate on that, please.
Also, why would I care about Benedict XVI and his criticisms of anything at all? Please explain.
Thanks Hector.
June 13th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Oh, sorry Hector, was that your justification for being an Islamophobic asshole, wasn’t it? I didn’t get it at first. Got it. Well, you’re one crazy tribalistic bastard, I must say; and fairly entertaining one too. Keep up the good work.
June 13th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
abb1
No, but since they specifically justified gassing them, planned to gas them, and possibly did gas them, I’d say this is a grey area. Even if they didn’t gas them in the end, that doesn’t really absolve them – remember, we’re talking about their hypothetical group-guilt here.
You have a point there. I’ll have to refresh my memory over what exactly happened. IIRC, Chruchill was Secretary of the Air in 1919 and proposed gassing the Iraqis. The cabinet nixed it since there were no gas bombs available in the middle east and bombing them worked just as well. But if they had been willing to go along with it if the logistical constraints weren’t there, I’d agree with you.
Now, can anybody tell why Hector and you are asking for apologies about acts that happened 800 years ago committed by people long dead and buried? That just seems a diversion from addressing current pragmatic problems in the Middle East since it’s much easier argue over what Suleiman the Magnificent or Richard the Lion Hearted did than to actually talk about settlement expansion or evacuating the Golan Heights.
June 13th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Re: He’s not a typical anti-Semitic Chritian bigot, either. The man saw Christianity as Jewish fairy tale designed to control white people.
The more extreme anti-Semites generally end up there as they follow the logic of their bigotry to its full conclusion. Nazi ideologues had similar beliefs, although they were careful not to say them too loudly in public since the majority of Germans reamined Christians under their rule.
June 13th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Mr. Kropotkin,
I’ll gladly stipulate that Israel should abandon the Golan Heights and should permanently evacuate the settlements, by armed force if necessary. My only interest in Israel is that a Jewish State exist somewhere in the world, and that it be able to militarily defend itself. I am not so concerned with how large that state is, or even its location.
June 14th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
You know who I’ve always found gets really angry at Dan Rather and critics of Sarah Palin? The Left.